The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

by Chris Fowler

  The Copper Age, Chalcolithic, or Eneolithic is based on different criteria in the archaeological traditions of different countries. This obscures supra-regional patterns. In Bulgaria, for example, the early ‘Chalcolithic’ during the first half of the fifth millennium BC fails to produce securely attributed cast heavier tools or axes, nor is there evidence for ore extraction and metal reduction beyond local activity. Countries like the Czech Republic, Austria, and Poland, with numerous copper artefacts in their record from c. 4500–2200 BC, did not even use the term ‘Copper Age’ until recently. In Bulgaria, a ‘Proto Bronze Age’ begins at c. 3600 BC (Nikolova 1999; Vajsov 2002), totally replacing, terminologically, the later years of the Copper Age. This also exists for Greece, where the beginning of early Helladic and Cycladic I is set conventionally at c. 3200 BC (Manning 1995), and for the Ukraine and southern Russia with their Yamnaya (Rassamakin 1999). Hungary defines its early Bronze Age I at c. 2700 BC with the emergence of the Makó/Kosihy-čaka and early Somogyvár (Ruttkay 2003) cultural complexes to which the Vučedol entity can be attributed, although perhaps starting two centuries earlier. The same archaeological cultures are, however, named ‘Final Eneolithic’ in Serbia and Croatia, ‘Endneolithikum’ in Austria, and ‘Transitional Period’ in western Romania. Given these differences, the best way to provide a comparative framework is to propose a south-eastern and central European early (c. 4600–3600 BC), middle (c. 3600–3000 BC), and late Copper Age (c. 3000–2500/2200 BC). Each of these horizons is defined by underlying cultural entities and by its characteristic copper artefacts (Fig. 35.1).

  FIG. 35.1. Chrono-typological chart of early copper axes and daggers (axes after Vulpe 1970 and most daggers after Vajsov 1993; author’s own montage).

  The early Copper Age

  The early Copper Age has a domestic emphasis and is characterized by a fragmented cultural background with different and relatively isolated, regional societies of sedentary farming villagers, living in nucleated settlements. Framed by the Suvorovo-Novodanilovka herders in the north-east (Govedarica 2004; Anthony 2007), branches of the Western Linearbandkeramik (LBK) and its successors in the west (Whittle 1996), and the emerging Trichterbecher (TRB) societies in the north-west (Midgley 1992; Klassen 2000, 2004), the societies of the Kodžadermen-Gumelniţa-Karanovo VI, Tripolye-Cucuteni, Salcuţa-Krivodol-Bubanj Hum, and the Tiszapolgár-Bodrogkeresztur-Hunjadi Halom sequences are the most important of these (cf. Parzinger 1993; Whittle 1996; Bailey 2000; Chapman 2000). The typical copper inventory consists of primarily heavy hammer-axes and mattocks (e.g. Vulpe 1970; Novotná 1970; Todorova 1981; Patay 1984) and certain types of flat axes (Dobeš 1989; Schmitz 2004; Kienlin 2008), both known of in their thousands. The copper dagger is another object that appears in the record simultaneously in the western Pontic and the eastern Carpathian basin, but only from c. 4000 BC onwards (Vajsov 1993, 2002; Matuschik 1998). Additionally, copper and gold jewellery and personal adornments are well known, including bracelets, all kinds of rings, spirals, plates, and decorated pins. There is also a range of amulets and other symbolic items. Greece sees the first silver objects in its record, in the form of arm rings and amulet pendants (Zachos and Douzougli 1999; Maran 2000; also Turkey, cf. Zimmermann 2005).

  The middle Copper Age

  Ever-increasing interaction between herders and emerging pastoralists of the Pontic Steppe belt and their sedentary neighbours at the lower Danube and the eastern Carpathians in the first quarter of the fourth millennium BC (Anthony 2007; Meyer 2008) led to a new emphasis on stock. Subsequent changes in the economy required a different lifestyle and settlement organization. Consequently, this altered social foundations which affected ritual, spirituality, and cult, for example with paired cattle burials appearing in the record for the Baden and Globular Amphora cultures (Pollex 1999). These are perhaps the mechanisms behind the rapid expansion of these cultures as well as Cernavodă III and Boleráz. Strikingly, metal production, circulation, and deposition followed an opposite pathway to this cultural expansion in most of south-eastern and central Europe. This horizon sees the end of the heavy copper holed axes. Gold also disappears completely from the record, as most of the silver does in the Aegean. However, flat axes, particularly broader specimens like the Altheim and Vinča types continue (e.g. Dobeš 1989) and daggers flourish in some regions in the east, albeit as different forms from their predecessors (Vajsov 1993; Nikolova 1999). Jewellery continues as well, but as with all other metal artefacts in this horizon, seemingly in lower numbers. At a handful of Baden sites in Austria and Slovakia, the neck ring re-enters the record after a short appearance in the mid-fifth millennium.

  The late Copper Age

  The late Copper Age is signalled by the infiltration of populations associated with the Yamnaya culture from the northern Pontic steppe belt, into large parts of south-eastern Europe with similar environmental conditions from c. 3000 BC (Anthony 2007; Heyd 2011). This event was not perhaps as drastic as one might think, but it would have been part of a new quality of interaction and communication between essentially heterogeneous social groups. This trajectory was accompanied by a range of innovations in the social, technological, and economic spheres, including the now widespread use of horses and wheeled transport, as well as in other material culture. This package also included a distinct series of new metal categories and types (Harrison and Heyd 2007; Subbotin 2008). The copper inventory around the Balkans and Carpathians sees the re-appearance of the holed axe, now in the form of the single edged shaft-hole axes of the Fajsz, Baniabic, and Corbasca types, undoubtedly originating from the circum-Pontic and Caucasus regions (Kohl 2007, 57ff). Along with them comes the tanged dagger; a distinct form of awl with swollen middle shaft; and small hair or temple-rings made sometimes of gold, but mostly of silver and occasionally copper. Besides, flat axes continue throughout the third millennium—for example, in the form of the Griča and Baranda types of south-eastern and central Europe (Kuna 1981)—and at the same time the first flanged ones appear, foreshadowing early Bronze Age forms.

  Whilst the various eastern and central European Corded Ware groups from the second quarter of the third millennium BC remain mostly metal-poor, later types of the single-edged shaft-hole axes flourish in south-eastern Europe and the Carpathian basin. It is only then, in the context of the expansion of the Bell Beaker phenomenon during the mid-millennium, that tanged copper daggers and small awls reach a prominence and range never experienced before (Heyd 2007), with rare daggers in gold and silver showing they have risen once more in social significance. Generally, regions now seem more closely linked, and gold and to a lesser extent silver reappear as jewellery and for symbolic or prestigious objects. The silver hair-rings of the aforementioned Yamnaya package transform rapidly into Corded Ware precious metal hair-rings and copper hair-spirals. Subsequently, two trajectories appear: a central European Bell Beaker branch consisting of hair-rings of the distinct Sion type dated to c. 2500–2400 BC, and the Noppenringe and British Bell Beaker branch of golden basket earrings, or more likely hair-rings.

  INCONSISTENCIES IN CHRONOLOGIES, DISTRIBUTIONS, AND CONTEXTS

  Despite these clearly visible evolutionary trends in early European metalwork, there are some aspects of the metallurgy that are still in dispute or not quite understood.

  The first is the apparent sudden appearance of the heavy Pločnik-type hammer axes, said to be the earliest cast axes in Europe, around the mid-fifth millennium BC. They stand at the beginning of a long series of heavy axes and then mattocks, both dominating the record of the early Copper Age in their thousands. They are found over a vast area from the western Ukraine to Slovakia/Slovenia (Govedarica 2001; Radivojević 2006). Most of them enter the record as single finds, which links them to all the other later heavy axes. But several come from the fifth millennium BC hoard of Karbuna in the Ukraine, the Pločnik hoards in eastern Serbia, the Tiszapolgár cemetery of Tibava in eastern Slovakia, and Varna grave 43 in Bulgaria. Varna has new AMS 14C-dates which centre around 4500
BC (Higham et al. 2007), matching the Tripolye A2 pot in which the hoard of Karbuna was deposited, whilst Tibava grave C is later by perhaps one or two centuries. However, the four Pločnik hoards, consisting of 45 objects altogether, are dug into an earlier Vinča layer (Stalio 1964), giving them a probable date within the second quarter of the fifth millennium BC. It is therefore quite possible that a European pyrotechnical metallurgy which produced these heavy axes originated from the central Balkans and the Vinča culture, supporting the new Belovode evidence mentioned above. This would make it the heartland not only of an independent European metallurgy, but also of a millennium-long early Copper Age axe tradition.

  In the later stages of the fifth millennium BC heavy hammer-axes and mattocks are found largely in the western and north-western Pontic, eastern Balkans, and eastern Carpathian basin. Between 4100 and 3800 BC, it is the Carpathian basin as a whole, and particularly its western and north-western regions, which produce the most, whilst their numbers across the previous centre to the east are declining (Meyer 2008; Ivanova 2008). This is why the Hungarian tradition calls this period the ‘High Copper Age’. It is also in the three centuries around 4000 BC that metallurgy is exported westward, for example, the Şiria type axe from Überlingen at Lake Constance (Matuschik and Matschullat 1997), perhaps the flat axe from Pont-de-Roide in eastern France (Klassen et al. 2007), and the famous gold lozenge from Pauilhac in Aquitaine (Roussot-Larroque 2008). Axes of Carpathian manufacture are also reaching the northern European plain (Müller 2001; Łęczycki 2005) and southern Scandinavia (Klassen 2000), and there is a contemporaneous spread south-west with the first copper artefacts entering the southern Alps and the Padanian plain of northern Italy (Zimmermann 2007; Gleirscher 2008). The next stage, from c. 3700 BC into the second half of the fourth millennium BC, sees the metal supply of the Carpathian basin vanishing and the previously described zones to the west, north-west, and south-west becoming the new centres of a central European metallurgy. Thus, a north Alpine metallurgical zone develops (Matuschik 1998; Bartelheim et al. 2002; Bartelheim 2007; Roberts and Frieman, this volume); a distinct hoarding tradition emerges in TRB Poland (Łęczycki 2004); and the distribution of flat axes in southern Scandinavia reaches its peak (Klassen 2000). This is also the period when independent metallurgy emerges in the central and western Mediterranean (Bartelheim and Pearce, this volume). There can be little doubt these developments are interlinked, but as yet there is no convincing model explaining these large-scale geographical shifts. Many questions remain. Were unique historical events responsible? Was there a breakdown of networks, first in the east and then in the Carpathian basin? Alternatively, was there a general devaluation of metals or loss of symbolic value? Or, more simply, did the copper ores in the east become exhausted with no technology available to move to different sources?

  Exactly the same questions have been asked of the so-called middle Copper Age metal decline across most of south-eastern Europe around the middle and second half of the fourth millennium BC. The scarcity of metal objects in the Cernavodă III-Boleráz cultures of the lower Danube and the Carpathian basin compared with previous periods has long been recognized (Roman and Diamandi 2001), as it has for the whole of the Baden sequence, and many contemporary societies in the lower Danube, the Balkans, and in Greece (Maran 1998, 513). Metals are also virtually absent during the early Helladic and Cycladic I of the late fourth and early third millennia BC in Greece, although termed here early Bronze Age (McGeehan-Liritzis 1996; Rambach 2000), as they are in the whole of the Globular Amphora culture of the north (which preceded the central area later occupied by the Corded Ware). In contrast, contemporary metal objects are quite well known from the Coţofeni of Transylvania (Mareš 2002; Ciugudean 2002), the Usatovo and related late Tripolye societies in the north-western Pontic region (Anthony 2007; Kohl 2007, 28ff), and as already described, for north-Alpine central Europe. Overall, south-eastern and central Europe offer distinctly differing pictures in this period. Yet as a whole the heavy copper axes and mattocks of the early Copper Age, which were probably symbols of value, wealth, and power, have disappeared.

  This goes along with fundamental changes of context. Hoarding was no longer practised and lavishly equipped graves were also now absent. Instead, wealth and status were perhaps negotiated through other media such as the single, paired, or multiple cattle burials of the Baden and Globular Amphora cultures. Nonetheless, even in what are regarded as metal-free regions, Cernavodă III-Boleráz and Baden-period metalwork exists, albeit mostly in low numbers and as smaller objects (e.g. knives, chisels, awls, jewellery and other miscellaneous objects). The conclusion is that the decline may not be as sharp as commonly suggested. A depression in metal circulation is being dealt with, which was geographically quite varied; less metal may have been available in the Carpathian basin, but elsewhere there may be continuity.

  BEYOND VARNA AND GOLD: THE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS

  There seem to be two major opinions when it comes to the social implications of early metalwork: the most popular describes metallurgy as one of the key triggers for emerging social, economic, and ritual complexity, particular during the early Copper Age horizon (e.g. Renfrew 1978; contributions of J. Lichardus in Lichardus 1991a; Sherratt 1994); the other sees its impact as rather marginal (e.g. Parkinson 2006; Kienlin 2008) and of little importance in terms of social stratification. This latter has been proposed especially for the Carpathian basin and is supported by the absence of settlement evidence for advanced social hierarchy in Bulgaria and Romania. It does, however, have to acknowledge the special position of the famous Chalcolithic cemetery of Varna in Bulgaria (Slavchev 2008), which has produced over 3,000 single gold objects, weighing more than 6kg; 165 copper objects, many of them larger axes and adzes (Higham et al. 2008, 95); more than 230 flint artefacts and around 90 stone objects; 650 clay products; and over 12,000 dentalium shells and around 1,100 Spondylus shell ornaments probably imported from the Aegean. Copper and gold obviously played an important role in the display of wealth, power, and perhaps status, a relationship clearly demonstrated by some clay vessels from prominent graves being decorated in gold powder, the multiple axe offerings in graves 1, 4, and 97, or, most lavishly, by the so-called ‘chieftain’s’ grave 43 (Todorova 1981; Fol and Lichardus 1988). The man buried in the latter has been described as having a symbolic role in, or control over, metalworking due to his special metal tool collection (as has cenotaph grave 4), and the grave’s so-called golden penis sheath could well be a golden replica of a tuyère (jet-like air-concentrator normally made of backed clay).

  Did the Varna cemetery and its accumulation of wealth really stand alone in south-eastern Europe? Interestingly, the answer must be both ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Yes, because as a funerary ensemble and a cemetery nothing can match it currently and perhaps never will. No, because there are structurally similar accumulations of material wealth, and in particular metals, in the early Copper Age horizon from a wide geographical range—however, they are mostly from hoards (Fig. 35.2). Massive golden bracelets like those from Varna (graves 1, 4, 36, 43, and 97), each weighing more than 100g, are known from Fundeni-Lungoci (probably a grave, or part of a hoard) and Balaci (a single find or part of a hoard) in the Romanian Lower Danube (Govedarica 2004), from the Moigrád hoard in Transylvania, and in the form of an arm spiral weighing 165.9g from the Tiszaszölös hoard in the Hungarian plain (Makkay 1989). The Moigrád and Tiszaszölös treasures themselves, with their lozenges, plates, and other things, must each have originally contained more than a kilo of pure gold, with the oval plate or pendant of Moigrád, with a diameter of an incredible 31.1cm, totalling 780g alone. But there is more: one can add the hoard from house 4 of the Chotnica site in Bulgaria with its 44 pieces of golden jewellery and pendants weighs 310g altogether (Todorova and Vajsov 2001); the Hencida hoard in Hungary weighs c. 150g (the largest pendant 94.91g; Virág 2003); the two gold disks from Stollhof in Austria weigh 121g and 71g; the two gold disks from Tenja-Orlovinja in Croatia weigh
150g (and more than double if one can add the gold bands and rings, Glogović 2003); the two Csáford disks weigh 140g (Korek 1960); the Ercsi hoard pieces are of similar weight (‘Trésors… 2001’); there is the 21.4cm wide Štramberk-Kotouč silver disk (Hásek 1989); and the collection of golden pendants most likely from another hoard said to have originated in either Greece or Bulgaria (Dimakopoulou 1998). Similarly, there are the big copper axe hoards, such as Plakuder in Bulgaria and Bečmen in Serbia each containing more than five kilos of pure copper (Lichardus-Itten 1991), the four Pločnik hoards weighing a total of 16kg, or the full metal hilted and decorated Jászladány axe from Osijek in Croatia (Jovanović 1979, 40–41, pl. II, 1–3) made of 18kg of pure copper, the heaviest single copper artefact for millennia (Fig. 35.3). Even the clay vessels with their decoration in gold powder have now found a parallel from the slightly later Bubanj site of Niš-Novo Selo in eastern Serbia (Stojić and Jocić 2006, 257, fig. 41). Lavishly equipped graves have also come to light, if only in limited numbers. Apart from the enigmatic Fundeni, there is now Giurgiulesti in Moldova (Govedarica 2004) and some other sites in the Ukraine (Rassamakin 2004) which belong to the Ochre Graves of the Suvorovo-Novodanilovka group (Anthony 2007, 249–258). As argued for Varna (Lichardus 1991b; Lichardus and Lichardus-Itten 2003), it was perhaps the north-eastern connection to the steppes which brought the idea of lavish grave furniture (Fig. 35.4), and the display of wealth, prestige, power, and social position in the grave, to the early Copper Age sedentary farming communities of south-eastern Europe.

  FIG. 35.2. Distribution map of early Copper Age golden bracelets, disks/lozenges, and gold/silver pendants.