Lost and found: The Funnel Beaker culture’s ‘megalithic tombs’ in the cultural and natural landscape of Greater Poland
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Date
2021-12
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Faculty of Archaeology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań
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Abstract
Non-megalithic long barrows were the earliest type of monumental tombs that occurred in
Europe. The oldest structures of this type, dating to 4800-4300 BC, are known from north-
western France. Then, at the beginning of the 4 th millennium BC, unchambered structures
occurred in southern and central England, northern and central Germany, Denmark, and
Poland. In Poland, tombs representing the Funnel Beaker culture (TRB) are found in several
distinct concentrations which do not correspond to the entire range of the settlement oecumene
of this community. They are also quite diverse in terms of construction and size. Interestingly,
their origin and purpose still remain a mystery. It seems likely, though, that for their creators
they had much higher significance than just a place to bury some selected members of the
community. Most probably, they were a kind of symbolic marker of a given area, testifying to the
unity and power of the communities living in such a region. Some researchers associate their
origin with the influence of hunter-gatherer communities on agricultural communities. Other
approaches to this topic point to the importance of borrowing the house model of early
Neolithic communities, which was symbolically transformed into a ‘house for the dead’, i.e.
a tomb. In most regions of Poland, megaliths were only ‘rediscovered’ in the 19 th century by
archaeologists, some of whom were amateurs. Unfortunately, this was not the case in Great-
er Poland. The megalithic tombs of the TRB remained unrecognized there until the second
decade of the 21 st century! What largely contributed to their discovery was technological
progress, mainly the use of LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging). Ongoing research aims
to locate and verify occurrences of other cemeteries and to ‘embed’ them in the cultural and
natural landscape of this region.
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Keywords
Greater Poland, Funnel Beaker culture, TRB, Non-megalithic long barrows, paleoenvironment
Citation
Treasures of Time: Research of the Faculty of Archaeology of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (2021) D. Żurkiewicz (Ed.). pp. 64-87
ISBN
978-83-946591-9-6