page_title: Bell Beaker culture
section_title: Central Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Bell Beaker culture / Extent and impact / Central Europe
caption_attribution_description: English: Straubing ( Lower Bavaria ). Gäubodenmuseum: Bell beaker of the Bell beaker culture, from Alburg - Hochwegfeld. Deutsch: Straubing (Niederbayern). Gäubodenmuseum: Glockenbecher der Glockenbecherkultur, aus Alburg - Hochwegfeld.
context_page_description: The Bell Beaker culture or short Beaker culture, is an archaeological culture named after the inverted-bell beaker drinking vessel used at the very beginning of the
  European Bronze Age. Arising from around 2800 BC, and lasting in continental Europe until 2300 BC, succeeded by the Unetice culture, in Britain until as late as 1800 BC.
  The culture was widely scattered throughout Western Europe, from various regions in Iberia and spots facing northern Africa to the Danubian plains, the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and also the islands of Sicily and Sardinia.
  The Bell Beaker culture follows the Corded Ware culture and for north-central Europe the Funnelbeaker culture.
  The name Glockenbecher was coined for its distinctive style of beakers by Paul Reinecke in 1900.
  The term's English translation Bell Beaker was introduced by John Abercromby in 1904.
  In its early phase, the Bell Beaker culture can be seen as the western contemporary of the Corded Ware culture of Central Europe. From about 2400 BC, however, the "Beaker folk" expanded eastwards, into the Corded Ware horizon.
context_section_description: In their large-scale study on radiocarbon dating of the Bell Beakers, J. Müller and S. Willingen established that the Bell Beaker Culture in Central Europe started after 2500 BC. Two great coexisting and separate Central European cultures – the Corded Ware with its regional groups and the Eastern Group of the Bell Beaker Culture – form the background to the Late Copper Age and Early Bronze Age. The Makó/Kosihy-Caka culture, indigenous to the Carpathians, may be included as a third component. Their development, diffusion and long range changes are determined by the great river systems. 
  The Bell Beaker settlements are still little known, and have proved remarkably difficult for archaeologists to identify. This allows a modern view of Bell Beakers to contradict results of anthropologic research. The modern view is that the Bell Beaker people, far from being the "warlike invaders" as once described by Gordon Childe (1940), added rather than replaced local late Neolithic traditions into a cultural package and as such did not always and evenly abandon all local traditions. More recent extensive DNA evidence, however, suggests a significant replacement of earlier populations.
  Bell Beaker domestic ware has no predecessors in Bohemia and Southern Germany, shows no genetic relation to the local Late Copper Age Corded Ware, nor to other cultures in the area, and is considered something completely new. The Bell Beaker domestic ware of Southern Germany is not as closely related to the Corded Ware as would be indicated by their burial rites. Settlements link the Southern German Bell Beaker culture to the seven regional provinces of the Eastern Group, represented by many settlement traces, especially from Moravia and the Hungarian Bell Beaker-Csepel group being the most important. In 2002, one of the largest Bell Beaker cemeteries in Central Europe was discovered at Hoštice za Hanou (Moravia, Czech Republic).
  The relationship to the western Bell Beakers groups, and the contemporary cultures of the Carpathian basin to the south east, is much less. Research in Northern Poland shifted the north-eastern frontier of this complex to the western parts of the Baltic with the adjacent Northern European plain. Typical Bell Beaker fragments from the site of Ostrikovac-Djura at the Serbian river Morava were presented at the Riva del Garda conference in 1998, some 100 km south-east of the Csepel Beaker sub-group (modern Hungary). Bell Beaker related material has now been uncovered in a line from the Baltic Sea down to the Adriatic and the Ionian Sea, including the modern states comprising Belarus, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Albania, North Macedonia and parts of Greece.
  The Bell Beaker culture settlements in southern Germany and in the East-Group show evidence of mixed farming and animal husbandry, and indicators such as millstones and spindle whorls prove the sedentary character of the Bell Beaker people, and the durability of their settlements. Some especially well equipped child-burials seem to indicate sense of predestined social position, indicating a socially complex society. However, analysis of grave furnishing, size and deepness of grave pits, position within the cemetery, did not lead to any strong conclusions on the social divisions.
  The Late Copper Age is regarded as a continuous culture system connecting the Upper Rhine valley to the western edge of the Carpathian Basin. Late Copper Age 1 was defined in southern Germany by the connection of the late Cham Culture, Globular Amphora culture, and the older Corded Ware Culture of "beaker group 1" that is also referred to as Horizon A or Step A. Early Bell Beaker Culture intruded into the region at the end of the Late Copper Age 1, around 2600–2550 BC. Middle Bell Beaker corresponds to Late Copper Age 2 and here an east–west Bell Beaker cultural gradient became visible through the difference in the distribution of the groups of beakers with and without handles, cups and bowls, in the three regions Austria–Western Hungary, the Danube catchment area of Southern Germany, and 
caption: An example of Beaker pottery from Straubing, Germany
exif: {"Image Make": "Panasonic", "Image Model": "DMC-FZ150", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "GIMP 2.6.11", "Image DateTime": "2014:04:30 21:28:31", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "422", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 14, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, ... ]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Rotated 90 CCW", "Thumbnail XResolution": "180", "Thumbnail YResolution": "180", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "10764", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5487", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/50", "EXIF FNumber": "17/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "800", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2014:04:15 13:48:33", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2014:04:15 13:48:33", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "113/32", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "79/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3000", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "4000", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "10616", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "88", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "High gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}