[gothic-l] Gothic connections

[Tore Gannholm]

>--- Tore Gannholm <tore.gannholm at swipnet.se> wrote:
>> I can recommend a new book "Gothic connections,
>> Contacts between eastern
>> Scandinavia and the southern Baltic coast 1000 BC -
>> 500 AD" by Anders
>> Kaliff   ISBN 91-506-1482-7 Department of
>> Archaeology and Ancient History,
>> Uppsala University  Uppsala 2001
>**********////// For the typical
>> Lusatian pottery Jan Dabrowski has suggested the
>> term "Pottery of Lusatian
>> style" ("Stil der Lausitzer Keramik"), in the same
>> manner as the term
>> "Hallstatt-style" is used. Cultural groups, with
>> pottery fitting into this
>> defintion are found within the South Scandinavian
>> Bronze Age culture, as
>> well as within the so called Knoviz-Milavce and
>> Wysocko cultures, in the
>> eastern Lusatian periphery of Pomerania. (Dabrowski
>> 1988, p.89)  The
>> Wysocko culture was located just west of the lower
>> part of the Vistula
>> basin, in the same area where the Wielbark culture
>> is formed centuries
>> later."
>
>*****GK: Actually this is incorrect. The so-called
>"Wysots'ka kultura" (named after a village in the
>area) was an archaeological phenomenon of the period
>1000-500 BC. It was located in contemporary Western
>Ukraine (straddling the western provinces of Lviv and
>Ternopil'). Ukrainian archaeologists agree with Polish
>archaeologists in considering it a branch of the
>Lusatian super-culture, in fact as its easternmost
>group. But these Wysotskians, as a border group, also
>had very strong ties with the pre-Scythian cultures of
>Ukraine. Urn burials constituted only some 5% of the
>total in their cemeteries. The Wysotskians were
>incorporated into the rising Scythian power in the 6th
>c. BC and totally acculturated with it. They were
>undoubtedly the "elite group" which facilitated
>contacts between Scandinavia and southeastern Europe
>in the 1rst millennium BC. Prestige objects from
>Central and Northern Europe and Italy were common here
>in the pre-Scythian period. Paradoxically warriors
>from the area of the Wysotska culture probably
>participated in the Scythian assaults on Lusatia in
>500-450 BC which were largely instrumental in the
>demise and transformation of this culture. The
>Gotho-Gepidic Wielbark culture arrived here (i.e.
>where the Wysotska group was earlier) in the late 2nd
>c. AD.*********

Thanks for your interesting comments.
I find all these analyses very thrilling as they explain unanswered questions.
By exposing this to members of the list in various countries we can get a
better understanding.

Anders Kaliff has a map which has the text "The approximate distribution of
furrowed, rusticated pottery of the Otterböte type, in the Lusatian area
and in Scandinavia. Map by Lars Östlin, after Gustavsson 1997."

I will quote somewhat more: "The oldest connection between the Lusatian
area and Scandinavia are possible to trace as early as the Bronze Age
period III. Some of the oldest typical Urn-burials in south-east Sweden are
dated to this period (Stålbom 1994,p.33). Similarities in pottery and
burial customs become more frequent and widespread during period IV-VI. The
definition of what characterized the Lusatian culture on the continent was
originally made from pottery found in burials. As a typical element, many
Lusatian graves contains ceramic vessels, depostited beside the bone
container. In Scandinavia, the Lusatian influences was first noticed in
pottery finds from settlements, and have been discussed by Hille Jaanusson
in the analyses of the ceramic from the Hallunda settlement, located in the
Stockholm region (Jaanusson 1981 and 1988).
Influences in the reversed direction, contemporary with the Lusatian impact
on Scandinavia, have also been documented. According to Jaanusson, the
typical South Scandianvian style of the bronze handicraft has influenced
the bronze industries of Pomerania, as well as in Estonia and southern
Finland, while the bronze style of the main Lusatian area is different from
the the Nordic area and closer to cultural groups in central Germany
(Jaanusson 1988,p.176). The metal finds from Pomeranian Early Bronze Age
show a high degree of similarity to south Scandinavian counterparts (e.g.
Kersten 1958) and the Nordic influence on the bronze indutstry of the
northern Lusatian area, Pomerania and the northern part of Poland is
significant from period III and onwards. This is noticeable to such a
degree that this area has sometimes been described as part of the Nordic
Bronze Age culture (Dabrowski 1989,p.73).
In the Late Bronze Age, one of the Lusatian groups, the Cassubian, located
on teh northern fringe of the Lusatian culture, began to acquire a
character of its own. It has been believed that this group was strongly
influenced by the Nordic area in the north and north-west. By the Early
Iron Age, it had acquired so many features of its own that it has been
regarded as a separate culture, often named the East Pomeranian culture:
"Certain religious ideas, probably connected with the cult of ancestors and
expressed in house-shaped urns (so-called hut urns) and primarily in the
portrayal of the dead by plastic or pictorial representations of human
faces, frequently with details of garments, ornaments and weapons (the
so-called face urns), penetrated here from the Etruscan area through
central and north-eastern Germany" (Jazdzewski, 1965,p.128). The end of the
Lusatian culture and the continuous existence of its people in later
cultural groups of the same area have been a difficult and much discussed
matter. Two main hypotheses have been presented: a political change caused
by attack from Scythic people and people from the Pomaranian culture, or a
crises within the Lusatian caused by changes in economy, social structure
and religion (e.g. Wozniak 1981,p.587ff)."

Tore

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