Goswinus
11-15-2008, 03:39 PM
Aunjetitz Culture
Named after a location in Bohemia, this cultural province situated in the Early Bronze Age spans the period 2300-1500BC and from it Czechian kernel it spread out over Slowakia, Poland, Eastern Germany as well reaching the eastern flanks of Lower Saxony.
Carl Schuchardt in Vorgeschichte von Deutschland points to the fact that its ceramic industry underwent a potpourri of influences with clear indications of wandering elements from north and central Germany, while Danubians and Pile Dwellers might have left some marks too.
The strongest ties though are made with the Corded Ware in Schlesien and on the Oder: the obsequies of delivering the body in a loam-pit with perpedicular shafts, a stone heap layed out in a sharp-edged rectangular "window" surrounding the body,the body itself in a protacted position on some distance of the window, perhaps it rested in a coffin covered up under the stone mass. Also the schlauchartige Henkelkrügen and so-called Blumentopfbechern hints on a Corded Ware connection.
Aunjetitz soarded highly the metal foundries of tin and copper and made it foremost for it great hoards of bronze objects to an important conception in protohistoric archaeology as a metallurgical province.
Aesthetic concerns and playing up the desires of chieftains and warrior classes alike to adorn themselves with status-enhancing goods, lead to the production of silvery blades (enriched by tin). More limited as a speciality in the Eastern Alpine region was the ösenring or neck-ring, transport by canoes this ornamental iten winded up along the Danube to the northern halve of today's Czech Republic and Central Germany. Still, commodities were rarely traded as luxury goods but were part and parcel fof a trade in status kits.
In stead bronze was accumulated locally in what K.A.Wardle called a potlach economy for the purpose of some ritualistic deposition.
Their potteries were initially poor and wretched, sometimes touched by stilistic animal representations, later cups and jars with concave necks on which a ornamentated grips are attached on become commonplace artefacts.
Greyish-black and well-polished and softly rounded as they are, the design betrays Rössen and Linear Pottery heritage and Schuchardt names Thüringen, Oberschlesien, Bohemia and Moravia as old vestiges of the Danubian culture and orientation areas of the Aunjetitz columns of settlers.
The Aunjetitz people were medium to high-skulled, the outline a broad ellipsoid form(Schildform) with a broad planely arching/steepish and high forehead, flattened parientals and narrowing occiput. The chin is narrow and pointy;the upper jaw is narrow, the mandible high placed and showing slight prognathy.
The nose is long and prominent, the nasion depression deep.
In general their skulls were not as long and narrow(though with jutting occiput) as Corded Ware people and somewhat higher-vaulted than the Megalithic types of NW Germany. The high vault and somewhat broadening of the skull is probably adopted by intermingling with Danubians and the Taurid element in Bell Beaker folks and Pile Dwellers, parallel to the Corded Ware who in the beginning tended more to orthocephaly.
This opens the possibility to reclaim the bulk of Northern Mediterranids as descendants of these Bronze Age partly mediterreneanized (Pile Dwellers contained also a definite Med. strain!) Nordic subforms.
Named after a location in Bohemia, this cultural province situated in the Early Bronze Age spans the period 2300-1500BC and from it Czechian kernel it spread out over Slowakia, Poland, Eastern Germany as well reaching the eastern flanks of Lower Saxony.
Carl Schuchardt in Vorgeschichte von Deutschland points to the fact that its ceramic industry underwent a potpourri of influences with clear indications of wandering elements from north and central Germany, while Danubians and Pile Dwellers might have left some marks too.
The strongest ties though are made with the Corded Ware in Schlesien and on the Oder: the obsequies of delivering the body in a loam-pit with perpedicular shafts, a stone heap layed out in a sharp-edged rectangular "window" surrounding the body,the body itself in a protacted position on some distance of the window, perhaps it rested in a coffin covered up under the stone mass. Also the schlauchartige Henkelkrügen and so-called Blumentopfbechern hints on a Corded Ware connection.
Aunjetitz soarded highly the metal foundries of tin and copper and made it foremost for it great hoards of bronze objects to an important conception in protohistoric archaeology as a metallurgical province.
Aesthetic concerns and playing up the desires of chieftains and warrior classes alike to adorn themselves with status-enhancing goods, lead to the production of silvery blades (enriched by tin). More limited as a speciality in the Eastern Alpine region was the ösenring or neck-ring, transport by canoes this ornamental iten winded up along the Danube to the northern halve of today's Czech Republic and Central Germany. Still, commodities were rarely traded as luxury goods but were part and parcel fof a trade in status kits.
In stead bronze was accumulated locally in what K.A.Wardle called a potlach economy for the purpose of some ritualistic deposition.
Their potteries were initially poor and wretched, sometimes touched by stilistic animal representations, later cups and jars with concave necks on which a ornamentated grips are attached on become commonplace artefacts.
Greyish-black and well-polished and softly rounded as they are, the design betrays Rössen and Linear Pottery heritage and Schuchardt names Thüringen, Oberschlesien, Bohemia and Moravia as old vestiges of the Danubian culture and orientation areas of the Aunjetitz columns of settlers.
The Aunjetitz people were medium to high-skulled, the outline a broad ellipsoid form(Schildform) with a broad planely arching/steepish and high forehead, flattened parientals and narrowing occiput. The chin is narrow and pointy;the upper jaw is narrow, the mandible high placed and showing slight prognathy.
The nose is long and prominent, the nasion depression deep.
In general their skulls were not as long and narrow(though with jutting occiput) as Corded Ware people and somewhat higher-vaulted than the Megalithic types of NW Germany. The high vault and somewhat broadening of the skull is probably adopted by intermingling with Danubians and the Taurid element in Bell Beaker folks and Pile Dwellers, parallel to the Corded Ware who in the beginning tended more to orthocephaly.
This opens the possibility to reclaim the bulk of Northern Mediterranids as descendants of these Bronze Age partly mediterreneanized (Pile Dwellers contained also a definite Med. strain!) Nordic subforms.