Boobs to Bottles (Dunne, 2019)

This paper by Dunne et al, 2019 settles and demonstrates the purpose of clay, pipe-like vessels used in mainland Europe from the Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age.

The verdict?  Using lipid analyses and other data...baby bottles.

Science baby! Fig 2. From the paper (H. Seidl da Fonseca)

Typically for the first six months of a baby's life they'll be titted and then around the age where they are able to sit up and grasp things they can be weaned to a bottle.  Recently, I saw one of these in a French Bell Beaker mound and then several (similar?) from Late Neolithic Perdigoes in Portugal.

Dunne's pipes all have lipid residue, so when they have ash, what does that mean?  Could these also be used as fire starters or smoking pipes?  I suppose reside analysis can answer for each.

Some groups used a cow's horn for bottling

Abstract

The study of childhood diet, including breastfeeding and weaning, has important implications for our understanding of infant mortality and fertility in past societies¹. Stable isotope analyses of nitrogen from bone collagen and dentine samples of infants have provided information on the timing of weaning²; however, little is known about which foods were consumed by infants in prehistory. The earliest known clay vessels that were possibly used for feeding infants appear in Neolithic Europe, and become more common throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages. However, these vessels—which include a spout through which liquid could be poured—have also been suggested to be feeding vessels for the sick or infirm^3,4. Here we report evidence for the foods that were contained in such vessels, based on analyses of the lipid ‘fingerprints’ and the compound-specific δ¹³C and Δ¹³C values of the major fatty acids of residues from three small, spouted vessels that were found in Bronze and Iron Age graves of infants in Bavaria. The results suggest that the vessels were used to feed infants with milk products derived from ruminants. This evidence of the foodstuffs that were used to either feed or wean prehistoric infants confirms the importance of milk from domesticated animals for these early communities, and provides information on the infant-feeding behaviours that were practised by prehistoric human groups.

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Clean-Cut Beakers? (Nortoft, 2017)

Clean-Cut Beakers?  Maybe some, but shaving culture seems to take off more toward its end.

Beards, mustaches, styling and shaving seems to have always been highly varied among European men, even when one fashion dominates.  It's during the Bronze Age that shaving becomes status-centered and archaeologically visible as a specialized tool set. 

This paper  by Mikkel Nortoft examines the IE shaving phenomenon from its Pontic origins using a multi-disciplinary approach:

"Shaving the Warrior: Archaeo-linguistic investigation of Indo-European warrior identity from the Eneolithic to the Bronze Age - prestige razors and ideology" by Mikkel Nortoft

This follows a recent post on male bone hair pins.

MBA razor at Balnalick (see also NOSAS)

The Beaker Culture was old enough to have possibly lived through several iterations of hair and beard styling.  Looking at the age and distribution of bone hair pins, this may well be the case.  There are a number of examples of Beaker razors or flint blades, and it is well possible that Beaker men most often shaved with their knives, as later razors look like tanged knives or Palmela points.  The Balnalick example above is technically MBA, but is in time close to the Beaker period, assuming the knife isn't an heirloom.

Another flint razor at Rudston was was positioned before the face, showing the importance of this object to the occupant.  But overall, assuming daggers weren't also shavers, the evidence for Beakers shaving so far doesn't appear anywhere as close to what you see with Urnfielders and later cultures.  Again, this may a visibility problem, and it may also be that razors had not yet become status symbols despite universally clean-shaven faces.

Rudston beaker (British Museum)

There's another missing piece of evidence and that is graphic representations of the schematic-fixated Beakers.  Well, there's just a few...

I thought this steale at Sion depicts a bearded Beaker, but that may just be too much imagination on my part.  See Here.

I'll be shifting back to Iberia in the next post.

Brother From Another Mother?

I have no way to verify, but some commentors are saying that two Bell Beakers in Barcelona (I0257 and I0261) in the Nature paper are R1b-V88 or slightly ancestral.  Neither of them have Steppe-related ancestry.

Freeze! 

Beaker inspired Kerma Ware? (1900 BC Nubia, Jan Turek?)

Over a week ago, Razib Khan talked about this new paper "The peopling of the last Green Saraha revealed by high-coverage resequencing of trans-Saharan patrilineages" by D'Atanasio et al, 2018.

In it, the authors attribute the star-like explosion of R1b-V88 in the Green Sahara to a rather recent coalescence period about 5,000 ago with an entrance from Sardinia (or S. Europe) ranging between this coalescence age and something up to two thousand years earlier.  I previously called the curious presence of R1b in the circum-Sahara a "grass fire pattern" phenomenon.

Here's what the D'Antanasio authors wrote:

"The peculiar topology of the R-V88 sequenced samples suggests that the diffusion of this haplogroup was quite rapid and possibly triggered by the Saharan favourable climate"

After this back-coalescence date, the Sahara began a rapid desiccation with some fairly strong pulses of catastrophic and permanent drought.  That event is revealed in the structure of V88's African phylogeny.  The D'Antanasio people rightly figure that the remnant of this dead zone can be partially re-created by looking at moderns in the peripheries.  Very clearly they believe that R1b-V88, now common among certain cattle pastoralist nations across the Sahel, are partially descended from populations that once populated this region.

 Before jumping through the computer with a retort, a commentor on Anthrogenica asks this very reasonable question in response (translated):

"The question remains unanswered, where did [V88] cross the Mediterranean and why is it the only one of the old [European] haplogroups to have done it with success...?"

If D'Antanasio is correct that African V88 plugs into a larger European phylogeny of a certain age, then why is this one child clade found dominating certain cattle communities in Africa, but not a single one from the alphabet of European or Near Eastern lineages?  From an archaeological standpoint, at what point in the Holocene is this directionality in either direction possible?

Let me ask directly.  Does African V88 find its source in the Beaker communities of Iberia and the Mediterranean Islands?  Does it find its source in Southwest Iberia in the centuries before this?

This comment is not to suggest any direct relationship with the following culture, but it does ask if the stylistic influences of the Bell Beakers were close enough in proximity that their decoration was recognizable to distant others.  Here, in a paper entitled "The Beaker World and Otherness of the Early Civilizations", Jan Turek makes this comment:

"...in Nubia (namely in the present-day Sudan) began at this time, the development of Kerma Culture (Early Kerma, group C, Phase Ia-b 2500-2050 BC).  Ceramic of the Kerma culture has a remarkably similar ornaments as the Late Neolithic Saharan pottery and Bell Beaker in Northwestern Africa and Europe."

The last quote was added partly because of the convenience of having a convenient graphic available, but also it shows that beyond permanent settlements and pit graves that Beaker traders, long hunters and family bands could be found in the reaches.  Some people of the Saraha at this time are V88; connecting too many dots?

Honestly, I do not know the answer to the V88 question.  Right now it could still be partially associated with the Cardium expansion, but the window of possibilities continues to narrow.