Aunjetitz Culture

[Goswin_van_Eyck]

Named after a Bohemian location, this cultural province situated in the Early Bronze Age spans the period 2300-1500BC and from it Czechian kernel it expended over Slowakia, Poland, Eastern Germany till the eastern flanks of Niedersachsen.

Carl Schuchardt in Vorgeschichte von Deutschland points to the fact that its wares underwent a potpourri of influences with clear indications of wandering elements from north and central Germany, while Danubians and Pile Dwellers might have left some marks too.
The strongest ties though are made with the Corded Ware in Schlesien and on the Oder: the obsequies of delivering the body in a loam-pit with perpedicular shafts, a stone heap layed out in a sharp-edged rectangular "window" surrounding the body,the body itself in a protacted position on some distance of the window, perhaps it rested in a coffin covered up under the stone mass. Also the schlauchartige Henkelkrügen and Blumentopfbechern hint on Corded Ware connection, although the decoration is intensified.


Aunjetitz soarded highly the metal foundries of tin and copper and made it foremost for it great hoards of bronze objects to an important conception in protohistoric archaeology as a metallurgical province.
While the Beaker folk innovated the copper workings to bronze and produced wooden hilts attached by rivets, the people of Aunjetiz added on blades solid metal hilts(casting-on method).
Aesthetic concerns and quite manipulative playing up the urges of chieftains and warrior classes to adorn themselves with status-imposing goods, they produced silver-shining blades by enriching them with tin.
More limited as a speciality in the Eastern Alpine region was the ösenring or neck-ring, transport by canoes this ornamental iten winded up along the Danube to the northern halve of today's Czech Republic and Central Germany.
Still, weird as it sounds commodities were rarely traded and usually for exchange of status kits.
In stead bronze was accumulated locally in what K.A.Wardle called a potlach economy for the purpose of some ritualistic deposition.


Their potteries were initially poor and wretched, sometimes touched by stilistic animal representations,
later cups and jars with concave necks on which a ornamentated grips are attached on become commonplace artefacts.
Greyish-black and well-polished and softly rounded as they are, the design betrays Rössen and Linear Pottery heritage and Schuchardt names Thüringen, Oberschlesien, Bohemia and Moravia as old vestiges of the Danubian culture and orientation areas of the Aunjetitz columns of settlers.


The Aunjetitz people were medium to high-skulled, the outline a broad ellipsoid form(Schildform) with a broad planely arching/steepish and high forehead, flattened parientals and narrowing occiput.
The chin is narrow and pointy;the upper jaw is narrow, the mandible high placed and showing slight prognathy.
The nose is long and prominent, the nasion depression deep.
In general their skulls were not as long and narrow(though with jutting occiput) as Corded Ware people and somewhat higher-vaulted than the Megalithic types of NW Germany.
The high vault and somewhat broadening of the skull is probably adopted by intermingling with Danubians and the Taurid element in Bell Beaker folks and Pile Dwellers, parallel to the Corded Ware who in the beginning tended more to orthocephaly.
Cautioned, it opens the possibility to acknowledge the bulk of Agrippa's North Mediterranids as descendants of these Bronze Age partly mediterreneanized(Pile Dwellers contained also a definte Med. strain!) Nordic subforms.

[Agrippa]

Recently I came across literature stating that the Aunjetitz-remains consisted mailny of Nordid-Mediterranid individuals with the Mediterranid tendency being predominant.

[Señor Malo]

Originally Posted by Agrippa

Recently I came across literature stating that the Aunjetitz-remains consisted mailny of Nordid-Mediterranid individuals with the Mediterranid tendency being predominant.

Carleton Coon talks about an "Aunjetitz blend" when he comes to talk about his classic nordics.
Yet, I assume that many of Coon's views must be outdated.

I just wander if there's any connection between Coon's Aunjetitz Blend and the Aunjetitz Culture.

[Agrippa]

There must be one. And you might know how difficult the borderline type classification between Nordid and Mediterranid is sometimes, especially if speaking about taller-robust Mediterranid variants...the border is fluent obviously.

[Señor Malo]

Originally Posted by Agrippa

There must be one. And you might know how difficult the borderline type classification between Nordid and Mediterranid is sometimes, especially if speaking about taller-robust Mediterranid variants...the border is fluent obviously.

I imagine ... specially if we talk about variants and subtypes that do not exist anymore today...or which "descendants" still remains undetected among living europeans.

Must be even harder if one choses to believe that nordic are mediterranid derivatives 'cause in that case one cannot say if he's before an ancient blend or before a "missing link" of the "evolutionary chain" from one racial type to the other.

What ever it is, I found most fascinating european archaelogy and palaoanthropology of the period going from the messolithic to the [early] metals ages.

[Agrippa]

That was the crucial time for most of Europe's racial developments. After that (late Iron Age) we see just mixture, migrations, change of proportions, partial decline mostly.

[Dr. Solar Wolff]

Hey guys, after a few beers some of those buried brain cells are telling me that Coon said the Aunjetitz culture practiced cremation and we are only guessing at racial type---or is that the beer telling me?

[Señor Malo]

Originally Posted by Dr. Solar Wolff

Hey guys, after a few beers some of those buried brain cells are telling me that Coon said the Aunjetitz culture practiced cremation and we are only guessing at racial type---or is that the beer telling me?

Well Coon refers to nordics as "Aunjetitz blend" in the following terms:
(7) Nordics: The basic Nordic is the Corded-Danubian blend of the Aunjetitz and of the Early Iron Age in central Europe. This type includes some Bell Beaker Dinaric absorbed in early Metal Age times. Although Danubian and Corded types may appear as individuals, they may nowhere be isolated as populations.

In his chapter VIII, section 6 of the Book Races of Europe.

He looks so confident when telling that that I suppose he has skeletical remains at his disposal to be so sure ... yet, I think it has been little say or written on his private live ... sp we cannot know if he appreciated drinking a feew beers when writing his books ...
No, I'm not being serious, of course. However I didn't check yet his chapters on the metal ages to see what he says on the Aunjetitz people.

[Agrippa]

After the Polish anthropologist B. Miszkiewicz, the typological composition of a Aunjetitz population of Tomice:

Keep in mind how difficult it partly is to distinguish Nordid from (especially North) Mediterranid if working with (especially poor) skeletal remains:

Whats obvious is the practical absense, very low percentage for other elements - Nordomediterranid dominated this Corded influenced group obviously, Tomice deviated insofar from other Aunjetitzers since the Nordid element was stronger. The first value comes from an analysis of the average values, the 2nd from individual analysis. In other series of the Aunjetitz group is according to Miszkiewicz et al. the Nordid element weaker, the Cromagnid/Palaeeuropid higher (25-35 percent over time), the Mediterranid (or better Mediterranoid) is still dominant (50-55 percent). Dinaroid-Armenoid varies (Polish used Armenoid often for Dinarid too) at a high level with 10-20 percent over time.

The Nordid element seems to come rather from Corded groups and the Dinaroid from Bell Beakers.

[Dr. Solar Wolff]

Yes, no, there are several references to Aunjetitz people and I do remember a discussion of cremation. Rheinengraeber skeletons were buried (in rows), going backward Hallstatt also buried, Aunjetiz??? cremation, Corded & Danubian buried--this is the way I remember it but my copy of Origin of Races is not at my other residence so please postpone this until I can find the reference. Coon talked about subjects in many places so sometimes it is hard to find what one is looking for.

Thanks for checking on this for me Agrippa.