About neolithic authenticity of finds from Belica
Authors: Antonovic Dragana , Peric Slavisa 
Published: January 2013

The objects of ?Neolithic plastic art? from Belica, made from baked clay,
stone and bone, have been arriving at the Regional Museum in Jagodina since
1991. These are accidental finds which never caught the attention of experts,
even though one of them, a figurine from black rock which arrived at the
museum in 1992, has been a part of a permanent exhibition. Almost two decades
after its arrival at the museum, the archaeologist Dr Milorad Stojic would
place it among the most substantial finds of Neolithic figural plastic,
identifying it as the Proto-Starcevo culture, dated to 6000 years BC and
named it the ?Great Mother?, linking her to the Neolithic cult of fertility
(Stojic 2011, 344) Asignificantly greater number of objects from Belica since
2001, first as accidental finds by Zivota Milanovic, an associate of the
Regional Museum in Jagodina, arrived to Dr Milorad Stojic who undertook a
one-day protective intervention at the site of Pojate-Pojilo in Belica
village, the exact area from which previously collected finds originated.
Ashort excavation, which was ?less than two full hours of work? (according to
the Report of the excavation), was carried out in January 2002. On that
occasion a pit, which was only 10 cm deep and located on the surface of the
village dirt road, was investigated (fig. 1). The excavation, together with
the appropriate technical documentation, has not yet been published. The
discovered pit was located in the middle of the dirt road which was used by
agricultural machinery and which had, on several occasions prior to the
exploration in 2002, been repaired by heavy construction machinery. In the
years following 2003, two more groups of finds of art objects from the Early
Neolithic were discovered in Belica and Lozovik (Stojic 2008, 73). In the
Livade site in Belica, which is 500 m from the site of Pojate-Pojilo, four
objects made of stone were found. In Lozovik, in the Repuska site, three
figurines made of deer bone were discovered. In both sites the finds of the
aforementioned objects were followed, according to the author, by finds of
Proto- Starcevo ceramics. More detailed descriptions of the locations,
conditions of discovery and subsequent finds do not exist. In August 2003,
within the usual activities of the project Permanent Archaeological Workshop
- Central Pomoravlje in Neolithisation of South East Europe, under the
supervision of S. Peric, in the Pojate-Pojilo site in Belica, some sondage
excavation was performed. One of the reasons this precise location was chosen
for exploration was that stone plastic finds are attributed to it, for which
there are no suitable analogies within the Middle or Late Neolithic Starcevo
culture. Two sondages of 5 x 5 m (fig. 2) were explored. The results of the
exploration were modest, which was in accordance with expectations based on
several visits made to all three Neolithic sites in Belica village. One
smaller Late Neolithic settlement from the Proto-Starcevo period existed on
this location. In conclusion, it should be mentioned that none of the finds
from this exploration could be connected to the accidental finds of stone
plastic from the village road even though, during the time of the
exploration, daily surface prospecting of this and the two neighbouring
Neolithic sites was carried out. A detailed inspection of the profile, which
is cut by the village road where it is believed that there was a Neolithic
pit of about 1m in depth, was also performed. The village road, as we
originally found it, worn out and uneven, with around twenty centimetre deep
tracks made by tractor wheels and with no clods of turf on it, didn?t leave
the impression that an only 10 cm deep bottom of a pit could be preserved
(fig. 3). The objects discovered in the pit explored in 2002 include: 60
stone, 9 ceramic and 11 bone and deer horn objects. Within this number are
also included the objects found in 2001 in the immediate vicinity of the pit
(Stojic 2011, 341-342). The most numerous are anthropomorphic figurines, and
besides them there are several examples of sacrificial altars, conical
objects (pintadera), axe figurines and one rectangular plate. Ceramic
figurines from Belica, which in their form resemble the Palaeolithic Venus
figurines, were made from insufficiently refined soil, which is a practice
completely opposite to the one noticed on the figurines from the other
Neolithic sites of the Central Balkans. The soil from which they were made
resembles that used for making rough ceramics or for building houses (daub).
Therefore, our doubt that we are dealing here with figurines which resulted
from the mechanical treatment of already baked soil, and not with objects
which got their final form in raw clay prior to baking, is not surprising.
The same is true with bone objects in which subsequent work is visible on a
piece of bone which remained in the ground for a number of centuries. By
courtesy of Dr Milorad Stojic, an archaeologist to whom Zivota Milanovic, the
sole discoverer of these objects, was bringing finds from Belica, and who was
digging the pit with the group of art objects finds, the authors of this
paper had an opportunity to thoroughly microscopically examine several stone
and bone objects from Belica (the Pojate-Pojilo and Livade sites) and from
Lozovik (the Repuska site). Specifically, we are talking about five stone and
four bone objects (fig. 4). The examination of traces of the treatment on the
surface of these objects clearly showed that we are dealing with objects
which had been mechanically treated by grinding tools spinning at a large
number of rotations per minute. The results of this kind of treatment are
fine, narrow, uninterrupted parallel grooves (fig. 5-10). After manual
treatment with a grindstone of natural sandstone or by using only sand, only
short grooves, which are significantly wider and not perfectly parallel,
remain (fig. 11). With bone objects the situation is slightly different.
Bones from the archaeological stratum were used, on which a subsequent
treatment was performed which removed the darker coloured patina. Microscopic
evidence of the working of the bone also shows the use of a grinding tool
spinning at a large number of rotations (fig. 9-10). The case of the
?Serpentine figurine? is particularly interesting. On a simply crafted awl,
which can be dated to the Neolithic period and beyond, a spirally carved
embellishment was added (fig. 13). The difference in colour between the
spiral detail and the rest of the awl indicates a large time interval between
the making of the awl and the addition of the decoration. A fortunate
circumstance in the story about the ?Neolithic art objects? from Belica is
that they have not been accepted in Serbian archaeology. If we exclude the
works of M. Stojic, the finds from Belica, glorified for their beauty,
symbolism and originality, have not yet found their place in archaeological
literature. There are no texts which even mention them as analogies for some
other cult or art creations from the Neolithic. For this reason, this
critical approach also happened at the right moment. If Serbian archaeology
had not made any comments about the finds from Belica, for which there is
some doubt as to whether they actually are of Neolithic origin, perhaps the
damage caused by it would have been deeper and more noticeable. The question
as to whether we could then talk about the Serbian ?Neolithic deception from
Belica? is one whose answer the authors of this paper did not want to wait
for with their arms folded.