Making Spaces into Places: The North Aegean, the Balkans and Western Anatolia in the Neolithic

During three millennia of the Neolithic in southeastern Europe important changes in the social organisation, everyday practices and beliefs formed a diverse and rich cultural landscape expressed in settlement patterns, architecture and numerous aspects of material culture. A growing body of data uncovered over the last few decades shows striking variety in settlement organisation, from single-layered, short-lived sites to long-lived tell settlements located in different geographical settings. In addition, small sites (e.g. 0.5 ha) and extended settlements also appear in most sub-regions. This volume brings together new data on the Neolithic of southeastern Europe, emphasising the organisation and use of space within the regions of Northern Greece, the Balkan hinterland and north-western Turkey. To this end, individual chapters focus either on the intra-site organisation of recently excavated settlements or provide an up-to-date synthesis on the regional level, combining old and new data.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Nenad N. Tasic, Dushka Urem-Kotsou & Marcel Buric 1. Narratives of Space and Contemporary Archaeological Theory Kostas Kotsakis Introduction Cultural history and processualism Postprocessualism Phenomenology and meta-postprocessualism Theory in practice Epilogue 2. Timelines in the Neolithic of Southwestern Anatolia, the Circum-Aegean, the Balkans and the Middle Danube Area Agathe Reingruber Introduction General remarks regarding the quality of the dates Timeline 1: 6600-6400 calBC Case A: Mediterranean and southwestern Anatolia Case B: The circum-Aegean Case C: The northeastern Aegan and the Marmara region Timeline 2: 6200-6000 calBC Case A: The northwestern and the northeastern Aegean Case B: The central and eastern Balkans Timeline 3: 5500-5300 calBC Case A: The middle and lower Danube river Conclusions 3. By the Rivers They Settled: Settlement Patterns and the Neolithic Landscape in Albania Gazmend Elezi 4. Transformations of Settlement Space at Neolithic Avgi, NW Greece Georgia Stratouli & Dimitris Kloukinas Introduction The Neolithic settlement of Avgi Settlement space through time: A short overview Avgi I (ca. 5700-5200/5100 calBC) Avgi II (ca. 5200/5100-4900 calBC) Avgi III (ca. 4900-4500/4300 calBC) Approaching spatial transformation Discussion 5. Outside the Residential Place at the Neolithic Settlement of Toumba Kremastis Koiladas, Northern Greece Areti Chondroyianni-Metoki Introduction The site The finds The pits The ditches Burials Cremations Inhumations Scattered human bones Conclusions 6. Identifying Ritual at Late Neolithic Toumba Kremastis Koiladas: Ceramic Assemblages of Representative Contexts Teresa Silva, Marianna Lymperaki, Areti Chondroyianni-Metoki & Dushka Urem-Kotsou Introduction Ritual The settlement of Toumba Kremastis Koiladas Selected contexts Cremation 7 Pit 4 Pit 314 Pits 175, 176, and 177 Conclusions 7. Settling Neolithic Central Macedonia, Northern Greece Dushka Urem-Kotsou & Stavros Kotsos Introduction Settlements and landscape Settlement types The architecture Burials Neolithic food and spatial organisation of the settlements Networking in central Macedonia Concluding remarks 8. Settlements and Landscape in the Neolithic of the Southern and Central Balkans Stavros Kotsos Introduction Geographical distribution of settlements in the Axios and Morava regions Settlement location and the wider landscape Settlements and their local environmental setting Intra-site organisation and architecture of Early and Middle Neolithic settlements Intra-site organisation and architecture of Late Neolithic settlements Discussion Concluding remarks 9. Pelagonian Tells and Pile Dwellings of Lake Ohrid Goce Naumov Introduction Tells of Pelagonia Pile dwellings of Lake Ohrid Continuity and networks: In conclusion 10. The Neolithic and Post-Neolithic Settlement Mounds of Western Serbia Boban Tripkovic The Macva district of Western Serbia: An overview of geography and prehistory The small settlement mounds of Western Serbia: Previous research The current project Conclusions 11. Vinca-Belo Brdo Settlement Size Kristina Penezic Introduction Vinca-Belo brdo settlement size In place of a conclusion 12. Use of Space in a Late Neolithic/Early Eneolithic Building at the Site of Vinca-Belo Brdo in the Central Balkans Ksenija Borojevic, Dragana Antonovic, Jasna Vukovic, Vesna Dimitrijevic, Dragana Filipovic, Miroslav Maric, Kristina Penezic, Boban Tripkovic, Vera Bogosavljevic Petrovic & Nenad Tasic Introduction Late Neolithic buildings at Vinca-Belo brdo Building 01/06 Contents of Room 1 (north room) Contents of Room 2 (central room) Contents of Room 3 (south room) Absolute dating of Building 01/06 The use of space in Building 01/06 Room 1 Room 2 Room 3 Rooms 2 and 3 Houses of the late Vinca culture Conclusion 13. The Neolithic Settlement at Drenovac, Serbia: Settlement History and Spatial Organisation Slavisa Peric, Olga Bajcev, Ivana Stojanovic & Ðurda Obradovic Introduction The site Form of the site and formation processes Site size Early Neolithic settlement Late Neolithic settlement Early Vinca phase Late Vinca phase Settlement size and layout Internal organisation of the settlement Late Vinca houses Conclusion 14. Neolithic Settlements in the Central Balkans between 6200 and 5300 calBC: Issues of Duration and Continuity of Occupation Sofija Stefanovic, Marko Porcic, Tamara Blagojevic & Jelena Jovanovic Introduction Jariciste Topole-Bac Dynamics of the Early Neolithic settlements in the central Balkans Conclusions 15. Off-settlement Ritual Practices in the Neolithic: Pit-Digging and Structured Deposition at Sarnevo in Bulgarian Thrace Krum Bacvarov & John Gorczyk Introduction The archaeological site of Sarnevo in Upper Thrace Relative and absolute chronology Feature types Deposits Composition of deposits Deliberate fragmentation, selectivity and di

About the Author :
Nenad N. Tasic is a professor of archaeology at Belgrade University, Serbia. His work and previous publications are dedicated to establishing chronologies, tracing origins, and study of the art of the Neolithic period of the Balkans. He has been the chief researcher at the site of Vinca since 1998. Dushka Urem-Kotsou is an associate professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Democritus University of Thrace, Greece. Her expertise ranges from pottery to environmental and food archaeology, architecture and settlements in prehistory of the Aegean and Southeastern Europe. She is currently the director of a research project on the Neolithic settlements in Aegean Thrace. Marcel Buric is an associate professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. His specific professional interests are social and technological developments in the Late Neolithic of Southeast Europe. He is the director of research of the Neolithic settlement at Bapska (Croatia). Contributors: Dragana Antonovic, Krum Bacvarov, Olga Bajcev, Tamara Blagojevic, Vera Bogosavljevic Petrovic, Ksenija Borojevic, Areti Chondroyianni-Metoki, Vesna Dimitrijevic, Dragana Filipovic, Gazmend Elezi, John Gorczyk, Jelena Jovanovic, Nemci Karul, Dimitris Kloukinas, Kostas Kotsakis, Stavros Kotsos, Marianna Lymperaki, Maric Miroslav, Goce Naumov, Djurdja Obradovic, Eylem Özdogan, Kristina Penezic, Slavisa Peric, Marko Porcic, Agathe Reingruber, Sofija Stefanovic, Ivana Stojanovic, Heiner Schwarzberg, Teresa Silva, Georgia Stratouli, Nenad N. Tasic, Boban Tripkovic, Dushka Urem-Kotsou, Jasna Vukovic

Review :
'Making Spaces into Places is a strong statement on the quality and directions of Balkan prehistory today.' Professor Nikos Efstratiou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki 'The papers cover an important region, which was in touch with central Anatolia and Mesopotamia and forwarded the Neolithic way of life to other parts of Europe (central Europe and further west). The proceedings will be of great interest to all researchers who are dealing with Neolithisation and the Neolithic in general.' Dr Peter Tóth, Masaryk University