"No Wait, This is the Real Ava!" - Smithsonian

Holy something

You'll remember Ava, one of the most diligently studied and interesting Beaker women ever.  Now with ancient DNA it is revealed her hair was straight and dark.  Update!

Via The Smithsonian

"Ava" (Hew Morrison via the Smithsonian)

I think any aspiring archaeologist should look to Maya Hoole as an example as how things should be done.  Many times over.  You take something ancient and you learn as much about it as is humanly possible and don't stop.  Respect and humanize the people you study and let the facts do the talking as the picture develops.

Many thousands of Beakers sit on the shelf; shoveled out of the ground by dudes with a coiled whip on the belt.  Ava was no warrior; her grave contains no copper or gold.  Her grave was nearly forgotten.  Now she is the most interesting woman in Britain.  The face of the mysterious Beaker Enigma.

Ginger Ava, before DNA informed coloration (Hew Morrison)

See also,

"Facial Reconstruction of Late Beaker Ava'

"Ava's Scapula: Supper, Supplication or Sound?'

"One of the Beakers DNA Tested"

"Archaeosoup Interviews Maya Hoole"

"Ava of the Highlands"

Jean Manco (in memoriam)

I just read from Anthrogenica that Jean Manco passed away Palm Sunday from cancer.  Very sad to hear.

She wrote several books about the peopling of Europe and she commented on Beakerblog a few times.  Jean also wrote about the architectural history of Bath and Bristol and spent her career in the West Country.

Funny how things work, sometimes we cross paths in different times and in different ways.  She was an expert on Bath Abbey.  Several of my ancestors are buried in the Bath abbey, and I'm grateful for Jean and those that preserve the past and seek to learn more about it.

Her avatar in various forums and websites was the Owl of Athena, which had a special significance to her in the quest for ancient truths and appreciation for wisdom and the arts.  She will be missed.


Sincerest Condolences to her family.

Biography at archaeology wiki

Jean speaking "Who are the Celts?" Youtube

Thy Beaker Overfloweth

One of the more striking aspects of the bell beaker vessel is - it's size.

In a way, bell beakers and giant beakers have something in common with the tankards and beer steins of historical Europe - they are very large.  In fact, the word 'tankard' suggests a 'drinking barrel'.  In the same way that some bell beakers became ridiculously large, so too are some beer steins cartoonishly large, in Germany no less.

Leave it to the Germans.  (a Risenbecher - Commons)

What's the point of having a drinking vessel that can't be held with one hand?  Did Neolithic beakers prove unsatisfactory? 

The answer my lie with a Beaker cultural system that is replete with subtle metaphors that express a new and different worldview.  Although there are several aspects of the beaker that are intriguing, at least this one suggests a life of plenty.


See also:

Symbolism, Metaphors and the Beaker Underworld

Crux in the 3rd Millennium 

Tablet Weaves and Pottery

Cerveza for your Ciempozuelos

Caspian Steppe Dustbowl

Below is linked a paper on the paleoecology of the Caspian Steppe.  The process of aridization can be viewed partly from the isotopes taken from those people.  The chronology in table 1 tells us why people began moving out of this area.

But first, in order to appreciate what aridization meant to the actual human beings that lived on the steppe of that time, I've linked a trailer to a series called "The Dust Bowl" by Ken Burns on PBS. 

The dust bowl was an environmental catastrophe.  Not as bad as this man-made disaster, though. 



Chatter networks informed people of prospects in other places.  Moving into Europe would have been a rather bold move, so I wouldn't call them hapless refugees.  They needed land, Europe had land.


PALEOECOLOGY, SUBSISTENCE, AND 14C CHRONOLOGY OF THE EURASIAN
CASPIAN STEPPE BRONZE AGE

Shishlina, Zazovskaya, VanderPlicht, Hedges, Sevastyanov, Chickagova
RADIOCARBON, Vol 51, Nr 2, 2009, p 481–499 [Link]

ABSTRACT. Combined analysis of paleoenvironment, 13C, 15N, and 14C in bone, including paired dating of human bone and terrestrial materials (herbivore bone, wood, charcoal, and textile) has been performed on many samples excavated from Russian
kurgan graves. The data can be used for dietary reconstruction, and reservoir corrections for 14C dating of human bone.  The latter is essential for an accurate construction of chronologies for the Eneolithic and Bronze Age cultures of the Caspian

Familiar Biomes and Anthropogenic Biomes

As Polynesians conquered the Pacific, one place they didn't conquer was Alaska, because it is freaking cold there.  Plus, coconuts don't grow in minus thirty.

This is an important principle for understanding human migration, whether in a genealogical time-frame or in early prehistory.  People tend to stick to biomes they are familiar with because it is efficient to do so; and this is true in contemporary life.

Volgograd Oblast (Russia Trek.org)

When looking at genetic relatedness of people before the Bronze Age, we should expect that any natural environment like the one above will attract people who are adapted to it.  The picture above is near Volgograd, but it could easily be thousands of miles from there.  And you might end up thousands miles from there because of overgrazing.

Battle Axe, British Museum 1964,1201.1474AN780948001 (FI-000918735)

One of the more intriguing aspects to the third millennium of temperate Europe is the creation of new anthropogenic biomes.  It appears that people were opening up the canopies with axes and burning the understory, most likely to encourage perennial grasses.  The high esteem of the socketed axe in the CWC can be partly understood within this context.  It wasn't just a tool, it was the equivalent of a plow for the herdsman.

Where's the Forrest?  Salsbury Plain (Visit Wiltshire)

The Salsbury Plain wasn't always so.  It was cut and burned in the Bronze Age.  So who would do that anyway?

"Dents in Our Confidence" (Horn and von Holstein, 2017)

Use-wear analysis bolstered a now erroneous perception that early copper weaponry were little more than male status symbols.  For whatever importance conferred to the owners of metal weapons, the over-interest in the social significance has apparently distracted archaeology from a critical analysis of emerging use-wear studies.

This paper by Horn and von Holstein looks at the study of use-wear and finds a need to honestly acknowledge what can be known with the limited study areas.  In fact, it could be reasonably surmised, base on the state of the current data, that most copper weapons were used regularly, sometimes forcefully, and then continually repaired, re-shaped, re-riveted and edge-hardened throughout the objects' lifetime.

They focus on two areas that obscure what can be known.  One is the maintenance of copper weapons, the other is the disparate corrosion associated with different styles of burial and deposition.  Here they consider attributes of copper to reconstruct the life of the object and they show that the presence of a decomposing body significantly alters the material over other burial methods.

"It has been argued that they were less important in warfare and served a more ceremonial purpose because in Scandinavian rock art they are usually depicted sheathed, i.e. in a passive role, and because researchers perceive real Early Bronze Age weaponry as lacking any usability in combat...However, at least 26% (18) swords from the Early Nordic Bronze Age possess notches..and 48% exhibit very strong (5) or extreme (6) corrosion, obscuring use-wear traces.  Thus, though only 26% can be directly shown to have use-wear damage, [but] up to 74% might have done so."

If looking at re-riveting of Unetice halberds, they raise the prospect that current typologies based on hafts could be totally false. 

"Being unaware of the possibility of repairs may cause researchers to assume that the reduced form was the original design.  This is problematic for the construction of typologies. For example, Wüstemann (1995) defined several variants of Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age halberds belonging to the Unetice complex according to the shape of their hafting plates. However, from the pieces with complete rivet holes, we can construct a continuous line of more and more damaged hafting plates with broken rivet holes and repairs such as secondary rivet holes."

Fig 3.  Rework halberd hafts of copper knives.

As a footnote, I've suggested previously that the small "jeweler's" cushion stones and whetstones found in some Bell Beaker burials were not the tools of a smith, but rather maintenance tools of a dagger owner, similar to a butt stock gun cleaning kit or an integrated whetstone on a survival knife.

Free version [here]

"Dents in our confidence: The interaction of damage and material properties in interpreting use-wear on copper-alloy weaponry" Horn and vonHolstein.  Journal of Archaeological Science

Volume 81, May 2017, Pages 90–100

Abstract

The presence or absence of use-wear marks on copper (Cu)-alloy weaponry has been used since the late 1990s to investigate the balance between functional (combat) and symbolic (value, status, religious) use of these objects, and thus explore their social and economic context. In this paper, we suggest that this work has not taken sufficient account of the material properties of Cu-alloys. We discuss mechanisms of plastic deformation, incremental repairs and corrosion in detail to show how these can obscure use-wear traces. In a survey of Cu-alloy weaponry from the Nordic Bronze Age (1800/1700e550 BCE) from Denmark, Sweden and Germany, we show that corrosion of Cu-alloy objects is strongly linked to depositional context, being greater in burials (both inhumations and cremations) than hoards or as single objects. A relative paucity of use-wear marks on burial weapons should therefore not be used to argue that these were purely symbolic objects, e.g. in contrast to the better preserved hoard material. We
propose that use-wear traces on Cu-alloy weaponry, particularly on blade edges, is significantly more elusive than previously realised, and that undamaged objects have been over-identified.

"Anthropology of a Prospector" Melheim and Prescott - part 2

Returning again to the chapter "Exploring new territories - Expanding Frontiers..." which seeks to understand the exploration of Scandinavia by Bell Beakers if interpreting their activity in this region as prospecting.

A Klondike Prospector with Chilkoot (?) Indian packers. (University of Washington)

Melheim and Prescott look to the memoirs of a Klondike prospector, Bill Jones, to gain insight into the high-risk and often unproductive world of prospectors.  They believe the dynamics of exploration, exploitation and relationship-building as a useful guide for the 2nd millennium.

"A striking feature in Jones's account is the often friendly encounters with the local sea mammal- and reindeer-hunting semi-nomadic Chutchki population.  The Chutchki were themselves uninterested in the mineral resources, but provided the prospectors with food, shelter and local clothing (Jones 1927:100-2).  They were already familiar with the English language, guns and alcohol.  Although Jones was a stranger in a new land, the many traders, prospectors and adventurers who had traveled this landscape before him had prepared his way, through information that flowed in the networks between prospectors.  Although not temporally and spatially related, there are shared environmental and material challenges which legitimise using this recent narrative as an analogy for how a BBC prospector on the Scandinavian Peninsula may have gone about his business."

The authors delve into the phases of prospecting, emphasizing that much of actual work is front-loaded into preparatory tasks, such as exploration and surveying.  Makes sense when you compare the time and resources to drill an oil well.  Much of the time is spent in the exploration and geological survey phase.  Even more time is spent firmly establishing legalities such as legal conveyances, easement and mineral rights and sometimes - security.

Bell Beakers traveling outside their core settlements into the distant reaches would have been confronted with similar primitive realities.  At least initially:  easement privileges, permissions to exploit resources, right to trade, logistical support, security.  Remember that Beakers, despite their prowess and pioneering spirit, are throughout their cultural existence numerically disadvantaged and unfamiliar with the territories they enter.  

Like the Chutchki, North Sea farming and fishing societies may have welcomed, or at least tolerated, adventurous foreigners eager to exploit resources and establish better trade.  At least for metal resources, Melheim and Prescott emphasize that Scandinavian metal prospecting didn't require success, and in fact, like the story of Bill Jones and so many Klondike adventurers, it appears that these ores were not fully exploited.

Here's some of the key points that the authors believe would have been important for these explorers.  I've shorten these, but each one is expanded upon in the text.

(1) To look for colourful bedrock typical of copper deposits...
(2) To follow river valleys and river beds
(3) To read the vegetation (for evidence of heavy metals)
(4) To read the geology
(5) The ability to relocate resources after their discovery

This takes us beyond the retarded, two-dimensional understanding of 'priest-kings' digging scary metal out of the ground.  These were highly specialized and time-consuming tasks that required considerable negotiations with the local nations, probably through interpreters.  Many of these efforts proved fruitless, at least the intended industry.
 
Melheim, Anne Lene & Prescott, Christopher (2016). Exploring New Territories – Expanding Frontiers: Bowmen and Prospectors on the Scandinavia Peninsula in the 3rd–2nd Millennia BC, In Anne Lene Melheim; Håkon Glørstad & Ann Zanette Tsigaridas Glørstad (ed.),  Comparative Perspectives on Past Colonisation, Maritime Interaction and Cultural Integration.  Equinox Publishing.  ISBN 9781781790489.  10.  [Link]

See also "Slettabo: Europe's northernmost beaker.  The BBC in Norway - from black box to historical watershed" 

Economics and Assery (Shai et al, 2016)

Here's an interesting paper on the importance of the ass in the developing Near Eastern World Economy.  Before I get to the paper, let's start by asking a simple question.

Based on the morphology of horses in Western Europe in the Early Bronze Age, is it possible that many of the unrefined tarpan-like domestic horses are in-fact hinnies or mules?  I'm not sure a tarpan or hinny are distinguishable from the skeleton or teeth alone because they are very similar, but we do know that 1) morphologically modern horses were present 2)  asses were also present before disappearing again.*

Generally, it is in the Beaker period that horses begin appearing in Western Europe before exponentiating rapidly in the Bronze Age.  (Davis, 1987)

Donkeys from Tomb of Ti, 5th Dynasty (2,500-2,300 B.C.)

We have seen unequivocal genetic proof that the ass was present in Chalcolithic Iberia (Cardoso et al, 2013) and there should be reasonable certainty that this misplaced Iberian beast was a domestic work and trade animal.  Within the context of Iberian trade networks reaching into Continental Europe, the importance of proving the existence of this animal at this location/time period cannot be underscored enough.

The authors of this paper examine the surprisingly deep domestic history of the ass, but also consider the physical stress indicators that point to the ass being used as a pack animal.  They stress the importance of this animal in the formation of a sophisticated economy that allowed commodities to be moved with greater efficiency.

Another interesting facet to the Shai et al case is the architectural implications in ancient Near Eastern cities for accommodating a donkey with a pack.  This may be true as well for some of the passageways of walled enclosures of Portugal.    

The Importance of the Donkey as a Pack Animal in the Early Bronze Age Southern Levant:
A View from Tell es-Safi/ Gath

By Itzhaq Shai, Haskel J. Greenfield, Annie Brown, Shira Albaz and Aren M. Maeir
Deutscher Verein zur Erforschung Palastinas
(2016) [Link]

Abstract

In this paper, we review the evidence for the use of the domestic donkey as a mode of transportation in the Early Bronze Age. The study will present the domestic donkey remains (artefactual and zoological) and their archaeological context from the Early Bronze Age III domestic neighborhood at Tell esSafi/ Gath. The remains indicate the significant role that donkeys played in the daily life of the inhabitants. This reflects on our understanding of their role in the trade networks and mode of transportation that existed within the emerging urban cultures in the southern Levant during the 3rd mill. B.C.E.

* It could be that the ass periodically fell out of favor due to innovations and circumstances that kept making it obsolete in Europe.  These could be the improvement or availability of roads, bridges, carts, wagons, shipping, shepherd dogs, ponies, draught horses and fields.

Conversely, as the lion and wolf population dwindled and Europe became less wild, attacks on livestock [this post] became less common.  The frugal mid-line browsing donkey is less desirable as Europe is deforested.  Basically it's a case of having the awesome skills but in the wrong job.

Being Tall

In places where swaddling was recently practiced, the desired end-state was to develop infants into taller, straighter adults.  Algonquians, Mongolians and Swedes bound the child to a board in infancy which would help develop the musculature in the most erect posture.

Why they troubled to do this is simple.  Crooked, curved people are historically looked upon as the lowest social order, whilst the fully erect and tall are viewed as strong, healthy, noble.

The English word crooked, as in "Crooked Hillary" or Richard Nixon's famous retort, "I am not a crook", is to literally say that someone is a scoundrel, felon or thief.  The etymology of crook connotes a crooked (curved) person, such as a haggardly witch, a hunchback or a sickly beggar.  Parents want their children to sit up straight, walk straight, and in many places practice walking with a book on the head.

In all likelihood Beakerfolk swaddled their children based on a number of clues, and by extension they did this to make them straighter and taller.  They likely had an active understanding of the effects of swaddling and did so intentionally if they were like later peoples such as the Mongolians, who did so with the intent of improving height and posture.

When we speak of Bell Beaker brachycephaly, we are usually speaking of two separate, and not necessarily related, phenomena.  One is natural brachycephaly which is a long-term human trend, especially in the northern mammal populations.  This may have been further exaggerated due to child rearing practices of Beakers.  The other is the flattened occiput (common to many Beakers), which is entirely the result of an external factor; as I've speculated for a long time, swaddling bands, clothes and cradles. [See here]

Swaddled Beaker babies may not seem that interesting at first, but given the hypothesized severity of the practice another cultural dimension comes to light, that of physical height.

Most Beaker men across Europe seem to have been the height of the Amesbury Archer, 5.8" (176cm), more or less.  This is taken by measuring the femur, although the health of the collagen may be factored in as well (this would likely make a greater difference between many Neolithic populations).  5.7, 5.8 is the mean height of diagnostic Beakers, which is tall for the age.

Some Beaker men were very tall for the times.  Cornaclery Man, Racton Man, Gristhorpe Man and Hindow Burial 1 were all in the 6.1 to 6.3 range (186-192cm).  (There are others, but I just pulled these out of the backpocket)  Now remember, this is based on the skeletal structure alone and other factors may be at play, such as the elongation of the spine as a result of infant binding.

The curvature of the spine is measured in Cobb Angles, which would suggest a person with a "theoretically" flat back would be 3" (or 7.6cm) taller than natural.  It's difficult to know the degree to which Beaker backs were malformed by cradle boards, but their heads were definitely malformed, so low degree backs (not zero degree) are not impossible.  So with that being said, it's possible that many Bell Beakers (men and women) were even taller than their skeletal predisposition, if only by an 1 to 1.5 inches (2 to 4 cm).

Maybe, maybe not.  But people will do anything to add an inch.

Facial Reconstruction of Late Beaker Ava (Hew Morrison via MtoE)

Here's an article from MessagetoEagle entitled "Facial Reconstruction of Ava: 3,700-Year-Old Bronze Age Woman"

The reconstruction of this Late Beaker woman was created by forensic artist, Hew Morrison.  He used tooth enamel to estimate some of the soft tissue.  I don't know if DNA has been taken from Ava, however it would be nice to verify hair and eye color in the near future.

Ava's reconstruction by Hew Morrison (Via MessagetoEagle)

Ava is noteworthy for having an especially deformed head.  Not only is she hyper-brachycephalic, but her occiput is flat as a pancake.  Two good examples of flatheads are the deformed standard-bearer of UCL's Beaker project and the Mesetan woman hyper-linked in the same post [here].
 

See this post "Ava of the Highlands"

See Maya Hoole's  "The Achavanich Beaker Burial Project"

The Beaker People Project (MP Pearson et al, 2016)

After a long wait... the results of the British mobility project are published.  Hat tip Eurogenes.

First of all, I'd like to thank the authors for putting this article up at the Durham University site [here].  I know this will be appreciated by many, especially given the importance of the work.

The legal hurdles of destructive testing on human remains are probably significant enough that multiple tests might be performed at a strike.  Isotopic and radiocarbon studies seem to precede genetic ones, so I'm hopeful that there will be some amount of DNA to follow.  Nevertheless, this one paper is, in of itself, a very big paper covering almost 300 individuals in the Beaker period.

Excerpt from University College London (UCL) Project Page* (extracted 5/2016 [Link])

I'll point out some items of interest and go from there.

Head shape:

Significant craniometric differences were observed between those individuals of the Early Neolithic and this Beaker period population.  Mostly expected.

And this:

"Certain individual skulls exhibited occipital flattening, a cranial modification probably caused by infants lying flat on their backs or being secured to a cradle-board."

And this:

"In contrast, two Neolithic period skulls exhibit artificial cranial deformation resulting from infant head-binding to produce long skulls."

Mamas!

Obviously, I agree with most of this, unless if intended to be a sole explanation:

"This evidence for artificial skull deformation was recognized at the time of excavation (Bateman 1861; Wilson 1863: 273–4) but has been largely forgotten; it goes some way to resolving the long-term debate about the existence of racial types of brachycephalic Bell Beaker people and dolichocephalic Neolithic people across many parts of Europe (Abercromby 1912; Childe 1925: 90; Brothwell 1960; Brothwell & Krzanowski 1974; Gerhardt 1976; Brodie 1994) by introducing a cultural explanation for some of these differences in cranial shape."

Certainly the heads of Bell Beakers were often deformed as I've speculated due to intense cradling/swaddling, possibly betraying a much deeper Asian ancestry IMO:  [here] and [here], among others.  On the other hand, the ancestral dimension is, by far, the most important aspect of head shape of modern Europeans who are no longer intensely swaddled but still exhibit much shorter heads than Paleolithic or Early Neolithic Europeans.

Sites of the Beaker remains (Page 13 of Pearson et al, 2016.)

Diet

Meat, fats (dairy), ensalada, despite living near the coasts.  This has also been shown of Beakerfolk in Portugal, Spain and other places.  There is a distinction made between this diet and the Iron Age and this may be due to the introduction of the chicken and chicken eggs (which I imagine would increase the sulfur-nitrogen content).  It appears that Mike P. Pearson will pen a separate paper about this, and I'll go ahead and put my money on the chickens.

Gender and mobility

Men, women, boys and girls moved with no observable differences among gender or age.   Lifetime immigrants are about 29%.  That's yuuugee IMO.  Remember, people live unbelievably short lives, so to 'catch' an immigrant from random burials is fairly significant.  As Parker & Co. suggest, the number is probably much higher, and in fact, appears to accelerate leading into the EBA.

From where?

Part of what's bizarre about Beakers in the island of Britain, is that immigrants seem to be coming from every direction.  From Holland, Amorica, the Alps, Ireland, somewhere near Iberia, Central Europe, everywhere.

This is also true in Wessex (*correction, I said county, however this is more or less a region rather than an administrative unit.  This encompasses Wiltshire and surrounds ) where some of the most famous sites are found.  The really flummoxing idea is that Bell Beakers in this area have such diverse backgrounds (or personal histories):

"The wide range of δ18O values (16.9‰–19.3‰) amongst this group makes it unlikely that they derive from a single place of origin."

Some conclusions:

"The overall lack of distinction between male and female migration histories across Britain suggests that notions of exogamous exchange of female marriage partners do not explain the observed patterns of movement in Britain."

and..

"Despite the uncertainties of isotopic provenancing, we consider that most lifetime movement during the Chalcolithic–Early Bronze Age was within Britain rather than from Europe into Britain."

We should rationally know, to whatever degree immigrants came to the Isles from the Continent, that it would be nearly impossible to see this from isotopes alone.  It would be like conducting isotopic analysis on American cemeteries and saying 'there was high mobility within America, but immigration from Europe played little role'.

BBB comments:

There's one piece of the mobility puzzle that's missing from many genetic discussions, not that this paper was wanting, but more or less aimed at migration through the lens of genetics. So I'll use cattle as an illustration; using a Brahman bull that's set out with 30 Angus cows.

In our scenario the Brahman bull is the 'immigrant' since he was brought to our herd.  So in our herd the first generation immigrant population is 1/30, but the genetic impact of immigration in the second year is roughly 1/2, or rather a quarter of the total herd.  In the third and fourth generation, using the same bull, the immigration impact is very, very substantial.  In fact, back-breeding to the bull may give us a population structure that is increasingly more immigrant-like than our original cows.

I think this is the missing component of our understanding the Beaker phenomenon from a genetic standpoint.  The default, reasonable view of migration is contained within the frame of a certain percentage of foreign barbarians moving to a new place and doing barbaric things at a specific moment in time.  But the genetic Beakerization of Europe may not be the result of a single epoch, but rather an increased importance and reliance on high-status males, high-status clans, high-status social orders exerting downward pressure on those who are increasingly marginalized, ostracized and de-landed.  Of course, this allows for or requires an original, foreign element.  Just saying the process of change may be more complex than barbarians running up ramparts.

A wide range of social phenomena may be at play, from very dark things to medium dark things, but it may have been a long process, possibly one that has continued to the modern era.  The DNA this paper eludes to may answer the question of speed.  Without a doubt, the genetic transformation is already evident.

This genetic complexity may be best illustrated in Beaker pottery itself, which incorporates on native bodies the Beaker themes and worldview, more often made by women whose deep matri-lineage had roots in older pottery cultures.



Mike Parker Pearson, Andrew Chamberlain, Mandy Jay, Mike Richards, Alison Sheridan, Neil Curtis, Jane Evans, Alex Gibson, Margaret Hutchison, Patrick Mahoney, Peter Marshall, Janet Montgomery, Stuart Needham, Sandra O'Mahoney, Maura Pellegrini and Neil Wilkin
Antiquity / Volume  90 / Issue 351 / June 2016, pp 620 - 637 Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2016
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2016.72 (About DOI), Published online: 17 May 2016


Abstract:

"The appearance of the distinctive ‘Beaker package’ marks an important horizon in British prehistory, but was it associated with immigrants to Britain or with indigenous converts? Analysis of the skeletal remains of 264 individuals from the British Chalcolithic–Early Bronze Age is revealing new information about the diet, migration and mobility of those buried with Beaker pottery and related material. Results indicate a considerable degree of mobility between childhood and death, but mostly within Britain rather than from Europe. Both migration and emulation appear to have had an important role in the adoption and spread of the Beaker package."

Crux in the 3rd Millennium (Michael Hoskin)

Some Beaker pots, more it seems from southerly latitudes, had a cross on the bottom, usually interpreted to be sun rays or maybe a wheel.  There is sometimes also instead a cross that is more sun-like corona or solar blazing.  Regarding the general pot decoration, it's probable that Beaker funerary pots were making references to the sun (makes sense for people buried facing the sunrise).

The ale of these pots could have been gruited with henbane (the herb of the sun god) as in much of Europe during the Bronze and Iron Age.  (At least one Spanish beaker has been shown to contain this substance)  It may have been the over-gruiting of henbane that caused berserkergang, where Iron Age Scandinavian warriors stripped off their clothes and became like wolves, boars or werewolves, panting and foaming at the mouth, furious like the god himself.  The nudity of Celtic warriors in battle could be another ancient reference to this battlefield, performance-enhancing drug.

I'll continue now, for your consideration, to throw a few more items into the cosmological stew of Beaker mythology.  The idea here is more or less to put the pieces of their material culture in a particular context.  As I've said before, using the beliefs of proto-historic and modern Europeans is a sufficient and plausible starting point IMO, especially since the underlying metaphysical worldview and genetics of Western Europe has changed little since the Early Bronze Age, at least its constituents.

In the previous post on the Beaker settlement of Son Oleza and its Son Mas Sanctuary of the Balearic Islands, I became interested in the interpretation of an astroarchaeologist, Michael Hoskin, who looked through the viewing stone to the saddle between two mountains.  From the rear sight post to the saddle, he envisioned a spectacular prehistoric object of Bell Beaker attention, Crux.

The Southern Cross in 2,000 B.C. through the Siting Stone of Son Mas (Time Team)

A good place to start is with Hoskins in his own words..
The video is embedded to the exact location where Michael Hoskin explains his reasoning.  The image of the sighting stone can also be found at 25:39.



The constellation of Crux (the Southern Cross) was slowly setting on Europe in the third millennium and in the procession of the constellations, Crux slowly slipped beneath the horizon year by year.  It was visible at the beginning of the third millennium from Stonehenge, although the star Acrux had already disappeared; and within the first millennium it would have disappeared from almost all of Europe.

Stonehenge itself, BTW, appears to have had a long runway oriented towards Crux. (Ruggles, pg 345)  Wayland's Smithy is also hypothesized to have had Crux aligned 'windows'. (North, page 38)

From a mythological standpoint, this is an interesting twist given Crux's association with a dying sun, descent into the underworld, and the sun's rebirth or resurrection.  In most of Iron Age Europe, the end of the calendar year was followed by an unregulated period during which the Saturnelia festival and the Winter Solstice occurred, representing the death of the sun and the current order.  Remnants of this persist in the names of days in the English week, with the week being born on Sun-day and the death of the week on Saturn's-day.

The waning solar year brings shorter and shorter days until finally the Winter Solstice arrives (being Latin for 'sun-stopped').  It's at this time that the Sun dwelled in cross for 2-3 days before being 'reborn' right around Christmas, to which the days begin increasing.

Cross Symbol Gold Foil from Britain (British Museum, order FI-000820937)

I've speculated a little about what descent into the underworld might have looked like for a people native to a certain geology [here].  In many ways, this belief is somewhat similar to Egyptian religion in that the dead are transported via a solar barque [here] and [here] via the Southern Cross (to which Egyptian pyramids are oriented). 

See also [here]

and

Michael Hoskin [here]

Idols at Perdiogoes (Valera and Evangelista x2)

After a long wait, Valera and Evangelista's paper is openly available (linked at bottom).  I'll move back and forth between the paper and other things...

So quick background.  In the Atlantic Neolithic and beyond, you see certain iconography emphasizing power eyebrows and 'seeing' eyes in various expressions.  In some rock art you may have big eyes and eyebrows on a stick figure.  Some megalithic tombs have looking eyes and eyebrows scrawled on the rock.  These 'seeing' characters seem to be very widely distributed in the ancient world, from the Northern Pontic, the Middle East to Southern Europe.

A Weridly Western idol out of Figure 2

There is deep Western Eurasian superstition of the 'evil eye' in the circum-Mediterranean zone which remains strong today.  When the historical period begins in the Middle East, anthropomorphic talismans or amulets with inlaid blue eyes or owl imagery are being used to protect the living and the dead from very bad things.  I would be comfortable with the assumption that the Southern Iberian idol tradition is one distinct variation of this wider and enduring superstition found throughout the Mediterranean and South Asia.

In Southern Iberia certain types of anthropomorphic ivories become increasingly naturalistic and male in the middle of the third millennium (this paper).  Many have lines across the face interpreted by Valera and Evangelista to be facial tattoos, although in some rock art depictions they look like cat whiskers or stylized facial hair IMO.  [See also]

I think a very satisfying case can be made that these lines represent the markings of an owl's face, The eyes of the owl do look 'soul penetrating' and the plumage around and below the eyes do look like many of these representations.  Like cornos, owl figures were commonly used in Roman Italy to combat the evil eye, and oddly enough, in non-Iberian Romance languages the 'streiga' (strix) is the word for the shape-shifting witch.* 

A Common Scops Owl (the 'Boar Owl' in the Basque language) (Brian Scott)

The most populous owls of the ancient Mediterranean world might have been the Common Scops Owl (I believe literally called a boar owl in Basque maybe for its 'tusks'), which has a high flute hoot, and the Screech Owl that sounds like an old woman (or witch) screaming in the night. [example]  (I got to experience this in the form of a heart attack while sleeping in the woods one night)

Back to the paper:

Not to be confused by the title of this blog, these idols are largely a continuation of a long Neolithic religious tradition that is slowly maturing.  The very natural figures are included with the cremated collective remains of some people of Perdigoes and then at some point, and to a degree that I don't really understand, individual burials and beaker artifacts are sometimes present, mostly in the damaged upper layers or in certain quarters of the site.

Now having read the paper, one of the more interesting points is the apparent uniformity in the observant, male figures, and it seems the arms are closely held about the waist and carefully holding something that is not well defined, perhaps a club as tentatively described in the paper.  I've tried to guess at other possibilities to what the figure is holding, and my best guess is either a torch or an ornamented 'hueso largo', as illustrated in Maju's site linked above.

Cutout of Figure 5

What I find especially interesting is that this period of artistic achievement and naturalism is followed by what Valera previously described as the almost 'iconoclastic' tendency of those that followed.  Few material things made by Beakers could be described as naturalistic art.  Those exceedingly few images that could pass (Swiss menhirs, a Millares sun bowl, or the Folkton Drums, for example), are more likely localized deviations due to cross-culture influence.  Really, I cannot think of any denominator of even a single thing in the Beaker sphere that isn't rigidly schematic, geometric or skewmorphic in its expression.  That alone, seems to be its denominator.

A previous post on work of Valera describes the cultural change that begins in this Late Neolithic period in this area and quickly accelerating into the Bronze Age [here].
 

You can see in Figure 4 below that these figures aren't just some random guy carved in ivory.  There is a specific pose where the individual is engaged in a specific action that people who lived at this time would recognize.  The hair is strange, it's a very long stylized hair that runs down the back.

Anthropomorphic Figurines at Perdigões Enclosure: Naturalism, Body Proportion and Canonical Posture as Forms of Ideological Language

ANTÓNIO CARLOS VALERA AND LUCY SHAW EVANGELISTA (2014)
NIA- Archaeological Research Unit – Era Arqueologia, Portugal

This paper focusses on a set of anthropomorphic figurines. It suggests that realistic human proportion
and canonical body posture were pursued in the carving of these objects as a means of expressing ideology, in a context of diversified forms of manipulation of bodies in funerary practices. It is argued that, against a background of predominantly schematic art, the more realistic and canonical anthropomorphic representation of the human body was used to communicate a set of ideological statements in a more controlled and immediate way, in a period of ontological and cosmological transition.

European Journal of Archaeology 17 (2) 2014, 286–300 [Link] 

* Also horse-shoes in later times, and boar's tusks in earlier times.  By the way, if you dig a little deeper into Iberian plaque idols, phalanx idols, and the various types, clearly some are owls and this is probably true for the oculado images as well.

The reason a screech owl would be associated with a shape-shifter should seem pretty obvious.  It doesn't sound a little like a woman screaming, it sounds A LOT like a woman screaming.  A Neolithic  person may have heard an old woman scream, then see the screech owl fly overhead.  A WITCH!

Symbolism, Metaphors & Beaker Underworld

Reading two recent papers sparked some ideas about funerary wares. 

The first was a discussion on the transition away from positive funerary structures to negative ones in the third millennium in Portugal (Valera, 1).  The other involved gypsum inlay paste of funerary ware (Besse, 2)  (Calcium carbonate and bone paste or a combination mash seem to be more common than gypsum alone)  This got me thinking about the significance of the most basic features of Beaker pottery.

Gypsum will normally occur as stratified veins in oxidized sedimentary layers, so the image to the left is something that might be visible in a creek bed or escarpment in some regions, more often outside Europe with the exception of Portugal and the North Pontic-Caspian region. 

What I find striking is that Beaker funerary ware, despite its many influences, generally retains core characteristics that necessarily must have been important.  After all, cars have changed a lot in the last hundred years, but most still have four wheels, and having four wheels seems to be more important than the shape or size of the car. 

Funeral pottery is almost always an oxidized red and they almost always have stratified bands of horizontal, white inlay.  Red, white, horizontal, stratified. 

The actual motifs could be sometimes borrowed from other ancestral cultures. For example, the Polish cup on the right has what might be tablet weaves, especially on the second to bottom band.  Again, I'll try not to over-project (and this is all theoretical), but the character seems to be suggestive of the cavernous depths of the Earth, and in the above case, maybe weaves associated with identity.

I'll get to the point and state that character of the beaker looks to be metaphorically connected to being buried in the Earth, the underworld and the contents of the beaker itself. 

We can look to later Bronze Age religions, those of the Greeks and Egyptians, an sensibly extrapolate some concepts about the sequence of events after death to Beaker religion.  Immediately upon death, the person needed to cross a river in a ferry or solar boat.  In Egyptian religion, the sun god cycled from the sky to the underworld each day taking the day's dead with him.  The Greek paid his way across the river into the Greek underworld with the money placed under his tongue.

The Atlantic gold lunulae look very much like solar boats [this post], and while found near burial sites, don't yet seem to have been worn by the dead but were instead hidden in weird places.  Were they possibly worn by someone regularly officiating the funeral?

What we can be certain of though, is that Bell Beakers were oriented in a side-prostrated, flex position towards the rising of the sun.  A strange body preservation story may be developing as well.  The accompanying beaker seems to have contained beer, and in a few cases it appears sufficiently provable that beer was bittered with henbane (herb of the sun god in European history).

Burials might contain offerings or payment in order to find passage or protection during this crucible.  The dead faced trials, tests and trickery and that this happened in the cavernous depths of the Earth.

At the same time, I don't want to suggest that Beakers were even consciously aware of this metaphorical meaning, assuming it's at all valid.  We say and do many things that are riddled with metaphors and history, but we just do them because that's the way things are done. 



1 Valera, A. "Twilight of Enclosures" 2015
2  Besse, M "Territorialités, transferts, interculturalités dans les contextes de la diffusion du
Campaniforme en Europe" 2015

Slash and Burn (Costa, Lopez, Kaal, Martinez, 2015)

"Environmental Changes in North-Western Iberia Around the Bell Beaker Period" is a chapter looking at evidence of changes in the landscape, soil and climate during the time of the Beakers, keeping in mind that they are one group among many.  (The hyperlink should be visible above)

This is a continuation of the previewable portion of "The Bell Beaker Transition in Europe" by Prieto-Martinez and Salanova.

Burning the Brushwood (Eero Järnefelt, 1893)

It may be easy to oversell the environmental impact of the Beaker period since it is really a continuation of Neolithic clearing practices and exasperated by climate change at the end of the third millenium.

Nevertheless, these authors see a fairly dramatic acceleration of soil erosion and clear evidence of slash and burn indicators in the soil.  The Beaker Period marks an intense increase in land use (in this area) for agricultural activities.*   It's during this time that many rock surfaces at high elevations became exposed, creating the canvass of Bronze Age rock art.

We already know from multiple isotopic studies that Beakerfolk had a diet rich in meats and dairy.  Aside from diet, loom weights suggest that much of their clothing was made of wool, so it follows that more pasture would have been required.

In addition to needing more room for animals, some crops like barley might have needed sandier soil at a higher and cooler elevation.  During the Beaker period many places experienced a cooler and wetter trend and this may have partly caused the shifting of preference between the varieties of barley and wheat grown, or maybe even where they were grown.

One thing that has been common in the United States is to use goats to clear lush underbrush in a deciduous landscape.  It'd be interesting to know if there was a relationship between the goat population and deforestation/defoliation during the Beaker period.


* I seem to recall in other areas of Europe, older fields are no longer maintained.  I'm not sure how the population size is estimated (concerning the population crash of the Late Neolithic), however erosion and drainage may have required seeking out previously unused land.

Children as Potters (Garrido-Pena, Herrero-Corral 2015)

I just changed my mind on ten things.  Seriously, this paper approaches Beaker pottery production through the lens of modern ethnography and then looks at the archaeological record in a way that makes greater sense.

Tiny Beaker (Thanet Arch?)

One item discovered throughout the ceramic-making parts of the planet are miniatures like the one above.  In the Late Neolithic of Europe, items like this found their way into graves which gives us a rare opportunity for some prehistoric insight.  Miniature grave items, whether they are tiny pots, battle axes or arrowheads, have sociological dimensions in the Late Neolithic as relates to idealism and the afterlife (Turek), but really there is another dimension too.

What Garrido and Herrero demonstrate is clear signals of prehistoric childhood apprenticeship using Bell Beaker as an example.  They extrapolate the ethnographic data from pre-modern cultures to show that tiny, medium-sized, and poorly-made Beaker pottery follow the natural trajectory of apprenticeship and learning by growing children.

Throughout the world, girls sat with their mothers at an early age, watching, playing and finally pinching tiny play pots.  Given the standardization of the Beaker pots, I previously believed before reading this paper that Beaker pottery was a specialized craft, executed by certain individuals.

There is now a more appealing explanation for the production of Beaker ceramics, that it was always made by ordinary women, and that all Beaker women participated in its production.  These women, every woman, began learning this craft and other crafts in early childhood.  That has profound implications for the miscegenation of regional pottery styles and the begleitkeramik itself, and I will absolutely go out on a limb and suggest that the genetic data (right now) can already complement this view.

To put it another way, we know that ethnic Bell Beakers intermarried frequently with local folks and, unsurprisingly, local character makes its way into the local Beaker pottery (or the other way around).  The only way to fully appreciate Irish food vessels or Dutch Zone Corded beakers or Artenac culture beakers, is to quite literally accept these material items as one product of actual ethnic miscegenation, largely between men of an Iberian Maritime Beaker ancestry and women of Carrowkeel Neolithic, Single Grave Culture and Artenac I culture, etc.  Blended families, blended pottery.

Another question is the poorly-made pygmy pottery that sometimes appears in the graves of adults.  In other respects there appears to be (IMO) at times evidence of sentimental grave offerings, such as single beads or an extra cup or equipment, and in the case of pottery appears likely that child pottery was sometimes deposited by those mourners in attendance of the funeral.

Really, I think the implications of this subject are more important that the many analyses of pottery and decoration.  This cuts right down to the important question of 'who' and the topic of 'cultural learning'.

Allow me to now put a slice of pizza in the punchbowl.  If all Beaker girls are learning how to make Beaker pottery at a young age, this would more likely be the result of "Unbiased Cultural Transmission".  It is the 'infinite alleles' model in which there is a tenancy for natural drift, but no explicit bias for prestige or non-conformity.

Most of the late models for the spread, adoption, imitation or trade of beaker pottery has been a preference for the later, that it was 'prestigious' or was part of some weirdo bonding ritual.  But I'll put this to brass tacks and get to the point:  Unbiased Cultural Transmission through childhood learning involves a stable and mature culture transmitting itself through the vehicle of ethnicity.

Papers can be found here.  Published 2015 [Link]

*Footnote for a paper involving lots of math and cultural transmission in archaeology assemblages:
"Neutral Cultural Transmission in Time Averaged Archaeological Assemblages" Mark E. Madsen Journal of Anthropological Archaeology (2012)  [here]

Tablet Weaves and Pottery

European textile tools and resources change rapidly with the progress of the Beakers and Battle Axe folk.  In fact, for all the talk about daggers, copper and drinking cups, the enduring impression of that time in Western Europe may have been Beaker clothing, especially that of the warrior elite.

Regarding the changes in the Sardinian textile industry, Luca Lai, 2008 says "...the increase in the symbolic importance of decorated textiles suggested for the 3rd millennium has also been connected to the Bell Beaker decorative motifs."  One component of that decorative dress may have been tablet borders, belts and straps.

Simple Tablet Weaves:  upper right (tablet-weavers.dreamwidth) & lower left (www.shelaghlewins.com)

You can see that the banding of Bell Beaker pottery looks very similar to the simpler tablet weaves.  The fact that so much of the Beaker pottery is broken up into bordered and equally-widthed geometric zones would seem to support the projection of tablet weave iconography on pottery.  In fact, bell beaker zoned bands could reflect the actual life size of tablet weaves given their general sizes.
 
I've waxingly opined on a number of decorative motifs with regards to gruits. [here], [here], [here],[here]

It's difficult to identify tablet weaving in the archaeological record.  The tablets and the weaves are perishable, so that leaves only a few avenues to research.  Using comparative analysis across distance and the very thin finds in the Hallstatt mines or the Tarim Basin, several authors have attempted to locate its origin in the Southern Caucasus or Western Iran in the 3rd or 4th millennium.

It is noteworthy that the hashed, chevron, diagonal, diamond and zig-zag motifs follow the order of complexity in tablet weaving, like motifs which adorn the pottery in Northwestern Iran beginning in the Pottery Neolithic.

See also:
Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Age E.J.W. Barber [Link]