Urnfield culture
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| Yellow-colored area Distribution area of the urn field culture; Southern Germany , Switzerland , eastern and partly southern France , Catalonia , northern Italy , Slovenia , the Czech Republic , western Danube countries |
The Urnfield Culture ( UK abbreviation ) is the most widespread Central European culture of the late Bronze Age . It existed from about 1300 to 800 BC. Chr. Since the burial rites - cremation on a pyre and the burial of the corpse fire in polls - was practiced in other cultures, the Urnfield culture by other criteria such as typical bronze - and ceramic molds , defined. The urn field culture follows the tumulus culture of the Middle Bronze Age . In many parts of its distribution area, the urn field culture was replaced by the Hallstatt culture at the beginning of the Iron Age .
chronology
The Urnfield culture is divided into several relatively chronological stages, which are referred to as the Bronze Age D (Bz D) and Hallstatt A and B (Ha), as the distinction to the Iron Age Hallstatt culture was initially unclear. Hermann Müller-Karpe and other researchers carried out a further subdivision of the levels ( Late Bronze Age ). The chronology of Lothar Sperber was further refined for the area of the southern German urn field culture .
| Levels according to Hermann Müller-Karpe | Levels according to Lothar Sperber | Absolute chronology |
|---|---|---|
| Bz D | SB Ia | about 1300 BC BC to 1200 BC Chr. |
| SB Ib | ||
| Ha A1 | SB IIa | around 1200 BC Until 1100 BC Chr. |
| Ha A2 | SB IIb | around 1100 BC BC to 1050 BC Chr. |
| Ha B1 | SB IIc | around 1050 BC BC to 950 BC Chr. |
| Ha B2 | SB IIIa | about 950 BC BC to 880 BC Chr. |
| Ha B3 | SB IIIb | around 880 BC BC to 800 BC Chr. |
Spread of the urn field culture
The urn field culture was widespread over large parts of western Central Europe. It reached from the Paris Basin in the west, in the east to Lower Austria , and in an expanded definition in the southwest from Spanish Catalonia to northern Italy . The boundaries between their area of distribution in the narrower sense and regions that were only under more or less strong influence of the urn field culture are not always clearly drawn, especially since they shift several times in the course of the Late Bronze Age.
The northern, eastern and south-eastern foothills of the Alps and in particular the Laugen-Melaun culture come into question as possible centers of origin . From there, important features of the urn field culture spread in all directions. A few centuries later it is in Italy, where it is superseded by the Villanova culture, and disappeared again in Transylvania . On the other hand, it did not spread to southern France and northeastern Spain until the end of the Late Bronze Age (around the 9th century BC).
In Germany, the northern border ran roughly from the Lower Rhine to the Thuringian Forest . In Austria, the Alpine and Danube regions were part of the urn field culture. The UK area is divided into a western and an eastern district. In the older and middle Urnfield Period, the border between the two districts was in the Strudengau - Dunkelsteinerwald area ; in the more recent phase, the Upper Austrian-Salzburg region belonged to the eastern district.
On the basis of differences in ceramics, three larger regional groups have been defined within the western UK district since the beginning of the Hallstatt period A: the Rhenish-Swiss, the Lower Main-Swabian and the Upper Bavarian-Salzburg-South Upper Austrian group. The definition of the Rhenish-Swiss and the Lower Main-Swabian groups goes back to Emil Vogt and Wolfgang Kimmig . The border of these two groups roughly coincides with the eastern and northern borders of southern Baden and further north with the Rhine . The eastern border of the Lower Main-Swabian group is to be taken along the western border of Upper Franconia , Middle Franconia and Lower Bavaria and south along the Isar .
During the Hallstatt period A and the Hallstatt period B, the Rhenish-Swiss group developed a more or less uniform ceramic province with the urn field culture of the eastern and central French region. The Upper Bavarian-Salzburg group borders in the west on the Lower Main-Swabian group and in the north on the Lower Bavarian-South Upper Palatinate ceramic province. It ends at the Inn / Salzach line.
The Lausitz culture , which borders the urnfield culture in the northeast, is similar to this in terms of burial customs and in some aspects of material culture. Some researchers therefore also count it as part of the urn field culture.
Funeral rite
The dead were burned on pyre, the remains of bones and ashes were then buried in grave pits, in containers made of fabric or wood and in clay urns on urn fields. A distinction can be made between simple cremation graves and grave chambers made of stones. In detail, the burial rite is different in the different regions and was subject to certain changes in the course of the Late Bronze Age. Correspondingly, there are many variants of burial customs and forms of grave; There were fire pits, fire empties, urn and so-called bell graves, but also graves with stone protection.
In the case of fire pit graves , the funeral pyre was built directly over the later grave pit and its remains were covered with soil or stones after they had been burned down on the spot. In the case of fire- filled graves, the remains of bones picked up from the pyre and the ashes of the dead were scattered on the floor of a grave that was separate from the pyre. After that, the corpse burn was covered with earth or stones. In the case of urn graves , the remains of bones were poured into larger urns, and the mostly almost completely burned gifts were added. The urn was usually covered with a bowl. A ceramic service consisting of four to six parts was often placed in or next to the urn. In the case of bell graves, the urn was covered with a larger clay vessel (usually a large storage vessel). The stone protection of Late Bronze Age graves occurs in the form of stone packings, stone pads and wall stones. In addition, stone box graves constructed entirely from stone slabs appear, which can contain scattered ash as well as urn and body burials.
In many regions, large grave fields were created in the urn field culture (for example Kelheim with more than 258, Ingolstadt- Zuchering with more than 316, Franzhausen with over 400 graves). Especially west of the Rhine, the grave fields are much smaller, which perhaps suggests other forms of social organization. Some of the urns were bordered with circular ditches or buried in burial mounds . In some grave fields only selected burials were treated in this way, which can possibly also be interpreted as an indication of a special position of the respective deceased. In the Netherlands, urn fields were found particularly in the Kempen area. A reasonably preserved urn field is the one on Boshover Heide near Weert. The reason for the conservation is the poor soil there. In addition, there are preserved urn fields in Vaassen and on the burial mounds in Veldhoven (remains of).
The urnfield time in Bavaria knows a few graves of a high-ranking upper class, the so-called "wagon drivers", who were burned at the stake together with four-wheeled representation wagons (for example from Poing ).
The addition of weapons in the grave probably marks a class of warriors with a leading social role. Swords were only found in very few graves. Instead of being buried in the grave, weapons and equipment were increasingly deposited in bodies of water in the course of the Late Bronze Age - a rite with a presumably cultic background.
Ceramics
The typical ceramics of the urnfield culture vary from large vessels such as handleless cylinder, funnel and conical neck vessels, amphorae and double-conical vessels to small vessels such as beakers, jugs, buckled wall bowls, conical bowls, plate-like flat bowls and bowls.
Temporal and regional differences can be observed in the shapes, but above all in the decoration of the ceramics. The Untermainisch-Swabian group is generally alien to the decoration of inner surfaces, a structure or decoration usually only takes place on the outside of the ceramics, whereby a plastic decoration with grooves and partly also humps forms a particularly characteristic feature of the Untermainisch-Swabian group. On the other hand, the decoration of inner surfaces, especially with bowls, is a characteristic of the Rhenish-Swiss group. Among the various decoration techniques, comb lines, incised and stamp decoration as well as polychrome decoration are typical of the Rhenish-Swiss group.
Red painting and graphitization do not appear in the urn field culture until the level Ha B, their appearance here is so characteristic that it is an important dating feature. The origin of the red color is not yet fully understood. However, it should not be a coincidence that it occurs particularly in the area of the Rhenish-Swiss group, as the colorful and varied ornamentation of the Rhenish-Swiss urn field culture stands in stark contrast to the conventional style of the Lower Main-Swabian group.
Bronze products
Metalworking reached a high technical level in the urnfield culture. Bronze products were mostly cast in stone molds and occasionally in bronze , but the labor- intensive and time-consuming casting in lost clay form ( double-edged razor ) is less common . Melt droplets found during excavations point to bronze foundry workshops in settlements of the Urnfield Culture.
A special characteristic of the urn field culture is the large number of objects made of sheet bronze. The manufacture of bronze greaves, buckets, helmets, scoops, sieves and cups was done using the technique of driving . Pieces made up of several parts were joined together with rivets , other objects with bronze clips or by bending and interlocking the edges of the sheet metal. There are many different types of jewelry from both grave and depot finds , such as forehead, ear, neck, chest, arm, finger and leg jewelry. In addition to bronze, jewelry was made from the teeth of animals, bones, amber, glass and gold. The wealth of forms of bronze tools and weapons, on the other hand, is not so much reflected in the graves, but especially in the numerous depot finds of the urn field culture. Among the tools, bronze hatchets and sickles are the most common. The weapons, however, included daggers, swords, lances, spears and arrowheads. In the case of daggers, lances, as well as bows and arrows, it is usually not possible to say in detail whether they are hunting or war weapons.
In addition to their practical function as weapons of war, the swords in particular also seem to have fulfilled a function as a status symbol. Depending on how the bronze sword blade and the sword handle made of organic material were connected to each other, specimens with a handle tongue, plate and spike can be distinguished. However, swords with handles made of bronze (full-hilt swords) were most likely to have been status symbols. During stage Bronze Age D mainly bronze were Riegsee -Schwerter (full handle swords of the type Riegsee) Rixheim -Schwerter (handle plate sword type Rixheim) but some early engagement tongue swords common. During the time stage Ha A1, three-bulged swords (full-grip swords with three bulges on the handle) were common, which were replaced in the Ha B2 / 3 by antenna, shell-type and carp-tongue swords.
At the end of the urn field culture, iron objects found their way into their area of distribution through barter. Such iron finds are among others from southwest Germany.
Settlements
The settlement structures with villages resembled those of previous epochs. In addition to hamlets, there were also settlement centers, often on island mountains. These were often 20 to 30 hectare large settlements, which were surrounded by wall-ditch systems. In Ormož (Slovenia) there was a 400 by 380 meter settlement with paved roads laid out at right angles. The Freinberg in Linz and Rainberg in Salzburg have also been well studied . Depending on the type of building, there are two types of settlements: the first type has only similar, small, rectangular buildings. In the second type there are smaller huts next to large hall-like, mostly two-aisled buildings. The latter were residential and community houses, the small ones probably workshops and storehouses.
Mining
In the northern eastern Alps, copper mining was of great economic importance. The Mitterberg and the Kelchalpe near Kitzbühel were of national importance . Numerous wooden tools were found on the Kelchalm, which is 1500 meters high. Including notches that were used for counting and are an indication of the beginning of administration. Remains of the carpentry, remains of drainage troughs and sieves were found in old men as evidence of underground processing, as well as an ass leather . A commercial area with over 100 fireplaces was found in Wörgl. In Krumpenthal (Styria) a larger area for multi-phase smelting with roasting beds and smelting furnaces was found. Twin ovens with roasting beds on two work platforms are characteristic of the Eastern Alps.
Salt production in the Salzkammergut goes back to the Middle Bronze Age. In the 13th century, however, the underground mining of mountain salt in solid form began. In Hallstatt the finds reach up to 215 meters below the surface of the earth. Wooden tools such as filling troughs were made in exactly the same way, as were the pine wood chips. This suggests industrial production.
Research history
The southern German prehistoric historian Ernst Wagner first formulated the term urn cemeteries in his work Tumulus and Urn Cemeteries in Baden in connection with late Bronze Age grave finds . Ernst Wagner's publication was commented on by Otto Tischler in the West German magazine in 1886 . Tischler spoke of "urn fields of the Bronze Age" and thus coined the term that gave the urn field culture its name.
Georg Kraft carried out further groundwork in 1927 with his description of the group of graves "Melz-Rixheim, Bz D", as well as with his work on "Oberdingen" for the period Ha A in the Württemberg area.
In 1930, just a short time later, Emil Vogt divided the urn field culture in south-western Central Europe into a western and an eastern group based on ceramics (these two groups are not identical to the eastern or western UK circle mentioned above in the section on the dissemination of the urn field culture, the refer to very large-scale structural units). In 1940, Wolfgang Kimmig described the two regional groupings, which Vogt distinguished as the East and West groups due to their different ceramic styles, as the Rhenish-Swiss and the Lower Main-Swabian urnfield culture group. In this work on Urnfield Culture in Baden, Kimmig assigned the whole of Württemberg to the Lower Main-Swabian group as a sub-province, which over time came under the influence of the Rhenish-Swiss group.
In 1951, E. Gersbach divided the time level Ha B into the lower levels Ha B1 and Ha B2 with the help of finds from Württemberg; In 1959, Hermann Müller-Karpe presented a similar breakdown for the whole of southern Germany. He divided Ha A into Ha A1 and Ha A2 and Ha B into Ha B1, Ha B2 and Ha B3.
Again E. Gersbach tried in 1961 to divide Ha B into three sub-levels, but research did not adopt this three-way division of Ha B any more than that of Müller-Karpe. The existence of an intermediate level Ha B2 remains controversial.
It was not until 1972 that the work by R. Dehn was supposed to provide a comprehensive treatment of the urn field culture in northern Württemberg. Dehn subdivided Ha A1 again into Ha A1a and Ha A1b. He described northern Württemberg as a sub-area of the Lower Main-Swabian group, but his hope of finding a contact zone with other urn field groups in this area was not to be confirmed. This work by R. Dehn was followed by further work on level Bz D: 1971 by Ch. Unz on ceramics, 1974 by H. Reim on armament, 1980 by A. Beck on costume components. In contrast to the work of W. Kimmig from 1948 to 1950, these authors emphasized a continuous cultural change from the tumulus culture to the urn field culture. In 1981 and 1987 two more works by Stadelmann and Biel followed.
There is still no agreement on the causes of the change from the preceding Middle Bronze Age to the urn field culture of the Late Bronze Age.
Especially in older research, the thesis was widespread that at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age in many areas of Europe migrations of peoples began, in the course of which the urnfield culture finally emerged through the cultural mixing of smaller cultural groups. The cause of this was in part assumed to be a strong increase in population, the effects of which could have been temporarily increased by a short-term climatic downturn.
Richard Pittioni, for example, was of the opinion in 1938 that in Lusatia, between Saxony, Brandenburg and Silesia, in the 13th century BC A large emigration of the population started. As a result of the encounters between various immigrant groups and the elderly native population, local urn field groups emerged in various parts of Europe according to Pittioni. In addition, due to certain similarities in archaeological finds, such as frequently recurring similar vessel types, Pittioni assumed that the various urn field groups belonged to a community with the same language. According to him, all urn field people were old Europeans who had taken possession of large parts of Europe.
Other prehistorians doubted great migrations, such as Georg Kraft. He ruled out this theory in 1927 after investigating southern German urn fields.
In 1964, Wolfgang Kimmig denied that the different urn field groups belonged to one people, but like Pittioni he assumed that migrations were responsible for the emergence and spread of the urn field culture in addition to cultural contacts and an associated cultural exchange with many different influences. According to Kimmig, these migrations of the urn field people led via Greece, the Aegean islands to Syria, Palestine and Egypt. The diversity of the individual groups suggested that there is no ethnically uniform complex in the Urnfield culture, but rather the existence of different tribes that were later involved in the formation of the various Iron Age ethnic groups ( Illyrians , Italians , Iberians , Ligurians , Celts ). A geographical assignment of individual regional groups of the Urnfield Culture to tribes and peoples handed down by name centuries later is not possible on the basis of the archaeological finds. The acceptance of new religious ideas at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age can be assumed as a binding commonality of the bearers of the urnfield culture , which led to a change in burial customs in large parts of Europe.
Subsequent cultures
In the heart of the Urnfield culture, spaciously "north of the Alps", from around 800 BC The Iron Age Hallstatt culture out. The transition to Hallstatt culture took place without any breaks, i.e. smoothly. Crockery, weapons and pieces of jewelry remained largely the same, the urnfield settlements also remained, and a number of burial grounds continued to be used. At least this suggests ethnic continuity.
See also
literature
- Rosemarie Müller: Urnfield culture. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 31, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2006, ISBN 3-11-018386-2 , pp. 549-558.
- Dirk Brandherm: Western urn field culture . In: AM Wittke (Hrsg.): Early history of the Mediterranean cultures. Historical-archaeological manual (= Der Neue Pauly Supplemente, Volume 10). JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2015, ISBN 978-3-476-02470-1 , pp. 202-209
- Georg Kraft: The position of Switzerland within the Bronze Age cultural groups of Central Europe . In: Swiss National Museum in Zurich (ed.): Anzeiger für Schweizerische Altertumskunde . No. 29 , 1927, OCLC 643581766 , ZDB -ID 280173-5 , p. 1-16, 74-90, 137-148, 209-216 .
- Emil Vogt: The late Bronze Age ceramics in Switzerland and their chronology (= memoranda of the Swiss Natural Research Society . Volume 66 , no. 1 ). Fretz, Zurich 1930, DNB 365623105 .
- Wolfgang Kimmig: The urn field culture in Baden . Investigated on the basis of the grave finds (= Roman-Germanic research . Volume 14 ). de Gruyter, Berlin 1940, DNB 580368998 .
- Hermann Müller-Karpe: Contributions to the chronology of the Urnfield time north and south of the Alps (= Roman-Germanic research . Volume 22 ). de Gruyter, Berlin 1959, DNB 453502202 .
- Lothar Sperber: Studies on the chronology of the Urnfield culture in the northern Alpine foothills from Switzerland to Upper Austria (= Antiquitas, Series 3, treatises on prehistory and early history, on classical and provincial Roman archeology and on the history of antiquity . Volume 29 ). Habelt, Bonn 1987, ISBN 3-7749-1700-0 .
- Frank Falkenstein: A catastrophe theory at the beginning of the urn field culture. In: Chronos. Contributions to prehistoric archeology between North and Southeast Europe. Festschrift for Bernhard Hänsel . Edited by Cornelia Becker, Marie-Luise Dunkelmann, Carola Metzner-Nebelsick, Heidi Peter-Röcher, Manfred Roeder and Biba Terzan. Publishing house Marie Leidorf, Espelkamp 1997 [1]
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g Otto H. Urban: The long way to history. The prehistory of Austria. Ueberreuter, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-8000-3969-9 , p. 188-224 .
- ^ Angus Konstam: Historical Atlas of the Celtic World. ISBN 1-904668-01-1
- ^ John Wilkes: The Illyrians (The Peoples of Europe). 1996, ISBN 0-631-19807-5 .
- ↑ Blank Map, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_topography_map.png
