TBM Standing stone Wiltshire
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can’t sleep if my toesies aren’t covered because there is a non zero chance that a Neolithic cave snake will drag me by my dogs into the cold, dark night
thank you for understanding
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so like
if I wanted to have a character who was from neolithic England (long barrow era, 5000-6000 years ago)
how on earth would I go about deciding what to name her
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Two Bronze Age Collared Urns from Bleasdale Bronze Age Timber Circle, Harris Museum and Gallery, Preston, Lancashire
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The Great Mother Goddess in Macedonian: a woman’s figure above, and a house below.
Symbolizing that it is this house (or, more broadly, the human dwelling in general) that the goddess must protect.
A 39-centimeter-long terracotta figurine, crafted in the sixth millennium BC, was discovered in 1981 in the Tumba Majari Neolithic complex near Skopje. The remains of houses and traces of an ancient sanctuary dedicated to the Great Mother had previously been found at the site.
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You know Stonehenge, but have you ever heard of Woodhenge?
Well, I have to admit that I first heard about Woodhenge on the radio this morning.
Woodhenge: Lesser Known Neighbor of Stonehenge - Historic Mysteries
This type of construction is also known in other places.
South of Magdeburg archaeologists discovered the remains of a more than 4,000-year-old cult site. Not far from the Elbe, the circular ditched enclosure was reconstructed at its original location. In size, structure, and function the Pömmelte Woodhenge resembled the English
A remarkable discovery in Denmark is shedding new light on our shared history with the UK. Archaeologists in North Jutland have uncovered a 4,000-year-old timber circle, strikingly similar in design and orientation to Stonehenge and Woodhenge in England.
Woodhenge Found in Denmark: A Link Between Denmark and Britain’s Neolithic Past
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Linear Pottery Culture
ALTBy Own work by Joostik; This file was derived from: European Middle Neolithic.gif:, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23059624
The major changes of the Neolithic Revolution, the change to settled agriculture and even the use of animal labor from kept herd animals to assist with that agriculture, spread through Europe on a couple of main pathways, both through people moving into areas and ideas being passed along. From it’s start in the Fertile Crescent in about 10000-8000 BCE, its movements through Europe can be traced through two particular pottery decoration traditions. One of these is the Linear Pottery Culture (LBK, from the German Linearbandkeramik), which followed the Danube, the upper and middle Elbe, and the upper and middle Rhine as they moved.
ALTBy PWN, Warszawa, 1975 - Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN, 1-4 t., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85663658
The use of ‘linear’ and 'band’ in the LBK name have very specific definitions in archaeology that don’t necessarily line up with their standard usage in either German or English, but refers to the continuous lines that create curved spirals incised into the pottery as opposed to painted wares that preceded it. Pottery was made for storage or consuming, consisting primarily as bowls, cups, jugs, and vases without handles, later developing pierced lugs, or flattened handles, bases, and necks to their pottery. The burial of pottery in female graves, probably indicating their trade, and the pottery decorations may indirectly 'indicate an endogamous [only marrying within a certain group], matrilocal [married couples living with or near the wife’s parents] residence’
ALTBy Eva Fernández , et al, 'Ancient DNA Analysis of 8000 B.C. Near Eastern Farmers Supports an Early Neolithic Pioneer Maritime Colonization of Mainland Europe through Cyprus and the Aegean Islands’ (2014) - CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=120325102
The oldest evidence of LBK in Europe flows through Serbia and Hungary, about 5600-5400 BCE along the middle Danube area. They proceeded along the Danube, practicing slash-and-burn agriculture, cutting down and burning local plant life to plant their fields of emmer wheat, einkor wheat, lentils, peas. They didn’t appear to use barley, millet, broad or field beans, bitter vetch, or rye. Hemp and flax also seem to have been grown, based on rope and cloth needs. Poppies were introduced later as they met groups traveling along the Mediterranean. As they spread through Europe, they began to incorporate local foods into their agriculture.
ALTBy Photographed by User:Bullenwächter - Photographed at Historisches Museum der Pfalz, Speyer, Germany, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1068959
Their tools were made from flint, obsidian, bone, and wood. They used flint that originated in modern day southern Poland while the obsidian was from the Tatra and Bükk mountain ranges, where they specialized in mining and manufacturing and then exported their products to other LBK regions, suggesting wide-reaching trade, and also speaks to a potential 'ethnic unity between the scattered pockets of the culture’. They used scythes that were curved wood lengths with flint blades embedded into the bend. They made use of 'shoe-last celts’, which are 'long thin polished stone tools for felling trees and woodworking’ and resemble shoe-lasts for making handmade shoes, that were tied to handles so they could be used as adzes, with the cutting edge perpendicular to the handle rather than parallel like axes based on wear patterns. An abundance of scrapers and knives have been found. The microliths of flint and the polished stone of the shoe-last celts represent technology from the Mesolithic and Neolithic, respectively.
ALTBy Wolfgang Sauber - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39979171
The LBK people lived in long houses, which could be 5.5-7.0 m wide and up to 45 m long built of wattle-and-daub, sometimes using split logs, oak by preference, with thatch roofs supported by poles along the center of the structure. They likely had a single door at one short end with no windows and the interior could be divided up to three sections, with one used for daily activities, one for sleeping, and one for either grain storage or for keeping animals. Waste was collected in external pits and trades that produced more wast, such as tanning and flint-working, were done outside. Villages contained five to eight long houses that were about 20 m apart with settlement cells of nearby villages that could range from one every 32 sq km to 20 per 25 sq km. We do not know how they lived within these houses and villages yet. It might have been a multi-generational family per house, though the life-span of the time would mean it would be only two generations, or it might have been communal houses, with multiple families within a single house. Nor have we been able to figure out their social structure as the set up of the settlements shows they weren’t anarchic or that they lacked a social structure of some kind.
ALTBy Einsamer Schütze - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66371815
Wells have been found, built up with timber, which supplemented the water from the rivers that the settlements were built around and also indicated 'sophisticated carpentry skills and [they] were capable of complex timber constructions’. The wells were also built up in layers as previous layers sank. They also built timber trackways, some of which have been preserved to the modern day in Lower Saxony.
ALTBy Wolfgang Sauber - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41639391
One of the largest LBK settlements was at modern day Vrable in Slovakia. It housed up to 1725 people in about 70 longhouses around 5100 BCE, at its peak. There seem to be three 'neighborhoods’ in the set up the houses, with one being surrounded by a palisade and trenches. Vrable itself hosts the remains of at least 313 longhouses from various times during the LBK culture. Eythra, Germany holds about 300 longhouses, indicating it was likely nearly on par with Vrable. Most of the settlements are relatively free of traces of violence, both on the skeletons buried in them and in the lack of battlements around the settlements.
ALTBy CryolophosaurusEllioti - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=161509321
It’s likely that they believed in a mother goddess as their primary deity, which was predominant at the time based on what relics we’ve found, so it was likely they held similar beliefs to those who lived in the areas before they settled there. This was focused 'around the mysterious process of birth and generation’. But, without a written record, we can only speculate on what they actually believed, but their art, figurines, grave goods, and the myths and customs that survive to today seem to indicate this veneration of a mother goddess is likely, with her being a 'mistress of animals, grain, distaff and loom, household, and life and death’, all of which would be important to a society transitioning to settled agriculture.
