10.33547/ODA-SAH.12.Kaz.07
Osada kultury trzcinieckiej na stanowisku 12 w Kazimierzy Wielkiej (Settlement of the Trzciniec culture at site 12 in Kazimierza Wielka)
by Marcin M. Przybyła 
In: Marcin M. Przybyła, Anita Szczepanek, Joanna Zagórska-Telega (eds) 2024. Kazimierza Wielka, stanowisko 12. Od neolitycznej osady do cmentarzyska z okresu wpływów rzymskich (Ocalone Dziedzictwo Archeologiczne 12), pp. 101–125. Pękowice – Kraków: Wydawnictwo Profil-Archeo.
The Bronze Age sequence of the site ends with the settlement site of the Trzciniec culture (TC). It is represented by merely ten pits, mostly trapezoidal ones, and a system of ditches. These features yielded a rather scarce collection of 140 pottery sherds and several flint artefacts. The Trzciniec culture settlement developed in two stages. During the older phase, a relatively small open settlement was located in the upper part of the southern slope of the hill on which the site is situated. Later, the settlement was surrounded by a ditch enclosing a vast space of perhaps 10 hectares, in the lower part of the slope. The scope of the excavation allowed for capturing two short sections of this ditch, separated by a passage (Features 36 and 69). The ditches were up to 1.5 m wide, inversely trapezoidal or basin-shaped in profile, and about 0.5 m deep. The oval-shaped pit 130 was dug into the bottom layer of the southern part of the western ditch. It contained a deposit of human bones. They came from the incomplete skeletons of three adults (adultus) (a woman, a man, and a person of indet. sex), three juveniles (iuvenis), and one child (infans II). The TC settlement with ditch enclosure from Kazimierza Wielka belongs to the horizon of defensive settlements existing during 2000–1400 BC (A2 and B period of the Bronze Age) in Lesser Poland. This horizon consists of Mierzanowice and Trzciniec culture sites. Other TC fortified settlements are known from Słonowice, Samborzec, Ciuślice, Ciborowice, Kępa, Górka Stogniowska, Opatkowice-Ogrodzisko, Biskupice and Bronocice. Some are known only from non-invasive prospection, and only a few have been excavated. The ditches discovered on these sites are similar to the example recorded in Kazimierza Wielka. The deposit of human bones found in the ditch surrounding the settlement is the only find of this type from the Trzciniec culture area. However, burials of human remains within such features have been known since the beginning of the Neolithic. In the Bronze Age, they appeared quite frequently on the Iberian Peninsula at the sites of the Bell Beaker culture. Few similar finds, corresponding chronologically to the feature from Kazimierza Wielka are known from Italy, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland. Probably, in the case of the Trzciniec culture, some relation between human burials and fortification structures existed. This is evidenced by the burial from the site in Słonowice, located below the fill of a ditch. In turn, at the settlements in Samborzec and Bronocice, the grave pits were located near ditches, probably under the accompanying embankments. Human remains from Feature 31 have been radiocarbon-dated, and the result obtained is 3155±35 BP. After calibration, it falls within the range 1496–1402 BC within the probability range of 68.3%. This suggests that the human bones were deposited during the younger part of the classic phase of TC. Stylistic analysis of pottery allowed for connecting at least some of the features with the older part of the classic phase. It seems that the beginning of the settlement can be dated to the end of phase A2 and the beginning of phase B of the Bronze Age (1650–1500 BC), whereas its younger phase, associated with ditches and the deposit of human bones, dates back to the 15th century BC, which means the developed phase B of the Bronze Age.