The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

by Chris Fowler

  With the exception of the wheel from Zürich Pressehaus, cut from a single piece of wood, all other Neolithic wooden wheels of the circumalpine area are manufactured in the same way. They consist of three separate wooden planks fitted together and fixed with two or three transversal strips inserted into dovetailed grooves (Fig. 5.4, 1–2). The axle was fixed in a square central hole, thus turning with the wheel under the wagon. The wheel was usually made from maple wood, with ash used for the strips and the axle. The carpentry details are very specific and at the same time widespread, suggesting a single ‘construction manual’ passed on or taught throughout the whole region and maintained over at least five centuries without visible alterations.

  FIG. 5.4. Earliest evidence for wheeled transport in central and eastern Europe: 1a,b wooden wheel and axle from Stare gmajne, Slovenia (c. 3500–3300 BC); 2 wooden wheel from Alleshausen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany (3000–2700 BC); 3 wooden yoke fragment from Arbon-Bleiche 3, Thurgau, Switzerland (3384–3370 BC); 4,5 wheel-shaped cups of the classical Baden culture (c. 3300–3200 BC) from Szigetszentmárton (4) and Budakalász (5), Hungary; 6,7 bowls on perforated sledge runners, drawn by one or two oxen, from Talyanki, Ukraine, Tripolye C (c. 3700–3500 BC). Various scales. After Velušček 2002, fig. 2–3; Schlichtherle 2002, fig. 14; Leuzinger 2002, fig. 3; Maran 2004a, fig. 5–6; Kruc et al. 2005, fig. 16; Gusev 1998, fig. 4.3.

  Although there is no clear evidence, this circumAlpine type of wagon is assumed to be two-wheeled. Schlichtherle (2002, 2004, 301–304) considered triangular fork-like drags as technological forerunners, the oldest of which was found in the bog settlement of Reute (Baden-Württemberg) and dendro-dated 3709–3707 BC (Fig. 5.5).

  FIG. 5.5. Reconstruction of a triangular two-wheeled wagon with detachable rotating axle, based on the wooden drag fragment from Reute, Baden-Württemberg, Germany (3709–3707 BC).

  After Schlichtherle 2002, fig. 28.

  A different type is the four-wheeled wagon known only from the famous wagon-shaped cups of the Baden culture in Hungary (Budakalász, Szigetszentmárton; Fig. 5.4, 4–5). These appear to represent a different principle of construction. The clay wheels have a round axle hole and a hub is indicated, suggesting that the wheels turned on a fixed axle, which would give a four-wheeled wagon better steerability. The two well-known model wagons belong to the classical phase of the Baden culture (Maran 2004a, 270–272), dated to around 3300–3200 BC.

  The existence of two different types of wagon in the Carpathian Basin and the circumAlpine region does not, however, exclude relations between both areas. The lakeside settlement of Arbon Bleiche 3 on the southern (Swiss) shore of Lake Constance, dendro-dated to 3384–3370 BC, yielded imported pottery fragments of the early (Boleráz) phase of the Baden culture (Maran 2004a, 266). The significance of these finds in terms of culture contact is underscored by a fragment of wooden yoke from the same settlement layer (Fig. 5.4, 3), one of the most ancient indicators of animal traction in Europe (Leuzinger 2002). The imported Boleráz pottery and the yoke could indicate a transfer of technology from the innovative Carpathian Basin along the Danube to Lake Constance (Maran 2004a, 278). This same route had been taken by copper metallurgy as it spread to the Pfyn culture half a millennium earlier.

  Growing Mobility in the Pontic Steppe Zone

  Further east, in the steppe zone of Moldavia and western Ukraine, animal-shaped clay vessels with perforated legs and containing clay wheels are known from several sites dating to phase C1 of the Tripolye culture, c. 3800–3600 BC (Maran 2004b, 438). A related category are bowls with single or paired bull head applications on sledge runners, which are perforated and seem to have contained axles with clay wheels (4, 6–7,; Kruc et al. 2005, 40, fig. 16). Obviously, the idea of containers put on wheels was present in the Tripolye culture before the middle of the fourth millennium, and was associated with single or paired animals. As Maran (2004b, 432) points out, the extremely large settlements of this culture (up to several hundred hectares) and the steppe environment would reasonably explain the economic advantage of local wheeled transport.

  A key role in the development and transfer of wagon technology can probably be assigned to the Majkop culture, located in the north-western foreland of the Caucasus. This highly innovative culture (Govedarica 2002) was indirectly influenced by the Mesopotamian Uruk culture, with which it is roughly contemporaneous (Maran 2004b, 433–436). The oldest wagon from a burial context comes from the middle phase (Kostromskaya-Inozemcevo) of the Majkop culture, dated c. 3500–3200 BC: two wheels were deposited on top of a wooden cover above grave pit 18 in kurgan 2 near Starokorsunskaya (Trifonov 2004, 168).

  Thus, the present evidence for early wheeled transport does not support the traditional belief in the oriental invention of wheel and wagon. Full-size wheels and axles from central and eastern Europe clearly pre-date the earliest wheels from the Near East, and the indirect evidence (models, depictions) does not allow for a temporal gradient indicating diffusion ex oriente. Two alternative hypotheses remain. Innovation could have happened roughly simultaneously, but independently, in several regions (the polycentric model). This could explain the contemporaneous existence of different technical variants (two or four wheels, fixed or rotating axle). Alternatively, there was only one innovation centre. Following Maran (2004b), the late Tripolye culture (around 3700–3500 BC) in the steppe area north-west of the Pontic Sea is the most likely candidate for inventing wheeled transport, and the steppe cultures north of the Black Sea show well-documented relations to south-eastern Europe. Further eastward, future research is needed to clarify the contacts between the late Tripolye and Majkop cultures, but the latter may have played a crucial role in transferring the wagon techno-complex to Mesopotamia (Maran 2004b, 438).

  The deposition of wooden wagons in graves continued with the Yamnaya (Pit Grave) culture (c. 3200–2500 BC), which, according to Russian archaeological tradition, is early Bronze Age. A considerable number of remarkably well preserved wagon burials in huge mounds (kurgans) have been excavated between Kuban, the lower Don, and the southern Ural mountains (Gej 2004; Tureckij 2004), dating between 3200 and 2500 BC (Tureckij 2004, 197). Generally, these wagons have four wheels and marked hubs, with round holes indicating wheels turning on a fixed axle.

  The Yamnaya culture, known mainly from kurgan burials, covers a huge area of steppe between the southern Urals and the eastern Carpathians. Consequently, several regional sub-groups have been defined (Gej 2004, 193–195). Wagon burials are more frequent in its south-eastern zone. For several decades, it has been considered a textbook example of a mobile archaeological culture due to the lack of settlements and an assumed focus on (nomadic?) animal husbandry. Isolated burial mounds, attributable to the Yamnaya culture because of burial rite and grave goods, have been discovered along the lower Danube and even in eastern Hungary (Ecsedy 1979; Gerling et al. 2012).

  THE THIRD MILLENNIUM

  The Origin and Spread of the Corded Ware Culture

  At the transition from the late (3500–2800 BC) to final Neolithic (2800–2200 BC), a widespread cultural phenomenon arises across central and eastern Europe—the Corded Ware culture. Its characteristic material culture (beakers with cord impressions or incised decoration, amphorae, battle axes) and burial rite (single graves, crouched skeletons in gender-specific positions and orientations) are known from western Switzerland to the Netherlands and southern Scandinavia (usually under the name Single Grave culture), and from the Rhine to Ukraine and Belarus (regionally the Fatjanovo culture). Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the widespread and apparently sudden appearance of Corded Ware was associated with the spread of the Indo-Europeans (Gimbutas 1956, 1997).

  Glob (1944) postulated a unitary European initial phase of Corded Ware, based on axe types and their stratigraphic position in Danish burial mounds of the Single Grave culture. The supporters of this so-called A-horizon saw Corded Ware spreading from eastern Europe, without specifying a closer region of origin. Researchers in central
Germany, indisputably a Corded Ware centre given site density and typological variety, argued for an origin in the Elbe-Saale region and rejected the A-horizon hypothesis (Fischer 1956). Until the 1990s the debate was based mainly on typological arguments.

  In the last decade, the basis for absolute dating was considerably enhanced (Czebreszuk and Müller 2001; Furholt 2003) and the focus of debate shifted towards the time, speed, and mechanisms of the spread of Corded Ware. As at the beginning of the Neolithic, the alternative hypotheses of diffusion and migration have been discussed, but also the meaning of the archaeological term ‘culture’: is Corded Ware the material expression of an ethnic or linguistic group, a social marker, or the reflection of an ideology? The culture concept and suggested model of spread obviously are mutually interdependent. Based on the evaluation of almost 200 radiocarbon dates, Suter (2002) postulated the end of the A-horizon, arguing that the elements of this assumed early phase span several centuries. Suter thus considers Corded Ware, together with the somewhat later Bell Beakers, as reflecting the spread of an ideology and ritual drinking customs.

  Based on an even larger collection of radiocarbon dates, Furholt (2004) presents different results. By classifying the dating evidence according to sample quality, he is able to demonstrate a temporal gradient for the oldest Corded Ware dates, running from central Poland to the north-west and south-west. The forms constituting the A-horizon are not the oldest ones (in Poland), but they appear in the first stage of diffusion, even if some of them persist regionally until the younger Corded Ware (Furholt 2004). Furholt even revives the old idea of an initial spread of burial rites without characteristic grave goods (‘Kalbsrieth’ group) as early as 2900 BC. Owing to the chronological difference between the separate spreads of burial rites and material culture, Furholt prefers two-step diffusion to migration (Furholt 2004, 493).

  Comparing the evidence from lakeside settlements in northern and western Switzerland, Hafner (2002) illustrates remarkably different processes. At Lake Zürich the late Neolithic Horgen culture was completely replaced by Corded Ware within 25 dendro years, but in the west a gradual adoption of Corded Ware pottery can be observed, lasting more than one century. Suter (2002) takes up this evidence in challenging the traditional view of an immigration of Corded Ware culture in Switzerland. Both Hafner and Suter do not interpret these opposed patterns in terms of immigration versus acculturation, but argue for a ‘Corded Ware ideology’ that spread and was adopted at different speeds in both regions.

  Recent research has considerably changed our view of the final Neolithic. For Corded Ware, an east–west gradient indicates the direction of spread. This might suggest the diffusion of ideas and their material expression, but migration should not be excluded, at least at a regional scale. A new ideology of individualized burial with battle axes as male status symbols and ritually polarized gender roles may have been important. The symmetrically opposed position and orientation of male and female individuals might even reflect complementary, gender-specific concepts of the lived world. This ‘gender ideology’ is maybe one of the most remarkable innovations of the final Neolithic.

  Only in central Europe, where the distributions of Corded Ware and Bell Beaker overlap spatially and temporally, can the continuation of this gender ideology be understood: Beaker males lie on their left side, females on the right side—the exact opposite of Corded Ware ‘rules’. Also, the orientation generally shifts from west–east/east–west to north–south/south–north. Fischer (1956) introduced the term ‘dialectic of the Beaker cultures’ for this phenomenon, thus emphasizing the ideological character of final Neolithic burial ritual.

  This emphasis on gender distinction within the burial ritual, possibly indicating complementary and opposed gender spheres among the living, persisted during the early Bronze Age in central Europe.

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