On May 30, 2011, at 12:30 PM, at the Department of Archaeology of the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade, I defended my master’s thesis titled: “The Industry of Chipped and Polished Stone from the Neolithic Site of Rug Bair near Gorubinci, in a Broader Regional Context” before a committee consisting of Dr. Dušan Mihailović (mentor), Dr. Nenad Tasić, Dr. Dragana Antonović, and Dr. Boban Tripković. With this, I obtained the title of Master of Science in Archaeology (M. Sci.), which is just one step away from a doctorate, and given the weight of my thesis, that certainly won’t escape me. 🙂
Before enrolling in archaeology studies in Skopje, I was involved in speleology and was a member of the speleological society “Peoni” for many years. Thus, at the beginning of my studies, my attention was directed towards caves, the oldest prehistoric periods, and the tools those people made. My love for stone industries developed gradually, as I did not have adequate lectures at the Department of Archaeology in Skopje. These studies are still deficient today, making this faculty the only one in the world that produces flawed archaeologists who do not receive lectures on prehistory (domestic and world), alongside the lack of information on artifacts typical of these periods.
To round off my need for knowledge necessary for processing a stone collection, both during my studies and later, I was part of many archaeological field teams, mainly at Paleolithic and Neolithic sites in the Balkans and Europe. This way, I supplemented my field and laboratory knowledge of lithic material, the technical term for collections of stone tools. Throughout my developmental path as an expert dealing with stone artifacts, I owe immense gratitude to many of my domestic and foreign colleagues who selflessly helped me, and they still do. I express great gratitude to the members of the committee for their criticisms, praises, and suggestions regarding my work during the writing of the thesis and afterward. I also publicly thank all the archaeologist colleagues from Macedonia who, in any way, helped in the creation of this scientific work.
During my work on the collections, primarily of chipped stone artifacts, for more than 12 years, I was assisted by the geologist Mr. Nedeljko Đorđević from Kumanovo, who unfortunately passed away last year, just before I completed the full processing of the archaeological material. Because of this, this thesis is dedicated to my friend Uncle Đokica, the only geologist who truly loved archaeologists and helped them until the end of his life. The petrological processing of the material was completed with Prof. Dr. Blažo Boev from the Faculty of Mining and Geology in Štip, to whom I also owe my gratitude for the help.
This thesis serves as a guide and manual for processing three types of artifacts: polished tools, chipped tools, and abrasive instruments, as it includes all the tables, codes, and codifiers necessary for the scientific analysis of this type of material, aiming to facilitate the work of future generations of archaeologists. I hope that besides the planned e-version, this thesis will also appear in hard copy, as it is a testament to my long-term, persistent, and exciting ‘adventure’ through Balkan archaeology, with the goal of expanding my knowledge of stone industries and conveying it in a condensed form.
I am proud to have brought to light unpublished material buried in a museum depot, of which there are tons in our country, and I am most pleased that this material is from Macedonia, thus placing another important point for the archaeology of our country on the world scientific map. Finally, I would like to quote my favorite saying, which Caius Titus, a speaker in the Roman Senate, uttered long ago: Verba volant, scripta manent (Words fly away, what is written remains forever).
– Abstract–
This work covers unpublished stone finds from a trench at the excavation of Rug Bair from 1970, housed in the Museum and Institute in Štip, Republic of Macedonia. An attempt was made, through scientific processing of the stone material, to obtain a more complete picture of the raw material, technical, and typological characteristics of the Neolithic stone industry from this site and its relation to similar contemporary industries.
All stone items from the Rug Bair site near the village of Gorobinci (Sveti Nikole) were divided into three main groups: chipped, polished, and abrasive tools. The approach to this material is reduced to petrographic and technological-typological analyses by defining the basic categories and types of tools based on the morphological characteristics of the artifacts. The results of the technological-typological analysis and the analogy with other stone industries in Neolithic cultures of southeastern Balkans contribute to further clarification of certain processes in a regional context that occurred during the Neolithic on the territory of the Republic of Macedonia and the Balkans.
The small number of stone artifacts in Neolithic collections from the Republic of Macedonia is primarily due to the non-recognition of lithic material, the absence of sieving and flotation, as well as the personal choice of researchers regarding which finds to retain in the collection. Stone tools are still not the subject of detailed analysis in Macedonian archaeology, and the Neolithic or new stone age in Macedonia is predominantly identified with ceramic production.
With this master’s thesis, an attempt was made to methodologically consolidate the mentioned aspects of studying the stone industry, which will contribute, enable, and facilitate further research for future generations of archaeologists in the Republic of Macedonia.
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Keywords: Neolithic, Rug Bair, Amzabegovo-Vršnik, Macedonia, raw materials, chipped, polished, stone, abrasive, tool.