Balkan Kurgans

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/25/2000 7:59:52 PM, Hans J. Holm wrote:

<<SF>PIE has a reconstructible word that *probably* meant silver, and it is
SF>derivable from a root meaning "white", which makes it unlikely to be
SF>borrowed.

.. That is well-known.

The question aimed at  *professional archaeologists* for archaeological
evidence whether that silver showed any traits that could be termed or
compared with clearly IE art.>>

I don't have the original post but perhaps this may help.

The appearance of silver ornaments in Balkan 'shaft graves' is not altogether
surprising, unless they were found in some large quantity.  We've discovered
that metallurgy is very early in the Balkans - copper appearing before 5000BC.
(Metallurgy here means evidence of extraction and processing by use of extreme
heat.) There is thinking furthermore that silver was actually smelted before
the advent of copper as part of earlier lead extraction.  Lead appears in fact
to have been processed well before copper in Anatolia, lead ornaments being
common already by 6500BC.  And silver is a by-product of lead smelting.  At
about 1000 degrees centigrade lead become solid while silver not oxidizing
becomes liquid.  Most processed silver before the bronze age in Europe contains
fair quantities of lead.  'Working silver' however was not particularly
sophisticated in Europe at the time and there has not been found an
identifiable style associated with these objects - unlike pottery and tools.
And so, for example, silver objects have been found in so-called "shaft-graves"
that are clearly Minoan as early as 2300BC, but even their character is often
such that they could have been found anywhere.

Once again, I don't know the site.  But 'Shaft-Graves' (and by that I mean
the culture associated with axe burials and red ochre, though not necessarily
mounds or 'kurgans' which are rare in Europe) have not generally yielded a
wealth of identifiably unique metalworks.

This all leads up to the fact that nowadays I don't think you'll find a lot
of  professional archaeologists - at least on this side of the tracks - who
would be very willing to identify anything called "IE art."  The eminent Prof
Casskey did venture a guess at what cultural materials at Lerna might be
related to Indo-European speakers and a summary of those findings from a few
decades ago can be found on the web at
http://users.erols.com/gayle/lerna.htm.  Reading through the summary of the
excavation (pre-Renfrew's A&L) - particularly dealing with 'Shaft Grave'
period I think you may get a sense of the ambiguoties involved in the idea of
IE art.  A very recent and thorough report on a dig in Moravia where
Shaft-Grave and 'group grave' cultures interwove - with I seem to remember
descriptions and maybe pictures of metal ornaments - is on the web at the
Comparative Archaeology site and perhaps also at the upenn museum site. Sorry
I don't have the urls but a search should turn the home pages up.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Steve Long