Interpreting the Beaker phenomenon in Mediterranean France: an Iron Age analogy

Abstract

The author offers a new descriptive explanation of the Beaker phenomenon, by focusing on Mediterranean France and making reference to the Greek influx in the same area 2000 years later. In the Iron Age, the influence began with an exploratory phase, and then went on to create new settlements and colonise new areas away from the coast. The Beaker analogy is striking, with phases of exploration and implantation and acculturation, but adjusted to include a final phase where Beaker practice was more independent. Comparing the numerous models put forward to explain it, the author shows that immigration and a cultural package are both aspects of the Beaker phenomenon.

The Beaker Phenomenon and the Genomic Transformation of Northwest Europe

“…Regardless of the geographic region where it originated (if it did have a single origin), 128 elements of the Beaker Complex rapidly spread throughout western Europe (and northern 129 Africa), reaching southern and Atlantic France, Italy and central Europe [10][11][12] where they 130 overlapped geographically with the Corded Ware Complex, and from there expanding to Britain 131 and Ireland 13,14 . A major debate has centred on whether the spread of the Beaker Complex was 132 mediated by the movement of people, culture, or a combination of these [15][16][17][18] . Genome-wide data hybridization DNA capture 4,19 , and generated new sequence data from 170 ancient Europeans 144 dating to ~4700-1200 BCE (Supplementary Table 1; Supplementary Information, section 1).…”

Demic and cultural diffusion in prehistoric Europe in the age of ancient genomes

“…Thus, we cannot assume that individuals or populations sharing certain cultures belonged to closely related populations, a point well appreciated by many archeologists . Indeed, a recent analysis of genome‐wide data found that individuals from the Bell‐Beaker complex of Europe (4,750‐3,800 years) did not represent a homogenous population, and found little support for the hypothesis, previously proposed, that a significant migration from Iberia established the Bell Beaker populations across Europe. Rather, cultural diffusion appears to have been the main way the Bell‐Beaker culture spread into central Europe.…”

Around Maritime beaker: the vases à cordon, linear beakers and épicampaniforme

“…The chronological argument was used to explain the differences between the vases (Treinen 1989). As more data became available, and the corpuses became more extensive, the idea that dotted-geometric style vases could be practically contemporaneous with maritime beakers was gradually accepted in southeast France (Lemercier 2004, 2012, Lemercier et al 2014. It was possible to go a little further in the northwest of France, since common ware productions, such as vases à cordon, are attested at each stage of Beaker development (Favrel 2015).…”