Act locally, think northerly: The aftermaths of the Pomeranian culture expansion onto...
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2023-03-20

Karol Dzięgielewski (Jagiellonian University)

After several decades of academic discussions there is a kind of consensus now that from the 
beginning of the younger Early Iron Age (Hallstatt D period) a series of migratory events took 
place from the southern Baltic coast (Pomerania) towards the southern regions of what is today 
Poland and even as far as the western Ukraine. Although this process still awaits 
bioarchaeological confirmations (hampered by exclusive crematory burial rite), it is distinctly 
visible in the distribution of the so-called northern component in material remains across the 
middle Polish lowlands and northern parts of the southern Polish uplands. The set of traits, 
which were completely foreign to these areas, embraces multi-urn stone chest graves, face urns, 
cap like urn lids, and characteristic bronze collars (breast plates) or their pictograms on urns. 
Since one of the incentives for the migration of mobile Pomeranian kin groups was probably 
the will to improve their economic status, soon after the arrival at the newly settled areas, there 
appeared evidence of adapting farming strategies from the local Lusatian culture societies. 
However, as in historical cases of post-migration adaptations, other areas of culture (the inner 
domain of habitus according to Bourdieu: burial rite, attire, symbols of social or religious 
status) remained more resistant to change. Analysing respective material culture from middle 
and southern Poland, one can observe 'negotiations' with local patterns and attempts at 
maintaining old values, even when contact with the motherland and its material culture 
developments was hard or broken.