THE CONSTRUCTION OF “CETINASCAPES” BETWEEN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND THE BALKANS AT THE END OF THE 3RD M
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2020-10-09

Resources and their appropriation represent an outstanding vehicle to describe transformations, especially if we consider them as socially produced constructions expressing what people perceive as relevant for their life. Resource-getting strategies and commerce connected to metallurgy are generally indicated as the main driving forces behind the expansion of the Cetina phenomenon, one of the large-scale ideologically-motivated interaction networks that characterised the 3rd mill. BC, and that connected the central Mediterranean to the western Balkans. However, the data at our disposal show that ideological and social aspects were equally important, since the Cetina phenomenon is also characterized by the spread of burial mounds in Dalmatia, which created a monumental landscape, by the long-distance mobilization of prestige objects with high symbolic value (e.g. bossed bone plaques, stone wrist-guards, etc.), which were perhaps transferred by gift exchange between distant communities, and by phenomena of technological and formal hybridisation in ceramic production and acculturation in practices connected to ritual and funerary spheres. This paper will explore the role of material and immaterial resources in the spread of Cetina features by means of both seaborne and overland mobility at the end of the 3rd mill. BC, and in the construction of materialized environments and different “Cetinascapes” across the Mediterranean and the western Balkans.


Author(s): Gori, Maja (Ruhr University of Bochum)