From around 2750 to 2500 bc, Bell Beaker pottery became widespread across western and central Europe, before it disappeared between 2200 and 1800 bc. The forces that propelled its expansion are a matter of long-standing debate, and there is support for both cultural diffusion and migration having a role in this process. Here we present genome-wide data from 400 Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age Europeans, including 226 individuals associated with Beaker-complex artefacts. We detected limited genetic affinity between Beaker-complex-associated individuals from Iberia and central Europe, and thus exclude migration as an important mechanism of spread between these two regions. However, migration had a key role in the further dissemination of the Beaker complex. We document this phenomenon most clearly in Britain, where the spread of the Beaker complex introduced high levels of steppe-related ancestry and was associated with the replacement of approximately 90% of Britain's gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the east-to-west expansion that had brought steppe-related ancestry into central and northern Europe over the previous centuries.

/pdf/the-beaker-phenomenon-and-the-genomic-transformation-of-1wzi3laams.pdf

The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe

Bell Beaker pottery spread across western and central Europe beginning around 2750 BCE before disappearing between 2200-1800 BCE. The mechanism of its expansion is a topic of long-standing debate, with support for both cultural diffusion and human migration. We present new genome-wide ancient DNA data from 170 Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age Europeans, including 100 Beaker-associated individuals. In contrast to the Corded Ware Complex, which has previously been identified as arriving in central Europe following migration from the east, we observe limited genetic affinity between Iberian and central European Beaker Complex-associated individuals, and thus exclude migration as a significant mechanism of spread between these two regions. However, human migration did have an important role in the further dissemination of the Beaker Complex, which we document most clearly in Britain using data from 80 newly reported individuals dating to 3900-1200 BCE. British Neolithic farmers were genetically similar to contemporary populations in continental Europe and in particular to Neolithic Iberians, suggesting that a portion of the farmer ancestry in Britain came from the Mediterranean rather than the Danubian route of farming expansion. Beginning with the Beaker period, and continuing through the Bronze Age, all British individuals harboured high proportions of Steppe ancestry and were genetically closely related to Beaker-associated individuals from the Lower Rhine area. We use these observations to show that the spread of the Beaker Complex to Britain was mediated by migration from the continent that replaced >90% of Britain9s Neolithic gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the process that brought Steppe ancestry into central and northern Europe 400 years earlier.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2017/05/09/135962.full.pdf

The Beaker Phenomenon And The Genomic Transformation Of Northwest Europe

The Geoarchaeological Significance and Spatial Variability of a Range of Physical and Chemical Soil Properties from a Former Habitation Site, Isle of Skye

‘It is the slippery assemblages and the social traditions they represent, that we are trying to precipitate from the mass of beaker data’. Clarke 1970, 33The pottery we collectively call ‘Beakers’ is united by the thread of a potting and style tradition, Wrapped up in that tradition are also expressions concerning what such a pot is for and who it may represent. Both style and those embedded meanings mutate through the long currency of British Beakers. Indeed, the newly emerging chronology for Beaker grave groups suggests that there was one critical point of rapid mutation in both pot form and associated artefacts. This phase is referred to as a fission horizon, c. 2250–2150 cal BC, and it underlines the difficulties that past schemes of steady evolution have run into.In reviewing the continental background for Beaker-carrying cultures, a corridor of Bell Beaker/Corded Ware fusion is perceived along the southern flanks of the Channel. This created a modified spectrum of Beaker culture which stands at the head of the insular phenomenon. The long ensuing currency of Beaker pottery and Beaker graves in Britain does not hold up as a unified, steadily evolving entity. Instead, three ‘phases of meaning’ can be suggested: 1) Beaker as circumscribed, exclusive culture; 2) Beaker as instituted culture; 3) Beaker as past reference. The fission horizon initiates phase 2.

Transforming Beaker Culture in North-West Europe; Processes of Fusion and Fission

While recent years have seen increasing interest in the geographies of heritage, very few scholars have interrogated the difference that scale makes. Indeed, in a world in which the nation state appears to be on the wane, the process of articulating heritage on whatever scale – whether of individuals and communities, towns and cities, regions, nations, continents or globally – becomes ever more important. Partly reflecting this crisis of the national container, researchers have sought opportunities both through processes of ‘downscaling’, towards community, family and even personal forms of heritage, as well as ‘upscaling’, towards a universal understanding of heritage. While such work has had critical impact within prescribed scalar boundaries, we need to build a theoretical understanding of what an emergent relationship between heritage and scale does within the context of dynamic power relations. This paper examines how heritage is produced and practised, consumed and experienced, managed and deployed ...

Heritage and scale: settings, boundaries and relations

National Museums: New Studies from around the World

From the Stone Age to the 'forty-five : studies presented to R.B.K. Stevenson, former keeper, National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland

A small number of Pictish symbol stones demonstrate evidence for multiple lives within the Early Historic Period. These stones are reviewed together with their implications for how we view the wider corpus of Pictish stones. The idea that the stones are burial markers is rejected. Instead, it is suggested that they were created in response to, and as a rejection of, Christian missionary activity.

Reading the multiple lives of Pictish symbol stones

As part of a major international research project, The Times of Their Lives, a programme of radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modelling was undertaken to refine the chronology of activities in one small but important part of the extensive Late Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement on Links of Noltland on the island of Westray, Orkney. The selected area (Trench D) is well known for having produced, next to a wall, the remains of a heap of at least 15 red deer carcasses, on top of which had been placed a large cod, a gannet’s wing along with part of a greater black-backed gull, and a pair of large antlers. This remarkable deposit had been preceded by, and was followed by, periods of cultivation and the deposition of domestic refuse. Refined date estimates have been produced, based on 18 radiocarbon determinations obtained from 16 samples from Trench D (including nine newly obtained dates, three from individual deer in the heap). These clarify when, during this long sequence of activities, the deer were heaped up: probably in the 22nd century cal bc, around the same time as Beaker pottery was deposited elsewhere on the Links. This allows comparison between the dated activities in this part of the site with activity elsewhere on the Links and also with other episodes of deer deposition in 3rd-millennium cal bc Orkney. It encourages exploration of the possible reasons for what appears to be a remarkable act of structured deposition. The significance of an earlier, much larger scale deposit featuring cattle remains at Ness of Brodgar is discussed in exploring the nature of Orcadian society and practices during the second half of the 3rd millennium cal bc.

https://dspace.stir.ac.uk/bitstream/1893/26805/1/3PSAS14657_89.pdf

The end of the world, or just 'goodbye to all that'? Contextualising the red deer heap from Links of Noltland, Westray, within late 3rd-millennium cal BC Orkney

Rodents have important effects on contemporary human societies, sometimes providing a source of food but more often as agricultural pests, or as vectors and reservoirs of disease. Skeletal remains of rodents are commonly found in archaeological assemblages from around the world, highlighting their potential importance to ancient human populations. However, there are few studies of the interactions between people and rodents at such sites and most of these are confined to locations where rodents have formed a part of the recent diet. Here we compare the accumulation pattern of rodent remains from four locations within and adjacent to the renowned Neolithic site of Skara Brae, Orkney, showing that those within the settlement itself were the result of deliberate human activity. The accumulation and nature of burnt bones, incorporated over an extended period within deposits of household waste, indicate that rodents were used as a nutritional resource and may have been the subject of early pest control. We, therefore, provide the first evidence for the exploitation or control of rodents by the Neolithic inhabitants of Europe.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsos.160514

Rodents: food or pests in Neolithic Orkney.

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