Diversity in SE Europe Settlements

Aspects of Settlement Diversity and Its Classification in Southeast Europe before the Roman Period Author(s): Timothy Taylor
Source: World Archaeology, Vol. 19, No. 1, Urbanization (Jun., 1987), pp. 1-22 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/124495 . Accessed: 31/05/2013 13:33
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diversity settlement of Aspects Europe in southeast classification period Roman the before
Timothy Taylor
and
its
Introduction There are few satisfactorily excavated prehistoric settlements in southeast Europe. Nevertheless, those known appear to show a remarkable diversity of type over space and time: there are tells more than 15 metres thick, and ashlar masonry fortresses; concentric rings of hundreds of small houses, and promontory forts with mud-brick ramparts; lakevillages, open entrepots, and great planned cities. After the colonization of the Black Sea coasts by the Greeks, Greek authors described the customs of the Scythian and Thracian tribes of the hinterland. Sometimes they described a type of settlement or gave a native name for one. From these names, and from other linguistic scraps, some idea of the language of the inhabitants can be arrived at. Elements of such tentatively reconstructed language can then be sought in modern place-names, and on this basis old foundations for modern settlements proposed. The evidence for the survival of ancient Thracian names or terms in the Greek and Roman authors and in modern place-names is reviewed by Sorin Paliga in his article 'Thracian terms for "township" and "fortress", and related place-names' (cf. pp. 23-9). In it he tries to establish derivations from both Indo-European (IE) and non-IndoEuropean language roots. Associating non-Indo-European with pre-Indo- European (pre-IE), and pre-IE with the Neolithic population (by considering the Bronze Age Kurgan cultures as the introducers of IE language, out of the east, over the steppe), he then suggests the possibility of associating surviving terms of pre-IE derivation meaning 'township' with particular Neolithic settlement types. This is a fascinating endeavour - to try to work from place-names towards the names of places, to the words that might have been used by prehistoric people to describe their own settlements. But is it possible? This article is intended to serve as an introduction to that of Sorin Paliga by providing a general archaeological and linguistic background to it. In addition, it suggests where the theoretical limits may lie for any joint archaeological and linguistical epistemology for dealing with past schemes of settlement classification. Much of the archaeology of later prehistory in Romania and Bulgaria is studied under the heading 'Thracology' (see Taylor 1985: 129ff). Thracology takes its name from the Thracians, a group of people known from classical texts. The Thracians lived in the Urbanization Volume 19 Nc). 1 World Archaeology (C)R.K.P. 1987 00438243/87/1901/1 $1.50/1
Timothy Taylor
regions to the west of the Black Sea. To their south were the Greeks, to their north the Scythians. Herodotus distinguished a number of tribes or tribal confederacies among the Thracians, of which the most important were the Odrysae of the Thracian Plain, the Getae of the Lower Danube Basin and the Agathyrsae (probably Thracian; certainly not Scythian:IHdt IV, 49-50) of Transylvania. In the later part of the first millennium BC, Celtic tribes, among them the Scordisci, settled areas of the Lower Danube Basin region. Towards the end of the millennium the Thracians or Getae came t6 be known as Dacians. The Thracians are known to have spoken a language different from Iranian, Greek or Celtic, which was recognised by the Greeks as distinct also from that of the Thracians' northern neighbours, the Scythians. But Thracian language is not easy to reconstruct. Although quite a large body of onomastica - proper names of individuals, peoples (ethnonyms), places (toponyms) and rivers (hydronyms) - exists, only twenty to thirty glosses are known (Hamp 1986 and pers. comm.). (Glosses are words which occur in a text written in another language in a position which allows an original meaning to be inferred.) This paucity of glosses means that neither the structure nor the vocabulary of Thracian can be known to any great extent. Paliga recognises this and sensibly dismisses the arguments for distinct north and south Thracian languages. Apparent uncertainty among the classical authors about where the northern boundary of Thrace lay - sometimes the Haemus (Stara Planina), sometimes the Danube, sometimes the Carpathian mountains (Katicic 1986: 129ff) - encouraged Georgiev to defend a theory of two lang-uages (1972): Thracian, spoken in the south, and DacoMysian, spoken in the north. Georgiev claimed a clear geographical distinction between place-names ending in -dava in the north and -bria, -para, and -diza in the south. This theory has not been generally accepted: Russu (1969), Crossland (1980) and Rddulescu (1984) all support the idea of a common Thraco-Dacian language. Even though DacoMysian may turn out to be more closely related to Illyrian (which is partly preserved in modern Albanian) than to Thracian proper, 6we will eventually have to conclude that we deal with three dialects of the same language' (Radulescu, 1984: 85). And, as Paliga notes, the -dava ending is present in the south (Pulpu-deva - modern Plovdiv), whilst the -diza ending is probably preserved in the north (Dezna - County Arad, W. Romania). English words such as house, town and city, or market, port and capital, express our ideas of how human settlement may be classified in our own country and our own time. Broadly speaking, it is physical size on the one hand and social function on the other which provide the dimensions of a more or less matrix definition of settlement types. In Figure 1 a number of terms principally related to settlement size are shown (1-5) intersecting with a number of terms principally relating to specific social function (A-E). Each increase in settlement size has been correlated with the addition of a general cultural function (IV). Thus a farm might be a farmhouse (1A), whilst a larger farm (2A) might constitute a hamlet (small churchless village). Category 2A has no common name in English, but in Norwegian it would be a tun (pl. tunet). Moving from IA to 2A, we move from familial to communal. A tun consists of a number of families, but is not a village because it does not fulfil the religious function (III): on Sundays the communities of many tunet converge by boat along and across the fjords towards their common
Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe
SETTLEMENTSIZE
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FAMILIAL+COMMUNAL+RE LIGIOUS+ JURAL+ POLITICAL ADDITIVEGENERAL FUNCTIONS
Figure1 church. Just as a tun is not exactly equivalent to any word in common English, so too we find that the best English equivalent for Norwegian st0l (pl. st0len) is 'seasonally used vertical transhumant pastoralist summer farm' (see further Taylor 1987b). In Figure 1, the specific social functions of settlements are correlated with a gauge of their likely degree of constancy of occupation. This scale is intended to be suggestive rather than explicit - a reminder that while farms may be of a slash-and-burn or of a seasonal type, and fortresses may be sporadically garrisoned and often moved, special locations are chosen for ports and capitals (such as Piraeus and Athens) and celebrated in their monumentality. This makes them more enduring 'places' and in part assures a greater constancy of occupation. As we have to introduce foreign words, such as tun and st0l, into our language in order to describe foreign settlement types properly, so too will we need special words if we are to describe prehistoric settlement types accurately (at least from an etic point of viewto describe them properly we would need to reconstruct an emic category; see below). Initially such special words need be no more than our common words for which a qualified sense has been explicitly defined.
Prehistoric settlement diversity in southeast Europe Using a number of more or less inaccurate common words as headings we can begin to look at individual examples of prehistoric structures which have been uncovered by archaeologists and considered to be the remains of settlements. The locations of all the
Timothy Taylor
sites discussed in this section of the text can be found on the map (Figure 2). Chronological arguments are peripheral to the purpose of this article, thus they are not rehearsed here. The dates given indicate the major phase of site occupation discussed in the text. 1. Villages Villages seem to be defined archaeologically as small agglomerations of residential structures, with no great internal heterogeneity. Lepenski Vir in Yugoslavia (Figure 3) is one of the earliest in southeast Europe, dating to the 6th millennium BC. Situated on the Yugoslav side of the Danube in the Iron Gates gorge, the site was excavated and published by Srejovic (1969). A palimpsest of stone-reinforced trapezoidal hut foundations with central fireplaces was found. The phasing of successive building was not made entirely clear during excavation. Lepenski Vir I and 1I (illustrated) were considered by Srejovic to be the remains of a hunter-gatherer-fisher (H-G-F) community; later phases to reflect a farming community. However, there is another view that the trapezoidal huts were built by farmers who dug down into the earlier layers of seasonally deposited mesolithic debris, causing a degree of stratigraphic admixture (e.g. Milisauskas 1978: 96). Such antitheses between H-G-F and farming communities are unhelpful. The location of the site suggests that it was not chosen for its arable or stockdriving potential. The quantities of red-deer and chamois bones indicate that Lepenski Vir served as a year-round base-camp, with a temperate river-moderated climate and a fish-stocked garden, from which seasonal forays to other zones were mounted. The period of use of the site, whatever the succession of its structural layout, clearly spans the transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic. Village sites are common in the region throughout the Neolithic: the site of Vinca, comprising a number of small rectangular houses with wattle and clay walls typifies such small open settlements. In Romanian Moldavia and South Russia by the beginning of the fourth millennium BC settlements of considerable size had begun to emerge from a background of small scattered villages. The Late Tripolye Culture site of Majdanets'ke, USSR (Figure 4) is one such. A mixture of excavation and aerial survey shows between 12 and 1700 rectangular structures arranged in ten to twelve concentric elipses. Some of the larger buildings, towards the outside of the settlement, probably had two storeys (Ellis 1984: 189). By analogy with the site of Petreny in Moldavia, these two-storied buildings may have been specialized ceramic workshops. Petreny consisted of 498 structures, not all of which were residential: Ellis considers 2000 people to be a reasonable estimate of population size (1984: 188). The large Cucuteni-Tripolye Culture sites are still not well enough understood to be classified satisfactorily. Wheat and cattle seem to have been the mainstays of the economy, but with a considerable contribution from red deer. Whether settlements such as Majdanets9ke were the religious, jural and political capitals of their surrounding territories (therefore cities), or just overgrown villages, perhaps agglomerated for defence, is unclear. Certainly the evidence of specialized craft production, continued in distinct quarters of the settlements, suggests that further (perhaps archaeologically invisible) functional specialization was present.
Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe S

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Timothy Taylor
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Lepenski Vir, phaseILP Scaleinrmet1res. After Srejovic 1969.
In Bullgaria, at Ezerovo on the outskirts of Varna, a number of villages of thle Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age have been discov7ered (Toncheva 1981L) These settlements appeaLr to have been oiFa classic lacustrine type (unlike the reedswamLp villages known from Neolithic Switzerland and fromn Iron Age Glast;onlbury, England, to the west) like t;hoserecordedfor fifth cenltury BC Thirace who lbyHerodotus, gives a dlescription of the way of life of the tribes who lived onl and around Lake Prasia in the neighbourhood of MWt. Pangaeum (see Figure 2):
,
'The houses of these lake-dwellers are actualllyin the water, and stand onL platforms supported on long piles aLnd the land lby a sinlgle narrow bsridge. approaLched fErolm Originally the labour of driving the lpileswas presumnably undertaken by the tribe as a whole, but later they adopted a different method: nowvthe piles are bsrought fro n Mt. and every man drives in three for each wiifehe marries-each has a great Orbellus manywives. Each lmember of the tribe has his own hut on one of tlhelplatformns, with a trap-door opening onrto the water underneath. To prevent t;heiLr from tumbling lbalbies in tJhey tie a string around their legs. Their horses and otiherpack-animals they feed on fish, whichL so abunldant inl the lakie that, whenL they openLthe t;rap-doorand let aLre down an emptybasketon a rope, they have only a minuteto wait ibefore they pull it up again, full.' (1Hdt V, 16; transltetd by A. de Se icourt) Daily life on tlhe gulf of Varna three-and-a-half thousand years before may not have lbeen muchldifferenlt;lbutwas the language? Early Bronze Age EDzerovo IIItwas occupied around the turn of the fourth and third millennia BC, at thLe time of tlhe Kurgan Ill and Kurgan IV cultures in Soutlh Russia (Gimbutas 1L985: 189). According to IE language tlheory, the inhabitant;sof Ezerovo III shouldlhave been speaking a form of [E.Thus they have usedla wordfor their lake-village similarto thatused by their fifh century BC mnight pile-driving counsterparts.But even if it existed we do not now know what it was.
Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe 2. Tells
Although a tell settlement may be laid out in exactly the same way as a village, each rebuilding raises the site above the level of the surrounding country. As each successive layer adds to the real physical defences of the settlement so it adds to its monumentality. As Chris Evans has said (1985: 85), 'we assign the quality of "monument" to sites which physically endure' and this quality of endurance has a value even after the site is no longer in active use. (An example of such a continuity of associated 'place-value' is the modern Bulgarian village of Dve Mogili (lit: Two Barrows), which takes its name from the two great fourth century BC burial mounds on the outskirts of the village.) The tell of Polyanitsa appears to have been deliberately created as a domestic monument, with an entrance at each of the cardinal points and lhouses built in each quarter (Todorova n.d. Eneolit Bolgarii: tab. 13).
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Timothy Taylor
Some of the Bulgarian tells are indeed monumental. Karanovo was built up over seventeen metres before its abandonment in the Early Bronze Age. The plan of the tenth level at Ovcharovo (Figure 5), uncovered during recent multi-disciplinary excavations in Bulgaria (Todorova et al. 1983) shows well the internal organization and developed topography of a small tell settlement: seven houses, measuring about six by ten metres each, cluster together on top of the debris of their predecessors. Each house has one or more hearth-places, and each appears to have had some kind of partition wall. The development of tell-site occupation from the Early Neolithic through the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic to the Bronze Age in the Maritsa valley near Plovdiv has been plotted by Andrew Sherratt (Figure 6). By linking nearest neighbours from one period to the next, Sherrattgives an indication of the underlying patterns of spatial expansion that caused new settlements to be founded (even though not all settlements can be supposed
Figure5 Ovcharovo,level X. House-wallsare shownhatcted; hearthsare shownin black. Scalein metres. After Todorovaet al. 1983.
Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe 9
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6 Patternsof tell-site occupationin the Plovdivregion:EN - EarlyNeolithic;LN = Late Figure After Neolithic; Eneol - Eneolithic (Chalcolithic);BA = Bronze Age. Scale in kilomnetres. Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge). Sherratt(unpublished to have survived or been discovered). On the map the initial 'parent' settlements continued in use except where an arrow indicates that a new location completely superseded the old. Thus about half of the Bronze Age settlements were on teil sites which had been continuously occupied since the Neolithic, whilst the other half were on fresh locations. This particular pattern of tell settlement ceased to be the norm during the Bronze Age, but settlement tells continued to be formed during later periods. The site of Babadag in
have been to the eighthcenturiesBC (Morintz1964). Correspondences thirteenth/twelfth in the VII and sought between the earliest Babadagphase Troy b2, especially pottery types in use. From the tenth century BC at Babadag, iron-smeltingand iron-working were practised (Taylor 1986). This would suggest that the site was in some sense a 'centralplace'; however, because no systematicsettlementsurvey has yet been carried out in the surroundingregion, the broader social functions of the site cannot yet be defined.
3. Fortresses
The site of Nebet Tepe (Figure7), one of the three hills whichform an isolated cluster sticking up out of the ThracianPlain, and around which the modern city of Plovdiv sprawls,is at once a settlementtell, a fortressand an acropolis.The naturallydefended site, which commands views of the wide plain to either side, has been almost continuouslyoccupiedfrom the MiddleBronze Age (MihalichCulture)untilthe present was begun, and it was addedto day. At some stage a series of massivestone fortifications at times up until the Byzantineperiod (Plate 1: D indicatessectionsof Byzantinedate). Because excavations have not been able to demonstrate convincing stratigraphic relationshipsbetween the layers of culturaldeposit (the 'tell') on the hill and the stone walls which surroundit, there is controversyover the datingof the variousfortification phases: Botucharova(1963) arguedthat there was a sixth centuryBC fortification(not
i-
Plate 1 Nebet Tepe, the fortress above the modem town of Plovdiv. Dr. Atanas Peikov's
in progress. excavations See textfor explanation.
11
shown on Plate 1), followed by a more massive second century BC construction (Plate 1: A, B, C); Peikov, whose excavations are still in progress (see his 1978), believes part of the latter construction (Plate 1: A) to date to the twelfth century BC, on the basis of both its 'cyclopean' appearance and its stratigraphy (pers. comm.), and further building to have taken place in the fourth century BC (Plate 1: B, ?C). Clearly these two accounts are incompatible. Although Peikov's twelfth century BC phase is contentious, his later phase makes sense. By 341 BC, Philip of Macedon had conquered most of Thrace south of the Danube, including Pulpudeva, the Thracian settlement around Nebet Tepe, which he renamed Philippopolis. Two observations follow from this. First, the architecture considered by Peikov to be of fourth century BC date, such as the section of gateway of Hellenistic appearance (Plate 1: B), could well be a remnant of a Macedonian refortification of the site after its conquest. Second, that Philip designated the settlement a polis may imply that a functional correspondence was perceived between Greek polis and Thracian deva. Not all defended sites are as archaeologically problematical as Nebet Tepe. The much earlier fortified sites of the Early Bronze Age Otomani Culture in western Transylvania represent a particular period of the earlier Bronze Age in the region when ninety per cent of known settlement was in fortified locations (Ordentlich 1969: 469). The 'citadel' site at Otomani itself (Figure 7), dating to the early second millennium BC, is a naturally defended location on a narrow spur looking out over the Great Hungarian Plain, which has been fortified further with ditches and ramparts. Such sites, like British hillforts, were probably the local seats of power of tribal chiefs, but, unlike them, they do not
Figure7 Otomani,the citadel. A
B rampart;
ditch. Scale in metres. After Ofdentlich1963.
their own fortifiedvillage.
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4.
Plate2 Colofenii-din-Dos, the remains of the outerbastion.Prof.VladZirra's excavations in progress. The Iron Age site of Colofenii din Dos (Plate 2) in Oltenia has a location similarto Otomani, a spur above the flood plain of the river Jiu, defended by a triple rampart defence. But the outer rampartis different barre' (Zirra 1983) forminga kind of e'peron from those of the Bronze Age sites, being built from largebricksto form a verticalwall strengthened by towers. The startof occupationat Colofenii din Dos can be datedto the fifth centuryBC, on the basis of Greek potterywhichwas importedto the site. Cultural contact with the Greek World, suggested by this pottery, may in part have been fortification.In centralEurope at the same responsiblefor the adoptionof a mud-brick of the mud-brick bastionsat the has the construction time, Kimmig argued(1968:54ff), Heuneburgmay actuallyhave been directedby a Greek architect.However,whereasthe Heuneburgis unique in centralEurope, Cotofenii din Dos in southeastEurope is not. Other nearby sites have defences-constructedin the same manner, and there are probablymany more examples awaitingexcavation.Although the idea of a 'city wall', TELX0S, may have come from the Greeks, its adoption was probablyfor reasons other than prestige alone (cf. Kimmig 1968: 50ff): in the hot bakingsummersof the Lower Danube Basin, and at a time when timbermay have been scarce (Taylor1987a),such a constructionwould have been both effective and cheap.
4. Markets
Greek influencewas certainlycriticalin the developmentof specializedmarketcentresin Thraceduringthe firstmillenniumBC. Greek colonizationfromthe seventhcenturyBC
13
onwards created a new economic order in the interior. The Milesian colony of Histria (Figure 8) was founded on the Black Sea coast just to the south of the Danube Delta. Excavations this century have uncovered the settlement and its defences in successive periods. After the foundation of Histria, many new indigenous settlements (such as Tariverde) sprang up in the immediate hinterland to service the needs of the colonists.
B DtD
0
m
200
Figure 8 Histria, on Lake Sinoe by the Black Sea, showing walls of successiveperiods: A = Archaic,B = Classical;C = Hellenistic;D = Roman;E = Romano-Byzantine. Scale in metres. After Suceveanu1969 and Coja and Dupont 1975. By the beginning of the fourth century BC the Thracian settlement of Zimnicea, situated at a nodal point in the Lower Danube Basin riverine network (Figure 2) had developed to take advantage of the trade in hides, slaves, timber, furs and woollens from both north and south of the Danube, goods for which the Greek colonies paid in silver (Taylor n.d.). Some of the Greek colonies may have been founded where there was already a Thracian settlement. Velkov (1983: 200) cites Mesambria as an example of a Greek colony which retained its pre-colonial Thracian place-name. In southern Thrace native states grew up, the most powerful being the Odrysian
14
Timothy Taylor
kingdom with its capital at Seuthopolis, named after its founder King Seuthes III (Figure 9). The site was excavated between 1948 and 1951 (Dimitrov 1960; Dimitrov et al. 1984), before being flooded by a dam. The photographs of the excavation which appear in the literature (the clearest and most accessible being Hoddinott 1981: Fig. 122) are
Fgre 9Xetooi.Saei
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of Wheelerboxes alignedexactlyon the mainaxes of the settlementitself. The published was mapped,but from it it plan (Figure9) shows that very little of the internalstructure is possibleto see that Seuthopoliswas conceivedas a type of plannedpolis followingthe Hyppodamiansystem. As at Cotofenii din Dos the bastions were of mud-brick.The Agora is clearly visible to the north (Figure 9: A), and within it the royal residence. Velkov (1983: 206) considersthis buildingto be the thyrsis- the fortifiedresidenceof were built. But what were these other the Thracianruleraroundwhichother structures Hoddinott(1981: 124) states 'Seuthopoliswas not a Greek polis, but the seat structures? of a rulerand his court. The majorityof the people lived outside'.The lackof excavation or surveyoutside the walls, as well as within them, leaves one in doubt. Kabyle (Plate 3) was part of a similardevelopment.The 'acropolis'(Plate 3, in the BC. It was capturedby PhilipII distance)was firstfortifiedin the earlierfirstmillennium during his Thracian campaign of 342-341 BC and grew into a lively Hellenistic and trade centre. The lines of successivecity walls datingto stockbreeding,agricultural the Hellenisticperiod are visible in the middledistancein Plate 3, with the ruinsof later in the foreground.Excavationsand surveysof the site have been carriedout, structures but no systematicreporthas yet been published.
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remainsof consecutivecity walls in middle distance Plate 3 Kabyle: Acropolis in background; in foreground. Roman period gatewayand modem reconstruction (runninghorizontally);
5. Diffuse urbansettlement A brief descriptivetour of some of the most importantprehistoricsettlement sites in southeast Europe could not end without mentioning Dacian Sarmizegetusaand its relatedsettlements.
16
Timothy Taylor
Figure 10 GrAdi?teaMuncelului. Identified with Dacian Sarmizegetusa. A Fortress; B Paved Way; C = Sacred Precinct; D = Circular Sanctuary. Scale in metres. After Diacoviciu 1981
The site of Gradi?tea Muncelului (Figure 10) was excavated and identified with Dacian Sarmizegetusa, the capital of Burebista in the first century BC, by the Diacovicius (1963). It consists of a large fortress (Figure 10: A), built of timber-laced ashlar masonry (murus dacicus), through which a smooth flagstone pavement runs (Figure 10: B) down to a sacred precinct (Figure 10: C) filled with temples and various calendrical devices, arranged on a series of terraces, artificially created on the steep slopes of a mountain in the middle of the high Carpathians. In the surrounding country there are a number of similar fortresses with temple areas, such as the one at Coste?ti (Plate 4). All were destroyed by Trajan, in his campaign against the Dacians under Decebalus, in AD 106. The fortified sites were part of a wider pattern (H. Diacoviciu 1981: Abb. 50) which might best be described as 'diffuse urban settlement'. On the southern slopes below Gradi?tea Muncelului were hundreds of small terraces, each of which supported a house and garden. A reconstruction of the whole system is most reminiscent of that of the Maya lowlands during the Classic period (Adams 1980): sacred sites which were also the political, jural and military focuses of communities living in residential areas whose dispersed nature was dictated by natural topography and the specific mode of production. The Dacians were transhumant pastoralists who had both summer sttne (cf. st0l, croft, sheiling, etc.) and permanent valley-side dwellings. This ofrm of settlement appears to have been quite widespread in Transylvania during this period. Circular
Gradi?tea roundabout, but they have also been found elsewhere, as at Pecicaon the LowerMure? at Pecica, and (Figure2). A set of silversmithing tools was foundwithinthe fortifications it seems that generallythese 'sanctuaries' were associatedwith specializedmetalworking (especially of iron and silver) in their immediate vicinities (Trohani, 1987). Thus, and Pecica apparently sites such as Grddi?tea provideda wide rangeof facilitiesfor their dispersedpopulations,both secularand religious.
Plate4 Coste?ti, a viewof the ashlar andthe localterrain. defences masonry (murus dacicus),
Khazanov(1984) suggeststhat true nomadicpastoralismdid not emerge on the steppe until c. 1000 BC; indeed the steppe may not have been formed until then (chernozems are now consideredto be mainly the result of anthropogenic factors). But before this date there must have been manysemi-nomadic or transhuming economiesin pastoralist southeastEurope. Many of the sorts of structuresbuilt by pastoralistcommunitiesare difficult to detect archaeologically.The prehistoric counterpartsof the pine and beechwoodhut shownin Plate 5, standingin a Carpathian uplandmeadow,wouldshow up only throughphosphateanalysis,andperhapsnot at all. Metalandwood wouldbe the preferredmaterialsfor utensilsat both sites, and at neitherwould butcheryor the burial of either animalor humanremainsbe common.
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Plate S A pine and beechwood hut in the Ora?tie mountains (TransylvanianAlps/South Carpathians) near Grddi?tea Muncelului.
Xenophon (Anab. VII, 4) describeshow a band of Thracianscame down out of the mountainsto launch an attack on a settlement: 'The masterof each house acted as a guide for them, and indeed in the darknessit was difficultwithouta guide to find where the houses were in the villages, as they were surrounded by high fences to keep in the cattle'. The houses were set fire to before 'the Thracians ranaway, slingingtheirshields, as their way is, behind their shoulders. Some of them, as they were getting over the fence, were caught suspended there, with their shields entangled in the stakes.' (translatedby R. Warner).How permanenta settlementwas this 'village'?Xenophon's description impliesthat the houses and relatedstructures were builtof wood, but thatthe perimeter fence was a fairly substantialhigh palisade. As elsewhere in the classical authors, the impression is given of a country populated by heterogeneous socio-
19
economic groups: 'mountain Thracians', who may well have been transhumant sheep pastoralists, and the 'village dwellers', who may have been semi-nomadic cattle stockbreeders, or more sedentary mixed farmers.
Conclusions One way of classifying settlement types in the first millennium BC period is by reference to Greek terminology. Velkov writes (1983: 202): 'Generally it is assumed that the Thracian para corresponds to the Greek kome, the Thracian diza to horion, a fortified settlement... Bria and dava correspond to the Greek polis, denoting a larger Thracian settlement, and later, a Thracian town, although both terms are not identical because their social and economic contents differ, as do the economic and political systems of Hellas and Thrace.' This last is an important limitation: if we say that dava is terminologically equivalent to polis, but that functionally it is not, then all we have done is to find out the Thracian name for a type of settlement which we understand no better than did the Greeks. Paliga (pp. 23-9) attempts to go back much further: by defining the 'Indo-Europeanness' of various known Thracian terms for types of settlement, he concludes that 'orasluras "city, township" . . . should be traced back to a pre-Thracian (pre-IE) idiom spoken in the Neolithic.' Thus we can say that perhaps the inhabitants of Majdanets'ke gave their settlement an oras ending. What seems clear is that there are a number of Thracian terms designating 'agglomerated settlement', dating to various stages in the development of the language, which have stayed in use up until the present. Their longevity does not bode well for their specificity. Both Paliga and Velkov are trying to find out what the Thracians called various sorts of settlements, and their efforts are worthwhile. As Maher has put it (1981: 341): 'Calls to defer the integration of the findings of archaeology and linguistics are not fruitful, for a language is a sign-system. It follows that a language cannot be effectively studied... .without reference to the world represented by the signs.' But archaeology cannot yet satisfactorily reconstruct this world, and we may never be able to reconstruct Thracian Weltanschduung to any great extent, because 'understanding [alien perspectives] just means incorporating alien utterances and behaviours into categories comprehensible to us.' (Roth 1986: 252); see also Taylor, forthcoming. The mere attachment of names to various forms of settlement, such as Paliga's suggested link between -leba (related to Latin lapis, stone) and the stone-built murus dacicus can never in itself provide a satisfactory emic classification. The archaeological priority in southeast Europe is to define an accurate etic classification of settlement types, their constituent structures, and the way in which they fitted in to the broader landscape. For particular areas of the region, during particular periods, this work has already been begun. But Sherratt's mapping of the tell-settlement patterning through successive periods of the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age, which in his fuller account is related to variations in soil and hydrology at a regional level, is exceptional. For other areas and periods the picture is far less clear. What can be said with some certainty is that there was a very great diversity of
20
Timothy Taylor
settlement type in the region during the prehistoric period. The number of surviving Thracian language terms which relate to settlements is small, and seems not to have changed much over very long periods. Thus, trying to sort out what the Thracians called various types of settlement is, generally speaking, an impossible (though interesting) task. This said, in the future it should be possible to construct more rigorous archaeological classifications for excavated structures. Ethnographies, both ancient and modern, suggest some of the sorts of buildings which may leave no trace in the record, or which will require specialized techniques for their recovery. Ethnography could also provide the basis for a more detailed terminology for the prehistoric period. However, the present ethnographic classification of structures, both on the basis of classical accounts and from modern fieldwork, is inadequate. For pastoralist communities, Nandris has attempted a division of Carpatho-Balkan sites into stina and katun: 'The Stina is characterised as much by its human and animal relations as by its morphology, which is quite variable. Women are not allowed on these sites; yet there are also types of Stine to be found which are composed only of women ... By contrast at the Katun, as defined here, complete families are present as an integral part of the site' (1985: 258). In fact, the human and animal relationships at these sites seem to be as variable as is their 6morphology': men, women and children may be present together at many stine. Different structures in different regions may be denoted by the same term, whilst similar structures are denoted by different terms: thus a goatherd's building, for example, would be called a mandra in Modern Greek (compare the plan of the Greek goat mandra: Nandris 1985: fig. 5), whereas in Bulgarian a mandra is usually a dairy for milch-cows. Already there is much more environmental work being done on sites in southeast Europe. This, along with the application of other new techniques for sourcing materials and for locating settlements, should help to produce fuller accounts of regional settlement developments. The philologists have tried hard to isolate particular local terms for settlements; it is now up to archaeologists to find out what these settlements really were. Acknowledgments There is not enough space here to thank all those individuals and institutions who have encouraged my studies and travels in southeast Europe. I would particularly like to acknowledge the help of the late Prof. Hadrian Diacoviciu (University of Cluj) and to thank Prof. Vlad Zirra (University of Bucharest), Dr. Atanas Peikov (Plovdiv Archaeological Museum) and Dr. Andrew Sherratt (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). I would also like to thank Anders Bergquist, Prof. Barry Cunliffe, Dr. Linda Ellis, Dr. Eric Hamp, Christo Terjiev, Dr. George Trohani, Chris Unwin and Sarah Wright for their help, and The British Council, The University of Sofia, St. John's College (Cambridge), Christ Church (Oxford), The Queen's College (Oxford), and the Meyerstein Research Fund (Oxford) for their assistance. 27.x. 1986 Institute of Archaeology Oxford
Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe References
21
Adams, R. E; W. 1980. Swamps,canals, and the locationsof ancientMayacities. Antiquity54: 206-14. Botucharova,L. 1963. Krepostnatastena na Philipopolpo severnite sklonove na Nebettepe. MuseiPlovdiv 5: 77-97. Godishnikna NarodniyaArkheologicheski Coja, M. and Dupont, P. 1975. Ateliers c6ramiques.HistriaV. Bucharest:Academiei. Crossland,R. A. 1980. The Dacian and Thracianlanguagesin the context of general Indode Thracologie. Bucharest:Academiei. Europeandialectology.Actes du lje CongresInternational Diacoviciu, C. and Diacoviciu, H. 1963. Sarmizegethusa. Bucharest,Academiei. Diacoviciu, H. 1981. Dakische Gottheiten und Heiligtumer.Die Daker (AusstellungsKatalog, Wien): 63-85. Mainz:Philipvon Zabern. i arkhitektura na trakijskiya 2: Dimitrov,D. P. 1960.Gradoustroistvo grad.Sevtopolis. Arkheologiya 3-15. and the Originsof a Complex Culture: a Studyin Technology Ellis, L. 1984. The Cucuteni-Tripolye Society. Oxford, BAR International Series 217. Evans, C. 1985. Traditionand the culturallandscape:an archaeologyof place. Archaeological Reviewfrom Cambridge 4 (1): 80-94. commentson the Gimbutas,M. 1985. Primaryand secondaryhomelandof the Indo-Europeans: Studies13: 185-202. Gamkrelidze-Ivanov articles.Journalsof Indo-European Hamp, E. P. 1986. The Thracian language in its Bronze Age Indo-Europeancontext. 4th International Thracian 399. Milan:DraganEuropeanFoundation. Conference: London:Thamesand Hudson. Hoddinott, R. F. 1981. The Thracians. Mouton. Katicic, R. 1986. AncientLanguagesof the Balkans.The Hague/Paris: Khazanov,A. M. 1984. Nomads and the OutsideWorld.Cambridge: C.U.P. Kimmig, W. 1968. Die Heuneburgan der oberen Donau. Stuttgart:Gesellschaftfur Vor- und in Wurtemburg und Hohenzollern. Fruihgeschichte Maher, J. P. 1981. Bed and grave in Germanicand Celtic. Journalof Indo-European Studies9: 341-347. Milisauskas,S. 1978. EuropeanPrehistory.New York: AcademicPress. la periodeanciennedu Hallstattau Bas-Danube Morintz,S. 1964.Quelquesproblemesconcernant 'ala lumieredes fouilles de Babadag.Peuce 2: 19-25. Nandris,J. G. 1985. Europeanhighlandzone ethnoarchaeology. WorldArchaeology17: 256-68. Ordentlich,I. 1963. Poseleniyav Otomaniv svete poslednikhraskopok.Dacia NS 7: 113-138. in den Siedlungender Otomanikultur in Ordentlich,I. 1969. Problemeder Befestigungsanlagen deren rumanischem Dacia NS 13: 457-74. Verbreitungsgebiet. Paliga, S. 1987. Thracianterms for 'township'and 'fortress',and related place-names.World Archaeology19: 23-9. Peikov, A. 1980. Raskopki v drevnefrakijskom gorode Evmolpiya (1974-1978). Pulpudeva3: 239-49. Radulescu, M.-M. 1984. Illyrian, Thracian, Daco-Mysian, the substratumof Romanian and Albanian.Journalof Indo-European Studies12: 77-131. Roth, P. A. 1986. Comment on Robert Feleppa 'Emics, etics and social objectivity'. Current Anthropology27: 243-55.
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Russu, I. 1. 1969. Die Sprache der Thraco-Daker. Bucharest: Academiei. S61incourt, A. de 1972. Herodotus: The Histories. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Sherratt, A. G. 1975 (unpublished) The Beginning of the Bronze Age in the Area Between the Middle Danube and the North Aegean. Ph.D Thesis, University of Cambridge. Srejovic, D. 1969. Lepenski Vir: nova praistorijska kultura u podynava. Belgrade. Suceveanu, A. 1969. Observations sur la stratigraphie des cites de la Dobrogea aux 'ala lumiere des fouilles d'Histria. Dacia NS 13: 329-365. Taylor, T. F. 1985. Bronze Age Thrace reviewed. Antiquity 59, 129-32. Taylor, T. F. 1987a. Iron and Iron Age in the Carpatho-Balkan region: aspects of social and technological change. In S0renson, M.-L. and Thomas, R. (eds) The Bronze Age - Iron Age Transition in Europe. Oxford: BAR. Taylor, T. F. 1987b. The Norwegian cultural landscape. CurrentAnthropology 28. Taylor, T. F. forthcoming. The real and the fantastic in the archaeological reconstruction of Weltanschauung. In Stanev, N. (ed.) Simvolite i tyacknata rolya vuv historiyata na kulturata. Sofia: Academy. Taylor, T. F. n.d. The Cultural Development of the Lower Danube Basin Region during the First Millennium BC. D.Phil thesis in preparation, University of Oxford. Todorova, H. n.d. Eneolit Bolgarii. Sofia: Sofia Press. Todorova, H., Vasiliev, V., Yanushevich, Z., Kovacheva, M. and Vulev, P. 1983. Ovcharovo. Sofia: Academy. Toncheva, G. 1981. Un habitat lacustre de l'Age du Bronze ancien dans les environs de la ville de Varna (Itz6rovo II). Dacia NS 25: 41-62. Trohani, G. 1986. Centres du production - centres socio-spirituels dans le monde g6todace de la plaine du Danube. Terra Antiqua Balcanica 3: 83-8. Velkov, V. 1983. Ancient Settlements in Thrace. Journal of Indo-European Studies 11: 194-216. Warner, R. 1949. Xenophon: The Persian Expedition (Anabasis). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Zirra, V. 1983. Citeva date privind a?ezarea getica, fortificata, de la Cotofenii din Dos (jud. Dolj). Thraco-Dacica 4: 135-40.
IeIIVe
siecles,
Abstract Timothy Taylor Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification 'insoutheast Europe before the Roman
period
There are many problemsassociatedwith the modern cross-cultural classification of settlement types. Even greater difficultyis experiencedin dealing with the prehistoricperiod, and this is especiallytrue in southeastEurope, for at least fourreasons:1) few regionalsurveysor large-scale excavationsof settlementshave been undertaken,2) variousThracianlanguagetermsrelatingto settlements have been preserved in ancient texts and modern place-names, 3) prehistoric settlement appears to have been remarkablydiverse, and 4) some types of settlement can be inferredwhich do not survivearchaeologically.

Diversity in SE Europe Settlements

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Aspects of Settlement Diversity and Its Classification in Southeast Europe before the Roman Period Author(s): Timothy Taylor

Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe

HOUSE >HAMLET-- VILLAGE- TOWN -A

FAMILIAL+COMMUNAL+RE LIGIOUS+ JURAL+ POLITICAL ADDITIVEGENERAL FUNCTIONS

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1000 and 2000

Lepenski Vir, phaseILP Scaleinrmet1res. After Srejovic 1969.

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in progress. excavations See textfor explanation.

Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe

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ditch. Scale in metres. After Ofdentlich1963.

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Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe

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Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe

Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe References

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