Following the traces of the earliest Corded Ware in Moravia and steppe elements in its content

Abstract

The earliest Corded Ware is very poorly represented in Moravia (several type A, Moravian-type, hammer-axes, settlements with the so-called Wellenleistentöpfe: Olomouc-Slavonín, Horní lán) and the situation is not much better even in the earlier Moravian Corded Ware Culture (MCWC) period (the Palonín settlement, graves at: Dub nad Moravou, Hradisko u Kroměříže, Němetice). Among the local MCWC (over 90%; 2700/2600 2400/2200 calBC) we find a number of components linking this to Eastern Europe both in the burial ritual (grooves around graves, internal construction, burials in the frog position, graves of metallurgists) and in the material content (daggers/razors with a tang, hammer-shaped pins, a beaker decorated with a cord and a fishbone motif) with numerous analogues in the Yamna and Catacombna cultures of the Carpathian, Balkan and northern Pontus. Most surprising is a group of MCWC graves with grooves at the bottom, interpreted as burials on all-wood four-wheeled ceremonial wagons with direct counterparts in the Maikop, Yamna, and Catacombna cultures of eastern Europe.