37543 S5006674

The Celtic settlement microregion in the area near Kraków

Paulina Poleska

The opinion that the areas of ieft-bank terrace of the Vistula River located in the immediate neighbourhood of Kraków played a key role in the development of the whole western Małopolska loess upland during the last centuries BC and the influences originating from there reached far beyond the borders of the area have been expressed in the literaturo on many occasions. The be-lief, initially based on random information about spec-tacular discoveries, increasing in number at a very rapid ratę especially over the past few decades when widely ranging rescue operations were under way there in con-nection with industrial projects, was gradually established by morę detailed examinations of certain materiais. That was the basis for the frequently formulated postulates concerning the need to provide a comprehensive ana-lytical study of the sources from the La Tóne settlements near Kraków (e.g. Woźniak 1986: 20; Dąbrowska 1988: 114ff.). The fulfilment of those postulates was one of the objectwes of the author's doctoral dissertation wrttten under the supervision of Professor dr hab. Zenon Woźniak, and defended at the Institute of Archaeology of the Ja-giellonian University in 2003. This paper presents the main theses of the dissertation.

The analysis comprised one of the most important microregions of the Tyniec group located east of Kraków, along approximately 23 kilometres of the high Ieft-bank loess terrace of the Vistula River, from the estuary of the the Dłubnia River up to the locality of Wawrzeńczyce (Fig. 1). Even though it is a reiath/ely smali area, the multi-tude of archaeological sources originating from there as weli as the fact that the microregion under consideration, located in the heart of the Tyniec group, was certainly one of its key settlement places with a concentration of phenomena characteristic of a broader area, provide a strong foundation for reconstructlng the development of settlement and the cultural processes that took place throughout western Małopolska.

Chronologically, the work covered essentially the period of frequent occurrences of materiais represen-ting the La Tóne culture, from the times to which the oldest permanent Celtic settlements in Małopolska can be related until the disappearance of later sets typical of the Tyniec group that is the period comprising the younger phases of the Early La Tśne period (LT B2) until the first decades AD. Considerable attention was devoted to the cultural situation prevailing there in the oldest phases of the La Tóne period, sińce the museum search query re-vealed an unexpectedly high number of artefacts im-ported from the areas of Early La Tóne culture. Those finds prove beyond any dispute that the contacts with territories then inhabited by Celts had been maintained long before they appeared there for permanent settlement. Additionalfy, those artefacts occurred in the con-text of previously unknown materiais throwing new light on the period between the appearance of Celtic settlers and the disappearance of classical sets of the Lusatian culture.

The materiais in the collections of the Branch of the Archaeological Museum in Nowa Huta include a number of finds providing strong evidence in support of that fact that in the times after the disappearance of settlements of the classical Lusatian culture (Upper Silesian-Małopolska group) and before the oldest Celtic settlements (comprising roughly the decline of the Hallstatt period and the earliest phases of the La Tóne period, i.e. essentially the 5^m-4^lh centuries BC), that is during the era quite commonly considered to mark a settlement crłsis of many regions of Southern Poland, crisis phenomena did not affect western Małopolska or at least the areas in the proximity of Kraków to the degree as it