POWER AND PRESTIGE IN THE MIDDLE COPPER AGE SOCIETY NORTH OF THE CARPATHIANS
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2020-10-03

The aim of this paper is presentation of one newly discovered cemetery (Książnice site 2, in the south-east of Poland) that changed our view of the strength of interactions between the Copper Age civilization of the Carpathian Basin and the areas situated in the north of the Carpathian. Based on the analysis of this largest and the best investigated necropolis of the younger Danubian cultures in the south-east Poland it is possible to show the characteristics of the new social order, inspired by southern cultural patterns. The most important of these are: the concentration of graves in separate cemeteries, the differentiation of burials with regard to sex, the occurrence of indicators of the richest male burials (a copper hatchet, axe, chisel, numerous and selected flint artefacts, especially retouched blades-daggers) and female burials (copper jewellery), as well as the allocation of a separate area for elite burials (with inhumations and cenotaph) and one for egalitarian burials (with inhumations, cremation and cenotaph). The above-mentioned characteristics, prove that there was a strong influence of the late Bodrogkeresztúr and the Hunyadihalom-Lažňany patterns of social and religious behaviour on the societies living in the south-east of Poland at the turn of the 5th and 4th millennium BC.

Author(s): Wilk, Stanislaw (Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Institute of Archaeology)