On the Silesian Lowlands, the cremation cemetery of Domasław—over two thousand graves spanning c. 1300/1250–550 BC—opens a rare window onto how mobility and power shaped life and death at the turn from the Bronze to the Iron Age. Our project combines archaeology with advanced bioarchaeological studies to reconstruct real networks of movement, exchange, and status written in funerary ritual.

About the project

Domasław, as one of Central Europe’s largest and best-documented cremation cemeteries, is ideal for testing how elite and non-elite groups—and local vs. non-local individuals—were differentiated in funerary practices. Rather than equating status with grave goods alone, we read additional markers: grave location and architecture, spatial organisation, osteological data, and isotopic signatures. This lets us reassess whether SW Poland was a periphery under outside influence or an active node in broader Hallstatt networks.

Domasław concentrates elite burials and unusually rich datasets, but also many modest graves that challenge easy assumptions. We test when weapon sets give way to jewellery and large “symposion” vessels—and what this shift says about changing identities. On the cemetery’s margins we confront graves that break typological rules, hinting at outsiders or novel practices. The result will be a refined Hallstatt chronology for the region and a grounded picture of mobility and hierarchy at Europe’s northern Hallstatt edge.

How we work

An interdisciplinary programme integrates specialist methods with classical archaeology to produce replicable, comparable results:

• Osteoarchaeology of cremations (200–300 burials): biological profiling (MNI, sex, age-at-death), skeletal representation and completeness, fragmentation, and macroscopic thermal alterations of burned human remains; evaluation of cremation technology and post-cremation treatment.
• FT-IR (ATR) spectroscopy (≈1,200 samples): verifies full calcination for isotope work and quantifies burning intensity with chemometric indices (CI, C/C, C/P, BPI, OH/P); measured at the Archaeosciences Laboratory (LARC) in Lisbon.
• Strontium isotopes (87Sr/86Sr; ≈400 calcined bone samples + ≈50 local proxies): otic capsule and/or teeth roots (early childhood signal) and long bones (later-life signal) to separate locals from non-locals and model mobility; measurements via Masaryk University and VUB BB-LAB; open data to IsoArcH.
• Radiocarbon (AMS; ~20 graves) & Bayesian modelling: resolves phases, including peripheral and atypical burials that defy standard typology.
• Chromatography (GC-MS, HPLC-DAD; ~30 vessels/samples): residue analysis to compare consumption practices—incl. fermented beverages—across statuses and time; conducted at Lodz University of Technology.
• Zooarchaeology: species/parts, sacrifice vs. food, and possible co-cremation, analysed against status and chronology.
• Statistical analysis & machine learning: unified database, spatial analyses, and classifiers to detect patterning in rites, mobility, and status.

What we deliver

• High-resolution cemetery phasing: integrated AMS ^14C (Bayesian) + ceramic assemblage change (typology/seriation) to define and date phases. We will also provide the largest cremation-era Sr dataset for this period in Europe, with all isotopic data shared via IsoArcH.
• Evidence-based models of mobility and hierarchy, linking local/non-local signals to elite and non-elite funerary treatments over time.

Team & partners

The core team is based at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, Polish Academy of Sciences (IAE PAN). Specialist work is carried out with Masaryk University and Vrije Universiteit Brussel (BB-LAB) for isotopes, the Archaeosciences Laboratory in Lisbon for FT-IR, Lodz University of Technology for chromatography, and Polish institutions for zooarchaeology and AMS 14C (Poznań Radiocarbon Laboratory). This setup secures top-tier instrumentation, comparative datasets, and robust methodology.