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The Origin of Neolithic Culture in Northern Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Extract

Till 1948 the coherent record of farming in Northern Europe began with the neolithic culture represented in the Danish dysser (‘dolmens’) and most readily defined by the funnel-necked beakers, collared flasks and ‘amphorae’ found therein. As early as 1910 Gustav Kossinna had remarked that these distinctive ceramic types, and accordingly the culture they defined, were not confined to the West Baltic coastlands, but recurred in the valleys of the Upper Vistula and Oder to the east, to the south as far as the Upper Elbe and in northwest Germany and Holland too. He saw in this distribution evidence for the first expansion of Urindogermanen from their cradle in the Cimbrian peninsula. In the sequel Åberg filled in the documentation of this expansion with fresh spots on the distribution map and Kossinna himself distinguished typologically four main provinces or geographical groups—the Northern, Eastern, Southern and Western. Finally Jazdrzewski gave a standard account of the whole content of what had come to be called Kultura puharów lejkowatych, Trichterbecherkultur, or Tragtbaegerkulturen. As ‘Funnel-necked-beaker culture’ is a clumsy expression and English terminology is already overloaded with ‘beakers’, I shall use the term ‘First Northern’.

The orgin of this vigorous and expansive group of cultivators and herdsmen has always been an enigma. Not even Kossinna imagined that the savages of the Ertebølle shell-mounds spontaneously began cultivating cereals and breeding sheep in Denmark. As dysser were regarded as megalithic tombs and as megaliths are Atlantic phenomena, he supposed that the bases of the neolithic economy were introduced from the West together with the ‘megalithic idea’. But the First Northern Farmers of the South and East groups did not build megalithic tombs. Moreover, in the last ten years an extension of the North group across southern Sweden as far as Södermannland has come to light, and these farmers too, though they used collared flasks and funnel-necked beakers, built no dolmens either. In any case there was nothing Western about the pottery from the Danish dysser, and Western types of arrow-head are conspicuously rare in Denmark.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1949

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References

1 ‘Ursprung und Verbreitung der Urfinnen und der Urindogermanen’, Mannus, I.

2 Das nordische Kulturgebiet in Mitteleuropa, 1918.

3 ‘Entwicklung und Vebreitung der steinzeitlichen Trichterbecher . . .’, Mannus, XIII, 1921.

4 ‘Kultura Puharów Lejkowatych w Polsce’ (Bibliotheka Prehist., 2), Poznan, 1936.

5 Bagge and Kjellmark, Stenåldersboplatserna vid Siretorp i Blekinge, Stockholm, 1939 ; Florin, ‘Vrå Kulturen’, Kulturhistoriska Studier tillägnade Nils Åberg, Stockholm, 1938.

6 Clark, Man.

7 C. J. Becker, ‘Mosefundne Lerkar fra yngre Stenalder ; Studier over Tragtbaegerkulturen i Danmark’, Aarbeger, 1948 (also published separately), 318 pp. Danish text, xvm pp. English summary, XXVIII plates, København, 1948.

8 Rust, Die altsteinzeitliche Renntierjägerlager Meiendorf.

9 Wiadomosc Archeologi xv, 1938, 1-105.

10 ‘Dyssetidens Gravfund i Danmark’, Aarboger, 1941.

11 Jazdrzewski, Kultura Puharów, 336.

12 Fresh well-attested Ertebelle burials are reported in Fra Nationalmuseums Arbejdsmark, 1945, p. 6, and Mathiassen, ‘En Boplads fra aeldre Stehalder ved Vedbaek Bolbaner’, Selkred Bogen, 1946.

13 Dawn of European Civilization, 4th edit., 176.

14 Iversen, ‘Landnam i Danmarks Stenalder’, Dansk Geolog. Undersogelse, II R., no. 66, 1941 ; summarized in ANTIQUITY, XIX, 1945, 61.

15 Jazdrzewski, op. cit. 383 and fig. 980.

16 Sprockoff Die nordische Megalithkultur, 1938, 31.

17 op. cit. 10, ‘Das Grab erschiene wie ein niedriges Haus mit flachem Firstdach ’.

18 P. V. Glob, ‘Barkaer’, Fra Nationalmuseums Arbejdsmark, 194-.