Journal of Neolithic Archaeology
Not a member yet
184 research outputs found
Sort by
Der Großdolmen Lüdelsen 3 in der westlichen Altmark (Sachsen-Anhalt) – Baugeschichte, Rituale und Landschaftsrekonstruktion
Get PDFThe megalithic tomb Lüdelsen 3 was excavated in 2007 within the frame of the project „Megalithic landscapes of the Altmark“. A complex architectural and depositional history of one of the earliest Funnel Beaker chambered cairns (ca. 3600 cal BC) was decoded. Both early to late Funnel Beaker activities as well as a Single Grave burial could be reconstructed. The architecture and functional change was synchronised to changing local environs. The building ground was subject to deforestation und reforestation activities, related to differential ritual activities. Forest covered the surroundings of the megalithic tomb and the monument itself during most parts of the Neolithic. Accordingly, the tomb could not function as a territorial marker. In spite of a wide range of ritual activities as documented inside the chamber and at the surrounding mound, the number of deposited items is limited. This is in clear contrast to ritual activities at passage graves, within which larger assemblages of artefacts were deposited
The Classification of the Clay Drums of the Southern Trichterbecher Culture
Get PDFMusical Instruments are often over looked in our view of the past and although recently interest in this particular field of human endeavour has been increasing, the standard textbooks on prehistory still make little mention of this art.The drums of the southern Trichterbecher culture have been recognised for more than a century and for half of that time we have relied on the classification scheme of Ulrich Fischer (1951). While every so often a new approach to these drums is proposed, it seems that none of them are able to reflect all the distinctive features so characteristic of the southern TRB.The classification scheme presented here relies heavily on the work of Fischer, but in the 50 years since he wrote many more drums have been unearthed. With this wealth of new contextual data it is possible to elaborate Fischer’s drum types, and this further division is supported by the parallel distribution of decorative motifs. Here we may propose that distinct drum types existed, associated with the living or the dead
Wattendorf-Motzenstein – Eine schnurkeramische Siedlung im digitalen Landschaftsmodell
Get PDFThis paper deals with the digital model development of the Wattendorf- Motzenstein Corded Ware settlement (Northern Franconian Alb, Germany) and his surrounding landscape. The aim and the demand to the model as well as the details of the modelling and visualisation process will be described by stating the uncertainties in translating the real archaeological findings into three-dimensional virtual images
Die Toten der spätneolithischen Tellsiedlung von Okolište / Bosnien-Herzegowina: Massaker, Seuche oder Bestattungsbrauch?
Get PDFThe following paper deals with the human skeletal remains of at least 14 individuals that were found during excavations in 2004 and 2006 in one of the surrounding ditches of the late Neolithic tell settlement of Okolište / Bosnia-Herzegovina. Based on the archaeological findings and the anthropological analysis it is proposed that these human remains are rather not the outcome of specific burial practices but have to been seen in connection with a short-termed, though not punctuated event. However, it is not very likely that the dead are casualties of warlike operations; instead, we think it more probable that they fell victim to some kind of epidemic or famine. However, because of the poor preservation of bone in other parts of the ditch, it cannot be ruled out completely that the skeletal remains were the result of some kind of yet unknown burial practice
Territoriale und soziale Strukturen. Modelle zur Kollektivgrabsitte der Wartberg-Gruppe
Get PDFThe element identity is regarded as the reason for the monumental erection of collective burials.Estimations of the labour costs for the graves as well as calculations of the living population show that the associated society could have been much smaller than usualy thought. For the only well investigated contemporary settlement (Wittelsberg, Kr. Marburg-Biedenkopf) for example can a much larger population be expected. Anthropological Investigations show a distribution of ages and sex which do not imply an exclusive access to the burial site. The graves themselve are according to GIS-analysis grouped in small clusters in constant distance. Radiocarbon dating shows that at least some of the grouped graves where erected at the same time.Because of these results a model of the burying society can be build which organised themselve according to ancestry (lineage) in oposition to the usual interpretation as territorial markers of regional comunities. Ethnological researches underpin this model. In all recent collective burying societies the access to a grave is controled by descent
On the Outskirts of the European Bell Beaker Phenomenon – the Danish Case
Get PDFThis article explores the Danish Bell Beaker phenomenon by focusing on the meaning of this distinctive pottery and seeking answers to the following questions: Does the pottery reflect social identities with respect to gender, rank, religion and so forth, and is the symbolic meaning of beakers the same all over their wide area of distribution? Furthermore, why are Bell Beakers adopted in some regions but rejected in others? The starting point for this article is a detailed analysis of a comprehensive selection of potsherds comprising not only Bell Beakers, but also different types of coarse ware found at Bejsebakken, a settlement site in northern Jutland. The intra-site distribution of pottery may reflect learning patterns and, consequently, matrimonial traditions. This has wider implications for our understanding of the social organisation of Late Neolithic society. Finally, this article discusses the directions of influence, rejecting a single source of origin, but arguing that the material culture of the Danish Bell Beaker phenomenon was shaped by many-sided influences
Frühbadener Elemente im Neolithikum Mitteldeutschlands: die "Schöninger Gruppe"
No full textEarly Baden Elements in the Neolithic of Central Germany – the »Schöningen Group«Some cultural complexes still do not fit reliably into the seemingly well-established chronology of the Mittelelbe-Saale-Region. One example is the enigmatic Schöningen pottery, named after a settlement site in Lower Saxony. When R. Maier presented the material in 1987, it could only be dated broadly to the Younger Neolithic due to an apparent lack of convincing typological parallels. In 1993 J. Beran assigned several new complexes (e.g. Salzmünde, Oberwerschen; both in Sachsen- Anhalt) to the »Schöningen group« as he called it then. Based on very general typological resemblances, he dated it to the beginning of the Younger Neolithic, regarding it contemporary with early Michelsberg (MK I / II; c. 4200 / 4000 B.C.). On the whole the typochronological suggestion was followed by D. Kaufmann in 1994.In this paper we point to the hitherto unrecognized fact that the Schöningen bowl, as the dominant and most characteristic type, is very closely related to early Baden (Boleráz) pottery. Furthermore, parallels for almost all other typological features can be found in Boleráz and to some extent in Altheim. Therefore Schöningen pottery can be placed in the context of Baalberge and perhaps early Salzmünde (c. 3700–3350 B.C.). We consider the Schöningen types not a cultural »group« sensu stricto, but a bundle of time-specific styles, resulting from a strong Boleráz and perhaps Altheim influence on the Mittelelbe-Saale-Region
Neolithische Grabenwerke in Mitteleuropa. Ein Überblick
Get PDFThe authors present an overview of Central European enclosures.The joint article combines two originally separate manuscripts, which will be printed in the publication “Atlas of the Central European Neolithic (Germany, Austria, Switzerland)”. The manuscript was submitted in 2001
Dead Animals and Living Society
Get PDFThe social life of animals in the societies of the past was mostly that of ritual. One can have a closer look at the question by examining the so-called animal burials (= animal deposits). In this paper the case area shall be Kujavia, a region situated in central Poland. The collection of data on animal deposits, made here by the populations of the Late Neolithic Globular Amphora culture, has – when compared to data for other regions – a number of specific characteristics. Special mention deserves the clear tendency to place deposits in pits within settlement bounds. A smaller group is made up of deposits in direct or indirect connection with graves of human beings. In this way dead (killed?) and intentionally buried animals mostly became part of space used by the living members of the community. Another important observation concerns preferences in selecting animals for use in different spheres of human activity including ritual ones
From Ancestral Village to Monumental Cemetery: The Creation of Monumental Neolithic Cemeteries
Get PDFThe north-west communities of the mid-5th millennium BC embarked upon a remarkable transformation of their surroundings by creating permanent abodes for their dead which manifest themselves in veritable monumental long barrow cemeteries. These make a highly significant appearance on the periphery of the disintegrating Danubian world, precisely in the areas of intensive cultural contacts between the indigenous hunter-gatherers and the Danubian farmers.The sites are important not only in terms of their visual and cultural impact in the landscape, and in terms of the actual burial ritual which imaginatively combined elements of hunter-gatherer and Danubian burial practices, but also in terms of their relationship with both past and contemporary settlement patterns.The idea of a house of the living serving as a prototype for ahouse of the dead has an ancestry that goes back to at least the mid-19th century, but the results of the past two decades of research have enabled us to consider this issue anew. In areas as far apart as Kujavia and the central Paris basin, long mounds can be shown to imitate the Danubian long houses.However, a house was merely a component of a village – one ofmany elements which symbolised families coming together to form a community. The significance of the long mound cemeteries lay not just in imitating the long houses but in monumentalising entire ancestral villages. Thus, the intentional combining of architecture with the funerary sphere linked elements of the past – the abandoned villages– with those of the future – enduring abodes for their dead