Brzezie 17. Osada solowarska z późnej epoki brązu

Karol Dzięgielewski Brzezie 17. A salt-making settlement from the Late Bronze Age in southern Poland (summary) As a result of rescue excavations commissioned by the Cracow Team for Archaeological Supervison of Motorway Construction and conducted by A. Czekaj-Zastawny and A. Zastawny between 2000 and 2007 at Brzezie, site 17, located in the commune of Kłaj, Wieliczka District, Małopolskie Province, and covering an area of just over six hectares (Czekaj-Zastawny 2014, 7), a large part of a multiphase Late Bronze Age (LBA) settlement was documented together with its natural surroundings, including palaeochannels of former watercourses and local terrain depressions. Site 17 is situated on a loess elevation in the north-eastern part of the Kraków Foothills, approximately one kilometre from the extensive plains of the Vistula Lowland (Fig. 1). From a taxonomic perspective, the settlement at Brzezie in its earlier phase can be attributed to communities of the Lusatian culture with “Silesian” traditions. The ancestors of this population arrived in western Lesser Poland from Upper Silesia around 1300 BC (Br D) and maintained intensive contacts with their regions of origin for at least 250 years. This is evidenced by the synchronous development of ceramic styles and a similar spectrum of bronze artefacts (Gedl 1982; Górski 2010; Przybyła 2017; Dzięgielewski 2024; Blajer, Dzięgielewski 2024). One of the most important findings of the research at Brzezie is the confirmation of early – at least from the Ha A period – exploitation of saline springs in the Wieliczka–Bochnia salt-bearing zone by these communities. Data from other sites indicate that the ceramic assemblage associated with briquetage-based salt production had formed even earlier, already in Br D, drawing on Middle Bronze Age traditions (Fig. 45). A crucial innovation was the introduction of relatively standardised vessels for the final crystallisation and portioning of salt, with a capacity of approximately 1.2 litres. This development should be interpreted as a shift from production for individual or local consumption toward a meso-local level of commodification. At the Brzezie settlement, dated to Ha A, we are dealing with a fully developed technological process. The increase in production scale, however, was not accompanied by improvements in ergonomic efficiency, which – together with environmental constraints such as lowering of groundwater levels or fuel availability – may have led to the abandonment of specific production locations. At Brzezie, this phenomenon is reflected in the disappearance of salt production during the younger settlement phase, despite the continued occupation of the site. In addition to the high agricultural potential of the loess-covered right-bank margin of the Sandomierz Basin, the easy access to saline springs was most likely a major stimulus for the settlement of migrants from Upper Silesia. Importantly, earlier Trzciniec culture communities did not permanently settle in salt-bearing areas, but instead made salt at (most likely seasonal) production sites. This change may also have encouraged the influx of other population groups, bringing with them cultural patterns – including material culture elements – typical of the Western Carpathians and even more distant regions in the heart of the Carpathian Basin (the Belegiš II ceramic style). The material from Brzezie shows that “foreign” elements did not form separate enclaves within the settlement but co-occurred throughout with elements of “Silesian” stylistic tradition. This suggests the coexistence and rapid assimilation of different population groups, united by the shared need to exploit an important resource – salt. Migrants likely contributed not only labour but also access to long-distance exchange networks, ensuring a sustained inflow of raw materials and bronze objects. Ceramics produced according to original stylistic models and technological procedures were not the only category of artefacts imported from Transcarpathian areas. The discovery of a casting mould for producing a unique category of bronze objects – half-form ingots in the shape of a socketed hammer, paralleled exclusively in Transdanubia – has, for the first time in southern Poland, provided direct contextual evidence linking pottery with Transcarpathian traits and (indirectly) metal artefacts of Tisza–Danubian stylistic affiliation. This opens the possibility that at least some of the objects previously regarded as Transcarpathian “imports”, or their imitations (Przybyła 2009, 251), were in fact manufactured north of the Carpathians using foreign casting equipment, technological know-how, and most likely also raw materials, but by craftsmen already settled there. This may prove relevant when attempting to fully explain the concentration of Transcarpathian “imports” from the Ha A phase in western Lesser Poland (Przybyła 2009, 260, fig. 74). Thanks to the excavation of the entire sequence of farmsteads, it was possible to observe the gradual simplification and transformation of original Danubian and Tisza-region stylistic models. In the case of Belegiš II pottery, two groups can be distinguished: one consisting of forms closely resembling Transcarpathian prototypes, and a second group comprising simplified, locally adapted variants (Fig. 69). This phenomenon fits well with the decline of this stylistic tradition at the Ha A–B1 transition and its contribution to the formation of a new, Upper Silesian–Lesser Poland Lusatian culture ceramic style (Przybyła 2017; Dzięgielewski 2024). One of the major achievements of the Brzezie research is the acquisition of some initial radiocarbon dates, placing the discussed processes between approximately 1210 and 1010 BC. These dates fill important gaps in regional Bronze Age chronometry and corroborate reconstructions based on stylistic-typological and comparative analyses (cf. Dzięgielewski 2024). Despite the discussed forms of production activity – some of which were oriented toward exchange – the economic foundation of the Brzezie inhabitants in the early Late Bronze Age was undoubtedly a mixed farming economy. Although the site yielded no osteological material, relatively rich archaeobotanical data are available. These indicate that cereals formed the basis of a plant-oriented diet, with millet, various wheats (spelt Triticum spelta and emmer Triticum dicoccon), and barley playing major roles, alongside small-scale cultivation of legumes such as horse bean Vicia faba var. minor and probably lentil Lens esculenta (Lityńska-Zając et al., in this volume, chap. 8.1). In the younger settlement phase, corresponding to Ha B2–3/C1, Transcarpathian stylistic elements are no longer evident, and ceramic forms largely conform to a broadly “common Lusatian” standard or to varieties typical of the wider Kraków region. Nevertheless, connections with communities representing Carpathian variants of Late Bronze Age cultures – particularly from the Dunajec valley – appear to have persisted, especially in vessel forms such as pots, storage vessels, and thick flat plates. During this period, the inhabitants of Brzezie remained an agricultural population. However, significant changes occurred in economic organisation: many specialised production activities documented for the earlier phase disappeared, including salt production, bronze casting, and weaving. The only apparent innovation was the use of slit pits (Schlitzgruben), possibly related to work connected with soaking, such as retting flax or hides. These changes may reflect a reduction in population size or a shift in economic needs and capabilities. Support for the hypothesis of a gradual decline in population numbers may be provided by analyses of the microregional settlement context recently conducted for the northern edge of the Kraków Foothills and the Wieliczka Foothills (Mazur, Dzięgielewski 2024). In the earlier phase (A), corresponding to Ha A, the settlement at Brzezie 17 formed part of a large settlement agglomeration situated on loess soils within the Tusznica catchment and other Subcarpathian tributaries of the Raba River, accompanied by an extensive urnfield cemetery at Targowisko, indicative of a relatively substantial population size (Fig. 72). This picture changed somewhat toward the end of the Bronze Age, during the time of the Phase B settlement (Ha B3/C), when a clear westward shift in settlement intensity can be observed across the entire region, toward the lighter, sandy soils of the western part of the Kraków Foothills (Fig. 73; cf. Mazur, Dzięgielewski 2024, fig. 1.4.3.14). On a micro-scale, a weakening of demographic potential is also evident in Phase IV of the cemetery at Targowisko (Dzięgielewski 2024, Fig. 1.2.2.25). For this reason, the primary explanatory model for the significantly reduced quantitative parameters of Phase B at Brzezie should be a decline in population size, rather than, for example, a change in the economic model (such as seasonal occupation or a growing emphasis on transhumant animal husbandry). The younger phase could also be securely placed on the absolute timescale thanks to radiocarbon dating, albeit currently limited to a single cluster on the western edge of the settlement. These dates indicate a narrow timeframe around the turn of the 8th century BC (Fig. 56). Overall, the Brzezie dating results significantly enhanced our understanding of two previously poorly dated segments of the Bronze Age sequence (Fig. 70). A particularly noteworthy aspect of the Brzezie site is the continuity of settlement clusters – sometimes interpretable as functional farmsteads – despite an apparent temporal gap between the two main occupation phases. The site exemplifies the “moving farmstead” or “wandering village” phenomenon, widespread in Bronze Age Lesser Poland and beyond (Korczyńska-Cappenberg et al. 2024, 586-589). This model involves cyclical relocation of buildings and fields within a small region and results in multi-phase sites that do not necessarily exhibit continuous stylistic phases sequences. On a micro-scale, it is even possible that returns to earlier locations had a personal or ancestral dimension – new houses built beside the ruins of old ones, former clay pits reused, and storage pits deliberately avoided in places occupied by earlier cellars. Such a model helps explain the striking functional continuity of most settlement clusters alongside a sharp, rather than gradual, replacement of stylistic and technological traits between the two phases. Although spatial analysis suggests that the settlement may have shifted only slightly northward between phases A and B, a more distant relocation cannot be excluded. In any case, the Brzezie site illustrates long-term continuity of settlement tradition accompanied by profound changes in material culture and economic organisation.