Starinar (Jan 2015)
Review of recent data in Starinar 64 regarding the sites of Belovode and Pločnik
Abstract
Archaeological investigations at Belovode and Pločnik, settlements of Vinča culture, have been conducted for an extensive number of years. The most intriguing contents were the archaeometallurgical finds, located partly within defined contexts, indicating an early metallurgy which had originated and developed within the Vinča culture. This aspect has been a primary objective in the investigations and expert interpretations to date. The metallographic and chemical analyses were agreed upon and carried out with UCL, Great Britain, confirming the basic assumptions published by the authors of the research. In the course of the archaeological investigations, several other elements, important for the understanding of the metallurgical process, were defined, such as the transportation of the raw materials, copper oxide ores, to settlements where, in the primary stages, further processing took place. Layers of coal, used to fuel the process, were discovered underneath and around the settlement at Belovode. Metallurgical installations for smelting were partially reconstructed based on later analogous Bronze Age sites in Cyprus. These are, for certain, solid starting points for further research into the entire production process, from the mining works through to the manufacturing of the finished products. This factual situation was also the basis for a critical review of the paper by the authors Radivojević-Kuzmanović, published in the previous issue of Starinar. The text contains a number of improvisations along with generalised observations in the concluding remarks, without citing authors who have been addressing this issue for decades, all of whom, to a greater or lesser extent, from different perspectives, point to the metallurgical aspects of Vinča culture. Their paper represents a compilation of previously published results on the metallurgy of Vinča culture along with a large proportion of illustrative contributions. The main objections are twofold in nature - scientific, due to a number of manipulations of the situations and finds documented in the archaeological papers, accompanied by inaccurate technical descriptions and citing of published papers, and ethical, due to the infringement of copyrights and disregard of collegial agreements.
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