Balkan prehistory - Exclusion, 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:

1. Setting the scene: the Balkans before 6500
2. Building social environments (6500–5500 BC)
3. New dimensions of material culture: pottery containers
and other forms of expression (6500–5500 BC)
4. Continuity or change? Burials, lithics, plants and animals
5. Continuities, expansion and acceleration of building and economy (5500–3600 BC)
6. Burial and expressive material culture (5500–3600 BC)
7. Transitions to new ways of living:
the Balkans after 4000 BC
8. The Balkans (6500–2500 BC):
exclusion, incorporation and projection