GREENSTONE BEADS IN THE EARLY NEOLITHIC OF TRANSYLVANIA? AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO STUDY A SMALL PREHISTORIC ADORNMENT DISCOVERED IN LUNCA TÂRNAVEI, ROMANIA
GREENSTONE BEADS IN THE EARLY NEOLITHIC OF TRANSYLVANIA? AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO STUDY A SMALL PREHISTORIC ADORNMENT DISCOVERED IN LUNCA TÂRNAVEI, ROMANIA

Summary/Abstract: More than a decade ago, a small greenish stone bead was accidentally discovered at the limit of the locality of Lunca Târnavei, in the place named Ierdaș, Romania. The artifact was identified near an early Neolithic complex, a specific one to Starčevo-Criș culture. At the first sight the aspect of this ornament is a similar one to the beads found in the Neolithic sites from the Balkans and the Near East, many of the respective artifacts being only of some millimeters in diameter, and of the greenish color of the stone they were made from. The ornament has been non-destructive interdisciplinary investigated to establish the raw material, as x rays diffraction and Raman spectrometry, and observed by SEM –scan electronic microscope with detector for micro-analysis of x rays (EDS) to obtain photographic details and establish the qualitative chemical composition. All the data acknowledge that the small bead was made from a metaphoric stone, green shale or a chloritoid one, probably. The typological correspondences of this stone bead and of small amount of archeological materials near it, discovered at the surface of Lunca Târnavei-Ierdaș site, offer a new perspective on the cultural connections between the communities Starčevo-Criș in the center of Transylvania and the ones in the Low Danube area, in the beginning of the 6th millennium BC.

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