The third millennium BC saw the emergence of two large-scale cultural developments that are marked by distinctive artifact styles distributed over vast areas. One is the widespread use of cord-marked pottery associated with single burials under low mounds, while the other involves the appearance of a very specific type of handleless thin-walled drinking vessel known as a beaker that is consistently found in male burials with other distinctive artifacts Archaeologists have puzzled over the meaning of these phenomena, known as Corded Ware and Bell Beakers, for over a century, and yet their significance remains elusive. Corded Ware is distributed through eastern, central, and northern Europe as far west as the Netherlands, whereas Bell Beakers are found from Spain to Denmark and throughout the British Isles.
The earliest dates for Corded Ware come from central and southern Poland around 2800 BC, and it spread outwards from this core area. It generally disappeared from most regions between 2300 and 2100 BC. A number of variants of Corded Ware are known. It is found in Alpine pile dwellings and along the Baltic coast. In Sweden and southern Norway, Corded Ware communities made axes with upturned edges that resemble the prow and stern of a boat, hence the name Boat-Axe Culture. One of the latest Corded Ware groups is the Fatianovo Culture along the upper Volga in Russia, which persisted until around 2000 BC.
Corded Ware communities continued the Neolithic pattern of mixed farming, with cattle, sheep, and goat playing a prominent role. With the exception of the communities along the southern Baltic coast, known as the Rzuczewo Culture, and the Alpine lake dwellings, Corded Ware settlements are rare. This has given rise to the hypothesis that the makers of Corded Ware were mobile pastoralists, although it is just as likely that they were sedentary peoples who simply built their houses in a way that did not leave substantial subsurface traces.
The practice of burying individuals under single small mounds which characterized the Corded Ware world was a break with the earlier practice of collective burial found over much of this area during the previous millennium. It appears from the burials that a key societal role was assigned to a group of men whose status is reflected in their possession of flint knives, battle-axes, bows and arrows, and drinking vessels. Such emergence of individual identity and status is an important development that continues into the Bronze Age.
Bell Beakers are even more enigmatic than Corded Ware. First recognized at the end of the nineteenth century, they were first presumed to be the characteristic artifacts of a single mobile people who spread rapidly across western and central Europe. Archaeologists spoke of a Beaker Folk and ascribed various attributes to them, such as being warriors, traders, and metalsmiths. Throughout the twentieth century, various theories were proposed for the origins of Bell Beakers under the assumption that they represented a people whose identity was reflected in the use of a very specific vessel form.
The vessel that gives Bell Beakers its name is a finely made thin-walled cup usually deep orange in color. It is tall and narrow, without handles. Its incised decoration occurs in horizontal bands, or ‘zones’, separated by smooth bands without ornament. The decoration is usually in the form of chevrons or hatching. A number of types of beaker decoration have been identified that appear to have regional or chronological significance. The late Andrew Sherratt suggested that the beakers were used to consume alcoholic beverages during feasting and conviviality.
Alongside the beakers archaeologists often find a distinctive set of artifacts. Many of these are associated with archery, including flint arrowheads, slate wristguards that protected the archer’s hand from the bowstring, and ‘shaft straighteners’ which were pairs of grooved stones to polish arrow shafts. Copper daggers were the principal metal artifact associated with Bell Beakers in central and western Europe, while in northern Europe, flint copies of metal daggers were made. Finally, a characteristic Bell Beaker artifact is the V-perforated button in which two holes were drilled into a piece of material to converge in its interior. Bone, antler, jet (a semiprecious black stone), and amber were the most common materials used. The V-perforated buttons were used as ornaments.
The significance of Bell Beakers has been debated heatedly by archaeologists. No longer do they speak of a Beaker Folk, since the geographical distribution and chronology of Bell Beakers makes it clear that there was no obvious origin or dispersal, but rather of the widespread Beaker Phenomenon in which a set of artifacts connected with drinking, war, and hunting appears in male burials in which the body was placed in a contracted position. The Bell Beaker set of artifacts may have been the status symbols of an emerging elite that came into sharper focus during the subsequent Bronze Age.
World History
