Change and Continuity in the Danubian Longhouses of Lowland Poland

Abstract

This chapter deals with houses from the Polish lowland connected with the Linear Band Pottery Culture or Linearbandkeramik (LBK) and the Brześć Kujawski Culture (BKC). Although they belong to the tradition of Danubian longhouses, there is no chronological and technological continuity between them. Houses of both of these archaeological cultures served above all domestic purposes, though their significance for these societies greatly exceeded purely practical considerations. Their size is quite similar, whereas their construction is different, although uniform in each period. The organization of the space around the house and in the settlement differs slightly. The most important disparity, though, concerns the practice of abandoning the house—in the LBK each generation built a new building next to the old one, which was still visible and constituted a reference point. In the BKC, in contrast, we observe a considerable variety of practices—from houses built independently of the previous ones to complete overlap. Similarly varied are the burial practices, though some of them are distinctly connected with the house. This differentiation of apparently identical houses indicates the different meaning of a house in the LBK and the BKC societies.