EAA2021: Session #470

Our session will address new insights concerning the chronology of Copper Age sites between the Black Sea and Central Europe. This vast region is characterised by various environments and historical landscapes, which led to an equally large variety of lifestyles and historical archives. The diversity of archives and different research traditions resulted in different ways of constructing chronology such as stratigraphic sequences of the lower Danube tell sites, ornamental styles and local groups of the flat Cucuteni-Tripolye settlements, or grave types in the North-Western Pontic. These different research approaches have built the basis for the establishment of various historical narratives, which often became fixed points of view. For example, current spatio-temporal understanding of ‘Tripolye’ was built up mainly on data obtained before late 1980s and the resulting models are partly used to date. Intensive research and dating have changed the ‘local’ situation dramatically in recent years. But often results of this work are confronted with established ‘global’ narratives that reflect ‘regional research traditions’.
The aim of the session is to explore how these new data increasingly allow us to rethink the typology-focused chronological constructions and historical reconstructions based on them. In particular, we would like to have a closer look on transformations that took place in this region, e.g.:
• Establishment, transformation and disintegration of flourishing agricultural settlement systems in the Lower Danube (BPK V, KGK VI)) and the North-Eastern Carpathian region (Cucuteni-Tripolye),
• Expansion of human groups into the forest-steppe zone between Prut and Dnieper,
• Cucuteni-Tripolye population agglomerations with giant settlements,
• The development of mobile pastoralism with dispersed settlement pattern in the steppe and forest steppe north-west of the Black Sea
• Intensive interlinking of the Pontic-Baltic region through communication and exchange networks (Baden, Funnel beaker, Globular Amphora, Malice).

Copper Age, Chronology, Southeastern Europe, Eastern Europe, Central Europe

 Session #470 (PDF)

Robert Hofmann¹

Sławomir Kadrow²
Catalin Lazar³
Liudmyla Shatilo¹
Stanislav Terna¹

Population dynamics inferred from summed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates during the 5th millennium BCE in the Lower Danube region

Take the whole valley! Non-invasive settlement archaeology of the Cucuteni civilization in the Neamţ Depression of the Moldavian Subcarpathians (Romania)

Interactions between Trypillian farmers and Srednij Stog pastoralists in the Dnieper area at the end of the 5th millennium BCE

The chronology of the Trypillia culture and the Bayesian approach

Tripolye mobility patterns, house duration and demography: The evidence of radiocarbon dating

Transformation of settlement systems at Dneeper region: from mega-sites to small sites at Trypillia Culture

Challenging pottery based chronologies and narratives on Tripolye societies

Fall of Neolithic societies in Central Europe and expansion of steppe populations at the end of the 4th millennium BC

Understanding changes in house construction in the second half of the 4th Millennium BC in the Eastern Carpathian area