To burn or not to burn: LBA/EIA Balkan case

[Riverman]

There is I2 in Knoviz too, which is kind of in between the Carpathian basin and Germany. However, it is a minority and probably related to Eastern Lusatian contacts.

What Knoviz clearly shows, so do other finds earlier and later, is that the Tumulus culture people dominated much of Urnfield and only in the East we find higher frequencies of other haplogroups (likely I2 and R-Z282 in Lusatians and E-V13 in Gáva).

Knoviz and Czech Hallstatt results show the dominance of TC R-L2 with a minority of I2:

R-L151
I-L1229
R-L2
R-S1161
R-L2
R-L2
R-S497
R-L2
R-L2
R-L2
R-Z280
I-Z2069
R-L151
H-P96
R-M269
R-Y6234
I-S18331
G-CTS4803
R-Z2110

From this paper:

Large-Scale Migration into Britain During the Middle to Late Bronze Age - PMC

Present-day people from England and Wales harbour more ancestry derived from Early European Farmers (EEF) than people of the Early Bronze Age1. To understand this, we generated genome-wide data from 793 individuals, increasing data from the Middle ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Therefore we see the survival of other male lineages, but only as a smaller minority.

The Knovíz culture emerged from the preceding Tumulus culture at the beginning of the Bz D period. Hrala states that the material and ethnic continuity of the Knovíz culture with the Tumulus culture is beyond any doubt.

Knovíz culture - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The good thing about Knoviz is the many samples we got, but the Middle Danubian Urnfield group would surely look pretty much the same, just more South Eastern (Kyjatice-Gáva) rather than North Eastern (Lusatian) influence - therefore a bit more Carpathian branches and possibly some E-V13 as a minority, like the minorities in Knoviz and Czech Hallstatt.

Stamped Pottery of the Basarabi style was widespread in the Eastern Hallstatt sphere, but also due to contacts with Basarabi people, as we know from e.g. the Frög group from Austria. Therefore we deal with migrants and contacts from the Daco-Thracian sphere, which spread it in the Hallstatt zone. In my opinion that was part of the early E-V13 dispersal to the North West.

However, this, just like in Urnfield before, was no mass migration of tribes into the R-L51/R-L2 TC people's zone, but just an influence and minority element, like artisans, priests, brides, traders etc. There was a bride exchange network from Basarabi, with groups (especially Frög) to the West. Sometimes a whole entourage seems to have accompanied the bride (like guards, artisans, servants).
Such exchange took also place with some of the Illyrian groups in the later period.

Remarkably, we find a lot more evidence for people moving from the Tisza-Lower Danube zone to areas like Austria (Frög group), than vice versa. Therefore there seems to have been more people from the East coming to the West, in that time frame (Hallstatt) than the opposite. Inside of Hallstatt its different, therefore East Hallstatt received influences from West and East too.

 

[TetaEglantina]

There is I2 in Knoviz too, which is kind of in between the Carpathian basin and Germany. However, it is a minority and probably related to Eastern Lusatian contacts.

What Knoviz clearly shows, so do other finds earlier and later, is that the Tumulus culture people dominated much of Urnfield and only in the East we find higher frequencies of other haplogroups (likely I2 and R-Z282 in Lusatians and E-V13 in Gáva).

Stamped Pottery of the Basarabi style was widespread in the Eastern Hallstatt sphere, but also due to contacts with Basarabi people, as we know from e.g. the Frög group from Austria. Therefore we deal with migrants and contacts from the Daco-Thracian sphere, which spread it in the Hallstatt zone. In my opinion that was part of the early E-V13 dispersal to the North West.

However, this, just like in Urnfield before, was no mass migration of tribes into the R-L51/R-L2 TC people's zone, but just an influence and minority element, like artisans, priests, brides, traders etc. There was a bride exchange network from Basarabi, with groups (especially Frög) to the West. Sometimes a whole entourage seems to have accompanied the bride (like guards, artisans, servants).
Such exchange took also place with some of the Illyrian groups in the later period.

Remarkably, we find a lot more evidence for people moving from the Tisza-Lower Danube zone to areas like Austria (Frög group), than vice versa. Therefore there seems to have been more people from the East coming to the West, in that time frame (Hallstatt) than the opposite. Inside of Hallstatt its different, therefore East Hallstatt received influences from West and East too.

Tumulus culture people did not "dominate" much of Urnfield, their burial rites were changed and therefore Tumulus was no more. The r1b Tumulus people that converted to Urnfield would have obviously been more numerous in the west but it is clear that Urnfield origin is more east where the Vatya and others were already cremating, including proto Lusatians. However still no sign of v13, looks like r1a played a bigger role in Urnfield elites than v13.

The early Urnfielders were involved in some huge wars, Tollense, Mycenae etc but obviously wouldn't have been this massive everywhere, major wars would have been against the bigger powers of the time not the regular folk who would have converted possibly more peacefully.

 

[Riverman]

Tumulus culture people did not "dominate" much of Urnfield, their burial rites were changed and therefore Tumulus was no more. The r1b Tumulus people that converted to Urnfield would have obviously been more numerous in the west but it is clear that Urnfield origin is more east where the Vatya and others were already cremating, including proto Lusatians. However still no sign of v13, looks like r1a played a bigger role in Urnfield elites than v13.

The early Urnfielders were involved in some huge wars, Tollense, Mycenae etc but obviously wouldn't have been this massive everywhere, major wars would have been against the bigger powers of the time not the regular folk who would have converted possibly more peacefully.

I edited my post above. We got solid evidence especially from one central Urnfield group, because of their special rites, and they are totally dominated by R-L2.

R-Z282 was dominant in Mierzanowice, Nitra, Kostany and Füzesabony-Otomani. But like I wrote above, just like with the Tumulus culture, the Füzesabony clans didn't manage to subdue completely the Transtisza zone, where cremations and local archaeological elements continued their existence despite the pressures from the West (Füzesabony, Tumulus culture) and East (Noua-Coslogeni-Sabatinovka).

Its therefore this Transtisza area which shows the greatest continuity and from which Gáva emerged - where I see E-V13 to have survived and grown.

The other areas to the West were all controlled by TC clans nearly completely.

 

[TetaEglantina]

I edited my post above. We got solid evidence especially from one central Urnfield group, because of their special rites, and they are totally dominated by R-L2.

R-Z282 was dominant in Mierzanowice, Nitra, Kostany and Füzesabony-Otomani. But like I wrote above, just like with the Tumulus culture, the Füzesabony clans didn't manage to subdue completely the Transtisza zone, where cremations and local archaeological elements continued their existence despite the pressures from the West (Füzesabony, Tumulus culture) and East (Noua-Coslogeni-Sabatinovka).

Its therefore this Transtisza area which shows the greatest continuity and from which Gáva emerged - where I see E-V13 to have survived and grown.

The other areas to the West were all controlled by TC clans nearly completely.

Knoviz culture is too late to be proto Urnfield. Knoviz was initially Tumulus that was taken over by Urnfielders so it became an Urnfield zone, this also happened to other regions further west and north. This is why you find Knoviz was mostly r1b (Tumulus) with some i2 (Urnfield elites) that originally came from further east/south in the Urnfield core (Vatya culture, proto Lusatians etc)

As for v13 it looks like they were even further east or south and had nothing to do with the Urnfield core/elites

 

[Riverman]

Knoviz culture is too late to be proto Urnfield. Knoviz was initially Tumulus which was taken over by Urnfielders so it became an Urnfield zone, this also happened to other regions west. This is why you find it was mostly r1b (Tumulus) with some i2 (Urnfield elites) that originally came from further east in the Urnfield core (Vatya culture, proto Lusatians etc)

As for v13 it looks like they were even further east or south and had nothing to do with the Urnfield core/elites

The main contact zone with Carpathian groups which used cremation was along the Tisza, with Egyek, Piliny, Cehalut, Suciu de Sus etc. And Suciu de Sus and Igrita are prime candidates for E-V13 early dispersals in a Pre-Gáva context.

The intial Urnfield spread along the Danube was also a clear continuity from the Middle Danubian Tumulus culture to the Middle Danubian Urnfield group. Just like Knoviz the TC continuity is beyond doubt. That doesn't mean there couldn't have been Eastern-Southern migrants, like from the groups mentioned, especially priests, warriors, artisans etc., but no mass migration or complete replacement of the elite, that's pretty much out of question.

 

[TetaEglantina]

The main contact zone with Carpathian groups which used cremation was along the Tisza, with Egyek, Piliny, Cehalut, Suciu de Sus etc. And Suciu de Sus and Igrita are prime candidates for E-V13 early dispersals in a Pre-Gáva context.

The intial Urnfield spread along the Danube was also a clear continuity from the Middle Danubian Tumulus culture to the Middle Danubian Urnfield group. Just like Knoviz the TC continuity is beyond doubt. That doesn't mean there couldn't have been Eastern-Southern migrants, like from the groups mentioned, especially priests, warriors, artisans etc., but no mass migration or complete replacement of the elite, that's pretty much out of question.

I never said there was complete replacement of Tumulus people/regions, I said the opposite in fact. The core of proto Urnfield was always east of Tumulus and from there expanded and engulfed Tumulus culture but not replacing the previous Tumulus folk, changing their culture.

Knoviz is a great example and most of Germany too, prior to Urnfield the region was 90%+ r1b. After 1200bc most regions in the west would still have been 80%+ r1b because there wasn't a population replacement. Some settlements would have been majority i2 like we have seen with Lichtenstein cave, this looks like may have been an elite family but in the grand scheme of things most settlements in Western Europe remained majority r1b.

I understand that you are v13 and this topic is regarding cremation but so far we have more evidence of r1a having a bigger role in Urnfield than v13. Either v13 is a very late arrival or it was too far south or east

 

[Riverman]

I never said there was complete replacement of Tumulus people/regions, I said the opposite in fact. The core of proto Urnfield was always east of Tumulus and from there expanded but not replacing the previous Tumulus folk, changing their culture.

Knoviz is a great example and most of Germany too, prior to Urnfield it was 90%+ r1b. After 1200bc most regions in the west would still have been 80%+ r1b because there wasn't a population replacement. Some settlements would have been majority i2 like we have seen with Lichtenstein cave, this looks like may have been an elite family but in the grand scheme of things most settlements in Western Europe remained majority r1b.

I understand that you are v13 and this topic is regarding cremation but so far we have more evidence of r1a having a bigger role in Urnfield than v13. Either v13 is a very late arrival or it was too far south east

We have no samples from the groups of relevance and these groups, unlike Knoviz, were way more strict about cremation, even before the emergence of Urnfield culture. They were doing it before, they were doing it afterwards, even when the Urnfield culture was gone. E.g. Late Cotofeni -> Nyirseg -> Eastern Otomani/Gyulavarsand-Wietenberg -> Suciu de Sus -> Lapus I, Igrita etc. (Pre-Gáva groups) -> Gáva/Belegis II-Gáva.
Not a singe proper sample from those and they are hard to get, because they continuously cremated.

Even from Encrusted Pottery which expanded from Hungary, fled to Croatia and Bulgaria, we have samples, they weren't taking things as strictly. But from the above mentioned groups we got nothing and of course, its not just cremation, but also the lack of samples from Romania.

 

[TetaEglantina]

We have no samples from the groups of relevance and these groups, unlike Knoviz, were way more strict about cremation, even before the emergence of Urnfield culture. They were doing it before, they were doing it afterwards, even when the Urnfield culture was gone. E.g. Late Cotofeni -> Nyirseg -> Eastern Otomani/Gyulavarsand-Wietenberg -> Suciu de Sus -> Lapus I, Igrita etc. (Pre-Gáva groups) -> Gáva/Belegis II-Gáva.
Not a singe proper sample from those and they are hard to get, because they continuously cremated.

Even from Encrusted Pottery which expanded from Hungary, fled to Croatia and Bulgaria, we have samples, they weren't taking things as strictly. But from the above mentioned groups we got nothing and of course, its not just cremation, but also the lack of samples from Romania.

Completely agree that we need more samples, especially from eastern Europe! Western Europe is where most archeologists are from and understandably are not as invested in researching eastern Europe.

It wasn't just Gava that continued to cremate with urns, Lusatians and their successors Pomeranians continued until 3rd century BC and Oksywie continued for a couple more centuries.

However Przeworsk changed to burials with influence from La Tene.

 

[Southpaw]

We have no samples from the groups of relevance and these groups, unlike Knoviz, were way more strict about cremation, even before the emergence of Urnfield culture. They were doing it before, they were doing it afterwards, even when the Urnfield culture was gone. E.g. Late Cotofeni -> Nyirseg -> Eastern Otomani/Gyulavarsand-Wietenberg -> Suciu de Sus -> Lapus I, Igrita etc. (Pre-Gáva groups) -> Gáva/Belegis II-Gáva.
Not a singe proper sample from those and they are hard to get, because they continuously cremated.

Even from Encrusted Pottery which expanded from Hungary, fled to Croatia and Bulgaria, we have samples, they weren't taking things as strictly. But from the above mentioned groups we got nothing and of course, its not just cremation, but also the lack of samples from Romania.

In Knovitz the inhumated remains in pits were mostly R1b, probably their elite cremated their deaths, but i see no reason why the elite would be different from common people, there is social stratification within the same lines as well.

They are so similar to Iron Age pits were E-V13 was found that Romanian archaeologist Sorin asked them whether they came from the same source or not, i guess it was a shared Urnfield-Hallstattian practice and genetically they were different people by male lineage. At the moment considering that during Iron Age, the earlier Hallstattian communities from which E-V13 arose were more prominent i am more inclined that it was the winner on eastern hemisphere rather than Encrusted Pottery people bearing I2a which at the same time was part of Proto-Urnfield as well. But, they were hit so hard by Tumulus people.

I want to see what we can make of so called Aegean migrations, because people living in South/East Pannonia were supposed to be the main actors. I doubt it was I2a considering it's missing in Iron Age and Late Antiquity until they came with Slavs. For the moment i am inclined to believe it was E-V13 mainly unless we are proven wrong.

Also, about Gava-Holigrady and E-V13, i am really not so sure whether we can make a connection, i rather lean more toward the option that Vatin Culture was the reason of misinterpretation of Belegis-Gava to be named with the appended Gava. They had shared cultural similarities. At the end, Vatin and Stamped-Ware were more closer geographically and i see more robust reasons to believe that Vatin was the western distribution of E-V13. We will see how things turn out.

 

[Riverman]

The whole zone of Protovillanovan, Middle Danubian Urnfield group, Lusatians and Gáva-Holigrady into Belegis II-Gáva II and related Channelled Ware groups at the Lower Danube were really extremely similar in many respects. Think about the most important item other than cremations and channelled biconical pottery, which is the Naue II/Reutlingen slashing sword, with which they conquered so many areas and moved as far as Palestine-Egypt - some splinter groups - with the Sea Peoples.

That sword spread like wildfire between those groups, to the point of making it nearly impossible to tell where it appeared first! That means in just 1-3 generations the exact same basic technology, even though with regional differences, was established from areas like Ukraine to the Alps, from Poland to Greece, by this network.
If you consider the context and time frame, that's astonishing. It is absolutely clear that people must have travelled from one centre to the other, otherwise that kind of similarity of rites, pottery and metal tool production are unthinkable. That's how I think the earliest (1.300-1.200 BC) Western branches of E-V13 came up, not due to mass migration, but by specialists moving, especially metal workers, miners, priests, elite warriors etc.
Some of the first iron works in pre-Cimmerian Europe were also produced by Gáva people, which just shows their position in that network, as specialised miners and smiths, like we can see it from the Lapus I-Lapus II-Gáva groups in North Western Romania.

Keep in mind that even within Gáva, we deal with different provinces, which might not have been all the same genetically. Lapus II-Gáva is particularly important, because they were not just technologically and economically the most advanced, but also introduced the knob decoration in their specific way the earliest and were influential to the Eastern flank (Holigrady), which in turn might have influenced the early layers of Babadag (Channelled Ware horizon).

The point about Gáva I was always making is the phylogeny and timeline for E-V13 itself. The radical expansion started earlier, in the time of Suciu de Sus-Lapus I, to truly explode right at the start of the LBA-EIA transition (1.300-1.100 BC).

I don't see Noua into Babadag feasible right now, because the samples we got are all so much Sabatinovka/Srubnaya like and R-Z93, and Monteoru is just another Danubian group (I2+G2 + high WHG). However, Noua in particular might have been like the later Scythians and Sarmatians in the area, mostly Wietenberg-local genetically, and Wietenberg is a contender, in my opinion. But that's a weak link and completely unproven, even worse than the Gáva -> Holigrady -> Babadag or Gáva -> Belegis II-Gáva or Gáva-related into Vartop etc.

But like you see, basically all these groups had a Gáva connection, all these groups came from Romania by and large. Its not one single movement, but multiple documented and likely movements, all coming from the same direction during the MBA-LBA-EIA. Its more like "which one is the main E-V13 thrust", rather than an alternative being likely.

There is however no doubt at all for me, that the Knobbed/Fluted Ware horizon is the crucial one in the South, at the Lower Danube. Absolutely no doubt. Now the analyses of the pottery and other artefacts always point out the similarities to Channelled Ware, Lapus II-Gáva and/or Babadag. The movement was very clearly going North -> South, no doubt about that.
The exact origin is however hotly debated for decades and so is the question of "cultural influences" vs. "demic diffusion"/tribal migrations.

Unlike with Protovillanovans and Gáva, here we have direct evidence for Gáva elite warriors being present in e.g. Bulgaria. The remaining question is just whether these were small numbers, which had a big cultural impact on a local population, or large numbers, which replaced the local clans to a large extent.

I say the later, also because the earlier cultures of the region are largely out of question. However, its possible that we deal with multiple waves of related people from the North coming in, like we got earlier Carpathian cremation cultures moving in, and later (latest was Gáva/Belegis II).

The rest were Encrusted Pottery, steppe people and Aegeans with ties to the Mycenaeans. But the related cremating groups, the only ones which are likely to smoothly have adopted the Gáva-ways/Knobbed Ware, were all Carpathian derived anyway.

 

[TetaEglantina]

In Knovitz the inhumated remains in pits were mostly R1b, probably their elite cremated their deaths, but i see no reason why the elite would be different from common people, there is social stratification within the same lines as well.

They are so similar to Iron Age pits were E-V13 was found that Romanian archaeologist Sorin asked them whether they came from the same source or not, i guess it was a shared Urnfield-Hallstattian practice and genetically they were different people by male lineage. At the moment considering that during Iron Age, the earlier Hallstattian communities from which E-V13 arose were more prominent i am more inclined that it was the winner on eastern hemisphere rather than Encrusted Pottery people bearing I2a which at the same time was part of Proto-Urnfield as well. But, they were hit so hard by Tumulus people.

I want to see what we can make of so called Aegean migrations, because people living in South/East Pannonia were supposed to be the main actors. I doubt it was I2a considering it's missing in Iron Age and Late Antiquity until they came with Slavs. For the moment i am inclined to believe it was E-V13 mainly unless we are proven wrong.

Also, about Gava-Holigrady and E-V13, i am really not so sure whether we can make a connection, i rather lean more toward the option that Vatin Culture was the reason of misinterpretation of Belegis-Gava to be named with the appended Gava. They had shared cultural similarities. At the end, Vatin and Stamped-Ware were more closer geographically and i see more robust reasons to believe that Vatin was the western distribution of E-V13. We will see how things turn out.

It is clear that the proto Urnfielders were i2a. V13 either joined very late or had nothing to do with Urnfield - it looks like even r1a had more history with Urnfield than v13, v13 is still a mystery

 

[Riverman]

It is clear that the proto Urnfielders were i2a. V13 either joined very late or had nothing to do with Urnfield - it looks like even r1a had more history with Urnfield than v13, v13 is still a mystery

You have to look at where cremation started, and that zone is by and large the Carpatho-Balkans and one of the most important groups in the CA-EBA was Cotofeni. Cotofeni is exactly situated were we have to assume that E-V13 was first surviving and then growing, basically the same territory later occupied by Gáva and Belegis II-Gáva in the LBA-EIA.

The R-Z282 were initially not cremating, on the contrary, they invaded the cremating groups from their original centre = Mierzanowice. The expansions were Nitra (Western Slovakia), Kostany (Eastern Slovakia) and Füzesabony-Otomani (North Eastern Hungary). Due to this invasion of R-Z282 pastoralists from the North East (Epi-Corded into Mierzanowice), there was some R-Z282 floating around.

However, in the East Carpathian area of the presumed E-V13 homeland cremating groups surviving (Eastern Otomani-Gyulavarsand).

In the MBA these R-Z282 expansions were pushed back by the Tumulus culture invasion and now its getting interesting, because in an area of Tumulus culture-local admixture, around Silesia probably, the Proto-Lusatians evolved.

Basically there were two different zones of interaction with locals, a Northern one (Pre-Lusatian) and a Southern (Pre-Gáva), with a group in between (Piliny = Pre-Kyjatice).

These three groups were in between Tumulus culture and local Carpathian people. But remind you, different people and branches respectively. Yet the only truly core-cremating groups were Piliny and the Pre-Gáva groups (Berkesz-Demecser, Suciu de Sus etc.).

From Kyjatice we got an J2a male (BR2) and Gáva likely was dominated by E-V13.

The Lusatians however had I2 and R-Z282 and we know that also because of these Knoviz finds, because while the Middle Danubian Urnfield group had closest contacts to Kyjatice and Gáva, therefore I think E-V13 was coming West along the Danube through Middle Danubians, which themselves were R-L2 dominated, the Knoviz group was clearly closest related to Lusatians and had the closest ties with them.
Even before DNA testing it was assumed that migrants from Lusatians moved to Knoviz. And that's, in my opinion, partly represented by these I2 and R1a individuals in Knoviz to Early Czech Hallstatt sample.

The other Lusatian find being of course Tollense, were we find the opposite, I2 dominates, R-L51 minority, even smaller R-Z282 minority, presumaly from the East Polish-West Ukrainian fringe of Urnfield. By the way, through this Urnfield fringe I think the Baltoslavs received the cremation rite, which they were stuck with for so long, and new technologies. Especially in the LBA-EIA transition, when the Lusatians got crushed and some might have fled to their Eastern allies (Proto-Baltoslavs).

Yet if you look at the East Carpathian core: A different root and substrate than the Lusatians, and not a single tested samples, that area, especially Suciu de Sus into Lapus I into Lapus II-Gáva is imho highly likely to have had E-V13.
Belegis II-Gáva is practically for sure.

Therefore you got your I2 carrying groups in Lusatians. And you shouldn't wonder, because there they existed already in Unetice together with R-L51 (from Bell Beakers) and R-L282 (Epi-Corded).

Those from Pannonia-Carpathian basin were likely gone by that time, not fully, but largely, due to beind kind of squeezed to death by the Western invasion of Tumulus culture and the Easterns groups which are highly likely to have been dominated by E-V13.

I'm highly confident that either Eastern Otomani-Gyulavarsand or Wietenberg would yield E-V13 if being tested - both did cremate of course, and only non-locals (like Monteoru traders and Scythian people) were buried in inhumation burials in Wietenberg territory.

From the area between Gyulavarsand and Wietenberg later Suciu de Sus and the Pre-Gáva groups emerged in the Tisza zone.

 

[Riverman]

By the way, items and migrants from the Wietenberg-Eastern Otomani zone spread after the invasions from the steppe to the steppe, as was noted in various papers - so there was some backflow early on, just like later with the Cimmerians, Scythians and Sarmatians.

Wietenberg:

Most important culture groups for the debate (MBA origin of E-V13):

Note the Suciu de Sus culture in between Eastern Otomani and Wietenberg, as well as Balta-Sarata and Verbicoara in the South. You can see a line of cremating groups from Suciu de Sus - Eastern Otomani - Wietenberg - Balta-Sarata - Verbicoara.
That's the crucial Carpathian cremation block.

The area of the Suciu Culture
(early phase) is one of exclusive cremation,
both in flat graves and under barrows. The
(poor) data available for the Balta Sărată
and the Verbicioara areas indicate the
practice of urned cremations (the latter
area also yielded one wholly inhumed
body), which give it increased similarity to
Transylvania, but the data are too scarce
for a reliable comparison. In the Tei area,
excepting some cases of inhumation,
bodies were disposed of in ways that are
not traceable archaeologically (Figure 1;
general outline based mainly on: Vulpe &
Petrescu-Dîmboviţa, 2010: 207–89, 351–
76; Motzoi-Chicideanu, 2011).
Finally, apart from one isolated crema-
tion grave in the western margin of the
study area with an Otomani III urn
Stolna: Ordentlich, 1971: 29), which is
most probably only an import among
many others in the Wietenberg area
(Müller, 1999: 83–84), all the other graves
from the study area mainly contained pots
or sherds attributed to the Wietenberg
ceramic repertoire (the few non-
Wietenberg pots being imports from the
neighbouring regions), or come from con-
texts with Wietenberg pottery, such as
settlements and cemeteries.

Wietenberg in itself is very interesting, as they had foreigners and sacrificed humans in inhumation "burials":

This evidence has been interpreted in
various ways:
• as a change from inhumation in the
early Wietenberg phases to the predomi-
nance of cremation in the later phases
(Andriţoiu, 1992: 33–34);
• that inhumation was reserved for sacri-
fices, while cremation was the funerary
rite of the Wietenberg Culture (Rotea,
2009: 54);
• that cremation was the primary funerary
rite, while inhumation was secondary,
whilst recognizing the high complexity
of funerary practices, and treating
human sacrifice as a separate category
(Motzoi-Chicideanu, 2011: 544–46);
• as a population characterized by anti-
somatism (implicitly understood as
willingness to negate the role of the
physical body and ultimately to do away
with it), proof of which are the
low number of bodily remains, the pre-
dominance of cremation, and the rarity
of anthropomorphic representations
(Moldovan, 2009: 305; Dietrich, 2011:
n. 2).

All these East Carpathian groups had in common that many bodies were disposed in an unrecognisable way, a feature which is common in the Tisza zone (already Cotofeni and Nyirseg), but less common in other Urnfield areas.

These kind of body disposals which leave no trace and irregular burials or sacrifices of humans is what connects all the South Eastern Urnfield/Channelled Ware groups (Suciu de Sus, Lapus I, Gáva-Holigrady, Belegis II-Gáva, Verbicoara, Babadag I etc.)

Apart from the disproportionately low
number of human remains compared to
that of settlements, further difficulties for
an analysis of the human body arise from
the high number of chance discoveries,
disturbed contexts (as most graves are
found at a shallow depth), superficial field
observations, and extreme rarity of
osteological diagnosis (Motzoi-
Chicideanu, 2011: Figure 81).

As a rule of thumb, if osteological diagnosis are difficult, taking usable aDNA samples is difficult as well.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272313965_Body_and_Social_Order_in_Middle_Bronze_Age_Transylvania_Central_Romania_c_1900_-_1450_BC

In that area and for those people, cremation was the norm for thousands of years before the Urnfield culture as a LBA phenomenon.

Since Wietenberg remains were tested for the Transylvanian continuity paper, its particularly bitter that this paper doesn't appear. However, whether these were regular Wietenberg males can be questioned, since those were regularly not buried but cremated. But we don't really know for sure and to see some autosomal results would be interesting in its own right, even if there are no male results. But unfortunately that paper needs forever and I'm getting nervous about it being published at all...

 

[Riverman]

Page 63 of this work is great, it sums up how Gáva broke through into Bulgaria with "channelled and bossed" pottery (channelling and knobs):

Thracians and Mycenaeans

books.google.de

The South was under Mycenaean control. He particularly notes:

An achievement of the Gava culture was its breaching of the Lower Danube-Stara Planina barrier, and the influence of its bossed and channelled pottery spread southwards to affect the Chatalka and the Pshenichevo cultures of the Thracian Plain, the Babadag of the West Pontic coastline and the Megalithic of the eastern Rhodope and Srandja hills.

P. 64.

 

[Southpaw]

Page 63 of this work is great, it sums up how Gáva broke through into Bulgaria with "channelled and bossed" pottery (channelling and knobs):

Thracians and Mycenaeans

books.google.de

The South was under Mycenaean control. He particularly notes:


P. 64.

Yeah, technically i can make an analogy that E-V13 can be associated with the North Thracian group the book mentions, the solar motifs, S shaped patterns which argues it was a Balkan/Carpathian Chalcolithic inheritance, which lattern on you encounter among Stamped-Ware groups.

Moreover, something more about North-West Anatolia/Troy.

 

[Riverman]

We're dealing with different movements coming from different directions, like one going the Tisza down to form Belegis II-Gáva, like coming from Susani and other groups, and the other moves through Southern Romania and the East of the Carpathians down, presumably having more ties to Lapus II-Gáva, Holigrady, into Babadag I-Danubian Fluted Ware.
It is still not that clear, to me, which branch was more influential for Knobbed Ware. Some say the West, South or East, or all together. In any case, the incoming Gáva-related influences on the local substrate from Noua formed Babadag and Knobbed Ware, and Psenichevo is a direct descendant. They should test the different layers of Babadag, with its human sacrifices and irregular burials, to get to know what they were.

 

[Southpaw]

Rasmus Bjorn has come up with the hypothesis:

The lexicon of an Old European Afro-Asiatic language. Evidence from early loanwords in Proto-Indo-European

The study examines the archaeolinguistic implications of Semitoid loanwords in Proto-Indo-European. Contact linguistics offer a unique opportunity to calibrate speech communities in relation to each other, but the Steppe hypothesis of Indo-European does not contain a concise explanation of the immutable similarities in primarily Neolithic vocabulary shared with Southwest Asian speech communities. The study introduces a baseline of 21 pivotal items with the distribution and age in both Indo-European and Semitic that should be accounted for. It is concluded that a parsimonious archaeolinguistic scenario is available on the “persistent frontier” between the early European farmers and the nascent Steppe pastoralists on the eastern perimeter of the Carpathians. Subject to further scrutiny, a sub-family here called Old Balkanic on the Afro-Asiatic language tree is posited as the source of the Semitoid words in Proto-Indo-European.

https://www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/abs/10.13109/hisp.2022.135.1.3?journalCode=hisp

Might be a coincidence, but the E-L618 connection is there.

 

[Riverman]

By the way, going by the data gathered from the German FTDNA project around 2018, the hotspots for E-V13 (7-13 %) in Germany run from the Eifel region, South to Baden-Alsace, West to South Hesse and into Bavarian Franconia.

If that pattern holds up, its quite peculiar, but most notable is the sudden decrease in the Bavarian tribal core zone, and its uptick both to North (Franconia), West (Hesse, Baden) and East (Bohemia, Lower Austria, Burgenland).
The spread in Germany being best explained by the Frankish dialects and settlement.

On this map Mittelfränkisch, Rheinfränkisch, Ostfränkisch and the Eastern Portion of Allemannic:

https://www.historisches-lexikon-bayerns.de/images/2/23/Artikel_45731_bilder_value_1_fraenkische-dialekte1.jpg

The only partial correlation is with "Celtic" variants of R-L51, to some even lower degree with G, but only very remote. There is very little to no correlation with any other significant haplogroup in this territory:

Here is the link to the Facebook post:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=...602&type=3

By region from top down, Germans from 1870:

E-V13, E-M35 (sometimes only E-V13 being shown, sometimes both E-M35 and E-V13, depending on the level of testing - most E-M35 will be E-V13, but not all):

Bavarian Franconia (11, 2)
Eifel (11, 1)
North Baden (7, 2)
Hesse South (6, 3)
Alsatia-South Baden (4, 6)
Saarland-Palatinate (6)
Silesia (6)
Tyrol-Salzburg (0, 7)
West Prussia (5)
East Prussia (5)
Wuerttemberg West (5)
Wuerttemberg West-Baden South (5)
East Pommerania (2, 3)
Switzerland (2, 2)
East Frisia-Bremen (3)
Bavaria (1, 1)
Lower Saxony (0)

Larger macro-regions:
Central Germany (5,6; 1,2)
South Germany (4,9; 1,9)
Former East Germany (4,4; 1,4)
North West Germany (3,4; 1,9)

Small numbers can skew things a bit, like for Lower Austria-Vienna, we are currently about 30,8 % E-V13/E-M35 in the locals, but with a sample size of 13 from the map, that's in no way representative and surely not the actual number of a larger sample. Burgenland same pattern, 10 samples, 3 of them are E-V13 = 30 %. Just like the opposite happened by chance for Upper Austria, with a percentage of 0 (out of a sample of 7). Styria + Carinthia, 1 out of 13.

If we sum those up for all of Eastern Austria (Lower Austria with Vienna, Upper Austria, Burgenland, Styria, Carinthia:
8 of 43 = 18,6 %
Surely still too high going by data from small scientific samples.

The haplogroups from the Eifel region and Franconia are pretty diverse. In Franconia-Saxony-Bohemia two different strains meet, like the more Eastern-Slavic E-S3003/E-L540 and other branches of probably Western origin, whereas in areas like Eifel, Baden-North West Wuerttemberg (area of Stuttgart), Hesse E-V13 is pretty diverse and has no clear dominance of a specific branch.

Would be great to have the Treverer Celtic tribe getting sampled, because he was in the midst of this hotspot, and compare it vs. later Roman and Medieval inhabitants from the Eifel region.

The apparent low level of correlation with other haplogroups makes it difficult to pinpoint the main migration event.

In any case, the higher frequency in Central vs. Southern Germany is quite remarkable, even though a good portion of this pattern can be attributed to the Bavarian tribal expansion, since E-V13 is particularly low in the Bavarian tribal core zone.

 

[Southpaw]

Rasmus Bjorn has come up with the hypothesis:



Might be a coincidence, but the E-L618 connection is there.

To further expand on this

Rasmus has raised quite some interesting points, like the words shared are equally equivalent with Semitic, Egyptian and Berber which makes it an extinct Afro-Asiatic dialect/language. And Caucasus couldn't have been the corridor of influence since the three Caucasus languages don't have these shared words.

+ We have E-L618 in Old Balkans. I guess he is fully aware of this, but he didn't mention, he is an Archaeolinguist from Max Planck Institute, so he probably is aware about archaeogenetics as well. But, it's an hypothesis which might be wrong as well, and which he acknowledges.

 

[Riverman]

The main carrier of any sort of language, and such old reconstructed words are harldy solid evidence, the E-L618 people spoke, was G2. I don't see any sort of special E-L618 group roaming around, so either all EEF or at least the Impresso-Cardial people were AA speakers, or none of them. Its not specific to E-L618 vs. other haplogroups of the EEF communities.