- Bell Beaker tradition
Bell Beaker tradition (until the 1980s — Bell Beaker culture, English: Beaker culture) (c. 2800–1900 BC) — an archaeological culture of the Late Neolithic – Early Bronze Age in Western and Central Europe. Individual sites of this tradition are also found in North Africa (Morocco). The term was proposed by the English archaeologist John Abercromby and is based on the characteristic pottery shape.
Until approximately the mid-20th century, archaeologists primarily spoke about the migration of "Beaker people," but later an increasing number of facts indicated that the beakers were not an archaeological culture and were not associated with large-scale ethnic migration, but rather represented a supra-cultural phenomenon, possibly of a cultic nature. Moreover, as the Polish archaeologist J. Czebreszuk writes, even if this tradition was associated with migrations, the migrants represented a clear minority in the societies to which they brought the beaker tradition. Bell beakers were used by bearers of various archaeological cultures of the Early Bronze Age with very different anthropological characteristics.
The Bell Beaker culture influenced the development of many subsequent Bronze Age cultures, in particular, the Únětice culture (Central Europe), around 2300 BC, as well as the cultures of Scandinavia, northern Germany, and Poland, known collectively as the Nordic Bronze Age, around 1800 BC. There is also a version that this culture influenced the Proto-Slavs. For example, the anthropologist Tatyana Alekseeva adhered to this version.
In Central Spain, many elements of the Bell Beaker tradition were inherited by the Cogotas I culture, which lasted until 700 BC.
A number of researchers consider the Picts in Scotland or the Basques on the coast of the Bay of Biscay as descendants of those who spread the Bell Beaker tradition.
On the Iberian Peninsula, the bearers of the culture left behind numerous funerary monuments known as "motillas," which are a kind of fortified burial mound. In Britain, a well-known structure is Stonehenge.
In burials of this culture, only representatives with Y-chromosome haplogroup R1b were found (including R1b1b2-M269(xS21/U106), R1b1a2a1a2). Mitochondrial haplogroups found among representatives of this culture include: W, I1a1, K1, T1, U2, U4, U5, T1a, H, H4, H5, T2.
Sources:
Ethnogenesis of the Abkhazians. D.A. Arshba, 2015
Hallstatt culture