Moon Rituals, Head-Binding & Ground up Bones: The Mysterious Beaker People

Around 4,500 years ago, a strange burial practice began to appear in Scotland; bodies were placed in individual graves with pots and other artefacts.

The people who practised this are identified by, and named after, the distinctive decorated pottery beakers which were placed in their graves.

Now a study into the artefacts left behind by the Beaker people has shed new light on the way they lived.

The Beaker people settled in Britain around 2500 BC and brought metal, the wheel and a less centralised political culture to the new country – which ultimately put an end to the mass monument building of the Ancient Britons.

Archaeologists gave this name to people living in various parts of Europe, from Spain to Central Europe; as well as Scotland and England, because of a distinctive style of finely made pottery that was often buried with people.  

Now a new study has revealed how their ideas and customs spread among ancient Scots.

Authors Neil Curtis, head of museums at Aberdeen University, and Neil Wilkin, curator of the British and European Bronze Age collections at the British Museum, looked at previous evidence collected about this mysterious group of people.

They examined the ‘unusual’ concentration of Beaker graves clustered between Inverness and Aberdeen, and the items they contained.

The team was able to get radiocarbon dates and stable isotope analyses from all surviving skeletons. 

This allowed them to study the people’s movement, finding none of those form the North-East had moved far in their lifetimes, and diet, which suggested they didn’t eat much sea-food.

‘We were also able to look at links with metalworking and monuments, discovering that the distinctive Recumbent Stone Circles were probably built at about the same time as Beakers were being made and the earliest bronze being made,’ Mr Curtis said.

‘It seems as though North-East Scotland was one of the first places to made bronze in Britain, drawing on skills from the Netherlands and beyond, copper from Ireland and tin from Cornwall.’

Beakers discovered in many of the graves were decorated with a white powder made from ground up bones, which was unique to the north-east of Scotland.

‘This was one of the most surprising findings, Neil Curtis told MailOnline.

‘We used to think at this was an unusual feature, but looking at them very carefully, we have now found that most of the Beakers in the region with incised decorations seem to have had white infill.’ 

He analysed the white powder and found it came from cremated bones, but whether animal or human is unknown.

‘We will never know what it meant, but it may show the importance of following precise rules in making metal, as well as symbolic links between pots and dead people. ‘

The graves examined by Mr Wilkin and Mr Curtis also follow a distinct pattern, with male remains typically placed on their left side and their heads facing the east, while women were put on their right side with their heads facing west.

‘As with the white infill, we don’t know why – that knowledge was lost when they died,’ Mr Curtis said.

‘It is, however another example of the precise rules that people in the region followed – and shows that gender was important in how people were categorised.

‘It also shows that orientation was important for burials as well as stone circles.’ 

The appearance of beakers at burial sites was also tied to the building of distinct stone circles which can be found in the area, and which were revealed to date from the same period.

‘Much to people’s surprise, these megalithic monuments were not neolithic, but a younger and local development contemporary with the region’s Beaker burials,’ the authors said.

‘But in north-east Scotland, communities focused their collective and ceremonial attentions on recumbent stone circles.

‘Suddenly, there was an exciting new dimension to the puzzle of how and why north-east Scotland adopted new and international customs.’

A large number of the female burials were found also include those of infants, indicating the dangers of childbirth in the early Bronze Age.

While it may appear isolated on a map, this part of Scotland was a major hub during the Bronze Age, with trade travelling up the great Great Glen and sea links to the Netherlands and the east coast of Britain. 

It is believed they are immigrants who crossed the North Sea and settled in Britain 2500 BC, in which they brought with them metal, the wheel and a less centralised political culture to the new country – which ultimately put an end to the mass monument building of the Ancient Britons. 

But exactly why they used beakers is not understood.

‘The question of why Beaker burial was so popular and exclusive of other traditions in this region has received surprisingly little attention,’ the authors said. 

Last year, scientists reconstructed the face of a member of the Beaker people.

Known as ‘Ava’, this Bronze Age woman died more than 3,700 years ago, but has been brought back to life in a two-dimensional image. 

Unusually, the Bronze Age woman was buried in a pit dug into solid rock and her skull is an abnormal shape – which some suggest was the result of deliberate binding.

WHO WAS AVA?

 Using facial reconstruction and stock images, experts used the skull found at Achavanich in Caithness in 1987 to piece together her facial features and skin.