Peterborough Ware, DNA

The apparent resurgence of WHG profiles by the end of the Middle Neolithic has been variously commented on and I think putting one corner of Europe in an archaeological context might give a little clarity for why this happened.

I had meant to post this paper on Peterborough Ware as it relates to the food vessels of British Beakers, but got sidetracked with other news.

Fengate Ware, Berkshire, 1990,1009.31, British Museum (order FI-000715026)

The British Middle Neolithic Peterborough Ware may have its roots in Southern Sweden or generally the Baltic coast, having plausibly spread via the similarly named Peterborough Ware of the Dutch lowlands.   History repeating itself.

If this was a population movement by stone-axe wielding boatsmen, it may have been part of a flood of similar Middle Neolithic 'pre-Vikings' that were floating down the rivers throwing axes in the faces of Farmers.  It's possible that the rise of certain genetic profiles we see in the Middle Neolithic from Hungry and Sardinia to the Languedoc and Northern France, were subject to similar throngs of northern barbarians coming over the walls of the palisades.  Environmental conditions again changing the board of history.

The Peterborough People seem to have arisen about 3,330 B.C. and probably overlap the introduction of Bell Beakers (more on that).  But before the Beakers, the Peterborough tradition appears to have lived in a system of apartheid or avoidance from the Grooved Ware peoples, reasonably assuming the two wares weren't used differently by the same people.  These two peoples seem to have been total opposites in every conceivable way, preferring different living arrangements and beliefs.

The fluffy version of Grooved Ware origins is that it is an independent development in Britain with people being attracted to a cool culture based on communal feasting and alcohol, except for those that avoid it.  (Whenever you hear the words "independent development" come from the mouth of an archaeologists, a good rule of thumb is to immediately disregard and begin looking for population movements).  Regardless, Grooved Ware culture is intrusive to most or all of the Isles, having come several hundred years after Peterborough Ware.  When Bell Beaker Culture arrives, it begins consolidating and/or replacing various separate traditions into a more uniform Early Bronze Age.

How exactly food vessels and urns emerge is another question mark.  Clearly food vessels are heavily influenced by islander impressed potteries, like Peterborough, but overlaid with Beaker motifs.  According to historical dating schemes, this shouldn't have been possible given the end of one and the beginning of the other.  But it may be that Beaker pottery is both earlier than presumed and Peterborough Ware continues strongly with hillbillies.

To add to the weirdness, is it possible that some Peterborough pottery, like the Fengate bowl above, are already beginning to copy certain Beaker stylistic motifs?  Perhaps the relationship between Beaker immigrants and hillbillies was agreeable given a common enemy, or Beaker cattle drivers were more frequently in contact with the marginal areas.

The question of Scandinavian influence from the Middle Neolithic is a good one.  Given its strong influence on the Isles prior to the Bronze Age, it would certainly seem that British profiles may be shifted towards Fennoscandia and the Baltic Coast.  As such, we may expect some British haplogroups to descend from these early migrants, but more interesting is the abundance of certain maternal haplogroup H and V in Britain.

It would truly be the most bizarre situation ever if the maternal lineages in Britian were the recombination of Fennoscandian and Ibero-Saharan sister lineages, both making their way ultimately from the Northern Middle East and both generally pared with members of the R1 paragroup in opposite directions?

Total PeterboroughWare

Fengate

  

Ebbsfleet

Mortlake

 
                                                                    
 REVISITING OLD FRIENDS: THE PRODUCTION,
DISTRIBUTION AND USE OF PETERBOROUGH WARE
IN BRITAIN, VINCENT ARD AND TIMOTHY DARVILL, Wiley, 2014 [Link]

Summary. Peterborough Ware is now recognized as the dominant ceramic tradition of the middle Neolithic in southern Britain during the period 3400–2800 BC, part of a wider north European family of Impressed Wares. Drawing on an extensive inventory of 600 recorded assemblages constructed by enriching previous lists with the results of development-driven research carried out over the last 20 years or so, this paper reviews the production, distribution and use of Peterborough Ware. Support is found for the traditional sub-division of the Peterborough Ware series into three sub-styles: Ebbsfleet, Mortlake and Fengate Wares on the basis of the materials used, forms, and the decorative
schemes preferred in each. The overall distribution of Peterborough Ware focuses on south-eastern Britain although there are important assemblages from areas to the west and north, especially those composed of Mortlake Ware. The range of contexts in which Peterborough Ware was deposited is wide, but suggests a backward-looking attitude in which the users of this style of pottery were trying to connect with their past.

 More..
Alex Gibson [Link] 

Julian Thomas [Link]

*Update 1*  This big study from Nature genetics hit the wire literally moments after my post - via Dienekes.  I consider my above comments as "pre-criticism".  Most notable is red square country of England clustering with Scandinavia which overlays Peterborough world.  Only large-scale dna from ancient remains can properly resolve the human mosaic over time.

Badger Digs Up Beaker

The Wiltshire story here at the BBC.  Hat tip Mandy Chamberland.

Look at these tools!  They look this good after four thousand something years.  It appears a badger was making a mess of things on military property. 

Clearly it has copper patina but is unevenly distributed.  I'll guess this is arsenic bronze?

A very fine greenstone bracer.  This one is rather interesting in that it appears to have been repaired.  Like so many bracers it has a broken corner but this one appears to have been re-drilled to make it functional.  There are two arrowshaft straighteners, or rather shaft extruders (to make uniform shaft weight IMO).

I'll take a total wild crack at this and guess this is a Primary Series collard urn, being defined by Ian Longworth in his book "Collard Urns of the Bronze Age in Great Britain and Ireland" having ancestral elements with the Mortlake and Fengate styles of Peterborough Ware (herringbone and repetitive vertical short-line motifs and maybe a pudding texture on the exterior.)

Longworth notes:

"to some extent, absorption of ideas from that source [Beaker] had already begun to take place before the close of the Peterborough tradition.  Zoned decoration in the form of split heeringbone, for example, a recurrent motif on European/maritime Beakers... is already found on rare occasions on Mortlake Ware....."

And it continues.  Got a bit of track but I had to read that for myself.  I kind of hypothesized this was the case that Bell Beakers had meaningful contact with the hillbilly Peterborough folk and so there is a disproportionate influence compared to the Grooved tradition that give birth to some of the incredibly ugly potteries of EBA Britain and Ireland, expanding beyond its original domain.

You will note a final chapter in Longworth's book on the association with wool remains and collard urns.

Food Vessel tradition

Here's a thesis posted recently on British Food Vessels:

Food vessel from child's grave Doune in Perthshire (National Museum of Scotland)

"Food vessel" substitution is a distinct tradition in the late Insular Beaker Culture, although it was variously practiced both before and outside the Beaker Culture.  Other continental Beaker cultures did incorporate other vessels into graves, but usually not as substitutions for Beakers and not of this heavy, flower pot style.

Because British Beaker Culture drew from several origins, its distribution is also not uniform.  The Central European derived Wessex Culture wasn't really into food vessels and the earliest Beakers in both Ireland and Britain are not associated with food vessels.  So food vessels are variously viewed as a late development, possibly a re-emergence of an older tradition and something preceding Collard Urns.

Food vessels have a strange origin because while they are similar to Middle Neolithic types within the region, they don't seem to have direct continuity at the local level.  They do look like Peterborough Ware, but it would be something like Early Mississippian or Woodland Indian pottery suddenly becoming popular again.  It's kind of hard to imagine how clunky pottery like this became a popular burial vessel.



FOOD VESSEL POTTERY FROM EARLY BRONZE AGE FUNERARY CONTEXTS IN NORTHERN ENGLAND: A TYPOLOGICAL AND CONTEXTUAL STUDY
NEIL C.A. WILKIN, 2013/2014 [Link]

Abstract This thesis demonstrates the significance of Food Vessel pottery and burial in Northern England during the Early Bronze Age (c.2200 to 1800 cal BC). It represents the first original and sustained study of this burial tradition for several decades. It is argued that the interwoven relationships between Food Vessels, other ceramic types, and trade and exchange networks are both a reason why the tradition has posed interpretative problems for prehistorians, and a central component of its significance during the Early Bronze Age. The chronological relationships between British Food Vessels and other ceramic and funerary traditions are reviewed using the first comprehensive and critically assessed dataset of radiocarbon determinations. Previous approaches to Food Vessel typology are critically reviewed and a new approach based on the ‘potter’s perspective’ and contextual studies is proposed. A contextual approach is applied to Food Vessels from three regions of Northern England: the Northern Counties; North-East Yorkshire, the central lowlands and North-West England; and South-East Yorkshire. Each study reveals significant inter- and intra-regional similarities and differences in how Food Vessels were used and understood. The significance of Food Vessel pottery and burial is then discussed at a national scale.

[More on food vessels]

Liff's Low Beaker Reconstruction

Here's a facial construction of a man burial in a 'bowl barrow' at Liff's Low in Derbyshire, England.
The story from LiveScience 'Striking Face' of 4500-Year-Old English Man Revealed.

"Beaker reconstruction" Face Lab/Liverpool John Moores University

When Liff's Low was originally excavated, the first body included an unusual pot that Stuart Piggott believed might have been Peterborough Ware related (L.V. Grisnell, 1936 page 17).  The site was excavated years later revealing another cist containing a bell beaker pot and a skeleton [Historic England].  This individual appears to have been from the second excavation.

Lead Mining in the British Isles (1800 B.C.)

This paper by David Barrowclough examines evidence for the earliest lead mining in Northern Europe. 

Compelling evidence of lead mining in Anglezarke‐Rivington shows predicted spikes in the Heavy Metals Assay and the Saturated Isothermal Remanent Magnetism (SIRM) of radio-carbon dated peat bog sections.  The results appear to show spikes corresponding to the times when lead smelting was active.


Additionally, the presence of galena crystal over the Collared Urns* of two Early Bronze Age individuals seems to confirm that the site was active by at least 1800 B.C.  To Barrowclough, this suggests an association between these individuals and the mines.

Lead Mines in Lancashire

These finds continue to show the sophistication of the metalworking craft that came to the Isles in the second half of the third millennium.  The spikes also show what may be a fairly significant lead smelting industry.  If the individuals associated with the galena specialized in a lead extraction operation, then it certainly indicates that lead was widely used for something.

As Barrowclough mentions in this paper, it's easy to become ensnared in viewing ancient metallurgy through the warped lens of periodization.  Lead has an ancient history and surprising uses.

What could lead have use for in the Early Bronze Age? 

Lead sulfide (galena) can be used to make domestic pottery glaze which is honey-colored but can also be made, orange, copper or red.  Lead was also used in cosmetics, paints and sweeteners?!

The Earliest Evidence for Lead Extraction in Northern Europe and Possible Lead Miners’ Burials: Early Bronze Age Lead Mining dated to the Second Millennium BC.  David Barrowclough, University of Cambridge (undated) [Link]

*Collared Urns and Food Vessels probably developed from interaction between Bell Beakers and the native Peterborough.  Both retain the somewhat older Beaker motifs and develop alongside the lagging Beakers.

Mean Megalithic Men (Sanchez-Quinto et al, 2019)

This quote from the paper (Sanchez-Quinto et al, 2019):

"Interestingly, we also found a significant farmer-specific genetic affinity between the British Isles Neolithic populations and the Scandinavian populations"

Yeah, about that.  This issue, as I've complained or wondered many times last year, is that many British farmers might have already been shifted towards Southern Scandinavia and its other outpost, the Netherlands, because of the Peterborough FOLK.  Heard it here first.  Whatever the final number, there's no doubt Beakers were storming the beaches of the Isles and pretty much flattened everything in their way, but 93%?  Food vessels?!

Via Carrowkeel.com

The number might go up or down.  No clue, but we'll see.