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GAYDARSKA AND CHAPMAN Megasites in Prehistoric Europe
This is an Element about some of the largest sites known
in prehistoric Europe – sites so vast that they often remain
undiscussed for lack of the theoretical or methodological
tools required for their understanding. Here, the authors use
a relational, comparative approach to identify not only what
made megasites but also what made megasites so special and
so large. They have selected a sample of megasites in each
major period of prehistory – Neolithic, Copper, Bronze and Iron
Ages – with a detailed examination of a single representative
megasite for each period. The relational approach makes
explicit comparisons between smaller, more ‘normal’ sites
and the megasites using six criteria: scale, temporality,
deposition/monumentality, formal open spaces, performance
and congregational catchment. The authors argue that
many of thelargest European prehistoric megasites were
congregationalplaces.
About the Series
Elements in the Archaeology of Europe
is a collaborative publishing venture
between Cambridge University Press
and the European Association of
Archaeologists. Composed of concise,
authoritative, and peer-reviewed studies
by leading scholars, each volume in this
series will provide timely, accurate, and
accessible information about the latest
research into the archaeology of Europe
from the Paleolithic era onwards, as well
as on heritage preservation.
Series Editors
Manuel Fernández-
Götz
University of
Edinburgh
Bettina Arnold
University of
Wisconsin–
Milwaukee
The Archaeology
of Europe
ISSN 2632-7058 (online)
ISSN 2632-704X (print)
Megasites in
Prehistoric
Europe
Bisserka Gaydarska
and John Chapman
Cover image: A house at Skara Brae. ian35mm / Getty
Images
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009099837 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Elements in the Archaeology of Europe
edited by
Manuel Fernández-Götz
University of Edinburgh
Bettina Arnold
University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
MEGASITES IN
PREHISTORIC EUROPE
Where Strangers and Kinsfolk Met
Bisserka Gaydarska
Durham University
John Chapman
Durham University
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009099837 Published online by Cambridge University Press
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DOI: 10.1017/9781009099837
© Bisserka Gaydarska and John Chapman 2022
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ISSN 2632-7058 (online)
ISSN 2632-704X (print)
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https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009099837 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Megasites in Prehistoric Europe
Where Strangers and Kinsfolk Met
Elements in the Archaeology of Europe
DOI: 10.1017/9781009099837
First published online: October 2022
Bisserka Gaydarska
Durham University
John Chapman
Durham University
Author for correspondence: Bisserka Gaydarska, b_gaydarska@yahoo.co.uk
Abstract: This is an Element about some of the largest sites known in
prehistoric Europe –sites so vast that they often remain undiscussed for
lack of the theoretical or methodological tools required for their
understanding. Here, the authors use a relational, comparative
approach to identify not only what made megasites but also what made
megasites so special and so large. They have selected a sample of
megasites in each major period of prehistory –Neolithic, Copper,
Bronze and Iron Ages –with a detailed examination of a single
representative megasite for each period. The relational approach
makes explicit comparisons between smaller, more ‘normal’sites and
the megasites using six criteria: scale, temporality, deposition/
monumentality, formal open spaces, performance and congregational
catchment. The authors argue that many of the largest European
prehistoric megasites were congregational places.
Keywords: megasites, congregation, relational approach, Nebelivka,
Alsónyék, Valencina de la Concepción, Corneşti, Bil’sk
© Bisserka Gaydarska and John Chapman 2022
ISBNs: 9781009096607 (PB), 9781009099837 (OC)
ISSNs: 2632-7058 (online), 2632-704X (print)
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009099837 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Contents
Preface 1
1 Introduction 2
2 Trypillia Megasites, Ukraine 13
3 Neolithic and Copper Age Sites in the Balkans
and Central Europe 24
4 Neolithic and Copper Age Sites in Southern Europe 42
5 Bronze Age Megasites 62
6 Iron Age Megasites - from Bil’sk to Bagendon 75
7 Discussion and Conclusions 98
References 107
A further Online Appendix (referred to in the text as OA/)
can be accessed at www.cambridge.org/megasites
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009099837 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Preface
Some people we know coped with COVID–19 enforced lockdowns by learning
Mandarin Chinese, others by joining new Zoom meetings teaching the art of
snake-charming, still others by beefing up their biceps and triceps and yet others
by extending their capacity for consuming Cobra at all hours. We took the
exciting alternative of writing a new book. Whether the mental well-being of
people turning to the other strategies turns out to be better than ours, only time
will tell. But we have coped reasonably well with the writing, even if data
acquisition was at times harder than for any other book we have written, meaning
that we leaned heavily on friends and colleagues for references not readily found
in the generally excellent Bill Bryson Library at Durham University.
When Manuel Fernández-Götz and Bettina Arnold approached us to write about
megasites in European prehistory, they had a fair idea of where we would be coming
from –the Trypillia megasites of Ukraine. Part of that research was already
published by Bisserka in books that Manuel had edited. But extending our compass
from the Ukrainian Neolithic to the whole of European prehistory proved
a challenging task. Responding to that challenge within the scope of the
‘Elements’format meant the selection of a small but perfectly formed group of
megasites from different eras. So how did we choose the megasites?
The starting point of the Element was clearly the megasites that we had
studied in great detail before –the Trypillia megasites of the Ukraine. The
choice of the next example –Alsónyék, in western Hungary –came about as
a direct result of Bisserka’s engagement with the site in the ‘Times Of Their
Lives’Project (or ToTL), for which she worked as a part-time post-doctoral
research assistant. The ToTL connection was also important for the choice of
Valencina de la Concepción. While Bisserka did not work on the Valencina
chronology, we had both met the director, Professor Leonardo García Sanjuán,
at the Second Shanghai Archaeological Forum and enjoyed many discussions
with him on Eurasian urbanism. Later, Bisserka edited an article that he
published on Valencina in her special issue on urbanism in the Journal of
World Prehistory. Both of us had enjoyed several discussions with our friend
Anthony Harding on the Bronze Age Corneşti megasite, whose special charac-
teristics and immense size made it an obvious choice. The final megasite –the
Iron Age complex at Bil’sk –was a site that we had encountered –though never
visited –during our Ukrainian Project and it was obvious that we could not
exclude the largest hillfort known in prehistoric Europe. As with the Trypillia
megasites in the 2000s, the predominant languages of Russian and Ukrainian in
which Bil’sk was published meant that it was poorly understood in the West.
This left some obvious candidates that we should enjoy researching.
1Megasites in Prehistoric Europe
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And that is what we have done. The task of extending our chronological and
cultural range by looking at sites we should not normally have analysed in such
detail was a pleasurable experience. We hope that readers will detect something
of that enjoyment in our account and themselves share in some of the excite-
ment of grappling with such a class of sites.
1 Introduction
1.1 From Silicon Valley to Stanwick
Governments, universities and land developers take the term ‘megasite’to mean an
enhanced zone with strong infrastructure, shovel-ready for the creation of a new
business cluster. The first such megasite, at Stanford University, grew into Silicon
Valley. Meanwhile, in prehistoric Europe –a continent with a late development of
urban centres in the 1st millennium BC –larger-than-usual sites emerged and
disappeared without causing much long-term cultural impact but also without
prompting explanation. It is only in the last two decades that megasites have been
recognised as an interesting phenomenon worth attention (e.g., in Iberia: Martínez-
Sevilla et al. 2020). But even when megasites have stimulated research projects,
remarkably little attention has been paid to why the sites were so large (e.g., Corneşti:
Heeb et al. 2017). Moreover, and with the exception of Roland Fletcher’s research
(1995;seeSection 1.1), the tendency in megasite studies for investigations in terms
of their own local cultural context has precluded comparative approaches.
In this Element, we use a relational, comparative approach to identify not only
what made megasites but also what made megasites so special and so large. We
address three themes in this Element –megasites in general, the phenomenon of
congregation and five examples of special megasites. Congregation consisted of
formal meetings at various scales according to punctuated temporality –people
congregated at the congregation place and then left. This occurred not only at
megasites but also at smaller sites, such as Rondels (see Section 3) but the scale of
congregation events at megasites attracted particularly large numbers of the
strangers and kinsfolk –those prehistoric forbears of C. P. Snow’s Cambridge
fellows and citizens in his Strangers and Brothers series, dealing with life and times
in the colleges and the town and examining issues of personal power and integrity.
The size of the Element limits our study to a consideration of one class of megasites
(the Trypillia megasites) plus one megasite per period (Neolithic, Copper, Bronze
and Iron Ages), with each megasite contextualised through a brief socio-cultural
introduction (Fig. 1). By the end of this Element, we hope that readers will have
come to understand why megasites in European prehistory mattered and how they
can help us to reach a deeper understanding of prehistoric societies in Europe.
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Figure 1 Map of key sites discussed in book: 1 –Bil’sk; 2 –Nebelivka; 3 –Corneşti; 4 –Csanadpalota; 5 –Munar; 6 –Sântana;
7–Idjoš–Gradište; 8 –Foggia Plain sites (Passo di Corvo, Motta di Lupo, Masseria Fragella & Posta d’Innanzi; 9 –Marroquíes –Bajos;
10 –ValencinadelaConcepción;11–Alcalar; 12 –Porto Torrão; 13 –Perdigões; 14 –Villeneuve –Tolosane & St. Michel-du-Touche;
15 –Corent; 16 –Bourges; 17 –Mont Lassois; 18 –Urmitz; 19 –Wiesbaden –Schierstein; 20 –Heuneburg; 21 –Heidengraben; 22 –Kelheim;
23 –Alsónyék; 24 –Stanwick (source: authors, re-drawn by Lauren Woodard)
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009099837 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Anyone reflecting on a research strategy for a 450 ha site will immediately
realise that these sites are challenging to investigate –that we shall always rely on
exploration of only a tiny fraction of their surface area. In this sense, writing this
account would have been impossible without the huge advances in geophysical
investigations in the last two decades, which have provided crucial detail for
megasite internal layouts. But, however indispensable, geophysical plots do not
provide chronological detail and it is only with targeted excavation and Accelerator
Mass Spectometry (AMS) dating through projects such as ‘The Times of Their
Lives’(or ‘ToTL’:Whittle 2018) that we can develop improved interpretation.
These methodological issues remain as yet unresolved for several of the megasites
we consider here. However, the point made in the study of Trypillia megasites –
that the methodological advances would be compromised without parallel
advances in theoretical understanding (Gaydarska 2020)–applies just as strongly
to other megasites. But what do we mean by a prehistoric megasite?
1.2 Refining the theoretical framework for megasites
Our central proposition for investigation is that megasites constituted particularly
large, though diverse, kinds of congregation places. Before we lay out the relational
approach to megasites, it is important to define an appropriate terminology, for many
terms are used, sometimes interchangeably, sometimes without definition. The five
related terms regularly used in discussions of large settlements –‘nucleation’,
‘aggregation’,‘agglomeration’,‘assembly’and ‘seasonal gathering’–do not
adequately cover the sense of congregations. ‘Nucleation’is contrasted with ‘dis-
persion’, often without a temporal dimension, while ‘agglomeration’refers to the
consolidation of a large, usually permanent population size. But not all agglomer-
ation sites were necessarily congregation places if they lacked the motivation or the
facilities for major meetings. The more neutral term ‘aggregation’is used as much
for a collection of structures, physical or social, as for large groups of people. The
term ‘assembly’prioritises the meeting aspect of a site without necessarily invoking
an appropriately large scale. The term closest in spirit to congregation is ‘seasonal
gathering’, in the sense of Wengrow and Graeber’s (OA/2015; cf. OA/Wengrow
2019) demonstration that seasonal hunter-gatherer group size alternated between
bands and large networks (viz., fusion–fission strategies), although, even with this
term, the scale of meeting is rarely specified. The notion that sizeable ‘seasonal
gatherings’were normal for human populations in the Holocene, as at Göbekli tepe
(OA /Schmidt 2006) or Lepenski Vir (OA/Srejović1972), provides the key long-
term context for congregation places.
In other words, not all megasites were congregation places, if they lacked
meeting spaces, and vice versa, if they were too small. Moreover, while small
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sites often shared similar practices with large sites, the key difference was the
intensity of the practices at the larger sites. Megasites can be considered as
congregational places if they embodied combinations of great size and scale as
well as intensity of practices in a relational sense. It is important to emphasise
that absolute size can be misleading. For example, the ditches at the Southern
French Chassey sites of Villeneuve-Tolosane enclosed ‘only 25 ha’but this size
exceeded the size of small 0.07 ha Chassey settlements by a factor of 400 (OA/
Phillips 1982)! The successive phases of the Iron Age site of Stanwick, North
Yorkshire (UK) encapsulated the change from a congregation place to
a megasite with regional congregations, with the earlier phases lacking the
intensity of depositional practices so clearly attested in the final phase (OA/
Haselgrove 2016).
We canextend to much of the farming period in Europe the insight of Danielisová
& Fernández-Götz (2015) that the later prehistoric and early historic world was still
principally the world of the common farmer. Haselgrove et al. (2018) concur,
proposing that the vast majority of settlements were small farmsteads with popula-
tions of fewer than 100 people. For Adler et al. (OA/1996: 403), local communities
were aggregations of people, shared risks, inter-dependencies and identities, consti-
tuting the highest level of decision-making above the residential kinship level in non-
stratified societies. The political implications of this insight is that the basic
settlement units for most of prehistoric Europe were relatively autonomous segmen-
tary societies, where the identities of equivalent settlement segments depended on
opposition to such segments but whose social reproduction required their existence
(OA/Curras & Sastre 2020), and which came together seasonally for larger-scale
interaction. There was an evident political tension between decisions more related to
the community level and those taken at the congregational scale. Any shift towards
specialised site-based practices, such as regional congregations, at megasites would
at once have weakened the independence of segmentary communities while
strengthening the regional significance of megasites.
One such practice in which differences between segmentary communities
and central places was played out was public architecture. A feature of each
megasite was the scale and significance of its public architecture, which would
have exceeded the scope of any village or farmstead constructions. However, as
L. K. Harrison & Bilgen (OA/2019) remind us, architecture could be mobilised
as an instrument of hierarchy or become an integrative medium of community
building, insofar as the built environment represented the ‘imagined ideologies’
of the residents and visitors. We should recall that people began to self-identify
as an integrated entity before –not after –major constructions, betokening
a prior change in community ideology (OA/Ryan 2019: 341–2). Munro’s (1997)
inversion of the division of labour to become the labour of division is pertinent
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to the manipulation of architectural difference: architecture created spatial
divisions in the light of the principle that ‘the more divisive a society, the
more space is divided’(OA/Fernández-Götz & Krausse 2016: 15). However,
the converse is true of the large open space in many congregation places, where
the absence of divisions created a welcoming reception to all participants.
There was also significant variability between megasites and smaller commu-
nities in the way that such constructions constituted ‘the choreography of power’
(OA/Osanna 2016: 275) –an idea related to Sharples’s (OA/2007: 179–80) notion
of ‘labour as potlatch’. It will also be important to investigate the extent to which
megasite ideological order was driven by a rhetoric of stability and permanence
(OA/Riva 2020), as found in site planning, continuities in traditional architectural
use of space or the monumental scale of ditches and ramparts, or whether, by
contrast, there were important tensions between the maintenance of this rhetoric
and its disruption through socio-economic changes.
Another long-term tension found in most, if not all, of the megasites featured
here concerns the relations between the domestic and mortuary domains (OA/
Chapman 1991) and, in particular, bodily mobility. In the context of well-
established settlements, there is an assumption that most or all of the local
deceased were buried nearby in specially constituted, permanent cemeteries.
However, mobile forager sites and dispersed farming homesteads had a tethered
relationship to their central cemeteries, with bodies regularly moved from the
(sometimes seasonal) settlement to their permanent, ancestral place (e.g., mega-
lithic tombs in much of western Europe). There is therefore a widespread prece-
dent in time and place for the transport of the complete bodies of the deceased for
burial across distances of 5–10 km to cemeteries and megalithic tombs. Another
term for these places is a mortuary congregation. We should therefore expect to
identify congregational site in the mortuary as well as in the domestic domain.
It is precisely the mortuary domain to which Munro’s notion of the labour of
division is pertinent in both the spatial and ontological senses. The centrality of the
categorisation of the human body in these practices implies that the more varied
the mortuary practices, the more different the ontologies of the persons buried.
One way in which mortuary variability was played out was through the tension
between the dominant mortuary practice and variations on, or oppositions to, the
main practice. If we can recognise in the megasites a trend through time towards
greater variability of mortuary practice, did this correlate not only with social
differentiation but also with individualisation –with mortuary personalisation?
In summary, megasites as congregational places can be considered as special
combinations of relational size, scale and intensity of practices. The sites that we
shall examine here are examples of Fletcher’s intermediate group of low-density
settlements of between 1 and 100 km
2
(Fletcher 2019: 17). There is a long-term
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Holocene contrast between smaller residential sites and larger (sometimes much
larger) seasonal congregational sites. A major issue for consideration is the extent
to which the community’s loss of political autonomy (autarky) was offset through
the scalar advantages pertaining to not just large but massive congregational
centres. In the next section, we consider the relational approach to megasites as
congregational centres.
1.3 The Relational Approach to Megasites
It will have become clear by now that the relational approach to megasites forms the
foundation of the Element. One of the authors (B. Gaydarska) has developed this
approach in her study of the low-density urbanism characteristic of the Trypillia
megasites (OA/Gaydarska 2016; Gaydarska 2020, chapter 6) in an attempt to
circumvent the inflexibilities of those urban studies dominated by high-density
cities. Here, although the urban theme is not pursued further, the touchstone of the
relational approach is what people experienced in ‘normal’, small settlements and
what they experienced in megasites. It is a fundamental categorical mistake to
assume that megasites were settlement sites writ very large; this is tantamount to
assuming that aircraft carriers were simply very large versions of yachts.
One of the most complex issues for urban sites and megasites alike remains the
currencies used for comparison. Standard units of analysis, such as Childe’s
criterion of writing (OA/Childe 1950), can readily become ossified and essentia-
lised, while others, suchas ideology or social power (OA/Cowgill 2004: 543), are
too general for differentiating urban from non-urban. The parameters chosen in
this study are as follows: scale, temporality, deposition/monumentality, formal
open spaces, performance and congregational catchment. We claim that these six
parametersprovide a commonframe of reference and an appropriate terminology
for all of the megasites discussed here in detail. While accepting that there are
other parameters that could have been considered, we suggest that there are good
research reasons for the inclusion of these parameters.
1.3.1 Scale
Scale is a basic parameter of megasites –perhaps the most basic. For megasites that
are also congregation places, a more useful analogy would be between parish
churches and cathedrals: while congregations who met at both types of building
could enjoy similar spiritual experiences, the parish church congregation was
limited in the experiential scale of participation in the full range of practices typical
of cathedrals. It will become clear in this Element that up-scaling was transforma-
tive at all levels. Elsewhere, we have discussed the implications of increased
metrics in terms of resources, logistics and settlement planning (OA/Gaydarska
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2019). Here, we focus on the various impacts of up-scaling, as they affected smaller
and larger megasites. These effects can be divided into the positive, the negative
and the neutral effects of up-scaling (Gaydarska & Chapman 2021).
The principal positive effect of up-scaling was the increase in the number,
size and variation in interactions between kinsfolk, friends and strangers, often
experienced through a greater population heterogeneity. These interactions
offered the possibility of the development of cross-cutting identities not likely
on small sites, leading to a wider range of enchained social relationships. One
form of interaction was the observation and transmission of a wider pool of
skills –especially specialised skills and knowledge –with the potential for the
development of what J. E. Clark and Parry (OA/1990) termed ‘conspicuous
production’(e.g., fine painted wares, rock crystal weapons or ivory ornaments).
The scale of feasting and ritual –far beyond that seen on smaller sites –brought
novel experiences for the megasite visitors. However, the size of the megasites
would not have made close interaction easy.
The negative effects of up-scaling can be subsumed under Greg Johnson’s
(1982) term ‘scalar stress’. Higher site numbers would have produced more
waste (both personal and household), more pollution (especially in local river and
stream catchments), more noise and more illness (tuberculosis has been identified at
Alsónyék, although claims that the plague was discovered at Trypillia megasites are
incorrect). The diversity of viewpoints among the varied site residents and visitors
would have constrained decision-making, emphasising the importance of the
megasite ‘Guardians’and making intra-site divisions into more manageable group-
ings a priority. One area likely to have led to tension was the potential clash between
the ‘collective’identity of the megasite and the ‘local’identities of the many
visitors. The escalation of disagreements into conflict or even violence would
have been a much more serious issue at megasites than at smaller settlements.
The neutral effects of up-scaling concerned those requirements that increased in
line with growing populations: more food and water, building materials and fuel.
These effects had a more profound effect in terms of organisation, logistics and
human experience, with co-operative learning and action essential in tasks such as
site maintenance, woodland management and hunting and gathering. Perhaps the
key challenge for megasites was how to ‘manage’issues of scale by bringing the
positive experiences of a vast settlement down to a manageable ‘local’scale.
In summary, up-scaling was transformative on a personal, community and
network level. This transformative power was perhaps not immediately grasped
at the very first massive gathering but with time was most certainly embraced
and appreciated. This is what led to the formalisation of this experience in the
establishment of megasites (OA/Gaydarska 2016).
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1.3.2 Temporality
Temporality does not only refer to the overall duration of a megasite occupation,
although this is always an important factor in a site’s biography. Another import-
ant aspect of temporality concerns the debate over the assumption of long-term,
uninterrupted, all-year-round permanence of megasites –an assumption that has
now been challenged for many of the ‘Anomalous Giant’sites (also termed
‘Giants’:Fletcher 2019)–sites that we would term ‘megasites’.
The size and variability of megasites raise the possibility of the emergence of
different temporalities on different parts of the megasite. We maintain that the
dominant temporality on megasites was ‘punctuated temporality’, during which
peaks of sociality (also termed ‘timemarks’: OA/Chapman 1997) stood out from
everyday experiences and practices. Such timemarks were related to both natural
and cultural rhythms (the solstices or the ‘Beating of the Bounds’–the annual
Mediaeval practice of marking the boundaries of the parish by processing round the
perimeter (OA/Hindle 2016) –and were subject to varying durations (a small pit-
digging or a special, day-long feast), tempi (varying intensity marked by more or less
frequent events) and changes in rhythms (especially at the start and finish of major
events). A ‘staggered temporality’could have been introduced as a form of schedul-
ing to ensure an even spread of resource requirements between households or
neighbourhoods at times of peak resource demand. There are potential research
benefits from the identification of varying temporalities between and within different
megasites.
1.3.3 Deposition and Monumentality
Deposition and monumentality are both central aspects of our vision of megasites –
the way that megasites were ‘consumed’by kinsfolk and strangers. Depositional
events and monumental constructions stood at opposite ends of the temporal
continuum, with deposition having the potential to build up impressive cumulative
effects from short-term acts performed by a handful of people, as contrasted to
monuments arising out of planned constructions, often involving hundreds of
people. Although there would have been overlaps between the forms of depositional
events and monumental constructions that took place on small sites and megasites,
the range and diversity of these events on megasites would have massively exceeded
those on small sites, whether these were public or private events. It is important to
remember that all acts of deposition presenced absent people, places and things.
1.3.4 Formal Open Spaces
Open spaces would have been central to the development of megasites as
congregational places –the space for the largest meetings of the regional calendar.
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Monica Smith (2008) has underlined the significance of open spaces not so much
as neutral spaces but spaces sustained to support a wide range of cultural
memories at different temporalities, although conflict could also feature in such
places. Open spaces were often many times larger than the size of a ‘normal’
settlement, creating an unprecedented and spectacular venue for visitors from
small sites. Unlike formal open spaces such as the agora, forum, plaza, odeon,
amphitheatre or hippodrome, there were varied ways by which open spaces on
megasites were integrated into the other parts of the site, whether through formal
layouts (Trypilla megasites) or less formal areas juxtaposed with dwelling areas
and/or public monuments (Valencina de la Concepción). This raises the challen-
ging issue of the number of people in such gatherings.
If we take an arbitrary figure for a large, dense gathering such as the Hadj, the
mean value of one person per square metre inan open space of 10ha results in the
improbable total of 100,000 people. The involvement in open-air performances of
both participants and spectators meant the differentiation of space, whether
presenting a scene surrounded by the audience, multi-foci performances more
akin to a street festival or craft production with potentially dangerous side-effects
(e.g., kiln-firing of pottery). An impossible minimum number for a 10 ha open
space would be 10–100 people –a meeting scale more suitable for a small
settlement. Another factor links the number of people in a congregation to the
number of people involved in its construction. Taking all of these factors into
account, a provisional size range of a congregation in a 10 ha open space would
have been 100 to 1,000 people, resulting in a density of one to ten people per
100 m
2
. This density range should be set against the often extreme size of
megasite open spaces, which could cover several hundred hectares.
1.3.5 Performance
Performance is what activated a congregation place –what gave a site its dynamic
agency on a massive scale. We propose that such sites were characterised by their
habitus of performance, which we find is an excellent way of invoking the people
so often missing from studies of megasites and who brought the megasite to such
dynamic life. The sensory experiences of performances –whether the sounds and
smells of smoke or lighting or a dramatic experience –would have been height-
ened, especially at major megasite events. While many modest, perhaps private
performative acts were certainly found on all sites, it was the larger-scale public
performances that distinguished the megasites from the rest. What is challenging
to gauge is the importanceof the intangible cultural heritage in these events –the
dancing, singing and chanting (Fig. 7). The larger-scale events featured three
types of performance –feasting, deposition (see Section 1.3.3) and processions.
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Large-scale feasting has been recognised as a classic means of integrating diverse
groups and generating cultural memories, while at the same time raising the social
status of its providers (OA/Dietler 2006; OA/Hayden & Villeneuve 2011). In
European megasites, the implications of slaughtering a herd animal, whether
a caprid or a bovid, were the provision of large quantities of meat for communal
feasting (for a bovid, 300–400 kg). Kassabaum (2019) has framed her analysis of
feasting with two intersecting axes –group size versus competitive (high-status) –
non-competitive/egalitarian (low-status) feasts, noting overlaps between the food
and drink consumed in each combination. The primary characteristic of a megasite
feast was surely the large-scale, low-status feast in the inner open area.
Processions were one of most important ways for people to meet a wide range of
other visitors. While the monuments at certain megasites constituted the end-point of
major processions, there were other megasites in which site planning (Trypillia
megasites) guided processions or built features (Bil’sk) defined processional route-
ways. Major ceremonies forming the start or the finish of the procession would have
made a big contribution to the habitus of megasite performance.
1.3.6 Congregational Catchments
Catchments require definition to set the megasites in their broad network context
and show the scale of links between communities across the landscape.The term
‘congregation catchment’indicates regular interaction between the residents at
the megasite and others, including visitors, over a certain distance, which varied
with each site according to its position in the regional settlement network. We
propose a preliminary distinction between an inner zone, with more intensive
interaction and the provision of heavier everyday things such as ground stone, salt
and potting clay, and an outer zone with less frequent but still potentially signifi-
cant interaction, bringing colourful, shiny things such as ornaments, pigments,
jadeite, copper daggers, gold bowls or ivory, to the megasites. An important task
is to define the spatial boundarybetween inner and outer zonesfor each megasite.
The overnight visits to intermediate sites by visitors travelling more than 20 km to
a megasite consolidated these interaction networks.
Three kinds of evidence can be used to define a congregation catchment:
settlement pattern, people and things. Formal modelling of settlement patterns
has been used to delineate Trypillia megasite catchments (Nebbia 2020), while
Thiessen polygons or informal settlement networks offered more general
insights for Bil’sk. Strontium isotope and aDNA analysis of human remains
can locate the origins and biographies of buried individuals. However, since
strontium isotope analysis cannot detect annual visits of up to three months to
the main site from residence elsewhere, the results can indicate only a general
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catchment for the buried population. We question the assumption that most
people buried at a centre derived from the local settlement(s), proposing that
some of the deceased were brought from the inner zone and only occasional
individuals (or their parts) coming from the outer zone.
Things can act as proxies of exchange and other forms of interaction, as well as the
cultural significance of exotica to a megasite. The form of transport used to bring the
things to megasites varied through prehistory, with human movement constant and
enhanced settlement mobility provided by wheeled transport with cattle or horse
traction from the Bronze Age onwards and large sea-going vessels in the Iron Age.
In summary, megasites as congregation places were among the most extraor-
dinary sites in European prehistory –distinguished from smaller, coeval settle-
ments in a range of ways that are well illustrated by the six parameters chosen
for study. Nowhere else in the cultural world of any megasite would related
kinsfolk meet so many ‘strangers’(viz., from the same cultural background) or
even ‘stranger strangers’(from other, more remote places and times). Such
gatherings were understandably rare since a round-trip journey of 200 km was
not a simple undertaking. Yet when they happened, the events at megasites
defined the life experience of a generation of residents and visitors –bringing
transformative scalar benefits and costs.
1.4 Structure of the Element
The structure of this Element is straightforward. Sandwiched between an intro-
ductory section and a discussion and summary of the principal findings of the
research (Section 7)arefive sections in which, with one exception, a general
introduction to the period in question precedes a more detailed analysis of
a single, representative megasite (Sections 2–6). Six detailed analyses –the
mortuary and land use modelling and the construction of ‘houses of the dead’
at Alsónyék, the chronological analyses of Valencina de la Concepción and the
labour studies at Corneşti and Bil’sk –are placed in the Online Appendix,
together with a more detailed account of the European Iron Age and much of
the further reading (references beginning OA/, as in OA/Anderson 1991).
In Section 2, we begin with a recapitulation of a whole class of megasites –the 4th
millennium cal BC Trypillia megasites. Since we have already published a detailed
study of the Nebelivka megasite (Gaydarska 2020), we offer a comparison of the
three largest Trypillia megasites –Taljanki, Nebelivka and Majdanetske.
In Section 3, we go back in time to the 5th millennium cal BC –to the Late
Neolithic and Chalcolithic of the Balkans and the Carpathian Basin and the Late
Neolithic of Central Europe. Despite a range of potential megasites with
evidence for settlement congregations, we have chosen the Lengyel site of
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Alsónyék, in south-western Hungary, as an example of a mortuary congregation
place that resulted in the largest mortuary complex known in Neolithic Europe.
Our choice of megasite for discussion in Section 4 is Valencina de la
Concepción, near Sevilla, in Southern Spain –a site whose precise chrono-
logical sequence (3200–2300 cal BC) resulted from its inclusion in the ‘ToTL’
Project. The size of the complex and the diversity of its finds at Valencina made
this an obvious choice when considered in comparison with the smaller mega-
sites and other enclosures of Neolithic and Copper Age Southern Europe,
including Italy, southern France and southern Iberia.
In the utterly different world of the European Bronze Age, dominated by small
hillforts and peopled by dispersed homestead groups, it is rare to find any
megasite at all. Once a landscape marked by mega-forts had been identified in
the Carpathian Basin, it was clear that one site stood out from all others in the 2nd
millennium cal BC for inclusion in Section 5 –the huge enclosed site of Corneşti.
The final choice of a 1st millennium cal BC, Iron Age megasite for treatment
in Section 6 was also surprisingly straightforward, even though the size and
complexity of Late Iron Age oppida in western and central Europe were well
known. Our selection returns us to the Ukraine, where the largest hillfort in
Europe was founded at Bil’sk (aka ‘Bel’sk’) around the time of the earliest
Greek colonies on the North Pontic shore. This choice was made particularly
easy because of the almost total neglect of the site (a single, three-line mention)
in the Oxford Handbook of the Europen Iron Age (Haselgrove et al. 2018).
While other localities could undoubtedly have been proposed for inclusion, we
are content that each of these five examples constitutes a place that conveys
important aspects of the period in question. In other words, these five megasites
are not ‘representative’of their millennium in a statistical sense but in the cultural
sense of a central place whose congregational practices ‘represent’the wider
regional society in which it is embedded. It is for this reason that we remain
confident that this choice of five megasites not only provides a key to understand-
ing the creation and maintenance of the megasites themselves but also helps us to
move forward in a broader understanding of European prehistory.
2 Trypillia Megasites, Ukraine
2.1 Introduction
The Trypillia group was but one part of the wider Cucuteni-Trypillia group, whose
immense duration of over two millennia (4800–2700 cal BC) was matched only by
its extreme size of cca. 250,000km
2
(Videiko 2013;Gaydarska 2020)(Fig. 2).
Although there were many shared features of Cucuteni and Trypillia material
culture in pottery, figurines and houses, there was a divergence in settlement
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Figure 2 Map of key Trypillia-Cucuteni sites, with sources of copper, salt, manganese and Gumelniţa pottery: 1. Grebeni;
2. Stolniceni; 3. Petreni; 4. Vesely Kut; 5. Apolianka; 6. Dobrovody; 7. Maidanetske; 8. Nebelivka; 9. Taljanki;
10. Haivoron graphite (source: M. Nebbia and Nebelivka Project)
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trajectories between the two groups, with Cucuteni sites rarely covering more than
a few hectares but with Trypillia sites growing to 10 ha in Phase A, 100 ha in Phase
BI and 236 ha in Phase BII (Fig. 3). Sites of 100 ha or more have been dubbed
‘megasites’(Chapman et al. 2014), the largest of which (the Phase CI Taljanki)
Figure 3 (upper) Plan of Nebelivka + Quarters; (lower) plan showing size of
Grebeni relative to megasites (source: authors)
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reached 320 ha (OA/Rassmann et al. 2014) (Fig. 4). The megasites clustered in the
interfluves between the Southern Bug and Dnieper rivers, with outliers to the east
and west.
Although Trypillia settlements were discovered at the turn of the 19th century
(OA/Khvoika 1901), megasites were not identified until the ‘first methodological
revolution’of the 1960s–1970s, when aerial reconnaissance revealed the complex
plans of hundreds of burnt houses, which, on excavation, were found associated
with Trypillia pottery (Videiko 2013). After forty years of mostly house excava-
tion, the ‘second methodological revolution’was initiated in the late 2000s, with
international teams using remote sensing, AMS dating and a battery of palaeo-
environmental techniques to access new information (Chapman et al. 2014;
Müller et al. 2016). The primary focus of the more precise geophysical investiga-
tions remained megasite plans (Figs. 3–4), still dominated by burnt houses but
also including new features such as unburnt houses, communal buildings termed
‘Assembly Houses’, pits, industrial structures and pathways. Supra-household
configurations showed two levels of site structure –Neighbourhoods comprising
three to twenty-seven houses and Quarters comprising five to eighteen
Neighbourhoods. The new plans also showed marked architectural variability,
suggesting a bottom-up approach to planning that had hitherto been overlooked.
However, these methodological breakthroughs were necessary but insuffi-
cient advances to gain a deeper understanding of megasite communities, not
least to answer the question of urban status. Gaydarska (OA/2016; 2020,
chapter 6.3) developed a relational approach to megasites through the structured
comparison of the Nebelivka megasite with the small Trypillia settlement of
Grebeni –an approach that provides the framework for this Element (see
Section 1)(Fig. 2). In a later study, a detailed comparison of the six parameters
used in this Element was made for the three Trypillia megasites of Taljanki,
Nebelivka and Maidanetske (Gaydarska & Chapman 2021)(Figs. 3–4). The
remainder of this section summarises the main points made in this recent
research on the congregational significance of the Trypillia megasites.
2.1.1 Scale
The size of the majority of Trypillia sites in each Phase was 10 ha or less (Nebbia
2020)–a reminder that small community size and limited site size were central to
the Trypillia habitus. The appearance of megasites was utterly unexpected for
their communities, with the increase in scale proving transformative on all levels.
This was as true for the number of houses constructed and burnt each year as it
was for the building and moving of Assembly Houses from one Neighbourhood
to another. It was also true for the construction of the largest Assembly House at
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Nebelivka –the so-called Mega-structure (Fig. 5)–with its great size matched
only by the massive assemblage of mostly fragmented vessels deposited before its
final burning. And it was also true for the large number of Quarters and
Neighbourhoods planned for Nebelivka –each Quarter larger than a ‘normal’
small Trypillia settlement site and each Neighbourhood the living space for the
visitors from a single small settlement.
2.1.2 Temporality
The insight from a global study of ‘Anomalous Giants’that many megasites were
occupied temporally or on a seasonal basis (Fletcher 2019) stimulated
a consideration of the multiple temporalities present on Trypillia megasites. Each
Figure 5 (upper) Reconstruction of Nebelivka mega-structure
(source: C. Unwin and Nebelivka Project); (lower) House-burning,
Nebelivka (source: Nebelivka Project Archive)
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of the three models presented to explain the development and persistence of
Nebelivka as a place of major inter-regional gatherings (Gaydarska 2020,chapter
6.1.3) featured different temporalities. The ‘Distributed Governance’model pro-
posed a permanent resident population, with annual changes in logistical support
between local communities (OA/Gaydarska 2021); the ‘Assembly’model com-
bined a massive one-month congregation each year with a small permanent
population of megasite ‘Guardians’(OA/Nebbia et al. 2018); while the
‘Pilgrimage’model, also featuring the Guardians, focussed on a seven–month
long pilgrimage season in which pilgrims would spend one month at the centre
(OA/Chapman & Gaydarska 2019). There was a marked contrast in temporality
between the dwelling part of megasites, with the longer-term continuities
reinforced by the one- or two-storey houses, and the inner open area, defined by
the punctuated temporality typical of congregational practices.
2.1.3 Deposition and Monumentality
If the core of Trypillia archaeology is the selective deposition and fragmentation
of objects, deposition lies at the heart of punctuated temporality. The variability of
megasite deposition concerns the context of the event –whether private (in
a house) or public (in a large pit or the site’s perimeter ditch) –as much as its
timing (inside a house before burning or placed on the top of the burnt remains)
and the scale of the practice, which ranged from placing fragments of ten vessels
in a pit to the filling of the largest Assembly House at Nebelivka (Fig. 5)withparts
of 332 vessels before the two-stage burning of the structure. Participation in the
deposition event revealed contrasts in relations between persons and households,
with deposited objects presencing other places, other persons and other times.
The experience of monumentality varied with perspective, whether witness-
ing the sounds, smells and sight of a megasite in its entirety from a neighbouring
hill or the local appreciation of a ceremony such as a procession towards an
Assembly House or a two-storey dwelling house in flames. The cumulative
growth of minor mortuary landmarks such as the memory mounds (Fig. 6)
transformed Nebelivka from a place of the living into a meeting place for the
living and the ancestors.
2.1.4 Open Spaces
The paradox at the heart of the vast open areas at the centre of Trypillia
megasites is that the areas with potentially the most significant interaction
have left the least evidence for such social practices. The impressive size of
these open areas (Figs. 3–4) can be related to two factors. Their multiple
functions could have included the corralling of animals, more stationary
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specialised production (like pottery) but also pop-up crafts (like flint knapping)
at times of craft-fairs, as well as a place for meetings, rituals, ceremonies,
games, performances, competitions, feasts, debates, gossiping, public display,
the exchange of goods, ideas, skills and know-how, singing, dancing, commem-
oration, grieving, celebrating and match-making –all on an unprecedented
scale. Some activities would have involved spectators and participants, others
would have consisted just of participants. Such functional complexity would
Figure 6 Memory mounds and inner streets, Nebelivka: clockwise from
upper left: memory mound, TP 24/4; memory mound, TP 22/4; square
and blocking streets, Quarter G; parallel inner radial streets with blocking
street, Quarter B; converging inner radial streets, Quarter L
(source: Nebelivka Project Archive)
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have required large spaces, while there was a recursive relationship between
large areas and large congregations (Smith 2008). The plans of each of the three
major megasites reveal different relationships between the open congregational
zone and the estimated site population. The rationale behind the open spaces at
Nebelivka and Taljanki would have included large numbers of both visitors and
locals, while, at Maidanetske, the cumulative reduction of the inner open area
would have restricted use to either all the residents with no visitors or special
residents with particular visitors.
2.1.5 Performance
Performance was an essential part of the Trypillia habitus, closely related as it
was to the timemarks of the social calendar. What differentiated megasite
performance from those at smaller sites was the significance of major cere-
monies. The temporality of performance included three stages –preparations,
the performance itself and the incorporation into social memory. These time-
marks took four principal forms: house-burning, feasting, other kinds of
deposition and processions. As the Nebelivka Project discovered during
their experimental house-burning (OA/Gaydarska et al. 2019), the stunning
visual effects of house conflagrations (Fig. 5) were amongst the most memor-
able events of the calendar, not diminished by their regularity and notable for
the unique scale of Assembly House burning. All four forms of feasting as
delineated in Kassabaum’s (2019) feasting typology could be identified at
Nebelivka through the varied form and scale of animal bone deposition.
Object deposition formed the centrepiece of hundreds of other depositional
performances in all the main megasite contexts. The well-established prin-
ciples of megasite planning, including the space between the two principal
house circuits as well as the parallel inner radial streets leading into the inner
open area (Fig. 6), conformed closely to the performance of processions into
and around the megasite (Fig. 7).
2.1.6 Congregational Catchment
The interpretation of a congregational catchment relates to the people visiting
the megasite and the objects that arrived there. In view of the absence of human
burials at megasites, Marco Nebbia (2020) has developed formal settlement
modelling to demonstrate that the majority of megasite interactions took place
in up to a 100 km radius. In the sense that the movement of people living more
than 15–20 km from a megasite meant overnight stays at smaller settlements,
the congregation process led to a consolidation of social relations within the
catchment.
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Figure 7 Singing, dancing and processions: (a) dancing pot Chirileni III
(Gaydarska & Chapman 2021,fig. 2.6a, based upon OA/Monah 2016, fig. 268/1);
(b) Kolomiishchina singing figurines (Gaydarska & Chapman 2021,fig. 2.6b,
based upon Ciuk 2008, p. 227); (c) singing figurine, Maidanetske (Gaydarska &
Chapman 2021,fig. 2.6c, based upon OA/Ciuk 2008, p. 215); (d) dancing scene,
Brânzeni (Gaydarska & Chapman 2021,fig. 2.6d, based upon OA/Monah 2016,
fig. 249/3); (e) Nebelivka procession (source: C. Unwin & Nebelivka Project)
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Early Trypillia communities were connected to the jadeite network linking
the French Alps and Eastern Europe, with two axes known from dated
contexts: Slobidka –Zahidna (Phase AIII) and Berezivka (Phase BI) (OA/
Pétrequin et al. 2017). In the later megasite phase, no more jadeite is known
but small quantities of copper, gold, salt, chipped stone and manganese
pigment (Fig. 8) came from beyond the 100 km catchment in two stages.
First, the exotics were brought into the catchment, from which local visitors
brought them to megasites. Later, with the expansion in the fame of congre-
gations, long-distance specialists (sensu OA/Helms 1988) had the opportunity
to bring exotics directly to the megasites. Such exotics were one of the many
attractions for visitors to megasites; no wonder visitors took them home
instead of depositing them at the megasite.
Figure 8 Exotics at megasites: (a) copper axe, Maidanetske (source: OA/
Ryndina 1998, Ris. 66/6, re-drawn byLauren Woodard); (b) copper awl, Taljanki
(source: OA/Ryndina 1998, Ris. 66/12, re-drawn by Lauren Woodard);
(c) Nebelivka graphite-painted dish with internally thickened rim; (d) Nebelivka
gold ornament (7 x 3 mm); (e) Prut –Dniester flint, TP 19/2; (f) Nebelivka painted
vessel (manganese) TP 1/3 (source for (c)–(f): Nebelivka Project Archive)
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2.2 Conclusion
Trypillia megasites can be considered as an exemplar of congregation sites for
European prehistory, with many of the six variables discussed here appropriate
to an analysis of later potential megasites. One of the outstanding features of
Trypillia megasites was the combination of a major dwelling zone with a
massive open congregation area. This combination shows that the supposed
mutual exclusivity between dwelling and ritual/deposition is a false dicho-
tomy. There is also no contradiction between a congregation centre and a
site of urban status, since the former influenced all the performances of the
latter.
3 Neolithic and Copper Age Sites in the Balkans and Central
Europe
3.1 Introduction
The Balkans and Central Europe resemble the Cucuteni-Trypillia distribu-
tion in the domination of their Neolithic archaeology by settlement
remains. The mortuary domain was relatively minor in most areas and,
until the Fall of the Berlin Wall opened up the floodgates of remote
sensing in these regions, there were relatively few known public monu-
ments, except for the Late Neolithic Hohensiedlungen (hill-top sites) and
Rondels (circular enclosures) of Central Europe (OA/Petrasch 2015). By
the 2020s, our understanding of the Neolithic landscapes of Hungary and
South East Europe has been transformed by the discovery of large numbers
of enclosures, some built in combination with Balkan site types such as
tells. However, even using the relational approach to site size and scale,
we can identify relatively few megasites in regions where nucleated settle-
ments are common (Table 1). Why is it that there were so few megasites in
such settlement-rich landscapes?
A well-known trait of Neolithic lifeways is a reduction in mobility, whose
reduction in direct access to ‘resources’was mitigated by an increase in
exchange practices between more settled places. This created a new form of
the Palaeolithic problem of the ‘absence’of the vast majority of people known
by a community, because they were living elsewhere. One common Neolithic
response in increasingly permanent communities was the creation of seasonal
meeting places.
In the Earlier Neolithic (6300–5300 BC), we can distinguish between tell
landscapes in North Macedonia and Bulgaria and landscapes dominated by
‘flat’sites (Romania, Central Balkans, Hungary) (OA/Chapman 2020a) (Fig. 9).
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Table 1 Large Neolithic settlement sites and megasites in South-East and Central Europe
Name and Region Date
Maximum
Size (Ha) Principal Features ReferEnce
Drenovac, Serbia
(Fig. 10a)
6th–5th mill. BC 40 ha Large multi-layer, polyfocal open Vinča site after
long-lasting Starčevo occupation
OA/Perić& Miletić
2020
Selevac, Serbia 5th mill. BC 53 ha Open multi-layer Vinča settlement OA/Tringham &
Krstić1990
Borđoš, Serbia Early 5th mill. BC 38 ha Polyfocal Vinča-Tisza complex with a tell and small
Rondel replaced by a larger enclosure with a central
mound
OA/Hofmann et al.
2019
Csőszhalom, Hungary
(Fig. 11)
4850–4500 BC 63 ha Eponymous polyfocal complex with one tell enclosed
by multiple ditches, a smaller enclosure and a large
horizontal settlement
OA/Raczky 2018
Szeghalom, Hungary Mid-5th mill. BC 70 ha Polyfocal Tisza complex with a tell and a large
horizontal flat site with many house clusters
OA/Parkinson et al.
2017
Alsónyék, Hungary
(Fig. 14)
5800–4400 BC 50 ha See Section 3.2. OA/Rassmann et al.
2020
Zengővárkóny Hungary 5th mill. BC 45 ha Open Lengyel settlement defined by clusters of
houses and graves, with a Rondel in the middle of
the settlement
Bertók & Gáti 2014
Urmitz, Germany
(Fig. 12)
4th mill BC 100–120 ha Ditched and palisaded Late Neolithic enclosure of
semi-circular form
OA/Boelicke
1976/7
Wiesbaden-Schierstein,
Germany (Fig. 12)
4th mill. BC 100 ha Ditched and palisaded Late Neolithic enclosure of
semi-circular form
OA/Petrasch 2015
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The Bulgarian tells are a classic example of what we have discussed as
segmentary societies (see Section 1.2)–mostly small settlements defined
by often low mounds, with site populations of 50–75 people. The mating
networks required for long-term viability would have needed the participation
of 10–12 tells. With high densities of houses on the tell, ‘off-tell’meeting
places were the obvious solution but there is little tradition of excavating away
from the tell in these countries. One of the few Earlier Neolithic enclosures
in a tell-dominated landscape was at Yabulkovo, in South Bulgaria (OA/
Roodenberg et al. 2014) (here Fig. 10a)–a triple-ditched enclosure with
deposition in pits in the central area.
In the non-tell world of the Starčevo –Körös –Crişgroups, settlement
varied between one-house sites, hamlets and villages (OA/Chapman 2008).
Village sites such as Alsónyék, in Hungary, Leţ, in Romania or Galovo in
Croatia, may have included meeting places within their settlement but these
are not obvious. This leaves enclosed sites such as Cârcea, in South West
Romania, as a potential congregation place.
In the Later Neolithic (5300–4600 BC), amidst rising regional settlement
densities and the expansion of tell lifeways, there was an increased diver-
sity of site types and sizes, with larger sites showing a greater variety of
combinations of site elements such as the mound, the horizontal settle-
ment, the Rondel and the enclosure (Chapman 2020, chapter 5). But the
basic settlement unit reproducing segmentary societies was the small tell or
flat site of <2 ha area with a population of <100 people. This was true of
most phases of the Karanovo sequence in South Bulgaria, with the excep-
tion of phase IV, when most people lived on flat sites and created meeting
places characterised by extensive deposition of ordinary day-to-day objects
in pits.
In places where increased sedentism had led to greater population
nucleation (Table 1), the concentration of so many people perhaps meant
that off-site assembly places were not necessary. However, the geophysical
plots of sites such as Drenovac (Fig. 10b), Pločnik and Belovode show few
signs of a meeting place within the settlement. It should be noted that the
largest Vinča sites were not as big as proposed earlier (OA/Chapman
1981). On the basis of new fieldwork, the 100 ha size of Potporanj refers
to an area of 1 sq km where settlement was in fact highly discontinuous;
equally, the 80 ha size of Selevac can be revised downwards to 53 ha and
the65haofTurdaşto 23 ha. By contrast, Csőszhalom included two
special assembly foci –a tell and an enclosure –within a large horizontal
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settlement (Fig. 11). Elsewhere, combinations of a tell within, or adjacent
to, an enclosure at sites such as Uivar, Szeghalom and Bordjošillustrates
how meeting places could be incorporated into site plans.
In Transdanubia and Croatia, a far higher density of enclosed sites was
found in the Sopot and Lengyel groups than in the Central Balkans. Two
sets of enclosures are known –the Djakovo (OA/Šošić-Klindžićet al.
2019) and Szemely (Bertók & Gáti 2014) groups, each with remarkably
different enclosure morphologies. In the former, the site of Tomašanci
comprises five separate small Sopot enclosures, while the largest site of
Gorjani –Kremenjača–revealed multiple dwelling features within three
concentric ditches. By contrast, most of the enclosures in the Szemely
group were Rondels of widely differing complexity (Fig. 13). The presence
of an enclosure or an empty space at the centre of several Sopot settle-
ments suggests regular on-site assembly places. An unusual combination
concerns the creation of a Rondel in the middle of the Lengyel settlement
site of Zengővárkóny, with its clusters of houses and burials. This site
forms a major contrast to Alsónyék, which lacks a Rondel (see Section 3.2).
A settlement that does not obviously fit these Central Balkan-Carpathian
patterns is Iclod, in Transylvania, with its so far unique combination of
enclosure, settlement remains and mortuary zone.
Figure 10 Early Neolithic Yabulkovo: (a) plan (source: Leshtakov 2014, fig.
77, re-drawn by Lauren Woodard) and ditch B1 (source: Petrova 2014, fig. 3.7);
(b) geophysical plan of Drenovac (K. Rassmann)
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The emergence of cemeteries in the late 6th millennium cal BC created
an alternative domain for the negotiation of ancestral links to that of the
well-developed domestic domain (Chapman 2020, chapter 6). Cemeteries
were rare until c. 4800 cal BC, even though large complexes such as
Figure 11 Plan of the Csőszhalom complex (source: OA/Raczky 2018, fig. 3.1)
29Megasites in Prehistoric Europe
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Figure 12 (a) Plan of Urmitz; (b) bastions at gates, Urmitz; (c) Hut 1, Urmitz;
(d) Hut 6, Urmitz; (e) plan of Wiesbaden –Schierstein (source: OA/Boelicke,
U. 1976/7, figs.1.1, 2.2–2.3, 2.6 and 6.7/4: re-drawn by Lauren Woodard)
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Figure 13 (a) Lengyel sites in the Carpathian Basin (source: OA/Scharl 2016, fig.
2.4), with enclosed sites in Co. Baranya (source: Bertók & Gàti 2014, II.90)
(combined and re-drawn by Lauren Woodard); (b) Soil environment of Alsónyék
and Mórágy (source: Depaermentier et al. 2020, fig. 2.1b, re-drawn by Lauren Woodard)
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Cernica (Romania), with c. 378 burials, were known from early on. The
only region with consistent cemetery usage from 5300 cal BC onwards was
the Western Black Sea coast (Hamangia group). This formed the basis for
exceptional cemeteries such as Varna, with the world’sfirst concentration
of gold objects (OA/Ivanov & Avramova 2000), and Durankulak –until
Alsónyék, the largest aggregation of burials in South East Europe (OA/
Todorova 2002). Alongside cemeteries of 30–100 burials, there were rare
instances of mortuary congregations, such as the sample of over 10,000
bones (human and animal) deposited in four pits at Alba Iulia –Lumea
Noua, representing over 100 human individuals whose bones were brought
from other sites for central burial (OA/Gligor 2009). Elsewhere, in the
Lengyel group, clusters of burials lay close to sets of houses in a pattern
fundamentally different from the small- to medium-size cemeteries of the
East Balkans and reaching 368 burials at sites such as Zengővárkóny (OA/
Dombay 1960).
The general conclusions are that, for the Earlier Neolithic, there were few
examples of settlements with obvious meeting places and even fewer special
and separate meeting places. For the Later Neolithic, meeting places were
often defined within the overall boundaries of large sites, even if the site was
dominated by everyday dwelling. The exceptions were Karanovo phase IV pit
sites and sites in any region with a high proportion of small dispersed
settlements.
The largest sites in the Balkan-Carpathian regions were between twenty
and forty times as large as the usual small (<2 ha) dispersed segmented
settlement. There was undoubtedly an up-scaling factor in site practices at
these larger settlements, which nonetheless seemed to fall below the
threshold of megasites. Many of these long-lasting Balkan settlements
formed key nodes in stable exchange and marriage networks, perhaps
displacing the need for even larger sites. If the Trypillia megasites emerged
in the context of agro-pastoral frontier conditions during the eastwards
Trypillia expansion (see Section 2), we should perhaps look for megasites
in the initial Neolithic expansion into South East Europe. However, the
restriction of the site sizes during the earliest farming expansion to a tenth
smaller than those of the Early Trypillia sites meant a far lower starting
point for site growth, leading to the absence of megasites in the Balkan
Early Neolithic. The longer-lived cemeteries, with their hundreds of bod-
ies, offered an alternative ancestral focus to that of the long-lived tells and
flat sites.
Further north and west, settlements of the Early Neolithic group termed the
Linearbandkeramik (or LBK) spread as far as the North Sea and into the Paris
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Basin (Bickle & Whittle 2013). As with the first farmers of the Balkans, LBK
sites ranged from single-house sites and hamlets to villages. There is currently
little evidence for special meeting places in this group, with the exception of the
mortuary congregation at the Late LBK Herxheim enclosure (OA/Chapman
et al., in press). However, the increased intensity of enclosure, which had
already started in the LBK, was a major characteristic of the Late Neolithic,
ranging from small Rondels to the two megasite enclosures of Urmitz and
Wiesbaden –Schierstein, in the Rhein valley –both c. 100–120 ha in size.
Although sharing many constructional and depositional details with Michelsberg
and other North European enclosures, these two sites appear to form a class of their
own (OA/Petrasch 2015).
Both sites share a semi-circular enclosure form, with ditches 2.5 km long at
Urmitz (Fig. 12) and 1.5 km long at Wiesbaden (Fig. 12). Some of the multiple
causeways spaced roughly every 100 m at Urmitz had complex entrance-works
(OA/Boelicke 1976/7) (here Fig. 12 inset). While there was frequent deposition
of pottery in the ditches at both sites, with burials in the ditches at Urmitz,
Wiesbaden showed a wider range of deposition in the interior than Urmitz, with
some evidence for on-site antler-working and flint-knapping. Small rectangular
houses were found in the interior at Urmitz alongside over 75 pits. No explan-
ation has been provided for the extreme size of these enclosures, although
Gronenborn et al. (OA/2020) have proposed links between Michelsberg enclos-
ures, local hierarchies and the exchange of salt and jadeite axes. While
Gronenborn (p.c., February 2021) has confirmed the rarity of coeval sites in the
Urmitz catchment, an explanation of congregation sites should be considered for
Urmitz and Wiesbaden –Schierstein.
3.2 Alsónyék: A Mortuary Congregation Site?
Alsónyék-Bátaszék is located in Transdanubia in modern-day Hungary and associ-
ated with several Neolithic cultural groups (Starčevo, LBK, Sopot and Lengyel).
The site was excavated in advance of the M6 motorway in 2006–9 and produced
15,000 features (Osztás et al. 2016a)(Fig. 14). It is an extraordinary site on five
grounds. It is the longest-lived flat site in the European Neolithic, with over
a millennium of uninterrupted occupation (5350 cal BC to 4300 cal BC) that is
comparable only to tells. Its estimated size of c. 50 ha is the largest known Lengyel
occupation. Its 2,300+ Lengyel graves constitute an unparalleled burial phenom-
enon. It was extensively excavated over an area of 25 ha, showing huge numbers of
houses, burials, pits and pit-complexes and over 500,000 sherds. Finally, the site
benefits from exemplary applications of best practice in archaeological science
(e.g. Bayliss et. al 2016;Depaermentier et al. 2020a,2020b). Almost every aspect of
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this amazing site has important implications for our understanding of cultural
developments in Western Hungary. There is an ongoing publication programme
of the resultant massive corpus of data and analysis, with some crucial results
already published (Bánffy et al. 2016). We concentrate here only on the published
data on the Lengyel occupation phase, with its 122 houses and over 2,300 burials,
representing 90 per cent of all Alsónyék graves.
The unprecedented number of burials led to the hypothesis of an equally vast
‘coalescent community’living at Alsónyék (Bánffy et al. 2016). Details about
our insights on this model and the pathway to the alternative suggestion of
mortuary congregation are provided online (Online Appendix I). Our starting
point is that the relationship between burial and settlement is not straightfor-
ward, as burial preceded the start of dwelling activities and ceased before the
end of the Lengyel settlement. This suggests that it is the huge concentration of
burials that defines this site. In short, instead of the emergence of a coalescent
community of more than 2,000 people over fifty years, we see a process of
nucleation of half that number of people –still unprecedented in the Lengyel
context –only part of whom were buried in Alsónyék alongside people who
were brought to Alsónyék as their final resting place. It is possible that such
a burial tradition started in the Sopot period, which may have overlapped with
the first Lengyel burials; what is certain is that the earliest Lengyel burials were
made without accompanying dwelling practices (Osztás et al. 2016b: 223).
Thus the main attraction for the initial dwelling and subsequent nucleation
was the increasing importance of Alsónyék as an ancestral mortuary space
whose cumulative burials emphasised place-value in the way that repeated
dwelling did on tells. Alsónyék’s advantage over other places was to provide
a cohesive, rather than a competitive, space for the display, negotiation and
reproduction of social identities at both the local and regional levels.
3.2.1 Scale
Hardly anyone will disagree that, with its 2,359 Lengyel graves, Alsónyék
dwarfs any earlier or later practice of the cumulative deposition of dead bodies,
which is a more complex social practice than the body-part mobility attested at
Herxheim (OA/Chapman et al. in press) or Lumea Nouă(OA/Gligor 2009). It
represents more than a six-fold increase from the next largest cemetery (the 368
burials at Zengővárkóny) and it is more than twenty times larger than the
neighbouring Mórágy cemetery, with 109 graves (OA/Regenye et al. 2020).
There can be no doubt that Alsónyék reveals a key long-term social practice that
cannot be explained simply as a by-product of increased population size.
Although population growth has certainly played a role, the long duration of
35Megasites in Prehistoric Europe
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