Lech valley connection to North Dutch Beakers
According to Davidski:
- WEHR_1192SkA is very similar to Bell Beakers from the northern Netherlands with whom he shares the R1b-P312 Y-haplogroup, suggesting that he was part of a population that moved into the Lech Valley from potentially as far away as the North Sea coast
And indeed this result pops up in the result of my mothers' sample the G25 ancient fit on number 3! Which is kind of surprising because most of the other samples are from the early middle ages, so presumably closer.
Beside the Lech Valley there are two other 'upstreams'
The second one is to NE Europe the Trzciniec connection
The emergence of Trzciniec in Mierzanowice territory has been described by Jacek Górski and Sławomir Kadrow as follows (Czebreszuk 1998).
1. Migration of “Trzciniec” population from the Lowlands.
2. Initially the migrants occupy in the south only those ecological niches which they know from the Lowlands, i.e. the sandy oecumene.
3. The migrants come into contact with local settled farmers, represented by the Mierzanowice culture, which was then in a crisis; they adopt traits that will enable them to exploit loess niches.
4. Finally, the Trzciniec package is shared also by the communities of settled farmers of loess areas.
Third the North English/Scottish connection of the North Dutch Beakers, Clarke (1967):
The Northern British/North Rhine Beaker Group
The particular interest of the Northern/North Rhine group and its close cousin the Barbed Wire beaker group, is that both groups only just scrape within the definition of beakers of the Bell beaker tradition. Both Northern/North Rhine and the Barbed-Wire beaker groups comprise traditions of mixed Late Corded Ware and peripheral Bell beaker origin. This mixture of traditions can be recognised in the squat, protruding foot, ovoid body beakers with recurved rims, incised or grooved decoration with a poor repertoir of basic beaker motifs and a neolithic poverty of grave associations. To these factors can be added the occasional use of cremation
burial rite in a small grave with the beaker beside the cremation heap, and a number of vessels without decoration below the belly.
The Northern/North Rhine beaker group then is represented by the small squat or globular vessels with protruding feet.
The decoration frequently consists of heavy grooving below the rim with crude or carelessly incised zones on the body,
including metopic motifs. The typical motif is the multiple outlined triangle of the diagnostic form common throughout the Corded Ware tradition and entirely alien in the Bell beaker motif assemblage (Struve, 195 5, p. 136). The origin of the group seems to lie
in the similar assemblages found immediately North of the old Rhine Delta and alongthe hinterland of the Frisian coasts. The Dutch examples of this group have been partially defined by Modderrnan ( 1955) but the type is centered across the border in coastal Germany4. In this are a it would appear that late and devolved Corded Waregroups integrated small bands of beaker settlers producing a pottery assemblage of hybrid character. These folk, with their strong non-beaker background, apparently crossed theNorth Sea in a series of small bands somewhere around 1700 B.C. or slightly later. The settlers clustered in three foci based on the North Sea Coast: - around the Moray Firth, in the Border Counties and on the Yorkshire Wolds. The domestic assemblage included both undecorated and non-plastic rusticated ware. The main importance of these settlers from across the North Sea lies in the subsequent integration of certain of their pottery features with the later Dutch beakers of the Veluwetype, giving rise to regional insular variations such as the beakers with short, angular.all-over-grooved necks.
The Northern British Beaker Tradition
The intrusive beaker group, represented by the Primary Northern/Dutch folk, rapidly settled, consolidated and expanded their territory in Britain. This Primary group established a beaker tradition that was to continue to evolve in NorthernBritain for at least another two centuries. I propose to divide the beakers of the subsequent Northern British tradition into a series of four consecutive assemblages orgroups, each of which represents a successively later phase in the tradition. Needless to say these assemblages Ol' groups are only phases in the coherent development of a single social tradition and must be assumed to overlap considerably. In additionto the Primary Northern group (N IjD), just discussed, I propose to distinguish a Developed Northern group (Nz), a Late Northern Group (N3) and a Final Northern Group (N4), each defined on the basis of the evolving motif assemblage and shape variation that separate the increasingly insular Northern British tradition from its divergently evolving Veluwe ancestor. There is however, some evidence of continued contact with the Netherlands upto, and including, a few beakers and associations of van der Waals' ZId group . The available evidence points to the continued links with the Vel uwe as the source of the single-rivet and notched rhomboidal knivesand also as the stimulus for more extensive metallurgy in Northern Britain.The confines of this paper are too small to allow the detailed description of the successive phases of the Northern British beaker tradition. However, I wish to underline one or two aspects. By the Developed Northern beaker phase c. 1600 B.C. this tradition was the dominant beaker tradition in Britain. Regional centres of the tradition evolved regional shape and motif preferences within the body of the maintradition. These are as included extensive settlements around the Fen Margin, in North Wessex, on the Yorkshire Wolds, in the Border Counties and along the ScottishEast Coast. This chain of settlement are as along the North Sea coast clearly maintained its commonly evolving tradition by sea trafIic. Consequently the central area of Yorkshire originally played a crucial axial role in linking the other groups one to another. With the subsequent expansion of the Southern beaker tradition, the centre of distribution within the Northern tradition retreated into the Scottish counties with consequent expansion of related groups to the West Scottish Coast and ultimatelyto Northern Ireland . One crucial feature needing special emphasis was the relatively heavy settlement of Northern British beakers (Nz, N3 ) around the Fen Margin of East Anglia and more sparsely, in North Wessex. The situation in Britain c. 1600 B.C. sees the Developed Northern Beaker tradition (N 2) occupying most of Britain north of the Wash. The remnants of the earlier beaker settlers were integrated into the new tradition but gave rise to regional styles within the tradition.