Multicultural Europe, Culture, Beaker, Celtic, Hallstatt

The "Beaker" Culture:
The Bell-Beaker culture ca. 2800 – 1900 B.C, is the term for a widely scattered cultural phenomenon of prehistoric western Europe starting in the late Neolithic or Chalcolithic running into the early Bronze Age. The term was coined by John Abercromby, based on their distinctive pottery drinking vessels. Beaker culture is defined by the common use of a pottery style — a beaker with a distinctive inverted bell-shaped profile found across the western part of Europe during the late 3rd millennium B.C. The pottery is well-made, usually red or red-brown in colour, and ornamented with horizontal bands of incised, excised or impressed patterns.

Bell - Beaker Ware

The early Bell Beakers have been described as "International" in style, as they are found in all areas of the Bell Beaker culture. These include cord-impressed types, such as the "All Over Corded" (or "All Over Ornamented"), and the "Maritime" type, decorated with bands filled with impressions made with a comb or cord. Later characteristic regional styles developed.

It has been suggested that the beakers were designed for the consumption of alcohol and that the introduction of the substance to Europe may have fueled the beakers' spread. Beer and mead content have been identified from certain examples. However, not all Beakers were drinking cups.

Some were used as reduction pots to smelt copper ores, others have some organic residues associated with food, and still others were employed as funerary urns. Beakers may have been a special form of pottery with a ritual character. Many theories of the origins of the Bell Beakers have been put forward and subsequently challenged. The Iberian peninsula has been argued as the most likely place of Beaker origin. The oldest AOO shards have so far been found in northern Portugal. Bell Beaker is often suggested as a candidate for an early Indo-European culture or, more specifically, an ancestral proto-Celtic or proto-Italic (Italo-Celtic) culture.

Hallstatt, Salzkammergut, Austria

There is evidence of a relatively large scale disruption of cultural patterns which some scholars think may indicate an invasion (or at least a migration) into Southern Great Britain c. the 12th century B.C.

This disruption was felt far beyond Britain, even beyond Europe, as most of the great Near Eastern empires collapsed (or experienced severe difficulties) and the Sea Peoples harried the entire Mediterranean basin around this time.

Some scholars consider that the Celtic languages arrived in Britain at this time, but the more generally accepted view is that Celtic origins lie with the Hallstatt culture.

The "Hallstatt" culture
The Hallstatt culture was the predominant Central European culture, centred in Germany, from the 8th to 6th centuries B.C. (European Early Iron Age), developing out of the Urnfield culture of the 12th century B.C. (Late Bronze Age) and followed in much of Central Europe by the La Tène culture.

Art from Hallstatt Culture

By the 6th century B.C, the Halstatt culture extended for some 1000 km, from the Champagne-Ardenne in the west, through the Upper Rhine and the upper Danube, as far as the Vienna Basin and the Danubian Lowland in the east, from the Main, Bohemia and the Little Carpathians in the north, to the Swiss plateau, the Salzkammergut and to Lower Styria.

It is named for its type site, Hallstatt, a lakeside village in the Austrian Salzkammergut southeast of Salzburg. The culture is commonly linked to Proto-Celtic and Celtic populations in its western zone and with pre-Illyrians in its eastern zone.

The Bronze Age (around 2200 to 750 B.C.)
This period can be sub-divided into an earlier phase (2300 to 1200) and a later one (1200 – 700). Beaker pottery appears in England around 2475–2315 B.C. along with flat axes and burial practices of inhumation. With the revised Stonehenge chronology, this is after the Sarsen Circle and trilithons were erected at Stonehenge. Believed to be of Iberian origin, (modern day Spain and Portugal.

Beaker techniques brought to Britain the skill of refining metal. At first the users made items from copper, but from around 2,150 B.C, smiths had discovered how to make bronze (which was much harder than copper) by mixing copper with a small amount of tin. With this discovery, the Bronze Age arrived in Britain.

Celtic Culture of the Bronze age

Over the next thousand years, bronze gradually replaced stone as the main material for tool and weapon making. The Beaker people were also skilled at making ornaments from gold, silver, copper, and examples of these have been found in graves of the wealthy Wessex culture of Central Southern Britain. Because of their close proximity to the actual crossing place for Africans entering Europe (Gibraltar), the Grimaldi skeletons of Monaco, which were described as resembling the Khoisan, are more likely the oldest human skeletons in Europe. End of part 2 of 4. To be continued---
Next blog 18/12/18