FIG. 5.—SILVER VASE FROM HISSARLIK ii.
We have seen that the Tripolje people had departed from the Ukraine and Galicia, driven away by drought or by the invading steppe-folk. Traces of pottery, bearing some resemblances of that of the Tripolje culture, have been found in various places to the south, just those places where we find that our steppe-folk had settled. This suggests that the steppe-folk had conquered these people, and taken captive some of their women,[245] who in all primitive tribes are the potters.
If Keith is right that our Beaker-folk came from Galicia, we must suppose that on leaving the Ukraine they passed westward and entered Bohemia, for it is from this country, as Lord Abercromby has shown,[246] the northern beaker seems to have been derived.
But Leeds has lately suggested,[247] and this suggestion was also made some years ago by Sir Arthur Evans,[248] that the beaker developed originally in Spain. Leeds has published a map, showing that beakers of the earliest type are found most abundantly in Andalusia, and he traces their distribution thence throughout west Europe. One of his lines of migration carried them to north Italy, where it points to the Brenner Pass.
Now the Spanish and western beakers differ in many important respects from the northern type, though it is characteristic of both to be decorated with parallel and horizontal bands of ornament. Leeds thinks that the beaker developed in Spain from a type of pot, which he terms carinated, and which is found associated with megalithic monuments at such distant points as Denmark, the Isle of Arran, Guernsey and Brittany, the Pyrenees, Spain, Algeria, Taranto, Sicily and Malta. This type of pot is distinguished by having a hemispherical base, while the sides, half way up, have a knee or angle, above which they are concave.
Now it is of course possible that the bell-beaker of Spain may be derived from this carinated vase, though intermediate forms seem to be lacking. I am inclined to think, however, that this beaker has a double parentage, and has been influenced, too, by certain types of ware not uncommon at Hissarlik II., the form of which is best shown by a silver vase found in that city.[249]
FIG. 6.
BELL BEAKER.
However this may be, the bell-beaker, which has invariably a convex base, seems to have been evolved in Andalusia, and to have been carried, amongst other places, to North Italy, and thence northward to Bohemia, where it is localised in the western part of that province. Here another type of pottery, called cord vases, which had developed in the plain of North Germany, had been already introduced, and the northern type of beaker, which has a flat base, seems to have been derived from a combination of both types.