Living by the River: Plant Use and Vegetation in the Late Neolithic along the Sava River in Serbia

Abstract

The sites of Gomolava and Klenak are situated on the left bank of the Sava River, in the southern Pannonian Plain, and were intensively occupied from the Neolithic through to Roman times. Recent rescue excavations at Klenak have uncovered remnants of a Late Neolithic settlement surrounded by multiple ditches, as well as the remains of Late Neolithic burials. Here, the ongoing archaeobotanical sampling and analysis provide a unique opportunity to study plant use and deposition in sacred and domestic contexts from the same period (5300-4500 BCE). At Gomolava, archaeobotanical investigations conducted in the 1970s provided a detailed view on plant production and surrounding vegetation in the different phases of occupation, including the Late Neolithic settlement. The two sites are located c. 10 km apart and in the same, predominantly flat landscape. Given their proximity and coeval Late Neolithic occupations, together they offer important insights into plant use, crop choices and cultivation practices within a specific environment – the Sava plain, renowned for its high agricultural potential but prone to flash floods. This poster presents first archaeobotanical results from the site of Klenak and compares them with the data from Gomolava