Communality and Discord in an Early Neolithic Settlement Agglomeration: The LBK Site of Vráble, Southwest Slovakia
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Communality and Discord in an Early Neolithic Settlement
Agglomeration: The LBK Site of Vráble, Southwest
Slovakia
Martin Furholt , Nils Müller-Scheeßel , Maria Wunderlich,
Ivan Cheben & Johannes Müller
Our research at the large LBK settlement site of Vráble, southwest Slovakia, revealed
dynamics of social integration and antagonisms unfolding in an agglomerated, early
farming community. During its lifespan from 5250 to 4950 BC, it constantly grew
until around 5050 BC it was inhabited by about 70 contemporaneous longhouses. We
found that Vráble consisted of markedly autonomous farmstead units that were held
together by village-wide social institutions including sharing and communality.
Nevertheless, from the beginning, a contradiction between particular farmstead and
collective village and neighbourhood interests existed and rose. Towards the end of the
village’s existence, around 5075 BC an elaborate enclosure was constructed around one
of the three neigbourhoods, actively blocking contact with the others. Along this
enclosure, human bodies were deposited, showing a social categorization that we
interpret as relating to social inequality. This rising level of conflict and emerging
social inequality was, we argue, not sustainable under the conditions of early farming
societies and led to the village’s abandonment at 4950 BC.
Introduction as village or neighbourhood communities, or
lineages and clans (as proposed by Bogaard et al.
The Early Neolithic settlement cluster of Vráble is 2011) might also have played an important role in
one of the largest known settlement sites with mate- structuring the social relations of this site. We thus
rials of the ‘Linear Pottery Culture’ (LBK) in central want to explore the question of in what ways and
Europe. It is thus a suitable case study to investigate to what extent particularist interests (e.g. those of
the social and political implications of early Neolithic individual households) and units of collective action
community agglomeration processes, a phenomenon (e.g. neighbourhood- or settlement-wide institutions)
that is not very well understood (R. Hofmann et al. interrelate or compete. We see this in the wider con-
2019; Petrasch 2012). LBK settlements are often seen text of contemporary Neolithic settlements in the
as consisting of independent farmsteads, or house- Balkans, where different social configurations have
hold economic units, that were integrated into local been studied. For example, settlements connected
and regional networks, rather than forming socially to Vinča or comparable materials are in many cases
and politically integrated village communities. The (e.g. Crnobrnja et al. 2009; Furholt 2012; R. Hofmann
site of Vráble, with a minimum number of 313 2013; Müller et al. 2013b; Schier & Draşovean 2004)
houses, separated into three spatially segregated considered villages in the sense that although there
settlement parts (Fig. 1), indicates that collective might be varying degrees of household autonomy,
forms of organization beyond the household, such the village community constitutes the most important
Cambridge Archaeological Journal Page 1 of 21 © 2020 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. This is an Open Access article, distributed
under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
doi:10.1017/S0959774320000049 Received 14 Sep 2019; Accepted 2 Feb 2020; Revised 1 Jan 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000049
Martin Furholt et al.
Figure 1. Reconstruction of the early
Neolithic settlement site of Vráble,
showing houses and the enclosure
system, based on the magnetic plan,
projected onto the modern landscape.
The figure also shows the position of
excavations in the years 2012–17 (in
white).
social institution of a residence group. This is a con- The social context
cept that probably has its roots in the Near Eastern
Neolithic (Düring 2006; Furholt 2016; 2017). Vráble, Our main research interest in the relation between
located in the southern part of the LBK area, not too household autonomy and village communality is
far from the Carpathian basin, might be reflecting a reflected in the heated debate about the so-called
more Balkanic tradition of a stronger role of the over- ‘yard model’ that has dominated LBK research for
all village community at the expense of household recent decades. Although this debate has often
autonomy, which might be generally stronger in centred around how best to date individual houses
most of the LBK contexts in the northern parts of cen- in LBK settlements, it is very much related to the
tral Europe. question of socio-spatial organization of settlements,
Thus, we began our research with the hypoth- with different models that are connected to different
esis that Vráble might represent a community united ideas about the overall social structure this spatial
by stronger village-wide institutions, and that this organization represents. The ‘yard model’ states
might be a function of its proximity to southeastern that even sites with dense house-plans such as
Europe, where such institutions are in general stron- Vráble were in reality made up of a much smaller
ger than in central Europe. In this paper, we will dis- number of autonomous, spatially isolated farm-
cuss to what extent the extraordinary concentration steads. Neighbouring houses would represent differ-
of settlement in Vráble is connected to processes of ent periods, as new houses were built on the same
social integration into neighbourhood and village farmstead area, while the older ones were succes-
communities, and how those social institutions relate sively abandoned (Boelicke et al. 1988; Stehli 1989;
to the social role of individual households or farm- 1994; Zimmermann 2012). In this model, the farm
steads. Are there overarching collective or hierarch- as an independent economic unit is emphasized, as
ical institutions of decision-making? What is the is its claim to a specific spot of land, which is, accord-
relation between household autonomy and village ing to the model, passed down through the genera-
communality? We aim to characterize the dynamic tions. This model is built upon a chronological
relationship between these different levels of social system which was established in the Rhineland
organization over the 300 years of settlement history area and uses pottery decoration as the main chrono-
in Vráble, in order to understand better the social logical marker.
agglomeration process and subsequent abandon- While the original proposition of the ‘yard
ment of this site. This will have implications for model’ has been claimed as a method to determine
understanding the wider phenomenon of conflict settlement structure without prejudging its outcome
and social transformation associated with the end (Zimmermann 2012), it has largely led to the
of the LBK phenomenon around 5000 cal. BC. assumption that networks of individual yards/
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000049
Communality and Discord in an Early Neolithic Settlement Agglomeration
farmsteads would have been the default configur- of this structure for social demarcation or
ation of LBK settlement communities. This was chal- integration.
lenged by Oliver Rück (2007; 2012), who argued for The magnetic plan (Fig. 1) shows that the settle-
the existence of a house-row concept, that would ment is comprised of three units of approximately the
thus display a higher degree of social integration same size, shape and orientation: all three parts, each
above household level (motivating households to located on a slight elevation separated from one other
build their dwellings in pre-defined rows). Other by a creek and a depression, measure approximately
scholars often try to mediate between these some- 15 ha in size (except the northern part, which is how-
what contradicting views (Link 2012), adding more ever partly destroyed by modern buildings; the ori-
variants (Lefranc & Denaire 2018; Lenneis 2012). ginal shape and dimension probably corresponded
Alternative models stress the existence of house- to the other two parts of the site). All three parts
groups, or neighbourhoods (Bogaard et al. 2011; show a trapezoidal shape (again, for the northern
Czerniak 2016; Hofmann 2016). It seems to be more part we have to reckon with partial destruction in
than a coincidence that Rück’s objections against the northwest), and similar orientation with a wider
the yard model were especially welcomed by collea- section located in the northeast and a less wide one
gues working in the southern area of LBK settle- in the southwest. We interpret this as a reflection of
ments, like Hungary and Austria (Bánffy et al. 2013; a common mental image which seems to apply for
Lenneis 2012; Marton & Oross 2012), because here all the settlement parts. Interestingly, the trapezoidal
excavation plans more often seem to indicate overall, shape is also the most common for LBK enclosure
settlement-wide patterns. ditches (Saile & Posselt 2004). In parts of the settle-
In our opinion, it is important to acknowledge ment, house clusters or house rows are visible,
the possibility of many diverse and dynamic forms which could indicate social sub-units above house-
of settlement organization in the vast region with hold level, or reflect successive house generations,
LBK material culture. This is also the case with with younger houses being built beside and close to
regard to the chronological and social development the old, abandoned ones.
of a single settlement.
Chronological differentiation
The archaeological evidence from Vráble
The basis for an understanding of the social organ-
To study the dynamic relationship between differ- ization during the lifetime of the settlement in
ent social units within the Neolithic site of Vráble Vráble is a chronological differentiation of the houses
(located on plots called Vel'ké Lehemby and and the enclosure. We created a chronological model
Farské), we can draw on a near-complete settle- based on the results of 138 radiocarbon dates from
ment plan, generated on the basis of geophysical our excavation trenches and a coring programme in
investigations (Winkelmann et al. in press),1 which the southwestern settlement area aimed at extracting
provides house numbers, positions, sizes and orien- datable materials from as many houses as possible
tation.2 This allowed us to develop a different (Meadows et al. 2019). We dated 14 houses in our
research strategy than the time- and cost-intensive excavation units, complemented by 9 additional
large-scale excavations that hitherto have domi- houses from the coring project. While this is only a
nated LBK research. Instead, we were able to sample of the 313 houses present, it was sufficient
apply a more focused approach, targeting specific to apply Bayesian modelling that strongly suggests
features of interest, according to our research ques- that the three settlement parts do not represent a
tions. As we are interested in the question of sequence of successive villages, but existed contem-
whether or in what form social integration is asso- poraneously during most of the period from 5250
ciated with social agglomeration, we targeted 14 to 5000/4950 cal. BC. We may have missed early out-
individual houses and house groups from different lier houses, but we have established a robust overall
parts of the settlement in order to assess differences chronological model, which is consistent with the
in subsistence strategies, traditions of material cul- expectations from pottery typochronology (Fig. 2),
ture production and use, and access to raw materi- which lacks Older LBK material. While there is
als within and between house clusters and between a lot of overlap between the two stylistic groups,
the three parts of the settlement (north, southeast Younger LBK and Želiezovce, a comparison of pot-
or southwest). In addition, we excavated parts of tery material in the houses dated by Bayesian model-
the enclosure surrounding the southwest section ling of 14C dates show that Younger LBK pottery
of the settlement, to understand better the role stops being deposited around 5100 BC, and that
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000049
Martin Furholt et al.
Figure 2. Chronological sketch of Younger LBK and Želiezovce-style pottery from Vráble illustrated on the estimated
maximal house occupation periods. (Based on modelled 14C dates derived from Meadows et al. 2019, plus additions.)
Želiezovce, while it might start to be used some time and a total time-span of 250 years for the whole settle-
after 5200, dominates the period from 5100 BC to the ment, an average of 50 contemporaneous houses
end of the settlement. Prelengyel pottery is used as would have been present in Vráble at any given
burial pottery around 5000 BC (Cheben et al. in press). time. This calculation could be modified by inserting
The chronology is additionally informed by shorter or longer average house durations. If we
our excavation results. In the 2016 campaign, we assume these 50 houses to be evenly spread out in
excavated a house group, consisting of five houses the settled area of Vráble, each house gets an area of
(Fig. 3) which were clearly clustering together, about 0.7 ha, which is surprisingly close to the space
while at the same time being spatially separated assumed in the classic yard model of the Rhineland
from other houses (Müller-Scheeßel et al. 2020a). In area (Zimmermann 2012). From the opposite starting
the 2014 campaign we excavated a row of five paral- point, if we assume a yard size of 0.5 ha, the built area
lel houses, three of them standing close together. in Vráble would have had space for a maximum of 68
Both these house groups were chosen as they poten- yards. This seems consistent with an average number
tially represented contemporaneous social sub-units of 50, assuming some dynamics in the settlement
within the settlement communities, be it a household development. Indeed, as shown in Figure 4, assuming
cluster (e.g. Czerniak 2016) or a row of contemporary that the Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) of the
houses. However, after the excavation and in the house-related 14C dates represents settlement activ-
light of stratigraphy and 14C dates, it became clear ities, it seems that there is a an increase in activities
that these houses in both groups were in fact not con- in the later period 5100–5000 BC, after which the
temporary, but rather represented several hundreds curve shows a rapid decline, leading to abandonment
of years of successive occupation (Müller-Scheeßel around 4950 BC. We can even go one step further, as
et al. 2020a; Staniuk et al. in press). we found a significant correlation between house
The duration of individual houses is a much- orientations, which vary between a northeastern and
debated topic in LBK research. The modelled dura- northern direction, and the 14C-dated age of a
tions calculated for the dated Vráble houses are vari- house. Müller-Scheeßel et al. (2020b) explain this find-
able (Meadows et al. 2019). And these time-spans ing with the neurological phenomenon of ‘pseudone-
represent the period in which the lateral long pits glect’, which causes a systematic deviation towards
were filled up, rather than the real house durations. the left, whenever humans try to reproduce a specific
If we assume an average house duration of 40 years, direction, for example through comparison with an
4
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000049
Communality and Discord in an Early Neolithic Settlement Agglomeration
Figure 3. Plan of the excavation area of 2016. The house group excavated turned out to represent a sequence of
non-contemporary houses, in accordance with the ‘yard model’.
already existing house. If we use house orientation as difference (between 0.7 and 0.5 ha) is explained by
a basis for chronological differentiation, and compare the fact that the first calculations assumed a constant
the distances of nearest neighbours of any given time number of houses at any given time, which is unreal-
(that is of houses with similar orientation), we find istic. From the orientation of houses, as well as from
two clear mean values, of about 70 and 150 metres the 14C dates, it seems far more likely that Vráble
(Müller-Scheeßel et al. 2020b), which indicates that started with a smaller number of houses, slowly
there is a standard space allocated to each house, grew until it peaked around 5100 BC, and that the
which is about 0.5 ha, and thus close to the space cal- building density decreased towards the end of the
culated above, using a different approach. The settlement.
5
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000049Martin Furholt et al.
Figure 4. A chronological model of
Vráble, derived from Meadows et al.
(2019), plus additions. The KDE of all
available 14C dates indicates a slow
increase of activities until 5050, the time
when the enclosure was erected.
These calculations come with large uncertainties, differences in their access to raw materials, interre-
where average house durations, average numbers of gional contacts, subsistence strategies and material
coexisting houses and yard sizes are mutually related. culture styles. As is not uncommon in southwest
Moreover, as the dating of houses relies on the mater- Slovakian LBK sites, stone tools are generally infre-
ial from the lateral long pits, the taphonomy of their quent, most excavation trenches yielding 5–15
filling process is crucial (Květina 2010; Stäuble 1997) chipped stone tools. Yet in the 2016 excavation
and could skew our dating results for each individual trenches we found 267 chipped stone artefacts, 105
house by up to a generation. of which were obsidian, including one blade core,
However, when it comes to our main question and two core rejuvenation pieces (Müller-Scheeßel
about the internal social organization of the site, we et al. 2020a). In all the other trenches combined we
can at least conclude that the chronological models had found eight pieces of obsidian. The closest
of Vráble, as well as the excavation results in single source for obsidian is the eastern Slovakian
houses and house clusters/house rows, unanimously Carpathians, about 200 km distant (Prǐ chystal &
point towards a settlement structure which is made Škrdla 2014). XRF analyses (conducted with
up of individual, spatially isolated farmsteads, with pXRF-device Niton XL3t900 Goldd+) confirmed
one or two contemporary houses, instead of house this source (Müller-Scheeßel et al. 2020a). In addition
groups, or contemporary rows of houses. This is a pat- to the abundance of obsidian, we also found sherds
tern that corresponds well with the yard model, as of Bükk pottery, which is most commonly found in
discussed above. While other sites have shown conclu- the region of obsidian sources. A co-occurrence of
sive evidence for contemporary house clusters obsidian and Bükk pottery in southwest Slovakian
(Czerniak 2016), and compelling cases have been Neolithic sites has been reported before (Šiška
made for house rows (Bánffy & Oross 2010; Jakucs 1995). It seems that the access to obsidian was con-
et al. 2016), in the case of Vráble, individual farmsteads nected to closer social relations with the eastern
seem to dominate the picture. House clusters or rows Slovakian regions, which probably also involved an
of houses visible in the settlement plan represent exchange of at least individual people.
sequences, intergenerational continuity of farmsteads, Within the house-group excavated in 2016,
within spatially relatively autonomous yards. This obsidian (and Bükk-style pottery) was very unevenly
implies a marked autonomy of households. distributed (Fig. 3). While the oldest house 132 con-
tained a large number of stone tools and a high pro-
Characterizing farmsteads portion of obsidian, this was also true for one of the
two successor houses (131), while the other successor
The six farmsteads we have excavated—we count house (133) also contained a large number of
here both the house-groups and the individual stone tools, only 30 per cent of which were, how-
houses at different places on the site—show distinct ever, obsidian. Also, when comparing the two
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000049Communality and Discord in an Early Neolithic Settlement Agglomeration
assemblages from the contemporary houses 131 and While all these datasets just discussed could,
133, there was a clear concentration of specialized each on its own, be disputed, they all show at the
tools—mainly sickles, borers and scrapers—in 131, current state a consistent pattern, indicating a strong
while 133 contained mainly knapping debitage, and social and economic autonomy of the farmsteads in
only few tools. We interpret this as an indication Vráble, expressed through farmstead-specific
for a division of labour concerning certain activities access-patterns to raw materials, crop-breeding strat-
involving those specialized tools within one eco- egies and traditions of pottery decoration. Only
nomic household unit. In the later phase (houses when it comes to animal-exploitation strategies
126 and 127) stone tool quantity is very low and does there seem to be some form of integration
thus more like in the rest of Vráble. Nevertheless, dif- between farmsteads in the same settlement part.
ferences in access to resources and social networks This overall autonomy in economic practices and
between farmsteads—and the continuity of these dif- material production is consistent with the spatially
ferences over generations—are obvious when com- isolated position of each farmstead in relation to
paring the lithic artefact data from the area the others, suggested by the dating results (see
excavated in 2016 with that of the others. above).
Concerning pottery, beyond the overall Younger
LBK–Želiezovce-style sequence, which represents a Communality in Vráble: neighbourhood and
regional trend, a correspondence analysis of the village communities
fine ware decoration patterns reveals house-group,
in the 2016 trench even house-specific, patterns After highlighting the strength of household or farm-
(Müller-Scheeßel et al. 2020a). This is consistent with stead autonomy in Vráble, we will examine indica-
earlier observations about household-based self- tions for more collective social institutions at the
supplying pottery production and house-styles level of the village or settlement part (that is, the
being established in the LBK (Frirdich 1994; Pechtl southwestern, the northern and the southeastern)
2015; Strien 2005). communities. We will first discuss indications for
Concerning subsistence practices, both plant institutions of communal sharing, and then examine
and animal bone remains show a corresponding collective action, as it is visible in the construction of
variability between yards, and at the same time the enclosure surrounding the southwest settlement
homogeneity within houses belonging to one house part.
group. The faunal remains show clear differences First, we would like to argue that the three spa-
between the house-groups excavated (Eckelmann tially separate but equally shaped and sized contem-
et al. in press), while the three settlement parts (that porary settlement parts of Vráble refer to an
is the north, southwest and southeast parts) show intermediate level of social organization between
different main domestic animal species (Fig. 5). the households, below the whole settlement. The
With their faunal spectra, the yards belonging to three settlement parts can probably best be character-
the same settlement part are more similar to each ized as ‘neighbourhoods’ within an overall settle-
other than to those from the other settlement parts. ment community, as they are tied together by their
For example, in both house-groups uncovered by spatial proximity, and a common concept of space,
the 2014 excavation of the northern settlement, pig but still spatially separated, most visibly by the
is the most frequent species, while in all houses in enclosure in the later phase. The concept of ‘clustered
the southwestern settlement part, cattle predomi- neighbourhoods’ has been used to characterize cen-
nates. In the southeast, sheep and goat are dominant, tral Anatolian Neolithic settlements, where it refers
with the exception of houses 126/127/131–133, to spatially bounded areas of more intense social
which however share the elevated proportion of interaction, within larger settlements (e.g. Düring
pigs with the other houses in the southeast settlement 2011, 116–18). While neighbourhoods are defined as
part (Eckelmann et al. in press). While the count of co-habitation groups, they are probably knitted
discernable bones is relatively low, there is consist- together, or separated by other kinds of social ties.
ency in the pattern when broken down on the level Lineages have traditionally been highlighted as a
of individual houses within a house group. A similar main principle of social organization in the
pattern is to be seen when it comes to plant remains European and southwest Asian Neolithic. While
(Filipović et al. in press). Emmer and Einkorn are the this principle is easily associated with the southwest
most frequent cereals found, but their proportion dif- Asian and the Balkanic Tell settlements, they also
fers greatly between house-groups, while being stable seem to be visible in the farmstead structure found
within them (Mueller-Scheeßel et al. 2020a). in Vráble, if materialized in different ways. Here,
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000049Martin Furholt et al.
Figure 5. NISP numbers for animal bones in the different house groups of Vráble.
analogous to the tell settlements, a specific area, the forming during the anaerobic decomposition of the
yard, is kept by one social group—with similar pre- outermost layers of grain, such pits create a well-
ferences towards pottery style, subsistence pattern sealed environment in which cereals can be stored
and raw-material supply—over several generations, for many years (Bowen et al. 1968). Yet, once opened,
which indicates a lineage-based inheritance system these conservational properties are gone, and the
at the level of the farmstead. whole volume of grains needs to be emptied and
The existence of neighbourhoods in LBK con- used (or it will otherwise perish). In the 2016 excava-
texts has been suggested by Czerniak (2016) for the tion area, we found one of these beehive-shaped pits
site of Targowisko in Poland, and by Hofmann per house, and the magnetic plan indicates a similar
(2016) and, though not explicitly, by Bogaard et al. distribution of such pits evenly across the settle-
(2011) for Vaihingen/Enz, Germany. Vráble does ment.3 So, while they seem to be associated with
provide another, very visible example of a division individual households, every opening must have
of the settlement into neighbourhoods, which are been shared with other farmsteads, reinforcing a
clustered spatially, show signs of an alignment of communal idea. In contrast, in the nearby Bronze
practices within, indicated by the faunal spectra Age settlement of Vráble-Fidvár there are areas
(see above) and collective action in the form of with enormous concentrations of such pits (Bátora
enclosure construction. et al. 2012, 114, fig. 5), indicating more centralized
In addition, we can expect communal sharing to food storage, while in the Neolithic period in
be practised mainly within these neighbourhoods. In Vráble, storage is decentrally located, creating a
the 2016 excavation area, we found four beehive- link between farmstead autonomy and communal
shaped pits (Fig. 6). This specific type of storage con- sharing. Similar arguments for the sharing of
tainer is known from ethnography for its specific resources across farmstead boundaries have to be
function (Kriegler 1929). Because of carbon dioxide made for cattle, that, when slaughtered, provide
8
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000049Communality and Discord in an Early Neolithic Settlement Agglomeration
Figure 6. Profile through a beehive-shaped storage pit, from the excavation area of 2016.
too much meat for one farmstead to consume, unless constituted the original demarcation of the settle-
cost-intensive preservation measures are applied ment, which was replaced at a later stage by the
(Russell 1998). two ditches.
The significance of the ditch system was marked
The special significance of the enclosure by burials and depositions of human bodies and
body parts within and beside it. In the 2017 cam-
Within the history of Vráble, the construction of a paign, we excavated two of the five entrance areas
ditched and palisaded enclosure around the south- and found at least 16 individuals in the filling of
west settlement took place towards its end. The the two parallel ditches as well as beside them (see
enclosure is associated with depositions of human Müller-Scheeßel & Hukel'ová in press; Fig. 7). The
bodies, some of which were placed on the bottom patterns of body deposition reveal at least two clearly
of one of the ditches, and thus it was possible to distinct categories of ritual treatment of human
determine a terminus ante quem for its filling. The remains. The first (Fig. 7a–c) corresponds to the
human remains from the ditch date around 5075 BC, known LBK burial custom, that is, a crouched indi-
others, from burials placed beside yet clearly vidual on its left side in a shallow burial pit with a
oriented along the ditch, date slightly later, around few grave goods. Six of these typical LBK burials
5050–5000 BC (Müller-Scheeßel & Hukel'ová in press). are distributed on both sides of the ditch. Instances
The enclosure consists of a double ditch system of disarticulated parts of some of the bodies suggest
with a palisade (see Fig. 1). It is 1.4 km long and thus that they were laid down on some kind of platform
probably constituted a community-wide group within the pit. Animal gnawing marks corroborate
effort, at least encompassing those people living the fact that the bodies were not immediately cov-
within the enclosed neighbourhood. It represents a ered. The second category consists of four headless
complex structure with more layers of meaning individuals (Figs 7d–e & 8), who were laid in a
than just being a physical barrier or fortification of stretched-out position on the very bottom of the
a settlement. The outer ditch was about 2.5–3.5 m ditch, without any grave goods. Their deposition
wide and its bottom is on average 1.5 m below the coincides with the recutting of the ditch, or occurred
modern surface. In profile sections, a distinct not much later. While one of the four headless indi-
re-cutting is visible which changed the profile of viduals was partly disarticulated, due to post-
the ditch from a trough shape to a more V-shaped depositional disturbances, there is a pattern. In
one. The inner ditch is much smaller and only 1.5 both entrance areas into the enclosure excavated in
m wide and its bottom 0.7 m below today’s surface. 2017, we found in the terminal part of the ditch to
14
C dates from human bones in the filling of both the west of the entrance two individuals stretched
ditches (see below) point towards their contemporan- out, headless, with their feet directed to each other.
eity. In contrast, a burial disturbing the course of the Furthermore, depositions of single human
palisade suggests—assuming the burial activities bones, and sometimes larger body parts, were
were all roughly contemporaneous, as indicated by found in the filling of the ditches. These finds are
the 14C dates—that the latter had already decayed more complicated to classify, as they may represent
or been removed when the deposition took place. potentially diverse depositional processes. For
Therefore, it seems likely that the palisade instance, they may represent older burials, disturbed
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000049Martin Furholt et al.
Figure 7. Burials and depositions found near the enclosure ditch: (a–c) regular LBK burials; (d–e) headless burials in the
ditch; (f) burial in a long pit within the settlement.
Figure 8. Two headless burials in the western ditch, close to the second excavated entrance, seen in front of the ditch
profile.
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000049Communality and Discord in an Early Neolithic Settlement Agglomeration
and re-deposited during the digging of the ditch, or the Bükk pottery referred to earlier. Nevertheless,
individuals that remained on the ditch bank for a the differential categorizations of people in Vráble
longer period of time, so that only very few bones could also stem from internal social mechanisms,
had the chance to be sedimented in the ditch filling without necessarily reflecting the relation between
and to survive. Or they may represent an alternative local and non-local individuals. Isotope and DNA
approach to deposition, or to disposing of human studies of the individuals from Vráble are currently
bodies. under way.
Away from the area of the ditch, there are single The human bodies and body parts from Vráble
human bones within the settlement, close to the have to be seen in the context of contemporary fea-
houses, which are mixed into the usual settlement tures in other settlement sites. In Herxheim in south-
waste. We also found two human skeletons in long western Germany, more than 500 individuals found
pits (Fig. 7f). so far are mostly disarticulated and partly articulated
The physical anthropological examination of body parts, found in the filling of the enclosure ditch
these human remains by Zusanna Hukel'ová (Orschiedt & Haidle 2012; Zeeb-Lanz 2016). A ritual
(Müller-Scheeßel & Hukel'ová in press) found the background is likely, as specific body parts were
presence of all age groups and both sexes in all more frequently represented than others, especially
groups. Four individuals from Vráble showed signs skulls and skull caps. There is currently a heated
of probable violence-induced trauma on the skeletal debate on the presence and interpretation of signs
material, none of which was perimortal, indicating of physical violence visible on the bones (Orschiedt
that conflict and violence were experienced by the & Haidle 2012; Zeeb-Lanz 2019). However, both pot-
inhabitants. The four headless individuals did not tery style and stable isotope analyses (Turck et al.
show any cut-marks on the remaining vertebra 2012) strongly indicate that the Herxheim human
bones, but the upper atlas was missing, indicating remains do not reflect one village population; rather
that the heads were removed in a state of partial, it served as a trans-regional place of gathering and
not total decomposition. The anthropological study ritual. In Asparn-Schletz, Austria, the ditch was filled
has shown that three of the four headless individuals with human remains (67 individuals excavated) that
showed spine deformations (Müller-Scheeßel & show clear signs of extensive violence, from arrow-
Hukel'ová in press). The headless burials might heads or blunt force applied towards the head. As
thus represent a group of people set apart from the these individuals have been dated as living towards
others by a different corporeal appearance. the end of the settlement period, experts attribute the
The regular burials were found beside the ditch, remains to a single massacre that ended village his-
both outside and inside, and one especially richly tory (Teschler-Nicola 2012). However, neither the
equipped adult male individual (with six pottery ritual sacrificial interpretation like the one in
vessels and one flint blade) was found in the middle Herxheim, nor the massacre variant of Schletz, or
of the largest entrance. From the 14C dates, it could similar places like Schöneck-Kilianstädten (Meyer
very well be that this deposition represents the first et al. 2015), is applicable for the Vráble case, where
of the regular burials. People literally had to step we find a combination of conventional burials and
over his dead body to enter the settlement. This dif- other forms of (ritual) deposition, with no signs of
ferential treatment of human remains suggests the deadly violence.
existence of different categories of people within
the settlement community. The social composition Discussion: household autonomy, village
of LBK communities has been demonstrated to be institutions and social conflict
variable (e.g. Bickle & Whittle 2013). A more widely
socially fluid setting of LBK communities is to be The results of the chronological analyses, as well as
expected (Furholt 2018). Different relations between the examinations of subsistence strategies, access to
local and non-local individuals have been found raw materials, material culture production patterns,
using strontium isotope analyses (for a summary, and the evidence from the enclosure, all point in
Bickle & Whittle 2013), and while patrilocal marriage the direction of Vráble as a village made up of
patterns are often been postulated (Bentley et al. 2012; strongly independent, autonomous farmsteads, as
Brandt et al. 2014; Pavúk 1972), a wider spectrum of proposed in the traditional yard model. Yet there
factors influencing mobility patterns is to be expected are also several indications for the strength of
(Bickle 2019; Bickle & Whittle 2013; Gomart et al. community-wide institutions. Firstly, even if the dat-
2015; Hofmann 2016). This might include long- ing results have adjusted the numbers of contempor-
distance relocation of individuals, as indicated by ary houses downwards towards lower numbers,
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000049Martin Furholt et al.
Vráble is still an extraordinary concentration of kinship structures such as clans and lineages (e.g.
population, especially when compared to the other Gunawan 2000; Sahlins 2013).
LBK sites in the Žitava valley (Breitenfeld 2019), in The presence of collective storage pits among,
southwest Slovakia (Pavúk 2004) and the whole presumably, each household could represent the
LBK area (Petrasch 2012). There is no obvious reason joint and interconnected efforts of the otherwise
(ecological, strategic concerning traffic routes) that independent farmsteads to provide economic secur-
would explain why the largest settlement in the ity. The erection of long houses (possibly communal
whole southern LBK area should be at this exact building activities) and the construction of a ditch
place. Also, as discussed above, the settlement system all point towards an enduring performative
space in Vráble is structured in what looks like creation and maintenance of larger social units, per-
three carbon copies of the same mental concept, haps constituted by unilineal descent groups (com-
with the same size, shape and orientation. Only pare Souvatzi 2017). The spatial separation of the
during an advanced stage can a differentiation different neigbourhoods also points towards a social
between the villages be seen in the form of the differentiation within or between these units, which
enclosure constructed around only one of the three might hint towards the presence of either sub-
neighbourhoods. divisions of one descent group, or several descent
Within the system of social organization of groups being present in Vráble.
Vráble, there are different, potentially contentious Despite these hints on the importance of com-
observations relating to social organization: the munal frameworks, the fact that only one of the
strong autonomy of the household, the importance three neighbourhoods is enclosed, although they
of communal sharing, neighbourhood grouping were all still occupied at the time of its construction
and overall concentrated cohabitation. In line with (5075 BC), makes the enclosure a complicated issue
expectations for agricultural societies (Carsten & when it comes to its relation to group identities.
Hugh-Jones 1995, 4; Ensor 2011, 213–16), the case While the whole enclosure has five entrances, they
study of Vráble shows both the social and economic are all facing away from the two other contemporary
importance of farmsteads as single households. In neighbourhoods (Fig. 1), and there is no entrance at
economic terms, we see a high degree of independ- all along the eastern and northern parts of the enclo-
ence and also exclusionary strategies (cf. Blanton sures, where it is close to these settlements. Clearly
et al. 1996) among the individual household units the enclosure is constructed to block off one neigh-
(access to and use of resources, animals, crops). bourhood from the two others. So, if it is to be seen
While we can see a clear emphasis on the individual- as a sign of multi-farmstead cooperation and higher-
ity and singularity of the farmsteads in Vráble, the level (i.e. neighbourhood- or settlement-wide) iden-
overarching social organization is contrarily marked tity formation, this is probably only relating to the
by an emphasis of communal strategies and the inhabitants of the southwest neighbourhood. Thus,
importance of overarching social groups (compare the enclosure can be interpreted as a sign of marked
Blanton et al. 1996; Saitta 1997). The storage pits tension between the three neighbourhoods.
and presumably collective consumption of slaugh-
tered animals indicate the importance of resources Social organization in a wider context
and land connected to the social institutions above
household-level, which were bound together by Overall, there seems to be a tension between the
sharing activities. Both a shared claim to land and household, or farmstead, as an economically inde-
resources as well as sharing economies were repeat- pendent unit, and higher-level institutions, probably
edly described as being of high importance within on two scales, namely the neighbourhood, and the
the maintenance of socially bound groups (for overall village community. This does not seem excep-
example, clans; e.g. Godelier 2012; Leach 2004; tional; in fact such tensions are widely believed to
Strathern et al. 2018). In Vráble this sharing most have driven much of the early Neolithic social
probably was practised within each neighbourhood. dynamics in southeastern Europe. For example,
One of the main responsibilities of broader larger Halstead (2006) discusses a constant tension between
social units, e.g. kin-groups such as lineages or household autonomy and community solidarity,
clans, is the provision of social security and cohesion between sharing and hoarding in the Aegean.
among its members. Cooperative action and the Leppard (2014), dealing with the same region,
establishment of commemorative places (the enclos- makes use of the old idea of the effects of Neolithic
ure) are all well-known examples of the manifold delayed return economies in a contextual back-
strategies to create communal institutions and/or ground governed by ideologies of sharing and
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000049Communality and Discord in an Early Neolithic Settlement Agglomeration
communality (Peterson 1993; Widlok 2016; (Furholt 2017; Marciniak et al. 2015). There seems to
Woodburn 1982), and argues that the Neolithic sub- be a spatial southeast–northwest as well as a tem-
sistence economy must have led to the emergence of poral trajectory with an increasing household auton-
and conflicts over systems of ownership of resources, omy the further northwest we go, and stronger
in which small-group or household interest might community-wide institutions in the southeast and
not have been easily brought in accordance with in earlier settlements (Furholt 2016). Still, apart
the interests of the whole community, and that ‘the from this overall tendency, the constant tension
contradiction between imperatives to share and a Halstead and Leppard refer to might have played
desire to reap benefits from delayed-return food pro- out in different ways in different periods. In the
duction could potentially have rendered Early early Neolithic of the Balkans, Starčevo settlement
Neolithic societies . . . fragile with intra- . . . commu- plans show little signs of any overall order, while
nity tension a possible outcome’ (Leppard 2014, 492). in the Balkan Late Neolithic, larger and more orderly
In Vráble, we could make this explicit. Early on, arranged villages appear, connected, among others,
some farmsteads start monopolizing supra-regional to Vinča materials (Draşovean & Schier 2010;
resources like the acquisition of obsidian and trans- Hansen et al. 2009; Lichardus 1996; Mischka 2009).
regional contacts with communities with Bükk pot- While the actual settlement layouts are variable,
tery. At the height of the agglomeration process, there are often settlement-wide patterns determining
around 5075 BC, the southwest part of the settlement the position of each house, indicating strong village-
started to identify itself as in opposition to the other wide institutions, at the cost of household autonomy.
neighbourhoods, the enclosure marking this. The set- In the Butmir site of Okolište, house groups are pos-
ting of formal burials, which is not observed in the tulated that show division of labour (Arponen et al.
other parts of the settlement, makes the statement 2015; Müller et al. 2013a). In the LBK area, contem-
of being different from the others even more pro- porary to Vinča and Butmir further south, patterned
nounced. These burials in turn also indicate the structures of house placement are much less fre-
development of some form of social inequalities quent, and strongly debated—see the yard-model
between inhabitants of that part of the settlement. versus rows-of-houses-model referred to above. In
Probably this development was triggered by the any case, regular village shapes, like the linear vari-
increasing population and challenged the originally ant in Okolište (Hofmann 2013; Müller et al. 2013b),
primarily acephalous way of life, which might be or circular arrangements of houses (Hofmann et al.
harder to maintain with a growing population 2019), are extremely rare in the LBK area, Vráble
number. with its three similar trapezoid shapes probably
It seems reasonable to assume such a conflict being one of the best examples. Also neighbourhoods
brooding in other Neolithic village communities in are not often identified in LBK settlements, except for
southeastern and central Europe as well. Looking at a few striking cases. They take very different forms.
the archaeological evidence, the relation between dif- In Cuiry-Les Chaudardes, France, two groups of
ferent social units within Neolithic village communi- houses, which are spatially separated and have dif-
ties shows a high degree of variability, but also ferent house types (small versus larger ones), are
certain trends that are of importance for our under- associated with different subsistence patterns (hunt-
standing of the Vráble community. During the estab- ing versus domesticated resource exploitation:
lishment of Neolithic economies in southwest Asia, Gomart et al. 2015). They are also differentiated via
large agglomerations of settlement appeared, some different pottery manufacture techniques. These
of which showed strong settlement-wide social insti- two groups are interpreted by Gomart et al. (2015)
tutions, visibly standardized house forms, building as representing newcomers versus more established
techniques, internal organization, etc. (e.g. Düring households, who engage in reciprocal exchange of
2011). In central Anatolia, for example, we find a their respective surplus production. A very different
threefold hierarchical structure of social organiza- system of intra-site subgroups is postulated in the
tional units, namely the household (identified with LBK settlement of Vaihingen/Enz in southwestern
the individual house), the house-group, or neigh- Germany (Bogaard et al. 2011), where specific tradi-
bourhood, and the whole village community tions of pottery decoration can be associated with
(Düring 2011, 116). In the following pottery differential access to different fields. These ‘clans’
Neolithic, during which the expansion of Neolithic are shown to occupy different areas in the settlement,
ways of life into Europe was triggered, the role of with some overlap. They are supposed to have come
the household is believed to have been strengthened to and left the community in Vaihingen at different
at the cost of the two other institutional levels times and are also associated with different regional
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https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774320000049Martin Furholt et al.
LBK pottery sub-styles. Such a translocal pattern of part of settlement is clearly directed against the two
clans or lineage groups could be present in Vráble other neighbourhoods. This might be a strategy to
too, but they have not yet been detected in the pot- avoid the social fission most other LBK communities
tery styles, as in southwest Slovakia the late LBK chose, alongside restriction to a smaller village popu-
and Želiezovce is regionally rather uniform. lation sizes in the first place. Overall, the increase in
However, in the great majority of LBK settle- settlement enclosures as well as their association
ments spatial subgroups, neighbourhoods, are not with violence, or ritual practices involving dead
visible in the archaeological material. We would human bodies in the late LBK, could thus also be
like to argue that this reflects a broader socio- ascribed to rising intra-community tensions rather
historical setting, and that in the period 5350–5000 than the inter-community conflict that is usually
BC the main difference between the Balkans (Vinča) assumed (e.g. Golitko & Keeley 2007). There were,
and central Europe (LBK), is that household auton- however, different ways of reconciling the tension
omy is decidedly stronger in the northwest, while between communality and particularist interests of
community-wide institutions are more visible in the individual farmsteads. In Vráble, the inhabitants
southeast. Taking into account a tension between chose to retain the overall concentration of settle-
household autonomy and village solidarity as inher- ment, but to mark or differentiate communities
ent in Neolithic economies, Vráble constitutes an more strongly at a lower level. There is not only
example in which the latter is more marked than in the clear fencing-off of one settlement part (or neigh-
most other LBK settlements, but less so than in the bourhood); in addition, the symbolic charging of the
Balkanic tradition. While the unusually large settle- neighbourhood demarcation with dead human bod-
ment concentration, as well as the separation into ies is connected to social differentiation. The different
neighbourhoods, reflects the strength of southern tra- categories of burials/deposition of human bodies
ditions, the spatial isolation and differentiation of and body parts reflect the definition of different
subsistence practices and material production kinds of people, with regular burials with burial
between the farmsteads within these neighbour- goods as opposed to headless people at the bottom
hoods accentuates the strength of small-scale auton- of the trench, and perhaps a third category being
omy, which is more similar to the central European people treated like settlement debris (or alternatively,
patterns. The negotiation of particularist farmstead deliberately fragmented and distributed in the ditch).
interests and communal institutions and village soli- This represents a situation that is historically
darity is probably more antagonistic, less resolvable specific for the communities in Vráble. However, it
than in other places, where one or the other eventu- cannot be overlooked that there are parallels to
ally gets an upper hand, or settlements break up. developments in other places. It is puzzling that
A way to mitigate the tension could be the promotion there is such a recurrent association of enclosure
of neighbourhood identity, as a smaller social unit, ditches and human bodies in the later LBK period.
substituting for the larger overall village community. Yet, while there is evidence for physical violence
It is at the neighbourhood level, where communality being associated with these enclosures, as in Schletz
and sharing—exemplified by beehive storage pits, by (Teschler-Nicola 2012) and Kilianstädten (Meyer
the construction of a complex enclosure system—are et al. 2015), there is definitely more to their interpret-
acted out. But in Vráble the development of these ation than a suddenly emerging need for fortification
neighborhood-ties obviously is also linked to a against an outside enemy because of a rising degree
contradictory social differentiation within the neigh- of conflict and violence. As Herxheim (Zeeb-Lanz
bourhoods. As described, the people buried or 2016) and Vráble show, the phenomenon of bodies
deposited in and along the enclosure are categorized in enclosure ditches is too complex to be explained
differently, maybe according to their physical by the theory of emerging warfare (Golitko &
appearance, or capacities. In addition, the monopol- Keeley 2007).
ization of trans-regional contacts and sought-after Instead, we would argue that there were overall
exotic resources by single farmsteads will have structural settings in Early Neolithic LBK settlements
undermined neighbourhood solidarity. Thus the which created parallel sets of social conflict, like the
new neighbourhood ideology failed as the social con- one discussed here, between household, village
tradictions increased: around 4950 BC, Vráble was communities and intermediate social groups, most
abandoned. virulent probably in the larger settlement agglomera-
The antagonism between the three neighbour- tions. And there might have been a set of ideas,
hoods in Vráble becomes most visible in the late which facilitated recurring associations between
phase, when the enclosure around the southwest physical entities—for example settlement space,
14
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