Re: Odp: Hemp (or, rather, LBK)

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 335
Date: 1999-11-23

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Marc Verhaegen
To: cybalist@eGroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 1999 8:13 PM
Subject: [cybalist] Re: Hemp (or, rather, LBK)

Sherrat thinks the impressions on the Corded Ware were made by hempen cords.
Bandkeramik is 2 millennia earlier. The motifs were probably made with some
sort of combs. They are the first farmers in Europe & colonized the loess
areas in the valleys of the Danube-Rhine basins. As Piotr says, they made
the long houses (loam). They had wheat, pies, pigs, cattle, dogs. They came
from Anatolia to the Balkan to the Rhine delta to England, AFAIR about 20 km
per generation. The Corded Ware came from Ukraine ca.3000 BC over the
N-European plain, was much faster & reached the Rhine delta ca.2800 BC. They
occupied areas also further away from the rivers. They had also wains,
wheels, plows, wool, barley, cords...

Marc
A few corrections, Marc. The Linear Pottery culture did not arrive from Anatolia (though perhaps the ancesors of its ethnic carriers did, but this is conjectural). It has many traits in common with the Cris/Starcevo complex, but also shows unique innovations, such as the longhouse building style. Its homeland was the middle Danube basin, from which LP communities colonised the loess belt of central Europe. The speed with which they moved will have to be recalculated yet, as archaeologists keep discovering very old (and pretty numerous) LP sites, from refuse pits to entire villages, way up north and west, from the Rhine to the lower Vistula. Quite recently abundant sites have been found in places hitherto regarded as sparsely settled or lying outside the LP area. Recent datings show that by 5600-5500 BC LP had already advanced as far as Baden-Württemberg, and that north-central Poland had been colonised by the end of the 6th millennium.
 
Whether the Corded Ware culture originated in the Ukraine, whether archaeological evidence justifies the vision of its "westward-ho" progress across the North European Plain, and whether its expansion involved ethnic movements are all debatable points. I'm sure we will have a much clearer picture in a few years time, given the recent rate of progress in archaeological studies of central Europe. A few years ago our young ambitious archaeologists dreamt of doing field research in Egypt or Syria (and they did, not without success). By now they've learnt that there are equally exciting things waiting to be found right under their feet.
 
Piotr