Harry Fokkens
My research interest focuses on Prehistoric farming communities in Europe. I try to find alternative explanations for the meaning of material culture in past societies: alternative - or rather complementary – to the neo-Marxist / evolutionist paradigm founded in the nineteen seventies. That paradigm reduces the past to a mere struggle for power between elites, and objects to ‘just’ valuables. I try to discuss how objects acquired value through a.o. exchanges between people, ancestors and super-natural entities.
My other research focus is the discussion about the spread and meaning Beaker cultures in Europe. In this discussion now DNA- and isotope analysis have become prominent tools. I try to use the Dutch data to bring nuance into the debate that now seems to focus only on ‘migration’ as an explanation. My challenge is to query the European data for other and less disruptive social processes.
Address: Faculty of Archaeology
Box 9515
2300 RA Leiden
My other research focus is the discussion about the spread and meaning Beaker cultures in Europe. In this discussion now DNA- and isotope analysis have become prominent tools. I try to use the Dutch data to bring nuance into the debate that now seems to focus only on ‘migration’ as an explanation. My challenge is to query the European data for other and less disruptive social processes.
Address: Faculty of Archaeology
Box 9515
2300 RA Leiden
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Papers by Harry Fokkens
University. Corrie Bakels is an extraordinary multifaceted woman, a biologist by training who checked every biotope on our planet off her bucket list and whose portrait graces the Senate Chamber of the Leiden Academy Building. She is a scientist to the core, who describes herself as someone who likes to poke her nose into everything but always charts her own course. In every way.
From around 2750 to 2500 bc, Bell Beaker pottery became widespread across western and central Europe, before it disappeared between 2200 and 1800 bc. The forces that propelled its expansion are a matter of long-standing debate, and there is support for both cultural diffusion and migration having a role in this process. Here we present genome-wide data from 400 Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age Europeans, including 226 individuals associated with Beaker-complex artefacts. We detected limited genetic affinity between Beaker-complex-associated individuals from Iberia and central Europe, and thus exclude migration as an important mechanism of spread between these two regions. However, migration had a key role in the further dissemination of the Beaker complex. We document this phenomenon most clearly in Britain, where the spread of the Beaker complex introduced high levels of steppe-related ancestry and was associated with the replacement of approximately 90% of Britain’s gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the east-to-west expansion that had brought steppe-related ancestry into central and northern Europe over the previous centuries.
Abstract
From around 2750 to 2500 BC, Bell Beaker pottery became widespread across western and central Europe, before it disappeared between 2200 and 1800 BC. The forces that propelled its expansion are a matter of long-standing debate, and there is support for both cultural diffusion and migration having a role in this process. Here we present genome-wide data from 400 Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age Europeans, including 226 individuals associated with Beaker-complex artefacts. We detected limited genetic affinity between Beaker-complex-associated individuals from Iberia and central Europe, and thus exclude migration as an important mechanism of spread between these two regions. However, migration had a key role in the further dissemination of the Beaker complex. We document this phenomenon most clearly in Britain, where the spread of the Beaker complex introduced high levels of steppe-related ancestry and was associated with the replacement of approximately 90% of Britain’s gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the east-to-west expansion that had brought steppe-related ancestry into central and northern Europe over the previous centuries.
University. Corrie Bakels is an extraordinary multifaceted woman, a biologist by training who checked every biotope on our planet off her bucket list and whose portrait graces the Senate Chamber of the Leiden Academy Building. She is a scientist to the core, who describes herself as someone who likes to poke her nose into everything but always charts her own course. In every way.
From around 2750 to 2500 bc, Bell Beaker pottery became widespread across western and central Europe, before it disappeared between 2200 and 1800 bc. The forces that propelled its expansion are a matter of long-standing debate, and there is support for both cultural diffusion and migration having a role in this process. Here we present genome-wide data from 400 Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age Europeans, including 226 individuals associated with Beaker-complex artefacts. We detected limited genetic affinity between Beaker-complex-associated individuals from Iberia and central Europe, and thus exclude migration as an important mechanism of spread between these two regions. However, migration had a key role in the further dissemination of the Beaker complex. We document this phenomenon most clearly in Britain, where the spread of the Beaker complex introduced high levels of steppe-related ancestry and was associated with the replacement of approximately 90% of Britain’s gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the east-to-west expansion that had brought steppe-related ancestry into central and northern Europe over the previous centuries.
Abstract
From around 2750 to 2500 BC, Bell Beaker pottery became widespread across western and central Europe, before it disappeared between 2200 and 1800 BC. The forces that propelled its expansion are a matter of long-standing debate, and there is support for both cultural diffusion and migration having a role in this process. Here we present genome-wide data from 400 Neolithic, Copper Age and Bronze Age Europeans, including 226 individuals associated with Beaker-complex artefacts. We detected limited genetic affinity between Beaker-complex-associated individuals from Iberia and central Europe, and thus exclude migration as an important mechanism of spread between these two regions. However, migration had a key role in the further dissemination of the Beaker complex. We document this phenomenon most clearly in Britain, where the spread of the Beaker complex introduced high levels of steppe-related ancestry and was associated with the replacement of approximately 90% of Britain’s gene pool within a few hundred years, continuing the east-to-west expansion that had brought steppe-related ancestry into central and northern Europe over the previous centuries.
The book is divided in two parts. Part 1 describes the results of the excavations in a personal account of how research goals developed in relation to ever changing theoretical and practical circumstances. It presents a synthesis of different study areas with a focus on how the past may have influenced new phases of settlement. In this synthesis also the fieldwork of the first decade and to some extent the third decade of excavations at Oss (Horzak) are taken into account.
Part 2 describes the primary data of the 1986-1995 excavations on which the analyses are based. Due to these mass of data, we have restricted ourselves to a (large) selection of features and structures that yielded information for the synthesis in part 1.
These are the kinds of questions that the present book aims to discuss. The main goal is to assess the gain in knowledge resulting from development-led archaeology, notably for remains of the period 2850-1500 cal BC: the Late Neolithic, the Early Bronze Age and the start of the Middle Bronze Age. We know this period very well from burial mounds and bronze hoards. Bronze objects and burial assemblages are widely discussed in international literature, for the Bell Beaker period even with the Netherlands as a typological role model. The question we raise in this book is whether development-led archaeology has confirmed this picture, or whether large scale excavations in ‘Malta-context’ have generated other types of evidence. Have we been able to detect houses from these periods, or settlements? Are these comparable for all regions or are there regional differences? Do we have indications for social stratification; for migrations?
The answers to such questions are hidden in the many reports that development-led archaeology has produced in the last 15 years. The problem is that so many site reports have been, that it is a large task to synthesise these data and translate them into coherent models. Therefor the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE) commissioned the authors to go over all the data assembled in the last 15 years, present them to the wider public in a synthesised form, and answer a number of research questions. Because these data are published in Dutch language site reports, this book has been written in English to make the data available to a European (scientific) public. Relevant sites have all been summarised in Chapter 7, which therefore has become the central part of this publication. A synthesis of the Dutch data was formulated in Chapter 8, demonstrating that especially settlement evidence has dramatically changed our perception of the period. The traditional image based on burial data needs to be altered completely. This has implications for the international discourse on the Beaker period as well.
The book ends with a large number of methodical and theoretical avenues that can be followed to gain more knowledge in the next fifteen years of development-led archaeology. We plea for a far more integrated approach between all specialists involved in archaeological excavation and post-excavation analysis. Only then we will be really able to generate new knowledge about the past.
The thesis covers the occupation history of Friesland since 4400 BC. Since this region was at some point completely drowned under marine sediments and peat bogs, there were a few interesting research problems. One was: how representative are the data that we now have? I solved this question with a time comsuming analysis of formation processes. This was done in the eigthies when we had no GIS yet. Another questions that needed to be answered before an analysis of the data could start was: how did the physical landscape develop. This was solved by reconstructing the palaeography in 7 different maps. This took a lot of effort, invested especially at the start of the project in the eraly eighties.
Finally I analysed the patterns that the data seemed to show. Most fun for me to write were chapter 7, where I discssed culture processes as I saw them at the time, and chapter 9, where I tried to discuss several models that previously had been used to explain the patterning of the data.
Dit ́grafheuvellandschap ́ ligt op een landschappelijk zeer markante locatie, namelijk op de noordelijke rand van het Peel Blok (de Maashorst). De grafheuvels geven naar het noorden toe een vergezicht over een relatief laag gelegen en nat gebied. De tientallen proefsleuven die hier zijn aangelegd hebben geen enkele aanwijzing voor prehistorische bewoningssporen opgeleverd. Een van de weinige vondsten betrof een bronzen bijl die zeer waarschijnlijk is gedeponeerd in een kwelgebied. Het vormt een aanwijzing dat we het gebied als een depositielandschap kunnen interpreteren. De nederzettingen tenslotte moeten we ten zuiden van de grafheuvels zoeken, op de hogere en bosrijke gronden. Binnen een kilometer zijn enkele oppervlaktevindplaatsen uit de brons- en ijzertijd bekend. Recapitulerend is er sprake van een sterke ordening van het landschap, met een strikte scheiding van de verschillende dimensies van een lokale gemeenschap op de rand van de Maashorst.