Vinča bowls with protoma

Abstract

Bowls with protoma represent one of several tens of types of Vinca vessels made of baked clay which have been published as finds excavated at Vinca sites for more than a century. We are dealing here with bowls of a markedly conical profile, with angled and slightly rounded walls and with a flat or slightly annular bottom. In most cases these bowls are not decorated, with the exception of the rare finds decorated by fluting, engraving and polishing. Their most significant peculiarity is the presence of four or eight protoma on the rim, facing the inside of the vessel. Taking into consideration all stylistic-typological characteristics, it is possible to divide them into two coherent categories of finds. The first consists of bowls with four oppositely placed protoma. Within this group it is possible to single out two subtypes, bowls with all four as anthropomorphic (Pl. I/6, 7; Pl. III/34) or all four as zoomorphic representations (Pl. I/5, 8, 9; Pl. III/33, 36). Bowls with eight protoma have actually got four pairs of oppositely placed representations. It was possible to discern two subtypes based on the objects that were completely preserved. The first subtype includes a bowl from the so-called Vinca ritual set, with two pairs of zoomorphic and two pairs of anthropomorphic protoma, both oppositely placed (Pl. I/3). The second subtype includes a bowl from house 1/2010 from Stubline with four identical, paired, totally stylised and schematised representations, whose identification is impossible (Fig. 1; Pl. I/1). Taking into consideration the metric and technological data, the thesis that seems most possible is that the bowls with protoma served for the consumption of or the storing/displaying of the content during some quite specific activities. Bowls with protoma appear in almost all regions of the central Balkans populated by Vinca culture communities and we do not note them in the areas of the neighbouring Late Neolithic communities. These bowls appear in a very long and clearly defined time span and their usage lasts for exactly the same time as the Vinca culture itself, appearing at the same time and together disappearing. The first vessels with their protoma facing the inside, appear almost synchronously at the very beginning of the Vinca culture, that is the Late Neolithic of the Balkans, in the centre of its area (Vinca and Grivac), but also in its furthermost peripheral areas (Roszke-Ludvar and Anza). Such a long period of almost 700 hundred years, in which one complex iconographic pattern survives without any significant changes (with the exception of the stylistic characteristics of the protoma themselves), primarily points to a long-standing and unchanged custom/belief/ritual that can evidently be associated solely with the communities within the Vinca culture. It is important to highlight the fact that bowls with protoma show “canonic” consistency to the utmost degree, even more so than the concurrent sacrificial alters and prosopomorphic lids. Dare we assume, on the basis of all that has been said, that in front of us we have a clearly canonised material pattern through which a clearly defined way of thinking/beliefs of one distinct community can be sensed? Their abrupt disappearance, together with the disappearance of the Vinca culture, that is to say the Late Neolithic way of living, should not be surprising. The change that comes along with the abandonment of the last Vinca settlements is not only perceptible in the material culture, but also, and above all, in the social system and the organisation of the community. Fundamental changes in the social structure in the middle of the 5th millennium BC, evidently led to the downfall and disappearance of many deep-rooted values of the communities of that time, as well as the very system of beliefs and sagas. This resulted in the disappearance of the vessels with protoma’s utilisation, one of the most steadfast material manifestations of the Vinca culture.