Talk:Beaker culture

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Beaker culture article.
Article policies

it's ok to have stuff on prehistoric Britain, no problem. As for the beaker culture, it does appear that the most finds by far are from Britain (we need a map), so Britain will have to be given some precedence on this article too. dab (ᛏ) 29 June 2005 16:36 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Language

Is there a general consensus as to whether or not the Beaker people spoke an Indo-European language? They appear to be derived from Corded Ware, which was almost certainly I-E, at least in its later phases.--Rob117 20:26, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

On the other hand, historically all Beaker areas west of the Celtic uhreimat were been non-IE until the Celts arrived, so it could represent the spread of a material culture, but not a language.--Rob117 18:46, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

As a far as I am aware there is nothing but speculation relating to the language of the 'beaker folk'. There are an obvious candidate for the origins of IE, but there are others that are just as valid and no evidence to distinguish between them. It is probably best just not to comment! (Thefuguestate 22:27, 15 February 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Recent addition about Egyptian beakers

I have reverted the recent addition by Kelvin Case over an Egyptian Beaker culture for the following reasons:

  • The source he links appears to make no mention of Beaker culture influences (although I admit I only read the pottery section and intro) and I think the link may be Original Research
  • Even if there is a mention I have missed, the linked source dates from the 1920s and archaeological thought has changed immeasurably since then
  • The source mentions beakers as an artefact type not Beakers as a type find of the eponymous culture
  • No modern source mentions this link.

adamsan 19:50, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

I removed several sections of vandalism, although hilarious and satirical in nature, that do not contribute to this article related to defameing one David John Decoskey.

[edit] Beaker Origins

This article seems to be quite outdated in claiming the Rhine area as the origin for beaker pottery. It is now widely accepted that the oldest beakers can be found in Portugal, although eastern corded ware had a big stylistic influence on the beakers that were used in central Europe and Britain. I don't have any references to hand, but I will probably be back with to do an edit if no one else feels up to the task. Thefuguestate 13:54, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

I am very curious. To me it is to the contrary, that the previous claim of Iberia being the origin has been widely abandoned in favour of the lower Rhine area. In Wikipedia there is a lot of reference going on to obsolete publications and books. Say books on this subject of before the 1970 are in general not valid anymore. Also, recent publications don't shun the possibility of the Bell Beakers being IE at all. This would be a reversal of previous views, that already took Bell Beakers for being ancestral to Celtic-Italic and Ligurian languages a long time ago. 134.146.0.12 09:52, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
The assertion that bell beakers originated in the lower Rhine area comes from stylistic work done by van der Waals in the early 1970s, which drew strong parallels between bell beakers and local corded ware. You are correct is saying that this replaced the old speculative theory of Iberian origins. However, more recently it has become apparent that the oldest C14 dates associated with bell beakers are indeed in Iberia and the argument has come full circle. This has gone unnoticed in some popular and general literature (for example the oxford illustrated prehistory of europe still sticks to the theory of Rhinish origins), but Iberian origins are now accepted by the academic community pending any further developments. Examples include Bradley 2007 (The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland:143) and Needham 2005 (Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society71:176).
If memory serves, a good english translation of the discussion of Iberian origins can be found in Nicolis, F. (2001) Bell Beakers Today: pottery, people, culture, symbols in prehistoric europe (2 volumes). Torento: Servizio Beni Culturali Ufficio Beni Archeologici. Thefuguestate 10:29, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

All C14 dates need to be calibrated. Besides, it is a well known problem to extract dates from biological material that is truely associated to some pottery. Outlandish C14 dates are very prone to bias. The oldest Bell Beaker pottery, even in Iberia, is confirmed to be of the All-Corded type, very similar to the protruding foot beaker pots - officially not Bell Beaker yet. It would be very interesting to have the Beaker phenomenon already started a few centuries earlier. However, I know of one Portugese sherd associated to a C14 measurement of 3000 BC, while simultaneously associated to a site that was inhabited from 2400 BC on. This kind of claims are not taken very serious. Unfortunately prehistoric Iberia does not have a local development towards corded pottery. Still I would be very interested to know to what sherds this Bradley and Needham are referring to. Rokus01 23:28, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Certainly everything you say is true. Unfortunately I do not have the books to hand to offer specific examples at this time. If anyone is near a library and can get hold of Nicolis (2001) they might be able to verify the claims. As a side note though, I am 100% sure the c14 dates are properly calibrated and 85% sure that they represent a significant group of dates rather than a few outliers that are common with c14 dating. It is also worth pointing out that the idea of Rhinish origins rest on an evolutionary morphological sequence, a technique that is no more certain than c14 dating. Sorry I can't be any more help at the moment! Thefuguestate 18:34, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Massive survival advantage

Martijn Faassen, I am a bit puzzled by the explanation you supplied to your removal of the word "massive": let's just say "survival advantage". Clearly its not massive in random cultural contexts, as cultures with prevalent intolerance abound still. I mean, this description of the survival advantage of lactose tolerance being "massive" is sourced. Sure, the massive advantage of the gene diminished to the south (cow milk was hardly consumed in Italy, maybe wine was just as healthy?) and petered out further away. I suppose nowadays there is no advantage left at all. Still, the movement and mixture of people in such a short time, reflected by the rapid expanion of this particular gene, has been confirmed to be unprecedented and not equalled in any known historical context. Rokus01 23:02, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I didn't realize that it was sourced - I hadn't realized the cite just before it was being referenced there. It's a newspaper article though and quotes from interviews with the scientists, so some exaggaration might've taken place in the translation for a popular audience. My reasoning to remove the word is because the survival advantage depends on actually drinking milk, and because many cultures have thrived without being outcompeted by people with this supposedly massive advantage. I have put in "big", which is also in the source, and I moved the cite to just behind it. Ok? It'd be nice if we could find some more other sources on this, as it's certainly a fascinating development.Martijn Faassen 00:12, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Old source?

The line "AOO beakers are consistently older than the maritime (BB) ones" is referenced to a publication written in the 1970s, when chronologies were still based on metalwork sequences, many of which have proven false. I feel very dubious about leaving this claim in unless a newer source can be found for it backed up by c14 dating.

To the contrary, you restrain from removing sourced information and stop calling information disputed as long you don't make yourself clear or manage to gather significant sources that seriously challenge generally accepted statements. Even Susana Oliveira Jorge, that published an old Portuguese AOC sherd, recognize this type of pottery to be very old and on the bedrock basement below other Beaker pottery. No more breaches of WP policy here. Rokus01 (talk) 17:47, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
I certainly will not contest that AOO pottery is very old (it is certainly among the very earliest forms of beakers), but I have a problem with it being claimed as being consistently older than BB. As I understood it these two forms had considerable chronological overlap. Perhaps I am being too punctilious about the issue, but I feel that to make such a strong statement requires it to be backed up by a source making use of the last 30 years of research. Thefuguestate (talk) 20:07, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
I would say the word "consistently" represents the tentative character of the statement well enough, since it does not extrapolate on all A00 finds, most of which have not been dated at all. In Iberia a typological stratification is still missing altogether. All we know so far is they are consistently older than other beaker pottery whenever dated. I consider some kind of overlap very likely, especially where different beaker cultures meet geographically, like in Ireland, or Iberia. Other apparent "All over ornamented pottery"-like styles might in reality pertain to other beaker groups, I think there is a dispute going on of such an issue in the Baleares. However, I inserted the quote for clarity on the Lantink classification that is still leading and generally accepted. If you want to expand on the incertainties I urge on persuing clarity and significant sourced information.Rokus01 (talk) 22:03, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I also have reservations about the section on Ireland. The claim that "the typical Beaker wristguards seem to have entered Ireland only after the Irish Beaker Folk had already settled there" is bizarre considering that not a single wrist-guard in Ireland has been recovered from an archaeological context and therefore cannot possibly be dated to before or after the beaker horizon! It also dredges up Clarke's 1960's ideas of intrusive groups having specific pottery, an explanation that I haven't seen repeated since the 70s. Thefuguestate (talk) 18:44, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

First, the book I quoted is from 1998, not 1960, so here you have a source contradicting your statement, confirming this interpretation is all but obsolete. The wristguards found are many, most of them however not found in association with burials. This is NOT typical to English and Continental Beaker burials. Nobody ever claimed any of this many Irish finds don't belong to Beaker culture, where did you get this? The oldest wristguard was found in association with other Beaker objects in Corran, County Armagh, a site that relate to Wiltshire Beaker, not really recognized to be the oldest Beaker type. Please don't resort to bizarre WP:OR to make your point, whatever this would be. Rokus01 (talk) 17:47, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
The two Corran wrist-guards found in a box with some jet beads and gold sheet hardly make for good dating evidence. Other wrist-guards are poorly associated with other objects. One from Ballywholan, Tyrone was found in a dual court tomb, but that just gives a date of late neolithic/early bronze age. There is a 'metal working stone' from the beaker settlement at Newgrange that is loosely associated with a horizon containing a Killaha axe (~2200-1900BC) and could possibly be a broken wrist-guard. This is the sum of dating for Irish wrist-guards, so the Corran examples might be taken as the oldest dated examples, but they might equally be the youngest. Dateing the wrist-guard phenomenon in Ireland on the bases of 2 out of 111 objects is hardly a sound basis for the statement: "the typical Beaker wristguards seem to have entered Ireland only after the Irish Beaker Folk had already settled there"

Thefuguestate (talk) 20:07, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

It is not so much the dating of bracers, it's the documented lack of association with beaker burials that is striking archeologists about the finds in Ireland. Somehow the wristguards did not belong to the "cultural beaker package" in the same way as they did in almost all other beaker contexts in England and at the Continent. It is reasonable to think of the beaker expansion as a process that involves both demic and material diffusion. Associated finds as wristguards that never made it to the Irish graves obviously reflect a material diffusion of cultural items, and less a demic diffusion and customs that travelled with migrating people. Consequently, such an accumulating "beaker package" of items not essentially entrenched into the local beaker ideology, including Irish wristguards, hardly could have been accompanied by any significant contemporary immigration. However, this does not invalidate ideas of a significant demic diffusion having happened already before. The idea of such a gradual accumulation of material items to the already existing beaker cultures is generally accepted and to my knowledge the wristguards are no well documented exception. In Ireland they are not. Rokus01 (talk) 22:03, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
My main problem is the specific quote I highlighted above. There just isn't enough evidence to support the statement that wrist-guards were introduced later than the first beaker pottery. The same can be said of flint arrowheads and tanged copper daggers which are also mentioned (indeed the oldest tanged copper daggers in Britain have chemical compositions that suggest they were imported from Ireland). I do not disagree with the notion that Ireland is particularly different from elsewhere in Europe with reference to how the beaker package was utilised, but this is not necessarily a chronological issue (which the article does at least mention in the last line of the first paragraph). Part of the confusion may result from the fact that much of the dating of Food Vessel burials was newly published at the time of the source's writing and perhaps not available. It was not until the mid-late 1990's that it was realised Food Vessels in Ireland were as ancient as the Beaker pottery, a fact which accounts for the extraordinary paucity of Beaker burials in Ireland. Until that point it had been assumed that Food Vessels followed the British pattern of replacing Beaker pottery, and therefore any item with strong associations with Food Vessel burials may have been seen as entering Ireland at a later date than Beakers. Thefuguestate (talk) 21:19, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

My source clearly distinguish seven intrusive beaker groups and threee groups of purely insular character that evolved from them. The classification was based on style of beakers used. Indeed, separately it dedicates a whole chapter on the issue of Food Vessels, to conclude this concept should be discarded and be replaced by a concept of two different traditions that rely on typology : the bowl tradition and the vase tradition. The bowl tradition might have been the oldest as it has been found inserted in existing Neolithic (pre-beaker) tombs, both court tombs and passage tombs. You are right none of the existing beaker classification is incorporated here, though the rich ornaments definitely remind to A00 that, indeed, was never considered true Bell Beaker (like it is, strange enough, in Iberia). I read some bowls have been found in association with bronze bracelets, though nothing on wristguards. Considering this new evidence, even more I wonder why you have problems with wristguards being introduced only later by cultural diffusion. There is not any evidence of wristguards in the earliest finds. However, since it was rather the burial context I was referring to, maybe the quote could be improved a bit. I'll take a look. Rokus01 (talk) 12:32, 16 December 2007 (UTC)