The Rhyton from Danilo

Structure and Symbolism of a Middle Neolithic Cult-Vessel

Omer Rak, Theresa Alt, Wayles Browne, Wayles Browne

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781842175767
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

The so called rhyton from Danilo, an archaeological site near the coastal town of Sibenik in Dalmatia, Croatia, is a four-legged Neolithic vessel made of fired clay that according to the consensus of archaeological opinion was most likely a cult vessel used in rituals of unknown origin and content. "Danilo Culture" is the eponymous name bestowed on a culture flourishing in the period from about 5500-4500 BC at Danilo and at some neighbouring sites. This culture had great influence along the eastern Adriatic coast and its hinterland and produced a significant number of these vessels. Rhyta, which other Neolithic cultures also made, were dispersed throughout a vast area of southeast Europe, from Greece to the Alps. This book is an in-depth study of that mysterious, prehistoric archaeological artifact which, due to its antiquity, structure and symbolism, has become a kind of universal proto-matrix for all relevant mythological and spiritual structures of the Mediterranean zone of later, historic times.

1

THE FIND

“In the valley where the village of Danilo lies (18 km east of Šibenik), about 2 km west of the site of the Illyrian-Roman settlement Rider, there is a well Bitinj, which dries up only in the very greatest droughts” (Pl. I, fig. 1 and fig. 2). Thus begins the report of F. Dujmović, at that time the Director of the Museum of the City of Šibenik, published under the title “A Neolithic ritual vessel from Danilo in Dalmatia” in the section for “New and Unpublished Materials/Excavations/Reports and Contributions” in Vjesnik za arheologiju i historiju dalmatinsku [“Annals of Dalmatian Archaeology and History”] no. 54 of 1952. Dujmović mentions that in the immediate vicinity of the above-named well, on the southern side, but also across the road, the local villagers when tilling the soil frequently came upon fragments of Neolithic ceramics, dressed stone and stone implements. Therefore, a rather small test excavation was undertaken on one farm field in the summer of 1951, with a positive result. (The excavation was done by Dr. D. Rendić-Miočević, then Director of the Archaeological Museum in Split). That same summer the owner of the neighbouring meadow was ploughing it to plant a vineyard and in so doing, after his plough caught on a rather large stone, discovered several fragments of decorated ceramics and six fragments of the vessel that Dujmović describes in an instalment of the report. The fragments of this vessel were brought to the Museum of the City of Šibenik, to which the discoverer readily relinquished them, and its restoration was carried out there. The vessel that had been found was a zoomorphic receptacle, Dujmović wrote (placing a question mark by the word “zoomorphic”), which, aside from a small triangular part on the left edge of the opening of the vessel, half of the rear left foot and the handle, was almost entirely preserved. The height of the receptacle is 13 cm, its width 12.5 cm, its depth 8 cm (Pl. II, fig. 3 and fig. 4). The oval opening of the vessel is turned forward like a sort of muzzle, as Dujmović visualizes the appearance of the receptacle. He considers it indubitable that the vessel did not serve for practical uses but most probably was a ritual object, “in which a ritual live coal might have been placed”(Dujmović 1952, 74). The first page of Dujmović’s report shows a sketch of the vessel with a bilingual legend (in Croatian and French): Rhyton from Danilo (Museum of the City of Šibenik). That was the professional and wider public’s first introduction to the Neolithic puzzle from the hinterland of Šibenik.

In the same issue of the Annals, in a contribution entitled “A new Neolithic cultural group on the territory of Dalmatia”, there also appeared J. Korošec, a respected expert in prehistory, writing about “vases on four legs”, that is, rhyta. “The vessel itself with its wide opening stands in a slanting position in relation to the legs. The front part is higher, but bowed toward the back side. The opening of the vessel is on the rear side in a slanted position” (Korošec 1952, 102). Examining the Danilo rhyton, Korošec comes to the conclusion that the vessel in its position standing on four legs cannot have a practical function. According to his thinking, it could serve for use only if it was being held up by the handle in a horizontal position, in which case the legs would be put in a slanting position. That, along with the red painted parts and the red encrustation, was enough for him to assign the rhyton to cult objects (Ibid.)

At the initiative of the City Museum in Šibenik and the Archaeological Museum in Split, with the material and moral support of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (JAZU) from Zagreb, rescue excavations were conducted at the Bitinj site in Danilo in 1953. A lack of time and limited means, and the threat to the terrain, meant that the fieldwork had the character of the usual rescue excavations, saving whatever could be saved. Therefore it happened that in observing the terrain certain details were overlooked that could have given a fuller picture than the one the hurried work yielded (Korošec 1958, 7). Participating in the work of the archaeological team were J. Korošec from the Archaeology Department of the Faculty of Philosophy of Ljubljana University, D. RendićMiočević, Director of the Archaeological Museum in Split, F. Dujmović, Director of the City Museum in Šibenik, and I. Marović, curator of the Archaeological Museum in Split. The excavations yielded an abundance of hitherto unknown material consisting of ceramics, stone and bone tools, remains of the bones of various animals, shellfish, etc. Five years after the excavation J. Korošec published a book with the results of the archaeological investigations on the Danilo site documented in detail – Neolitska naseobina u Danilu Bitinju [“The Neolithic Settlement at Danilo Bitinj”], which to this day remains a classic in research on the Middle Neolithic Danilo Culture.

To obtain firmer foundations for dating and new information for resolving certain questions connected with the newly discovered Neolithic culture, JAZU again undertook work at the Danilo Bitinj site in August 1955. The City Museum of Šibenik headed by F. Dujmović was put in charge of the excavation, while the professional and scholarly work was done by J. Korošec supported by his assistants from the Archaeological Seminar of the Faculty of Philosophy in Ljubljana and the Archaeological Section of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana. To gather as much information as possible, the investigation encompassed not just one place, but two separate terrains totalling somewhat more than a thousand square meters. The investigations confirmed the hypotheses made on the basis of the earlier excavation, and some new information for understanding that period was obtained as well as information about the relationships of the Danilo cultural group with neighbouring ones, but also with distant cultural groups (Korošec 1959, 226–227). Stratigraphic data, especially those of vertical stratigraphy, were, as in the earlier excavation, negative, since the entire layer, regardless of whether it had been disturbed or not, consisted of a homogeneous whole in which no distinctions could be found, either on the basis of typology or of evolution. Whereas in the layers of vertical stratigraphy, in vertical cross-sections, it was not possible to find differences in the material culture, it turned out that this difference could be sought on the horizontal level, over the surface, in the different sectors of the settlement. Thus Korošec, a little discouraged, concludes that today, if we wanted to determine the exact development of the entire material culture in Danilo and specify all the chronological phases in connection with its typological development, we would be forced to examine the whole settlement, because we do not know which places were populated at specific times. Since on account of the great area of the settlement and the vineyards and other agricultural plantings there this is technically impossible, he foresaw that excavations under such circumstances would last “many years or decades” (Ibid., 228).

On the other hand, the excavations conducted during the 1950s and 1960s by the archaeologists A. Benac in central Bosnia, Š. Batović in the hinterland of Zadar, and S. S. Weinberg in central Greece contributed a plethora of new material and stimulated interest in the Danilo Culture, particularly in the cult rhyton, which so to speak became its trademark. In addition to these there were later excavations of Neolithic sites in Albania and Italy, which filled in gaps in the previous conceptions and cast new light, in particular on the matter of the origin of the rhyton and the directions in which it had spread.

The Šibenik archaeologist M. Menđušić, digging in 1993 on a parcel across the way from the Bitinj well, which had not hitherto been included in the excavations, made two test excavations 7 × 3 metres in size, which were subsequently extended in certain parts, and investigated an area of some sixty square metres. In the relatively thin cultural layer (the intact layer was only about 50 cm thick) Menđušić found quite a few fragments of typical Danilo ceramics, ordinary ones and vessels decorated with spiral motifs and hatched triangles. Fragments of the handles and feet of rhyta were also found. Aside from the ceramic material, several stone artifacts were found, as were remnants of daubs that indicated the remains of a prehistoric dwelling irregularly circular (ellipsoid) in form. The masonry walls of the half-dugout, for it was that kind of dwelling, were plastered with clay, mainly on the outside, which took on a reddish-yellow colour from long exposure to the sun. The roof was of straw, and the entrance, according to the floorplan, was on the western side. The floor was of clay; no hearth was found. Unfortunately, for lack of funds the work had to be stopped and could not encompass a larger area (Menđušić 1993, 22–25). Menđušić’s dig, aside from its valuable finds, confirmed the supposition that Korošec’s excavation, forty years earlier, had not exhausted the finds from the Danilo Culture at Bitinj. Led on by this understanding, in March 2003 experts from the Museum of the City of Šibenik in cooperation with experts from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York State began to sound the terrain at the Bitinj site by means of the latest ground penetrating radar methods, which were being used in Dalmatia for the first time. The professional team was led by the archaeologists M. Menđušić and A. M. T. Moore, an American archaeologist known for excavations at Abu Hureyra in Syria, where in 1972 and 1973 digging was undertaken that lasted for about six months, before the whole site was flooded in early 1974 by water from the artificial lake formed by a nearby dam on the Euphrates. The results of that excavation were only published in 2000. Radiocarbon AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry) dating established the continuity of the settlement at Abu Hureyra, which occupied a large area (11.2 hectares), from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Neolithic, or from about 11,500 to after 7000 BC, which meant that there existed an uninterrupted sequence from the hunter-gatherer way of life to the early phases and developed phases of agriculture (Moore 2003, 65–67). For Moore the remains of plants and animals on archaeological sites are fundamental evidence in researching the transition from gathering fruits to agriculture. Such an approach demands the collection of huge quantities of that material in excavation, far more than what is referred to in normal archaeological research. It implies a thorough analysis of the environment, supported by evidence of social changes, which should, in Moore’s view, yield the most productive results (Moore 2003, 65–67).

The joint team of American and Croatian archaeologists continued investigations at Danilo in 2004 and 2005. The results were the discovery of two children’s graves, some round semi-dugouts and above-ground square houses with their lower parts of stone and the upper ones of homemade wattle and daub. Abundant archaeological material was collected (ceramic, stone, flint, bone and other fragments), remains of grain (wheat, flax and barley), as well as fruit seed but also sea shells (Pl. XIII., fig. 22 and fig. 23). At a press conference Moore emphasized that the population on the territory of Danilo as far back as seven thousand years ago survived by raising domestic animals, sheep, cattle and pigs, as well as barley, two kinds of wheat and flax, which proves that the ancient inhabitants of Danilo were mainly farmers and herdsmen. A member of the professional team, A. Legge, who had also collaborated with Moore on the Syrian archaeological project, concluded, on the basis of the finds that had been found and tested on the site, that the modern landscape and soil typeat Danilo are nearly identical to those of seven millennia ago. The Šibenik archaeologist M. Menđušić, a specialist in the prehistoric period, stressed that on the archaeological site many other prehistoric remains had been found, ceramic fragments with familiar patterns of the “Danilo Cultural Sphere” and flint artifacts. Moore promised that the results of research on the archaeological site Bitinj would be elaborated in more extensive studies, offering an answer to the question of how and when agriculture and herding spread from the area of today’s Near East toward Europe (HINA 2005).

2

THE CULTURAL SPHERE OF THE RHYTON

Previous investigations have established that rhyta, and most probably also the cult that they represented, were widespread in central Greece and Thessaly (Corinth, Chaeroneia, Elateia, Tsangli and Larissa), in central Albania (the Cakran-Dunavec Group), in central Bosnia (the Kakanj Group), in Kosovo (Reštani/Reshtan, southern Metohija), in the eastern Adriatic zone (especially Danilo, Smilčić, Markova Cave on Hvar, Crvena Stijena in Montenegro and Zelena Pećina in Herzegovina) as well as in northern Italy (Caverna del Muschio, Aurisina near Trieste) and central Italy (Benac 1979, 408). Recent data on the distribution of rhyta shows that, by the beginning of the 1990s, a total of 48 archaeological sites had been recorded where remains of such vessels were found – from Alepotrypa in the southern Peloponnese to numerous caverns in the hinterland of Trieste and several sites on the Apennine peninsula together with the Lipari Islands near Sicily (Montagnari Kokelj and Crismani 1993, 22).

Finds of rhyta that belong to an older, Early Neolithic stage were, it appears, first reported by Albanian archaeologists. Namely, several undecorated rhyton legs were found at the Vashtëmi site near Korçë by the Pindus range. M. Korkuti, of the Institute of Archaeology in Tirana, one of the most outstanding contemporary Albanian archaeologists, states that vessels painted white and decorated with red clay, barbotine ceramics, as well as impressed pottery very reminiscent of the Starčevo and Adriatic form were found there (Korkuti 1982, 91–146, according to: Biagi 2003, 17). Chronologically, Korkuti places Vashtëmi together with Starčevo II in Serbia (Biagi 2003, 17). Moreover, three examples of rhyta come from the Early Neolithic site in Barç, and one from the Albanian cave Blaz, where the ceramics were decorated by pressing with a finger or a Cardium shell, by pinching, and by wavy or linear incision; barbotine ceramics were also found (Prendi 1990, 420, according to: Biagi 2003, 17). Apart from sites of late Starčevo impressed ceramics, the presence of rhyta in Albania is documented on sites of Middle Neolithic material culture such as Dunavec I and Kolsh (Korkuti 1995, according to: Biagi 2003, 19).

On the opposite side of the Adriatic, in Italy, two Early Neolithic Apulian examples of rhyta have come from the impressed ware site Le Macchie di Polignano a Mare, and from Caverna Elia near Ceglie Messapico, most probably a “cult cave”, in which one red-painted fragment of a rhyton was found. In the context of the possible origin of the rhyton in a period earlier than the Middle Neolithic, Biagi also mentions the find of a four-footed vessel from Donja Branjevina in Vojvodina, which the archaeologist S. Karmanski considers the (proto)type of the rhyton. The difference between the classically formed ones and the “rhyton” from Donja Branjevina is evident at first glance, since the latter lacks the characteristic handle over the opening of the vessel (Pl. XX, fig. 40). Moreover, seven radiocarbon results were obtained from this site. The result for the find mentioned was 6810±80 BP. In the book Žrtvenici, statuete i amuleti sa lokaliteta Donja Branjevina kod Deronja [“Altars, Statuettes and Amulets from the Site Donja Branjevina near Deronje”], in the chapter entitled Kultne vaze i kultne posude [“Cult vases and cult vessels”], S. Karmanski writes of a special set of cult objects made up of cult vases (found in fragments), in form and probably in purpose similar to altars (Karmanski 1968, 25). Particularly interesting for him is a cult vase (altar?) painted a reddish-brown colour, with a slanting receptacle which he relates by analogy to the Danilo vases. Namely, judging by the preserved part of the curve that connected two adjacent legs and the vertically pierced openings placed symmetrically in relation to the legs, Karmanski is inclined to think that the fragment belonged to a cult vase for which close analogies exist in the Danilo Culture (Ibid.). Although the composition of the clay and the technique of workmanship of the fragment were somewhat different from the other ceramics found in the same layer (layer II), Karmanski finds that it is not an imported object. If we accept a different method of reconstruction, he asserts, we will encounter a typologically quite new and unknown form of altar similar only in conception to the other altars within the Starčevo-Körös-Criş complex (Ibid., 26). The entirely new feature in the making of cult vases, which is found in this artifact, is precisely the absence of a strictly separated receptacle, which in the hitherto known altars had been considered a characteristic element, as were the hollow legs. In view of their form and position, the altar (?) was probably placed on four symmetrically arranged legs, while the receptacle could be of round or elliptical form. Thus the object must be seen in its entirety. If we accept the assertion that it is an altar, one needs to know that it differs from the other altars found at the site Donja Branjevina, and that it is a form of cult vase typologically unknown to the Starčevo-Körös-Criş complex. This is entirely understandable, since the fragments were found in layer II, corresponding to the later phase of the culture in Donja Branjevina, i.e. in the layer that belongs to a cultural group unknown until recently (Karmanski 1979, 12). Karmanski also mentions a fragment of an altar (?) in the form of a human leg from layer III, which can likewise be counted among the objects unknown to the Starčevo-Körös-Criş complex. In the preserved part it can clearly be seen that the altar (?) had a receptacle, as evidenced by the slanting position of the legs in relation to the ground, as well as that it was painted red, which, judging by the finds of fine ceramics, was the dominant colour in that layer (Ibid. 27). From this, connections can easily be made with similar finds of “human legs” by J. Korošec at Danilo Bitinj.

P. Biagi especially emphasizes the fact that many authors have discussed the origin of the Neolithic rhyton, and that only a few have taken into account the earliest Apulian, Albanian and Vojvodina finds. Their age, he is convinced, confirms that the origin of the rhyton must be sought within one of these three areas, and not in the Peloponnese, in central Bosnia or on the Dalmatian coast, as was previously supposed (Biagi 2003, 19). If that were to turn out to be accurate, the time span that covered the rhyton would have to be shifted back to 1200 calibrated years earlier than J. Chapman’s suggested date (4800–3500 cal BC). Therefore their first appearance in the Starčevo Culture and at sites of impressed ceramics would have to be shifted to about 6000 cal BC, Biagi holds, or a little earlier (Ibid.).

Some of Biagi’s “innovations” vis-à-vis the origin of the rhyton had already been observed by A. Benac and Š. Batović. For example, Benac tries to answer the question of whether cult rhyta in the Adriatic and Aegean area and in their hinterlands were only a replacement for altars, portable tables of the Starčevo component in Obre I at Kakanj, because the proto-Kakanj phase was strongly connected to the Starčevo component and in some ceramic artifacts continues that tradition. However, with time the Starčevo type altars with their level platform gradually disappear, to be replaced by a new type of ceramic objects, which served a specific cult. Their form is very greatly changed: the four legs remain, but a slanting receptacle replaced the level platform and round receptacle, and a high handle was added. The use of red paint remained common to both forms. Benac likewise notes the find by S. Karmanski in Donja Branjevina, allowing for the possibility of continuity between the Starčevo altars and rhyta within the Kakanj Group, but he is conscious of the lack of intermediate types that would connect these two forms of cult objects so that, in the end, nothing can be asserted with certainty. The fact remains that cult rhyta in the Kakanj Group directly replaced altars of the Starčevo ty...