Funnelbeaker culture in the context of "Saale"

The Bronocice pot (Polish: Waza z Bronocic) is a ceramic vase incised with one of the earliest known depictions of a wheeled vehicle. It was discovered in the village of Bronocice near the Nidzica River [pl] in Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, in south-central Poland. Attributed to the Funnelbeaker archaeological culture, radiocarbon tests dated the pot to the mid-fourth millennium BCE. Today it is housed at the Archaeological Museum of Kraków in southern Poland.

The archaeology of Northern Europe studies the prehistory of Scandinavia and the adjacent North European Plain, roughly corresponding to the territories of modern Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Northern Germany, Poland, the Netherlands and Belgium.

The region entered the Mesolithic around the 7th millennium BC. The transition to the Neolithic is characterized by the Funnelbeaker culture in the 4th millennium BC. The Chalcolithic is marked by the arrival of the Corded Ware culture, possibly the first influence in the region of Indo-European expansion. The Nordic Bronze Age proper began roughly one millennium later, around 1500 BC. The end of the Bronze Age is characterized by cultural contact with the Central European La Tène culture (Celts), contributing to the development of the Iron Age by the 4th century BC, presumably the locus of Common Germanic culture. Northern Europe enters the protohistorical period in the early centuries AD, with the adoption of writing and ethnographic accounts by Roman authors.

The Harhoog is a dolmen, a rectangular megalithic tomb from the Funnelbeaker culture, located near Keitum on the island of Sylt in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. Discovered in 1925, it was moved to the present site in 1954 when a new airport was developed.

The Scandinavian Peninsula became ice-free around the end of the last ice age. The Nordic Stone Age begins at that time, with the Upper Paleolithic Ahrensburg culture, giving way to the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers by the 7th millennium BC (Maglemosian culture c. 7500 – 6000 BC, Kongemose culture c. 6000 – 5200 BC, Ertebølle culture c. 5300 – 3950 BC). The Neolithic stage is marked by the Funnelbeaker culture (4000–2700 BC), followed by the Pitted Ware culture (3200–2300 BC).

Around 2800 BC, metal was introduced in Scandinavia in the Corded Ware culture. In much of Scandinavia, a Battle Axe culture became prominent, known from some 3,000 graves. The period 2500–500 BC also left many visible remains to modern times, most notably the many thousands rock carvings (petroglyphs) in western Sweden at Tanumshede and in Norway at Alta. A more advanced culture came with the Nordic Bronze Age (c. 2000/1750 – 500 BC). It was followed by the Iron Age in the 4th century BC.

The Battle Axe culture, also called Boat Axe culture, is a Chalcolithic culture that flourished in the coastal areas of the south of the Scandinavian Peninsula and southwest Finland, from c. 2800 BC – c. 2300 BC. It was an offshoot of the Corded Ware culture, and replaced the Funnelbeaker culture in southern Scandinavia, probably through a process of mass migration and population replacement. It is thought to have been responsible for spreading Indo-European languages and other elements of Indo-European culture to the region. It co-existed for a time with the hunter-gatherer Pitted Ware culture, which it eventually absorbed, developing into the Nordic Bronze Age. The Nordic Bronze Age has, in turn, been considered ancestral to the Germanic peoples.