This solid 459-page work by John Chapman summarises his life-long work in the Balkans and, as he states in the preface, was first conceived as a synthesis of Balkan prehistory but subsequently developed along a specific research path focusing on social narratives. The book is composed of 11 thematic chapters, each of which presents a summary at its end that underlines the most salient points discussed, making the volume particularly useful for students.
Chapman begins by describing the study region, its palaeoenvironment, and the timeframe and cultural framework addressed in this book, as well as putting forward the research questions that it aims to answer: 1) How were social relations created in the past? 2) Why were there so many settlements and so few cemeteries in this region? and 3) Why was there such an amazingly diverse and rich material culture, especially in the domestic domain? He then goes on to lay out the theoretical foundation of the book, explaining the terminology used to describe social practices and the demographic scales adopted in approaching different types of relations, including the individual (rational personhood) and dividual (relational personhood), which Chapman uses as a key concept in his research. These concepts are particularly prevalent in chapter 4, which addresses ideas of personhood, using well-known case studies to demonstrate how dividuality was an important characteristic of the Balkan Neolithic, and to highlight the fact that Neolithic persons had ontologies (ways of categorising the world around them) that cannot easily be identified through the archaeological record.
The connection between social relationships and the material record is a focus throughout much of the book, but is especially prominent in chapters 5 and 6, which present a thorough discussion of settlements in Balkan prehistory. Chapter 5, ‘Houses and households’, opens with the fascinating story of an archaeological experiment in which one of the two replicas of a prehistoric house was burned in an attempt to investigate the destruction process and the consequent formation of archaeological traces. Chapman follows this with an examination of different dwelling typologies, which are described diachronically (looking at their development through time). Also interesting is the discussion of household structures compared to house-models. Of particular interest in chapter 6, ‘Settlement planning’, is the examination of spatial order between households and communal spaces, which can be well understood in the Trypillia mega-sites of the 4th millennium BC. The subject is also raised in chapter 7, ‘The mortuary zone’, where Chapman points out the extreme paucity of burials in comparison to the remains of settlements, before offering an overview of different burial practices – empty burials, burials with disarticulated bones, complete body burial – together with an overview of the most relevant burial sites in the Balkans.
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