Talk:Corded Ware culture

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the rewrite is fair enough, but what about the Tarpan reference? Are you disputing that? Please make sure no information is lost in rewrites (and if you do remove information, make a statement that you are doing so consciously, becaue it was false or whatever). dab (ᛏ) 16:02, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Happy? With the material at hand, this is as far as I can go. --FourthAve 11:28, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

I have removed the "wild" tarpan info. On the Internet I stumbled on the info that it is not "proved" that they were tame. I consider it extremely unlikely that the appearance of the Tarpan in Scandinavia with this culture was the due to "reintroductions in the wild" of some kind of corded ware environmentalist group. However, such incredible anachronisms are what must have happened if the CWC did not have domesticated horses.--Wiglaf 11:38, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Horses 2 Accuracy? 3 The Name 4 Proposal 5 overlaps 6 Reconsiderations 7 merge 8 Einar Østmo? 9 onwards 10 Classical anthropology & Mention of the taxonomical phenotype?

[edit] Horses

I would love to push serious horseback riding well into the 3rd millennium, but have no source for it. Even what little there is on the web is rather vague.

Domestication is sometime around 4000, perhaps somewhat before, perhaps a little after; it was probably initially a meat animal. Horseback riding involves a technology; one can of course ride bareback, just holding onto the mane, but something resembling a bridle is necessary for any serious control, and the bit is the crucial bit of technology. Finding sources for the earliest use of a bit is very difficult. It was probably European. It had spread everywhere by the time of Rameses II (1200s, and this is late). Then real saddles. Stirrups and finally the horse collar are both astonishingly late; the Huns seem to have invented metal stirrups, allowing one to stand in the saddle, while the horse collar does not come along until the early middle ages (both anno Domini!).

Comparison to the Icelandic horse is useful as a representative of a 'primitive' breed, in terms of size, and for the fact they have to be 5 years old before a full sized human can ride them. At the beginning, riding was mainly used to control herds of meat-animal horses and cattle (and of course, for joyriding). Certainly, it could have been used as a pack animal from very early on. But remember, wagons were being pulled by cattle at this time. Horses would not be put to draft until sometime before 2000.

I don't see the horse as anything near a military weapon until after 3000, and then mostly as a terror weapon to trample pedestrian peasants. Real cavalry does not occur until after the demise of the chariot as a practical weapon.

I'm as frustrated as you on the topic, but what I have learned is that we tend to over-romanticize the place of the horse and want to push it back before it can really be demonstrated. Nonetheless, the horse is fully divinized in IE mythology, a creature of light, of the sky: the divine twins, the Asvins, Castor and Pollux, Apollo and Artemis, the twinned horses of the chariot of the sun, and/or of the chariot of Dawn (with her sun-maiden Helen).

If you have a source for horses in Corded Ware Sweden, then by all means put it in the article. For Sweden, horses can have only been introduced. --FourthAve 17:11, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

I have been googling about this, and all I can find is that the horse, i.e. the tarpan, was introduced to Scandinavia during the CW culture. The problem with the CW and IE is that if the CW was not IE, I have not a single clue about the Indo-Europeanization of Scandinavia. It may seem to be a lesser problem in Indo-European studies, but as far as the Germanic languages are concerned it is quite interesting.--Wiglaf 19:07, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

As I understand it, the Corded Ware culture is more of an archaeological complex than a tightly defined culture. Considering how it sprawls across nearly the whole of Northern Europe, it was certainly ethnically and linguistically mixed, incorporating disparate ancestral cultures. As I have pointed out, the Globular Amphora culture and the Baden culture both overlapped the Corded Ware in both chronological time and geographic extent. When you have the G.A. essentially occupying the same geographical area as the previous Funnelbeaker culture and being co-extensive in time and space in part of the area occupied by the Corded Ware, then statements about the introduction of the horse into Sweden from the CW is not necessarily a problem, in that G.A. is certainly part of the "Corded Ware archaeological horizon/complex". Thus, the Swedish horses came out of this, even if it was ultimately via the Globular Amphora.

One thing the article does not get into are the Atlantic salmon runs of Northern Europe. Back then, these were pristine rivers that doubtless matched the extraordinary quantity recorded in the early 19th century for US salmon runs, Atlantic and Pacific (now sadly reduced to near-extinction by overfishing and pollution). With that much delicious protein essentially just waiting to be picked up in the river shallows, even the most primitive of preservation methods (salting, smoking, drying) would ensure a year-long supply of food. Life could be easy. I remember stock fishing (essentially freeze-dried cod) being recorded at something like 5000 BC (???) in the Lofoten Islands.

My own feeling is to see the earliest Germanics as part and parcel of the Globular Amphora. And certainly, earliest Germanic seems to go into isolation, and Sweden is about the only candidate around (all southern Swedish toponyms and hydronyms are 100% Germanic, as I recall).

The more I mine EIEC, the more I find contradictions. JP Mallory has taken articles from other scholars, lightly revised them, then slapped his own initials at the end, but has not attempted to integrate them into a single consistent whole. --FourthAve 22:38, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, no traces have been found of pre-Germanic place names in southern Sweden, which suggests that too much time has passed since the early Proto-Germanic language appeared there. You're right about the salmon runs, but it is not only the good fishing that must have been attractive to early immigrants. Regions such as the Mälaren basin, Skåneland, central Västergötland and the Baltic Sea islands (Bornholm, Öland and Gotland) are very productive agricultural regions and excellent bases for the Nordic Bronze Age culture, which evolved out of the CW. My personal feeling is that the Danish isles (but I don't know anything about the earliest Danish place names) and Skåneland (southernmost Sweden) are the focal point of the Germanic Urheimat, due to their agricultural richness and excellent waterways to the rest of Scandinavia and Northern Germany.--Wiglaf 07:32, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Accuracy?

According to the commonly accepted Kurgan hypothesis, Corded Ware was indeed Indo-European, and would therefore be at least in part derived from one of the Kurgan cultures to the east. This article claims that it is "obviously" derived from the more westerly Funnelbeaker culture, a claim that I have never seen before. Where does this article get its information, and is it accurate?--Rob117 12:53, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't think either of them is necessarily erroneous. New cultures frequently evolved out of two or more parent cultures, such as the Chernyakhov culture. However, different scholars may stress either of them leading to conflicts such as this one.--Wiglaf 14:28, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Who holds the Kurgan hypothesis to be "commonly accepted"??? In fact it is not. And up to now there are NO compelling arguments for any Urheimat/staging area hypo of the Indo-Europeans User: HJHolm 08:24, 17. feb 2006.

[edit] The Name

I hate to bring this up. According to my source, corded ware is a subgroup of the battle axe culture, that of central Europe.--Wiglaf 22:01, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal

I suggest that I restructure this article so that it is called the Battle-Axe culture, and divide it into the following sections:

1. Corded Ware culture (central Europe)
2. Swedish-Norwegian Battle-Axe culture
3. Finnish Battle-Axe culture.
4. Middle-Dniepr culture
5. Fatyanovo-Balanovo culture

This way the name "corded ware culture" will be preserved for the subgroup.--Wiglaf 22:09, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Had a look at the Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology which considers the Corded Ware Culture to be "a generic term applied to a wide range of late N. and early BA communities in central and northern Europe...their material culture included perforated stone battleaxes...round-bodied amphora...and kurgan burials" It goes on to talk about CWC being lots of local groups with shared ideas. Also, "In Scandinavia it is known as the Single Grave culture". Looking up Battleaxe culture just says to "see CWC".

The Penguin Dictionary of Archaeology puts Corded Ware as the main entry for a culture stretching from "Jutland to the Volga" which I suppose conveniently misses out Scandinavia altogether and has no entry for Battleaxe Culture alone. When it talks about the Single Grave culture though it describes it as being linked with the "Corded ware-Battleaxe Complex". When discussing the Protruding foot beaker culture of the Netherlands, it describes it as a branch of CWC-Battleaxe complex or the Single Grave Cultures as though the Scandinavian ones are distinct from those further south (my italics). I'm not convinced about that though.

That's all I've got to hand at the moment. It sounds to me that Battleaxe=CWC with numerous regional sub-types extending outwards This page may help with the Single Grave Culture thing and illuminate the Scandinavian side of things, but it hurts my eyes to even look at it. adamsan 21:19, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for weighing in. I have renamed it, to reflect what appears to be the most common English-language terminology.--Wiglaf 09:48, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] overlaps

it's perfect (check the maps!) -- Eastern late CW (Proto-Balto-Slavs) and early Andronovo (Proto-Indo-Iranians) cultures said goodbye (lost contact) at the Volga exactly 2300 BC, already fully Satemized and rukied. Satemization took from 3000-2500, then, starting 3000 between disparate, but mutually intelligible Eastern Late PIE dialects :o) dab (ᛏ) 18:52, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Brilliant! :).--Wiglaf 18:59, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Reconsiderations

In the "origins" section, I made some comments about how the CWC cannot considered a monolithic bloc. Nothing this colossal can be in any sense homogenous. In my reading, I have gotten some insight into some of the "dirty little secrets" of archaeology, in that just about NO site assigned to one particular culture of this antiquity-- particularly sites where the only remains are mortuary -- bears all of the stigmata, and often what seems certain in the literature is in reality something considerably less than a learnéd conjecture. I read a bit where it was stated the only PURE corded ware sites, where EVERYTHING was there are at the periphery, at exactly three sites, one is Switzerland, another in the Crimea and the last in Lithuania.

The other reality is that multiple distinct cultures really did overlap in time and space. At one point in Poland, one could likely have found relatively pure Funnelbeaker sites just a few miles from similarly pure Corded Ware sites, and a just as pure Globular Amphora site just around the bend. It's rather like any large cosmopolitan city of today, where you get an extraordinary mix of emigrants, with quite different cultural practices, all living cheek-to-jowl. If you excavated a Christian cemetery, a Jewish cemetery and a Muslim cemetery, you would say you are witnessing three separate cultural horizons -- and indeed you would -- but they are simultaneous and coterminous cultural horizons. The old comparison between Village Arabs and Bedouin Arabs comes to mind -- radically different material cultures, but ever so much a part of a single culture.

Nonetheless, there really does seem to be a consensus about the Corded Ware culture -- it's real, it's huge, and it really is mixed up with the Indo-Europeanization of Middle and Western Europe.

I've become more critical of Mallory and EIEC. It's not Mallory's fault, really, in that he is adapting other authors' articles; the Great Man himself has admitted that there are some horrible lapses. EIEC, despite its defects, is still a priceless resource. The CWC article in EIEC sort of suggests agriculture was not too present, but the Funnelbeaker article indicates this is the first wave of agriculture in N. Europe. Obviously, there was not a cessation of agriculture once CWC came into being, but you see the problem.

At the moment, I am juggling a host of archaeological cultures in my head, their names, their times, their places, who preceded, what were the successors, what stocks might be placed there, etc. I am gaining, however dimly, a full gestalt of IE expansion.

Right now, my feelings are to put PIE-with-Anatolian at the northern base of the Caucasus, somewhere before 4000, with Anatolian going up into the mountains, and then descending into Anatolia. The main center of PIE then moved, either to north of the Sea of Azov, or up towards the Samara Bend, or probably, to both places, in that both are considered ancestors of the Yamna. pre-proto-Tocharian may have been the Samara culture and/or the Khvalynsk culture (see my comments at Talk there, there is something funny with the dates). It's a superb marshalling ground for sending them east very early by the classic path, the only logical path into Central Asia -- thru the valley of the Samara River into the Ural valley, and then beyond.

The pre-pre-pre-proto Germanics would have been the pioneering northern-fringe. They might have been the group that represents Globular Amphora, but my feeling is that they are only part of that group. Wiglaf and I both like the idea that Germanic sailed to Sweden and went into deep isolation; this certainly explains some things, but probably, before it left, encountered in coastal Poland, if not the substrate, at least a non-IE non-Uralic language that understood rivers, tides, and doing the Baltic Sea and donated a few words.

The Germanics, I hold, were the first IE seafarers, and started a tradition that culminated in the greatest of all IE seafaring traditions, the Royal Navy of the UK. The Greeks got good and have continued good. The Norwegians are heroically good right down to the present. The rest of the IE peoples are largely fishermen, and not sailors (here endeth the editorial). The best sailors of all time, of course, were the the Polynesians.

It's tempting to put pre-pre-proto Celts and Italics in the Baden culture. When you look at the EIEC map of the LBK, it's striking how it resembles the Celtic continuum ca. 100 BC, just before Gaius Julius Caesar re-arranged the ethnic furniture of France. Celts went from the mouth of the Seine, over the Rhine into the Danube valley up the Tisza and down the Dnieper and thence into Anatolia (Galatia, as in St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians). I'm thinking of the Balkan-Danubian complex (Troy to the Elbe, via the Danube), an article that needs to get written and integrated into the CWC article.

The great mixing bowl of Europe is greater Hungary. The Vienna Basin can be defended, but Hungary is easily overrun by invasions from the east, via the gentle passes at the headwaters of the Tisza, San-Vistula and Dnieper. The fact the region speaks a non-IE language essentially proves this.

Anyway. The CWC is essentially the Roman Empire of the European Bronze Age. It defined the next 5000 years of history. --FourthAve 06:06, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

I think you're right. This is a really important culture, and you're doing valuable work here.--Wiglaf 07:42, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] merge

I've made Corded Ware a redirect now. This was its content:

Corded ware is pottery having an ornamental pattern created by a cord impressed in the unfired clay. This kind of pottery was a characteristic artifact of the neolithic corded-ware culture (sometimes known as Battle-axe people. Often, the decoration only imitates cordmarks. Burial is characteristically in single graves by inhumation under a barrow.

The corded-ware culture is found from the Netherlands to Poland and Switzerland.

Other cultures use cord-impressions for ornaments as well. A well known example is the AOC (for All Over Corded) vessel, considered to be an early Beaker type. Cord-impressed ware is known from Indonesia as well, where it was formerly described as Neolithic, but seems to be mainly of quite recent date.

I think we have all that, except perhaps the Indonesia reference. dab (ᛏ) 11:17, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Einar Østmo?

If a person is used as a source, there should at least be some explanation: Who is he, why is he important? Preferrably, there should be an article about this person. Orcaborealis 10:29, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Einar Østmo is in one of my books, basically the "Journal of Indo-European Studies".

[edit] onwards

this article is quite nice by now, but still a long way from FA standards. Specifically, we need a more coherent account of archaeological excavations, and a more specific literature list. We'd also need a wider choice of images on top of the various "battle-axes", in particular an image of a "corded ware" artifact. dab (ᛏ) 12:30, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

The article still contains phrases that seem to represent personal interpretations rather than statements drawn from the proper sources. Two examples:

• "it clearly represents a fusion of earlier archaeological cultures": clear to whom? Even if partly true (the culture has repeatedly been defined as intrusive to most areas by various authors), this rather sounds like a personal deduction.
• "This viewpoint was still reflected in even some relatively recent literature, but has now been essentially supplanted by the work of Marija Gimbutas" : Some influential opponents to this popular view are still very alive and never renounced their stances. Basic objections and (negative) evidence against theories fully based on migrationist assumptions remain unanswered. It is tricky to dismiss scholarly views like this and the "failure" of other views is not sufficiently sourced.Rokus01 14:19, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Classical anthropology & Mention of the taxonomical phenotype?

"Corded", named from the Corded Ware culture, is a supposed 'look', trait or phenotype given to a northern European human type in a common, well attested, strain of anthropological taxonomy. This has been popularized by Carleton S. Coon and others. There should be some minor mention of this, brief description, and redirect to proper articles. Nagelfar (talk) 09:38, 1 April 2008 (UTC)