Papers by Julka Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic
Science, 2020
Dog domestication was multifaceted Dogs were the first domesticated animal, likely originating fr... more Dog domestication was multifaceted Dogs were the first domesticated animal, likely originating from human-associated wolves, but their origin remains unclear. Bergstrom et al. sequenced 27 ancient dog genomes from multiple locations near to and corresponding in time to comparable human ancient DNA sites (see the Perspective by Pavlidis and Somel). By analyzing these genomes, along with other ancient and modern dog genomes, the authors found that dogs likely arose once from a now-extinct wolf population. They also found that at least five different dog populations ∼10,000 years before the present show replacement in Europe at later dates. Furthermore, some dog population genetics are similar to those of humans, whereas others differ, inferring a complex ancestral history for humanity's best friend. Science , this issue p. 557 ; see also p. 522
Starinar, 2016
The long-standing archaeological research of the Serbian Vinca culture sites of Belovode and Ploc... more The long-standing archaeological research of the Serbian Vinca culture sites of Belovode and Plocnik has been strengthened with the joint collaborative work with the UCL Institute of Archaeology in the past 6 years. This collaboration yielded scientific demonstration of the world?s earliest copper smelting amongst the excavated materials, c. 7000 years old. In the six years since the first publication of this finding in 2010, a number of detailed analytical studies followed, together with another breakthrough discovery of the world?s earliest tin bronze artefact. This artefact was excavated in a secure context within a Vinca culture settlement feature at the site of Plocnik, which was radiocarbon dated to c. 4650 BC. On the basis of the early metallurgical results from Belovode, the UK Government funded a large international collaborative project from 2012-2015. This included Serbian, British and German teams all of whom brought substantial experience and cutting-edge technology to ...
Starinar, 2014
The Vinca culture sites of Belovode and Plocnik have been attracting scholarly attention for deca... more The Vinca culture sites of Belovode and Plocnik have been attracting scholarly attention for decades now, due to numerous discoveries indicative of copper mineral and metal use in these settlements, which are confirmed as, currently, the earliest worldwide and very likely developed independently in Eurasia.1 The authors attempt to give an overview of already published data along with new results stemming from the recently completed doctoral research of the primary author.2 All materials related to copper mineral use and pyrometallurgical activities are presented through the concept of metallurgical cha?ne op?ratoire, following the established sequence of operations,3 which is adjusted for this specific case study and divided into three categories: copper mineral processing, (s)melting debris, and the making and working of finished metal objects. The qualitative overview of available data is therefore focused mainly around the material side of the studied samples and provides an insi...
The earliest tin bronze artefacts in Eurasia are generally believed to have appeared in the Near ... more The earliest tin bronze artefacts in Eurasia are generally believed to have appeared in the Near East in the early third millennium BC. Here we present tin bronze artefacts that occur far from the Near East, and in a significantly earlier period. Excavations at Pločnik, a Vinča culture site in Serbia, recovered a piece of tin bronze foil from an occupation layer dated to the mid fifth millennium BC. The discovery prompted a reassessment of 14 insufficiently contextualised early tin bronze artefacts from the Balkans. They too were found to derive from the smelting of copper-tin ores. These tin bronzes extend the record of bronze making by c. 1500 years, and challenge the conventional narrative of Eurasian metallurgical development.
Antiquity, 2013
The earliest tin bronze artefacts in Eurasia are generally believed to have appeared in the Near ... more The earliest tin bronze artefacts in Eurasia are generally believed to have appeared in the Near East in the early third millennium BC. Here we present tin bronze artefacts that occur far from the Near East, and in a significantly earlier period. Excavations at Pločnik, a Vinča culture site in Serbia, recovered a piece of tin bronze foil from an occupation layer dated to the mid fifth millennium BC. The discovery prompted a reassessment of 14 insufficiently contextualised early tin bronze artefacts from the Balkans. They too were found to derive from the smelting of copper-tin ores. These tin bronzes extend the record of bronze making byc. 1500 years, and challenge the conventional narrative of Eurasian metallurgical development.
Antiquity, 2014
These comments are in response to Radivojević et al. (2013) who claim that a small foil object id... more These comments are in response to Radivojević et al. (2013) who claim that a small foil object identified as tin bronze (11.7 per cent tin), found at the Late Neolithic and Early Copper Age site of Pločnik in southern Serbia, comes from an undisturbed context of the Vinča culture settlement. The object was used as the central piece of evidence to argue for the first appearance of tin bronze production in Eurasia (and presumably the world). This object is compared to 14 other objects, characterised as tin bronzes on the basis of their compositions, from 10 sites, mainly in the central and eastern Balkans, in present-day Serbia and Bulgaria. These sites have complex settlement histories and, while they have produced evidence of late fifth millennium BC habitation, their deep stratigraphies show that this is only one phase among many that extend into later prehistory. It is on the basis of these finds that Radivojević et al. argue that the previously accepted narrative regarding the evolution of metallurgy in Eurasia is destabilised. They claim a date for the rise of tin bronze production 1500 years before its first documented emergence among the Bronze Age societies of southwest Asia. They also suggest that the colour obtained by producing tin bronzes imitated the aesthetic properties of mid fifth millennium BC golden objects. Radivojević et al. conclude that the evidence they present suggests that the nature of early metallurgy in the Balkans was 'polymetallic'. There are several fundamental problems with both the factual evidence presented in the paper and the research design. The compositional analysis undertaken by Radivojević et al. is not questioned and we assume that their identification of the objects as tin bronzes is accurate. However, we are concerned by the archaeological context and the interpretation of the findings. The key issue that concerns us here is the provenance of the central piece of evidence-the tin bronze foil, labelled as sample 63 from the site of Pločnik. At this point, we should state that one of the present authors (DŠ) has been the principal investigator of the archaeological works at the site of Pločnik since 1996 and was present at the site as its field director throughout the 2008 field season when the object in question was found. DŠ also provided Miljana Radivojević with the piece of metal foil, with its contextual information, for analysis. Contrary to the statement made in the article, this object was not found in "an undisturbed context, on the floor of a dwelling structure next to a copper workshop [.. .] approximately 1m from a fireplace" (Radivojević et al. 2013: 1032), but in the spoil heap above section CD, which is on the opposite side of the excavated area from the find spot indicated in their fig. 2. The metal foil was noticed by the excavators and collected from the spoil heap; it was
Quaternary International, 2020
This study applies thin-section petrography to a wide selection of ceramic and geological samples... more This study applies thin-section petrography to a wide selection of ceramic and geological samples from four archaeological sites (Belovode, Pločnik, Gradište-Iđjoš, and Potporanj) belonging to both the Neolithic and Chalcolithic phases of the Vinča culture phenomenon (c. 5350 to 4600 BC) to track intra-and interregional traditions of pottery production with a focus on paste recipes. The results of this study suggest that Vinča pottery manufacturing traditions possess general technical similarities, with significant differences resulting from both environmental constraints and deliberate choices. The comparison of these results with 2 those of other petrographic studies in the Neolithic/Chalcolithic Balkans further emphasises that Vinča pottery reflects numerous communities of practice that fall under the umbrella of 'Vinča culture'. This is visible in the varying processes of selecting and manipulating raw materials for ceramic production. Therefore, differences between Vinča pottery assemblages reflect various models of interaction between people and their landscape as well as different technological traditions. Overall, this approach allows us to discuss the problem of similarities and differences in material culture from a perspective that emphasises the socially constructed nature of ceramics.
Quaternary International, 2020
This study applies thin-section petrography to a wide selection of ceramic and geological samples... more This study applies thin-section petrography to a wide selection of ceramic and geological samples from four archaeological sites (Belovode, Pločnik, Gradište-Iđjoš, and Potporanj) belonging to both the Neolithic and Chalcolithic phases of the Vinča culture phenomenon (c. 5350 to 4600 BCE) to track intra-and interregional traditions of pottery production with a focus on paste recipes. The results of this study suggest that Vinča pottery manufacturing traditions possess general technical similarities, with significant differences resulting from both environmental constraints and deliberate choices. The comparison of these results with those of other petro-graphic studies in the Neolithic/Chalcolithic Balkans further emphasises that Vinča pottery reflects numerous communities of practice that fall under the umbrella of 'Vinča culture'. This is visible in the varying processes of selecting and manipulating raw materials for ceramic production. Therefore, differences between Vinča pottery assemblages reflect various models of interaction between people and their landscape as well as different technological traditions. Overall, this approach allows us to discuss the problem of similarities and differences in material culture from a perspective that emphasises the socially constructed nature of ceramics.
Science, 2020
Dogs were the first domestic animal, but little is known about their population history and to wh... more Dogs were the first domestic animal, but little is known about their population history and to what extent it was linked to humans. We sequenced 27 ancient dog genomes and found that all dogs share a common ancestry distinct from present-day wolves, with limited gene flow from wolves since domestication but substantial dog-to-wolf gene flow. By 11,000 years ago, at least five major ancestry lineages had diversified, demonstrating a deep genetic history of dogs during the Paleolithic. Coanalysis with human genomes reveals aspects of dog population history that mirror humans, including Levant-related ancestry in Africa and early agricultural Europe. Other aspects differ, including the impacts of steppe pastoralist expansions in West and East Eurasia and a near-complete turnover of Neolithic European dog ancestry.
Glasnik Srpskog arheološkog društva 35, 2019
Abstract: The paper addresses the research on topographic features and economic potentials of lan... more Abstract: The paper addresses the research on topographic features and economic potentials of landscapes connected with Metal Age sites, in order to compile fundamental data on settlement trends in the Toplica District during the Eneolithic, Bronze and Iron Age. Considering that our current knowledge on Metal Ages within the Toplica District is quite scarce, the paper presents basic data for each of the sites that had been compiled for decades, together with the accompanying archeological material which originates from prehistoric collections of museums in Prokuplje and Niš. The archaeological data is complemented by topographic, geological, natural-geographical and ethnographical data related to the landscape of the sites, which indicate certain economic perspectives of Metal Ages populations in the Toplica District (4500-1 BC).
Топлички округ обухвата четири општине на југозападу Србије: Прокупље, Блаце, Куршумлију и Житора... more Топлички округ обухвата четири општине на југозападу Србије: Прокупље, Блаце, Куршумлију и Житорађу. То је заправо подручје слива реке Топлице омеђено планином Копаоник на западу, планином Јастребац на северу, са југа је Радан, а према истоку је долина Топлице отворена ка плодном Добричу. Захваљујћи повољним условима за живот и великом руд-ном богатству, у Топлици људи континуирано живе од неолита, кроз све историјске периоде. Када говоримо о археолошкој баштини Топлице, с по-носом можемо да поменемо неколико изузетних споменика из различитих времена, бројна археолошка налазишта из праисторије, остатке римских вила, византијске тврђаве, средњовековна утврђања... Но, важно археолош-ко наслеђе још увек није у потпуности евидентирано, неке споменике које је забележио Феликс Каниц (Каниц 1985) почетком XX века више не можемо да пронађемо, неке који су истраживани и конзервирани не можемо да пре-познамо. Свест о значају археолошког наслеђа је у Топлици постојала још по-четком XX века, и чини се да је однос према наслеђу, у то време, био испра
(Summary in English)
The long-standing archaeological research of the Serbian Vinča culture sites... more (Summary in English)
The long-standing archaeological research of the Serbian Vinča culture sites of Belovode and Pločnik has been strengthened with the joint collaborative work with the UCL Institute of Archaeology in the past 6 years. This collaboration yielded scientific demonstration of the world’s earliest copper smelting amongst the excavated materials, c. 7000 years old. In the six years since the first publication of this finding in 2010, a number of detailed analytical studies followed, together with another breakthrough discovery of the world’s earliest tin bronze artefact. This artefact was excavated in a secure context within a Vinča culture settlement feature at the site of Pločnik, which was radiocarbon dated to c. 4650 BC. On the basis of the early metallurgical results from Belovode, the UK Government funded a large international collaborative project from 2012–2015. This included Serbian, British and German teams all of whom brought substantial experience and cutting-edge technology to the study of the evolution of the earliest known metal-making in its 5th millennium BC Balkan cultural context. This project’s forthcoming publications, including a major monograph published by UCL Press, which will be free to download, promise to shed new light on the life of the first metal-making communities in Eurasia, and also out- line integrated methodological approaches that will serve as a model for similar projects worldwide.
The open, balanced and respectful research atmosphere within our core project team is currently being challenged by an unsubstantiated controversy. This controversy arises from accusations against the project team members by Duško Šljivar, a once an extremely supportive and prominent member of our team. Each of these accusations by Duško Šljivar is completely contradictory to his own previous documented work, and have therefore easily been refuted. The work by Duško Šljivar in question encompasses: two decades of excavations at the sites of Belovode and Pločnik; including single-authored and joint publications prior to 2012, including those with Miljana Radivojević and Julka Kuzmanović-Cvetković; and official field documentation, either signed off solely by him, or together with his co-excavator at the site of Pločnik, Julka Kuzmanović-Cvetković. The first accusation, published in 2014, saw Duško Šljivar deny, together with another colleague, the veracity of his original field journal notes on the context of the previously mentioned tin bronze foil, for which he received an immediate and successful rebuttal. In the second accusation, published in Starinar LXV/ 2015, Duško Šljivar continued with the same practice of denying his own official field journals and publications which he (co-) authored with a series of false accusations relating to the manipulation of the original data from the excavations of the sites of
Belovode and Pločnik by Radivojević and Kuzmanović-Cvetković. In the third accusation, Šljivar argues that his copyright was infringed, and that field journals were used without per- mission. This is despite the fact that these accusations are legally and formally unsupported, and that he shared his data and materials during the course of a long collaboration and co-authorship on a number of articles with both Radivojević and Kuzmanović-Cvetković over the course of the last two decades.
In other words, in order to validate his accusations and to seek to damage our untainted academic standings, Duško Šljivar has denied all his professional and academic achievements, research articles, field diaries and formal documents that he ever (co-) wrote and/or signed on the topic. He even goes as far as to exclude a landmark joint publication in an international peer-reviewed scientific journal (Radivojević et al. 2010) from his citation list in order to support his claim that a formal agreement on the joint publishing of Belovode metallurgy results has never been fulfilled. Šljivar also omitted the published rebuttal (Radivojević et al. 2014) to unsubstantiated claims on alleged manipulation of contextual data of the tin bronze foil from the Vinča culture site of Pločnik put forward in a joint article by him and another colleague (Šljivar and Boric 2014). In order to end this malicious debate, we present our rebuttal from 2014 and further elaborate upon it by showing the original quotes from the Pločnik field diary on the day that the tin bronze foil in question was found, and from the concluding remarks of the diary in question. We again clearly demonstrate that there has never been any doubt regarding the secure context of the tin bronze foil within the Vinča culture material, that the Vinča horizon is the only cultural occupation at the site of Pločnik and that no intrusion has ever been observed in the context of this find, not on the day of the discovery, not in the conclusions or the excavation field diary, and not in the first publication of the said find by Duško Šljivar.
We have presented a detailed account of this particular case in order to show [Šljivar’s contradictory and inconsistent account of the official fieldwork documentation that he co-authored. It would appear that either Šljivar made a false field diary entry regarding the context of the tin bronze foil on the day of its discovery in 2008, or he presented incorrect information in the later joint commentary. The former hypothesis that Šljivar made a false entry in the field diary in 2008 in order to potentially mislead later scholarship does not seem plausible, especially as the object of dispute was not identified as tin-bronze on the day of discovery, but merely as another copper object from Pločnik and therefore not nearly as important to early metallurgical scholar ship. To underline further the absurdity of the situation in which we found ourselves with Šljivar, we should also mention Šljivar’s initial agreement to co-author the paper we published in Starinar XLIV/2014, from which he withdrew without offering any constructive comments, only to publicly publish his views as well as professional and personal insults directed towards us in Starinar XLV/2015. The situation where Šljivar had the opportunity to act in his best professional interest was while our article was still in preparation and he chose not to do it; this leads us to assume that professional interests were not his priority on this matter. Finally, Šljivar’s deceitful and erroneous claims were executed in a spiteful language that is unfit for a scholarly journal, and damages both his reputation and the decision of this journal to publish them.
We further elaborate on these developments in the broader context of Serbian archaeology, quoting the legislation on the intellectual copyright of excavation directors over the archaeological materials that they have excavated. The current law on Cultural Monuments recognizes the exclusive rights of excavation directors to publish their research for the period of 12 months after the excavations ended. After this period, other interested parties in the field can access the materials and any related field documentation. This demonstrates, alongside previously mentioned scientific arguments that we have worked with the Belovode and Pločnik materials in accordance with the valid legal regulations. We conclude that there is no formal support for the exclusive interpretation of lives of communities in the sites of Belovode and Pločnik c. 7000 years ago, and emphasise the value of our original scientific contribution as illuminating a particular economic activity of the inhabitants of these two prehistoric villages. Finally, we call for the reinforcement of existing procedures in Serbia so that our profession can prevent any future misconduct such as that exemplified in the attempt by Duško Šljivar.
Tables for the original article accepted for publication in Starinar (XLVI/2016)
The earliest tin bronze artefacts in Eurasia are generally believed to have appeared in the Near ... more The earliest tin bronze artefacts in Eurasia are generally believed to have appeared in the Near East in the early third millennium BC. Here we present tin bronze artefacts that occur far from the Near East, and in a significantly earlier period. Excavations at Pločnik, a Vinča culture site in Serbia, recovered a piece of tin bronze foil from an occupation layer dated to the mid fifth millennium BC. The discovery prompted a reassessment of 14 insufficiently contextualised early tin bronze artefacts from the Balkans. They too were found to derive from the smelting of copper-tin ores. These tin bronzes extend the record of bronze making by c. 1500 years, and challenge the conventional narrative of Eurasian metallurgical development.
Starinar 64, 2014
The Vinča culture sites of Belovode and Pločnik have been attracting scholarly attention for deca... more The Vinča culture sites of Belovode and Pločnik have been attracting scholarly attention for decades now, due to numerous discoveries indicative of copper mineral and metal use in these settlements, which are confirmed as, currently, the earliest worldwide and very likely developed independently in Eurasia . The authors attempt to give an overview of already published data along with new results stemming from the recently completed doctoral research of the primary author. All materials related to copper mineral use and pyrometallurgical activities are presented through the concept of metallurgical chaîne opératoire, following the established sequence of operations, which is adjusted for this specific case study and divided into three categories: copper mineral processing, (s)melting debris, and the making and working of finished metal objects. The qualitative overview of available data is therefore focused mainly around the material side of the studied samples and provides an insight into the technological choices for making copper mineral ornaments and copper metal artefacts in the sites of Belovode and Pločnik. Accordingly, it provides a model for the understanding of similar material assemblages that occur in other Vinča culture sites, or beyond.
Archaeotechnology: Studying Technology from Prehistory to the Middle Ages, 2014
The appearance of the earliest tin bronze artefacts is traditionally linked to the copper-tin a... more The appearance of the earliest tin bronze artefacts is traditionally linked to the copper-tin alloying practice in the 3rd millennium BC Near Eastern Bronze Age settlements. Advocates of this model argue that tin for alloying may have come from deposits located in central Asia or southwest Iran; however, evidence for tin bronze production remains a challenge for archaeologists. Here we present a piece of tin bronze foil discovered in the Vinča culture site of Pločnik in Serbia, and securely dated to c. 4650 BC, which makes it the earliest known tin bronze artefact anywhere in the world. Compositional analysis links it to smelting a complex copper-tin ore, such as chalcopyrite intergrown with stannite and / or fahlerz, while metallographic analysis indicate its intentional production and understanding of material properties of the newly acquired metal. These results initiated a reassessment of the fourteen previously discovered and analysed artefacts of similar compositional pattern as the Pločnik foil. The rise of tin bronze metallurgy in the Balkans is also discussed in the light of the concurrent appearance of other colourful metal objects in this region.
The earliest tin bronze artefacts in Eurasia are generally believed to have appeared in the Near ... more The earliest tin bronze artefacts in Eurasia are generally believed to have appeared in the Near East in the early third millennium BC. Here we present tin bronze artefacts that occur far from the Near East, and in a significantly earlier period. Excavations at Pločnik, a Vinča culture site in Serbia, recovered a piece of tin bronze foil from an occupation layer dated to the mid fifth millennium BC. The discovery prompted a reassessment of 14 insufficiently contextualised early tin bronze artefacts from the Balkans. They too were found to derive from the smelting of copper-tin ores. These tin bronzes extend the record of bronze making by c. 1500 years, and challenge the conventional narrative of Eurasian metallurgical development.
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Papers by Julka Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic
The long-standing archaeological research of the Serbian Vinča culture sites of Belovode and Pločnik has been strengthened with the joint collaborative work with the UCL Institute of Archaeology in the past 6 years. This collaboration yielded scientific demonstration of the world’s earliest copper smelting amongst the excavated materials, c. 7000 years old. In the six years since the first publication of this finding in 2010, a number of detailed analytical studies followed, together with another breakthrough discovery of the world’s earliest tin bronze artefact. This artefact was excavated in a secure context within a Vinča culture settlement feature at the site of Pločnik, which was radiocarbon dated to c. 4650 BC. On the basis of the early metallurgical results from Belovode, the UK Government funded a large international collaborative project from 2012–2015. This included Serbian, British and German teams all of whom brought substantial experience and cutting-edge technology to the study of the evolution of the earliest known metal-making in its 5th millennium BC Balkan cultural context. This project’s forthcoming publications, including a major monograph published by UCL Press, which will be free to download, promise to shed new light on the life of the first metal-making communities in Eurasia, and also out- line integrated methodological approaches that will serve as a model for similar projects worldwide.
The open, balanced and respectful research atmosphere within our core project team is currently being challenged by an unsubstantiated controversy. This controversy arises from accusations against the project team members by Duško Šljivar, a once an extremely supportive and prominent member of our team. Each of these accusations by Duško Šljivar is completely contradictory to his own previous documented work, and have therefore easily been refuted. The work by Duško Šljivar in question encompasses: two decades of excavations at the sites of Belovode and Pločnik; including single-authored and joint publications prior to 2012, including those with Miljana Radivojević and Julka Kuzmanović-Cvetković; and official field documentation, either signed off solely by him, or together with his co-excavator at the site of Pločnik, Julka Kuzmanović-Cvetković. The first accusation, published in 2014, saw Duško Šljivar deny, together with another colleague, the veracity of his original field journal notes on the context of the previously mentioned tin bronze foil, for which he received an immediate and successful rebuttal. In the second accusation, published in Starinar LXV/ 2015, Duško Šljivar continued with the same practice of denying his own official field journals and publications which he (co-) authored with a series of false accusations relating to the manipulation of the original data from the excavations of the sites of
Belovode and Pločnik by Radivojević and Kuzmanović-Cvetković. In the third accusation, Šljivar argues that his copyright was infringed, and that field journals were used without per- mission. This is despite the fact that these accusations are legally and formally unsupported, and that he shared his data and materials during the course of a long collaboration and co-authorship on a number of articles with both Radivojević and Kuzmanović-Cvetković over the course of the last two decades.
In other words, in order to validate his accusations and to seek to damage our untainted academic standings, Duško Šljivar has denied all his professional and academic achievements, research articles, field diaries and formal documents that he ever (co-) wrote and/or signed on the topic. He even goes as far as to exclude a landmark joint publication in an international peer-reviewed scientific journal (Radivojević et al. 2010) from his citation list in order to support his claim that a formal agreement on the joint publishing of Belovode metallurgy results has never been fulfilled. Šljivar also omitted the published rebuttal (Radivojević et al. 2014) to unsubstantiated claims on alleged manipulation of contextual data of the tin bronze foil from the Vinča culture site of Pločnik put forward in a joint article by him and another colleague (Šljivar and Boric 2014). In order to end this malicious debate, we present our rebuttal from 2014 and further elaborate upon it by showing the original quotes from the Pločnik field diary on the day that the tin bronze foil in question was found, and from the concluding remarks of the diary in question. We again clearly demonstrate that there has never been any doubt regarding the secure context of the tin bronze foil within the Vinča culture material, that the Vinča horizon is the only cultural occupation at the site of Pločnik and that no intrusion has ever been observed in the context of this find, not on the day of the discovery, not in the conclusions or the excavation field diary, and not in the first publication of the said find by Duško Šljivar.
We have presented a detailed account of this particular case in order to show [Šljivar’s contradictory and inconsistent account of the official fieldwork documentation that he co-authored. It would appear that either Šljivar made a false field diary entry regarding the context of the tin bronze foil on the day of its discovery in 2008, or he presented incorrect information in the later joint commentary. The former hypothesis that Šljivar made a false entry in the field diary in 2008 in order to potentially mislead later scholarship does not seem plausible, especially as the object of dispute was not identified as tin-bronze on the day of discovery, but merely as another copper object from Pločnik and therefore not nearly as important to early metallurgical scholar ship. To underline further the absurdity of the situation in which we found ourselves with Šljivar, we should also mention Šljivar’s initial agreement to co-author the paper we published in Starinar XLIV/2014, from which he withdrew without offering any constructive comments, only to publicly publish his views as well as professional and personal insults directed towards us in Starinar XLV/2015. The situation where Šljivar had the opportunity to act in his best professional interest was while our article was still in preparation and he chose not to do it; this leads us to assume that professional interests were not his priority on this matter. Finally, Šljivar’s deceitful and erroneous claims were executed in a spiteful language that is unfit for a scholarly journal, and damages both his reputation and the decision of this journal to publish them.
We further elaborate on these developments in the broader context of Serbian archaeology, quoting the legislation on the intellectual copyright of excavation directors over the archaeological materials that they have excavated. The current law on Cultural Monuments recognizes the exclusive rights of excavation directors to publish their research for the period of 12 months after the excavations ended. After this period, other interested parties in the field can access the materials and any related field documentation. This demonstrates, alongside previously mentioned scientific arguments that we have worked with the Belovode and Pločnik materials in accordance with the valid legal regulations. We conclude that there is no formal support for the exclusive interpretation of lives of communities in the sites of Belovode and Pločnik c. 7000 years ago, and emphasise the value of our original scientific contribution as illuminating a particular economic activity of the inhabitants of these two prehistoric villages. Finally, we call for the reinforcement of existing procedures in Serbia so that our profession can prevent any future misconduct such as that exemplified in the attempt by Duško Šljivar.
The long-standing archaeological research of the Serbian Vinča culture sites of Belovode and Pločnik has been strengthened with the joint collaborative work with the UCL Institute of Archaeology in the past 6 years. This collaboration yielded scientific demonstration of the world’s earliest copper smelting amongst the excavated materials, c. 7000 years old. In the six years since the first publication of this finding in 2010, a number of detailed analytical studies followed, together with another breakthrough discovery of the world’s earliest tin bronze artefact. This artefact was excavated in a secure context within a Vinča culture settlement feature at the site of Pločnik, which was radiocarbon dated to c. 4650 BC. On the basis of the early metallurgical results from Belovode, the UK Government funded a large international collaborative project from 2012–2015. This included Serbian, British and German teams all of whom brought substantial experience and cutting-edge technology to the study of the evolution of the earliest known metal-making in its 5th millennium BC Balkan cultural context. This project’s forthcoming publications, including a major monograph published by UCL Press, which will be free to download, promise to shed new light on the life of the first metal-making communities in Eurasia, and also out- line integrated methodological approaches that will serve as a model for similar projects worldwide.
The open, balanced and respectful research atmosphere within our core project team is currently being challenged by an unsubstantiated controversy. This controversy arises from accusations against the project team members by Duško Šljivar, a once an extremely supportive and prominent member of our team. Each of these accusations by Duško Šljivar is completely contradictory to his own previous documented work, and have therefore easily been refuted. The work by Duško Šljivar in question encompasses: two decades of excavations at the sites of Belovode and Pločnik; including single-authored and joint publications prior to 2012, including those with Miljana Radivojević and Julka Kuzmanović-Cvetković; and official field documentation, either signed off solely by him, or together with his co-excavator at the site of Pločnik, Julka Kuzmanović-Cvetković. The first accusation, published in 2014, saw Duško Šljivar deny, together with another colleague, the veracity of his original field journal notes on the context of the previously mentioned tin bronze foil, for which he received an immediate and successful rebuttal. In the second accusation, published in Starinar LXV/ 2015, Duško Šljivar continued with the same practice of denying his own official field journals and publications which he (co-) authored with a series of false accusations relating to the manipulation of the original data from the excavations of the sites of
Belovode and Pločnik by Radivojević and Kuzmanović-Cvetković. In the third accusation, Šljivar argues that his copyright was infringed, and that field journals were used without per- mission. This is despite the fact that these accusations are legally and formally unsupported, and that he shared his data and materials during the course of a long collaboration and co-authorship on a number of articles with both Radivojević and Kuzmanović-Cvetković over the course of the last two decades.
In other words, in order to validate his accusations and to seek to damage our untainted academic standings, Duško Šljivar has denied all his professional and academic achievements, research articles, field diaries and formal documents that he ever (co-) wrote and/or signed on the topic. He even goes as far as to exclude a landmark joint publication in an international peer-reviewed scientific journal (Radivojević et al. 2010) from his citation list in order to support his claim that a formal agreement on the joint publishing of Belovode metallurgy results has never been fulfilled. Šljivar also omitted the published rebuttal (Radivojević et al. 2014) to unsubstantiated claims on alleged manipulation of contextual data of the tin bronze foil from the Vinča culture site of Pločnik put forward in a joint article by him and another colleague (Šljivar and Boric 2014). In order to end this malicious debate, we present our rebuttal from 2014 and further elaborate upon it by showing the original quotes from the Pločnik field diary on the day that the tin bronze foil in question was found, and from the concluding remarks of the diary in question. We again clearly demonstrate that there has never been any doubt regarding the secure context of the tin bronze foil within the Vinča culture material, that the Vinča horizon is the only cultural occupation at the site of Pločnik and that no intrusion has ever been observed in the context of this find, not on the day of the discovery, not in the conclusions or the excavation field diary, and not in the first publication of the said find by Duško Šljivar.
We have presented a detailed account of this particular case in order to show [Šljivar’s contradictory and inconsistent account of the official fieldwork documentation that he co-authored. It would appear that either Šljivar made a false field diary entry regarding the context of the tin bronze foil on the day of its discovery in 2008, or he presented incorrect information in the later joint commentary. The former hypothesis that Šljivar made a false entry in the field diary in 2008 in order to potentially mislead later scholarship does not seem plausible, especially as the object of dispute was not identified as tin-bronze on the day of discovery, but merely as another copper object from Pločnik and therefore not nearly as important to early metallurgical scholar ship. To underline further the absurdity of the situation in which we found ourselves with Šljivar, we should also mention Šljivar’s initial agreement to co-author the paper we published in Starinar XLIV/2014, from which he withdrew without offering any constructive comments, only to publicly publish his views as well as professional and personal insults directed towards us in Starinar XLV/2015. The situation where Šljivar had the opportunity to act in his best professional interest was while our article was still in preparation and he chose not to do it; this leads us to assume that professional interests were not his priority on this matter. Finally, Šljivar’s deceitful and erroneous claims were executed in a spiteful language that is unfit for a scholarly journal, and damages both his reputation and the decision of this journal to publish them.
We further elaborate on these developments in the broader context of Serbian archaeology, quoting the legislation on the intellectual copyright of excavation directors over the archaeological materials that they have excavated. The current law on Cultural Monuments recognizes the exclusive rights of excavation directors to publish their research for the period of 12 months after the excavations ended. After this period, other interested parties in the field can access the materials and any related field documentation. This demonstrates, alongside previously mentioned scientific arguments that we have worked with the Belovode and Pločnik materials in accordance with the valid legal regulations. We conclude that there is no formal support for the exclusive interpretation of lives of communities in the sites of Belovode and Pločnik c. 7000 years ago, and emphasise the value of our original scientific contribution as illuminating a particular economic activity of the inhabitants of these two prehistoric villages. Finally, we call for the reinforcement of existing procedures in Serbia so that our profession can prevent any future misconduct such as that exemplified in the attempt by Duško Šljivar.
In European Neolithic era, the culture of Vinča stands out as the one characterized by superior craftsmenship in clay modeling, its most prominent aspect being figurative sculpture, one of the most outstanding artistic achievements of the Neolithic era. Although figurative sculpture is present in all phases of Vinča culture (5400- 4500 BC), it could be claimed that its diversity, profusion and high artisanship culminated in the centuries around 4800 BC (Тасић 2008: 144). It is assumed that such flourishing of art is connected with the continual existence of the settlements and stable economy, followed by an organized social system with a developed belief system and established ritual practices.
The sample chosen for the statistical analysis of the sex or any other detail is limited to the specimens with preserved body parts on which it is possible to notice the existence of the required element. Thus, if we are interested in the sex of the figurine, the analytical sample will only be comprised of the specimens with preserved body parts on which sex attributes could be expected. The procedure is similar if we are interested in the number of bracelets shown on female figurines, in which case the sample will include only the specimens with defined sex and at least one preserved arm. Such sampling procedure was followed consistently in all the statistical analyses of the presence of certain elements on the figurines.
The total of Neolithic and early Eneolithic figurines from northern areas of the Central Balkans is 359 specimens of figurative sculpture, collected from fifteen sites from four narrow geographical areas, marked as Župa aleksandrovačka, lower section of Južna Morava, Ponišavlje and Toplica. The number of sites and figurines per area varies considerably from one area to another; thus, in Župa aleksandrovačka, only one site with twenty-three figurines has been registered, while only seventeen figurines have been collected from four sites in Ponišavlje. On the other hand, 225 specimens from five sites in Toplica were included in the sample for analysis, and only ninety-four specimens from the same number of sites registered in the lower section of Južna Morava entered the catalogue. Such irregular concentration is connected with the degree to which these areas have been researched, but also with the inference that the highest concentration of figurines has been noted between the lines Vinča- Gladnice and Starčevo – Pavlovac. More precisely, the concentration of figurines decreases with the increase of the distance between Vinča’s settlements and these lines.
The total sample showed that the largest number of specimens is incomplete and can be classified into some of the categories according to the preserved elements (Table 1). The specimens with only heads preserved are the most common ones (152 items or 42%), while the fragments which represent only preserved body parts are much less frequent (64 items or 18%), followed by headless figurines (58 items or 16%), complete figurines (46 items, 13%), busts (22 items, 6%) and limb fragments (17 items, 5%). Some researchers noted that the fragmentation of figurines is related to deliberate breaking and mutilation of certain body parts. This thesis is based on the fact that complete figurines are most commonly found in the remains of Neolithic houses, while a much larger number of figurines’ fragments are found scattered across the site or thrown into the garbage pit (Porčić 2011, 2012a). Hence, it is assumed that deliberate breaking of figurines was a part of a widespread ritual which used to define or regulate the complex social relations among the members of Vinča’s communities (Chapman J. 2000; Porčić 2012b; Лазић 2015).
The fragmentation of the zoomorphic figurines allowed sex analysis in seventeen items (52%), while 16 items (48%) had no preserved body parts where the attributes for sex recognition would be expected. Thus, in the chosen sample of zoomorphic figurines, there are three items with a clearly defined male sex organ (18%), while it was impossible to clearly determine the sex in the rest.
An interesting characteristic of the figurines from the sample is that the heads on the male and sexless ones are preserved in the majority of cases (64% and 65%), while the percentage of female figurines with preserved heads is much lower and amounts to 23%. Such statistic supports the thesis that figurines without clear sex characteristics are also male representations. If we take into account the assumption that each figurine represents an individual from the community (Лазић 2015), as well as the fact that complete figurines are mainly found in houses (Porčić 2011, 2012a; Porčić and Blagojević 2014), we can assume that the majority of male figurines actually used to represent the head-of-household, i.e. the protector of the family. Although family relations in the communities of Vinča culture remain unknown to us, the long established thesis of complete absence of matriarchal societies throughout the entire history of humankind (Vezel 1983) could point to this possibility. However, such conclusions do not necessarily negate the importance of women in religion, cult and ritual practices. Observing their artistic beauty, representations and frequency, it could be assumed that certain female figurines justifiably represented an infinite source of inspiration for the study of Neolithic religion, where fertility cult and woman as a supreme deity of the Neolithic pantheon, with names such as Mother goddess, Great goddess, or the proto-mother, have always been emphasized.
The practice of keeping male anthropomorphic figurines may have been preserved through the cult of ancestral spirits, so this type of figurines was passed down from generation to generation as the idol and protector of the home. In relation to this, the reason for generally lower frequency of male statuettes on Vinča sites should be looked into. Potential scenarios which emerged from the analyses of the figurines found in a precisely registered context present us with several possibilities, but the assumption that each household had a figurine whose duration equalled that of the household itself or one generation (Porčić 2011) is the most well-argumented one. Activities connected to ancestor worship lead to the development of a belief system which could have evolved into concepts of heroes and gods in the course of time. The notion of ancestor cult and common history of a society limited the process of social differentiation through inherited power, authority or status, thus lowering social tensions (Insoll 2011). That way, male or sexless figurines can also be interpreted as status symbols of family's origins.
On the other hand, the sample showed that female figurines were broken more often, which could be related to a certain ritual during a woman's marriage and leaving the family home, but, since there are no insights in the structure of Neolithic society, this thesis remains just a bold assumption. We must note that such interpretation of Late Neolithic anthropomorphic figurines cannot be applied to all items in the sample, since it contains figures which represent babies, hermaphrodites, as well as individuals or groups in various scenes from the life of the community.