A German-Serbian resurvey more than triples the population estimate for the Vinca site at Opovo

The mapped area grew by a factor of not quite two, while the population estimate more than tripled ^[3][4]. Per hectare, the 1980s reading works out to about 40 people and the new one to about 78 ^[1][2].

Set the peak population against the building count and you get a little over three people per house structure ^[5]. The team also identified two settlement phases and an expansion of the settled area over the course of the occupation ^[6], and the announcement does not say how the structures divide between them. If a sizeable share belong to the earlier phase, fewer houses stood at the same time and occupancy per house at peak was higher than three ^[7].

The social claim rests on a different measurement. "An analysis of the different house sizes suggests a relatively low level of inequality in material wealth. There were probably economic differences, but these did not lead to significant social stratification," said Martin Furholt, a co-author and speaker for the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence at Kiel University ^[7][8]. A house size on a geophysical plan is a floor area, a measure of how much building each household put up. The one trench the team dug went into an enclosure ditch ^[3].

The ditches carry the other half of the social argument ^[9]. Digging five of them is physical evidence of coordinated labour. The voluntary part is an inference; the excavation found no evidence of coercion ^[9].

Sturdiest of them is the method claim. "Apart from the new insights into the late Neolithic settlement at Opovo, the study demonstrates, more generally, how precise, minimally invasive investigative methods can be used to reevaluate old excavation findings and thus yield significantly expanded insights," said Fynn Wilkes of Kiel University, the study's lead author ^[10][12]. Surface finds, a magnetic map, cores at selected points and a single trench nearly doubled the site's measured area four decades after the last excavation there ^[3][14][3].

One site does not settle what large late Neolithic settlements demanded of the people living in them. Before this work, Opovo looked like either a small agricultural village or a moderately active centre in regional trade networks ^[15]; Wilkes calls it one of the largest known late Neolithic settlement sites in the southern Banat, and the new dates give its main phase a span of roughly 125 years ^[13][6]. The comparison with neighbours is still ahead: "When viewed in conjunction with other sites, this will refine our picture of a region that is crucial to our understanding of the Neolithic period," Wilkes said ^[11].