Bell Beaker (culture and style)

Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age cultures that lived in the fourth millennium BCE. The name is derived from the inverted-cloche form of the characteristic vessel. Bell Beaker vessels occur in a variety of styles with specific regional distributions and chronological limits. The beakers are typically decorated in bands of incised and corded decoration and frequently occur in graves associated with wristguards of polished and perforated stone and V-perforated buttons. While earlier generations of archaeologists attributed the beakers to a particular "Beaker folk" who originated in Spain and spread to central and western Europe carrying bronze technology to the British Isles, scholars now tend to think that the beakers were prestige items whose popularity spread over time among existing peoples as symbols of social rank.