Although several hundred are known archaeological sites of the Starčevo and Vinča cultures from the Neolithic era throughout the central region Balkans, finds of human skeletal remains and necropolises are rare. However, this does not mean that they are not there, but that they have not been sufficiently explored.
The graves found in Starčevac and necropolis in the Vinča culture are mostly the result of accidental discoveries, rather than systematic and targeted research. Dr. Miroslav Marić, senior research associate of the Balkanology Institute, states that "the area that has been investigated is insufficient Neolithic locality. In the majority of cases, they were investigated with smaller probes, which were traditionally placed in places where surface findings such as pottery indicated the existence of objects or pits". He adds that "even when geophysical surveys are used, research is often focused on large objects or pits where numerous finds can be expected". All graves from the Starčevo culture discovered so far are located within settlements, near residential buildings, in pits or dugouts, and sometimes under the floors of houses (like Lepenski vir), which corresponds to intramural burials characteristic of early Neolithic communities.
Those accidental finds of graves and necropolises have not been sufficiently investigated. A good example is the site of Sailovo 5 near Novi Sad, where burials from the Starčevo and Vinča cultures were discovered more than a decade ago, and only recently were they analyzed in detail. On the basis of radiocarbon dates and contextual analysis, Dr. Miroslav Marić and his collaborators showed that intramural burials persisted during the early stages of the Vinča culture, which is an important knowledge about life in the Neolithic.
Here are some basic details: In the Starčevo culture (6200–5300 BCE), the dead were most often laid in shallower or deeper pits of irregular shape. The deceased were buried in a crouched position, on the left or right side, while grave goods are rare or absent at all. If they are present, they are ceramic vessels, stone axes, shells or flint tools. Most often, one deceased person was buried in one pit, rarely two, and multiple burials are an exception. Necropolises of the Starčevo culture, in the sense of separate burial spaces, are not known. Group graves have been documented in the localities of Velesnica, Ajmana and Vinča–Belo Brdo, among which the one from Vinča stands out, which is sometimes interpreted in the literature as a possible place of violence. Four graves of Starčevac from the Jaricište locality are also known, including the burial of a woman and a child, as well as two individual children's graves.
"If we can judge by the case from the Jarichište 1 site, where there are multiple burials in a dugout with two ovens, the deceased were buried in the building while it was still in operation. After that, gifts were left over them in the form of dacha - broken vessels and animal bones, and then the building was abandoned. Radiocarbon dates show that burials were carried out on several occasions, which indicates that the building did not lose its importance for the community even though it was no longer inhabited," explains Marić.
The number of known deceased from the Vinča culture (5300/5200–4400 BCE), which is one of the longest-lasting and most researched Neolithic cultures of Southeastern Europe, is significantly smaller. Their fragmentary nature and frequent appearance within the settlement indicate that the practice of intramural burials continued, especially in the early stages of the Vinča culture.
The exceptions are the two famous Vinča necropolises outside the settlement, in Botoš and Gomolava. In Botoš, the skeletons were immediately reburied after the excavation, without anthropological analysis, while in Gomolava only men of different ages, probably connected by family ties, were buried. More recent protective and systematic investigations of the Vinča sites confirm that the burials are most often located within the borders of the settlement, in pits or within residential buildings, and are dated to the early and middle phases of the culture (Vinča A–C). Sometimes it is only about parts of skeletons found in trenches, which further complicates the interpretation of burial practices. Dr. Miroslav Marić says that "it is very likely that there were several different practices at the same time. Recent research at the site of Adžina njiva near the village of Klenak revealed individual human bones in the trenches around the Vinča settlement, which may indicate the intentional deposition of human remains on the borders of the settlement, which had a strong symbolic meaning."
In this context, the discovery from the site of Sajlovo 5 near Novi Sad represents an exceptional and valuable source of information about Neolithic people, since human skeletal remains at the transition between the Starčevo and Vinča cultures are extremely rare in the archaeological record. Protective archaeological research was carried out in 2010 and 2011, on the occasion of the construction of the northern bypass around Novi Sad, when about 7.000 square meters of a multi-layered site with traces of settlement from the early Neolithic to the modern period were investigated. Neolithic horizons are represented by pits and residential buildings, and the settlement did not have the character of a proto-urbanized area, but consisted of several groups of households, spaced between 70 and 100 meters apart.
Five burials from the Neolithic period were discovered at the site: one was dated to the early Neolithic, i.e. the Starčevo-Kereš culture, and four were from the Vinča culture. The deceased were buried inside dwellings with earthen ovens or in simpler pits, and all burials can be placed in a relatively short period of time, between the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 5th millennium BC.
The anthropological analysis of the skeletal remains from Saylovo 5 allows us to glimpse concrete human lives behind this scarce archaeological material. Among those buried are adult men and women, as well as a younger adolescent and a child, which indicates that members of different age groups were buried within the settlement. Traces of long-term physical exertion, dental diseases, metabolic stress and occasional trauma were recorded on their bones. One of the men had a healed skull injury, which was not the cause of death, but testifies to the injuries that people endure throughout their lives. In the other, signs of chronic physiological stress and possible infection were registered, while degenerative changes and atrophy of the muscle grips in the elderly woman indicated a life marked by long-term stress. None of the burials contained grave goods, which further emphasizes the modesty of the funeral ritual.
The fact that a significant number of previously discovered burials have never been published in detail makes such new research particularly important. Every discovery of human remains from the Neolithic period represents an invaluable source of information about the state of health, burial practices and attitudes towards death in the first farming communities. Precisely because of this, finds such as those from Saylo 5 enable us to see the Neolithic past not only through houses and pottery, but also through the people who lived and died in them.
