UDK 903.2(4/5)“633/634”:291.37:159.961


Documenta Praehistorica XXXI 

The transition to farming and the ‘revolution’ 
of symbols in the Balkans. From ornament to 
entoptic and external symbolic storage 

Mihael Budja 

Department of Archaeology, University of Ljubljana, SI 
miha.budja@uni-lj.si 

ABSTRACT – In desimplifying the logic of colonisation and transition to farming we discuss hunter-
gatherers’ and farmer’s symbolic structures in the Balkans and Carpathians. Particular attention is 
paid to the concepts of ‘revolution of symbols’, ‘external symbolic storage’ and ‘signs of all time’. Our 
basic premises are (1) that ceramic technology and the principles of fragmentation and accumulation were not the exclusive domains of farmers and, (2) that the hunter-gatherers’ symbolic structures and the process of transition to farming were not exclusive and competitive but rather correlative in maintaining control and power within society and over the frameworks of external interactions and exchange networks. 

IZVLE
EK – V razpravi analiziramo ‘kognitivne’ pristope in koncepte, povezane s simbolnimi strukturami lovcev in nabiralcev ter poljedelcev. Opozarjamo na interpretativni pomen ‘entoptov’, ‘revolucije simbolov’ in ‘eksternega hranjenja simbolov’ v kontekstu procesa neolitizacije Balkana in Karpatov. 

KEY WORDS – Palaeolithic; Neolithic; Eurasia; transition to farming; symbolism 

INTRODUCTION 

The prejudices toward hunter-gatherers in general, ded and engendered all the others in the process of 
and Mesolithic peoples in particular, are well em-transition to farming, and that the regions periphbedded in the context of the humanistic evaluation eral to the Levant did not become neolithicised until 
of the genesis of European civilization ever since his-the new ideology reached them (Cauvin 2000.23, 
torian Herodotus of Halicarnassus (ca 485–425 BC) 207–208). Steven Mithen, thinks on contrary, that 
marked the agricultural frontier in his book The His-the rise of agriculture was a direct consequence of 
tory as the boundary between the civilized and the ‘an integration of technical and natural history in-
barbarian worlds. The prejudices became broadly ac-telligence’ evolved with the emergence of ‘cognitive 
cepted in the typologically oriented perception of fluidity’ (a term denoting how the modular human 
European prehistory as Gordon Childe put forward mind has learned to work) and the origins of art, re-
the concepts of ‘an oriental view’ and of the Euro-ligion, and science in the upper Palaeolithic. There 
pean Neolithic ‘as a story of imitation’ and ‘at best, were domestications of plants and animals that can 
an adaptation of Middle Eastern achievements’ (Mül-only be related to the initial Neolithic (Mithen 1996. 
ler 1972.101–131; Trigger 1980.66–67; Budja 1996. 217–226). 
61–76). 

In southeastern Europe, the transition to farming 
It was suggested that changes in collective psycho-has been related to intrusive agricultural communi-
logy – ‘the revolution of symbols’– must have prece-ties that created the Neolithic diaspora in which far


Mihael Budja 

ming communities dispersed across the regions. It 
was hypothesised that the migrating farmers brought 
in the new technologies, symbolic behaviours and 
symbols. The appearance of pottery has been understood for decades as the exclusive marker of cultural discontinuity between Late Mesolithic and Early 
Neolithic cultures. Pottery decoration was chosen as 
the marker of “indisputable typological similarities” 
with the cultural traditions of Asia Minor on the one 
hand, and the marker of the Early Neolithic ethnic 
groups on the other. 

In the scenario of endemic movement, ‘earplugs’ 
‘pins’ and ‘stamp seals’ are hypothesised to have 
been well embedded in the baggage of the immigrants. They have been understood as signifiers of 
a ‘marine version of the wave of advance model’ 
(Renfrew 1987.169–170), and also used as markers 
of the Near Eastern ‘great exodus’ and ‘insular colonisation’ of the Balkans (Perles 2001.283–290; 2003. 
99–113). 

It was hypothesised also that social and symbolic domestication preceded the transition to agriculture in 
the northern Balkans (Hodder 1990.31–32, 41–43). 

In desimplifying the logic of colonization and transition to farming in southeastern Europe we pointed 
out elsewhere that elements of the Neolithic package are well embedded in hunter-gatherer social contexts and that Neolithic symbolic structures in the 
Balkans do not mirror the paradigmatic ornamental 
and symbolic principles of Asia Minor (Budja 2003a; 
2003b; 2004 in press) 

IN PURSUIT OF THE SYMBOLIC 

The dichotomy between the material world and invisible ideas and feelings are topics under constant 
discussion. It may appear trivial, but while anthropologists can usually assess the functions and meanings of most artefacts and symbols by correlating 
them with selected, observable behaviours, pre-historians must construct hypothetical behaviours which 
can never be verified directly. Assigning functions to 
prehistoric artefacts therefore relies exclusively on 
inferential arguments and the axiomatic principle 
that artefacts are material containers that convey 
archaeologically accessible symbolism to the degree 
that we think they are material and cultural. Discussing ‘Symbolic Archaeology’ John Robb (1998.331) 
pointed out an interpretative paradox: “If we understand how a prehistoric rock carvings was made tech-

Fig. 1. Entoptic basic categories, each represented 
here by a typical form (after Oster 1970.87). 
nologically without knowing why it was made culturally, the effort is considered a failure, and symbolic archaeology is pronounced impossible. But if we 
understand how prehistoric people produced their 
food technology without knowing the cultural reasons why they produced what and how much they 
did in the way they did, the effort is considered a 
successful demonstration of economic archaeology; 
never mind that we have reduced a complex, value-
laden set of social relations to a simple faunal inference.” 

However, at the risk of oversimplification, he outlines three major traditions that archaeologists have 
followed in conceptualizing symbols: the structuralist, the processual, and the post-modern. Each has 
its own preferred objects of study, understandings 
of social relations and power, and epistemology. 
While the first tradition treats symbols as cultural 
structures, in the second they have been viewed as 
tokens that represent reality. In the last, symbols 
have been manipulated as tesserae, arbitrarily incorporated into phenomenological experience (Robb 
1998.329–346). In the heuristics of identifying symbols, ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches have 
been recognized. Ethnographic-cultural narratives 
have significant positions in both, whether embedded in a cultural matrix within which clusters of archaeological data can be integrated into meaningful 
virtual behaviours or in reconfigurations of the data 
within middle-range hypothetical interpretations 
(Bouissac 2004. online). 

What we find to be creative approaches in the archaeology of symbols have been conceptualized as entoptics, ‘the signs of all times’ (Lewis-Williams and 
Dowson 1988; 1993), and as the cognitive model of 
‘external symbolic storage’ (Donald 1991; 1997; 
1998a; 1998b). 


The transition to farming and the ‘revolution’ of symbols in the Balkans. From ornament to entoptic and external symbolic storage 

The syntagm ‘external symbolic storage’ relates to 
“…the most salient and indisputable property of material culture: it exists only in relation to interpretative codes stored inside the heads of the people who 
invented it, that is, inside their ‘biological’ memory 
systems. Written symbols, and even other less explicitly symbolic aspects of material culture, are external to biological memory, and serve as storage 
devices for the information needed to replicate entire cultures. This simple fact changes the nature of 
shared cognition. But it also makes the archaeologist’s job very difficult, because the specific content 
of symbols can never exhaust their functions when 
in use. When in use, symbols engage biological memory, which is creative, constructive, dynamic, force. 
Symbols and cognitive artefacts are thus drawn into 
a maelstrom of shared cognitive activity in any culture. Artefacts are static things, and undoubtedly 
serve as static storage devices, but their functions in 
the larger cultural matrix go well beyond mere storage, because they are in dynamic interaction with 
the entire cognitive-cultural system in any living culture.” (Donald 1998b.184). Donald recognized external symbols as very powerful transforming forces 
in human life that altered the cognitive landscape as 
they became more potent storage devices, capable 
of storing explicit and more detailed knowledge. 

Donald’s model proposes three stages/transitions in 
the evolution of culture and cognition. The first and 
the second cognitive transformations are still genetically based and linked to the development of mimetic skills and lexical inventions related to oral-
mythic culture. The third, the transition from pre-
literate to symbolically literate societies, relates to 
the externalization of memory storage which rapidly 
involves new memory media and new types of symbolic artefacts. It began in the Upper Palaeolithic, 
and has been marked by a long and culturally cumu-

Fig. 2. Petroglyph in Helan Mountains, China (af-
ter Xu Cheng and Wei Zhong 1993.353). 
lative history of ‘visuo-symbolic’ invention, which 
advanced through various well-documented stages, 
culminating in a variety of complex graphic and numerical conventions, and writing systems. External 
memory evolved to the point where records, mediated by a “literate” class, started to play a governing 
role and a variety of large, externally-nested cultural 
products, called theories, emerged. 

In the process of the externalization of memory, he 
conceptualized four structural arrangements. We 
point out two of these: cognitive reorganization and 
the changed role of biological memory (Donald 
1997.744–747). 

The first introduced new cognitive skill-clusters that 
are referred to as ‘literacy’ routines, including full 
symbolic literacy extends, which are well beyond 
the traditional Western perception of literacy, that 
is, alphabetic reading competence. The neuropsychology of various acquired dyslexias, dysgraphias and 
acalculias has revealed a cluster of functionally dissociable cognitive “modules” in the brain that are 
necessary to support these skills. It is hypothesized 
(see above) that ‘literacy support networks’ are anatomically and functionally distinct from those that 
support oral-linguistic skills. There are three dissociable, visual, interpretative paths involved in symbolic literacy: the pictorial, ideographic, and phonetic. They emerged at different historical phases of 
visuo-symbolic evolution, and remain functionally 
independent of one another. The most basic is pictorial, and is needed to interpret pictorial symbols 
such as pictograms and visual metaphors. The second, ideographic, maps visual symbols directly onto 
ideas, as in the case of Chinese ideographic writing, 
most systems of counting, and analogue graphic devices like maps and histograms. The third is phonetic, and serves to map graphemes onto phonemes, 
as in alphabetical print. 

The second structural arrangement, the changed role 
of biological memory, relates to the way in which 
external mnemonic devices alter human working 
memory. Working memory is generally conceived of 
as a system centred on consciousness. Using a cognitive system model, Donald hypothesised that when 
we think, we either imagine, via the sketchpad (responsible for the manipulation and temporary storage of visual and spatial information), or verbalize, 
via an articulatory loop (responsible for storing 
speech-based information). In preliterate cultures, 
all individuals have had to work with this, and its 
limitations are well documented. 


Mihael Budja 

This situation changed with 
the increased use of external 
symbolic storage and the breaking out of this limited working memory arrangement. 
The larger architecture within 
which the individual mind 
works has changed – the structure of internal memory is now 
reflected in an external mnemonic context that serves as 
the real ‘working memory’ for 
many mental operations, and 
as an external ‘long-term’ store. 
It allowed for important new 
developments, new meta-linguistic skills, the kinds of symbolic products and cognitive 
artefacts that humans could produce and maintain. 
It is believed that any single new entry in the external storage “system, from Palaeolithic cave-paintings 
to modern science, has never been a trivial occupation” (Donald 1997.737–791; 1998a. 7–17). 

This model has been criticised because of its inconsistent correlation of the sequence of evolution of 
material culture and the sequence of cognitive transitions. Renfrew (1998.3–4) disagrees that the (third) 
transition to ‘theoretic culture utilizing external symbolic storage’ is marked as a palimpsest of a long and 
culturally cumulative history from upper Palaeolithic paintings to early writing systems in Mesopotamia. External symbolic storage employing symbolic 
material culture, he suggests, was not a characteristic of hunter-gatherer, but of agrarian societies, and 
the third transition can be equated only with the 
transition to farming. External symbolic storage in 
the form of writing, he adds, is a marker of a fourth 
transition and urban societies. 

Parallel to ‘external symbolic storage’ Lewis-Williams and Dowson (1988.201–244; 1991.149–162; 
1993.55–65) proposed the concept of ‘the signs of 
all times’. The proposition is based on a neuropsychological bridge between modern experiences in 
altered states of consciousness and Palaeolithic and 
Neolithic imagery. They actualize the idea, originally 
proposed by Oster (1970) in America and Eichmeier, 
Höfer, Knoll and Meire-Knoll (Eichmeier and Höfer 
1974) in Europe that the abstract ornaments and 
motifs on Neolithic pottery, clay stamps, megalithic 
art, rock paintings and engravings in Europe, Africa 
and Australia derived from the luminous, geometric 
entoptic phenomena, known also as form constants 

and phosphenes, seen in certain altered states of 
consciousness. 

Neuropsychological laboratory experiments have 
shown that in an initial stage of trance, participants 
see luminous, pulsating, enlarging, fragmenting and 
changing geometric forms which include grids, sets 
of zigzags and parallel lines, dots, triangles, squares, 
circles, spirals, arcs, crosses, meanders, and nested 
centenary curves. (Fig. 1) These forms are defined 
as entoptic phenomena because they are ‘within 
the optic system’ and are independent of an external source of light. In the deeper, second stage of 
trance, participants try to make sense of these forms 
by elaborating them into iconic forms as objects familiar and/or important to them. In religious contexts they become important ritual objects. In the 
third and deepest stage of trance, mental imagery is 
more culturally controlled, and entoptics tend to be 
peripheral. The participant’s attention is focused on 
iconic hallucinations of animals, people, monsters 
and highly emotional events in which they themselves participate. At this point of visual hallucination two intertwined principles overlap: geometric, 
entoptic images that derive from the universal human nervous system (neurologically controlled elements), and culturally controlled iconic hallucinatory visions of culturally controlled items such as 
animals and people, as well as somatic and aural experiences that derive from the subject’s mind or 
culture (psychological elements). The complex iconic 
images appear to drive from memory, and are often 
associated with powerful emotional experiences. 
This shift to iconic imagery is also accompanied by 
an increase in vividness. Both kinds of image are 
processed or transformed according to neurologi-

Fig. 3. Bedolina petroglyph topographic map (after Turconi 1998.Fig. 1). 

The transition to farming and the ‘revolution’ of symbols in the Balkans. From ornament to entoptic and external symbolic storage 

Fig. 4. Upper Palaeolithic ivory figurines. Mezin, 
Desna River basin, Ukraine (after Abramova 1962. 
XXXI). 
cally based principles such as replication, fragmentation, combination, rotation, superpositioning, and 
juxtapositioning. The ways in which subjects perceive both entoptics and iconic hallucinations are 
many and varied. In such an experience a grid or 
dots may be integrated with animals and people, or 
an animal can be blended with the characteristics of 
another species and combined to produce composite 
animals and therianthropes. These three stages are 
not necessarily sequential, but cumulative. 

Lewis-Williams and Dowson applied the three stage 
model of altered consciousness to two known and 
ethnographically well documented shamanistic arts 
from different continents and to Upper Palaeolithic 
paintings and engravings, both mobile and parietal, 
as well as to Neolithic megalithic art. The first is that 
of the southern African San (Bushman) rock paintings and engravings. The second is Shoshone Coso 
rock art of the California Great Basin. Both arts are 
known historically and ethnographically to be shamanistic. San rock art was favoured because shamanistic images can be studied simultaneously from 
two directions: neuropsychological approach explains the forms of depictions; the meanings of these 
depictions can be established from directly relevant 
ethnography. 

In applying the neuropsychological, three stage model of altered consciousness and its utility to Palaeolithic and Neolithic imagery, they say that as many 
as 437 of the 488 (or 90%) societies that have been 
surveyed had some form of institutional altered states of consciousness. They ranged from foraging to 
more complex societies and, therefore “there are a 
priori grounds for suspecting some form of institutionalised altered states during the Neolithic” (Lewis-
Williams and Dowson 1993.55; see also Sherrat 
1991.50–64). However, as neuropsychological research has shown that hallucinations comprise geometric and realistic imagery, we have to be cautious 

in claiming that Upper Palaeolithic or Neolithic art 
derived “in part from the mental imagery of altered 
states if only signs had been present”, and that 
“practically any geometric motif by itself” can not be 
recognized as entoptic in origin and therefore indicative of shamanism (Lewis-Williams and Dowson 
1990.407; Lewis-Williams 2004.107). 

It is hypothesised that at “least some Palaeolithic 
people experienced hallucinations induced by one 
or more of the many techniques that range from the 
ingestion of psychotropic drugs to sensory deprivation”, and their mental imagery “would necessarily have included hallucinations very like the 
range of depictions in their art” (Lewis-Williams 
1991.158; 2002). It has also been shown that altered 
states of consciousness can be experienced in a variety of circumstances other than shamanism, and 
that entopic phenomena can be seen in migraine attacks and schizophrenic conditions (Asaad and Shapiro 1986.1088–1097; Richards 1971.88–96). However, migraine-induced visions have certainly have 
played a role in religious experience in the European 
Christian tradition and, there is no need to exclude 
the variety of mental disorders, including schizophrenia, migraine and epilepsy, as well as the induction of altered states of consciousness by sensory deprivation, rhythmic dancing, hyperventilation, and pricking sensations etc. (Eliade 1972; Pearson 2002). 

Sherratt (1991.51–52, 54, 61–62) indicates the importance of sensory-altering substances by saying 
that there would have been an extensive knowledge 
of the ‘various mood-altering substances’ which 
were available in the natural flora, and which survive today in the attenuated form of ‘herbal reme-

Fig. 5. Ceramic ‘Black Venus’ of Dolní Vestonice 
(after Soffer et al. 1993.Fig.1) 

Mihael Budja 

dies’. The quantity of the stimulant need not be 
large, as it may be enhanced by fasting or breath 
control. Such experiences are likely to be deliberately sought in the course of ceremonies or rituals, 
at that time perhaps seen as a means of accessing 
other worlds. He sums up by saying that there was 
a considerable potential for the spread of even mild 
stimulants and of methods of preparation which enhanced their effectiveness and, that “any account 
of prehistoric Europe which omits a consideration of 
such substances is likely to be incomplete”. Along 
the written records which give many accounts of 
drug use he notes some concrete evidence – ceramic 
pots for smoke inhalation in the Mihailovka, Tripolye, and Bodrogkeresztur cultures in eastern Europe, 
and in megalithic complexes in western Europe. 

It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that some 
form of shamanism can be applied to early prehistoric art to objectify a religion centred on altered 
states of consciousness. Because the human nervous 
system is everywhere alike, we can assume that the 
effects of its functioning were the same from the Aurignacien to the present, and in all parts of the 
world. Neuropsychological research has shown that 
visual hallucinations experienced in altered states 
are cross-culturally uniform (Eichmeier and Höfer 
1974; Lewis-Williams 1991.159–160; 2002.189– 
227; Dowson 1998a. 73; 1998b.333–343; Dowson 
and Porr 2001.165–177). 

However, what needs to be mentioned is a criticism 
of the thesis that archaeological findings may be interpreted as shamanic and that there exists something like a ‘general shamanic ability’. Anthropologists have made a coherent and strong front against, 
as they want to be “a refreshing antidote to a regrettable phenomenon…i.e. the uncritical and unfounded 
presentation of ‘shamanism’ as a key to understanding prehistoric rock art.” (Francfort and Hama-
yon, Bahn 2001.51). The concept of ‘the signs of all 
times’ has been ideologised, such that rock engravings should be understood as homogenous religious phenomenon shared by the ‘primitives’ of all 
times and places, from Eurasian Palaeolithic hunters to the San of Africa and Shoshone of America, 
having one religion and one iconography, while 
‘high’ civilizations have complex religious and religious iconographies. It is believed, paradoxically, 
that archaeologists marginalized shamanic processes 
to the level where rock art is interpreted as the creation of shamans, who, after a trance experience induced by obsessive dancing, fasting or hallucinogenic 
drugs, depict their visions on rocks and artefacts 

Fig. 6. ‘Fragmented’ anthropomorphic ceramic fig-
urines from Dolní Vestonice and Pavlov (after 
Verpoorte 2001.Figs. 3. 6, 7, 8, 9, 46 and 54). 
(Layton 2000.169–186; Klein et al. 2002.383–420; 
Helventson and Bahn 2003.213–224; se also Hodgson 2000.866–873). 

We will not enter into a discussion of the diagnostic 
element of shamanism and the social status of shamans, but point out the concept of ‘labelled landscape’ that one may find neutral. That is to say, pre-
and historically interactive symbolic palimpsests are 
available where replicated, fragmented, combined, 
rotated and superpositioned entoptics associated 
with animals and people have been recognized as 
evidence of an external symbolic storage of spatial 
knowledge, not necessarily related to a shamanistic interpretative network. 

LABELLED LANDSCAPE 

Along with temporal continuity, geographical continuity – the universal occurrence of rock art in Eurasia, Africa and Australia – has been demonstrated 
elsewhere. The rock art of China seems to be the 
earliest that has been recorded in historical documents, as early 6th century AD, when the geographer Li Daoyuan (472–527) mentioned the rock engraving in Shuijing Zhu (Commentary on the Classic 
of Rivers), he saw while surveying the land in many 
parts of China (Chen Zhaofu 1991.26–36). 

The Chinese rock art concentrations, found along 
the northern frontier close to the remains of the 


The transition to farming and the ‘revolution’ of symbols in the Balkans. From ornament to entoptic and external symbolic storage 

Fig. 7. Zoomorphic ceramic statuettes from Pred-
mosti and Dolní Vestonice (after Verpoorte 2001. 
Figs. 3.73 and 8.1). 
Great Wall, apparent symbols of the Chinese empire, 
have been studied recently (Xu and Wei 1993; Dematte 2004.5–23) (Fig. 2). Petroglyph sites are located on the two main mountain ranges: the Yinshan 
of Inner Mongolia, which runs for over thousand kilometres along the Yellow River, and the Helanshan 
of Ningxia Province. Archaeological and historical 
data indicate that for millennia – from the Neolithic 
to the later dynastic phases in the nineteenth century – these areas were (military) borders that separated different economic lifestyles, nomadic pastoralism in the north and arable farming in the south. It 
is believed that these mountains were chosen as petroglyph sites not only because they provided stone 
surfaces necessary for carving, but also because their 
canyons were on communication routes which connected the world of the steppe with China. Archaeological and textual evidence shows that the northern 
silk route passed through these areas, and that the 
local nomadic populations were engaged continually 
in exchange and trading activities. Paola Dematte 
suggests that the petroglyphs and paintings there 
were not only associated with religion, ritual and 
shamanistic activities, but also related to more prosaic activities such as dotting the landscape. It is that 
nomadic societies created their own signs to mark 
borders and to reiterate ‘the symbolic attachment’ to 
the land with which they identified. She points out 
a ‘deeper and visual connection’ between the single 
petroglyphs and written signs of the earliest (iconographic and symbolic) types (generally known as 

pictographs). It cannot be overlooked that these pictures also functioned in roles which in literate societies are taken up by writing. If the function of writing and that of petroglyphs may have something in 
common, there is also a deeper and visual connection between the two, particularly if the single petroglyphs are compared with the earliest pictographic forms of writing. In later periods, when writing 
became more widespread among the nomads, writing and engravings were combined and sometimes 
petroglyph production disappeared and writing took 
over the same surfaces. The inscriptions in Xixia 
script appended next to earlier petroglyphs describe 
them as ‘the parents of writing’ or ‘the writing of the 
spirits of writing’, thus making clear the close connection perceived by literate people between the 
two sign systems (O.c. 20). The systematic simplification and transformation of images into easily recognizable narrative symbols is an acceptable indication that petroglyphs were probably used to record 
and communicate information, perhaps to later generations, neighbouring groups, or even encroaching 
enemies. Similar spatial communication ‘is also not 
unlike’ that of literate cultures which were attached 
to their social territories by writings, edicts, historical inscriptions etc. (Dematte 2004.17–21). A similar ‘borderland’ concept has been applied recently in 
the interpretation of rock art distribution in Europe 
(Bradley 2000; see also Coles 2000). 

There is no doubt that signs, labelling the landscape 
at significant locations, have been embedded in multiple functions and levels of symbolic behaviour, including spatial perspective. But more indicative are 
the alternative contexts where the topographic maps 
and complex landscape representations have been 
attached to rocks, house walls, and pots. There is a 
corpus of 43 prehistoric maps available, 
ranging from Almaden Upper Palaeolithic cave painting to 
Iron Age rock carving 
in Val Camonica, and 
a list of 67 hunting, 
fishing and gathering 
societies that created 
such maps (Zubrow 
and Daly 1998.164– 
165, 170). Palaeolithic and Neolithic petroglyphs, cave paintings, rock paintings, 
wall paintings, and 

Fig. 8. Anthropomorphic 
ceramic figurine from 
Maina, Yenisei River ba-
sin in Siberia (from Vasi-
l’ev 1985.Fig.2). 

Mihael Budja 

bone engravings are pictorial, including all the ‘the 
signs of all times’. They are considered to be maps, 
as they display spatial relationships. They tend to 
have a focal point, in that emphasis and resolution 
decrease with distance from familiar points; and 
they show usage, ownership and horizon marking 

(O.c. 167). The well-known examples are the petroglyphic maps at Bedolina in Val Camonica in the Dolomites (Turconi 1998.85–113) (Fig. 3), a wall painting map in Çatalhüyük (Mellaart 1967.Figs. 59, 60) 
and the famous Tepe Gawra landscape jar (cf. Zubrow and Daly 1998.Figs. 13.1–2). All the items listed have been hypothesised as memory devices and, 
we may additionally say they are multifunctional and 
multidimensional in symbolic behaviour. The palimpsests of ‘entoptics’, ‘pictorial’ and ‘ideographic’ visual representation are still driven by mimetic organizational principles, although they operate as external symbolic storages at a different, more sophisticated level. However, they clearly reflect the external 
representation of spatial knowledge. 
THE GREAT GODDESS OR DRESSED CERAMIC 
VENUS, SHAMANISM, EXTERNAL SYMBOLIC 
STORAGE, AND THE ORIGINS OF CERAMIC 
FRAGMENTATION 

The small series of early Upper Palaeolithic sculptures in Europe consisting of female figurines, therianthropes, and several animal figurines is believed 
to have been followed in Gravettian by numerous 
zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figurines carved 
from mammoth ivory, bones and tusks, limestone 
and marble, or modelled in ceramics. There are corpuses of some 200 female figurines, and a much larger, but ill-defined number of animal figurines whose 
distribution in Eurasia from the Pyrenees to Lake 
Baikal in Siberia indicate a Gravettian cultural tradi

tion. The main focus of attention has been on Palaeolithic depictions of women, commonly named Venuses. Less attention has been paid to stylized female 
figurines and the ‘design motifs’ attached to them. 
This selective focus on the emotionally charged primary and secondary sexual characteristics has led to 
‘gynecocentric’ (see Meskell 1995.74–86) explanations of symbols of fertility, palaeo-erotica and self-
portraiture on one hand, and conflicting conceptualizations of female divinity and the nature of mother 
goddesses (Ucko 1968; Gamble 1982; Gimbutas 
1982; 1989; 1991; Marshack 1991.17– 31; McDermott 1996.227–275; Goodison and Morris 1998; 
Soffer, Adovasio and Hyland 2000. 511– 537). 

It is worth remembering that Marija Gimbutas, although finding the model of the ‘Great Mother’ deity 
inconsistent with her conceptualization of the complex of nineteen female divinities embedded in the 
‘Great Goddess’ (1989), applied to the Palaeolithic 
parthenon the ‘bird goddess’ only. She believes she 
has identified and decoded at least fifty ideograms, 
including many geometrical and other ‘abstract signs’ 
and ‘animal symbols’, but there is, again, a very limited number to which she applied to Palaeolithic 
imagery, and all of them supposedly relate to ‘aquatic symbols’, ‘waters of life’ and ‘aquatic family’ (Gimbutas 1982; 1989). 

Three-dimensional imagery, animal statuettes, human figurines and therianthropes, (whether they 
bear geometric signs and entoptics or not), have 
been hypothesised in an alternative approach as 
shaman’s helpers – it is believed they were reified 
spirit animals and dead ancestors, with all their prophylactic and other powers, as integral parts of shamanism (Lewis-Williams 2002.169–293; Schlesier 
2001.410; see also Layton 2000.169–186). The suggested examples from Europe (Predmostí, Dolní Ves-


Fig. 9. Ceramic assemblages of Upper Palaeolithic Pavlovian sites in Central Europe (after Verpoorte 
2001.Tab. 5.1). 


The transition to farming and the ‘revolution’ of symbols in the Balkans. From ornament to entoptic and external symbolic storage 

Fig. 10. Composed ceramic figurine, Dolní Vestoni-
ce in Moravia (after Verpoorte 2001.Fig. 3.6). 
tonice) and Siberia (Mal’ta) are embedded in Gravettian and Solutrean cultural contexts. 

A much more simplistic approach focuses on the 
question of whether Gravettian Venuses in Eurasia 
depict an Upper Palaeolithic ideology of dressing or 
not. The results of very recent studies indicate ‘dressed female bodies’ and the occurrence of textile use 
and weaving technology. The focus has thus been 
moved from the sexual characteristics to ‘symbols of 
achievements’ of female weavers and related power, 
prestige, and value (Soffer, Adovasio and Hyland 
2000.511–537; Soffer and Adovasio 2004.270– 
282). The ‘geometrical design’ on Mezin’s figurines 
have been recognized as weaving patterns and design elements that can be linked to ‘East European 
Slavs’ (2000.533) (Fig. 4). We agree, they can be interpreted as aniconic geometrical designs for all 
times, but they might also have been acting as entoptic phenomena. 

Despite the strong wind of interpretative change, 
there are still some intriguing points in interpreting 
Upper Palaeolithic imagery and technologies. Janusz 

K. Koz³owski has pointed out recently that “Gravettian Venus figurines exhibit 
more characteristics in common with the figurines of the 
initial Neolithic of the Near 
East than with the Late Magdalenian or Epigravettian”. 
His comment was marginalized, as it revives Gimbutas 
interpretation, and conflates 
time and space (Soffer, Adovasio and Hyland 2000.526, 
533; Koz³owski 1992). 
However, it is broadly accepted that there are many 
thousands of ceramic artefacts – anthropomorphic 
and zoomorphic figurines and pellets – across Eurasia, from the Pyrenees to the Yenisei Basin in Siberia, well-embedded in Upper Palaeolithic contexts. 
We can not avoid the similarities of shape and ornamentation to much later Neolithic figurines in Anatolia and Europe, although thousands of years lie 
between them, and they appear indifferent social 
and economic contexts. It is a fact, however, that ceramics were used for figurines, instead of pots and 
polished stone, for decorative elements instead of 
axes. 

The anthropomorphic figurines, zoomorphic statuettes and pellets of fired clay were produced at Upper Palaeolithic sites at Dolní Vestonice, Pavlov, Petrkovice and Predmostí in Moravia (Klíma 1989. 
81–90; Vandiver et al. 1989.1002–1008; Soffer et 
al. 1993.259–275; Gamble 1999.402–404). The 
most easterly anthropomorphic ceramic figurine 
was found at an open air site at Mayininskaya near 
Maina, on the left bank of Yenisei River in Siberia 
(Vasil’ev 1985.193–196; Maina online). (Figs. 5, 6, 
7, 8) 

In Central Europe, ill-defined types of ceramic fragments were found at Krems-Wachtberg, Moravany-
Lopata, Jaroov, and hypothetically at Kaov and 
Cejkov (Verpoorte 2001.95–96). On the Russian 
Plain at Kostenki, on the banks of the River Don, 
more than four hundred fragments of low-temperature-fired ceramic were found, contextually associated with hearth, marl and ivory Venus figures, and 
animal statuettes (Abramova 1962; Soffer et al. 
2000.814). 

At the Dolní Vestonice and Pavlov camps, located 
about three hundred meters from each other, more 
than 16 000 ceramic objects have been found. According to the available statistics, at Dolní Vestonice almost all the figurines and statuettes are fragmented 

Fig. 11. Entoptic phenomena engraved on mammoth tusk, Pavlov in Mo-
ravia (after Verpoorte 2001.Fig. 3.69) 

Mihael Budja 

(Fig. 9). It is interesting 
to note that, with the exception of Predmostí, ceramic objects at the other sites were contextual 
associated with hearts or 
kilns, and that many fractures were not caused by 
mechanical means, but 
are high-energy fractures, 
caused by thermal shock. 
It should be noted that 
the pellets and balls 
which form a large part 
of the ceramic inventory 
remained mostly unbroken. This led Vandiver 
and Soffer to reconstruct 
the entire process of ceramic production by examining the technological 
skills which were involved. They found out that 
the local loess was suitable for shaping the female figurines, animal statuettes and pellets. Figurines and statuettes were made of several small pieces of clay stuck together (Fig. 10). Heads, legs, feet, 
ears and tails were shaped separately and attached 
to the bodies. They were fired at temperatures between 500° and 800°C. The most important finding 
was the evidence of thermal shock, an explosive 
reaction which shatters clay when it is being fired. 
It is believed the figurines, undried or fired at low 
temperature, had been purposefully rewetted to 
absorb some liquid, then put into a hot fire where 
they loudly exploded, sending pieces flying in all 
directions. It is believed the thermal shock was intentional, and the process of making and firing was 
therefore more important than achieving a lasting 
final product. All ivory objects and stone figurines, 
in contrast, survived in fairly complete states. 

Fig. 12. ‘Therianthro-
pe’ incised on mam-
moth tusk, Predmostí 
in Moravia (after Mar-
shack 1991.Fig.5) 
We have already mentioned that the majority of ceramics were found in the contexts of everyday activities, but at Dolní Vestonice, around and in the 
‘oven-like hearth’ located in the middle of the hut, 
“two thousand pieces of ‘ceramic’, among which 
about one hundred and seventy-five with traces of 
modelling” were found (Verpoorte 2002.56, 128). 
The locus of production located in the settlement 
may reflect a utilitarian, but controlled behaviour related to making, firing and the noticeable fragmenting of the female figurines and animal statuettes. 

We should not overlook the fact that that thousands of clay pellets were not thermally shocked 
and were quite consistently fired in the higher temperature and equally distributed over the site (Vandiver et al. 1989.1002–1008; Soffer et al. 1993.259– 
275). A much smaller amount of ceramics was found 
at Dolní Vestonice II, where six modelled fragments 
had been deposited in the vicinity of a triple burial. 
Seven more were found in the ‘first settlement unit’, 
deposited in “two depressions in the vicinity of a 
large heart and a male burial” (Verpoorte 2002.95). 

Venuses designed for fragmentation are not ornamented. There are a few at Dolní Vestonice and Pavlov bearing almost identical incised pattern on their 
backs (Soffer et al. 2000.Fig.3; Verpoorte 2001.Figs. 
3.6, 3.7, 3.11, 3.79). (Figs. 6, 10) If we accept two 
basic premises: that the ceramics were not just kiln 
waste because the makers were ‘awfully bad potters’ 
and, that the female figurines and animal statuettes 
had been intentionally fragmented in well visible 
and audible explosions, then this was not merely 
‘playing with fire’, but well-controlled pyrotechnic 
manipulation with newly adopted media – the ceramics. It is worth remembering Gordon Childe, besides the Neolithic revolution, put forward the idea 
that: “Pot making is perhaps the earliest conscious 
utilization by man of a chemical change ... this 
change in the quality of the material must have 
seemed a sort of magic transubstantiation – the conversion of mud or dust into stone. It may have 
prompted some philosophical questions as to the 
meaning of substance and sameness.” (Childe 1951. 
76–77). 

Pot making obviously happened much earlier, and 
they were not vessels, but female figurines, animal 
statuettes, and small pellets that appeared in Eurasia 
first. The figurines from Dolní Vestonice and Pavlov 
are assigned to the Pavlovian, a local variant of the 
Eastern Gravettian techno-complex, and dated to 


Fig. 13. Entoptics on 
ivory plate, Mal’ta 
in Angara River basin, north of Irkutsk 
in Siberia (Abramova 1962.L. 2, LI. 2). 
Plate(14.1x8.5cm) 
with a drill-hole in 
its centre features 
three engraved snake figures on one 
side and impressed 
spirals on the other. 


The transition to farming and the ‘revolution’ of symbols in the Balkans. From ornament to entoptic and external symbolic storage 

Fig. 14. Pottery in Osipovka and Ust-Karenga cul-
tural complexes in Siberia and Xianrendong site 
in southern China (after Kuzmin 2002.Figs. 2 and 
7; Zhang Chi 2002.Fig. 9). 
about 26 000 BP (Verpoorte 2001.86). Ceramics at 
Kostenki are embedded in dates as early as 24 100 
BP to as late as 18 000 BP (Soffer et al. 2000.814). 
A ceramic figurine at Mayininskaya was deposited 
in layer 5, which was dated to 16 540±170 BP and 
16 176±180 BP (Vasil’ev 1985.193–196; 1996; Vasil’ev et all 2002.526, Tab. 1). 

It may not be surprising that transubstantiation and 
fragmentation in the central European Upper Palaeolithic social context, whether formalized or not, 
were objectified with the help of Venuses, as they represent the principal component of the three-dimensional imagery of Gravettian parthenon. But it is surprising that the entoptics were not attached to new 
media, although being broadly applied to ivory and 
bone imagery, and also stone figurines. Did the 
audio-visual effects of transubstantiation and fragmentation simply replace them, and the visual and 
audible magic of newly adopted media, which was 
not conditioned by the shaman’s altered states of 
consciousness, become accessible to the all members 
of community? 

It is believed that ivory and stone Venuses had a 
much higher value than those modelled in ceramics, 
as there is no evidence that they were circulating 
within an alliance or exchange network and that 
“they were not made to be presented to Palaeolithic 
spectators” (Verpoorte 2002.99, 108, 129). But it is 
certainly not the case in Kostenki, where marble, 

stone and ivory female figurines were broken intentionally, as Abramova (1962.9) pointed out, adding that the number of fragments and traces of repeated pounding might suggest that the destruction 
of figurines had been ritually necessitated. And we 
should not overlook engraved entoptic phenomena 
at Pavlov and therianthrope, an engraved Venus at 
Predmostí that can be associated with iconic hallucinations. Marshack (1991.24) characterized the latter 
as ‘horned geometric female’ and ‘mythologized creature’. Ivory plate at Mal’ta with engraved snakes on 
one side and impressed spirals on the other is believed to objectify a shaman’s ‘helper’ (see above) 
attached to his costume (Figs. 11, 12, 13). 

We mentioned above that we would not enter into 
a discussion of shamanism and their social status, it 
is reasonable to hypothesise that ceramic production – manipulation, with transubstantiation as the 
matter of technical knowledge and skills – may have 
affected their social position. Bearing in mind the 
dangers inherent in using ethno-historical evidence, 
it is worth remembering that in some social contexts 
and related cosmologies potters may be injurious to 
others because they cause diseases. The worst thing 
that could happen was that a rain chief should come 
into contact with a potter. Both would die. The potter would swell up with moisture, while the rain 
chief perished from a dry cough (Barley 1994.64). 

Is it then possible that ceramic production in hunter-gatherer societies in central Europe was taboo 
from the end of the Pavlovian? And can we recognize the ceramic artefacts in the Pavlovian cultural 
context as external symbolic storage involving new 
technology, media and audio-visual symbolism? If 
so, we can assume that external symbolic storage 
employing technical and symbolic culture was therefore a characteristic of hunter-gatherer as much as 
of agrarian societies (contra Renfrew, see above). 
But it was not maintained continuously in Europe. 


Fig. 15. ‘Linearbandkeramik’ figurine from Boskov
tejn in Moravia (after Höckmann 1967.Abb. 
1.1). 


Mihael Budja 

However, it was in Siberia. 
The chronological discontinuity there is negligible and we 
might speculate that the 
knowledge of ceramic technology was maintained continuously as the datating of a ceramic anthropomorphic figurine at Mayininskaya in the 
Yenisei River basin (see 
above) is close to that of the 
earliest pottery that appeared 
in the Amur River basin in the settlement contexts 
of the Osipovka and Gromatukha cultures. Pottery 
was dated to within the period of ca. 16 500–14 500/ 
15 940–14 310 calBP (13 300–10 400 BP) (Kuzmin 
and Orlova 2000.356–365; Kuzmin 2002.43; Kuzmin and Keally 2001.1125; Kuzmin and Shewkomud 2003.42; Kuzmin et. al. 2003.39–42; Vasil’ev 1985.193–196; 1996; Vasil’ev et al. 2002. 
526.Tab. 1). 

It has been suggested on the basis of the latest compilation of the earliest radiocarbon dates that pottery was adopted ‘almost simultaneously, around 
14 000–13 000 BP’ in eastern Asia, which evidently 
predates the transition to farming. The ceramic vessels were thus recorded in cave sites at Miaoyan, Yuchanyan, Xiarendong and Diaotonghuan in southern 
China; the Odai Yamamoto, Kitahara and Tokumaru 
Nakata sites of the incipient Jomon (Chojakubo-Mikoshiba cultural complex) in eastern and northern 
Japan; the Gasya, Khummi, Goncharka and Gromatukha sites in Amur River basin in Siberia. The earliest vessels are described as deep bowls, with flat 
or pointed bases, with walls up to two centimetre 
thick. The estimated volume of the pot is approximately 5.5 to 6 litres. The secondary burning, carbonized adhesion, soot and water lines seen on many 
fragments, suggest that the basic functions of the 
pottery were boiling water and foods or other organic materials and extracting 
fish oils from salmonids. 
There are differences in ornamental motifs between the 
regions. While in Japan, plain 
vessels prevail, vertically grooved decoration is typical of 
Chinese pottery. In Siberia 
the ornamental principles are 
more complex, as they consist 
of vertical and horizontal grooves and zig-zag impressions. 
On some, the vertical zig-zag 


designs and horizontal lines were made with a comb, 
on others, sinuous lines were made by cords (Zhao 
and Wu 2000.233–239; Zhang 2002.29–35; Kuzmin 2002.42; Keally, Taniguchi and Kuzmin 2003. 
3–14) (Fig. 14). 

There have been few attempts to explain the principle of fragmentation as a social practice in hunter-gatherer contexts, especially for the ceramics. Departures and arrivals are hypothesised as an obvious motivation for such a rite in forager mobility 
(Chapman 2000.40–41), and the art (but not diffracted) could have been involved in establishing 
and maintaining the identity, the genius loci, of 
these places (Verpoorte 2002.12). 

‘Fragmented Goddesses’ are more intensively discussed in Neolithic farming contexts. It is not because they were believed to posses the special creative magic necessary to coax fertility out of the 
earth and to be broken and discarded around the 
village, which brought new life to the soil (Winn 
1995), but also because of a wide variety of available ethnographic practices. Figurines are used in initiation rites and then destroyed, buried or kept by 
an initiate; they are buried with the owners after 
use in fertility rites; they act as tokens in economic 
and social transactions (Talaly 1993). The principles 
of fragmentation and accumulation in the contexts 

Fig. 16. Lepenski Vir petroglyph (after Srejovi
 and Babovi
 1983.Fig. 149). 
Fig. 17. Lepenski Vir ‘therianthrope’ (after Srejovi
 and Babovi
 1983. Fig. 
118). 

The transition to farming and the ‘revolution’ of symbols in the Balkans. From ornament to entoptic and external symbolic storage 

of social interactions between persons, 
objects and places (Chapman 2000), 
and ‘diffracted’ approaches in studies 
of predominantly female figurines in 
‘early villages’ (Lesure 2002) have 
been narrated recently. 

For our approach, it is more important 
that in the Far East, in Jomon hunter-
gatherer contexts, female figurines 
were incorporated into community rituals, where they were deliberately 
broken and scattered around the village (cf. Chapman 2000.25–26). Höckmann hypothesised a similar pattern 
in the central European Linearbandkeramik settlements, where the majority of figurines were intentionally broken and deposited as fragments, some still bearing an incised pattern on the backs similar to the Gravettian Venuses 
at Dolní Vestonice and Pavlov (Höckmann 1967.2, 
Abb. 1.1, 5.1) (Fig. 15). 

One can find of interest the ceramic ‘earplug’ embedded in a Gravettian assemblage at Pavlovi (Klíma 
1989.88, Abb. 4q). It is well known that earplugs 
have been played an important role in the scenario 
of endemic movement and early Neolithic colonization of Europe. Their restricted geographical distribution, as well the distribution of “pins” and “stamp 
seals”, is used as a key argument in modelling “insular colonisation” and rapid displacements over long 
distances, as they were hypothesised to be well embedded in the baggage of the immigrants. They have 
maintained this position since Miloji conceptualized the pre-pottery Neolithic in Greece (Renfrew 
1987.169–170; Perles 2001; 2003.99–113; Miloj

i 1959(1960).6; 1960.327–328). 

BOULDERS, POTS, ORNAMENTS AND/OR ENTOPTICS IN THE BALKAN MESOLITHIC AND NEOLITHIC 

We mentioned at the beginning that the transition 
to farming in southeastern Europe was related to intrusive agricultural communities that created the 
Neolithic diaspora in which farming communities 
dispersed across the regions. It was hypothesised 
that the migrating farmers brought in the new technologies, symbolic behaviours and symbols. The appearance of ceramic technology and pottery production has been understood for decades as the exclusive marker of cultural discontinuity between Late 

Mesolithic and Early Neolithic cultures. The white 
and red painted pottery decorations were chosen as 
markers of ‘indisputable typological similarities’ 
with the cultural traditions of Asia Minor on the one 
hand and the marker of sequential demic expansions from the Konya plain in central Anatolia to 
floodplains in Thessaly first, and to the Danube and 
Carpathian Basins later on. It is worth remembering 
that in the broader Eurasian context, the earliest 
pottery in Thessaly predates by two centuries the appearance of pottery in western Anatolia, and that 
there is no significant chronological difference in 
pottery appearance, whether located on the southern tip of the Balkan Peninsula in Thessaly or in its 
most northerly margin in the Danube Region (Budja 
2003a; 2004). 

Iann Hodder (1990.28–30) believes that on the margin of the early Neolithic world in the hunter-gatherer settlement palimpsest at Lepenski Vir in the 
Danube basin he can read how economic domestication is associated with or is preceded by social and 
symbolic domestication. As there is no evidence of 
domesticates available, he puts forward the idea 
that the trapezoidal houses objectifying arena where 
indigenous hunter-gatherers neolithicise themselves 
socially and symbolically. The act of domestication is 
supposed to have been dramatic. The dead bodies 
and/or selected bones of ancestors and the antlers 
of wild stag were brought into the houses and buried 
within the domus. The same principle he applies to 
“cultural products”, stone sculptures and statutes, 
which being wild because depict fish-like ancestors 
and retaining the form of natural boulders. They become domesticated when brought into houses and 
placed behind hearths. Pottery was not part of the 
scenario, although the excavator of the site, while 

Fig. 18. Lepenski Vir ‘topographic map’ petroglyph (after Srejo-
vi
 and Babovi
 1983.Fig. 130). 

Mihael Budja 

interpreting the Mesolithic cultural phases at Lepenski Vir, pointed out that monochrome pottery fragments had been found lying on the floor of fifteen 
Mesolithic trapezoidal buildings. He described the 
pottery assemblage as comprising simple forms with 
limited ornamental techniques and motifs. The pots 
were mainly undecorated, and those that were ornamented comprised impressed ornamentation made 
by fingertip and fingernail or the edges of freshwater shells and awls (Srejovi 1971.8–9). Pottery was 
contextually associated with burials, stone and other 
decorated sculptures, altars, and artefacts ornamented with various symbols and attached meanings 
deposited on the floors of the same buildings. A remarkable symbolic structure was well preserved in 
the centrally positioned trapezoidal building. A pot 
adorned with spiral ornaments was deliberately incorporated into a context associated with burials of 
newborns, and red and black coloured stone sculptures. Special attention should also be drawn at this 
point to a building where pottery was associated 
with a deer skull, a stone figurine and two juvenile 
burials (Garaanin and Radovanovi 2001.120, 
Fig. 4; Bori 1999.52; 2002a.Fig. 7; Budja 2003a. 
347–359). 

The Lepenski Vir site in general, and trapezoidal buildings in particular, were recently dubbed a “deep 
time metaphor”. Bori (2002b.46–74; see also Chapman 1993.71–121) hypothesises that they represent sacred heirlooms upon which repetitive mnemonic and apotropaic practices were performed. 
Houses with buried ancestors and animals and “boulders” placed on limestone floors he recognizes as 
sources of ancestral and apotropaic power and potency, evolving a consciousness of a collective deep 
time. From this perspective the disarticulated ancestral bones and skulls are attributed first-class apotropaic power and potency. Sculptured boulders are assigned as second-class agencies in anchoring and 
emitting ancestral powers and potencies. 

It is well known, however, that almost all of them 
are carved, engraved and red and/or black painted 
with secondary (hydrothermal) pigment that can be 
distinguished from traces of burning (Srejovi and 
Babovi 1983; Radovanovi 1996.140). But it is 
less known they bear petroglyphs, which we can interpret in accordance with a neuropsychological model of altered consciousness as ‘signs of all time’ – 
entoptic motifs and their construals (Fig. 16) and 
theriantropes (Fig. 17). Topographic markers and 
landscape representations are attached to some others (Fig. 18). They might have been maps and were 

Fig. 19. Lepenski Vir. Engraved and incised ima-
gery attached to stone monuments and stone, bone 
and antler tools and implements (after Srejovi
 
and Babovi
 1983.Figs. 29 and 34). 
perceived as mnemonic devices and as such can be 
incorporated into Zubrow’s and Daly’s corpus of prehistoric maps mentioned above. It is worth remembering that similar imagery was also attached to 
stone, bone and antler tools, and implements (O.c.) 
(Fig. 19). 

It is well known that they were embedded in hunter-gatherer settlement contexts at Lepenski Vir. But 
it is less known that they have also been found at 


The transition to farming and the ‘revolution’ of symbols in the Balkans. From ornament to entoptic and external symbolic storage 


Fig. 20. Lepenski Vir site plan showing centrally positioned trapezoidal building 54, and children burials, stone boulders and pottery distributions (after Babovi
 1997.Slika 1; Bonsall et al. 2000.Fig. 8; Bori
 
2002.Fig. 7). 

Vlasac, Padina, Hajduka Vodenica, Cuina Tarcului 
and Schela Cladovei in the Danube Djerdap gorges 
(Srejovi and Babovi 1983.56–57; Boroneat 1990. 
479). And it has been overlooked for decades that 
they were embedded in agricultural settlement contexts at Gura Baciului in Transylvania (Vlassa 1972. 
187–191; Lazarovici and Maxim 1995.379). 

We may hypothesise that hunter-gatherers and early 
farmers in the northern Balkans and Carpathians 
transformed the basic rock art principles in a way 
they made them portable and incorporated them into settlement and dwelling contexts. It is not that 
they brought and circulated the monuments within 
and between the settlements, but fixed them inside 
the trapezoidal buildings. 

The sandstone boulders and blocks were brought 
from some 10 km from the upper stream of a tributary of the Danube. Contextual studies show a clear 
spatial patterning of monuments within the buildings, as a high percentage of monuments are found 
behind the hearths at the rear of the houses (Srejovi1969; Srejovi and Babovi 1983; cf. Chapman 
1993.103) and associated with burials, some of them 
of new born infants and children (Budja 2003.352, 
Fig. 3). They were not visible from the outside. 

Were they institutionalised to mark the houses of ancestors and places of communal rituals, as is widely 
suggested? Perhaps, although it seems unlikely that 
the location of standing monuments in the dark confines of the rear of the buildings was conducive to 
communal, public and open rituals. It would be con

venient to hypothesise closed, lineal or kinship shamanic rituals in household contexts, like the shamanistic role in Lepenski Vir already suggested. The 
male remains in grave 69 show he was buried in a 
seated position, and it is believed he was a shaman, 
as the trapezoidal disposal of his skeleton is clearly 
reminiscent of an architectonic canon which was adhered to for a millennium (Srejovi 1969.90; Srejovi and Babovi 1983.44–45). 

Freidman and Rowlands presented in seventies 
(1977.201–276) a model of social dynamics in ‘tribal’ societies whereby competitive feasting in the 
context of ritual activities may led to the emergence 
of dominant groups with special status involving 
control of rites and mediation between the community and the supernatural but also over the production and circulation of goods outside the local territory. 

The question of the meaning of the geometric and 
iconic features attached to the boulders and tools 
remains. It would be convenient, again, to ascribe 
them to mental imagery that became part of a complex system of representation, and to prominent 
shamans who controlled by the agency of altered 
states of consciousness supernatural potency and 
manipulate with prestige and power. We must remember, however, that these symbolic storages 
were spatially embedded on the extremely strict 
geographical boundary in Danube Djerdap gorges 
that must have been respected in deep time as much 
by hunter-gatherers and nomadic pastoralist as farmers. 


Mihael Budja 


Fig. 21. Lepenski Vir. Symbolic inventory of the building 54 (after Srejovi
 and Babovi
 1983.18, 92– 
93,167; Garaanin and Radovanovi
 2001.Figs. 1–3). 

Ethnographic evidence of complex shamanic rituals 
and related depictions show that shamans and their 
power were clearly recognized in small societies and 
their internal social dynamics, as well as in external 
communications and even interactions between foragers and farmers. Thus !Kung (San) Bushman shamans struggle in the spirit world of trance experience against frightening spirits of the dead which 
during the ritual hover in the darkness beyond the 
light of the fire. The social relations between Bantu 
speaking farmers and San foragers are well known. 
Farmers recognized them as the original inhabitants 
and custodians of the land, but as the farmers were 
more dependent on rain, they requested San rain 
makers to perform rituals, giving them cattle in return. Thus shamans have ideological control over 
the farmers’ economy on the one hand, and a new 
status as procurers of meat, with the power to distribute it, on the other. If !Kung woman marries into a 
farming community, in some cases the !Kung families acquire cattle as bridewealth (Lewis-Williams 
1991.150–153; Dowson 1994.337–341; 1998b.336– 
339). 

The interpretation of the Lepenski Vir iconography 
is based on the myth that all men were children of 
the river and descendants of mermen (Srejovi 
1972.122; Radovanovi 1996a.39–43; 1997.87– 
91; Whittle 1998.138–145). Radovanovi describes 
the river as being of critical and central importance 
as the direction for the passage upstream of the ancestors and the departure downstream of the dead, 
and as a metaphor for death and endings on the one 
hand, and life and return on the other. 

The annual returns of anadromous fishes, sturgeon 
(Acipenser sturio) and Beluga (Acipenser huso) 

reaching up to 9 metres long and weighing up to 
1500 kilograms and living up to 150 years, migrating from the Black Sea and the Mediterranean to the 
Danube must have been an impressive event, and it 
is not surprising that fish find their place in the symbolic imagery. But they were not the staple food 
there and survival did not depend greatly on fishing. 

However fish-like forms and theriantropes have been 
well recorded in external symbolic storages on petroglyphs and stone monuments. 

For our approach the important complex symbolic 
structure at Lepenski Vir is embedded in the centrally positioned trapezoidal buildings mentioned 
above. It consisted of a hearth positioned in the 
centre of the building, a ceramic pot placed in front 
of it, three stone monuments behind it: an altar and 
two erected boulders bearing petroglyphs, painted 
red and black, with the mandible of a mature woman deposited within it, and two burials of newborns in the rear of the building. The context is 

Fig. 22. Lepenski Vir. Human hands modelled on 
globular ceramic pot (after Srejovi
 1969.Fig. 90). 

The transition to farming and the ‘revolution’ of symbols in the Balkans. From ornament to entoptic and external symbolic storage 

Fig. 23. Gura Baciului and Ele
nica. The earliest coloured motifs attac-
hed to pottery (after Lazarovici and Maxim 1995.PC I, III, VII; Nikolov 
and Maslarov 1978.Fig. 2). 
for ceramic vessels not having 
been coloured, although the technical manipulation of pigments 
and ornamental techniques was 
broadly applied to stone monuments. The pottery’s ornamentation was limited to finger, nail 
and awl impressions. 

In discussing Lepenski Vir cosmology we should not overlook 
the particularly narrative symbolism, as shown in a human hands 
modelled on a large globe-like 
ceramic pot (Fig. 22). There is 
again an old symbol on the new 
medium, giving good reason to 
believe that the image itself and 
the act of inscribing it on ceramic 
vessel are simply parts of a longer chain of operations entailing 

hunter-gatherers’ rituals and beliefs. 

When the ‘painted pottery’ appeared in the Balkans 
the first coloured motifs attached to the vessels had 
extremely standardized forms, patterns and colours. 
They were white and correlate perfectly with the 
basic list of ‘signs of all time’, which consists of 
dots, grids, zigzags and parallel lines (Fig. 23). Red 
and black correlate with more complex motifs and 
patterns: triangles, squares, circles, spirals, arcs, crosses and meanders which were adopted later (Schubert 1999; Nikolov 2002). 

radiocarbon dated to 6170–6130 cal BC at 2
 (Srejovi and Babovi 1983; Garaanin and Radovanovi 2001.118–120; Bori 2002.1032; Budja 
2003a.352–355) (Figs. 20, 21). 

We argued recently that pottery was deliberately incorporated into hunter-gatherers’ symbolic structures 
in the Balkans, and we do not need to consider ceramics as exclusively related to farmers. The almost simultaneous interregional distribution of pottery in 
the Balkans, Ionia and the Adriatic reflects a network 
of integrative mechanisms that in some regions predate the farming economy and made 
possible the selective adoption of 
crops and/or animal husbandry in 
others (Budja 2001.27–47; 2003a). 

It is our belief that pottery in the 
hunter-gather contexts in Lepenski 
Vir should not be marginalized to 
the level of containers and cooking 
pots, but understood in a complex 
symbolic scenario as a new medium 
bearing an old symbol. The vessel 
was certainly not incorporated into 
the symbolic structure of the central 
building by coincidence, and the spiral motif on it was certainly not attached by chance, as it represents 
one of the basic petroglyph motifs 
(Fig. 19), which was not applied to 
any other vessel found there. There 
must have been ideological reasons 

Fig. 24. Regional and interregional spatial distributions of stamp 
seals (after Budja 2003.Map 2). 

Mihael Budja 

The ceramic and stone stamp seals (pintaderas) 
mentioned above are even better indicators, as they 
exhibit a chronological and typological sequence, 
but have more structured spatial distributions that 
might indicate local, regional and interregional cultural practices and social networks in the Balkans. 
While a labyrinthine design was decorated the first 
series of stamp seals in Thessaly, dots, zigzags and 
spiral designs were distributed in the other parts of 
the Balkans and Carpathians (Budja 2003b.115– 
130). (Fig. 24) 

So, in summary we again point to the complex assemblage deposited in an agropastoralist settlement 
context at Gura Baciului in Transylvania that has 
been overlooked for decades (Vlassa 1972.178– 
190; Lazarovici and Maxim 1995.379–384). The 
similar principles we met in the hunter-gatherer context at Lepenski Vir are clearly recognizable: burials, 
fifteen sculpted monumental boulders, some placed 
on ceramic pedestals and stone plates with attached 
petroglyphs. While the impressed motifs on the pottery are identical to those from the Danube Djerdap 
Gorge, all the others are white and rarely red, and 
restricted to grids, zigzags and parallel lines. Stone 
and ceramic female figurines, and images and animal statuettes are reappeared finally (Fig. 22, 25). 
We might interpret bovine-like statuettes, supposedly representing Bos primigenius, as an indicator 
of economic change, as well as the broadening of 
the hunter-gather symbolic structure. 

CONCLUSIONS 

It would be incorrect not to remind us of Boroneat’s 
(1990.479) appreciation that the geometric motifs 
attached to hunter-gatherer tools and implements 
are identical to those painted on farmers’ pottery, 
and that the “discovery of clay baking and processing towards the end of the Epi-Palaeolithic” in the 
Balkans and Carpathians resulted in the replacement of stone monuments with ceramic “idols”. 

We can assume that external symbolic storage employing technical and symbolic culture was therefore 
a characteristic of hunter-gatherer as much as of ag-

Fig. 25. Gura Baciului, stone plate with attached 
anthropomorphic image and ceramic female fig-
urine (after Lazarovici and Maxim 1995.Fig. 21, 
Fig. 22.1) 
rarian societies. From our arguments here we should 
expect that hunter-gather symbolic structures in the 
Balkans and Carpathians maintained long traditions 
and that the ‘revolution of symbols’ in the context 
of the transition to farming is not a paradigm we 
have to adopt. 

Ceramic technology and the principles of fragmentation and accumulation were certainly not the exclusive domains of farmers. As the entoptics, on the 
other hand, were certainly not the principle exclusively driven in hunter’s and foragers’ societies that 
disappeared in the process of transition to farming. 
We agree with the critical appreciation that any geometric motif by itself can not be identified as entoptic in origin and therefore indicative of shamanism. 
Nevertheless, the first coloured motifs attached to 
vessels are extremely standardized in terms of form, 
pattern, and colour, correlating with the basic list 
of ‘signs of all time’. The same concept was applied 
to stamp seals. Additionally, both were integrated in 
Early Neolithic settlements in the Balkans and the 
Carpathians where some were associated with collections of prestige objects (Budja 2003.115–130). 

Our basic premise is that the hunter-gatherers’ symbolic structures and the process of transition to farming were not exclusive and competitive, but rather 
correlative in maintaining control and power within 
society and over the frameworks of external interactions and exchange networks. 


The transition to farming and the ‘revolution’ of symbols in the Balkans. From ornament to entoptic and external symbolic storage 

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