Assess the impact of the introduction of metallurgy on the Balkans.

I think the impact of metallurgy on the Balkans was not very substantial. It could be argued that the introduction of metallurgy was one of the innovations that has had the biggest impact on humanity. However, I feel that it has not had the massive impact it is sometimes claimed to have. This is partly because we should be careful in ascribing changes over this era simply to the introduction of metal. The introduction of metal took place over several millennia and many other stimuli for change no longer appear in the archaeological record. To determine this I will use this essay to make a case study of the Balkans at the time of the introduction of the first metals which was during its copper age. The copper age in the Balkans lasted from approximately 4500 BC till 3200 BC but I intend to examine the period from 5000 BC down to 3000 BC so as to be able to compare the copper age to the surrounding Neolithic and Bronze Age. There are two things that we first need to examine , firstly what we would define as a culture and secondly by what terms we would determine an impact and what it could be counted as impacting on. In terms of culture I am taking this to mean similar assemblages within societies for example assemblages of zoomorphic pottery. With regards to impacts I broadly think there are three areas which metallurgy had an impact: upon social organisation, the environment which surrounds human habitation and finally burial practices. It should be noted that though we see a change in the culture of the Balkans over the period in which metallurgy was first introduced and we are working on the assumption that the metal causes this change it could be the result of this change instead or be only tenuously linked to it. A further difficulty when discussing the Balkans is that we are examining a very large diverse area stretching from the Danube to the Mediterranean and as a result there would be a large amount of variation within this area and as such I will be focusing on specific areas of the Balkans. The problem is also raised by D. W. Bailey (2000 6) is that these societies were many and varied, meaning what is true in one area is not in another. Thus I intend to use the geographical areas examined by D. W. Bailey in Balkan Prehistory (2000), notably Serbia, Bulgaria and Southern Hungary as the main focus.

Social Organisation One big area where the introduction appears to have had a large impact is social organisation. By the end of the period societies within the Balkans appear have a change in gender and age identity. A further impact upon the culture of the Balkans during this period was that society becomes more and more stratified across this period. However, this is a good indication that the introduction of metal played little influence in this vertical stratification of society. This is due to an argument put forward by Gies and Gies (1991 82) that in a medieval village wealth and status fluctuated based on the harvests. Such a principal is readily applicable to the Balkan copper age. For instance if one of the villagers had an excellent harvest for several years running and anothers failed then the villager with the excellent harvests would become richer and acquire more land. As a result should he suffer a bad harvest following this that villager would be more able to ride out the tough patch whilst those who had weaker harvests in preceding years would be harder hit. Thus, in theory this villagers family over generations could continue to grow in authority and wealth till his influence extended beyond the Above: Image of the Balkan Peninsular

world of agriculture for instance into trade. Thus we could argue that the introduction of metal had little impact on Social Organisation as the metal artefacts are merely symptomatic of these social elites not the cause of them. Alternatively, Derevenski (2000) argues that there was increasing categorisation of persons during the transition from the Neolithic and thus copper objects in particular, due to their value, played an important role in delineating gender and age. For instance arm rings are found on the remains of the younger members of one culture whilst the more senior members had copper beads (Derevinski 2000 391). Personally I do not believe that this shows an impact from metal working, for one thing Derevinski is primarily reliant on burial evidence which can be misleading when examining social organisation. Furthermore it is hard to argue that the introduction of metal created new views on different genders or ages. These were arguably already inbuilt or developed during this period, that they did so in conjunction with the introduction of metal is probably unrelated. Thus I do not think that the introduction of metal had a huge affect on the Balkan culture. The Environment

Burial Practices

Conclusion

Bibliography Books Bailey, D. W. 2000. Balkan Prehistory London and New York, Routledge. Earle, T. & Kristiansen, K. 2010. Organising Bronze Age Societies New York, Cambridge University Press. Gies F. and Gies J., 1991. Life in a Medieval Village New York, Harper Perrenial Press. Articles Derevenski , J. F. 2000. Rings of Life: Roles of Metallurgy in Mediating the Gendered Life Course World Archaeology 31: 389-406.