Urnfield culture


The Urnfield culture was a late Bronze Age culture of Central Europe, often divided into several local cultures within a broader Urnfield tradition. The name comes from the custom of cremating the dead and placing their ashes in urns, which were then buried in fields. The first usage of the name occurred in publications over grave sites in southern Germany in the late 19th century. Over much of Europe, the Urnfield culture followed the Tumulus culture and was succeeded by the Hallstatt culture. Some linguists and archaeologists have associated this culture with a pre-Celtic language or Proto-Celtic language family. By the end of the 2nd millennium BC, the Urnfield Tradition had spread through Italy, northwestern Europe, and as far west as the Pyrenees. It is at this time that fortified hilltop settlements and sheet‐bronze metalworking also spread widely across Europe, leading some authorities to equate these changes with the expansion of the Celts. These links are no longer accepted.

Chronology

It is believed that in some areas, such as in southwestern Germany, the Urnfield culture was in existence around 1200 BC, 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 in Paul Reinecke's chronological system, not to be confused with the Hallstatt culture 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 :
date BC
BzD1300–1200
Ha A11200–1100
Ha A21100–1000
HaB11000–800
HaB2900–800
Ha B3800–750

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.

Origin

The Urnfield culture grew from the preceding Tumulus culture. The transition is gradual, in the pottery as well as the burial rites. In some parts of Germany, cremation and inhumation existed simultaneously. Some graves contain a combination of Tumulus-culture pottery and Urnfield swords or Tumulus culture incised pottery together with early Urnfield types. In the North, the Urnfield culture was only adopted in the HaA2 period.
16 pins deposited in a swamp in Ellmoosen cover the whole chronological range from Bronze B to the early Urnfield period. This demonstrates a considerable ritual continuity. In the Loire, Seine, and Rhône, certain fords contain deposits from the late Neolithic onward up to the Urnfield period.
The cremation rite is commonly believed to have originated in Hungary, where it was widespread since the first half of the second millennium BC. 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.

Distribution and local groups

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:
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,
Lower-Rhine Urnfield culture
  • Lower Hessian Group
  • North-Netherlands-Westphalian group
  • Northwest-Group in the Dutch Delta region
Middle-Danube Urnfield culture
File:Urnfield2.jpg|thumb|Urnfield culture, bronze situla with bird-headed sun ship motif, Hungary,.|227x227px
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. An unusual earthwork was constructed at Goloring near Koblenz in Germany.

Related cultures

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. The Italic peoples are descended from the Urnfield and Tumulus culture, who inhabited Italy from at least the second millennium BC onwards. Latins achieved a dominant position among these tribes, establishing the ancient Roman civilization. During this development, other Italic tribes adopted the Latin language and culture in a process known as Romanization.
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.
Evidence for an association between the Urnfield culture and a hypothetical Italo-Celtic language group has been discussed by scholars such as Peter Schrijver.
Placename evidence has also been used to point to an association of the Urnfield materials with the Proto-Celtic language group in central Europe, and it has been argued that it was the ancestral culture of the Celts. 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", 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 Golasecca culture in northern Italy developed with continuity from the Canegrate culture. 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 Urnfield culture. 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.
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. Evidence for east-to-west early Urnfield elite contacts such as rilled-ware, swords and crested helmets has been found in the southwest of the Iberian peninsula. 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.

Migrations

The numerous hoards of the Urnfield culture and the existence of fortified settlements were taken as evidence for widespread warfare and upheaval by some scholars.
File:02010 Naval battle of Delta, peuples de la mer, Medinet Habu Ramses III. Tempel Nordostwand.jpg|thumb|left|Depiction of the Sea Peoples with bird-headed ship. Medinet Habu, Egypt.
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 1200 BC
  • Destruction of Troy VI 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 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.

Ethnicity

While it is agreed that the Urnfield culture was, at least in part, linguistically Indo-European, the significant
variety of regional sub-groups in the material culture is strongly suggestive of ethnic diversity. Marija Gimbutas proposed connections between Urnfield in Central Europe to later ethnolinguistic groups, in other parts of Europe: proto-Celts, proto-Italics, proto-Veneti, proto-Illyrians, proto-Phrygians, proto-Thracians and proto-Dorians. While it is unclear whether mass migrations out of the Urnfield heartland occurred, they may have taken place during the so-called Bronze Age collapse. During that period, communities in various parts of western and southern Europe introduced the new rite of cremation, new ceramic styles and the mass production of metal objects as well as a new religion and Indo-European languages.