The inscriptions of the proto-European script are often found completely covering clay female figurines, votive offerings (sometimes ex-votos), libation vases, miniature vessels, spindle whorls, seals, temple models and loom weights, indicating they were developed in a religious context (Marler, 2001) .

In south-east Europe of the Neolithic and Copper Ages, stones or clay artefacts were inscribed with the religious beliefs of the ancient Balkan-Danube populations. This script was not used for commercial transactions or for recording administrative documents, but for "communicating with the gods".

The inscribed artefacts were used both by the common people in domestic rites and by a powerful priestly elite during magical and religious ceremonies and, according to some authors, when celebrating burial rites; e.g. the inscribed Tartaria tablets accompanying the charred bones of an individual in a grave.
( Harmann, 1997)

The reorganization of religion and the invention of a script were basic elements of the long period of transition experienced by the populations of south-east Europe, of which many aspects are still unknown to us today. During this time, the nomad groups of hunters and gatherers began to disappear, giving way to crop-growing village-dwellers, although cities, kings and the state had not yet appeared. So that, alongside the appearance of writing, new religious concepts developed out of older traditions and cults by a kind of metabolic process. The elite used the sacred script also for guiding and controlling the peoples' sense of belonging to communities, where a strong egalitarian spirit still existed.( Merlini 2002a)

The religion of south-east Europe was above all the religion of "chthonic and lunar spiritual principles strongly related to female divinity. The images portrayed were impregnated with the richness of the earth and were as cyclical as the moon" (Gimbutas, 1991). The leitmotifs of the "sacred verses" inscribed or painted on cult objects consist of the different names, attributes, prerogatives and functions of female divinities. Therefore it was a sacred script, used when communicating with transcendental powers.

The proto-Balkan peoples were greatly in awe of the giving and nurturing of new life and produced texts whose central theme was the mystery of birth, death, and life-renewal; the life of humanity, but also that of the whole earth and cosmos. Writing, abstract symbols and images mostly referred to one or more feminine divinities who were harbingers of life, ruled over the afterlife and dispensed energy for regeneration; divinities who, like Mother Earth, were born, died and were regenerated in harmony with the seasons and the crops.