Pottery traditions as a mirror of social structures of the 5th and 4th millennium BC in northern Central Europe

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For several decades, the transition from hunter-gatherer cultures to agrarian societies and their consolidation during the Neolithic in northern Central Europe is one of the priorities within the settlement research. The main question often concerns the structural connections between settlements, tombs and ritual sites of the Funnel Beaker Culture in its different forms, most recently within the DFG SPP Monumentality and Social Differentiation. In this research, it has been confirmed that natural scientific analyses of pottery finds, in addition to typochronological studies, can highly contribute to gain new insights into the social organization within micro-regions of this period. Several pilot studies based on the analysis of the raw materials used for making pottery have shown how local networks were constructed and provided information about the existence and extent of interactions among settlements. In addition, it is also possible to make statements about the spatial involvement of monuments. Furthermore, non-locally produced, foreign vessels can be used to receive important indications of supra-regional communication connections. Another great potential of pottery analyses is the possibility to characterize the transition between successive cultures, such as the ceramic phase of the Ertebølle Culture and the early Funnel Beaker Culture. Thus, they provide independent, reliable information which should also be included in the interpretation of aDNA studies on human and animal skeletal remains. In this regard, the proposed project intends to make detailed and comparative analyses of pottery inventories from settlements, monuments and flat grave cemeteries from seven micro-regions, which are located between the Netherlands, the Danish islands and the Oder region. Together with the already conducted investigations of the SPP Monumentality the micro-regions cover large parts of the distribution area of the Funnel Beaker Culture. Only regions were selected in which intensive research activities on the transition from the late Mesolithic to the Funnel Beaker Culture or on the Funnel Beaker Culture itself have taken place during the last decades, so that these regions already offer optimal conditions for a holistic evaluation of the obtained pottery data. For example, it is possible to refer to landscape reconstructions, numerous 14C-datings and typological pottery studies for the individual regions and to use these data for the interpretation of the newly achieved results. Against this background, it can be expected, that the project will make a substantial contribution to the reconstruction of space utilization and social organization during the 5th and 4th millennium BC in northern Central Europe.