The Lengyel Interaction Sphere in East-Central Europe during the Fifth Millennium BC

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Wheels, Horses, Babies and Bathwaters: Celebrating the Impact of David W. Anthony on the Study of Prehistory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Sites of the Lengyel Culture are found from the Drava River in Croatia to the lowlands of northern Poland during the fifth millennium BC. While the Lengyel Culture is clearly in the great "Danubian" tradition as a successor to the first farmers of this area several centuries earlier, it appears in a multitude of regional variants defined by pottery and other material culture. Linking these groups are manifestations of ritual mortuary behavior and distribution of exotic materials that comply with the criteria set forth decades ago by Caldwell for "interaction spheres" in which local traditions in crafts and subsistence underlie the acquisition and display of exotic materials by nascent elites. Seeing the Lengyel Culture in all its forms within the interaction sphere framework perhaps can provide an improved understanding of its concurrent diversity and uniformity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Wheels, Horses, Babies and Bathwaters: Celebrating the Impact of David W. Anthony on the Study of Prehistory

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25022