In the previous post
"Being Tall" the historic purpose of
swaddling infants in North Eurasia was explored and its likely use among the prehistoric Bell Beaker groups for the purpose of improving stature and form.
 |
Beaker Mother and Infant, Camino de Yeseras (Foto a partir
de Blasco et al. 2005: Fig. 7) |
There is still yet another interesting aspect when looking at the circumstantial clues pointing to the practice among early Beakers. That is that boys appear to have been more often swaddled than girls, and by a fairly large margin if you were to accept the hypothesis that flattened occiputs are evidence of this practice. (This by the way has been demonstrated in studies from Kurdistan to Mongolia)
Here's a long excerpt from a 1984 paper by Van der Waals, but the context is important:
In his paper 'Anthropology of Bell Beaker people', presented to the symposium, Professor Kurt Gerhardt summarized and substantiated his views on Bell Beaker physical anthropology (1976). Gerhardt is a representative of the traditional typological approach in physical anthropology, with a keen knowledge of human genetics. He acquired fame by his definition of one specific cranial type, occurring in Bell Beaker contexts: the planoccipital steephead. At Oberried he pointed out that this planoccipital steephead was the most characteristic and numerically important type identified by him among the essentially heterogeneous complex of cranial types in Bell Beaker graves. The type had
never been found with any of the earlier Neolithic Central European groups. He based his arguments on his own research, chiefly comprising finds from Central Europe (from the Elsass to Southwest Poland), but on the basis of inspection of material published and illustrated in Crania Britannica from 1865 he was convinced that planoccipital steepheads were also represented on the British Isles. What made Gerhardt's contribution remarkable was his emphatic demonstration of a systematic sexual dimorphism. Among male 'Bell Beaker' skeletons in Central Europe, he had found more than twice the number of planoccipital steepheads than among female 'Bell Beaker' skeletons of the same area. He furthermore noted that many of the male planoccipital steepheads had been found in the richer Bell Beaker graves, and concluded that 'this remarkable situation asked for a sociological explanation'. During the final discussion of the symposium he explained that he could only think of this situation as resulting from strong endogamy within clans, as with Medieval European high nobility. The resolution of such a social system at the end of the Bell Beaker period could account for the disappearance of the planoccipital steephead in the succeeding Unetice period.
Essentially we learn something that has been recently eluded to in
Liesau et al, 2015, and that is a sociological dimension in which head shape is loosely associated with status. In Camino de Yeseras, the flat-head mother lived a good life and was given a rich burial. Ordinary women buried nearby lived hard lives and had modest burials.
The other aspect is the attention or preference given to the development
of boys. Throughout much of the Old World, especially the modern
MENA nations, boys are nursed substantially longer than girls. In fact,
the attention disparity between genders can be cruelly stark. The
degree to which girls were swaddled compared to boys may depend on where Beaker girls fell within the sequence of male children as parents would focus
attention and resources on their boys.
An interesting point to dove-tail in a later post is the apparent 'ruggedness' of Bell Beaker males. Aside from being taller, they are also much stronger with stronger bones and stronger muscle attachments. Obviously part of this is genetic, part of it is diet, but another aspect could be environmental. In other words some of the skeletal evidence may point to resistance training, or at least 'feats of strength', among the warrior elite. Back to Van der Waals:
In comparing the complete groups of the three periods Czarnetzki demonstrates that the
greatest divergence is between the Late Neolithic (=Corded Ware) and Bell Beaker groups, the smallest between Bell Beaker and Unetice groups, the divergence between Late Neolithic and Unetice being intermediate. The same pattern of divergences emerged when male individuals only were taken into consideration, but among females the divergence between Late Neolithic and the Bell Beaker period was smaller than between the late Neolithic and Unetice. In this case, there appeared to be a normal type of increase in divergence through time. In other words, the gene pool in females remained unchanged into Bell Beaker times, only then certain changes appeared to take place. During the Bell Beaker period, the introduction of a new gene flow must be inferred from the shift in the values active in the formation of epigenetic traits, a shift caused
mainly by male individuals.
Here's the irony of all of this: everything is circular, from the Dutch hypothesis to Clarke's social continuity. To be overly cavalier in dismissing a particular theory is to miss that often times there is a valid argument to be made, although maybe not an all encompassing explanation. I do believe that catastrophic population changes are occurring at the end of the Neolithic, but Clarke's points aren't without merit.
Some of the skeletal quirks of Beakers could in fact be environmentally and culturally induced from the Early Bronze Age arms race:
Yet, to many of the participants the elements of convergence in the presentations of Gerhardt and Shennan were quite intriguing. David Clarke then intervened and pointed out that the convergence of ideas was only apparent. 'There is in fact a very basic division between us here', Clarke said. The question of origins . . . is part of the
questions asked by the old school, about how, when and where. The questions of greater interest and deeper explanatory meaning answer the questions why'. Clarke went on to make clear why he had a deep mistrust of all physical anthropological evidence. If I remember correctly he said it was because the skeletal material available was too much the result of heavily biasing regional circumstances, and therefore liable to generate illusory conclusions.
See also
[here]
"Discontinuity, cultural evolution and the historic event"
J D VanderWaals, Proc SocAntiq Scot, 114 (1984), 1-14
[Link]
SUMMARY
Aspects of the traditional culture concept, the closely connected twin concepts of continuity
and discontinuity, and their usefulness for prehistory are reconsidered. Continuity and discontinuity
are considered as functions of the evolution of culture; it is argued that the role of the historic
element should not be overlooked.
