Marco Merlini (Italy)
Inscriptions and messages of the Balkan-Danube script
a semiotic approach
Daniela Bulgarelli is the author of the paintings appearing on the study. Images and text are "Copyright© 2002 The Global Prehistory Consortium at EURO INNOVANET - www.prehistory.it. All rights reserved World Wide. May not be reproduced without permission".
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Here in synthesis are a few characteristics of the Balkan-Danube script.

1. The mainspring of its birth: it was not developed for economic or administrative reasons but for religious rituals which gradually became increasingly complex.

2.  Characteristics of the signs of which it composed:

a. the signs of the script are individual ones, are highly stylised in form and each of them was capable of communicating one unambiguous meaning;

b. the core set of the script consists of about thirty abstract root-signs expressing most of the fundamental geometric forms;

c. It multiplies the root-signs, arriving at over two hundred derivative signs on the basis of a sophisticated rule of multiple variations (simple or complex) and by duplicating or triplicating them;

d. the signs of this script often have the same silhouettes of sacred, geometrical and abstract symbols, but symbolic signs were in consistent use prior to the script's emergence;

e. the written signs share the geometric and the essential shape of the decorations which embellish vases, seals and figures, but must be kept distinct from such ornamental motifs;

f. The script is made up of abstract and arbitrary signs rather than figurative or naturalistic motifs;

g. notwithstanding the urge towards the multiple variation of the root-signs, the script is characterised by a high number of basic signs when these are compared to those derived from their modifications;

h. Although the script tends to make the root-signs more complex and to show them in a multiple form, it does not enable the latter to be dismembered or simplified into their elementary components. The various root-signs in their complete versions (V, M, X) have come straight down to us from Palaeolithic times.

1. The origin of its birth
The inscriptions of the proto-European script  are often found completely covering clay female figurines, votive offerings (sometimes ex-votos), libation vases, miniature vessels, spindle whorls, seals, temple models and loom weights, indicating they were developed in a religious context. In south-east Europe of the Neolithic and Copper Ages, stones or clay artefacts were inscribed with the religious beliefs of the ancient Balkan-Danube populations. This script was not used for commercial transactions or for recording administrative documents, but for "communicating with the gods".  The inscribed artefacts were used both by the common people in domestic rites and by a powerful priestly elite during magical and religious ceremonies and, according to some authors, when celebrating burial rites; e.g. the inscribed Tartaria tablets accompanying the charred bones of an individual in a grave.

The reorganisation of religion and the invention of a script were basic elements of the long period of transition experienced by the populations of south-east Europe, of which many aspects are still unknown to us today. During this time, the nomad groups of hunters and gatherers began to disappear, giving way to crop-growing village-dwellers, although cities, kings and the state had not yet appeared.  So that, alongside the appearance of writing, new religious concepts developed out of older traditions and cults by a kind of metabolic process. The elite used the sacred script also for guiding and controlling the peoples' sense of belonging to communities, where a strong egalitarian spirit still existed.

The religion of south-east Europe was above all the religion of "chthonic and lunar spiritual principles strongly related to female divinity. The images portrayed were impregnated with the richness of the earth and were as cyclical as the moon" (Gimbutas, 1991). The leitmotifs of the "sacred verses" inscribed or painted on cult objects consist of the different names, attributes, prerogatives and functions of female divinities. Therefore it was a sacred script, used when communicating with transcendental powers.

The proto-Balkan peoples were greatly in awe of the giving and nurturing of new life and produced texts whose central theme was the mystery of birth, death, and life-renewal; the life of humanity, but also that of the whole earth and cosmos. Writing, abstract symbols and images mostly referred to one or more feminine divinities who were harbingers of life, ruled over the afterlife and dispensed energy for regeneration; divinities who, like Mother Earth, were born, died and were regenerated in harmony with the seasons and the crops.

By studying a few finds discovered in the VinŸa site of Turda­ consisting in signs inscribed on clay pieces, Winn (1990) formulated the hypothesis concerning a few remote uses of the script in economic contexts, underlining at the same time, however, that this regarded a limited use and the highly conjectural character of his hypothesis. The whereabouts of the village was very near to some gold and copper mines and this fact might have promoted a complex trading network which would lead us to think of the existence of a numbering and record-keeping system. Many signs which could be decoded as numerical ones (series of notches, similar to combs, or trees with branches) appear on the base of the objects or adjacent to their base (perhaps to facilitate informative sign recognition on vessels that where placed upside down when stored and were inscribed before oven-firing in most cases. Did this therefore consist in a system by means of which to enumerate or  state quantities during production? Or were the signs used for storing or trading operations? Could the single signs present isolated on the base of the pottery-instead have had some connection with its ownership or production? Finally, a few pictographs might have functioned as symbols for places names. A part of these signs may have successively been used in the following sacred script.

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