Baltic-Pontic contact space in 4th and 3rd millennium BC

A keynote lecture by Marzena Szmyt held on Thursday 9 September, during 27th Annual Meeting of EAA.

The topic of the lecture will be some questions from the prehistory of areas situated between two seas: the Baltic in the north-west and the Black in the south-east. The territory in question is located between two big rivers - the Vistula and Dnieper. Despite many essential differences, in the 4th and 3rd millennium BC the areas between the Vistula and Dnieper rivers were covered by a network of multi-directional circulation of peoples, cultural patterns and innovations. This network gradually commanded an increasingly greater area populated by communities of agrarian or early pastoral way of life. Various forms of their relations have been identified including cohabitation, cooperation or competition. The intensity of these relationships justifies using the name Baltic-Pontic contact space.