gordon childe - new views on the relations of the aegean and the north balkans

8/3/2019 Gordon Childe - New Views on the Relations of the Aegean and the North Balkans

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NEW VIEWS ON THE RELATIONS OF THE AEGEAN ANDTHE NORTH BALKANSWE have been treated to many variants of the thesis that bringssome or allthe elements of neolithic culture in Greece from a little-known region north ofthe Balkans. Recently two versions1 have appeared that surpass their fore-

runners in profundity and erudition. After intensive study in the principalGreek Museums and visits to Serbia and Hungary, Dr. Frankfort has come tothe conclusionthat there was a great influx of people2 from the Danube basinacross the Balkans and into Greece about the end of the First (Thessalian)Neolithic Period. ThisDanubian invasion would have been in a sense a counter-part of one from farther east that brought the obviously intrusive Dimini cultureto easternThessaly.The clearest proof of their advent that his Danubians have left consists incertain types of carboniferouspottery. But, of course, carboniferouswares arecharacteristicof the earliest culturallayers in the wholeeast Mediterraneanregionfrom the Hellespont to Upper Egypt.3 Dr. Frankfort himself admits thisgenerallyaccepted propositionas fully as Mr.Forsdyke. He even goes so faras toadvance evidence for the existence of a similartradition in Thessaly itself, coevalwith, and perhaps even prior to, the classical neolithic red ware of the FirstPeriod. Plainly then black carboniferous pottery per se does not have to bebroughtfrom the Danube valley to reachthe Aegean area.Consider hen the distribution of the fabrics our author singles out from themass of black wares as intrusively Danubian in Greece. They are not, likeDimini ware and its Corinthiananalogues,concentrated in and confined to regionspeculiarly exposed to penetration from the north. On the contrary, the typesupon which Dr. Frankfort insists, burnish-decorated,ribbed,knobbed and white-painted wares, are commonest in the sheltered valleys of Phocis and Boeotia.Central Greece is hardly where we should expect to find northern invaders con-gregated; on the other hand, it is a region where an old tradition might persistlonger than elsewhere. And the black wares there might be due to just such asurvival. For there is no local stratigraphical authority for the proposal,madeby the present writer in 19154 and accepted only with due reserve by Dr.

1 Frankfort, Studies in the Early Pottery nastic black-topped ware is partly carboni-of the Near East, ii.; Matz, Friihkretische ferous, as Lucas has recently shown,Siegel. J.R.A.I., LIX, p. 128. On the distri-2 Frankfort, op. cit., p. 42. bution of such wares cf. Forsdyke, B.M.3 Even in the very earliest culture of Catalogue, Vases, I, i. p. x.Egypt found at Badari, black carboniferous 4 J.H.S., xxxv, p. 200.pottery occurs, and the classical Predy- 255


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V. G. CHTTLDEFrankfort,to put the black waresat Hagia Marinaand Orchomenos ater than thered fabrics. Hence the CentralGreekblack wares might beregardedas a legacyfrom a common east Mediterranean radition. Since the very wares under dis-cussion appearalso in Anatolia at Yortan and Boz Euyuk, the idea that they aredevelopments of a generalcommon tradition is materially strengthened.Turn now to the wares themselves. Thereis no doubt whatever of the identityof the burnish-decoratedand ribbed fabrics from Central Greeceand from Vincain Serbia. But the distribution of both types north of the Balkans is quitelimited. The former is confined to Serbia, and even there is far from common.Ribbed ware does eventually reach Central Hungary (Lengyel and Bodrog-keresztur)5 and even Czechoslovakia. But while at Vinca it appearsalready inthe earliest strata, at the more northern sites it appears in a phase that must beequated rather with the Middle strata at Vinca, my Period II-in other words,it spreads gradually northward. At Lengyel, too, new southern imports (e.g.Tridacnashells) appear about the same time, and in Moraviacopper and spoolsthat can be paralleledat Troy. To label as Danubian fabrics one of which onlyjust crossesthe Balkans,whilethe otherdemonstrably spreadsslowlynorthwards,is illogical. Conversely the rippled wares of neolithic Crete and the burnish-decorated wares of Syria at least disclosetendencies in the originalMediterraneanceramictradition from which our specialisedvarieties might have developed.The case of knobbed ware is still worse. The variety found in Thessaly andCentral Greececharacterised by the application of flattened pellets to the vase-surface is really uncommon in the MiddleDanube basin and does not occur at allfarther north. On the contrary it enjoyed a wide popularity in the westernMediterraneanas far west as Almeria.6 If it were to symbolise Danubians weshould have to postulate their influencenot only in Malta but even in Spain, ona culture which might well be proto-Mediterranean n origin but could only bythe wildest stretch of the imagination be termed Danubian.Worst of all is the case of the white-paintedware. Dr. Frankfort, elsewherelavish of references,does not cite a single sherdfrom any Danubian site. (Erosdis, of, course not Danubian in the sense in which Dr. Frankfort and I use theterm). I have not seen a trace of it in the Museumsof Zagreb, Osijek,Belgrade,Vrsac and Szeged, where the finds from Middle Danube sites are concentrated,nor yet among the material from Tordos and other stations in the Marosvalleyat Cluj (Kolozsvar). Indeed, the only places I know, north of the Balkans, whereblack polished pottery decorated with linear patterns in thin white paint occurs,lie on the UpperAlt, wherethe wareis associated with the ' Black Earth ' cultureof Erosd. Dr. Frankfort himself contrasts the latter with his Danubian. Act-ually the fabric in question seems in all probability to be Anatolian in origin.At Hagia MarinaDr. Frankfort adduces a fifth ware which has for him aDanubian ancestry. It is decorated with incisedribbons,hatched or punctured.

5 Both sites belonging principally to my 6 There are good examples in Siret'sDanubian II Period as defined in The Danube collection at Hererias; for Maltese sherds cf.in Prehistory. The finds are at Szekszard Liverpool Annals, iii, pl. v.and Budapest respectively.

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RELATIONS OF THE AEGEAN AND THE NORTH BALKANS 257In this case the Danubian similarities are really close, and the analogous wareshave a wide distribution between the Balkans and the Sudeten in quite earlytimes. But then there are still moreDanubian-lookingsherds in a good neolithic

FIG. 1.-MAP SHOWING SITES MENTIONED.

context at Knossos. So our author has to invoke trade down the Adriatic atthat,remote date to explaintheir presencein Crete. But why stop here? Thereare black wares decorated with ribbon patterns in Egypt from Badarian (i.e.earliest Predynastic) times onwards,7 and they and their decoration often7 Brunton and Caton-Thompson, The Prehistoric Egypt, Pottery Corpus, N. andBadarian Civilisation, p. 23; Petrie, below, p. 260.


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V. G. CHTTL)Eapproximate quite as closely to Danubianpatterns as do the Phocian and Cretan.Let us note too that cognate designs areby no means unknowneast of the Aegeanin Anatolia and Syria.8In none of these cases, then, is a Danubian origin as against a derivationfrom the native east Mediterranean radition a necessarypostulate. In the caseof the white-paintedware and the ribbon wares of Predynastic Egypt it is abso-lutely excluded; for there is not the least ground for assuming Danubianinfluence on Predynastic Egypt, nor indeed for supposing that any culturepossessed of pottery existed at all in the Danube valley at the remote epoch towhich the earliest agriculturalsettlements on the Nile go back.As to forms, Dr. Frankfort relies principallyon the 'raking handles.' Butsincehis Studieswerecomposed, Heurtley's reporton Vardaroftsa9has appeared.In it the excavator shows conclusively that the oldest datable specimens of thetype on the European mainland belong to a complex that is wholly Anatolianin character. All the datable specimens from the Danube valley that approxi-mate even remotely to our types are attributable to an advanced stage of thelocal Bronze Age comparable at earliest with the B Period in Macedonia. Onthe other hand, in Cyprusand in the neolithic layers at Knossos 10we encounterformsthat might have sprungfrom the same (wooden) prototype and that soconfirmits Anatolian affinities deduced from its context in Macedonia.In fact absence of handles is a feature of all the earliestDanubian ceramics.Neither in the lower levels of Vinca nor at Csoka, Tordos or Klakari, still less onthe gourd-shaped vases of Danubian I in Austria and Czechoslovakia,is a truehandleto be found; the lug alone was known to these early potters. It is, there-fore, surprisingto find the high-handledcup and the tankard cited by Frankfortas Danubian forms.ll Certainly both types occur in the Danube valley, butthey appear late, at first sporadicallyand in a very significant context. In theDanubian II phase we find both types representedby a couple of examples eachfrom Lengyel and cemeteriesalong the Tisza.12 Though the chances of handle-fragments being preserved are disproportionately great, not more than one percent. of the Danubian II vessels are thus equipped. Moreover,this first hesi-tating appearance n the MiddleDanube valley coincideswith the advent of freshsouthern imports represented by Mediterranean or Red Sea 13 shells and ofobjects unmistakably imitating Aegean models. Of the latter I should like tomention cubical or parallelopiped-shapedblocks of clay with one or two roundcups excavated in the centre and perforations in the corners.14 In shape, sizeand even details of construction-e.g. the cornerperforations-these stray objectsagree exactly with the stone paint-pots so common in the Early Minoan tombsof Crete.15

8 e.g. Liv. Annals, i, pl. XLIV. 13 Wiener Prdhist. Ztschr., x, p. 3 (Cassis9 B.S.A., xxvii, pp. 51-4. saburon); from Lengyel, Tridacna gigantea.10 Evans, Palace, i. Fig. 7, 3. 14 Mitt. anthr. Ges. Wien, lvii, p. (185)11 Pp. 115 and 132. (Sitzungsberichte); Schranil, Vorgeschichte12 Wosinsky, Lengyel, Nos. 73, 331, 3; B6hmens und Mdhrens, P1. VII, 12.Archceologia Hungarica, iv, Pis. I, 9, II, 1; 15 Xanthudides, Vaulted Tombs of Mes-Wiener Prdhist. Ztschr., xiii, p. 37, fig. 10, 8. ard, Pls. III, X.

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RELATIONS OF THE AEGEAN AND THE NORTH BALKANS 259In the same context I might cite the simultaneous appearance in limitednumbers and over a restricted area-not farthernorththan southernMoravia-of clay stamps or pintaderas.16 Both in shape and design-notably the 'filledcross '-these agree with types found in larger numbers in Thessaly, Anatolia,Cappadociaand as far east as Susa, wherethey are certainly pre-Sargonic.17The first tentative appearance of high-handled cups and tankards in theDanube valley, accordingly, coincides with a spread of indubitably exotic pro-ducts. Moreover,they meet us already fully developed in Danubian II withoutany obvious local antecedents. It is, therefore, more reasonable to regardthemas additional instances of that current of south-eastern influence which is so

clearly manifested in other objects of the same date. Later on both typescertainlybecome quite commonon the MiddleDanube. Tankards, forexample,are typical of the earliest BronzeAge culture at Perjamos and Oszentivan on theLowerMaros. But their shapes and the polishedblack ormottled fabricstronglysuggest reinforced Anatolian influence. The spread of Oriental metal types-spiral earringswith flattened ends as in the Royal tombs of Ur,18 knot-headedpins as in Troy II and ingot torques as at Byblos 19-confirms that impression.Frankfort's forms do indubitably illustrate relations between the Danube areaand the eastern Mediterranean,but in a sense opposite to that which he postu-lates.

Finally, Dr. Frankfort adduces the spiral and fretwork patterns as proofof Danubian influence even on the Early Helladic and Early Cycladic cultures.Fretwork patterns certainly occur early at Tordos and other kindredDanubiansites, though the finest products of their technique belong to the much laterSlavonian culture and the full Bronze Age. But the same technique is appliedoccasionally to bell-beakers in Spain,20where Danubian influence is scarcelythinkable. In fact these patterns are inspired by wood-carving. As Cycladicpottery is profoundly influencedby wood-work, patterns derived therefrom areintelligible upon it without any appeal to the Danube basin. At the same timeHall21 has very shrewdly pointed out that a similar pattern was current amongthe Sumeriangoldsmiths, whose influencein the Aegean will be mentioned againin the next paragraph.Thespiralandmaeandercertainlyhave a strongclaim to a Danubianpedigree.Dr. Frankfort rightly insists on the way these motives at all periods luxuriate onthe vases north of the Balkans, while in the Aegean area their role in ceramicdecoration before Late Minoantimes was very subordinate. But perhapsin hisestimate of the position of the spiral in Aegean art, our author has concentratedhis attention too much on the vases. The discoveriesat Malliashow the motiveflourishingon stone and metal work at a time when it was quite rare on pots.Indeed, it is on stone, ivory and metal that the running spiral is best represented

16 E.g., Schranil, op. cit., P1. VI, 10. 19 Syria, vi. (1925) P1. II.17 To the examples enumerated by Matz, 20 A. del Castillo Yurrita, La cultura delop. cit., add Childe, Most Ancient East, vaso campaniforme, P1. LXXIII.Fig. 63. 21 Civilisation of Greecein the Bronze Age,18 Childe, op. cit., P1. XXII, a. p. 60.J.H.S.-VOL. L. T


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V. G. CHTIT)Ein Early and MiddleAegean times.22 It may be that, in the Aegean world, themotive belonged not so much to the repertory of the vase-painter as to the gold-smith. In that case the derivation of the Aegean seriesfrom the older Sumerianmodels, suggested by Hall,23would seem certain, and Danubian interventionwould be entirely superfluous.The conclusionsof the foregoing analysis are plain: not one of the ceramicparallels between the Aegean and the Danube region, adduced by Frankfort,can be accepted as unambiguous evidence of influence from the latter quarterupon the Aegeanworld. He has drawn attention to a numberof really significantagreements, but, owing to an eminently excusable want of familiarity with thesadly scattered Hungarian material and a failure to appreciate chronologicalrelations only very recently settled, he has misinterpreted these. Relationssubsisted, but, as we have demonstrated above conclusively in the case of thehigh-handled cups and tankards, they betoken influence from the south-east.By Period II at least a culturalcurrent was flowingup the Danube valley. Canthe earlieragreements going back to Period I be interpretedin the same sense?Our analysis of the distribution of burnish-decoratedand ribbed wares wouldcertainly favour that view. But the case of the spiralis crucial.Here Dr. Matz comes unwittingly to our aid; for he too regards the spiralas a Danubian element in the Aegean. To him it is one of the modes in which aspecificmentality, a peculiarattitude towards the round surface to be decorated,manifests itself. Another symptom of the same 'Danubian' attitude is the'torsion motive.' 24 Now this pattern appears, as Matz himself points out, in amature form on a ribbon-ornamented vase from Predynastic Egypt, so thatonce again, if we admit Danubians in Greece, we shall have to admit them inEgypt too. The alternative, which looks simpler, is to say that Danubians hadan east Mediterraneanmentality.Now Dr. Matz further contends that the Danubian running spiral belt isonly a logical derivative of a simpler motive, a zigzag band encirclingthe vase.Here he agrees with one of the leading authorities on Danubian pottery. Thelate Dr. Schliz25 concludedfrom a detailed study of the ceramic material thatthe Danubian spiraldecoration was sprungfromsuch a band that is often actuallyseen encircling early Danubian vases. But this decoration is skeuomorphic inorigin. It was inspiredoriginally by the sling of plaited grassin which the primi-tive gourd vase was carried.26 Precisely similar imitations continued to beincised on gourd-shaped vessels of black carboniferousware in Nubia till MiddleKingdom times, and from Yortan we have plentiful examples decorating equallygourd-like pots.27The gourd ancestry of Danubian pottery had been pointed out long ago bySchliz and Schuchhardt28 and recognised as evidence of southern origin.

22 Cf. e.g., Ath. Mitt., 1886, Beilage 2; wind up it like screw-threads.Xanthudides, op. cit., Pls. IV, 106, XI, 1904, 25 P.Z., ii, p. 131.a, XV, 455; Dorpfeld, Alt-Ithaka, Beilage 26 Sophus Muller in Mem. Soc. Antiqu.61, b, 3. Evans, Palace, iii, fig. 10. Nord., 1920-25, p. 237.23 Loc. cit. 27 B.M. Cat. Vases, I, i, A28, A18, A52,24 Expressed by lines radiating from the A58, etc.base or centre of the vessel, but bent to 28 Z.f.E., 1906, p. 342; P.Z., i, p. 51.

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RELATIONS OF THE AEGEAN AND THE NORTH BALKANS 261While gourds do harden to-day as far north as the Hungarian plain, the truehome of gourd pottery admittedly lies south of the Balkans. Now that the" Danubian " spiral has been shown to be derived from a skeuomorphic patternproper to gourd pottery, its claim to the name " Danubian" is plainly under-mined. For the same mentality that evoked the transformation has just beenshown,by the Egyptian blackware vase alreadycited, to be at home in a primitiveeast Mediterranean complex. Hence all the agreements between Aegean andDanubian fabrics can be satisfactorily explained on the assumption that bothwere descendants of a primitive east Mediterraneanstock. The cultural move-ment up the Danube valley that we have demonstrated in Period II was merelya continuation of an earlier movement that brought the Danubians into theDanube basin.

In south Central Europe an almost complete hiatus separates the upperpalaeolithic from the neolithic occupations. While the Aurignacian and earlySolutrean phases are well represented even in Hungary and Transylvania,remains comparable to the Magdalenian of France are everywhere sparse,andsouth of the Little Carpathians virtually non-existent. The long mesolithicepoch is represented only by a minimal number of microliths. Hence thenumerous peasant population, our Danubians, who occupied the 1oss lands sothickly by early neolithic times, must have been for the most part immigrants.They can only have come from the south-east, from that wide region east of theMediterraneanwhere, it is generally agreed, agriculturebegan. Proofs of sucheast Mediterraneanaffinities are provided, in addition to the gourd pots, by theuse of the Mediterraneanshell, Spondylusgaederopi, or ornaments or amuletsby all the Danubian peasants.We must assume then that the neolithic population of the Danube valleycame from the south-east, immediately from Anatolia, whence also the firstsettlers in Crete had come. Early infiltrations into Macedonia and MainlandGreece from the same quarterwould be a reasonable and, in view of the exten-sive Anatolian penetration along the land route by Early Helladic times demons-trated by Heurtley, a necessary postulate. They would sufficeto explain theresemblances at once to Danubian and to Anatolian wares noted on neolithicfabrics from shelteredcornersof Greeceand discussed in our first paragraphs.Naturally the colonisation of such areas would be a gradual process29accomplished,not by a single migration but by a series of waves spreadingfroman as yet ill-definedcentre. When the archaeological ecord begins effectively,we catch a glimpse, as it were, of a cross-sectionthrough that process after ithad already advanced some way. On the periphery, in Bohemia and Moraviaon the north and in Nubia to the south, the simplest gourdtypes of carboniferouswares mark the crest of the first wave; figurinesjust reach Moravia. Nearerthe centre particoloured fabrics,30black only inside and round the rim, occur

29 I have tried to explain it in more detail 30 On these and their distribution in Asiain Antiquity, i, as the advance of primitive Minor see Frankfort, op. cit., pp. 64, 74;cultivators who, through ignorance of his sharp contrast with Egyptian waresmanuring and fallowing, had to shift their cannot, however, be maintained in view ofsettlements periodically as the soil became Lucas' recent researches.exhausted.T2


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262 RELATIONS OF THE AEGEAN AND THE NORTH BALKANSsporadicallyas far north as Vinca, Oradea Mareand Tordos,31and then through-out Asia Minor to Egypt. Within a still more circumscribedarea we have theribbed and burnish-decorated wares. And close on their heels follow the pureAnatolian types with true handles, long spouts, cut-away necks, etc., so wellillustrated in Vardaroftsa A. Hence Vinca and Tordos, as far back as we cantrace them, are outposts, albeit not the farthest, of an immense cultural provincewhose frontiers once reached Upper Egypt.32 It is plainly a methodologicalfallacy to treat peripheralregionslike Hungary and Serbia as cradle-landswhencethe whole culture emanated. They fall into their right place and their complexrelations with the Aegean world become intelligible once the original focusbe displaced to the south-east as here proposed. V. G. CHILDE.

31 Hubert Schmidt had already compared Oriental culture represented in Egypt bythe latter with Egyptian black-topped ware the Second Predynastic. The intrusion ofin Z.f.E., 1903, p. 460. Dimini culture into Greece presumably32 Because by this time the continuity of caused a similar but only temporary, inter-the carboniferous gourd-ware province had ruption of continuity in Thrace.been interrupted by the advance of a more

gordon childe - new views on the relations of the aegean and the north balkans

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