The Funnelbeaker culture is the archeological designation for a late Neolithic culture in what is now northern Germany, the Netherlands, southern Scandinavia and Poland. The name has been designated to the time period of ca 4100BC-3200(3000)BC and is supposedly the first developed farming culture of southern Scandinavia.
The Funnelbeaker culture is preceded by another culture, the Ertebölle culture which is named after a Danish village. This predecessor culture was partly neolithic but still primarily hunter-gatherer.
The switch to farming caused a downfall in health among the funnelbeakers that probably lead to the demise of the tradition the culture is named from, putting large ceramics with large funnels on top that are heavy decorated near the meglithic tombs of the era, that are called chamber tumuluses and dolmen.
It has been theorised that the funnelbeakers were an extremely communal society as almost every grave located from this era is literally packed with skeletons, even though most of them have been robbed or destroyed of the years. A singe grave of the type chamber tumulus could contain the burials of up to a hundred individuals. Death is also thought to have been present in the everyday life of the funnelbeakers since the megalithic structures often were risen in the middle of the village or small farming community. Back then the structures where probably covered within a heap of dirt and the entrance was blocked by a stone.
The Funnelbeaker culture marks the appearance of megalithic tombs at the coasts of the Baltic and of the North sea. The megalithic structures of Ireland, France and Portugal are somewhat older and have been connected to earlier archeological cultures of those areas. The German variants of the funnelbeaker culture include the Tiefstichgruppe in Northern Germany as well as the Walternienburg-Salzmünde and Bernburg cultures of eastern Germany. The megalithic monuments of the funnelbeaker culture found in the Netherlands are called hunebeds.
The successor culture was the Corded Ware culture and the overlapping Globular Amphora culture.
Oddly, it was later pushed south from the Mälaren basin, and from the east, by a hunter and gatherer culture called the Pitted Ware culture (the debate on whether it was by demic diffusion or cultural diffusion mirrors the arrival of the Funnelbeakerculture).
The Funnelbeakerculture marks the appearance of megalithic tombs at the coasts of the Baltic and of the North sea, an example of which are the Sieben Steinhäuser in northern Germany.
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 Funnelbeakerculture, and later with the agricultural Corded Ware culture.
The culture is most easily accounted for as deriving from the mesolithic Nøstvet and Lihult cultures that received additional population and skills from the Funnelbeakerculture, but less of its economy.
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