The bell beaker question: on some debates yesterday and today

Abstract

What is commonly called «Bell Beaker culture» corresponds to two distinct phenomena:

– a process of rapid diffusion of some sign-objects (including the international goblet) within the late Neolithic (or Chalcolithic) populations.

These vestiges bear witness to an individualistic ideology, particularly manifest in the funerary realm;

– at a second stage, the emergence of local cultures, of limited geographical extension, which definitively adopted the codes of the previous phenomenon. They are therefore classic archaeological entities, known particularly through specific habitats, diversified ornate ceramics, commonware pottery, etc.

The author considers a probable western origin of the maritime goblet, the original and emblematic marker of the phenomenon. He also wonders about the meaning of the «package» elements: sign-objects of general value or structural markers of the Bell Beaker culture?

The presence of some of these elements out of the Beaker sphere as well as their perdurance during the Early Bronze Age do not systematically support their strictly Belll Beaker status.