A History of the Bandkeramik Culture

By the middle of the 6th millennium BCE, a distinctive culture emerged in Western Europe, around modern-day western Hungry and part of Poland. The earliest traces of Bandkeramik settlement occur in the late fifth millennium B.C.E. This cultured is also known as Linearbandkeramik, but has been shortened over the years to Bandkeramik or LBK. Other terms for this culture include Linear Pottery Culture or LPC, however, for this article, I will use the term Bandkeramik.

Two of the main features of Bandkeramik culture are the pottery which was produced, with incised banded decoration, and the longhouses which were constructed. Internal groups of massive timber posts supported the pitched roofs, covered in thatch, which rested on and overhung the side walls. The northern end of these houses was often more massively built of split timber planks in a bedding patch; occasionally the whole of the outer wall was of timber plank construction (Scarre, p.407). These houses were built grouped together in bands of twos or threes on gravel river terraces in forest clearings. This allowed access to water and easily tilled soil.

The history of the Bandkeramik culture is of importance in regards to Neolithic farming. Indeed, the rapid expansion of the Bandkeramik has led to the interpretation as a �movement of colonizing farmers� (Scarre, p.407).

This leads to the question, what motivated the Bandkeramik penetration of lowland Europe? Some scholars believe that because of the depletion of the fertility of the loess soils to the south, the �Bandkeramik agriculturalists were forced to seek fertile land further afield in order to maintain a growing population� (Bogucki, p.242).

In the period from c. 5000-4700 cal. BC, sites belonging to successive epi-Bandkeramik groups expanded westwards in three salient�s, following the loess plains: along the Somme through Picardy; into Normandy, reaching the Plain of Caen; and south-westwards across the Plain of Beauce into the middle Loire and towards the Gate of Poitou (Sherratt, p.152). The pottery of these groups began to deviate away from the typical Bandkeramik convention and its successors in the Rhineland: it carried comb-impressed ornament and had a distinguishing bone filler - characteristics which may possibly signify a local involvement to the tradition.

It is only during the middle and late phases of the Bandkeramik occupation that large, long-term (debatably "strategic") settlements such as Olszanica appear. The interval between the early manifestation of "tactical" settlements and the growth of "strategic" sites in southern Poland is only somewhat shorter than that observed in the north, since in lowland Poland the initial Bandkeramik sites can be typologically linked with the middle and late Bandkeramik phases in the south.

The Bandkeramik culture, their way of life, the language they spoke etc, cannot be fully understood with the available evidence that we have today. However, with the continual study of this fascinating culture, will undoubtedly reveal unknown aspects of Neolithic European cultures.

Bibliography:

Bogucki, Peter I. (1979) Tactical and Strategic Settlements in the Early Neolithic of Lowland Poland, Journal of Anthropological Research, University of New Mexico.

Scarre, Chris (2005) The Human Past � Holocene Europe, Thames & Hudson, London.

Sherratt, Andrew (1990) The Genesis of Megaliths: Monumentaility, Ethnicity and Social Complexity in Neolithic North-East Europe, World Archaeology, Taylor & Francis Ltd.

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