Little Cucuteni pots of hope: a challenge to the divine nature of figurines

Discussion of figurines is one of the most popular topics in the prehistory of Eastern Europe. They have been perceived as goddesses and gods, toys, individuals, dividuals, comforting miniatures, embodying personhood and more recently as “teaching devices”. Their relationship to fecundy and fertility is over-exploited but a safe haven for the majority of East European archaeologists. Here, we take on exactly the opposite view and try to build a case in which a set of figurines and a number of accompanying objects are interpreted as infertility aid-kits. The sets from Poduri-Dealul Ghindaru and Isaiia-Balta Popii are assessed in terms of recent tendencies in Western archaeological thought whereby representation and imposed meaning gives way to agency, action and performance. Rezumat: Figurinele reprezintă unul dintre cele mai preferate subiecte din preistoria Europei de Est. Acestea au fost percepute ca zeițe și zei, jucării, indivizi, divizi, miniaturi aducătoare de confort – încorporând personalitatea, și mai recent ca “instrumente de învățare”. Relația lor cu fecunditatea și fertilitatea este supralicitată, dar se constituie într-un rai sigur pentru majoritatea arheologilor est-europeni. În textul de față, adoptăm o perspectivă exact opusă și încercăm să construim un caz în care un set de figurine și un număr de obiecte asociate sunt interpretate drept seturi-de-ajutor împotriva infertilității. Seturile de la Poduri-Dealul Ghindaru și Isaiia-Balta Popii sunt evaluate în termenii tendințelor recente din gândirea arheologică Apuseană, în care reprezentarea și impunerea de sens lasă locul agenței, acțiunii și performării

A Vinča potscape: formal chronological models for the use and development of Vinča ceramics in south-east Europe.

Recent work at Vinča-Belo Brdo has combined a total of more than 200 radiocarbon dates with an array of other information to construct much more precise narratives for the structural history of the site and the cultural materials recovered from it. In this paper, we present the results of a recent attempt to construct formal models for the chronology of the wider Vinča potscape, so that we can place our now detailed understanding of changes at Belo Brdo within their contemporary contexts. We present our methodology for assessing the potential of the existing corpus of more than 600 radiocarbon dates for refining the chronology of the five phases of Vinča ceramics proposed by Milojčić across their spatial ranges, including a total of 490 of them in a series of Bayesian chronological models. Then we outline our main results for the development of Vinča pottery. Finally, we discuss some of the major implications for our understanding of the source, character and tempo of material change

Landscape, Material Culture and Society in Prehistoric South East Bulgaria

This volume compares the prehistoric settlement patterns in adjacent small valleys in South East Bulgaria - an area with an important geographical location and intensive investigations but with very little archaeologically relevant synthesis and no history of landscape research. The research investigates prehistoric sites within three selected microregions - the Kalnitsa valley and the valleys of the middle and lower courses of the Sokolitsa and Ovcharitsa