Archaeometrics - Beaker Pottery in the 3rd Millennium (Salanova et al)

This study by Salanova, Prieto, Clop, Convertini, Lantes and Martinez looks at the elemental composition of 1,129 pottery artifacts and inlay paste from the area seen below.

Fig 1.  The Nine Study Areas.

Conclusions from the paper:

"The results of the research allow us to confirm and further refine a model of the circulation mechanisms of Bell Beakers that was published several years ago...  This model proposed three types of pottery circulation to explain the wide distribution of this style: the circulation of pots when techniques, style and raw materials are locally unknown, despite having raw materials locally available; and the circulation of ideas when the Bell Beaker style has obviously influenced the potters, who carried on with their own local traditions."

"The circulation of pots, despite being a rare occurrence, has been well and truly confirmed.  Here, we can distinguish between the displacement of pots for special occasions and the movement of one part of the domestic vessels with the mobility of groups."

"The circulation of potters is also confirmed.  The three Dutch AOO beakers from northern France with their local raw materials clearly refer to the foreign potters who produced outside their traditional sphere... The exchange network for flint daggers that developed during the third millennium BC from Grand-Pressigny (central France) to the Netherlands and Germany could explain the presence of these foreign potters..."

"The combination of XRD [X-ray powder defraction] and TSPA [Thin Section Petrographic Analysis] made it possible to verify their complementarity, as some minerals, such as chorite, talc and kaolinite, were only detected by XRD.  The use of TS-PA alone is unlikely to lead to the detection of these phyllosilicates, due to their small grain size.  In contrast, other inclusions such as rock fragments (granite, mica schists), plant remains, charcoal and grog could only be detected by TS-PA.  Due to the complementary technique of TS-PA, it was also possible to verify the intentional addition of tempers made of quartz, mica and rounded iron nodules (Garcia-Heras et al. 2009)"

To summarize, it is demonstrated that (1) pottery circulated, albeit at low levels (2) Beaker potters circulated, who then used local materials to make Beaker pottery (3) native potters contributed to the regional flavor of Beaker pottery, which itself sometimes spread.


Beaker Blog on pottery
[Tablet Weaves and Pottery]
[The Media and The Message]
[The Copper Color of Beaker Pottery]
[Cerveza for Your Ciempozuelos]


What are large-scale Archaeometric programmes for? Bell beaker pottery and societies from the third millennium BC in Western Europe. Salanova, L., Prieto-Martínez, M. P., Clop-García, X., Convertini, F., Lantes-Suárez, O., and Martínez-Cortizas, A. (2015) doi: 10.1111/arcm.12173.

Abstract:

"Variability in clay processing recipes for pottery is still at a descriptive stage as far as prehistoric contexts are concerned. This paper intends to go beyond our traditional limits, based on the best-documented case for prehistory, the Bell Beaker style, which spread throughout the whole of Europe during the third millennium bc. The thousands of archaeometric analyses that have been carried out on the main concentrations from France, Spain and Portugal are taken into account in order to reconstruct the circulation mechanisms of the pottery and the social organization of the communities who used it."

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]

Cerveza For Your Ciempozuelos

It's likely beakers were used for alcohol, probably barely beer, but also meads, nogs and other cereal beers.  The evidence isn't overwhelming for all of Europe, but it leads that direction.  At least in Northern Spain, there seems to be a fairly good association with alcohol and beakers.  This thesis by Vaca Alonso examines the earliest alcohols from the Early Neolithic through the Bronze Age in Northern Spain.

La Sima by Luis Pascual Repiso, Aratikos Arqueólogos S. L.

She points out that alcohol beverages have likely been in Europe since the Early Neolithic.  Various evidences from Cardial to Grooved Ware point that direction.  Her conclusion is that beer takes on a new meaning with the ideology and idealism of Bell Beaker Culture.

To go off tangent here...

One thing not too surprising is the presence of henbane in some of the Meseta beakers.  In fact, before beer was hopped, probably all beer gruits, including those of the Christian era, were mildly psychoactive.  Henebane was probably one of many different additives used for beer gruit.

European purity laws had tinkered with regulating beer ingredients since the eleventh century, but it was the Protestant Reformation that fueled the anti-gruit lobby (see here) and this was imposed by various duchies during the Holy Roman Empire, the most famous known as the Reinheitsgebot.

The purity laws had a complex mix of cronyism and politics, but it appears that Protestants were more interested in lowering the hotness of beer, whose additives multiplied alcohol's unchaste behaviors and chemical dependence.  Hops, it was known, made the drinker sedated, relaxed, and the estrogenic compounds decreased libido or increase erectile dysfunction.  So hops it came to be.

Henbane, the Witch's plant. [USDA Forrest Service]

I've speculated that all of the iconography and linguistic terminology associated with witchcraft has its origins in brewing [here].  Henbane, which seems to have been a common additive to early gruit, was in ancient times associated with the god Apollos Helios* (god of sunlight), brother to Selene Artemis (goddess of the moon).  I've commented on these associations [here] and also the possibility that beaker decoration (corded, acacia, herringbone) corresponds to the principle gruit or bittering ingredient (cannabis, acacia, henbane, etc).

The linguistic etymology for henbane and hemp similarly emerge from PIE bhongo or soma1, generally attributed to the sun god who rides at daybreak.  Because PIE does not appear to distinguish from various psychoactives, it's possible multiple drugs were lumped into a single category.

A possible etymology of English hene-bane or heng-belle may also be found in Old High German as constructed by Siebs as the German god, Henno Wotan, aka the Roman sun-god Mercury or Greek Apollo. (Liberman, 2008)  It's interesting to note that the etymology associates the various sun gods + death (aka hene) for people who were buried facing the sunrise (regardless if it was hyoscyamus niger or not)  But it's also interesting to note that both PtG hene and pech are associated with black resins.

A long list of mood altering additives were originally put in alcoholic beverages, especially beer.  I'm very interested in seeing a more complete chemical analysis from beaker pottery and dental plaque.  I think the decoration of European pottery hints at some of those substances.

La cerveza en la prehistoria reciente: contextos de producción y consumo en la Península Ibérica, Alicia Vaca Alonso, Universidad de Valledoloid, 2014 [Link]

More:

(1) Flattery & Swartz on Soma [here]
*In fact, the Greek word, Herba Apollinaris, is 'the herb of Apollo'

Thanet Arch Acacia motif? (footnote)

At the hip of this Thanet, England beaker and you'll notice what appears to be an Acacia Leaf motif.

At first appearance, it might be taken as cordage, or pho-cordage, but it doesn't look like a typical corded braid.

"Woman's Burial" (1cm inc) Thanet Arch

I've speculated [before] that Iberian acacia-leaf pottery might be appropriately named and that its derivatives (in keeping with Andrew Sherratt) were taken as a psychoactive, either in tea form or as an additive to alcohol.

I assumed that only a stylized version would have left Iberia, but it appears in this beaker and in other EBA pottery, usually a well depicted, single band is maintained in numerous potteries that went afar.

*Update 1*

The good people of Thanet Arch provided some closeups of the beaker comb impressions and the waist decoration.  See [here]   (I just realized that the hyperlinks have been ghosting instead of turning blue.  They're now blue, see above.)
 
In a previous post, linked above, I wondered if the herringbone is in fact, stylized acacia.  I think you see this trend with proto-writing as the natural became stylized, divorced from its original expression.
The naturalness of this beaker's waist caught my attention.

The closeups are great.  Hat tip Thanetarch.

*Update 2*

IOT avoid confusion the title was updated to say "motif?".  Hopefully what I am trying to express is coming out clearly.  It is a single motif embedded within a larger expression that I find interesting.

International Bell Beaker & Egyptian C-Ware Comparison

The Beaker Blog is on the archaeological road to hell.  The Apostasy continues.

Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology UC14285

In the absence of any big archaeological news, I'll give a comparison of Egyptian White Cross-Lined Ware and early Bell Beaker International pottery.

I'm not going to suggest an especially close relationship between the two types, but rather suggest that a relationship is possible and that both typologies, being distinct from other potteries, fit into a stylistic scheme of the Central Saharan Pastoralist Societies.  (Read that carefully)

First, a few things about Egyptian White Cross-Lined (C-Ware).

C-Ware appears only very briefly in Egypt during the pre-dynastic Naqada IC sequence and probably last no more than a few generations to around IIA, possibly slightly overlapping the Gerzean period.
Naqada II probably heralds the arrival of Mespotamian invaders, at least it would appear so, whereas its predecessor, Naqada I, may involve a limited number of individuals integrating into Egyptian society from the Western Desert or the Southwest.

The latest absolute chronologies of the pre-dynastic era have been compressed to about 800 years and have shifted it to the right (Dee et al, 2013)  The exact timeframe in which C-Ware appears is sometime around 3600-3500 B.C.

Of the several daily-use pottery classes in Egypt, C-Ware is generally a mortuary ware and is found in the graves of about a third of the people in several cities.  Overall, the body of the ware is no different than the preceding Badarian and if fact, was probably made by the same potter houses that made the former and common wares in the centuries preceding.

Amratian Naqada IC (Princeton)

The vast majority of C-Ware contains a scheme consisting of triangle, slashed-line and cross motifs, such as the beaker above, but occasionally animals and human figures appear of similar petroglyphic design of the Western Desert (Egypt).  Curiously, great emphasis is given to the Barbary Sheep when non-abstract depictions occur (mostly unique to this style but petering out later on)

Because C-Ware motifs are overlaid on previous pottery bodies, some of the symmetry can be awkward, which along with other archaeological indicators may point to disparity between scheme and body.  C-Ware is red slip burnish with contrasting white paint before firing, although some of it is encrusted with white paste.  C-Ware vases appear only later, but beakers comprise a third and dishes another third, usually one vessel per occupant (no information on sex distribution).

Beaker Supping dish, Rome, 2500-2200 B.C. Vitrbo, State of Lazio, Museum of Rome [Link]

Without further ado, here's some things that are similar between Beaker and C-Ware (and some differences).

1.  Both potteries are always red.  The base coloration was extremely high in the design hierarchy.  Most potteries vary considerably in color.  These two follow strict conformance (regional soil dependent)

Achieving this was difficult for European Beaker potters due to the geology of Europe.  In some cases potters resorted to painting it red.  It's clear, however, that an ideal beaker looks this>

Sardianian Bell Beaker 'coffee cup'

This is especially noteworthy because much of the Beaker pottery was actually manufactured by native European potter houses.  Even with native potter influences, the design was already settled.

2.  White line highlights contrast the base color.  This is usually done through encrustation with white paste in Beaker pottery, C-Ware is usually lined with white slip before firing (although sometimes encrusted).

3.  Triangle, zig-zag and cross motifs are the most common schemes of both.  C-Ware sometimes has less abstract depictions, as does Beaker ware, but C-Ware sometimes also includes animals and human figures.

4.  They occupied a special significance in burial, and one that is apparently foreign to the more localized common ware.  The peculiar pottery is cohesive to a multi-regional identity and occurs in the graves of some people over a large geographical area who possess this identity.

5.  The two potteries appear with the desiccation of the grassy savanna (that became desert).  C-Ware appears around 600-700 years before the first Maritime Iberian Beakers, but this number may yet be compressed with ongoing excavations.

Barbary Sheep with Mountain Triangle Background

6.  Both potteries exhibit foreign elements and native elements within their respective regions.

This last point is crutial and very subtle.  What is most interesting of the two is not where they are similar, but what deviances were not acceptable.

Certain elements of both potteries are variable, such as the adaptation of local shapes, but other elements are more ridged.  An example of this would be the red/white coloration or the motifs.

I've talked repeatedly about functional requirements within a design hierarchy in this blog.  Everything made by men, arrowheads or boats, differ by the need to do specific things in a certain order to satisfy his maker (with the assumption he is rational).  Factors may include efficiency, appearance, weight, performance, material availability, speed of manufacture, training requirement, etc, etc.  So the difference between a leaf-shape shape arrowhead and a barbed arrowhead aren't the result of some cosmic gelatin; instead a close look of their attributes reveal the subtle needs of their maker.

Typology can be a real pain in the ass because you can create a list of similarities between any two items, say pencils and steak knives.  Deciding which similar traits weigh more than others can skew our interpretation of their genetic relationship.  So I understand that an argument could be made for similarities between Beaker ware and Corded Ware, but again the depth of the genetic relationship depends on what and how heavy we weigh each factor.

Once again, there is nothing necessarily connecting these two potteries other than that may have come from the pastoral belt pictured below.  If you look at other pottery from Morocco or the Tassili region of Algeria, its possible to find other variations of this phenomenon.

Cattle Pastoralist Rock Art Belt (Marina Gallinarido)

Why is it more reasonable to believe that the immediate origin of the bell beaker is to be found 6,000 miles away and not a few miles away?