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The Dawn of
European Civilization
By
V. GORDON CHILDE
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.461431
1923
By
V. GORDON CHILDE
D.Litt., D.Sc.
Professor of Prehistoric European Archeology, University of London
LONDON
ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL LTD
BROADWAY HOUSE: 6S-74 CARTER LANE. E.C.4
First Edition 1925
Second Edition 1927
CONTENTS
Chapter I. SURVIVALS OF FOOD-GATHERERS .... i
II. The Orient and Crete ..... 15
III. Anatolia the Royal Road to the Aegean 35
IV. Maritime Civilization in the Cyclades . 48
V. From Village to City in Greece 57
VI. Farming Villages in the Balkans . 84
VII. Danubian Civilization ..... 105
VIII. The Peasants of the Black Earth 136
IX. Culture Transmission over the Eurasian Plain? 148
X. The Northern Cultures ..... 175
XI. Survivals of the Forest Culture . 203
XII. Megalith Builders and Beaker-folk 213
XIII. Farmers and Traders in Italy and Sicily 229
XIV. Island Civilizations in the Western Mediterranean 252
XV. The Iberian Peninsula . . . . 265
XVI. Western Culture in the Alpine Zone . 287
XVII. Megalith Builders in Atlantic Europe . 303
XVIII. The British Isles ...... 322
XIX. Retrospect: The Prehistory of European Society 341
Notes on Terminology ..... 353
Abbreviations ....... • 354
Books ........ • 358
FIG.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SWIDERIAN FLINT IMPLEMENTS, POLAND {after KoztOWSki)
Magdalenian harpoon from Cantabria and Azilian harpoons
AND PAINTED PEBBLES FROM ArI^GE .....
Geometric microliths and microgravers from Franconia
{after Gumpert) .........
Microliths from Muge, Portugal, and transverse arrow-
head SHAFTED FROM DENMARK ..............
"Lyngby axe” of reindeer antler, Holstein
Maglemosian types from Zealand ......
ERTEB0LLE POT, ANTLER AXES AND BONE COMBS, DENMARK .
Neolithic figurines from Crete and their relatives {after
Evans) ..........
Early Minoan III "teapots” and button seal {after Evans) .
The Minoan "Mother Goddess” and {left) Horns of Consecra-
tion, from a sealing {after Evans) .....
Minoan axes, axe-adzes and double axe, and seal impressions
{after Evans and Mon. Ant.) .......
(1) Early Minoan daggers, (2) Stone beads {after Evans) .
Middle Minoan I-II daggers {after Evans) ....
M.M.III RAPIERS (MyCENJE) AND L.M.I. HORNED HILT (CRETE)
{after Evans) . ........
(1) Late Mycenzean short sword, (2) Middle Minoan spear-
head ..........
Egyptian representations of Vapheio cups ....
Pottery from Thermi I-II(A) and III-IY(B) {after Lamb, BSA.,
XXX)....................................
"Megaron” palace, Troy II . ............
Pottery from Troy II .......
Knife and daggers and gold vessels, Troy II {Museum f.
Vorgeschichte, Berlin) ........
Battle-axe, gold-capped bead, and crystal pommel from
Treasure L, and stray axe-adze {Museum f. Vorgeschichte,
Berlin) ..........
Gold earring and pendant from Treasure A, pin from
Treasure D, bracelet from Treasure F, and knot-headed
pins {Museum f. Vorgeschichte, Berlin)
Tomb-group. Amorgos ......
Cycladic "frying-pan” and sherd showing boat .
Tombs on Syros and Eubcea ,
page
3
4
6
7
8
10
12
18
20
25
28
29
30
31
32
33
39
40
42
42
43
45
49
50
52
vii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
26. Slotted spear-head (showing method of mounting), halberd
AND TWEEZERS. AMORGOS ....... 53
27. Early Cycladic ornaments: Paros; Syros .... 54
28. Cycladic pottery: (i) Pelos; (2) Phylakopi I; (3) Phylakopi
II (L.C.).................................................55
29. Thessalian stone axes and adzes (after Tsountas) ... 59
30. Pottery of Sesklo style, white on red and red on white
(after Wace and Thompson) ....... 59
31. Neolithic figurines, Thessaly (after Wace and Thompson) . 61
32. Miniature altar or throne (after Wace and Thompson) . . 62
33. Plan of fortified village of Dimini (after Tsountas) . . 63
34. Dimini bowl and gold-ring pendant (after Tsountas) . . 64
35. Axe and battle-axes from H. Mamas (after Heurtley, BSA.,
XXIX).....................................................68
36. Early Helladic sauce-boat, askos, tankard, and jar . . 70
37. Early Macednic pot-forms (after Heurtley, B.S.A., XXVIII) . 71
38. Anchor Ornament, Kritsana................................... 71
39. Spear-head, knives, and dagger from M.H. graves in
Thessaly (after Tsountas) ....... 73
40. Minyan pottery from Thessaly, and imitations from Thermon,
JJtolia .......... 74
41. Matt-painted bowl and pithos from J£gina; and M.C. jugs
from Marseilles harbour and Phylakopi .... 75
42. Matt-painted jar, Lianokladhi III (after Wace and Thompson). 76
43. Terminal and pattern-bored spacer-bead from amber neck-
lace: Shaft Grave at Mycenze ...... 79
44. Mycenzean tholos tomb on Eubcea (after Papavasileiou) . . 81
45. Clay loom-weights and bone spatula of Kor6s culture . 86
46. Cruciform-footed bowl in fine Starcevo ware, and jar of
rusticated Koros style . . . . . . . 87
47. Bone combs and ring-pendant, Tordos, and ‘‘harpoon’’, Vinca 89
48. "Face urn” lid from Vinca (after Vassits) .... go
49. Mug, tripod bowl, and “altar” decorated by excision,
Banyata II ......... 95
50. Peg-footed vase from Denev ...... 97
51. Copper axe and adze from Gaborevo ..... 99
52. Gumelnija pottery: (i) Czernavoda; (2) Tel Metchkur;
(3-4) Tel Ratchev; (5-6) Kodja Berman .... 100
53. Painted clay head, Vin£a . . . . . . .101
54. Squatting figure, bone figurines and clay phallus, Bul-
garia ........... 102
55. Models of houses, Denev . . . . . . .102
56. Small Danubian I house from Saxony; the walls are marked
by a double row of posts (after Sangmeister) . . .107
viii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG.
57-
58.
59-
60.
61.
62.
63-
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
7°.
7i-
72.
73-
74.
75-
76.
77-
78.
79.
80.
81.
82.
83.
84.
85-
86.
87.
88.
PAGE
“Shoe-last celts” (after Seger) ...... 107
DANUBIAN I POTTERY . . . . . . . . 108
Clay block vase, Moravia . . . . . . .114
Copper trinkets and triangular axe, Jordanova (after Seger) 114
DANUBIAN II POTTERY, LENGYEL . . . . . . II5
Stroke-ornamented vases, Bohemia; Rossen vases, Central
Germany .......... 117
Copper battle-axes, Hungary . . . . . .120
Copper axe-adzes and axes, Hungary . . . . .121
Knobbed mace-head, Maros Decse . . . . .122
Bodrogkeresztur pyxis and milk-jug (after Tompa) . . 122
Pins and earrings from Unetician graves (after Schrdnil) . 129
Daggers from Unetician graves (after Schrdnil) . . . 131
Hoard of Sobochleby (after Schrdnil) . . . . .131
Bronze-hilted dagger (after Schrdnil) . . . . .131
Bulb, disc, trilobate, and crutch-headed pins from later
Unetician graves (after Schrdnil) ..... 133
Marschwitz and early Unetician pottery, Silesia and Bohemia
(after Stockf) ......... 134
Model hut from Popudnia . . . . . . .138
Potters’ oven and model, Ariu^d (after Laszlo) . . . 140
Tripolye types (after Passeh) .....................141
Stone sceptre-head, Fedele$eni, and clay stamp, Ariu^d . 143
Usatova types (after Passek) . ...................146
Copper battle-axe, Vozdvizhenskaya, copper beads, copper
spear-head, copper and bone hammer-pins . . . .151
Vases: (i) from Catacomb grave, Donetz; (2-3) from pit-graves,
Yatskovice, near Kiev; (4) from Yamno grave, Donetz;
(5) B FUNNEL BEAKER, DENMARK.....................I52
Transverse axe, axe-adze, knife, and gold and silver vases,
CARNELIAN BEAD AND FLINT ARROW-HEADS, FROM MAIKOP
barrow .......... 133
(1) Megalithic cist, Novosvobodnaya; (2) Catacomb grave,
Donetz .......... 153
Pottery, weapons, tools, and pins from tomb at Novosvo-
bodnaya .......... 155
Pottery and battle-axes from the Single Graves of Jutland
and Sweden (after Fv, 1922) . . . . . .161
Saxo-Thuringian corded ware .......................163
Thuringian faceted battle-axe and Silesian battle-axe . 164
Zlota pottery (after Kozlowski) . . . . . .166
Fatyanovo battle-axe and Finnish boat-axe . . . 169
Fatyanovo pottery of the Moscow, Yaroslav, and CuvaS groups i 70
ix
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
89. The Gali£ hoard . ........ 171
90. Northern flint axes arranged according to Montelius’
typology {by permission of Trustees of British Museum) . . 175
91. A-type funnel-beakers, amphora, “baking plate” {after Becker) 178
92. Tongued club-head, Denmark; polygonal battle-axe, Jordan-
ova; and flint axe of Eastern type . . . . .179
93. Pottery from Danish dysser ...... 181
94. Grave 28 at Jordanova {after Seger) . . . . .182
95. Danish Passage Grave pottery of phases B and C; battle-axe
AND ARROW-HEAD . . . . . . . . 184
96. Furniture of a grave at Zastow; and collared flask from
GRAVE AT NaLENCZOW . . . . . . . . 188
97. Kuyavish grave, Swierczyn {after Kozlowski) . 189
98. Walternienburg vases, Latdorf drum, and Baalburg jug . 193
99. Globular amphorae from Saxo-Thuringia and Podolia, and
BONE GIRDLE-CLASP FROM PODOLIA ..... I94
100. Flint daggers and Swedish cists of Montelius' IV . .197
101. Section of the Leubingen barrow............................ 200
102. Bronze-shafted halberd and halberd-blade from Leubingen
barrow .......... 201
103. (1) Pit-comb ware from Karelia; (2) vase of East Swedish
style from Aland Islands; (3) flint sculptures from
Volosovo .......... 204
104. No ST vet and Suomusjarvi celts, and polished chisel and
adze . 205
105. Maglemosian types which survive: (1-4) Esthonia {after Clark)',
(5) Ukraine; (6) leister from Ural peat bog . . . 206
106. Slate knives and dart-head, Sweden, stone mace-heads,
Finland, and slate pendant ...... 207
107. Knives and axe from Seim a hoard . . . . .211
108. Rock-cut tomb, Castelluccio, and corbelled tomb, Los
Millares ...................................................214
109. Rock-cut tomb and naveta, Balearic Islands . . .216
no. Segmented cist, North Ireland, and Giants’ Tomb, Sardinia 217
in. Beakers: (1-2) Palmella, Portugal; (3) La Halliade, South
France; (4) Villafrati, Sicily . . . . . .222
112. Beaker, wrist-guard, and associated vases, Silesia {after
Seger) ........... 225
113. West European dagger (Bohemia) and flint copy (Silesia);
arrow-straightener (Wiltshire); gold-leaf from wrist-
guard AND COPPER AWL, BOHEMIA ..... 225
114. South Italian painted pottery: (i) and (2) black on buff,
Serra d’Alto ware; (3) red and black on buff, Middle
Neolithic I, Megara Hyblzea ...... 232
x
FIG.
ii5-
116.
117.
118.
119.
120.
121.
122.
123.
124.
125.
126.
127.
128.
129.
13°.
I3I*
132-
133-
134*
135-
136.
137-
138.
139-
140.
141.
142.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Bossed bone plaque, Castelluccio (after Evans)
Copper and Early Bronze Age pottery: (1-2) pit-cave, Otranto;
(3) KEELED VASE WITH AXE HANDLE, “DOLMEN” OF BlSCEGLIE;
(4-5) Castelluccio ware .......
View into chamber tomb, Castelluccio .....
Knife and razor, Pantalica .......
ApENNINE VASE-HANDLES AND WINGED AXE, RAZOR, PESCHIERA
DAGGER, ANGLED SICKLE FROM PUNTO DEL TONNO
(1) Vase of North Italian Polada type; (2) square-mouthed
NEOLITHIC POT FROM ArENE CaNDIDE .....
Copper daggers and flint copies, Remedello
Peschiera safety-pin (fibula)................
Plan of “temples” at Mnaidra, Malta .....
Tripod bowl, San Bartolomeo, and vase-handle of nose-
bridge TYPE, ANGHELU B.UJU ......
Plan and elevation of tomb XXbis at Anghelu Ruju .
Necklace from Anghelu Ruju ......
(1) Gouge, El Garcel; (2) schist adze, Portugal; (3) jar, El
Garcel ..........
page
235
236
237
240
243
245
246
250
253
258
259
261
268
Stages in conventionalization of parietal art in Spain {after
Obermaier)) A, Maimon; B, Figuras; C, La Pileta . . . 269
Flint arrow-heads: (i) Alcala; (5) Los Millares. Halberd
blades; (3) Casa da Moura; (4) Los Millares; (2) Palmella
points .......... 271
“Late Neolithic” vase from Tres Cabezos, and symbol vases
from Los Millares . . . . . . . .272
Ritual objects: (i) Almeria; (2 and 4) Portugal; (3) Granada 273
Copper daggers and adze, AlcalA, and bone pin, Cabeqo da
Ministra. .......... 275
Plan of “neolithic” passage grave and part of the furniture,
S.E. Portugal [after Leisner) ...... 277
Argaric burial-jar showing diadem, funerary vases, halberd,
dagger-blades, and sword {by permission of Trustees of British
Museum) .......... 283
Antler harpoon and bone arrow-head, Switzerland . . 289
Cortaillod pottery {after ‘Antiquity’) ..... 290
Plan of a house at Aichbuhl ...... 292
Michelsberg pottery ........ 294
Types of antler sleeves for axes: A-B, Lower; C, first in
Middle; D, first in Upper Neolithic; Lake NeuchAtel . 296
Bone copies of Unetician pins ...... 297
Mondsee pottery ......... 300
Vase-supports in Chassey style: (i) Le Moustoir, Carnac;
(2) Motte de la Garde, Charente........304
xi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIG. PAGE
143. Late Chalcolithic types from Cevennian cists: (a-e) Liquisse;
(f~i) Grotte d’en Quisse, Gard; (j-o) “dolmens” of Aveyron 308
144. Polypod bowl, La Halliade ....... 310
145. Statue-menhirs from Gard and sculptured tomb, Petit
Morin (Marne) ......... 312
146. Horgen pot from Paris cist, and channelled pot from
Conguel, Morbihan . *313
147. Arc-pendant of stone . 313
148. Passage grave, Kercado, Morbihan ..... 316
149. Breton Bronze Age vase ....... 320
150. Lop-sided, tanged-and-barbed and leaf-shaped arrow-heads 323
151. Windmill Hill pot-forms (after Piggott) ..... 324
152. Passage grave in horned cairn, 240 ft. long, Yarrows,
Caithness ............................................. 327
153. Long stalled cairn, Midhowe, Rousay ..... 327
154. Gold earring ......... 330
135. Peterborough bowl from Thames, and sherds from West
Kennet Long Barrow (by permission of Trustees of British
Museum) .......... 333
156. Evolution of a socketed spear-head in Britain (after Green-
well): (1) Hintlesham, Suffolk; (2) Snowshill, Glos.; (3)
Arreton Down, Isle of Wight . . . . . -335
157. Segmented Fayence beads, Wilts (by permission of Trustees of
British Museum) ......... 336
158. Food Vessels from Argyll and East Lothian . . . 337
159. Gold lunula, Ireland {by permission of Trustees of British Museum) 338
Map I—Europe in Period I ...... 348
Map II—Europe in Period II ...... 349
Map Ilia—Period III: Megalithic Tombs .... 350
Map III6—Period III: Beakers and Battle-axes . . . 351
Map IV—Period IV : Early Bronze Age Cultures and Trade
Routes................................................. 352
Xll
PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION
When the First Edition was written as a pioneer attempt at a com-
prehensive survey of European prehistory, the archaeological record
was so fragmentary that a pattern could only he extracted by filling
up the gaps with undemonstrable guesses. A spate of excavations,
investigations and publications in the next twenty years rendered
obsolete some of those speculations, enriched the record with a wealth
of often quite unexpected facts, but actually complicated the picture.
Since 1945 still more intense activity has doubled the available data,
but in some points has simplified the scene; several formerly discrete
assemblages now appear as aspects of a very few widespread cultures.
Moreover, the new technique of radio-carbon dating, though still very
much in the experimental stage, offers at least the hope of an inde-
pendent time-scale against which archaeological events in several
regions can be compared chronologically. These advances allow and
demand drastic revision and re-arrangement of my text. At the same
time the fresh data, as much as Mongait’s pertinent criticisms in his
Introduction to the Russian translation, have induced a less dog-
matically “Orientalist” attitude than I adopted in 1925. In particular
the discovery that not all farmers were potters has entailed a complete
revaluation of the ceramic evidence! Radio-carbon dating has indeed
vindicated the Orient’s priority over Europe in farming and metallurgy.
But the speed and originality of Europe’s adaptation of Oriental
traditions can now be better appreciated; it should be clear why, as
well as that, a distinctively European culture had dawned by our
Bronze Age! Two more points should be noted. The radio-carbon dates
here given, many of them unofficial, axe all subject to a margin of error
of several centuries and must be regarded as tentative and provisional!
Secondly, to me the Near East still means what it meant in English
before 1940 and still means in American, Dutch, French and Russian.
For opportunities of studying at first hand the latest finds from
Eastern Europe I wish to thank the Academies of Sciences of Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Roumania, the U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia,
and to colleagues in those countries as well as in Austria, Belgium, the
British Isles, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Holland, Italy, Poland,
Sweden, Turkey and the U.S.A. I am grateful for information on un-
published finds, for reprints, drawings and photographs. Dr. Isobel
Smith has very kindly read the proofs.
March 1957. . V. G. C.
xiii
-
CHAPTER I
SURVIVALS OF FOOD-GATHERERS
Despite a startling refinement of industrial equipment and a masterly
graphic art, Pleistocene Europe altogether lacked civilization in the
economic sense. During the last Ice Age collective hunts on open
steppes and tundras in South Russia, Moravia, and France yielded
such plenteous and reliable supplies of mammoth, reindeer, bison, and
horse flesh, that the hunters could establish relatively permanent
camps and enjoy leisure to cultivate art. But they remained, none the
less, pure food-gatherers, dependent on what the environment offered
them. With the passing of glacial conditions, the old herds vanished;
forest, invading the open lands, rendered obsolete the familiar tech-
nique of communal hunting, and so the culture based thereon shrivelled
and decayed. Indeed, last century it appeared that Europe, abandoned
by reindeer- and mammoth-hunters, was left an empty wilderness for
neolithic immigrants to subdue to pasturage and tillage.
Forty years’ researches have erased the last outlines of that picture.
Archaeologists have discovered the remains left by various communities
occupying Europe continuously since the close of the Ice Age, but still
lacking the hall-marks of neolithic civilization. Their remains consti-
tute cultures that are termed mesolithic, because in time—but only in
time—they occupy a place between the latest palaeolithic and the oldest
neolithic cultures. At the same time botanists and geologists have
defined more precisely the changes in environment to which the meso-
lithic cultures were adaptations. Modern vegetation was only slowly
established in the glacial landscape; a temperate climate did not
abruptly replace an arctic one.
In Northern Europe phases in the colonization of the once frozen
plains by forest trees have been determined with great precision by
pollen-analysis (i.e. a quantitative study of the pollen grains preserved
principally in peat mosses).1 The first immigrants were birches and
willows, then come pines, later the hazel, soon followed by elms, limes,
and oaks—the mixed oak woods—lastly, in Denmark, the beech. But
of course the composition of a forest is profoundly affected by topo-
graphical and geological as well as climatic factors so that even on the
North European plain itself the local variations are large and significant.
1 Zeuner, F. E., Dating the Past (London, 1954), summarizes the evidence conveniently.
A I
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Stages in the gradual amelioration of climate can also be distinguished,
largely on the basis of the same botanical evidence. In North Europe
the long late glacial phase passed over eventually into a cold conti-
nental “Pre-Boreal phase” when birches and a few pines began to
colonize the tundra. This in turn gave place to a Boreal period, still
continental but characterized by summers longer and warmer than
to-day, but severe snowy winters. Next a relatively abrupt increase
of rainfall and westerly winds affected North-Western Europe without
reducing the average annual temperature, so that the climate of
Denmark was really Atlantic, and mixed oak woods attained a maxi-
mum extension at the cost of pine woods. In Britain, on the contrary,
excessive rain and wind caused deforestation in exposed areas. Gradu-
ally the course of the Atlantic storms shifted again, allowing a second
period of forest growth in England but inducing some contraction on
the Continent. This phase, still warmer than to-day, is termed the
Sub-Boreal. It ultimately ended with the onset of modem cold wet
weather in an exaggerated form in the so-called Sub-Atlantic phase.
Of course, the terms Boreal, Atlantic and so on are not strictly applic-
able to Switzerland or South Germany and are meaningless in Mediter-
ranean lands: they were devised in Denmark and Sweden, where alone
they are accurately descriptive.
In the meanwhile the distribution of land and water was also
changing. The release of the vast volumes of water locked up in glaciers
during the Ice Age produced a general, if gradual, rise in sea-level or
marine transgression, but this was offset in the north, where the
accumulations of ice had been deepest and heaviest, by an “isostatic”
re-elevation of the earth’s crust that had been depressed by their
weight. While much of the North Sea basin was still dry land, or at
least fen (Northsealand!), uniting England to the Continent, Scotland
and Scandinavia were thus depressed by the weight of the Ice masses.
The Baltic depression was occupied by a frozen sea, communicating
with the Arctic Ocean and termed the Yoldia Sea. The rebound of the
earth's crust on the melting of the superincumbent ice raised strips
of the Scottish coast above their present relative level and isolated
the Baltic depression; it was occupied by the Ancylus Lake, rendered
slightly brackish by a small inflow of salt water across Central Sweden.
At the end of Boreal times the continued rise of sea-level flooded the
North Sea basin and salt water poured into the Baltic depression,
forming the Litorina Sea, larger and salter than the modem Baltic.
England was completely separated from the Continent, while in Scot-
land whales could swim up the enlarged Forth estuary to above
Stirling. The resultant extension of the area occupied by warm salt
SURVIVALS OF FOOD-GATHERERS
water was perhaps the cause of the shift in storm tracks that brought
about the Atlantic phase of climate in the North. But north of a line
that runs through Southern Zealand and County Durham the isostatic
re-elevation of the land has continued so that the shore line of Atlantic
times is now represented by the “25 ft. raised beach” in North Britain
and corresponding raised strands round the Baltic. Nevertheless some
time elapsed before this local re-elevation of the land overtook the
general rise in sea-level, so that in marginal areas like Denmark and
East Anglia several local transgressions can be distinguished. In
Denmark and Southern Sweden, in fact, four have to be admitted—
the first at the beginning of the Atlantic phase, the last, and sometimes
the greatest, during early Sub-Boreal times,1 coinciding with Northern
Neolithic III a and b (p. 176).
This changing environment constitutes for the archaeologist a pro-
visional chronological framework, but contemporary men had to
adjust their cultures to it. To small groups of food-gatherers the
temperate forests offered greater facilities for picking up a bare liveli-
hood without intensive social co-operation or a highly specialized
kit-bag than had the bleak hunting-grounds of the Ice Age. Mesolithic
groups appear in general isolated and poorly equipped in contrast to
Magdalenians or Pfedmostians. But all had acquired, or themselves
domesticated, dogs whose co-operation would be of greatest assistance
to man precisely in the pursuit of the smaller, less gregarious game of
the new woodland. Everywhere the collection of nuts, snails, and
shell-fish played a conspicuous part in the new economy. Several of
the mesolithic cultures are clearly just the responses of palaeolithic
survivors to the new environment.
The Swiderian culture,2 represented by assemblages of small flint
tools collected from sand-dunes in Russia and Poland, sometimes under
fossil turf-lines of Atlantic age, is characterized by small asymmetrically
Fig. i. Swiderian flint implements, Poland. After Kozlowski (£).
1 “Aamosen” (1943), 162; Arsberattelse (1937-38), 36-96; cf. New Phytologist, XL1V
(1944), 64.
2 Confined effectively to the woodland zone; KS., XXXI (1950), 96-110; LIX, 7-9;
cf. Clark (1936), 62.
3
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
tanged-points (Fig. i) used presumably as arrow-heads, but morpho-
logically descended from the large dart-heads used by the South
Russian mammoth-hunters. Such was their ultimate response to the
extinction of the mammoth.
Descendants of the Franco-Cantabrian Magdalenians, who combined
with hunting and collecting fishing with the harpoon in the ancestral
manner, created the Azilian culture.1 The Azilians, like their ancestors,
lived by preference in caves where they buried their dead too.2 The
famous cave of Ofnet in Bavaria contained a nest of twenty-one skulls,
buried without the trunks, but not belonging certainly to Azilians.
Because eight of the skulls were brachycranial, anthropologists used
to think that the burial indicated the immigration of a new race into
Europe, but now admit that at least a tendency to round-headedness
existed among Upper Palaeolithic Europeans.3 The Azilians’ equipment
seems poor. The type fossil is the harpoon of red-deer’s antler (Fig. 2),
flat and clumsy in comparison with the ancestral Magdalenian instru-
ment of reindeer antler. Flint blades and gravers persist, but tend to
be diminutive. The cores could be used for wood-working, but were not
specialized into axes. However, some heavy wedge-like tools from the
Fig. 2. Magdalenian harpoon from Cantabria and Azilian harpoons and
painted pebbles from Ari&ge (f).
cave of Bize (Aude) may denote responses to the needs of primitive
carpentry. And in the Falkenstein cave, Hohenzollem, a ground stone
celt was found mounted in an antler sleeve with seemingly typical
Azilian harpoons.4 But now similar harpoons5 have turned up with
geometric microliths in a Tardenoisian layer in the Birsmatten cave
in the Swiss Jura so that all the Alpine-Jura “Azilian” may really be
Tardenoisian and so at best “late mesolithic”. The only reminiscences
1 Obermaier, Fossil Man in Spain (1925), 340!; PPS., XX (1954), 193-210.
2 E.g. in Axtege, L’Anfhr., XXXVIII (1928), 235.
3 See C. S. Coon, Races of Europe (1939), 35-6, 67-8.
4 Germania, XVIII (1934), 81-8.
5 Jb. Bernischen Hist. Mus., XXXIV (1954), 197-8.
4
SURVIVALS OF FOOD-GATHERERS
of Magdalenian art are highly conventionalized figures painted on
pebbles.
The cave deposits suggest that the Azilians lived in very small and
generally isolated communities; their isolation was not, however,
complete, since shells of Columbella rusticana, imported from the Medi-
terranean, reached the Falkenstein cave. Some sort of boat must have
been available, since Azilians encamped on small islands. Azilian
encampments are found on the slopes of the Cantabrian mountains
and the Pyrenees, of the Massif Central, the Jura, Vosges, Black
Forest, and Alpine foothills, and finally on the south-west coast of
Scotland. But the industry here is distinctive enough to be regarded
as a new culture, "the Obanian",1 not certainly descended from the
French Azilian. In South France the Azilian succeeds the Magdalenian
almost immediately, presumably in Boreal times; the Scottish sites are
situated above the 25-ft. beach and must be Atlantic in age. The
discrepancy might indicate the slow rate of migration by short stages
presumably along tracts of coast now submerged.
Descendants of the local Aurignacians created a very similar culture
in early post-glacial times in the Crimea1 2 and Transcaucasia. They too
lived in caves and buried the dead therein either in the contracted
position or extended. They had tamed a local wolf or jackal to help
them in the chase. In the Crimea harpoons of bone, but of Azilian form,
and slotted points armed with flints as in the Forest cultures, appear
late. Geometric microliths, at first triangles and lunates, later also
trapezes, were made and that even in layers that contain pottery and
polished celts and so look formally neolithic.3
The Tardenoisian culture survives in the archaeological record almost
entirely in the form of pigmy flints or microliths, ingeniously worked
into regular geometrical shapes—triangles, rhombs, trapezes, and
crescents—or into microgravers (Fig. 3) that may be a by-product in
their manufacture.4 These do not really define a single culture, but
represent several disparate industries.5 As the latter can only be dis-
tinguished statistically, all will here be grouped together under the rather
misleading term Tardenoisian. All microliths were presumably parts
of composite tools of wood or bone, but no one knows why the little
blades should be so carefully trimmed. Their makers camped exclusively
on sandy soils6 that would be lightly wooded, and sheltered at first
1 Movius, H., The Irish Stone Age (Cambridge, 1942), 180 ft.
2 HanSar, Kaukasiens, 116-26, 148-50, 194-206; SA., I, 195-212; V, 160-75, 299; for
the fauna MIA., XXXIX (1953). 460-2.
8 SA., V, 97-100; KS., IV (1940), 29.
4 Clark, Meso. Britain, 97-103.
5 PPS., XXI (1955). 14-19. 8 Clark (1936), 190-4.
5
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
often in caves, but also in flimsy huts1 partly sunk into the sandy soil.
At Muge1 2 on the Tagus and on Teviec and Hoedic, two tiny islets off
the coast of Morbihan,3 Tardenoisians settled on the open shore,
hunting and collecting shell-fish and leaving mounds composed of the
Fig. 3. Geometric microliths (2-5) and microgravers (1) from Franconia.
After Gumpert (f).
debris of their repasts. Skeletons, some brachycranial, were buried
in these midden heaps in the contracted attitude. On Teviec and
Hoedic a little cairn was heaped over each of the corpses, which were
sprinkled with ochre; some were covered with a sort of crown of stags’
antlers. In the Ligurian cave of Arene Candide,4 too, was a mesolithic
—perhaps more Azilian than Tardenoisian—cemetery of ten graves,
each containing an extended adult, twice accompanied by an infant,
lying on a bed of ochre.
A tendency to reduce the size of flint blades was common to most
Upper Palaeolithic industries. It led to the production of geometric
forms already in the Gravettian of France and Italy,5 while at Parpallo
in Eastern Spain6 even microburins occur from the Solutrian layers
upward. This tendency was perhaps more marked in the Mediterranean
environment than on the steppes and tundras of periglacial Europe
and strongest in North Africa. There a profusion of geometric micro-
1 Clark (1936), 198; Antiquity, XI (1937), 477; Gumpert, Frank. Mesolithikum
(Mannus Bibliothek, 40), 14-27.
2 Obermaier, op. cit., p. 324; Breuil and Zbyszewski, "Revision des industries de
Muge”, Communicagoes dos Servicios geologicos, XXVIII (Lisbon, 1947); Roche, J.,
L'lndustrie du Cabego d'Amoreira {Muge) (Porto, 1951).
3 Pequart, Boule and Vallois, Teviec, IPH., Mem. 18 (1937), with important section
on mesolithic races; Pequart, M. and St. J., Hoedic (Anvers, 1954).
4 Riv. St. Lig., XII (1946), 36-7.
6 L’Anthr., XLIX (1939-40), 702; Riv. St. Lig. XIV (1948). 16-19.
* Pericot, La Cueva del Parpalld (Madrid, 1942), 67, 92.
6
SURVIVALS OF FOOD-GATHERERS
liths characterizes the middens and other deposits of the later Capsian
culture. Moreover, these Capsians buried their dead in the middens.
Some Tardenoisians may then be immigrants, driven north by the
incipient desiccation of the Sahara at the close of the European Ice
Fig. 4. Microliths from Muge, Portugal, and transverse arrow-head shafted
from Denmark (f).
Age. The flints from such sites as the cave of La Cocina in Eastern
Spain are indeed virtually identical with the late Capsian.1 The top-
most layers of this cave yielded “Almerian” pottery which we shall
see (p. 268) represents a neolithic of Capsian tradition. It does not
follow that all makers of “Tardenoisian microliths” were recent
immigrants from Africa. Such microliths are found in most parts of
France, Britain, Belgium, South Germany, Poland, and the Pontic
Steppes; most are derivatives of local Upper Palaeolithic industries,
and had emerged in Britain, France, Belgium, and Germany by Boreal
times.2 But in both Britain3 and France,4 and probably too in south-
west Germany5 and Portugal,6 Tardenoisians still survived, retaining
their primitive economy and microlithic traditions in industry, when
a neolithic or even a Bronze Age economy had already been established
among neighbouring groups. And certain Tardenoisian types—trapezes
and lunates—used by later communities in the Peninsula, France,
and South Russia, may denote the absorption of Tardenoisian hunters
by food-producing peoples. Microlithic must not be mistaken for
mesolithic. On the other hand, isolated bones of sheep, reported
exceptionally from pure Tardenoisian layers, otherwise pre-neolithic,7
suggest the possibility that the term Tardenoisian may include some
1 Vaufrey, L’Afrique, 413.
2 Clark (1936), 211-13.
3 Ibid., 217; 1932, 51.
4 E.g. at Sauveterre (Lot-et-Garonne) Tardenoisian microliths were associated with
finger-tipped cordoned pottery and tanged and barbed arrowheads, Conlanges, IPH.
Mem. 14 (1935), 26.
6 Chile, Danube, 18.
6 Sherds of decorated “cave” pottery were found at least in the upper levels of the
midden.
7 Lacam, et al., Le Gisement misolithique du Cuzoul, IPH .Mem. 21 (1944), 11; Pequart,
et al., Teviec, IPH .Mem. 18 (1937), 101 • At Mas d’Azil even un tas de bU was once
mentioned.
7
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
early immigrant sheep-breeders who made no pots nor ground stone
celts.
Asturian1 is the term applied to the culture of strandloopers who
succeeded the Azilians on the coasts of North Spain and appear in
Portugal too. They lived very largely on shell-fish during a period of
greater rainfall than the present and are characterized in the archaeo-
logical record by a pick-like tool formed by chipping a beach pebble
to a rough point.
Though inhabiting wooded countries, none of the communities so
far described give any sign of a sustained effort to master this element
in their environment by the elaboration of specialized carpenter’s tools.
Peoples occupying the forested plain of North Europe, on the contrary,
did develop adzes and axes for dealing with timber. To emphasize this
adaptation to their environment they may be grouped together as the
Forest folk. Their ancestors had advanced as far north as Jutland
before the end of Pre-Boreal times. The pioneers in the colonization
were known down till 1936 only by stray discoveries of “ Lyngby
axes”—reindeer antlers on which the brow tine has been trimmed to
form an adze or an axe edge, or the socket for a flint blade (Fig. 5),
Fig. 5. "Lyngby axe” of reindeer antler, Holstein (£).
which, however, are ill-adapted for chopping and were doubtless used
as clubs. In 1936 a camp of reindeer-hunters who used them was
located on the banks of a shallow mere at Stellmoor near Hamburg
and revealed the content of the Ahrensburg culture.2 The reindeer
were killed with wooden arrows smoothed on grooved stone straighteners
(like Fig. 113) and tipped with asymmetrically tanged flint points;
game or fish were speared with barbed harpoons made on strips roughly
wrenched from reindeers’ antlers.
A reindeer’s skull, mounted on a post, was planted on the shore like
a totem pole.
1 Obermaier, op. tit., 349-58; Pericot, Hist. Espaiia.
z Rust, A., Die alt- and miUtlsteinzeitliche Funde von Stellmoor (Neumunster, 1943).
8
-
SURVIVALS OF FOOD-GATHERERS
Stellmoor was just a temporary camp where the Ahrensburg hunters
spent summer and autumn, retreating presumably farther south to
winter. Their ancestors should doubtless be sought among the Eastern
Gravettians; "Lyngby axes" had in fact been used in late pleistocene
times in Moravia,1 Hungary, and Romania.1 2 At the same time flint
axes were already being used in South Russia.3
The Ahrensburg folk were, however, not the direct or sole ancestors
of the Forest tribes who did develop an effective wood-working equip-
ment. These can most clearly be recognized at Star Carr in Yorkshire
near Scarborough.4 There in Pre-Boreal times about 7500 b.c. (accord-
ing to a radio-carbon estimate) used to winter a band of four "house-
holds” of hunter-fishers on the banks of an extinct lake. They fished
from a rough platform of birch trunks sloping down into the mere.
They had felled the trees with chipped flint celts, edged by a tranchet
blow—i.e. a blow at right angles to the main axis of the flint; both the
celts and the flakes detached in resharpening them were found lying
between the logs.
Game—elk, red deer, and wild ox—and the birds were slain with
arrows or darts tipped with geometric microliths; fish speared with
leisters. The barbed prongs of the latter, usually called harpoons, were
fashioned on strips neatly carved from stags’ antlers by the groove-
and-splinter technique inherited from the Aurignacian,5 but in form
foreshadow the classical Maglemosian bone points of the Boreal period.
To aid them in the chase as disguises or to ensure an ampler supply of
game in magic ceremonies the hunters wore frontlets carrying the
antlers cut from stags’ skulls. Similar Forest folk must have been
spread all over Northsealand and perhaps farther east, but are directly
attested only in Denmark by distinctive flints.
Certainly by Boreal times the Forest folk had spread all over the
still unbroken North European plain from Southern England to Fin-
land, and had achieved a very nice adjustment to their environment
of pine woods, interrupted only by lakes and rivers. While hunting
expeditions brought the widely scattered groups into contact from
time to time, fishing beside streams and meres encouraged more per-
manent encampment so that equipment was already being differen-
tiated locally to meet divergent conditions. Within the larger con-
tinuum local facies or cultures can be distinguished in England,
1 In the Magdalenian levels of the Pekarna cave and in the contemporary camp of
Pavlovce near Dolni VSstonice.
2 Dacia, V-VI (1934-35), 12, pi. Ill; cf., Antiquity, XVI (1942), 259.
3 At Kostienki I; KS , XXXI (1950), 168.
4 Clark, G., Star Carr (Cambridge, 1954).
3 APL., IV (1955), 195 f-
9
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Denmark, North Germany,1 the East Baltic2 (Kunda), and perhaps
the Norwegian coast. But the Maglemose near Mullerup and other
classic sites in Zealand supply material for an adequate picture, applic-
able with modifications to the rest.
These were summer-camps, submerged each winter, whither men
repaired for hunting, fowling, fishing, and nut-gathering. To secure
I 5 6 8
Fig. 6. Maglemosian types from Zealand. 1-3, 7-8 (£); 4 (§); 5-6 ($).
food they had devised or perfected a highly efficient equipment—
for hunting, bows3 of elm wood reinforced with sinews from which
were shot wooden arrows armed with geometric microliths inserted
into grooves on the shaft or merely gummed on with birch-pitch,4
slotted bone points, also armed with small flints (Fig. 6, 3), and clubs
with spheroid or spiked stone heads perforated by percussion. Their
still more specialized fishing tackle5: leisters with several kinds of
barbed bone prongs (Fig. 6, 1-2; cf. Fig. 105, 6), bone fish-hooks, nets
1 Clark, Northern Europe (1936); cf. Childe, PCBL, 26-8.
2 Indreko, "Die mittlere Steinzeit in Estland”, K. V. H. A. Akademiens, Handlingar,
LXVI (Stockholm, 1948); SMYA., LVII (1956) (the Askola culture).
3 FNA. (1945), 63-5.
1 Arsberattelse (1951), 123-36. 8 Clark, Preh. Eur., 42-8.
10
SURVIVALS OF FOOD-GATHERERS
of lime bast with pine bark floats and ingenious wicker weels (traps).
For killing fur-bearing animals with minimum damage to the pelts
they employed conical wooden arrow-heads which east of the Baltic
were translated into bone (Fig. 105); there an antler pick had been
specialized for breaking the ice. Bone needles were made for netting,
flint gravers for cutting bone, small disc scrapers (Fig. 6, 4) for dressing
skins, and split boars’ tusks for knives. The wood-worker was now
provided with chisels of antler, socketed chisels made from marrow
bones of large game (Fig. 6, 8), perforated antler adzes, and flint core-
axes (Fig. 6, 5) or exceptionally flake-axes (Fig. 6, 6) mounted as
adze-blades in perforated antler sleeves (Fig. 6, 7). East of the Baltic,
where flint was scarce, the adze-blades were pebbles sharpened, like
the antler tools, by grinding. In England the flake-axe was still un-
known.
Communications were maintained most easily by water in boats,
presumably of skins, which have not survived, though the paddles that
propelled them are extant. For land transport over the winter snows
sledges were available east of the Baltic.1 Dogs of a wolfish type were
everywhere domesticated and may be the ancestors of modem sledge-
dog breeds. The electrical properties of amber had already been recog-
nized as a magic virtue so that the substance was collected in Den-
mark. .Esthetic satisfaction was obtained by decorating bone imple-
ments with geometric patterns, generally outlined by a series of points
in the so-called drill-technique.
Remarkably exact replicas of the Maglemosian bone equipment
have been recovered from undated levels of peat bogs in the Urals,
but these can hardly be used to document an eastern origin for the
Maglemosians; Briusov2 suggests that a common southern origin for
both the Baltic and Uralian groups would adequately explain the
agreements. An eastward spread would seem more likely; for the Magle-
mosian is a natural development of the Pre-Boreal cultures of North-
sealand. So too the Komsa and Fosna cultures, represented by assem-
blages of stone tools (including tranchet celts) from high strands on
the Norwegian coasts,3 must be due to a simultaneous coastwise
spread from the same region.4
The marine transgression that ushered in the Atlantic phase broke
up the unity of the Forest cultures and offered new opportunities to
1 A runner was recovered from a Boreal peat in Finland, SM., XXXVTII-XXXIX
(1931-2), 60; XLI, 121; XLII, 22.
2 OUerM, 146-8, 168-9; he would derive the Kunda culture from the east but not the
west Baltic Maglemosian.
8 Bee and Nummedal, Le FinnmarMen (Oslo, 1936).
4 Freundt, “Komsa, Fosna, Sandarna”, Acta Arch., XIX (1948), 4-55, but cf. SMYA.,
LVII.
II
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
certain groups. Rich oyster banks combined with sealing and sea-
fishing allowed communities to settle down at sheltered spots along
the Danish and South Swedish coasts. The Ertebslle culture represents
an appropriate adjustment.1 The sites are marked by huge shell-heaps
(that may be 100 yards long and 30 yards wide), the refuse of a more
sedentary population. The exposure of new deposits of superior flint
resulted in an increasing substitution of flint for bone in making heavy
tools. Flake-axes were preferred to picks, plump green-stone axes were
sometimes made by grinding, as earlier in the East Baltic, but perfor-
ated antler axes2—no longer adzes—and sleeves for axes were still
Fig. 7. Ertebolle pot, antler axes and bone combs, Denmark (£).
made. The only microliths manufactured were transverse arrow-heads.
Fish were not speared with harpoons but caught with hook and line.
The sedentary life permitted the manufacture of pottery in the form
of large jars with pointed bases and troughs that may have been used
as blubber lamps. A taste for personal adornment is indicated by bone
combs and armlets. The dead were buried extended in the middens,3
generally without grave goods, occasionally wrapped in a birch-bark
shroud4 and laid upon a bier, or once apparently cremated.5 On the
other hand, human bones, broken up just like those of game, afford
good evidence for cannibalism.6
1 Clark, Northern Europe, 138-56, but cf. now Acta Arch., VIII (1937), 278-94;
Mathiassen, “Bopladsen Dyrholmen”, K. Dansk. Videns. Selskabs, Ark.-Kunsthist.
Skrifter, I, 1 (1942); Bagge and Kjellmark, Siretorp.; "Aamose”, 136-44; and Althin,
Scania.
2 These “axes” and the earlier "adzes” would not be much good for chopping, since
the shafts actually preserved are hazel stems not over 2 cm. thick though as much as
50 cm. long; Mathiassen, “Dyrholmen”, 24.
a Brondsted, Danmarks, i, 115; round heads exceeded long heads in the ratio of 3 to 2,
ibid., 123.
4 FNA. (1945), 6.
5 Sellerod Bogen (1946), 33. Degerbol, in Mathiassen, "Dyrholmen”, 118-20.
12
SURVIVALS OF FOOD-GATHERERS
Now a local invention of pottery cannot be a priori ruled out and
ground stone adzes had been made in Boreal times (p. n). So the
Erteb0lle culture as just described could be regarded as an auto-
chthonous adjustment of the native culture of the Boreal phase—if
not of the classical Maglemosian as illustrated in the lakeside camps,
at least of its hypothetical counterpart as developed on the now sub-
merged coasts of Northsealand. However, in 1953 Troels-Smith1 showed
that bones of domestic cattle and sheep or goats, and sherds bearing
imprints of naked barley and of emmer and hexaploid wheats, do occur
in several Ertebplle middens in Denmark that are dated by pollen-
analysis to the Atlantic phase, while weeds of cultivation were already
growing in their vicinity. Accordingly some Ertebplle folk were not
mere food-gatherers, but farmers cultivating the soil and keeping
domestic animals, tethered and stalled and not allowed to graze freely.
Moreover, the earliest “neolithic” pots—Becker's A funnel-beakers—
were made by the same technique and found on the same sites as the
coarse “mesolithic” jars and troughs.
As there were no wild sheep or goats to tame in Denmark nor wild
cereals to cultivate, an actual infiltration of neolithic farmers must be
admitted in Denmark already. Their stock and grains point unam-
biguously to the south-east, their diffusion forms a major theme in
subsequent chapters. Meanwhile a pure continuation of the old gather-
ing economy can be traced round the North Sea and the Baltic.
While the coastal populations thus took advantage of a new environ-
ment, the communities inhabiting Norway, Central Sweden, the East
Baltic lands and even the interior of Jutland and Schleswig-Holstein
remained true to the Boreal way of life and preserved much of the old
equipment—particularly harpoons or, as in the Gudenaa culture of
Jutland,1 2 geometric microliths—throughout the greater part of the
Atlantic phase. Similar survivals to the south and east maybe inferred
from geometric microliths collected in Southern Sweden3 and Poland.4
To the West the culture of Lower Halstow on the Thames estuary,5
dated botanically to Atlantic times, with its flake-axes provides a
good parallel to Danish Erteb0lle in its mesolithic aspect. The Horsham
culture of Southern England6 characterized by core-axes and many
microliths should be partly contemporary though the absence of flake-
axes and the archaism of the microliths might suggest an earlier date.
1 Aarbsger (1953)- 5-62.
2 Mathiassen, Aarbeger (1937).
8 Althin, Scania, 159; Fv. (1944). 257-79-
4 WA., XX (1954), 23-66; at Janislavice (Skierniewice Dist.) a sitting skeleton showing
Lapponoid features is assigned to this phase.
5 Clark, Northern Europe, 158. 8 Childe, PCBI., 28.
13
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
In Scotland an antler axe found with a stranded whale in the Atlantic
estuary of the Forth above Stirling1 and similar implements from
Obanian sites farther west are in good Erteb0lle traditions. How far
to the south-west the Forest culture had spread in Atlantic times before
it was overlaid or transformed by immigrant neolithic farmers cannot
yet be determined. The famous site of Le Campigny, Seine Inferieure,
once the patent station for a mesolithic culture, now proves to be the
hilltop settlement of fully neolithic Western farmers (p. 305).1 2
The mesolithic cultures just described prove the continued occupation
of large tracts of Europe from the glorious days of mammoth-hunting
and the existence there of sparse but vigorous populations that could
expand when the introduction of cereals and domestic stock offered
an enlarged food supply. They may, moreover, be credited with positive
contributions to later cultures that must be adapted to a like environ-
ment. Most conspicuously had the Forest folk perfected an apparatus
for exploiting the natural resources of their habitat, items of which
survive to the present day where the environment has persisted.
Fish-traps and leisters, structurally identical with those devised in
Boreal times, are still used by fishermen round the Baltic—a striking
example of a craft tradition persisting locally for some eight thousand
years. So they had discovered the process of making birch-pitch, an
artificial material still used by the peasants of the region.3 Forest folk
had perfected an efficient kit of wood-working tools and in particular
the ingenious tranchet technique for edging flint chopping-tools. That
is not to say that this technique was diffused from Northern Europe
to Italy, Egypt, Palestine, and the Solomon Islands, where it was
certainly applied. It had in fact been anticipated in the late Acheulian
cleavers of the Lower Palaeolithic and in the rare Moustierian coupons
of the last Ice Age.4 The positive contributions made by Swiderians,
Azilians, Asturians, and the diverse groups here termed Tardenoisian
are less well documented, but surely not altogether negligible. But by
themselves none of the food-gatherers of temperate Europe could turn
into food-producers. Is it not significant that mesolithic cultures are
most richly represented in regions remote from the oldest historical
centres of civilization and the native habitat of wild cereals and wild
sheep? Whatever part mesolithic folk may have formed in neolithic
populations, the flocks of sheep and the seeds of grain on which the
new economy was based were not carried by wind or intertribal barter,
but brought by actual immigrant shepherds and cultivators.
1 Clark, Preh. Eur., 65.
2 But cf. Nougier, Les Civilisations campigniennes (Paris, 1950).
3 Clark, Preh. Eur., 208-9. 4 Peyrony, Prehist., Ill, 17.
14
CHAPTER II
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
The now desiccated zone of North Africa and Hither Asia had been
grassy prairie when Northern Europe was tundra or ice-sheet. On the
upland steppes of South-West Asia grew wild grasses which under
cultivation became barleys and wheats—the ancestor of one-corn
wheat (Triticum monococcum) from the southern Balkans to Armenia
and wild emmer (Triticum dicoccoides) from Palestine to Iran.1 Sheep
and cattle fit for domestication were roving there too. In such an
environment human societies could successfully adopt an aggressive
attitude to surrounding nature and proceed to the active exploitation
of the organic world.
At Jarmo in Kurdistan2 the inhabitants of a little hilltop village
were cultivating emmer and barley that already exhibit some effects
of domestication as early as 4750 B.c. In Palestine where the meso-
lithic Natufians had been reaping annual grasses,3 farming may have
started before 6000 b.c. at Jericho.4 But neither at Jarmo nor at
Jericho did the first farmers make pottery.
Stock-breeding and the cultivation of cereals were revolutionary
steps in man’s emancipation from dependence on the external environ-
ment. They put man in control of his own food-supply so far that
population could—and did—expand beyond the narrow limits imposed
by the naturally available supply of wild fruits and game. But the
expansion of population led by its very conditions to the expansion
of the revolutionaries themselves—the primitive half-sedentary farmers
—or their transmutation by a second revolution into a settled peasantry
producing surplus food-stuffs for its own surplus offspring who had
become artisans and traders, priests and kings, officials and soldiers in
an urban population.
The second revolution was accomplished first in the valleys of the
Nile, the Euphrates, and the Indus. There irrigation cultivation had
produced a surplus vast enough to support the whole superstructure
of literate civilization. By 3000 b.c. archaeology and written history
reveal Mesopotamians and Egyptians already grouped in vast cities
1 On the cereals see Helbaek, Inst. Arch. All., IX (1953), 44-52.
a Braidwood, R. Antiquity, XXIV (1950), 190-6.
3 Childe, NLMAE., 28-30.
i Antiquity, XXX (1956), 196.
15
-
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
any one of which might, like Erech, measure two square miles in area,
and in which secondary industry and trade offered an outlet for the
surplus rural population.
In New Light on the Most Ancient East I have tried to sketch in some
details in that prehistoric background of Oriental history. And I have
tried to show too how the first revolution that precedes it had to spread,
and how the growing demands of the new urban centres of population
and wealth must involve the propagation both of the arts and crafts
on which the second revolution rested and of the economy that sus-
tained it. To find food for rising generations, the simplest step was to
bring fresh land under cultivation and annex new pastures. That
meant a continuous expansion of colonization and the progressive
multiplication of farming villages. But the surplus accumulated in
Egyptian and Mesopotamian cities could serve as capital for the
promotion of trading expeditions through which the villages thus
founded could share in the surplus and use it in their turn for the
development of secondary industries. To obtain this share by supplying
the effective demands of civilized societies, the Anatolian or Syrian
villages must turn themselves into towns producing a surplus of farm-
produce to support industrial workers and traders. And villages, thus
urbanized, must become secondary centres of demand and for diffusion;
they must in turn repeat the process of propagation, generating thereby
tertiary centres to carry on the work. We should thus expect a hier-
archy of urban or semi-urban communities, zoned, not only in space
but also in time and in cultural level around the metropoles of Egypt,
Mesopotamia, and India. How far does prehistoric Europe confirm such
anticipation?
Farming must of course have started in South-West Asia. But in
tracing its primary expansion thence, it must now be remembered
that the first farmers were not necessarily also potters; the first peasant
colonists to reach Europe may not have left a trail of potsherds to mark
their tracks! And those tracks were not necessarily on land. Fishing
communities along the Levant coasts could perfectly well have learned
to supplement the produce of food-gathering by cultivating cereals
and breeding stock. Such incipient food-producers, forced to colonize
fresh territories, might perfectly well have taken to their boats and
paddled or sailed on the alluring waters of the Mediterranean to the
next landfall—and then the next.
By its spatial position and by special favours of the winds and
currents the great island of Crete is easily accessible from the Nile,
from Syria, from Anatolia, and from peninsular Greece. Its fertile
16
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
lowlands guarantee a living to farmers and orchardists; its resources
in timber, copper, and other raw materials can supply the needs of
secondary industry; its natural harbours are not only bases for fisher-
men but havens for merchants who can transport Cretan produce to
urban centres and bring back in return the manufactures and also the
science of older cities.
The ruins of neolithic villages have formed a tell, 6-5 m. high,
beneath the oldest Minoan levels at Knossos in Central Crete, where
the Minoan civilization was first identified. But trial pits have revealed
but little of the neolithic culture.1 It was formally neolithic in that
pebbles were ground and polished to make plump celts (axes and chisels).
But obsidian was imported from Melos and from Yali so that the
farmers were hardly self-sufficing. For the later levels indeed the term
neolithic is not even formally correct, since a copper flat axe was found
on a house floor with stone celts. Stone was also drilled to make spheroid
and pear-shaped mace-heads and worked into studs and even vases.
The latest houses consisted of agglomerations of small chambers with
fixed hearths and stone foundations for their walls.
Pottery,1 2 though hand made, was of fine quality, self-coloured grey-
black or red-brown according as to whether it were fired in a reducing
or an oxidizing atmosphere; the surface was often burnished, sometimes
so as to produce a decorative rippled effect. The forms cannot be
called primitive: the vases may be provided with genuine handles
(including wish-bone, nose-bridge, and flanged ribbon handles) as well
as simple and trumpet lugs; some vases have short spouts, most flat
bases. Goblets on tall half-hollow pedestals and fruit-stands with
hollow feet appear before the period ends. Ladles are common, as in
neolithic Egypt and Western Europe. Some middle neolithic vessels
have club rims, as in Portugal and Britain. The potter decorated her
products with incised patterns, including triangles and ribbons filled
with punctuations. In the transitional pottery of the Trapeza cave3 in
the mountainous interior a schematized human face was modelled on
the vase rim.
For their fertility rituals the farmers modelled in clay or carved in
soft stone highly conventionalized figurines of the "Mother Goddess’*,
seated or squatting (Fig. 8). As amulets they wore miniature stone
axes pierced for suspension (axe-amulets). Caves were used for burials
but for individual interments, not as ossuaries.4
Since palaeolithic food-gatherers have left no relics on the island, we
1 Pendlebury, Archeology of Crete (London, 1939), 35-41.
2 BSA., XLVIII (1953). 94-134-
8 BSA., XXXVI, 30.
BSA., XXXVIII, 15.
B
17
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
may assume that the earliest Cretan farmers were immigrants who
brought their neolithic equipment with them. “Neolithic Crete”, writes
Evans, “may be regarded as an insular offshoot of an extensive Ana-
tolian province.” His table (Fig. 8) shows many Asiatic relatives to
the squatting figurines. The self-coloured pots, with handles and spouts,
have a general Anatolian aspect, the fine grey wares can be paralleled
in the “Chalcolithic levels” of Megiddo1 and in the deepest layers of
Engberg and Shipton, "The Chalcolithic Pottery of Megiddo” (O.I.C. Studies, xo), 6x.
18
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
many Asiatic tells.1 The mace-heads too belong to an Asiatic family
but recur, like the axe-amulet, in the neolithic village of Merimde2 in
Lower Egypt, which also yielded plump axes and clay ladles. But
punctured ribbon decoration and pedestalled goblets have analogies
also in the Balkans (p. 91), and the wish-bone handle is typical of the
Macedonian Bronze Age, while Trapeza ware is still more reminiscent
of Balkan and Apennine fabrics.
The “neolithic" phase was ended by a “quickening impulse from the
Nile, which permeated the rude island culture and transformed it”
into the Minoan civilization. Evans suspects an actual immigration
of predynastic Egyptians, perhaps refugees from the Delta fleeing
from Menes’ conquest. At least on the Mesara, the great plain of
Southern Crete facing Africa, Minoan Crete’s indebtedness to the Nile
is disclosed in the most intimate aspects of its culture. Not only do the
forms of Early Minoan stone vases, the precision of the lapidaries’
technique and the aesthetic selection of variegated stones as his materials
carry on the predynastic tradition: but also Nilotic religious customs
such as the use of the sistrum, the wearing of amulets in the forms of legs,
mummies and monkeys, and statuettes plainly derived from Gerzean
"block figures”,3 and personal habits revealed by depilatory tweezers
of Egyptian shape, and stone unguent palettes from the early tombs
and, later, details of costume such as the penis-sheath and the loin-
cloth betoken something deeper than the external relations of
commerce.
At the same time even more explicitly Asiatic traits can be detected
among the innovations distinguishing the "Metal Age” from the
“Neolithic” civilization. Some might indeed have been transmitted
via Egypt: block-vases—paint-pots consisting of two or more com-
partments hollowed out of a stone parallelepiped with perforated
corners—which were especially favoured in the Mesara, are common
to Sumer and Egypt in Early Dynastic times.4 But Minoan metallurgy
is based entirely on Asiatic traditions; the coppersmith cast axe-heads
with a hole through the head for shafting in the Mesopotamian manner,
the artists treated rosettes and similar figures in the Asiatic, not the
Egyptian style.5 The most striking Minoan pot-forms—the pyxis with
cylindrical neck and string-hole lid, the jug with cut-away neck and
the side-spouted jar have parallels on the Anatolian, not on the African
side; the so-called teapot with curious spout (Fig. 9) recurs without
1 Childe, NLMAE., 218.
2 Childe, NLMAE., 39.
3 Childe. NLMAE., fig. 36.
4 Evans, P. of M., II, fig. 20; cf. Childe, NLMAE., 94, 142, 163.
5 Matz, Friihhretische Siegel, 88.
T9
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
the handle—as far away as Tepe Hissar near Damghan1 and even
Anau in Turkestan. The technique of glaze paint that distinguishes
Minoan pottery had been earlier employed by the Tel Halaf potters
of North Syria. So in religion the cult of the Double-Axe is foreshadowed
by Tel Halaf amulets.1 2 The use of engraved bead and button seals as
contrasted with carved amulets is a very ancient North Syrian-Iranian
practice later adopted in Egypt as in Crete.
Fig. 9. Early Minoan III ‘‘teapots ” and button seal. After Evans.
How far fresh Anatolian or Syrian colonists—merchants or artisans
—joined with Egyptian refugees in founding the Minoan cities is for
us a secondary question. Minoan civilization was not brought ready
made from Asia nor from Africa, but was an original native creation
wherein Sumerian and Egyptian techniques and ideas were blended
to form a novel and essentially European whole. The admittedly Nilotic
and Oriental elements that we see superadded to the Cretan neolithic
culture may be treated as concrete expressions of the transformation
of the island’s economy with the support of capital accumulated in the
great consuming centres that arose, round about 3000 b.c., on the Nile
1 Schmidt, Excavations at Tipi Hissar (1931-3), and MusJ., XXIII, p. CXVI; cf.
Frankfort, "Archaeology and the Sumerian Problem” (O.I.C. Studies, 4), 57-64. In
Anatolia ldndred forms were popular under the Hittite Empires (1950-1200 B.c.);
MDOG., 75 (1937), 38- Cf. Gordon, Iraq, XIII (1951), 40-46.
2 Childe, NLMAE., fig. 105, 3.
20
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
and the Euphrates. In supplying their needs the Cretan farmer’s sons
might find a livelihood in trade and industry; their self-sufficing villages
would become commercial cities.
On the basis of the stratigraphies! sequence, best preserved at
Knossos, Sir Arthur Evans divided the Cretan Bronze Age into the
famous "nine Minoan periods” to which he attributed absolute dates
on the strength of contacts with the literate centres of civilization.
His scheme, columns I and II below, needs some revision after fifty-
five years. Firstly, the chronologies of Egypt and Mesopotamia1 have
been deflated since then. Secondly, Evans’ division was based mainly
on the sequence of ceramic styles observed at Knossos. This turns out
to be applicable to other parts of the island only with drastic modi-
fications. The ceramic art, defining Evans’ L.M.II, was a “ palace style”,
in vogue only at Knossos. The same thing had happened before. Once
it looked as if East Crete had been deserted in M.M.II, since the eggshell-
fine polychrone pottery defining that phase was lacking. In reality this
style too was confined to the palaces of Knossos and Phaestos in Central
Crete.1 2 Even in the Mesara, a fortiori in East Crete, the M.M.I style
was still in fashion as late as 1790 b.c.3 Moreover, at Knossos the Early
Minoan period is poorly represented owing to the levelling carried out
by later builders; Evans’ account had to be filled out by large drafts
on material from East Crete and the Mesara. But during E.M. Minoan
culture was by no means uniform so that there is a real danger of inflat-
ing the sequence by using local styles to represent chronological periods.
Thirdly, the first reliable synchronisms based on an actual and dated
interchange of products are afforded by M.M.II vases in Middle King-
dom Egypt securely dated about 1850 b.c. We have no Early Minoan
imports in dated contexts in Egypt or Hither Asia, and, though actual
Egyptian manufactures of Old Kingdom and even predynastic type
were imported into the island, hardly any come from closed finds.
One Egyptian jar from a Late Neolithic deposit is considered by
Reisner to be no earlier than Dynasty I. If he be right, E.M.I must
begin after 2830 or 3188 b.c. whichever date for that dynasty’s begin-
ning be accepted. Another imported vase from an E.M.I context,
however, cannot be later than Dynasty III, some four centuries later.
Further Egyptian imports imply an overlap between E.M.III—in the
Mesara and East Crete—and the rise of Dynasty XII about 2000 b.c.4
We thus have the following scheme:
1 E.g. by Sidney Smith, Alalakh and Chronology (London, 1940).
2 Aberg, Chron., IV, 201 ff.; Pendlebury, Crete, XXXI, 300-2; Demargne, Fouilles &
Mallia: Nicropoles (Etudes Cretoises, VII, Paris, 1945), 65-9.
2 Smith, AJA., XLIX (1945). 23-4.
4 Hutchinson, Antiquity, XXII (1948), 61-3.
21
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Period Abbreviation and Subdivision Absolute Date
Knossos East Crete B.C.
Early Minoan E.M.I
E.M.II
E.M.III E.M.III ? ? 2000
Middle Minoan M.M.I I85O
M.M.II M.M.I
M.M.III M.M.III I7OO
Late Minoan L.M.I 1550
L.M.I.
L.M.II1 1450
L.M.III(A) L.M.III(A) I4OO
L.H.III(B) 1300
L.H.III(C) 1200
No attempt can be made here to evoke in a few pages an adequate
picture of Minoan civilization. We must content ourselves with a brief
outline of the economic development and some reference to the indus-
trial products that are relevant for comparative purposes.
As in neolithic times the foundations of Minoan economy were
fishing, the breeding of cattle, goats, and pigs (sheep are not osteologic-
ally attested till Late Minoan times)2 and the cultivation of unidentified
cereals together with olives and other fruits. But now specialized
craftsmen—jewellers, coppersmiths, lapidaries—must have been sup-
ported by the surplus produce of the peasantry. And so in addition
to rural hamlets, larger agglomerations of population must be assumed
though no Early Minoan township has been fully excavated. Soundings
at Vasilild3 in East Crete and beneath the palace of Knossos give hints
of the existence of complexes of rectangular houses of brick and timber
on stone foundations, like the contemporary towns of Anatolia and
Mainland Greece. But even as late as M.M.I we find the rural population
living in isolated house-complexes more reminiscent of a big farm than
even a village. A dwelling of that period at Chamaizi4 was an oval
walled enclosure, measuring 20 m. by 12 m. and divided by radial
walls into eleven compartments—exactly like the Iron Age courtyard
houses and wheel dwellings of Western Britain!
Similar conclusions might be drawn from the graves. The standard
1 A diorite amphora, bearing the cartouche of Thothmes III (1500-1447) from a
L.M.II tomb near Herakleion, gives new precision to this dating; Kretika Chronika,
VI (i953)* ii-
3 Hazzadakis, Tylissc• .$? /’' ^ - r:--: r-'lroenne (1921), 77.
3 Described in Boyd :. v. >. =, :..: ? ;.
4 Evans, P. of M., I, 147.
22
-
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
Minoan burial practice at all periods was collective interment in a
family or communal ossuary used for many generations. This practice,
foreign to Egypt, Sumer, and the Anatolian plateau, was current all
round the Mediterranean, going back to "Mesolithic” times among
the troglodyte Natufians of Palestine.1 In the Minoan ossuaries the
bones are generally lying in the utmost disorder. The dislocated con-
dition of the skeletons, which has been observed in collective tombs
farther west too, has been taken as evidence of secondary burial; the
remains would have been deposited in a temporary resting-place until
the flesh had decayed. Xanthudides’1 2 careful studies of the Mesara
burials have, however, shown that the disordered condition of the
bones was due in the main to disturbances by those undertaking later
interments who showed little respect to the former occupants of the
tomb in making room for a fresh interment. The bodies had generally
been placed on the floor of the tomb in the contracted attitude. Simi-
larly traces of fire, sometimes noted on the bones, are due to ritual or
purificatory fires kindled within the ossuary rather than to cremation.
The ossuaries themselves may be natural caves (E.M.I to M.M.I),
rectangular stone chambers, imitating two-roomed houses, or circular
enclosures commonly termed tholoi. In the Mesara the tholoi vary
in internal diameter from 4-10 to 13 m., and are entered through a low
doorway, formed of two megalithic uprights supporting a massive
lintel and often entered from a small walled enclosure. The walls are
from i*8 to 2-5 m. thick and the inner courses oversail one another as if
the whole had been roofed with a corbelled vault on the principle
employed in the Cycladic tomb illustrated in Fig. 25, 1. While it is
hard to believe that a space 30 or 40 feet across could really have been
spanned by a false dome, the smaller chambers certainly do deserve
the name of tholoi, or “vaulted tombs”. In an early example at Krazi3
in East Crete, 4*2 m. in diameter, the corpses must, as in the Cyclades
and Attica (pp. 51, 72), have been introduced through the roof, since
the door, only 0-5 m. high, was completely blocked by an accumulation
of bones and offerings; the “door” would in fact be purely symbolic
as in Egyptian mastabas and some British long barrows.
Evans has compared the Cretan tholoi to Libyan and Nubian closed
tombs of later date, but Mallowan, followed by Peake, would find the
prototypes of the Minoan tholoi in circular brick constructions of
unknown, but certainly non-sepulchral, use which he had discovered
in the chalcolithic Tel Halaf township at Arpachiya in Assyria that
1 Garrod, The Stone Age of Mount Carmel, I, 14.
2 Xanthudides and Droop, Vaulted Tombs of the Mesard.
3 AA (1929), 103.
23
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
goes back at least far into the fourth millennium b.c.1 By that date the
device of corbelling was certainly well understood in Hither Asia, but
it is not attested in Egypt before the Second or Third Dynasty. In fact,
the Minoan tholoi, like the contemporary rectangular ossuaries, may
be just imitations in permanent material of dwellings for the living,
since round houses are attested by a model from Phaestos. As the tholos
tomb was current also in the Cyclades, pottery and ornaments of
Cycladic character were abundant in the early tholos at Krazi, and
Cycladic idols occur even in the Mesara tombs, Marinatos seems
inclined to think that the type of sepulchre may have been introduced
by families from the small islands.
In East Crete (for instance at Mochlos) the house-tombs may be
grouped to form small cemeteries such as' should correspond to a
township where several lineages lived together. Tholoi are more often
isolated as if the territorial unit corresponded to a single clan or lineage.
But in the Mesara small cemeteries are known—three tholoi and a
rectangular ossuary at Koumasa, three tholoi at Platanos, etc. Such
aggregations imply the association of several kinship groups in a single
village, but no actual settlements anterior to Middle Minoan have been
yet identified in the vicinity. Both in the Mesara and at Krasi, when
the tholoi had become congested, accessory chambers were built on
to the original mausoleum to receive subsequent interments, mostly
of Middle Minoan date. And by M.M.II there developed the practice
of excavating in the soft rock sepulchres designed for a single small
family—irregular chambers entered by a short passage or antechamber
—as attested by the Mavro Speleo cemetery near Knossos.2 Cases of
cremation occur among the latest interments in an adjacent cemetery.3
A small tholos seems to have been built in an excavation in a hillside
in the same period. Subterranean chambers became the standard form
of tomb in Late Minoan times in Crete as in Mycenaean Greece. But
even before the end of Early Minoan, individual burial in small stone
cists, in clay coffins (lamakes), and in jars (pithoi) grouped in cemeteries
as contrasted with ossuaries was beginning to compete with ossuary
practice, and steadily increased in popularity during later periods.
The clay coffins4 have early parallels both in Mesopotamia and Egypt,
whereas jar burial is a specifically Anatolian-Syrian rite.
The variety of burial practices coexistent in Early Minoan times,
like the variety of ceramic traditions, suggests that the island had been
colonized by distinct communities which had not yet fused to form a
1 Iraq, II, 20, figs. 13-14.
a BSA., XXVIII (1926-27), 263-96.
3 “Archaeology in Greece”, Supplement to JHS. (1955).
4 Man, XXIX (1929), 18.
24
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
single people with an homogeneous culture. But they seem to have
lived together peaceably, as no fortifications have been found, and as
members of a single economic system in view of the uniformities in
types of metal tools, stone vases, jewellery, and seals. This system
secured and distributed foreign materials, gold, silver, lead, obsidian,
marble, and perhaps amber (from the tholos of Porti), Egyptian and
Asiatic manufactures such as fayence beads and stone vases that were
copied locally, and perhaps Cycladic figurines. Individual artisans
needed seals (buttons, beads, and prisms) that might bear scenes
symbolic of their craft; merchants stamped therewith bales of goods
exported to Asine and other mainland ports. But no regular system
of writing and ciphering was yet needed nor publicly sanctioned for
correspondence or accounts. Though sepulchral furniture discloses
considerable personal wealth, neither monumental private tombs,
palaces, nor temples indicate concentration of wealth in the hands of
capitalists human or divine. Cult was conducted in rustic sanctuaries
and grottoes. Its symbols—stone figurines imported from the Cyclades
or imitating predynastic Egyptian block figures, phalli1 and model
Fig. io. The Minoan “Mother Goddess” and (left) Homs of Consecration,
from a sealing. After Evans.
horns of consecration2 as in Anatolia, dove-pendants3 as in the Cyclades
and Assyria, and votive double-axes4 of copper and lead—while fore-
shadowing the distinctive apparatus of later Minoan ritual, still appear
in forms appropriate to domestic worship.
1 Koumisa, tholos X.
2 Mochlos, E.M.I. (P. of M., I, 57).
3 Mochlos (ibid., 102); cf. Iraq, II, fig. 51, 7.
25
Mochlos (P. of M., I, 101).
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
In Middle Minoan times power and wealth began to be concentrated
in the hands of dynasts residing in Central Crete and combining political
and religious authority. Palaces that were also temples, factories, and
warehouses were erected at Mallia, Knossos, and other sites. Special-
ization invades the domain of domestic industry. The potters’ wheel,
symbolizing the industrialization of the ceramic art, is attested from
M.M.I. The wheel itself was a large clay disc which itinerant potters
could carry about with them as they do to-day.1 Wheeled vehicles
are first represented at the same period by a model four-wheeled cart
from Palaikastro.2 They could hardly be serviceable without roads
maintained by some authority with more than local jurisdiction. And
in fact during Middle Minoan times the divergent local traditions
that had persisted throughout the preceding period were gradually
fused until Crete came to enjoy a single civilization. But the dis-
tinction between province and metropolis becomes prominent. The
provincial potters of Eastern Crete could not compete with the experts
employed in the palaces of Knossos or Phaestos in turning out poly-
chrome ware of eggshell thinness.
The priest-kings organized more effectively trade with Egypt, Melos,
peninsular Greece, and other foreign lands where even the eggshell
pottery has been discovered—in Egypt in a Twelfth Dynasty tomb
sealed some time after 1850 b.c. And this commerce must have sub-
stantially augmented their real wealth. For its administration a civil
service would be required. And the perpetual corporation thus insti-
tuted needed a socially sanctioned system of keeping records and
accounts. In fact a conventional script of an ideographic type was
developed during M.M.I and used for accountancy. The idea was
presumably borrowed from the Minoans’ correspondents in Egypt or
Syria, where writing had been in use for a thousand years. The actual
conventions were local, though several signs have Egyptian analogues
and the numeral forms are reminiscent of early Sumerian, while the
use of a clay tablet as a vehicle of writing is an Asiatic habit.
Increase of wealth is usually accompanied by increase of population.
The palace of Knossos was surrounded with an extensive town of two-
storeyed houses, known not from actual excavation so much as from
a mosaic attributed to M.M.IIb. The native population would be
swelled by the immigration of craftsmen attracted by the wealth of
Minoan courts and towns. So professional potters from Asia may have
introduced the potters’ wheel and trained native apprentices in its
use. And other specialists such as fresco-painters may have arrived to
1 Essays in Mgean Archeology, presented to Sir Arthur Evans (Oxford, 1927), 111-2S.
2 BSA., Supplementary Volume, Palaikastro (1923), 17.
26
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
minister to courtly desires for refinement. But if new arts were intro-
duced by immigrants, the Minoan schools these founded were original
and creative both in devising fresh techniques and in creating a new
naturalistic style that owed little to Oriental models. In beholding the
charming scenes of games and processions, animals and fishes, flowers,
and trees that adorned the Middle Minoan II and III palaces and
houses we breathe already a European atmosphere.
The development of Minoan civilization was interrupted by catas-
trophes which may be taken to mark the end of the phases termed
M.M.II, M.M.III, and L.M.I. The disasters are usually attributed to
earthquakes and were followed by reconstructions of the ruined palaces
without any break in the continuity of architectural, artistic, and
technical traditions. But after the last a new and simplified script—
Linear B—was introduced at Knossos, and with it apparently a new
language; for while the older, Linear A writings still defy decipherment
in 1956, Ventris and Chadwick have read the L.M.II tablets as docu-
ments in an early Greek dialect identical with that current in Mycen-
aean Greece. Thus it looks as if Knossos had become the capital of a
conquering dynast from the Mainland who established over the whole
island a regular empire of the Oriental pattern. His empire did not last.
About 1400 b.c. hostile forces razed the palace of Minos to the ground.
The hegemony in the iEgean had passed to Mycenae on the Mainland
(p. 81). But urban civilization still flourished in Crete for two centuries.
Goumia, for instance, in East Crete, now covered six acres and com-
prised some sixty houses. And the richly furnished Late Minoan
cemeteries comprising corbelled tombs (partially subterranean), rock-
hewn chamber tombs, pit-caves, and shaft graves as well as larnax
burials, remained in use in places even into the Iron Age.1
This inadequate sketch must be supplemented by a brief reference
to certain industrial products that will be cited in later chapters dealing
with less progressive parts of Europe. Tools and weapons are particu-
larly relevant in this context. Obsidian was used for knives, sickle-
teeth, and arrow-heads (including the transverse type). Fine hollow-
based specimens are found even in Late Minoan tombs. At least in
Early Minoan times stone was used even for axe-heads; notable is a
“jadeite” celt from the tholos of Kalathiana in the Mesara. But copper
was being used for celts even in the latest ‘'neolithic” phase1 2 and soon
ousted stone. Copper ore exists in East Crete3 and may have been
exploited in Early Minoan times. The addition of tin to copper to
1 Arch., LIX, and LXV, 1-94; Pendlebury, Crete, 195, 242, 306.
2 P. of M., II, 14.
3 Mosso, Dawn of Mediterranean Civilization (1910), 290.
27
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
facilitate casting is attested as early as M.M.I, though the standard
alloy containing 10 per cent of tin was not firmly established till
M.M.III. Bronze was known to the Sumerians before 2500 b.c. and
knowledge of its qualities was probably transmitted thence to the
iEgean via Anatolia (p. 38). But the Minoans’ demand for tin may
ultimately have been supplied from lodes in Etruria, Cornwall, or
Bohemia, since in each country we shall encounter ambiguous hints
of contact with the iEgean world (pp. 128, 241,336). Iron is represented
by a ring from a Middle Minoan tomb in the Mavro Speleo cemetery,
but was not used industrially before 1200 b.c.
Fig. 11. Minoan axes, axe-adzes and double axe ($), and seal impressions (|).
After Evans and M. A.
For axes the flat celt of the copper age did not lead, as in Cis-alpine
Europe, to flanged and socketed forms, but was superseded by the
shaft-hole axe (Fig. 11,1) that had been current from prehistoric times
in Mesopotamia. After Middle Minoan III the single-bladed axe was
ousted in Crete by the two-edged variety—the Double Axe—known
also to the Sumerians and elevated to become a fetish or symbol of
divine power by E.M.II. Double adzes too were used by the Knossian
workmen by the beginning of L.M.I.1 Finally, the axe-adze that may
be regarded as a combination of two types of axe used by the Sumerians
is represented by a gold model attributed to E.M.II2 and actual
specimens from the farmhouse at Chamaizi (Fig. 11, 3) attributed to
M.M.I and then the standard Minoan form (Fig. 11,4) from M.M.II on.
1 P. of M., II, 619, fig. 392. 2 P. of M., I, 193, n. 3.
28
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
Heavy perforated hammers of metal rectangular in cross-section are
reported as early as M.M.II1 and carpenters’ saws are attested as early
as wheeled vehicles, by M.M.I.1 2 But elongated flat celts served as
chisels and no sickles older than L.M.III3 survive.
Early Minoan daggers are triangular or provided with a very short
wide tang (Fig. 12, 1), and sometimes given longitudinal rigidity by
means of a midrib cast on both faces. They were attached with small
rivets, sometimes of silver, to their bone or wooden hilts that were
surmounted by globular or hemispherical pommels4 of stone or ivory,
Fig, 12. 1, Early Minoan daggers (J); 2, Stone beads (f). After Evans.
laterally perforated for transverse rivets to hold them in position.
During Middle Minoan times the blades, still either flat or strengthened
with a midrib, were elongated and assume an ogival form (Fig. 13).
Some have a flat tang, like Asiatic daggers, and the rivets are large.
But the palace of Mallia has yielded a genuine rapier, attributed to
M.M.I,5 which is shown by its elongated pommel and its attachment
to the hilt to be a development of the Sumerian series illustrated in
the Royal Tombs of Ur. And in M.M.III the great rapiers from the
Shaft Graves of Mycenae (Fig. 14, 1-3) are clearly elongations, to the
1 From Hagia Triada and Prisos.
2 P. of M., IV, 2, 797.
3 BSA, Palaikastro, pi. XXV; JRAI., LXXIV, 17.
* Xanthudides and Droop, pis. XXIII, LIV.
8 P. of M., II, 272; cf. Childe, NLMAE., pi. XXVIa.
29
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
surprising length of 93 cm., of the native types of Fig. 13. The pommels
are improvements on the Early Minoan form approximating to Fig. 21,3,
while the hilt-plate of type 1 preserves a reminiscence of the distinc-
Fig. 13. Middle Minoan I—II daggers (£). After Evans.
tively Egyptian crescentic gap. In L.M.Ib type 2 develops into the
rapier with horned guards (Fig. 14, 4), and then in L.M.III into a
short sword with flanges carried right round the hilt (Fig. 15, i).1 But
towards the close of the period a new type, adapted for cutting as well
as thrusting and apparently evolved beyond the Balkans, appears to
herald the collapse of jEgean civilization.
-
Some Early Minoan dagger-blades might really have been mounted
as spear-heads—that must be the case with a two-pronged weapon2
from Mochlos. But the classical Minoan spear-head, going back to
M.M.III, was provided with a socket, once formed by folding a wide,
flat tang into a tube (Fig. 15). This device had been employed by the
Sumerians from the middle of the third millennium, but was replaced
by a cast socket, sometimes split to reproduce the effect of the fold,
even in M.M.III.
Minoan warriors carried armour too. Helmets,3 consisting of rows
of boars’ tushes sewn round a leather cap as described in Homer,
were worn from M.M.III on. In L.M.II a bronze bell helmet, sur-
mounted by a knob carrying a plume, was in use.4 The type was
popular in Central Europe from the Unetician phase on throughout
the Bronze Age; it may have originated there or been inspired from
Crete.
1 Arch., LIX, 105 ff.
2 P. of M., I, fig. 72.
3 Evans, P. of M., IV, 867 ff.; cf. Lorimer, Homer and the Monuments (1950), 211 ff.;
BCH. (1953). 57-
4 Hood, BSA., XLVII (1952), 256-61; infra, p. 132.
30
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
31
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
For removing facial hair Minoans used, in addition to tweezers,
razors, generally leaf-shaped in Late Minoan times.1
Minoan pottery is too rich and varied to be described here in detail.
During Early Minoan times self-coloured burnished wares like the
local neolithic and Early Anatolian and. Cycladic fabrics were current.
They might be decorated by stroke-burnishing1 2 or with channelled
lines that may compose concentric semicircles.3 In E.M.II the potters
of Vasiliki in East Crete covered their vessels with a red ferruginous
wash which they relieved with dark blotches deliberately produced
by the reducing agency of a glowing piece of charcoal.4 But from the
first the Minoan potter could produce a clear buff ware, probably
Fig. 15. Late Mycenaean short sword (Mycenae) and Middle Minoan spear-head (£).
fired in a kiln. By coating the vessel with a lustrous glaze paint he
obtained a surface resembling that of the self-coloured burnished
fabrics upon which patterns were drawn in white paint. Alternatively
the paint was used as medium for producing dark patterns on a light
ground. During Middle Minoan times red and yellow were combined
with white, but the light on dark system was predominant. In Late
Minoan on the contrary this style was abandoned altogether in favour
of dark on light. Spiral patterns appear first in E.M.III under Cycladic
influence (cf. p. 54). Some main forms of Early Minoan pottery have
already been mentioned on p. 19.
Throughout the Minoan epoch vessels of stone, metal, and wood
competed with the potters’ products and reacted upon their forms
and decorations. Indeed, from its inception a wealth of stone vases
distinguishes the Minoan civilization from contemporary Helladic and
Anatolian cultures. Though the Egyptians excelled in transforming
hard stones into vessels, stone vases had been used in Mesopotamia
and Syria too since the fourth millennium and were made in Cyprus
1 Evans, Arch., LIX, 117; Hood, loc. cit., 262.
2 Evans, P. of M., I, 59.
3 Ibid., fig. 22. 4 Frankfort, Studies, II, 90.
32
THE ORIENT AND CRETE
before the oldest pots.1 Of importance for comparison are the block-
vases already mentioned that may have been copied in clay in the
Danube valley and the birds’-nest vases that might be the prototypes
for certain Almerian pots; both forms are Early Minoan.
Metal vessels may have been in use even in Early Minoan times and
were undoubtedly quite common in later periods. But the competition
of plate on the tables of the rich did not involve any degradation of
the ceramic art in Crete as it did in Mesopotamia and Egypt. Two
shapes are noteworthy—a two-handled tankard or cantharos with
quatrefoil lip (represented by a silver specimen from Mochlos allegedly
M.M.I)2 which is known in pottery from Hittite times in Anatolia
Fig. 16. Egyptian representations of Vapheio cups.
and the Middle Bronze Age of Hungary and in alabaster from Shaft
Grave IV at Mycenae, and the so-called Vapheio cup of M.M.III to
L.M.II (Fig. 16),3 the curious handle of which may after all be inspired
by a wooden model; a clay cup with a rather similar handle turned up
at Nienhagen in Saxo-Thuringia apparently in an Early Bronze Age
cemetery.
Minoan costume, like the Egyptian, did not require fastening with
pins, so that, apart from a few hairpins, these toilet accessories, so
common in Mesopotamian, Anatolian, and Central European graves,
are missing in Bronze Age Crete. On the other hand, the Minoans, like
the Egyptians, Sumerians, and Indians, were skilled at shaping and
perforating hard stones for beads. Rock crystal and carnelian were
used from Early Minoan times as well as ivory and fayence. Two
amorphous lumps from the tholos of Porti have been identified as
amber, but Evans has questioned this diagnosis.4 By L.M.I amber
was certainly reaching Crete regularly from the Baltic, and a gold-
bound amber disc from the cemetery of Knossos (L.M.II)5 is almost
1 Dikaios, Khirokitia (London, 1953); so also at Jarmo, Kurdistan.
2 P. of M., I, fig. 139a; cf. van der Osten, The Alishar Hiiyiih (1928-29), Chicago
O.I.C. Publication XIX), pi. XI.
2 P. of M., II, 175.
4 Xanthudides and Droop, 69. 8 Arch., LXY, 42.
C
33
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
identical with six found in Early Bronze Age II graves in Wiltshire.
Segmented beads of fayence, copying stone beads that go back to
E.M.II1 (Fig. 12, 2 (top)), were being manufactured in Crete from
M.M.III. Similar beads have turned up as imports in the Danube valley,
Spain, Poland, and England (p. 336, below). Stone hammer-beads occur
even in the E.M. ossuaries of the Mesara.2
1 U. of Penns., Anthrop. Pubis,, III, 3, 184.
2 Xanthudides and Droop, pi. XXXII, 548.
34
CHAPTER III
ANATOLIA THE ROYAL ROAD TO THE AEGEAN
In the fifth century the Royal Road from Mesopotamia to the Aegean
led not to the Levantine coasts alone but on across the plateau of
Anatolia—a promontory of Asia thrust out towards Europe. Here ran
the route along which Persian armies marched to impose Oriental
culture on Greece, along which diplomatists, scientists, and merchants
travelled to transmit more peacefully and successfully Babylonian
ideas to the young Ionian states. More than a millennium earlier the
plateau was a bridge along which merchant caravans could travel to
transport westward a share of Mesopotamian capital. Between 2000
and 1800 b.c. the region’s wealth in ores had induced a colony1 of
Assyrian merchants to settle at Kanes (Kultepe) in Cappadocia; they
maintained continuous intercourse with the cities on the Tigris and
Euphrates, illustrated by their business archives, the so-called Cappa-
docian tablets. They may have had earlier precursors. In any case they
found, if not a literate civilization, at least some degree of urbanization
and an incipient state organization. Rich “royal tombs” at Alaca
Huyiik2 illustrate the wealth amassed by local princes, several special-
ized crafts, and trade that secured a variety of raw materials. Un-
fortunately these tombs contain no undoubted imports nor even types
that can be dated by reference to Mesopotamian literature. The culture
of the princes’ subjects is reduplicated in many little huyuks (tells),
too small to represent anything but modest villages. In them, copper
was already competing with stone and bone as an industrial material
but without in the least replacing them. This “Copper Age” culture,
as Turkish archaeologists label it, is fairly uniform all over the plateau;
judged by its pottery—self-coloured dark-faced wares, jugs and cups
with true handles and side spouts, corrugated ornament—its prefer-
ence for the sling, the multiplicity of female figurines—it is allied to
the Early Troadic to be described below. It differs sharply from the
latter in burial practice; the dead were regularly interred under the
house floors as in Syria, Assyria, and Iran, and not in distinct cemeteries.
Many of these peculiarities seem to have been inherited from a
1 Tahsim Ozgii?, Kultepe Hafriyati (Ankara), 19; id., Belleten, passim.
2 Remzi Ogiz Arik, Lesfouilles d'Alaca Hoytih (Istanbul, 1937); H. Z. Kosay, Ausgra-
bungen von A. H. (Ankara, 1944); id. Alaca Hoyiih Kazisi (Ankara, 1951).
35
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
previous phase, termed by Turkish archaeologists Chalcolithic because
copper was already in use if mainly for ornaments. It is very imper-
fectly known from the deeper levels of Alisar in the Halys1 basin, and
perhaps from Buyiik Gulliicek2 and Maltepe near Sivas3 farther north.
As compared to the Early iEgean Bronze Age, the Anatolian Copper
Age does not seem early, though the discrepancy may be due to the
more modest guesses of its investigators.4 A seal of Jemdet Nasr type
from the Copper Age strata and a radio carbon date of 2500^250 b.c.5
for layer 14 at Alisar might justify more generous estimates. It does not
seem an apt vehicle for the transmission westward of the cultural
achievements of the Tigris-Euphrates at an early date. Nor does the
so-called Chalcolithic disclose earlier Oriental advances on their way
westward. There are indeed stamp seals and figurines, but painted
sherds are exceptional, the pottery being mostly self-coloured though
comprising fruitstands. Nothing approaching the precocious neolithic
of Kurdistan and Palestine nor yet mesolithic remains have been
found on the plateau so far, but though unrepresented in the tells,
they may still come to light on other sites. Until they do, no recogniz-
able archaeological milestones mark an ancient route across Anatolia
from the Orient to Europe. Nor do the available data disclose there
an ancient cultural centre nor yet a human reservoir from which the
J£gean coastlands could have been populated.
On the other hand, at least in the north-western extremity of Asia
Minor, a vigorous and original culture is documented quite early. The
first settlement in the area is represented by pottery found in the
lowest levels of Rum Tepe, a tell in the Troad.6 Notable are fruitstands
with profiled pedestals, as in Fig. 86, and stroke-burnished ware
which recurs on Samos as well as in Europe.
In the sequel develops a culture which may conveniently be called
Early Troadic, though it is not strictly confined to the Troad. The same
culture is represented at Poliochni on Lemnos,7 Thermi on Lesbos,8 at
Yortan in Mysia and elsewhere. But the classic site remains Hissarlik,
the ancient Troy, a key position on the Hellespont commanding at
once sea-traffic up the straits and a land route’s crossing to Europe.
There Heinrich Schliemann last century distinguished seven super-
1 van der Osten, Alishar Httyiik (1930-3), OIP, XXIX. Chicago.
2 Belleten, XII (1948), 475-6.
3 Belleten, XI (1947), 659 ff.
* Gotze, Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc., XCVII (1953), 215-20.
6 Libby, Radio Carbon Dating (Chicago, 1950), 71.
6 AJA., XXXIX, 33.
7 Jahrb. d. Inst., LII; Arch. Anz. (1937), 167-70; Bemabo Brea, PPS. XXI (1955),
144-55-
8 Lamb, W., Excavations at Thermi (Cambridge, 1936).
36
ANATOLIA THE ROYAL ROAD TO THE AEGEAN
imposed prehistoric cities, but left a multitude of crucial issues. Re-
excavation of the site by an expedition under C. W. Blegen,1 supple-
mented by the stratigraphy of Thermi and Poliochni, has yielded the
following scheme as the standard for the culture sequence in North-
Western Anatolia:
Troad Greece Lesbos Lemnos Absolute Dates
Troy Vila L.H.IIIb Thermi Poliochni 1275-1200
fLate L.H.IIIa and b — — 1400-1300
Troy VI 1 Middle L.H.I and II = ) VII f1550-1400
(Early M.M.III, M.H. l ? -1550
Troy V Troy IV E.H.III VI
Troy III E.H. — [ V
Troy Ilg to E.H. — J
a 'Late E.H.] Thermi V \ f Thermi / IV
Troy I - Middle E.H.V i 1 to | II-III
Early “ J l iv /
All " cities" can be dated in terms of Aegean chronology by sherds
of actually imported TEgean vases found in the several levels at Troy.
Troy I and the contemporary settlements on Lesbos and Lemnos
consisted of clusters of two-roomed houses (often of the long rectangular
plan), closely juxtaposed along well-defined but crooked and narrow
streets. The mud-brick walls rested on foundations of stones, some-
times (in Thermi I and IV and Troy I) laid not horizontally but
obliquely in herring-bone formation, an arrangement often employed
in the brick architecture of Early Dynastic Sumer. And as in Meso-
potamia the doors were pivoted on stone sockets. Some houses in
Thermi were provided with low domed ovens of clay only 3 ft. high.
Especially in Thermi III pits (bothroi) were often dug in the house
floors and carefully lined with clay.2
But Troy I comprised also a "palace"—a rectangular hall 12*8 m.
long by 5*4 m. wide, entered through a porch at the west end. So Troy
was already ruled by a chief, an institution not yet attested in other
Early Troadic settlements. Moreover, Troy I, at least by the Middle
phase, was girt with a massive stone rampart enclosing some i| acres;
Poliochni was probably fortified at the same time.
Anatolian economy rested on the cultivation of wheats,3 barley,
millet, and presumably vegetables, perhaps also of vines and fruit-trees,
the breeding of cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs, and fishing with hook
and line or with nets. Axes and rare adzes were made from pebbles
1 Blegen, Caskey, etc., Troy, I (1950); II (1951); III (1953), Princeton.
2 On bothroi in general, see JHS., LV (1935), 1-19,
s One-corn is attested, though perhaps later at Troy and Kusura (Arch., LXXXVT,
10), emmer only at Thermi, where there are some traces of vines.
37
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
ground and polished and also from stags' antlers pierced for a shaft-
hole, knives, and sickle-teeth from flint blades simply trimmed. But
stone battle-axes with drooping blade, precursors of ceremonial
weapons like Fig. 21,1, must immediately be copies of metal weapons.
In fact, copper battle-axes of the same pattern have been found at
Yortan as at Polatli on the plateau and in the Royal Tombs of Alaca.1
Bone splinters, pointed at both ends, served as arrow-heads, while the
armoury comprised also sling-stones and maces with spheroid stone
heads.
But trade already brought metal even to Lesbos, and at Thermi I
and Troy I there were specialized smiths available to work it. A
crucible was found on virgin soil at Thermi, and small metal pins and
trinkets were comparatively common at all levels. Most were made
from unalloyed copper, but a pin from Thermi II contained as much
as 13 per cent of tin, and a bracelet of this rare metal was found in
town IV. Indeed, by the time of Thermi II and III metal was common
enough for large implements to be left lying about for modern ex-
vators to find, while at Troy lead rivets were employed for repairing
pots. The smiths produced flat chisels with rounded butts, as in Egypt
and protoliterate Sumer, flat axes and axes with the sides hammered
up to produce low flanges2—implying that celts were mounted as axes
in knee-shafts as in Central Europe—and as weapons flat-tanged
daggers like Fig. 20, 2-4, cast in two-piece valve moulds of stone.
The types of metal daggers and pins suffice to show that Troadic
metal-workers followed Asiatic rather than Egyptian traditions.
Though shaft-hole axes of the normal Mesopotamian pattern were not
manufactured, the earliest dated battle-axes are represented by clay
models from al’Ubaid levels in Babylonia.3
But the most distinctive types and actual imports point explicitly
to intercourse with Greece, the Cyclades, and the Levant coasts.
Emery and marble vases were imported from the Cyclades; bird-headed
pins are common to Thermi I and Syros; polished bone tubes like Fig.
27, 1, from Thermi III-IV and Troy I recur not only on the iEgean
islands but also in Syria and Palestine—in the last-named area in an
E.B.III context (after 2500 B.c.).4
Despite the specialization of the metallurgical industry and the
ramifications of commerce, pot-making was not sufficiently industrial-
ized for the use of the wheel. The self-coloured, burnished vases, vary-
1 Prausnitz, Inst. Arch. AR., XI (1955), 20
8 The same device is seen in the Copper Age township of Ahlatlibel near Ankara,
Turk Tarih Arkeologya ve Etnografya Dergisi, II (Ankara), 1934.
3 Childe, NLMAE., fig. 60.
* Prausnitz, Inst. Arch. AR., XI (1955), 23 and 28; cf. Childe, NLMAE., 231-7.
38
-
ANATOLIA THE ROYAL ROAD TO THE AEGEAN
ing in hue from deep black to brick red and often copying gourd or
leather vessels, are representative of a tradition common to the whole
of Anatolia. A conspicuous peculiarity throughout the province is the
popularity of genuine handles in addition to simple lugs. The handles
are often of the “thrust” type—the lower ends being inserted into a hole
at the side of the vessels1—a trick popular in later periods too and in
other parts of Anatolia. Forms distinctive of West Anatolia are bowls with
lugs growing from the inverted rims (Fig. 17, column 1), jugs with cut-
Fig. 17. Pottery from Thermi I-II (A) and III-IV (B). After W. Lamb, BSA., XXX.
away necks (Fig. 17, columns 2-3), tripod vessels, and collared pyxides
with string-hole lugs and lids (Fig. 17, column 4). Significant changes in
form, documented by the stratigraphy of Thermi, are the expansion of
the ends of the tubular lugs on the bowls to “trumpet lugs” in town III
and the contemporary transformation of tripod legs into model human
feet. At Troy the trumpet lugs grew into regular handles, flanged and
angled, quite reminiscent of Cretan neolithic types. Decoration was
effected by bosses, ribs, corrugations, and incisions forming rectilinear
patterns. White paint on the dark ground, quite exceptional at Thermi
and Troy, was very popular at Yortan. The patterns were always recti-
linear.
Spinning and weaving would be domestic arts too. Their importance
is attested by the numbers of spindle-whorls, and clay spools. The
1 Blegen, Troy, I, 65; cf. Frankfort, Studies, ii. 86, n. x.
39
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
weaver may have used, perforated arcs of clay up to 9 cm. in length,
represented in Thermi III, that seem to be forerunners of the narrower
crescentic loom-weights so common in the Hittite levels of Kusura and
Alisar.1
The domestic fertility cults of a superstitious peasantry may be
illustrated by numerous female figurines of stone and clay, the former
Fig. 18. "Megaron” palace, Troy II.
always highly conventionalized in the manner of Fig. 8, 13-162; clay
figurines begin later at Thermi and sometimes indicate the division
between the legs. But at Troy itself the “Mother Goddess” (if such she
be) was represented on a more monumental scale: an owl-like visage
had been carved in low relief on a stone slab, 1*27 m. high, that was
found standing just outside the city gate. But to domestic cult again
1 Arch., LXXXVI, 35, fig. 15; Alishar, fig. 30.
2 Very similar figurines turn up sporadically as if imported in Mesopotamia about
2750 b.c.; Speiser, Tepe Gawra, pi. LIII, b. Frankfort, “Iraq Excavations”, OIC.
Communication, 19, fig. 24.
40
ANATOLIA THE ROYAL ROAD TO THE AEGEAN
belong clay phalli from Thermi and perhaps a homed clay spit-support
(? altar) rather like Cretan horns of consecration. The dead were
apparently buried, if adults, outside the town in regular cemeteries—
enclosed in jars, judging by the case of Yortan.
After the long period of relatively peaceful development repre-
sented by the 4 metres of “Troy I” and the four successive townships
at Thermi, unrest led to a concentration of power and wealth. Though
its population was already dwindling, Thermi V was fortified with a
stout stone wall supplemented by complicated outworks. Even so, the
site was soon deserted; it has yielded vases imported from Troy Ila,
but none of those proper to the later phases of that city. Poliochni in
Lemnos likewise declined. But at Troy potent chieftains had arisen
who exploited to the full the strategic advantages of their site and
concentrated in the city West Anatolian trade to the ruin of their rivals.
Troy II was now encircled with a new stone wall, surmounted with a
parapet of mud-brick. But, though larger than Troy I, the circuit of
Troy II still enclosed only some 7850 sq. metres, or less than two
acres. Its ruler built himself a palace of the f< megaron” plan—a hall
with central hearth, 66 feet long by 33 feet, preceded by a porch 33 feet
long and wide (Fig. 18). The citadel had reached the apex of its glory
in phase lie, but underwent four further reconstructions before it was
taken by hostile assault and burnt. But before the final catastrophe
the defenders had hidden many of their valuables. Our knowledge of
Trojan metal-work and jewellery is mainly derived from these hoards
that the plunderers had missed.
Ere its destruction Troy II had become economically, if not physic-
ally, a city. Through its monopoly of Hellespontine trade, its citizens
amassed wealth to support an industrial population and pay for
imported goods. Tin was obtainable in such abundance that bronze
containing the standard proportion of 10 per cent tin and 90 per cent
copper was in general use. Gold, silver, lead, obsidian were also im-
ported; lapis lazuli from Iran and amber from the Baltic are also
represented in hoard L, the date of which is not, however, quite certain.
Specialist jewellers, potters, and other craftsmen, trained in Asiatic
schools, settled in the rich city. The jewellers introduced solder, filagree
work, and the trick of making beads from two discs of gold
soldered together or from two folded tubes each ending in spirals—
all devices employed by Mesopotamian goldsmiths in the third
millennium.1
The potters’ wheel, indicating a further advance in urbanization,
was introduced in the time of Troy lie, but the products, turned out
1 Childe, NLMAE,, 162; cf. Iraq, IX (1947), 171-6.
41
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
3 4
Fig. 19. Pottery from Troy IX (i)-
ANATOLIA THE ROYAL ROAD TO THE AEGEAN
en masse by the new specialist craftsmen, carry on the native traditions
in form and surface treatment and did not replace hand-made vessels.
Shapes easily recognized as emerging during the lifetime of Troy II
are anthropomorphic lids and jars (“face-urns”, Fig. 19, 2 and 6),
jugs with flaring mouths (Fig. 19, 4), and curious two-handled depas
(Fig. 19, 5). But these appear already hand-made in phase lie and are
merely exaggerated expressions of tendencies inherent in the earlier
Fig. 21. Battle-axe (£), gold-capped bead (J), and crystal pommel (£)_from
Treasure L, and stray axe-adze (£). Museum f. Vorgeschichte, Berlin.
and more generalized Anatolian tradition. The representation of the
“Mother Goddess” on the face-urns is significantly like that on the
handles of early Sumerian funerary jars1; but the convention is already
foreshadowed in the stele from Troy I. Side-spouted jugs, multiple
vessels, jugs with double necks, zoomorphic vases are essentially
Anatolian and not confined to Troy II. Improvements in the prepara-
tion of the clay and firing, probably introduced at the same time as
the wheel, allowed the potter to produce harder, paler, and less porous
vessels. But to preserve the effect of the old-self-coloured vases, their
1 Childe, NLMAE., fig. 98.
43
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
surfaces were normally covered with a ferruginous wash that turns
red on firing (red wash ware)—a device popular at Alisar and farther
east, and employed even in the Middle Danube basin.
Despite the abundance of metal, stone, flint, obsidian, bone, and
antler were still freely and almost predominantly employed for axes,
battle-axes, agricultural implements, knives, awls, pins, and combs.
The battle-axes carry on the tradition of Troy I, but include some
superbly polished weapons of semi-precious stones (Fig. 21, 1) (from
Treasure L) that must be ceremonial.
The jewellery from the hoards not only demonstrates the wealth of
Troy but the divergent ramifications of its commerce. Many items are
specifically Eastern; the earrings and lock-rings with flattened ends,
the spiral filagree work (Fig. 22, 3), the gold disc beads, etc., may be
regarded as Sumerian and the technique of the knot-headed pin1 was
known there as in predynastic Egypt. Pins with double spiral heads
(of which Fig. 22, 3, is a glorified version) are found all across Anatolia
and Iran to India and Anau.2 A "spear-head” identical with the
Cycladic specimen of Fig. 23, 1, from Treasure A, belongs to a family
represented also in Central Anatolia, Cyprus, and Iran.3 Earrings like
Fig. 22,1, are worn by foreign dancing girls depicted in an Eighteenth
Dynasty tomb-painting.4 A gold hammer pin from 2g5 is ultimately
a South Russian type, but was familiar also at Alaca. At the same time,
so many types common at Troy recur in Central Europe as to prompt
the suspicion that Trojan tin came from Bohemia, copper from Tran-
sylvania or the Balkans. On the other hand, bossed bone plaques,
like Fig. 115, indicate connections westward as far as Sicily and Malta,
but their stratigraphical position at Hissarlik is a little doubtful and
they have gold analogues to the east at Alaca.6 Ring pendants of stone,
paralleled in gold in Wallachia and Transylvania, might disclose one
source of Trojan gold while copies in Sweden and Sammland may be
counterparts of the amber beads from Treasure L. If Troadic trade
were founded on Oriental demand for metal, Troy II was itself a centre
of accumulated wealth, providing capital for development of industry
and trade in our Continent.
Yet Trojan merchants seem to have managed without writing. They
did not even, like the Minoans, engrave stone seals. Two cylinders were
found at Troy,7 but their attribution is uncertain. But the Trojans did
1 Childe, NLMAE., 63, 196.
2 Ibid., 196; LAAA., XXIII, 119; Alaca (1951), pi. CXII.
3 Alaca (1937), pl* CCLXXV; Schaeffer, Stratigraphie, 38.
4 Aberg, Chron., IV, 11.
s Blegen, Troy, I, 376, and fig. 357, 37.528.
9 Antiquity, XXX, 80-93.
7 Schliemann, IHon, figs. 500-3; cf. PPS., XXI, pl. XVII.
44
ANATOLIA THE ROYAL ROAD TO THE iEGEAN
Fig. 22. 1-2, Gold earring and T: ?, ? sure A, 3, pin from Treasure jD,
4 bracelet from Treasure F, : \ ; .. pins (f). Museum f. Vorge-
schichte, Berlin.
45
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
copy Asiatic seals in clay while an imported sherd from lib bears the
imprint of an Early Minoan seal.
The old native fertility cult continued without any notable changes,
but the figurines, now predominantly of stone, are all highly conven-
tionalized (Fig. 8, 15), and the phalli are made of stone.
After the sack of Troy II a reoccupation of Hissarlik on a smaller
scale is represented by the ruins of towns III, IV, and V,1 each fortified
and each reconstructed several times. All were urban in the sense that
they comprised specialized potters and smiths and relied upon trade,
though a marked increase in the proportion of game bones in the food
refuse from town III may denote a temporary decline in farming.
Throughout the pottery attests unbroken continuity of tradition.
But face-urns are commoner in Troy III than in II. Pots found on
Euboea and at Orchomenos look like exports from Troy III, while a
copper pin from that town is taken for a Cycladic manufacture.2
Domed ovens,3 taller than those from Thermi, appear at Troy for the
first time in IV. In town V iEgean imports are rare. But bowls adorned
with a red cross in the interior that are characteristic of Troy V have
close parallels on E.H.III sites in Greece, while analogous vessels are
found at Gozlii Kale, Tarsus, together with Cappadocian tablets.4
With the sixth settlement5 Troy approximates more closely than
ever before to the dignity of a city. It was girt with a new and more
formidable stone rampart enclosing an area of over five acres. But
revival seems due to the advent of a new people who introduced pottery
foreign to the native tradition, novel domestic architecture, the practice
of cremation and probably the horse, whose presence is osteologically
attested first in Troy VI. The new pottery is termed Minyan ware—
a fine grey ware, owing its colour to the reduction of the iron oxides
in well-selected clay by controlled firing in a kiln—and accompanied
by a red oxidized variant. These are the characteristic native wares
of Troy VII too. The houses no longer conform to the megaron plan,
but are entered through doors in their long sides. No cemeteries of
Troy I to V, nor even of Early and Middle VI, have been located, but
that of Late VI was an umfield in which the cremated bones were
enclosed in cinerary urns. The first Indo-European Hittites at Bogaz
K5y had likewise laid out an umfield and deposited remains of horses
with the urns, while burial in umfields was characteristic of Period VI
in Central Europe and began in Hungary even in Period IV.
Under the new rulers trade and industry flourished luxuriantly once
more. Middle III, Late Helladic I, II, and Ilia—but hardly any Illb—
1 Blegen et al., Troy, II. 2 Ibid., 9. 3 Ibid., 107.
* Ibid., 229. ’ 5 Blegen et al., Troy, III.
46
ANATOLIA THE ROYAL ROAD TO THE AEGEAN
vases were imported from the JEgean, white-slipped ware from
Cyprus, ivory from Syria or Egypt through the iEgean, but not a
single Hittite manufacture. Bronze sickles, of Asiatic looped type,1
show that metal was now cheap enough for use in rough agricultural
work. Smiths produced a chisel provided with a socket formed not
by casting but by hammering a projecting tang of metal round a
mandril as in Hittite cities.2
Judged by the imported iEgean vases, Troy VI should have lasted
from about 1700 to 1300 b.c. Then it fell, overthrown perhaps by an
earthquake, perhaps by the Homeric Achseans under Agamemnon.
In any case the site was reoccupied and Troy Vila—a rather poorer
city—survived for another century, only to be destroyed with obvious
violence. For the last twenty years it has been held that Troy Vila
was Homer’s Ilion, but that view was plausibly challenged in 1955.
In any case, after its destruction barbarians settled at Hissarlik and
introduced a coarse wart-omamented pottery without, however,
exterminating the older population or suppressing the old ceramic
tradition; for grey wares, like Minyan, were still manufactured in
Troy Vllb. On the other hand, socketed bronze celts cast on the spot
by the usual Central European method leave no doubt as to the origin
of these invaders.
1 Childe, “The Balanced Sickle”, in Aspects of Archeology (ed. Grimes; London, 1951),
145-6.
8 OJP., XXIX, fig. 289; this was, of course, the method used for providing spear-heads
with sockets in Crete earlier (p. 30) and in Sumer in the third millennium.
47
CHAPTER IV
MARITIME CIVILIZATION IN THE CYCLADES
The Cyclades are scattered across the iEgean, remnants of a land-bridge
between Anatolia and Greece affording a passage for cultural ideas
from Asia to Europe. To mere food-gatherers or self-sufficing peasants,
the islands, often small and barren, offered no attractions. But to
mariners crossing from Asia to Europe they offer convenient halting
places and lairs to any pirates who might wish to prey on more peaceful
voyagers. Moreover, they contain raw materials of the sort needed by
urban civilizations—copper (Paros and Siphnos), obsidian (Melos),
marble (Paros and others), emery (Naxos). Accordingly, while larger
islands like Chios and Samos seem to have been settled by neolithic
peasants, the little Cyclades were at first passed by, but early colonized
by communities that could find a livelihood in commerce and perhaps
in piracy too. Such communities must have lived near the shore and
presumably in townships. But only at Phylakopi in Melos1 has a
Cycladic settlement been fully explored. There, three consecutive town-
ships could be distinguished, preceded by some earlier occupation
represented by sherds collected beneath the oldest house-floors. The
city has been partially engulfed by the sea, but must have extended
well over four acres. The first town was apparently unfortified, the
second and third girt with strong stone walls, 20 feet thick in the
latest phase. Fortified settlements are also known at Chalandriani2
on Syros, on Paros,3 and elsewhere. But these fortifications seem
relatively late. Soon after the foundation of Phylakopi II, M.M.Ib
polychrome vases were imported from Crete; the city is accordingly
hardly older than the twentieth century b.c.; it is frankly Middle Cycladic.
For the remaining islands and for earlier periods we are reduced
to estimating the size and stability of the settlements from the ceme-
teries. Few have been fully explored, but they were admittedly
extensive. Three on Despotikon comprised 50 to 60 graves each; on
Syros one cemetery at Chalandriani was composed of nearly 500 graves,
a second of more than 50; on Paros, Tsountas mentions nine cemeteries
1 For Phylakopi see Excavations at Phylakopi in Melos (Society for Promotion of
Hellenic Studies, Supplementary Volume, IV, 1904)
2 For tombs on Amorgos and Paros, see Tsountas, KvaXaStKa, in ’E<f>. ’Apx-, 1898;
for Syros and Siphnos, ibid., 1899.
» AM., XLIII (1917), 10 ff.
48
MARITIME CIVILIZATION IN THE CYCLADES
of from xo to 60 graves. Of course, all these burials are not contempor-
ary. While it has been customary to assign most cemeteries to the
Early Cycladic period (before 2000 b.c.), Aberg1 has shown that some
graves must be Middle or even Late Cycladic. Fortunately Cycladic
Fig. 23. Tomb-group. Amorgos (|).
imports in Egypt, in Crete, at Thermi and Troy, and on Mainland
Greece suffice to show that the islands’ culture reached its zenith in
the third millennium. Marble idols like Fig. 23, 2, were imported into
Crete chiefly during E.M.III, a blade like 23, 1, from the same tomb
on Amorgos, was included in Treasure A of Troy II; Cycladic marble
1 Chronologie, IV, 71, 84.
49
-
D
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
vases were used in Thermi I-III, and the bird pins of Thermi I recur
on Syros; a pin with double spiral wire head like Fig. 27, 9, was found
in an Early Helladic tomb at Zygouries; “frying-pans” with spiral
decoration like Fig. 24 were found in the oldest Early Helladic town-
ship at H. Kosmas in Attica, and in the E.H.III level at Asine; duck
vases (like Fig. 28, 2) were imported into iEgina in Early Helladic
times though they continued to reach Eutresis in Boeotia during Middle
Helladic I (pp. 70 ff.).
Finally, a zoomorphic vase of Parian marble was recovered from a
predynastic grave in Egypt1 while a cylinder seal of Jemdet Nasr
style2 had been buried in a tomb of the Pelos group on Amorgos.
The inference that the density of population on the islands was
1 Frankfort, Studies, II, 103.
2 Frankfort, Cylinder Seals (London, 1939), 232, 301; the tomb group is in the
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
50
MARITIME CIVILIZATION IN THE CYCLADES
made possible by trade and manufacture is confirmed by the list of
exports just given. And of course that list is by no means exhaustive.
Obsidian was quarried on Melos and exported as nuclei or blades to
Crete, Mainland Greece, and the other islands. The Cycladic grave
goods comprise the products of specialized craftsmen—smiths, jewellers,
lapidaries—and prove the use of copper, tin,1 lead, silver, and other
materials which in some cases must have been imported. The role of
maritime intercourse is further emphasized by the frequent repre-
sentation of boats on the vases (Fig. 24) .1 2 But the islanders do not seem
to have needed writing for their business transactions and did not even
make regular use of seals like the Minoans. The prominence of weapons
in the tombs (especially of Amorgos) and the fortification of the settle-
ments may indicate that piracy was already combined with legitimate
trade. In any case, being dependent on overseas trade, the prosperity
of the islands might be expected to decline when that trade was
“cornered” by monopolistic princes in Crete and the Troad. A real
contraction of population during Middle Minoan II-III and Late
Minoan I-II would be perfectly comprehensible. In that case the bulk
of our material would really be Early Cycladic.
But this Early Cycladic culture was by no means homogeneous.
Culturally the islands fall into a southern and a northern group over-
lapping only on Naxos.3 To the former belong Melos, Amorgos, Des-
potikon, Paros, and Antiparos; to the northern Syros, Siphnos, Andros,
and also Euboea. The contrast is revealed in burial practices as well as
in grave goods. In the southern group, though shaft graves and chamber
tombs of uncertain age are plentiful near Phylakopi,4 the early graves
were normally trapezoid cists. In the oldest cemeteries5 (the Pelos
group), definitely antedating Phylakopi I, the cists served as ossuaries
and contain several skeletons together with vases like Fig. 28, 1, and
“fiddle idols” like Fig. 8, 10-12. The later tombs were individual
graves; they contain idols like Fig. 23, 2, marble vases and weapons.
On Syros6 in the northern group rectangular or oval tombs were built
in excavations in the hillside and roofed by corbelling (Fig. 25). But
these too served as individual graves, and the single body was intro-
duced through the roof. As at Krazi in Crete, the door (only *50 m.
square) was merely a ritual element. In Euboea7 the tomb was a pit-
1 One dagger from Amorgos was of unalloyed copper, but a ring contained I3'5
per cent tin.
2 On iEgean ships see Marinatos in BCH., LVII (1933), 170 ff.
3 Aberg, Chronologie, IV, 59 f.
4 Phylakopi, 234-8.
8 Pelos in Melos, BSA., Ill, 40; Antiparos, JHS., V, 48.
6 ’E0. 'Apx. (1899); cf. p. 23, above.
7 Papavasileiou, TleplrQ/v ev WijSolq. ipxtuwv ratpQv (Athens, 1910).
51
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
cave, excavated in the ground and containing only a single corpse
(Fig. 25). The earliest vases of the Pelos group are mud-coloured, imitat-
ing the shape of marble vessels and are decorated with simple basketry
patterns (Fig. 28, 1). Late pottery from the northern isles includes
dark-faced fabrics often decorated with running spirals and excised
triangles (Fig. 24). Technically it corresponds to the Early Helladic I
of the Mainland, though Cycladic imports at Eutresis1 prove that on
Fig. 25. Tombs on Syros and Euboea.
the islands this fabric remained current in Middle Helladic times.
Favourite forms are the so-called frying-pans and globular or cylindrical
pyxides with lids. In some graves on Syros pottery of this class is
associated with marble idols like Fig. 23, 2, which are common to both
groups of islands.2 Other graves on Syros and Naxos3 contain sauce-
boats, jugs with cut-away necks and other vessels decorated in lustrous
glaze paint in the style of Early Helladic III (p. 69). Finally, Anatolian
forms are common in the northern isles, and one tomb group on Euboea
contained exclusively Troadic vases (like Fig. 19, 3-4) and daggers
(like Fig. 20, 2).
The fish emblem carried by (Northern) Cycladic boats had been the
standard of a predynastic parish in the Delta that did not survive into
historic times in Egypt.4 So Fish-folk from the Nile may have fled to
1 Goldman, Eutresis, 182.
3 Aberg, Chron., IV, 102, nos. 13, 15; in both graves the "frying-pans" were decorated
with concentric circles so that those with running spirals may be earlier.
3 Aberg, Chron., IV, 86; Congris Int. Arch. Athens (1905), 221.
* Evans, P. of M.t II, 26.
52
MARITIME CIVILIZATION IN THE CYCLADES
the Cyclades when Menes conquered the Delta. Other Cycladic traits
—the tweezers (Fig. 26, 2), the popularity of stone amulets and par-
ticularly the type represented in Fig. 27, 4; the use of palettes (though
the Cycladic specimens are generally more trough-like than the
Egyptian and Minoan1) and the preference for stone vases may also
be Nilotic traits.
Metal-work, pottery, and dress, on the contrary, are rather Asiatic
Fig. 26. Slotted spear-head (showing method of mounting), halberd and
tweezers. Amorgos (?§?).
than African. Broad flat celts were used as axe-heads. Shaft-hole axes
are represented only by an axe-hammer and an axe-adze from a hoard
on Cythnos.1 2 Daggers with a stout midrib and rivets, sometimes of
silver as in Crete, are common chiefly on Amorgos. Spear-heads were
slotted for mounting as shown in Fig. 26; the type with hooked-tang,
shown in Fig. 23, 1, has already been connected with Asiatic models
on p. 44.
At least in the northern islands clothing had to be fastened with pins,
as in Anatolia, and the types with double-spiral and bird heads have
already been encountered in that area. Rings, bracelets, and diadems
of copper or silver were also worn as in Asia. The silver diadems
resemble gold ornaments from an E.M.II tomb at Mochlos in Crete
1 These palettes, perforated at the four comers, resemble, but only superficially, the
wrist-guards of the Beaker complex; cf. BSA., Ill, 67.
2 B.M., Bronze, fig. 174.
53
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
and from the Royal Tombs of Ur.1 Some of the beads and amulets
may be Asiatic, notably the dove-pendants that are found even in
the early tombs of the Pelos class.2 The so-called phallic (or winged)
beads (Fig. 27, 3) might be compared with the fly-amulets of Egypt
and Mesopotamia,3 but probably derive from a form fashioned of
deers’ teeth by the mesolithic Natufians of Palestine.4 A speciality
of the northern isles was the decorated bone tube designed to contain
pigments (Fig. 27, 1). But similar tubes have been found in Troy IV
and Va, and at Byblos in Syria5 as well as on Levkas in Western Greece.
Fig. 27. Early Cycladic ornaments: 2-8 Paros; 1, 9, Syros (f).
The self-coloured sepulchral pottery belongs in a general way to
the same Anatolian tradition as the early Cretan, and some vase forms
such as the pyxides are in the same vague way Anatolian. Even the
curious frying-pan form so common in the northern graves recurs, in
copper, in a “royal tomb” at Alaca Hoyiik in Central Anatolia.6 (The
excised decoration and the form of the handles show that these odd
utensils are copied from wooden originals.) On the other hand, the
running spiral design on North Cycladic pottery has generally been
considered a Danubian motive. Weinberg,7 however, suspects inspira-
1 Evans, P. of M., I, 97; Woolley, Ur Excavations: The Royal Tombs, p. 139.
2 Aberg, Ckron., IV, 62-3.
3 Cf. Childe, NLMAE., fig. 36 (Gerzean).
1 Garrod, Stone Age of Mt. Carmel, I, p. XV, 2.
5 Aberg, Chron., IV, 13, 87; AJA., XXXVIII (1934), 229, 231.
6 Hfimit Ziibeyr Kosay, Ausgrabungen von Alaca Hdytik (Ankara, 1944). pi. LXXXIII,
60.
7 In Ehrich, Relative Chronologies in Old World Archceology (1954), 95*
54
MARITIME CIVILIZATION IN THE CYCLADES
tion from the disconnected impressions of spiral shells such as appear
on the early Ghassulian pottery of the Jordan valley while Kaschnitz-
Fig. 28. Cycladic pottery: i, Pelos; 2, Phylakopi I; 3, Phylakopi II (L.C.).
Weinberg1 considers that the incised spirals on the pots copy the wire
spirals of early Sumerian and Anatolian gold-work.
As already indicated, Cycladic culture declined when Minoan palaces
indicate a Cretan grip on maritime trade and the warlike “Minyans'’
1 pz., xxxiv (1950), 196.
55
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
occupied the Helladic townships. On most islands only a few graves
are dated by long rapiers or imported Minyan vases to Middle or Late
Cycladic I—II. The “halberd" of Fig. 26, 3, comes from a M.C. shaft
grave at Akesine on Amorgos.1 Its interpretation as a halberd, imported
or copied from the West, is indeed uncertain, but M.C. pottery like
that from the tomb, turning up in the Western Mediterranean (Fig. 41),
does at least suggest Cycladic enterprise in that direction. But her
resources in obsidian secured to Melos a share in Minoan commerce,
and Thera2 too benefited from her neighbours’ wealth until a volcanic
convulsion overwhelmed her inhabitants. Phylakopi II was a fenced
city with regular streets. Imported M.M.I-II polychrome pottery and
Minyan vases from Greece found together on the earliest house floors
show how close was the island’s connection both with Crete and with
the Mainland. Conversely, the matt-painted Middle Cycladic I pottery
of Melos is significantly like the Early Bronze Age or Cappadocian
ware of Alisar, in Central Anatolia, as if the island had also connections
with the East. At a later stage in Phylakopi II a large building equipped
with pillar-rooms like a Cretan palace and decorated with a frescoe of
flying fishes in M.M.III technique might be the residence of a Minoan
governor or consul. The potters’ craft was industrialized, but the wheel-
made vases were decorated with lovely naturalistic patterns in matt
paint imitating the Minoan style of M.M.III-L.M.I (Fig. 28, 3). But
though ceramic technique and style changed, there is no break in the
tradition; matt paint had replaced the glaze medium at the beginning
of Phylakopi II or even earlier though the patterns at first were
geometric, as in Early Cycladic. In Late Mycensean-L.M.III times
the fortifications of Phylakopi were strengthened; the walls were now
20 feet thick, and near the gate a staircase led up to a tower or rampart-
walk. Most of the other islands have yielded traces of occupation at
this time, but their culture now was just a variant of the Mycenaean
“koine” described on p. 81.
1 Festschrift P. Goessler (Stuttgart, 1954), 26-34.
2 See Aberg, Chron., IV, 127-37.
56
CHAPTER V
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
The southern extremity of the Balkan peninsula, though intersected
by jagged mountain ranges, chasms, and gulfs, yet displayed as much
cultural unity during the prehistoric Bronze Age as it did during the
historical Iron Age. In the Stone Age, though peninsular Greece fell
for a time into two divisions, Macedonia and even Southern Thrace
belonged to the same cultural province. Hence the stratigraphy,
observed at citadels, continuously occupied, and in rural tells, provides
a chronological frame applicable to the whole region with certain
reservations. In Classical times Thessaly, Arcadia, and the mountainous
country of North-West Greece and still more Macedonia were cultur-
ally backward as compared with Bceotia, Attica, and Laconia, while
Thrace was frankly barbarian. A similar retardation can be observed
in the Bronze Age. Then from the beginning of the Bronze Age Mace-
donian culture diverged so far from that of peninsular Greece as to
deserve a different name—Macednic—that may be applied to Thessaly
too.
Subject to these limitations, the Mainland Bronze Age has been
divided into three main periods termed, on the analogy of the Cretan,
"Early”, "Middle”, and “Late Helladic”, and each subdivided. The
preceding Neolithic is similarly subdivided; but Early Neolithic is still
very shadowy, and Middle corresponds to the first or “A” phase in the
old sequence. Absolute dates can confidently be assigned to the Late
Helladic or Mycenaean period by interchanges of goods with Crete and
the literate countries of the East Mediterranean: L.H.I began no later
than 1500 b.c., L.H.IIIb ended just after 1200. The beginning of
Middle Helladic about 1800 b.c. is deduced from the association of
M.H. and M.M.II pottery at Phylakopi on Melos (p. 48). Finally, Minoan
seals and sealings from E.H.III layers demonstrate a parallelism with
E.M.III Crete and Egypt between Dynasties VI-XI. For estimating
the antiquity of earlier periods the relative depths of deposits are at
least suggestive: at Eutresis 4 m. out of 6*5 are composed of E.H.
ruins, at Korakou 2 m. out of 4-5 m. But in the Thessalian tell at
Tsangli, occupied in Early and perhaps Middle TEgean times, 5 m. out
of a total height of 10 m. is attributable to Middle Neolithic debris.
In conclusion, it must be recalled that the Helladic and Neolithic
57
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
periods are generally defined by pottery styles and are in fact usually
treated as the period when pottery of the distinctive style was being
manufactured at a particular site. Now on Levkas, in the backward
north-west, rapiers of L.H. or at least M.M.III type were apparently
associated with good E.H. pottery.1 Hence the absolute dates for Early
and Middle Helladic given above are valid only for the ZBgean coasts
and their immediate hinterland. In peripheral regions a retardation
of several centuries must be allowed for! Moreover, the distinction
between Late Neolithic and Early Helladic I is nowhere very sharp.
In fact, a substantial overlap between some Late Neolithic and E.H.I
is generally admitted. Weinberg2 equates Late Neolithic in Thessaly
with E.H.I in the Peloponnese.
Early and Middle Neolithic
While palaeolithic food-gatherers had reached peninsular Greece, no
remains have yet been found of any mesolithic successors, perhaps
merely because no systematic search for such remains has been made.
In 1956 the archaeological record begins with mature neolithic cultures
characterized by well-made pottery and little else. From Corinthia to
Thessaly “variegated ware”, part pink, part grey,3 seems to character-
ize the earliest levels. But from the next level at Otzaki magoula4
in Thessaly as from the cave of Khirospilia on Levkas5 come sherds
ornamented with the edge of a Cardium shell or by rustication that
we shall find are the symbols of the earliest neolithic farmer-colonists
throughout the Balkans and round the Western Mediterranean too.
With them are associated distinctive female figurines. From the
figurines and from the incipient tell formation it may be inferred that
the rural economy and ideology of these early colonists coincided with
those of still earlier cultivators in South-Western Asia, some of whom
did decorate their pottery with Cardium impressions,6 as of their
better-known kinsmen farther north (p. 86) and of their successors
in the Middle Neolithic phase.7
By the latter a rich culture already ruled throughout the mountain-
ridged peninsula from Servia in Western Macedonia to Asea in Arcadia
and from Levkas on the west to the coasts of Attica. It is best illus-
trated in the fertile valleys of Thessaly and Central Greece and is
1 Dorpfeld, Alt-Ithaka, R. 7 and R. 24.
2 AJA., LI (1947), 172; Miloj&c, Chron., 39.
3 Hesperia, VI (1937). 487-97*
4 Jhb. d. Inst., LXIX. (AA„ 1954), n-23* 5 Dorpfeld, Alt-Ithaka, 335.
8 Childe, NLMAE., 218; Godman, Tarsus, II (1956), 66.
7 Mylonas, 'H veokiducy ’Ettoxv tv 'EM dSi (Athens, 1928). Cf. Weinberg, A JA., LI
(1947), 167-85, and Schacherxneyr, Die altesten Kulturen Griechenlands (1955).
58
-
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
Fig. 30. Pottery of Sesklo style, white on red and red on white. After Wace
and Thompson (£).
59
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
usually named after the Thessalian site of Sesklo on the Gulf of Volo.
In Thessaly and Central Greece the peasants found an environment
that they could exploit from self-sufficing hamlets, continuously
occupied. They lived in modest round or rectangular huts of wattle
and daub or of mud-brick on stone foundations. A model from Sesklo
shows a house with gabled roof. The repeated reconstruction of such
dwellings has converted the settlements into little tells (toumba or
magoula). Such mounds are very numerous but generally small: ioo
by 75 m. is an average area for a Thessalian tell, but at Hagia Marina
in Phocis the mound covered 300 by 200 m.
Now tell formation implies a rural economy advanced enough to
maintain the fertility of the fields, if not orchard husbandry that ties
the farmer to his fruit-trees. In phase A the villagers lived by culti-
vating cereals, probably also vegetables and fruit-trees1 and breeding
cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs.2
Unspecialized potters built up by hand delicate vessels, imitating
baskets or perhaps even metal vessels3 in an extremely fine burnished
ware, generally red, in the Peloponnese sometimes black or mottled.4
The pots might be decorated with simple rectilinear patterns formed
by wedge-shaped or round punctuations or by lines in white paint.
In Northern Greece the vase surface was more often covered with a
white slip on which designs were painted in red; in Central Greece and
the Peloponnese the white slip is often omitted. The patterns, often
very elaborate, are clearly derived from basketry originals, but each
hamlet developed its own distinctive style of painting. Ring bases
and genuine handles betoken an unusual degree of sophistication,
while an imitation of a leather bottle from Nemea approximates to the
Early Helladic askos (like Fig. 36, 2).
Simple stone vases too were found at Sesklo, but a bone spatula like
Fig. 45 must come from an unrecognized Early Neolithic settlement.
Though self-sufficing communities, the neolithic hamlets were not
mutually isolated; they exchanged pots5 and doubtless other com-
modities. War is not attested; the only definite weapons found were
sling-stones, probably used by hunters. Peaceful commerce outside the
province is disclosed by the general use of obsidian. At Tsani a stone
button seal bearing a cruciform design was found, and clay models of
1 Barley is attested for period A at Tsani, wheat, barley, figs, pears, and peas for
period B at Sesklo and Dimini, vulgare wheat from Rakhmani IV (D). Triticum dwum
from Servia I in Macedonia.
2 BRGK., 36 (1955), 1-50.
3 Forsdyke, British Museum, Catalogue of Greek and Etruscan Vases, I, pp. xvi and 23.
* The surface colour is determined by the firing, an oxidizing atmosphere yielding
red, a reducing black. See Blegen, Prosymna, 368-9; Hesperia, VI, 491-6.
5 Wace and Thompson, 241.
60
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
seals are reported from Sesklo, Hagia Marina, and from Nemea in the
Peloponnese. The type is certainly at home in Hither Asia1 and there
generally occurs in a “chalcolithic” milieu, and copper may well have
been known to the “neolithic” Greeks. Some of their pots seem to
imitate the shape and even the rivets of metal vases, and at Hagia
Marina Soteriadhes1 2 claims to have found riveted copper daggers on
virgin soil in a Sesklo settlement. Still, no sustained effort was made
to secure regular supplies of metal.
Surplus energies were devoted rather to domestic fertility cults.
i 24
3
Fig. 31. Neolithic figurines, Thessaly. After Wace and Thompson. (1, f;
3-4- 2, i-.)
For these figurines (Fig. 31) were modelled in clay, depicting, often
with considerable verisimilitude, a female personage, standing or
seated, or, in one example from Chaeroneia, nursing an infant (the
“kourotrophos”). Model thrones or altars (Fig. 32) were also manu-
factured. As ornaments and charms the peasants wore bracelets of
stone or Spondylus shells (as on the Danube), and stone nose-plugs as
in the al’Ubaid culture of Sumer.
In its rural economy and ideology and in more specific items of
equipment—mud-brick architecture, use of the sling instead of the
bow as well as the shape of the clay missiles, familiarity with stamp
1 Childe. NLMAE., 112, 120, 139, 195, 219, but at Byblos clay stamps are neolithic.
2 Mylonas, op. cit., fig. 64.
6l
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
seals, the decoration of kiln-fired pots with basketry designs in dark
paint—the Sesklo culture reveals just the westernmost outpost of the
South-West Asiatic province, extending from the Mediterranean coasts
to Iran and Turkmenia. Peculiarities of the pottery alone connect it
Fig. 32. Miniature altar or throne. After Wace and Thompson (£).
more specifically with Syria than with the Anatolian plateau. Technic-
ally the chalcolithic pottery of Cyprus1 is very like the red-on-white
ware described above and may constitute a link with the Hassuna-
Halaf complex farther east. At the same time connections with the
cultures of the Lower and Middle Danube valley are already discernible;
significant common elements are shoe-last adzes, triangular altars,
and shell bracelets.1 2
The Sesklo culture endured for a long time: at Tsangli five out of
ten metres of settlement debris are attributed to it, and four out of
eight occupational levels at Zerelia. But eventually the continuity
of tradition was interrupted. Changes in ceramic technique, in art,
in architecture, and even in economy not only define a new period, the
Late Neolithic, but also may betoken an infiltration of new colonists.
Among these two groups at least may be distinguished—Dimini folk
in Eastern Thessaly and Corinthia, and Larisa people in Western
Macedonia and Thessaly, Central Greece, and Corinthia. But the break
is nowhere complete. Thus female figurines were still modelled in clay;
in Eastern Thessaly the kourotrophos survived, painted in Dimini
style, and later a very schematized type emerged in which the head
is a stumpy cylinder of stone or clay, fitted into a legless torso
1 Dikaios, Khirokitia (London, 1953), 314-24; Schaeffer, Missions en Chypre, no.
The chalcolithic and proto-chalcolithic of Mersin in Cilicia provide even better analogies,
Garstang, Prehistoric Mersin (Oxford, 1953), 54-124.
2 AM., LVII (1932).
62
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
Fig. 31, 4)—a type that recurs beyond the Danube in the Gumelnita
culture.1 Hence it may be assumed that the old population absorbed,
or was subjugated by, the new settlers. The latter’s cultural affinities
seem to lie in the Balkans, but the manifestations of their advent
differ in different regions.
Late Neolithic
At Dimini near the Gulf of Volo a completely new settlement was
founded. In contrast to the earlier open hamlets it was defended by a
complex of stone walls (Fig. 33). Sesklo was probably fortified at the
® 1 i« 10 M
Fig. 33. Plan of fortified village of Dimini. After Tsountas.
same time.2 In both citadels houses of the megaron type with porch
and central hearth were erected. At Dimini and Sesklo the bevelled
1 Dacia, VTI-VIII (1940). 97-
2 It is possible that the fortifications and megara at both sites are Middle Helladic
and so unconnected with the Dimini culture.
63
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
adze (D) went out of use, and axes (Fig. 29, C) were employed for the
first time. Adzes were hafted at Dimini with the aid of perforated
antler sleeves. Copper and gold were now imported; they are repre-
sented respectively by two flat celts and a ring-pendant (Fig. 34, 2),
all from Dimini. In East Thessaly the vases were now decorated with
spirals and mseanders normally combined with the older basketry
patterns; the designs may be incised or painted in white or warm black
on a buff, red, or brown ground, and may then be outlined with a
second colour—black or white; the fruitstand—a dish on a high
pedestal—is an important innovation. Similar pottery turns up in
Corinthia and the Argolid, again in a Late Neolithic context.1
Technically Dimini pottery is inferior to that of Sesklo; ring-bases
were abandoned, true handles give place to pierced lugs, though some
of these are horned or elaborated into animal heads. So Dimini ware
cannot be treated as an autochthonous development of the native
Middle Neolithic tradition. It was surely introduced by a new people,
come most probably from the Danube valley; for there spiral and
mseander patterns were always popular and antler was extensively
used in industry. Technically Dimini ware is identical with the painted
ware of the Balkan Starcevo culture, where, however, it is associated
with rusticated ware such as we have already met in Early Neolithic
Greece. The patterns, however, whether painted or incised, can best
be matched in the Tisza-Maros region.2
1 At Gonia and the Argive Heraeum.
2 Cf. Schachermeyr, MAGW., LXXXI-LXXXIII (1953-4). i-39.* below, p. ira.
64
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
In Thessaly the Dimini culture is confined to the east. To the west
its place is taken by the Larisa culture, found also in Central Greece
and Western Macedonia. In the latter region the Late Neolithic phase
began with the violent destruction of the Sesklo village of Servia. The
site was reoccupied by a new people whose Larisa culture is as different
from that of Sesklo as is Dimini, at least judged by its pottery. The
commonest ware is self-coloured, generally black and highly burnished,
but sometimes at least in Macedonia parti-coloured—black inside and
round the rim, elsewhere red like the grey and pink variegated pottery
of the Early Neolithic. Vessels no longer stand on ring bases, handles
are replaced by lugs that may be homed.1 Decoration is effected by
stroke-burnishing, shallow fluting or channelling, incisions, or rarely
by thin fines of white paint. (Crusted ware occurs in Eastern Thessaly,
but in a later horizon.) The patterns are generally rectilinear, but
include occasional spirals. Besides self-coloured wares a light fabric
was made and covered all over with shiny brown or black paint. This
ware, termed ” neolithic urfirnis”, looks like an attempt to reproduce
the appearance of black burnished ware in kiln-fired vases, but is said
to begin in Middle Neolithic times in Corinthia.1 2
As at Dimini, adzes were mounted in perforated antler sleeves, the
sling was still preferred to the bow, but an arrow-head was found at
Servia. Personal ornaments include bracelets of Spondylus shell and
of marble and bone combs rather like those of the Danubian Vinca
culture (Fig. 47).
Larisan ideology was still expressed in the production of female
figurines, now very conventional, but one burial was found in the
settlement at Servia.
All the new ceramic fabrics and shapes found at Servia (except
white painted ware) recur in the Vinca culture on the Danube and Tisza,
as do bone combs, shell bracelets, and other traits. Hence Frankfort,3
Grundmann,4 and Heurtley5 have deduced an invasion from beyond
the Balkans. On the other hand, many of the ceramic innovations can
be paralleled equally in Crete and in Hither Asia. Agreements between
Cretan neolithic and Mainland Greek black-polished wares have already
been noted. Stroke-burnishing decorated one E.M.I fabric (p. 32) but
was also applied in the chalcolithic of Kum Tepe in the Troad (p. 36).
White painting on polished black ware was also later popular at Yortan
1 True handles are attached to jugs at Olynthus and a few other Macedonian sites,
but Heurtley believes they are influenced by Early JEgean models and not truly
"neolithic”.
2 Hesperia, VI, b, c.; AJA., LI, 174.
3 Studies, II, 40-5.
4 AM., LVII (1932), X02 ft, LXII, 56-69.
E 65
6 PM., 115-20.
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
and in South-Western Asia Minor,1 while parti-coloured wares are
characteristic of central Anatolia and Cyprus, but not before the time
of Troy I. Finally, black polished wares, sometimes decorated by
stroke-burnishing, in North Syria2 precede the painted fabric with
which Sesklo pottery has been compared. If the inference drawn from
this comparison be correct, it would be chronologically impossible to
attribute this Syrian neolithic to any Danubian inspiration. Hence,
as Milojcic has argued most cogently, the Larisa culture should mark
not a transplantation of the Vinca culture from north of the Balkans
but a stage in the spread of an Asiatic-JEgean culture thither or at
least a parallel emanation of the latter. That would further accord
with Weinberg’s3 equation of the Late Neolithic of Thessaly and
Macedonia with Troy I and E.H.I. Nevertheless, these archaeological
arguments are not so conclusive as to exclude absolutely the idea of
an invasion from the Danube valley, should other, e.g. philological,
considerations make that imperative.
The Early AEgean Bronze Age
The influx of new settlers in Late Neolithic times had not involved
an immediate transformation of the economic structure of Hellas;
despite its copper axes, the Dimini culture can be termed neolithic
as legitimately as its Sesklo precursor. The succeeding period witnessed
a real advance towards the Urban Revolution and the nuclei of the
classical City States were founded in peninsular Greece.
Not only there, but also in Macedonia and even in Thrace (at least
at Mikhalic4 on the Maritsa close to its junction with the Tundja), the
Mainland Bronze Age is marked by innovations in domestic architec-
ture and in pottery that find precise parallels on the eastern coast of
the iEgean. Architectural tricks such as herring-bone masonry (in
Boeotia and Attica, cf. p. 37) and bothroi in house floors (in Macedonia
and, by E.H.III, in peninsular Greece) and ceramic novelties—“thrust
handles”, pyxides, jugs with cut-away necks, bowls with tubular or
trumpet lugs growing from the inverted rims—suggest a transfer of
Anatolian culture across the .ZEgean and the Dardanelles. A closer
study of the pottery, however, shows that no one known Anatolian
culture was reproduced on the European shores. If a migration from
Asia Minor be assumed, it will be necessary to postulate several streams
1 Anatolian Studies, IV. (1954), 202-5.
2 Childe, BSA., XXXVII (1936-37), 31-5.
3 AJA., LI (1947). *70-4-
4 Razkopki i Prou&vaniya, I, Naroden Arkh. Muzei (Sofia, 1948), 8-20; cf., Anatolian
tudies, VI (1956), 45-8.
66
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
with different starting-points. Only the Early Aegean pottery from
Thrace and Macedonia is explicitly Troadic, while the local post-
neolithic Thessalian pottery seems derived from the Early Macednic.
In Macedonia and Thrace stone battle-axes occur at the same time,
but they are not distinctively Troadic. In the Peloponnese and Attica
Cycladic features in pottery and burial rites are prominent, as if the
islands had been at least stepping-stones on the way from Asia. At
Asine the best analogy to one of the earliest E.H. pots is to be found
in the Copper Age of Ali$ar in Central Anatolia.1 On the West Coast
Ithaka seems to have been colonized from Corinthia.1 2 Even in Thrace
and Macedonia horses’ bones occur on Early Aegean sites, while on the
Troad that animal appears first in Troy VI.
Perhaps, then, the striking agreements could be explained as parallel
adjustments of related cultures when visiting merchants and prospectors
from the Levant and the Nile introduced metallurgical and other
techniques and opened up opportunities for securing a share in the
surplus accumulated in Sumerian and Egyptian cities.
All Early Helladic, Macednic, and Thracic societies of course still
lived mainly by farming, though viticulture is now deducible from
grape seeds at H. Kosmas in Attica, while in Thrace and Macedonia
horses’ bones occur. The early ABgean settlements in Thrace and
Macedonia indeed remained simple villages, as did those at most inland
sites in Central Greece and the Peloponnese (e.g. Asea in Arcadia).
Many had already been occupied by neolithic peasants. Both in Mace-
donia and peninsular Greece Late Neolithic sherds are found on the
oldest Bronze Age floors. But at least in peninsular Greece new settle-
ments were established on sites chosen with a view to trade or piracy
rather than agriculture. These, though often of no larger size physically,
approximate to fenced cities in their location on naturally defencible
sites and their protection by ramparts of stones, combined on iEgina
with timber beams as at Troy.
-
The townsmen lived in long two-roomed houses, closely grouped
along narrow lanes, as at Troy and Thermi. But in the more rustic
villages houses were oval or apsidal and more scattered. At Tiryns
and Orchomenos monumental circular structures were built, probably
to serve as granaries.3 By E.H.III tiles were already used for roofing.
Finally, by that phase the town of Lema4 at least comprised a regular
palace of several rooms grouped about a spacious court or hall and
roofed with tiles and slates. So in at least one Mainland centre the
1 Fr6din and Persson, Asine, 204.
2 Heurtley, BSA., XXXV (1934-35), 39-
8 Marinatos, BCH., LXX (1946), 337 fi.
67
Hesperia, XXIII (1954), 21-4-
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
social surplus was being concentrated and communal activity directed
by a chief as at Troy.
Stone was still employed for axes, adzes, and knives even in the
Peloponnese, and so extensively farther north that Thessalian and
Thracian villages look positively neolithic. Obsidian was used for
knives, sickle teeth, and hollow-based arrow-heads; for the bow is
now attested for the first time, without, however, ousting the sling.
In Thrace and Macedonia, but not in pensinsular Greece, stone battle-
axes were now being made as in the Troad; one from H. Mamas in
Macedonia (Fig. 35), though in course of local manufacture, repro-
Fig. 35. Axe and battle-axes from H. Mamas. After Heurtley, BSA., XXIX (§).
duces a South Russian type. At Mikhalic in Thrace miniature battle-
axes were modelled in clay as toys or votives.
But copper, tin, lead, silver, and gold were everywhere imported
or distributed and worked. Close to the shore at Rafina in Attica,
a convenient port for Cycladic or Cypriote ores, were found two large
furnaces for smelting copper surrounded by quantities of slag and
broken moulds. At Cirrha on the Gulf of Corinth, Davies1 reported a
crucible with tin oxide adhering to it in an open working from which
all ore had been extracted, but tin ore in this context is almost incon-
ceivable. Even in Macedonia2 gold slag and a crucible have been described.
At least south of Thessaly the distribution of metal was so well
organized that copper could be freely used for craftsmen’s tools.
Though most have been melted down in prehistoric times, an axe-
adze and a flame-shaped knife like Fig. 20, 1, survived in the E.H.II
level at Eutresis.3
1 JHS., XLIX (1929), 93-4. 8 Vardaroftsa and Saratse, Heurtley, PM,
3 Two copper battle-axes found stray in peninsular Greece and now at the British
School in Athens may well be Early Helladic.
68
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
Whether or no the techniques of metallurgy were implanted by
immigrant prospectors or itinerant artificers from Asia, the capital
for industrial development was secured in the last resort by supplying
the demand of cities on the Nile and the Euphrates. As in Crete and
the Cyclades, the coastal populations of peninsular Greece had now
turned to trading. Perhaps they colonized the Ionian Islands and the
west coasts to extend their commerce as the Dorians colonized Corfu
in historical times.
The importance and wide ramifications of Early Helladic commerce
are illustrated not only by the materials used but by actual foreign
manufactures imported or copied locally: leg amulets as in Crete and
Egypt (Zygouries,1 Hagios Kosmas2), Cycladic bone tubes (Hagios
Kosmas and Levkas), frying-pans (Hagios Kosmas, Eutresis,8 Asine),
marble idols and palettes (Hagios Kosmas), and a double-spiral pin
like Fig. 27, 9 (Zygouries). From Asia came an arm-cylinder of twisted
silver wire (like a gold one from Troy II) found in a grave on Levkas.
In the E.H.III level at Asine lumps of clay stamped with E.M.III-
M.M.I seal-impressions must have sealed bales of merchandise or jars
of oil brought from Crete. And the Early Helladic merchants themselves
felt the need of seals; seals, probably imported, have been found at
Hagios Kosmas, Asine, and other sites. One from Asine is almost
identical with a Sixth Dynasty Egyptian seal. The counterbalancing
exports may possibly have included tin from Cirrha. Early Helladic
vases were certainly exported to Troy from peninsular Greece (p. 37).
A depas found near Mikhalic in Thrace, and another from Orchomenos
as well as some other vases from that site and Eutresis may well be
Troadic imports.
The ceramic industry was not industrialized, since Early Helladic
vases are all hand-made. The fabrics that appear first (from E.H.I
onwards) are dark and self-coloured, burnished and decorated with
incised and excised patterns. In a later phase (E.H.II) begins in penin-
sular Greece a buff ware which is covered with a dark glaze paint to
reproduce the effects of the old burnished fabric. It is generally known
as Urftrnis and probably denotes Cretan influence4 though red wares
had been coated with a rather similar “glaze” in Late Neolithic times.
In E.H.III the glaze paint is used as the medium for producing dark
geometric patterns on a light ground—chiefly in the Peloponnese—or
as a ground on which similar patterns are drawn in white—in
Central Greece. The rectilinear light-on-dark designs recall Cretan
1 Blegen, Zygouries (Cambridge, Mass., 1928).
* AJA., XXXVIII (1934). 259 ff-
3 Goldman, Excavations at Eutresis in Bceotia (1931).
4 Frodin and Persson, Asine, 433.
69
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
E.M.II-III patterns, but are also foreshadowed on the black neolithic B
vases of the Mainland. Distinctive Early Helladic II-III shapes are
sauce-boats (also manufactured in gold1), hour-glass tankards, askoi and
globular water-jars, at first with ring-handles,2 later with flat vertically
pierced lugs, on the belly (Fig. 36).
North of Othrys in Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace, Early iEgean
3 4
Fig. 36. Early Helladic sauce-boat (1), askos (2), tankard (3), and jar (4) (£).
potters did not use a kiln that would produce clear ware and so did
not manufacture Urfirnis ware. Its place was taken by self-coloured
wares as in Early Helladic I and Early Troadic. Save for "sauce-boats’',
most of the forms popular in peninsular Greece were reproduced in
local variations looking rather more Troadic than the latter (Fig. 37,
1, 2, 6). Even horned handles had been current at Troy, but in Mace-
donia a distinctive development was the wish-bone handle (Fig. 37,
1 JHS., XLIV (1924), 163.
2 This form resembles the Corded Ware amphora, Fig. 84 (cf. Fuchs, Die griechische
Fundgruppen der friihen Bronzezeit, 1937), but also good Anatolian forms (Germania,
XXIII, 62).
70
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
3, 5), analogies to which have met us in neolithic Crete. In Thrace the
vases from Mikhalic, where askoi are missing, look more Troadic still.
But here, as in Chalcidice, trumpet lugs grow out of the inverted rims of
bowls. Now in Lesbos this type of lug appeared first in Thermi III,
having grown up out of the simpler tubular lugs of Thermi I (Fig. 17).
For once pottery discloses an irreversible relation. Finally, a few sherds
Fig. 37. Early Macednic pot-forms. After Heurtley, BSA., XXVIII.
from Mikhalic in Thrace, from H. Mamas in Macedonia, and from
E.H.III levels at Eutresis and H. Marina in Central Greece are decor-
ated with cord imprints. This “corded ware” has usually been con-
nected with the battle-axes and horses’ bones from the Thracic and
Macednic sites as evidence for an invasion from Saxo-Thuringia1 or
at least from somewhere north of the Balkans. The forms of most vases
have however nothing in common with Saxo-Thuringian corded ware,2
while the similarities of the amphorae are due at most to a common
pre-ceramic prototype (p. 173).
Imported marble figurines of Cycladic type may have been used in
domestic fertility rites, but clay figurines do not seem to have been
manufactured unless the “anchor ornaments” (Fig.
38) be really ultra-conventionalized versions of such.
They constitute one of the most distinctive type
fossils of the Early Aegean Bronze Age, being
found—in E.H.II-III layers—from Asea in Arcadia
to Servia in Macedonia and Mikhalic in Thrace,
and from Rafina and Asine on the east to Levkas
and Ithaka on the west.3 Really they are no more
likely to be ritual than the clay hooks common to
Early Thracic, Macednic, and Troadic. Clay horns
of consecration from Asine on the other hand
point to rites like the Minoan and Anatolian. But the principal super-
stitious impulse to accumulation of wealth was supplied by the desire
for a good burial. In the Peloponnese and Attica the dead were buried
1 So Fuchs, Die griechische Fundgntppender friihen Bronzezeit (1937).
3 MilojCid, Germania, XXXIII (1955), 151-4.
3 Listed by Weinberg, A JA., LI, p. 168, n. 26; add Mikhalic and Rafina,
7*
Fig. 38. E. H. An-
chor Ornament,
Kritsana (£).
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
in family vaults outside the settlements. At Zygouries the tombs were
pit-caves or shafts cut in the rock, one of which contained fourteen
skeletons. At Hagios Kosmas in Attica, the earlier ossuaries were cists
with a false door facing the township. The cists were later replaced
by built ossuaries like Fig. 25, 1, but still used as collective tombs;
in each case the bodies, in the contracted attitude, had been introduced
through the roof. Such cemeteries of family vaults show that in
peninsular Greece quite a number of lineages or clans lived together
in a single township. Out of six skulls measured from H. Kosmas three
were long-headed, but two round-headed.1
In the north-west quite different burial practices prevailed. On
Levkas Dorpfeld described a so-called royal cemetery of thirty-three
round tombs. Each "tomb” was a circular platform of stones defined
by a built wall and suggesting a denuded cairn, in or on which were
burial pithoi, cists, or shaft-graves—each containing a single corpse
(allegedly roasted)—and the ashes of a "pyre”. Among these lay burnt
human and animal bones and remains of metal ornaments and weapons.
The pottery from the graves is typically Early Helladic, but the metal
gear from the "pyres” includes besides good Early iEgean types a
couple of rapiers and gold hilt mounts2 that elsewhere would be
Mycenaean or at least M.M.III. The cemetery must be a whole period,
perhaps four centuries, later than that of H. Kosmas in Attica. The
burial rites are equally abnormal. Cremation in situ must have taken
place on the pyres, a rite otherwise unknown in Bronze Age Greece.
The platforms sound like cairns, and in 1955 a cairn with pithos burials
very like our round tombs was found in Messenia, but was M.H. in
date. So the warriors and rich women buried on Levkas did not possess
the standard Early Helladic culture though they used Early Helladic
pots and Early J2gean weapons and ornaments.
The standard Early Helladic burial practices are in sharp contrast
to the Troadic, but conform rather to Cycladic, Minoan, Cypriote and
Levantine traditions. They cannot have been introduced from the
Troad. But no Early iEgean burials have been recognized where
Troadic parallels are clearest—north of Attica and Euboea or in Mace-
donia and Thrace.
In peninsular Greece, Early Helladic societies had created a polity
and an economy under which some at least of the peasant’s younger
sons might find a livelihood in industry or commerce, but only in
reliance on Oriental markets opened up by maritime transport. Remote
from access thereto, the contemporary inhabitants of Macedonia had
1 Coon, Races, 144.
2 Dorpfeld, Alt-Ithaka, 229 (R. 7), 237 (R. 17), 241 (R. 24).
72
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
no alternative but to occupy fresh land. So they filtered southward
into Thessaly. The culture that used to be attributed to Neolithic III
and IV there was in fact basically Early Macednic.1 But local Late
Neolithic traditions were blended with the Anatolian. So clay figurines
were still manufactured, but now male as well as female. At Rakhmani
in Eastern Thessaly spiral patterns were applied in crusted technique.
Middle Helladic
The Middle Helladic period is ushered in by the violent destruction
of Orchomenos and other sites. Many were reoccupied. But abrupt
changes in architecture, pottery, burial rites, and general economy
indicate the dominance of new and warlike settlers. The latter can be
most easily recognized by their pottery—the reduced grey ware
Fig. 39. Spear-head, knives, and dagger from M.H. graves in Thessaly.
After Tsountas ($).
described on p. 46 and unhappily termed Minyan by archaeologists—
and by the practice of burying the dead contracted in small cists or in
jars among the houses. The martial character of the invaders is dis-
closed by the deposition in the graves of metal weapons (Fig. 39)—
knives, ogival daggers, and spear-heads with a socket, cast like a shoe
on one or both faces of the blade (Sesklo, Levkas, Mycenae). Hollow-
1 BSA., XXVIII (1926-27), 180-94.
73
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
based obsidian arrow-heads were still used, but now the archer used
also grooved stone arrow-straighteners like Fig. 113 (Asine, Levkas,
Mycenae). Perforated stone axes appear for the first time at Eutresis
and Asine and antler axes and sleeves at Asine. On the other hand, such
craft tools as saws and gouges are first found in a Middle Helladic
grave (on Levkas).
The Minyan invaders did not exterminate the older inhabitants or
Fig. 40. Minyan pottery from Thessaly (£), and imitations from Thermon,
iEtolia (TV).
destroy their economy, but added to the population and accelerated
the accumulation of wealth. Malthi now attained its maximum popu-
lation; the walls comprised, within an area of 3f acres, 305 rooms, while
the citadel was supplied with spring water by an aqueduct. The houses
are more often agglomerations of rooms than long rectangular halls.1
Tin-bronze was now worked by the smiths, and stone moulds for
casting spear-heads like Fig. 39,1, and Minoan double-axes were found
even at Dimini in Thessaly.
The potters’ craft was soon industrialized. The grey-ware vases were
fired in a closed kiln and either formed in a mould or thrown on the
2
4
1 AJA., XLVIII (1944), 342.
74
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
wheel. A family of Minoan potters settled on TEgina, bringing with
them their clay wheel as used in Crete.1 Perhaps such immigrant
craftsmen were responsible for introducing the wheel from Crete every-
where, but there is nothing Minoan about their products. The favourite
“Minyan" forms are ring-stemmed goblets, high-handled cups (Fig. 40),
craters, and amphorae. Both in hue and form such Minyan vases imitate
silver models. Indeed, in one Late Helladic grave the silver originals
Fig. 41. Matt-painted bowl and pithos, iEgina (TV); and Middle Cycladic jugs from
Marseilles harbour and Phylakopi (A).
were actually found together with the clay skeuomorphs.2 On the other
hand, the influence of woodwork is patent—notably in the homed
handles from JEtolia (Fig. 40, 3), which are repeated in good Minyan
ware at Troy but have a long Balkan ancestry. But grey Minyan
vases had to compete with hand-made vessels of the same shapes in
polished brown or black and vitreous red wares.
Perhaps later, pithoi, bowls, and other shapes were built up by hand
in clear wares and decorated with geometric patterns in matt paint (Fig.
41). In form and decoration these matt-painted vessels agree precisely
1 Jhb. d. Inst., LII, A A. (1937). 20-5.
2 Persson, New Tombs at Dendra (Lund, 1942), 87.
75
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
with Middle Cycladic pots from Melos and show the same Central
Anatolian affinities (p. 56). A M.H.III beaked jug from Asine1 looks like
an imported “Early Hittite” manufacture. On the other hand, at Liano-
kladhi in the Spercheios valley the Macedonians, who had occupied the
site in Early iEgean times, now learned to make in matt-painted ware
jars, tankards, and bowls with wish-bone handles of good Macednic or
Early Helladic shape, and decorate them with Macednic patterns,
including pot-hook spirals, in Middle Helladic technique (Fig. 42). A
Fig. 42. Matt-painted jar, Lianokladhi III. After Wace and Thompson (£).
similar fabric appears at Thermon in iEtolia together with “imitation
Minyan’’ vases, but not before L.H.II (fifteenth century) and also in
Levkas. This Lianokladhi painted ware thus illustrates people of
Macednic-Middle Helladic traditions surviving into Late Helladic times
whom Heurtley plausibly identifies with the Dorians’ ancestors.2
In peninsular Greece trade with Crete was at first interrupted by
the invasion, but obsidian was still secured from Melos and the metal
trade was unimpaired. Soon Middle Minoan II polychrome pottery
was being imported into iEgina and imitated at Eutresis. A bossed
1 Frodin and Persson, Asine, 286; cf. van der Osten, AHshar, 1928-Q, OIP., XIX,
pi. IV, b 1671.
2 BSA„ XXVIII (1926-27), 179 ff.
76
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
bone plaque like Fig. 115 and a hammer pin,1 from M.H. layers at
Lerna, illustrate connections at once with Anatolia and with Sicily.
The dead were generally interred in cists or jars under or between
the houses within the settlements. But on Levkas ten or twelve such
burials might be grouped together in rectangular or circular "platforms”
(cf. p. 72). In Messenia2 Middle Helladic pithos burials lay on the
periphery of a regular cairn 14 m. in diameter.
-
The intrusive culture typified by grey Minyan ware is found all over
Greece to the Ionian Islands, Levkas, Thessaly, and even Chalcidice.
Only in inland Macedonia did the native culture persist quite unaffected
by it. Now most authorities agree that the Minyan invaders were the
first Greek speakers in the peninsula. From them should have sprung
the new dynasty that began to write Indo-European Greek at Knossos
in L.M.II (p. 27). If so, the origin of the invaders becomes a major
issue for European prehistory. In 1914 Forsdyke suggested a Troadic
origin for the invaders.3 But, though Minyan ware was the normal
pottery of Troy VI, it did not begin demonstrably earlier there than
in Greece. Burial among the houses contrasts as much with Troadic
as with Minoan and Early Helladic practice, but was normal in Central
Anatolia and farther east. Now grey vases, technically allied to
Minyan and including pedestalled goblets, are characteristic of Hissar II
in North-Eastern Iran and allied sites in Turkmenia,4 where again
the dead were buried among the houses. On the other hand, Persson
insists on Northern features in the intrusive culture.5 None is really
convincing, and the most significant can already be found south of
the Balkans in Thrace and Macedonia in Early iEgean times. If fresh
"Northern” elements entered peninsular Greece and the Troad at the
beginning of Middle Helladic there is no evidence for bringing them
from beyond the Balkans.
Mycenaean Civilization
The martial prowess of the Minyan invaders eventually allowed them
to win by force of arms a share in the wealth accumulated in Minoan
and Oriental cities while their war-chiefs, becoming kings, concen-
trated some of it for use as capital in the development of a Mainland
civilization. The Icings attracted or compelled Minoan craftsmen to
settle at their courts while merchants brought regular supplies of raw
materials and luxury goods. By Late Helladic times the Middle Helladic
townships had grown into little cities.
1 Hesperia, XXIII (1954), 21; xxv, 160. 3 JHS. (1955), Suppl., p. 11.
3 JHS., XXXIV, 126. 4 Arne, Excavations at Shah-Upe; cf.
8 Frodin and Persson, Asine, 433. p. 20, n. x.
77
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
The urban revolution was apparently first consummated at Mycenae,
a citadel that commands a main artery of communications between
the south-east and the north-west. The old settlement, founded in
Early Helladic times, became the capital of a potent dynasty. The
kings with their families were buried with regal wealth in two Shaft
Grave cemeteries, each enclosed by a circle of upright slabs. Schliemann
discovered a circle of six tombs, numbered I to VI, that had subse-
quently been incorporated in the walls of the Late Mycenaean citadel.
A second circle comprising 14 shaft graves (designated by Greek
letters) farther out and disturbed by the erection of the “Treasury of
Clytemnsestra", came to light in 1951.1 In both, the shafts, cut 10 to
15 feet into the rock and provided with a ledge 4 or 3 feet above the
floor to support a wooden roof, normally contained several skeletons
lying on their backs with the legs extended or drawn up; one skull
had been trepanned. These may have been buried in wooden coffins,
but at the bottom of the latest and largest shaft in the new circle
had been built a stone mortuary house, divided into chamber and ante-
chamber and roofed with a corbelled barrel vault. Stelae, carved in
low relief with spiral patterns framing scenes of war and of the chase,
once marked each grave. Now they provide the earliest evidence for
the use of horse-drawn war-chariots in the iEgean. A little imported
M.M.IIIb pottery together with native matt-painted and Minyan
vases suggest that the earliest interments in some graves go back into
the sixteenth century; the latest dateable sherds from any shaft grave
are L.M.II. The Shaft Grave period covered roughly the century 1600
to 1450 B.C.
The equipment acquired by the Shaft Grave kings is largely of
Minoan inspiration. Their palace was equipped with a light-well, like
those of Knossos, and decorated with frescoes in Minoan technique.
Most vessels and ornaments are evidently products of Minoan crafts-
men. On figured documents men wear the Minoan drawers and women
the flounced skirt of the island. Minoan signets were adopted for official
business. The cult of the Mother Goddess, associated, as in Crete, with
the symbols of the dove, the double-axe, the sacred pillar and horns
of consecration, was practised with Minoan rites at Mycenae, and
draughts were played as in Crete. No one denies that craftsmen trained
in Cretan schools produced the objects in question though many must
have been executed at Mycenae itself to the order of the local king.
An immigration of Cretan potters seems to have initiated the local
manufacture of Mycenaean vases, decorated with shiny paint in the
best Minoan tradition. It no longer seems likely, as it did thirty years
1 G. Mylonas, Ancient Mycence, the Capital of Agamemnon (Princeton, 1956).
78
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
ago, that Mycenaean civilization was founded by Minoan princes
carving out for themselves kingdoms on the Greek Mainland. The
martial character of Early Mycenaean culture, as revealed in the forti-
fication of the citadel, the abundance of weapons, and the popularity
of battle scenes in art, is quite foreign to the Minoan spirit. The kings
of Mycenae wore beards; the Minoans generally shaved their faces.
In their tombs native Minyan and matt-painted vases are juxtaposed
to vessels painted in Cretan style and technique. An arrow-shaft-
straightener in Shaft Grave VI and a Mainland spear-head like Fig. 39,1
(Grave IV), occur side by side with arms in Minoan tradition. Though
the terrible rapiers, nearly a metre long, like Fig. 14,1, may be Middle
Minoan types, the flange-hilted variant of Fig. 14, 2, is Mainland rather
than Cretan. A round-heeled dagger from Shaft Grave VI would seem
more at home in Central and Western Europe1 than round the iEgean.
Mycenaean warriors wore helmets plated with boars’ tusk laminae, but
so did Minoans (p. 30). Amber for beads found in several shaft graves
must have been imported from the Baltic, a newly
found crescentic necklace with pattern-bored
spacers2 (Fig. 43) of that material is likely to be
of English manufacture.
Finally, the horse-drawn war-chariots, at once
the symbols and the decisive instruments of
Mycenaean kingship, are certainly not Minoan.
The horses that drew them point north of the
TEgean basin. That is not to say that Minyan
invaders had brought chariots and horses with
them into Greece in the eighteenth century. A
small group of charioteers could easily seize
power and maintain authority with this new and
potent weapon. Structurally the Mycenaean shaft
graves agree closely with the ‘ ‘yamno” graves of the Pontic steppes, which
do contain wheeled ox-carts and hammer pins (p. 151). Whatever the
ancestry of the Shaft Grave rulers, by concentrating wealth, won by
pillage, mercenary service in Egypt3 or more peaceful trade, and so
attracting or compelling expert craftsmen to settle on the Mainland,
they prepared the way for an urban civilization.
Between 1500 and 1400 b.c. the same process of acculturation was
accomplished at other sites which had remained rural townships during
1 The identification of another blade from this grave as a halberd is incorrect, Blegen,
in 'E7HrtinBiap X. Tcrowras (Athens, 1951), 423 ff; cf. PPS., XIX, 231.
8 Germania, XXXIII (1955), 316-18.
* Schachermeyr, Archiv Orientalni, XVII (Praha, 1949), 331-50, suggests that the
Mycenseans learned to build and use chariots while helping Ahmose to expel the Hyksos!
79
n
Fig. 43. Terminal and
pattern-bored spacer-
bead from amber neck-
lace. Shaft Grave at
Mycenae (£).
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
the Early Mycenaean Shaft Grave epoch. Here again the change coin-
cided with the rise in the townships of chieftains, concentrating the
local wealth for expenditure on the products of secondary industry and
trade. These celebrated their elevation by erecting stately beehive
tombs or tholoi. Such tombs are significantly located near the heads
of southward-facing gulfs and along natural trade-routes by sea or land.
On the east coast these Middle Mycenaean tholoi extend as far north as
the Gulf of Volo, on the west to Cakovatos in Elis. At Mycenae itself,
rulers, perhaps of a new dynasty, erected a series of tholoi in which
Wace traced the typological development from earlier and ruder vaults
to the celebrated “Treasuries” of “Clytemnaestra” and “Atreus”,
built in ashlar masonry and provided with richly sculptured portals.1
The oldest dated tholos, one at Navarino,2 contained only matt-
painted and (a minority of) Cretanizing L.H.I vases, so should have been
built in the sixteenth century. Kakovatos3 and a few other tholoi
yielded good L.H.I pottery pointing to a foundation before 1450 b.c., a
larger number are L.H.II, the rest, including the finest “treasuries” at
Mycenae, were Late Mycenaean. A very rich tholos, found intact at
Dendra,4 contained no pottery earlier than L.H.III, but the gold and
silver vessels are L.M.I in style and illustrate a survival of heirlooms
for half a century at least!
Mycenaean tholoi are corbelled chambers entered by a long unroofed
passage or dromos. Many were erected in an excavation in a natural
hillside, but others stood on level ground or on a hilltop and were
covered by an artificial mound or cairn5 (Fig. 44).
Much of the grave goods from the Middle Mycenaean tholoi are
either imports from Crete or products of craftsmen trained in the
Minoan schools. So too the contemporary palaces at Tiryns and
Thebes, neither a megaron, were decorated with frescoes in Minoan
technique.
But the idea of the tholos tomb can hardly have been introduced
from Crete; in that island no tholoi are known to bridge the five
centuries between the building of the Early Minoan ossuaries and the
erection of the Mainland vaults. On the other hand, the architectural
similarities between the Mycenaean tholoi and the corbelled passage
graves of Southern Spain and Portugal are familiar, and there typo-
logical series can be produced to illustrate the development of the
1 Wace, BSA., XXV, 387; the contrary theory of Evans, making “Atreus” the oldest
tholos {PM., IV, 236 f.), has been refuted by the discovery of the new grave circle.
2 Hesperia, XXIII (1954), 158-62.
2 AM., XXXIV, 255; Fiiriimark, Chronology of the Mycencean Pottery (1941), 4.
4 Persson, The Royal Tombs at Dendra (Lund, 1931).
5 So at Kakovatos, Bodia (Messenia), etc.; Corolla Archceologica Gustavo Adolpho
dedicata (Lund, 1932), 217 if.
80
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
tholos from simpler forms.1 So if the idea of the tholos were introduced
into Greece, it may have come from the Iberian Peninsula.
In any case connections with the West are conspicuous in Mycenaean
culture. L.M.I (or L.H.I) pots were exported to the iEolian islands,
L.H.I metal-types were copied in Sicily (p. 238). The colonization of
Kakovatos and the wealth of its ruler must be connected with the
amber trade. His treasures included a crescentic amber necklace with
pattern-bored spacer plates (Fig. 43), reputedly made in England.
Burial in a tholos must have been the prerogative of kings and their
families. But even in the fifteenth century some of their urban subjects
began to prepare for themselves family vaults. Villagers, however,
Fig. 44. Mycenaean tholos tomb on Euboea. After Papavasileiou.
were still buried singly in cists or pithoi. Similarly throughout L.H.II
native potters continued to turn out Minyan and hand-made matt-
painted vases.
But by 1400 b.c. the Mainland had thoroughly mastered Minoan
techniques and assimilated the Cretan industrial system. Native
workers, having been apprenticed to Minoan craftsmen, could turn
out en masse rather shoddy articles that satisfied the less refined tastes
of the Mainlanders and gradually ousted the products of household
industry. Thus equipped, the Mainland took over from Crete the political
and economic hegemony in the iEgean. Knossos was sacked; the Conti-
nental megaron replaced the iEgean palaces at Phsestos and Phylakopi.
The Mycenaean cities were more numerous and perhaps more populous
than the Cretan; the acropolis of Mycenae alone, not to mention un-
walled suburbs, covered about ix acres, that of Asine nearly 9, Gla
1 Cf. Piggott in Antiquity, XXVII (1953), I4I“3*
8l
F
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
in L. Copa'is no less than 24 acres. The immense cemeteries of rock-
cut chamber tombs adjacent to each city are even more convincing
than the areas. Each tomb, an irregular chamber entered by a narrow
passage or dromos, was a family vault. Some contain as many as twenty-
seven corpses. Though carefully sealed up after each interment, such
tombs were in fact reopened periodically and used over several genera-
tions; vases of L.H.II, L.H.IIIa, and L.H.IIIb styles were found in
one and the same tomb at Mycenae, showing its use for burial for at
least two centuries (1450-1250 b.c.).1 And a family likeness could be
detected on the skeletons from the same tomb. This collective burial
practice, though deeply rooted in the Aegean and still current in Crete
in Middle Minoan times, is in sharp contrast to the "Minyan” usage
and looks like a reversion to Early Helladic customs or an imitation of
the royal practice.
The populous cities sought an outlet for their goods and overflowing
population in trade and colonization. Mycenaean pottery and other
products were exported in quantities to Troy, Palestine, Syria, Egypt,
and Sicily, rapiers to Bulgaria and perhaps the Caucasus. The Aegean
and Ionian islands and even the coastal tracts of Macedonia received
contingents of Mycenaean traders, potters, and metal-workers and were
incorporated in the Mycenaean economic system. Mycenaean colonies
denoted by tholos tombs were planted even on the coasts of Asia Minor
and Syria.1 2 In the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries a complete
cultural uniformity prevailed over the whole iEgean world—a uni-
formity that embraced the political diversity reflected in the Iliad.
The zenith of Late Mycenaean civilization, as fixed by Mycenaean
imports in Egypt and Syria and Egyptian imports in Greece, was
reached in the fourteenth century. After 1300 b.c. trade with Egypt
declined, wealth diminished, art decayed as piracy and militarism
took the place of peaceful commerce. Only the armament industry
expanded; commerce with the barbarous West alone was intensified.
The fortifications of Mycenas, Tiryns, and Athens were extended.3
Greaves4 and probably corselets were worn as well as helmets. A new
type of flange-hilted sword was introduced in which the flange is
carried right round the pommel5 (Fig. 15). Swordsmen were mounted
on horseback to become the first cavalrymen of antiquity.6 The sup-
1 Arch., LXXXII (1932).
2 AJA., LII (1948), 145 fL; Schaeffer, Stratigraphie, 9-12; Stubbings, Mycentsan
Pottery from the Levant (Cambridge, 1951).
3 AJA., LII (1948), X09-14.
4 Found in a tomb near Patras, A JA., LVIII (1954), 2351 cf. Lorimer, Homer and
fhfi Ji/fP'Yitx
6 Evans, Arch., LIX (1905), 501; cf. Benton, PPS., XVIII (1952), 237.
* Hood, BSA., XLVIII (1953), 85.
82
FROM VILLAGE TO CITY IN GREECE
plies of amber, copper, and tin from the north and west were main-
tained. As a consequence, a flange-hilted sword of the new type was
exported to Cornwall,1 there to be buried with the chief of a tribe that
controlled access to the tin lodes (p. 336). Relations with the West were
more intimate than a mere interchange of goods. An Italian smith
came to the court of Mycenae and there cast in a stone mould2
Continental winged axes like Fig. 119, 2. Peschiera daggers (like Fig.
119, 4), cut-and-thrust swords,3 and fibulae (both like Fig. 122, and
with flattened leaf-shaped bow)4 appear in such numbers as to imply
changes in ways of fighting and in fashions of dress, if not in population.
They herald the cataclysm that submerged the Mycenaean civilization
—the “Dorian Invasion” dated by Classical tradition about 1100 b.c.
1 Childe, PPS., XIV (1948), 185 f.
3 BSA., XLVIII, 15; the actual mould was found.
3 Schaeffer, Enhomi-Alasia, I (Paris, 1952), 237-42.
1 Blinkenberg, Fibules grecques et myceniennes (Lindiaha V), (Copenhagen, 1926).
83
CHAPTER VI
FARMING VILLAGES IN THE BALKANS
The rugged peninsula between the Black Sea and the Adriatic, despite
the severity of the winters and the retardation of spring, enjoys, owing
to its latitude and the prolongation of autumnal warmth, a climate
intermediate between the Mediterranean and the Temperate. So the
adaptation of an Asiatic rural economy would be less difficult there
than in the rest of the European woodland zone. And incidentally the
ancestors of one-corn wheat (Triticum monococcum) and several fruit-
trees grew wild there. So the fertile valleys intersecting the Balkan
ranges are, like Thessaly and South-West Asia, studded with tells
representing the sites of permanent, though formally neolithic, villages.
Their stratification should provide a reliable record of the process of
adaptation. But in Bulgaria the latest accounts of the culture-sequence
at Banyata1 and Karanovo2 are in flat contradiction with earlier
accounts of the succession at Kyrollovo,3 Veselinovo,4 and Karanovo
itself.5 So too at Vinca on the Middle Danube the divisions of the
material excavated by Vassits6 from the 10 m. deep deposit proposed
respectively by Holste,7 Milojcic,8and Garasanin9are equally discrepant.
-
In the peninsula and along the Lower Danube a mesolithic popula-
tion, allied to the Northern Forest-folk, might be postulated to explain
peculiarities in the local neolithic culture, but is not documented by
any certified finds. In the caves so far explored no occupation layers
intervene between strata containing Upper Palaeolithic (Aurignacian)
implements and a pleistocene fauna and those yielding remains of
developed neolithic cultures. The continuous record recommences
with farmers whose cultures in general for all their local divergences
are not only based on the same cereals and domestic stock as those
of peninsular Greece and Hither Asia, but also reproduce the latters’
rural economy and ideology expressed in female figurines and even
their preferences for adzes and slings.
1 Godolnik Plovdiv, II (1950), 4-20.
2 SA., XXIV. (1955). 125; cf. IzbBAI., XVII (1950). 210-12.
3 Jhrb. d. Inst., LVIII, A A. (1943), 74-92.
4 IzbBAI., XIII (1939), 195-227.
5 Antiquity, XIII (1939), 345-9; Gaul, BASPR., XVI {1948), 43-5.
6 Preistorijskaya Vinca (Belgrad, 1930-36), 4 volumes, cited P.F.
7 WPZ., XXVI (1939), 1 ff.
8 Chronologie, 71-81; BSA., XLIV (1949), 258-82.
9 Hronologija Vinlanshe Gruppe (Ljubliana, 1951).
84
FARMING VILLAGES IN THE BALKANS
The Starcevo-Koros Culture1
Throughout the Balkan peninsula and on both sides of the Carpathians,
north of the Danube, the continuous record of food-production begins
in settlements of the Starcevo culture. This assemblage, only in the
last ten years clearly distinguished from its successors, extends from
the iEgean coasts in Thessaly and Gallipoli across the main Balkan
range and the Danube to the Koros and the headwaters of the Pruth
(Map I, crosses). In such a vast and diversified region the material
remains of the culture are surprisingly uniform, though local divergences
are of course recognizable, especially in pottery; we could easily
distinguish a Maritza or Thracian, a Drave-Morava, and a Maros-Koros
aspect.
Though occurring at the base of several tells both in Bulgaria and
in Yugoslavia, the Starcevo layers seem to represent rather temporary
settlements, and similar material has been collected from caves and
from unstratified camp sites along streams and lake shores. On the
Maros and Koros the latter consisted of groups of trapeze-shaped huts
of wattle-and-daub with lean-to walls that formed also the roof,1 2 but
on the Maritza more commodious houses were built in the later phase
of the culture. In the economy, hunting played a prominent role;
bones of game animals are common in all settlements. But the hunters
did not use flint-tipped arrows, but relied on traps and slings.3 Fishing
may be deduced from the location of the encampments along the banks
of streams and lakes and from clay net-sinkers which in the Koros
aspect assume the ornate form of Fig. 45. But Starcevo folk were
always farmers even though their rural economy may have been
incompatible with durable settlement in one place.
Actual cereals—so far only one-corn wheat in Bulgaria; millet in
Yugoslavia!—have been identified; they were stored in clay-lined pits;
sickle flints were found mounted in a curved horn-handle at Karanovo4;
saddle querns and rubbers are found everywhere. Beside the querns in
Bulgaria are regularly found bone spatulse (Fig. 45) that must have
been used to scoop up the flour. Such spatulse recur on practically every
Starcevo site throughout the province, but in no other context, so that
they can be used as a diagnostic type of the culture as confidently as
pots. Bread was probably already baked in low clay ovens. Finally,
cattle, goats, sheep, and pigs were bred for food. But in general the
1 Kutzian, I., The Koros Culture (Dissertationes Pannoniccs, s. II, no. 23) (Buda-Pest,
1944-47); Garasanin, Arandeljovic-, Starceva6ka Kultura (Univerz v. Ljubljani, 1954);
Gaul, “West Bulgarian Painted”, ASPRB., XVI (1948); “Banyata”, God. Plov., II
(1950), 4-12; St. s. Qerc., II (1951), 57-64. 2 Banner, TMK., 17; Dolg., IX-X, 75.
3 Gara§anin, StarcevaL Kult., 134. 4 Antiquity, XIII, 345.
85
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
rural economy must have been one of shifting agriculture and pastoral-
ism combined with hunting and collecting. That will account for the
relatively rapid spread of such a homogeneous culture over so vast a
province.
In industry carpenters used exclusively adzes (like Fig. 29, B and D)
and chisels mounted in antler sleeves. In the Koros aspect at least
celts were sometimes drilled with a hollow-borer and antler beams
were perforated—and sometimes armed with stone blades—to serve
as adzes or mattocks. Textiles may be inferred from spindle-whorls,
spools, and loom-weights of baked clay.
Fig. 45. Clay loom-weights or net-sinkers (£) and bone spatula of Stardevo
Koros culture, (?£).
The potters, though not full-time specialists, had complete mastery
over their material. The universal and perhaps earliest Starcevo ware
is indeed coarse and chaff-tempered. But the shapes are highly sophisti-
cated. The vases, some 21 inches high, are all provided with flat bases
or even stand-rings though not with true handles. North of the Balkan
range the stand-rings may be quatrefoil or cruciform (Fig. 46) or
replaced by four nipples that farther south have grown into four solid
legs. These vessels were elaborately decorated by rustication (often
called barbotine), which in the Koros aspect is combined with con-
ventional figures of goats, stags, or men in relief. This coarse ware,
save perhaps in the Koros aspect, was generally accompanied by finer
fabrics, also chaff-tempered, with a well-smoothed or even burnished
surface, grey, buff, or red in colour. The fine grey wares may be decor-
ated with narrow flutings or channellings that both at Starcevo and
on the Maritza may form spiraliform patterns. Finally, small vases,
especially goblets on a low foot, may be painted in white or black on a
red ground or—in Yugoslavia—in dark brown on buff, in fact just like
86
FARMING VILLAGES IN THE BALKANS
Dimini ware (p. 64). The lines of paint form simple designs among
which spirals occur only rarely and, according to Milojcic, late. Neither
the rusticated nor the painted designs were blended into harmonious
compositions as in Thessaly. At Karanovo fluted ware seems to appear
later than painted; both appear later than rusticated ware at Starcevo
according to Fewkes,1 Milojcic,1 2 and Mrs Garasanin,3 but Ehrich4 denies
Fig. 46. Cruciform-footed bowl in fine Starcevo ware and jar of rusticated Koros
style (XV).
this. Both Milojcic and Mrs Garasanin agree that the rusticated Koros
ware represents a still later phase of the culture.
Trade brought obsidian to the encampments on the Pruth and along
the Tisza and Koros, and Spondylus shells to the latter region from the
Mediterranean.
Clay stamps, as in neolithic Byblos, are common on the Koros
sites, at Starcevo itself and along the Pruth, but have not yet been
reported south of the Balkans. Similarly figurines, well-modelled and
markedly steatopygous, are common in the Kor5s group but rare and
rude at Starcevo and on the Maritza. Burials were unceremonious, being
represented by skeletons without grave goods, interred contracted in pits
in the encampments. The expansion of the Starcevo culture must have
occupied a considerable time, and in each area, though not at any
single site, its life may well have been long. Earlier and later phases
1 Fewkes, ASPRB., IX (1933), 44-6.
2 BSA., XLIV (1949), 261-6.
3 Starcevadka Kultura (Ljubljana, 1954), 62-80, 134.
4 Relative Chronologies in Old World Archceology (Chicago, 1954), 112.
87
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
should then be distinguishable. Now in Thessaly Starcevo rusticated
ware is Early Neolithic, being stratified below Sesklo wares (p. 58).
In Macedonia, on the contrary, the painted pottery of Olynthus is
indistinguishable from painted Starcevo ware.1 but is Late Neolithic.
On the Pruth in Northern Romania Starcevo wares (painted and rusti-
cated) are stratified below Danubian I. At Vinca too Starcevo culture
appears pure in the deepest level, though Koros sherds at least are
mixed in the immediately overlying deposit of the Vinca culture. But
north of the Danube the Koros culture is said, sometimes at least,
to be later than the Vinca culture.2 So the clay stamps that are com-
monest on Koros sites are Danubian II on the Middle and Upper
Danube. Hence the Koros aspect is probably a late phase of the
Starcevo culture as Garasanin and Milojcic contend, and painting may
be a secondary feature in the pottery.
If this be correct, antler sleeves and mattocks and the spiral motive
may be accretions developed or borrowed by Starcevo farmers from
hypothetical hunter-fishers of Forest traditions along the Danube.
Similarly vase painting, the manufacture of the more realistic figurines
and of the stamps, that look most like Asiatic seals, and perhaps the
improvement in rural economy, suggested by the more permanent
settlements on the Maritsa, may be additions to the original culture
inspired by fresh immigrants from Hither Asia. The hypothetical “pure
Starcevo culture”, left by the abstraction of the foregoing accretions,
could quite well have arisen in the Balkans, since the only directly
attested cereals cultivated and animals3 bred may be native there. It
may, on the other hand, be due to immigrants from South-Western
Asia related to the farmers who made unpainted pots in North Syria
and Cilicia, or, if rusticated Starcevo ware seems too unlike the recog-
nized incised fabrics of the area, to farmers who made no pots at all.4
The relatively homogeneous Starcevo culture was in the sequel
replaced by—or by divergent adjustments to the environment grew
into—distinct local cultures in the several natural subdivisions of the
province. Divergent development would be quite natural if a sparse
population of herdsmen and shifting cultivators that had maintained
communication between dispersed bands as a consequence of trans-
humance, hunting expeditions, and the search for fresh soil to till,
settled down in permanent villages; for owing to their neolithic self-
sufficiency these could remain isolated.
1 Heurtley, PM., 116.
2 AE. (n.s.), VII-IX (1946-48), 19-41.
3 But probably no sheep or goats, BRGK., XXXVI (1955), 21-5.
4 The "unfired pottery” reported by Grbic from Subotica is really the clay lining
to bottle-shaped silos on a sandy site. Normal StarSevo pottery was found in the silos.
FARMING VILLAGES IN THE BALKANS
The Vardar-Morava or Vinca Culture
In Western Macedonia, along the Vardar and Morava, on the Danube
above the Iron Gates, and thence across the Banat and up the Maros,
permanent villages growing into tells begin with the Vinca culture.
In the great tell of Vinca itself above the Starcevo levels appear
fabrics and ceramic forms that are not found in pure sites of the
Starcevo culture but do occur at sites where Starcevo types are totally
absent. These ceramic features Milojcic1 and Garasanin2 have isolated
from the Starcevo assemblage and used to define a distinct Vinca
culture to which other traits may be attributed by association. As thus
defined, the culture is represented at a series of sites from the Vardar-
Morava watershed down the latter river, along the Save3 and the
Danube, and then beyond that river4 as far as Tordos on the Maros5 in
Transylvania. The stratification at Vinca allows of the definition of
phases in the development of those data susceptible of statistical
treatment, but not of the determination of the relative age of isolated
objects. Milojcic distinguishes five main phases, but Garasanin can
recognize only two. He will be followed here.
The basis of life was still mixed farming combined with hunting,
fishing, and collecting. But the rural economy had been adjusted to
Fig. 47. Bone combs and ring-pendant, Tordos, and "harpoon”, Vinca (f).
maintain permanent villages on one site. To catch the large fish of the
Danube, the Tisza, and the Maros, antler harpoons or leister-prongs
(Fig. 47) were employed as well as nets and hoolc-and-line (by Vinca II
the hooks were barbed). Flint arrow-heads were only exceptionally
used, but no clay sling-bolts have been found either. The houses of
wattle and daub were rectilinear but rather irregular in plan, divided
into two or three rooms and furnished with low-vaulted ovens. Adzes
1 BSA., XLIV (1949), 258-306.
2 Hronologia Vincanska Gruppe (1951).
3 Starinar (n.s.), III-IV (1953), 107-26.
4 AE., VII-IX, 19-41.
6 Roska, M., Die Sammlung Zsofia Torma (Cluj-Koloszvar, 1941).
89
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
were still preferred to axes. Perforated stone hammer-axes appeared
first in Vinca II, but antlers were perforated for mattocks as in the
Starcevo culture.
The pottery was of high quality. The commonest fabric at all levels
and sites was black burnished ware. A red-surfaced version (erroneously
termed "red-slipped”) was also made. Black and red part-coloured
vases, as described on p. 65, are confined to the first phase. To the
same phase belongs what Milojcid calls urfirms and compares to the
Late Neolithic ware of Greece (p. 65). Vases were flat-based. Handles
were foreign to the pure Vinca tradition, but at Plocnik1 and other late
sites in the Morava valley appear handled tankards and mugs resembling
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 t 9 10
1 --1---1____L.__1____L__J____I____L___L___1 cm.
Fig. 48. "Face urn" lid from Vinca. After Vassits.
the Early Macednic. Instead, vases were provided with lugs that even
in phase I may be hornlike and are provided with button-like pro-
jections in phase II. Tubular spouts may go back to phase I, but are
commoner in II. Carinated bowls and dishes with flaring or vertical
rims were popular throughout. Chalices on tall solid feet occur already
in the first phase, tripod vases only in the second. Curious bottles,
designed for carrying on the back, flat on one side and provided with
looped lugs on the other, are assigned to Vinca I. The same type occurs
in the Koros and Romanian variants of the Starcevo culture, but in
Bulgaria is also post-Starcevo. Distinctive of both phases of the Vinca
culture and found equally on the Save, the Morava, and the Maros are
anthropomorphic lids (Fig. 48), traditionally compared to Trojan
1 Grbic, Plocnik (Beograd, Narodni Muzeum, 1929).
90
FARMING VILLAGES IN THE BALKANS
face-urns and really like some from Troy III. Anthropomorphic and
zoomorphic vases were likewise manufactured, presumably for ritual use.
Decoration was effected by stroke-burnishing, narrow flutings or
corrugations, and incisions combined with punctuations; rouletting was
introduced in phase II. White, red, or yellow colours were applied after
firing to decorate altars and figurines in phase I, but crusted on the
vase surface mainly in phase II. The motives in phase I include triangles,
filled with punctuations, and punctured ribbons or corrugations, form-
ing simple rectilinear patterns. Mseanders, spirals, and repetition
patterns, derived therefrom, are reputedly confined to phase II.
In addition to pots, white limestone dishes were used at VinSa.
Toilet articles include a comb from Tordos (Fig. 47), resembling that
from Late Neolithic Macedonia, and ring pendants.
Ritual equipment was as rich in the Vinca culture as in other Balkan,
Greek, and South-West Asiatic cultures and implies a similar ideology.
The earliest figurines are more schematic than those from Koros sites,
but some were already seated on thrones. Later details of the visage
were more carefully modelled; the face became pentagonal instead of
triangular, the hands rest on the stomach, clasp the breasts or carry a
suckling, but the legs fuse into pedestals. Mortuary ceremonial, on the
other hand, is not well attested and must have played a minor part in
ideological activity. Some dubious cases of cremation have indeed been
mentioned, and at Vinca1 nine skeletons were buried in a “pit cave”
cut in the loss, but at Vucedol similar “chamber tombs” contained
Slavonian pottery.
The site of Vinca, close to the junction of the Morava with the
Danube above the perilous rapids of the Iron Gates, was well-adapted
for trade. Indeed, Vassits attributed the settlement to a colony
of iEgean merchants whom he eventually identified as Ionians of
the seventh century. Actually the adjacent cinnabar deposits of
Suplja Stena were exploited by Vinca people. Unambiguous imports
are Spondylus bracelets, found at all levels, and obsidian commonest
in Milojcid, phase B. The volcanic glass presumably came from North-
East Hungary down the Tisza. With it came pots such as were being
made along that river, first Koros types of Starcevo pottery, then
numerous complete Tisza vases. Small scraps of copper are reported
from all levels at Vinca, but the abundance of stone adzes and other
tools at all levels and all sites implies that no regular supplies were
organized. But at Plocnik in phase II was found a hoard of thirteen
copper adzes and a hammer-axe like Fig. 64,1, together with five stone
adzes. Many similar Hungarian-Transylvanian types are scattered
1 Vassits, PV., II, 9, pis. 8-17.
-
91
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
about throughout the Vinca province, all presumably imports from
beyond the Danube. At Kladova on the Save1 a typical Hungarian
axe-adze was found with thirty-nine long flint blades such as are proper
to the Bodrogkeresztur culture of Danubian III.
Such imports establish good synchronisms with the Danubian
sequence: Vinca I overlaps with the Koros phase of Starcevo, but its
later subdivisions (Milojcid’ B and C) are frankly contemporary with
the Tisza culture. The latter should be Danubian II though direct links
with the Lengyel culture, typical of that period, are lacking at Vinca.1 2
The succeeding Vinca II phase is in turn contemporary with, or replaced
locally by, the Baden and Bodrogkeresztur cultures of Danubian III.
Correlations with the East Balkan sequence are equally explicit. On
the Romanian bank of the Lower Danube, Vinca I remains at Verbi-
coara are stratified below those of the Salcuta culture while Boian
pottery is found at Tordos,3 presumably with the Vinca I material
from the site. Conversely the Vinca II relics from the upper Morava
valley are hardly distinguishable from those proper to the Salcuta
culture. In other words, Vin£a I and II are respectively homotaxial
with Boian and Salcuta.4
Chronological relations with the iEgean are much harder to deter-
mine. Relations are plain enough, but not in the form of direct imports
across the Balkans or local reproductions of ephemeral types. The
Vinca I culture on the Danube is so nearly identical with that of Late
Neolithic Servia in Macedonia that we may say that this culture, like
that of Starcevo, crossed the frontier between the Mediterranean and
the Temperate zones intact. Most Vinca I pot-fabrics and forms recur
also in Late Neolithic Central Greece, some even at Kum Tepe in the
Troad. All that does not prove contemporaneity. Indeed, the priority
of one region over the other would decide several crucial issues in Euro-
pean and Indo-European prehistory. Now Milojcid5 has indeed claimed
a pedestalled pyxis from his Vinca B2 as an Early Cycladic import,
and it might well be a copy of an imported marble vase. An unstratified
fragment from Vinca may again imitate an Early Helladic askoid
jug,6 while a vase from Bubanj II (i.e. Vinca II) may imitate a meta
1 Arh. Vest., Ljubljana, V (1954), 229-32.
2 The few sherds of crusted ware reported from Vin£a (Vassits, PV., II, p. 134)
come mostly from late Vin£a II levels.
3 Roska, Torma-Sammlung, pi. CXV, 12-21; cf. St. s. Qerc., V (1954), 61, pi. V.
4 Milojfiid, Chron., p. 64, writing before the Romanian data were available, equated
Gumelnija as well as Boian with Vinfca I.
5 Chron., 77.
8 Fragmentary “Minyan” and "Early Helladic” vases from Humska Cuka, quoted
by Garaganin (Arch. Iugoslav., I (1954), 19 f.) and Miloj£i<5 (Chron., 55-6), are not really
much help. Their .Egean provenance is not at all likely and their relation to the Vinda
sequence debated.
92
FARMING VILLAGES IN THE BALKANS
sauce-boat like those from Troy and the Peloponnese. The Vinca II
handled jugs and tankards from the Morava sites must be related to
the corresponding Early iEgean forms, but might be earlier as well as
later.
Yugoslavian prehistorians are agreed that the Vinca culture did
not develop out of the local Starcevo culture, but must be attributed
to fresh colonists from the south-east. It would be these, then, who
introduced into temperate Europe the form of sedentary village life,
the rural economy that supported it, and the ideology that held society
together as they had been developed in South-Western Asia. On the
other hand, as pointed out on p. 66, there may be archaeological and
other grounds for believing that the Late Neolithic culture of Western
Macedonia and Central Greece, now identified as the Vinca I culture,
was introduced by an incursion from beyond the Balkans. If no
development of the Starcevo culture in that direction can be observed
on the Morava, it may conceivably be traceable on the Maritza when
the varied material from Karanovo I and Banyata I have been
exhaustively studied and published.
During phase I, the Vinca culture exhibited remarkable uniformity
from Servia on the Haliakmon, or at least from Pavlovce on the Vardar-
Morava divide, to Tordos on the Maros, from Ostrul Corbului below
the Iron Gates westward to Sarvas on the Drave. In phase II this
unity dissolved, as had that of the Starcevo.
North of the Danube the permanent villages of Vinca type give
place to more temporary hamlets, probably based on shifting culti-
vation. In the Balkans, however, many tells were still occupied and the
ideology appropriate to settled agriculture everywhere continued to
find expression in the production of female figurines. But in the Nis
basin on the upper Morava the culture of Bubanj II is a sort of hybrid
between Vinca and Salcuta. About the same time arose on the Bosna
the remarkable Butmir1 culture. At the eponymous site, a low tell,
adzes, figurines, and much of the pottery carry on the Vinca tradition.
But the exuberant development of spiral ribbons and mouldings,
sometimes forming a net pattern as on Early Cycladic vases, and the
multiplication of tanged flint arrow-heads is quite novel. Finally, at
Vinca itself the old culture persists. But in the levels between 4-5 and
2-5 below Vassits’ datum obsidian is rare, and Milojcic sees Baden
influence in the pottery. Between the last two occupation levels were
found vases belonging to the Middle Bronze Age of the Lower Maros,
assignable to period V of the Danubian sequence. So unless an inter-
1 Benac, A., Prehistorijsko naselje Nebo i problem Butmirske Kulture (Univerzav
Ljubljana), 1952.
93
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
ruption of habitation has produced an hiatus, Danubian III, IV, and V
should be contemporary with later phases of the Vinca culture!
It seems as if, having established a workable adjustment to the
local environment, the self-sufficing Balkan villagers made no effort—
or at least failed—to obtain regular supplies of metal. The widespread
bronze types that define periods IV and V in the Danubian province
are missing in the Balkans; a formally neolithic culture persisted.
The Veselinovo Culture of Southern Thrace
According to the latest reports of Mikov and Detev, the Starcevo
culture at Karanovo,1 Banyata,2 and Ginova mogila near Celopec3
in the Maritza valley was immediately succeeded by one of very
different aspect that may be named after another tell, Veselinovo.4
The permanent villages were composed of spacious houses comprising
several rooms. The frame was constructed of upright wooden posts,
but the walls consisted of clay mixed with straw. Their inhabitants
were settled farmers who now cultivated emmer in addition to one-
corn wheat. Perhaps, too, they bred, or at least hunted, horses whose
bones are reported from Veselinovo.5 Huntsmen still relied mainly on
slings, but stone battle-axes may have been made for war. The pottery,
even more than the architecture, reveals a thorough mastery of wood-
work. For this adzes were still preferred, but axe-heads were made and
perforated for mounting. The pottery marks a complete break with the
Starcevo traditions. The normal ware is self-coloured, usually black
and sometimes burnished. Ornament, employed so profusely before,
has been abandoned save for applied strips that may terminate in
spirals. During building some pots were stood on rush mats, the impres-
sions of which are common on bases. Pithoi, over 50 cm. high, were
manufactured, but the most distinctive form is a straight-sided or
pear-shaped mug (Fig. 49) provided with a stout handle prolonged
upwards to a little pillar. The form is obviously inspired by a wooden
model. So are bowls or lamps on four stout round legs and triangular
ones on short flat legs. The latter are often decorated with excised
chequer patterns, inspired by chip-carving (Fig. 49), and recur,
similarly decorated, in the homotaxial Boian culture farther north
and in the Chalcolithic of Alisar in Central Anatolia. Lop-sided bottles
1 Information from the excavator.
2 Godtinik Plovdiv, II (1950), 4-30.
3 God. Plovdiv, I (1948), 160-4; RazkopM i Proucvaniya (Sofia, Naroden Muzei,
1948). 75-8i.
4 IzbBAI., XIII (1939).
s The stratigraphical position of the horses' bones—and of the battle-axes—is still
uncertain. Neither have been yet found in situ at Karanovo.
94
FARMING VILLAGES IN THE BALKANS
for carrying on the back were made in the Veselinovo level at Banyata
as at Vinca (p. 90).
A few very conventional figurines come from Karanovo II, but in
general the Veselinovo levels are conspicuously poor in those ritual
objects of clay that illustrate the ideology of the Sesklo culture in
Greece and of later Balkan cultures. Indeed, the Veselinovo culture
seems to interrupt the Balkan tradition and can hardly be regarded
as an autochthonous development of the Starcevo complex. Its plain
Fig. 49. Mug, tripod bowl, and “altar" decorated by excision, Banyata II.
self-coloured pots with thrust handles in particular look Anatolian.
If Mikhalic (p. 66) really be parallel to Macedonian Late Neolithic and
belong to Balkan period II, the Veselinovo culture could be regarded
as a result of the same movement, more closely adapted to the Balkan
environment. But none of the distinctive Troadic forms, so conspicuous
at Mikhalic, has yet been found in situ in a Veselinovo layer. There are
indeed analogies to Veselinovo handles and to the “chip-carved" lamps
in Anatolia, but these are confined to Alaca Hoyuk, Biiyiik Giillucek,1
and Ali^ar,2 all on the plateau. Moreover, these are imitations of wooden
models such as are common all along the southern slopes of the Balkans
and the Alps, even to Italy and South France.
Now, at the eponymous site Mikov traced the development of the
Veselinovo culture into one of Bronze Age type characterized by a
copper shaft-hole axe, stone battle-axes, bowls with short trumpet
lugs growing from the inturned rims, side-spouted bowls and jugs,
and even something like a Minoan teapot. Similar material comes from
Razkopanitsa,8 Ezero, and Yunatsite,4 where it certainly overlies
Gumelnij:a deposits and so belongs to Balkan IV. Of course, the strati-
fication at Banyata and Karanovo may have been misinterpreted, and
1 Betteten, XII (1948), 475 ff.
2 von der Osten, Alishar Hiiyiik, 1930-32, OIP., XXIX, fig. 93, 2393.
3 IsvBAI., XVII (1950), 171 ft.
4 Godi&nik Plovdiv, 1927-9 (1940), 55 ff.
95
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Veselinovo there may have followed Gumelnita, as Mikov reported in
1939. Alternatively it could be assumed that the Veselinovo culture,
like the Macednic Bronze Age cultures, developed at some sites parallel
to, but unaffected by, the intrusive Gumelnita settlements, and that
then in Balkan IV the Veselinovo tradition triumphed over the intru-
sions from the north. In either case some ceramic forms of the
developed Veselinovo culture from Ezero—trumpet lugs and cord-
ornament, though belonging to Balkan IV—are more reminiscent of
Mikhahc than anything yet observed in Karanovo II!
The Boian Culture
North of the main Balkan range, on both sides of the Lower Danube
and in Transylvania on the Upper Olt, Balkan period II is occupied
by an assemblage termed, after an island in the Danube, the Boian
culture.1 Comsa2 has recently claimed to distinguish two preparatory
phases during which settlements were not yet quite stable villages,
when only one-corn wheat and millet were cultivated, when arrows
were armed with trapezes and lunates, and when pottery was tempered
with chaff and decorated only with channelled or incised lines that
might form spirals and mseanders. His stages, if reliable, would give
hints at the acculturation of mesolithic survivors, already postulated
(p. 88), or at their absorption by immigrant farmers.
But, as found at the base of the tells of Vidra3 and Tangaru,4 and at
the eponymous site, Boian denotes a regular village culture based on
the cultivation of one-corn and emmer wheats and millet combined
with stock-breeding, hunting, and fishing. The villages were made up of
substantial rectangular houses, walled with split tree-trunks and wattle
and daub and equipped with central fire-places and a very shallow
porch, thus approximating to the megaron plan.5 These are said to
have been preceded by less substantial huts at Tangaru. Weaving is
attested by clay loom-weights and cruciform whorls, like those used
on the Koros. The carpenter used adzes of shoe-last form or bevelled
as in the Sesklo culture of Thessaly. But they might be mounted in
perforated antler sleeves as at Maglemose.
The home-made pots are obviously influenced both in form and
decoration by wooden models. Characteristic are cylindrical peg-footed
boxes (Fig. 50), big biconical jars, two-storeyed urns, ladles with solid
1 Gaul. ASPRB., XVI (1948). s.v.
2 St. s. Qerc., V (1954). 395 #?
3 Rosetti, Publicat. Muzeului Munirip. Bucuresti, I (1934).
4 Berciu, Bui. Muzeului Judet. Vlasca T. Antonescu, I (Bucurest, 1935).
5 Bui. Muzeu, Jud. Vlasca T. Antonescu, II (1937), fig. 3.
96
FARMING VILLAGES IN THE BALKANS
handles, and tiny vases with pointed bases that stood in pairs on
cubical supports. Exceptional are pedestailed bowls of Danubian II
form and others on human feet. For decorating these products the
potter employed the wood-carver’s technique of excision, but also
incision, fluting, rustication, and, exceptionally, negative painting in
graphite, and crusting with colours after the firing; spirals, mseanders,
=“=a==as==:^
^ ==:=======aa=^
Fig. 50. Peg-footed vase. Denev (£).
and cognate repetition patterns form the basis for a rich all-over
decoration.
The Boian farmers were acquainted with copper, but used it only
for small ornaments and made no attempt to organize regular supplies
for industrial use. The only other indication of rudimentary trade is
provided by bracelets of Spondylus shell which were as popular on the
Lower Danube as in Thessaly and Central Europe. And as there,
triangular and quadrangular altars were made for domestic cult, but
figurines, later so common, were very rarely modelled in clay.
The Boian culture, as thus defined, eventually spread south across
the Balkans to the Maritsa valley, but has not been isolated sharply
enough there to be attributed to Balkan II rather than Balkan III.
Northward, characteristic pottery is found as far as the mouth of the
Danube and the upper valley of the Oltu, while unmistakable sherds
are included in the collection from Tordos on the Maros. Here its
position in the Balkan sequence is well established. Boian underlies
Gumelnita in the tells of Tangaru and Vidra. Near Le|i, on the Upper
Oltu, early Boian pottery is stratified above Starcevo ware but below
Tripolye Bj pottery of the Ariusd style, while the Boian sherds from
Tordos should denote a synchronism with Vinca I.
The neolithic elements, save perhaps the emmer wheat, can simply
G 97
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
be derived from the antecedent Starcevo culture. The antler work
and the carpentry might be a legacy from surviving mesolithic hunter-
fishers, represented by geometric microliths collected on some Romanian
sites. These too might have transmitted the overall system of decora-
tion using the maeander as a repetition pattern; for it was so used in
late pleistocene times by the mammoth-hunters of Mezin on the loss
lands of South Russia.
The Gumelnija and Salcuja Cultures
The Boian culture seems to have developed, though not without
enrichment from Anatolia, the Aegean, and the Middle Danube, into
what Romanian prehistorians term the Gumelnita culture.1 This is
represented at a larger number of sites in Wallachia and Bulgaria
than the Boian culture owing to the foundation of new villages by an
expanding population. And it endured a long time; at least three phases
can be distinguished stratigraphically at Vidra and Tangaru, but the
Wallachian divisions are inapplicable in Bulgaria.
The basis of life remained unchanged save that antler harpoons, like
those of the Vinca and Tisza sites, were now employed for spearing
fish. But from the first a tendency to industrial specialization was
manifested; in several settlements hoards of flint blades and bone
tools, all fresh as if designed for barter, were uncovered. Later, in
phase III, metal must have been worked by craftsmen in some sites.
Trade was also organized to some extent. In phase I at Vidra the
material for stone implements was brought from Bulgaria and the
Dobrudja, later from Transylvania and the Banat. Commerce brought
actual manufactures, new ideas and eventually new technical processes.
A binocular vase of the Tripolye A style from Moldavia or farther
north and a vessel ornamented with punctured ribbons, as at Tordos
and Vinca, were brought to Vidra in phase I. From the same horizon
and from several Bulgarian sites come clay stamps2 imitating Asiatic
seals though decorated always with spirals. By phase II, ring-pendants,
as at Troy, Dimini, and Tordos, were being manufactured in bone, and
bone copies of double-spiral headed pins. Actual pins, like Fig. 27,
save that the spirals are ribbons, not wiry, were found in level III at
Vidra, as at many sites and Gaborevo in Bulgaria.3 Finally, even the
Macedonian-Helladic askoi were copied locally in Vidra III and other
Wallachian and Thracian sites.
1 Gaul, BASPR., XVI (1948).
2 One from Qunesti, Moldavia, Dacia, V-VI (1938), 117.
3 BRGK., XXII, Taf. 7. Maps in Gaul, loc. cit.
? 98
-
FARMING VILLAGES IN THE BALKANS
By this time metallurgists, attracted perhaps by the copper lodes
of Eastern Bulgaria,1 were actually working in Bulgaria and Wallachia.
The double-spiral pins they made show the Anatolian models that
inspired these artisans, but they seem to have relied on hammering,
presumably through ignorance of casting,2 and not all their products
were direct copies of Asiatic forms. A shaft-hole axe and a shaft-hole
adze were found together at Gaborevo (Fig. 51). Combined in a single
casting, they would yield an axe-adze, and an actual specimen was
found at Vidra. It may mark the starting-point of the Hungarian series
of period III.
Nevertheless, the Gumelnrfa economy was never transformed so
that metal could take the place of stone. Throughout the period tools
were normally made of stone or bone. But in addition to adzes of Boian
style, flint adzes were now used; the later specimens have splayed
blades or polished faces in imitation of the rare copper adzes. Hammer-
axes and even simple battle-axes, all hollow-bored as on the Middle
Danube, came into fashion, and antler-axes with square-cut shaft-
holes. Arrows were tipped with double-ended bone points, more rarely
with triangular flint heads. Even a bowman’s wrist-guard was found
at Vidra III. Spheroid mace-heads occur sporadically, but the culture
never assumes a bellicose aspect.
The pottery carries on the old traditions. The peg-footed box went
out of fashion and was replaced by the foot-base type (Fig. 52, 6), in
1 O. Davis, Man., XXXVI (1936), 119, describes prehistoric mines near Burgas;
cf. Gaul, AJA., LXVI, 400.
* PZ., XIX (1928), 131.
Fig. 51. Copper axe and adze from Gaborevo ($).
99
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
which the foot is open to the body but closed below, and a socketed
ladle of Danubian II type was introduced by phase I at Vinca. Excised
decoration became less popular, but rusticated designs remained
current, and graphite painting, now positive, became the prevalent
method of decoration. It was rarely supplemented by the use of white
Fig. 52. Gumelni^a pottery: 1, Czernavoda (£); 2, TelMetchkur (J);
3-4, Tel Ratchev (£); 5-6, Kodja Derman ($, £).
paint applied before firing. The impression of a split reed producing
the so-called bracket ornament (Fig. 52, 2) was popular south of the
Danube.
The relative stagnation in industry is counterbalanced or explained
by an extravagant elaboration of magico-religious equipment. From
phase I on, female figurines of clay were as carefully modelled as those
from the middle strata at Vin&a (Fig. 53). One from Vinfia has shell
100
FARMING VILLAGES IN THE BALKANS
inlays for the eyes, like Early Sumerian statuettes. A vase from
Vidra III is a grotesque female figure 42 cm. high; a smaller vase from
Gaborevo represents a male personage. Both products belong to the
same circle of ideas as the anthropomorphic vases from Vinca. Sitting
figures, male or female (Fig. 54, 1), were also made. Flat bone figurines
Fig. 53. Painted clay head, VinSa (•$).
are distinctive in all phases (Fig. 54, 3) (especially II) in Wallachia,
and also in Bulgaria, where the form was also reproduced in gold leaf.1
A much more conventional type is a simple bone prism (Fig. 54, 2);
at Balbunar in Bulgaria prism figures were found in strata deeper than
those containing flat figurines, but at Vidra the order of occurrence was
reversed.2 Stone idols rather like the Cycladic, were made of local
Bulgarian marbles,3 while a torso from Gumelni^a itself replicates the
Thessalian type of Fig. 31, 4, save that the inserted head is of clay,
not stone.4 In addition to female personages, males were being modelled
in clay from phase II (as in Thessaly C-D), and clay phalli, like the
Anatolian and Minoan, were used as fertility symbols (Fig. 54, 4).
Other ritual objects are horns of consecration (phase II), model altars
and thrones, and by phase III models of houses (Fig. 55), as well as
models of animals and doves.
The dead were not objects of any elaborate cult or even tendence.
At the base of the tell of Balbunar twenty-two contracted skeletons
1 Izv. Bulg. Arch. Inst., VIII (1934). 2°9-
2 But cf. Milojfiid, Chron., 61-2.
3 Izv. Bulg. Inst., Ill (1925), 91-101; XIX, 1-13. 4 Dacia, VII-VIII, 97.
101
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
(accompanied in two or three cases only by flint adzes) and two trunk-
less skulls had been buried under the house floors; four contracted
burials more richly furnished were found at Ruse. But unburied skulls
and ribs hacked about have been reported from other stations as
Fig. 54. Clay and bone figurines (?£) and clay phallus (i), Bulgaria.
Fig. 55. Models of houses, Denev
evidences of cannibalism. The skulls from Romania were dolichocranial
and allegedly Mediterranean, but two from Ruse1 are round.
In addition to the pins already mentioned and bracelets of Sfiondylus
shell, ring-pendants of bone or gold (Vidra II) and conventional bulls’
heads of gold leaf adorned with punctuations (Vidra III) were worn
as ornaments or charms.
The label "Salcu^a” is applied to the version of the Gumelnij:a culture
found in Oltenia (i.e. on the north bank of the Lower Danube between
the confluence with the Oltu and the Iron Gates)1 2 and found also in the
1 IzbBAl., II (1924), 187 £f. In IzbBAI., XIX (1952), 182-9, thirty-six further burials
—at relatively high levels—are reported.
2 Berciu, Arheologia preistorica a OUeniei (Craiova, 1939, 50-68).
102
FARMING VILLAGES IN THE BALKANS
Sofia basin—above Veselinovo remains1—and in Bubanj II on the
Upper Morava.1 2 It is distinguished chiefly by ceramic peculiarities:
graphite painting and bracket ornament are relatively rare, narrow
flutings and crusting with colours after firing commoner. Among shapes,
askoi and handled cups or mugs were particularly popular. The two-
handled tankards are reminiscent of the Early Macednic, but some are
ridiculously like the Silesian Jordanova type of Fig. 94.3 A distinctive
Bulgarian form is a lamp in the shape of a goat.4 Most of the Gumelnita
ritual objects, including even prismatic bone figurines, recur in a
Salcuta context. Finally, a stone “sceptre head” carved to represent
an animal’s snout (Fig. 76)5 6 from Salcuta may be an import from the
steppes as another came from an ochre grave (cf. p. 158). So no very
sharp frontiers can be drawn between Gumelnita and Salcuta. Even
on the slopes of Rhodope, Banyata III might be classed as Salcuta
rather than Gumelnita. The Salcuta culture presumably developed
on the same Boian basis as Gumelnita, but was more strongly influenced
by the Vinca culture and the Early Macednic.
It should be easy to fit Balkan III into the Danubian sequence and
assign it an absolute date in virtue of the Danubian and iEgean
parallels in Gumelnita and Salcuta assemblages. Clay stamps are
proper to Danubian II, but battle-axes and axe-adzes belong there to
period III. The double-spiral pins, the askoi, and the Salcuta mugs
are Early JSgean types, but of course none are actual imports. If taken
as denoting synchronisms, they should date the third phase of Gumel-
nija and Salcuta not later than 2000 b.c.
In that case we should have painfully little archaeological material
to fill the next thousand years. The Lower Danube and Eastern Thrace
were incorporated, no more than the Western Balkans, in either the
Danubian or the iEgean commercial system. The bronze types defining
Danubian IV and V are, if possible, even worse represented here than
on the Morava and the Bosna. Half a dozen local copies of Late
Minoan I homed rapiers have turned up in Bulgaria, but all are strays.
Apart from urnfields of period VI along the Lower Danube, Bronze
Age graves are lacking in Bulgaria. The funerary record begins, richly,
with the Early Iron Age. Material from domestic sites is scarce and
poor, compared with the rich deposits of Gumelnita and earlier cultures
from so many sites, and it still looks “neolithic”.
1 E.g. at Krivodol, Raz. i Pro. (1948), 26-57.
a MPK. (1940), IV B, 1-2.
3 Raz. i Pro. (1948), fig. 43.
4 At Yasatepe, Plovdiv (God. Plovdiv, I (1948), 4-11, fig. 12), and Banyata III (ibid.,
II (1950), fig. 30).
6 Dacia, VII-VIII, go ff.; St. s. Qerc., V (1954), 540-8.
103
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Above the Gumelnita levels at Vidra is a thin deposit of the Glina
culture, the product of a less sedentary, more pastoral and warlike
society. Though copper or bronze was worked, metal did not replace
stone in industry or armament. Painted pottery and female figurines
have alike disappeared. Homotaxial assemblages are rather more
substantial in Bulgaria. At Yunatsite,1 in the middle (II) levels above
a Gumelnita layer (I), Vesilnovo handled vases with pillar handles are
said to be associated with askoi that would have been expected in
the lower, Gumelnita, level. Higher up in Yunatsite III, immediately
below a Thracian settlement of the seventh century B.C., occur cups
and tankards with pointed bases. These are found also in late houses at
Razkopanitsa2 on the Struma, in Karanovo V, Veselinovo and a few
other Bulgarian sites, and in Oltenia3 and in the Nis basin of the
Morava.4 Jugs and cups with oblique mouths, presumably descended
from Anatolian beaked jugs, are found in Karanovo V, Banyata IV,
the earlier houses at Razkopanitsa, the highest levels at Ruse.5 All
this pottery, self-coloured and rarely decorated, looks at least as
Anatolian as the Veselinovo ware from Karanovo II. It might be
derived therefrom if a long Gumelnita occupation did not intervene
(cf. p. 95).
Hence if we placed even the first two phases of Gumelnita in the
third millennium, we should get the impression that the large sedentary
population, attested by the numerous Gumelnita tells, was either
decimated or relapsed into shifting cultivation. Be that as it may, one
conclusion can be drawn. Neolithic societies in the Balkans quite
quickly adapted the South-West Asiatic rural economy to their inter-
mediate environment and elaborated or adopted a similar ideology
appropriate to settled village life. They did not take the next step
towards civilization—to adjust their economy to support a bronze
industry—nor, as far as our evidence goes, did they help to transmit
northward the technical skills of their neighbours round the iEgean.
The Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages of the Lower Danube and the
Balkans were based entirely on Central European traditions to which
Greek contributions were superadded only subsequently.
1 GodiSnih Plovdiv (1940), 55-70; Miloj£ic, Chvon., 50-2.
2 IzvBAJ, XVII (1950), 171-87, with list of other sites on 187.
8 Bercin, Arheol. preistoricd a Olteniei, figs. 136-8.
4 MilojSid, Chron., 55, and fig. 2. fi IzvBAI., XIX (1952), 121-8.
IO4
CHAPTER VII
DANUBIAN CIVILIZATION
PERIOD I
Immediately north of the Serbian Danube and the Save begin loss-
clad plains and slopes which extend, not without formidable interrup-
tions, right up to the edge of the moraines in Poland, Germany, and
Belgium. These Central European loss lands had been frequented in
Aurignacian and Solutrean times by mammoth- and reindeer-hunters,
but mesolithic successors of such food-gatherers survived only on
isolated patches of sandy soil and among the post-glacial forests on
the northern and western fringes. To food-producers, the loss lands,
naturally drained, not too heavily wooded and easy to till, offered a
domain where they could practise the simplest conceivable sort of
farming. With unstinted water supplies and seemingly boundless
territories the peasant was free to shift his hut and break fresh ground
as soon as his former fields showed signs of exhaustion. And in fact we
find prevailing throughout Central Europe a system of nomadic culti-
vation that does look really primitive—such as the earliest food-
producers, undisciplined by environmental limitations, might be
expected to invent.
The cultures1 based upon this economy exhibit considerable uni-
formity throughout the loss lands. Though the temporary nature of
the settlements excludes tell formation and the stratigraphical chron-
ology derived therefrom, the cultural sequence is well established.
Throughout the area three main periods can be recognized before the
Early Bronze Age, which coincides with period IV. In period I we can
distinguish three main groups: the Koros culture, already described
under Starcevo in Chapter VI, the Biikk culture in North-Eastern
Hungary and Slovakia, and the Danubian I extending from Western
Hungary to the northern confines of the loss.
Danubian I Culture
The loss lands west and north of the Danube were first occupied by a
neolithic population whose whole culture down to the finest details
For points not otherwise documented see Childe, Danube.
105
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
remains identical from the Drave to the Baltic and from the Dniester
to the Meuse.1 This is the best known culture in Central Europe and
perhaps the most classically neolithic in the ancient world. Hence the
term Danubian I may be legitimately applied to it in preference to the
clumsy and inaccurate terms “linear pottery" or “spiral-maeander”
culture.
The Danubian I economy was based on the cultivation of barley,
one-corn, and perhaps also emmer1 2 wheats, beans, peas, lentils, and
flax, in small plots tilled with stone hoes. Only small herds of stock
were kept; bones of sheep, Bezoar goats, oxen, and pigs turn up in settle-
ments, but animal dung was never incorporated in hut walls, as is
usual where the farmyards are well stocked. To hunting the Danubians
made no resort. Danubian I settlement sites are dotted very densely
all over the loss lands, but none shows evidence of prolonged occupa-
tion. That is a result of the Danubians’ crude agricultural technique,
one still illustrated by some hoe-cultivators in Africa to-day. They
cultivated a plot till it would bear no more and then another, and so on
until they had used up all the land round the hamlet; thereupon they
shifted bag and baggage to a new site on fresh virgin soil.
Yet these shifting cultivators lived in commodious and substantial
rectangular houses3 from io to 40 m. in length and 6 to 7*5 m. wide;
five rows of posts supported a gabled roof and walls of wattle and daub
or split saplings (Fig. 56). Four hearths in a row were identified on
the floor of a house, 33*5 m. long, at Postoloprty in Bohemia,4 but at
other sites remains of fireplaces or ovens are curiously missing. Outside
the long houses irregular pits, once termed pit-dwellings, had been
dug to get clay and subsequently used as rubbish-pits, silos, pig-sties,
or working-places. Intersections of house plans at many sites prove
intermittent return to settlements that, nevertheless, did not grow
into stratified tells. On the assumption that all contemporary houses
were exactly parallel, Sangmeister infers5 that Koln-Lindental,® the
best explored Danubian village, had been occupied seven times and
at its largest comprised twenty-one households. But of course the
1 For the distribution in Hungary, BRGK., XXIV-XXV, 30-2; AE.t XLIV, 30 ft.;
in Poland and East Germany, Przeg A., VIII (1949), 315-17; for the rest of Germany,
Buttler, Donau; for Bohemia, Stocky, Boh. Prdh.; for Belgium, Marien, Oud-Belgie,
13-47; for Austria, Pittioni, Osterreich, 125-40.
2 Emmer is reported only from the Rhineland and Belgium, bread wheat from
Poland alone; both might have been borrowed from other populations. Cf. BRGK.,
XX (1930), 30.
3 BRGK., XXXIII (1943-50). 66-82; AR., II (1950), 208; VII (1955), 5-10.
* PA., XLV (1954). 81-5.
8 BRGK., XXXIII, 90-109.
* Buttler and Habery, Das bandkeramische Dorf Koln-Lindenthal (Romisch-Germani-
sche Forschungen 11) (Berlin, 1936).
I06
DANUBIAN CIVILIZATION
“household” must have been more like a clan than a pairing family.
In its latest phase Koln-Lindental was surrounded with a trench and
palisade. Sangmeister suggests that each occupation might last ten
« • H
§
9
*
Fig. 56. Small Danubian I house from Saxony; the walls marked by a double row of
posts, After Sangmeister.
years and postulates abandonment for regeneration of scrub for fifty
years.
The rest of the Danubians’ equipment was equally home-made.
I V* I
Fig. 57. "Shoe-last celts.” After Seger (J).
Shoe-last celts of stone (Fig. 57) served, if mounted on knee-shafts, as
hoe-blades and adzes, or, if perforated, as axes and hammers. Knives,
sickles, and scrapers were made on flint blades. No whorls nor loom-
107
-
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
weights attest a textile industry; the flax found at Koln-Lindental
may have been grown for oil. At Statenice in Bohemia,1 a bone imple-
ment like the spatulae of the Koros was found.
Two sorts of pots (Fig. 58) were manufactured—hemispherical bowls
and globular bottles (some flattened for carrying on the back)—pro-
vided with 3, 6, or 9 lugs and clearly derived from gourd models. The
resemblance is often enhanced by zig-zag incised lines reproducing the
slings in which gourds are carried. But instead of skeuomorphic patterns
the peasants often incised on their vases the continuous spiral and
mseander designs that are regarded as distinctively Danubian. Some
designs, perhaps late, suggest human figures, double-axes, and other
objects. And some coarse vases were just rusticated as on the Koros.
Lugs may be modelled to resemble animals' heads as on the Vardar
and the Morava, while .the incised double-axe patterns may be inspired
from Crete or North Syria,1 2 but probably belong to Danubian II.
In principle this economy was essentially self-sufficing. But in
practice materials had to be carefully selected and often transported
over long distances. The green schist, used for adzes at Koln-Lindental,
must have been brought 60 or 70 miles from the Hunsriick or the
Taunus; Niedermendig lava from near Mayen was used for querns
in Belgium.3 Such partiality for selected materials, without destroying
self-sufficiency, encouraged intercourse between distinct communities.
In fact, a few vases, made from local clays in the Main valley, were
transported to Koln-Lindental, 50 miles away. Moreover, in Moravia,
Bohemia, Thuringia, and even the Rhine valley ornaments made from
1 Stocky, Boh. Pr6h., 62.
2 IPEK., XI (1936-37), 16 f.; PA., XL (1934-35). 3-
108
3 Buttler, Donau., 32.
DANUBIAN CIVILIZATION
the Mediterranean Sfiondylus shell were worn as in Thessaly and on
the Middle Danube; they must have been handed on by some sort of
inter-tribal exchange from the iEgean or the Adriatic! So too African
ivory reached Flamborn near Worms.1 The interchange of goods, thus
disclosed, developed into something like regular trade. Particularly on
the borders of the Danubian province in Brandenburg, Holstein, and
West Poland, hoards2 of shoe-last adzes turn up. Like the later hoards
of bronzes, these must be the stocks of specialized travelling merchants.
Individuals must already have been at least supplementing their
livelihood by satisfying the Danubians’ prejudices in favour of selected
materials and extending their activities to other still mesolithic tribes.
Such were surely the forerunners of the bronze-merchants described
on p. 128. And workshop debris in villages may indicate even industrial
specialization within a community.
The Danubians were a peaceful folk. The only weapons found in
their settlements are disc-shaped mace-heads, such as had been used
by the predynastic Egyptians, and occasional flint arrow-heads. They
were democratic and perhaps even communistic; there are no hints of
chiefs concentrating the communities’ wealth. Nor did deities fulfil
that function. As expressions of ideology clay figurines or schematic
representations of the human form are rare, confined to peripheral
areas, and probably late enough to be attributed to the south-eastern
influence that is conspicuous in Danubian II. Nothing like the ritual
paraphernalia, distinctive of South-West Asian and Balkan cultures,
has survived. Nor is an elaborate ancestor cult illustrated by many
ceremonial burials.3 Cemeteries are practically confined to the Rhine
valley. There the dead were generally interred in the contracted posi-
tion, more rarely cremated. The few skulls examined are all dolicho-
cranial and in a general way Mediterranean. One from an Alsatian
cemetery4 had been trephined.
The culture just described had reached Germany by 4000 b.c.5 and
lasted a long time; on Sangmeister’s estimate the seven settlements at
Koln-Lindental occupy between them 430 years. It can hardly have
appeared simultaneously at all points within the vast area eventually
colonized. But save in ceramic decoration, no development can be
recognized. In the Rhineland and Belgium, styles in which the spirals
and maeanders have disintegrated and simple lines are combined with
punctuations, comb-imprints, and cord-impressions have been shown
stratigraphicallv to be late. So too the “music note” style in which
1 Buttler, Donau., 36; Marburger Studien, I, 27-9.
2 JST., XXIII (1935), 73; Bl.f. d. Vorg., VII, 51; Buttler, Donau., 21.
2 Listed in AR., VIII, 697 ff. * Germania, XXVI (1942), 177-81.
5 Radio-carbon date, Schachermeyr, Die alt. Kulturen Griechenlands, 98.
IO9
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
lines are supplemented by pits, like breves, is often regarded as late,
but Spudsky1 has challenged this assumption. The densest concentra-
tion of sites with simple linear decoration still seems to lie on the
Upper Elbe and the Upper Rhine, but these just happen to be the best
explored parts of the loss lands. Only since 1950 has Danubian I
pottery—of the music-note style—been identified on the Dniestr and
the Sereth,1 2 but that is no proof that these outposts were really planted
in the last areas to be colonized!
But it is significant that the main concentrations do lie north of the
Bakony and the Carpathians, i.e. north of the ecological limit beyond
which gourds will not harden. If First Danubian pots be really substi-
tutes for gourd vessels, they may have been made by preceramic
farmers, spreading from the southern cradle of cereals, when they had
reached the areas where their traditional receptacles were no longer
available. Such immigrants, bringing the materials and technique
of farming, would then have reached the Danube basin before the
emergence there of the Starcevo culture. Alternatively, Danubian I
might be a secondary neolithic culture, created by autochthonous
hunter-fishers who would have learned farming and pot-making from
the Starcevo immigrants. As there are at present no evidence for a
mesolithic population on the Danubian loss lands and mesolithic sur-
vivals appear only late in Danubian industry,3 the former hypothesis
is the more plausible. The Danubian penchant for Spondylus shells is a
positive argument for a southern origin, but the bone spatula from
Statenice is strong evidence for some sort of connection with Starcevo.
The Bukk: Culture
In Eastern Slovakia and North-East Hungary the Bukk culture4 may
be regarded as a parallel to Danubian I in the latter part of period I,
though it is more nearly contemporary with Vinca I than with Starcevo.
In the Bukk economy, in contrast to the First Danubian, hunting and
fishing (with hook-and-line as well as with nets) were as important as
farming. No houses have been identified, but caves were used for
habitations—according to Hillebrandt5 mainly as winter shelters.
Hollow-bored stone axes and perforated antler mattocks were used as
well as the usual Danubian adzes. The Bukkians controlled the obsidian
1 PA., XLV. (1954). 81 ff.
2 SA., XX, 100; KSU., IV (1955), 142-5 (Nezviska, stratified below Tripolye Bi);
St. s. gerc., II (1951), 54*
8 Anthropozdikum, III (Praha, 1953), 207-222.
4 Tompa, Arch. Hung., V-VI (1929), 9-38; BRGK., XXIV-XXV, 32-9; Stov. Dej., 58.
5 AE., XLIV (1930), 301; cf«, AE. (1943), 22.
IIO
DANUBIAN CIVILIZATION
deposits of the Hegyalya near Tokaj and made from the volcanic glass
knives and scrapers, but no bifacially worked arrow-heads.
The pottery which defines the culture is of high quality, usually
grey. The commonest form is a hemispherical bowl, like the First
Danubian, and decorated, like the latter, with spirals and mseanders
in an all-over style but enriched with fine embroideries. Besides such
Danubian forms, bowls with tubular spouts and fruit stands were
made. Besides grey ware, a kiln-fired buff fabric was manufactured
and decorated with thin lines of warm black paint forming patterns
in the Bfikk style. In both fabrics the designs include human
figures,1 and some fruitstands have human legs as at Thermi. Otherwise
figurines are missing as in Danubian I.
The inclusion of the Bfikk culture in period I may be justified by
a grave at Nagyteteny (Pest) furnished with early Bfikk and late
Danubian I vases and by observations at sites where Bfikk pottery
lay in the same stratum as Danubian I or below that yielding Tisza
sherds of period II.2 But elsewhere Bfikk and Tisza remains are con-
temporary3 and the culture must largely belong to period II. The ritual
anthropomorphic vases and clay copies of cylinder seals4 attributed
to the Bfikkian may be due to Vinca I-Tisza influence. The technique
of painting could, however, be derived from Starcevo, though fruit-
stands are normally Danubian II.
PERIOD II
The Tisza Culture
On the loss lands east of the Tisza, occupied in period I by the Koros
and Vinca or Bfikk cultures, the Tisza culture of period II had developed
a rural economy better suited to regular agriculture and directed par-
ticularly to exploiting the fish abounding in the rivers and the game
haunting their banks. The settlements do not form tells, but the houses
were superior to those of the Koros folk. At the village of Kokeny-
domb,5 the dwellings—rectangular houses measuring up to 7-2 m. by
3-4 m., entered through the long side and decorated with painted clay
models of bulls’ heads—were strung out in a single row along the river
bank. The fisherman now employed harpoons of antler (Fig. 47) (as at
Vin£a) and double or triple rings of bone in addition to nets.6 Stock-
1 Arch. Hung., V-VI, pis. XVIII, 5, XXIV, 13.
2 AR., VIII, 637; AE., XLIX, 86 and 70.
3 Folya Arch., Ill (1941), 1-27; VII (1955), 42-4.
* Ibid., pi. V, 1-3.
6 Banner, MTK., 31-8; Dolg., VI (1930), 50-150; AE. (1943), 22.
3 Dolg., VI, pis. Ill, VI; BRGK., XXIV-XXV, 43.
Ill
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
breeding and agriculture still provided the basis of life. Grain was
stored in large clay jars or rectangular vessels, 70 cm. by 50 cm. by
65 cm. in volume and exactly like the wooden bins used locally to-day.1
The general economy remained neolithic. The materials for axes
were drawn from the Banat, Transylvania, and Northern Hungary,
but obsidian was no longer imported. Shells were still imported from
southern seas and typical vases were exported to Vinca and Silesia
(p. 91), but clay “stamp seals” were no longer used.
Pots, including cylindrical jars and large oval bowls, suitable for
cooking fish in, may be provided with indented lugs like the Early
Macednic, or short, tubular spouts, sometimes fitted with strainers.
They are decorated with coarse incisions in a thick slip, sometimes
supplemented by crusting with red or yellow colours after firing. The
designs are grouped in vertical panels in contrast to the Danubian
all-over style and are often derived from basketry.2 The motives include
concentric circles and maeanders, conventionalized faces and hut
roofs.
Clay figurines were no longer manufactured, but a cognate ideology
may be implied by large vases in human form,3 as at Vinca, Vidra, and
Tsani. Clay rattles in animal form may have been used in ritual. The
dead were ceremonially buried flexed in small cemeteries. Shell or
marble buttons with shanks were worn as brow-ornaments.
In the Tisza culture elements from Biikk and Vinca have perhaps
been blended. The rural economy could be derived from that of Vinca,
although less sedentary. The ideology expressed in anthropomorphic
vases and metopic composition, could likewise be derived from the
south-east. Now Schachermeyr4 has enumerated thirty-five motives,
some of them significantly improbable, common to Tisza and Dimini
ceramic decoration, and a Late Neolithic vase from Olynthus5 might
pass for an actual Tisza product. If the Dimini culture must be brought
from north of the Balkans into Greece, the Tisza culture has the best
claim to its parentage. But then the relative ages of the Tisza and
VinCa cultures in terms of the .ZEgean sequence would need revision.
The Lengyel Cultures
On the loss lands, colonized in period I by First Danubian peasants,
the remarkable cultural uniformity thus created dissolved in period II
1 AE., XLV (1931). 253.
2 Csalog, FA., III-IV (1941), x VII (1955), 37-41.
3 FA„ VII, 27-36; Germania, XXIII (1939), 145 ff.; Dalg., XIX, 130.
* MAGW., LXXXIII (1953-54), 21-34.
6 Mylonas, Excavations at Olynthos (Johns Hopkins University, Studies in Archceology,
6) (1929), fig. 59.
112
DANUBIAN CIVILIZATION
to give place to a multiplicity of distinct regional cultures as a result
of extraneous influences as well as mere divergent development. From
the Drave to the Upper Danube, in Austria, the Upper Elbe in
Bohemia, and the Upper Vistula,1 the period witnessed the spread of
the South-West Asian-Balkan ideology reflected in female figurines,
model houses, clay stamps, and a taste for coloured vases, and of a
rural economy in which cultivation was better balanced by stock-
breeding though it did not yet allow settlement in one spot long enough
for tell formation. The result was not a single culture even in this
Hmited region, but several related cultural facies. As none exhibits a
well-defined spatial distribution, all may still be grouped together and
designated by the name given to the first one recognized, the Lengyel
culture.1 2
Some settlements at least were fortified. At Hluboke Masovky in
Southern Moravia an area of some 15 acres (60,000 sq. m.) was enclosed
by a flat-bottomed fosse supplemented by a stockade, the gate being
flanked by stout projecting walls as at Troy.3 So near Zlota on the
Vistula4 two adjacent settlements, possibly of a later stage, were
surrounded by entrenchments. Small rectangular houses, probably
divided into two rooms that are best known outside the Lengyel
province at Ariusd in Transylvania and in Rossen and Michelsberg
settlements round the Alps, replaced the earlier long communal houses.
From within our area we have only clay models.
Commerce, as in Danubian I, is most clearly attested by the importa-
tion from the south of Spondylus and Tridacna shells. North Hun-
garian obsidian was distributed all over the Middle Danube basin and
northward to Moravia, Western Galicia, Silesia, and Bohemia, but in
the northern districts it is found only in the earliest settlements, as
if stocks had been brought by the colonists but not subsequently
replenished by trade. Cubical blocks of clay, perforated at the corners,
in which one, or exceptionally two, cups have been hollowed out5
(Fig. 59) have been claimed as copies of Early Minoan block vases
of stone. Clay imitations of stamp seals are attributed to the later
phase of the period in Moravia, and by that time copper trinkets began
to be distributed in Moravia and Silesia (Fig. 60).
1 Buttler, Donau., 38-43; Arch. Hung., XXIII (1939); Slovensko Dejiny, 58-61;
Ohzor, VIII {1929), 1-53; XIV (1950), 163-72; Przeg.A., VIII (1949), 318-21; B6hm,
Kronika, 136-49; Pittioni, Osterreich, 143-67.
2 Tompa’s extension to this of the name "Tisza” (BRGK., XXIV-XXV, 70) has
cansed confusion with the quite different assemblage just described; cf., Milojfiid,
Chron., 8o, and Csalog, FA., VII, 24-6.
3 AR., II (195°). 52-6; HI* 136-9.
4 WA., XIX (1953), 7-53*
6 Schranil, Bdhmen, 50; cf. p. 19 here.
H 113
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Besides shoe-last adzes, triangular greenstone axes (Fig. 60),
hollow-bored axe-hammers and antler axes were employed. A few
spheroid mace-heads and flint arrow-heads and, in Bohemia, stone
Fig. 59. Clay block vase, Streli£e I, Moravia (§).
arrow-straighteners,1 may point to warlike behaviour. Whorls and
loom-weights attest a textile industry.
Characteristic pot forms are hollow-pedestalled bowls (Fig. 61, 1),
ladles with socketed handles (Fig. 61, 2), biconical jars (Fig. 61, 3),
and variants on the older bottles. Bowls are flat-bottomed and often
Fig. 60. Copper trinkets (£), and triangular axe (f), Jordanova. After Seger.
carinated, but inturned rims do not occur till the end of the period.
Handles remain unknown. The most characteristic and nearly universal
ware is black-polished, as in the Vinca and Larisa cultures. It may
be decorated with crusted patterns in red, white, and yellow colours
applied after firing, that may be supplemented by incised lines or low
round bosses (Fig. 61, 3, 4). Buff and red wares also occur, and in
Moravia2 characterize a second phase of the culture. There the red
1 PA., XXXIX (1933), 50-3. 2 Vildomec in Obzor, VIII, 1-43.
114
-
DANUBIAN CIVILIZATION
ware may be burnished and ornamented with designs in white paint
or covered with a white slip on which the design is painted in red, as in
Middle Neolithic Thessalian or Tripolye B wares. In the latest Moravian
phase, coloured decoration was abandoned altogether. While crusted
spirals were everywhere employed and in Hungary composed in the
old Danubian style (Fig. 61, i), basketry patterns, breaking up the
surface into panels as in the Tisza style, were even more popular.
Fig. 6i. Danubian II pottery, Lengyel. i, 3, 4 (£); 2 (|).
A South-West Asian ideology found expression in female figurines,
models of animals and doves, and zoomorphic vases. But in Hungary
regular cemeteries of well-furnished graves containing flexed skeletons
attest already ancestor tendence; at Zengovarkony near Pecs, seventy-
eight graves (including six double burials of male and female—? sati)
divided between eleven groups (? lineages) had been uncovered by
1939.1 Farther north Danubian II burials are rare; at one Moravian
site twelve skeletons were found buried together in a shaft grave,2 at
others cremations, or evidence for cannibalism3, are reported.
The Lengyel culture could most readily be explained as a result of
the further extension of the south-eastern influence that induced the
Vinca culture on the Danube. But if such influence be denied, Lengyel
might claim a parental relation to Vinca and so to Larisa!
Comparisons with the Aegean and Anatolia offer ambiguous possi-
bilities for dating period II. The resemblances of crusted ware to that
1 Arch. Hung., XXIII (1939). 2 Obzor, XIV (1950), 335.
8 AR., VIII, 1956, 773-4.
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
of phase C in Thessaly, of the indented lugs on the Tisza to Early
Macedonian, and of clay stamps and block vases to Early Minoan
forms, suggest a date round about 2500 b.c. for the period’s beginning.
On the other hand, pedestalled bowls, very much of Danubian II form,
may go back to the fourth millennium in the chalcolithic of Alisar, at
Kum Tepe and in “neolithic” Crete; the red on white painted sherds
from Moravia recall equally ancient Thessalian fabrics. On this evi-
dence 3000-2600 would seem just as plausible as 2500-2200 as the
historical dates of period II.
Danubian I Survivals in the North
The expansion of Danubian II farmers, like that of their precursors
in Danubian I, was a slow process. Indeed, it had begun while Danubian
I folk were still spreading down the Oder, the Elbe, and the Rhine
valleys. Since period II begins with the emergence of the Danubian II
and Tisza cultures in the Middle Danube basin, we may say that
Danubian I cultures survived in the north into period II. In fact they
outlasted even that period in remote places. Moreover, the Danubian I
expansion did not take place in vacuo. In the hill countries between the
Danube and the Rhine and in Thuringia, along the rivers of the North
European plain and on the sand-dunes of Silesia and Poland, still
lived scattered groups of Tardenoisian, Maglemosian, and Swiderian
food-gatherers. Some of these were absorbed into Danubian com-
munities or copied the Danubians’ way of life. Thus arose various
cultural groups,1 essentially Danubian in economy and equipment,
but diverging from the norm in details, particularly in ceramic art.
Hence the groups are defined by their pottery. And most flourished
in period III too.
(1) Stroke-ornamented ware (Stichbandkeramik) (Fig. 62, 1) distin-
guishes a group which arose probably in Bohemia and spread thence
back into Moravia, and into Bavaria, Central Germany, and Western
Poland in the wake of the Danubian I groups, and under pressure from
the same economic forces. Economically it differs from Danubian I
only in a tendency to supplement farming by hunting, for which
transverse arrow-heads2 of Tardenoisian ancestry were employed.
The arrow-shafts were straightened on grooved stones, as in the
Danubian II culture and farther east.3 The pots were still round-
bottomed, but were decorated exclusively with skeuomorphic zig-zag
patterns composed of ribbons executed by a series of distinct jabs
1 Buttler, Donau., 29, 45; Anthropozoikum, III, (1953), 207; IV, 411.
2 E.g. at Lobec, Bohemia, AR., Ill, 130. 3 PA., XXXIX (1933), 50-3.
Il6
DANUBIAN CIVILIZATION
instead of continuous lines. In Bohemia, Bavaria, and Central Germany
the dead were cremated.1 In Moravia and Poland stroke-ornamented
ware occurs in late Danubian II settlements, and at Gleinitz in Silesia
an imported Tisza vase was found with stroke-ornamented ware,2
Fig. 62. Stroke-ornamented vases, Bohemia (•$, £); Rossen vases. Central
Germany (f5).
while at Vochov near Plzen a figurine of Danubian II type turned up
in a similar context.3 Hence the culture thus defined at least lasts into
period II.
(2) The Rossen group arose in Western Bohemia and Saxo-Thuringia
through the adoption by Forest-folk of a fundamentally Danubian
equipment and economy.4 They spread down the Main and then up the
Rhine to Switzerland, and into France through the Belfort gap.5
Though the Danubian agricultural economy had been taken over
1 AR., VIII {1956), 710-18.
2 Altschles., Ill (1931), 153,' Buttler, Donau., 60.
3 Obzor, XIV (1950). 330.
4 The theory of its derivation from “the North-West German Megalith Culture”, once
dominant in Germany, was refuted by Stocky, Boh, Prdh., 161, and more conclusively
by Engel, Mannus, XXXII (1940), 57-81.
5 See Buttler, Donau., 40 fi., and Kimmig, Bad. Fb. (1948-50), 47-62.
117
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
entire, hunting retained much of the importance that it had enjoyed
in the ancestral Forest culture. The increased competition for land,
due to the rise of this and other new groups of cultivators, may by
now have led to war. The Rossen people were the first in the Rhine
valley to fortify their settlements, while weapons—transverse and
hollow-based arrow-heads, disc-shaped mace-heads and the old per-
forated antler-axes of the Forest-folk—were relatively common. The
Rossen folk lived in rectangular houses with vertical walls and gabled
roofs supported by three rows of earth-fast posts,1 and they also
erected rectangular granaries. But their settlements were no more
permanent than those of the preceding groups. Their pots are hemi-
spherical or globular in profile, but are often provided with stand-rings
and are decorated with rectilinear patterns imitating basketry and
executed in stab-and-drag technique (Fig. 62, 2). Exceptional forms
are quadrilobate dishes with analogues in the Balkans and North Italy
and a small clay barrel with closed ends and an opening in the side,
a form well-represented in Troy I.1 2
As ornaments the Rossen folk wore marble bracelets, disc-beads
of shell, bored tusks and deers’ teeth and marble buttons identical
with those from Lengyel. The dead were buried contracted in ceme-
teries. One skull from Alsace had been trepanned.3
The buttons of Danubian II type from the graves at Rossen in
Central Germany prove that the group even there belongs to period II,
while on the Isar, in Alsace, and in the Wetterau, Rossen house-
foundations have disturbed the ruins of those left by later Danubian I
peasants. On the other hand, on the Goldberg, in Wurttemburg, the
Rossen village was succeeded by a settlement of the Western Michels-
berg culture that generally belongs to period III. Hence Rossen
flourished in period II.4
The Danubian I peasants themselves persisted, wandering about
during period II and in the Rhine basin even into period III, preserving
their culture intact, but not unaffected by the example of their neigh-
bours and rivals. Plastic suggestions of a human face from Koln-
Lindental, in the manner of Trojan face-urns, may belong to this
phase.5 Even in Central Germany the later Danubian I pottery is
associated with the stroke-ornamented ware of period II. Such late
Danubian I people fortified Koln-Lindental. Pressure on the land was
1 Germania, XX (1936), 229-34; see Fig- 137 here.
* Buttler, Donau., 47, pis. 10, 12; 12, 1; cf. Blegen, Troy, I, form D 28. The R8ssen
and Troadic “barrels" could both be derived from geomorphic vases of the Lengyel
culture like Stocky Boh. Preh., pi. LIX, n, or WPZ., XXVIII (1941), 39-
3 Germania, XXVI (1942), 177-81.
1 Buttler, Donau., 62. 6 Buttler, Donau., 31.
118
DANUBIAN CIVILIZATION
becoming serious. In addition to the natural increase of the population
and the competitive groups resulting from the conversion of food-
gatherers into cultivators, new groups were spreading from the south-
east and from the west.
PERIOD III
By period III the natural growth of peasant populations, the con-
version to food-production of food-gathering communities, and immi-
grations of fresh tribes from beyond the I5ss lands had produced a
pressure upon the soil that entailed adjustments in everyday life.
Inferior lands above the loss were exploited; hunting and pastoralism
became more important economically, and in fact in the temperate
zone they would be more productive than hoe-agriculture. Settlements
were often planted on hilltops as well as in the valleys, and were fre-
quently fortified.1 Competition for land assumed a bellicose character,
and weapons such as battle-axes became specialized for warfare. The
consequent preponderance of the male members in the communities
may account for the general disappearance of female figurines. Part
of the new surplus population may have sought an outlet in industry
and trade; imported substances such as Baltic amber, Galician flint
and copper begin to be distributed more regularly than heretofore.
Warriors would appreciate more readily than cultivators the superiority
of metal, and chiefs may already have been concentrating surplus
wealth to make the demand for metal effective. Its satisfaction was
none the less dependent on the diffusion of the requisite technical
knowledge, whether by immigrant prospectors or captives, from the
south-east.
A general picture of the period in the loss lands would present a
bewildering variety of small conflicting groups. Some of these are
admittedly intruders and can be better described elsewhere. From the
West, Michelsberg folk (p. 291) spread as far as Upper Austria, Bohemia,
and Central Germany, while Beaker-folk (p. 223) reached the Danube
near Buda-Pest and spread across Germany and Czechoslovakia as far
as the Vistula. From the Pontic-North European plain warriors using
battle-axes and cord-ornamented pottery spread as far as Bavaria,
Bohemia, and Moravia, and even into the Middle Danube basin. In
other groups there is an injection of types (collared flasks, globular
amphorae, and so on) which we shall find in Chapter X to be genuinely
Northern. But these hardly suffice to demonstrate a large-scale “Nordic"
invasion of the Danubian province. We shall describe here only certain
1 E.g. Homolka in Bohemia, Proc. Am. Phil. Soc., LXXI (1932), 357-92.
Iig
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
cultures which remain fundamentally Danubian even though they be
found on fortified hilltops or in caves.
Bodrogkeresztur designates the culture into which the Lengyel
culture developed through a Tiszapolg&r stage in North-East Hungary
and beyond the Tisza, whence it spread north to Silesia.1 It is known
almost exclusively from cemeteries larger than those of previous
periods. That at the patent station comprised at least fifty graves, at
Jaszlad&ny forty, at Pusztaistvanhaza thirty-two,2 while at Tiszapolgar-
Basatanya 158 graves have been excavated out of an estimated total
of 225.3 The size of the cemeteries may be due as much to prolonged
occupation of the same village as to density of population. At Basatanya,
Kutzian could distinguish two consecutive phases, both transitional,
between Lengyel and mature Bodrogkeresztur. Double graves, in
which one body had been buried with rich furniture, the other with
none, suggest a division of society into classes.
Trade now brought to the Hungarian plain flint from Galicia, gold
and copper from Transylvania. In the cemeteries copper is represented
by several quadrangular awls, three or four rhomboid knife-daggers
without midribs or rivet holes, a flat adze, five axe-adzes and at least
one battle-axe.4 Several similar battle-axes (Fig. 63) have been found
1 Nbl.f. d. V., XV (1939). 114-17.
2 Arch. Hung., IV; AE., XLI (1927), 50-7; BRGKXXIV-XXV, 53.
3 Report by Kutzian to the "Conference Arch^ologique de l’Acad&nie hongroise des
Sciences’’ (Buda-Pest, 1955); cf. AE. (1946-48), 42-62.
* PZ., XXII, in; AE. (1944-45), 1 ff.
120
DANUBIAN CIVILIZATION
stray and disclose the translation into metal of antler axes that in
turn became the model for stone weapons (p. 159). Adzes and axe-
adzes are very common stray and sometimes occur in hoards.1 Evi-
dently copper was being systematically extracted in the Carpathian
basin. Roska1 2 long ago argued that axe-adzes served as miners’ tools.
Driehaus3 has now shown that the simplest types, like Fig. 64, 1 and
5, are virtually confined to metalliferous Transylvania while the classic
type of Fig. 64, 6, radiates thence to the Balkans, Bavaria, Silesia,
and the Ukraine. They must have been traded; and the hoards, though
rare, suggest an incipient organization on the fines established by
period IV. The metal employed was mainly native copper, of which
there must once have been really large deposits. It was undoubtedly
melted, but none of the products shows unambiguous evidence of
having been shaped by casting in a mould,4 but all traces would be
removed by the necessary hammering.
1 Dolg., xix (1943). 135-9*
2 Dacia, III-IV, 352-55; cf. Kozlemenyeh, Cluj, II (1942), 15 ft,
3 Archceologia Geographica, III (1952), 1-5.
4 Inst. Arch. AR., VII (1951), 44-5.
121
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Copper did not oust stone tools. Graves contain long knives on flint
blades, polished stone adzes, hollow-bored celts and, in a late phase,
triangular flint or obsidian arrow-heads and a mace embellished with
four projecting knobs (Fig. 65).
Technically Bodrogkeresztur pottery carries on the
late Lengye] tradition and in the Tiszapolgar phase
at least vessels on high hollow pedestals—though
more often bowls as in Tripolye than fruitstands—were
still popular. But bowls’ rims are now inverted, never
expanding. Distinctive of mature Bodrogkeresztur are
the so-called milk-jugs (Fig. 66, 2.)1 Handled tankards
and pyxides, very like Early iEgean ones, occur spo-
radically. Apart from warts and dimples, ornament
is not common. Some vases, however, are decorated
with cross-hatched ribbons forming mseander patterns
even more like those of Dimini than the cognate Tisza designs. Late
vases decorated with plastic ribs foreshadow the Bronze Age usage.
Fig. 65.
Knobbed mace-
head from Maros
Decse (£).
Fig. 66. Bodrogkeresztur pyxis and milk-jug.®After Tompa (J).
Girdles of disc-beads of shell together with stray copper or gold
trinkets were worn as ornaments.
Obviously the Bodrogkeresztur population was descended from the
1 What looks like a typical milk-jug was found at Maltepe near Sivas in northern
Anatolia, Belleten, XI (1937), 659 ff.
122
DANUBIAN CIVILIZATION
Lengyel group. But had mining and metallurgy been initiated by
prospectors from the Aegean or the Caucasus? No doubt axe-adzes of
different shapes were used by Early Aegean peoples and were actually
manufactured—by casting in clay moulds—at Tepe Hissar in Northern
Iran. Prospectors should have introduced the techniques of casting
and smelting, but the Transylvanian products seem made of native
copper. The forms could be regarded as translations into this "superior
stone” of Danubian II adzes, hammer-axes and battle-axes of ordinary
stone or antler. Native copper-working could perfectly well have
originated in such a metalliferous region. Indeed, the iEgean axe-adzes
could theoretically be derived from Transylvania while Heine-Geldem1
has invoked axe-adzes like Fig. So, to mark the Aryans' route to
India. In other words the iEgean and Asiatic parallels to Bodiog-
keresztur metal types might just as well give termini ante, as
termini post, quos. Still, independent invention of casting is hard to
admit.
The Jordanova culture of Bohemia2 and Silesia3 can be regarded as
a parallel local development of the Lengyel tradition. It too is best
known from graves—fifty-seven from the eponymous site (once called
Jordansmuhl) in Silesia and thirty-eight at Brzesd Kujawski on the
middle Vistula.4 Metal was here used solely for ornaments—spectacle
spirals (Fig. 60, i), cylindrical ribbon armlets, and small discs bearing
embossed patterns. Antler axes, deposited in men’s graves at BrzeSd
Kujawski, illustrate the weapons, copper translations of which were
current south of the Carpathians. The distinctive pot-forms are mugs
with one or two band handles (Fig. 94) and bowls, again with inverted
rims. Bracelets were made of Spondylus shell or of engraved bone,
while disc beads of shell were strung together as girdles or necklaces.
As in the Bodrogkeresztur culture, female figurines are no more in
evidence. The old ideology has been changed. That may reflect a change
from a matrilineal to a patrilineal organization of society.
The copper spectacle spirals might have been inspired by Early
IEgean gold ones like those of Fig. 22. If so, they would constitute a
substantial argument for Oriental participation in the foundation of
the Danubian III copper industry. Otherwise there are no more indi-
cations of influence from that quarter in Jordanova than in Bodrog-
keresztur. Such can, however, be detected in the largely contemporary
Baden culture.
1 /. Indian Oriental Soc., IV (1936), 1-30.
2 Obzor, XIV (1950), 163-257.
3 Buttler, Donau., 43.
4 WA., XV (1938), 1-X05; the graves have disturbed foundations of Danubian I
long houses.
123
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DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
The Transitional Baden-Pecel Culture
West and north of the Danube between Buda-Pest and Vienna emerged
a culture complex variously designated Baden,1 Ossarn,1 2 or Pecel3
after Austrian and Hungarian sites or "channel”4 or “radially5 orna-
mented" after ceramic features. Its domain extends northward through
Moravia to the Upper Elbe and the Upper Vistula and eastward across
the Tisza and the Maros. Its regional manifestations in architecture
and burial rites as well as pottery differ so widely as to raise doubts
whether the discrepancies be due to the partial assimilation of distinct
traditions or local divergences of a single tradition. Much of the data
comes from isolated burials or rubbish pits; only Ossarn in Austria,
Vucedol on the Drave, some sites near the Maros, and two large ceme-
teries near Buda-Pest have been systematically explored on an adequate
scale.
While one-corn and emmer wheats2 were regularly cultivated (very
likely with the plough), stock-breeding combined with hunting made
major contributions to the food-supply. Ritual burials of cattle and
deer underline the importance of these activities. Experts conclude
that the cattle were bred for milk, not just for flesh.6 The bones from
Ossarn2 disclose for the first time on the Middle Danube large flocks
of sheep. The first remains of horses in the province, too, have been
reported from this and other sites. Perhaps they were already domesti-
cated.7 At least there were vehicles for horses to draw.
A model waggon, carried on four solid disc wheels,8 from the ceme-
tery of Buda-Kalasz affords the oldest evidence for such vehicles
north of the Alps, if not in Europe as a whole. But these vehicles were
not drawn by horses. At least paired oxen, buried in two rich graves
at Alsonemedi,9 must surely have drawn the hearses in which their
masters were conveyed to the grave.
On the fertile plains and in mountain valleys the farmers lived
on fortified hilltops or in caves. The best-attested house type is a
one-roomed rectangular hut with rounded corners,10 but at Vucedol,
1 Fittioni, Osterreich., 189-208.
2 Bayer, Die Eiszeit, V (Vienna, 1928), 60 ff.
3 Banner, "Die P6celer Kultur” Arch. Hung., XXXV (1956).
4 Stocky, Boh. Preh., 115 ff.; B6hm, Kronika, 134-49; cf. SlovensM Dejiny, 61-4.
5 WA.,XII (1933), 140-67.
6 AAH., I (1951). 49. 75-
7 Dolg., XV. (1939), 166; the attribution of an antler cheek-piece from a bit to the
P£cel culture is dubious.
8 Folya Arch., VI (1952), 29-35; Banner, loc. cit., 127.
8 AAH., I (1951). 38-40.
10 Measuring 4-5 by 3^4 m. at Palotabazsolc (Banner, “Peceler Kultur”, 214),
8-o by 5-5 m. at Praha-Bubenic (B6hm, Kronika, 198).
124
DANUBIAN CIVILIZATION
Schmidt1 reports apsidal houses. Circular pits (? bothroi) are common in
all settlements; at Vucedol they led into subterranean cellars excavated
in the loss. At least in Hungary the size of the cemeteries—305 graves
at Buda-Kalasz, 41 at Alsonemedi—point to large and stable villages.
But these did not grow into tells, and the huts seem more appropriate
to semi-nomad pastoralists. Their location, like the weapons from
graves, emphasizes the martial aspect of pastoral societies.
Stone was still the normal material for knives, axes and adzes,
arrow-heads, and battle-axes. But the last-named exhibit an imitation
seam as if copied from a cast metal model, and Pittioni2 assigns copper
weapons, like Fig. 63, from Austria to the Baden culture. Copper
ornaments alone have so far been found in graves; two in Lower
Austria3 were furnished with neck-rings of twisted wire with recoiled
ends, immediate precursors of the cast ingot-torques (Fig. 69, 11-12)
of period IV. Long-distance trade is positively documented by Spon-
dylus and Tridacna shells, imported from the Mediterranean.
Spools, like the Early Troadic, and whorls attest an active textile
industry. Pottery was self-coloured and generally dark-faced, occasion-
ally mottled. A universal peculiarity is presented by large ribbon
handles rising above the rims of mugs and jugs; at the top they are
often deeply flanged, as in Fig. 96, or fanned out. Subcutaneous
string-holes are not uncommon, and occasionally trumpet lugs (like Fig.
17, column 1) grow from the bowls. Bowls have inverted rims and, in
Hungary and Slovakia, are divided into two unequal compartments
and provided with conspicuous button handles. Channelled decoration
is universal, but is often combined with other techniques—punctured
ribbons, incised lattices, exceptionally crusting combined with incision
as in the Tisza culture, or even cord impressions.
Female figurines have not been recorded, but clay animal figures
and models of waggons and boats may represent a survival of the old
ideological tradition. It was quite overshadowed by funerary ritual.
A few burials of men and women together may be taken as evidences of
sati and of a patriarchal family. At Alsonemedi two centrally situated
graves containing oxen and hearses must belong to chiefs interred in
accordance with the tradition of royal burials that can be traced back
to the Early Dynastic tombs of Kish and Ur and here marking the
oldest royal funerals in Europe. The normal burial rite was interment
in a contracted or flexed position, but in Hungary a small group of
cremation graves has been recently reported. In a couple of Austrian
tombs five or eight corpses had been buried together. Round Buda-
pest graves were grouped in distinct cemeteries; at some other sites
* Vuiedol, 10-15. 2 Osterreich., 204. 2 WPZ., XXIV (1937) 15-21.
125
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
they are said to have been dug within the inhabited area. Collective
tombs containing up to twenty corpses were reported from Slovakia.1
But in western Hungary cemeteries of cremation burials in urns
constitute regular urnfields.2 At Vucedol men were laid on the right,
women on the left side.
In the Danubian sequence Baden is undoubtedly later than Lengyel.
At Kiskoros3 on the Hungarian plain a Bodrogkeresztur grave had
been dug into an abandoned Baden settlement, but east of the Tisza
the relation between the two cultures was reversed. At Fonyod Baden
graves had been disturbed by later Early Bronze Age graves of the
Kisapostag culture, while the copper neck-rings from Austria are
typologically older than the torques of period IV. So the Baden culture
is well fixed within period III; the extent of its overlap with the Bell-
beaker culture remains to be determined. Racially the Pecel population
shows a mixture of round and long heads.4
To Menghin, R. R. Schmidt and Pittioni Baden is just a "Nordic”
culture, the result of an invasion from the wooded plain of Northern
Europe. No doubt a few specifically Northern types, like collared
flasks, occur sporadically on Baden sites as at Jevisovice in Moravia.
On the other hand, peculiarities in Northern ceramic decoration have
been ascribed to Baden influence,5 and there is far more evidence for
southern than for northern influences in the fundamentally Danubian
Baden pottery. The distinctive channelled ornament is prominent in
the Vinca culture; the incised and punctured patterns can be paralleled
there and, still more precisely, in the Macedonian Late Neolithic;
trumpet lugs are Troadic; flanged handles have been met in Troy
while the Chalcolithic of Mersin6 provides an exact parallel to the
Baden variant. Similarly, subcutaneous string-holes recur in the
Rinaldone culture of Central Italy. The wire torques from the Austrian
graves can be exactly matched in "Copper Age” burials at Ahlatlibel
in Anatolia7 and so could be. claimed as concrete evidence of the south-
eastern inspiration tor the metallurgy at least of the Baden culture.
Finally, wheeled vehicles were invented in Mesopotamia about 3000 b.c.
and employed as hearses in royal funerals there by 2500. They were
surely diffused thence, though the nearest analogues—spatially and
chronologically—to the Baden model—from South Russia—are two-
wheeled carts.
1 AR., IV (1952), 244; V, 733-6.
1 Banner "P6celer Kultur”, 200-4. 3 PZ., XXII (1931), m-15.
4 Arch. Hung., XXXV, 293-309.
8 Maier in Germania, XXXIII (1955), 159-73.
a Garstang, LA A A., XXV, p. XXVIII, 22.
7 Turk Tarih Arkeologya ve Etnografya, Dergisi, II (1934), 9°-
126
DANUBIAN CIVILIZATION
The southern connections just summarized, save the last, do not
necessarily mean influences from the south. The “torque bearers’’ who
introduced better metallurgical techniques into Syria1 might conceiv-
ably have come from Central Europe, and, if so, the earlier torque
from Ahlatlibel might after all be Danubian. Italian prehistorians
would prefer to derive the Baden features in the Rinaldone culture
from the north. If the Baden analogies in the Balkans, Macedonia, and
Anatolia too could be thus interpreted, the Baden culture does exhibit
all the archaeological characters—horses, wheeled vehicles, cattle and
sheep, a dairy economy, patriarchal families, bows and arrows—
deduced by linguistic palaeontology for the ancestral Indo-Europeans;
their expansion could be beautifully documented by the connections
just mentioned! Of course, such an interpretation would demand a
literal inversion of current chronologies both relative and absolute.
Still, these are based—mainly but not entirely—on undemonstrated
postulates. With that reservation on purely archaeological evidence
the Baden culture cannot begin more than a couple of centuries before
2000 b.c. and so could only be influenced by Late Neolithic and Early
Bronze Age cultures of the iEgean.
The Early Bronze Age
During period III the growth of population was calling for a new
economy and making labour available for industry and commerce.
War was stimulating a demand for metal, and chiefs were accumulating
capital; the prejudices of immigrant warriors had to be satisfied with
trade-goods from the Baltic and Galicia. The Bell-beaker folk (pp. 222-
227.) established regular communications with the West and North
and opened up new connections with the Mediterranean across the
Brenner Pass. The rise of rich cities on the Levant coasts by 2000 b.c.,
in Crete by 1800, and in peninsular Greece by 1600 had created markets
for metals and other raw materials not too far from Central European
sources of supply and provided capital for their exploitation. Perhaps
prospectors trained in Asiatic traditions had begun working the copper
of Transylvania, Slovakia, and the Eastern Alps, and even the tin
lodes of Bohemia and Saxony. At least as soon as the lords of Mycenae
and Knossos began to demand amber, it became worthwhile to organize
the transport of the magic resin from Denmark and at the same time
the distribution of metal among the peasant societies of the Danube
basin. The appearance of the metal wares thus distributed defines
for archaeologists period IV.
1 PPS., XVII (1951), 178 ft.
12 7
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
No actual mines can be dated by direct evidence to period IV, but
there are indications that the copper lodes of the eastern Alps, demon-
strably mined during period VI, may have been exploited by surface
workings as early as period IV (p. 301). Equally early exploitation of
copper lodes near Saalfeld and of Vogtland tin has been deduced from
recent analyses.1 Moulds have been found in several settlements, but
do not necessarily belong to resident smiths.
The distribution of the industry's products was effected by a regular
class of itinerant merchant-artificers. Their routes are defined by hoards
of finished and half-finished articles—the merchant's stock in trade—
that had been buried when danger threatened and never recovered.
They show that the merchants were following ancient Danubian
traditions (p. 109) and that they dealt also in amber, gold, and presum-
ably substances such as salt that leave no trace in the archaeological
record. The amber routes are particularly well defined: the fossil resin
was brought from Jutland and Sammland to the Saale valley and
thence passed on through Bohemia and across the Brenner to Upper
Italy and the Aegean, while a little was diverted across Moravia to the
Hungarian plain and the Maros.1 * 3 A counterpart to this export trade
is certainly to be seen in segmented and cruciform beads of Egyptian
or iEgean fayence common in cemeteries round Szeged3 and in Slovakia,4
and found sporadically in Western Hungary,5 Lower Austria,6 Moravia,7
and Poland.
The activities of these merchants linked up the Central European
region round the Brenner amber route into a single commercial system
with branches to the tin-lodes of Cornwall and the gold-fields of Tran-
sylvania, but completely by-passing the Balkans. The types of metal
ware thus diffused from the beginning of the Bronze Age produce a
superficial appearance of uniformity throughout the Danubian province
which no longer includes the Save or Drave, the Danube below Buda-
pest, or the Tisza south of the Maros mouth. At the same time Asiatic
parallels to the arbitrary metal ornaments suggest the source of the
fresh chemical knowledge, the alloy of copper with tin, on which the
new economy was based.
Cast neck-rings with recoiled ends (Fig. 69, 11) were not only worn
1 Otto-Witter, Handbuch der altesten Meiallurgie in Mitieleuropa (Leipzig, 1952).
8 Only in graves 2 and 211 at Szfireg and 14 at Deszk; Dolg., XVII (1941); cf. Milojdid,
CJSPP. (Zurich, 1950), 268.
3 A]A., XLIII (1939), 17; Banner, Dolg., XVII.
4 Especially at VySapy-Opatovce near Nitra, unpublished.
5 In Kisapostag graves at Dunapentele, AAH., II (1952), 66.
8 Germania, XXI (1937), 89.
7 At Nemiice and Jiriltovice, Mus. Brno.
128
DANUBIAN CIVILIZATION
as ornaments but served also as ingots and therefore are termed “ingot-
torques”. Such torques were the insignia of members of a metal-working
clan or guild in North Syria about 2000 b.c.1 and were deposited as
symbols of abstract wealth in contemporary shrines at Byblos.1 2 Lock-
rings with flattened ends and racket pins have explicitly Sumerian
prototypes3; knot-headed pins (Fig. 67, 0), appearing in predynastic
Egypt4 recur later at Troy and in Cyprus: the basket-shaped earrings of
gold wire (Fig. 67, 4, 5) are detached members of the Trojan ornaments
4 5
Fig. 67. Pins and earrings from Unetician graves. After Schr&nil (l).
shown in Fig. 22, 1. The first bronze-smiths producing for a Central
European market seem to have been trained in Asiatic schools and to
have introduced, together with the secret of bronze, Oriental fashions
in personal adornment.5 If so, the absence of these types on the Euro-
pean coasts of the Aegean and in the Balkans requires the admission
1 Schaeffer, Ugavitica, II (1949), 49, calls these metallurgists “Torque-Bearers”.
2 Syria, VI (1925), 18.
3 Childe, NLMAE., 161-2.
4 Ibid., 53, 63.
5 MilojSid, Germania, XXXIII (1955), 405-7, points out that the "Asiatic” types do
not all appear simultaneously at the beginning of period IV, but severally during
phases Ai, A2, and B respectively.
I
T29
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
that they were introduced up the Adriatic and across the Brenner,
unless they had been introduced through Troy by metallurgists work-
ing for export only till the fall of the “second city” destroyed their
market.
The novel metal tools and weapons appearing at the same time were
neither so uniform in the Danubian province nor so clearly related to
Oriental models. The flat axe which at Thermi had been provided with
flanges by hammering (p. 38) was translated into a flanged axe, cast
in a two-piece mould (Fig. 69,1). Hence it can be inferred that Central
European bronze axes, like Danubian adzes, were mounted in knee
shafts. Chisels were even|provided with cast tubular sockets in Moravia
and Austria.1 Only in Hungary was a shaft-tube axe of Sumerian
ancestry preferred (Fig. 64, 5-6).2 Shaft-hole axes were, however, used
as weapons elsewhere in the province, while a remarkable weapon from
a Saxon hoard3 of the end of period IV seems a barbaric version of the
crescentic axe represented in the Royal Tombs of Ur and rather later
in North Syria.4
The universal weapon was the round-heeled knife-dagger (Fig. 68).
Its bone or wooden hilt was hollowed at the base like the bronze hilt of
the rather later dagger shown in Fig. 70, an old Egyptian trick never
popular in Asia nor Greece, but traceable in Central, as in Western,
Europe, on the flat-tanged daggers of the Bell-beaker folk during
period III. Halberds5 were used in Germany and Lower Austria and
occasionally even in Hungary, but not in Bohemia. The type is sup-
posedly West European, and reached the Danubian province from
Ireland or from the Iberian Peninsula.
The unity created by the metallurgical industry and commerce had
no political counterpart. It was imposed on a number of distinct
cultures called after the sites of Perjamos6 on the Maros, Toszeg, or
NagyrSv on the Tisza,7 Kisapostag west of the Danube,8 Unetice in
Bohemia, and Straubing in Bavaria, and asserting their independence
not only in peculiarities of pottery and personal ornaments but even
by divergences in burial rites and economic status. Most are presumably
1 PA., XLIV (1953), 203; Arch. Aust., VII (1950), 1-8.
2 Derived through the Caucasus, or Crete; cf. PZ., XXVII (1936), 150; Folya Arch.,
VIII, 43.
3 PZ., XXXIV (1949-50), 232-8; JMV., XXXV (1951), 65.
* Iraq, XI (1949), 118.
8 P.Z., XXV, 130-42; Arch., LXXXVI (1937), 222-5.
* Banner, Dolgozatoh, VII (1931), 1-53; XVII, 70-82; Patay, FruhbronzezeiiUche
Kulturen in Ungarn; Nestor, BRGK., XXII, 84-8; CISPP. (1950), 267-77.
7 The culture from the lowest levels in the T6szeg tell is termed Nagyr£v.; cf. Patay,
FruhbronzezeiiUche Kulturen in Ungarn (1939); Mozsolic, AAH., II (1952); Banner,
PPS., XXI, 127.
8 Mozsolic, Arch. Hung., XXVI (1942); Patay, op. tit.-, in Slovakia Kisapostag and
UnStice types occur with inhumations, AR., VI (1954), 297-300.
I30
-
DANUBIAN CIVILIZATION
descended from local groups; for everywhere the pottery is technically
in the Lengyel-Baden tradition, but everywhere, save on the Tisza,
influence from Bell-beaker folk is patent even in the pottery. But the
universally used strap-handled jugs and tankards with the body and
neck modelled separately have nothing to do with the Bell-beakers.
68 69 70
Fig. 68. Daggers from UnStician graves (£)•
Fig. 69. Hoard of Sobochleby (£)•
Fig. 70. Bronze-hilted dagger (J).
All after Schr&nil.
In the Middle Danube basin settlements were founded in period IV
on sites chosen primarily with a view to commerce where natural
routes intersect at a ford or pass mouth.1 And these settlements were
permanent townships occupied so long that their ruins form tells.
Cemeteries of contracted skeletons no less clearly attest a sedentary
life; that at Szoreg near Szeged comprised 200 graves, 103 attributed
to period IV and 54 to period V. But even these communities were
1 PZ., XXII (1931), 33-
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
more nearly self-sufficing villages than industrial cities. Bone and stone
were still used for implements and even battle-axes; metal toilet-
articles such as girdle-clasps were imitated in bone. The pots were
hand-made, but the slipped and polished vases, red, black, or mottled,
recall Anatolian and Iberic fabrics. In the basal or Nagyrev levels at
Toszeg and in the older Szoreg graves the jugs have only one loop or
strap handle. Later these give place to hour-glass tankards which
develop in period V into metallic-looking cantharoi with quatrefoil
mouths like the Middle Minoan and Hittite vases (p. 33). While the
local smiths made most of the types characteristic of the period, they
did not develop the flanged axe nor the same variety of pins as was
popular farther north. Segmented fayence beads were, however,
imported and Oriental lunula-pendants1 were imitated, as were iEgean
“sacred ivy-leaves”.2
North of the Bakony and Carpathians no tells have been recognized,
but cemeteries in Austria comprising over a hundred graves3 must
belong to permanent villages, occupied even into period V (sixteen
rectilinear houses have in fact been recognized at Postoloprty).4 All
the foregoing graves contained contracted skeletons. Only in the
Kisapostag group and the earliest graves near Szeged was cremation
the normal practice. Their cemeteries are indeed urnfields like that of
Troy VI. Of course, cremation had been practised locally by some
Baden communities and also by Bell-beaker folk in Hungary. In South
Bohemia, Poland, and Thuringia Unetician burials have been found
under barrows (p. 200)
The Unetician culture proper extends from the Austrian Danube
to Silesia and Saxony, but is most typically developed on the Upper
Elbe in Bohemia and along the Saale and Oder. Here, owing to the
proximity of the Ore Mountains and the amber trade across the
Brenner, the metal industry developed most luxuriantly. By casting
in valve-moulds, the celts were equipped with high flanges and the
knot-headed pin was translated into the distinctive “Bohemian eyelet-
pin” (Fig. 67, 2). Towards the end of period IV core casting allowed
the manufacture of socketed spear-heads and socketed chisels. More-
over, Unetician smiths could produce not only ornaments of sheet
bronze but also bell helmets if, as Hencken5 has shown grounds for
believing, the specimen found a century ago at Beitsch in Saxony was
1 Cf. e.g. Schaeffer, Stratigraphie comparee, fig. 183, 36.
2 Essays in Mgean Archeology, ed. Casson, pp. 1-4; cf. Petrie, Ancient Gaza, III,
pi. XIV, 29-33.
8 Four hundred at Hainberg-Teichtal (MAGW., LX (1930), 65 ff.); 255 at Gemein-
lebam (Szombathy) Flachgraber bie Gemeinlebarn, R.-G. Forsch. 3, Berlin, 1929.
4 AR., V (1953). 308-18
6 “Beitsch and Knossos”, PPS., XVIII (1952), 36-47, cf. p. 30 above.
132
DANUBIAN CIVILIZATION
really associated with Unetician ingot-torques and a triangular daggei.
Amber, gold, and Mediterranean shells were freely imported, but
fayence beads are rare and the segmented variety (like Fig. 157) is not
found north of Brno.
Fig. 71. Bulb, disc, trilobate, and crutch-headed pins from later Unetician
graves. After Schr4nil (£).
The hand-made pots agree in fabric with those from Perjamos, but
the most distinctive shapes were at first pouched jugs and mugs some-
times decorated with cord-impressions or incised lines (Fig. 72) .1
1 Formerly attributed to a distinct “Marschwitz culture” and period III.
133
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Then in the classical phase of Unetice (IVb) these are transformed by
flattening out the belly into keeled mugs and jugs. Neumann1 has
analysed the constituents of Unetician pottery into elements derived
from the Bell-beaker and Corded ware groups and a southern com-
Fig. 72. Marschwitz and early Unetician pottery, Silesia and Bohemia.
After Stocky.
ponent. His analysis summarizes the constitution of the whole culture.
Bell-beaker folk established the requisite commercial connection,
battle-axe warriors made the demand for metal effective, metallurgists
from the south may have provided the technical basis, but the founda-
tion was still Baden and so Danubian.
The development of the Central European bronze industry was
undoubtedly correlated with that of the amber trade across the
province; the guaranteed market that alone could make regular trade
among barbarians worth while was in Mycenaean Greece and Crete.
It is undoubtedly assumed that the initiation of the industry was
equally due to prospectors, ultimately relying for a livelihood on the
purchasing power of East Mediterranean cities. On this assumption
the Oriental types reproduced by Danubian smiths should provide
limiting dates for period IV. The limits thus given prove to be unex-
pectedly wide. Most of the ornaments mentioned on p. 129 had been
current in Egypt or Mesopotamia long before 2000 b.c. Even the ingot-
torques, introduced into Syria about that date, had earlier wiry pre-
cursors at Ahlatlibel, as in Austria (p. 125). So period IV might begin
before 2000 b.c. But regular trade with the ZBgean is attested first
about 1600 b.c.
The initial assumption, however intrinsically probable, has not yet
been demonstrated by actual dateable imports; for segmented fayence
beads were current in Hither Asia for a millennium before 1400 b.c.
Now the metal-working clan, who introduced ingot-torques with core
casting and other advances into Syria, are thought to have been
1 PZ., XX (1929), 70-128.
134
DANUBIAN CIVILIZATION
immigrants. As no other cradle has been found for them, they might
have come from Central Europe. In that case their advent a century it
before or after 2000 b.c. would be a terminus ante quem for the beginning {
of Danubian IV. So too the amber beads from the Shaft Graves of
Mycenae at least prove that the commerce that enriched the Un&tician
culture was fully established before 1550 b.c. Crescentic necklaces with
pattern-bored spacers, like the Mycenaean, in Bavaria and Alsace are
found in graves of period V. So 1550 should be near the end of period IV.
If so, the strikingly close Middle Minoan and contemporary Hittite
analogies to the quatrefoil cantharoi that developed from the Perjamos
tankards in period V (p. 132) become chronologically significant.
Moreover, by 1200 b.c. fibulae and other Central European or North
Italian types were appearing in Greece, and the types in question are
more proper to period VI than to period V.1 If, then, period V—the*j
Middle Bronze Age—ended about 1250 b.c., and began in 1550, period IV, y
the initial phase of the Continental Bronze Age, might very well have
occupied five centuries and begun before 2000 b.c. On the available
Central European evidence, 2100 is as likely a date as 1700 for the
start of the Early Bronze Age.
But whether Perjamos and Unetice are to be compared to Sargonid
cities in Mesopotamia or early Mycenaean townships in Greece, they
must rank several stages lower in the cultural scale. Economically they
have not. reached the level of the Early Aegean townships of the
Peloponnese or the Troad. Most of the population must remain peasants.
But one industry at least did absorb a few of the farmers’ younger sons;
trade did indirectly secure a share in the Oriental surplus to supple-
ment home-grown supplies. The smiths, the only specialist craftsmen
recognizable in the archaeological record of period IV, displayed far
more originality and inventiveness than their fellows in Asia or Egypt.
And their products were more democratic. Even in period IV they were
making sickles while Egyptian peasants were still reaping with flints.
By period VI their successors would have invented an axe of bronze J
that was as efficient and as cheap as an iron one, and an armament 'J|
with which European barbarians could challenge the well-equipped
armies of Oriental monarchies.
1 Cf. p. 83; even violin-bow fibulae are first reliably attested in urnfields of period VI.
A fragment from an Un£tice grave at Polepy in Bohemia (Schranil, Bohmen, ioi;
Bohm, CISPP, (London. 1932), 242; cf. AR., VI (1954), 533> where the fragment
is accepted jas an Unetician fibula) is too small for reliable diagnosis', another from
Gemeinlebam is just as likely to belong to the umfield at that site as to the late
UnStician cemetery.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PEASANTS OF THE BLACK EARTH
On the loss-clad flanks of the Carpathians, in the valleys of the upper
Oltu and the Seret, and on the parkland plateau extending north-
eastward across the Prut, the Dniestr, and the Southern Bug to the
Dniepr, there developed, on a Starcevo foundation enriched by Dan-
ubian elements, a remarkable farming culture named after Tripolye,
a site near Kiev.1 Though its authors were throughout farmers and lived
in large villages of substantial houses, they seem, like their kinsmen
farther west, to have practised a sort of shifting cultivation.2 Hence
the village sites are very numerous—twenty-six have been identified
in no sq. miles just south of Kiev—but none formed tells. A few sites
—Nezviska3 on the Dniestr, Cucuteni4 and Izvoare5 on the Prut,
Traian6 on the Seret—were occupied more than once. The stratigraphy
there observed justifies a division of the culture into four main stages:
A, Bi, B2, and C7. It is based primarily on a stylistic analysis of the
ceramic decoration in which local divergences may have sometimes
been mistaken for discrepancies in age. Phase A is confined to a few
sites on the upper reaches of the Prut, the Dniestr, and the Bug. The
valleys of the Oltu and Dniepr would then have been colonized in
phase Bi (AB). Only in phase C does Tripolye pottery occur in settle-
ments of quite different cultures on the steppes and in the forests north
of the Teterev.
The basis of life was throughout the cultivation of wheats—Tnticum
monococcum, dicoccum, and vulgare—barley, and millet, and the breed-
ing of cattle, goats, sheep, and pigs.8 Cows were always the most
important stock; horses’9 bones occur in all stages, but perhaps repre-
sent game animals save in the latest stage. Hunting was at all times
important, but the percentage of game bones in the food refuse declines
from 52 in stage A to 20 in stage C. Fishing must also have made
1 Passek, Periodizatsiya Tripolskikh Poselenii (MA., X, 1949), tliough. written in
1946, documents facts unless another reference be given.
2 Krifievskii, KS„ VIII (1940), 53-
3 KSU., IV (1955), 142-6.
4 Schmidt, H., Cucuteni in der oberen Moldau (Berlin, 1932).
6 Vulpe, ESA., XI (1937). I34-46-
6 St. s. Cere., V (1954), 36-54.
7 Passek, La Cdramique tripolienne (GAIMK., Leningrad, 1935).
8 Bibikov, Ranne-tripolskoe poselenie Luka-Vrublevetska, MIA., XXXVIII (1953).
8 Hancar, Das Pferd, 65 if; KS., LI (1953), 53.
I36
THE PEASANTS OF THE BLACK EARTH
a substantial contribution; hooks of copper or bone are found even on
phase A sites, while along the Dniestr remains of fish over 1*5 m. long
have been reported. Net-fishing may be inferred from clay sinkers.
Finally, the collection of shell-fish and berries added substantially to
the food-supply.
The settlements are normally located on spurs of loss, protected on
three sides by ravines. At the time of their occupation the plateaux
were moister than to-day, liable to swamping, covered with damp
woods and inhabited by tortoises, otters, and water-rats.1 Most
sites were probably defended by ditch and rampart. Those at Ariusd2
on the Oltu (phase Bi) enclosed ij acres that would accommodate
at most 21 houses arranged in three rows. Haba^esti on the Seret3
comprised perhaps 44 dwellings, while as many as 150, mostly B2,
are reported from Vladimirovka. Normal villages of phases B2 and
C consisted of 30 to 42 houses usually arranged radially on the
circumferences of one or more concentric circles 200 m. to 500 m. in
diameter.
Only alleged pit-dwellings of phase A have been described; the
houses of later phases are represented by the celebrated ploUadki,
areas of baked clay resulting from the burning and collapse of walls
and floors. The walls of wattle and daub heavily plastered with clay
and straw were supported by earth-fast posts at Ariufd in phase Bi;
their sockets define houses measuring 8*25 by 5-4 m. and divided into
two rooms by a partition. Ovens were found in both rooms, a hearth
in the outer one. In plan and internal arrangements these houses are
identical with those of Rossen and contemporary settlements round
the Alps (Fig. 137), and assumed for period II along the Middle Danube.
In phases B2 and C, posts planted in sleeper beams seem to have served
to support only a skeleton frame and the roof-tree, the walls being
built of compacted earth—kerpitsh. In most villages a few houses
were small and one-roomed, 7 by 4 m. in area and containing only
a single oven. The average house measured about 14 by 5*5 m. and
contained two to four ovens. The largest house recorded measured
27 by 6*5 m. and was divided into five rooms, four furnished with one
oven each, the fifth with two. The most puzzling features in many
houses are the hard-baked and well-smoothed clay floors on which
ovens, querns, and vases stood and on the undersides of which imprints
of close-set timbers are preserved.4
1 Pidopliika in Passek, note 1, 146.
2 Childe, Danube, 98-104.
3 Hdb&sesti, Monografie Arheologica (Acad. Repub. Pop. Romine, Bucuresti, 1954).
* KriCevskil, "Tripolskie Ploscadki”, SA., VI (1940), argued that the floors were
baked by fires kindled upon them before the house was roofed over.
137
-
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
The large ovens, 2 m. or more square, were made of clay on a frame-
work of saplings. In addition, some rooms were furnished with raised
benches of baked clay, and—at least in phase B2 on the Bug—also
with cruciform pediments ornamented on their surfaces with engraved
lines or with paint. Russian archaeologists agree that these last were
offering-places. Six or seven fragmentary models illustrate the interior
of a Tripolye house, showing the porch, the oven, the cruciform pedi-
ment, the jars of grain, and the quern just as excavators have found
them (Fig. 73). All these models stand on legs and so suggest that
138
THE PEASANTS OF THE BLACK EARTH
Tripolye houses were really raised on piles. That would be quite
reasonable as the sites were liable to swamping; it would at once
explain the burning of the clay floors and of the wooden beams under
them. But there is no excavational evidence for this very plausible
hypothesis. Russian excavators frequently refer also to half-subter-
ranean dwellings or zemlianki, but the plans look almost as dubious
as those of Danubian “pit-dwellings".
Kricevskii believed that the large houses with three or more rooms
resulted from the enlargement of one-roomed houses to accommodate
married children of the latters’ builders. The enlarged family would
keep together, as in the recent Slav zadruga. If so, the sites in question
must have been occupied for at least two generations.
Tripolye farmers were generally content to use local materials for
their equipment which consequently looks purely neolithic. Adzes
were made of local stone, often rather soft, but axe-hammers or even
simple battle-axes were perforated with a hollow borer, and mattocks
or adzes were made from bored antlers (Fig. 75, 15). Weapons are not
common. Triangular flint arrow-heads occur sporadically from phase
Bi at least. A knob bed mace like one from Danubian III is reported
from a B2 site near Kiev,1 while model battle-axes—surely warriors’
weapons—were made at Ariusd and Haba^esti in phase Bi.
Trade secured farmers even at Petreny on the middle Dniestr
obsidian from west of the Carpathians by phase B2. Copper too was
similarly obtained from the very first, but in phase A2 was employed
only for fish-hooks, rings, bangles, and beads; one fragment analysed
contained 30 per cent of zinc, so native copper at least is excluded. In
phase Bi copper was used occasionally for making flat adzes, while
a B2 site yielded a copper pick-axe, allied to the Transylvanian axe-
adzes of Danubian III. Phase C is certainly contemporary with the
frankly Bronze Age Usatova culture (p. 145), but even in Bi a knot-
headed pin is reported from Sabatinovka on the Bug.3 It may be
evidence for Asiatic inspiration of the school of metallurgy that grew
up west of the Black Sea, but it could just as well be derived from the
Perjamos and Unetician cultures in the Danube valley. In that case
phase Bi of Tripolye would fall already into Danubian IV.
The products of Tripolye potters have been celebrated in archaeo-
logical literature for nearly a century. In every village local potters
made vases of sophisticated forms and substantial dimensions and
1 F. Vovk in Antropologiya, 1927 (Kiev, 1928), 20-5, pi. Ill, 9.
2 See p. 137, n. 3.
3 Arkheolog. Pamat. Ukrain. S.S.R., IV (Kiev, 1952), 78-83; a clay copy of a Scythian
cauldron, allegedly from the same horizon, prompts doubts as to the reliability of the
excavation report.
139
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
fired them in kilns to a hard red or orange ware. A model vertical kiln
and remains of an actual one stacked with vases were found at Ariusd1
(Fig. 74), perforated clay grills from Habasesti2 may have served to
separate the firing chamber from the hearth. Yet housewives most
probably made at home the pots required for domestic use instead of
purchasing them from a full-time specialist potter; for stocks of pre-
9 JO HA
? ? ?
Fig. 74. Potters' oven and model, Ariu§d (Exosd), After Laszld.
pared clay were discovered in some houses and instruments for decor-
ating vases in many. Actually two wares are found on most Tripolye
sites—a coarse ware tempered with shell and a finer fabric with chaff
or sand temper. The former, not reported from phase A sites, is orna-
mented with a comb, impressed into, or drawn over, the wet clay;
its affinities lie with the products of surviving hunter-fisher societies
in the boreal forest zone of North-Eastern Europe.
The finer wares, red or orange in hue, were richly decorated. In all
phases the patterns might be outlined with deep channelled grooves
supplemented with dots and, in phases A and Bi, filled with rouletted
lines; the curved stamps of antler, bone, or shell used to produce such
lines have been found on several sites3 (Fig, 75, Bi, 12). Broad flutings
were sometimes employed with, or instead of, grooves in phase A and
especially in Bi.4 Exceptionally these devices were enriched by incrusta-
tions in ochre or with lines of white paint applied before firing to the
red ground in phase A. The most familiar decoration in phases B and
1 See p. 137, n. 2.
2 Page 137, n. 3, pp. 189 ft., fig. 9.
3 At Luka-Vrublevetska (p. 136, n. 8); Ariusd; Sabatinovka, etc.
4 Especially atTraian on the Seret, Dacia, IX-X (1941-44), ix ff.
140
THE PEASANTS OF THE BLACK EARTH
Fig. 75. Tripolye types (after Passek).
B I: Polychrome pottery (T\) and ladle, figurine, clay cone, and stamp (J), comb for
decorating pottery, stone adze, antler pick.
B II: 1 (^7), 3, 7 grooved, 5-6 painted ware PyaniSkovo; Yladimirovka.
C I: 1-3 Popodnia; 6-8 (y^), Staraya Buda.
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
C was, however, painted'—in white or red (mainly in Bi), outlined
with black on red, or red outlined in black on a white slip. Warm
black, sometimes supplemented by thin lines in red, on buff or orange
was the favourite style in phases B2 and C. In phase A running spirals,
used as a repetition pattern, formed the basis of the decoration, but
they gave place to closed S spirals in phase Bi. In the sequel these
dissolved into circles and the old all-over composition gave place to a
tectonic arrangement emphasizing the vase’s articulation.
From the first the vase forms are highly sophisticated and too
varied even for enumeration. Tubular stands (Fig. 75, Bi, 2) are con-
fined to phases A and Bi. Fruitstands (Fig. 75, Bi, 1) were most popular
in phase Bi and in that phase alone are accompanied by jars on profiled
and perforated pedestals. “Binocular vases” (Fig. 75, Bn, 7) were char-
acteristic at all periods. Vases in the form of animals, usually bulls,
or anthropomorphic, may rank as ritual vessels, but a “bird vase” of
phase A1 could just as well be regarded as an askos.
In the light of the total excavation of Kolomishchina Tripolye society
would seem to have been as democratic and equalitarian as the Dan-
ubian of Koln-Lindental, since the size of the houses was determined
by the number of families inhabiting them jointly. But at Fedele^eni,
a Moldavian village of stage Bi, Nestor2 mentions that one house was
more richly furnished than the rest and contained a stone animal
sceptre-head (Fig. 76) as if it had belonged to a chief. Moreover, the
mace-head from Veremye might be interpreted as a symbol of authority.
The ideology of the Tripolye farmers was as “Asiatic” as that of their y
Balkan and Danubian II contemporaries. In addition to the cruciform
“altars”, many houses were littered with clay figurines and models.
.The former, predominantly female, in phases A and Bi were steato-
pygous, and in phase Bi richly ornamented with incised spirals (Fig.
75, Bi, 10), though fiddle-shaped types like Fig. 8, 2 were also common
at Habasesti.3 In phase B2 the figurines are flat, often perforated for
suspension and painted (Fig. 75, Bn, 13; C, 8). Males are represented^
sporadically even in phase A, phalli4 too in phase Bi. Clay stamps
occur only in phase Bi and are confined to sites between the Oltu
and the Prut—Ariu^d, Cucuteni, Haba^ti, and Ruginoasa; one bears
a filled cross design, the rest spirals (Fig. 76).
As ornaments, besides copper and very rare gold trinkets, clay beads,
some star-shaped, were worn at all periods. Copper beads and bored
deers’ teeth seem confined to phases A and Bi, to which belong also
1 MIA., XXXVIII, p. 338, tab. 46.
2 BRGK., XXII, 45 and 51, n. 80.
3 Page 137, n. 3, 414.
4 Page 137, n. 4, 468.
142
THE PEASANTS OF THE BLACK EARTH
laminae from boars’ tusks perforated at the four corners. Clay cones,
common in phase Bi (Fig. 75, 8) may have been gamesmen, though
one is surmounted by a rough human head.
The position of the Tripolye phases in the Balkan sequence is fairly!
clear. On the Seret, phase A is preceded by Boian, while a brokeir
binocular vase was found as an import in the earliest Gumelnita level
at Vidra (p. 98). At Verbicoara in Wallachia, polychrome sherds,
attributed to phase Bi, were found in the Salcu|:a layer, while the
Fig. 76. Stone sceptre-head, Fedele^eni and clay stamp, Ariu§d.
sceptre-head from Fedelefeni is paralleled at Salcufa itself. On the
Upper Oltu, remains of the Ariu^d, Bi, version of Tripolye are super-
imposed on early Boian strata. On the Dniestr at Nezviska, the
settlement with early Bi pottery overlies the late Danubian I village
(p. no), but at Traian, Danubian I sherds are reported from a Tripolye
A layer.1 Hence, while phase A may overlap with Boian in Balkan II,
most of phases A and B must be parallel with Gumelnita and Salcu^a
in Balkan III.
Links with the Danubian sequence are more ambiguous. The clay
stamp-seals might be used as a basis for synchronizing phase Bi with
Danubian II, and so might the Ariusd figurines that, as in Moravia,
were modelled in two parts separately and then stuck together. On
the other hand, the relative abundance of metal, the battle-axes, repre-
sented by models, a bossed copper disc from Habafe^ti2 would all be
1 St. s. Qerc. (1954), V, 36.
2 Page 136, n. 6, 436; the disc is very like that from the Danubian III grave at BrzeSd
Kujawski, p. 123 above.
143
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
more appropriate to Danubian III. So the jars on high profiled pedestals
of phase Bi have their closest analogies in the transitional Tiszapolgar
pottery that is likewise Danubian III, while at Marosvasarhely poly-
chrome Bi and decorated Bodrogkeresztur pottery seem to have been
associated. An even lower limit in terms of the Danubian sequence
would be given by the one possible import found in a Tripolye settle-
ment: the knot-headed pin from Sabatinovka, if imported from
Bohemia or Hungary, would mean that Tripolye Bi did not end
before Danubian IV began. But of course the pin might have come
from Asia. That Tripolye C lasts into and perhaps beyond Danubian IV
is nearly certain.1 Here Tripolye has been assigned to periods II, III,
and IV, but perhaps its several phases should each be set a period later.
In its economy, as in its art, the Tripolye culture is so fundamentally
Danubian that one might speak of a Dniestro-Danubian cycle of
cultures. The Danubian element can be most economically derived
from the colonists established at Nezviska and elsewhere in pre-
Tripolian times. But they had been preceded by earlier Starcevo
settlers, if not by the hypothetical hunter-fishers who might have
remained in occupation of the region since the Ice Age (p. 88). Indeed,
the latter now become almost tangible in the coarse ware found on all
Tripolye sites and related to that of the more boreal hunter-fisher
tribes of the Eurasiatic taiga. It is now no longer necessary to look
to Central Asia to account for the painted Tripolye vases, since the
Starcevo pioneers painted their vases and must have possessed the
vertical kilns requisite for producing light-faced wares.
The Tripolye ideology and the elaborate ritual paraphernalia that
expressed it were of course shared by the Tripolye farmers with their
cultural antecedents in South-West Asia, but equally with neighbour-
ing Gumelnijia, Vinca, and Danubian II societies; it could have reached
the Tripolye province thence, if not earlier with the Starcevo colonists."
The Beginnings of Metallurgy on the West Pontic Coasts
By Tripolye phase C, and probably earlier, there had arisen on the
steppes bordering the Black Sea a local metal industry serving stratified
societies, best represented in the Usatova culture,2 so named after a
village and cemeteries near Odessa. Warlike chiefs, leaders of a pastoral
aristocracy, were enabled to exercise an effective demand for metal
armaments by concentrating the surplus wealth produced by their
pastoral followers and by their Tripolye subjects.
1 Sulimirski, PPS., XVI (1950), 45-52.
8 Full summary by Passek in MIA., X, 190-200.
I44
-
THE PEASANTS OF THE BLACK EARTH
The new pastoral aspect of the economy is disclosed by the very
numerous animal bones from the village and the prominence among
them of sheep and horses, now surely domesticated; the percentages
are : 37*8 sheep, 31 cows, 15-5 horses, only 2-2 pigs. Game accounts for
only 28*4 per cent of the total.1
The rulers were buried under barrows which form two cemeteries
near the village. A chief2 was interred contracted on one side or on
his back in a central shaft grave encircled by a ring of slabs on edge.
Under one barrow a slab in the kerb had been engraved with very
rough representations of a man, a stag, and perhaps a horse.3 Before
the barrow was heaped, one or two slaves or dependents would be
slain and interred in accessory graves. Bones of animals and statuettes,
too, were buried in separate pits.
Contrasted with these almost royal tombs are the flat graves belong-
ing presumably to the cultivators. These are shallow pits, each covered
by a flat slab and containing a single contracted skeleton. That these
cultivators were an off-shoot from Tripolye communities may be
inferred from survivals of the Tripolye ideology and ceramic art.
Figurines were still made in clay though stylized almost beyond
recognition (Fig. 77, 6-8).
In the village and both under the barrows and in flat graves well-
fired vases, painted and fashioned in the Tripolye technique, occur
side by side with coarser vessels ornamented with cord impressions.
The designs on the painted pots can be regarded as degenerations of
the good spiral ornament of Tripolye A and Bi, and some old Tripolye
forms are reproduced. The cord-ornamented pottery must represent
the new pastoral element; some of the jars could be regarded as degen-
erations of Thuringian amphorae (Fig. 77,1, 3), but the impressed cord
designs are more elaborate than any from North or Central Europe
and include the imprints of crocheted necklaces, maggot patterns, and
horse-shoe loops.4
Trade brought amber, presumably from the Baltic, antimonite
allegedly from Turkey, and substantial supplies of copper. The metal
was cast into characteristic local types. The most distinctive is a kite-
shaped riveted dagger with a midrib on one face only (Fig. 77, 4), but
flat axes and quadrangular awls were also made. The shaft-hole axe
from Cucuteni may also be a product of Usatova industry, since a
typical dagger comes from the site. Small spiral rings of copper or
1 SA., V, 258; Naukove Zapiski IIMK., II (TJkrain. Akad. Nauk, Kiev, 1937),
n6.
2 For these barrows see also SA., V (1940), 240-56.
3 Figured in Mongait, Arkheologiya v SSSJR. (Moskva, 1955), 109.
4 Rosenberg, Kulturstromungen in Europa zur Steinzeit (Copenhagen).
K 145
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
silver were worn as well as necklaces of bored deers’ teeth. The stone
industry is comparatively poor. A perforated antler axe had been
buried with one of the chiefs and so must rank as a battle-axe, as in
the Danubian III graves of Brzesc-Kujawsld.
Fig. 77. Usatova types.
{Top) Usatova Barrows: 1-2, cord-ornamented and painted vases (£); 3-5, copper objects
(!) barrow I; 6-10, figurine (£), painted pot ($), copper spirals, bored wolfs teeth (i)
barrow II.
{Below) 3-7, cord-ornamented and painted pots (£), clay figurine (J) from other barrows;
8 figurine from Usatova settlement (after Passek).
146
THE PEASANTS OF THE BLACK EARTH
Ustatova ceramic and metal types occur in a number of barrow
graves on the steppes between the Tripolye province and the Black
Sea and in a few marginal Tripolye villages.1 The first two villages at
the fortified site of Mikhailovka2 on a tributary of the Lower Dniepr
may well have been occupied by a kindred society, again predomin-
antly pastoral. Metal was certainly worked here too, but no distinctively
Usatova types have been published in 1956.
Kricevskii3 and Passek treated the Usatova culture as the final
result of the conversion of the Tripolye economy to pastoralism.
Briusov,4 however, could easily show that Usatova represented a
distinct culture not later than Tripolye B2 or at least C. A Tripolye
component is indeed obvious enough. The origin of the pastoral
element will be considered in Chapter IX. What of the metal industry?
The distribution of the distinctive. metal types leaves little doubt
that the raw material reached the Black Sea coasts by sea. If that
means that the knowledge of metal-working was introduced by pro-
spectors from the ^Egean or Asia Minor, it cannot be claimed that their
local products reproduced any specific southern models. The technique
of casting midrib daggers in a one-piece mould is a barbarism quite
foreign to any of the advanced schools of metallurgy and paralleled
only in the Iberian peninsula and South France. Usatova metal types
give no clue as to the origin of their makers nor as to the absolute
date of the Usatova culture. Relatively it might be assigned to period
IV or a late phase of period III in the Balkan sequence. In the Danubian
sequence it should occupy a similar position. Usatova must surely
be earlier than period V, since Hungarian bronzes of that phase are
quite common in the province.5 A little support for an equation with
Danubian IV might be derived from the kite-shaped daggers of the
East Polish and Slovakian Tomaszow culture6; at least in plan they
recall the Usatova type and they are associated with segmented fayence
beads. Still the latter might be correlated with the amber beads from
Troy II and Usatova as indicative of a trade in metals and Sammland
amber in the Illrd., millennium.
1 Passek, loc. cit.; Avkheolosiya, VIII (Kiev, 1953), 95-107.
2 KSU., IV (1955). 119-23; V, 13-17-
3 MIA., II (1941), 251-3.
4 05erki, 240 ff. Note distribution map on p. 234.
5 Tallgren, ESA., II.
6 Kostrzewski, J., Prehistoria Ziem Polskich (Krakow, 1939-48), pi. LXII, 18.
I47
CHAPTER IX
CULTURE TRANSMISSION OVER THE EURASIAN PLAIN?
Last century anthropologists regarded the Eurasiatic plain as a
corridor through which Asiatic hordes, precursors of the Huns and the
Tartars, swept neolithic culture to Western Europe. Their guess is
hardly confirmed by the evidence of the spade. But of course con-
firmatory evidence would be hard to obtain; predominantly pastoral
and ex hyfiothesi mobile communities need leave no durable equipment
that archaeologists could recognize, and certainly would leave no
stratified tells in their wake. Stock-breeding is indeed not attested
earlier near the eastern than near the western extremities of the plain,
but only in the sense that no geological nor pollen dates are available
in the former area while the culture sequence as distinguished in 1956
seems less varied, and therefore shorter, than farther west. No doubt
in the wide chilly forest zone a “palaeolithic” economy based on collect-
ing, hunting, and fishing along the shores of meres and rivers persisted
long, albeit made increasingly sedentary by the emphasis on fishing.
Farther south, in the wide belt of parkland and the steppe zone border-
ing the Black Sea, collections of flint tools may indicate a continuity
of settlement from late pleistocene times. Chopping tools, sharpened
by a tranchet blow (p. 9), are reported from the parklands of Vol-
hynia, Podolia, and the Ukraine.1 Only in a few stratified caves in
Crimea1 2 can even the relative antiquity of the archaic flints be deter-
mined, and even there, though microliths are associated with pots
with pointed bases3 no very high antiquity need be assigned to them
since geometric microliths may survive quite late.
Still less can such collections be cited as documenting precocious
animal husbandry, since no bones survive on sandhill sites. The flints
collected from dunes between Lake Aral and the Oder may have been
left by ancestors of the herdsmen who reached Denmark in Atlantic
times, but there is not a scrap of evidence that they were.
On the fringe of the vast loss lands, colonized by primary neolithic
Danubian, Starcevo and Tripolye peasants, there did indeed emerge
communities of herdsmen, known almost exclusively from graves. Do
1 Briusov, Oierhi, 181-203.
2 Antropologiya, II (Kiev, 1928), 190-1.
3 KS., XXXI (1950), 110-16; SA., V (1940), 97-100; cf. Gerasimov, Litsa, 263-5.
148
CULTURE TRANSMISSION OVER EURASIAN PLAIN?
these represent pastoral tribes separated out from the more agricultural
Dniestro-Danubian societies? Or are they local mesolithic communities
converted by their neighbours’ example to food-production? Or,
finally, are they immigrants from the steppes farther south and east?
There, too, are barrow graves of a peculiar kind, the so-called ochre
graves.
The Ochre Grave Cultures of the Pontic Steppes
The true steppe zone extends from the Dobrudja and the wooded
outposts of the Carpathians round the Black Sea coasts to the Caucasus
and beyond the Volga to the Altai. The steppes are covered with
barrows of all periods down to the late Middle Ages. The prehistoric
ones, generally small, cluster in little cemeteries, presumably marking
some sort of tribal territory, and most cover many successive inter-
ments. On the strength of his excavations between the Donets and the
Don, Gorodtsov defined three main stages on periods distinguished
primarily by tomb types—first shaft graves (yamy), next pit-caves
(“catacombs”) and finally wooden cists (sruby). Hence the archaeo-
logical record in South Russia has been divided into yamno, catacomb,
and srubno periods, and this terminology is retained even though
it is now established that catacomb graves are confined to the Black
Sea coasts and the valleys of the Donetz, the Don, and the Manyc,
and define a culture rather than a period of time. On the slopes of the
metalliferous Caucasus, however, some barrows are so rich that a
finer typological division into five periods has been established by
Yessen.1 His phases I and II correspond roughly to the old Early
Kuban2 and more roughly to Gorodtsov’s yamno stage,3 while his
group III may equal Middle Kuban and catacomb. But these burials
under round barrows are not the earliest. Just as the funerary record
in Britain begins with collective burial under long barrows, so in South
Russia it begins with multiple burials in long trenches or under long
mounds.
In all these graves the skeletons he extended, usually covered with
red ochre and arranged in groups. At Vovnigi4, near Dniepropetrovsk,
130 skeletons in three layers were lying side by side under a sandhill.
At Mariupol on the Sea of Azov5 120 adults and six children had been
1 SA., XII (1950), 157-85. 2 ESA., IV, 1-19.
3 Degen-Kovalevskii (ITS., II (1939), 14-16) and Artamonov {SA., X (1948), 161-81)
proposed much later dates for the Early Kuban barrows.
4 KSU., TV (1955). 147-9; cf. Arkheologiya, V (Kiev, 1951), 163, for a similar burial
farther down the Dniepr, and Gerasimov, Litsa, 260-80, for others; the skulls are
‘ ‘ Cromagnonoid’ ’.
6 Makarenko, Mariupilski Mogilnik (Kiev, Vse-Ukrainska Akad. Nauk, 1933);
Stolyar (SA., XXIII, 16) distributes the burials over four successive phases.
I49
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
buried in groups across one long trench filled with red earth. At Nalcik1
a low irregular mound covered 130 contracted skeletons, again buried
in groups and covered with red pigment. Such numbers exceed those
recorded from any mesolithic cemetery of food-gatherers so that the
denial of neolithic status may be unjustified. Actually flint celts with
polished blades were found at Mariupol together with stone beads and
bracelets and a variety of ornaments carved out of wild beasts’ teeth
and boars' tusks. Two skeletons were accompanied by knobbed mace-
heads (cf. Fig. 65), interpreted as emblems of chieftainship. A female
figurine of stone lay in one grave at Nalcik, and pottery in others.
However these communities got their food, they were not economically
isolated. A pendant of porphyry imported from the Urals occurred at
Mariupol; a copper lock-ring and beads of “vitreous paste” and car-
nelian at Nalcik. The last-named ornaments are explicitly results of
connection with Oriental civilization, and even the knobbed maces
from Mariupol may be thus interpreted, since the type was common
in Mesopotamia from Early Dynastic times.
The burials just described recall most strikingly those of mesolithic
Natufians in the Wad cave on Mount Carmel, but agree in several
points also with those of neolithic hunter-fishers on Gotland and on
Olenii Island in Lake Onega. They are not for these reasons neces-
sarily earlier than the single burials, sometimes accompanied by metal
objects, under the commoner round barrows. Indeed, knobbed mace-
heads farther west are Danubian III or Balkan III (pp. 122). On the
other hand, microliths are found in Early Kuban barrows.
The earliest food-producers detectable on the steppes in South Russia
are those buried under round barrows in the yamno graves. In these,
remains of domestic animals—only sheep have been recorded—are
exceptional, while bones of game, flint arrow-heads, and bone harpoons
do attest hunting and fishing. Finds from domestic sites,2 however,
prove that cows, sheep, goats, and probably horses and pigs were bred
and millet cultivated. The stock-breeders were interred, thickly sprinkled
with red ochre, lying on a bier or bed of rushes on the back with the
legs drawn up or more rarely extended, sometimes in a tent-shaped
mortuary house,3 at the bottom of the shaft, which was roofed with birch
poles resting on ledges in the sides (as in the Shaft Graves of Mycenae).4
In the Ukraine, rudely anthropomorphic stelae covered some graves.5
1 MIA., Ill (1940), 69 fi.
2 Near Nalcik, MIA., Ill (1940), 192; Mikhajlovka on the Lower Dniepr, KSU., IV
(1955), 119-22.
2 IGAIMK., 100 (1933), 105.
* Rau, Hockergraber der Wolgasteppe (Marxstadt, 1928); SAIV (1937), 93 ff.;
MIA., XLVI, 12 if.
2 KSU., I (1952), 21; V (1955), 75-8.
150
CULTURE TRANSMISSION OVER EURASIAN PLAIN?
In no grave does much furniture survive—at best a pot, some hunting
or fishing tackle, necklaces of bored teeth and—only in the latest
graves—a hammer-headed pin of bone (Fig. 78, 5-6) .*? The pot, if
present, is an ovoid beaker, often plain, sometimes decorated with
pits below the inturned rim or even with cord impressions2 (Fig. 79, 4).
Fig. 78. Copper battle-axe, Vozdvizhenskaya (J), copper beads (?§?), copper
spear-head (?$?), copper and bone hammer-pins (£).
A lucky chance has revealed dramatically how unreliable negative
conclusions, based on the inevitable deficiencies of the archaeological
record, may be. Under a large barrow of the period, “Storozhevaya”,
near Dnepropetrovsk3 an exceptional conjuncture has preserved
remains of a wooden cart with two solid wheels, 48 cm. in diameter,
that served as a hearse. It demonstrates at once that wheeled vehicles
were used by the steppe folk, that these had not only domesticated
but also harnessed oxen—or conceivably horses—and that they
recognized chiefs who enjoyed the privileges of Sumerian kings.
On the slopes of the Caucasus such chiefs secured more substantial
emblems and instruments of authority. A celebrated barrow near
Maikop4 is representative of the eleven rich “royal burials” that con-
stitute Yessen’s group I. The tomb was a tripartite wooden chamber
in a deep shaft enciicled by a ring of boulders. A prince had been
buried in the main chamber under a canopy adorned with gold and
silver lions and bulls. A male and a female corpse occupied the remain-
1 Though found in graves that are typologically “yamno”, most common from
“catacombs”.
2 Found from the Dniepr to as far east as Stalingrad.
3 KS., XXXVII (1951), 117; Arkheologiya, V (Kiev, 1951), 183-8.
1 Haniar, 248,
151
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DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
ing compartments, less richly furnished, but all the bodies were covered
with red ochre. The royal weapons (Fig. 8o) include a transverse axe,
certainly, and a straight axe together with an axe-adze1 that looks like a
combination of the other two, but also rhomboid arrow-heads of flint
and microlithic lunates of mesolithic ancestry. A gold flask with a
silver ring round the neck, jars of silver and of stone, and imitations
in reduced grey pottery are certainly Asiatic. Beads of turquoise and
4 5
Fig. 79. Vases: 1, from Catacomb grave, Donetz (J); 2-3, from pit-graves, Yatskovice, near
Kiev (•$?); 4, from yamno grave Donetz basin (£); 5, B funnel beaker from Denmark (£).
lapis lazuli had been imported from Iran, meerschaum1 2 from Anatolia.
Two silver vases are engraved with local mountain scenes and a pro-
cession of animals—two kinds of ox, a mouflon, a tame boar, Prze-
walski’s horse, and a panther.
Yessen's second and rather less homogeneous chronological division
within the Early Kuban period is represented by the furniture of the
tombs in two huge cairns at Novosvobodnaya (generally but incor-
rectly termed Tsarevskaya).3 Both were megalithic cists divided into
two compartments by porthole slabs (Fig. 81, 1). Cist II measured
1 LAAA., XXIII (1936), 114-15.
2 Yessen, TGAIMK., 120, 81.
152
3 Hanfiar, 244.
CULTURE TRANSMISSION OVER EURASIAN PLAIN?
internally i*8o m.+ i-i5 m. by i*6o m. by 1-20 m., and was surrounded
by a ring of orthostats over a metre high. The princely dead, one
wearing a linen garment, dyed red and purple, a cloak of earners wool
Fig. 8o. Transverse axe, axe-adze, knife, and gold and silver vases (J),
carnelian bead and flint arrow-heads (p, from Maikop barrow.
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
covered with a black hide and profusely sprinkled with red ochre,
were provided with shaft-hole axes, bidents, spear-heads, cauldrons,
ladles, wands, and drill bits of copper, together with flint arrow-heads
and globular clay vases (Fig. 82). The spear-head is directly derived
from an Early Sumerian type and the bident and gouge have an equally
Early Sumerian pedigree, but exact parallels to them and to the ladles,
perhaps also to the wand, can be cited from Hissar III1 in Northern
Iran. The pottery, on the contrary, undoubtedly resembles the Central
Russian Fatyanovo ware and the Globular Amphorae of Central
Europe (pp. 170,194).
A dozen other burials are assigned to this second phase of the Early
Kuban period and enlarge the repertory of types attributable to it.
They include battle-axes2 both in copper (Fig. 78, 1) and stone and
probably a clay model of a covered cart3; the latter, if really Early
Kuban, demonstrates the use of wheeled vehicles and ox traction on
the slopes of the Caucasus as on the steppes.
Yessen4 insists that none of the metal ware from any Early Kuban
tomb is a local North Caucasian product; all are imports or loot from
more advanced regions south of the range. By the Middle Kuban
period resident or itinerant smiths were producing local types of tools,
weapons, and ornaments, and Oriental imports have disappeared.
The North Caucasian smiths manufactured flat axes, chisels5 with
an incomplete socket, made by folding the butt end round a mandril,
flat daggers the tang of which expands for the pommel,6 shaft-hole
axes with a drooping shaft-hole and long narrow body, and ornaments—
including elaborate versions of the hammer-pin (Fig. 78, 4)—on which
filigree work has been ingeniously imitated by cire perdue casting.
Most of these types recur farther north in the catacomb and con-
temporary shaft graves. Their extension suggests that the rich copper
resources of the Urals were now being exploited. Querns, pestles, flint
sickle-teeth,7 and animal bones attest a regular farming economy to
support the metal-workers and the chiefs.
On the Caucasian foothills, south of the Kuban and the Terek, the
Middle Kuban graves are more varied and more numerous than the
Early Kuban. None are so obviously “royal” as those described above,
but many must belong to small chiefs. The catacomb graves that define
a contemporary local culture extending from near Odessa to the valleys
1 MusJ., XXIII (1933), pis. CXIX, CXX.
2 Hanfiar, 253; Letniskoe, Yessen, SA., XII.
3 : I , loc. cit.
4 “Iz Istoril drevnei Metallurgiya Kavkaza”, IGAIMK., 120 (1935).
5 IGAIMK., 120, 99.
6 SA., XII, Plate, Col. Ill, 3; Rau, Hochergraber, pi. Ill, 3.
7 Hooked metal sickles were being made in Yessen’s phase IV.
154
CULTURE TRANSMISSION OVER EURASIAN PLAIN?
Fig. 82. Pottery ($), weapons and tools (£), and pins (i) from tomb at
Novosvobodnaya.
155
VZeaM#
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
of the Donets, Don, Manyc, and Upper Kuban-Terek and just into
Daghestan (Fig. 81, 2) are really pit-caves under barrows. Most contain
only a single corpse, but some served as family tombs housing as many
as seven persons. There is explicit evidence of one or even two females
having been slain to accompany their lords.1 Round-headed persons
now appear and these perhaps practised annular deformation of the
skull.1 2
Additions to armaments peculiar to the catacomb graves are heeled
battle-axes,3 like Fig. 35, arrow-shaft straighteners, and sling bullets.
The pottery, distinctive of the period, is represented by flat-bottomed
vases profusely decorated with the imprints of cords, whipped or
braided cords, and shells sometimes forming spiral patterns (Fig. 79, i).4
Peculiar to the Manyc and Kuban-Terek group of catacomb graves are
cruciform-footed lamps—shallow saucers, divided into two unequal
compartments and standing on four solid and united feet. They are
richly decorated in the style of the period.
Other characteristic pots and catacomb types recur in shaft graves
in several regions. On the Lower Volga, one grave probably of this
period under a very large barrow contained no less than three carts
with tripartite disc wheels, while a clay model of a covered cart lay
in an “offering place" above the shaft mouth.5
The catacomb type of tomb and its distribution suggest Aegean
inspiration. Cranial deformation had been practised in Cyprus from
neolithic times.6 A few beads of “paste”, presumably fayence, reported
from catacomb tombs and copper imitations of winged beads (Fig. 78,2)
might be derived from the same quarter. A hoard of metal objects from
Cetkovo near the mouth of the Dniepr,7 probably assignable to this
period, comprises double-axes, presumably of Minoan or Helladic
manufacture. Conversely, the unfinished battle-axe from the Early
Macednic site of H. Mamas (p. 68) belongs to a distinctively South
Russian family first appearing in the catacomb phase. On the other
hand, the cross-footed lamps are absurdly like Starcevo forms from
Moldavia and Hungary (Fig. 46) and still more the later Vucedol type.
Moreover, the “pit-caves” of the Vucedo culture at Vucedol are rather
like catacomb graves.
1 Artsikovskii, Osnovy Arkheologii (1954), 75-
a SA.j IV, 122; XI (1949), 327; KS., VIII, 86; cf. Dingwall, Artificial Cranial De-
formation.
3 ESA., VIII, 61; in Cis-Caucasia Yessen attributes these to phase IV.
4 Popova, SA„ XXII (1955), 20-60 distinguishes six local varieties, some not repre-
sented in catacomb tombs at all.
5 SA., X (i948), 147-56.
6 Angell in Dikaios, Khirohitia (London, 1953).
7 ESA., II (1932).
156
CULTURE TRANSMISSION OVER EURASIAN PLAIN?
But if the chiefs of the pastoral clans were imitating the fashions of
TEgean colonists on the Black Sea coasts, nothing of precise dating
value has come from their tombs. The battle-axe from H. Mamas
alone could be invoked to justify a partial synchronism between the
Middle Kuban-Catacomb period and the Early iEgean.
The actual Oriental imports in the Early Kuban tombs are not
incompatible with such a dating, but are all too long-lived to confirm
it. The transverse axe from Maikop is a type of undoubtedly Meso-
potamian origin, but was current from 3000 B.c. for nearly two mil-
lennia.1 The type was being cast in clay moulds at Shah Tepe in Trans-
caspia,1 2 3 while axe-adzes of the Maikop variant were being similarly
manufactured in the contemporary settlement of Hissar III.® The
grey ware from Maikop likewise recalls Iranian fabrics of the Hissar III
phase. There too the ladles, bidents, and drill-bit from Novosvobodnaya
can be paralleled,4 but just as well in the Early Sumerian metal-work
of Ur. Only the hammer-pins are more illuminating, for the type is
comparatively rare. In Anatolia, gold specimens occur in the Royal
Tombs of Alaca,5 at Ahlatlibel, in Troy Ilf., and in the Middle Helladic
Greece. Moreover, bone hammer-pins have been found in a Danish
passage grave of Northern IIIc and in Central European graves of
Danubian III or IV. In time the Pontic pins should come at least
between the Anatolian and the Central European examples.
Now the rare gold pins from the treasures of Anatolian princes may
well be luxury versions of a Pontic type. If so, their absolute date—
certainly about 2000 b.c.—is a terminus ante quern for the creation
of the type in South Russia. Hammer-pins are not attested before the
Middle Kuban phase in Cis-Caucasia and mark the end of the yamno
period of the steppes. Thus the beginnings of the Ochre Grave culture
should go back well into the third millennium. So too yamno graves in
Eastern Poland had been dug before the dry Sub-Boreal climate had
promoted the formation of black earth.
Only in the light of these chronological considerations can possible
contributions from the Steppe societies to the development of European
culture farther west be evaluated. That they did really transmit ideas
westward is proved by the hammer-pins just mentioned and by the
1 Childe, NLMAE., 159.
2 Arne, Excavations at Shah Tepe (Sino-Swedish Expedition, Pub. 27, Stockholm,
1945). 258.
3 Schmidt, Excavations at Tepe Hissar, 1931-3 (Philadelphia, 1937), *85; actual
axe-adzes of this precise type are known from Uzbekistan (KS., XXXIII, 1950, 152)
and the Indus valley.
* Schmidt, op. cit.
5 Hamit Zubeyr Kosay, Alaca Hoytik Kazisi, 1937-9 (Ankara, 1951), pi. 135, 68-9;
cf. Germania, XXXIII (1955), 240-2, and pp. 44, 183 here.
157
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
animal sceptre-heads from Romania (p. 103); one of these came from
an ochre grave in the Dobrudja1 and there is another from Cis-Caucasia.2
Yet early Central European metallurgy cannot be proved to owe any-
thing to the Caucasian school. To derive the great family of Transyl-
vanian axe-adzes from the single Maikop specimen seems far-fetched.
Nor are the later Hungarian shaft-tube axes obviously related to the
Maikop-Novosvobodnaya type and its Middle Kuban derivatives.
Even at Usatova no types are distinctively Caucasian, and at Mikhail-
ovka metal had been worked in the first settlement perhaps before
makers of yamno pots arrived there in the third.
Wheeled vehicles, horses, and even sheep are in a different category.
Genuine ochre graves under round barrows in Romania, Eastern
Slovakia,3 and Eastern Poland4 do attest infiltrations of herdsmen from
the steppes into the zone of temperate forest. But the position of these
graves in the Danubian sequence is still undetermined. Further west
cord-ornamented pots from barrow-burials5 and globular amphorae
from porthole cists have been claimed at once as indications of a wider
expansion and as proofs that the steppe folk themselves came from
Germany!
For the moment it will suffice to insist that there is no evidence
for an origin in Central Asia. Relations can indeed be traced right to
the Yenesei. There the earliest steppe culture, termed Afanasievo,6
is characterized by ovoid vases resembling those from European
yamno graves; but they seem later, being accompanied by catacomb
types; and they accompany skeletons of Europeoid type. At the same
time the ovoid yamno pots are strikingly like those made by the
hunter-fisher folk of the Eurasian taiga from the Baltic to Lake Baikal.
But these hunter-fishers were mostly Lapponoid, the Steppe herdsmen
Europeoid.
Battle-Axe Cultures
All the cultures that emerge round the fringe of the territories colonized
by Dniestro-Danubian peasants on the wooded North European plain
from the Middle Dniepr to the Lower Rhine exhibit so many common
features that they may be designated by a single name, Battle-axe
cultures. That does not imply that all are branches of a single culture.
By divergences in burial rites, armament, and pottery we may dis-
1 Dacia, VII-VIII (1937-40), 81-91.
2 KS., XLVI (1952). 48-53*
3 Slovenski Dejiny, 64-6.
4 Ksiega Pamietkowa, 141-95; Swiaiowit, XVI (1934-35), 117-34.
6 Shaft graves under barrows without pottery may, however, be earlier even in Saxo-
Thuringia. Festchr. d. Rom-Germ. Zentralmuseums, III (Mainz, 1953). 168.
Kiselev, Drevnaya Istoriya Yuzhnoi Sibiri (Moskva, 1951).
158
CULTURE TRANSMISSION OVER EURASIAN PLAIN?
tinguish a number of cultures, of which the most important are:
(i) the Single Grave culture of Jutland with relatives in North-West
Germany and Holland; (2) the Swedish Boat-axe culture with exten-
sions east of the Baltic; (3) the Saxo-Thuringian or ‘'Classical” Corded
Ware culture; (4) the Oder culture; (5) the Middle Dniepr culture;
and (6) the Fatyanovo groups in Central Russia.
All these cultures were based primarily on stock-breeding and hunt-
ing, but always combined with cereal cultivation. In all groups at
least the earliest graves contain a single skeleton1 buried in the con-
tracted position. Timber linings to the grave pit have been observed in
groups 1, 2, 3, and 6. Save in groups 2, 4, and 6, the grave was normally
surmounted by a barrow. Grave goods common to all groups include
stone battle-axes, necklaces of bored teeth, and a pottery drinking-
vessel that may be termed a beaker and that may everywhere be
ornamented with cord-impressions. All the battle-axes in this series
are characterized by drooping blades—that is the blade expands only
downwards in contrast to the symmetrical splay of Baden and poly-
gonal battle-axes. Though each group is distinguished by peculiar
local types, in nearly every area are to be found specimens of a simple
type, like a stone version of Fig. 63, 1, and at least in Jutland these
are stratigraphically, as well as typologically, the oldest.2 Finally,
on all early drooping-bladed battle-axes a longitudinal ridge imitates
the seam of a casting and reinforces the metallic impression given by
the splayed blade though the original model were antler.3
North Sea-Baltic Battle-Axe Cultures
Towards the western extension of the plain between the Vistula and
the Rhine the pastoral societies represented by barrow cemeteries
were juxtaposed to and contrasted with more sedentary farmers.
After such farmers had already reached Denmark, a herding group
who sometimes decorated their funnel-breakers (Fig. 79, 5) with cord
imprints had cleared tracts of Denmark and Southern Sweden for
pasture in Late Atlantic times. They do not seem to have settled
permanently, since forests soon returned and smothered the pastures
they had cleared.4 A second and more drastic clearance by fire was
made in Jutland, and this time no regeneration of forest followed.5
A new wave of herdsmen had colonized Jutland, and their free-grazing
1 Save for occasional sati burials of a male and female.
2 Ayrapaa, ESA., VIII (1933), 5; Glob, Aarb0ger (1944), I8,‘ Forssander, Bootaxt., 56.
3 Childe, ESA., IX (1934), 156-67.
* Troels-Smith, A arboger (1953), p. 178, below.
8 Troels-Smith in Mathiassen, JDyrholmen (1942), 175-6.
159
-
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
stock ate up the young tree seedlings. Archseologically these graziers
are known only by little cemeteries of barrows, and so they are termed
the Single Grave folk.
In Jutland the Single Grave folk1 replaced all remnants of the
Gudenaa hunter-fishers and came to occupy the interior of the peninsula
to the exclusion of the Megalith-builders, but never engaged in that
commerce the results of which allow the several phases of Megalithic
culture to be arranged in the general scheme of prehistoric chronology.
Contact between the two groups was, however, sufficiently frequent to
allow the chronology for the Northern Stone Age, set forth on p. 176,
to be applied also to the Battle-axe cultures. A reliable chronology of
these cultures’ own development can in turn be based upon successive
interments under the same barrow, as on the Pontic steppes.
The oldest graves (Bottom Graves or Undergrave), timber-lined
pits2 dug in virgin soil and designed to hold a single contracted corpse,
contain the finest battle-axes (often very metallic looking) and beakers
with an S profile decorated with cord imprints round the neck (Fig. 83).
Next, in graves on the ground surface (Ground Graves or Bundgrave),
large enough to hold an extended skeleton, the axes deteriorate and
the beakers are decorated with incised herring-bones. Finally, the
Upper Graves (Overgrave) in the body of the mound contain flower-
pot vases decorated with rouletted zig-zags, degenerate axes, and even
flint daggers such as are found in the latest megalithic tombs. They
denote the fusion of the two cultures, with that of the Battle-axe folk
triumphant.
The furniture of the Upper Graves shows that the latest phase of
the Battle-axe culture in Denmark falls into Northern period IV. The
prior development represented by only two or three interments in the
same barrow cannot cover a vast number of years—indeed perhaps
only three generations. But it begins already during Northern Illb or
IIIc.3
In Sweden4 separate graves containing contracted skeletons, but
not surmounted by barrows, are contrasted to the collective tombs
of the agricultural megalith-builders and to the extended burials of
a native food-gathering population. They are furnished at first with
battle-axes, gouges of flint or greenstone, facetted polishing stones,
and shallow beakers decorated round the neck with cord imprints.
The battle-axes (Fig. 83), termed boat-axes, are always provided with
1 Brondsted, Dcmmarks, I, 2x5 ff.; Aarb0ger (1944).
2 Sometimes encircled by an annular ditch, A arbeger (1944), 170.
3 Glob, Aarb0ger (1944), 207, implicitly dates the beginningto M.N.IIb (Ilia), Becker,
Acta. Arch., XXV (1954), i*4> I27> explicitly to M.N.III (IIIc).
4 Forssander, Die schwedische Bootaxtkultur (Lund, 1933).
l6o
CULTURE TRANSMISSION OVER EURASIAN PLAIN?
a shaft-tube which gives them a very metallic look. Indeed, a copper
boat-axe was found in East Russia, but the tube might be suggested
by the tine stump through which the shaft-hole of some antler axes
DANMARK•
SVERIGE
UNbtmAVL
JdSDALA-SMDCT
BUNDGMVZ
muim-SKCDCT
Fig. 83. Pottery and battle-axes from the Single Graves of Jutland (left)
and Sweden (right). After Fv, 1922 (tV) •
has been bored. Pottery of this type has been found associated with
that in vogue about the middle of the Passage Grave phase (Northern
IIIc), while later graves containing rouletted vases like the bottom
row in Fig. 83 admittedly belong to Northern IV. Very similar graves
with just the same kind of battle-axes are found in Norway1 and on
1 Hinsch, "Yngre steinalders stridsokskulturer i Norge”, Bergen Universitets
Arbok (1954), No. 1.
L l6l
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
the opposite coasts of the Baltic in Esthonia and Finland. The dis-
tribution of these graves, confined to South-Western Finland with a
sharp frontier between them and the encampments of the native
hunter-fishers, leaves no doubt that the Boat-axe folk were intruders.1
On the heathlands of North-West Germany and Holland2 many
barrows (two dated by radio carbon to 2480 and 2240 b.c.) covering
Single Graves reveal an extension of the Battle-axe cultures to the
English Channel. Many barrows are demarcated by a ring of upright
posts; some, that may belong to period IV, cover small mortuary
houses3 and so may rank as chieftains’ tombs. The earlier graves are
furnished with battle-axes akin to Jutland types, but less finely worked,
and S beakers, bearing cord or herring-bone ornament, and exceptionally
also with amphorae of Saxo-Thuringian form. But the Battle-axe folk
here came into contact with local Megalith-builders (p. 192) and Bell-
beaker folk from the west and developed hybrid cultures. S beakers are
not seldom found with the later burials in megalithic tombs; from the
Bell-beaker group the Battle-axe folk took over their bow and the
wrist-guards appropriate thereto and even adopted the roulette
technique for ornamenting their beakers and spread the designs in
zones over the whole vase-surface in the style regularly applied on
Bell-beakers. Nevertheless, the Battle-axe component remained
dominant in the resultant fusion.
Despite their intimate contact with the metal-using westerners, the
Battle-axe folk in North-West Germany and Holland remained con-
tent with a neolithic equipment throughout period IV. They managed
at times to import Danish amber and English jet, but failed to secure
regular supplies of metal. However, a flat axe of copper was found with
an S beaker in a cremation grave at Sande near Hamburg.4 This grave
incidentally forms part of a regular umfield which is perhaps the
earliest example of such a cremation cemetery in Northern Europe,
though no earlier than the Bronze Age urnfields of Kisapostag in
Hungary.
Battle-axe cultures arrive later on the Danish islands where the
Megalith-builders were firmly established, and are represented prin-
cipally by intrusive elements in late Passage Graves and only rarely by
true separate graves.5 The battle-axes approximate to the later Jutland
1 SM. (1952), 22-5; cf. SMYA., XXXII, i, 152 ff. For Esthonia, see Gerasimov,
Litsa, 396-9; the skulls closely resemble those from Pontic yamno graves.
2 van Giffen, Die Bauart der Einzelgraber; Stampfuss, JungneoL Kuliuren; NNU.t II
(1928), 20; Albrecht, "Die Hugelgraber der jiingeren Steinzeit in Westfalen”, Westfalen,
XIX (1934), 122 ff-I Glasbergen, Palcsohistoria, V, VI.
8 See e.g. Off a, I (1936), 62-77. 4 Kiel-Festschrift (1936), 79.
5 Aarbeger (1936), 145 ff., for parallels from Holstein, see Mannus, XXVII (1935), 60;
cf. Brondsted, Danmarks, I, 269-75, and Acta Arch., XXV, 74-6.
162
CULTURE TRANSMISSION OVER EURASIAN PLAIN?
or even Swedish types. The funerary pots are squat S beakers, recurving
at the rim and ornamented all over with rouletted zig-zags or wavy
ribbons executed with a comb, clearly inspired by the Bell-beaker
style. Indeed, the Battle-axe folk who reached the islands probably
brought with them the Bell-beaker culture’s bows and wrist-guards
and arrow-straighteners.
Saxo-Thuringian Corded Ware and its Congeners
Food-gatherers undoubtedly survived from mesolithic times on the
heaths and boulder clays of Central Germany and on the sandy lands
farther east fringing and interrupting the loss. But here Battle-axe
Fig. 84. Saxo-Thuringian corded ware (r1ff).
cultures represent neither the first food-producers—those were the
Danubians (pp. 105, 118)—nor yet the sole result of the acculturation
of residual food-gatherers or of the internal development of Danubian
society itself. The most important—the Saxo-Thuringian to whose
pottery alone the term Corded Ware was originally applied—emerges
in Central Germany and Bohemia as only one among several groups,
all more pastoral and more warlike than any Danubians.
Its distinctive cemeteries of barrows or flat graves are concentrated
in the Saale basin, but extend south-east into Central Bohemia and
westward to the Rhineland and even Central Switzerland. While
common enough on the loss, Saxo-Thuringian barrows are still more
163
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
prominent on heaths and uplands, as if hunting and stock-breeding
had been the foundations of the economy. Yet the cemeteries are too
extensive to belong to nomads, and grain imprints on vases1 prove
some sort of cultivation.
Characteristic of Saxo-Thuringian corded ware is the conjunction of
amphorae (Fig. 84, 1-3) with the usual beakers which here have an
ovoid body contrasted with a long straight neck (Fig. 84,4-7). Ornament
is effected, as usual, on the earlier vases by cord impressions which
then later give place to stamped herring-bone patterns (Fig. 84, 3).
Equally distinctive is the faceted battle-axe (Fig. 85, 1), though this
is not often found in graves and then not with the earliest pottery.2
Its peculiar form may show some influence from spiked club-heads3
of mesolithic ancestry (the Vogtland type), but stray copper battle-
axes exhibit much the same form4 and the influence of antler weapons
is admitted. Actual antler axes, asymmetrical stone axes like Danubian
“ploughshares”, almond-shaped celts of flint or greenstone mounted
as adzes (one was found thus mounted in an antler haft) and occasional
spheroid mace-heads or rough flint daggers also served as weapons.
Small rings of copper and even spirals of poor bronze sometimes
served as ornaments. But though these were allegedly made from local
1 JST., XIV, 30; XXIV, 115. 2 Forssander, Bootaxthultur, 146.
3 Mannus, XXV (1933), 271-82. 4 E.g. Danube, fig. 92.
164
CULTURE TRANSMISSION OVER EURASIAN PLAIN?
ores,1 the Saxo-Thuringians remained content with a neolithic equip-
ment and armoury. The best evidences for trade of any kind are a
carving in Sammland style and a few other amber beads. Discs
made from local shells but ornamented with a cross1 2 constitute the most
distinctive additions to the usual bored-teeth necklaces. One man,
buried with a herring-bone beaker and a tanged copper spear-head
or dagger, had worn a hammer pin of Pontic type as a head ornament.3
Normally the Saxo-Thuringians were interred in simple pit graves,
rarely in wood-lined shafts, by no means always covered by barrows.
North of the Unstrut, modest megalithic cists, measuring up to 3*5 m.
by 2-25 m., were often used as collective sepulchres.4 The practice was
presumably borrowed from adjacent Northern or Horgen megalith-
builders (p. 190), but might have been inspired from the Kuban5 since
some are divided by a porthole slab as in Fig. 81, 1. Trephined skulls
occur in both Central German and Bohemian graves. In some tombs,
mostly late and more often in Western than in Central Germany, the
bodies have been burned. Exceptionally the cremated remains lay in
wooden mortuary houses.6 The latter prove that some Saxo-Thuringian
groups were led by chiefs and that the herdsmen lived in substantial
houses with at least a porch in addition to a living-room.
The later phases of the Saxo-Thuringian culture admittedly last
into period IV, and grave-groups7 establish synchronisms with Globular
Amphorae and Walternienburg 2 in period III. A beginning in period II
might be deduced from corded ware sherds in Danubian village-sites
and faceted battle-axes associated in hoards with shoe-last celts, but
the associations are not very reliable.
Westward, burials under barrows accompanied by corded beakers
and amphorae and faceted battle-axes document an extension of Saxo-
Thuringian culture to the Rhine. Beyond it in Switzerland, in the latest
occupation levels of the neolithic Alpine lake-dwellings, sherds of
corded ware mark the replacement of the Middle Neolithic Horgen
population or the superposition thereon of a pastoral aristocracy such
as we met at Usatova. Eastward, too, barrow-burials if accompanied
by cord-ornamented vases that could be derived from amphorae like
Fig. 84, 1-3, are likewise attributed to colonists from Saxo-Thuringia.
1 Nbl. f. d. V., X (1934), I46: XIV, 73; Witter, Die dlieste Erzgewinnung in nord-
german. Lebenskreis.
2 PA., XL (1934-35). 21.
3 Behrens, JMV., XXXVI (1952), 52-65.
4 Mannus, XXVIII (i936). 363.' Nbl. f. d. V., IX (i933)» 93-
5 Forssander, Bootaxtkultur, 164; Arsberdt. (1937-38), 38.
6 Germania, VI (1922), no (Haldorf near Cassel); Mannus, VI, Erg.-Bd., 214 (Sarmens-
torf, Switzerland).
7 Altschles., V (1934), 37; Mannus, XXVIII, 376.
165
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
So in Sammland1 are graves furnished with amphorae and beakers, and
in a couple of cases with bone hammer-pins, while at least three faceted
battle-axes are reported from the province. Here corded ware is found
also in the substantial houses of farmers who combined cultivation
and the breeding of cattle, sheep, and pigs with hunting, fowling, and
fishing with bone harpoons.2 But with the supposedly Saxo-Thuringian
pots go other vases that may represent an East Baltic version of the
Erteb0lle or First Northern culture.
Fig. 86. Zlota pottery. After Kozlowski.
On the Polish loss lands within the great elbow of the Vistula,
already intensively colonized by Danubians by period II, corded
beakers and amphorae are associated with Oder flower-pots, handled
cups, funnel-necked beakers, and globular amphorae that elsewhere
denote distinct groups, in the Zlota culture (Fig. 86) .3 Extensive
cemeteries of contracted skeletons, generally in flat graves, sometimes
1 Killian, Die HaffkUstenkultur (Bonn, 1955). 8 Altschles., V, 62.
8 Childe, Danube, 152; Kozfowski, Mlodsa, 66; WA., VIII, 98; IX, 34.
l66
CULTURE TRANSMISSION OVER EURASIAN PLAIN?
in pit-caves, mark the population as sedentary. Ritual burials of cattle,
pigs, and horses demonstrate the economic importance of these domestic
animals. Battle-axes are not very often included among the grave goods,
but such as occur are typologically early.
In Eastern Moravia1 one barrow at Nemetice covered a shaft grave
containing an amphora and a beaker, and another barrow one furnished
with a faceted battle-axe. But other graves here, as also at Drevohostice
and Prusinovice, contained battle-axes of Silesian type (Fig. 85, 3) and
keeled mugs with cylindrical necks and strap handles derived from the
Jordanova group; others again Bell-beakers.
Then in East Galicia2 some barrows, girt with a circular trench and
heaped after the black earth’s formation—and therefore later than
those mentioned on p. 166 above—cover graves containing corded
amphorae and beakers and copper trinkets. So do the flat graves of the
Tomaszow culture3 forming large cemeteries and representing a sedent-
ary population extending across the Carpathians into the Nitra valley
of Slovakia.4 These burials are furnished with segmented fayence
beads like those from the Tisza-Maros region (p. 128) and occasional
round-heeled triangular daggers. The Tomaszdw cemeteries therefore
extend over period IV.
Still farther east the corded ware from Usatova (p. 145) has been
claimed as evidence that the pastoral aristocracy there superimposed
on Tripolye peasants was of Saxo-Thuringian extraction! Even the
Middle Dniepr culture5 has been regarded as an offshoot of the Saxo-
Thuringian. “Amphorae” do no doubt occur in the urnfield of Sofiivka6;
among the grave goods associated with 141 cremations are also stone
battle-axes, flat axes and daggers of copper, flint celts and sickles, and
vases painted in late Tripolye style (as at Usatova). Barrows of this
culture, however, do not seem to have contained amphorae; the beakers
are sometimes ovoid as in yamno graves (Fig. 79, 3), more often basket-
shaped (Fig. 79, 2).
The Oder and Marschwitz Cultures
On the other hand, between these alleged outposts of Saxo-Thuringian
culture and its centre on the Saale-Elbe intervene other groups dis-
tinguished by corded ware and battle-axes of quite different forms.
1 Pravek, V (1909), 56-130; Real., s.v. Drevohostice.
2 Ksiega Pamietkowa, 141-9; Swiatowit, XVI (1934-35), 117-44; Sulimirski, "Die
schnurkeramischen Kulturen”, 3-5.
3 Kostrzewski, Prehistoria, 183; Swiatowit, XIX (1946-47), 105 ff.
4 Material from 300 graves at Nitra, unpublished.
5 Briusov, OSerki, 215-20; KS., XVI (1947).
8 Arhh. Pam., IV (1952), 112-21; Arhheologiya, Kiev, VIII (1953), 94-101,
167
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DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
The Oder culture in Brandenburg shares with the Saxo-Thuringian the
usual beaker, but is distinguished by the absence of amphorae and
the presence of cylindrical ‘‘flower-pot” vases, sometimes with ledge-
handles.1 Such are found in pit graves, occasionally under barrows and
at least once containing red ochre, but also in slab cists of Central
German type. Other grave goods include small battle-axes, flint adzes
with a pointed-oval cross-section, and Danubian "plough-shares” as
in Saxo-Thuringia. While occasionally associated with Globular
Amphorae or Waltemienburg 3-5 pottery (p. 193), a few bronze orna-
ments and Scandinavian flint daggers2 show that the Oder culture
lasted well into period IV.
In the Marschwitz culture of Silesia and Moravia this persistence is
more amply demonstrated. The graves contain flower-pots of Oder
form, but these are accompanied by pouched jugs, decorated with
cord-impressions, but of early Unetice shapes (Fig. 72, 1). With them
go battle-axes made of Sobotka serpentine3 (Fig. 85, 3), rather like
the Fatyanovo form but also wrist-guards, derived from the Beaker
folk, and even bronze ornaments. The whole group occupies economic-
ally as well as geographically an intermediate position between the
Bronze Age Unetician culture of Bohemia and the still neolithic culture
of the middle and lower Oder.
The Fatyanovo Culture4
In the forest zone of Central Russia the first reliable indications of the
neolithic economy are afforded by bones of domestic cattle, swine,
sheep, goats, and horses, and grain-rubbers from graves of the Fatya-
novo cycle of cultures. These have been divided into three local
groups which differ in age as well as in spatial distribution, by
Kritsova-Grakova.6 The earliest is the Moscow group on the Oka and
Kliazma, next the Yaroslav group on the Upper Volga to which the
eponymous cemetery belongs. The Cuvas group on the lower Kama
near the confluence of that river and the Oka with the Volga should
begin latest.
The graves, never surmounted by barrows and normally containing
one contracted skeleton, rarely a male and female together, occasionally
cremations,6 form cemeteries of half a dozen to a score, and occur both
1 Sprockhoff, Mark-Brandenburg, 60 ff., 160; Mannus, XXVIII, 374.
2 Forssander, Ostskandinav., 60; Bolim, Bronzezeit Mark-Brandenburg, 30.
3 PrzegA., VIII (1949), 256.
4 Tretyakov, IGAIMK., 106, 126-8; SA., II 32; cf. FM. (1924), x ff. Hausler,
Wissenschaftliche Zts. d Martin-Luther Universitat, Halle-Wittenberg, V (1955-56), H. 1
(Arbeiten aus d. Inst. f. Vor- u. FrUhgeschichte, 5) gives a convenient German summary
of the Russian literature.
5 KS., XVI (1947), 22-32. 9 Problemy GAIMK. (1934), Nos. 11-12,
l68
CULTURE TRANSMISSION OVER EURASIAN PLAIN?
in the low-lying basins, long occupied by the hunter-fishers, and also
on the uplands right to the Volga-Oka watershed, where the gatherers
had never settled- This extension is itself a symbol of the new economy
since the uplands are better suited to tillage and grazing than the
chilly vales,1 but it was possible only with aid of the polished flint celts
that occur alike in men’s and women’s graves,2 since the new territory
was densely wooded. At the same time bones of pike and teeth of bear,
wolf, fox, lynx, and reindeer, as well as shells, used for ornaments,
attest a persistence of the old economy of the Forest.
But now cattle-raising provided a prize for more serious warfare
than the hunter-fishers had indulged in, and so the graves are furnished
with an armoury of weapons strange to the older forest dwelling-places.
Fig. 87. Fatyanovo battle-axe and Finnish boat-axe ($).
Stone battle-axes accompany every male interment. The finest, the
classical Fatyanovo axes (Fig. 87, 1) are confined to the Yaroslav
group; some of the rest can be treated as degenerations of these,8 but
at least one, from the Trusovo cemetery in the Moscow4 group, belongs
to the heeled type proper to the Catacomb culture of the steppes.
Another grave contained a pair of arrow-shaft straighteners,5 yet
another a Pontic hammer-pin. In chieftains’ graves in the Yaroslav
and Cuvas groups copper shaft-hole axes accompany or replace the
stone weapons, but miniature clay battle-axes were buried with
children in the Yaroslav group.8
Flint strike-a-lights with tinder too were sometimes7 buried with the
dead. Perforated clay discs, some 5*5 cm. in diameter,8 are doubtless
model wheels and attest familiarity with wheeled vehicles.
1 SA., II, 33-5. 2 TGIM., XII (1941), 125.
3 As by Ayrapaa, ESA., VIII, 16-23. 4 S^4., IV, 302. 5 SA., XXII, 120.
3 TGIM., VIII, 63. Showing that the models from Mikhalic and Tripolye sites are
not necessarily ritual objects!
» TGIM., XII, 132. 8 SA., VI, 79.
169
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
The numerous pots tend to be globular, provided with flat bases,
sometimes ornamented, and distinct necks, but never with handles;
so none could be called an amphora! In the Moscow group early vases
are ornamented with cord impressions (Fig. 88, i); elsewhere combs
or other stamps were used.
3
Fig. 88. Fatyanovo pottery of the Moscow, Yaroslav, and Cuvas groups.
Peaceful if irregular commerce brought the Fatyanovo warriors
occasional amber beads,1 silver earrings, disc-pendants, lock-rings, cuff
armlets, and neck-rings of copper.
In the Vaulovo cemetery two rich graves, each containing male and
female skeletons buried together and furnished with copper shaft-hole
axes, surely belong to chieftains. Graves in the same cemetery, con-
taining respectively the skeleton of a boar and that of a kid, suggest
to Krainov2 the totems of two clans.
A clue to the relative position of the Central Russian cultures in
the general sequence is given by the Catacomb types; they establish
a partial synchronism between the Moscow group and the Catacomb
phase on the Steppes. Kritsova-Grakova8 uses the cuff-armlets from
Mytiscensk to establish a synchronism between the Yaroslav group
and Unfetice; though the agreement is not exact, Danubian IV should
be an upper limit for the Yaroslav group.
The copper axes from the Yaroslav cemeteries approximate closely
to those included in the hoards found at Seima and Galic4 (Fig. 89).
These presumably represent southern imports intercepted by the
Fatyanovo population that must have controlled the fur trade so
important in the first millennium B.c. But both hoards contain types
that would be more appropriate to the srubno phase in the Pontic
sequence. But by that time the Cuvas version of the Fatyanovo
culture was developing into the fully metal-using Abasevo culture.
1 TGIM., VIII, 70. 2 TGIM., XII (1941). 119, 135-7.
* KS., XVI, 30. « ESA., II, 137 ff.
170
CULTURE TRANSMISSION OVER EURASIAN PLAIN?
Bader and other Russian prehistorians1 in the ’thirties regarded the
Fatyanovo culture as a development of the native culture of local
hunter-fishers to exploit the new sources of food made available by
the introduction of cereals and domestic stock. These were admittedly
introduced from outside into the woodland zone of Central Russia.
Anthropometric studies of the Fatyanovo populations by Trofimova2
have subsequently shown that the cultivators and stock-breeders
themselves must be immigrants; for the skulls, Europeoid or Medi-
terranean, are in sharp contrast to those of the autochthonous hunter-
fishers, which are Lapponoid. Briusov3 proposes to derive the Moscow
group at least from the Middle Dniepr culture. But, after all, the
origin of the latter is not at all clear, and Briusov himself admits the
possibility of a more western origin for the Yaroslav group. German
and many other Western prehistorians, emphasizing—and perhaps
exaggerating—the similarities of the classic Fatyanovo pots to Saxo-
Thuringian and Globular Amphorae, have thence deduced an invasion
of Central Russia by warriors from Central Germany, Scandinavia, or
Sammland.4 But of course the Fatyanovo cultures are not mere trans-
plantations of any one of the known western or southern Battle-axe
cultures and "amphorae” are not necessarily derived from Saxo-
Thuringia. The Fatyanovo battle-axes derive from East Poland.5
Fig. 89. The GaliS hoard, 1-4 (£).
1 SA., II, 30 ff.; Ill, 38 ; IGAIMK., 106, 100 ff.
2 Sovietskaya Etnografiya (1949), 3, 72; (1950), 3, 37.
3 Oierhi, 94.
171
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Origin and Significance of the Battle-Axe Cultures
The cultures of several peoples that in historical times spoke Indo-
European languages could plausibly be derived from those described
in the preceding pages. The list could be further enlarged if cord-
ornamented sherds from Greece, Macedonia, and Thrace (pp. 71, 96),
and battle-axes from Troy and the Caucasus were accepted as evidence
for kindred cultures in the Balkans and Anatolia. Hence, if the several
cultures considered in this chapter be all provincial variants of one
single culture, the latter could be identified with that of the hypothetical
Indo-European parent stock, “Aryans” or “Wiros”.
Many prehistorians have in fact tried to derive all the distinct
cultures from one primary culture whose expansion and local divergence
should account for the emergence of the several distinct cultures that
alone are presented in the archaeological record. By 1910 Kossinna1 had
argued that the postulated primary culture developed in Jutland
through the acculturation of Maglemosians by Erteb0lle immigrants
and megafith-builders, and Aberg elaborated his thesis in 1918.1 2 From
Jutland the bearers of the resultant neolithic culture—the Single Grave
culture—would have spread across Central Europe to the iEgean and
the Caucasus.
Danish prehistorians, however, are unanimous in regarding the
Single Grave culture as intrusive in Jutland. Even German pre-
historians, since the “Versailles Diktat” detached South Jutland from
the Reich, have preferred to transfer the cradle of the Single Grave and
other Battle-axe cultures, and so of the Indo-Europeans, to the more
thoroughly Germanic soil of Saxo-Thuringia!3 There should be the
focus from which the warriors radiated not only to the Balkans and
the Ukraine but also to Sweden, Denmark, and Switzerland!
On the contrary, near fifty years ago J. L. Myres suggested reversing
Kossinna’s migrations and deriving the Single Grave, Saxo-Thuringian,
and other Battle-axe cultures from the Pontic steppes. Borkovskij4
pointed out how well the ovoid beakers from yamno graves could serve
as prototypes for the Central and North European vases. Forssander5 6
inclined to think that the makers of Globular Amphorae (infra, p. 195),
coming from the Caucasus and bringing with them the idea of the
porthole cist, affected the development of the Central and North
1 “Ursprung und Verbreitung der Urfinnen und Urindogermanen”, Mannus, 1-11.
2 Das nordische Kulturgebiet (1918).
3 Most recently by Killian, Die Haffkiistenkultur (Bonn, 1955), who relies, in addition
to battle-axes, on the skeuomorphic pattern impressed or painted on amphorae.
* “Snurova keramika na Ukrajine,” Obzor IX (1930), cf. PA. (1933).
6 jBootaxtkultur, 174, 213.
X72
CULTURE TRANSMISSION OVER EURASIAN PLAIN?
European cultures, which, would still have been rooted in the Saxo-
Thuringian. The discovery of Pontic hammer pins in a Danish passage
grave of Northern IIIc and in more or less contemporary Corded Ware
graves in Central Europe and Sammland, has provided some concrete,
if by no means conclusive, evidence in favour of a Pontic origin. Still
the Ochre Grave culture, the oldest concretely recognizable on the
steppes, on the one hand does not exhibit even in germ all the dis-
tinctive traits common to the Battle-axe cultures, and on the other
hand contains elements not replicated in any of them. In a word, the
Pontic steppes can offer a concrete ancestor for all no more than
Jutland or Saxo-Thuringia.
A satisfactory explanation of the distribution of our battle-axes, of
cord-ornamented vases, and of amphorae decorated like Figs. 42 and
84 in Central Europe, Central Russia, Greece, and the Troad, would
be provided by Sulimirski's postulate of an early herding culture in
the woodlands between the Vistula and the Upper Dniepr. The hypo-
thetical cattle-breeders would, Sulimirski1 suggests, have used wood-
and-leather vessels that, translated into clay, assumed the form and
decoration of the amphorae. They expanded first to Central Russia,
the East Baltic, and the Eastern Balkans, but to Jutland and Saxo-
Thuringia only after adopting the practice of barrow-burial from
Ochre Grave pastoralists who had advanced as far west as the head-
waters of the Vistula, if not farther (p. 158). The main defect of Suli-
mirski’s account is that the assumed East Polish-Byelo-russian culture
is still not directly documented archseologically. But, after all, such
documentation will be hard to find (p. 148), and the presumptive
cradle-land is virtually unexplored.
Marxist prehistorians in the U.S.S.R. have rejected any explanation
of the agreements between the several Battle-axe cultures in terms of
migration or conquest. They would result from parallel or convergent
developments of local societies in accordance with general laws of
social-economic progress. In temperate Europe, with a neolithic equip-
ment, pastoralism combined with hunting was the most productive
rural economy, and with pastoralism are associated a patriarchal
social organization, differentiation of status, and warfare. The Battle-
axe cultures would represent “pastoral tribes separated out from the
mass of agricultural barbarians”. In a remarkable article Kricevskil2
showed how many of the features of the Battle-axe cultures of Danubian
III—even cord ornament on vases and ochre in graves—were explicitly
foreshadowed in Danubian cemeteries and settlements of the preceding
1 PPS., XXI (1955), 108 ff.
8 "Indogermanskil vopros arkheologi6eskirazre§ennyi”, IGAIMK., ioo (1933), 158 fi.
173
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
period. Some such account has the incomparable advantage of economy;
it makes minimal draughts on undemonstrable assumptions and un-
documented entities. It is not incompatible with the belief that “the
battle-axe”—i.e. the copper translation of an antler axe (Fig. 87, 2-3)
and “wheeled vehicles”—concretely the idea of making wooden discs
and mounting local sledges upon them-—were diffused. Only dogmatists
need assume that the battle-axes were brandished by conquering
hordes or that the waggons carried migrating tribes. Yet human agents
were inevitably involved. In neither case do “traders” fit the bill. We
might postulate behind the known Battle-axe and Steppe cultures, a
loose continuum of scattered groups of herdsmen or indeed of hunter-
fishers; for our tangible pastoral groups might have arisen from the
one-sided acculturation of savages, as well as from specialization
among barbarians. Seasonal shifts of pasture or hunting expeditions
would guarantee sufficient intercourse between the several groups for
the transmission of ideas. Such transmission is established for the
period of the fully differentiated Battle-axe and Steppe cultures.
Perhaps it should be postulated earlier to explain the association of
wheeled vehicles with chieftains’ funerals and the spread of plough
cultivation in Central Europe.
m
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CHAPTER X
THE NORTHERN CULTURES
The coveted amber of Jutland, whose magic virtue was appreciated
as far away as Greece by the sixteenth century, attracted a commerce
which brought fresh ideas and foreign manufactures to Denmark.
Thus stimulated, the local farmers developed an exceptionally rich
culture on the fertile morainic soils left by the recent retreat of the
ice-sheets. At the same time extensive peat bogs provide unusually
favourable conditions for the preservation of relics and for the recon-
struction of the environment in which they were made and used.
Finally, since the beginning of the nineteenth century Swedish, and
still more Danish, antiquities have been systematically studied by
successive generations of gifted investigators. By 1812 Thomsen had
established the system of the Three Ages, still used by all prehistorians,
and had divided the prehistoric period of the North into Stone, Bronze,
and Iron Ages. By 1870Worsaae had distinguished an Earlier and a Later
Stone Age that subsequently became Mesolithic and Neolithic respec-
tively. Finally, Montelius divided the Northern Neolithic Age into
four periods—Neolithic I, II, III, and IV—based on the typology of
flint axes (Fig. 90) and megalithic tombs.
175
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
During the 1920s the existence of Montelius’ Neolithic I as an inde-
pendent period was seriously questioned; for it was then represented
solely by flint axes with pointed butts, found without context. The
remaining periods were designated by the names of the megalithic
tombs by which Montelius had characterized them—Dolmen (dyss,
dos), Passage Grave (ganggrift, jcettestuer), and Stone Cist (hallkist)
periods. But since 1945 Danish and Swedish prehistorians1 have
adopted a triple division into Early, Middle, and Late Neolithic (EN,
MN, and LN), each subdivided. The subdivision of Early Neolithic was
originally based on the typology of the funnel-beaker—the most dis-
tinctive vase in the dominant culture which is usually called after it,
not at all euphoniously, the Funnel-Beaker culture (Tnchterbecher or
Tragtbagre kultur—abbreviated TRB culture). But the subdivision
of Early Neolithic had in practice the effect of re-establishing in
somewhat different form a pre-Dolmen phase equivalent to Montelius'
Neolithic I. Hence in the sequel his numeration will be retained albeit
for the sake of brevity alone. Its correlation with other nomenclatures
can be effected with the aid of the following table:
Montelius TRB Tombs Flint Axes, etc.
Northern Neolithic 1 B Early Neolithic B Pointed-butted
II C Dolmens Thin-butted
a III J c d Middle Neolithic I II III IV Passage Graves Thick-butted
IV Late Neolithic Stone Cists Daggers
Montelius’ typological system had been worked out on the basis of
closed finds from the West Baltic coasts and is still substantially valid
there, though no one now supposes that Dolmen, Passage Grave, and
Long Cist mark stages in a self-contained evolution. But his disciples
and imitators have clumsily extended his system beyond the regions
for which it was devised and have used it as a frame of reference into
which cultural phenomena in Central Europe, South Russia, and even
Turkestan must be fitted! From a fog of misconceptions and distortions
they have evoked a “Nordic myth”. The “Nordic” cultures, crystallized
1 Cf. P. V. Glob, Danske Oldsager, II (Copenhagen, 1952).
176
THE NORTHERN CULTURES
in Montelius’ II, would have expanded in periods III and IV till they
reached the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Caucasus.1 These fantasies were
never accepted in Denmark and have recently been emphatically
rejected in Sweden and even Germany. An explicit refutation here is
accordingly superfluous. None the less, it will be convenient to base
our survey on the Danish and Swedish record which is incomparably
more complete, though not necessarily longer or originally richer, than
that from the Continent.
The Early Neolithic Period of the West Baltic
The first farmers to reach Denmark are represented by the bones of
cows and sheep or goats and by sherds bearing impressions of one-corn,
emmer, club, and dwarf wheats and of barley2 found in several votive
deposits, in certain “Ertebolle kitchen middens”, and in one or two
pure domestic sites, all of the Atlantic phase. In all cases the farmers’
archaeological personality is expressed in flat-bottomed funnel-beakers
and amphorae of Becker’s A group. Troels-Smith3 insists that these
pots are made by the same technique of ring-building as the standard
Erteb0lle jars and lamps, though their walls are thinner, and are
associated with the latter in many kitchen-middens. Hence he con-
cludes that the Erteb0lle culture of Late Atlantic times was in fact
the culture of the A group of First Northern Neolithic farmers.
Becker,4 on the contrary, in 1954 described a pure assemblage of
A types—including flat clay discs or baking plates—from a site that
was not a normal kitchen-midden (Fig. 91). So he maintains the con-
trast between intrusive neolithic farmers and survivors of the older
mesolithic population of hunter-fishers. In 1956, therefore, it would be
premature for an English author to try and define too precisely the
economy and the stone industries of the earliest or A group of neolithic
farmers recognized on Danish soil. So much at least is certain.
About 2600 b.c. (according to a radio-carbon estimation) A farmers
were cultivating cereals (including Triticum monococcum and the
hexaploid club wheat Triticum compactum) and breeding domestic
stock. The latter were not allowed to graze freely but were tethered
by day and stalled at night, being fed during winter on leaves—a small
decline in elm pollen, coinciding with the farmers’ appearance, has
been attributed to the provision of winter fodder.5 In the kitchen-
1 E.g. N. Aberg in Das nordische Kutturgebiet, and Reinerth, Chronologie der jiingeren
Steinzeit.
2 Helbaek in A arboger (1954), 202-4.
3 Aarbeger (1953), 5-62. 4 Becker, Aarbeger (i954> published in 1956), 127-97.
8 Aarb0ger (1953), 16-21.
m 177
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
middens, bones of game and fish still predominate. A few polished
flint celts with pointed butts (Fig. 90,1) are the only notable additions
to the mesolithic stone industry.
No graves attributable to phase A have been identified, but votive
deposits in bogs give some indication of the current ideology. They
include beside human and animal bones—presumably from sacrifices
Fig. 91. A-type funnel-beakers (bottom), amphora, “baking plate,” etc. (|).
After Becker.
—amber beads, the magic value of the resin having been recognized
even in Boreal times.
Amphorse and funnel-beakers like the Danish A type have been
found in North-Eastern Germany and Poland.1 They may mean that
the First Northern culture in its A form extended over a wide area
of the wooded plain south of the Baltic.
In Denmark these cultivators with their tethered stock were followed
by other farmers with larger herds who burnt wide tracts of forest for
pasture and plots and cultivated thereon emmer wheat and barley.
A layer of ashes in the bogs, followed by a sharp decline in all tree
pollen, marks the arrival of these B-group farmers.1 2 Doubtless their
1 Aarboger (1947), 205 ff.; (1954), 168-9.
2 Iversen, “Landnam. i Danmarks Stenalder”, Dansk. Geol. Undersog., R. II, No. 66
(1941).
178
THE NORTHERN CULTURES
flocks and herds grazed freely in the clearings, but their masters cannot
have remained very long at any one place since in time the forest
regenerated. Nor did they drive out their precursors. At Havnelev1 in
Zealand a settlement of B farmers is marked by numerous rubbish
pits. In them the bones of cows, sheep or goats, and pigs preponderate
over those of game animals. Polished thin-butted axes were used side
by side with the mesolithic flake axes. The blade tools were inferior to
the Erteb0lle types, but polygonal battle-axes of polished stone (Fig.
92) were already in use. The funnel-beakers were] sometimes decor-
Fig. 92. Tongued club-head, Denmark, polygonal battle-axe, Jordanova (•$?),
and flint axe of Eastern type (J).
ated with cord impressions below the rim (Fig. 79, 5), but were round-
bottomed, as were the contemporary amphorae and collared flasks.
But not far away on the shore at Strandegaard Erteb0lle folk were still
living almost exclusively by hunting, fishing, and collecting with a
mesolithic equipment.
Similarly at Siretorp in Scania2 herding folk, using funnel-beakers
adorned with cord impressions and sometimes exhibiting com imprints,
twice encamped on the same strip of sandy shore. Between the two
periods of herder settlement, Erteb0lle hunter-fishers had occupied
the site. To the B farmers may be attributed a grave at Virring in
Jutland,3 large enough to contain onlya single contracted adult skeleton,
but no bones survived.
1 Mathiassen, Aarb0ger, 1940, 3-16.
2 Bagge and Kjellmark, SV'?’Jv- '-V-tt- 'T939); but cf. Acta Arch., XXII
(1951), 88 ff., where the first ; 1 : to Northern II=E,N.C.
3 Br0ndsted, Danmarks, I, 130, 338.
179
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Pottery appropriate to the B group of First Northern farmer-herders
has been found all over Denmark and right across Southern Sweden
to the east coast.1 On the Continent, B vases are not readily dis-
tinguishable from those just attributed to the A group.
In Northern Neolithic II-—Early Neolithic C the First Northern
culture even in Denmark dissolves into several local sub-cultures.
All are characterized by the same type-fossils—funnel-beakers, collared
flasks, amphorae, thin-butted flint axes, polygonal battle-axes, etc.,
but are mutually distinguished by divergences in pot forms and
decoration and by burial rites. By this time, too, Denmark and Southern
Sweden themselves form only quarters of a larger province eventually
extending from the Vistula to the lower Rhine.
Everywhere farming provided the basis of life, but some Danish
groups followed the practice of their A ancestors in animal husbandry
while others may have grazed stock freely, as in the B phase. By
judicious burning of scrub, using the ashes as fertilizers, substantial
communities could live together for a generation or more. The village
of Barkaer in Jutland2 consisted of fifty-four one-roomed houses
arranged on either side of an open space in two continuous rows, each
85 m. long.
The farmers still used thin-butted axes of flint with rectangular
cross-section and mounted directly on wooden handles, but now also
others of fine-grained rock, sometimes splayed at the blade.3 Numerous
weapons survive—arrows, their shafts polished on stone straighteners
like Fig. 113 and tipped with transverse flint heads, polygonal battle-
axes, and tongued club-heads like Fig. 92. The stone celts and battle-
axes with splayed blades evidently copy metal models. In fact,
many minute scraps of copper were observed at Barkaer while a con-
temporary earth-grave at Salten in Jutland4 contained a bossed copper
disc that can be exactly matched in the graves of Brze£d Kujawski
(p. 123). This import not only established an exact synchronism
between Northern II (EN.C.) and early Danubian III, but also indicates
the source of the metal, already known in Northern Neolithic II,
albeit only as a luxury material.
The pottery of Neolithic II (Fig. 93) is a development of that made
in Neolithic I, but is now more often decorated with pits, ribs, or im-
pressions of whipped cords so as to produce vertical patterns. Variations
in techniques and pattern serve to distinguish three or four local
1 Florin, “Vr&-Kulturen”, Kulturhistonska Studier tillagnade N. Aberg (Stockholm,
1938).
2 FNA. (1949).
> 3 Nordmann, "Megalithic”, fig. 63.
1 Aarb0ger (1947), 250-5.
l80
THE NORTHERN CULTURES
groups.1 As charms and ornaments amber beads, sometimes decorated
in the drill-technique inherited from Maglemose times and strung
together in necklaces of several strands kept apart by spacers, were
worn.
One classical method of disposal of the dead, or perhaps only of
deceased chiefs, which gives its name to the whole period in Denmark,
Fig. 93/Pottery from Danish dysser (J).
was ceremonial burial in a megalithic dolmen or dyss. In its oldest
form a dyss is a small chamber formed by four uprights supporting a
single large capstone, and less than 6 ft. long by 2 ft. wide.2 Such small
chambers sound as if they were designed to contain a single corpse
only; though as many as six skeletons3 have been found in one, they
cannot rank as collective tombs. Later, one end-stone is generally
lower than the remaining uprights, leaving an aperture through which
subsequent burials might be introduced after the completion of the
tomb. A rare and archaic-looking variant of the dolmen is an enclosure
of inward-tilted slabs not supporting a capstone, but converging,4
just as in Portugal. Small polygonal chambers with a rudimentary
passage and rectangular chambers with more than two side-stones
have also yielded relics of the kind described above and are accordingly
classed as dysser by Danish authorities. Dolmens of all types were
normally partially buried by mounds, sometimes round but often long
and rectangular and demarcated by a peristalith of large boulders.
The distribution of dolmens along the Danish coasts indicates a
1 Ibid., 141 ff.
8 Nordmann, "Megalithic Culture", 26.
l8l
2 Aarb0ger (1941), 63-8; (1947), 266.
4 Aarb0ger (1936), 1-8.
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
population of accomplished seafarers. Indeed, both the basis of the
new economy and the metal tools that were imitated in stone might
have reached Denmark by sea. But no regular supplies of metal were
obtained by this or any other route. The economy of the dolmen-
builders is typically neolithic though they lived when societies in
Central Europe or Britain were already in a Copper Age.
But even in Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein people, perhaps
descendant of the B group herders, might be buried in non-megalithic
earth graves accompanied by a typical “dolmen” equipment of thin-
butted axes, collared flasks, etc.1 In such burials one or rarely two
corpses were laid extended on the ground surrounded by a setting
of boulders, as in Fig. 94, and sometimes covered with an elongated
mound (in contrast to “Battle-axe” burials, contracted in a pit under
a round barrow).
In Northern III about the time of the last marine transgression new
influences affected both the architecture of the megalithic tombs and
their furniture. The spacious passage graves that partly replaced the
dolmens were used as collective sepulchres by clans for several genera-
tions; for they may contain as many as a hundred skeletons2 and
pottery of several styles the succession of which serves as a basis for
the subdivision of the period. But owing presumably to the need for
fresh land as old plots became exhausted, the settlements were shifted
1 Forssander (1935-36), 2 if.; NNU., X (1936), 22 1; Aarboger (1936), 15; (1947),
141 ff.; Brandsted, Danmarks, I, 162, 344.
2 Nordmann, "Megalithic Culture”, 28.
182
Fig. 94. Grave 28 at Jordanova. After Seger.
The Danish Passage Graves
THE NORTHERN CULTURES
more often and yield as a rule pottery of only one stylistic phase.1
A settlement of the first phase at Tr0ldebjerg on Langeland2 consisted
of several apsidal huts, 13 to 18 ft. long, and a continuous row of
rectangular buildings with a total length of 71 m. Two of these were
certainly houses, each about 28 m. long and apparently subdivided so
that one end was occupied by humans, the other by cattle. The gabled
roof, about 11 ft. high, sloped down to the ground on one side and on
the other rested on a wall only 6 ft. high. (Obviously these houses have
nothing to do with the iEgean and Balkan megaron type but derive
directly from the Barkaer form.) They could accommodate a household
larger than the "natural family”—i.e. a clan—whose deceased members
might rest in the spacious passage grave.
Hunting was now relatively unimportant. Hexaploid wheat in
addition to one-corn, emmer, and flax were certainly cultivated, but,
as in England, wheat was far more popular than barley.
Specialization in industry is attested by the existence of communities
of flint-miners and by specialized tools such as gouges for the carpenters.
Trade was sufficiently developed to secure for the Passage Grave
builders a certain number of metal tools and ornaments. A hoard found
in Bygholm in Jutland3 and dating from the very beginning of the
period, comprised four flat axes, a dagger with an imitation midrib on
one face, like Fig. 132, 5, and two arm-cylinders. A distribution map
of copper axes in Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein suggests that they
were imported by sea, though most of them must have come from
Hungary.4 Halberds have a similar distribution to axes and certainly
were brought by sea from Ireland;5 Amber was presumably the prin-
cipal export bartered for metal and was very likely worked locally to
form necklaces. Beads reached Brittany, Central France, and the
Iberian Peninsula, and, as we saw, were common throughout Central
Europe in Unetician times. In exchange the Danes obtained hammer-
headed pins of Pontic type6 by phase III. But the supplies obtained by
such barter were quite insufficient to allow metal even to compete
with stone and bone. Even the ornaments imported are mostly inferred
from bone imitations made locally.
The emergence of Battle-axe folk during the period (p. 161), com-
bined with the increased competition for land as the population grew,
intensified militarism. The outstanding weapons are stone double-
1 Mathiassen, Acta Arch., XV, 88; cf. Becker, ib., XXV, 50-66.
2 Winther, Treldebjerg (Rudk0bing), 1935, and Tillaeg, 1938.
3 Nordmann, *''T ?-•••i-'.;. (?'"’?‘?vre”, £g_ g0
4 Forssander, 6\> .? ; '• ?' . io, 51, etc., Kersten, Zur alteren nordischen Bronze-
zeit, 72, 98.
6 Arch., LXXXVI (1936), 277.
8 Aarb0ger (1929), 204.
183
-
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
axes, imitating Aegean metal models transmitted up the Danube
thoroughfare (Fig. 95, 4), flint daggers, disc-shaped mace-heads of
Danubian origin and transverse flint arrow-heads.
The earlier pots, including funnel-necked beakers, are decorated with
patterns executed with whipped or braided cords and arranged vertic-
ally or in panels, thus carrying on the Early Neolithic traditions.1 Still
in the settlement of Tr0ldebjerg the distinctive innovations of deeply
cut or stamped incisions in what Sophus Muller called “the grand
Fig. 95. Pottery (f, ?$•), double-axe (£), and arrow-head (^) from Danish
Passage Graves.
style” and even cardial decoration (p. 353) already appear and with
them new Danubian forms—the pedestalled bowl and the socketed
ladle.2 In a later settlement, like Blandebjerg,3 phase Illb, the tech-
nique of deep incision is completely dominant and is used to form
basketry patterns on angular vases, inspired by basket models (Fig.
95,1) and derived from North-West Germany or the early Walternien-
1 I follow the division established on the basis of settlement finds by Mathiassen in
Acta Arch., XV (1944), 89-97. rather than that of Eckholm, Real., IX, 42; cf. now Lili
Kaelas, Fv. (1951), 352-7.
2 These ceramic type'. -:er to Danubian II in Hungary and Moravia, may
have reached Denmark 1 , the Upper Elbe-Oder region and, if so, would not
justify a synchronism between Northern Ilia and Danubian II as suggested by
Schwabedessin, Offa, XII (1953), 58-64; cf., Milojfiid, Germania, XXXIII (1955), 401-4.
3 Winther, Blandebjerg (Rudkabing, 1940).
184
THE NORTHERN CULTURES
burg group of Central Germany. Next in IIIc the profiles are rounded
off (Fig. 95, 2) and rouletted lines, presumably derived from the Bell-
beakers (p. 227), replace the cardial technique in shading. Finally, in
phase Hid the shapes are further simplified while simple incision or
stab-and-drag lines were preferred to rouletted ones for the sparing
decoration. This, however, includes oculi motives (Fig. 95, 3), recalling
the Copper Age of Almeria.
Of the domestic pots, 50 per cent were decorated in Ilia at Trplde-
bjerg, but the percentage had fallen to 4 per cent at Lindp in Hid.
Still, at all times some vessels were ornamented with pits in the native
Ertebplle tradition, indicating how large a proportion of the old popu-
lation was absorbed in the new farming societies.1 Yet of course un-
absorbed groups of food-gatherers survived.
As in Early Neolithic times, a non-megalithic branch of the First
Northern1 2 culture survived in the succeeding period. But among the
better-known Megalith-builders, soon after the beginning of Northern
III,3 came in the practice of collective burial in a megalithic passage
grave. The latter cannot be regarded as an independent development
from the dyss—such tombs were still used—as Montelius’ disciples
have contended, but reflects fresh influence from the West, explicitly
imitating the corbelled tholos of the Atlantic coasts (p. 215). The
earliest passage graves, standing closest to the models, are polygonal
chambers sometimes with a cell attached, entered through a long
passage and covered with a circular mound. In later versions the
chamber is elongated at right angles to the passage. Passage graves
served of course as family vaults. Some contain as many as a hundred
skeletons. But in others the earlier interments with their gear had been
removed and reburied outside the vault to make room for subsequent
burials. Votive offerings continued to be deposited in bogs during
Northern III, and by this phase, if not before, there is evidence fora
cult of the axe. But at no time did the manufacture of female figurines
in any durable material form part of First Northern ideological activity.
In Middle Neolithic II or III a new group of warlike herdsmen, the
Battle-Axe folk, had invaded Jutland (p. 159), while kindred groups
occupied the Danish islands. Then bands of hunter-fishers4 from the
Scandinavian peninsula began crossing the Belts to win raw flint which
they traded far into Sweden and Norway. They were armed with heavy
1 Forssander, "Gropomerad Megalithkeramik”, Arsberattelse (1930-31), 10-30.
2 Becker, Acta Arch., XXV (1954), 22-5.
3 Kaelas, Fv. (1951), 352-7; Bagge and Kaelas, Acta Arch., XXII (1951), 118;
Becker, Acta Arch., XXV 55-66; Berg, “Klintebakken”, Medd. Langelands Mus,
(Rudk0bing, 1951)*
* Becker, Aarb0ger (1950), 155-251.
185
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
bows from which they could shoot the curious arrow-heads of Fig. 95, 5.
The latter may ultimately he derived from the mesolithic Games point,
but immediately seem to be translations of bone models; for they have
a triangular cross-section more appropriate to bone than to flint work.
Imported objects or copies thereof found, sometimes in stratified
horizons, in passage graves establish the chronological relations of
Northern Neolithic III with cultural sequences in other provinces.
A Bell-beaker, probably of Bohemian manufacture,1 thus provides a
synchronism between Northern IIIc and a late phase of Danubian III;
the metal ware from Bygholm, if of Danubian origin, should not be
very much earlier in the same period. The contemporary fruitstands
and socketed ladles, made locally in the North, cannot then be con-
temporary with their Danubian II analogues, and are in fact associated
with handled cups and tankards derivable from Baden and Bodrog-
keresztur types. At the same time the hammer-pin establishes a quasi-
synchronism with the Middle Kuban and Catacomb phases in South
Russia.
The First Northern Culture on the Continent and Its
Origin
The West Baltic cultures whose development during the local Early
and Middle Neolithic stages has just been surveyed were just regional
variants of a wider culture the unity of which has been typified for
prehistorians by the ubiquity in one form or another of the Funnel
Beaker. As this vase does not yield a euphonious culture name in
English and still less in French, and as almost any open-mouth bowl—
even the "Arpachiya milk bowl" of Mesopotamia in the fourth mil-
lennium1 2—could be called a funnel-beaker (!)—I have substituted the
term "First Northern".
This First Northern culture is far less homogeneous than the Starcevo,
First Danubian, or Tripolye culture. In addition to the Northern
province whose diversity has just been disclosed in the last two sec-
tions, Eastern, Southern, and Western provinces have been recognized
since 1912 but are even less unitary and less fully explored than the
Northern. Yet certain distinctive peculiarities other than ceramic are
common to all four. Everywhere the subsistence economy was mixed
farming combined with hunting and gathering, though there may have
been the variations in animal husbandry that pollen-analysis alone
1 Nordmann, "Megalithic”, 122; Glob, Danshe Oldsager, II, 119, 196; cf. Acta Arch.,
XXV, 80.
2 Childe, NLMAE., pi. XVI, a.
186
THE NORTHERN CULTURES
has revealed in Denmark and more hunting in the Continental than in
the Peninsular provinces. In the South province, positive evidence for
cultivation with the aid of an ox-drawn plough is provided by a clay
model of a pair of yoked oxen from Kreznica Jara near Lublin.1 But it
cannot be proved that plough cultivation was an original trait and not
a secondary borrowing from, for instance, Baden neighbours. Horse
bones have been reported from many settlements but may have
belonged to game animals1 2 since wild horses had roamed the North
European plain since Pre-Boreal times (p. 9). Centrally perforated
clay discs,3 about 4 cm. in diameter, may represent model wheels rather
than spindle whorls, but no vehicles survive.
Hunters used arrows, armed normally with transverse heads but
occasionally also with lozenge-shaped points, and doubtless clubs.
Flint was preferred for axes, but in the East and South provinces these
do not have the rectangular cross-section favoured in the North and
West, but resemble Fig. 92, 3. The material was extensively traded
from Riigen, and in Galicia banded flint was won by regular mining,4
while the village on Gawroniec Hill can properly be described as an
axe-factory.5
Though a trade in flint had been thus early organized, the organiza-
tion did not extend to the distribution of metal, which, though known,
was very little used. So, too, amber ornaments were occasionally worn,
but only in quantities that could have been obtained from local moraines
supplemented by irregular barter. Warlike behaviour is abundantly
attested by stone battle-axes, usually of the polygonal type and always
with symmetrically splayed blades in contrast to the drooping blades
of Battle-Axe cultures.6
In pottery, divergent modifications in the form and decoration of
the ubiquitous funnel-beakers, collared flasks, and amphorae illustrate
divergence of taste between local groups and influences from other
societies. So in the South group the attachment of strap handles or
nipple feet to flasks and beakers, and still more the flanged character
of the handles (Fig. 96, i),7 might have been suggested by Baden.
Basketry ornament, popular in the West group, might be inspired by
Rossen or by the basketry vessels of an hypothetical pre-existing
1 Z Otchlani Wiekow, XVIII (1949). 184; WA., XVII, 120.
2 WA., XVII (1950), 228; cf. Germanenerbe, IV (1939), 240; Hanfiar, Das Pferd, 34-7.
2 WA., XVII, pi. XXXV, 1.
4 WA., VII, 53-4; Krukowski, Krzemionki Opatowskie (Warszawa, 1939). Dawna
Kultum, IV (Wroclaw, 1955) 204.
6 WA., XVII, 143.
0 Jazdrzewski, “Kultura Puhardw Lejkowatych w Polsce” (Bibliotheka Prehist., 2
(Poznan, 1936), 365-8.
* Cf. also WA., XVII, pis. XXXVII-XLI.
187
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
hunter-fisher population. But, as in Denmark, fruitstands and socketed
ladles must be derived ultimately from Danubian II.
In the ideological domain, votive deposits in bogs are reported at
least from the East group. Female figurines were nowhere manu-
factured, but figures of animals were sometimes modelled in clay in
the South group, as in the Baden cultural province. The characteristic
burial rite everywhere was to inter a single corpse extended in an earth
grave—i.e. on the ground surface surrounded by a kerb of boulders.1
Fig. 96. Furniture of a grave at Zastow (f), and collared flask from grave at
Nalenczow (£).
But, save in the South group, some persons—perhaps only “chiefs"—
were interred in stone or perhaps wooden chambers under long or
round barrows. In the East group the Kuyavish graves of Western
Poland1 2 must have been wedge-shaped mounds, up to 80 m. in length,
bordered with stone kerbs and containing the burial near the broader
east end (Fig. 97). West of the Oder,3 trapeze-shaped mounds of more
modest dimensions enclose a cist of slabs without entrance passage
(such are termed long dolmens). In the West group4 long oval or
rectangular mounds bordered with large boulders covered at first
closed chambers and later chambers as long as the barrow generally,
provided with a short entrance passage in the middle of one long side,
and popularly termed Huns’ Beds. These North-West German and
Dutch passage graves were collective tombs, presumably inspired by
1 Jazdrzewski, op. cit.; for Holland, van Giffen in Drenthe (1943), 435.
2 W. Chmielewski, ‘‘Zagadanie Grobowcdw Kujawskich” (Biblioteka Muz, Archeol.,
2), L6dz, 1952. He regards them as collective tombs, but the maximum number of
interments recorded was ten and the skeletons were not buried together in a single
chamber.
3 Sprockhoff, Megalithkultur, 25-31.
* Ibid., 59 fif.; van Giffen, Hunebedden.
188
THE NORTHERN CULTURES
Fig. 97. Kuyavish grave, Swierczyn. After Koziowski.
189
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
the same ideology as their Danish-Swedish counterparts under round
barrows. They contain, like the latter, fruitstands and socketed
ladles, decorated with basketry patterns, but also collared flasks
similarly decorated.
Thus in the West group contradictory chronological conclusions
could be drawn from the tomb types and their furniture. On the
typology established for the North group, the collective tombs, the
basketry ornament on the pottery, and the fruitstands and socketed
ladles would be MN., the collared flasks EN.1 Did the innovations
reach North-West Germany and Holland from the Atlantic coasts
and the Danubian province before they reached Denmark and Sweden?
That would be a priori likely. But still farther south in Westfalia and
Hesse collared flasks appear in long cists with porthole entries identical
with those of the Paris basin (p. 312) and of Sweden in LN. times.1 2
Now the slabs of the cist at Ziischen, Hesse, are carved and the carvings
seem to include representations of ox-carts.3 On the other hand,
among the sparse ceramic finds, two tombs are said to have yielded
minute sherds of Rossen pottery.4 These sherds, if really part of the
tomb furniture, would accord with the collared flasks in making these
West German long cists EN. in terms of the Northern sequence. But
then they would be a whole period earlier than the LN. Swedish tombs
of identical plan!
Now, since in 1910 Kossinna purported to explain the distribution of
funnel-beakers, collared flasks, and amphorse on the Continent as the
result of an expansion of Ur-Indogermanen from Denmark, it has been
tacitly assumed that the Continental cultures characterized by these
vases are later than their nearest Danish analogues of Northern II
(EN.C). Such a relation may still hold good for the West group. But
the imported disc from a Neolithic II grave at Salten (p. 180) now
proves that the South group was by then already established between
the Warta and the Oder. So there is no longer any reason to doubt
that the long barrows covering dolmen-like chambers and earth graves
furnished with funnel-beakers, collared flasks, and amphorse in Poland
and North-Eastern Germany were in fact substantially contemporary
with the Danish dolmens and earth graves of EN.C. In this case the
analogues to Early Neolithic A-B vases, found-—twice under long
barrows—between the Vistula and the Elbe, may be as old as the
1 The flint celts too are thin-butted, but diverge from the Danish forms, Sprockhoff,
NNU., IV (1930), 36.
2 Sprockhoff, Megalithkultur, 59 f.; cf. Westfalen, XIX (1934), 150-7.
3 Mannus, XXV (1933), 131-2; Kuhn, Die Felsbilder Europas (1952), 153-4.
* Sangmeister, Die Glockenbecher . . . (Die Jungsteinzeit in Nordmainischen Hessen,
III), Melsingen, 1951, p. 73 and n. 246.
I90
THE NORTHERN CULTURES
Danish specimens. Thus, though best known from the West Baltic
coasts, the First Northern culture in its earliest manifestations may
already have occupied the whole area from the North Sea to the
Upper Oder, from the Vistula to the Elbe. “The origin of the First
Northern culture” thus means the origin of this widespread complex.
Outside this region no single culture is known that exhibits all the
distinctive traits—ceramic forms, battle-axes, arrow-heads, burial
rites, bog offerings—enumerated above. On the other hand, survivals
of mesolithic Forest culture traditions (transverse arrow-heads, tranchet
axes, antler axes, extended burials, etc.) are conspicuous in the First
Northern neolithic culture. Since even in Boreal times the Forest culture
must have spread more widely on the Continent than the surviving
bone tools can show, and a local invention of pottery cannot be excluded,
the archaeological content of the First Northern culture could be
explained as an autochthonous development of that vigorous and
adaptable culture save for the cereals and domestic stock. The question
of its origin would then be reduced to this: Whence did the Forest-folk
acquire these and learn the arts of cultivating and breeding them?
Of course, pottery might provide some clue. Hinsch1 has convincingly
stated the case for deriving First Northern pottery from the Western
neolithic. Becker,1 2 too, would admit Western—or more precisely
Michelsberg—inspiration in his B-group vases. Troels-Smith,3 how-
ever, insists that the rural economy as well as the pottery of the A
group agrees with that of the Michelsberg and Cortaillod cultures.
Vogt,4 on the contrary, has contended that Michelsberg itself is not
a Western culture but an offshoot of the First Northern. His thesis has
been substantially strengthened by the subsequent publication5 of
baking plates, distinctive of the Michelsberg culture, as an integral
element in the First Northern from its earliest, A, phase. Indeed, the
striking similarity of British and Breton long barrows (p. 325), for
which no satisfying explanation has yet been found in South-Western
Europe, to Kuyavish graves and long dolmens6 might provide an argu-
ment for admitting at least a First Northern element even in the Wind-
mill Hill and Armorican Early Neolithic cultures. Still, the First
Northern is not an offshoot of any known Western culture.
That is not to say it could not spring from some earlier and less-
specialized assemblage from which such Western cultures as Windmill
1 Universitets Oldsaksamling Arbok (Oslo, 1951-53), 140-60.
a Aarbsger (1947), 262.
3 Ibid. (1953). 61.
4 Acta Arch., XXIV (1953), 174-86.
5 Aarb0ger (1954).
6 Antiquity, XXIII (1949), 130-5; PPS., XXI, 96-101.
I9I
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DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Hill and Michelsberg might also have arisen. Or it could be argued
that on the now submerged coasts of the North Sea representatives
of the Forest culture's coastal variant learned farming from pioneer
Western immigrants. That too, however, makes excessive draughts
on the unknown, since neither the Mesolithic coastal culture nor that
of the Western pioneers is tangibly represented in the existing archaeo-
logical record.
On the other hand, First Danubian farmers had demonstrably
spread right to the Baltic coasts between the Oder and the Vistula
and, west of the Elbe, had advanced into territories later occupied by
First Northern farmers.1 In Denmark itself, while no Danubian settle-
ments occur, stone implements of Danubian type have been found,
some on Ertebplle sites.2 The First Northern long barrows could well
be regarded as durable imitations of the external appearance of a
Danubian I long house.3 Finally, the Triticum monococcum, demon-
strably cultivated in Northern IA could hardly have reached Northern
Europe save through the Danubian province. East of the Oder'—
admittedly rather hypothetical—Forest hunter-fishers could have
learned from the pioneer Danubian outposts to breed stock and till
the soil.
Still, it remains possible that predominantly pastoral tribes without
pottery, with no specialized kit of stone tools nor ideology expressed
in funerary monuments or figurines of clay, pushed in through Vol-
hynia from the south-east. But for such an invasion there is of course
no positive evidence.
Middle Neolithic Northern Cultures on the Continent
During what corresponds to Northern Middle Neolithic, the West,
South, and East groups of First Northern cultures in contact with
surviving mesolithic groups and remnants of the Rossen, Jordanova,
and Michelsberg cultures dissolved into a multiplicity of local groups,
known mainly from grave-finds and distinguished primarily by ceramic
peculiarities.
In the West group the Elbe-Weser culture carried on the traditions
of burial in Huns' Beds and earth graves and of basketry vases. But
Bell and S beakers found even in Huns’ Beds illustrate the increasing
dominance of Beaker and Battle-axe folk over the First Northern
elements, and also the late survival of the culture in Danubian III.
1 Potratz NNU., XV (1941), quoted by MilojSid, Chron., 97.
8 Glob, Acta Arch., X (1939), 132-9.
3 Sprockhoff, Megalithkultur, 10, emphasizes the similarity of such a long barrow to
a "house with low-pitched gabled roof".
192
THE NORTHERN CULTURES
A gold armlet with expanded terminals from an earth grave at Himmels-
pforten near Stade1 should in fact belong to Danubian IV.
The W alternienburg-Bernburg culture2 developed on the Lower
Saale and in Havelland out of the local branch of First Northern,
termed the Baalburg culture,3 through the so-called Salzmunder
culture of MN.i.4 The angular vases, distinctive of Walternienburg i,
obviously copy basketry models (Fig. 98), but in subsequent phases
the basketry origin seems to have been forgotten. Pottery of this sort
is found in simple pit-graves, grouped in small cemeteries, in mega-
Fig. 98. x, Walternienburg vases, 2, Latdorf drum, and Baalburg jug.
lithic cists or galleries, in Huns’ Beds with lateral passage and in cists
of thin slabs. Axe-heads were made by preference of Wida shale from
the South Hartz; the rest of the Walternienburg equipment seems to be
derived indiscriminately from various Northern and foreign cultures.
It includes double-axes of Passage Grave type, amber beads, crutch-
headed pins, perhaps derived from the Pontic hammer-pins, and metal
ornaments of Unetician type or bone copies of such. The culture,
while beginning in Northern period III, lasts therefore well into
Danubian IV.
In part of the areas formerly occupied by the East and South groups
1 NNU., VII, 50; X (1936), 22.
2 Childe, Danube, 133-9; Sprockhoff, Megaliihkultur, 106-16.
2 Grimm, Mannus, XXIX (i937)> *86 ft.
4 JST., XXIX (1938), 20 ff. For the culture sequence in Central Germany, see
Mildenberger, Studien zum Mitteldeutschen Neolithikum (Leipzig, 1951); Behrens, JMV.
(1953), 105; Fischer, Festschr. d. Rom-Germ. Zenfralmuseums, III (Mainz, 1953), 175.
N 193
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
emerged the culture typified by and named after the Globular Amphora.1
The type-vase, like the other vessels habitually associated with it, is
clearly a copy of leather models and is always decorated in a very
distinctive manner round the neck, with fillets hanging over the
shoulder (Fig. 99). The characteristic vases are accompanied by small
trapeze-shaped axes and chisels of flint, frequently of the banded
variety mined in Galicia, transverse and tanged arrow-heads, bored
Fig. 99. Bone girdle-clasp, Podolia (£), and globular amphorae, Saxo-Thuringia
and Podolia (£).
teeth and boars’ tusks, amber beads and, east of the Oder, ornate bone
girdle-clasps. Antler axes, double-axes of stone, flint knives and other
articles were occasionally borrowed from contemporary groups. Ring-
pendants of bone and other ornaments characteristic of the Scan-
dinavian long cists, and bronze rings and spirals demonstrate the sur-
vival of the culture during period IV.
The makers of these vases might be interred, extended, in simple
trench graves forming cemeteries of not more than twelve graves,
cremated, or buried, generally squatting, in collective tombs, containing
as a rule not more than seven corpses and generally less. The collective
1 Sprockhoff. Megalithkuttur, 120-30; Mark-Brandenburg, 108; JST., XXVIII (1938).
I94
THE NORTHERN CULTURES
tombs are sometimes megalithic cists or large cists made of thin slabs.
The latter are often divided into two compartments, sometimes by a
porthole slab.
The principal concentration of Globular Amphorae is in the Saale-
Elbe region and Havelland, but they extend northward to Riigen,
southward into Bohemia, and eastward through Galicia into Volhynia
and Podolia. In Bohemia1 Globular Amphorae are sometimes found on
hilltops in fortified settlements, but even in Volhynia and Podolia they
are normally found alone in characteristic slab-cists, subdivided and
containing up to six skeletons.2 Even the pottery from the cists, divided
by porthole slabs, at Novosvobodnaya in the Kuban valley (p. 153),
is reminiscent of the Globular Amphorae.
Evidently these vases were made by swine-breeders who roamed
about in small groups far and wide, presumably mainly as hunters and
swineherds, but doubtless engaging in casual robbery and trade. They
were thus agents in the distribution of amber, Galician flint, and even
metal trinkets, but developed no specialized industries of their own
that we can recognize.
In Holstein a Globular Amphora was associated with pottery of
Northern Neolithic Hid or even IVa,3 while in Kuyavish graves
Globular Amphorae represent the latest intrusions. An oft-quoted report
of the association of a Globular Amphora with Danubian lb pottery
at Klein Rietz is quite unreliable and intrinsically improbable.4 In the
Danubian sequence they cannot be earlier than period III; the Bohemian
sites that have yielded specimens belong at earliest to the Baden
culture.
Kossinna derived the Globular Amphorae from those of the Danish
dolmens and made them the symbols of his second wave of Indo-
Germanic expansion from the West Baltic coasts. The culture they
typify is still considered by all German writers “Nordic” and is now
supposed to have developed between Elbe and Oder and thence spread
eastward. But, if so, why did it not spread westward too? Forssander,5
on the contrary, suggested that the culture arose somewhere in the
Pontic zone and that its authors introduced into Northern Europe
not only Galician banded flint but also porthole cists, such as we have
in fact met in Novosvobodnaya; presumably the idea then spread from
Central Germany both to Sweden and to the Paris basin. In fact, it is
not easy to derive the culture simply from the First Northern, but it
remains essentially a culture of the woodland zone and its outposts in
1 Stocky1, Bohbme prehist., 128; Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc., LXXXI (1932), 380,
2 Levitskii, Antropolgiya, II (Kiev, 1928); Zapiski Vse-Ukrainskogo Arkh. Komitetu, I
(Kiev, 1931); Briusov, Oie-rki, 220-3.
3 Offa, XII (1953), 8-9. 4 Germania, XXXIII (1955), 239.
195
5 Boolaxikultur, 174.
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Volhynia are separated by a huge tract of steppe, bare of comparable
finds, from the Caucasian group of porthole cists.
Sometimes associated with Globular Amphorae are curious tubular
pots like Fig. 98, 2 (top), often embellished with crosses and other
symbolic figures and generally interpreted on the strength of good
ethnographic parallels as drums. Most come from the Elbe valley in
Saxo-Thuringia and Bohemia, but they are not peculiar to any one
culture; the jug from Latdorf is a Baalburg type and some Moravian
drums1 were found in a Baden context.
We must accordingly imagine numbers of small groups, each dis-
tinguished by peculiarities in pottery and sometimes also in burial
rites or equipment, wandering about the North European plain simul-
taneously. Especially in Central Germany, groups adhering respectively
to Walternienburg, Globular Amphorse and Battle-axe traditions must
have been not only contemporary but also in close spatial contact.
And they must have encountered also Danubian peasants making
stroke-ornamented ware and others making Jordanova pots to say
nothing of makers of collared flasks and miscellaneous megalith-
builders. It is not surprising that such groups frequently interchanged
ideas—perhaps they intermarried; the wonder is,that they retained
the individuality of their ceramic traditions so long. The number of
distinct types of pottery tends to give a quite exaggerated idea of the
density of population and the duration of Northern Neolithic III.
Actually the several kinds of vases must have been made by relatively
small and nomadic groups, several of which must have been living
side by side. It is only by trying to arrange all groups in a sequence,
which may really be valid at one particular site, that period III becomes
inordinately inflated. But that it overlaps with Danubian IV may be
once more demonstrated by the metal trinkets associated with Globular
Amphorse and Walternienburg vases.2
The Northern Late Neolithic Period
During the fourth period of the Northern Stone Age the sharp contrast
between Megalith-builders and Battle-axe folk began to break down in
Denmark and Southern Sweden. Though each party still retained its
traditional burial practices, there is little difference between the furni-
ture of the Long Stone Cists, collective tombs that carry on the mega-
lithic tradition, and that of the Upper (Separate) Graves of the Battle-
axe population. But it is the culture of the latter that is dominant.
The area of settlement remains unaltered, but the population has
1 ar., vi (1954) • 652-8.
2 Bohm, Die altere Bronzezeit in der Mark-Brandenburg, 32.
196
THE NORTHERN CULTURES
perhaps increased: in Vastergotland there are 4266 relics belonging to
period IV, as against 3106 from the preceding period.1 These figures
further indicate that the Stone Cist period can hardly have been
shorter than that of the Passage Graves. But the general economy
remained unaltered. The importance of agriculture may be inferred
from the number of flint sickles, curved in imitation of metal models.
Fig. ioo. Flint daggers (Denmark, £) and porthole cists (Sweden)-
types of Montelius' IV.
But weapons are still the most prominent relics. The flint axes now
regularly imitate metal axes with a splayed blade; but the faces are
seldom polished; indeed, polished flint axes made in period III were
sometimes flaked all over for use in period IV. Battle-axes were still
used, but are less shapely and less metallic. The classical weapon was
the dagger, at first lanceolate in form but culminating before the end
of the period in the famous fish-tailed form (Fig. 100).2 The arrow-
heads are hollow-based rather as in the Copper Age of Iberia.
1 Forssander, Ostskcmdinavische, 162.
2 Ibid., 118, fig. 23; Brondsted, Danmarks, I, fig. 251.
197
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
The fish-tailed flint daggers certainly copy the bronze-hilted daggers
of Central Europe. The models for these and other weapons were indeed
imported from time to time. A certain number of bronzes from Italy,
Central Europe, and Britain have survived from this period, stray or
in hoards. And before the period ended smiths may have been producing
for a local market in Schleswig-Holstein and even Southern Sweden.1
To obtain metal for rearmament the northerners had to rely chiefly
on the export of amber. Every scrap of the precious gum was reserved
for foreign trade, so it could no longer be used locally for charms. In
the tombs the place of amber beads is taken by long pendants of slate,
ring-pendants of stone or bone, and a few metal trinkets of Unetician
type.1 2 But for all their sacrifices the Northerners’ equipment and
economy remained essentially neolithic throughout period IV.
The practice of collective burial persisted, alongside burial in separate
graves in the mass of the barrow. But the passage grave gave place
to the long stone cist or gallery grave generally sunk in the ground.
These are not, as Montelius thought, the result of a degeneration of the
passage grave.3 One group might be treated as an evolution of the
dolmen, but even so that evolution must have been inspired by new
ideas from outside the Northern province. A group of Swedish cists,
built of thin slabs and often subdivided by a porthole slab, must be
derived from the Paris basin, presumably through the Westfalian
group mentioned on p. 190. Even the splay-footed pot, characteristic
of the French Horgen culture (p. 313), was reproduced in a variant
in Sweden and Denmark.4 These new ideas must have been introduced
by immigrant families joining the established communities. But the
normal pottery of the period is represented by flower-pot forms imi-
tating wooden models and decorated with rouletted zig-zag ribbons
(Fig. 83, bottom left) perhaps derived from the Oder Battle-axe culture.
Imitations of Unetician pins and Unetician gold ornaments associated
with even the early flint daggers show that the fourth period of the
Northern Stone Age did not even begin till the Early Bronze Age was
well established in Central Europe and in Britain. Though metal-
workers and traders were spreading northward, the Northern Stone
Age outlasted Danubian IV. In Denmark and Scandinavia the Bronze
Age proper begins first in the Middle Bronze Age of Hungary and
Britain.5 Till that date metal was too scarce for bronze weapons to be
1 Forssander, 95 f., 116 if.; Kersten, Nordischen Bronzezeit, 98; Broholm, Danmarks
Bronzsalder, 2 (1944), 30 ff.
2 Nordmann, “MegaJithic Culture”, 44.
3 Forssander, Ostskandinavische, 114, 140, 156; Brondsted, Danmarks, 290.
4 AsA., XL (1938), 14.
6 Forssander, Ostskandinavische, 176, 196; Kersten, Nordischen Bronzezeit, 100.
198
THE NORTHERN CULTURES
buried with even the richest chief. And one of the earlier graves fur-
nished with products of the local Northern bronze industry (at Lies-
biittel in Schleswig-Holstein) contained an imported spear-head of a
type characteristic of Middle Bronze Age 2 in Britain,1 while British
palstaves of the same typological age are included in contemporary
Danish hoards.2 If the preceding phase of the British Bronze Age be
correctly dated to the fifteenth century by the fayence beads then
imported (p. 339), Northern Neolithic IV must have lasted till 1400 b.c.
in the sense that till then metal weapons were not normally deposited
in native graves in Denmark, Southern Sweden, and the adjacent
parts of North Germany. A segmented fayence head was, however,
found in a grave of Bronze Age form in North Jutland.3
The Saale-Warta Bronze Age
-
Round the salt deposits and ore lodes of the Saale and Elbe, and along
the trade-route leading thence to the East Baltic amber coast, a peculiar
version of the Unetician culture had arisen by the beginning of Northern
period IV. Metal had been brought thither in the time of the Jordanova
culture and weapons already by the Beaker-folk in Danubian III.
These or some other unidentified prospectors may have begun the
exploitation of the ores of Vogtland and exported their winnings as
ingots in the form of the sacred double-axe.4 For double-axes with a
shaft-hole too small to take a real shaft are concentrated in that region
and strung out thence across Switzerland to Central France. At the
same time, connections with the Pontic zone to the east are attested
by the hammer-pins mentioned on p. 165. In the sequel Unetician
farmers had spread down the Elbe and the Oder to the Saale and Warta.5
Their poor graves contain a few Unetician ornaments—but not the
oldest forms such as knot-headed pins—but their pots with provincial
conservatism preserved the pouched form that had gone out of fashion
in Czechoslovakia after the earliest phase of Danubian IV.
The local bronze industry was based on the same Unetician tradition,
but it was fertilized by the importation of Britannico-Hibernian manu-
factures6 and very likely by the immigration of Irish craftsmen. Its
products were exported to the still neolithic North and raw amber
1 Kersten, Zur alteren nordischen Bronzezeit, 65.
2 Broholm, Danmarks Bronzealder, 1, 224; M81.
3 Acta Arch., XXV, 241.
4 Hawkes, BSA., XXXVII, 144-51.
3 PZ., XX (1929), 128 ff.
6 E.g. Irish axes from Dieskau and Leubingen, Arch., LXXXVI, 303; PPS., IV,
272 ff. Note that the Irish axe from Dieskau is rich in tin, the other "bronzes" frotn the
board contain none! JMV., XXXIV (1950), 90 ff.
199
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
obtained in exchange. Some of this was re-exported in the raw state
to England, there to be worked up into amber cups and crescentic
necklaces. Local chieftains succeeded in concentrating the profits
derived from this commerce and thus accumulated capital for the
industry’s further development. Their rich burials under imposing
barrows present a striking contrast to the flat graves of Unetician
Fig. ioi. Section of Leubingen barrow.
farmers and confer a distinctive character upon the Bronze Age of the
province quite reminiscent of the Kuban.
At Leubingen,1 for instance, an old man and a young girl had been
interred in a lean-to chamber of stone slabs and oak beams (Fig. ioi)
enclosed by a circular fosse 20 m. in diameter, and furnished with
bronze rounded-heeled daggers, gold pins and lock-rings of Unetician
types, a halberd derived from the Irish series, a massive gold bracelet,
and a perforated stone axe (or ploughshare).
Even richer burials were discovered in a barrow cemetery at Leki
1 JST., V, 1-59; Arch., LXXXVI (1936), 205; cf. also JST., VI (Helmsdorf); I
(Baalberg), and perhaps Kuttlau, Silesia [Gotze-Fest., 84-9), and Anderlingen, Hanover,
Jb. ProvMus. Hannover, 1907-08, 242-4, and Arch., LXXXVI, 225.
200
THE NORTHERN CULTURES
Male in Poznania during 1953.1 A wooden chamber built in a shaft
grave at the centre of a barrow, 30 m. in diameter, had contained the
remains of a man and a woman. The former was accompanied by a
bronze-shafted halberd like Fig. 102, 1, a flat knife-dagger, a flat
Unetician axe, a knot-headed pin of poor bronze, and two gold lock-
rings, the woman by only two bronze bracelets. A secondary grave on
Fig. 102. 1, Bronze-shafted halberd (}), 2, halberd-blade from
Leubingen barrow (J).
the periphery contained a bronze-hilted dagger of Elbe-Oder type, an
axe, a Bohemian eyelet pin and three gold lock-rings. Horses, oxen,
pigs, and sheep were represented, in that order of frequency, among
the remains of funerary feasts under the barrow.
Such richly furnished barrow burials must belong to chieftains who
had won economic power as well as authority by taking toll on the
trade that traversed their territories. They established no kingdoms
guaranteeing order and security beyond the narrow limits of tribal
1 Kowianska-Piaszykowa and Kurnatowski, “Kurhan Kultury Unietyckiej”, Forties
Archesol. Posnanienses, TV (Poznan, 3954), I-34 (with analyses of bronzes, and English
rdsum^).
201
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
domains. A large number of merchants’ hoards of bronzes and amber
beads vividly illustrate the dangers to which traders and perambulating
metal-workers were exposed between these local realms.
These hoards, together with the grave goods just mentioned, show
how by blending varied foreign traditions in producing for their warlike
patrons local craftsmen had created a variety of original types1—
halberds, modelled on late Irish types, but decorated with grooves
and triangles and ultimately mounted on bronze shafts (Fig. 102, 1),
curious narrow “double-axes”, daggers with bronze hilts, cast in one
piece with the blades either oval in imitation of daggers like Fig. 70,
or flat like the gold-studded Anglo-Armorican weapons,1 2 and what may
be clumsy imitations of the elegant crescentic axes of the Kings of Ur.3
Their products were exported to North Germany and across Poland to
Sammland.4 Thence and from Denmark came in exchange amber
beads to be used in turn for barter with England, Bohemia, Hungary,
and Italy.
Though definitely Early Bronze Age, the graves and hoards contain-
ing these products need not be early within Danubian IV. As compared
with Britain, the actual imports establish synchronisms only with
phase II of our Early Bronze Age. In Central European terminology
graves and hoards containing true Middle Bronze Age—Reinecke B-C
—types are practically non-existent in just those parts of Central
Germany and Poland where the chieftains’ graves occur5; there the
archaeological record seems to recommence with the Lusacian culture
generally attributed to Danubian VI! That might suggest that the
Saale-Warta culture occupies part of Danubian V too.6 On the other
hand, in Southern England and in Brittany we shall witness the abrupt
emergence of richly furnished barrow graves whose furniture, though
still Early Bronze age, exhibits specially close affinities with, if not
derivation from, that of the Saale-Warta chieftains’ tombs,7 and the
English graves at least seem fairly well dated by ASgean connections
between 1600 and 1400 b.c.
1 Childe, Danube, 242-4.
2 Gotze-Fest., 93, and PZ., XVI, 205; cf. p. 335 below.
3 PZ., XXXIV (1949-50), 238, Taf. 15, 1; cf. Childe, NLMAE., fig. 91; Jahn in
JMV., XXXV (1951), 65-70.
1 See for halberds O’Riordain’s map, Arch., LXXXVI, 277, and for narrow double-
axes, Sturm's jDie Bronzezeit im Ostbaltikum (Berlin, 1936), 32.
5 Cf. Childe, Danube, 3x3.
6 One bronze-shafted halberd of Saale-Warta type is said to have been found with
a socketed celt, Mannus, XIII (1923), 42-55.
7 So the characteristic Wessex and Armorican daggers seem to be derived from the
Elbe-Oder type, the Anglo-Armorican gold-studded hilts were copied in the Saale
region, Wessex amber pendants copy bronze-hilted halberds.
202
CHAPTER XI
SURVIVALS OF THE FOREST CULTURE
The circumpolar zone of Eurasia, extending from the Norwegian coasts
across the Baltic and the North European plain far into Siberia, offered
no propitious soil to neolithic cultivators, but was rich in game, wild
fowl, fish, nuts and berries such as mesolithic Forest-folk had pursued
or collected round the North Sea and the western Baltic in Boreal
times. By then the Forest-folk had perfected an efficient equipment for
the exploitation of these natural resources. They continued to use a
similar equipment long after farmers had colonized Denmark and
Southern Sweden; for the coniferous forests or taiga to the north con-
stituted a botanical environment very similar to that of Britain and
Denmark in the Boreal phase. In it much of the Maglemose culture
survived. Now, the survival of equipment implies also continuity of
tradition prescribing its manufacture and uses. And continuity of
tradition means in turn some continuity of population too. However
much immigration or invasion have modified its genetic constitution,
cultural traditions have been preserved locally for eight or nine
thousand years (cf. p. 14).
But continuity of culture is not equivalent to immutability. In fact,
the environment was neither static nor uniform. Cultures were modified
to take advantage of new opportunities, were differentiated to exploit
local resources, and were enriched by inventions and borrowings. Nor
was the population of the European taiga zone homogeneous; by Sub-
Boreal times Mongoloid, Lapponoid, Europeoid and hybrid types are
represented in the graves.
Throughout the period here considered the Forest-folk remained
food-gatherers. All indeed possessed domestic dogs which were some-
times fed on fish,1 but nowhere were animals bred for food save in
Eastern Sweden, where the hunter-fishers, perhaps inspired by the
example of the B group herders (p. 178), kept pigs of native stock. On
the Norwegian coasts, round the Baltic and along the shores of the
White Sea the pursuit of aquatic mammals provided an important
element in the food supply and evoked a specialized equipment of
harpoons, ice-picks, and blubber-axes, while fishing was universally a
major economic activity. Hence the most permanent settlements were
1 E.g. at PanfLlovo in Central Russia, JGAIMK., 106 (1935), 125.
203
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
close to the coast or along the shores of lakes and rivers. Even these—
the so-called Dwelling-places (Bopladser)—seem mere encampments
where not more than ten households congregated temporarily. Large
cemeteries of 49 graves on Gotland1 and of 150 on Deer Island in Lake
Onega2 do not necessarily imply large and permanent villages.
But despite their comparatively nomadic mode of life, all the hunter-
fishers save those in Northern Norway made pots from Sub-Boreal
times on, and these help to define local and chronological groups. From
Sweden to Siberia indeed all pots were manufactured by the same
technique of ring-building,3 all taper downward to a rounded base
and all may be decorated with horizontal rows of pits, frequently
combined with zones of comb-impressions.4 The whole ceramic family
is therefore termed “pit-comb ware”. But west of the Baltic most
Fig. 103. 1, F.II pit-comb vase from Karelia (£); 2, vase of East Swedish style from
Aland Islands (|); 3, flint figures from Volosovo (fa).
vases have a concave neck separated from the conical body by a
shoulder, while farther east neckless ovoid vessels predominate. Within
these branches variations in the technique and arrangement of
the decoration demarcate stylistic groups and phases. In Sweden5
and Finland6 four consecutive styles can be arranged in chronological
order by the relations of the coastal dwelling-places on which typical
sherds occur to the receding shore of the Litorina Sea; for the land here
was still rising, so that the higher a camp is above the present strand
the older it should be. The Swedish scheme can be correlated with the
1 M. Stenberger, Das Grabfeld von Vdsterbjers auf Gotland (Stockholm, 1943).
a SA., VI (1940), 46-62; cf. Gerasimov, Litsa, 296-320; physically the population was
mixed Europeoid and Mongoloid.
3 The techniques have been admirably described by Voyevodskii, SA., I (1935), 51-78.
4 Made at first with the curved and notched edge of a flat pebble, later with short-
toothed bone combs figured by Voyevodskii, loc. cit.
6 Bagge, Acta Arch., XXII (1951), 56-88.
6 Ayrapaa, Acta Arch., I, 165-90, 205 ff.; he discusses correlations with Sweden in
FM., LXII (1955), 26-50.
204
SURVIVALS OF THE FOREST CULTURE
subdivisions of the Northern Neolithic indicated in the last chapter
and less precisely with the Finnish. An extension of the latter to North
and Central Russia has been attempted by Finnish prehistorians,
while Gurina1 has outlined a roughly parallel sequence based on observa-
tions round Lake Onega and the White Sea. But other Russian
authorities2 reject such generalizations and deny the extension of
pit-comb ware to the Urals altogether.3 Nevertheless, we shall apply
the Finnish scheme to the whole region, using the expressions F.I,
F.II, F.III, and F.IV to denote similar styles and to indicate relative
positions in local sequences rather than contemporaneity throughout
the zone, and assigning to F.O assemblages not associated with pottery
that are probably pre-ceramic.
1 MIA., XX (1951), 77-140. 2 E.g. Foss, MIA., XXIX (1952); Briusov, Olerki.
3 Wrongly since good comb-ware is cited in SM., LVII (1950), 5-22.
205
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
F.O then denotes the Suomusjarvi culture, characterized by rough
stone adzes (Fig. 104, 2) and slate points1 that in Finland appear in
Atlantic contexts and do recur in the Urals, and assemblages of Magle-
mosian types in North-West Russia similarly dated by Russian pollen-
analysts.2 F.I pots, decorated with broad zones, sometimes of whipped-
cord impressions, are reported from the Baltic coasts to Lake Onega
and the White Sea and from one site in the Upper Dniepr basin.3 F.II
would be well represented also in Central Russia and up to the Urals
2345 6
Fig. 105. Eastern Maglemosian types (£); 1-4, Esthonia, after Clark; 5, Ukraine;
6, leister from Ural peat bogs (£).
if it include stylized representations of aquatic birds.4 (Fig. 103, 1.)
Subsequently local divergences are too great to allow of correlations
presumably owing to the rise of Battle-axe cultures on the Baltic
coasts and in Central Russia. But pit-comb ware of F.IV styles was
still being made by hunter-fishers when a few socketed celts of Late
Bronze Age types and even iron were reaching Finland and Northern
Russia.
For fishing, leisters with bone prongs (Fig. 105, 6) more or less like
the Maglemosian, were in use throughout our period from Norway
1 Also transverse arrow heads; SM., LIV (1947-48), 1-18; LVII (1950), 9.
2 Lower Veretye (Foss, MIA., XXIX), Pogostis£e, 1 (ibid., XX, 46); cf. Briusov,
Ocerki, 28-31.
3 Mapped by Gurina, MIA., XX, 95.
4 MIA., XX (1951), iro, Gurina’s group 3; SM., LX (1953), 33-44—F.III!
206
SURVIVALS OF THE FOREST CULTURE
to Siberia. Fish-hooks of the Boreal Pemau type (Fig. 105, 5) survived
too in North Russia and even on the Desna, but by the Sub-Boreal
were supplemented throughout the zone by composite implements
with a notched shank of stone or bone and a separate barb.1 But net-
fishing was at least equally important.2
Of the Maglemosian hunting-equipment, slotted bone points survived
everywhere, conical bone arrow-heads3 and the type of Fig. 105, 3 as
far as the Urals and from F.O to F.IV. Flint tips for arrows and darts
Fig. 106. 1-3 Slate knives and dart-head, Sweden (£), 4-5 stone mace-heads, Finland
(£), and 6 slate pendant (|).
with little invasive retouch on the bulbar surface, occurring in F.O
and F.I sites may be derived from the Swiderian and were copied in
slate. Rare transverse arrow-heads4, found with the oldest F.I
pottery in Finland and on early sites along the Oka, could be derived
from the Ukraine as well as from the West Baltic. Bifacially trimmed
arrow-heads, generally leaf-shaped, appear first in F.II and in F.III
were translated into slate, as were older flint and bone types with a
triangular or rhomboid cross-section (Fig. 106, 3). Rhomboid club-
1 SA„ III, 101; V, 44; cf. Clark, Ant. /., XXVIII (1928), 67-8.
2 Imprints of nets are often found on pit-comb ware, IGAIMK., ro6, 118.
3 Finds listed and mapped by Foss, MIA., XXIX (1952), 46; cf. TGIM., XXIX, 108 f.
4 FM., LXII, 30-3; Briusov, Olerhi, 58, 69.
207
-
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
heads like Fig. 106, 4, current from Norway to the Urals and the Lower
Volga,1 may be descended from Maglemosian spiked weapons.
For woodworking, antler wedges2 and socketed bone chisels remained
in use in Norway as in North Central Russia, but in the north were
supplemented by more efficient adzes, gouges, and chisels of polished
stone (Fig. 104, 3); in Central Russia such tools of polished stone are
not apparently found before the rise of the Fatyanovo culture. So too
the Maglemosian boars’ tusk knife survived in Norway, Sweden, and
Central Russia,3 but was translated into slate in the north, giving
rise to forms like Fig. 106,1.
For land transport the man-pulled sleighs of Boreal age were supple-
mented by dog sleighs, represented by runners found from Sweden
to the Urals and dated in Finland as early as F.II.4 A still heavier
sledge, suited for reindeer traction, is attributed to “the transition from
the Stone to the Bronze Age” in Finland. Skis too are attested in
Finland and Sweden.5 For use on water, the skin boats, inferred for
the Maglemosian, are actually depicted in a Norwegian rock engrav-
ing,6 while paddles of the Maglemosian type have been dug up from
Ural peat.
Each little group of hunter-fishers could be self-sufficing, but this
economic independence did not exclude interchanges of goods and
materials. Indeed, the seasonal hunting trips, imposed by their pre-
datory mode of subsistance, might well be combined with inter-
communal barter and easily grow into trading expeditions. So Russian
flint was largely imported into Finland during F.II, but was ousted
by Scandinavian flint in F.III.7 Chisels like Fig. 104, 3, were manu-
factured east of the Baltic, but were imported into Sweden.8 Forest
folk had discovered the amber deposits of Sammland and carved it in
their own naturalistic style, but exported it to Norway, Central
Germany, Finland, and Central Russia.9 Becker10 has convincingly
attributed to Forest hunter-fishers the surprisingly wide distribution
of South Swedish or Danish flint attested by regular hoards of celts
from Northern Scandinavia while Clark11 has envisaged an export of
dried cod from Norway in return.
1 Ailio, Wohnplatzfunde, 29, 33; SGAIMK. (1931), No. 6, 7, found with, contracted
skeleton in an “ochre grave”.
2 Veretye and Kubenino, MIA., XXIX; Lyalovo, near Moscow, RAZ., XIV (1925), 37.
3 Fv. (1924), 298; RAZ., XIV, loc. cit.
4 SM., LVI (1949), 1-26.
6 SM., XLI, 1-10.
6 Clark, Preh. Europe, 283, pi. IV, b.
7 Acta Arch., I, 210.
8 Real., VI, 222.
9 Brogger, Den arktiske Stenalder, 185; Real., 1, 436; IGAIMK., 106, 132.
10 Aarboger (1950), 155-245. 11 Preh. Europe, 88, 256.
208
SURVIVALS OF THE FOREST CULTURE
The ideology, as far as it is expressed in the archaeological record, was
as uniform as the economy on which it reposed, So the dead were
always buried extended, often accompanied by lumps of red ochre
or sprinkled with that colouring matter, either on camp sites or in
distinct cemeteries.1 The latter are usually very small, 8 to 22 inter-
ments, but those at Vasterbjers on Gotland comprised 49 graves,
on Deer Island in Lake Onega over 150.2 In the latter cemetery five
bodies had been interred standing erect in deep pits and accompanied
by an exceptional profusion of hunting weapons of flint and bone (all
of types appropriate to F.O.!) and personal ornaments. They must
belong to chiefs and reveal distinctions in rank within hunter-fisher
societies.
At least east of the Baltic human figures, some explicitly male,
were carved in bone or wood and later modelled in clay.1 2 3 The ideological
purpose they doubtless served was probably not the same as that
fulfilled by the familiar female statuettes made by neolithic peasants,
and the style is quite different. In Norway elks and reindeer were
engraved on rocks in a style as realistic as the Magdalenian.4 In Sweden
and North Russia5 figures of animals, birds and men and even ritual
scenes were pecked out on ice-smoothed surfaces in a far more con-
ventional manner. Beasts and birds were carved realistically in bone,
stone, and wood by all the Forest hunter-fisher tribes, but curious little
flint sculptures6 are concentrated rather in Eastern Russia from the
Oka to the White Sea.
The authors of these relatively uniform cultures did not constitute
a racially homogeneous population. Most of the skulls from sites in
North and Central Russia are described as Lapponoid, some as Euro-
peoid, Mongoloid or hybrid,7 and even on Gotland one skull has been
diagnosed as Mongoloid.
The most economical account of the hunter-fisher cultures just
surveyed would be to treat them all as derived by divergent adaptation
from the North Sea—West Baltic Maglemosian of the Boreal phase.
1 North Russian burials are described and listed by Gerasimov, Vostanovlenie litsa po
Herepu (Trudy Inst. Etnografiya, XXVIII), Moscow, 1955, 328-65. Stenberger, Das
Grabfeld . . the cemetery should be Northern III, D, or F.III.
2 SA., VI (1940), 46-62; Ravdonikas dates the cemetery to F.III or IV, but Briusov
(Oberki, 108) to the Atlantic phase, i.e. F.O.! See also Gerasimov, op. cit.
3 Foss, MIA., XXIX, 35 ff.; Ayrapaa, SM., XLVIII (1941), 82-119. Save perhaps
for the bone figurine from Deer I., all seem late.
4 Boe, Felsenzeichnungen in westlichen Norwegen (Bergen, 1932).
s Ravdonikas, Les Gravures rupestres des bords du lac Onega et de la Mer Blanche
Trudy Inst. Etnografiya), Moscow, 1936, 1938.
6 Zamiatnin, “Miniatiurnye kremnevye skulptury", SA., X (1948); Hausler, IFiss.
Zts. d. Martin-Luther Universitat, HaUe-Wittenberg, III (1954), 767-82.
7 Briusov, Oberki, 35-6; KS. Inst. Etnografiya, XVIII (1953), 55-65; Gerasimov,
Vostanovlenie litsa (1955), 296-395.
O
209
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
The anthropological data would suffice to exclude such an over-
simplification. Becker1, without of course denying its Maglemosian
constituents, regards the culture symbolized by the pit-comb ware of
Scandinavia as introduced there immediately from beyond the Baltic.
Russian prehistorians deny vehemently all dependence of the Central
Russian, Uralian, and Siberian aspects on the Baltic cultures. Accord-
ing to Briusov,1 2 the Urals would have been colonized in early post-
glacial times from the Aral-Caspian basin, Central Russia and the East
Baltic from the Pontic region; the classical cultures distinguished by
pit-comb ware would have crystalized in the Oka-Upper Volga and
Upper Dniepr basins. His account involves rather heavy draughts on
ignorance. The early cultures of the North Pontic zone and Trans-
caspia are still very ill-defined. The chronological relations of assem-
blages from the Ural peat bogs, from sand-dune sites in the Oka-Volga
basin, and even from the White Sea-Onega-Ladoga belt to those
collected round the Baltic are quite ambiguous. Few pollen-diagrams3
have been published, and their interpretation in terms of the West
Baltic zonation remains disputable.
Types proper to the Boreal phase round the Baltic do indeed occur
in the Ural bogs, but their context is unknown. They might theoretic-
ally have spread westward rather than eastward, but without inde-
pendent evidence of date no final decision is justified. So, too, ovoid
pots, similar in technique to the Swedish and Finnish, are found both
in Siberia4 and across the Pontic steppes to the Caucasus.5 The coarse
ware, associated with Tripolye pottery at all stages, is technically
akin to pit-comb ware. Whipped-cord patterns that might have
inspired Finnish styles I and II6 were at some time very popular in
the Ukraine and Dniepr basin. But the relative antiquity of all these
phenomena is uncertain. The apparent brevity of culture sequences
round the Urals, in Central Russia, and in the Ukraine gives the West
Baltic a semblance of priority. But that brevity is partly due to de-
ficiencies of exploration and of publication and, in so far as archaeo-
logical events are occasioned by climatic changes or land movements,
to the greater stability of the continental environment.
The archaeological data here summarized do prove that the hunter-
fisher populations of the taiga zone, however sparse, constituted a
continuum for cultural transmissions all through the circumpolar zone
1 Aarb0ger (1950), 251.
2 Oierki, 30-40, 164-74, 147-49; Ayrapaa, too, seems to favour a south-east origin
for pit-comb ware, FM., LXII, 32. 3 TGIM., XXIX (1956), 70.
4 E.g. MIA., XVIII, 169 if.; but some pots in addition to pits bear net impressions.
6 HanCar, Kaukasiens, pi. XXIX.
6 A. Rosenberg, Kulturstromungen in Europa zur Steinzeit (Copenhagen, 1931).
210
SURVIVALS OF THE FOREST CULTURE
of Eurasia and between it and the parklands and steppes to the south.
They prove too that this was not a one-way traffic, but they give no
measure of the relative importance of contributions from the east, the
south, and the west respectively. The technique of bifacial retouch on
flint flakes and blades is more likely to have reached the north from
the south-east than from the south-west; the contemporary apprecia-
tion of amber must have been diffused in the opposite direction. The
heavier bow introduced into Denmark by the pit-comb traders may
have been of the composite type attested in Siberia by the Serovo
stage1 and ancestral to the Turko-Mongolian type, but even the
Maglemosian bows had been re-inforced with sinews. The transmission
through the food-gathering cultures of the taiga of Asiatic contributions
to European civilization is in fact better attested in Sub-Boreal than
in Boreal times, but still eludes precise evaluation.
The cultural continuum thus constituted was disrupted by the
arrival of warlike farmers and herdsmen of the Boat Axe and Fat-
yanovo cultures. The former occupied the East Baltic coastlands, but
beyond a frontier, sharply defined in Finland,2 left undisturbed the
old hunter-fishers. These preserved intact the old ceramic tradition
of pit-comb ware, though they sometimes used asbestos as temper
for the pots, and continued to rely on stone implements and weapons
Fig. 107. Knives and axe from Seima hoard: 1, (•£); 2, ($); 3 (detail of 2), (J); 4-5, (?£).
with the addition of local imitations of boat axes even when a few
imported socketed axes of Swedish Malar and East Russian Ananino
types3 proclaim that the Final Bronze Age had already been reached
in Denmark and Southern Sweden. So too in Central Russia the Fat-
yanovo warriors did not replace the older population of the Volga
valley. Camp sites, yielding pottery made in conformity with the old
1 Okladnikov, MIA., XVIII (1950), 220.
2 SM., LIX (1952), 6-24. 3 ESA., XI (1937), 16-30; MIA., XX (1951), 133.
211
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
prescriptions, though now sometimes decorated with textile impressions,
illustrate the survival of a predominantly neolithic hunter-fisher
population when socketed celts and other metal types represented in
the hoard from Seima (on the Oka west of Gorki)1 were filtering in
from the Late Bronze Age cultures of the srubno phase to the south and
east. The realistic elk’s head of the Seima knife-handle (Fig. 107, 2-3)
has indeed analogues in Siberian and Chinese bronze-work,2 but
springs from the naturalistic art of the Eurasiatic hunter-fishers and
can be closely matched not only on stone battle-axes that have turned
up from Norway to the Urals3 but also on the bone dagger from the
Deer Island cemetery on Lake Onega. But such belated survivals of
the Stone Age lie outside the scope of this book.
1 Tallgren, “Ett viktigt fornfynd", FM. (1915), 73 ff., and ESA., II (1926), 137,
remains the best publication of this “hoard”.
2 Childe, Inst. Arch., AR., X (1954), II_25-
3 Clark, Northern Europe, 186; SM., XXXV (1928), 36-43.
For further details consult in additions to works mentioned in the footnotes:
on Norway: “Vistefundet”, Stavanger Museums Arsheft, 1907; Gjessing, Norges
Sten&lder (Oslo, 1945).
on Latvia: Balodis, Det aldsta Lettland (Uppsala, 1940).
on Estonia: Moora, Die Vorzeit Estlands (Tartu, 1932).
on Finland: Ailio, Steinzeitliche Wohnplatzfunde in Finland (Helsinki, 1909).
on the whole region: Gjessing, “The Circum-Polar Stone Age”, ActaArctica, II (Copen-
hagen, 1944).
212
CHAPTER XII
MEGALITH BUILDERS AND BEAKER-FOLK
Megalithic Tombs
The diffusion of Oriental culture in Western Europe must have been
effected in part by maritime intercourse. And evidence of such inter-
course is supposedly afforded by the architecture of groups of tombs
spread significantly along the coasts of the Mediterranean and the
Atlantic and along terrestrial routes joining these coasts. Judged by
their contents, the tombs in question do not belong to a single culture
and were not therefore erected and used by a single people. But archi-
tectural details recur with such regularity at so many distinct places
that a general survey of the main types at this stage will save repetition.
The most intriguing tombs of the series, which consequently received
the first attention from archaeologists, are built of extravagantly large
stones. They are therefore termed “megalithic”. But as the same plans
are followed in tombs built in dry masonry with small stones and in
others excavated in the ground (;rock-cut tombs) the application of the
term to the whole series is misleading. In Portugal,1 for instance,
beehive chambers entered through a low, narrow passage were exca-
vated in hillsides where the soft limestone facilitated digging. Where
the subsoil was shallow and the rock hard, the same plan was repro-
duced above ground in dry-stone masonry roofed by corbelling if the
local sandstone or schists broke naturally into convenient slabs. Where
the rock is more refractory, like granite, large blocks set on end,
orthostats, supporting large capstones or lintels form the framework for
chamber and passage. And tombs constructed by all three methods
often contain the same furniture.
Many authorities2 therefore contend that in such regions the method
of construction is conditioned by local geology alone. That thesis will
be adopted in the sequel with the reservation that it is not universally
applicable. “Rock-cut” tombs could easily have been excavated in
the chalk of the English Downs, but in fact the burial chambers here
1 V. Correia, "El Neolitico de Pavia”, Mem. CIPP., XXVII (1921). 63 f.; cf. Forde,
Am. Anthr., XXXII (1930), 41.
2 Elliot Smith, "The Evolution of the Rock-cut Tomb and Dolmen”, in Essays and
Studies presented to Sir William Ridgeway (Cambridge, 1913), was a pioneer in this
interpretation.
213
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
were always built above ground. At Antequera and other cemeteries
in Southern Spain (p. 274), orthostatic and corbelled tombs—of differ-
ent plans'—stand side by side. In such instances the method of con-
struction must have been dictated exclusively by the traditional
prejudices of the tombs' builders. In a preliminary survey, however,
it is community of plan that is most significant.
Among a bewildering variety of local deviations it is convenient to
distinguish two main types—Passage Graves consisting of a chamber
entered by a distinct passage, lower and narrower than the chamber
Fig. 108. Rock-cut tomb, Castelluccio, and corbelled tomb,
Los Millares.
proper; and Long Cists (Gallery Graves) in which the chamber itself is
long and narrow and entered directly through a portal without any
preceding passage. But if this conventional distinction be rigidly main-
tained, it leads to quite arbitrary classifications. A tomb like Fig. 153
is on plan as much a Gallery Grave as Fig. 109, but by its furniture
and method of construction it belongs to the same group as Fig. 152.
Long Cists may be covered by long or round barrows and so may
Passage Graves. No complex of relics is peculiar to one type rather than
the other save that the SOM culture (p. 312) is regularly associated
with Long Cists of the Paris type. Hence even in Western Europe the
facts do not authorize us to postulate the diffusion of two distinct
versions of the “megalithic idea”.1
The Passage Grave is the most widely distributed type, being com-
1 Of. Daniel, PPS., VII (1941), 1-49.
214
-
MEGALITH BUILDERS AND BEAKER-FOLK
mon throughout the East Mediterranean area, in Sicily, Sardinia,
Southern Spain, Portugal, Brittany, Central Ireland, Northern Scot-
land, Denmark, South Sweden, and Holland. Cellular annexes open
off the main chamber in the rock-hewn tombs of the East Mediter-
ranean, Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands and in some corbelled
tombs in Southern Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Scotland, in a few
orthostatic tombs in Brittany and Denmark. Roughly circular chambers
characterize the corbelled tombs of Crete and the Cyclades, the earlier
rock-hewn tombs of Sicily, and many South Spanish, Portuguese,
Breton, Irish, and Scottish sepultures and the oldest Danish ones. A
corbelled passage grave of circular plan is often called a tholos (Figs. 44
and 108).
In rock-cut tombs the passage is often a descending ramp. Where
the ground surface is nearly level it may be reduced to a stepped shaft,
producing the pit-cave (Fig. 25, 2) already encountered in Greece and
South Russia and to meet us again in Sicily. If the chamber is cut in
the face of a cliff, the passage may be abbreviated to a mere doorway
as often in Sicily (Fig. 108). A well-marked variety of passage grave,
built with large orthostats, has been termed an undifferentiated passage
grave because the passage gradually expands towards the chamber
which is generally bottle-shaped. Near Arles and in the Balearic Isles
the rock-hewn chambers are themselves long and narrow and not
preceded by any length of passage though cellular annexes sometimes
open off the chamber (Fig. 109). In Menorca the same type is repro-
duced above ground in dry-stone masonry in so-called navetas.
The long stone cist or gallery reproduces this Balearic plan in ortho-
static masonry. In Sardinia the orthostats support dry-stone walling
corbelled in to a barrel vault. But in the classic form represented in
the Paris basin, Brittany and Jersey, Belgium, Western and Central
Germany, and Sweden the uprights support the lintels, and the long
narrow rectangular chamber is preceded by a short porch as wide as
the chamber. Most cists of the Paris type are subterranean, being built
in an excavated trench. Variants on the long cist occur in South Italy,
Sardinia, Northern Spain, France, Britain, Denmark, and Holland.
On the slopes of the Pyrenees, in Northern Ireland, and South-West
Scotland gallery graves are divided into a series of intercommunicating
compartments by low, transverse slabs, termed septal stones, sometimes
combined with upright portals; such tombs are known as segmented
cists (Fig. no).
Dolmen is a term applied sometimes to any megalithic tomb, but
generally only to small rectangular or polygonal chambers without
entrance passage, formed of three to six megalithic uprights. Even
215
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
when thus restricted, the name obscures the genetic and functional
variety of the monuments to which it is applied. Some “dolmens", for
instance in Sardinia1 and in the Cotswolds,2 appear to be just the most
stubborn remains of more complex monuments destroyed by culti-
1 Antiquity, XIII, 376.
2 Crawford, Long Barrows of the Cotswolds, 21; Daniel, Antiquity, XI (1937), 183-200.
2l6
MEGALITH BUILDERS AND BEAKER-FOLK
vators or road-builders. Some are closed chambers, not collective
tombs. Others are obviously just abbreviated gallery graves.1 To
avoid confusion we have used the Danish name dyss (plural dysser) for
dolmens which are marked by furniture as well as structure as a distinct
type. But even the classical dyss, as defined on p. 181, might be regarded
as a segmented cist abbreviated to one compartment only.
The portal of the tomb was treated with special care, and one form
—termed the porthole slab—must be mentioned here. A round or sub-
rectangular aperture, 45 to 80 cm. (1 ft. 6 in. to 2 ft. 8 in.) across is
Fig. 110. Segmented cist in horned cairn, North Ireland, and Giants’
Tomb, Sardinia.
cut out in a slab—or in the proximal edges of two juxtaposed slabs—
which closes the entrance to chamber or passage (Figs. 81 and 100).
Porthole slabs were a regular feature in Caucasian '‘dolmens” and
occur even in the Indian ones. They form the portals to megalithic
cists and rock-cut tombs in Sicily, to the gallery graves of Sardinia, to
corbelled and other passage graves in Southern Spain,2 to long cists
of the Paris type not only in the Seine valley, but also in Brittany,
Jersey, Central Germany, and Sweden; they were even incorporated in
the megalithic temples of Malta.3 A porthole stone often enhances the
resemblance of a built tomb's doorway to the entry into a natural
1 For instance Adam’s Grave near Dunoon is just a segmented cist reduced to a
single segment.
2 Marburger Studien, I (1938), 147-55.
3 Arch., LXVIII, 266.
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
or artificial cave. The desire to emphasize the similarity has in fact
been suggested as an explanation for the porthole stone’s origin.1 But
a porthole slab was employed to form the portal of a tomb cut in
friable rock at Monte Salia,1 2 and the device does not always simulate
a cave mouth at all realistically.
Built chamber tombs, when not erected in an artificial excavation,
were probably always put underground artificially by burial in a
mound or cairn. The latter was always carefully constructed and was
often, if not always, supported by a built masonry revetment wall,
or by a peristalith of large uprights. Masonry revetments are well
illustrated in the Balearic navetas, in some Almerian round cairns, and
in the long cairns of the Cotswolds and Northern Scotland. But it is
doubtful whether these finely built walls were intended to be seen
in Britain, since the faces were masked deliberately by an “extra
revetment”3 of slabs piled obliquely.
The passage or portal of a chamber tomb often gives on to a fore-
court so carefully planned that it must have played an essential part
in funerary ritual. Semicircular forecourts cut in the rock precede
some Siculan tombs, and are delimited by built walls in front of Sar-
dinian gallery graves and North Scottish passage graves and by ortho-
stats in front of tholoi at Los Millares in Almeria and Barro in Portugal
and of North Irish and South-West Scottish segmented cists4 (Figs. 108
and no). In England the forecourts are more often cuspidal in plan,
as are those connected with one or two Mycenaean, Danish, Swedish,
and Armorican passage graves.5 More careful examinations of the
environs of chamber tombs or of the barrows covering them will
certainly reveal the presence of forecourts in other regions. Despite
their careful construction, the forecourts in Great Britain are generally
found filled up with earth and rubble. This filling may be deliberate.
In any case the entrances to tombs have usually been intentionally
blocked up and hidden. That need not mean, as Hemp6 has inferred,
that the numerous skeletons found in such tombs had all been laid
to rest simultaneously, after which the vault was finally sealed up.
The initiated could always rediscover the entrance and remove the
blocking, as happened at Mycenae (p. 82). Irrefutable evidence of the
1 Kendrick, Axe Age, 48.
2 BP., XLIII, 17, fig. 6.
3 Arch., LXXXVI, 132; PPS., IV (1938), 201.
* BP., XVIII, 75; Ausonia, I, 7; Not. Sc. (1920), 304; Correia, “Pavia”, 72; Childe,
Prehistory of Scotland, 26, 33. Vestiges of such a forecourt can be seen in Balearic
navetas (CIPMO,, 26), and with timber revetmentin English unchambered long-barrows
(p. 325, below).
5 Nordmann, Megalithic, figs. 36-9.
6 Arch. Camb. (1927), 13, 17.
218
MEGALITH BUILDERS AND BEAKER-FOLK
use of tombs for successive interments is forthcoming from one or
two graves in Scotland, Brittany, and Denmark,1 as at Mycenae.
The distribution of chamber tombs is presumably due to the spread
of some religious idea expressed in funerary ritual. Save in Egypt, they
seem everywhere to have served as collective sepulchres or family
vaults. A family likeness between the skeletons buried in the same
tomb has been reported in England and Denmark2 as at Mycenae, and
the features noted in Crete (p. 23: fires kindled in the chamber, con-
fusion of bones) are repeated almost universally. Collective burial
alone can hardly represent the unifying idea, since collective burial in
natural caves was practised even in mesolithic Palestine (p. 23). It
has indeed been suggested that the tombs were just copies of cave
ossuaries,3 and Wheeler4 describes the erection of megalithic tombs as
“the mass production of artificial caves” by populations accustomed
to collective burial in natural ones. But in Scotland and elsewhere
perfectly good natural caves were neglected; collective burial comes
in simultaneously with megalithic sepulchral architecture. But mega-
lithic tombs were not always used as communal ossuaries. The finest
tholoi, the Mycenaean, were designed for a single chieftain and perhaps
his spouse. The most elaborate rock-cut tombs of the Marne contain
only a few skeletons, the rest a hundred or so. Moreover, burial practices
were far from uniform. While inhumation, generally in the contracted
attitude, was everywhere the normal practice, cases of cremation have
been reported from many South Spanish, South French, Armorican,
and British tombs and are conclusively attested in Northern Ireland.
It is in fact only detailed agreements in seemingly arbitrary peculi-
arities of plan and in accessories, such as porthole slabs and forecourts,
that justify the interpretation of megalithic tombs as evidences of the
diffusion of ideas. The grave goods afford little support for this inter-
pretation. They are characterized at first by purely local idiosyncrasies
and would suggest to the typologist differences in date. In Egypt,
Cyprus, and the Aegean even the earliest tombs contain a relative
abundance of metal objects, and such are not uncommon even in the
first Siculan and Sardinian vaults. Moreover, in all these regions
chamber tombs continued to be built and used even in the Iron Age.
In Portugal, as in Malta, some megalithic tombs seem to be genuinely
pre-metallic, but in most tombs in the Iberian Peninsula and South
France, too, despite numerous stone tools, the grave goods are explicitly
Copper Age, while during the Bronze Age collective burial in chamber
3 Childe, Scotland, 43; Nordmann, Megalithic, 28.
2 PPS., TV, 147; Aarboger (1915), 3x9; Nordmann, Megalithic, 30.
8 Hemp, in PPS., I (1935), no.
4 In Eyre, European Civilization, II, 182.
219
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
tombs went out of fashion. In Brittany metal is exceptional in chamber
tombs. In Great Britain and the rest of North-Western Europe such
tombs contain an exclusively neolithic furniture and in general went
out of use as bronze became available.
This disparity has been used to support the thesis that megalithic
tombs, invented in the extreme north or in Portugal in a fabulously
ancient Stone Age, were carried thence to reach South Spain in the
Copper Age and the iEgean in a still later Bronze Age. In reality the
quantity of metal from the tombs is no criterion of their absolute age.
In North Europe we have proved conclusively that at least the later
“Stone Age” passage graves and long cists were in use during the full
Bronze Age or Danubian period IV in Central Europe and that none
of the dysser even need be appreciably older than period III. On the
short chronology outlined on p. 339 megalith building in Denmark
should begin about 2500 b.c., or several centuries later than the Early
Minoan and Cycladic tombs, to say nothing of the Egyptian.
The extreme rarity of metal and indeed of other imported objects
in the megalithic tombs of Northern and North-Western Europe seems
an almost fatal objection to the theory that the idea of building such
tombs was diffused by “prospectors" or “Children of the Sun”1 setting
out from Egypt or some other East Mediterranean centre to settle in
regions where ores or precious stones, valued for magical qualities as
givers of life, were to be found. There is a general, but far from exact,
correlation between the distribution of such substances (for instance,
copper in the Iberian Peninsula, the Pyrenees, Sardinia, Ireland,
Galloway, and the Crinan district, tin in Galicia and Cornwall, gold
in Brittany, Ireland, and the Strath of Kildonan, pearls in Orkney,
amber in Jutland, etc.) and foci of megalithic architecture. The tomb
furnitures afford surprisingly little evidence for the exploitation of
these resources (no Scottish copper, gold, or pearls have been found in
a local megalith) and none whatever of Egyptian or JEgean imports
obtained in exchange for their exportation. Yet such products would
be expected in the graves of merchant princes enjoying such prestige
that they could persuade local savages laboriously, if rather barbar-
ously, to copy for them the sepultures appropriate to their rank at
home, and inspired also with the desire for securing their own immor-
tality by necklaces of pearls and gold beads.
The rarity or complete absence of imports from megalithic tombs
is furthermore a serious obstacle to their correlation with any inde-
pendent sequence of cultures by which their relative or absolute age
might be determined. Once in Sicily, very frequently in Sardinia, the
1 Perry, The Growth of Civilization,
220
MEGALITH BUILDERS AND BEAKER-FOLK
Iberian Peninsula, South France, and Brittany, occasionally in Scot-
land and even Denmark, Bell-beakers or their derivatives are found
in megalithic tombs of almost every form. From individual tombs in
Brittany, Spain, Scotland, and Denmark1 it has been proved con-
clusively that the Beakers were associated only with the later inter-
ments in the tombs concerned. The Beaker-folk cannot therefore have
been the vehicles in the original diffusion of the “megalithic idea”, nor
can their expansion, which reached the Danube basin late in period III,
fix the relative age of the earlier chamber tombs.
Gallery graves in Central France, Brittany, and Jersey and even
in the Balearic Islands and Southern Sweden regularly contain relics
of the Horgen culture (p. 198). Indeed, it may be said that Horgen folk
diffused the Paris type of long cist to Brittany and across Germany to
Sweden. In Central Europe the Horgen culture too seems to belong to
a late phase of period III, and lasts into IV. But megalithic tombs are
not attached to the best-dated Horgen settlements, and the long cist
may be a secondary accretion in their culture.
In default of better founded chronologies, a resort to typology is
tempting. In Scandinavia the sequence, dyss (dolmen), passage grave,
long stone cist really seems to hold good, though it is no longer regarded,
as it was by Montelius, as a self-contained process of evolution and
degeneration. Similar sequences have been applied by Leeds, Ober-
maier, and Bosch-Gimpera1 2 to the Iberian Peninsula, and by Mackenzie
to Sardinia.3 Bosch-Gimpera, by labelling some ruinous tombs in
Northern Portugal “dolmens”, traces their development into ortho-
static passage graves, rock-cut tombs, and lastly tholoi. But of the
Iberian Peninsula Forde could write4 quite justly, “small passage
dolmens have a poorer, but not earlier furniture and represent a pro-
vincial degradation typical of peripheral areas”. In the sequel, however,
it has been established that some orthostatic passage graves are really
earlier than any tholoi in Portugal, while the still unpublished furniture
is said to confirm the yet higher antiquity of “small dolmens”, con-
taining it would seem only a single burial. Mackenzie’s "dolmens” in
Sardinia prove on closer examination to be just badly ruined Giants’
Grave.5 Only in Denmark is the priority in time of the simplest types
proved by grave goods. But even in Denmark out of hundreds of dysser
only 57 are dated by their contents to Northern II; a very large
1 L’Anthr., XLIII (1933), 248; Childe, Scotland, 43; Nordmann, “Megalithic", 122;
Leisner, Megalithgrdber, 554.
2 Arch., LXX, 215 £f.; "El Dolmen de Matarxibilla’’ (CIPP., 26); Real., X, 358;
Rev. Anthr., XL (1930), 244 ff.; Prehistoire, II (1933), 189 f.
3 BSR., V (1910), 87-137; VI, 127-70.
4 Am. Anthr., XXXII, 16. s Antiquity, XIII (1939), 376-7.
221
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
proportion must have been built, like the passage graves, during
period III.1
No new typology need be attempted here. The architectural agree-
ments cited reveal the megalithic province as a cultural continuum.
Within that continuum culture grows in every aspect poorer as we
pass westward and northward from the East Mediterranean to Scotland
and Denmark. We see the same sort of cultural zoning that has been
disclosed in the Danubian corridor and on the Eurasiatic plain.
Beaker Traders
The Beaker-folk was a principal agency in opening up communications,
establishing commercial relations, and diffusing the practice of metal-
4
Fig. iii. Beaker pottery: i, (i) and 2 ($), Palmella, Portugal; 3, La
Halliade, South France (•£); 4, Villafrati, Sicily (?£).
lurgy. We have already mentioned their activities in Central Europe,
and they will meet us so frequently in the West that a brief characteriza-
tion becomes convenient at this point.
1 Brendsted, Danmarks, 198, 345.
222
-
MEGALITH BUILDERS AND BEAKER-FOLK
Beaker-folk can be recognized not only by their economic activities
but also by the distinctive armament, ornaments, and above all
pottery, associated together everywhere in their graves. Indeed, the
inevitable drinking-cup, which gives a name to its users, may be more
than a readily recognized diagnostic symptom; it symbolizes beer as
one source of their influence, as a vodka flask or a gin bottle would
disclose an instrument of European domination in Siberia and Africa
respectively. Millet grains1 were in fact found in a beaker in Portugal.
The Beaker-folk are known principally from graves which never
form large cemeteries. When their pottery and other relics are found
in settlements, they are normally mixed, save perhaps in Central
Spain, with remains distinctive of other groups. Thus Beaker-folk
appear as bands of armed merchants who engaged in trading copper,
gold, amber, callals, and similar scarce substances which are frequently
found in their graves. The bands included smiths—the mould for
casting a West European dagger was found in a Moravian Beaker
grave1 2 3—and women who everywhere fashioned the distinctive vases
with scrupulous attention to traditional details of form and ornament.
They roved from the Moroccan coasts8 and Sicily to the North Sea
coasts, and from Portugal and Brittany to the Tisza and the Vistula.4
Sometimes they settled down, by preference in regions of natural
wealth or at the junctions of important routes. At times they obtained
economic and political authority over established communities of
different cultures, formed hybrid groups with these, and even led them
on farther wanderings; the Beaker groups that invaded Britain give
indications of composite origin.
A detailed study of Beaker pottery does not disclose a single and
irreversible expansion. It suggests an early uniformity so remarkable
as to be hardly explicable merely by the rapidity of a migration and the
conservatism of the migrants followed by the emergence of distinct
local groups, but the maintenance of intercourse between some of these
at least. The “classical” or “Pan-European” beaker (Fig in, 3-4),5 *
made of relatively fine grit-tempered ware coated with a burnished
1 CIA A., 1930 (Portugal), 356.
2 Casopis vlastenickeho spolku museijniho v Olomouci, XLI (1929), T. 11; Forssander,
Ostskand. Norden, 70.
3 Germania, XXXIII (1955). 13-22.
1 General review in A. del Castillo, La Culture :I:l Yr.i :t,:: *- 7;-*-f (Barcelona,
1928), and “Cronologia de la cultura del vaso <';???.? .i;-, r'v •'.>i r- < EspaHol de
Archeologia, LIII (1943), 388-435; (1944), 1-67; add for Belgium, Marien, Bui. Musdes
roy. d'Art et d’Hist. (Brussels, 1948), 16-48; for Poland, 2urowski, Wiad. Arch., XI
(1932), 116-56; for Central Germany, Neumann, PZ., XX (1929), 35 ff.; for North
Germany, NNU., II (1928), 25 £f.; X, 20; for Holland, Bursch, Oudh. Med., XIV (1933),
39-122.
5 Savory, Revista Guimardes, LX (1950), 363 ff.
223
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
slip that is liable to peel off and brick red to black in colour, is decorated
with zones of "rouletted” hatchings, alternating with plain zones. The
“rouletted” decoration is executed with a comb with very short teeth,
separated by extremely narrow interstices and probably with a curved
edge. It yields a practically continuous “hyphenated line" of round or,
more often, rectangular dots, separated by low septa. The horizontal
zones may be combined with a radial decoration on the base.
This classic Pan-European style is represented in nearly every
region1 reached by the Beaker-folk, though it grows less common and
characteristic as one goes eastward from the Rhine-Brenner line. But
wherever Beaker-folk settled down at all, local styles grew up. These
are presumably in general later and specialized variants on the origin-
ally common theme. On the other hand, an Iberic style using sharply
incised or stamped lines (well represented at Ciempozuelos and Pal-
mella) (Fig. hi, 1-2) is possibly older than the classic style.2 Be that
as it may, some local or derivative styles have such a wide distribution
that they must denote secondary intercourse if the dispersion of the
rouletted style be ascribed to a primary expansion. For instance,
beakers decorated by a cord, wrapped spirally round the vase, occur
in Northern Holland, Scotland, Brittany, and South France.3
In the Iberian Peninsula, South France, and Central Europe beakers
are often associated in graves with shallow hemispherical bowls decor-
ated in the same technique but more often with patterns radiating
from the base (Fig. in, 2).
A distinctive weapon associated everywhere with the Beaker com-
plex is the tanged West European knife-dagger (Fig. 113, 2). The tang
may be flanged; the hilt, never riveted to the blade, was hollowed at
the base in the Egyptian manner explained on p. 130. Flint copies
were frequently made as substitutes at least for funerary use. But
Beaker-folk were primarily bowmen. Arrows were normally tipped
with tanged-and-barbed flint heads in Western Europe, with hollow-
based heads in Holland, Central Europe, and Upper Italy. In Central
Europe (including Italy and Poland), Holland, and Great Britain,
rarely also in Brittany, but only once certainly in Spain,* the Beaker
archer wore a concave plaque of stone perforated at the four corners
1 E.g. Castillo, pis. VII, 4 (Andalusia); L, 2 (Portugal); LXI (Castellon); LXXVI,
1 (Catalonia); LXXXIV (Galicia); XCIV (Hautes Pyrenees); CIII (Brittany); CXIX,
2 (Sicily); CXXIII (Po valley); CL, 7 (Bohemia); CLII, 8 (Moravia); CLXXXII, 2
(Middle Rhine).
8 Nordmann, "Megalithic”, 100; A etas y Mem., XIV (1935), Noticiario, 5; Bosch-
Gimpera, Man, XL (1940), 2; but the stratigraphy of Somaen on which the latter relies
does not, as published, afford any clue as to the relations between my “classic” and
“grand” styles; Savory, lac. cit., 169.
a Childe, Scotland, 83; PCBI., 93.
4 Corona d'Estudis dedica a sus Martires (Madrid, 1941), 128.
224
MEGALITH BUILDERS AND BEAKER-FOLK
as a wrist-guard for protection against the recoil of the bow-string
(Fig. 112). In South France, Brittany, and Bohemia1 thin strips of
gold-leaf (Fig. 113, 4), similarly perforated for the same purpose. Thick
Fig. 112. Beaker, -wrist-guard, and associated vases, Silesia.
After Seger (J).
Fig. 113. West European dagger (Bohemia) and flint copy (Silesia); arrow-straightener
(Wiltshire); gold-leaf from wrist-guard and copper awl, Bohemia (?£).
* Mat., 1881, 552; Cazalis de Fondouce, Les Allies couvertes de Provence', L’Anthr.
XLIV, 507; Childe, Danube, 191, 193.
P 225
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
clay plaques of the same plan, but flat and also perforated at the corners,
are found on Beaker sites in Portugal and Spain and may also have
been used as wrist-guards. Stone arrow-straighteners,1 used by Beaker-
folk in Bohemia and Poland and also in Sardinia, do not seem to be
an original part of their equipment since in Central Europe they appear
in pre-Beaker times, in Britain only in the early Middle Bronze Age,
well after the Beaker invasions were over.
A distinctive element of the Beaker-folk’s costume was a button of
stone, bone, amber, or jet with V perforations.
In Northern Sicily, Sardinia, the Iberian Peninsula, South France
and Brittany, and the Channel Islands, Beakers and their normal
associated armaments are found, generally accompanied by relics
distinctive of other cultures, in collective sepulchres—natural caves,2
rock-cut tombs,3 tholoi,4 orthostatic passage graves,5 gallery graves,6
and segmented cists.7 In no case, however, do they demonstrably
accompany the primary interments, while in isolated instances they
were proved to be secondary (p. 327). Beaker-folk had sometimes
obtained admission to the families or clans entitled to burial in such
sepulchres, but arrived only after the tombs were erected. In North
Italy and throughout Central Europe, Beaker-folk were interred
individually and strictly contracted, in simple trench graves.
These form cemeteries comprising in Moravia as many as thirty
graves,8 but normally considerably less, as if the communities settled
in one place were small. But the Beaker-folk must have settled down
and multiplied in Central Europe, since the total numbers of Beaker
burials recorded from Bohemia is about 300, from Saxo-Thuringia 103,9
and from the small province of Veluwe in Holland 150.10 Settled in
Central Europe, the Beaker-folk formed hybrid cultures through con-
tact with other groups. In Moravia some adopted cremation and
burial under barrows perhaps from Battle-axe folk. From these in the
Rhineland, Holland, and North Germany Beaker-folk adopted barrow-
burial, battle-axes, and some elements even in ceramic decoration,
including presumably the use of cord impressions. In fact the contact
> PA., xxxix (1933), 50-3; cf. pp. 102, 106.
2 E.g. Villafrati in Sicily, commonly in the caves of Monges, near Narbonne, in
Central and Northern Spain and in Portugal.
3 E.g. Anghelu Ruju, Sardinia; Palmella and Alapraia (Portugal).
4 E.g. at Los Millares and other Almerian sites, and in Var.
5 E.g. in Brittany and Portugal.
6 E.g. in Brittany and in the Paris basin.
7 Puig Rodo (Catalonia) and La Halliade (Hautes Pyrenees).
8 Childe, Danube, 192; cf. Mannus, XXXI (1939), 467 if., for a cemetery of twenty-
four graves in Swabia.
» PZ., XX, 45.
10 Oudh. Med. (1933), 120.
226
MEGALITH BUILDERS AND BEAKER-FOLK
produced a hybrid population with a composite culture and art. At
least the B2 and C groups of Beaker invaders in Britain are offshoots
of such a hybrid.
The people buried with Bell-beakers at Ciempozuelos, near Madrid1
and almost invariably in Central Europe and Britain, are round-headed,
and brachycranial skulls are found in nearly every collective tomb
that yields Bell-beakers, even in regions so dominantly Mediterranean
as Sardinia and Sicily. In Germany,1 2 though not representing a strictly
homogeneous population, skulls from Beaker cemeteries regularly
comprise a novel racial type, better known in the Iberian Peninsula
and ultimately of East Mediterranean stock. In this instance, there-
fore, it looks as if culture and race coincided and one might legitimately
speak of a Beaker race. Even in Central Europe Beaker skulls had
been trephined.
Both in form and decoration Bell-beakers of the classic style and
the associated bowls look like copies of esparto-grass vessels such as
are made in the Sudan to-day.3 Beaker-like vases decorated with zones
of incision which might be clay translations of such basketry vessels
occur in Egypt in the early “Tasian” phase of culture.4 Potsherds found
in a still undatable settlement on the western edge of the Nile valley
at Armant and in a “neolithic" context in the Sudan and Africa Minor5
show roulette decoration, though rather coarser than that on classical
beakers, while typical beakers have been found in a cave on the
Moroccan coast.6 A hollow-based hilt like that regularly attached to
West European daggers was attached to flint and copper blades on the
Nile in Predynastic times.7 Hollow-based arrow-heads were character-
istic of the “neolithic" Fayum and of Early Predynastic Egypt. There
is accordingly some evidence for an African element in the Beaker
culture. Still most authorities hold that the culture as we know it took
form in Andalusia or on the lower Tagus,8 though plausible typological
arguments favour a North-West German origin.
The Beaker-folk’s expansion, from whatever cradle it started, was
presumably rapid. It thus constitutes a convenient chronological
horizon in several otherwise separated areas. But the number of beakers
and the variety of their decorations in each area imply that such vases
1 Bol. R. Acad. Madrid, LXXI, 22 fi.
2 Gerhardt, Die Glockenbecherleute in Mittel- und West-Deutschland (Stuttgart, 1953).
3 Schuchhardt, PZ., I (1909), 43.
4 Childe, NLMAE., 34, fig. 10; cf. pi. XVIIIb for Mesopotamian analogies.
6 Mond and Myres, Cemeteries of Armant, 268 ff., Arkell, Early Khartoum, pi. 89;
Vaufrey, Inst. Pal. Hum., Mem., 20 (1939), 72 ff.
8 Germania, XXXIII (1955), 13-22.
7 Childe, NLMAE., 98, fig. 39.
8 Castillo, op. cit., Bosch-Gimpera, Real., X, 356; PPS., XXIX, 95 ff.
227
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
must have been in fashion for several generations. It is therefore a
grave error to treat all beakers as contemporary.1 Such vases mark
rather a substantial period of time, not everywhere of equal duration.
In Central Europe beakers go back to period III. On the other hand, in
Moravia, Bohemia, and even on the Rhine, beakers2 are associated in
graves with round-heeled riveted daggers typical of period IV and in
Austria3 with mature Unetician forms. A beaker, with exact parallels
in Bohemia and in Sardinia too, reached Denmark, in Neolithic IIIc.
And the bronzes of period IV are often decorated with patterns that
recur on beakers. In other words, beakers remained in fashion into
period IV in Central Europe and the Beaker and Un&tician cultures
overlap. Beakers do not denote a point in time. But the Beaker cultures
are everywhere on the same economic plane. Judged by form and
decoration, most British and Central European Beakers seem to be
later than the “classic type”, those from the edge of the Beaker terri-
tory—Scotland and Poland—looking particularly late.
1 Forssander, Ostskand. Norden, 37; Childe, Am. Anthr., XXXIX (1937), 10.
2 Childe, Danube, 190; Forssander, Ostskand. Norden, 72; Mannus, XXXI, 478, fig. 17.
2 PZ., XXV, 137.
228
CHAPTER XIII
FARMERS AND TRADERS IN ITALY AND SICILY
Spreading westward by sea, the neolithic economy would be expected
to reach the Apennine Peninsula next after Greece. This expectation
is justified by quite early settlements in Apulia, in Sicily and on the
adjacent iEolian Islands, and along the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
But ecologically Italy is less uniform than Greece. In the south and
on the Tyrrhenian coasts a rural economy that had worked in the
Levant would still serve. It would need drastic adjustments to meet
the more continental conditions that reign on the northern slopes of
the Apennine chain. In fact, the two sides of the Peninsula enjoyed
very different fortunes in the neolithic phase, but during the Bronze
Age a remarkable degree of uniformity was attained.
The general outlines of Italian prehistory were sketched last century
by Pigorini and Orsi and summarized for English readers by Peet.1
After fifty years of stagnation they have been corrected and filled in
largely as a result of stratigraphical excavations by Bemabo Brea in
Liguria, on the iEolian Islands, and in Sicily. His division2 of the Italian
Neolithic into Lower, Middle, and Upper will be followed in the sequel.
The Neolithic Colonization of South Italy and Sicily
In the south and in Liguria the record begins with settlements char-
acterized best by rough-looking but well-fired vases of quite sophisti-
cated shapes that agree very closely both in technique, form, and
ornament with the “barbottine” ware of Starcevo, that we have
encountered all over the Balkan peninsula. That their makers came
by sea is clear from the coastwise distribution of the sites and the
occupation of small islands in the Tremiti and iEolian archipelagoes.
It must have been the rich deposits of obsidian that attracted early
neolithic voyagers to the iEolian Islands; for fertile though they be,
water supplies are totally lacking. In fact, the volcanic glass was
extensively exported and used in neolithic villages all over the main-
land and Sicily. These first settlers might have come direct from the
1 The Stone and. Bronze Ages in Italy and Sicily (Oxford, 1909). No equally compre-
hensive survey has superseded this work save for Sicily, where Bemabo Brea, "La
Sicilia prehistorica”, Ampurias, XY-XVI (1954), has replaced Orsi’s system.
2 Bernabo Brea, Gli Scavi nella Caverna delle Arene Candide, II (Bordighera, 1956)
(cited AC., II), 155-292.
229
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Balkans, but the occurrence, together with simple rustication, of
patterns executed with the edge of a shell (generally Car diuni) and
in particular the so-called rocker motive might suggest a parallel but
independent movement from the Levant where this motive was
popular on neolithic pottery. Still, “rocker patterns”, executed with
a notched stamp if not a shell edge, occur on “neolithic” pottery in
the Urals, in the Sudan, and widely in North Africa, and cannot all
be plausibly traced to a single origin! This distinctive pottery is found
only exceptionally1 unmixed with other styles. Hence the Lower
Neolithic culture, introduced by these maritime colonists, cannot be
further defined. In Sicily it developed directly into the Stentinello
culture. This takes its name from a village on the shore just north of
Syracuse, but is represented at similar sites at Matrensa and Megara
Hyblaea. All three villages he near the coast on level ground, but were
girt with rock-cut ditches and internal ramparts of some kind. At
Matrensa the ditch was interrupted by frequent causeways as in
English and Rhenish neolithic camps. On these sites, as elsewhere in
Sicily and at Castellaro on Lipari, the rough-looking rusticated pottery
is associated with a very fine local ware characterized by the use of a
greater variety of stamps, more diversified motives, their composition
to form well-ordered patterns (in contrast to the casually scattered
finger-tip or cardial impressions of the “rough ware”), and an equal
diversity of shapes; the latter include simple round-bottomed types
such as are attributed to the “Western Neolithic” in Chapter XV, and
also sophisticated vessels with, for instance, ring handles rising above
the rims.
-
The economy evidently was based on cultivation, stock-breeding,
hunting, fishing, and collecting, but no weapons survive save sling-
bullets. Blade tools of local flint or of obsidian from Lipari include
neither bifacially worked nor geometric types. Ground stone celts were
rare.
The only burial attributable to the Stentinello culture is that of a
skeleton in a round pit lined with slabs on edge. Nor do female figurines
survive to attest a fertility cult of the Asiatic-Balkan type. A few clay
animal heads may be ritual or merely ornamental.
While the Stentinello culture was still flourishing in Sicily, the
Middle Neolithic phase in Apulia had already been initiated with the
advent or development of a distinct culture which will here be called
the Molfetta culture, characterized by painted pottery. It is known
from numerous ditched enclosures, revealed by air photographs,2 of
1 Perhaps at Coppa Nevigata, MA., XIX (1909), 340-5; cf. AC., II, 162-6.
2 Bradford, in Antiquity, XX (1946), 191; XXIII, 60-5; XXIV, 86-8.
230
FARMERS AND TRADERS IN ITALY AND SICILY
which only a few have been excavated.1 The enclosures can, from the
plans alone, be classified as villages and homesteads. The former cover
very large areas often subdivided into an inner enclosure, containing
within its ditch smaller round enclosures and representing the inhabited
area, and a larger outer space, presumably fields or pastures. The
inner enclosures, of which there may be 100 in one village, measure
60 to 50 feet across and must be farmyards, like Irish raths, each
corresponding to one household. Homesteads too may be divided up
into an infield or yard of about an acre in area and a larger demesne
outside it. Bradford from air-photographs alone has identified over 200
villages and homesteads in an area of less than 1500 square miles. So
the neolithic population must have been quite dense even if not all
sites were Middle Neolithic.
The population was engaged in breeding cows, pigs, sheep, and
allegedly buffaloes,2 while sickle-teeth and saddle querns3 demon-
strated the cultivation of cereals which were stored in the numerous
pits that are found within the farmyards. Again the sling is the sole
weapon attested. Obsidian was imported from the Eolian Islands.
Ground stone celts were supplemented by roughly flaked chopping-
tools. The pottery4 comprises on the one hand hard-fired burnished
ware, generally red and often decorated with rectilinear patterns
scratched after firing, and on the other light-coloured fabrics painted
with designs in red, or red and black. Some vases show a nose and two
eyes, just below the rim, as in the Trapeza ware of Crete.5 Similar
painted vases may illustrate the spread of the Molfetta culture to the
Eolian Islands, Ischia, and Capri,6 but on Sicily it is represented only
by stray painted vases (Fig. 114, 3) found on Stentinello sites. On
Lipari7 some of these vases are provided with vertical subcutaneous
handles, foreshadowing a device already encountered in Central Europe
in the Baden complex, and to meet us shortly in the Rinaldone culture
of Central Italy. And the painted ware is associated with black bur-
nished vases, some provided with broad ribbon handles as in Early
Neolithic Greece. These black vessels are sometimes crusted after
firing with red or black colours 01 incised with mseanders or less often
spirals in a manner that really recalls Dimini and Balkan-Danubian
styles.
1 BP., XLIV (1924), 107-21; MA., XX, 238 ff.
2 BP., XLV, 92.
3 But on Lipari the querns are saucer- or even trough-shaped.
4 Stevenson, PPS., XIII (1947), 88-92.
5 Rellini, La piii antica Ceramica dipinta in Italia (Rome, 1935), 56-62.
6 Rellini, op. cit. The style of painting represented on Capri, Lipari, and Sicily diverges
substantially from the Apulian.
7 Bemabo Brea, APL., Ill (1952); BP., n.s., X (1956), 18-24.
231
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
The Molfetta culture is usually supposed to have been introduced
into Apulia from the Balkan peninsula. But except for the maeander
and spiral patterns on Lipari no decisive parallels can at present be
found on that side of the Adriatic.
The Later Neolithic Phases
A second division of the Middle Neolithic (M.N.II) is conveniently
defined on the mainland and on the iEolian Islands by the “fine
painted ware” classically represented at Serra d’Alto near Mat era.
The walls and ditches of the enclosures had been allowed to col-
lapse or fill up,1 but the sites were still inhabited or used as burying-
grounds. Much of the old culture persisted, but ceramic forms and
2
Fig. 114. Middle Neolithic painted pottery: 1-2, black on buff, Serra d’Alto ware, M.N.II;
3, red and black on buff, Megara Hyblaea (J).
decorations are quite novel. The vases, including on Lipari2 rare
square-mouthed vessels, are painted, but only in warm black, and with
stumpy spirals or mseanders and step, ladder, or windmill motives
(Fig. 114, 1-2). One vase from Apulia stood on model human feet.
Long horizontal tubular handles, perforated axially, are quite dis-
tinctive; they might be surmounted by conventionalized heads of
bulls or rams.
The dead were buried flexed in pits lined with stones and provided
with a special niche for the feet.3 Rare clay stamps or pintadere,4 long
1 E.g., at Molfetta, MA., XX, 251-58; Mosso mistook the ruined wall for a streetl
2 BP. (1956), 25-8.
3 MA., XX, 255-8; Rellini, Ceramica, 67; Mayer, Matera und Molfetta, Leipzig
(1924), 20-30.
i Mayer, Matera, 67, pi. IX, 19; BP. (1956), 27; analogies to the Italian pintadere
come from early iEgean levels at G6zlu Kale (Tarsus) in Cilicia, AJA„ XLII (1938),
39—and from Neolithic Byblos.
232
FARMERS AND TRADERS IN ITALY AND SICILY
and narrow in plan in contrast to the iEgean-Balkan forms, may
belong to the ideological equipment, but clay figurines are missing save
on Lipari.
The Serra d’Alto culture, like its predecessor, is generally considered
to be intrusive in Apulia and of Balkan origin. Similar painted pottery
has in fact been found in the cave of Khirospilia on Levkas, and the
pintadere could be derived from Balkan clay stamps. But no exact
counterpart to the culture has been identified outside Italy. Now
Puglisi1 has recently reported Mycenaean sherds associated with typical
“fine painted ware” in the Caverna di Erba in the heel of Italy. If his
observations be confirmed, the whole culture sequence in South Italy,
Sicily, and Malta will have to be drastically curtailed. But on the
acropolis of Lipari Serra d’Alto pottery is stratified well below the
layer containing abundant L.M.I imported vases, while Diana and other
groups, distinguished mainly by typology, should be intercalated
before this horizon.
In the Late Neolithic phase, more sharply distinguished in the
village of Diana on Lipari than on the mainland, painted wares went
out of fashion to give place to highly burnished red vases. These still
retained the horizontal tubular handles of Serra d’Alto which, at first
of exaggerated length and expanding towards the ends like trumpet-
lugs, subsequently degenerated into unpierced ridges. But by this
time fresh impulses were reaching the province. At Diana on Lipari
occur a few bifacially trimmed hollow-based arrow-heads and even
metal slag.2 On the mainland at Bellavista near Taranto3 polished vases
with Diana handles but also spouts were found in a small cemetery
of rock-cut collective tombs.
The Transition to a Bronze Age
The phenomena just mentioned herald the transition to a new division
of the archaeological record traditionally termed Chalcolithic, most
clearly documented in Sicily. There the Serra d'Alto culture had been
represented only by a few typical vases found as far west as Palermo.4
Vases of Diana style are more widespread and occur even on Stentinello
sites, though perhaps in intrusive graves. But in the chalcolithic
cultures of Sicily the Stentinello tradition seems to be blended with,
or transformed by, fresh foreign impulses.
So in the San Cono culture5 we find both single interments in stone-
1 Riv. Sc. Pr., VIII (1953), 86-93.
2 BP. (1956), 31- 3 B.P., XXXII (1906), 36-48.
4 BP., XLV, 113. * BP., XXV (1898), 53; XXXIV (1908), 119; XLV, 62.
233
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
lined pit graves, as at Molfetta, and at least one rock-cut pit-cave,
used however for a single interment. The pottery is dark-faced, some-
times incised and incrusted with red or white colour, but occasionally
painted in bright red before firing. Small polished celts, hitherto rare,
are now common, and bifacially trimmed arrow-heads appear, as at
Diana. Metal is practically unrepresented, but obsidian was freely
imported and rough celts, some sharpened with a tranchet blow, were
manufactured in regular factories on the slopes of the Iblean Moun-
tains and systematically distributed.1 From this culture developed in
North-Western Sicily that termed Conco d’Oro,2 known mainly from
small groups of pit-cave tombs each containing one, or exceptionally
two corpses; sometimes two chambers open off a single shaft. Hollow-
based arrow-heads, stone beads, and an axe-amulet are among the
grave goods, and a variety of pots. Besides self-coloured wares decor-
ated by incision or rarely with white paint, clear buff ware was manu-
factured and covered all over with a dark slip that might be used as a
ground for designs in white paint. Cups and mugs are provided with
good handles, some nosed; “salt-cellars"—paired bowls linked by a
high loop handle—were conspicuous. The tomb type, the pot forms
and the dark-slipped pale ware vaguely suggest East Mediterranean
influence. On the other hand, a Bell-beaker, imported from Sardinia
or Spain, was found in a sepulchral cave at Villafrati, and another
Beaker, perhaps a local imitation, came from a Conco d’Oro tomb at
Carini.3 The Conco d’Oro culture lasted until the Casteluccio culture
was established in South-Eastern Sicily, and Late Minoan I pottery
was reaching the dBolian Islands in the fifteenth century.4
By then the Serraferlicchio5 pottery style of Southern Sicily had
developed and disappeared. The vases, red surfaced and painted in
black, include handled mugs, amphorae, and spouted jugs that look
vaguely iEgean though the patterns can be best matched in the
''Neolithic" of Acarnania. On the dSolian Islands6 the period is
represented by the village of Piana Conte, where imported vases of
Serraferlicchio style were found together with local vases provided
with vertical subcutaneous string-holes or horizontal tunnel-handles.
The Sicilian Bronze Age
The foreign influences foreshadowed in these rather nebulous tran-
sitional cultures culminate in the rise of the Castelluccio culture,
1 Ampurias (1954), 158-60. 2 MA., XL (1944). 1-17°-
3 Annales de Geol. et PaUontol. (Palermo, 1900I, No. 28.
4 APL., Ill, 85-7; BP. (1956), 5*-
8 Arias in MA., XXXVI (1937). 695-838.
6 Ampurias (1954). 181-2; APL., Ill (1952). 78-9*
234
FARMERS AND TRADERS IN ITALY AND SICILY
Orsi’s Siculan I, in South-Eastern Sicily. Now actual iEgean imports
supplement ceramic and architectural analogies and provide an his-
torically dated horizon not only for the environs of Syracuse but for
Malta and the iEolian Islands too.
In Eastern Sicily, as on the iEolian Islands, the lowland coastal
villages had been replaced by little townships planted on naturally
defensible hilltops or promontories and well fortified. The walled areas
were still small; in two cases the estimate given is one hectare or 2,\ acres.
But large cemeteries of collective tombs imply a substantial population
settled in one place for several generations; 32 tombs have been actually
examined at Castelluccio, 20 at Syracuse, 11 at Monte Salia, and each
tomb contained from 50 to 200 corpses.1 The population, of course,
still depended primarily on farming—the bones of horses are now
reported in addition to those of food animals—but produced a surplus
to support craftsmen and traders.
Flint was still systematically mined at Monte Tabuto by expert
miners who were presumably specialists. Metal was imported and
apparently worked locally into- simple flat axes (known only by a
couple of miniatures made for funerary purposes), triangular riveted
daggers and ornaments such as spectacle-spirals, and tubes of coiled
wire. However, metal was so rare that polished stone axes and roughly
flaked picks were still made and used even for carving the tombs.
Stone beads were manufactured for the first time.
Foreign trade is explicitly disclosed by bossed bone plaques (Fig. 115)
found in several tombs,2 in the ruins of Troy II, in a Middle Helladic
layer at Lerna (p. 77), and in the “neolithic” temple of Hal Tarxien in
Fig. 115. Bossed bone plaque, Castelluccio. After Evans (£).
Malta. Its effects may also be recognized in a bone pommel3 of the
same type as the Trojan pommel shown in Fig. 21,3, in a Middle Helladic
matt-painted cup from tomb V at Monte Salia, and in numerous axe-
amulets, but some alleged “amber” beads may be made of a local resin.
Pottery remained a domestic industry, but the forms of the hand-
made vases—hour-glass tankards, high-handled mugs (Fig. 116, 4-5)
and pedestalled bowls with handles joining bowl and stem—are quite
1 von Duhn, Italische Graberkunde, 71-9.
2 Antiquity, XXX (1956), 80-94. 3 BP., XLIII, pi. II, 6.
235
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
alien to the Stentinello tradition. They may be plain or painted in
black on a reddish ground with geometric designs. On some vases from
Vallelunga the black is outlined in white, giving somewhat the effect
of Dimini ware.
The dead were now buried in rock-cut tombs of East Mediterranean
style (Fig. 108). The chambers are generally more or less circular in
plan and may be preceded by a smaller ante-chamber. When cut in a
3 4 5
Fig. 116. Early Apennine Copper and Early Bronze Age pottery: 1-2, pit-cave, Otranto;
3, “dolmen” of Bisceglie; 4-5, Castelluccio ware (£).
vertical cliff face, the entrance is normally a small window-like aperture,
rebated to receive the blocking stone. The blocking stone in one tomb
at Castelluccio was carved with spirals in low relief; the entrance to
the inner chamber of another tomb in the same cemetery was closed
by two carved slabs, which, combined (Fig. 117), produce the effect
of the funerary goddess carved on many megalithic tombs in France
and on the stele from Troy I mentioned on p. 40. The tombs often
open on to a semi-circular porch or forecourt cut in the rock, the walls
of which were in at least one case carved with pilasters.1 In some late
1 von Duhn, pis. 4, iS; 6, 22 and 7, 23; BP., XVIII, 75; Not. Sc. (1920), 304; Ausonia,
I. 7-
236
FARMERS AND TRADERS IN ITALY AND SICILY
tombs at Monteracello the vault had been reproduced above ground
in a rectangular cist (2*05 m. by 1*2 m. square) framed with four large
slabs on edge in one of which a square window had been cut out, con-
verting it into a sort of porthole slab.1 The disused galleries of flint-
mines were also used as burial-places. All these tombs served as family
vaults in which numerous skeletons were deposited, sometimes seated
as if at a feast. Ritual objects from domestic sites include clay horns,2
Fig. 1x7. View into chamber tomb, Castelluccio.
used perhaps against the evil eye. Such horns had, however, been used
already at Serraferlicchio and in contemporary sites on the Eolian
Islands.
In a general way the Castelluccio culture, economy, and funerary
ritual might be attributed to a further extension of the causes that
occasioned the rise and westward expansion of Early Helladic culture
in Greece. But the sepulchral architecture has more analogies to the
West than to the East. The pottery, despite Early Helladic parallels
(e.g. to the tankards of Fig. 116, 2), has been more aptly compared by
Bernabo Brea3 to Anatolian wares—particularly the Cappadocian
current at the time of the Assyrian colony at Kul-tepe between 1950
and 1850 B.c. The bossed bone plaques may be just versions of the gold
ornaments from the earlier Royal Tombs of Alaca, but find their
closest analogues in Troy and Middle Helladic Lerna (p. 44). The
1 BP., XXIV, 202.
2 MA., XVIII, 643; BP., XXXVI, pi. 12.
' 237
3 Ampurias (1954), 177-18.
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DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
matt-painted cup from Monte Salia unambiguously attests contact
with Middle Helladic Greece, probably after rather than before 1600 b.c.
More precise limits can be deduced from Aegean imports on the iEolian
Islands.
The islands had now become points of trans-shipment for coastwise
trade between the iEgean and the West or lairs for pirates who preyed
thereon. In contrast to the earlier open villages, settlements of the
Early Bronze Age Capo Graziano culture (so-called after a site on that
promontory of Filicudi) are located on naturally defensible sites or
fortified.1 That on the acropolis of Lipari comprises over ten oval
huts with stone wall bases and internal diameters between 3-2 x3*0 m.
and 4*5x3*i m. which are grouped round a much larger oval building
in an inner enclosure that seems a sanctuary rather than a chieftain’s
palace. Though the culture is termed Bronze Age, no metal survives
—collective tombs that might have contained some had been pillaged
long ago—and obsidian was still quarried and worked. But a relative
abundance of Minoan and Mycensean vases attest frequent contacts
with the JEgean. Most sherds are L.H.I-II, only a tiny handful might
be L.H.IIIa. Hence the Capo Graziano villages flourished mainly
between 1500 and 1400 b.c. Only a couple of sherds of Castelluccio
ware have been recognized on the iEolian Island sites. On the other
hand, the earliest Bronze Age pottery of Malta is related to native
Capo Graziano ware, while imported specimens of the latter have been
reported from Conco d’Oro tombs at Villafrati.2
Hence in North-Western Sicily the Conco d’Oro culture must have
lasted till 1500 b.c. Only thereafter was it replaced by the Castel-
luccio culture. By 1400 b.c. in South-Eastern Sicily the latter culture
had been replaced by that now named after a cemetery at Thapsos—
Orsi’s Siculan II.
By then Sicilian economy had been transformed into one of full
Middle Bronze Age type by the incorporation of the island into the
iEgean commercial system. Late Helladic III pottery,3 gold rings,
bronze vessels, mirrors, rapiers,4 and fayence beads were imported
from Greece. iEgean influence was so strong that Evans5 suspected
a Cretan colonization of the island under a Minoan prince.
But basically the Thapsos culture was rooted in the native traditions
of the island. Pottery was not industrialized. The hand-made grey
vases, though unpainted and decorated in a novel style, preserve many
1 BP. (1956), 43-52.
2 Not in the same tomb as the Beaker, though with the same local variety of pottery.
3 Fullest list by Levi in Paoli Or si a cur a dell’Archivio Storico per Calabria (Rome,
1935); cf. BP. (1936-37), 57 ff.
4 Evans, Arch., LIX, 1906, 108 ff. 5 P. of M., I, 3.
238
FARMERS AND TRADERS IN ITALY AND SICILY
Castellnccio forms. Large cemeteries of rock-cut tombs carry on equally
old traditions. But though the cemeteries comprise far more tombs,
each chamber contained far fewer corpses, serving as the burying-
place of a single family, as at Mycenae.
Ischia,1 the iEolian Islands, and the adjacent promontory of Milazzo
in Sicily were also now incorporated in the orbit of Mycenaean trade,
but not in the Thapsos culture. They seem rather to be frontier posts
between the Aegean and the Continental-West European commercial
systems. The cemetery of Milazzo1 2 consists not of chamber tombs
but of pithos burials; these reproduce the practice of Argaric Spain,
of Anatolia, and of Middle Helladic—but not Mycenaean —Greece. The
grave goods include amber, imported from the Baltic, and fayence
from the iEgean. On the acropolis of Lipari and in the natural fortress
of Milazzesi on Panarea3 imported Mycenaean vases and Thapsos
pottery turn up in villages of oval, or exceptionally rectilinear, houses,
built on stone foundations—23 survive at Milazzesi. Native vases,
inscribed with characters derived from the first Minoan linear (A)
script, show how deeply Aegean influence had penetrated the islands'
culture. Associated are ritual objects of clay, almost identical in form
and size with the anchor ornaments so popular in Greece and Thrace
in the Early Aegean period—nearly a millennium earlier. A hoard of
imported beads found on Salina contains more segmented fayence
beads than have been found in the whole of Britain! But side by side
with these yEgean and Sicilian elements are sherds of early Apennine
ware. They indicate strong influence, if not some actual colonization,
from the Italian mainland as early as 1350 B.c. Thereafter the iEolian
Islands were annexed to the mainland province of the Apennine
culture, doubtless as a consequence of the invasion by Ausonians, of
which Diodorus has preserved a tradition.
An extension of this current to Sicily may be inferred from an
urnfield at Milazzo4; the cremation rite is that proper to the mature
Bronze Age of peninsular Italy; the funerary vases are of Apennine
type. But one at least is decorated in the old Thapsos style. Thus the
cremationists should have arrived at latest about 1150, which would
agree strikingly with the traditional dates given for the arrival of the
Sicels by Hellanikos and Thucydides! But in South-Eastern Sicily the
old tradition of inhumation in chamber tombs was maintained in the
cultures of Pantalica and Cassabili5 (both were included by Orsi and
1 Buchner, BP., n.s., I (i936_37)> 65.
2 Ampurias (1954), 184; BP. (1956), 56-7.
3 APL., Ill, 71-4, 80; BP. (1956), 53-63.
4 At a different place to the pithos cemetery; Ampurias (1954), 203-5; BP- (I956), 78.
0 Ampurias (1954), 203-5.
239
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Peet in Sicilian II). But here too ceramic styles have changed, Mycenaean
imports have ceased, the settlements and cemeteries have been trans-
ferred from the coastal plains to more defensible fastnesses farther
inland. Some of the metal-work is still based on Mycenaean traditions
(shaft-hole axes, knives like Fig. 118, i). Razors and fibulae conform
to Continental types. By the Late Bronze Age even Sicily was domin-
ated by the traditions of Temperate Europe.
The Early Metal Ages in South Italy
In tells1 and caves2 strata containing plain burnished leather-coloured
pots of Apennine types seem to be immediately superimposed on those
yielding Serra d'Alto ware, and the local Apennine culture they typify
lasted, through a period when Mycenaean pottery was imported, into
the Iron Age. The Mycenaean levels should correspond to the Thapsos
phase in Sicily and to the Middle Bronze Age of Upper Italy. Earlier
phases may be represented in some sepulchral caves,3 chamber tombs,4
and “dolmens".5
The latter are either passage graves with a chamber, no wider than
the passage, or long cists, one actually a segmented cist.6 One was
provided with a porthole slab, placed however in one side instead of at
the end.7 Of the furniture, a few amber beads and a cup with an axe-
handle (Fig. 116, 3) survive. Identical cups will meet us in Liguria,
South France, and Catalonia associated in the latter regions with a
late phase of the local megalithic culture. So it looks as if the South
Italian dolmens were an offshoot of the South French megalithic
culture. Puglisi8 suggested that it was brought through Corsica and
1 E.g., Punto del Tonno, Taranto, Saflund in Pragma Martino P. Nilsson (Skrifter
Svensk. Instl), Rome, 1939, 458 fi.
2 Riv. Sc. Pre., VIII (1953), 89-93.
8 BP., XXI (1905), 153; Quagliati, La Puglia preistorica (Trani, 1936); MA., XXVI
(1921), 494.
* LAAA., II, 80; BP., XLIV, 1x6; ib., n.s. (1938), 42; Riv. Sc. Pre., V (1950), 126;
von Duhn, 72-4.
6 Gervasio, I Dolmen (Bari, 1913).
6 Ib., p. 63. 7 Ib., p. 68. 8 Riv. Antr., LXI (1954), 1-31.
24O
FARMERS AND TRADERS IN ITALY AND SICILY
Sardinia by pastoral groups, who, landing in Tuscany, would have
helped to develop the Apennine culture which they brought with them
by land routes to the southern extremity of the peninsula.
But some interments in chamber tombs and natural caves may be
earlier, for some of these contain Diana ware (p. 233) or vases with
striking parallels in Thessaly III.1 The chamber tombs themselves
might denote iEgean influence as in Sicily and equally early.
If so, similar funerary practices should reveal the same influence in
Central Italy too. After all, in historical times the first Greek colony
in the West was planted at Cumae near Naples, not in Sicily nor the
heel of Italy. A cemetery of pit-cave tombs at Paestum (Gaudo) near
Salerno2 might represent a precursor a millennium earlier. Most
chambers contain only one, or at most two, flexed skeletons, but some
were genuine collective tombs with 17 or even 26 corpses, while occa-
sionally two chambers open off a single pit. The funerary pottery,
monochrome, generally black, rarely ornamented with incised designs,
includes some very TEgean-looking forms, notably askoi and pyxides
with string-hole lids, while “salt-cellars,” globular vases with strap
handles, and some other types could be paralleled in the Conco d’Oro
(p. 234) as well as in Apulia. Transverse arrow-heads were found in
one tomb, but bifacially trimmed tanged arrow-heads and lance-heads
and a single copper dagger with prominent mid-rib are types proper
to the Rinaldone culture farther north. Of thirteen skulls examined,
five were brachycranial, three long-headed.
Trade from such a "colony” might have promoted the rise in Central
Italy of the Rinaldone culture, first distinguished from the North
Italian Remedello culture by Laviosa-Zambotti in 1939.3 It is repre-
sented by burials in pit-caves or natural grottoes in Latium4 and
Tuscany.5 There are tin lodes in Tuscany and there a sepulchral cave
in Monte Bradoni contained two V-bored buttons of metallic tin, a
dagger like Fig. 121, a, of Early Minoan affinities and brachycranial
skeletons. Kite-shaped or triangular daggers and flat, or exceptionally
hammer-flanged, axes recur in other Rinaldone tombs. But while the
tomb form and the metal gear may be of iEgean inspiration, other
items in Rinaldone equipment are not. Bifacially trimmed daggers and
1 Stevenson, PPS., XIII, 197.
2 Riv. Sc. Pr., I (1946), 249, 257; II, 284-92.
3 St. Et., XIII (1939). 58.
4 A sepulchral cave at Sasso near Civitavecchia containing a hundred skeletons (one
with trepanned skull), sling bullets but no arrow-heads is assigned by the excavator
(BP., VIII (1953). 43-8; Riv. d’Antr., XLI (1954), 4°-5°) to "Middle Neolithic”, but a
cup with elongated handle would seem more appropriate to an Upper Neo. or even
Apennine context.
5 To Feet's list add BP., XL, 53; XLIII, 97; n.s. VIII (1951), 109; Atti i0. Con. Preh.
Med. (Firenze, 1950), 334-40; Riv. Sc. Pr., V (1950), 122; VI, 3, 151.
Q 241
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
tanged arrow-heads of flint are common to all the “chalcolithic”
cultures of the peninsula. Stone battle-axes with symmetrically splayed
blades must be connected with the “polygonal” weapons of Northern
Neolithic II or their copper prototypes of Danubian III. In the pottery,
which is dark-faced, burnished but undecorated, the most distinctive
form is a bottle provided with no handles but vertical subcutaneous
string-holes like those of the Danubian III Baden culture or of M.N.I
on Lipari. But at Punta degli Stretti (Grosseto)1 good Rinaldone types
seem associated with an axe-handle cup like Fig. 116, 3.
Thus if southern and western influences travelled northward along
the Tiber-Arno corridor, it provided a channel also for cultures, adapted
to the Temperate zone, to spread south, and in the Apeninne peninsula
these proved the more viable.
The Apennine culture that succeeds Rinaldone in Central Italy and
that had reached the Tyrrhenian coasts and South Italy by Mycenaean
times is still known almost exclusively by its highly characteristic
pottery. This has indeed been found in some semi-megalithic tombs
under round cairns in Tuscany which, resembling the late passage
graves of the Causses d’Aude, might provide the required link between
South France and the South Italian “dolmens”.1 2 But these tombs had
been re-used in Etruscan times and robbed of any non-ceramic grave
goods. Most of the pottery comes from hilltop settlements, much eroded,
and from caves used for collective inhumations over a long period.3 The
distinctive monochrome burnished pottery is characterized by an
exuberant development of bizarre handles (cf. Figs. 116,1-3, and 119),
all inspired by wooden models. Some vases are decorated with incised
punctured ribbons forming spirals and maeanders, as at Butmir and
Vinca, or with excised ornament imitating the chip-carving of wood, as
in the West Alpine Vucedol culture. Such metal-work as is associated is
all based on North Italian and Central European traditions, but is more
appropriate to the Middle and Late Bronze Age.
No doubt the amber trade across the Brenner went on to Greece,
either along the Adriatic or across Italy by the Arno and the Tiber. But
the inhospitable Italian coasts of the Adriatic offered no convenient
halting-places to merchantmen, while the rough herdsmen and farmers
of Central Italy do not seem to have benefited by any transit trade.
Many Apennine sites yield so many stone tools as to look quite neolithic.4
1 Archivio per Antrop. ed Etnog., XLII (1912), 263; BP., XXXVIII (1923), 132.
2 Puglisi, Riv. Antrop., LXI, 1-22.
3 Especially Belleverde (Cetona), Not. Sc. (1933), 50 ff.; St. Et„ X (1936), 330-8; XII,
227 ff.; andManacore (Gargano), BSR., XIX (1951), 23-38; XXI, 1-31.
4 According to Bemabo Brea, AC., II, 259, Belleverde does in fact go back to the
Rinaldone phase.
242
FARMERS AND TRADERS IN ITALY AND SICILY
Metal types, proper to Danubian IV, are very rare in Italy south of the
Po basin. A single hoard from Montemerano near Grosseto comprising
halberds and a dagger with triple midrib1 is the sole link with an equally
isolated cist grave furnished with a flat axe, a bronze-hilted dagger and
perhaps a halberd at Parco di Monaci near Matera. The funerary caves
of Central Italy do indeed contain amber beads, but associated with
daggers, swords, winged axes, fibulae and other types not known before
Danubian V. By then the M.N.II settlement at Punto del Tonno2 near
Tarentum had grown into a Bronze Age village the prolonged occupation
of which converted the site into a regular tell. Here were found a winged
4 5
Fig. i 19. Apennine vase-handles (jj), and bronzes (£) from Punto del Tonno (winged
axe, razor, Peschiera dagger, angled sickle).
axe, a North Italian flanged sickle, a Peschiera dagger (Fig. 119), a
razor, and a fibula like Fig. 122, together with Apennine handles. Im-
ported Late Mycenaean pottery and figurines are said to have been
found at a higher level, while the winged axe is the closest known
parallel to that made at Mycenae by an immigrant Italian smith about
1250 b.c. (p. 83). So a mature phase of the Apennine culture and the
closing phase of Danubian V (Reinecke D) had alike been reached by
1250 b.c. By that time the whole peninsula was dominated by cultures
of Continental European type while Central European traditions of
metallurgy ruled to its southern extremity.
1 BP., XXVI (1900), T.I., but cf., ib., n.s. (1938), 64.
2 Saflund, Pragma Martino P. Nilsson, 458 ff.; Not. Sc. (1900), 440-64.
243
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DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Neolithic Cultures in Northern Italy
In the third natural zone of the peninsula a culture sequence, based on
stratigraphical observations, is available only in. Liguria, thanks to
fresh excavations in the cave of Arene Candide conducted by L.
Bernabo Brea since 1939.1 It is not applicable to the whole of Upper
Italy; for Liguria belongs still to the Mediterranean zone and was in
historical times a backward and provincial area. And so in this cave
stone axes were plentiful right up to the last occupation layer, where
the pottery is appropriate to the fourth or fifth century b.c. Still the
succession provides the only available standard. Twenty-eight separate
layers containing pottery could be distinguished above a deep deposit
of palaeolithic and mesolithic occupations. The nineteen lowest have
been grouped together to represent three main periods—termed
respectively Lower, Middle, and Upper Neolithic by the excavator,
while the topmost eight contain Chalcolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age,
and Roman remains.
The first neolithic occupants of this cave, and of many others in the
coastal zone of Italy and France, were a branch of those maritime
colonists who landed also on Sicily and in South Italy. Continued
contact with that area is illustrated at Arene Candide by obsidian from
Lipari. But some fusion with the local mesolithic population probably
took place in Liguria.
In the Middle Neolithic layers (24-17) this old tradition is blended
with Danubian II and Western elements. The former are exemplified
by socketed ladles, clay stamps or pintadere, female figurines, moulded
in two parts and then stuck together, and the selection of Spondylus
shells for bracelets. Microliths, plain potsherds,1 2 arc-pendants (like
Fig. 147),3 and others made from hares’ phalanges4 may rank as
Western elements since they occur in the "Cortaillod culture” of South
France. Finally, obsidian and sherds painted in M.N.I style from
Lipari5 prove continued relations with the south and synchronize the
Ligurian with the South Italian sequence. Middle Neolithic pottery in
Liguria was generally smooth, dark-faced, and decorated, if at all, with
scratched lines. The most distinctive form is the square-mouthed vase
(Fig. 120, 2) which was equally popular in the Po basin and was some-
1 Gli Scavi nella Caverna delle Arene Candide, Bordighera, I (1946), II, 1956.
3 Escalon de Fonton ‘‘Les stratigraphies du niolithique”, Bull. Musie d’Anthropologie
prdhistorique de Monaco, II (1955), 245-52.
3 Riv. Sf. Lig., XV (1949), 28; AC., II, 218.
4 Found in M.N. layers 21, 23, and 24, but also in I„N, layers 25 and 27, AC., II, 65;
cf. Vogt, CISPP., 3 (Zurich, 1950), 33.
s AC., II, 91-5,
244
FARMERS AND TRADERS IN ITALY AND SICILY
times reproduced, on Lipari in a M.N.1 context. Among the scratched
patterns are “Danubian” spirals.
The dead were buried individually and contracted in little stone cists
within the cave. These closely resemble the Chamblandes cists of the
Upper Rhone valley and might be linked therewith by similar graves in
the Aosta valley.1 They would then disclose movements of persons,
perhaps herdsmen with their flocks, across the Alps in Middle Neolithic
Fig. 120. i, Vase from lake-dwelling at Polada (£); 2, Square-mouthed
neolithic pot from Arene Candide ($?).
times and help to confirm a synchronism between Swiss Lower Neolithic
and Ligurian Middle Neolithic.
In the Upper Neolithic of Arene Candide (layers 13-9) figurines,
pintadere, and decorated pots have disappeared. The layers are charac-
terized by plain Western pottery more akin to the Chassean of South
France than to the Lagozzian of Lombardy; for pan-pipe handles are
common as in France. In the immediately succeeding layers appear
cups with axe-handles that we have classed as Early Metal Age in South
Italy. Even the Upper Neolithic in Liguria is perhaps equivalent to
the Chalcolithic of Central Italy and the Po valley.
In the more continental environment of the Po valley and the Alpine
foothills neolithic culture is less well defined and certainly less homo-
geneous than on the Tyrrhenian coasts. The Lagozzian of the Lombard
lake-dwellings is, judged by its pottery, certainly “Western”, but not
identical with the Cortaillod culture of the Swiss lake-dwellings nor yet
with the Upper Neolithic of Arene Candide,1 2 while microlithic flints
indicate a survival of mesolithic traditions. In Emilia, south of the
Po, the late F. Malvolti3 established a succession of three cultures—
1 BP., XLIII, no.
2 Antler sleeves and other types in bone and horn, so prominent in the Swiss lake-
dwellings, are totally absent from the Lagozzian collections in the museums of Como
and Varese, and pan-pipe lugs are equally missing; cf. Sibrium, II, Centro di Studi
Preistorici (Varese, 1955), 99.
3 Appunti per una cronologia relativa neo-eneolitico emiliano, Centro Emiliano di
Studi preistorici (Modena, 1953); cf. St. Et., XVII (1943). 3-I9i BP. (i952)> 13-38.
245
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Fiorano, Chiozza, and Pescale. But these are little more than ceramic
styles, though in the second obsidian and square-mouthed vases1
suggest relations with Liguria and a quasi-synchronism with the Middle
Neolithic there.
The Bronze Age in Upper Italy
The archaeological record becomes coherent only in the “AEneolithic
Period” of Italian terminology and discloses the Remedello culture
fully formed in the Po valley. Extensive cemeteries2 of contracted or
flexed skeletons—117 at Remedello (Brescia), 41 at Cumarola, 36 at
Fontanella—sometimes arranged in regular rows, reveal substantial
Fig. 121. Copper daggers and flint copies, Remedello (|).
communities occupying the same site for several generations. Metal-
lurgical industry and rudimentary trade were now combined with
farming, hunting, and fishing. The copper-smiths produced flat axes,
some with notched butts or low-hammered flanges (as at Thermi),
daggers of two types (Fig. 121), and occasional halberds. The one type
of dagger with a tang to which the hilt was attached by rivets with a
conical head is clearly a derivative of the Early Minoan group. The
other form, kite-shaped, was hafted in the Egyptian manner with a
hollow-based hilt held in place by several small rivets (cf. p. 130).
Despite the contemporary exploitation of Tuscan tin suggested by
the tanged dagger from Monte Bradoni (p. 241), trade was not regular
enough to supply the Remedello smiths with material for bronze, and
even copper was relatively scarce. So polished stone axes were still
1 Found also in a cemetery of contracted burials at Quinzano near Verona.
3 Cf. recent lists, Aberg, Chronologie, iii, 8, and van Duhn in Real., s.v. Italien.
246
FARMERS AND TRADERS IN ITALY AND SICILY
used, and tanged, riveted kite-shaped and unriveted West European
daggers were each copied locally in flint (Fig. 121). Axes were hafted
with the aid of antler sleeves perforated with square-cut holes for the
shaft. Still even silver was obtained, perhaps from Sardinia. But the
forms produced by the silver-smith suggest more far-flung intercourse.
A hammer pin from Remedello itself resembles, but rather remotely,
Pontic yamno types. A gorget from a tomb at Villafranca near Verona1
recalls the Irish lunulse, but also may be compared to a copper gorget
from a tomb dated to period III-IV at Velvar in Bohemia. Finally,
stone battle-axes, sometimes with knobbed butts,2 could be treated
as a reflex of intercourse with the copper-miners of Upper Austria.
And there, in the lake-dwellings of the Mondsee and Attersee, have
been found rhomboid daggers of Remedello type and stone axes with
notched butt, mistaken by Pittioni3 for prototypes of the copper
specimens, but really just copies thereof.
Nevertheless, the bulk of Copper Age relics are native products.
Transverse arrow-heads are presumably mesolithic survivals, but the
commoner tanged arrow-heads splendidly worked on both faces have
nothing in common with earlier industries nor yet with those of South
Italy nor the Danube valley. The pottery included vessels with rudi-
mentary thumb-grip or nose-bridge handles in a tradition common to
all the mountain lands north of the Mediterranean from Macedonia
to Spain (Fig. 120). The skeletons from Remedello comprise Mediter-
ranean long-heads and a minority of round-heads.
Whatever its background, the Remedello culture owes its character
partly to a northward extension of intercourse with the iBgean, moti-
vated by the tin lodes of Tuscany and attested there, as in the Po
valley, by daggers of Early Minoan type. At the same time contribu-
tions by the Bell-beaker folk must be admitted. Bell-beakers were
found in three graves in the Province of Brescia, once with a character-
istic West European dagger, and stray sherds of the same ware are
reported from Remedello itself.4 The Bell-beaker folk may have intro-
duced from the west the halberd and perhaps the gorget and assisted
in opening up intercourse with the Danube valley. The battle-axes
may well be contributions from Central Europe, perhaps even from
farther east, but hardly suffice to prove an intrusion of Battle-axe folk.
The daggers of Early Minoan type provide a vague upper limit, some-
where about 2300 b.c., for the beginning of the Remedello culture.
Since amber and fayence beads are missing from the graves, the
1 BP., LII, 9 f.; Forssander, Ostskandinavische, fig. 10.
2 BP., XLI (1915), pi. I.
3 MAGW., LXI (1931), 74-80; p. 299 below.
4 Relation to cemetery uncertain, Castillo, Campaniforme, 133.
247
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
cemeteries had presumably gone out of use before the regular trade
between Mycenae and Bohemia was established about 1600 b.c. So, too,
Danubian IV bronze types are missing from the Remedello cemeteries.
The Beaker graves do indeed establish a connection with period III
in the Danubian sequence, but no one knows whether they belong to
the beginning or the end of the long period represented by the Reme-
dello cemeteries.
The Bronze Age begins with the extension to Upper Italy of the
Danubian commercial system. Types of period IV—flanged axes like
Fig. 69, 3, round-heeled and bronze-hilted daggers, ingot torques and
even a few Unetician eyelet pins are not uncommon. Some, like the
pins, must have been imported from beyond the Alps. Many were
made locally by itinerant or resident smiths who worked in populous
settlements—lake-dwellings on the shores of the eastern lakes, marsh
villages like Lagazzi south of the Po, the celebrated terremare on the
southern margin of the marshy plain and caves on the Apennine
foothills.
The eastern lake-dwellings, among which Polada1 is taken as the
type site, though Ledro2 and Barche de Solferino3 have been better
explored, may like Lagazzi4 have been founded before the terremare.
They have yielded pottery carrying on the older Remedello tradition,
hollow-based flint arrow-heads, arrow-shaft straighteners, a few wrist-
guards and buttons with V perforation going back before period IV,
but only a few later bronzes appropriate to period V. The terremare, on
the contrary, are genuine tells—sites of villages occupied for many
generations—from which come Middle and Late Bronze Age relics and
only a few distinctive of period IV. All alike were farming villages.
Their fields were certainly tilled with the plough; the oldest dated
European plough, made entirely of wood, comes from Ledro, while
ploughs drawn by two or four oxen are depicted in rock-engravings
high up in the Alps round Monte Bigo.5 The cereals6 were reaped with
angled sickles of wood armed with flint teeth; the type is illustrated
by a complete specimen from Solferino and was literally translated
into metal in the Middle Bronze Age (Fig. 119, 5). In addition to cows,
pigs, sheep, and goats, the terremaricoli—but probably not the earlier
lake-villagers—kept horses and controlled them with bits furnished'
1 Laviosa Zambotti, St. Et., XIII, 50 ff.; BP. (1940), 120 ff.
2 BP., (1940) 69-79.
3 Battaglia, “La palafitta di Lago di Ledro”, Mem. del Museo di Storia Naturale della
Venezia Tridentana, VII (Trento, 1943).
4 BP., XVII (1891), 1-12.
B Bicknell, Rock Engravings in the Maritime Alps (Bordighera).
6 At Ledro Triticum monococcum and dicoccum, Hordeum hexasiichon, Panicum
miliacum.
248
FARMERS AND TRADERS IN ITALY AND SICILY
with antler cheek-pieces. Carts with solid disc wheels may well have
been drawn by oxen, but a model six-spoked wheel from Solferino and
a complete wheel from Mercurago could have belonged to a horse-
drawn chariot. The latter specimen, which may belong to period VI,
illustrates the peculiar type later distinctive of Classical Greek country
carts.1
The lake-village of Ledro covered only 5000 square metres; Lagazzi
was a cluster of ten huts, probably round, but the terremare1 2 3 may cover
from four to eighteen acres. The regular plans, popularized by Pigorini,
have been shown to be products of his imagination. We do not know
the plans of the houses, nor even whether the villages were from the
outset defended by a moat and casemate rampart; Saflund considers
these defences additions made in the Late Bronze Age.
The pottery throughout imitates wooden models such as have
actually been preserved in all stages of manufacture at Ledro. In the
Polada group, that carries on the Remedello tradition, relatively
simple nose-bridge and elbow handles (Fig. 120, 1) predominate and
plainly give expression to a fashion detected all along the mountain
zone from Northern Anatolia through Thrace and Macedonia to the
Pyrenees. In the Lagazzian wares, derivable perhaps from the Lagoz-
zian,8 begins a fantastic elaboration of handles towards comute types
(Fig. 119, 1) that culminates in the terremare and eventual!}7 spread
south to the heel of the peninsula.
Moulds for casting Early Bronze Age types occur in many settle-
ments, but may have been used by perambulating merchant-artificers
who distributed metal-ware as a sideline of the amber trade across the
Brenner; one such left in the cave of Fameto near Bologna the only
surviving example of a mould for a flanged axe. Many hoards contain-
ing ingot torques, daggers, and other Early Bronze Age types illustrate
the travels of these merchants and the danger attendant thereon.
Middle Bronze Age types are not thus represented in hoards as if some
degree of security had been established throughout the Po-Adige basin
by period V. Moulds and other metallurgical appliances are relatively
common in the terremare and may well denote the workshops of resident
smiths. The earlier metal types are mostly derivable from the Un&tician,
as if the local bronze-smiths had been trained in the Danubian school.
But halberds are more likely Iberian, and if so, imply the incorporation
of Western traditions in the nascent North Italian school. To these must
be added the development of the local Remedello tradition, inspired, as
1 Lorimer, JHS., XXIII (1903). 132-51.
3 Saflund, Le Terremare (Rome, Svenska Institut, 1939),
3 Cf. Bejmabo Brea, A.C., II, 276.
249
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
suggested above, by Early iEgean models. Fresh links with the Levant
are not discernible.
North Italian metallurgists had evolved original forms of axe and
dagger even in the Early Bronze Age and developed these into original
types in the succeeding phase. They are generally credited with several
more pregnant inventions, in particular that of the safety-pin1 (Fig.
122) that was introduced into Greece in the thirteenth century and
diffused in Central Europe chiefly in period VI, but this claim has been
challenged on behalf of the Unetician culture! It was indisputably a
North Italian craftsman who at this time found a patron at Mycenae
itself (p. 83) for whom he cast medial winged axes. Other North Italian
innovations are flanged sickles, double-edged razors, “Peschiera
daggers” (double-edged knives with flanged handles) (Fig. 119, 3, 4,
and 5) and cut-and-thrust swords.1 2
No graves attributable to the Early Bronze Age lake-dwellers nor to
the terremaricoli are known. A Middle Bronze Age cemetery of extended
skeletons accompanied by Central European rapiers at Povigliano near
Verona3 may be attributed to a group of invaders from beyond the Alps.
The umfields connected with some terremare are attributed by Saflund4
to a fresh wave of conquerors who would have occupied—and fortified—
the village sites only in the Late Bronze Age. Finally, the Apennine
herdsmen continued to practise collective burial in natural caves.
The ideology of some Bronze Age societies found expression in the
celebrated rock-carvings round Monte Bigo near the 7000-ft. contour
in the Maritime Alps.5 They depict warriors, brandishing halberds,
side by side with peaceful scenes of ploughing and other agricultural
operations. To the same period, but to another group, might be
attributed the statue menhirs of the Adige6 depicting a male personage
wearing a triangular dagger. They are stylistically allied to those of
South France (p. 311). If they be inspired by a Western cult, its mother
1 J. Sundwall, Die altere italischer Fibeln (Stockholm, 1943).
s Saflund, Le Terremare, 157, n. 1, considers that a sword, bearing the cartouche of
Seti II who died in 1198, is of terramara type.
3 Montelius, CPI., 200.
1 St. Et., XII (1938), 18-22.
5 Bicknell, Prehistoric Rock Engraving in the Italian Maritime Al‘ - 'TV????’:.1 ? ?r-;', v :.
6 M. O. Acanfora, "Le Statue antropomorfe dell’Alto Adige”, ’ ? ? ? : !’
Studi siilla Regione Trentino-Alto Adige (Bolzano, 1953).
250
-
Fig. 122. Peschiera safety-pin (fibula) (J).
FARMERS AND TRADERS IN ITALY AND SICILY
goddess has been transformed into a warrior god. The transfiguration
should reflect the conversion of a matriarchal social order into a
patriarchal one.
The rich and complex culture, formed by the convergence of diverse
traditions in Upper Italy, dominated the whole peninsula and Sicily
too before the end of the Bronze Age. Its manifestations at Punto del
Tonno and on Lipari show that it must have matured in the Po valley
by 1300 b.c.
251
CHAPTER XIV
ISLAND CIVILIZATIONS IN THE WESTERN
MEDITERRANEAN
It is possible to sail coastwise from the ZEgean to Italy and Sicily
without ever losing sight of land. Progress thence westward meant
embarking on the pathless ocean without any guiding point in the
heavens like the Pole Star by which a mariner might set his course.1
Sicily must have set a bound to regular intercourse between the iEgean
and the western world in so far as such intercourse depended on follow-
ing the northern shores of the Mediterranean. Land routes across North
Africa and even coastal routes along the inhospitable southern shores
of the Mediterranean were of course available, however difficult they
may have been. But they traversed territories so little explored archaeo-
logically that the effect of communications along them can hardly be
even inferred. We can therefore scarcely expect to find the West
Mediterranean islands clearly revealed in the archaeological record as
stepping-stones in the transmission of culture wholes from East to
West, nor to be able adequately to assess the part they may have played
in transmission from Africa northward.
The Megalithic Civilization of Malta
The barren little islands of Malta and Gozo are last remnants of a
land-bridge from Africa to Europe and offer natural havens to mariners
blown by mischance or groping their way deliberately westward from
the East Mediterranean. They were unsuited to Old Stone Age hunters,
and, save for a questionable Neandertaler, were uninhabited thereby.
In the Holocene they supported a surprisingly dense population of
farmers who developed a vigorous insular culture,2 through two main
periods.3
The most enduring and distinctive monuments of period I are mega-
lithic “temples”, built of really gigantic stones, and labyrinthine burial-
vaults ingeniously carved out of the limestone with stone tools. And so
1 L. Hogben, Science for the Citizen, 106.
2 The best collection of illustrations and plans of Maltese monuments and relics is
L. M. Ugolini, Malta: Origini della Civiltu Mediterranea (Rome, 1934), teR the views
expressed there are scarcely plausible.
3 The culture sequence has been established on an objective basis by John Evans,
PPS., XIX (1953). 45-89.
252
ISLAND CIVILIZATIONS
to-day the most truly native monument of Maltese culture in the
twentieth century a.d. is the village church of Musta, near Valetta,
roofed with a dome larger than that of St. Path’s Cathedral. Like it, the
neolithic temples and tombs are eloquent of a devotion to immaterial
ends which inspired the island farmers to produce a surplus above
immediate needs. And they suggest how “circulation” of this surplus
wealth was effected through unproductive works, that, just because
they were unproductive, could be repeated again and again.
Stratigraphical observations justify the division of period I into
three phases, A, B, and C, distinguishable by pottery styles and temple
plans. The first colonists who have left distinct traces in the archaeo-
logical record and who presumably initiated this unproductive activity
seem to have come from Sicily since they introduced a version of the
Stentinello type of impressed pottery. The temples of period IA, built
of undressed stones, possess a simple trefoil plan. This was elaborated
in phase B by the addition of an extra apse and further complicated
in the culminating phase C. By this phase the slabs had been beauti-
fully dressed with stone mauls and sometimes pitted all over decor-
atively. Some are carved in low relief with spirals or even processions
of animals and men.1
Community of tradition between this temple architecture and the
sepulchral architecture of West European collective tombs2 is revealed
in many details of plan and construction—semicircular forecourts in
front of shrines (Fig. 123); the deliberate use of enormous blocks;
Fig. 123. Plan of "temples” at Mnaidra, Malta, Period IC.
1 Cf. T. Zammit, Prehistoric Malta; the Tarcsien Temples (Oxford, 1930),
3 Noted first by Leeds, LA A A., IX (1922), 35 if.
253
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
porthole slabs as doorways; roofing of apses by corbelling1; walls in
which uprights set with their broad faces in line with the wall alternate
with slabs projecting at right angles thereto1 2; cup-marks on many
stones.
In fact, in the islands themselves chamber tombs were hewn in the
rock to accommodate collective burials throughout period I, and even
in phase A some replicate the trefoil plan of the temples. Most early
tombs, however, were little more than rock-cut pits containing skeletons
sprinkled with ochre.3 But at Hal Salflieni near Valetta a vast and
complicated hypogseum had been carved in the living rock. Starting
simply in phase A (to judge by the pottery), it was gradually enlarged
till by phase B it already comprised many underground rooms with
several chambers opening off a central hall. In phase C it was further
elaborated and decorated with spiraliform paintings and skeuomorphic
carvings.
Cult objects from the temples of phase C include limestone statuettes4
a foot or more in height representing an obese female personage stand-
ing, seated, or reclining on a couch and sometimes wearing a skirt
recalling Minoan or Sumerian fashions, as well as betyls, bells, altars,
and other models in stone. Most belong to phase C, but from a tomb of
phase A2 near Zebbug5 came a fragmentary statue menhir, comparable
to those of South France and to the stele from Troy I.
All these works were executed without the aid of metal tools; the
culture of period I was in this sense neolithic. But flint was imported—
probably from Sicily—by phase A and obsidian from Lipari in phase C
at least. The flaked stone implements are of the simplest kind without
bifacial working, and ground stone celts are extremely rare. Querns
were made from Sicilian lava while pebbles of fine grained rock were
imported for the manufacture of charms and ornaments. Among these,
axe-amulets are very common, pendants in the form of doves and other
shapes rare. Finally, a bossed bone plaque, identical with those from
Castelluccio tombs and resembling those from Troy and Lerna, from
the Tarxien temple is generally assigned to period IC. As ornaments
may be regarded hemispherical buttons with V perforation, found
already in phase A,6 beads of Spondylus shell and bone, and in phase C
winged beads.
1 T. Zammit, The Neolithic Temples of Hajar Kim and Mnaidra (Valetta, 1927),
9 and 28.
2 Ibid., 13; the resultant effect is that of the alternating buttresses and recesses that
adorn the fagades of early Egyptian mastabas and Sumerian temples; cf. Childe,
NLMAE., 85 and 125.
* BSR., XXII (1954), 1-21.
1 JRAI., LIV, 67 ff., IPEK. (1927), 131.
5 BSR., XXII, 13, pi. III. « Ibid., 11.
254
ISLAND CIVILIZATIONS
Vases, too, were carved in stone, probably already in phase A but
with exquisite skill by phase C. Then quite complicated shapes, familiar
in pottery, were reproduced in stone and even fitted with tunnel or
nose-bridge handles. A giant cup from Hagar Qim is 6 ft. in diameter
and equipped with a projecting nose-bridge handle!
The Maltese ceramic industry was as fine as the stone-work. No less
than 26 varieties of pottery had been distinguished at Hal Saflieni
by 1910.1 These have been arranged in a chronological order, based
on stratigraphy, by Evans,2 who has also recognized their affinities
with Sicilian and South Italian wares. The earliest are closely related
to the Middle Neolithic Stentinello wares, but even in phase A (Evans'
A2) appear vases still more closely related to the later San Cono group
and probably tubular handles of the Upper Neolithic Diana type, as
well as a little red-on-buff painted ware. In phase B vases were decor-
ated with scratched lines sometimes incrusted in red or white and
forming curvilinear patterns. Elbowed or triangular handles were
already attached to some vases in phase B and in C develop into fully
fledged nose-bridge and even axe-handles (like Fig. 116, 3), while
tubular lugs had been converted by a local evolution into the so-called
tunnel handle;3 that is a clay tube attached horizontally to the inner
wall of the vase the contours of which are interrupted only by two
apertures corresponding to the tube’s ends. Such handles appear in
the Piano Conte phase of the Chalcolithic on the iEolian Islands and
will meet us again in Sardinia. Axe-handles too are appropriate to the
Early Bronze Age of Italy.
Judged by ceramic analogies, therefore, the age of temple-building
and tomb-cutting on Malta should have begun late in the Middle
Neolithic of the Italian scheme, used in the last chapter, and continued
well into the succeeding Chalcolithic. The bossed bone plaque from
Tarxien, if correctly attributed to period I, should mean that period IC
overlaps with the Castelluccio culture of Sicily. It should, however,
end therein since the earliest pottery of period II can best be paral-
leled in the Capo Graziano culture of the iEolian Islands that can be
synchronized both with Castelluccio and with L.M.I. Sepulchral
architecture would suggest rather different correlations with Italy.
Chamber tombs there are at earliest Upper Neolithic, most explicitly
Chalcolithic. In the West, too, V-perforated buttons are most com-
monly associated with Bell-beakers that are late Chalcolithic.
If the first settlers on Malta and Gozo were Sicilian in ceramic tastes,
their ideology was rather East Mediterranean. But the architecture
that expressed it is more West Mediterranean; the best analogies for
1 LA A A., Ill (1910), 1-22. 2 pps., XIX, 44-62. 3 Ibid., 55-
255
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
the trefoil temples may be found in the corbelled tombs of Los Millares
(pp. 270-4). Ideological megalithicism seems again a West European
disease. The statue menhir could indeed as well be a symbol on its
way from Troy to South France as a contribution from that direction,
but V-perforated buttons are explicitly Western. Allowance must
certainly be made for West European stimuli at the birth of the islands’
remarkable culture. Fresh inspiration from the East may be suspected
in promoting the brilliant efflorescence of phase C, but despite analogies
to the spiral carvings and painting on Middle Minoan Kamares cups1
and on the Shaft Grave stelse from Mycenae, concrete evidence for this
is lacking.
Whatever its origins, the megalithic culture of period I was brought
to a violent end by an armed invasion or a religious revolution. As a
result the temple complex of Hal Tarxien was diverted from its primary
use and made a cemetery for cremation burials. With these were
deposited2 little triangular daggers and flat or hammer-flanged axes
of copper or bronze, pottery in an absolutely new tradition, and clay
figurines curiously stylized to a disc with projections.3 The novel
pottery includes vases with oculi ornaments, handled mugs, askoi, and
two-storeyed urns. Beads of silver, fayence, and shell were worn as
ornaments.
On the typological systems, valid for the East Mediterranean and for
peninsular Italy, the metal gear would be Early iEgean and Chalco-
lithic respectively, though in Sardinia almost equally archaic bronzes
survive in hoards attributable to the first millennium. The pot forms,
too, are definitely Early iEgean and find vague analogies in the Chalco-
lithic Psestum cemetery. But in Sicily and Sardinia askoi and similar
iEgeanizing forms reappear after 1200 b.c.4 The new burial-rite might
be connected with the urnfield invasion that had reached Northern
Sicily about that date. Indeed, a few sherds of Apennine ware have
turned up in the cemetery and on other period Ila sites. However,
cremation had been practised at Bogaz Koy and Troy much earlier in
the second millennium and might have reached Malta direct from that
direction. Still, the closest parallels to the pottery of period Ila are
found in the village of Capo Graziano on Filicudi, the occupation of
which was roughly contemporary with Castelluccio and L.M.I-II but
lasted nearly to 1400 b.c.5 That is not to say that the cremationist
1 Evans, P. of M., II, 182-9.
2 The best illustrations of the cemetery furniture are given by M. A. Murray, Corpus
of Bronze Age Pottery of Malta (London, 1934).
3 Curiously like some figurines from Middle Bronze Age sites near the Iron Gates on
the Danube, e.g. Hcemes-Menghin, Urgeschichte der bildenden Kunst (Vienna, 1925), 411.
4 E.g. MA„ XXV, pi. VIII; Not. Sc. (1888), pi. XV, 2; St. Et., Ill (1929), 21 ff.
8 Evans, PPS., XIX, 85; Bernabo Brea, BP. (1956), 51.
256
ISLAND CIVILIZATIONS
invaders came from the TEolian Islands, but does suggest that the
Maltese Bronze Age began a little before 1400 b.c.
It failed to develop. Bronze merchants would not accept the spiritual
commodities that had satisfied pedlars in flint and obsidian, and the
Maltese had nothing else to offer. Nor could they, like the iEolian
Islanders, become intermediaries in Mycenaean trade with the West;
for even voyagers to Spain preferred the coastwise route up the
Tyrrhenian Sea to a direct crossing exposed to the western gales in the
fifteenth century a.d., a fortiori in the fifteenth century b.c.1 No later
bronzes survive in the islands. Still new settlers arrived and converted
some old temple sites, like Borg in-Nadur2 into fortified villages. They
introduced new pottery types, quite unlike those of the Tarxien
cemetery, and made pottery anchor ornaments. A single Mycenaean
(L.H.IIIb) kylix is the sole import or piece of loot that survives from
period lib. It serves to date the phase to the thirteenth century and so
confirms the dating of phase 11 a. Moreover, some vases from the
Thapsos cemeteries round Syracuse are thought by Bernabo Brea3 to be
imported products of the Borg in-Nadur culture. But anchor orna-
ments, just like Fig. 38, appearing about the same time also at Milazzesi
in the iEolian Islands, had been Early Helladic in Greece and so took a
thousand years to reach Malta!
In the sequel Malta made no further contribution to European
culture. In fact it was only during period I that the island culture was
original and creative. Even then its contributions to the European
heritage can only have been immaterial and may well have been
illusory.
Sardinia
Sardinia, though apparently uninhabited in the Old Stone Age, is large
enough despite its mountainous character to support numerous, if
mutually isolated, farming communities in its valleys and plains.
Moreover, it possesses natural resources—obsidian, copper, and silver'—
to attract industrial colonists. When the archaeological record opens
clearly, all these opportunities were already being exploited. The
evidence is derived in the main from natural caves and rock-cut tombs
used as collective sepulchres for many generations. Relics of different
periods accordingly occur generally mixed together.
Only in the cave of San Bartolomeo4 near Cagliari in the south of the
1 Clavijo {Embassy to Tamerlane, London, 1928) en route from Cadiz to Constantinople
in 1403 sailed from Minorca through the Straits of Bonifacio to the Tyrrhenian coast
but was forced to shelter off Lipari before passing the Straits of Messina.
2 PPS., XIX, 69, 88.
3 BP., n.s., X (1956), 60. « BP., XXIV (1898), 253 fi.
R
257
-
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
island is a stratigraphical separation possible. In an upper layer here
the grave goods comprised Beakers, tripod bowls decorated in Beaker
style (Fig. 124,1), West European daggers and a fiat axe of copper, and
a prismatic V-perforated bone plaque—in fact a typical “Copper Age"
assemblage. Below and separated by a layer of stones from the "Copper
Age" burials was an earlier funerary deposit comprising, as well as
Fig. 124. Tripod bowl, San Bartolomeo (£), and vase-handle of nose-bridge
type, Anghelu Ruju ($-).
skeletons, simple obsidian implements and hemispherical and carinated
bowls, one adorned with a stellate pattern of finely incised hatched
ribbons. Technically the last-named vase recalls some vessels from
Villafrati in Sicily, from Hal Saflieni in Malta, and from pre-Beaker
horizons in South France. The pottery from the sepulchral cave of San
Michele (Ozieri)1 includes vessels of the same type, but others with
tunnel-handles quite like the Maltese but decorated with semicircles
executed in cardial and stab-and-drag technique that is represented at
San Bartolomeo only in the upper level.
Sardinian culture of Beaker and post-Beaker age is better represented
by the rock-cut tombs, locally termed domus di gianas. Some of these
family vaults may have been dug even in pre-Beaker times, since sherds
of the incised fabrics represented in the lower level at San Bartolomeo
occur in them, but others were excavated, or in any case still used, in
the first millennium b.c. Generally the tombs are isolated or grouped in
twos or threes, but at Anghelu Ruju,2 a cemetery of no less than thirty-
one chamber tombs has been systematically explored. The burial
chambers here tend to a rectangular plan, are often preceded by an
antechamber and entered either by a stepped pit or a passage. Subsidiary
chambers may open off the principal compartment. The inner portals
may be carved to suggest a Hntelled wooden doorway like the facades
of Early Cypriot tombs.3 In two cases rock pillars were left standing in
the chamber. On such pillars and on the walls bulls’ heads or high-
1 BP., XLI, 102 ff. 2 Not. Sc. (1904), 305 ff.; MA., XIX 409 ff.
8 Antiquity, XIII (1939), 461-3.
258
ISLAND CIVILIZATIONS
prowed ships have been carved in low relief (Fig. 125)- Traces of red
ochre were found on the floors of two tombs. Normally the bodies were
buried in the contracted attitude, but in two tombs (XV and XXbis)
cremated remains were found in small niches and in tomb XX a baby’s
skeleton in a jar.
A series of intermediate forms leads from the subterranean domus di
Fig. 125. Plan and elevation of tomb XXbis at Anghelu Ruju.
gianas (Witches’ Houses) to the megalithic tombs built above ground
and termed locally tombe di giganti (Giants’ Tombs)—rock-cut tor*03
roofed by corbelling in megalithic style,1 megalithic extensions hmlt on
in front of rock-cut tombs,2 domus di gianas with the rock fsCe above
and around the entrance carved to reproduce the portal *nd forecourt
of a Giants’ Tomb.3 Similarly Mackenzie4 has construed a typological
series leading from simple “dolmens” to the classical Giants’ Tomb—a
long narrow gallery walled with megalithic ^abs, roofed by corbelling,
covered by a cairn enclosed by masonry walls and entered through a low
arch cut in a tall upright slab or stele from a semicircular space flanked
by masonry walls (Fig. no). Of course, such a series can be reversed
as it is a pure a priori construction and unsupported by a reliable series of
closed grave finds. The so-called “dolmens” have yielded no datable
furniture. Some are just remnants of Giants’ Tombs.5 The distribution
1 BSE., V (1910), 103, fig. 5.
2 Taramelli, II Convegno archeologico sardo, fig. 65.
3 Taramelli, II Convegno archeologico sardo, fig. 66; BSE., V, pi. IX, 1.
* BSR., VI (1913), 167; BP., XLI, 15. . 5 Antiquity, XIII (1939), 376-7.
259
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
of the latter does not agree so exactly with that of the nuraghe as to
prove contemporaneity.1 Nuragic and even Roman1 2 relics have been
found in Giants’ Tombs. But of course such finds do not establish
erection in the Iron or Late Bronze Age.
The grave goods recovered at Anghelu Ruju give the best available
picture of Sardinian culture before the Nuragic age, though tomb-
robbing in antiquity has stripped that picture of any pretence at being
complete. Metal was used, but apparently only sparingly; only two or
three West European daggers, one flat axe, one arrow-head, several
quadrangular awls, some beads, bracelets and atypical pins of copper
and olive-shaped beads, and a ring of silver have escaped the ancient
plunderers. Martial activities are indicated by numerous weapons—
the copper daggers, spheroid mace-heads of stone, arrow-heads (tri-
angular, tanged, tanged-and-barbed, and even serrated) of flint together
with wrist-guards (these, however, having for the most part only two
perforations, may have been used as whet-stones as in Crete) and an
arrow-straightener of pumice. In the pottery we might distinguish:
(i) carinated vases, and cylindrical pyxides, vaguely iEgean in form;
(ii) vessels decorated with semicircles and other patterns formed either
of (a) finely incised hatched ribbons or of (b) stab-and-drag lines;
(iii) Bell-beakers and tripod bowls like Fig. 124, 1; (iv) carinated cups
and other vessels with nose-bridge handles (Fig. 124, 2), which persist
into the Nuragic age.
As ornaments and charms, stone bracelets and rings, axe-amulets,
disc-beads of shell, and tortoise beads (Fig. 126, a, c, f) and conical
buttons with V perforations were worn. Finally, three tombs contained
rabble idols, which, although made of local stone, look like deliberate
imitaur,ns 0f Early Cycladic models.
Plainly many streams have converged in the Copper Age culture
of Anghelu 'Rqjju. Its debt to Crete was admirably summarized by
Patroni3: "Not Gaty the form of the tombs but also the shape and
decoration of some oi the vases in them recur in Crete. The symbols
sculptured on the walls the statuettes of marble show relations
of a nature superior to any external relations of commerce; for they
denote a profound affinity of thought and culture.” Giuffridi-Ruggieri
adds anthropological arguments. Noting that fifty-three skulls from
Anghelu Ruju were long-headed and tm round, and that a similar
mixture is detectable in Crete, he concludes that Sardinia was invaded
at the end of the third millennium by a mixed race of Cretans. (It
1 Rivista, XX, 6 flf.; BSE., V, 135.
2 MA., XI, 268; Not. Sc., 1933, 360.
3 Quoted by Giufiridi-Ruggieri in Archivio per Antrop. ed Etnogr., XLVI, 18.
260
ISLAND CIVILIZATIONS
would be safer now to say “East Mediterraneans, including the round-
headed type that reappears among the Beaker-folk” (p. 227). The
invaders, combined with some small pre-existing population also of
Mediterranean stock, created the Copper and Bronze Age civilizations
of Sardinia.
If Giuffridi-Ruggieri be right, the finely incised wares of our group (ii)
might be taken as representative of the “pre-existing population”.
These fabrics are certainly related to those of Malta, Apulia, and Sicily
on the one hand, of South France on the other. Their origin is not
thereby determined. The Beaker-folk’s effective contribution is demon-
strated by their pottery, armament, and ornaments. Some beakers from
Anghelu Ruju resemble especially those from Almeria, but one is
almost identical with specimens from Bohemia and Denmark.1 The
arrow-straightener, too, though locally made, is a Central European
trait in the West Mediterranean. But a beaker from a rock-cut tomb
at Cuguttu2 has a rudimentary thumb-grip handle.
This and related nose-bridge handles and many other traits, espe-
cially the V-perforated tortoise beads and prism-shaped buttons,
betoken particularly intimate relations with Catalonia and South
France. In South France such handles belong to a horizon explicitly
later than wares like our group (ii) and on the whole post-Beaker
(p. 310). In Sardinia they persist into the Nuragic age.
Despite the industrial development and wide cultural relations
attested at Anghelu Ruju, no urban civilization arose and Sardinia
held aloof from any comprehensive system of foreign commerce that
might bring datable foreign manufactures into the archaeological
record. Judging by sepulchral architecture, island culture developed
1 Nordmann, “Megalitliic,” p. 122. 2 Not, Sc. (1909), 103.
26l
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
insensibly into the extremely insular Nuragic phase. This development
did not take place without renewed contact with the East Mediter-
ranean. A Cypro-Mycenaean copper ingot stamped with Mycenaean
letters was found on the island. About 1200 b.c. maritime raiders,
termed Sh’rd’n’, appear in the Egyptian records. They are depicted
protected by horned helmets and round shields and armed with swords
precisely like those of bronze statuettes from the Sardinian nuraghi.
Whether the Shardana originated in Asia Minor, like the Etruscans,
and only settled in the Western Mediterranean after raiding Egypt,1
or were actual descendants of the Copper Age Sardinians,1 2 their con-
nection with the island in its Nuragic age is indisputable, as is the
stimulus given to West Mediterranean development by their experiences
in the East.
But the result was not the establishment of a city-state organization
such as the Etruscans created. In the island the highest social unit
was a cluster of round huts sheltering beneath the dry-stone tower—
nuraghe—of the clan chief. Architecturally as well as sociologically
these complexes are significantly like a modern Nigerian village.3
Mines and smelting furnaces, as well as many hoards belonging mostly
to founders, disclose indeed an active and efficient metallurgical
industry.
On the whole, indeed, the Late Bronze Age industry of Sardinia,
like those of peninsular Italy and Sicily, was based on Central European
traditions. Yet the variety of types comprised in the hoards would
suggest trade with, or raids on, both the iEgean (double-axes, axe-
adzes) and Atlantic coasts (double-eared palstaves, carp’s-tongue
swords). But the island industry was extraordinarily conservative.
Hoards of Nuragic age may contain every sort of axe4 from flat or
flanged types assignable by typologists to the Copper or Early Bronze
Age, up to socketed forms of the Late Bronze Age and of stabbing
weapons from archaic round-heeled daggers5 to carp’s-tongue swords.
Luckily a few imported manufactures prove that these archaic types
were still current in the eighth or even seventh century b.c., when the
Etruscan Iron Age was in full bloom in Italy.6
Yet the nuragic bronzes appear in the archaeological record as the
immediate successors of the Copper Age types just as nuragic pottery
1 So Hall, Cambridge Ancient History, II, 282.
2 BP., XXXIX, 100; MA., XXV, 896; Archivio, XLVI (1916), 9; RM., XIII (1928),
74-
3 Bosch-Gimpera, Etnologia, 194.
4 E.g. at Monte Sa’Idda, MA., XXVII, 14 ff.
5 At Monte Sa’Idda and A1& dei Sardi, Not. Sc. (1925), 466.
6 Not. Sc. (1922), 293; (1926), 374; cf. Bosch-Gimpera in CIPMO., 30 f.; Studi
Etruschi, III, 20.
262
ISLAND CIVILIZATIONS
occurs already in the rock-cut tombs of Anghelu Ruju itself. We have
unconsciously overstepped the chronological boundaries of this book.
The excursus demonstrates how dangerous it would be to apply to the
West Mediterranean typological systems that may work well within
the Danubian and British commercial spheres and how difficult it is
to fill with developments in tools and vessels, weapons and tombs any
vast interval between the prehistoric Copper Age or Beaker period
and the proto-historic Bronze Age of the eighth century B.c. Archseo-
logically a millennium is not very plausible, two quite incredible.
The Balearic Islands
In the Balearic Islands the archaeological record begins with the mega-
lithic culture. In Mallorca the normal family vault was a rock-cut
tomb.1 The chamber (Fig. 109) takes the form of a long narrow gallery
round which runs a shallow bench divided into several stalls by low
ridges of rock. One or more cells may open off the chamber, and it may
be preceded by an antechamber. The entrance is a low arch or window
cut in the rock and may give on to an uncovered forecourt excavated in
the hillside. In Menorca the form of the underground gallery is repro-
duced above ground in megalithic chambers enclosed in boat-shaped
constructions walled with cyclopean masonry and termed navetas. The
end at which the chamber opens is flattened and sometimes even concave
in plan.2
Evidence of early contact between the islands and the Mgean is
afforded only by a matt-painted beaked jug of Middle Cycladic type
like Fig. 41, 3, certainly an import but found without definite context
on Menorca. Otherwise the earliest contacts with the outer world are
provided by a single sherd of Beaker ware3 from the rock-cut tomb of
Felanitx, and a conical button with V perforation from the tomb of Son
Mulet. Both are indicative of the activities of Beaker-folk on Mallorca.
On the other hand, splay-footed vases typical of the Horgen culture
from a rock-cut tomb at Sa Val4 prove connections northward, as do
the similarities of the Balearic tomb plans to those of the Rhone and
Seine valleys.
The bulk of the sepulchral pottery from the rock-cut tombs, however,
consists of plain vases sometimes provided with upstanding lugs but
never with true handles. Technically this fabric resembles the Argaric
ware of the East Spanish Bronze Age, and several forms can be matched
1 Arch., LXXVI, 121 fL; Ant. XIII (1933), 33 U CAS., 113.
2 CIPMQ., 26.
3 Castillo, Campanifortne, 125; CIPMO., pi. II.
4 In museum at Palma unpublished before the rebellion,
263
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
in the same context. But simple round-bottomed and carinated vessels
preserve the traditions of the oldest West European neolithic ceramics.
Little metal survives among the grave goods. Round-heeled daggers
of “Early Bronze Age” type were recovered from Sa Val and several
other tombs,1 but one tomb yielded an identically shaped dagger of
iron!
Indeed, the cultural history of the Baleares is parellel to that of
Sardinia. There is no obvious break between the “Copper Age” culture
represented in the rock-cut tombs and that represented in the
“talayots”. The latter are fortified hamlets, counterparts of the
Sardinian nuargic settlements, and like these, the talayots2 continued to
be inhabited into the Iron Age. As in Sardinia, the archaeological
material from the Balearic Isles does not show sufficient typological
development to justify a very high dating for the local megalithic
culture. If, like Hemp,3 we treat the Mallorcan rock-cut tombs as the
starting-point for the French series of gallery graves, we must still insist
that a reversal of the relations would accord far better with the tombs’
furniture and any chronology based thereon.
1 Ant, /., XIII, 35, 39; CIPMO., pi. III.
2 So the axes of the Talayot culture include both flat and socketed forms, CIPMO, 21.
3 PPS., I (1935), no.
264
CHAPTER XV
THE IBERIAN PENINSULA
The Iberian Peninsula1 offers the natural channel through which
Oriental influences, whether transmitted by land ways across North
Africa or by sea along the Mediterranean, might penetrate to Atlantic
Europe. In the Peninsula a substantial Old Stone Age population had
probably been augmented at the end of the pleistocene by makers of
microliths in the Capsian tradition (p. 7). Some of these may indeed
have brought with them at least domestic sheep and goats if not some
rudiments of agriculture. Their traditions of flint-working and of
parietal art at least can be recognized in cultures that are admittedly
neolithic.
Now Spanish prehistorians to-day recognize two “Neolithic” phases,
I and II, followed by a “Bronze Age I”, equivalent to the old “Copper
Age”, that is divided into phases A and B; the old “Early Bronze Age”
(El Argar) thus becomes Bronze Age II. And within the Neolithic they
have long recognized two parallel cycles—the Almeria culture and the
Cave culture.
-
Maritime Neolithic Settlements
The Cave culture used to denote a very heterogeneous assemblage; for
at all times hunters, herdsmen, pirates, and outcasts have taken shelter
in caves for shorter or longer periods. But in some caves both in the
Peninsula and in South France, as in Liguria, it is now possible to dis-
tinguish at the base of deep deposits a recurrent assemblage of pots and
implements. This is just that culture, characterized by Cardial ware,
already encountered in South Italy and Liguria. It is found all round
the West Mediterranean coasts in North Africa,1 2 the Iberian Peninsula,3
and South France4 too. But at least in its earlier manifestations it is
strictly confined to the coastal regions where the Mediterranean en-
vironment is preserved in its most distinctive form.
It was carried by groups of hunters and stock-breeders, known
1 Pericot, Historia de Espana, I (Madrid, 1947); La Espafla Primitiva (Barcelona,
1950). 355*
2 Rev. Anthr., XLI (1931), 158; A. Ruhlmann, La Grotte prehistorique de Dar es-Sultan
(Paris, Col. Hesperies), 1951.
3 Pericot, Historia, 121; Act. y Mem., XVII, 1942, 88-108.
4 Riv. St. Lig., XV (1949), 22-5; Bailloud and Mieg, 58-71; AC., II.
265
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
almost exclusively from their occupation of caves. This circumstance
has unduly exaggerated the rdle attributed to animal husbandry in the
economy; for herdsmen periodically shelter in caves even though they
have homes in permanent farming villages. Actually the Cardial herds-
men did cultivate cereals; in their deposits have been found not only
grains of barley,1 sickle-teeth, and querns, but also—both in Spain1 2 and
Provence3—bone spatulse of the specialized type used by Starcevo folk
in the Balkans for collecting flour (p. 84). Perhaps they followed that
system of cultivation, still observable in Corsica and Liguria, by which
the scrub is burnt off and the grains planted between the trees still left
standing.4 But for hunting they employed bows and arrrows armed
with microliths and clubs, weighted with percussion-perforated
stone heads5—both items that could have been borrowed from
local "Tardenoisians”.
The flint-work is generally very simple. Axes, in preference to adzes,
were made from fine-grained rock. The pottery shows leathery forms,
generally round based and sometimes provided with small strap
handles. The vases have been profusely decorated by impressing the
edge of a shell or other stamp in the wet clay. The impressions are
normally arranged to form skeuomorphic patterns recalling wicker
cases in which pre-ceramic vessels might have been carried.
Bracelets of shell or stone were worn as ornaments together with
necklaces of bored teeth. The dead seem to have been buried in caves,
used as collective ossuaries.6
The coastal distribution of this culture leaves no doubt that it was
diffused by seafarers. Though very similar pottery is distributed very
widely in North Africa down to Tibesti and Khartoum,7 there are no
convincing grounds for supposing that the maritime distribution of
our culture began from Little Africa rather than the Balkan or Levant
coasts. Cardial decoration is found on some of the earliest neolithic
pottery of North Syria. On the other hand, Starcevo ware is related
to Cardial and associated with the bone spatulse that occur in no other
context. It certainly seems that the earliest neolithic cultures, adapted
1 San Valero Aparisi, La Cueva de la Sarsa, Servicio de Investigacion Prehistorica
(Valencia, 1950), pi. II.
2 Ibid., pi. I.
3 Bailloud and Mieg, 71 (Chateauneuf-lez-Martigues), but in Prehistoire, XII (1956),
89, this is classed as "n6olithique cardial".
4 Sereni, "II sistema agricola del debbio nella Liguria antica,” Mem. della Acad.
Lunigianese, XXV (La Spezia, 1955).
5 San Valero, op. cit., 37-46, argues that these are weights for digging-sticks. Similar
objects are widespread in the North African Capsian, cf. Vaufrey, Prehistoire de VAfrique,
I, 413-15. They are too light for digging-sticks.
6 Riv. St. Lig., XVII (1951), 132.
7 Cf. Arkell, Shaheinab (London, 1953), 69.
266
THE IBERIAN PENINSULA
respectively to Balkan and West Mediterranean environments, at
least sprang from a common root,1 In the latter area Cardial herdsmen
may well have mingled with surviving mesolithic hunters and with
neolithic farmers of Capsian tradition. And so a certain continuity of
tradition may be observed in the cave deposits. But the varied styles
of pottery and kinds of stone tool grouped together in earlier books
to constitute a “Cultura de las Cuevas” are no more homogeneous
culturally or chronologically than the relics from the several strata
of Arene Candide. But in Spain they can seldom be distinguished
stratigraphically. At least at El Pany near Barcelona, however, col-
lective burials with Cardial ware were stratified below Bell-beakers
of Bronze I.2
The Almeria Culture
A second and possibly earlier stream of neolithic colonists, come this
time from Africa, introduced a different culture that is first recogniz-
able in Almeria and therefore thus designated.
The neolithic colonists settled generally on hilltops like the type site,
El Garcel,3 overlooking the fertile valleys; they arrived at a time when
pines still grew on the now treeless hill. In addition to breeding stock
and cultivating cereals they may have introduced the culture of olive-
trees since olive-stones were found, but grape-seeds are said to be
derived from wild vines.4 The grains were reaped with sickles armed
with serrated flint teeth, like those from the pre-dynastic Fayum,
stored in subterranean silos and ground on saddle-querns. Tied to the
soil by their fruit trees, the villagers lived in round or oval huts, partly
excavated in the soil but roofed with a superstructure of wattle-and-
daub. Huntsmen still used microlithic arrow-heads—micro-gravers
found at El Garcel may be by-products in the manufacture of these.
Carpenters employed ground stone axes, adzes, and gouges. A textile
industry is implied by biconical whorls. Pottery was undecorated and
vases were never provided with true handles, though singly or even
doubly perforated lugs were applied. Forms include jars with pointed
bases (Fig. 127, 3) like the early Egyptian (Gerzean) and North African,5
curious bottles, oval in plan, that also recur in North Africa, and sack-
like leathery vessels related to the neolithic pottery of the Fayum and
Merimde6 in Egypt. The leathery sack-like forms continued to be
1 Cf. MilojCid, Germania, XXX, 314-18; Bernabo Brea, A.C., II, 192-8.
2 Anuari, VIII (1936), 19 ff.; Ampurias, V, 190.
3 Siret, RQS., XXXIV (1893), 489 ff., and Les premiers Ages du mUal dans le sud-est
de VEspagne; Gosse, Ampurias, III (1941). 63-84.
1 Siret, Questions de chronologie et d'ethnographic iberiques, Paris, 1913.
s BSPF., XXXIII, 633; Rev. Anthr., XLI (1931), 158, fig. 1, 4-
B Caton-Thompson, The Desert Fayum; Chiide, NLMAE., 58.
267
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
popular in all later phases of Almerian culture. In Siret's second neo-
lithic phase as represented at Tres Cabezos1 they are provided with
upstanding perforated lugs (Fig. 130, 1), while bowls maybecarinated,
and even double-vases were made as at Merimde in Egypt. Vessels
were also woven of esparto grass.
Disc-beads of shell, made also by African Capsians, and bracelets
of Pectunculus1 2 shell and stone, beads of callais and later of steatite
were worn as ornaments. The dead were buried collectively in natural
cave ossuaries or in stone-walled but closed cists, usually circular in
plan and covered by low tumuli.3 Even at El Garcel a very crude
Fig. 127. 1, Gouge, El Garcel (£); 2, schist adze, Portugal (£); 3, jar, El
Garcel (£).
fiddle-shaped stone, rather like Fig. 8, 14, may represent a “Mother
Goddess''. She is slightly more recognizable in stone figures from the
tombs that may, however, be Neolithic II.
Vaufrey4 reports “the whole assemblage from El Garcel”—flints,
celts, and even pots—“is an almost exact replica of the neolithic of
Capsian tradition” as found throughout the Maghreb. The African
origin of the Almeria culture is thus established. But bifacially trimmed
arrow-heads and richly decorated pottery are missing from its neo-
lithic I phase. Hence the Straits may have been crossed before the
1 Siret, Ages du metal, pi. 3; segmented bone beads, a clay plaque perforated at the
four corners and a heap of ore suggest that this site should be assigned rather to the
Copper Age.
2 Siret, Questions, 38; APL., I (1928), 25.
3 Leisner, Megalithgrdber, 390-404.
4 Prehistoire de I'Afrique, I, Maghreb (Paris, 1955), 412.
2
3
268
THE IBERIAN PENINSULA
main expansion that Vaufrey has traced took place in Africa. And the
radio-carbon date of 3050 b.c. for the Capsian neolithic in the Maghreb1
need not be accepted as an upper limit for its arrival in Europe.
A parallel colonization of the west coast may perhaps be inferred
from plain baggy pots and microliths, similar to those from El Garcel,
found in megalithic passage graves that are at best Neolithic II (p. 276
below). Perhaps the first phase of this western colonization will be
documented if the furniture of the Portuguese "dolmens” be pub-
lished. These are reported1 2 to be megalithic cists, each containing
a single corpse accompanied by archaic microliths.
On the east coast Spanish prehistorians have traced the spread of
the Almeria culture northward to Catalonia by a series of burials of
contracted skeletons in simple pit graves. Their furniture includes
tanged and transverse arrow-heads, Pectunmlus bracelets, callals
Fig. 128. Stages in conventionalization of parietal art in Spain. After Obermaier.
A, Maimon; B, Figuras; C. La Pileta.
beads, and plain "Western” pottery—once indeed a "square-mouthed
vase”.3 Though formally neolithic, these Almerian cemeteries in the
north may be relatively late, but at least once the distinctive plain
pottery has been found stratified below Beakers.4
On their way north these Almerians must have come into contact
not only with Cardial herdsmen but also with descendants of older,
mesolithic, tribes. Interactions with the latter must be responsible
for the curiously African character of some of the East Spanish rock-
shelter art. Pericot indeed now believes that the practice of decorating
shelter walls with lively but impressionistic scenes of animals and the
chase began in the Solutrian phase of the old Stone Age. But some
still quite lively paintings depict side by side with gathering activities
sheep, equids, and even a rider.5 If these neolithic elements be derived
1 Ibid., 415.
2 Leisner, Antas do Concelho de Reguengos de Monsarraz (Lisbon, 1951), 177.
3 Maluquer de Motes, “La Cultura neolitica del Valles,” Armhona, 1-2 (Sabadell,
1950), 4-13.
4 Ampuriaz, VI (1944), 43-58. 5 AJA., LIU (1949), 150, figs. 1-4.
269
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
from the Almerian of Capsian—i.e. North African—tradition, the
stylistic similarity of some East Spanish paintings to those of Libya1
or even Rhodesia would be more comprehensible. But the paintings in
question are demonstrably older than more conventionalized paintings
the figures of which can be matched on Copper Age I vases (Fig. 128)
and tomb walls. Rock-shelter art of this later conventionalized type
is not confined to the eastern coasts, but occurs widely in the Peninsula2
and along the Mediterranean coasts even east of the Rhone.3 It must
be the work of roving hunting and herding groups whose palaeolithic
traditions had been enriched by interaction with Almerian and other
neolithic farmers.
The Rise of a Metal Industry
The Peninsula was rich in gold, silver, copper, lead, and even tin. The
discovery of these natural resources permitted the development of a
new economy in which industry and trade could absorb some of the
rural population, as in the Eastern Mediterranean. It was presumably
initiated by actual prospectors, probably by veritable colonies, from
that direction. It is in fact first and most brilliantly attested in Almeria
at sites adjacent to the Mediterranean coasts whence colonists come
by sea from farther east could conveniently exploit and work neigh-
bouring lodes of argentiferous copper and lead ores. The type station,
Los Millares,4 a few miles up the Andorax from the modem port of
Almeria, has indeed all the aspects of an iEgean township, covering
5 hectares (i2f acres) and protected by a wall and fosse. Outside the
wall lay a cemetery of a hundred-odd collective tombs said to have
held up to a hundred interments. A similar settlement was established
at Almizaraque about a mile up from the mouth of the Almanzora.
Others may be inferred from corbelled tombs at Belmonte, Purchena,
and Tabernas.5
Most of the townsmen were of course farmers who cultivated emmer
and hexaploid wheat, barley, beans, and flax.6 But the population
included also metallurgists, presumably initiated in the East Medi-
terranean and interested especially in silver and gold. Slags from
Almizaraque attest the extraction of silver, copper, and lead. Siret7
1 Cf. e.g. Graziosi, L'Arte rupestre della Libia (Napoli, n.d.), 275-85.
2 Breuil, Les Peintures rupestres scMmatiques de la Peninsule ibdrique (Paris, 1936).
3 BSPF., XLI (1944), 168.
4 Siret, RQS. (1893); Leisner, Megalithgrdber, 19-64.
5 Leisner, ibid., 10, 13, 73.
6 T. dicoccum and compactum, H. hexastichon; Telles and Ciferri, Tr'r v '~.T' ? de
Espaiia, Madrid (Inst. nac. de Investigaciones Agronomicas), 1954; < ?' ) :? 1 ? ? ! ?? \6),
38 f.
7 Cuadernos, III (1948), 117-24.
270
THE IBERIAN PENINSULA
believed that clay arcs, perforated at both ends and up to 22 cm. long,
formed parts of a reverberatory furnace. But the exact Anatolian
parallels to such arcs, that are characteristic of most sites of Bronze I,
suggest that they really served as loom weights. The copper-smiths
were masters of only the simplest techniques of forging and open-
Fig. 129. Flint arrow-heads: 1, Alcald (|); 5. Los Millares (|). Halberd blades; 3, Casa
da Moura; 4, Los Millares (£); 2, Palmella points (•£).
hearth casting. So they manufactured only daggers with a midrib on
one face (like Fig. 132, bottom), as at Usatova, or quite flat and tanged
(of West European type) together with long narrow flat adzes, cutters,
as in the Cyclades, quadrangular awls, and even saws.
Trade brought to Los Millares hippopotamus ivory and ostrich
egg-shells from Africa, turquoise, callais, amber, and jet from undeter-
mined sources. But stone was still normally used instead of metal for
axe-heads, and flint was now superbly worked by pressure flaking for
arrow-heads, dagger or halberd blades (Fig. 129, 4), as well as knives
271
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
and sickle-teeth. Apart from transverse arrow-heads which were still
used, 68 per cent of the specimens from Los Millares are hollow-based,
17 Per cent tanged-and-barbed, 7 per cent leaf-shaped (Fig. 129, 5).
Thick plaques of clay, perforated at the four corners, may have been
used as wrist-guards or loom-weights.1 A stone plaque perforated at
each end from Belmonte was used as a whetstone.
The pottery on the whole carries on the native Almerian tradition,
but some vases are decorated with incised patterns that include oculi
motives (like Fig. 130, 2) and conventionalized stags (Fig. 130, 3), with
Fig. 130. 1, “Late Neolithic” vase from Tres Cabezos; 2-3, symbol vases from
Los Millares.
small knobs or even painted in warm black on a light ground. New forms
include squat birds' nest pyxides, sometimes with plaster necks,
cylindrical tumblers and little globular vases with short necks as well
as a few multiple vessels. Beakers were found, apparently as an intrusive
element in only four tholoi at Los Millares, in one each at Belmonte,
Purchena, and Almizaraque, and in five cists. Vases were also made out
of plaster to imitate ostrich eggs, and unguent flasks were carved out
of ivory or white limestone.
As toilet articles and ornaments, bone or ivory combs were worn at
Los Millares, the clothing fastened with shanked stone buttons, and
simple disc or barrel beads of stone, shell, talc, and imported materials
were hung on strings round the neck. At Almizaraque, conical and
prismatic buttons with V perforation and a grooved bone toggle of a
type found at Troy and Alisar were used as dress-fasteners, and in the
tholos at Tabernas and probably also in that at Llano de Media Legua
on the Almanzora, bone pins with grooved cylindrical heads (like
Fig. 132) were found.
The Almerians were, however, deeply preoccupied with immaterial
ends. The collective tombs were constructed with great care; sixty-
1 From Tres Cabezos (neolithic), Velez Blanco, Mas de Menente (Alicante, Bronze
Age!).
272
THE IBERIAN PENINSULA
4
Fig. 131. Ritual objects: 1, Almeria; 2 and 4, Portugal; 3, Granada (£}.
five of those at Los Millares, as at Almizaraque, Belmonte, Tabernas,
are corbelled tholoi (Fig. 108), often with cells opening off the chamber
or passage, and with porthole slabs for entries,1 covered with circular
1 Leisner, Megalithgraber, 289-328.
273
S
-
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
cairns supported by a built retaining-wall on to which straight or
curved walls may be built to frame a forecourt. Wooden pillars are said
to have supported the roofs. A few of the earlier tombs at Los Millares
are rectangular or trapezoid megalithic cists from 2 to 5 m. long, pre-
ceded by a short entrance passage. Ritual objects include owl-eyed
female figurines made by painting bovine phalanges (Fig. 131, 1), or
stone and ivory cylinders, plain plaques of schist (Los Millares), and
flat stone figures without faces like Fig. 8, 13, and, at Almizaraque,
bone models of sandals. Axe-amulets were worn as charms at Los
Millares and elsewhere.
The urbanization of Almerian economy seen at Los Millares and
Almizaraque is presumably a reflection, however indirect, of Oriental
cities' demands for metal. But the townships thus created, themselves
constituted local secondary centres of demand and radiated their
influence right across the Peninsula. Westward, parallel or colonial
settlements sprang up all across Andalusia to the coasts of Portugal
along the natural route, followed by the modern railways from Almeria
to Algarve, and principally at focal-points (now junctions) thereon or
in metalliferous districts.
On the plateau of Granada1 are several large cemeteries of collective
tombs round Guadix, Gor, and Gorafe, composed partly of tholoi,
more often of cists of the Almerian form and frequently entered through
porthole slabs. The tombs contain typical Almerian products—oculi
vases, flat stone idols, phalange idols, ribbed cylinder-headed pins—
as well as a few Beakers. Yet other tombs of the same form in these
cemeteries contain pottery and bronzes characteristic of the succeeding
Argaric Bronze Age. Farther west at Antequera2 and in the ancient
Betica,8 the route is marked by superbly built tholos tombs. But near
the princely tholos of Romeral at Antequera is a small cemetery of
rock-cut tombs4 that reproduce in miniature the plan of the tholos
but contained mainly Argaric bronzes. On the other hand, stroke-
burnished ware from villages near Jerez and Carmona5 points to fresh
impulses direct from the East Mediterranean. But at Campo Reale
near Carmona, Bonsor6 found burials in "silos”—really chamber
tombs—accompanied by polished stone axes, plain pottery, and a
little painted ware akin to the Almerian and the characteristic clay arcs.
1 Leisner, Megalithgraber, 84-168.
2 Ibid., 174-85.
3 Ibid., 194-213.
4 S. Gimenez Reyna, "Mem. arqueol. de Prov. Malaga hasta 1946”, Informes y
Memorias (Madrid, Junta para Excavaciones, 1946).
fi Acta Arqueol. Hispanica, III (1945), 37; Bonsor, "Les Colonies agricoles pr6-
roinaines de la vall6e du Bdtis," Rev. Arch., XXXV (1899), in.
6 Op. cit., 36-9, 105-10, fig. 41-2.
274
THE IBERIAN PENINSULA
Then, in Algarve, a metalliferous region where the rocks are suited
to dry-stone masonry, a cemetery of seven tholoi at Alcala1 marks the
site of a smaller Los Millares. The tombs contained flat adzes, notched
daggers with midribs on one or both faces (Fig. 132), awls and saws
of copper, superbly worked hollow-based arrow-heads of flint (Fig.
129, 1), undecorated vases of Almerian type, a marble paint-pot, a
clay arc, hammer beads, and beads of amber, callai's, and jet, but not
Beaker ware nor West European daggers. Corbelled tombs extend along
2
Fig. 132. Copper daggers and adze, Alcala, and bone pin, Cabe9o da
Ministra (-&).
the Portuguese coasts as far north as Torres Vedras (Pena and Barro
with semicircular forecourt).1 2 Tombs at Monge and San Martinho,
Cintra,3 excavated in the rock but roofed by corbelling, illustrate the
transition from the built tholos to the rock-cut tomb.
Tombs of the latter class, agreeing in plan with the tholoi and, like
them, sometimes preceded by an antechamber, a curved forecourt or
a long entrance passage divided by rock-cut versions of the porthole
slab form regular cemeteries at Palmella,4 Alapraia,5 Estoril, and
1 Estacio de Veiga, Aniiguidades monumentaes do Algarve (Lisbon, 1886-91).
2 Pena (OAP., XIV, 354), and Barro, with semicircular forecourt; V. Correia, CIPP.,
Mem. 27 (1931), 72, relics at Belem.
3 Cartailhac, op. cit.; OAP., II, 211. 4 OAP., XII (1907), 210, 320.
6 Afonso do Pafo, “As Grutas de Alapraia”, Broteria, XXI (Lisbon, 1935); Anais
IV (Lisbon, 1941).
275
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
other sites round the Tagus estuary.1 From their situation at the
river mouth and from the tomb furniture these cemeteries of the
Palmella culture might belong to maritime colonists from the East
Mediterranean like Almizaraque and Los Millares, with which they are
in fact largely contemporary.
But in the hinterland, including the stanniferous plateaux of Northern
Portugal, are cemeteries of four or five megalithic passage graves
{antas) under round cairns which embody an older tradition of sepulchral
architecture and should belong to a native population of neolithic
ancestry (p. 269)—the builders of the unpublished “dolmens”. Nearly
all antas had been pillaged in the seventeenth century. The surviving
furniture from most includes beakers and typical relics of the Palmella
culture. But at least two1 2 were demonstrably earlier than “Almerian”
tholoi that had been built up against them under the same cairns. And
from a couple of very simple passage graves (Fig. 133) the original
furniture has been recovered intact.3 Each interment was accompanied
by an axe and an adze, a set of geometric microliths and a couple of
plain round-bottomed “Western” pots and a plate of red-slipped ware.
So the first megalithic passage graves in Portugal were built by a neo-
lithic population akin to the Almerian and at a time at least culturally
equivalent to Neolithic II in Spain. Yet larger, and presumably later,
tombs reproduce in orthostatic masonry all the features of the tholoi and
rock-cut tombs4 with their divided passage and even porthole slabs.5
The only settlement yet explored in Portugal is Vila Nova de S.
Pedro,6 not on the coast, but well in the hinterland of Lisbon. It was
founded before Beaker ware became fashionable locally,7 but was
occupied throughout the “Copper Age” (Bronze I) and until Argaric
types were locally produced in Bronze II. The villagers cultivated
hexaploid wheat,8 barley, and beans and engaged in stock-breeding and
hunting. Local copper ores were smelted at the site and the metal
worked into flat axes, saws, and other types,9 though perhaps not before
Bronze II. The domestic pottery is characterized by reinforced rims,
surprisingly like those of neolithic Britain.10 But beakers and other
vases, found in the rock-cut tombs, were also used, and on the whole
the site reveals just a provincial variant on the Palmella culture.
1 Alapraia e S. Pedro, Junta de Turismo de Cascais, 1946; Congresso Luso.-Espanhol.
do Porto, T. VIII, 1943.
2 Leisner, Antas do Concelho de Reguengos (Lisbon, 1951), 284-9.
3 Ibid., 212 and 310.
4 Correia, CIPP., Mem. 27. 5 Marburger Studien, i, 150.
6 Afonso do Pa^o, Act. y Mem., XX (1945). 7 Id. Broteria, LIV (1952), 7-16.
8 Andis, V (1954), 280-356, T. sphcerococcuw, cereals from other sites are described here.
8 Zephyrus, III (Salamanca, 1952), 32-9.
10 Childe, Revista Guimardes, LX (1950), 7-12.
276
THE IBERIAN PENINSULA
6
Fig. 133. Plan of "neolithic” passage grave (anta) and part of furniture; Alemtejo.
After Leisner. Pottery and celts (i), flints (£).
In the Palmella culture the essential features of the Millares economy
are conserved though less fully than in Algarve. Metal tools and weapons
are rare in the rock-cut tombs and practically confined to the odd arrow-
heads1 shown in Fig, 129, 2. The place of copper in industry is taken
1 One such “point” was found sticking in a skull at Valdenabi, Leon; Corona d'Estudis
dedica a sus Martiros (Madrid, 1941), 128.
2 77
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
by stone axes and adzes and superbly worked flints, including halberd
blades like Fig. 129, 4, that may be polished on the faces as if in imita-
tion of metal. Arrow-heads include still microlithic types, but hollow-
based, tanged, and leaf-shaped forms, none comparable in delicacy to
those from Alcala, occur in the proportions of 72,19, and 9 respectively
at Palmella. Trade brought gold, callais, amber, and ivory, while the
connections with Almeria are explicitly attested by cylinder-head pins
from tombs and by clay plaques perforated at the corners from con-
temporary settlements. But tortoise beads from Palmella and Vila Nova
de S. Pedro conform to the Sardinian-Proven9al type of Fig. 126a,
while a pair of basket-shaped gold earrings from a rock-cut tomb at
Ermageira1 reproduce a familiar Irish type (cf. Fig. 154).
In the Palmella pottery Beaker ware, both of the "grand style”
(Fig. hi, 1-2) and of the "classical” variety decorated with rouletted
zones, is the most conspicuous element, but plain round-bottomed and
carinated vessels may just carry on the native "neolithic” tradition,
illustrated in the megalithic tombs. Stroke-burnished sherds have
been recovered from tholoi and from sepulchral caves while channelled
and other kinds of incised decoration are also represented in caves and
settlements.
Among the ritual objects too, besides familiar Millares types'—
phalange (S. Martinho) and cylinder idols and schist sandals (Alapraia)
—the Palmella tombs contain a variety of peculiar Portuguese forms—
plaque idols richly decorated with incised patterns (Fig. 131, 2), schist
croziers, similarly decorated, marble copies of shafted hoe-blades, large
crescentic "collars” of limestone,1 2 and pendants in the form of a rabbit.3
The owl-face of a funerary goddess and even representations of a copper
dagger were carved or painted on the uprights of some tombs.4
Similarly on the east coasts from Almeria northward to Catalonia
rural communities continued to bury the dead in natural cave ossuaries.
While they relied mainly on stone for axes, they obtained objects of
copper, and beads of callais, learned to work metals and copied locally
such Almerian types as cylinder-head pins and painted phalange idols.5
Flint daggers and hollow-based arrow-heads of Portuguese form are
not, however, found north of Almeria. The local pottery preserves the
1 Ethnos, II (Lisbon, 1942), 449-58.
2 Afonso do Paco, Anais, IV, 122, compares these to Irish gold lunulas, but the per-
forations, if any, are near the centre, not the ends; comparison with the clay arcs might
be equally legitimate.
3 Leisner, As Antas de Monsarraz (Lisbon, 1952), 145.
4 Breuil, Les Peintures rupestres schematiques, IV (1936), 148.
5 Blanquires de Labor, Murcia, Cuadernos, III, 5-30; Cami Real and Barranc de
Castellet, Alicante (Arch. Preh. Levant., I, 31-72); Monte de Barsella, Alicante, JSEA.,
Mem. 112 (1930); APL., II, 115-40.
278
THE IBERIAN PENINSULA
rounded Almerian shapes but is generally mixed up with decorated
“Cave wares” and beakers. A round-headed minority is represented in
most of these caves.
From many Copper Age tombs and settlements, especially in Portugal,
but also in Almeria, bones of horses—or just possibly asses—have been
reported.
We might thus recognize in the Copper Age Almerian (Los Millares)
Andalusian, Algarvian, Portuguese, and East Spanish cultures though
the first four might be grouped together as local facies of one Early
Hispanic culture. Should we distinguish a sixth entity'—a “pure”
Beaker culture in the Peninsula. Beakers of the Pan-European type,
like Fig. hi, 3-4, with their usual accompaniment of West European
daggers and arrow-heads but no wrist-guards, have been found in every
type of Copper Age tomb—tholos, rock-cut, megalithic, natural cave—
but far more frequently in Portugal than in Almeria. But there are local
variants on this standard model. Fig. in, 1-2, illustrates a Portuguese
variant that may be found in the same tomb as the Pan-European
form.1 Beakers, decorated in this style, are associated with chalices of
Argaric shape at Acebuchal near Carmona in Betica.1 2 In two tombs at
Gandul in Betica beakers were associated only with the latest (Copper
Age I) and presumably intrusive, interments and must thus be later
than the erection of the tombs. Similarly, at Vila Nova de San Pedro
Beaker ware was missing from the oldest habitation deposit. On the
other hand, at Los Millares, Leisner assigns beakers to the earliest
phase. So it is impossible in the south of the Iberian Peninsula to
isolate an assemblage of relics and rites that should distinguish archseo-
logically a Beaker people from the rest of the interrelated societies
responsible for the Early Hispanic culture. Physically Beaker-folk were
undoubtedly represented among those societies, and, assuming they
were of East Mediterranean origin, should have been among the first
colonists thence who founded those societies. Yet they did not arrive
as Beaker-folk since Beakers are not known in the East Mediterranean
nor yet at Paestum, where the physical type is represented.
Presumably they separated out from them in the Peninsula. Margaret
Smith has shown that the beaker cannot be derived from the native
Cave culture pottery of Betica3 and that the Tagus estuary is the most
likely focus for the wide dispersion described in Chapter XII. But
1 The alleged stratigraphical evidence for Bosch-Gimpera’s view (Man, XL (1940),
6-10) making the Palmella style older than the Pan-European, has been demolished by
Castillo, APL., IV (1953), 135 ff.; cf. also Savory, Revista Guimaraes, LX, 363-6; Leisner,
As Antas nas Herdades da Casa de Braganga (Lisbon, 1955), 20-27.
2 "Colonies agricoles’' (Rev. Arch., XXXV), 88-90, 116-23, 132.
2 pps., xix (1953)- 95-107.
279
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
unless the fine bifacially worked arrow-heads they carried with them
evolved in the Peninsula from microlithic forms as Siret suggested,
we might suspect that they had been joined by a contingent of bowmen
from the Sahara, where such arrow-heads were made in profusion,
whether as a local continuation of the Aterian tradition or under
inspiration from the Fayum neolithic.
The foundation of the Copper Age cultures in the Peninsula, as in
Italy and Sardinia, is generally attributed to an actual colonization by
East Mediterranean prospectors. But these colonists did not, like the
Phoenicians and the Greeks, bring shiploads of manufactured articles;
not a single East Mediterranean export has been recognized on any
Peninsular site before the Argaric period. The metal gear, locally made
by the immigrant smiths, was technically inferior to that current in the
East Mediterranean even during the third millennium—but after all
the “prospectors” would have been looking for silver and gold, not
copper. Some Millares pot forms have general parallels in the Early
Minoan ossuaries of Crete,1 the stone figurines are obviously like
Cycladic and Anatolian ones; the owl-face engraved on plaques and
vases or painted on phalanges and caves belongs to the same “goddess”
whom the Sumerians depicted on the handles of funerary jars and the
Trojans on a stele and on face-urns. The plaque-idols like Fig. 131, 2,
are very like Egyptian block figures (p. 19) or Early Cypriote clay
“idols”.2 The clay arcs have exact parallels in Anatolia, as has the
toggle3 from Almizaraque; a segmented stone bead from Palmella is
quite like Fig. 12, 2, while the stroke-burnished ware from Betica
(p. 274) is identical with the East Mediterranean fabric. The idea of the
aritficial collective tomb is East Mediterranean and was translated into
corbelled vaults in Crete and the Cyclades in the third millennium.
The tholoi of Los Millares are actually rather similar to Krazi in Crete
(p. 23), while the contemporary cists resemble those of H. Kosmas
in Attica (p. 72).
Still these analogies are distinctly vague. Collective burial had
apparently been practised in the Peninsula already in the neolithic
period. In Portugal even built collective tombs may be equally neo-
lithic. There, too, megalithic tombs are demonstrably older than tholoi.
Even for the Almerian tholoi Leisner has expounded a plausible evolu-
tion from the neolithic round cists. The similarity between tholoi, like
those at Antequera and Alcala and the Mycenaean looks indeed particu-
1 Xanthudides, Vaulted Tombs, pis. XI, 1850 (stone birds' nest vases), XXXI, 687
(clay tumbler), XXX, 4982 (stud-ornament), M.M.I.
2 Act. y Mem. Soc. Espafi. Anthropologia, XIX (1944), I35-
3 Schliemann, Ilios, fig. 536; van der Osten, “The Alishar Hiiyiik, 1928-29,” OIC.
Pubs., XIX, fig. 85; for arcs, see p. 40, n. 1.
280
-
THE IBERIAN PENINSULA
larly striking. It is accentuated by the cemetery of rock-cut tombs near
Antequera that seem to bear the same relation to the tholos as chamber
tombs do to Mycenaean tholoi. But perhaps the similarity in plan is
deceptive; in Greece the passage was unroofed, where in Iberia it was
always covered. In any case it is no longer plausible to derive from the
Mycenaean the Iberian tholoi any more than to make the latter the
models for the Portuguese passage graves. Indeed, it is now just as
plausible to derive the Mycenaean tholoi from the Peninsula (p. 80.)
Hence its East Mediterranean relations provide no indisputable limiting
dates for the Early Hispanic Copper Age.
Whether as a consequence of East Mediterranean colonization or
no, during the Copper Age the several societies inhabiting the Peninsula,
while asserting their autonomy in divergent ceramic styles, fashions in
amulets, and preferences for arrow-heads, had achieved a considerable
degree of uniformity in stone and metal tools and weapons, in costume
and personal ornaments and from one coast to the other. To this cultural
uniformity no political union need have corresponded. Only in Andalusia
and perhaps Algarve do a few monumental tombs look like princely
sepulchres rather than communal ossuaries or family vaults.
The exotic materials—turquoise, amber, jet, callais—and foreign
types, like tortoise beads, from Copper Age tombs illustrate wide
commercial relations, particularly with the North-west. The counter-
balancing exports—at least before the Beaker expansions—seem to
have been of a less substantial character—elements of a cult. The
passage graves of Brittany are so closely related to the Portuguese in
architecture and furniture as to suggest direct maritime intercourse
foreshadowing that of the Tartessians in the eighth century.1 The
Northern passage graves should result from a further extension of such
relations that might account for the amber at Los Millares. The symbol-
ism and the technique of ceramic decoration in Brittany and Scotland
point in the same direction, while the magic patterns on Irish bronzes2
are inspired by the hieratic art of Palmella. In the sequel, of course, the
Beaker-folk, presuming they did set out from Spain, played a decisive
role in initiating a Bronze Age in Central Europe and Upper Italy. The
main contribution of the Peninsula to Atlantic and North-Western
Europe was, however, surely "the Megalithic Religion”. With Hawkes3
we might imagine the megalith-builders sailing from the Portuguese
coasts, like the Conquistadores, to conquer for that faith a New World.
1 As described in the late Latin poem, Ora Maritima, by Avienus; cf. Hawkes in
Ampurias, XIV (1952), 81-95.
2 MacWhite, Estudios sobre las reladones atldnticas de la peninsula hispdnica (Disserta-
Hones Matritenses, II, Madrid, 1951).
3 The Prehistoric Foundations of Europe (London, 1940), 159.
281
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Or perhaps the saints of the Celtic Church would provide a better
analogy; some actually followed routes marked out by megalithic tombs
while our megalith-builders have left no superior copper weapons to
correspond to the fire-arms with which the Conquistadores vindicated
the authority of the cross.
The great creative moment was transient. As in the seventeenth
century, after the great expansion, Peninsular culture stagnated and—
compared to Britain and Central Europe—declined. Even in Copper
Age II decline is perceptible. According to Leisner the later tombs at
Los Millares contain a poorer and less varied furniture than the earlier
ones. In the succeeding Bronze Age (Bronze II), though tin was now
obtainable and alloyed with copper and methods of casting were
improved, Hispanic culture seems less progressive and its domain
contracts.
The Bronze Age
In Eastern Spain the Copper Age culture of Los Millares develops into,
or is succeeded by, a no less well-defined semi-urban culture of Bronze
Age type, named after the type station at El Argar.1 Its authors con-
tinued to live in hilltop townships, or citadels, more solidly fortified than
before. There might even be galleries in the walls. The houses are agglo-
merations of rectangular rooms with stone foundations, but the total
areas are small—the acropolis of El Officio covered 2\ acres. The dead
were no longer buried in collective tombs but individually in cists or
jars among the houses; the 780 graves actually identified at El Argar
give some indication as to how large the population must have become
or how long the Argaric Bronze Age lasted. Metal was mined and worked
locally on a larger scale than in the Copper Age and was effectively dis-
tributed throughout the province. Long-distance trade, on the contrary,
languished; it brought only a few beads of callais and segmented beads
of Egyptian fayence like those from Perjamos graves. Tin was scarce,
and the smith had generally to be content with copper or poor bronze.
But he could turn out flat axes with splayed blades or even with
hammered flanges, awls, saws, round-heeled daggers that might be
elongated into swords up to 70 cm. long (Fig. 134) and specialized
halberds which seem to be local translations of Copper Age flint forms.1 2
Silver was sometimes used for rivets. Whetstones perforated at both
ends were in regular use. Yet polished stone axes are quite plentiful on
all Argaric settlements.
1 Siret, Les premiers dges is the principal source.
2 Arch., LXXXVI (1936), 288, 298.
282
THE IBERIAN PENINSULA
Round-bottomed and carinated pots might seem to carry on some
Copper Age traditions (Fig. 134), but technically the fabric—red, black,
A
o /?..*» «>4.v *•:nuvs . • ~w''i '?, % y
v.'irl 1 " ? 1 ' Hh i« ?! "
Fig. 134. Argaric burial-jar showing diadem (^); funerary vases (J); halberd and
dagger-blades (£); sword (£). By permission of Trustees of British Museum.
or mottled—is surprisingly like Anatolian Bronze Age pottery and its
Danubian IV analogues. The carinated shapes, too, but for the absence
of handles, would fit well into the Unetician repertory; indeed, one mug
283
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
from a typical cemetery near Orihuela is actually provided with a
handle.1
Ornaments included diadems of silver (Fig. 134, top), beads, rings,
and simple bracelets of gold, silver, or copper, perforated boars’ tusks
carrying tiny rings of copper wire, shells, fish-vertebrae, and various
beads (none of amber). Rare burials with diadems (Fig. 134) must
belong to chiefs or nobles, burials of males and females together
should be instances of sati. A class division of society and a patriarchal
organization are thus attested. Concurrently the cult of a mother
goddess, in so far as it inspired the production of female figurines, was
given up. Indeed, apart from an “altar” surmounted by “horns of
consecration” at Campos, ritual objects are no longer conspicuous.
In the mixed population, round-heads were mingled with a majority of
Mediterraneans.2
The Argaric culture might be regarded as a continuation of the old
Almerian stripped of foreign elements after appropriating the technical
advances introduced therewith.3 The Almerians, having emancipated
themselves from the megalithic superstition, went on to develop the
metallurgy introduced therewith on original native lines. Yet the novel
burial practices, as strange to El Garcel as to Los Millares, but tradi-
tional in Central Anatolia and adopted in Middle Helladic Greece,
suggest that this emancipation was not effected without help from the
East Mediterranean. Indeed, there is better evidence for an East
Mediterranean colonization of Almeria at the beginning of the Bronze
Age than in the Copper Age. Agreements in burial practices are more
specific. The typical Argaric chalices are just ZBgean kylikes of wood*
or metal translated into the local pottery as they were into Minyan or
painted Mycenasan ware in Greece. The fayence beads are actual Aegean
imports. On the other hand, some would derive the innovations of the
Argaric culture from Upper Italy. Italian prehistorians, however, prefer to
regard the halberd-brandishers there as immigrants from the Peninsula.
The segmented fayence beads from Fuente Alamo in any case prove
that the Argaric culture was flourishing at latest by 1400 b.c. If due to
/Egean colonists, it could not have started much before 1500, since
even the Minyan kylikes are Late Helladic (p. 75). How long it lasted
is still more uncertain. There are no connected remains outside the
Argaric citadels and graves till the Iron Age began after 1000 b.c.,
so that Almeria is in much the same plight as Sardinia. Outside that
province the position is still worse.
1 Institut d’Estudis Valencians: Servei d’Investigacio Prehistorica, No. 5 (1928),
Colleccid de Treballs del P. J. Fergus, IV, lam. I, 2.
2 Coon, Races, 151, insists on contrast with "Copper Age" population.
3 So Bosch-Gimpera, Archivo Espanol de Arqueologia (1954), 4&-
284
THE IBERIAN PENINSULA
Typical Argaric cemeteries, well provided with metal tools, as far
north as Alicante and Valencia1 illustrate the effective extension of the
Almerian economic system. But in the province of Alicante itself in
the Alcoy district on the hilltop citadels of Mola alta de Serelles2 and
Mas de Menente3 axes of Argaris type were cast, or Argaric riveted
daggers used, but the round-bottomed bowls and globular jars pre-
serve purer traditions of the Almerian culture in contrast to the sharper
profiles of Argaric pottery, while polished stone axes were still regularly
employed.
Westward in Granada some megalithic tombs in the cemeteries of
Gor, Gorafe, and Los Eriales contain Argaric bronzes, ornaments, and
pots. So at Alcaide near Antequera,4 rock-cut tombs, reproducing
exactly the plan of the built tholos, contain relics of Argaric type.
Otherwise there is nothing in South Spain till the Iron Age. In Portugal
cemeteries of cist graves containing (? Argaric) carinated pottery are
rare and mainly concentrated in Algarve.5 Sometimes the capstones of
the short cists are carved with representations of developed metal
axes.6 Apart from cist graves, only the megalithic passage graves and
natural cave sepulchres are available to fill the gap in the funerary
record between the Copper and Late Bronze Ages; carinated and even
handled pots from such might well be “Bronze Age”. On the other hand,
bronzes of highly specialized type, especially two-eared palstaves,7
show that there arose in North Portugal and. Galicia during the Late
Bronze Age an important centre of metallurgy the products of which
were exported to Britain in a revival of the old trade that had been
reflected in the ear-rings of Irish form from Ermageira and lunulse
from Galicia.8
With this revival the Peninsula’s Atlantic coast or at least its stan-
niferous northern part at length became again a creative centre of
metallurgy and trade, of which Avienus’ verses have preserved a
memory.9 Yet this Late (Atlantic) Bronze Age began only after 1000 b.c.
No Middle Bronze Age is defined by typological landmarks. Into this
vacuum the poor Early Bronze Age cists and even some Copper Age
collective tombs might easily slide! Between 1550 and 1400 b.c.
indirect commerce between Britain and Mycenaean Greece by some
1 Bol. R. Acad. Hist., LIV, 357; APL., II, 151-63.
2 JSEA., Mem. 94 (1927).
3 A.P.L., I, 101-12.
* Gimenez Reyna, “Mem. Arqueol. de Malaga”, Informes y Mems., 12 (Comisario
gen. de Excavaciones, Madrid, 1946), 49 ff.
s Archivo Espatlol de Arq., XXII (1949), 310.
6 OAP., XI (1906), 108; Act. y Mem., XXII (1947), 158.
7 Savory, ‘‘TheAtlantic Bronze Age”, PPS., XV (1949), 128 ff.
8 Cf. Mac White, Estudios, 48-64.
9 Hawkes, Ampurias, XIV, 81 ff.
285
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
western route is positively attested. Were Alcala—and Los Millares—
points on that route? An affirmative answer seems quite plausible1 and
the extra-short chronology for the Hispanic Copper Age cannot be
refuted just by the vague parallels in the third millennium we have
cited. But then the Peninsula’s claim to cradle the Beaker-folk would
become precarious unless the chronology for Temperate Europe be
similarly telescoped!
1 Piggott, Revista Guimaraes, LVII (1948), xo ff. Sir Lindsay Scott (PSAS., LXXXII
(1950), 44) has pointed out the close resemblances between British Middle Bronze Age
“incense cups” and stone and pottery vases from Los Millares and cognate Copper
Age sites.
286
CHAPTER XVI
WESTERN CULTURE IN THE ALPINE ZONE
The diversified region north of the Pyrenees and west of the Rhine
and the high Alps, which had been steppe and parkland during the
Ice Age, in the subsequent forest period still supported Azilian de-
scendants of the Magdalenian reindeer-hunters and salmon-fishers, of
Tardenoisian immigrants from Africa, and of Forest-folk who spread
southward. These autochthonous food-gatherers were converted
gradually to a food-producing economy by the spread of an exotic
neolithic culture, and, multiplying in response to the new opportun-
ities of livelihood, accelerated its expansion. This conversion itself
might indeed have taken place in Provence and round the Pyrenees,
where the Cardial herdsmen, as shown in Chapter XV, had implanted
their neolithic culture and economy. It is, however, generally attributed
to a second wave of immigrants who would have introduced a Western
Neolithic culture and spread it thence to more temperate regions,
indeed to the Alps and the Channel. Even on the latter view the
primary Western farmers admittedly mixed with native food-gatherers
and, in adapting their rural economy to the novel environment, took
advantage of their experience and equipment. Moreover, in South
France the postulated Western immigrants have left only ambiguous
traces of their passage, and the Western culture they should have
brought with them is largely an inference from the “Western” cultures
of Lombardy, Western Switzerland, Central and North France, and
Southern England.
No doubt in a number of South French caves Cardial ware is replaced
in higher strata by plain leathery pots that can be more or less exactly
matched on the one hand in the Lagozza, Cortaillod, Chassey, and
Windmill Hill cultures,1 on the other in the Almeria culture and its
Portuguese counterpart (p. 269), while similar pots occur in the basal
levels of caves outside the narrow zone colonized by Cardial herdsmen.
It is less clear whether other distinctive traits occur so early in South
France or, if they do, whether they be distinctive of the Western
Neolithic. Leaf-shaped arrow-heads are thus found2 and are distinctive
of the earliest Neolithic in Britain, but not of Lagozza or Cortaillod.
1 J. Hawkes, Antiquity, VIII, 26-40; Piggott, L’Anthr., LVII (1953), 413-42.
2 Piggott, loc. cit., 426; Bailloud and Mieg, 100.
287
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Antler sleeves for celts so distinctive of Cortaillod occur early in Aude
and Ariege,1 but are missing from the deepest levels in Gard as from
Lagozza and Windmill Hill. Hares’ phalange pendants again occur2
in Gard as in South Spain and in Cortaillod and in the Lower to Middle
Neolithic of Liguria. Hence the South French caves have yielded some
material, stratified below Beaker layers, which could be treated as
intermediate between the Almeria culture on the one hand, the Ligurian
Middle Neolithic and the Alpine Cortaillod cultures on the other. In
the last-named assemblage we have the fullest picture of the Western,
indeed of any, neolithic culture available in Europe.
The Early Neolithic Phase on the West Alpine Lakes
The Swiss lakes have provided not only an unique picture of neolithic
equipment and economy, owing to the preservation by the waters of
organic materials, but also the clearest record of cultural development
in Western Europe, thanks firstly to the stratigraphical excavations
on Lake Neuchatel, initiated by Paul Vouga in 1919, and to the subse-
quent observations of E. Vogt3 and others which have clarified and
extended Vouga’s sequence. The names Cortaillod-Michelsberg, Horgen,
and Corded Ware denote three culture periods that follow one another
in that order on all the Alpine lakes and bogs. But the earliest neolithic
colonization of the area is not represented by lacustrine habitations at
all, but is known exclusively from cereal pollen blown into some peat
mosses from cultivated fields adjacent to unidentified settlements on
what is still dry land.4
So the oldest “lake-dwellings” in Western Switzerland were erected
by farmers who arrived with a complete neolithic equipment, con-
stituting what is termed the Cortaillod culture—now divisible into an
Early and a Late phase.5 But the majority of Swiss prehistorians by
19566 have become convinced that “lake-dwellings” were not raised
on piles above the waters but erected on solid, if rather moist, ground,
strung out along the shore between the reed belt and the strand scrub,
which had then been left dry owing to the contraction of the lakes in
1 Riv. Sc. Pr., VI (1951), 130-7; Helena, Les Origines de Narbonne (Paris-Toulouse,
1937)-
2 Vogt, CIPPS. (Zurich, 1950), 33; Piggott, loc. cit. 430.
3 Germania, XVIII (1934), 91 ff.
4 Welten, in Das Pfahlbauproblem (Monographien zur Ur- und Friihgeschichte der
Schweiz, XI), (Basel, 1955), 78.
6 Vouga, “Le N6olithique lacustre ancien", (Universite de Neuchatel, Recueil de
Travaux, Faculte de Lettres, 1934); Antiquity, II (1928), 388-92; von Gonzeobach, Die
Cortaillodkultur in der Schweiz (Monographien zur Ur- und Friihgeschichte, 1949).
G Vogt, Guyan, Welten in Das Pfahlbauproblem', butTschumi, Urgeschichte der Schweiz
(1948) adhered to the classical theory of pile-dwellings formulated by Keller in 1854.
288
-
WESTERN CULTURE IN THE ALPINE ZONE
late Atlantic and Sub-Boreal times. Similarly the so-called "stacked
platforms" (Packwerkbauten) were not artificial islands floating in
bogs, but houses built on firm peat the floors of which required frequent
renewal owing to subsidence.
The farmers cultivated wheats (Triticum monococcum, dicoccum, and
comfiactum) and barley, and also peas, beans and lentils.1 Plums and
apples were at least gathered; apples were eventually cultivated by the
Lake-dwellers, though not certainly in the Cortaillod phase, and a sort
of cider brewed from them. Homed cattle (Bos brachyceros) were bred
together with minor herds of pigs and small flocks of sheep and goats.1 2
Cattle were tethered and fed on leaves during the winters.3 A neolithic
(? Cortaillod) yoke4 survives, and Vouga con-
siders some stone implements to have been
used as ploughshares, but more probably the
land was tilled only with antler hoes.5 Game
contributed much less to the community's
diet than domestic stock. But the huntsman
used arrows tipped with double-ended bone
points (Fig. 135), or more rarely with trans-
verse or triangular flint heads. Fish were
caught in traps, in nets weighted with grooved
stones and suspended from birch-bark floats,
and were also speared with antler "harpoons"
(Fig. 135).
Wood-work was done with stone axes and
rare adzes made from suitably shaped pebbles
or sawn-out blocks of fine-grained rock. They
were mounted directly in straight shafts or in tapering antler sleeves
(Fig. 139 A) which were fitted into straight wooden shafts. Antler
axes and picks with square-cut shaft hole were also employed.
A local flax was cultivated for its seeds and for its fibres, which were
woven into linen, but the spinner did without whorls. Skins were
doubtless largely worn; bundles of bone spines, like the antler combs
of Michelsberg and Windmill Hill, could have served for leather-
dressing. Baskets were plaited with great skill.
Fig. 135.
Antler harpoon (£) and bone
arrow-head (1). Switzerland.
1 Urgeschichte der Schweiz, 597; cf. Beck, Rytz, Steklen, and Tschumi, ‘‘Der neol.
Pfahlbau Thun”, Mitt, naturforschenden Gesellschaft (Bern, 1930).
2 The proportions are: oxen 39 per cent, swine 21 per cent, sheep and goats each
18* 5 per cent of food animals; game only 30 per cent of total animal bones; Vouga,
op. cit. Bones of wild horse are reported from Port; Tschumi, Die ur- und friihgeschicht-
liche Fundstelle von Port, im Amt Nidau (Biel, 1940), 73.
3 Troels-Smith, Pfahlbauproblem, 49-52; Guyan, ib., 262.
4 Ischer, Pfahlbauten des Bielersees (Biel, 1928), 43, pi. VII.
6 Such actually survive with wooden handles: von Gonzenbach, Cortaillodkultur, 51.
T 289
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Early Cortaillod pots are of simple leathery forms without handles
save for lugs, which may be perforated with several vertical holes
(Fig. 136). In the Late phase much more sophisticated forms were
produced and vases were often decorated1 with strips of birch bark,
Fig. 136. Cortaillod pottery. After Antiquity (£).
stuck on with birch-pitch to form patterns, including the magic con-
centric circles popular at Conguel and Beacharra (pp. 317, 326), or
just with paired nipples simulating human breasts.
In Late Cortaillod sites appear some vases of Rossen style or at
least influenced by Rossen and others of Michelsberg affinities. And on
all Cortaillod sites flint instruments were made exclusively of a trans-
lucent yellow flint, strange to the Neuchatel basin but of unknown
provenance. Otherwise Cortaillod sites have yielded no conclusive
evidence for trade.
Combs for the hair were made of wood. As ornaments were worn
beads of steatite, wood, and bored teeth, cranian amulets (p. 311),
pendants made from segmented tines, from perforated phalanges of
hares, boars’ tusks, perforated at both ends, and wooden models of
clubs.
No cemeteries attached to the lake-side villages have been found,
but some human bones, broken to extract the marrow, turned up in
the villages—as if the peasants had practised cannibalism'—while two
measurable skulls proved to be dolichocranial. On the other hand,
Sauter2 has argued that cist graves of the Chamblandes type belonged
to Cortaillod people. Cemeteries of such graves,8 containing single
contracted skeletons or a male and female together, extend from the
vicinity of Basel in the Aar valley to the Upper Rhone and thence
beyond the Great St. Bernard along the Aosta valley into Upper Italy.
The grave goods—unpolished flint axes, a triangular axe hammer,
hollow-based arrow-heads, coral and Mediterranean shells, a copper
1 von Gonzenbach, 25; Vogt, PPS., XV (1949), 50-2.
2 Sibrium, II (1955), 133-8.
8 Tschumi, "Die steinzeitliche Hockergraber der Schweiz, AsA., XXII-XXIII
(1920-21); Altschles., V, 96 ff.
290
WESTERN CULTURE IN THE ALPINE ZONE
disc, a cranian amulet, and a V-perforated button—are certainly very
poor, but look late. The “Chamblandes culture” has therefore generally
been assigned to Swiss Middle or Late Neolithic. But its distribution
agrees very closely with that of the Cortaillod culture, and the grave-
type is identical with that characteristic of the Middle Neolithic levels
of Arene Candide.
Chronologically the Cortaillod culture, at least in its Late phase,
can be conclusively equated with the Rossen culture, again mainly
with its later manifestations,1 thus giving a partial synchronism between
Swiss Lower Neolithic and Danubian II. A knobbed battle-axe, how-
ever, from the Late Cortaillod layer at Seematte,2 must mean that
Swiss Lower Neolithic lasts into Danubian III and Northern E.N.c.
A radio-carbon estimate for the pre-Rossen Cortaillod of Egolzwil 33 put
the oldest tangible phase of Lower Neolithic at 2740^90 b.c.—a figure
that would be perfectly reasonable for Danubian II too, but only on a
“long” chronology.
In the Cortaillod culture such elements as mounting celts with
antler sleeves, antler harpoons, microlithic arrow-heads, can econ-
omically be derived from the mesolithic heritage. Of the constituents
that make it neolithic, one-corn wheat must be Danubian. But it could
have been introduced by the Rossen colonists (pp. 117-18), for it is
not yet attested before their influence becomes perceptible, and no
distinctively Danubian artifacts, necessarily older than Rossen, have
yet been found in the West Alpine area. So it still seems most likely that
the primary impulse—i.e. the cereals and domestic stock together with
a tradition of leathery vessels, cranian amulets, hares’ phalange pend-
ants—that engendered the pre-lake village cultivations and the pre-
Rossen Cortaillod culture of Egolzwill4 came up the Rhone despite the
ambiguity of the analogies in South France.
The Michelsberg Culture
North of the Cortaillod province, in lake-side villages on the Lake of
Constance, in moor villages in northern Switzerland and Wurttemberg,
in hilltop camps in South-West Germany, and at the flint-mines of
Spiennes in Belgium, the place of Cortaillod is taken by a quite different
culture—named after the hilltop camp at Michelsberg5 in Baden.
1 von Gonzenbach, 68-76; Kimmig, Bad. Fb. (1948-50), 58-64.
2 von Gonzenbach, 47; Vogt, Ada Arch., XXIV (1953), 180, Abb. 2, 2.
3 Das Pfahlbauproblem, 113.
4 The culture of this (Vogt, Ztschr.f. schweiz. AUertum. u. Kunst, XII (1951), 205-15)
and other villages in Middle Switzerland diverges from that familiar on Lake Neuch&tel;
it might be Cortaillod still quite uninfluenced by Rossen (von Gonzenbach, op. cit., 21).
6 Buttler, Donaulandische, 79-91; Baer, A., Die Michelsberger Kultur in der Schweiz,
(.Monographic zur Ur- und Friihgeschichte, Bile.)
291
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
The moor villages may comprise up to 24 houses grouped along regular
corduroyed streets.1 In land settlements as many as 75 houses have been
recorded, but, since a hut might be pulled down at its owner's death,
they cannot all be regarded as contemporary. The houses themselves
were again rectangular, varying in size from 6 by 3*6 m. to 5-3 by 3*2 m.
or less, but normally divided into two rooms with a hearth in the inner
and an oven in the outer (like Fig. 137). The dry land stations in
Germany were generally defended by flat-bottomed ditches and
palisades; the ditches of many camps are interrupted by frequent
causeways as in England.
The rural economy seems very similar to that of the Cortaillod and
First Northern A cultures. But there are some hints of more pastoral
clans separating out from the mass of Michelsberg villagers and pre-
sumably allowing their stock to graze freely. The principal crop in
Wiirtteniberg2 was barley, but wheats (T. monococcum, dicoccum, spelta,
and compactum) too were grown, and apples, strawberries, and other
fruits collected. Flour was not, according to Guyan,3 converted into
1 See also R. R. Schmidt, Jungsteinzeitliche Siedelungen in Federseemoor, Tubingen,
1930 ff.; Paret, Das Steinzeitdorf Ehrenstein bei Ulm (Stuttgart, 1955).
8 Paret, op. cit., 60. 3 Pfahlbauproblem, 269.
o
b
Fig. 137. Plan of a house at Aichbiihl (TJT)
292
WESTERN CULTURE IN THE ALPINE ZONE
bread, but eaten as a sort of gruel, but the ovens, so conspicuous in
most villages, must surely have served for baldng bread. Guyan1
believes that the villagers practised shifting cultivation, deserting their
homes at intervals but returning to the same site as soon as the scrub
had grown up again on their old clearings. The villages were certainly
occupied over considerable periods, during which the house floors at
least had to be renewed more than once—at Ehrenstein near Ulm as
many as thirteen times.2 The evidence here suggests not reoccupation
but continuous habitation on the same site for fourteen years or
probably longer. Finally, hunting played a far more prominent role in
the Michelsberg subsistence economy than it did in that of the Cortaillod
farmers; bones of game animals, including horses,8 form a relatively
high proportion in the food refuse.
Secondary industry and trade played a recognizable part in the
Michelsberg economy. Thus at Spiennes in Belgium4 lived a com-
munity of specialized flint-miners skilled at sinking shafts and digging
out subterranean galleries. Indeed, the Michelsberg settlers there con-
stituted a specialized industrial community, supplementing their liveli-
hood by exporting the products of their mines and workshops—and
Spiennes was no isolated phenomenon within the Western complex. It
implies also the development of hunting expeditions and transhumance
into something like regular commerce. Hoards of Western axes in
Southern Germany may belong to Michelsberg traders. As a result of
such trade some communities, like that at Weiher near Thayngen,
eventually obtained copper axes and amber beads.
But on the whole Michelsberg equipment is typically neolithic and
agrees generally with that of Cortaillod; axes were preferred to adzes
and often mounted in antler sleeves. The pots are generally plain and
many could be called leathery in shape. But many have flat bases and
jugs have genuine handles. Supposedly distinctive forms are “tulip
beakers” (Fig. 138, 1, 12, 14) and flat round plates, reputedly used for
baking cakes, which, however, recur in a First Northern context
(Fig. 91). A few contemporary sites in Wurttemberg have yielded vases
of more or less Michelsberg shapes but decorated with fine incised
patterns reminiscent of Chassey (p. 303). These represent the "Schus-
senried” style, but do not suffice to define a distinct culture.5 For
leather-dressing, bunched antler combs were employed at Spiennes as
in Southern England.
The dead were normally buried, contracted or extended, within the
1 Ibid., 261. 2 Paret, op. cit., 20.
3 Ibid., 66.
4 Loe, La Belgique ancienne, I, 190 ff.; and Marien, Oud-Belgie, 59-79.
5 Kimmig, JSGU., XL (1950), 150, regards it as a Michelsberg-Rossen hybrid.
293
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
confines of the settlements, but small cemeteries comprising up to seven
graves have been recorded. On the other hand, at Ottenbourg and
Boitsfort in Belgium1 cremations have been reported under long mounds,
but the latter may be the ramparts of fortified villages rather than
barrows. The skulls examined proved to be dolichocranial to mesati-
cranial, none brachycranial.
In Switzerland, Michelsberg2 is partly parallel to Cortaillod, and both
1 Loe, La Belgique ancienne, 235, 241; Marien, Oud-Belgie, 55-83; L’Anihr., LVII, 4x0.
2 von Gonzenbach, 35, 76; Vogt, CISPP. (Zurich); Acta Arch., XXIV, 185.
294
WESTERN CULTURE IN THE ALPINE ZONE
overlap locally with Rossen. But farther east on the Goldberg in
Wurttemberg1 the Michelsberg settlement succeeded the fortified
Rossen village. Thus in the Danubian sequence Michelsberg could not
be placed before the final phase of period II. Its persistence well into
period III can be deduced from polygonal battle-axes and even copper
celts from Michelsberg settlements.2 Indeed, Baden influence has been
recognized in the pottery from some eastern sites.3
The main concentration of Michelsberg settlements lies on the
Neckar and the Middle Rhine.4 There are outposts on the Saale, in
Bohemia, and near Salzburg. Settlements in Belgium and in the Aar
valley likewise look peripheral. This distribution might well prompt
doubts as to the Western origin traditionally attributed to our culture.
Indeed, Vogt has argued that the Michelsberg culture is just a south-
western extension of the First Northern culture of (Northern) Early
Neolithic times (p. 191). The Michelsberg rural economy is in fact
strikingly like that of the A group of First Northern as described by
Troels-Smith, and the ceramic agreements are even closer than Vogt
imagined. All might perhaps be explained more simply by positing an
acculturation of Forest hunter-fishers in Western Germany by im-
migrant Danubian peasants, parallel to that assumed farther east to
account for the First Northern itself. But if the latter originated
farther south-east, Vogt's account would seem the most probable, at
least until a primary Western Neolithic immigration be better
documented.
The Middle Neolithic Horgen Culture
On Lake Neuchatel, after a flood which overwhelmed the Early
Neolithic stations, many sites were reoccupied and new ones founded
by people of a quite different culture5—the Horgen culture. It is re-
cognizable too above a Michelsberg settlement at Greifensee, on many
lakes and probably also in land stations.6 Economically the Middle
Neolithic witnesses a cultural regression. On Lake Neuchatel agri-
cultural equipment is poorer (no more "plough-shares"); hunting con-
tributes more to the meat supply than stock-breeding, the percentage
of bones of game as against those of domestic beasts rising from 30 to
45 per cent; local flint replaces the imported material. But triangular
perforated axes now reach the Rhone valley, copper double-axes were
1 Germania, XX (1936), 230.
2 E.g. JSGU. (1944). 32.
3 Germania, XXXIII (1955), 166-9.
4 JSGU., XL, 149.
5 Childe, Danube, 171-3; Vouga, AsA., XXXI (1929). 167-70; Vogt, ib., XL, 1938, 1-14.
6 Germania, XVIII, 92-4; AsA., XL, 2-4.
295
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
copied in stone and unbored Western celts were mounted as axes in
perforated or heeled antler sleeves and as adzes in socketed ones
(Fig. 139, B). Continued inter-communal specialization is illustrated by
an axe-factory at Mumpf, Aargau. The pottery is coarse, badly baked,
and ornamented only with raised cordons (what used to be regarded as
Fig. 139. Types of antler sleeves for axes: A-B, Lower; C, first in Middle;
D, first in Upper Neolithic; Lake Neuchatel (£).
early because crude), but the vases have flat and even splayed bases
(cf. Fig. 146). Spindle-whorls of stone, however, came into use.
Even architecture declines; while some Horgen houses from the Lake
of Constance are long rectangles, as at Aichbuhl, the occupants of other
sites, like Dullenried, were content with small rectangular houses with
a peaked roof, more suited to pastoral nomads than sedentary
cultivators.1
Such a reversion to hunting and pastoralism was formerly attributed
to adversities overtaking the West Alpine farmers. Really it reflects the
advent of fresh settlers with stronger mesolithic traditions. Judged by
its pottery, its perforated antler sleeves, its arc pendants, and other
artifacts, the Horgen culture is only an aspect of that which we shall
meet (p. 3x2) in the collective tombs of the Seine-Oise-Marne basins.2
Moreover, even gallery graves of the Paris type were built near Lake
Neuchatel and on the Upper Rhine, while five megalithic cists are
known in the area.
The Altheim culture of the Upper Danube basin may be regarded as
an eastern extension of the Horgen culture. On the Goldberg3 in
Wiirttemberg the Altheim village, consisting of one-roomed huts like
1 Germania, XXI, 155-8; Buttler, Donauldndische, 76. 2 AsA., XL, 2-14.
3 Germania, XXI (1937), I49> cf. von Gonzenbach, Cortaillodhultur, 76.
296
WESTERN CULTURE IN THE ALPINE Z
-
those of Dullenried grouped in clusters of four or five, was super-
imposed on the ruins of the Michelsberg settlement and thus occupies
the same stratigraphical position as Horgen layers in the Swiss sites. It
too belongs to period Ilia, but the Altheim culture is so closely linked
with the East Alpine that it can best be considered on pages 299 ff.
below.
Upper Neolithic and Chalcolithic Periods
Though separated by a “flood layer” from the Middle, the Upper
Neolithic strata on Lake Neuchatel1 exhibit essentially the continued
evolution of the Horgen culture; there are new types of antler sleeve
(Fig. 139, D) and tanged-and-barbed or hollow-based arrow-heads. But
battle-axes indicate that warlike tribes were already reaching the
western lakes. On Lake Zurich2 typical corded ware from the im-
mediate successor of a Horgen village attests already the sway of
Battle-axe warriors.
In the Chalcolithic phase on Lake Neuchatel3 their sway was extended
westwards; for cord-ornamented sherds and fine battle-axes are found
in the Chalcolithic villages. The barrows of the invaders covering
cremation burials were raised in the interior. But in the western lake-
villages the native tradition is presumably illustrated by coarse wares
decorated with finger-printed cordons. This decoration at the same time
recalls that of some pottery in North Spain, South
France, and Liguria. On the Lake of Geneva south-
western connections are more explicitly attested by
polypod bowls,4 like the Pyrenaean vase of Fig. 144.
A surplus, perhaps exacted by Battle-axe chieftains,
was now available to purchase foreign material; rare
objects of metal including flat axes and riveted
daggers, Grand Pressigny flint from Central France,
and, on the Lake of Geneva, winged beads (like Fig.
143, j, n) from the Midi5 occur in the lake-dwellings.
But not till the Late Bronze Age did bronze-smiths,
supplied with raw materials by regular commerce,
establish themselves in the lacustrine villages. Stray UnStidan'pSs^i).
axes and triangular and rhomboid daggers, appro-
priate to periods IV and even V, together with bone copies of Unetician
pins (Fig. 140), have indeed been collected from many “neolithic” (in
1 Antiquity, II, 398; AsA., XXXI, 171. 2 Germania, XVIII, 94.
3 Antiquity, II, 401; VIII, 38; Childe, Danube, 175-6.
4 Altschles., V (1934), I02-
5 Altschles., V., pi. XVIII, 5.
297
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Vouga’s sense Chalcolithic) lake-dwellings.1 But the economy remained
formally neolithic.
The West Alpine Bronze Age
But to prosperous villages on dry land must belong cemeteries of richly
furnished flat graves in the Rhone and Aar valleys.1 2 In them the
deceased, buried contracted, were equipped with flanged axes, triangular
or ogival daggers, ingot torques, and ring-head, trilobate, trefoil,
racket, bulb-headed, or even knot-headed and Bohemian eyelet pins.
All types can be derived from Central European models and disclose the
extension westward of the Danubian traditions of metallurgy. Indeed,
two currents from that quarter can be distinguished3: the one charac-
terized by classical Unetician pins, ingot torques, and axes brought
Bohemian traditions via the Upper Danube and the Aar to the Rhone
valley; the other, distingushed by a preference for ornaments of sheet
metal (Vogt’s “Blechstil”), brought the traditions of Kisapostag and
Straubing through Upper Austria and Bavaria to the Upper Rhine and
to Vallais.
Copper was won from small local lodes to exploit which metal-
lurgists penetrated far into the high Alps. They based their operations
on tiny fortified villages like Mutter-Fellers,4 Crestaulta,5 and Borscht
in Liechtenstein.6 The villagers were primarily farmers who cultivated
wheat and barley and bred cattle, sheep, cows, pigs, and goats, and
perhaps horses,7 and who must have devised a rural economy almost as
well adapted to the Alpine environment as that practised there to-day;
for the villages seem to have been permanently occupied. They included
also metallurgists who smelted the local ores and developed from
Danubian models local types—spatulate axes, bronze hilted daggers of
Rhone type, a variety of handsome engraved ornaments. Such were
exported to Upper Italy and France. In return, amber and glass beads
reached Crestaulta, while a quoit-shaped fayence pendant was acquired
by a resident in the contemporary village of Bleich-Arbon in North-
1 AsAg., IV, 2 if., Viollier in Opuscula archcsologica O. Montelio dicata, 126 ff.;
MAGZ., XXIX, 200.
2 Kraft, AsA., XXIX (1927), 5 ff.
3 Vogt in Tschumi Festschrift (Frauenfeld, 1948), 54-68.
4 ZfsAK., VI (1944), 65 ff.
5 Burkart, Crestaulta (Monographien zur Ur- und Friihgeschichte, V), Basel, 1946;
JSGU. (1947), 42.
6 The Early Bronze Age village succeeded Horgen and Michelsberg settlements, all
stratified; D. Beck in Vols. 47 and 48 of Jahrbuch des historischen Vereins fur das
Fiirstentum Liechtenstein.
7 The bones of 22 bovids, 22 sheep, 22 pigs, 10 goats, and 71 horses were recognized
at Crestaulta.
298
WESTERN CULTURE IN THE ALPINE ZONE
Eastern Switzerland. Judged by the types produced, this brilliant Swiss
bronze industry flourished mainly in the latter part of period IV and in
period V. But despite their enterprise and originality, the Swiss smiths
seem to have remained content with supplying a local market. Cut off
from the great trade-routes to the Mediterranean, the West Alpine
Early Bronze Age culture did not progress so far towards urbanization
as did the North Italian or Hungarian.
The Eastern Alps
Altheim1 near Landshut, Bavaria, Mondsee2 in Upper Austria, Vucedol3
on the lower Drave in Slavonia, and Ljubljansko Blat (Laibach Moor)4
in Slovenia are patent stations for a series of related cultures extending
along the eastern slopes of the Alps from Goldberg in Wiirttemberg to
Debelo brdo on the Bosna near Serajevo. They are lake-dwellings or
fortified hilltop camps; at Altheim three concentric rings of ditches and
palisades enclosed an area 40 m. in diameter. Their occupants lived
by cultivating cereals which they reaped with crescentic sickles made
from a single flint flake and, on the Austrian lakes, also apples and
beans, by breeding cattle, sheep, pigs, and horses, by hunting and by
fishing—in Upper Austria using double-pronged fish-spears of bone.
Stone was still used for axes which might be mounted with antler
sleeves and sometimes notched at the butt5 and for weapons—knobbed
polygonal battle-axes, spheroid mace-heads, daggers, hollow-based
arrow-heads, and sling bullets.
But copper was generally used, too, both for flat axes and rhomboid
daggers, like Fig. 121, c, and for ornaments. On the Austrian lakes and
Ljubljansko Blat and at Vucedol it was also worked locally; for moulds
have been found in the settlements (one from Ljubljansko Blat would
yield an axe like Fig. 64, 3) as well as grooved hammer-stones. Indeed,
the Austrian lake-villagers, living at the head of navigation on the
Traun,6 were supplementing the products of farming by smelting copper
ores and shipping their winnings down the Danube's tributaries. So,
too, Ljubljansko Blat lies at the head of navigation on the Save and
may have been the precursor of the Roman station of Nauportus for
trade from the Middle Danube basin to the Adriatic. Intercommunal
1 Bayerische Urgeschichtsfreund, IV (Munich, 1924), 13 ff.; Childe, Danube, 125-8.
3 Franz, “Die Funde aus den prahistorischen Pfahlbauten im Mondsee” (Materialien
zuv Urgeschichte Osterreichs, III), Vienna, 1927; Willvonseder, Oberdsterreich in der
Vorzeit, Vienna, 1933, 2°~8 (Attersee); WPZ., XXVI (1939), 135; Pittioni, Urgeschichte.
3 Childe, Danube, 210-12; Schmidt, Vutedol', Patay, "Korai Bronzkori”, 24-8 (“Zok”
culture).
4 Childe, Danube, loc. cit.
5 MAGW., LXI, 75-80. ® Franz, “Mondsee”, 11-12.
299
DAWK OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
specialization is further illustrated by “axe-factories” on the Enns1
and elsewhere.
Everywhere, many of the vases are coarse and decorated only with
cordons though they have flat bases and include handled cups and jugs.
But on the Attersee and Mondsee and in land stations in Salzburg,
vases were decorated with concentric circles incised in stab-and-drag
technique and filled with white paste (Fig. 141).
Fig. 141. Mondsee Pottery (i).
In the Vucedol or Slavonian ware2 of the Lower Drave, the Save,
and the Bosna the same magical motives were combined with excised
patterns that imitate the chip-carving of wooden vessels, and dis-
tinctive shapes, proper to the latter, were reproduced in pottery.
Among these are bowls or lamps on a cruciform foot, like those of the
Starcevo culture, but even closer to the lamps from the Pontic Cata-
comb Graves (pp. 86, 156). But some vases from Ljubljanslco Blat
are provided with tunnel-handles just as in Maltese “Neolithic B”,
in Piano Conte on Lipari, and in Sardinia.
Models of animals were moulded in clay on the Austrian lakes;
1 WPZ., V, 19. 2 Schmidt, Viicedol.
300
WESTERN CULTURE IN THE ALPINE ZONE
Slavonian ideology1 was expressed in the production also of figures of
human beings fully dressed, of vases in the shape of a bird, and of
models of huts, tables, and perhaps in “horns of consecration”. At
Vucedol itself the dead were buried in loss-cut “cellars”, formally like
the pit-caves of the Mediterranean and the Pontic “catacombs”.
On the Drave, Save, and Bosna, Vucedol ware, being exclusively
associated with the assemblage just summarized, may serve to define
a distinct Slavonian culture. But vases, decorated in the same style
and including cross-footed lamps, have been unearthed at many
points—usually fortified hilltop settlements—in Hungary,2 Austria,3
Slovakia, Moravia, and Bohemia,4 but always associated with relics
proper to some other culture, generally Baden. Still, in a small
cemetery at Caka in Slovakia,5 Slavonian vases alone furnished the
graves, one serving as a cinerary urn. For here the burial rite was
cremation.
At the Goldberg, the Altheim settlement succeeded an occupation
by Michelsberg folk, and at Vucedol Slavonian pottery was stratified
above Baden wares. Hence the East Alpine neolithic cultures cannot
well begin before period III. On the other hand, though ingot torques
and even metal types of period V have been found in and around the
Austrian lakes, the abundance of well-made polygonal battle-axes
from the lake-villages suggest that their foundation should be put early
in that period. Allied types occur in Slavonian contexts and in the
Rinaldone culture of Italy. The latter should give a partial synchronism
between East Alpine and Italian Chalcolithic.
Now, the symbolic patterns adorning Mondsee pottery are notori-
ously identical with motives popular on Early Cypriote Bronze Age
vases, while the Mondsee daggers are at least East Mediterranean in
form. If, then, Central European metallurgy were initiated by Torque-
bearers from the Levant coasts (p. 134), these patterns may well be
an ideological reflection of the arrival of a few Asiatic prospectors
among a native Baden-Horgen population whose labour they enlisted
in the exploitation of the adjacent copper lades. Analogies to Slavonian
ceramic decoration at Pescale in Upper Italy (p. 246) and to Vucedol
tombs in the Central Italian Rinaldone culture (p. 241) might even, if
less plausibly, be interpreted as indicators of the prospectors’ route,
but even closer analogies in the Pontic Catacomb graves and the cross-
x Schmidt, Vubedol.
2 Patay, “Korai Bronzkori”, 24-8.
2 WPZ., XXVI (1939), 135-47*
4 Novotny, Slov. Arch., Ill (1955), 7-22, lists and maps 15 sites in Bohemia, 3 in
Moravia and 22 in Slovakia.
5 Ibid., 16.
301
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
footed lamps therefrom (p. 156)1 might just as well mark a circuitous
route from the Black Sea coasts.
In any case, if a trading-post were early established on the Mondsee
during period III, it declined in importance during period IV. Trade
southward was diverted to the Brenner route.2 Carinthia, Slovenia, and
Slavonia lay outside the system that distributed the metal types of
period IV to Upper Italy and to the Maros valley. The Slavonian
culture presumably lasted through that period, but as none of the
constitutive metal types reached the province, it still looks neolithic.
Even in the Eastern Alps it is not till period VI that the rich graves
of the Hotting umfield culture attest a local prosperity based on
mining for copper and salt and a rural economy adapted to take full
advantage of Alpine conditions. No counterpart of the West Alpine
Early Bronze Age, described in the last section, is discernible in the
Eastern Alps nor in the North-West Balkans.
1 As far as the shape is concerned, both groups could be derived independently from
the Starfievo types of period I, but the decoration of the Slavonian and the Catacomb
lamps is also very similar.
2 The porterage (from the Adige to the Inn) is much shorter on the Brenner route
than on that across the Julian Alps which replaced it when the Romans had built a road
to Nauportus.
303
CHAPTER XVII
-
MEGALITH BUILDERS IN ATLANTIC EUROPE
The corridors of the Garonne and the Rhone valleys offer passage from
the Mediterranean to the Atlantic West, traversed in historical times
by the trade-route that carried Cornish tin to the Greek colonies round
the Gulf of Lions. Along it perhaps had spread a millennium or so
earlier the megalithic religion in the wake of prehistoric trade from
colonies on the same shores. But still earlier the Western farmers whose
arrival and spread to the north-east were postulated in Chapter XVI
should have expanded also north-westward to Central France, Nor-
mandy, and Brittany. It is convenient to consider the results attribut-
able to such an expansion before describing the impact of megalithic
ideas on South France.
Chassey and Fort Harrouard
The famous but badly excavated station of the Camp de Chassey
(Saone-et-Loire)1 certainly ought to mark a stage in the assumed
expansion of Western neolithic culture. It is a fortified hilltop, and
from it have been gathered many objects distinctive of the West Swiss
Lower Neolithic Cortaillod culture—plain leathery pots, tapering
antler sleeves for axes, segmented tine pendants. But collections from
the site include also types that are not older than Middle or even
Upper Neolithic on Lake Neuchatel, such as sleeves like Fig. 139, B,
perforated stone axes, and tanged arrow-heads. If these denote a
second phase of occupation, there are no stratigraphical observations
to decide to which the decorated pottery, often called simply Chassey
ware,2 belongs. This ware bears hatched rectilinear patterns scratched
on the surface after firing or on the hard-dried clay just before (Fig.
142, 2).3 The “vase-support" is a distinctive shape.4 Such decoration is
missing from Cortaillod sites in Switzerland, but finds analogies in
Schussenried pottery farther east (p. 293). In Liguria, scratched
decoration was Middle Neolithic.
1 Ddchelette, Manuel, 1, 559; Bailloud and Mieg, 97 fi.; Piggott, L’Anthr., LVII
(1953), 410-32.
2 Many authors thus describe all plain Western pottery from France; Arnal and
Benazet distinguish therefrom "Chasseen decord" which they consider earlier than the
plain ware; BSPF., XLVIII (1951), 552-5.
3 BSPF., XLVIII, 555. 4 BSPF., XXVII (1930). 268-76.
303
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
After crossing the Massif Central the neolithic colonists would reach
the downlands of Northern France, an area rich in flint1 and already
inhabited by mesolithic hunter-fishers, probably of the Forest culture.
In the oldest recognizable neolithic settlements the farmers appear
to have adopted much of the food-gatherers’ equipment'—core and
flake axes, transverse arrow-heads, and other items—giving the local
cultures a hybrid, “secondary neolithic” aspect. Their neolithic ele-
Fig. 142. Vase-supports in Chassey style: i, Le Moustoir, Carnac; 2, Motte
de la Garde, Charente.
ments might have been contributed by Rossen farmers, spreading
through the Belfort Gap as far as Yonne2 or Danubians advancing
from the Meuse to the Somme and the Marne as well as by Westerners.
The best picture available of the ambiguous result is provided by Fort
Harrouard3 (Eure-et-Loire), a promontory camp about 17 acres (7 hr.)
in extent, where Father Philippe could distinguish two neolithic strata.
The villagers lived by cultivating indeterminate grains and breeding
mainly horned cattle; they kept also some pigs and goats and a very
few sheep too, but relied very little on hunting or fishing.4 They lived
1 This is the truth underlying Bosch-Gimpera’s thesis of the existence in North
France of a "culture de silex"—just another way of saying that in this area rich in
flint but poor in fine-grained rocks, flint was the normal material even for axes, cf.
Rev. Anthr., XXXVI (1926), 320.
2 At Nermont, Danubian pottery seems to precede Western, Bailloud and Mieg, 50.
3 Philippe, "Cinq ann6es de fouiUes au Fort Harrouard” (Socidte normande d’dtudes
pr&iistoriques, XXV bis), Rouen, 1927.
4 The actual proportions are: cattle 68 per cent, swine 18 per cent, sheep 10 per cent,
goats 1-5 per cent, game 2-5 per cent; L'Anthr., XLVII (1937), 292.
2
304
MEGALITH BUILDERS IN ATLANTIC EUROPE
in irregular oval huts partly excavated in the ground1 and dressed in
woven fabrics, using whorls for spinning and clay loom-weights in
weaving. The carpenter used polished axes of imported stone occasion-
ally, but relied mainly on the “mesolithic” flint tranchets and “picks”,
together with rare antler axes.2 Besides transverse arrow-heads the
bowman sometimes used triangular ones. Before the end of the period
Grand Pressigny flint was imported, as were amber beads and arc-
shaped pendants of schist.3
The pots, baked in the fort in tiny kilns, are typically Western, but
include, besides simple leather forms, baking plates as in the Michels-
berg complex, vessels with pan-pipe lugs perforated vertically and
horizontal tubes expanding at the ends like the trumpet lugs of
Troy I, and vase-supports and other vessels decorated in the Chassey
style.
Though there are a megalithic tomb and some small long barrows in
sight of the camp, villagers were buried extended, or in one case con-
tracted, within the enclosure.4 Female figurines were modelled in clay,
a quite exceptional cult practice within the Western cycle.
Judging by the pottery, other sites in North France, notably the
celebrated fortified station at Le Campigny (Seine Inf6rieure) (once
made the patent station for a mesolithic culture) and the Camp de
Catenoy (Oise)5 were occupied at the same time as Fort Harrouard I.
At that station the second neolithic stratum illustrates a development
of the older culture. While cattle-breeding predominates, a large breed
of Bos brachyceros now co-existed with the small cattle of the older
herds. Goats had died out, but game bones now amount to as much
as 8 per cent of the total. And oysters and other shell-fish were imported
from the coast. Finished implements, such as daggers and lance-heads
of Grand Pressigny flint, were also obtained by barter. But the old
types of tools, including the “mesolithic” core and flake-axes, were still
retained. The pottery shows a development of the Chassey style with
much coarser incisions combined with rusticated wares.
Since the late Chassey style inspires the decoration of “Incense
Cups” at the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age in Southern England,
it must follow that Fort Harrouard II falls at least into the “Beaker”
period of the West; it may indeed outlast it, since, as on the Swiss
lakes, the record of settlement is continued only by the Late Bronze
Age occupation of Fort Harrouard III.6 For all we can tell, the pastoral
1 L’Anthr., XLVI, 270-1. 2 L'Anthr., XLVI, 559.
3 L'Anthr., XLVI, 604. 4 L'Anthr., XLVI, 541 f.
6 L’Anthr., XII (1901), 359 and 354; LVII, 441-2.
6 But besides Late Bronze Age pins the crutch-head type occurs, as in the Copper
Age lake-dwellings, Philippe, “Cinq Anndes,” pis. XI, 11, and XVIII, 19.
u 305
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
communities of Northern France preserved their neolithic economy
unaffected by the cultural impulses that crossed South-Western France.
So even Fort Harrouard I may begin relatively late; Grand Pressigny
flint in Switzerland is Middle Neolithic, so are arc-pendants in both
the Swiss and the Ligurian sequences. In other words, Fort Harrouard I
is not demonstrably pre-megalithic or anterior to the earlier SOM
tombs. Even the ceramic evidence for a pre-megalithic Western colon-
ization is no more explicit at Fort Harrouard than at Michelsberg. An
acculturation of Forest hunters by Danubians in North France,
parallel to that suggested as a possible explanation of Michelsberg,
cannot be ruled out. Indeed, if Michelsberg represent a south-western
extension of First Northern, Fort Harrouard I could be claimed as an
outpost still farther west (p. 291 ff.). Still, in 1956 the best authori-
ties consider the neolithic elements of North French culture Western.
Brittany, too, may have been reached in pre-megalithic times by
Western neolithic herdsmen-cultivators who would have joined forces
with survivors of the Teviec strand-loopers. The stone-walled “camps”
of Croh Colle and Lizo have indeed yielded pottery of the channelled
and later Chassey styles common in the peninsula’s megalithic tombs.
But leathery vases, generally plain, rarely decorated with scratched
patterns and sometimes provided with trumpet lugs, found in small
cist graves,1 conform to the standard Western neolithic types. The
cists recall the mesolithic sepulchres of Teviec, but contain cremated
human bones. Some groups of cists, e.g. at Manio, were covered by
elongated mounds of earth and stones which in plan offer the closest
West European analogy to the British long barrow.2
The Megalithic Culture of South France
If the megalithic religion were implanted round the Gulf of Lions by
colonists from the East Mediterranean, a cemetery of monumental
collective tombs on an island in the Rhone delta near Arles might well
belong to a bridgehead station comparable to Los Millares. The tombs,
cut in the rock but roofed with lintels and covered by round barrows,
are in plan long galleries3 and might have provided the models for the
built gallery graves which constitute the majority of the megalithic
tombs in South-West France and, south of the Pyrenees, in Catalonia
and the Basque Provinces.4 Segmented cists occur in Catalonia (Puig
1 L'Anthr., XLIV (1934), 486-9.
2 Antiquity, XI (1937), 441-52.
3 Cazalis de Fondouce, Les Allies couvertes de la Provence (1878), describes the
“grottes" de Bouxxias, Castellet, and des F<£es; cf. Hemp., Arch., LXXVI, 150.
4 Pericot, Sepulcros megaliticos (1950), gives a comprehensive survey of tombs and
grave goods from South France as well as from Spain.
306
MEGALITH BUILDERS IN ATLANTIC EUROPE
Rodo), in the Basque Provinces and at La Halliade1 near Tarbes; that
at La Halliade was 14-2 m. long, divided by septal slabs into seven
compartments with a lateral compartment added at one end and
covered with a cairn of stones. Others like St Eugenie near Carcassonne
are subdivided by internal portals.2
On the other hand, passage graves in the area might be inspired from
Spain. A group of corbelled passage graves in Provence3 and Gard might
be connected directly with Los Millares. A series of rectangular ortho-
static chambers entered by dry-stone walled passages is strung out
significantly along a line from the coast to the copper and lead deposits
near Durfort,4 Gard. Architecturally these resemble Puglisi’s Tuscan
“dolmens” (p. 240), and their builders seem to have been pastoralists.
Finally, many caves in the area were still used as collective ossuaries in
megalithic, as in Early Neolithic, times. If burial in megalithic tombs
were the prerogative of aristocratic clans, commoners may have been
interred in caves.
The furniture of these various sepulchres is the principal source for
any picture of the cultures of North Spain and South France during a
long period, traditionally termed Chalcolithic, but certainly capable of
subdivision. Two phases stand out clearly: during the first (Pericot's
Bronze I) Bell-beakers were generally current; they had gone out of
fashion by the second (Pericot's Bronze II and III), which might last
down to the advent of Urnfield invaders with an equipment of
Danubian VI types. Near Narbonne, Helena5 claimed to distinguish a
pre-Beaker megalithic phase (Chalcolithic I), two phases with Beakers
(II and III), and two later. Other authorities,6 however, do not accept
his separation of Chalcolithic I from II. It is therefore a disputed issue
whether the transformation of the neolithic cultures, described in the
last chapter, into a “Chalcolithic” one were due to the simultaneous
arrival of megalith-builders and Beaker-folk or whether the latter
arrived only after the former and in either alternative precisely what is
to be attributed to the newcomers and what to the earlier neolithic and
mesolithic groups.
In any case the subsistence economy of the Chalcolithic as thus dis-
closed appears more pastoral and less sedentary than the previous
1 Mat. (1881), 522.
2 BSPF., XXVII (1930). 536-9; the tomb contained “300” skeletons, at least 7
beakers, 12 palettes, gold beads, tanged arrow-heads.
3 Goby ‘‘Les Dolmens de Provence”, Rodania: Congres de Cannes-Grasse (1929).
4 Amal, Ampurias, XI (1949), 29-44.
6 Les Origines de Narbonne (1937)- To Bernabo Brea (A.C. II, 232) only some sherds
from the Arles tombs might be (Upper) Neolithic; the pottery from all other tombs
should be Chalcolithic—in the Ligurian sequence.
6 Bailloud and Mieg (1955), 163-79; Pericot, Sepulcros megal.-, Piggott, L’Anthr.,
LVIII (1954), 7-22.
307
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
“Western Neolithic”. Apart from inhabited caves, only two settlements
are known—Fontbouisse in Gard1—a disorderly cluster of round and
rectangular huts on stone foundations'—and La Couronne—a fortified
site near the Rhone delta that might be comparable to Los Millares or
Vila Nova de San Pedro.
But food-production was now certainly combined with some secondary
industry and trade. Local ores of copper, lead, and perhaps even tin2
were probably worked. They do not seem to have formed the basis for a
Fig. 143. Late Chalcolithic types from Cevennian cists: a-e, Liquisse;
f-i, Grotte d’en Quisse, Gard; j-o, "dolmens” of Aveyron (f).
metal industry capable of satisfying local demand such as arose in the
Alpine valleys (p. 298), and only elementary techniques of casting are
illustrated by local finds. West European daggers3 were no doubt manu-
factured for the Beaker-folk, and several notched daggers with a mid-
rib on one face only (cast in an open-hearth mould) were found in a
1 Louis, Peyrolle, Arnat, Gallia, V (1947), 235-57.
2 L'Anihr., XXII (1911), 413.
3 Listed by Sandars, Inst. Arch., AR., VI (1950), 44 ff.
308
MEGALITH BUILDERS IN ATLANTIC EUROPE
curious crematorium near Freyssinel in Lozere.1 Otherwise metal was
used mainly for ornaments. Metal daggers were replaced by bifacially
flaked flint copies—some polished on one face to enhance the similarity,2
Only in the post-Beaker phase, Helena’s Chalcolithic IV, do a few
Bronze Age types appear, and these—daggers, trefoil,3 bulb-head,4 and
racket pins5—are imports from Central Europe or Switzerland, not East
Mediterranean (Fig. 143).
Gold was obtained in Beaker times and used to cover wrist-guards
(like Fig. 113, 4), and for other purposes. Callais was imported at the
same time, but earlier in Catalonia. Amber arrived still later, in Chalco-
lithic III according to Helena, only in Bronze II on Pericot’s6 division.
The sole recognizable Mediterranean import found in any context is a
segmented fayence bead from the sepulchral Grotte du Ruisseau,
Aude.7 To this may be added a Middle Cycladic jug8 (Fig. 41, 3) dredged
up from Marseilles harbour and two contemporary Cypriote daggers
found stray in Provence.9 All three could, with the bead from Almeria,
be accounted for by coastwise traffic with the West as well as by a trans-
peninsular tin-trade with Cornwall. Yet in the first millennium the
Greek and Sicilian manufactures that should mark archseologically that
historic route are sparse enough.10 If the Cycladic jug be accepted as a
counterpart of the Classical vases, it means that the route was open
before 1600 b.c.
Most Chalcolithic pottery is based on older native traditions, but
bell-beakers are of course intrusive; those of Pan-European type are
presumably the oldest, but several local variants grew up.11 With the
latter are associated12 polypod bowls with grooved shoulders (Fig. 144),
inspired by wooden models, but at least indirectly related to British
food-vessels (p. 337) on the one hand, to the Central European and
Sardinian associates of beakers (pp. 224, 258) on the other. Well-made
bell-beakers, decorated by wrapping a cord spirally round the vase13
1 Morel, “Sepultures tumulaires de la Region de Freyssinel”, Bui. Soc. des Lettres,
Sci., Art. du Lozere (1936), 17-23.
2 L'Anthr., LVIII, 7 and 27.
3 Rev. £t. Anc., XIII, 435.
4 Helena, Origines, fig. 64.
B Mat. (1869), 328.
6 Sepulcros megal., 122, 131.
7 Helena, Les Grottes sdpulchrales de Monges (Toulouse, 1925), pi. V, 49; wrongly
termed “stone”; a segmented bone bead from the “dolmen” of Cabut, Gironde, may be
a copy, Bailloud and Mieg, 190.
8 Cuadernos, III, 37-42; Prehistoire, II (1933), 37.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.; cf. Hawkes, Ampurias, XIV, 90 ff.
Bailloud and Mieg, 190; BSPF., XLIX (1952), 158; (1953), 60.
12 At La Halliade and other sites in Acquitaine, Fabre, Les civilisations protohistoriques
de VAcquitaine (Paris, 1952); a similar bowl was found in a Hallstatt grave in C6te d’Or.
13 Act. v Mem., XXI (1946), 196; L’Anthr., LVIII, 6.
309
-
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
may reflect a reaction from the corded ware of Central Europe; a few
stone battle-axes1 might be connected therewith. Vases decorated with
incised and punctured patterns should be related to those of Los
Millares and the later Chassey style. But channelled ware, adorned with
concentric circles, might be of Early Minoan ancestry (p. 32) and
parallel to the Portuguese. It would on Helena's view be associated with
the first megaliths in Chalcolithic I, but at Fontbouisse it is said to be
later than Beakers and so Bronze II.1 2
In this latter period emerged flat-bottomed vases, sometimes
decorated with applied ribs and presumably related to Horgen ware.
To much the same phase might be attributed carinated cups with axe-
handles, ancestral to, or derived from, those of the South Italian
dolmens3 (Fig. 116, 3). A few specimens, decorated with excised
patterns identical with those on Apennine ware,4 may be actual imports
from Italy.
If they created no novel industrial types, the Pyrensean and Provencal
societies did develop distinctive toilet articles and ornaments that were
exported to or copied by other groups. For fastening their garments
Beaker-folk, as elsewhere, used V-perforated buttons, but local
variants5 were devised and exported. Thus an elongated prismatic type
was preferred round the Eastern Pyrenees, particularly in Bronze II,
while Aude may have been the cradle of tortoise beads which were
1 Pericot, Sepulcras, 190.
8 L’Anthr., XLVIII, 8-10; BSPF., XLVIII, 557.
3 Riv. St. Lig., XV (1949), 42-4; Peric'"1' c'p: 125-6, and map 84.
4 Maluquer de Motes, ‘‘Yacimientos ; V ?1 Monografias de la Estacion de
Estudios Pyrenaicos, I (Zaragoza, 1948), 22 and n. x.
3 BSPF., LI (1954), 255-66.
310
MEGALITH BUILDERS IN ATLANTIC EUROPE
diffused thence to Sardinia and Portugal. Winged beads of East
Mediterranean ancestry found a secondary centre of manufacture in
South France, while some bone tubes from the cave of Treille, Aude,1
and the dolmen of Cabut, Gironde, are vaguely like the Early JEgean
type of Fig. 27, 1.
The main creative impulses of Pyrenaeic-Proven$al societies were
diverted to ideological ends. The overwhelming importance attached to
the funerary cult is patently displayed in the innumerable megalithic
tombs and cave ossuaries. But no rigid orthodoxy prevailed. Some
clans adopted cremation at an uncertain date; a sort of collective
cremation is reported from some caves,2 while under a cairn near
Freyssinel3 (Lozere) fifty corpses had been burned on the spot.
South France was certainly one, and perhaps the primary, centre of
the practice of ritual trepanation, though the superstition was potent
also round the Tagus estuary4 and in the SOM culture. Certainly an
astonishingly large number of the skulls from the Cevennian megaliths
and from the caves5 had been trephined, some while their owners were
still alive! As the cranian amulets produced by this operation were
found in Cortaillod sites in Switzerland, the practice presumably goes
back to premegalithic times in South France, though it persisted like
so much else. In Aveyron, Gard, Herault, and Tarn monoliths were
carved with representations of a female divinity armed with an axe6;
one such statue-menhir was used as a lintel in a corbelled megalithic
tomb at Collorgues, Gard (Fig. 145a).7 Clearly this is no “portrait statue”
but represents the same deity as the citizens of Troy I carved also on a
monolithic stele. We shall meet her again in the Marne valley. Pre-
sumably these statue-menhirs mark her route northward, unless her
journey should be reversed; with a change of sex the deity was carried
eastward to Upper Italy (p. 250), presumably by immigrants from
South France. The latter, though recognizable in pottery too, are not
likely to have made contributions, such as ploughs and halberds, to
the material culture of the Apennine peninsula. Sculpture and surgery
in South France developed outside the frame of urban life and with-
out relation to practical ends, as we understand them, in a society
whose material culture remained fossilized for perhaps a thousand
years.
1 Ampurias, XI (1949), 29. 2 Helena, Origines, 80. 3 Seep. 309, n. 1.
4 MacWhite (Cuadernos, I (1946), 61-9) enumerates 15 trepanned skulls from this
region.
5 In Loz&re 52 cases come from “dolmens”, 105 from caves, D^chelette, Manuel, I,
474 f.; cf. AsAg., XI (1945), 56; E. Guiard, La trepanation cranienne chez les neolithiques
et chez les primitifs modernes (Paris), 1930.
6 Rev. Anthr., XLI (1931), 300 ff.
7 Afas., 1890, 629; Rev. Anthr., XLI, 362; the usual plans are wrong.
311
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
The Seine-Oise-Marne (SOM) Culture
The adoption of themegalithic faith by a Forest population on the chalk
downs of Champagne and round the Paris basin produced a remarkable
culture, known almost exclusively from collective tombs and termed
the Seine-Oise-Marne culture (abbreviated SOM).1 The burial-places
may be natural caves,2 artificial caves hewn in the chalk,3 or “Paris
cists", a specialized type Of gallery grave. In the Marne4 the rock-cut
tombs form regular cemeteries; there are some fifty in the valley of
Petit Morin alone. All are rectangular chambers entered by a descending
ramp like the dromos of a Mycenaean tomb. A few are more carefully
a b c
Fig. 145. Statue-menhirs from. Gard and sculptured tomb (b), Petit Morin (Marne).
excavated than the rest and are provided with an antecella on the walls
of which may be carved or sketched in charcoal representations of the
same funerary goddess, bearing an axe,5 as appears on the statue-
menhirs of the Midi (Fig. 145). While the smaller tombs contain forty
or more corpses (including some cremated bones), not more than eight
bodies were deposited in the more elaborate chambers, but the funerary
furniture in them is much richer. They accordingly belong to “chiefs”,
while poorer common-folk were crammed into family ossuaries. The
gallery graves in the valleys of the Aisne, Seine, Oise, and Eure6 (Paris
cists) are generally built of slabs erected in a long trench, a compart-
1 General review Childe and Sandars, L'Anthr., LIV (1950), 1 ff., and Bailloud and
Mieg, 190-9.
2 E.g. Vaucelles, Namur, Loe, La Belgique ancienne, I, 144.
3 In Marne and also Oise, Mem. Soc. academique d’Archeol. du Dep. de VOise, IV
(Beauvais, i860), 465.
4 J. de Baye, L'Archeologie prehistorique (Paris, 1884); cf. also BSPF., VIII (1911),
669; Gallia, I (1943), 20-5.
6 Rev. Antkr., XLI, 371-3.
6 Ddchelette, Manuel, I, 397 ff.; Rev. Arch., XXVII (1928), 1-13; Forde, Am. Anthr.,
XXXII, 63-6; AsA., XL (1938), 1-14.
312
MEGALITH BUILDERS IN ATLANTIC EUROPE
ment at one end, divided from the rest by a porthole slab, serving as the
entrance (cf. Fig. ioo). The funerary goddess1 reappears in the entrance,
generally more conventionalized than on the Marne, so that only her
breasts are recognizable.
The grave goods disclose a warlike population living by stock-breed-
Fig. 146. Horgen pot from Paris cist (Mureaux) (?$?), and channelled vase
from Conguel, Morbihan (?$•).
ing and hunting, but almost certainly also tilling the soil. Its role in
flint-mining is uncertain, but Grand Pressigny flint was obtainable, and
the chieftains of the Marne secured even beads of amber, callals and
rock-crystal and small copper trinkets. Even flanged axes of bronze
have been reported from SOM gallery graves.2 The grave gear consisted,
however, of polished flint axes, normally mounted in perforated antler
Arc-pendant of stone (}).
sleeves, antler axes with square-cut shaft-holes, very numerous trans-
verse arrow-heads together with a very few leaf-shaped ones, daggers of
Grand Pressigny flint and characteristic splay-footed vases of rather
coarse ware (Fig. 146, i).a The ornaments include shells, bracelets, rings,
and arc-pendants (Fig. 147) of stone, a leg amulet of antler,4 axe-
1 Rev. Anthr., XLI, 371-3. 2 Breuil in Afas. (1899), 590.
3 See also BSPF. (1934), 282-5; (1951), 558; L‘Anthr., LVIII, 18-20.
4 Gallia, I (1943). 24.
3*3
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
amulets, and cranian amulets. Nearly a third of the population was
round-headed, less than a quarter really dolichocranial. Quite a large
number of individuals had undergone ritual trepanation as in South
France.
The tomb plans and sculptures and the trepanned skulls suggest that
the megalithic religion had reached the Seine-Marne basins from the
lower Rhone. Paris cists, as slab-lined trenches, reproduce most faith-
fully the plan of the rock-cut tombs near Arles, and the chalk-hewn
tombs of the Marne are the most Mediterranean chamber tombs north
of the Pyrenees and the Alps. The missionaries who introduced the faith
must have travelled fast and kept it fresh. But the SOM culture pre-
serves so many mesolithic traits that the bulk of their converts must
have been descendants of native Forest-folk. The transformation of
these "savages’1 into farmers may be attributed not so much to the
“missionaries” as to Danubian peasants who had established colonial
outposts on the Somme, the Marne, and the Seine,1 or to less well-
documented Westerners (p. 304).
The composite warlike population thus unified by the megalithic
faith soon embarked on a crusade of conquest and colonization, in the
course of which some items of the faith, or at least their durable ex-
pressions, were lost or distorted. Westward the whole complex with its
specialized gallery graves, porthole slabs, and splay-footed vases reached
Brittany,2 Normandy, and Jersey—but not Guernsey—while Beakers
were still current there. Even the funerary goddess, albeit degraded to
a mere pair of breasts, was thus carried to the Atlantic coasts. To the
north-east the culture is classically represented in Belgian caves,3 while
Paris cists were built in Belgium, Westfalia, and Hesse. Finally the
long cists of South Sweden (p. 198) not only reproduce the Paris plan
but also contain splay-footed pots of SOM form. To the south-east
the Horgen culture (p. 295) must be attributed to a similar colonization,
though relatively few tombs were built for its spiritual leaders. Even to
the south the grave goods from Bougon (Deux Sevres) unmistakably
mark the site of a SOM colony, while a couple of “porthole dolmens”
in the Cevennes and the pottery already mentioned from South France
and the Baleares might denote a return of the faith in a barbarized
version towards its assumed starting-point.4
From this expansion chronological limits for the rise of the SOM
1 Bailloud and Mieg, 48.
2 E.g. Tregastel, BSPF., XLIII (1946), 305.
3 Marien, Oud-Belgie, 142-5; 152 ff.
4 But if the megalithic religion were introduced into the Seine-Marne basins from
the Loire, from the coasts of Normandy (Piggott, L’Anthr., LVIII, 20), or from the
Caucasus via Hesse, the Paris cists and the Marne carvings must represent the germs
from which evolved the rock-cut tombs and statue-menhirs of South France!
314
MEGALITH BUILDERS IN ATLANTIC EUROPE
culture can be more precisely deduced. Not only have Beaker sherds
been found in three tombs in the Paris basin/ but also in those of its
colonial outposts in Brittany. Thus in the French sequence the culture
goes back at least to Chalcolithic II or Pericot’s Bronze I. So its arrival
in Switzerland initiates Middle Neolithic there. Collared flasks appro-
priate to Northern Neolithic II occur in the Paris cists of Westfalia
and of Brittany,1 2 while, judging from a couple of tiny Rossen sherds
from their counterparts in Hesse (p. 190), the culture should have
arrived there near the beginning of Danubian III if not in Danubian II.
The SOM culture must then be among the earliest manifestations of
the megalithic religion in temperate Europe. Yet it lasted a long time
with no recognizable progress or change. It reached Scandinavia only
in Northern Neolithic IV—i.e. Danubian IV, the Early Bronze Age.
In its homeland there are no other burials save those in Paris cists and
SOM caves to represent the Early and Middle Bronze Ages in the
funerary record, while types of these periods are inordinately scarce.
The region remained isolated from the great currents of Bronze Age
trade, and its population, absorbed in cult practices, was content to
subsist in a neolithic stage.
The Armorican Megalithic Culture
In megalithic times the Armorican Peninsula with its extension to the
Channel Islands became a goal of pilgrimage so that a bizarre assort-
ment of cultures was superimposed on the primary Western neolithic
described on p. 306. Brittany offers the first land-fall on the northward
voyage from the Iberian Peninsula to Cornish tin-lodes and Irish gold-
fields and sets the limit to terrestrial wanderings in search of isles of the
blest beneath the setting sun. Moreover, its old rocks contain gold,
perhaps also tin and callais.3 The densest and most varied concentration
of collective tombs in Europe is to be found round the Gulf of Morbihan,4
but from this centre the tombs spread coastwise to the mouth of the
Loire and to Jersey (still perhaps joined to the Continent in megalithic
times) and Guernsey. The diverse tomb plans and the heterogeneous
articles constituting the furniture of every sepulchre indicate the
varied traditions that went to make up the Armorican culture and the
complexity of their interweaving.
1 Sievekng, Inst. Arcli. AR., IX (1953), 60-7; L’Anthr., LVIII, 20.
2 BSPF., XLIII, 307.
s Forde, Am. Anthr., XXXII, 85.
4 Types summarized by le Rouzic, L’Anthr., XLIII (1933), 233-48; for Guernsey,
T. D. Kendrick, Archcsology of the Channel Islands, I (1928), for Jersey, J. Hawkes,
Archeeology of the Channel Islands, II (1939).
315
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Corbelled passage graves are concentrated on the coasts and Islands
and are obviously inspired by Iberian, immediately by Portuguese,
models. Their counterparts in the orthostatic architecture, more suited
to the local rocks, are megalithic passage graves, often P-shaped in
plan (Fig. 148), rarely with a lateral cell, as the standard type for
Morbihan, while undifferentiated passage graves, like the South
Spanish, are commoner in the Channel Islands. The gallery grave,1 on
the other hand, exhibits a more inland distribution and does not cross
the sea to Guernsey. Accordingly the idea was brought by land from
the Paris basin by migrant pastoralist families. Divergent variations
on the exotic models were devised locally. Undifferentiated passage
graves with one or two pairs of lateral chambers, arranged like tran-
septs on either side of the principal gallery, may be derived from tholoi
with lateral cells, as at Los Millares, and are common to the peninsula2
and the Islands (La Houge Bie, Jersey,3 and Dehus, Guernsey4).
Passage graves with a bent corridor and gallery graves similarly
"angled” are peculiar to Armorica.
1 Forde, Man, XXIX, So; Am. Anthr., XXXII, 74.
2 L’Anthr., XLIII, 242; Antiquity, XI, 455.
3 Soci£t6 Jersiaise, Bulletin (St. Helier, 1925).
4 V. C. C. Collum, “Re-excavation of Ddhus”, Trans. Soc. Guernesiaise (1933).
0
Fig. 148. Passage grave, Kercado, Morbihan.
316
MEGALITH BUILDERS IN ATLANTIC EUROPE
Most tombs were covered by a cairn or barrow, generally round and
carefully constructed, but sometimes two or even three tombs are
covered by a single mound which may then be oblong. Elaborate
carvings, including representations of hafted axes and human feet, are
a feature of the megaliths of Morbihan.1 And in Brittany the tombs
often contain remains of cremated skeletons. The same heretical rite
is associated with other equally novel manifestations of the megalithic
cult that are peculiar to the extreme west, but common to Brittany
and Britain. Oval or horseshoe settings of megalithic uprights on the
islet of Er Lannic,2 now half submerged, were associated with vase
supports decorated with punctured patterns in late Chassey style. But
at the feet of the orthostats were little stone cists containing cremated
bones almost certainly human; these must be compared to the
cremations in pits within British “henge monuments” (p. 325). So, too,
alignments of huge upright stones, one of which runs across one of the
long barrows described on p. 306, might be Armorican equivalents
of the English cursus which too are associated with long barrows.
Most tombs have been violated in Roman times and further dis-
turbed in the nineteenth century, so that the grave goods do not
contribute as much help as might be expected to unravelling the com-
ponents of the megalithic complex and establishing the sequence of
events. Tombs of most types contain Beaker ware, proving that the
Paris galleries had arrived and the local variants been elaborated
during the Beaker phase. But the number and variety of the beakers
prove that this period was a long one. Z. le Rouzic3 and Jacquetta
Hawkes4 assign to a pre-Beaker phase the corbelled passage graves
of Morbihan and Jersey; they certainly contain no Beaker ware. That
some megaliths are really pre-Beaker is established by the succession
of burials in the passage grave (one wall of which was formed of natural
rock) at Conguel,5 Quiberon. There the later interments only were
accompanied by beakers, the earlier by vases bearing channelled
semicircle patterns as in Portugal and South France (Fig. 146, 2).
This fabric is found in other tombs too, and in the fortified settlement
at Croh Colie.6 It links the Pyrenees or Portugal with the Beacharra
culture in Scotland.
Chassey pottery, chiefly in the form of vase-supports, is represented
in many tombs on the Mainland and in Jersey (Fig. 142). In that
1 Pecquart et le Rouzic, Corpus des signes gravis, Paris, 1927; Prehistoire, VI (i938)*
1-48
2
3
4
s
«
Z. le Rouzic, Les Cromlechs de Er Lannic (Vannes, 1930).
L’Anthr., XLIII, 233-5; XLIV, 490-2, so Breuil, Prehistoire, VI, 47.
CISPP. (Oslo, 1936); Archceol. Channel Islands, II, 90, 248.
BSA. (Paris, 1892), 41.
L’Anthr., XLIV (1934), 496, fig. 9, numbers 8, and 12-16.
317
-
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
island it was found below the Beaker layer in the stratified settlement
at le Pinnacle.1 It was presumably introduced by land from Central
France, and the first connections with Grand Pressigny were probably
established at the same time. Neither Chassey ware nor Grand Pressigny
flint reach Guernsey.
The Beaker-folk seem to have come by sea, like the first megalith-
builders from Portugal; they reached even Guernsey, but on land have
left only one grave between the Garonne and the Loire, and that not
far from the coast.2 Besides the classic rouletted style, cord ornament
is common on Breton beakers, while specifically South French variants
are missing. Wrist-guards3 are represented by a gold strip from Mane
Lud, like the South French ones, and a few doubtful stone specimens
which may really be whetstones. Two West European daggers have
been found in Brittany4 and one on Guernsey.5
From the Paris basin came the SOM gallery grave, the porthole
slab, carvings of a funerary goddess, characteristic splay-footed vases6
and arc-pendants.7 Finally, from the North came an amber bead and
a boat axe.8 But "collared flasks’’9 may be local SOM pots rather than
First Northern vessels.
The culture which blended all these foreign elements preserved a
rigidly neolithic aspect in Morbihan. Axes with pointed butts were
made of fibrolith and greenstone. Large, thin and superbly polished
specimens, obviously ceremonial and perhaps late,10 are surprisingly
common and were exported to Portugal and England. Celts with a
knob at the butt end found stray in Morbihan seem to copy Egyptian
adzes,11 while double-axes of stone12 imitated the Minoan metal form or
the "ingot axes’’ from Vogtland.13 For arrows, transverse and tanged-
and-barbed heads were preferred; leaf-shaped forms are exceptional.14
In addition to the foreign pottery absorbed, carinated bowls adorned
1 CISPP. (London, 1932), 140; Hawkes, Channel Islands, 7, 162.
* In a “small dolmen'1 near Trizay, Charente Inferieure, with, a West European
dagger, tanged-and-barbed arrow-heads and gold ribbon; BSPF., XXXVIII (1941), 45;
cf. L’Anthr., LVIII, 26.
3 L’Anthr,, XLIV, fig. 19, u; Rev. Arch. (1883), pi. XIV.
* Inst. Arch., AR. VI (1950), 49.
6 V. C. C. Collum, “Re-excavation of Delius”, Trans. Soc. Guernesiaise (1933).
* Kendrick, Axe Age, 34.
7 Jersey, Kendrick, Channel Islands, 94.
8 L’Anthr., XLIV, 504, figs. 14, 5 and 15.
9 From an angled passage grave at Lann Blaen (Morb.) and a SOM gallery at Trdgastel
(Cotes du Nord); BSPF., XLIII (1946), 306.
10 Some have expanded blades imitating copper axes, Am. Anthr., XXXII, 87.
11 Petrie, Tools and Weapons, Z., pi. XVII.
12 L’Anthr., XLIV, figs 14, 11 and 16, 1; Ant. /., VII, 17.
13 Copper double-axes with a hole too small to take a shaft occur in Central France,
Switzerland, and Southern Germany, ZfE., XXXVII, 525; Childe, Danube, 177, 193;
BSA., XXXVII, 152-6.
14 L’Anthr., XLIV, 500.
3*8
MEGALITH BUILDERS IN ATLANTIC EUROPE
with pairs of vertical ribs are a distinctively Breton variant on the
West European tradition, replaced in Jersey by similar shapes decor-
ated with horizontal lines and punctuations.
As charms were worn rather simple beads of talc, callais, rock-
crystal, or gold, axe-amulets and bracelets of hammered gold. The
callais and gold may have been obtained locally, but Grand Pressigny
flint was certainly imported. Unless the Portuguese and South French
callais be of Armorican origin, the peninsula’s exports must have been
immaterial goods. Whatever they were, they were employed to obtain
magical rather than practical materials. The whole society was so
obsessed with funerary cult that material advancement was neglected.
The chronological criteria applicable to more materialistic societies
cannot then be used for dating the megalithic culture in Brittany.
Despite its neolithic exterior it may have lasted well into the Bronze
Age elsewhere. In fact, in Guernsey some megalithic tombs do contain
"incense cups" and cinerary urns of types appropriate to the mature
Bronze Age of England. In Morbihan closed megalithic chambers under
gigantic barrows at Tumiac, Mont St Michel and Mane er Hroek are
assigned to the Bronze Age by le Rouzic on typological grounds.1 But
they contained ceremonial axes of greenstone, greenstone bracelets
and beads of callais and rock-crystal that can be matched in more
normal megalithic tombs.
The Armorican Bronze Age
Throughout the Atlantic megalithic province, desire for a good burial
stimulated production of surplus wealth; the erection of gigantic
tombs and the importation of magic substances kept accumulated
wealth in circulation. But it was not used to support professional smiths
nor to purchase ores. In France, graves furnished with bronze tools
and weapons and hoards of bronzes begin in general only during the
Middle Bronze Age when Tumulus-builders from Central Europe spread
along the Massif Central. Only in Armorica is there a group of graves2
richly furnished with weapons of Early Bronze Age type.
The tombs in question are closed chambers of dry masonry, some-
times roofed by corbelling and always surmounted by a cairn. The dead
were buried in them, generally but not always after cremation, on
wooden planks (remains of coffins ?), with arms and ornaments. The
armament consisted typically of one or two flat or hammer-flanged
1 L’Anthr., XLIII, 251-3; Forde, Am. Anthr., XXXII, 76-9, notes that the supports
are sculptured like those of normal collective tombs.
2 L’Anthr., XI, 159; XLIV, 511; LV, 425-43; Bui. Soc. Arch. FinisUre, XXXIV (1907),
125; Ant. J., VII, 18; Les Tresors arcMologiques de VArmorique occidentale.
319
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
axes, several daggers and superb arrow-heads with squared barbs and
tangs. The daggers are either round-heeled and strengthened with a
midrib or triangular with grooves parallel to the edge and sometimes
a rudimentary tang. In eight cases the wooden hilts
(or scabbards) had been adorned with tiny gold nails
forming a pointille pattern. Ornaments include a
ring-head pin1 and some spiral rings of silver, beads
of amber, and one segmented fayence bead.2 Pottery
is represented by biconical urns with two to four
handles joining rim and shoulder (Fig. 149).
Evidently these graves belong to rich and war-
like chiefs. They are concentrated3 in the north
and interior of the peninsula and in general avoid
the principal megalithic centres, where the old family vaults were
presumably still in use. The Bronze Age war-lords can therefore
hardly be descendants of the old megalithic chiefs or Beaker-folk, and
owe nothing of their equipment to these. Their silver probably came
from Almeria or Sardinia. The ring-head pin is a Central European
type. The grooved daggers seem related most closely to those of the
Saale-Warta culture (p. 200). But the chief source of metal and the
dominant inspiration in metal-work must have been in the British
Isles, where for instance gold-studded dagger hilts also occur. Relations
with Britain were indeed so close that for a while Armorica and Wessex
became a continuous cultural province.
Piggott4 explained this continuity by an invasion of Southern
England from Brittany. Cagne and Giot5 would reverse the process
or postulate parallel occupations of both regions by seafarers, coming
like the Vikings from farther North. Actually the last-named view
is the most likely and the Saale-Warta area the ultimate starting-point.
To link the Armorican with the West German Tumulus culture,
Hawkes6 can cite only two isolated "Bronze Age" barrows between
the Rhine and the Atlantic.7 Relations with the Saale-Warta culture,
on the contrary, are clear but direct. While these give a limiting date
1 Bui. Soc. Arch. Fin., XXXIV.
2 From the tholos of Parc Guerin which had been converted into a single grave of
Bronze Age type, L'Anihr., LV (1952), 427.
3 See maps in PPS., IV (1938), 65, and L'Anihr., LV, 428.
4 PPS., IV (1938), 64 ff.
6 L'Anihr., LV (1952), 442-3.
8 Foundations, 312-14.
7 Apart from these barrow graves in Allier and Dordogne (Dechelette, II, 142, 147),
the poor non-megalithic cists in Vienne, Charente, and Loz&re (de Mortillet, Origine du
culte des marts (Paris, 1921), 79 f.) might be “Bronze Age" though only one contained
any metal. East of the Sa6ne, of course, there are Early Bronze Age graves, related to
the Swiss though several contained polished flint or greenstone axes (Dechelette, II,
136 ff.).
Fig. 149.
Breton Bronze Age
vase.
320
MEGALITH BUILDERS IN ATLANTIC EUROPE
for the rise of the Armorican Bronze Culture, its strict parallelism with
the Wessex culture equates it with Early Bronze Age 2—Danubian
IVb—which, judging by the fayence beads, should last down to 1400
b.c. The conquering aristocrats may have freed the local population
from excessive devotion to megalithic rites, but the metal industry
that flourished under their patronage failed to develop. The leaders
sailed away or were absorbed. No graves in Brittany are furnished with
types of my period V, and it is not till the Late Bronze Age—or perhaps
even Iron Age I—that large hoards reveal the inclusion of Brittany
in a commercial system guaranteeing regular supplies of metal gear.
x
321
CHAPTER XVIII
THE BRITISH ISLES
All routes from the South hitherto considered converge on Britain.
It is the northern terminus of the “megalithic” seaway along the
Atlantic coasts from Portugal; the land route across France is con-
tinued beyond the Channel by the South Downs; the Danube thorough-
fare and the wide corridor formed by the North European plain con-
verge on the North Sea coasts to be continued in Kent and East Anglia.
And the British Isles offers to voyagers, migrants, and prospectors
inducements to settlement—downs and moors swept bare of trees,
excellent flint, copper, and gold, and above all tin. But islands they were
already in neolithic times. Would-be colonists embarking in frail craft
must discard unessential equipment and relax the rigid bonds of tribal
custom. Any culture brought to Britain must be insularized by the
very conditions of transportation. Many streams contributed to the
formation of British culture, but the blending of components already
insularized inevitably yielded a highly individualized resultant.
Nor is Britain a unity. The Highland Zone of mountains and ancient
rocks to the West and North is contrasted with a “Lowland Zone” of
more recent formation in the South-East.1 And beyond the Highland
Zone lies Ireland. It is the Highland Zone with Ireland that yields tin,
copper, and gold. But the megalithic route alone leads thither directly.
Cultures and peoples, desiring “short sea crossings”, must land in the
Lowlands and reach the Highland Zone only after crossing them and
absorbing their already insular cultures.
Cultures arriving from the Continent often preserve their ancestors'
lineaments recognizably in the Lowland Zone; in the Highlands they
assume a mask of stubborn insularity.
Great Britain and Ireland were relatively well populated with meso-
lithic hunters and fishers. But a neolithic culture2 of distinctive Western
type was first introduced by peasants who crossed to Southern England
from North France or Belgium and did not mingle with the pre-existing
food-gatherers. In Sussex the latter occupied the greensands, the
neolithic peasants colonized the chalk,3 The neolithic farmers owed
1 Fox, The Personality of Britain (Cardiff, 1938).
2 For Neolithic Britain see Piggott, The Neolithic Cultures of the British Isles (1954),
unless other reference is given. But on relations with Northern Europe see now PPS.,
XXI (1955), 96-101. 3 Clark, Mesolithic Britain, 90.
322
THE BRITISH ISLES
hardly an item in their equipment to their mesolithic forerunners and
competitors.
Windmill Hill Culture
The oldest neolithic culture is best known from a series of hilltop
encampments strung out all along the downs and uplands of Southern
England from Eastern Sussex at least to Devon and probably to
Cornwall. The classic site where this culture was first really defined'—
as recently as 1925!—Windmill Hill, near Avebury, Wilts, must serve
hereafter as the patent station. The hilltops are girt with a system of
three or four flat-bottomed ditches, interrupted at frequent intervals
by causeways, as in Michelsberg camps, and supplemented by palisades.
The areas thus enclosed are often small: the diameters of the inner
ring lie between 250 ft. at Windmill Hill and 400 ft. at the Trundle,
though there is room for settlement beyond it, and Maiden Castle
covered 12 acres. It is not yet clear how far the “camps" should be
regarded as permanent villages. Piggott regards them rather as en-
closures where cattle were rounded up in the autumn. No houses have
been identified inside them, but in Devon, Wales, and Ireland a few
isolated neolithic houses are known—most rectangular in plan.1
The camps’ occupants lived principally by breeding cattle—of a
robust breed, perhaps a cross between imported short-horns and native
oxen of Bos primigenius stock. But they kept a few sheep, goats, and
pigs, and cultivated crops—principally wheat (emmer with a small
proportion of one-corn), but also a little barley.2 And naturally they
hunted deer and collected nuts and shell-fish. The huntsman used leaf-
shaped arrow-heads, Fig. 150, 3. Axes were made of flint where this
1 23
Fig. 150. 1, lop-sided, 2, Tanged-and-barbed, 3, leaf-shaped, and arrow-heads
from Britain (£).
1 Piggot, op. cit.; cf. PRIA., LVI (1956), 300-6, 447-7; Arch. CambCII, (1953), 24-9.
a Jessen and Helbaek, Det hong, danske Videns. Selskdb, Biol. Skrifter, III, 2; PPS.,
XVIII, 194-200.
323
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
material is abundant and then include archaic "picks” as well as
polished implements. Elsewhere, in Devon for instance, polished celts
of fine-grained stone competed with flint axes. In Southern England
and Norfolk flint was systematically mined by specialized groups of
highly skilled miners, who must have lived largely by exporting the
products of their industry. But while hint-mining began early in
Neolithic times, it flourished more in the subsequent Beaker period.
And in Norfolk and even Wiltshire "Peterborough folk” (p. 331, below)
were associated with its exploitation. A textile industry is not clearly
attested but flint scrapers and bunched combs of antler emphasize
the importance of leather-dressing.
The earliest Windmill Hill vases (Fig. 151) are leathery round-
bottomed pots with simple rims and sometimes vertically pierced lugs.
Thickening of the rims by pressing down or rolling over the wet clay
is thought by Piggott to mark a later phase in Southern England and
is more prominent in the Highland Zone. To an equally late phase
should belong incised and channelled decoration and shallow flutings
produced by drawing the finger-tips over the moist clay. Trumpet
lugs, confined to Dorset and Devon, denote specially close relations
with Brittany (p. 306).
Fig. 151. Windmill Hill pot-forms. After Piggott.
324
THE BRITISH ISLES
A few figurines and phalli, carved in chalk so rudely as to be almost
dubious, are all that survives of ritual paraphernalia. Windmill Hill
ideology found more durable expression in funerary monuments. Most
authorities believe that Windmill Hill farmers or their "chiefs” were
buried under “unchambered long barrows”. These are pear-shaped
mounds reaching the extravagant length of 300 feet though the inter-
ments occupy only a small space near the wide end. The corpses, from
one to twenty-five in number, had been interred disarticulated or
cremated on chalk platforms or in crematorium-trenches. In two cases
a timber revetment at the wide end looks like an attempt to reproduce
the forecourt of the chambered long barrows of Highland Britain
(p. 326). So it has been suggested that unchambered long barrows are
just substitutes for the megalithic tombs of the Atlantic coasts in
stoneless regions. However, the extravagantly long mounds seem alien
to the general megalithic tradition while the plans and the arrangement
of the interments within them find surprisingly close parallels in the
long dolmens and Kuyavish graves of the German and West Polish
tracts of the North European plain of which Lowland England is just
the westernmost section.
If such monumental sepulchres were reserved to families of special
rank or sanctity, commoners perhaps were buried, after cremation,
in pits, arranged in a ring in a cemetery surrounded by a penannular
bank and internal ditch. For a few of these so-called "class I henges”
have yielded pure Windmill Hill relics though most contain also
“Secondary Neolithic” types.1 But even these henges may not have
been primarily constructed as cemeteries and to the same periods
belong certain non-funerary but ceremonial monuments, traditionally
known as "cursus”,2 enclosures varying from one to six miles in length
and defined by banks and ditches. Association with long barrows
justifies their attribution to the Windmill Hill culture.
No causewayed camps have been identified north of the Thames.
But judging from pottery finds and long barrows, Windmill Hill
farmers colonized East Anglia and the Yorkshire Wolds and spread
over Northern England and Eastern Scotland as far as the Moray
Firth. In the Highland Zone their culture is known only from mega-
lithic tombs.
Megalithic Tombs in Britain
Apostles of the megalithic faith presumably arrived by the Atlantic
seaway; for the tombs they should have introduced fan out from land-
1 Atkinson et ah, Excavations at Dorchester, Oxon. (Oxford, 1951).
2 Atkinson in Antiquity, XXIX (1955), 4-10.
325
-
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
falls on the west coasts and round the Irish Sea. More or less close
parallels can be found in Western Europe to the plans of these tombs,
but their furniture and the long cairns that cover them seem distinc-
tively British. So in Britain the megalith-builders do not appear so
much as fresh contingents of neolithic farmers as a spiritual aristo-
cracy who may have led Windmill Hill farmers to the colonization of
the rugged coasts of Scotland and Ulster and the adjacent islands.
Peculiarities of sepulchral architecture allow of the recognition of at
least three groups of missionaries in Great Britain.
The Bristol Channel would have been the entry for the designers of
the Cotswold-Severn tombs. All are covered by long cairns with a
cuspidal, rather than semicircular, forecourt. Typologically the oldest
chambers are long galleries with one or more pairs of transepts or
lateral cells opening off them and roofed by corbelling. Cairns, termin-
ating in a dummy portal in the wide end but with small chambers
opening on to their sides, twice through porthole slabs, should be later
degenerations. Tombs of this family occur on both sides of the Bristol
Channel and spread across the Cotswolds to the chalk downs of North
Wiltshire and Berkshire. The finest of them all was built under a
typically English long barrow at West Kennet near Avebury and
Windmill Hill, and the first interments were accompanied by Windmill
Hill vases though the tomb remained open till Beaker and Peterborough
wares had come into fashion.
Segmented cists characterize the Clyde-Carlingford group of tombs
that spread inland from these sea-inlets in South-West Scotland and
Northern Ireland but occur also in Man, in Wales, and on the limestone
plateau of Derbyshire. Two tombs of this group—in Man and Stafford-
shire—were entered through porthole slabs. The tombs contain up to
sixteen corpses, normally inhumed but occasionally cremated. In
addition to classical Windmill Hill pottery and arrow-heads, the
grave goods comprise vases of Beacharra ware, decorated with semi-
circles arranged in panels and executed by channelling or cord-
impression as at Conguel in Brittany (Fig. 146, 2), but also types to
be classed as “Secondary Neolithic”; Beakers accompanied the latest
interments in three cases. The sepulchral architecture of the tombs
and the semicircular forecourts on to which they open (Fig. no), but
not the long cairns that cover them, seem to be inspired by Pyrenasic
or even Sardinian traditions. Beacharra ware too might have been
introduced from the same quarter, but since its decorative technique
was used also in the non-megalithic province of Southern England,
only the magic semicircle motive need be regarded as a fresh contribu-
tion from the south-west.
326
THE BRITISH ISLES
Tombs of the Pentland group on the treeless moors and sandy coasts
of North Scotland and the adjacent archipelagoes are formally passage
graves. But some are covered by extravagantly long cairns with “horns”
framing semicircular forecourts at both ends and the corbelled chambers
are normally subdivided into at least three segments by paired jambs
projecting from the side walls (Fig. 152). In the stalled cairns of Orkney
Fig. 152. Passage grave in horned cairn, 240 ft. long, Yarrows, Caithness.
a multiplication of the same device divided a long corbelled gallery
into six to twelve benched stalls (Fig. 153). Round or oval cairns in
Orkney, too, cover elongated corbelled chambers with three or more
Fig. 153. Long stalled cairn, Midhowe, Rousay.
small cells opening off them. In Pentland tombs, too, Beakers accom-
pany only the last interments. The older grave goods include leaf-
shaped arrow-heads, developed Windmill Hill ware, a single vase
decorated in Beacharra style, and others ornamented with stab-and-
drag patterns best represented at Unstan, Orkney, but also Secondary
327
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Neolithic types. Here, too, cases of cremation have been reported, but
inhumation was the normal practice.
Judging from the dispersal of the tombs, each, if it were a communal
ossuary, might correspond to a single homestead. But such a unit and
the number of burials would be too small to provide the manpower
for the erection of such monuments. They should rather be, like un-
chambered long barrows, the family vaults of the leaders of small
local groups. These remained simple farmers. The multitude of bones
of calves, sheep, and game animals—including horses even in the
Cotswolds1—imply an economy based primarily on stock-breeding and
hunting. But barley (not, however, wheat) was demonstrably culti-
vated in Orkney and one-corn wheat in Ulster.2 Metal is totally absent
from the grave goods. A few beads of soft stone can be paralleled in
the causewayed camps of Southern England. The only imports are
products of axe-factories not far away. Chronologically these mega-
lithic tombs had demonstrably been built before the arrival in the
province of Beaker-folk and no fresh ones were built thereafter. These
round-headed invaders replaced the megalithic aristocracy. If, then,
the latter came from the Armorican or Iberian peninsulas, they must
have set out before the rise of Beaker-folk there. On the other hand,
the secondary neolithic types, so prominent in the Clyde-Carlingford
and Pentland tombs, may be little, if at all, older than the Beaker
invasion of Southern England; some indeed occur in graves of Early
Bronze Age II.
On Ireland a direct impact of megalithic culture from the south-west
can be detected only after the island had been colonized from Britain
by neolithic farmers of the Clyde-Carlingford and other groups, and
hardly before bands of Beaker-folk had established themselves in
Limerick and Sligo. The recognizable result of that impact was the
erection of passage graves under round cairns that constitute the sole
monuments of a Boyne culture.
The standard and most widespread type of Boyne tomb is cruciform
in plan—a corbelled chamber entered through a long passage with
three cells grouped symmetrically round the remaining sides. Such
tombs, generally located on conspicuous heights, form scattered
cemeteries, notably on Carrowkeel and other limestone mountains
in Sligo, along the Boyne, and on the Lough Crew hills. The stones
walling the tomb and supporting the cairn are often adorned with
elaborate incised or pecked patterns, including stylized boats, spirals,
and distorted conventionalizations of the funerary goddess of Los
1 Crawford, Long Barrows of the Cotswolds (Gloucester, 1925), 26; AntJ., XV, 435.
a Jessen and Helbaek, see p. 323, n. 2.
328
THE BRITISH ISLES
MiUares and Palmella. Most tombs had been plundered. In the finest,
large stone basins alone survive of the original furniture. At Carrowkeel,
cremated bones, resting on stone slabs but originally enclosed in hide
bags fastened with skewer pins of bone or antler, should represent
primary interments while cremations in food-vessels may be intrusive.
Of the furniture survive stone balls, V-perforated buttons and beads,
including hammer beads, of hard stone, small scraps of ill-fired pottery,
but not a scrap of metal.
It is assumed that these magnificent sepulchres were built for aristo-
cratic lineages. A few decorated tombs in Anglesey and Antrim indicate
an extension of their sway to the coasts of Wales and the shores of
the North Channel. A spread thence may be denoted by some simpler
tombs in Galloway and round the Moray Firth. Most authorities agree
that the founders of the Boyne culture came by sea from Portugal and
—with less unanimity—that they started after, rather than before,
the Beaker phase there.1 In their wake should have come prospectors
and metallurgists who initiated the exploitation of Irish copper and
gold and introduced Hispanic types and techniques. In Britain their
products—decorated axes and basket-shaped gold earrings—were
purchased first by Beaker-folk, while the most significant British
parallels to the furniture of the Boyne tombs are hammer-beads from
Wessex graves of the succeeding period, but British B Beaker sherds
were found in an atypical Boyne tomb at Moytirra, Sligo. Such are the
rather slender grounds for believing that the Boyne culture began as
early as the Beaker period of England. Raftery has found evidence
that at least one decorated tomb at Lough Crew was built as late as
Iron Age II!
The Earliest Bronze Age and Secondary Neolithic Phase
The Bronze Age of the British Isles is traditionally considered to begin
with the arrival in England and Eastern Scotland of bands of round-
headed invaders who buried their dead individually in single graves,
generally under round barrows and accompanied by some kind of
Beaker. Variations of the latter and of the associated grave goods
allow us to distinguish three or even five main groups of invaders. The
earliest arrivals used Bi Beakers, decorated with simple zones of
rouletted patterns and preserving the profile of Pan-European beakers.
They used West European daggers, tanged-and-barbed arrow-heads
1 The. sole probable Hispanic import found in a Boyne tomb is matched in a Spanish
sepulchral cave, JSEA. (1929), pi. VII, 11-12; Rev. Guim. (1948), 12.
329
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Fig. 154.
Gold earring
and stone wrist-guards, as on the Continent, and wore as ornaments
basket-shaped earrings (Fig. 154) and sun discs bearing a cruciform
pattern of gold.1 B3 Beakers, of the same shape but decorated with
a spiral cord impression, have close analogies in
Western Europe (p.224) and the Rhineland, and may
denote a distinct invasion from the latter quarter
unless they spread from Britain.2 A second major
group of invaders, coming this time from Holland
and landing on the coasts of Northern England and
Scotland, introduced the same arrow-heads and
wrist-guards, but coarser and more angular Beakers,
labelled C. But perhaps the most prominent group
of Beaker-folk are characterized by A Beakers, gen-
erally decorated with metopic patterns and in profile more like corded
than bell-beakers. These vases have no Continental counterparts and
are associated with stone battle-axes and flint, or rarely round-heeled
bronze daggers. So the A-Beaker culture is believed to be due to a
local fusion of intrusive North European Battle-axe with established
C—and perhaps also B—Beaker traditions.
From their landing-places on the south and east coasts Beaker-folk
must have spread rapidly across Britain and even sent out contingents
to Ireland.3 The latter are just as likely as the Boyne megalith-builders
to have organized the exploitation and export of Irish copper and gold,
but must have been quickly absorbed in the native populations; for
they are scarcely represented in the funerary record in which in Britain
the Beaker-folk figure so conspicuously. But even in Britain Beaker-
folk must have formed a small ruling class, or a succession of ruling
classes, among the already heterogeneous Neolithic population,
replacing the “Megalithic aristocracy”. Their advent accelerated a
general trend towards pastoralism and promoted the cultivation of
barley in preference to wheat.4 But no pure Beaker settlements are
known; Beaker pottery is always mixed with Late Neolithic pottery
and flints whether in secondary occupation levels of South English
causewayed camps, in coastal encampments in the Highland zone, or
in hut-villages in Western Ireland.5
The surplus they appropriated enabled them to become the first
1 Childe, PCBI., 92-4; add Arch. Aeliana (1936), 210, and Oxoniensia, XIII (1948),
1-9; the earrings are associated with B3 rather than Br beakers.
2 Childe, Act. y Mem., XXI (1946), 196; Piggott, L’Anthr., LVIII, 6; Fox, Arch.,
LXXXIX (1943), 100-4.
3 To Co. Limerick from the Bristol Channel {PRIA., XLVIII (1942), 260-9); LTV.
(1951), 56-9, 70-2; to Ulster from Southern Scotland (UJA., II, 264; III, 79).
4 PPS., XVIII, 204.
8 PRIA., LVI (1954), 343- 379; PPS., XVII, 53.
330
THE BRITISH ISLES
purchasers of metal gear in Britain. But metal is found in only 5 per
cent of the known Beaker graves, and their bronze axes came from
Ireland while the round-heeled daggers should be of Central European
manufacture. In addition to the metal trade, Beaker-folk may have
organized the distribution of axes from flint-mines and from factories
at Langdale in the Lake District, Penmaenmawr in North-West Wales,
and Tievebulliagh in Antrim,1 and elsewhere; these factory products
were distributed all over England and Scotland, but always turn up
in a Secondary Neolithic context.
By displacing the spiritual aristocracy, the invaders liberated
farmers and herdsmen in Britain—but not in Ireland—from the Mega-
lithic superstition, but they patronized native cults or gave them a
new celestial, rather than chthonic, orientation. Circles of great stones
were set up, sometimes in old class I henges or in those of the new
class II, with two entrances,2 that the Beaker-folk had begun to con-
struct. From the Presely Mountains in South-West Wales huge blocks
of spotted dolerite (Bluestone) were transported to Salisbury Plain
for erection in a Secondary Neolithic class I henge to become Stone-
henge II.3 This fantastic feat, like the construction of the huge class II
henge (diameter 1,400 feet!) at Avebury (North Wilts4), must illustrate
a degree of political unification or a sacred peace guaranteed by the
Beaker aristocracy or by the spiritual leaders of the Cotswold-Sevem
culture before them, and reflects the resources at their disposal but
produced by the neolithic farmers of the Wiltshire Downs,
The round-headed invaders did not exterminate the native neolithic
population or replace their culture by a new one, brought ready made
from the Continent. Yet, while they were establishing themselves as a
ruling class, the old Windmill Hill culture changed into, or was replaced
by, what Piggott terms “Secondary Neolithic” cultures. In all these,
animal husbandry plays a more prominent part in the subsistence
economy than even in the older “Western” Neolithic, and in sympathy
therewith ceramic technique declines. Types of mesolithic ancestry,
such as lopsided arrow-heads (Fig. 150, 1), derivatives of the petit
tranchet (cf. Fig. 3, 6-7), re-appear as if the traditions of autochthonous
hunter-fishers were being incorporated in those of neolithic societies.
Novel types—narrow flint knives with polished edges, antler mace-
heads and cushion or pestle-shaped mace-heads of stone, bone pins,
some with a lateral loop or bulb, boars'-tusk pendants—came into
use. These, though missing from primary Windmill Hill sites in Southern
1 PPS., XVII, 1951, 100-59; uja., xv, 1952,32-48.
2 Atkinson, Excavations at Dorchester, I, 84 ff.
3 Atkinson, Stonehenge (London, 1956), 63 ff.
4 Childe, PCBI., 102-4.
331
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
England, are found in long barrows in Northern England, in Clyde-
Carlingford and Pentland tombs, and in class I henges, but also alone
in single graves under round barrows or at the centre of a ring ditch.
Yet none are regular components of the Beaker culture nor of any
other assemblage outside Britain. So all may be accepted as insular
products of native genius.1
Even the new pottery styles were not introduced ready made from
the Continent. With Peterborough ware2 no assemblage of distinctive
types is exclusively associated. Three consecutive styles can now be
recognized under this head. In the earliest, Ebbsfleet, style the rather
ovoid pots have distinct necks but simple rims; they are decorated
with a row of pits below the rim supplemented at times with an incised
lattice band above the pits or vertical cord impressions. In the deriv-
ative Mortlake style the rims are thickened and the pits are supple-
mented by a lavish decoration of "maggot” imprints or the impressions
of a “comb” or a bird’s leg bone that covers the whole vase surface
(Fig. 155). Vases of the still later Fengate style are the immediate
forerunners of the Overhanging Rim Urns of the “Middle Bronze Age”.
Ebbsfleet pottery is found, alone or associated with normal Windmill
Hill ware, in two causewayed camps in Sussex, in one Cotswold-Severn
tomb, and with normal Windmill Hill pottery and arrow-heads in a
barrow on the Chilterns.3 Mortlake pottery recurs repeatedly together
with Windmill Hill, and usually also Beaker, wares in causewayed
camps, megalithic tombs and around long barrows, but always in
strata later than the primary occupational or burial deposits. Hence,
despite the really surprising similarity of Peterborough pottery to
that of the Swedish “dwelling-places” and to pit-comb ware beyond
the Baltic, no invasion from the Baltic need be postulated to explain it.
It may more economically be regarded as the product of the established
Windmill Hill farmers, now mixed with descendants of mesolithic
stocks and, in the Mortlake stage, subject to the Beaker aristocracy.
Rinyo-Clacton pottery, found in East Anglia in pits submerged
by the subsequent “Lyonesse transgression” and in henge monuments
in Wiltshire—sometimes with, never demonstrably before, Beaker
ware—does characterize conveniently a distinctive culture,4 best
known from the Orkney Islands,5 created by a tribe of sheep- and
cattle-breeders who had reached Orkney before the first Beaker-folk
1 Bone pins with lateral loops occur in a boat-axe grave in Sweden and in another in
Estonia {Fv. (1956), 196-207); all may be copies of—rare—metal Unetician pins of like
form.
2 Piggott, op. cit., 315, must be revised in the light of Isobel Smith’s researches.
3 Smith, PPS., XX (1954), 227.
4 Piggott, op. cit., 321-40.
3 Childe, Skara Brae (London, 1931); PSAS., LXXIII, 6-31 (Rinyo).
332
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THE BRITISH ISLES
arrived there. On those wind-swept islands they found ideal pasture
for their flocks and herds, but were forced to translate into stone,
dwellings and furniture elsewhere made of wood. Their huts, grouped
in hamlets of seven or eight, and several times rebuilt on the old site,
were some 15 ft. square. On either side of the central hearth were
Fig. 155. Peterborough bowl from Thames (£), and sherds from West Kennet
Long Barrow. By permission of Trustees of British Museum.
fixed beds framed with stone slabs on the edge and covered with
canopies of hide. A dresser stood against the back wall, there were
cupboards above the beds and tanks let into the floor. As clothing,
skins were worn, for the dressing of which innumerable scrapers of
flint and awls and other bone tools were made. Adzes, of polished stone,
were mounted in perforated antler sleeves. The pots, though badly
fired, were flat-bottomed and decorated with grooved or applied ribs
and knobs forming lozenges, wavy lines, and even spirals.
333
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Personal ornaments, ingeniously made entirely from local materials,
include beads of bone, cows' teeth, and walrus ivory, arc-pendants of
boars’ tusk laminae and bone pins with lateral loops.
The Rinyo-Clacton culture was an insular British creation, but
doubtless incorporates fresh Continental traditions. So Rinyo houses
are stone versions of the Horgen huts (p. 296), and antler sleeves and
arc-pendants again point to Horgen. The patterns adorning the vases
can be paralleled in late Cave pottery from Catalonia,1 in the Late
Chassey ware of Brittany, and its Wessex derivatives and in the
carvings on Boyne tombs. But in the earliest habitation level at Rinyo
“Western” Unstan pottery was still current side by side with the local
ware as if the latter had grown up out of the former. Though in Essex
Rinyo-Clacton ware is older than the Lyonesse transgression and in
Orkney than the oldest local Beaker, the similarity of its decoration
to that of Wessex incense cups has convinced Scott2 and others that
the Rinyo-Clacton culture need be no older than the Wessex culture
in Southern England, i.e. Early Bronze Age II. In any case, its tradi-
tions live on in the Encrusted and Cordoned Urns of our Middle and
Late Bronze Ages.
The Wessex Culture and International Trade
If the Beaker culture represent the first phase of our Early Bronze
Age (E.B.A.I), that phase ended with the emergence of a new warrior
aristocracy in Wessex and Cornwall and of more isolated warrior
chieftains in East Anglia, Yorkshire, and Scotland, known exclusively
from burials under elaborate barrows. The Wessex chieftains3 dominated
the chalk downs from Sussex to Dorset, but established outposts on
both sides of the Bristol Channel. Their bones or ashes were buried,
sometimes in coffins hollowed out of a tree-trunk,4 with extravagantly
rich furniture—handled cups of gold, amber or shale, grooved triangular
or, later,5 ogival daggers (some with gold-studded hilts or amber
pommels), tanged spear-heads (Fig. 156, 2), flat or low-flanged axes,
but also superb flint arrow-heads tanged and barbed in the Breton
manner, arrow-shaft straighteners, and stone battle-axes (derivable
from the A Beaker type, but absurdly like the Northern Middle Neo-
lithic type of Fig. 95, 4). Their ladies wore gold-bound discs and
crescentic necklaces with pattern-bored spacers of amber, halberd
1 PSAS., LXIII (1929), 273.
2 PSAS., LXXXII (1950), 44 ft.
3 Piggott, PPS., IV (1938). 52-106; cf. ibid., 107-21; Inst. Arch. AR., X, 107-21.
4 PPS., XV (1949), 101-6.
6 Ap Simon, Inst. Arch. AR., X (1954), 107-10.
334
THE BRITISH ISLES
pendants of amber, gold, and bronze, double-axe, hammer and other
beads of jet and amber and of fayence imported from the Mediterranean.
The vases distinctive of the Wessex graves (domestic pottery is
unknown) are “incense cups” decorated with punctured ribbons or
knobs admittedly inspired by the Late Chassey tradition of Brittany,
but contemporary Cinerary Urns reflect the Secondary Neolithic
2 3
Fig. 156. Evolution of a socketed spear-head in Britain after Greenwell:
1, Hintelsham, Suffolk; 2, Snowshill, Glos.; 3, Arreton Down, I. o W. (•£).
traditions of the subject population. Though they are not found in the
aristocratic Bronze Age barrows there, the Armorican parallels to
Wessex funerary pottery are the strongest arguments for regarding
the Wessex chiefs as immigrants from Brittany (p. 320); the rest of
their equipment cannot be derived thence, but, in so far as it is not
of British origin, is based on Unetician (Saale-Warta) models.1 If the
Wessex rulers be not just aggrandized A-Beaker-Battle-axe folk, they
are most likely to have come immediately from the Saale valley.
Wherever the chiefs themselves came from, their wealth was prim-
1 For instance, the earlier Wessex daggers seem derivable from the Elbe-Oder type;
the halberd pendants reproduce the Saale-Warta bronze-shafted type.
335
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
arily based on the produce of flocks and herds grazed on the chalk
downs. But it was greatly augmented by the profits of trade. For the
chieftains controlled trade in Irish gold and copper and Cornish tin
with the Baltic, Central Europe, and even the Aegean. In return they
secured lumps of amber and late Unetician pins like Fig. 71, 6, 8, and 9.
Their wealth enabled them to enlist the services of highly skilled
craftsmen who devised original British products. Smiths, who had
learned core-casting in Bohemia, developed for instance a distinctively
British type of socketed spear-heads (Fig. 156). Jewellers translated
Highland crescentic necklaces into amber and bound with Irish gold
amber discs. Such products found a market even in the civilized iEgean;
the amber disc from Knossos (p. 33) and the necklaces from Mycenae
and Kakovatos (p. 80) must rank as “made in England”. In return,
the Wessex chieftains were of course given segmented fayence beads,
(Fig. 157), trinkets suitable for barbarians. But surely they acquired
Fig. 157. Segmented fayence beads, Wilts (£). By permission of the Trustees
of the British Museum.
more enticing rewards. A dagger, carved on a trilithon in Stonehenge
III, may represent an imported Mycenaean dirk. The hilt of an actual
imported Mycenaean L.H.IIIb sword (like Fig. 15, 1) was in fact
recovered from a barrow at Pelynt near the south coast of Cornwall
though not from a typical Wessex grave1.
At the same time the Wessex chieftains devoted part of their wealth
to sanctifying their power by transforming and enriching the grandest
sanctuary of their predecessors. Stonehenge IIP combines a new
arrangement of the holy Bluestones with the trilithon horseshoe and
circle of sarsen blocks, dragged some twenty-five miles from Marl-
borough Downs; the well-dressed uprights are consecrated and dated
by carved representations of the axes found in Wessex graves and of a
dagger, possibly imported from Greece.
Meanwhile in the Highland Zone of Britain the absorption of the
Beaker aristocracy is symbolized by the gradual replacement of their
lordly drinking-cups by humble Food Vessels as the appropriate
funerary vessels. For these can be derived from Secondary Neolithic
vases though sometimes hybridized with Beaker or Battle-axe types.
At the same time individual interment finally replaces collective burial
in megalithic tombs. But the single graves are often grouped in little
1 Childe, PPS., XVII (1951), 95.
336
2 Atkinson, Stonehenge, 68-77.
THE BRITISH ISLES
cemeteries, as in class I henges, and inhumation slowly gives place to
cremation, a change that once more documents a revival of Neolithic
rites and ideas. Food Vessels—of the Yorkshire vase form with a
sharp, generally grooved shoulder (Fig. 158, 2)—were introduced into
Ireland, presumably by a fresh wave of immigrants from Great Britain.
As a result, there too collective burial gradually gave way to individual
X 2
Fig. 158. Food Vessels, Argyll and East Lothian (|): 1, Bowl; 2, Vase.
interment; in several Boyne tombs Food Vessels accompanied intrusive
secondary cremations. But in Ireland and Western Scotland1 developed
a bowl type of Food Vessel (Fig. 158, 1) as a substitute for wooden
bowls, the form and decoration of which may also be inferred from the
Pyrenaean polypod bowls like Fig. 144 and Beaker associates like
Fig. hi, 2.
The predominantly pastoral economy favoured by the Beaker-folk
was maintained by Food Vessel societies. Though the latter are less
obviously stratified than that of Wessex, industry and trade flourished
among them too. Halberds and decorated axes made in Ireland2 were
1 Childe, PCBI., 1x9-34; SBS., 8-10, 51-62, 105-18.
2 PPS., IV, 272-82; Arch., LXXXVI, 305 £E.; Childe, PCBI., 115-17.
Y 337
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
transported across North Britain for shipment to Northern Europe
without paying tribute to the chieftains of Wessex. Direct maritime
intercourse with the Atlantic coastlands as far as Portugal may be
deduced from a cylinder-headed pin, like Fig. 131, found with a
Yorkshire Food Vessel in a grave in Galway, from the exact agreement
of the cup-and-ring marks, carved on the slabs of such graves with the
petroglyphs of Galicia and Northern Portugal1 and from the distribu-
tion in Brittany and Normandy (and perhaps the imitation in Portugal,
Fig. 159. Gold lunula, Ireland. By permission of Trustees of British Museum.
p. 285) of gold lunulas like Fig. 159. For the latter, if inspired in the
last resort by gold collars worn by Egyptian nobles, are immediately
Irish translations into sheet gold of the crescentic jet necklaces,
repeatedly associated with Food vessels in Scotland,1 2 which were
copied in amber in Wessex.
Finally cremationists,3 of Secondary Neolithic stock, using as Ciner-
ary Urns derivatives of Peterborough vases, were spreading from
South-East England into the Highland Zone. They had reached Ireland
1 MacWhite, Estudios, 42-3; Sobrino Buhigas, Corpus Petroglyphorum GallacicB
(Compostella, 1945).
2 Childe, PCBI., 123-4. Note that the gold lunulas found in Northern Europe are not
of Irish manufacture.
3 Childe, PCBI., 145-59.
338
THE BRITISH ISLES
while segmented fayence beads were still current,1 while another
party, crossing the North Sea, colonized the Low Countries.1 2 Burials
in Cinerary Urns, like the urns themselves, preserve even more clearly
than those with Food Vessels the native neolithic traditions. For they
cluster in small cemeteries or urnfields, some enclosed in a penannular
bank and ditch like a class I henge.3 They are still poorer and less
aristocratic. Nevertheless, contemporary hoards of Middle Bronze Age
II show that, though the Wessex chieftains had been expelled or
absorbed, the established bronze industry continued to flourish,
creating novel types—distinctively British spear-heads with a loop at
the base of the blade, palstaves, and rapiers, while goldsmiths devised
a variety of splendid ornaments, culminating in the superb tippet of
sheet gold richly embossed, found in a grave at Mold in Flintshire.4
The widespread diffusion of Britannico-Hibemian metal-work, and
the variety of products that reached the British Isles in exchange,
not only illustrate the leading role of these islands at the dawn of the
Continental Bronze Age and the diverse influences that fertilized
insular culture; they also provide a unique opportunity for corre-
lating several local sequences and assigning to them historical dates.
The crescentic amber necklaces from the Shaft Graves of Mycenae and
from Kalcovatos (p. 79) give a terminus ante quem not later than 1600
B.c. for the rise of the Wessex culture, though the imported segmented
fayence beads probably indicate that it lasted till 1400. Danubian and
North European chronologies can be checked against this dating.
The pins of late Unetician form from Wessex graves (p. 336) on the
one hand. Irish axes, halberds, and even a gold ornament of the bar-style
from the Unetician hoards on the other5 prove that our Early Bronze
Age 2 falls within period IV of the Danubian sequence. The Early
Bronze Age I round-heeled daggers, associated here with A Beakers,
are typologically parallel to the earliest Unetician forms and can
in fact be matched in late Bell-beaker graves in Bohemia and the
Rhineland. The earlier Bi beakers should then be contemporary with
their Central European counterparts and go back to late Danubian III.
A synchronism with Northern Neolithic Illa-b (M.N. Ill) can in fact
be established by J. J. Butler with the aid of the sun-disc mentioned
on p. 330. Northern Neolithic IV is substantially parallel to our Wessex
culture. But it is itself equivalent to Montelius’ Northern Bronze
1 Such, a bead was discovered in a secondary grave in the Mound of the Hostages at
Tara by Prof. O’Riordain in 1955.
2 Glasbergen, “Excavations in the Eight Beatitudes” (Palceohistoria, II-III), Gron-
ingen, 1954, esp. pp. 127-31; 168-70.
3 Childe, PCBI., 151-3.
4 PPSXIX (1953), 161 ff. 6 Germania, XXII (1938), 7-11.
339
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
Age I, though metal was locally too rare to be buried in its characteristic
Long Cist tombs. But one of the earliest Northern graves, furnished
with metal gear and so representative of Montelius’ Bronze Age Ha
at Liesbiittel in Schleswig1 contained an imported British spear-head
of the type distinctive of our Middle Bronze Age 2. In the opposite
direction a synchronism between Northern Neolithic II (E.N.C.) and
some phase of our Clyde-Carlingford (Megalithic) culture may be
deduced from the adoption of the Western semicircle motive, prom-
inent on Beacharra vases, on C funnel-beakers in Denmark and Sweden,
and the application of the Northern device of cord impression to the
decoration of some Beacharra vases.1 2
Correlations with the Iberian Peninsula are not quite so conclusive.
Segmented fayence beads no doubt prove an overlap between the
Wessex culture and the El Argar culture of South-Eastern Spain—
Spanish Bronze II. But the cylinder-headed pin found with a Food
Vessel in Ireland should belong there to Bronze I while the incense
cups from Wessex graves and associated with Cinerary Urns have
significant parallels in the incised pots and stone vessels of Los Millares
and contemporary sites. So, too, daggers with a midrib on one face only,
as at Los Millares and Alcala, have been found with Cinerary Urns
in Scotland and Southern Ireland.3 This phase of the Los Millares
culture should then on the British evidence be assigned to Bronze lb
(Los Millares II) and later than the popularity of at least Pan-European
Beakers in the Peninsula. These would have to be assigned to Bronze la
(Los Millares I as Leisner put it), which would be roughly parallel to
the Beaker period in England. Even so, the neolithic passage graves
of Portugal maybe at least as early as the Northern ones of Neolithic III.
1 Kersten, Zur alteren nordisehen Bronzezeit (Neumiinster, n.d.), 65; cf. also Broholm,
Dcmmavhs Bronzealder, I (Copenhagen, 1944), 223.
2 Childe in Corolla archtsologica in honorem C. A. Nordmann (Helsinki, 1952), 8.
3 Childe, APL., IV (1953), 182-4.
340
CHAPTER XIX
RETROSPECT: THE PREHISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETY
What meaning can be extracted from the intricate details compressed
into the foregoing pages? What patterns unify the fragmentary archae-
ological data? To clarify the issue the abstract results have been
schematized into tables and maps. These present the distribution in
time and space of cultures, assemblages of archaeological phenomena
that should reflect the distinctive behaviour patterns of human societies.
The maps at first sight present a very complicated mosaic of con-
temporary cultures. But historical reality was certainly more compli-
cated still. So many pieces of the mosaic are missing that even the
spatial pattern is blurred. Here it has been deliberately simplified
by the omission of a number of assemblages, some of which have been
mentioned in the text but most of which in 1956 are little more than
pottery styles. This bewildering diversity, though embarrassing to the
student and confusing on a map, is yet a significant feature in the
pattern of European prehistory. Across it another pattern may be
discerned. The first two maps exhibit quite clearly the gradual spread
of neolithic farmers, or at least of farming, from the south-east during
two consecutive periods of uncertain duration. (But even here there is
some doubt as to the right of “Western cultures” to a place on map II!)
Map III should suggest the groups, the complex relations between
these and the impact upon them of alien or peripheral cultures in a
period not necessarily longer than I or II, but more crowded with
archseologically recognizable events. The main cultures distinguishable
at the opening of the period are designated by letters, their boundaries
defined by solid lines. Different hatchings denote cultures that subse-
quently arose from, or were superimposed upon, the foregoing. Finally,
map IV displays the main areas that benefited from the Early Bronze
Age economy, their interrelation and their dependence on Mycenaean
Greece.
The distribution of entries on the several maps is based on the
chronological discussions included in all the preceding chapters and
summarized in the following tables. In most of the columns the actual
order of the entries, the sequence of cultures, is reasonably well-
established, though here again a reference to the text will disclose
doubts as to the order both in the extreme West and in the East.
34i
-
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
But each, column is virtually independent and should be regarded
as a single scroll hanging freely from its own roller. The lower end is
always loose, so that, as far as pure archaeology is concerned, each
scroll could be rolled up at least to the 1400 notch—deduced from
segmented fayence beads. Nuclear physicists have indeed diffidently
offered some provisional radio-carbon dates1 that might act as pins
to keep some scrolls extended. So in column 15 the Windmill Hill
culture (at Ehenside Tam in the Lake District!) might be pinned about
3000 b.c.1 2 and the Secondary Neolithic of Stonehenge I at 1850; in
column 7 Early Cortaillod about 2740,3 and in column 14 the earliest,
A, funnel-beakers at 2650, while in column 2 Danubian I (in Germany!)
might go back before 4000.4 But radio-carbon dating proves to be
infected by so many potential sources of error that European pre-
historians accept its results with as much reserve as the physicists
offer them. In any case the available dates do not suffice to decide
between the competing archaeological chronologies of the European
Bronze Age set out on pp. 135. The Stonehenge figure perhaps makes
the extreme dates for the beginning of the Unetician culture—before
2000 and after 1600 b.c. respectively—less likely, but any year between
1950 and 1650 B.c. would still be equally defensible. Fortunately, for
some positive conclusions at least, these uncertainties do not matter.
Whichever chronology be eventually vindicated, the primacy of
the Orient remains unchallenged. The Neolithic Revolution was
accomplished in South-Western Asia; its fruits—cultivated cereals
and domestic stock—were slowly diffused thence through Europe,
reaching Denmark only three centuries or so after the Urban Revolu-
tion has been completed in Egypt and Sumer. Ere then the techniques
of smelting and casting copper had been discovered and were being
intelligently applied in Egypt and Mesopotamia, to be in their turn
diffused round the Mediterranean during the third millennium, but
north of the Alps only at its close, if not already in the second. The
development of industry and commerce in Greece and subsequently
in Temperate Europe was as much dependent on Oriental capital as
the industrialization of India and Japan was on British and American
capital last century.
On the other hand, European societies were never passive recipients
of Oriental contributions, but displayed more originality and inventive-
1 The method is explained by Zeuner, Dating the Past (1952), pp. 341 ff.
2 Libby, Radio Carbon Dating (Chicago, 1953), 75- British prehistorians unanimously
reject this date.
8 See p. 291, n. 3.
4 These figures have frequently been mentioned by archaeologists, but not formally
published by the responsible physicists.
342
THE PREHISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETY
ness in developing Oriental inventions than had the inventors’ more
direct heirs in Egypt and Hither Asia. This is most obvious in the
Bronze Age of Temperate Europe. In the Near East many metal types
persisted unchanged for two thousand years; in Temperate Europe an
extraordinarily brisk evolution of tools and weapons and multiplication
of types occupied a quarter of that time.
The startling tempo of progress in European prehistory thus docu-
mented is not to be explained racially by some mystic property of
European blood and soil, nor yet by reference to mere material habitat,
but rather in sociological and historical terms. No doubt the Cro-
Magnons of Europe created a unique art in the Upper Palaeolithic
Age while their mesolithic successors devised and bequeathed to con-
temporary Europe much ingenious equipment for exploiting their
environment (p. 14). No doubt, too, its deeply indented coastline,
its propitiously situated mountain ranges and navigable streams, and
its resources in tin, copper, and precious metal have conferred on our
continent advantages possessed by no other comparable land mass,
while the Mediterranean was a unique school for navigators. But the
creative utilization of these favours of Nature must be interpreted in
sociological terms.
The bounteous water-supply and seemingly unlimited land for
cultivation allowed Early Neolithic farmers an unrestricted dispersion
of population; dense aggregations had to grow up in the arid cradle of
cereal cultivation where settled farming was possible only in a few
oases or in narrow zones along the banks of permanent rivers. Hence
Jericho, the earliest known neolithic settlement in the Near East,
probably contained ten times as many inhabitants as any Early
Neolithic village in Europe. But such aggregations require rigid dis-
cipline which the scarcity of water enables society to enforce. So from
the first the Oriental environment put a premium on conformity. In
Europe it was always feasible, however perilous, to escape the restraints
of irksome custom by clearing fresh land for tillage; indeed, such an
escape was actually imposed on the younger children of a village in
historical times, at least in Italy, by the Sacred Spring. But such dis-
persion under neolithic conditions of self-sufficiency encouraged
divergence of traditions and the formation of independent societies.
Just that is imperfectly reflected during our period II in the multi-
plication within a comparatively small area of cultures distinguished
by differences in ceramic art, burial rites, equipment, and even economy.
Thereby even on our simplified map Europe appears in contrast to
Hither Asia where the Halafian and Ubaid cultures are successively
but uniformly spread over a vast area. Again in the ideological sphere
343
DAWN OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
the variations in megalithic architecture—really far greater than
could be indicated here—should be the counterpart of the fission of a
single and presumably Oriental orthodoxy into a myriad local sects.
It might then be compared to the disruption of Christianity after the
Reformation and contrasted with the faithful repetition of temple
plans from the Persian Gulf to the Orontes in the third millennium.
In short, a multiplicity of neolithic societies, distinguished by divergent
traditions but never completely isolated one from the other, offered
a European peasant some possibility of comparison and free choice.
The observed diversity was, of course, due not only to the splitting
of a few immigrant societies and foreign traditions. Divergence was
accelerated and emphasized also on the one hand by the multiplicity of
pre-existing mesolithic groups who absorbed the neolithic techniques
or were absorbed in the neolithic societies, on the other by the plurality
of external stimuli that impinged upon them from Africa, the Levant,
Anatolia, and perhaps Central Asia.
Still, material progress was impossible without an accumulation of
capital, a concentration of the social surplus. This was effected in
Early iEgean times and during period III of the temperate zone by the
emergence of chieftains or aristocracies, spiritual or temporal; it made
effective a demand for reliable metal weapons promoted by the con-
commitant intensification of warlike behaviour. Yet the small inde-
pendent groups of herdsmen, cultivators, and fishers, owing allegiance
to such rulers, just could not by themselves accumulate resources
sufficient for the development of a metallurgical industry and of an
efficient machinery for the distribution of its products. That had
demanded the Urban Revolution, the concentration of the surplus
produced by thousands of irrigation-farmers in the hands of a tiny
minority of priests, kings, and nobles in the valleys of the Nile, the
Tigris-Euphrates, and the Indus. Fortunately the effective demands
of the masters of this concentrated wealth in Egypt and Mesopotamia
enabled iEgean farmers and fishermen to secure a share in the surplus
thus accumulated without themselves submitting to the same degree
of political unification and class division. The archseological picture
of Bronze Age Greece at its most prosperous period corresponds well
with Homer’s description of many independent but loosely federated
principalities, smaller but more numerous than even the Temple
States of pre-Sargonic Mesopotamia.
In the sequel, Minoan and Mycensean demand for tin, gold, and
eventually amber, created a reliable market for the peculiar products
of Temperate Europe. Thus indirectly the barbarian societies of Central
Europe and thg British Isles obtained a share in the capital accumu-
344
THE PREHISTORY OF EUROPEAN SOCIETY
lated through the Urban Revolution for the development of their own
extractive, manufacturing, and distributive industries without sub-
mitting to the repressive discipline of urban civilization or suffering
the irrevocable class division it entailed. Specialist craftsmen were
liberated from the absorbing preoccupation of food production, but
yet were not dependent on a single despot’s court, temple, or feudal
estate. They must no doubt sell their products and their skill to patrons,
but whether these were classless societies, as perhaps in Bohemia and
on the Middle Danube, or chieftains, as in the Saale-Warta province
and in Wessex, there was plenty of competition for their services. As
in Homeric Greece, a craftsman was welcome everywhere. So they had
every inducement to display their virtuosity and inventiveness. In
the European Bronze Age metal-workers were in fact producing for an
international market.
In the ancient East the Urban Revolution had finally divided the
societies affected by it into two economically opposed classes and had
irretrievably consigned craftsmen, the pioneers of material progress,
to the lower class. In prehistoric European and Mycenaean societies
the cleavage was never so deep, if only because of their smallness and
poverty. Craftsmen at least were not depressed into a class of slaves
or serfs.
345
H
to
00
On
O'
co
Segmented faience beads
MAP I
Co
4^
00
Europe in Period I,
MAP II
Oo
5* Meridian of 0* (ii-eeirricli
Europe in Period II.
MAP Ilia
u>
c_n
O
MAP IIIb
co
Cn
H
Europe in Period III: Beaker and Battle-axe cultures.
MAP IV
Europe in Period IV: Early Bronze Age cultures and trade routes.
NOTES ON TERMINOLOGY
Definitions of certain terms, descriptive of ceramic decoration, here used in a
special or restricted sense.
Cardial—decorated with lines executed with a shell edge.
Channelled—with relatively wide and shallow incisions, round-bottomed.
Cordoned—with applied strips of clay in relief.
Crusted—with colours (paints) applied to the vase surface after the firing of
the vessel.
Excised—with regular small triangular or square hollows made by depressing the
surface or actually cut out ("fret-work” or “chip-carving” or "false relief”).
Fluted—with flutings separated only by a sharp narrow ridge.
Grooved—with broad incisions, not normally round-bottomed.
Incrusted—with incised lines filled with white or coloured paste.
Maggot—with the impressions of a loop of whipped threads, see Fig. 155.
Particoloured—by firing the vessel so that part is reddened by the oxidization
of the iron oxides exposed to a free access of air while part is blackened by
the reduction of these oxides. (Egyptian black-topped ware is one variety.)
Rusticated—by roughening the surface, generally covered with a thick slip, by
pinching with the fingers, brushing, etc. ("barbotine”).
Rouletted—as described on p. 224.
Stab-and-drag—decorated with continuous lines formed by jabbing a pointed
implement into the soft clay, then drawing the point backwards a short
distance and stabbing it in again, and so on.
Celt, a term formerly used to describe chopping implements of stone or metal
that could be used as axes, adzes, gouges, chisels, or even hoe-blades. Here we
distinguish, where possible, between the several types and in particular describe
as
Adze—a celt that is asymmetrical about its major axis so that it could not
possibly be used as an axe (Fig. 29, D, B). When hafted the handle is
perpendicular to the plane of the blade.
Axe—therefore describes a celt that is symmetrical about its major axis even
though such a celt could often be used as an adze.
An axe (or adze) provided with a hole for the shaft, like a modem axe-head, is
termed a shaft-hole axe (or adze), but, if the butt end is elongated and
carefully shaped, the term battle-axe is conventionally used.
Burials should be described as contracted when the knees are drawn up towards
the chin so as to make an angle of 90° or less with the spinal column. When
the angle is more than a right angle, the terra, flexed should be used. Owing
to ambiguities in the authorities followed, it has not been possible to main-
tain this distinction strictly here.
Z
353
ABBREVIATIONS
AAH.
"Aamose”
Aarbager
Acta Ay oh.
Act. y Mem.
AA
AE.
AfO.
AfA.
Afas.
AJA.
Altschles.
Am. Anthr.
AM.
Ampurias
Antiquity
Ant. J.
Anuari
Arch.
Arch. Camb.
Arch. Ert.
Arch. Hung.
Arch. J.
AR.
Arh. Vest.
Arkh. Pam.
Arsberdttelse.
APL.
AsA.
PERIODICALS AND COLLECTIVE WORKS
Acta Archesologica Hungarica, Buda-Pest.
“Stenalderbopladser i Aamosen,” by T. Mathiassen, J. Troels-
Srnith, and M. Degerbol, Nordiske Fortidsminder, iii, 3,
Copenhagen, 1943.
Aarb0ger for Nor dish Oldkyndighed og Historic, Copenhagen.
Acta Archesologica, Copenhagen.
Adas y Memorias de la Sociedad Espanola de Antropologla,
Etnograffa y Preistoria, Madrid.
’Ap^aioKoyiKov Ae\rLov, Athens.
Archcsologiai Ertcsit'6, Buda-Pest (A Magyar Tudomanyos
Akadexnia).
Archiv fur Orientforschung, Vienna.
Archiv fur Anthropologic, Brunswick.
Association fran9aise pour Tavancement des Sciences (Reports
of congresses).
American Journal of Archaeology (Archaeological Institute of
America).
Altschlesien, Breslau (Schlesische Altertumsverein).
American Anthropologist (New Haven, Conn.).
Mitteilungen des archaologischen Instituts des deutschen Reiches,
Athenische Abteilung.
Ampurias, Barcelona.
Antiquity, Gloucester.
Antiquaries' Journal, London (Society of Antiquaries).
Anuari de I'Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona.
ArchcBologia, London (Society of Antiquaries).
Archceologia Cambrensis, Cardiff.
See A .E.
Archesologia Hungarica, Buda-Pest.
Archaeological Journal, London (R. Archaeological Institute).
Archeologiske Rozhledy, Praha (Ceckoslovenskd Akademie
VSd).
Arheoloski Vestnik, Ljubljana (Slovenska Akademija Znanosti)
Arkheolog. Pamyaiki U.R.S.R., Kiev (Ukrainian Academy of
Sciences).
Arsberdttelse K. Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundets i Lund.
Archivo de Prehistoria Levantina, Valencia.
Anzeiger fur schweizerische Altertumskunde, Zurich.
354
ABBREVIATIONS
AsAg.
ASPRB.
Bad. Fb.
BCH.
Belleten
Bl.f.d.V.
Bol.R.Acad.Hist.
BP.
BRGK.
Archives suisses d’Anthropologie generate, Geneva.
American School of Prehistoric Research, Bulletin, New Haven,
Conn.
Badische Fundberichte, Baden-Baden.
Bulletin de correspondance hellenique.
Belleten, Ankara (Turk Tarih Kurumu).
Blatter fur deutsche Vorgeschichte, Konigsberg.
Boletin de la R. Academia de la Historia, Madrid.
Bullettino di paletnologia italiana, Parma, Roma.
Bericht der rbmisch-germanischen Kommission des arch.
Instituts des deutschen Reiches, Frankfurt.
BSA.
BSR.
BSABrux.
BSAPar.
BSPF.
CIIA.
CIPP.
CISPP.
Cuadernos
Dacia
Dolg.
’AW
ESA.
FA.
FM.
FNA.
Fv.
Gallia
Germania
IGAIMK.
Inst. Arch.AR.
IPEK.
lYH-.Mem.
Iraq
Annual of the British School at Athens.
Papers of the British School at Rome.
Bulletin et Memoires de la Soci6te d’Anthropologie de
Bruxelles.
Bulletin de la Soci6t6 d’Anthropologie de Paris.
Bulletin de la Soci6t6 prdhistorique fran£aise, Paris.
Institut international d’anthropologie, Congres.
Comisidn de investigaciones paleontologicas y prehistoricas,
Madrid (Junta para Ampliaci6n de estudios cientificas).
Congres international des sciences pr6historiques et proto-
historiques.
Cuadernos de Historia Primitiva, Madrid.
Dacia'. Recherches et Decouvertes arcMologiques en Roumanie,
Bucuresti.
Dolgozatok a m. kir. Ferencz J dszef-tudom&nyegyetem
archaeologia int6zet6bol, Szeged.
’E<pr]nepis ’ApxaioXoytKrj, Athens.
'Eurasia septentrionalis antiqua, Helsinki.
Folya Archceologica, Buda-Pest.
Finsht Museum, Helsinki.
Fra Nationalmuseets Arbejdsmark, Copenhagen.
Fornvannen, Stockholm (K. Vitterhets, Historie och Anti-
kvitets Alcademien).
Gallia, Paris.
Rdmisch-germanische Kommission des archaologischen Insti-
tuts des deutschen Reiches.
Izvesiiya Gos. Akademrya Istorii Materialnoi Kultury, Lenin-
grad-Moskva.
Annual Report of London University Institute of Archaeology,
London.
Jakrbuch fur prdhistorische und ethnographische Kunst, Koln.
Institut de Pal6ontologie humaine, MSmoire, Paris.
Iraq, London (British School of Archaeology in Iraq).
355
-
ABBREVIATIONS
JHS.
JNES.
JRAI.
JRSAI.
JSEA.
JST. '
JMV.,
KS.
KSU.
LAAA.
MA.
MAGW.
MAGZ.
Man
Mannus
Mat.
MIA.
MDOG.
MS AN.
MusJ.
Nbl.f.d.V.
NNU.
Not. Sc.
Obzor
OAP.
OIC.
Oudh. Med.
PA.
PDAES.
PGAIMK.
PPS.
PrShisi.
PRIA.
Journal of Hellenic Studies, London (Society for Promotion of
Hellenic Studies).
Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Oriental Institute, Chicago.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, London.
Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland,
Dublin.
Junta superior para excavaciones archeologicas, Madrid.
IJahresschrift fur die Vorgeschichte der sachsich-thuringische
I Lander, continued as
(jahresschrift fur Mitteldeutsche Vorgeschichte, Halle.
Kratkie Soobshcheniya o dokladakh i polevykh issledovaniyakh
Instituta Istorii Materialnoi Kultury, Moskva-Leningrad.
Kratkie Soobsceniya, Arkh, Institut, Ukrainian Academy of
Sciences, Kiev.
Annals of Archceology and Anthropology, Liverpool.
Monumenti Antichi, Rome (Accademia dei Lincei).
Mitteilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien.
Mitteilungen der antiquarischen Gesellschaft in Zurich.
Man, London (Royal Anthropological Institute).
Mannus, Berlin-Leipzig (Gesellschaft fur deutsche Vor-
geschichte).
MaUriaux pour Vhistoire primitive et naturelle de Vhomme,
Paris.
Materialy i Issledovaniya po Arkheolgil SSSR., Institut Istorii
Materialnoi Kultury Akademiya Nauk, Moskva-Leningrad.
Mitteilungen der deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, Berlin.
Memoires de la Soci6t6 des Antiquaires du Nord, Copenhagen.
Museum Journal, Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania
Free Museum).
Nachrichtenblatt fur deutsche Vorzeit, Leipzig.
Nachrichten aus Niedersdchsens Urgeschichte, Hannover.
Noiizie degli Scavi di Antichitd, Rome (Accademia dei Lincei).
Obzor prahistoricky, Praha.
0 Archceologo Portugues, Lisbon.
Oriental Institute, University of CVcngo 'C??v-nunications,
Publications, or Studies in Orientc' (..'' . r: ,\.
Oudheidkundige Mededeelingen uit ’s Rijksmuseum van
Oudheden te Leiden.
Pamdtky archeologiske a mistopisne, Praha.
Proceedings of the Devon Archaeological Exploration Society,
Exeter.
Problemy Istorii Mat. Kult., Leningrad.
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, Cambridge.
Prihistoire, Paris.
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin.
356
ABBREVIATIONS
Przeg.A.
PSAS.
PSEA.
PZ.
RAZ.
Raz. i. Pro.
Rev. Anthr.
Rev. Arch.
Rev. Ec. Anthr.
REG.
Real.
Rev. Gnim.
Rivista
Riv. Sc. Pr.
Riv. St. Lig.
RQS.
SA.
SAC.
SGAIMK.
Slov. Arch.
Slov. Dej.
SM.
SMYA.
St. s. Cere.
Swiatowit
TGIM.
TSA.
UJA.
WA.
WPZ.
ZfE.
Przeglad Archeologiczny, Poznan.
Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Edin-
burgh.
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia, Ipswich
(continued as PPS).
Prcehistorische Zeitschrift, Berlin.
Russ. A ntropologicheskii Zhurnal, Moskva.
Razkopki i Proucvaniya Sofia (Naroden Arkheologiceski
Muzei).
Revue Anthropologique, Paris.
Revue Archeologique, Paris.
R6vue de I’Ecole d’Anthropologie de Paris (continued Rev.
Anthr.).
Revue des Etudes grecques, Paris.
Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte, edited by Max Ebert, Berlin.
Revista Guimaraes, Guimaraes.
Rivista di Antropologia, Rome.
Rivista di Scienze preistoriche, Florence.
Rivista di Studi liguri, Bordighera.
Rivue des Questions scientifiques, Bruxelles.
Sovietskaya Arkheologiya, Moskva-Leningrad.
Sussex Archceological Collections, Lewes.
Soobshcheniya GAIMK., Leningrad.
Slovenskd Archeologia, Bratislava (Slovenskd Akaddmia Vied).
Slovenski Dejiny, Bratislava (Slov. Akad. Vied) 1947.
Suomen Museo, Helsinki.
Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistyksen A ikakauskirja^ Finsha
Fornminnesforeningens Tidskrift, Helsinki.
Studii §i Cercetdri de Istorie Veche, Bucuresti.
Swiatowit, Warsaw.
Trudy Gosudarstvennogo Istoricheskogo Muzeya, Moskva.
Trudy Setksil ArkhelogU RANION, Moskva.
Ulster Journal of Archeology (3rd ser.), Belfast.
Wiadomosci archeologiczne, Warsaw.
Wiener Prahistorische Zeitschrift, Vienna.
Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, Berlin.
357
BOOKS
(Only books mentioned in more than one chapter are mentioned here.)
Aberg, N. Bronzezeitliche und fruheisenzeitliche Chronologie, Stockholm, 1930-5.
Alaca. See Axik and Kosay.
Arilc, Remzi Oguz. Les Fouilhs d'Alaca Hdyuh, Ankara, 1937.
Bagge and Kjellmark. Stendldersboplatserna vid Siretorp i Blehinge (K. Vitter-
hets, Historie och Antikvitets Akademien), Stockholm, 1939.
Bailloud, C„ and Mieg de Boofzheim, P. Les Civilisations neolithiques de la
France, Paris, 1955.
Banner, J. Das Tisza-Maros-Kords-gebeit, Szeged, 1942.
Berciu, D. Arheologia preistoricd a Olteniei, Craiova, 1939.
Bemabo Brea, L. Gli Scavi nella Caverna degli Arene Candide, Bordighera,
1946, 1956.
Blegen, Caskey, et al. Troy, Princeton, 1950, 1951, 1953.
Bohm. J, Kronika Objeveneho Viku, Praha, 1941.
Bosch-Gimpera, P. Etnologia de la Peninsula Iberica, Barcelona, 1932.
Brondsted, J. Damnarks Oldtid, Copenhagen, 1938-9.
Brinton, G. The Badarian Civilization, London, 1928.
Briusov, A. Ocerki po istorii piemen evropaiskoi casti SSSR. v neoliticeshu
epokhu, Moskva, 1952.
Buttler, W. Der donauldndische und dev westische Kulturhreis der jungeren
Steinzeit (Handbnch der Urgeschichte Deutschlands, 2), Berlin, 1938.
Castillo Yurrita, A. del. La Cultura del Vaso campaniforme, Barcelona, 1928.
Caton-Thompson, G. The Desert Fayum, London, 1935.
Childe, V. G. The Danube in Prehistory, Oxford, 1929.
-----New Light on the Most Ancient East, London, 1954.
-----Prehistoric Communities of the British Isles, Edinburgh, 1940.
Clark, G. The Mesolithic Age in Britain, Cambridge, 1932.
-----Prehistoric Europe: the economic basis, London, 1952.
-----The Mesolithic Settlement of Northern Europe, Cambridge, 1936.
Coon, C. S. The Races of Europe, New York, 1939.
Correia, V. El Neolitico de Pavia, Madrid, 1921 (CIPP. Mem. 27).
Ddchelette, J. Manuel d'ArchSologie prehistorique, celtique et gallo-romaine,
Paris, 1908-14.
Ehrich, R. W. (ed.). Relative Chronologies in Old World Archceology, Chicago,
1954-
Engberg and Shipton. "The Chalcolithic Pottery of Megiddo”, Oriental
Institute Studies, 10, Chicago.
Evans, Arthur. The Palace of Minos and Knossos, London, 1921-8.
Forssander, J. E. Die schwedische Bootaxtkultur, Lund, 1933.
-----Der ostskandinavische Norden wdhrend der dltesten Metallzeit Europas,
Lund, 1936 (Skrifter av K. Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet, XXII).
358
BOOKS
Frankfort, H. Studies in the Early Pottery of the Near East, London, 1925-7
(R. Anthrop. Institute, Occasional Papers, 6 and 8).
Garrod, D. The Stone Age of Mount Carmel, I, Oxford, 1937.
Gerasimov, M. M. Vosstanovlenie Litsa po Cerepu, Moskva (Trudy Instit.
Etnografii, XXVIII), 1955
Giffen, A. E. van. Die Bauart der Einzelgraber, Leipzig, 1930 (Mannus-Bibliothek,
44)-
Hancar, F. Urgeschichte Kaukasiens, Vienna, 1937. Das Pferd im prdhistori-
scher und fruher historischer Zeit, Vienna, 1956.
Hawkes, C. F. C. The Prehistoric Foundations of Europe, London, 1940.
Heurtley, A. W. Prehistoric Macedonia, Cambridge, 1939.
Kosay, Hamit Zubeyr. Ausgrabungen von Alaca Hoyuk, Ankara, 1944, Alaca
Hoyuk Kazisi, Ankara, 1951.
Kostrzewski, J. Prehistoria Ziem Polskisch, Poznan, 1948.
Loe, A. de. La Belgique ancienne, Brussels (Mus6es du Cinquantenaire), 1928.
Laviosa-Zambotti, Le piii antiche Culture agricole Europee, Milano, 1943.
Leisner, G. and V., Die M ?7‘'7 . lev iberischen Halbinsel, I., Der Suden.
(Romisch-germaniscl; !' . 0. ,17) Berlin, 1943.
Mac White, Eoin, “Estudios sobre las relaciones atlanticas de la peninsula
hispanica” [Dissertationes Matritenses, II), Madrid, 1951.
Marien, M. E., Oud-Belgie, Antwerp, 1952.
Milojcic, V. Chronologie der jungeren Steinzeit Mittel- und Sudosteuropas,
Berlin, 1949.
Nordmann, C. A. “The Megalithic Culture of Northern Europe”, Helsinki, 1935
(SMYA., XXXIX, 3).
Osten, H. H. van der. The Alishar Huy ilk, Chicago, 1929-37 (Oriental Institute
Publications, XIX-XX, XXVIII-XXX).
Patay, P. “Friihbronzezeitliche Kulturen in Ungam”, Dissertationes Pan-
nonicce, S. II, no. 13) Buda-Pest, 1939.
Pendlebury, A. The Archcsology of Crete, London, 1939.
Pericot, L. Espaiia primitiva e romana (Historia de Espana, I), Madrid, 1947.
-----Los Sepulcros MegaUticos Catalanes y la Cultura Pirenaica, Barcelona, 1950.
Pittioni, R. Urgeschichte des bsterreichischen Raumes, Vienna, 1954.
Schaeffer, C. F. A. Missions en Chypre, Paris, 1936.
-----Stratigraphie comparee de I’Asie occidentale, Oxford, 1948.
Schmidt, E. Excavations at Tepe Hissar, Damghan, Philadelphia, 1937.
Schmidt, R. R. Die Burg VuZedol, Zagreb, 1945.
Sprockhoff, G. Die nordische Megalithkultur (Handbiicher der Urgeschichte
Deutschlands, 3), Berlin, 1938.
?----Die Kulturen der jungeren Steinzeit in der Mark Brandenburg (Vor-
geschichiliche Forschungen, I, 4), Berlin, 1926.
Stocky, A. La Boheme pr&historique, Praha, 1929.
Vaufrey, R. Prehistoire de I'Afrique, I, Maghreb, Paris, 1955.
Wace, A. J. B., and Thompson, M. Prehistoric Thessaly, Cambridge, 1912.
Xanthudides, S. The Vaulted Tombs of the Mesard, Liverpool, 1924.
Zeuner, F. E. Dating the Past, London, 1952.
359
INDEX
Figures where a term is defined are printed in Clarendon type.
Aberg, N., 49, 172
adzes: antler, see axes
copper, 91, 120, 139, 271, 275
shaft-hole, 91, 99, 152
stone, 11, 59, 62, 64, 65, 68, 84, 86, 89,
91, 94, 96, 107, 110, 114, 122, 139,
164, 165, 168, 205, 206, 208, 267,
278, 296, 333
iEolian Islands, 81, 229-35, 237-8, 244,
254, 257, 300
air-photographs, 230-1
Alaca Hoyiik, 35, 38, 44, 54, 95, 152, 237
Alapraia (Portugal), 275, 278
Alcaide (Spain), 285
Alcala (Portugal), 275, 280, 286, 340
Alisar (Turkey), 36, 40, 44, 56, 67, 94, 95,
157, 272
Als6n<hnedi (Hungary), 124, 125
altars (model), 60, 61, 97, 101
Altheim (Bavaria), 296-7, 299
amber, 11, 25, 33, 34, 41, 44, 79, 81, 119,
127, 134, 145, 162, 165, 170, 178,
181, 183, 187, 193, 194, 199, 208,
220, 223, 226, 239, 240, 242, 243,
271, 275, 278, 281, 293, 298, 305,
309, 313, 318, 320, 334, 336, 344
amulets, axe, 17, 19, 234, 235, 254, 260,
274, 313, 319
cranian, 290, 291, 311, 314
hares’ phalange, 244, 287, 291
leg, 16, 69, 313
rabbit, 278
anchor ornaments, 71, 239, 257
Anghelu Ruju (Sardinia), 258-9, 262
animals, models of, 101, 115, 188, 209, 230,
300
see also zoomorphic vases
Antequera (Spain), 274, 281, 285
anthropomorphic vases, 17, 43, 46, 90, 91,
101, 111, 118, 142
Apennine culture, 239, 242, 250, 310
arc-pendants, 244, 296, 305, 313, 318
arcs, clay, 40, 271, 274, 275, 280
areas and sizes of settlements, 27, 37, 41,
46, 48, 60, 74, 81, 106, 113, 137, 231,
235, 249, 270, 282, 292, 299, 304,
313, 333
Arene Candide (Liguria), 6, 244-5, 291
Argaric, see El Argar
Ariu?d, 97, 113, 137, 139, 140, 142-3
armlets, bone, 12, 123
metal, 170, 183, 193, 200
shell, 61, 65, 102, 123, 244, 266, 268,
269
stone, 61, 65, 118, 150, 260, 266, 268,
313, 319
arrow-heads: bone, conical, 11, 206-7
double-pointed, 99, 289
flint, hollow based, 27, 68,118, 150, 197,
224, 227, 233, 234, 248, 272, 275,
278, 280, 290, 297, 299
leaf-shaped, 152, 187, 207, 272, 278,
278, 287, 313, 323, 327
triangular, 99, 122, 139, 260, 289, 305
tanged, 93, 194, 241, 247, 260, 269,
278, 303
tanged-and-barbed, 224, 260, 272,
297, 318, 320, 329
transverse, 9, 12, 27, 118, 180, 184,
187, 191, 207, 241, 247, 267, 269,
272, 278, 304,305, 313,318, 331, 334
arrow-straighteners, 8, 74, 79, 114, 116,
156,163,169,180, 226, 248, 260, 334
art: carvings and painting on stone, 190,
209, 248, 250, 253, 259, 269, 278,
317, 328, 336, 338
naturalistic sculpture, 208, 209
see also animal models, amulets, figur-
ines, anthropomorphic vases, zoo-
morphic vases, mseander, spiral,
Asine (Greece), 50, 67, 71, 74, 81
askoi, 60, 69,70-1, 98,103,104,142,241,256
Atlantic climatic phase, 2, 11, 13, 14, 177,
289
Avebury (England), 331
axes: antler, 8, 14, 37, 44, 74, 86, 90, 99,
110, 119, 121, 139, 191, 194, 203,
289, 305, 313
flint, tranchet, 11-13, 179, 191, 194, 234,
305, 314
polished, 9, 150, 167, 169, 178, 182,
187, 194, 197, 290, 313, 323
stone, polished, 4, 12, 17, 27, 37, 44, 64,
68, 94, 99, 114, 125, 180, 193, 231,
234, 235, 244, 246, 266, 267, 271,
274, 276, 277, 282, 289, 293, 295,
296, 298, 299, 305, 318, 324
perforated, 74, 90, 94, 107, 114, 122,
139, 165, 290, 295, 299, 303
copper, flat, 17, 28, 38, 53, 64, 68, 145,
154, 162, 167, 183, 201, 235, 241,
243, 246, 256, 258, 260, 262, 276,
282, 293, 299, 319, 334
flanged, 38, 130, 246, 319
shaft-hole, 19, 28, 95, 99, 130, 145,
152, 154, 158, 169, 299
bronze, flanged, 130, 132, 241. 248, 249,
256, 262, 282, 297, 313, 319, 334
winged, 83, 243, 250
palstav, 199, 262, 339
socketed, 47, 206, 211, 262
double, 28, 25, 74, 78, 108, 184, 193,
194, 262, 295, 318
shaft-hole, 240
see also adzes, battle-axes
361
INDEX
axe-adzes, 28, 53, 68, 92, 99, 120,121, 139,
152, 157, 158, 262
Azilian culture, 4
Baalburg culture, 193, 196
Baden culture, 92, 124-9, 132, 187, 196,
242, 295
baking plates, 177,178, 293, 305
Banyata (Bulgaria), 84, 94-6, 103
Barkaer (Denmark), 180.
barley, 13, 15, 37, 60, 106, 136, 177, 183,
248, 266, 270, 276, 289, 292, 298,
323, 328, 330
barrows, long, 149, 181, 188, 190, 191, 213,
259, 306, 317, 325
round, 6, 72, 77, 80, 132, 145, 150, 156,
159, 160, 167, 181, 185, 200, 213,
226, 242, 247, 268, 274, 276, 297,
306, 317, 319, 329
basketry models for pots, 60, 62, 112, 115,
116, 118, 184, 187, 190, 192, 193,
227, 266
battle-axes, antler, 121, 123, 146,159, 161,
164
copper, 38, 68 n., 120, 125, 154, 161
stone, 38, 44, 43, 67, 68, 71, 94, 99, 119,
125, 139-54, 159 ff., 160, 169, 179,
182, 187, 226, 242, 247, 291, 295,
330, 318, 334
model, 68, 139, 144, 169
beads, disc, 118, 122, 260, 268, 272
double-axe, 335
hammer, 24, 329, 335
segmented, 34, 128, 132, 147, 167, 199,
239, 280, 282, 283, 309, 320, 336,
339
tortoise, 260, 278, 281, 310
spacer, 79, 81, 135, 181
winged, 54, 156, 254, 297
Beaker culture, 119, 127, 130, 132, 147,
162, 167, 185, 192, 221, 222-8, 234,
247, 258, 261, 272, 276, 278, 279,
307, 309, 318, 329
beans, 106, 270, 289
Becker, C. J., 13, 177, 191, 208, 210
Bell Beaker, see Beaker
binocular vases, 98, 142
birch pitch, 10, 14, 290
bits, bridle, 248
block topped, see particoloured
block vases, 19, 33, 113, 116, 114
boats, 11, 51, 52, 125, 208, 259
boat axes, see battle-axes
Bodrogkeresztur culture, 92, 120-3, 126
Boian culture, 94, 96-8, 143
Boreal climatic phase, 3, 5, 9, 10, 203,
208
Bosch-Gimpera, P., 221
bossed bone plaques, 44, 76, 235, 254
bothroi, 37, 66, 125
bottles, lopsided, 90, 94, 108
bows, reinforced, 10, 211
see also arrow-heads
Brea, L. Bernabd, 229, 237, 244, 257
Brenner Pass, 127, 128, 242, 249, 302
Briusov, A. YA., 11, 147, 171, 210
Brze£d Kujawski (Poland), 123, 144, 146,
180
Bubanj (Yugoslavia), 92, 93, 103
Biiyiik Giilliicek (Turkey), 36, 95
burials: in caves, 4, 5, 17, 23, 226, 240, 241,
242, 250, 258, 266, 278, 307, 311,
312
in short’ cists, 51, 72, 73, 81, 245, 268,
282, 290, 306, 317
in jars, 24, 41, 72, 73, 77, 81, 239, 282
in middens, 6, 7, 12, 87
in settlements, 77, 87, 101, 282, 294, 305
collective, 23, 24, 51, 72, 82, 91,126,165,
182, 185, 188, 198, 219, 226, 233,
235, 241, 242, 254, 266, 268, 270,
306
double, 115, 120, 125, 151, 156, 159 n.,
168, 200, 201, 283, 290
contracted, 5, 6, 23, 101, 118, 125, 131,
145, 159, 160, 166, 168, 226, 245,
246, 259, 269, 290, 293, 297
erect 2Q9
extended, 5, 6, 9, 12, 14, 78, 160, 182,
188, 191, 209, 250, 293
flexed, 5, 112, 115, 125, 241, 246
see also cemeteries, cremation, cists,
gallery graves, passage graves,
roclc-cut tombs, tholoi
of skulls, 4, 102
animals, 124, 167
Butmir (Yugoslavia), 93-4, 242
buttons: shanked, 112, 118, 272
V-perforated, 226, 241, 248, 260, 263,
291, 310, 329
prismatic, 258, 261, 272
Bygholm (Denmark), 183, 186
-
C 14, see radio-carbon
cairns, see barrows
callais, 223, 268, 269, 271, 275, 278, 281,
282, 309, 313, 315, 319
Campigny, le (France), 14, 305
cannibalism, 12, 102, 115, 290
Capo Graziano (Italy), 238, 256
Capsian culture, 7, 268
Cardial ornament, 58, 184, 230, 258, 269,
287, 353
Castelluccio culture, 234-7, 254, 256
Catacomb culture and period, 149, 154-6,
169, 184, 300, 301
cattle (bovids), domestic, 13, 22, 37, 60,
85, 106, 124, 136, 145, 150, 166, 177,
179, 201, 231, 248, 289, 298, 299,
304, 323, 328, 332
causewayed camps, 230, 292, 323, 332
cavalry, 82, 269
caves, inhabited, 4, 6, 85, 110, 265, 308
sepulchral, see burials
celts, see adzes, axes, chisels, gouges
362
INDEX
cemeteries, 24, 27, 41, 48, 72, 115, 118, 120,
123, 125, 131, 132, 144, 149, 164,
166, 168, 204, 209, 226, 235, 239,
246, 250, 258, 270, 274, 290, 298,
301, 312, 337
chamber tombs, see rock-cut tombs
Chamblandes culture, 245, 290
channelled decoration, 32, 96, 125, 278,
306, 310, 317, 324, 326, 353
chariots, 78
Chassean or Chassey culture, 245, 287, 293,
303, 305, 206, 310, 317
chiefs, 37, 67, 78, 90, 119, 125, 144, 150,
151, 156, 162, 165, 170, 188, 200,
201, 209, 262, 281, 312, 320, 334
chisels, socketed bone, 11, 208
metal, 47, 130, 132, 154
chronology, 9, 15, 21, 26, 37, 47, 49, 57, 78,
80, 103, 110, 116, 126, 134, 135,
157, 175, 176, 199, 202, 204, 233,
238, 243, 247, 251, 283, 291, 321,
339, 342
circles round graves, 78, 145, 151, 153, 162,
167, 200
cists, megalithic, 51, 72, 152, 165, 193, 195,
213, 237, 274, 280, 296
see also gallery graves
climate, changes in, 2, 137, 167, 288
collared flasks, 119, 126, 179-184, 190, 196,
315
combs, bone, 12, 44, 91, 272
antler bunched, 293, 324
wood, 289
comb-ornament, 109, 140, 163, 170, 204,
224, 332
Conco d’Oro culture, 234, 238, 241
Conguel (Brittany), 317, 326
copper ores, 48, 121, 127, 220, 257, 270,
276, 298, 307, 322, 336
copper trinkets, etc., 97, 113,122, 142,164,
167, 168, 180, 194, 198, 283, 290,
313
see also adzes, axes, battle-axes, daggers,
etc*
corbelling,' 23, 27, 51, 78, 80, 213, 254, 270,
307, 311, 316, 319, 327, 328
cord ornament, 71, 96, 109, 133, 145, 151,
156, 159, 160, 164, 166, 168, 179,
184, 226, 297, 309, 318, 326, 330,
332, 340
core axes, see tranchet
Cortaillod culture, 191, 244-5, 287, 288-90.
294, 303, 311, 342
cranial deformation, 156
cranian amulets, see amulets
cremation, 12, 46, 72, 109, 115, 117, 126,
165, 167, 226, 239, 256, 259, 294,
301, 306, 311, 317, 319, 325, 326,
328. 329, 337
crescentic necklaces, 79, 81, 200, 336,
338
crusted ware, 72, 91, 112, 114, 116, 125,
231, 353
Cucuteni (Romania), 136-9, 140
cursus, 317, 325
daggers, flint, 168, 184,197, 224, 246, 247,
330
metal: bronze-hilted, 130, 198, 202, 248,
298
ogival, 29, 73, 298, 334
Peschiera, 83, 243, 250
rhomboid, 297, 299
round-heeled, 79, 130, 167, 200, 228,
243, 248, 262, 264, 320, 330, 334
tanged, 36, 38, 52, 120, 154, 165, 241,
247, 320
triangular, 29, 53, 61, 235, 241, 256
unifacial, 145, 183, 271, 275, 308, 340
West European, 130, 224, 246, 258, 260,
279, 308, 318, 329
Deer Island, see Olenil Ostrovo
Dendra (Greece), 80
depas, 43, 69
diadems, 53, 283
Diana style, 233, 241, 255
Dimini culture, 63-4, 98, 112
disks, metal, bossed, 123, 143, 202, 262
amber, gold-bound, 33, 334, 336
dogs, 3, 11, 203, 208
dolmens, 181, 190, 215, 221, 269
double-axes, 25, 74, 78, 108, 184, 193, 194,
202, 262, 318
see also ingot axes
dove pendants, 25, 78, 115, 264
dolmens, 181, 190, 215, 221, 269
drill-bits, 154, 157
drums, 196
duck-vases, see zoomorphic vases
earrings, 44, 129, 278, 283, 329
earthquakes, 27, 47
El Argar (Spain), 282, 340
El Garcel (Spain), 267, 268, 283
emery, 48
Ertebolle culture, 12, 166, 177, 179, 192
Eutresis (Greece), 50, 51, 57, 68, 69, 71,
74, 76
Evans, Arthur, 21, 23, 33, 238
excised decoration, 54, 69, 94, 97, 100,
242, 300, 310, 353
face-urns, 17, 43, 46, 90, 118, 231
see also zoomorphic vases
family likeness between skeletons, 82, 219
Fatyanovo culture, 154, 168-70, 211
fayence, 25, 33, 128, 132, 147, 150, 167,
199, 238, 239, 256, 282, 298, 309,
320, 336, 339
fibulae, 83, 135, 240, 243, 250
figurines: female, clay, 17, 35, 39, 58, 61,
65, 73, 84, 87, 91, 93, 100, 112, 117,
142, 145, 244, 256, 301, 305
bone, 101, 209, 274, 278
ivory, 274
gold, 101
363
INDEX
figurines: female, stone, 25, 39, 46, 49, 51,
69, 101, 254, 260, 268, 274, 278, 280,
325
male, 73, 101, 142, 209
filagree, 41, 154
fish-hooks, 10, 12, 37, 89, 110, 137, 206,
207
fish-traps, see weels
flake axes, see axes, tranchet
flax, 106, 108, 183, 270, 289
fluted decoration, 65, 91, 103, 140, 353
Fontbouisse (France), 308, 310
forecourts, 818, 236, 253, 259, 263, 274,
275, 325, 326, 327
forests, 1, 9, 148, 159, 177, 178
Forssander, E. J., 172, 195
Fort Harrouard (France), 304-6
fortifications, 37, 41, 46, 48, 56, 63, 67, 78,
82, 112, 118, 124, 137, 147, 230,
231, 238, 239, 249, 264, 270, 382,
291, 299, 301, 303, 304, 306, 308,
323
Fosna culture, 11
fruitstands, 17, 36, 64, 97, 111, 122, 142,
184, 186, 190, 235, 279
frying pans, 50, 52, 54, 69
funerary goddess, 236, 249, 278, 311, 313,
314, 318, 328
funnel beakers, 13, 152, 158, 166, 176,
186, 190, 340
Gali6 (Russia), 170
gallery graves, 190, 196, 198, 214, 215, 221,
226, 240, 263, 296, 306, 312, 314,
316, 318, 340
see also cists
GaraSanin, 84, 87, 89
girdle clasps, 131, 194
Globular Amphorae, 154, 158, 194-6
goats, 13, 22, 37, 106, 136, 150, 177, 248,
OQQ 90ft OOO
gold, 25, 41, 64,' 68, 70, 122, 128, 133, 142,
198, 200, 220, 223, 238, 270, 278,
283, 309, 315, 319, 322, 329, 334,
344
Goldberg (Germany), 295, 296, 299, 301
gouges, copper, 74, 154
stone, 160, 183, 208, 267
see also drill-bits
gourd models for pots, 39, 108, 110
granaries, 67, 118, 231, 267
Grand Pressigny flint, 207, 305, 306, 313,
318, 319
graphite painting, 97, 100, 103
Gudenaa culture, 13
Gumelni^a culture, 63, 96, 98-102, 143
Haba3e§ti (Romania), 137, 139, 140, 142,
143
Hagia Marina (Greece), 60, 61, 71
Hagios Kosmas (Greece), 67, 69, 72, 280
Hagios Mamas (Macedonia), 68, 71, 155
halberds, flint, 277
metal, 56, 130, 183, 201, 202, 243, 246,
282, 334, 337
hammers, metal, 29, 56
see also battle-axes; axes, perforated
stone
handles to pots: animal, 232
axe, 240, 242, 245, 255, 310
elbowed, 249
flanged, 17, 39, 70, 125,187
horned, 75, 94, 249
nose-bridge, 17, 234, 247, 249, 255, 260
thrust, 39, 66, 95
tunnel, 234, 255, 258, 300
wishbone, 17, 70, 76
see also lugs, subcutaneous
1' , see amulets
1 ? 13, 89, 98, 111, 150, 166,
203, 289
Hawkes, C. F. C„ 281, 320
Hawkes, J., 317
hearses, 124, 125, 151
Helena, 307, 309, 310
helmets, 30, 79, 82, 132, 262
Hemp, W. J., 218, 264
Hencken, H. O., 132
henges, 317, 325, 332, 339
herring-bone masonry, 37, 66
Heurtley, W. J., 65, 76
Hissar, Tepe (Persia), 20, 77, 123, 154, 157
Hlubokd Masovky (Moravia), 113
hoards, 31, 44, 98, 109, 121, 128, 170, 198,
199, 202, 208, 211, 243, 249, 262,
293, 339
hoes, antler, 289
see also mattocks
Horgen culture, 198, 221, 263, 295-7, 310,
314, 334
horses, 46, 67, 71, 78, 79, 124, 136, 145,
150, 158, 187, 201, 235, 248, 293,
298, 299, 328
see also cavalry
houses: curvilinear, 22, 24, 67, 183, 238,
239, 249, 262, 267, 305, 308
rectilinear, 17, 26, 37, 46, 60, 63, 67, 74,
85, 89, 94, 96, 102, 106, 132, 137,
165, 180, 183, 192, 239, 282, 292,
296, 308, 323, 333
model, 60, 102, 111, 113, 138, 301
human feet to vases, 39, 97, 111, 232
Huns' Beds, 188, 192
Indo-Europeans, 27, 46, 77, 123, 127, 172,
190, 195
ingot-axes, 199, 318
torques, 125, 128-9, 133, 248, 249, 298,
301
iron, 28, 206, 264
ivory, 29, 33, 109, 271, 278
jet, 226, 271, 275, 281, 338
Jordanova culture, 103, 123, 167, 196
Jordansmuhl (Poland), see Jordanova
jugs with cut-away necks, 89, 52, 66, 263
364
INDEX
Kakovatos (Greece), 80, 336, 339
Karanovo (Bulgaria), 84, 87, 94, 104
Khirospilia, see Levkas
kilns, potters’, 32, 43, 46, 62, 73, 74, 139
Kisapostag culture, 130, 132, 298
knives, boars’ tusk, 11, 208
Knossos (Crete), 17, 21, 26, 27, 33, 77, 81,
127, 336
Koln-Lindental (Germany), 106, 118
KolomisSina (Ukraine), 142
Koros culture, see Starievo
Kossinna, G., 172, 190, 195
Krazi (Crete), 23, 24, 51, 280
Krifievskii, E., 139, 147, 173
Kuban culture, 151-5,157,158,165,195,200
Kum Tepe (Turkey), 36, 65, 92, 116
Kuyavish graves, 188-9, 191, 195, 325
ladles, clay, 17, 96
socketed, 100, 114, 184, 186, 190, 244
Lagazzi (N. Italy), 248-9
Lagozza culture, 245, 249, 287
Laibach, see Ljubljansko
lake-dwellings, 165, 247, 248, 288, 299,
291, 295
lamps, cross-footed, see quatrefoil footed
lapis lazuli, 41, 152
lead, 25, 38, 41, 51, 68, 307, 308
leather models for pots, 39, 194, 266, 267,
287, 290, 293, 303, 305, 324
see also aslcoi
Ledro, Lago di (Italy), 248-9
Leeds, E. T„ 221
leisters (fish-spears), 9, 14, 206
Lengyel culture, 92,112-5, 123
Lerna (Greece), 67, 76, 235, 237, 254
Leubingen (Germany), 200
Levkas (Greece), 58, 69, 71, 72, 73, 76, 77
Lipari, see Aeolian Islands
Litorina Sea, 2, 204
Ljubljansko Blatt (Yugoslavia), 299
lock-rings, 44, 129, 150, 200
loom-weights, 40, 86, 96
Los MiUares (Spain), 218, 256, 270-4, 285,
306, 308, 329, 340
lugs, animal-head, 23, 64, 108
trumpet, 17, 39, 65, 66, 71, 96, 125, 233,
306, 324
see also subcutaneous string-holes,
handles
lunates, see microliths
lunulse, 247, 285, 338
Lyngby (Denmark), 7
mace-heads, cushion, 331
disk, 109, 118, 184
knobbed, 122, 139, 150
rhomboid, 207
spheroid, 10, 17, 19, 38, 99, 114, 164,
260, 266, 299
spiked, 10, 164, 208
maeander patterns, 64, 96, 98, 108, 122,
231, 242
Maglemose culture, 10-12, 116, 206, 210
Maikop (S. Russia), 151-3, 157
Marinatos, S., 24
Mariupol (Ukraine), 149, 150
Matera (S. Italy), 232
mattocks, see axes, antler
megalithic tombs, see cists, dolmens,
gallery graves, passage graves
megaton houses, 41, 63, 183
Michelsberg culture, 118, 191, 290, 291-5,
306
microliths, 4, 5, 6, 9,10, 11, 13, 96, 98, 148,
150, 152, 245, 266, 267, 269, 276
see also arrow-heads, transverse
Mikhailovka (Ukraine), 147
Mikhalic (Bulgaria), 66, 68, 69, 71, 95
Mikov, V., 94, 96
Milazzo (Sicily), 239
millet, 85, 96, 136, 150, 223, 248
Milojfiid, V., 66, 84, 87, 89, 90, 92
mines, copper, 123, 128, 247, 282, 298, 302
flint, 183, 187, 235, 293, 324, 331
Minyan ware, 46, 47, 56, 73, 75, 77, 78, 79,
92 n.
models, see animals, basketry, altars,
gourds, houses, leather, wooden
Molfetta (S. Italy), 230-2, 234
Mondsee (Austria), 247, 299
Monte Bradoni (C. Italy), 241, 246
Montelius, O., 175, 185, 198, 221, 339
moulds (for casting metal), 38, 74, 83, 123,
128, 223, 249, 299
Mycenae (Greece), 29, 33, 73, 78, 127, 135,
150, 190, 218, 219, 239, 243, 250,
256, 336, 339
Natufians, 15, 23, 54, 150
Nestor, I., 142
nets (fishing), 10, 85, 110, 111, 137, 207,
289
Nezviska (Ukraine), 110, 136, 143, 144
Northsealand, 2, 13
Novosvobodnaya (Russia), 153-4,157,195
nuraghe, 262
Obermaier, H., 221
obsidian, 17, 27, 41, 48, 56, 68, 74, 76, 87,
91, 110, 113, 122, 139, 229, 231,
234, 238, 244, 245, 254, 257
ochre, red, in graves, 6, 209, 254, 259
ochre graves, 103, 168
oculi motive, 185, 271
Oder culture, 167-8, 198
Ofnet (Germany), 4
Olenix Ostrovo (N. Russia), 150, 204, 209
olives, 22, 267
Olynthos (Macedonia), 112
Orchomenos (Greece), 69, 73
Orsi, P„ 229, 239
orthostats, 213
Ossam (Austria), 124
ostrich eggs, 271
365
INDEX
Otzaki (Greece), 58
ovens, 37, 46, 85, 89, 137, 292, 293
ovoid vases, 151, 158, 167, 204, 210, 324
paddles, 11, 208
Paestum (Italy), 241, 256, 279
palaces, 21, 26, 37, 56, 67
palettes, 19, 53, 69
Palmella (Portugal), 223, 275, 329
Pantalica (Sicily), 240
Paris cists, 312
see gallery graves
parti-coloured pottery, 58, 65, 90, 353
passage graves, 182, 185, 193, 214, 226,
242, 269, 276, 307, 316, 328
see also tholoi, rock-cut tombs
Passek, T., 136, 147
peas, 106, 289
P&el, see Baden
Peet, T. E., 229, 240
pedestailed bowls, see fruitstands
Pericot, L., 269, 307, 309
peristalith, 181, 218
see also circles round graves
Perj&mos culture, 130, 134
Pescale (Italy), 301
Peterborough ware, 324, 332
phalli, 25, 41, 46,101, 142, 325
Phylakopi (Greece), 48, 56, 75, 81
Piggott, S., 320, 323, 324, 331
pigs, 22, 37, 85, 106, 136, 145, 150, 166,
177, 195, 201, 203, 231, 248, 289,
298, 299, 304, 323
pins: bird headed, 50, 53
bulb headed, 309
Bohemian eyelet, 132, 200, 201, 248, 298
crutch headed, 193, 297
cylinder headed, 272, 274, 278, 338
double-spiral headed, 2, 44, 50, 53, 69, 98
hammer headed, 44, 76, 151, 154, 157,
165, 166, 169, 173, 183, 186, 247
knot headed, 44, 45, 129, 132, 139, 144,
201, 298
racket headed, 129, 298, 309
trefoil headed, 298, 309
with lateral loops, 331, 334
see also fibulae
piracy, 48, 61, 238
pit caves, 27, 51, 72, 91, 156, 167, 234, 241,
301
pit-comb ware, 204-210, 332
pithos burials, see burial in jars
pit ornament, 185, 204, 324
Pittioni, R„ 125, 126, 247
Plocnik (Yugoslavia), 90, 91
ploSHadki, 137
ploughs, 187, 248
points, slotted bone, 5, 10, 207
Polada (N. Italy), 246
Poliochni (Lemnos), 36, 37, 41
pollen-analysis, 1, 13, 178, 186, 206, 210,
288
polypod bowls, 309, 337
population density, see areas, cemeteries
portals, dummy, 23, 51, 72, 326
porthole slabs, 152, 158,165,190,195, 198,
217, 237, 240, 254, 259, 273, 274,
278, 313, 314, 318, 326
Postoloprty (Bohemia), 106, 132
Puglisi, 233, 240, 307
Punto del Tonno (Italy), 243, 251
pyxides, 19, 39, 54, 66, 122, 241, 272
quadrilobate vases, see square-mouthed
quatrefoil lipped cantharoi, 33, 132, 135
quatrefoil footed bowls, 86, 156, 300
querns, 85, 108, 138, 231, 254, 266, 267
races: brachycranial, 4, 6, 72, 102, 126,
156, 227, 241, 247, 260, 279, 283,
314, 329
dolichocranial, 72, 109, 126, 171, 241,
247, 260, 283, 290, 294, 314
Lapponoid, 158, 171, 203, 209
Mongoloid, 203, 209
radio carbon dates, 9,15, 36, 109, 162, 177,
269, 281, 342
rapiers, 29, 72, 79, 82, 238, 339
rattles, 112
razors, 32, 240, 243, 250
red-slipped ware, 44, 90, 276
Remedello culture, 246-8
ribbon decoration, 17, 93, 116, 122, 242
Rinaldone culture, 126, 231, 241, 301
ring pendants, 44, 64, 91, 98, 194, 198
rings: bone, 111
stone, 260, 313
Rinyo-Clacton culture, 332-4
rivets, silver, 29, 282
lead, 38
rock-cut tombs, 24, 27, 51, 72, 78, 82, 91,
213, 215, 226, 233, 236, 239, 240,
241, 254, 258, 263, 274, 275, 281,
285, 312
see also pit-caves
rock engravings, see art
Rdssen culture, 113, 117-8, 187, 190, 290,
291, 295, 304, 315
Rouzic, Z. le, 317, 319
rural economy, 58, 86, 105-6, 136, 177-8,
295, 302, 330
rusticated ornament, 58, 64, 86, 100, 108,
230, 305, 353
sacrifices, see votive offerings
Saflund, G., 249, 250
Salcu^a culture, 91, 102-3
Saale-Warta culture, 200-2, 320, 335
“salt cellars’1, 234, 241
sandals, 274, 278
Sangmeister, 106, 108, 109
sati, see burials, double
sauceboats, 52, 70, 93
saws, 29, 74, 271, 275, 276, 282
sceptre-heads, 103, 142, 158
366
INDEX
Schachermeyr, 112
Schliemann, H., 36, 78
Schussenried style, 293, 303
scratched ornament, 231, 244, 263, 303
sea mammals, 12, 203
seals: cylinder, 36, 44, 50, 111
stamp, clay, 36, 46, 61, 87, 88, 98, 112,
142, 232, 233, 244
stone, 25, 60
seals, see sea mammals
segmented cists, 215, 226, 240, 306, 326
Seima (N.E. Russia), 170, 212
semicircle pattern, 32, 258, 260, 290, 310,
317, 326, 340
septal stones, 215, 307
Serra d’Alto (S. Italy), 232
Servia (Macedonia), 65, 92
Sesklo culture, 58, 63, 73, 88
shaft graves, 27, 51, 56, 78, 150
Shaft Graves, see Mycenae
sheep, 7, 13, 15, 37, 85, 88 n., 106, 124, 136,
145, 150, 152, 177, 179, 201, 231,
248, 269, 289, 299, 323, 328, 332
sickles, flint armed, 27, 38, 68, 85, 108, 154,
167, 197, 231, 248, 266, 267, 299
metal, 29, 47, 135, 243, 248, 250
silver, 25, 33, 41, 51, 53, 68, 75, 146, 152,
247, 256, 257, 260, 270, 283, 320
Siret, L., 267, 270, 280
Skara Brae (Orkney), see Rinyo
skis, 208
sledges, 11, 208
sleeves for celts, antler, 4, 11, 64, 74, 86,
96, 164, 247, 288, 293, 296, 297, 299,
303 313 333
sling, use of the, 35, 38, 60, 65, 68, 84, 85,
94, 156, 230, 299
slotted bone points, see points
smelting, 68, 270, 276, 298, 299
sockets, see axes, chisels, spear-heads
SOM. (Seine-Oise-Marne) culture, 214,
312-15
spatulae, bone, 60, 85, 108, 110, 266
spear-heads, metal: Helladic, 73, 79
hook-tanged, 44, 53
socketed, 30, 132, 199, 336
tanged, 334
spectacle spirals, 123, 235
Spiennes (Belgium), 293
spindle whorls, 39, 86, 96, 125, 267, 305
spiral patterns, 32, 49, 52, 54, 64, 65, 73,
78, 87, 93, 94, 96, 98, 108, 111, 115,
142, 156, 231, 236, 242, 245, 253,
256, 328, 333
splay-footed vases, 198, 263, 296, 313, 314,
318
Spondylus shell, 61, 65, 87, 91, 97, 102,
109, 113, 123, 125, 244, 254
spools, 39, 86, 125
spouts to vases, 17, 19, 24, 43, 90, 111, 112,
233
-
square-mouthed vases, 232, 244, 245, 269
stamps, clay, see seals
Starcevo culture, 64, 85-8, 90, 108, 110,
136, 144, 156
statue menhirs, 250, 254, 256, 311, 312
stelae, 40, 78, 145, 150, 236
see also statue menhirs
Stentinello culture, 230-1, 233, 236, 253
Stonehenge, 331, 336, 342
Straubing (Bavaria), 130, 298
stroke-burnished decoration, 32, 36, 65,
91, 274, 278, 280
Sub-Boreal climatic phase, 2, 3, 207, 289
subcutaneous handles, 125, 231, 234, 242,
254
see also tunnel handles
Sulimirski, T., 173
suttee, English for sati, q.v.
Swiderian culture, 3, 116, 207
swords, 30, 82, 243, 250, 282, 336
Szoreg (Hungary), 131, 132
Tangaru (Romania), 96, 98
tankards, 69, 70, 76, 90, 103, 122, 132,
186, 235
Tardenoisean cultures, 5, 116, 266
teapots, 19, 95
tells, 17, 35, 36, 57, 58, 60, 85, 93, 94, 96,
89, 131, 240, 243, 248, 249, 293
temples, 217, 251, 252
terremare, 248
Teviec (France), 6, 306
Thapsos culture, 238-40, 257
Thermi (Lesbos), 36, 37-41, 49, 71, 130
tholoi, 23, 80, 215, 226, 273, 280, 375
see also corbelling, passage graves
thrones, model, 61, 91
tiles, 67
tin, 27, 38, 41, 51, 74, 83, 128, 241, 282,
308, 315, 322, 336, 344
tinetip pendants, 290, 303
Tiszapolg&r (Hungary), 120, 144
toggles, 272, 280
Tomaszdw culture, 167
Tordos (Transylvania), 89, 97, 98
Torque-bearers, 127, 129, 134, 301
Toszeg (Hungary), 130
totems, 8, 170
trade, 5, 17, 26, 38, 41, 46, 47, 49, 67, 69,
76, 80, 91, 97, 98,108,112,119, 125,
131, 139, 146, 185, 187, 195, 208,
223, 229, 234, 235, 242, 246, 254,
271, 278, 282, 293, 299, 309, 319,
336
transgressions of the sea, 2, 3, 5, 11, 182,
332, 334
Trapeza ware, 17, 19, 231
trepanation, 78, 118, 165, 227, 311, 314
trephining, see trepanation
Tripolye culture, 136-144, 147, 210
Troels-Smith, 13, 177, 191, 295
Traldebjerg (Denmark), 183
Troy, 36-47, 98, 129, 157, 235, 254, 272
tubes, bone, 38, 54, 69
tweezers, 19, 32, 53
367
INDEX
TJnStician culture, 30, 132-5, 170, 199, 249,
283, 339, 342
Urfimis, 65, 69, 90
urnfields, 46, 103, 126, 132, 162, 167, 239,
250, 339
Usatova culture, 144-7, 158, 167
Vapheio cups, 33
vase supports, 393-4, 317
vases: ivory, 272
metal, 33, 42, 70, 75, 152, 238, 334
stone, 19, 25, 32, 60, 91, 152, 272, 275,
334
Vaufrey, R„ 268, 269
Vidra (Romania), 96, 98-104, 112, 143
Vila Nova de San Pedro (Portugal), 276,
278 279
Villafrati (Sicily), 258
Vinfia (Yugoslavia), 66, 84, 88-94, 100-1
110, 112, 126
Veselinovo (Bulgaria), 94-6, 104
Vogt, E., 288, 295, 298
votive deposits in bogs, 8, 177, 178, 185,
188
Vouga, P., 288, 289, 298
VuCedol (Yugoslavia), 91, 124, 156, 242,
299-301
Waltemienburg culture, 184, 193
wedges, antler, 4, 208
see also chisels
weels, 11, 14, 289
Weinberg, S., 54, 66
wheats: one-corn, 15, 37, 85, 94, 96, 106,
124, 136, 177, 183, 248, 289, 291,
292, 323, 328
emmer, 13, 15, 94, 96, 106, 124, 136, 177,
183, 248, 270, 289, 292, 323
hexaploid, 13, 106, 136, 177, 270, 276,
289 292
wheel, potters’, 26, 42, 46, 56, 75
wheeled vehicles, 26, 78,124, 126, 151, 154,
156, 158, 187, 190, 249
Windmill Hill culture, 323-5
wooden models for pots, 54, 75, 95, 198,
242, 249, 283, 300, 309, 337
wrist-guards, 99, 162, 168, 225, 309, 318,
330
writing, 26, 27, 77, 239, 262
Xanthudides, 5, 23
Yamno graves, 149,150-1, 157, 158, 79
Yessen, 149, 151, 154
Yortan (Turkey), 36, 38, 65
yokes, 187, 289
zinc, 139
Zlota (Poland), 112, 166
zoomorphic vases, 43, 50, 91, 115, 142, 301
see also askoi
Ziischen (Hesse), 190
Zygouries (Greece), 50, 69
368
THE HISTORY OF
CIVILIZATION
PREHISTORY AND ANTIQUITY
The Earth Before History: Man’s Origin and the Origin of Life. By
Edmond Perrier, late Hon. Director of the Natural History Museum
of France. With four maps. £i 3s.
Language: a Linguistic Introduction to History. By J. Yendryes,
Professor in the University of Paris. £1 10s.
The Dawn of European Civilization. By V. Gordon Childe, D.Litt.,
D.Sc., Professor of Prehistoric Europeon Archaeology, University of
London. New edition, revised and enlarged. With 159 illustrations
and five maps. £z zs.
From Tribe to Empire: Social Organization among the Primitives and
in the Ancient East. By A. Moret, Professor in the University of
Paris, and G. Davy, University of Dijon. With 47 illustrations and
seven maps. £1 5 s.
EARLY EMPIRES
Israel, from its Beginnings to the Middle of the Eighth Century. By A.
Lods, Professor at the Sorbonne. With 16 plates, three maps, and 38
text illustrations. £1 15s. 8
The Prophets and the Rise of Judaism. By A. Lods, Professor at the
Sorbonne. With eight plates. £1 10s.
GREECE
The Greek City, and its Institutions. By G. Glotz, Professor of Greek
History in the University of Paris. £1 10s.
ROME
Primitive Italy, and the Beginnings of Roman Imperialism. By Leon
Homo, Professor in the University of Lyons. With 13 maps and
plans. £1 8s.
The Roman Spirit in Religion, Thought and Art. By A. Grenier, Pro-
fessor in the University of Strasburg. With 16 plates, and 16 text
illustrations. £1 8 s.
Rome the Law-Giver. By J. Declareuil, Professor in the University of
Toulouse. £i 8s.
The Economic Life of the Ancient World. By J. Toutain, Director
at L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes. With six maps, £i ios.
BEYOND THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Chinese Civilisation. By Marcel Granet, Professor at the School of
Oriental Languages, Paris. With 12 plates and 5 maps. £1 15s.
The Life of Buddha, as Legend and History. By E. J. Thomas, D.Litt.,
Under Librarian in the University Library, Cambridge. With four
plates. £1 12s.
A History of Buddhist Thought. By E. J. Thomas, D.Litt. With four
plates. £1 1os.
Ancient India and Indian Civilization. By P. Masson-Oursel, H. de
Willman-Grabowska, and P. Stern. With five maps, 16 plates and
24 black and white illustrations. £1 12s.
CHRISTIANITY AND THE MIDDLE AGES
Life and Work in Medieval Europe, Y-XV Century. By P. Boissonnade,
Professor in the University of Poitiers.* Introduction by Eileen
Power, D.Litt. With eight plates. £1 ios.
Travel and Travellers of the Middle Ages. Edited by A. P. Newton,
Rhodes Professor of Imperial History in the University of London.
With eight plates and maps. £1 5s.
Chivalry : its Historical Significance and Civilizing Influence. Edited by
Edgar Prestage, Camoens Professor in the University of London.
With 24 plates. £1 3 s.
The End of the Ancient World, and the Beginnings of the Middle Ages.
By Ferdinand Lot, Professor in the University of Paris. With three
plates and three maps. £1 12s.
The Feudal Monarchy in France, and England from the Tenth to the
Thirteenth Century. By Ch. Petit-Dutaillis, Member of LTnstitut de
France. With 2 maps. £1 8s.
The Jewish World in the Time of Jesus. By Charles Guignebert,
Professor of the History of Christianity at the Sorbonne. £1 4s.