Изазови средњег бронзаног доба: ватинска култура и балкански суседи

Abstract

CHALLENGES OF THE MIDDLE BRONZE AGE: THE VATIN CULTURE AND BALKAN NEIGHBOURGHS

Summary

The generation of researchers to which I belong has contributed to the struggle for a better knowledge of the overall cultural milieu of the Middle Bronze Age, in which the bearers of the Vatin culture lived. Thanks to the growing number of radiocarbon dates, we can provide more precise chronological frameworks for the neighbouring regions and define more clearly the nature of interregional relations and contacts. Some of the decades-long doubts about the southern, Balkan neighbours of the Vatin culture have been resolved. As a result, new doubts have opened up, but the chronological consensus that has been reached has significantly facilitated professional communication. One gets the impression that today we can confirm with more confidence which traces in the material record were left by the bearers of the Vatin culture, and who were really their neighbours and not the generations that lived years after the Vatin culture no longer existed. This work is dedicated to the challenges of the Middle Bronze Age in Serbia and the answers that archaeologists have today, although a significant part of it refers to a wider region that has allowed us to set the knowledge of local manifestations of the Middle Bronze Age on a more solid basis. Some regions have taken the lead thanks to a multidisciplinary approach to the study of metal finds and sources of raw materials, some lead with the number of absolute dates for individual sites, so the contribution made to the common good is undeniable. Despite attempts to reconcile several different but matching types of data available today, the Vatin culture, like many other archaeological cultures of late prehistory, is largely defined on the basis of one category of archaeological evidence - pottery. The finds according to which the Vatin culture has been defined, primarily pottery material with its specific style, in its native south Pannonian territory, originate mostly from settlement type sites. Three regional groups of the Vatin culture have been recognized in that territory: Pančevo-Omoljica, Kornešti-Crvenka and Syrmia-Slavonia. So far, this approach, according to which regional variants are recognized, has proven to be the most relevant and has been accepted in scientific circles. Of course, once the satisfactory series of radiocarbon dates are available, this method will be checked and only then will we be able to assess its degree of reliability. When it comes to the problems of formal differences, especially regarding pottery styles, the priority has been given to regional specificities, which are due to differences in substrates or later external influences, rather than to chronological differences.

The sites with the most instructive stratigraphic sequence for the development of the Vatin culture are the tell-type settlements on Feudvar and Židovar. When considering the social and economic function of tells in the Carpathian basin, tells are regarded as central places. The Bronze Age settlement on Feudvar has been defined as proto-urban. It has been concluded that during the classical phase of development of the Vatin culture, the settlement on Feudvar was located on the northern edge of a wider system of central Vatin settlements. These settlements were set at such a distance from each other that prehistoric means of transport (horse, oxcart, boat) could cross in one day. Local activity of a settlement was limited to smaller areas surrounding the central settlement, which were separated by larger uninhabited zones. The settlement structure of the Vatin culture was obviously based on a network of autonomous communities, which refers to the segmentary organization of tribal communities of the Early Bronze Age, which did not include a higher central power. In contrast to the segmentary organization at the level of the region, the communities themselves had a clearly defined hierarchical organisation with a representative central settlement and short-term subordinate settlements in its surroundings. Although Židovar and its surroundings have not been subject to such a detailed prospection as in the case of Feudvar, according to the data available at the moment, we can assume a similar model of settlement.

So far, the image of the funeral practice of the Vatin culture has been created exclusively on the basis of individual graves, such as the grave from Stubarlija near Mošorin or the child's grave from Gomolava. The tomb from Gomolava does not allow us to get a clearer picture of the standard funeral practice of the bearers of the Vatin culture, but rather suggests the possibility that the burial of children in these populations deserves special treatment. The task of the future research should be to verify this assumption, but first of all to discover the sites that can be claimed to be common Vatin necropolises. With enough luck in researching, such sites would contribute to illuminating many aspects of knowledge of the Vatin culture, including the process of its formation. The data that would be obtained thanks to specialized analyses of burials would help to overcome the limitations of the settlement archaeology.

Provided that we adopt the principles of absolute chronology based on the existing calibrated radiocarbon dates and the relative chronology for the Vatin culture, according to which its duration is linked to the Middle Bronze Age and goes through three stages of development, we would obtain a solid basis to create a common chronological language for the Bronze Age of the Carpathian basin. The new research phase, with a focus on specific research issues within wider scientific projects, also results in new radiocarbon dates that strengthen the settings from the beginning of the 21st century. In the nearest future, we expect the publication of dates from Židovar related to the stratigraphic sequence of the Vatin culture, as well as a methodological phase including analyses of pottery that will additionally confirm interregional contacts between the Middle Bronze Age populations of southern Pannonia and the central Balkans and chronological limits set in the 21st century. The definition of the cultural group Bubanj-Hum IV-Ljuljaci was the most important for the study of the relations between the bearers of the Vatin culture and their neighbours from central Serbia. Analysis of absolute dates, stylistic and typological characteristics of beakers with trapezoidal rim and accompanying pottery, as well as their distribution, concluded that they represent one of the most distinctive forms of material culture of the Middle Bronze Age of the central Balkans, named Bubanj-Hum IV-Ljuljaci after the eponymous sites and because of the fact that it developed from the previous Bubanj-Hum III culture with almost no chronological hiatus. The distribution of beakers with trapezoidal rim showed that they were present mostly in the Morava Valley, Šumadija and Timočka Krajina, and sporadically in southern Banat. Exceptions are numerous specimens recorded in the area of the confluence of the Mureş and Tisza, which seem to be younger and are the result of intensive contacts, the process of cultural transmission between the populations of the central Balkans and this part of Pannonia during the Middle Bronze Age.

The earliest finds of beakers with trapezoidal rim were found in Šumadija, the Morava Valley and Timočka Krajina and they date from the 19th / 18th century BC, so we can assume with some reservation that this group was formed in the area of Šumadija, the upper flow of the South Morava, central Morava Valley and possibly Timočka Krajina, and that it spread all the way to the Danube basin in the north. The development of this group in the border area was somewhat different due to the presence of elements of various cultures from the neighbourhood (Vatin, Verbićoara). It developed independently of the Vatin culture, although certain elements of the Vatin and Verbićoara culture, formed through contacts of this group with the populations from the Danube basin and eastern parts of the central Balkans, were recognized in its central territory during the later phases.

The Bubanj-Hum IV-Ljuljaci group ceased to exist at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, during the 15th / 14th century BC when it was replaced by younger cultures that developed in its tradition. Accordingly, the Paraćin group was formed in the wider zone of the central Morava Valley and the Brnjica culture in the South Morava Valley. Both groups retain numerous stylistic and typological pottery elements from the previous period and testify to a certain cultural continuity in the central Balkans throughout the Bronze Age. As we can now more reliably confirm, its northern neighbours, the founders of the Vatin culture, experienced a similar fate at the same time.

When it comes to the territory of western Serbia, pottery from a few non-settlement sites speaks in favour of the fact that, under the evident influence of the Vatin ceramic production, it was made by the bearers of the cultural group Bubanj-Hum IV-Ljuljaci. The pottery from the necropolis with tumuli is younger and could have been influenced by the ceramic production of the Belegiš culture. It follows from the above that the culture from the end of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages in western Serbia should not be linked to the Vatin culture and its regional groups and local variations, but rather regarded as a special cultural entity whose genesis includes autochthonous components and influences from the north. Therefore, the traditional name of the western Serbian variant of the Vatin culture should be changed to one that does not insist on a direct parallel with the Vatin in the southern part of the Carpathian basin. There have already been proposals to rename this specific culture, of which we should mention the syntagms Brezjak group and the western Serbian group of the Middle Bronze Age. Until a consensus is reached and a single name is adopted, the fact is that it is unequivocally recognized and accepted that the Vatin and western Serbian cultures have no direct points of contact, starting with chronological ones, since the Vatin culture is a proven cultural phenomenon of the first half of the second millennium BC. Although, terminologically speaking, the western Serbian Middle Bronze Age group seems to be a more neutral solution, as the number of radiocarbon dates for the western Serbian region increases, there are growing arguments that lead to the conclusion that this group should not be defined as a Middle Bronze Age, but Late Bronze Age group. It seems justified that the disappearance of distinctive cultural phenomena such as the Vatin culture and Bubanj-Hum IV-Ljuljaci group should mark the end of the Middle Bronze Age. New cultural patterns, especially those clearly recognizable through funeral practices, speak in favour of the fact that populations that buried their dead in the necropolises of Paulje or Dubac lived in the Late Bronze Age. In the absolute chronological sense, the transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age probably took place as early as in the 15th century BC. Along the flow of the Danube, which in the Middle Bronze Age was a factor of cohesion among people rather than an insurmountable natural barrier, the bearers of the Vatin culture came into contact with the population of today's northeastern Serbia. The designation of necropolises in northeastern Serbia as a manifestation of an autochthonous phenomenon defined as the Gamzigrad culture is partially justified in terms of specific funeral customs (urn and circular stone structures), but the current amount of material is not enough for a substantial regional classification. Our current knowledge about the level of organization and mutual relations between the different Bronze Age communities and their necropolises in northeastern Serbia is too fragmented and far from providing a complete picture of the internal dynamics and development of that particular society. Nevertheless, the proposed name of the Gamzigrad group is justified if it is used as a temporary technical term, until the time when the picture of the Middle Bronze Age will be more complete. In the same scope and with similar achievements, we can accept that the same cultural manifestation is defined as the Timok group, which is related to the phase Bubanj - Hum IV of the developed Bronze Age in the Morava Valley.

The results of research of several sites near Bor (Ružana 1 and 2, Trnjane and Hajdučka Česma), as well as new absolute dates from closed units, provide enough data to set the chronological framework of settling during the Bronze Age in the vicinity of Bor in the interval between the 19th and 17th century BC. Radiocarbon dates obtained from new research in Trnjani bring the first absolute dates for the Bronze Age necropolises in northeastern Serbia and therefore deserve special attention both in terms of methodology and interpretation. Samples from settlements and graves with urns set the period between 1900 and 1600 BC as the most probable for chronological determination. It is possible that two traditions in pottery manufacture – the Vatin and Paraćin - reflect chronological differences, which remained "elusive" in the stratigraphy of the sites.