A78 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1919. 
cupied first of all the sparsely peopled northeastern portions of the 
territory, but was soon overflowing across the more central regions, 
and which eventually, strengthened by new accretions, occupied all of 
Bohemia. The culture of this people is characterized in the first 
place by a special manner of disposing of the dead. The dead were 
cremated, the remains of the bones were deposited in urns, and these 
were interred in communal burial places which are commonly known 
as “urn fields” or ash-urn cemeteries. Besides the ashes and charred 
bones, however, there were placed in the urns also burial offerings, 
such as jewels and even weapons; while about the urns were placed 
other pieces of 
pottery, so that 
the burial occa- 
sionally resembles 
a nest of ceramics. 
The forms and 
decorations of the 
urns and offerings 
4 ere =6vhave their own 
<s characteristics, 
and with time 
show gradual 
changes, which 
permit us to clas- 
sify this period 
into some second- 
ary phases that 
can be traced up- 
ward directly to 
the early histori- 
cal Slavonic time. 
The influence of 
this new north- 
eastern culture ex- 
Fic. 4.—A cross-section of an urn burial on the Pi¢é moun- tended over cen- 
tain, near Dobfichoy. : : 
tral Bohemia with- 
out evidently displacing the older population, for there are instances 
where side by side with cremation we find also the surviving habit of 
contracted burial. 
Due to universal cremation among these early Slav people, their 
physical type has not as yet been definitely determined; but some re- 
mains of bones indicate that they were of moderate stature and prob- 
ably of light eyes and light brown hair, resembling the old Slav pop- 
ulations of Lusatia and Silesia, regiéns from which the influx oc- 
curred. 
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