Olszanica is located on the southern edge of the Cracow-Czestochowa Plateau near Cracow in Poland and was excavated during 1967, 1968, and 1969. This area is mostly composed of Jurassic Limestone. The site of Olszanica measures close to 50 hectares, which makes it one of the largest Early Neolithic sites in Europe. Over time, there has been controversy as to where Olszanica was located. Most of the controversy was due to border changes during the mid-twentieth century.
However, regardless of the controversy over location, many exciting findings were discovered in this area now known to be a part of Poland. Olszanica was a site where linear houses were discovered. That fact was important in the eyes of many researchers because previoulsy linear houses were only thought to span from the Maas River in the Low Countries to the Dniestr River in the Soviet Union.
Ever since the early 1930’s when the linear houses at the site of Koln-Lindenthal in Germany were discovered, many archeologist have been enthralled by the size of the linear houses. The size of the houses gave the archeologists some idea as to what kind of social organization may have existed at the time. Until the finding of Olszanica, it was thought that there were no linear houses in Poland and that the sites were much more localized in their original distribution.
Upon doing more excavations in Poland, it was discovered that the linear culture that existed was intermixed with remains from the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman period, and medieval times. It was discovered that Olszanica also contained the same trench-like pits that were found at other linear sites and that those trench-like structures contained many of the same materials.
During this excavation, it was discovered that Olszanica contained only Linear Culture material. There were, however, a few medieval influences in the cultural layer. During the excavation, ten Linear Culture Longhouses were found. However, it was not possible to determine the exact number of Longhouses that were in a given area because there was some overlapping of occupations.
These Longhouses varied in area. “They ranged from 7 to 41.5 m in length and from 5 to over 6 m in width” (Milisauskas, 287). These Longhouses were built with a wood beam structure. It is interesting to note that in Longhouse number 6, more tools were found than in any of the other houses. This possibly suggests that this Longhouse was used as a communal area for all of the people who were part of the Linear community.
It was hard to determine what type of methods the Linear people used for hunting because no tools that had projectile points were found at Olszanica. It was noted that bones of aurochs, red deer, roe deer, wild boar, wild horse, and hare were discovered. That suggests that hunting did play an important part of the Linear people culture.
The site of Olszanica was a unique find that tied some important facts together about the Linear people and their culture. Until Olszanica was discovered, there were many unanswered questions about the Linear people, questions that were answered by the remains at Olszanica.
Milisauskas, S. Current Antropology, Volume 14, Issue 3. June, 1973, 287-290.
Bogucki, P. & Grygiel, R. Current Anthropology, Volume 24. June, 1997, 161-178.
Written by: Katie Majeski