Alcune considerazioni sulle sepolture di bovini nella preistoria e protostoria europea

spread. Its functional interpretation varies according to the epochs and regions examined, but it can be considered a universal phenomenon in the history of mankind. Cattle burials characterize the late Neolithic and Copper Ages of large areas of Central and Eastern Europe and are typical of the Cultures of Globular Amphorae, Funnelbeaker and Baden. As a wagon-drawn animal, the cattle is often buried in pairs. Some authors assume that it is related to solar worship and that it is on the basis of later religious beliefs about the sun carried through the sky by a wagon. The deposition of paired buried cattle with their heads at the back of each other, known in the early Bronze Age of Poland and respectively in the middle-late Bronze Age of northeastern Italy, is discussed as an effect of cultural contacts on a large geographical scale.