Mediating Marginality: Mounds, Pots and Performances at the Bronze Age Cemetery of Puric-Ljubanj, Eastern Croatia

Mediating Marginality draws on eight years of excavation and survey at the newly discovered Bronze Age Cemetery of Puric-Ljubanj in the county of Vukovar-Syrmia in eastern Croatia. It also incorporates data from an ongoing landscape project that continues to provide evidence of an extensive, hitherto unknown, cultural group living on the margins between well known and documented groups, such as the Belegis and West Serbian variant of the Vatin cultural complex. The monograph explores what this marginality may have meant for these people and how they built a strong community identity through ongoing landscape modification that involved appropriating materials from a very limited palette and reworking and redepositing these in very specific ways over an exceptionally long period of time. Ideas surrounding the deployment of skill, stocks of knowledge and scales of performance are used to interrogate the social world the Spacva-Ljubanj mound builders created for themselves and reveal that although apparently marginalised they were far from impoverished and indeed appear to have created a thriving cultural heritage. The monograph closes with a discussion of how the project intends to go forward, placing particular emphasis on how the modern community can best benefit from continued research in the area.

Sandy Budden-Hoskins attained her BA, MA and PhD at the University of Southampton after many years working as a professional potter. She has 20 years experience working in Central Europe, specialising in analyses of Bronze Age ceramics. A Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship led directly to the Puric-Ljubanj project. Sandy worked with National Taiwan University to establish a clearer understanding of indigenous Paiwan pottery. Her publications relate to the role of skill and society in the Bronze Age. Andreja Malovoz gained an MA in archaeology and a second MA in archaeological computing from Gothenberg University in 2004 and 2005. She became curator for archaeology at the Stjepan Gruber Museum in upanja in 2006 and defended her doctoral thesis at Heidelberg University in 2019. Andreja has worked with a number of museums in setting up both permanent and temporary exhibitions. Her publications interrogate the nature of landscape construction as a social phenomenon in the Bronze Age. Mu-Chun Wu (PhD) is an assistant professor in archaeological computing (spatial technologies) at the Department of Anthropology, National Taiwan University. His core interests are social identity, spatial analysis, computing and landscape. Lisa Waldock, BA, MA, ACifA currently works for Minerva Archaeology as an assistant project officer. Lisa loves the exploration of historic buildings, heritage and community-led archaeology and is a professional illustrator.