JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHAEOLOGY ARTICLE NO.

16, 334 395 (1997)

AA970310

The Age of Clay: The Social Dynamics of House Destruction

Mirjana Stevanovic
ARF; and U.C. Berkeley Received March 15, 1997; revision received May 1, 1997; accepted May 15, 1997 This study provides some fresh insight into Neolithic domestic architecture through the analysis of architectural technology and the control over the practice of house construction and destruction. Examined on a regional or local level, architecture of the Neolithic is often presented as a fairly homogenous social practice over the large area of Southeast Europe. In viewing the Neolithic houses as homogenous and uncontroversial material culture, archaeologists have overlooked not only the possible variation and multimeaning of the Neolithic houses but also their striking and extensive means of destruction. The role of house conagration, a practice that lasted during the entire Neolithic of Southeast Europe, has not been addressed in archaeological investigations. Indeed the phenomenon of burned houses has been treated as a series of lucky accidents during the Neolithic, which are primarily responsible for the preservation of Neolithic sites. Contrary this view, I argue that it is unlikely that the houses were burned as a result of a series of accidents or for any structural and technological reasons but rather that they were destroyed by deliberate burning and most likely for reasons of a symbolic nature. The causes for the practice of house ring and house abandonment as observed through the architectural evidence at the site of Opovo are believed to have been related to the need for house replacement and securing its postutilitarian visibility in order to show social and material continuity of the Neolithic society. In my view, a struggle for social and material continuity might have been a leading mobilizing force in creating and maintaining social practices 1997 Academic Press and beliefs in the Neolithic society.

THE NEOLITHIC HOUSE SOCIETIES

. . . the best way to understand Montaillou is to [. . .] go straight to the basic cell which, multiplied a few dozen times, went to make up the village. This basic cell was none other than the peasant family, embodied in the permanence of a house and in the daily life of a group co-resident under the same roof. . . . the inhabitants of Montaillou [themselves], for whom the family of esh and blood and the house of wood, stone or daub were one and the same thing. (Ladurie 1979: 24) (italics are my emphasis)

people. In Southeast Europe the Neolithic1 houses were the rst permanently and systematically built dwellings that are known in the archaeological record and whose emergence is linked to the more general process of neolithization, i.e., domestication. The Neolithic period, as many archaeologists demonstrate, is the key transitional period from the hunter gatherer way of life to the farming (i.e., food-producing) life. During this period a change from mobile living in the nonpermanent or semipermanent dwellings to living in the permanent dwell-

This article addresses the houses made of daub in the Neolithic of Southeast Europe, which at the end of their use-life were destroyed in conagration. It asserts house burning as a deliberate social practice and evaluates its signicance for the Neolithic
334 0278-4165/97 $25.00
Copyright 1997 by Academic Press All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

1 In this essay, Neolithic is used to mark the time period that is otherwise segmented and called differently in different parts of Europe and the Near East. Thus, in this case the Neolithic stands for Neolithic, Eneolithic, Mature Neolithic, and the Copper Age. With full appreciation of the regional-specic periodization, I decided to use one term in order to avoid confusion.

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ings organized in villages occurred.2 Sedentism has been invoked as one of the main characteristics, if not the cause, of the process of neolithization while architecture became the symbol of the period. It is widely assumed that at this point in time a domestic mode of living emerged. In archaeology a domestic house is considered to provide a body of evidence that authors often refer to when they write about diverse issues specic to the Neolithic period (Hodder 1990). It has generated a number of formal and social interpretations of houses including speculations on matriarchal versus patriarchal social organization. Yet, it can hardly be said that we have much insight into the architectural practices of the Neolithic people and much less into the social forces that organized these practices. This article, therefore, raises the question of the Neolithic houses which were central to the domestic domain in the changing Neolithic society, but traditionally taken to be uncontroversial features of the cultural environment. In Southeast Europe architectural evidence for the Neolithic is presented on both a regional and a local level as a result of a homogenous social practice that was conditioned by a settled way of life and new farming economy and demonstrated by the existence of long-lasting tell settlements. In viewing the Neolithic houses in Southeast Europe as harmonious material culture, arThere are examples of permanent dwellings and village life from the Mesolithic period in Southeast Europe, such are the settlements in the Iron Gorge region includ ing the famous Lepenski Vir site, Padina, Hajducka Vodenica, and others. It is increasingly evident that our concept of sedentism is monolithic and simplistic and that it will change in the future so to encompass a variety of human solutions to the problem of sedentism, which are not present currently in archaeological explanations. In this study, it is not the problem of sedentism that is primary subject and therefore the traditional view of Neolithic as the rst period of the sedentary village life is not challenged. For further insights into the problem of Neolithization and for the references see Rowley-Conwy and Zvelebil (1989), Seferiades (1993), Zvelebil (1995), and others.
2

chaeologists have overlooked the signicance of their destruction by conagration during this period of prehistory. The role of house conagration, a practice that lasted during the entire Neolithic of Southeast Europe, has traditionally not been addressed in archaeological investigations (see Fig. 1). House building as well as house destruction are the hallmarks of the Neolithic period in Southeast Europe. This article argues that both house construction and destruction are closely related architectural practices which have to be examined simultaneously. The practices of house construction and house burning by the same group of people may seem to be on opposite sides of the spectrum, even paradoxical, when one considers that the Neolithic period was the beginning of house construction on a large scale. I suggest, however, that they were complementary practices. In other words, I argue for the possibility that a deliberate social strategy existed during the Neolithic according to which houses were built with the intent to be destroyed at a certain point in their use-life, moreover by an act of conagration. Through this extensive study of construction materials that were used in the Neolithic and their multiple transformations during the house use-life, I intend to address a number of larger archaeological and anthropological issues. These include the role of the house in the Neolithic house-based societies, i.e., the link among the houses architectural, social, and symbolic signicance. The house is to be interpreted not only as a feature that protects one from the elements but also as a meaningful and complex artifact which can express physical, social, and symbolic aspects of the lives of the people who dwell in it. More specically, I will present in this article the results of the analysis of the materials for house construction and how their choice might be linked to the practice of house burning at the Neolithic village site of Opovo. Opovo is a Vinca culture site situated in the southwest part of the Banat in

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the province of Vojvodina in Serbia, former Yugoslavia. It lies in the lower valley of the Tamis river, 20 km from its conuence with the Danube. The Vinca culture lasted from ca. 5500 B.C./4700 B.C. to ca. 4000 B.C./3300 B.C. Its territory is considered to be in the region of the central Balkans (south from the Danube and Sava rivers, in contemporary Serbia and northern Macedonia). Its core territory is in the Morava and Vardar river val leys. The Vinca culture spread from this core territory up to the Drina and Ibar rivers and Sar planina to the west and to the Suva and Osogovo mountains to the east (Garasanin 1979) (see Figs. 2 and 3). The Morava (both Great and Southern branches) and Vardar valleys run through the middle of the Balkan peninsula and are considered its main natural north-south communication route. This is the shortest direct communication that joins the Aegean coast and the central Danube region. It is also considered to be the direct communication route between, on the one hand, the east Mediterranean, Asia Minor, and the Near East and Central Europe on the other hand. Therefore, it is believed that in this region the contacts between two broad cultural regions, the east Mediterranean and the Central European, were most intensive (Garasanin 1979). The eponymous Vinca culture site of Vinca-Belo Brdo became renowned from the time of the earliest excavations carried out at this site in the beginning of the century (e.g., Vasic 1936). Since its discovery to the present the site of Vinca-Belo Brdo and abundant other sites of the Vinca culture have been the subject of numerous studies of prehistoric archaeology. The scholars who concerned themselves with the archaeology of Southeast Europe have considered the site of Vinca-Belo Brdo the basis for the relative chronology of the Balkan-Danubian Neo lithic and Eneolithic (see Garasanin 1973; Tringham 1991c; Stevanovic and Jovanovic 1996). Moreover, this important prehistoric culture of Southeast Europe features nearly all the phases of development of the long

Neolithic period and it represents a fruitful source for studies of architecture and other Neolithic material cultural.

House Burning as Social Practice in the Vinca Culture

Southeast Europe has historically and prehistorically been a crucial region, as it represents the crossroads between Europe and the Near East. The proximity of Southeast Europe to the Near East made this region a part of the wider debates in the origins of agriculture, sedentism, urbanism, and origins of civilization. The extent of archaeological research made the region one of the archaeologically better known areas in Europe. The attention that was given to Southeast Europe by assuming its importance as a gateway for the process of diffusion was probably a decisive factor for its further developments in archaeology. The concept of culture change by population replacement was, in a way, imposed on Southeast Europe and inspired extensive investigations for its evidence (Srejovic 1988). In Yugoslavia the Neolithic represented by the Vinca culture was sometimes characterized as the glamour period of prehistory (Bankoff and Winter 1982: 149). Coincidentally, the tone and scope of the debate empowered but also constrained the archaeology of the region. The constraints for archaeology of the region that resulted were that many other avenues of research, architecture of the Neolithic being one, were not considered. It has been noticed in archaeology that in the large area of Southeast Europe in the Neolithic period the archaeological cultures show a striking similarity in archaeological remains that pertain to building activities in terms of the volume of materials and their universality at settlements (Chapman 1981; Sherratt 1982a,b; Stevanovic 1972, 1995; 1985; Tringham 1971, 1972, 1995; Tringham et al. 1985, 1992; Tringham and Krstic 1990a). In addition to their universality and volume, it was recognized and emphasized by Tring-

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ham (1990, 1994, 1995), and investigated by Tringham and Stevanovic (1990, 1991; Steva novic 1996), that there is another common and important characteristic of architecture in this region house destruction by burning a phenomenon which had been up to that point recognized in archaeology only in the sense that the burning has preserved the architecture exceptionally well. At virtually all the sites with preserved architecture we see the dramatic effect of a large-scale house re and the massive accumulation of burned clay rubble of clay house oors and the daub of the superstructure. There has not yet been reported a single Later Neolithic site in the region with architecture remains that are completely unburned. In the house re, under high temperatures, the clay covering of the wood frame is transformed into a durable ceramic-like material. The Vinca culture houses, for example, were built by the wattle-and-daub method of construction. This method involves using a mixture of materials that comprise (a) a heavy or light framework of wood (including the main upright posts and the wattling, planks, half-timbers, reeds which were woven or packed horizontally or placed vertically between them) and (b) a layer of varying thickness of clay which was daubed over the frame on one or both surfaces. Archaeologically these structures comprise areas of compacted, red clay rubble, representing all that remains of the burned and collapsed superstructures of wattle-and-daub buildings. They are typically found in proximity to postholes, pits and other surrounding features. The house re, in a way, produces a Pompeii effect in the archaeology of this region by literally freezing the picture of the houses at the moment when they collapse after their burning. We recognize that after their collapse they have been modied by removal of rubble, and possibly of some burned artifacts. Thus, we have the main differentiating elements of the house in situ in the form of house oor, its walls, and other

immobile and mobile elements that include furniture, ovens, pots, and a variety of artifacts whole or crushed on the oor and covered with the crumbled walls. This is a unique record which allows extensive architectural analysis and provides an extraordinary situation for examining the technology of construction in the Neolithic that is not possible in many other archaeological contexts from this period of prehistory (Tring ham and Stevanovic 1990, 1991). In most other areas of the world, Neolithic structures are represented only by postholes. This homogeneity in the architectural remains in terms of their construction and their destruction in a conagration is linked to a specic episode of prehistory 4500 3000 B.C. or 5300 3800 B.C. and is not observed in the prehistoric periods before or after neither in such frequency nor in such volume (see Fig. 1). Chronologically this phenomenon belongs to the period of the Middle to Late Neolithic/Early Eneolithic. In terms of regional prehistoric cultures of Serbia, that is, from the early stages of the Vinca culture around 5200 B.C. based on the 14C dates (see Gimbutas 1991:451) un til the end of the Vinca culture around 4000 B.C. according to the 14C dates from the same source. However, if the phenomenon of house burning is observed on the larger regional level, that is, including the Neolithic/Eneolithic cultures of Bulgaria and Southern Hungary, it lasted longer (at Karanovo site and culture in Bulgaria from ca. 6200 3800 B.C. and at the Tisza and Tiszapolgar culture sites in Hungary from ca. 5300 B.C. to 3800 B.C., according to the 14C dates).3
3 It is very likely that future research will show similar if not the same method of house construction and destruction in the earlier periods of prehistory in Southeast Europe. That is, that building and possible destruction of dwellings can be extended back to the transitional period from Mesolithic into Neolithic and especially to the Early Neolithic. It is already rather apparent that, for instance, the people of the Early Neolithic Starcevo culture who inhabited earlier the same

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Houses as Social Spaces in Southeast European Archaeology

Up to this point the Neolithic architecture of the region has been mainly viewed through the studies of the transition to a sedentary way of life. Neolithic architecture is rmly embedded in two very important issues of archaeology of Southeast Europe and the Near East sedentism and the nature of social formations of the Neolithic period. The sedentary way of life its causes, consequences, mechanisms, and denition has been the object of rich debate (Hodder 1990; Kaiser and Voytek 1983; Price and Brown 1985; Rafferty 1985; Tringham and Krstic 1990b; Wilson 1988; and others). Sedentism is usually dened as a link between a house and its inhabitants. Thus the signicance of architecture in the process of settling down is not disputed, but the degree of its importance varies depending on whether it is taken to be a cause or consequence of sedentism. It has been suggested that the house may at certain times have been conceptually central. As such, it would have evoked certain emotions such as security, and served to demarcate the social and cultural from the wild and natural (see Hodder 1990) It is also possible that the institution of the home was necessary in order to objectify and to enclose a newly created social structure protecting the individuals investment and possessions (see Wilson 1988). The Neolithic societies have often been characterized as being structured around the domestic mode of production (Sahlins 1968, 1972). The household is considered in these studies the primary unit of production and reproduction. In Southeast European archaeology a household (i.e., a co-residential unit) has been equated with a house and
geographic territory as the Vinca culture people, practiced similar if not the same method of house construc tion (see Stankovic, 1992, for house description from the Starcevo culture site), as well as their destruction in conagration.

extensively examined for intensication of production (Kaiser and Voytek 1983; Tring ham 1985; 1990; Tringham and Krstic 1990b), as well as for increased reproduction (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza 1973, 1984; Bogucki 1988; Sherratt 1984; Sterud 1978; Todorova 1978). The role and signicance of the built environment in these studies have been entertained as part of and secondary to the analysis of agriculture. Levi-Strauss has proposed a direct relationship between the house and the lineage and, moreover, between the house and the social organization of the groups (see Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995). It is interesting that archaeology, at least in some regions of the world, assumes the same position even if unintentionally. Archaeologists working in Southeast Europe have not been traditionally engaged in the theoretical debate on the role and signicance of the house for the social organization and its potential to mark the lineage in settled societies. However, interpretations of the houses and villages of Neolithic societies in Southeast Europe have implicitly been along the lines of the lineage (see for instance, Chapman 1989; Lazarovici et al. 1985; Todorova 1976; 1990; Todorovic and Cermanovic 1961). Inferring from Neolithic architecture, mainly from the uniform house size and house type, archaeologists have traditionally considered Neolithic societies to be as internally undifferentiated as the houses them selves (Garasanin 1973; Todorova 1990; To dorovic and Cermanovic, 1961; to mention only few). The only exception to this constructed uniformity is the occurrence of occasional large long-houses that have variously been interpreted as village halls or clubhouses rather than as residential dwellings (Nea Nikomedeia, Sesklo, Dhimini in Greece; Polyanitsa in Bulgaria; Gomolava in Serbia) (see Whittle 1985; Brukner 1982), or structures interpreted as temples (Partsa in Romania) (see Lazarovici et al. 1985). Villages in the Neolithic have been considered to consist of extended families of the same

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Vucedol

Bubanj ISalcuta Krivodol

VincaPlocnik

(Gumelnita)

(Gumelnita)

VincaPlocnik

Vinca Tordos

Dudesti Cris Starcevo

Proto Cris

Cris

FIG. 1. The Burned House Horizon in Southeast European Prehistory.

lineage sharing all resources and labor communally, much like the traditional zadruga in the Balkans (Byrnes 1976; Halpern

1958; Hammel 1984; Hammel and Laslett 1974; Stahl 1986). Zadruga literally means cooperative.

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Historically, zadruga describes a form of joint family, usually related in the male line, and a prominent feature of rural society. A zadruga is dened by Mosely as a household composed of two or more biological or small-families, closely related by blood or adoption, owning its means of production communally, producing and consuming the means of its livelihood jointly, and regulating the control of its property, labor, and livelihood communally (1953:19). Todorova and Vajsov (1993) assert on the basis of the Neolithic settlements of Ovcar ovo, Polyanitsa, Goljamo Delcevo that the earliest founders of these villages comprised in the early stage three to ve member families. During the later phase of the settlements (phase IV at Ovcarovo, for instance) the village is described as comprised of three groups of dwellings (eight to nine houses per group), from which they conclude that the original commune consisted of three extended families, each of eight to nine nuclear families. By the culmination phase the Ovcarovo settlement was comprised of 25 dwellings of smaller size, each believed to have housed not more than one average family of three members still organized on the zadruga model. Todorovic and Cermanovic (1961), and Benac (1952) interpreted the Neolithic social organization of Vinca culture settlements on the basis of architecture as the formative period of the nuclear family unit living in an individual house. They say the village comprised a single lineage that had communal ownership of the basic means of production. Tripolye culture architecture and social organization have been interpreted also as representing an original zadruga. In this instance, however, the interpretation is based much more on the Marxist explanation of society than on ethnohistorical analogy. Both Kricevskij (1940) and Passek (1949) concluded that in Neolithic villages several nuclear families shared one collective long house, each family occupying a small housing unit with other long houses serving as

storage and communal rooms for the whole village. The division of labor and ownership of the means of production in these villages were thought to be as communal, with equal access to resources for all village members and with no social differentiation. It is important to understand that the interpretation of the Neolithic social organization as the original zadruga is based solely on the architectural evidence. Without disputing the possibility of the original zadruga or matriarchal social organization during the Neolithic, I believe that such an interpretation of the Neolithic architecture is unsubstantiated at the present stage of research on Neolithic architecture. The works by Tringham on Southeast European Neolithic households, their spatial, economic and social organization, and their gender tensions (1984, 1985a, 1990, 1991a,b, 1995) and by (Chapman 1989) on house and village complexity in the Vinca culture, on the other hand, have inferred based on the Neolithic houses in the region more complex and more dynamic social structures during the Neolithic. It was this kind of vision of the Neolithic in Southeast Europe that prompted me to ask questions such as, what can we learn from studying the Neolithic architectural record that could throw more light on the house and contribute to a better comprehension of the processes of a new practice of creating structured space by humans and in return what can we learn about social complexities of the inhabitants by studying their houses. In this article it is assumed that the objects which people create and with which people surround themselves including houses have meaning for them and show the relation of these individuals not only to the space in which they live but to the wider society; they help build the context of social action (Hodder 1987; Donley 1982; Donley-Reid 1990; Moore 1986; Tringham 1994). It is proposed here that the buildings themselves and their associated material culture provide evidence for domestic space as place and an expression of

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lineage continuity, which also acted as both context and media in domestic negotiations, tensions, gender relations, and dominance structures.

The Technological Practice of Architecture in Southeast Europe

Within the renewed effort to stimulate the studies of the house in anthropology (e.g., Carsten and Hugh-Jones 1995 volume) as well as in social theory in general (numerous works that through the studies of space, action and agent often refer to architecture, such as Bourdieu 1990; Foucault 1984; Pred 1986; and others), I nd that in archaeology, theoretical discussions on the prehistoric house as a technological practice is missing. Looking through the archaeological prism, the technological aspect of architecture should be the baseline for the analysis and interpretation of the house. The dwelling, I would argue, includes the making of the house, and in my mind, it has a logical precedence over inhabiting the house. I argue in this article that the technology of architecture has to be understood in its social context and not just as technical skills, as has too often been the case in archaeology. Technology of architecture should be understood as the processes through which materials are transformed into artifacts and cannot be separated from the social relations of their production (many authors make and expound upon this point; see, for instance, Lechtman 1977, 1984, 1993; Lemonnier 1990, 1993; Ingold 1988, 1990; Dobres 1995; and for a thorough review, Dobres and Hoffman 1994). Architecture can be seen, therefore, as the transformation of raw materials into cultural products, a process through which the social relations are being formed, played out, or negotiated (Ingold 1990, Hughes 1979). Hodder (1990) indicates a crucial role of production in the Neolithic society and stresses that the act of moving and living inside the house is the major acting force in becoming cultural objects (after Heidegger

1977). My emphases, however, would be that the practice of building the house, the transformation of building soil, and its combination with other organic and inorganic elements in the essential source material for house production was the crucial cultural building block in the process of becoming cultural objects. I further entertain the possibility that the practice of house discard/ abandonment/destruction in the Neolithic Vinca culture society was an expression of the same cultural process, that of becoming social agents. In Southeast European archaeology the house as a subject of analysis has traditionally been assigned a background or secondary importance. It is examined primarily as containing and encompassing other human material culture and activities, and secondarily as the medium and product of human activities. Furthermore, houses are traditionally viewed in archaeology as stable, slow changing, and not indicative of social processes except for those which bring about a considerable cultural and social change. This disadvantage makes them less important in conceptualizing the behavior of small size social groups or an individual, whereas it makes them more indicative of large scale social processes. It could also be asserted that in archaeology the house is taken to be a composite material culture beyond the complexity of an artifact and in the analysis not subjected to the same conceptual schemes as other artifacts. The lack of discussion on technology of architecture is an example of this. Neolithic houses are immobile features set on the landscape in particular arrangements that satisfy the needs and ideas of their human creators. As the products of technological practices, houses are artifacts of a certain culture and express the social conditions of their creation. These houses are not only spatial and organizational products but also technological products. Much of the explanation in archaeology, and especially the explanation of architectural remains, depends

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on the way of conceptualizing space. However, in order to interpret domestic architecture one has to understand not only the spatial relationships within each house and within the larger community but also the transformative processes of the materials involved in house production and simultaneously their effect on the social processes. Thus, rather than analyzing the spatial aspects of Neolithic houses, I have ventured into examining their material constituents, their use-lives, and the cause of their destruction. While I quite agree that the house provides the context for the artifacts and features within it, I emphasize that, at the same time, the house is an artifact in itself and needs to be studied as such. One aim of the research presented is to elevate the house to the level of an artifact and demonstrate that its archaeological remains house rubble are a valuable part of material culture once a set of analytical tools is developed that will allow archaeologists to use house rubble to make inferences about society. To begin investigating the complexity of Neolithic architecture, I suggest (after Tring ham and Krstic 1990b; Tringham 1994; 1995; McGuire and Schiffer 1983) that a Neolithic house should be viewed through its four basic phases of use-life rather than as a single event/product: (i) house construction (including building technique and materials), (ii) house use (spatial organization), (iii) house maintenance, and (iv) house destruction. Not all the phases have been considered to be viable as a subject of technological practice. Some are believed to be more so, such as construction and maintenance, while use and destruction are not. It has been suggested and the investigation presented in this article will support that prehistoric house destruction could be interpreted as a deliberate technological practice (Semenov 1968; Shaffer 1984, 1993; Wilshusen 1988, 1989). The practice of house construction during the Neolithic in Southeast Europe featured some technological innovations, such as use

of structural materials and their combinations that had not been used before. At the same time, the introduction and development of new strategies, methods, and techniques of production were taking place, such as, for example, house construction in the wattle-and-daub method. Even though soil of various types had been a known material resource, which, when mixed with water and tempering materials, had been used for the production of pottery, gurines, and many other objects, its use in house construction had been minimal until the Early Neolithic period. There is also another dimension to the technology of house construction the use of large quantities of materials that had not existed before. The magnitude of the project of Neolithic house building required massive amounts of soil that had to be dug out and mixed with water and large quantities of organic temper, as well as an adequately complex organization of labor, access to the resources for construction materials and building area, and the proper scheduling for successful results. This papers title places clay in the focus of the discussion. The aim is to draw attention to the role that clay had as a raw material in societies throughout the prehistory of Europe. Especially important is the role clay had during the Neolithic period. The Neolithic period in Southeast Europe is marked by an incredible increase of material production probably resembling a level of industrial manufacture. Whereas evidence of the production of foods, textiles, and other activities in the Neolithic societies is not as obvious, even though it is present, evidence for the production of artifacts made of clay as a fundamental raw material, such as ceramics, gurines and other gurative representations, and house construction, is plentiful. Not only were houses constructed of it but also house interiors with mobile and immobile furniture and a variety of tools were all made in clay. Thus, a typical scene of a Neolithic house is the oor built of a thick layer of compacted clay on which we nd

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other objects made of it: bed platforms and benches; ovens and mangals for warming food and air; wheat grinding receptacles, grain grinders, and mortars; storage vessels and very large immobile vessels built into the oor; portable storage containers (in numbers that usually go over several dozens) and lids; clay balls used for a variety of functions, such as weights for shing nets, weaving, and cooking/heating stones; gurative representations of humans and animals; furniture; house and oven models; jewelry; and so on. The choice of clay as a predominant source of material for a number of functions in the Neolithic societies calls for redening this period of prehistory as the Age of Clay. What could be the quality of clay that made it such a pervasive raw material during the Neolithic? Was it its availability and abundance? In addition to the list of signicant functions of clay during the Neolithic, I add that clay as a raw material had a particular importance for its quality of providing durability and visibility in a pragmatic and symbolic sense to the objects that it constituted. Moreover, the multiple transformations that this material as well as other building materials could endure are considered here to be of exceptional signicance for archaeology of the Southeast European house-based societies. The rst set of transformations of the building materials consisted in their mixing, in the process of which the raw clays were brought in contact with domesticated plants, i.e., food-remains, such as chaff and straw. The second set of transformations of the construction materials took place when the house was red at the end of its use-life. The clay, wood, and temper materials were transformed into a durable ceramic-like material. By suggesting the concept of the house use-life which would have been controlled by the Neolithic people I am also exploring the role that houses come to play as symbols of social groups, such as bound-

aries, hierarchies, or mnemonic places, which lay claim on the valuable grounds.

REGIONAL CONTEXT OF ARCHITECTURE OF THE VINCA CULTURE

Long-term permanent villages are the most characteristic pattern during the Neolithic period of Southeast Europe. The villages are mainly known from tell settlements, even though a large number of at/ non-tell sites, such as Opovo, have been discovered. For instance, Demoule and Perles (1993) talk about hundreds of closely spaced, compact villages known from the rich basins of Thessaly and central Greece. Kotsakis talks about large at villages, with widespread, separated houses and short-term occupation (1993). Tells and at Neolithic settlements are also well known from the Central and Northern Balkans in cluding the Vinca culture (see Garasanin 1951, 1984; Bogdanovic 1981, 1988, 1990; Be nac 1973; Brukner 1962, 1988; Jovanovic 1965; Jovanovic and Glisic 1960, 1961; Srejo vic 1988; Srejovic and Tasic 1990; Tringham and Krstic 1990b). Tell sites have the potential to provide excellent architectural and settlement data because of their boundedness and the practice of very obvious vertical house replacement. These settlements can be subjected to investigations of the settlements size and organization as well as change through time, since they often represent continuous occupation. On the other hand, at settlements feature expansion by horizontal house replacement (Tringham and Stevanovic 1990) and are different for the analysis of settlement size, its organization, and household studies. The at sites are often considered to provide much less reliable evidence on settlement size and organization (see the discussion in (Tringham and Krstic 1990b). The broad culture areas of Southeast Europe are distinguished by similarities in their economy, settlement type, house type,

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and other material culture throughout the Neolithic period. The Neolithic architecture seems to show a steady development of certain traits from the earlier to later periods. First of all, the number of surface buildings in comparison to subterranean and semisubterranean buildings increases in the later period. Through time larger and more solid houses were constructed using greater quantities of clay, and frequently these formed villages with evidence of deliberate planning and delimitation by various means (Todorova 1990; Tringham 1991b; Whittle 1985; Champion et al. 1984; Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza 1973; Dennell 1983; Gimbutas 1976a; Evans and Rasson 1984; and others). The uniform interior space of the houses in the earlier periods became segmented in the later periods. The associated features in the houses such as ovens, furniture, xed storage vessels, and other artifacts increased in their number and complexity in the later periods of prehistory. The materials for house construction stayed the same, i.e., soil, wood, and temper-materials, but were used in larger quantities than before. The surface houses from the Late Neolithic period in the region including the Vinca culture are of square shape at rst and later of rectangular shape, usually comprising a main room with an antechamber. In some instances the division of the space in the house is even more complex and comprises several smaller rooms or delineated spaces (e.g., in the Vinca culture sites of Banjica, Divostin, Gomolava). The house interiors comprise thick clay oors; round, oval, square, and horseshoe-shaped ovens; silos for storing grain; massive cattle heads of clay; a large number of pottery vessels and other tool assemblages; and traces of colored plaster (Vasic 1936, Garasanin 1951, 1973, Chapman 1981; Markotic 1976, 1984; McPherron and Srejovic 1988; Jovanovic and Glisic 1960, 1961; Todorova at al. 1983; Brukner 1980; Demoule and Perles 1993; and others). It should also be pointed out that indepen-

dent evidence for the general appearance of the Neolithic houses (some of which are two- or three-roomed like the Middle Neolithic megaron at Sesklo) comes from the clay models, which show double-pitched, painted roofs and several openings, possibly doors or windows (Theocharis 1973, Figs. 192, 193, 225). The clay house models are relatively constant in occurrence in the Southeast European Neolithic period. Some of the models have been interpreted as temples (see Gimbutas 1980, 1982); none of the house models have been interpreted as a representation of a two-story building, although some of them do show such indications (see Todorova et al. 1983). The phenomenon of two-story houses has been ignored in Southeast European archaeology even though there are occasional reports of two-story Neolithic houses from Tisza and Herpaly II contexts in Hungary (Horvath 1987; Kalicz and Raczky 1987a, 1987b), Gumelnitsa sites in Bulgaria (Todorova and Vajsov 1993), Cucuteni B sites in Romania and Moldavia (Ellis 1984; Markevic 1981), and Sesklo sites in Greece (Theocharis 1973, Demoule and Perles 1993, Treuil 1983). The Opovo excavations revealed another two-story Neolithic house in the region. However, there seems to be an air of disbelief around this issue in the archaeology of Southeast Europe. In my view, this kind of attitude has prevented archaeologists in the region from paying closer attention to potential evidence for two-story structures during excavation. Whereas the shape and the size of houses seem to have followed the same trend all over Southeast Europe, the methods of construction vary to some extent (Elia 1982). Mudbrick is typical of the Near East (Fig. 2) and in Europe is restricted to Greece; in contrast, wattle-and-daub was rare in the Near East but is characteristic of Europe and has been seen as a local invention (Treuil 1983). Both techniques occur in Greece, sometimes at the same site, as at Sesklo (Demoule and Perles 1993). In Southeast Europe

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FIG. 2. Map of the Balkans and the Near East (modied after Gimbutas 1991).

during the Neolithic period and certainly in the Vinca culture, the only method of construction used was wattle-and-daub. Presently, there is no evidence for signicant differences in house construction, that is, the building method and the materials between the tell and at settlements in the Vinca culture, and it has been assumed that they have been of the same kind. The phenomenon of burned houses seems to be a constant occurrence throughout the Vinca

culture, regardless of the settlement type or cultural variant. That the strategy of house replacement is an important factor in tell formation has been noticed in Southeast European archaeology. Tringham (1990) and Tringham and Stevanovic (1990) pointed out that in the context of the Vinca culture house replacement is present also in the case of at or non-tell sites, and more importantly that the Neolithic house replacement is linked to the practice of house burning.

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Opovo and the Excavation of Neolithic Architecture

The Banat in the province of Vojvodina in which the site of Opovo is situated is a part of the Pannonian plain, the great lowland plain of the middle Danube basin. As a region, the Banat is bound by the Tisza river to the west, the Danube to the south, and the foothills of the Carpathians in Romania to the east (Tringham et al. 1992, 1985). It is believed that this area represents the northern edge of the territory traditionally inhab ited by the Vinca people (Fig. 3). Neolithic settlement of the Banat region began in the late 6th millennium B.C. with the Early Neolithic Starcevo-Koros cultures. In the 5th millennium B.C., Starcevo sites were replaced by Vinca culture sites, which continued to exist until the late 4th millennium B.C. Opovo is considered to be a Late Neolithic settlement of the Vinca culture (ca. 4700 4500 B.C.). The site covers an area approximately 5 ha on a low knoll overlooking an abandoned meander of the Tamis river. The survey of the area around Opovo carried out by the National Museums in Pancevo and Vrsac identied a large num ber of Starcevo and Vinca culture Neolithic sites, some of which are presented in Figs. 4 and 5 (for a more detailed account, see Tringham, Stevanovic and Brukner, in press). The major research objectives at Opovo included: (i) an investigation of change in the Neolithic agricultural economy north of the Danube, (ii) an assessment of the permanence of settlement at Opovo, and (iii) a detailed examination of the role of households in the organization of social and economic life at Opovo (Tringham et al. 1985: 427). The interest in the problem of Neolithic settlement permanence and the role of households put the focus of research at Opovo on the houses and other such features. It is known in Southeast Europe that the best strategy to take in excavating settlement sites, especially if one is interested in

architecture, is a large exposure of a site, which allows investigation of the relation between the houses and within each unearthed dwelling. The strategy of large exposure has been exercised successfully in the excavation of many Vinca culture sites (e.g., Vasic 1936, Brukner 1980). Some sites have provided a formidable stratigraphic sequence of habitation horizons, or else house levels, and thus allowed investigation of the relations between them. This excavation strategy also has provided the possibility for obtaining basic chronological divisions such as the one for the Vinca culture, which serves as the chronological benchmark for the wider geographic region. However, the traditional excavation method of the large exposure has its limitations. In some ways, by opening large site surfaces, the archaeologists had little vertical stratigraphy control within exposed blocks. Therefore, such a strategy has produced, on the one hand, an enormous amount of evidence about settlements as a whole, but on the other hand, many aspects, such as house construction and destruction, have stayed blurred. First, the horizontal relationship between the houses, i.e., their contemporaneity, was not investigated in detail but rather assumed on the basis of the houses absolute elevation. Second, in house cleaning and removal, all the house remains were not treated as potential evidence; the house superstructure was traditionally discarded and the focus has been on the house oor. Third, none of the house remains were considered worth further analysis after excavation. Excavating architecture has traditionally meant acquiring data not on the houses themselves, except for their size, shape and orientation, but on the other artifacts found within them. Thus very basic data on house walls, oors, roof, and other structural elements have been neglected. There are many objective and subjective causes for such methodological shortcomings; to mention just a few: lack of resources, lack of developed methodology, or lack of interest.

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FIG. 3. Map of the Vinca and Tisza culture sites (modied after Gimbutas 1991).

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FIG. 4. Distribution of loess soils in former Yugoslavia (modied after Chapman 1990).

One objective of the Opovo Archaeological Project was to overcome the shortcomings of previous excavations in the treatment of Neolithic architecture. It was maintained at the OAP that exibility in the method of house excavation was necessary in an attempt to achieve sufcient detail to allow meaningful interpretation of features, ensure systematic recovery of samples of all materials, and complete the excavation of the block during the projected time. Therefore, the method of oating balks was used in order to understand the relation between the houses that belonged to the same habitation level and between the levels. The balks were positioned so as to provide proles linking houses and other features, which would then, through the careful analysis, show the relationships. Our sampling of the construction materials and their transformations included considerably larger quantities of archaeological material then before (see Fig. 6).

Excavating architecture at Opovo with such objectives meant providing an entirely new methodology for it that had not been applied before. Some elements of the method had been developed initially during the excavation of the sites of Selevac, Gomo lava, and Vinca-Belo Brdo (see Stevanovic 1984, 1985, 1996; Tringham 1990; Tringham and Stevanovic 1991). However, only during the OAP was this method nally established and systematically executed. In order to collect data on house construction and destruction, our work focused on the careful cleaning of the burned structures, lifting the rubble and mapping it layer by layer, and taking systematic samples. Recording was carried out according to cells (each 1 square m) in and around the structural features. The rst task was to separate house rubble into different categories (house walls, oors, furniture, ovens) out of an often amorphous mound of material that was formed during the process of house collapse. Rubble frag-

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FIG. 5. The pedology of the site at Opovo.

ments which exceeded 10 cm in size were recorded by their specic numbers assigned within the house map. Each fragment was rst drawn in the house plan and described in situ in its spatial context. The next stage consisted of lifting the fragment out of its spatial context and recording its specic characteristics. Some of the recorded characteristics provided the measurements for the

piece as a whole; others refered to the wood impressions that are part of a particular rubble fragment. The remaining rubble, i.e., the fragments that were too small to be individually recorded, the fragments from the cultural layer which were in secondary position, and the fragments that were a part of usually heavily damaged features, were processed separately as the bulk record. The

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FIG. 6. Neolithic houses at Opovo.

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FIG. 6Continued

bulk rubble was recorded spatially by locus and by the rubble type (ordinary, oor, vitried) for their weights. The next step in data acquisition was to sample the rubble for further analysis according to the questions that were being asked in the project. The aim was to collect more than one sample from each category in each house in order to compare the samples from different houses in one building horizon. The remains of the wattle-and-daub houses were therefore exceptionally and carefully excavated and systematically and fully mapped, recorded, and sampled. House Construction The strategy, recording, and analysis of excavation were designed to collect evidence on: (1) house construction materials: their type, sizes, quantities, and methods of processing; (2) house construction method; (3) the transformations of the construction materials through utilization with specic interest in the causes of their res; and (4) house destruction as the result of re. Rubble weights. The rubble weights provided substantial control over the quantities of clay used in house construction and the proportions of different construction materials used. Figure 7 illustrates the total rubble weights at Opovo. The weights of the Opovo structural rubble show that the largest quantities of this material belong to the bulk rubble, which comprised 14,012 kg. House 1

comprised 1078 kg of house rubble fragments analyzed. The analyzed construction clay of house 2 weighed 707 kg. House 3 was only partially excavated and yielded 57 kg of rubble analyzed, and the analyzed rubble from house 4 rubble weighed 188 kg. The rubble weights indicate that the largest quantity of building materials at the site of Opovo was excavated in the latest building horizon. In addition, the weights of the bulk rubble provided data for density maps, which show the concentrations of the rubble that originally was part of the cultural layers but could not be directly assigned to any particular structure in the excavation block. After being spatially located as densities, the rubble could be compared and combined with the location of actual house remains and other structures in the excavation block. The density maps were created for six excavation layers out of which the latest period of the settlement at Opovo shows the largest densities of rubble in two areas of the excavation block. It also shows that the highest concentrations in this building horizon correspond with the location of houses 1 and 2. The rubble that was excavated, recorded, and analyzed does not reect the total quantities of construction materials employed in house construction in Block 1 at Opovo. Rather, it represents only one part of it, that which was preserved. There are many factors that inuence the quantity of rubble that survives as archaeological record: The origi-

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FIG. 7. Total rubble weight in kilograms.

nal size and type of the building, the way in which it collapsed, disturbances of the rubble by later prehistoric activities at the same place, and disturbances caused by other postdepositional processes and recent soil works. Much rubble was spread by ploughing across the rest of Block 1. Even the occurrence of a predominant rubble type of a specic weight range for example, vitried rubble which is very light, can inuence the total rubble weight of a house. Such is the case of house 4, where large quantities of rubble were vitried. A large sample of rubble from house 4 was recorded, but it weighed little in comparison with houses 1 and 2 that did not have such quantities of vitried rubble. The implications of rubble quantities and densities at Opovo are many. First, it gives an idea about the quantities of the materials, their location in the excavated area, and their

change through time, i.e., by the building horizon. The top building horizon was the only one that had two domestic structures. This may mean that the largest house density in the village was reached during the last building horizon. This would speak in favor of a trend, which has been indicated by other scholars of the Southeast European Neolithic period, according to which there was an intensication of production, including house production, which reached its peak during the Late Neolithic/Early Eneo lithic period (Tringham and Krstic 1990a, Kaiser and Voytek 1983). It has been proposed that the increased amount of house construction material could in the Later Neolithic indicate the change in house construction introduced with the use of larger quantities of clay (Tringham and Stevanovic 1990; Tringham and Krstic 1990b). A second implication of the rubble quanti-

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ties is that it allows for the reconstruction of the proportions of building materials, such as wood and clay, that were employed for each house. Both implications will be discussed later with the help of an idealized model of the Opovo Neolithic house.

Building Materials in Opovo House Construction: Experimental and Analytical Studies

The experimental and analytical studies were primarily undertaken to provide identication of the basic building materials that were used by the Neolithic people. However, in addition to the basic materials, their origins, and likely quantities, we are now able to discuss the kinds of materials locally available, the strategic choices that were made by the Neolithic people in the materials for construction, as well as make a contribution to the reconstruction of the environment in which the Neolithic Opovo people lived. It was concluded, rst of all, that there were two classes of construction material which we know for certain were used in the wattle-and-daub building method at the site of Opovo. Namely, these are Source materials (clay and other rock and tree-wood and reeds); Anthropogenic materials or ne plant material used as temper (parts of wheat, such as chaff, straw, grasses, and other plant materials). Both groups can be further divided into inorganic and organic materials (see Fig. 8). Soil for building. The investigation for the source materials at Opovo began with a number of steps to identify the original construction clays. A series of physical, chemical and microscopic analyses in combination with experimental studies were carried out on the original Neolithic samples and on a collection of the geological samples of clays acquired from the vicinity of the Neolithic settlement. The analysis of the construction clays used for the Opovo houses was conducted in association with the analysis of the same type of material from two other Vinca

culture sites in the region, that of Gomolava and Vinca-Belo Brdo (Fig. 3). For a detailed account of the method and scientic analy ses that were applied, see Stevanovic (1996).4 A variety of tests, such as X-ray diffraction and uorescence analysis, enabled the identication and quantication of the clay minerals in the Neolithic unburned samples; the samples that were burned at low temperatures, i.e., below 400 C; and the burned samples. Their complete mineral composition, and especially clay mineral composition, was determined. In conjunction with microscopic analysis it was possible to compare the results of both groups of samples and establish that the house construction was indeed performed with the use of two to three types of soil and their mixtures, including the surrounding subsoil, which was loess soil, or a combination of loess subsoil with marshy or river sediments. In the case of nal coating of internal walls or furniture, the clays used were of better quality, i.e., with more clayey minerals, which originated in special clay deposits. The fact that the same types of soil were used as building materials in all three analyzed Vinca culture settlements implies that their selection was either a matter of convenience or a matter of cultural choice, which might have been a convention for the wider region of the Vinca culture. Considering the characteristics of the environment in which the Opovo settlement was situated (Tringham et al. 1992), its inhabitants had access to a variety of soils, especially loess and marshland soils. The site is located on a slight rise about 4 km from the present banks of the Tamis river. In prehistory it would have been surrounded by waterlogged and marshy ground, full of old meanders until the major drainage projects
4 These analyses were carried out in collaboration and with the facilities of the Institute for Materials Testing, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia and the Department of Soil Science and Geology, Agricultural University at Wageningen, Holland.

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FIG. 8. House building materials at Opovo.

of the 18th and 19th centuries (Fig. 4). The pedological survey of the team directed by L. van der Plas and L. Pons established that a dead meander was immediately adjacent to the Neolithic village at Opovo (Fig. 5). When the quantities of clay needed for a house and its weight are taken with consideration, the most likely solution for the Neolithic builders was to obtain as much construction soil as possible from the vicinity of the building site. The analyses presented in this investigation have shown that the majority of soil used in construction was loess soil. The loess soil came from the loess plateau on which a large number of the Neolithic settlements of Southeast Europe including that at Opovo were located. This soil is regarded highly suitable for purposes of plastering and construction. It has been assumed since Paret (1942) that it was digging for loess soil that cause the many pits found on LBK settlements. It is thought that in particular the oblong pits beside the long walls

of the LBK houses provided the loess for the houses (Modderman 1973 among others). Milisauskas (1972) and Modderman (1973) made calculations about the quantities of clays needed for a LBK house walls and the likelihood that the pits procured the soil. It is viable to propose that the pits at Opovo that were situated around the houses were the places of procurement of the substantial portion of construction clay. The marshy soils, which contain plenty of organic materials that make them exible and easily workable were probably a very useful ingredient in the mixture with the loess but they had to be brought in from the vicinity of the Neolithic settlement. However, the problem of construction clay procurement was more complex activity than the one that has been described. At any stratied Neolithic site in the region that was located on the loess plateau, in the earliest building horizon the access to the construction soil would have been im-

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mediate. However, in the upper building horizons the access to this soil changes. Since the later houses were erected on layers of earlier houses they are located on ground that is raised above the loess plateau and they do not have an immediate contact with loess soil. In addition, the burned houses of the previous building horizons make digging to the loess sub soil more difcult. In these conditions it is to be expected that the loess clay procurement took place further away from the bulding site. Thus, it is feasible to propose that access to building soil could have been the cause for the horizontal house displacement in non-tell settlements of Southeast Europe. Wood for building. In gathering the evidence on organic source materials, i.e., construction wood and reeds at Opovo, I had to rely completely on the information obtained from the house rubble, that is, either from the wood and reed impressions in the rubble, or from their actual fragments that can be observed rarely as unburned in the thin sections. The analysis of construction wood in all four houses at Opovo concentrated on the variety of diameters that occur and on their shape. The frequency of wood diameters is illustrated by the charts shown in Figs. 9 12. The wood diameters proved to be very important evidence for the nal reconstruction of the way the Opovo houses were destroyed. They show the following patterning: i. The reeds and wood used in the construction of houses 1 through 4 ranged from 0.20 to 15 cm. The largest diameter materials were used only in the construction of houses 1 and 2. ii. The most common diameter of wood used in houses 1, 2 and 4, however, is 1 cm. For house 3 the most common diameter used is 1.5 cm. The frequency distribution for houses 1, 2, and 4 is nonnormal, though for house 1 and 2, wood 5 cm in diameter was commonly utilized. It is uncertain if the frequency distribution for house 3 conforms to

a normal distribution or not. In the case of all Opovo houses wood diameters larger than 7 or 8 cm occur only in small frequencies. Diameters larger then 10 cm are especially infrequent. iii. The analysis of the wood diameters by house sublayers also shows patterning. In the case of all the houses, the most common diameters may be observed in all the sublayers. Thus, in some sense they may be regarded as universal as building material for all the Opovo houses. However, they do appear within the sublayers in different frequencies when the houses are compared. In the case of house 1, diameters of 1 cm occur in much smaller frequency on the bottom layer, that is on the house oor, than in the upper two sublayers. In the case of houses 2 and 3 this diameter is of almost equal frequency in all the sublayers. Contrary to the three other houses in the case of house 4 this diameter is dominant on the top and middle sublayers, but entirely missing on the house oor layer. Considerable quantities of wood of a diameter of 1 cm on the house oor level in all the houses except for house 4 may indicate that house roofs were covered with organic materials, such as water reeds and thin wood branches (i.e., branches of 1 cm in diameter). House 4, however, was built with two stories and in its case the second storey would have prevented the roof materials from falling down on the primary house oor. In the case of all the houses except house 3, undoubtedly the largest quantity of construction wood was that whose diameter was 1 cm or around it. Construction wood of other diameters that occur in larger frequency is present in all the sublayers in varying quantities. The analysis of the wood impressions observed in the structural rubble allowed making a typology of construction wood at Opovo. The diameters that range from 0 to 2 cm represent type 1, diameters from 2 to 5 cm are type 2, diameters from 5 to 10 cm make type 3, and diameters from 10 cm and

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FIG. 9. House 1: Frequency of construction wood diameter at Opovo by sublayer.

above make type 4. The role of the typology is primarily to indicate the size and possibly the tree-part that it comes from, such as a twig, a branch, or a trunk. Thus, type 1 is interpreted in this study as impressions of the water reeds and twigs that were used for wattling; type 2 represents the middlesize branches; type 3 represents secondary posts; and type 4 primary posts. The wood-type frequency by house (Fig. 13) shows that all Opovo houses except house 3 contain all four wood-types. Type 1 is the most frequent in all houses but house

2 where it is second to type 2. Types 2, 3, and 4 are present in progressively lesser amounts in all the houses. Thus, wood-type 4, which would be the primary posts is present in the least amounts. It has been proposed that a mosaic type of vegetation with heavy forest along the rivers, open forest and forest-steppe in most areas, meadow-steppe on the saline soils, and marshes scattered throughout existed in the vicinity of the Opovo Neolithic village (Russell 1993). The building materials that were used in the Opovo architecture judging

FIG. 10. House 2: Frequency of construction wood diameter at Opovo by sublayer.

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FIG. 11. House 3: Frequency of construction wood diameter at Opovo by sublayer.

by the tree-diameters and tree and reed impressions do reect, to some extent, such a mixed vegetation cover. In the analysis presented, the diameters show the presence of wood that ranges in size from thin branches to secondary branches and primary tree parts, all of which could have been found in the forests. Most of the impressions show the use of round poles but there are also traces of split timber (thick tree trunks that had been made into posts with a semicircular cross-section), posts with a triangular cross-section and even planks. The water

reeds and grasses that were used in large quantities for construction at Opovo could have been obtained in the local marshes. Even though it is impossible to identify the tree species of the construction wood based on the timber impressions in the daub, it is possible to propose based on the environmental reconstruction of the area, that several indigenous trees might have been used. According to several accounts (Pounds 1961; Sercelj 1967), the Neolithic farmers would have found the region of the Balkans to be almost entirely forested, in

FIG. 12. House 4: Frequency of construction wood diameter at Opovo by sublayer.

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FIG. 13. House 1 4: Frequency of construction wood-types.

some places more densely than in others. In most places oak would have been the dominant tree. Thus, at Opovo, if the indigenous trees were used as the major construction timber, it is feasible to expect that oak would have been the choice. There are several reasons why oak would have been suitable wood for construction in comparison with other tree species that are likely to have existed in the region. First of all oak grows to an adequate size to produce primary and secondary house posts. Second, it is a more durable wood than other trees which are likely to have existed around the Opovo settlement, such as elm, pine, maple, birch, alder, lime, poplar, and willow (see Bakels 1978, Table 6). And what is equally important, oak is very resistant to insects. Actually, according to Bakels there are almost no insects that attack this timber. Anthropogenic materials. The Opovo evidence on anthropogenic materials comes from: (i) The once fresh plant remains that comprised the organic temper inside the burned rubble, that have since been completely oxidized and decayed, but were preserved in the burned rubble as hollows known as pseudomorphic vegetal voids. The majority of house rubble from Opovo shows the presence of numerous voids in

the shape of chaff, straw and other grasses that were completely oxidized in the house re; sometimes the voids of complete wheat seeds are present. (ii) The actual fragments of organic materials that were preserved in the structural materials in silicied form. Most of these at Opovo seem to be the parts of wheat that were preserved because of the high silica content of wheat. Occasionally there are examples of actual fragments of the organic materials preserved within the construction materials in a noncarbonized state and nonsilicied state, such as grains, charcoal, tree bark, and others. However, these are not clearly tempering materials in the structural clays, but may be the remains of organic materials used for other purposes, such as wood for fuel. Examples of such remains were found at Opovo buried or trapped inside ash deposits, such as indoor oven oors or in ash depositories next to ovens. In the Opovo thin sections from the oven oor were identied fragments of charcoal that belonged to a pine tree and the fragments of unidentied tree bark, which may also belong to a pine tree. These building materials are treated as a special group because they are indicative of the choices that the Neolithic people had

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made as a part of their building strategy. In this group are included plant materials that were obtained from the environment, such as marshy soils with grasses, which might have been either an accidental or deliberate addition to the building clay, and the plant materials that were tended and produced by humans, such as wheat. These latter materials comprise different wheat parts, such as chaff, straw, and occasionally whole grains. The presence of wheat parts in the house construction material could potentially prove to be very signicant. Wheat domestication and production had a primary purpose of providing subsistence for the Neolithic people, a role which seems to be conceptually distant from that of house construction. At the same time, the evidence shows that the wheat parts which were not consumed by the humans or domesticated animals, such as chaff and straw, were secondarily used as tempering material in house building. It has been suggested in ethnohistorical and engineering sources that chopped straw, grass or other vegetable materials were often added to clay daub to help bind it, to assist in the drying process, and to distribute the shrinkage cracking. The reasons for the choice of materials is not discussed in these sources. In archaeology of Southeast Europe it has been assumed traditionally that the secondary use of the wheat parts was to aid construction clay or that it was accidental. It has been suggested, for example by Rye (1981) that these materials (straw, stems from crop plants) may be agricultural waste which was included as such. In my view, the implications of the secondary use of the precious subsistence product, such as wheat in house construction during the Neolithic deserves attention since it might be of a nonaccidental and nonutilitarian nature but expressive of the close connection and interdependency between agriculture and a domestic way of life. In the cultural layers at Opovo botanical remains were fairly scarce. Based on the botanical, topographic, and morphological

analyses, it was concluded that at Opovo the heavy soils and swampy environment would not have been very conductive to Neolithic agriculture, although the region is the bread basket of Yugoslavia today. Nevertheless, it is clear from impressions in the house rubble that einkorn and emmer wheat were cultivated by the Opovo people at least in small quantities (Tringham et al., 1985, 1992). However, when one considers the quantities of wheat parts that are observed as temper in the construction clay at Opovo the size of crop that was needed to produce it seems to have been quite substantial. It is impossible, at this stage, to suggest the exact quantities of chaff and straw embedded in the rubble. It has been suggested in the literature that a necessary volume of organic tempering materials in the construction clay mixed for mud brick should range from 20 30% of the tempering materials to 70 80% of construction clay volume. At Opovo, the overall impression is that the quantities of wheat parts used for temper were considerable. At the same time, this impression is not supported by the existing evidence on suitability of the area for Neolithic agriculture. Many puzzling questions stem from these circumstances, such as what was a necessary amount of chaff for one house construction, and was this amount collected from one annual crop or from several crops; how many elds were involved in it; was collecting carried out over a number of years, in which case the question is how was it stored or was it collected in one season; was, along these same lines, house construction a seasonal activity that took place after harvesting? We have no idea how much chaff and straw were produced yearly but we do not consider them as raw materials available in large quantities. The research on the quantities of the wheat parts as temper in the construction clay, therefore, has a potential to conrm or alter this idea. Bakels (1978) talks about different parts of plants that were collected for the purpose of house construction on the basis of void

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shape in the tempered building clay that she nds in the LBK settlements of North and Central Europe. Bakels claims that the plant remains found in the daub are seldom longer than 1 cm and they are remains of graminae: stems, leaves, and chaff, including chaff remains of emmer and einkorn, that the evidence in the rubble as a whole is highly suggestive of chopped straw. She adds that in some cases it is clear that loess was tempered with chaff only; that the chaff and the straw must have been gathered especially for this purpose. In addition, the fact that the weed species found in the settlements belong exclusively to tall or climbing plant species is considered evidence that the inhabitants of the LBK settlements would have harvested only the ears of wheat. Low plants are rare in the impressions, which would mean that the stalks were cut or picked just below the ear and not just above the ground (Bakels 1978). It should be added here that the ne plant materials were used in house construction also for tying the construction timber, i.e., at the joints and for tying the roof parts including roof thatching. One can imagine the use of a variety of bers for such purposes. At Opovo we have found some evidence of this kind in a fragment of rope and fragment of textile, both made of ax ber. In the Atlantic vegetation in Central and Western Europe bast bers are the most general natural source of rope (Bakels 1978). Lime- and yewbast in particular were used for binding. Willow- and elm-bast would have been also suitable. The latter was used up to historic times successfully in the experimental construction of a Neolithic house in Denmark (Hansen 1961). I conclude this section by pointing out that, even though the presented discussion reveals that we have some control over the plant materials used in house construction during the Neolithic, it does not offer evidence on the roof construction and its materials. The remains of the roof frame and of roong materials have not been found at any

Neolithic settlement in Southeast Europe so far. For this reason an assumption exists that the roong was made of perishable organic materials. The roofs for the houses in the Neolithic of Southeast Europe have usually been reconstructed on the basis of the house models and the ethnograpic analogy of the area. Some house models, such as from Strelice, Moravia, and Branc, Slovakia, have elements that are considered to be the representations of roof rafters (Modderman 1973). Modderman claims that such roof construction would have used animal skins as roong material. Other authors oppose this suggestion. Startin (1978) states that skin was not suitable for roong because of its poor insulation properties and the necessity of regular greasing if it is to be long-lasting and waterproof. The majority of authors agree that other materials, such as plants, were the most likely choice for roong. Tree bark has been suggested as the most likely material used for the house roofs in LBK settlements (see Bakels 1978). In historic times only birch-bark is known to be used for roong in Europe in combination with wood and sod. It is suspected that the birch trees were not very common in North Europe during the Neolithic because of their need for space and light which were not available in dense forests at the time. Therefore, it is not likely, according to Bakels, that this bark was used then. But some other barks could have been used, such as limebark and elm-bark which were used frequently in North America. Many authors suggest the use of reeds for roong during the Neolithic. The reed plant is a cosmopolitan plant which occurs in a large number of habitats, all of which are humid to wet; the water table must lie at least just under the surface. Some Neolithic landscapes, such as North European are believed to have been too dry to be suitable for reed growth. At Opovo, on the other hand, the environmental conditions seem to have been ideal for reed growth. Therefore, it is very likely that reeds, which were inten-

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sively used in house-wall construction, were also used for house roofs. In this case the roofs were probably made with some sort of thatching method. Modderman claims that there is evidence for thatched roofs in the Neolithic house models from Southeast Europe (see Theocharis 1973: Figs. 8 11, pp. 253 256).

TABLE 1 Median and Mode Values for Wall Thickness

Percent Percent Percent (valid) (cum) 34.3 .1 .8 4.9 8.0 10.2 9.2 9.7 6.5 4.0 5.8 2.4 1.7 .7 .6 .4 .1 .1 .3 .1 .1 .1 .1 100.0 34.3 .1 .8 4.9 8.0 10.2 9.2 9.7 6.5 4.0 5.8 2.4 1.7 .7 .6 .4 .1 .1 .3 .1 .1 .1 .1 34.3 34.4 35.2 40.1 48.1 58.3 67.5 77.1 83.6 87.6 93.4 95.9 97.6 98.2 98.8 99.2 99.3 99.4 99.7 99.8 99.9 99.9 100.0

Value

Frequency

Elements of House Construction at Opovo

Some elements of house construction are directly related to calculating the quantities of materials used in house construction and to the reconstruction of the process of house destruction in the Neolithic of Southeast Europe. These include the quantities and types of wood and the thickness of the house claycover, that is the rubble thickness. In Table 1 it can be observed that the wall-rubble shows a large range of thickness at Opovo. The full range is between 1 and 20 cm but the majority of rubble thickness falls between 3 and 10 cm. If the wall thickness ranged between 3 and 10 cm it would imply that a very large quantity of clay was used in house construction. In order to calculate the amount of clay used for house construction at Opovo I had to use an idealized model of a Neolithic house. The idealized house model (Fig. 14) is largely based on evidence from the Opovo houses, such as house size, constructionwood size, and clay thickness used for the walls. The model is only partially based on informed assumptions, such as house height and house roof. Since in the Neolithic architectural record the full height of the walls is never preserved intact, we are forced to make an approximation of it. The ethnohistorical record shows that in a similar environmental and cultural context the height of domestic structures ranges from 1.5 to 2.0 m. For the idealized Opovo house model, the height of 1.8 m has been applied. On the basis of this idealized Opovo house I was able to calculate the proportion between the construction wood and construction clay

.00 659 1.00 2 2.00 15 3.00 95 4.00 153 5.00 195 6.00 177 7.00 186 8.00 124 9.00 77 10.00 112 11.00 47 12.00 32 13.00 13 14.00 11 15.00 8 16.00 2 17.00 2 18.00 6 20.00 2 23.00 1 40.00 1 42.00 1 Total 1921 100.0 Median 5.000 Mode .000 Valid cases 1921 Missing cases 0

used in the Opovo buildings. The roof structure even though a part of the idealized house model has not been included in the material calculations. The reason for this is that we have no primary archaeological evidence for roof structure, nor its size nor the materials that were used in its construction. The measurements of the model are presented in Table 2. The idealized house model was used for estimating the quantities of the materials in the house construction and especially for estimating the proportions between the construction clay and wood volumes. The relationship between clay weight and volume was calculated according to engineering principles (Ramsey and Sleeper 1981). The

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FIG. 14. Idealized Neolithic house model.

idealized house model indicates that the proportion should be around 10% of construction-wood volume versus 90% construction-clay volume. When this ratio was

TABLE 2 Measurements of the House Model

House Size: 4 1 8 m (32 m2) Wall length: 2 times Wall volume: 13 m2 24 m length 0.3 m thickness 1.8 m H Wood volume Walls: Area gross: 25 m2 4m18m Area net: 3.4 1 4.7 m Total of 24 m

compared with the actual Opovo house ratio of wood and clay volumes that were inferred from the house rubble analysis, it gave very similar results. In the Opovo houses the ratio was 10 15% of construction-wood volume to 85 90% of construction-clay volume. Table 3 summarizes the types and quantities of materials used in the Opovo house construction. House Destruction Since house burning in Southeast European prehistory has traditionally not been a subject of investigation, the explanation of this practice either has not been sought or has been generalized on the basis of popular constructions. These explanations take two paths. One of these assigns the practice to the general intensication of production and population increase which results in overcrowding in the Neolithic villages. Typically

f15 20 cm f4 10 cm f1 3 cm

Total wood volume Clay volume Walls Wood to clay volume 1:12

0.032% 0.38 m3 0.01% 0.12 m3 0.038% 0.45 m3 0.08% 0.95 m3 12.00 m3

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TABLE 3 Building Materials and Their Quantities

House 1 Building horizon House length in meters House width in meters House surface in m2 House orientation Recorded house loci Total rubble weight in kg. Volume of construction clay in m3 Volume of construction wood in m3 Wood and clay ratio Volume of anthropogenic materials 1 8 5.5 40 NE/SW 100 1078 1.1 0.18 10 15% (wood) vs 85 90% (clay) 20% House 2 1 6 6.5 36 NE/SW 65 707 0.7 0.093 n/a 20% House 3 2 7 4 24 NE/SW 13 57 0.057 0.0097 n/a 20% House 4 3 6.5 5.5 27 NE/SW 22 188 0.188 0.015 n/a 20%

they have suggested that the increased use of re within houses or the denser crowding of houses within the village creates the conditions for occurrence of accidental res. The other path seeks the explanation within social dynamics that led to intersettlement competition, unrest, raiding, and even invasion. Other explanations, which are sporadic and do not seem to have as much persuasive power on the archaeological community, have suggested the deliberate setting of a re in a house in order to strengthen construction clay and make it water resistant (Kricevskij 1940; Semenov 1968), or ring of an old house in order to preserve its clay materials for later reuse (Shaffer 1984, 1993). In the Opovo Archaeological Project we proposed that the Vinca culture houses: (1) were burned individually and not collectively; (2) were burned not in the middle of their use-lives but at the end of their uselives (Tringham 1994, 1995). As has been suggested by Tringham there is a strong case to be made against the collective burning of the houses at the Vinca culture sites (1990b). The evidence shows that the house remains of each building horizon are conned to the immediate area of the house. That is to say, the cultural layers between two burned and collapsed houses are free from the burned remains. The reasoning here is, that if the

houses had caught re collectively, the soil in between would be burned to some extent and would be rich in rubble remains from the collapsed houses themselves. The fact is that while the construction clays were very obviously red to achieve the state of the brick-like material, the surrounding soil was not. There are traces of very crumbled rubble usually found around the burned house but nothing that would approximate the level of house ring. Thus, this evidence is understood as an indication of individual rather than collective burning of houses. In order to support the proposition that house-re was of deliberate nature and that it took place at the end of house use-life, I examined the following aspects of burned houses: 1. The houses were consumed in re completely. 2. The temperatures from burning form clusters, which could be observed in all four houses at Opovo. 3. The house construction elements do not provide enough fuel for a successful house re. 4. There are obvious re-ignition points within the houses, which are indicative of how the re started. 5. The re path or the spatial direction of

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re within the houses shows a patterning indicative of deliberate re. The completeness of the house re. At Opovo, as well as in most other Neolithic sites in the region, the entire houses were burned to the point that organic materials, such as construction wood and temper materials in the clay, were thoroughly consumed in re. Consequently, the clay cover of the house was burned and transformed to a brick-like material. Moreover, construction clay often shows traces of sintering or that it was reduced to a glassy, bubbly amorphous structure through the process of vitrication. The burning did not only affect the house but all the internal mobile and immobile features and artifacts, which as a result, lost all their utilitarian purpose in the re. A typical occurrence at the Neolithic sites in Southeast Europe is a burned and collapsed house with everything inside destroyed, for example, cooking ovens, grinding receptacles, large number of ceramic vessels, stone tools, bone tools, gurines, and other objects. There was most likely a large number of other artifacts made of more perishable materials, such as wood receptacles, baskets, furs, feathers, and textiles, as well as, remains of stored foods, possible stored seeds, and stored fuel materials, which by their nature got entirely consumed by re and whose remains we nd extremely rarely preserved. In the light of the evidence on completeness of the house re, suggestions proposed by Semenov (Semenov 1964, 1968) that Neolithic houses were burned for technological reasons or as suggested by some for the reasons of fumigation seem untenable. In other words, since the houses were burned to the point of being destroyed with all their inventory they could not have been burned for technological or structural reasons. Also, the proposition that house burning was carried out in order to recycle the building materials, suggested by Shaffer (1984) for the Neolithic of Southern Italy, could be rejected on

this basis. Namely, it is hard to justify burning down a house with its complete inventory in order to acquire the clay from the old house walls as building material for a new house. This hypothesis seems not to hold especially if construction clay is not a material in shortage, as was the case in the Neolithic sites of Southeast Europe that were located on the loess plateau. The temperatures of burning. The temperature of burning is potentially indicative of the nature of re, its ignition, type of fuel, re intensity, and re path. These elements, in return, could be decisive in determination of the causes of re. Keeping this in mind in all the phases of research on architecture at Opovo, we tried to acquire data which could later be used for determination of temperatures of ring. Virtually all res ignite because there is some local high temperature in a region in which an appropriate fuel air mixture occurs (Kirk 1969). That is, at a large or very small point in space a temperature in excess of the ignition temperature has occurred in the presence of appropriate fuel and air (or oxygen). These circumstances constitute a minimum requirement for any re to result. A variety of minimum temperatures for ignition have been reported, and they range from 190 555 C (McNaughton 1944). The ignition temperatures for most res are generally so high as to rule out spontaneous combustion except for a very small category of materials (see Browne 1929; Hoffman 1940). Also, frequently, no source of relatively high temperatures appears to be present and the origins of the re seem to be very mysterious, as is known from arson investigation.5 According to the arson investiSince re losses are one of the most common causes of civil litigation and one of the most difcult areas in which to reach rm conclusions (Kirk 1969), some criminologists specialize in analyzing re. Their primary interest is in discovering if a re was deliberately or accidentally set. It is believed that one half of the destructive res in the United States currently are deliberately set by the arsonists. Therefore, in order to prove
5

SOCIAL DYNAMICS OF HOUSE DESTRUCTION

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gations, it is the point and source of ignition that are the keys to be determined by the investigator if an origin of re is to be discovered. A major factor in the process of ring is not only the ignition itself but the next stage, that is, the temperature at which the fuel material becomes exothermic and therefore, self-sustaining. This temperature appears to be about 270 to 280 C (Kirk 1969). Therefore, to trace the behaviour of a small ame as it grows into a large re is of greatest importance. At the same time, re is chiey determined by the availability of the combustible materials. In the case of the Neolithic house burning, in my view, it is the origin and the sustainability of re that are equally important for explanation of re causes. The process of ring clays transforms the basic clay composition partially or completely depending on the intensity of temperature. It is now known at what temperature intensities certain clay minerals decompose and the same is valid for the nonclay minerals that are likely to be present in the soils. All these alterations usually cause changes in color in the red clays but the reactions between iron, calcium, and silica are responsible for major sequences of changes in colour that are correlated with temperature and atmosphere (Matson 1971). One of the ways, therefore, to reconstruct the temperatures at which construction clays were red would be to investigate the change of their mineralogical and micromorphological composition, and/or to investigate the change in color that the clays undergo. However, in many instances to establish the clay color change or change in their mineralogical composition is not sufcient. The minerals in the soils are transformed in re and are likely to go through the chemical reactions that form new minerals out of the old ones, as will be indicated later. Often it
such crimes, the arson investigators use many scientic methods to analyze and understand re.

is not possible to establish if these minerals are primary or secondarily formed clay minerals. Therefore, a basic precondition for conducting the research on the change of clays when red is to know the composition of the original clay in order to be able to follow the transformations of the minerals that re incurs. When this essential precondition, the composition of the clays cannot be satised, an experiment is necessary to help in making the link between the burned and the unburned clays. Experimentation in rubble ring temperatures. It has been mentioned that at the Opovo site house rubble fragments were carefully recorded for many technological attributes including their color. The colors were assigned to the fragments based on the Munsell Soil Color Chart. The charts in Figs. 15 18 show the frequency of color occur rence in the cases of four Vinca culture houses at Opovo. However, since the rubble colors of the Opovo houses by themselves were not sufcient to show the temperatures of ring that the houses underwent, my investigation turned to an experimental study, which was focused on transferring the rubble colors into adequate temperatures of burning (for detailed account see Stevanovic 1996). This procedure required making the comparison between the original rubble samples and experimental ones. The experiment comprised the collection of the local soils found in the vicinity of the Neolithic settlement; making the rubble-simulations using these soils; and mixing them with adequate temper materials into rubble-tablets, which were then red under controlled conditions, at a series of different temperatures ranging from 50 1100 C. The experimental rubble, which was acquired in this way, was compared with the original rubble samples through comparison of their thin sections. Only as a result of this process was I able to assign certain rubble colors to certain temperatures of burning. Table 4 shows the correspondence between

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FIG. 15. House 1: Rubble color frequency.

Munsell colors and temperatures of ring that were established by experiment. The process of ring causes rst the lowtemperature decomposition that takes place at temperatures up to 350 C. Any organic material present in clays naturally or added as temper begins to decompose around 200 C. When the temperature reaches 500 C carbon at the surface burns and clay color turns reddish. At temperatures of 500600 C the structural clays obtain the porosity and the color of the brick-like material that makes them durable. Under suitable oxidizing conditions all carbon

will be removed by about 900 C except graphite which can resist oxidation up to 1200 C. Up to 750 C clays that contain CaCO3 remain relatively inert. When heated above 750 C calcium carbonate begins to decompose. With still further temperature increase, and especially in a reducing atmosphere, the calcium can combine with sodium and other uxes and silica to form glass. Vitrication is a process by which glass is formed in clay bodies. It can begin at about 700 C, but generally does not become extensive below 900950 C. The rubble-colors at Opovo were, with the

FIG. 16. House 2: Rubble color frequency.

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FIG. 17. House 3: Rubble color frequency.

help of the experiment, interpreted as specic temperature intensities (see Table 4). The temperature frequency charts (Fig. 19 26) show the frequencies of temperature occurrence in the case of four Opovo houses. It could be deduced from the charts that a variety of temperatures that range between 400 and 1200 C occurred during the ring of the Neolithic houses at Opovo. However, certain patterning of the temperatures can be observed. First, in the case of all Opovo houses the highest temperatures (1000 1200 C) are present in the smallest number

of cases, except for house 4, which most likely shows a different pattern because of specic conditions of burning since it was a two-story structure. The real sharp break in temperature can be observed at 700 800 C in the case of all houses. The 500 600 C temperatures occur in roughly the same quantities in all the houses. The general impression is that large quantities of the construction materials in the Opovo houses were red at relatively high temperatures, that is, at the range between 500 and 800 C. If we compare the tempera-

FIG. 18. House 4: Rubble color frequency.

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TABLE 4 Rubble Colors by Munsell Soil Color Chart and Corresponding Temperatures
Temperature Below 400 C 400 C 2,5Y 2,5Yr 5Yr 2/3, 4/1, 4/3 4/2, 4/4, 4/6, 5/3, 5/4, 6/4 5/6, 5/8 6/6, 6/8, 7/8 78/4, 7/6 6/6, 6/8 7/2 6/1 5/6 7,5Yr 2/5, 3/1, 3/2, 4/1, 4/2, 4/4, 5/2, 5/4, 5/6, 6/4 10R 10Yr 2/1, 2/2, 3/1, 3/2, 3/3 5/4, 5/6, 5/8, 6/4

500 C 600 C 700 C 800 C 900 C 1000 C Over 1000 C 5/4, 5/6 4/3, 4/4 2.5/1, 3/1 3/2, 3/3

3/4, 3/6, 4/4, 4/6 4/8 5/6, 5/8, 6/8 5/4, 6/4, 6/6

5/8, 6/6, 6/8 4/6, 4/8, 5/6, 5/8 3/6, 4/4, 5/4, 6/6, 6/8

7/6, 7/8 8/4, 8/6, 8/8 7/1, 8/1 5/1, 6/1

tures of house burning with the temperatures of pottery production in the same Vinca culture, which range from 850 to 950 C (Kaiser 1984; Kaiser et al. 1986) we can conclude that the temperatures of house burning were high indeed. The very high temperatures of rubble burning, those above 800 C at which clays sinter and vitrify, occur in dramatically smaller numbers, except for

house 4. This result is also to be expected since the high temperatures require unusual circumstances, such as very high quantities of fuel. If the same temperature range is analyzed by the house sub-layers (see Figs. 23 26) another type of cluster can be observed. It shows an obvious tendency of higher temperatures to be located closer to or on the

FIG. 19. House 1: Rubble temperature frequency.

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FIG. 20. House 2: Rubble temperature frequency.

bottom sublayer, while the lower temperatures are predominant in the upper sublayers of the collapsed rubble. In the Opovo houses we can see that the highest temperatures, i.e., the vitrication spots, occur in the largest numbers on the bottom sublayer, that is on the house oor. This was the case in all four houses. These charts also show that the lowest levels comprise more high temperatures, whereas the upper layers comprise the lower temperatures. This situation implies that the hottest re occurred on the house oor level, and not on the roof level, for instance.

The house construction elements as fuel for house re. The volume of house burning at Opovo, which is the same as at other Vinca culture sites, and the intensity of re that Neolithic evidence shows bring in the question of what type and quantity of fuel was used to achieve such results. This problem becomes especially interesting when one considers the ethnographic (Gordon 1953; Vitruvius) and experimental sources (Hansen 1961; Shaffer 1993; Bankoff and Winter 1979) on the subject. These sources point out the great difculty that one can have in trying to burn down a wattle-and-daub or a

FIG. 21. House 3: Rubble temperature frequency.

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FIG. 22. House 4: Rubble temperature frequency.

mud-brick building. For this reason the likely volumes of construction materials, chiey wood and clay, that were used for the Opovo houses are important. The implications of the ratio between clay and wood volumes, 10 15% of wood to 85 90% of clay (indicated in Table 2), are that the amount of wood was substantially smaller in comparison to the amount of clay. I would take this implication even further and propose that the volume of construction wood was not large enough to serve as sufcient fuel to bake the construction clay to

the extent to which we nd it baked in the archaeological record. The analysis of the wood types retained as impressions in the rubble at Opovo shows the presence of 43% of type 1 wood, 37% of type 2, 18% of type 3, and only around 2% of type 4 wood (Fig. 27). This indicates that the predominant type of wood in house construction was the thin wood, that up to 2 cm in diameter. One more aspect of construction wood as potential fuel material in house re is the wood ammability. Wood ammability

FIG. 23. House 1: Temperature frequency by rubble sublayer.

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FIG. 24. House 2: Temperature frequency by rubble sublayer.

largely depends on its specic gravity. That is, the wood of low specic gravity, such as reeds, twigs, and thin branches is considered more ammable, whereas the wood of high specic gravity, such as primary branches and tree trunks, is less ammable. On the other hand, wood of low specic gravity even though easy to ignite gives off less energy and is likely to be consumed in re in shorter time than the wood of lower level ammability. According to Kirk (1969), hardwoods, i.e., oak, are difcult to ignite but are capable of generating much heat and

extended combustion when burning. Thus they present a lessened re hazard as compared to the more combustible softwoods but create a hotter and more protracted re. In the Opovo houses the wood of high ammability is present in considerably larger quantities than the wood of low ammability. The implication of such wood volumes and types is that the Opovo houses contained construction wood of ammability that could easily start the re but not provide enough energy to sustain the re for a long time. For instance, the oven exper-

FIG. 25. House 3: Temperature frequency by rubble sublayer.

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FIG. 26. House 4: Temperature frequency by rubble sublayer.

iment with a newly made and unused oven of the type known from the Neolithic showed that after it was red for 6 days it needed 10 12 h and 2 2.5 tons (2T 2.5 m3) of wood fuel to reach a temperature of 1000 C. Thus, the energy of fuel for burning a wattle-and-daub house to the temperatures of 500 C and up to 1000 C had to be substantial. Another important element of wood py-

rolysis is that wood, especially in massive form, requires a considerable amount of heat to cause its ignition. This is completed at about 500 C, at which point wood is completely consumed by re and only wood charcoal remains (Browning 1963). Even though this charcoal could be further heated and it can release more energy the point is that additional fuel is necessary to carry this process through. Therefore, if we know that

FIG. 27. House 1 4: Wood-type ratio.

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the construction wood in the Neolithic houses would be completely gone by 500 C but the level of temperatures of the house rubble at Opovo exceeded 500 C and actually goes up to 1200 C, we must propose that the quantities of wood needed as fuel must have been larger then the wood incorporated in the house construction. Consequently, in order to burn down the houses at Opovo the Neolithic people needed an additional source of fuel to that provided by the wood used in house construction. The ignition points. In the investigation of causes and mechanisms of re one of the major indicators is the ignition point of re. According to the arson investigations, any low point in a burn pattern should be investigated as a possible origin. Mainly, the points of the highest temperature found at the lowest level within a house are most likely the ignition points of a particular house re (Kirk 1969). The reason for good preservation of the ignition is often that when a superstructure collapses in re it generally preserves the point of re origin underneath it excellently. The reason for the ignition point to show high temperature of burning is that because the point of origin is likely to burn longer than the re that develops from it, more time is allowed for it to produce an impressive degree of burning. Especially important for our investigation is, that when the re is aided by the presence of accelerants or kindling materials of any kind, an unusually intense re may result at the point of origin. Therefore, the lowest point of burn must always be inspected with the greatest care. This is especially true if one is to determine the immediate cause as well as intention behind deliberate or accidental re (Kirk 1969). In the process of house rubble mapping and recording at Opovo special attention was dedicated to the locations of vitried rubble. The initial observation of the rubble in a house usually indicated the presence of several vitrication zones within each house. However, since there were several

sublayers of rubble in each house it was difcult to talk with any certainty about the locations of vitrication zones before a house was completely removed and rubble recorded, and all the analyses were nished. Within the Opovo houses a number of vitrication points, or the hottest spots of re in all the sublayers were discovered. Figure 28 shows the frequencies of the vitrication rubble within each Opovo house. This chart shows that, indeed, in the case of all Opovo houses but house 4, most vitrication points, which are considered to be the ignition points of re, occurred on the bottom sublayer. Thus, once more we can conclude that in the Opovo houses the re is more likely to have started on the oor level then on the roof level. The re path. It is known from arson investigation, and it has been mentioned above, that the spatial distribution of ignition point/(s) and temperatures is an important aspect of re to consider in a search of the re causes. In tracing the re pattern there are a number of important aspects, such as that low burns should be systematically sought while upper portions of the re may be disregarded; each of the burns should be analyzed as to the spread of re away from it. This could be accomplished by noting the direction of predominant re as shown by depth of burn. One of the guidelines in the research presented in this thesis has been to follow the spatial clusters of vitrication and high temperatures within each Opovo house. It has been considered that these elements could provide the re path within each house. The maps of the Opovo houses are presented in Figs. 29 32 and they illustrate the temperature distribution. The house maps show the following regularities in their distribution: i. The lower- and middle-range temperatures (400 C/500 C/600 C) are fairly well spread within the house. ii. The temperatures around 700 and 800 C are present in larger amounts but in a more restricted area. This is valid for all

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FIG. 28. House 1 4: Frequency of vitrication.

houses except for house 4 (Fig. 32) in which a fairly large portion of the house interior was covered with clays burned at high temperatures. House 4 is the only two-story house unearthed at Opovo and the pattern of re in it is bound to be somewhat different from the other houses. The conditions of burning and the amount of fuel provided by the second story structure are larger than they are in one story houses; iii. Finally, the very high temperatures, those around 1000 C and above, occur in much smaller quantities and in very restricted areas. Again the exception to this was house 4. The location of the vitrication points within the house sublayers shows in the case of the Opovo house 1. There are six vitrication points at the bottom sublayer, four at the middle sublayer, and three in the top sublayer (see Fig. 29). In house 2, sublayers three, two, and one contained six, four, and three vitrication points, respectively (see Fig. 30). House 3 sublayers three, two, and one contained two, one, and also one vitrication point, respectively (see Fig. 31). Finally, the sublayers in house 4 continued ve, four, and three vitrication points (see Fig. 32). Both the frequency of vitrication by sublayers and the distribution of these

points within houses, as well as the distribution of the temperature intensities away from them shows that we can, indeed, talk about a re path in the case of the Opovo houses. First, the depth of burns indicates that the ignition points were on the house oor as represented by the vitrication points. The vitrication did continue to occur in the upper sublayers of the house collapsed superstructure but in smaller numbers. When examined spatially these vitrication points are connected, i.e., the top points most likely represent the continuation of the bottom points of ignition and in that sense they indicate a re path. Second, the re path maps show that the highest temperatures were located in the immediate vicinity of the vitrication/ignition points. Only farther away from these points the temperature intensity dropped down to 500/600 C. The Neolithic re scenario. By following the sequence of examination that was suggested by the arson investigations, and thus, determining the origin of the re in the space, its causative agent, i.e., the nature of the initial fuel and the nature of the ignition, we should be able to get an informed idea about the nature of the re and if it was intentionally or accidentally set. The re begins with

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FIG. 29. House 1: The re path.

, sublayer 1;

, sublayer 2; l, sublayer 3;

, 700 800 C.

ignition. In my investigation I proposed that a point of vitrication that occurs on the lowest level within a house and exhibits considerable thickness, i.e., continues upward in the next sublayer, is to be considered the

ignition point. The spread of temperature away from this point from the highest towards the lowest temperature should be considered a re path. Based on the maps of re paths within the Opovo houses and

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FIG. 30. House 2: The re path. See Fig. 29 Legend.

the principles from the arson investigations, if there were more than one vitrication point that had been a re ignition point within a house, such as in the case of the Opovo houses, this situation will be considered a deliberately set re. It is known that the behavior of re is such that it always burns upward. Thus, taking

all that has been said into account the most likely scenario for the Neolithic house-res was that once started on the oor with some fuel, re ignited the roof structure, which we suspect was built of wood construction with a large amount of organic, leafy cover (reeds, straw, grasses), i.e., thatch (see Fig. 33). Fire is chiey determined by the avail-

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FIG. 31. House 3: The re path. See Fig. 29 Legend.

ability of the combustible materials. Even though in the scenario presented the house roofs are considered a very important source of fuel, in my view, the roof materials were the secondary source of fuel for a house re and more important for the later stages of

the re than for the ignition point. The primary source of fuel was on the oor level where the re started. However, neither the initial re fuel, if it were structural wood, nor the roof materials provided enough fuel for re of such intensity and of such an ex-

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FIG. 32. House 4: The re path. See Fig. 29 Legend.

tent to last long enough to burn through the entire house clay cover. There must have been an additional fuel involved that was either set up on the house oor or on the outside around the house to help it burn entirely. There is a possibility that interior res originate from exterior sources, which in the case of the Neolithic res would mean starting them from the roof and most likely igniting from the exterior even if by sparks from chimneys. According to Kirk (1969) in such an instance the house roof gets ignited and this results in the exterior re. Since the nature of re is such that it always burns upwards either the entire roof or some portions

of it would be caught in re but the burn would not go under the roof. The process of burning can change if the conditions change, for instance if the roof collapses inside the house and provides fuel for the internal burns. In such circumstances it is important to have sufcient quantities of ammable roof materials or other fuel to sustain the re to the necessary extent. Other lines of evidence. There are other lines of evidence within the material culture of the Vinca people that can be reviewed in support of the presented statement that the Vinca culture houses at Opovo were deliberately red. The rst one, I would say, is the level of knowledge on pyrotechnology of the

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FIG. 33. The Neolithic re scenario.

Vinca people and their success in the use of re in other elds of production. The second one is the orderly collapse of houses after their burning and the absence of any traces of secondary use of the houses. PYROTECHNOLOGY. The ability of the Vinca culture potters to reach high temperatures in conjunction with reducing atmospheres on a routine basis and prior to the rst appearance of copper ore processing in late Vinca sites has been now demonstrated (Kaiser et al., 1986). Moreover, it is suggested that high temperature rings had become culturally conventionalized in the Vinca culture. The Vinca peoples pyrotechnological experience included also plasterlime production, as well as copper ore processing. The pyrotechnological practice of the Vinca culture people could have a twofold consequence for this study. Firstly, the

knowledge of re and skill in handling it may mean that they knew the ways to create, control and prevent res. For instance, in case of house res the control could have been achieved by introducing changes in the building materials, building methods such as mud brick architecture, or in a villagewide change of house proximity. Taking into consideration the lengthy time period during which the practice of house burning occurred it seems realistic to assume that such changes were possible and likely if all other necessary conditions were met. Secondly, the pyrotechnological knowledge of the Vinca culture people was such that it could have allowed for a deliberate setting up of a successful house re and hence house destruction. Knowing that complete burning of a wattle-and-daub Neolithic house is not necessarily an easy task (Bankoff and Winter 1979) it is being claimed in

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FIG. 34. House 1 4: Impression orientation.

this study that a knowledge of pyrotechnology was desirable for achieving it. ORDERLY HOUSE COLLAPSE. The second line of supporting evidence for deliberate house re in the Neolithic comes from the orderly nature of house collapse that the Opovo houses show. The analysis of the cardinal orientation of the wood impressions shows considerable regularity (Fig. 34). In the case of all four Opovo houses the impression orientation is predominantly NW-SE. Immediately after comes E/W, and then NE/SW, and N/S. What is even more important for my argument is that in the case of all 4 houses the orientation and the proportion of orientation is almost identical. My explanation for this regularity is that the houses were burned down in similar fashion. They have collapsed in a short period of time, as shown by the long stretches of fairly intact wall portions which were excavated in some instances. There are no indications of structures burning more than once. PRIMARY HOUSE USE ONLY. Taking into consideration that there are absolutely no indications of these houses being reoccupied I propose that the house burning and collapse was an organized and strategic effort of house destruction and their complete sealing off from possible future utilitarian purposes.

Discussion The age of clay. The study presented was undertaken for two main reasons: one, to improve our methodology for investigating architectural remains of the Neolithic in Southeast Europe and allow for making more inferences about the behavior of Neolithic peoples in regard to architecture than we were able to do before; and two, to offer some plausible interpretations for why and how the Neolithic houses of Southeast Europe were destroyed. An important focus of the study, therefore, was the investigation of the causes of house res during the Neolithic. The empirical data in this investigation have been used to establish some relationships between the materials used in house construction and their behaviour in re by introducing the method of excavation, recording and sampling the data on architecture and performing their analyses. The data collected on the construction materials also allow for further insights into the specics of the wattle-and-daub method of house construction. The most critical evidence that followed from the analyses is the ratio between the volume of construction wood and the volume of clay, the wood-types used in construction which indicate their ammability

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potential, and the series of analyses of temperatures of ring of the architectural remains, house ignition points, and re paths. The ratio between wood and clay which shows the use of considerably larger quantities of clay than wood in house construction is an important aspect of the investigation. In the Opovo houses large primary posts were used but the majority of wood in the construction was of smaller size. That is, reeds and small branches predominated, which is understandable if the environmental conditions are taken into account. The choice and quantities of the anthropogenic materials are of exceptional interest, but they do not seem to play a signicant role as fuel in the house re. The signicance of the ammability of different wood is that most construction wood at Opovo was such that it could ignite easily but being of a low energy level it could not keep a re burning for a long time. The quantity of clay used in the wall construction unlike wood was large and was applied on both sides of the house walls (inside and outside). At the same time the temperatures at which the houses burned were around or exceeded 500 C and went up to over 1000 C. This indicates that res were intensive enough and lasted long enough to burn the clays completely. It is known that igniting clays is difcult if not impossible unless substantial quantities of fuel are added. The question arises whether the wooden construction of the Neolithic houses provided enough fuel by itself to burn the clays to the extent to which we nd them in the archaeological record. According to the engineering studies in modern brick technology as well as to the ethnographic sources (Lucas and Harris 1962); (Khalili 1986) the quantities of wood that would be necessary as fuel to re the clay to the state of a brick exceed considerably the quantities of wood that were used in the construction of the Opovo houses. In other words, the construction wood of the Opovo houses could not by itself constitute enough fuel to

re the daub to such an extent regardless of whether the re had been initiated accidentally or deliberately. Thus the ammability of the construction materials and their quantities available as fuel both show a negative correlation with the intensity of the re (based on temperature readings). In other words, neither the wood endurance (ammability) nor its quantities seem to be satisfying to account as a single factor for the house re. I have used these conclusions as basic arguments against the hypothesis that the house burning was an accidental occurrence. However, in order to support the hypothesis that the house res were deliberate and not an accidental occurrence, I have also investigated the burned houses from many other points of view. Through this investigation I have been able to dene the following characteristics of burned houses, some of which are the results of the properties of materials but some are the result of human behaviour. The properties of the construction material show that: i. the temperatures of house burning were much too high to have been achieved only by the re of the construction wood; ii. the re path in each Opovo house indicates several ignition points within a house; with the same methodology as modern arson investigation I have used this criterion to judge if Neolithic res were deliberately set or not; iii. the re path also shows that the ignition did not start in the house roof but at oor level; on this basis I suggest that the re was set indoors and on the oor level; iv. the pattern of house collapse supports the view that houses were pulled down in an organized and strategic way so as to bring them to a closure. Other critical factors are: a. The completeness of house burning and completeness of house destruction when coupled with evidence that the houses

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were not used secondarily, i.e., after ring, indicate the intention of the occupants to terminate the utilitarian (i.e., for residence) role of a house by ring. b. The sophisticated pyrotechnological knowledge of the Vinca culture people shows that they were capable of manipulating re in a variety of productive activities and would have been able to control house res successfully as well if that had been their intention. c. Finally a variety of other factors, such as the fact that we nd no bodies inside houses but we nd complete house inventories6; and the fact that we nd no animal skeletons inside or around the houses that had been caught in the re, also seems to point to intentional res that had not been set as acts of aggression. Rather, I believe that other reasons of a social nature should be explored that could account for the practice of intentional house burning during the Neolithic in Southeast Europe. Some intentional reasons for house ring have already been discussed. The suggestion that houses were red for the functional reason of providing a rigid and durable skeleton to the dwelling was suggested by Semenov (1968) but the completeness of house destruction in the res contradicts this argument entirely. According to Shaffer (1984, 1993), the reason for house re was created by the need for acquiring reusable clay for further house building. This can be disputed by the same argument of the completeness of house destruction in combination with the fact that the houses were not abandoned before ring but after ring and the valuable inventories were not taken out of the red
There are instances of the Neolithic houses that were burned just like any other house but were completely or almost completely emptied from the typical house inventory. However, at this point of investigation of the subject it seems to me that the reason these houses were emptied of their typical content lies in their different function and not in the fact that they were emptied in the course of house re escape.
6

houses, and that the reusable rubble is still lying where it burned. Other functional causes for house res include the need for fumigation of houses infested with pests. There are many arguments that contest this proposition. The infestation of the Neolithic dwellings assumes various types of wood insects and wood rot. It has been mentioned in previous chapters, however, that oak was the most likely type of wood used as the primary construction material, that is for the primary and secondary posts and for the roof beams, and that this species is very resistant to infestation (see Bakels 1978). In addition, many ways of fumigating a house are known from the ethnographic sources (see Khalili 1986; Weltsh 1965). Fire smoke, for example, is used as an agent for fumigationunderstandably without it resulting in the house destruction. Burning a house because it is very infested in order to replace it with another still cannot account for the fact that completely equipped houses were burned down so that none of the equipment could be reused. The risk of re in the age of clay. Nonfunctional causes of house res have been argued by the majority of archaeologists who have worked in the region. A widely shared belief within the archaeological community has been that the Neolithic houses of Southeast Europe were destroyed as the result of accidental res. The competing view assumes that the house res were acts of aggression. Many archaeologists have expressed the assumption that domestic activities, such as hearth or even mismanagement caused re ignition within a house, which later turned into full-edged and uncontrollable re that destroyed all the houses in a settlement. However, evidence presented in this paper does not support this assumption. First, it is clear that at Opovo there were no houses that were not burned. It was concluded that the burned houses that may have been built and occupied concurrently were most likely burned at separate times and not in one blaze. This conclusion is based on the lack of

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burned remains in between the houses which would indicate the spread of re from one house to the other and its continuation (Tringham et al. 1992). Second, the reconstructed temperatures of the house rubble which belongs to the oven superstructure or oven oor which are usually around 500 C do not correspond with the temperatures that occurred at the ignition points of re. For illustration of coercive house res I turn to ethnohistorical sources. A rare ethnographic account of house res is presented to us by the Roman historian Vitruvius who believed that the risk of re was great and the results catastrophic, as demonstrated by Verulamium when the city was red by Boudicca in AD. 61. Vitruvius (as referenced in Davey 1961:41) writes that the part of the city of Verulamium that was built in wattle work burned down during this attack. Vitruvius account describes wattle-and-daub houses as an easy target for the ames. I would suggest, however, that there was a difference between the Neolithic and Roman wattle-and-daub houses that is demonstrated by their different behaviour in re. The Roman houses of Verulamium ignited more easily for a number of reasons. The Roman cities, in which certain residential quarters were built in wattle-and-daub according to Vitruvius account were famous for being overcrowded with multistory buildings that were tightly packed, very poorly built, with very thin walls and large thatched roofs. What is most important is that the clay cover of these buildings seems to have been quite thin. Equally important for understanding the Roman Verulamium city re of 61 AD is the nature of the re itself. The city was burned in an organized fashion and houses were set on re at the same time. This would have caused a large concentration of the gases that occur in res, which could then have carried the re as long as there were suitable fuel available. Another example of house destruction that was conducted in an organized manner was the raiding of villages in Afghanistan

during the Afghan British war in the beginning of the century, as presented by colonel Gordon (1953). A house of mud and rubble walls and a at mud-covered roof had to be prepared for burning or it would not burn at all. The two essentials were extra fuel and good draft. These houses would not burn by a simple application of torch to their framework made of wood. Even when houses had been thoroughly burned, Colonel Gordon claims, they could be, and in fact were, made habitable after a few months work. Wilshusen (1988; 1989) argues that despite sparse accounts of accidental rings of structures in the ethnographic record, the common belief among many archaeologists working in Southwest United States has been that pit-structures were real tinder boxes; that one of their greatest enemies was re (e.g., Canby 1982:563). He notes that in the Southwest United States all the archaeologists believe that the best explanation of the many burned structures is accident. Wilshusen (1988, 1989), however, argues that, although certainly there are cases that might suggest accidental burning especially if the nds include an individual that may have been trapped inside a burning structure, on the basis of his data from the Dolores Project earth-covered dwellings do not burn down as quickly as stick-house dwellings. An experimental study that was conducted in order to assess this proposition in which a pit-structure in the Dolores area was burned down in 1983 suggested that it would take at least several hours for a pitstructure to fully catch re and burn down (Wilshusen 1988, 1989). Wilshusen also refers to the results of a study of experimental destruction of a 40-year-old earthlodge in At-A-Slant Village, North Dakota, in the winter of 1978 79 by burning. This study proved that earth-covered dwellings simply are slower to burn down than most wooden buildings. Wilshusen (1988, 1989) asserts that in the case of the Middle Missouri tribes there is ethnohistoric and archaeological evidence of structures being burned down dur-

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ing enemy raids. Those are the structures with human skeletons inside (Lehmer 1971:101). In our example, that is in the Southeast European Neolithic, it seems highly improbable that all so far excavated Neolithic villages throughout this long period of prehistory would have been burned down by coercive activity of the kind described by Vitruvius, Gordon and Wilshusen. If some archaeologists do believe that village conagration as the result of raiding is a plausible interpretation of the Neolithic, they have rst to account for the archaeological evidence that indicates individual and deliberate house ring that has been presented here. Moreover, they have to rethink and reevaluate their rmly embedded belief that the Neolithic was a period of great stability, peacefulness, gradual change and development in which no large movements of population, such as migrations that would involve territorial ghts were taking place. If all the Neolithic settlements were the targets of coercive attacks and all their houses were destroyed in conagration caused by raiders, the question arises: who were the people who undertook these attacks? Several recent experimental studies of ring houses deliberately or accidentally show that it is very hard or almost impossible to re houses built in clay to the extent that we nd in the archaeological record without some form of help on the part of the humans, by either providing additional fuel and draft for the re and by doing nothing to contain the re. The experimental studies conducted by Bankoff and Winter (1979) and Shaffer (1984) have shown that ring of houses that were built of wattle and daub with large quantities of clay is very difcult. They conclude that even if wood is a highly ammable building material the fact that the structural wood is coated with a thick layer of clay makes it hard to burn. The hardest part in the Bankoff and Winter experiment was to sustain the re long enough to have any

effect on burning the house walls. Actually the damage of the re in their experiment was insubstantial to the structure of the building. They concluded that to burn the wood and clay of a house to the extent to which we nd it in the excavated deposits would be very difcult. Even if an initial re were easily ignited by highly ammable materials stored inside the house, this re would not go on, according to Bankoff and Winters experiment, long enough to burn the construction wood thoroughly. To achieve that state of burning it would have been necessary to help the re in some way, for instance by adding fuel in order to reach high temperatures and sustain them until they could burn wood and clay (Bankoff and Winter 1979). An experiment with similar results was presented by Hansen (1961). The re in an experimental Neolithic long-house built of wattle-and-daub with large thatched roof came about through carelessness while lighting a re on the houses hearth. As a result, with the exception of the osiers inside the clay wall, which remained standing upright, practically all the woodwork was charred. In spite of the great heat (in places near a haystack it burned for up to 6 hours), the clay wall was surprisingly little baked through. The inner side of the walls was heavily red or black but only to 0.50 cm depth. This layer aked off in about two weeks. It was only at the top, and at the places that were especially severely exposed to the heat, that the clay was practically baked through, and large pieces of mud plastering similar to those originally discovered at the genuine site could be broken off. The tops of the roofs supporting posts had been ablaze, but had crashed down fairly soon when they were burned at their base by the fallen roof. Despite all this, Hansen concluded that the slight damage to the walls was remarkable. The practice of house burning lasted throughout the Neolithic period of Southeast Europe (ca. 1500 years) without intro-

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ducing any changes in the method of construction, or in the choice of the materials used or in the intrasite organization of the dwellings. The technological knowledge of the Vinca culture people has proved to be substantial and I believe it included the possibility to introduce some changes to their architecture. The possibility of altering the method of construction to one of mud-brick technology would have been feasible if the social conditions had been favorable. This method must have been known to the Vinca culture people from the times of the earlier settlements (Early Neolithic) in the bordering region to the South, such as at the site of Anzabegovo (Gimbutas 1974, 1976b). In addition, soil in large quantities necessary for mud brick manufacture was readily available at the Neolithic sites. However, the mud-brick construction is considered to be a slower method and more labor intensive. The dilemma arises: did the Vinca culture people not want to invest more time and energy in mud-brick construction of their houses? Or did they prefer their houses to be more easily built and at the same time easier to destroy? A much more plausible interpretation of house burning in the Southeast European Neolithic, which is in my view supported by the analyses presented in this paper, is that the house conagrations were the result of deliberate and symbolic action. I argue that for the Neolithic Vinca culture people, domestic houses were of utilitarian and ritual signicance at the same time. But whereas it is easier to illustrate their utilitarian role based on the number of domestic activities that were carried out within them, it is much more difcult to show their nonutilitarian role. Based on all evidence presented in this study, I suggest that the house burning and collapse was an organized and strategic effort of house destruction and their complete sealing off from possible future utilitarian purposes. At this point of their use-life the houses might have acquired a new, nonutilitarian function, such

as ensuring the continuation of ancestral line in one place. Consequently, house construction, their use and destruction were the segments of a continuous process. House abandonment and replacement. House and village abandonment and replacement for structural or social reasons is a worldwide practice known from a variety of time periods. The term abandonment covers many different processes and has no single archaeological consequence. Site abandonment and replacement, even though the latter is much less known, has received a considerable attention in archaeological literature lately (Cameron and Tomka 1993). After the initial focus on studies of abandonment in site formation processes (Schiffer 1976), more recently archaeology has witnessed an intensication and diversication in the study of this phenomenon (Brooks 1993). Investigations of planned versus unplanned abandonment and utilization of sites from initial occupation to abandonment has been the focus of research in archaeology (e.g., Brooks 1989; Binford 1982; Stevenson 1982), and ethnoarchaeology investigations (e.g., Kent 1984, 1990; Stevenson 1985; Tomka 1989). The phenomenon of abandonment is currently viewed in the archaeological community as a complex set of processes in which differences can be drawn in its causes and its nature, such as episodic, seasonal, permanent (e.g., Tomka 1989), or punctuated abandonment (e.g., Graham 1993). These processes are believed to have operated on the settlement, aggregate, and individual household level. Furthermore, it has been concluded by recent investigations that abandonment cannot be viewed as a separate static event, but is always dynamically linked to other events within a social group (Brooks 1993). As suggested by Tringham (1990), discussion on site abandonment and replacement in the Vinca culture, as well as in Southeast European prehistory has been limited. Some causes for village abandonment and later replacement during the Neolithic of Central

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Europe have been implied by archaeologists that worked on the LBK culture. Childe (1957), and Soudsky and Pavlu (1972) analyzed the LBK horizons of houses in terms of interrupted occupation. Their argument suggests that between the two phases of houses the same people lived at another site. The cause of such alternating of settlements was related to the type of agricultural practices conducted by the LBK populations. Soudsky talked about a restricted territory within which a group of related people would alternate the settlements staying at each location for 10 15 years at one time or until the elds are exhausted by overcropping. Modderman (n.d.) argued against cyclical habitation pattern of the LBK settlements remarking that this explanatory model, developed for the tropical regions characterized by the slash and burn agriculture, was inappropriately imposed on the Neolithic settlements of Europe, which were located on different types of soil. Explanations such as the one for the LBK villages of Central Europe presume that as a single event a complete village was abandoned and later on resettled in a similar fashion. On the other hand, I suggest that even though a complete village abandonment and replacement was a possible strategy in the Neolithic, another strategy, that of abandonment and replacement on an individual or household scale, must not be ruled out. In the ethnographic and archaeological literature often mentioned functional reasons for individual house abandonment are structural decay, as for instance, among the American SW Pueblo populations (McIntosh 1974), or insect infestation in the case of the Navajo, which limited their use-life of hogans to 6 10 years (McGuire and Schiffer 1983:291), (see discussion in Wilshusen 1988, 1989; and Weltsh 1965:252). Extreme drought conditions and resource depletion forced many of the Hopi to temporarily abandon on the village scale the Mesas (Dockstader 1979:525). The social reason for

abandonment on the village level is known from the historic Pueblos at Orabi where the partial abandonment of the site was due to a social dispute (see Wilshusen 1988, 1989). According to Brooks (1993) the Plains societies of North America feature several types of abandonment, from planned abandonment that was related to the life-cycle of the house and a need for its replacement to the less planned or very sudden abandonment in the case of a sudden death. The long-term planned house and/or site abandonment could take two years of preparation in which help was provided by the kin. In these instances, the houses that were abandoned show a pattern of scavenging for high-reproduction-cost goods or other valued items including removing and transporting of the old wood-beams in the areas where wood is scarce, and exhibit burning of the dwellings as a ritual associated with the abandonment of a residence (1993:180 182). House destruction or abandonment for fear of ancestral ghosts, if a person dies in a house for reasons other than old age, is known among the Athapaskans in the Southwest United States (Jett and Spencer 1981:28). Among the Navajo a house in which a person died may be burned; if not, a hole is torn through the north wall and the roof beams are allowed to fall in, indicating that the place should be avoided (Reichard 1963:81). The ethnographic examples are not only important to illustrate the practice of house abandonment and replacement on the individual scale but also to draw attention to another related practice that can occur during the process, that of partial or complete house destruction. The causes for the practice of house destruction and house abandonment at the Neolithic site of Opovo are believed to have been related to the need for house replacement. In any archaeological study of cooperative production and especially the possibility of cooperative generational transmission of land and other property by households, it is essential to establish

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the relationship of the household to a locus or loci through time. Houses as residing dwellings were the focal points for the social life in many respects of the Neolithic communities (Tringham 1990; Tringham and Stevanovic 1991). This study argues that the Neolithic Opovo houses were not just abandoned in order for their inhabitants to alternate the settlements and gain new farming grounds. The Opovo houses, just as other Neolithic houses in the Vinca culture, were destroyed before they were abandoned. The Opovo houses were burned down and replaced with no exception. The Opovo houses, moreover were built with a technique that would facilitate house destruction at the end of its use-life. Since there are no indications that the end of a house use-life was based on utilitarian grounds all the houses were fully equipped when burnt down it is proposed here that their use-life ended as the result of other nonutilitarian factors. Surely, such an act of house destruction would have been highly undesirable among the settled people had there not been socially essential reasons. House burning may have been a ritualized act marking, for instance, the end of a house use-life and an end or new beginning of a household head (as suggested by Tringham 1994). In these circumstances, by housing the events of life and death of its inhabitants houses are embedded in those events and as such they acquire their use-lives.

CONCLUSION

Continuity of Place The Neolithic house was the central feature in the society by way of constituting the largest and most complex single feature for production and by encapsulating the social activities within it and its physical belongings. However, the house during the Neolithic might have also had the symbolic role of securing a postutilitarian visibility and

objectifying the successful social reproduction of the owners. Social and material continuity were important to the Neolithic societies and might have remained a leading mobilizing force in the society throughout the Neolithic. The engagement in domestication of plants and animals, as well as domestication of humans was physically and conceptually a struggle for constancy. The only way to succeed in the domestication of animals, plants, and humans, as we know from the historical periods, is through perseverance and protraction of human and natural resources. In the Vinca culture, the period of greatest intensication of production and the period of the most extensive house burning coincide with the practice of building new structures which are horizontally removed to a certain extent from the location of older destroyed houses. It has been suggested that if this was a common practice in the late Vinca culture settlements, especially those where the land available or preferred for residence was more restricted, such as tell settlements, the houses would have symbolized the continuity of land use and possibly land ownership (Tringham et al. 1992). Thus, in those circumstances a Neolithic house secured its visibility by being burnt and provided a foundation for the new house with which it was replaced. It is quite feasible that such continuity would have served to legitimize ownership of a locale in a settlement and of agricultural resources in the vicinity of the settlement. Continuity is being assured not only through succession and replacement of its human resources (reproduction) but also through holding onto xed or movable property and through the transmission of the names, titles and prerogatives as pre sented by Levi-Strauss and reviewed by Carsten and Hugh-Jones (1995). Thus in the Neolithic of Southeast Europe, in addition to assurance of a lineage continuity through reproduction, we could propose a social mechanism for assurance of continuity

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through the house and the farming grounds that go with it. It may seem paradoxical to suggest that house destruction can assure continuity in a society in which houses seem to have been the largest asset for an individual or a family. However, if the houses had to be replaced at some point in their uselife (as suggested by Tringham 1994) and sealed off from the future utilitarian purposes to do so by the means of ring them is an understandible strategy. In fact red clay, that the houses were made of, lasts much longer than unred clay and becomes much more visible in the village deposits, as surely the Neolithic people realized from their own manufacture of ceramics in clay. It is not surprising that the Vinca people would have chosen re as an agent of transformation the agent that can create and destroy to carry out the closure of their houses in a ritualized action. Domestication of re had been achieved by bringing it within the realm of the houses (in hearths and ovens). Fire as an agent of transformation of the raw-food into the cooked-food was a crucial part of the process that focused on bringing the wild within the house and into the cultured/domesticated space of the humans in the concept of Domus. The real control of re that followed was achieved by the sophisticated pyrotechnology of the Vinca culture people. During the Vinca culture period house res by their destructive role played a constructive part as well and expanded the process of technological and social domestication. The Neolithic house was brought to closure by burning; it was shut off from the active/utilitarian life. At the same time, it is preserved by that same re which transforms it into a brick-like solid material that can stay as such for an indenite time. In this way the house as a place gains visibility in a much wider sense than it had during its utilitarian life. Even though a burned and collapsed house becomes invisible by being covered by humus and/or by another house on top,

it retains its visibility and its mnemonic potential. Its existence would have been known to the people who built a new house on top of it. Moreover, the reason that they build the house at the very place of the previous one, I believe, was a strategic action with an aim to incorporate symbolically and structurally the old house into the new one. By such action the role of the older place continues to exist through the role of the new place. Thus, the continuation of the place is established. There are multiple examples from the site of Opovo, as well as from many other Vinca culture sites (Gomolava, Vinca-Belo Brdo) of the practice of house construction by incorporating older outdoor hearths and ovens as well as older burned houses into the foundation of new houses. This was achieved by erecting the new house not directly on top of the older features, but resting on one part of the older house or feature (in some instances to incorporate more than one outdoor oven and/or house). This positioning of a house may have given it a structural advantage in the sense that the stable, solid ground of the older features was used as a foundation for the new house. However, the fact that they do not always lie directly on top of the older feature I interpret as a symbolic continuation of the place. The tell settlements of Southeast Europe and the Near East are prime examples of such a practice and of the signicance of the place that many generations inhabited. The non-tell sites or so-called at site, such as Opovo, are another example of the same practice. At Opovo there are three building horizons which, on the basis of 14C dates, are believed to have lasted for nearly 200 years. In my mind the places of the Neolithic people which were kept alive and visible for generations to come indicate the continuity of the social structure, such as lineage, through the mechanics of house construction, their use and destruction being the segments of a continuous process.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For the research presented in this article I received support from the Fulbright-Hayes Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program, the Stahl Fund of the Archaeological Research Facility, Department of Anthropology at U.C. Berkeley, and the Explorers Club Fund. I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all of them.

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