Paper short abstract:

The Neolithic sites of Lepenski Vir and Vinca in the present-day Serbia (and the “cultures” assumed to have flourished in them) provide examples for tendencies to project ethnographic ideas and interpretations from the present far into the past, and then try to justify conclusions not actually supported by archeological data.

Paper long abstract:

The paper deals with interpretation of the data from several Neolithic sites in the present-day Serbia, especially Lepenski Vir and Vinca. These sites (and the "cultures" assumed to have flourished in them) also provide examples for tendencies to project ethnographic ideas and interpretations from the present into the past, and then try to justify conclusions not actually supported by archeological data. This becomes plainly obvious when dealing with ideas about myth, religion, and ritual. Both of these sites have also served as important symbolic markers of the Serbian (and even wider, Balkan) ethnic identity, which was important in times of the political upheaval and wars that raged in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s.

In these examples, it is clear that archeology has been used as a tool for promotion and formation of a particular ethnocentric worldview, the one that promotes intra-group solidarity, and strengthens a particular self-esteem of the present-day population of the region.