During the 7th millennium BCE, the Balkan Peninsula served as a gateway for the spread of farming, animal husbandry, and Neolithisation from Anatolia and the Near East to Europe. The central Balkan River valleys, including the Vardar and Bregalnica, were among the most significant migration routes during this period. Amzabegovo, situated between these two river basins, encapsulates nearly two millennia of Balkan Neolithic development. The site was occupied 6,300 to 4,800 BCE, encompassing the era from the arrival of the first farmer settlers to the advent of metallurgy. Amzabegovo features a sequence of over 20 construction phases, including residential structures, pits, public buildings and burials. The site was abandoned at the end of the Neolithic until the Roman era, when a Roman villa was built on its top, sealing and preserving the Neolithic layers.

Research at Amzabegovo begun in the late 1960’s. The site is over 10 hectares in size and represents the full duration and development of the Neolithic in the Balkan Peninsula. The emblematic, white-painted Neolithic pottery was widely represented at Amzabegovo, and is a cultural marker of the Central Balkans Neolithic population. At the same time, the material culture includes some Near Eastern elements, including architecture patterns originating in the Near East and the use of marble for personal ornaments production. After a 50-year hiatus, field research was reinitiated at Amzabegovo. The current project, which this field school is part of, focuses on understanding the Neolithic transition to sedentary living, associated with the first adaptation of farming practices. A key question is understanding the regional dynamics and the role of Amzabegovo as the largest settlement in the cluster of sites within the Bregalnica River Basin, as well as its relationship and relevance to long distance trade routes.