From: george knysh
Message: 64415
Date: 2009-07-24
--- On Fri, 7/24/09, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
Why do you keep mentioning Wielbark?
****GK: Because that is another local culture where inhumations appear "suddenly". And Wielbark replaces a cremation culture (Oksywie). Wielbark is bi-ritual, and there is nothing in the funeral inventory to suggest alien ethnic influx. That makes it similar to the 1rst c. BCE Przeworsk inhumations, and to Eggers' and Lichardus' Elbe Germanic situation. My view is that the Wielbark shift might have been influenced by the earlier Marbod shift since the Gutones were part of his empire.****
> > > Where did the impulse for that come? The Marcomanni? [Note that
> > > that Gutones were subjects of Marbod and participated in the
> > > assault of 19 AD which eliminated his rulership].
> >
> > No matter what line of reasoning might explain them as derived
> > from the Marcomanni, there remain the very early inhumation
> > graves of Central Germany, which must have to do with Ariovistus'
> > campaign down the Wetterau valley.
> >
> > GK: Those are the ones the Polish Wikipedia associates with a
> > "return" to earlier Celtic customs, though otherwise the
> > inventory is as "Przeworsk" as the cremation burials of that
> > culture. No archaeologist has ever found "eastern" elements
> > therein (constant reminder "in passing"...
>
> Yes, true.
>
> > > On the other hand, as Wielbark spread into Ukraine
> > > and transmogrified into Chernyakhiv (beg. in the 4th decade of
> > > the 3rd c. D) it recorded a very significant number of burials
> > > of the Przeworsk inhumation type as described above
> > > ('flexed/sidelying' ) [acc. to Boris Mahomedov's magisterial
> > > 2001 study of the Chernyakhiv culture some 10% (!!) of the
> > > Chernyakhiv inhumation burials were of this type. He
> > > distinguishes them from the rare Wielbark/Germanic Chernyakhiv
> > > borrowings of "Sarmatian poses" (legs crossed; hands on hips).
> > >
>
> Any geographical connection with soil type?
>
> GK: I've read literature which made such a connection in the
> case of house types, but no direct statement about this affecting
> the burial rite.
>
> > Does the flexed/sidelying pose type of inhumation have any
> > relatives elsewhere?
> >
> > GK: AFAIK not at that time. I could check way back to the
> > bronze age (in the context of my earlier notion of the position
> > in which bodies were cremated).
> >
I'll extend that: Flexed goes with short, on the side goes with shallow. We don't want his knees sticking up, it doesn't look nice.
****GK: I don't know about Przeworsk but that certainly doesn't apply to the Chernyakhiv graves.*****
Torsten