Urnfield culture

It is believed that in some areas, such as in southwestern Germany, the Urnfield culture was in existence around 1200 BC (beginning of Hallstatt A or Ha A), but the Bronze D Riegsee-phase already contains cremations. As the transition from the middle Bronze Age to the Urnfield culture was gradual, there are questions regarding how to define it.

The Urnfield culture covers the phases Hallstatt A and B (Ha A and B) in Paul Reinecke's chronological system, not to be confused with the Hallstatt culture (Ha C and D) of the following Iron Age. This corresponds to the Phases Montelius III-IV of the Northern Bronze Age. Whether Reinecke's Bronze D is included varies according to author and region.

The Urnfield culture is divided into the following sub-phases (based on Müller-Karpe sen.):

The existence of the Ha B3-phase is contested, as the material consists of female burials only. As can be seen by the arbitrary 100-year ranges, the dating of the phases is highly schematic. The phases are based on typological changes, which means that they do not have to be strictly contemporaneous across the whole distribution. All in all, more radiocarbon and dendro-dates would be highly desirable.

The Urnfield culture grew from the preceding Tumulus culture.[1] The transition is gradual, in the pottery as well as the burial rites.[1] In some parts of Germany, cremation and inhumation existed simultaneously (facies Wölfersheim). Some graves contain a combination of Tumulus-culture pottery and Urnfield swords (Kressbronn, Bodenseekreis) or Tumulus culture incised pottery together with early Urnfield types (Mengen). In the North, the Urnfield culture was only adopted in the HaA2 period. 16 pins deposited in a swamp in Ellmoosen (Kr. Bad Aibling, Germany) cover the whole chronological range from Bronze B to the early Urnfield period (Ha A). This demonstrates a considerable ritual continuity. In the Loire, Seine and Rhône, certain fords contain deposits from the late Neolithic onwards up to the Urnfield period.

The origins of the cremation rite are commonly believed to be in Hungary, where it was widespread since the first half of the second millennium BC.[4] The neolithic Cucuteni–Trypillia culture of modern-day northeastern Romania and Ukraine were also practicing cremation rituals as early as approximately 5500 BC. Some cremations begin to be found in the Proto-Lusatian and Trzciniec culture.

Europe in the late Bronze Age.

The Urnfield culture was located in an area stretching from western Hungary to eastern France, from the Alps to near the North Sea. Local groups, mainly differentiated by pottery, include:

• Knovíz culture in western and Northern Bohemia, southern Thuringia and North-eastern Bavaria
• Milavce culture in southeastern Bohemia
• Unstrut culture in Thuringia, a mixture between Knovíz-culture and the South-German Urnfield culture
• Lusatian culture in northern Bohemia, Lusatia and Poland

South-German Urnfield culture

• Northeast-Bavarian Group, divided into a lower Bavarian and an upper Palatinate group
• Lower-Main-Swabian group in southern Hesse and Baden-Württemberg, including the Marburger, Hanauer, lower Main and Friedberger facies
• Rhenish-Swiss group in Rhineland-Palatinate, Switzerland and eastern France, (abbreviated RSFO in French)

Lower-Rhine Urnfield culture

• Lower Hessian Group
• North-Netherlands-Westphalian group
• Northwest-Group in the Dutch Delta region

Middle-Danube Urnfield culture

• Velatice-Baierdorf in Moravia and Austria
• Čaka in western Slovakia
• Gáva culture
• Piliny culture
• Kyjatice culture
• Makó culture

Sometimes the distribution of artifacts belonging to these groups shows sharp and consistent borders, which might indicate some political structures, like tribes. Metalwork is commonly of a much more widespread distribution than pottery and does not conform to these borders. It may have been produced at specialised workshops catering for the elite of a large area.

Important French cemeteries include Châtenay and Lingolsheim (Alsace). An unusual earthwork was constructed at Goloring near Koblenz in Germany.

Villanovan cinerary urn from Chiusi, 9th-8th century BC.

The central European Lusatian culture forms part of the Urnfield tradition, but continues into the Iron Age without a notable break.

The Piliny culture in northern Hungary and Slovakia grew from the Tumulus culture, but used urn burials as well. The pottery shows strong links to the Gáva culture, but in the later phases, a strong influence of the Lusatian culture is found. In Italy the late Bronze Age Canegrate and Proto-Villanovan cultures and the early Iron Age Villanovan culture show similarities with the urnfields of central Europe. Urnfields are found in the French Languedoc and Catalonia from the 9th to 8th centuries. The change in burial custom was most probably influenced by developments further east.

The Golasecca culture in northern Italy developed with continuity from the Canegrate culture.[3][5] Canegrate represented a completely new cultural dynamic to the area expressed in pottery and bronzework, making it a typical western example of the Urnfield culture, in particular the Rhine-Switzerland-Eastern France (RSFO) Urnfield culture.[3][5] The Lepontic Celtic language inscriptions of the area show the language of the Golasecca culture was clearly Celtic making it probable that the 13th-century BC language of at least the RSEF area of the western urnfields was also Celtic or a precursor to it.[3][5]

Placename evidence has also been used to point to an association of the Urnfield materials with a Proto-Celtic language group in central Europe, and it has been argued that it was the ancestral culture of the Celts.[6] The Urnfield layers of the Hallstatt culture, Ha A and Ha B, are succeeded by the Iron Age "Hallstatt period" proper (Ha C and Ha D, 8th-6th centuries BC), associated with the early Celts; Ha D is in turn succeeded by the La Tène culture, the archaeological culture associated with the Continental Celts of antiquity.

The influence of the Urnfield culture spread widely and found its way to the northeastern Iberian coast, where the nearby Celtiberians of the interior adapted it for use in their cemeteries.[7] Evidence for east-to-west early Urnfield (Bronze D-Hallstatt A) elite contacts such as rilled-ware, swords and crested helmets has been found in the southwest of the Iberian peninsula.[8] The appearance of such elite status markers provides the simplest explanation for the spread of Celtic languages in this area from prestigious, proto-Celtic, early-Urnfield metalworkers.[8]

The numerous hoards of the Urnfield culture and the existence of fortified settlements (hill forts) were taken as evidence for widespread warfare and upheaval by some scholars. Written sources describe several collapses and upheavals in the Eastern Mediterranean, Anatolia and the Levant around the time of the Urnfield origins:

• End of the Mycenean culture with a conventional date of c. 1200 BC
• Destruction of Troy VI c. 1200 BC
• Battles of Ramses III against the Sea Peoples, 1195–1190 BC
• End of the Hittite empire 1180 BC
• Settlement of the Philistines in Canaan c. 1170 BC

Some scholars, among them Wolfgang Kimmig and P. Bosch-Gimpera have postulated a Europe-wide wave of migrations. The so-called Dorian invasion of Greece was placed in this context as well (although more recent evidence suggests that the Dorians moved in 1100 BC into a post Mycenaean vacuum, rather than precipitating the collapse). Better methods of dating have shown that these events are not as closely connected as once thought. [citation needed]

More recently Robert Drews, after having reviewed and dismissed the migration hypothesis, has suggested that the observed cultural associations may be in fact partly explained as the result of a new kind of warfare based upon the slashing Naue II sword,[9] and with bands of infantry replacing chariots in warfare. Drews suggests that the political instability that this brought to centralised states based upon maryannu chariotry caused the breakdown of these polities.

Site of a hill fort, Urnfield Culture, Burgstallkogel (Sulm valley)

The number of settlements increased sharply in comparison with the preceding Tumulus culture. Unfortunately, few have been comprehensively excavated. Fortified settlements, often on hilltops or in river-bends, are typical for the Urnfield culture. They are heavily fortified with dry-stone or wooden ramparts. Excavations of open settlements are rare, but they show that large 3-4 aisled houses built with wooden posts and wall of wattle and daub were common. Pit dwellings are known as well; they might have served as cellars.

Open settlements

Heunischenburg fortification

The houses were one or two-aisled. Some were quite small, 4.5 m × 5 m at the Runder Berg (Urach, Germany), 5-8m long in Künzig (Bavaria, Germany), others up to 20 m long. They were built with wooden posts and walls of wattle and daub. At the Velatice-settlement of Lovčičky (Moravia, Czech Republic) 44 houses have been excavated. Large bell shaped storage pits are known from the Knovíz-culture. The settlement of Radonice (Louny) contained over 100 pits. They were most probably used to store grain and demonstrate a considerable surplus-production.

Reconstruction of a pile dwelling settlement at Unteruhldingen on Lake Constance in southern Germany

Cattle, pigs, sheep and goats were kept, as well as horses, dogs and geese. The cattle were rather small, with a height of 1.20 m at the withers. Horses were not much bigger with a mean of 1.25 m.

Forest clearance was intensive in the Urnfield period. Probably open meadows were created for the first time, as shown by pollen analysis. This led to increased erosion and sediment-load of the rivers.

Wheat and barley were cultivated, together with pulses and the horse bean. Poppy seeds were used for oil or as a drug. Millet and oats were cultivated for the first time in Hungary and Bohemia, rye was already cultivated, further west it was only a noxious weed. Flax seems to have been of reduced importance, maybe because mainly wool was used for clothes. Hazel nuts, apples, pears, sloes and acorns were collected. Some rich graves contain bronze sieves that have been interpreted as wine-sieves (Hart an der Alz). This beverage would have been imported from the South, but supporting evidence is lacking. In the lacustrine settlement of Zug, remains of a broth made of spelt and millet have been found. In the lower-Rhine urnfields, leavened bread was often placed on the pyre and burnt fragments have thus been preserved.

Wool was spun (finds of spindle whorls are common) and woven on the warp-weighted loom; bronze needles (Unteruhldingen) were used for sewing.

There is some suggestion that the Urnfield culture is associated with a wetter climatic period than the earlier Tumulus cultures. This may be associated with the diversion of the mid-latitude winter storms north of the Pyrenees and the Alps, possibly associated with drier conditions in the Mediterranean basin.

Various large hoards of sickles have been excavated across central Europe, which feature a range of cast markings that have been interpreted in different ways. An analysis of the Frankleben hoard from central Germany found that markings on the sickles constituted a numeral system related to the lunar calendar. According to the Halle State Museum of Prehistory:

“Many sickles carry line-shaped markings. The scope and order of these brands follows a defined pattern. This sign language can be interpreted as a pre-form of a writing system. There are two types of symbols: line-shaped marks below the button and marks at the angle or at the base of the sickle body. The archaeologist Christoph Sommerfeld examined the rules and realized that the casting marks are composed of one to nine ribs. After four left-hand, individually counted strokes there follows a bundle as a group of five on the right side. This creates a counting system that reaches to 29. The Synodic Moon orbit lasts 29 days or nights. This number and the lunar shape of the sickle suggest that the stroke groups should be interpreted as calendar pages, as a point in the monthly cycle. The sickle marks are the oldest known sign system in Central Europe.”[11]

Four elaborate cone-shaped hats made from thin sheets of gold have been found in Germany and France, dated to 1200-800 BC. It's thought that they may have been worn as ceremonial hats by ‘king-priests’ or oracles.[12]

The gold cones are covered in bands of ornaments along their whole length and extent. The ornaments - mostly disks and concentric circles, sometimes wheels, crescents, pointed oval shapes and triangles - were punched using stamps, rolls or combs. Analysis of the Berlin Gold Hat has demonstrated that its ornaments form systematic patterns which represent the Metonic cycle of a lunisolar calendar. According to the historian Wilfried Menghin:

“The symbols on the hat are a logarithmic table which enables the movements of the sun and the moon to be calculated in advance.”[13]

The Kyffhäuser caves in Thuringia contain headless skeletons and split human and animal bones that have been interpreted as sacrifices. Other deposits include grain, knotted vegetable fibres and hair and bronze objects (axes, pendants and pins). The Ith-caves (Lower Saxony) have yielded comparative material.

In the Knovíz-culture, human bones with cut-marks and traces of burning have been found in settlement pits. Moon-shaped clay fire dogs are thought to have a religious significance, as well as crescent shaped razors.

An obsession with waterbirds is indicated by numerous pictures and three-dimensional representations. Combined with the hoards deposited in rivers and swamps, it indicates religious beliefs connected with water. This has led some scholars to believe in serious droughts during the late Bronze Age. Sometimes the water-birds are combined with circles, the so-called sun-barque-motif.

• Beaker culture
• Sorothaptic language
• Urnfield culture numerals

• J. M. Coles/A. F. Harding, The Bronze Age in Europe (London 1979).
• G. Weber, Händler, Kieger, Bronzegießer (Kassel 1992).
• Ute Seidel, Bronzezeit. Württembergisches Landesmuseum Stuttgart (Stuttgart 1995).
• Konrad Jażdżewski, Urgeschichte Mitteleuropas (Wrocław 1984)
• Association Abbaye de Daoulas (eds.), Avant les Celtes. L'Europe a l'age du Bronze (Daoulas 1988).
• Frans Theuws, Nico Roymans (eds.), Land and ancestors: cultural dynamics in the Urnfield period and the Middle Ages in the southern Netherlands, Amsterdam Archaeological Studies, Amsterdam University Press, 1999, ISBN 978-90-5356-278-9.

Media related to Urnfield culture at Wikimedia Commons