Pitted Ware culture
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- For the contemporary (ca 4000 BC– ca 2000 BC) North-East European culture, having a similar name, see Pit-Comb Ware culture.
The Pitted Ware culture (ca 3200 BC– ca 2300 BC) was a neolithic Hunter-gatherer culture in southern Scandinavia, mainly along the coasts of Svealand, Götaland, Åland, north-eastern Denmark and southern Norway. It was first contemporary and overlapping with the agricultural Funnelbeaker culture, and later with the agricultural Corded Ware culture.
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[edit] Objects
The culture has been named after the ornamentation of its pottery, which is usually round pits and horizontal lines. The vessels are uniform and have usually pointed bottoms in order to facilitate positioning in the soil or on the hearth. Their height varies from only a few cm to 40. The settlements on the Swedish east coast have produced large quantities of pottery. At Fagervik on Bråviken in Östergötland archaeologists have found 170 000 shards, but few flint objects. The bow was very important and the arrows were provided with flakes of flintstone. These flinstone finds are abundant on Scandinavia's west coast, while pottery is sparse. The culture was consequently less homogeneous than the contemporary and overlapping agricultural cultures.
Its array of tools and weapons is largely borrowed from the Funnelbeaker and the Corded Ware cultures, while these cultures stayed very conservative with their own. The characteristic pottery is probably based on that of the Funnelbeaker culture, but what was unique for the Pitted Ware culture were the small clay figurines of animals.
[edit] Economy and ethnicity
In all regions, the economy was based on fishing and the hunt of land animals and seals, as well as gathering of plants, as can be seen at sites such as Ajvide on Gotland.
The culture is most easily accounted for as deriving from the mesolithic Nøstvet and Lihult cultures that received additional population and skills from the Funnelbeaker culture, but less of its economy. The two cultures appear to have coexisted with few conflicts. However, Svealand and East Götaland had initially a Funnel Beaker population, but it was later replaced by the Pitted Ware culture, which probably had a more successful economy.
The unique Alvastra Pile Dwelling in south-western Östergötland belongs to the Pitted Ware culture when the pottery is concerned, but to the Funnelbeaker culture in tools and weapons. It can be hypothesized that this was the result of Funnelbeaker men taking over a Pitted Ware settlement and its women. Hunting and gathering in combination with agriculture and animal husbandry points to a mixed economy, a combination which was probably common in southern Scandinavia at the time.
[edit] Graves
Its grave customs are not well known, but Västerbjers on the island of Gotland has produced a large number of grave fields, where the limestone has preserved the graves well. In these graves, archaeologists found skeletons laid on their backs with well-preserved tools in bone and horn. Numerous imported objects testify to good connections with the Scandinavian mainland, Denmark and Germany.
[edit] Language
Its connections with the probably pre-Indo-European Funnelbeaker culture and the probably Proto-Indo-European Corded Ware culture are debated. As the language left no records, its linguistic affiliations are a mystery. It has been suggested that it spoke a language related to the Finno-Ugric languages and provided the unique linguistic features discussed in the Germanic substrate hypothesis.
