New Insights into the Settlement of Northeastern Slovenia in the Late 5th Millennium BC

The latest article by Bine Kramberger and Matjaž Mori, titled Reassessing the Architecture and Spatial Organisation of Lasinja Culture Settlements in the Southeastern Alpine Region. Insights from Northeastern Slovenia and published in Archaeologia Austriaca (Vol. 109, 2025), presents a series of new findings on the architecture and spatial organisation of Early Copper Age settlements in northeastern Slovenia.

For the first time, archaeological evidence from sites dated to the last third of the 5th millennium BC has revealed the presence of above-ground houses built with wooden posts, featuring either a two-room rectangular or a square floor plan. These types of buildings are well known from contemporary settlements in the Pannonian Plain, northern Croatia, and Lower Austria, but had previously been absent from the Slovenian archaeological record.

The study also provides an archaeological analysis of large irregular pits and critically re-evaluates existing interpretations of these features, which in the southeastern Alpine region have often been regarded as "pit-houses", whereas elsewhere they are understood as clay-extraction pits or as multifunctional features with a variety of possible uses.