Resumen de Karanovo und das südosteuropäische Chronologiesystem aus heutiger Sicht
With a succession of layers attaining a height of 12.40 m, the settlement mound of Karanovo in Thrace is one of the largest tell sites in Europe. SmaHer trial excavations on the mound were already conducted in 1936. Large-scale investigations were carried out in 1947-1957 by Vassit Mikov and Georgi Georgiev. Karanovo beeame wett-known through Georgiev's presentation of the settlement's stratigraphy at the conference on the Neolithic he Id in 1959 in Prague, the proceedings of which appeared two years later (1961).
Although recent research has brought forth important changes pertaining to the division into prehistoric phases, the system based upon seven settlement horizons that was presented in 1961 stitt holds today. This stratigraphic sequenee provided the first framework for early in Southeast Europe. Prior to this a link between European prehistory and Near Eastern civitisations could be attained only through comparisons and a chain of datings.
Resumption of exeavations at Karanovo in 19841999 by the Bulgarian Institute of Archaeology in cooperation with the University of Salzburg led to re-examination and in some parts to a new evaluation of the chronology. The modification of the traditional sequence in layers of Karanovo I to VII by Nikolov renders a far more complex character to the stratigraphy in Karanovo as guidetine for the cultural development on the eastern Balkan peninsula. Compared to other settlement mounds that have been revealed the west Black Sea region during the past decades, the stratigraphy in Karanovo appears as simply one chronological framework among many. Hence, the questions: what is circumscribed by settlement layers in Karanovo and what significan ce do they hold for the eharacterisation of culture-chronological horizons. Using the settlement sequence at the telt in Karanovo as an example, the cultural development from the earliest groups involved in crop cultivatlon and stock-raising in Europe to complex communíties of the southeast European Copper and Bronze Age 1s traced. Mappings of the individual horlzons of finds attested in Karanovo demonstrate the actual dissemínation of the material in Southeast Europe and the cultural groups that existed at the same time. An attempt is made to iIlumínate the economic foundations of the Copper Age on hand of the important raw materials eopper. gold, spondylus, flint and sal1. Finatty. the available radiocarbon datings from Karanovo itself and from other settlement in the eastern Balkan region that correlate typologicatty with the individual Karanovo horizons are gathered together and diseussed.
