Turning West: On the Disappearance of Figurative Representations in Neolithic West-Central Europe

2024-04-16T12:34:19+02:00

At the start of the Middle Neolithic (5000 BCE), as the central-European Linear Pottery culture (LBK) dissolved into smaller cultural groups, the traditional making of figurative representations was either transformed or radically abandoned. For thousands of years, these clay figurines and vessels representing humans and animals had been a hallmark of Early Neolithic lifestyle. They were found in hundreds in Southeastern Europe during the 6th millennium BCE and continued to be produced as the Neolithic reached Central Europe, although in smaller numbers. By the start of the Middle Neolithic, however, figurative representations seem to have disappeared from the western LBK, or turned into highly stylised motifs. This dissolution of a thousand-year-old figurative tradition may have been the outcome of increasing collective activities and contacts with local hunter-gatherers since the start of the LBK.

Trapezoid Structures from the Transition of the Younger to the Late Neolithic Time Period at Nördlingen, Southern Germany: Evidence for Collective Burial Sites?

2024-10-22T16:05:40+02:00

Death is a timeless, inevitable fact of human biology and the only explanation for the absence of burials from a distinct archaeological time period is therefore most likely caused by a low visibility due to the burial mode in combination with taphonomic processes. In respect of the favourable soils and the archaeological record piled up by decades of research, the absence of burials from the second half of the 4^th millennium BC in the Nördlinger Ries area is remarkable but in line with the general scarce burial evidence from this time period in Southern Germany. Here we present a group of trapezoid structures discovered in the alluvial plain of the Eger valley near Nördlingen. Based on cremated human bones found in one of these structures we suggest the structures to have been collective burial chambers. Both the function and layout strongly resemble comparable grave chambers in Southwest Germany and may indicate that the Ries area was part of a wider tradition of non-megalithic burial structures.

Journal of Neolithic Archaeology

Turning West: On the Disappearance of Figurative Representations in Neolithic West-Central Europe

Trapezoid Structures from the Transition of the Younger to the Late Neolithic Time Period at Nördlingen, Southern Germany: Evidence for Collective Burial Sites?