Session: #333

Content:

The period from the 5th to the mid-4th millennium BC in central Europe is a time of fundamental change. At one level, there are repeated episodes in which larger-scale cultural entities fragment into small regional groupings. Yet, on the other hand, there are trends and innovations which are shared widely and across such culture boundaries. These include, amongst many others, the purposeful deposition of human remains, animals and selected material culture; the importance of enclosures as landscape centres and ritual spaces; the development of new technological systems concerning for instance metal and the production of high-quality pottery; and the spread of economic innovations which enable life in new landscapes. This means that potentially very different social formations and societies were in intensive and sustained contact with one another, implying considerable personal and group mobility. In this session, we wish to explore how one particular communication corridor, the Danube River and its tributaries, worked in this setting. What is the evidence for long-distance connections along its course? At what times/points were boundaries created and the flow of ideas and objects interrupted? How did this change over time? And how did the societies involved in these networks react to the novelties that reached them? We particularly welcome papers treating the spread of (technological, social or ritual) innovations and material culture, human mobility and boundaries, and the role of meeting sites in the 5th and 4th millennia BC, roughly from the Iron Gates to the sources of the Danube.

Session: #333

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