The National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina presented a new international project “After the ice-Forager uses of persistent places” as part of which researchers intend to better understand the communities of hunters and gatherers who inhabited the area around the Adriatic Sea basin at the end of the last Ice Age (Late Paleolithic).
Researchers from the University of Ferreira and the University of La Sapienza of Rome are participating in the project.
Badanj near Stolac in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Tagliente in northern Italy were chosen as representative localities for understanding these communities and comparing life in two different simultaneous habitats, Klix.ba writes.
Deputy director and senior curator Ana Marić explained to Klix.ba how this important project was realized.
“One of the leaders of the ‘After The Ice’ project, Dušan Borić, participated as an external consultant in the period 2019 – 2021 in setting up the permanent exhibition ‘Bosnia and Herzegovina in prehistoric times’.
On that occasion, good collegial relations developed, and “The National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina responded to the invitation of the Roman University of La Sapienza to participate in a project that can bring new, previously unknown facts about the oldest inhabitants of this area,” said Marić.
The layers of these two localities cover the period of the so-called epigravity, during which there is a sudden thaw and rise in the level of the Adriatic Sea.
Marić pointed out that in the case of the Bdanj site in Borojevići near Stolac, we are talking about the Epigravetian culture in the Upper Paleolithic period, that is, about 20,000-10,000 years before the present.
“It is about the last phases of the Paleolithic, i.e. the older Stone Age, which, apart from Herzegovina, has also been confirmed in the north of Bosnia, i.e. at the Kadar site in Svilaj near Odžak. The first and simplest way of determining the age is to compare mobile archaeological material with similar specimens on other localities where the age is already known. However, the most reliable results are obtained with the method of radioactive carbon isotope C14, which is applied to organic remains, if they exist,” said Marić.
About 20,000 years ago, during the maximum glaciation, the level of the Adriatic Sea was about 130 m lower than today’s sea level. Throughout the period there is a direct land connection across the northern Adriatic, strong cultural ties and population influences between the human communities of the Italian and Balkan peninsulas.
Our interlocutor points out that the connections of the mentioned communities are determined by analyzing the moving material from both (or more) localities.
“Every community shows certain characteristics in the production of the objects they used, if something is found among those materials that deviates from the characteristic production, the area of analysis expands until the source is found. Contacts have always existed and do not necessarily have to be physical (population migrations, barter , trade, marriage, etc.), can already be realized as a transfer of ideas,” notes Marić.
A large fund of archaeological material from the Badanj site is kept in the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina and was discovered during two research phases – between 1976 and 1979, led by the then curator of the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Đuro Basler, and between 1986 and 1987, led by Zilka Kujundžić Vejzagić in front of the Museum in partnership with Robert Whallon in front of the University of Michigan in the USA. The new project aims to analyze hitherto unprocessed parts of flint and bone material, primarily remains of flint tools and remains of animal bones.
During the analyzes already started on the remains of the bones, disarticulated remains of human bones were found, which have now been directly dated using the radioactive carbon method. The obtained date confirms the Late Paleolithic age of these human remains and these remains currently represent the oldest directly dated human remains on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
An analysis of the ancient DNA of these individuals is underway, which will give us precious data about the genetic heritage of these Paleolithic communities, which will provide the first information about the populations that inhabited the Balkan Peninsula during the Late Paleolithic.
