Boscombe Bowmen Collective Grave?

In 2014 there were a number of papers from authors around Europe tackling the assumptions and misconceptions of Beaker burials.  Three of many [here] [here] [here]

These centered around monumentalism and monument reuse, the lower numbers of women and importantly, individuality.

Boscombe Down Grave (Wessex Archaeology)

The Boscombe Bowmen are one of the more frequently mischaracterized graves IMO, being supposedly an example of a continued practice of Neolithic collectivism due to its seven occupants.  Not quite convinced of this.  Here is what I think is a proper interpretation:

This is an individual grave of a mature man in the flexed position with typical man gear.  The six boys buried with him are certainly his sons who died at different times and at different ages.  This is not a "collective" grave in the classical sense.  It's a parent-child grave which is impossible to saddle with a re-constructed notion of individuality.

The first boy, maybe a toddler, was cremated and placed in an urn.  Given that Boscombe-dad traveled a great distance in his life (isotopic analysis) this child could have died 10-20 years prior in a far away land and remained on the mantle for a long time.

The eldest sons, 2 young men and a teenager, were probably exhumed from a nearby grave to be buried with their father.  The two other children may have been buried during a re-opening.

Organisation of the grave (Wessex Archaeology)

There's a few important things to learn here.  One is that cremation doesn't necessarily reflect some kind of metaphysical or religious difference from those that practice inhumation.  It's clear that these closely related individuals believed their cremated brother would be present in the afterlife, hence his beaker.

We also might understand a few things about the people who buried these people.  All of these boys had a mother who, if she was alive, probably wanted to ensure that her youngest sons had safe passage through the underworld.

If we were to reconstruct Beaker mythology from what is definitely known and what can be reconstructed through triangulation (looking at Beaker habits through the lens of Greek and Egyptian mythology), then it is likely that death was followed by a journey through Hades (underworld) where, once disembarked, the dead would face obstacles, tests and trickery.  It may have comforted Beaker mother to know that the younger kids were received in the company of her husband and oldest sons who could ensure they weren't ensnared during this passage.

Ghost Grave or Party Pit?

This paper addresses party pits in Iberia.  It was published before a similar find in Supraśl, Poland and it answers or adds to other recent papers concerning bodiless graves in the Meseta and possibly other places as well.

Essentially, what you are looking at is a pit with two beaker bowls and a bunch of pulverized beakers on top.  Sometimes a gold artifact, an amber bead or bunch of arrowheads are deposited, then covered with stones.

It may be a very widespread phenomenon and so these authors echo Blanco-Gonzales in saying that the inventory of Beaker barrows need re-examination.  Originally, I thought that these random field finds were agriculture related, but now as they pile up it looks clear that many of them (but maybe not all) are indeed ritual related.

To add to the weirdness, only occasionally is a single body part located within similar pits.  So re-approaching the situation,  it seems in some of these cases we might be able to point to a few possible facts:

The ceremony was attended by multiple individuals who drank and then smashed their beakers.  In the Ambrona Valley, it seems two bowls are set inside the pit.  One or two individuals deposited something of value to them.  The pit is enclosed and preserved as a monument to this event.

In this light, several scenarios might be cause for a meeting such as this.  I'm shooting from the hip as always:

1)  Tribal arbitration?  Literally, to "bury the hatchet", make peace, end a dispute, bury the past.
I'm sure these people had boundary disputes, failed marriages, in-law wars, etc.  

2)  Covenant monuments?  You might remember how some convenants were monumentalized in the Old Testament landscape.  Or you may think of various European wedding traditions where pottery is ritually smashed as a sort breaking with the past or driving away spirits.

3)  Harvest ritual?  There might be a lot of organic stuff that didn't survive, like "corn mothers", effigies or dolls.

BEAKER BARROWS (not) for the dead: El Alto I & III, Las Cuevas/El Morrón and La Perica (Soria, Spain) CuPAUAM 40  Manuel A. Rojo-Guerra1, Rafael Garrido-Pena, Íñigo García-Martínez-de-Lagrán, and Cristina Tejedor-Rodríguez, 2014 [Link]

Abstract

In this article we will discuss on a peculiar and interesting feature recently discovered in the archaeological record of Copper Age Bell Beakers in the Ambrona Valley (Soria, Spain), that is the existence of barrows which look like tombs but they were not. They even include valuable items (finely decorated pottery, gold jewellery) but no sign of human bones. This absence could not be explained by selective preservation of the materials, since those barrows are not located in acid soils, and faunal remains are usually found in other sites of the same area. We could interpret this special finds as the archaeological testimonies of eventual ceremonial activities, perhaps including commensality rituals (intentionally broken pots are found inside them), being the stone mound the commemoration in the landscape of those important events (a possible cenotaph evoking the death of someone important away from his hometown?) or places (the location of special features of the environment in their mythic geographies).

Origin of Cogotas Pottery

Cogotas Ware replaces the old Beaker Ciempozuelos in the North Meseta of Iberia.  This paper explores how Cogotas retains, mimics or was influenced by the old pottery.

As I mentioned on the DNA page of procrastination, the end of a nominal Bell Beaker identity in Europe has received much less interest than its origins.  While the beginning of the Beakers is exciting and full of debate, its end should be more interesting to those involved in genetics.  Cogotas may or may not be an example of cultural continuity, but the continuation of mesetan motifs hints at a stable identity or belief.

As Blanco-Gonzales mentions (others have mentioned this in other regions as well), there are a number of confusing allusions to Beakers in later times.  What do you make of a bell beaker dated to a much later period?  Or golden beakers?

Another dynamic not mentioned in this paper is the potential influences back and forth between the Irish Channel and the Meseta over a long period of time. (Savory, 1978)  Maybe Agaric and British influences shaped the body of Mesetan pottery but not the Mesetan message?

Copying from sherds. Creativity in Bronze Age pottery in central Iberia (1800-1150 BC) Creativity: An Exploration through the Bronze Age and Contemporary Responses to the Bronze Age. Oxbow Books: Oxford.  Antonio Blanco-González, 2014 [Link]

Island of Man

This thesis considers "change" using the emergence of the Bronze Age in the Isle of Man. 

Celtic-Norse foundations on Mann (Greg Kingsley)

For this paper, the subjects are kind of secondary to the subject matter of 'change', so I really can't condense this in a way that would be faithful to the actual topic or theory of the paper.  But the crest the change wave in the Isles is the Beaker culture, so even its presumed absence on one island is noteworthy.

Crellin uses Man for her subject since islands, by convention, are supposed to be like Petri dishes and this island has its own peculiarities during the timeframe in which copper began spreading in the Isles.  Man develops uniquely in the Late Neolithic/EBA so it is a bit of a test case for identifying the causes of cultural change in the 3rd millennium.  

The apparent scarcity of Bell Beaker material in the Island of Man has been used, among other things, to support the notion that Man was a very backwards place that the world bypassed.  However, Crellin challenges its supposed insularity and argues that lack of exposure to Bell Beaker or Grooved Ware were not the reason for its uniqueness.  Clearly Grooved Ware and Bell Beaker identities traded or lived on the island to some degree.  So the question is why the uniqueness of Man, or are we projecting insularity and innovation that just isn't there?

You'll see in some of the graphics of this paper, slate plaques similar to those of pre-Beaker Southern Iberia, but less refined,  located within Ronaldsway arrangements.  It is one of several solid examples of outside influence on the island.

"Ronaldsway Culture" occupies a period in Mann when Grooved people and later Beakers were moving into other parts of the Isles.  In some cases Grooved materials occur with Ronaldsway materials in Man, and even appear to be fabrically similar, but defining what Ronaldsway materials are can be dicey. 

The evidence for Ronaldsway being a distinct culture is generally kind of thin, Crellin notes some of the problems and criticisms associated with it.  She also notes the lack of organic material at these sites, although some dates have been obtained.

Figure 3-2: Colby Mooar Ronaldsway Earthfast Jar

The crude, pudding texture of Ronaldsway jars look in some ways looks like a 19th century reduction pot.  This round base pot and a bowl are the only ceramics that define the culture.  They appear to be found near gullies, not cemeteries or homes.  Also, she notes the presence of a few dome ingots in fields at these sites that are not dated.  Man has glacial chalcopyrite.*

On the other hand, the presence of slate over the tops and the way they were deposited (buried, one was upside down) would seem funerary or ritual related. On the third hand, they've been found empty, without human remains. Whatever their purpose, they don't seem to have any remotely plausible domestic function and have zero aesthetic appeal, which calls into question the Ronaldsway domestic sites.

It would seem if the cultural credibility of Ronaldsway crumbles, then the chronological question opens up.  Although this is a unique question to Man, the space between the end of the Middle Neolithic and the EBA cultures appears to be a persistent problem in the Isles.  For example, it takes about three seconds to see Petersborough and Bell Beaker traits in Food Vessels of the EBA in Ireland or Britain.

Rather than having a neat sequential chronology of A followed by B, followed by C, followed by E; it could be rather something more like A followed by E.  'Gronaldsway' may be nothing more than seasonal mining camps (or whatever strange activity) and Bell Beaker nothing more than a red herring.

I have more comments regarding the Beaker section of the paper, but more than ten paragraphs on a blog is yelling, so I make those in upcoming posts.

Changing times: the emergence of a Bronze Age on the Isle of Man., Newcastle University, Rachel Joanne Crellin, 2014 [Link]

*Two or three posts ago, I linked to a paper that questioned some of the traditional techniques for determining the provenance of copper ore.  Although Ross Island is credited with much of the early insular copper, the situation may turn out to be more complex.

**While EBA Manx copper may have been from Ross Island, it doesn't necessarily mean that an earlier phase of production wasn't performed on Man in the Late Neolithic.

How Old is European Falconry?

One hundred and fifty years ago a Bell Beaker warrior (c38) was excavated by Lord Londesborough in Yorkshire.  He wrote that this man was buried with a hawk before him.  In addition to the raptor, the grave included warrior gear, amber beads and a bell beaker.

The incredible state of preservation not only preserved the top of the hawk's head and beak, but some of the wooden artifacts and burial shroud or bed blanket were also partly preserved in the burial.  (excavation notes)

"The Falconer" Petrus Christus c. 1445 A.D.

Revisiting these old papers, modern archaeologists Ann Woodward and John Hunter (2011) proposed the possibility that some of the bracers on the forearm of Beaker males were in fact hawking equipment.  This argument builds from previous discussion on the excessively robust bracers compared to anything used in archery.

Several months ago, Robert Wallis challenged the non-bracer theory of Woodward and Hunter and essentially put the bracer issue to bed.  However, the possibility that c38 was a hawker is still an open matter. (Wallis, 2014)  Wallis, a hawking historian, gave a great interview [here] on the matter.


Opinion on early falconry is all-over-the-place.  I favor the view that it is much older and widespread than we might imagine.  The oldest secure dates appear to occur in the third millennium in Syria and Anatolia (Charles Brunley, 2004).  Falconry is possible in proto-dynastic Egypt or before this, however a lot of the papers on the matter are decades old.  Falconry is also apparently old in China with the same dating problems.

Enki's son with a falcon?  (Enki sometimes portrayed with an eagle from his hand or two eagles)

I think this subject will eventually come up again. 

Footnote - How to identify archaeological evidence of hawking (Wietske Prummel, 1997)