Abstract
With the exception of Circum-Alpine wetland sites, structural remains of fourth-millennium BC settlements in Central Europe are rarely encountered. As a result, there is a dearth of information concerning settlement organisation and social differentiation. Recent excavations at the waterlogged Parkhaus Opera site on the shores of Lake Zurich have, however, provided important new evidence for the existence of complex Late Neolithic settlement strategies and social stratification. Excellent organic preservation conditions permit extensive dendrochronological analyses of structures and the precise phasing of building activity. The results reveal a complex and highly dynamic settlement system, and provide a rare insight into the organisation of Late Neolithic Central European society.
Highlights
The waterlogged prehistoric sites of the Circum-Alpine region are well known for their high archaeological potential
The absence of an associated central loam patch and of any clear subdivision into bays suggests that structure 110 may represent a walkway; it bears similarities with a structure from phase 3 that we interpret as a footbridge (Figure 6: upper right, labelled with ‘a’)
Our results suggest that a complex model of settlement development existed in the late fourth millennium BC between the French Jura region, southern Germany and around Lake Zurich
Summary
The waterlogged prehistoric sites of the Circum-Alpine region are well known for their high archaeological potential. Each house appears to have stored its own supply of cereals (with some variability in crop species), leading to the suggestion that the autonomous nuclear family was the basic social and economic unit at these sites, communal building activities, such as palisade construction, suggest some form of village-scale organisation or authority (Hasenfratz & Gross-Klee 1995: 228). Differences in archaeobiological economic data (e.g. animal bone and fish remains) for individual houses, for example, need not be taken to indicate household autonomy; for Arbon-Bleiche 3, on the shore of Lake Constance, Doppler et al (2011: 153) suggest that these differences may rather hint at social units with complementary economic functions and focus, within an egalitarian framework
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