The size and structure of Tarnobrzeg Lusatian culture population

Abstract

Tarnobrzeg Lusatian culture is a cultural unit distinguished in south-eastern Poland, spanning from the middle Bronze Age to the early Iron Age (and thus roughly from the 14 th /13 th to the 5 th /4 th century BC). One of its most characteristic features are large crematory cemeteries (the largest consisting of more than a thousand tombs), utilized for many centuries. For many of them, apart from standard archaeological information, we also possess anthropological analysis, perfect for demographic considerations. One can specify the size and structure of the population which used the cemetery, as well as study the dynamics of changes in the course of a long period of burying the dead in the same place. Such an analysis in the form of social microstructure research is the basis of inference at a higher level, including mesoregions settlement, characterized by a network of co-occurring cemeteries and accompanying settlements. The sum of these observations, in turn, allows us to estimate the number of people living in the territory assigned to Tarnobrzeg Lusatian culture. At each level of inference in terms of population size, a crucial role is played by possibly the most accurate and precise estimation of time of cemetery usage or the presence of settlements in the analyzed region.