The Gradeshnitsa tablets () 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.
Overview Steven R. 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)." The tablets are dated to the 4th millennium BC and are currently preserved in the Vratsa Archeological Museum of Bulgaria.The Gradeshnitsa Tablets
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
References