Vinča culture
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Map of European Neolithic at the apogee of Danubian expansion, c. 4 500-4 000 BC. |
The
Vinča culture was an early culture of
Europe (between the
6th and the
3rd millennium BC), stretching around the course of
Danube in
Serbia,
Romania,
Bulgaria, and the
Republic of Macedonia, although traces of it can be found all around the
Balkans, parts of
Central Europe and
Asia Minor.
It was named after
Vinca, a suburb of
Belgrade, where in
1908 several artifacts were found by the first
archaeological excavation team led by
Miloje M. Vasić. After WWI excavations were resumed in
1924 and the site was visited by numerous prominent scholars of the time:
Veselin Čajkanović, Ch. Hyde, J. L. Myres, W. A. Hurtley,
Bogdan Popović.
At that time it was believed by both Yugoslav and Romanian archaeologists that the
Vinča culture began around 2700BC. However
carbon dating of the
Tartaria tablets, discovered by Nicolae Vlassa at
Tărtăria in Romania in
1961, pushed the date of the civilisation back to before 4000BC. If the inscriptions on the Tartaria tablets are indeed
pictograms, as Vlassa argued, they would be the earliest known writing in the world. This claim however remains controversial; most experts consider the Tartaria finds to be an example of
proto-writing rather than a full writing system.
*
Old European script (Sometimes called "the Vinča alphabet".)
*
Tartaria tablets*
Neolithic Europe*
Cucuteni culture*
YamnaGimbutas, Marija A. (ed.)
"Neolithic Macedonia as reflected by excavation at Anza, southeast Yugoslavia." Los Angeles: Institute of Archaeology, University of California, 1976. OCLC# 3073058
*
Vinca culture pottery*
culture.fr: The Vinca Culture*
Vinca, Centre of the Neolithic culture of the Danubian region
