The Pitted Ware Culture (abbreviated PWC) is the name given to a Middle Neolithic period people, who were hunter-fisher-gatherers and lived in coastal southern Scandinavia between about 3200 and 2300 BC. The term Pitted Ware refers to a dominant ceramic decoration: PWC pots have zones of small indentations on the shoulders. PWC sites are concentrated along the shorelines from northern Denmark to southern Norway, southern and east central mainland Sweden, and the islands in the Baltic Sea such as Gotland and Öland.
Related cultural groups dated to the same period, and exhibiting the same living strategies, but located across the Baltic Sea in Latvia and Estonia and their islands are sometimes called Comb-Ware Culture or Pit-Comb-Ware Culture. Comb ware pots were decorated by dragging a toothed object across the surface. Both Scandinavian and Baltic groups share commonalities in artifacts assemblages and subsistence methods, and are often considered as sharing the same scholarly questions.
PWC and Farming
The importance of PWC lies in the fact that it represents a rare instance in which Neolithic farming strategies (exhibited in the archaeological record as Funnel Beaker or TRB culture) were rejected and replaced on the coastlines and islands by a return to hunter-gatherer strategies.
At the time of the Neolithic entrance of farmers from central Asia into Europe about 9000 years ago, all of Europe, including Scandinavia, was following some form of Mesolithic hunting-gathering-fishing strategy to survive. Scandinavia's first Neolithic farmers arrived fairly late, and are known as the Funnel Beaker cultural complex (4000-2800 BC). In most regions throughout Europe and the rest of the world for that matter, once farming was established, it remained the primary form of subsistence strategy.
But in rare places, such as Scandinavia's coastlines, the Neolithic farming strategy was rejected for a return to earlier strategies. This may have been the result of climate change, including a return to higher saline levels of the Baltic Sea, which increased marine mammal numbers. In addition, scholarly research the world over seems to suggest that the transition to farming was not a clear-cut issue anywhere. The PWC reversion was not a permanent return, although PWC culture did last for ~1000 years: eventually, farming redeveloped even on the coastlines and islands and became the predominant method of living.
PWC Characteristics
Subsistence methods used by PWC groups vary from specialized and exclusive seal hunting, to part-time pig-herding farmers: some sites, particularly in Gotland, contain quantities of domestic cattle and goats as well. Burials are typically flat, single inhumations, with grave goods such as PWC pottery; worked boar tusks; animal tooth pendants (seal, dog and fox); bone spears, harpoons and fishhooks; stone axes; and beads of dentalium shell and bone.
Tools from PWC village occupations with earlier Funnel Beaker occupations include a shift in ceramic decorative techniques, a dependence on local flint rather than imported, amber, and sea shells. however, some artifacts appear to maintain Neolithic traits, including some pottery designs, burnt clay figurines, and bone sculptures and ornaments.
Controversies
One central debate concerning all of these changes in Scandinavia and indeed throughout Europe is whether the archaeological evidence indicates a change in the migration of people into the region, rather than a change of indigenous people's subsistence strategy. DNA investigations into animals such as pigs and hedgehogs as well as human DNA have shed light on the subject, although not conclusively resolving the issues. Stable isotope analysis of human bone shows a striking differentiations between middle Neolithic people living in the interior of Scandinavia and on the coast, reflecting subsistence differentiations.
The origins of the PWC and their association with modern populations are also a matter of some speculation. It is clear that the artifact assemblages identifying PWC arose some thousand years after the arrival of Funnel Beaker people. Three possibilities suggested in the literature are: 1) the PWC were Mesolithic hunter gatherer complexes who migrated to the Swedish coastline from the rest of Europe, and would be genetically different from indigenous Scandinavian inhabitants; 2), the PWC were disaffected TRB people who gave up farming and thus the ancestors of modern Scandinavians; and 3), the PWC came from northern Scandinavia, and are ancestral to modern day Saammi reindeer hunters. DNA studies (Malmström et al. 2009) have been inconclusive to date.
Genetic Differences Between PWC and TRB
A recent DNA study performed on individuals from similarly dated PWC and Funnel Beaker (TRB) burials in and published in Science in April of 2012 (Skoglund et al.) described differences between the two populations. The two populations were taken from neighboring sites, at similar ages: strontium analysis of the burials indicate that all of the people investigated were born in Sweden.
The DNA profile identified for three PWC hunter-gatherers from Ajvide and Ire on Gotland Island and radiocarbon dated between 5300 to 4400 cal BP contained similar DNA markers to Finnish and northern European individuals, although by no means a perfect match. A single burial recovered from a megalithic structure in Gökhem parish some 400 km away and dated to 4921 Cal BP, in contrast, contained genetic markers associated with Greek and Cypriot modern populations. The researchers argue that this is evidence that TRB peoples were immigrants from the Mediterranean region into northern Europe. researchers have long hypothesized that the first farmers in Europe followed along the Mediterranean before moving northward.
Archaeological Sites of the PWC
Korsnäs, Västerbjers, Hässleby, Ajvide, Visby, Hemmor, Simunde (all in Sweden)
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the About.com guide to Neolithic, and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Eriksson G. 2004. Part-time farmers or hard-core sealers? Västerbjers studied by means of stable isotope analysis. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 23(3):135-162.
Fornander E, Eriksson G, and Lidén K. 2008. Wild at heart: Approaching Pitted Ware identity, economy and cosmology through stable isotopes in skeletal material from the Neolithic site Korsnäs in Eastern Central Sweden. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 27(3):281-297.
Fraser M, Sten S, and Götherström A. 2012. Neolithic Hedgehogs (Erinaceus europaeus) from the Island of Gotland show early contacts with the Swedish mainland. Journal of Archaeological Science 39(2):229-233.
Isaksson S, Karlsson C, and Eriksson T. 2010. Ergosterol (5, 7, 22-ergostatrien-3[beta]-ol) as a potential biomarker for alcohol fermentation in lipid residues from prehistoric pottery. Journal of Archaeological Science 37(12):3263-3268.
Malmström H, Gilbert MTP, Thomas MG, Brandström M, Storå J, Molnar P, Andersen PK, Bendixen C, Holmlund G, Götherström A et al. 2009. Ancient DNA Reveals Lack of Continuity between Neolithic Hunter-Gatherers and Contemporary Scandinavians. Current Biology 19(20):1758-1762.
Martinsson-Wallin H. 2008. Land and sea animal remains from Middle Neolithic Pitted Ware sites on Gotland island in the Baltic Sea, Sweden. In: Clark GR, Foss L, and O'Connor S, editors. Islands of Inquiry: Colonisation, Seafaring, and the Archaeology of Maritime Landscapes: Australian National University. p 171-183.
Rowley-Conwy P. 2009. Human Prehistory: Hunting for the Earliest Farmers. Current Biology 19(20):R948-R949.
Skoglund P, Malmström H, Raghavan M, Storå J, Hall P, Willerslev E, Gilbert MTP, Götherström A, and Jakobsson M. 2012. Origins and genetic legacy of Neolithic farmers and hunter-gatherers in Europe. Science 336:466-469.
