Gumelnita

an Aeneolithic culture of tribes inhabiting the Balkan Peninsula and leading a settled, agricultural way of life. The culture was in existence from the second half of the fourth millennium to the beginning of the third millennium B.C., according to data obtained from radioactive carbon dating. The culture was named after a site on the Danube, which was excavated by the Rumanian archaeologist V. Dumi-trescu in 1925. It was widespread in northern and southeastern Bulgaria and southern Rumania; its presence has also been revealed in the USSR in the vicinity of Odessa and southern Moldavia. The population of the Gumelnita culture lived in above-ground rectangular houses. Tools include copper axes and awls, flint arrowheads and spear tips, flat stone axes, and chisels and awls made from bone. Their ceramic work was polished gray-black, red-brown, and crude gray-yellow. Anthropomorphic vessels and idols made from clay, bone, and gold have been found, as well as decorative ornaments such as copper pins with spiral and spade-shaped heads.