Impressed Ware culture, or Cardial/Cardium Ware culture — a decorative style of the Neolithic period. The name comes from the custom of imprinting shells of the cockle mollusk, Cardium edulis, on pottery. Some archaeologists use the alternative name "Printed-Cardium Pottery, Impressed Ware" (since among the impressions there are not only Cardium).
It should be noted that Cardial Ware had a much wider distribution than the Cardial Ware culture.
As the culture developed, it began to practice new types of impressions, but the general style of pottery remained — unprocessed, unpainted, with shell impressions as the only decoration. The culture was distributed from the coast of the Adriatic Sea to the Atlantic coast of Portugal and Morocco.
Origin
An outdated hypothesis about the spread of Cardial Ware from the Middle East to Europe (the earliest samples of stamped pottery were found in Byblos). According to another hypothesis, finds at Sesklo belonged to the extreme eastern border of the Impresso distribution.
Currently, the origin of the Cardial Ware culture (CWC) is a subject of debate. The oldest samples of pottery with Cardium shell impressions were found in Byblos (Lebanon) and date to the 9th millennium BC. Between these sites and Cardial Ware in western Greece (Pre-Sesklo in Thessaly) there is a chronological gap of 2.5 thousand years.
The first known sites of the CWC proper were found on the eastern coast of the Adriatic and date to the first centuries of the 6th millennium BC. Representatives of this culture then lived in caves and of all Neolithic technologies were familiar only with pottery. This is characteristic of sub-Neolithic people: hunter-gatherers were in contact with agricultural cultures, but did not abandon their way of life.
Further, Cardial Ware spread along the coast of Italy, with different variants existing on the western and eastern coasts.
Ukrainian archaeologist D. L. Gaskevich believes that the chronological gap between the pottery of Byblos and later sites of the Adriatic can be explained by the fact that the areas of Cardial migration in the 8th—7th millennium BC were flooded by rising sea levels (see the Black Sea deluge theory). He considers Samchinskaya pottery of the 7th—6th millennium BC, found in the northern Black Sea region and further inland along the coast, as one of the offshoots of Cardial Ware.
- Expansion of the Cardial Ware culture (blue) and Balkan Neolithic cultures (green) in the 7th—5th millennium BC.
Expansion of the Cardial Ware culture (blue) and Balkan Neolithic cultures (green) in the 7th—5th millennium BC.
Only many years after the appearance of Cardial Ware did the inhabitants of the Adriatic fully adopt the Neolithic way of life: they began to build villages, grow cereals, and raise goats, sheep, and cattle. Thus, in the second half of the 6th millennium BC, the second stage of CWC development begins. During this era, the Cardial design on pottery degenerates, and decorations in the form of vortex patterns appear.
The most notable characteristic of this culture is their developed navigation skills, as evidenced by finds of seafood species that can only be obtained in the open sea. This ability allowed them to colonize vast regions along the Mediterranean coast. At the same time, the Cardial Ware culture is in no way connected with Crete, where maritime traditions were also developed during the Minoan period (19th-century researchers suggested such a connection through the Butmir culture).
Initially, the CWC colonized southern Italy — starting from Apulia and then into other regions in the south of the peninsula and in Sicily. In almost all cases, representatives of the culture settled in caves. Gradually, colonization covered Latium, Tuscany, Sardinia, Corsica, and Liguria; individual settlements were founded on the coast of Provence.
In the 5th millennium BC, the CWC spread to southeastern France and eastern Spain. With rare exceptions, archaeological data indicate rather a process of cultural adaptation of the local population (post-Tardenoisian cultures — Castelnovian, Roucadourian, etc.) than mass migration from the Adriatic. Away from coastal lands, this culture spread north along the Rhone Valley (La Hoguette tradition) and west along the Ebro River. Its further advance to the west was somewhat limited, although it did play a role in the (usually slow) development of the first Neolithic cultures of the Atlantic region. Long barrows and other megalithic monuments in northwestern Europe often contain pottery remains and other artifacts of this culture.
During the same period, this culture colonized Northern Italy, where it came overland from the Balkans. The advance of the CWC into the territory of northern Greece was unsuccessful.
As noted by A. L. Mongait, in some places in France the Chassey culture coexists with the Cardial Ware culture, while in other places the Chassey layers lie above the layers with Cardial Ware.
When the expansion ended, local development of regional Mediterranean cultures began. The western descendants of this culture are designated as "Epicardial Ware," while in northern Italy this culture gave rise to the Square-Mouthed Pottery culture (future Ligurians), and in the Adriatic Balkans — to three related cultures: Hvar, Lisicic, and Butmir. A connection with the Hamangia culture is not excluded.
- Mollusk cockle (Cardium), the impressions of which are characteristic of CWC pottery.
According to prominent 19th-century linguists — A. d'Arbois de Jubainville, J. Pokorny, and P. Kretschmer — the supposed descendants of the Cardial Ware culture in the historical period are the Iberians in Spain and the Ligurians in Italy (both peoples were later assimilated by the Romans). This, in their opinion, is evidenced by place names with characteristic suffixes identified in the toponymy of Liguria, southern France, and the eastern coast of Spain.
The hypothesis of the relationship between the Basques and the Iberians, shared by a number of modern linguists, also allows the Basques to be linked to the Cardial Ware culture (through the Artenac culture — with the La Hoguette culture in southern France).
Demography and genetics
Y-chromosome haplogroup E3b is found in small numbers in the areas where this culture was distributed. However, due to the wide maritime contacts of this culture, this group may also be found among those modern peoples whose ancestors did not belong to this culture — in particular, among the Basques and Pasiegos. In addition, in the 2nd millennium BC, descendants of this culture actively mixed with representatives of Balkan and Anatolian cultures, and later with Indo-European newcomers.
According to an alternative hypothesis, Cardial Ware is associated with haplogroup J2, the distribution of which in Europe covers almost the entire region of Cardial Ware. The maximum concentration of J2 in Europe, however, is observed on Crete, where Cardial Ware has never been found.
6000—5000 BC Abadzekh legend about the disaster