The Biskupin site is a fortified settlement in Poland, occupied between the Late Bronze and early Iron ages, and belonging to the Lausitz (Late Bronze age) and Hallstatt C (Early Iron) cultures.
Known as the "Polish Pompeii," Biskupin was a walled settlement of about 800-1000 people on an island in the Warta River Valley about 500 BC. The planned settlement included thirteen parallel rows of densely packed together houses separated by corduroy timber roads. The 105 houses in Biskupin were packed so close together that there was only one roof to every three to ten houses. Around the settlement was a ring road, which itself was surrounded by a wall, 550 meters in circumference and about 3.5 meters wide and 3 meters high. The wall was built by a series of wooden boxes filled with dirt and stones.
The site was discovered in the 1930s and excavated by Jozef Kostrzewsk of Poznan University. Its remarkable preservation has led to the reconstruction of some of the buildings, which are now open to the public.
Sources
This glossary entry is part of the About.com Guide to Hill Forts and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Cunliffe, Barry. 1998. Iron Age Societies in Western Europe and Beyond, 800-1400 BC. pp 336-372 in Prehistoric Europe: An Illustrated History, Barry Cunliffe, ed. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Harding A, and Raczkowski W. 2010. Living on the lake in the Iron Age: new results from aerial photographs, geophysical survey and dendrochronology on sites of Biskupin type. Antiquity 84(324):386-404.
Maciej Henneberg and Janus Ostoja-Zagórski. 1984. Use of a General Ecological Model for the Reconstruction of Prehistoric Economy: The Hallstatt Period Culture of Northwestern Poland. Journal Anthropological Archaeology 3:41-78.
