PeBA 2017. Spheres of Interaction - Contacts and Relationships between the Balkans and Adjacent regions in the Late Bronze / Iron Age (13th/12th-6th/5th BCE)
Abstract
The second year of international conference targeting young professionals and selected senior researchers from South-Eastern and Central Europe was organised in collaboration with Marek Verčík (Prague), Daniela Heilmann (Munich), Mario Gavranović (Vienna), Aleksandar Kapuran (Belgrade) and Aleksandar Jašarević (Doboj) in Belgrade. The concept of this year's conference was the role of the Balkans as a bridge between the Mediterranean region and Central Europe.
The discussion focused on the general processes as well as individual features of interregional connections between the Late Bronze and Iron Age communities in the western Balkans and the Aegean, the Apennine Peninsula, the Black Sea region, the Southeast Alps or the Carpathian Basin. On the first two days, 28 oral contributions and four poster presentations addressed questions concerning not only the main communication lines of the Vardar/Morava valleys, but also discussed the routes along the Struma and the Adriatic coast often neglected by the past research.
How do relationships and contacts materialize in settlements, grave contexts, and sanctuaries or in certain (burial) rituals or technological choices? If connections are visible in the archaeological record, how can they be interpreted? Are buffer-zones, contact zones or isolated regions identifiable? Can spheres of interaction be shown to change over time? A field trip to archaeological sites along the River Danube, such as Lepenski Vir or Golubac, completed this fruitful discussion on the last day.