Vinca bowls with protoma
Authors: Spasic Milos , Crnobrnja Adam 
Published: January 2015

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 (R?szke-L?dv?r 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.