Gradeshnitsa tablets
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d1/Vratsa-history-museum-Gradeshnitsa-tablet-face.jpg/150px-Vratsa-history-museum-Gradeshnitsa-tablet-face.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/Vratsa-history-museum-Gradeshnitsa-tablet-back.jpg/150px-Vratsa-history-museum-Gradeshnitsa-tablet-back.jpg)
The Gradeshnitsa tablets (Bulgarian: Плочката от Градешница) or plaques are clay artefacts with incised marks. They were unearthed in 1969 near the village of Gradeshnitsa in the Vratsa Province of north-western Bulgaria. Steven Fischer has written that "the current opinion is that these earliest Balkan symbols appear to comprise a decorative or emblematic inventory with no immediate relation to articulate speech." That is, they are neither logographs (whole-word signs depicting one object to be spoken aloud) nor phonographs (signs holding a purely phonetic or sound value)."[1] The tablets are dated to the 4th millennium BC and are currently preserved in the Vratsa Archeological Museum of Bulgaria.[2]
See also
- Cucuteni-Trypillian culture
- Sinaia lead plates
- Tărtăria tablets
- Prehistory of Southeastern Europe
- Vinča symbols
Further reading
- Ivan Raikinski (ed.), Catalogue of the Vratsa Museum of History, 1990.
External links
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References
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