Graves of the Linear Pottery culture from Šesták’s homestead in Prague-Liboc. A grave of a young man with a marble mace head
Abstract
The subject of this paper is the presentation of thirteen inhumation graves located in a settlement area of the early Neolithic Linear Pottery culture which were investigated on the grounds of former Šesták's homestead in Prague 6 - Liboc in 2004. The paper includes a description of the findspot, an assessment of the spatial relationships between the buried individuals and the settlement area, and at the same time, it is supplemented by detailed analysis of the grave goods recovered from grave H3, which include two ground stone tools, three transverse arrowheads and two bone ornaments.
The analyses include a standard assessment of the burial rite and associated finds, with a central focus on petroarchaeological analysis of the provenance of the raw material used for the manufacture of a unique marble oval mace head, and archaeozoological analysis of two ornaments made of animal hard tissue, focusing primarily on the methodology for classifying deer canines. The grave complexes documented in the settlement area dating from the close of the early and from the classical stage of the Linear Pottery culture are then briefly evaluated, with a focus on the chronology of grave complexes supported by radiocarbon data.