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New Views on the Relations of the Aegean and the North Balkans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

We have been treated to many variants of the thesis that brings some or all the elements of neolithic culture in Greece from a little-known region north of the Balkans. Recently two versions have appeared that surpass their forerunners in profundity and erudition. After intensive study in the principal Greek Museums and visits to Serbia and Hungary, Dr. Frankfort has come to the conclusion that there was a great influx of people from the Danube basin across the Balkans and into Greece about the end of the First (Thessalian) Neolithic Period. This Danubian invasion would have been in a sense a counterpart of one from farther east that brought the obviously intrusive Dimini culture to eastern Thessaly.

The clearest proof of their advent that his Danubians have left consists in certain types of carboniferous pottery. But, of course, carboniferous wares are characteristic of the earliest cultural layers in the whole east Mediterranean region from the Hellespont to Upper Egypt.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1930

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References

1 Frankfort, Studies in the Early Pottery of the Near East, ii.; Matz, Frühkretische Siegel.

2 Frankfort, op. cit., p. 42.

3 Even in the very earliest culture of Egypt found at Badari, black carboniferous pottery occurs, and the classical Predynastic black-topped ware is partly carboniferous, as Lucas has recently shown, J.R.A.I., LIX, p. 128. On the distribution of such wares cf. Forsdyke, B.M. Catalogue, Vases, I, i. p. x.

4 J.H.S., xxxv, p. 200.

5 Both sites belonging principally to my Danubian II Period as defined in The Danube in Prehistory. The finds are at Szekszard and Budapest respectively.

6 There are good examples in Siret's collection at Hererias; for Maltese sherds cf. Liverpool Annals, iii, pl. v.

7 Brunton, and Caton-Thompson, , The Badarian Civilisation, p. 23Google Scholar; Petrie, , Prehistoric Egypt, Pottery Corpus, N. and below, p. 260.Google Scholar

8 e.g. Liv. Annals, i, pl. XLIV.

9 B.S.A., xxvii, pp. 51–4.

10 Evans, , Palace, i. Fig. 7, 3.Google Scholar

11 Pp. 115 and 132.

12 Wosinsky, Lengyel, Nos. 73, 331, 3; Archœologia Hungarica, iv, Pls. I, 9, II, 1; Wiener Prähist. Ztschr., xiii, p. 37, fig. 10, 8.

13 Wiener Prähist. Ztschr., x, p. 3 (Cassis saburom); from Lengyel, Tridacna gigantea.

14 Mitt, anthr. Ges. Wien, lvii, p. (185) (Sitzungsberichte); Schránil, , Vorgeschichte Böhmens und Mährens, Pl. VII, 12.Google Scholar

15 Xanthudides, Vaulted Tombs of Mesará, Pls. III, X.

18 E.g., Schránil, op. cit., Pl. VI, 10.

17 To the examples enumerated by Matz, op. cit., add Childe, Most Ancient East, Fig. 63.

18 Childe, op. cit., Pl. XXII, a.

19 Syria, vi. (1925) Pl. II.

20 del Castillo Yurrita, A., La cultura del vaso campaniforme, Pl. LXXIII.Google Scholar

21 Civilisation of Greece in the Bronze Age, p. 60.

22 Cf. e.g., Ath. Mitt., 1886, Beilage 2; Xanthudides, op. cit., Pls. IV, 106, XI, 1904, a, XV, 455; Dörpfeld, , Alt-Ithaka, Beilage 61Google Scholar, b, 3. Evans, Palace, iii, fig. 10.

23 Loc. cit.

24 Expressed by lines radiating from the base or centre of the vessel, but bent to wind up it like screw-threads.

25 P.Z., ii, p. 131.

26 Müller, Sophus in Mém. Soc. Antiqu. Nord., 1920–25, p. 237.Google Scholar

27 B.M. Cat. Vases, I, i, A28, A18, A52, A58, etc.

28 Z.f.E., 1906, p. 342; P.Z., i, p. 51.

29 I have tried to explain it in more detail in Antiquity, i, as the advance of primitive cultivators who, through ignorance of manuring and fallowing, had to shift their settlements periodically as the soil became exhausted.

30 On these and their distribution in Asia Minor see Frankfort, op. cit., pp. 64, 74; his sharp contrast with Egyptian wares cannot, however, be maintained in view of Lucas' recent researches.

31 Schmidt, Hubert had already compared the latter with Egyptian black-topped ware in Z.f.E., 1903, p. 460Google Scholar.

32 Because by this time the continuity of the carboniferous gourd-ware province had been interrupted by the advance of a more Oriental culture represented in Egypt by the Second Predynastic. The intrusion of Dimini culture into Greece presumably caused a similar but only temporary, interruption of continuity in Thrace.