Balkan Dialogues. Negotiating Identity between Prehistory and the Present

Spatial and temporal patterning in the distribution of artefacts are topics of fundamental signifi cance in Balkan prehistory. Since the late 19th century, archaeologists have been classifying spatial clusters of artefacts into discrete “cultures” which are conventionally treated as bound units and implicitly equated with past social (or even ethnic) entities. The urgent need for a theo- retically informed reconsideration of traditional approaches to the region’s material culture and prehistoric societies is the point of departure for the present volume. The name Balkan Dialogues refl ects the need of an exchange of ideas among scholars with different theoretical backgrounds who are actively working in the Balkans, while the subtitle Negotiating Identity between Prehistory and the Present refers to the awareness that any recon- struction of the past is a product of the political, social, and cultural frame- work in which we operate.