Corded Ware culture

The Corded Ware culture comprises a broad archaeological horizon of Europe between c. 2900 BC and 2300 BC, thus from the Late Neolithic, through the Copper Age, and ending in the early Bronze Age.:14 Corded Ware culture encompassed a vast area, from the contact zone between the Yamnaya culture and the Corded Ware culture in South Eastern Europe, to the Rhine in the west and the Volga in the east, occupying parts of Northern Europe, Central Europe and Eastern Europe. Autosomal genetic studies suggest that the Corded Ware culture originated from the westward migration of Yamnaya-related people from the steppe-forest zone into the territory of late Neolithic European cultures, evolving in parallel with (although under significant influence from) the Yamnaya; while the idea of direct male-line descent between them has not received significant support yet, IBD-sharing between the populations of these two cultures indicates that, at the very least, they came from a recent common ancestor, with a Harvard Magazine article on the find referring to them as "cousins" who were "biologically separated ... by only a few hundred years".

The Corded Ware culture is considered to be a likely vector for the spread of many of the Indo-European languages in Europe and Asia.

Nomenclature

The term Corded Ware culture (German: Schnurkeramik-Kultur) was first introduced by the German archaeologist Friedrich Klopfleisch in 1883. He named it after cord-like impressions or ornamentation characteristic of its pottery. The term Single Grave culture comes from its burial custom, which consisted of inhumation under tumuli in a crouched position with various artifacts. Battle Axe culture, or Boat Axe culture, is named from its characteristic male grave offering, a stone boat-shaped battle axe.

Geography

Corded Ware encompassed most of continental northern Europe from the Rhine in the west to the Volga in the east, including most of modern-day Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Switzerland, northwestern Romania, northern Ukraine, and the European part of Russia, as well as coastal Norway and the southern portions of Sweden and Finland. In the Late Eneolithic/Early Bronze Age, it encompassed the territory of nearly the entire Balkan Peninsula, where Corded Ware mixed with other steppe elements.