Bell Beakers in Ireland

[1798]

http://www.ucd.ie/archaeology/research/previouspostgraduates/neil_carlin/

[ironroad41]

This is a quote of yours from another thread?

It doesn't matter when it was written but it matters who wrote it.
The Beaker burials that were found in Britain and the continent have not been found in Ireland. The Beaker people is nonsense. It took only one Beaker to get here before someone copied the design.

Is the proposed work a waste of time?

[Stevo]

This is a quote of yours from another thread?

It doesn't matter when it was written but it matters who wrote it.
The Beaker burials that were found in Britain and the continent have not been found in Ireland. The Beaker people is nonsense. It took only one Beaker to get here before someone copied the design.

Is the proposed work a waste of time?

That is what he said, but he knows better. The Beaker Folk had a big impact in Ireland.

My own belief is that they were the source of R1b in the Isles and of early Celtic. That is apparently the belief of Dr. Jim Wilson of BritainsDNA, as well, among others.

[Stevo]

The following pair of quotes is from The Celtic Realms, by Myles Dillon and Nora Chadwick.

About 2000 BC came the Bell-Beaker people, whose burials are in single graves, with individual grave-goods. The remarkable Wessex Culture of the Bronze Age which appears about 1500 BC is thought to be based upon this tradition. The grave-goods suggest the existence of a warrior aristocracy 'with a graded series of obligations of service . . . through a military nobility down to craftsmen and peasants', as in the Homeric society. This is the sort of society which is described in the Irish sagas, and there is no reason why so early a date for the coming of the Celts should be impossible. We shall see that there are considerations of language and culture that tend rather to support it.

If we suppose that the Celts emerge as a separate people about 2000 BC, Goidelic may be a very early form of Celtic, and Gaulish (with British) a later form; and the first Celtic settlements of the British Isles may be dated from the early Bronze Age (c. 1800 BC), and even identified with the coming of the Beaker-Folk in the first half of the second millennium. This was suggested by Abercromby long ago (Bronze Age Pottery ii 99) and more recently by Crawford, Loth and Hubert. It would mean a lapse of time, a thousand years, between the first settlements and the Belgic invasions that Caesar mentions, quite long enough to explain the absence of any trace of Goidelic in Britain outside the areas of later Irish settlement. It would accord well with the archaic character of Irish tradition, and the survival in Ireland of Indo-European features of language and culture that recur only in India and Persia, and, for language, in Hittite or in the Tocharian dialects of Central Asia.

[1798]

This is a quote of yours from another thread?

It doesn't matter when it was written but it matters who wrote it.
The Beaker burials that were found in Britain and the continent have not been found in Ireland. The Beaker people is nonsense. It took only one Beaker to get here before someone copied the design.

Is the proposed work a waste of time?

No, but in the case of Ireland, the manifestation of this complex differs from elsewhere because settlements are comparatively common while stereotypical Beaker burials are rare.

[1798]

That is what he said, but he knows better. The Beaker Folk had a big impact in Ireland.

My own belief is that they were the source of R1b in the Isles and of early Celtic. That is apparently the belief of Dr. Jim Wilson of BritainsDNA, as well, among others.

Bell Beakers were found all over Europe and so you are saying that only R1b men could use them.LOL

[Stevo]

Bell Beakers were found all over Europe and so you are saying that only R1b men could use them.LOL

Is that what I said? Really? Do you often "LOL" over falsehoods of your own vain imagining?

Thus far the only ancient Beaker y-dna that has been recovered was R1b (U106-). The Beaker Folk are believed by a number of scholars to have spread Italo-Celtic with them. Both early Celtic and R1b got to the Isles somehow.

[1798]

Wikipedia
Ireland
"Beakers arrived in Ireland around 2500 BC and fell out of use around 1700 BC (Needham 1996). The beaker pottery of Ireland was rarely used as a grave good, but is often found in domestic assemblages from the period. This stands in contrast to the rest of Europe where it frequently found in both roles. The inhabitants of Ireland used food vessels as a grave good instead. The large, communal passage tombs of the Irish Neolithic were no longer being constructed during the Early Bronze Age (although some, such as Newgrange were re-used (O’Kelly 1982)). The preferred method of burial seems to have been singular graves and cists in the east, or in small wedge tombs in the west. Cremation was also common.

The advent of the Bronze Age Beaker culture in Ireland[44] is accompanied by the destruction of smaller satellite tombs at Knowth[45] and collapses of the great cairn at Newgrange,[46] marking an end to the Neolithic culture of megalithic passage tombs.

Beakers are found in large numbers in Ireland, and the technical innovation of ring-built pottery indicates that the makers were also present.[47] Classification of pottery in Ireland and Britain has distinguished a total of seven intrusive[48] beaker groups originating from the continent and three groups of purely insular character having evolved from them. Five out of seven of the intrusive Beaker groups also appear in Ireland: the European bell group, the All-over cord beakers, the Northern British/North Rhine beakers, the Northern British/Middle Rhine beakers and the Wessex/Middle Rhine beakers. However, many of the features or innovations of Beaker society in Britain never reached Ireland.[49] Instead, quite different customs predominated in the Irish record that were apparently influenced by the traditions of the earlier inhabitants.[50] Some features that are found elsewhere in association to later types[51] of Earlier Bronze Age Beaker pottery, indeed spread to Ireland, however, without being incorporated into the same close and specific association of Irish Beaker context.[52] The Wessex/Middle Rhine gold discs bearing "wheel and cross" motifs that were probably sewn to garments, presumably to indicate status and reminiscent to racquet headed pins found in Eastern Europe,[53] enjoy a general distribution throughout the country, however, never in direct association with beakers.

In 1984, a Beaker period copper dagger blade was recovered from the Sillees River near Ross Lough, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland.[54] The flat, triangular-shaped copper blade was 171 mm (6.73 in) long, with bevelled edges and a pointed tip, and featured an integral tang that accepted a riveted handle.[54] Flint arrow-heads and copper-blade daggers with handle tangs, found in association with Beaker pottery in many other parts of Europe, have a date later than the initial phase of Beaker People activity in Ireland.[55] Also the typical Beaker wristguards seem to have entered Ireland by cultural diffusion only, after the first intrusions, and unlike English and Continental Beaker burials never made it to the graves. The same lack of typical Beaker association applies to the about thirty found stone battle axes. A gold ornament found in County Down that closely resembles a pair of ear-rings from Ermegeira, Portugal, has a composition that suggests it was imported.[55] Incidental finds suggest links to non-British Beaker territories, like a fragment of a bronze blade in County Derry that has been likened to the "palmella" points of Iberia,[48] even though the relative scarcity of beakers, and Beaker-compatible material of any kind, in the south-west are regarded as an obstacle to any colonisation directly from Iberia, or even from France.[48] Their greater concentration in the northern part of the country,[47] which traditionally is regarded as the part of Ireland least blessed with sources of copper, has led many authorities to question the role of Beaker People in the introduction of metallurgy to Ireland. However, indications of their use of stream sediment copper, low in traces of lead and arsenic, and Beaker finds connected to mining and metalworking at Ross Island, County Kerry, provide an escape to such doubts.[56]

The featured "food vessels" and cinerary urns (encrusted, collared and cordoned) of the Irish Earlier Bronze Age have strong roots in the western European Beaker tradition. Recently, the concept of this food vessels was discarded and replaced by a concept of two different traditions that rely on typology: the bowl tradition and the vase tradition, the bowl tradition being the oldest[57] as it has been found inserted in existing Neolithic (pre-beaker) tombs, both court tombs and passage tombs. The bowl tradition occurs over the whole country except the south-west and feature a majority of pit graves, both in flat cemeteries and mounds, and a high incidence of uncremated skeletons, often in crouched position.[58] The vase tradition has a general distribution and feature almost exclusively cremation. The flexed skeleton of a man 1.88 tall in a cist in a slightly oval round cairn with "food vessel" at Cornaclery, County Derry, was described in the 1942 excavation report as "typifying the race of Beaker Folk",[59] although the differences between Irish finds and e.g. the British combination of "round barrows with crouched, unburnt burials" make it difficult to establishes the exact nature of the Beaker People's colonization of Ireland.[49]

In general, the early Irish Beaker intrusions don't attest[60] the overall "Beaker package" of innovations that, once fully developed, swept Europe elsewhere, leaving Ireland behind.[61] The Irish Beaker period is characterized by the ancientness[55] of Beaker intrusions, by isolation[62] and by influences and surviving traditions of autochthons.[63]

Beaker culture introduces the practice of burial in single graves, suggesting an Earlier Bronze Age social organisation of family groups.[64] Towards the Later Bronze Age the sites move to potentially fortifiable hilltops, suggesting a more "clan"-type structure.[65] Although the typical Bell Beaker practice of crouched burial has been observed,[66] cremation was readily adopted[67] in accordance with the previous tradition of the autochthons.[45] In a tumulus the find of the extended skeleton of a woman accompanied by the remains of a red deer and a small seven-year-old stallion is noteworthy, including the hint to a Diana-like religion.[68] A few burials seem to indicate social status, though in other contexts an emphasis to special skills is more likely.[69]

Ireland has the greatest concentration of gold lunulae and stone wrist-guards in Europe. However, neither of these items were deposited in graves and they tend to be found isolated and at random, making it difficult to draw conclusions about their use or role in society at the time.

One of the most important sites in Ireland during this period is Ross Island. A series of copper mines from here are the earliest known in Ireland, starting from around 2500 BC (O’Brien 2004). A comparison of chemical traces and lead isotope analysis from these mines with copper artefacts strongly suggests that Ross Island was the sole source of copper in Ireland between the dates 2500-2200 BC. In addition, two thirds of copper artefacts from Britain also display the same chemical and isotopic signature, strongly suggesting that Irish copper was a major export to Britain (Northover et al. 2001). Traces of Ross Island copper can be found even further afield; in the Netherlands it makes up 12% of analysed copper artefacts, and Brittany 6% of analysed copper artefacts (Northover 1999, 214). After 2200 BC there is greater chemical variation in British and Irish copper artefacts, which tallies well with the appearance of other mines in southern Ireland and north Wales. After 2000 BC, other copper sources supersede Ross Island. The latest workings from the Ross Island mines is dated to around 1700 BC.

As well as exporting raw copper/bronze, there were some technical and cultural developments in Ireland that had an important impact on other areas of Europe. Irish food vessels were adopted in northern Britain around 2200 BC and this roughly coincides with a decline in the use of beakers in Britain (Needham 1996). The ‘bronze halberd’ (not to be confused with the medieval halberd) was a weapon in use in Ireland from around 2400-2000 BC (Needham 1996, 124). They are essentially broad blades that were mounted horizontally on a meter long handle, giving greater reach and impact than any known contemporary weapon (O’Flaherty 2007). They were subsequently widely adopted in other parts of Europe (Schuhmacher 2002), possibly showing a change in the technology of warfare.

The Bronze Age Beaker period is noteworthy, since archeological finds seem to indicate a strong continuity with native Bronze Age traditions in Ireland as much as Britain. No evidence of other large-scale immigrations took place, and many scholars[who?] deny Celtic speech originated solely from La Tene culture, whose migrations started at about 400 BC. Instead, those scholars[who?] propose Celtic languages evolved gradually and simultaneously over a large area by way of a common heritage and close social, political and religious links. Although controversial, the theory fits (according to its proponents) the archeological evidence that provides little support for westward migrations of Celtic people matching the historically known movements south and west."

[Stevo]

From David Anthony's The Horse The Wheel And Language, page 367:

The many thousands of Yamnaya kurgans in eastern Hungary suggest a more continuous occupation of the landscape by a larger population of immigrants, one that could have acquired power and prestige partly just through its numerical weight. This regional group could have spawned both pre-Italic and pre-Celtic. Bell Beaker sites of the Csepel type around Budapest, west of the Yamnaya settlement region, are dated about 2800-2600 BCE. They could have been a bridge between Yamnaya on their east and Austria/Southern Germany to their west, through which Yamnaya dialects spread from Hungary into Austria and Bavaria, where they later developed into Proto-Celtic. Pre-Italic could have developed among the dialects that remained in Hungary, ultimately spreading into Italy through the Urnfield and Villanovan cultures. Eric Hamp and others have revived the argument that Italic and Celtic shared a common parent, so a single migration stream could have contained dialects that later were ancestral to both.

From Jean Manco's Ancestral Journeys, pages 168 and 169:

Celts Arrive in the British Isles

The Bell Beaker culture brought the Bronze Age to the British Isles. To be more exact, Beaker folk initially brought the Copper Age around 2450 BC, homing in on the copper belts of Ireland and Wales. They left their characteristic beakers at a copper mine on Ross Island, in Lough Leane, Co. Kerry . . .
Genetically, the predominance of R1b-L21 over R1b-DF27-derived subclades of R1b-P312 in the British Isles suggests that British and Irish Bell Beaker people arrived mostly via the Rhine route . . .
We can picture an archaic form of Celtic spoken by the Late Bell Beaker period that evolved over the millennia into Gaelic.

[1798]

From David Anthony's The Horse The Wheel And Language, page 367:



From Jean Manco's Ancestral Journeys, pages 168 and 169:

This is all pure speculation.

[Stevo]

This is all pure speculation.

How would you know? Have you read Anthony's book?

Have you read Manco's book?

Have you read The Celtic Realms by Dillon (an Irish scholar) and Chadwick?

[1798]

How would you know? Have you read Anthony's book?

Have you read Manco's book?

Have you read The Celtic Realms by Dillon (an Irish scholar) and Chadwick?

I would like to see the results from ancient dna testing that shows all the Bell Beakers with L21 remains.

[Stevo]

From The History of the Celtic People by French archaeologist and inguist Henri Hubert, pages 169 and 171-173:

But whence did the Goidels come, and when did they come? Where must we look for their earliest home on the Continent and their starting-point? Probably they came from north of the Brythonic domain, and it is to them that tradition refers when it tells that the Celts used to live on the low coasts of the North Sea. They must have left those shores very early, for hardly a trace of them remains there (p. 169).
. . . In the first period of the Bronze Age there arrived in the British Isles, coming from the Continent, people with very marked characteristics. The old Neolithic inhabitants (among whom I include those of all the beginning of the Bronze Age) were long-heads of Mediterranean type, who built for their dead, or, at least, for the more distinguished of them, tumuli with a funeral chamber known as the "long barrows", in which one sometimes finds those curious bell-shaped beakers adorned at regular intervals with bands of incised or stamped decoration, of a very simple and austere type. The newcomers were of quite a different type, and had other funeral practices.
They buried their dead under round tumuli, known as "round barrows", in graves in which the body was placed in a crouching position on one side and enclosed in stone flags or woodwork. Later they burned them. In their graves there were zoned beakers (Fig. 33), but of a late type in which the neck is distinguished from the belly, or vases derived from these beakers . . . The grave goods comprised buttons with a V-shaped boring, flint and copper daggers, arrow-heads, and flat perforated pieces of schist which are "bracers", or bowman's wristguards. The skeletons were of a new type: tall, with round heads of a fairly constant shape, the brow receding, the supraciliary ridge prominent, the cheek-bones highly developed, and the jaws massive and projecting so as to present a dip at the base of the nose. I have already described them as one of the types represented in Celtic burials.
The association of the physical type of this people with the beaker has led British anthropologists to call it the Beaker Folk . . . In Scotland they were accompanied by other brachycephals, with a higher index and of Alpine type. In general they advanced from south to north and from east to west, and their progress lasted long enough for there to be a very marked difference in furniture between their oldest and latest tombs.
. . . Their progress was a conquest. It is evident that they subdued and assimilated the previous occupants of the country (pp. 171-173).

[Stevo]

I would like to see the results from ancient dna testing that shows all the Bell Beakers with L21 remains.

I never claimed all the Beaker men were L21+. For one thing, I don't think they were. But I do think L21 was prevalent among the Beaker Folk who went to the British Isles.

Of the two sets of Beaker remains from the site near Kromsdorf, Germany, one tested M269+, but they could only get as far as M343+ with the other. It's not that the second one was M343*; it's just that they could not get a clear M269+ result from such old remains. They did test both sets of remains for U106, however, and both were clearly U106-. I guess they tested them for U106 because the site is in Germany. They may have expected them to be U106+ because U106 is so common there now. They did not even test the remains for P312, let alone L21.

[1798]

I never claimed all the Beaker men were L21+. For one thing, I don't think they were. But I do think L21 was prevalent among the Beaker Folk who went to the British Isles.

Of the two sets of Beaker remains from the site near Kromsdorf, Germany, one tested M269+, but they could only get as far as M343+ with the other. It's not that the second one was M343*; it's just that they could not get a clear M269+ result from such old remains. They did test both sets of remains for U106, however, and both were clearly U106-. I guess they tested them for U106 because the site is in Germany. They may have expected them to be U106+ because U106 is so common there now. They did not even test the remains for P312, let alone L21.

P312 and U106 are 50/50 in Germany among the R1b population.
I looked at the German dna project.