Corded Ware
Corded Ware
Corded Ware
2 Geography
Corded Ware encompassed most of continental northern Europe from the Rhine on the west to the Volga
in the east, including most of modern-day Germany,
the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia,
Estonia, Belarus, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Switzerland,
northwestern Romania, northern Ukraine, and the European part of Russia, as well as coastal Norway and the
southern portions of Sweden and Finland.[2] In the Late
Eneolithic/Early Bronze Age, it encompassed the territory of nearly the entire Balkan Peninsula, where corded
ware mixed with other steppe elements.[6]
The origins and dispersal of Corded Ware culture remained one of the pivotal unresolved issues of the IndoEuropean Urheimat problem.[3] but a genetic study conducted by Haak et al. (2015) found that a large proportion (about 75%) of the Corded Ware cultures ancestry
came from the Yamnaya culture, tracing the Corded Ware
cultures origins to migrations from the Yamnaya population of the steppes.[4] Their study conrms with paleogenomics the pivotal role Corded Ware culture played
in disseminating many forms of the Indo-European language ancestral to at least Northern European IndoEuropean languages (Germanic and Balto-Slavic), and
suggests a role in the spread of other Indo-European
languages of Southern Europe (Italo-Celtic and probably Greek languages).[4]:Supplementary Material: 139-140 Furthermore, Allentoft et al. (2015) presents surprising genetic evidence of genetic anity of the Corded Ware Culture with the later Sintashta culture, suggesting that the
Western or European Neolithic component of Sintashta
and its daughter cultures may have come from the Corded
Ware culture.[1]
Archaeologists note that Corded Ware was not a unied culture, as Corded ware groups inhabiting a
vast geographical area from the Rhine to Volga seem
to have regionally specic subsistence strategies and
economies.[2]:226 There are dierences in the material
culture and in settlements and society.[2] At the same
time, they had several shared elements that are characteristic of all Corded Ware groups, such as their burial practices, pottery with cord decoration and unique stoneaxes.[2]
The contemporary Beaker culture overlapped with the
western extremity of this culture, west of the Elbe, and
may have contributed to the pan-European spread of that
culture. Although a similar social organization and settlement pattern to the Beaker were adopted, the Corded
Ware group lacked the new renements made possible
through trade and communication by sea and rivers.[7]
Nomenclature
3.2
Genetic studies
clearly articulated by the Lithuanian archeologist Marija peoples during the 3rd millennium BCE, they came to
Gimbutas and more recently modied and updated by J. dominate the local populations yet parts of the indigenous
P. Mallory and David Anthony, among many others.
lexicon persisted in the formation of Proto-Germanic,
the status of being an IndoAccording to Gimbutas' original theory, the process of thus giving Proto-Germanic
[23]
Europeanized
language.
Indo-Europeanization of Corded Ware (and, later, the
rest of Europe) was essentially a cultural transformation,
not one of physical type.[13] The Yamnaya migration from
Eastern to Central and Western Europe is understood as a
military victory, resulting in the Yamnaya imposing a new
administrative system, language and religion upon the indigenous groups.[14][note 1] [note 2] The social organization
greatly facilitated the Yamnaya peoples eectiveness in
war, their patrilineal and patriarchal structure.[15][note 3]
The Old Europeans (indigenous groups) had neither a
warrior class nor horses.[16] They lived in (probably) theocratic monarchies presided over by a queen-priestess or
were egalitarian society[17][note 4] This Old European social structure contrasted with the social structure of the
Yamnaya-derived cultures that followed them.[18]
GRAVES
Economy
Graves
6.3
covery of the worlds rst gay caveman.[29][30] Archaeologists and biological anthropologists criticised media
coverage as sensationalist. If this burial represents a
transgendered individual (as well it could), that doesn't
necessarily mean the person had a 'dierent sexual orientation' and certainly doesn't mean that he would have
considered himself (or that his culture would have considered him) 'homosexual,'" anthropologist Kristina Killgrove commented. Other items of criticism were that
someone buried in the Copper Age was not a "caveman"
and that identifying the sex of skeletal remains is dicult
and inexact.[31] A detailed account of the burial has not
yet appeared in the scientic literature.
6
6.1
Subgroups
Corded Ware culture
5
the already known dolmens, long barrows and passage
graves.[33] In 1898, archaeologist Sophus Mller was rst
to present a migration-hypothesis stating that previously
known dolmens, long barrows, passage graves and newlydiscovered single graves may represent two completely
dierent groups of people, stating Single graves are
traces of new, from the south coming tribes.[34]
The cultural emphasis on drinking equipment already
characteristic of the early indigenous Funnelbeaker culture, synthesized with newly arrived Corded Ware traditions. Especially in the west (Scandinavia and northern
Germany), the drinking vessels have a protruding foot
and dene the Protruding-Foot Beaker culture (PFB) as a
subset of the Single Grave culture.[35] The Beaker culture
has been proposed to derive from this specic branch of
the Corded Ware culture.
6.2
Single Grave term refers to a series of late Neolithic communities of the 3rd millennium BCE living in southern
Scandinavia, Northern Germany, and the Low Countries
that share the practice of single burial, the deceased usually being accompanied by a battle-axe, amber beads, and
pottery vessels.[32]
About 3000 battle axes have been found, in sites distributed over all of Scandinavia, but they are sparse in
Norrland and northern Norway. Less than 100 settlements are known, and their remains are negligible as they
are located on continually used farmland, and have conThe term Single Grave culture was rst introduced by sequently been plowed away. Einar stmo reports sites
the Danish archaeologist Andreas Peter Madsen in late inside the Arctic Circle in the Lofoten, and as far north
1800s, he found Single Graves to be quite dierent from as the present city of Troms.
8 NOTES
The Swedish-Norwegian Battle Axe culture/Boat Axe Uralic nor Indo-European.[37] Genetics seems to support
culture was based on the same agricultural practices as Hkkinen.
the previous Funnelbeaker culture, but the appearance
of metal changed the social system. This is marked
by the fact that the Funnelbeaker culture had collective 7 See also
megalithic graves with a great deal of sacrices to the
graves, but the Battle Axe culture has individual graves
Funnelbeaker culture
with individual sacrices.
FatyanovoBalanovo culture
A new aspect was given to the culture in 1993, when a
death house in Turinge, in Sdermanland was excavated.
Middle Dnieper culture
Along the once heavily timbered walls were found the remains of about twenty clay vessels, six work axes and a
Beaker culture
battle axe, which all came from the last period of the cul Mjlnir
ture. There were also the cremated remains of at least six
people. This is the earliest nd of cremation in Scandi Ukko
navia and it shows close contacts with Central Europe.
In the context of the entry of Germanic into the region,
Einar stmo emphasizes that the Atlantic and North Sea
coastal regions of Scandinavia, and the circum-Baltic areas were united by a vigorous maritime economy, permitting a far wider geographical spread and a closer cultural
unity than interior continental cultures could attain. He
points to the widely disseminated number of rock carvings assigned to this era, which display thousands of
ships. To seafaring cultures like this one, the sea is a highway and not a divider.
6.4
The Finnish Battle Axe culture was a mixed cattlebreeder and hunter-gatherer culture, and one of the few
in this horizon to provide rich nds from settlements.
6.5
Middle Dnieper
Balanovo cultures
and
Fatyanovo-
Erteblle culture
8 Notes
[1] Gimbutas uses the term Old Europe to refer to indigenous, Pre-Indo-European Europeans during the Neolithic,
Chalcolithic and Copper ages, representing a clearly unbroken cultural tradition of nearly 3 millennia (c. 65003500 B.C.). Notably, the Narva culture, the Funnelbeaker
culture, the Linear Pottery culture, the Cardium pottery
culture, the Vina culture, the early Helladic culture, and
the Minoans, among others, are all part of her Old Europe.
[2] Marija Gimbutas: Three millennium long traditions were
truncated by two waves of semi-nomadic horse riding people from the east: the towns and villages disintegrated, the
magnicent painted pottery vanished; so did the shrines,
frescoes, sculptures, symbols and script. ... [This is evident in] the archaeological record not only by the abrupt
absences of the magnicent painted pottery and gurines
and the termination of sign use, but by the equally abrupt
appearance of thrusting weapons and horses inltrating
the Danubian Valley and other major grasslands of the
Balkans and Central Europe. Their arrival initiated a dramatic shift in the prehistory of Europe, a change in social
structure and in residence patterns, in art and in religion
and it was a decisive factor in the formation of Europes
last 5,000 years.
[3] Additionally, this "Old Europesocial structure is inferred
to have contrasted with the Indo-European culture, who
were mobile and non-egalitarian. This relates to the threecategory hierarchy reconstructed for Indo-Europeans earlier by Georges Dumzil: warrior priest rulers, warrior
nobility, and laborers/agriculturalists at the bottom. The
members of the Kurgan Culture were also warlike, were
either mobile or lived in smaller villages, and had an ideology that centered on the virile male. Their gods were
often heroic warriors of the shining and thunderous sky
rather than peaceful mother goddesses of birth and regeneration. In sum, when comparing and contrasting these
two groups through the eyes of Gimbutas, it can be said
that, the Old Europeans put no emphasis on dangerous
[8] Asya Pereltsvaig and Martin Lewis 2015. The IndoEuropean Controversy: Facts and Fallacies in Historical
Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[5] David Anthony (1995): Language shift can be understood best as a social strategy through which individuals and groups compete for positions of prestige, power,
and domestic security [...] What is important, then, is not
just dominance, but vertical social mobility and a linkage
between language and access to positions of prestige and
power [...] A relatively small immigrant elite population
can encourage widespread language shift among numerically dominant indigenes in a non-state or pre-state context if the elite employs a specic combination of encouragements and punishments. Ethnohistorical cases [...]
demonstrate that small elite groups have successfully imposed their languages in non-state situations.
[10] Wlodarczak, Piotr (2009). Radiocarbon and Dendrochronological Dates of the Corded Ware Culture. Radiocarbon. 51 (2): 737749. Retrieved 2 July 2016.
[11] Czebreszuk, Janusz (2004). Corded Ware from East to
West. In Crabtree, Pam; Bogucki, Peter. Ancient Europe, 8000 B.C. to A.D. 1000: An Encyclopedia of the
Barbarian World.
[12] Bloemers, JHF; van Dorp, T (1991), Pre- & protohistorie van de lage landen, onder redactie (in Dutch), De
Haan/Open Universiteit, ISBN 90-269-4448-9
[13] Gimbutas 1997.
[14] Gimbutas 1997, p. 240.
[15] Gimbutas 1997, p. 361.
References
10 SOURCES
10
Sources
10.1
Web-sources
11
11.1
11.2
Images
File:ALB_-_Neolithikum_Bootsaxt.jpg Source:
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2C_sen_skafth%C3%A5lsyxa%2C_Nordisk_familjebok.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: Nordisk familjebok (1917), vol.26,
Till art. Stenlder. I. [1] Original artist: Nordisk familjebok
11.3
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