Pottery of Pikutkowo Style and the Processes of the Eneolithisation of "Megalithic Cultures” in the 4th Millennium BC

The authors discuss the current state of knowledge concerning the specific pottery features of the Funnel Beaker culture (FBC) that constitute the "cycle of Pikutkowo stylistics”. These characteristics are especially strongly represented in the Kuyavia region  where the changes in the "Pikutkowo” set of characteristics define phases III B and III B-C of the FBC, dated to 3700–3200 BC. Relatively quickly, because already in the period 3700–3600 BC, "Pikutkowo” pottery appears not only in the Polish Lowlands (including Greater Poland and Central Poland, as well as in the Chełmno Land and the Gostynin Lake District), but also in the old upland areas located in the upper Vistula basin. The latest data indicate that at the same time „Pikutkowo” characteristics are also present in FBC assemblages from the Subcarpathian foothills, as well as from the upper Dniester. In the final centuries of the first half of the fourth millennium BC, "Pikutkowo” features were resent with varying intensity within the borders of the Vistula and Odra catchment area in the west and the Dniester drainage basin in the east. The authors argue that this wide distribution designates the "Pikutkowo stylistics space”, which was a zone of active circulation of cultural patterns within the FBC. The culture-forming potential of this zone is best confirmed by the phenomenon of the transfer of one of the key innovations at the time, i.e. copper (including arsenic copper) processing

Mitochondrial genomes reveal an east to west cline of steppe ancestry in Corded Ware populations

From around 4,000 to 2,000 BC the forest-steppe north-western Pontic region was occupied by people who shared a nomadic lifestyle, pastoral economy and barrow burial rituals. It has been shown that these groups, especially those associated with the Yamnaya culture, played an important role in shaping the gene pool of Bronze Age Europeans, which extends into present-day patterns of genetic variation in Europe. Although the genetic impact of these migrations from the forest-steppe Pontic region into central Europe have previously been addressed in several studies, the contribution of mitochondrial lineages to the people associated with the Corded Ware culture in the eastern part of the North European Plain remains contentious. In this study, we present mitochondrial genomes from 23 Late Eneolithic and Bronze Age individuals, including representatives of the north-western Pontic region and the Corded Ware culture from the eastern part of the North European Plain. We identified, for the first time in ancient populations, the rare mitochondrial haplogroup X4 in two Bronze Age Catacomb culture-associated individuals. Genetic similarity analyses show close maternal genetic affinities between populations associated with both eastern and Baltic Corded Ware culture, and the Yamnaya horizon, in contrast to larger genetic differentiation between populations associated with western Corded Ware culture and the Yamnaya horizon. This indicates that females with steppe ancestry contributed to the formation of populations associated with the eastern Corded Ware culture while more local people, likely of Neolithic farmer ancestry, contributed to the formation of populations associated with western Corded Ware cultur

Traits Of ‘Early Bronze’ Pontic Cultures In The Development Of Lowland And Eastern European Forest Cultural Environments In The Baltic Southern Drainage Basin. An Outline Of The State Of Research

This publication constitutes the fruits of National Science Centre research projects (grant no 2011/01/M/HS3/02142 – 6 articles) and the National Programme for the Development of the Humanities (grant no 0108/NPH3/H12/82/2014 – 3 articles). We would like to acknowledge and at the same time express our sincere gratitude for the generosity shown by the following at the Adam Mickiewicz University in making this publication possible: the Dean of the Department of History, Institute of Pre-history and the Eastern Institute

RADIOCARBON CHRONOLOGY OF THE MĄTWY GROUP OF THE FUNNEL BEAKER CULTURE. THE QUESTION OF CHRONOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL POSITION OF „LINEAR-COMB POTTERY”

This volume of the Baltic-Pontic Studies is a record of investigations carried out under the research project begun earlier in vol. 7 ("The Foundations of radiocarbon chronology of cultures between the Vistula and Dnieper: 3150-1850 BC", Poznań 1999). Here, the approach is broader in terms of chronology and culture. Our purpose has been to fill taxonomic gaps hitherto present in the discussion (supplementing the dating of cultures, groups or phases) or reanalyze the grounds for findings considered particularly controversial. In the latter case, a very enlightening debate was provoked by the comparative chronology of the Yamnaya and Catacomb cultures presented by A.N. Nikolova. We hope that a large series of 14C dates and a revision of the foundations of "archaeological knowledge" (stratigraphy, typochronolgy and groups of co-occurrence of traits), brought together in the paper by D.Y. Telegin, S.Z. Pustovalov, N. Kovalyukh, lay the ground for a stabilization of views on this important dividing line in the chronology of the Bronze Age in the Pontic zone. A vast majority of the new 14C dates have been obtained under an international research project financed by the Polish Committee for Scientific Research

PONTIC TRAITS IN THE MATERIALS OF THE KUJAWY FUNNEL BEAKER CULTURE AND EARLY CORDED WARE CULTURE — A RADIOCARBON PERSPECTIVE

This volume of the Baltic Pontic Studies focuses on the results of the research carried out so far into the absolute (radiocarbon) chronology of the area lying between the Vistula and Dnieper or the bio-cultural borderland between the West and East of Europe. Absolute chronology is treated here both as a research goal and fundamental premise in the broader studies of the chronometrie and development synchronization of "borderland" cultural systems. In a series of articles devoted to individual taxa a considerable number of new 14C dates have been compared. The dates concern source materials that have been chosen from the point of view of their representativeness and chronometrie value ("short-lived" materials were preferred to minimize a potential error). The vast majority of analyses were purposefully made in the same 14C laboratory of the State Scientific Center of Environmental Radiogeochemistry of Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev taking advantage of funds generously provided by the Polish Committee for Scientific Research. The volume devoted to the "dark" section of the "borderland" history (3150-1850 BC) is the first but not the last publication on the broader issues mentioned above that we intend to present in the near future

FLUTED MACES IN CULTURAL SYSTEMS OF THE BORDERLAND OF EASTERN AND WESTERN EUROPE: 2350-800 BC. TAXONOMY, GENESIS, FUNCTION

Fluted maces (Kannelierte Streitkolben) have not been an object of a monographic study so far. The reasons for this deficiency was the paucity of assemblage finds (mainly grave ones) and the fact that they occurred in the borderland between the East and West of Europe. Both reasons made it difficult to identify them chronologically and keep a full record of finds. The present monograph sums up almost 25 years of studies that at the outset were limited to Poland and only gradually were expanded to include the whole continent. This was made possible owing to the goodwill of many people and institutions from the Danube area, the Balkans and the Russian Plain. The present volume of Baltic-Pontic Studies consists of two parts devoted, respectively, to the current state of knowledge on the position of the mace in the Near East and North Pontic civilizations, and the forms, chronology, origins, functions and socio-organizational significance of one of its types, namely the fluted mace. As in previous volumes in this series, our intention is to inspire team, interdisciplinary studies involving scholars from different centres and countries. Only such a wide-range co-operation will bring about new developments in the areas discussed in this volume