The eve of destruction?: Local groups and large-scale networks during the late fourth and early third millennium BC in central Europe

This volume collects papers on the pre-Corded Ware horizon in central Europe and adjacent areas (i.e. from c. 3500 – 2800 BC). This phase is very patchily researched, partly also because certain kinds of evidence, notably domestic architecture and burials, are rare or absent in many regions. This has occasionally been interpreted as signs of a major crisis and population bottleneck, which in turn facilitated the migration of new populations from the steppe, bringing with them amongst others new economic regimes, ideologies and settlement patterns.

Research over the last few years has shown that this scenario needs to be nuanced. Although evidence remains scattered, a picture of regional diversity is emerging, with probably mobile but well-connected Late Neolithic societies undergoing social changes of their own, and instituting several key innovations long before the appearance of the Corded Ware. This volume offers a selection of such case studies, comprising amongst others an overview over the steppe background of new mortuary practices, contributions on settlement and changing networks in Switzerland, Poland and several regions of Germany, as well as discussions on the spread of pottery innovations and lithic material, the possible effect of droughts on Late Neolithic societies, new patterns of monumentality and figurative expression, the social role of battle axes, networks of influences visible in burial rites, and the possibility for “parallel societies” with different modes of life. An introductory chapter draws out central themes.

Together, these contributions show that the transition to the Corded Ware culture was a diverse and multi-facetted process, with many continuities across the transition.

Table of Contents

The pre-Corded Ware horizon in central Europe and why it matters – an introduction to the volume
Daniela Hofmann, Doris Mischka and Silviane Scharl

The times they are a-changin’. The Final Copper Age between the eastern Carpathians and the Don river
Elke Kaiser

The arrival of the Corded Ware in eastern Switzerland. A settlement archaeological view
Niels Bleicher

Pots without plots? Danubian and other non-local finds in Horgen cultural contexts of the thirty-second century BC and beyond at Lake Constance and in Upper Swabia
Joachim Köninger

The time of the cord rollers. Textile-roughened pottery of the early third millennium BC and cultural transmission networks from a south-western German perspective
Philipp Gleich

Decades of drought in the twenty-eighth century BC and its effects on settlement and culture
Joachim Pechtl and Alexander Land

In the middle of nowhere – Burgerroth and the Early Final Neolithic in Franconia
Thomas Link

Networks at the turn of the millennium — the situation in northern Bavaria
Martin Nadler

Long barrows, causewayed enclosures and the long term spiritual continuity in ritual landscape around Mount Říp in Bohemia (Czech Republic)
Jan Turek, Petr Krištuf and Ondřej Švejcar

The third millennium BC in the German lower mountain ranges: Are social ties falling apart?
Clara Drummer

Lithics, Lousberg axes and no settlements. In search of the late fourth millennium BC in the Lower Rhine area
Silviane Scharl and Ingrid Koch

In varietate concordia — united in diversity. Battle axes, coarse ware pottery and burial rituals during the Late Neolithic of western and central Europe and their meaning for the deconstruction of Final Neolithic narratives
Sebastian Schultrich

Continuation and change in settlement of the Polish Lowland in the period 3300–2700 BC
Marzena Szmyt

Societal rise, dissolution and diversity: from Funnel Beaker (TRB) societies to Single Grave groups on the North European Plain (c. 3300–2700 BC)
Jan Piet Brozio

Global transformation? Globular Amphora sedentary pastoralists 3200–2700 BC
Johannes Müller

Parallel societies: evidence for the co-existence of Late Funnel Beaker West and Early Corded Ware communities
Quentin P.J. Bourgeois, Erik J. Kroon and S. Louise Olerud

Same old, same old? Fisher-hunter-gatherer graves, burials and mortuary practices in the late fourth and early third millennium BC northern and eastern Baltic Sea region
Marja Ahola

Daniela Hofmann has obtained her PhD from Cardiff University and is currently Junior Professor at Hamburg University, Germany. She has published extensively on funerary archaeology, as well as the figurines and domestic architecture of the central European Neolithic, but she is also interested in instances of structured deposition and in spheres of exchange.

Doris Mischka is Professor for Prehistoric Archaeology at the Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Previously, she worked at the Universities of Göttingen, Kiel, Bologna and Cologne. Her publications are devoted mainly to the Linear Pottery culture, the Funnel Beaker culture and Cucuteni-Tripyllia. She is also interested in landscape archaeology and has worked on lithics and pottery. Her most recent publications include an exhaustive study of the Neolithic burials in Flintbek (Das Neolithikum in Flintbek, Kr. Rendsburg-Eckernförde, Schleswig-Holstein. Eine feinchronologische Studie zur Besiedlungsgeschichte anhand von Gräbern, 2022), and co-editorship of a landmark introductory work on the Neolithic of Bavaria (Steinzeit in Bayern. Das Handbuch in 2 Bänden, 2023, with T. Uthmeier). Currently she conducts fieldwork in Romania.

Silviane Scharl is Professor for Prehistoric Archaeology at the University of Cologne. One focus of her research is on the central European Neolithic, where she has published extensively on networks of innovation and on human mobility (see e.g. Human mobility and the spread of innovations – case studies from Neolithic Central and Southeast Europe. Open Archaeology 9/1, 2023). She has also written an introductory volume on the Neolithic in central Europe (Jungsteinzeit – Wie die Menschen sesshaft wurden, 2021). In her current project, she explores the Late Neolithic in the Rhineland in western Germany.