Volume 97, Issue 2

A new chronological study of the LBK in the central Polish lowlands shows that it emerged later, lasted for a shorter period, and ended sooner than has been supposed up till now. LBK communities emerged, probably in the middle of the 53 rd century cal BC, to form an enclave in the central Polish lowlands, probably as a result of colonisation from loess areas in the south of Poland. Settlement steadily intensified throughout the 52 nd century cal BC, reaching its peak at the beginning of Phase III. In the middle of the 51 st century cal BC there followed an abrupt decline or collapse, and LBK occupation of the lowlands had probably ended completely by the end of that century. There followed an appreciable gap before the re-emergence of settlement in the form of the Late Band Pottery culture (LBPC), characterised by significantly sparser settlement, changed dwelling structures and contacts with hunter-gatherer groups. A start to the wider task of comparing the situation in the central Polish lowlands with other regional sequences is made principally by reviewing similar formal modelling of a post-LBK hiatus in the Rhineland. Possible factors causing the LBK decline are discussed, including climatic downturn, population boom and bust, warfare, cultural malaise, disease and internal social conflict. None of these is overwhelmingly convincing on its own, and one of the many challenges for continuing research in the Polish lowlands and beyond will be to find further specific evidence to decide which of this range of possibilities is most plausible in specific contexts.

The aim of the article is to characterize the early Neolithic settlement region of Targowisko in SE Poland. It is located on the northern edge of the Western Carpathians, 30 km east of Krakow. It functioned during the development of the entire Linear Pottery culture (LBK) and the subsequent Malice culture (MC), in the period from 5300 to 4500 BC. The focus was on the cultural transformation at the turn of the 6 th to the 5 th millennium BC. Cases of decisive cultural change (e. g. forms and ornamentation of ceramics, dwellings construction, directions of the supply of stone materials, the organization of inhabited space) and cases of continuity (elements of ceramics technology and flint production, continuation of settlement processes and subsistence strategy) were recorded. Cultural change is best represented by the symbolic realm and continuity in the utilitarian realm. These processes were projected onto a reconstructed, dynamic picture of environmental changes recorded in the palynological and geochemical material. Impulses from various cultural environments contributed to the formation of the MC, which proves its heterogeneous character and the complicated course of its genesis.

During the rescue excavations in the periphery of the village Petrijevci (Eastern Croatia), a set of Neolithic figural plastic findings was discovered. The group of findings consists of six fragments of “Vinča-like” type figurines, discovered in the Sopot cultural area. In the paper, an attempt of cultural and typological determination will be presented, with some references to the question of the Late Neolithic figural plastics in Croatia.

The function of sunken rectangular features in the Late Neolithic has been a subject of interest in Central Europe for many years. This type of pit is not found very often. One of the latest examples is a square Lengyel feature in the village of Střelice near Brno. A study of the microstratigraphy of the fill has made it possible to qualitatively move the debate to a new level. The qualitative assessment of bone micro-fragments is also innovative for the method of micromorphology in the archaeological context. The study also includes an analysis of artefacts in the actual fill of feature 562, especially the deposits of fragments of “other lithic industry”, pottery and parts of an animal’s body. The discovered situation is then interpreted in the context of other known contemporary features of this type. The presence of excrement with digested bone micro-fragments in the lower layer and the absence of a floor treatment, tread horizon or bedding can be interpreted in the context of ethnohistorical analogies, e. g., as the short-term use of a faecal pit for an omnivorous or carnivorous species (bear) with a subsequent ritual ending.

Zusammenfassung Der vorliegende Beitrag bietet eine kurze Übersicht diverser, den Beginn sozialer Stratifikation anzeigender Bestattungssitten in Kulturen des ausgehenden Äneolithikums in Mähren. Bestattungssitten werden im Beitrag als ein ritualisiertes Spiegelbild prähistorischer Realitäten verstanden, bei denen Grabbeigaben symbolische Rollen übernehmen, etwa Zugehörigkeit oder Identität. Die Grabausstattung kann gleichzeitig auch die Position des Verstorbenen in Gesellschaft und Handwerk spiegeln. Soziale Unterschiede zeigen sich bei den untersuchten Einheiten durch Allokation in isolierten Lagen oder innerhalb kleiner Grabgruppen, anhand ausgeprägter Grabarchitekturen (innere Grabkonstruktion, die Gräber umgebende Kreisgräben, Totenhäuser) sowie durch zahlreiche und verschiedenartige Grabbeigaben (einschließlich prestigeträchtiger Objektkombinationen – „Pakete“) als Manifestation gesellschaftlicher Stellung, Macht und Identität. Am wenigsten lässt sich dies in der Protoaunjetitzer Kultur erkennen. Eine spezielle Kategorie umfasst die Bestattungen reicher Männer, die als Metallurgen angesprochen werden und in der Glockenbecherkultur klar dominieren. In der Anfangsphase der Glockenbecherkultur können wir sogar von Bestattungen gesellschaftlicher Eliten sprechen.

Until the beginning of the 21 st century it was believed that the north-eastern border of Bell Beaker influence reaches the Vistula River basin. Recent discoveries in the North Podlachian Lowland provided grounds for verification of this belief, particularly with regards to the Masurian Lake District, which used to be considered as a territory of intensive activity of the Iwno Culture – a propagator of Bell Beaker influence in this part of Europe. This verification included materials of the highest diagnostic value – pottery and flint artefacts from two best-researched sites in this area: Ząbie X and Szestno II. As a result, fragments of pottery vessels and flint artefacts which can be conclusively associated with Bell Beakers were identified and their analyses revealed that these objects were not connected with the local Iwno Culture, but rather resembled both the materials recently unearthed in the North Podlachian Lowland and corresponding materials from the area of the Atlantic coast. This might mean that people carrying the Bell Beaker cultural package reached the area of the Masurian Lake District and North Podlachian Lowland in the Late Neolithic.

Most societies view infants and partially children, up to a certain age, as not fully human beings and/or persons. This paper takes a longue durée perspective to examine built spaces shared by the living and dead infants during the four millennia (seventh to third millennium BC) in Anatolia. Evidence of infant burials within and around houses in several prehistoric periods and sites is analysed through a child-centred approach to mortuary remains, which does not equate adults with subadults or fully human with not fully human beings. This allows us to gain new perspectives of how age, age groups and infancy or childhood were perceived in prehistory. By perceiving houses as social spaces where ritual and non-ritual mimesis is embodied in shared practices and beliefs, where the material and social collide, rather than simply as signifiers of social units, we are better able to grasp subadult identities and decipher the personhood of infants and children through mortuary practices. Through our Anatolian case study, we provide socio-anthropological explanations for keeping the ‘ghost children’, buried close to houses, due to delayed personhood. We argue for constructing culture-specific models of infancy based on the archaeological evidence in Anatolia and beyond.

Zusammenfassung Thema des Beitrages ist die Bedeutung der Kessel- und zoomorphen Modellwagen in der Späten Bronze- und Frühen Eisenzeit. Die Überlegungen gehen von einer vollständigen Vorlage und typo-chronologischen Analyse aller 1880 geborgenen Funde aus einer Grabhügelgruppe auf der Glasinac-Hochebene aus, in deren größtem Tumulus das Zentralgrab einen Vogelrindwagen und andere Ritual- und Symposialobjekte enthielt. Vergleiche mit italischen und balkanischen Vogel(rind)wägen und ihren Grabzusammenhängen werden gezogen. Weitere entscheidende Punkte betreffen den sozialen Status der mit einem Modellwagen Verstorbenen, die kultische Funktion dieser Miniaturwägen und den Inhalt der Wagenkessel bzw. zoomorphen Behälter.

From 19 inhumation graves from the cemetery in Malbork-Wielbark (northern Poland) samples (teeth) were collected for the analysis of strontium ( 87 Sr/ 86 Sr) isotopes in order to try to determine the origin of the subjects. The chronological range of the analyzed statistical sample covers about 300 years of over 600 years of necropolis history, i. e. the period from the end of the early pre-Roman period (phase A3 – the last decades BC) to the C1b phase of the Roman period (more or less the first half of the 3 rd century AD). The results of the analysis indicate the local origin of the studied group, and at the same time constitute an interesting contribution to the discussion on the ethnic structure of the Wielbark culture.

Zusammenfassung In diesem Beitrag werden die Glasgefäße und Mosaikperlen mit Gesichtsmasken aus Fundorten der Sântana de Mureş-Černjachov Kultur in Ostrumänien, Kreis Vaslui, vorgestellt. In der für Vaslui angelegten Datenbank (angelehnt an die Systematik im Corpus der römischen Funde im europäischen Barbaricum ) sind 84 Glasgefäße unterschiedlicher Typen verzeichnet, datierend vom Ende des 3. bis zum Beginn des 5. Jahrhunderts n. Chr. (bes. der Typ Kowalk und konische Becher mit Facettierung). Im Gräberfeld von Bârlad-Valea Seacă fand sich die bislang größte Anzahl an Glasgefäßen (50 %). Nur indem zukünftig umfassende Fundkataloge für Glaswaren auch für die Nachbarregionen erarbeitet werden, wird man einen Überblick über die sozioökonomischen Beziehungen, die Technologien und den Handel in der gesamten Region erhalten.

This paper returns to Husby in Glanshammar, Sweden, where an important manorial settlement of the mid-to-late 1 st millennium AD was excavated in the 1990s for a highway project. A recent intensive and comprehensive metal detector survey of the site’s surviving parts has secured additional finds that cast a new light on the manor and its afterlife. Fine copper alloy casting was amply demonstrated by the 1990s excavations. Now a die for the making of waffled gold foil has been added to this assemblage. Waffled foils formed part of gold-and-garnet cloisonné work, one of the most exclusive decorative techniques of the era. Hacksilver and coins from around AD 900 were found scattered over the old foundation of the torn-down mead-hall, apparently forming a first phase of memorialisation that continued from about AD 1100 onward with a small Christian cemetery next to the foundation. These single coins go back at least half a century before the start of silver hoarding in the region. The silver found at Husby shows clear signs of having been used as bullion in economic transactions, with a high degree of fragmentation and many test marks.

Zusammenfassung In diesem Beitrag wird ein spezieller Aspekt der Bestattungssitten im Rahmen der kulturellen Interaktionen im späten Frühmittelalter im Ostseeraum betrachtet: Die Nachnutzung alter Grabhügelfelder durch skandinavische Gruppen an der südlichen Ostseeküste. In dieser Zeit kommt es zu verstärkten Kontakten zwischen skandinavischen Gruppen und an der südlichen Ostseeküste siedelnden Gemeinschaften. In diesem Zusammenhang kommt es zur Gründung von Handelsorten und Kolonien skandinavischer Gruppen an der südlichen Ostseeküste. Bei den zugehörigen Bestattungsplätzen lässt sich an verschiedenen Fundorten die Nachnutzung alter Grabhügelfelder aufzeigen. Diese Nachnutzung stellt in diesem speziellen Fall eine Aneignung dar, mit der einerseits innergesellschaftliche Aspekte, wie beispielsweise die Stärkung der Gruppenidentität, ausgehandelt werden und eine (fiktive) kollektive Erinnerung geschaffen wird. Andererseits finden sie im Rahmen interkultureller Kontakte statt und bieten somit Anknüpfungspunkte an die Frage der interkulturellen Interaktion. Dabei ist die Nachnutzung und Aneignung der Bestattungsplätze im Zusammenhang mit der Legitimation der Anwesenheit auch gegenüber den heimischen Siedlungsgruppen, der Genese eines auf die Örtlichkeiten bezogenen kulturellen Gedächtnisses und der Überwindung von Fremdheit zu sehen.

Chełm – located today on the Polish-Ukrainian border –for over a century has attracted the attention of numerous scholars. The town had been rebuilt by Daniel Romanovich, the Halych-Volhynian prince who was crowned in 1253 by Pope Innocent IV and recognized as the king of Ruthenia – which was an unusual event in medieval Europe. For here we have a ruler who belonged to the Orthodox Church accepting a papal crown and the Catholic faith. In such circumstances, some time before the middle of the 13 th century, Daniel decided move his seat from Halych to Chełm, situated on the western periphery of his domain. The new city became not only a main seat, but also the real capital of the Halych-Volhynian Princedom. Here, on Cathedral Hill, excavations revealed the remains of the medieval basilica and a multi-element residence. At the same time, new discoveries were made in the city outskirts – namely, two masonry towers and an enigmatic column. The interdisciplinary archaeological research carried out by the author show an architectural complex and many archaeological finds unique in this part of Europe, ones inspired by the traditions of ancient Rome, the Byzantine East, and patterns known at that time in the Latin West.