Human and animal deposits in circular pits of the 5th millennium between the Rhine and the Danube

Abstract

On account of recent developments in the absolute chronology of circular-shaped grave deposits from Bavaria, new bibliographic research and a series of discoveries in the south of the Upper Rhine Plain, we can now advance the hypothesis of an origin of this phenomenon in Central Europe, between the Czech Republic and Bavaria. These regions have yielded the earliest deposits with typologies encompassing all of the defined categories: burials in conventional or non-conventional positions, asymmetrical deposits, mixed deposits, anatomic segments, etc. The introduction of this practice in the south of the Upper Rhine Plain and in the Neckar Valley, undoubtedly under the direct influence of Munchshofen, occurs in the second third of the 5th millennium: it is illustrated in particular by mixed deposits, anatomic segments, isolated individuals in conventional or non-conventional positions, singular deposits with a warrior connotation and deposits of animals. The Michelsberg culture, attested in Lower Alsace at the end of the millennium, perpetuates this practice which undergoes a new development during the middle stage of this culture and a direct diffusion towards Upper Alsace. To the east, in Slovakia, it is possible that the group from Ludanice, affected by the phenomenon during the last centuries of the 5th millennium, played a relay role in diffusion towards early Trichterbecherkultur groups.Thus, rather than a progressive diffusion of the phenomenon from the Chassean towards Michelsberg, then towards the Danubian regions, we propose a polycentric model in which South and Central Europe evolve separately without necessarily interacting.