THE CONTEXT IN TERMS OF CULTURAL HISTORY AND THE STUDY OF RELIGION
There is a very clear cultural logic determining the interpretation of cult images in the Near Eastern-Mediterranean area. Cult images had firmly established positions at the centre of religious activities in a cult building, where they were worshipped primarily through the presentation of offerings.
The system of cult image, sanctuary and offerings is known far beyond the Near Eastern- Mediterranean area, as it seems to be a universal phenomenon of human culture. It follows that we can legitimately pose the question of whether this was true in the European Neolithic.Along with ordinary dwellings, a building that has been interpreted as a cult centre was excavated in Par^a, a settlement of the Vinca Culture in Banat (Lazarovici et al. 2001). The central element of the structure was a “life-size” statue with two heads. In this sense, Par^a is quite similar to the Near Eastern- Mediterranean concept of religion with a “cult image in the cult building”. The two-headed statue was made of unbaked clay, as was the entire building and all of its components. Although lightly “baked” in a conflagration, all of the various pieces are nevertheless very badly preserved and fragmentary, assuring that the find and its interpretation have been the subject of debate. The other “life-size” statues mentioned above from other settlements of the Vinca Culture (Jovanovic 1991) are only a hint that the cult building at Par^a was not unique. Considering the very large number of excavated houses and the very rare direct and indirect evidence of cult buildings, we must conclude that cult buildings were very rare in the European Neolithic as a whole.
Aside from the rare cult buildings, open-air sites could have been demarcated and used for worship. A general characteristic of the European Neolithic are enclosures, characteristically surrounded by ditches, walls and palisades.
In some cases, they enclosed settlements, but in other cases, they were built far from any settlement (Andersen 1997: 133-280; M. Meyer 2003). The enclosures vary significantly with respect to the surface area enclosed, the form, and the size of the ditches - and their position in the landscape. The interpretations of the possible functions hitherto proposed are thus correspondingly diverse, ranging from fortifications, protection against wild animals, corrals, marketplaces and political meeting places to sanctuaries, calendar buildings and astronomical observatories. The multitude of suggestions may correspond to the diversity of the enclosures themselves, as it is hardly probable that all of these different structures can be traced back to a single conceptual origin. Furthermore, enclosures can be erected for a number of different reasons, and their utilization can have changed over time. The inter-pretation prevailing at any given moment is largely determined by the trends dominating archaeological research at any given time. It follows - as is gradually being appreciated - that warfare was far more common in the Neolithic than was considered to have been the case as recently as the 1990s (Keeley 1996; Carman & Harding 1999; Petrasch 1999; Ivanova 2008); most enclosures are now interpreted as fortifications again, as was the case a century ago (Lehner 1910; Kaufmann 1997; M. Meyer 2003).There is, however, one category of enclosures where archaeologists generally exclude a mundane function of this type. These are the Kreisgrabenanlagen (circular ditch systems) of the Lengyel Culture and the Stroke-Ornamented Pottery Culture areas (Daim & Neubauer 2005; Petrasch 2012), typically characterized by a virtually circular plan including up to three ditches, and in some cases more than one palisade enclosing an area without any features (ca. 4800 BCE). There are usually one to four very narrow entrances, and the Kreisgrabenanlage is usually embedded in a prehistoric landscape.
The width and depth of the ditches corresponds to the size of the structure and thus the enclosed surface. In the smaller Kreisgrabenanlagen, the dimensions of the ditches are so insignificant that they cannot have been intended as fortifications, and thus they can only have had a symbolic role, demarcating the enclosed interior from the outside. Given the absence of features in the interior, it follows that one can legitimately interpret them as having been used for political or religious assemblies. However, any propositions about the nature of such assemblies are unverifiable as none of the original Neolithic surfaces has been preserved in any of the Kreisgrabenanlagen. As the separation of political and religious activity is a relatively recent phenomenon, there is no reason to distinguish them, and thus there is no reason not to link them together in the context of the Kreisgrabenanlagen.From the standpoint of the study of religion, the results of the study of the Kreisgrabenanlagen are quite modest, but nevertheless significant in terms of the reconstruction of Neolithic religion in Europe. These are the only complexes which can be interpreted in religious terms, and are (relatively) abundantly documented, since around a hundred Kreisgrabenanlagen have been excavated thus far in central Europe. Given the overall number of settlements, this strengthens the religious interpretation for these most suitable candidates - but it also means that most settlements will have been bereft of a cult site.