Bubanj, the Copper and the early Bronze Age tell in southeastern Serbia

Abstract

The site of Bubanj is a multi-layered prehistoric site located in the middle stream of the Južna Morava River, not far from the area in which the Nišava River flows into the Južna Morava River, in the very heart of the Balkan Peninsula. Cultural layers starting from the Early/Middle Neolithic up to the Bronze Age, sometimes up to 3 m thick, are recorded on this tell uncommon for the central Balkans. Both Adam Oršić-Slavetić and Milutin Garašanin contributed to the long-term research on the site, whilst, based on the results of the research on this site and the nearby Velika Humska Čuka site, Milutin Garašanin defined the Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age culture of the central Balkans – the Bubanj-Hum group, which persists in scholarly literature even nowadays. The site of Bubanj is one of the few sites excavated before the Second World War whose research results are published abroad. It is our extraordinary honour that this volume, representing the result of the latest and unfortunately last research on the Bubanj site, which will soon cease to exist, is published here, in the same place where almost 80 years ago the first results of the research on the site were published by the aforementioned Adam Oršić-Slavetić. Besides the results of the most recent excavations, we have also tried to present the results of old excavations, inorder to compare them and form as good as possible a reconstruction of the everyday life of those communities in the Eneolithic and the Bronze Age.