"Here, we present results from recent excavations from Belovode, a Vinca culture site in Eastern Serbia,which has provided the earliest direct evidence for copper smelting to date. ... These results extend the known record of copper smelting by more than half a millennium"
“the surviving amount of copper circulating the Balkans throughout this period (the early 5th millennium BC) was estimated to be about 4.7 tons altogether, which is equal to about 4300 copper implements. Noteworthy, the total number of contemporaneous cast copper artefacts in the entire Near East does not exceed three hundred (Rydina, 2009).”
On the origins of extractive metallurgy: new evidence from Europe, Radivojevic et al, 2010
"This paper discusses the invention of gold metallurgy within the Southeast European Chalcolithic on the basis of newly investigated gold objects from the Varna I cemetery (4550-4450 cal. bc). Comprehensive analyses, including preceding gold finds, shed new light not only on the technical expertise of the so far earliest known fine metalworkers, but also on the general context and potential prerequisites in which the invention of gold metallurgy may be embedded. Here, these structural trajectories as well as the unprecedented inventions connected to this early gold working will be highlighted in order to contextualize the apparently sudden appearance and rapid development of this new craft".
On the Invention of Gold Metallurgy: The Gold Objects from the Varna I Cemetery (Bulgaria)—Technological Consequence and Inventive Creativity, Pernika et al, 2015.
“The weight and the number of gold finds in the Varna cemetery [Bulgaria] exceeds by several times the combined weight and number of all of the gold artifacts found in all excavated sites of the same millennium, 5000-4000 BC, from all over the world, including Mesopotamia and Egypt.”
The Lost World of Old Europe, Anthony, D. and Chi, J., 2010
“Varna is the richest cemetery anywhere before 3500 BC. There’s more gold in the cemetery of Varna than has been recovered from all of the rest of the old world put together, before 3500 BC. And the gold at Varna is found in only a few graves. There are 310 graves in the cemetery of Varna; only 60 of them contain gold, and the great majority of the gold was contained in four extraordinarily rich graves”
The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley, 5000 to 3500 BC, NY University, 2010.
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