Pottery of Pikutkowo Style and the Processes of the Eneolithisation of "Megalithic Cultures” in the 4th Millennium BC

The authors discuss the current state of knowledge concerning the specific pottery features of the Funnel Beaker culture (FBC) that constitute the "cycle of Pikutkowo stylistics”. These characteristics are especially strongly represented in the Kuyavia region where the changes in the "Pikutkowo” set of characteristics define phases III B and III B-C of the FBC, dated to 3700–3200 BC. Relatively quickly, because already in the period 3700–3600 BC, "Pikutkowo” pottery appears not only in the Polish Lowlands (including Greater Poland and Central Poland, as well as in the Chełmno Land and the Gostynin Lake District), but also in the old upland areas located in the upper Vistula basin. The latest data indicate that at the same time „Pikutkowo” characteristics are also present in FBC assemblages from the Subcarpathian foothills, as well as from the upper Dniester. In the final centuries of the first half of the fourth millennium BC, "Pikutkowo” features were resent with varying intensity within the borders of the Vistula and Odra catchment area in the west and the Dniester drainage basin in the east. The authors argue that this wide distribution designates the "Pikutkowo stylistics space”, which was a zone of active circulation of cultural patterns within the FBC. The culture-forming potential of this zone is best confirmed by the phenomenon of the transfer of one of the key innovations at the time, i.e. copper (including arsenic copper) processing