The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

MINISTERY OF CULTURE, RELIGIOUS DENOMINATIONS AND NATIONAL CULTURAL HERITAGE

BRUKENTHAL NATIONAL MUSEUM BIBLIOTHECA BRVKENTHAL XXXV

Proceedings Signs and symbols from Danube Neolithic and Eneolithic

MAY 18-20, 2008: International symposium

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

Exhibition
May 18-June 5, 2008: Exhibition of photographs of inscribed artifacts from museums throughout Romania (photos by J. Appelbaum, Institute of Archaeomythology) and paintings of artifacts from throughout Southeast Europe (paintings by D. Bulgarelli, F-M.U.S.E.U.M Project) Museum of History, Casa Altemberger, Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu, Romania

Sibiu, 2009

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

Published by the Brukenthal National Museum Piaa Mare 4-5 550163 Sibiu, Romania http://www.brukenthalmuseum.ro

In collaboration with the Institute of Archaeomythology 1645 Furlong Road Sebastopol, California 95472 USA http://www.archaeomythology.org
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In collaboration with the Institute for the Study and Valorification of the Transylvanian Heritage in European context Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu Bulevardul Victoriei 5-7 550024, Romania

Edited by: Sabin Adrian LUCA

Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Naionale a Romniei THE DANUBE SCRIPT : NEO-ENEOLITHIC WRITING IN SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE. INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM (2 ; 2008 ; Sibiu) Proceedings "Signs and symbols from Danube Neolithic and Eneolithic" ; Sibiu, may 18-20, 2008 : international symposium "The Danube script : NeoEneolithic "writing" in Southeastern Europe" / Ministery of Culture, Religious Denominations and National Cultural Heritage ; ed.: Brukenthal National Museum. - Alba Iulia : Altip, 2009 ISBN 978-973-117-217-0 003(063)

Editura ALTIP Alba Iulia

2

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

Summary SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................................3 Joan MARLER, OVERVIEW AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.................................................................5 Sabin Adrian LUCA, FOREWORD ............................................................................................................7 Harald HAARMANN, CHANGING THE CANON: RESEARCH ON ANCIENT WRITING SYSTEMS BEYOND THE MESOPOTAMIAN BIAS ......................................................................9 Adrian PORUCIUC, FROM BULL-AND-BUTTERFLY TO ALPHA AND PSI.....................................37 Gheorghe LAZAROVICI, ARE THE TRTRIA TABLETS A ENIGMA ?. ....................................41 Attila LSZL, SOME ASPECTS OF THE TRTRIA ISSUE ..........................................................57 Sabin Adrian LUCA, Cosmin Ioan SUCIU, Adrian LUCA, INCISED AMULET FROM TURDALUNC ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATION ............................................................................67 Radian-Romus ANDREESCU, THE SIGN: TYPOLOGY, CONTEXT, MEANING .............................77 Nicolae URSULESCU, Felix Adrian TENCARIU, SYMBOLIC SIGNS ON THE CERAMICS OF THE CHALCOLITHIC SETTLEMENT AT ISAIIA (IAI COUNTY, ROMANIA) ............87 Susan MOULTON, PARSING THE PAST: VISUAL MARKS AS CULTURAL METAPHORS ......103 Miriam Robbins DEXTER, THE DANUBE SCRIPT AND THE OLD EUROPEAN GODDESS: THE INTERSECTION OF LANGUAGE, ARCHAEOLOGY, AND RELIGION ......................113 CorneliaMagda LAZAROVICI, CLAY BREAD AND TABLETS WITH SIGNS AND SYMBOLS ......................................................................................................................................125 M. VIDEIKO, THE LEGACY OF THE DANUBE SCRIPT EAST OF THE CARPATHIANS IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE (3400-2300 BC). ..................................................................................... 137

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

Overview and Acknowledgments

On May 18-20, 2008, a dozen researchers from Eastern and Western Europe and the United States, representing a variety of disciplines assembled in Sibiu to participate in an international symposium on the subject of The Danube Script: Neo-Eneolithic Writing in Southeastern Europe. The symposium was organized by the Institute of Archaeomythology in collaboration with the Brukenthal National Museum and was held in the historic Museum of History, Casa Altemberger. The symposium was accompanied by an exhibition of large, high resolution images of inscribed artifacts photographed in museums throughout Romania produced by the Institute of Archaeomythology. The exhibition also included a series of paintings of inscribed figurines from throughout Southeast Europe painted by the Italian artist / anthropologist Daniela Bulgarelli contributed by Marco Merlini from the F-M.U.S.E.U.M. Project (Leonardo da Vinci Programme), Rome, Italy. These works were exhibited at Casa Altemberger until June 5, 2008; afterwards they traveled to several other Romanian museums.

The directors of the Institute of Archaeomythology would like to thank Professor Sabin Adrian Luca, Dr. Cosmin Suciu, Florian Dumitrescu and the entire staff of the Brukenthal National Museum and Casa Altemberger for their gracious and dedicated collaboration which made this exhibition and symposium a reality. We are grateful to the directors of the Romanian museums who generously allowed our photographer Jacob Appelbaum and staff from the Institute of Archaeomythology, to photograph inscribed artifacts in their collections for this exhibition as a result of official requests for permission sent by Professor Sabin Luca. The participating museums are: Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu; National History Museum of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca; National Museum of History, Bucharest; "Vasile Prvan" Museum, Brlad; Institute of Archaeology, Iai; Braila Museum of Archaeology and History, Braila; Department of Archaeology, "Al. I. Cuza" University, Iai; Museum of History and Archaeology, Piatra-Neamt; Museum of Banat, Timioara; and the Museum of Banat Mountain Area, Reita.

Thank you to the international group of scholars who gathered in Sibiu to take part in the symposium on the Danube Script, and to our Institute teamSusan Moulton, Harald Haarmann, and Marco Merliniand especially Adam Giacinto and Greg Dexter who tirelessly documented the unfolding events in Sibiu.

Joan MARLER

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

Foreword
The incised, impressed or more rarely painted signs and symbols found all over the space of the Neolithic and Eneolithic from South-Eastern Europe incited and still incite scholars to ideas and assumptions regarding to possible communication systems who could exist in those periods. The scientists duty is to analyse those theories and artefacts, to look carefully for a scientifically explanations of the Danubian signs phenomena. The international symposium and the exhibition held in Sibiu in May 2008, the Exhibition Catalogue published in 2008 in USA and the present volume are trying to explain the significance of the Neolithic and Eneolithic signs and symbols in a very scientifically manner. The Symposium programme:
The Danube Script: Neo-Eneolithic Writing in Southeastern Europe Museum of History, Altemberger House, Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu, May 18-21, 2008 Symposium Schedule: Day 1 May 17: Presenters arrive / Informal dinner Day 2 May 18 - 9.00-9.30. Official welcome; 9.30-11.00: Presentations with discussion Introducing the Danube Script, Joan MARLER; Changing the Canon: Research on Ancient Writing Systems Beyond the Mesopotamian Bias, Harald HAARMANN; DISCUSSION; Coffee break 11.00-11.30; 11.30-13.00. Key Features of the Danube Script Based on the Databank DatDas, Marco MERLINI; The Legacy of the Danube Script to the East from the Carpathians in the Early Bronze Age (34-2300 BC), Mikhail VIDEIKO; DISCUSSION; Lunch 13.00-14.00. 14.00-16.00: Clay Bread, Slates or Tablets with Signs and Symbols?, C. Magda LAZAROVICI; Danube Script: The Intersection between Language, Archaeology, and Myth, Miriam Robbins DEXTER; The Signs: Typology, Context, Means Radian Romus ANDREESCU; DISCUSSION; Coffee break 16.00-16.30. 16.30-18.00: From Bull-and-Butterfly to alpha and psi, Adrian PORUCIUC; Parsing the Past: Visual Marks as Cultural Metaphors, Susan MOULTON; DISCUSSION; 18.00: OPENING OF THE EXHIBITION; 19.00: OPENING BANQUET; Day 3 May 19 - 9.00-10.30: Balkan Neolithic and Early Copper Networks of Communication Lolita NIKOLOVA; ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION: Did the Neolithic and Eneolithic signs and symbols constitute an early writing system?; Coffee break 10.30-11.00. 11.00-13.00: Are the Trtria Tablets an Enigma?, Gheorge LAZAROVICI; Some Aspects of the Trtria Issue, Attila LSZL; DISCUSSION about the Trtria Issue; Lunch 13.00-14.00. 14.00-16.00: Symbolic Signs on Ceramic Objects from the Eneolithic Settlement (Precucuteni Culture) from Isaiia (Iai County), Nicolae URSULESCU, Felix Adrian TENCARIU; CONCLUDING DISCUSSION; 16.00-18.00: HISTORY MUSEUM VISIT; 18.00-20.00: CLOSING BANQUET; Day 4 May 20: 9.00: DAY-LONG EXCURSION TO TURDA, TRTRIA AND ALBA IULIA MUSEUM / RETURN TO SIBIU FOR DINNER AND OVERNIGHT; Day 5 May 21: Departures.

Dear colleagues, I am inviting you to read and to think!

Professor Sabin Adrian LUCA, Ph.D.

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

CHANGING THE CANON: RESEARCH ON ANCIENT WRITING SYSTEMS BEYOND THE MESOPOTAMIAN BIAS Harald HAARMANN (Finland) Abstract: By analyzing the conditions of emergence of ancient scripts, of their principles and features, and of their multifunctional roles for the cultural ecology of early agrarian societies, valuable insights may be gained for the study of the differential fabric of ancient civilizations of the Old and New Worlds. These insights allow for pronouncements about the early civilizations and their communication networks which are more precise than previous statements given within the limited frame of traditional writing research. Keywords: Old Europe, Sumerian, writing, proto-writing, Danube script, mnemotechnics, language. Introduction The study of writing systems has followed certain canonical paths which are characterized by the observation of alleged truisms. The tricky thing with truisms in science is the unstable oscillation in the amount of truth that they carry in their conceptualizations. Some truisms may reflect a true image of reality, others may have a true core but are too generalizing while others are misconceptions or distortions of reality. It is tedious trying to cope with truisms and to distinguish between these various categories. Writing, with its function as an information technology, is a marker of civilization in the meaning of high culture, and it is interrelated with other markers of high culture. This truism about early or first writing has never been seriously denied. However, if this truism is integrated into a network of other truisms about the nature of civilization then it may lose its original weight for the discussion about cultural evolution or it may even become distorted. In other domains of modern science, as in writing research, theory-making readily adheres to the application of prototypical models that supposedly have explanatory potential for all known cases of a studied subject. In the humanities, thinking in the categories of prototype models has long been canonical. Assumptions about the emergence of ancient civilizations in the Old World, formulated by modern scholarship, illustrate the canon (see Haarmann 2007a: 162 ff. for the deconstruction of the notion of prototype). According to the traditional culture chronology, the threshold of civilization was passed first in Mesopotamia in the late fourth millennium BCE. Following the canon, any ancient civilization is characterized by a specific combination of advanced institutions, and these are a hierarchically stratified society, centralized political leadership (kingship), statehood and a related bureaucracy to handle state affairs, urbanism and writing. The canon of prototype institutions gained in profile under the impression of progress made with the investigation of civilizations in the Ancient Orient during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the context of European historical romanticism of the early nineteenth century, a type of circular reasoning originated which favored the idea of Mesopotamia as the cradle of civilization. Since those days, the notion ex oriente lux (the light from the East) has dominated as a basic orientation of cultural history in the mindset of many people. This fixation on the Mesopotamian prototype produced well-known, wide-spread, and misconceived truisms: Since it is believed by many scholars that Sumerian civilization is the oldest known in the worldan assumption which does not hold trueits cultural fabric serves as a prototypical model for research on ancient cultures; Since the Sumerian prototype of ancient civilization is canonical, researchers look for a Mesopotamian fabric of high culture wherever an ancient civilization might have emerged. According to this circular logic, a given culture cannot be identified as a civilization if scholarly analysis of local settings does not reveal a stratified society, political leadership and statehood. There are many flaws in this notion of prototype with respect to how ancient civilizations emerged. Ironically, the network of features postulated for the prototype is not even complete in all known cases of civilizations of the Old World. The most crucial propertiesstratified society, statehood and bureaucracy are either missing or weakly developed in some regions. For instance, a state with a clearly defined territory 9

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe and a common army was absent from the conditions of political rule during the Shang Dynasty (c. sixteenth eleventh centuries BCE) in ancient China, as was an apparatus of state bureaucracy (Chang 1983: 25 ff.). These institutions became clearly defined as late as the Western Zhou Dynasty (11th century771 BCE). Statehood and hierarchical social structures were also missing in the context of the ancient Indus civilization (Maisels 1999: 220 ff.). The discourse about the emergence of civilizations, the unfolding of their institutions and the trajectories of sociocultural evolution illustrates the problems inherent in adherence to the prototype mentality in scholarship. Consequently, the issue of how writing technology unfolded as one of the institutions of the ancient civilizations has been tainted by the mindset that adheres to the prototype. The prototype mentalityaccording to which writing must have served state administration in the early stage of any ancient civilizationis likely to isolate itself when one inspects the evidence for the functions of first writing in different regions of the world. Symbolic (i.e., religious, commemorative and/or ceremonial) functions of writing frequently occur, and, in a comparative view of first writing, their frequency may well dominate the overall picture of early literacy (see Haarmann 2009 for a comparative view on first writing). Non-administrative functions prevail in the early use of a script in civilizations with secondary literacy such as Archaic Greece in the eighth century BCE (with primary writing in Linear B and secondary alphabetic writing). During the archaic period the combination of images and writing generally appears in one of two contexts, as inscriptions on pottery vases or as texts accompanying votive dedications or funerary monuments (Newby 2007: 7). Calling for a new paradigm in research on ancient civilizations and the analogy from astronomy The challenges which the research on early writing is facing today resemble, in certain ways, the requirements of modernization facing contemporary astronomers. For decades, since the discovery of Pluto in 1930, the truism about our solar system was that there are nine planets circling the sun and only one is inhabited by life forms. With the discovery of celestial bodies beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto in the early twenty-first century, astrophysics has deconstructed the simplistic concept of a limited set of objects orbiting the sun. Since the 1950s, two large formations of celestial bodies on the periphery of our solar system have been known. One of these formations is the Oort Cloud which is described as a spherical swarm of a million comets surrounding the solar system and extending halfway to the nearest stars. The cloud is named after the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort who first suggested its existence in 1950 in order to explain the orbits of the observed long-period comets (Murdin and Penston 2004: 306 f.). As for the other formation, the Kuiper Belt (or Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt), the argument is that there is no reason why the solar system should end abruptly at Neptune or Pluto. Perhaps large planets could not form beyond Neptune, but smaller bodies might have been able to (Murdin and Penston 2004: 307). The discovery of this vast ice-belt with tens of thousands of objects with a diameter larger than 100 km, circling around the sun at a distance far beyond Pluto, has prompted the need for revision of conventional definitions of the concept planet. Some celestial bodies in the Kuiper Belt are much larger than Pluto. In modern astrophysics, a debate about definitions has flared up. The older truism of nine planets in our system is no longer valid. On the occasion of their meeting in Prague in 2006, scientists of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) decided to delete Pluto from the list of planets and to categorize it as an object of the belt zone. Because of its high-inclination and high-eccentricity orbit, Pluto is now understood as a Kuiper Belt Object (KBO), similar to many other objects with orbits resembling that of Pluto. Instead of its former, now abandoned categorization as a planet, Plutos name is now used for a new category of orbiting objects: plutoids. As for the state-of-the-art of astronomy following the meeting of IAU astronomers in June of 2008, two plutoids are listed, Pluto and Eris. The consequences for such a change in the traditional canon of astronomy-oriented worldview are immense, reaching as far as the revision of schoolbooks and encyclopedias. The need for a revision of the history of ancient civilizations and for a new definitional approach to one of their prominent institutions (i.e., writing technology) has produced a movement of scholarly emancipationa breaking away from the concept of the Mesopotamian prototype. During the past two decades, some sensational archaeological discoveries have produced new insights into the absolute chronology of the history of writing, and these insights call for a revision of previous conceptions about the high age of writing in Mesopotamia. The early beginnings of Sumerian pictography are literally outdated 10

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe by finds of older evidence for the use of Egyptian hieroglyphs that extends the cultural chronology of writing at least 150 years further back in time than the oldest texts from Uruk. There is no longer any doubt that the tradition of writing in ancient Egypt emerged in the pre-dynastic period and is older than the use of pictographs in southern Mesopotamia (see Tuchscherer 2007 for an outline). For a long time the truism of Mesopotamia as the cradle of civilization and of writing technology had remained unrivalled. The chronological extension back in time of the tradition of ancient Egyptian writing makes a decisive difference. If one is inclined to adhere to a handy slogan, then the novel truism may be paraphrased as ex meridie lux (the light from the South). And yet, old-fashioned descriptions of the events in the world history of writing continue to reflect, still today, the traditional mindset of ex oriente lux. For example, this is true for Jared Diamonds generalizing survey of writing history (1998: 215 ff.) and also for recent contributions to writing research by experts (e.g. Cooper 2004). Although the view on the history of writing has been widened with the introduction of the findings about ex meridie lux, yet another revision is called for, and this because of the new cultural chronology that was elaborated for the European Neolithic in the 1990s. The new chronology with calibrated C14 dates was propagated by Marija Gimbutas (1982 and 1991 for details), and has been acknowledged by scholars in European archaeology (e.g. Kruta 1993; Cunliffe 1994; Whittle 1996; Bailey 2000; Budja 2005). Moreover, further finds of artifacts bearing signs and symbols call for a re-opening of the debate about early experiments with writing technology in the Neolithic cultures of southeastern Europe. In view of the growing evidence that speaks in favor of writing having emerged independently in the context of European cultural evolution, it is conclusive to envisage yet another shift in perspective relating to the beginnings of early civilization. Neither ex oriente lux nor ex meridie lux are valid any longer. Instead, the novel truism is ex occidente lux (the light arising in the West). The notational systems of the Neolithic cultures in Southeastern Europe are among the markers of high culture and contributed decisively to the formation of the Danube civilization that flourished from c. 5500 to c. 3500 BC. The exclusion of the early experiments with writing technology from the canon of topics of writing research does not only deprive scholarship of a valuable case study to modernize its methodology but it also produces contradictions since, in other scientific disciplines, writing in Neolithic Europe has been acknowledged as a reality to reckon with. This is true for the new paradigm of the philosophy of language and writing that has been presented by Christoph Trcke (2005: 59 ff.). The insights relating to early successful experiments with writing in Southeastern Europe have also been duly noted in the history of information technology (see Watson 2005: 106 f.). Even scholars with no particular interest in the study of writing technology show themselves impressed by the abundance of signs and their systematic use in the regional cultures of the Danube oecumene. Marks incised on figurines and pots suggest the appearance of a notation system (Anthony 2007: 162 f.). One gets the impression that the discussion about writing technology outside the traditional canon of writing research assumes the role of an arbiter in the modernization process of this scholarly domain. Traditional writing research seems to remain indifferent to demands of a revision of methodology and terminology and it has beenso to speakstanding on the wrong foot because visual communication has been preferably treated as an extension of the study of spoken language, as if the written code were the visible mirror image of speech. This mindset is vividly reflected in the study Visible speech (1989) by DeFrancis whose analysis of writing technology is exclusively oriented to the sound structure of language. In recent year, a breakthrough has been achieved, marked by approaches that view writing and literacy as a trajectory of communication in its own right, in principle independent from spoken language although, in later periods in the history of writing, the association of visual signs and the sounds of language became ever closer, culminating in the emergence of alphabetic scripts from the second millennium BCE onwards. The investigation of humans capacity for visual symbol-making has produced insights about early documents of intentional markings made by hominid predecessors of our species, such as Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis, archaic humans (see Haarmann 2005 and 2007a: 40 ff. for an outline). Thus, the sense of abstractness and the ability to create visual signs with an associated meaning date far back on the continuum of human evolution. The capacity for abstract symbol-making is a condition sine qua non (indispensable) for any kind of notation, whether numerical, calendrical, script-oriented or other. The first comprehensive scheme to establish a linguistics of writing and literacy as a scientific discipline has been recently elaborated by Christa Drscheid (2006). In her outline on the history of writing, the originality of the (Old European) Danube script is acknowledged and its major features are analyzed, in a comparative view with the other ancient writing systems (Drscheid 2006: 104 ff.). 11

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe This field of study which, according to Drscheid, deserves independent status among the scientific disciplines of the humanities covers a wide array of original writing systems in different regions of the Old and New Worlds: Original writing systems of the Old World The Danube script (c. 5500c. 2600 BCE): Principle of writing: Logographic with occasional marking of phonetic elements. Writing systems inspired by the Danube script: Linear A in ancient Crete; Linear B for writing Mycenaean Greek; the scripts of ancient Cyprus, i.e., Cypro-Minoan, Cypriot- Syllabic (the latter is purely phonographic = syllabic without a logographic component). The Egyptian script (c. 3300 BCEfirst century AD) in three variants: Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, Demotic: Principle of writing: Logico-segmental (logograms + signs for rendering the consonantal structure of words). Derivations: Meroitic (in ancient Nubia). The Sumerian script (ancient pictography since c. 3150 BCE, cuneiform since c. 2700 BCE): Principle of writing: Logico-syllabic (about two thirds of the signs were used as logograms, one third as syllabograms). Derivations: cuneiform script used for Akkadian (with a shift to a predominance of syllabograms), Elamite, Hurrian, Urartean, Hittite, Ugaritic, Persian. The Proto-Elamite script (c. 3050c. 2700 BCE): Principle of writing: Logographic with an additional phonographic component. Derivations: none known. The Indus script (c. 2600c. 1800 BCE): Principle of writing: Logographic with occasional marking of phonetic elements. Derivations: none known (individual signs of the ancient script are perpetuated as magical symbols among the Dravidian population in southern India). The Chinese script (since c. 1200 BCE): Principle of writing: Logographic (ideographic) with an additional phonographic component (rebus). Derivations: historical Ido (Korea); historical Manyogana and modern Kanji (Japan); historical Chu Nom (Vietnam); script of the Yi/Lolo in southern China; the historical scripts of the Yao, hsia, Juchen, etc. Original (pre-Columbian) writing systems of the New World: Olmec (c. 1500600 BCE): Principle of writing: Logographic (no additional phonographic component known). Writing systems inspired by Olmec writing: primary scripts such as the newly discovered Isthmian script, Mayan (logico-syllabic) and Zapotec; the Zapotec script inspired other writing systems such as Toltec, Aztec and Mixtec. To this overview of pre-alphabetic writing systems has to be added the tradition of alphabetic writing from which all modern scripts derive: Varieties of the alphabet (beginnings in the seventeenth century BCE): Principle of writing: Purely phonographic (without logographic component). Seminal scripts from which numerous others have derived: Phoenician, Aramaean, Greek, Latin, Brahmi, Cyrillic, etc. The interplay of communication systems and the pivotal role of writing for knowledge-construction - A typology 12

Hsi-

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

Knowledge-construction is at the very core of culture which is a dynamic rather than static phenomenon. Modulations and variations of the culture process are effected by the varying extent to which knowledge about the world is accumulated, as a collective experience, in local communities. Knowledge makes culture operational and this fact emphasizes the significance of human agency for the construction of culture (Haarmann 2007a). The extent to which knowledge can be accumulated depends on the effectiveness of gathering informationthe raw material for constructing knowledgethe reworking and selecting of data and on the storage capacity for useful knowledge. The cultures of the world distinguish themselves by patterns of how communication systems of verbal and non-verbal mnemotechnics operate and co-operate to serve the purpose of knowledge-construction. A universal constituent in all patterns is oral memory in manifold variations (i.e., oral tradition of narratives, the memorizing of elementary rules of social conduct and basic laws in chanting, singing in rituals). Other constituents are more specialized, such as calendrical notation, the notation of music, secret codes, etc. (Boone 2004). An inspection of the interplay of communication systems reveals a selective patterning in the worlds cultures. The tentative typology of mnemotechnics presented in the following is related to that patterning. A) Mnemotechnics based on oral memorizing and on visual means of constructing knowledge (excluding literacy)

The combination of oral memorizing and of a visual recording of information without the participation of writing technology is the most widely spread type of culture in space and time. The mental abilities for this type of combined verbal and non-verbal mnemotechnics can be postulated for early species of hominids, that is these capacities reach beyond modern humans into the past of cultural evolution. Evidence for this comes from the cultural layers of Homo erectus and archaic humans (i.e., Homo neanderthalensis). The ability to use a rudimentary language can only be hypothesized for Homo erectus while the notation of information for reuse with visual signs is documented for that species (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Intentional abstract markings on bone from the cultural horizon of Homo erectus, about 1.1 million years BP, Kozarnika cave, Bulgaria (after Guadelli 2004: 2). The combinations of mnemotechnical means in question is better documented for archaic humans. The presence of the language bone (i.e. hyoid bone) as part of the Neandertal skeleton points at the neurological ability of the motorics to produce sounds of speech, albeit within the limitations of a protolanguage. The visual manifestation of symbol-making of that hominid species is evidenced by abstract motifs scratched on material such as bone and stone. This culture type reached a considerable level of sophistication in the communities of modern humans, with the earliest evidence for visual symbolic activity coming from the cultural strata of the Blombos Cave in South Africa, dating to some 77,000 BP (Henshilwood et al. 2002). The dual capacity to produce iconic (i.e., naturalistic) and abstract motifs, as documented in rock carvings and paintings, is found from the Upper Palaeolithic into the Mesolithic and Neolithic, and beyond. Although there is no cultural sequence at any site where rock art continued uninterruptedly from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic, stylistic evolution of some basic motifs seem to speak in favor of artistic continuity (Anati 1989). The degree of complexity of meaningful elements and their assemblages in Neolithic rock pictures is astounding and in certain compositions may be as dense as to form narrative sequences. Illustrative of this is 13

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe the composition of figurative motifs and abstract symbolism on the so-called roof stone from Lake Onega (dating back to the late third millennium BCE) which contains elements of a calendar, a year chronicle, and an abundance of motifs with mythological significance (see Haarmann 1990: 201 ff.; Haarmann and Marler 2008a for an interpretative approach). B) Mnemotechnics based on oral memorizing and on visual means of constructing knowledge, including pictorial literacy

Pictorial literacy is not language-related, yet it can be much more effective for recording information than the casual alignment of naturalistic and abstract motifs in a figurative composition (e.g., in a rock painting). The term literacy is usually applied to language-related mnemotechnics although, in anthropology, its range of application is much wider, to also refer to pictorial narratives (e.g. Boone and Mignolo 1994). It has to be acknowledged that numerous cultures in the world that may be deemed illiterate by the definitions of an evolutionarybased model are the inventors, users, and intellectual guardians of highly complex systems of graphic communication, which may include pictographic, ideographic, calligraphic forms, and/or other kinds of visually codified and mnemonic systems (Roberts et al. 2007: 20).

Figure 2: The beginning of the first chant in the chronicle Walam Olum (after Haarmann 1991: 74). In the present context, the term literacy is used in a metaphorical association with the attribute pictorial because pictorial literacy has a property which it shares with language-related literacy (see C, D and E): the technique of organizing symbols in a meaningful sequence. As an example, the mnemotechnics called kekinowin (an Ojibwa term), applied by North American Indians of the Northeast, can be mentioned. A famous specimen of a narrative account in this technique is 14

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe the Walam Olum (literally truthful painting), the tribal chronicle of the Delaware (Vascenko 1989: 17 ff.) (Figure 2). The alignment of pictorial symbols in this document which stand for contextual units such as phrases or clauses reveals linearity as in a written text because the relationships between the successive drawings . . . suggest a continuous metamorphic chain: the syntax of a fundamental grammar of forms (Maclagan 1977: 79). There are many cultural settings where pictorial literacy serves the needs of storing information for reuse and of accumulating knowledge or, as a mnemotechnical support for oral memorizing. In connection with traditional cultures where pictorial literacy is wide-spread, especially in Eurasia and North America, this type of visual mnemotechnics is referred to as pictographic art by some anthropologists (see Fitzhugh and Crowell 1988: 308 ff. for this tradition among the Siberian and Alaskan Eskimo). When reflecting on the technique of pictorial narratives (as non-writing), one is confronted with the question of what the boundaries are between writing and non-writing. If pictography is an ancient form of writing (e.g., as used in the oldest Sumerian accounting tablets or on Chinese oracle bones), how does it differ from picture sequences in a pictorial narrative (e.g., as in Palaeolithic and Neolithic rock carvings around the world or in the kekinowin system of Native Americans)? There is a clear distinctive feature which separates pictography from a pictorial narrative. Any form of writing, regardless of being logographic (ideographic) or phonographic, functions according to the principle of a 1-to-1 equivalence.

Figure 3: A typology of writing systems: a) Principles and techniques of writing; b) The application of techniques. Pictorial narratives lack this rigid 1-to-1 equivalence. The meaning of individual pictures may stand for a whole sequence of ideas. In the typological overview of the different stages in the development of writing systems, the difference between pictorial techniques and writing (pictography, for one) becomes 15

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe apparent (see the configuration in figure 3a). The cognitive fabric of writing is highlighted by the features in the central and right columns while, in the left column, the relation between a pictorial sign and ideas remains diffuse, that is, ambiguous or undifferentiated. The diffuse nature of pictures and their meaning in pictorial narratives can be elucidated when contrasting them with signs of writing (see examples in figure 3b). C) Mnemotechnics based on oral memorizing and on visual means of constructing knowledge, including logographic writing

The fabric of any of the civilizations which are defined in terms of the sum of their institutions as high culture is characterized by the operation of writing technology. When inspecting the incipient phases of logography which is the most elementary and archaic form, it is amazing to notice that logographic literacy is but a short step from pictorial literacy to a more advanced level of organizing information for reuse. In pictorial literacy, the tendency toward assembling pictorial symbols in a linear sequence can be observed, a sequence which marks the flow of ideas in a narrative. While a pictorial symbol stands for a contextual unit (i.e. a phrase or a clause), a logogram is equal to one single cognitive construct. Logographic literacy thus provides a higher degree of precision in recording ideas than does pictorial literacy which requires much more support from oral memorizing. From the standpoint of the capacity of information storage the emergence of high culture is characterized by a thrust toward greater precision in the use of visual symbols. Thus, writing is not the great invention of civilization, as it has been hailed, but rather an item which documents the specialization of high culture. The principle of writing which is called logographic or ideographic, practically speaking, corresponds to one-word (= whole-word) writing. Logographic refers here to the rendering in writing of concepts that are products of abstract reasoning (e.g., ideas such as generous, friendship, self-consciousness) whereas ideographic makes reference to ideas which can be depicted (e.g., house, dog, pot). In Chinese writing, many abstract ideas are rendered by composite signs that are comprised of miniature components in a figurative ensemble (Figure 4).

Figure 4: The visual etymology of some Chinese characters (after Haarmann 1990: 138). In the historical retrospective, one can make the surprising observation that none of the early writing systems that emerged in the civilizations of the Old World started out as a phonographic system. Regardless of how the writing systems of antiquity associated themselves, writing started out as non-phonetic. In the course of time, more and more writing systems became associated with the sound structures of the languages which were rendered by their signs, The process by which the early writing systems of the world emerged shows a similar pattern in each of the cultural environments. In early writing, the sound sequences of spoken words were neglected in favor of the contents of the message being rendered with signs. In the formative stage of the ancient scripts, the intentionality of writing is associated with the realm of ideas, rather than with the sounds of the language in which ideas were expressed. The intentions of those who created writing systems did not primarily lie in the 16

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe exact rendering of speech sounds but in the fixation of ideas and information of which messages were composed. This intentional fixation of information for reuse bears all the characteristics of what we understand as writing, regardless of the missing (or diffuse) connection with language. The contents of the ancient Sumerian accounting tablets, can be understood and reconstructed without knowing any word of Sumerian, for the simple reason that the signs of the ancient Sumerian script are pictographic, that is, they render ideas as products of the mind, not words as products of speech. When correlating the intentionality of fixing information for reusewith the realm of ideasone arrives at the following basic formula: The realm of ideas <==> writing /// language (sound structure) In this pattern, an idea is visually associated with a sign of writing via its representational form (that may be identified with a certain object) orin the case of an abstract signvia its conventional use. For example, the concept woman in Egyptian hieroglyphs is visually evoked by a graph depicting a sitting female; while in Sumerian writing, the concept divinity is evoked by the convention of using a star. This is the pattern of intentionality which governs the formative process of ancient writing systems. Evidence for this is provided by the early stages of Sumerian pictography (Green and Nissen 1987), ProtoElamite script (Englund 2004), ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs of the pre-dynastic period (Dreyer 1998), ancient Indus script (Parpola 1996), and ancient Chinese oracle bone inscriptions (Bagley 2004). The same holds true for the Danube script (Haarmann 1995: 31 ff., 2008b). Although this writing system has not yet been deciphered, its organizational infrastructure, which can be identified, speaks in favor of the pattern described here (see the script-oriented contributions in Marler 2008). All ancient writing systems are composed of many hundreds of signs. The reason for the high number of signs is the logographic principle of writing, which requires individual signs for writing individual concepts or ideas. The concepts dominating daily communication in community life of any culture easily amount to several hundreds and, including special terms in professional fields, the number further increases to several thousands. The signs to render logograms dominate the ancient writing systems, and this is true even in those cases where an additional phonetic component (i.e., syllabic writing) is developed. The Danube script was comprised of several hundred signs, perhaps even more than 1,000. Egyptian hieroglyphic writing made use of some 760 signs in the second millennium BCE, whose number increased to more than 1,000 at the times of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt (4th1st centuries BCE). Ancient Sumerian pictography (between c. 3200 and c. 3000 BCE) operated with about 770 signs. Later cuneiform writing (after 2700 BCE) used some 2,000 signs. Altogether 410 individual signs belong to the repertory of the ancient Indus script which was in use from c. 2600 to c. 1800 BCE. From the collection of the oracle bone inscriptions of ancient China (between c. 1200 and 771 BCE), some 1,200 to 1,400 signs are known. The multitude of signs of the Danube script and the other ancient writing systems of the Old World is indicative of a way of writing that was non-phonetic. This means that neither the Danube script nor any of the other ancient scripts were alphabets which operate according to the principle ONE sign = ONE sound. The earliest documentation of alphabetic writing dates to the seventeenth century BCE (that is thousands of years later than the experiments with writing in the Danube civilization). In its multi-faceted history, the alphabetic principle has produced hundreds of local systems of letters with which to write a great variety of individual languages (Haarmann 2007b: 74 ff.). The number of signs for alphabets fall in a range between a minimum of 13 letters (i.e. for Tahitian) and a maximum of 38 (i.e. for Armenian). The number of letters in most alphabets of the world amounts to some 20 to 30. The number of letters in alphabets is remarkably smaller than in those phonographic systems where signs have the value of syllables. Several syllabic systems are known from antiquity. The number of regularly used cuneiform signs in late Assyrian writing was less than 200; the system of Elamite cuneiform was comprised of 113 signs; Cretan Linear A made use of some 120 syllabic signs, while Cypriot-Syllabic used 55. In all probability, the Danube script was based on the principle of nuclear writing. This refers to the practice of logographic writing that focuses on the rendering of the stem of words, while extensions of the word stem (i.e., pre- and/or suffixes for marking the plural of nouns or case endings) would be neglected in writing. In general, the inscriptions of the sixth, fifth and fourth millennia BCE in Southeast Europe are very short, and many are comprised of one single sign. Despite the occurrence also of longer texts with alignments of several signs (some with more than twenty signs), short inscriptions prevail. 17

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe When an inscription consists of only one sign, this sign must express a single idea or, the most elementary independent unit of language, a whole word. This inductive identification is logical since any single sign with phonetic value (syllabic, segmental or alphabetic) would not express an independent linguistic unit and, thus, would not render a meaningful component of a message. In nuclear writing, only that part of a word (i.e., the stem) is rendered graphically which bears the elementary meaning. In the hypothetical case of writing English words according to this principle, the plural -s in girls or the 3rd pers. -s in a verb form (e.g., she sees) would be omitted. Also, an inflectional plural form as in women (with the -e- in the plural for the -a- in the singular, woman) would not be marked graphically in nuclear writing. Nuclear writing is cumbersome because it requires a great interpretative effort on the part of the reader to specify the precise meaning of a text and to identify the exact contents of messages. Rendering meaningful elements (= word stems) in writing and, at the same time, omitting or randomly marking grammatical elements, is illustrative of an archaic system of writing, and this means that nuclear writing is archaic. The inductive identification of one-sign inscriptions as representing logographic writing was the key that facilitated the decisive initial step for the decipherment in progress of the ancient Indus script. For this script, a crude system of nuclear writing has been reconstructed in which each sign stands for a word or morpheme of one or more syllables (Parpola 1994: 85) and where only the meaningful elements (= stems of words) were written. Grammatical elements were either completely omitted in writing or rendered only occasionally. The best known script based on this principle of nuclear (logographic) writing is the system of Sumerian pictography, the predecessor of cuneiform writing. Nuclear writing is the principle which governs the sign compositions in the oldest clay tablets from the cultural strata of Uruk III and IV, dating to between 3200 and 3000 BCE. D) Mnemotechnics based on oral memorizing and on visual means of constructing knowledge, including phonographic writing

On a theoretical level, the transition from logography to phonography can be characterized as a drive toward a greater union between visual signs and the sound structure of a given language. The motivation for this specialization of writing lies in the need for an appropriate recording of names, personal, mythological and geographical, and in a tendency toward greater economy of the sign repertory in a system. In the transitional process toward greater effectiveness, cultural relativity became the major arbiter to determine the pace of phoneticization and the degree to which the whole writing system shifted toward phonography. The realm of ideas <> writing <==> language (sound structure) In this pattern, the idea (or concept) is only indirectly, via its conventional meaning, associated with the graphic sequence that renders the sound structure of a word. The meaning of words like dom or talo (as rendered in alphabetic writing) is not recognizable in the graphic appearance of their sound structure because the sound structure of elements of speech is arbitrary in its relation to meaning. The meaning reveals itself only to those who share the conventions of the given speech communities whose members use those words. In the case of dom, this requires the knowledge of Russian language use while talo is assigned its conventional meaning in the Finnish speech community. Both dom and talo have the same meaning, which is house. This pattern of intentionality is typical of all phonographic writing systems which, in a historical retrospective, are all a secondary development of writing technology. There are several types of phonographic writing. Most widely spread in antiquity was syllabic writing in which one sign corresponds to a syllable. Akkadian, Babylonian, Hittite and other cuneiform systems are syllabic (Walker 1990; Cooper 1996), as is Cretan Linear A (Bennett 1996: 132 ff.). Another kind of phonographic writing is represented by the Egyptian hieroglyphs (Ritner 1996) where a sign renders the consonantal segments of a word. There are signs for writing one segment, two segments, three segments and even a four-segment sequence (Petrovskij 1978). The picture of the famous scarabaeus, the beetle that rolls dung balls, features the inventory of threesegment signs and reads h-p-r. It becomes clear from the different stages of writing that the establishment of the alphabetic principle (one sign as an equivalent for one sound) is the most advanced and specialized of all techniques. Alphabets follow the principle of a 1-to-1 correspondence of sign and sound. Each single letter stands for one individual sound. Historical orthography may blur the perspective. In the spelling of American English the 18

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe writing of the word thru is closer to the basic alphabetic principle than the rendering of the same wrd as through in British English in whose spelling an older (medieval) stage in the phonetic development of the English language is still reflected. In most languages which use varieties of alphabetic scripts, though, the 1to-1 correspondences of sign and sound are much more clearly recognizable than in writing English (e.g., in Spanish, Hindi, Russian or Finnish). It is evident that the emergence of the pattern (b) is inconceivable without the prior stage (a). Consequently, only when taking into consideration the duality of stages in the development of writing technology can one perceive the gradual unfolding of the process of phoneticization and gain insight about the fact that relatively early scripts tend to be logographic rather than phonographic (Sampson 1985: 36). Although all ancient writing systems (= original scripts) started out as logographic they developed an additional phonographic component in the course of time. The trajectories of transition from a dominance of the logographic principle to phonographic varieties of writing are specific for each of the ancient scripts. The Danube scriptlike the ancient Indus scriptdid not develop a marked phonographic constituent. In the case of cuneiform writing in Mesopotamia, a remarkable shift occurred in connection with the adoption of Sumerian writing practices by the Akkadians. This shift is characterized by a transition from predominantly logographic writing (Sumerian cuneiform) to predominantly phonographic (i.e., syllabic) writing (Akkadian cuneiform). In certain cultural environments, one can observe a floating between the principles (a) and (b) in the history of local literacy. Sumerian writing illustrates this state of a diffuse intentionality. In the early phase of Sumerian literacy (c. 3200c. 2900 BCE), there was no explicit intention to render Sumerian words according to their sound structure and grammatical elements were omitted in writing. Sumerian is an agglutinative language in which nouns take suffixes and verbs both prefixes and suffixes. Virtually no trace of these affixes can be found in the early archaic texts, but they begin appearing after 2900 B.C.E. Curiously, they are used in what can only be described as a skeletal way for centuries; and only in the early second millennium, when Sumerian was probably extinct and spoken only in the schools, are the affixes fully expressed (Cooper 1996: 43). Still, after the introduction of the cuneiform technology of writing (c. 2700 BCE), Sumerian scribes wrote according to the catchword principle, writing the key words of a sentence and often neglecting grammatical elements and syntactic markers. The Sumerian writing never attempted to render the language phonetically correct, exactly as it was spoken (Thomsen 1984: 20). The later history of writing in Mesopotamia is the history of a gradual process of reconciling sign sequences with the sound sequences of Sumerian. Throughout the period of Sumerian literacy, writing was never predominantly phonographic. On the contrary, the use of logographic signs abounds (Figure 5).

Figure 5: The reading and development of Sumerian logograms (after Walker 1990: 20).

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe This use of Sumerian signs as logograms, differing according to individual texts and text genres, constitutes up to 60 percent of the total amount of signs. In the Sumerian system, signs with phonetic (= syllabic) value make up minimally 36 percent of written texts (Civil 1973: 26). For several hundreds of years, Sumerian scribes rendered the sound structure of their mother tongue only selectively in writing. It was not until the adoption of cuneiform writing by the Akkadians (c. 2500 BCE) that the decisive step toward a full-scale phonographization was taken. The writing system thus changed from chiefly logographic to chiefly syllabic, with a trend towards consistent spelling. In the early first millennium BC, an Assyrian scribe could manage fairly well with just 120 graphemes (Parpola 1994: 35). With the shift to the priority of phonographic writing, that is with the transfer of Sumerian cuneiform signs to writing Akkadian, also the value of signs experienced a shift to predominant use as syllabograms. In Akkadian texts, up to 90 percent of the signs have syllabic value while only some 5 percent are used as logograms and another 5 percent as determinatives. Graphic determinatives are elements which are written but not spoken. They precede a word and their function is to identify this word as belonging to a certain class of words. For example, in Sumerian writing, the stylized picture of a star served as a determinative. In association with a name, it specified that name as one of a divinity. In Sumerian literature, there is a particular genre of texts, the so-called instructions. These texts have a stereotyping phrase structure and their formulaic contents was reproduced, more or less unchanged, for hundreds of years, being transferred from one generation to the next as sources of proper conduct in Sumerian society. One of these texts contains the instructions given by Suruppak to his son (see Thomsen 1984: 21). When comparing an archaic version of the text (c. 2600 BCE) with the Old Babylonian version (c. 1850 BCE) one recognizes that, in the early version, the writing concentrates on catchwords and omits, for the greatest part, the writing of syntactic markers. In the younger text, the rendering of words and syntactic markers with signs of writing is much more extensive. The initial stage of writing in ancient Egypt was dominated by the use of logograms. The Egyptian system of hieroglyphs developed into a full-fledged phonographic script (at the same time retaining its repertory of logograms), with sign inventories for rendering the consonantal structures of words. According to this segmental principle of writing, signs are distinguished for words containing one, two, three or four consonants. The set of four-consonant signs is fairly limited, so is the set of one-consonant signs. More numerous is the amount of two- and three-consonant signs. The development of Chinese characters deviates from all other ancient scripts since the logographic (ideographic, respectively) principle has remained dominant throughout history. This conservatism in writing ultimately explains itself with the fact that Chinese is an isolating language operating with stem words and without grammatical markers (suffixes, prefixes, endings) as in inflectional (e.g., Russian) or agglutinative (e.g. Hungarian) languages. Logography suits the structures of Chinese well. As an additional component, Chinese writing operates with a phonographic technique called rebus which corresponds to an additional phonetic marking of logographic characters. The alphabet is the most specialized of all phonographic varieties. Although the identification of the sounds of a language with the signs of the script is the organizational principle with top priority, no written language in the world exists with a perfect ratio of a one-to-one correspondence (i.e. one sign for one sound). Finnish holds the record in that there are only two deviations from making its script a perfect alphabet. These deviations are the following: The nasalized n-sound [n] as in the word kuningas king is written with two signs (-ng-) instead of a special sign; In the phonetic nexus diphthong -ai + -j, a double j is articulated as, for instance, in Aija (a womans name; pronounced Aijja), but this doubling does not appear in writing. The alphabet is not only an effective technology, it is also shrouded in the mystery of myth-making about it. Traditionalists and amateurs still adhere to the idea that the adoption of the Phoenician alphabet by the Greeks led to the improvement of their abstract thinking and effected a leap in cultural development which resulted in the fabric of the classical Greek civilization. The ultimate wisdom of this mindset culminates in the claim that all the basic ingredients of Greek civilization (i.e. the sense of abstractness in art 20

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe and philosophy, logical reasoning, the distinction of basic geometrical forms) allegedly originated under the impact of the alphabetic principle on the human mind in antiquity (Donald 1991: 340 ff.). Among the prominent supporters in favor of the evaluation of the alphabet as a revolutionary breakthrough for the progress in civilization are M. McLuhan and R.K. Logan (1977). They go as far as to attribute the development of codified law, monotheism, abstract theoretical science, formal logic, and individualism to the effect of the alphabet. Logan (1986: 233 ff.) re-emphasizes earlier claims that the use of alphabetic writing stimulates left-brain patterns, including rationality, logic, linearity, sequence, mathematics, and analysis. Despite extensive research on the prehistory of Southeastern Europe and the early history of writing among the Greekswhich was non-alphabeticalmany representatives of the mainstream of antique studies still adhere to the myth of the miraculous effect of the alphabet as a driving-force of human inventiveness. This myth is deceptive in many respects. The imaginative division of cultural periods, namely a time when the Greeks did not yet possess writing and one when they definitely did, is erroneous. The former is labelled the pre-literate and primitive Greek culture of the dark ages, the latter is referred to as literate and associated with the fabric of Greek civilization. This division and the values associated with its periodization are a typical product of the Romanticist movement of the nineteenth century, and its repercussions can still be felt today. Despite its perseverance in peoples minds the miracle of the rapid emergence of Greek civilization is a myth which is out of touch with the realities of cultural history. Logans exaggerated claims fall flat when one inspects the heritage of abstract symbolism of the Danube civilization in its relationshipvia the ancient Aegean cultures and, via Mycenaean civilization in particularwith Greek institutions. For instance, the polis (as a political unit in a wider economic-cultural oecumene), geometry, temple architecture and poetry were already developed before the adoption of the alphabet (see Haarmann 2003: 70 ff., 2006b for an outline of this trajectory). The roots of the sense of abstractness, of rationality and of logical thinking can be attested already for the pre-Greek period, and they are manifested in the organizing principles of the repertory of linear signs. There is ample evidence from the structuring of the Cypriot-Syllabic script (which was used to write Greek from the eleventh to the third centuries BCE) for the continuity of abstract symbolism from the era of the Danube civilization into classical Greek times. The Old European spirit is present in the organizational principles of that script as well as in the shapes and forms of its signs. This includes all basic forms of Greek geometry, the stroke (i.e., line), the circle, the square, and the triangle. The visual impression of the abstract sign inventory of Cypriot-Syllabic provides direct evidence for the diffusion of such forms as mental concepts among the Greeks in Cyprus which kept up continuous contact with the mainland Greeks. As regards the alleged stimulating effect of the alphabet on the codification of Greek laws, this idea can also be discarded as unsubstantiated. The oldest Greek laws come from Crete, a cultural area where law-making is rooted in the Minoan past. There is evidence of a Greco-Minoan synthesis in Crete. Indicative of this is the Greek word kurbis for which the following meanings are given: (a) ancient laws, (b) ancient commandments, (c) instructions (in poetic speech since the fifth century BCE), (d) tall stele with inscription (since the times of Theophrastos, fourth century BCE). The pre-Greek origin of the term kurbis is underscored by the uncertainty with which its grammatical gender is treated in the classical texts, sometimes as masculine, sometimes as feminine. In all likelihood, the expression was borrowed from the pre-Greek language of Crete; for Cretes well-established pre-eminence in the framing of laws during the archaic period may rest ultimately upon the great law-givers of the Minoan period (Jeffery 1990: 53 f.). The pre-Greek (= Minoan) language in Crete, in its late Eteocretan stage of development, persisted well into the era when the Cretan version of the alphabet was elaborated, that is into the nineth and eighth centuries BCE. This is evidenced by the fact that both Greek and Eteocretan were written with the same script in the archaic period.

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe E) Mnemotechnics based on oral memorizing and on visual means of constructing knowledge, including primary (traditional) and secondary (digital) literacy

We are living in the information age (or in network society, respectively; Castells 1996-98). We have been educated in a world of literacy and we are accustomed to the idea that the accumulation of information for the purpose of a successful interaction in our cultural environment depends on the effectiveness of the written code (see Assmann 1999 for such a worldview). The written code is an essential tool for transferring digital data into sign sequences which can be processed by the human brain. The use of writing is nowadays distributed in two domains: in primary literacy (the production of texts on traditional materials and in traditional techniques) and in secondary literacy, which is equivalent to digital literacy (Gilster 1997, Haarmann 2006a: 353 ff.). The Motivation for First Writing: Deconstructing a Euro-American Myth Writing activity is the manifestation of human intentionality. There is no writing without the intention to attain certain ends. Most scholars would agree that writing basically serves the purpose of fixing information for reuse with the help of visual markers. Intentionality has a multifaceted role in this activity because it relates both to the content of a message as well as to the way in which it is rendered (Lyons 1995). In the Western (= Euro-American) tradition of writing research, the established truism about the origins of writing focuses on the administrative demands to organize larger communities. Those who follow the mainstream of writing research advocate bureaucratic origins of writing, relating to the emerging bureaucracy of palaces, temples and communities. The prototype settings for this scenario have been identified for Mesopotamia and early Sumerian writing. Whereas there can be little argument with this proposition based on the evidence from ancient Babylonia [...] the case for Egypt, China, and Mesoamerica is less obvious. The surviving early written material from each of those regions is religious, political, for elite display, or a combination of these; except for Egypt, administrative texts have not been found (Cooper 2004: 72). Although early evidence for bureaucratic records is absent from the archaeological material in the ancient civilizations other than Babylonian, this lack of evidence is marginalized, in a smart argumentative move, by postulating that such records had been written on perishable material. The reason is simple: in Mesopotamia, the primary writing material was clay, virtually indestructible. [...] In Egypt, administrative records would have been kept on papyrus or other perishable materials, which would not have survived in the Nile flood plain, where administrative archives would have been located; [...] In China, records would have been kept on silk or on wood strips, and in Mesoamerica, on bark paper or palm leaves. These, too, are perishable and would not have survived (Cooper 2004: 72). This argumentation makes the impression of a vicious circle of pressing arguments into a prefabricated mold, adhering to the traditional canon of imagined needs for introducing writing technology. The underlying logic is simple, along the lines: We know that there must have been bureaucratic records; since we cannot find them we claim that they were written on perishable material. First writing on unperishable material in pre-dynastic Egypt The claim that, in Egypt, administrative records would have been kept on papyrus is pure speculation. Clay was available in large quantities, not only in Mesopotamia but also in Egypt, in the areas of settlement in the Indus valley and in ancient China. The availability of this raw material in the mentioned regions is evidenced by finds of ceramic figurines which date to the pre-agrarian period. If there had been a need for administrative recordings, people in Egypt, India or China would have certainly set their minds to clay as a material to write on, and we would find a similar tradition to write on clay in all the ancient civilizations. However, since the trajectories of cultural evolution differed from one another, also writing technology unfolded on different paths. How much of a speculation the statement about papyrus as an old material for writing is in the context of ancient Egyptian culture can be concluded from the fact that the oldest specimen of papyrus (i.e. a papyrus roll, found in a grave of the 1st dynasty) is uninscribed. This means that papyrus as a writing material came 22

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe into use some time after the technology of papyrus-making had been introduced. The custom of writing on papyrus in Egypt originated after 3000 BCE, that is after the use of hieroglyphic signs on grave goods of the pre-dynastic era. Inscriptions featuring Egyptian hieroglyphs are executed in black ink on the handles of pottery, that is on objects fabricated from clay of the Nile valley. Inscriptions are also found on small perforated plaques of bone and ivory. The meaning of the signs is the marking of ownership of royal goods from the graves at Abydos (Dreyer 1998: 47 ff., 113 ff.). This means that the oldest texts from the pre-dynastic period did not serve administrative functions of urban bureaucracy. It was only later that papyrus became the preferred material for Egyptian administration to write on: Papyrus rolls formed the medium for most of Egyptian literature, and for the administration of what was always a bureaucratic state; later the use of papyrus was extended to the Hellenic world, and to much of the Roman empire. [...] Papyrus manufacture may have been a royal monopoly, and court records in particular were written on material which is far superior to any modern imitation (Ray 1999: 611). First writing on durable material in ancient China Scapulomancy (divination using bones) was practised for thousands of years before the introduction of writing, so this material and its durability was familiar to the Chinese for a very long time. It is unlikely that bureaucrats used perishable material such as silk for writing down administrative information anywhere in the world. Silk was much too precious to serve as a surface for storing information relating to ordinary bookkeeping. The oldest evidence for silk cloth with Chinese characters painted on its surface comes from the period of the dynasty of the western Han (206 BCE - 8 AD). The texts found on ancient silk from that time are all non-bureaucratic. The other alternative for a material that is speculatively assumed to have been used for early recordings of bureaucratic bookkeeping are wood strips which are known in this function since the times of the Qin dynasty (236 - 202 BCE). The conjecture that wood strips might have been written on for bureaucratic purposes in the second millennium BCE (that is before the introduction of writing on oracle bones) cannot be substantiated, and this for several reasons. The prominence of tradition in Chinese thought and reflections on the origins of Chinese institutions The sense of tradition among the Chinese has been vivid since the emergence of the institutions that make the fabric of Chinese civilization. The achievements of the ancestors for promoting Chinese culture have been constantly remembered by subsequent generations. There is a vast array of information found in Chinese sources about the origins of customs and institutions. The appreciation of the achievements of the ancestors manifests itself as the most stable constituent of Chinese cultural memory. It is true of almost any major tradition that its foundational texts exhibit a powerful mythic quality and, regardless of their exact provenance or historicity, prove no less formative of tradition and axial to a civilization for partaking of this transhistorical, mythic quality (Watson et al. 1999: 24). A full-fledged state bureaucracy developed fairly late, that is during the reign of the rulers of the eastern Zhou dynasty (770256 BCE). If there had been earlier records of a bureaucratic system, these would have definitely been mentioned in the Zhou chronicles and praised as outstanding achievements for the benefit of state authority. If the custom of early bookkeeping had existed in the early days, then the memory of it would have been reflected in later sources. But there is a void concerning bureaucracy, and this has to be understood as a lack of an older tradition, not to speak of an alleged use of silk or wood strips in this domain. Wood strips were not used for first recordings of any form of literacy First recordings of any kind, be it literature or law, were not executed on wood strips. Authoritative propositions with legal character were first perceived in association with religious practices. The essence of legal foundations in ancient China was first recorded in ceremonial inscriptions on bronze vessels during the times of the late Shang dynasty. During the reign of Zhou rulers, from the seventh to the fifth centuries BCE, members of the political lite performed rituals including blood sacrifices, asking the powerfiul spirits of their ancestors to enforce the terms of their oaths. Starting in the sixth century BCE, the idea of 23

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe eternalizing the essence of foundational laws in the form of commandments on sacral bronze vessels marked the beginning of writing down the contents of laws. The fact that the material on which the early legal texts were written were sacral vessels sacralized their contents. Much later, more extended legal texts were written on wood strips. The sacralization of law in covenants and bronzes did not end with the development of more elaborate codes written on bamboo or wooden strips. Han texts narrate several occasions in the QinHan interregnum and the early Han when ceremonies accompanied by blood sacrifice were used to consecrate new laws. But by this time the emphasis had shifted to the text of the oath as the binding force - a recognition of the power of sanctified writing (Lewis 2007: 228). The specific facet of sacralization which is so typical of ancient Chinese traditions is obviously difficult to perceive by a modern western mind that is infused with the profanization of cultural essence in the Euro-American worldview. Consequently, if the mindset of the modern observer is forcefully fixated to the notion of economic-administrative beginnings of writing then the manipulatively conditioned mind is likely to eclipse reflections on the Sacred and to create options like the speculation of bureaucratic recordings on perishable material that did not survive, to fill the void of non-existent evidence. The search for the source of inspiration for this kind of argumentation may take one to the surprising statement: I have long believed that ... (Cooper 2004: 72). Here, belief compensates for the lack of factual knowledge by avoiding to engage in scientific reflection on archaeological facts or constraints of cultural history that can be reconstructed. As is well known, beliefs may be long-lived and, as far as stereotypes and prejudices are involved, it is hard to eradicate them and replace them by items of substantiated knowledge. And this holds true for the world of science, too. The pseudo-argument relating the origins of writing to the administrative needs in larger communities becomes void when put to the test in pertinent contexts where, according to the logic of the modern EuroAmerican mindset, writing would be thought of as indispensable. The fallibility of the Euro-American canon (1): The puzzle of atalhyk A technologically advanced Neolithic community without writing technology Arguably, the most famous case of a large-size community of early agriculturalists is atalhyk in southern Anatolia whose inhabitants were illiterate and where there are no traces of recordings that would reflect the demands of municipal bureaucracy. A modern observer, in a retrospective of the Neolithic world, cannot imagine that such a large community as the one at atalhyk could have existed without the use of a script to support its communal infrastructure. atalhyk means forked mound and its Neolithic settlement is spread over two neighboring mounds (atalhyk West and East). The forked mound, situated in the Konya Plain of southern Anatolia (Turkey) and inhabited between c. 7400 and 6000 BCE, was discovered in 1958 by a group of archaeologists, led by James Mellaart (b. 1925). During four seasons of excavation, between 1961 and 1965 (with an interruption in 1964), Mellaarts team uncovered over three hundred rooms, many of which contained not only well-built domestic features and skillfully produced crafts and tools, but dozens of polychrome wall paintings, clay and plaster bas reliefs, ritual installations and sculptures indicating a pervasive and sophisticated ritual life that extended throughout the duration of the Neolithic occupation. The people of atalhyk were described as being competent agriculturalists, builders and painters, weavers and undertakers (Mellaart 1989: 15). The discovery of atalhyk was undoubtedly the highlight in Mellaarts career, and with his narrative skills he succeeded in spreading the sensational news about the oldest large agricultural settlement of the world which had the size of a small town and a population whose number varied according to different periods of occupation and has been estimated between 3,000 and 8,000 inhabitants. Already in his early reports about the first season of his excavations, Mellaart had taken to calling the Neolithic settlement a city (Mellaart 1964) because of its sheer size. Later, he decided to use the term town in his 1967 book. atalhyk is usually referred to as a town by excavators of the site and by those scholars who contribute to the reconstruction of community life, the technologies, social relations and belief systems of the early agriculturalists (Haydaroglu 2005; Hodder 2006; Marler and Haarmann 2007). So far, excavations at atalhyk have been carried out in almost 20 seasons (four in the 1960s and, continuously, since the re-opening of the site in 1993). During all those campaigns of concerted digging, many treasures of world heritage have been unearthed in the settlement that extended over more than 13 24

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe hectares. Albeit ample evidence for manifold advanced technologies, one technology is clearly missing from the archaeological record, and that is documentation of any kind of ancient writing. According to what is known about life in Neolithic atalhyk, this urban community managed to organize itself without the help of literacy. This may puzzle those observers who are used to project modern ideas about the functioning of complex communities onto prehistoric settings. Much of the culture of atalhyk remains invisible and has to be reconstructed with great caution from the ensembles of artifacts which are discovered by the spades of the archaeologists. Although many reconstructionsin particular of social relations and religious worldvieware a matter of an ongoing dispute, all experts agree that the inhabitants of that early Neolithic town created for themselves sophisticated webs of vivid and refined symbolism where much information and items of knowledge relating to their cultural memory were manifested. It has been emphasized that the people of atalhyk shared ideas about the historical development of their settlement, including concepts relevant for the sustainability of the community (i.e., the significance of rituals, seasonal ceremonies and burial customs). The web of the symbolic systems which played a central role for the community enhanced the process of memorization by visual means without the participation of writing. [W]hat we see is a strategic choice from the range of available symbols. One way of explaining the longevity of these symbols is to argue that they were embedded in myths that were retold and passed down over millennia, with elaborations on the mythic themes in different contexts. [...] people were able to pick and choose the specifics of which symbols to use [...] They also began to use the symbols to create specific histories that linked a specific past to a specific present. I clearly do not mean by this that people at atalhyk had a written history. But I do believe that one can talk about the constructions of history in non-literate societies (Hodder 2006: 142 f.).

The fallibility of the Euro-American canon (2): Fluctuations of systemic sign use Community life at Troy, a civilization oscillating between illiteracy and literacy Troy is located on a hill on the southern tip of the Dardanelles Strait, at some distance from the Aegean coast. The Turkish name of the hill is Hisarlik which means fortified place. In its outer appearance, Hisarlik resembles other settlements on hills (Turkish hyk or tepe) in Anatolia and also in Southeastern Europe (Greek magula). The settlement of Troy developed over a span of time of about 3,500 years in altogether nine consecutive layers (Troy I - IX). Archaeologists add a further layer to the chronology of habitation at Troy, that of Troy X (starting c. 1050 AD), a small Byzantine bishopric that followed the sequence of Roman Troy (Troy IX), after a hiatus of about 500 years. Excavations started in October 1871, conducted by Heinrich Schliemann. The finds from more than thirty archaeological campaigns up to the present during which the greatest part of the once settled area has been explored, allow for a meticulous distinction of the architectural remains in their relation to chronological layers. It is noteworthy that, among the mass of artifacts unearthed at Troy, there is only one written document from pre-Greek times. This is a seal made of bronze which is inscribed on both sides (Figure 6). The language is Luwian und the signs belong to the inventory of Anatolian hieroglyphs. This seal which was found in 1995 is dated to the end of the twelfth century BCE, corresponding to the layer Troy VIIb and to a period after the decline of the Hittite empire (Neumann 2001: 47).

Figure 6: An inscribed seal from Troy (layer VIIb; after Neumann 2001: 47). 25

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

Literacy is an achievement which was introduced to Troy considerably late. Although the site of Troy has been thoroughly investigated, the bronze seal is the only evidence for the use of writing in this town before it was inhabited by Greeks around 700 BCE. At its apogee, the urban area covered a terrain of some 270,000 square meters. The layers with diagnostic items illustrating the evolutionary stage of high culture date to the period between c. 1700 and c. 1200 BCE, corresponding to Troy VI and VIIa (Korfmann 2001). Literacy is absent from this phase of cultural evolution at Troy. This is strange when taking into consideration that the people of Troy, through economic and political ties, stood in contact with their literate neighbors, the Hittites in the east and the Mycenaeans in the west. Troy is mentioned as Wilusa in Hittite documents. The later name of (W)Ilios is first mentioned in Homers epics. The identification of the city state of Wilusa as an ally of the Hittite empire and as the major site of the famous war with the Mycenaean power is generally acknowledged by modern scientists. This also means a re-appraisal of the validitythough not with the value of exact historicityof Homers account of the Trojan war in his epic Iliad (eighth century BCE). Troy evidently lost the war with the Mycenaeans, and this meant the end of its original civilization. The later Greek period (Troy VIII between the end of the eighth century BCE and c. 85 BCE) and the Roman era (Troy IX between c. 85 BCE and c. 500 AD) firmly connected Troy to the world of antique literacy, of Greek and Latin coinage, respectively (Rose 2001). The beginnings of Troy (Troy I c. 3000 BCE) illustrate ancient relations between the Troad and the eastern Balkan region. This is evidenced by pottery from the layer Troy I which shows, in its fabric and ornamentation, striking similarities with the ceramic tradition of the Ezero culture in Bulgaria (Georgiev et al. 1979). There is another remarkable resemblance, and this is the transfer of signs and symbols from Southeastern Europe to the Troad. At the time when Troy was founded the ancient Danube script was no longer in use in Bulgaria. Nevertheless, the memory of the decayed writing system left its traces in the form of potters marks on Troy pottery (Haarmann 2008b: 64). The ancient tradition of literacy in the Danube script was not renewed in Troy, as it was elsewhere, namely in ancient Crete around the middle of the third millennium BCE. Troy remained illiterate throughout its stage of high culture, and the administration of its urban population functioned without the use of writing. It is somehow ironic that, when the use of a script is evidenced for Troy, the traditions of literacy among Troys former allies (the Hittites) and former rivals (the Mycenaeans) had already fallen into decline. Sociocultural development in the city of Troy illustrates the fact that, despite the awareness of the existence of literacy in neighboring cultures, writing technology was not spontaneously adopted by the inhabitants via idea diffusion and it was only introduced at a late stage in the development of the original Anatolian system of hieroglyphic writing that had flourished during the classical period of the Hittite state. The lack of literacy at Troy and its delayed adoption clearly highlights the fallacity of modern logic about the necessity of writing for administrative organization of community life in an urban environment. Writing technology and cultural ecology in societies without statehood According to a widely held prejudice, all ancient civilizations of the Old World had societies with a hierarchically stratified structure, and their political organization was that of states. The assumption of the universality of hierarchically stratified ancient civilizations has been challenged as a misconception in recent anthropological investigations. Following Maisels assessment of early society in the ancient civilizations (Maisels 1999), two different models can be distinguished. One is the well-known state model with a patriarchal social structure. The other is a recently identified model of society for which no conventional term yet exists. I prefer to categorize this model of society as the oecumene model (Haarmann 2003: 155 ff.) after Maisels (1999) description of oecumene as a type of commonwealth. Maisels has drawn attention to the fact that certain ancient civilizations were not organized as states. Their societies had reached a high level of cultural organization but lacked statehood. The lack of statehood is explicitly emphasized for the ancient Indus civilization: [I]n anthropological theory it is the state that is seen as the next advance in complexity, and indeed there is a distinct lack of evidence for the presence of a state at any, even the fully urban, stage of Indus Civilization (Maisels 1999: 254). This may seem surprising at first sight since it is widely believed that the evolutionary stage of high culture is specifically associated with political centralism. This unilateral interpretation obviously did not take into 26

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe account that the developmental stage of civilization (in the sense of high culture) may well function without the organizational framework of a state. This evolutionary stage of civilization without statehood has been identified for the ancient Indus civilization, with its economic and cultural centers Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa and other cities in the valley of the Indus river and its tributaries on the northwestern rim of the Indian subcontinent, which flourished between 2600 and 1800 BCE. Egalitarianism manifests itself in lively trade relations where villages exchanged goods among themselves and with towns. There is no evidence to show that the towns would have dominated the economy of the villages. Unfortunately, Maisels fails to investigate the archaeological record of Southeastern Europe. The economic egalitarianism highlighted by Maisels for the ancient Indus civilization finds a parallel in the system of trade relations in Old Europe (Gimbutas 1991), that is, in the Danube civilization (55003500 BCE). In the Danube civilization, no marked distinction between the social roles of the sexes in community life can be observed. This is also true of atalhyk, the oldest agrarian society in Anatolia about which we have some reliable data, reaching back into the seventh millennium BCE. Ian Hodder (2004), who has led the excavations at atalhyk since 1993, states that there was no distinction in the social status between the sexes. Although Hodder does not perceive the resemblance between his findings about social egalitarianism at atalhyk and those made by Gimbutas for the Danube civilization, they are evident in that burial rites and settlement patterns [in Old Europe] reflect a matrilineal structure, whereas the distribution of wealth in graves speaks for an economic egalitarianism (Gimbutas 1991: 324). It is undoubtedly Gimbutas merit to have highlighted a prominent example of an oecumene model of society for the Old World, thus providing a differential for the prototype axiom of Mesopotamian studies. This emphasis of women holding prominent positions in the prehistoric communities of Southeastern Europe is not only typical of the works of Gimbutas and others, but also of the same Hodder (1992: 67) who stresses the central importance and power of women as reproducers and as the nodes of links to other lineages. In the context of economic egalitarianism, trade contacts evolved as relationships of mutual advantage, making the community a commonwealth or an oecumene. In terms of its geographical dispersal, the oecumene model flourished in Southeastern Europe (Danube civilization), in western Asia (atalhyk, Halaf) and, in South Asia (Indus civilization). It is clear from its intercontinental spread that the emergence of a society organized as an oecumene did not depend on specific local conditions of a given region; it was an alternative pattern of how society in early civilization could evolve. Furthermore, its association with a diversity of local cultures makes the oecumene model a major variant in the great enterprise of experimenting with civilization (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Models of ancient civilizations (after Maisels 1999: 343 and Haarmann 2003: 157).

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe The requirements for communication among the members of communities which lack the power relations typical of a state (i.e., stratified society and a ruling lite) evidently differ from those in communities of the state model. Where there is no state there is no need for an administrative bureaucracy and, consequently, no notational system for recording taxes is needed. Where there is no social hierarchy there is no concentration of political power in a ruling lite and, consequently, there is no monopolization of the powerful technology of writing by a dominating lite. If the pressure to introduce writing for bureaucratic ends is absent in oecumene communities, how then does the web of communication systems in oecumene communities differ from the communicational needs in a state model? The emergence of a script under communal conditions without statehood follows a trajectory that has to be understood as a path of cultural evolution in its own right. This is not a mere deviation from the trajectory of the state model which is still widely misconceived as allegedly prototypical. There are several cases of an independent origin of first writing without the pressing needs of state bureaucracy. Writing emerged in several stateless societies as a ritual means to sustain community life. Examples of this are communities which share the basic constituents of what is conventionally known as an ancient civilization (= stage of high culture of an agrarian society) but which do not represent the state model (i.e. the Danube civilization, the ancient Indus civilization, ancient China, the Olmec civilization), and two of them represent stateless societies of the oecumene model: the ancient Danube civilization and the ancient Indus civilization. There is an abundance of settlements and artifacts which testify to the advanced stage of technological development, of socioeconomic organization and of belief systems in the latter two high cultures. The archaeological record speaks for itself (see Brukner 2002 for the Danube civilization, for the Vina cultural complex in particular, and Chakrabarti 1998 for the ancient cities in the Indus valley). And yet, the presence of urbanism without statehood in the Indus settlements and the absence of a ruling lite in the agrarian communities of the Balkan region have puzzled many scholars. In a kind of circulus vitiosus, traditionalists follow the path of an argumentation dominated by conventional constraints of how to define a high culture. They deny the status of a civilization to both the Indus and the Danube cultures and, consequently, they refuse to acknowledge the systems of organized sign use in the two areas as scripts. If the investigation adheres to the stereotype no statehood - no stimulus for introducing writing, then the path of progress to reliably assess the achievements of the Danube and Indus civilizations remains blocked to traditionalists. If we perceive the emergence of literacy in the two regions as a response of peoples inventiveness to specific conditions of local coinageuncomparable to the settings in early Mesopotamia or ancient Egypt then we may succeed in reconstructing the motivation for writing out of such conditions, without forcefully projecting modern speculations about a pre-defined practical use for this technology. In the absence of administrative pressure of a state bureaucracy to profit from written records, one could imagine that the trade relations between villages and towns in the oecumene communities in the Danube and Indus valleys would have spurred the use of writing for bookkeeping in the transactions of merchants and traders. One could have expected writing to be at the service of the extensive trade relations which held the local communities in the Balkans together. But this was not the case. The realities of cultural history teach us that trade relations, however specialized, can function quite well without written communication. The archaeological record does not show any specialized use of signs and symbols for economic bookkeeping in the early layers of settlements, in the Danube oecumene nor in the towns along the Indus river and its tributaries. The socioeconomic pattern of trade without writing repeats itself in later stages of cultural evolution. Archaeologists, cultural scientists and historians of writing have often wondered why the early Greeks did not introduce their version of alphabetic writing to serve the practical purposes of their extensive trade across the Mediterranean. The traditional view is that bookkeeping was done on perishable material which disintegrated in the course of time. Such an argument is shaky. Archaeological research around the Mediterranean - boosted especially by underwater discoveries of ship wreckages with well-conserved contents - would have produced some clues as to socioeconomic practices of early Greek writing if there had been any. The current state of the art does not provide any new insights. The fact remains that the earliest records written in the Greek alphabet are inscriptions on ceremonial vessels (i.e. the Dipylon jug, Nestors cup) or on gravestones (Osborne and Pappas 2007). As for the span of time during which literacy flourished in the Danube and the Indus civilizations, the archaeological record does not provide any clues for a wide-spread economic use of organized sign systems. 28

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe Although writing may have been used for economic purposes (e.g., signs engraved on weight stones) at a later stage in the two regions, this function never dominated sign use. Instead, the particular assemblages of inscribed objects which are, in one way or another, associated with the religious sphere indicate a motivation for writing that evolved outside the economic, commercial or bureaucratic domains. It is evident that the need to amplify the potency of communication with the spirit world was the driving force for the development of writing technology in the Danube oecumene (Haarmann and Marler 2008b). Writing technology and cultural ecology in communities of the state model Cases of first writing related to the socioeconomic conditions of early statehood are well known from the Old World. In the Old World, there are three cases of an emergence of early writing which indisputably illustrate the conditions of community life under the auspices of the state model of ancient civilization and which all date to the latter half of the fourth millennium BCE. Although the emergence of first writing in the ancient Orient and in Egypt has been extensively investigated and well documented, the new cultural chronology calls for a revision in the understanding of the interrelations between local cultures where writing technology emerged as a constituent in the fabric of ancient civilization. The new chronological sequence of their appearance is the following: pre-dynastic Egypt (with writing technology appearing c. 3350 BCE); the Sumerian city states in Mesopotamia (starting c. 3200 BCE); the Elamite state in the Susiana (starting c. 3100 BCE). In view of the new insights for the reconstruction of cultural evolution that have become available for the mentioned areas there is a growing awareness among experts in the domain of writing research that the ancient Sumerian script (i.e. pictography which is also referred to as proto-cuneiform) is not the oldest that originated in the world of state-governed societies. Since the tradition of writing in Mesopotamia is younger than that in Egypt and since the beginnings in the Nile valley do not point in the direction of state bureaucracy or written records linked to taxation, it follows that the economic-administrative use of writing in the ancient Sumerian city states cannot be regarded as prototypical for the evolvement of writing as a general trajectory for the Old World. While early writing in Sumer and Elam shows similarities as to the motivation to introduce this technology (resulting from communicational challenges for early statehood) as well as to the materials used (i.e. clay tablets), Egypt differs in that clay was not selected as a raw material for written recordings, but signs of writing were painted on ceramic objects. The case of first writing in pre-dynastic Egypt deserves special attention since it illustrates that writing technology was multifunctional from the very beginning, with a balanced distribution of economic as well as religious functions. Progress in pre-dynastic archaeology was made during the late 1980s and early 1990s when graves of the pre-dynastic period were excavated near Abydos (Dreyer 1998). Among them was a royal tomb, U-j (Umm El-Qaab I), which dates to the Naqada III period (c. 3310-3050 BCE). This period is also known as the era of dynasty 0, a time when Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt were still independent kingdoms. The royal grave U-j has yielded large amounts of pottery and ceramic ware. An analysis of the fabric of the ceramic objects reveals that one portion of this ware is of local (Egyptian) production while other items are imported. Style and design of the imported pottery show similarities with pottery from Palestine and the Jordan basin. Many ceramic objects carry signs of an early version of the Egyptian script (Dreyer 1998: 183 ff.). In the short inscriptions which resemble labels, there is always a central icon which is accompanied by additional signs. The iconic symbol generally is the picture of an animal such as a scorpion, falcon, fish, or bull's head. Besides various numerical symbols some 50 individual signs can be distinguished. According to the leading excavator, Gnter Dreyer, the use of signs in the pre-dynastic inscriptions illustrates the variety of sign types which are typical of ancient Egyptian writing in the later dynastic era: logograms (or semograms) for rendering words, phonograms for rendering phonetic elements, and determinatives for marking a semantic class of words. This organized sign usage exemplifies an advanced model of writing, and it can be concluded that there are earlier stages of experimenting with writing in Egypt which still have to be identified. Since the 29

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe principle of Egyptian writing is segmental, that is rendering the consonantal structure of words without marking vowels, and thus deviates from syllabic writing in Mesopotamia, a local development for the Egyptian tradition of literacy can readily be assumed.

Figure 8: Early hieroglyphic signs and their compositions on tags from the Abydos graves (after Baines 2004: 156). Early inscriptions are found on two types of objects which clearly belong to distinct domains: Inscriptions were incised and/or painted on the ceramic ware of royal tombs, identified as referring to the amounts of goods and to their origin. Names of rulers (e.g., scorpion, falcon) also occur, and there are symbols which obviously refer to royal insignia (e.g., the motif of the throne) (Figure 8). Since prestigious symbols are used as signs, these are likely to refer to prestigious entities like royal estate names (Baines 2004: 164). Certain sign groups catch the eye of the analyst, in particular, the repeated fish sign with plants and structures. This distinctive pattern of associating the fish sign with other symbols resembles conventions of writing in Mesopotamia (Dreyer 1998: 182). This may be seen as evidence of an early influence in the Sumerian mode of sign clustering coming from the Nile valley.

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe Inscribed statues (so-called Min statues) found in graves together with other items indicate a funerary function of the early script (Dreyer 1998: 181) (Figure 9).

Figure 9: Early hieroglyphic signs on funerary statuary (Min statues) (after Dreyer 1998: 177). This means that, from the very beginnings of writing in ancient Egypt, there was a functional duality that motivated the use of a script. Judging from the material remains in the graves of Abydos, from the ensembles of objects that bear inscriptions, there seemed to have existed a balance of mundane (economic and/or administrative) and religious (commemorative and/or funeral) functions, without either function dominating the early use of writing. Significantly, the extant documentation of hieroglyphic writing throughout the periods of ancient Egyptian civilization shows preponderance for religious contexts. The result of three thousand years of ancient Egyptian culture is a vast body of inscriptions, but the bulk of the material is not, like most other ancient civilizations, archival in nature. Instead of 31

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe innumerable administrative records, surviving texts from ancient Egypt largely come from sacred structures, such as temples and tombs, which throughout Egyptian history have displayed the greatest amount of hieroglyphic writing (Patch 2007: 107). Correlating with the attention that hieroglyphic writing enjoyed within the religious domain is the fact that the cultic or religious function of the script - in a wider sense its imagined spiritual dimension - came to dominate the image of the scope of writing in ancient Egypt. The art of writing was closely associated with the visual arts, and the conventions of writing followed those of representational art in general. As an integral part of a system of recreative art the hieroglyphs were naturally believed to have the power to bring to life what they depicted or stated. A funerary formula invoking benefits from a god was enough in itself, if written in hieroglyphs, to ensure the reception of those benefits by the deceased owner, as long as the owner was named, ... The name of a person, inscribed in hieroglyphs, was believed to embody that persons unique identity (Davies 1990: 89). Insights from research on first writing for the study of early civilizations By analyzing the conditions of emergence of ancient scripts, of their principles and features, and of their multifunctional roles for the cultural ecology of early agrarian societies, valuable insights may be gained for the study of the differential fabric of ancient civilizations of the Old and New Worlds. These insights allow for pronouncements about the early civilizations and their communication networks which are more precise than previous statements given within the limited frame of traditional writing research. Major insights resulting from such an analysis have been elaborated in a recent study on comparative writing research (Haarmann 2009). Some aspects will be summarized in the following: The emergence of first writing does not depend on state organization as a constituent element of civilization. This insight stands in contrast to the traditionally held notion that the motivation for first writing can only originate in a state. First writing in early agrarian societies without statehood is documented for the Danube civilization of the sixth millennium BCE, for the ancient Indus civilization of the third millennium BCE, for ancient China of the Shang dynasty (late second millennium BCE) and for Olmec civilization in the late second millennium BCE. Social hierarchy is not a necessary precondition for the emergence of first writing. The Danube script and the Indus script originated and flourished in egalitarian societies. Olmec writing unfolded in communities that experienced a transition from egalitarian to stratified social structures. First writing in societies with state organization is not necessarily bureaucracy-oriented. Although the emergence of ancient Sumerian pictography illustrates the functional use of writing for state bureaucracy, this case is an exception rather than the rule in ancient civilizations with statehood. Writing in pre-dynastic Egypt is multifunctional, and the use of a script in the pre-Columbian city state of Teotihuacn was non-bureaucratic and served ritual functions. Writing technology belongs to the range of primary markers of civilization while social stratification and statehood are secondary markers. Harald HAARMANN (Finland) Institute of Archaeomythology European Branch, Luumki E-mail: harald.haarmann@pp.inet.fi

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

References ANATI Emmanuel. 1989. Origini dellarte e della concettualit. Milan: Jaca Book. ANTHONY David W. 2007. The Horse, the Wheel and Language. How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press. ASSMANN Aleida. 1999. Erinnerungsrume. Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedchtnisses. Munich: C.H. Beck. BAGLEY Robert W. 2004. Anyang Writing and the Origin of the Chinese Writing System. In Houston 2004: 190-249. BAILEY Douglass W. 2000. Balkan Prehistory. Exclusion, Incorporation and Identity. London & New York: Routledge. BAINES John. 2004. The Earliest Egyptian Writing: Development, Context, Purpose. In Houston 2004: 150-189. BARD Kathryn A., ed. 1999. Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt. London & New York: Routledge. BENNETT Emmett L. 1996. Aegean Scripts. In Daniels and Bright 1996: 125-133. BOONE Elizabeth Hill. 2004. Beyond Writing. In Houston 2004: 313-348. BOONE Elizabeth Hill and Walter D. Mignolo, eds. 1994. Writing without words: Alternative Literacies in Mesoamerica and the Andes. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. BRUKNER Bogdan. 2002. Die Vina-Kultur in Raum und Zeit. Akademija Nauka i Umjetnosti Bosne i Hercegovine. Godisnjak 32: 61-103. BUDJA Mihael. 2005. The Process of Neolithisation in South-Eastern Europe: From Ceramic Female Figurines and Cereal Grains to Entoptics and Human Nuclear DNA Polymorphic Markers. Documenta Praehistorica XXXII: 53-72. CASTELLS Manuel. 1996-98. The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, 3 vols. Malden, Mass. & Oxford: Blackwell. CHAKRABARTI Dilip K. 1998. The Archaeology of Ancient Indian Cities. Delhi, Calcutta & Mumbai: Oxford University Press. CHANG K.C. 1983. Art, Myth, and Ritual. The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China. Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press. CIVIL Miguel. 1973. The Sumerian Writing System: Some Problems. Orientalia NS 42: 21-34. COOPER Jerrold S. 1996. Sumerian and Akkadian. In Daniels and Bright 1996: 37-57. ______2004. Babylonian Beginnings: The Origin of the Cuneiform Writing System in Comparative Perspective. In Houston 2004: 71-99. CUNLIFFE B., ed. 1994. The Oxford Illustrated Prehistory of Europe. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. DANIELS Peter T., and William Bright, eds. 1996. The Worlds Writing Systems. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. DAVIES W.V. 1990. Egyptian hieroglyphs. In Hooker 1990: 75-135. DE BARY Theodore and Irene Bloom, eds. 1999. Sources of Chinese Tradition, vol. 1: From Earliest Times to 1600. New York: Columbia University Press. Defrancis John. 1989. Visible Speech. The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. DIAMOND Jared. 1998. Guns, Germs and Steel. A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years. London: Vintage. DONALD Merlin. 1991. Origins of the Modern Mind. Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press. DREYER Gnter. 1998. Umm El-Qaab I. Das prdynastische Knigsgrab U-j und seine frhen Schriftzeugnisse. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. DRSCHEID Christa. 2006. Einfhrung in die Schriftlinguistik. Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ENGLUND Robert K. 2004. The State of Decipherment of Proto-Elamite. In Houston 2004: 100-149. 33

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe FITZHUGH William W. and Aron Crowell, eds. 1988. Crossroads of Continents. Cultures of Siberia and Alaska. Washington, D.C. & London: Smithsonian Institution Press. GEORGIEV G. I., I.Y. Merpert, R.V. Katincharov and D.G. Dimitrov, eds. 1979. Ezero-Rannobronzovoto selishte. Sofia: Izdatelstvo na Balgarskata Akademija na Naukite. GILSTER Paul. 1997. Digital Literacy. New York & Weinheim: John Wiley & Sons. GIMBUTAS Marija. 1982. The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 6500-3500 B. C. Myths and Cult Images. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. ______1991. Civilization of the Goddess. San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco. GREEN M. W., and Hans J. Nissen. 1987. Zeichenliste der archaischen Texte aus Uruk. Berlin: Gebrder Mann Verlag. GUADELLI Aleta. 2004. tude des incisions du plus ancien os grav dcouvert dans la grotte Kozarnika (Bulgarie du Nord-Ouest). Une preuve de lexistence du symbolisme au Palolithique Infrieur. In Archaeologia Bulgarica 3:1-7. HAARMANN Harald. 1990. Language in its Cultural Embedding. Explorations in the Relativityof Signs and Sign Systems. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ______1991. Basic Aspects of Language in Human Relations. Toward a General Theoretical Framework. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ______1995. Early Civilization and Literacy in Europe: An Inquiry into Cultural Continuity in the Mediterranean World. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ______2003. Geschichte der Sintflut. Auf den Spuren der frhen Zivilisationen. Mnchen: C.H. Beck. ______2006a. Weltgeschichte der Sprachen. Von der Frhzeit des Menschen bis zur Gegenwart. Munich: Beck. ______2006b. On the Fabric of Old World Civilizations: Human Response to the Black Sea Flood and Subsequent Climatic Change. In Journal of Archaeomythology 2: 27-64. ______2005. The Challenge of the Abstract Mind: Symbols, Signs and Notational Systems in European Prehistory. Documenta Praehistorica XXXII: 221-232. ______2007a. Foundations of Culture. Knowledge-construction, Belief Systems and Worldview in their Dynamic Interplay. Frankfurt, Berlin, Bruxelles & New York: Peter Lang. ______2007b. Geschichte der Schrift. Munich: C.H. Beck (3rd ed.). ______2008a. The Danube Script and Other Ancient Writing Systems: A Typology of Distinctive Features. Journal of Archaeomythology 4: 12-46. ______2008b. The Danube Script and its Legacy: Literacy as a cultural identifier in the Balkanic-Aegean convergence zone. In Marler 2008: 61-76. ______2009. Writing as Technology and Cultural Ecology. Explorations of the Human Mind at the Dawn of History (book manuscript, forthcoming). HAARMANN Harald, Joan MARLER. 2008a. Introducing the Mythological Crescent. Ancient Beliefs and Imagery Connecting Eurasia with Anatolia. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ______2008b. Reflections on the Origins of the Danube Script and its Role in the Communities of Early Agriculturalists. In Marler 2008: 3-9. HAYDAROGLU Mine, ed. 2006. From Earth to Eternity, atalhyk (exhibition catalogue). Istanbul: Yapi Kredi Cultural Activities, Arts and Publishing. HENSHILWOOD C. S., F. DERRICO, R. YATES, Z. JACOBS, C. TRIBOLO, G.A.T. DULLER, N. MERCIER, J. D. SEALY, H. VALLADAS, I. WATTS and A. G. WINTLE. 2002. Emergence of Modern Human Behavior: Middle Stone Age Engravings from South Africa. Science (February): 1278- 1280. HODDER Ian. 1992. Theory and Practice in Archaeology. London & New York: Routledge. ______2004. Women and men at atalhyk In Scientific American (January): 77-83. ______2006. atalhyk: The Leopards Tale. Revealing the Mysteries of Turkeys Ancient Town. London: Thames & Hudson. HOOKER J. T., ed. 1990. Reading the Past. Ancient Writing from Cuneiform to the Alphabet. London: British Museum Publications. 34

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe HOUSTON Stephen D., ed. 2004. The First Writing. Script Invention as History and Process. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. JEFFERY L. H. 1990. The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece: A Study of the Origins of the Greek Alphabet and its Development from the Eighth to the Fifth Centuries B.C. Oxford: Oxford University Press. KORFMANN Manfred. 2001. Die troianische Hochkultur (Troia VI und VIIa): Eine Kultur Anatoliens. In Troia 2001: 395-406. KREAMER Christine Mullen, Mary Nooter ROBERTS, Elizabeth HARNEY and Allyson PURPURA, eds. 2007. Inscribing Meaning. Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art. Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institution and the National Museum of African Art. KRUTA V. 1993. Die Anfnge Europas 6000-500 v. Chr. Munich: C. H. Beck. LEWIS Mark Edward. 2007. The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han. Cambridge, Massachusetts & London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. LOGAN R. K. 1986. The Alphabet Effect: The Impact of the Phonetic Alphabet on the Development of Western Civilization. New York: William Morrow. LYONS William. 1995. Approaches to Intentionality. Oxford: Clarendon. MACLAGAN D. 1977. Creation myths: Mans Introduction to the World. London: Thames & Hudson. MAISELS Charles Keith. 1999. Early Civilizations of the Old World. The Formative Histories of Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, India and China. London & New York: Routledge. MARLER Joan, ed. 2008. The Danube Script. Neo-Eneolithic Writing in Southeastern Europe. Catalogue of the exhibition, Casa Altemberger, Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu, Romania. Sebastopol: Institute of Archaeomythology. MARLER Joan, and Harald HAARMANN. 2007. The Goddess and the Bear. Hybrid Imagery and Symbolism at atalhyk. Journal of Archaeomythology 3: 48-79. MCLUHAN M. and R. K. LOGAN. 1977. Alphabet, Mother of Invention. Et Cetera 34: 373-383. MELLAART James S. 1964. A Neolithic City in Turkey. Scientific American (April): 94-104. ______1967. atal Hyk: A Neolithic Town in Anatolia. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ______1989. The Goddess from Anatolia, vol. 2: atal Hyk and the Anatolian Kilims. Milan: Eskenazi. MURDIN Paul, and Margaret PENSTON, eds. 2004. The Firefly Encyclopedia of Astronomy. Buffalo & Richmond Hill: Firefly Books. NEUMANN Gnter. 2001. Der grosse Nachbar in Anatolien: Die Hethiter. In Troia 2001: 46-50. NEWBY Zahra. 2007. Introduction In Newby and Leader-Newby 2007: 1-16. NEWBY Zahra, and Ruth LEADER-NEWBY, eds. 2007. Art and Inscriptions in the Ancient World. New York & Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. OSBORNE Robin, and Alexandra PAPPAS. 2007. Writing on Archaic Greek Pottery. In Newby and Leader- Newby 2007: 131-155. PARPOLA Asko. 1994. Deciphering the Indus Script. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. ______1996. The Indus Script. In Daniels and Bright 1996: 165-171. PATCH Diana Craig. 2007. Art and Writing in Ancient Egyptian Culture. In Kreamer et al. 2007: 107116. PETROVSKIJ N. S. 1978. Zvukovye znaki egipetskogo pisma kak sistema. Moscow: Nauka. RAY John D. 1999. Papyrus. In Bard 1999: 610-611. RITNER Robert K. 1996. Egyptian writing. In Daniels and Bright 1996: 73-84. ROBERTS Mary Nooter. 1996. Luba Memory Theater. In Roberts and Roberts 1996: 117-149. ROBERTS Mary Nooter, Elizabeth HARNEY, Allyson PURPURA and Christine Mullen KREAMER. 2007. Introduction. In Kreamer et al. 2007: 13-27. ROBERTS Mary, and Allen F. ROBERTS, eds. 1996. Memory. Luba Art and the Making of History. New York: Museum for African Art; Munich: Prestel. ROSE Ch. Brian. 2001. Ilion in griechischer und rmischer Zeit: Geschichte und Ausgrabungsbefunde. In Troia 2001: 180-187. SAMPSON Geoffrey. 1985. Writing Systems. London, Melbourne & Sydney: Hutchinson. 35

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe THOMSEN Marie-Louise. 1984. The Sumerian Language. An Introduction to its History and Grammatical Structure. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag. Troia - Traum und Wirklichkeit. 2001. Archologisches Landesmuseum Baden-Wrttemberg, ed. Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss. TUCHSCHERER Konrad. 2007. Recording, Communicating and Making Visible: A History of Writing and Systems of Graphic Symbolism in Africa. In Kreamer et al. 2007: 37-53. TRCKE Christoph. 2005. Vom Kainszeichen zum genetischen Code - Kritische Theorie der Schrift. Munich: C. H. Beck. VASHCHENKO A.V. 1989. Istoriko-epicheskij folklor severoamerikanskikh indejtsev. Tipologiia i poetika. Moscow: Nauka. WALKER C. B. F. 1990. Cuneiform. In Hooker 1990: 17-73. WATSON Burton, Nivison, David S. and Irene Bloom. 1999. Classical Sources of Chinese Tradition. In De Bary and Bloom 1999: 24-40. WATSON Peter. 2005. Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud. London: Phoenix. WHITTLE Alasdair. 1996. Europe in the Neolithic. The Creation of New Worlds. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. ZHANG Yingpin. 2003. The History and Civilization of China. Beijing: Central Party Literature Pub House.

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FROM BULL-AND-BUTTERFLY TO ALPHA AND PSI Adrian PORUCIUC (Romania) Abstract: The Old European symbols of bull and butterfly, which were often represented in association, are now well-known to specialists in archaeomythology. Also, the stylization of an archaic bull-pictogram into the West Semitic sign that was to become the alpha of the Greek alphabet has been thoroughly discussed. A similar process appears to have taken place in the case of an Old European butterfly-pictogram, which grew into an Aegean sign that was interpreted as double ax. That sign can have in this authors opinion something to de with the invention of the Greek letter psi, which has no Phoenician antecedent. Such an assumption is based not only on the double-winged shape () of the letter under discussion, but also on the fact that psi renders the first sound of Ancient Greek psukh (psyche), a substratal word that meant vital force and soul, as well as butterfly. Keywords: Old Europe, Semitic, Greek, Romanian, Bulgarian, bull-head, butterfly symbolism, script. Many recently published books and articles on the history of script, and particularly the ones concerned with the prehistoric beginnings of linear script in Southeast-Central Europe, have pointed out continuity of signs (or, more precisely, shapes of signs) rather than continuity of meanings and functions. In that respect, one may observe that, after the Greeks adopted West Semitic (most probably Phoenician) alphabetic signs, those signs were preserved and perpetuated, for all functional shifts and additions (Notably, a number of Phoenician consonantal signs were made to render vowels in Greek; and a number of non-Phoenician signs, of obscure origins, were added at the end of what was to become known as the Greek alphabet.) The West Semitic origin of Greek phonographic writing is indicated by the very term alphabet, a compound that contains the names of the first two Greek letters, alpha and beta. Those are just opaque names of letters in Greek, whereas the West Semitic source-words may be said to be semantically transparent, as they refer to primeval pictograms, that is, to images of things with names whose first sounds represented (by acrophony) the value of corresponding letters. In that respect, according to Klein 1987:32b, the Hebrew version of that Semitic sign, aleph, got its name in allusion to the ancient Hebrew form of this letter, representing the head of an ox. I will observe, however, that the original ox-head representation was not exactly Hebrew, but rather Proto-Sinaitic/Proto-Canaanite, so the name of the primeval pictogram must have sounded closer to Ugaritic alpu ox (cf. Healey 1990:18). Anyway, the shape of Greek A still can be interpreted as a stylized ox-head, or bull-head, in a reverse position (horns down). Worth remembering is that the alpu/aleph sign originally marked not a vowel, as in Greek, but a specific Semitic glottal stop. In regard to script symbolism, what Christians know about Jesus Christ as alpha and omega (that is, as beginning and end of the world) reflects a Semitic-Greek tradition. We may speculate on the fact that the early Semitic mind may have interpreted the alpu/aleph sign as a symbol of beginnings not only because it was the first letter of the alphabet, but also because so many Semitic words have initial glottal stops (like, in fact, all Germanic words that we see as introduced by vowels). If we try to dig deeper than the period of the 2nd millennium BC during which alphabetic writing was designed (in a Proto-Sinaitic/Proto-Canaanite context), we may reach the conclusion that the bull-head sign must have grown into a symbol of beginnings (or foundations) already in prehistory. Along that line, it is worth observing that an A-like sign, of unknown value, appeared already in Old European times (cf. Haarmann 1996, figs. 32h, 99, 151). Of prehistoric age is also the association of two very important Old European symbols, namely bull-head and butterfly. The founder of archaeomythology, Marija Gimbutas, wrote many incisive pages on the association under discussion, and on the stylized butterfly (double-triangle) representations as symbols of the Goddess of Death and Regeneration (see especially Gimbutas 1991:243-247). The sacrifice of the bull is known to have reflected the belief that, after the sacrificial death of this particular animal, a new life would emerge (Haarmann 1996:66). What I can add here is that such a belief has nuptial implications too, as manifest in a number of rituals and traditions that openly refer, or only allude, to bull-sacrifice. Most remarkable is that such archaic features are still visible in certain Romanian ritual songs (now functioning as Christmas carols). Such songs present a young woman (of a proto-Europa type) seated in a swing suspended between the horns of a wild bull that swims across a troubled sea. In some variants of that song the young woman foretells the fortune of the swimming bull: her brothers will eventually catch him, slaughter him, and use him for the foundation of her new home. More concretely, the 37

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe young womans brothers are expected to cook the slaughtered bulls flesh for their sisters wedding feast and to use his bones as posts for her new house, his skin as a roof, his hooves as wine-cups, etc. (see Poruciuc 2009: 28). Foundation sacrifice does, of course, imply new life, but the latter idea was more directly expressed by representations of a bee or a butterfly symbolically emerging from the cadaver (of the slaughtered bull), as Haarmann observes (1996:66). The same author dwells on the stylization of the Old European butterfly symbol into what developed as a double-ax motif (1996:62). The latter persisted (as symbol of the Goddess) into antiquity, most notably in ancient Crete, where the double-ax symbol features in the decorative art and ranges as a sign in the inventories of Linear A and the Hieroglyphic script (1996:78). The Old European bull-sacrifice survived among classical Greeks, and the latter also painted stylized butterflies on their vases. But it would be hard to say whether the Greeks considered that bull and butterfly representations had any direct ties with any particular letters of their alphabet. In another part of Europe, Germanic populations that used the runic alphabet reinvented (or perpetuated?) the archaic idea of acrophony (cf. Page 1987:14-15). But, in that case, the phonetic value /a/ was attached to an a-rune (that is, to a counterpart of the Ugaritic alpu-sign and of Greek alpha) whose Germanic name, ansuz god, did not actually recall bull-symbolism. In exchange, the value /u/ was attached to a rune whose name, ruz, meant wild-bull (cf. Germ. Auerochse > Eng. aurochs). The shape of the latter shows a reverse (horns down?) position of the archaic Greek V, as variant of the better-known Y (from the Early Phoenician hook-sign for /w/ - cf. Healey 1990:29, 37). Among the most spectacular semantic alterations that occurred in the field of Old European symbolism due to Indo-Europeanization, Gimbutas mentions the shift of the Bull (and of the Bucranium) from symbol of regeneration to symbol of strength and maleness (1991:400). Similarly, IndoEuropeanization appears to have produced a reinterpretation of the Old European regeneration symbol of the butterfly as double-ax, that is, as stylized representation of a weapon or a symbol of authority (for such a symbolic sense of Cretan labrys and of various types of axes, see Poruciuc 1990:199). Other semantic shifts subsequently occurred when the stylized double-ax grew into a script sign. The precise phonetic value of the double-ax sign of Linear A remains unknown; but the value of the extremely stylized variant of the same sign in Linear B was deciphered as re (see sign nr. 08 in Chadwick 1989: 51). We may deduce that just as an original bucranium symbol became a Greek letter that no longer recalled bull symbolism the connection between the Cretan double-ax sign and the original butterfly symbol appears to have been already lost in Linear A. However, what is worth observing at this point is a spectacular survival, not of the ancient doubleax sign, but rather of the primeval butterfly symbol. Old European symbolism survived quite well as part of the Southeast European peasant culture. Among other things, the butterfly remained an important symbolic figure among Romanians, long after Christianization, as visible in the brief dictionary-presentation done by the outstanding Romanian ethnologist Ion Talo (2001, under fluturele the butterfly): At the beginning of the world there was only water, which, in one spot, was covered by foam. In that foam there were a butterfly and a worm. The butterfly took off its wings and got a wonderful shape. It became God. The worm got horns and tail and thus the Devil appeared. According to other [Romanian] beliefs, the butterfly is an embodiment of dead childrens souls. It will carry water to the dead who are thirsty. [] In spring, if one first catches sight of a red butterfly, it means health and luck for the whole year; a yellow or a black butterfly brings sickness and death. Beliefs in magic ties between the butterfly and the netherworld have also been recorded across the Danube, in Bulgaria. Here is, for instance, a fragment from Nicovs presentation (2004:78-79) of the Bulgarian celebration of Great All Souls Day (November 1): It is believed that at each memorial service the soul eats to the full and the relatives try to prepare the dishes that the dead person liked best []. If during the memorial service a butterfly or a small fly flies over the meals, people believe the soul of the deceased is among them visible but untouchable. Although Nicov does not comment on it, his subchapter on the above-mentioned festival is opened by a color picture that renders a traditional All-Souls-Day cake. What we can see in the middle of that cake is a geometrical (cut out) double-triangle that looks exactly like the Old European double-ax (or hourglass) sign, which can be considered as a stylization of a butterfly representation. Certainly, a fact like the Bulgarian one under discussion is a good argument in favor of the idea that there is continuity of Old 38

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe European symbolism, but that does not automatically imply continuity of script too. Nevertheless, there is a Greek fact that urges me to assume, at least as a working hypothesis (for the time being), that one particular non-Phoenician Greek letter may have implied as both reinstatement of a pre-alphabetic sign, and reinvention of acrophony (of a kind that may be referred to the runic cases mentioned above). As Healey puts it (1990:35), when alphabetic signs were taken over by the Greeks from the Phoenicians, some supplementary letters were developed and added to the alphabetic order: , , , , . In such a context to develop would be synonymous with to design and to invent. However, it was also Healey who in referring to the problem represented by the lack of distinct signs for the specific Hebrew consonants // and // made the following statement: It would have been feasible to invent a new letter, but writing systems are extraordinarily conservative once established and the Phoenician model was dominant. Hence no such radical innovation was undertaken. As for the Geek alphabet, it is only in the case of omega that one may speak of innovation proper, since the Greeks obviously modified their O based on a West Semitic eye-sign to produce , representing long // (Healey 1990: 59). As for the other four supplementary signs, it is quite obvious that the Greeks did not develop them, but took them over from non-Phoenician sources. In particular, the psi-sign appears to have been selected from the inventory of the Linear B syllabary. In my opinion, the Greek may represent a merger of two symmetrical double-winged signs of Linear B, namely the trident sign (nr. 27) and the already mentioned double-ax sign (nr. 08), the latter representing the final stylization of the primeval butterfly symbol. And here comes my hypothesis of a possible reinvention of acrophony in the case under discussion. In the very first entry () of the psi pages in his etymological dictionary of Greek, Chantraine (1968) points out that the words beginning with a - are the object of W. Merlingens theory (Eine ltere Lehnwrterschicht im Griechischen 1963-1967), according to which, in a certain Indo-European substratum of Greek namely the one Merlingen calls -griechisch *p- appears to have turned into - (my translation). The existence of an extremely important substratal psi-word in Greek, namely psukh (), made me suppose that there was an acrophonic connection between that word and . That letter appears to have something to do with the Old European butterfly symbol, that is, the symbol that still marks a special kind of Bulgarian offering to the dead. In support of such a supposition, I can make use of several of Chantraines comments on psukh (better known to us as psyche). Among the most important meanings of that Greek word, Chantraine mentions breath, vital force and life. The same author states (my translation): In antiquity the separated soul of a dead person [] appeared under the form of a light flying thing []; the word came to designate a butterfly (archaic painted representations) []. The butterfly is still called psikhari () in Modern Greek []. No doubt, we may ask ourselves whether at the time when the early Greeks were giving up earlier scripts in favor of phoinikeia grammata there was any well-established connection between a doublewinged sign and a lingering Old European butterfly symbol, or such a connection was created, for the sake of explanatory acrophony, under those new circumstances. Both possibilities should be taken into consideration in future studies. As for the present article, suffice it to say that the materials discussed above can be made use of in more general discussions on the extraordinarily conservative character of symbols and signs. Adrian PORUCIUC (Romania) Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza Iai E-mail: aporuciuc@yahoo.com

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References CHADWICK John. 1989 (1967). The Decipherment of Linear B. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CHANTRAINE Pierre. 1968. Dictionnaire tymologique de la langue grecque. Paris: Klincksieck. GIMBUTAS Marija. 1991. The Civilization of the Goddess. Edited by Joan Marler. San Francisco: Harper. HAARMANN Harald. 1996. Early Civilization and Literacy in Europe An Inquiry into Cultural Continuity in the Mediterranean World. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter. HEALEY John F. 1990. The Early Alphabet. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press/ London: British Museum. KLEIN Ernest. 1987. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English. Jerusalem: Carta. NICOV Nikolay. 2004. Holidays of the Bulgarians in Myths and Legends. Sofia: National Museum of Bulgarian Books and Polygraphy. PAGE R. I. 1987. Runes. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press/ London: British Museum. PORUCIUC Adrian. 1990. TOPOR and BALTAG - Two Lexical Relics from the Copper-Bronze Age. Kurier 15: 195-208. Universitt Bochum. ______2009 (forthcoming). Prehistoric Roots of Romanian and Southeast European Traditions. Sebastopol: Institute of Archaeomythology. TALO Ion, 2001. Gndirea magico-religioas la romniDicionar. Bucureti: Editura Enciclopedic.

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

ARE THE TRTRIA TABLETS A ENIGMA? Gheorghe LAZAROVICI (Romania) Abstract: This article is a critical response to a paper presented by Iuliu Paul (2007) entitled "Enigma tblielor de la Trtaria". The author is explaining, point with point, the archaeological context of the Trtria tablets discovery using Pauls directory line. Keywords: Enigma, Trtria, tablets, Iuliu Paul, Nicolae Vlassa, excavation, radiocarbon, Vina Culture. Our attention was attracted by a paper presented at a public event in Timioara by Profess or Iuliu Paul, named Enigma tblielor de la Trtria (Paul 2007). The paper has two parts: the first one seems to belong to a larger work concerning Trtria where the first chapter possibly includes Enigma. . ., while in the second part, the author expresses older opinions and discoveries about religious life, referring to signs, writing, symbols.1 In this paper we will analyze only matters concerning the Enigma. . . section and will present archaeological material with notes and explanations of figures included in the text. We will include in our analysis observations regarding the terminology, chronological frame, bibliography, method, and other significant details relating to this subject. According to DEX (Dicionarul explicativ al Limbii Romne), enigma means something difficult to understand, secret, intimate, mysterious, a riddle, or a puzzle. In Webster's New World College Dictionary, fourth edition, enigma is a perplexing, usually ambiguous statement, a baffling or seemingly inexplicable matter, a mystery. From the beginning, Professor Iuliu Paul specifies two ideas about the Trtria tablets: they provoked a storm in the archaeological literature (and not only here). Based on this, specialists in the field have produced several written comments, and non-specialists who are not well informed, accept one or another of these ideas. Meanwhile, there has been much coffee house gossip, rumors, and can-cans. People who have written on this subject have presented both pro and contra opinions that readers can either accept or reject. But others positions represent The myth of the mytho-mania, as M. Merlini named it. We have decided to write this study because of I. Pauls title and of paragraphs that are similar to cancans. A scientific critique is necessary in order to represent the state of new research in contrast to gossip and erroneous interpretations. As shown by the archaeological literature2 (see Vlassa 1967:403-423, 1969), there have been disputes between Iuliu Paul and Nicolae Vlassa. N. Vlassa narrated nice stories from their student period when they were colleagues at the university. When they met, they related with the same candor telling stories, jokes and discussing spiritual things. Therefore, in a new study that could have brought new results related to a modest excavation at Trtria, made in two stages (the first report being part of I. Pauls presentation, mentioned above), we do not understand why certain opinions about N. Vlassa's publications, opinions, hypothesis, and discoveries are insinuated. We appreciate as modest I. Pauls excavation, while K. Horedt excavated several surfaces: A = 9,5 x 5 = 45 m2 ; B+F = 8 m2; C = 4 x 7 = 28 m2; D = 4 x 1 m = 4 m2; E = 5 x 6 = 30 m2; resulting in 115 m2. In the beginning, N. Vlassa opened surface G = 18 x 5 m (as results on the marker of his profile), here and there 6 m, with an average surface of 90 m2 (that intercepts the C surface of K. Horedt). If we subtract what K. Horedt excavated and what N. Vlassa enlarged, 66 m2 remains in the area of the C and G cassettes researched by N. Vlassa. According to the plan, section H has 8 x 1,5 m = 12 m2, with a total for N. Vlassa of 78 m2. The surfaces investigated by K. Horedt are 93 m2. Iuliu Paul excavated I_SG of 10 x 5 m = 50 m2; SI of 10 x 1,5 = 30 m2, cI_A maybe 5 x 2 = 10 m2, SII of 10 x 1 or 1,5 = 10/15 m2; S3 of 8 x 1 m = 8 m2, with a total of 100 or 115 m2. The location of I. Paul's sections, IS_G, cSIA, S1, followed N. Vlassa's
The two parts are separated: the first one may be part of a study related to Trtria (it starts with page 20 and the plate numbers are I-XIX); the second part concerns other ideas that are only tangentially related to the enigma, containing older and new hypotheses. While there is no information concerning archaeological material regarding the square, depth, complex or level, we cannot comment on the cultural and chronological frame. 2 Vlassa 1969:513-540 presents an answer to Paul 1965: 294-302.
1

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe stratigraphy, but I. Paul did not bring new details or materials for his presentation at Timioara. SII has to verify the stratigraphy between K. Horedt (S B_F) and N. Vlassa (SH) and SIII, the stratigraphy in the area of cassette A of K. Horedt. Paul did not mention our opinions of 2004 printed in 2005 (Lazarovici, Merlini 2005); either he was not informed, or the information was ignored, although it was presented on the WEB (see arheologie.ulbsibiu.ro). In 2007, in a Romanian synthesis, we presented new informationincluding C14 data, analysis of different situations, objects, the skeleton, inventory, the position of the ritual pitand we presented other explanations related with Trtria (this paper was in the Library of Alba Iulia University months before the presentation at Timioara).

Figure 1a: Reconstruction of the plan by J. Makkay that observes differences between North in Horedts and Vlassas plans (our marks);1b)Our reconstruction (Lazarovici, Merlini 2005) with differences in the location of the ritual pit, which, to us, is on the border and is cut.

Figure 1b: Plan and the profile at Trtria, reconstructed by Gh. Lazarovici. Different positions regarding the Trtrias discoveries have been commented upon and annotated (Merlini 2004; Gh. Lazarovici, Merlini 2005; Merlini, Gh. Lazarovici 2007), even in a volume on Neolithic architecture (C.-M. Lazarovici, Gh. Lazarovici 2007:127, 133-134, 137, 191, 198-207 .a.) and in other studies about Vina written by us in Romanian and German languages, with references to Trtria (Gh. Lazarovici 1977b). Compared with J. Makkays reconstruction from 1991, we have located the ritual pit on the border of part of pit house no.1. 42

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

1. References and answers regarding the non-scientific assertions made in public by I. Paul We present here some of the non-scientific assertions drawn from Iuliu Pauls study. We believe that a short answer is necessary, based on the information we have until now. From the Prelude (beginning on p. 20) comes the following quote: . . .we will briefly linger over some of the hypothesis wording until now, especially on those that try to establish the place and role of the Trtria's tablets in the context of the absolute chronology, of the culture in which medium it is pretended that have been discovered (our underline). The use of it is pretended is intended to create doubt! On p. 24, I. Paul refers to N. Vlassa's article (1971:21) . . ..with occasion of some excavations that have not an archaeological character, as well as of some research in Cluj museum deposits. Answer: This expression suggests what Paul did not say, but we can understand through the expressions he uses which we will analyze in the following lines. It feeds those suppositions mentioned in coffee houses that N. Vlassa discovered the tablets in Zsfia Tormas manuscript (such an assumption has been repeated by Ms. Silvia Marinescu-Blcu several times, even in our presence). M. Roska was very well acquainted with the museum deposits as well as Zsfia Tormas collection. If the tablets had been in Zsfia Tormas collection, we are sure that Marton Roska would have published or inventoried them, as he did with other fakes from this collection, identifying them as fakes. We refer to note 1 where I. Paul (2007: 24) specifies . . . N. Vlassa, knowing profoundly the literature of the field, has the chance or maybe the bad luck to know in detail Zsfia Tormas collection and the whole documentation associated with it. Answer: The differences between what M. Roska (1941) has published and the collection in Zsfia Tormas 1897 journal are not too big. Most of the specialists, except J. Makkay, did not even study what M. Roska had published. To underline M. Roskas perspicacity, we mention that from 210 pieces we have included in a recent catalogue of an exhibition related with signs (that will open in April, 2009 at the Cluj museum), after our and M. Merlinis analysis, only one piece from Tormas 1897 collection (Catalogue 184, p. 28, fig. 10) was omitted by M. Roska in his publications. This is a pot base related with sacred numbers 1 + 6. So, in our opinion, pieces such as tablets could not have escaped M. Roskas attention if they were in Zsfia Tormas Journal. M. Roska published some identical figures such as those found in Zsfia Tormas Journal, only with bad drawings, even though he did not make excavations (I. Pauls word). We would like to apologize for the viciousness we infer and will present below the conditions of the excavations made by prof. Iuliu Paul, Al. Aldea, Vl. Dumitrescu, S. Marinescu-Blcu, Fl. Draovean, and S. A. Luca. In note 2, I. Paul (2007) writes, . . .in 1989 conditions [were such that] we had very few materials to organize the excavation. Even the elementary materials such as paper for packages, cord, spatulas, brushes and brooms were missing. Other tools and special devices/apparatus were completely missing. . . If we compare N. Vlassas last day of excavation at Trtria with those made by Paul, we notice that Vlassa had better conditions for work, even with paper for packing. He was not able see the tablets in situ while the museums car came to pick up all the materials, people, etc. He wrote, after I had made the photo of the profile and of the pit, I gave to a schoolboy a spatula, paper and cord; to take out from the pit the archaeological material and to pack everything. N. Vlassa was involved in the drawing of another big complex profile (where Prof. Attila Lszl, a student at that time, was working). The absence of the cord and paper mentioned by I. Paul is true. When we returned to Cluj from our excavation in Para, together with our colleague Dr. Eszter Bnffy (now second Director of the Archaeological Institute in Budapest) we stopped to visit Turda and Trtria. I. Paul and his colleagues did not mention any word about this excavation, even though several people had left Para some days earlier to participate in the Trtria excavations. At Trtria there was a big surprise for us and our colleague: there were traces of the recent excavation represented by the bulk of archaeological material arranged in rows, on the width and length (maybe on squares), near every section, without tickets (paper was not used. The archaeological materials of Iuliu Pauls excavation remained many days without tickets. Bones have been arranged on depth, but not on squares. The sherds were arranged on rows (maybe on squares of 2 x 2m, maybe on excavation depth, but surely not on layers). Nobody was taking care of the archaeological excavation or materials; the ditches were not closed up. We have a photo proving this model of a modern archaeological excavationnot made by intuition, as the one made by N. Vlasss, as I. Paul accuses. In the excavation made under I. Pauls direction, some sections of 1 m wide were dig until -1 43

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe m; from -1m deep the sections had only been dug 50-60 cm in width until the yellow clay: What sort of systematic excavation was this? What sort of observations could be made regarding the stratigraphy, the complexes and their content? These are only stories, because if they did not have spatulas they could not empty the pits or work on the complexes! After I. Paul publishes the results of the excavation, we will publish the photos that prove how the excavation was. On p.12/30 I. Paul suggests that only N. Vlassa and M. Roska had access to the Zsfia Torma Collection, and he even says . . . there are several questions . . . but in reality the collection has been seen by S. Winn, J. Makkay, M. Merlini and others. Answer: Parts of Zsfia Tormas Collection were never together. T. Soroceanu chaoticly deposited the objects into new closets, except the idols that were in the case windows even from M. Roskas time. In the 1970s, N. Vlassa systematized the storehouse by placing the materials from Turda in the first and third closets; some pieces from the Zsfia Torma Collection were put there, also. On the occasion of some studies regarding connections between the Transylvanian Neolithic and the Near East (Vlassa 1971, 1971a). N. Vlassa used the identified materials and others from Zsofia Tormas unpublished manuscript. Answer regarding the grave: Z. Maxim opened up the packets with bones from Trtria and put them in the bones closet in room 2/left. M. Merlini and I found the bones very quickly, not through assiduous pursuits, as I. Paul insinuates. Some parts of the materials are already inventoried, other not; they stay in two different chambers. All of them have been investigated by Cosmin Suciu for his Ph.D. thesis; some are already in his data base, other not yet. Otto Crandel, who earned a Masters degree at Alba Iulia, studied the flint artefacts. Whoever has wanted to see or study the Trtria materials has done so, but nobody until now has wanted to study all the sherds from the excavations by N. Vlassa and K. Horedt. As we have mentioned, these are now introduced into data bases and will be part of a completely analytical study. We have made photos of selected materials from K. Horedts and N. Vlassas excavations; when the inventory is finished we will make photos of the others. On p. 12/30 there are gratuitous assertions by I. Paul (2007) concerning the . . .use of accidental tests, oriented after simple intuitions or deductions, based on selective corroboration of known data and the hypothesis until now formulated will lead to multiply the questions marks regarding the tablets already abundant and contradictory. Table 2: Statistics on material published by I. Paul and N. Vlassa.
Statistics for the published material Total objects Adornments Vina pottery Altars Pots completely in the drawings Imports Idols Tablets with signs

Answer 1: From the plans published by I. Paul, it is evident that N. Vlassa has verified K. Horedts stratigraphy 67/115m 117/78m 0-1 4 2 1-1 and those of N. Vlassa. Where, then, are the accidental tests 19 23 1-2 made by N. Vlassa? Or do we have to name intuitions made 2 4 1-3 by I. Paul too, being located after the same criteria? 8 9 1-4 Answer 2: Based on the selective corroboration of 2 11 1-5 known data. As we like statistics very much, lets see who 2 6 1-6 has excavated what and how much has been published until 1 3 1-7 (unpublished) now (Table 2). The score is 5 to 13 for N. Vlassa (see last row Whirls 1 1 2-8 of Table 2). N. Vlassa has published 117 objects in two years, Looms 1 1 3-9 Lumea Nou 7 7 4-10 while I. Paul published 67 objects in 19 years. That represent Petreti 9 9 5-11 58,5 objects per year for N. Vlassa and 3,5 objects per year Pots profiles 11 30 5-12 for I. Paul. Of course, I. Pauls study is not finished; N. Efficiency on year 3,5 58,5 5-13 Vlassa can not publish anymore, but we hope that these statistics will stimulate the next publications and that things will not remain as in the case of Limba.3 In terms of I. Pauls 2007 paper, we were expecting a statistical analysis of the pottery categories, such as color, mixture, flattening, firing, shapes and ornaments.
2 2

IP

NV

Score

2. Other opinions of I. Paul referring to scientific problems 2.1. The location of the cult pit
3

See cimec.ro sub vocem Limba.

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe The first conclusion by I. Paul (2007:9) regarding the location of the cult pit is false. The manuscripts by N. Vlassa in the museum contain a plan of his excavations with the pits; but the cult pit is located only on the photo (it is possible that the journal of the excavation might be in his family). In 2005 and 2006, we published the plan of N.Vlassas manuscript in English and Romanian (Lazarovici, Merlini 2005; C.-M. Lazarovici, Gh. Lazarovici 2006:149-150, 199, fig. IIIa.83). As a result, we came to understand that there was another pit or pit house (which we have noted as B1); the ritual pit was about 3 m from the cliff margin. We do not know how much of this cliff was preserved during I. Pauls excavations, but in the profile that he published we cannot see if he excavated the area of pit house 1 (that was 40 cm down from the ritual pit). For pit house 2 we have C14 data. The chronological position of this complex was well established as Vina A3 (Gh. Lazarovici, Maxim-Kalmar 1991: 9, pl. I). The inventory of pit house 2 (idols, pots, and other pieces) is older than (or contemporary with) level Ib at Trtria. We have several times published the C14 data for Trtria, as early as 2004 (see Merlini 2004, 2006, 2007; C.-M. Lazarovici 2006). Since I. Paul did not mention this, we will clarify the problem again by presenting other data from Transylvania, some of which can be found on the WEB (see arheologie.ulbsibiu.ro). C14 data from the ritual pit are older then those of pit house 2 (our mark, see Figure 4a). If we take into account the age of the person, the defleshing process, and setting into the pit between the two pit houses, the ritual pit can belong to either of the mentioned complexes. As we do not have data regarding the inventory of the pit/pit house 1 (there is only a plan without comments), we connect the ritual pit to pit house 2 (B2). The standard deviation, 65 years, corresponds by chronological point of view with pit house 2. The radiocarbon data from Figure 4a correspond with W. Schier's chronology (Schier 1995:149). We believe that from what we have mentioned here we have clarified the place and the role of the tablets. If I. Paul would like to read the bibliography, or is interested in the new studies, we can send them. They are present on the Internet in several places and anyone can see them. 4 I believe that we have answered to I. Pauls question, especially to those who try to establish the place and role of the Trtria tablets in the context of absolute chronology. Certainly now, based on these data, older opinions related to the chronological liaisons, such as N. Vlassas, J. Makkays or others are now related only with the history of the research, or the chronology used in their period. The ritual pit can belong to both pit houses, but can not be newer than pit house 2. While I. Pauls manuscript might have been interesting in 1989 (the year of his excavation at Trtria) or in the years soon afterwards, it represents now only a page in the history of the research. If the war with N. Vlassa is still actual for I. Paul, it is out-dated for us. N. Vlassa knows the truth but he can no longer answer to I. Paul. The memory and honesty of a dear colleague and friend is affected, so therefore we are obliged to defend him of all unfair attacks.

In our bibliography for Trtria, data for I. Paul stops in 1981.

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe Figures 3a-b:( a)Picture with pit house 2/ B 2 and reconstruction of the angle of the picture; (b) frontal picture Pit houses 1, 2/ B 1, 2. In the unpublished plan, the ritual pit was not located. When Vlassa made the drawing he did not know the contents of the pit The chronological system we present here does not need any discussions; the data problems are quite evident, and they very well converge with others in Banat and Transylvania.
Atmospheric data from S tuiver et al. (1998); O xCal v3.5 Bronk Ramsey (2000); cub r:4 sd:12 prob usp[chron]

Cultura Z autim purie si m ijlocie LimbaBord.IVA_VA2 GrN/28457 658060BP GBaciu SCIIIB Lv-2157 640090BP Tartaria Lady A3B1 R1630 631065B P Parta C B II Lv 2141 629080BP Limba GrN/28112 629050B P C iumesti Mantu 95 6280100BP Satchinez Vinca A2 Deb 2579 627040BP C arcea Vii Dud- Vin Bln 2008 625040BP Parta C B I Lv 2142 624080B P Parta C B I Lv 2151 624070B P Zau A1 G59 L11 Ly-8934 623055B P Tartaria B rdH17_18 A3B1 621565BP Zau A2 Gr.in P8a Ly-8932 618555BP Liubcova Vinca B 2 Bln 2133 617585BP M iercSB 9 n Ic SC_IIIBIVA GrN-69053 615040BP C Turc SCII H-17919 610551BP Zau A3 G8 Ly-8933 610455BP C arcea Vii Dud- Vin Bln 1980 610060BP LN Gr Funerara P7 Su2 B 1 Poz-19490 609050BP Farcasu Dud II-III Bln 2285 608060B P 6000C alBC 5500C alB C Calibrated date 5000CalBC

Figure 4a-b: (a) Absolute chronology of the neighboring cultures; (b) Chronology of W. Schier (1995) and ours (Lazarovici, Merlini 2005). 2.2. Page 10/47: Comments regarding I. Pauls stratigraphy The level of the pit houses is -3,42,8 m parallel with Vina A, maybe A2A3. But on page 11 they are synchronized with Vina A1A2. Which is correct? A1A2 or A2A3 ? + Late Cri -2,8 - 2,5 m StarevoCriVina A. Answer 1: It is true we have demonstrated the synchronism of StarevoCriVina A, but, if I. Paul had looked attentively at our paper published in Prhistorische Zeitschrift that he quotes in his bibliography, he could have seen that we make a parallel between Starevo-Cri material at Trtria and phase III of Vl. Miloji (Gh. Lazarovici 1981). We had to specify that the so-called late Cri discoveries are only IVA, IVB; the synchronisms referred at that time only to them. The A1 stage is present only in northern Banat, at Sat Chinez. The A1 stage does not exist at Trtria. N. Vlassa mentioned a late Cri, but we have to keep in mind that at that time, Le was thought to be synchronous with Le IStarevo I (Zaharia 1962, 1964). This is false, as we have later proved, but the published materials belong to another period (see below). Answer 2: Concerning -2,5 2 m Vina B1, I. Paul has not published the materials on complexes or levels or provided a figure illustration list, so it is very difficult now to more exactly specify the chronological problems without an analytical study. When the materials will be presented about the complexes or stratigraphic units, we will make an analytical study with discoveries from other Vina sites. In the materials published by N. Vlassa, the Lumea Nou pottery appears earlier, over the level with pit houses. In 1981 we situated the earliest Lumea Nou materials at level Vina B1 (Gh. Lazarovici 1981, Beil. 1 nr. 52). C14 data from Zau (Maxim 1999:129; C.-M. Lazarovici 2006; C.-M. Lazarovici, Gh. Lazarovici 2006:430, fig. IIIe.26) confirm N. Vlassas observations (Figure 4a). Once, when B. Brukner was in Romania, we saw some painted pottery of the Lumea Nou type from one of the sections made by I. Paul at Trtria. This type of technology and painting appears in the earliest levels, but these materials are not illustrated in Pauls study. 46

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe Answer 3: Concerning -2 1,5 m Vina B2 + Lumea Nou: three successive levels with Notenkopf imports (pl. IX/1), Tisa (pl. IX/2), a) it is possible that there was a synchronism with the Linear pottery, musical notes phase (LBK- Notenkopf), but in which levels were the materials discovered? If there was not packing paper, were all of the materials packed together? What are they affiliated with? Linear pottery appears later and is affiliated with Precucuteni I (Turda, Olteni II), at Vina C1 level by W. Schier (prior to Vina B2/C). The association of Linear pottery materials with the Bkk ones at Turda, Snduleti and other places suppose a Vina C horizon; b) so named Tisza I materials (pl. IX/2) do not belong to Tisza. In fact this is a Vina altar with specific decoration. Even the decoration seems later to us. Maybe in the future more information will be published concerning the paste, color, and lustre. Then we can better analyze these pieces. I. Paul has marked 7-10 levels at Trtria, while N. Vlassa has marked 8 levels in G, plus others in the pit house as functional phases. K. Horedt had 6 levels in cassette G, 6-8 levels in cassette H. So, I. Pauls excavations have confirmed the older ones, with no new information regarding the horizontal stratigraphy! 2.3. Page 11/47: I. Paul introduces the term turdan aspect of the Vina culture as a synthesis between Vina + Lumea Nou. Answer: The Turda term creates confusions for the Trtrias discoveries. Today almost all archaeologists specialized in the Neolithic period of Banat and Transylvania (Gh. Lazarovici 1977, 1977b, 1981, 1985, 1986, 1991, 1994; Luca 1993, 1996, 1996a, 1996b, 2001, 2006; Draovean, Luca 1990; Draovean 1994, 1995, 1996, 1996b, 2006; Draovean, Mari 1998, Bcue-Crian 2008; Gligor 2007) 5 agree that the Turda culture is situated at Vina B2/C level or C1 (W. Schier (1995). At VracAt (C.-M. Lazarovici, Gh. Lazarovici 2006: 570-571)6 such Turda materials appear after an early Vina B2 level, at 6,4 m at Vina site. 2.4. Page 12/30: .the first pits start at Vina B1 levels considers postquem for the ritual pit and the tablets . . .Paul 2007). Answer: The pits there are even in K. Horedt levels (Horedt had taken the materials from 30 to 30 cm; the mixing of materials can be seen in all the levels). In N. Vlassas levels there are pits and deeper areas, as in I. Pauls profile, pl. IV. A rhetorical question arises, as I. Paul addresses many rhetorical questions to N. Vlassa, too: Did I. Paul take the materials from these levels on complexes? How were they prepared and packed if was not with cord, packing paper, and spatula, not to speak about others (see Paul 2007:26, note 2)? 2.5. Page 11/29: Starevo-Cri pottery belongs to phase II (Gh. Lazarovici, Z. Maxim-Kalmar 1991:12) based on DM motive of our database (Vlassa 1967:403),7 but especially for the monochrome paste, or of the barbotine and incisions missing. DM motive is an earlier one that is present at Donja Branjevina III (Karmanski 1968: 3, fig. 2, 1975: 0/1)8 from phases Starevo-Cri IC-II; the same level phases I-II are present at Vaksevo I-II horizon with white painting (ohaiev 2001:29/2), Verbicioara I (Gh. Lazarovici 1977: 37-38), Anzebegovo II (Gimbutas 1976: 44; Mock 1976: 58/9), Tei (Gimbutas 1976, 44; Mock 1976:58/9), Sfntu GheorgheBedehaza (later here) and others.9 N. Vlassa (1963, 1976) dated this pottery as late Starevo-Cri, but then there was not a finer periodisation. On the same page, 11/29, I. Paul raises another question regarding the collection: . . .if somebody else deals with this collection. Answer: Not especially. Only those who wanted to and were were willing to stay longer then two hours in the Cluj-Napoca museum have studied the pieces from this collection during the past 25 years. In 1980, together with our colleague Zoia Maxim, we made a topographic and alphabetic file (after pieces and inventory) for all the materials of the prehistoric collection. Anyone who wants can use it. From Alba Iulia only Mihai Bljan has used it for the Early Medieval period and Otto Crandel for flint; from Cluj the file was used by Hgo Attila Nndor for his licensee work Scrierea n cultura Turda. Most persons who have seen how many materials are in the collection have abandoned the study. Even M. Merlini has studied only the pieces with signs, not being a specialist in Vina pottery. Some other colleagues from Germany, such as Marion Boller 10 and Swend Hansen11 have studied the Turda and Trtria plastic from the
5 6

See C.-M. Lazarovici, Gh. Lazarovici 2006 for the problems, 2007 for relation with Foeni, Chapter Va. See also older and newer bibliographies. 7 Our codes for Gura Baciului 1995 DM. 8 Also partially in unpublished documentation. 9 Horedt 1949, 17, 9/9; B111, 554; C 66, 356-357, 22/2-3; L 62, 39-40, 47. 10 Marion Boller has unfortunatly abandoned her study for the moment. 11 See Hansen 2007, a monumental work in two volumes.

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe collection and from the excavations. We have published some pieces and for the next exhibition we are organizing, together with Joan Marler in 2009, we have collected most of the pieces; others we can not yet find. The deposit contains 170.000 pieces and was recently reorganized. Answer for I. Paul (2007:11/29, note 4): For its personal information, the study he mentions was realized together with us; it is not signed only by M. Merlini, as I. Paul quotes; a variant of the mentioned paper was sent for publishing to Lolita Nikolova (still under print). 2.6. Page 13/35, note 5: To intensify the susceptibility over N. Vlassas discoveries at Trtria, I. Paul quotes A. Lszls opinions that he had not seen the moment of discovery or the tablets, a fact that is true. Answer: N. Vlassa told this to several persons who were interested in the tablets and I was present for some of those stories. The truth is that even Vlassa did not see them on the fieldjust later at Cluj, in the laboratory, where the pieces were washed. The only discrepancy is related with the number of discovered pieces. N. Vlassa also says that A. Lszl was on section H, where he supervised the works and had to draw the profile. Here, a massive platform with holes, maybe perforations was discovered (but too large to belong to an oven), so N. Vlassa was thinking that maybe it was a sanctuary.12 One of the workers, a child (our underline!),13 maybe the better one, was send to empty the pit; N. Vlassa letting him have a spatula and packing paper.14 The discrepancy related to the number of pieces from the ritual pit consists in the fact that N. Vlassa cites from the pit 26 idols, the bracelet and the tablets, 30 pieces in total, or has published every time only 11 pieces. Between his manuscripts in the museum we did not find other details or his journal regarding the excavation, so for the moment there are no other details. We have made some investigation that is still going on. We have also the opinion of another (ex) boy who participated in the excavation. During lunch break, together with other boys, he went for a swim in the Mure River. He invited the colleague who had to work on the ritual pit, but he could not go because he still had to work. When children returned from the Mure they stopped near their colleague. Our informer saw the tablets and he affirms that there was much more and not all of them have been published. We do not exclude the possibility that some of the pieces have disappeared. Maybe N. Vlassa knew their number but he can not recuperate them. This is the lonely discrepancy in N. Vlassa's publications. On our account there are 1519 pieces missing. It is possible that N. Vlassa believed that other pieces came from the same complex. Maybe some of the pieces were discovered by K. Horedt and, based on this information; he mentions this in a 1949 publication. We are thinking about the alabaster idol, but other investigations have to be initiated in the field15 and deposits, even if these seems very similar to excavations and we can be accused that we know Zsfiei Tormas collection. 2.7. Page 14: I. Paul raises other questions marks. For some of them we will answer, in order not to be anymore an enigma; to other questions we cannot: . . .why was the content of this complex divided into different deposits without connection between them, without any denotations. . . Answer: The pieces considered as characteristic have been located in the museum in the glass case with Trtria, after the published model in Dacia (1963). Other packed pieces were in the closet with the glass case of Trtria. Later, I. Piso and M. Rotea as directors ordered that in one week all the museum deposits had to be reorganized, because a Bucharest commission was going to come. So, the closet with the Trtria materials was dived into three: the pieces without inventory were taken to a transitory hall, those with inventory were put in hall A (where even now they can be seen), and the bones and stones were put in the left hall. Referring to the question why only some materials have been published and other not, we specify that was not the case. N. Vlassa published the material on levels representing the most significant in his opinion. All these pieces are in the glass case in the museum and many photos have been made by students and scholars. I. Paul wrote that there was a . . .total secret intended for forgetting forever everything that was less convenient, incomprehensible or hard to be explained? Answer: the secret about which Iuliu Paul writes, is just a gratuitous statement that may exist only in his imagination. It has been over 38 years since the deposit of the Prehistoric section was organized, and over 28 years since the topographic file was made.
This confession was made at Para when he came to see the sanctuary. At Trtria he thought that they had found the sanctuary were dead people had been burned. He remembered that even K. Horedt had found similar thing; he was referring maybe to the fireplace with a child skeleton (Horedt 1949: 52, fig. 7). 13 We have the declaration of a physicist, then a schoolboy. 14 To be malicious, we note that when N. Vlassa finished the excavation he had cord, spatula and packing paper, which I. Paul did not have at the beginning of his big excavation at Trtria (see Paul 2007: 8/47, note 2). 15 We are thinking to verify things at Trtria.
12

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe We especially take care of this, so I know very well there were no secrets, and nothing is difficult to be explained, but pieces have been seen only by the persons mentioned above. Regarding the publishing, we can also ask: why until now was nothing published regarding I. Pauls 1989 excavation at Trtriano preliminary report, no study, photos, nothing? Only the parts have been mentioned in this presentation that contain two/thirds of all enigmatic things not related with his excavation. When the 1989 excavation from Trtria will be published on complexes, levels, with a catalogue, or at least in a similar manner such as those published by K. Horedt or N. Vlassa (1963), then we will be able to judge that something comparing to what Vlassa published was made. Officially we have not seen any sherd from Trtria in exhibitions or in Alba Iulia deposits, even though we visit the place at least three times each year. In 18 years nothing was published related with this excavationUnofficially,16 together with Bogdan Brukner, we have seen some archaeological materials (especially Vina and Lumea Nou) from one section made by I. Paul at Trtria. It was not officially possible to see something from Trtria. On the same page, I. Paul says that he did not have the occasion to study the tablets or the pottery of Trtria at the Cluj museum collection, but during the time I was second director or director, he never asked for this, until 1998. He just has seen twice the materials from Zau, and never asked about the other materials. Earlier it was more difficult to see the pieces from thesaurus, because of the very strict rules, but since this was opened to the public, everybody can see the tablets. Even earlier, when somebody (scholars especially) wanted to see the tablets, it was not a problem. 3. Rectifications regarding the study of the tablets seen by I. Paul in 1968 and his observations 3.1. Page 14/47: I. Paul affirms . . .with this occasion I can observe even with eye, that the tablets are made of a compact sandstone and do not contain organic material. Answer: This is an intentionally false or a very superficial observation. The tablets are made of sand; a temper was used with little clay and maybe calcium carbonate that determine their color, observed when they were discovered. Because of this white color it was assumed that they were covered with limestone, so they were sent to the laboratory to be washed. Prof. Korodi, chief of the Restoration Laboratory, took them out the paper and washed them. Because of this limestone stratum he had to use special substances for decalcification.17 In the very good photos as well as in the images obtained through the microscope we can see very well the incisions, and we can see on the cross line that divided the tablet into four registers. Sometimes, because of the small stones, the lines do not have a regular outline, being relapsed (upper stones b, c), or a later line drawn too close to another pushing the small stone e in the hole of empty i2 (incision 2).

Figure 5: Round tablet: (1) old incision, (2) the new one moved the small stone (d) (see detail, above). The distorted red color is because of the microscopic light;( a-e) small stones moved from their place by the
Unofficially (due to a colleague who did not want his name mentioned) we have seen some materials coming from several levels of one section. 17 For referencies and analyses, see Lazarovici, Merlini 2004; C.-M. & Gh. Lazarovici 2007 (our volume was at the university library at Alba Iulia when professor I. Paul presented his paper at Timioara).
16

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe The distorted red color is because of the microscopic light;( a-e) small stones moved from their place by the incisions made in soft paste and doubled incisions 3.2. Another wrong observation. A superficial one is that the tablets did not contain organic material. Answer: If he would observe attentively the back side of the bigger tablet he could see traces of a blade of grass (Gh. Lazarovici, Merlini 2005: 213, fig. 20) from the paste, in the area of a small brake. In the following picture we can see the hole made by Prof. E. Stoicovici when he took the sample for the mentioned analysis. Maybe when the tablet was treated with hydrochloric acid this fragment detached and the trace of grass can now be seen very well, not only with the microscope, as in this figure. So, after all this data we have presented is very sure that the tablets can not have been made in the laboratory and N. Vlassa did not have other collaborators who could make such a fake.

Figure 6: Impression of a burned grass on the back side of the round tablet. The area probably detached when the piece was introduced into the acid. If I. Paul had studied all of our articles in Romanian and in English that are possible to be found (on the Internet, too) he could have known all these things, including the geologists opinions. The tablets and idols from the cult pit have been chemically and mineralogically investigated by Prof. Eugen Stoicovici from the Geological Department of Cluj-Napoca University, whose opinion it was that the tablets and idols have the same chemical-mineralogical composition (Vlassa 1977:14). Another accusation which is wrong, with no real basis that he addresses to N. Vlassa is related with the perforation of the tablets. I. Paul considers that perforation was made ...with the help of a sharp point maybe a flint tool, operation being made on both sides, therefore the orifice is not cylindrical, but conic. Such a shape of the orifice can be obtained only if the tablets have been compact and not soft, therefore they have to be consolidated in the laboratory through firing.

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

Figure 7: Round tablet with the place of the grass and traces of areas with limestone detached during the cleaning process. Answer: All of these are wrong suppositions based on external, misunderstood information. If the tablets were made of sandstone (a suppostion that has not been proven, as we have seen) and were hard, they can be perforated on both sides with a bone chisel, with a broken bone, with a stone chisel, with any sort of tool through gyration. If the tablets were soft (as in reality, with traces in the incisions and on their margin) having to be perforated on both sides, the clay would be broken if it was pushed. Through roll up of both parts such traces still remain. Another inadvertence is that the conic orifice supposes perforation on one side, not on both. We did not make detailed photos for the orifices; we hope to do it in the future. Regarding the firing of the tablets in the laboratory, that I. Paul supposes the . . .tablets have to be consolidated through firing in the laboratory. Answer: We did not find this quote by N. Vlassa. Maybe this escaped us, but in the reply to Vl. Dumitrescu, N. Vlassa explains very clearly, Because of the very weak firing and tablets friability, the tablets have been impregnated in vacuum in an auto valve, with an organic reversible substance (Vlassa 1972). The temperature cannot be raised until the firing point while the diluent for the nitrolac could inflame and blow up (Gh. Lazarovici, Merlini 2005: 211-213; C.-M. Lazarovici, Gh. Lazarovici 2006:201-203). For the weak firing and friability of the tablets, we have explained already that the mixture with calcium carbonate permits a quick reinforcement of the clay. Being the main binding it determines a light color of the clay, the white limestone crust that N. Vlassa mentioned. This binding produces in a humid hand, on emotions or perspiration a warming sensation. In our opinion this was the aim of using the tablets (maybe for obtaining the white color too); they represent sort of prestige objects. It is possible that they can be worn on the neck too. It is a pity there are not pictures before their cleaning with hydrochloric acid.

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe On the same page there is one other observation of I. Paul, based on his own hypothesis: Position of the orifice of the tablet is made not to disturb the inscription that makes us to believe it was made afterwards, for the aim of using the tablet as an amulet. Answer: We believe that both orifices on the pieces were made from the beginning. Marco Merlini has observed that through the superposition of both perforated tablets, on the round tablet the texts from the higher part are hidden to the person that looks at it from the front side. The cross line on the tablet divides the piece into four dials, two of them being hidden, secret. I. Paul, in the last phrase from the second chapter of his study, lets us understand that the chronological non-concordances between the tablets and the cultural historical context that have been reported are enough to raise the problem of their originality. He says that there are even now many specialists who do not trust (true or not) that the tablets belong to the period and context in which it is pretended they were discovered. We believe he is referring to the moment he was writing the first part of this study, 15-18 years ago. The facts we have marked here, have been especially made to underline the idea of enigma that I. Paul needs to underline all the time. Maybe his non-official information represents the base of some myths regarding the tablets, its proofs representing the manner in which this study and title were written. Our opinion is that I. Paul (2007: 22/47) does not want to have an obvious opinion, while referring to the Trtria tablets as being newer than the Turda pieces. In a chronological point of view, the Turda pieces are later, such as Sabin Adrian Luca has already specified. On the same page, I. Paul formulates new enigmatic questions for maintaining suspense: Where, when, how and in what conditions (context) have the tablets appeared?. . . The answer is still under the enigma empire . . . articulated considerations regarding their origins . . . The part of their provenance is still surrounded in mystery. . . Answer: All these allegations remain a suspicion when, even later on, I. Paul accuses N. Vlassa of dishonesty. To accuse someone of being dishonest, one must prove that falsity. If you do not proove it, you are dishonest. If you accuse someone of using bombs (I. Paul accuses indirectly N. Vlassa for this) we have to remember here the stories about the heads from Gura Baciului (Gh. Lazarovici, Z. Maxim et alii 1995: 145, 179-181, 186, 397-398) that in the end prove to be a cheap gossip indirectly attributed to N. Vlassa, as a bomb. At the same time, I. Paul accepts as unusual the idea of false. We can also ask a question to vitiate a problem: Were the pieces from Ocna Sibiului, the altar and the statue discovered together? Is there any picture proving their position in situ in house number 8? It seems that I. Paul avoids this idea, while such pieces occupy our attention. Until now is there any detailed plan for such an important discovery? Maybe it was a domestic sanctuary? So, this can be seen as a bomb too. Is the pot with the seal from Daia Romn not another bomb? Did it not appear one year later after the Trtria discoveries? Did not I. Paul launch it as a bomb too? Until now he has not published any details, no sketch, plan, or photo for the in situ context, as was naturally expected for such an important discovery. How are we to know if the pot was surely discovered together with the Vina statuettes, or if it was in an unobserved pit from the upper layer!? The idols seem to be earlier, of Vina B1 time, while the pot is decorated with the small wheel characteristic of the Bakarno GumnoCrnobuki horizon (Copper Age). If the pieces had been discovered in the deposits of Sibiu or Petreti (as I. Paul accuses N. Vlassa about the tablets; have been witnesses for the Daia Romn discoveries?! Did he realize the importance of the pieces on the field, or later? Such vicious questions are not necessary to be asked!), there would have been a lot of questions, partially gratuitous. But while I. Paul asks such questions to N. Vlassa that can no longer be answered, we are really interested to know more things about the mentioned discoveries at Daia Romn, and why such seals are present later in Photolivos III, and Maliq II (see Gimbutas 1991: 318, fig. 8-19-20). If we have such an attitude, we have to doubt everything and anything because this means that we believe we know more things than the person who has made the discovery. We have to believe the authors discoveries. The anchor from Trtria is an amulet, the perforation is different than on the pieces of Coofeni, but who published a similar one in Coofeni? Are these realities or enigmas? If we do not like somebody it is easier to blaspheme and not to believe them. If I. Paul considers the tablets to be false, accusing N. Vlassa, why does he still consider them as local linear writing, following those from Ocna Sibiului (Paul I. 1995:134)? At the same time he relates pieces from Ocna Sibiului with the Old European civilization, while I and N. Vlassa consider Gura Baciului, Ocna 52

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe Sibiului and Crcea to represent migrations from the Near East (Vlassa 1972, 1972a).18 In fact even I. Paul finds analogies for the Ocna Sibiului piece at atal Hyk (Paul 1995:130-133, fig. IIa, n. 5). For sure there are still many questions and many things to be written on the big study of Trtria. But in twenty years I. Paul has only written this part. On the other hand we specify that we have to have a special respect for Prof. Iuliu Paul for the University he has built from nothing. If he would let the dead sleep without questions, inverted commas, underlining and incitement titles, we would not be forced to defend the memory of a colleague and friend, Nicolae Vlassa, a bright mind and a vivid spirit. Gheorghe LAZAROVICI (Romania) Eftime Murgu University, Reia Email: ghlazarovici@yahoo.com

18

See also Gh. Lazarovici 2006 and bibliography.

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REFERENCES BCUE-CRIAN S. 2008. Neoliticul i Eneoliticul timpuriu n Depresiunea imleului. In Bibliotheca Brukenthal XXIII. Sibiu: Muzeul Naional Brukenthal. OHAIEV St. 2001. Vaksevo. Praistorieski Selia. Veliko Trnovo. DRAOVEAN Fl. 1994. Die Stufe Vina C im Banat. In Germania 72, 2: 409-425. ______1995. Locuirile neolitice de la Hodoni. In Banatica 13: 53-138. Reia. ______1996. Cultura Vina (faza C) n Banat. BHAB, I. DissDoc. Timioara: Mirton. ______1996a. Relations of Vina Culture phase C with the Transylvanian Region. In The Vina Culture, Its Role and Cultural Connections. International Symposium on the Vina culture its Role and cultural Connections, Timioara Romnia, October 1995. Edited by F. Draovean, 269-285. Timioara: Mirton. DRAOVEAN Fl., T. MARI. 1998. Aezarea neolitic trzie de la Zlati (jud. Hunedoara). In Analele Banatului VI: 93-119. ______2006. Nordgriechenland und der Mittlere Donauraum zum ende des 6. und der Beginn des 5. Jahrtausend V. Chr. In Homage to Milutin Garaanin, 267-276. Belgrade. DRAOVEAN Fl., S. A. LUCA. 1990. Consideraii preliminare asupra materialelor neo-eneolitice din aezarea de la Mintia-Gerhat (com. Veel, jud. Hunedoara). In SCIVA 41:71-76. GIMBUTAS M., ed. 1976. Neolithic Macedonia. As Reflected by Excavation at Anza, Southeast Yugoslavia. Monumenta Archaeologica, vol. 1. Los Angeles: Institute of Archaeology, University of California. ______1991. The Civilization of Goddess. The World of Old Europe. San Francisco: Harper. Gligor, M. 2007. Aezarea neo- i eneolitic de la Alba IuliaLumea Nou n lumina noilor cercetri. PhD, Alba Iulia. HANSEN S. 2007. Bilder vom Menshen der Steinzeit. Untersuchungen zur antropomorphen Plastik der Jungsteinzeit und Kupferzeit in Sdosteuropa, 2 vols. Archlogie in Eurasien, Band 20. Mainz: Deutsches Archologisches Institut, Eurasien-Alteilung. Verlag Philipp von Zabern. HOREDT K. 1956. Aezarea de la Sf. GheorgheBedehaza. In Materiale II: 16-18. ______1949. Spturi privitoare la epoca neo- i eneolitic. In Apulum III (1947-1948) 1949: 44-69. KARMANSKI S. 1968. rtvenici, statuete i amuleti sa lokaliteta Donja Branjevina. Odaci. ______1975. Ornamentika na keramici sa lokaliteta Donja Branjevina, kod Deronja. Odaci. LAZAROVICI C.-M. 2006. Absolute Chronology of the Late Vina Culture in Romania and its Role in the Development of the Early Copper Age. In Homage to Milutin Garaanin. Edited by N. Tasi, and C. Grozdanov, 277-293. Belgrade. LAZAROVICI C.-M., Gh. LAZAROVICI. 2006. Arhitectura Neoliticului i Epocii Cuprului din Romnia. I. Neoliticul. Edited by V. Spinei, V. Mihailescu-Brliba. Iai: Trinitas. LAZAROVICI C.-M., Gh. LAZAROVICI 2007. Arhitectura Neoliticului i Epocii Cuprului din Romnia. II. Epoca Cuprului. Edited by V. Spinei, V. Mihailescu-Brliba. Iai: Trinitas. LAZAROVICI Gh. 1977. GorneaPreistorie. Reia, 1977. ______1977a. Die Beziehungen der Vina A Phase zu Nordthessalien und dem Sdbalkan. Beitrge zum ursprung der Vina-Kultur. In Apulum 15, 1977:19-26. [CORRECTED FROM 1979a) ______1977b. Periodizarea culturii Vina n Romnia. In Banatica 4:19-44. ______1981. Die Periodisierung der Vina-Kultur in Rumnien. In Prhistorische Zeitschrift 51, 2: 169196. ______1985. Noi descoperiri Bodrogkeresztr n Banat. In Banatica 8: 83-90. ______1986. Neoliticul trziu din nord-vestul Romniei. Slajul, Clujul, Bihorul. In ActaMP 10: 15-46. ______1991. voci n Cultura Vina n Romnia, 17-22, 27-28, 28-29, 31-40, 50-58, 81-84, 97-120. Timioara. ______1994. Der Vina C - Schock im Banat, n Relations Thrako-Illiro-Helleniques, 62-100. Bucharest. ______2006. The Anzabegovo-Gura Baciului Axis and the First Stage of the Neolithisation Process in Southern - Central Europe and the Balkans. In Homage to Milutin Garaanin, 111-158. Belgrade. LAZAROVICI Gh., Z. MAXIM KALMAR. 1991. Trtria. Cluj-Napoca. LAZAROVICI Gh., Z. MAXIM, L. TARCEA. 1995 Gura Baciului. Monografie arheologic. Bibliotheca Mvsei Napocensis XI. Cluj. ______2008. Database for Signs and Symbols of Spiritual Life. Journal of Archaeomythology 4:94-125. LAZAROVICI Gh., MERLINI M. 2005. New Archaeological Data Refering to Trtria Tablets. In Documenta Praehistorica XXXII: 205-219. (Papers of the International Neolithic Seminar-Symbols and Symbolism, 5-10 November, 2004). Ljubljana. 54

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe LAZAROVICI Gh., M. MERLINI. 2008. New Information and the Role of the Trtria Discoveries. In The Danube Script. Neo- Eneolithic Writing in Southeastern Europe, 39-51. Edited by J. Marler. Exhibition catalogue, Casa Altemberger, Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu, Romania. Sebastopol: Institute of Archaeomythology. LUCA S. A., 1993. A New Special Discovery from Turda. In Banatica 12: 21-24. ______1996. ncadrarea cronologic i cultural a aezrii neolitice de la Ortie-Dealul Pemilor, punct X2. In Corviniana 2: 23-28. ______1996a. Eine Rituelle Anlage in Turda-Lunc (Kreis Hunedoara). In Forscungen zur Volks-und Landeskunde 39, 1-2: 121-126. Sibiu. ______1996b. Aezarea de la Turda. Situaia actual a sitului arheologic (II). In AnICSUS 3: 33-35. ______2001. Aezri neolitice pe Valea Mureului (II). Noi cercetri arheologice la Turda-Lunc. I. Campaniile anilor 1992-1995. In Bibliotheca Musei Apulsensis, XVII. ______2004 Data base for spiritual life, signs and symbols, sub tipar n S.U.A. (comunicare prezentat la simpozionul internaional de la Novi Sad). ______2006. Aspects of the Neolithic and Eneolithic Periods in Transylvania. In Homage to Milutin Garaanin, 341-366. Belgrade. MAXIM Z. 1999. Neo-eneoliticul din Transilvania. In BMN XIX. Cluj-Napoca. MERLINI M. 2004. La scrittura nata in Europa? Rome: Avverbi. ______2006. Trtria Tablets Fresh Evidence of an Archaeological Thriller. Paper delivered at the 71st Anual SAA Meeting, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 27, April, 2006. ______2007: Did Southeasern Europe Develop a Rudimentary System of Writing in Neo-Eneolithic Times? Paper delivered at the EAAs 13th Anual Meeting in Zadar, Croatia, 2007. MERLINI M., Gh. LAZAROVICI. 2008. Settling discovery circumstances, dating and utilization of the Tartaria Tablets. In Acta Terrae Septemcastrensis VII: 111-195. Sibiu. MOCK R. E. 1976. Anza I-III (pre-Vina Ceramics. In Neolithic Macedonia as reflected by Excavations at Anza, Southeast Jugoslavia, 78-115. Edited by M. Gimbutas. Monumenta Archaeologica. Los Angeles: Institute of Archeology, University of California. PAUL I. 1965. Unele probleme ale neoliticului din Transilvania n legtur cu cultura Petreti. In Revista Muzeelor 4: 294-302. ______1995. Vorgeschichtliche Untersuchungen in Siebenburgen. Alba Iulia. ______2007. Enigma tblielor de la Trtria Schi preliminar. Comunicare prezentat cu ocazia ceremoniei de acordare a titlului de Doctor Honoris Causa a Universitii de Vest Timioara, 23 mai 2007. ROSKA M. 1941. Die Sammlung Zsofia von Torma, Cluj. _____1942. rdly rgszeti repertorium I. Cluj-Napoca. SCHIER W. 1995. Vina-Studien, Tradition und Innovation im Sptneolithikum des zentralen Balkanraumes am Beispil der Gefsskeramik aus Vina-Belo Brdo. Habilitationsschrift I-II. Heidelberg. TORMA Z. von. 1897. Manuscript at Muzeul Naional de Istorie a Transilvaniei, Cluj-Napoca (partially published by M. Roska in 1941). VLASSA N. 1962. Probleme ale cronologiei neoliticului Transilvaniei n lumina stratigrafiei aezrii de la Trtria. In StudiaUBB, SH, 2: 23-30. ______1963. Chronology of the Neolithic in Transilvania in the Light of the Trtria Settlements Stratigraphy. Dacia N.S. VII: 485-494. ______1967. Unele probleme ale neoliticului Transilvaniei. ActaMN IV: 403-423. ______1969. Einege Bemerkungen zu Fragen des Neolithikums in Siebenbrgen. Studijn Zvesti 17: 513-540. ______1971. Contribuii la problema racordrii cronologiei relative a neoliticului Transilvaniei la cronologia absolut a Orientului Apropiat (Partea a II-a). In Apulum IX: 21-63. ______1971a. Asupra unor probleme ale neoliticului final i ale nceputului epocii bronzului n Transilvania. In Sesiunea Muzeelor de Istorie 1964 I: 117-126. Bucureti. ______1972. Eine frhneolithischen Kultur mit bemalter Keramik der Vor- Starevo-Krs-Zeit in ClujGura Baciului, Siebenbrgen. In Prhistorische Zeitschrift 47, 2: 174-197. Berlin. ______1972a. Cea mai veche faz a complexului cultural Starevo-Cri n Romnia. ActaMN IX: 7-38. ______1976. Neoliticul Transilvaniei. Studii, articole, note. In BMN III. Cluj-Napoca. ______1977. Contribuii la problemele neoliticului Transilvaniei. Diss. doc. Cluj-Napoca. ZAHARIA E. 1962. Consideration sur la civilisation de Cri la lumire des sondages de Le. In Dacia 6:551. _____1964. Consideraii despre cultura Cri pe baza sondajelor de la Le. In SCIV 15, 1: 19-44. 55

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SOME ASPECTS OF THE TRTRIA ISSUE Attila LSZL (Romania) Abstract: Nicolae Vlassa's discoveries at Trtria, especially the clay tablets with pictographic signs, raised in the beginning lively disputes among specialists with regard to their authenticity, their stratigraphic position, their cultural belonging, their significance and chronological value. The author of this paper tries to answer some of these questions from his experience as a student, in 1961, working as an attendant alongside Nicolae Vlassa in the excavations at Trtria. Keywords: Trtria, Nicolae Vlassa, excavation, tablet, chronology. The publication of Nicolae Vlassas findings at Trtria, especially of the clay tablets, aroused fierce disputes from the very beginning among specialists both in Romania and in the international scientific world. Sometimes, the meaning of these disputes was simplified and reduced to a controversy between the adepts of the low and high chronology. Vlassa himself, at a certain moment, accused the partisans of the radiocarbon method (the radiocarbonists) of showing partial or total reserves as to the accuracy of his observations and of the relevance of the tablets (Vlassa 1970:30). In fact, the core of the problem was, from the very start, the conditions in which the tablets were found and the archaeological context to which they originally belonged. The uncertainties, in this respect, came from the brief publication of the excavations and findings which fueled various opinions on the stratigraphic position, the cultural and chronological belonging, the significance and even the authenticity of some objects discovered. It is difficult to understand that neither Nicolae Vlassa nor the specialists who had access after his early death to his scientific heritage did not fully publish the results of the archeological excavations of almost fifty years ago, backed by the appropriate documentation. Instead, they preferred polemics and/or the consideration of some data or hypotheses that, instead of clarifying things, sometimes made them more confused. It is not my intention to review or reexamine the above issues and I confess that the urge to write these lines comes from some collegues who expected me to clarify some enigmas, since I participated as a student at the diggings in 1961 at Trtria. (See below; Vlassa, in his publications, does not make any note of my presence at the excavations.) Giving way to this stimulus (and maybe for my own relief as well) I have to say from the very start that I do not have any unknown data or documents or any information kept secret up to now. I did not shoot pictures because, at that time, I did not have a camera. It is worth noting that Vlassa had a very simple camera (Pionier trademark, made for beginner amateurs) which explains maybe why few pictures were made and why we do not have close-ups with findings in situ. Therefore I allow myself, using my memories as well, to make some observations and suggestions that might be useful to further studies. ***

Figure 1: The plane of the Trtria site and the excavations (after Vlassa 1963, fig. 1, remade). 57

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

The excavation took little time, from 6 to 16 September (see Popescu 1962:204; Lazarovici, Maxim-Kalmar 1991:6, 17 who say that the digging lasted 5-18 September), a period when the little Saint Mary Holiday (September 8th) was celebrated. Two surfaces were opened and dug concomitantly, G and H (numbered as follows when continuing the surfaces A-F of Kurt Horedt in 1942-43), the first in the northwestern margin of the promotorium, the second in the inner western part of the settlement (Figure 1). As it appears in a later publication, the surface G (10 x 5.5 m) was dug under the direct supervision of N.Vlassa, and the small surface H (8 x 1.5 m) was supervized by me and by Iuliu Paul, who visited the excavations for a few days. The digging of this section has a special journal, accompanied by the ground plan and section drawing, all made by me (Figure 2; see Lazarovici, Maxim-Kalmar 1991:6, 17, fig. 2). The found material was collected and packed according to the depth levels and could be related to the established stratigraphy.

Figure 2: Profile and ground plan of the surface H (after Lazarovici, Maxim-Kalmar 1991, fig. 2).

Figure 3: Topographic plan of the Trtria site, after Vlassa (after Lazarovici, Merlini 2005, fig. 3). The surface G in which Vlassa signals the finding of a hut (pit house) and of a ritual pit with the tablets, is written in the general plan (at a very low scale) of the site to the west and south of the surfaces C and E of Horedt, and is a kind of enlargement of these surfaces (Figure 1). Vlassa did not publish the ground plan of the surface G, hence the location of the pit house and of the ritual pit, as well as their size and shape, remain uncertain. This is why at a later date there was a debate not only about the stratigraphic position of 58

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe the pit, but also about its location in the southern or northern part of the surface G (see Zanotti 1983; Makkay 1990:15-20; Lazarovici, Maxim-Kalmar 1991:10-12, 21-23, etc.). The confusion is perpetuated in some recent works, due to contradictory and superficially accounted for statements.

Figure 4: The reconstitution of the surfaces C, E and G (after Makkay 1990, plate 1). I note that Gheorghe Lazarovici and Marco Merlini reproduce a topographic plan of the Trtria site after Vlassa (without exactly indicating the source), where the ritual pit is located in the southern margin of the G surface (Figure 3). Practically, this plane is identical to the older reconstitution of Jnos Makkay, who also is doubtful that the above mentioned ground plan is reproduced after Vlassa (Figure 4). Moreover, the same plan (but in the reverse position) is reproduced once more by Lazarovici and Merlini with the mention the site of the ritual pit after Makkay and others is wrongly located on the southern profile (Figure 5). The statement is reiterated in the text as well where it is said that the correct position is in the northern border of this G trenchs profile (fig. 11). In the photo (fig. 9) we can see the pit profile projection. We underline once more that the ritual pit was located in the northern profile of the cassette (fig. 8) (Lazarovici, Merlini 2005: 207).

Figure 5: The site of the ritual pit after Makkay and others, is wrongly located on the southern profile (after Lazarovici, Merlini 2005, fig. 10). Figs. 8-9, reproductions of Vlassas photos, referred to in the text above, are not the northern profile of the cassette. The explanations for fig. 8 clearly express it: The pit house; southern profile of G cassette made by Vlassa. This image is identical to N. Vlassas picture, except that in this photo the authors passed also the ritual pit, which cannot be seen in Vlassas original picture (Figure 9). We have to say in relation to the above that, as far as I remember and as one can understand from Vlassas pictures, there was no northern profile section of the G surface, because the northern wall was not kept: this excavation surface was open to the north, to the meadow of the Mure river. The profile photos of Vlassa, including the rest of the cross section with the bottom of the ritual pit, were shot from north, from the open side of the G surface. Our opinion is also supported by the proposed reconstruction by the authors: the ritual pit is located in the

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe immediate vicinity of the contour (elevation) lines demarcating the northern steep side of the Trtria site (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Trtria: stratigraphy, profile of cassette G made by Vlassa, location of the ritual pit (reconstruction by Lazarovici) (after Lazarovici, Merlini 2005, fig. 11). Considering the excavation documentation published by Vlassa, we were able to draw the following conclusions concerning the pit house, the ritual pit and their location in the G surface.

Figure 7: E-W profile (southern wall) of the surface G (after Vlassa 1963, fig. 2/1). Vlassa published a section (profile) drawing eastwest (the southern wall) of the surface G that comprises as well the section of the hut (Figure 7). The middle part of the same profile also appears in a photo published by Vlassa (Figure 9 = 1963, fig. 3/3: section of a Turda hut from the G surface, 1961). The 18 m long profile drawn by Vlassa has east to west markings one meter apart. The eastern side of the profile, between m 0 and 8, evenly hachured down to about 1 m deep (thus without any stratigraphic details), passes trough surfaces E (m 0-1) and C (m 1-8), excavated by K. Horedt in 1943. Hence, it is actually only the m 8 to m 18 part that corresponds to the profile of the southern wall of surface G/1961, as Vlassa observed it. In this part, the pit house section is located approximately between m 10 and 14.50. As no map is available, we are unable to establish exactly where the northern side of the pit house extended to. In one of Vlassas photos one may notice that, following the pit house profile, he only deepened the digging on a narrow strip (Figure 9). Assuming that the pit house contour followed this strip, one may conclude that the distance between the southern wall of surface G and the northern border of the hut pit did not exceed 1.5-2 m.

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Figure 8: Surface G, 1961. In front, the arrow points to the ritual pit, dug into the yellow loess, where the idols and the clay tablets were found (after Vlassa 1963, fig. 3/4).

Figure 9: Section of a Turda hut, from the G surface, 1961 (after Vlassa 1963, fig. 3/3). As concerns the ritual pit, Vlassa published no ground plan and/or profile drawing to account for the location of this complex within surface G. The ritual pit is shown only by an arrow on one photo made during the digging (Figure 8). On this picture the lower part of the profile section of the ritual pit is seen, deep into the (archaeologically sterile) loess layer, the upper part being already dug at the time of the shooting of the photo, together with all the culture layers. In the background of the picture the entire southern wall of the G surface is seen, that should be identical to the profile section of the hut, represented in another picture (Figure 9), as in the profile drawing (Figure 7). It is obvious that the full section, comprising also the hut (Figure 9 and Figure 8, background) and the partial section with the ritual pit (Figure 8, foreground), are located at different vertical levels, at a distance determined by the sizes of the hut and by the distance between hut and pit, which, when the documentation is missing, cannot be then approximately appreciated. The ritual pit (as presented in Figure 8) was surprized only in the loess layer, in the final phase of the digging, when by successive scraping and sloping, the delimitation, in the horizontal plan and vertical profile 61

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe of the bottom of the hut was searched. To this purpose, the side near to the section of the hut (to the southern wall) was much deepened in comparison with other parts of the bottom of the surface G (see Figure 9). The E-W profile drawing and the section photo of surface G (Figures 7 and 9) show that, in order to comprise the whole pit house contour, the digging was deepened in some steps by the southern wall, being approximately 1.60 m lower than the bottom of the rest of the surface G. This portion should be found behind the loess strip (block) in which a part of the ritual pit is seen (Figure 8). (In the same picture, to the right, likely the outline of another pit marked by a black spot is also seen). As we can see in this picture, the pit was sectioned as the northern margin of the G surface in the loess layer that was deepened in the final phase of the digging. This short analysis proves that the ritual pit was located near the pit house, north from it, therefore in the northern part of the surface G, close to the steep border of the site. The image resulting from our remarks resembles closely Lazarovicis recent reconstruction (Figure 6). Unfortunately, the authors did not present the arguments and the whole documentation this reconstruction relies on. We can only assume that he also used some unpublished drawings and photos of K. Horedt and N. Vlassa, especially for the scale reconstruction of the ground plan of the surfaces C (1943) and G (1961). Please note however that the location of the ritual pit precisely at the northern border of cassette G, about 3-3,50 m away from the southern wall contradicts the older statement according to which the cassette was 5,50 m wide (see Figure 6. and Lazarovici, Maxim-Kalmar 1991: 6, 17). In the foreground of Vlassas photo (Figure 8.) one may also observe that north from the ritual pit (in other words, between the pit and the cassette border, where the photo was taken) there is a ca 2 m wide strip going deep in the loess layer. Hence, Lazarovicis reconstruction would be accurate only if cassette G had originally been about 3,50 m wide and if it had been later widened, after the ritual pit sectioning, the 5,50 m width being then measured on the bottom of the cassette. Obviously, all these facts should have been clearly explained. To conclude, we should add that, despite some uncertainties and controversy regarding the location of the ritual pit within the surface G ground plan, brought about by an incomplete excavation documentation, we have no reasons to doubt that this pit belonged, together with the neighboring pit house, to the layer I (Turda, after Vlassa) of the Trtria site. Therefore, all the issues related to the discoveries coming from the pit house and from the ritual pit should be regarded from the perspective of the early Vina period, irrespective of the finer chronological attributions proposed by several archaeologists: Vina B1 (Vlassa 1963:486, 494; Lazarovici, Maxim-Kalmar 1991:6, 9, 20); Vina A2 (Makkay 1990:12-15); early Vina period (Vina A3-B1) (Lazarovici, Merlini 2005:214-215); Vina A2-A3 (Lazarovici, Merlini 2008:41, 45). *** It seems that during the digging Vlassa did not realize the significance of the pit and it should be checked if, in his excavations journal, he noted anything about the existence of the ritual pit (and its contents), or if the idea of a magic-religious complex emerged only when the discovered materials were examined and when the excavation report was drawn up. It is certain that, during the excavations, Vlassa did not tell me anything about the ritual hole or about the tablets. Of course, in the days spent at Trtria, especially in the evenings hours, we talked about the excavations and the findings, especially about stratigraphy and pottery. During these talks, the idea of the sequence of the layers Turda, Turda-Petreti, Petreti-Turda and Petreti-Coofeni was raised, in the spirit of an evolutionism and of a dialectics that later seemed too simplifying. Of the existance of the tablets, I found out in Cluj, probably still in October, after I came from holiday. It was then that Vlassa told me that while washing the material he found the tablets. It is interesting that in the first note printed about the excavations at Trtria (Popescu 1962: 204, no. 19) neither the ritual pit nor the tablets are mentioned. As far as I know, the second finding of the tablets, in the lab, was not noted in writing by Vlassa as late as ten years after that, saying that at the moment of the finding he did not realize what the tablets represented, as a calcarous deposit covered most of the signs. They became visible only after the tablets and the clay statuettes were treated with hydrochloric acid. He also notes that initially the tablets were poorly burnt and frail, and this is why they were impregnated in the lab, in a vacuum sterilizer, with an reversible organic substance (Vlassa 1972: 371). The brief publication of the digging, not backed by the appropriate documentation, and the late explanatory notes made on some aspects of the finding and the lab treatment of the tablets, aroused debatesnot only about the cultural and chronological belonging of the findingsbut they were also the source and the pretext for some speculations: for instance, that the tablets had been burnt in the laboratory (with all the consequences for the possibility of future investigations); that they had come from somewhere else (for instance from Turda, from the collection of Zsfia Torma); that they could be modern forgery; or 62

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe that they could have been made by Vlassa himself, etc. (see Dumitrescu 1972: 107; Masson 1984: 114-116; Makkay 1990: 15-20, 33-39 and passim, with further literature). These speculations spring sometimes from the scientists natural circumspection, while other times they come from ill faith. I do not think we have the right to accuse a man, a colleague of ours, who cannot defend his point of view, but we have the duty to do everything possible to solve the enigma of Trtria, using the entire documentation still existing and all the facilities provided by todays investigation methods. I think that before any erudite interpretation regarding the chronology, the existence of a system of signs and symbolsor even the beginnings of writing, the existence (or not) of some connections to the Near Eastern World, the manifestations of magic or of religious beliefs, ideas and practices, persons and places that may be considered connected to the practice of cult, etc.it is necessary to reconstitute and to publish as accurately as possible the data from which the debate starts. A first attempt in this respect was made by Jnos Makkay who dedicated the findings of Trtria to a vast monographic work, solidly documented, that is not yet published in a wide spread language (Makkay 1990). There is the premise, according to some information, that in the second half of the year 1983, Nicolae Vlassa, together with Gheorghe Lazarovici, prepared to resume the excavations in the settlement of Trtria. For this purpose they gathered together the entire documentation and all the data available (including the memories) concerning the archaeological diggings of 1961 (see Makkay 1990: 18, including information from Gh. Lazarovici, the end of the year 1983). This documentation has not yet been published except for some drawings and some photos representing aspects of the excavations, yet they cannot be used because of the low printing quality (Lazarovici, Maxim-Kalmar 1991, figs. 1, 4-6). I reckon that instead of always returning to the same scanty data, it would be necessary to publish the entire excavation documentation (journal, ground plans and section drawings, photos etc.) and to present the found material as fully as possible. The publication of Vlassas manuscripts is also necessary, including the publication of his doctoral thesis, defended in 1977, that is quoted (probably also read) by some archaeologists (see, e.g., Lazarovici, Maxim-Kalmar 1991: 28; Lazarovici, Merlini 2008: 51). The contents of the ritual pit (to the extent it can be truthfully reconstituted) should be published piece by piece, also as a catalogue. I am reminded that, for instance, out of the 28 statuettes mentioned by Vlassa, he or others published only the pictures and/or the drawings of a few parts, without an accurate description. Even the sizes of the tablets, the signs and their manner of accomplishment were presented more or less differently in various publications. It would also be useful to collect and publish data on possible protocols concerning the restoration and the conservation of the found objects, to make clear to what extent the applied lab procedures may affect the results of some later analysis. Within newer projects, like the Prehistory Knowledge Project supported by Marco Merlini, anthropological and radiological experiments were made on the remains of the skeleton from the ritual pit, and geological analysis was made on the material of the tablets. Their results were only mentioned and commented in some papers (see Lazarovici, Merlini 2005, 2008); their full publication remains another requirement. Furthermore, new comparative analysis would be necessary to confirm (or infirm) some older statements according to which the tablets were made out of local clay, that they might come from the surroundings, but there is no such clay in Trtria (Masson 1984: 115, n. 67; Makkay 1990: 113, 158, n. 54, with regard to the opinion of Gh. Lazarovici). To this respect, it is worth noting that in 1970 Vlassa published the fragment of a clay plate in which, according to him, the matrix of a engraved Mesopotamian cylinder (Rollsiegel) was printed. The object comes from the collection of Zsfia Torma of Turda and the researchers attention avoided it up to that moment. Vlassa said that the plate was made out of sandy clay paste, slightly burnt, identical to the paste and the burning of the tablets of Trtria (Vlassa 1970, 30, n. 56). Such statements, unchecked by laboratory analysis, cannot but feed the speculations regarding the origin (the finding site) of the tablets. From the existing information, it results that the charges, according to which the tablets were burnt in the lab by Vlassa, are not grounded (see Lazarovici, Merlini 2005: 211-212 who state that the three pieces . . . were placed in a drying chamber at a low temperature). In this way (assuming that the tablets were burnt originally and/or secondarily, still in the prehistoric times, at a temperature of about 5000 C) there is the possibility of an investigation by the thermoluminescence method. Without deteriorating the pieces, even when soil samples and data on the radioactivity of the environment at the finding site are lacking, this could be decisive for determining the authenticity (and the antiquity) of the objects. If the treatments applied in the laboratory did not alter the carbon isotopic composition of the material of these objects, the more accurate dating of the tablets may be tried by the radiocarbon method, via the AMS technique, based on the organic materials found in the composition of some pieces (see Lazarovici, Merlini 2005: 211, fig. 20). These 63

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe datings may be compared to the C-14 datings already obtained for Trtria from human and animal bones. In this way, the dating of the entire complex would benefit from more consistency and credibility. To conclude, I reiterate that in my opinion the crucial duty of the specialists who are charged with the scientific heritage of Nicolae Vlassa would be to make available to researchers, at least now, fifty years later, the full documentation regarding the excavations and the findings of Trtria, to discard the ghosts that still haunt this issue. ADDENDUM In the exhibition catalogue, edited with the opportunity of the symposium where this paper was presented, Gheorghe Lazarovici and Marco Merlini published new information (actually: new variations) on the theme of the amazing discoveries of Trtria (Lazarovici, Merlini 2008). It is not the place here and now to discuss the sometimes amazing ideas of the authors, like the story of Milady T rtria, of her dwelling, of her liturgical tools (sic!), of her cultic sacrificial pit (!), which became after her death her consecrated grave! But I cannot ignore the fact that practically without explanations, the authors redraw radically the ground plane of the G surface, based on the possible comparison of two photographs, mentioned in a footnote yet not presented. In their text, they say that The results are synthesized by Figure 8, which connects in the same image the ritual grave and the pit house, making a complete revision of the circumstances of the discovery. This process establishes the precise location of the ritual grave, setting up the stratigraphy of the trench where it was unearthed, and documenting that the ritual grave and pit house were not only contemporaneous but also belonged to the same archaeological complex under the same roof and were functionally connected (Lazarovici, Merlini 2008: 47).

Figure 10: The connection between the ritual grave and the pit house based on a revision of Vlassas photos (after Lazarovici, Merlini 2008, fig. 8). In this paragraph a pit house is mentioned and the neighbouring ritual pit, as they became known in Vlassas publications. But in the drawing that accompanies the text, the ritual pit is located between two (!) pit houses (Figure 10). Pit house 2 is known to the present day, being seen in the southern wall of the surface G. Pit 64

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe house 1 is represented in this drawing to the north of the ritual pit, on the partially crumbled border of the site. Until now nobody talked about the existence of a second pit house, herein referred to as number 1, the traces of which cannot be found in any accessible excavation document. We are expecting the authors to explain how all of a sudden after the last reconstitution they published in 2005, another pit house appeared next to the ritual pit in the small surface G, dug by Vlassa in 1961. And they should also mention which was, after all, the fabulous dwelling of Milady Trtria? Attila LASZLO (Romania) Facultatea de Istorie Universitatea Al. I. Cuza, Iai Email: arch_atticus@yahoo.com

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REFERENCES DUMITRESCU Vl. 1972. TurdaMesopotamia. SCIV 23, 1:93-109. LAZAROVICI Gh., Z. MAXIM-KALMAR. 1991. Trtria. Cluj-Napoca. LAZAROVICI Gh., M. MERLINI. 2005. New Archaeological Data Refering to Trtria Tablets. Documenta Praehistorica 32: 205-219. _____2008. New Information and the Role of the Trtria Discoveries. The Danube Script: NeoEneolithic Writing in Southeastern Europe, 39-51. Exhibition Catalogue, Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu, Romania. Edited by J. Marler. Sebastopol: Institute of Archaeomythology. MAKKAY J. 1990. A tartariai leletek. Budapest. MASSON E. 1984. Lcriture dans les civilisations danubiennes nolithiques. Kadmos 23, 2: 89-123. POPESCU D. 1962. Spturile arheologice din Republica Popular Romn n anul 1961. SCIV 13, 1: 201-215. VLASSA N. 1963. Chronology of the Neolithic in Transylvania in the light of the Trtria Settlements stratigraphy. Dacia 7: 485-494. _____1970. Kulturelle Beziehungen des Neolithikums Siebenbrgens zum Vorderen Orient. Acta Musei Napocensis 7: 3-39. _____1972. Zona balcano-asiatic i Transilvania. Rspuns unei note polemice. Acta Musei Napocensis 9: 367-373. ZANOTTI D. G. 1983. The Position of the Trtria Tablets within the Southeast European Copper Age. American Journal of Archaeology 87: 209-213.

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INCISED AMULET FROM TURDA-LUNC ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATION Sabin Adrian LUCA Cosmin Ioan SUCIU Adrian LUCA Abstract: It is presented the archaeological context of discovery of the Turda incised amulet from the eponym site, discovered during the systematic excavations undertaken in trench S I, in the central area. The incised signs look as the pictographic ones. On the amulet the scratched signs were made intentionally and a message could be seen. Keywords: Incised amulet, Turda, sign, writing, pictographic, Transylvania, Copper Age, Neolithic, Eneolithic 1. Turda Culture geographical, terminological and chronological frame. Turda culture is following the Vina Culture in Transylvania and belongs to the Early Eneolithic period. The moment is linked to the evolution of Vina B1 communities, documented by generalisation of the Lumea Nou painted pottery. Unfortunately we do not have so many data and complexes available for early Turda Culture. The stratigraphic contexts were not well defined in the decades after WWII because of the use of Vina-Turda term by some scholars (LUCA et al 2004, 109) who affected the bibliographical understanding of materials and cultural relations. It was not found the proper relations between the Early Vina, Lumea Nou and Turda cultures (LUCA 2001, 124). The new excavations from Turda and Miercurea Sibiului could be the keys. The Turda Culture geographical areal is axed on the Middle Mure Valley concentrated in the area of Alba and Hunedoara counties. Other settlements could be seen on the Mure tributary rivers, in Sibiu, Cluj and Mure counties. At the level of 2004 year were counted sixty Turda settlements (LUCA et al 2004, 109). The data (LUCA et al 2009) shows us that the evolution of Turda Culture could be seen starting after 6200 BP. In the northern area of Transylvania is the last part of Picolt Culture and is starting the evolution to Tisa Culture (VIRAG 2008, 22). At the same chronological level the last data of Szaklht Culture are coming. This period is known, in Hungary, as proto-Tisa or as the Szaklht-Tisa transition and it was equalised in the Mure area, by F. Horvth, with Vina B2 and with the start of Vina C1. The Szaklht influence is still strong, but meander incisions are missing. Now the bitumen painting is becoming appearing in the area. This proto-Tisa phase is corresponding, maybe, to Zseliz III-Vorlengyel in Transdanubia with contacts Bkk, Esztr and Lumea Nou Figure 1. Map with most important Turda Culture (HORVATH 2005, 67). At Turda there are some elements in the old and intermediate levels, discoveries from South-West Transylvania. namely the red and yellow painted pottery (in crusted technique), the incisions filled with white; some typical meander elements having sometime imprecates made with red that are to do with Szaklht-Tisa influences (LUCA 2006, 356) which are confirmed by discoveries from Banat (DRAOVEAN 1996, 97-98). We presume that this is the moment of Turda Culture birth. The oldest Turda Culture complexes excavated and published till now, are the complexes from the layer I from Turda-Lunc settlement, from the middle Mure valley.

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe Long time, scholars considered the Turda Culture as a Group, not a Culture. Between them, the most influent was Gheorghe Lazarovici, who seen it as a group, formed in the presence and at the contact with Vina C1 materials. The origin is seen in the South, at the earliest Vina C level (LAZAROVICI et al 2006, 570). After the abandon of the CCTLNZI groups terminology, Gheorghe Lazarovici accepted the term of Turda Culture, who contributes to the evolution of third phase of Zau Culture from the Transylvanian Plain till Mese Mountains and in Maramure area (LAZAROVICI 2009). Sabin A. Luca is using the term of Turda Culture and sustains that it is formed at an earlier level, Vina B2. He sustains that he can see, in Turda-Lunc settlement, ancient materials isolated through typical Turda materials (LUCA 2008, 30). The Turda Culture reveals itself as an independent entity, born as a result of a powerful Vina rush. This influence marks the shape, the ornaments, the processing techniques, even though the Vina materials are very rare (LUCA 2006, 354). 2. Incised amulet discovery context at Turda-Lunc settlement The new excavations at the eponym site of Turda started in 1992 and were stopped in 1998. The first volume, covering excavations from 1992 to 1995, was published in the year 2001 (LUCA 2001). In the central area (A) of the site was uncovered pithouse B1, from the early Turda Culture horizon (level I). The pithouse was recovered in the trench S I /1992-1993 area (10 m length and 3-4 m breadth Figure 2). After the levelling of the profiles from 1993 the area was 11 m long. The geographic disposal of the area is approximately North-EastSouth-West. The variable breadth of this surface it devolved due to the tracks and excavations on a part of the area situated on the Mure`s bank and it was well exposed (Figure 3). Surely the pithouse was 50 % bigger than what it was preserved. We presume that this one had an oval shape, 6 m length and 4 m breadth. The soils colour from this pile is grey; pigmented by the ash resulted from burned upper wooden structure. Left side when we see it from Mure River is steep dug till it reaches 2,80 m depth, representing the bottom of the complex. The right side is dug in levels. After one larger level, situated at 1,50 m from the actual soils surface (maybe a place for sleeping), it descends to the maximal proximity of the pithouse, were we found entire pots on the pithouses bottom (one pot was with carbonized seeds` remainders) and a board covered with incised signs (LUCA 2001, 42) (Figure 4,8-15).
E:\doctorat final biblio\turdas\plan topo mic.jpg

Figure 2. Topographic plan at Turda-Lunc site with highlight of S I area (LUCA 2001, Map 2). Beside this surface, the pithouse B2 / 1992-1993 was uncovered, followed by dwelling L1 / 1992, L3 / 1992, domestic pits and ditches on layers II and I. The depth at which we arrived with the exploration is 0,90-1,25 m for the culture layer and below 3 m at the bottom of the pithouse B1 / 1992 (LUCA 2001, 42-43).

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe 3. Description of the incised amulet The incised amulet (Figure 4) found in B1 /1992 (in the oldest level from Turda-Lunc) had 7,5 centimetres in diameter and it is made of clay, carefully choice. The pasta is sand mixed with little stones and mica. The burning is good and a secondary burning can be seen as a result of the pithouse fire destruction. The amulet colour is brick-red. The little blackboard has 4 holes disposed opposite, 2 to 2. Orifices have 0,3 cm diameter and are disposed to 0,5 cm one from another the ones in superior part and 1 cm one from the other; in inferior part. Perforations seems realised with an object from the incised face towards the back side, and have 0,15 cm deep. So called wearing is not visible on the incised side.
E:\doctorat final biblio\turdas\s1 1992.jpg

Figure 3. Level I, S I area with complexes B1 /1992 and B2 /1992 (LUCA 2001, Plan 5). The incisions were made with a small stick. Unfortunately, the amulet is not entirely preserved. It was broken in the ancient times and we were able to recover only two fragments. The last one, very small, was lost (LUCA 1993, 21-22; LUCA 2001, 83-84).

Figure 4. Incised amulet: original drawing (LUCA 1993, Fig. 1). 4. Interpretation of the signs from the incised amulet The messages about this piece have to be watched with special prudence, the possibility of personal interpretations of signs is relative high.

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Figure 5. Incised amulet: S1-5- Pictograms/signs present on the amulet. Figure 5. S1 Sledge? On the left quarter a sledge can be distinguished. For the representation of this object only few analogies exists, even if the sledge was in all probabilities the only means of transport for heavy objects till the wheal appeared. The presence of sledges on signed tablets can be counted later (protoliterate time), in Ancient East (VLASSA 1976, 176, Fig. 14, Fig.15), in a time when the full wheal was not extensible used (LUCA 2001, 83-84). Figure 5. S2 Stylised human body Under the sledge a clear sign can be seen: the figure of a moving person (dance?). We meet them frequently on the ceramic objects with this way of reproduction of the dancer from Neolithic (MAKKAY 1990, Fig. 13/6-8; 24/k; 25/Ib6 perfect analogy; 32/o, p; 33/12). It strikes the perfect analogy with the position of the body from atal Hyk (MAKKAY 1990, Fig. 25/I6). The piece from MAKKAY 1990, Fig. 25/I 3 has represented the head, too, in a similar style like our stylised body (LUCA 2001, 84). Figure 5. S4 Stylised human body (?) - With little imagination we can ascertain the presence of another human person in the right (as well as we know), flat on the ground. Figure 5. S5 Waves, stream - Below the first persons leg and below the second one, we could have waves (?), which can represent the blood liquid of the person who is sacrificed or it could be a stream. The associations between waves and human persons were meeting at Turda, on an incised vessel published in 1941 year (ROSKA 1941, Taf. XCII/12; LUCA 2001, 84). A pictographic sign (very close as shape with ours) came from early writing system in Mesopotamia and can be interpreted as a stream if we link it with later evolved cuneiforms (XXX 2005, 440, Fig. 12.9). Figure 5. S2-5; Figure 6. Signs of edge (MARKAY 1990, Fig. 7/2, 5 Trtria 13/1, 18/8a; 19/3; 33/8; 34 - the column represent signs from Troy; the first symbol 37/7; 38/1-5) The V signs appear like relatively equal interval as distance. It is possible to be separate signs or it is possible to have another meaning which escapes us (Figure 5. S2, S3, S4 and S5; Figure 6.) (LUCA 2001, 84). It is strange that some edge signs can appear as heads of two stylised persons. On the first one (Figure 5. S2), the sign seems to be clear. Here the V is having a short line, starting from the up-right to down-right. On the second stylised human (Figure 5. S4), the short line is starting from the upright V to up-left. Another similar sign appears (Figure 5. S3), but it is near Figure 6. Possible signs of the missing part of the amulet and it cannot be linked. In B1 pithouse nothing offers us any sign about the existence of the edge from Turda Amulet. complex ritual from the structure of archaeological material (Figure 8-15). 5. Chronology of B1 pithouse

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe The Turda incised amulet is coming with a closed early Turda Culture context. Chronological we do not have any radiocarbon data for this level. But we know that the next level, the intermediary level from Turda, is contemporary with the lower level from Ortie-Dealul Pemilor, Point X2 who was radiocarbon dated (Deb-5765, Deb-5790, Deb-5775). Another data is coming from Cauce Cave (GrN-28994). Table 1. IPTCE RADIO- Turda Culture, radiocarbon data (LUCA et al 2008). Settlement LABNR BP Error Description Cal BC frame OrtiePemilor Hill, Deb-5765 6070 70 B2 5070BC (59.2%) 4880BC Point X2 OrtiePemilor Hill, Deb-5762 5825 60 B1 4780BC (68.2%) 4600BC Point X2 OrtiePemilor Hill, Deb-5775 5790 55 B2 4710BC (63.2%) 4580BC Point X2 Cauce Cave 5760 40 depth 50 cm from surface 4680BC (26.3%) 4630BC GrN4620BC (41.9%) 4550BC 28994 From the Table 1 we can date approximately the lower level from Turda-Lunc terminus ante quem 4800-4900 cal BC. Beside the discoveries of the tablets from Trtria (VLASSA 1976, p. 3133) and of the incised pot from Daia Romn (PAUL 1995, 135-144, Tafel I, abb.1), the discovery of sign amulet from Turda is representing an important step forward. The researches from last decade ( MERLINI 2008, 58-59) show us that the appearance of signs in Northern Balkans is a wider phenomenon at this chronological level.

Figure 7. Chronological frame for 6000-4600 calBC (modified the original from BHNER et al 2006 where we added Transylvanian radiocarbon frame data as present at LUCA et al 2008). 5. Could we consider Turda amulet signs as writing like in the Near East? The signs from Turda amulet seem to be logographic or pictographic and for sure the signs are linked somehow. At this chronological horizon, Turda Culture corresponds, in the Near East, to the Ubaid Culture (Figure 7), dated from 5900 to 4200 BC. The earliest Ubaid material is contemporary with Halaf Culture and earlier developments in Upper Mesopotamia, while later, from around 5400 BC, see a spread of Ubaid influence into Upper Mesopotamia, replacing the Halaf period occupation, and beyond to southeast Anatolia (XXX 2005, 437). From Halaf times are attested stones or pieces of clay decorated with simple patterns. Some are pierced for suspension and seem to have been used as amulets; others have been used to stamp fabrics or to secure portable containers used in trade, acting like signatures (CRAWFORD 2004, 198). Seals were used to represent legitimacy and property based on social power in a form which makes them independent of personal confrontation (DAMEROW 1999, 14). The Ubaid Culture is followed by Uruk period framed from around 4200-3000 BC. Social and economic development will conduct to the appearance of an early writing system in Mesopotamia, around 3500-3200 BC, in the Late Uruk period, named proto-cuneiform. Some 850 signs are employed, but the lack of grammar is preventing a secure identification of the language used. The messages are hard to understand. Maybe, the use of pictographic signs and unused of grammar elements could be intentionally made to be read by different ethnic groups (XXX 2005, 438- 440). The appearance of these pictographic writing did not appear overnight. Far for representing the beginning of a phenomena, those earliest text represent an end of a long 71

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe process of elaboration of social order, with roots in the Ubaid period (POTTS 1997, 236). The oldest writing development from logographic or pictographic signs was well attested in Mesopotamia, but some 1500-1700 years later than Turda Culture. The difficulties of understanding the messages written in a proto-writing system result primarily from the fact that the information represented in such a system is essentially incomplete. The users of proto-writing apparently assumed that the readers of their messages knew the context of information (DAMEROW 1999, 2). In this way, our Turda amulet could be compared with proto-cuneiform who had at the base a pictographic system, very hard to decrypt even if the signs from Mesopotamia were able to evolve to a more advanced writing system. For sure we have, at Turda, signs and a story. The clear archaeological context and the holes from the amulet indicate that was human used. But we cannot be sure about message meaning or about the language. 5. Conclusion The signs from the little Turda amulet could be a legend or could represent a tale which has a role of mystical protection of a product or human gesture. Maybe the role of the tables text was to protect grain found in the vessels from the B1 complex or the amulet was simply lost in the moment of pithouse burning. Maybe we will never guess the real message transmitted, but the clear archaeological context proves us that, at the start of fifth millennium calBC, in a village near by the Mure River, somebody was able to understand the meaning of a message, scratched on a burned clay amulet. Sabin Adrian LUCA Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu (Romania), sabin.luca@brukenthalmuseum.ro Cosmin Ioan SUCIU Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu (Romania), cosmin.suciu@ulbsibiu.ro Adrian LUCA Lucian Blaga University, Sibiu (Romania), luca_adrian_sibiu@yahoo.com

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Annex 1. The archaeological material from B1 /1992 (without incised amulet)

Figure 8. Pottery from B1 /1992 Figure 9. Pottery from B1 /1992 (LUCA 2001, fig. (LUCA 2001, fig.12). 13).

Figure 10. Pottery from B1 /1992 (LUCA 2001, fig. 15).

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Figure 11. Pottery from B1 /1992 (LUCA Figure 12. Pottery from B1 /1992 (LUCA 2001, fig. 17). 2001, fig. 31).

Figure 13. Pottery from B1 /1992 (adapted after LUCA 2001, fig. 30).

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Figure 14. Pottery from B1 /1992 (LUCA 2001, fig.35).

Figure 15. Horn tool from B1 /1992 (LUCA 2001, fig.2:3).

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Literature BHNER et al 2006 U. Bhner, D. Schyle, Near east chronological chart - http://context-database.unikoeln.de/download/radiocarbon_CONTEXT_database_chronology_2006.pdf, [doi:10.1594/GFZ.CONTEXT.Ed1] H. E. W. Crawford, Sumer and the Sumerians, Cambridge University Press, 2004. P. Damerow, The Origins of Writing as a Problem of Historical Epistemology, Invited lecture at the Symposium: The multiple Origins of Writing: Image, Symbol and Script, University of Pennsylvania, Center for Ancient Studies, March 26-27, 1999. http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/P114.PDF F. Draovean, Cultura Vina (faza C) n Banat, Timioara 1996. F. Horvth, Gorzsa. Elzetes Eredmnyek az jkkori Tell 1978 s 1996 Kztti Feltrsbl, in Htkznapok Vnuszai, Hdmezvsrhely, 2005, pp. 51-83. Gh. Lazarovici, Cultura Zau, Unpublished work, 2009. M. Lazarovici, Gh. Lazarovici, Arhitectura Neoliticului i Epoca Cuprului din Romnia, I, Neoliticul, Iai, 2006. S.A. Luca, A new special discovery from Turda, in Banatica, 12, (1993, 1), pp. 2124. S.A. Luca, Aezri neolitice pe Valea Mureului (II). Noi cercetri arheologice la Turda-Lunc. I. Campaniile anilor 1992-1995, Bucureti, 2001. S.A. Luca, Aspects of the Neolithic and Eneolithic periods in Transylvania, in N. Tasi and C. Grozdanov (eds) Homage to Milutin Garaanin, pp. 341366, Belgrade, 2006. S.A. Luca, The Neolithic and Eneolithic periods in Transylvania, in (editor: Joan Marler) The Danube Script, Neo-eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe, Exhibition Cataloque, 2008, pp. 23-38. S.A. Luca, C. Roman, D. Diaconescu, Cercetri arheologice n Petera Cauce, I, Sibiu, 2004. S.A. Luca, C. Suciu, IPCTE Radiocarbon Data Base, Chronological radiocarbon data for the Neolithic and Eneolithic in Carpathian-Danube area (01.08. 2008) - 967 dates only without calibration charts. http://arheologie.ulbsibiu.ro/radiocarbon/download.htm J. Makkay, A tartariai leletek, Akademiai Kiado, Budapest, 1990. M. Merlini, Evidence of the Danube Script in Neighbouring Areas: Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, and Czech Republic, in (editor: Joan Marler) The Danube Scriptexhibition catalogue, Sebastopol, 2008, pp. 53-60. I. Paul, Vorgeschichtliche untersuchungen in Siebenbrgen, Alba Iulia, 1995. D. T. Potts, Mesopotamian Civilization: The Material Foundations, Continuum International Publishing Group, 1997. M. Roska, Die Sammlung Zsfia von Torma, Cluj, 1941. C. Virag, Problematici ale neoliticului din nord-vestul Romniei i zonele nvecinate, in Studii i comunicri Satu Mare, XXII, I, 2005, (printed in 2008), pp. 13-25. N. Vlassa, Neoliticul Transilvaniei Studii, articole i note, Cluj-Napoca, 1976. XXX, The Human Past, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, 2005.

CRAWFORD 2004 DAMEROW 1999

DRAOVEAN 1996 HORVTH 2005 LAZAROVICI 2009 LAZAROVICI et al 2006 LUCA 1993 LUCA 2001 LUCA 2006

LUCA 2008

LUCA et al 2004 LUCA et al 2008

MAKKAY 1990 MERLINI 2008

PAUL 1995 POTTS 1997 ROSKA 1941 VIRAG 2008 VLASSA 1976 XXX 2005

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THE SIGN: TYPOLOGY, CONTEXT, MEANING Radian-Romus ANDREESCU (Romania) Abstract: Artefacts, bearing all sorts of signs, are discovered each and every year during archaeological investigations. These signs are of an astonishing diversity. For example, the decorative motifs on clay vessels go from simple graffiti to sophisticated geometrical motifs, some of which are even gold-painted. The anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines represent a special category among the artifacts. The signs on the figurines are particular for each Neolithic culture. The figurines of the Vina culture are different from those of the Gumelnia and Cucuteni cultures in terms of both decoration and morphology. A thorough analysis of the Gumelnia culture figurines proves that certain patterns existed for decorating the figurines. The signs are extremely varied also from the viewpoint of the material onto which they are engraved. Clay weights bear different signs that sometimes make up a series of similar signs. The mould or seals made of clay have curious and varied incised or excised signs. Strange clay objects, with uncertain functions, also bear different signs. The diversity of these signs makes their deciphering a difficult task. Writing, owner marks, clothing, tattoos, various symbols are some of the meanings assigned to them. Beyond these interpretations, the significance of the signs is powerfully linked with the context in which they existed; namely: the amazing, but, unfortunately, not well known and understood Neolithic civilization. Keywords: sign, context, figurine, pattern, meaning, writing/script. Each year, archaeological investigations of Neolithic settlements reveal numerous artifacts bearing different signs. These artifacts are made of various materials, such as clay, bone or stone. The diversity of the signs is astonishing. For many years we have been asking about their meaning. Do they represent an ancient script? Are they the symbols of a rich, yet unknown spiritual life? Could they be the marks of religious or social status? The Neolithic figurines, in particular, bear numerous signs creating what we call their decor. This article presents some artifacts bearing signs, most of which having been discovered in recent excavations. We will focus upon three categories of artifacts. The first category is that of the so-called burntclay loom-weights. Many such weights have been discovered in the Neolithic settlements, especially in those belonging to the Gumelnia culture. Most of them lack decor, but there are enough pieces bearing all sorts of signs (Marinescu-Blcu 2007). Such loom-weights have also been discovered in the Vitneti settlement, in Teleorman Valley, southern Romania (Andreescu et al. 2003). There are several weights with a similar decor, seemingly representing a pattern, and some of these loom-weights bear oblique lines forming angles or triangles (Pl. 1/2). A specific feature of the Vitneti site seems to be represented by the weights with a pattern made of spirals or circles, sometimes deeply incised (Pl. 1/1). The signs are incised onto all the sides of the weights. Two recently discovered loom-weights have a different decor, somehow resembling the decor of some anthropomorphic statuettes. The incised decor is more intricate than the usual one and it represents a combination of triangles, circles, dots and lines (Pl. 1/3, 4). Another category of artifacts bearing different signs is that of the anthropomorphic figurines. One could elaborate on the various aspects of these figurines (Bailey 2005), but we have focused our attention upon the decor of the statuettes belonging to Gumelnia culture. There are figurines lacking decor, yet there are some decorated with incised lines. The analysis of the decor on the figurines belonging to Gumelnia culture has proven that there were two main decorating patterns (Andreescu 2002). The first pattern consists of a combination of geometrical elements: angles, triangles, rhombs and oblique lines (Pl. 2/1, 2). The second one is represented by some lines, inside of which different signs are incised (Pl. 2/3, 4). In the first case, the oblique lines might represent the folds of a garment, whereas the geometrical elements, the angles, the triangles, the rhombs could have a different meaning: might they have been symbols, or might they have been writing? Likewise, in the case of the second pattern, the incised lines might represent a clothing piece. Nevertheless, the signs inside these lines have a different meaning, possibly the same as the signs pertaining to the first pattern. The interesting fact is that the first pattern is also encountered on the aforementioned clay weights (Pl. 1/3, 4). Different signs on the decor of some artifacts are quite suggestively conveyed. A special artifact is an anthropomorphic vessel known as The Goddess of Vidra (Rosetti 1939: Pl. 21-23). Its decor is made up of skillfully crafted incised stripes. The interior of the stripes is divided into several areas of incised lines, some 77

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe of which contain concentric circles insidea seldom encountered decorating element (but we have to take into account the special character of this artifact). The stripes are filled with notches covered in white and red paste. An interesting feature is the stripe on the upper part of the back suggesting that it is somehow hung upon the shoulders of the statuette (Pl. 3). Another statuette, quite large in size (c. 20 cm.), was discovered in Vitneti. Its decor fits in the first pattern, as it is made up of a combination of oblique lines and geometrical elements (Andreescu 2006: Pl. 5/1). This is one of the less numerous statuettes with decor elements all over the body, including concentric circles on its legs (Pl. 4/1). An interesting case is that of a statuette found in Glina, unfortunately, in a damaged state (Andreescu 2006: Pl. 5/2). The decor also covers all its body and it is represented by rather carelessly incised notches and geometrical elements. The incised decor was filled with white and red paste (Pl. 4/2). An extremely spectacular decor is on a headless statuette discovered in Radovanu (Pl. 5). This decor is highly neat and accurate, being made up of geometrical elements created by deep and wide incisions filled with white paste. Afterwards, the statuette was painted in red. It belongs to an older period, set at the end of Boian culture/beginning of Gumelnia culture. The interesting fact is that it seems to represent an archetype of the decor of later statuettes belonging to the Gumelnia culture. The last category includes clay objects bearing interesting, strange signs. The artifacts in this category have been discovered in Mgura, Teleorman Valley, near Vitneti, during the SRAP project19 researches. The objects belong to the Dudeti and Vdastra cultures (VI mill. BC). The first object is a clay plaque with a hole in its center and another in the corner. On this plaque there are incisions, such as circles and different lines. Unfortunately, the object is eroded and we cannot figure out the composition of these signs (Pl. 6/1). The second object is a clay parallelepiped with different incised signs on every side: lines, short lines forming angles, rows of oblique lines and others. Signs were also incised both onto the top and bottom of the object (Pl. 6/3). The third artifact is an eroded clay object. A few short lines representing some signs were incised on one of its sides. The object also has a side perforation suggesting that the artifact could have been a sort of pendant (Pl. 6/4). The last object is a clay cylinder-like artifact (Andreescu 2007: Pl. 5/1). An extremely strange decor was incised onto it. The incisions seem to represent two human silhouettes. The first one appears to be kneeling, whereas the second one seems to be sitting, while its arm is possibly stretched above the head of the other character. The interesting fact is the stance of the characters which seems to portray a scene of praying or obedience (Pl. 6/2). Conclusions What is the meaning of these signs, as well as of many others we could not include in our presentation due to their large number and diversity? Do they represent the signs of an ancient script, the so-called Danube script? This might be true and there are several articles approaching this subject, from the works of Marija Gimbutas (1989, 1991) to Harald Haarmanns most recent ones (see, e.g., Haarmann 2008). In our opinion, what we call writing is, generally speaking, a convention, referring to the spread of information by means of certain signs. In this respect, the analysis of artifacts points out the importance of the context in which these signs were found. It is quite possible that, in various contexts, a sign could have had various meanings, or, better yet, it could have contained various information. To illustrate this case, we have chosen a seemingly commonplace example from our daily world: a traffic sign in the form of a red triangle. The information it conveys, according to the traffic signs handbook, is give way, meaning that, when at a crossroad, you must let other cars drive ahead of you. If there is a policeman watching the scene, you might lose your driving license, causing you transportation problems for quite a while. Worse, even, if you ignore the sign, another car might crash into you. Hence, you could be injured and the car damaged. Or, the most grievous thing could happen: you might lose your life. This is how a simple sign can convey extremely valuable information concerning, in a certain sense, your own life or death. Nevertheless, the meaning analysis would be incomplete without the context in which this sign exists. It is placed at a crossroad, part of a network of roads. The road network belongs to a civilization that, among other rules, came up with the red triangle rule: give way. In this case, the context is strongly linked to the

Southern Romania Archaeological Project (SRAP) is a project involving the Romanian National History Museum, the Cardiff University and the Teleorman County Museum. The project has been financed by the British Academy, the Cardiff University and the Ministry of Culture and Cults, www.cardiff.ac.uk/srap.

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe category of persons for whom the sign has meaning: the drivers. For persons who do not have a driving license, the sign is nothing else than a simple, meaningless red triangle. Coming back to the signs on the Neolithic artifacts, we should notice that the same signs might have different meanings, depending on the context in which they appear. In this respect, more care is required when analyzing the signs; more precisely, a data base of these signs needs to be set up. There is the danger of extrapolating these signs out of their cultural context. For instance, triangles or V-shaped signs are encountered in all Neolithic cultures, on various artifactsvessels, statuettes, plaquesbelonging to different chronological levels. Nevertheless, it does not mean that they have the same signification in all encountered cases. Therefore, a sign on a clay plaque from the sixth millennium BC might have a completely other meaning than the same sign found on a statuette from the fifth millennium BC. Or, the same sign may have a different meaning in two different regions. The triangle is often used to indicate the gender of anthropomorphic statuettes. In this case, the triangle has a clear meaning: it points out the feminine statuettes. However, on the same statuette, there could be another triangle positioned on the upper part of the back. It is obvious that the second triangle no longer signifies the sex of the statuette and that it has a completely other meaning. There most certainly are, as we have also noticed, certain signs repeating themselves throughout the Neolithic era, but we believe we need more information to make this analysis more thorough. Unfortunately, the improvement of this analysis is obstructed, at this time, by the lack of archaeological investigations. So far, research has revealed numerous signs which have been, and are still being systematized and analyzed. But this analysis is hindered for several reasons. An important one is that the number of discovered signs is still quite low, if we take into account the space and time span of the Neolithic era. Secondly, the support bearing the sign is extremely important. For example, the statuettes bear most of the signs, but these artifacts could belong to a special domain, the spiritual one, where the symbolismboth of the anthropomorphic representations and of their signsis complex, most likely having strong ties with the sacred. There is another drawback, this time related to the context in which the respective discoveries were made. Many artifacts come from collections or from random discoveries, or their context is missing. Therefore, the record of signs is, to a large extent, lacking the archaeological context and, to an even broader extent, lacking the historical context. What exactly do these facts mean? We believe they represent, or are about to become, a main impediment in further understanding the Neolithic era. The lack of extensive research on Neolithic settlements becomes more and more critical. Let us refer to the example of the signs. A wholly dug up settlement, in a given area, might reveal, among other things, a number of signs with certain features. The complete research of another settlement would disclose another set of signs with other characteristics. Comparing those two sets of signs with well-established archaeological and historical contexts would undoubtedly lead to spectacular results for the analysis of the Neolithic era signs. For instance, the analysis of the statuettes decor has proven that a certain decorthe one with oblique lines and geometrical elementsis especially encountered in the western area of the Gumelnia culture (Andreescu 2006). Yet, in this case, the analysis is tainted by the inequality of the statuettes lots, a fact which is obviously due to the different levels of archaeological researches. Some of the statuettes were randomly discovered, whereas others were found during some (rare) large excavations. Unfortunately, during the recent years, archaeological researches have been extremely limited area-wise, and the resulting inventory has been quite poor. Under these circumstances, the analysis of the few pieces bearing signs, discovered during the scanty excavations, is of no great consequence. Such an example is represented by the famous tablets from Trtria (Vlassa 1962). Having been discovered under not so very clear circumstances, they aroused and will still arouse, a lot of debates and interpretations. We would like to emphasize the fact that they are rather isolated within both the archaeological and historical contexts. Although almost fifty years have passed since that discovery, no other such tablets have been found. We should also bear in mind that they belong to the Vina culture, a culture with numerous researched settlements and possessing a particularly rich archaeological inventory. Nevertheless, no other similar tablets have been reported or discovered. The Trtria tablets run the risk of remaining an isolated occurrence for lack of extensive investigations which might reveal other similar artifacts. We believe that an interesting hypothesis, worth examining, is the existence of an ancient Danube script. Regrettably, the information sources (the archaeological researches) are scarce, thus leading to a reduced understanding of Neolithic society. A closer analysis of the old artifacts combined with new investigations that should bring up new artifacts within clear archaeological and historic contexts might contribute to the improvement of this exciting theory of the old Danube script. 79

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe Radian-Romus ANDREESCU (Romania) Romanian National History Museum Bucharest E-mail: radian_romus@yahoo.com Acknowledgements Our gratitude to Joan Marler, President/ Executive Director of the Institute of Archaeomythology and to Prof. Sabin Adrian Luca, General Director of the Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu, for the opportunity to participate in the interesting sessions of the exhibition and international symposium, The Danube Script: Neo-Eneolithic Writing in Southeastern Europe.

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Plate 1, 1-4: Inscribed loom weights from the Vitneti settlement, Teleorman Valley, southern Romania, V mill. BC (after Marinescu-Blcu 2007). 81

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Plate 2, 1-4: Anthropomorphic statuettes from the Gumelnia culture ; (1) from Ciolneti (2, 4) from Vitneti, (3) from Grgu, V mill. BC (after Andreescu 2002).

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Plate 3: Three views of The Goddess of Vidra, V mill. BC (after Rosetti 1939: Pl. 21-23).

Plate 4: Anthropomorphic statuettes with full-body engraved decor; (1) large statuette (c. 20 cm.) from Vitneti; (2) statuette from Glina with incised decor filled with white and red paste, V mill. BC (after Andreescu 2006).

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Plate 5: Headless statuette from Radovanu. Engravings filled with white paste; the statuette was then painted red. End of the Boian/beginning of the Gumelnia culture, first half of V mill. BC.

Plate 6, 1-4: Engraved clay objects from Mgura, Teleorman Valley, from the Dudeti and Vdastra cultures (VI mill. BC); (1) perforated clay plaque incised with circles and lines; (2) cylinder-like artifact incised with human-like silhouettes; (3) parallelepiped with incised signs on all sides; (4) eroded clay object (possibly a pendant) with side perforation (after Andreescu 2007).

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REFERENCES ANDREESCU Radian-Romus. 2002. Plastica antropomorf gumelniean. Monografii III. Bucureti: Muzeul National de Istorie a Romniei. _____2006. Consideraii asupra decorului statuetelor gumelniene. Cercetri Arheologice XIII: 159-171. _____2007. Valea Teleormanului. Consideraii asupra plasticii antropomorfe neolitice. Studii de preistorie IV: 53-66. ANDREESCU Radian, Mirea Pavel, and tefan Apope. 2003. Cultura Gumelnia n vestul Munteniei. Aezarea de la Vitneti, jud. Teleorman. Cercetri Arheologice XII: 71-87. BAILEY Douglass. 2005. Prehistoric Figurines. Representation and corporeality in the Neolithic. London: Routledge. GIMBUTAS Marija. 1989. The Language of the Goddess. New York: Harper & Row. 1991. The Civilization of the Goddess. The World of Old Europe. San Francisco: Harper. HAARMANN Harald. 2008. The Danube Script and Other Ancient Writing Systems: A Typology of Distinctive Features. Journal of Archaeomythology 4: 12-46. MARINESCU-BLCU Silvia. 2007. Greutti decorate din aria Gumelnita. Studii de Preistorie IV: 87-104. ROSETTI Dinu. 1939. Steinkupferzeitliche plastik aus einem wohnhugel bei Bucharest. Jahrbuch fr Prhistoriche und Etnographische Kunst XII:29-50. VLASSA Nicolae. 1962. Probleme ale cronologiei neoliticului Transilvaniei lumina stratigrafiei asezrii de la Trtria. Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai. Series Historia 2: 23-30.

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SYMBOLIC SIGNS ON THE CERAMICS OF THE CHALCOLITHIC SETTLEMENT AT ISAIIA (IAI COUNTY, ROMANIA) Nicolae URSULESCU, Felix Adrian TENCARIU (Romania) Abstract: Among the artefacts discovered in the Precucuteni site of Isaiia which hold a special signification, seventeen objects stand out through their incised signs, which represent something different than the usual decoration. This paper analyzes these artefacts in order to reveal their signification. The spatial analysis shows that this kind of discovery is present in every dwelling, in very small numbers (usually one or two), especially in the vicinity of ovens or hearths, a fact which underlines their cultic significance. In general, the signs on the ceramic artefacts from Isaiia do not have analogies with the already published signs from the Precucuteni culture, but rather with those from the areas of Vina, Turda and Boian-Gumelnia cultures, with which the bearers of the Precucuteni culture had close relations. The authors consider that the Precucuteni culture has to be placed among the Eneolithic civilisations in Romanian territory where the presence of symbolic signs on ceramic artefacts is testified. Keywords: Chalcolithic, Precucuteni Culture, Romania, Isaiia, symbolic signs. Among the burnt clay artefacts that form the overwhelming majority of Neolithic archaeological discoveries, a certain class of objects, incised or painted with signs, has drawn special attention within the last decades. The signs on these artefacts are different from the ordinary decoration on pots, clay figurines, spindlewhorls, loom weights, stamps or shrine-tables. In a few cases, clay tablets have been discovered whose only purpose is to support these signs. Their unusual character finally forced archaeologists, following long hesitations and wariness, to record their existence and to formulate an opinion regarding their use. When the signs were treated with prudence, they were interpreted as symbolic signs, part of a symbolic code, considered difficult to decipher and understand, constituting some kind of pre-writing (Winn 1981; Dumitrescu 1985), a neutral, doubtful and uncommitted term. However, in the cases where such signs were approached with a certain enthusiasm, it was observed that they present a pattern that could represent an attempt at writing invented by the Neolithic civilisation of Old Europe (Gimbutas 1989a: 78-82, 1989b; Haarmann 1995; Merlini 2004). Significantly enough, the renowned researcher Jan Lichardus named its synthesis in the European Neolithic and Chalcolithic La Protohistoire de lEurope (Lichardus and LichardusItten 1985) considering that, with the emergence of a sign system, the Neolithic world would no longer belong to prehistory, but to the first literate history. As far as the Romanian Neolithic is concerned, it held and still holds a major role in discussions concerning this category of artefacts with an obvious spiritual significance. Although such artefacts have been known since the end of the nineteenth century through Turda artefacts belonging to the Zsofia Torma collection (Roska 1928: 18-25, 1941), they received special attention after the publication by N. Vlassa (1963) of the now famous tablets from Trtria. The Trtria tablets caused a wave of controversy, 1 with repercussions within the most divers areas. These discoveries were followed by those from Karanovo (Mikov et al. 1969; Flavin 1998: 86-92) and Gradenica in Bulgaria (Nikolov 1974: 29-30), 2 and then by the reevaluation of numerous finds of the same type from the Vina culture area (Todorovi 1969: 77-84, pl. XII; Winn 1981, 1990; Chapman 1981; Merlini 2005: 57-76). Such artefacts have made it possible to formulate and support the theory of autonomous Neolithic and Chalcolithic developments in Southeast Europe in contrast to similar phenomena from the Near East (see Renfrew 1972, 1973), as a counterbalance to the theory of ex Oriente lux.

1 2

For an ample list of references, see Makkay 1990 and Masson 1984: 89-123. For images from Gradenica, see Nikolov 1974: 29-30, pl. 68-70, 89, 109, 110; for discussions about these discoveries.

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Figure 1: Isaiia, Iai county. Plan of the northwestern area of the site with the location of the excavations during 1996-2005. Considering the publication of hundreds of such ceramic artefacts with symbolic signs from throughout Southeast Europe (Nikolova 2003; Starovi 2004), today it is practically impossible to question the authenticity and cultural framing of the Trtria tablets. Archaeologists are admittedly confronted with a widely spread phenomenon with different local forms of manifestation, but also with numerous common traits and significations (Ursulescu 2002: 101-105). Within recent years, a number of studies have been published which underline and analyze the signs on different ceramic artefacts, especially present within the cultures of southern origin, e.g., Starevo-Cri, Vina, Rast, Turda, Boian, Gumelnia (Lazarovici and Maxim 1996: 223-267; Srbu and Pandrea 2003: 103-134, 2005: 93-114; Gh. Lazarovici 2003: 57-64; C-M. Lazarovici 2003: 85-96, 2006: 57-92; Teodor and Lazarovici 2006: 93-114; Marinescu-Blcu 2007: 87-103). Although with a strong meridional component with connections to the Vinian environment from the dawn of the Chalcolithic the Precucuteni culture from east of the Carpathian Mountains was not considered, until recently, to be part of the significant cultures within Romanian territory, as far as the symbolic signs on ceramic artefacts are concerned (see Figure 1). The publication of the monograph on the cult treasure from Isaiia (commune of Rducneni, Iai County) (Ursulescu and Tencariu 2006) has provided the opportunity to tangentially treat the problem of several ceramic artefacts with symbolic signs discovered within this site. Considering the importance of the problem, we thought a separate and detailed analysis of these items was necessary in order to better underline their signification. We will first present the artefacts, ordered by their relationship to habitation structures in order to emphasize their discovery context, followed by their analysis. Habitation/Discovery Context The most numerous artefacts (five) were found within habitation no. 1. This structure is considered due to the number of cult objects discovered here, as well as to its central position within the settlement to have fulfilled the role of the communitys sanctuary (Ursulescu 2001a:42-47). All of the five items belong to two cult complexes, one from the earliest level of the structure (Figure 2) and the other from the second level (Figure 3) (Ursulescu and Tencariu 2006: 39-56).

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Figure 2: Isaiia, Iai county. Habitation no. 1A (the old construction) with the first cult complex. 1-2. In the first cult complex within the earliest construction level, from the vicinity of the hearth, near a cult table and an askos pot (Ursulescu and Tencariu 2006: 123), a fragmentary burnt clay tablet was discovered. There is a possible relationship between a second tablet (also fragmentary) to the same complex of cult objects.3 Both tablets have incised lines and signs on one of their faces (Figure 4). The fragmentary state of the items does not allow the reconstruction of the pieces, but from the preserved fragments one may notice an intention of framing the composition through circular lines. Thus, on the first tablet fragment (with a diameter of 11.5 cm) it seems that the signs are within two circular curves, placed opposite to each other (Figure 4/1), while on the second tablet fragment (diameter 10.6 cm) we are dealing with a singular circular curve (Figure 4/2). Both tablets were manufactured from a rough paste, carelessly modelled and incompletely burned, which suggests that these artefacts were intended for a short period of use (probably a ceremony), being then intentionally fragmented (see Chapman 2000). It is worth noting the fact that, after fragmentation, half of each tablet was kept within the dwelling, probably at the place of the ceremony, while the other two halves were deposed somewhere else, which means that these artefacts, even when broken, did not lose their sacred character, continuing their ritual lives. The signs, traced carelessly, seem to indicate, rather than an intentional message, the clumsy imitation of some burnt clay tablets with incised symbols that the person who deposed it in the dwelling (probably a shaman of the community) had previously seen during initiation travels to some other locations where such items played an important role within cult ceremonies. Thus, we do not believe that in the case of the Isaiia tablets one may speak of the attempt to transmit a message4 and, even less, of mythograms, but only of an attempt to give a magical utility to such items within cult ceremonies.

3 This item was discovered in the soil excavated from dwelling no. 1 ( S. I), investigated in 1996 in the area where the cult complex with the first clay tablet was found. This fact makes us believe that this item also belonged to the same complex (Ursulescu and Tencariu 2006: 124, fig. 42). 4 As M. Merlini (2008) recently suggested, Segni di scrittura su oggetti della ceramica Precucuteni e Cucuteni?

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Figure 3: Isaiia, Iai county. Habitation no. 1 (the new construction) with the second cult complex. The cult complex from the later level of dwelling no. 1 (Figure 5) contained, in a pot, 21 feminine figurines, 21 schematic male representations (in phallic form), 13 miniature chairs and 42 beads, all made from burnt clay (Ursulescu 2004a: 325-331). Three artefacts are incised with symbolic signs. 3. Miniature chair no. 3 (Ursulescu 2004b: 109; Ursulescu and Tencariu 2006:112), carefully modelled, has symbolic signs on both sides (Figure 6/1). The front side has a spiral decoration with four spires imprinted with dots, which continue onto the backrest in three horizontal rows. On the backside, lines are incised consisting of two X signs separated by a vertical line. Within the spaces marked by the arms of the X signs there are traced five vertical lines. 4. Miniature chair no. 6 (Ursulescu 2004a:346, fig. 9/2; Ursulescu and Tencariu 2006:112) has, on the front side (seat and backrest), a decoration of imprinted dots (Figure 6/2). On the seat, an incised line separates the dots, from which, at one end, branch two oblique lines. The incisions seem to render, in a very schematic way, a human silhouette with arms raised laterally, 5 or with spread legs.6 5. Figurine no. 3 (Ursulescu and Tencariu 2006: 86-87) is part of a group of four statuettes within the ensemble of the 21 feminine figurines distinguished by separate modelling of the legs, covered with stitchlike markings (Figure 6/3). Of the four statuettes, this is the only one engraved with a sign. This trident-like sign, located on the back close to the area of the heart, consists of three vertical lines connected at the top by an oblique line, shallowly incised by a blunt object. On the front, at the left side of the chest (corresponding to the aforementioned sign) are two approximately horizontal and parallel lines. In our opinion, the trident sign on the back could indicate a masculine symbol, representing just the lower part of a male silhouette. To support our interpretation, this sign which is also present on several Neolithic ceramic artefacts from the

A similar sign appears on the bottom of a pot from Turda, as well as the complete form of schematization, with two rows of oblique lines (Srbu and Pandrea 2005:111, fig. 9/6-7). Similar signs, which separate metopes, are found on the bottom of several Vina type pots, e.g., from Gradenica (ibid. 2005:112, figs. 27-28) or uuge (Starovi 2004:66). 6 This interpretation seems to be supported by an incised representation on a circular clay plate from Zorlenu Mare which depicts the eyes on one end and the spread legs on the other (Lazarovici 1991:30, fig. 6).

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe Balkans and Carpathian region7 may be compared to masculine silhouettes incised on other miscellaneous objects.8 Two items were found within the perimeter of each of the dwellings no. 5, 6, 8 and 9. Dwellings no. 5, 6 and 8 are part of those completely reconstructed on the same location as dwelling no. 1 (Figure 1).

Figure 4: Isaiia, Iai county. Burnt clay tablets with incised lines and signs. 6. Half of the bottom of a pot was found near a dismantled oven from the first stage of existence of dwelling no. 5. This fragment contains three or four circumscribed right angles, which were inscribed within a quarter of the surface of the bottom of the pot (Figure 7/1). The same decoration was probably repeated on the diagonal quarter, thus forming, if the reconstruction is correct, a cruciform motif, created by the line (or the two lines) which limited the angles on the centre of the piece. 7. The second item found in dwelling no. 5 is not incised with a symbolic sign, but is painted with whitea technical procedure that is rare within the area of the Precucuteni culture (Niu 1955:4; Dumitrescu 1963:61; Marinescu-Blcu 1974:77, 129, 1981:30, 32; Ursulescu and Boghian 2001:13). This denotes an influence from the early Gumelnia culture, or rather, from its northern aspect of Aldeni-Stoicani-Bolgrad (Dumitrescu 1963:62, 1974: 84-87; Bejleki 1978:98-102; S. Marinescu-Blcu1981:139; Dragomir 1983:5592; Ursulescu, Boghian, and Cotiug 2005: 217-260). This item is a pottery fragment, probably representing the cylindrical handle of a lid.9 It was discovered outside dwelling no. 5 near the houses southeast wall where the pot was probably hung. The handle was found in a concentration of pottery fragments where several shards from the same pot have been identified. The fragments were buried at a depth of 1.20 m, which suggests that the dwelling belongs to the first stage of its construction. On the flat surface of the handle, encircled by an annular border, vertical and horizontal lines were painted in a grid, cutting across each other three times in the central area (Figure 7/2). The painting was applied after the burning of the pot, making the partly erased motif difficult to observe. The grid motif, which is quite frequent in the Vina
See, e.g., the artefact from Mehtelek in Todorova and Vajsov 1993:195, fig. 174; the sign on the Late Vina sherd from Belo Brdo in Starovi: 2004:79; and signs on objects from Ortie, Daia Romn and Turda in Srbu and Pandrea 2005:107, 111, figs. 5/9-10, 9/15-16, 22-24. 8 See, e.g., the artefact from Glbnik in Todorova and Vajsov 1993: 195, fig. 173/1a; and the Turda and Zorlen finds in Srbu and Pandrea 2005:107, 111, 113, figs. 5/3, 9/35, 11/7. 9 For analogies of this shape from Traian-Dl. Fntnilor, see Marinescu-Blcu 1974:82-83 and fig. 61/7.
7

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe environment, is usually incised, 10 and only seldom polished. 11 As far as our knowledge goes, this motif has never been attested, until now, in the Precucuteni culture.

Figure 5: Isaiia, Iai county. Cult complex from the later level of dwelling no. 1.

Figure 6: Isaiia, Iai county. Items from the cult complex (dwelling no. 1) with incised symbolic signs.
For examples from Kalojanovec, Turda, and Rast, see Srbu and Pandrea 2005:108, 111-112, figs. 6/11, 9/25-26, 10/15; for Gomolava and Vina, see Starovi 2004:53, 84 (above). 11 For an example from Gomolava, see Starovi 2004: 69 (above).
10

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

8. Two miniature burnt clay chairs discovered in dwelling no. 6, belong to the oldest level of inhabitation. The first fragmentary miniature chair (Figure 7/3), from which only the bottom has been preserved, was found in front of the oven. It is manufactured from a porous paste and is deeply incised with lines. The main motif is created by two parallel lines, under which a right angle and an X (resembling the cross of St. Andrew) are incised.

Figure 7: Isaiia, Iai county. Items with incised or painted symbolic signs. (1-2): pot bottoms from dwelling no. 5; (3-5): miniature burnt clay chairs from dwellings nos. 6/3-4 and 9/5. 93

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe

9. The second miniature chair, entirely preserved, with the backrest ending in two massive horns (Figure 7/4), was found in the fill of the foundation ditch of the latest inhabitation level. It probably belonged to the anterior level. The chair is manufactured from a more sandy paste, well smoothed. On the bottom, three concentric curved lines are traced and, within the last one, two incised lines converge towards an undefined meeting point (which could be an acute angle or, eventually, a fourth curved line). The intentional character of this motif is indicated by its repetition in a small two-mouthed pot discovered at Poduri, also in a Precucuteni II level (Monah, et al. 2003:116). The only difference consists in the fact that the sign from Poduri has, inside the last curved line, just a single incised line as an axis for the entire ensemble.

Figure 8: Isaiia, Iai county. Pots with cross-shaped motifs on their bottoms. (1): dwelling no. 9; (2): dwelling no. 3. 10. Another miniature chair, with notched margins, from which only a fragment of the bottom has been preserved, was discovered within dwelling no. 9, which belongs to the last stage of the Precucuteni habitation at Isaiia. On this fragment a Y is incised, oriented perpendicularly on the backseat (Figure 7/5). 11. In the same dwelling, in the medial part of the southern limit, the fragments of a bowl were discovered with a supporting leg. Its annular bottom is incised with a motif resembling a developed Maltese cross, with arched arms formed by fascicles of five lines, each ending with an alveolus (Figure 8/1). We do not rule out 94

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe the possibility that such pots may have been used as lids, considering their large opening. This may justify the frequent presence of the cruciform motif, in various forms, on the bottom of certain pots.12 The cruciform sign is, without a doubt, a stylized representation of the sun with its rays,13 probably a masculine symbol that had to ensure the fertility of the goods stored within the pot. The sign illustrated here resembles the realistic representation of the sun through its fascicles of rays with a rounded central core. 12. Between the disturbed debris of dwelling no. 3, east of the oven, fragments of an urn-like pot were found with a high neck decorated with fluting, with four opposing prominences at the maximum diameter. On the bottom, a cross is incised in a clumsy manner resembling the one described above, but with continuous lines; each arm has a few transversal lines. For unknown reasons, on the same bottom, a new simple cross is incised, formed of two lines, from which one is deeply carved, while the other one is shallow (Figure 8/2). The arms of the new cross are interspersed between those of the old cross, expressing the intent of the manufacturer to dissociate it from the old model. As far as we know, this is the first artefact where two cruciform signs are overlapped. 13. A particularly interesting pot was found under a concentration of stones, southeast of dwelling no. 8. The concentration consisted of complete and fragmented grinding stones, a large stone anvil, as well as animal bones. At the limit of this complex, probably in a domestic annex of house no. 8, within a small intentional deposit, an entirely preserved pot, shards from another pot and a fragment from a large burnt clay figurine were discovered (Ursulescu and Tencariu 2004:41-52). The pot (a small pitcher with a distinct neck and funnel-like, slightly reverted rim) has a form and decoration unusual for the Precucuteni culture (Figure 9). On opposite sides of the body of the pot, at different levels, there are two vertical pairs of small earhandles with horizontal perforations: two of the small ear-handles are placed on the upper third of the pot and the other two are on the lower third of the pot. On top and underneath each small ear-handle there is a similar decoration consisting of two vertical lines joined at the upper end by a horizontal line, which is flanked, at its ends, by small hollows resembling the heads of musical notes. The only difference consists in the fact that, while the archway of the small ear-handles from upper third reach the demarcation line between the body and neck, the archway of the small ear-handles from the lower third stop at half of the body. Under the small ear-handles, the horizontal incised line is deeper, almost a notch, thus creating, with the small ear-handle and its perforation, the effect of a stylized human face (slightly oval eyes, nose and mouth). In the spaces between the two groups of small ear-handles, at the entire height of the body of the pot, there are two opposing similar decorative motifs (archways). The result is a symmetry of decoration through a six-times repetition: four archways attached to the small ear-handles and two in the spaces between the groupings of small ear-handles. This symmetry is disturbed by the addition of a seventh archway, of high type, between the lower small ear-handles, producing an interference with the short decorations attached to the left small ear-handle. This detail underlines the fact that the potter intentionally added the seventh arch, while being aware of disturbing the symmetry, in order to create the result of seven vertical registries. The asymmetrical addition of the seventh registry seems to have been symbolically motivated. Although, we have not yet found a perfect analogy for this decoration of archways, we consider that, as a whole, we are dealing with seven extremely stylized human figures. This hypothesis seems to be best supported by the four decorative motifs attached to the small ear-handle which suggest an orant shape: the lower archway would represent the body, the horizontal line with the small ear-handle suggest the face and the upper archway could indicate the raised arms, holding an offering above the head. 14 The other three arches vaguely suggest extremely stylized human silhouettes, thus completing the ensemble to seven. We believe that the forced (asymmetrical) addition of the seventh archway underlines the ritual character of this unusual decoration, where the symbolic nature of a sacred numerology, based on the number seven, may be distinguished (Ursulescu 2001b:51-69, 2004b:325-331).

12 See Srbu and Pandrea 2005:109, fig. 7a-d for examples of linear ceramics (Precucuteni culture, Ist phase), p. 110, fig. 8/1-19, 26-27, 31-32 (Giuleti phase of the Boian culture), p. 111, fig. 9/1-5, 8-18 (Turda culture), and p. 112, fig. 10/1, 4-7, 9, 12, 16-17, 21, 26, 28, 31 (Vina culture). 13 On rare occasions the sun is depicted in its ample form, as in the Bronze Age (see Srbu and Pandrea 2005:111, 103, figs. 1/8, 9/27 for examples from Turda and Silitea. 14 This would be an amplified variant of the linear manner of depicting the human silhouette as it appears, for example, at Zorlenu Mare, in Vina B2 (Lazarovici 1979, fig. 38/1 and pl. XXI/C7).

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Figure 9: Isaiia, Iai county. Entirely preserved pot with incised stylized human figures.

Figure 10: Isaiia, Iai county. Items with incised symbolic signs. (1): lid handle found in close vicinity of dwelling no. 8; (2): fragment of a pot bottom found in the area of dwelling no. 11; (3-4): fragments of pot bottoms from the Precucuteni level.

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe 14. Within the same area of economic activities, attached to dwelling no. 8, a lid handle was found in a concentration of archaeological materials, directly connected to the southeastern limit of the structure (D. 8A). Its discovery depth (1, 20 m) demonstrates that this is the first level of the structures habitation. 15 A realistic solar motif is incised on the flat surface of the handle consisting of a circle from which numerous lines set out towards the ends, imitating solar rays (Figure 10/1). This solar motif does not represent the stylization found in the developed cruciform motifs, as on item no. 11; it represents the idea of the sun in a very direct manner. The best analogy may be found on the bottom of a pot from Turda (see Srbu and Pandrea 2005:111, fig. 9/27). 15. In the area of dwelling no. 11 which dates from the last Precucuteni habitation level of the settlement a fragment of the bottom of a pot was found, manufactured from a very fine, red coloured paste. On the slightly concave bottom, a cruciform sign is incised, with simple lines. The spaces between the arms of the cross are hachured with fascicles of lines disposed in opposite directions (Figure 10/2). 16. A similar decoration is incised on the slightly concave bottom of a pot found on the surface of the settlement (without stratigraphy). The potter distinguished the line that traces the cross, thinner and deeper, from the hachured lines in-between the arms of the cross, which are wider and shallower (Figure 10/3). The motifs of the last two described items are frequently found on the bottom of pots from southern cultures.16 17. Within surface area G, among other materials belonging to the middle level of inhabitation, a fragment from the bottom of a pot was found, carelessly incised with a cruciform sign (Figure 10/4). The spaces between the arms of the cross are filled with different signs: on two diagonally placed quarters, there are three lines, disposed as the petals of a flower; in another quarter there is an arched, ogival line and in the opposite quadrant are three poorly imprinted dots. Analysis By synthesising the presented data, one may notice that the most numerous objects with symbolic signs (five) are from the central dwelling of the site, which we consider to have functioned as the communitys sanctuary because of the large number and variety of cult artefacts discovered within. However, objects of this type have also been discovered in other dwellings as well, especially within those that had two levels of existence. Only in two cases (nos. 16 and 17) were items with symbolic signs not tied to a habitation structure, but this situation is most certainly due to the careless gathering of the two pottery fragments. Practically, from the data we have gathered until the present, only one dwelling (no. 7) lacks this type of artefact, which allows us to assume that such artefacts probably existed in every habitation structure in small numbers (one or two items); this underlines their unusual character, most probably linked to certain beliefs and rituals. From the point of view of their placement, the signs appear most frequently on pots (nine), on miniature chairs (five), on clay tablets (two) and only once on a figurine. As far as the pots are concerned, in almost all cases the signs are placed either on the bottom (six), or on the flat surface of the handles of lids (two). Only once (no. 13) are the signs placed on the body of the pot but in this case we are dealing with a symbolic manner of decoration which could be connected to the magical value of the number seven. One has to notice also the high frequency with which the signs appear on miniature chairs (five times). The signs are always placed on the seat of the chairs and only once (no. 3) on the invisible side (the bottom). It is also worth mentioning the fact that within a closed complex of discovery (the treasure of clay objects from dwelling no. 1), the signs appear on only two of the 13 miniature chairs and on only one of the 21 feminine figurines. This fact speaks of the special character of these signs, placed with a clear purpose only on some of the items. In some cases (ten), there is only one sign (nos. 5-7, 9-12, 14-16), while for the rest of the items (nos. 1-4, 8, 13, 17) there are compositions of signs which were sometimes designated under the term mythograms (Paul 1995:129-134; Teodor and Lazarovici 2006:99). From the point of view of the motifs, one may notice a certain grouping within their variety:

The pots deposited near and on the southeastern wall of the dwelling probably were broken when the wall fell outwards. For examples from the Boian and Vina cultures, see Srbu and Pandrea 2005:110, 112. figs. 8/24, 10/7, 9, 18; for Karanovo IV, see Raduneva 1976:22, fig. 25.
16

15

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe The most frequent is the solar motif, expressed: (a) in an abstract manner through cruciform signs: simple (nos. 12, 17); composed shaped as a Malta cross (11-12), spiralled (no. 3) or as tetraskelion (nos. 6, 15, 16); (b) in a realistic manner, through a circle from which rays are diverging (no. 14); Schematised anthropomorphic silhouettes (4, 13); Trident (no. 5); Y (no. 10); Grid (no. 7); Concentric curved lines (no. 9); Compositions (nos. 1-4, 8, 13, 17).

Place of discovery

POTS
Seat Handle Body

Tablets

Figurines

Miniature chairs

MOTIFS
cross sun anthro
trident

grid

curved

lines

comp osed

Dwelling 1 Dwelling 3 Dwelling 5 Dwelling 6 Dwelling 8 Dwelling 9

Dwelling 11

2 1 1 1

1 1 1

1 1 1

2 1 1 1 2 6 2 1 2 1 5 1 1 1 1 2 7 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1

1 1

Passim

1 1 7

Total

We notice that, for the time being, the signs discovered on the ceramic artefacts from Isaiia do not generally have analogies with other published signs from the Precucuteni culture area,17 except with some cruciform/solar motifs. 18 Such analogies are found in the Vina, Turda and Boian-Gumelnia cultures with which the bearers of the Precucuteni culture had rather close connections. We believe that, given the present state of documentation on the symbolic signs found on ceramic objects of the Precucuteni culture as well as from other Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures it would be premature to launch theories and hypotheses concerning their signification. First and foremost, it is necessary to publish all of the signs that exist in different collections, as well as an augmentation about discoveries from new field research. This would finally make it possible to establish the frequency of these signs and, eventually, their systematisation based upon certain criteria. Nicolae URSULESCU, Felix Adrian TENCARIU (Romania) Department of Archaeology, Al. I. Cuza University, Iai E-mails: n.ursulescu@gmail.com, sem-arh@uaic.ro

For discussions about Precucuteni signs, see M. Merlini 2007. For images see Marinescu-Blcu 1974:225, figs. 1b, 36/2; p. 226, figs. 31/1, 3; p. 229, figs. 34/2, 5, 7; p. 230, figs. 35/4, 5, 9, 14, figs. 37/6, 8; p. 231, fig. 38/7; p. 238, fig. 45/1, fig. 49/3; p. 247, fig. 60/6; p. 251, fig. 64/5; p. 260, fig. 79/4; p. 262, figs. 81/1-2, 87/5-6; p. 265, figs. 84/2, 6-8, 94/11, 14; fig. 89/12; p. 267, fig. 90/3. 18 For cruciform/solar analogies see Marinescu-Blcu 1974: 228, figs. 33/1, 3; p. 230, figs. 35/1-3; p. 236, figs. 43/2-4, figs. 52/1-3, 14; p. 241, fig. 54/6; p. 248, figs. 61/4, 6.

17

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REFERENCES BEJLEKI Viktor S. 1978. Rannij eneolit nizovev Pruta i Dunaja. Kiinev: Nauka. CHAPMAN John. 1981. The Vina Culture of South-East Europe. Studies in Chronology, Economy and Society. BAR International Series 117. Oxford: Archaeopress. ______2000. Fragmentation in Archaeology. People, Places and Broken Objects in the Prehistory of SouthEastern Europe. London & New York: Routledge. DRAGOMIR Ion T. 1983. Eneoliticul n sud-estul Romniei. Aspectul cultural Stoicani-Aldeni. Bucureti: Academia. DUMITRESCU Vladimir. 1963. Originea i evoluia culturii Cucuteni-Tripolie. Studii i cercetri de istorie veche 14, 1-2: 51-74, 285-305. ______1974. Arta preistoric n Romnia. Bucureti : Meridiane. ______1985. Peut-on rellement parler dun systme de pr-criture de la culture de Vina? Dacia 29: 112-118. FLAVIN Richard D. 1998. The Karanovo Zodiak and Old European Linear. Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers 32: 86-92. GIMBUTAS Marija. 1989a. Spiritualitatea Vechii Europe. In Civilizaie i cultur, 78-82. Edited by S. Paliga and R. Florescu. Bucureti: Meridiane. _____1989b. The Language of the Goddess. San Francisco: Harper & Row. HAARMANN Harald. 1995. Early Civilization and Literarcy in Europe. An Inquiry into Cultural Continuity in the Mediterranean World. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. LAZAROVICI Cornelia-Magda. 2003. Pre-Writing Signs on Neo-Eneolithic Altars. In Early Symbolic Systems for Communication in Southeast Europe, 85-96. Edited by L. Nikolova. BAR International Series 1139. Oxford: Archaeopress. ______2006. Semne i simboluri n cultura Cucuteni-Tripolie. In Cucuteni 120 valori universale, 57-92. Coord. by N. Ursulescu and C.-M. Lazarovici. Iai: Sedcom Libris. LAZAROVICI Gheorghe. 1979. Neoliticul Banatului. Cluj-Napoca: Muzeul de Istie a Transilvaniei. ______1991. Zorlenu Mare. In Cultura Vina n Romnia, 28-29. Edited by Gh. Lazarovici and Fl. Draovean. Timioara. ______2003. Sacred Symbols on Neolithic Cult Objects from the Balkans. In Early Symbolic Systems for Communication in Southeast Europe, 57-64. Edited by L. Nikolova. BAR International Series 1139. Oxford: Archaeopress. LAZAROVICI Gheorghe, Zoia MAXIM. 1996. Marton Roskas Excavation from Turda and their Results. In The Vina Culture, its Role and Cultural Connections, 223-267. Edited by Fl. Draovean. Timioara: Mirton. LICHARDUS Jan, Marion LICHARDUS-ITTEN. 1985. La Protohistoire de lEurope. Le Nolithique et le Chalcolithique entre la Mditerrane et la mer Baltique. Paris: P.U.F. MAKKAY Janos. 1990. A tartariai leletek (Les dcouvertes de Trtria). Budapest. MARINESCU-BLCU Silvia. 1974. Cultura Precucuteni pe teritoriul Romniei. Bucureti: Academia. ______1981. Trpeti. From Prehistory to History in Eastern Romania. BAR International Series 107. Oxford: Archaeopress. ______2007. Greuti decorate din aria Gumelnia. Studii de Preistorie 4: 87-103. MASSON Emilia. 1984. Lcriture dans les civilisations danubiennes nolithiques. Kadmos XXIII, 2 : 89-123. MERLINI Marco. 2004. La scrittura natta in Europa? Roma: Avverbi. ______2005. The Danube Script and the Gradenica Platter. A Semiotic Study on the Most Recent Autopsy of the Bulgarian Item. In Prehistoric Archaeology and Anthropological Theory and Education, 5776. Edited by L. Nikolova, J. Fritz and J. Higgins. Reports of Prehistoric Research Project 6-7. Salt Lake City & Karlovo: International Institute of Anthropology. ______2007. Did Tripolie, Precucuteni and Cucuteni Cultures Develop a Script? Did a Form of Literacy Develop in Neo-Eneolithic Times in Southeastern Europe? In Tripylska kultura. Pouki, vydkrittja, svytovij kontekst. Zbyrka naukovikh prac, 113-136. Edited by M. Videiko, S. Kot. Kyiv. ______2008.Segni di scrittura su oggetti della ceramica Precucuteni e Cucuteni? In Tesori di una civilt preistorica dei Carpazi, 173-200. Edited by N. Ursulescu, R. Koglniceanu, C. Creu. Roma & Iai. www.PrehistoryKnowledge.VirtualMuseumoftheInscriptions MIKOV Vassil, Georgi I. GEORGIEV, Vladimir I. GEORGIEV. 1969. Nadpist vrhu krglija peat ot Karanovo najdrevnata pismenost v Evropa. Arkheologija XI, 1: 4-13. Sofia. 99

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe MONAH Dan, Gheorghe DUMITROAIA, Felicia MONAH, Constantin PREOTEASA, Roxana MUNTEANU, Dorin NICOLA 2003. PoduriDealul Ghindaru. O Troie n Subcarpaii Moldovei. Bibliotheca Memoriae Antiquitatis XIII. Piatra Neam. NIKOLOV Bogdan. Gradechnitza. Sofia: Nauka i Izkustvo. NIKOLOVA Lolita, ed. 2003. Early Symbolic Systems for Communication in Southeast Europe. BAR International Series 1139. Oxford: Archaeopress. NITU Anton. 1955. Aezarea cu ceramic de factur precucutenian de la Tg. Negreti. Studii i cercetri tiinifice, seria III (tiine sociale) VI, 1-2: 1-28. Iai. PAUL Iuliu. 1995. Das Mythogramm von Salzburg Ocna Sibiului. Vorgeschichtliche Untersuchungen in Siebenbrgen, Bibl. Universitatis Apulensis I: 129-134. Alba Iulia. RADUNEVA Ana. 1976. Die prhistorische Kunst in Bulgarien. Fnftes bis zweites Jafrtausend v.u.Z. Sofia: Sofia-Press. RENFREW Colin. 1972. The Emergence in Civilisation. London. Methuen and Co. _____1973. Before Civilisation. London: Jonathan Cape ROSKA Mrton. 1928. Staiunea neolitic de la Turda. Publicaiile Muzeului Judeean Hunedoara 3-4 (2526): 18- 25. ______1941. Die Sammlung Zsofia von Torma, Cluj. SRBU Valeriu, and Stnic PANDREA. 2003. Vasele cu semne pe fund din neoliticul dezvoltat n spaiul carpato-balcanic. Banatica 16, I: 103-134. ______2005. Neolithic Objects Bearing Incised Signs on the Bottom Found in the Carpatho-Balkan Area: Analysis and Possible Significance. Studii de preistorie 2: 93-114. Bucureti. STAROVI Andrej, ed. 2004. Signs of Civilization. Exhibition Catalogue. Novi Sad: Institute of Archaeomythology, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. TEODOR Silvia and Gheorghe LAZAROVICI. 2006. Un fragment de vas Cucuteni B cu semne i simboluri. In Cucuteni 120 valori universale, 93-114. Coord. by N. Ursulescu and C.-M. Lazarovici. Iai. TODOROVA Henrieta and Ivan VAJSOV. 1993. Novo-kamennata epoha v Blgarija. Sofia. TODOROVI Jovan. 1969. Written Signs in the Neolithic Cultures of Southeastern Europe. Archaeologia Iugoslavica X: 77-84. URSULESCU Nicolae. 2001a. Position des constructions-sanctuaires dans les habitats de lEnolithique ancien de la Roumanie. Cultur i civilizaie la Dunrea de Jos XVI-XVII: 42-47. Clrai. ______2001b. Dovezi ale unei simbolistici a numerelor n cultura Precucuteni, MemAnt, XXII: 51-69. ______2002. nceputurile istoriei pe teritoriul Romniei. Iai. ______2004a. La valeur sacre des nombres dans lnolithique de Roumanie, 325-331. In Actes du XIVme Congrs UISPP, Universit de Lige, Belgique, 2-8 septembre 2001, Section 9Section 10. BAR International Series 1303, Oxford: Archaeopress. ______2004b. Nouvelles donnes concernant les croyances magiques des communauts de la civilisation Prcucuteni (nolithique ancien) de lEst de la Roumanie, 343-348. In Actes du XIVme Congrs UISPP, Universit de Lige, Belgique, 2-8 septembre 2001, Section 9Section 10. BAR International Series 1303. Oxford: Archaeopress. URSULESCU Nicolae and Dumitru BOGHIAN. 2001. Influences mridionales dans la phase finale de la civilisation Prcucuteni. Codrul Cosminului, s.n. 6-7, 16-17: 11-20. URSULESCU Nicolae, Dumitru BOGHIAN and Vasile COTIUGA. 2005. Problmes de la culture Prcucuteni la lumire des recherches de Trgu Frumos (dp. de Iai), 217-260. In Scripta praehistorica. Miscellanea in honorem nonagenarii magistri Mircea Petrescu-Dmbovia oblata. Edited by V. Spinei, C.-M. Lazarovici and D. Monah. Iai: Trinitas. URSULESCU Nicolae and Felix Adrian TENCARIU. 2004. Un vas neobinuit din aezarea precucutenian de la Isaiia (jud. Iai). Carpica XXXIII: 41-52. ______2006. Religie i magie la est de Carpai acum 7000 de ani. Tezaurul cu obiecte de cult de la Isaiia. Iai. VLASSA Nicolae. 1963. Chronology of the Neolithic in Transylvania, in the Light of the Tartaria Settlements Stratigraphy. Dacia VII: 485-494. WINN Shan M. M. 1981. Pre-Writing in South-Eastern Europe: The Sign System of the Vina Culture, 4000 B.C. Calgary. ______1990. A Neolithic Sign System in Southern Europe. In The Life of Symbols. Edited by M. Le Cron Foster, and L. J. Botscharow. San Francisco. 100

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ABBREVIATIONS Banatica Banatica, Muzeul de Istorie al judeului Cara-Severin, Reia. BAR British Archaeological Reports, Oxford. BMA Bibliotheca Memoriae Antiquitatis, Piatra Neam. Carpica Carpica, Complexul Muzeal Iulian Antonescu Bacu. CCDJ Cultur i civilizaie la Dunrea de Jos, Clrai. Codrul Cosminului Codrul Cosminului. Analele Universitii tefan cel Mare Suceava, seria Istorie. Dacia Dacia. Revue darchologie et dhistoire ancienne, Bucureti. Kadmos Kadmos. Zeitschrift fr vor- und frhgriechische Epigraphik, Berlin. MemAnt Memoria Antiquitatis, Piatra Neam. SCIV (A) Studii i cercetri de istorie veche (i arheologie), Bucureti. List of Illustrations Figure 1: Isaiia, Iai county. Plan of the northwestern area of the site with the location of the excavations during 1996-2005. Figure 2: Isaiia, Iai county. Habitation no. 1A (the old construction) with the first cult complex. Figure 3: Isaiia, Iai county. Habitation no. 1 (the new construction) with the second cult complex. Figure 4: Isaiia, Iai county. Burnt clay tablets with incised lines and signs. Figure 5: Isaiia, Iai county. Cult complex from the later level of dwelling no. 1. Figure 6: Isaiia, Iai county. Items from the cult complex (dwelling no. 1) with incised symbolic signs. Figure 7: Isaiia, Iai county. Items with incised or painted symbolic signs. (1-2): pot bottoms from dwelling no. 5; (3-5): miniature burnt clay chairs from dwellings nos. 6/3-4 and 9/5. Figure 8: Isaiia, Iai county. Pots with cross-shaped motifs on their bottoms. (1): dwelling no. 9; (2): dwelling no. 3. Figure 9: Isaiia, Iai county. Entirely preserved pot with incised stylized human figures. Figure 10: Isaiia, Iai county. Items with incised symbolic signs. (1): lid handle found in close vicinity of dwelling no. 8; (2): fragment of a pot bottom found in the area of dwelling no. 11; (3-4): fragments of pot bottoms from the Precucuteni level.

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PARSING THE PAST: VISUAL MARKS AS CULTURAL METAPHORS Susan MOULTON (USA) Abstract: This paper proposes that in order to understand the function of Neolithic signs and symbols, it is necessary to consider the human association with place and the use of metaphorical communication as analogous to the transformative powers of nature itself. Signs and symbols for nature-based cultures cannot be interpreted independently from geographical contexts and features which often defined culture and an individuals role within it. The sacred and the mundane cannot be disaggregated as they traditionally are in contemporary Eurocentric culture. Signs and symbols function as mnemonic devices, verbal analogies, and glyphic codes derived from shared knowledge, experience and history transmitted across generations. More than alphabets or rational signs, they are living elements whose meaning requires direct experience of place and commitment to sacred interaction within specific ecosystems. Keywords: Signs, symbols,Trtria, tablet, language, writing, Okanagan, ritual. [T]he body is Earth itself. Our flesh, blood and bones are Earth-body; in all cycles in which Earth moves, so does our body. We are everything that surrounds us, including the vast forces we only glimpse . . . The body is sacred. It is the core of our being; it permits the rest of the self to be. It is the great gift of our existence. Our word for body literally means the land-dreaming capacity. Jeannette Armsong, Okanagan (2006). The world creates and gives birth to us and our spirits, along with the rest. The soul resides in the world around us; it shares itself with us. We breathe its breath. We are blessed by its light. Linda Hogan, Chickasaw poet (2001). Our post-modern Eurocentric world with its industrial belief in unlimited natural resources and consumerist thinking is starkly different from the traditional societies of the remote past and present indigenous peoples, some of whom still practice the customs of their ancestors. People from land-based cultures view themselves as part of a unit, guided by community, practicing place-based economics and experiencing a shared fate. This contrasts starkly with the present enthusiasm for technology that fails to consider the impact or the consequences of its development. This ignorance of place has led to tragic and drastically transformed landscapes and ecosystems. Contemporary photographer Ed Bertynsky has documented this in images, such as Industrial Landscape: Discarded Tires.1 The values of cultures whose peoples still live embedded in Nature today are characterized by a fullness of meaning and relationship to their watersheds. Sharing a fundamental awareness of an integral relationship with place may be a key to understanding the Neolithic imagery found in the Danube Basin area where the remarkable objects are found that are the focus of this symposium. It is through their glyphs, marks and signs that the past returns to engage us. The urgency of climate deterioration and a rapidly changing world makes our understanding of the remote past and its apparently balanced cultures even more significant. Setting the Stage: An Archaeological Theater Tribal members in the Southwest United States struggle today to maintain their sustaining relationship with their ancestral lands. They have sought to accommodate the intrusions of modern technology and autistic commercialism on the one hand, with their traditional practices honoring the elements of natureits innate processes of life, death and regeneration as well as its extant flora and faunaon the other. For many indigenous people, their ancestral ways offer the only option for survival in a morally and ecologically deteriorating world, and they have a renewed enthusiasm for their ancient practices and imagery. This sacred lifestyle and world view figures prominently and is given expression in the objects they make, including pottery, weaving, carvings and rock paintings with potent marks and images that crystallize the elegance of
1

See www.edwardburtynsky.com for more images.

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe their interaction with life and place. The practices and examples of native peoples today in many ways can function as a bridge across time to understanding the Neolithic past. Named by the Land In many indigenous cultures, elements of nature specific to a place often identify the human inhabitants, rather than the other way around. When speaking about making a pot or a weaving, indigenous people focus more on the gathering of the materials needed than they do about the making of the object, itself; how nature directs and inspires them, how they must be respectful in gathering grasses or clay. For them, the gift of these materials by nature, and the sacred process of gathering and preparing them is as significant, and more time consuming than is the actual process of creation. In conversation, one southwestern American indigenous potter noted that in her culture, the finished pot has always been considered a being whose existence is sacred. When its owner is deceased, or the pottery is damaged, it is killed and returned to earth with ceremony. What non-indigenous people would consider to be trivial actions or mundane events of daily life, in tribal communities everyday activities such as eating, food gathering, and communication are done with great reverence and awareness. This paper proposes that in nature-based cultures communal identity, often associated with place, was only one aspect of sacred life. The sacred was encoded in marks and symbols that catalyzed multidimensional associative meaning rather than defining it in human-centered terms. In the nature-based traditional world, rocks, plants, weather, and animalsindeed, all sentient lifewas/is sacred, coequal and respected, interrelated and honored as part of a living formal complexity that is ultimately unknowable by people who are unable to see these deeper dimensions. Stories and myths connect and animate traditional people with their historic residence and their identity derived from it. If we want to understand the marks and glyphs left by ancient indigenous cultures, native people today suggest we must also include their association with place and their view of metaphorical, transdimensional communication as analogous to the transformative powers of nature itself. Their signs and symbols cannot be interpreted independently from the natural contexts which informed their overall culture and defined an individuals role within it. Scholars have noted that written communication systems simultaneously functioned on many levels both practical and spiritual (Gimbutas 1989: 318). Archaeologist/linguists/folklorists like Marija Gimbutas were prescient advocates for trans- and interdisciplinary approaches to find meaning. Her methodology was particularly suited for investigating nature-based cultures that believed all sentient life was part of a larger divine context inherent in everything. The sacred and the mundane cannot be disaggregated as they traditionally are in Eurocentric cultures; they are all part of one fabric of being. Language of the Land Jeannette Armstrong, an indigenous British Columbian native, explains: The Okanagan word for our place on the land and our language is the same. We think of our language as the language of the land. This means that the land has taught us our language. The way we survive is by speaking the language that the land offered us as its teaching. To know all the plants, animals, seasons and geography is to construct language for them (Armstrong 2006: 35). Stories and myths have existed as oral histories, sung or chanted through time, and are essential to cultural identity and for establishing a symbiosis with place. Language is a living element linking people and place through story, song, and intonation. Armstrong explains that her mother was a river Indian, responsible for taking care of the river in the north while her fathers people were from the mountains, hunters, who didnt live in the river basin and who had a separate, distinct culture from her mothers lineage. While she is associated with her fathers side of the family, she had a responsibility to the river through her mothers birth. The land creates her identity and her language, where sacred, unspoken names often derive from the inherited aspect of nature cared for by ones maternal ancestors. The name of her people, Okanagan, comes from a whole understanding of what we are as human beings. Through interaction of prayer and word they identify themselves as different from the animals and plants in their physical world. The second part of their name refers to the dream state, the unseen part of our existence as human beings (Armstrong 2006: 36). This is what we call mind, spirit or intellect. The third part of their name refers to their human community in place through time: their clan or the people who lived 104

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe in their specific geographic area. They call their relationship with other life our one skin meaning they share more than a place; they share a physical tie or body that is uniquely human through generations of community in communion with a specific place. They refer to their land and bodies with the same root syllable. This means that the flesh that is our body is pieces of the land come to us through the things that the land is. We are our land/place. Not to know and celebrate this is to be without language and without land. It is to be displaced (Armstrong 2006: 36-37). Both their individual and communal selves are bonded to the land and identified by it. Their ceremonies join them with the larger communal self and with the land to rejoice in what they are. We are this one part of the earth. Without this self and this bond, we are not human (ibid. 38). To understand language we must locate it in its chora or inhabited, holistic place and parse its eidetic (non-syllabic, trans-dimensional) function which does not distinguish between figure and ground, object and context, but views them in dynamic interaction. If we apply the Okanagan world view to understanding the carved boulder stones found at the site of Lepenski Vir in the Iron Gate region of the Danube (Figure 1), the sense of abstract imagery and signs which have been traced to the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic peoples in the Danube Valley, takes on a rich, deep contextual meaning (Kozlowski 1992: 74ff). Armstrong might say that this, and other stones carved to represent fish found near the hearths, were human expressions of the responsibility of a clan or group to be caregivers and to maintain rituals to affirm that they are one flesh with the flora and fauna of the river, and to acknowledge the mutual cohabitation and exchange between fish and human.

Figure 1: Carved boulder stone as a fish, bird, woman. Lepenski Vir, Iron Gate region, Danube, Serbia (after Gimbutas 1989:260, fig. 407). The Subjectivity of Context In the absence of deep spiritual meaning in contemporary culture modern people sometimes look to the remote past, romantically, believing it holds the answers to the desire for knowledge of the world and its human history. We parse its glyphs and images according to categories familiar to us. But, most of us live in a world in which Nature is viewed as outside and a resource to be exploited. Hierarchical Eurocentric colonial values can preclude an integrated worldview. Without realizing, contemporary assumptions can be overlaid onto the past in an attempt to decode marks, artifacts, and ruins. Some cannot even imagine that the Neolithic past was holistic and egalitarian because few twenty-first century societies are this way. Many view the world through a perpetually dualistic lens of separation, isolation and difference, seeking to understand cultures and values that communicated through the seemingly foreign language of signs and imagery. This difference is intensified in a world where competition and new technologies are often revered; a world of exploding populations with people unaware of their natural surroundings, with dwindling resources. Nevertheless, the ancient signs can be viewed as potential bridges of affinity between people across time. But how do we determine what we have found? Where does the background stop and foreground appear? When does a mark or footprint or ancient absence become something else? How can we re-enact 105

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe the past in the face of entropy, decay, or failure to recognize what is noise and what is substance? (Shanks 1992). The real and the symbolic are held in suspension in the Neolithic earth in a compelling past that haunts and confounds us. Many of our indigenous kin, however, dont experience this same disconnection when reading the marks and signs of the past. A Native Reading: Setting the ego aside Applying contemporary analogies to understand the past is always problematic. The words of Native peoples who still respect their traditional practices and value their historical symbiosis with place can guide us to a deeper understanding of the function of signs and glyphs in indigenous cultures. In the estimation of Linda Hogan, a Chickasaw native, the spoken story is much larger than the one written, which, in her estimation, remains unheard or unsaid. In nearly all creation accounts, words or songs are how the world was created, the animals sung into existence. Why should it be different for human lives? We are, as Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday said, made of words (Hogan 2001: 21). Hogan clarifies, though, that words alone are insufficient and telling our stories out loud is a powerful communication. There is something beyond the words themselves; all the elements of ourselves reside in oral communication that in our world today seems beyond human logic (ibid. 16). When story is combined with ritual, often in the form of dance, the catalyzing imagery, glyphs and words become part of a larger tableau vivant. When place-bound communication was shared by people through time it often was in the form of poetry/song and/or metaphorical signs and images that distilled and essentialized shared meaning. The experience of being a poet, artist, or storyteller was part of everyones life and the sharing community. We can imagine that the Neolithic glyphs and signs were poetic and multidimensional in the same way. The rhyming of lyrical oral communication has been equated with shamanism and ritual transcendence. 2 Poetry is healthy because theres no doubt that it belongs to the elusive and egalitarian realm of the imagination. This is no small matter, since the imagination is part of the life of the true self . . . Poets (meaning artists) help give voice to the vernacular forms, styles, and values by which a society grounds itself in its own deep nature (Snyder 2004: 44). Artists are the conduits for integrating meaning. This is in alignment with the Okanagan worldview, and perhaps Neolithic culture. The Pulitzer prize-winning poet, anthropologist, and Zen Buddhist, Gary Snyderwho has spent many years living with indigenous peoples in diverse bioregions around the globe describes the affinities, both East and West, between the shaman and song (and, indigenous visual artist or scribe). The philosopher and the poet-yogin both have standing, not too far behind them the shaman, with his or her pelt and antlers or various other guises, and with songs going back to the Pleistocene and before. The shaman speaks for wild animals, the spirits of plants, the spirits of mountains, of watersheds. He or she sings for them. They sing through him. This capacity has been achieved via sensibilities and disciplines. In the shamans world, wilderness and the unconscious become analogous: she who knows and is at ease in one will be a home in the other (Snyder 2004: 50). This expression is much like the Okanagan dream or the memory and imagination that derives from generations living in place, handed down through stories, songs, ceremonies and visual images. [I]f you take a number of strands, hair or twine, place them together and then rub your hands and bind them together, they become one strand. You use this thought symbolically when you make a rope and when you make twine, thread and homemade baskets, and coiled basket(s). That [] indicates we are tied into and part of everything else. It refers to the dream parts of ourselves forming our community, and it implies what our relationships are (Armstrong 2006: 36).

Gary Snyder (1995: 50-51) explains that the convergence of many ancient religious and shamanistic lines produces the western lore of the muse. In fact, singing comes very close to being a sort of meditation in its own right; some recent research holds that song is a right-hemisphere-of-the-brain function, drawing on the intuitive, creative, nonverbal side of human consciousness. Since speech is a left-hemisphere function, poetry (word and song together) is surely a marriage of the two halves.

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe In this way, all acts of living become part of a larger language-identity connected to the interaction with place and indistinguishable from its context. In indigenous or traditional cultures, survival demands that tribal members develop all their sensory faculties and integrate knowing synaesthetically/intuitionally: a simultaneous combination of hearing, smell, tactile perception, and mental recall. These qualities are often referenced in visual expression, as well. Nature requires each life form, including humans, to be responsible and responsive to their natural network. Inevitable death is always at hand as grist for the expressive mill, and vital mulch for a fertile future. Nature abides and all life is sacred and in flux, deriving and providing nourishment through generations, often powerfully encoded in glyphic repetition. It is often difficult for a citizen of the 21st century to comprehend that living collaboratively in a tribal group and in symbiosis with a place results in a very different concept of self or ego; that identity is allocated to the larger group, considered equally with its natural context rather than focused on ones separate individuality. Me and mine are subsumed into a larger context of ours. This has a practical function for nature-based cultures. Calling attention to oneself in nature unbalances the harmony of the contextual relationship and could jeopardize the welfare of all. As one indigenous friend commented, If you draw attention to yourself in the woods, you might become someone elses dinner. Athabaskans from North America believe dishonesty, deception and immodesty can also compromise the delicate balance of the human/nature relationship. North American indigenous hunters modestly understate or disguise the sighting or capturing of animals for food to avoid upsetting the spirit world. Rather than depicting realistic images with detailed descriptions of actual objects, an abstract glyph can both catalyze shared meaning, and protect against alienation of the spirits in Nature or the emergence of egoism. Indigenous hunters believe that the animal gives itself to them. It must therefore be returned to the spirits and its body must be treated with respect, every part eaten or used according to established practice and ritual. Killing is not for sport, but for survival (Nelson 1983). Communalism and Compassion: Having one covering like a blanket These codes of conduct are passed down through time as pictorial marks and/or stories, rich in visual and oral analogies, told to children and repeated by generation after generation. Long winter nights are spent around the warmth of a communal hearth, telling and listening to ancient stories, playing games based on visual and verbal analogy derived from things experienced in nature, and sharing clan connections to remember ancestry and recognize other distant family members who marry into other kinship lines (Snyder 2004). Armstrong explains, The word we use to mean community loosely translates to having one covering, like a blanket; communing signifies sharing and bonding. Communicating signifies the transfer and exchange of information. The Okanagan word close in meaning to communing is the way of creating compassion for. We use it to mean the physical acts we perform (in everyday acts of living) to create the internal capacity to bond (Armstrong 2006: 38-39). In a similar way, the objects used in Neolithic communities were very probably used for communing rather than simply exchanging information. This provides a shared emotional response to the events of the world or sharing the same skin (Armstrong 2006: 39), as in the Lepenski Vir humanized fish objects cited before. We would call this Neolithic example anthropomorphic with an emphasis on the human anthro because it fuses human and fish qualities. In fact, the indigenous reading would be ichthyanthropomorphic with the fish and human qualities viewed as equal. This communion may be passed on through time using dynamic mnemonic devices such as rhymes, symbols, verbal analogy, and glyphic codes derived from shared knowledge, experience and history lived in a particular geographic region and observed across generations. Such empirical knowledge yields a deeply intimate, intuitive connection to all life in a location through time that becomes part of the warp and weft of an enduring nature-based cultural fabric. For centuries people lived embedded in the flux and flow of nature rather than perceiving themselves outside of it or superior to it as we do today. Moreover, deep experience, itself, can yield transcendent, universal experience, but only if one has been properly prepared. In a culture that seeks immediate gratification some no longer appreciate or understand the nature of the slow accretion of deep transformative knowledge or the universal significance of things experienced in nature through time. For them there is little sense of deep time or the abiding patterns of animals, like birds that have been migrating, following a genetic clock, along the same fly-ways for more than a million years. In ancient or indigenous land-based cultures oral or visual reference often carries with it the quality of sustainability and predictability, viewed as a seasonal ritual. People believe that to live without this deep understanding and 107

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe reverence of all aspects of place is to be dehumanized and that without it humanity cannot survive (Armstrong 2006: 38). Reading Neolithic Poetic/Visual Analogies Reference to the animate world and the meaning behind stories and the collective power of natural images deepens with ones primary experience of nature and its elements. In a specific place viewed through the trajectory of time this sense of being part of a larger timeless continuity and negotiating the natural world is often encoded in potent signs or markers that catalyze remembrance of the cultural consonants. People of good will who cannot see a reasonable mode of either listening to, or speaking for, nature except by analytical and scientific means must surely learn to take this complex, profound, moving, and in many ways highly appropriate worldview of the yogins, shamans, and ultimately all our ancestors into account. One of the few modes of speech that gives us access to that other yogic or shamanistic view (in which all are one and all are many, and the many are all precious) is poetry or song (Snyder 1974). In this context, we also find marks and signs and the visual equivalents of the oral practices, equally potent and essential to millennia of ritual and ceremony in which humans acknowledge and return to nature the energy and celebration of living that they derive from it. Our artistic expressions are encapsulations of deep meaning and gifts we return in response to our experience of life. It must have been so in the Neolithic, too. In attempting to read meaning into the marks and signs of ancient cultures, cairns, visual poems and archaeological trail markers in clay and paint are often all that is left to us. It is helpful to become conscious of the social narratives we carry within us but often fail to recognize. These have been imposed on our psyches by our contemporary assumptions and conditioning. The methodologies and disciplines for parsing the past derive from the mono-dimensional neo-colonial mindsets of nineteenth and twentieth century hierarchical scientific thinking that assumes the Descartian view that man is separate from and superior to nature. Few scientists come to their disciplines with open minds and the deep, primary experience of living indigenous culturestheir geographic locations, or cross-cultural understanding of oral traditions, signlanguage communication, comparative religion, linguistics, folk mythology, dance history, textile patterns, earth sciences, etc. Nor have they spent years actively experiencing the complex interrelationships of the bioregions from which ancient and indigenous artifacts are derived. These experiences are crucial to the meaning of context, and must be considered in an effort to recognize the cultural humus that produces marks and signs as ritual or ceremonial expressions of gratitude and acknowledgement of a transcendent, inclusive nature-based divine. Marija Gimbutas was a rare individual who found deep meaning in the past. Her humility, broad background in diverse cultural expressions and generational experience of the ancient roots of her familys geographic place gave her a unique insight into the cultural past of her ancestors across time. Science alone, while valuable for purposes of identification, is not always adequate when seeking deeper cultural understanding. Survival, Compassion and Reverence: Lessons for Today Hierarchical, socially materialist mindsets prevent some of us from grasping a multi-dimensional reality and experience that is still accessed by people who reverence all tangible aspects of life and seek to live in harmony and symbiosis with a place they have occupied for centuries. To them it is sacred in its totality, as are they within it. In the West some of us have been diminished as humans because we no longer understand or appreciate how everything in life is interconnected. Increasing natural disasters and the rapid deterioration of ecosystems have precipitated an awareness that is changing the Western view of Nature. Extant indigenous people remind us that each element of a place, down to the smallest creature or plant, occupies an important position in that ecosystem and plays a vital role. The Okanagan believe that Every fish, plant, insect, bird, and animal that disappears is part of me dying. I know all their names, and I touch them with my spirit. I feel it every day, as my grandmother and my father did (Armstrong 2006: 39). The equality of Nature has been largely lost to the Eurocentric world view although remnants of it are found in the Christian concept of What happens to the least of us affects the rest of us. The concept of compassion or reverence of all life requires that we leave our self-focus behind while we become one with 108

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe a larger reality which advocates Eastern ahimsa to cause the least possible damage or harm in every situation. This is the same ethical tenet as the famous nineteenth century message of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce whose people consider the impact of their actions on the seven generations to follow. Given the longevity and collaborative nature of the Neolithic, these trans-generational values must undoubtedly also have applied. Ancestral Patterns and Parallel Worlds

Figure 2: Ceramic jar with birds from Grasshopper Pueblo, Anasazi, Southwestern USA.

Figure 3: Stylized patterns of migrating birds from Anasazi pottery, 13th-14th centuries, AD (after Kessel 2003). Some believe our history lives deeply within our cellular structure and can be known, but for many it can no longer be accessed. Migratory birds, like the Sand Hill cranes travel thousands of miles following innate ancestral patterns passed down from generation to generation for a million years or more. They were watched by people along their transcontinental routes each year who marked the seasonal time by their 109

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe reliable passage, as sure as the turning of the constellations in the heavens through which they flew. These people skillfully incorporated the behavior of animals into their lore assimilating them as part of their identity. For example, for the Anasazi of the Southwestern U.S., bird imagery was popular in their pottery decoration for centuries. Karen Kessel, using symmetry analysis to study this imagery, has found that migratory birds are represented in a reflective, bi-fold pattern that indicates their seasonal movement, as found on the jar with birds in medallions from Grasshopper Pueblo (Figure 2). See also the Southwest Bird Pattern Chart (Figure 3). Her study found that the depictions of domestic birds Anasazi pottery from the 13th and 14th centuries occurred in a random and isolated fashion, rather than the patterned repetitions of migratory birds (Kessel 2003.) Such subtle distinctions would be understood by a culture aware of the inherent habits of their animal brothers and sisters. They would be coded appropriately as tribute to them and as confirmation of their calendrical function in pottery, weaving and painting. Hogan describes what it is to have tribal lineage: [M]y tribal identity has always been chasing after me, to keep its claims on my body and heart. I cant escape and be whole and real. As if I am the lung and it is the air breathing me in and out like waves of the ocean, rhythms and cycles of wind. It is the blood; Im just the container. It is the ocean. It carries me and I float. It is something Native people can never explain to those who dont know it, and I have given up trying to do so. As with life, as with water, attempts to explain it slip through fingers and minds. I only know that the heart and the mind are created by culture, past and present. []Ive concluded over the years that the two ways, Native and European, are almost impossible to intertwine, that they are parallel worlds (Hogan 2001: 27). At a Writers Conference in Sitka, Alaska several years ago, an Inuit living in the Baranof Island Chain commented that anthropologists would fly in for an afternoon to interview one or two local natives to write short pieces on Eskimo life for a popular journal. When they stayed for a day, they were writing a scholarly article for an academic journal. And if they came for a week, they were gathering information to write a book on native culture. In the hurry to chart, graph, identify, sort and catalogue the past it is good to pause and to reflect on its long pathway into the present. To find deep meaning, it is helpful to identify and embody that profound spiritual dimension which accompanied the making of special objects in the remote past; to recognize and assume our place as part of that millions-of-years old world that continues to nourish us today. Our Neolithic ancestors must also have acknowledged and merged with this river of existence through song, ritual, ceremony, and glyphic marks. Nature as metaphor and Natures hybridsbird/humans, fish/humans, and other anthropomorphic deities and beingswere found in rhythmic chants, glyphs and songs. Animal sounds, behavior patterns, and interactions were mimicked in rituals and ceremonies, dance patterns and sacred marks. Expressed visually as signs, figures, costumes and marks, these visual metaphors were tributes to a larger divinity in Nature. Enacting the Past: The Trtria Tablets, a ritual interpretation

Figure 4: Trtria tablet, c. 5300 BC (after Gimbutas 1982:88, fig. 43a). An older woman illuminated by a full moon, wise with years and experience stands under a night sky contemplating the sacred object she fashioned years before to encode the secrets of her tribe and affirm their 110

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe connection to their placethe stars and planets in the heavens above her, the rivers and streams, trees, flowers and plants, earth, wind, moon and sun of which her body is a part. Suspended on a cord between her breasts, she cradles the tablets in her hand as she has done for so many seasons before. She knows intimately the sacred characters that fall into harmonic, seasonal place in this intimate position. Her reading is the reverse of what we, in the remote future, see. The narrow tablet covers the sacred code of the object below (Figure 4; see Lazarovici and Merlini 2008). Representing her tribe across time, she holds it lovingly, up close to her fading eyes. Once again she merges with the transcendent meaning of the sacred glyphs. Tracing their outline with her eyes, she chants quietly, moving her body in rhythmic pulses merging with the sounds and soul of the night, in harmony with the heavens. The characters fluoresce in her expanded consciousness with the energy of years of liminal experience. She becomes one with the history, hopes, dreams, desires and powers of the sacred trees, birds, fish, clouds, winds and other beings of nature; the vital energy of her beloved bioregion, the sun and phases of the moon, the cycling of the stars that watch over and mark the phases of life in this place. This will be her last ritual interaction. Soon she will become a part of the sacred soil of place that will nurture life to come. We can imagine that she sees into the future, to us gathered together here in the 21st century, connected to her by thought and memory. Her sacred tablets now function as trail markers to guide us to her wisdom and ritual energy, like a glyphic arrow shot through time. To experience the energy, exchange, and wisdom of the Neolithic, we too, could step outside what we think we know to become one with the intrinsic flux and flow of these ecosystems of the past. To honor this process and its ancestors we might ask extant indigenous cultures who understand these nature-driven realities to help us parse the glyphs of the past to hear these remarkable objects speak across time. Susan MOULTON (USA) Sonoma State University Rohnert Park, California E-mail: suzmoulton@yahoo.com

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REFERENCES ARMSTRONG Jeannette. 2006. Paradigm Wars: Indigenous Peoples Resistance to Globalization. Edited by J. Mander and Victoria Tauli-Corpuz. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books. BURTYNSKY Edward. Industrial Landscape: Discarded Tires. www.edwardburtynsky.com. GIMBUTAS Marija. 1982. The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 6500-3500 BC. Myths and Cult Images. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. ______1989. The Language of the Goddess. San Francisco: Harper & Row. HAARMANN Harald. 2008. The Danube Script and its Legacy: Literacy as a Cultural Identifier in the Balkanic-Aegean Convergence Zone. In J. Marler, ed., 2008: 61-76. HAARMANN Harald, Joan MARLER. 2008. Reflections on the Origins of the Danube Script and its Role in the Neolithic Communities of Early Agriculturalists. In J. Marler, ed., 2008: 3-9. HAYS Kelley Ann, 1992. Anasazi Ceramics as Text and Tool: Toward a Theory of Ceramic Design Messaging. Tucson: University of Arizona Doctoral Dissertation. HOGAN Linda 2001. The Woman Who Watches Over the World. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. KESSEL Karen. 2003. Tracking Birds in Western Anasazi Ceramics of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. Masters Thesis. Rohnert Park: Sonoma State University. KOZLOWSKI Janusz K. 1992. LArt de la Prhistoire en Europe Orientale. Milan: Presses du CNRS. LAZAROVICI Gheorghe, Marco MERLINI. 2008. New Information and the Role of the Trtria Discoveries. In J. Marler, ed., 2008: 39-76. MARLER Joan, ed. 2008. The Danube Script: Neo-Eneolithic Writing in Southeastern Europe. Exhibition catalogue. Casa Altemberger, Brukenthal National Museum, May 18-June 5, 2008. Sebastopol: Institute of Archaeomythology. NELSON Richard. 1983. Make Prayers to the Raven: A Koyukon View of the Northern Forest. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. REID J. Jefferson and Stephanie Whittlesey, 1999. Grasshopper Pueblo: A Story of Archaeology and Ancient Life (Tucson: University of Arizona Press). SHANKS Michael. 1992. Experiencing the Past: On the Character of Archaeology. London: Routledge Press. SNYDER Gary. 1974. Unpublished lecture. Conference on the Rights of the Nonhuman. Claremont, California. _____1977. The Old Ways. San Francisco: City Lights Books. ______2004. The Practice of the Wild. Shoemaker & Hoard. ______1995. A Place in Space: Ethics, Aesthetics and Watersheds. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint Press. SREJOVI Dragoslav. 1972. Europes First Monumental Sculpture: New Discoveries at Lepenski Vir. London: Thames & Hudson. WASHBURN Dorothy. 1983. Symmetry Analysis of Ceramic Design: Two Tests of the Method on Neolithic Material from Greece and the Aegean. In Structure and Cognition in Art. Dorothy Washburn, Editor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. WINN Shan M. M. 2008. The Danube (Old European) Script. Ritual Use of Signs in the Balkan-Danube Region c. 5200-3500 B.C. Journal of Archaeomythology 4: 126-142.

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THE DANUBE SCRIPT AND THE OLD EUROPEAN GODDESS: THE INTERSECTION OF LANGUAGE, ARCHAEOLOGY, AND RELIGION Miriam Robbins DEXTER (USA) Abstract: Building upon the theory that the Danube (Old European) Script was used for religious, rather than economic, purposes, this paper discusses the fact that the Scriptthe earliest form of writing yet discoveredstands at the intersection of the earliest written language, archaeology, and religion/myth. Although many of the symbols of this script cannot be interpreted with certainty, this paper theorizes that one of the core symbols of the Script, the Vindeed one of the most productive symbols in the Danube Script, in terms of the multiplicity of diacriticscan indeed be interpreted; this paper relates it to the female pubic triangle, to excavated Neolithic and Chalcolithic female figures from Southeast Europe and elsewhere, and to early historic iconography and text. Another symbol, the Mperhaps related to the W, or double V may well symbolize the position taken in magical dance. Keywords: Goddess, Old European, signs, figurines, myth, dance, frog, symbolism. Introduction The Danube Script offers the earliest evidence of a place where archaeology, language and mythor archaeology, language and religionintersect. Along with many others, I theorize that the Danube Script was used for religious, rather than economic, purposes (see, e.g., Haarmann 1995: 28 ff, 77 ff.; Haarmann 2008: 38; Gimbutas 1974: 85 ff; 1999: 50). If so, then meanings of the symbols have religion and myth at their core. The word is Greek, and, in Greek, it means word, speech, fact, matter, saying, tale, fiction, and, finally, legend or myth (Liddell and Scott 1961: 1151). There is no implication here about the truth or falsity of a myth. According to Webster's Third International Dictionary, myth is a story that is usually of unknown origin and at least partially traditional, that ostensibly relates historical events usually of such character as to serve to explain some practice, belief, institution, or natural phenomenon, and that is especially associated with religious rites and beliefs (Webster 1968:1497). So, we may connect myth with religion. Mythology is the study of myth, from + , word + , a Greek abstract ending; o means study of. The Greek philosopher Plato, in the Laws, first used the word o to indicate storytelling (Liddell and Scott 1961:1151). As defined by Webster (1968:1497), mythology is a body of myths, as 1) the myths dealing with the gods, demigods, and legendary heroes of a particular people in stories that involve supernatural elements. Thus a myth is usually a story which has a deity or many deities as its characters. The myths tell us of what is divine. What may be myth, or made-up stories to one person may be religion, that is, spiritual truth, to another. Each mythological or religious system has great importance for the society or facets of society which it serves. The V and the M The Danube Script gives evidence of signs of religious context. The interrelated signs of the V and the M (I believe they are interrelated both in their physical form and in their meaning, since the M can be composed of two upside-down Vs) provide the basis for many signs of the Old European / Danubian Script found on human and human-animal figures, pots, and tablets. The Wtwo Vs or an upside-down Min form, may be closely related to the M. Although we cannot know with certainty the meaning of the W, it may have been related to the meaning of the M, as well. Shortened from a triangle into a V, expanded by means of diacritics, the V may have as its base the magical and enlarged vulva of the female figures who were excavated by the thousands from Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites throughout prehistoric Europe and Anatolia (see Gimbutas 1989, 1991, 1999). A characteristic of many of these female figures is a magical display. This figure continued to be depicted in iconography and text into the early historic periodagain throughout Europe, the Near East, and 113

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe even into the Far East.1 Again, the deep meaning of the V, I believe, is the pubic triangle of the divine feminine. As happens with writing systems, meaning can vary from the concrete to the abstract. One expects abstraction when there are multiple forms of a symbol with diacritics. However, I believe that the core of deep meaning would have remained within each symbol. The M Marija Gimbutas associated the M with birthing and with the frog goddess as life regenerator (Gimbutas 1999:46). Vassil Nikolov, writing on the semantics of Neolithic altars, discusses what is expressed by both the form and the ornamentation of Neolithic altars. He discusses the deeply incised V on altars, comparing this symbol to the iconography of the lower part of upright female figures of the same time period. He also discusses the M figures, both figurines and altars (Nikolov 2009). We can add many figures to that category, and we can attempt an analysis of the M. The M-figures are a particular type of display figure. These female figures, as we saw, date to the earliest Neolithic and beyond, and they either crouch to display prominent genitals or present themselves in a stylized, magical dance or stance. M-figures such as the frog may also represent birthingas we will discuss shortly. Display Figures For many thousands of years, female figures have been depicted in a shamanic stance or magical dance with one or both arms raised, and crouching or standing on one leg. Often the female figure is nude, displaying a large, magical vulva. A variant of this sort of figure is a class of female figure often termed display figures in which the magical female crouches and displays her vulva. Probably the earliest female display figure dates to the aceramic, pre-agricultural Neolithic, no later than 8000 BCE. It has been found in level II of the southeast Anatolian site of Gbekli Tepe; the figure is carved in an area between pillars containing depictions of felines. The correlation of goddess and feline has been consistent for thousands of years (see Dexter Forthcoming). The Gbekli Tepe figure is crouching, and her arms and legs are bent. Her bent legs frame a clearly depicted vulva with enlarged labia. Her breasts hang on either side of her body. The excavator, Klaus Schmidt, sees this as more likely a readiness for coitus than a rendition of a birthing scene (Schmidt 2006: 235 ff., fig. 104).2 He does not discuss the magical, shamanistic character of this female figure, nor does he seem to know that there are correlates throughout Western as well as Eastern cultures. This figure demonstrates the huge, preternatural power of the vulva, as well as the magical qualities of the shamanistic dance.3 One can easily see the M in the position of the legs. Gbekli Tepe seems to have been a purely ritual site, since no evidence of habitation, such as ovens or fireplaces, has been found (Schmidt 2000: 46, 230-32). The structuresround megalithic buildingscontain pillars on which are carved reliefs of many animals, including the aforementioned felines, probably lions, as well as snakes and boars. In Lepenski Vir, in the Iron Gates region of the Danube River, there are several female fishsculptures (copies may be seen in the Lepenski Vir Museum). One, dating to 6800 BCE, is crouching; her arms reach down to grasp a deeply incised vulva. Near the hands one can see two knobs, which represent breasts.4 There is a strikingly similar figure from the Tarxien megalithic site in Malta (Gh. Lazarovici 2003: 74, Table 16.8), and another display figure from the Hagar Qim megalithic site, also in Malta (Gh. Lazarovici 2008, Table 4b; see also Gimbutas 1991: 224, fig.7.2, H 7 cm); these date to the fourth
1

For female figures which are both ferocious and erotic, see Dexter and Mair 2005. See also Dexter and Mair, Forthcoming. 2 Schmidt (2006) discusses various highly sexualized representations, particularly from North Africa, and he believes that the crouching Gbekli Tepe female is of the same type. He does not mention any comparative figures such as Sheela na gigs from Western societies, and he does not think of the display as a source of power. I am grateful to Harald Haarmann for discussing Schmidts interpretations with me. 3 Schmidt (2006: 237) compares Gbekli Tepe to the contemporaneous site of Neval ori, which includes among its artifacts a figure im fliegenden Lauf, which Schmidt interprets as a dancer. If this is the magical dance, then the figure may represent a religiosity similar to that indicated by the crouching female figure of Gbekli Tepe. 4 These are published in Gimbutas 1989: 260, figures 407-408; they date to ca. 6500 BCE.

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe millennium BCE. The Hagar Qim display figure has one arm raised and one arm down,5 thus connecting the display with the dance. This figure is in a birthing position; nonetheless, the position of the hands her left hand pointing to her head and her right hand pointing to her vulva renders it shamanic. There is quite a difference between this figure, which has a magical hand position, and a figure from Achilleion II, early Sesklo, which is in a birthing posture (Gimbutas 1991: 224, fig. 7-1.2, 6300-6200 BCE). One finds very similar figures in China, dating to the Machang period, ca. 3000 BCE (see Dexter and Mair 2005). In some figures, such as a female figure with a huge vulva from Bulgaria, dating to the Early Neolithic, the vulva is the center of gravity and the center of attention. 6 The breasts are not even indicated, because the vulva allows us to determine her gender with clarity. Her arms are stumpy and her face is undifferentiatedagain, because the center of focus is the vulva. Another figure from Bulgaria, dating to the Chalcolithic, also has a huge vulva, stumpy arms, no indication of breasts, but with markings on the face and body. There is continuity of these figures through several millennia. The huge vulva is often in complementary distribution with depicted breasts, because as indicator of the femininefertility or nurturanceonly one of the two is really necessary. However, some figures do contain indication of both breasts and vulva; in this case, both may be of normal size, rather than magically huge; thus a marble Early Neolithic figure found near Sparta (ca. 6000 BCE).7

Figure 1: Marble pregnant Cycladic figure, 2800-2300 BCE (courtesy British Museum, no. GR 1932-1018.1; photo by G. L. Dexter). Dating to a couple of thousand years later are the Cycladic figures found in the British Museum (as well as in many other museums);8 these have knobby breasts and huge pubic triangles. Although these are stiff white nude figuresdemarked by Marija Gimbutas as death figures and found in a burial contextyet one of the Cycladic figures in the British Museum collection is pregnant,9 denoting life out of death (Figure 1). In the Sumerian epic poem, the Descent of Inanna, dating to the third millennium BCE, the GreatGoddess of life, Inanna, descends to the Underworld to visit her sister, the Goddess of the Great Below, Ereshkigal. Ereshkigal fixes upon Inanna the eye of death and she hangs Inanna from a meat hook. When the tiny kurgarru and galatur go down to the Underworld to try to rescue Inanna, they come upon Ereshkigal, death personified, in the process of giving birth. The mother giving birth to infancy, Ereshkigal [. . .] She has hair on her head like leeks. She says, Ohhhhh! my insides! 10
See Marazov 2000: 116 for an example of women depicted in this position on a Thracian silver rhyton from Poroina. 6 Stara Zagora Museum. 7 National Museum, Athens (NM 3928). For an illustration, see Warren 51. 8 Cf. the marble Cycladic figurine, British Museum (no. A17 1863.2-13.1), 2800-2300 BCE. 9 Cf. the marble pregnant Cycladic figure, British Museum (no. GR 1932-10.181), 2800-2300 BCE. 10 Sumerian Fragment. The Sumerian text (in English) is in Kramer 1963: 511, lines 227-228; 232-233 (all translations in this paper are by the author): Ama-gan-a nam-dumu-ne-ne-
5

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The tiny creatures empathize with Ereshkigal in her birth pangs, and she grants them a boonin this case the body of the goddess Inanna which hangs upon the peg. Inanna is enabled to ascend to the Upper World once again. The process is a cyclic one, the Great Round, with birth and life cycling into death, which then cycles into Rebirth. That is, the tomb, the place of death, is also the womb, from whence all life issues (see Gimbutas 1991: 243, 1999: 55-71).11 The M and the Dance Petroglyphs incised into a mountain at Kangjiashimenzi, near Qutubi, East Central Asia, dating to ca. 1000 BCE, depict dancing female figures (cf. Wang Bing-Hua 1990, fig. 7; see Dexter and Mair 2005: 103, fig. 7). These very strongly resemble earlier dancing female figures depicted on Romanian pots from the Vina Culture, dating to ca. 4000 BCE (C-M Lazarovici 2008, figs. 9-13).12 In the dance position, one or both arms are raised and the legs either mirror the armsthat is, legs bent at the knees, one leg up and one leg downor the legs are in an M-position. The dance represented may be a ritualthat is, religiousdance. This bent-knee or Knielaufen position is characteristic of many female figures, from the Neolithic era through the Classical age. On a pot from Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, dating to the Early Neolithic, there is a figure with arms extended and then hanging at the elbows; the legs are spread.13 This is a magical position. Two potsherds from the same site, 14 also dating to the early Neolithic, also demonstrate this position; clearly, the depicted figures are taking part in a magical dance. A potsherd from the Bulgarian Karanovo site depicts an anthropomorphic figure which has one arm up and one arm down, again, a magical dance position. Similar figures have been found in Romania. A figure excavated by Cornelia-Magda Lazarovici demonstrates this magical dance (C-M Lazarovici 1992: 308, fig. 2),15 as does a Vina B figure from Zorlenu Mare, Romania (4300-4200 BCE), excavated by Gheorghe Lazarovici (2008: 98, fig. 4c). In the Palatul Culturii Museum in Iai, Romania, one finds decoration in the form of a human figure with arms raised. There are so many female figures portrayed in the magical dance position, throughout Neolithic Central and Southeast Europe, that one may draw the conclusion that this magical (or shamanistic) dance may well be an important part of the Neolithic religions in (at least) that part of the world. The Frog and the M The frog, a symbol of fertility, birth-giving, and rain, also can take the shape of an M, as is illustrated by a frog figure from Neolithic Achilleion, dating to ca. 6300 BCE.16 To this one may compare the frogwoman from Haclar excavated by James Mellaart.17 Frog-figures are depicted on a potsherd and a pot from Prague, Czech Republic, dating to the Neolithic.18 That this position has religious significance is underscored by Vassil Nikolov, who discovered the grave of a young woman, buried in Slatina-Sophia, Bulgaria, in this frog position (Nikolov 2009.). Burials are a religious phenomenon, because if one buries a body with care they are readying it for a spiritual afterlife.

ere-ki-gal-la-ke4... sg-ni-garasar-gim sag-g-na mu-un-tuku-tuku -u8 a--mu dug4-ga-ni. 11 See Marler (2002: 19) on Medusa as representative of the great round of birth, death, and rebirth. 12 Similar figures have been found throughout the Middle Neolithic of Southeastern Europe and elsewhere (see e.g., Gimbutas 1989: 239-243). 13 Stara Zagora Museum. 14 Stara Zagora Museum. 15 For the dating, see C-M Lazarovici 1995: 228: Cucuteni A-3, Scnteia, C-M Lazarovici, excavator (4300-4050 BCE). 16 See Gimbutas 1989: 252, fig. 388 for this Early Sesklo black stone amulet from Achilleion 1b, Thessaly. 17 Anatolian Civilizations Museum, Ankara, Turkey. 18 National Museum, Prague, Czech Republic.

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Figure 2: Colossal Figure from Tarxien, Malta. Only her torso and legs are extant (photo by M. R. Dexter). The M as the Body of the Goddess The M can be the body of the Goddess. At the Tarxien temple in Malta there is a colossal statue of a female figure, dating to ca. 3300-2500 BCE (Figure 2). Although the upper body is missing, the lower body and legs resemble the trilithons of the Maltese temples through which one enters the body of the Goddess, to the holy of holies, the womb, the place of rebirth (Figures 3-4). It is the womb, center of the whole life cycle, which is important here. The lower body of the Goddess makes a stylized M.

Figure 3: Trilithons in Mnajdra, Malta (photo by M. R. Dexter). 117

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Figure 4: The model of a temple engraved onto a standing stone at the entrance to Mnajdra central temple, Malta (photo J. Marler). The trilithon entrance strongly resembles the lower body and legs of the colossal Tarxien figure. Early Historic Display Figures Depiction of the sacred Display continues for several more millennia. Dating to the Greek Classical Age, a particularly beautiful figure of Medusa, the Medusa from the Gorgo Pediment found in Corfu (Figure 5), is in the crouching, or Knielaufen, position.19 Although she is not actually doing a display but more of a magical dance there is an Etruscan figure of Medusa wherein the Gorgon is in a full crouch, indeed displaying her vulva.20 Her legs form an M. She crouches between two felines, continuing an interrelationship of female figures and felines which begins at least in the pre-Neolithic era in Anatolia.21

Figure 5: Gorgon on the pediment of the Artemis Temple, Corfu, 590-580 BCE. The Medusa on this pediment is nine feet tall; her waist is cinched with serpents, with snakes in her hair. She appears with a lion and with her children, Pegasus and Chrysaor (courtesy of Kekyra Archaeological Museum; photo by G. L. Dexter).
19 20

Gorgon Pediment, Artemis Temple, Corfu, 590-580 BCE. Etruscan Gorgon with animals, Munich, Alte Pinakothek, 540-530 BCE (in Devereux 1983). 21 See above, on Gbekli Tepe. Female figures are connected with felines at Ctlhyuk and other sites in Anatolia as well, and the relationship continues in early historic Mesopotamia (see Dexter and Mair forthcoming; Dexter 2009).

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe In the early historic British Isles and Ireland one finds display figures as well: the Sheela na gigs, which are built into the walls of castles and churches. A most interesting Sheela na gig, in terms of the magical stance, is the Kiltinan Sheela na gig, who stands on one foot with her left hand lifted to her face (Figure 6). Her knees are bent, in a magical dance. Although there is not a one-to-one correspondencethe Sheelas are nude, and the women in the text is clothed (see Freitag 2004)yet a magical woman in a magical posture such as the Kiltinan Sheela na gig may be reflected in the Old Irish text, The Destruction of Da Dergas Hostel. In this text, there is an old woman whom the Irish king Conaire, in his decline, rejects at the door of a hostel. We are told that a bad omen for King Conaire appears at the inn where he is staying: first a crude, ugly man and then a woman of huge mouth, big, dark, a trouble, ugly, came after him. Thereafter, even if her snout were thrown upon a branch it would remain sticking to it. Her lower lip [i.e., her labia] extended to her knee.22 Then, close to the time of King Conaire's death, a lone woman appears at the hostel after sunset, asking to be admitted into the house. Each of her two shins was as long as a weavers beam. They were as black as a beetles back. A dusky, very wooly cloak about her. Her lower (pubic) hair extended to her knee. Her lips [were] upon the side of her head.23

Figure 6: Kiltinan Sheela na gig, Fethard, Co. Tipperary, Ireland (photo courtesy of J. Kenny www.fethard.com). The lone woman stands near the hostel door. She leans against the doorpost and, from the door, upon

The Destruction of Da Dergas Hostel (Togail Bruidne Da Derga). The Old Irish text is from Knott 1963. Also see Stokes 1901-1902, Section 38, lines 354-356: ...ben blmar mr dub duabais dochraid ina diaid. Ca fo-certa didiu a ssrb ar gsce fo-lilsad. Tacmaicead a bl chtarach co a gln. 23 The Destruction of Da Dergas Hostel, Old Irish text (Knott 1963: 61, lines 537-541: oc cuindchid a llicthi isa thech [sic]. Sithir cloideb ngarmnai ceachtar a d lurcan. Batir dubithir dethaich [Stokes: druim ndil]. Brat rabach rolmar impi. Tacmaicead a fs in t-chtarach co rrici a glin. A beil for leith a cind.

22

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe one leg and holding up one hand,24 she utters prophecies to the inhabitants of the hostel. Although she is grotesque, this woman nonetheless embodies the erotic. King Conaire asks her, What is your desire? That, therefore, which is a desire to you yourself, says the woman. It is taboo for me, says Conaire, to receive a company [of] one woman after the setting of the sun.25 In other words, Conaire is sexually attracted to the woman, but it is taboo for him to sleep with her. Not only is this magical woman that is, goddess in the magical dance position taken by the Kiltinan Sheela na gig; she also has a huge mouth, similar to those of two other Sheela na gigs, the Moate and the Cavan.26 Further, the Cavan Sheela na gig has a huge vulva which hangs down below her knees. The young king, Conaire, thus sexually rejects the goddess (see Dexter and Goode 2002; Goode and Dexter 2000), who is a form of the shape-changing divine feminine. By rejecting her, he has sealed his fate: just as importantly as his breaking of other taboos, he has broken the taboo of the goddess, that she be welcomed and not rejected (sexually or otherwise). Because of this, Conaire will lose his kingdom and his life. Sheela na gigs also served an apotropaic function. Thus, the Sheelas on the walls of churches and castles protect the entrances to those powerful and often sacred places. The most powerful and sacred place of all, as depicted by the Sheela, is the vulva of the goddess. Female display figures such as the Sheela na gigs represented the life continuum: birth, death, and rebirth, as well as the phases of an individual life (see Dexter 1990: 160-183). They could be young or old, since they were shape-changers, but they were still erotic as well as fierce. 27

Figure 7: Figure of the goddess Kl dancing on her consort, Shiva (courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art). The Dance of the Goddess Today The magical dance of the goddess continues to this day. In Hindu religion, one finds the ferocious and erotic dancing Kl (Figure 7). In Buddhist India, Nepal, and Tibet, one finds the dancing Dakns and other shamanistic female figures (see Shaw 2006). Kl, as Shakt or activating energy, dances upon her consort,
24

The Old Irish text is taken from Stokes 1901-1902, Section 62: for en choiss 7 enlim. See otherwise Knott 1963: Section 62, line 562: For nchois 7 oenanil. 25 The Old Irish text is taken from Stokes 1901, Section 63, lines 564-567: Cid as il dait? ol Conaire. A n-as il daitsiu didiu, ol sisi. Is ges damsa, ol Conaire, dm enmn do airitin ar fuin ngrne. 26 For an illustration of the Moate Sheela na gig, see Dexter and Goode 2002: 61; Dexter and Mair 2005: 105, fig. 9. 27 The fierce goddess represented not only the older phase of life of an individual, but also death itself feared mightily by Classical-age and later historical cultures (see Dexter 1997).

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe Shiva, in order to awaken him. So the magical dance is the dance which renews life, epitomized by Kl reenergizing her mate. Finally, the erotic display of the goddess may be found in the Lajj Gaur figures, which bring good fortune to temples throughout India, and which date from the second through the twelfth centuries of this era. In some figures, their heads are represented as lotuses, and in others their heads are snakes. The Lajj Gaurs expose their vulvas by raising their legs. The most basic meaning of the Lajj Gaur figure is that of a brimming vase [of fortune]a prna kumbha; kumbha meaning both pot and womb (Bolon 1992: 1314). Thus, the erotic Lajj Gaurs bring good luck, to the temple and to the devotee. 28 The Lajj Gaurs are different from the male-female Mithuna couples, who represent the sexual act. The former are alone in their display, and not associated with male figures. Conclusion In conclusion, I believe that the V and the M from the Danube Script carry the embedded meaning of the sacrality of the divine womb. Thus, at least some of the characters of the Danubian script provide a locus wherein archaeology, religion and language intersect. The prehistoric artifacts that carry this script whether pots, figurines, or tabletscarry a language of the divine. In particular, the writing on Danubian female figurines is writing on the body of the divine religious figure, the Goddess who gives life, takes it away, and then gives it again, in an eternal dance of the continuity of the life force. Miriam Robbins DEXTER (USA) University of California, Los Angeles, USA Email: mdexter@ucla.edu

28

On the Lajj Gaur figures see Bolon 1992. See also Brown 1990; Donaldson 1975; Sonawane 1988.

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REFERENCES BOLON Carol R. 1992. Forms of the goddess Lajj Gaur in Indian Art. Monographs on the Fine Arts v. 49. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press. BROWN Robert L. 1990. A Lajj Gaur in a Buddhist Context at Aurangabad. The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 13, 2: 1-18. DEVEREUX Georges. 1983. Baubo: La Vulve Mythique. Paris: Jean-Cyrille Godefroy. DEXTER Miriam Robbins. 1990. Whence the Goddesses: A Source Book. New York: Pergamon. Athene Series. ______1997. The Frightful Goddess: Birds, Snakes and Witches. In Varia on the Indo-European Past: Papers in Memory of Marija Gimbutas. Edited by M. R. Dexter and E. C. Polom, 124-154. Journal of IndoEuropean Studies Monograph 19. Washington, D.C.: The Institute for the Study of Man. ______2009. Ancient Felines and the Great-Goddess in Anatolia: Kubaba and Cybele. Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, 2008, Edited by S. Jamison, C. Melchert, and B. Vine. Hempen Verlag. DEXTER Miriam Robbins, and Starr Goode. 2002. The Sheela na gigs: Sexuality, and the Goddess in Ancient Ireland. Edited by M. Condren. Irish Journal of Feminist Studies 4, 2: 50-75. DEXTER Miriam Robbins, and Victor H. Mair. 2005. Apotropaia and Fecundity in Eurasian Myth and Iconography: Erotic Female Display Figures. In Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, 2004. Edited by K. Jones-Bley, A. della Volpe, M. Huld, and M. R. Dexter, 97-121. Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph 50. Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Man. ______Forthcoming: Ferocious and Erotic Eurasian Female Figures. DONALDSON Thomas. 1975. Propitious-Apotropaic Eroticism in the Art of Orissa. Artibus Asiae 37: 75-100. ______Freitag, Barbara. 2004 Sheela na gigs: Unraveling an Enigma. London: Routledge. GIMBUTAS Marija. 1974. The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe, 6500-3500 BC. Myths and Cult Images. Los Angeles: University of California Press ______1989. The Language of the Goddess. San Francisco: Harper & Row. ______1991. The Goddess Civilization. The World of Old Europe. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. ______1999. The Living Goddesses. Edited and supplemented by M. R. Dexter. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. GOODE Starr, and Miriam Robbins Dexter. 2000. Sexuality, the Sheela na gigs, and the Goddess in Ancient Ireland. ReVision 23, 1: 38-48. HAARMANN Harald. 1995. Early Civilization and Literacy in Europe: An Inquiry into Cultural Continuity in the Mediterranean World. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ______2008. The Danube Script and Other Ancient Writing Systems: A Typology of Distinctive Features. Journal of Archaeomythology 4, 1: 12-46. KELLY Eamonn P. 1996. Sheela na gigs: Origins and Functions. Dublin: Country House, Dublin / The National Museum of Ireland. LAZAROVICI Gheorghe. 2003. Pinea, Grul i Rnitul Sacru n Neolitic. Tibiscum XI: 65-86. Caransebe. ______2008. Data Base for Spiritual Life, Signs, and Symbols. In Journal of Archaeomythology 4, 1: 94125. LAZAROVICI Cornelia-Magda Mantu. 1992. Reprezentri antropomorfe pe ceramica aezrii Cucuteni A3 de la Scnteia (jud. Iai). Studii i Cercetri de istorie veche i arheologie 43, 3: 307-315. ______1995. Cteva consideraii privind cronologia absolut a neo-eneoliticului din Romnia. Studii i Cercetri de istorie veche i arheologie 46, 3-4: 213-235. ______2008. Symbols and Signs in Cucuteni-Tripolye Culture. In Journal of Archaeomythology 4, 1: 6593. LIDDELL Henry G., and Robert Scott. 1961 [1st edition 1856]. Greek-English Lexicon. 9th edition. New York: Harper and Brothers. MARLER Joan. 2002. An Archaeomythological Investigation of the Gorgon. ReVision 25, 1: 15-23. NIKOLOV Vassil. 2009. On the Semantics of Neolithic Altars. In Signs of Civilization. Proceedings from the International Symposium on the Neolithic Symbol System of Southeast Europe, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Novi Sad, May 25-29, 2004. Edited by J. Marler and M. R. Dexter. Sebastopol: Institute of Archaeomythology. 122

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe SHAW Miranda. 2006. Buddhist Goddesses of India. Princeton, N.J./Oxford: Princeton University Press. SONAWANE V. H. 1988. Some Remarkable Sculptures of Lajj Gaur from Gujarat. Lalit Kal 23: 2734. WARREN Peter. 1975. The Aegean Civilizations. Series: The Making of the Past. Oxford: Elsevier Phaidon. Websters Third New International Dictionary of the English Language,Unabridged. Springfield, Mass: G. & C. Merriam Co.

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CLAY BREAD AND TABLETS WITH SIGNS AND SYMBOLS CorneliaMagda LAZAROVICI (Romania) Abstract: In this article we intend to analyze some clay objects containing signs and symbols from the CucuteniTripolye cultural complex named as breads as well as tablets. Some of these pieces have been discovered at Scnteia and in other Cucuteni A sites, such as Trueti, Hbeti and Toflea. It is possible that similar pieces also belong to other sites. Pieces from Hbeti seem to be without any sign or symbol, but those from Trueti and Toflea contain these elements. During the Cucuteni B phase such pieces are present only at Ghelieti Nedeia. In the recently published Encyclopedia of Trypillya Civilization (2004), other similar pieces, simple or with signs and symbols, have been presented in a very suggestive way. On this occasion we will focus on the contexts of the discoveries, to analyze the signs and symbols and to sketch some hypotheses related with the use of these sorts of pieces in the CucuteniTripolye cultural complex. Keywords: Clay bread, signs, symbols, Cucuteni. In this article we will analyze some clay objects from the CucuteniTripolye cultural complex named as bread, which might also be interpreted as tablets (C-M Lazarovici 2006). Some of these objects contain signs and symbols. Seven pieces have been discovered at the Copper Age site of Scnteia in northeast Romania (43504200 BC). Three, maybe four of these objects have signs or symbols; six pieces were published without comments (Mantu, urcanu 1999:124-125, catalogue no. 271-276) and one (Figure 1/4) was discovered afterwards (Lazarovici 2006:60-61, fig. 5/1-2). The pieces from Scnteia are small in size, between 2,34,6 cm in diameter (Figures 1/1-8). Related to their discovery, one piece (Figure 1/2-3) was found in House 1 (identified as a sanctuary through inventory) and two pieces were discovered in a rich cult pit, Gr. 21; the other pieces were discovered in a regular context (not in a domestic sanctuary or pit with offerings).

1/1: Scnteia, house 5 (inv. MIMIS 18083), 4,1 cm dia.

1/2-3: Scnteia, house 1 (drawing and photo, inv. MIMIS 18066), 2, 5 cm dia.

1/4: Scnteia, 2,3 cm dia (after Lazarovici 2006:60-61, fig. 5/12).

1/5: Scnteia, Pit 17 (inv. MIMIS 18080), 2,8 cm dia.

1/6: Scnteia, Pit 21 (inv. MIMIS 18081) 3,6 cm dia.

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7-7a: Scnteia, (with an engraved M), Pit 21 (inv. MIMIS 18060) 3 cm dia. Figure 1: Tablets or disks discovered at Scnteia.

1/8: Scnteia, under house 5 (inv. MIMIS 18082) 4,6 cm

Because I am very interested in these sorts of pieces, I have checked all the publications related to this subject for the Cucuteni culture. It is possible that several pieces without decoration, signs and symbols, have not been recorded. Similar pieces have been found at other Cucuteni A sites such as Trueti, Hbeti or Toflea. Similar pieces might also belong to other sites, but these have not come to my attention. Pieces from Hbeti seem to be without any signs or symbols, but those from Trueti and Toflea contain these elements. During the Cucuteni B phase such pieces have been discovered, so far, only at GhelietiNedeia.

2/1: Trueti tablet, 5,2 dia, 1,3 thick (after Petrescu-Dmbovia et al. 1999:104, 540, fig. 381/5).

2/2: Hbeti, 2,2 cm dia (after Dumitrescu et al. 1954: 466, fig. 49/1).

2/3: Hbeti, 3,3 cm dia (after Dumitrescu et al. 1954: 466, fig.49/5).

2/4: Hbeti, 3 cm dia (after Dumitrescu et al. 1954: 466, fig. 49/7).

2/5: Hbeti, 2 cm dia (after (Dumitrescu et al. 1954: 466, fig. 49/8).

2/6: TofleaDealul Tnsoaia tablet, 4 cm, 1,3 thick ( inv. 8680, Muzeul orenesc Tecuci).

2/7: Cucuteni-Cetuia, tablet, 5,4 cm dia, 0,7 cm thick.

2/8: Cucuteni-Cetuia, clay bread (after Schmidt 1932, fig. 37/6) 6,2 cm long, 3,2 cm wide, 2,1 cm thick.

2/9: GhelietiNedeia tablet (after Cuco 1999: 139, fig. 68/10).

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2/10: GhelietiNedeia tablet (after Cuco 1999: 139, fig. 68/13).

2/11: Uivar tablet (after Scharl, Suhrbier 2005).

2/12: Para tablet (discovered by Gh. Lazarovici, unpublished)

2/13: Para tablet (discovered by Gh. Lazarovici, unpublished) Figure 2: Other Cucuteni tablets.

2/14: Para (discovered by 2/15: Zorlen (discovered by Gh. Gh. Lazarovici, Lazarovici, unpublished) unpublished)

We have four pieces from Hbeti attributed to Diverse obiecte/different objects (Dumitrescu et al. 1954: 466, fig. 49/1, 5, 7-8). Their sizes are rather small (see Figures 2/2-5). Two of them have quite round shapes, resembling bread (Figure 2/2-3); others are almost dusty (Figure 2/4-5) having analogies with the pieces from Scnteia (Figure 1/4, 8). From the Cucuteni A level at Trueti, from annex 40 of House LII, comes another circular piece (Figure 2/1) which has margins with festoons (Petrescu-Dmbovia et al. 1999:104, 540, fig. 381/5). The piece is decorated with incisions: three long, on which perpendicularly others are organized in three-four rows (on the first row there are 3; 6 on the second row; 7 on the third one; only 3 on the last row, the piece being broken on these areas). Interpreted as a tablet, the piece is 5,2 cm in diameter and 1,5 cm thick (ibid. 1999:540). This decoration is special and we do not find close analogies in related or neighboring cultural areas. A round disk (Figure 2/6) was discovered in the Cucuteni A site (maybe A2-A3)1 at TofleaDealul Tnsoaia (commune Brheti, Galai district). The disk was not discovered in an archaeological complex in 1967 (information N. Mircea; inv. 8680 at Muzeul orenesc Tecuci). The circular tablet is 4 cm in diameter and 1,3 cm thick. It is made of semifine clay, such as the pieces from Scnteia and Trueti. One of the faces is divided into four quarters by two incised lines. Each quarter contains 5 incisions that join in the center. This piece is very similar to one from Scnteia that is partially destroyed (Figure 1/1) and to those from Okopi (Figure 3/7). Such pieces have not been noticed in Cucuteni A-B phase sites. The other ones are from the Cucuteni B phase, from GhelietiNedeia (Cuco 1999: 139, fig. 68/10, 13) presented by us on another occasion (Lazarovici C.-M. 2006: 60, fig. 6/2-3). After tefan Cuco, two tablets, made of fine clay, were discovered in different houses, no. 8 and 18 (Cuco 1999:139, fig. 68/10). Their diameters are 5,7 cm and 6 cm; both have 1 cm thickness. Cuco presented them as having signs of representation not of communication, relating them with cult practices (Cuco 1999, 139). He finds their analogies in the piece published by Hubert Schmidt at Cucuteni (Cuco 1999:139, note 535; Schmidt 1932:69, pl. 37/6). The closest analogies to the tablet from CucuteniCetuia (Figure 2/7) (Schmidt 1932: 69, fig. 37/6) are represented by the pieces from Scnteia (Figure 1/1) and Toflea (Figure 2/6). We have to specify that the only observation is that the tablet contains only 3 lines that unite as a cross. With these analogies in mind we are tempted to attribute the piece much more to the Cucuteni A level from CucuteniCetuia.

Unpublished excavations made by Marilena Florescu and Nicu Mircea between 1970-1971

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe We consider that these sorts of disks or tablets present analogies with similar pieces from other areas, such as those from Para (Figures 2/12-14) or Uivar (Figure 2/11) (Scharl, Suhrbier 2005, S. 53, Abb. 54) that have signs and symbols. Also at Cucuteni, an oval bread loaf in clay was discovered that is 6,2 cm long, 3,2 cm wide and 2,1 cm thick. It is decorated with three parallel channels and was attributed to the late Cucuteni horizon (Schmidt 1932, fig. 37/6). Other pieces can be interpreted as bread (Figure 3/1-6) (see Eniklopedia Tripolskoi ivilizaii 2004, tom 1, 471), as well as those presented earlier (C-M Lazarovici 2006: 60-61, fig. 6/1, 4-6). In Eniklopedia Tripolskoi ivilizaii, there are other clay similar objects of different dimensions, or some that can be considered as tokens, but we have very little information, as well as data regarding their dimensions or decoration, and the illustrations are very small (Eniklopedia Tripolskoi ivilizaii 2004, tom 1, 470). Only the piece from Maidaneckoe (Figure 3/4, c. 2 x 2, 5 cm) has the surface dived into four sections through two brown/black lines (Eniklopedia Tripolskoi ivilizaii 2004, tom 1, 471). Different authors have written about bread, but we will mention only some of them (Makkay 1984; 1990, fig. 18/2a-c; Gimbutas 1991: 114; Trnka 1992; Gh. Lazarovici 2003a: 72-73, fig. 9-14; 2003b).

3/1: Olexandrivka, bread.

3/2: Bernaivka, bread.

3/3: Luka Vrublevetskaja, bread.

3/4: Maidanetskoje, bread.

3/5-6: Platar collection, bread or tablets?

3/7: Okopi, tablet

3/8: Klicev, maybe bread?

3/9: Suplevac, tablet. tablet. Figure 3: Bread and tablets from the Tripolye area.

3/10: Macedonia,

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe Such tablets or disks, circular in shape without perforation, are present in few numbers even in other cultural areas, so we will point out just some of these. 2 In prehistoric Mesopotamia similar objects have been published by different authors (e.g., Goff 1963; Sabah Abboud Jasim 1985); at atalhyk in Anatolia, recent research mentions seals (Trkcan 2005); some stone objects, or tokens, have been identified in Cyprus, from the Pre-Pottery period, 9-6 millennia BC (Steel 2004: 57, fig. 3.6/2, 4), until the beginning of the Bronze Age (Peltenburg 1982: 55; Pilides 1994: 1-9, who interprets them as weights for fish nets). We believe that this sort of object with signs and symbols might be related to sacred concepts and initiation practicessymbols and signs representing an important step to the appearance of writing (Zalhaas 1995, 56). In the next lines we will focus on the tablet discovered at Scnteia (Figure 1/2-3), which can be associated with the category of en violon idols, such as the piece discovered at Para (Figure 2/14) which has visible similarities. In the upper part of the Scnteia tablet there are several signs that receive a number from our catalogue and our database (Gh. Lazarovici M. Lazarovici: Gh. Lazarovici 2003b). The mentioned signs have analogies with other signs from other pieces. The next tables have been obtained through the investigation of our database (Gh. Lazarovici M. Lazarovici: Gh. Lazarovici 2003b).

_______________________ [NOTE 5] Cult pots with sacred signs, Para P126 (Lazarovici et al. 1 2001: I.2, fig. 51/10). Round tablet, register 1, Karanovo (Schier 2002, II/8). Pot base with signs, Vina culture, Srem (Makkay 1990, 42/24; Trbuhovi, Vailjevi 1983, VIII). Pot fragment with signs, Linear stichband culture (Makkay 1990, fig. 21/j, 24s; Hoffmann 1963:32-4). Pot fragment, Zeus from Turda, Turda group (Roska 1941, 141/6; Makkay1990:11/22.2). Pot base with signs, Turda (Roska 1941:131/44, 46). Idol with signs, Turda (Roska 1941, fig.138/1). 1 1 1 1

For other examples and bibliography see C.-M. Lazarovici 2006.

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe Black disc, Turda (Roska 1941, fig. 128/18; Vlassa 1970: 20, 11; Makkay 1990:15.5-7). Pot fragment with signs, Csapojevka (Makkay 1990, 37/9; Masson, Merpert 1982, LXXXIII). Kurgan graves, fragment with signs; Trpeti spindle whorl; Svetozarevo idol with sacred signs; Para P40 sacred sign, the virgin; generally sacred sign, pregnant woman; Pot base with signs, VracAt pot base with signs; Gradesnica fragment with signs; Turda Tablet; Tangru spindle whorl; Turda small altar; Turda small altar; Vrnik disc or ball; Ghirbom spindle whorl; Dikili Tash small altar; Rudna Glava (Jovanovi 1982, fig. 27; Bnffy 1997: 32/3, 5). Idol with signs,Turda (Roska 1941:141/14) Round plate register 2, Karanovo (Schier 2002, II/8). 1

1 1 1

1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2

1 1

In the lower part of the same tablet from Scnteia we have identify the next signs that can be fiind in other sites too:

Para Para P18 Karanovo Csapojevka Gradesnica

1 1 2

1 1 1 130

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe Para P40 Svetozarevo Tangru Trpeti Turda 138.1 Turda Linear c. stichband Vrac -At C. Vina, Srem Cifer, Pacon Daia Romn Glvnetii Vechi, face b SC tablet Nandru 2 Perieni SC tablet Svetozarevo 2 Ghirbom 1 1 1 1 1 4 2 2 2

1 1 2 1 1 1 1

1 1 1 1 CorneliaMagda LAZAROVICI (Romania) Institute of Archaeology, Iai. E-mail: magdamantu@yahoo.com

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe Annexes A. I. Artefacts that contain the same catalogue number, 49: 1. Ghirbom, tablet or ball from the sanctuary (Aldea 1974, 40-47, fig. 1-4; Gimbutas 1976, 3, Makkay 1990, 19/4a-b). 2. Base of a pot with signs, Srem, Vina C (Makkay 1990, 42/12.1; Trbuhovi, Vailjevi 1983, VIII). II. Other artefacts belonging to different cultures that have the same catalogue number, 49a: 1. Spindle whorl, Romania,Transylvania, Nandru 2 Torma (Vlassa 1970:19; Makkay 1990, 16/1; Winn 1981). Nandru 1, Late Neolithic, Turda gr., Vina C1-C2. 2. Tablet, ex Jugoslavia, Svetozarevo 2 (Winn 1981), Svetozarevo 2, Neolithic, Vina C1 c. 3. Pot base with signs, Neolithic, ex Jugoslavia,Vrac At (Jovanovi 1981:134; Makkay 1990, 35/I.2),Vina C. 4. Pot base with signs, Neolithic, ex Jugoslavia,Vrsac At (Jovanovi 1981:134; Makkay 1990, 35/XVIII.1-2), Vina C. 5. Sacred pot with signs, Romania, Daia Romana (Paul 1992; Gimbutas 1991:8, 7.3), Eneolithic, Petreti A. 6. Pot base with signs, ex Iugoslavia, Srem, Vina c., Srem (Makkay 1990, 42/15.1; Trbuhovi, Vailjevi 1983, VIII), Neolithic,Vina B2/C. 7. Fragment with signs, Germany, Linear stichband (Kaufmann 1976:15; Makkay 1990, 24/ s), Late Neolithic, LBK. 8. Small tablet, tablet, Romania, Moldavia, Perieni (Makkay 1990, 18/70, Neolithic, Starevo-Cri IIIb. 9. Small tablet, tablet, Romania, Moldavia, Glvnetii Vechi, face b (Makkay 1990, 18/8a), Neolithic, Starevo-Cri IIIb. 10. Sacred pot, with signs, Slovacia, Cifer, Pacon (Makkay 1990, 22/7), Eneolithic, Lengyel. 11. Pot base, with signs, Romania,Transylvania, Turda (Roska 1941, 131/43), n, Turda c. III. The sign with catalogue number 49f, can be found too: Tablet from Karanovo (Schier 2002, II/8); IV. Bibliographic list with other artefacts that contain the sign with catalogue number 50: 1. Black disc, Romnia, Transylvania, n, Turda, Turda c. (Roska 1941:128/18; Vlassa 1970:20, 11; Makkay 1990:15.5-7,1). 2. Small tablet, tablet, Romania, Wallachia, Late Neolithic; Tangru; Gumelnia (Marinescu-Blcu after Ursulescu 1998:103, 27/3,1). 3. Round plate, register 1, Neolithic, Bulgaria, Karanovo (Schier 2002, II/8,1). 4. Fragment with signs, Germany, Late Neolithic, Linear stichband, LBK (Kaufmann 1976:15; Makkay 1990, 24/s, 1). 5. Fragment with signs, Germany, Late Neolithic, Linear stichband, LBK (Kaufmann, Makkay 1990, 21/j,1). 6. Fragment with signs, Romania, Moldavia, Late Eneolithic, Csapojevka, Kurgan graves (Makkay 1990: 37/9; Masson, Merpert 1982, LXXXIII,1). 7. Fragment with signs, Romania, Moldavia, Eneolithic, Trpeti (Makkay 1990, 37/10; Masson, Merpert 1982, LXXXIII,1). 8. Fragment with signs, Romania, Transylvania, n, Turda; Turda group (Roska 1941, 136/7,1). 9. Pot fragment, Zeus from Turda, Romania, Transylvania, n, Turda, Turda gr. (Roska 1941, 141/6; Makkay 11/22.2,1). 10. Pot base with signs, ex Jugoslavia, Srem, Neolithic, Vina c., Srem, Vina B2/C (Makkay 1990, 42/24; Trbuhovic, Vailjevi 1983, VIII,1). 11. Pot base with signs, ex Jugoslavia, Srem, Neolithic, Vina c., Srem, Vina B2/C (Makkay 1990, 42/3.1; Trbuhovi, Vailjevi 1983, VIII,1). 12. Pot base with signs, Neolithic, ex Jugoslavia, Vina C, VracAt (Jovanovi 1981:134; Makkay 1990, 35/I.3, 5, 6, 10, 11, 27, 34, 38,1). 132

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe 13. Pot base with signs, Neolithic, ex-Jugoslavia; Vina C; VrsacAt (Jovanovi 1981:134; Makkay 1990, 35/I.28;1). 14. Pot base with signs, Bulgaria, Neolithic, Gradesnica, Gradesnica (Makkay 1990, 29/5; Nikolov 1974: 110 si urm,1). 15. Pot base with signs, Turda, Romania, Transylvania, n, Turda, Turda gr. (Roska 1941: 131/44, 46,1). 16. Spindle whorl; ex-Jugoslavia, Neolithic, Svetozarevo, Vina C1 c. (Winn 1981), Svetozarevo1,1. 17. Idol with sacred signs, Romania, Banat, Neolithic, Para P40, Banatului II c. (Lazarovici et al. I.2, 2001, figs. 6/3,1). 18. Idol, with signs, Turda 138.1 (Roska 1941, 138/1,1). 19. Sacred sign, virgin, generally, code Lazarovici, 1. 20. Sacred sign, pregnant woman, generally, code Lazarovici, 1. V. Bibliographic list with other artefacts that contain the sign with catalogue number 1b: 1. Fragment with signs, Romania,Transylvania,Turda (Roska 1941, 136/:12, M fig. 11/22.2), Turda. 2. Small altar, R. Macedonia, Vrsnik (Bnffy 1997, 24/7: after Praist Mak. fig. 97), Neolithic. 3. Small altar, ex Jugoslavia, Serbia, Rudna Glava (Jovanovi 1982, fig. 27; Bnffy 1997, 32/5), Neolithic,Vina C. 4. Small altar, ex Jugoslavia, Serbia, Rudna Glava (Jovanovi 1982, fig. 27; Bnffy 1997, 32/3), Neolithic,Vina C. 5. Pot base, with signs, Neolithic, ex Jugoslavia,Vrac At (Jovanovi 1981:134; Makkay 1990, 35/ XXIII.2), Vina C. 6. Pot base, with signs, Bulgaria, Gradesnica (Makkay 1990, 29/14; Nikolov 1974: 110 si urm), Neolithic, Gradesnica. 7. Disc or ball, Romania, Transylvania, Ghirbom (Aldea 1974: 40-47, fig. 1-4; Gimbutas 1976: 3; Makkay 1990, 19/4a-b), Eneolithic, Petreti AB. 8. Spindle whorl; Greece, Tracian Greece, Dikili Tash (Gimbutas 1974: 41; Makkay 1990, 19/1), Neolithic. 9. Small tablet, tablet, Romania, Wallachia, Tangru (Marinescu-Blcu after Ursulescu 1998:103, 27/3), Late Neolithic, Gumelnia. 10. Spindle whorl, Romania, Transylvania, Turda (Roska1941, 127/16), Turda. 11. Small altar, Romania, Transylvania, Turda (Roska1941, 98/6), Turda. B. Tablet discovered in Pit 21 at Scnteria (Figure 1/7-7a) contains the sign with number 111 = 89c, present in other sites too: 1. Small tablet, tablet, Falkenstein - Scheanzboden 111 (Neugebaurr-Maresch 1983-1984:18; Makkay 1990, 19/5); 2. Casiopeia, Para 111 (Lazarovici et al. 2001:271-274, fig. 244-247); 3. Casiopeia, Para 89c (Lazarovici et al. 2001:271-274); 4. Casiopeia, Bucov 111 (Lazarovici et al. 2001:271-274, 244/1,8); 5. Casiopeia, Vina 111 (Lazarovici et al. 2001:271-274, 244/3); 6. Casiopeia, Para 111 (Lazarovici et al. 2001:271-274, 244/2a, 2b, 4-7, 9); 7. Casiopeia, Picolt 111 (Lazarovici et al. 2001:271-274, 244/10); 8. Casiopeia, Segvar 111 (Lazarovici et al. 2001:271-274, 245/1). C. On the Maidaneckoe bread (Figure 3/4) we have the sign with number 127g, . The sign was also identified on the base of a pot (pot with signs) at Vrac At (Jovanovi 1981:134; Makkay 1990, 35/I.13). ,

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REFERENCES ALDEA I. Al. 1974. Altarul magico-ritual descoperit n aezarea neolitic de la Ghirbom (com Berghin, jud. Alba). Apulum 12: 41-47. BNFFY E. 1997. Cult objects of the Lengyel culture. Connections and interpretation. Archaeolingua SM. Budapest. CUCO St. 1999. Faza Cucuteni B n zona subcarpatic a Moldovei. Piatra Neam: Bibliotheca Memoriae Antiquitatis VI. DUMITRESCU Vl., H. DUMITRESCU, M. PETRESCU-DMBOVIA, N. GOSTAR. 1954. Hbeti, monografie arheologic. Bucureti: Edit. Acad. R.P.R. Eniklopedia Tripolskoi ivilizaii. 2004. Kiiv. GIMBUTAS M. 1976. Neolithic Macedonia. As reflected by Excavation at Anza, Southeast Yugoslavia. Monumenta Archaeologica. Los Angeles: University of California. ______1991. The Civilisation of the Goddess. The World of Old Europe. San Francisco: Harper. GOFF B. L. 1963. Symbols of Prehistoric Mesopotamia. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. JOVANOVI . 1981. Rad vojvodianskih muzeja 27:129-148. JOVANOVI B. 1982: Rudna Glava. Najstarije Rudarstvo Bakra na Centralnom Balkanu. Bor, Muzej rudarstva i metalurgije. Beograd: Arheoloki Institut. Hoffmann, E. 1963. Die Kultur der Bandkeramik in Sachsen. Berlin. LAZAROVICI C.-M. 2006. Semne i simboluri n cultura Cucuteni. In Cucuteni 120. Valori universale. Lucrrile simpozionului naional, 30 septembrie 2004, 57-90. Edited by N. Ursulescu and C.-M. Lazarovici. Iai. LAZAROVICI Gh. 2003a. Significations Regarding the Sacral Writing on the Cult Objects from the Carpathian-Balkan Area. In Early Symbolic System for Communication in Southeast Europe, vol. 1. Edited by L. Nikolova. BAR International Series 1139. Oxford: Archaeopress. ______2003b. Pinea, grul i rnitul sacru n neolitic. Tibiscum, p. 65-86. Caransebe. LAZAROVICI Gh., Fl. DRAOVEAN, Z. MAXIM. 2001. Para. Monografie arheologic, vol. 1.1, vol. 1.2. BHAB XIII. Timioara: Waldpress. MAKKAY J. 1984. Early Stamp Seals in South-East Europe. Budapest: Akadmiai Kiad. _____1990. A Trtriai Leletek. Budapest. MANTU C.-M., S.URCANU. 1999. Scnteia. Cercetare arheologic i restaurare. Edited by V. Chirica, C.-M. Mantu, S. urcanu: Iai: Helios. MARANGOU C. 2001. Evidence for Counting and Recording in the Neolithic? Artefacts as Signs and Signs on Artefacts. In Manufacture and Measurement Counting. Measuring and Recording Craft Items in Early Aegean Societies, 9-43. Athens. MASSON V. M., N. Ja. MERPERT, R. M. MUNAEV, E. K. ERNY. 1982. Eneolit SSSR. Moskva. NEUGEBAUER-MARESCH C. 1983-1984. Chronologie der Befestigungs- und Kultanlagen des Mittelneolithikums in Nanhand der Grabungen von Falkenstein-Schanzboden und Friebritz. In Mitteilungen der sterreichischen Arbeitsgemeinschaft fr Ur- und Frhgeschichte 33-34, 2: 189-207. NIKOLOV B. 1974. Gradechnitza. Nauka i Iskustvo. PAUL I. 1992. Cultura Petreti. Bucureti. PILIDES D. 1994. Handmade Burnished Wares of the Late Bronze Age in Cyprus. SIMA 105. Jonsered: P. strms Frlag. PELTENBURG E. J. 1982. Recent Developments in the Later Prehistory of Cyprus. SIMA Pocketsbooks 16. Gteborg: P. strms Frlag. PETRESCUDMBOVIA M., M. FLORESCU, A. C. FLORESCU. 1999. Trueti. Monografie arheologic. Bucureti-Iai. ROSKA M. 1941. Die Sammlung Zsofia von Torma. Cluj. SABAH Abboud Jasim. 1985. The Ubaid Period in Iraq. Recent Excavations in the Hamrind Region. BAR International Series 267, vols. 12. Oxford: Archaeopress. SCHARL S., S. Suhrbier. 2005. Ton, Steine, Knochen-Handwerk und Kunst der Vina-Kultur. In Masken, Menschen, Rituale, 48-53. Wrzburg: Herausgeber W. Schier. SCHMIDT H. 1932. Cucuteni in der oberen Moldau. Berlin & Leipzig. SCHIER W. 2002. Vorschiftliche Zeichensysteme im Neolithikum Sdosteuropas (6.-5. Jt. V. Chr.). In Schrift, Sprache, Bild Klang. Entwiclungs Stufen, der Schrift von der Antique bis in die Neuezeit, 24-30. Edited by U. Sinn. Wrzburg: Martin von Wagner Museum der Universitt Wrzburg. 134

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe STEEL L. 2004. Cyprus Before History. From the Earliest Settlers to the End of the Bronze Age. Duckworth. MAGLI M. M. 2001. The Large Tripillya Culture Settlements and Problem of Early Urbanization. Kiev. TRNKA G. 1992. Neues zu den Brotlaibidolen. In Festchrift zum 50jhringen Bestehen des Institutes fr Ur-und Frhgeschichte der Leopold-Franzens-Universitt Innsbruck, 8: 615-622. Bonn: Universittsforschungen zur Prhistorischen Archologie. TRBUHOVI V., M. VASILIEVI. 1983. Nejstarije Zemljiradnike kulture u podrinu. abac. TSVEK E. V. 2001. Certain Aspects of World View of the Tribes of the East Tripolian Culture. Interacademica II-III: 14-23. Bucureti. TRKCAN A. U. 2005. Some Remarks on atalhyk Stamp Seals. In Changing materialities at atalhyk. Reports from 1995-1999 Seasons. Edited by I. Hodder. Ankara: British Institute. URSULESCU N. 1998. nceputurile istoriei pe teritoriul Romniei. Iai. VLASSA N. 1970. Contribuii la problema racordrii cronologiei relative a neoliticului Transilvaniei la cronologia absolut a Orientului Apropiat (Partea I-a). Acta Musei Napocensis VII: 3-39. WINN S. M. 1981. Pre-writing in Southeastern Europe. The Sign System of the Vina Culture ca. 4.000 BC. Calgary: Western Publishers. ZALHAAS G. 1995. Orient und Okzident. Kulturelle Wurzeln Alteuropas 7000 bis 15. v. Chr. Mnchen.

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THE LEGACY OF THE DANUBE SCRIPT EAST OF THE CARPATHIANS IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE (3400-2300 BC) M. VIDEIKO (Ukraine) Abstract : During the Copper Age (5000-3500/3400 BC) some elements of the Danube script were used and developed by the Trypillia Culture. At the beginning of Early Bronze Age (3400-3200 BC) we can observe differentiation into local types of the Trypillia Culture sign system. The developed sign system, created by Trypillians, was the step toward the creation of writing. But since 3200 BC the Trypillian world fell into decay, and the process of writing invention was interrupted. But some signs were used by the different local cultures of the Early Bronze Age. Keywords: Early Bronz Age, Ukraine, Cooper Age, signs, linear inscription, Since 3400/3200 BC, the Cucuteni-Trypillia cultural unity was divided into several local cultures. All of them preserved the use of signs, which appeared from previous periods. Old signs were used mainly in territories connected with the production of traditional painted potteryin the Dnister area, and in some areas of the Dnipro. This sign system was studied by Taras Tkachuk (Tkachyk, Melnyk 2000).

Figure 1: Location of archaeological cultures and sites: (1) Khalepya; (2) Gorodsk, Troyaniv; (3) Verteba cave; (4) Kamyana Mohyla; (5) Marl Ride. From this period a few artifacts originated with linear inscriptions. The most known is one small pot, published in 1901 by V. Khvoiko and I. Linnychenko (1901). This pot was found from amateur excavations near Khalepya (40 km to south from Kyiv) (Figure 1). It is now stored at the National Museum of History of Ukraine (Figure 2).

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Figure 2: Linear inscription from Khalepya (Trypillia Culture, c. 3400-3200 BC), (1) after V. Khvoiko; (2) contemporary picture (courtesy of National Museum of History of Ukraine; photos by M. Videiko). Its inscription, which covered the lower part of the pot, was made by white paint. For many years some archaeologists supposed it was an imitation. But T. Tkachuk believes it is an original sample of Trypillia Culture linear inscription. At the same time, painted pottery with signs inscribed on decoration was used in this region (Figure 3). Many years ago these signs were assumed to be samples of some ancient writing system (Linnichenko, Khvoiko 1901: 201; Bolsunovsky 1908). But now they are considered part of the Trypillia Culture sign system.

Figure 3: Signs on painted pottery (Trypillia Culture, c. 3500-3200 BC) from the Dnipro region (courtesy of National Museum of History of Ukraine; photos by M. Videiko). Figure 4: Spindle-whorls with signs (Trypillia Culture, c. 3200-3000 BC) from Troyaniv and Gorodsk (courtesy of Archaeological Museum, Institute of Archaeology NAS of Ukraine; photos by M. Videiko).

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The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe At the same time there was a flourishing use of signs and pictograms on clay spindle-whorls, mainly by the populations of the Troyaniv and Gorodsk local groups in the Volhynia region. Among these signs were images of plants, animals and geometrical figures (Figure 4). Some of compositions look similar to those found in the Baden Culture or in Anatolia. After 3200/3000 BC, Late Trypillia types (or cultures), like Troyaniv-Gorodsk, Sofiivka, Usatove and others coexisted with the kurgan cultures Yamna (pit-graves) and Catacombna (catacomb graves). Now we have a lot of C14 dates, which demonstrated this coexistence. The cultures, mentioned above, spread not only in the steppe zone, but also in the forest-steppe zone. This period encompassed a few hundred years, up to 2700/2600 BC.

Figure 6: (1-2) Signs on pottery from Catacomb Figure 5: Signs on pottery from Catacomb Culture graves, and (3) stone hammer-axe (courtesy Culture graves (courtesy of Institute of Archaeology of Institute of Archaeology NAS of Ukraine; photos NAS of Ukraine; photo M. Videiko). by M. Videiko). We can observe some categories of the old signs, mainly geometrical figures, on pottery and other artifacts of these cultures. The main successor of Trypillia, it seems, was the Catacombna Culture (or Catacomb Cultural unity), presented by several types (or cultures). The sign systems of the Catacomb Culture(s) during this period were closely connected with funeral practice. Most of the Catacomb pottery with signs is decorated funeral pottery found in graves (Figures 5-6). Some of symbols were pictured on the walls of the graves (Pustovalov 2005, figs. 4.30-4.43). Another important field of sign application was decoration for warfare, such as the stone hammer-axes of the Ingul Catacomb Culture (Figure 6/3). The sign system of the Catacomb Culture and its application was studied by Sergei Pustovalov. He determined 24 groups of signs, in which some resemble the Vina script (Pustovalov 2005: 98, fig. 4.43), while most of them are similar to the Near Eastern sign system and were used as magic and calendar symbols (Pustovalov 2005: 99). At that time the Catacomb Culture had contacts with distant regions in the Middle East, and some signs have analogies in that region. We can observe such signs on pottery and stones. A lot of signs from the Bronze Age were discovered at the ancient sanctuary of Kamyana Mohyla (Figure 1), located on the steppe zone not far from the Azov Sea (Mikhailov 1994: 172-176, 2003: 154-158). They were engraved on slabs and walls of numerous grottoes (Figure 7). Contacts with the Maykop Culture were very important for the spreading of signs. The Maykop Culture, which originated in the Trans139

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe Caucasian region (c. 3900/3600 BC) had a sign system connected with Mesopotamia (Korenevaky 2004, fig. 61, 69, 71).

Figure 7: Kamyana Mohyla (1) general view, (2) stone slab with signs (courtesy of Institute of Archaeology NAS of Ukraine); (3) signs at destroyed grotto (photos 1-3 by M. Videiko). (4) signs from grottoes (after B. Mykhailov 1994). On finds that originated from the steppe region of Ukraine, we can observe the coexistence and integration between the Old European and Eastern script traditions during the Early Bronze Age. One question is how the tradition and knowledge of sign use was transmitted from one culture to another. It 140

The Danube script: Neo-Eneolithic writing in Southeastern Europe seems that sanctuaries played an important role, which functionated during the long periods of the Copper and Bronze Ages in these territories as, for example, in the Verteba cave, Kamyana Mohyla or the Marl Ride. 1 M. VIDEIKO (Kyiv, Ukraine) Institute of Archaeology National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine E-mail: wideiko@gmail.com

The Marl Ride, a sanctuary near the village of Stepanivka (the Lugansk region of Ukraine), included megaliths and kurhans with burials and altars. It was located on an area of more than 1,3 km. According to C14 dates, the sanctuary was founded c. 3500-3400 BC, then c. 3200-3000 BC was used by the Donetsk Catacomb Culture (Klocho, Paramonov 2006).

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REFERENCES BOLSYNOVSKY K.V. 1908. Simvolika epokhi neolita. Kiev. KLOCHKO V., Paramonov, V. 2006. Mergeleva gryada. Pamyatki Ukrainy 4, 144. KORENEVSKY S. N. Drevneishie zemledeltsi i skotovody Predkavkyazya. MaikopskoNovosvobodnenskaya obschnost. Moscow. LINNICHENKO I. A., V. V. KHVOIKO. 1901. Sosudy so znakami iz nakhodok na ploschadkakh tripolskoi kultury. Zapiski Odesskogo Obshestva Istorii i Drevnostei XXIII: 199-202. MIKHAILOV B. D. 1994. Petrogliphy Kamennoi Mogily na Ukrainie. Zaporozhe. ______2003. Kamyana Mohyla. Kyiv. PUSTOVALOV S. Zh. 2005. Socialnyi lad katakombnoho syspilstva Pivnichnogo Prychornomora. Kyiv. TKACHYK T. M., Ya. G. MELNYK. 2000. Semiotychnyi analiz trypilsko-kukutenskykh Znakhovykh system. Ivano-Frankivsk.

CAPTIONS:
Figure 1: Location of archaeological cultures and sites: (1) Khalepya; (2) Gorodsk, Troyaniv; (3) Verteba cave; (4) Kamyana Mohyla; (5) Marl Ride. Figure 2: Linear inscription from Khalepya (Trypillia Culture, c. 3400-3200 BC), (1) after V. Khvoiko; (2) contemporary picture (courtesy of National Museum of History of Ukraine; photos by M. Videiko). Figure 3: Signs on painted pottery (Trypillia Culture, c. 3500-3200 BC) from the Dnipro region (courtesy of National Museum of History of Ukraine; photos by M. Videiko). Figure 4: Spindle-whorls with signs (Trypillia Culture, c. 3200-3000 BC) from Troyaniv and Gorodsk (courtesy of Archaeological Museum, Institute of Archaeology NAS of Ukraine; photos by M. Videiko). Figure 5: Signs on pottery from Catacomb Culture graves (courtesy of Institute of Archaeology NAS of Ukraine; photo M. Videiko). Figure 6: (1-2) Signs on pottery from Catacomb Culture graves, and (3) stone hammer-axe (courtesy of Institute of Archaeology NAS of Ukraine; photos by M. Videiko). Figure 7: Kamyana Mohyla (1) general view, (2) stone slab with signs (courtesy of Institute of Archaeology NAS of Ukraine); (3) signs at destroyed grotto ( photos 1-3 by M. Videiko). (4) signs from grottoes (after B. Mykhailov 1994).

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