life in clay net

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Bisenija Petrovi, Velibor Kati, Milo Spasi

LIFE IN CLAYNeolithic Art on the Territory of Belgrade

Figural Plastic Artifacts from the Collection of the Belgrade City Museum

Catalogue of the exibition 55

2009

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Bisenija Petrovi, Milo Spasi

NEOLITHIC ART ON THE TERRITORY OF BELGRADE.

During the late stone age (Neolithic) the territory of Serbia,

once a cultural province, became the hub of important and dy-namic events, where the paths of various prehistoric communitiesintersected and many cultural influences converged. At that timethe Belgrade area was especially prominent, as one of the greatestcultural centers of Southeast Europe. Downstream from the conflu-ence of the Sava and the Danube, where present-day Vina is locat-ed, the first farmers made their settlement. at was the birthplace

of one of the grandest cultures of European prehistory, which hasbecome eponymously world-famous in the field of science. Withits neighbors in Starevo, arkovo, Banjica, Kalemegdan, Jablanica,Kormadin, as well as with their fellow tribesmen in Kosovo, in theMorava Basin and Banat, Vinas inhabitants took part in creatingNeolithic cultures, the first origins of European civilization in thisregion.


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Archaeological evidence from this geographically very favor-able terrain has enabled the division of culture of early farmers-

cattle breeders communities into three periods of development:the Early and Middle Neolithic (the Starevo culture), cca 62005300 BC (Tasi 2006) and the late Neolithic (the Vina culture), cca52504500 BC (Schier 1996).

During the early and middle Neolithic periods this territorywas inhabited by groups of people of Anatolian origin. ey mi-

grated throughout the Balkans, due to the frequent land exhaustionand in search for new pastures. Simultaneously, these farmers-cattlebreeders communities formed temporary habitations, which pre-serve the traces of their material culture. Nowadays those groupsare designated as the representatives of the Starevo culture, namedafter the Starevo site on the left bank of the Danube, in Vinas im-

mediate vicinity. at culture existed in these parts until approxi-mately 5300 BC. Certain Starevo settlements were occupied bynew populations, i.e. representatives of the Vina culture.

On the banks of the Danube, which offered an abundant catchof fish, and of the smaller rivers, which deposited mud from fertileumadija and the Pannonian Plain, the population cultivated cere-

als with a minimum effort, bred cattle, pursued trade and crafts, es-pecially making pottery as a characteristic feature of their materialculture. e Danube and its many tributaries served as waterwayswhich connected the inhabitants of this area with other places, allthe while standing as landmarks and guideposts. It is certain thatthe Danubes hugeness caused admiration in the minds of the peo-ple of that long-gone era, and its elevated right bank offered a beau-tiful view far and wide, so the choice of location doubtless points to


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mans need to belong to that very space. All that made it possiblefor the Vina communities to settle in one place for the first timeand start up a peaceful sedentary life. With the advent of sedenta-

risation, plant cultivation, advancement of agriculture and cattlebreeding, surplus products appeared, facilitating the exchangeamong Neolithic communities throughout the Belgrade area ofmaterials that was lacking on their respective territories, and by thesame token, the encounters with the customs and culture of othercommunities.

Economic stability, especially at the time of the Vina culture,also brought about the fact that some household members shouldbe exempt from everyday works and start specializing in particu-lar activities. Because of that they could travel farther than usu-al, enrich and improve their skills in various crafts, and to obtainnew raw materials. After cinnabar was discovered on Mt. Avala,the inhabitants of Vina and Banjica Neolithic settlements mustalso have mastered the primary technology of coalmining, so theytransported the excavated ore to be processed in Vina, followed byits exchange for products of other communities. Cinnabar process-ing yielded the purple color, which was very valuable and served forornamenting objects used in everyday life, as well as in perform-ing many rituals. Vina thus became an important center for the

exchange of goods, and its waterways connected it to numeroussettlements, like Starevo on the Danubes right bank, and fartherto the north and southeast of Europe, which resulted in closer con-tacts with neighboring populations, in knowledge exchange, andprobably in establishing interethnic relations. It seems that the verytrade was instrumental in Vina settlements millennial survival,bringing it into the center of a powerful culture, and it is no wonderthat it is sometimes considered the cradle of European civilization.


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Such a bustling human activity, in a bygone era, apart from satis-fying everyday needs, must have inspired the wish for expressingtheir inner being. at was particularly manifested in the making

of a large number of objects of art, first of all figural plastic, whichtestify to a high and complex state of mind of the Neolithic man inthese parts.

As an expression of the first artistic aspirations, figural plasticappears in a wide area, occupying an important place in the mate-rial culture of Neolithic communities on the present day territory

of Belgrade. e best insight into all aspects of Neolithic art is of-fered by long-lasting settlements of the Vina culture, like Banjica,Vina, Grabovac, Jablanica 1 and 2, Kormadin and arkovo (Fig. 1),where many generations left a large number of artifacts. eir artis-tic value often exceeds the artisans skill in the production of objectsused in ritual and religious rites or in usual daily activities. A muchsmaller group consists of objects from the Popovi settlement Mali Drum, Jugovo in Grocka, Brestovik, Kalemegdan, Bataevoand Agino Brdo. Although evidence from these sites gives us only afragmentary insight into the art of ancestors of modern Belgrade, italso has a major importance for the study of relations between thecenter and periphery of the Vina culture, in the field of both urbanand economic development and art and religion.

Contemporary interpretations of Neolithic figural plastic havechanged in accordance to the way of studying Neolithic culture ingeneral. Although Vinas first explorer, professor M. Vasi, in linewith his basic definition of the Vina culture, misdated the figu-rines to the Archaic Greek period, seeing almost exclusively theirsepulchral character (Vasi 1936b: XXX), he did recognize por-trait features in them of actual faces of Vinas inhabitants, which


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many of the later researchers neglected. In the second half of the20thcentury, in a scholarly effort to include the Starevo and Vinacultures into the framework of the Eurasian Neolithic, the discus-

sion of the meaning of figural plastic was to an extent disregarded(Garaanin 1951: 3843, 6365). However, new interpretationsappeared promptly, which saw Neolithic figural plastic in the reli-gious and cult spheres of life of the first agriculturist communities(Gavela 1956a; ibid. 1956b; Garaanin 1968; Tasi 1973). e mostinfluential papers on this aspect of Neolithic material culture, de-prived of sterile typology and almost poetically and philosophically

inspired, derived from professor D. Srejovis pen (Srejovi 1964;ibid. 1984). In recent times, in the process of interpreting the entirematerial culture, including figural plastic, special attention is paidto contextual analysis, without which it is impossible to shed lighton the actual role and meaning of the evidence (Tripkovi 2007;3839, Tasi 2008).

At present, when several decades have elapsed since the firstresearch of Jablanica, Vina, arkovo, Banjica and Kormadin, wefeel the need to review the art, style and meaning of Vina plasticonce again. Revived, Neolithic artifacts find their infinity in differ-ent interpretations and in the new form of digital photography.

Many figural plastic art pieces from the Starevo and Vinacultures draw attention and ask the fundamental question: whatdo they mean? It is common knowledge that various Neolithic ar-tifacts (anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines, amulets, al-tars, prosopomorphic lids) served for magic and religious cults, asan integral part of the rites performed in everyday life. ey werefound in various contexts in settlements, pits, and cult places. eywere accompanying objects in sorcery, sacrifices, invocations and


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bringing supernatural beings into connection with the essence ofall phenomena in nature. e figurines represent demons in humanform, but they do not have the meaning of the gods and their power,

possessing just a momentary effect. Before some works began, manmost often used certain magic to pacify the superior power so thatit could provide him with what he wanted. Regarding the time andcircumstances in which figural plastic presented here originated,the starting point for its interpretation must be related to the devel-opment of agriculture. Forming these objects it animated the hu-man imagination to intimate and establish a new relationship with

life, nature and other worlds.

Every figurine in the Starevo and Vina cultures can beviewed as an organic unity and discussed as if we were watching anartistic, sculptural form. Only shaping in clay, in a plastic material,allows us to follow the development of a stylistic phase through themanner of formation, so we can even talk about the style and artof the Neolithic era. In figural plastic, like in pottery production ingeneral, we discern the first signs of art, excelling in creativity andinvention, and from the aesthetic point of view it has an importantrole in offering the beautiful, attractive, even sensual experience.e emergence of plastic forms in Neolithic art, in which the style ofthe period is revealed, has to be treated as art and analyzed in order

to find those elements in them that we nowadays recognize in everywork of art. Most often it is a representation of a woman stand-ing or sitting, with emphasized sexual attributes, naked or in richlyadorned clothes. e choice was not made at random because thewoman is a symbol of fertility, the Great Mother, the principal deitythat had a very important place in the life of Neolithic farmers, butshe was also represented as a genuine human being, with a strikingindividuality. In some statuettes we can see bearded men, slightly


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plump, square-built (cat. 132). Others show an asymmetrical face(cat. 50), which means that those were also the first portraits. eNeolithic artists had an inner need to put across human and super-human features onto stone, bone, clay and wood, thus creating veryindependent and definite artistic wholes. at is the intersectionof the code of mans power and that of superior power, but we donot know which of them is primary and which is secondary. Evennowadays in fresco painting we can notice that certain artists, apartfrom strictly canonized images of saints, added an individual traitto a face, perhaps their own portrait. In Neolithic art, we can also

feel a particular distancing from some usual magic-religious pat-terns. e thematic diversity of figurines points to an early tenden-cy towards establishing regional styles, even to the establishmentof actual small circles of artists. In the figurines we can discern thetypes of artistic forms, with numerous signs of naturalism, realisticrepresentation, stylization, as well as the forms full of ambiguity inwhich we can see a fusion of masculine and feminine features.

Viewing Neolithic anthropomorphic plastic as a whole, it isvisible that naturalist elements are present in the early andmiddle Neolithic, i.e. at the time of the Starevo culture. Starevofigurines are characterized by pillar-like, phallic forms, with a neckundistinguished from the body, and attention is drawn completely

to the formation of facial details, with a plastically presented noseand incised eyes (cat. 24). e representations are impersonal andshow a strict, static form. In some statuettes we can see the ten-dency towards a more relaxed motion in space, the lines begin tocurve and abandon the frame of the rectilinear contours. For thefirst time in Neolithic art there is an intimation of the arms and amuch emphasized steatopygy, like in Venus-type figurines (cat. 1).ese statuettes iconography is very simplified, without attributes


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that associate with a more specific function, so they cannot be re-lated to the appropriate deities, and they were certainly intended formagic rituals regarding everyday works with domestic animals, intilled fields and in settlements. When the desired aim had been ac-complished through their use, they were broken and thrown away,losing all value.

Unlike Starevo figurines, Vina figurines occur in a much larg-er number and have three phases of development. e oldestfigurines thematically and stylistically preserve the Starevo tradi-

tion of cylindrical forms with engraved details on the face. eironly difference is the more harmonic proportions and more naturalrepresentation of some details. A human figurine, still unskillfullymodeled, tends to present the head and the body as closely as pos-sible, and now the marked details include the triangular face, shortstubs of the arms, appended breasts and glutei that are sometimesmisplaced (cat. 59, 47). ese early Vina figurines seem dishar-monic just because artistic creation was still under a very strongStarevo influence. Made after Starevo traditions, thanks to theeconomic progress, Vina plastic very soon managed to wrestle it-self away from that canon and to introduce a new style into humanfigural representation, which was to secure its leading role in theNeolithic art of southeast Europe.

The evolution of plastic proceeded continuously, and in the sec-ond phase the realist tendency gained full prominence. isphase is characterized by a three-dimensional shaping of the hu-man figure and an abundance of details, now plastically modeled.e artists found it most difficult to shape the face. Seeking a repre-sentation as close as possible, they modeled the nose plastically, andset the large eyes into a horizontal, natural position, thus elongating


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the entire face and making it assume a pentagonal shape. ere areno more level surfaces the brows, rudiments of the mandible,and cheekbones are boldly stressed (cat. 42, 68, 69, 73, 89, 119).ey achieve a fullness of shape, looking very lively. e breasts,hips and glutei muscles have a natural shape; the arms are shapedwholly, with the bent elbows and hands resting on the stomach, orextended forward, sometimes even raised (cat. 33, 38, 52, 53, 76, 94,99, 111, 124). Some figurines legs are spread and placed as step-ping forward (cat. 29, 37). Male and female genitals are emphasized(cat. 29, 81, 121), and sometimes different hairstyles are presented

(cat. 113, 117). All that leaves an impression that the artists wellknew the human body and had mastered its motion, so the entirefigure received a complete and boldly shaped form. Modeling skillespecially mattered in sitting or kneeling figurines (cat. 3032, 41).Simultaneously, the artists deft fingers clothed the deity, either amagical instrument or a realistically presented model, in variousskirts and gowns, which is an important source of information tothe reconstruction of Neolithic womens clothes (cat. 22, 26, 27, 87,93). Two identical aprons can hardly be found. Some are threadedon a string around the waist, some are rolled over the skirt or gown.Perhaps the aprons signified a different status or a membership in acertain group or clan. It is interesting to note that the figurines areperforated on the back of the heads, temples, short stubbed arms

and hips, which could be used for hanging or inserting various ac-cessories, by means of which certain individuality, possibly evensome ritual, was expressed. In any case, while forming the figurines,the artist achieved different forms and aspects of ornamentation,which may mean that the figurines were used for one action only,to associate the believer with a certain supernatural power, and wecan say that, unlike the Starevo and earlier Vina statuettes, theyhad a deeper religious sense.


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Unlike this phase of Vina art, imbued with realism, three-di-mensionality, personality, fullness and exuberance of form,in the most recent stage of development the figural plastic losesthe splendor and lavishness of artistic expression, resorting to ab-straction, schematics and linear representation of form. e figu-rines now become flat, two-dimensional, details are engraved, andplasticity is imitated through various pictorial methods (cat. 56, 62,66, 82). e artist incises, paints, shortens and emphasizes certainbody parts to construct the impression of three-dimensionality.

e almond-shaped eyes are incised, often framed with eyelashes,whereby the artist tries to compensate for an absence of a full natu-ral form, while other surfaces remain empty (cat. 129). Figurinesare decorated with incised lines that freely move along the bodyand form various motifs, without a definite meaning. e elbows,knees and glutei are usually marked with spiral lines, which visuallyachieves a sculptural representation of a human figure. e orna-mental expression is made complete by painting some body partsred or black. Such a mode of ornamentation was probably not re-lated to the use of statuettes in rituals and cults, nor did it representa tattoo, as some experts think. It is a manner of visual expression,i.e. a special style devised in the art of the time, tending towardsabstraction.

In further schematization, the face shortens, and broad-ens horizontally. Only a very elongated nose is modeled, whichunites with the chin and assumes the beak shape, thus giving riseto the beaked-face figurine type (cat. 79, 134, 141, 142). In shap-ing these figurines bodies, the lower part is much shortened andforegrounded, creating an illusion of formal plasticity. at changeof style could not have been coincidental. It indicates that some-


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thing was happening in Vina communities at that time. Due toan economic crisis, instability and dangers that new populationsbrought along, these areas experienced a crisis in the organizationof life. People were afraid for their fortune, realizing that they werelosing their ancestral land, they retreated into themselves and intonarrower frames, trying to protect themselves from their environ-ment, which reflected on the change in thinking and understandingof life in general. ose changes could not have passed unnoticed inartistic creation, as well as in religious attitude. We can still noticea feminine figure formed in various positions. e Jakovo throne

figurine (cat. 131) does not present the deity with human features;that is a figurine with an abstract image, which in its position andappearance symbolizes the central role of the feminine deity in thefertility cult, possessing an all-encompassing power and hope ofsalvation in another safer time and place.

Apart from anthropomorphic ritual plastic forms, animal fig-ures were also frequently modeled in the Neolithic. ose in-

clude mostly domestic animal figurines, the dog (cat. 148), sheep,goat, pig (cat. 161), especially the bull as a symbol of strength andfertility (cat. 147, 149, 156), less frequently fish and birds (cat. 151,157). As far as the wild species are concerned, the deer was mostoften represented (162). Occasionally the turtles were also mod-

eled (cat. 153), which can be related to the fertility cult. Animalfigurines were first represented realistically, and later formed sum-marily, where we can identify only the distinctive trait of the spe-cies. eir role is not completely clear, but it is assumed that theywere used in rituals whose purpose was herd protection and fer-tility enhancement. An interesting statuette is that of a reclininganimal, resembling a sphinx (cat. 150). Representation of mythical

beings is very rare, but their emergence certainly points out to the


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fact that they had a special meaning in the life of the Neolithic man.In zoomorphic figurines as well, the artist took pains to imitate aform with characteristics of a sculptural work, through modelingand ornamentation.

Prosopomorphic lids account for a special type of Vina art, andoccur on its entire territory. ose are uncommon cylindricalobjects, with a representation of human or animal faces, featuringears, nose, eyes and various decorations. It seems that they had amultiple role in the Vina mans life, for vessel covering, but also

as objects with apotropaic properties. ey were used for coveringamphorae containing special purposes liquid, seed or reserves ofsome products used on special occasions. e most striking partof the face is the large modeled or incised eyes, drawing consider-able attention (cat. 229, 230). ey have a mystical appearance towhich a particular importance is attached. e eyes are consideredto be the mirrors of the soul and to have an incredible power,evil and bewitching, as well as defensive apotropaic. e lids mayhave served as a mask to cover the sorcerers face from the unlim-ited power of the deity he was appearing before. ey have a high-quality finish so, despite their large number, there are no two iden-tical specimens. Each of them is an attractive unique product, aninspired work of art of a great cultural-historic value.

Another type of objects draws attention with its purpose and avery impressive appearance. ose are altars used as cult ob-jects at sacrifices (cat. 203218). ey differ in size, shape, num-ber of legs and ornamentation. ey have a shallow receptacle intowhich most probably some precious liquid was poured, or were usedfor some sacrifices at home, within the family. e altars are richly

ornamented with incised lines shaped as meanders and hatched


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