30 Years Later – the Neolithic of Chełmno Land in the Research of the Department of the Younger Stone Age

Abstract

In the 1980s, a research programme on the Chełmno Land Neolithic was launched
at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Nicolaus Copernicus University.
From the very beginning, it was permanently associated with the Archaeological Picture of
Poland project. As a result of the work undertaken, approximately 2,500 archaeological sites
from the younger Stone Age were located in the area of the former Toruń Voivodeship, of
which approximately 120 were examined by the excavation method. Archaeological sources
have been obtained from the early phases of the Linear Pottery culture until the end of the
Corded Ware culture. This allows the Department of the Younger Stone Age, and within it
the authors of this study, to conduct multifaceted studies on Neolithic communities. They
focus on issues related to the mentality of prehistoric communities, Bayesian modelling
of radiocarbon markings, the dynamics of settlement of early agricultural communities
and the conditions of their contemporary manifestation in the geographical space of the
Chełmno Land, or research on the oldest metallurgy in Poland.
Some research issues carried out at the Department of the Younger Stone Age are
closer to classical archaeology, while other projects aim at a slightly different form of its
implementation, inspired by cultural constructivism and the research of the Poznań school
of cultural studies. The factor integrating the activities of the Department of the Younger
Stone Age is a strong belief in the need to implement the postulate of cognitive pluralism,
which is to abstract from the conventional boundaries of disciplines. We assume that the
paradigm that will make the postulate of transdisciplinary research come true is cultural
constructivism.