Celestial Symbolism of the Vucedol Culture

Celestial Symbolism of the Vucˇedol Culture

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Emı´lia Pa´sztor

Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Vucˇedol Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Characteristic Elements with Semantic Indication of Decoration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Most Significant Elements of the Vucˇedol Ornamental Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Surmise on Archaeoastronomical Features of the Vucˇedol Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Calendar Pot? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Abstract

The ornamental art of the Late Copper Age Vucˇedol culture is outstanding. The consistent use of starlike motifs and their arrangement might symbolize cosmological notions which show surprising similarities with the Eurasian belief system involving the starry sky.

Introduction The consistent and repetitive application of some elements of Late Copper Age/ Early Bronze Age Vucˇedol decorative art indicates that they had a semantic background. Most of the circular signs are argued to be star or sun symbols due to their starlike appearances. In the classical phase of the culture, such signs were profusely employed, especially on fine ceramics.

E. Pa´sztor Magistratum Studio, Dunafo¨ldva´r, Hungary e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] C.L.N. Ruggles (ed.), Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-6141-8_134, # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

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The Vucˇedol Culture The Vucˇedol culture is named after the archaeological site of Vucˇedol which is situated on the right bank of the River Danube, 6 km south of the Croatian town of Vukovar. It flourished between about 3000 and 2200 BC – in terms of European prehistory, the Late Copper Age/Early Bronze Age. The homeland of the culture was located around present-day Slavonia (Croatian Slavonija) and Syrmia (Croatian Srijem, Serbian Srem). Its expansion in the later period is represented through a large variety of regional forms of pottery from sites covering a wide area, from the Carpathian Basin and the western Balkans to as far south as the Adriatic coast. Although the Vucˇedol culture developed from two older Eneolithic cultures, there are, however, other significant influences which contributed to the formation of the Vucˇedol culture complex. A terracotta horn of consecration and a doveshaped vase with a double axe (or butterfly?) motif on its neck point to a connection with the Aegean world. On the other hand, burials under tumuli, the double grave at Vucˇedol, and some typical shapes (especially censers on cruciform stems) point to the influence of steppe peoples (Garasˇanin 1982). Vucˇedol settlements took over earlier Eneolithic sites, but new ones were also developed where none had previously existed. The settlements were partly situated on terraced river banks and partly in positions that dominated the surrounding area, which clearly indicates the importance of the role of defense. The culture exploited regional copper ores and developed metallurgy, employing new casting technology. Decoration is especially spectacular in the case of the white incrustation grooved into the shining dark-brown pottery surface.

Characteristic Elements with Semantic Indication of Decoration The basic structure or the arrangement of the symbols on the surfaces of Vucˇedol artifacts is often characterized by the number four.

The Most Significant Elements of the Vucˇedol Ornamental Art • Five “rayed” dots arranged like on a die, giving the semblance of a constellation, or at least a closed group of five stars (Fig. 114.2) • A “rayed” rhombus or square carved with double lines and often filled with crosses or dots • Several concentric circles often having different signs in the center – a triple circle, an upright cross, and an “X” with dots in each segment (Fig. 114.1) • Four triangles symmetrically arranged and touching a common circle with their points – depicted on the inner surface of a shallow bowl (Fig. 114.6a, b) • Three dots in a line used as an independent element

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Fig. 114.1 Pot, VucˇedolGradac (Durman 2000, Catalogue 15)

Fig. 114.2 Pot, Vinkovci (Durman 2000, Fig. 38)

Surmise on Archaeoastronomical Features of the Vucˇedol Culture The first researcher who employed an alternative to customary archaeological approaches in analyzing the symbol system of the Vucˇedol culture was Aleksandar Durman (2000). The particular decorative art often arranged in panels with profusely employed starlike signs inspired him to correlate it with astronomy, the constellations, and planets, and he deduced that the makers intended to picture a number of astronomical events. It has been argued that the clear, regular application of the five-dot sign represents the Orion constellation as it appears in the early evening winter sky (Figs. 114.1, 114.2). The often larger central dot stands for the three significant stars of the Orion’s Belt which are so characteristic of this constellation (Fig. 114.7). It is also contended that a richly decorated terrine belonging to the furniture of a sacral pit with human skeletons pictures the conjunction of Mars and Venus in the Pleiades. Even human sacrifice was devoted to this very rare event.

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Fig. 114.3 ‘Calendar’ pot (Durman 2000, pp 99)

Calendar Pot? The Vucˇedol ornamentation is often arranged into panels. The most well-known artifact with such a decoration is the so-called calendar pot, which was unearthed in the eastern Croatian town of Vinkovci in 1978 and which, alongside the aforementioned dove-shaped vase, became the emblematic representative of the culture (Fig. 114.3). It is decorated with four parallel bands, but the pot is damaged and only the lowest band, which is divided into 12 fields, has been preserved in its entirety. Each of the other bands is decorated with different marks which share their symbol assortment with other ceramics. The explanation offered for such decoration is that the four horizontally parallel bands represent the four seasons, starting with spring on the top. Each band is probably divided into 12 boxes, making up 12 “weeks” for each season. Each of the small boxes contains the pictograph of a constellation that was characteristic for the given part of the year, the constellations which could be seen on the horizon directly following sunset in that season as the first visual signs of the evening sky (Orion, Gemini, Pegasus, the Pleiades, Cassiopeia, and Cygnus). The first disappearance of the Orion’s Belt signalled the end of winter and the beginning of a new year. Unlike other ancient calendars, which are usually based on the movements of the moon or the sun, this is an entirely astral calendar based on an Orion cycle (Durman 2001).

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Fig. 114.4 Pot, Sarvasˇ-Vlastelinski brijeg (Durman 2000, Fig. 62)

Discussion The identification of the Vucˇedol motifs with planets or astronomical events according to the positions of the symbols in relation to each other lacks any solid evidence. In addition to enthusiasm for the exceptionally beautiful ornamentation having created a whole starry story about the sophisticated astronomical knowledge of the Vucˇedol culture, Aleksandar Durman’s work has also drawn attention for its unique celestial symbolism. The regularity of the application of the five-star symbol with fixed arrangement as an independent motif bears testimony to its significance. It might represent a Vucˇedol star group (Figs. 114.1–114.4). Sky lore is ancient; there are even constellations such as the Milky Way, Orion, the Pleiades, and Ursa Major which are known to most peoples on earth; therefore, there is no reason why the Vucˇedol people would have no interest in the sky. It would also go against ethnographical records concerning the rich ethnoastronomical heritage of Eurasia. The five-star sign might also stand for the Orion constellation that is presented on the same way near the “roof” of the “cosmic house” on the cosmological drawing of a native Inca Indian chronicler, who worked at the beginning of the seventeenth century (Fink 2001). Therefore, the one group of dots on a jug might indeed represent Orion, while the other, the form of which is realistically elongated, like the later Near Eastern visualization, may symbolize the Pleiades (Pa´sztor and Roslund 2007, Fig. 114.4). On the other hand, the Vucˇedol “Orion” might only represent five independent stars which were important to the people for some reason. Some of the silver ethnic

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Fig. 114.5 Three of the Tuareg Crosses with symbol of the five stars

marker Tuareg Crosses depict the same symbol. An elderly Moroccan once personally informed me of the importance these five stars held for caravan leaders. Although he was unable to name the stars as he was very young when his grandfather handed this knowledge down to him, he did know that he had to turn to south with the longer arm of the cross and remember that he could always find his way with the help of the five stars. The astronomical knowledge of Saharan societies is mostly encoded in their vast oral traditions and represented as celestial iconography in the African arts. Nomadic Tuareg people practised celestial navigation in their travels across the great desert. They followed the “mother camel” constellation (Ursa Major) when travelling north and watched the “gazelle stars” (a and b Cen) when travelling south (Snedegar 2008, Fig. 114.5). Some of the geometric designs on the Vucˇedol calendar pot panels show striking similarity with motifs of the squares of the game boards found in funerary context of the Royal Cemetery of Ur dated from the mid-third millennium BC. This Twenty Squares Game was played all across the ancient Near East. They attest to the cultural contacts across the vast region that stretches between the Euphrates and Indus rivers (Voogt et al 2013). The squares on the board are argued to have a connection with astronomy, and the game could be used for divination purposes but not for individual use (Finkel 1995). The most conspicuous is the significant presence of the five-dot motif not only in the squares of the board but also on the tokens. As the Vucˇedol dots are mostly adorned with rays, it could indicate that those, whose intention was inquired by divination, inhabited in the sky. This symbol is also the significant element of the celestial adornment of Dunavecse golden armlet (see ▶ Chap. 115, “Celestial Symbolism in Central European Later Prehistory: Case Studies from the Bronze Age Carpathian Basin”). The game was not a pastime for Vucˇedol people as the ceramics adorned with the symbols could also have served ritual purpose. The number five, however, also had a celestial power as it is the very middle number of the Magic Square of Three that intimately involved with star gods and

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Fig. 114.6 Characteristic bowls of the Vucˇedol culture (Durman 2000, Fig 57 and 58)

various kinds of divination. Arguments on the origin of the magic square cannot decide between Mesopotamia and ancient China (Cammann 1961). At the same time, the Vucˇedol people might have been strongly influenced by a common ancient Eurasian belief system shared with nomadic steppe people and even the inhabitants of western China. The celestial pole and its circumpolar stars, the concept of the four main cardinal directions, played a basic, essential role in this system (Didier 2009). One of the most expressive representations of this ancient cosmography based on four divisions is offered by a unique type of artistic bowls made in the Vucˇedol culture (Fig. 114.6a, b). It later spread with the Vucˇedol influence and traditions and survived almost unaltered in later phases primarily as a grave find (Kulcsa´r 2009). Very frequently the pedestal of the bowl was shaped like a cross, or a cross was incrusted on the underside of its circular base (Durman 2001). Its inner surface might picture the four “corners” of the world, the four mountains which often also hold up the firmament. This pattern combined with the five-star motif can already be clearly recognized among the decorative motifs applied on a unique shallow vessel type by the earlier Baden culture (37/3500–30/2800 BC) (Bonda´r 2002). The above depiction shows surprisingly similar elements to the basic patterns of cosmic mirrors in Han dynastic (206 BC–220 AD) graves of ancient China (Cammann 1948). This cosmological basic pattern also appears in large numbers

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Fig. 114.7 Bowl with five dots decoration on its outer surface (Durman 2000, Fig. 60)

mostly on burial pottery in the middle period of the Bronze Age Carpathian Basin (sixteenth to twelfth centuries BC). The five-star sign might unite the concepts of the center and the four directions and also include the starry sky. Literary sources of the Shang period (1600–1100 BC) testify to the importance of the four directions and the middle in Shang cosmology; however, there might be archaeological evidence of more than one thousand years earlier (Pankenier 2011; Turk 2011). The Vucˇedol culture also shares the favored design of the cross (in a circle) with the Majiayao culture of 3100–2700 BC (Hung 2011, Fig. 114.7).

Conclusions The symbolism of the Vucˇedol culture clearly attests how complex intellectual influences reached the Carpathian Basin even in such an early period of prehistory. Although evaluation of the ancient interaction between the East and West is still the subject of continual debate, the intercultural relations may have been much more involved and of further-reaching influence in prehistory than has been supposed. The analogies, including the symbols, justify arguments not only on the usual Aegean and Anatolian/Near Eastern influence as over the last six millennia, from the Copper Age to the Modern Era; the steppe belt cultures undoubtedly played one of the most striking roles in the history of Eurasia (Anthony 2007; Chernykh 2008 and many others). The fragments of beliefs embodied in symbols dispersed through the whole of prehistory might signal the presence in the Carpathian Basin of a jointly held belief system with Asia in which the starry sky played an important role. Even if there is no consensus in the interpretation of signs (and there might never be), the unique symbol system of the Vucˇedol culture still deserves profound investigation.

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Cross-References ▶ Celestial Symbolism in Central European Later Prehistory - Case Studies from the Bronze Age Carpathian Basin ▶ Concepts of Space, Time, and the Cosmos ▶ Cultural Interpretation of Archaeological Evidence Relating to Astronomy ▶ Cultural Interpretation of Ethnographic Evidence Relating to Astronomy ▶ Nebra Disk ▶ Skylore of the Indigenous Peoples of Northern Eurasia

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