Taoism and the Championing of Woo-Woo Nonsense?

Taoism and the Championing of Woo-Woo Nonsense?

Taoism has a high potential for woo abuse, especially by those who don’t really know much about the religion, and by martial artists. Many of these can be found in books with the title “The Tao of…” There are a few good ones out there, like Bruce Lee’s Tao of Jeet Kune Do, but most resemble Fritjof Capra’s 1975 book The Tao of Physics, which has been criticized in its efforts to link mystical philosophy and quantum mechanics and for its use of outdated physics. ref

Popularly, a distinction is drawn between philosophical and religious Taoism. Philosophical Taoism, called 道家 daojia, treats the Tao Te Ching as a guide to help one’s actions conform with the way of nature. Religious Taoism, called 道教 daojiao, is focused on obtaining physical immortality and avoiding evil spirits. In reality, this distinction is completely fictional and merely serves as a method for fans of the Tao Te Ching or the Zhuangzi to separate out the ideas they find most palatable, and discard the rest as superstition. One critic states, “[M]ost scholars who have seriously studied Taoism, both in Asia and in the West, have finally … abandoned the simplistic dichotomy of tao-chia and tao-chiao – ‘philosophical Taoism’ and ‘religious Taoism.'” Nonetheless, most popular interpretations and high-school summaries of Taoism make this division into “philosophical Taoism,” which provides a way to understand the world and which is fully compatible with other religious traditions, and “religious Taoism,” which includes elements of ancestor worship, animism, and alchemy. Taoist Xian (not to be confused with the X-Men or Xians), have super powers, like the Siddhis of Hinduism. According to Victor H. Mair, “They are immune to heat and cold, untouched by the elements, and can fly, mounting upward with a fluttering motion. They dwell apart from the chaotic world of man, subsist on air and dew, are not anxious like ordinary people, and have the smooth skin and innocent faces of children. The transcendents live an effortless existence that is best described as spontaneous. They recall the ancient Indian ascetics and holy men known as ṛṣi who possessed similar traits.” The term refers to both supernatural humans and animals dwelling in the sacred mountains. In the early part of the 21st century, a new text was discovered, called the Nei-yeh (lit. Inward training), which dated to roughly the same period of the Laozi and Zhuangzi texts. The Nei-yehis a manual for personal betterment, largely through meditative practices, and much of the more obscure language in the foundational texts can now be deciphered as references to this work. This discovery has further destabilized the belief that there is any real separation between philosophical and religious Taoism, since the fundamental distinction, that philosophical Taoism does not partake in or advocate monastic-type practices, has now been effectively disproven. ref

Taoism (/ˈdaʊɪzəm/ or /ˈtaʊɪzəm/), also known as Daoism, is a religious or philosophical tradition of Chinese origin which emphasizes living in harmony with the Tao (道, literally “Way”, also romanized as Dao). The Tao is a fundamental idea in most Chinese philosophical schools; in Taoism, however, it denotes the principle that is the source, pattern and substance of everything that exists. Taoism differs from Confucianism by not emphasizing rigid rituals and social order. Taoist ethics vary depending on the particular school, but in general tend to emphasize wu wei (effortless action), “naturalness”, simplicity, spontaneity, and the Three Treasures: 慈 “compassion”, 儉 “frugality”, and 不敢為天下先 “humility”. The roots of Taoism go back at least to the 4th century BCE. Early Taoism drew its cosmological notions from the School of Yinyang (Naturalists), and was deeply influenced by one of the oldest texts of Chinese culture, the Yijing, which expounds a philosophical system about how to keep human behavior in accordance with the alternating cycles of nature. The “Legalist” Shen Buhai may also have been a major influence, expounding a realpolitik of wu wei. The Tao Te Ching, a compact book containing teachings attributed to Laozi (Chinese: 老子; pinyin: Lǎozǐ; Wade–Giles: Lao Tzu), is widely considered the keystone work of the Taoist tradition, together with the later writings of Zhuangzi. By the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), the various sources of Taoism had coalesced into a coherent tradition of religious organizations and orders of ritualists in the state of Shu (modern Sichuan). In earlier ancient China, Taoists were thought of as hermits or recluses who did not participate in political life. Zhuangzi was the best known of these, and it is significant that he lived in the south, where he was part of local Chinese shamanic traditions. Women shamans played an important role in this tradition, which was particularly strong in the southern state of Chu. Early Taoist movements developed their own institution in contrast to shamanism, but absorbed basic shamanic elements. Shamans revealed basic texts of Taoism from early times down to at least the 20th century. Institutional orders of Taoism evolved in various strains that in more recent times are conventionally grouped into two main branches: Quanzhen Taoism and Zhengyi Taoism. After Laozi and Zhuangzi, the literature of Taoism grew steadily and was compiled in form of a canon—the Daozang—which was published at the behest of the emperor. Throughout Chinese history, Taoism was nominated several times as a state religion. After the 17th century, however, it fell from favor. Taoism has had a profound influence on Chinese culture in the course of the centuries, and Taoists (Chinese: 道士; pinyin: dàoshi, “masters of the Tao”), a title traditionally attributed only to the clergy and not to their lay followers, usually take care to note distinction between their ritual tradition and the practices of Chinese folk religion and non-Taoist vernacular ritual orders, which are often mistakenly identified as pertaining to Taoism. Chinese alchemy (especially neidan), Chinese astrology, Chan (Zen) Buddhism, several martial arts, traditional Chinese medicine, feng shui, and many styles of qigong have been intertwined with Taoism throughout history. Beyond China, Taoism also had influence on surrounding societies in Asia. Today, the Taoist tradition is one of the five religious doctrines officially recognized in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as well as Taiwan and although it does not travel readily from its East Asian roots, it claims adherents in a number of societies. It particularly has a presence in Hong Kong, Macau, and in Southeast Asia. Ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Cucuteni–Trypillia Culture

“The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture (Romanian: Cultura Cucuteni and Ukrainian: Трипільська культура), also known as the Tripolye culture (Russian: Трипольская культура), is a Neolithic–Eneolithic archaeological culture (c. 5500 to 2750 BCE) of Eastern Europe. It extended from the Carpathian Mountains to the Dniester and Dnieper regions, centered on modern-day Moldova and covering substantial parts of western Ukraine and northeastern Romania, encompassing an area of 350,000 km2 (140,000 sq mi), with a diameter of 500 km (300 mi; roughly from Kyiv in the northeast to Brașov in the southwest).” ref

“The majority of Cucuteni–Trypillia settlements consisted of high-density, small settlements (spaced 3 to 4 kilometers apart), concentrated mainly in the Siret, Prut, and Dniester river valleys. During the Middle Trypillia phase (c. 4000 to 3500 BCE), populations belonging to the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture built the largest settlements in Neolithic Europe, some of which contained as many as three thousand structures and were possibly inhabited by 20,000 to 46,000 people.” ref

“One of the most notable aspects of this culture was the periodic destruction of settlements, with each single-habitation site having a lifetime of roughly 60 to 80 years.[7] The purpose of burning these settlements is a subject of debate among scholars; some of the settlements were reconstructed several times on top of earlier habitational levels, preserving the shape and the orientation of the older buildings. One particular location; the Poduri site in Romania, revealed thirteen habitation levels that were constructed on top of each other over many years.” ref

“The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture flourished in the territory of what is now Moldova, northeastern Romania, and parts of Western, Central, and Southern Ukraine. The culture thus extended northeast from the Danube river basin around the Iron Gates to the Black Sea and the Dnieper. It encompassed the central Carpathian Mountains as well as the plains, steppe, and forest steppe on either side of the range. Its historical core lay around the middle to upper Dniester (the Podolian Upland). During the Atlantic and Subboreal climatic periods in which the culture flourished, Europe was at its warmest and moistest since the end of the last Ice Age, creating favorable conditions for agriculture in this region. As of 2003, about 3,000 cultural sites have been identified, ranging from small villages to “vast settlements consisting of hundreds of dwellings surrounded by multiple ditches”.” ref

Periodization

“Traditionally separate schemes of periodization have been used for the Ukrainian Trypillia and Romanian Cucuteni variants of the culture. The Cucuteni scheme, proposed by the German archaeologist Hubert Schmidt in 1932, distinguished three cultures: Pre-Cucuteni, Cucuteni, and Horodiştea–Folteşti; which were further divided into phases (Pre-Cucuteni I–III and Cucuteni A and B). The Ukrainian scheme was first developed by Tatiana Sergeyevna Passek in 1949 and divided the Trypillia culture into three main phases (A, B, and C) with further sub-phases (BI–II and CI–II). Initially based on informal ceramic seriation, both schemes have been extended and revised since first proposed, incorporating new data and formalized mathematical techniques for artifact seriation.” ref

“The Cucuteni–Trypillia culture is commonly divided into an Early, Middle, Late period, with varying smaller sub-divisions marked by changes in settlement and material culture. A key point of contention lies in how these phases correspond to radiocarbon data. The following chart represents this most current interpretation: • Early (Pre-Cucuteni I–III to Cucuteni A–B, Trypillia A to Trypillia BI–II):5800 to 5000 BCE• Middle (Cucuteni B, Trypillia BII to CI–II): 5000 to 3500 BCE• Late (Horodiştea–Folteşti, Trypillia CII):  3500 to 3000 BCE.” ref

Exchange of People, Ideas and Things between Cucuteni-Trypillian Complex and Areas of South-Eastern Poland

Abstract and Figures

“Influences of Cucuteni-Tripolye culture complex on the cultures in Lesser Poland were not intensive. At the turn of 5th and 4th millennia BCE, communities of Lublin-Volhynia culture adopted the laminar oblique retouch to form the long blades made of flint. Later, i.e. in the mid of the 4th millennium BCE, communities of Funnel Beaker culture imitated the production of Tripolyan big rectangular flint axes and the way of ornamentation of ceramic cups using figurines of rams’ heads. At the end of 4th and at the turn of 4th and 3rd millennia BCE Funnel Beaker culture communities in Lesser Poland (Gródek Nadbużny, Zimne, Kamień Łukawski) used to import some painted pottery from Cucuteni-Tripolyan partners.” ref

“A little later ornamentation of some pottery wares with cord imprints was recorded on some settlements of Funnel Beaker culture (Zimne, Majdan Nowy, Tominy) in the way characteristic for Kasperivtsy and Gorodsk groups of the late Tripolye culture. Transfer of Cucuteni-Tripolye ideas into Lesser Poland, what is confirmed by the presence of mentioned above elements of material culture: Tripolyan retouched blades and axes made of flint, imports of painted pottery and ornamentation of pottery with cord imprints, slightly imposed on mentioned cultures in the south-eastern part of Poland, but did not changed their character. Lublin-Volhynia culture communities remained still as a Polgarlike one, and Funnel Beaker culture communities did not change their megalithic face. In the reacher’s opinion, the modern theory of the network society (of Maffesoli and Castells) better explains the presence of Cucuteni-Tripolyan imitations and artifacts in the south-eastern part of Poland in the 4th millennium BCE than some traditional models like diffusion, ethnic migrations, or simply so-called „influences”.” ref

Introduction

“In the forming period of the Trypillia culture, the most important cultural influences came from the area on the lower Danube, the eastern Balkans, and the western coast of the Black Sea. From the BII phase, however, the culture increasingly influenced the Pontic steppe, especially the area between the mouth of the Danube and the Dnieper. Trypillian contacts with the Polgár cultures of the Carpathian Basin and the younger Danubian cultures from Małopolska have frequently been discussed. Polish and Ukrainian archaeology takes much interest in Trypillian relationships with the Funnel Beaker and the Globular Amphorae cultures in the CII phase. Researchers also point out the oldest transmission of cord impressions as a decorative motif on ceramics and of elements of funeral rites, as well as the borrowing of the Thuringian amphora form, crucial for the genesis of the Corded Ware culture, from the environment of late Trypillian groups.” ref

“Contacts between Cucuteni-Trypillian complex and areas of South-Eastern Poland one can consider in frames of five chronological horizons:

1. Malice culture, phase IIa – Trypillia culture, phase BI-BII – 4400/4200-4000 BCE.

2. Malice culture, phase IIb, and Lublin-Volhynia culture, phase II – Trypillia culture, phase BII – 4000-3800 BCE.

3. Lublin-Volhynia culture, phase III and Funnel Beaker culture, phase Gródek I,

Bronocice II – Trypillia culture, phase CI – 3800-3550 BCE (Bilcze Złote, phase Werteba I).

4. Funnel Beaker culture, phase Gródek I, Bronocice III – Trypillia culture, phase CII (early) – 3550-3100 BC (Bilcze Złote, phase Werteba II).

5. Funnel Beaker culture, phase Gródek II, Bronocice IV-V, Baden and Globular Amphorae culture – Trypillia culture, phase CII (late) – 3100-2700 BC (Bilcze Złote, phase Werteba III).” ref

Horizon 1

“The earliest pottery imports from South-Eastern Poland are concentrated in the area of the upper and northern part of the middle Dniester basin, at sites belonging to the Zaleshchiki group of Trypillia culture (Bilshivtsy 1,  Viktoriv, Korzhova, Bilcze Złote -Ogród site. They originated in the Malice culture and can be dated mainly to its phase IIa, probably also to the very beginnings of the Lublin-Volhynia culture. The „cooking” ceramics from Bilcze Złote (some of them show Malice culture influences) are predominantly made of well-mixed mass of clay tempered with a large or quite large admixture of crushed mollusk shells. This type of admixture points to a continuation of Eastern European traditions. The ceramics tempered with crushed mollusk.” ref

“Introduction In the forming period of the Trypillia culture, the most important cultural influences came from the area on the lower Danube, the eastern Balkans, and the western coast of the Black Sea. From the BII phase, however, the culture increasingly influenced the Pontic steppe, especially the area between the mouth of the Danube and the Dnieper. Trypillian contacts with the Polgár cultures of the Carpathian Basin and the younger Danubian cultures from Małopolska have frequently been discussed. Polish and Ukrainian archaeology takes much interest and the Globular Amphorae cultures in the CII phase. Researchers also point out the oldest transmission of cord impressions as a decorative motif on ceramics and of elements of funeral rites, as well as the borrowing of the Thuringian amphora form, crucial for the genesis of the Corded Ware culture, from the environment of late Trypillian groups.” ref

“Contacts between Cucuteni-Trypillian complex and areas of South-Eastern Poland one can consider in frames of five chronological horizons. 1. Malice culture, phase IIa – Trypillia culture, phase BI-BII – 4400/4200-4000 BCE. 2. Malice culture, phase IIb, and Lublin-Volhynia culture, phase II – Trypillia culture, phase BII – 4000-3800 BCE. 3. Lublin-Volhynia culture, phase III and Funnel Beaker culture, phase Gródek I, Bronocice II – Trypillia culture, phase CI – 3800-3550 BCE (Bilcze Złote, phase Werteba I). 4. Funnel Beaker culture, phase Gródek I, Bronocice III – Trypillia culture, phase CII (early) – 3550-3100 BCE (Bilcze Złote, phase Werteba II) . 5. Funnel Beaker culture, phase Gródek II, Bronocice IV-V, Baden and Globular Amphorae culture – Trypillia culture, phase CII (late) – 3100-2700 BCE (Bilcze Złote, phase Werteba III). Horizon 1: The earliest pottery imports from South-Eastern Poland are concentrated in the area of the upper and northern part of the middle Dniester basin, at sites belonging to the Zaleshchiki group of Trypillia culture (Bilshivtsy 1, Viktoriv, Korzhova, Bilcze Złote – Ogród site.” ref

“They originated in the Malice culture and can be dated mainly to its phase IIa, probably also to the very beginnings of the Lublin-Volhynia culture. The „cooking” ceramics from Bilcze Złote (some of them show Malice culture influences) are predominantly made of well-mixed mass of clay tempered with a large or quite large admixture of crushed mollusk shells. This type of admixture points to a continuation of Eastern European traditions. The ceramics tempered with crushed mollusk shells make up over 70% of the entire assemblage of the „cooking” ceramics. Interestingly, the „cooking” ceramics tempered with an admixture of crushed pottery and fine sand, but without crushed mollusk shells, predominate distinctly in the modest material recovered from the Ogród site at Bilcze Złote, linked with three oldest settlement horizons (from the BI / BII phases to the early CI phase of Trypillia culture). Afterwards, the ceramics with crushed shells become prevalent. Relationships between formal traits, ornamentation, chronology, and local or – more broadly – Eastern European traditions of preparing the mass of clay at Bilcze Złote are very interesting.” ref

“Among 119 bowls, as many as 63 items (almost 53% of the group) do not contain any admixture of crushed mollusk shells. This refers particularly to three- or two-part bowls, sometimes having a slightly sharper profile. These forms, dated to the oldest horizon of settlement at the Ogród site, are linked with the Ogród I ceramic assemblage at Bilcze Złote, attributed to the Zaleshchiki group from the turn of the BI and BII phases of the Trypillia culture. In earlier interpretations, this group of vessels had its models in assemblages attributed to the II phase of the Malice culture). At present, it seems that the inspiration came from the environment of the Kodžadermen-Gumelniţa-Karanovo VI cultural complex and from cultures around the Danube Delta. Influences from the Malice culture, however, cannot be ruled out completely. In its late (II) phase, the culture spread also to Volhynia; its single sites have been found in the upper Dniester basin, as well. Perhaps some of these vessels, difficult to point out, should be treated as western „imports” in the Trypillian environment.” ref

“The presence of similar bowls in successive horizons of settlement at the Ogród and the Werteba sites in Bilcze Złote, thus at an increasing temporal distance from the Malice culture, may mean that the period of „imports” and imitations was followed by the period of adaptations and creative development of that group of ceramics in the Trypillian environment. This seems to be confirmed by the wealth of bowl forms and by the accepted mode of their production based on technology typical of the Trypillia culture, i.e. with shells tempering the mass of clay. This local development should undoubtedly be linked with the horizon defined by the chronology of the Ogród III assemblage, i.e. the early CI phase of the Trypillia culture at the latest.

Horizon 2  

Later Danubian imports from South-Eastern Poland (within stages BI-BII of the Trypillia culture) are connected with some influences of phase II of the Lublin-Volhynia-culture. They are present both at the settlements of the Western basin of the Boh river (Sokiltsy-Polizhok V, Klishchiv), as well as on the territory between the Boh and the Dnieper rivers (Krasnostavka, Veseliy Kut). M. Videiko recorded a lot of Polgár elements on many areas of Trypillia culture, including the Dniester, Southern Bug, Middle Dnieper regions.” ref

“Some of these influences penetrated into mentioned territories through the Lublin-Volhynia culture. To real imports from the Lublin-Volhynia culture at Bilcze Złote belongs a cup ornamented with white paint. It should probably be linked with the Ogród II ceramic assemblage (Mereshovka group of Trypillia culture). Among „serving vessels” in the Werteba I ceramic assemblage at Bilcze Złote, one may distinguish a group of thin-walled vessels made of adobe clay, often tempered with crushed pottery (nearly a hundred items, i.e. almost 4% of the whole assemblage). The vessels are usually undecorated, sometimes with small handles pierced horizontally. Most fragments of large and medium forms have the proportions of half-barrel-shaped vessels or vases. Since there are few handles preserved in this class, most of the vessels probably had no handles. Semispherical bowls come second as regards their number in the group; fragments of vessels with high, smooth cylindrical necks are even less frequent. Fragments of egg-shaped vessels have handles below the rim. Bowls shaped like three-fourths of a sphere and semispherical bowls also belong to the group of handled forms. On two items, handles are arranged in a chequered pattern: on a semispherical bowl, in two zones; on a half-barrel-shaped vessel, in three zones. Fragments of other vessels with handles below the rim are ornamented with monochromatic or bicolored diagonal stripes and a bicolored arc.” ref

“These forms may be viewed as „imports” or rather, as imitations of vessels produced in the late phase of the Lublin-Volhynia culture (numerous half-barrel-shaped vessels) and the Bodrogkeresztúr culture (handled vessels). „Imports” and influences of the Bodrogkeresztúr culture and other cultural centers point to the development of contacts with the Carpathian Basin and loess uplands of Małopolska and Volhynia in the late phase of the Shipentsy group of the Trypillia culture. The great number of those „imports” and influences shows that the contacts were intensive and multidirectional. The half-barrel-shaped vessel at Bilcze Złote is definitely a form of Central European origin. Each of the six preserved items of that type was made without the shell admixture in the mass of clay. Those vessels were mainly related to the Lublin-Volhynia culture as its most important group of ceramics, with variants produced in all its phases. In the Lublin-Volhynia culture flint industry was exclusively oriented towards the production of blade blanks (including microlithic ones).” ref

“In this culture, an interregional role of Volhynian raw materials is evident, particularly for fulfilling non-utilitarian functions arising from developing social relations. One of the basic techniques of tool production was oblique covering parallel retouching. It was used to shape basically all retouched blades and triangular points, but also a large part of truncated pieces, scrapers, and even some perforators. This kind of retouch was borrowed from the North-Western groups of the Trypillia culture. Probably the tendency to produce the longest possible flint blades was also influenced by this culture.” ref

Horizon 3

The interaction between the Lublin-Volhynia in its late (III) phase of and Trypillia cultures in its CI phase was continued. Late Danubian pottery features were absorbed by Trypillian communities. On the other hand, some Trypillian flint industry features were adopted by Lublin-Volhynia culture groups. At the same time, contacts between the oldest (pre-classic) phase of the Funnel Beaker and Trypillia culture are confirmed. Groups of the Funnel Beaker population colonized for the first time a borderland between two cultures (Korytyny, Grodzisko III site on the upper Dniester river). On the other hand, pottery features of the Funnel Beaker culture are recorded in assemblages of Chapaevka, Kolomishchina, and Lukashi groups in the Middle Dnieper Region of Trypillia culture.

Horizon 4 

“In the 2nd part of IV millennium BCE populations of Funnel Beaker culture expanded into the East and settled areas to the Gniła Lipa and Bystrzyca Sołotwińska rivers, tributaries of the Upper Dniester. The Funnel Beaker culture settlers meet East of these rivers groups of Trypillia culture inhabitants (Koshilivtsy group) from the older stage of its CII phase. As a result of it, a mixed settlement zone was created in the Upper Dniester basin. In Volhynia compact settlement zone of Funnel Beaker culture reached Styr river. However, single settlement points of this culture were found also more to the East, i.e. in the neighborhood of Ostrog town. On Novomalin-Podobanka site materials of classic Funnel Beaker culture together with Trypillian ones (from the beginnings of phase CII) were recorded. Close contacts with Trypillian world was mirrored in numerous Funnel Beaker-like pottery elements on the vast territories between the upper Dniester, Volhynia ad Dnieper. At the same time, communities of Trypillia culture settled more intensely middle and eastern part of Volhynia.” ref

“Imports of painted Trypillian (Koshilivtsy and Bryndzeny groups) pottery were discovered on the Polish-Ukrainian borderland in Gródek Nadbużny, Zimno and Male Gribovichi and even more to the West of Vistula river at Kamień Łukawski, Bronocice, and even in Kuyavia. The appearance of ram’s heads, so characteristic ornament of some pottery vessels in the South-Eastern group of the Funnel Beaker culture, might be an effect of Trypillian culture influences. However the most dominant were Trypillian influences on the Funnel Beaker culture flint industry. Long blades and large axes were produced due to their symbolic meanings rather than functional requirements. Probably they served as prestige objects.” ref

“This production involved a multi-level system of specialization, apparent on various levels (of regions, settlements, and individual homes). A leading supra-regional role was played by Świeciechów and striped raw materials, which deposits are located in the Holy Cross Mountains. Different tools were made of these flints. Large tetrahedral axes from Świeciechów flint were produced imitating Trypillian patterns. There were also differences in access to their deposits and processing organization. The same one can say about their distribution systems. In Volhynia, imported assemblages of Świeciechów and striped tools differ in quantities of imported artifacts and regards to the kinds of implements and raw materials used to make them. Only finished tools were being distributed from the Holy Cross Mountains production centers. They circulated as a part of an exchange system of prestige goods.” ref

“The flint industry of the Funnel Beaker culture communities in Małopolska (fig. 9, 10), especially production of blades, axes and triangular arrowheads was more related to the Trypillia culture than to the other Funnel Beaker culture groups. The key to understanding the evolution of flint processing in Małopolska leading up to the emergence of the industry of south-eastern Funnel Beaker culture group is the evolution of the flint industry of the Trypillia culture. Strong Trypillian influences on Funnel Beaker culture flint industry are also visible on Polish Lowlands.” ref

Horizon 5 

“The turn of 4th and 3rd and beginnings of 3rd millennium BCE was the scene of a particular intensification of contacts between different cultures in Europe. This period was defined as the crisis of Neolithic societies. There are several indications of possible direct contacts of Baden communities from Slovakia with the area between the Prut and Dnieper rivers, which was inhabited by local groups of the Tripolye culture of phase CII. Many traditions and imports of the Baden Culture can be observed at Horodiștea-Erbiceni sites. This culture group transmitted directly Baden traditions to the East of the Carpathians.” ref

“Gordinești (closely connected with  Horodiștea-Erbiceni group) and Kasperivtsy groups display features of the Baden Culture in its pottery stylistics too. Elements of Gordinești group are present on many sites of Troyaniv-Gorodsk group. The Sofievka group evolved under the direct influence of the Gordinești and Troyaniv-Gorodsk groups and indirectly of the Baden-Kostolac-Coţofeni and Cernavoda II culture. The lower and middle Danube was one of the most important axes of intense contacts, transfer of things and ideas, and human migration. From the West to the East moved cultural elements of the Baden culture and its related cultural units. In the opposite direction moved groups of Yamna culture. Baden elements, especially in form of Funnel Beaker-badenized assemblages, reached at the same time the central part of Volhynia. They moved to the East directly from Małopolska Uplands. The whole settlement agglomeration of such assemblages was lately discovered in the upper Styr river basin in the neighborhood of Ostrog town.” ref

“Similar pottery materials were discovered also at Korytyny, Grodzisko III site, located on the bank of the upper Dniester river. In addition to migrations from the East to the West and from the West to the East it took place the transmission of people, things, and ideas from the South to the North and vice versa. In addition to the late Funnel Beaker culture assemblages with Baden elements in South-Eastern Poland there are also sites of this culture with cord decorated pottery. On two sites: Majdan Nowy and Tominy, site 12 cord ornamentation was accompanied by vessls with their rims obliquely cut off inwards. Similar elements are recorded in the Kasperivtsy and Gorodsk group of the Trypillia culture. They can be dated to the first centuries of the 3rd millennium BCE. As regards direct sources of inspiration for the use of ‘cord’ ornamentation, they are to be found in the late groups of the Trypillia culture, chiefly Kasperivtsy and Gorodsk groups. Jointly occurring in them, specifically, in the former, lips with their rims obliquely cut off inwards and cord ornamentation are recorded in Majdan Nowy and Tominy, site 12.” ref

“The origin of the former trait have their roots in Anatolia and the eastern Balkans (culture complexes Sitagroi Va – Radomir I-II – Yunacite XIII-IX traditions), while the latter trait – cord ornaments – comes from Pontic steppes. The two traits may have merged in the late groups of the Trypillia culture at the mouth of the Danube. The best example of the move from the north (eastern part of Poland) to the south (the Danube Delta) was great migration of Globular Amphorae culture communities. There are numerous Globular Amphorae culture traits in the assemblages of the late Trypillia culture pottery. Groups of people of Globular Amaphorae culture, returning from the south on Sandomierz Upland in south-eastern Poland, brought with them a new form of pottery, so-called Thuringian amphora, borrowed from the Usatovo group. The time of it could be dated to the period between 2900-2700 BCE. This resulted in the origins of the Złota culture. Złota Culture can be  interpreted as a stylistically distinct, intermediate stage between the Globular Amphorae culture and Corded Ware culture, which was not occurring on the other territories.” ref

“This local phenomenon was a part of the broader processes which took place mainly in south-eastern Europe (the eastern Balkans, Ukraine and Moldova), resulting in a profound civilizational change, i.e. the creation of the great cultural complex of Corded Ware culture. Conclusions In the second half of the 5th millennium BCE (horizon 1), communities of the Tripolye culture, phases BI-BII, had contacts with the population of the late (IIa) phase of the Malice culture. The areas settled by both cultural complexes were located at a great distance from each other. The communities of the Tripolye culture adopted selected features of Malice ceramic production. This seems to have resulted from marital exchange: on a moderate scale, Tripolye men sought out their wives in the area of the Malice culture and, according to patrilocal marriage customs, the women then moved to the Tripolye settlements, sporadically transferring ready-made ceramic products, so-called imports, to the Tripolye culture. Thus, the wives were responsible for the considerably more numerous imitations of the Malice ceramics and the long-lasting, though selective, traditions of Malice pottery passed down in their new environment.” ref

“The patrilocal marriage customs involving the Malice women and the Tripolye men (never the other way round), and the fact that pottery was women’s domain, led to the unidirectional transfer of vessels, technology, and norms of ceramic production from the Malice culture to the Tripolye culture. The turn of the 5th and the 4th millennia and the early 4th millennium BC (horizon 2) witnessed the deepening interaction between the populations of the youngest (IIb) phase of the Malice culture and the classic (II) phase of the Lublin-Volhynia culture on the one hand and the communities of phase BII of the Tripolye culture on the other. The Danube and the Tripolye settlement complexes came into contact on the upper Dniester and between the Styr and the Horyn rivers in Volhynia. This helped to continue the previous forms of marital exchange, which resulted in the further popularisation of the ceramics and the traditions of ceramic production typical of the Danube cultures, i.e. the Malice and the Lublin-Volhynia cultures, and also the Polgár culture, in the areas settled by the Tripolye cultural complex. As the civilizational norms of the Eneolithic (Copper) Age became widespread in that period, the forms of interaction described above acquired new elements.” ref

“The deepening internal diversification of the early Eneolithic communities of the Lublin-Volhynia culture led to a growing demand for prestige objects, which was met with import or imitation of copper artifacts, mainly those from the Carpathian Basin, and with flint tools produced from long blades. That type of flint production depended largely on new technologies derived from the Tripolye culture, as proven by such borrowings as trough-like retouch or the very idea and technology for the production of long flint blades in the Lublin-Volhynia culture. It seems that the influx of Tripolye settlers into flint-bearing areas in Volhynia and on the upper Dniester, adjacent to the settlement centers of the late phase of the Malice culture and the Lublin-Volhynia culture, created sufficient conditions for the expanding influence of the Tripolye flint working on the communities of the Eneolithic Lublin-Volhynia culture. In the mid-4th millennium BCE (horizon 3), those forms of interaction between the Danube communities (the late phase of the Lublin-Volhynian culture) and the Tripolye communities (phase CI) (fig. 3) were continued.” ref

“Elements of the Danube pottery still grew in popularity in the Tripolye population, while selected features of the Tripolye flint working were adopted by the Lublin-Volhynia culture. In that period, the population of the Funnel Beaker culture of the pre-classic and early classic phases (the beginnings of Gródek 1 and Bronocice III), until then absent from those areas, quite quickly drove out and replaced the Danube population in western Volhynia and the upper Dniester basin. This caused significant changes in the forms and intensity of the intercultural interaction, which became fully apparent already in the 2nd half of the 4th millennium BC. In the following period (horizon 4), the population of the classic phase of the Funnel Beaker culture (Gródek 1, Bronocice III) settled more and more intensively the upper Dniester basin, up to the Hnyla Lypa river, and western Volhynia, up to the Styr river.” ref

“East of those rivers, the Funnel Beaker settlers created considerable areas where they mixed with settlers from early phase CII of the Tripolye culture. Their coexistence, lasting there for many generations, resulted in deepening the interactions between members of both cultural complexes and in developing entirely new forms of relationships. This is shown by imports and imitations of the Tripolye painted ceramics at Funnel Beaker sites located not only at the eastern edge of that culture (e.g. Gródek Nadbużny, Zimno), but also in the Sandomierz-Opatów Upland (e.g. Kamień Łukawski), the Western Małopolska Upland (e.g. Bronocice) and Kuyavia, and by contemporaneous imitations of the Funnel Beaker ceramics documented in large areas of the Tripolye culture. The higher level of the interaction resulted e.g. in specialized workshops near Sandomierz which produced prestige flint axes modeled on the Tripolye tools, meeting the demand of communities inhabiting vast areas of present-day Poland.” ref

“It seems that the production was possible only with the participation of specialists from the Tripolye culture, and that complying with the high technological standards needed in that work required long apprenticeship with a master; mere observation of the technological process or attempted imitation based only on the analysis of ready-made axes would not have been sufficient. The strong influence of the Tripolye culture on the flint working in the Funnel Beaker culture in Małopolska and western Ukraine, together with the maximization of the length of the produced blades, indicate that the flint working had more in common with the Tripolye traditions than with the standards of production of flint tools in the other areas of the Funnel Beaker culture. The intensifying interaction between the communities of the Funnel Beaker culture and the Tripolye culture, early phase CII, in the 2nd half of the 4th millennium BC (horizon 4) was an introduction to, and perhaps a condition for, even more frequent contacts in the next period, the first centuries of the 3rd millennium BC (horizon 5).” ref

“In that case, the interaction was mainly triggered by multidirectional migrations of larger human groups, involving a significant part of the population of all cultures from the areas discussed here. The Tripolye communities of younger phase CII settled Volhynia, its eastern areas in particular, from the south and the south-east, while groups representing the younger phases of the Funnel Beaker culture (Gródek 2), often with Baden features (Bronocice IV and V), moved increasingly into the western part of that region. The Yamna communities expanded along the lower and central Danube to the west, whereas the populations of the late phase of the Baden culture took the opposite direction, reaching as far as Kiev in the north-east, and contributed to the cultural character of the Sofievka group.” ref

“The communities of the Globular Amphora culture migrated from the north-west, from eastern Poland, towards the Danube Delta and as far as the Dnieper in the east, while the multicultural population from the areas around the mouth of the Danube moved in the opposite direction, carrying with them cultural elements from Thrace, or even from Anatolia. Some of them returned to the starting point (to south-eastern Poland), bringing with them a new form of pottery, so-called Thuringian amphora, borrowed from the late Trypillian Usatovo group. This resulted in origins of the Złota culture, a cultural phenomenon that gave beginnings to the oldest Corded Ware culture. Inventories of both cultures contained the already mentioned Thuringian amphorae.” ref

“The events described above-formed part of the broader processes which took place mainly in south-eastern Europe (the eastern Balkans, Ukraine and Moldova), resulting in the so-called crisis of the early farming communities and in a profound civilizational change. The cultures that had developed there until then were superseded by the mobile communities of three large cultural complexes: the Yamnaya, the  Corded Ware, and the Bell Beaker cultures.” ref

Comprehensive Site Chronology and Ancient Mitochondrial DNAAnalysis from Verteba Cave – a Trypillian Culture Site of Eneolithic Ukraine

ABSTRACT

“This manuscript presents a study of a ritual site of the Trypillian culture complex (TC) in western Ukraine where material artifacts are found side-by-side with human and animal remains. The organic content in pottery sherds made it possible to carbon date the ceramics found with bone remains, thus allowing a reference point for carbon dating bone collagen. This allowed us to develop a comprehensive chronology of the usage of the cave. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) extracted from human remains shed additional light on the history of the site’s occupation by early agrarians on the territory of Ukraine.” ref

Introduction

“Farming in Europe spread from western Anatolia after 7000 BCE. The European Neolithic initially developed in Greece, from where it expanded northward into the Balkans, and westward along the Mediterranean coast. After 6000 BCE Neolithic cultures of the Danube basin, such as Starčevo-Körös-Kriş and the Linear Pottery culture (Linearbandkeramik or LBK) began to appear east of the Carpathian Mountains. On the foundations laid by these and other Neolithic groups, a new archaeological culture began to form in the pre-Carpathian region around 5400 BCE. This culture became known as Precucuteni, and later as Cucuteni in Romania and Moldova, and Trypillia A (formally spelled “Trypolie” or “Tripolye”) followed by Trypillia B and C, in Ukraine. The Trypillian cultural complex (TC) existed from 5400 to 2700 BCE on a vast area extending from the Carpathian piedmont, east to the Dnipro River, and south to the shores of the Black Sea.” ref

“As an archaeological culture, TC was discovered in 1896 by V. Khvoika near the village Trypillia, Ukraine. TC is characterized by advanced agriculture, developed metallurgy, pottery-making, sophisticated architecture, and social organization, including the first proto-cities on European soil. TC occupies a prominent place in Eastern European archaeology but still remains largely unknown to the Western science. The new TC chronology identifies the following brackets for each TC phase: AII-III-3 from 5400–4300 BCE, BI from 4300–4100 BCE, BII from 4100–3600 BCE, CI from 3600–3200 BCE, and CII from 3400–2750 BCE. More than 40 local archaeological groups are recognized within the TC complex, with the region- and group-specific variations in the styles of pottery and plastics, in many cases infuenced by contemporaneous neighboring cultures. At the material culture level, TC is known for a variety of painted pottery as well as anthropomorphic and zoomorphic clay figurines. While the material culture of TC has been well studied and documented, human remains are scarce. In fact, they are virtually non-existent until the CII phase, when burials of TC begin to appear on a regular basis. This creates a gap in our understanding of the biological origins of TC and in their cultural traditions, such as rituals for the dead.” ref

Trypillia Megasites in Context: Independent Urban Development in Chalcolithic Eastern Europe

Abstract

“The Trypillia megasites of the Ukrainian forest steppe formed the largest fourth-millennium bc sites in Eurasia and possibly the world. Discovered in the 1960s, the megasites have so far resisted all attempts at an understanding of their social structure and dynamics. Multi-disciplinary investigations of the Nebelivka megasite by an Anglo-Ukrainian research project brought a focus on three research questions: (1) what was the essence of megasite lifeways? (2) can we call the megasites early cities? and (3) what were their origins? The first question is approached through a summary of Project findings on Nebelivka and the subsequent modelling of three different scenarios for what transpired to be a different kind of site from our expectations. The second question uses a relational approach to urbanism to show that megasites were so different from other coeval settlements that they could justifiably be termed ‘cities’. The third question turns to the origins of sites that were indeed larger and earlier than the supposed first cities of Mesopotamia and whose development indicates that there were at least two pathways to early urbanism in Eurasia.” ref

Introduction

‘The concept of “city” is notoriously hard to define.‘ This is the opening statement of Childe’s seminal article ‘The urban revolution’. Almost 70 years later, this task has become even harder, with urbanism attested in a far wider range of environments, cultural trajectories, and material forms than were known to Childe. Yet in western Asia and Europe, the traditional supremacy of Uruk urbanism—earlier than the first European city by two millennia—has remained intact and untroubled by global difference. While Minoan statehood may be dated to 2400 BCE, the Late Minoan city of Knossos—at 100 ha the largest settlement on Crete—dates to the mid-second millennium bc, showing that states may have developed without cities. Later still, classic examples of European cities co-emerged with states in the first millennium BCE in Greece, Etruria, and Rome, while large, low-density, temperate European Iron Age oppida have an ambiguous relationship to urbanism. This narrative enshrines the powerful tradition of equating urbanism with political and economic centralization, which this reacher disputes.” ref

“The second, empirical problem with this narrative is its exclusion of the largest sites in fourth-millennium bc Eurasia, if not the world—the Trypillia Chalcolithic megasites of the Ukrainian forest-steppe—and this despite a vigorous discussion of urban and non-urban status conducted largely in Russian and Ukrainian since the 1970s (Korvin-Piotrovskiy 2003; Masson 1990; Shmaglij 2001; summarized in Supplementary Materials 1, online). Ignoring Fletcher’s (1995) recognition of megasites as the only exception to his global rule of settlement constraints, most authors even today consider megasites as ‘large villages’ (see chapters in Müller et al. 2016b), with none of the core traits of Childean urbanism and no urban legacy (for an exception, see Wengrow 2015). However, advancing a relational approach rather than a Childean check-list compilation provides a new perspective on the urban debate.” ref

“In this article, we use the results of an AHRC-funded research project to investigate the question of European urbanism on the North Pontic forest-steppe through the multi-disciplinary study of a single Trypillia megasite—Nebelivka (Novoarhangelsk region, Kirovograd County)—in its wider landscape and cultural context. The Trypillia–Cucuteni network (Russian Tripolye; hereafter ‘CT’) covers over two millennia and three modern states—Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine. Unlike the Cucuteni part of the CT network, found in eastern Romania and Moldova, and which displayed a strong tendency to settlement dispersion in the late fifth millennium BCE, the Trypillia part contained megasites defined as settlements of 100 ha or larger from 4100 to 3400 BCE.” ref

“There are three research questions which are of primary concern: origins, megasite lifeways, and urban status. We address these questions in a different order,2 since consideration of both urban status and megasite origins must be grounded in an interpretation of megasite lifeways that is radically different from the standard view of megasites as long-term permanently occupied settlements with tens of thousands of residents living in thousands of coevally used houses at the same time.” ref

“The first question focuses on megasite lifeways—the essence of what a megasite was and how it came to function in a large-scale landscape. It is here that the most dramatic changes in interpretation have emerged in the last decade. The traditional narrative has relied on the planned layout of megasites and the large number of solid, permanent houses, which in most accounts were coevally occupied, as proxies for long-term all-year-round occupation for thousands of people. Our research has managed to deconstruct this approach, leading to the modeling of three different scenarios for Nebelivka. While the social underpinning of two of the models rests on the seasonal patterning of social life, the third model relies on a broadly heterarchical social pact supporting permanent dwelling.” ref

“The second question confronts the urban status of Trypillia megasites, using a relational approach in which lifeways on a typical, small Trypillia site are compared and contrasted with what would have happened on a megasite. The results show that there is a strong case for calling Trypillia megasites ‘cities’ in their forest steppe context. The origins of the Trypillia megasites have been regularly discussed over the last 30 years, with the military/strategic response to internal and/or external threat generally being considered adequate to explain this settlement hyper-nucleation. Our approach takes a different starting-point of how Trypillia communities used to living in settlements of 20–40 ha could have imagined the possibility of creating a site 10 to 20 times as large. But before we turn to the research questions, it is important to gain some perspectives on how we conceptualized megasites and developed a feel for the contexts in which megasite archaeology has developed.” ref

Conceptualizing/contextualizing megasites

“Studying megasites and Balkan Neolithic tells may be mapped onto the difference between the Orient Express and a commuter train from Bushey to Euston: it is hard to comprehend the vastness of the former, while not denying the intrinsic interest of the latter. It is not only the megasites that are vast—it is also their landscapes and the time-space dimensions of the CT network. The rolling forest steppe-covered loess landscapes carry on for thousands of kilometers, while, at a local level, a single Soviet-era field in central Ukraine can be larger than an entire English parish. Moreover, the CT network lasted longer and covered a wider area than any other central and eastern European network—from 5000 to 2800 BCE and more than 250,000 sq. km. By comparison, the Vădastra network in modern Romania lasted 200 years and covered 6000 sq. km, while the Veselinovo network in Bulgaria lasted 300 years and covered 60,000 sq. km. Ukrainian specialists have claimed the existence of more than 60 local ‘groups’ within the Trypillia network alone. The scale of these phenomena is not only theoretically challenging but also poses many methodological problems of how to investigate such sites/landscapes/cultural groups (Table 1).” ref

“The first question of scale concerns the way that clearly similar though the varying material culture was replicated over such distances and reproduced over 80+ generations. Reachers found the concept of the ‘Big Other’ stimulating in this respect. Alongside and ‘above’ the daily household practices which characterized the habitus—what Bloch has termed ‘transactional social practice’— the Big Other played an overarching, integrative role as a virtual symbolic order (in Bloch’s terms, a ‘transcendental entity’) that existed only through its subjects believing in it—something which was sufficiently general and significant to attract the support of most members of society but, at the same time, sufficiently ambiguous to allow the kinds of localized alternative interpretations (‘transactional practices’, according to Bloch) that avoid constant schismatic behavior.” ref

“These localized interpretations became materialized in three principal forms which were all central to CT cultural identity: different types of painted pottery, different kinds of figurines and houses of different shapes and sizes. All three forms were concentrated in the domestic domain, where the mortuary domain and hoarding practices were virtually invisible.4 While for typological ‘splitters’, the variability in these three forms permitted the etic differentiation of over 60 local groups, a CT person would have emically recognized a vessel as ‘theirs’ in a pottery assemblage from a settlement 800 km away from their home. Diachronic studies of CT figurine usage shows continuity in discard practices over the entire CT timespan. The Big Other was fundamental in the growth and expansion of the CT network, transcending face-to-face contact and local social networks to enable continuities of practice and identities across vast distances. But the Big Other leads us to an important question concerning the role of imagination in the CT network.” ref

“In Imagined Communities, Anderson’s influential study of the anomaly of modern nationalism, the author reminds us that all communities larger than a single village were ‘imagined communities’, because separate communities have, by definition, never lived together with a second group. Bloch has recently expanded the use of the term ‘imagined communities’ to beyond the political framework, suggesting that the transcendental social consists of essentialized groups that exist because they are ‘imagined’, whether as descent groups or religious groupings. There are therefore three different levels at which imagined communities have taken root in the CT network: at the level of the megasite, at the level of the descent group whose members spanned two or more settlements, and at the far larger scale of the ‘Big Other’ itself. The Big Other can be conceived in Bloch’s terms as ‘a totalising transcendental representation without its political foundation’.” ref

“For the imagined community of megasites, we suggest that the first step of the integration of people beyond their normal, face-to-face groups had been taken through the evolution of the Big Other as much as the development of transcendent local and regional descent groups. But local Trypillia settlement groups still required a vision of how diverse communities could live together to derive benefits from the new settlement form that were considered greater than the difficulties this linkage may have brought. After all, there is a long tradition, supported by Childe, of actualizing the advantages of autarky—living in independent, face-to-face communities—which put a long-term brake on the scale of settlement nucleation in prehistoric Europe.” ref

“It is easy to forget the unprecedented nature of Trypillia megasites, which have created immense problems of explanation and understanding, but first of all, problems of imagination. On the Eurasian continent of the fifth–fourth millennia bc, the Trypillia megasites were unique in size and scale. There was nothing anywhere else on the planet, at 4200 BCE, to compare with the Phase BI megasite of Vesely Kut, covering an area of 150 ha—no analogies from which to derive this extraordinary place. In our discussion of how the earliest megasites were imagined, we shall return to the issues of their cultural background, the changes which stimulated their growth and their advantages and disadvantages.” ref

“In the theoretically divided terrain of the last three decades, one of the areas in which post-processualists, interpretative archaeologists, and those of the ontological turn have made least impact has been urbanism. With a handful of exceptions, research into urban developments has been the domain of the processualists, who have focused on wide-ranging processes of change and often grand narratives to account for what was clearly a critical step in the human past. One of the problems that interpretative archaeologists have faced is the scale of the processes, which tend to be beyond their comfort zone. As previously discussed, the similarities of the scale of CT settlement and those of early urban networks make the interpretation of CT just as problematic as other early cities. This means that conceptualizing CT in terms of the Big Other and ‘imagined communities’ does not make for ready linkages to urban origins. The route that we have taken remains, however, true to post-1980s contextual and relational approaches.” ref

“The term ‘urban’ is a modern analytical construct, largely used as an essentialist concept, but more recently used to encompass very different phenomena worldwide. This contradictory usage stems from the tension between the desirability of a single definition and the diversity of cases that make this impossible. Historical, anthropological, and epigraphic sources informing us about the emic views of cities reveal not only linguistic differences but, more significantly, very different understandings of the phenomenon. Thus, the introduction of an etic category such as ‘urban’ seems reasonable to reconcile these cross-cultural differences, allowing comparisons of human development. It is easy to overlook this feature of the term ‘urban’ due to its Latin origin, its implied Eurocentrism, and the unfortunate interchangeability of the terms ‘urban’ and ‘city’.” ref

“Defining ‘urban’ might be helpful in distinguishing between ‘urban’ and ‘non-urban’ lifeways, were it not for the static and descriptive aspects of any definition, especially in a constantly expanding field. By contrast, analytical constructs are more flexible and can be regularly updated. In this paper, we have chosen not to produce a definition of ‘urban’ since we believe that such an operation has, in the past, done more harm than good through the essentialization of selected criteria. Instead, we rely on ‘urban’ as an analytical construct whose constitutive points are relational rather than fixed. In this sense, the term ‘megasite’ resembles the Chinese character for ‘city’ or the Greek word ‘polis’.” ref

“Looking for cities in context rather than as examples of essentialized universalities is not a novel concept, but it has been continuously undermined by what has become the traditional view of urbanism. As early as his 1938 discussion of the number and density of urban communities, the prominent sociologist Louis Wirth noted: ‘But these criteria must be seen as relative to the general cultural context in which cities arise and exist and are sociologically relevant only so far as they operate as conditioning factors in social life’. However, another quotation from his seminal work has largely eclipsed his contextual insight in urban research, namely the definition of the city as a ‘relatively large, dense and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals’. More than 60 years later, it was the American archaeologist George Cowgill who advocated a more flexible approach that looks for ‘a city’, rather than ‘the city’, and approaches urban ‘variables’ in a novel manner. His suggestion is ‘it is useful to think of urbanism as a cluster of variables that can be measured (if only roughly) on ordinal or interval scales, rather than as a discrete category’. Building on this study, yet a third influential figure, the American archaeologist Michael Smith, has developed an approach to measuring ‘citi-ness’ in a non-constraining way. Yet these approaches have as yet had little effect on the mainstream notion of what is ‘urban’. What we have attempted is a fully worked-out example of a relational comparison between a megasite and a small Trypillia site.” ref

“In summary, the major and complex issue for any project seeking to confront Trypillia megasites is the issue of scale. Just as Trypillia megasites posed a problem of how fifth-millennium communities could imagine a site 10—20 times the size of what they habitually built and occupied, the question of scale confronts each project with logistical, methodological, and sampling issues of how to investigate such massive sites, such huge landscapes. A further question of scale also applies to one of the key Project research questions. One distinctive trend in post-1980s archaeology has been the focus on ever more detailed questions, based on ever more localized data sets—a trend that has prevented many interpretative archaeologists from making a creative contribution to research into urban origins and development. Just as transcending the limitations of face-to-face contacts and local networks was essential to the development of megasites, so our research project has sought to transcend issues of scale in our theoretical approach, relying on a relational and contextual approach to early cities which remains true to post-processual and interpretative principles. With these scalar issues in mind, it is time to turn to the three principal research questions which the Project addressed, beginning with our re-interpretation of Trypillia megasite lifeways.” ref

Megasite lifeways

“One of the most salient questions in megasite archaeology concerns what was happening on these massive sites—not just in very general terms (cattle husbandry, pit-digging, house-burning), but in integrated detail. Here, we turn to some of the key Project findings which, in our view, provide an alternative view of megasite functions to those found in most recent accounts.” ref

“The introduction of modern geophysical techniques of investigation has had a dramatic impact on Trypillia research, with pedestrian fluxgate gradiometry utilized at Nebelivka and vehicular cesium magnetometry at Taljanki, Majdanetske, Dobrovody, and Apolianka. The Project has produced the only complete megasite plan so far, with a site area of 238 ha inside a shallow perimeter ditch. All of the principal planning elements recognized in the first stage of megasite research have been confirmed in this second stage: the multiple concentric house circuits separated by large spaces, the inner radial streets leading to an open inner space, and the high frequencies of burnt houses and lower totals of unburnt/poorly burnt structures. In addition, recent geophysical research has identified several new classes of anomalies: (unburnt/poorly burnt houses, pits of differing sizes, large structures interpreted as public buildings, industrial features—kilns or cooking facilities, perimeter ditches, garden areas, palaeochannels, and pathways), as well as new combinations of elements (Neighbourhoods, Squares and pit lines/groups). These new elements and combinations enabled the production of a much more dynamic narrative of megasites than was previously possible.” ref

“The total of 86 AMS dates would, in most circumstances, have enabled the Bayesian modeling of a robust internal chronology for the megasite, informing us on the relative start and end dates of the inner and outer circuits, the Squares, and the inner radial streets. Unfortunately, the coincidence of dates with a wiggle in the calibration curve prevents an adequate internal sequencing, leaving us with the most probable dating for the overall occupation of 200 years (3970–3770 BCE). This dating provides a secure chronology for part of Phase BII of the Trypillia group. Modeling of the number of houses and the length of occupation suggests that between a third and a sixth of all houses were occupied simultaneously (Supplementary Materials 7, online). The center of the megasite plan comprises a 65 ha open area with no evidence for building or deposition—an area that could have contained almost any previous Trypillia site. It has been demonstrated how open areas were active participants in the social space of complex sites, carefully managed and often with seasonal changes in function. The significance of the inner open area for major megasite ceremonials and regional-scale meetings has been overlooked in previous research.” ref

“At first sight, the regularity of the megasite plan suggests a hierarchical social order, with the power to impose a site-wide plan and control house-building in a regular layout. But the new geophysical investigations show that this regularity is deceptive, with 18 different forms of variability in plan detail. This heterogeneity was seen in major plan elements, such as the distance between the outer and inner house circuits or the length of uninterrupted perimeter ditch sections, as well as minor planning elements, such as the presence and alignment of kinks in house circuits or the presence/absence of blocking streets cutting off radial streets from the inner open area. This high level of variability is a strong indicator that the Nebelivka plan was created from the bottom up rather than imposed hierarchically from the top down; indeed, there was so much planning heterogeneity that the opposite problem of social integration may have been more important to megasite survival.” ref

Households, Neighbourhoods and Quarters

“The improved resolution of Nebelivka’s geophysical plan enabled a more structured interpretation of social space, with two additional nested levels between the levels of the house and the entire site—the Neighbourhood and the Quarter. At the smallest scale, houses made a statement about the whole Trypillia landscape, with construction materials collected from all parts of the landscape. Using information from our experimental house-building program, the average 15×5 m house, mostly two-storeyed, would have taken 10–12 people one month to construct, with the largest houses taking twice as many person-days. Two-thirds of Nebelivka houses had been deliberately burnt to a high temperature, with the remainder weakly burnt or unburnt. The experimental finding that five to ten times more timber was required to burn a house as to build it confirms the notion of deliberate burning and has major implications for landscape impact. The burnt remains of about 10 % of the houses formed a low mound, visible on the surface, unlike the burnt houses on a Balkan tell, which were usually leveled for the next building phase. Steady accumulations of these ‘memory mounds’ across the site turned Nebelivka from a dwelling site to a mixture of settlement and ‘burnt house cemetery’.” ref

“The grouping of houses into Neighbourhoods provided a local context of living in neighborly proximity, with most households no more than 30 m from each other. Neighborhoods are defined by a minimum of three houses separated at each end of the group from the next house. While up to 27 houses were found in the total of 153 Neighbourhoods, over half comprised three to seven houses. Larger Neighbourhoods suggested longer durations or greater demographic growth. The experimental program estimates show that seven houses of average size could have been built by 50 people in 40 days—perhaps by visitors to/residents at Nebelivka from a single home community.” ref

“Local dynamism was evident in most Neighbourhoods in two ways—the wide range of house sizes and the variety of house-burning treatments—some completely burnt, others weakly fired. Neighborhoods provided a focus for multiple local identities which contrasted with, and may have posed a threat to, an overall Nebelivka identity which was central to the long-term success of the megasite. These local Neighbourhood identities dampened inter-household scalar tensions without necessarily decreasing scalar stress between neighborhoods. Such higher-level disputes may have been solved at the next level up—the Quarter.” ref

“The 14 Nebelivka Quarters have been defined using multiple criteria. Covering an areal range of 5–20 ha, Quarters represented a scalar change in size, perhaps five or ten times the size of Neighbourhoods, and were larger than the average small Trypillia site. Each Quarter differed from other Quarters in size, number, and size of houses and Neighbourhoods, suggesting origins from a variety of outside communities from whom visitors to Nebelivka had been drawn.” ref

“The moderate differences between Quarters revealed through GINI coefficient analysis (see Supplementary Materials 4, online, for details) may be compared with the findings of greater house size variability by Quarter (see Supplementary Materials 5, online, for details); only two Quarters showed high scores in both analyses, underlining the modest social differentiation at this level. Both Neighbourhoods and Quarters helped to mitigate scalar stress by a combination of living conditions at a local community scale and unprecedented opportunities for social interaction at a vast scale. However, despite variability in size and layout, a pioneering application of Visibility Graph Analysis using the software package Depthmap (see Supplementary Materials 3, online, for details) showed similar structuring of visibility and movement through space in all of the analyzed Quarters. This was particularly evident in the location of the public buildings termed ‘Assembly Houses’ in the most visually integrated and public zones of each Quarter. This finding indicates the tensions between an overall Nebelivka identity and the variability within Quarters highlighting a series of local identities.” ref

Artifact studies

“The Nebelivka excavations showed an archaeology of selective fragmentation and practices of episodic discard and deposition, as revealed through the taphonomic filter of the finds in structures and pits. While the discard of food refuse and lithic knapping debris indicated in situ practices, the majority of discarded and deposited remains do not provide a direct reflection of daily lives (a ‘living assemblage’), but rather constitute a series of interventions that brought together a range of people in deliberate depositional practices, such as the unusual but not rare event of a house-burning performance. This means that the deposited finds cannot be conceived as a direct reflection of, for example, household social differentiation, but rather in terms of contributions by different households to the ‘house death assemblage’, as a way of materializing inter-household relations.” ref

“Those maintenance activities which the Nebelivkans chose to exclude almost completely from their performances were food storage, plant-food preparation, cooking, the making of clothes, and tool-making from bone, stone, and metal. Special finds such as fired clay tokens and ornaments were also rarely deposited, although the overall density of figurine deposition matched that of small Trypillia sites. A startling absence from burnt house assemblages was the functionally coherent pottery group indicating a ‘living assemblage’. While specialized production can be related to the construction of Assembly Houses and widespread painted pottery production, we can also identify skilled production by what Timothy Taylor called ‘limited interest groups’ of builders, potters, flint-knappers, bone tool-makers, and figurine-makers.” ref

“The scale of depositional practices at Nebelivka ranged from the single event, such as an episode of placing fragments of two vessels in a pit fill, to the massive communal ceremony of the burning of the megastructure—the largest Assembly House at Nebelivka and, at 60.5×18.3 m, the largest Trypillia structure yet found. The megastructure deposition involved the placement of over 60 kg of pottery derived from at least 332 vessels—the majority for communal consumption—with variability in vessel fabric suggesting contributions from many households and Neighbourhoods. The most striking collective find was the group of 21 miniature vessels, with six vessels showing the first examples of graphite-painted decoration and a graphite wash ever found in the Trypillia group. One graphite-painted vessel was most probably an import from the Gumelniţa group in the Lower Danube valley. The Trypillia mega-sites of the Ukrainian forest-steppe formed the largest fourth-millennium BCE/6,000-5,000 years ago sites in Eurasia. The Trypillia mega-sites of the Ukrainian forest-steppe formed the largest fourth-millennium bc sites in Eurasia and possibly the world.” ref

“Small numbers of objects hint at ancestral relations with pre-megasite groups, such as the flint rhomboid point, lunate and rare incised fine ware vessels. Others still hint at individual production, such as the six flint projectile points all made in different ways, and personal identity, such as the two figurines with realistic portrait heads. But, for the most part, the producers and the people using the objects engaged with a broadly similar range of statements about how an object should be in relation to the Trypillia Big Other—thereby forming a stable, ‘Trypillia’ material world. The clear preference for graded differences rather than presence/absence variation in pottery deposition indicates that a relational strategy of identity-construction was preferred, with the slow build-up of the remains of depositional events creating and maintaining the identities that related persons to all of their nested social contexts.” ref

Nebelivka foodways and landscape

“The megasite faunal sample showed the typical Middle Trypillia dominance of 90 % domesticates, with preferences for beef in some houses and a balanced mix of beef and mutton/lamb in other contexts. The deposition of large quantities of animal bone in some pits suggested the prevalence of feasting in combination with artifact deposition. Despite the extensive use of flotation, the recovery rate of cereal grains and chaff was very low (six cereal grains in four excavation seasons!), with plant impressions on daub showing the common use of emmer and einkorn wheat, barley, and pulses, as well as a neglect of the higher-yielding bread wheats and hexaploid barleys. The combination of the absence of manuring scatters in the field-walking program of the 5 km hinterland of the megasite and the emphasis on hulled cereals from the botanical data suggests a relatively inefficient, traditional ‘Neolithic’ form of agriculture not at all consistent with mega-populations, with no sign of arable intensification on the chernozem soils. The intriguing paucity of coeval small sites within a 15 km radius showed that the hinterland of Trypillia megasites contrasted strongly with that of early Near Eastern cities such as Uruk, with its dense network of supporting settlements.” ref

“A 6 m sediment core from a valley 250 m from the edge of the megasite has provided a dated sequence of local vegetation and megasite human impacts. An unexpected finding was the traces of cereal pollen and a charcoal peak indicating intensive landscape burning, which both pre-dated the megasite occupation. But the greatest surprise in the Nebelivka 1B proxy records was the modest human impact on the landscape of a megasite for which others had estimated a population of 6420–8560 people. None of the five proxy records—deforestation, cereal pollen, micro-charcoal counts, soil erosion and water quality—showed more impact during the megasite occupation than before or after it.” ref

“There is, thus, a paradox at the heart of the Trypillia megasites. On the one hand, the megasites constituted the largest settlements in fourth-millennium bc Europe, with site sizes up to 320 ha and estimated numbers of houses of almost 3000 on one site. Their size, distinctive concentric settlement planning, and signs of social complexity have reinforced the notion of massive, permanent, long-term dwelling. On the other hand, there is little evidence for the material or social differentiation one might have expected from such remarkable settlements. The houses fell within a narrow size range and there is a remarkable paucity of prestige goods, especially copper metallurgy, Spondylus ornaments, and finely polished stonework. While specialists such as Diachenko have used gravity models to identify size-based settlement hierarchies, Nebbia’s spatial analyses challenge this finding. Moreover, there is no evidence for a strong human impact on the local forest-steppe environment which would have followed from such postulated intensive dwelling. In short, there is a mismatch between the interpretation of a massive, permanent, long-term urban settlement and the settlement, environmental and material cultural evidence for a very different form of dwelling—smaller, less permanent, and perhaps seasonal. The lack of a fine-grained internal chronology prevented the creation of a nuanced sequence of megasite development, instead of prompting us to develop three alternative models for a smaller-scale form of megasite.” ref

Alternative models for Nebelivka

“The models were tested against, and met, four basic criteria: the total number of houses; the number of burnt houses; the low level of human impact as shown in the Nebelivka 1B core; and the number of coeval houses modeled by Millard. Two of the models are based upon the seasonal pattering of social life, while the third relies on smaller-scale permanent settlement. Each model presents a variant on the Nebelivka site biography, which began with a well-established settlement network in the Southern Bug catchment, some of whose site clusters included megasites of up to 150 ha, and a local settlement near the Nebelivka promontory, as attested in the Nebelivka 1B pollen core.” ref

The Distributed Governance Model

“The Distributed Governance Model envisages Nebelivka as a smaller but still permanent settlement with up to 400 contemporary houses, organized through a regional alliance of 10 descent groups that emerged from the existing settlement network. Multiple small settlements dispersed within a 100 km catchment area were affiliated to one of the 10 extended social groups. Each descent group drew on its wider network to complement megasite subsistence with food, salt, timber, and other resources for one year before passing on the leadership role to another group. The responsibility of the smooth, heterarchical running of the megasite came with the power to take daily decisions on behalf of the people living in the settlement, but also their friends and relatives in the wider landscape. The descent groups built a single house circuit over the first five years, with expansion into a second circuit and the inner radial streets over the following decades. Seven to ten houses were built and burnt every year, keeping the number of contemporary houses around 400, while still accounting for the low environmental impact and the final footprint of 1445 houses.” ref

“Decision-making at Nebelivka was taken through a council consisting of descent group representatives, with the leading descent group in any year organizing major festivals, such as the annual ‘Change of Descent Group’ ceremony and minor periodic ceremonies. But political power was distributed, with each descent group in control for one year in ten. The reason behind the emergence of this settlement form is the formalization of the experience gained during previous seasonal episodes of aggregation. The benefits of the increased potential for interaction, trade, and later specialized production inspired the initial experiment of a larger permanent co-habitation of heterogeneous groups. Once the sustainability of such a settlement was established via an off-site supply network, the vitality of this form of aggregation is witnessed by 600–800 years of continuity. The greatest strength of this model is that it fits well with the traditional view of permanent long-term occupation, but with greatly reduced population estimates. This model also best conforms to the construction of the solid timber-framed houses typical of all megasites.” ref

The Assembly Model

“The Assembly Model interprets Nebelivka as a regional center for large-scale assembly over one month per annum, with a small group of ‘Guardians’ living year-round as an agro-pastoral community and maintaining the center outside assembly times. In comparison with the Pilgrimage Model’s emphasis on religious practices and a much longer visiting season (see below), the Assembly Model exploited the shorter period for more concentrated interactions which brought a wide variety of benefits to participants, principally the opportunity to meet a far wider group of visitors than was ever possible elsewhere.” ref

“The Assembly place developed out of the central settlements in previous (Phase BI) local settlement clusters. The site would have developed through the formation of Quarters, with five founded in each of the first and second generations and four more in the third generation—a slow development of the overall plan that was perhaps a weakness in this model. These Quarters had the dual purpose of materializing the local identities of the home communities through bottom-up planning, while at the same time providing an overall framework for the creation of a ‘central’ or ‘Nebelivka’ identity. These two identities were in tension throughout the use of the assembly site, with the Nebelivka identity supported by house-building and -burning activities, pit- and ditch-digging, and communal feasting. But the ‘Nebelivka’ identity was dominant only at the time of the assembly, sustaining the seasonal re-structuring of society to form a regional political unit to create and run the assembly. The creation of a major assembly as the key event in the annual regional calendar would have been a big attraction to people over a wide area.” ref

The Pilgrimage Model

“The Pilgrimage Model is an extended version of the Assembly Model, but with a much longer, eight-month season and a more focused motivation based upon the Trypillia Big Other. This model is based upon extensive pre-existing social networks linking sites across regions, supported by the ubiquitous shared symbolic order of the Big Other. Following on from the assemblies of the earliest megasites in Phase BI, pilgrimage centers were selected for a range of different reasons by ritual leaders who became ‘site guardians’. It was these guardians who prepared the ground, organized the large-scale woodland management necessary for initial house-building and negotiated with other settlements for major contributions to the construction of the site.” ref

“The key feature of the model is the massive labor input required of ‘Pilgrim-Builders’ to construct an entire house circuit and dig the entire perimeter ditch in the first two seasons. The advantage for this effort was the creation of a spectacularly large pilgrimage center which would have become famous across the whole Trypillia world. Thereafter, building rates became more tightly controlled, with home communities living in the same houses for a succession of one-month visits. In addition to the religious experience, healing, exchange, and meeting with a diversity of people were all important parts of pilgrimage. This model provides the most cogent explanations for many of the planning elements of the megasite—not only the location and multiplicity of Assembly Houses, but also the concentric ditch and house circles and the radial streets, which are all interpreted as framing devices for processions from the outside of the site into the sacred open inner area.” ref

“Given that each model has its advantages and disadvantages, we have so far found it impossible to decide on any single model, leaving an element of ambiguity to the future interpretation of the Nebelivka megasite. Each model can best explain a key feature of the megasite plan—the Distributed Governance Model relates well to the multiplicity of timber-framed houses, the Assembly Model requires an inner open area for its principal meeting space, while the form of the concentric house circuits and inner radial streets would have created ideal processional spaces for the Pilgrimage Model. The Distributed Governance Model was inspired by K. Hirth’s views on the modus operandi of the Mesoamerican altepetl and Hahn’s work on segmentary societies in Africa, while pilgrimages have recently been discussed in comparable terms in British prehistory and the Near East. Equally, the importance of assembly sites has been widely discussed for Stonehenge, Angkor Wat, Cahokia, and in a special issue of World Archaeology. The failure of any model to explain all of the megasite planning elements is an indicator that we cannot yet reject any model for the growth of the Nebelivka megasite. This conclusion inevitably complicates the debate over the urban status of megasites, to which we now turn.” ref

Independent European urbanism

“The initial impetus for pursuing an urban agenda in the interpretation of Nebelivka, and the megasites more generally, was the large settlement size. Very soon, however, it became obvious that such a path of box-ticking (e.g. large size being one of the few traits most urban commentators agree on) will relegate these sites to what they were before the Project—an exception that proves the rule (Liverani 2013). Since the accumulation of many strands of evidence proved the exceptional nature of Nebelivka, it was imperative that the exceptions now formed an alternative rule.” ref

Building on Cowgill’s insights, a proposition for measurement of ‘urban-ness’ was put forward that followed Cartwright and Runhardt’s approach to measurement in the social sciences (Gaydarska 2016). Such an approach has been called ‘relational’, as its core premise is that various categories of sites, including urban, emerge in relation to each other rather than absolutely. Thus, for example, what constitutes a city (or a town) in the second-millennium BCE China could not and should not be a mold applied to ad eleventh-century North America. Such a mold usually comes in either one of three definitions—Childe’s check-list, Wirth’s sociological definition, and Michael Smith’s functional definition—or a variant on one of these three definitions or a combination of two or three of the definitions. For all the advantages such definitions have, they ‘flatten’ emerging phenomena, developed cities, and sites with a long urban legacy into one single ‘idealized’ view of what should be considered as urban. The relational approach avoids such an amalgamation of individual and collective agencies, historical and landscape contexts, and rapidly or slowly changing local circumstances by looking for emerging and recurring categories of sites in relation to preceding and contemporary settlement patterns. The difference, then, is not measured by presence/absence, absolute numbers, or on a gradient scale, as suggested by Michael Smith, but by identifying meaningful local markers in what Cartwright and Runhardt call the characterization of those social phenomena to be measured.” ref

“Any characterization should meet the following conditions: it should be useful for its purpose, it is socially constructed, it should be not too general but it should also not create boundaries. The characterization of the category ‘urban’ in the Trypillian context in general, and Nebelivka in particular, has nine constituents—the territory to which a site is central, site size, population numbers, population heterogeneity, the concentration of skilled labor and management, the built environment and formalized spaces with special functions, the scale of subsistence, the potential to be a node and re-distribution center in a wide-reaching exchange network and the overall social structure. The small (4.5 ha) Trypillia settlement of Grebeni was then selected as a well-documented comparandum for the 238 ha Nebelivka along these nine lines, not just to point out obvious contrasts in scale, but to demonstrate the profound difference in lived experience and a wide range of social and technological potential.” ref

“As an example, we select only two—probably the most contentious—of the nine elements—the size of the sites and their population. The density of building on the smaller settlement was nine houses per hectare, providing enough space for small gardens and/or pens in the vicinity of each house. With a maximum population of c. 300 people (38 dwellings × 8 inhabitants), additional agricultural plots were needed to complement the plant-based component of their diet. Even the more distant of these fields would not have been more than half-an-hour’s walk from the settlement. With just 38 houses, members from each neighborhood would have seen each other daily, while inter-neighborhood encounters were, if not a daily, then a weekly event. The residential density at Nebelivka was broadly similar or even lower (6 houses/ha) and although allotments and pens may have been nearby, the complementary arable plots and pastures to sustain a population in its thousands would have been located at a serious distance from the megasite—probably hours away.” ref

“More people meant not only more food, water, and waste, but also a more complex use of space not just for habitation, subsistence, and rituals but requiring planning, logistics, and management. And since the regular scale of face-to-face contacts on settlements rarely exceeded 450–500 people, the daily and weekly habitus of any occupant of Nebelivka may, at first sight, be like that in any small site; however, this number is 1/8 to 1/10 of the population of Nebelivka. While everyone could potentially have seen or met everyone else, people’s interactions were probably channeled so that there were some more regular and other less regular meetings, introducing heterogeneity into social interactions and a diversity of household locations with differing degrees of connectivity.” ref

“The social, economic, and personal implications of living on a small 4.5 ha and the rare >150 ha sites are so different that we argue that there was no possibility that the Nebelivka megasite was simply a very large example of a typical small rural settlement. Such an equation would be a categorical mistake, of the kind which suggests that aircraft carriers are simply very large examples of yachts. We argue that megasites were perceived, experienced, and functioned in a very different way from any smaller previous and contemporary site. We do not know the emic name for megasites, but we call them ‘urban’ since Trypillia megasites exhibited the same order of qualitative and quantitative differences from the typical small Trypillia settlement as the city of Uruk did from small tells in the Fertile Crescent, or Roman London from the villas of southeast England. The fact that this class of megasites can be dated to the earliest part of the fourth-millennium bc—several centuries earlier than urban Uruk—offers further ground for considering their significance in world prehistory in a new light.” ref

“It is not just Trypillia megasites that have suffered an oversight in global urban debates. It is only in the last 10 years that the significance of a certain class of sites has finally been recognized. Low-density urbanism is now an acknowledged alternative trajectory of urban development in several regions in the world, such as Southeast Asia and Central America, with continuous expansion to include more anomalously large sites from across the globe. The Trypillia megasites share all of the principal characteristics of the low-density urban sites, such as the short time taken from the origins of agriculture to the formation of urban communities, the transformation from higher-density to lower-density large sites, the importance of major building projects, kinship-based, house-oriented planning practices, seasonal settlement, the relative insignificance of the mortuary domain and the rarity of an urban legacy. This means that the Trypillia megasites were not only the earliest known urban sites in the world, but also the earliest known low-density urban sites in the world. But, whatever the label we attribute to the megasites, there remains the question of the origins of such remarkable sites.” ref

The origins of Trypillia megasites

“The North Pontic forest-steppe zone constituted a mosaic of deciduous woodland of lime, elm, oak, and hazel interspersed with open parkland in rolling loess plateaux rarely exceeding 250 masl, where some of the most fertile soils in Europe—the chernozems—had developed from the Mid-Holocene onwards. The Trypillia group were pioneering agro-pastoral communities that introduced domesticated crops and animals, large timber-framed houses, and a wide range of novel material culture to the forest-steppe zone. A key area for a concentration of megasites, including the earliest examples, was the south Bug–Dnieper interfluve. The absence of significant environmental differences between this zone and other forest-steppe areas with few or no megasites suggests that social rather than environmental factors were responsible for this concentration of megasites. So what was the cultural background from which they emerged? What were the changes in the Trypillia world to which megasites were a possible response? And what (dis)advantages did Trypillia megasites bring to their world?” ref

“Reachers can summarize the picture of Trypillia settlement at Phase BI/II (c. 4200–4000 BCE), before the emergence of the first planned megasites, in the following way. The three key material traits of the Big Other—the house, the pottery, and the figurines were all demonstrably part of the initial agro-pastoral expansion east of the Dniester valley, proving to be the most attractive elements of Trypillia communities to the Forest Neolithic groups, who produced a limited range of fine wares but lacked figurines and rectangular houses. The BI/II network brought modest amounts of copper and Volhynian flint from the Western CT area. While some elements of what would become central elements of Phase BII megasite planning had already developed by Phase BI/II, they were not apparent on the largest sites and no Phase BI/II site showed more than a single ‘advanced’ planning element.” ref

“The emergence of large CT settlements by 4000 BCE is part of two long-term settlement trends—landscape infilling northwards from the southern Bug valley and increased site clustering into small groups of sites, occasionally with more than one large site in the cluster. As the first farmers in the North Pontic steppe, the CT network came into regular contact with local foragers (the so-called ‘Forest Neolithic’), who lived in small, possibly seasonal settlements. While the details of interactions between local foragers and incoming farmers remain unclear, the varied mix of site types and lifeways would have broadened the CT awareness of temporalities different from their own. The dramatic 15-fold increase in site sizes in a period of a few centuries depended on support from other, smaller settlements in a local buffering network and further exposed the CT network to the reality of inter-settlement differences. In these ways, it became possible to imagine massive sites with a temporality which differed from that of the usual settlement.” ref

“Three key innovations affecting the growth of CT settlements concerned the creation of coherent settlement plans, the introduction of painted pottery, and changes in the importance of animal husbandry. Changes in settlement planning led to the novel combination of planning elements such as concentric house circles, inner radial streets, and an inner open area into a single coherent megasite plan. The creation of two new types of large vessel widened the scope of household grain storage and communal consumption and feasting. Decoration of fine wares in black paint required an expansion of exchange networks to obtain exotic manganese pigments. The combination of these changes led to a new class of fine painted wares more common than the rare prestige goods, leading in turn to new opportunities for domestic and public deposition. The preference for more domestic animals (over 90 % at Nebelivka) gave households a greater control over animal keeping and opportunities for feasting. It was the integration of all three sets of practices at megasites that enabled scalar transformations in the quantity of people involved, the quantity of material involved and the quantity of house-building and -burning involved.” ref

“There is still a residual concern that these structural changes were necessary but insufficient factors in the emergence of these extraordinary sites. It is hard to envisage the scale of social interaction at an early megasite, with visitors meeting people from 30–50 home communities in contrast to the previously limited face-to-face engagements. In return for a commitment to corporate projects (ditch- and pit-digging, the gathering of materials, and house-building), early residents participated in an unprecedented range of special events, from ‘local’ Neighbourhood pit deposition and feasting to annual ‘global’ celebrations of the megasite itself. There was an element of success feeding success, with tales of the events, their scale, and magnificence, spreading through the Trypillia network and attracting more and more visitors to the megasite. The stimulus of the megasite community for the creation of alliances made Nebelivka and other early megasites particularly special centres. It was this upward trend in alliance-formation and the richness of interactions that were the sparks leading to the emergence of megasites.” ref

“Given these important developments at early megasites, can we identify the key advantages to participating in megasite practices? The decision to develop a megasite into a more permanent arrangement was an agreement made by the whole network, as mediated by representatives of the many home communities whose members would settle at the megasite. This decision had several implications. The first was to consolidate alliances between those clans participating in the megasite dwelling, bringing those groups closer to each other than to other neighbouring clans. Secondly, the permanent arrangement led to a more formalized site plan which, in turn, supported the idea of a community identity. Thirdly, the increased place-value accruing to a megasite led to the general growth in importance of places where large gatherings were held.” ref

“And, fourthly, the unprecedented scale of exchange occurring on such early megasites led to cumulative social advantages for those dwelling on such sites. The sum total of these advantages led to the attraction of megasite lifeways to a wider pool of people living in the extended Nebelivka network of 100 km radius. Problems of scalar stress would undoubtedly have caused more disputes than on a typical small Trypillia settlement. In the case of the two seasonally based models, the options of leaving early or simply moving to another part of a huge site were always open; disputes may well have been harder to manage or resolve in the third, permanent settlement model (see above).” ref

“In summary, the diversity of pre-megasite settlement experience in the southern Bug–Dnieper interfluve provided settlers with the possibility of imagining different kinds of site—small settlements and large, seasonal, or permanent centers of assembly—which enabled the emergence of the megasites. Major changes in settlement planning and painted pottery production, as well as changes in animal keeping, can be closely related to the origins of megasites. But the key innovation which co-emerged with megasites was the potential for an unprecedented scale of interaction—whether personal (exchange, feasting) or institutional (alliance formation).” ref

Conclusions

“Our principal finding is that, in a relational sense, Trypillia megasites are currently the earliest known examples anywhere on earth of urban settlements and, indeed, low-density urban settlements. While there were many small Trypillia sites that accorded well with Gabriel Cooney & Eoin Grogan’s characterization of the Neolithic as ‘local worlds linked by exotic elements’, this description does not fit the Trypillia megasites. What is perhaps surprising for most archaeologists is that there were at least two routes to urbanism before the state in the fourth-millennium BCE—the Mesopotamian route, with centralized management, a massive exchange network (the Uruk Expansion), and a highly visible urban legacy, and the Trypillia megasites low-density route with more limited exchange networks and far less materialization of social difference.” ref

“Whichever of the three alternative models for Nebelivka is accepted, each model shares the same characteristics of a much smaller population estimate than had previously been accepted, a social model which is heterarchical and with no obvious signs of centralized management, a constant but low-intensity reliance of exotic materials in a wide-ranging exchange network and the total absence of any urban legacy for three millennia. While one model favors smaller-scale permanent settlement, the other two models rely on a seasonal mode of settlement, in which the great mass of Nebelivkans were present for only one month per year—whether a month in an eight-month pilgrimage season or a one-month period of Assembly. Each model acknowledges the key roles of bottom-up settlement planning, local depositional practices, house-burning, and the creation of memory mounds. Our thinking about complex societies will henceforth need to include both of these fourth-millennium bc pathways to urbanism into account. It is important to underline that neither route involved a high degree of political or economic centralization.” ref

“At the end of this article, we return to the origins of the megasites. At c. 4500 BCE, a settlement covering 150 ha had never been experienced anywhere in the world. However much we improve the quality of our data for the mid fifth-millennium bc, what we still need to do is to understand how Trypillia people could imagine the possibility of these early megasites, in the same way as Benedict Anderson discusses imagined political communities in the Early Modern period or Maurice Bloch discusses the centrality of human imagination to the development of transcendent religious groups. For to experience an utterly unprecedented settlement form is to make a giant leap into the dark—to risk, to improvise, and to generate novel social forms. In many ways, the challenge to imagine unprecedented settlement forms was greater than the challenges of megasite sustainability. For during a period of 800 years, megasites continued to be the key aggregation sites in the Ukrainian forest-steppe. This major cultural achievement has only recently been recognized and merits wider exposure.” ref

Analysis of ancient human mitochondrial DNA from Verteba Cave, Ukraine: insights into the Late Neolithic-Chalcolithic Cucuteni–Tripolye culture

Abstract

“Verteba Cave (VC) in western Ukraine dates to the Eneolithic period (c. 5500 YBP), and contains the largest collection yet found of human skeletal remains associated with the Cucuteni–Tripolye culture. The subsistence economy of this people was based on agropastoralism, and included some of the largest and densest Middle Neolithic settlement sites in all of Europe. To understand further the evolutionary history of the Tripolye people, we examined population genetics patterns in mitochondrial DNA from ancient human remains excavated from VC chambers. From five commingled and secondary burial sites within the cave, we obtained 368 bp mtDNA HVR1 sequences from 22 individuals assignable to eight haplogroups: H (three haplotypes), HV (two haplotypes), W, K, and T. Overall nucleotide diversity is low (π = 0.00621). The two largest samples, from Chamber G3 and Site 7, were significantly differentiated with respect to haplotype composition: G3 (n = 8) is dominated by haplotype W (π = 0), whereas Site 7 (n = 15) is dominated by H haplotypes (π = 0.00439). Tajima’s D as an indication of population expansion was not significantly negative for the complete sample (D = −1.37) or for sites G3 (D = −0.973) and 7 (D = −1.35), which were analyzed separately. Individuals from the Tripolye culture buried at VC c. 5500 YBP had predominantly haplogroup H and related haplotypes. This contrasts with predominantly haplogroup U individuals in preEneolithic peoples from the same area, which suggests lack of genetic continuity in a site that has been dated to the Mesolithic. The peoples of the Tripolye culture are more closely related to other early European farmers than to Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and/or pre-Eneolithic cultures.” ref

Introduction

“Profound cultural transitions accompanied the Neolithic and Bronze Age in Europe. A continuing question of debate among researchers is how migrations from West Asia or the Pontic-Caspian steppe affected the genetic composition of modern-day Europe. A key question in this debate posits whether these cultural changes were the results of movements of people (demic diffusion model), or the movement of ideas and artifacts (cultural diffusion model) (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza, 1984). That is, were these large-scale migrations a process of cultural diffusion, with little or no genetic admixture among early Neolithic farmers and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers? Or, is a model of demic diffusion more appropriate, whereby different regions of Europe were more or less affected by admixture with early farmers, and later steppe herders during the Bronze Age?” ref

“The transition to farming from a foraging lifestyle first appeared in the Near East c. 10500 years before present (YBP) in modern-day southeastern Anatolia and Syria. Archaeologists have described two major and contemporaneous routes of expansion, namely the Continental (Danubian) and Mediterranean routes. By 9500 YBP, farming spread into parts of Central Europe through the migration of peoples associated with the Linear Pottery culture (or Linear-bandkeramik, LBK). These LBK cultures originated in Hungary and Slovakia (the Carpathian Basin) and then spread rapidly as far as the Paris Basin and Ukraine. A lingering question among archaeologists has always been whether these first farmers were descendants of local hunter-gatherers or whether they migrated from the Near East. Paleogenetic studies have generally suggested these early farmers were migrants, though in some places peoples continued to admix after the adoption of agriculture.” ref

“Southeastern Europe (SE Europe) has not been as extensively investigated as southwestern Europe, Central Europe, or southern Scandinavia, in terms of their ancient DNA variation. In contrast to Central Europe, the area of what is modern Ukraine saw the adoption of agriculture late. Although features of the Neolithic package are visible in Ukraine as early as 8500–7500 YBP, agriculture was not adopted as a primary subsistence economy until the Eneolithic or Chalcolithic period (c. 6500 YBP). Whereas Central Europe saw mostly demic diffusion, SE Europe seems to have adopted agriculture through innovative subsistence strategies as a result of the transfer of ideas, with little genetic influence and genetic continuity from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic. Therefore, the Neolithic transition occurred at a slower pace, thus perhaps shaping the genetic composition of this region differently than in other parts of Europe.” ref

“Following the establishment of farming communities in the Balkan Peninsula, a series of complex societies formed, culminating in large settlements. By 6500 YBP, agriculture had reached Eastern Europe, in the form of the Cucuteni–Trypillian (C-T) complex in the area of present-day Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine. This culture spanned close to 2000 years and influenced much of SE Europe and the Baltic regions. It is known for elaborate anthropomorphic and animal figurines, as well as distinct, elegantly painted pottery. Around 5000 YBP, these societies began to change, with the large settlements being abandoned, and archaeological evidence suggesting contact with nomadic steppe populations from the East.” ref

“The complex process of Neolithisation in SE Europe by examining an Eneotlithic (Chalcolithic) Cucuteni–Tripolye site from Ukraine. For brevity, we will use the term Tripolye, as it is known in Ukraine. Tripolye culture (7100–5000 cal-BP) is defined as Eneolithic based on the presence of copper artifacts and the onset of metallurgy, and ends at the beginning of the Bronze Age. The Tripolye culture occupied a large area from the Carpathian Mountains in the west to the Dnieper River in the east, and extended as far south as the Black Sea and north to Kiev. Relative and absolute chronologies divide the Tripolye culture into several phases, which normally accompany changes in pottery manufacture and decoration. The people associated with this culture are known as Trypillians.” ref

“In the present study, we investigate human remains found at a single Tripolye site known as Verteba Cave (VC), with human and faunal remains dating to the Eneolithic. VC has been excavated as an archaeological site since the 1820s, though more intensive excavation has been ongoing since 1996 under the direction of coauthor M. Sokhatsky (Borschiv Regional Museum of the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Arts). Verteba is a gypsum cave located in western Ukraine, in the boreal forest-steppe zone of the East European Plain. It is one of many vast underground cave systems in the region.” ref

“Interpretations surrounding the use of the cave during these periods vary. Some believe the cave was used as a temporary shelter, while increasing archaeological evidence suggests use as a ritual site or a mortuary function. There is also evidence to support the idea that individuals buried in the cave, which are largely secondary in nature, are victims of warfare or sacrifice, due to the high frequency of blunt force trauma. The cave contains the largest accumulation of human remains associated with the Tripolye culture found to date. Very few Tripolye culture human remains exist, making the cave one of the most important sites for the investigation of the diet, health, pathology, and population history of Trypillian peoples.” ref

“Using data obtained from the mitochondrial HVR-I region, we ask several interrelated questions about individuals buried at VC. First, is there evidence for a maternal genetic continuity, and thus a degree of cultural diffusion, with local Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, as suggested in several recent studies? If there is no evidence for this, how are these individuals related to earlier farmer groups from SE or Central Europe? Is there any indication of a steppe influence for the Trypillian peoples? And lastly, can we infer something about the collapse of the Trypillian people from maternal lineages? Several studies have briefly addressed two of these three questions, indicating a link to early Neolithic farmers with some possibility of a link with Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. However, in those studies, the sample sizes tended to be smaller and the human remains used came from only a single chamber. Here, we analyze mitochondrial (mt) DNA data from several chambers in different locations found throughout the cave in an attempt to answer these questions.” ref

Samples

“Human remains for DNA analyses come from several excavation sites located within VC. VC is a mortuary site located outside the modern village of Bilche Zolote, Ternopil Oblast, Ukraine. Most samples date to the Tripolye CII period (c. 5500 YBP) based exclusively on associated pottery found in the same cultural layer as the human remains. Nikitin et al. (2010, 2017) and Ledogar et al. radiocarbon dated human and animal remains, as well as pottery sherds from Verteba, and found that the dates correspond to transitional phases in pottery decoration, with peak activity placed c. 5500 calBP, although some remains date to before or after this date. All skeletal samples excavated within VC are commingled and individual burials are difficult to identify. ” ref

“The remains were initially kept at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and later transferred to Kitasato University for processing. R.W.S. then collected bone and teeth samples on site and in situ using sterile sampling methods (wearing coveralls, gloves, and facemask) from four additional chambers (20, G1, G2, G3). We attempted to collect samples from these other chambers that did not overlap elements from a single individual and we are confident this is the case for sites 20, G1, and G2 as samples were collected from different levels and from different parts of the site; however, site G3 had several skeletal elements within a small chamber and thus these samples could derive from a single individual or only a few individuals—though they may likely be members of the same family. Samples from sites 20, G1, G2, and G3 were deposited into sterile bags on site and are now stored at the University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria under the curation of R. Pinhasi. A total of 63 skeletal elements were analyzed for this study.” ref

Results

“63 specimens (53 bones and 10 teeth) from VC, from which we made 156 DNA extractions. Of these, we were successful in PCR amplification of 38 specimens with three overlapping primer sets each. We sequenced all 114 amplicons using the Sanger method on an ABI 3130 Genetic Analyzer, and obtained contigs based on all three amplicon sequences from 34 of the 38 specimens. We removed 6 specimens where the amplicon sequences were mutually incompatible, so as to produce a final set of 28 specimens with consensus sequences over a 368 bp region of HVR-1.” ref

“Eight distinct HVR-1 sequences were found in the 28 specimens. We also include the sequence types for two who worked on DNA extraction. K.W. and R.S. sequence types were not identical to the eight sequence types, except for Seq type II from one bone specimen that was identical to the sequence type of R.S. This sequence type corresponds to mitochondrial haplogroup HV12b, which is common in modern European populations. We could not eliminate the possibility that it is contamination and so did not include it in subsequent population genetic analyses. In addition to Seq type II, sequence type VI was assignable to be haplogroup HV. Sequence types I, III, and IV were assignable to be haplogroup H, while sequence types V, VII, and VIII were assignable to be haplogroups W, K, and T, respectively. Thus, all the haplotypes found in the VC specimens are also found in modern European populations, as expected.” ref

“The distribution of haplotypes varies among spatially distinct areas of the cave (Table 3). Most notably, Site 7 had five different haplotypes [I, II (similar to R.S. and thus removed from further population genetic analyses), III, IV, and VIII] among 15 individuals, whereas Chamber G3 was almost exclusively type V (7 out of 8). The other two sequences were confined to sites G2 and Site 20 (VI and VII). We were unable to produce any sequence data from site G1. Although we have a total of 28 samples represented in our sequence assemblage, the possibility exists that only 22 individuals are present in our dataset. This reasoning is based on the following: we know that all of the samples from Site 7 are different individuals (each is represented by a single right second metacarpal bone, n = 15); the samples from the ‘undefined chamber’ were also two right metacarpal bones (n = 2); samples from sites G2 and 20 derive from different layers and are not in close approximation to each other, i.e. sites are spatially separated (n = 3); and site G3 contains different skeletal elements that may come from a single individual, though we observe two different haplotypes, so it is possible that n = 2 rather than n = 8. This gives us a minimum of 22 individuals in our dataset for population genetic analyses.” ref

“They tested for nucleotide diversity (π) and Tajima’s D (Table 4). A significantly negative Tajima’s D would suggest that a population has experienced a demographic expansion; otherwise, there is no evidence of departure from constant population size. Tajima’s D values of VC specimens were negative (−1.36690) but not significantly different from zero (P = 0.078). Several values for nucleotide diversity were inferred for the different Seq types (apart from Seq Type II) and show relatively low diversity, although the sample sizes for each are small.” ref

Discussion

“In this study, they have attempted to answer a number of related questions surrounding Trypillian population history using data gleaned from maternal ancestry. They include a minimum of 22 individuals buried at VC, an Eneolithic site associated with the Tripolye culture. Although the data are limited, our findings may offer some insight into aspects of Trypillian people’s genetic affiliation with other Neolithic groups.” ref

“To address the complexities associated with the transition to farming (or the process of Neolithisation), a wealth of ancient mtDNA data has been amassed from the Late Mesolithic to the Late Bronze Age. To explain these genetic changes in various regions of Europe, it is important to fully understand the genetic substratum spanning the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition. Studies have suggested that the maternal signature of local hunter-gatherer groups in many parts of Europe is homogeneous, with a relatively small population size and haplogroups dominated by lineage haplogroup U, such as U2, U4, U5a, U5b, and U8. In contrast, Neolithic mtDNA arrived in Central Europe c. 8000 years BP along with cultures associated with LBK farmers, comprising largely haplogroups N1a, T2, K, J, HV, V, W, and H. These lineages replaced local signatures of haplogroup U from peoples associated with Mesolithic cultures, over large areas of Central Europe.” ref

“Reachers first explored whether individuals buried at VC are more closely related to earlier Neolithic farmers from Central Europe, or perhaps have some connection with local hunter-gatherers, thus emphasizing the role of cultural diffusion in the adoption of agriculture. mtDNA haplogroup data for modern and ancient populations in Europe and West Asia have shown there was a discontinuity between late hunter-gatherers and early farmers, and later extant European populations, in most locations throughout Europe. An exception has been in SE Europe and the Baltic where cultural diffusion may have played a larger role.” ref

“The VC haplotype distribution indicates common haplotypes among Eurasian populations. These include haplogroups H, T, K, and W. The majority of haplotypes occur in haplogroup H, which is the most common haplogroup among modern-day Europeans and peoples of the West Asia, accounting for around 40% in Europeans, including approximately 44% of modern Ukrainians. This suggests a possible continuity between the Tripolye and modern Ukrainians. The VC haplotypes included one T2b individual, which is a possible marker of Anatolian expansion that has also been found at high frequency in the Carpathian Mountains. In Nikitin et al., an individual from Bilche Zolote was found to have haplogroup T2b. Bilche Zolote is only 3 km from the VC site, indicating some degree of local continuity with the Trypillian people.” ref

“Previous ancient DNA studies showed that hunter-gatherers before 6500 YBP in Europe commonly had haplogroups U, U4, U5, and H, whereas hunter-gatherers after 6500 YBP in Europe had a lower frequency of haplogroup H than before. Haplogroups T and K appeared in hunter-gatherers only after 6500 YBP, indicating a degree of admixture in some places between farmers and hunter-gatherers. Farmers before and after 6500 YBP in Europe had haplogroups W, HV*, H, T, K, and these are also found in individuals buried at VC. Therefore, our data point to a common ancestry with early European farmers.” ref

“Our data may suggest a degree of population replacement from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic. Mathieson et al., analyzed a number of Neolithic Ukrainian samples (petrous bone) from several sites in southern, northern, and western Ukraine, dating to c. 8500–6000 YBP, and found exclusively U (U4 and U5) mtDNA lineages. It should be noted that ‘Neolithic’ in this context does not mean the adoption of agriculture, but is simply coincident with a change in material culture. They also analyzed several Trypillian individuals from VC (different samples than those included in this study), among whom they found a wider diversity of mtDNA lineages, including H5a, HV, and T2b. “One individual (I3151) had haplotype U8b1b. This finding is similar to an earlier study by Nikitin et al., who analyzed the same samples for only mtDNA variation.” ref

“Although found as early as the Paleolithic, haplotype U8b1 has also been discovered in Neolithic Anatolian farmers. In the analysis by Mathieson et al., the individual with U8b1b showed little evidence that their genome-wide variation was more similar to earlier Neolithic or Mesolithic groups, displaying a mixture of mostly Balkans Neolithic with some contribution from western hunter-gatherers, Ukraine Neolithic, and steppe Yamnaya. In fact, the Trypillians in Mathieson et al. had up to 80% Neolithic Anatolian ancestry. Based on these data, combined with our preliminary results, it appears the Trypillians were very much a distinct people with ancestral roots tied to early Neolithic groups from Anatolia.” ref

“Haplogroup W was also observed in several specimens deriving from Site G3. Although we are unsure if all of these haplogroups come from a single or multiple individuals, this observation is interesting in that it is relatively rare and isolated among Neolithic samples. It has, however, been found in samples dating to the Bronze Age. Wilde et al. found haplogroup W present in two samples from the Early Bronze Age associated with the Yamnaya and Usatovo cultures. The Usatovo culture (c. 3500–2500 BCE) was found in Romania, Moldova, and southern Ukraine. It was a conglomeration of Tripolye and North Pontic steppe cultures. Therefore, this individual could link the Trypillian peoples to the Usatovo peoples and perhaps to the greater Yamnaya steppe migrations during the Bronze Age that lead to the Corded Ware culture.” ref

“VC contains archaeological evidence for the Tripolye cultural complex, including implements for agrarian cultivation, including grain processing. Based on the material culture, the immensity of certain settlements (some housing up to 10000 people), as well as the deterioration in biological health resulting from grain consumption, it is clear the subsistence economy of the Trypillians was based on agriculture. Previous studies report that modern hunter-gatherers do not indicate a signal of demographic expansion in mismatch distribution and/or Tajima’s D test, but farmers tend to show expansion based on increasing numbers of individuals living in sedentary conditions.” ref

“An explanation for our observed population size stability as seen in Tajima’s D might be due to sampling strategy and the temporal component of ancient DNA sites. If a population migrates in low numbers into a new environment, such as the case with early migrating farmers from Anatolia, we would slowly see an increase in the population as they become increasingly sedentary over time. If we were to sample from this site and test for demographic expansion, we would most likely see that reflected in a statistic such as Tajima’s D. As the population increases and resources reach an upper limit, groups would begin to split and settle into new locations in close geographic proximity. Sampling individuals from each of these new sites, we would expect to see the maintenance of population stability since the groups, though genetically related, are spread out and thus would maintain population equilibrium with bidirectional migration.” ref

“If, at some point in time, these sites again become aggregated because of increased population size, and we were to sample from this new, larger archaeological site, we would again witness demographic expansion simply because the overall population size has increased. Therefore, farmer populations as a whole (over the course of the Neolithic) generally see a trend for increased population expansion as local villages turn into larger settlements (as could be the case for peak occupation at VC, where nearby settlements tended to be large). However, if we sample from each of those localities over time, as perhaps we are seeing with our results when we include samples from all sites (chambers), then we do not see demographic expansion, but rather the maintenance of population size over time.” ref

“Archaeologically, it has been documented that Tripolye settlements began to disappear at the beginning of the Bronze Age. The reasons for this vary, but could be influenced by their interaction with steppe groups from the east. One of the possibilities for settlement abandonment is warfare. It has been well documented at VC that interpersonal violence was a common phenomena. Madden et al. found a high degree of trauma-related cranial injuries among Trypillian burials. It is believed these individuals were killed by an outside raiding group and were later buried by members of the Tripolye culture.” ref

“The Trypillians were one of the last of the ‘Old Europe’ cultures that lived along the shores of the Danube River. By 5800 calBP, many of these Neolithic Danubian cultures were wiped out after the arrival of pastoralists from the steppe. It is believed that by 5300 calBP, the Trypillians were in conflict with members of the Usatovo culture to the south, no longer benefiting from trade relationships across the forest–steppe boundaries.” ref

“Another explanation for the sudden collapse of Tripolye culture may be an early form of plague, recently documented, that was widespread from Siberia to the Baltic at c. 5000 YBP. Neolithic communities contracting this early form of the plague would have devastated Tripolye mega-sites, thus creating a demographic collapse that we are only glimpsing in our population genetic analyses. To get a better understanding of the demographic collapse in Tripolye society, we will need to obtain genome-wide data to further explore how these early agropastoralists eventually declined or were replaced by steppe nomads from the east.” ref

Conclusions

“In this study, we have shown that mtDNA diversity during the Eneolithic at the VC site is closely related to early European farmers and that the represented haplogroups are qualitatively different from the mtDNA haplotypes found during the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic at other Ukrainian sites. Although based on a single locus, this may suggest some population transition by newly migrating farmers who replaced or, in some cases, admixed with local groups during the Mesolithic or Early Neolithic. Archaeologically, we also know that the Trypillians seemed to have disappeared at the beginning of the Bronze Age. Although we do not know the exact cause of the abandonment of Trypillian sites, several scenarios could account for this, including conflict with steppe groups to the south and east, or the spread of disease in the form of plague. Additional material will be needed to understand genome-wide variation of the Trypillians and how nuclear diversity changed during the rise and fall of the Cucuteni–Tripolye culture.” ref

Mitochondrial DNA analysis of Eneolithic Trypillians from Ukraine reveals neolithic farming genetic roots

Abstract

“The agricultural revolution in Eastern Europe began in the Eneolithic with the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture complex. In Ukraine, the Trypillian culture (TC) existed for over two millennia (ca. 5,400–2,700 BCE) and left a wealth of artifacts. Yet, their burial rituals remain a mystery and to date, almost nothing is known about the genetic composition of the TC population. One of the very few TC sites where human remains can be found is a cave called Verteba in western Ukraine. This report presents four partial and four complete mitochondrial genomes from nine TC individuals uncovered in the cave. The results of this analysis, combined with the data from previous reports, indicate that the Trypillian population at Verteba carried, for the most part, a typical Neolithic farmer package of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages traced to Anatolian farmers and Neolithic farming groups of central Europe. At the same time, the find of two specimens belonging to haplogroup U8b1 at Verteba can be viewed as a connection of TC with the Upper Paleolithic European populations. At the level of mtDNA haplogroup frequencies, the TC population from Verteba demonstrates a close genetic relationship with population groups of the Funnel Beaker/ Trichterbecker cultural complex from central and northern Europe (ca. 3,950–2,500 BCE).” ref

Introduction

“The Cucuteni-Trypillia culture complex dominated the cultural landscape of the Carpathian foothills in eastern Romania, Moldova, and the territory of modern-day Ukraine west of the Dnieper River during the Eneolithic (Copper Age) period in eastern Europe, ca. 5,400–2,700 BCE. It is known as the Cucuteni culture in its western ranges, while in its eastern part it is known as the Trypillian culture (TC) after the village of Trypillia in what is now central Ukraine where it was first identified by Vikentij Khvoika in the late 19th century.” ref

“Spanning more than 2,000 years, TC influenced the course of human population and cultural history in eastern Europe. Some of the best-known TC accomplishments are its proto-urban mega-sites dated to 4,100–3,600 BCE. These are architectural phenomena of communal living with each site stretching over 150 hectares with a carefully planned layout and hundreds of buildings that could house more than 10,000 people. The fact that Trypillian groups carried out active trade and interactions with their neighbors is well documented in the archeological record. Trypillian neighbors to the north and northwest were the Lengyel and Funnel Beaker (FBC, also Trichterbecker or TRB) culture groups. In the south, TC interacted with the North Pontic Region (NPR) steppe populations with which TC formed a steppe-agrarian conglomerate called Usatovo ca. 3,300 BCE, which left a lasting impression on the region and beyond. Apart from the impressive burial mounds (kurgans) the Usatovo people left behind, Usatovo also likely mediated the spread of Indo-European languages across Europe, in particular helping to forge a link between the steppe and TRB groups from southeast Poland thus facilitating the establishment of Pre-Germanic dialects.” ref

“The material culture of TC, including exquisitely painted pottery, an extensive array of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic clay figurines, as well as a variety of implements for land cultivating and grain processing provides strong evidence for the agrarian basis of the TC economy. While the origin of the economic subsistence and cultural attributes of Trypillia have been traced to European Neolithic farmers, the extent of biological relatedness of the people of TC to the Neolithic European farming groups remains unclear. The major impediment in the study of the genetic origins of the carriers of TC is that while leaving behind great volumes of material culture evidence, very little trace of TC inhabitants themselves remains. In fact, human burials are virtually unknown until the final part of TC chronology. The only TC site discovered to date that contains a continuous record of human osteological deposits is a gypsum cave called Verteba located in the Podillya region of western Ukraine.” ref

“Verteba Cave (Lat: 48.47/Long: 25.53) is situated in the southwestern boreal forest-steppe zone of the East European Plain. Verteba contains the earliest human remains belonging to TC. The reconstructed site chronology suggests several phases of human remains deposition, covering a substantial span of Trypillian cultural existence, ca. 3,950–2,700 BCE. Human remains dated to the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1,015–420 BCE) were also uncovered in the cave. Thus, Verteba provides a unique record of human ritual activity spanning over 1,000 years for TC and continuing for at least another 1,500 years. The availability of human remains provides an opportunity to study the population dynamics in the area through genetic and anthropological analyses, particularly with respect to the understanding of the biological origins of TC.” ref

“An earlier archeogenetic study conducted on ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has revealed lineages characterizing European Neolithic farmers in TC remains from Verteba. No lineages identifiable as belonging to autochthonous hunter-gatherer groups were found at Verteba until the Bronze Age. Anthropological studies of TC remains concurred with mtDNA data and characterized the TC population as belonging predominantly to the gracile Mediterranean type prevalent in the Neolithic farming communities of Europe and Anatolia. At the same time, the more robust craniological type characteristic of European populations of late Pleistocene as well as steppe populations of the NPR was also identified among the TC remains. These findings established the overall conclusion about the relatedness of TC to the descendants of the Anatolian farmers and the culture itself became considered an expansion of European Neolithic farming communities eastward.” ref

“The presence of a robust craniological type was considered to be evidence of an admixture with local Mesolithic populations as well as populations from the North Pontic steppe, but the nature and extent of this admixture remained unclear. The small sample size and a low-resolution coverage of the early ancient DNA (aDNA) study did not allow a comparable quantification of Trypillian mtDNA lineages against other prehistoric groups. In this report, seven new specimens from Verteba are presented and two previously reported samples are re-evaluated to expand our knowledge of maternal genetic determinants of TC thus making it possible to put mtDNA TC heritage in the continent-wide context of mtDNA haplogroup frequencies of prehistoric populations of Eurasia.” ref

Origin of the specimens

“The specimens reported in this study were recovered during excavations at Verteba Cave undertaken at the direction of the Borschiv Museum of Regional History and Ethnography in Borschiv, Ukraine (Mykhailo Sokhatsky, Museum and excavations Director). See for a detailed description of the site excavations. The excavation finds, including human osteological material, have been deposited in a permanent repository at the Borschiv Museum of Regional History and Ethnography in Borschiv, Ukraine, and are publically accessible. Samples for DNA (teeth and cranial fragments) were taken from specimens V1.1.1, V1.2, V3.13.1, V3.14.1, V3.15.1, V3.16.1, and V3.17.1. In addition, two previously reported specimens, A22 and M5, were re-typed in the current study. A22 consistently produced no aDNA data in previous attempts and M5 was the better-performing specimen for aDNA in previous analyses. Based on radiocarbon dates of human remains and associated pottery sherds, specimen A22 dates to 4,000–3,400 BCE]. The M5 specimen was dated to 3,600–2,900 BCE. The chronological age for the rest of the specimens used in the current study was placed within the range of 3,700–3,500 BCE based on radiocarbon dating of specimen V1.2). Site #7 where specimens V1.1.1-V3.17.1 have been discovered has been extensively dated using potsherds as well as human and animal remains to the range of 3,700–2,700 BCE, with the peak activity at the site around 3,500 BCE.” ref

Results

“At GVSU, all eight Verteba specimens subjected to mtDNA analysis produced ancient mtDNA sequence data. Specimen V1.2 failed to amplify at HMS due to inhibition. Specimen A22 was initially typed to haplogroup H5b and produced a 17-fold mtDNA coverage at HMS, but its mtDNA contamination estimate using the contamMix software suggests only 90% of sequences matching to the consensus, which is a substantial contamination rate. Specimen V1.1.1 produced 2-fold coverage at HMS with no haplogroup determination. At GVSU, specimens V3.17.1, V1.2 and A22 produced no nucleotide deviation from rCRS in the HVR-1 and the examined coding region segments. Thus, these three specimens were designated as belonging to haplogroup H. All three exhibited reduced amplification efficiency. At the same time, all three displayed deamination patterns consistent with post-mortem damage. However, based on the amplification results from A22 at HMS, and further considering that A22 failed to amplify in previous attempts at GVSU, the haplotyping results for A22 may not represent endogenous aDNA. Therefore, specimen A22 was excluded from further analysis.” ref

“The HMS analysis revealed a diagnostic polymorphism in V3.17.1 for haplogroup H5a. Specimen M5, previously identified to belong to haplogroup H, GenBank accession #JN098425) produced polymorphisms in both the GVSU and HMS labs that are characteristic to the H1b haplogroup. Specimen V3.13.1 was typed to haplogroup HV at HMS. Specimen V3.14.1 was typed to haplogroup T2b by both labs. Specimen V3.16.1 carried coding region and HVS-1 polymorphisms diagnostic for haplogroup HV0. The remaining two specimens, V1.1.1, and V3.15.1 have been identified as members of the U clade at GVSU. Specimen V1.1.1 failed to produce sufficient amplification at HMS (S1 Table). Specimen V3.15.1 was typed to haplogroup U8b1. Specimen V1.1.1 produced polymorphic sites consistent with its placement in haplogroup U8b1a2, due to the presence of transitions at nucleotide positions 16172 and 16259, although the diagnostic for U8b1 transitions at nucleotide positions 16189 and 16234 were not identified in V1.1.1.” ref

“When the Trypillian mitochondrial haplogroup frequencies from Verteba from the current study were combined with the data, along with 36 other prehistoric Eurasian populations from the Upper Paleolithic to the Bronze Age, were visualized in the space of principal components, component 1 explained 37.75% of the variance and component 2 accounted for 18.2% of the variance. On the PCA graph, the Trypillian population was placed in a cluster represented by European and West Asian/Anatolian Neo-Eneolithic farming populations, including Asia Minor Neolithic (AMN), Anatolian Neolithic (ANA), Neolithic from the south Paris Basin (GLN), Kriș-Starčevo from Croatia and Hungary (STA), Early Neolithic and Eneolithic Spain (ENS, EES), Linear Pottery from central Europe and Hungary (LBK, LBKT), Rossen and Schöningen from Germany (RC, SCG), as well as Funnel Beakers/TRB from Scandinavia (FBC) and Germany (Baalberge (BAC) and Salzmünde (SMC)). The Salzmünde group of German Funnel Beakers (3,400–3,025 cal BCE appeared to be the most proximate population to TC on the PCA graph.” ref

Discussion

“The mtDNA haplogroup diversity found in the TC remains at Verteba is, overall, typical of a group of European Neolithic farmers tracing their maternal genetic roots from Anatolia with little or no admixture with indigenous hunter-gatherers. In our study, we have not identified mtDNA lineages in TC that typically characterize European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers or their Paleolithic predecessors, with a potential exception of the two U8-carrying specimens. These findings are consistent with the notion that maternal genetic contribution from Mesolithic Europeans was minimal in the TC. Thus, any robust features of craniology, if they are genetic in origin, are more likely to be explained by paternal contribution, which should be visible at the whole genome level of analysis.” ref

“The mtDNA frequency analysis presented in this report revealed close genetic association, at the mtDNA level, between TC and European Neo-Eneolithic farming groups, particularly those from central and northern Europe, including representatives of the Funnel Beaker/TRB complex such as Funnel Beakers from Scandinavia (FBC) as well as the Baalberge (BAC) and Salzmünde (SMC) Funnel Beaker groups from central Germany. Like TC, the FBC group lacked representatives of hunter-gatherer lineages of haplogroup U such as U5, while the U5 component in the BAC and SMC populations comprised less than 5% of the mtDNA haplogroup variety.” ref 

“All three abovementioned European Funnel Beaker groups featured representatives of haplogroup H at or over 25% frequency, as well as having representatives of haplogroups J and T2b. The BAC and SMC populations also contained individuals belonging to haplogroup HV. The similarity in mtDNA lineage composition between TC and the Funnel Beaker/TRB culture complex may be a result of inter-group contacts due to the proximity of the TRB populations to the TC territory. An overlap of TC and TRB settlements has been documented to the northwest of the Verteba site, in the upper parts of the Dniester River basin and adjacent areas, and evidence of contacts between the two cultures exists in the archeological record. Certain artifacts found in Verteba (clay buttons, perforated bone plates, a massive megalith inside the cave across from the cave entrance, some of these discussed can be viewed as the influence of the Beaker cultural horizon on the Verteba cultural complex.” ref

“The geographic proximity might have promoted cultural and biological contacts between TRB and Trypillian groups throughout the entire extent of the TC distribution along the Carpathian arc and reaching the western part of the NPR, thus providing the Beakers with an access to the North Pontic steppe. A recent study revealed close genetic proximity of the Eneolithic NPR as well as western NPR Yamna groups of the Early Bronze Age to the Funnel Beaker Bernburg population (3,100–2,650 BCE) from Germany. There is also evidence that the contacts involving Beakers and the Pontic steppe and forest-steppe populations potentially extended further eastward into the Ponto-Caspian region during the Early Bronze Age (EBA). An mtDNA analysis of the Novosvobodnaya and Maikop cultures (3,700–3,000 BCE) from the northern foothills of the Caucasus mountain range produced mtDNA lineages of T2b and U8b1a2, although displaying different polymorphism patterns compared to the T2b and U8b1a2 lineages reported for TC (this report) and ancient farming groups from central Europe. At the same time, Novosvobodnanya culture artifacts suggest a Funnel Beaker influence]. Additional mtDNA sampling from Novosvobodnaya, Maikop, Trypillia, and the North Pontic steppe should clarify the relationship between the EBA cultures from the northern Caucasus and Trypillia and their genetic connection with the Beaker cultural horizon, as well as the extent of the Beaker influence on the genetic landscape of prehistoric Ponto-Caspian region.” ref

“Among the uncovered mtDNA lineages in the TC population at Verteba, haplogroup T2b is considered to be one of the genetic markers of the Anatolian demic expansion into Europe in the early Neolithic. At the same time, ancestors of T2b may have been present in Europe since the late Pleistocene, although evidence from the studies of modern and ancient mtDNA genomes suggests that its dispersion within Europe has likely taken place in the early Neolithic period. The T2b lineage is also frequent in modern populations of the Carpathian Basin. In the study of mDNA lineages of the Carpathian highlanders one of the individuals coming from Bilche Zolote, three kilometers away from Verteba, carried an identical polymorphism pattern at HVS-1 to V3.14.1. Another individual from Bilche Zolote in the same study carried the H5a mtDNA lineage, thus testifying to the persistence of mitochondrial lineages derived from the European Neolithic farmers in local populations of the Verteba Cave area. At the same time, the lineage match of three of the specimens in this study (HV0 (16298), H1b, and H5a) to three of the researchers is most likely coincidental, at least in the latter two cases. The researcher carrying the H1b lineage did not have contact with the M5 specimen at any point in the study and the H5a lineage was determined at HMS while failing to produce an H5a-diagnostic polymorphism at GVSU.” ref

“The presence of the members of a rare in Europe U8b1 mitochondrial lineage can be viewed as further support for the link between the Eneolithic population of Verteba and Anatolian farmers. U8b1 is one of the two subclades of haplogroup U8. The other U8 subclade is haplogroup K, the dominant mitochondrial lineage in early Neolithic farmers from the Levant, Anatolia, and Europe. The U8b1b lineage identified in specimen V3.15.1 shares the HVS-1 polymorphism pattern with the Anatolian Neolithic Barcın [I0745/M11-363] specimen. In Neolithic Europe, members of the U8b1 subclade have been identified in a proto-Lengyel individual from Hungary and a representative of the Schöningen group from Germany. At the same time, haplogroup U8 has been reported in the Upper Paleolithic specimens from Europe. Based on mtDNA data alone and further considering the incompleteness of the mtDNA sequence data for the U8-bearing TC specimens in this report, we cannot distinguish between the Anatolian and Paleolithic European origin of U8 lineages in TC at the present time.” ref

“Considering the data, representatives of the H clade comprise 28.6% (4 out of 14 specimens) of the mitochondrial lineage composition at Verteba, which is at comparable levels with other Neo-Eneolithic European farming groups, but particularly close to the Funnel Beaker populations of Europe. The SMC Funnel Beaker group featured 30% of its lineages being members of the H clade, over half of those belonging to haplogroup H5, while the proportion of H in the BAC group was at 25%. Despite the small sample size (n = 9) of available mtDNA lineages of the Scandinavian FBC group, five out of nine (55.5%) of the group’s mitochondrial lineages were represented by members of haplogroup H. FBC and BAC also featured members of the H1 haplogroup.” ref

“Analyses of modern mtDNA genomes tied the origin of the main divisions of the H clade (H1, H3) to the Franco-Cantabrian region in the pre-glacial period, and their subsequent extension across Europe during the Holocene from the Iberian glacial refugium, although modifications of this scenario involving east European glacial refugia have also been proposed. Some of the earliest finds of the members of the H clade in Europe, including representatives of H1 and H3, have been made in the early Neolithic sites in northeastern Spain and southern France]. Archeogenetic evidence points towards the expansion of the major sub-branches of haplogroup H such as the H1 mtDNA lineage from western Europe during the second half of the Neolithic, thus not being directly associated with the initial spread of farming in Europe, but, instead, being connected to the spread of the Beaker groups across the subcontinent.” ref

“The frequency of haplogroup H and the presence of H1 in mtDNA lineages found in TC population at Verteba further strengthen the genetic connection between TC and populations of the Beaker cultural complex. Taken together, the maternal genetic lineages presented in this study strongly argue that the Trypillian population from Verteba derives most of its maternal genetic ancestry from the population groups that brought farming to Europe in the Neolithic. Whole-genome data should further clarify the position of Trypillia on the genetic map of Eurasian prehistory.” ref

Religion and ritual of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture

“The study of religion and ritual of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture has provided important insights into the early history of Europe. The Cucuteni-Trypillia culture, which existed in the present-day southeastern European nations of Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine during the Neolithic Age and Copper Age, from approximately 5500 to 2750 BCE, left behind thousands of settlement ruins containing a wealth of archaeological artifacts attesting to their cultural and technological characteristics. Refer to the main article for a general description of this culture; this article deals with its religious and ritualistic aspects.” ref

“Some Cucuteni-Trypillia communities have been found that contain a special building located in the center of the settlement, which archaeologists have identified as sacred sanctuaries. Artifacts have been found inside these sanctuaries, some of them having been intentionally buried in the ground within the structure, that are clearly of a religious nature, and have provided insights into some of the beliefs, and perhaps some of the rituals and structure, of the members of this society. Additionally, artifacts of an apparent religious nature have also been found within many domestic Cucuteni-Trypillia homes.” ref

“Many of these artifacts are clay figurines or statues. Archaeologists have identified many of these as fetishes or totems, which are believed to be imbued with powers that can help and protect the people who look after them. These Cucuteni-Trypillia figurines have become known popularly as Goddesses, however, this is actually a misnomer from a scientific point of view. There have been so many of these so-called clay Goddesses discovered in Cucuteni-Trypillia sites that many museums in eastern Europe have a sizeable collection of them, and as a result, they have come to represent one of the more readily-identifiable visual markers of this culture to many people.” ref

“As mentioned above, beginning in the Precucuteni III period (circa 4800-4600 BCE), special communal sanctuary buildings began to appear in Cucuteni-Trypillia settlements. They continued to exist during the Cucuteni A and Cucuteni A/B (corresponding to Trypillia B) periods (circa 4600-3800 BCE), but then for some reason these sanctuaries began to disappear, until in the Cucuteni B (Trypillia C) period (circa 3800-3500 BCE) only a few examples have been discovered from archaeological exploration. These sanctuaries were constructed in a monumental style architecture, and included stelae, statues, shrines, and numerous other ceremonial and religious artifacts, sometimes packed in straw inside pottery.” ref

“Some of these artifacts originally seemed to represent themes that are Chthonic (of the Underworld), and Celestial/Heavenly, or of the sky. During an excavation in 1973 at the Cucuteni-Trypillia site at Ghelăiești, near the city of Neamț, Romania, archaeologist Ștefan Cucoș discovered a house in the center of the settlement that was the community sanctuary. The following account written by Croatian archeologist Marina Hoti describes the findings within this sanctuary: In the southeast corner of the house, a vase surrounded by six vases was found under the floor. The central vase was turned upside down, covering another vessel with a lid, in which four anthropomorphic figurines were found, arranged in a cross and looking to the four sides of the world. Two figurines were decorated with lines and had completely black heads and legs; the other two were not colored, but they had traces of ocher red.” ref

“Refer to the two accompanying images for a visual depiction of the four figurines within the upturned pot buried in the sanctuary at the Ghelăiești site. Subsequent analysis of this discovery has led to a number of interpretations by various scholars over the years. Ștefan Cucoș, who discovered the artifact, included other symbols discovered at Ghelăiești, including snake-like depictions, the cross-shape of altars, and swastika designs, concluded that it was associated with a ritual of fertility dedicated to the Goddess, associating the black-painted figurines with chthonic themes, and the red ocher-painted figurines with celestial or heavenly themes. Hungarian archaeologist János Makkay also supported a fertility ritual interpretation. Marija Gimbutas, Lithuanian archaeologist and author of “The Civilization of the Goddess”, interpreted this discovery as a dualistic interpretation of summer and winter, representing the cycle of life and death in nature.” ref

“However, later analysis of this discovery incorporated the entire setting in which these painted figurines were found: specifically, that they were buried under an upturned ceramic vessel. Comparing this find with other similar discoveries from contemporary cultures in Isaiia and Poduri, scholars developed a theory that the tableau taken in its setting, being buried beneath the floor of the sanctuary, and with the four figurines facing outward to the four cardinal directions, represented a means to protect the sanctuary and settlement from evil. The black heads of the figurines were associated with death, and the red ocher was painted on the figurines on the precise body parts that the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture painted on the body parts of their dead before burial. These figurines, therefore, most likely represented departed souls, or beings from the underworld (land of the dead). By enclosing them in an overturned vessel, and burying this entire arrangement under the floor of the sanctuary, they were protecting the settlement from the evil influences these figurines represented by creating a magical sigil of protection.” ref

Mother Goddess figurines

“As evidence from archaeology, thousands of artifacts from Neolithic Europe have been discovered, mostly in the form of female figurines. As a result, a goddess theory has occurred. The leading historian was Marija Gimbutas, still, this interpretation is a subject of great controversy in archaeology due to her many inferences about the symbols on artifacts. Some researchers consider that the symbols used for representing the feminity are the rhombus for fertility and the triangle as a symbol for fecundity. The cross, symbolizing nature’s power of fertility and renewal, was sometimes used to represent masculinity, as well as the phases of the moon.” ref

“Circle of Goddesses” figurines

“This ritual assemblies lay in a vase that had a very anomalous shape to the Precucuteni style and were full of soil and straw. The cultic objects were put on display and worshiped during magic-religious ceremonies. The repeated use of them is proven by the presence of some chipping from wear. When not in motion, they were probably stored in this special container. The presence of soil under some statuettes kept in the vase, and the evidence of cariossids on the surface of two figurines and four stools, led some researchers to hypothesize that the pieces had been deposited in soil and straw for magical purposes: they had been left to bud. all the statues were distinct. Some of them bear geometrical decorations. There were observed mature statuettes (that have already given birth), young statuettes (that have not yet given birth), and a babies. Only the mature figurines may sit by right on clay stools.” ref

Bird goddess figurines

“According to some researchers as Gimbutas, Lazarocici, for the Precucuteni communities, mythic birds possibly embodied a solar principle and the revival of the life, serving as a symbol of prosperity and protection.” ref

Funerary rites

“One of the unanswered questions regarding the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture is the small number of artifacts associated with funerary rites. Although very large settlements have been explored by archaeologists, the evidence for mortuary activity is almost invisible. Making a distinction between the eastern Tripolye and the western Cucuteni regions of the Cucuteni-Trypillia geographical area, American archaeologist Douglass W. Bailey writes: There are no Cucuteni cemeteries and the Tripolye ones that have been discovered are very late. The discovery of skulls is more frequent than other parts of the body, however, because there has not yet been a comprehensive statistical survey done of all of the skeletal remains discovered at Cucuteni-Trypillia sites, precise post-excavation analysis of these discoveries cannot be accurately determined at this time.” ref

“Some historians have contrasted the funerary practices of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture with the neighboring Linear Pottery culture, which existed from 5500-4500 BCE in the region of present-day Hungary and extending westward into central Europe, making it coincide with the Precucuteni to Cucuteni A Phases. Archaeological evidence from the Linear Pottery sites have shown that they practiced cremation, as well as inhumation (or burial). However, there appears to have been a distinction made in the Linear-Pottery culture on where the bodies were interred, based on gender and social dominance. Women and children were found to be buried beneath the floor of the house, while men were missing, indicating some other practice was associated with how they dealt with the dead bodies of males. One of the conclusions drawn from this evidence was espoused by Marija Gimbutas, author of The Civilization of the Goddess: The world of Old Europe, in which she theorizes that women and children were associated with hearth and home, and so they would be buried beneath it as an act of connecting their bodies to the home.” ref

“Collectively taking these characteristics of the neighboring Linear Pottery culture into consideration, scholars have theorized that additional Cucuteni-Tryilian sites may be found, including locations that may be detached from the main settlements, where there may be evidence of the practice of cremation. Archaeologists have discussed broadening the search areas around known Cucuteni-Trypillia settlements to cover a much wider area, and to employ modern techniques to help try to find evidence of outlying sites where evidence of funerary activities could be found.” ref

Cucuteni—Trypillia (CT) Archaeology Understanding

“It seems like a counterfactual proposition that any collection of papers addressing global prehistoric and historic urbanism would be well-advised to heed the forest steppe zone North of the Black Sea in the fifth and fourth millennia BC. For it is in these times in the territory of modern Ukraine and Moldova that you would find examples of the earliest urbanism in the world. In this article, we outline the cultural and social context of what are known as “Trypillia megasites” and discuss the contrasting explanations for their origins.” ref

“The Lithuanian prehistorian Marija Gimbutas (1974) coined a phrase for this part of Europe known variously as “Central and Eastern Europe,” “South-East Europe,”and the “Balkans.” Her preferred term was “Old Europe”—that part of Europe with the oldest farming communities and with the closest links to even earlier agro-pastoral groups in the Near East and Anatolia. Gimbutas’ most positive connotation of Old Europe was of a zone connected culturally by shared rich material culture, common ritual beliefs, and a network of matriarchal, matrifocal societies. Although “Old Europe” was ideologically created in opposition to the patriarchal Bronze Age, the term is a vivid shorthand for an assemblage of societies which were indeed materially very different from those in Austria, Poland, and points North and West. One of the leading constituents of “Old Europe” was the Cucuteni—Trypillia1 group (or CT), recognised as being the “last great Chalcolithic society of Europe.” ref

“One of the most striking characteristics of the CT group was its immense size and chronological depth. The sites of this group covered 225,000–250,000 km2, stretching from the Eastern Carpathians in the West to the Dnieper valley in the East, avoiding the North Pontic steppe zone and the East European temperate forest zone to remain within the forest-steppe parkland. Although AMS dating remains patchy, the best estimates for its duration is from 5000 to 2800 BCE—how much longer than two millennia remains unclear. No other group in Old Europe reveals such a long tradition, based upon three aspects of material culture—pottery, figurines, and houses. The immense size and the material tradition lasting 65–70 human generations are related insofar as the adoption and millennial continuation of the same material forms in such basic elements of prehistoric lifeways indicates a strong social network that would have attracted the support of communities on the margins, providing a mechanism for continuous spatial growth. We propose that it was the depth and strength of this network that provided the basis for the growth of highly nucleated communities in part of the CT network.” ref

“An important result of the spread of CT pottery over such a vast area was the introduction of mixed farming into large parts of the forest-steppe previously settled by hunter-gatherers who made pottery but consumed little domesticated foodstuf. Agro-pastoral communities had been established as far East as the Dniester valley by the 6th millennium BCE or between 8,020-7,020 years ago and, although LBK pottery has recently been found on sites near Odessa, further discoveries of Trypillia pottery East of the Dniester are assumed to be evidence for the spread of the farming way of life, although whether by movement of people or by assimilation of local hunter-gatherer groups remains unclear. The notion of Trypillia communities as “first farmers” is rarely considered in these debates.” ref

“Two related characteristics were shared by both of the CT groups (Cucuteni in Romania and Moldova; Trypillia in Ukraine): the dominance of the domestic, or settlement, domain over the mortuary domain, and the dominance of ceramic over all other forms (metal, stone) of finely made goods. The vast proportion of CT sites are settlements, with no cemeteries known until the very latest phase of the Trypillia group (Phase CII), occasional examples of cave deposition (e.g., the Verteba Cave) and very few instances of intra-mural burial.” ref 

“The absence of funerary contexts in which to deposit prestige metal or polished stone items may be one reason for the rarity of metal objects and finely crafted stonework in the CT group. Another reason is what Taylor has termed “lateral cycling”—the melting and re-shaping of copper into “new” objects. Taylor also argues that ornament hoards constituted a strategy for the defence of valuable copper, as in Karbuna and Horodnitsa hoard II. Early CT metalwork was small-scale, regionally specific as to type and rare, often showing signs of repairs. Production of larger-scale copper items occurred only from the Middle Phase (BI/II) onwards. By contrast, CT groups produced large quantities of fine pottery which manifested its own special intrinsic value. Painted pottery comprised up to 50% of some Cucuteni Phase A assemblages (e.g., Drăguşeni).” ref

“The third characteristic of the CT group was, in fact, limited to the Trypillia group and concentrated in the Southern Bug—Dnieper interfluve—the growth of the so-called megasites. Megasites were exceptionally large sites of more than 100 ha, with specific planning features such as concentric circuits of houses and a large, open inner space. From the late 5th millennium BCE onwards, a divergence trajectory in settlement size and nucleation separated Cucuteni from Trypillia.” ref 

“In the Cucuteni A phase, settlement numbers increased as size fell to a mean of 1 ha, with a resultant dispersion of settlement across the landscape. A good example consists of the Cucuteni settlements in Bacău County, North-East Romania, in which small sites spread from the main valleys into third- and even fourth-order stream catchments. The opposite development occurred in the Trypillia A phase, with 1-ha sites still found but occasional nucleated sites such as Mogylna III reaching 10 ha in size. Increased nucleation is seen against a background of the continuing dominance of small sites in the Phase A-BI transition (Stepanivka: 15 ha), Phase BI (Chyzhivka: 20 ha) and the BI-BII transition, with several sites larger than 100-ha. (e.g., Vesely Kut, Kharkivka) and even sites of up to 200 ha claimed (e.g., the eponymous site of Trypillia). The strong trend toward settlement dispersion in the Cucuteni area is a very good reason for the absence of mega-sites in Moldavia—but why did the opposite occur in the Trypillia zone?” ref

“The “second methodological revolution” led to a new generation of much more accurate geophysical plans which revealed a wide range of new plan features and combinations of features at megasites such as Nebelivka, Majdanetske, Taljanki, and Dobrovody. The Nebelivka project focussed on the integration of a wide range of data lines to provide a challenge to the traditional account of megasites as permanent settlements with thousands of people (the “maximalist” view) The combination of nine different lines of evidence produced a “tipping point” in megasite interpretations, which led to three alternative models of smaller-scale, sometimes seasonal settlement models—the Distributed Governance Model, the Assembly Model and the Pilgrimage Model. While each of the three models is informed by contrasting decisions about seasonality and building strategies, they share many communalities in the reasons for megasite origins.” ref

Traditional “Maximalist” Accounts of the Origins of Megasites

“The principal source of complexity in the Trypillia group is the unique incorporation of elements of two of Gordon Childe’s “Revolutions” in the same group. While the spread of CT documents the spread of the Neolithic Revolution, the development of Trypillia megasites illuminates aspects of the Urban Revolution. Unlike most other regions in the world, these developments are separated by only one millennium. It will be important to distinguish the effects of the two Revolutions in any discussion of megasite origins.” ref

“In a paper entitled “Two studies in defence of migration concept,” Dergachev documents the spread of the use of CT pottery—read as people—across the forest steppe zone, showing in a series of maps the 5-fold sequence of core settlement zones and expansions into hunter-gatherer lands. Waterbolk notion of the huge reservoir of Holocene soil fertility available for the LBK first farmers in Central Europe applies just as effectively to the chernozems of the Ukraine—some of the richest soils in Europe and surely offering huge land-use potential to Trypillian first farmers. However, the intriguing fact is that Dergachev never once mentions the impact of these migrations on the formation of megasites. Rather, population movement was a response to the widespread availability of free land, which continued into the Late Trypillia phase in significant areas, as well as to military threats (see below).” ref

“More recently, Diachenko has invoked population pressure in the form of a population boom in the BI phase to account for the formation of early megasites. He relies on exactly the same site data as Dergachev—population migration into the Southern Bug—Dnieper Interfluve from the Dniester valley—but with the introduction of site population estimates. Diachenko and Menotti) have used the gravity model to trace “genetic ties” between pairs of sites in the Bug—Dnieper Interfluve through time, based upon Ryzhov’s typo-chronological method.” ref 

“However, Diachenko & Menotti fail to explain why such migrations led to the creation of megasites rather than just village clusters in areas of high arable potential. One well-known advantage of settlement nucleation is the protection it affords residents in crises of internal or external aggression and warfare. Could the positive feedback cycle of increased settlement nucleation—greater threat from larger armed groups—even more nucleated defence have led to the trajectory of increased Trypillia site size discussed above?” ref

“Echoing Chernysh and Gimbutas, as well as Kruts argues that the principal threat to Trypillia communities came from the Sredni Stog groups in the steppe zone to the South and East, which is why the greatest concentration of megasites was located near the forest-steppe—steppe border on the Southern side of the distribution. However, to the extent that even 10–20-ha Trypillia sites would have been large enough to deter armed Sredni Stog raiders, there was no military reasons for much larger agglomerations—and certainly not for sites of over 100 ha.” ref

“Dergachev supports the view of a steppe invasion with his finding of a higher ratio of fortified to non-fortified sites, and higher numbers of arrowheads per site, in Phase BI than in Phase BII. He suggests that Phase BI was a “society…literally under siege”, in a “state of war owing to outside threat” from the steppe), contrasting Phase BII as a period of relative peace, with the removal of siege and military threat). While this view can be used to support the appearance of early (BI) megasites, it offers no support for the military explanation for the largest megasites of Phases BII and CI.” ref

“By contrast, Videiko proposed an internal social conflict for the origins of megasites, describing Trypillia chiefdoms as “in a state of perpetual internecine war” (cf. Dergachev’s view but for a later Phase) because of the expansive nature of Trypillia agriculture, with each site exhausting their local soil potential every 40–70 years and needing to move on to capture more arable land. Even if the maximalist assumption of massive megasite populations was not met, Videiko ignores the large unsettled areas in the Southern Bug—Dnieper Interfluve, even in Phase BII. There is also little evidence for warfare, with two exceptions. At Drutsi I, in Moldova, lithic distributions showed an archery attack on a small site. More compelling evidence derives from the Verteba Cave, where 11 out of 25 buried crania have clear indications of trauma. However, none of these crania has been directly dated and the site is far from any megasite, thus jeopardizing any potential link between the two phenomena.” ref

“It is clear that migrations can provide a method for moving people across the landscape but not a reason for any particular settlement form—say, megasites rather than village clusters. This leaves internally-driven or externally-imposed warfare as the principal traditional explanation for the rise of megasites—not the outcome predicted by Gimbutas peaceful matriarchal CT society!” ref

“Many of the problems with these traditional explanations are tied to basic maximalist assumptions about the megasites themselves. Once the population estimates of tens of thousands of people on a megasite are accepted, large-scale processes are required to conjure up the masses. This usually involves grade-inflation: bigger-than-usual migrations, sustained baby booms or mega-battles3. The fundamental underpinning of these explanations—especially the modelling—is Videiko claim for the coeval dwelling of as many as 78.4% of houses on a megasite. Once this claim is challenged, new possibilities open up for the debate on megasite origins. In the first part, we discuss alternative readings of the settlement and subsistence evidence, before turning to tradition and innovation in Trypillia material culture.” ref

Alternative Explanations I—Settlement and Subsistence

“There are two basic issues with discussing Trypillia settlement—a paucity of intensive, systematic fieldwalking programmes and the lack of a critical appraisal of existing settlement data. Nebbia’s filtering of the settlements listed in the “Encyclopaedia of Trypillia Civilization” reduced the number of sites with clear location, size, and Phase information from over 2,500 to just under 500. Equally, the fieldwalking programme for the Nebelivka Project led to the discovery of two new Trypillia sites in a surveyed area of 15 km2. Since the Bug—Dnieper Interfluve—an area of c. 50,000 km2–has received hardly any detailed fieldwalking coverage, the trends discussed here can be little more than preliminary suggestions.” ref

“The spatial distribution of sites in the Dniester-Dnieper interfluve suggests different levels of clustering/nucleation from the Forest Neolithic phase onwards, and therefore a consideration of second-order effects of the site distribution will help in clarifying social relations between sites. A Ripley’s K-function was used in order to explore the clustering at different scales across the four phases. In Figure 3, plots representing K-functions are shown for the four point patterns (Forest Neolithic, Phase A, Phase BI, Phase BII). These plots display the expected values of complete spatial randomness (CSR) (Ktheo(r)) and the observed values (Kobs(r)) where r represents distances between points.” ref

“If the K (r) is higher than the top of the Monte Carlo envelope, it means that, at that distance, the points are clustering and the hypothesis of spatial randomness can be rejected. The progressive diachronic increase in the scale at which sites are clustering, even at short distances (5–10 km) in Phase BII. For the earlier phase of hunter-gatherer settlement, the hypothesis of complete spatial randomness cannot be rejected as the observed values remain within the simulated envelope. In the Trypillia period, there is a significant increase in spatial interaction at short distances for sites in the Southern Bug—Dnieper interfluve, meaning an underlying process of site clustering. The identification of these clusters was facilitated by a Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) for the four point patterns. Although the K-function suggested that a complete spatial randomness could not be rejected for the Forest Neolithic groups, the plot shows how around 20 km the K (r) values are higher than the simulated envelope, and therefore a minimal spatial interaction is occurring. For the Trypillia phases, it is clear that increasing numbers of cluster were co-emerging with the mega-sites themselves. Moreover, the KDE plot shows how the clusters themselves show an overall aggregation within the wider area, thus suggesting an even higher degree of interaction at a larger scale between different site clusters.” ref

“The basis for a discussion of Trypillia settlement is the trajectory toward nucleation at selected sites from Phase A onwards in the Southern Bug—G. Tikych river system. It is important to note that Phase A site clusters were located along the Southern Bug in areas of traditional hunter-gatherer site groupings (viz., Forest Neolithic sites: Gaskevych), indicating long-term continuity in favourable settlement locations. Phase A settlements were strung along the Southern Bug like beads in groups of up to five sites, including the largest sites—Mogylna III and Stepanivka—both already large sites and in different site clusters. One site in the G. Tikych valley was settled in Phase A. As with the hunter-gatherer groups, the network of smaller streams was generally avoided.” ref

“Settlement in Phase BI showed a combination of continuity and expansion. The same three site clusters were occupied along the Southern Bug but there was a major expansion along the network of small streams. However, all three large sites in the Phase BI and BI-II transition (Chyzhivka,Vesely Kut, and Kharkivka) were located in the same site cluster in a main tributary—the upper part of the G. Tikych valley. The discovery of traces of casting and production waste alongside earlier production methods indicates extractive metallurgy at the largest early megasite—Vesely Kut.” ref

“A major expansion along small stream networks was the defining characteristic of Phase BII, with its many new settlement clusters and growth in megasite size. Despite the continuation of settlement in one site cluster upstream on the Southern Bug, settlement changes can be seen in the abandonment of the longest-lasting site cluster on the Southern Bug and the opening up of new site clusters both along the upper parts of the G. Tikych and along many small streams. The location of the first megasites adjacent to smaller streams can be dated to this Phase.” ref

“What this long-term settlement pattern indicates is the establishment of solo settlements before the emergence of a new site cluster in the succeeding Phase—a well-known pioneer colonising strategy. An important development is the inclusion of sites much larger than the usual in two of the clusters. This dwelling strategy led to a growing number of site clusters in the Southern Bug—G. Tikych system, some of them including early (BI and BI-II transition) megasites. What can account for the emergence of site clusters?” ref

“The process of farming groups dwelling in a relatively unfamiliar terrain populated by hunter-gatherer populations in main valley site clusters would have required two contrasting settlement choices—proximity to hunter-gatherers for peaceful interaction and distance from hunter-gatherers for security. One way to achieve both goals was the creation of small site clusters near to the hunter-gatherer locations. The emergence of a single large site in such agro-pastoral clusters would have intensified interaction over several farming clusters as well as being attractive to hunter-gatherers.” ref

“Another benefit of site clusters was the buffering opportunities offered by kin-related communities in case of crop failures or poor harvests. The argument is that long-term exchange networks between nearby communities would provide security through additional food exchanged for desirable goods such as fine pottery, high-quality flint, copper, or polished stone axes. However, such buffering may not have been so important in Phase A owing to three factors: (1) the small size of settlements, which (2) put little pressure on local chernozem resources, whose (3) Holocene fertility reserves had scarcely been touched.” ref

“It was only with increases in settlement nucleation in Phase BI that the opportunities for buffering may have become significant, when the sharing and exchange of resources without the need for a structured socio-economical organisation to regulate the network would have stimulated looser inter-kin interactions, with less resultant social pressure. Shukurov et al. have modelled the agro-pastoral potential of Trypillia landscapes, reaching the conclusion that the local soil and forest resources were capable of supporting settlements up to the size of 35 ha. However, site clusters in the same areas may have begun to put pressure on even the legendary fertility of chernozems.” ref 

“Moreover, BI and BI-II settlements were growing to a size well beyond 35 ha—indeed to 100 ha and over. Apart from the solution of using only a part of the houses at such large sites at any one time, a more complex intra-cluster practice may have involved the provisioning of the largest sites from smaller settlements in exchange for ritual services and exchange items. The site clusters could thus have opened up a space for inter-site functional differentiation involving ritual leadership and the transfer of food and drink to such centres. It is suggested that this scenario may have kick-started a long-term role of assembly places in Trypillia site clusters, at least partly based upon the strong social networks connecting local and more distant settlements. However, it is still a long way from Phase BI assembly places to BII megasites such as Nebelivka and CI megasites such as Taljanki and Majdanetske. How did this trajectory take root and progress?” ref

“The size of the overall Trypillia group is such that we have to assume the development of inter-site interactions over a much greater distance than in other groups (e.g., the Csőszhalom group). A significant change would have been the foundation of an assembly place which attracted people from more than one site cluster. What was the scale of attraction of early megasites? An additional analysis of second-order effects was conducted on the spatial behaviour of values of site size within the whole Trypillia period, thus including Phase CI and CII data, for a total number of 499 sites with good-quality information.” ref 

“An incremental Global Moran’s I on site size values has been calculated for 30 iterations of five site distributions (one for each Trypillia phase), starting from an initial distance band based on the 2nd nearest neighbour count in order to test the scale of site size clustering. Using the chronological phases as time blocks, the results showed how the onset of clustering during phases BI, BII, and CI at 84 km – 93 BI sites, 112 km – 176 BII sites, and 100 km – 236 CI sites. The scale of ~ 100 km becomes meaningful when it is constant for the duration of mega-sites occupation of approximately 1,000 years. A LISA (Local Indicators of Spatial Association) test supported the hypothesis that mega-sites are outliers and provided further confirmation at 95% confidence4 that these are outliers of high values within a 100 km neighbourhood of low values. An interesting result is that megasites from the Southern Bug – Dnieper Interfluve had overlapping catchments of 100 km, which might suggest the competitive nature of megasite interaction in that area.” ref

“In fact, the 100-km scale of interaction meant that there was no reason why an assembly place of sufficient reputation could not have attracted participants from another site cluster in Phase BI. In Phase BII, the close proximity of site clusters across the Southern Bug—Dnieper interfluve reflexively created the opportunities for visits between site clusters, with all the attendant social potential for significant growth. But we are still far from the typical megasite planning elements that have defined megasites since their discovery and even further from an account of the cultural foundation of Trypillia social networks. A background narrative for settlement history is a necessary but insufficient story to provide a convincing explanation of megasite origins.” ref

Alternative Explanations II—Tradition vs. Innovation

The Possibility of a Megasite

“Before further discussion of alternative trajectories toward megasites, we should step back and consider one fundamental issue. In his influential study of Imagined Communities concerning the anomaly of modern nationalism5, Anderson reminds us that all communities larger than a single village are “imagined communities.” By implication, we suggest that integration of people beyond their normal, face-to-face groups required a vision of how those diverse communities could live together to derive benefits from the new settlement form that were considered greater than the difficulties this linkage may have brought. After all, there is a long tradition, beginning with Childe, of praising the advantages of autarky—living in independent, face-to-face communities—a strategy which has, by and large, limited the scale of settlement nucleation in prehistoric Europe. Nonetheless, the existence of the Trypillia megasites is an obvious negation of small-scale communities; their scale and size engenders an equally sizeable problem of how such communities were imagined in the first place.” ref

“For let us be under no illusions: on the Eurasian continent of the 5th−4th millennia BCE or between 7,020-5,020 years ago, the Trypillia megasites were unique in size and scale. There was nothing anywhere else on the planet to compare with the Phase BI megasite of Vesely Kut, covering an area of 150 ha—no analogies from which to derive this extraordinary place. We should never forget the unprecedented nature of Trypillia megasites, which have created immense problems of explanation and understanding but, first of all, problems of imagination. A better understanding of this issue comes from defining what social relations were in place before the imagining and the form of these relations’ materialisation—whether objects or site plans. In this section, we consider how existing elements known to Trypillia communities were juxtaposed and combined in a process known as “bricolage.” This anthropological term signifies the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things that happen to be available. Used by Levi-Strauss to refer to the process of myth-making, bricolage was extended by Derrida to refer to any form of discourse. We consider the Trypillia Big Other, inter-regional exchange networks and the development of settlement planning as three critical bricolage-led contributions to the emergence of megasites.” ref

The Trypillia Big Other

“The massive size and great temporal depth of the CT group was founded upon a strong social network connecting communities at both the local and the regional level. We have previously discussed the importance of what we term the “Trypillia Big Other” for integrating the vast number of Trypillia settlements and their residents. We think of the Big Other as a suite of beliefs which was materialised in practices involving the three key Trypillia traits—houses, pottery and figurines. The term “Big Other” was developed by Lacan and elaborated on by Žižek to convey the sense not of an ideology nor a religion but an effective symbolic fiction playing a significant role in everyday life. Kohring has discussed the Big Other in terms of its impact on the Bell Beaker assemblage, acting as “a material/symbolic mediator for a whole network of shared conceptual structuring principles.” ref 

“One of the greatest attractions of the Big Other for us is that it is “something which is sufficiently general and significant to attract the support of most members of society but, at the same time, sufficiently ambiguous to allow the kinds of localized alternative interpretations that avoid constant schismatic behaviour“. Thus, the Big Other has allowed myriad regional and local variations in house-building, pottery, and figurine production yet, all the while, retaining an overall attachment to Trypillia identity. Bricolage was involved through the selective permutation of different elements of the Big Other to produce local forms, with their attendant practices, best suited to the local community without straying too far from overall principles.” ref

“However, major changes occurred at the transition from Phase BI to BII in the ceramic aspect of the Big Other. Although painted pottery was the predominant fine ware in North-East Romania and Moldova in Cucuteni Phase A, it was rare in comparison with incised wares in Phase BI in the Southern Bug—Dniester Interfluve. The spread of trichrome painted wares, with red motifs outlined in black on a light background, characterised Phase BII in this area, providing a novel medium for household identity and linking settlements in a developed version of the Big Other. The assessment of the importance of this ceramic innovation to megasite origins remains an urgent task.” ref

“It is therefore hardly credible to us that megasites could have emerged without the mediating, integrative potential of the Big Other to provide the basis for everyday social practices on all Trypillia settlements, viz. the habitus. In the context of megasite origins, shared participation in the Big Other and its quotidian materialisation created pre-existing bonds between communities in different sites living in different site clusters, often quite remote from each other. It was the Big Other that reduced the social difference between communities separated by much physical space, providing common grounds for meeting strangers as well as brothers on assembly places. But the bricolage of the many varied elements of the Big Other also enabled communities to create difference without threatening either inter-site relations or local community identities.” ref

Trypillia Exchange Networks

“The second part of the ancestral past which Phase BI and II communities relied upon to create megasites consisted of the pre-existing exchange networks. Most Balkan Neolithic and especially Chalcolithic communities played important roles in often long-distance exchange networks featuring copper, gold, obsidian, and flint, polished stone of many kinds, marine shells such as Spondylus and finished objects such as pottery, ornaments and other prestige goods. There have been many CT sites with the deposition of objects or materials exotic to the CT distribution.” ref

“A degree of network continuity is demonstrated by the exchange of the lithics essential to many maintenance activities on any Trypillia site. However, the large fall from thousands of items deposited in Phase A and BI sites to hundreds on Phase BII sites was a major and as yet unexplained change. All of the BII and CI megasite lithic assemblages so far analysed have included a sizeable proportion of high-quality flint (often up to 50%) from the Prut—Dniester valleys, indicating exchange over 200–300 km.” ref

“The major changes in exchange networks concerned manganese and copper. The black pigment manganese was essential for Trypillia painted vessels in Phases BII—CI—a high-value, low-bulk material with sources in the East Carpathians, the Lower Dnieper valley, and the Crimea. The most recent characterisation studies confirm Ellis identification of the main sources in the Eastern Carpathians, indicating low-bulk, high-value exchange over 300–500 km. This aspect of Trypillia exchange hardly touched Phase BI sites but was vital for BII settlements. There was also a major re-orientation of copper exchange networks at the start of transitional Phase BI-BII, with sources in Transylvania preferred to the hitherto dominant Bulgarian sources). The question of high-bulk, long-distance salt transportation from either the Eastern Carpathian sources or the North Pontic limans remains under discussion).” ref

“However, when we turn to prestige goods, there is something of a “white hole” for exotic copper or polished stone items in the Southern Bug—Dnieper interfluve. A very rare Spondylus bracelet in Lysaya Gora, in the Lower Dnieper valley, has good stylistic parallels with the West Pontic Chalcolithic cemeteries at Varna and Durankulak but no such marine shell finds are known from the megasites. Equally, the serpentine bracelet from the pre-Caucasus range deposited at Novi Ruşeşti in Moldova has no parallels in megasite deposition. There has been no analysis yet of the only gold ornament yet found on megasites—the gold spiral at Nebelivka.” ref

“To summarise this complex data set, all Trypillia settlements in the Southern Bug—Dnieper Interfluve would have required lithic raw materials for basic tool-making—whether from local quarries or exotic sources in the Prut—Dniester valleys. Local sources would also have supplied stones for grinders and mortars. While there were widespread local sources for red, white, and orange pigments, black pigments from Phase BII onwards was an exotic for the Interfluve, probably from the Eastern Carpathians. Transylvanian copper would also have been transported across the Eastern Carpathians.” ref 

“Thus, exchange of exotic flint, copper, and pigment alone would have been predicated upon an inter-regional network connecting dozens if not hundreds of sites—a network which would have been instrumental in the consolidation of the Trypillia Big Other as well as maintaining contacts between neighbouring and distant communities. An inter-regional network for exotic lithics would have been operational in Phase A, with an expansion in Phase BII to transport manganese for pot-painting and Transylvanian copper. The paradox of Trypillia exchange dates to Phases BII and CI—the peak of the megasites—when the expected social differentiation consequent upon the development of such massive sites fails to find materialisation in exotic prestige goods on the megasites themselves. This is all the more surprising when we recall that exotic prestige goods exchange was one of the foundations of the Balkan Climax Copper Age. Is it possible that we have grossly over-estimated the significance of Trypillia exchange? Or does lateral cycling hide the multiple re-working of copper objects—the first such recyclable material in prehistory?” ref

Trypillia Settlement Planning

“If the Trypillia Big Other provided the necessary material constancy in a cultural tradition and inter-regional exchange networks maintained links between communities through the transmission of ideas, materials and marriage partners, the evolution of planning on Trypillia settlements provided the spatial context for megasite living. The megasites were not only about size, although this was key to their significance—they were also concerned with spatial order and the provision of structure for such huge settlements. Trypillia megasites were based upon the principle of concentricity—unlike the Balkan tell principle of grid-plan rectangularity.” ref

“Videiko has claimed that all of the four key planning elements which typified a developed megasite such as Taljanki—concentric house circuits, inner radial streets, sectoral growth (e.g., in Quarters), and an inner open space—were already present in earlier sites such as Mogylna III, Stepanivka, and Vesely Kut. Recent geophysical plans from BI sites such as Singerei, Moldova, show only weak tendencies to house concentricity and no inner radial streets or open inner space.” ref 

“However, a careful re-examination of the plans of Phase A, BI, and BI-BII transition megasites shows that not one single early megasite contained all of the four key planning principles of the developed megasites—rather, they rarely contained more than one element. Instead, many of the early megasites contained house nests and concentric house nests that typified Cucuteni settlements as a “hang-over” from pre-megasite planning (e.g., Truşeşti and Hăbăşeşti). This crucial finding underlines the variability which one may expect in megasite plans of the BI and BI-II Phases. It also shows that, rather than inheriting the blueprint of a complete megasite plan, planner-builders of BII megasites such as Nebelivka improvised a complete plan with all four planning elements as they built the site. This form of bricolage is typical of cultural creation based upon improvisation rather than faithful copying of a pre-existing design.” ref 

“It was not that the planner-builders of Phase BII megasites had nothing to use in formulating a site plan—rather that decisions taken in the process of creating a site were taken based upon a combination of cultural memory and direct witness. This result emphasises the creative bricolage of the BII megasite planner-builders in forming a fresh, previously unknown megasite plan from elements selected from the ancestral past. The result was the spatial formalisation of an assembly place in terms of the two principal spaces—the outer space for dwelling and the open, inner space for assembly. It is suggested that the formalisation of megasite planning in Phase BII was a vital advance toward megasite development, which allowed the evolution of Phase CI sites of even greater size and complexity. Moreover, this advance also influenced the new formalisation of the layout of smaller settlements. An example shows how the CI site of Apolianka (7 km West of Nebelivka) reproduced on a much smaller scale two of the four key elements of megasite planning: a house circuit defining a central open space.” ref

“Gatherings of different group sizes must have taken place well before the emergence of megasites so as to underpin the cultural uniformity of CT. While small and medium-size settlements would have comfortably accommodated a local gathering of settlements within a 30–40 km catchment, intra-regional or inter-regional assemblies of 100 km would have required a much larger space. The accumulated experience of the benefits of such gatherings—a substantial increase of opportunities for social interaction, access to “exotic” goods, scaled-up rituals, feasts, and ceremonies, etc., together with the efforts to “set up” and manage such massive aggregations, may have led to the realization that they need not be always temporary or that organization of such events should always start from scratch.” ref 

“The formalization of the best of both worlds—the space for large gatherings and the everyday habitus—reinforced the accumulation of place-value through the incorporation of two very important social principles in CT lifeways. These novel aspects of settlement planning are part of a new knowledge that developed within the experience of the making of megasites and which broadened the shared material practices that constituted the Trypillia Big Other. The changes in a dynamic social milieu which allowed for megasites in the first place also could have led to disputes and breaks in former alliances, stimulating the founding of alternative assembly places, which would have led to competition between emergent megasites, even in the same site cluster.” ref

Discussion

“The possibility of a Trypillia megasite was not an on / off possibility but a contextually rooted concept always in statu nascendi, depending upon the potential of the forms of settlement plan, exchange networks and Big Other known at the time. Far from seeing it as in martial crisis under a state of siege, we think of Phase BI in the Bug—Dnieper Interfluve as a time of both settlement consolidation in the main valley site clusters of Phase A and settlement expansion into the network of smaller streams which defined plateaux and promontories for dwelling. The emergence of settlements larger than the 35-ha. threshold of local sustainability was limited to one site per cluster in the main valley site clusters in the G. Tikych valley, with smaller sites in the smaller valleys. These earliest megasites had begun to create concentric house circuits and inner open spaces in their plans, alongside the traditional house nests of Trypillia Phase A and indeed much of Cucuteni settlement planning. Phase BI site plans had by no means coalesced into a settled planning system—a development not seen until BII megasites such as Nebelivka—but were creating dwellings with an unprecedented scale and number of inhabitants.” ref

“It is hard to conceive of successful attempts to integrate so many people at megasites without an early version of the Trypillia Big Other—the Phase A version, accepted by most people in most former and existing settlements. Nevertheless, we should not forget the fundamental changes to the Big Other, notably the innovations of painted pottery and figurine styles, that were occurring during Phase BI—at the same time as major changes in settlement form. Both types of objects offered new resources for identity-formation in times of immense change except in one key area—dwelling houses.” ref 

“There is remarkable continuity over the whole CT distribution in house-design, the context for family living which underpinned the dwelling process of Trypillia settlements. The mutual reinforcement of the Big Other by inter-regional, regional, and local exchanges of stone, pigments and metals strengthened inter-community ties in ways that were particularly important at the local dwelling level. Supplying each site with basic local stones for grinding grain and making cutting and scraping tools tied communities into a landscape routine and a set of social relationships for sharing the stone between houses. The use of exotic flint from the Prut—Dniester valleys not only linked the people in the Bug—Dnieper Interfluve to their Western roots but provided the means for differential acquisition of high-quality flint. It seems that lithics formed the basis for regular, repeated inter-site exchange, with the movement of finely-crafted stonework and marine shell ornaments a far more occasional practice probably “piggy-backing” on pre-existing lithic, copper, and pigment exchange networks.” ref

“Back to those Phase BI settlements which transgressed the 35-ha. threshold of local sustainability. We submit that no-one has yet provided a well-documented case of the coeval use of 80%, or indeed 100%, of a megasite’s houses9. One solution to the problem of sustainability is the acceptance of a small fraction of houses in coeval use—in the case of Vesely Kut, perhaps a quarter of its houses, whereas a third of its houses at the smaller Kharkivka.” ref

“Another solution—by no means incompatible with the first—concerns the stimulus of new social relations between the largest and the smaller sites in the site cluster. These relations provided a form of buffering which was hardly necessary in Phase A. The co-emergence of the growing size of a megasite with its reputation as a ritual and exchange centre led to a synergy between locals and other residents in the site cluster. The provision of food, drink and possibly other resources (such as salt or copper) increased the sustainability of the megasite, which, in exchange, provided a key context for inter-community ritual and exchange, as well as all of the other benefits arising in assembly places. It is suggested that the pre-existing links between the settlements of a site cluster, whether based upon the Big Other or exchange networks, would have been fundamental in the possibility of the emergence of a larger site serving all others in the site cluster and probably beyond—the region’s earliest megasites. This dynamic settlement system allowed the emergence of more than one megasite in a single cluster, indicating variations in the success of alliance-formation and an element of competition between these sites10.” ref

“Clearly, the Trypillia megasites did not stop in the BI Phase but continued for a further 600 years (4000–3400 BCE or 6.020-5,420 years ago). We shall content ourselves here with a summary of the major changes that took place in megasites in Phase BII11, using Nebelivka as an example. Although on the global CT level, Phase BII was marked by a fall in the number of sites, this was anything but the case in the Southern Bug—Dnieper Interfluve, where the number of site clusters grew to cover large parts of the network of smaller streams. In this Phase, we can detect the emergence of the first megasites based in the smaller stream networks—sites such as Nebelivka. It is interesting to confirm that, despite the local increase in both settlement numbers and site sizes, the 100-km. interaction zone continued to operate for megasites such as Nebelivka.” ref 

“However, with the increase of settlement numbers, not only the size of megasites grew, but Phase CI sees the emergence of “isolated” megasites, such as Yaltushkiv I, Stina, Bilohorodka, and Obukhiv, that developed outside the Southern Bug—Dnieper interfluve, but that maintained the 100-km scale of interaction. This could have important implications on the meaning of the Southern Bug—Dnieper Interfluve as the area of megasite emergence that progressively loses its place-value, during a time of Trypillia centrifugal expansion into new territories. This movement maintained the practice of megasite building and large-scale interaction for 200–300 years until their demise in Phase CII.” ref

“The most obvious differences between Nebelivka and the BI megasites concerns site planning and the appearance of a series of public buildings we have termed “Assembly Houses.” A greater degree of formalisation of planning is inherent in the integration of all four main planning principles in the Nebelivka plan. However, at the same time as the major planning elements have been strengthened as a consequence of bricolage, the size of the building project enabled local diversity in building design and location at all scales of the plan, from individual houses to Neighbourhoods (groups of houses), Quarters (groups of Neighbourhoods) and major planning elements (e.g., the variations in the width of the space between the Outer and Inner house circuits). We have argued that local architectural diversity probably marks not only the contribution of many communities in the Nebelivka interaction zone to dwelling on the megasite but also the passage of social time in the creation of different built ensembles.” ref

“The apparently novel aspect of BII megasites concerns the creation of public buildings (“Assembly Houses”) to participate, if not take a lead, in local and trans-megasite ceremonies, including processions. Geophysical investigations at Nebelivka have produced the first and currently only complete megasite plan with modern geophysical instruments. These investigations have revealed the existence of 23 Assembly Houses, unevenly dispersed across the megasite but mostly outside the two house circuits. The location of the Assembly Houses was one of the criteria used to divide the megasite into Quarters, producing a sense of a special local relationship between Neighbourhoods and “their” Assembly House. It is intriguing to note that the Assembly Houses were burnt in a quite different way from usual dwelling houses, reinforcing the difference between the two architectural forms. It is apparent that the building of Assembly Houses was one response to the much greater social and architectural complexity found in the BII megasites in comparison to their BI predecessors, contributing the increased formalisation seen in the larger BII sites.” ref

“The principal material culture changes from Phase BI to Phase BII concerned the decline in the quantity of lithic deposition, the increased deposition of painted pottery and the production of heavy copper tools. Greater reliance on local sources was probably one of the factors involved in the change in lithic deposition but changes in the operational chain were also involved. Two of the most significant effects of the innovation of Phase BII painted ware were the constant new demand for black, manganese-based pigment for potters in each community and the re-orientation of copper exchange toward Transylvanian sources. These changes led to a major expansion in inter-regional exchange, with high-quality lithics, copper and manganese pigment all brought from the Western part of the CT distribution to the Southern Bug—Dnieper interfluve. We are currently unaware of the linkage of the lithic, copper and pigment networks but they may have been closely integrated, with the same traders moving all three materials, at least East from the Prut valley.” ref

“How can these considerations be “translated” into an answer to the question of why the megasites emerged when they did, in Trypillia Phases BI and BII? There is no straightforward answer to this question, since we are dealing with a multivariate issue with many relevant data sets. The growth of settlement clusters in Phase BI led to increased interaction between the neighbouring settlements, which further increased in intensity with the need for buffering for the largest site in each cluster—the early megasites. The differential attraction of copper, lithics, and pigments of these early megasites helped to maintain their position as central assembly places in the face of their weakness—the absence of social mechanisms, perhaps principally planning mechanisms, to integrate visitors from large numbers of smaller settlements.” ref 

“This weakness in social controls would have led to either megasite abandonment or, as happened later, in Phase BII, to the emergence of planning practices which helped megasites to live more cohesively in even larger sites. Another key aspect of Phase BII settlement in the Southern Bug—Dnieper interfluve was the increasing interaction between as well as within settlement clusters, which increased the value of co-ordinating assembly sites. The expansion of exchange to bring three critical resources—exotic flint, pigments for painted pottery and copper—from the same regions to the West further consolidated the BII megasites as assembly places for in turn larger settlement clusters. It should not, however, be forgotten that a megasite could fail at any time—there were many possible pathways to disintegration and decline. It is a mark of the stability of the social practice at the BII megasites such as Nebelivka that they continued for five or six generations before their ultimate demise.” ref

But Were the Trypillia Megasites “Cities”?

“In the etymological dictionary Origins, the term city is defined as an “aggregation of citizens”. As clearly elucidated by Emberling, this highlights three “basic” elements of the city, (1) a community of people with forms of social and political organization which are different from pre-urban and non-urban communities; (2) the aggregation happens in a specific location, the city, which is a physical space and a conceptual map of urban residents and their neighbours; (3) the inhabitants—citizens—identify themselves with the physical space, thus creating an urban identity. But what kind of urban identity?” ref

“Reachers have already made a case that Trypillia megasites would not fit what we broadly call the “traditional” view of urbanism and would be more at home with massive global phenomena still awaiting their name (“Big Anomalous” sites, “Big Weird” sites). Some of these sites (e.g., Angkor) are the first to be recognized as low-density urban settlements, while Trypillia megasites are currently the earliest example of low-density occupation in well-defined large sites. We have also posited a relational approach whereby the meaning and function of given sites is only definable in relation to other sites, instead of in fixed and absolute terms. In the CT context, that would replace the unhelpful site hierarchies based on size (Ellis, Videiko, Diachenko) and identify to what extent significant social practices differed from site to site.” ref 

“Ideally, such a comparison would involve settlement planning, depositional practices, subsistence practices, and the consumption of exotic and local objects made of clay, metal, and stone. Holistic inter-site evaluations are limited by more than 100 years of CT investigations, mostly based upon small-scale excavations and heavily biased toward pottery comparisons and classification. Still, there is some patchy evidence allowing the differentiation of sites and forms of human occupation. First, there is a tendency toward increasing settlement size, peaking in the 100 ha site of Kharkivka and the 150 ha site of Vesely Kut. Such social experiments would have accumulated practical experience of ways of mitigating the social tensions arising from scaled-up habitation. However, we know very little about the spatial arrangements at these early large sites. By contrast, other sites, such as Mogylna III, evince evolving principles of house concentricity among the more general pattern of a lack of formal planning but their size is very small (10 ha). The pattern in the Early Trypillia period (Phases A and BI) shows a contrast between some small sites with developed planning elements and other large sites with no evidence for evolved planning features.” ref 

“The proposed conclusion is that these two aspects of site development did not come together until Phase BII, at sites such as Nebelivka. There are strong environmental indicators for human presence at the site of Nebelivka well before the establishment of the BII megasite but no material trace of such occupation has been found as yet. The implication is that short, probably temporary, but intensive and perhaps massive aggregations must have taken place that would account for both the strong human impact on the landscape and the lack of material evidence.” ref 

“Thus, although the “norm” for a Trypillian BI settlement was a small site with few distinctive planning elements and variable consumption of material culture, there were formalized and non-formalized forms of human occupation that deviated from that norm: settlements constituted the former, assembly places, and gathering places the latter. Taken individually and spread over some distance and in time, these differences may have not been perceived as “too different” and therefore threatening to the social order but remaining as part of the Big Other. But when ancestral memory and intensified human interaction in the BII period brought various practices together, this resulted in the creation of a very different kind of place—the 238 ha megasite of Nebelivka, with its intricate combination of formal layout and local diversity. In relational terms and according to the currently published data, the BII Nebelivka megasite stood out among its contemporary and preceding settlements. This was an emergent settlement form rooted in previous forms of dwelling and aggregation, whose novel combination marked a significant difference in relation to other sites. It was perceived, experienced and functioned as a very different kind of place that fulfilled a dual purpose of dwelling and assembly. It is in this sense that we see the megasites as what, in hindsight, modern scholars call “cities.” ref

Conclusions

The Trypillia megasites of the Southern Bug—Dnieper Interfluve in central Ukraine are the largest, and earliest, settlements in 4th millennium BCE Eurasia and potentially the world; we claim that they are the earliest known cities. The megasites were not permanent, long-term settlements but have been modelled as different forms of low-density city, whether permanent with a much smaller population or as seasonal forms of assembly or pilgrimage places.” ref

“In this article, we propose a model for the origins of Trypillia megasites more consonant with this alternative view of smaller-scale settlements. Pre-existing exchange networks moving exotic flint, copper and salt across the forest steppe helped to consolidate the Trypillia Big Other as an ideological framework for building material traditions. Out of the mix of large, amorphous settlements and small sites with developed planning elements, but not both on any single site, emerged the BII megasites—an unprecedented settlement form where bricolage of earlier plan elements produced formalised sites which combined an inner assembly space with an outer dwelling space. Settlement modelling showed the scale of megasite interaction to remain stable at c.100 km for many centuries, integrating increasing numbers of small sites to megasite assembly places.” ref

“Because of their size and seasonality, Trypillia megasites benefited from the increasing connectivity of their 100-km networks and the specialised building of public buildings and production of painted pottery without suffering from the disadvantages of inequality, severe human impacts on the local landscape and lower standards of living. These developments enabled the reproduction of megasite lifeways for over 600 years, even though the lack of hierarchical structure prevented the appearance of successor settlements on the forest steppe.” ref

“To recap: both the Balkan Neolithic and especially Copper Age communities played important roles in often long-distance exchange networks featuring copper, gold, obsidian, and flint, polished stone of many kinds, marine shells as well as other finished objects such as pottery, ornaments, along with other prestige goods.” ref

“No other group in Old Europe than the Trypillia-Cucuteni cultural complex has such a long tradition, based upon three aspects of material culture, such as pottery, figurines, and houses.” ref 

The ‘disappearance’ of Trypillia culture

Abstract and Figures

“The Trypillia-Cucuteni cultural complex over a period of almost 2000 years was an outstanding phenomenon east of the Carpathians, but it fell into decay. The Late period of Trypillia culture dates back to 3200-2700 BCE and is represented by a few local types or so-called ‘post-Trypillia cultures’, all located in regions with different natural conditions and resources, from forest to steppe zones. Local features displayed different trends of change in the economy and material culture and also in social structures. The most conservative were groups with the highest development of the social organization and an economy based on a division of labor, with proto-cities, as ‘points of rest’. On the borders of Trypillia culture, intercultural relations took on a special significance and led to changes in material culture and economy that materialized as a process of ‘disappearance. It seems that these changes had a common point of departure – changes in the environment since 3200 BCE.” ref

Linear Pottery culture

“The Linear Pottery culture is a major archaeological horizon of the European Neolithic, flourishing c. 5500–4500 BCE or 7,520-6,520 years ago. It is abbreviated as LBK (from German: Linearbandkeramik), and is also known as the Linear Band Ware, Linear Ware, Linear Ceramics, or Incised Ware culture, and falls within the Danubian I culture of V. Gordon Childe. The densest evidence for the culture is on the middle Danube, the upper and middle Elbe, and the upper and middle Rhine. It represents a major event in the initial spread of agriculture in Europe. The pottery after which it was named consists of simple cups, bowls, vases, and jugs, without handles, but in a later phase with lugs or pierced lugs, bases, and necks.” ref

“Important sites include Nitra in Slovakia; Bylany in the Czech Republic; Langweiler and Zwenkau in Germany; Brunn am Gebirge in Austria; Elsloo, Sittard, Köln-Lindenthal, Aldenhoven, Flomborn, and Rixheim on the Rhine; Lautereck and Hienheim on the upper Danube; and Rössen and Sonderhausen on the middle Elbe. In 2019, two large Rondel complexes were discovered east of the Vistula River near Toruń in Poland.” ref

“Two variants of the early Linear Pottery culture are recognized:

1· The Early or Western Linear Pottery Culture developed on the middle Danube, including western Hungary, and was carried down the Rhine, Elbe, Oder, and Vistula.

2· The Eastern Linear Pottery Culture flourished in eastern Hungary.” ref

“Middle and late phases are also defined. In the middle phase, the Early Linear Pottery culture intruded upon the Bug-Dniester culture and began to manufacture musical note pottery. In the late phase, the Stroked Pottery culture moved down the Vistula and Elbe. A number of cultures ultimately replaced the Linear Pottery culture over its range, but without a one-to-one correspondence between its variants and the replacing cultures. The culture map, instead, is complex. Some of the successor cultures are the Hinkelstein, Großgartach, Rössen, Lengyel, Cucuteni-Trypillian, and Boian-Maritza cultures.” ref

“The term “Linear Band Ware” derives from the pottery’s decorative technique. The “Band Ware” or Bandkeramik part of it began as an innovation of the German archaeologist, Friedrich Klopfleisch. The earliest generally accepted name in English was the Danubian of V. Gordon Childe. Most names in English are attempts to translate Linearbandkeramik. Since Starčevo-Körös pottery was earlier than the LBK and was located in a contiguous food-producing region, the early investigators looked for precedents there. Much of the Starčevo-Körös pottery features decorative patterns composed of convolute bands of paint: spirals, converging bands, vertical bands, and so on. The LBK appears to imitate and often improve these convolutions with incised lines; hence the term, linear, to distinguish painted band ware from incised band ware.” ref

“The LBK did not begin with this range and only reached it toward the end of its time. It began in regions of densest occupation on the middle Danube (Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary) and spread over about 1,500 km (930 mi) along the rivers in 360 years. The rate of expansion was therefore about 4 km (2.5 mi) per year, which can hardly be called an invasion or a wave by the standard of current events, but over archaeological time seems especially rapid.” ref

“The LBK was concentrated somewhat inland from the coastal areas; i.e., it is not evidenced in Denmark or the northern coastal strips of Germany and Poland, or the coast of the Black Sea in Romania. The northern coastal regions remained occupied by Mesolithic cultures exploiting the then rich Atlantic salmon runs. There are lighter concentrations of LBK in the Netherlands, such as at Elsloo, Netherlands, with the sites of Darion, Remicourt, Fexhe, or Waremme-Longchamps and at the mouths of the Oder and Vistula. Evidently, the Neolithics and Mesolithics were not excluding each other.” ref

“The LBK at maximum extent ranged from about the line of the Seine–Oise (Paris Basin) eastward to the line of the Dnieper, and southward to the line of the upper Danube down to the big bend. An extension ran through the Southern Bug valley, leaped to the valley of the Dniester, and swerved southward from the middle Dniester to the lower Danube in eastern Romania, east of the Carpathians.” ref

Periodization

“A good many C-14 dates have been acquired on the LBK, making possible statistical analyses, which have been performed on different sample groups. One such analysis by Stadler and Lennais sets 68.2% confidence limits at about 5430–5040 BCE; that is, 68.2% of possible dates allowed by variation of the major factors that influence measurement, calculation, and calibration fall within that range. The 95.4% confidence interval is 5600–4750 BCE.” ref

“Data continue to be acquired and therefore any “one” analysis should be taken as a rough guideline only. Overall, it is probably safe to say that the Linear Pottery culture spanned several hundred years of continental European prehistory in the late sixth and early fifth millennia BC, with local variations. Data from Belgium indicate a late survival of LBK there, as late as 4100 BCE. The Linear Pottery culture is not the only food-producing player on the stage of prehistoric Europe. It has been necessary, therefore, to distinguish between it and the Neolithic, which was most easily done by dividing the Neolithic of Europe into chronological phases.” ref

“These have varied a great deal. An approximation is:

· Early Neolithic, 6000–5500 BCE. The first appearance of food-producing cultures in the south of the future Linear Pottery culture range: the Körös of southern Hungary and the Dniester culture in Ukraine.

· Middle Neolithic, 5500–5000 BCE. Early and Middle Linear Pottery culture.

· Late Neolithic, 5000–4500 BCE. Late Linear Pottery and legacy cultures.” ref

“The last phase is no longer the end of the Neolithic. A “Final Neolithic” has been added to the transition between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. All numbers depend to some extent on the geographic region. The pottery styles of the LBK allow some division of its window in time. Conceptual schemes have varied somewhat.” ref

“One is:

· Early: The Eastern and Western LBK cultures, originating on the middle Danube.

· Middle: Musical Note pottery – the incised lines of the decoration are broken or terminated by punctures, or “strokes”, giving the appearance of musical notes. The culture expanded to its maximum extent, and regional variants appeared. One variant is the late Bug-Dniester culture.

· Late: Stroked pottery – lines of punctures are substituted for the incised lines.” ref

Early or Western

“The early or earliest Western Linear Pottery culture began conventionally at 5500 BCE, possibly as early as 5700 BCE, in western Hungary, southern Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. It is sometimes called the Central European Linear Pottery (CELP) to distinguish it from the ALP phase of the Eastern Linear Pottery culture. In Hungarian it tends to be called DVK, Dunántúl Vonaldiszes Kerámia, translated as “Transdanubian Linear Pottery”. A number of local styles and phases of ware are defined. The end of the early phase can be dated to its arrival in the Netherlands at about 5200 BCE. The population there was already food-producing to some extent. The early phase went on there, but meanwhile, the Music Note Pottery (Notenkopfkeramik) phase of the Middle Linear Band Pottery culture appeared in Austria at about 5200 BCE and moved eastward into Romania and Ukraine. The late phase, or Stroked Pottery culture (Stichbandkeramik or SBK, 5000–4500 BCE) evolved in central Europe and went eastward.” ref

Eastern

“The Eastern Linear Pottery culture developed in eastern Hungary and Transylvania roughly contemporaneously with, perhaps a few hundred years after, the Transdanubian. The great plain there (Hungarian Alföld) had been occupied by the Starčevo-Körös-Criş culture of “gracile Mediterraneans” from the Balkans as early as 6100 BCE. Hertelendi and others give a reevaluated date range of 5860–5330 BCE for the Early Neolithic, 5950–5400 BCE for the Körös. The Körös Culture went as far north as the edge of the upper Tisza and stopped. North of it the Alföld plain and the Bükk Mountains were intensively occupied by Mesolithics thriving on the flint tool trade.” ref

“At around 5330 BCE, the classical Alföld culture of the LBK appeared to the north of the Körös culture and flourished until about 4940 BCE. This time also is the Middle Neolithic. The Alföld culture has been abbreviated ALV from its Hungarian name, Alföldi Vonaldíszes Kerámia, or ALP for Alföld Linear Pottery culture, the earliest variant of the Eastern Linear Pottery culture. In one view, the AVK came “directly out of” the Körös. The brief, short-ranged Szatmár group on the northern edge of the Körös culture seems transitional. Some place it with the Körös, some with the AVK. The latter’s pottery is decorated with white painted bands with incised edges. Körös pottery was painted.” ref

“As is presented above, however, no major population movements occurred across the border. The Körös went on into a late phase in its accustomed place, 5770–5230 BCE. The late Körös is also called the Proto-Vinča, which was succeeded by the Vinča-Tordo, 5390–4960 BCE. There is no necessity to view the Körös and the AVK as closely connected. The AVK economy is somewhat different: it used cattle and swine, both of which occur wild in the region, instead of the sheep of the Balkans and Mediterranean. The percentage of wild animal bones is greater. Barley, millet, and lentils were added.” ref

“Around 5100 BCE 7,120 years ago or so, towards the end of the Middle Neolithic, the classical AVK descended into a complex of pronounced local groups called the Szakálhát-Esztár-Bükk, which flourished about 5260–4880 BCE:

· The Szakálhát group was located on the lower and middle Tisza and the Körös Rivers, taking the place of the previous Körös culture. Its pottery went on with the painted white bands and incised edge.

· The Esztár group to the north featured pottery with bands painted in dark paint.

· The Szilmeg group was located in the foothills of the Bükk Mountains.

· The Tiszadob group was located in the Sajó Valley.

· The Bükk group was located in the mountains.” ref

“These are all characterized by finely crafted and decorated ware. The entire group is considered by the majority of the sources listed in this article to have been in the LBK. Before the chronology and many of the sites were known, the Bükk was thought to be a major variant; in fact, Gimbutas at one point believed it to be identical with the Eastern Linear Pottery culture. Since 1991, the predominance of the Alföld has come to light. The end of the Eastern Linear Pottery culture and the LBK is less certain. The Szakálhát-Esztár-Bükk descended into another Late Neolithic legacy complex, the Tisza-Hérpály-Csöszhalom, which is either not LBK or is transitional from the LBK to the Tiszapolgar, a successor culture.” ref

“The earliest theory of Linear Pottery culture origin is that it came from the Starčevo-Körös culture of Serbia and Hungary. Supporting this view is the fact that the LBK appeared earliest about 5600–5400 BCE or 7,620-7,420 years ago on the middle Danube in the Starčevo range. Presumably, the expansion northwards of early Starčevo-Körös produced a local variant reaching the upper Tisza that may have well been created by contact with native epi-Paleolithic people. This small group began a new tradition of pottery, substituting engravings for the paintings of the Balkanic cultures. A site at Brunn am Gebirge just south of Vienna seems to document the transition to LBK. The site was densely settled in a longhouse pattern around 5550–5200 BCE. The lower layers feature Starčevo-type plain pottery, with large number of stone tools made of material from near Lake Balaton, Hungary. Over the time frame, LBK pottery and animal husbandry increased, while the use of stone tools decreased.” ref

“A second theory proposes an autochthonous development out of the local Mesolithic cultures. Although the Starčevo-Körös entered southern Hungary about 6000 BCE or 8,020 years ago and the LBK spread very rapidly, there appears to be a hiatus of up to 500 years in which a barrier seems to have been in effect. Moreover, the cultivated species of the near and middle eastern Neolithic do not do well over the Linear Pottery culture range. And finally, the Mesolithics in the region prior to the LBK used some domestic species, such as wheat and flax. The La Hoguette culture on the northwest of the LBK range developed their own food production from native plants and animals.” ref

“A third theory attributes the start of Linear Pottery to an influence from the Mesolithic cultures of the east European plain. The pottery was used in intensive food gathering. The rate at which it spread was no faster than the spread of the Neolithic in general. Accordingly, Dolukhanov and others postulate that an impulse from the steppe to the southeast of the barrier stimulated the Mesolithics north of it to innovate their own pottery. This view only accounts for the pottery; presumably, the Mesolithics combined it de novo with local food production, which began to spread very rapidly throughout a range that was already producing some food.” ref

LBK Population

“The initial LBK population theory hypothesized that the culture was spread by farmers moving up the Danube practicing slash-and-burn methods. The presence of the Mediterranean sea shell, Spondylus gaederopus, and the similarity of the pottery to gourds, which did not grow in the north, seemed to be evidence of the immigration, as does the genetic evidence cited below. The lands into which they moved were believed untenanted or too sparsely populated by hunter-gatherers to be a significant factor. The barrier causing the hiatus mentioned above does not have an immediate geographical cause. The Körös culture ended in the middle of the Hungarian plain, and although the climate to the north is colder, the gradient is not so sharp as to form a barrier there.” ref

Copper Age or Chalcolithic/Eneolithic

“The Chalcolithic, a name derived from the Greek: χαλκός khalkós, “copper” and from λίθος líthos, “stone” or Copper Age, also known as the Eneolithic or Aeneolithic (from Latin aeneus “of copper”) is an archaeological period which researchers now regard as part of the broader Neolithic. Earlier scholars defined it as a transitional period between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. In the context of Eastern Europe, archaeologists often prefer the term “Eneolithic” to “Chalcolithic” or other alternatives.” ref

“In the Chalcolithic period, copper predominated in metalworking technology. Hence it was the period before it was discovered that by adding tin to copper one could create bronze, a metal alloy harder and stronger than either component. The archaeological site of Belovode, on Rudnik mountain in Serbia, has the worldwide oldest securely-dated evidence of copper smelting at high temperature, from c. 5000 BCE (7,020 years ago). The transition from Copper Age to Bronze Age in Europe occurs between the late 5th and the late 3rd millennia BCE. In the Ancient Near East the Copper Age covered about the same period, beginning in the late 5th millennium BCE and lasting for about a millennium before it gave rise to the Early Bronze Age.” ref

Carpathian Mountains

“The Carpathian Mountains or the Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Roughly 1,500 km (932 mi) long, it is the third-longest European mountain range after the Urals at 2,500 km (1,553 mi) and the Scandinavian Mountains at 1,700 km (1,056 mi). The range stretches from the far eastern Czech Republic (3%) in the northwest through Slovakia (17%), Poland (10%), Hungary (4%), Ukraine (10%), Romania (50%) to Serbia (5%) in the south. The highest range within the Carpathians is known as the Tatra mountains in Slovakia and Poland, where the highest peaks exceed 2,600 m (8,530 ft). The second-highest range is the Southern Carpathians in Romania, where the highest peaks range between 2,500 m (8,202 ft) and 2,550 m (8,366 ft).” ref

“The divisions of the Carpathians are usually in three major sections:

· Western Carpathians: Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary

· Eastern Carpathians: southeastern Poland, eastern Slovakia, Ukraine, and Romania

· Southern Carpathians: Romania and eastern Serbia” ref

“The term Outer Carpathians is frequently used to describe the northern rim of the Western and Eastern Carpathians. The Carpathians provide habitat for the largest European populations of brown bears, wolves, chamois, and lynxes, with the highest concentration in Romania,] as well as over one-third of all European plant species. The mountains and their foothills also have many thermal and mineral waters, with Romania having one-third of the European total. Romania is likewise home to the second-largest surface of virgin forests in Europe after Russia, totaling 250,000 hectares (65%), most of them in the Carpathians, with the Southern Carpathians constituting Europe’s largest unfragmented forest area. Deforestation rates due to illegal logging in the Carpathians are high.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Evolution of Religion: Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, Paganism, and Progressed Organized Religion

Animism, Totemism, Shamanism, Paganism & Progressed organized religion

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

People don’t commonly teach religious history, even that of their own claimed religion. No, rather they teach a limited “pro their religion” history of their religion from a religious perspective favorable to the religion of choice. 

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Do you truly think “Religious Belief” is only a matter of some personal choice?

Do you not see how coercive one’s world of choice is limited to the obvious hereditary belief, in most religious choices available to the child of religious parents or caregivers? Religion is more commonly like a family, culture, society, etc. available belief that limits the belief choices of the child and that is when “Religious Belief” is not only a matter of some personal choice and when it becomes hereditary faith, not because of the quality of its alleged facts or proposed truths but because everyone else important to the child believes similarly so they do as well simply mimicking authority beliefs handed to them. Because children are raised in religion rather than being presented all possible choices but rather one limited dogmatic brand of “Religious Belief” where children only have a choice of following the belief as instructed, and then personally claim the faith hereditary belief seen in the confirming to the belief they have held themselves all their lives. This is obvious in statements asked and answered by children claiming a faith they barely understand but they do understand that their family believes “this or that” faith, so they feel obligated to believe it too. While I do agree that “Religious Belief” should only be a matter of some personal choice, it rarely is… End Hereditary Religion!

Opposition to Imposed Hereditary Religion

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey 

“How have human cultures engaged with and thought about animals, plants, rocks, clouds, and other elements in their natural surroundings? Do animals and other natural objects have a spirit or soul? What is their relationship to humans? In this new study, Graham Harvey explores current and past animistic beliefs and practices of Native Americans, Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans. He considers the varieties of animism found in these cultures as well as their shared desire to live respectfully within larger natural communities. Drawing on his extensive casework, Harvey also considers the linguistic, performative, ecological, and activist implications of these different animisms.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

We are like believing machines we vacuum up ideas, like Velcro sticks to almost everything. We accumulate beliefs that we allow to negatively influence our lives, often without realizing it. Our willingness must be to alter skewed beliefs that impend our balance or reason, which allows us to achieve new positive thinking and accurate outcomes.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“These ideas are my speculations from the evidence.”

I am still researching the “god‘s origins” all over the world. So you know, it is very complicated but I am smart and willing to look, DEEP, if necessary, which going very deep does seem to be needed here, when trying to actually understand the evolution of gods and goddesses. I am sure of a few things and less sure of others, but even in stuff I am not fully grasping I still am slowly figuring it out, to explain it to others. But as I research more I am understanding things a little better, though I am still working on understanding it all or something close and thus always figuring out more. 

Sky Father/Sky God?

“Egyptian: (Nut) Sky Mother and (Geb) Earth Father” (Egypt is different but similar)

Turkic/Mongolic: (Tengri/Tenger Etseg) Sky Father and (Eje/Gazar Eej) Earth Mother *Transeurasian*

Hawaiian: (Wākea) Sky Father and (Papahānaumoku) Earth Mother *Austronesian*

New Zealand/ Māori: (Ranginui) Sky Father and (Papatūānuku) Earth Mother *Austronesian*

Proto-Indo-European: (Dyḗus/Dyḗus ph₂tḗr) Sky Father and (Dʰéǵʰōm/Pleth₂wih₁) Earth Mother

Indo-Aryan: (Dyaus Pita) Sky Father and (Prithvi Mata) Earth Mother *Indo-European*

Italic: (Jupiter) Sky Father and (Juno) Sky Mother *Indo-European*

Etruscan: (Tinia) Sky Father and (Uni) Sky Mother *Tyrsenian/Italy Pre–Indo-European*

Hellenic/Greek: (Zeus) Sky Father and (Hera) Sky Mother who started as an “Earth Goddess” *Indo-European*

Nordic: (Dagr) Sky Father and (Nótt) Sky Mother *Indo-European*

Slavic: (Perun) Sky Father and (Mokosh) Earth Mother *Indo-European*

Illyrian: (Deipaturos) Sky Father and (Messapic Damatura’s “earth-mother” maybe) Earth Mother *Indo-European*

Albanian: (Zojz) Sky Father and (?) *Indo-European*

Baltic: (Perkūnas) Sky Father and (Saulė) Sky Mother *Indo-European*

Germanic: (Týr) Sky Father and (?) *Indo-European*

Colombian-Muisca: (Bochica) Sky Father and (Huythaca) Sky Mother *Chibchan*

Aztec: (Quetzalcoatl) Sky Father and (Xochiquetzal) Sky Mother *Uto-Aztecan*

Incan: (Viracocha) Sky Father and (Mama Runtucaya) Sky Mother *Quechuan*

China: (Tian/Shangdi) Sky Father and (Dì) Earth Mother *Sino-Tibetan*

Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian: (An/Anu) Sky Father and (Ki) Earth Mother

Finnish: (Ukko) Sky Father and (Akka) Earth Mother *Finno-Ugric*

Sami: (Horagalles) Sky Father and (Ravdna) Earth Mother *Finno-Ugric*

Puebloan-Zuni: (Ápoyan Ta’chu) Sky Father and (Áwitelin Tsíta) Earth Mother

Puebloan-Hopi: (Tawa) Sky Father and (Kokyangwuti/Spider Woman/Grandmother) Earth Mother *Uto-Aztecan*

Puebloan-Navajo: (Tsohanoai) Sky Father and (Estsanatlehi) Earth Mother *Na-Dene*

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Sky Father/Sky Mother “High Gods” or similar gods/goddesses of the sky more loosely connected, seeming arcane mythology across the earth seen in Siberia, China, Europe, Native Americans/First Nations People and Mesopotamia, etc.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Expressions of Atheistic Thinking:

• Around 2,600 years ago, Ajita Kesakambali, ancient Indian philosopher, who is the first known proponent of Indian materialism. ref
• Around 2,535 to 2,475 years ago, Heraclitus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor or modern Turkey. ref
• Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, according to The Story of Civilization book series certain African pygmy tribes have no identifiable gods, spirits, or religious beliefs or rituals, and even what burials accrue are without ceremony. ref
• Around 2,490 to 2,430 years ago, Empedocles, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek city in Sicily. ref
• Around 2,460 to 2,370 years ago, Democritus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher considered to be the “father of modern science” possibly had some disbelief amounting to atheism. ref
• Around 2,399 years ago or so, Socrates, a famous Greek philosopher was tried for sinfulness by teaching doubt of state gods. ref
• Around 2,341 to 2,270 years ago, Epicurus, a Greek philosopher known for composing atheistic critics and famously stated, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?” ref

This last expression by Epicurus, seems to be an expression of Axiological Atheism. To understand and utilize value or actually possess “Value Conscious/Consciousness” to both give a strong moral “axiological” argument (the problem of evil) as well as use it to fortify humanism and positive ethical persuasion of human helping and care responsibilities. Because value-blindness gives rise to sociopathic/psychopathic evil.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope (Said as “At” “Hope”)/(Autodidact Polymath but not good at math):

Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist, Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Jeweler, Poet, “autodidact” Philosopher, schooled in Psychology, and “autodidact” Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Pre-Historian (Knowledgeable in the range of: 1 million to 5,000/4,000 years ago). I am an anarchist socialist politically. Reasons for or Types of Atheism

My Website, My Blog, & Short-writing or Quotes, My YouTube, Twitter: @AthopeMarie, and My Email: damien.marie.athope@gmail.com