It's wrong to assume that Beaker People were only English

The first thing I have to report is that while the Beaker People did exist in Scotland, as I will show, we have an even stronger link to them because the very name “Beaker” was devised by a Scotsman, the soldier and archaeologist John Abercromby (below) (1841-1924) the 5th Baron Abercromby of Tullibody, who coined the term in 1904 to describe the drinking vessels being found all over Europe by archaeologists like himself.

He travelled far and wide across Europe chronicling such finds, and his 1912 seminal work A Study of the Bronze Age Pottery of Great Britain and Ireland and its Associated Grave-goods contained more than 1000 photographs of beakers and food vessels.

Though not totally accepted at the time, his theory that the Beaker People of Britain and Ireland were migrants from the eastern parts of Europe around 2000 BC was the most influential theory for decades, and one contemporary critic said of the 1912 publication that it would “long remain the standard work on the early Bronze Age of the British Isles”.

As a result of his ground-breaking work, Abercromby was honoured with a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, the city where he spent the latter part of his life. He left money to the university to fund the Abercromby chair of archaeology, while during his life he was president of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland – a name that will recur in this column.

Given Abercromby’s importance to Beaker studies, it never ceases to amaze me that many people think of the Beaker People as an English phenomenon when in fact they were a truly international collection of people who cast their influence, and their DNA, across Europe from what is now Russia and Poland all the way to Scotland and Ireland. Or did they?

For despite Abercromby’s discoveries, scientists are still arguing about whether the Beaker People were of a single origin who migrated westwards, or were the beakers found in many separate areas of Europe simply as the result of changes in the technology of that era? Or could there have been some overarching religious reason for the Beakers?

As I frequently write, part of this column’s mission is to try and convince National readers to do their own research, especially when a particular subject is not a speciality of mine – that’s a lot of them – and this column will indicate genuinely useful sources of information for further study of this intriguing subject.

I first became fascinated by the Beaker People when I learned of the discovery of a woman’s body at Achavanich in Caithness. She had been buried with a beaker some 4000 years ago and this amazing archaeological discovery captured my imagination – we will meet her again later in this column.

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It was back in 1987 when the find was made, and I have to confess my flirtation with the Beaker People was all too brief – something to do with getting married and having children proved a mild distraction … As I related last month, after my columns on the Clyde and Clava cairns a reader emailed me to ask if I could write about the Beaker People, so it’s been a fascinating fortnight or so researching the subject again, and I have been amazed at the developments in the scholarship about the Beaker People in the last 40-odd years.

Everything we know about the Beaker People has been the product of many years of research by scientists, principally archaeologists and geneticists, who have shown that the Beaker People were here in Scotland between 2400 BC and 1800 BC – as always with pre-history these dates are approximate.

Acknowledging the different theories about their origin, I tend to favour Abercromby’s migration concept, as DNA analysis published in 2018 shows that Beaker People did not originate in Scotland. Indeed that study has shown that their arrival here substantially altered DNA in the populace.

NAMED for their distinctive pottery of beakers in an inverted bell shape – the other name for the era is the Bell Beaker culture – the Beaker People flourished in the early Bronze Age, beginning around 2800 BC.

We do not know exactly how it began, but around the period when culture and religion started to dictate that people should be buried in individual tombs and graves, beakers began to be buried alongside the dead.

The culture, possibly inspired by religious mores, spread quickly and widely with beakers found in graves as far south as the Iberian peninsula and as far north as the Orkneys and Shetlands.

Archaeologists and genetics researchers have shown that the Beakers themselves were descended from the ancient peoples of the Eurasian Steppe who over time moved west to what is now Central Europe. They moved on to Great Britain around the middle of the third millennium BC, and spread north from Kent and southern England all the way to the north of Scotland. Though Stonehenge was mostly built before they arrived, traces of the Beaker People have been found around the site.

From carbon dating tests, we know that the Beaker People were skilled in the use of copper and other metals, and brought these skills to Britain and Ireland for the first time – there are some spectacular works in gold that were found in Ireland.

It is part of the Beaker phenomenon that they practised archery and also had undoubted networks over what for them must have been vast distances.

Most experts have speculated that the Beakers shared religious ideology and certainly their approach to dealing with their dead showed that while local diversity such as cremation was practised, nevertheless the general trend was to bury people or store their ashes in small tombs known as cists.

It is inside these cists that beakers were discovered, with traces of their contents showing that the vessels contained food and drink, presumably to be used in the afterlife. That is what is so remarkable about the Beaker People – despite considerable diversity in society between the areas in which they lived, there really was a continent-wide culture which suggests that they explored and settled numerous different regions, and assimilated themselves into indigenous peoples. Or perhaps they conquered such tribes – nobody can say for certain.

I prefer to think that assimilation is why the Beaker People as a distinct entity seem to have disappeared from view around 1800 BC to 1600 BC.

We are fortunate in Scotland that we have definite proof that the Beaker People existed here, and I am going to provide examples of important finds that were preserved by archaeologists and are still being studied. We also have one of our major universities, Aberdeen, noted for its expertise on the subject of the Beaker People.

First of all, and as I often do, I refer to the indispensable Canmore website, the online database of information on more than 340,000 archaeological locations, monuments, buildings and maritime sites in Scotland, begun by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland and now maintained by Historic Environment Scotland.

Canmore describes one of the earliest and most important Beaker finds which took place in Caithness: “In August 1904 a man called Robert Sutherland was excavating gravel from a pit, near a standing stone, with the intention of mending a road on the hill at Acharole.

“He must have been very surprised when he accidentally uncovered a Bronze Age cist containing the skeletal remains of a young male, buried with a complete beaker vessel. The skull was very round and would have had a broad face – both traits common amongst the beaker people.

“The beaker itself was highly decorated with a mixture of bands containing vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines making a mixture of criss-cross and zigzagging patterns.

“Unfortunately, due to indelicate handling, the beaker broke into multiple pieces but was carefully reassembled and is now cared for by National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh. The skeletal assemblage was analysed by one of the most famous antiquarians active in Caithness at the time – Sir Francis Tress Barry – and is now stored in the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow.”

A second example is known as Culduthel man and the National Museums of Scotland tells his story on their website: “The burial assemblage was discovered in 1975 when a contractor’s vehicle broke through the cover of a stone-capped cist. An emergency excavation was then carried out, uncovering the remains of a man and the several objects that had been buried alongside him. The cist contained the body of a man who died when he was around 35-40 years old. Radiocarbon dating has now shown that he lived and died around 2280-2020 BC. This places him around the end of the Chalcolithic period or the start of the Bronze Age period.

“He was discovered in a crouched position with a Beaker by his head and other objects around him. The Culduthel Beaker can hold around 2-3 litres and most likely held a liquid food or drink of some sort. It has been suggested that the drink, perhaps milk or ale, would have been for the man to take with him in the Afterlife. The Beaker was placed into the grave whole and upright but had become fragmented some time during the years it spent underground. It has since been reconstructed.”

The third example I have chosen was that woman whose discovery first alerted me to the presence of Beaker People in Scotland. She has become known as Ava. It is described in excellent fashion by the Dig It! Scotland website: “In 1987, the remains of a woman who lived around 4000 years ago was excavated at Achavanich in Caithness in the Highlands along with one of these beakers.

“The vessel was discovered in an almost complete state and features bands of decoration, including horizontal lines, herringbone, triangular and criss-cross impressions. The skeleton was found in a burial cist (stone box) with items that may have been intended for use in the afterlife such as stone tools.

“Limited post-excavation work was undertaken and the report was never published, but in 2014, archaeologist Maya Hoole FSAScot launched a project to investigate and publish the find with support from the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (who coordinate Dig It!).”

That’s the same society which had Abercromby as its president a century ago. I like that continuity.

The report continues: ”Ancient DNA analysis revealed that the woman was born in Caithness, but her family had moved from the Continent, and she may have been a first- or second-generation migrant. It also showed that she most likely had black hair, brown eyes and tanned skin (similar to populations living in southern Europe) and may have been lactose intolerant. Thanks to Maya’s work, support from the Society and the help of experts and institutions, this little-known archaeological site has become one of the best researched of its kind.”

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Three years ago a fascinating programme on Channel 4, The Bone Detectives, featured Ava and the extraordinary work of Aberdeen University who are undoubtedly Scotland’s greatest scholars of the Beaker People.

At the time of the documentary, the university’s head of museums and special collections Neil Curtis said that there were various reasons for the university having such an important collection associated with the Beaker People.

“The main reason is that the North-east of Scotland was one the areas that had very strong connections with the European Beaker phenomenon 4000 years ago. On top of that, their burial in stone cists protected them for thousands of years, until they were discovered by farming, road and house building since the nineteenth century.

“Finally, the strong links between the university’s medical school and its museum meant that anatomists were well-placed to collect, study and curate the skeletons and other finds.”

Their work is ongoing and perhaps I will have more to report in a future column.