Diversity in SE Europe Settlements

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Aspects of Settlement Diversity and Its Classification in Southeast Europe before the RomanPeriodAuthor(s): Timothy TaylorSource: World Archaeology, Vol. 19, No. 1, Urbanization (Jun., 1987), pp. 1-22Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/124495 .

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A s p e c t s o f settlement divers i ty a n d i t sclassification in southeas t E u r o p eb e f o r e t h e R o m a n p e r i o d

Timothy Taylor

IntroductionThere are few satisfactorily excavated prehistoric settlements in southeast Europe.Nevertheless, those known appear to show a remarkable diversity of type over space andtime: there are tells more than 15 metres thick, and ashlarmasonry fortresses; concentricrings of hundreds of small houses, and promontory forts with mud-brick ramparts;lake-villages, open entrepots, and great planned cities.After the colonization of the Black Sea coasts by the Greeks, Greek authors describedthe customs of the Scythian and Thracian tribes of the hinterland. Sometimes theydescribed a type of settlement or gave a native name for one. From these names, andfrom other linguistic scraps, some idea of the language of the inhabitants can be arrivedat. Elements of such tentatively reconstructed language can then be sought in modernplace-names, and on this basis old foundations for modern settlements proposed.The evidence for the survival of ancient Thracian names or terms in the Greek andRoman authors and in modern place-names is reviewed by Sorin Paliga in his article'Thracian terms for "township" and "fortress", and related place-names' (cf. pp. 23-9).In it he tries to establish derivations from both Indo-European (IE) and non-Indo-European language roots. Associating non-Indo-European with pre-Indo-European(pre-IE), and pre-IE with the Neolithic population (by considering the Bronze AgeKurgan cultures as the introducers of IE language, out of the east, over the steppe), hethen suggests the possibility of associating surviving terms of pre-IE derivation meaning'township' with particular Neolithic settlement types.This is a fascinating endeavour - to try to work from place-names towards the namesof places, to the words that might have been used by prehistoric people to describe theirown settlements. But is it possible?

This article is intended to serve as an introduction to that of Sorin Paliga by providing ageneral archaeological and linguistic background to it. In addition, it suggests where thetheoretical limits may lie for any joint archaeological and linguistical epistemology fordealing with past schemes of settlement classification.Much of the archaeology of later prehistory in Romania and Bulgaria is studied underthe heading 'Thracology' (see Taylor 1985: 129ff). Thracology takes its name from theThracians, a group of people known from classical texts. The Thracians lived in the

World Archaeology Volume 19 Nc). 1 Urbanization(C)R.K.P. 1987 00438243/87/1901/1 $1.50/1

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2 Timothy Taylorregions to the west of the Black Sea. To their south were the Greeks, to their north theScythians. Herodotus distinguished a number of tribes or tribal confederacies among theThracians, of which the most important were the Odrysae of the Thracian Plain, theGetae of the Lower Danube Basin and the Agathyrsae (probably Thracian; certainly notScythian:IHdt IV, 49-50) of Transylvania. In the later part of the first millennium BC,Celtic tribes, among them the Scordisci, settled areas of the Lower Danube Basin region.Towards the end of the millennium the Thracians or Getae came t6 be known asDacians.

The Thracians are known to have spoken a language different from Iranian, Greek orCeltic, which was recognised by the Greeks as distinct also from that of the Thracians'northern neighbours, the Scythians. But Thracian language is not easy to reconstruct.Although quite a large body of onomastica - proper names of individuals, peoples(ethnonyms), places (toponyms) and rivers (hydronyms) - exists, only twenty to thirtyglosses are known (Hamp 1986 and pers. comm.). (Glosses are words which occur in atext written in another language in a position which allows an original meaning to beinferred.) This paucity of glosses means that neither the structure nor the vocabulary ofThracian can be known to any great extent. Paliga recognises this and sensibly dismissesthe arguments for distinct north and south Thracian languages.

Apparent uncertainty among the classical authors about where the northern boundaryof Thrace lay - sometimes the Haemus (Stara Planina), sometimes the Danube,sometimes the Carpathian mountains (Katicic 1986: 129ff) - encouraged Georgiev todefend a theory of two lang-uages (1972): Thracian, spoken in the south, and Daco-Mysian, spoken in the north. Georgiev claimed a clear geographical distinction betweenplace-names ending in -dava in the north and -bria, -para, and -diza in the south. Thistheory has not been generally accepted: Russu (1969), Crossland (1980) and Rddulescu(1984) all support the idea of a common Thraco-Dacian language. Even though Daco-Mysian may turn out to be more closely related to Illyrian (which is partly preserved inmodern Albanian) than to Thracian proper, 6we will eventually have to conclude that wedeal with three dialects of the same language' (Radulescu, 1984: 85). And, as Paliganotes, the -dava ending is present in the south (Pulpu-deva - modern Plovdiv), whilstthe -diza ending is probably preserved in the north (Dezna - County Arad,W. Romania).

English words such as house, town and city, or market, port and capital, express ourideas of how human settlement may be classified in our own country and our own time.Broadly speaking, it is physical size on the one hand and social function on the otherwhich provide the dimensions of a more or less matrix definition of settlement types. InFigure 1 a number of terms principally related to settlement size are shown (1-5)intersecting with a number of terms principally relating to specific social function (A-E).Each increase in settlement size has been correlated with the addition of a generalcultural function (IV). Thus a farm might be a farmhouse (1A), whilst a larger farm(2A) might constitute a hamlet (small churchless village). Category 2A has no commonname in English, but in Norwegian it would be a tun (pl. tunet). Moving from IA to 2A,we move from familial to communal. A tun consists of a number of families, but is not avillage because it does not fulfil the religious function (III): on Sundays the communitiesof many tunet converge by boat along and across the fjords towards their common



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Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe 3

SETTLEMENTSIZE1 2 3 4 5HOUSE >HAMLET-- VILLAGE- TOWN -- CITY

A L-OWFARM 0 0 0 00 B -

l FORTRESS zz -


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4 Timothy Taylorsites discussed in this section of the text can be found on the map (Figure 2).Chronological arguments are peripheral to the purpose of this article, thus they are notrehearsed here. The dates given indicate the major phase of site occupation discussed inthe text.1. VillagesVillages seem to be defined archaeologically as small agglomerations of residentialstructures, with no great internal heterogeneity. Lepenski Vir in Yugoslavia (Figure 3) isone of the earliest in southeast Europe, dating to the 6th millennium BC. Situated on theYugoslav side of the Danube in the Iron Gates gorge, the site was excavated andpublished by Srejovic (1969). A palimpsest of stone-reinforced trapezoidal hutfoundations with central fireplaces was found. The phasing of successive building was notmade entirely clear during excavation. Lepenski Vir I and 1I (illustrated) wereconsidered by Srejovic to be the remains of a hunter-gatherer-fisher (H-G-F)community; later phases to reflect a farming community. However, there is another viewthat the trapezoidal huts were built by farmers who dug down into the earlier layers ofseasonally deposited mesolithic debris, causing a degree of stratigraphicadmixture (e.g.Milisauskas 1978: 96). Such antitheses between H-G-F and farming communities areunhelpful. The location of the site suggests that it was not chosen for its arable or stock-driving potential. The quantities of red-deer and chamois bones indicate that LepenskiVir served as a year-round base-camp, with a temperate river-moderated climate and afish-stocked garden, from which seasonal forays to other zones were mounted. Theperiod of use of the site, whatever the succession of its structurallayout, clearly spans thetransition from Mesolithic to Neolithic.Village sites are common in the region throughout the Neolithic: the site of Vinca,comprising a number of small rectangular houses with wattle and clay walls typifies suchsmall open settlements. In Romanian Moldavia and South Russia by the beginning of thefourth millennium BC settlements of considerable size had begun to emerge from abackground of small scattered villages. The Late Tripolye Culture site of Majdanets'ke,USSR (Figure 4) is one such. A mixture of excavation and aerial survey shows between12 and 1700 rectangular structures arranged in ten to twelve concentric elipses. Someof the larger buildings, towards the outside of the settlement, probably had two storeys(Ellis 1984: 189). By analogy with the site of Petreny in Moldavia, these two-storiedbuildings may have been specialized ceramic workshops. Petreny consisted of 498structures, not all of which were residential: Ellis considers 2000 people to be areasonable estimate of population size (1984: 188).The large Cucuteni-Tripolye Culture sites are still not well enough understood to beclassified satisfactorily. Wheat and cattle seem to have been the mainstays of theeconomy, but with a considerable contribution from red deer. Whether settlements suchas Majdanets9ke were the religious, jural and political capitals of their surroundingterritories (therefore cities), or just overgrown villages, perhaps agglomerated fordefence, is unclear. Certainly the evidence of specialized craft production, continued indistinct quarters of the settlements, suggests that further (perhaps archaeologicallyinvisible) functional specialization was present.



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Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe SW . r ~~~~~~~~~~) W.,- E ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~ajantsk/"'_ ) 9 9 ;


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6 Timothy Taylor1 10

GFiguxre3 Lepenski ir, phase LP cale nrmet1res.AfterSrejovic 969.

In Bullgaria,at Ezerovo on the outskirts of Varna, a number of villages of thleLateChalcolithic and Early Bronze Age have been discov7ered(Toncheva 1981L) Thesesettlements appeaLro have been oiFa classic lacustrine type (unlike the reedswamLpvillages known from Neolithic Switzerland and fromnron Age Glast;onlbury,England, tothe west) like t;hoserecorded for fifth cenlturyBC Thirace byHerodotus, who gives adlescriptionof the way of life of the tribes who lived onl and around Lake Prasia , in theneighbourhood of MWt.angaeum (see Figure 2):'The houses of these lake-dwellers are actuallly n the water, and stand onL latformssupported on long piles aLnd pproaLchedErolmhe land lby a sinlgle narrow bsridge.Originally the labour of driving the lpileswas presumnably ndertaken by the tribe as awhole, but later they adopted a different method: nowvhe piles are bsroughtro n Mt.Orbellus nd every man drives in three for each wiifehe marries-each has a greatmanywives. Eachlmember f the tribe has his ownhut on one of tlheplatformns, withatrap-door opening onr o the water underneath. To prevent t;heiLrbalbiesrom tumblingin tJheyie a string around their legs. Their horses and otiherpack-animals they feed onfish, whichL Lreo abunldantinl the lakie that, whenLhey openLhe t;rap-doorand letdown an emptybasketon a rope, theyhave onlya minute o wait ibeforehey pull t upagain, full.'

(1Hdt V, 16; transltetd by A. de Se icourt)Daily life on tlhegulf of Varna three-and-a-half thousand years before may not havelbeen muchldifferenlt; butwas the language? Early Bronze Age EDzerovoIItwas occupiedaround the turn of the fourth and third millennia BC, at thLeime of tlheKurgan Ill andKurgan IV cultures in SoutlhRussia (Gimbutas 1L985: 89). According to IE language

tlheory,the inhabitant;sof Ezerovo III shouldlhave been sp eaking a form of [E.Thus theymnight aveusedl wordfortheir lake-village similar o thatused by their fifh century BCpile-driving counsterparts.But even if it existed we do not now know what it was.



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Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe 72. TellsAlthough a tell settlement may be laid out in exactly the same way as a village, eachrebuilding raises the site above the level of the surrounding country. As each successivelayer adds to the real physical defences of the settlement so it adds to its monumentality.As Chris Evans has said (1985: 85), 'we assign the quality of "monument" to sites whichphysically endure' and this quality of endurance has a value even after the site is nolonger in active use. (An example of such a continuity of associated 'place-value' is themodern Bulgarian village of Dve Mogili (lit: Two Barrows), which takes its name fromthe two great fourth century BC burialmounds on the outskirts of the village.) The tell ofPolyanitsa appears to have been deliberately created as a domestic monument, with anentrance at each of the cardinal points and lhousesbuilt in each quarter (Todorova n.d.Eneolit Bolgarii: tab. 13).

~~~~~~~~~~ /;t~~~- /' '\. JJ

A~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I I I ~~~~~~~~t 00/I 'g)

le

metres.~~~~~~fe li 94

a .1~~~~~~~1I x Z

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// ~~~0 500Fiue4Majdanets'ke.Site mappedfromexcavation,magnetometer nd aerialsurvey.Scaleinmetres. After Ellis 1984.



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8 Timothy TaylorSome of the Bulgarian tells are indeed monumental. Karanovo was built up overseventeen metres before its abandonment in the Early Bronze Age. The plan of the tenthlevel at Ovcharovo (Figure 5), uncovered during recent multi-disciplinaryexcavations inBulgaria (Todorova et al. 1983) shows well the internal organization and developedtopography of a small tell settlement: seven houses, measuring about six by ten metreseach, cluster together on top of the debris of their predecessors. Each house has one ormore hearth-places, and each appears to have had some kind of partition wall.The development of tell-site occupation from the Early Neolithic through the LateNeolithic and Chalcolithic to the Bronze Age in the Maritsavalley near Plovdiv has been

plotted by Andrew Sherratt (Figure 6). By linking nearest neighbours from one period tothe next, Sherratt ives an indication of the underlying patterns of spatial expansion thatcaused new settlements to be founded (even though not all settlements can be supposed

Figure5 Ovcharovo, evel X. House-wallsare shownhatcted;hearthsare shown n black.Scale nmetres. After Todorovaet al. 1983.



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Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe 9

EN ~nearest*49gA * L~~~~~N neighbourl*L N links< \* CoBAE i 'ALN - Eneol

0O? | PLOV DIV REGION':v\_


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.sought between the earliestBabadagphase and Troy VII b2, especially n the potterytypes in use. Fromthe tenth centuryBC at Babadag,iron-smeltingand iron-workingwere practised(Taylor 1986). This would suggest that the site was in some sense a'centralplace';however, because no systematicsettlementsurveyhas yet been carriedout in the surrounding egion, the broader social functionsof the site cannot yet bedefined.3. FortressesThe site of Nebet Tepe (Figure7), one of the three hillswhich form an isolated clusterstickingup out of the ThracianPlain, and aroundwhich the moderncity of Plovdivsprawls, s at once a settlementtell, a fortressandan acropolis.The naturallydefendedsite, which commands views of the wide plain to either side, has been almostcontinuouslyoccupiedfrom the MiddleBronzeAge (MihalichCulture)until the presentday.At somestagea seriesof massivestonefortificationswasbegun,and it wasaddedtoat timesup untilthe Byzantineperiod (Plate 1: D indicatessections of Byzantinedate).Because excavations have not been able to demonstrate convincing stratigraphicrelationshipsbetweenthe layersof culturaldeposit (the 'tell') on the hill and the stonewalls which surround t, there is controversyover the datingof the variousfortificationphases: Botucharova 1963) arguedthat there was a sixthcenturyBC fortification not

i-

Plate 1 Nebet Tepe, the fortress above the modem town of Plovdiv. Dr. Atanas Peikov'sexcavationsnprogress. eetext forexplanation.


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Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe 11shown on Plate 1), followed by a more massive second century BC construction (Plate 1:A, B, C); Peikov, whose excavations are still in progress (see his 1978), believes part ofthe latter construction (Plate 1: A) to date to the twelfth century BC, on the basis of bothits 'cyclopean' appearance and its stratigraphy (pers. comm.), and further building tohave taken place in the fourth century BC (Plate 1: B, ?C). Clearly these two accountsare incompatible. Although Peikov's twelfth century BC phase is contentious, his laterphase makes sense. By 341 BC, Philip of Macedon had conquered most of Thrace southof the Danube, including Pulpudeva, the Thracian settlement around Nebet Tepe, whichhe renamed Philippopolis. Two observations follow from this. First, the architectureconsidered by Peikov to be of fourth century BC date, such as the section of gateway ofHellenistic appearance (Plate 1: B), could well be a remnant of a Macedonian re-fortification of the site after its conquest. Second, that Philip designated the settlement apolis may imply that a functional correspondence was perceived between Greek polisand Thracian deva.

Not all defended sites are as archaeologically problematical as Nebet Tepe. The muchearlier fortified sites of the Early Bronze Age Otomani Culture in western Transylvaniarepresent a particular period of the earlier Bronze Age in the region when ninety percent of known settlement was in fortified locations (Ordentlich 1969: 469). The 'citadel'site at Otomani itself (Figure 7), dating to the early second millennium BC, is a naturallydefended location on a narrow spur looking out over the Great Hungarian Plain, whichhas been fortified further with ditches and ramparts. Such sites, like British hillforts,were probably the local seats of power of tribal chiefs, but, unlike them, they do not

Figure7 Otomani,the citadel.A rampart;B ditch.Scale in metres.After Ofdentlich1963.



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their own fortifiedvillage.

......... ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~~~~~~~~~~. ;

Plate2 Colofenii-din-Dos,he remains f the outerbastion.Prof.VladZirra's xcavationsnprogress.The IronAge site of Colofeniidin Dos (Plate2) in Oltenia has a location similar oOtomani, a spur above the flood plain of the riverJiu, defendedby a triplerampart(Zirra 1983)forminga kind of e'peron arre' efence. But the outerramparts different

from those of the BronzeAge sites, beingbuiltfromlargebricks o forma verticalwallstrengthenedbytowers. The startof occupationat ColofeniidinDos can be dated to thefifthcenturyBC, on the basis of Greekpotterywhichwasimported o the site. Culturalcontact with the Greek World, suggested by this pottery, may in part have beenresponsible or the adoptionof a mud-brickortification. n centralEuropeat the sametime, Kimmighas argued(1968: 54ff), the constructionof the mud-brickbastionsat theHeuneburgmayactuallyhavebeendirectedbya Greekarchitect.However,whereas heHeuneburg s uniquein centralEurope, Cotofeniidin Dos in southeastEuropeis not.Other nearby sites have defences -constructed n the same manner, and there areprobablymanymore examplesawaitingexcavation.Althoughthe idea of a 'citywall',TELX0S, may have come from the Greeks, its adoptionwas probably or reasonsotherthanprestigealone (cf. Kimmig1968:50ff): in the hot bakingsummersof the LowerDanubeBasin, and at a time when timbermayhave been scarce(Taylor1987a),such aconstructionwould have been both effective andcheap.4. MarketsGreek influencewascertainlycritical n the developmentof specializedmarketcentres nThraceduring he firstmillenniumBC. Greekcolonization romthe seventhcenturyBC


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Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe 13onwards created a new economic order in the interior. The Milesian colony of Histria(Figure 8) was founded on the Black Sea coast just to the south of the Danube Delta.Excavations this century have uncovered the settlement and its defences in successiveperiods. After the foundation of Histria, many new indigenous settlements (such asTariverde) sprang up in the immediate hinterland to service the needs of the colonists.

1 B DtD

0 200m

Figure8 Histria, on Lake Sinoe by the Black Sea, showing walls of successive periods: A =Archaic,B = Classical;C = Hellenistic;D = Roman;E = Romano-Byzantine. cale in metres.After Suceveanu1969 and Coja and Dupont 1975.By the beginning of the fourth century BC the Thracian settlement of Zimnicea,situated at a nodal point in the Lower Danube Basin riverine network (Figure 2) haddeveloped to take advantage of the trade in hides, slaves, timber, furs and woollens fromboth north and south of the Danube, goods for which the Greek colonies paid in silver

(Taylor n.d.). Some of the Greek colonies may have been founded where there wasalready a Thracian settlement. Velkov (1983: 200) cites Mesambria as an example of aGreek colony which retained its pre-colonial Thracian place-name.In southern Thrace native states grew up, the most powerful being the Odrysian



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14 Timothy Taylorkingdom with its capital at Seuthopolis, named after its founder King Seuthes III (Figure9). The site was excavated between 1948 and 1951 (Dimitrov 1960; Dimitrov et al. 1984),before being flooded by a dam. The photographs of the excavation which appear in theliterature (the clearest and most accessible being Hoddinott 1981: Fig. 122) are

0 50Fonao

Fgre 9Xetooi.Saei ers Aoa fe iirve l 94



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of Wheelerboxesalignedexactlyon the mainaxesof the settlement tself. Thepublishedplan(Figure9) showsthat verylittleof the internal tructurewasmapped,butfrom it itis possibleto see that Seuthopoliswasconceivedas a typeof plannedpolis following heHyppodamian ystem. As at Cotofeniidin Dos the bastionswere of mud-brick.TheAgora is clearlyvisible to the north (Figure9: A), and withinit the royal residence.Velkov (1983:206) considers his building o be the thyrsis the fortifiedresidenceofthe Thracianruleraroundwhich other structureswerebuilt. But whatwerethese otherstructures?Hoddinott(1981:124)states 'Seuthopoliswas not a Greek polis,but the seatof a rulerand hiscourt. The majorityof the peoplelivedoutside'.The lack of excavationor surveyoutside the walls, as well as withinthem, leavesone in doubt.Kabyle (Plate 3) was part of a similardevelopment.The 'acropolis' Plate3, in thedistance)wasfirst ortified n the earlier irstmillenniumBC. It was capturedby PhilipIIduring his Thracian campaign of 342-341 BC and grew into a lively Hellenisticstockbreeding,agricultural ndtrade centre. The linesof successivecitywalls datingtothe Hellenisticperiodarevisiblein the middledistance n Plate3, with the ruinsof laterstructuresn the foreground.Excavationsandsurveysof the site havebeen carriedout,but no systematicreporthas yet been published.

_ | i h .~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| .._~~~... .

''...1[-lgE\?K:-~~~~~~~~~....

..... ....-;xPlate 3 Kabyle:Acropolisin background; emainsof consecutivecity walls in middledistance(runninghorizontally);Romanperiodgatewayand modem reconstructionn foreground.5. DiffuseurbansettlementA brief descriptive our of some of the most importantprehistoric ettlementsites insoutheast Europe could not end without mentioningDacian Sarmizegetusaand itsrelatedsettlements.


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16 Timothy Taylor

Figure 10 GrAdi?teaMuncelului. Identified with Dacian Sarmizegetusa. A Fortress; B PavedWay; C = Sacred Precinct; D = Circular Sanctuary. Scale in metres. After Diacoviciu 1981The site of Gradi?teaMuncelului (Figure 10) was excavated and identified with DacianSarmizegetusa, the capital of Burebista in the first century BC, by the Diacovicius(1963). It consists of a large fortress (Figure 10: A), built of timber-laced ashlar masonry(murus dacicus), through which a smooth flagstone pavement runs (Figure 10: B) downto a sacred precinct (Figure 10: C) filled with temples and various calendrical devices,arranged on a series of terraces, artificiallycreated on the steep slopes of a mountain in

the middle of the high Carpathians. In the surrounding country there are a number ofsimilar fortresses with temple areas, such as the one at Coste?ti (Plate 4). All weredestroyed by Trajan, in his campaign against the Dacians under Decebalus, in AD 106.The fortified sites were part of a wider pattern (H. Diacoviciu 1981: Abb. 50) whichmight best be described as 'diffuse urban settlement'. On the southern slopes belowGradi?teaMuncelului were hundreds of small terraces, each of which supported a houseand garden. A reconstruction of the whole system is most reminiscent of that of the Mayalowlands during the Classic period (Adams 1980): sacred sites which were also thepolitical, jural and military focuses of communities living in residential areas whosedispersed nature was dictated by natural topography and the specific mode ofproduction. The Dacians were transhumantpastoralists who had both summer sttne (cf.st0l, croft, sheiling, etc.) and permanent valley-side dwellings. This ofrm of settlementappears to have been quite widespread in Transylvania during this period. Circular



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roundabout, but they havealso been foundelsewhere,as at Pecicaon the LowerMure?(Figure2). A set of silversmithingools was found withinthe fortifications tPecica,andit seems thatgenerally hese 'sanctuaries'were associatedwithspecializedmetalworking(especially of iron and silver) in their immediate vicinities (Trohani, 1987). Thus,sites suchas Grddi?tea nd Pecicaapparentlyprovideda widerangeof facilities or theirdispersedpopulations,both secular and religious.

Plate4 Coste?ti, viewof the ashlarmasonry efencesmurus acicus), nd helocal errain.


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azanov 1984)suggeststhat truenomadicpastoralismdid not emergeon the steppeuntil c. 1000BC; indeedthe steppemaynot have been formed untilthen (chernozemsare now consideredto be mainlythe result of anthropogenicactors).But before thisdate theremusthave been manysemi-nomadic r transhuming astoralist conomies nsoutheastEurope. Manyof the sorts of structuresbuiltby pastoralist ommunitiesaredifficult to detect archaeologically.The prehistoriccounterpartsof the pine andbeechwoodhut shown in Plate5, standing n a Carpathian plandmeadow,wouldshowuponlythroughphosphateanalysis,andperhapsnot at all.Metal andwoodwouldbe thepreferredmaterials orutensilsat bothsites, and atneitherwouldbutcheryor the burialof eitheranimalor humanremainsbe common.

tt~~x~ ' -,j~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~........ . .. . ......y;.w..............Y'..;.'?._

A~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~APlate S A pine and beechwood hut in the Ora?tie mountains (TransylvanianAlps/SouthCarpathians) earGrddi?teaMuncelului.

Xenophon(Anab. VII, 4) describeshow a band of Thracians ame downout of themountains o launchan attackon a settlement: 'The masterof each house acted as aguidefor them, andindeedin the darkness t wasdifficultwithouta guide to findwherethe houseswere in the villages, as they were surroundedby highfences to keep in thecattle'.The houseswere set fire to before'theThracians anaway,slinging heirshields,as their way is, behindtheir shoulders.Some of them, as they were gettingover thefence, were caught suspended there, with their shields entangled in the stakes.'(translatedby R. Warner).How permanenta settlementwasthis 'village'?Xenophon'sdescriptionmpliesthatthehousesandrelatedstructureswerebuiltof wood,butthattheperimeterfence was a fairly substantialhigh palisade. As elsewhere in the classicalauthors, the impression is given of a country populated by heterogeneous socio-


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Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe 19economic groups: 'mountain Thracians', who may well have been transhumant sheeppastoralists, and the 'village dwellers', who may have been semi-nomadic cattlestockbreeders, or more sedentary mixed farmers.

ConclusionsOne way of classifying settlement types in the first millennium BC period is by referenceto Greek terminology. Velkov writes (1983: 202): 'Generally it is assumed that theThracian para corresponds to the Greek kome, the Thracian diza to horion, a fortifiedsettlement... Bria and dava correspond to the Greek polis, denoting a larger Thraciansettlement, and later, a Thracian town, although both terms are not identical becausetheir social and economic contents differ, as do the economic and political systems ofHellas and Thrace.' This last is an important limitation: if we say that dava isterminologically equivalent to polis, but that functionally it is not, then all we have doneis to find out the Thracian name for a type of settlement which we understand no betterthan did the Greeks.Paliga (pp. 23-9) attempts to go back much further: by defining the 'Indo-European-ness' of various known Thracian terms for types of settlement, he concludes that'orasluras "city, township" . . . should be traced back to a pre-Thracian (pre-IE) idiomspoken in the Neolithic.' Thus we can say that perhaps the inhabitants of Majdanets'kegave their settlement an oras ending. What seems clear is that there are a number ofThracian terms designating 'agglomerated settlement', dating to various stages in thedevelopment of the language, which have stayed in use up until the present. Theirlongevity does not bode well for their specificity.Both Paliga and Velkov are trying to find out what the Thracianscalled various sorts ofsettlements, and their efforts are worthwhile. As Maher has put it (1981: 341): 'Calls todefer the integration of the findings of archaeology and linguistics are not fruitful, for alanguageis a sign-system.It follows that a languagecannot be effectivelystudied... .withoutreference to the world represented by the signs.' But archaeology cannot yetsatisfactorily reconstruct this world, and we may never be able to reconstruct ThracianWeltanschduung to any great extent, because 'understanding [alien perspectives] justmeans incorporating alien utterances and behaviours into categories comprehensible tous.' (Roth 1986: 252); see also Taylor, forthcoming. The mere attachment of names tovarious forms of settlement, such as Paliga's suggested link between -leba (related toLatin lapis, stone) and the stone-built murus dacicus can never in itself provide asatisfactory emic classification.The archaeological priority in southeast Europe is to define an accurate eticclassification of settlement types, their constituent structures, and the way in which theyfitted in to the broader landscape. For particular areas of the region, during particularperiods, this work has already been begun. But Sherratt's mapping of the tell-settlementpatterning through successive periods of the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age,which in his fuller account is related to variations in soil and hydrology at a regional level,is exceptional. For other areas and periods the picture is far less clear.What can be said with some certainty is that there was a very great diversity of



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20 Timothy Taylorsettlement type in the region during the prehistoric period. The number of survivingThracian language terms which relate to settlements is small, and seems not to havechanged much over very long periods. Thus, trying to sort out what the Thracians calledvarious types of settlement is, generally speaking, an impossible (though interesting)task.This said, in the future it should be possible to construct more rigorous archaeologicalclassifications for excavated structures. Ethnographies, both ancient and modern,suggest some of the sorts of buildings which may leave no trace in the record, or whichwill require specialized techniques for their recovery. Ethnography could also providethe basis for a more detailed terminology for the prehistoric period. However, thepresent ethnographic classification of structures, both on the basis of classical accountsand from modern fieldwork, is inadequate. For pastoralist communities, Nandris hasattempted a division of Carpatho-Balkan sites into stina and katun: 'The Stina ischaracterised as much by its human and animal relations as by its morphology, which isquite variable. Women are not allowed on these sites; yet there are also types of Stine tobe found which are composed only of women ... By contrast at the Katun, as definedhere, complete families are present as an integral part of the site' (1985: 258). In fact,the human and animal relationships at these sites seem to be as variable as is their6morphology': men, women and children may be present together at many stine.Different structures in different regions may be denoted by the same term, whilst similarstructures are denoted by different terms: thus a goatherd's building, for example, wouldbe called a mandra in Modern Greek (compare the plan of the Greek goat mandra:Nandris 1985: fig. 5), whereas in Bulgarian a mandra is usually a dairy for milch-cows.Already there is much more environmental work being done on sites in southeastEurope. This, along with the application of other new techniques for sourcing materialsand for locating settlements, should help to produce fuller accounts of regionalsettlement developments. The philologists have tried hard to isolate particular localterms for settlements; it is now up to archaeologists to find out what these settlementsreally were.AcknowledgmentsThere is not enough space here to thank all those individuals and institutions who haveencouraged my studies and travels in southeast Europe. I would particularly like toacknowledge the help of the late Prof. Hadrian Diacoviciu (University of Cluj) and tothank Prof. Vlad Zirra (University of Bucharest), Dr. Atanas Peikov (PlovdivArchaeological Museum) and Dr. Andrew Sherratt (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). Iwould also like to thank Anders Bergquist, Prof. Barry Cunliffe, Dr. Linda Ellis, Dr.Eric Hamp, Christo Terjiev, Dr. George Trohani, Chris Unwin and Sarah Wright fortheir help, and The British Council, The University of Sofia, St. John's College(Cambridge), Christ Church (Oxford), The Queen's College (Oxford), and theMeyerstein Research Fund (Oxford) for their assistance.27.x. 1986 Institute of Archaeology

Oxford



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Aspects of settlement diversity and its classification in southeast Europe 21ReferencesAdams, R. E; W. 1980. Swamps,canals,and the locationsof ancientMayacities.Antiquity54:206-14.Botucharova,L. 1963. Krepostnatastena na Philipopol po severnite sklonove na Nebettepe.Godishnikna NarodniyaArkheologicheskiMusei Plovdiv 5: 77-97.Coja, M. and Dupont, P. 1975. Ateliersc6ramiques.HistriaV. Bucharest:Academiei.Crossland, R. A. 1980. The Dacian and Thracian anguages n the context of general Indo-Europeandialectology.Actesdu lje Congres nternationale Thracologie.Bucharest:Academiei.Diacoviciu,C. and Diacoviciu,H. 1963.Sarmizegethusa. ucharest,Academiei.Diacoviciu,H. 1981. DakischeGottheitenund Heiligtumer.Die Daker (AusstellungsKatalog,Wien):63-85. Mainz:Philipvon Zabern.Dimitrov,D. P. 1960.Gradoustroistvoarkhitekturaatrakijskiyarad.Sevtopolis.Arkheologiya:3-15.Ellis,L. 1984.TheCucuteni-Tripolyeulture: Study n Technology ndtheOriginsof a ComplexSociety. Oxford, BAR InternationalSeries 217.Evans, C. 1985. Traditionand the cultural andscape:an archaeologyof place. ArchaeologicalReview rom Cambridge (1): 80-94.Gimbutas,M. 1985.Primaryandsecondaryhomelandof the Indo-Europeans:ommentson theGamkrelidze-Ivanov rticles.Journalsof Indo-European tudies13: 185-202.Hamp, E. P. 1986. The Thracian language in its Bronze Age Indo-Europeancontext. 4thInternationalThracianConference: 99. Milan:DraganEuropeanFoundation.Hoddinott,R. F. 1981. TheThracians.London:Thamesand Hudson.Katicic,R. 1986. AncientLanguagesof the Balkans.The Hague/Paris:Mouton.Khazanov,A. M. 1984. Nomadsand the OutsideWorld.Cambridge:C.U.P.Kimmig,W. 1968. Die Heuneburgan der oberen Donau. Stuttgart:Gesellschaft ur Vor- undFruihgeschichten Wurtemburg nd Hohenzollern.Maher,J. P. 1981.Bed andgravein Germanicand Celtic.Journalof Indo-European tudies9:341-347.Milisauskas,S. 1978. EuropeanPrehistory.New York:Academic Press.Morintz,S. 1964.Quelquesproblemes oncernant aperiodeanciennedu HallstattauBas-Danube'a a lumieredes fouilles de Babadag.Peuce 2: 19-25.Nandris,J. G. 1985. Europeanhighland one ethnoarchaeology.WorldArchaeology17: 256-68.Ordentlich, . 1963.Poseleniyav Otomaniv svete poslednikhraskopok.DaciaNS 7: 113-138.Ordentlich, . 1969. Problemeder Befestigungsanlagenn den Siedlungender Otomanikulturnderen rumanischemVerbreitungsgebiet.DaciaNS 13: 457-74.Paliga, S. 1987. Thracian erms for 'township'and 'fortress', and related place-names. WorldArchaeology19: 23-9.Peikov, A. 1980. Raskopkiv drevnefrakijskom orode Evmolpiya (1974-1978). Pulpudeva3:239-49.Radulescu, M.-M. 1984. Illyrian, Thracian, Daco-Mysian, the substratumof Romanian andAlbanian.Journalof Indo-European tudies12: 77-131.Roth, P. A. 1986. Comment on Robert Feleppa 'Emics, etics and social objectivity'. CurrentAnthropology27: 243-55.



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AbstractTimothy TaylorAspects of settlement diversity and its classification 'insoutheast Europe before the RomanperiodThere are many problems associatedwith the modern cross-cultural lassification f settlementtypes. Even greater difficulty s experienced n dealing with the prehistoricperiod, and this isespecially ruein southeastEurope,for at least four reasons:1) few regional urveysor large-scaleexcavationsof settlementshavebeen undertaken,2) variousThracian anguage ermsrelating osettlements have been preserved in ancient texts and modern place-names,3) prehistoricsettlement appears to have been remarkablydiverse, and 4) some types of settlement can beinferredwhich do not survivearchaeologically.

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Diversity in SE Europe Settlements

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