[tied] Beakers.

----- Original Message -----

From: John Croft

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2000 7:56 AM

Subject: [tied] Re: Gimbutas.

John,

 

With all due respect for your archaeological expertise, you're partly confusing TRB (the Funnel Beaker culture) with the Corded Ware/Battle Axe complex. The Funnel Beakers started out in northern Germany ca. 4300-4000 BC according to calibrated radiocarbon datings (if you include the Michelsberg culture, the process may have begun somewhat earlier in southern Germany). At the peak of its Middle Neolithic expansion in the North European Plain (in the mid-fourth millennium BC) the TRB cultural sphere extended from the Netherlands to W Ukraine and from S Norway to the Czech/Austrian border. The beginnings of the Late neolithic Corded Ware culture (identified by Gimbutas with the second and more important "Kurgan" invasion of Central Europe after the earlier and territorially more restricted Globular Amphorae) date to about 3100 BC. The Fatyanovo culture has direct affinities with the Corded Ware, not the TRB culture (the latter was already extinct at the time).

 

Piotr

 

 

 

John wrote:

There is significant arguement over the degree to which "Beaker
Culture" is a significant unity, as it generally covers two distinct
cultural assemblages.

1. The TRB or "Funnel Necked Beakers", called by V.Gordon Childe as
"Battle Axe" cultures after a very destinctive stone axe made to copy
a copper prototype.  These cultures certainly did start just north of
the steppe zone in the Ukraine and spread as far as the North Sea.
It
has been suggested from microcrystaline deposits found in Funnel
Beakers that they were associated with the drinking large amounts of
honey mead.  It used to be proposed that they were an adstratum. 
Certainly in Denmark, North Germany and southern Scandinavia, they
were the first full "neolithic" culture after the Ertebolle people
("Folkish"), which developed in situ out of the Mesolithic Swiderian
culture.  They were also the first (and last) group to have extended
from Ukraine into the Baltic region, and have been credited as
introducing the Balkan IE languages into that region.  The problem
with this identification is that these people also involve the
Fatyanova culture complex, which is located in what in historical
times was clearly Finno Ugric.  Fatyanova culture extended into
Estonia and Finland and is usually accepted as the arrival of the
Finnish cultures (over a Swiderian sub-stratum).