Late Bronze Age megasites in the Carpathian Basin and their relation to the Eastern Mediterranean

Rüdiger Krause of Goethe University Frankfurt examines the Late Bronze Age fortified megasites of the eastern Carpathian Basin and the wider exchange networks connecting Northern and Central Europe with the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean during the second millennium BC.

The first half of the talk surveys prestige goods that moved along this north-south route, peaking in the 14th century BC. Krause discusses Eastern Mediterranean glass beads, Egyptian-type folding chairs and oxhide ingot pictograms in the Nordic Bronze Age, and an Aegean-type spearhead copied locally in the Únětice culture of eastern Germany. Turning to Baltic amber, he traces its movement south to the shaft graves of Mycenae, the Uluburun shipwreck, Qatna, and the tomb of Tutankhamun. He then reviews the 14th-century BC fortified site of Bernstorf in southern Germany, where folded sheets of pure gold refined by cementation and an amber seal inscribed in Linear B were studied in a project with Vassos Karageorghis.

The second half presents fieldwork in the Mureș river region of the Romanian Banat, in the foreland of the ore- and salt-rich Apuseni Mountains, where Middle Bronze Age tell settlements gave way around 1500 BC to vast fortified enclosures. At Cornești-Iarcuri, concentric earth-and-timber ramparts totalling 33 kilometres enclosed 1,700 hectares. At Sântana, geomagnetic survey, LiDAR and excavations have revealed burnt ramparts, five-metre-deep V-shaped ditches, and over a tonne of clay sling projectiles. On an artificial mound inside Sântana's inner ring, Krause's team excavated monumental post-built halls up to 60 metres long, one with a geometrically decorated plaster floor dated to the 14th century BC, alongside white-plastered wall debris, Eastern Mediterranean blue glass beads, and archaeobotanical evidence for the introduction of millet.