Ceramic Beaker Census (Bilger, 2018)

This is a census of beaker pots and the context in which they were found: strays, settlements, graves and totals.

As Michael Bilger explains, there are many subjective elements to these analyses and many biases inherent to finds.  But an honest effort is put forth to create beaker maps like this and the many others in  "Der Glockenbecher in Europa - eine Karteirung".

It was published with other papers here.

Before sharing some observations, I'll remind that some of the vacant regions are not without Beaker activity.  Some were not studied and some purposefully excluded.  Population density or rejection of Beaker culture (Corsica) factor in some parts.  There is a bias toward heavily excavated urban areas where large earth-moving projects uncover disproportionate artifacts.  I'm saying this for the benefit of the reader since the paper is in German.

Having said that, there's some interesting out-takes when you look at the maps closely.

Often the volume of Beaker pottery around Lisbon and surrounds is cited as evidence of gravity emanating from this area and its seniority in the development in the Beaker phenomenon.  No doubt, it was a gravitational hub and exerted stylistic influence far away.  But looking at the numbers, almost 85% of that pottery is associated with settlements not graves.  A lot of those graves are also not straightforward.  To me, that's more of a question rather than a supporting fact.

The volume of beakers in the Czech Republic is mildly surprising.  It has more beakers than anywhere else, but that is partly an artifact of these gigantic, flat cemeteries that are continually in the way of major highway projects.  While a much greater percentage of pottery is coming from the graves, a good amount is from settlements.

If you look at France on the other hand, most ceramics come from actual graves, pried from cold dead hands.  So while the volume is much lower than Portugal or Czechia, the map is larger.  In other words, Bell Beaker may have been more significant in the French countryside than raw numbers tell.

The concentration in Central Spain seems to indicate Beakers like this area.  Madrid is probably disproportionately represented due to earth-movers and projects, but I'd guess in was an area of concentration anyway.

The numbers around Wiltshire aren't surprising.  It seems to have been a focal point of religion and trade with Stonehenge and all the other crazy mega-monuments.

If you take the results with some clarity and reservation, you'll notice some fairly reasonable patterns emerge that have been noted by Van de Noort, Lemercier and others.  You can see it in the map above.  The heaviest concentrations of beaker activity are found in favorable positions on the waterways, the mouths of rivers, major fordings and on the side of islands with favorable winds and currents. 

On the other hand, the distribution of beaker ceramic is found somewhat evenly across the map, suggesting that most Bell Beakers lived in small farm hamlets connected to distant villages across the countryside.