No abstract

This project aims to reconstruct the settlement patterns and palaeoenvironment of the Saspów Valley in the Polish Jura by combining unpublished archaeological fieldwork with results of recent excavations at 13 cave sites.

Abstract

The inflow of the Carpathian obsidian into the areas on the northern side of the Carpathians and the Sudetes is confirmed as early as in the Palaeolithic. However, its greatest intensity occurred in the Early Neolithic, i. e. in the late 6th and in the first half of 5th millennia BC. During that period, the phenomenon was closely related with the development of the Danubian cultural groups in the upper Vistula river basin, including especially Linear Pottery culture (LBK) and Malice Culture. The constant presence of this raw material products in mentioned areas is documented from the classical (musical-note) phase of LBK, constituting one of the most expressive pieces of evidence of permanent and intense intercultural contacts with communities of the northern Carpathian Basin. This phenomenon has been repeatedly emphasized in the literature. One of the most numerous LBK obsidian inventories in the upper Vistula river basin was obtained at site 6 in Tominy, located in southern Poland, in the non-loess zone of the Sandomierz Upland northern foreground. The above-mentioned collection, its non-destructive elemental analysis, using Prompt Gamma Activation Analysis (PGAA) and also traceological analysis, is the subject of this article. The results supplement the published data to a significant extent, simultaneously providing partial verification and updating of the current state of knowledge on the basic issues related to the Early Neolithic obsidian inflow into areas located North of the Carpathians, including primarily the origin of the raw material, the scale of its processing and distribution ways, as well as the range of its use by the LBK communities.

The article is an attempt to characterize and assess the intensity of far-reaching, intercultural contacts of the LBK community from the Sandomierz Upland and its northern foreland with the Eastern Linear cultural groups from the northeastern part of the Carpathian Basin. The basis for these considerations was the discovery of diagnostic material (pottery, obsidian products) from the Sandomierz region -in particular, from one of the largest inventories of this type in the Vistula basin: the settlement site Tominy 6. Important data in this context were also provided by products made of Chocolate and Świeciechów flints from the Świętokrzyskie Mountains Region discovered within the Transcarpathian zone. The entire collection of findings reveals the previously unknown and very large-scale bilateral, intercultural relations between the LBK communities of the Sandomierz settlement cluster and the younger phase of Alföld-LBK groups, especially the Bükk culture, settled in eastern Slovakia, or more precisely in the Košice Valley and East-Slovak Lowland.