Cohabitation, conflicts and skull cult?
Lecture Series »World Archaeology Seminars«
»Cohabitation, conflicts and skull cult? The LBK and Želiezovce settlement of Vráble-Veľké Lehemby, SW-Slovakia«
Maria Wunderlich, Katharina Fuchs | Kiel University, Germany
Recent investigations in the south-western Carpathian Basin revealed insights into early farming communities and their unique ways of cohabitation and socio-political interaction. The site of Vráble-Veľke Lehemby, dating between 5350 and 4950 calBCE, is a central part of processes of agglomeration, dispersal and changing cohabitation patterns in the course of the 6th to 5th millennium BCE in the Žitava valley, southwest Slovakia. The last decade of fieldwork at this Linear Pottery and Želiezovce site revealed a structurally differentiated settlement pattern that consists of three contemporaneously inhabited units, which we interpret as neighborhoods. Throughout the settlement history, we see material expressions of socio-economic differentiation and possibly inequality, as well as expressions of communal practices and sharing economies. Based on the available data on house inventories, economic strategies, and the use of space within the settlement, we interpret a dynamic interaction between diverse socio-political actors that inhabited the site of Vráble. The rise of tensions and conflicts that are documented in various late LBK sites in Central Europe is also observable in Vráble; around 5000 calBCE a double-ditched enclosure is constructed around one of the neighborhoods of the village. Besides some regular graves, we recovered the remains of at least 93 individuals deposited in the ditch. What distinguishes this find from other LBK sites with human remains in ditch systems, however, is that 64 of the skeletons were found headless and most of them in one gate area. By using a multidisciplinary approach, the presentation give insights into how life was Vráble-Vel’ke Lehemby 7000 years ago and discuss how to counter speculative headlines such as the »Slovakia’s Stone Age Decapitated Victims«.