Lengyel culture

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Map of European Neolithic at the apogee of Danubian expansion, c. 3 500 BC.

The Lengyel culture, ca. 5000–4000 BC, was an archaeological culture located in the area of modern-day southern Moravia, western Slovakia, western Hungary, parts of southern Poland, and in adjacent sections of Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia.

It was a successor to the Linear pottery culture, and in its northern extent, overlapped the somewhat later but otherwise approximately contemporaneous Funnelbeaker culture.

Agriculture and stock raising (mainly cattle, but also pigs, and to a lesser extent, ovicaprids) was practiced, though a large number of wild faunal remains have also been recovered. Settlements consisted of small houses as well as trapezoid longhouses. These settlements were sometimes open, sometimes surrounded by a defensive ditch.

Inhumation was in separate cemeteries, in the flexed position with apparently no preference for which side the deceased was laid out in.

Interpretation

It was associated with the cover-term Old Europe by Marija Gimbutas, though may have been undergone "kurganization" by the Proto-Indo-Europeans and become integrated into the successor Globular Amphora culture.