Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (73 page)

 
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A general term for widely scattered groups of late Neolithic and early Bronze Age communities of the late 3rd and early 2nd millennia
bc
, whose material culture includes substantial amounts of
BEAKER
pottery. The distribution of these communities is wide: from the North African coast in the south to Scotland in the north; and from Spain and Portugal in the west to the Dnieper in the Ukraine in the east. The greatest concentrations of beaker-using communities is in fertile agricultural regions, especially in the lower Rhine Valley and around the North Sea coastlands where they seem to have developed from the local protruding foot beaker corded ware ceramics.
Because of the ubiquity of beaker ceramics, their distinctive forms and fabrics, and the fact that in most parts of Europe they appear to contrast markedly with existing later Neolithic styles, diffusionist explanations seemed highly appropriate. During early decades of the 20th century this expanded to embrace not only the pottery, but also the spread of metalworking in northern Europe, links to preferred burial rites (well-furnished crouched single inhumations), the extensive use of round barrows over their burial places, and biometrical data suggestive of intrusive racial groups in some areas. Together these were seen as the Beaker Folk , described in 1940 by Gordon Childe as ‘warlike invaders imbued with domineering habits and an appreciation of metal weapons and ornaments which inspired them to impose sufficient political unity on their new domain for some economic unification to follow’.
Most of these connections can now be seen as erroneous, with beaker ceramics and certain aspects of the early metalworking traditions being added to rather than replacing local late Neolithic traditions. Following suggestions made in 1976 by Colin Burgess and Steven Shennan , what was once seen as a Beaker Culture is increasingly viewed as a ‘package’ in which exotic elements such as pottery (and maybe whatever was drunk from it) and new styles of metalwork were acquired and adapted by indigenous communities.

 
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The general term ‘bean’ relates to two genera of plants: Phaseolus which comprises a number of species and varieties including the haricot bean, french bean, runner bean and butter bean, all of which originate in Mexico and South America; and Vicia which comprises only one cultivated species, the horsebean (also known as the field bean or broad bean), which originated in the Near East before being spread all over Europe by the later first millennium
bc
.

 
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Beazley , Sir John Davidson
(1885–1970)
[Bi].

British scholar and art historian who identified the various potters responsible for making Attic black-figure ware and red-figure ware. Educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he read classics, he was appointed a tutor at Christchurch College in 1908. In 1925 he was made Professor of Classical Archaeology in the University of Oxford. In addition to recognizing the various forms and styles of decoration characteristic of the potters whose names appear on the vessels themselves, he identified a series of anonymous potters whom he named either by the museum in which some of their best work is represented, a former owner of an exemplar of the style, or a mannerism of the style itself. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1927, and held many offices and appointments in professional and academic bodies. He was knighted in 1949 and became a Companion of Honour in 1959.
[Bio.:
Dictionary of National Biography
, 1960–70, 84–6]

 
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In geology, this term refers to the smallest formally recognized division in a sediment or rock formation within a defined stratigraphic series. In much Palaeolithic archaeology, these geological units form the contextual units for assemblages of stone tools, faunal remains, and fossil hominid remains.

 
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