Territoriality and vaiolence in the Brześć Kujawski culture. Archaeological perspective

Abstract

The Brześć Kujawski culture developed in the middle and lower Vistula basin during the Neolithic period, between 4500 and 4000/3900 BC. It is one of the best-studied units of the Late Stone Age in Central Europe. The population of the Brześć Kujawski Culture established long-lasting so-called central settlements, where household cemeteries were also located. The settlement network included smaller and more short-lived residential units, referred to as satellite settlements. Groups of the Brześć Kujawski Culture inhabited areas with the best arable land in a given region, thus creating compact clusters of settlement.

            Research on the burials of the inhabitants of the central settlements has drawn attention to numerous traces of trauma on skeletons as well as to differences in the burial practices applied to particular social groups. For the first time in the prehistory of the Polish Lowlands, burials of men with weapons were distinguished. In the stratigraphy of the central settlements, relics of defensive structures and traces of fires are also present. All this evidence should be incorporated into the model of the Brześć Kujawski Culture, which combines two interrelated phenomena: territoriality and violence. Similar patterns have been observed among some traditional societies studied by cultural anthropologists. The results of studies in other branches of the humanities also point in this direction.

            This article represents an attempt to provide a new perspective on the complex character of the settlement system and Culture of early farming communities inhabiting the middle and lower Vistula basin in the second half of the 5th millennium BC.