Linear Pottery culture
From Freepedia
The Linear Pottery culture or (German) Linearbandkeramik (abbr. LBK) or Linear Band Ware culture or Linear Ceramics culture or the Danubian I culture of V. Gordon Childe, or Early Danubian or Incised Ware Group is a major archaeological horizon of the northern European Neolithic (stone age), flourishing ca. 5500—4500 BC. The heaviest concentrations are on the middle Danube, the upper and middle Elbe, and the upper and middle Rhine. The LBK represents the advent of agriculture into this part of the world.
Three variants are recognized:
- Early or Western Linear Pottery Culture. The culture developed on the middle Danube was carried down the Rhine, Elbe, Oder and Vistula into largely unoccupied lands.
- Bükk or Eastern Linear Pottery Culture. The Early Linear Pottery Culture influenced or intruded upon a population of Starcevized Mesolithic remnants in the upper Tisza drainage system of the Bükk Mountains.
- Late Dniester-Bug Culture. The Early Linear Pottery Culture intruded upon the Neolithic Dniester-Bug Culture.
A number of cultures ultimately replaced the Linear Pottery culture over its range, but there is no one-to-one correspondance between its variants and the replacing cultures. The culture map instead is complex. Some of the successor cultures are the Hinkelstein, Großgartach, Rössen, Lengyel, Cucuteni, and Boian-Maritza.
Contents |
Extent and Duration
The LBK ranged from about the line of the Seine—Oise (Paris Basin) eastward to the line of the Vistula and upper Dniester, and southward to the line of the upper Danube down to the big bend. An extension ran through the Western Bug river valley, leaped to the valley of the Dniester, and swerved southward from the middle Dniester to the lower Danube in eastern Romania, east of the Carpathians.
The LBK was concentrated somewhat inland from the coastal areas; i.e., it is not evidenced in Denmark or the northern coastal strips of Germany and Poland, or the coast of the Black Sea in Romania. The northern coastal regions remained occupied by Mesolithic cultures exploiting the then fabulously rich Atlantic salmon runs. There are lighter concentrations of LBK in the low countries, such as at Elsloo, and at the mouth of the Oder. Evidently, the Neolithics and Mesolithics were not excluding each other, nor is there any sign of armed confrontation.
The pottery styles of the LBK allow some division of its window in time:
- Early. Pottery is as described in the article. This culture appeared on the middle Danube.
- Middle. Musical Note pottery. The incised lines of the decoration are broken or terminated by punctures, or "strokes", giving the appearance of musical notes. The culture expanded to its maximum extent. Regional variants appeared.
- Late. Stroked pottery. Lines of punctures are substituted for the incised lines.
Origins
Most scholars derive the LBK culture from the Starcevo-Körös culture of Northern Serbia and Hungary, but some would argue for an autochthonous development out of the local Mesolithic cultures. Supporting the Starcevo-Körös origin is the fact that the LBK appeared earliest ca. 5600-5400 BC on the middle Danube in the Starcevo range. Presumably, the expansion northwards of early Starcevo-Körös produced a local variant reaching the upper Tisza that may have well been created by contact with native epi-Paleolithic people. This small group began a new tradition of pottery, substituting engravings for the paintings of the Balkan cultures.
Important sites include Nitra in Slovakia; Bylany in the Czech Republic; Langweiler and Zwenkau in Germany; Brunn am Gebirge in Austria; Elsloo, Sittard, Köln-Lindenthal, Aldenhoven, Flomborn and Rixheim on the Rhine; Lautereck and Hienheim on the upper Danube; Rössen and Sonderhausen on the middle Elbe.
Variants
Image:European Middle Neolithic.gif
Early or Western Linear Pottery culture
The term, Linear Band Ware, is a mnemonic of the pottery's decorative technique. The "Band Ware" or Bandkeramik part of it began as an innovation of the German archaeologist, Friedrich Klopfleisch (1831-1898), in his work, published in 1882, "Die Grabhügel von Leubingen, Sömmerda und Nienstädt. Voraufgehend: allgemeine Einleitung. Charakteristik und Zeitfolge der Keramik." But, in selecting the words "Band" and "Linear", the initial investigators were depending à priori on certain assumptions:
- Pottery is a diagnostic of the Neolithic. The concept of a pre-pottery Neolithic in the late 20th century casts some doubt on this assumption; that is, a food-producing culture is not necessarily diagnosed by pottery.
- The spread of pottery northward necessarily indicates the migration of people northward. The spread of LBK might have been simply the transmission of cultural objects (Leslie White's symbolates) between regions and peoples.
Since Starcevo-Körös pottery was earlier than the LBK and was located in a contiguous food-producing region, the early investigators looked for precedents there. Much of the Starcevo-Körös pottery features decorative patterns composed of convolute bands of paint: spirals, converging bands, vertical bands, and so on. The LBK appears to imitate and improve these convolutions with incised lines; hence the term, linear, to distinguish painted band ware from incised band ware. The name depends on specialized meanings of "linear" and "band", whether in English or in German. Unfortunately these words without the qualifiers do not describe the decoration. There are few bands going around the pottery and the lines are mainly not straight.
LBK pottery consists of simple cups, bowls, vases and jugs, without handles, but some with lugs or pierced lugs. They were obviously designed as kitchen dishes, or for the immediate or local transport of food and liquids. Patterns are repeated motifs: spirals, rectangles, triangles, chevrons. For the most part they are not placed within bands, but rather, the entire surface of the pot is the artist's field. As is true today, they probably represent the "nice dishes" that are desirable to family matriarchs.
Eastern Linear Pottery culture
The Bükk Culture belonged to a dense pocket of Cro-magnon type people inhabiting the Bükk mountains of Hungary and the upper Tisza and its tributaries. The surrounding Neolithic was mainly of the gracile Mediterranean type. As to whether the Cro-magnons were a remnant squeezed into this pocket, there is no sign of conflict and the Cro-magnons were doing rather well in the obsidian trade. They were, so to speak, the wealthy men of the European Neolithic.
The Cro-magnons did acquire the Neolithic from the Starcevo culture to the south. In the Szatmar culture prior to 5500 BC, the Cro-magnons modified their Mesolithic ways and took on Starcevan artifact types and pottery styles, and the same can be said of the succeeding Tiszadob culture of roughly 5200-5000. By 5000 the LBK had replaced the Starcevo in the surrounding region and it influenced the Cro-magnons in the Bükk culture.
Bükk pottery is the finest ware of the LBK. It has a larger variety of forms: tall stands, jars with feet, globular bowls, and so on. Their fabric is tempered with sand, as opposed to the chaff of the western LBK. The walls of the pots are thin and delicate. Decoration consists of LBK patterns composed of bands that are both painted and engraved with fine lines. Colors are white, red and yellow, just the ones to brighten and make warm a successful household. The patterns are more complex, more regular and evidence more care in their execution. Some of the patterns are probably symbols. The Cro-magnons also owned abstract human figurines, in which geometric forms represent people. These are covered with symbols.
The source of Bükk culture wealth is the fine obsidian of which the mountains are an abundant source. The Cro-magnons probably encouraged each other to settle there and take up the ethnic trade. Workshops for the manufacture of obsidian tools are common. They are identified by the hundreds of tools littering the floor of the site, which must have been a shed. These workshops were near homes. They probably represent a family business. In some cases jars of knives stand ready for export. The knives are sorted by size. An abundance of spondylus shells in the graves suggests that this collectible was used for currency. Their ultimate source was the Mediterranean. These Cro-magnons, as opposed to the Mesolithics of the Atlantic coast, are probably best regarded as men of the world, dominating the market for stone tools from their mountain retreats.
The Bükk people lived a very different life from the residents of the long houses. Bükk homes are individual and rectangular, a few meters wide and about twice as long. Many are dug into the earth as wholly or partly subterranean. Others are wholly aboveground, wattle and daub construction. The Bükk people sited their homes on hills, slopes, or in ravines. They used caves for sacred purposes, but may have lived there as well.
When not engaged in manufacture and trade, the Bükk people shared the same garden economy as the western variant. To the light game of the open forests they added the fierce aurochs. When death came they buried the deceased in the village, sometimes under the house. Such a custom implies a belief in spiritual continuity and lends to the family a dimension in time as well as space. In the village resided simultaneously both the living family and the spirits of their deceased.
Late Dniester-Bug (or Bug-Dniester) culture
The Dniester-Bug culture refers to the culture that developed in the black-soil region of Moldavia and Ukraine around the Dniester and Southern Bug rivers in the Neolithic. Over approximately 1500 years, 6500-5000 BC, the culture metamorphosed into quite different phases, but the population remained about the same. What is most noteworthy about the Neolithic in this region is that it developed autochthonously from the Mesolithic there.
The earlier phases are pre-pottery. The people in this region reinvented the wheel, so to speak. On the one hand they relied predominantly on hunting aurochs, red deer, roe deer and boar, and fishing for roach, eels and pike. On the other they raised a few cattle and pigs, cultivated the soil with implements made of antler, and were working on domesticating a wild grass, Aegilop cylindrica.
At about 5800 BC they began to make a native pottery, mainly jars, flat-bottomed or pointed-bottomed, decorated in patterns of wavy lines. Influence from the Starcevo struck the native culture changing it drastically. Pottery suddenly became like that of the Starcevo culture and the wild grass was abandoned in favor einkorn, emmer and spelt, already popular in south Europe.
At some time after 5500, the Starcevo lost its influence in favor of one from the LBK. LBK people probably did enter the region from the upper Dniester and overran it as far south as the lower Danube. The pottery became like the LBK. Native stone subterranean houses were replaced by long houses.
Economy
The LBK people settled on fluvial terraces and in the proximities of rivers. They were quick to identify regions of fertile loess. On it they raised wheat, barley, millet, rye, peas and lentils in small plots, an economy that Gimbutas called a "garden type of civilization." Hemp and flax gave them the raw material of rope and cloth, which they no doubt manufactured at home as a cottage industry. From poppies they must have manufactured palliative medecine.
They were stock raisers as well, with cattle favored, though goats and swine are also recorded. Like farmers today, they must have used the better grain for themselves and the lower grades for the animals. The ubiquitous dogs are present here too, but scantly. Substantial wild faunal remains are found. The LBK supplemented their diets by hunting elk, deer and boar in the open forests of Europe as it was then.
The tool kit was appropriate to the economy. Flint and obsidian were the main materials used for points and cutting edges. There is no sign of metal. For example, they harvested with sickles manufactured by inserting flint blades into the inside of a curved piece of wood. One diagnostic tool, the "shoe-last celt", was made of a ground stone chisel blade tied to a handle. You pulled the blade over a piece of wood by the handle, removing flakes, similar to a plane. Augurs were made of flint points tied to a stick that could be rotated. Scrapers and knives are found in abundance. The use of flint pieces, or microliths, descended from the Mesolithic, while the ground stone is characteristic of the Neolithic.
These materials are evidence both of specialization of labor and commerce. The flint used came from southern Poland; the obsidian, from the Bükk and Tatra mountains. Settlements in those regions specialized in mining and manufacture. The products were exported to all the other LBK regions, which must have had something to trade. This commerce is a strong argument for an ethnic unity between the scattered pockets of the culture.
The unit of residence was the long house, a rectangular structure, 5.5 to 7 m wide, of variable length; for example, a house at Bylany was 45 m. Outer walls were wattle-and-daub, with pitched thatched roofs, supported by rows of poles, three across. At least part of the house may have been used for animals, as a fenced enclosure adjoined one end. Ditches went along part of the outer walls, especially at the animal end. Their purpose is not known, but they probably are not defensive works, as they were not much of a defense. There are no defensive works in the entire culture, nor are the villages sited on hills (except in the mountains). More likely, the ditches collected waste water and rain water. A large house with many people and animals would have had to have a drainage system. One can conceive of a smelly end, where the animals and latrines were located, and a domestic end.
The long houses were gathered into villages of 5-8 about 20 m apart, placed on 300-1250 acres. Nearby villages formed settlement cells, some as dense as 20 per 25 sq km, others as sparse as 1 per 32 sq km. Such a pattern hints of a society composed of extended families, each to its long house, organized into village clans in a tribal region. Perhaps this pattern is the original model of the tribal system of early European history; that is, it was pre-Indoeuropean. The Indoreuropean settlments were quite different.
LBK houses were occupied for about 30 years. Analysis of the pottery finds reveals that each house had its own tradition. The occurrence of pottery primarily in female graves indicates that the women of the long house made the pottery. These circumstances argue for matrilocal residence; that is, on marriage a male joined his wife's family.
Religion
The Linear Pottery culture shared the universal Neolithic religion, which was the worship of the forces of nature, personified as a mother goddess. She retained a mystical or transcendental element but also manifested herself as specific forms, or goddesses. These were represented on various media as females with reproductive organs, or just the organs, or symbols of the organs or the reproduction. She appeared also as the white goddess of death, represented by a supine female figure. The mother goddess was both the giver and the taker of life.
This religion descended from the Palaeolithic and was modified to fit agricultural forms. After a major study of most of the representations and ancient beliefs, Marija Gimbutas was able to trace the unity of reproductive themes in cultural objects previously unsuspected of such themes. For example, the burial pits of the Linear Pottery culture, which were lined with stone, clay or plaster, were intended to represent eggs. The deceased returns to the egg, so to speak, there to await rebirth.
The presence of such pits contemporaneously with the burial of women and children under the floors of houses, where they were, no doubt, considered to remain as tutelary spirits, suggests a multiplicity of religious convictions, as does the use of both cremation and inhumation. Cremation among the Indoeuropeans later is a means of returning warriors and family members to the ethereal realms of the bright, burning air. In the European Neolithic, however, males play a very small part in representation. Whether they had a different post-mortem destiny in belief is not known. Perhaps the beliefs of Europeans of any culture always were complex.
Funerary customs
The early European Neolithic featured burials of women and children under the floors of personal residences. Remains of adult males are missing. Many female archaeologists interpret these circumstances as indicating that women held a special place of honor, but men did not. Although such a view has not been shown to be false, it can be questioned on the grounds of its being biased in favor of matriarchy and matriliny. At very least, it is safe to say that Neolithic culture featured sex discrimination in funerary customs, and that women and children were important in ideology concerning the home. What happened to men at death remains to be discovered.
Burials beneath the floors of homes continued until about 4000 BC. However, in the western variety, the cemetery also came into use at about 5000 BC. LBK cemeteries contained from 20 to 200 graves arranged in groups that appear to have been based on kinship. Males and females of any age were included. Both cremation and inhumation were practiced. The inhumed were placed in flexed position in pits lined with stones, plaster or clay. Cemeteries were close to, but distinct from, residential areas.
The presence of grave goods indicates both a sex discrimination and a dominance discrimination. Male graves included stone celts, flint implements and money or jewelry of spondylus shells. Female graves contained many of the same artifacts as male graves, but also most of the pottery and containers of ochre. The goods have been interpreted as gifts to the departed or personal possessions. The beliefs that governed their inclusion remain unknown.
Only about 30% of the graves have goods. This circumstance probably rightly has been interpreted as some sort of distinction in dominance, but the exact nature is not known. If the goods were gifts, then some were more honored than others; if they were possessions, then some were wealthier than others. Gimbutas chose to see the male honorees as skilled craftsmen and the females as dominant matriarchs. This is not the only possible interpretation. Missing is detailed and certain knowledge of the customs.
The late Dniester-Bug variety developed a distinct and somewhat different method of burial. They dug communal trenches in which to place the dead without distinction as to age or sex. The trench was elongated to include new burials.
References
- J. P. Mallory, "Linear Band Ware Culture", Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997.
- Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language : The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins. Cambridge University Press, 1990. ISBN 0521386756.
- Stäuble, Harald. Häuser und absolute Datierung der Ältesten Bandkeramik. Habelt, 2005.
- Marija Gimbutas, The Civilization of the Goddess: The World of Old Europe, HarperCollins Publishers (HarperSanFrancisco), 1991, ISBN 0062503685 (hardcover) or ISBN 0062503375 (paperback).
- Robert W. Ehrich, Editor, Chronologies in Old World Archaeology, The University of Chicago Press, 1965.
