Where styles collide: the Western Carpathians in the Early Iron Age in the light of pottery analysis

In the Early Iron Age, the Western Carpathians constituted a contact zone of various cultural traditions, which contributed to the complex, syncretic stylistic character of this region. At the same time, due to the scarcity of archaeological data, consisting mostly of relatively poor pottery assemblages from settlements, these mountainous areas escape unambiguous cultural classifications. Leaving aside the problems of taxonomy, this paper is an attempt to define the past processes that resulted in the observed diversity. Analyses were performed based on the most numerous sources available, which are ceramic vessels. Instead of being assigned to specific cultural units, individual pottery assemblages from the Western Carpathians were described in terms of stylistic diversity. This approach made it possible to analyse the available sources using quantitative methods, e.g. network analysis. The obtained results were treated as the starting point for a broader discussion on the processes of cultural development in prehistory. The problem of the possibility of reconstructing past social relations based on the pottery was addressed. Furthermore, a detailed study of three Western Carpathian regions provided a framework for considering the branching and blending models of cultural development in the context of local geographical conditions. It was demonstrated that very different processes may occur in neighbouring regions at the same time, resulting in various patterns of pottery styles distribution.