Pyrotechnological connections? Re-investigating the link between pottery firing technology and the origins of metallurgy in the Vinča Culture, Serbia

Abstract

The present paper re-examines the purported relationship between Late Neolithic/Early Chalcolithic pottery firing technology and the world's earliest recorded copper metallurgy at two Serbian Vinča culture sites, Belovode and Pločnik (c. 5350 to 4600 BC). A total of eightyeight well-dated sherds including dark-burnished and graphite-painted pottery that originate across this period have been analysed using a multi-pronged scientific approach in order to reconstruct the raw materials and firing conditions that were necessary for the production of these decorative styles. This is then compared to the pyrotechnological requirements and chronology of copper smelting in order to shed new light on the assumed, yet rarely investigated, hypothesis that advances in pottery firing technology in the late 6 th and early 5 th millennia BC Balkans were an important precursor for the emergence of metallurgy in this region at around 5000 BC. The results of this study and the recent literature indicate that the ability to exert sufficiently close control over the redox atmosphere in a two-step firing process necessary to produce graphite-painted pottery could indeed link these two crafts. However, graphite-painted pottery and metallurgy emerge at around the same time, both benefitting from the pre-existing experience with dark-burnished pottery and an increasing focus on aesthetics and exotic minerals. Thus, they appear as related technologies, but not as one being the precursor to the other.

Early Balkan Metallurgy: Origins, Evolution and Society, 6200–3700 BC

“…This metal construct is still frequently dominant in scholarship seeking to define the (elite) socio-economic dynamics of prehistoric communities, despite the fact that other materials such as ceramics, flint, polished stone, obsidian and spondylus (e.g. Amicone et al 2019;Amicone et al 2020a;Amicone et al 2020b;Ifantidis & Nikolaidou, 2011;Klimscha, 2016;Milić, 2015;Spataro, 2018;Whittle et al 2016;Windler 2018) were also comparably, or much more extensively, sourced, shaped, traded and/or deposited in settlements and graves both prior to and, later, along with metal objects. It is evident that, especially in the last decade, many major Balkan Neolithic/Chalcolithic projects have explicitly sought to push beyond traditional metal-orientated perspectives, especially given the significantly increased scale and depth of understanding of the non-metallurgical archaeological andenvironmental record in recent years.…”

“…It is therefore not uncommon to see debates on the connections between the emergence of metallurgy and the Gradac phase of Vinča culture ceramic sequence, or the relationship between the development of metallurgy and the widespread graphite painted decoration on the ceramics of the Kodžadermen-Gumelniţa-Karanovo (KGK) IV cultural complex (e.g. Amicone et al 2019Amicone et al , 2020bGarašanin, 1995;Jovanović, 1971Jovanović, , 1994Jovanović, , 2006Radivojević & Kuzmanović-Cvetković, 2014;Radivojević et al 2010b;Renfrew, 1969;Spataro & Furholt, 2020;Spataro et al 2019;Todorova, 1995;Todorova & Vajsov, 1993). As is now widely acknowledged in Balkan and world prehistory, the creation of spatial and temporal frameworks through the identification of similarities and differences in materials and practices continues to evade researchers; straightforward explanations are unlikely (cf.…”

“…In addition to dominating the agenda for the 'when' and 'where' for the origins of metallurgy, Renfrew's (1969) suggestion of a direct connection between the production of graphite-painted ceramics and the invention of copper metallurgy also provided a new explanatory framework for the 'how'. His pyrotechnological transfer model was subsequently also advocated by Gimbutas (1976), although it was not to be investigated from a comparative pyrotechnological perspective until nearly four decades later (Amicone, 2017;Amicone et al, 2020b). A partial model for the 'why' that went beyond the back-projection of assumed ideas concerning value (e.g.…”

The Vinča group - (Almost) 40 years on John Chapman (independent scholar)

“…7). This means that pottery kilns would have been widespread in what Sherratt (1976) termed 'metropolitan Vinča sites' in the main lowland valleys -a sign of at least part-time specialisation in pottery production (contra Amicone et al 2020). Nonetheless, in the recent review of the relationship between dark burnished ware production and copper smelting, Amilcone et al (2020,120) conclude that while "it is not possible to exclude that a certain degree of specialisation in pottery production existed among Vinča potters, no convincing arguments have been brought in thus far that demonstrated that this craft was a highly specialised activity carried out by professional figures that had privileged access to resources and technology".…”

“…Turning to pottery, most Vinča fine wares were fired to a dark burnished surface, varying within sites between light grey and black in colour and degree of burnish / polish, and, to judge from available ceramic analyses (e.g., Spataro, 2017;Amicone et al, 2019Amicone et al, : 2020 Amicone, this issue), fired for the most part to 800 -900 0 C by non-specialist potters (but see above, p. xxx). The aesthetic result of the technical achievements of pottery firing was a startingly attractive object that shone like an obsidian core, putting all other ceramics into the shadow.…”