Larger than Life. Monumentality of the landscape and other-than-human Imagery at Lepenski Vir (Serbia)

With the title of the first publication about Lepenski Vir in English – Europe’s first monumental sculpture: new discoveries at Lepenski Vir (Srejović 1972) – the excavator of the site, Dragoslav Srejović, hinted at the importance of the site as the earliest place on European soil where artworks made from durable material (sandstone) might have achieved monumental significance and connotations. By revisiting the evidence, this paper looks at the ecology of relationships between humans and ‘other-than-humans’ at Lepenski Vir and broadly contemporaneous Mesolithic and Mesolithic-Neolithic transitional sites in the Danube Gorges area along the River Danube. Development and elaboration of relationships between the specific landscape and other-than-human beings in this setting might have given rise to the tradition of sculpted boulders. It is argued that, apart from the likely mimetic, animatory and commemorative roles of sandstone boulders, the whole landscape, along with its many inhabitants, might have been understood in monumental terms underlined by their consubstantial modes of relating to each other.