page_title: Prehistory of Transylvania
section_title: Wietenberg culture
hierarchical_section_title: Prehistory of Transylvania / Bronze Age / Wietenberg culture
caption_attribution_description: Pottery, bone and bronze artefacts of the Wietenberg culture, National Museum of the Union, Alba Iulia, Romania
context_page_description: The Prehistory of Transylvania describes what can be learned about the region known as Transylvania through archaeology, anthropology, comparative linguistics and other allied sciences.
  Transylvania proper is a plateau or tableland in northwest central Romania. It is bounded and defined by the Carpathian Mountains to the east and south, and the Apuseni Mountains to the west. As a diverse and relatively protected region, the area has always been rich in wildlife, and remains one of the more ecologically diverse areas in Europe. The mountains contain a large number of caves, which attracted both human and animal residents. The Peştera Urşilor, the "Bears Cave", was home to a large number of cave bears whose remains were discovered when the cave was discovered in 1975. Other caves in the area sheltered early humans.
  Prehistory is the longest period in the history of mankind, throughout of which writing was still unknown. In Transylvania specifically this applies to the Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age.
context_section_description: The thesaurus found in 1840 at Ţufalău, Covasna County, in the area of the Wietenberg culture, speaks clearly of the wealth and refined tastes of a social elite.  Kept in a clay pot, the thesaurus contained several solid gold axes, ornamental phalerae with spiral motifs, hair rings, one bracelet and one large gold piece. A great number of gold and silver items (bracelets, loop rings, etc.) were found at Oarţa de Sus, with accurate stratigraphy, in a ritual space belonging to the Wietenberg culture. Such thesauruses containing hundreds of pieces weighing several kilograms, such as those at Sarasău (Maramureș County) or Hinova (Mehedinţi County), are few and likely to represent the community treasure. They are outnumbered by those displaying fewer items which seem to have been the private property of some leaders.
  Metal, bone, stone or clay processing were most certainly operations performed by specialists, who worked in small workshops, or sometimes larger ones such as those at Derşida or Palatca.
  There certainly existed many wooden tools or receptacles, but they have not been preserved. Animal skin processing for fashioning clothing items, shields, harnesses, etc. must have been widespread.
  The Bronze Age necropoles reveal funeral practices peculiar to each community. The graves, with variations specific to the different cultural entities, by their design and their contents attest to an advanced spiritual culture. Incineration (Wietenberg culture) or inhumation (Noua culture), the placing of offering-items alongside the deceased, all imply abstract thinking and belief in the afterlife.
  Archeological investigations alone are too few and disparate for a detailed reconstruction of the religions of the Bronze Age people. The solar symbols, dynamic or static in form, (continuing spirals, simple crosses or crosses with spirals, spiked wheels, rays, etc.) are so numerous that they could be illustrated in a separate volume, and speak clearly about the prevailing role of this cult.
  Cultic practices were performed by the people of the Bronze Age in diverse locations: in mountains, trees, springs, rivers, clearings or even, as noted, in specially assigned places inside the settlements. At Sălacea, Bihor County, in the southern area of the settlement of the Otomani culture there was a cultic edifice, a megaron type sanctuary measuring 5.20x8.80m, with a porch with two in antis pillars, a pronaos with an elevated altar and a naos with two fixed altars. The solid crust on the altar surface testifies to the rituals involving fire, while the walls nearby were provided with circular orifices (a ventilating system and alternative lighting of the altars depending on sunrise and sunset). On one of them were found nine clay weights, three curved stone knives, and one cylindrical clay stand. The other had nine clay weights in miniature, three curved stone knives and one cylindrical stand.
  The symbolic value of the items and their number speak for themselves. The walls were decorated with plaster work with geometrical motifs (spirals, continuing spirals) randomly painted in white. Close by the entrance an infant grave has been researched, possibly partially deposited as an offering. Another founding ritual is encountered in Early Bronze Age at Copăceni, where under the lodge's floorboard were found five human skeletons (one female adult and four fetuses). Judging by their position – the female in an obstetric position with the fetuses around her basin and one between her inferior members – it could well be a mother and her infants.
  All of these practices, judging by the archeological data mentioned above, as well as being based on other analogies, were accompanied by offerings, libations, chanting and cultic dancing. Apart from some daily festivals (sewing, harvesting, reaping, sheep loss or recovery, etc.), there must have been annual or multi-annual festivals of the whole community, or of part of it. This has been made clear from the above-mentioned research at Oarţa de Sus - Ghiile Botii. The divinities guarding this space were in harmony w
caption: Pottery, bone and bronze artefacts of the Wietenberg culture. In display at National Museum of the Union, Alba Iulia
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