Session 333 Danube as communication axis (original) (raw)
Related papers
T HE DANUBE AND SETTLEMENT PREHISTORY -80 YEARS ON
European Journal of Archaeology, 2009
Although commentators have discussed myriad themes presented in the rich and extensive oeuvre of Childe, one of the topics that has been, in my view, seriously neglected is the topic of settlement types. In this article, I seek to make good this omission, starting from a consideration of The Danube in Prehistory. The basis of Childe's ideas on settlement types in the Neolithic and Copper Age of eastern Europe was a binary classification into 'tells' and 'flat sites' that, in turn, reflected a division between permanent and shifting cultivation and greater and lesser cultural complexity. However, the introduction into this debate of questions of trade, surplus production, and Neolithic 'self-sufficiency', as well as metallurgy and ritual, meant that the initial binary classification left a series of contradictions that Childe struggled to transcend in the last decade of his life.
Hussain, S.T. & Floss, H. 2014. The role of river courses in organizing the cultural space of the Upper Paleolithic: examples from the Rhine, Rhône, Danube and Garonne. In: Otte, M. & Le Brun-Ricalens, F. (eds.), Modes de contacts et de déplacements au paléolithique eurasiatique, p. 307-320.
In order to understand human spatial behavior in the Paleolithic and related processes such as dispersal and mobility, it is urgently imperative to focus on a finer grained analysis of human-environment interactions than usually provided. Recent studies tend to overlook the explanatory value of single natural features establishing important anchor points for Paleolithic hunter-gatherer groups. Rivers are good candidates constituting such important natural features. We thus explore the role of salient rivers in the construction of Upper Paleolithic cultural landscapes through time. It is argued that rivers indeed played a crucial role, either as axes of communication and displacement or as referential frontier features in space. On the other hand, it seems clear that human river engagement was never static, but highly dynamic and variable both through space and time, because it is partly shaped by cultural conceptualizations and embedded in semantic webs. We finish our survey with the observation that in the Early Upper Paleolithic, rivers were mainly used to facilitate the flow of people and information, whereas the spatial consolidation after the colonization of Europe was accompanied by a tendency of conceptualizing rivers as frontiers or even boundaries. Only the Central European Magdalenian is again characterized by the use of rivers as spatial trajectories.
2015
Given its geographical characteristics (i.e. open to the south), the Carpathian Basin formed an integral unit with the northern Balkan regions. Previous prehistoric research highlighted the southern and southeastern connections of these Carpathian/northern Balkans areas due to their primary focus upon Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean territories and because of their chronological connections and the role played in the process of Neolithisation. In fact, the Carpathian Basin became an active innovation centre of Central European interaction during the Early and Middle Bronze Age with relatively loose connections towards the Aegean. Social complexes east and west of the Danube produced different cultural and metallurgical characeristics as well as indications of different regulations of settlement structure. However, the overall picture of the Carpathian Basin suggests the presence of the same developmental rhythm between the 18th and 16th centuries BC. Intensive network connections are indicated by the presence of raw materials, finished products and their replicas principally along the major rivers and tributaries which join the Danube (which itself acted as the main northwest-southeast artery in the broader Central European region). The present paper has briefly discusses the region’s cross-cultural networks both on a regional and interregional scale.
Large river valleys have long been seen as important factors to shape the mobility, communication and exchange of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers. However, rivers have been debated as either natural entities people adapt and react to, or as cultural and meaningful entities people experience and interpret in different ways. Here, we attempt to integrate both perspectives. Building on theoretical work from various disciplines we discuss the relationship between bio-physical river properties and sociocultural river semantics and suggest that understanding a river’s persona is central to evaluating its role in spatial organization. By reviewing the literature and analyzing European Upper Paleolithic site distribution and raw material transfer patterns in relation to river catchments, we show that the role of prominent rivers varies considerably over time. Both ecological and cultural factors are crucial to explaining these patterns. Whereas the Earlier Upper Paleolithic record displays a general tendency toward conceiving rivers as mobility guidelines, the spatial consolidation process after the colonization of the European mainland is paralleled by a trend of conceptualizing river regimes as frontiers, separating archaeological entities, regional groups or local networks. The Late Upper Paleolithic Magdalenian, however, is characterized again by a role of rivers as mobility and communication vectors. Tracing changing patterns in the role of certain river regimes through time thus contributes to our growing knowledge of human spatial behavior and helps to improve our understanding of dynamic and mutually informed human-environment interactions in the Paleolithic.
Draft for the workshop: “Linking the Mediterranean. Regional and Trans-Regional Interactions in Times of Fragmentation (300 -800 CE)”, Vienna, 11th-13th December 2014 (see: https://www.academia.edu/9238221/Linking\_the\_Mediterranean\_Regional\_and\_Trans-Regional\_Interactions\_in\_Times\_of\_Fragmentation\_300\_-800\_CE\_) While Michael McCormick in his “Origins of the European Economy” has highlighted the dynamics of connectivity between Western Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean after the fall of the Western Roman Empire and thus also ultimately confuted the thesis of Henri Pirenne on a destruction of the unity of the Mediterranean in this period, a similar approach towards the connections within the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond would provide equally significant results for the “Origins of Eurasian Economy”. In my paper, I will focus especially on the mobility of individuals, objects, technologies and ideas between the spheres of Byzantium respectively Persia and Central Asia and the “Far East”, traditionally connected with the master narrative of the “Silk Road”. The notion of the “Silk Road” suggests linear routes between two localities, while recent scholarship has illuminated the “multiplexity” of commercial, political or religious ties among places on the local, regional and trans-regional level. Within these complex and dynamic networks over several spatial and temporal scales emerged processes of religious, intellectual or artistic diffusion. I survey some selected developments and intensities of long-distance connectivity, especially from the perspective of some important intermediary regions, for the period between 550 and 850 CE. Second, I focus on what C. A. Bayly in his “Birth of the Modern World” (2003) has called the lateral and the vertical dimension of phenomena of “global” diffusion and exchange: the spatial range of mobility and communication of individuals and objects which connected localities and clusters of localities along the “Silk routes” – and the vertical dimension of the impact of the material and immaterial artefacts of these exchange in the respective local societies. Finally, I link these observations with some discussions on the character of exchange and socio-economic integration in the Roman and Post-Roman world as well as with some general models of connectivity.