Symbolic Spaces in Prehistoric Art Espaces

UNION INTERNATIONALE DES SCIENCES PRÉHISTORIQUES ET PROTOHISTORIQUES INTERNATIONAL UNION FOR PREHISTORIC AND PROTOHISTORIC SCIENCES PROCEEDINGS OF THE XV WORLD CONGRESS (LISBON, 4-9 SEPTEMBER 2006) ACTES DU XV CONGRÈS MONDIAL (LISBONNE, 4-9 SEPTEMBRE 2006) Series Editor: Luiz Oosterbeek VOL. 40

Session C28

Symbolic Spaces in Prehistoric Art Territories, travels and site locations

Espaces symboliques dans l’art préhistorique Territoires, déplacements et localisation des sites Edited by

François Djindjian Luiz Oosterbeek

BAR International Series 1999 2009

This title published by Archaeopress Publishers of British Archaeological Reports Gordon House 276 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7ED England [email protected] www.archaeopress.com

BAR S1999 Proceedings of the XV World Congress of the International Union for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences Actes du XV Congrès Mondial de l’Union Internationale des Sciences Préhistoriques et Protohistoriques Outgoing President: Vítor Oliveira Jorge Outgoing Secretary General: Jean Bourgeois Congress Secretary General: Luiz Oosterbeek (Series Editor) Incoming President: Pedro Ignacio Shmitz Incoming Secretary General: Luiz Oosterbeek Volume Editors: François Djindjian and Luiz Oosterbeek

Symbolic Spaces in Prehistoric Art: Territories, travels and site locations / Espaces symboliques dans l’art préhistorique: Territoires, déplacements et localisation des sites © UISPP / IUPPS and authors 2009

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THE SYMBOLIC CONSTRUCTION AND REPRESENTATION OF THE DWELT SPACE IN THE LOWER DANUBE CHALCOLITHIC (6TH MILLENNIUM BC) Dragos GHEORGHIU National University of Arts, Bucharest; email: [email protected] Abstract: The attempt of this paper is to demonstrate the existence of symbolic relationships between the macro and the micro levels of the Chalcolithic material culture of the populations living near the Danube in the 6th millennium BC. The comparison between the symbolic structure of the tell-settlements and the ceramic architectural models, as well as the identification of the tropes of the visual rhetoric modeling the material culture, will try to reveal the worldview and help to understand the grammar of the art of the Lower Danube dwellers. Keywords: tell-settlements, symbolism, rhetoric, tropes, models Resumé: La tentative de ce chapitre est de démontrer l’existence des relations symboliques entre les niveaux macro et micro de la culture matérielle des populations Chalcolithiques vivant à proximité du Danube, dans le 6eme millénaire av JC. La comparaison entre la structure symbolique des villages-tells et des modèles d’architecture en céramique, ainsi que l’identification des tropes de la rhétorique visuelle qui modéllent la culture matérielle, vont essayer de révéler la perception du monde des populations Chalcolithiques et nous aider à mieux comprendre la grammaire de l'art des habitants du Bas – Danube. Mots-clef: villages – tell, symbolisme, rhétorique, tropes, maquettes

In the Lower Danube area, the middle of the 6th millennium was characterised by a substantial progress in architecture and the set up of settlement networks; the houses, positioned in compact groups, use an improved technology of building, with posts of variable dimensions (Marinescu-Bilcu et al. 1997; Todorova 1982:23-32, figs.13-22), foundation trenches and wooden platforms plastered with clay.

INTRODUCTION The goal of the present paper is to demonstrate the existence of symbolic relationships between the geometry of the spatial organization of the 6th millennium B.C. Chalcolithic sites from the Lower Danube area and some artistic representations discovered within these settlements. Therefore this paper is a comparative study of the uses of visual syntaxes at macro and micro scale with the role to identify analogies of meaning between these two levels of the prehistoric material culture.

If at the beginning of the millennium the settlements used a fuzzy scheme, and were characterised by a dynamic occupation of the land (Andreescu et al. 2002, 44 ff), as soon as the middle Boian a higher degree of sedentism can be identified (Neagu 2001) in the new strategy of land occupation, which will be expanded by the next tradition Gumelnita-Karanovo VI-Kodžadermen.

I will discuss the symbolic structure of the tell-settlements of Late-Boian and Gumelnita traditions as well as the rhetoric involved in the construction of objects which intended to symbolize the spatial organization of these sites.

A new symbolic mode of settling emerges in Late-Boian tradition, with ditches surrounding the settlements, which will determine the emergence of tells (Bailey 2000: 156).

A SHORT PRESENTATION OF THE TERRITORY DISCUSSED THE SYMBOLIC STRUCTURING OF THE CHALCOLITHIC TERRITORY: THE EMERGENCE OF TELLS

The Lower Danube area consists of the hydrographical basins of the Danube River tributaries between Bazias and Sulina, which was characterized until recently by large meadows and lakes, produced cyclically by the flooding rivers.

This new strategy of settling on a particular place, surrounded by a ditch and a palisade, will direct to the materialization of a new kind of settlement, the tell (Fig. 11.1). While restricted to a specific place, tells show discontinuities in settling (see Bailey 1997; Gheorghiu 2006), with firing (see Erdoğu 2005: 31; van Andel et al. 1995) and abandon episodes. For example, at Cascioarele – Ostrovel, a small island on Catalui lake (a former Danube River buffer) (Fig. 11.2), four episodes of settling (dated from Boian to final Gumelnita), were separated by

As the result of the Neolithic dispersal from Western Asia, as soon as early 6th millennium B.C., the Balkans and the Lower Danube region will develop an original cultural phase, labelled First Temperate Neolithic (Nandriş 1970; Nandriş 2005), which was characterised by an architecture of wood and daub, specific for woodland regions (Perlès 2001: 198; Treuil1983).

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But tells were not the only form of settling; they belonged to a larger functional and symbolic strategy of inhabiting the Lower Danube territory, comprising closed settlements (the tells), open settlements, workshops and necropoleis. The tell was a dwelt unit separated from the natural and cultural environment by means of a series of obstacles, i.e. rites of passage (Gheorghiu 2008). At the same time a tell was constantly in a direct relationship with water, being positioned generally to be on the southern bank of a river or a lake (Gheorghiu 2003).

TELLS AS RITUAL AND SYMBOLIC SPACES As already mentioned, the separation of the tell by means of different architectural features like ditches, simple or double palisades, or by geomorphs, generated a series of rites of passage which defined the dwelt territory as a ritual space par excellence.

Fig. 11.1. Reconstruction by the author of a tell settlement, Vadastra 2003-2007

Additionally, the sacrifice of a part (the house) or of the whole (the tell) settlement by fire, could be perceived as a rite of passage analogous with the technological rites of the agricultural pyrotechnologies, ceramic firing or food preparation, probably with a parallel symbolism. Such statement could be supported also by the analogies existing between the architectural shape of the oven and the house, as many miniature clay objects infer (Done 1997:250, fig. 3/6). Compared with the Early Neolithic settlements (Neagu 2001), the Late – Boian tells seem to have been the result of a careful geometry, under the shape of an orthogonal frame (as at Radovanu, see Comsa 1990). During the following cultural phases (i.e. Gumelnita A1,2 and B) the rigour of the orthogonal design will fade and will be replaced by diverse designs. Since dwelling in a tell meant to built overlapping the former level of settling, every new level of new built houses implied a shift in the positioning of the plan, which led in time to a loss of the initial spatial organisation (Gheorghiu 2002).

Fig. 11.2. The Ostrovel – Cascioarele island (centre of the image) on the Catalui Lake three levels of firing, abandon and flood (Dumitrescu 1986; see also Gheorghiu 2006). Compared with the Early Neolithic strategy of settling, when settlements were positioned in the lowest wetland, in the Gumelnita-Karanovo VI-Kodžadermen tradition each dominant feature of the landscape like terraces (Sultana tell) (Fig. 11.3), levees (Gumelnita eponymous site), slopes or islands (Cascioarele Ostrovel) were used for building tells.

The Chalcolithic orthogonal frame of dwelling could be approached as being a symbolic feature, similar to the perspective in the Renaissance (see Panofsky 1927), employed for an easy mental and technical control of the newly accessed landscapes. One could paraphrase a wellknown expression and say that the orthogonal frame was not only „bon[ne] a penser” (Lévy-Strauss 1962), but also „facile a penser”. A possible functional explanation for the emergence of the orthogonal frame could be the extension of the ordered space of the household to form a rectangular pattern, with minimal perimeter, therefore controlling/ protecting better the built space. Another symbolic feature of tells is their controlled deconstruction. At the end of its life-cycle, a house could have been left to weathering, or, from unknown reasons,

Fig. 11.3. The Sultana tell

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intentionally fired (Tringham 1992; Tringham and Krstic 1990; Stefanovič 1997, 2002; Chapman 1999; Gheorghiu 2007a, b; Cavulli and Gheorghiu 2008; Gheorghiu 2009).

A very frequent trope was the synecdoche, materialised by the substitution of the whole by one of its parts, sometimes employed in complex visual compositions by putting the fragment in relationship with the whole (Gheorghiu 2001: 20).

To perform the intentional combustion of a wattle and daub structure beside an additional quantity of fuel, a series of operations of controlling the firing process were employed, which lead to the partial transformation of the clay of the walls, ceiling and floor into ceramic material (Gheorghiu 2007a, b) (Fig. 11.4). As a result of the [controlled?] collapse of the walls inside the perimeter of the firing house its volume transformed into a series of overlapped layers of ceramics and unfired clay. Such a remarkable material transformation due to a rite of passage would certainly have a symbolic meaning for Chalcolithic populations since the fired area was settled. One can conclude that the symbolism of construction and deconstruction of tells was in a direct relationship with rituality and, up to a certain extent, with geometry.

The orthogonal frames discussed above belong to this rhetoric category, since they are abstract and symbolic representations of the part – whole relationship. Another trope, specific to visual rhetoric, was the miniaturization (meiosis would be the equivalent trope in classical rhetoric) of objects or beings (see Gheorghiu 2001: 20). This category comprises technomorphic, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines. One rhetoric scheme which modelled the large part of the material culture was the construction – deconstruction process, which structured the symbolism as well as the technology of Chalcolithic traditions, being in a direct relationship of meaning with the basic phenomena which shaped the symbolism of traditional populations. The tropes and scheme mentioned can be identified in the production of architectural models of the 6th millennium B.C. traditions of the Lower Danube area, and I will continue by discussing a couple of study cases.

THE RHETORIC RECONSTRUCTION OF THE SPACE WITH THE HELP OF OBJECTS: THE SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATIONS OF SYMBOLIC SPACES Because of the difficult nature of the subjects approached, the prehistoric artisan created intricate schemes to express messages like the complex symbolic shape and space of the tell or its sacrifice through combustion. As soon as Late Boian, ceramic architectural models were used to support rhetoric messages about the spatial organization of tells. Fig. 11.4. Firing a replica of a prehistoric house, Vadastra 2006

The most famous model discovered until present is the “Cascioarele temple” (Dumitrescu 1970, National Museum of History, Bucharest), excavated in a Late Boian layer on the island Ostrovel, Catalui Lake, and consists of four small house models positioned on a large platform with perforations (Fig. 11.5). In my opinion, after several experiments of building replica of prehistoric houses surrounded by palisades, I believe this object describes accurately the image of a tell bordered by a palisade. From perspective reasons, as well as from symbolic reasons, the palisade was hyperbolised, which is a rhetoric trope. The many perforations would have had a double signification: functional and symbolic. Experiments demonstrated that the perforation of the ceramic object would allow a good air-draught if fire was lit inside (Gheorghiu 2005; Gheorghiu 2007b) (Fig. 11.6). At the same time since the number of perforations coincided with the average number of the houses of a tell, it is

To understand the symbolic rules which structured the existence of tells one shall approach the Chalcolithic mind looking for indirect evidence in the material culture of the period.

COGNITIVE TEMPLATES OF THE 6TH MILLENNIUM B.C. An analysis of the “cult” or “ritual” objects of the 6th millennium B.C. populations from the Lower Danube area reveals the presence of rhetorical templates not only in their overall shape but also within their technology (Gheorghiu 2001).

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Fig. 11.5. The model from Cascioarele, National Museum of History, Bucharest

Fig. 11.7. The reconstruction of the Ovcarovo tell (by Bogdan Dumitru)

Fig. 11.6. A replica of the Cascioarele model (by Andrea Oprita), used as brazier

Fig. 11.8. The model from Sultana, Oltenita County Museum

possible that they represented a diagram of the tell as well as an indexical sign for households or “smokes”. The four small houses could be perceived as a synecdoche of the settlement, a trope whose meaning is supported also by the diagram of the perforations. I believe that the slanting frame cold be the result of an attempt to present a perspective view of the settlement (Fig. 11.7). Finally, the frame of the composition of the four housemodels as well as the rigour of the frame of the perforations places this object in a relationship of analogy with the spatial organization of the Late Boian settlements. Another type of architectural model, displaying a row of three perforations on the long walls and on the roof comes from Sutlana tell (Gumelnita tradition, Oltenita County Museum) (Fig. 11.8). Analogous objects discovered in the south of the Lower Danube Area, in Kodžadermen (Gaul 1948) or Drama (Lichardus et al. 1996), present the same semiotic combination between an icon and a diagram, the icon acting as a synecdoche to evoke the whole.

Fig. 11.9. The lid from Pietrele, Giurgiu County Museum

lids, to cite only the finds from Pietrele (Berciu 1956: 42, fig. 51; 46, fig. 58; the object from Fig. 11.9, Giurgiu County Museum), identified in all literature as being images of “ovens”. In this cases the curved surface of the

A different way to symbolize the whole settlement from one of its buildings is to be found on some Gumelnita

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lid evokes the geomorph on which the tell was positioned, and the synecdoche evokes the whole settlement; the artisan insisting on the symbolism of the tell as “island”.

flux. Central and Eastern Europe. Colloquia Pontica 3. Oxbow Books, Oxford: 41-58. BERCIU, D., 1956, Cercetari si descoperiri arheologice in regiunea Bucuresti, Materiale II, pp. 1-80.

The difference of complexity between the rhetoric schemes of the architectural models from Late Boian and Gumelnita could be related to the change in the spatial organisation of the settlements, the new kind of territory occupation being preferred to be represented volumetrically by synecdoches.

CAVULLI, F., and GHEORGHIU, D., 2008, Looking for a methodology burning wattle and daub housing structures. A Preliminary Report on an Archaeological Experiment, Journal of Experimental Pyrotechnologies, pp. 37-43.

CONCLUSION

CHAPMAN, J., 1999, Deliberate house-burning in the prehistory of Central and Eastern Europe, In: Gustafsson A., and Karlsson, H. (eds.), Glyfer och arkeologiska rum – en vanbok till Jarl Nordbladh, pp. 113-126, Gotarc Series A, Vol.3.

The main conclusion of the present text is that in the 6th millennium B.C. Chalcolithic traditions there was a relationship of analogy between the spatial organisation of the settled territory and a series of objects displaying architectural features. One could observe the emergence of a symbolic design in Late Boian, from the macro to the micro levels of its material culture, the orthogonal frame being an efficient symbol to organise (at a mental and at a physical level) the territory to be settled.

COMŞA, E., 1990, Complexul Neolitic de la Radovanu, Călăraşi: Cultură şi Civilizaţie la Dunărea de Jos VII. DONE, S., 1997, Modele de locuire si sanctuare eneolitice, Cultura si civilizatie la Dunarea de Jos XV, pp.232-259. DUMITRESCU, Vl., 1970, Edifice déstine au culte découvert dans la couche Boian-Spantov de la station de Cascioarele, Dacia 14, p. 5-24.

All the objects discussed, whose role was to symbolise the dwelt space, were the result of a complex symbolic and rhetoric design process which is characteristic for the “art” productions. In this perspective we shall add to the “cult” or “ritual” labels ascribed to various objects, the label of “art”, which today is restricted to a small category of (recent) products of the past.

DUMITRESCU, V., 1986, Stratigrafia asezarii-tell de pe ostrovelul de la Cascioarele, Cultura si civilizatie la Dunarea de Jos, 2, pp. 73-81. ERDOĞU, B., 2005, Prehistoric settlements of Eastern Thrace, BAR International Series 1424. GAUL, J.H., 1948, The Neolithic period in Bulgaria, Peabody Museum of Harvard University. GHEORGHIU, D., 2001, Tropes in material culture, In Gheorghiu, D. (ed.), Material, virtual and temporal compositions. On the relationship between objects, BAR International Series 953, pp. 17-26.

Acknowledgements I thank very much my colleagues Drs. Louis Oostebeck and François Djindjan for the kind invitation to submit a paper to this volume. And for their long patience!

GHEORGHIU, D., 2002, On Palisades, Houses, Vases and Miniatures: the Formative Processes and Metaphors of Chalcolithic Tells, pp.93-117 in Gibson, A. (ed.), Behind Wooden Walls: Neolithic Palisaded Enclosures in Europe, BAR International Series 1013 Oxford: Archaeopress.

Note Photos by the author: 1-4 and 6-9. © Dragos Gheorghiu 2008.

GHEORGHIU, D., 2003, Water, tells and textures: A multiscalar approach to Gumelnita hydrostrategies, in D. Gheorghiu (ed.), Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Hydrostrategies, British Archaeological Reports 1123, Archaeopress, Oxford, , pp. 39-56.

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