Balkan Prehistory - Exclusión, Incorporation and identity

Douglass W. Bailey - Balkan Prehistory, © 2000


The period from 6500 to 2500 BC was one of the most dynamic eras of the
prehistory of south-eastern Europe, for it saw many fundamental changes in the
ways in which people lived their lives. This up-to-date and authoritative synthesis
both describes the best excavated relevant Balkan sites and interprets long-term
trends in the central themes of settlement, burial, material culture and economy.

Prominence is given to the ways people organized themselves, the houses and
landscapes in which they lived and the objects, plants and animals they kept. The
key developments are seen as the creation of new social environments through
the construction of houses and villages, and a new materiality of life which filled
the built environment with a wide variety of objects. Against the prevailing trends
in European prehistory, the author argues for a prehistoric past riven with tension
and conflict, where hoarding and the exclusion of people was just as frequent as
sharing and helping.

Balkan Prehistory provides a much-needed guide to a period which has previously
been inaccessible to western scholars. It will be an invaluable resource for
undergraduates, advanced students and scholars.

Douglass W.Bailey is Lecturer in European Prehistory at the School of History
and Archaeology, Cardiff University. He has carried out extensive fieldwork in
Bulgaria and Romania.


Contents:

Introduction: Balkan prehistory (6500–2500 BC):
fundamental changes in human behaviour
Fundamental changes in living
Explanation
The organization and structure of the book

1. Setting the scene: the Balkans before 6500 BC
The early Balkans
Spatial organization in the middle and upper Palaeolithic
Expressions of identity in the Balkan late Pleistocene
Where is the Mesolithic?
Chapter conclusions
Summary

2. Building social environments (6500–5500 BC)
Building the social environment
Northern Greece
West- and south-central Bulgaria
The Western Balkans and the lower Danube
The Danube Gorges
North-west Anatolia and Turkish Thrace
Chapter conclusions
Summary

3. New dimensions of material culture: pottery containers
and other forms of expression (6500–5500 BC)
Pottery
Other forms of expressive material culture
Non-representational, visually expressive material culture
Chapter conclusions and summary

4. Continuity or change? Burials, lithics, plants and animals
Treatment of the deceased
Flaked stone tools
Plants and animals
Chapter conclusions
Summary

5. Continuities, expansion and acceleration of building and economy (5500–3600 BC)
The built environment
Managing the living environment
Chapter conclusions
Summary

6. Burial and expressive material culture (5500–3600 BC)
Mortuary practice
Expressive material culture
Chapter conclusions
Summary

7. Transitions to new ways of living:
the Balkans after 4000 BC
Settlement
Burial
Material culture
Continuity in lithics and economy
Chapter conclusions
Summary

8. The Balkans (6500–2500 BC):
exclusion, incorporation and projection
The built environment
The new materiality
The arrangement of people and things
Illusion within the post-6500 BC Balkans
Conclusion: Why were things different after 6500 BC?