The origin and exchange of obsidian from Vinca-Belo Brdo

Abstract

Since the time of the revolutionary characterization of obsidian in the 1960's only a small number of artefacts from the Serbian sites have been analyzed, of which at least seven samples come from the site of Vinca. These results showed that obsidian was coming from Carpathian sources, disproving old romantic ideas of the existence of local obsidian sources in the central Balkans. These results allowed for the development of ideas about exchange networks of interregional importance during the Late Neolithic in which obsidian was an integral component. In this paper we will be discussing the results of the characterization of 60 obsidian samples, representing ca. 4% of the entire obsidian assemblage from the site. The samples were taken from the whole Neolithic sequence at Vinca selecting macroscopically different obsidian types.