Gimli of Grimisuat?

For some reason this Sion Beaker just wants to have a beard.  Maybe that's because of how the amber beads are situated across the upper chest. 

The helmet appears to be an early form of the common nasal helmet of Western Europe which is at least as old as the Late Bronze Age.  My guess is that it would have been constructed of boiled leather over a wooden frame, the kevlar of its day.  The guy's dress is commonly thought to be a patterned tunic, but I wonder if it is instead scaled armour, also of hardened leather.  Someone's probably mentioned that before, but I can't think who off hand.

One of the interesting things about Bell Beaker men with dagger injuries, they are most often found in the armpits and forearms, at least in Britain.  As demonstrated in the video linked above, in a knife fight you have to get under the scale which indicates how the knife is held and thrust.  But it should be remembered that body thrust wounds may be under-represented in the skeletal record.

Doctored Late Sion Stele by Sebastian Favre, right (Bocksberger Memorial Site)

I'm pretty sure those are amber beads around the guy's neck.  I don't know if this Gimli was a lord or a war king, but he was important no doubt.

One interesting bit is the changing pattern from chest, the apron, then lower portion.  It can't be a single tunic, or at least it wouldn't seem so.  I'd propose that there are two layers of scale, the outermost covering the torso, and then the actual tunic is the bottom-most pattern.  Maybe you see something else?

Maritime Marnotos? Bread of Salt (Guerra Doce, 2018)

Elvira Guerra Doce has a new paper in 2018* about the original economic currency of the Bell Beaker Phenomenon.  Some of Guerra's ideas here are pretty interesting food for thought.  One of them not so much.  But this first one is really interesting.  So lets' start with a story.

Discriminating Russian oligarchs salt their bread with only one kind of salt and it only comes from the Algarve region of Portugal.  The Portuguese Flor de sal (Times) “Cream of the Salt Pan” is a finishing salt for fine food.  Local salts are for the snotty peasants outside the pallisades and for cow licks.  Since I belong to the second or third category, it wasn't too obvious.

Fleur de sel (Wiki), or any ole' salt generally, is a natural currency for obvious reasons.  It's divisible, transportable, everlasting, and is accepted by everyone.  It has already been proposed by Jonathan Thomas in 2014 that shell beads in the Estramadura region were a kind of proto-currency at this time. See Bead Wampum.  Guerra believes that "white gold" facilitated the development of a Beaker pan-regional phenomenon.

herringbone pattern esparto bag from Portugal (commons)

The Algarve region hasn't exactly been known as Beaker country in the past, but right to the north they fill dump trucks with Beaker pottery.  Guerra Doce believes that the maritime herringbone decoration is a skeuomorph of the traditional, desalinization esparto bags of this region.

Skeuomorph?  Fig 3. Comparison of esparto bag and maritime pot

She believes that somehow the style traveled north by way of fancy salt containers that were of themselves an object of prestige and want.  And why not put a fancy whiskey in a fancy bottle?  Perhaps this skeuomorph copied itself to hillbilly AOC style pottery to create a hybrid pottery form.  Below you can see how a salt container in an esparto bag might have been filled over time.

I'm having a difficult time understanding what "bread of salt" means in Spanish or Portuguese.  It has a similarly weird significance in the Slavic languages as you might treat a guest.  In the Germanic and  Celtic languages there is an association between salt or mixed like *brac and bread, maybe both of which mean break or *bhreg.

In any case, the 'salt loaf' is important for covenant-making, as in the wedding covenant, which is why throughout Europe the bride and bridegroom exchange bride-cake, which is a salt-bread loaf.  There are other customs like the bride throwing salt over the shoulder and whatever.

The deeper question is what this says about Bell Beakers if it were true that Portuguese salt was widely distributed in Europe.  They liked very fine things.  But why?  Would they have valued it for religious reasons, weddings or funerals?  Does currency necessarily mean anything, like the Spanish Dollar?


“La sal y el Campaniforme en la Península Ibérica: Fuente de riqueza, instrumento de poder ¿y detonante del origen del Estilo Marítimo?”. En V.S. Gonçalves (ed.): Sinos e Taças: Junto ao océano e mais longe. Aspectos da presença campaniforme na Península Ibérica. Lisboa: UNIARQ, Estudos e Memórias, 10, pp. 342-353  [Link]

ABSTRACT Among the mechanisms that Beaker individuals might have drawn upon
by the mid-3rd millennium cal BC in order to attain wealth and power, and consequently
acquire a social position, Iberian Beaker groups might have assumed control over the pro
duction and circulation of salt. This paper is aimed at further exploring this issue, and
assessing the possible link between the origin of the Beaker phenomenon, or, more specifically, the Maritime Beaker pots, and the production of salt in the Portuguese Estremadura region.
KEY-WORDS: Bell Beaker. Salt. Circulation. Tagus estuary. Skeuomorphs.

savory spices

*This forthcoming paper was mentioned in 2015 in "The Bell-beaker complex in Portugal: an overview" by Joao Cordoso.  He has this paper coming in 2016, but I'll assume that Guerra had already delayed some of these present ideas.  She did publish this in 2016 "Economic Foundations of Social Supremacy of Beaker Groups"  and this paper concerning salt production and beaker pottery in 2015.  I'm guessing that some ideas were delayed until this paper.

Amber in Prehistoric Iberia (Murrillo-Barroso et al, 2018)

Almost all the amber in Late Neolithic and Copper Age Southern Iberia is of Sicilian origin.  Simitite is a dark red color and found around the mouth of the Simeto River on the Eastern shore of Sicily.

This new paper by Murrillo-Barroso et al (2018) looks at the sources of Iberian amber through the ages.

It is proposed that Sicilian amber made its way to Iberia via North Africa, perhaps through Tunisia, rather than direct trade during the Copper Age.  Then strangely, this rich amber trade in Iberia is completely disrupted in the 2nd millennium along with most of Southern Europe when Baltic amber is most common.  The authors are not sure to what degree the Bell Beaker phenomenon is responsible for this.  Even then, Baltic amber appears somewhat restricted to the Northeast of the Peninsula in the Bronze Age, at least for the moment.

Also, the disruption in the southern amber trade is indicative of a larger disruption in the Mediterranean economic network involving other commodities and styling.  What kind of disruption?  Plague? Pillaging? Piracy?

Amber decoration and over 1Million shell buttons on thirty women in a prince's grave!

One interesting question I would ask is to what extent Bell Beakers eventually settled or traded in Eastern Sicily around the outflow of the Simeto.  Not much or nothing that I see.  So it would seem that the Beakers were either unable to wrest control of this resource from the natives in Eastern Sicily, and/or perhaps the Sicilian cartel was a competitor of an increasingly powerful Central European network?

Maybe Baltic amber was cheaper, more abundant, stronger networks.  But looking at other materials it seems more than just economics or social re-alignment.  Disruption seems like the right word.



Murillo-Barroso M, Peñalver E, Bueno P, Barroso R, de Balbõ Ân R, Martino Ân-Torres M (2018)
Amber in prehistoric Iberia: New data and a review. PLoS ONE 13(8): e0202235. https://doi.org/
10.1371/journal.pone.0202235  PLOS ONE

 Abstract

 Provenancing exotic raw materials and reconstructing the nature and routes of exchange is a major concern of prehistoric archaeology. Amber has long been recognised as a key commodity of prehistoric exchange networks in Europe. However, most science-based studies so far have been localised and based on few samples, hence making it difficult to observe broad geographic and chronological trends. This paper concentrates on the nature, distribution and circulation of amber in prehistoric Iberia. We present new standardised FTIR analyses of 22 archaeological and geological samples from a large number of contexts across Iberia, as well as a wide scale review of all the legacy data available. On the basis of a considerable body of data, we can confirm the use of local amber resources in the Northern area of the Iberian Peninsula from the Palaeolithic to the Bronze Age; we push back the arrival of Sicilian amber to at least the 4th Millennium BC, and we trace the appearance of Baltic amber since the last quarter of the 2nd Millennium BC, progressively replacing Sicilian simetite. Integrating these data with other bodies of archaeological information, we suggest that the arrival of Baltic amber was part of broader Mediterranean exchange networks, and not necessarily the result of direct trade with the North. From a methodological perspective, thanks to the analyses carried out on both the vitreous core and the weathered surfaces of objects made of Sicilian simetite, we define the characteristic FTIR bands that allow the identification of Sicilian amber even in highly deteriorated archaeological samples.

Hattem Houses Ahead? (De Stentor)

There is a settlement search underway in Hattem, Netherlands for the elusive klokbekercultuur settlements.  This yesterday from De Stentor Magazine.

They have an idea of what Beaker houses should look like and they are fairly optimistic of finding some near a previous graveyard.  Michael Klomp appears to be heading up the investigation.

Not local.

Excavation will last ten weeks from now. 

Siret's Smile? Part 2 (Jean Guilaine, 2018)

Here's part 2 on Siret's Smile published in Antiquity.

Guilaine's counter-arguments to Kossinna's Smile are condensed here with a few notes.  Some concepts like 'diffusion' mentioned in part 1 need a little context when considering similarities and differences between Kossinna and Siret.  Here, diffusionism includes migration or outside stimulation and is opposed to acculturation or internal innovation.  Usage varies historically.

By invoking Siret, Guilaine is not arguing for an internally native Iberian origin of Beaker as opposed to steppic ones.  He sees different sources of the Iberian stimulation that were most important to the birth of proto-Beaker which is widely believed to have expanded from Iberia.  Whether or not this involves a genetic component would be irrelevant in this argument, and the cultural and genetic identity of Continental Beakers is probably irrelevant to this discussion as well.

Stele from Lacunae, Tarn, France (snip Fig 1)

Guillaine counters Heyd on three points and they really center around the origin of the Beaker phenomenon from exterior day 1, especially in Iberia:

"In the present paper, partly as a response to that published by Heyd, I wish to comment on three issues among the many raised therein: [1] the anthropomorphic stelae, [2] the Chalcolithic funerary rituals and grave goods of southern Iberia, and [3] the origins of the ‘Maritime’ Bell Beaker tradition."

1.  Guilaine doesn't see anthropomorphic stelae in Western Europe as evidence of steppe influence from the East.  He thinks the various groups of stelae are too diverse to represent a single source borrowing and that they more represent themes and objects of local Neolithic cultures.  Guilaine views some of the groups, such as the Amorican group, as being too old (3500-3000) to be linked with Yamnaya specifically or any known Eastern influx.  He also sees the Western European stelae as a continuous development from the early Neolithic and following a pattern of increasing detail comparable to a similarly-phased evolution in the Pontic Steppe.


2.  Grave rituals and grave goods.  Guilaine doesn't see any special relationship between Pontic and Iberian sandals.  He makes reference to similar foot fetish in Southern Egypt and goes on to point to other exotic objects in Iberian tombs with North African or Eastern roots, rather than Pontic roots.

Sandal comparison by V. Heyd, "Kossinna's Smile"

3.  Guilaine believes the Maritime expression of the Bell Beaker is unrelated to events in Northern or Eastern Europe.  Like many others, he sees a uniquely southern expression in the Maritime beaker decoration that has no precedent in the Continent but does have antecedents in the decoration of pottery from certain Moroccan sites through which Southern Iberians traded heavily.  He also mentions the early dates.


It's important to consider that these archaeologists would probably agree on many points.  They probably agree on the importance of Iberia in spreading the early manifestations of Beaker Culture.  Kossinna's Smile took issue with holy archaeology denying what should have been obvious from the skeletal remains, but it also skewered the overly simplistic approach of ancient DNA.  Siret's Smile takes issue with the relationship between culture and ethnicity by disagreeing on what got the ball rolling in the first place.

Of course Beakerblog has opinions on a lot of this, but this post is already too long!  More stuff ahead.

Siret's Smile? Part 1 (Jean Guilaine, 2018)

Surprises in the tea leaves?  Sounds like new data ahead...maybe... "Siret's Smile" is discussed at Bernard's Blog.

And a little disclosure.  I've read the four sentences in the abstract and the references.  Hopefully a nice person will send me a copy of the paper!

The best I understand is that Gustav Kossinna and Louis Siret represent different flavors of a diffusionist archaeological interpretation.  From this viewpoint, innovation occurs rarely in humanity and when it does, like the invention of the airplane or the use of metals, it originates from an epi-center, a homeland, and by some process spreads to other places, sometimes dragging an entire cultural package with it.

Diffusion is demonstrably more often the lazy act of borrowing, but it can also be a full-blown, heads-spinning-off-shoulders population replacement in the other extreme.  Major disruptions in the archaeological record, according to the diffusionist perspective, are not evidence of a kind of localized punctuated equilibrium, they are instead actual disruptions from an external source.

Kossinna viewed culture as necessarily rooted in ethnicity and equated changes in material culture with changes in ethnicity, whereas Siret viewed religion and technology as the glue that bound most cultures together, however routinely stimulated from the outside.  "Kossinna's Smile" was published as a prelude to, and with foreknowledge of, The Bell Beaker Phenomenon and the Genomic Transformation of Northwestern Europe.  From that study we learned that the heads-spinning-off-the-shoulders variety was the primary instigator for material change in the Island of Britain.

Importantly, Volker Heyd sees the original, external stimulation of proto-Beaker Culture in Iberia as potentially having subtle steppic tendencies.  That's probably a minority view, but he gives examples of this in his paper.  In other words, I doubt he would he would accept that the northern and southern Beaker domains had totally discrete origins that were simultaneously and coincidentally expanding on each other and somehow melded into pan-Beaker through acculturation.

"Siret's Smile" by Guilaine is a reply to Heyd's "Kossinna's Smile" which may be nothing more than an argument for what embodies the Beaker Culture center of gravity.  This question is dealt with by David Reich in the video presentation linked by Bernard, and Reich clearly sees religion as the glue of Beaker material culture in opposition to the ethnically monolithic Corded Ware.

Guilaine appears to be of an opinion similar to Oliver Lermercier, Convertini, Besse & co. in the idea of a Greek Implantation Model of the Beakerization of SW Europe.  It's a diffusionist view also, which emphasizes the evangelization of local people by elites.  It may be entirely valid for this region.  But I doubt he's arguing acculturation, and looking at the abstract, it seems that Guilaine's argument and style (Siret's Smile) is hinting (or taunting) at even newer evidence not disclosed, maybe genetic.

Although Siret's chronology for Southern Iberia is technically outdated, in broad terms he saw the beginning of the Metal Age in Southern Iberia as being stimulated from the Eastern Mediterranean, which he called "Phoenician".  These were colonies of skilled men devoted to mining and trade with high status who upgraded the local culture.  Then in the regular Bronze Age, Iberia went through the process of "Celticization", as he called it. (Aranda Jimenez, 2015, pg8) Which brings us to the tea leaves...

At 1:53 in the video Bernard linked, David Reich specifically says that there was almost "no shared ancestry between the Spanish practitioners of this culture..and the Central European ones...".  But let's look at that statement closely.  According to Siret's view (Guilaine), that's kind of irrelevant since most Spanish practitioners of this culture are native Spanish who have become indoctrinated in a new religion.  And Guilaine, at least from the snippets I viewed, emphasizes the role of the Eastern Mediterranean elites (Siret) in remaking early Metal Age Spain.

Of course, during the Bronze Age Spain is increasingly Steppified (Celtified), and later, actually Celtified.

So of course Guilaine presents new archaeological data in this paper to counter Heyd.  I haven't seen it yet, but when I do, I'll post part 2.  I imagine that it's new data from Valencia de Conception which will be rather conclusive, like isotopes or updated radiocarbon dates.  I may be reading too much into this, but I imagine ancient DNA (not disclosed in this paper) maybe be lurking around the corner to offer a new twist to the narrative.  Maybe not.

Abstract:

Recent palaeogenomic data have expanded the debate concerning the direction of cultural transmission during the European Chalcolithic by suggesting the western movement of people from the Eurasian Steppe. Heyd (2017) considers a simultaneous spread of material culture as supportive of these model. The author addresses Heyd’s suggestions in the light of new archaeological data from the southern Iberian Peninsula. These data strongly suggest both Eastern Mediterranean and endogenous influences and innovation in the spread of culture across Europe during the third millennium BC.