Prehistoric
Sitagroi: Excavations in Northeast Greece, 1968-1970. Volume 2: The
Final Report edited by ERNESTINE E. ELSTER and COLIN RENFREW
Monumenta Archaeologica 20. 2003.
519 pages, 235 line drawings, 184 photographs, 4 maps and 104 tables.
ISBN 1-931745-02-1. (c. $65)
The title of the series under whose imprint Sitagroi
volume 2 appears sums up the volume – this excavation report is
indeed a monument to the monument (the tell), to the investigators and,
most importantly, to Greek and Balkan prehistory. For Sitagroi faces
both North and South – that is one of the two reasons why Colin
Renfrew and Maria Gimbutas decided to excavate there in the first place.
In the late 1960s, Renfrew was exploring the effects of radiocarbon
calibration and he proposed a Radiocarbon Fault line, separating those
parts of the Aegean in direct contact with historically-dated societies
from those Balkan prehistoric communities whose dating require(d) scientific
dating. Located on the faultline, Sitagroi was meant, inter alia,
to solve once and for all the vexed relations between the Balkan Neolithic
and Copper Age and the Early Bronze Age of Greece and Anatolia and the
question of independent Balkan copper metallurgy. As it turns out, the
Sitagroi excavations accomplished much more than that in seeking to
fulfil the other prime aim – the investigation of the Sitagroi
environment and material culture to explain the richness and diversity
of the remains on the tell.
In the preface, and for those prehistorians who, unaccountably,
do not have volume 1 to hand (Renfrew et al. 1986: reviewed
for PPS by Chapman 1988), the editors summarize the project
aims, the stratigraphic sequence, volume of excavated earth and radiocarbon
chronology. A synopsis of the chapters in volume 2 follows but a synthesis
of prehistoric North Greece and the Southern Balkans is deferred till
a later date, with tantalizing hints at future research questions. The
second volume contains 14 chapters, most of them combining a specialist
finds report with a detailed finds catalogue. Since the volume is profusely
illustrated, the reader can gain an extremely good impression of the
findings. If there are questions not answered in the commentary, readers
can often find out the answer for themselves. This is extremely valuable,
since, to this reviewer’s knowledge, there are no other tell excavations
published in this way in Greece or the Balkans. And there certainly
will be questions concerning Sitagroi that readers will find
unanswered, even in this magnificent volume.
The specialist reports begin with Jane Renfrew’s
study of the botanical remains, based upon 232 stratified samples, with
representative coverage of each of the five phases. All of the main
cereal species, crop weeds, pulses and fruit remains are discussed in
detail, with an important discussion of the eventual domestication of
the grape, identified through both pips and stalks, in Phase IV, though
not as early as in the nearby tell of Dikili Tash. An extraordinary
find from a Phase IV house is a large storage jar full of unthreshed
barley and acorns – interpreted as the ingredients of Latest Copper
Age gruel. Fortunately, much venison and river fish were also available
in this period. The only criticism to make of Renfrew’s study
is that she pays little attention to the ecology of the crop weeds,
which Amy Bogaard has recently used to telling effect to identify the
areas where Linear Bandkeramik cereals were grown.
Over 600 bone and antler tools are ably analysed by
Ernie Elster in probably the most comprehensive review in this part
of Europe, excepting the landmark research of Alice Choyke. While, in
absolute numbers, the tools are made mostly from the bones of domesticated
species, there is a proportional emphasis on tools made on wild animal
bones, since the bone is stronger and the capture of the specimen can
be more heroic. There is a bias towards bone & antler tools in Phases
I – III, especially with antler, which declines in IV and V.
The chipped stone report by Ruth Tringham is supplemented
by attempts at sourcing the lithic raw materials by Sarantis Dimitriadis
and Katerina Skourtopoulou. Tringham’s work emphasises the importance
of Sebastian Payne’s water-sieving recovery technique, which produced
75% of the sample (mostly from Phases II & III). She cross-correlates
raw materials, tool usage and morphology in a revealing way. However,
Tringham confuses the Bulgarian lithic sources – the Sredna Gora
is not in N.E. but in C. Bulgaria and mistakes the Hungarian Zemplén
source of obsidian for the Bükk (as did Gordon Childe before her!)(cf.
on p. 492, Renfrew is incorrect in terming honey flint ‘Madara
flint’ – there are now over 50 known sources). Tringham
also confuses readers with diachronic changes in the percentages of
honey flint, which reaches a peak in Phase II and declines consistently
till Phase V. But the report on lithic raw material sourcing is very
disappointing, with not even a correlation between the thin-section
groupings and the samples analysed! The suggestion of a source for honey
flint in the Rhodopes or N.E. Thrace will certainly surprise Bulgarian
specialists and requires urgent investigation. I sympathise with the
problem of lithic raw material exploration in border areas: clearly,
an international effort is required to solve this problem.
John Dixon’s petrological analyses of the ground
and polished stone is more effective but, even here, the results are
rather general, with the only divisions made between local and non-local
rocks. It is striking that the peak of non-local axe discard is in Phase
III – the phase with the highest absolute numbers of honey flint.
Ernie Elster repeats her successful bone tool study with the ground
and polished stone tools. Martin Biskowski adds an intriguing appendix
on ground stone production, in which he claims that, because of the
long-lasting (?30-year) use of most grindstones, each full-time specialist
could produce sufficient grindstones for almost 20,000 consumers.
Elster’s third contribution, with Adavasio and
Illingworth, is an analysis of the spinning, weaving and mat-making
tools and impressions. A single impression of a good-quality faced linen
weave survives from Phase I, making this the earliest such textile in
prehistoric Europe. The use of wool is supported using Bökönyi’s
caprine kill-off patterns, strongest in Phases III and V.
Elizabeth Gardner contributes a short report on pottery
technology and firing temperature, unfortunately unrevised from 25 years
ago. She discovers a cumulative pattern in firing temperature, with
few wares fired at higher than 1000oC in Phases I – III, but almost
all analysed wares in Phases IV and V fired above that temperature.
The Phase III exceptions were incised and white incrusted wares, black
burnished wares and graphite painted wares. No convincing link, however,
could be made between pottery and metallurgical technologies.
Elizabeth Slater’s thorough report on the analysis
of 130 samples for traces of metal – both objects and ceramics
– indicates that Phase III was the only period with evidence for
on-site copper melting or smelting, while one tin bronze pin was found
in Phase V. Slater and Renfrew, who adds a detailed review of Aegeo-Balkan
metallurgy, curiously infer the melting of copper from the crucible
evidence, overlooking the fact that some copper smelting does not produce
slag and that, even if it did, it would probably have occurred off-tell.
Nonetheless, the discovery of Karanovo VI-dated crucibles is a rare
enough event on a tell to make this a very important finding. The re-evaluation
of the lead isotopes results by Zosia Anna Stos suggests that Phase
III metal is consistent with a derivation from the Burgas area on the
Bulgarian coast and maybe even from the Taurus Mountains, while Phase
V metal may have originated from Burgas and the Southern Aegean.
One of the outstanding chapters in volume 2 concerns
the report on ornaments by Marianna Nikolaidou, in conjunction with
Nick Shackleton and Michele Miller. Anyone with an interest in Spondylus/Glycymeris
ornament production must read this chapter, with Miller providing an
excellent account of the chaîne opératoire of a Spondylus
ring and Nikolaidou’s analysis of diachronic changes in rings,
beads and pendants. Almost all of Miller’s production stages are
represented at Sitagroi, indicating local production after shell-collection
from the sea 25 km distant, possibly with an eye to exporting completed
ornaments to the Balkans.
After minor chapters by Colin Renfrew and Ernie Elster/Nikolaidou
(on things forgotten in volume 1: a nice Greek word for this is “Paralipómena”!),
what should have been a key chapter in the book – the contextual
discussion of key contexts with their associated finds – falls
rather flat, since the scale of excavation of the Phase I – III
deposits was insufficient to recognise the nature of the deposits, beyond
general terms such as ‘Hearth’ and ‘Debris’
levels. This stands in marked contrast to the complete houses of Phases
IV and V, where Nikolaidou and Elster accomplish miracles (after 30
years!) of data retrieval and synthesis. The volume concludes with publication
of the finds made on field survey and a masterly envoi by Colin Renfrew
and, inevitably, Elster, closing the first phase of the Sitagroi project
and setting up others for a second phase of excavation.
Since the Sitagroi project was conceived on a European
scale, we are entitled to enquire about its contributions to European
prehistory in the AD 21st century. In three senses, Sitagroi is a child
of its time, which has now grown into less fractious middle age. First,
few prehistorians now doubt the reliability, accuracy and precision
of calibrated radiocarbon dates. Secondly, a slightly larger group –
but, in total numbers, still vanishing small – doubts the independence
of Balkan copper metallurgy. Thirdly, a sadly larger group of practicing
excavators doubts the vital importance of wet-sieving and froth flotation
for the recovery of small finds and ecofacts. None of these claims was
secure at the time of the Sitagroi excavations and we should not forget
the role of the Sitagroi project in winning over hearts and minds. So
what else is new?
One of the most significant aspects of the Sitagroi
sequence is its length, enabling us to assess long-term trends in a
way that few sites can do. Despite all of the problems of non-comparability
of the different phases (and it is especially hard to compare I –
III with IV and V), glimpses can be seen of a very striking continuity
over 3,000 years. Jane Renfrew shows us that, with a very few exceptions
(eg domesticated grape from Phase IV), the same range of domesticated
cereals were the mainstays in all phases: einkorn more than emmer wheat
more than hulled six-row barley (the sole reversal dates to Phase IV,
where hulled barley predominates). Aspects of lithic production show
remarkable continuity – all of the cores are worked out in every
phase and Tringham notes a relative uniformity of tool use in all phases.
However, there are marked diachronic variations in the preference for
local vs. exotic lithics. Most ground and polished stone tool types
occur throughout the sequence, with similar distributions of tool sizes;
the same is true for spindle-whorls but not for loom-weights (almost
all in Phase III). Interestingly, the trend towards gradual, cumulative
change through time is most marked in pottery and metal technologies.
This is completely absent, however, in ornament production, which reaches
a peak in Phases II and III. However, small quantities of similar shell
ornaments do occur in Phase IV, amidst the general decline in ostentatiously
symbolic objects.
I am not trying to smooth over the gaps and the discontinuities
in the Sitagroi sequence to produce an unbroken line of ancestral occupation.
What I am suggesting, however, is that there are multiple reasons for
accepting that certain social practices show continuities across ‘phase’
boundaries. We should, after all, not be afraid to state that the phases
at Sitagroi are the investigators’ constructs – based, of
course, on good stratigraphic and ceramic data but, nontheless, constructs
- and therefore not totally sacrosanct. I am also not denying that Phase
III is characterised by peaks in almost every aspect of material culture
– the very manifestation of what we understand as the ‘Climax
Copper Age’. But, despite the uncertainties about the transition
from Phase III to Phase IV on the tell, there would appear to be many
aspects of the habitus linking the Climax Copper Age, the latest
Copper Age and the Early Bronze Age.
What is also extremely exciting about the two Sitagroi
volumes is the innovations that cluster in Phase IV. This period of
Balkan prehistory – broadly equated to the Baden period –
is very poorly understood, not least because, off-tell, settlement deposits
of this period are extremely hard to discover, even in intensive, systematic
survey. At Sitagroi itself, Phase IV is the only period when hulled
six-row barley predominates, when acorn collection is matched by a doubling
of pork consumption and a big increase in venison and when the domestication
of the vine is celebrated by the appearance of new, glossy, prestige
drinking sets. To emphasise these innovations, let me turn briefly to
North East Hungary, where Dr. Eniko Magyari has studied the pollen core
from the Sárlo-hát marsh. In the Baden period, the most
major deforestation thus far combined with high values for both agricultural
and pastoral land use to suggest the most significant landscape transformation
in the mid – late Holocene. In the fieldwalking of the adjacent
settlement area, not a single Baden sherd was found at all, yet the
human impact of that population was very important. Making a comparison
of Sitagroi and Sárlo-hát makes us realise that there
is something which we have not yet grasped about the early 3rd millennium
cal BC.
The other major theme to which the second volume alludes
is social structure. There are several levels at which comments could
be made. At the level of the individual, it is surely significant that
each of the decorated spindle-whorls found in Phase III bore different
incised motifs - surely a sign of individuation of material culture
and paralleled by the very varied motifs on Phase III fired clay figurines,
as well as by the individual drinking cups, each with their own shape,
found at Late Neolithic Makriyalos (Urem-Kotsou et al. 2002).
If we are looking for the ‘individual in prehistory’, it
is no coincidence that s/he is most visible in the Climax Copper Age.
At the level of the household, Elster has made an
impressive spatial analysis of the Phase V Burnt House, with its division
into three areas – the entrance, the all-purpose room and the
apsidal kitchen, with a total of five working areas The gender-sensitive
commentary concerned with women grinding cereal grains, salt and other
foodstuffs is matched by the neat inference from the number of spindle-whorls
that there were probably three spinners in the house. Another aspect
is the corporate level, as exemplified by the Phase V Bin Complex –
interpreted as a sign of collective storage rather than facilities controlled
by a single house. The tensions played out between individuals, households
and corporate groups on this, as any other, prehistoric tell could provide
the framework for a social interpretation that would complement all
of the other aspects of the Sitagroi project. It is clear from instances
like these how much we are missing by lacking any completely excavated
house contexts from the first three phases of life on the tell.
Lastly, the exchange networks connecting Sitagroi
to the outer world tell us much about the climax Phase III, since this
is the period of widest connections. While stone sources for the axes
may well be located to the West (FYROM) or to the East (Greek Thrace),
some of the Phase III copper appears to derive from the Bulgarian Black
Sea coast, exactly the zone with the largest concentrations of Aegean
Spondylus. For a relatively Southern location, Sitagroi III
has the largest collection of Balkan honey flint known in the Copper
Age/Final Neolithic. Since the source of honey flint most probably lies
North of the Rhodopes (if not North of the Stara Planina), corresponding
to the main zone of graphite-painted fine wares, the main components
of a long-distance exchange network are clear – honey flint and
copper carried South, Spondylus and Glycymeris moving
North. While this may not explain the floruit of material culture
in the Climax Copper Age, it locates Sitagroi as part of a primarily
Balkan exchange network, which does have relevance to the emergence
of copper metallurgy on the tell.
In sum, Colin Renfrew and, especially, Ernie Elster,
as well as their team of authors, have completed a magnificent job in
publishing the fascinating results of three seasons of excavations in
such lavish volumes. The achievement of the authors is sufficient to
merit the warmest of congratulations, for the two volumes of Sitagroi
conjointly amount to the most extensive publication as yet of a major
tell excavation in Europe. A final proposal concerns what may be termed
the Sitagroi Principle of Tell Excavation: any would-be
excavator of a tell should be encouraged to read the sum total of over
1,000 pages of text and almost a thousand images from six months’
fieldwork before setting spade to earth.
John Chapman
Department of Archaeology
University of Durham
References
Chapman, J. 1988. Review of ‘Excavations at Sitagroi Volume 1’.
Proc. Prehist. Soc. 54, 341-342
Renfrew, C., Gimbutas, M. & Elster, E. (eds.) 1986. Excavations
at Sitagroi, a prehistoric village in Northeast Greece, Vol. 1.
Monumenta Archaeologica 13. Los Angeles: UCLA Institute of Archaeology
Urem-Kotsou, D., Kotsakis, K. & Stern, B. 2002. Defining function
in Neolithic ceramics: the example of Makriyalos, Greece. Documenta
Praehistorica XXIX, 109-118
Review Submitted: May 2004
The views expressed in this review are not
necessarily those of the Society or the Reviews Editor.
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