Parts and Wholes: object categorisation and fragmentation in prehistoric context
J C Chapman, Bisserka Gaydarska, 2011. https://doi.org/10.5284/1000419. How to cite using this DOI
Data copyright © Emeritus Prof J C Chapman, Dr Bisserka Gaydarska unless otherwise stated
This work is licensed under the ADS Terms of Use and Access.
Primary contact
Emeritus Prof
J C
Chapman
Reader in Archaeology
Department of Archaeology
Durham University
South Road
Durham
DH1 3LE
England
Tel: 0191 378 0641
Resource identifiers
- ADS Collection: 462
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1000419
- How to cite using this DOI
Overview
The Tell Dolnoslav Late Copper Age figurines
The Dolnoslav tell
The site of Dolnoslav is a prehistoric tell located in South Central Bulgaria. It was excavated by A. Raduntcheva and B. Koleva over nine seasons (1983 - 1991). Such types of sites are typical for the prehistoric landscape of South East Europe, yet Dolnoslav has some rare particularities. It is enclosed by a low dry-stone wall of river pebbles, within which was a flat clay surface coloured in black through the admixture of manganese. This was separated from a second zone with clays of different colours in different phases by a narrow zone of fine river pebbles. The enclosed space has an Built: Unbuilt ratio of 1:2.3 that, at the time of the abandonment of the site, was reduced to 1:2.9. The built area comprised 28 structures in total, interpreted by the excavators as shrines. Among the buildings, there are examples of round and trapezoidal plans, which is extremely rare for the prehistoric architecture at the Balkans. Another rare feature is the traces of middening that, in contrast to the Western European pattern, is found within the built area - between buildings and over destroyed buildings. In terms of the general distribution of finds, 54% of all finds were deposited in the built area, leaving 46% for the unbuilt areas (middens + open areas). The final episode of the Dolnoslav occupation was represented by a massive ritual fire that produced burnt debris up to 1.5m thick. After this act of closure, the building remains were covered with soil and the mound was plastered with white mineral.
The figurine assemblage
Fired clay figurines comprised the third most common artifact type on the Dolnoslav tell, after the antler tools and the pottery. The present dataset includes 500 anthropomorphic figurines, omitting more than 200 clay zoomorphic, bone and marble figurines. The assemblage as a whole is typical for the Balkan Late Copper Age, including some widespread anthropomorphs, such as seated or standing figurines, as well as some less common types designed as single body parts, such as ears, busts or arms. The vast majority of the figurines are broken - 96%. The most common body part is the leg, followed by standing examples with a rounded belly, standing figurines and torsos with legs. Distributed between 5% and 10% are the seated figurines, the heads, the torsos, the star-shaped figurines and the lower parts of the body with legs. In dimensional terms, there are three classes of figurine size: small (less than 5 cm), medium (5.1-10 cm) and large (more than 10 cm). According to their length/height, the majority is medium-sized (61%), followed by small figurines (34%), while only 5% are large. The commonest category of figurine lacked any gender information (39%) - the preserved body part was unsuitable for expressing gender information (e.g. a foot). Female figurines comprised almost 1/3 of all body parts (31%), while males and hermaphrodites amounted to only 1% each. An intriguing gender category was represented by the unsexed figurines, comprising 28% of all figurines and including examples of torsos and/or legs on which sexual attributes (incised pubic triangle, modeled breasts or penis, etc.) could have been shown but were not. More than half of the figurines had two (28%) or three (31%) breaks. Fragments with one break were fewer (16%), which may be an indicator of the potential for further fragmentation activities. On the contrary, figurines with 4 breaks (15%) may have represented the final stages of the fragmentation chain. In addition, around 10% of the fragments had five or more breaks, suggesting that four to five breaks usually marked the end of the fragmentation cycle. A few figurines were re-fitted during the excavation from fragments that were found in adjacent contexts. During the refitting study, performed in 2003, another 25 joins between fragments were identified, leading to a total of 15% of all fragments that could be re-fitted within the site. A full description of each refitting join is provided in File xx. Because the site was almost totally excavated, there are good grounds for supposing that parts of most of the figurines were taken off site OR that only parts of figurines already broken on other sites were introduced into the Dolnoslav tell.
In the database presented here, the twin foci are the biographical story of each figurine, with descriptions of the traces of making, use and post-depositional features found on the figurines and the extent of intra-site refitting an re-use after the break, reflecting the importance of fragmentation as one or more stages in the life history of a figurine.
The Spondylus shell rings from the Durankulak and Varna cemeteries
The sites
The Varna cemetery
The Varna cemetery was discovered by accident in 1972 in the Black Sea coastal city of the same name. An area of 7500 m2 yielded 294 graves (Fig. 1) dating to the Eneolithic (Copper Age) period. What marked the site as truly significant was the large accumulation of gold objects recovered. Over 3,000 objects of a wide range of design and weighing more than 6 kg were excavated. The excavator of the site, Ivan Ivanov (1975) claimed the material dated to the 5th millennium BC, and was therefore the earliest evidence for goldwork in the world (Ivanov, 1975). In addition to the goldwork, the grave goods included 160 copper objects, more than 230 flint artifacts, about 90 stone objects, and more than 650 clay products, as well as over 12,000 Dentalium shells and about 1,100 imported Spondylus shell ornaments (bracelets, necklaces and appliquès). Amongst the burials were 43 graves with no human remains. Some of these so-called 'cenotaph' graves contained clay masks with gold objects placed strategically on the location of eyes, mouth, nose and ears. Although the specific social structure underpinning theVarna I cemetery is disputed - from early state formation (Todorova 1976; Ivanov 1975) to chiefdom (Renfrew 1978) - there can be little doubt of the hierarchical nature of the social relations that resulted in such a massive accumulation of exotic prestige objects (Renfrew 1986; Chapman 2000).
The excavations of what became known as the Varna I cemetery (hereafter simply 'Varna') continued into the 1990s but a full publication of the site and its archaeological finds is still awaited. The vast majority of the graves contained pottery stylistically dated to the later phases of the Late Copper Age Varna culture - the so-called Varna II-III phases (Ivanov 1988: 1991). These phases are dated at other sites to the general time range 4600 - 4200 cal BC (Ivanov & Avramova 2000:12; cf. Boyadzhiev, 1995). However, the paucity of accurate C14 dates from the Golemiya Ostrov tell at Durankulak means that there are no closely dated settlements of the Varna culture which can be used to provide parallel dates for Varna.
A recent AMS dating project by the Oxford University Radiocarbon Laboratory has produced the first AMS dates for Varna (Higham et al., in press). In the absence of stratigraphic constraints between the dated burials at Varna, the entire corpus of 14 dates was modelled as a single phase. The results suggest an overall span of cemetery use of 70-155 years (with a highest probability of 110 years). The probability distribution representing the boundary date prior to the use of the site as a cemetery (equivalent to the terminus post quem for Varna) was 4605-4550 BC (68.2% prob.) with the highest probability associated with 4550 BC. This is equivalent to what has been termed the beginning of the Middle Copper Age in other parts of Bulgaria (Boyadziev, 1995). The distribution representing the boundary for the end of the use of the cemetery (ie. a terminus ante quem) was 4480-4425 BC (again at 68% prob.), with the highest probability of 4450 BC. This is equivalent to what has been termed the end of the Middle Copper Age and the beginning of the Late Copper Age in other areas of Bulgaria (Boyadziev, 1995). It should be noted that these dates match the typological dates proposed by Ivanov and Avramova.
The Durankulak complex
The Eneolithic cemetery of Durankulak is an impressive site that contains more than 1,200 human burials, making it one of the largest concentrations of prehistoric burials in Europe (Todorova 2002). As is the case at Varna, the Durankulak burials vary in the abundance and diversity of grave goods, including pottery, stone-based materials, and metals. The cemetery is associated with a tell settlement that exists as an island in the western side of Lake Durankulak, a coastal lagoon with a continuous sediment history dating back to the Neolithic. While the Neolithic settlement on the lake-shore is represented mostly by pits and the plentiful deposition of artifacts, the Eneolithic settlement phases of the tell contain stone-walled architecture and other novel phenomena in the region that are hallmarks of the late Hamangia and Varna cultures and evidence of settlement differentiation (Todorova 1997; Chapman 1991; Boyadziev 2004). The Durankulak settlement remains the only extensively excavated Eneolithic settlement on the Black Sea littoral and provides useful domestic information that may aid in the reconstruction of human dietary trends during the Neolithic and Eneolithic.
A recent AMS dating project by the Oxford University Radiocarbon Laboratory has produced the first consistent set of AMS dates for the Durankulak cemetery (Honch et al., in press). Acknowledging the fluidity of the dates for the Early and Middle Copper Age at Durankulak, the results suggest the cemetery was used for at least 470 to 650 years in the early to mid sixth millennium BC, with the highest probability of a duration of about 550 years (Figure 13). The large variance of the temporal border preceding the burials complicates the calculation of a terminus post quem. The border marking the termination of dated burials is relatively small, suggesting the cessation of burials occurred within a 70 year period (1?) around 4450 BC. The AMS results suggest the cemetery was probably in use by 5000 BC, in the Late Neolithic period in Bulgaria, and had gone out of use around approximately 4450 BC, at a time referred to as the transitional stage between the Middle and Late Eneolithic in other parts of Bulgaria (Boyadziev 1995).
Spondylus exchange in the European Neolithic
The Spondylus objects of the Balkan Neolithic and Copper Age form part of a much wider distribution of prestige-goods exchange stretching as far as the North Sea and which Séfériades (2000: 423) has termed 'the earliest European long-distance exchange system'. These shell bracelets, pendants and beads occur in some of the richest known Copper Age graves (e.g., Varna grave 43), as well as being deposited in graves with few or no other grave goods (e.g., other graves in Varna and Durankulak). They are generally supposed to confer high status on those newly-dead with whom they have been placed (Renfrew 1973; Todorova 1995; Séfériades 2000: 2003). Their overall significance is as part of a distinctive mortuary costume, which is perhaps represented on some of the coeval fired clay figurines.
This prehistoric network differs in at least one respect from that of the kula ring - namely, a proportion of the Spondylus objects were deposited in an incomplete form. While the undated hoard of 20 intact Spondylus bracelets from the site of Kozludze (Gellert & Garscha 1930) reminds us of the value of complete objects in the Black Sea coastal zone, incomplete objects have been found in three kinds of contexts - graves, settlements and hoards. Yet a fourth type of context has been claimed for Spondylus objects - the workshop. By their nature, claims for Spondylus workshops entail the presence of shell fragments, which may not necessarily betoken the same kind of enchained relations as shell fragments in hoards or graves. But the initial premise from this survey of Spondylus finds is that persons in the Balkan Neolithic and Eneolithic were treating Spondylus in the same way as ceramic, stone and metal objects - as a resource for enchained relations using fragments of objects, as well as for the deposition of complete ornaments. Any fragment of a Spondylus ornament deposited in a grave implies an enchained relation with the person(s) keeping, using or exchanging the matching piece in the world of the living. The widespread occurrence of this practice would be an important support for the notion of ancestral relations in the Balkan Neolithic and Copper Age.
The shell ring assemblages
Research into the shell ring assemblages from Varna and Durankulak focussed on two principal issues: the development of individual shell ring biographies through transformation and revelation; and the extent of the practice of deposition of shell ring fragments in graves.
There are many aspects of prehistoric shell rings that are worth consideration as the form of the materiality in which the rings existed for past individuals and communities. The underlying concepts for making shell rings are twofold: transformation and revelation. It seems highly probable that the acquisition of each shell was an individual act, since the social practice of diving 3 - 5 m under the sea to retrieve a shell firmly attached to the rock would have required a sharp blow to dislodge it, suggesting an individual approach to the shell without the 'interference' of other shells in bags or nets. Examination of unmodified Spondylus and Glycymeris shells indicates such a wide variety of shapes and sizes that, even from the time of discovery, shells may have had their own distinctive character - their individual differentiated features, in terms of colour, length of spines and spikes and overall dimensions.
The second transformation concerned the grinding of the outer surface of the shell - the removal of the spines, spikes, ridges and protuberances that make the Spondylus so distinctive a species in and out of the water. The making of a shell ring gives a real sense of the creation of a harmonious cultural order out of a chaotic natural shape. The resultant shape seeks bilateral symmetry in three dimensions: left - right, top - bottom and overall thickness of ring section. The second transformative process is also a process of revelation insofar as different degrees of grinding and polishing can reveal a variety of natural features that may well be prized for their inherent aesthetic attraction as much as for 'bringing out' the distinctive qualities of each shell ring. It is easy to appreciate that the differential grinding away of successive surface shell layers can produce remarkably divergent 'natural' features that go a long way to defining the unique character of a shell ring. There are, in addition, other, non-revelatory traces of the process of making a ring, including perforation, extra polishing and grooving.
This biographical approach to the transformation of marine shells, the revelation of their 'natural' features and the addition of artificial features emphasises the reflexive processes of individuation characterising both the shell and the social actor. What appears to be a reductive, homogenizing process of manufacture is in fact an endlessly varied series of choices of what to reveal and what not to reveal, starting from an individual shell recovered by a specific diver from a known place.
The question of the extent to which the communities burying their dead at Durankulak and Varna were making deposits of incomplete Spondylus bracelets was given a provisional answer, based upon the published evidence and a study of part of the unpublished materials in Varna Archaeological Museum (thanks to the late Dr. Ivan Ivanov) and Dobritch Historical Museum (thanks to Dr. Todor Dimov) (Chapman 2000:97, 127-8). Two contrasts were apparent: at Durankulak, Spondylus bracelets were deposited in both complete and incomplete forms in the Hamangia graves, while only complete bracelets occur in the Eneolithic graves. By contrast with Eneolithic Durankulak, in Varna I, both incomplete and complete forms of Spondylus bracelet are deposited.
Now that the Durankulak cemetery has been fully published (Todorova 2002) and following a more wide-ranging examination of the distribution of Spondylus ornaments at Varna and Durankulak, it is now possible to offer a more definitive answer to this question - many shell rings were deposited in a fragmentary state in many graves in both cemeteries. There was a strong chronological trend in the fragmentation pattern, with a higher proportion of shell ring fragments in the Late Eneolithic graves at Durankulak in comparison with the Late Neolithic graves, with the additional point that in the two Late Eneolithic cemeteries, there was a much higher rate of ring fragmentation at Varna than at Durankulak. Interestingly, no re-fits were found between shell ring fragments deposited in different graves, suggesting that enchainment by ring fragments was focussed on links between the land of the living and the domain of the dead.
The two main databases for each cemetery provide details of the biography of the shell rings as revealed by a close study of each example, as well as providing estimates of the completeness of each ring and its state at time of deposition.
References
Boyadziev, Ya. (1995) Chronology of prehistoric cultures in Bulgaria. In Bailey, D. & Panayotov, I. (eds.) Prehistoric Bulgaria. Madison, Wisc: Prehistory Press, 149 - 192.
Boyadziev, Y. (2004) Chalcolithic Stone Architecture from Bulgaria. Archaeologia Bulgarica VII/1, 1-12.
Chapman, J. (1991) The creation of social arenas in the Neolithic and Copper Age of South East Europe: the case of Varna. In P.Garwood, P. Jennings, R. Skeates and J. Toms (eds.) Sacred and Profane, Oxford Committee for Archaeology Monograph No. 32, 152-171. Oxbow, Oxford.
Chapman, J. (2000) Fragmentation in archaeology: People, places and broken objects in the prehistory of South Eastern Europe. London, Routledge.
Gellert, J. F. & Garscha, F. (1930) Prähistorisches Depotfund aus dem ostlichen Tafelbalkan, insbesondere Muschelringe. Prähistorisches Zeitschrift 21: 269 - 271.
Higham, T., Chapman, J., Slavchev, V., Gaydarska, B., Honch, N., Yordanov, Y. and Dimitrova, B. (in press) New AMS radiocarbon dates for the Varna Eneolithic cemetery, Bulgarian Black Sea coast (To appear in Antiquity).
Honch, N., Higham, T., Chapman, J., Gaydarska, B. and Hedges, R. (in press) A Palaeodietary Investigation of Carbon (13C/12C) and Nitrogen (15N/14N) in Human and Faunal Bones from the Copper Age Cemeteries of Varna I and Durankulak, Bulgaria. (To appear in Journal of Archaeological Science).
Ivanov, I. (1975) Razkopki na Varnenskiya eneoliten nekropol prez 1972. Izvestia na Narodinia Muzei Varna 11, 1 -16.
Ivanov, I. (1988) Die Ausgrabungen des Gräberfeldes von Varna. In Fol, A. and Lichardus, J. (eds.) Macht, Herrschaft und Gold, 49 - 66. Saarbr�cken, Moderne Galerie des Saarland-Museums.
Ivanov, I. (1991) Der Bestattungsritus in der chalkolitischen Nekropole von Varna (mit einem Katalog des wichstigsten Gräber). In Lichardus, J. (ed.) Die Kupferzeit als historische Epoche. Saarbr�cker Beiträge zum Altertumskunde 55, 125 - 150. Saabrücken, Saarland Museum.
Ivanov, I. & Avramova, M. (2000) Varna necropolis. The dawn of European civilization. Sofia: Agató.
Renfrew, C. (1973) Before civilisation. The radiocarbon revolution and prehistoric Europe. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Renfrew, C. (1978) Varna and the social context of early metallurgy. Antiquity 52: 199 - 203.
Renfrew, C. (1986) Varna and the emergence of wealth. In Appadurai, A. (ed.) The social life of things, pp. 141 - 168. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Séfériades, M. L. (2000) Spondylus gaederopus: some observations on the earliest European long-distance exchange system. In Hiller, S. and Nikolov, V. (eds.) Karanovo Band III. Beiträge zum Neolithikum in S�dosteuropa, 423 - 437. Wien, Phoibos Verlag.
Séfériades, M. L. (2003) Note sur l'origine et la signification des objets en spondyle de Hongrie dans le cadre du Néolithique et de l'Énéolithique européens. In Jerem, E. & Raczky, P. (eds.) Morgenrot der Kulturen. Festschrift f�r N�ndor Kalicz zum 75 Geburtstag, 353 - 373. Budapest, Archaeolingua.
Todorova, H. (1976) Eneolit Bolgarii. Moskow: Nauka.
Todorova, H. (1995) Bemerkungen zum frühen Handelsverkehr während des Neolithikums und des Chalkolithikums im westlichen Schwartzmeerraum. In Hänsel, B. (ed.) Handel, Tausch und Verkehr im bronze- und früheisenzeitlichen Südosteuropas. Prähistorische Archäologie Südosteuropas Band 11, 53 - 66. M�nchen-Berlin, S�dosteuropa Gesellschaft.
Todorova, H. (1997) Tellsiedlung von Durankulak. Fritz Thiessen Stiftung Jahresbericht 1995/96, 81 - 84.
Todorova, H. (ed.) (2002) Durankulak Band II. Die prähistorischen Gräberfelder, 81 - 116. DAI, Berlin - Sofia, Anubis.
