MIGRATIONS AND LOCAL EVOLUTION IN THE EARLY NEOLITHIC OF TRANSYLVANIA THE TYPOLOGICAL-STYLISTIC ANALYSIS AND THE RADIOCARBON DATA1

The spread of Neolithic life as a historical phenomenon is a process which brings about major changes in the lives of human communities. Neolithic communities are different to Mesolithic ones in terms of tools, architecture and technology. The earliest Neolithic sites are located in south-western Transylvania (the Haţeg region), in the middle Mureş valley, and along its tributaries and the Someş River (in the Cluj county region). According to the latest information, sites belonging to an earlier stage may also be present along the Someş in north-eastern Transylvania. New radiocarbon results, typological and statistical observations, indicate that a fully-Neolithic culture appeared in Transylvania around 7200 BP, with artefacts very similar - if not identical - to those of contemporary communities south of the Danube. The definition of Early Neolithic cultural phenomena has become an important subject of debate. In Transylvania and not only here, the term Starčevo-Criş was and is still used to define a cultural phenomenon spread over a long period of time, with four stages of evolution which span from the appearance of the first Neolithic communities to the arrival of the first Vinča communities. The term Pre-Criş deals with the process of Neolithisation, or the first two stages of the Starčevo-Criş culture and it belong to the past from terminological point of view. The stylistic- 1 Note: This article was prepared in 2005 for the proceedings of the A Short Walk through the Balkans: the First Farmers of the Carpathian Basin and Adjacent Regions, 20-22 June 2005, London. From reasons that depend of human behavior was not yet published. So, for this reason, we will publish it with this occasion. Some aspects reflect the stage of research in 2005.