Original scientific paper
The Mačkovac-Crišnjevi Settlement as a Contribution to Identifying the Beginnings of Urnfield Culture in Slavonian Posavina
Snježana Karavanić
Marija Mihaljević
Hrvoje Kalafatić
Abstract
The village Mačkovac is situated on the left, Croatian
bank of the Sava River, approximately 15 km south of
Nova Gradiška. It was first mentioned in the literature already
at the end of the 19th century, parallel to a hoard of
bronze artifacts found at the Klupko site (Ilić-Oriovčanin,
1874; Ljubić, 1889). This was the first in a series of hoards
found in the neighboring area. It was published in 1973
(Vinski-Gasparini, 1973, T. 73), along with the hoard from
the neighboring village Siče (Vinski-Gasparini, 1973, T.
95). The third hoard from this area, from Dolina on the
Sava, was published by Schauer in 1974.
The locality is situated 1 km north of the village, on a
site called Crišnjevi, 92 m above sea level, thus topping a
floodplain at 90 m above sea level. It covers approximately
2 hectares of land. On its southern side it is defined by the
natural depression called Prišnjica, in which water accumulates
throughout most of the year, making access to the
settlement difficult. In the surrounding area there are a
few other sites with Late Bronze Age pottery. In the vicinity
there are two more sites, Glavičica with tumuli, and
the Late Bronze Age settlement Babine Grede. In 1985
another hoard was uncovered on Crišnjevi (Karavanić and
Mihaljević, 2001), which brought about trial excavations
in 1997. Its interesting results contributed to the continuation
of excavations. Up to the present day, 323 m2 have
been investigated. Over the years many pottery objects,
animal remains, a human tooth (verbal communication by
M. Šlaus) and several bronze objects were unearthed.
Three layers can be distinguished at the site. The surface
layer consists of humus damaged by plowing, with
pottery and daub finds. Beneath this comes a dark brown,
almost black clay layer with plenty of daub, pottery and
charcoal, representing a cultural deposit settled in the
area outside or above the settlement facilities. On the bottom
there is a layer with many animal bones and coal. On
Crišnjevi no remains of above-ground houses were uncovered,
but only of smaller furnaces. One furnace has a regular
oval ground plan, with two layers of a 20 cm thick clay
coat, whereas others were made of a substruction of pottery
fragments and a 2-3 cm thick clay coat. Above the
furnace with the thicker coat there was an implosion made
of daub fragments and parts of furnace. In the implosion
a bronze ingot and a bellows nozzle (T. 2, 14) were found,
and in the vicinity dross fragments as well, indicating metallurgical
activity in this part of the settlement. In 2000
and 2001, a 15 cm thick stratum of hard, packed clay was
unearthed above the bottom layer, on which there was a
furnace (Fig. 2), as well as numerous heaps of pottery and
daub fragments. The earth in this stratum was obviously
leveled in order to create a surface for specific economic
activities in the settlement; thus it might have been a
house surface, within which there were smaller fireplaces
and furnaces. In it only a limited number of finds was unearthed,
only a few pottery and daub fragments.
Considering the excavated surface, a relatively large
number of metal objects was unearthed in Mačkovac.
Those were mostly bronze needles. Thus regular sewing
needles were found, as well as two needles with a biconical
head (Vrdoljak, Mihaljević, 2000, Fig. 2, 1-6). Needles
with a simple biconical head as well as those with a
rounded head are simple, long-lasting utensils. Apart from
a few exceptions, these needles cannot be used for accurate
dating. In Moravia they were dated in early Urnfield
culture, and in Hungary, in the hoards Romand and
Velemszentvid, in late Urnfield culture. The needle (T. 4,
5) would correspond to the Deinsdorf type (Říhovský,
1979; Innerhofer 2000).
Most similar to the needle from Mačkovac is that from
grave-mound I, from a skeletal grave at the Velke
Hosteradky site (Říhovský, 1963, 66, T. 1,; B6). Similar
needles were also found in the Polešovice hoard in
Moravia (Salaš, 1997, T. 23, 574-577), where they were
dated in late grave-mound culture and early Urnfield culture
(Salaš, 1997, 40). Needles of the same type were also
found at other localities in northern Croatia, e.g. in Ilok
(Vinski-Gasparini, 1973, 180, T. 19, 1-2), Bogdanovci
(Vinski-Gasparini, 1973, T. 19, 3), and Slavonski Brod
(Vinski-Gasparini, 1973, T 19, 4). These needles, along
with other finds, correspond with the group of finds representing
the Middle Bronze Age basis for the development
of Urnfield culture and are dated into the end of the
Middle Bronze Age and the beginning of the Late Bronze
Age. Apart from those needles, there is also a needle from
the Virovitica site (Vinski-Gasparini, 1973, T. 10, 10) that
represents the Middle Bronze Age needle type with a nailshaped
head which Teržan used as an argument for dating
the beginning of the Virovitica group in the period Br
B2-C (Teržan, 1995, 327).
The most numerous group of finds in Mačkovac is pottery.
The paper gives a selection of finds from all these years.
Pot types found in Mačkovac are distributed over a
large territory and in different Urnfield culture groups.
Mostly we are dealing with pots with a rounded body and
an everted rim, of different sizes, with one or two ribboned
grips beneath the rim. Often they are decorated with a
horizontal rib or a plastic ribbon with finger-prints (T. 1,
7), sometimes combined with a vertical ribbon, which is
connected with the rim. The same forms of pots are found
in the settlement Oloris (Dular, 2002), in Laminci near
Bosanska Gradiška (Čović, 1983, 65-70, T 1; Đurđević,
1987, 50) and Saghegy (Patek, 1968). Interesting are pots
decorated by clustered applications at the bottom (T. 3,
4), which are also found at the Laminci locality (Čović,
1983, 65-70). Such applied ornaments also occur in
Transdanubia at the Gelsesziget site within the gravemound
culture (Laszlo, 1994, 226), as well as at the
Urnfield culture necropolis Voers-Battyani (Honti, 1993,
152, 155). Bowls are represented with a much richer repertoire of
forms. Several varieties of rounded bowls with a flat rim
(B3a, B3b, B3e) and one with an everted, horizontally flattened
rim (B3d) were out. They occur in the early Urnfield
culture settlements of Oloris (Dular, 2002) and Saghegy
(Patek, 1968), as well as at the necropoli of Barice (Čović,
1958) and Mala Brusnica (Belić, 1963-1964). The bowl variety
of rough manufacturing, with thicker walls and a flat
bottom with vertical, horn-shaped protrusions (B3c) (T. 3,
2) has no closer analogies. Řihovsky mentions them in his
work as an element of the grave-mound culture which was
conveyed into early Urnfield culture, the Blučina-Kopčany
horizon (Říhovský, 1982, 17, 42). Patek dates them as early
as Br C and defines them as a form conveyed from gravemound
culture (Patek, 1968, 102, T. 1, T. 6). Bowls with a
broadly ribboned rim (B6), a regular find on each
necropolis of the Virovitica and Barice-Gređani groups,
were also found in Mačkovac, and they appear in early
Urnfield culture since Br C. Among them is also a fragment
decorated with an oval knob in the interior (T. 3, 7).
Deep bowls with a rounded (B5a) (T. 1, 1-2, 4-6; T. 4,
2, 4) or slightly biconical (B5b) (T. 1, 3; T. 4, 1, 3) belly account
for more than a third of all bowls in Mačkovac and
are the most remarkable vessels at the site. They were all
reductionally baked, they may have one or two ribboned
grips, the portion where the belly turns into the neck is accentuated
by a shallow groove, and often their belly is decorated
with oval, knob-shaped protrusions (German Buckel)
surrounded by a groove. Similar bowls were found in the
necropoli of the Barice-Gređani group (Minichreiter, 1982,
T. 4, 6, 8, 15), the necropoli in the surroundings of Bjelovar
(Majnarić-Pandžić, 1988, 18-23), in Virovitica and Sirova
Katalena (Vinski-Gasparini, 1973, T. 8, 15), and Moravče
near Sesvete (Sokol, 1996, Fig. 13, 14).
Particularly interesting is the analogy of bowls from
Vinkovci (Dimitrijević, 1979, 141) that opened a number
of questions pertaining to their chronological and cultural
position. It is a chance find, culturally determined already
in 1966 (Dimitrijević, 1966, 68) as part of the Hatvanoid-
Bebrin culture and dated into Br A2 and Br A3. The scientific
literature leans on this opinion due to a lack of investigation
(Dimitrijević, 1979; Čović, 1983), or refers to
it as Brod culture (Petrović, 1970; Belić, 1968; Lozuk,
1993, 2000), persisting upon dating into the Early Bronze
Age. Bosnian literature, after the excavation in Laminci,
subscribes the earlier published finds to Urnfield culture
(Čović, 1988; Đurđević, 1987).
After having studied the materials preserved in the
Brodsko Posavlje Museum and comparing them to all the
published localities it can be concluded that we are dealing
with pottery artifacts from a settlement which is notably
related to those from the Mačkovac-Crišnjevi site and
therefore chronologically classified as belonging to the
end of the Middle Bronze Age and the beginning of the
Late Bronze Age, concurrent with the Virovitica group
and culturally belonging to the Barice-Gređani group. The
preliminary analysis of metal and ceramic finds dates the
settlement into the latest phases of Middle Bronze Age
and the very beginning of the Late Bronze Age or the
Virovitica group. To conclude, the settlement lasted from
stage Br BC until stage Br D with a few elements of Ha A.
The principal economic activities were farming and livestock
breeding with occasional fishery, and there are also
testimonies to metallurgic activity that took place near the
furnaces. At present we cannot estimate how many inhabitants
the settlement had since only a small area has been
excavated, but it can be assumed that it was a smaller village
community.
Keywords
Early Urnfield Culture; metallurgy; Barice-Gređani group; Virovitica group; Mačkovac; Posavina
Hrčak ID:
804
URI
Publication date:
20.7.2002.
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