Martin Furholt: Do Bell Beakers actually have an origin?

Martin Furholt: Do Bell Beakers actually have an origin?
The Transformation of Europe in the Third Millennium BC
International Conference on the Third Millennium BC archaeology in Europe
Riva del Garda, Trento, Italy
25-28 October 2023

[@Ponto-zv9vf]

When a set of ideas or paradigms become dominant there will be kickback, a negative reaction to those ideas and paradigms and those reactionaries will develop ideas and paradigms to counter the dominant paradigms. It is a natural process, adolescents do that as they approach adulthood against the older generation. I don't accept the speakers ideas and his debunking of the dominant paradigms. So Bell Beakers had variation in burial practices, so Corded Ware had their variations. Humans do vary in their preferences, and the practices that suit them. He talked about natural increase showing how different rates produces larger populations. Well maybe in the 21st century when most people are well fed, well housed, educated and have access to doctors and hospitals then rate of natural increase will produce different end populations, but in the Neolithic, Copper, Bronze and Iron Ages, people died young, many before reproducing, many children died in the first years of life - its a different story. Having 15 children and all but 2 die, and having 3 children and 2 survive, isn't going to make a difference. Population growth is a modern thing, there was no exponential growth in the Neolithic, Copper, Bronze and Iron Ages, what happened was culture and technology supported more people to survive to reproduction. What did the Steppe people introduce into Europe, pastoralism, dependence on domestic animals like cattle. Everyone knows animals use up more resources per kg than what growing plants does. So in the end, less people can be supported by pastoralism than by straight agriculture, so the genetic changes in the populations of Europe was due to immigration and male domination of the local farmer populations.

[@alicelund147]

I think we need to separate the people/genetics and the cultural, technological, trade-driven BB complex. I see a BB complex with some new technology, costal seafaring, trading, maybe new rituals/consumption of alcohol. They have spread in two ways. 1) "colonies" among non-WSH cultures along the Atlantic in Spain, France, the Low countries and Denmark. 2) They also spread inland along the river-systems to areas populated with Corded Ware culture areas. They absorbed those things but still belong to the same "people" with language, traditions and burial practises inherited from the Yamnaya. This second group of "Bellbeaker-WSH" then spread as a populations West, introducing their DNA, to France, Spain and Britain.

[@liquidoxygen819]

The reason Furholt constantly looks like he's shitting his pants is because genetic research keeps backing up the historical linguists and comparative mythologists, and he's hanging on for dear life. Extremely sneaky presentation here. We don't just know about the patriarchal, warrior traditions of the Indo-Europeans through things like strontium isotope analysis! Flowery Furholt is in love with his fantasy of a peaceful, egalitarian Europe which never existed. The whole "where are the bodies?" query is one of the most frustrating to deal with, because if you just look at the criteria historians use versus archaeologists, it's clear that the archaeological standard on narratives needs reformation. I understand, of course, that you can't use a lack of bodies to prove violence: but archaeologists must speak to their limits and where their hands are tied. Other lines of evidence can be used to triangulate that violence is likely to have taken place. We see this disparity not only in presentations like this one, or Furholt's presentation, uploaded prior, on "Peaceful Yamnaya" who only liked to braid each other's hair, but elsewhere in the crossover of the disciplines of history and archaeology: dealing with the Dorian Invasion, for example, or the Anglo-Saxon migrations. However, some stories of violence and invasions are basically impossible to deny for the archaeologist (such as the Mongol invasions), but there is famously a surprising lack of physical evidence which might, at first, be expected. Archaeologists ought to know better than anyone, but seem not to, that we are *lucky* to have each and every artifact and remain that we do. Who's to say that bodies weren't left to rot and be ripped to shreds by scavengers, or dumped into the sea where they might disarticulate and rot away? Are the archaeologists going to start claiming that we have no evidence drownings ever took place for ancient sailors because of a dearth of bodies on the sea floor? Furholt seems to expect more violence out of societies with honor culture, violence values, and a "warrior nation" self-conception than would actually be the reality, or perhaps he's insidiously setting up a strawman to attack. Furholt is clearly uncomfortable with violence and upset by it, and this psychological bias of his is projected onto all of his work.

[@christianfrommuslim]

This is not a professional way to speak. It denegrates the weight of any point that you are trying to make.

[@MeatGoblin88]

@@christianfrommuslim He clearly WANTS the yamnaya to be warriors because he's some sort of LARPer.

[@liquidoxygen819]

@@MeatGoblin88 Furholt is distorting evidence. Not every Indo-European society remained warlike through time, of course, and I’m sure that their ancestors were markedly less warlike, but it’s supremely annoying to see the warrior identity for Yamnaya/Corded Ware/Bell Beaker undermined by Furholt with no real evidence and with no attention paid to the aspects of their society which do point to them having a martial nature. Yeah, warriors are cool, what about it? That’s part of what impressed me about them. I don’t only like warlike societies, but these archaeological cultures assuredly were, and these exhausting reinterpretations don’t even have any teeth upon inspection

[@MeatGoblin88]

​​@@liquidoxygen819So I understand where you come from, I'm big into Neolithic europe and am especially intrigued by Neolithic violence because of how personal it was (looking at you LBK) However some dogmatic scholars seemed to be glued to the myth of peaceful farmers and would classify any evidence of violence as a rare example of interpersonal violence within a tribe. Now we have pretty definitive evidence of warfare in the Neolithic, in early Neolithic Britain it seemed like everyone and their mother was buried with multiple leaf point arrowheads lodged into them, so much to the point that an author of a book on Neolithic violence suggested that death in combat might've been a requirement for burial in certain Neolithic British cultures. The guy glossed over it, but Neolithic Britain had a higher rate of violent injuries on corpses even when you factor in them preferring cremation after the early Neolithic. He's also not denying that some steppe descended groups were violent. The author of the book I read also pointed out how bronze age burials make it look like a warrior caste emerged, but it could only be because bronze weaponry is a lot easier to connect to warriorhood as opposed to an adze or bow which the Neolithic farmers used. Many of their burials might have been for warriors, but we just don't know what to look for. Also I know I didn't really address your points, I want to be on my PC before I do that since I'm on my phone rn