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By Aristos Georgiou
Science and Health Reporter
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Archaeologists have uncovered a previously unknown prehistoric settlement of "spectacular" size in southeastern Europe.
The settlement, which dates back around 7,000 years to the Late Neolithic period, is located near the Tamiš River in the Banat region of northeastern Serbia, a landlocked country in the Balkans.
"This discovery is of outstanding importance, as hardly any larger Late Neolithic settlements are known in the Serbian Banat region," research leader Martin Furholt from the Institute of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology (IPPA) at Kiel University in Germany, said in a news release.
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The team has managed to fully map the extent of the settlement using geophysical methods, determining that it covers an area of roughly 11-13 hectares. It is also surrounded by between four and six ditches.
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"A settlement of this size is spectacular. The geophysical data also gives us a clear idea of the structure of the site 7,000 years ago," Fynn Wilkes, co-team leader of the German-Serbian research team with the IPPA, said in the release.
Wilkes told Newsweek the "considerable size" of the settlement is not unknown from this time period, but it is still one of the largest documented.
"Further research might show if the settlement had a special function as a regional center or trading hub," Wilkes said.
The fact that a settlement of this size was not known to archaeologists until now is also significant, according to the researcher.
"Usually Neolithic settlements occupied the same areas of modern day villages or have been well known since there is a lot of material on their surface. But somehow [this one] remained undiscovered for all these years. It is very rare that we find completely new sites of this size in a relatively densely populated region," Wilkes said.
As well as mapping the site, the archaeologists also surveyed the ground surface of the site in an attempt to find artifacts. This survey yielded material indicating that the settlement is associated with the Vinča culture, which is dated to between 5400 B.C. and 4400 B.C.
The Vinča culture is a prehistoric group that occupied a region of southeastern-central Europe in this period. Its territory now primarily corresponds to Serbia and Kosovo, as well as parts of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. Among other distinctive characteristics, the culture is known for producing some of the largest settlements in prehistoric Europe.
"The Vinča culture is one of the first sedentary and farming cultures of the Balkans and on the Euopean continent," Wilkes said. "High quality pottery production—as well as the earliest copper metallurgy (in Europe)—show the technological skillset of the Vinča culture societies."
While the newly uncovered settlement—located near the modern village of Jarkovac in the province of Vojvodina—is associated with the Vinča culture based on the material found at the site, archaeologists have also documented possible links to the regional Banat prehistoric culture. The Banat culture is a local variety of the Vinča culture.
"This is also remarkable, as only a few settlements with material from the Banat culture are known from what is now Serbia," Wilkes said in the news release.
Analyses of finds from the site are still ongoing, but the discovery of the settlement could help researchers to better understand prehistoric societies in the region.
"Southeast Europe is a very important region in order to answer the question of how knowledge and technologies spread in early periods of human history and how this was related to social inequalities," Furholt said. "This is where new technologies and knowledge, such as metalworking, first appeared in Europe."
The Serbian Vojvodina, in particular, is an important region when investigating European prehistory.
"Some of the earliest sedentary farming communities formed in this region and there are several prehistoric settlements known from this general region," Wilkes told Newsweek.
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about archaeology? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
Update 06/24/24, 3:30 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional comment from Wilkes.
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