Identity of FBC societies in the Upper Vistula River basin

2014

"Landscape, Histories and Societies in the Northern European Neolithic" presents papers from two sessions of the conference of the European Association of Archaeologists held in 2011 in Olso. The papers of this volume describe new research on the relationships between landscape, history and society in the northern European Neolithic. They focus on the Funnel Beaker complex and related Neolithic contexts, with case studies extending from Poland and the Czech Republic to Norway and Scotland. Several case studies examine the significance of enclosures – from early causewayed enclosures in the north associated with the very beginnings of the Neolithic to the significance of palisade enclosures constructed towards the end of the Neolithic in Scotland and Sweden. The volume also includes new studies on the origin, significance and interpretation of Neolithic burial and megalithic architecture found in a range of landscapes across northern Europe. Importantly, the volume also outlines the significance of other kinds of places that were not monumentalised in the same way, such as fens, the seashore and the wider environment, in the construction of Neolithic worldview. Finally, it concludes with a series of articles that consider the significance of particular forms of material culture – axes, grinding stones, pottery and food – in social reproduction in the Neolithic of northern Europe. Overall, the volume presents an important body of new data and international perspectives concerning Neolithic societies, histories and landscapes in northern Europe.

R. Gleser/D. Hofmann, Contacts, boundaries and innovation in the 5th millennium, 2019

The article follows the methodological approach to define - not a "culture" - but "ceramic styles", then dating this "style groups" by radiometric dates and then map epirossen and Michelsberg ceramics on the level of vessels. This was done for Baden-Württemberg in the South of Germany, showing a rather mixed picture of styles for the horizon MK I, followed by "closed" style regions during horizon MK II. This was interpreted on the level of "function of decorated vessels", as only this part of "material culture" was investigated. The idea is, decorated vessels lost by and by their place and importance for social interactions, but got more a reaffirmative function for group identity. The fifth millennium is characterized by far-flung contacts and a veritable flood of innovations. While its beginning is still strongly reminiscent of a broadly Line-arbandkeramik way of life, at its end we find new, interregionally valid forms of symbolism, representation and ritual behaviour, changes in the settlement system, in architecture and in routine life. Yet, these interregional tendencies are paired with a profusion of increasingly small-scale archaeological cultures, many of them defined through pottery only. This tension between large-scale interaction and more local developments remains ill understood, largely because interregional comparisons are lacking. Contributors in this volume provide up-to-date regional overviews of the main developments in the fifth millennium and discuss, amongst others, in how far ceramically-defined 'cultures' can be seen as spatially coherent social groups with their own way of life and worldview, and how processes of innovation can be understood. Case studies range from the Neolithisation of the Netherlands, hunter-gatherer-farmer fusions in the Polish Lowlands, to the Italian Neolithic. Amongst others, they cover the circulation of stone disc-rings in western Europe, the formation of post-LBK societies in central Europe and the reliability of pottery as an indicator for social transformations.

Landscapes, Histories and Societies in the Northern European Neolithic., 2014

The essay describes major movements of people and ideas in central and eastern Europe during the sixth to third millennium BC. For the sixth millennium, Neolithization itself is the main issue, the debate about which reflects changing attitudes in central European archaeology over the past two decades. The spread of a solarcosmological ideology is suggested at the beginning of the fifth millennium, manifested in circular enclosures with astronomical orientations. In the late fifth and early fourth millennium the Neolithic economy and areas of habitation are considerably enlarged in central Europe, suggesting new agricultural techniques. The later fourth and early third millennium was a time of far-reaching innovation with the development of wheeled transport; in contrast to earlier opinions an origin in the Pontic steppe zone seems highly probable. The latest large-scale movement of ideas and/or people considered here is the diffusion of the Corded Ware culture, and with it, a new gender-specific ideology, reflected in its rigid burial customs.

Network in Eastern European Neolithic and Wetland Archaeology. Scientific Cooperation between Eastern Europe and Switzerland. Working Papers on Prehistoric Archaeology. , 2020

The general aims of the IP were to build up a scientific network in Neolithic and wetland archaeology and the transfer of knowledge from Switzerland, as one of the worldwide leading countries in this field, to the participating Eastern European (EE) countries. Further aims were to concentrate on an improvement of archaeological field techniques (mainly underwater archaeology/ documentation under water/diving security) and dating methods. The combined application of locally developed dendrochronological calendars and radiocarbon dating is most promising. All EE-sites have the potential to give new insights on the process of the Neolithisation of Europe. In order to achieve these goals, joint activities, such as workshops, seminars, public lectures, field trips, diving courses and study weeks, were organised in the individual countries within framework of the NEENAWA project.