Weaving Looms, Intentional Demolitions, Burnt Offerings? Trenchlike Features of the Urnfield Period in Central Europe

Abstract

The paper presents a summary on specific settlement features that have been often documented, particularly in recent decades, in Late or Final Bronze Age flatland settlements in southern and western Bohemia and southern Germany. They are trenchlike features with a uniform north-south orientation, often filled with numerous artefacts as well as archaeobotanical material, with traces of burning. The largest number has been documented in the southern Bohemian settlement of Březnice u Bechyně (okr. Tábor / CZ). The interpretation of these spatially and chronologically limited features is not certain and in the present literature it has mostly occurred in profane (foundations for weaving looms, features associated with the production of ceramics, preparing food, etc.) or sacral (cult pits, burnt offerings, ritual waste, etc.) interpretations. In the presented paper we argue that most of the above interpretative options can be combined in a single model of past reality, however, provided the primary functions and ways of actual use are distinguished.