Intermediate or “hybrid” forms also occur. The classification is hardly natural and is responsible for much confusion and dispute. It can have only temporary and provisional value. These three groups are:
1. Banded pottery, Céramique rubanée, Bandkeramik.
2. Corded pottery, Céramique cordée, Schnurkeramik.
3. Calyciform pottery, Vases caliciforms, Zonenbecher.
They differ mostly in ornamentation, but often also as distinctly in form.
1. Banded pottery occurs all over Europe except northeast of the Oder, perhaps also in Great Britain. Its shape is usually that of a spheroidal gourd with the upper fourth removed; and its system of ornament may have been derived from the system of cords by which the jar was once suspended. Sometimes we find a low neck, rim, or collar around the large mouth. The ornament in what seems to be its most primitive form consists of lines marked in the clay, arranged parallel to one another in bands covering most of the body of the jar. These bands, either broad or narrow, run in a zigzag or saw-tooth pattern horizontally around the base. By doubling each saw-tooth we get a diamond-shaped area. Even this simple ornament admits of a large variety of patterns. But the bands may be curved instead of angular, forming scrolls, meanders, or spirals. Logically, these should represent the latest development of the type. But the spiral may yet prove to be actually older than the angle. The bands may be raised and projecting (Bosnia) or be merely painted on a flat, sometimes burnished, surface. The incised lines may be plain or filled with a white material (encrusted). The briefest consideration shows that we have here a very generalized type or group of types which made its first appearance in Europe on the lower Danube and then underwent development by simplification or sometimes, perhaps, by increased complexity, as it radiated from this centre, becoming more and more modified as it went westward or northward.
The banded pottery of southwest Germany and the Rhine region is found in dwellings as well as graves, usually accompanied by the mattock or the deer-horn pick, but lance-heads fail. The rectangular houses belonged to people of a settled and quite advanced agriculture. We find cellars, and barns or granaries. The dwellings are single or in groups, sometimes, as at Grosgartach, forming quite a village or town. They are situated by preference on the loess terraces of the streams and rivers, near enough to the water for boat communication. The pottery varies in fineness and beauty according to the size of the dwelling and therefore the wealth of its owner. Social differences, rank, and fashion are appearing in truly modern form.
2. Corded Pottery. The most characteristic and, perhaps, culminating form is the Amphora or flasklike vase with wide neck, which starts abruptly from a globose portion with flat base. Its prototype may have been the leathern flask or bottle. Here the ornament consists of parallel lines arranged in a band or in bands around the neck, but often extending somewhat on to the upper surface of the bulb. The lines look as if made by winding a cord around the neck while the clay was still soft; hence the name of the group. It seems to have been originally a purely northern product, which toward the close of the Neolithic period was carried southward by a distinct movement of population. It is found almost entirely in graves, often accompanied by calyciform cups. Schliz says that it is never found in remains of dwellings. The household pottery was apparently crude and coarse, with no distinctive type of ornament. The carriers of the culture were apparently herdsmen rather than tillers of the soil, and always more or less hunters. Their finest implements were their weapons.
3. Calyciform Pottery, Zonen-or Glocken-becher, has been by some united with Corded Pottery. It has the shape of a goblet or inverted bell with flaring rim and flat base.