“Ritual Feasting” in the Late Bronze Age in the Northwestern Carpathian Region – Archaeological and Scientific Perspectives

DFG Project: Ritual Feasting in the Late Bronze Age in the Northwestern Carpathian Region – Archaeological and Scientific Aspects

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The complete excavation of a multi-phase Late Bronze Age cult building in the Lăpuş Valley in northwestern Romania has not only made it possible to record a type of monument previously unknown in the Carpathian region and beyond for the first time, observing a complex stratigraphy, but has also provided insights into complex ritual contexts. A central aspect of these rituals is the evidence of ritually connoted meals for presumably large numbers of participants, which were celebrated in and around this cult building as well as other mound complexes detected by geomagnetic prospecting.
The aim of the project is to reconstruct the nature and scope of these feasts and the associated sacrificial rituals and to place them in a supraregional context with comparable phenomena from other archaeological sites.
Due to the highly fragmented ceramic finds resulting from ritual violence, new methodological approaches are being developed to evaluate the available data archaeologically, culturally, historically, statistically, and mathematically on the basis of extensive restoration work and an already completed evaluation of the stratigraphic findings. The rituals, which are known to have been performed repeatedly, are to be broken down into individual chronologically separable events through microstratigraphic observations in conjunction with modeling of 14C data. In order to gain precise insights into the nature of the ritual meals, residue analyses of pottery shards and macro-residue analyses of botanical and zoological finds are being carried out.
Prospecting at the only known, potentially comparable site (Bicaz, northwestern Romania) should clarify whether the findings in the upper Lăpuş Valley are indeed unique or whether traces of comparable banquets can also be found here. This is expected to fundamentally expand our understanding of an aspect of ritual behavior that has not yet been satisfactorily researched in the Late Bronze Age Carpathian region—ritual feasting and its wide-ranging connectivity.

Lectures from 2014 onwards:

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• Ritual Feasting as indication of social cohesion? A late Bronze Age case study from Romania. EAA Meeting in Vilnius Session TH3-09, September 2016
• Eine Festhalle und potenzieller Kultbau der späten Bronzezeit aus Lăpuş in Nordwestrumänien. Februar 2017, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
• Lăpuş - Ein Ritualplatz und Herrschaftszentrum der späten Bronzezeit in Nordwestrumänien, Juni 2017, Universität Bamberg
• Carola Metzner-Nebelsick zusammen mit Louis Nebelsick und Ken Massy: From here to there - long range connections to and from the Carpathian Lands in the Late Bronze Age. November 2017, International Conference: Objects, Ideas and Travelers. Contacts between the Balkans, the Aegean and Western Anatolia during the Bronze and Early Iron Age. Conference to the memory of Alexandru Vulpe, Organisors: Institut für Ur- u. Frühgeschichte u. Vorderasiatische Archäologie, Universität Heidelberg; Gavrilă Simion Eco-Museum and Research Institute, Tulcea RO, Vasile Pârvan institute of Archaeology Bucharest RO.
• A Feasting Hall of the Late Bronze Age in Lăpuş, Northwest Romania, and its Cultural Context. April 2018, Universität Brno, CZ.
• A Late Bronze Age Feasting Hall in Lăpuş, Northwest Romania, and its Context. März 2019, Karls-Universität Prag
• C. Metzner-Nebelsick, K. Massy, L.D. Nebelsick, New 14C-dates from the feasting site and cult building of Lăpuş, dating and cultural connections of channeled pottery as seen from Northwest Romania
• K. Massy, C. Metzner-Nebelsick, Millions of sherds, many stories - Methods and possibilities to investigate the taphonomy and chronology of Tum. 26 of the site of Lăpuş, Jud. Maramureş.

Mitorganisatorin seitens der LMU einer internationalen Konferenz zusammen mit Dr. Alexandru Szentmiklosi (†), Muzeul Naţional al Banatului, Prof. Dr. Matthias Wemhof und Dr. Bernhard Heeb, Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte Staatliche Museen zu Berlin: Local Traditions, Culture, Contact or Migration? The Pottery-Belegiš-Gáva Type as a Chronological and Cultural Marker in Southeast Europe during the Late Bronze Age. Timişoara 8th-11th October 2018