BEAKER CULTURE

A dramatic change, not only in England but also in much of Europe, took place with the emergence of the Beaker culture, a term relating to a distinctive type of pottery that makes its appearance in many places from Spain to Germany and England around 2400 bce. The Beaker people, though they grew all of the crops that had been established, showed a preference for barley. Barley had a double advantage: It could be used for livestock fodder and it could be used to make a type of beer. And indeed, the beakers that they made seem to have been associated with a drinking ritual that promoted solidarity among the elites. At death, they preferred single burials in flat graves or under very low round barrows as opposed to the communal burials of old.47

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It was originally thought that the Beaker migrated westward from origins in southeastern Europe or that they had some relationship with the Kurgan culture. Some scholars have argued that they came from Spain. It is now thought that regardless of their origin, they were not a single “people,” but a culture of bronze traders who settled in various places bringing with them their tools of the trade. The Beaker people were indeed excellent metal smithies, making bronze axes, knives, awls, and clothing pins as well as ornate gold necklets of a unique design. Since bronze is an alloy of tin and copper, one of the reasons they might have been attracted to England was that it had abundant tin. It was gathered in the form of cassiterite pebbles in streams in Cornwall and Devon and traded in this raw, unreflned state or worked into ingots.48 Tin mining was far difierent from flint and even copper mining, which were done by digging pits. Tin was gathered in streams and this required a laborious process and great experience. The water flow into the pits had to be carefully controlled by means of ponds, canals, drains, and washing reservoirs. The miners, standing in the water, would then pan for the rocks. The process could transform fertile valley bottoms into marshy wilderness.

This was not just a technical question. Since smelting is ofl:en accorded ritual and magical powers, it is possible that the Beaker people held sway by means of a new cosmological perspective that focused on the connection between smelting of ore and the sun. The taboos regarding smiths are still alive in many cultures of the world. Among tribes in West Africa, for example, the tools of the smith are thought to have great power and are considered to do the work, not the smith, and if not used properly could kill him. In Benin, the smith is considered to be a magician. In some places, it is taboo to touch him or to even enter a smith’s workshop.49 In assessing the Beaker people, one must remember that the people of the European Atlantic Tradition already had a fascination with stones going back thousands of years. Turning stone to metal would have been seen as the epitome of magical power. Unlike the traditional shaman, whose knowledge focused on plants and their magical transformative properties, these were rock shamans, which might also explain why they were not buried communally. The impact of copper is apparent in the west of Ireland, where a new kind of tomb appeared, the so-called Wedge Tomb that consisted of a narrowing stone chamber covered by a mound of earth. The single entrance almost invariably faced southwest. There is a huge concentration of over one hundred examples in a small area of northern county Clare. They are the flrst tombs to be found in that area, which is possibly due to the presence of copper ore. Baur South wedge tomb is typical. Dug partially in the ground, it is a modest 2.4 meters long.

Although individual graves became the norm, great megalithic architecture continued to be made, such as the dolmen around Saumur on the Loire River. Unlike most, they were not covered with earth. Le Grand Dolmen de Bagneux is enormous: 17.3 meters long, 5.4 meters wide, and 3.1 meters high. The antechamber adds another 4 meters to the length. It is covered with four capstones, the largest of which weighs 86 tons. The continued skill of the builders is also proven at Cueva de Menga, one of the largest such communal tomb structure in Europe. Housing several hundred bodies, it is 25 meters deep, 5 meters wide, and 4 meters high, and was built with thirty-two large stones. The rear is partially cut into the bedrock, the whole thing clearly meant to simulate a cave.