Chapter-6 Indus Valley Civilization

97 Pages·2011·5.13 MB·English

Revised Edition: 2016
ISBN 978-1-283-50922-0
© All rights reserved.
Published by:
The English Press
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Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - Beaker Culture
Chapter 2 - Urnfield Culture
Chapter 3 - Hallstatt Culture and Srubna Culture
Chapter 4 - Nordic Bronze Age and Atlantic Bronze Age
Chapter 5 - Aegean Civilizations and Famous Bronze Age Cultures
Chapter 6 - Indus Valley Civilization
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Chapter-1
Beaker Culture

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Approximate extent of Beaker usage
The Bell-Beaker culture (sometimes shortened to Beaker culture, Beaker people, or
Beaker folk; German: Glockenbecherkultur), ca. 2400 – 1800 BC, is the term for a
widely scattered cultural phenomenon of prehistoric western Europe starting in the late
Neolithic or Chalcolithic running into the early Bronze Age. The term was coined by
John Abercromby, based on their distinctive pottery drinking vessels.
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Pottery
Beaker culture is defined by the common use of a pottery style — a beaker with a
distinctive inverted bell-shaped profile found across the western part of Europe during the
late 3rd millennium BC. The pottery is well-made, usually red or red-brown in colour,
and ornamented with horizontal bands of incised, excised or impressed patterns. The
early Bell Beakers have been described as "International" in style, as they are found in all
areas of the Bell Beaker culture. These include cord-impressed types, such as the "All
Over Corded" (or "All Over Ornamented"), and the "Maritime" type, decorated with
bands filled with impressions made with a comb or cord. Later characteristic regional
styles developed.
It has been suggested that the beakers were designed for the consumption of alcohol and
that the introduction of the substance to Europe may have fuelled the beakers' spread.
Beer and mead content have been identified from certain examples. However, not all
Beakers were drinking cups. Some were used as reduction pots to smelt copper ores,
others have some organic residues associated with food, and still others were employed
as funerary urns.
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Possible pottery precursors
Until recently, early Bell Beakers of the All Over Ornamented (AOO) type were thought
to have developed from Corded Ware ceramics of the northern parts of Central and
Eastern Europe, such as the Protruding Foot Beaker (PFB), a type of late Neolithic (2850-
2450 BC) vessel found in the Netherlands and lower Rhine Valley, that were typically
ornamented with cord impressed decoration mixed with comb impressions and
herringbone-style incisions. However Bell Beakers have now been radiocarbon dated to
2900 to 1800/1700 BC, which would make them contemporary with Corded Ware.
Origin
Many theories of the origins of the Bell Beakers have been put forward and subsequently
challenged. Lanting and Van der Waals proposed a chronology for the development of
Bell Beakers from the Corded Ware forms and Funnelbeaker culture (TRB) antecedents,
which was generally accepted for decades. Bell Beaker has been suggested as a candidate
for an early Indo-European culture, more specifically, an ancestral proto-Celtic or proto-
Italic or Italo-Celtic culture.
This can be excluded by a recent overview of all available sources from southern
Germany concluded that the Bell Beaker Culture was a new and independent culture in
that area, contemporary with the Corded Ware Culture. This conclusion was supported by
a review of radiocarbon dates for Bell Beaker across Europe, which showed that the
earliest dates for Bell Beaker were 2900 BC in Portugal, Southern France and Northern
Italy. This makes the style contemporary with Corded Ware, but beginning in a different
region of Europe.
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Beaker culture objects
Migration vs. acculturation
Given the unusual form and fabric of Beaker pottery, and its abrupt appearance in the
archaeological record, along with a characteristic group of other artefacts, known as the
Bell Beaker "package", the traditional explanation for the Beaker culture has been to
interpret it as a diffusion of one group of people across Europe. However British and
American archaeology since the 1960s has been sceptical about prehistoric migration in
general, so the idea of "Bell Beaker Folk" lost ground. Neither Mallory nor Anthony
proposed mass migrations.
Noting the distribution of Beakers was highest in areas of transport routes, including
fording sites, river valleys and mountain passes, it was suggested that Beaker 'folk' were
originally bronze traders, who subsequently settled within local Neolithic or early
Chalcolithic cultures creating local styles. Close analysis of the bronze tools associated
with beaker use suggests an early Iberian source for the copper, followed subsequently by
Central European and Bohemian ores.
Many archaeologists believe that the Beaker 'people' did not exist as a group, and that the
beakers and other new artefacts and practices found across Europe at the time that are
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attributed to the Beaker people are indicative of the development of particular manu-
facturing skills. This new knowledge may have come about by any combination of
population movements and cultural contact. An example might be as part of a prestige
cult related to the production and consumption of beer, or trading links such as those
demonstrated by finds made along the seaways of Atlantic Europe. Palynological studies
of pollen analysis conducted, associated with the spread of beakers certainly suggests
increased growing of barley, which may be associated with beer brewing.
A theory of cultural contact de-emphasizing population movement or "invasions" was
presented by Colin Burgess and Steven Shennan in the mid 1970s, and it is now common
to see the Beaker culture as a 'package' of knowledge (including religious beliefs and
copper, bronze and gold working) and artefacts (including copper daggers, v-perforated
buttons and stone wrist-guards) adopted and adapted by the indigenous peoples of Europe
to varying degrees.
Investigations in the Mediterranean and France recently questioned the nature of the
phenomenon. Instead of being pictured as a fashion or a simple diffusion of objects and
their use, the investigation of over 300 sites showed that human groups actually moved in
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a process that involved explorations, contacts, settlement, diffusions and acculturation/
assimilation. Some elements show the influence from the north and east, and other
elements reveal the south-east of France to be an important cross road on an important
route of communication and exchange spreading north. A distinctive barbed wire element
is thought to have migrated through central Italy first. The pattern of movements was
diverse and complicated, along the Atlantic coast and the northern Mediterranean coast,
and sometimes also far inland. The prominent central role of Portugal in the region and
the quality of the pottery all across Europe are forwarded as arguments to a new
interpretation that denies an ideological dimension.
A Strontium isotope analysis of 86 people from Bell Beaker graves in Bavaria suggests
that between 18-25% of all graves were occupied by people who came from a
considerable distance outside the area. This was true of children as well as adults,
indicative of some significant migration wave. Given the similarities with readings from
people living on loess soils, the general direction of the local movement according to
Price et al., is from the northeast to the southwest.
Physical anthropology
Historical craniometric studies found that the Beaker people appeared to be of a different
physical type than those earlier populations in the same geographic areas. They were
described as tall, heavy boned and brachycephalic. The early studies on the Beakers
which were based on the analysis of their skeletal remains, were craniometric. This
apparent evidence of migration was in line with archaeological discoveries linking
Beaker culture to new farming techniques, mortuary practices, copper-working skills, and
other cultural innovations. However such evidence from skeletal remains was brushed
aside as a new movement developed in archaeology from the 1960s which stressed
cultural continuity. Anti-migrationist authors either paid little attention to skeletal
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evidence or argued that differences could be explained by environmental and cultural
influences. Margaret Cox and Simon Mays sum up the position: "Although it can hardly
be said that craniometric data provide an unequivocal answer to the problem of the
Beaker folk, the balance of the evidence would at present seem to favour a migration
hypothesis."
Non-metrical research concerning the Beaker people in Britain also cautiously pointed in
the direction of immigration. Subsequent studies, such as one concerning the Carpathian
Basin, and a non-metrical analysis of skeletons in central-southern Germany, have also
identified marked typological differences with the pre-Beaker inhabitants.
Jocelyne Desideri examined the teeth in skeletons from Bell Beaker sites in Northern
Spain, Southern France, Switzerland, the Czech Republic and Hungary for her thesis.
Looking at inherited dental traits, she found that only in Northern Spain and the Czech
Republic were there demonstrable genetic links between immediately previous
populations and Bell Beaker populations. Elsewhere there was a genetic discontinuity.
Extent and impact
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Bell Beaker people took advantage of transport by sea and rivers to create a cultural
spread from Ireland to the Carpathian Basin and south along the Atlantic coast and
following the Rhone valley until Portugal, North Africa and Sicily, even penetrating
northern and central Italy. Its remains have been found in what is now Portugal, Spain,
France (excluding the central massif), Great Britain and Ireland, the Low Countries, and
Germany between the Elbe and Rhine, with an extension along the upper Danube into the
Vienna basin (Austria), Hungary and Czech Republic, with Mediterranean outposts on
Sardinia and Sicily; there is less certain evidence for direct penetration in the east.
Beaker-type vessels remained in use longest in the British Isles, late beakers in other
areas are classified as early Bronze Age (barbed wire Beakers in the Netherlands, Giant
Beakers (Riesenbecher)). The new international trade routes opened by the Beaker people
were there to remain and the culture was succeeded by a number of Bronze Age cultures,
among them the Únětice culture (Central Europe), ca. 2300 BC, and by the Nordic
Bronze Age, a culture of Scandinavia and northernmost Germany-Poland, ca. 1800 BC.
Sardinia
From the earliest period, Sardinia has been in contact with extra-insular communities in
Corsica, Liguria, Lombardy, and Provence. Towards the end of the fifth millennium BC
an increased exportation of obsidian extended the cultural interaction to the Balkans and
the Eastern Mediterranean. From the third millennium BC on, comb-impressed Beaker
ware, as well as other Beaker material in Ozieri or sub-Ozieri contexts, has been found,
demonstrating continuing relationships with the western Mediterranean; it appears likely
that Sardinia was the intermediary that brought Beaker materials to Tuscany and Sicily.
The Ozieri culture (3500-2700 BC) developed mighty megalithic walls that are limited to
the northern area, suggesting unknown defensive demands that are the sign of the warlike
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state that can be noticed at the same time in the Mediterranean. The successing
chalcolithic (aneolithic) Filigosa-Abealzu culture (2700-2500 BC) followed the collapse
of the great megalithic civilizations. A significant impulse given to metallurgy ac-
companied vascular production characterized by a disappearance of earlier St.Micheal
(Ozieri) fanciful decoration in favor of blank soberly scribbled surfaces. The Monte Claro
culture (2500-2000 BC) reveals scratched ceramics and fortified enclosures that seem to
anticipate a strategic conception of territory control which reached a highlight in the
Nuragic Age (1600-900 BC). This tradition came to an end only around 900 BC by
destruction and fire.
In some sites, material of the megalithic Monte Claro culture has been found in
association with true Bell Beaker materials; elsewhere, Beaker material has been found
stratigraphically above Monte Claro and at the end of the Chalcolithic period in
association with the related Bronze Age Bonnanaro culture (1800-1600 BC), for which
C-14 dates calibrate to ca. 2250 BC. Like elsewhere in Europe and in the Mediterranean
area, the Bell Beaker culture in Sardinia (2000-1800) is characterized by the typical
ceramics decorated with overlaid horizontal bands and associated finds (brassards, V-
pierced buttons etc.) There is virtually no evidence in Sardinia of external contacts in the
late third andW early second millennia, apart from lateT Beakers and close parallels between
Bonnannaro pottery and that of the North Italian Polada culture. By the 15th century,
international trade returned, making Sardinia an integral part of a commercial network
that extended from the Near East to Northwestern Europe, the principal eastern
component of this network being Cyprus. Also contacts with the Mycenaean world were
established. The cyclopean nuraghes has more or less related cousins like the Mycenaean
tholoi, the Corsican Torre, the Talaiots of the Balearic Isles, the Sesi of Sicily, and more
(the probably much later Brochs of Scotland are mentioned as well): All these
architectural forms have their origins from a common cultural matrix widespread in the
Mediterranean, but in Sardinia there was an original and grandiose development that has
not be found elsewhere. Indigenous Sardinians appear in the Eastern Mediterranean as
Sherden, one of the main tribes of the Sea Peoples, and are supposed to be the carriers of
some of the eastern material found on the island.
Religion expressed itself around sacred wells, often in association to the megalithic
nuraghe, most of them of Beaker signature. The earliest attested water cult site is that at
Abini-Teti, where votive offerings dateable to the early Bonnanaro period have been
found; votive offerings at the spring of Sos Malavidos-Orani date to later Bonnanaro.
This tradition showed local continuity to historic times, as it was at such centers that the
Romans found attacking the natives most efficient (Strabo 5.2.7).
Central Europe
In their large-scale study on radiocarbon dating of the Bell Beakers, J. Müller and S.
Willingen established that the Bell Beaker Culture in Central Europe started after 2500
BC.
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Two great coexisting and separate Central European cultures – the Corded Ware with its
regional groups and the Eastern Group of the Bell Beaker Culture – form the background
to the Late Copper Age and Early Bronze Age. Their development, diffusion and long
range changes are determined by the great river systems. As a third component counts the
indigenous Carpathian Makó/Kosihy-Caka culture.
The Bell Beaker settlements are still little known, and have proved remarkably difficult
for archaeologists to identify. This corresponds to contradictory results of anthropologic
research and to the modern view of Bell Beakers who, far from being the "warlike
invaders" as once erroneously described by Gordon Childe (1940), added rather than
replaced local late Neolithic traditions into a cultural package and as such did not always
and evenly abandon all local traditions.
Bell Beaker domestic ware has no predecessors in Bohemia and Southern Germany,
shows no genetic relation to the local Late Copper Age Corded Ware, nor to other
cultures in the area, and is considered something completely new. The Bell Beaker
domestic ware of Southern Germany are not as closely related to the Corded Ware as
would be indicated by their burial rites. Settlements link the Southern German Bell
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Beaker culture to the seven regional provinces of the Eastern Group, represented by many
settlement traces, especially from Moravia and the Hungarian Bell Beaker-Csepel group
being the most important. In 2002 one of the largest Bell Beaker cemeteries in Central
Europe was discovered at Hoštice za Hanou (Moravia, Czech Republic).
The relationship to the western Bell Beakers groups, and the contemporary cultures of the
Carpathian basin to the south east, is much less. Research in Northern Poland shifted the
north-eastern frontier of this complex to the western parts of the Baltic with the adjacent
Northern European plain. Typical Bell Beaker fragments from the site of Ostrikovac-
Djura at the Serbian river Morava were presented at the Riva del Garda conference in
1998, some hundred km south-east of the Hungarian Csepel-group. Bell Beaker related
material has now been uncovered in a line from the Baltic Sea down to the Adriatic and
the Ionian Sea, including countries such as Bielo-Russia, Poland, Romania, Serbia and
Montenegro, Croatia, Albania and even Greece.
The Bell Beaker culture settlements in Southern Germany and in the East-Group show
evidence of mixed farming and animal husbandry, and indicators such as millstones and
spindle whorls prove the sedentary character of the Bell Beaker people, and the durability
of their settlements. Especially some well-equipped child-burials seem to indicate sense
of predestined social position, indicating a socially complex society. However, analysis
of grave furnishing, size and deepness of grave pits, position within the cemetery, did not
lead to any strong conclusions on the social divisions.
The Late Copper Age is regarded as a continuous culture system connecting the Upper
Rhine valley to the western edge of the Carpathian Basin. Late Copper Age 1 was defined
in Southern Germany by the connection of the late Cham Culture, Globular Amphora
Culture and the older Corded Ware Culture of "beaker group 1" that is also referred to as
Horizon A or Step A. Early Bell Beaker Culture intruded into the region at the end of the
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