Vinča culture

Vinča culture

Map showing the extent of the Vinča culture
Alternative names	Turdaş culture Tordos culture
Horizon	First Temperate Neolithic
Period	Neolithic–Chalcolithic
Dates	c. 5400–4500 BC
Type site	Vinča-Belo Brdo
Major sites	Belogradchik Drenovac Gomolava Gornja Tuzla Pločnik Rudna Glava Selevac Tărtăria Turdaş Vratsa Vršac
Characteristics	Large tell settlements Anthropomorphic figurines Vinča symbols
Preceded by	Starčevo culture
Followed by	Tiszapolgár culture

The Vinča culture [ʋîːntʃa], also known as Turdaș culture, Turdaș–Vinča culture or Vinča-Turdaș culture, is a Neolithic archaeological culture of Southeast Europe, dated to the period 5400–4500 BC. Named for its type site, Vinča-Belo Brdo, a large tell settlement discovered by Serbian archaeologist Miloje Vasić in 1908, it represents the material remains of a prehistoric society mainly distinguished by its settlement pattern and ritual behaviour.

Farming technology first introduced to the region during the First Temperate Neolithic was developed further by the Vinča culture. It was noted for dark-burnished pottery, and fuelling a population boom and producing some of the largest settlements in prehistoric Europe. These settlements maintained a high degree of cultural uniformity through the long-distance exchange of ritual items, but were probably not politically unified. Various styles of zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figurines are hallmarks of the culture, as are the Vinča symbols, which some conjecture to be the earliest form of proto-writing. Although not conventionally considered part of the Chalcolithic or "Copper Age", the Vinča culture provides the earliest known example of copper smelting in the Old World.

Geography and demographics

The Vinča culture occupied a region of Southeastern Europe (i.e. the Balkans) corresponding mainly to modern-day Serbia and Kosovo, but also parts of Southernmost Hungary, Western-Central Romania (Oltenia, Transylvania), Western Bulgaria, Eastern Croatia, Eastern Bosnia, Northern Montenegro and North Macedonia. John Chapman (1981) previously included Greece and excluded Hungary and Croatia (as new findings and conclusions were not known at the time).

This region had already been settled by farming societies of the First Temperate Neolithic (like Starčevo culture) and during the Neolithic demographic transition population sizes started to grow. However, during the Vinča period happened changes in technology and style of pottery, and the sustained population growth led to an unprecedented level of settlement size and density along with the population of areas that were bypassed by earlier settlers. Vinča settlements were considerably larger than almost all other contemporary European culture (with the exception of Cucuteni–Trypillia culture), in some instances surpassing the cities of the Aegean and early Near Eastern Bronze Age a millennium later. Considering their size can be grouped into 1-1.9 ha, 4-4.9 ha and 20-29 ha. One of the largest sites was Vinča-Belo Brdo (a suburb of Belgrade, Serbia), it covered 29 hectares (72 acres) and had up to 2,500 people.

Early Vinča settlement population density was 50–200 people per hectare, in later phases an average of 50–100 people per hectare was common. The Divostin site was occupied twice between 4900 and 4650 B.C. and an estimate based on 17 houses suggests that given a lifespan per house of 56 years. 1028 houses were built on the site during that period with a final population size estimated to be between 868 and 2864. Another large site was Crkvine-Stubline from 4850/4800 BC. it may have contained a maximum population of 4,000. The settlement of Parţa maybe had 1,575 people living there at the same time. It is considered that alike the Neolithic-Chalcolithic Age "there is no evidence for any proto-urbanism nor specialised military, religious or administrative centres", but their settlements did have defensive formations.

Origin

Vinča ceramics

The origins of the Vinča culture are still debated and there exist two mainstream theories, as stated by Marko Porčić (2016), "currently there is no sufficient evidence to accept or to reject out any of the hypotheses proposed for the issue of Vinča culture origins". It is also debatable whether it can be conceptually considered as a "culture" or a "phenomenon".

The first hypothesis is that the Vinča culture developed locally from the preceding Neolithic Starčevo culture—first proposed by Colin Renfrew (1969) and Ruth Tringham (1971)—and it became accepted by many scholars, showing "strong links with the contemporaneous Karanovo (phases III to Kodžadermen-Gumelnita-Karanovo VI) in Bulgaria, Precucuteni-Tripolye A in Moldavia and Ukraine, Dimini in Greece, and the late manifestations of the Starčevo culture and early Sopot culture in eastern Croatia". However, the evidence is not conclusive, and according to recent research "the earliest Vinča sites in the south seem to be as early as those in the north" and have lack of local continuity.

According to the second hypothesis—first proposed by V. Gordon Childe (1929) and Milutin Garašanin (1982)—on the basis of typological similarities, paleodemography and archaeogenetics, the Vinča culture and those of 'Dark Burnished Ware' developed by a second wave population movement from Anatolia to the Balkans after happened demographic-cultural decline and discontinuity between Early-Late Neolithic in the Central Balkans. Recent studies suggest possibility of both local and migration origin, also related to the emergence of Dudești and Boian culture in Romania, or a combination of both origins.

Archaeogenetics

The 2017 and 2018 archaeogenetic studies on 15 samples show that all except one belonged to the paternal Y-DNA haplogroup G-M201 (G2a2a; G2a2a1; 2x G2a2a1a; G2a2b2a1a-PF3346), while the remaining sample belonged to haplogroup H-P96. Their maternal mtDNA haplogroups belonged to H, H3h2, H26, HV, K1a1, K1a4, K2a, T2b, T2c1, and U2 respectively. According to ADMIXTURE analysis they had approximately 90-97% Early European Farmers, 0-12% Western Hunter-Gatherer and 0-8% Western Steppe Herders-related ancestry, and were closest "to the samples from Neolithic Anatolia and to those of Transdanubia LBK and Starčevo, and from the Early Neolithic period from Germany ... consistent with the presumed direction of Neolithic demic movement from Anatolia through the Balkans to central Europe".

A 2021 study found that Neolithic farmers, including those of the Vinča culture, produced much less cytokine levels for inflammation than earlier hunter-gatherers, which evolutionary introduction to the European genomic heritage helps the immune system of modern Europeans.

Chronology

Vinča figurine, Cleveland Museum of Art

There exist several divisions of the culture, according to J. Chapman (1981) it can be divided into two main phases divided into four sub-phases (A-D), closely linked with those of its type site Vinča-Belo Brdo and dated between 5700 and 4200 BC. According to the most recent radiocarbon dating based on 76 dates (1996) Vinča-Belo Brdo spanned between 5200 and 4500 BC; on 155 dates (2009) it was dated between 5400/5300-4650/4600 BC; and on 600 dates (2016) it was concluded that the culture existed between 5400/5300 and 4500 BC.

In the Vinča C phase happened many significant changes to pottery style, settlement and pyrometallurgical activities and increase in ritual figurines among others because of which it is also called as "Vinča C shock" and "Gradac Phase" (Vinča B2-C1). The phenomenon was particularly strong in the South-Moravian and Kosovian variation of the culture.

Vinča culture	Vinča-Belo Brdo	Years BC
Early Vinča period	Vinča A	5400/5300–5200
	Vinča B	5200–5000/4950
	Vinča C	5000/4950–4850/4800
Late Vinča period	Vinča D	4850/4800–4600/4500

Decline

In its late Vinča D phase the centre of the Vinča network shifted from Vinča-Belo Brdo to Vršac, and the long-distance exchange of obsidian and Spondylus artefacts from modern-day Hungary and the Aegean respectively became more important than that of Vinča figurines. Eventually the network lost its cohesion altogether and fell into decline. It is likely that, after two millennia of intensive farming, economic stresses caused by decreasing soil fertility were partly responsible for this decline.

According to Marija Gimbutas, the Vinča culture was part of Old Europe – a relatively homogeneous, peaceful and matrifocal culture that occupied Europe during the Neolithic. According to this hypothesis its period of decline was followed by an invasion of warlike, horse-riding Proto-Indo-European tribes from the Pontic–Caspian steppe. However, this "New Age sentiment" viewpoint was prevalent until 1990s when started to emerge evidences of violent massacres and defensively-enclosed fortified settlements in Neolithic period.

Economy

Subsistence

One of the Tărtăria tablets with Vinča symbols, dated to 5500–5300 BC

Most people in Vinča settlements would have been occupied with the provision of food. They practised a mixed subsistence economy where agriculture, animal husbandry and hunting and foraging all contributed to the diet of the growing Vinča population. Compared to earlier cultures of the First Temperate Neolithic (FTN) these practices were intensified, with increasing specialisation on high-yield cereal crops and the secondary products of domesticated animals, consistent with the increased population density. In the late Vinča period (Vinča D; c. 4850-4500 cal BC) appeared first toggling harpoon.

Vinča agriculture introduced common wheat, oat and flax to temperate Europe, and made greater use of barley than the cultures of the FTN. These innovations increased crop yields and allowed the manufacture of clothes made from plant textiles as well as animal products (i.e. leather and wool). There is indirect evidence that Vinča farmers made use of the cattle-driven plough, which would have had a major effect on the amount of human labour required for agriculture as well as opening up new area of land for farming. Many of the largest Vinča sites occupy regions dominated by soil types that would have required ploughing.

Areas with less arable potential were exploited through transhumant pastoralism, where groups from the lowland villages moved their livestock to nearby upland areas on a seasonal basis. Cattle were more important than sheep and goats in Vinča herds and, in comparison to the cultures of the FTN, livestock was increasingly kept for milk, leather and as draft animals, rather than solely for meat. Seasonal movement to upland areas was also motivated by the exploitation of stone and mineral resources. Where these were especially rich permanent upland settlements were established, which would have relied more heavily on pastoralism for subsistence.

Although increasingly focused on domesticated plants and animals, the Vinča subsistence economy still made use of wild food resources. The hunting of deer, boar and aurochs, fishing of carp and catfish, shell-collecting, fowling and foraging of wild cereals, forest fruits and nuts made up a significant part of the diet at some Vinča sites. These, however, were in the minority; settlements were invariably located with agricultural rather than wild food potential in mind, and wild resources were usually underexploited unless the area was low in arable productivity.

Industry

Generally speaking craft production within the Vinča network was carried out at the household level; there is little evidence for individual economic specialisation. Nevertheless, some Vinča artefacts were made with considerable levels of technical skill. A two-stage method was used to produce pottery with a polished, multi-coloured finish, known as 'Black-topped' and 'Rainbow Ware'. Sometimes powdered cinnabar and limonite were applied to the fired clay for decoration. The style of Vinča clothing can be inferred from figurines depicted with open-necked tunics and decorated skirts. Cloth was woven from both flax and wool (with flax becoming more important in the later Vinča period), and buttons made from shell or stone were also used.

The Vinča site of Pločnik has produced the earliest example of copper tools in the world. However, the people of the Vinča network practised only an early and limited form of metallurgy. Copper ores were mined on a large scale at sites like Rudna Glava, but only a fraction were smelted and cast into metal artefacts – and these were ornaments and trinkets rather than functional tools, which continued to be made from chipped stone, bone and antler. It is likely that the primary use of mined ores was in their powdered form, in the production of pottery or as bodily decoration.

Gallery

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  The Tărtăria tablets
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  Vinča figurine, the Goddess on the Throne
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  Double-headed figurine
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  Vinča figurine, British Museum
• 
  Vinča figurine
• 
  Vinča pottery
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  Vinča pottery
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  Pottery with sculpted lid (reconstruction)
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  Vinča-Belo Brdo tell site
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  Magura cave drawings

Major Vinča sites

Drenovac

Gomolava

Gornja Tuzla

Pločnik

Rudna Glava

Selevac

Tărtăria

Turdaş

Vinča-Belo Brdo

Vršac

class=notpageimage|

Map of Serbia with markers showing the locations of major Vinča archaeological sites.

• Belogradchik
• Crkvine
• Drenovac
• Gomolava
• Gornja Tuzla
• Pločnik
• Rudna Glava
• Selevac
• Tărtăria
• Turdaş
• Vinča-Belo Brdo, the type site
• Vratsa
• Vršac

See also

• Tărtăria tablets
• Old Europe
• Prehistoric Europe
• Sesklo culture
• Varna culture
• Hamangia culture

References

Bibliography

• Borić, Dušan; Hanks, Bryan (2018). "Enclosing the Neolithic World: A Vinča Culture Enclosed and Fortified Settlement in the Balkans". Current Anthropology. 59 (3). University of Chicago Press: 336–346. doi:10.1086/697534. hdl:11573/1545302. S2CID 150068332.
• Chapman, John (1981). The Vinča culture of south-east Europe: Studies in chronology, economy and society (2 vols). BAR International Series. Vol. 117. Oxford: BAR. ISBN 0-86054-139-8.
• Chapman, John (2000). Fragmentation in Archaeology: People, Places, and Broken Objects. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-15803-9.
• Cvekic, Ljilja (12 November 2007). "Prehistoric women had passion for fashion". Reuters. Retrieved 23 September 2010.
• Gimbutas, Marija A., ed. (1976). Neolithic Macedonia as reflected by excavation at Anza, southeast Yugoslavia. Los Angeles: Institute of Archaeology, University of California.
• Jakucs, János (2016). "Between the Vinča and Linearbandkeramik Worlds: The Diversity of Practices and Identities in the 54th–53rd Centuries cal BC in Southwest Hungary and Beyond". Journal of World Prehistory. 29 (3). Springer Science+Business Media: 267–336. doi:10.1007/s10963-016-9096-x. PMC 5040754. PMID 27746586.
• Lipson, Mark (2017). "Parallel palaeogenomic transects reveal complex genetic history of early European farmers". Nature. 551 (7680). Nature Research: 368–372. Bibcode:2017Natur.551..368L. doi:10.1038/nature24476. PMC 5973800. PMID 29144465.
• Narasimhan, Vagheesh M. (6 September 2019). "The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia". Science. 365 (6457). American Association for the Advancement of Science: eaat7487. bioRxiv 10.1101/292581. doi:10.1126/science.aat7487. PMC 6822619. PMID 31488661.
• Perić, Slaviša (June 2017). "Drenovac: a Neolithic settlement in the Middle Morava Valley, Serbia". Antiquity. 91 (357). doi:10.15184/aqy.2017.41.
• Porčić, Marko (2020). "Observations on the origin and demography of the Vinča culture". Quaternary International. 560–561. Elsevier: 57–64. Bibcode:2020QuInt.560...57P. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2020.04.012. S2CID 218815232.
• Roberts, Benjamin W.; Radivojević, Miljana; Marić, Miroslav (2021). "The Vinča culture: an overview". In Radivojević, Miljana; Roberts, Benjamin (eds.). The Rise of Metallurgy in Eurasia: Evolution, Organisation and Consumption of Early Metal in the Balkans. Summertown, Oxford: Archaeopress. pp. 38–46. doi:10.32028/9781803270425. ISBN 978-1-80327-043-2. S2CID 245057541.
• Rassmann, K; Furholt, M. (2021). "The social organisation of the Vinča culture settlements. New evidence from magnetic and archaeological excavation data". In Radivojević, Miljana; Roberts, Benjamin (eds.). The Rise of Metallurgy in Eurasia: Evolution, Organisation and Consumption of Early Metal in the Balkans. Summertown, Oxford: Archaeopress. pp. 455–459. doi:10.32028/9781803270425. ISBN 978-1-80327-043-2. S2CID 245057541.
• Suciu, Cosmin Ioan (2011). "Early Vinča Culture Dynamic in South-Eastern Transylvania". In Mills, Steve; Mirea, Pavel (eds.). The Lower Danube in Prehistory: Landscape Changes and Human-Environment Interactions. Bucharest: Editura Renaissance. pp. 75–86. ISBN 978-606-8321-01-1.
• Tasić, Nenad (2015). "Vinča-Belo Brdo, Serbia: The times of a tell". Germania. Anzeiger der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts. 93 (1–2): 1–76. ISBN 978-3-943407-66-2. ISSN 0016-8874.
• Whittle, Alasdair (2016). "A Vinča potscape: formal chronological models for the use and development of Vinča ceramics in south-east Europe". Documenta Praehistorica. XLIII. University of Ljubljana Press: 1–60. doi:10.4312/dp.43.1. hdl:11573/1545305.

Further reading

• Amicone, Silvia (2020). "Beneath the surface: Exploring variability in pottery paste recipes within Vinča culture". Quaternary International. 560–561. Elsevier: 86–101. Bibcode:2020QuInt.560...86A. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2020.04.017. S2CID 218993018.
• Botić, Katarina (2020). "Middle Neolithic trasformation: Starčevo–LBK–Vinča meeting point and the emergence of Ražište style in Drava river valley". Quaternary International. 560–561. Elsevier: 197–207. Bibcode:2020QuInt.560..197B. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2020.03.032. S2CID 216336481.
• Chapman, John (2020). "The Vinča group - (Almost) 40 years on John Chapman (independent scholar)" (PDF). Quaternary International. 560–561. Elsevier: 5–19. Bibcode:2020QuInt.560....5C. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2020.06.014. S2CID 225663493.
• Diaconescu, Dragoș (2020). "The early Vinča culture in Transylvania: Considerations regarding its chronological position using correspondence analysis". Quaternary International. 560–561. Elsevier: 65–77. Bibcode:2020QuInt.560...65D. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2020.05.019. S2CID 225654476.
• Hofmann, Robert (2020). "Orientation of Neolithic dwellings in Central and Southeast Europe: Common denominator between the Vinča and Linearbandkeramik worlds". Quaternary International. 560–561. Elsevier: 142–153. Bibcode:2020QuInt.560..142H. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2020.05.006. S2CID 219487233.
• Jakucs, János; Vanda, Voicsek (2015). "The northermost distribution of the early Vinča Culture in the Danube valley: a preliminary study from Szederkény-Kukorica-dűlő (Baranya County, southern Hungary)". Antaeus. 33. Communicationes ex Instituto Archaeologico Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae: 13–54.
• Jakucs, János (2020). "LBK and Vinča in South-East Transdanubia: Comments on merging, interleaving and diversity" (PDF). Quaternary International. 560–561. Elsevier: 119–141. Bibcode:2020QuInt.560..119J. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2020.03.029. S2CID 216362702.
• Shennan, Stephen (2018). The First Farmers of Europe: An Evolutionary Perspective. Cambridge World Archaeology. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9781108386029. ISBN 9781108422925.
• Tasić, Nikola; Srejović, Dragoslav; Stojanović, Bratislav (1990). Винча: Центар неолитске културе у Подунављу [Vinča: Centre of the Neolithic culture of the Danubian region]. Belgrade: Центар за археолошка истраживања Филозофског факултета.
• Vasić, Miloje (1932). Preistorijska Vinča I [Prehistoric Vinča I]. Beograd.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Vasić, Miloje (1936). Preistorijska Vinča II [Prehistoric Vinča II]. Beograd.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Vasić, Miloje (1936). Preistorijska Vinča III [Prehistoric Vinča III]. Beograd.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Vasić, Miloje (1936). Preistorijska Vinča IV [Prehistoric Vinča IV]. Beograd.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Weninger, Bernhard (2020). "Barcode seriation and concepts of Gauge Theory. The 14C-Chronology of Starčevo, LBK, and early Vinča". Quaternary International. 560–561. Elsevier: 20–37. Bibcode:2020QuInt.560...20W. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2020.04.031. S2CID 219057197.
• Подунавље између 6000 и 3000 г. пре нове ере [The Danubian Region from 6000 to 3000 B. C.] Винча и њен свет [Vinča and its world] (in Serbian). Belgrade: SANU. 1990.

External links

• The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley 5000-3500 BC, Exhibition Video (2010)
• narodnimuzej.rs - Vinca culture artefacts