Bell Beaker pottery
Cerámica campaniforme
- Date
- c. 2800 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Tagus estuary (Leceia, Oeiras), Lisbon, Portugal
- Credited to
- Chalcolithic communities of the Tagus estuary
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
An inverted-bell-shaped vessel with impressed horizontal bands of decoration that appears in the Tagus estuary around 2800 BC and gives its name to a cultural phenomenon that eventually spread across much of western Europe. Its diffusion went hand in hand with the circulation of prestige goods, copper metallurgy and archers' equipment.
An Iberian origin for the style (radiocarbon dates from Leceia and Zambujal) is the most widely accepted hypothesis, but other researchers argue for the Rhine or the Low Countries. Ancient DNA (Olalde et al., 2018) shows that the phenomenon spread through the exchange of ideas in Iberia and through migration into Britain, not as a single people.
What it led to
- an exchange network of copper, gold and prestige objects between the Iberian Peninsula and central Europe
- the spread of copper metallurgy and the bow across western and central Europe
- single graves with grave goods reflecting increasingly marked elites