Re: Post-Postscript on Przeworsk

Torsten, these considerations are not really one of my major interests.

But, I would like to compliment you on the situation report as you see it,
which was written so lucidly that even a person like myself could easily
understand it.

Patrick

----- Original Message -----
From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 9:23 AM
Subject: [tied] Re: Post-Postscript on Przeworsk


Translation

> Rolf Hachmann
> Germanen und Kelten am Rhein in der Zeit um Christi Geburt, p. 36
> in
> Rolf Hachmann, Georg Kossack, Hans Kuhn
> Völker zwischen Germanen und Kelten
> Schriftquellen, Bodenfunde und Namengut zur Geschichte des
> nördlichen Westdeutschlands um Christi Geburt
>
"
If we extract the totality of all these phenomena we get the
following picture: The area east of the Rhine limited by the Lippe
river to the North and by the upper Leine valley to the East is in the
essential a part of the late Latène culture which reaches from
England and France in the West to southern Poland and Hungary in the
East. It is connected very closely to the core area of this culture,
although not completely identical to it in every detail. The existence
of abundant amounts of handmade ware beside potter's wheel made ware
presents just as many local peculiarities as the funeral custom, which
has had the effect that here in the North numerous grave finds are
present, whereas hardly any graves are known in the core area of the
Latène culture. These and other particular phenomena characterize the
area between the Rhine and the Leine valleys as a "barbarian
peripheral area" of the Latène culture in certain respects, clearly
separate from it and yet part of it ... .

In no way are we dealing here with a cultural area superficially
assimilated by having taken over a few cultural markers. Certainly
this area oriented itself in many respects towards the core area of
the Latène culture to the South and West. Isolated traits were taken
over from there. This is not the case for the structure of the
culture. That had its own character, already before the beginning of
the late Latène culture, and that character was already then
characteristically different from that of the North. The Northern,
Eastern and Southeastern limits of this peripheral province is easily
understood on the basis of the present sum of finds, even though one
may be uncertain with regard to a particular find from the peripheral
area whether it is oriented towards the North or more towards the
South. Also the Southern border is somewhat clear. In contrast, it is
presently hardly possible to discern a border line to the West.
Certainly, this cultural area stretches into Northern France... .

Within this area - perhaps towards the middle of the last
pre-Christian century or somewhat earlier - a few foreign phenomena
appear, namely a few grave sites in the Wetterau, the earthenware,
metal forms and grave customs of which have no immediate predecessors
in the country itself ... . The earthenware is as a rule handmade. It
has, however, no pre-forms in the native handmade ware nor any
counterparts in the handmade earthenware North of the river Lippe. Its
closest relatives are found in Central Germany, where at this time
grave sites with the same cultural markers, although much more
numerous than in the Wetterau, appear just as foreign within the
native environment as further West. Only much further to the East,
beyond the rivers Oder and Neisse in Silesia, Wielkopolska and
Southern Poland do we meet a cultural group similar in all essential
markers to the foreign phenomena in the Wetterau ... . It is the
Oder-Warthe group or Przeworsk culture, as it is called in the Polish
literature. The traces of this culture disappear again in the Wetterau
already before the end of the last pre-Christian century.
"


Torsten