The people of the Funnel Beaker culture, known for building monumental tombs, did not thoughtlessly destroy the original forests. On the contrary, it conducted a sustainable economy in harmony with the ecosystem.
These are the conclusions reached by an interdisciplinary team of scientists from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, studying the archaeological site and former lake settlements in Sobota near Poznań.
The results of their pioneering research have just been published in the international journal Journal of Archaeological Science (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2026.106624).
Discovered in 2018 thanks to LiDAR technology, the cemetery in Sabota (Rokietnica commune, Wielkopolska province) consists of five monumental, earth-stone tombs (the so-called Kujawy tombs) with a length of up to 145 meters. It was erected in the fourth millennium BCE. Until now, knowledge about the interaction of these prehistoric communities with the environment in Central and Eastern Europe has been incomplete and based mainly on conjecture.
The breakthrough was brought only by high-resolution, multi-faceted paleoecological analyses carried out by researchers from Poznań. The researchers took and examined the core of sediment from a nearby peat bog (a former lake), directly adjacent to the monuments. Analysis of plant pollen and microscopic and macroscopic charcoals allowed to reconstruct the history of this place almost year after year.
The most important discoveries of Poznań researchers:
Economy in balance: Researchers have shown that Neolithic farmers used a rotational system of land use and avoided burning forests en masse to create fields. Their economic model can be described as “quasi-sustainable” – the exploitation of natural resources did not disturb the stability of the ancient forest.
Selective logging stimulated nature: Before the tombs were erected (c. 3660 BCE), local communities for more than a century cleared mainly young trees and shrubs that were easier to cut down for crops and forest pastures. Paradoxically, such a procedure illuminated the crowns of age-old trees and led to a rapid increase in their pollen productivity lasting several hundred years.
The sacred and the profane side by side: The regular presence of agricultural and breeding indicators (including spores of coprophyllium fungi living on livestock feces) right next to the cemetery suggests that the zone of the sacred (monumental graves) and the profane (fields and pastures) were close to each other or were naturally separated by a small lake.
Permanent Footprint in the Landscape: Human activity accelerated soil erosion, which led to the gradual shallowness of the former lake and its transformation into a wetland, which has survived in a changed form to this day.
Success of the interdisciplinary AMU team:
The success of this research is due to the close cooperation of Poznań scientists from various disciplines, representing the Faculty of Archaeology and the Faculty of Geographical and Geological Sciences of Adam Mickiewicz University.
The team consisted of: Dr. Danuta Żurkiewicz (project leader and main author of the research) and Dr. Jakub Niebieszczański from the Faculty of Archaeology, as well as representatives of geographical and natural sciences: Daria Wochal, MSc, Prof. Iwona Hildebrandt-Radke, Prof. Mariusz Lamentowicz, Dr. Monika Karpińska-Kołaczek and Dr. Piotr Kołaczek.
“The integration of archaeological data with advanced paleoecological reconstruction allowed us to answer questions about the role of fire and the impact of man on forest ecosystems in the Neolithic for the first time in this part of Polish. We have proven that monumental tomb architecture did not have to be associated with drastic environmental degradation – the authors of the publication emphasize.
The research was funded by the National Science Centre as part of the project “Lost and Found: Megalithic Tombs of the Funnel Beaker Culture in the Cultural and Natural Landscape of Wielkopolska”.
Danuta Żurkiewicz, Daria Wochal, Iwona Hildebrandt-Radke, Mariusz Lamentowicz, Jakub Niebieszczański, Monika Karpińska-Kołaczek, Piotr Kołaczek, Old-growth forest and sacred landscape with Middle Neolithic non-megalithic barrows in western Poland during the 4th millennium BCE, Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 192, 2026, 106624, ISSN 0305-4403,
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440326001548)
