Volker Heyd

Late April 2024 will bring more exciting progress in our understanding of Third Millennium BC archaeology in Europe.
Following the successful first ‘The Transformation of Europe in the Third Millennium BC’ conference in October 25–28, 2023 in Riva del Garda, Trento, Italy, 25 years after the International Conference “Bell Beakers Today” (see also: www.TransformEurope1Riva2023.com), we are now preparing for the second ‘Transformation’ event. As anticipated, this second conference --under the local guidance of Gabriella Kulcsár, the Institute of Archaeology HUN-REN RCH, and funding by the ERC YMPACT project and National Cultural Fund of Hungary-- will be held in Budapest in April 24–27, 2024, in the Research Centre for Human Sciences of Hungarian Academy of Sciences. It will cover the late Fourth and first half of the Third Millennium BC, and here particularly Yamnaya, Globular Amphoras and Corded Wares in the east, center and north of the Continent. There will be the following six thematic sessions:
1) Early Steppe interactions from the mid to the end of Fourth Millennium BC between Caucasus and Carpathians;
2) Yamnaya divided? Yamnaya East – Yamnaya West;
3) In the Carpathian Basin and around at the end of Fourth and in the first half of the Third Millennium BC;
4) Globular Amphoras in changing worlds; and
5) Corded Wares and parallel societies in the Third Millennium BC.
6) A special session at the end of the conference will be devoted to the ‘Big Picture’ of Eurasia, bringing also both conferences together, while altogether emphasizing migrations, interactions/admixture and cultural change.

We are looking forward to seeing you in Budapest, either in person or via our remote streaming option. For both, please register at: www.TransformEurope2Budapest2024.com

Volker Heyd (University of Helsinki, Finland)
Franco Nicolis (Archaeological Heritage Office, Trento, Italy)
Gabriella Kulcsár (Hungarian Research Network, Budapest, Hungary)

The next months will bring exciting progress in our understanding of Third Millennium BC archaeology in Europe.
Exactly 25 years after the ‘Bell Beakers Today’ international conference in Riva del Garda / Italy, scholars from across Europe have committed themselves to participating in a momentous scientific event. Under the umbrella title of 'The Transformation of Europe in the Third Millennium BC', two distinct conferences, however mirroring each other, will be held in two different parts of Europe six months apart.
The sole purpose for these two meetings will be to develop and deepen, through an interdisciplinary approach, all aspects that in recent years have contributed to outlining a new interpretative framework of the cultural and social transformation of Europe in the Third Millennium BC. Scholars will pursue such in a constructive dialogue between archaeology, anthropology, genetics/genomics, linguistics and other biological and environmental disciplines.
The first meeting, over four days with 26 lecture contributions organized in six sessions with two keynotes each, will take place in October 25-28, 2023 in the Centro Congressi of Riva del Garda, Trentino, Italy. Its focus will be on the mid and second half of the Third Millennium BC, particularly Bell Beakers in the west and south. Check out the programme on the site www.TransformEurope1Riva2023.com
The second meeting will then be held in Budapest in April 24-27, 2024 and will cover the late Fourth and first half of the Third Millennium BC, here particularly Yamnaya, Globular Amphoras and Corded Wares in the east, center and north. The conference webpage will be published later.

We are looking forward seeing you in Riva del Garda and later in Budapest, either in person or via the remote option. Access, upon registration via the website, is free of charge.

Franco Nicolis (Archaeological Heritage Office, Trento, Italy)
Volker Heyd (University of Helsinki, Finland)
Gabriella Kulcsár (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary)

Mobility and migrations are key factors for understanding cultural change. Since the advent of mobility isotopes and especially ancient DNA studies, this fact is in no prehistoric periods so obvious as in the Early Neolithic of the 7th/6th millennium BC and the Copper Age/Early Bronze Age transition of the 4th/3rd millennium BC. However, especially for the 3rd millennium BC, there is no consensus on the scale, size, extent, directions, and speed of events. We likewise lack good conceptualisations and explanations for the mechanisms behind people moving. Here, an attempt is being made to describe essentials of four events in which archaeology and genetic studies regard recognisable quantities of peoples moving westwards: 1) Yamnaya; 2) Early Corded Ware; 3) Later Corded Ware; and 4) ‘steppe’ Bell Beaker. Emphasised is the importance of the geography in the understanding of regional transmissions. Particularly discussed are the roles of versatile/volatile boundaries of the Eastern European forest-steppe region between the Dnieper and Dniester rivers for the formation of Corded Ware, and of the Central European Upper Rhine river region in the border triangle of France, Germany and Switzerland for ‘steppe’ Bell Beaker users. Highlighted are also possible origins of the typical gender-differentiated burial custom of Corded Ware and Bell Beaker cultures in the north-Pontic Zhivotilovka-Volchansk group; the importance of Bohemia and the Elbe river in the earliest spread and first consolidation of Corded Ware users; and the ‘Beakerisation’ of central and southern France rather happening from the east than from the Iberian peninsula.

Bell Beaker pottery spread across western and central Europe beginning around 2750 BCE before disappearing between 2200-1800 BCE. The mechanism of its expansion is a topic of long-standing debate, with support for both cultural diffusion and human migration. We present new genome-wide ancient DNA data from 170 Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age Europeans, including 100 Beaker-associated individuals. In contrast to the Corded Ware Complex, which has previously been identified as arriving in central Europe following migration from the east, we observe limited genetic affinity between Iberian and central European Beaker Complex-associated individuals, and thus exclude migration as a significant mechanism of spread between these two regions. However, human migration did have an important role in the further dissemination of the Beaker Complex, which we document most clearly in Britain using data from 80 newly reported individuals dating to 3900-1200 BCE. British Neolithic farmers were genetically similar to contemporary populations in continental Europe and in particular to Neolithic Iberians, suggesting that a portion of the farmer ancestry in Britain came from the Mediterranean rather than the Danubian route of farming expansion. Beginning with the Beaker period, and continuing through the Bronze Age, all British individuals harboured high proportions of Steppe ancestry and were genetically closely related to Beaker-associated individuals from the Lower Rhine area. We use these observations to show that the spread of the Beaker Complex to Britain was mediated by migration from the continent that replaced >90% of Britain's Neolithic gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the process that brought Steppe ancestry into central and northern Europe 400 years earlier.

The article presents the feasibility of the investigation of kurgans of which no visible surface traces survive. Case studies suggest that the archaeological topographic examination of the tumuli on the Great Hungarian Plain calls for the application of a complex and comprehensive methodology. The best results can be expected from a combination of the study of histori- cal maps,  eld surveys and geophysical (magnetometry) surveys. The only limitation of this holistic approach is that by using non-invasive methods, we are unable to determine the exact age of the examined mound, and thus the invasive method of excavation is necessary in order to clarify the stratigraphy and the date of a particular site.

Reconstructing stock herding strategies and land use is key to comprehending past human social organization and economy. We present laser-ablation strontium and carbon isotope data from 25 cattle (Bos taurus) to reconstruct mobility and infer herding management at the Swiss lakeside settlement of Arbon Bleiche 3, occupied for only 15 years (3384–3370 BC). Our results reveal three distinct isotopic patterns that likely reflect different herding strategies: 1) localized cattle herding, 2) seasonal movement, and 3) herding away from the site year-round. Different strategies of herding are not uniformly represented in various areas of the settlement, which indicates specialist modes of cattle management. The pressure on local fodder capacities and the need for alternative herding regimes must have involved diverse access to grazing resources. Consequently, the increasing importance of cattle in the local landscape was likely to have contributed to the progress of socio-economic differentiation in early agricultural societies in Europe.

Two recent palaeogenetic studies have identified a movement of Yamnaya peoples from the Eurasian steppe to Central Europe in the third millennium BC. Their findings are reminiscent of Gustaf Kossinna’s equation of ethnic identification with archaeological culture. Rather than a single genetic transmission from Yamnaya to the Central European Corded Ware Culture, there is considerable evidence for centuries of connections and interactions across the continent, as far as Iberia. The author concludes that although genetics has much to offer archaeology, there is also much to be learned in the other direction. This article should be read in conjunction with that by Kristiansen et al. (2017), also in this issue.

The Pit-Graves under burial mounds (Kurgans) of the Lower Danube region are being assessed in terms of their burial customs, funeral equipment, stratigraphy and radiocarbon dates. The latter comprise 17 recently performed AMS dates from Northern Muntenia, most of them yet unpublished. Two distinct burial groups can be separated: A first consists of graves with more oval than rectangular grave-pits, predominantly side-crouched body positions of the deceased, few ochre, and rare but seemingly local pots. Graves of this group are mostly the primary graves in their mounds. By using some already published and the newly obtained 14C dates from the graves 3B and 5B of Ariceşti IV (and partly grave 2/3 of Păuleşti II), all Prahova District, we demonstrate this group to date to before c. 3050/3000 cal BC, probably cov- ering the whole last third of the IVth millennium BC. The second group presents all characteristics of the classical ’Yamnaya’, i.e. primary and secondary graves, predomi- nantly rectangular grave-pits covered by wooden beams, and supine body positions with flexed legs, ochre patches and/or lumps, and sparse equipment of those occasional precious-metal hair rings stand out. Pottery is again rare; but when vessels are given they often represent cord-dec- orated beakers, resembling very much the typical Corded Ware beakers of Central and Northern Europe. Graves of this group have normally 14C dates after c. 3050/3000 cal BC with a tentative possibility to further divide them along the flat and steep parts of the calibration curve, i.e. firstly from c. 3050/3000 to 2880 cal BC and then from c. 2880 to 2580 cal BC. This perhaps opens the possibility to eventually define an earlier and later ’Yamnaya’. Overall, and after examining more than 500 radiocarbon and/ or dendrochronological dates from the Ural to the Tisza river, the pit-grave cultural phenomenon ranges from c. 3500 to 2400 cal BC. By including the preceding Suvoro- vo-Novodanilovka graves (Vth mill. BC) and some Kurgan/ steppe burials attributed to Cernavoda I and its relatives (1st half of IVth mill. BC), a 2,000 years lasting continuum of exchange between the northeast, north and west-Pontic regions becomes evident. While we assume the ‘Yamnaya’ being mostly covered by an intense wave of migrant people from the east, in a novel socio-economic-ideo- logical athmosphere, it remains to be seen whether the first Pit-Graves under Kurgans at the Lower Danube from c. 3300 cal BC are also carried by steppe people related to those using the north-Pontic Nizhne-Mikhailovka and Kv- ityana burial traditions, or by local populations integrat- ing new ‘eastern’ burial customs into their own rituals. Perhaps a combination of both is the most likely scenario.

The area encompassed by the Danubian Early Bronze Age comprises the regions north of the Alps, mostly along the upper and middle Danube corridor, from Switzerland in the west to western Hungary in the east, plus a kind of regional exclave near the point where the modern countries of Hun- gary, Romania, and Serbia meet. It is thus congruent with what E.Vogt termed the Blechkreis and incorporates the regional archaeological cultures and groups of Singen (Baden- Württemberg), Straubing (Lower Bavaria), Linz (Upper Austria), Unterwölbling (Lower Austria), Leithaprodersdorf (Burgenland) and the Early Maros Culture. Framed by various other regional Early Bronze Age cultures and groups – the most important of these being Rhône and Adlerberg in the south-west to north-west; Unětice in the north and north-east; Proto-/Early-Mierzanowice and Chłopice-Veselé/Nitra in the north-east; Nagyrév in the east; and Polada in the south across the Alps – the Danubian Early Bronze Age formed exchange networks with all of them and was bound into even wider contemporary networks, currents, and customs. It thus rapidly became a major innovative centre. Its beginnings are conventionally dated to 22oo cal BC. However, due to the plateaus in the calibration curve of the later 3rd millennium BC, and a resulting lack of chronological resolution in the available radiocarbon dating, the date 22oo BC is almost inevitably arrived at, since it is the short-lived meeting point of two distinct plateaus. If one looks more closely at the structure of these dates, as they have been published, and the various ways in which scholars have worked with and interpreted them, one cannot escape the impression that the conventional beginning of the Danubian Early Bronze Age (Reinecke A1 period) has to be shifted somewhat forward in time, i. e., closer to 215o cal BC, if not even a further generation beyond that. Also, it would appear that there was a gradual chronological shift from east to west in the formation of the Danubian Early Bronze Age, with the beginning of the Leitha group occurring one or two generations earlier than that of the Straubing group, for example. However, one needs to be cautious here, as this proposal is (only) based on typo-chronological fine tuning of the Reinecke Ao and A1 phases and is not yet sup- ported in absolute dating. The Danubian Early Bronze Age is primarily defined by its typical burial customs, its pottery inventory, and its jewellery and dress fittings, often made of copper (and rarely, initially, of tin-bronzes) and mostly known from its numerous graves and graveyards – by far the most important archaeological source of our understanding. Contemporary settlement sites have only recently added valuable data about the subsistence economy and the settlement/land- scape organisation. Hoarding was poorly developed in the ini- tial stages; the custom of depositing large and uniform metal hoards only began to develop about a century later. Both burial customs and the pottery inventory now demonstrate an unambiguous continuity from the later (Begleitkeramik) phases of the Bell-Beaker East group and it may be supposed that this continuity also applies to the great majority of the population of the time. There are also indications that the basics of the social and settlement organisation continued from the preceding Late Copper Age. However, jewellery such as hair/head-decorations, torcs, neck chains, and arm-rings are innovative, and new dress codes are indicated by metal/ bone pins and buttons – which although already known as single pieces in the regional Late Copper Age, now appear in far greater quantity and uniformity, and in new combinations. The same is true of the typical weaponry, soon consist- ing, in its most elaborated form, of the riveted copper dagger, flanged axe, and halberd.
But there is another aspect of discontinuity that is not yet fully understood in terms of its importance for the transformations taking place at the transition to the Early Bronze Age: not a single burial ground of the late Bell Beaker phases appears to continue into the initial Danubian Early Bronze Age. All the cemeteries, including those of the Early Maros Culture, are newly founded and are then sometimes used continuously for several centuries, as in the cases of Franzhausen and Gemeinlebarn in Austria. The same situation is interest- ingly observable in the case of the Unětice Culture, in the north of the Danube River, and of the epi-Corded Ware Mierzanowice/Nitra groups in Poland and Slovakia. Might this speak in favour of a more substantial change, or even a partial system collapse, around 22oo–215o cal BC north of the Alps? We summarise and contribute to the ongoing discussion.

Carbon isotope analysis (δ13C) was performed on collagen extracted from 54 domestic cattle (Bos taurus) and 20 red deer (Cervus elaphus) bones from the Neolithic (3913-2586 BC) and Bronze Age (1950-950 cal. BC) layers of the lakeshore site Zurich-Mozartstrasse located in the lower Lake Zurich basin, Switzerland. We observed shifts in the δ13C of both domestic cattle and red deer over two millennia. Mean δ13C values of red deer changed from -24.1 ± 0.7‰ to -22.5 ± 0.3‰, while mean δ13C values of domestic cattle showed minor changes from -22.7 ± 1.3‰ to -22.1 ± 0.3‰. Our data suggest that in the early 4th millennium BC the landscape was densely forested with red deer feeding in closed habitats and cattle grazing in more open landscapes. Forest was also a food resource for some young cattle as indicated by the lower δ13C values of non-adult relative to adult animals. This points to a greater diversity of herding strategies and feeding techniques compared to the later periods. The landscape was still rather forested towards the mid-3rd millennium BC, with no obvious changes in the habitat use of the large herbivores. However, the carbon isotopes suggest a clearly reduced forest cover in the 2nd millennium BC with red deer using similar open feeding grounds as domestic cattle. Our study demonstrates that the stable carbon isotope composition of archeological bone material from large herbivores can provide integrative constraints on paleoenvironmental and vegetation changes, prehistoric animal management and land-use.

Precise timing of natural and cultural events provides a foundation for understanding how past natural phenomena have driven changes in population and culture. In this study, we used high-resolution Bayesian chronology to describe an event sequence of a massive and abrupt water level decline of a large lake and the contemporaneous cultural changes that occurred in eastern Fennoscandia during the mid-Holocene. The study provides the first transdisciplinary analysis of the causes and effects of the events by using a combination of archaeological, geological and ecological data. Nearly 6000 years ago, ancient Lake Saimaa, estimated to cover nearly 9000 km2at the time, was abruptly discharged through a new outlet. The event created thousands of square kilometres of new residual wetlands. The archaeological record shows a profound cultural replacement and a subsequent sharp human population maximum in the area during the decades after the decline in water level. During the population maximum, the proportion of Alces alces (moose) in the diet rapidly increased and became prominent as a dietary resource. The eventual population decline in the area coincided with ecological development towards old boreal conifer forests, along with the colonization of a new species of tree Picea abies (Norway spruce). The new ecosystem was less suitable for moose to forage in, and this attenuated the dietary role of moose and thus contributed towards the eventual population and cultural decline. The methodological approach described in this paper allowed the reconstruction of past natural and cultural events and demonstrated how they can be causally intertwined.

There are still large gaps in Istanbul’s prehistoric chronology. Especially our knowledge covering the periods of the Early Bronze and Iron Ages is very limited. Finding new evidences to fill this gap is one of the objectives of our Istanbul Prehistoric Research Project. Fieldworks in the past years provided data supporting this objective. The flint tools uncovered in Istanbul’s western districts of Avcilar-Firuzköy, the handmade burnished potteries identified in Çatalca-Incegiz and the Dagyenice-Karatepe/Kartepe caves give new archaeological insights dating from the Bronze Age to the Iron Ages. The pottery fragments discovered in the Çatalca region show that the Bronze Age cultures of the Balkans reached right to the mountainous and forested zones in the west of Istanbul. On the other hand, the results obtained from the detailed surveys and geophysical studies we carried out in Silivri-Selimpasa Höyük situated at Istanbul’s Marmara Sea shores, showed that in the Early Bronze Age the Höyük was under the influence of Western Anatolian cultures. Thus the western side of Istanbul is showing influences from two different spheres. No doubt Istanbul’s western side was part of the trade route leading from Mesopotamia, over Anatolia to the Balkans which was established towards the end the Early Bronze Age.

The settlement mound of Selimpasa is the last of its kind in the western (Thracian) part of the Istanbul province. We got the impression that the settlement was a kind of bridge between Southeastern Europe and Anatolia as well as between the Black Sea region and the Aegean one. The geophysics prospection we carried out on the mound demonstrated that the mound consists of an upper and a lower "town" resembling an Anatolian settlement's pattern. Pottery sherds have parallels from the Troia I - Yortan Culture and the subsequent Troia II/III and respective Küllüoba phases, as shown by some wheel-made plates.