New Late Hallstatt Finds from the Vinkovci Region (Eastern Croatia): A Contribution to the Study of Impacts from the Balkans to the southeastern Carpathian Basin

Abstract

The Late Hallstatt period in the territory of the southeastern Carpathian Basin is defined by a characteristic group of finds, mostly from female graves, which have been attributed to the Syrmian group. The group is characterized by flat cemeteries with inhumation burials. During all phases the group adopted various influences, mostly from the Central Balkan and southeastern Alpine region, and transformed them into its own recognizable style visible in female burials, which also bear witness to the process of social differentiation of local communities. Typical female burials consist of costume and jewellery items, while rare male graves feature weaponry. The female costume includes bronze astragal belts and various types of fibulae, the most frequent among them being Certosa types V and XIII, but there also appear other types that originated in the Central Balkan region. One of the best examples of the transfer of ideas from the Central Balkan region and their local adoption into a distinct style, except for fibulas, can be seen in the bronze astragal belts which very often appear in female graves in the Syrmian, Eastern Slavonian and southeasternTransdanubian cemeteries, where they were dated at the late 6th and 5th centuries BC. New finds from the Vinkovci region, together with some other previously collected items, indicate an earlier appearance of the astragal belts which have direct analogies in the area of spreading of the Glasinac cultural complex, testifying to a firmly connectivity between the southeastern part of the Carpathian Basin and the Central Balkans at the beginning of the Late Hallstatt period.