Chapter Three
Theoretical and Methodological background

The mortuary domain

It is not surprising that the monument which has attracted most attention for both Bulgarian and Western archaeologists is the Varna cemetery. The breadth of different opinions and commentaries on Varna was summarized by Chapman (1991) as processualist (e.g. Renfrew), materialist (e.g. Ivanov) and symbolic (e.g. Gimbutas). Despite the different approaches, however, all of the researchers share two similar insights:- a) Varna shows deep social differentiation and b) such a process cannot be claimed for the preceding Early-Middle Copper Age. It was believed that the apparent paradox of developing copper metallurgy in a non-ranked society was solved by the Varna community whose abundance of metalwork (copper and gold) in a non-utilitarian context was said to demonstrate the social origin of metallurgy (Renfrew 1978). In a later study of the emergence of wealth in Europe, Renfrew (1986) developed his interpretation of Varna, claiming that it constitutes evidence for the emergence of ranking in which the ownership and display of valuable objects underpins the social order. Social ranking is always connected to a developed system of production and exchange and circulation of goods of prime value. The combination of these three variables was to characterise the Bulgarian Copper Age, hence its presence reflected in the Varna cemetery (Renfrew 1986).

One of the more recent discussions of the Varna phenomenon attempts to resolve the major and, despite numerous researches, unanswered question why such prominent social differentiation was to be expressed in Varna in particular (Chapman 1991). Like most of the previous commentators, Chapman does not consider the Varna case in isolation from overall Chalcolithic developments in Bulgaria. But, unlike them, he seeks for concrete evidence for social tensions and differentiation, rather then to generalize random evidence from the whole Bulgarian territory (Lichardus) or theorise the overall social process (Renfrew). A key point in his analysis of the available settlement and burial data from the Neolithic up to the end of the Copper Age is the concepts of social space and arenas of social power (ASPs) – places where the negotiation of quotidian social relations took on concrete form.

In his study of the three Copper Age cemeteries of Devnya, Goliamo Delchevo and Vinitsa, Chapman (1996) found that each community was using the same material culture to make different statements about age/sex identities and that, moreover, the different genders attributed values to different grave goods – copper objects for males, functional tools for females. Both tells and cemeteries are dialectically linked in the gradual process of social differentiation throughout the course of the climax Copper Age, as the creation of distinct cemeteries is supposed to indicate the spatial focus for re-negotiation of an otherwise insoluble social contradiction or tension on tells. The apogee of this social differentiation is expressed in the Varna cemetery. Here, the total absence of females from the rich core of the cemetery indicates that, whatever the actual balance of social power between males and females, males had managed to dominate the mortuary aspect of the public domain – that part which may have been responsible for the reproduction of lineages and wider political relationships. This interpretation is favoured by archaeologists such as Lichardus (1988) and Ivanov (1988) who emphasise the archaeological evidence for male warrior identities (cf. Chapman 1999a). However, the insight of social anthropologists such as Strathern (1988) that male domination of the public arena does not necessarily mean the obliteration of female power and influence in many salient parts of social life should make us cautious in our interpretation of the Varna phenomenon as a male-centered society.

The domestic domain

The development of household studies in archaeology reinforced the importance of the house itself as crucial evidence in the overall socio-cultural process of change and stability. This new understanding of the house was applied to the data from Ovcharovo in a study of spatial pattering on the tell, in particular where superposition houses are found throughout the whole occupational sequence (Bailey 1990). Bailey argued that the layouts of the houses together with increasing number of tectomorphs (house models) were deliberately chosen strategies of legitimating each new occupation (horizon) after some period of abandonment. Houses with their own life or biography have participated in maintaining social continuity and hence stability on the tell (e.g., House 59 on Tell Ovcharovo: Bailey 1996). These practices of legitimisation handled the rivalry and tensions between tell’s inhabitants and the loss of their effectiveness led to the site abandonment (Bailey 1990). Bailey’s approach does not rejects Todorova’s conclusions and advocates a different perspective on the data, which in this particular case has hypothesized mechanisms of successful social reproduction.

Tell Ovcharovo has been discussed by Chapman (1990), as well, in his study of social inequality on Bulgarian tells, together with three more fully excavated tells (Targovishte, Radingrad, Poljanica), in an analysis of the development of social space throughout the lifetime of the tells. By the investigation of a number of spatial variables (house dimensions, built/un-built ratio, access maps and inter-house space), Chapman has argued that there were two contrasting patterns of spatial order on the investigated tells. The first one (Targovishte and Radingrad) indicates a more coherent, repetitive tell organization in which the houses presented stable dimensions, one/two entrances and access levels and within which it was easy to move due to the gradually increasing un-built space and the variety of inter-house spacing. In the second pattern (Ovcharovo and Poljanica), there was constrained access around the tell, cyclic variations in house dimension, containing up to 11 rooms with multiple entrances and access levels, the un-built ratio was diminishing through time, while the inter-house space remained stable and not very large. Both patterns are claimed to manifest different spatial expressions of household and lineage competition, in which the second pattern (Ovcharovo and Poljanica) reveals evidence for successful reproduction of social inequality. Failure to find an adequate way to express the social rivalry on Targovishte and Radingrad settlements led to the relatively short lifetime of these two tells.

Both Bailey and Chapman have examined one possible aspect of prehistoric social organisation – how house design and spatial ordering was used to negotiate and maintain the existing or new social order on the constrained area of a tell.

Chapman goes further in his study of the Balkan Chalcolithic through the investigation of certain aspects of material culture and their incorporation in a wider social interpretive framework. In a series of studies, Chapman has identified and introduced a number of practices such as fragmentation, accumulation, enchainment, the deliberate burning of houses and structured deposition. Personal enchainment through gift exchange and genealogy was argued to be valid also for the exchange of fragmentary objects, as well as for the exchange with the ancestors by means of structured deposition. The accumulation of objects appeared as an alternative practice along with the intensification of exchange and ritual networks and the deepening of occupational specialization. Structured deposition (see section 3.2.3) and house burning were related practices of exchange with the ancestors. Summarizing previous studies that have sought to identify a set of criteria for deliberate rather than accidental fire (Tringham and Krstić 1990, Russell 1994, Stevanović 1997), Chapman (1999) has extended the range of evidence over the Balkans (including Bulgarian data) and suggested that house burning was closely related to structured deposition, forming a specific type of set – the house assemblage - comparable with grave sets and hoards. The main product of house burning is burnt daub that was easy to distribute in different contexts and thus to objectify the link between the dead ancestor’s house and the living. Chapman (1999) has suggested that house burning was related to the death of an important member of the community, while I should extend the range of possible events in which deliberate burning have taken place (see p. 180-181, 340).

Fragmentation and structured deposition on a tell are important practices of the grounding of the inhabitants in the ancestral world. A fragment evoking an image for the complete object, as well as the time/space characteristics of its origin, have been interpreted as a significant point for people interrelating through fragment enchainment. Complete objects were, of course, not devoid of meaning; their deposition was meant to underline principles of social integration. The increase of complete objects within a tell, and especially within the newly defined formal mortuary area, betokens a change in social relationships and the emergence of a new social practice of object accumulation. In the latter, the value of an object in terms of the circulation of relationships has been transformed, by keeping the object, into a means of negotiating social relations. The new material - metal and gold – was not only harder to fragment but also was readily accumulated in sets. During the course of gradual social differentiation, based on more or less successful household or lineage development, object accumulation gained an advantage over personal enchainment as two ways of acquiring social power. One way to express status was to accumulate and display object/s in the emergent arenas of social power. Both settlements and cemeteries have been argued to represent such arenas of social power, in which cemeteries were the initial area for the display of social differentiation. The latter was claimed to be rooted in the adoption of the emergent but weakly developed practice of accumulation, in which the inalienable link between people and objects has changed into the personal possession of objects; as well as in gender contradictions caused by the introduction of secondary animal products that has led to a division of labour in which males had gained political power through ploughing, while females maintained their traditional economical power gained through dairying and weaving (Chapman 1991).

Chapman’s approach to Bulgarian later prehistory data engages a wide range of evidence that elsewhere is either misinterpreted or avoided (e.g. pits on tells, numerous vessels with missing parts, burnt houses, etc.) in a model of development of social relations highlighting both tradition and change. The problem with the spatial analysis of the tells is their small sample number – four out of 550 (the exact number of the tells occupied during the Chalcolithic period is not known)- that is, however, entirely due to the availability of excavated and published data.

A similar general intention to inter-relate people, places and things permeates Bailey’s recent monograph entitled Balkan Prehistory, in which he employs a wide range of data, deriving from a series of excavated sites in Eastern Hungary, former Yugoslavia, Southern Romania, Bulgaria, Northern Greece and North West Anatolia (Bailey 2000). The chronological span is from the Mesolithic up to the end of the Early Bronze Age. The material culture data set consists of lithics, pottery (vessels, figurine, altars, etc.) and metal assemblages, as well as ornaments and raw materials. Special attention was paid to the build environment (architecture and internal spatial organisation) and burial practices.

In Bailey’s view, the main social processes during the later prehistory of the Balkans are seen as exclusion, incorporation and projection. Exclusion and incorporation are the logical opposites of one and the same process of control over the ways in which material culture and people are related. Dividing them into two processes is probably meant to emphasise the very act of exclusion (e.g. separating rooms for different activities) and incorporation (e.g. the dead were buried under the house floors). Projection is the more abstract and less evident part of the same process of conceptualising space, material culture and people. Although not stated clearly, these symbolic and/or physical actions were made as a result of deliberate choice. However, it remains unclear why such choices were made, why and how exactly these social processes were developed and whether or not - and indeed why - they were unique, contrasting or similar to contemporary social processes in a wider context.

For the purposes of the present study, most of Bailey’s research into Balkan prehistory is not integrated into the research scheme, since many of the basic arguments are generated from evidence for architechture, settlement planning and the use and discard of figurines, which are not strongly represented (if at all) in the current study area. However, some of Bailey’s previous hypotheses (e.g., the pattern of deliberate superimposition of houses on tells) are acknowledged where they are considered as relevant.

Social interpretations in the present study

The gap between Bulgarian and Western interpretative concepts is far from being bridged. The political changes of the late 1980s broke down the formal ideological framework but so far alternatives to the traditional modes of archaeological explanation have not been elaborated. Building up a tradition of discussing social aspects in accordance with some body of theory is a long process, during whose initial stages tolerance of other people’s opinion is a key point. Yet, this is far from happening. At present, there is a conceptual vacuum in Bulgarian archaeology as a whole and in particular within social archaeology. The old interpretations have not been reconsidered, new ones have not been established and studies such as those of Bailey and Chapman have, in fact, not been in active circulation among Bulgarian archaeologists.

In the current study, it is my intention to introduce some of the modern concepts in social archaeology with regard to both the available data set and the research priorities formulated as landscape-material culture-society. The Drama case study will be discussed in some details in section 3.3.1. Here, I shall present in brief the interpretations of selected aspects of the settlement and burial data from the Maritsa Iztok area. Through this debate, I am hoping to build up an alternative more socially- orientated interpretative view of the same data.

Although not all of the sites in the Maritsa Iztok study area are fully excavated, their existence as the consequence of the long-term human interest of the region provides a significant background for the interpretation of daily and lifetime socio-economic practices. As already mentioned in Chapter I, prehistoric burial evidence in Maritsa Iztok includes numerous BA barrows (the exact number is not known) and two flat LBA cemeteries. The former are believed to belong to the Lower Danube variant of Pit-Grave culture (Panayotov and Alexandrov 1995). The appearance of both cremation and flat cemeteries during the LBA has not received any formal explanation yet.

Some aspects of deliberate human behaviour were considered in the discussion of the burial rites of the biggest barrow in the Maritsa Iztok region. This very precise study of the typology, technology, chronology, parallels and position of the grave goods in the graves from the Goliamata Mogila (the Big Barrow) seeks a reconstruction of the ritual (burial - note mine) practices in the EBA in the region. It was inferred that the vessels were made especially for the burial and revealed a high level of pottery-making skills. Therefore they could not be accepted as exchange objects between the local agriculturists and the nomadic Pit-Grave communities. Most of the vessels were deposited whole in the graves and four patterns of their spatial order were identified. The comparison with a neighbouring barrow revealed difference in the deposition practice outside the grave pit that led the author to suggest people that have different understandings of death (Leshtakov and Popova 1995:77). The difference was lack of trizna in the Goliamata Mogila (the Big Barrow) in contrast to its widespread use in barrow IV (2.5 km to the South East). Trizna is a Slavic word for a memorial practice of the deliberate breakage and perforation of pottery that is subsequently scattered. Despite the fact that trizna-s are fairly common on Bulgarian sites, there is no formal introduction or explanation of this kind of practice, which is generally referred to as ritual or an indication of feasting.

The presence of Pit Grave characteristics in the Goliamata Mogila (e.g. stone stelae) were not denied and, on the basis of the results of anthropological investigations, it was claimed that if the dead werealiens" in the region of Ezero culture, they had been close enough to the local population" (Leshtakov and Popova 1995: 78). The hesitation in challenging the Pit-Crave concept and the formal refusal to employ or create an alternative generalized model left this otherwise excellent study lacking in both overall mortuary domain theory and the regional specifics and importance of burial data in the Maritsa Iztok area.

All of the prehistoric sites in Maritsa Iztok area that are not barrows are interpreted as settlements. In the past, settlement remains have been interpreted using two basic principles, First, the settlement pattern consisted of a central settlement – a tell - with some affiliated smaller sites - satellite open-air settlements (Leshtakov et al. 2001). Site distributions and their possible interrelations within and outside the study area were investigated in spatial, chronological and logistical terms. The second principle is that the similarity or identity of pottery or other archaeological material was produced as evidence for chronological or cultural affiliations, as well as for contacts with contemporary archaeological cultures (Leshtakov et al. 2001).

Before turning to alternative concepts, two major disagreements with the above interpretation should be presented. First, the lack of formal criteria in Bulgarian archaeology for the interpretation of archaeological evidence as dwelling activities (whether permanent or not) results in claiming a wide variety of archaeological evidence as discard indicative of settlement. This is valid for the Maritsa Iztok area in particular, where all of the satellite sites are claimed on the basis of building horizons (presumably dwelling floors) or pottery scatters. Although I was not able to find any records or material from some of the so-called satellite sites (e.g., the Chalcolithic settlement near tell Galabovo), having known the constrained working regime of the Maritsa Iztok team and having had numerous discussion with my colleagues, I do not doubt that traces of human activity were really present within the vicinity of the tell and whose traces were called open-air annexes. My criticism here targets the omission of the possibility of any kind of off-tell activities. Off-site archaeology has no local tradition in Bulgarian archaeology (the only exception is Bailey et. al 1998); its omission from consideration can lead to the establishment and re-production of, if not false, then highly speculative, settlement patterns.

The second objection concerns the deterministic view that any domestic discards reflect past settlement activity. Thus, the presence of hearths, ovens with thin bases and beaten clay floors within an enclosure which reaches 2 m in depth has misled the investigators into the inference that this triple ditch/stone enclosure is a fortified settlement with dug-out dwellings (the interpretation of this site - Ovcharitsa II - is discussed in section 6.3.3). At least one more site – Iskritsa – contains features, such as several pits and a single burnt feature (house), which provide grounds for challenging the prevalent settlement interpretation.

However, these two objections do not question the spatial order of the sites; since the suggested settlement pattern (Leshtakov at al. 2001) does not lead to some explicit social interpretation, this time/space model of prehistoric development in Maritsa Iztok can be used as a starting point in a more socially- oriented approach to the data, for which the diversification of site function is crucial for its interpretation.

A key point in the alternative approach is the concept of arenas of social power (ASP)(Chapman 1993). According to this concept, archaeological sites are places for; inter alia, the negotiation of social relations and not just a static display of material evidence. The type of investigation in the Maritsa Iztok area does not allow such meticulous analysis as for tell Ovcharovo and the Varna cemetery, for example, but yet there is enough evidence to enable the identification of a wide variety of social practices at the sites in the study area. The introduction of the ASP concept will enable an innovative approach to problematic issues in both domestic and mortuary domains, currently insoluble within the present interpretative framework. A major characteristic of the latter is that humans are bearers of culture(Nikolov 1980, Todorova 1995), while, in the suggested alternative, people’s action are mediated through material culture.

Before moving to the other two key novelties in the interpretation of the data - social practices and social networks – it will be useful to identify the facts and interpretations that the current approach is going to challenge.

At present, the barrows in Maritsa Iztok region are formally related to the Lower Danube variant of the Pit- Grave culture (Panayotov and Alexandrov 1995). Such an interpretation is contested insofar as the barrows contain some evidence for local agricultural elements that raise questions about their origin and meaning (Leshtakov and Popova 1995). The cultural debate obscures two other important aspects of the barrows – their physical appearance in the landscape and their possible social potential. No matter whether local or adopted or an alien phenomenon, the barrows constitute significant evidence for a change in the relationship between the dead and the living with regards to the previous Copper Age period, from which no burials have as yet been found. ² If local in origin, these new monuments betoken a profound social change around the end of the LCA and the beginning of the EBA. If non-local in origin, any newcomers within the permanent tell landscape who left such a prominent cultural feature should trigger a social response from the local inhabitants. In any case, deliberate human action was involved in this crucial re-definition of the landscape.

The appearance of barrows coincides with one of the most problematic issues in Bulgarian prehistory – the transition between the Chalcolithic and the Bronze Age. This period is highly debated in Bulgarian prehistory (Georgieva 1987) and the only thing on which there is common agreement is the total cultural change that has taken place. Chalcolithic tells and other settlements were abandoned and, after a certain period of time some of them were reoccupied by communities with completely different material culture - that of the Bronze Age. However, apart from the obvious change in pottery design and technology, the other two major characteristics of the BA – apsidal houses and bronze itself – were not prominent features from the very beginning of the period (e.g., the first EBA horizon at tell Ezero (Georgiev et al. 1979)). For other aspects of material culture (e.g. stone tools), so far there is no study claiming that changes in the technology or typology of the artefacts occurred at the beginning of the Bronze Age. In summary, the claimed drastic shift in material culture can be supported only on the basis of pottery production; subsequently different features were added to the assemblage to create a newly-defined EBA culture. This same radical change in material culture is presumed for the study region as well. Indeed, EBA pottery shape, technology and decoration are totally different from those of the preceding Chalcolithic. To what extent other characteristics of the material culture at the end of the Eneolithic differ from those at the beginning of the Bronze Age is not clear, since the scattered data from Maritsa Iztok does not allow detailed comparison of the full range of artefacts. However, there are practices that remained the same even after the alleged drastic change of material culture. All of the Late Chalcolithic tells were reoccupied, thus implicitly pointing that the former Eneolithic forests, pastures and fields were reused for growing and herding the same species known from the Copper Age (see Chapters 5 and 6 for details). This is usually interpreted as continuity. The mechanism of this continuity that survives the chronological and cultural gap puzzles Bulgarian prehistorians and usually makes them turn towards some external source to explain the differences and the similarities (e.g. a steppe invasion or Anatolian influences). Comparing cultures as given time/space entities inevitably leads to the realization of the impossibility of explaining change, similarity and difference. Comparing social groups, however, acting in accordance with their world-view is more likely to provide some possible explanation of change and continuity. Viewing a society instead of a culture is a novelty for Bulgarian archaeologists but it is not a new approach to Bulgarian data. As mentioned above, the Varna cemetery was not an isolated phenomenon; rather it was the consequence of attempts to overcoming social contradictions during the Copper Age (Chapman 1991). Do the barrows in Thrace present a similar focal point for trying to resolve social tensions? Is it a coincidence that the earliest BA traces in Maritsa Iztok comprise several barrows and a ditch – all of which with an emphasis on structured deposition? What was the role of local sedentary elements (pottery) in a nomadic feature (barrow)? Has a total population and cultural change really taken place? Or are we dealing with a much more complex socio-cultural change?

Answers to these and related questions are possible if burial, settlement and other highly formalized sites in Maritsa Iztok are recognised as ASPs. It is not only the barrow phenomenon and the Late Chalcolithic-Early Bronze Age transition but the overall settlement dynamic in the study region that can be viewed and I believe explained through the perspective of social action.

The second notion requiring comment and revision in the course of the study is another common interpretative term in Bulgarian archaeology - contacts.

It is typical to interpret all kinds of material similarity of archaeological data as cultural contacts or cultural interactions, regardless of the distance between the places of origin. In most cases, the latter are used as the basis for a circular argument – there were contacts because there are similarities; there are similarities because there were contacts. In the context of the cultural-historical approach, the acculturation process was used to encompass and explain all changes – migration, diffusion and interactions (Nikolov, V. 1980). In the only short discussion of acculturation in Bulgarian prehistory, the emphasis was on a brief introduction of acculturation, assimilation, consolidation and ethnical developments rather than on the presentation of concrete mechanisms of these complex processes of human interaction (Nikolov, V. 1980). Cultural contacts dominate the interpretation of similarities, with common features initially defined as different archaeological cultures, although trade and exchange contacts were also recognized. The exchange interpretation is entirely dominated by economic constraints; e.g., in the case of the Maritsa Iztok study region, nomadic tribes exchange animal products for goods and pottery with the sedentary communities (Panayotov 1989). Local exchange within the limits of one archaeological culture was also registered (Raduncheva 1976, Todorova 1978).

Trade contacts were more readily claimed on the basis of exotic imports (e.g. Mycenaean pottery or Spondylus ornaments (Todorova 1995). Recently, the first Bulgarian study of prehistoric trade contacts was published in which commercial relations between Upper Thrace, the Aegean and Anatolia were developed during late EBA III and the MBA (Leshtakov 1996). The main archaeological evidence in the study derives from a tell in the Maritsa Iztok area that contains a wide range of Anatolian and Aegean pottery, as well as local imitations of imported ceramic shapes. Three explanations have been suggested:– a) tell Galabovo was a trading diaspora (after Sherratt 1993); b) it was a fair for trading; and c) less likely- it provides evidence for the existence of transhumance. Similar trading diasporas or fairs were recognised by the author on Samothrace Island and in Turkish Thrace. Traders were claimed to be sammalum – a term that appears in the Mesopotamian tablets (after Leemans 1950) or in other words itinerant traders. The MBA merchants followed the routes of earlier traders, whose existence was argued on the basis of the EBA Trojan depas cup imports in Baadere and Constantia (respectively 70 km to the South East and 10 km to the South of tell Galbovo). Upper Thrace was claimed to export raw materials and possibly some goods/commodities in exchange for goods/commodities including organic products, such as perfumes. Two possible routes were suggested – the maritime one – Crete – Irini- Samothrace (Lemnos/Lesbos)- along Maritsa river to Constantia and Galabovo; and the terrestrial one – Central Anatolia- Sakaria valley- Bosporus – Karaevli-alti- Sakar Mountain – Baadere- Sokolitsa river valley to Galabovo/Constantia (Leshtakov 1996).

So far, for Maritsa Iztok, Leshtakov’s (1996) article remains the only Bulgarian study that outlines trade routes and contacts on the basis of archaeological distribution data (cf. Todorova 1995a for Bulgaria as a whole). The establishment of such a long-distance trade network is an important step towards the reconstruction of BA relations between Europe and Asia Minor and it is a pity that the author (perhaps unwittingly) remains under the influence of the concept of cultural circles and thus, does not extend his analysis outside the Upper Thracian area. The aspect of the research requiring more supporting evidence is the type and variety of the traded products.

Leshtakov’s study is the only one in which contacts are defined in some kind of a dynamic network. In all other studies on contacts, an area is related to an area, an object is related to an object or an area but people seem to absent. Why and how people have brought, bought, exchanged, gifted or kept a certain object from an exotic area remains unclear. The dynamics and diversification of human contacts throughout the changing social reality has not been discussed, leaving cultural, trade and exchange contact on one and the same operational level. My intention in this study is twofold – first, to personalise the notion of contacts while relating people to people, people to objects and people to places and, secondly, to tackle the recurrent and changing patterns of relations in accordance with growing social diversity.

On a local, intra-regional level, such an enquiry is possible with the adoption of the idea of social practices. As pointed out above, fragmentation, enchainment and accumulation were important social practices in the Bulgarian Copper Age, the main evidence for which comes from the Northeast part of the country (Chapman 2000). Structured deposition (see next section for details) and the deliberate burning of houses were two further social practices relatively recently recognised as deliberate acts of enchainment and identity exchange (Chapman 1999, 2000). There is evidence to suggest that fragmentation, enchainment, feasting or deposition (see next section) and burning houses were practiced in the study region as well, together with the already recognized trade and exchange activities.

On an inter-regional level, the interrelation of people, places and objects is not possible within the concept of the archaeological culture. Although the latter is already a discarded part of the history of Western archaeological thinking, it is still in active circulation in the Balkans. Commentaries on the continuous reluctance of Balkan archaeologists to employ different interpretative modes need special attention and, although undoubtedly important, they cannot be undertaken here. Instead, arguments for the suggested social alternative named network are to be presented. Social network concept in archaeology is related to the pioneering work of D. Clarke (1979), who adopted the idea developed in sociological theory for flexible social relations in contrast to concept of fixed social entities (groups). The advantages of network concept are that it permits multiple non-static human interrelations, which in the archaeological terms is network of settlements, network of people within a site and off-site and most importantly dynamic operational form of network. The latter is the major achievement of the network concept as it readily explain change and continuity, which remain major stumbling blocks within the traditional culture-history model. Exchange networks, in conjunction with breeding networks, are a particularly dynamic aspect of social network theory, providing a theoretical grounding for the spread of exotic objects over a variety of social – physical distances.

The development of the idea of Structured deposition in Western archaeological theory and practice

Structured deposition appeared as a term in the mid-1980s and was immediately related to a ritual practice in which some contexts were deliberately highly formalized (Richards and Thomas 1984). The debate over the sacred or quotidian character of structured deposition was developed by J.D. Hill (1995), who argued that the conceptualising of deposits might be through both daily and more formal activities. Recently, Brück (1999) reconciled the opposition between ritual and secular on the basis of evidence for formalised structures in informal contexts and vice versa. She argued that prehistoric communities developed different forms of rationality, including the rituals necessary for achieving practical goals, which were radically different from modern forms of rationality (Brück 1999). Chapman (2000, 2000a) has summarised the evidence for structured deposition from Central and Eastern Europe by disputing the concept of archaeological finds as simply rubbish. In summary, structured deposition is a deliberate arrangement and display of a variety of objects (e.g. pottery, bones, ashes, etc.) in a particular way, which has a specific meaning for the participants in the deposition action. Recent studies revealed that features with structured deposition might be pits, ditches, burials and even houses.

Structured deposition in Bulgaria

Structured deposition as a term does not exist in the Bulgarian archaeological lexicon, partly because it is difficult to find an appropriate analogue in the Bulgarian language, partly because of a complete lack of interest in establishing a common explanatory mode for this archaeological phenomenon. However, there are findings in Bulgaria that, in Western terms, would be instantly recognisable as structured deposition. Some of them are published and their interpretation is a good illustration of the Bulgarian interpretive practice of borrowing an explanatory framework, then neither defending its relevance for the particular case, nor explicating the origin and logic of the applied interpretive mode (Gaydarska 1998).

There are two trends in envisaging and interpreting cases of structured deposition in Bulgaria. The first one is connected with earlier findings and complete and/or precious objects (dining sets, metal sets). Common to their interpretation is the emphasis on artefacts and a neglect of context. The stylistic traits of the objects were described, while the mode of deposition and the surrounding cultural or landscape features were paid little, if any, attention. Sets of precious objects are called hoards. Other sets are called collective findings or storage finds or a combination of both. They are related to horizons or groups of similar phenomenon – e.g. the two LBA hoard horizons postulated after analogues of types of bronze artefacts. Their deposition is believed to stem from the hiding of valuable possessions in response to hostile invasion. This approach has already been criticised (Gaydarska 1998) and although this interpretation has been abandoned, alternative claims have not been considered.

A different interpretation has been given to the numerous sets of precious objects – dining sets, jewellery, horse-trappings - from the first millennium BC. A sacred act of deposition was assumed for pre-Hellenistic hoards in Bulgaria in connection with the Hyperborean myth, usually connected to Thracian orphic rituals (Gergova 1987). An attempt to extend this practice back into the LBA was made, leaving un-discussed all the pre-LBA and post-Hellenistic findings (Gergova 1987). This ethnically oriented and time-dependent approach was favoured because of the prevailing culture-historical framework used for interpretation.

The second trend appeared in the last decade with the rapid increase in the number of excavated ditches and pit-fields in Bulgaria. These features started to be seen as a result of deliberate practice, mainly of ritual origin. Special attention was paid to their content, as well as to their context (Georgieva 1991, 2001, Bonev and Alexandrov 1996, Tonkova and Savatinov 2001, Nikov 2001, Balabanov 1995, Lichardus et al. 2001, Leshtakov et al. in press). Five of the 15 pit-fields formally accepted as such in Bulgaria are in the Maritsa Iztok study region, which makes structured deposition an important issue of the current study.

The function of the pits provoked informal discussion among Bulgarian archaeologists, most of whom still insisted on the rubbish-dump interpretation given the pits’ non-representative infilling of sherds, ash, animal bones, etc. The official publications made by the excavators of such sites and features overcame the old traditional interpretation and accepted pits and pit-fields as evidence of some kind of ritual. Since most of the pit features excavated so far in Bulgaria are from the Early Historic and Classical periods (EIA, LIA and Roman period), their interpretation has been related to the Greek tradition of libatio (Nikov pers comm.), an attempt to make images of the Greek Gods Hecate and Hermes (Balabanov 1995), a cult to the Thracian Great Mother Goddess, i.e., a cult of fertility and domesticity (Tonkova and Savatinov 2001), fertility and protection of the home or a solar cult or thanksgiving (Georgieva 2001).

In 1991, the first general overview of pit structures was published, summarising and standardising all pit features known at that time. They were classified according to their situation (in/under mound or outside cemeteries), their content and shape and their purpose (memorial, sacrificial, feasting, etc). The earliest pits included in this study were single LBA pits from Plovdiv, Essenista, Cherkovna and Govora (Georgieva 1991).

Discussion of any late prehistoric pits found within pit-fields dominated by later features has been avoided. If mentioned at all, pits discovered on tells are interpreted either as clay-mining pits filled later with rubbish, deliberately excavated rubbish pits or as storage pits (Raduncheva 1976, Lichardus et al. 2001). In one case, a cult complex consisting of a shaft, a pit and a feature was recognized within a tell, unfortunately without any context or content description and interpretation (Stanev 1997). Structured deposition has been claimed for wall-plasters that formed ritual reliefs (tell Dolnoslav) and even the settlement mound after the end of a tell’s occupation (tell Podgoritsa), leaving without any explanation, however, the 100 pits that enclose the sacred space (or temenos, as the excavator called it) on tell Dolnoslav (Raduncheva 1996).

Ditches that surround tells have been interpreted as fortifications (Todorova 1995, Stanev 1997). Combination of ditches and banks were also claimed to serve as barriers against flood-waters (Bailey 1990). In just two cases, BA ditches were considered as instances of deliberate depositional practice. The first one is the ditch on tell Merzdumekia in Drama. After 3 years of excavation and 8 years of field experiment, the investigators inferred that the MBA (EBA3 according to Bulgarian chronology) enclosure bounding some 30 pits of the same period is a ritual rather than a defensive feature. It contained stones, plasters, clay, animal bones, spindle whorls, weights, vessels - fragmented or secondarily broken - and all of the materials showed evidence of deliberate order in the sequence of deposition. Field experiment observations proved that some maintenance strategies have been performed and, once they had been stopped, natural conditions caused the filling of the feature within a decade. The presumed duration of the MBA ditch/enclosure at Drama was the lifetime of one generation. A similar ritual function was accepted for the Chalcolithic ditch, which was, however, a place of structured deposition after its primary function was complete (Lichardus et al. 2001).

A second ditched site found near the village of Cherna gora was considered as a rondel, thus implying a non-utilitarian, ritual function for this particular feature (Leshtakov et al. in press). Complex planning over several different chronological phases and a diversity of features and artefacts documented during the excavations made the investigators infer a long-lasting, specifically oriented strategy of construction, deposition and maintenance. The two main features were inner and outer ditches, both filled with ash, charcoal, broken vessels, animal bones, spindle whorls, weights, fragments of stone and flint tools, etc. According to the excavators, the ditch sanctuary existed for more then 400-500 years, starting around EBA2/3 (Leshtakov et al. in press).

Other structures that, in the Western archaeological tradition, are usually connected with SD are wells or shafts. So far there is just one reported from Bulgaria. It is considered as a megalithic monument since it is faced with stones. The shaft is 5.5m deep and has a 7-m-long dromos with niches in it. The excavator claims that it contains materials of different date such as a prehistoric layer of stones, remains of timber and animal bones, among which a fragment of a stone axe was found. It is interpreted as a LBA cult monument – a shrine devoted to spring water. The site is believed to be strongly influenced and inspired by the Sardinian Nuragic culture, although no other links with Sardinia have been identified (Mitova-Dzonova 1984).

This brief summary of structured deposition issues in Bulgaria has revealed two important facts. First, there are features that contain structured deposition and these have recently been recognized as places with deliberate depositional practices. Secondly, the lack of any general theoretical background for interpreting pit-features and their content has led to the lack of any commonly accepted term for this deliberate practice, as well as temporal, spatial and ethnic limitations of suggested interpretations that have one thing in common- they are all ritually oriented. Moreover, this approach reifies the sacred – profane duality that I wish to overcome.

Structured deposition in the current study

The present emphasis on structured deposition was prompted by the presence of such features within the study region. Some of them (e.g. the Drama ditch and the Polski Gradets pits) were recognized as deliberate ritual practice but this was not related to the overall pattern of social and/or cosmological reproduction. Others (e.g. Ovcharitsa II and Iskritsa) were misinterpreted and need re-consideration.

Regional surveys

Systematic regional surveys in Bulgaria have been organised under the umbrella of the project for the establishment of the Archaeological Map of Bulgaria (AMB). Archaeologists from local museums (usually at the county level) had to complete a record form with detailed information for each site in their district. On a regular basis, archaeologists from AIM, responsible for enlarging and popularising the AMB project, helped county archaeologists in intensive field-walking surveys and the re-assessment and up dating of the available archaeological data set. All of the museums held records and archives of site distributions and previous investigations in the region. One of the tasks of the AMB was to utilise the pre-exiting data set and to make a detailed record of all archaeological monuments in each territorial/administrative unit (okrug) in Bulgaria.

Prior to, and now running in parallel with, the AMB project, there was a similar initiative of the National Institute for Cultural Monuments (NIMK). This was a long-term joint project between the different counties (okrug) and the NIMK but, in fact, the job has been mainly done by county archaeologists for just 6 out of 26 regions (Dremsizova-Nelchinova and Antonova 1975, Dimitrova and Popov 1978, Dremsizova-Nelchinova and Slokoska 1978, Dremsizova-Nelchinova 1987, Mitova-Dzonova 1983, etc.). While similar in aims, the two projects differ in their visible outcome and degree of successful target completion. The AMB is a computer-based interactive database of more than 14,000 archaeological sites with the possibility of keyword searches. It also contains some limited environmental data for the sites. The NIMK project succeeded to map the archaeological sites in less then 30% of all the counties but its six printed volumes complement the AMB very well, by providing paper topographic and distribution maps, otherwise unavailable from AMB records.

Apart from these large-scale centralised projects, there were several attempts to catalogue and map prehistoric occupation sequences at the regional level. These were either the result of research enthusiasm of amateur archaeologists (e.g. Petkov 1932/34, 1934, 1939, 1960, 1961,1965) or county archaeologists (e.g. Nikolov, B. 1952) or certain time/space-oriented studies (e.g. Domaradski et al. 1999). An extreme example of constrained regional studies is the Maritsa-Iztok Expedition itself (Panayotov et al.1991, 1994, 1995, 1998, 2001). Others of similar kind are the intensive surveys of linear strips along highways, pipelines and dam constructions (Leshtakov 1997, Borislavov n.d., Borislavov et al. n.d.).

Some data about the cultural environment at the microregional level could be found in some publications of major multi-occupational sites (e.g. tell Ovcharovo) that provide, as a reference point and additional information, the site distribution around the immediate excavated area (Todorova et al. 1983). Recently the cultural milieu became an integral part of the survey record form of the Maritsa Iztok Expedition.

All of the above mentioned studies contain empirical data for the sites in terms of variables such as area, chronology, features, etc.; a few of them are complemented by interdisciplinary investigations such as palaeo–ethnobotanical, palynological and faunal analyses, as well as mineralogical, chemical and geomorphological studies. Most of them also present some kind of interpretation and/or discussion.

However, regional surveys were rarely considered as an opportunity for settlement pattern studies (one exception is Leshtakov et. al. 2001). Despite the use of a constrained area, local studies failed to identify places or a series of places as an entity (e.g. river valley/ microregion, catchment basin/macroregion) that might be compared and /or contrasted to adjacent regions.

Funding constraints, and hence research priorities, put Bulgarian archaeologists in the position of describing cross-cultural and cross-temporal relations within and outside a surveyed area (county, river course valley or pipeline layouts), rather than exploring the evidence from different points of view and thus giving them the opportunity to justify what is unique (what is specific to the region) and what is general (what unites the region with the outside world). Microregional and regional studies were never mentioned in the Bulgarian archaeological research agenda and usually the contemporary administrative division imposed the smallest territorial research unit. Though maybe occurring to some Bulgarian archaeologist, the concept of microregional studies as an opportunity to explore inter-site relationships, settlement patterns and regional social and economic potential, has never been realized as a working project.

The Drama project

So far, there is only one case in Bulgaria in which microregional aspects of the study were claimed and partly implemented as such. For 18 seasons since 1983, a German expedition has undertaken a series of field surveys, total excavation of three sites, palaeo-geographical investigations, detailed analysis of artefacts (flint, pottery), animal bones and plant remains studies in the region around the modern village of Drama in Southeast Bulgaria (Fol et al. 1989, Lichardus et al. 1996, Lichardus et al. 2000a, Lichardus et al. 2000b). The expedition in fact was planned as a Bulgarian-German co-operation and indeed the names of some Bulgarians are present in the publication. In fact, however, apart from constant participation of Ilya Illiev and the sporadic presence of some Bulgarian students during the field seasons, the Expedition was closed to Bulgarians. Two exhibitions and three major publications have disseminated the results and the evidence from 18 years of intensive investigations (Fol et al. 1989, Lichardus et al. 1996, Lichardus et al. 2000a, = in Bulgarian translation Lichardus et al. 2001).

The most recent book was issued in both German and Bulgarian language and contains the most recent data and interpretations (Lichardus et al. 2000a, Lichardus et al. 2001). The structure of the book is to present the evidence in the order in which it was excavated, not in order of their chronological occurrence. The claims and subsequent arguments are in scattered groups throughout the whole text and not helpfully summarized in a consistent conclusion. Thus, for example, on the basis of the map of the Aegean, the Balkans and the North Pontic steppes (Lichardus et al. 2001:1) with a delineated area that unites these three cultural entities³ and some common research issues briefly mentioned in the introductory chapter, one can only guess at the place of the Drama microregion in the overall archaeological picture of Bulgarian prehistory. Indeed, evidence for long-distance contacts has been discussed in the publications (Lichardus et al. 2000: 161-174), underlining the significance of the region in the contemporary prehistoric world (e.g. contacts with the North Pontic steppes and the Aegean). However, no explanation was ever given for why and how these contacts have occurred and the sequence of their directions was extremely briefly mentioned only in the last section of the publication (Lichardus et al. 2001:194).

A similar difficulty is valid for following the arguments for the expedition research aim, which is formulated as follows: ...to find out a topographically bounded valley with human occupation traces but with settlement sites priority that are going to be systematically excavated and the settlement history from the Neolithic till Early Medieval period is going to be reconstructed along with environmental investigation (Lichardus et al. 2001: 10-11)⁴. Chapter six is supposed to present this reconstruction, where occupational stages are mainly given in terms of pottery phases, while features and structures are very briefly mentioned. Environmental investigation results are, again, scattered throughout the text, selectively and very briefly summarized in Chapter six, with very little evidence provided, which gives rise to serious doubts about their validity.

Despite the evident contribution in gaining new empirical data and in introducing microregional studies as an appropriate method of investigation, the Drama project seems to misunderstand some of the important issues in regional studies. The site distribution map shows 20 sites within the microregion (Lichardus et al. 2000a: 11) but just three are published in detail. Evidence for the remaining 17 is only briefly mentioned, thus leaving a big gap between the apparently intensively occupied Drama microregion and the one presented in the publications. An imbalance in presentation of archaeological data, interdisciplinary investigation results and interpretations led the Drama team away from their stated microregional research orientation. Huge attention was paid to the definition on phases of prehistoric pottery development, perhaps because, on the one hand, it contradicts the so-far accepted Bulgarian relative chronology based on pottery typology, and, on the other hand, because pottery was the main source for claiming the presence of a certain occupational stage in the surveyed area. The features containing this pottery, whether ceramic scatters, pits or houses, tend to lack any attempt of interpretation in terms of social practices, settlement pattern or intra- and inter-site relationships. Similarities in pottery were the only inter-site link to be mentioned. The palaeo-geographical conclusions were not justified with reference to the data and the selective cross-reference to earlier publications led to a serious confusion about relations between the people and their environment.

The lack of established settlement patterns and overall reconstruction of human –environment relations throughout the occupational sequence of the region resulted in a failure to provide a coherent picture of life in the microregion as a whole. Reasons for why and how the region was settled, abandoned or reoccupied remain unclear. For inexplicable reasons, samples for C14 dates were never taken, with the consequent loss of opportunities for solving many of the chronological issues widely discussed in the publications. Changing or recurrent patterns of dwelling, land use, social practices, etc. were not discussed. The human impact on the landscape was not considered as an issue, since there were neither pollen samples taken nor proper publication of plant remains studies.

Answers to all these questions will perhaps be forthcoming in future monographs in the Drama project series of microregional publications.

Introducing the method

In 1970, Higgs and Vita-Finzi formulated the term site catchment analysis (SCA) and introduced it as a proper field and interpretive approach to prehistoric settlement study. This followed their practice experience and was theoretically inspired by von Thünen’s model of Das Isolierte Stadt (von Thünen 1826, new ed. 1966), re-introduced into modern geography by Chisholm (Chisholm 1968). Geographical approaches were not a novelty in archaeology (Fox 1923), neither were subsistence issues (Clark 1939, 1952). But Higgs and Vita-Finzi were the first to integrate a number of approaches – geographical, ethological, economic and anthropological – in a coherent method of investigation for prehistoric settlements and their surroundings. Originally, the method required the determination of a ring of 5 km in radius around an agricultural site and 10 km or two hours’ walking time for non-agricultural sites. The latter was derived from anthropological data (Lee 1967), the former on the basis of Chisholm’s study of Sicilian farms (Chisholm 1968) and then first applied to the economic status of Natufian sites in Palestine (Higgs and Vita-Finzi 1970). Available resources within that ring were documented in terms of quality and type of soils, their potential for certain vegetation or cultivation (arable, good grazing, rough grazing, no potential), as well as accessibility to prey. For agricultural sites, inner rings (1-4 km in radius) were also defined in order to weight the resources in terms of cost/distance relations. The basic assumption of the model was that least- cost strategies of subsistence influence site location and catchment area (Higgs and Vita-Finzi 1970).

Review of SCA development

After its formal introduction in archaeological theory and practice, SCA was both highly debated and applied in various ways during the 1970s. A review of SCA literature reveals a high degree of self-criticism among the method’s followers that resulted in refinement and improvement to both the theory and the practice of SCA. Thus the catchment area was reduced to 1 hour and 10 minutes’ walking (1km- my note) (Jarman and Webley 1975); the central place of the site was considered an appropriate in the case of plant foods or cultivated crops subsistence but not applicable for the catchment of mobile resources such as animals, for instance (Bailey 1997); the ring-like perimeter and size of the catchment area, especially in cases of overlapping territories of adjacent sites, appeared to be inconvenient and a more flexible size and shape were assumed (Dennell and Webley 1975); the SC of any site should be considered in relation to and in the context of its regional potential (Flannery 1976); and the evidence for potential resources should be compared and justified to actual site evidence (Bailey and Davidson 1983). Finally, a number of factors, particularly social factors, were gradually considered as additional (but not alternative) constraints on site location (Roper 1979, Bailey and Davidson 1983).

Each application of SCA was a contribution to the theoretical background of the model. The element of the approach most in question appeared to be the name, and hence the underlying implications, of SCA. The lexicon of the method was enlarged with terms as site-territory area, site-exploitation territory, actual field, annual territory, temporary annexes, etc., whose aim it was to resolve the inconsistencies in the use of model and the evidence from particular case-studies. Each of the investigations, however, was dealing with resources – raw materials, animal and plant accessibility, their human exploitation and site location. Flannery suggested that the catchment area should be investigated from the evidence found within a settlement (Flannery 1976), an idea developed by Dennell (1978), who proposed that catchments be used to refer to objects and their movements around the landscape, exploitation territories to people.

The first part of this statement has been already criticized, since an exotic object may appear in a local catchment (Gamble 1993), while the second claim for the relationship between exploitation territories and people returns to the original concept for SCA.

A detailed overview of SCA and its applications until 1979 was made by Donna Roper, who concluded that SCA favoured different kind of research aims and objectives such as the determination of the feasibility of various forms of economy, modelling of the settlement pattern and the study of demographic process (Roper 1979). Further contributions were discussed in Bailey and Davidson’s article, that was one of the last SCA case studies in the 1980s (Bailey and Davidson 1983). After years of various applications and attempts to answer the ever-growing criticism, SCA ceased to be an important issue in the mid-eighties. It was neither criticized nor mentioned. In the context of the increasing post-processual trend in archaeology, the research potential of SCA diminished and was no longer an area of active research interest.

SCA received a substantial amount of critique from outside its circle of followers. Some of the method’s shortcomings were solved even prior to their formal critique (e.g. Hodder and Orton’s (1976) critique of the concentric circles had already been reconsidered by Dennell and Webley (1975)), while others were the object of constant refinement. Most important among the latter were the least cost assumption and the use of modern land use patterns as a source for palaeo-land use. Answering the modern land use objection, SCA case studies started to include a review of palaeo-environmental changes, aiming to reduce the modern biases in SCA results (Bailey and Davidson 1983, Gilman and Thornes 1985, Chapman et al.1996). Least cost criticism is a part of a more general critique of SCA concerning the economic issues of the method that will be considered in some detail later. Here, it is noteworthy that, without being considered as deterministic, the least cost assumption was argued to be valid in numerous archaeological case studies (e.g., Gilman and Thornes 1985, Limp 1989, 1990). As an answer to a critique of least cost, ethnographic evidence, according to which this concept was practiced among traditional societies, was summarised in the last of the British Academy Early Farming Projects volumes (Jarman et al.1982)

An original application of SCA was made in the Maddle Farm field project (Gaffney et. al 1985). It extends the number of factors through which past human behaviour could be studied and explained. The inclusion of domestic animals and their role in manuring practice is an important contribution to the refinment of the theory and the methods of SCA. The Maddle Farm study is particularly relevant for the current study as it argues that domestic animals were kept in immediate proximity to the settlement, for reasons of milking and ready transportation of concentrated manure.

Looking for an acceptable explanation for expulsion of SCA from archaeological theory and practice in the last 15 years or so, the most evident reason appeared to be the method’s economic orientation, which does not favour the social priorities of the interpretive framework of recent post-processual archaeology. An opposition between social and economic factors was alleged as the principal theoretical contradiction of SCA. Prior to formulating SCA as a milestone in palaeo-economical studies (Higgs 1972), social and economic issues used to be considered as different but inseparable aspects of the past and were studied as such (Clark 1939, 1959, Sherratt 1972).

This supposed social/economy dichotomy was exposed after the intensification of the application of ecological models in archaeology in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Butzer 1972). Higgs and Jarman emphasised that the study of economy, the major selective force in prehistory has, until now, largely been ignored as a result of years of dominance by the cultural model (Higgs and Jarman 1969: 40). This triggered the initial critique of the deterministic relationship between economic strategy, resources and technology and gave alternative reasons for site location as defence, access to water, roads, ritual places, etc. (Hodder and Orton 1976). Since then, many arguments were adduced to favour the primacy of either social or economic factors in prehistoric site location, along with studies, however, that consider them as complex, inter-related variables (Sieveking et al. 1976). Although social factors started to be recognized in SCA studies in the early 1980s (Bailey and Davidson 1983, Gilman and Thornes 1985), the debate was exhausted and SCA appeared to sink into academic oblivion.

SCA and GIS

A partial vindication of the SCA concept was to appear in the early applications of GIS in archaeology. The traditional application of this new analytical tool-kit can be seen in the exhaustive settlement pattern study of Late Woodland horticulturists in New York State area (Hunt 1992), the study of the island of Hvar in Dalmatia (Gaffney and Stančić 1991) and the settlement pattern study of the LBK in Central Germany (Saile 1997). All of these studies related settlement location and any subsequent changes to some kind of environmental variable (soil, slope, etc). Apart from the obvious simplification of the human/environment interrelation, these applications promoted GIS and SCA as a proper complex methodological tool in settlement patterns and regional studies. Their importance can be relevantly evaluated on the ground of the then prevailing predictive modelling in GIS applications.

Predictive modelling (PD) of archaeological site location has a long tradition in GIS practice and maybe the greatest research efforts and resources of GIS application in archaeology have been spent in its development and improvement. It employs a number of techniques and methods but its basic assumption is that there is a link between a site location and its surroundings reconstructed through measurable environmental variables. This is more or less equivalent to the SCA concept, although the term has never been mentioned. Predictive modelling has been broadly applied in Cultural Resource Management (CRM) and planning development (for details for PD and CRM chapters 9, 13, 14, 18 -24 in Allen et al.1990, and chapters 1 - 3 & 26 in Lock and Stančić 1995).

As mentioned earlier in this chapter (p. 57), GIS applications have been heavily criticised because of their implicit environmental determinism (van Leusen 1995). Since SCA may well be vulnerable to the same critique, this is the place to discuss the issue in some detail. The debate dates back to the 1980s, when the post-processual movement in archaeology criticised the straightforward environment – human adaptation link as simplistic and omitting any social aspects in human development. In all the environmental determinism critiques, however, it is not clear why a clearly observable relationship between some settlements and certain soil type or the connection of some barrows to a South Eastern aspect is deterministic and hence bad according to the contemporary archaeological interpretive framework. It is the successive explanation of such an interrelation and most of all the change in this pattern of interrelations that is the reason for the severe criticism (e.g. settlements were located in a particular place because of the fertile soils and when the latter were exhausted, settlement locations have changed). However, I was not able to identify what the possible explanation of environment / settlement location relation is according to the social adherents of human development. While consistent in their ED critique (such as Hodder’s criticism of the systems approach in archaeology, of which ED is considered a part) and the presentation of alternative explanatory modes (e.g. contextual archaeology) (Hodder 1986) social and cognitive archaeologists tacitly avoid the meaning of environmental factors and hence, reaching the other extreme that easily can be called social determinism.

This unhelpful formulation of determinisms results in an ungrounded opposition between environmental /economic and social factors, in which the former are considered as behavioural response and adaptation and the latter are considered as the most important in the human development as they are the driving force of cultural change. This opposition will be discussed in the following section of this chapter. The comment I’d like to make here is that the physical background is more likely to be relevantly appreciated in the case of environmental extremes (e.g. desert or constant snow coverage) where geographic, weather or any other conditions play an important role in social practices (e.g. recurrent journeys for water or social gatherings for the collective hunting of whales), while, in less extreme conditions, environment factors seemed to be either over- or under-estimated. Most probably, people needed to be well integrated with their surroundings and it is our AD 20^th century investigators’ evaluation that considers such an interrelation deterministic or adaptive. In an attempt to escape from the ED critiques in their renewed study of island of Hvar, Gaffney and Stančić (1995) placed emphasis on the distribution of stone cairns, seeking to investigate the landscape of perception. What they seem to miss is that it was the karst environment of Dalmatia that made people clear some areas for agriculture, heap the stones with or without burial among them, following what most was probably a consistent socio-economic practice of relating everyday activities (agricultural fields), ancestors (burial mounds) and some purification and fertility rituals (empty cairns)(see Chapman et al. 1996).

Another property of the GIS toolbox – the cost-surface analysis - was indirectly criticised, since it rests on the least cost presumption. While I would agree with the general disapproval of the uncritical application of behavioural patterns to the past (Hodges 1987, Shepherd 1999), I’d like to suggest that, before overruling certain modern models, one should examine the evidence against such a model and provide an alternative behavioural pattern. In the case of the least cost assumption, it means that, as long as some ethnographic and off-site evidence suggests least cost strategy as relevant, it should be considered as one important influence on site location but not the only one. After a proper joint investigation of the available archaeological and environmental data, it is possible that other factors (e.g. defence) were more important in the site location. Only after that, least cost assumption should be considered as a factor with no or secondary importance in the particular case study.

The development of GIS packages produces the results of cost surface analysis in terms of time (not just in distance as in the original SCA), effort, least-cost paths, cumulative cost surfaces, multiple least-cost paths and least cost networks (van Leusen 1999). Thiessen polygons were spatial pattering adopted (Hodder and Orton 1976) and applied (Hodder 1972, Renfrew 1973) by archaeologists after modern geographical applications (Haggett 1965); this is a routine operation in cost surface analysis. Thiessen polygons are taken as integrating political, administrative, religious, etc. entities by considering space as two-dimensional, flat and isotropic (van Leusen 1999). However, when overlaid with a cost surface slope map, for example, the outcome map will justify the relevance of the defined areas according to one aspect – in this case, terrain slope. Several such overlays are possible (e.g. hydrology, soils), showing the integrity of GIS data and the flexibility of GIS analysis. Thiessen polygons and SCA are usually opposed in archaeological theory and practice literature (Hodder and Orton 1976), while, in GIS analysis, they can very often be effectively combined (Savage 1990, Gaffney and Stančić 1991).

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, environmental and landscape aspects should not be divided into different parts of a regional settlement study. Two case studies are presented to illustrate a consistent approach to both archaeological and environmental data which establishes a coherent socio-economic and spatial pattern: the first in prehistoric North America (Savage 1990), the second in prehistoric Spain (Verhagen et al. 1995). Both studies comprise a reasonable body of original and general archaeological theory, as well as some methods and techniques not common in GIS practice (e.g. models of social grouping (Savage) or introducing domains as socio-natural descriptors (Verhagen et al.). They are included in the SCA section, since both of them are either referring directly to SCA (Savage) or denying the traditional SCA concept but, in fact, re-introducing it in its refined variant of territorial analysis (Verhagen et al.). The two case studies are also chosen as, according to my view, the best examples of theoretically grounded socio-economic studies revealing and using the ability and potential of GIS in archaeology to the full.

In his study of social organisation in the Late Archaic in the Savannah River Valley of Georgia and South Carolina, Savage starts from the claim that models of social organisation can be conceptualised in terms of the social, cognitive and physical landscapes within which people live (Savage 1990:). Following Dennell’s (1983) subsistence/reproductive groups, Wobst’s (1974) minimum/maximum band and Pred’s (1986) geographic location approach, Savage hypothesises that the Late Archaic social landscape consisted of maximum band social territories divided into minimum band subsistence territories(1990). After a series of theoretical assumptions, defined test implications and GIS assessment of the test implications according to the available archaeological data, the hypothesis was confirmed. It was inferred that there were six habitual areas of different size, defined on the basis of Thiessen polygons from base camp sites, that were occupied by six minimum bands, forming a maximum mean band size of 497 people. Boundaries between the habitual areas were related to both edges and centres and two contact areas were identified. The sites within the research area were clustered and each cluster contained a variety of site types in terms of different temporal, spatial and functional uses. To achieve these results, Savage applies a non-conventional interpretative framework accommodating geographic location theory, models of social organization, boundary studies, site function study, demographic and subsistence models (Savage 1990). The main problem with this joint approach is its not very well defined common theoretical background in terms of both LA and GIS.

The second case study dealt with socio-economic activities in the Bronze Age in Southeast Spain (Verhagen et al 1995). Acknowledging the failure of SCA because the social is abruptly disintegrated from the natural ((Verhagen et al 1995:189) and following Crumley and Marquard’s (1990) socio-historic and biophysical structures, Verhagen et al. develop a model of social space consisting of six socio-natural descriptors. They are called domains and are the domain of human reproduction and maintenance activities, the domain of food production, the domain of material technology production, the domain of raw material and artefact transaction, the domain of political and administrative organization and the domain of the ancestors. In the case study of the Vera Basin in Southeast Spain, the domain of food production was investigated via an integrative, hierarchical framework containing three levels of data transformation. The first level is the representative level, referring to climate, geology, soils, etc., the second level is the descriptive level, dealing with site location, site intervisibility, transportation surface, etc., and the third is the interpretive level that represents the dynamic models of subsistence, demography and human/land interaction. As the input point of this framework, GIS form the link between relational and mapping database and, together with archaeological, social/historical data and environmental data, it is direct related to the first level and indirectly to the other two levels. The descriptive level in Vera Basin case study includes distance analysis (to the coastline, to the dry river beds, etc), analysis of the surrounding of each site (refined SCA) and visibility analysis. The results of cost surface analysis of the three investigated sites showed that each site’s one-hour territory had differential potential based upon their different sizes and outlines. At least two possible routes (paths) connecting the three sites were identified, thus showing the capability of GIS on the one hand and sensitivity to tackling and interpreting GIS analysis results on the other. It was also concluded that, in the Bronze Age of the Vera Basin, there was, a natural type of landscape organization, incorporating cereal cropping, olives, oak groves and animal pasture as a diversified single system (Verhagen et al 1995:203).

The aims of this short review of GIS applications which make active use of SCA are twofold. First, I wish to argue that the critique of ED and cost surface analysis as being too general is ill-founded; the critiques are also unhelpful in failing to provide an alternative approach to such data. Secondly, I attempt to reconcile the landscape and environmental approach in archaeology, giving productive examples of GIS studies combining these two approaches. As Verhagen et al. put it, …humans do not adapt to the environment…rather, they are embedded in landscape evolution as a continuous structuring and restructuring of time-space, one that implies no teleological directive (Verhagen et al 1995:190).

New perspective in territorial analysis

As stated in the introductory chapter, the concept of SCA will be applied in the current study. The brief review of SCA development in archaeological theory and practice revealed its various understanding and applications. This means that each new application of SCA, usually connected with a further refinement of the term, receives an introductory explanation. For the purposes of this study, further extensions to the existing SCA terminology was considered as an inappropriate, so the term SCA is going to be used to denote both Dennell’s catchment area and exploitation territory. A similar application of SCA was utilised by Bailey and Davidson (1983). This follows my understanding that the recognition of local and non-local elements within a site and its surroundings is important but that their study and interpretation should not be separated. The practice of delineating an area around a particular site to define its exploitation territory (a practice that will be followed in this study as well) does not contradict the concept of a broader catchment area, that should be inferred, and not assumed, on the basis of the available evidence.

This refined understanding of SCA has, in my view, great potential in microregional and settlement pattern studies. Instead of fostering a false opposition between social and economic variables, research efforts should be re-directed towards the establishment of a flexible model of investigating and overlaying different kind of evidence that would subsequently facilitate a proper socio-economic interpretation. An improved SCA, along with the GIS technique, would provide a powerful base for the development of such a approach.

The first step in the refinement of SCA is to explore the social/economy dichotomy. It was not until 1996 that a different usage of word economy in archaeology was clarified both semantically and in content (Preucel and Hodder 1996). Terms such as ecosystems modelling, evolutionary ecology, cultural economics, cultural materialism and political economy were formulated to unify the diversity of approaches and interpretations of human activities such as subsistence, resource exploitation, production, distribution and trade. This is an example of how contemporary archaeologists tend to name events and issues of the past with modern, mainly English terms, and to fragment these event and issues into pieces that are convenient to study with present means and models (e.g. production of commodities to be studied in terms of political economy), not providing evidence that such division was really a fact in the period under study. This critique targets not the language limitations that we cannot avoid but the easily claimed and then broadly reproduced oppositions such as natural - cultural, social – economic or quotidian – sacred, without arguing that this opposition was valid in the period under study. Whether or not subsistence strategies in the past should be called the economy, does not change the fact of their existence. I am not aware of any archaeological evidence which can prove that these strategies were disconnected from quotidian social and/or ritual practices. On the contrary, archaeological literature contains many examples of ritual objects found in non-ritual contexts, such as in the middle of an arable field, for example (see discussion and references in Harding 2000, Mikov 1933, Gaydarska 1998), as well as natural residues (animal bones and plant remains) and working tools discovered in a highly structured context of ditches, pits, enclosures and burnt houses (Richards and Thomas 1984, Chapman 2000 with references, Lichardus et al. 2001).

The potential for a certain class of subsistence strategy could be established through the exploration and evaluation of the resources around a particular site. This is far from claiming that each and every available resource was used and the intensity with which they were used. Land use and other subsistence patterns are to be explored after environmental data is juxtaposed to site evidence and, if possible, together with proper demographic analysis. The definition of subsistence activities should always be related to the social practices on which they are based and the implied social relations. The link between economy and social organization has already been pointed out long ago (Sherratt 1972) and it is my intention to extend and deepen this statement by claiming that subsistence and social practices were strongly interrelated. Social practices, here, are understood in a broad sense and their claimed relation to environmental factors is not to be seen as re-introducing the 1960s trend of environmental deterministic into archaeology, according to which cultural change was dependent on environment (Steward 1955, Struever 1968). Social practice is another term by which modern archaeologists seek to explain the daily, seasonal, year-round and life-time activities of interconnected human groups, through which their relations are maintained and/or negotiated for the establishment of successful reproduction and transformation.

Although not specially emphasising this point, some of the 1980s applications of SCA support socio-economic integration. An example is the claim for the existence of a major aggregation site and " three major site systems, each of which would have provided a regional integration of a variety of sites" in Palaeolithic Cantabria (Bailey and Davidson 1983). In another case, the refutation of long-lasting claims for the primacy of transhumance and metalworking in prehistoric Southeast Spain is achieved entirely on the basis of SCA (Gilman and Thornes 1985). Investigating environmental variables around a site is not necessarily non-social, since such studies provide evidence for the suitability and sustainability of the area for camping, hunting, settling, burying, defending, worshipping and any other social practice, and hence the opportunity for reconstruction of each of these practices in accordance with the site data. As already argued in the Neothermal Dalmatia Project, SCA is a proper and necessary interpretive technique in each regional study (Chapman et al. 1996). The detailed small-scale survey of a site and its surroundings facilitates the multi-site sub-regional and regional studies of settlement patterns, land use, inter-site relationships and human – landscape interrelations. In this small-scale interpretive framework, in which regional studies consist of numerous SCAs, the site does not lose its identity and importance in an abstract theoretical model or does not represent the smallest (almost anonymous) surveyed unit in a large-scale field project but it is simultaneously a significant demonstration of past social practices and a constituent of the overall regional breeding network pattern.

Returning to SCA, a helpful revision would be to make explicit links between environmental/ economic and social factors. Thus, for example, if important social issues imposed the setting of a certain settlement in a particular location, it is the environment of the place that supports the continued dwelling of the people at the same place. In contrast, if a site retains the same catchment area and exploitation territory but the actual settlement is moved, this alerts us to some form of social or other constraint. An example of such inter-related constraints could be the models of restricted and extended mobility of the settlement patterns in prehistoric Turkish Thrace (Erdogu 1999).

Any new application of SCA should be based upon past experience and an open and critical mind. Settlement and subsistence strategies should be inferred from the evidence of each concrete case and recurrent and changing patterns are to be equally anticipated. The results of environmental investigations must be checked and cross-referenced with site and off-site evidence, and only then a reconstruction of settlement pattern, land use, subsistence and social practices of the surveyed area could be suggested.