European Kingdoms

Bell Beaker Horizon (Chalcolithic / Bronze Age) (Iberia)
c.2800 - 2300 BC

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The system which has evolved to catalogue the various archaeological expressions of human progress is one which involves cultures. The task of cataloguing the vast range of human cultures which emerged from Africa and the Near East right up until human expansion reached the Americas is covered in the related feature (see link, right).

Early Iberia formed the south-western peninsula of Europe and comprises the modern countries of Portugal and Spain, plus the principality of Andorra and the British crown colony of Gibraltar. The peninsula's role in human development played a notable role in the first millennium BC, even before the coming of imperial ambitions which reached its southern and eastern shores.

The three thousand year-old Iberian Neolithic experienced some difficulties towards the end of the fourth millennium BC, seemingly as part of a wider climate-related transition which also affected Sumer. The early Chalcolithic (Copper Age) became dominant, leading directly into the Iberian Bronze Age around 2800 BC.

The Bell Beaker started out as a horizon in Iberia rather than an archaeological culture. The definition for an archaeological 'horizon' is different from that of a 'culture' because it is less robust - it is defined on the basis of just a few traits - and is often superimposed on local archaeological cultures as a kind of trend.

The Bell Beaker in late Neolithic Europe, and especially Southern Europe, is defined primarily by a widespread style of decorated drinking cup (beakers), this being the source of the culture's name. Its practitioners have also been labelled 'Bell Beaker Folk', especially in some earlier twentieth century works (and 'Beaker folk' in a much-loved television drama of the 1970s!).

Burials with these pots alongside the dead have been used by archaeologists to chart the growth and expansion of the Beaker folk. In many places the culture also introduced a few new weapon types (such as copper daggers and also polished stone wrist-guards) which diffused throughout Europe alongside a new fashion in social drinking.

Archaeological finds are constantly being made, and archaeological cultures are frequently being updated with new information. Get in touch here if this page also requires updating.

(Information by Peter Kessler and Edward Dawson, with additional information from The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, David W Anthony, from The La Tene Celtic Belgae Tribes in England: Y-Chromosome Haplogroup R-U152 - Hypothesis C, David K Faux, from A Genetic Signal of Central European Celtic Ancestry, David K Faux, from The Celts, TGE Powell, and from External Links: The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe (Nature), and Gran Enciclopedia Aragonesa (in Spanish), and Celtiberia.net (in Spanish), and Lista de pueblos prerromanos de Iberia (in Spanish, Hispanoteca.eu), and Euskomedia (in Spanish), and Linking Up Bell Beakers in the Iberian Peninsula, Joaquín Jiménez-Puerto & Joan Bernabeu Aubán (Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Vol 30 pp 1200-1232, 2023, and available via Springer Nature).)

c.2800 BC

The Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Bell Beaker horizon first appears in eastern and south-eastern Iberia immediate prior to the emergence of the Vila Nova de Sao Pedro in western Iberia, but well behind the long-lived Los Millares civilisation in the south-east.

It signals a clear change from late Iberian Neolithic and early Chalcolithic cultural expressions. Its arrival appears to correct some of the increasing agricultural inequalities of the Neolithic at a time in which farming practices are also being forced to change.

The Iberian Bell Beaker cultural horizon reached the Alps around southern Germany where it met newly-arrived Indo-Europeans who took it up with enthusiasm to spread a wider Bell Beaker culture

A shift to drier conditions has been taking place since about 3300 BC. Pollen core samples from across Eastern Europe - notably across the Pontic-Caspian steppe between the Don and the Irtysh (in Kazakhstan) - show that forests sharply decline and Artemisia (an arid herb indicator) increases.

As a result the steppe has been growing and the steppe people have kept on increasing their herds, feeding them by moving them more often, and their new wagons help them to do this almost constantly. Something similar happens in Iberia, albeit without the wagons which are unknown at this time.

The result in Iberia is an outwards cultural spread (not a physical migration) of the Bell Beaker horizon, while a flood of physical migration is also taking place from the steppe into Central Europe and northern Italy. This migration is part of the Yamnaya horizon.

It is these West Indo-Europeans who now pick up the influence of the originally-Iberian and Balearic Islands Bell Beaker horizon. They do this enthusiastically, turning it into a true Bell Beaker culture.

Shown here is a selection of highly distinctive bell-shaped pots which were created by the Bell Beaker folk between around 2900-1800 BC in Europe and the British Isles