The Iron Gates in Prehistory: New perspectives

Description

This book had its origins in a symposium held at the University of Edinburgh from 30 March to 2 April 2000, which was attended by archaeologists with a shared interest in the prehistory of the small but distinctive region of Southeast Europe known as theIron Gates. In the broad sense the area refers to the section of the Danube valley where the river forms the modern political border between Serbia and Romania, and this definition is adopted for the present volume. First and foremost the volume is intended to illustrate the immense research potential of the Iron Gates region. A second objective is to provide case studies that illustrate the nature of current research and the rich possibilities offered by the growing range of scientific techniques available to archaeologists and their application to existing archaeological collections. Front Cover Title Page Copyright Table of Contents Acknowledgements A Note on Dates List of Contributors Introduction Section 1: REGIONAL STUDIES Lithic technology and settlement systems of the Final Palaeolithic and Early Mesolithic in the Iron Gates The development of the ground stone industry in the Serbian part of the Iron Gates Sturgeon fishing in the middle and lower Danube region The Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in the Ðerdap as evidenced by non-metric anatomical variants Demography of the Đerdap Mesolithic–Neolithic transition Approaches to Starčevo culture chronology Faunal assemblages from the Early Neolithic of the central Balkans: methodological issues in the reconstruction of subsistence and land use Section 2: SITE STUDIES Lepenski Vir animal bones: what was left in the houses? New-born infant burials underneath house floors at Lepenski Vir: in pursuit of contextual meanings DNA-based sex identification of the infant remains from Lepenski Vir Dating burial practices and architecture at Lepenski Vir The vertebrate fauna from Hajdučka Vodenica in the Danubian Iron Gates: subsistence and taphonomy from the Early Neolithic and Mesolithic Velesnica and the Lepenski Vir culture The human osteological material from Velesnica The Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in the Trieste Karst (north-eastern Italy) as seen from the excavations at the Edera Cave