Stratigraphy of Tumulus 6 in Shtoj and the appearance of the violin idols in burial complexes of the south Adriatic region

Abstract

The paper presents the violin-shaped idols from Shtoj, Rakića Kuće and Apollonia that date to the beginning of the Bronze Age in the area of the southern Adria. A relationship is indicated between the appearance of these idols and the abstract-schematic forms of the Early Cycladic period. Further, the question of contacts between the study area and the Pit-grave culture of the steppe region, with its local derivatives in the eastern Balkans, is discussed. To this end, the emergence of the pit graves under tumuli in the area of the Adria, in which the idols were discovered, is also considered. The links with the Aegean and the eastern Balkans, including several reliable radiocarbon dates that fit within the local framework, offer for the first time the possibility of placing the beginning of the Adriatic Bronze Age in the context of cultural advancements of the first centuries of the 3rd millennium BC. At the same time, it represents the first age determination for this period based on definite indicators of the absolute chronology. The emergence of tumuli and violin idols, as well as rich “princely” graves is an explicit reflection of the important cultural innovations that mark the final break with the former Neolithic traditions. That makes the southern Adriatic, above all the coastal areas of present-day Montenegro and northern Albania, the initial centre of the development of the Adriatic Bronze Age.