Beakers in the Polish Lowlands

Here's a chapter on Bell Beakers of the Polish Lowlands by Czebrezuk and Szmyt entitled "Bell Beakers and Their Role in a Settlement Evolution During the Neolithic-Bronze Interstage of the Polish Lowland"

Field in Kujawy (commons)

I'll summarize a few points covered in the chapter:

In Poland there was a fading of village life from the earliest Neolithic down to the Late Neolithic cultures.  Whereas in the early Neolithic people clustered in farm hamlets and villages, by the Late Neolithic evidence for settlements becomes much more sparse, especially among the Corded Ware.  This trend is considered the result of growing reliance on husbandry over cultivation.

Initially the Beaker mobility pattern is similar to the Corded Ware, but it is for the first time this trend is reversed as Beakers begin settling down and making agricultural improvements.  Beakers of the Polish lowland seem to prefer high elevations on deep, sandy soil overlooking rivers and steams.  Their houses are semi-subterranean, which may additionally have some design influences from Denmark, possibly including Danish TRB.


Keeping that in mind, we should see some Bell Beaker genomes from the Iwno group, which is an increasingly distinct type of Beaker to Greater Poland.  These remains might serve as a proxy for Danish Beakers and they'll likely have some differences from the Malopolskan and Silesian Beakers who appear to derive from the area of the modern Moravia and Bohemia in the Czech Republic.