An elite burial from the Copper Age: Grave 8 at the cemetery of the Lublin-Volhynian culture at Site 2 in Książnice, Świętokrzyskie Province

Abstract

The paper describes an inhumation burial (Grave 8) discovered at the cemetery of the Lublin-Volhynian culture at Site 2 in Książnice, Świętokrzyskie Province, in August 2008. A skeleton of an adultus woman, lying in a flexed position on the left side, with the skull directed towards the south, was discovered at the depth of 55–60 cm in a partly destroyed rectangular burial pit. The unusually rich grave goods consisted of ten ornaments made from copper wire (two necklaces with spectacle-shaped pendants, two bracelets, two earrings and two rings), a chocolate flint retouched blade and a blade, as well as fragments of two clay vessels: a pear-shaped amphora and a pear-shaped goblet. The analysed burial is a perfect example of changes taking place in the social structure of the younger Danubian cultures at the turn of the 5th and the 4th millennia BC. It shows that the elite controlling trade exchange and the distribution of prestige objects in the Lublin-Volhynian culture included also women of high social standing.