Sprawozdania Archeologiczne

Current paleoanthropology and paleoarchaeology in the museums of Poland in the tourism context. Invisible heritage?

2024-03-07T14:01:43+00:00

The heritage of prehistory, in the fields of both palaeoanthropology and palaeoarchaeology, constitutes a huge physical and interpretative resource, even though the majority of artefacts have never left museum storage rooms. The current significant development in research into human fossils does lead to considerations about the current ways of exhibiting museum collections regarding this kind of heritage. In Poland, artefacts of prehistory, including human fossils, are distributed between different kinds of museums ‒ historical, archaeological, natural history, and geological ones, as well as museums belonging to universities and scientific institutes. None of them builds their brand based on palaeoanthropological artefacts. Moreover, since the excavations have stopped, the sites of discoveries of that kind remain illegible to the general public due to the lack of on-site markers and appropriate educational tourist facilities. All these facts together underline the problem of limited visibility of the recent discoveries and palaeoanthropological and palaeoarchaeological heritage in the Polish museum and tourist market.

Attempts at spatial analyses of data from the Polish Archaeological Record

2024-03-07T14:04:01+00:00

Since the mid-1970s, the Polish Archaeological Record has been a national program in Poland with the primary objective of cataloguing archaeological sites, providing detailed descriptions and exact geographical locations. It is in operation to this day. So far, approximately 90% of the area of Poland has been prospected and almost 470,000 archaeological sites catalogued. Currently, work is underway to digitise the entire database. This paper presents our attempts to use the digitised data from this database to study the intensity of settlement processes in the past as well as how to visualise these data on a map. For the purpose of this research, archaeological data from an area in the northeast of Poland were digitised in a GIS environment. Examples of similar spatial analyses were taken from Scottish and Czech research and adapted to this case. The results, a series of maps showing the intensity of traces of human habitation in different time periods, demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of such visualisations.

Radiocarbon Chronology of the post-LBK Malice Culture in Lesser Poland

2024-03-07T14:02:00+00:00

A series of new radiocarbon dates from Neolithic Malice Culture (MC) sites in Lesser Poland allow for making significant corrections in the absolute chronology of this culture. Bayesian modelling of a series of MC dates made it possible also to specify the absolute chronology of individual phases of the development of this culture. The early classic phase (MC1a) is around 4800-4700 BC, the classic phase (MC1b) between 4700 and 4450 BC, and the late phase (MC2) between 4450 and 4200 BC. In addition, the review of the definitions of the MC phases and their new absolute chronology allow for the synchronization of their development with the cultural
units in the Tisza basin. Phase MC1b developed parallel to phase III of the Herpály culture, phase MC1c to Proto-Tiszapolgár (layer 5 on the Herpály tell), and phase MC2 with the Tiszapolgár culture.

Early Neolithic settlers on the border of the loess of Eastern Poland: new data from the Nałęczów Plateau

2024-03-07T14:03:54+00:00

This article is an interim presentation of the colonisation of the loess upland border of the western Lublin Region
by LBK societies. The main point of reference are materials discovered in Bogucin (Nałęczów Plateau) in 2011,
which are currently the only homogenous Early Neolithic collection from this region. The results of the research indicate that the LBK settlement on the loess borderland started at least at the end of the 6th millennium BC, in the classical stage of the Music-Note phase (NII). It clearly intensified during its latest part (NIII), which was linked with the adaptation of the early-Želiezovce ornamentation style. The obtained data confirms the existence of at least two settlement micro-regions in the discussed period. They dynamically developed through intense and far-reaching interregional contacts and exchange of goods (especially flints and flint artefacts). The initial territories of the LBK societies inhabiting the analysed loess borderland were most probably the areas of the northern foreland of the Sandomierz Upland.

From pots to potters: reconstructing group and individual variability in pottery production. A case study of the LBK site Cząstków Polski XII, Comm. Czosnów

2024-03-07T14:04:04+00:00

This article presents the results of the analysis of the manufacturing macrotraces on the LBK pottery from Cząstków Polski, Site XII, Czosnów commune. It is a small, highly fragmented, and eroded assemblage and the usefulness of such material for the study of pottery production was tested. Different lines of evidence could be combined and led to the recognition of various vessel forming methods and to the reconstruction of distinct chaînes opératoires and even individual traits within them, indicating the occupation of the site by one community of practice with multiple manufacturers. Pottery production at Cząstków Polski followed general LBK
potting standards but also shows some peculiarities indicating some degree of idiosyncrasy within this community of practice.

Baltic Amber in Hungarian Bronze Age. New data and current stage of research

2024-03-07T14:01:46+00:00

Amber was one of the key raw materials distributed in Bronze Age Europe. One of its varieties – succinite – was
exchanged over a vast area stretching from its sources on the southern shores of the Baltic Sea to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The chemical identification of Baltic amber significantly expands our knowledge of the dynamics and nature of the relationships connecting different regions of Europe in the first half of the second millennium BC. One of the most significant cultural-geographical areas reached by this amber was the Carpathian Basin. This text presents a summary of the current state of knowledge about the context, chronology, and the extent of amber occurrence in the Hungarian Bronze Age. At the same time, it supplements the catalogue of finds with artefacts acquired in recent years, providing new information regarding radiocarbon dating and spectral analysis of selected amber artifacts.

A multidisciplinary assessment of disability in early medieval Culmen, Poland

2024-03-07T10:42:34+00:00

This study bridges a gap between palaeopathology and the textual analysis, with the aim of investigating which
diseases and pathological lesions could have been associated with disability in Early Mediaeval Culmen in Poland.
We used palaeopathological methods to examine 661 skeletons, as well as reviewed Early Mediaeval hagiographies
and chronicles. The textual analysis revealed three types of disability: mobility difficulties, an abnormal posture, and blindness, which were also identified in the osteological materials from Culmen. Eight skeletons display lesions corresponding to Pott’s disease, poliomyelitis, leprosy, osteomyelitis, multiple myeloma, and amputation, which were identified as disabilities. The prevalence of disability depended on the age, with adults affected more frequently. This interdisciplinary study is the first to analyse people with disabilities on a population level, using textual sources and osteological materials from mediaeval Central Europe. The protocol for
research on disability in archaeology presented by us may be applied to other archaeological contexts, also from sites outside Poland, from historical periods of time.

Chipped lithic artefacts from Paradimi and Krovili (Thrace, Northern Greece). Remarks from the 2020 surface investigations

2024-03-07T14:01:50+00:00

The paper presents flaked lithic materials from two tell-type Neolithic sites Paradimi and Krovili located in Eastern Thrace. They were obtained during systematic and detailed surface surveys. All the collected lithic materials were examined and described. Some conclusions about processing and sources of raw materials were presented along with comparisons to other Neolithic sites in northern Greece.

Early Neolithic red-painted pottery from the Prandocin site, southern Poland. Indirect transfer in a technological context

2024-03-07T13:59:43+00:00

The paper presents the results of specialized research on a small collection of artefacts of the Linear Pottery Culture in southern Poland. Among the 27 pottery fragments discovered at the Prandocin Site 1, a few painted fragments were identified. Such kind of painting style directly relates to the Želiezovce group of this culture in western Slovakia. Painted vessels are rarely found in the context of the Linear Pottery Culture in Lesser Poland (Małopolska), which is why special attention was given to raw material and technological studies of the ceramics. The study aimed to answer the question of whether the painted vessel was produced locally or if it represents
evidence of direct migration of people, objects, or ideas from the areas of present-day western Slovakia at the turn of the 6th and 5th millennium BC.

Results of a palynological study of the contents of small glass bottles of the Late Antiquity from the Kanchaani Cemetery (Southeastern Georgia)

2024-03-07T14:04:07+00:00

Eight small glass bottles (vials) have been obtained from five graves of the Kanchaani cemetery, dating to the 1st-3rd centuries AD. The objects came to the laboratory almost intact, and their contents have also survived. Analysis of the plant pollen and the study of non-pollen palynomorphs (NPP) of these contents showed that there was a set of various medicinal plants in seven bottles, and one bottle contained an infusion made from in-sects, which also had medicinal properties. The pollen of 23 medicinal plants has been determined to genus and species levels in the contents of the bottles. The paper describes in detail the characteristics of all found medici-nal plants and their use in folk medicine. It turns out, that the ethnopharmacology of the Late Antiquity Period in the region under consideration was rather well developed.

Cemetery at Luzino – the easternmost located site of the Dębczyno Group in Poland (Pomerania)

2024-03-07T14:03:58+00:00

Luzino burial ground is the easternmost site of the Dębczyno group, located in Wejherowo county, in the northern Polish province of Pomerania. The cemetery occupied the summit of a slightly elevated terrain ridge. The remains of 20 graves, most probably only skeletal burials, were recorded, in which, apart from one case, no bone material survived. Grave goods were recorded in five of them. In four graves, small-sized hand-made vessels were recorded whose state of preservation allowed their reconstruction, while in one burial an elaborate necklace of beads (glass and amber, see below), a brooch and probably a belt buckle were discovered.
The materials found at the Luzino site should be associated with the late stages of Migration Period. The burials with grave goods, however, show mainly links to the Elbe circle, while Scandinavian influences are lacking in the mobile materials.

Early medieval burial from the culmination of the Old Town Hill in Sandomierz

2024-03-07T14:02:06+00:00

The subject of this article is a grave dated to the end of the 10th century AD discovered in 2016 at the culmination
of the so-called Old Town Hill in Sandomierz (Sandomierz Site no 45). The grave, just like a burial found in 2006
– located a dozen or so metres from the discussed feature – was unusually oriented – approximately along the
N-S axis. Specialist analyses and examination of the burial goods found in the grave – a knife, a firesteel, a flint
strike-a-light and a vessel fragment – indicate that the buried man probably lived in Sandomierz or its surroundings.
The graves discovered in 2006 and 2016 are not part of a vast cemetery that occupied the middle and upper
part of the Old Town Hill in the 11th century, but they are separate burials. It is possible that they attest to an
abandoned attempt to establish a cemetery by an unspecified group inhabiting Sandomierz at the end of the 11th
century, desiring to stress their distinctiveness from the rest of the population not only by having their own necropolis,
but also by digging graves that were oriented in a different direction.

In the middle of nowhere. Unique sword scabbard chape from Niepołomice Forest

2024-03-07T14:01:40+00:00

Detector recognition carried out in Lesser Poland in last few years deliver a wealth of movable historical artefacts. One of them is a sword scabbard chape made of a copper alloy discovered in the middle of Niepołomice Forest. The paper subjected this artefact to typological classifications, comparative analysis, dating and ethnocultural characterization. Sword scabbard chapes in this type are very rare finds and most of them were discovered in southern and eastern Europe in Bulgaria, Ungarn and Ukraine, and are dated to the second half of the 10th and the 11th century. Specimen from Niepołomice Forest was presumably created in one of these areas and ended up here via one of the trade routes that intersected in Cracow.

(Review) Agnieszka Czekaj-Zastawny, Anna Rauba-Bukowska, Agnieszka Kukułka (eds), Najstarsza osada kultury ceramiki wstęgowej rytej z terenu Polski. Gwoździec stan. 2, gm. Zakliczyn/ The earliest settlement of the Linear Pottery Culture from the territory

2024-03-07T14:01:34+00:00

(Review) Martin Furholt, Ivan Cheben, Johannes Müller, Alena Bistáková, Maria Wunderlich, Nils Müller-Scheeßel (eds), Archaeology in the Žitava valley I: The LBK and Želiezovce settlement site of Vráble (= Scales of Transformation in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies 9)

2024-03-07T14:01:38+00:00

(Review) Andrzej Buko, Świt państwa polskiego

2024-01-13T15:55:49+00:00

Preface. Jan Machnik (20 September 1930 –7 October 2023)

2024-01-24T21:45:27+00:00