A Bell Beaker workshop in Vienna
Blog post by Eve Derenne and Karina Grömer On March 21, 2023, members of two partner institutions from the HEAS network — the Vienna Institute for Archaeological Science and the Natural History Museum Vienna — co-organised a workshop titled ‘Interweaving Bell Beaker decorative motifs and textile patterns: Exploring technical and symbolic productions during the third millennium BCE in Europe’. The idea for this workshop emerged in September 2022, when Priv.-Doz. Dr. Karina Grömer (Head of the Prehistory Department at the NHM) and Dr. Eve Derenne (postdoctoral fellow, VIAS) met by chance in Hallstatt during a science communication event, the ‘Archäologie am Berg’ day. The conversation regarding the reconstruction of Bronze and Iron Age textiles shifted to the subject of Bell Beakers, a crucial component of SEASCAPES, the project currently occupying Eve's time in Vienna. The intricate motifs found on both Bell Beaker pottery and anthropomorphic stelae have often been compared to textile patterns, but few if any publications have really substantiated that claim. Several aspects of this topic have also remained unexplored, such as the weaving or fiber working methods used to produce these repeated geometric patterns, and whether these techniques were already established by the third millennium BCE. This lively discussion ultimately resulted in an agreement to hold a workshop that would bring together experts from both fields, with…