The Bell Beaker Transition in Europe: Mobility and local evolution during the 3rd millennium BC

Could the circulation of objects or ideas and the mobility of artisans explain the unprecedented uniformity of the material culture observed throughout the whole of Europe? The 17 papers presented here offer a range of new and different perspectives on the Beaker phenomenon across Europe. The focus is not on Bell Beaker pottery but on social groups (craft specialists, warriors, chiefs, extended or nuclear families), using technological studies and physical anthropology to understand mobility patterns during the 3rd millennium BC. Chronological evolution is used to reconstruct the rhythm of Bell Beaker diffusion and the environmental background that could explain this mobility and the socio-economic changes observed during this period of transition toward Bronze Age societies. The chapters are mainly organised geographically, covering Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean shores and the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula, includes some areas that are traditionally studied and well known, such as France, the British Isles or Central Europe, but also others that have so far been considered peripheral, such as Norway, Denmark or Galicia. This journey not only offers a complex and diverse image of Bell Beaker societies but also of a supra-regional structure that articulated a new type of society on an unprecedented scale.

Table of Contents:
1. Preface Maria Pilar Prieto Martinez and Laure Salanova 2. Introduction. A Folk who will never speak: Bell Beakers and linguistics Alexander Falileyev 3. Bell Beakers and Corded Ware People. Anthropological point of view in the Little Poland Upland Elżbieta Haduch 4. Personal identity and social structure of Bell Beakers: the Upper Basins of the Oder and Vistula rivers Przemysław Makarowicz 5. Bell Beaker stone wristguards as symbolic male ornament. The significance of ceremonial warfare in the 3rd millennium BC Central Europe Jan Turek 6. The Emergence of the Bell Beaker set: migrations to Britain and Ireland Andrew P. Fitzpatrick 7. Bell Beakers – chronology, innovation and memory: a multivariate approach Johannes Müller, Martin Hinz and Markus Ullrich 8. The long-house as a transforming agent. Emergent complexity in Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age southern Scandinavia 2300–1300 BC Magnus Artursson 9. Expanding 3rd millennium transformations: Norway Christopher Prescott and Håkon Glørstad 10. The Bell Beaker Complex: a vector of transformations? Stabilities and changes of the indigenous cultures in south-east France at the end of the Neolithic period Jessie Cauliez 11. The dagger phenomenon: circulation from the Grand-Pressigny Region (France, Indre-Et-Loire) in Western Europe Ewen Ihuel, Nicole Mallet, Jacques Pelegrin, and Christian Verjux 12. Long-distance contacts: the north-west Iberia during the 3rd millennium BC Carlos Rodríguez-Rellán, Antonio Morgado Rodríguez, José Antonio Lozano and Francisco Rodríguez-Tovar 13. Early gold technology as an indicator of circulation processes in Atlantic Europe Barbara Armbruster and Beatriz Comendador Rey 14. Environmental changes in north-western Iberia around the Bell Beaker period (2800–1400 cal BC) Manuela Costa-Casais, Lourdes López-Merino, Joeri Kaal, and Antonio Martínez Cortizas 15. Evidence of agriculture and livestock. The palynological record from the Middle Ebro Valley (Iberian Peninsula) during the 3rd and 2nd millennia cal BC Sebastián Pérez Díaz and José Antonio López Sáez 16. Bell Beaker pottery as a symbolic marker of property rights: the case of the salt production centre of Molino Sanchón II, Zamora, Spain Elisa Guerra Doce, Francisco Javier Abarquero Moras, Germán Delibes De Castro, Ángel Luis Palomino Lázaro and Jesús Del Val Recio 17. Exploring social networks through Bell Beaker contexts in the central Valencia region from recent discoveries at La Vital (Gandía, Valencia, Spain) Oreto García Puchol, Joan Bernabeu Aubán, Lluís Molina Balaguer,Yolanda Carrión Marco, and Guillem Pérez Jordà 18. Dynamism and complexity of the funerary models: the north-west Iberian peninsula during the 3rd–2nd millennia BC Pablo Vázquez Liz, Laure Nonat and Maria Pilar Prieto Martínez 19. Concluding remarks Maria Pilar Prieto Martinez and Laure Salanova

About the Author :
Maria Pilar Prieto Martinez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology and History at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain with particular research interests in the material culture of prehistoric pottery in western Europe, especially Galicia, Britain and Denmark, and the examination of ways in which social inequalities are expressed through the different dimensions of material culture, for instance in Bell Beaker using societies. Laure Salanova is a researcher at the CNRS, based at the Université Paris-Ouest Nanterre La Défense with research interests focusing on Neolithic societies, in particular Bell Beaker societies of the 3rd millennium primarily addressed through ceramic and burial assemblages

Review :
In their concluding remarks, Prieto Martinez and Salanova claim that the BBP 'marks the end of the European Neolithic, with stable social structures and a genuine turning point towards urban and stratified civilisations' (p.214). Do the contributions to this book support such an impressive claim? In the main part yes...this volume represents an important step in that direction, for which the editors and contributors should be warmly congratulated. -- Neil Wilkin Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society