Beaker culture

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The Bell-Beaker culture (sometimes shortened to Beaker culture, Beaker people, or Beaker folk; German: Glockenbecherkultur), ca. 2800 – 1900 BC, is the term for a widely but spottily scattered archaeological culture of prehistoric western Europe starting in the late Neolithic (stone age) running into the early Bronze Age. The term was coined by John Abercromby, based on their distinctive pottery drinking vessels.

Contents 1 Pottery 2 Origin 3 Extent and impact 3.1 Sardinia 3.2 Central Europe 3.3 Iberian peninsula 3.4 Balearic Islands 3.5 Ireland[27] 3.6 Jutland[30] 4 Interpretation 4.1 The "Beaker problem" 5 See also 6 Notes 7 Bibliography 8 External links

[edit] Pottery

Beaker culture is defined by the common use of a pottery style — a beaker with a distinctive inverted bell-shaped profile found across the western part of the Continent during the late 3rd millennium BC. The beakers are part of a larger cultural package that included a wide range of attributes. The pots may have developed from the protruding foot beaker corded ware ceramics, a type of late Neolithic (2850-2450 BC)^[1] vessel found in the Netherlands and lower Rhine Valley, that were typically ornamented with cord impressed decoration mixed with comb impressions and herringbone-style incisions.^[2] All Over Ornamented (AOO) beakers were previously interpreted as products of the hybridisation of Corded Ware and Bell Beaker elements. Analysis has led to the conclusion that the AOO beakers should be seen as linking the Protruding Foot Beaker (PFB) and the Bell Beaker (BB) series, as the AOO beakers are consistently older than the maritime (BB) ones.^[3] A big pot unearthed in Spoolde that Lanting regarded a direct precursor of the pots of Beaker culture, featured decorations similar to the Mesolithic Swifterbant culture and probably pertains to the Hazendonk 1 horizon (4250-3950 BC).^[4]

The claim to the oldest AOO sherds is contested by northern Portugal.^[5]

It has been suggested that the beakers were designed for the consumption of alcohol and that the introduction of the substance to Europe may have fueled the beakers' spread.^[6] Beer and mead content have been identified from certain examples. However, not all Beakers were drinking cups. Some were used as reduction pots to smelt copper ores, others have some organic residues associated with food, and still others were employed as funerary urns. Beakers may have been a special form of pottery with a ritual character.^[7]

[edit] Origin

Many theories of the origins of the Bell Beakers have been put forward and have subsequently been seriously challenged.^[8] At one time, the Iberian peninsula was seen as the most likely place of Beaker origin. Since Lanting and Van der Waals put forward a chronology for the development of Bell Beakers from the earlier Corded Ware forms and Funnelbeaker culture (TRB) antecedents ^[9], the Netherlands/Rhineland region became the most widely accepted site of origin, (J. P. Mallory,EIEC p. 53). As such, it is often suggested as a candidate for an early Indo-European culture or, more specifically, an ancestral proto-Celtic ^[10] or proto-Italic (Italo-Celtic) culture. Bodmer(1992)^[11] suggested that the Celtic populations of Britain trace their (genetic) origins to an early settlement of the British Isles by Paleolithic Europeans, rather than by a later migration associated with the spread of the Celtic culture from central Europe in the first millennium B.C.

Slightly earlier dates of true bell beaker pottery have been obtained in Portugal by carbon dating, confirming the interpretation of the Bell Beaker horizon as essentially a cultural phenomenon.

In contrast to this, Marija Gimbutas derived the Beakers from east central European cultures that became "Kurganized" by incursions of steppe tribes. Despite this, an eastern origin is not often sought, not even by supporters of the Kurgan hypothesis. This corresponds to the now widely accepted view that Kurganisation never occurred.^[12]

This possible expansion from Northern Europe of new ways, primarily by people exposed to dairy products like the Beaker folks, coincides with the rapid spread of a new gene mutation against lactose intolerance traced back to Northern Europe and so far not attested by Europeans before 5000 BC. This gene gave its carriers a big survival advantage, and gives credit to a certain demographic advantage as well.^[13]

[edit] Extent and impact

As derived from the western extremity of the Corded Ware culture in the Netherlands, otherwise marginal groups of Corded Ware took advantage of their contacts by sea and rivers and started a diaspora of North West European culture from Ireland to the Carpathian Basin and south along the Atlantic coast and following the Rhone valley until Portugal, North Africa and Sicily, even penetrating northern and central Italy.^[14] Its remains have been found in what is now Portugal, Spain, France (excluding the central massif), Great Britain and Ireland, the Low Countries, and Germany between the Elbe and Rhine, with an extension along the upper Danube into the Vienna basin (Austria) and Hungary (Csepel-Island), with Mediterranean outposts on Sardinia and Sicily; there is less certain evidence for direct penetration in the east. Beaker-type vessels remained in use longest in the British Isles, late beakers in other areas are classified as early Bronze Age (barbed wire Beakers in the Netherlands, Giant Beakers (Riesenbecher)). The new international trade routes opened by the Beaker people were there to remain and the culture was succeeded by a number of Bronze Age cultures, among them the Unetice culture (Central Europe), ca. 2300 BC, and by the Nordic Bronze Age, a culture of Scandinavia and northernmost Germany-Poland, ca. 1800 BC.

[edit] Sardinia

From the earliest period, Sardinia has been in contact with extra-insular communities in Corsica, Liguria, Lombardy, and Provence. Towards the end of the fifth millennium BC an increased exportation of obsidian extended the cultural interaction to the Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean. From the third millennium BC on, comb-impressed Beaker ware, as well as other Beaker material in Ozieri or sub-Ozieri contexts, has been found, demonstrating continuing relationships with the western Mediterranean; it appears likely that Sardinia was the intermediary that brought Beaker materials to Tuscany and Sicily.^[15] In some sites, material of the megalithic Monte Claro culture has been found in association with Bell Beaker materials; elsewhere, Beaker material has been found stratigraphically above Monte Claro and in association with the Bonnanaro culture at the end of the Chalcolithic period, for which C-14 dates calibrate to ca. 2250 BC. There is virtually no evidence in Sardinia of external contacts in the late third and early second millennia, apart from late Beakers and close parallels between Bonnannaro pottery and that of the North Italian Polada culture. By the fifteenth century, international trade returned, making Sardinia an integral part of a commercial network that extended from the Near East to Northwestern Europe, the principal eastern component of this network being Cyprus. Also contacts with the Mycenaean world were established. Indigenous Sardinians appear in the Eastern Mediterranean as Sherden, one of the main tribes of the Sea Peoples, and are supposed to be the carriers of some of the eastern material found on the island.

Religion expressed itself around sacred wells, often in association to the megalithic nuraghe, most of them of Beaker signature. The earliest attested water cult site is that at Abini-Teti, where votive offerings dateable to the early Bonnanaro period have been found; votive offerings at the spring of Sos Malavidos-Orani date to later Bonnanaro. This tradition showed local continuity to historic times, as it was at such centers that the Romans found attacking the natives most efficient (Strabo 5.2.7).

[edit] Central Europe

All over Central Europe, two great coexisting and separate Beaker cultures – the Corded Ware with its regional groups and the Eastern Group of the Bell Beaker Culture – form the background to the Late Copper Age and Early Bronze Age, characterized by a continuous development and a series of innovations whose diffusion and long range changes are determined by the great river systems. As a third component counts the indigenous Carpathian Makó/Kosihy-Caka culture.^[16]

The Bell Beaker settlements are still little known, and have proved remarkably difficult for archaeologists to identify. This corresponds to contradictory results of anthropologic research^[17] and to the modern view of Bell Beakers who, far from being the "warlike invaders" as once erroneously described by Gordon Childe (1940), added rather than replaced local late Neolithic traditions into a cultural package and as such did not always and evenly abandon all local traditions.^[18]

Bell Beaker domestic ware has no predecessors in Bohemia and Southern Germany, shows no genetic relation to the local Late Copper Age Corded Ware, nor to other cultures in the area, and is considered something completely new. The Bell Beaker domestic ware of Southern Germany are not as closely related to the Corded Ware as would be indicated by their burial rites. Settlements link the Southern German Bell Beaker culture to the seven regional provinces of the Eastern Group, represented by many settlement traces, especially from Moravia and the Hungarian Bell Beaker-Csepel group being the most important. The relationship to the western Bell Beakers groups, and the contemporary cultures of the Carpathian basin to the south east, is much less.^[19] Research in Northern Poland shifted the north-eastern frontier of this complex to the western parts of the Baltic with the adjacent Northern European plain. Typical Bell Beaker fragments from the site of Ostrikovac-Djura at the Serbian river Morava were presented at the Riva del Garda conference in 1998, some hundred km south-east of the Hungarian Csepel-group. Bell Beaker related material has now been uncovered in a line from the Baltic Sea down to the Adriatic and the Ionian Sea, including countries such as Bielo-Russia, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia, Albania and even Greece.^[20]

The Bell Beaker culture settlements in Southern Germany and in the East-Group show evidence of mixed farming and animal husbandry, and indicators such as millstones and spindle whorls prove the sedentary character of the Bell Beaker people, and the durability of their settlements.^[19] Especially some well-equipped child-burials seem to indicate sense of predestined social position, indicating a socially complex society. However, analysis of grave furnishing, size and deepness of grave pits, position within the cemetery, did not lead to any strong conclusions on the social divisions.

The Late Copper Age is regarded as a continuous culture system connecting the Upper Rhine valley to the western edge of the Carpathian Basin. Late Copper Age 1 was defined in Southern Germany by the connection of the late Cham Culture, Globular Amphora Culture and the older Corded Ware Culture of "beaker group 1" that is also referred to as Horizon A or Step A. Early Bell Beaker Culture intruded^[21] into the region at the end of the Late Copper Age 1, at about 2600–2550 BC. Middle Bell Beaker corresponds to Late Copper Age 2 and here an east-west Bell Beaker cultural gradient became visible through the difference in the distribution of the groups of beakers with and without handles, cups and bowls, in the three regions Austria-Western Hungary, the Danube catchment area of Southern Germany, and the Upper Rhine/lake Constance/Eastern Switzerland area for all subsequent Bell Beaker periods.^[22] This middle Bell Beaker Culture is the main period when almost all the cemeteries in Southern Germany begin. Younger Bell Beaker Culture of Early Bronze Age shows analogies to the Proto-Unétice Culture in Moravia and the Early Nagyrév Culture of the Carpathian Basin.

During the Bell Beaker period a border runs through southern Germany, which divides culturally a northern from a southern area. The northern area focuses on the Rhine area that belongs to the Bell Beaker West Group, while the southern area occupies the Danube river system and belongs to the homogeous East Group which overlaps with the Corded Ware Culture and other groups of the Late Neolithic and of the earliest Bronze Age. Nevertheless, southern Germany shows some independent developments of itself.^[21] Although a broadly parallel evolution with early, middle and younger Bell Beaker Culture was detected, the Southern Germany middle Bell Beaker development of metope decorations and stamp and furrow engraving techniques do not appear on beakers in Austria-Western Hungary, and handled beakers are completely absent. It is contemporary to Corded Ware in the vicinity, that has been attested by associated finds of middle Corded Ware (chronologically referred to as "beaker group 2" or Step B) and younger Geiselgasteig Corded Ware beakers ("beaker group 3" or Step C). Bell Beaker Culture in Bavaria used a specific type of copper, which is characterized by combinations of trace elements. This same type of copper was spread over the area of the Bell Beaker East-Group.

Previously archeology considered the Bell-beaker people to have lived only within a limited territory of the Carpathian Basin and for a short time, without mixing with the local population. Although there are very few evaluable anthropological finds, the appearance of the characteristic planoccipital Taurid type in the populations of some later cultures (e.g. Kisapostag and Gáta-Wieselburg cultures) suggested a mixture with the local population contradicting such archaeological theories. According to archaeology, the populational groups of the Bell-beakers also took part in the formation of the Gáta-Wieselburg culture on the western fringes of the Carpathian Basin, which could be confirmed with the anthropological Bell Beaker series in Moravia and Germany.^[17]

In accordance with anthropological evidence, it has been concluded the Bell Beakers intruded in an already established form the southern part of Germany as much as the East Group area.^[21]

[edit] Iberian peninsula

The Bell Beaker phenomenon in the Iberian peninsula defines the late phase of the local Chalcolithic and even intrudes in the earliest centuries of the Bronze Age.^[23]

At present no internal chronology for the various Bell Beaker-related styles has been achieved yet for Iberia.^[24] The all-corded (AOC) type, however, follows the pan-European tendency to generally demonstrate the earliest dates. Peninsular corded Bell Beakers are usually found in coastal or near coastal regions in three main regions: the western Pyrenees, the lower Ebro and adjacent east coast, and the northwest. A corded-zoned Maritime variety (C/ZM), proposed to be a hybrid between AOC and Maritime Herringbone, was mainly found in burial contexts and expanded westward, especially along the mountain systems of the Meseta. Maritime Bell Beakers related to Herringbone, Lined and Cord-Zoned are tentatively dated in the first half of the 3rd millennium.

With some notable exceptions, most Iberian early Bell Beaker burials are at or near the coastal regions. As for the settlements and monuments within the Iberian context, Beaker pottery is generally found in association with local Chalcolithic material and appears most of all as an "intrusion" from the 3rd millennium in burial monuments whose origin may go back to the 4th or 5th millennium BC.

In Portugal, supposedly archaic styles predominate in the north of the country, which in other parts of the Peninsula, such as Estremadura and the Alentejo, can be seen as evidence of early dates, from the early or mid-3rd millennium BC.

Very early dates for Bell Beakers were found in Castelo Velho de Freixo de Numão in Guarda, Northern Portugal. The site was located on the summit of a spur. A short-lived first occupation of pre-Bell Beaker building phase about 3000 BC revealed the remains of a tower, some pavings and structures for burning. After a break Bell Beaker pottery was introduced in a second building phase of one or two centuries later, that lasted to the Early Bronze Age until 1800 BC. A third building fase followed smoothly and lasted to about 1300 BC, after which the site was covered with layers of stone and clay, apparently deliberately, and abandoned.

The second building phase was dominated by a highly coherent group of pottery within the regional Chalcolithic styles, representing Maritime Bell Beakers of the local (northern Portuguese), penteada decoration style in various patterns, using lines of points, incision or impression. Three of them were carbon dated to the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. The site demonstrates a notable absence of more common Bell Beaker pottery styles such as Maritime Herringbone and Maritime Lined varieties found in nearby sites like Castanheiro do Vento and Crasto de Palheiros. One non-local Bell Beaker sherd, however, belonging to the upper part of a beaker with a curved neck and thin walls, was found at the bedrock base of this second phase. The technique and patterning are classic forms in the context of pure European and Peninsular corded ware. In the Iberian Peninsula this AOC type was traditionally restricted to half a dozen scattered sites in the western Pyrenees, the lower Ebro and the Spanish east coast: especially a vessel at Filomena at Villarreal, Castellón (Spain), has parallels with the decoration. In Porto Torrão, at the coast of Alentejo (Southern Portugal), a similar vessel was found having a date ultimately corrected to between 2823 and 2658 BC. All pottery was locally made.

The finding of early AOC pottery now also at mediate distances from the sea has urged for a "complete rethink of the ways that this pottery circulated in the Peninsula." Archaic styles may have coexisted with more "evolved" styles. However, another possibility is the general circulation of Bell Beaker pottery, in its diverse styles and regional adaptations, in a short space of time during the 3rd millennium BC. The cultural interpretation of the high degree of technical and stylistic standardisation in corded vessels in the Peninsula, although they were spatially so widely scattered, remains the core problem of the Bell Beaker debate.

Jorda Cerdá (1986)^[23] distinguishes the following types using dates that are not calibrated:

• Corded type. Beginning as early as c. 2150 BCE, and apparently arriving from Central Europe via the Rhône river, this type of rustic bell beaker is decorated with strings' impressions. It is found specially in the Mediterranean areas but also reaches to the Basque Country and Badajoz.
• Maritime or International type. This type decorated with narrow dotted bands, filled with slanted parallel lines, and usually made of a reddish-orange clay, is found all around the Iberian peninsula and southern France, often associated to Megalthism. It's center of difussion is probably in the Portuguese civlization of Vila Nova de São Pedro. It is also quite old, being most frequently found in the 2100-1900 BCE period.
• Continental type. Characterized by decoration of wide bands with geometrical motiffs, this quite veriegated type is found mainly in the interior of the peninsula since c. 1900 BCE. A specific variant is the Ciempozuelos type, made of gray or black clay.
• Palmela type replaces the International style in the area of the Tagus estuary (Portugal) c. 1900 BCE. The beakers of this type are decorated with dotted geometrical style. It is also found in the plateau, the Guadalquivir basin and northern Morocco. Two related types, Carmona (Andalusia) and Salamó (Catalonia) are of a later period.
• Almerian type is typical of the Los Millares civilization and neighbouring areas. Its incise decoration consists of parallel bands delimited by crooked lines. It also begins c. 1900 BCE.

While for most of the Bell Beaker findings in the Iberian peninsula the chronology is not older than the 22nd century BCE, there are a couple of controversial findings that are claimed to have much older radiocarbon dates, specifically at Lapa do Bugio and Somaén, dated 2900 and 2780 BCE respectively^[23].

The lack or presence of Bell Beaker elements is the basis for the division of Los Millares and Vila Nova cultures in two periods: I and II.

[edit] Balearic Islands

Radiocarbon dating currently indicates a 1200 year duration for the use of the Beaker pottery on the Balearic Islands, between circa 2475 BC and 1300 BC (Waldren and Van Strydonck 1996). There has been some evidence of all-corded pottery in Mallorca, generally considered the most ancient Bell Beaker pottery, possibly indicating an even earlier Beaker settlement about 2700 BC.^[25] However, in several regions this type of pottery persisted long enough to permit other possibilities. Suárez Otero (1997) postulated this corded Beakers entered the mediterranean by routes both through the Atlantic coast and through eastern France. Bell Beaker pottery has been found in Mallorca and Formentera but has not been observed in Minorca or Ibiza. Collective burials in dolmen structures in Ibiza could be contrasted against the individual burials in Mallorca. In its latest phase (circa 1750-1300 cal BC) the local Beaker context became associated with the distinctive ornamented Boquique pottery^[26] demonstrating clear maritime links with the (megalithic) coastal regions of Catalonia, also assessed to be directly related to the late Cogotas complex. In most of the areas of the mainland Boquique pottery falls into the latter stages of the Bell Beaker Complex as well. Along with other evidence during the earlier Beaker period in the Balearics, circa 2400-2000 BC, as shown by the local presence of elephant ivory objects together with significant Beaker pottery and other finds (Waldren 1979 and Waldren 1998), this maritime interaction can be shown to have a long tradition. The abundance of different cultural elements that persisted towards the end of the Bronze Age, show a clear continuity of different regional and intrusive traditions.

The presence of perforated Beaker pottery, traditionally considered to be used for making cheese, at Son Ferrandell-Oleza (Waldren 1998: 95) and at Coval Simó (Coll 2000), confirms the introduction of production and conservation of dairy. Also, the presence of spindles at sites like Son Ferrandell-Oleza (Waldren 1998: 94) or Es Velar d’Aprop (Carreras y Covas 1984) point to knowledge of making thread and textiles from wool. However, more details on the strategies for tending and slaughtering the domestic animals involved are forthcoming.

Being traditionally associated to the introduction of metallurgy, the first traces of copper working on the Baleares was here indeed also clearly associated to the Bell Beakers.

[edit] Ireland^[27]

The advent of the Early Bronze Age Beaker People in Ireland is evinced by what appears to be deliberate destruction of smaller satellite tombs at Knowth and collapses of the great cairn at Newgrange, marking an end to the Neolithic culture of megalithic passage tombs. The technical innovation of ring-built pottery indicates that the makers were also present. The flexed skeleton of a man 1.88 tall in a cist in a slightly oval round cairn with "food vessel" at Cornaclery, County Londonderry, was described as 'typifying the race of Beaker Folk.' Recently, the concept of this food vessels was discarded and replaced by a concept of two different traditions that rely on typology: the bowl tradition and the vase tradition, the bowl tradition being the oldest as it has been found inserted in existing Neolithic (pre-beaker) tombs, both court tombs and passage tombs. Classification of pottery in Ireland and Britain has distinguished a total of seven intrusive beaker groups originating from the continent and three groups of purely insular character having evolved from them. Five out of seven of the intrusive Beaker groups also appear in Ireland: the European bell group, the All-over cord beakers, the Northern British/North Rhine beakers, the Northern British/Middle Rhine beakers and the Wessex/Middle Rhine beakers. However, many of the features or innovations of Beaker society in Britain never reached Ireland. Instead of round barrows with crouched, unburnt burials, quite different customs predominated in the Irish record that were apparently influenced by the previous traditions of the magalithic autochthons. Some features that are found elsewhere in association to later types of Earlier Bronze Age Beaker pottery, indeed spread to Ireland, however, without being incorporated into the same close and specific association of Irish Beaker context. The Wessex/Middle Rhine gold discs bearing "wheel and cross" motifs that were probably sewn to garments, presumably to indicate status and reminiscent to racquet headed pins found in Bulgaria, enjoy a general distribution throughout the country, however, never in direct association with beakers. Flint arrow-heads and tanged copper daggers, found in association with Beaker pottery in many other parts of Europe, have a 'post-Beaker' date in Ireland, that is, a date later than the initial phase of Beaker People activity. Also the typical Beaker wristguards seem to have entered Ireland by cultural diffusion only, after the first intrusions, and unlike English and Continental Beaker burials never made it to the graves. The same lack of typical Beaker association applies to the about thirty found stone battle axes. A gold ornament found in County Down that closely resembles a pair of ear-rings from Ermegeira, Portugal, has a composition that suggests it was imported. Incidental finds suggest links to non-British Beaker territories, like a fragment of a bronze blade in County Londonderry that has been likened to the "palmella" points of Iberia, even though the relative scarcity of beakers, and Beaker-compatible material of any kind, in the south-west are regarded as an obstacle to any colonisation directly from Iberia, or even from France. Even their greater concentration in the northern part of the country, which traditionally is regarded as the part of Ireland least blessed with sources of copper, has led many authorities to question the role of Beaker People in the introduction of metallurgy to Ireland. Even though indications of their use of stream sediment copper instead, low in traces of lead and arsenic, and Beaker finds connected to mining and metalworking at Ross Island, County Kerry, provide an escape to such doubts, in general, the early Irish Beaker immigrants appear to be ignorant of the overall "Beaker package" of innovations that, already fully developed, swept Europe elsewhere. This Irish peculiarity could be due to the ancientness of Irish Beaker immigrations, to isolation and to influences and surviving traditions of autochthons.

Beaker culture introduces the practice of burial in single graves, suggesting an Early Bronze Age social organisation of family groups. Towards the Later Bronze Age the sites move to potentially fortifiable hilltops, suggesting a more "clan"-type structure. Although the typical Bell Beaker practice of crouched burial has been observed, cremation was readily adopted in accordance with the previous tradition of the autochthons. In a tumulus the find of the extended skeleton of a woman accompanied by the remains of a red deer and a small seven-year-old stallion is noteworthy, including the hint to a Diana-like religion. A few burials seem to indicate social status, though in other contexts an emphasis to special skills is more likely. Boats capable of transporting cattle by sea must have been available, possibly skin-covered, wood-framed vessels that so far have not been unearthed yet. Cattle was presumingly imported in significant numbers from Britain. The most abundant remains of cattle come from the Beaker settlement at Newgrange. Pigs were the second most important animal in the stock list. Excavations on Knockadoon Hill (County Limerick) show evidence that cattle and pig husbandry formed the basis of the economy. The ageing data suggest that a greater proportion of cattle than pigs reached full adulthood and may have been exploited for secondary products. Horses lived to a greater age than the majority of the food species, suggesting their primary value may have laid in their use as mounts, pack animals or perhaps items of status. Some evidence of cereal production was also recovered.^[28] Sheep and goats were poorly represented. Medium sized dogs often survived to a fairly advanced age, suggesting their use as pets. The introduction of the horse by the same people using beakers must have facilitated land transport, in particular in the Later Bronze Age when appear a number of timber-built trackways. Agriculture of wheat and emmer was already praciced by the magalithic autochthons and maybe extended by the Beaker people, as indicated by the introduction on new varieties of cereal. The first mill-stones are attested in the Later Bronze Age.

The Bronze Age Beaker period is noteworthy, since archeological finds seem to indicate a strong continuity with native Bronze Age traditions in Ireland as much as Britain. No evidence of other large scale immigrations took place and many scholars deny Celtic speech originated solely from La Tene culture, whose migrations started at about 400 BC. Instead, those scholars propose Celtic languages evolved gradually and simultaneously over a large area by way of a common heritage and close social, political and religious links. Although controversal, the theory fits according to its proponents the archeological evidence that provides little support for westward migrations of Celtic people matching the historically known movements south and west.^[29]

[edit] Jutland^[30]

In Denmark, large areas of forested land were cleared to be used for pasture and the growing of cereals during the Single Grave Culture and in the Late Neolithic Period. Faint traces of Bell Beaker influence can be recognized already in the pottery of the Upper Grave phase of the Single Grave period, and even of the late Ground Grave phase, such as occasional use of AOO-like or zoned decoration and other typical ornamentation, while Bell Beaker associated objects such as wristguards and small copper trinkets, also found their way into this northern territories of the Corded Ware Culture. Domestic sites with Beakers only appear 200-300 years after the first appearance of Bell Beakers in Europe, at the early part of the Danish Late Neolithic Period (LN I) starting at 2350 BC. These sites are concentrated in northern Jutland around the Limfjord and on the Djursland peninsula, largely contemporary to the local Upper Grave Period. In east central Sweden and western Sweden, barbed wire decoration characterised the period 2460–1990 BC, linked to another Beaker derivation of northwestern Europe.

Northern Jutland has abundant sources of high quality flint, which had previously attracted industrious mining, large-scale production, and the comprehensive exchange of flint objects: notably axes and chisels. The Danish Beaker period, however, was characterized by the manufacture of lanceolate flint daggers, described as a completely new material form without local antecedents in flint and clearly related to the style of daggers circulating elsewhere in Beaker dominated Europe. Presumably Beaker culture spread from here to the remainder of Denmark, and to other regions in Scandinavia and northern Germany as well. Central and eastern Denmark adopted this dagger fashion and, to a limited degree, also archer’s equipment characteristic to Beaker culture, although here Beaker pottery remained less common.

Also, the spread of metallurgy in Denmark is intimately related to the Beaker representation in northern Jutland. The LN I metalwork is distributed throughout most of Denmark, but a concentration of early copper and gold coincides with this core region, hence suggesting a connection between Beakers and the introduction of metallurgy. Most LN I metal objects are distinctly influenced by the western European Beaker metal industry, gold sheet ornaments and copper flat axes being the predominant metal objects. The LN I copper flat axes divide into As-Sb-Ni copper, recalling so-called Dutch Bell Beaker copper and the As-Ni copper found occasionally in British and Irish Beaker contexts, the mining region of Dutch Bell Beaker copper being perhaps Brittany; and the Early Bronze Age Singen (As-Sb-Ag-Ni) and Ösenring (As-Sb-Ag) coppers having a central European – probably Alpine – origin.

The Beaker group in northern Jutland forms an integrated part of the western European Beaker Culture, while western Jutland provided a link between the Lower Rhine area and northern Jutland. The local fine-ware pottery of Beaker derivation reveal links with other Beaker regions in western Europe, most specifically the Veluwe group at the Lower Rhine. Concurrent introduction of metallurgy shows that some people must have crossed cultural boundaries. Danish Beakers are contemporary with the earliest Early Bronze Age (EBA) of the East Group of Bell Beakers in central Europe, and with the floruit of Beaker cultures of the West Group in western Europe. The latter comprise Veluwe and Epi-Maritime in Continental northwestern Europe and the Middle Style Beakers (Style 2) in insular western Europe. The interaction between the Beaker groups on the Veluwe Plain and in Jutland must, at least initially, have been quite intensive. All-over ornamented (AOO) and All-over-corded (AOC), and particularly Maritime style beakers are featured, although from a fairly late context and possibly rather of Epi-maritime style, equivalent to the situation in northern Holland, where Maritime ornamentation continued after it ceased in the central region of Veluwe (cf. Lanting/van der Waals 1976 a) and were succeeded c. 2300 BC by beakers of the Veluwe and Epi-Maritime style.

Clusters of Late Neolithic Beaker presence similar to northern Jutland appear as pockets or "islands" of Beaker Culture in northern Europe, such as Mecklenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, and southern Norway.^[31] In northern central Poland Beaker-like representations even occur in a contemporary EBA setting. The frequent occurrence of Beaker pottery in settlements points at a large-scaled form of social identity or cultural identity, or perhaps an ethnic identity.

In eastern Denmark and Scania one-person graves occur primarily in flat grave cemeteries. This is a continuation of the burial custom characterising the Scanian Battle-axe Culture, oftern to continue into the early Late Neolithic. Also in northern Jutland, the body of the deceased was normally arranged lying on its back in an extended position, but a typical Bell Beaker contracted position occurs occasionally. Typical to northern Jutland, however, cremations have been reported, also outside the Beaker core area, once within the context of an almost full Bell Beaker equipment.

The introductory phase of the manufacture and use of flint daggers, around 2350 BC, must all in all be characterised as a period of social change. Apel (2001, 42; 323ff) argued that an institutionalised apprenticeship system must have existed craftsman-ship was transmitted by inheritance in certain families living in the vicinity of abundant resources of high-quality flint. Debbie Olausson’s (1997) examinations indicate that flint knapping activities, particularly the manufacture of daggers, reflect a relatively low degree of craft specialisation, probably in the form of a division of labour between households.

Noteworthy was the adoption of European-style woven wool clothes kept together by pins and buttons in contrast to the earlier usage of clothing made of leather and plant fibres.^[32]

Two-aisled timber houses in Late Neolithic Denmark correspond to similar houses in southern Scandinavia and at least parts of central Scandinavia and lowland northern Germany. In Denmark, this mode of building houses is clearly rooted in a Middle Neolithic tradition. In general, Late Neolithic house building styles were shared over large areas of northern and central Europe (Nielsen 2000,161 f.). Towards the transition to LN II some farm houses became extraordinarily large.

The cultural concepts originally adopted from Beaker groups at the lower Rhine blended or integrated with local Late Neolithic Culture. For a while the region was set apart from central and eastern Denmark, that evidently related more closely to the early Únetice Culture across the Baltic Sea. Before the turn of the millennium the typical Beaker features had gone, their total duration being 200–300 years at the most. A similar picture of cultural integration is was featured among Bell Beakers in central Europe, thus challenging previous theories of Bell Beakers as an elitist or purely super-structural phenomenon.^[33] The connection with the East Group Beakers of Únetice had intensified considerably in LN II, thus triggering a new social transformation and innovations in metallurgy that would announce the actual beginning of the Northern Bronze Age.

[edit] Interpretation

Given the unusual form and fabric of Beaker pottery, and its abrupt appearance in the archaeological record, the traditional explanation for the Beaker culture has been to interpret it as a diffusion of one group of people across Europe. During the early twentieth century, Beaker pottery was seen as one element of a people who, through repeated waves of invasion, brought with them metal-working, crouched burials and round barrows, replacing an earlier Neolithic race of Europeans. Vere Gordon Childe described the Beaker people as "warlike invaders imbued with domineering habits and an appreciation of metal weapons and ornaments which inspired them to impose sufficient political unity on their new domain for some economic unification to follow."

There is no necessary correlation between an archaeological culture and an ethnic group however, as there is no one-to-one correlation between the material culture excavated by archaeologists and an ethnicity or society. Additionally, material culture and technological innovations can spread independently of population movement that is, through cultural diffusion rather than demic diffusion. Childe's view is now seen as being incorrect, its connections erroneous and based on limited knowledge, whilst its assumption of a Beaker invasion is considered an attempt to attribute numerous different cultural changes to one cause.

Other archaeologists, noting the distribution of Beakers was highest in areas of transport routes, including fording sites, river valleys and mountain passes, suggested that the pan-European style of Beaker 'folk' were originally bronze traders, who subsequently settled within local Neolithic or early chalcolithic cultures creating local styles. Close analysis of the bronze tools associated with beaker use suggests an early Iberian source for the copper, followed subsequently by Central European and Bohemian ores. This would support a "two-wave" thesis for the spread of Beaker culture, initially coming from the South West, and subsequently spreading from Central or even Western Europe. Lanting (1976)^[9] suggests, from a compilation context, that Bell Beaker culture emerged on the Rhine delta from a Corded Ware culture context.

A recent Strontium isotope analysis of 86 people from Bell Beaker graves in Bavaria suggests that between 18-25% of all graves were occupied by people who came from a considerable distance outside the area. This was true of children as well as adults, indicative of some significant migration wave. Given the similarities with readings from people living on loess soils, the general direction of the movement according to Price et al, is from the northeast to the southwest.^[34]

Many archaeologists believe that the Beaker 'people' did not exist as a group, and that the beakers and other new artefacts and practices found across Europe at the time that are attributed to the Beaker people are indicative of the development of particular manufacturing skills. This new knowledge may have come about through the influence of neighbouring peoples, rather than as a result of mass migrations, knowledge that could spread independently of any population movement. An example might be as part of a prestige cult related to the production and consumption of beer, or trading links such as those demonstrated by finds made along the sea-ways of Atlantic Europe. Palynological studies of pollen analysis conducted, associated with the spread of beakers certainly suggests increased growing of barley, which may be associated with beer brewing.

This non-invasionist theory was first proposed by Colin Burgess and Steve Shennan in the mid 1970s and it is common to see the Beaker culture as a 'package' of knowledge (including religious beliefs and copper, bronze and gold working) and artefacts (including copper daggers, v-perforated buttons and stone wrist-guards) adopted and adapted by the indigenous peoples of Europe to varying degrees.

Investigations in the mediterranean France recently questioned the nature of the phenomenon. Instead of being pictured as a fashion or a simple diffusion of objects and their use, the investigation of over 300 sites showed that human groups actually moved in a process that involved explorations, contacts, settlings, diffusions and acculturation/assimilation. Some elements show the influence from the north and east, and other elements reveal the south-east of France to be an important cross road on an important route of communication and exchange spreading north. A distinguished barbed wire element is thought to have migrated through central Italy first. The pattern of movements was diverse and complicated, along the Atlantic coast and the northern Mediterranean coast, and sometimes also far in the inlands. The prominent central role of Portugal in the region and the quality of the pottery all across Europe are forwarded as arguments to a new interpretation that denies an ideological dimension.^[35]

[edit] The "Beaker problem"

Historical craniometric studies found that the Beaker people appeared to be of a different physical type than those earlier populations in the same geographic areas. They were described as tall, heavy boned and brachycephalic. This anthropological feature has been referred as the "Beaker problem".^[36] The early studies on the Beakers which were based on the analysis of their skeletal remains, were craniometric. Though the origin of the Beaker people was still disputed, these studies were in line with archeological discoveries linking Beaker culture to new farming techniques, mortuary practices, copper-working skills, and other cultural innovations (Harrison 1980).

The metric research on skeletal remains, once decisive in proving this migrationst theory, became subject to severe criticism. Subsequent to the discovery of cultural continuity^[9] and the location of the most likely origin in the Netherlands (J. P. Mallory,EIEC p. 53), new studies showed metrics like brachycephaly, size and robustness to be subject to environmental and cultural influences. This has been confirmed also by studies on the Dutch that throughout time, though lately cited for being the largest people of the world, showed a remarkable variation in average length in comparison to other people.^[37][38]

Thus, surviving traits, like more than average length, robustness or high degree of brachycephaly, would be due to surviving favorable environmental conditions rather than genetics. The recognition of "plasticity" of the human skeleton resulted into a rejection of the "roundheadedness" of Beaker people to be a clear indication of their external origins. The trend towards brachycephaly was found throughout north-west Europe in the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, including areas that did not undergo Beaker settlement, thus leading to the conclusion that "cranid form is not genetically determined, and that it might alter through time by mechanisms other than those of microevolution" (Neil Brodie 1994: 71). Moreover, Brodie speculated that Neolithic longheaded cranial morphology was influenced by cold, damp conditions. During the early Bronze Age (2480 cal BC- 1450 cal BC), the climate was drier and climatic improvement could have led to the gradual (brachycephal) increase in the Cranial Index which occurred in northwestern Europe during the Neolithic and early Bronze Age (Brodie 1994: 77-78). According to this view the Beaker people emerged as an environmental phenotype that can be fully derived from the general physical type of the people of Northern Europe originally surrounding them. Also non-metrical research concerning the Beaker people in Britain^[36], less prone to criticism against the influence of genetics and taking into consideration a genetic "threshold" towards the expression of a particular physical trait at certain environmental conditions (Hauser and De Stefàno 1989:4-5), led to ambiguous results, on the one hand pointing to the direction of immigration and on the other hand failing to provide conclusive evidence of the arrival of people of another genetical type.

On the other hand, studies in geographic regions further away from the supposed Beaker culture homelands, like those concerning the Carpathian Basin^[17], are more specific in identifying marked typological differences with the pre-Beaker inhabitants.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

[edit] Bibliography

• Darvill, T., Oxford Concise Dictionary of Archaeology, OUP 2003.
• J. P. Mallory, "Beaker Culture", Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, Fitzroy Dearborn 1997.
• Marc Vander Linden, Le phénomène campaniforme dans l'Europe du 3ème millénaire avant notre ère : synthèse et nouvelles perspectives. Oxford: Archaeopress 2006, BAR international series 1470.

[edit] External links

• A Beaker from Kent
• BBC — History — Bronze Age Britain
• Bronze Age — Beaker People — Wessex Culture
• The Beaker Folk in the Balkans
• Historical model of settling and spread of Bell Beakers Culture in the mediterranean France
• Le Campaniforme et l'Europe à la fin du Néolithique