Koniec „łużyckiego świata”

Abstract

The article is devoted to the disappearance of the Lusatian cultural circle, also traditionally called the Lusatian culture or, in more recent literature, the Lusatian urnfields. At the beginning, terminological issues are clarified and views on the disappearance of this cultural unit, which played an important role in Central Europe in the middle of the 2nd and 1st millennium BC, are presented. The main analytical part focuses on four regions within today’s borders of Poland – north-western, north-eastern, south-western and south-eastern. This is due to the sharply outlined foreign cultural features that are particularly sharp in these regions. This applies to the infiltration of the Jastorf culture (and earlier Nordic influences), the Baltic circle, the Hallstatt cultural complex and the Eastern European nomadic world. They are the aftermath of migration movements of varying intensity and chronology, but always within the early Iron Age (9th/8th–5th centuries BC). Signs of the structural crisis of the local Lusatian communities, which are very fragmented and do not constitute a cultural monolith, are also important for the considerations undertaken. The issue of changes in the natural environment on the border of the subboreal and subatlantic periods is also considered.