This author summarised some of the Dacians remains and the available evidence. Unfortunately, like pointed out not often enough, practically all burials were cremations, just like in all North Thracian-Dacian groups and contrary to the earlier Mezocsat and Basarabi period, also contrary to the South Thracians, where inhumation while not the rule was used more often.
It is, quite clearly, a defining marker of the North Thracian-Dacian tribes, that they regularly and fairly strictly burnt their dead, just like Channelled Ware people before.
There are however human remains from "non-funerary contexts", like described by the author on page 64:
Sirbu lists threse last finds amongst 196 examples of uncremated remians in a "non-funerary" contexts, of which 77 (39 %) were complete skeletons.
Despite these examples, the principal characteristic of this period is the lack of burials.
That was typical for Suciu de Sus and Gáva - even Nyirseg in the EBA - the lack of burials but eivdence for a big population. This suggests the remains were burnt and scattered or deposed in another way which left little behind.
One of the complete skeletons had practically all his bones broken, therefore it might have been a brutal execution if it was happening ante mortem, which is not for sure.
These might be all kind of people and its not as good as getting the elite male with his three sacrificed horses, but if sampling more than a dozen or so males from those contexts, locals should be included eventually, if not majority wise.
Typically many of the body burials being mass graves in pits, similar to the situation in post-Psenichevo Bulgaria, from where we got the South Thracian E-V13, similar to Babadag, to Gáva and to Belegis II-Gáva and Kalakacza sites, of which one between those two groups and Basarabi might be sampled soon and hopefully. Or even two sites if we're lucky.
Rustoiu, also wrote about the Celtic hybridisation in Transylvania and the mobility of the warrior class:
Other strontium isotope analyses carried out in the la Tène cemeteries from Nebringen, on the Rhine, Monte Bibele, in northern Italy, Radovesice and kutna Hora, in Bohemia, showed that inside certain communities the individual mobility was low, most of the deceased being locals. Also, the individual mobility was more prevalent amongst men than women. Finally, it was noted that in the cemeteries from Bohemia the funerary inventories of the dead coming from other areas contained weapons, a fact that illustrates up to a certain point the mobility of the warriors (Scheeres et al. 2013; 2014).
This explains the appearance of the E-V13 minority throughout the Celtic zone in the Later Iron Age. Some Sardinian branches which split from Central Europeans in that period have a TMRCA of around 250 BC, which means they must have been at least in the vicinity of Northern Italy by 300 BC.
On Daco-Thracian survival between the Celtic settlements:
Nevertheless, it has to be emphasized that not all of the regions from inside the mountain range were occupied by the celts. Fortiied or rural settlements have been discovered in the Maramureş Depression and the depressions from eastern Transylvania, as well as cemeteries belonging to the local populations, which continued to evolve according to the older, Early Iron Age traditions. These people were more likely connected to cultural models from the eastern carpathians and the lower Danube regions (Rustoiu 2008, 80–86; Rustoiu 2014a, 153–156).
That's a clear reference to Basarabi and the connections between the Daco-Thracian provinces, well-established since hte Channelled Ware expansion (Eastern Slovakia, Transcarpathian Ukraine, Romania, Moldova, much of Serbia, Bulgaria, European Turkey basically).
The Celtic invasion resulted in a hybrid culture in the West, in which presumably R-L2 and E-V13 dominated, with Celts being dominant, but strong local elements persisting. Sometimes in a mixed context, sometimes side by side. This Celtic period ended however and quite clearly so:
The fate of the communities belonging to the ‘celtic horizon’ in Transylvania can be archaeologically traced until the end of the lT c1 (beginning of the second century Bc), when a sudden disappearance of the cemeteries can be noted both in Transylvania and the Great Hungarian Plain and across wider central European areas. The phenomenon was considered to be a consequence of major changes in the local beliefs and funerary practices. In the lT c2–D1 period (second–irst centuries Bc), the bodies of the dead were disposed of in a manner that left no archaeologically visible traces. Some researchers suggested the use of cremation, followed by scattering of the burned remains in places that cannot be investigated today (lakes, rivers, groves etc.), or of corpse exposing/decomposing (Sîrbu 1993, 37–38; about the social and ritual changes that led to the emergence of this phenomenon, and also about the ritual and social treatment of the deceased, see Egri 2012, 507–509). New cultic places, in which human or animal sacriices were performed, appeared in the same period (Petres 1972).
There was however some general continuity of the mixed habitation, but not in the later clearly Dacian zone:
The situation is entirely diferent in Transylvania. The celtic horizon, with typical la Tène cemeteries and settlement inventories, abruptly ceased to exist at the end of the lT c1. Other types of habitation and burials appeared almost instantly in the next period. This kind of cremation graves in a simple pit or the tumulus ones, sometimes organized in small ‘familial’ cemeteries, were mostly discovered in south-western Transylvania, for instance at cugir and călan (tumulus graves), or at Blandiana, Tărtăria, Teleac, Hunedoara, Piatra craivii etc. (cremation graves in a pit). Recent inds allowed the identiication of such burials towards north, for instance in the surroundings of the Malaja kopanja fortress, on the right bank of the upper Tisza River, in Trans-carpathian ukraine (Fig. 27).
That clearly reads like migration. Channelled Ware traditions re-appear, but this time they come from the South:
Finally, weapons and harness ittings speciic to this horizon were recently discovered at Bulbuc, Alba county (Fig. 28) (Borangic 2014). The funerary inventories comprise weaponry which deines the characteristic panoply: long swords of the la Tène type, spears, curved daggers, sometimes having the blade decorated with geometric or zoomorphic symbols, shields and sometimes chain-mails and helmets. They are associated with harness ittings among which the so-called ‘Thracian’ horse bits are the most typical ones. With regard to the pottery, the vessels placed in graves (complete or fragmentary) no longer resemble the forms of the previous horizon, but evolved from shapes that are characteristic for the northern Balkans region. Amongst them can be listed the jar-like vessels with knobs, the so-called ‘fruit-bowls’ (bowls with a tall foot, the larger ones being probably used in convivial practices), one handle beakers (usually handmade and sometimes used as funerary urns), large bi-truncated vessels with two handles etc. (Rustoiu 2008, 142–163).
The warrior complex:
comparable funerary assemblages containing panoplies of weapons that are typologically and functionally homogenous were found on a relatively extended area in the northern part of the Balkan Peninsula and on both banks of the Danube, downstream from the Iron Gates (Fig. 27). The entire phenomenon was designated by the archaeologists as the Padea–Panagjurski kolonii group, on the basis of two cemeteries discovered on the territories of Romania and Bulgaria respectively (Woźniak 1974, 74–138; Woźniak 1976, 388–394).
Regardless of the unitary aspect of the weaponry, elements of the funerary rite and ritual difered from one region to another, which leads to the hypothesis of their belonging to warrior elites who shared the same symbolic means of expressing the identity, but with diferent ethnic origins. The ancient authors mention diferent populations in the regions in question, of which the lesser Scordisci, the Triballi and the Dacians are better known.
Therefore this new, kind of royal warrior class, which later formed the Dacian kingdom, had different tribal affinities united under its banner, according to the Rustoiu.
In conclusion, the funerary contexts from Transylvania which chronologically follow the cemeteries and settlements of the celtic horizon suggest a migration from the south of the warrior elite coming from the northern Balkans or the lower Danube regions, which ended the celtic domination on the area, imposing new organisational structures.
Basically Dacians-North Thracians from outside of the Celtic zone of dominance pushed Celts back, which were however mixed with related tribes which lived to the North long before. It is kind of funny that even in the later Dacian period, the "fruit bowls" still show elements introduced by Channelled Ware, most notably in Lapus I to Lapus II-Gáva, in the Upper Tisza zone.
Quote:The military elite, who arrived in Transylvania from the northern Balkans and ended the celtic way of life, later generated a coherent political and social class. The outcome of this process was the appearance of the Dacian kingdom, which in the time of Burebista, who was caesar’s contemporary, expanded greatly, from the Middle Danube to the Black Sea.
Aurel Rustoiu, The Celtic Horizon in Transylvania. Archaeological and Historical Evidence. IN: S. Berecki, Iron Age...in Transylvania, 2015, p. 9-29.
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