Tomasz Oberc

In 2019, two partially damaged features linked to the late phase of the Mierzanowice culture were examined during a short rescue survey in Dobranowice, Kraków district. A fragmentarily preserved human skeleton was discovered at the bottom of one of the pits. Aerial prospection established that the two examined features are part of an extensive Early Bronze Age settlement, perfectly legible in a highly eroded ploughed field. The site had not been previously recorded. It belongs to a settlement micro-region abundant in settlement and funerary finds of the Mierzanowice culture. The results of the research indicate that the archaeological resources of the Lesser Poland Upland are still insufficiently known and that systematic surveys using aerial photography should be undertaken.

The Foothills of the Northern Carpathian region were an important part of the ecumene of the Linear Pottery Culture (LBK), as witnessed by the repetitive pattern of settlement in such areas. Multiple sites associated with this archaeological culture can be found near the Raba basin in the region of Wieliczka and Bochnia, as well as in the Rzeszów Foothills. Among these, the complex of LBK sites in the Dunajec basin stands out, as most distant from settlement centres. The sites also represent a different settlement system than clusters uncovered in the upland areas: the sites are mostly located in the highest points in local topography and show a higher degree of centralisation. This study aims to include chronological data to the analysis of changes in this settlement system, with the use of a collection of radiocarbon data from the LBK sites in the foothills area of SE Poland. The general model of a probability distribution for the phenomenon was constructed and confronted with the data from individual sites from the Wiśnicz Foothills region. On this basis, a spatiotemporal simulation was performed, to illustrate changes in the settlement network changes over six centuries of the LBK activity. Additionally, regions threatened with higher erosion possibilities were identified, in which possible archaeological traces were not preserved. According to the known distribution of sites in space, these regions were populated with semi-randomly generated sites to perform a second simulation. While the available data allow only limited insight into the problem of settlement system changes over time, the approach used in the study seems to be relatively robust in visualising and identifying general patterns of this phenomenon. It provides an interesting exploratory method, allowing the formulation of further research questions concerning the changes in the LBK settlement system in the foothills area.