Volume 96, Issue 2

Vrbjanska Čuka is a tell site in the region of Pelagonia (Macedonia) established 8000 years ago by the Neolithic communities. Later it was used as an agricultural unit during the Roman era and the Middle Ages when it was also employed as a burial area. The excavations performed in the 1980s and during the last five years indicate a Neolithic farming society that constructed large buildings made of daub in a settlement enclosed by a circular ditch. The buildings had many clay structures, such as ovens, granaries, bins and grinding areas for processing cereals and bread production. The Neolithic communities used sophisticated fine pottery and modeled figurines and altars, while the stone tools were mainly used for cutting trees, harvesting and grinding. Apart from the cereal-based food (einkorn wheat, emmer wheat or barley), the inhabitants of Vrbjanska Čuka consumed lentils, peas and a variety of gathered wild fruits, while cattle, caprovine, mussels, fish and wild game meat was also part of a diet, as well as the dairy products. This paper will be a summary of a variety of data provided from the current international and multidisciplinary research of the site that involves excavation, prospection, geomagnetic survey, study of material culture, examination of architecture, radiocarbon dating, geoarchaeological, archaeobotanical, archaeozoological, lipid and use-wear analyses, as well as the topographic and 3D modeling. The recent knowledge on Vrbjanska Čuka provides novel understanding of the Early Neolithic in Pelagonia and contributes to the more extensive research of first farming societies in the Balkans.

The chaîne opératoire of Neolithic Korenovo ceramics is poorly known, as hitherto potsherds from only three sites, Malo Korenovo, Tomašica in central Croatia, and Becsehely–Bukkaljai dűlő in Hungary have been analysed archaeometrically. Korenovo is considered the southernmost aspect of the Linearbandkeramik (LBK). In this paper, the ceramic assemblage from Kapelica-Solarevac and Kaniška Iva (Central Croatia) will be discussed. Kapelica-Solarevac and Kaniška Iva are the only two sites in which Starčevo and Korenovo ceramics have been found together in closed contexts. Twenty potsherds from the Kapelica-Solarevac and Kaniška Iva assemblages were analysed using polarised microscopy and scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDX). In combination with equivalent data from 49 Korenovo ceramics from Tomašica and Malo Korenovo, the results offer an insight into the practices of Korenovo potters and show the lack of exchange of technological knowledge between Korenovo and LBK potters in Austria and central Transdanubia (Hungary). On the other hand, Korenovo potters seem to closely follow ceramic recipes typical of the neighbouring Vinča potters, suggesting Korenovo to be a hybrid group between the Vinča and the LBK pottery communities.

In Kozavchyn on the Southern Bug, an Early Copper Age settlement surrounded by trenches was explored by means of field surveys and magnetic prospection. In addition to the enclosing trenches, the magnetogram revealed a palisade trench and remains of pits and burnt houses, which covered a contiguous area with archaeological findings of almost 4 ha situated on a spur with the field name “Kozachyi Yar”. The settlement belongs to the Trypillia BI local group Sabatynivka, as does the nearby site Kamyane, “Kamyane-Zavallia 1”, also surrounded by ditches, which was investigated a few years ago and dated to the last third of the 5 th millennium BC. The Sabatynivka group is documented in a narrowly confined area on both sides of the Southern Bug River and may have once been a jointly acting political entity. Internal conflicts or external threats from the steppe area to the east are often considered as reasons for the enclosure of CTCC settlements. It seems conceivable, however, that the apparently once much more numerous enclosures had less of a protective than merely a delimiting character.

Two earthen mounds, trapezoid in shape, oriented along the W-E/NW-SE axis and located in prominent landscape positions, were recently discovered in the Głubczyce Forest in the loess area of the Głubczyce Plateau (SW Poland). Their resemblance to long-barrows of the Funnel Beaker culture, as yet unknown in this part of Silesia prompted low-invasive research, involving ALS data analysis, magnetic prospection and a study of soil properties. The objective was to determine if these are indeed anthropogenic structures and if so, how and when were they built. The results indicate: 1) a transformation from chernozemic (Phaeozem) to clay-illuvial soil (Luvisol/Retisol) in the Głubczyce Forest area. Similar processes were identified in neighbouring Central European loess regions and linked with prehistoric climate/vegetation changes (the spread of dense, beech-dominant forests). Human management of the landscape (involving sustained deforestation), enabled the patchy preservation of chernozemic soils until the present-day, 2) both mounds are anthropogenic features, built on a Phaeozem using chernozemic soil. Their construction occurred before the soil transformation, i.e. most likely in prehistory. The development of the Głubczyce Forest may have taken place during the Migration period – a time of settlement decline in Silesia, and 3) the Głubczyce Forest bears further traces of anthropogenic activity: ancient agriculture (field systems), funerary practices, forest management and WWII combat.

A women’s burial of the Early Bronze Age that was uncovered near Ammerbuch-Reusten, Tübingen district in autumn 2020 shows clear relations to burial rites of the Final Neolithic in central Europe. The only grave good was in the rear of the burial. A small spiral ring made of gold wire at the left side of the burial at hip level, which can be considered to be the earliest securely dated precious metal find in southwestern Germany. The find fits into a small series of early spiral rings made of gold wire, which are among the oldest precious metal finds in central Europe. Its composition with c. 20 % silver and less than 2 % copper as well as traces of platinum and tin indicates the use of a naturally occurring gold alloy, most likely from so-called alluvial deposits obtained by panning from rivers. The trace element pattern strongly suggests that this type of gold derives from Cornwall, specifically from River Carnon. The burial matches a group of other burials from the Bronze Age on the plateau and is apparently related to a hilltop settlement on the nearby Kirchberg of Reusten.

Over the past dozen years or so, there has been a significant increase in the pace of research on the phenomenon of the Trzciniec cultural circle. This is due to a snowballing increase of the source base, which was obtained as part of modern excavations, currently being conducted in a wide spatial scope (research on routes of planned motorways). A number of synthesis publications have also appeared. Coherent periodizations of development of this cultural circle has been worked out for many regions. It should be noted, however, that these are mainly systematics created on the basis of materials originating from settlements. The number of sepulchral discoveries that have been made so far is incomparably smaller than those of settlement-type objects. The problem of the scale of occurrence of cemeteries seems to be very clear, because in some thoroughly researched areas, no single confirmed grave has yet been discovered. The areas of the San, Vistula and Wisłoka river interfluves, the central Warta region and the sandy areas of the Nida Basin can, among others, be considered as such regions. This article is an attempt to address this problem more broadly. It is also a search for possible explanations the indicated irregularity of an absence of grave sites. The work analyses three aspects of this issue: the degree of excavation reconnaisance of the Trzciniec ecumen, environmental conditions and cultural factors. For the purposes of the analyses, a current list of sepulchral sites of the Trzciniec culture in Poland has been created and all relevant information has been collected. Selected aspects have been illustrated with various types of mapping, specific examples from selected Trzciniec culture sites or groups remote territorially or remote in time, chemical analyses of soil for phosphorus content and radiocarbon facts.

This paper deals with the provenance of Mycenaean pottery found in the palace of Ayios Vasileios in Laconia. It focusses on painted and plain fine wares and reports the results of neutron activation analysis (NAA). The analyzed ceramics cover all of the habitation phases of the palace as well as the short, post-palatial use of the site, i. e. LH IIB to LH IIIC Early 1 (ca. 1450–1180 BCE). A large part of these fine ware pots represents a compositional pattern, which probably relates to local or regional production during the palatial periods LH IIIA and IIIB. Very similar patterns are known from other sites in the Eurotas valley as well as on the southeastern Laconian coast. The diachronic analysis shows that a reduction of paste variability towards the use of a more homogeneous clay recipe occurred after LH II, i. e. approximately contemporaneously with the establishment of the palace at Ayios Vasileios. Relatively few samples of the painted fine wares are imports and can be assigned to the wider region of Mycenae. Interestingly, these imports are restricted to the earlier phases up to LH IIB/IIIA1.

Zusammenfassung Der längste Abschnitt der mykenischen „Palastzeit“, Späthelladisch III A2/B (ca. 1370–1200 v. Chr.), wird in der mykenischen Archäologie auch mit dem Begriff der „koiné“ bezeichnet, da uns die materiellen Hinterlassenschaften dieser Jahrzehnte als ausgesprochen homogen erscheinen. Mit diesem Beitrag wird dies für die Peloponnes kritisch und auf einer breiteren Quellenbasis hinterfragt. Dabei wird auf durchaus nicht zu unterschätzende Unterschiede in der materiellen Kultur dieser Zeit hingewiesen, die wiederum in Zusammenhang mit den Handlungen und Entscheidungen der Menschen in der damaligen Zeit gesehen werden müssen. Insgesamt wird dem Modell „homogenerer“ Verhältnisse, ausgehend von der materiellen Kultur, zugestimmt – im Vergleich mit unserem Bild der frühmykenischen Zeit sowie der Nachpalastzeit. Die Wahrscheinlichkeit, von der materiellen Kultur ausgehend zwingende Rückschlüsse auf die politische Gliederung in der Vergangenheit, auf das konkrete Territorium eines „Staates“, auf Grenzverläufe etc. ziehen zu können, sei allerdings als sehr gering eingeschätzt.

The enclosed landscape around the Artanish Peninsula (Lake Sevan/Armenia) can be seen as a prehistoric terra incognita due to the wholesale lack of archaeological investigations to date. Initial approaches in 2019 – funded by the Gerda-Henkel-Foundation – revealed outlines of the prehistoric settlement patterns which could be placed in relation to gold mining in a clearly delineated natural corridor along this line of superregional communication and trade routes. The intention of the following project is to implement an intensive, holistic-archaeological investigation of the settlement network in the surroundings of the gold mining area and an interdisciplinary attempt to embed these structures within the larger ecological and anthropogenic environment.

The results of excavations show that the La Tène culture community which inhabited the microregion of the contemporary village of Samborowice (Upper Silesia, Poland) in the Iron Age did not differ from its brethren from the area of Moravia and the middle basin of the Danube. Our intention is to try to identify the most important features of local economy based on newly acquired archaeobotanical and archaeozoological sources. The results from Samborowice in the form of a set of cereals characteristic of La Tène culture settlements from Central Europe suggest that the set of remains being analysed comes from a period when changes to the selection of cereals had yet to occur. The population in this period of history applied a model of economy based on agriculture and livestock rearing, with cattle being the most important animals, followed by pigs and small ruminants interchangeably.

The study addresses remains of two peculiar graves unearthed at the site Mikulin 9 in the Dobużek Scarp (Pol. Skarpa Dobużańska) area in Western Volhynia. Unique character of the burials under consideration consists in the peculiarity of funeral ritual performed, scenario of which was basically divided into two acts of burning of the deceased – once on cremation pyres, and then in the eventual places of their interment (grave pits). Both the graves under consideration as well as analogical finds from the western part of the Lublin-Volhynian Upland and its northern foreland can be connected with an impact form the Pontic area and dated back to the Early Scythian Period. Historically, their presence is commonly considered as a result of westward migrations of forest-steppe people form the area of nowadays Ukraine triggered by the appearance of Indo-Iranian Scythian tribes. In the case of the presented burials no less significant from the peculiar eastern burial rite performed seem their localization. When discussing the Dobużek Scarp area as a destiny point of one of such migrations, clearly Pontic character of the escarpment’s physiography should be taken into consideration. The local conditions of the already unsettled loess paha of Dobużek escarpment must have peculiarly attracted pastoral communities arriving from the east. Moreover, the graves were placed in a very exposed point within the preexisting prehistoric landscape, to wit – they were dug into today non-existent but then dominating the area long barrows of the Funnel Beaker Culture. It seems likely that by the act of burying their kinsman into the exposed Eneolithic mounds the incomers tried to create an ancestral tie with the area and thereby justify their presence “here and now”.

Gold snake-head rings are a famous and much studied artefact group of the Late Roman Period in Scandinavia. But before and during their heyday, women in the same areas were occasionally buried with shield-head and snake-head rings made of silver or bronze. This paper surveys the material and traces the origin of these designs from the Wielbark Culture in coastal Poland about AD 100. The early shield-head rings probably arrived across the Baltic with the women who wore them. After the AD 210s, non-gold rings are a feature of the gold snake-head rings’ core production and distribution area on the Baltic Islands and south-east mainland Sweden. The women who wore them were not tribal royalty, but enjoyed comfortable economic means and had the right to display this top-level symbol in more affordable materials.

Zusammenfassung In den 1970er Jahren wurden auf dem Alten Kirchplatz in Haan, Kreis Mettmann, während Bauarbeiten zahlreiche Bestattungen aufgedeckt und dabei weitgehend zerstört. Geborgen wurden damals lediglich einige Schädelreste mit einer besonderen Kopfzier aus Buntmetall (inkl. Anhaftungen von Haaren und Textilien), die später als sterbliche Überreste hochadliger Stiftsdamen beschrieben und als Ensemble in das 10. Jahrhundert datiert worden sind. Diese chronologische Einordnung basierte vor allem auf Radiokarbondatierungen, die heute allerdings als Fälschungen angesehen werden müssen. Eine aktuelle, interdisziplinäre Untersuchung der wenigen heute noch vorhandenen Funde ergibt zum einen eine vollkommen neue Interpretation als zuvor und zum anderen eine Umdatierung in das 17. bis 18. Jahrhundert. Die neue Datierung basiert dabei auf drei voneinander unabhängigen Methoden (Osteoarchäologie, AMS 14 C-Datierung, Mikro-Röntgenfluoreszenz-Analyse), die sich gegenseitig ergänzen. Die Metallfunde konnten zudem durch Vergleiche mit Bild- und Schriftquellen sicher als sog. Ohreisen (ndl. oorijzers ) identifiziert werden, hergestellt aus Messing, welche als Unterbau einer neuzeitlichen Haubentracht von Frauen verschiedener Gesellschaftsschichten getragen worden sind. Im Einzugsgebiet des Rheins war die Ohreisentracht in Deutschland bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts weit verbreitet, ist danach aber sehr schnell in Vergessenheit geraten, was mit zur langjährigen Fehldeutung der Funde beigetragen hat. Mit der hier vorgelegten, neuen kulturhistorischen Einordnung der Bestattungen aus Haan kann gleichzeitig ein signifikanter Beitrag zur Funeralarchäologie der Neuzeit geleistet werden.

A fragmentarily preserved Byzantine icon made of steatite was discovered in 2015 during regular excavations in Chełm, eastern Poland. Identified as the left wing of a diptych illustrating the Twelve Great Feasts and created at the close of the 12 th century, the find is one of the most important and beautiful Byzantine artefacts to have been found in Poland. The icon was uncovered within the confines of the palace complex which was created by Daniel (Danylo) Romanovych († 1264) in Chełm in the second quarter of 13 th century. The icon, even though it was found within the borders of what is now Poland, is material evidence of contact between Byzantium and the social elite of the Galicia-Volhynia lands, rather than with the Polish Piasts. In this paper we concentrated on the presentation of the archaeological context of the find, which made it possible to establish that the icon arrived Chełm before the middle of the 13 th century ( terminus ante quem 1253), and especially on petrographic and traceological analyses of the icon. Assuming that greenish plaques were indeed the most characteristic steatite icon type, a decision was made to examine, apart from the Chełm artefact made from white rock, a greenish icon from the National Museum in Krakow as well. Petrographic analyses were based on optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM-EDS) and X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD). Both icons were carved in steatite i. e. talc rich rock but their chemical compositions indicate the presence of other components. Artifact from Chełm is white. Porous, enriched in potassium (K) and locally blistering outer rim of the icon from Chełm was formed probably during the fire event. Presence of forsterite and subordinate amount of leucite also indicate high temperature influence. Local enrichment in calcium (Ca) is related to exchange reactions with ground compounds. Accumulation of different components on the surface of the icon’s surface was noted. The icon from the National Museum in Krakow is greenish probably because of the presence of chlorite. The results of the traceological analysis (icon from National Museum in Krakow was not analysed) indicate that the icon found in Chełm was created most likely by a skilled and experienced carver with access to the high-quality magnifying glass and specialist tools required for rendering minuscule objects and their details. The production of the icon also involved the use of a “mechanical” tool, probably a kind of a miller with a rotating polishing head, which also seems to point to a specialist workshop. The use-wear traces observed on artefact are limited to polish resulting from prolonged contact with human hands or storing the icon in a leather case. Most of the extant Byzantine icons are unprovenanced objects held in museum collections or church treasuries. Therefore, as the icon presented in this paper was discovered during archaeological excavations, it ranks among the few Byzantine artefacts to have been found outside of this realm. The petrographic and traceological analyses conducted are the first published natural science contributions to the study of Byzantine steatite icons and we hope they will provide the impetus for undertaking such research on other Byzantine finds, helping to develop Byzantine archaeology further.