Going Over: The Mesolithic-Neolithic Transition in North West Europe

Going Over The Mesolithic-Neolithic Transition in North-West Europe Edited by Alasdair Whittle & Vicki Cummings Proce...

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Going Over The Mesolithic-Neolithic Transition in North-West Europe

Edited by Alasdair Whittle & Vicki Cummings

Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 2007

Contents Alasdair Whittle

Preface

xvi

Alasdair Whittle & Vicki Cummings

Introduction: transitions and transformations

1-4

Alan Barnard

From Mesolithic to Neolithic modes of thought

5-19

Jean Guilaine & Claire Manen

From Mesolithic to Early Neolithic in the western Mediterranean

21-51

Pablo Arias

Neighbours but diverse: social change in north-west Iberia during the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic (5500–4000 cal BC)

53-71

Detlef Gronenborn

Beyond the models: 'Neolithisation' in Central Europe

73-98

John Robb & Preston Miracle

Beyond 'migration' versus 'acculturation': new models for the spread of agriculture

99-115

Alex Bentley

Mobility, specialisation and community diversity in the Linearbandkeramik: isotopic evidence from the skeletons

117-140

Richard P Evershed

Exploiting molecular and isotopic signals at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition

141-164

Ruth Bollongino & Joachim Burger

Neolithic cattle domestication as seen from ancient DNA

165-187

Anne Tresset & Jean-Denis Vigne

Substitution of species, techniques and symbols at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Western Europe

189-210

Pierre Allard

The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the Paris Basin: a review

211-223

Grégor Marchand

Neolithic fragrances : Mesolithic-Neolithic interactions in western France

225-242

Chris Scarre

Changing places: monuments and the Neolithic transition in western France

243-261

Philippe Crombé & Bart Vanmontfort

The neolithisation of the Scheldt basin in western Belgium

263-285

Leendert P Louwe Kooijmans

The gradual transition to farming in the Lower Rhine Basin

287-309

Graeme Warren

Mesolithic myths

311-328

Chris Tilley

The Neolithic sensory revolution: monumentality and the experience of landscape

329-345

Richard Bradley

Houses, bodies and tombs

347-355

Amy Bogaard & Glynis Jones

Neolithic farming in Britain and central Europe: contrast or continuity?

357-375

Alasdair Whittle

The temporality of transformation: dating the early development of the southern British Neolithic

377-398

Gill Hey & Alistair Barclay

The Thames Valley in the late fifth and early fourth millennium cal BC: the appearance of domestication and the evidence for change

399-422

Julian Thomas

Mesolithic-Neolithic transitions in Britain: from essence to inhabitation

423-439

Alison Sheridan

From Picardie to Pickering and Pencraig Hill? New information on the 'Carinated Bowl Neolithic' in northern Britain

441-492

Vicki Cummings

From midden to megalith? The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western Britain

493-510

Steven Mithen, Anne Pirie, Sam Smith & Karen Wicks,

The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western Scotland: a review and new evidence from Tiree

511-541

Gabriel Cooney

Parallel worlds or multi-stranded identities? Considering the process of 'going over' in Ireland and the Irish Sea zone

543-566

Sönke Hartz, Harald Lübke & Thomas Terberger

From fish and seal to sheep and cattle: new research into the process of neolithisation in northern Germany

567-594

Lars Larsson

Mistrust traditions, consider innovations? The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition 595-616 in southern Scandinavia

Alasdair Whittle

Going over: people and their times

617-628

Preface In proposing this conference to The British Academy I am grateful first to fellow members of Section H7 for their encouragement, and especially to Professor Paul Mellars for his advice and guidance. I would like to thank the Research Committee and the Publications Committee of The British Academy for their support, Angela Pusey for her help in the setting up of the conference, and James Rivington and Amritpal Bangard for their help in the publication of these papers. We are also grateful to Hilary Meeks for her expert copy editing. The conference took place in Cardiff University on 16–18 May 2005, and I am grateful to my colleagues Liz Walker, Sue Virgo, Ian Dennis and Steve Mills for their various inputs, as well as to Vicki Cummings for her help throughout. Daniela Hofmann looked after registration and accounts, and she, Ollie Harris, Jessica Mills, Andy Cochrane and Penny Bickle gave invaluable support during the conference itself. Finally, Vicki and I would like to thank all the contributors for their efforts to submit papers promptly and to schedule. ALASDAIR WHITTLE Cardiff School of History and Archaeology Cardiff University June 2006

Copyright © British Academy 2007 – all rights reserved

Introduction: transitions and transformations ALASDAIR WHITTLE & VICKI CUMMINGS

THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT, in the long run and on a global scale, the transition from hunter-gatherer existence to farming society has had profound consequences for mankind. A world of vastly increased numbers, developed social hierarchy, institutional diversity, technological innovation, and social forms such as states and empires, is scarcely conceivable to us on the basis of subsistence provided by hunting and gathering, even though there are interesting examples of hunter-gatherer social complexity such as found on the North-west Coast of America. In these terms, adopting farming, settling down, and becoming Neolithic, constituted one of the big changes in human history, with big consequences, the effects of which we are still experiencing today. The transformation can even be seen in moral terms, as a kind of fall from a state of grace in the world of hunters and foragers, where different values and ideals prevailed, promoting sharing among people, creatures and the earth itself (Brody 2001): a view that resonates today in an era of humanly induced climate change. Archaeology can identify, in broad terms, when these processes of change and their subsequent consequences began, in a series of regional early Holocene sequences around the globe. The situation in Europe appears dependent on earlier developments in the Near East. As far as central and north-west Europe is concerned, we can state with some confidence, after well over a century of research in many areas, that there were no farmers before 6000 cal BC, and very few hunter-gatherers after 4000 cal BC except in peripheral regions. Surely, the optimist might claim, we are getting better not only at the timescales, but also at understanding the main features of transformation: the connections with south-east Europe and beyond there with the Near East, the spread of agriculture, sedentism and related new material practices, the adaptations and adoptions of the people already there in the face of or in reaction to incoming population, and the resultant, steady increase in social complexity. Some might even argue that we are getting better at grasping the major mechanisms and stimuli of change, such as leapfrog or targeted Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 1–4, © The British Academy 2007.


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Alasdair Whittle & Vicki Cummings

colonisation in search of prime conditions for agricultural life, on the one hand, or responses to abrupt and major alterations in climatic conditions, on the other. In this perspective, the terms of debate have long been fixed, and the task is to sift existing evidence and to win new data, in order further to refine the timescales—above all to grasp the moment of transition from one kind of existence to another—and to weigh in the balance the competing claims, region by region, for a dominant role by colonisers or indigenous people. That kind of debate has certainly been more complicated since the contribution of indigenous people was seriously acknowledged, which we could date back to the appearance of the Man the hunter volume (Lee & DeVore 1968). It has also become more interesting over the last 30–40 years as more and more evidence has been made available, region by region, by a combination of research and contract/rescue investigations. How long-term processes have ended, however, does not tell us automatically how they began. The consequence of this teleological fallacy is that our narratives are given a predetermined form, shaped by long-term outcomes on the one hand and a globalising perspective on the other. We therefore tend to look for particular moments of transition, to privilege certain features such as subsistence, residence, population and social complexity from the outset and to discuss north-west Europe in the terms of everywhere else. What if other things were in play in our particular area (and indeed elsewhere), including novel ways of thinking about the world, about time, about identity and about sociality? What if the connections with elsewhere were not so much to do with dependence as contingency: making use of what happened to become available through other histories? What if new practices could be adopted while existing, older ways of thinking—about self, others and the natural world—were still dominant? What if the processes of change required or resulted in complex mergings of both identity and practice, which our essentialising labels of hunter-gatherers versus farmers, or worse still Mesolithic versus Neolithic, are simply inadequate to signify? What if we started with the radical premise that most or all societies in the post-glacial period— whatever their subsistence or technological base—were normally in a state of transformation, which would offer a quite different perspective on the holy grail of finding moments of Mesolithic-Neolithic transition? With these starting points, our enquiry in north-west Europe could transform itself from being a footnote to large-scale, global processes whose character and consequences had already been largely determined, and become instead a detailed, particularising case study of change in specific human societies, in particular times and places. As such, it can be seen as a contribution also to contemporary debate in archaeology about the play between


INTRODUCTION

3

agency and structure, the place of individual actors, and the meaning and significance of diversity. The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition has been investigated in Denmark for some 150 years (Fischer & Kristiansen 2002), and Enlightenment philosophers such as Rousseau and Hume had already speculated extensively about the shape and nature of social development. The dominant twentieth-century trope was rapid and extensive change brought from the outside, but in northwest and central Europe an allowance for the contribution of indigenous people can be traced back to the effects of Lee and DeVore (1968), suggestions by figures such as Humphrey Case (1976) and Pieter Modderman (1988), and modelling by Marek Zvelebil and Peter Rowley-Conwy (1986), among others. Other important and relevant recent theoretical trends to note include debates on agency (e.g. Barrett 2001), dwelling (e.g. Ingold 2000) and personhood (e.g. Fowler 2004; cf. Bailey & Whittle 2005; Pluciennik 1998). Because the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition has long been in focus, there have been many reviews of it, which it is not our intention here to list in detail. There have been other good, recent collections of papers, but with either rather broad European (e.g. Ammerman & Biagi 2003; Price 2000) or more concentrated regional coverage (e.g. Marchand & Tresset 2005; Zvelebil et al. 1998). We have to go much further back in the literature to find a comparable regional coverage to that offered in the papers here, to the ‘closed shop’ of the former Atlantic Colloquium (e.g. Palaeohistoria 12 of 1966, and de Laet 1976). While we have arranged the order of papers largely on a geographical basis, this volume also offers a wider range of approaches, which we believe is another distinctive feature. It was as important for us to include discussion of isotopic and aDNA analyses or plant remains and animal bone assemblages, for example, as to assemble a coherent regional coverage from northern Spain to southern Scandinavia. It has not been possible for every thematic treatment presented at the conference itself to be included in the volume, and if space were not a limitation we could have commissioned yet more regional syntheses. We do not claim that the volume as a whole presents a new consensus on the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in north-west Europe. Some authors argue vigorously for the colonisation model (see also Rowley-Conwy 2004), and others just as strongly for the indigenist perspective; some at least may agree with our own view of the complexities involved and the likely resultant fusions of identities and practices. All would agree, we think, about the diversity of the processes involved, and that sense of variation on not a single but several themes will act, we hope, as a spur to further investigation and interpretation of this most intriguing and challenging of changes.


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Alasdair Whittle & Vicki Cummings REFERENCES

AMMERMAN, A. J. & BIAGI, P. (eds) 2003. The widening harvest. The Neolithic transition in Europe: looking back, looking forward. Boston: American Institute of Archaeology. BAILEY, D. & WHITTLE, A. 2005. Unsettling the Neolithic: breaking down concepts, boundaries and origins. In D. Bailey, A. Whittle & V. Cummings (eds), (un)settling the Neolithic, 1–7. Oxford: Oxbow. BARRETT, J. C. 2001. Agency, the duality of structure, and the problem of the archaeological record. In I. Hodder (ed.), Archaeological theory today, 141–64. Oxford: Blackwell. BRODY, H. 2001. The other side of Eden: hunter-gatherers, farmers and the shaping of the world. London: Faber and Faber. CASE, H. J. 1976. Acculturation and the Earlier Neolithic in western Europe. In S. J. de Laet (ed.), Acculturation and continuity in Atlantic Europe, 45–58. Brugge: de Tempel. DE LAET, S. J. (ed.) 1976. Acculturation and continuity in Atlantic Europe. Brugge: de Tempel. FISCHER, A. & KRISTIANSEN, K. (eds) 2002. The Neolithisation of Denmark. 150 years of debate. Sheffield: J. R. Collis Publications. FOWLER, C. 2004. The archaeology of personhood: an anthropological approach. London: Routledge. INGOLD, T. 2000. The perception of the environment: essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill. London: Routledge. LEE, R. B. & DEVORE, I. (eds) 1968. Man the hunter. Chicago: Aldine. MARCHAND, G. & TRESSET, A. (eds) 2005. Unité et diversité du processus de Néolithisation de la façade atlantique de l’Europe (7e–4e millénaires avant notre ère). Paris: Mémoire 36 de la Société Préhistorique Française. MODDERMAN, P. J. R. 1988. The Linear Pottery culture: diversity in uniformity. Berichten van het Rijksdienst voor Oudheidkundig Bodemonderzoek 38, 63–140. PLUCIENNIK, M. 1998. Deconstructing ‘the Neolithic’ in the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. In M. Edmonds & C. Richards (eds), Understanding the Neolithic of north-western Europe, 61–83. Glasgow: Cruithne Press. PRICE, T. D. (ed.) 2000. Europe’s first farmers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ROWLEY-CONWY, P. 2004. How the west was lost: a reconsideration of agricultural origins in Britain, Ireland and southern Scandinavia. Current Anthropology 45, Supplement AugustOctober 2004, 83–113. ´ SKA, L. (eds) 1998. Harvesting the sea, farming ZVELEBIL, M., DENNELL, R. & DOMAN the forest: the emergence of Neolithic societies in the Baltic region. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. ZVELEBIL, M. & ROWLEY-CONWY, P. 1986. Foragers and farmers in Atlantic Europe. In M. Zvelebil (ed.), Hunters in transition: Mesolithic societies in temperate Eurasia and their transition to farming, 67–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


From Mesolithic to Neolithic modes of thought ALAN BARNARD

THIS PAPER HAS ITS ORIGIN in the comparative study of an observed ‘Mesolithic’ to ‘Neolithic’-type transition (actually in African tool-tradition terms, Later Stone Age to Iron Age): the present-day shift from hunting and gathering to agro-pastoralism in southern Africa. But before entering into comparisons between Europe and Africa, let me make two disclaimers. First, the paper is not specifically concerned with theories of the spread of herding or farming. Indeed, my model is not contingent on any particular perspective in archaeological theory or model of neolithisation (such as ‘wave of advance’ or ‘indigenous development’). It could prove useful under various theoretical banners in reinterpreting aspects of the archaeological record with reference to economics, sociality, politics, land use, and inter-group interactions in the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. Secondly, the paper is concerned not with direct ethnographic analogy, but rather with relational analogy. A relational analogy involves comparable archaeological periods, and it involves equivalent sets of structural relations. Comparable here means literally compare-able; it does not mean identical. The pitfalls of crude ethnographic analogy are avoided because the model is structural and not dependent on ethnographic or archaeological detail.

SOUTHERN AFRICAN/EUROPEAN COMPARISONS My own field of research is as a social anthropologist among huntergatherers, part-time hunter-gatherers, and former hunter-gatherers (and some herding groups) in southern Africa. These groups are comparable in many ways to north-west European Mesolithic populations. The surrounding agro-pastoral populations are similarly comparable to European Neolithic peoples.

Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 5–19, © The British Academy 2007.


Alan Barnard

6

A word on the history of archaeology in the two regions is worthwhile. In north-west Europe, the term ‘Neolithic’ is attributed to Lubbock (1865, 1–2), who made the contrast between the Neolithic and Palaeolithic ages. ‘Mesolithic’ was first used a year later, by Westrop, though what he described was more the Upper Palaeolithic than what we call today the Mesolithic. Piette in the 1880s and 1890s began to uncover the Mesolithic as we know it, but used other terms for the periods he described (Bahn 1996, 122–3; Daniel 1975, 123–30). Read (1911, 347) mentions the ‘Mesolithic’ (in inverted commas) as an attempt to bridge the gap between Palaeolithic and Neolithic, but asserts that ‘it would not seem probable that the missing links will occur at all events as far north as Britain’. In southern Africa, early archaeologists sought to fit what they found into European paradigms (Deacon 1990). Scholars at first used the terms ‘Palaeolithic’ and ‘Neolithic’, though the Cambridge anthropologist A. C. Haddon, on a visit in 1905, argued that South African archaeology must develop its own understandings of its ‘Stone Age’. Leading amateur archaeologists of the following decade, such as Johnson and Péringey, would only go half way and used a mixture of local and European terminology. Péringey died in 1924, and this gave the first professional, A. J. H. Goodwin, the chance to go through his collection. Goodwin first presented his specifically southern African typology in 1925, and by 1929 his detailed classification of Stone Age cultures was complete (Goodwin & Van Riet Lowe 1929). It is the one still in use. The comparable ages then are, for Europe the modified Lubbock scheme with Mesolithic and Neolithic, and for southern Africa the Goodwin scheme comprising for our purposes here his Later Stone Age (or Late Stone Age, in contemporary ethnography, Bushmen or San) and the Iron Age (Bantuspeaking agro-pastoralists). I stress that the southern African Later Stone Age is analogous to the European Mesolithic, not the Neolithic. The southern African Iron Age is analogous to the European Neolithic, not the European Iron Age (in modern usage, southern Africa has no ‘Neolithic’ and no ‘Bronze Age’).

NEOLITHISATION: MODELS FROM SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY The next question, if I can employ the word ‘neolithisation’ in a southern African context, is when such ‘neolithisation’ began there among its huntergatherer population. The traditional view among southern African ethnographers of so-called Bushman or San groups (actually a diverse set of populations) is that it begins now; processes comparable to neolithisation have been witnessed a great many times by several ethnographers in the last


FROM MESOLITHIC TO NEOLITHIC MODES OF THOUGHT

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four or five decades (e.g. Guenther 1986). The revisionist view, among several other ethnographers, archaeologists and historians (e.g. Wilmsen & Denbow 1990), is that it began some 1500 years ago and seemingly was rapid in its effects on ways of life. The traditionalists are essentially gradualists, and see slow transition rather than rapid revolution as the best description of the process of change towards a full agricultural economy. Thus, in a sense, they are in agreement with many today in their understanding of the process in Europe, whereas the revisionists in that sense replicate at least a simplified image of Gordon Childe’s classic vision of a ‘Neolithic Revolution’. I shall return to this question later. In social anthropology some five models have been created in order to explain differences between foraging (Mesolithic) and non-foraging (Neolithic) economies. Those concerned with the problem tend to be huntergatherer specialists, whereas in archaeology those concerned with the problem tend to be Neolithic (i.e. non-hunter-gatherer) specialists. The main reason is simply that social anthropologists who do fieldwork among living hunter-gatherers see themselves in terms of the transition which their societies have gone through. We academics are all post-Mesolithic; our hunter-gatherer informants are not. The five models of foraging society include Sahlins’ ‘original affluent society’, Woodburn’s immediate-return economic systems, Bird-David’s ‘giving environment’, the Marxists’ foraging mode of production, and my foraging mode of thought. Sahlins (1974, 1–39) sees the perception of ‘affluence’ among hunter-gatherers as being based on the value of leisure time rather than wealth; thus the ‘Neolithic Revolution’, as he, like Childe, sees it, increases wealth but not leisure time. In the 1970s, one Botswana government officer noted that ‘original affluence’ in such a sense presupposes that there is no post-Mesolithic, in other words that the model works only for those who are not surrounded (as of course present-day Bushmen are) by agropastoralists. Sahlins’ model nevertheless survives, albeit with modifications, in the tool-kit of anthropologists who are interested in transitions comparable to the Mesolithic-Neolithic. The most significant alteration has been one suggested by Bird-David (1992), that we should take greater account of cultural perceptions, especially sharing, in understanding ‘original affluence’. The second model is Woodburn’s (1980) idea of immediate-return, as contrasted to delayed-return, economic systems. Most hunter-gatherers are immediate-return, but complex hunter-gatherers, along with all non-huntergatherers, are delayed-return. For Woodburn, delayed-return hunter-gatherers include those who store or invest time in making nets, those such as Australian Aborigines who ‘farm out their women’ (i.e. who have complicated kinship systems based on ‘investment’ in reproduction), and any who are only part-time hunter-gatherers (i.e. who engage, however slightly, in


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pastoralism or horticulture). The last might include European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, especially any with partly domesticated plants and animals (cf. Zvelebil & Lillie 2000). Bird-David’s (1990) model of the ‘giving environment’ supposes that hunter-gatherers perceive environments differently to farmers. For huntergatherers, the environment shares; one does not extract from it, and this is related too to her later notion of the ‘cosmic economy of sharing’. Marxists have emphasised production: what they have called the foraging mode of production or the communal mode of production (e.g. Lee 1981). The emphasis is on the interplay between production and social relations. My own model places the emphasis differently: on economic ideology (mode of thought) rather than on production. In earlier papers, I have distinguished a foraging or hunter-gatherer mode of thought from an accumulation mode of thought. The model was derived in part by altering the terms of reference of Marxist notions. In changing the emphasis from subsistence to the ideological basis of diverse economies, different sets of social relations become apparent. Like modes of production, modes of thought are in ‘articulation’; and in my observations in southern Africa, the foraging mode of thought has proven more resilient than either traditionalist or revisionist understandings would predict. My concern has been with the continuity of the foraging mode of thought in transitional societies (i.e. ones that no longer practise ‘pure’ foraging but possess livestock or crops), and it is apparent at least in the Kalahari that the transition is a slow one; people can hold on to ideologies reflecting foraging for generations, even when their systems of production have undergone transition. For the purposes of this paper, what I have previously labelled the foraging mode of thought will be described as Mesolithic, and what I have described as the accumulation mode of thought will be called Neolithic. What this implies is both that the significant European archaeological periods for these are Mesolithic and Neolithic, and that the transition there is comparable to the observed differences between foraging and accumulation practices in southern Africa (cf. Gronenborn 2004).

MESOLITHIC AND NEOLITHIC MODES OF THOUGHT My two proposed modes of thought are characterised by opposite perceptions in at least four domains: saving versus consumption (which reflect notions of time and work); decision-making and political hierarchy; degree and kind of kin category extension; and notions of land, place and settlement. All of these have implications for understanding group structure, transhumance, migration, and so on. These are discussed with detailed evidence in



9

earlier papers (especially Barnard 2002), so for reasons of space just short summaries and figurative representations will be presented here. A fifth domain, identity in terms of ethnic group and nation, is not relevant for Mesolithic-Neolithic comparisons, but I can add, at least for archaeological speculation, several new ones: relative equality (gender, class and age), ritual and belief, related aspects of kinship structure and memory, and magical practices (including ‘good’ magic, witchcraft and sorcery). Just the first of these new ones lends itself to diagrammatic representation. Take sharing (and immediate consumption) versus accumulation (Fig. 1). Of course all hunter-gatherers accumulate and store to some extent, and I include ‘immediate-return’ Bushmen as well as complex hunter-gatherers like those who lived at the time of contact on the north-west coast of North America. However, what Bushmen value is sharing over accumulation, and this usually takes the form of distribution, particularly of meat. Bushmen value sharing not just in the sense of a belief that those who share are ‘good people’, but also in the sense that failing to share is anti-social. Society itself is based on sharing, and is offended by accumulation. Evidence for this includes the very fact that people conceal accumulation, while nevertheless acknowledging its existence. For example, one may have two tobacco pouches—a full one, which is hidden, and a relatively empty one, to show people and to share from. Furthermore, exchange is related to sharing, and not equated with it. The well-known system of hxaro (as the Ju/’hoansi or !Kung call it) or //aî (the Nharo or Naro term) is a sphere of exchange in which non-consumable, movable property is exchanged for similar property, but always with a delay. What is important is that the delay creates an ongoing relationship of generalised rights of access to resources, including water, firewood, and rights to hunt in one’s exchange partner’s territory: in other words, a system of informal sharing that formal exchange overlies. The second domain concerns decision-making and political hierarchy (Fig. 2). Hunter-gatherers tend to have a political ethos in which leaders emerge for specific tasks. Leadership is often not long-lasting and is generally not hereditary. It may exist only for some specific purpose, such as for a hunt or a ritual. Leaders aid in consensus-based decision-making, but they do not hold power. Indeed, the act of seeking power is discouraged, and it would weaken their prestige if it became apparent. One might claim that much the same is true in some other societies, but hunter-gatherers couple the position of self-seeking individuality with a low opinion of power itself. Even leaders who have power thrust upon them are sometimes reluctant to take on the role, as in one case I witnessed of the inability of a Ju/’hoan group to find a representative to speak to a government official. Leaders, though they might bear labels like ‘big one’ or ‘great one’, do not like making the decisions for the rest of their communities.


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MESOLITHIC MODE OF THOUGHT Accumulation

Anti-social (equated with not sharing)

Immediate consumption

Social (equated with sharing with family and community)

NEOLITHIC MODE OF THOUGHT

Figure 1.

Accumulation

Social (equated with saving for self and dependants)

Immediate consumption

Anti-social (equated with not saving)

Sharing (immediate consumption) and accumulation. MESOLITHIC MODE OF THOUGHT Leadership

Negative (associated with self interest)

Followership

Positive (associated with deference to the will of the community)

NEOLITHIC MODE OF THOUGHT Leadership

Positive (associated with high status)

Followership

Negative (associated with low status or possibly lack of initiative)

Figure 2. Followership and leadership.

The third domain may seem strange to archaeologists, but it is ethnographically attested throughout the world. Hunter-gatherers have universal systems of kin classification, in which each member of society classifies every other as belonging to a particular kin category (Fig. 3). This means that there is no distinction between kin and non-kin. The mechanism of classification varies greatly, even within southern Africa, but among both Ju/’hoansi and Nharo, for example, it is done through personal names. There are a limited number of these, and they cycle through the generations from grandparent to grandchild; anyone with the same name is believed to be descended from the same namesake-ancestor and is therefore a ‘grandrelative’. A sister’s namesake will be a ‘sister’, a daughter’s namesake a ‘daughter’, and so on (usually



11

MESOLITHIC MODE OF THOUGHT Kin classification

Universal (everyone classed as ‘kin’)

Society

Equated with kinship


Figure 3.

Kin classification

Non-universal (distinction between kin and non-kin)

Society

Equated with tribe or ethnic group

The extent of kin classification.

MESOLITHIC MODE OF THOUGHT Land

Sacrosanct (associated with primordial possession)

People

Sovereign (people as free individuals)


Figure 4.

Land

Sovereign (associated with alienable wealth or political authority)

People

Sacrosanct (people as ‘citizens’ of a larger unit)

People and land.

older people classify younger, and the latter reciprocate appropriately). All this determines things like incest and marriageability and whether to be informal or formal in verbal or physical association. Non-Bushmen who stay for some length of time are given names too in order to fit them into the system. Universal kinship often remains important even after permanent settlement, and it ties in clearly with the idea that one has kinship with people across vast areas, and not merely within one’s own locality. It is easy to envisage this in Mesolithic Europe too. The system is not dependent on trade or migration; it is conducive to the exploitation of shared hunted and gathered resources, seasonal movements, and great flexibility in group structure.


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MESOLITHIC MODE OF THOUGHT Equality

Natural (equated with social harmony)

Inequality

Unnatural (equated with antisocial behaviour, boasting, etc.)


Figure 5.

Equality

Unnatural (equated with stagnation)

Inequality

Natural (equated with ability to accumulate, achievement, competition)

Relative equality.

Attitudes to land are embedded in local knowledge and longstanding relations between peoples and their respective environments, and this represents my fourth domain. Accumulators and foragers may understand relations between land and people in reverse (Fig. 4). Agricultural peoples in the modern world will tend to see land more in terms of sovereignty: for example with regard to the nation-state’s authority to decide what does and what does not constitute legal ‘ownership’. They see semi-sacred rights of freedom and so on, as vested in the people independently of the land they occupy. Foragers and recent former foragers, however, see their lands as associated with inalienable rights and the primordial possession of land by kin groups. They see people as innately free and the state as the usurper, not the guarantor, of freedom and mutual aid. Agricultural peoples accumulate land by conquest or purchase, whereas for most foraging peoples this is not possible because relations between people and land are different, in terms of ritual association, economic association, notions of ownership and knowledge, and perceptions of power and rights. My fifth case here is that of relative equality (Fig. 5). In an egalitarian hunter-gatherer society, equality is associated with ‘natural’ social harmony. Bushmen value modesty and see any attempt to boast or assert superiority as out of the order of things. Inegalitarian societies include examples from Neolithic (and no doubt some Late Mesolithic) to capitalist, and my contention is that these will see the idea of social hierarchy differently. Of course, there are many forms of social hierarchy, and these can be based on gender, on class, on age, and so on. The significant thing here is simply the contrast between the two forms. It is possible that some Late Mesolithic groups might be seen for these purposes as ‘Neolithic’, or in any case deviating from



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the model. This does not negate the model for the Mesolithic (or huntergatherers) in more general terms. Finally, we have the cases of ritual and belief, memory and kinship, and magical practices. These do not lend themselves to diagrammatic representation with two dyadic sets of relations. Let me here simply offer speculation on the basis of my ethnographic experience. In terms of ritual and belief, Mesolithic sites are not present in the archaeological record, and in a Mesolithic mode of thought (like a Bushman or San one) I would expect ritual to be focused above all else on sociality. Living hunter-gatherers throughout the world base their rituals on sociality: more specifically on either curing (as in the main Bushman ritual activities), on shamanic practices, or on totemic association. In contrast, Neolithic sites are of course apparent in the archaeological record, and I would expect that in contrast to a Mesolithic mode of thought, the Neolithic would be focused on forces external to society and on kin groups within society (i.e. not society as a whole). These latter could be totemic groups or simply ancestors. In Africa and many other parts of the world, hunter-gatherers tend not to have unilineal descent groups, whereas small-scale agro-pastoralists do. Hunter-gatherers, often nomadic, have less emphasis on specific sites, even for example in burial of the dead. There are exceptions, such as burial sites like Skateholm in Sweden, and indeed the sedentary hunter-gatherer communities of Late Mesolithic southern Scandinavia as a whole may be the exception (see for example Larsson 1990; but also Larsson, this volume). That said, one can easily see classic Neolithic burial sites as part of the general change of emphasis towards such different kinds of genealogical memory in post-hunter-gatherer society (cf. Whittle 1996, 8–9; 2003, 107–32). In a Mesolithic mode of thought, magic should be rare but communal, focused either on good (in the abstract) or on non-humans (such as hunted animals). This accords with the situation among all Bushman groups, and many other hunter-gatherers too. In a Neolithic mode of thought, as in Iron Age southern African and many other non-foraging communities, I would expect magic to be more common and individual, focused either on affines or on enemies.

THE PERSISTENCE OF MESOLITHIC THOUGHT INTO THE NEOLITHIC? Today we talk about the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. Childe talked instead about a Neolithic Revolution. To me, it is not a matter of either/or, and indeed Childe himself (1936, 105) referred to his revolution as ‘the climax of a long process’. The Neolithic did eventually yield a revolutionary new way of


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thinking for those societies undergoing the transition. It is not simply a matter of how many generations, or how many steps the transition requires. I say this as someone who has observed a similar transition taking place, in my period of observation over some thirty years, on and off; and in terms of the full duration of the transition, much longer of course. Southern African revisionists talk in terms of a millennium and a half of transition from first contact between Iron Age agro-pastoralists and Later Stone Age huntergatherers. The prevailing opinion among revisionists is that contact itself creates new ways of thinking, and this fits too with Woodburn’s (1980) model. My view is that both sides in that debate have overestimated the impact of culture contact on mode of thought. Traditionalists used to expect purity from their hunter-gatherers: one hundred percent or they do not count as ‘real’ huntergatherers. Revisionists seem to expect the same. To exaggerate slightly, in the traditionalist mind, the hunter-gatherer ceased to exist just after one’s fieldwork; in the revisionist mind, the hunter-gatherer ceased to exist much earlier, perhaps a millennium ago. Both sides are saying the same thing: the hunter-gatherer mode of thought has disappeared. I have seen and documented many cases of the persistence of huntergatherer thought among semi-sedentary and sedentary hunter-gatherercultivators and even among San wage labourers from diverse parts of the Kalahari (e.g. Barnard 1988). So too have other ethnographers. What these observations indicate is that mode of thought is much slower to change than mode of production. Social relations (relations of production, if you like) retain the structures of hunter-gatherer times if these are deeply rooted in cultural understandings of sociality. The existence nearby of agro-pastoralists does not make former hunter-gatherers think more like agro-pastoralists; it may even accentuate the differences in their thinking by making each side more aware of what makes them, say, Nharo or Tswana (or Mesolithic or Neolithic). Let me illustrate with two examples from southern Africa. My ethnographic summaries are necessarily very short and simplified, but they should serve as models for thinking about possibilities in the transition of Late Mesolithic groups in contact with a Neolithic culture to a Neolithic way of thinking. My first example concerns individuals in Bugakhoe and Ts’exa Bushman communities in the swampy areas of northern Botswana, north of the Kalahari. These have been described by Michael Taylor in his thesis on community-based natural resource management in the area (Taylor 2000). He describes how both livelihoods and identities are malleable and contextual. Individuals can operate in diverse economic situations: traditional hunting, gathering and fishing; subsistence-herding; being part of the modern economy when temporarily in the south of the country, and so on. It is not



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just that they have diverse strategies, but that they seem to think in terms of different cultural systems (or modes of thought). My second example concerns a specific community of Hai//om Bushmen in northern Namibia. Aspects of the relation between Hai//om and their neighbours and their transition to new ways have long existed in the ethnographic record, but my interest here is with the apparent seasonal difference between hunting and gathering (in the winter dry season) and agriculture (in the summer wet season). Among his descriptions of diverse settlement types, Thomas Widlok (1999, 164–70) describes seasonal movements between three of particular interest here. One, which I had the good fortune to visit briefly with Widlok in the dry season of 1991, is located in a remote mangetti (mongongo) grove some two hours walk from the nearest water. This group stays there for only a few weeks of the year, but their lifestyle is based purely on gathering and hunting. The main part of the dry season is spent at another camp where water is permanently available, but where gathering and hunting still provide the bulk of subsistence and there is little contact between the Hai//om and their agricultural neighbours. Yet they spend the wet season at another site, where they work for Ovambo agro-pastoralists, grow their own crops, and even structure their encampment and build their dwellings in Ovambo style. In European terms, it would not be too far-fetched to translate this pattern to a hypothetical community with a winter Mesolithic way of life and a summer Neolithic way of life. In broad terms, the foraging mode of thought is resilient and resistant to contact with agro-pastoralists. Typical characteristics of hunter-gatherer society include a band level of social organisation, large territory for size of population, lack of social hierarchy, universal kinship (everyone being classified kind of ‘kin’, no non-kin), widespread sharing, a dualistic mentality (farmers think in ‘threes’), symbolic relations between hunted animals and humans, and flexibility in all realms. The very flexibility of such groups enables the survival of many of the other attributes (cf. Barnard 1999; 2002). Or, as Widlok (1999, 107) has put it: ‘. . . former hunter-gatherers now forage on agropastoralist economies and on the State without changing their internal social organisation drastically and without necessarily adopting new social institutions’. Why should a hunter-gatherer population take up agro-pastoral pursuits (cf. Sadr 2002)? There could be many reasons, of course: climate change (and, for example, sea-level change in the case of Europe), population pressure, pressure on old resources or the availability of new resources, political domination (either directly or through trade), culture change (including religious conversion), desire for sedentary lifestyle, or desire for greater accumulation of wealth. In considering these, it is wise to consider at the same time the huge differences in mindset involved in the transition, both to the addition


Alan Barnard

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of livestock as a major focus and to the addition of cultivating. These differences are illustrated diagrammatically in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7. Let me return to the Hai//om for two final examples of the difficulties involved in the transition to a Neolithic mode of thought. In Botswana there is a practice, known in the Tswana language as mafisa, whereby poor people (often Bushmen) look after livestock for better-off people (usually Tswana) and in return receive products from the livestock, or sometimes calves or kids born to the cattle or goats they look after. Among the Hai//om in Namibia, Widlok (1999, 113–19) refers to a roughly equivalent practice as ‘inverse mafisa’. The difference is that in inverse mafisa, the poor person (a Hai//om) acquires his own livestock and leaves them with a well-off Ovambo, who in turn keeps the products of the arrangement. Why does it occur? Plainly not for economic advantage on the part of the poor Hai//om, but for social reasons: it is not good to be seen to have wealth, so one pays to deposit it elsewhere. It is as if one were to pay interest to a bank for keeping one’s money! In another example from Widlok’s (1999, 100–6) ethnography, Hai//om sell gathered mangetti nuts to Ovambo. The Ovambo make liquor from the nuts, then sell it to the Hai//om at a profit. Again, Ovambo get wealthier

Figure 6.

Hunting and gathering versus herding, hunting and gathering.



Figure 7.

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Hunting and gathering versus cultivating, hunting and gathering.

and Hai//om poorer, with the only gain for the latter being the retention of ‘original affluence’ in the form of more free time.

FINAL REFLECTIONS A ‘Neolithic Revolution’ is, of course, both technological and ideological, and need not either be quick or affect all Mesolithic groups in contact with Neolithic peoples equally (cf. Price 2000, 314–18). Proper use of analogy is not to pick up and drop on to, but more subtle than that—to be used to think with. I can provide an analogy, but it is up to archaeologists to decide how and where it might be useful. Indeed, I can see the case for analogy in reverse. For example, it may be significant for the rethinking of Kalahari revisionism that the timescale from first farmers in the Kalahari to the present, about 1500 years, is almost exactly the period reckoned for the process of neolithisation in the Netherlands (Verhart 2000, 233). As Louwe Kooijmans (1998, 51) puts it: ‘The main problem with respect to the agricultural transformation of Northern Europe is not why the new system was adopted, but why it was adopted only after a substantial time lag.’


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Nor should the ‘original affluent society’ or Mesolithic mode of thought necessarily be regarded as either quite so ‘original’ or quite so backward as it may seem to us, in any post-Mesolithic Age—be it Neolithic, southern African Late Stone Age, or global capitalist. The Mesolithic mode of thought was a different value system from what came after (cf. RowleyConwy 2001), and whether economically rational or otherwise represents a manner of thinking that encodes perceptions of social behaviour, relations to land and so on, that are both adaptive and equally rational in their own terms. Note. I am grateful to Magdalena Midgley and Thomas Widlok for comments on an earlier draft.

REFERENCES BAHN, P. G. (ed.) 1996. The Cambridge illustrated history of archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. BARNARD, A. 1988. Cultural identity, ethnicity and marginalization among the Bushmen of southern Africa. In R. Vossen (ed.), New perspectives on the study of Khoisan, 9–27. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. BARNARD, A. 1999. Modern hunter-gatherers and early symbolic culture. In R. Dunbar, C. Knight, & C. Power (eds), The evolution of culture: an interdisciplinary view, 50–68. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. BARNARD, A. 2002. The foraging mode of thought. In H. Stewart, A. Barnard & K. Omura (eds), Self- and other images of hunter-gatherers, 5–24. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology. BIRD-DAVID, N. 1990. The giving environment: another perspective on the economic system of gatherer-hunters. Current Anthropology 31, 189–96. BIRD-DAVID, N. 1992. Beyond ‘the original affluent society’: a culturalist reformulation. Current Anthropology 33, 25–47. CHILDE, V. G. 1936. Man makes himself. London: Watts and Co. DANIEL, G. 1975. A hundred and fifty years of archaeology (second edition). London: Duckworth. DEACON, J. 1990. Weaving the fabric of Stone Age research in Southern Africa. In P. Robertshaw (ed.), A history of African archaeology, 39–58. London: James Currey. GOODWIN, A. J. H. & VAN RIET LOWE, C. 1929. The Stone Age cultures of South Africa. Annals of the South African Museum 27, 1–289. GRONENBORN, D. 2004. Comparing contact-period archaeologies: the expansion of farming and pastoralist societies to continental temperate Europe and to southern Africa. Before Farming 2004/4, 1–35. GUENTHER, M. 1986. The Nharo Bushmen of Botswana: tradition and change. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. LARSSON, L. 1990. The Mesolithic of southern Scandinavia. Journal of World Prehistory 4, 257–310. LEE, R. B. 1981. Is there a foraging mode of production? Canadian Journal of Anthropology 2(1), 13–19.



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LOUWE KOOIJMANS, L. P. 1998. Between Geleen and Banpo: the agricultural transformation of prehistoric society, 9000–4000 BC. Amsterdam: Stichting Nederlads Museum voor Anthropologie en Praehistorie. LUBBOCK, J. 1865. Pre-historic times, as illustrated by ancient remains, and the manners and customs of modern savages. London: Williams and Norgate. PRICE, T. D. 2000. Lessons in the transition to agriculture. In T. D. Price (ed.), Europe’s first farmers, 301–18. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. READ, C. H. 1911. Archaeology. Encyclopaedia Britannica (eleventh edition), 2, 344–54. ROWLEY-CONWY, P. 2001. Time, change and the archaeology of hunter-gatherers: how original is the ‘original affluent society’? In C. Panter-Brick, R. H. Layton & P. Rowley-Conwy (eds), Hunter-gatherers: an interdisciplinary perspective, 39–72. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. SADR, K. 2002. Encapsulated Bushmen in the archaeology of Thamaga. In S. Kent (ed.), Ethnicity, hunter-gatherers, and the ‘other’: association or assimilation in Africa, 28–47. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press. SAHLINS, M. 1974. Stone age economics. London: Tavistock Publications. TAYLOR, M. 2000. Life, land and power: contesting development in northern Botswana. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh. VERHART, L. B. M. 2000. Times fade away: the neolithisation of the southern Netherlands in an anthropological and geographical perspective. Leiden: Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University. WHITTLE, A. 1996. Europe in the Neolithic: the creation of new worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. WHITTLE, A. 2003. The archaeology of people: dimensions of Neolithic life. London: Routledge. WIDLOK, T. 1999. Living on mangetti: ‘Bushman’ autonomy and Namibian independence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. WILMSEN, E. N. & DENBOW, J. R. 1990. Paradigmatic history of San-speaking peoples and current attempts at revision. Current Anthropology 31, 489–24. WOODBURN, J. 1980. Hunters and gatherers today and reconstruction of the past. In E. Gellner (ed.), Soviet and Western anthropology, 95–117. London: Duckworth. ZVELEBIL, M. & LILLIE, M. 2000. Transition to agriculture in eastern Europe. In T. D. Price (ed.), Europe’s first farmers, 57–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



From Mesolithic to Early Neolithic in the western Mediterranean JEAN GUILAINE & CLAIRE MANEN

INTRODUCTION THE TRANSITION FROM the Mesolithic to the Early Neolithic in the western Mediterranean is a stimulating subject for more than one reason. First, the region’s geographic position means that it is a case of ‘distant Neolithisation’ (between 2000–3500 km) from the presumed epicentre of Neolithisation in south-east Asia, around the Turko-Syrian border. Attempting to grasp the economic, social or symbolic differences compared with the ‘parent region’ is in itself a challenging exercise. Indeed, this remoteness, associated with the idea of a substantial and dynamic indigenous substratum, has frequently fostered the idea that this zone could have ‘toppled’ into the Neolithic by a process of acculturation of the native populations. For many years debates have in fact opposed upholders of a process of colonisation by maritime routes and those in favour of a transition merely due to cultural dissemination and local adaptation of farming or other aspects of the Neolithic. How, on the basis of archaeological data and their interpretation, can these diverse questions be approached today, and what conclusions can be drawn from them? The geographical context taken into consideration here is that of the broad western Mediterranean (Fig. 1), from Liguria (northern Italy) to the Valencian region (Mediterranean Spain). The French regions will be more specifically examined, but there will be frequent comparisons with the Mediterranean shores of the Iberian peninsula.

THE LAST HUNTER-GATHERERS Only the Final Mesolithic will be considered here, with no attempt to explain the genesis of the cultural complexes involved.



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Geographical distribution: a state of research, or ecological selection? The Mesolithic populations are still poorly known. Along the coast from Liguria to Valencia there are relatively dense concentrations of sites (Lower Ebro and southern Catalonia, Valencia) and zones completely empty of any settlements (Liguria and coastal Catalonia). Is this due to an ecological selection of certain sectors to the detriment of others? It has often been observed that sites of contacts between valleys and medium-altitude mountains are privileged: the heart of the Causses region, or the Upper Segre for instance. However, coastal or sub-coastal (Châteauneuf) occupations are also known. The distribution map of Iberian sites grouping all those dated to between 6500 and 6000 cal BC points to a mainly peripheral, but fairly even, distribution (Juan-Cabanilles & Martí Oliver 2002). While the notion of systematic ‘poles’ seems plausible, it is certainly likely to be qualified under the effects of a more balanced research policy. Indeed, there are areas where Mesolithic and Cardial populations co-exist (such as western Provence and Valencia), and others where they are mutually exclusive. In addition, the effects of a contrasted, unevenly spread research background cannot be neglected. The destruction of coastal sites due to the Versilian transgression should also be envisaged. Other possible culprits are erosive crises which may have led to the truncation of deposits in caves or rockshelters (such as Balma Margineda), and a fortiori on open-air sites. The latter are, moreover, very poorly known; most of the evidence comes from

Figure 1. Location of the main sites mentioned in text. 1. Secche, Isola del Giglio, Italy 2. Arene Candide, Finale Ligure, Italy 3. Pendimoun, Alpes-Maritimes, France 4. Fontbrégoua, Salernes, Var, France 5. Font des Pigeons, Châteauneuf les Martigues, Bouches du Rhône, France 6. Unang, Malemort de Comtat, Vaucluse, France 7. Lalo, Espeluche, Drôme, France 8. Grande-Rivoire, Sassenage, Isère, France 9. Montclus, Gard, France 10. Oullins, Le Garn, Gard, France 11. L’Aigle, Méjannes-le-Clap, France 12. Bourbon, Cabrières, Gard, France 13. Peiro Signado, Portiragnes, Hérault, France 14. Pont de Roque-Haute, Portiragnes, Hérault, France 15. Camprafaud, Ferrières-Poussarou, Hérault, France 16. Abeurador, Félines-Minervois, Hérault, France 17. Gazel, Sallèles-Cabardès, Aude, France 18. Cuzoul, Gramat, Lot, France 19. Le Martinet, Sauveterre-la-Lémence, Lot-et-Garronne, France 20. Borie-del-Rey, Blanquefort-sue-Briolance, Lot-et-Garronne, France 21. Buholoup, Cazères, Haute-Garronne, France 22. Jean Cros, Labastide-en-val, Aude, France 23. Dourgne, Fontanès-de-Sault, Aude, France 24. Balma Margineda, St Julia, Andorra 25. La Draga, Banyoles, Gerona, Spain 26. Pasteral, La Cellera del Ter, Gerona, Spain 27. Avelanner, Les Planes d’Hostoles, Gerona, Spain 28. Lladres, Vascarisses, Barcelona, Spain 29. Frare, Matadepera, Barcelona, Spain 30. Forcas, Graus, Huesca, Spain 31. Moro, Olvena, Huesca, Spain 32. Chaves, Casbas, Huesca 33. Costalena, Maella, Aragon, Spain 34. Pontet, Maella, Aragon, Spain 35. Secans, Aragon, Spain 36. Botiqueria, Mazaléon, Aragon, Spain 37. Cingle del Mas Nou, Ares del Maestre, Valencia, Spain 38. Carasol de Vernissa, Valencia, Spain 39. El Collado, Oliva, Valencia, Spain 40. Cova de l’Or, Beniarrés, Valencia, Spain 41. Barranc del Castellet, Valencia, Spain 42. Cova dels Pilars, Valencia, Spain 43. Coveta del Moro, Valencia, Spain 44. Cova de la Sarsa, Bocairente, Valencia, Spain 45. Mas d’Is, Penàguila, Valencia, Spain 46. Cova del Cendres, Teulada, Valencia, Spain.


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deposits in shelters and cavities. The great dearth of Final Mesolithic sites often remains enigmatic. What should be thought of the fact that Mesolithic series often end in caves and shelters during the Middle-Late Mesolithic (such as Fontbrégoua c51, or Abeurador c3)? The total absence of any Final Mesolithic in certain islands which were otherwise fairly well frequented during the ninth and eighth millennia cal BC, such as Corsica, may be explained by the interruption of visits by mobile groups based on the continent. It is therefore on the continent that the explanation of this halt in insular exploration should be sought. Techno-cultural aspects The Final Mesolithic in the north-western Mediterranean presents some general characteristics: good knowledge of flint deposits, the obtaining of standard blades, use of the microburin technique, and trapezoidal or triangular microliths. Some slight differences can, however, be observed with respect to the principal complexes identified. The western version of the Castelnovian (as opposed to the eastern Castelnovian from the karst, the Adige valley, Emilia or the Alpine forelands in Lombardy) is known in Provence, along the Rhône route and in the western Alps. The known sites are few and far between. Whole areas are lacking in any data (western Liguria: the region of Early Neolithic Ligurian impressed ware sites; eastern Provence). The characteristic technical features are a standardised blade production technique, asymmetric trapezes (Châteauneuf trapezes)—sometimes practically triangles due to reduction of the small base—and rhombuses (Binder 1987; 2000; Escalon de Fonton 1956; 1971). The ‘Gazel-Cuzoul’ group stretches from the Pyrenees (Gazel, Dourgne, Buholoup) to the Aquitaine borders of the Massif Central (Le Martinet, La Borie del Rey, Le Cuzoul de Gramat). In Languedoc and the Pyrenees, the poor quality materials (Thanetian flint, Pyrenean rocks, quartz) explain the low proportion of blades. The most original pieces are the ‘Gazel points’: triangular points with abrupt crossed retouch on the back, flat inverse retouch on the base and thinning retouch on the faces (Barbaza 1993; Guilaine 1973). In the Iberian peninsula, where the contemporary Mediterranean facies have long been designated by the general term of ‘Geometric Complex’ (Fortea Perez 1973), the following groups can be distinguished for the final phases of the Mesolithic: The Segre Basin group. At Forcas II, the levels for the end of the Epipalaeolithic (III, IV) contain triangular and trapezoidal abruptly retouched microliths with use of the microburin (Utrilla 2002).



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The Lower Ebro group (Botiqueria, Costalena, Pontet, Secans). Trapezes, short or asymmetric, often with one or two concave sides, are associated with scalene triangles also presenting one or two concave sides (Costalena c3). ‘Thorn’ triangles are sometimes present (Botiqueria c4; Pontet e) (Barandiaran & Cava 1981; 1989; Utrilla 2002). The ‘Cocinian’ group in the region of Valencia/Alicante. This is sometimes subdivided into two cores: Central Valencian and Lara-Arenal (Bernabeu Aubán 2002). The ‘Cocina II’ group is characterised in particular by trapezes and triangles with concave edges (Cocina-type triangles), use of the microburin technique, and Montbani bladelets (Fortea Perez 1971; JuanCabanilles 1990; 1992). Economy The seventh and sixth millennia cal BC (a period which, in the western Mediterranean, includes the last hunter-gatherer populations and the first farmers) are characterised by the maximum development of the post-glacial forest. The image of a generalised oak forest can sometimes be moderated; naturally open spaces could also exist, for example at Lalo (Drôme: Beeching 2003). Hunting was essential; red deer, boar and roe deer were the most frequent prey. Ibex were also stalked in high-altitude zones. There is little evidence concerning plant gathering, mainly attested on earlier sites (Abeurador, Fontbrégoua: lentil, chickling vetch, pea, vetch, chick pea); it must, however, have continued (Courtin 1975; Vaquer & Barbaza 1987). Recently, taxa of Fabaceae, Lens sp., Vicia cf. tetrasprema and Vicia/Lathyrus have been identified in the Mesolithic levels of the cave at Gazel (Laurent Bouby, pers. comm.). Dried fruits (hazelnuts) are often attested (Dourgne), as are the remains of pulpy fruits (La Margineda: blackberry, sloe, pistachio, fruit of the dogwood-tree) (Marinval 1995). Mollusc collecting was common, whether from the sea (as at Châteauneuf) or land (as at Dourgne and Gazel). The question of the possible ‘rearing’ of ovicaprins during the Final Mesolithic, proposed for a time (for example at Gazel and Dourgne), has been reconsidered, with probable Neolithic ‘pollution’ or ‘palimpsest strata’ telescoping as it were the contents of successive occupation levels (cf. Dourgne: Guilaine 1993). It often turns out, indeed, that in caves and rockshelters the ‘archaeological strata’—or those observed as such—in fact only represent the outwardly homogenous compaction of a certain number of successive visits. Brochier’s observations at Balma Margineda are edifying in this respect; each ‘layer’ proved to be the telescoping of several ‘floors’. The temporal homogeneity of the evidence obtained from a given stratigraphic unit therefore often remains relative. Moreover, the idea that a technique (breeding) was borrowed or hunks of meat exchanged between



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predators and producers is an agreeable picture, but one which is difficult to prove. It is interesting to note that a few years after the discussion concerning possible ‘Mesolithic animal husbandry’, the concept of ‘pre-Neolithic’ agriculture appeared in France. Pollen analyses carried out in filled-in depressions or in marshy coastal areas, from the Rhône to the Ebro, have indicated clearing of the landscape with the development of ruderal plants and, sometimes, the presence of cereal pollens in horizons dated to between 6400 and 5800 cal BC, i.e. earlier than the first Neolithic settlements (for a survey see Richard 2004): Etang de Berres (Triat-Laval 1982), Embouchac (Puertas 1998), Capestang (Jalut 1995), Petit Castelou (Guenet 1995). Should the presence of fires on certain sites (Drassanes 1) be interpreted as the result of natural phenomena, or as attempts at clearing the forest by hunters (Riera i Mora 1996)? The chronology of the Neolithic spread through the Mediterranean region is today sufficiently well established with regard to its general features to consider such clearing (with cereals) as difficult to accept. The phenomenon arises in more general terms since these possible traces of pre-Neolithic human activity appear in several regions of France (Dordogne, the Loire basin, Vosges and Jura), which reveal an obvious divergence between palynological data and archaeological facts. Chronology The chronological distribution of dates between Italy and Spain for the various facies of the late Mesolithic is clear; they are all situated between 6600 and 6000 cal BC (Fig. 2). Without anticipating the discussion which follows, we must also observe the very clear gap between dates for the late Mesolithic and those for the Early Neolithic; the two series run side by side c. 6000 cal BC with practically no overlapping. It must thus be recognised that the various hypotheses regarding Mesolithic/Neolithic interaction refer to a historic reality even though the lack of precision of radiocarbon dating does not yet allow this to be demonstrated.

THE MESOLITHIC INHERITANCE The world of the dead One domain in which the Mesolithic and early Neolithic populations in the western Mediterranean had common features, and which thus allows the hypothesis of a possible filiation to be proposed, is that of funerary contexts and mortuary rites. In both cases, the dead are rare and inconspicuous, and



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Figure 2. Comparisons of the histograms of the late Mesolithic and early Neolithic datings. In grey, late Mesolithic datings; in white, early Neolithic datings. After Manen & Sabatier 2003.

do not seem to be part of the ‘landscape’ of the living. The deceased of Impressed Ware groups remain few and far between, unlike, for example, the Neolithic of the Near East. There, from a very early date, sometimes in the PPNA, necropolises appear (Kortik Tepe, Turkey) or, in the PPNB, ‘houses of the dead’ with multiple or collective burials (‘Skull Building’, Çayönü, Turkey; ‘house of the dead’, Djade, Syria), or individual burials in dwellings, under the floors of houses (Halula, Syria). In southern France a few individuals have been found buried in caves or shelters used as temporary dwellings during the Cardial or Epicardial (e.g. Pendimoun, Unang, Baume Bourbon and Gazel: Binder et al. 1993; Coste et al. 1987; Duday & Guilaine 1980; Paccard 1987). The phenomenon also existed in the Iberian peninsula where certain individuals were buried in dwelling-caves (La Sarsa), or in small peripheral cavities: El Carasol de Vernissa, El Barranc del Castellet, Cova Negra, Coveta del Moro, Cova dels Pilars, Cova del Frontó in Valencia, and Avellaner and Cova dels Lladres in Catalonia (Bernabeu Aubán et al. 2001; Bosch i Lloret & Tarrus i Galter 1990; Pla & Junyent 1970). It was not until the Catalonian Postcardial that the first Neolithic necropolis appears in that geo-cultural zone: ‘Caserna de San Pau’ (Barcelona). This type of situation echoes a model observed previously in the Late or Final Mesolithic in France, where practically no Castelnovian individuals have been found: one in the Epi-Castelnovian at Montclus (Ferembach 1976), and another at Le Rastel (Barral & Primard 1962).


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In Spain, the burial at Cingle del Mas Nou was that of an individual interred in a supine position in a narrow pit with, at the level of his legs, the incomplete and disconnected remains of five other persons. This tomb is dated to 5875–5650 cal BC, i.e. the Final Mesolithic-Neolithic transition (Olària et al. 2005). The existence, in Valencia, of the El Collado ‘necropolis’ represents a case which is so far unique: 14 pit burials, with bodies in the flexed position and accompanied by stone objects and shell ornaments (Arias & Alvares-Fernandez 2004). It obviously calls to mind the graves in shell middens at Muge (Portugal). This short survey suggests the hypothesis of a relatively thin population density for the Mesolithic. However, assuming that the human groups during the Early Neolithic were more numerous, we also have to note the small amount of evidence available for that period. Whence the idea, proposed by Chambon (in press), that the bodies found so far do not represent the norm, but rather reprobates or outcasts. An archaeological argument can be added to this hypothesis; the Early Neolithic individuals found are rarely accompanied by any significant grave goods. In fact, they very often have none at all (such as Pendimoun: Binder et al. 1993). It therefore seems that, in the Early Neolithic, the norm could have been deliberately making bodies disappear, either by natural means (abandoning to wild animals, abandoning in rivers, and so on) or by anthropic means (dismembering, breaking of bones, cannibalism, and so on). The deceased members of the Cardial population seem to have been ‘excluded’ from the cultural landscape. As the same seems to be the case for the Final Mesolithic populations, the hypothesis of a continuance of funerary rites among the early farmers can be proposed. Basically, the Neolithisation of the western Mediterranean may not have destabilised a well established tradition among the native populations. It was only with more marked territorial claims and the appearance of more stable dwellings, and perhaps too with the emergence of social differences, that the signalling of certain deceased individuals became more obvious and that the dead became integrated, in one way or another, in the cultural landscape. Personal ornaments Some typical items of adornment are common to the last hunters and the Cardial populations. There are, first, perforated Columbellae rusticae. These shells are found on several sites, both Mesolithic (e.g. Châteauneuf, Dourgne, Costalena, Botiqueria dels Moros, El Collado, and others) and Early Neolithic (e.g. Châteauneuf, Camprafaud, Cova de l’Or, Chaves, and others). The same observation is valid for unworked, merely pierced, cardium shells. In addition, in Cardial and Epicardial contexts, beads made of shell, stone or bone have been found which manifestly imitate the upper eyeteeth of



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red deer. They are oval beads with a swollen base. They are also found in Valencia (Or and Cendres), Catalonia (Cova Pasteral and Lladres), Aragon (Chaves and Moro de Olvena) and southern France (Jean Cros, Châteauneuf and Oullins). In a context where the environment was subject to the effects of human action, this tradition underlines the continuing existence of a reference to the domain of ‘the wild’ and hunting. Of course the Cardial culture also developed at the same time items of adornment unknown to the Mesolithic populations: for instance, stone bracelets and circular beads made of shell. Cardial art and Mesolithic art? This problem, which would on its own merit greater development, will merely be mentioned. The debates concerning the chronology of the famous ‘Levantine art’ in the Iberian peninsula are well known. Some authors, in view of its favourite theme—hunting—have considered it to be an iconography of hunters and initially dated it to the Mesolithic, or even to the Upper Palaeolithic (Breuil, Cabré and Obermaier). Others perceived it as a longterm output, straddling the world of the hunter-gatherers and that of food producers (Almagro, Ripoll and Beltran). Finally, more recently, it has been attributed to the Neolithic and considered, due to the stylistic superpositions observed in certain shelters (such as La Sarga), to have begun after the macro-schematic art, itself envisaged as a typically Cardial production (Martí & Hernandez 1988; Hernandez Perez & Segura Marti 2002). Bernabeu recently proposed an interesting hypothesis. In the perspective of the ‘dual’ Neolithisation model (intrusive Cardial/accultured Mesolithic populations), he attributed Levantine art to the neolithicised native populations of the sub-continental zones (Geometric Complex with pottery). This naturalistic art would essentially have emerged during the Epicardial, as a sort of cultural statement or even one of resistance to the Cardial environment with its foreign origin. This perpetuation could explain why the native populations, although neolithicised, asserted their own artistic culture. Schematic art and macro-schematic art, stamped by a certain degree of conceptualisation or abstraction, would thus be the vectors of a Cardial iconography promoting anthropomorphism (Bernabeu Aubán 2002). It is interesting to note that this dual model, applied to the artistic domain, is also echoed in Aragon (Utrilla 2002). Another point, of more general interest, concerns the absence of figurines in the Western Mediterranean Early Neolithic (Guilaine 1996); they are scarcely found beyond the Italian peninsula. We suggest that these objects are linked to the social functioning of the fully sedentary communities of the Near East or of south-eastern Europe. In central and western


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Mediterranean zones, this stage was generally attained only in the Middle Neolithic (fifth/fourth millennia cal BC). Finding figurines in Cardial dwellings cannot of course be excluded; it would be surprising if any were found on neolithicised Mesolithic sites. The question of microliths It is interesting to note that it is often arrowheads which serve to raise the question of tradition or rupture between hunters and farmers. This could underline the role still played by hunting in farming populations (and even if the arrowheads are sometimes microliths serving other uses). It should be recalled that in the Valencian Cardial, the microliths are for the most part trapezoidal with abrupt marginal retouch; they are obtained from laminary supports broken by flexion or percussion (Juan-Cabanilles 1990; 1992). In the Cardial at Chaves, Upper Aragon, however, the microliths are mainly doublebevelled (‘doble bisel’) segments (Cava 2000). In France, arrowheads from the Cardial in Provence, trapezoidal or triangular, often have abrupt or semiabrupt retouches, sometimes associated with covering retouch on one face (Châteauneuf, Grotte de l’Aigle: Binder 1987; Roudil et al. 1979). A certain morphological diversity reigns (Fig. 3). It is the development, in France, of Montclus arrowheads and, in Mediterranean Spain, of double-bevelled microliths (‘doble bisel’), which gives rise to several theories. They may be items resulting from a technical process deriving from a native practice: the presence of inverse flat retouch on the base of the triangular points of the Final Mesolithic in Languedoc, thinning retouch on the faces of the same implements (Barbaza 1993), and use of the ‘double bevel’ technique among some Epipalaeolithic ‘Geometric Complex’ populations in Mediterranean Spain (Stage C of Juan-Cabanilles and Martí). They would thus, in both cases, be a legacy from a pre-Neolithic population. Or it may be a question of Neolithic types (Montclus, segments) secondarily adopted by the hunter-gatherer cultures who had come into contact, directly or indirectly, with farmers (Marchand 1999). Their presence among predatory groups would thus reflect late horizons, contemporary with farming settlements. This argument can be supported by the increase of these types during the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. The problem is all the more acute in that often the chronology of the Montclus and double-bevelled segments (‘doble bisel’) is determined from sites in shelters or caves—i.e. locations often frequented during hunting activities—where the Mesolithic/Neolithic succession is legible. However, this type of site also presents some risks; mixed or disturbed levels may lead to questionable scenarios.


Figure 3. Some geometrical arrowheads and microburin present in Mesolithic and/or early Neolithic sites in western Mediterranean. After Briois 2000; Binder 1987; Juan-Cabanilles 1990; Barbaza 1993; Cava 2000; Utrilla 2002; Barandiaran & Cava 1989.



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It should be noted, however, that on sites such as Gazel or Dourgne, the setting in place of the Early Neolithic is accompanied by a rapid redeployment pattern for microliths; the Montclus/Jean-Cros technique (direct semiabrupt retouch, covering retouch of the convex section) replaces the Gazel points. These transformations seem to occur in a broader context of modifications to hafting techniques when Neolithisation arrives; the triangular point, or one used as a barb, is replaced in farming communities by microliths with a cutting edge. This observation does not, however, settle the question of the origin (or origins) of these microliths. A diffusionist hypothesis is unlikely; Montclus points exist both in the Final Mesolithic and Early Neolithic levels of Franchthi Cave (Argolis, Greece) where they are, in an early period, evidence in favour of a possible native Neolithisation with borrowed technology during the seventh millennium cal BC (Perlès 1990). They do not, on the other hand, exist in either the Mesolithic (Latronico 3 cave) or the Early Neolithic (Impressa) in southern Italy, the geographical relay of the westward advance of Mediterranean Neolithisation. No microliths of this type are known in the various Neolithic groups of central Italy (Marmotta). Finally, these microliths are unknown in the small settlements of Portiragnes where the stereotyped model is that of symmetrical trapezes obtained by the bitruncation of bladelets (Briois 2000). On the other hand, bifacially retouched microliths are known in the Impressa at Pendimoun. Arrowheads with covering retouch are found sporadically in the Tyrrhenian Cardial (Caroppu di Sirri). Lastly, the hypothesis of a western Mediterranean genesis for these two types of microliths (Montclus, mainly known to the west of the Rhône, and double-bevelled (‘doble bisel’) segments, well represented in Iberian Mediterranean regions) is thus the most likely explanation, whether invented by the late Mesolithic or the early Neolithic populations in which they will proliferate.

NEOLITHISATION IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE: ITALIC INFLUENCES One of the lessons learnt from research over the past twenty years is that the development of the Cardial Neolithic, previously considered to be the earliest culture of the southern French Neolithic, had been preceded chronologically by small settlements of populations with a clearly Italic origin. This anteriority seems to be confirmed by the radiocarbon dates of these sites which converge around 5800–5600 cal BC. From a cultural point of view these sites, still few in number, while presenting some shared features, are not indis-



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putably homogeneous. That could indicate varied origins and not ‘colonisation’ from a single locality. The impression gained from excavation of the two sites at Portiragnes is one of small dwellings, probably of limited duration, linked to a first attempt at exploiting and utilising arable coastal environments. Although a certain amount of evidence attributable to this horizon has been recorded between the Côte d’Azur and Roussillon, three sites have provided more representative information. They are the lowest level at Pendimoun, Castellar (Alpes-Maritimes) and the two open-air sites of Pont de Roque-Haute and Peiro Signado, Portiragnes (Hérault). We will describe now their principal cultural aspects, which in spite of certain similarities are far from being consistent. Peiro Signado (Portiragnes, Hérault) Discovered and excavated first in the late 1970s, the site of Peiro Signado completely disrupted the classical schema of the Cardial/Epicardial succession by offering direct comparisons with the famous site of Arene Candide (Liguria). The resumption of excavations by Briois has allowed the nature of the occupation to be more precisely defined. The pottery production at Peiro Signado presents shapes of the flat-based basin type, but also bowls, bottles and cooking pots (Fig. 4). Handles are very little used: vertical or horizontal ribbon handles, knobs (sometimes perforated), tongues or strips and nipples. The great majority of the sherds studied present a decoration made by the ‘impressed groove’ technique. Other decorative techniques are used, but to a lesser degree (less than 10%): impressions made with a cardium shell, short vertical or curved incisions, some rare furrows, various impressions, more or less circular, elongated or half-moon shaped and, lastly, finger-pinched decorations. The ‘impressed groove’ technique is used to construct varied overall, extremely geometric, decorative themes: vertical or horizontal chevrons organised in bands, vertical or horizontal zigzags, or simple lines. The short impressions made with cardium shells form horizontal, vertical or oblique lines spreading in parallel across the belly of the pot. The longer impressions give structured themes of blank or hatched triangles near the lip and on the belly. The same themes are found made from circular impressions, with fingers, or grooves which are sometimes used to outline hatched triangles. From the lithic production point of view (Briois 2000, fig. 4), the raw materials used consist almost exclusively of small pebbles probably from secondary fluviatile formations of the Lower Rhône. Small quantities of obsidian from the Tyrrhenian region, however, were exploited on the site. This lithic industry has a very high proportion of blades and uses the pressure technique. Tools include bladelets with lateral retouch, borers and symmetrical trapezes produced by bitruncation.


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Figure 4. Shapes and decoration of the pottery production at Peiro Signado, Portiragnes, Hérault. After Manen 2002.

Pont de Roque-Haute (Portiragnes, Hérault) Excavation of the site of Pont de Roque-Haute, also located at Portiragnes, about 3 km from Peiro Signado, has revealed a dozen pits, mutilated by ploughing, presenting, as a secondary deposit, fills of discarded rubbish. The pottery production on this site presents shapes similar to those at Peiro Signado (Fig. 5): flat-based basins, bowls, cooking pots and bottles. Handles seem to have been little used: ribbon or rolled handles, knobs, lugs and tongues; none are perforated. Among the decorative techniques, the use of the cardium shell is well represented. As a complement, various other types of impressions, but also incisions, impressed grooves and relief modelled adornments are used. The decorative themes are predominantly simple, composed of lines or parallel bands. Observation of the fragments and more complete shapes shows that the decoration generally covers the pot to a large extent. In a few rare cases, a more geometric decoration (triangles or angles)



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Figure 5. Shapes and decoration of the pottery production at Pont de Roque-Haute, Portiragnes, Hérault. After Manen 2002.

adorns the upper section of the pot. The lithic industry is identical to that of Peiro Signado, except for the many remains of macro-tools (grinding implements) at Pont de Roque-Haute. The blade knapping is carried out on local raw material, but also on a few pieces of obsidian from the island of Palmarola. Analysis of the faunal remains attests to well-mastered animal husbandry with in particular some specialisation in sheep. In this very early context of the first Languedoc Neolithic, it may be presumed that the occupants of Pont de Roque-Haute had acquired a long experience in animal production elsewhere (Jean-Denis Vigne, pers. comm.). Einkorn, emmer and barley have been identified. There is evidence of accessory predatory activities. Pendimoun, Castellar, Alpes-Maritimes In the Pendimoun shelter, the bottom of the stratigraphy has yielded, alongside largely monochrome ceramics, pots characterised by a decoration made with nail impressions, pinched patterns, and some discontinuous impressions of


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various shells (cardium, patella, and so on). The decorative themes form horizontal bands or panels filled with lines. The ceramic shapes include spheroid or truncated conical open pots, bottles with narrow necks and small pots in the shape of a flattened dome. Flat bases are attested. Handles are mainly tongue-shaped, unperforated or with a vertical perforation. The excavator considers that Pendimoun 1 demonstrates connections with Apulia, the Marches and Abruzzi (Binder et al. 1993). However, these comparisons require refinement since the Neolithisation of the Marches and Abruzzi presents a probable chronological difference compared with the early Neolithic in Apulia. In the lithic industry, the presence of triangular geometric pieces with flat bifacial retouch and sickle elements is observed. The mammal fauna is mainly composed of domesticated species: sheep or goats and cattle. The remains of cereals point to the cultivation of emmer and barley. Gathering activities are attested. Chronologically, the early horizon of Pendimoun seems to be located between 5800 and 5600 cal BC. Above this horizon, levels related to the Cardial context have been compared, for the earliest, with the Tyrrhenian zone (‘geometric Cardial’) and, for the more recent, with the Cardial in Provence (zoned Cardial ware). Discussion What can be concluded from these data? Although all three are related to the Italian domain, these sites include a ceramic production with parallels in diverse geographic areas. Peiro Signado presents ceramic similarities with the series from the Arene Candide cave. It may thus be considered that it represents a sort of Ligurian ‘bridgehead’ towards the west. Pont de Roque-Haute has stronger relationships with a more southern site in the Tuscan archipelago: Giglio Island (Manen 2000). There are also resemblances to the vertical layout of the shell decoration with separate impressions to be found in southern Italy (Guilaine & Crémonesi 2003). At Pendimoun, a strong ‘monochrome’ element is associated primarily with ‘spike’ motifs and with pinched decorations and impressed edges. Thus, from a ceramic point of view, there is no cultural unity. From a lithic point of view, a certain diversity also seems apparent. As previously mentioned, the Pendimoun microliths with cutting edges are for the most part triangular, and call on flat bifacial retouching. On the contrary, arrowheads at Portiragnes are trapezoidal, made from bitruncated bladelets. The presence of obsidian from Sardinia and Palmarola points to contacts with islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea. At Pont de Roque-Haute, the abundant fauna indicates animal husbandry based for the most part on goat, associated with some cattle, whereas predatory activities remain restricted to a low level. Agriculture is shown by numerous millstones and the presence of emmer, einkorn and barley.



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The impression gained is thus one of a productive system based on a well developed agro-pastoral economy. In that sense, we can speak of a ‘colonisation’ process. Lastly, dwellings on the Portiragnes sites seem to call largely on cob as a building material. The remains of a circular building with wooden posts have been identified at Peiro Signado (Briois & Manen in press). Seeking the chronological articulation between these different currents has become an essential approach for understanding the settlement of the first Neolithic societies in southern France.

GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRANCO-IBERIAN CARDIAL In France Distribution and chronological evolution. In comparison with the preceding ‘settler’ or ‘colonised’ sites, the constitution of the Cardial culture in southern France seems to be, rather, the result of a more structured process of development and demographic expansion, provoking a rapid transformation of the scope of identity references. Recent research puts the accent on the variety of economic systems adopted but also on an organisation based on a mobile system of resource exploitation. The Cardial in southern France is well installed in coastal territories, but several indications attest to its early penetration into more continental domains, in particular along the main fluvial routes, and even into highland environments (Beeching 1999; 2003). Apart from these general considerations, it has to be admitted that we have insufficient knowledge of the siting criteria for Cardial settlements and that it is difficult to identify the geo-ecological features which may have determined settlement choices for these communities. The relationship with water (coastal regions, ponds and lakes, fluvial routes, marshy or swampy zones) is, however, evident. The chronology of the French Cardial is still subject to debate (Manen & Sabatier 2003). We are advocates of an early chronology, with the first phase of the Cardial between 5600 and 5400/5300 cal BC. Coordinated study of radiocarbon dates and ceramic styles has allowed the Cardial to be subdivided into two phases. The modalities of this evolution were identified at an early date thanks to the stratigraphy at Châteauneuf (Escalon de Fonton 1967; Courtin et al. 1985), and later refined (Beeching 1995; Binder 1991; Manen 2002). Generally speaking, Cardial pottery was made with local clay to which particles of chamotte (fire-clay) were added (in particular for the early phase). The characteristic shapes are small and medium-sized pots:


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basins, cooking pots, bottles, bowls and small globular pots (Figs 6 and 7). Fragments of storage jars are rare. Among the main categories of decoration, impression dominates to a large extent, followed by relief moulding. In the impression category, cardium shells represent the dominant decorative technique (over 60%). The decorative themes of the early Cardial consist of various types of impressions organised in well defined ribbons. They are frequently filled with geometric motifs (crosses, zigzags, chevrons, oblique strokes, and so on) and framed or interrupted by a border. More rarely, the

Figure 6. Pottery styles from Cardial in south of France. 1, 5: Grotte de l’Aigle; 2, 4, 6–7, 9: Baume d’Oullins; 3: Leucate; 8, 10: Grotte Gazel. After Manen 2002.



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Figure 7. Pottery styles from Cardial in Catalonia. 1: Cova del Frare; 2: Cova Freda; 3: Esquerda Roques del Pany; 4–5, 8: Cova Gran; 6: Guixeres de Vilobi; 7: Cueva de Chaves. After Manen 2002.

ribbons are accompanied by ‘pendants’. The relief-moulded decorations form themes which are often simple: a horizontal cord circling the pot and repeated in parallel from top to bottom. The cords are often covered with a band of impressed motifs, and may then serve as framing or dividing features. In a more recent phase of the Cardial, the cardium shell loses its value, to the advantage of other impressed implements: finger, comb and smooth shell. The decorative themes are still structured in horizontal bands which may or may not be repeated from top to bottom of the pot. Themes of vertical bands


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and areas covered with decoration are also well represented. It is above all in the filling of the bands that differences with the earlier style can be observed. This filling consists mainly of simple lines of impressions; geometrical motifs are less frequent. The evolutionary sequence of the Cardial, which covers nearly 700 years, remains to be defined, as does the question of regional variability. The Cardial industry associates laminary production (sickles, knives) obtained by indirect percussion with a flake industry providing denticulates and sturdy endscrapers. The characteristic geometric pieces are trapezoidal arrowheads with abrupt and also covering retouch. Distribution circuits ensured the spread of polished stone: eclogites from Piedmont and Liguria reached the Rhône, glaucophanites from the Durance region are found in Languedoc up to the borders of Roussillon (Leucate), and calcic amphibolites, probably from the Pyrenees (Ricq-de Bouard 1996). The economy presents a fairly broad diversification. Settlements on plains, centred on agro-pastoral production, are found alongside a sector focused on exploiting ecological niches more favourable to pastoral activities and hunting. These last activities imply a mobile aspect in the economy, probably with networks structured at an early date and the use of caves for shepherding activities. Agriculture (wheat and barley) was preferentially focused on Triticum aestivum compactum (Marinval 1988). The long-lasting occupation of sites has not been demonstrated and there could have been frequent moves. Formation of the Cardial The relegation of the appearance of the Cardial to a secondary position after the Italic sites, vectors of the Neolithic ‘package’ (agriculture/animal husbandry/pottery/adzes), means that it has lost part of the innovative aspect attributed to it until now. Long considered by many authors as intrusive, at the head of new technologies, it has now ‘come down in the world’ and is henceforth envisaged as a second phase culture. Its interest is not any the less, however, for it displays a power of expansion which goes far beyond the coastal strip affected by the earliest sites of Italic inspiration, so that inland, especially, the Cardial remains the true vector of Neolithisation. As the idea of an intrusive neolithicising wave borne by the Cardial has weakened, several hypotheses can be proposed for the genesis of that culture (Fig. 8). It can be considered as consisting of a second wave of populations of external origin. By its partly coastal geographical distribution, the Cardial remains a fully Mediterranean culture, in spite of its continental breakthroughs. The only cultural horizon set on its eastern flank and likely to have provided a certain influx remains the Tyrrhenian Cardial (Latium, Tuscany,


Figure 8. Hypotheses for the genesis of the Cardial culture.



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Sardinia and Corsica). Apart from spatial proximity, it shares with it the taste for decoration in bands treated with shells, but the Cardial in southern France differs from that of the Tyrrhenian region in several aspects: a halt in obsidian imports, the almost complete abandonment of flat-based pots, decoration on pottery restricted to the cardium shell alone, and loss of the decorative geometrism specific to the Tyrrhenian region. It should be noted, however, that these two facies share a fairly similar management of meat resources (sheep/goat and hunting well represented), a ‘light’ installation on the ground, or in any case of short duration, and the non-signalling of the dead. Without excluding contacts (areas of geographical overlapping exist in eastern Provence), it seems difficult to consider the Cardial as globally imported from the Tyrrhenian zone. The Cardial can be envisaged as a native process resulting from the conversion of local populations to the new economy introduced by the ‘Italics’. In Provence, technological interruptions or breaks between the Castelnovian and the Cardial industries do not argue in favour of this option (Binder 1987). On the other hand, in western Languedoc, we have seen that ‘transit terms’ could exist between Gazel points and Jean-Cros or Montclus arrowheads (Barbaza 1993). More generally, certain cultural features of the Cardial—‘invisibility’ of the dead, use of Columbellae shells, and imitation deer’s teeth—seem to be inscribed in a sort of native tradition. Our knowledge of the Mesolithic substratum is still too scanty and barely allows us to go beyond these generalities. A third hypothesis could rest on a process of the ‘demographic transition’ type. By introducing an agro-pastoral economy, settlers of Italic origin could have provoked demographic stress, with a rapid population increase, a process encouraged by the production economy. In a few generations, a new culture would have emerged under the effect of several factors: earlier Italic influence conveying the Neolithic ‘package’, contacts with the Tyrrhenian zone promoting the acquisition of decorations with bands of shell impressions, and the maintainance of the native traditions (Columbellae and exclusion of the dead). Unlike the Italic settlements, localised and of short duration, the Cardial is organised around large interactive territories (circulation of polished tools, flint materials and certain pots, bracelets, pastoral activities), which explain its geographic extension and its long duration. In Mediterranean Spain Cardial and Neolithisation. The question of the Iberian Cardial will be considered more rapidly, for this culture is intrusive here and the question of its genesis does not arise in the same manner as in southern France. We do not know whether, in the Iberian peninsula, settlements of Italic origin exist as



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we have seen between Liguria and the Pyrenees. The Cardial is thus in Spain the vector of Neolithisation, a prolongation from the southern French core (Fig. 9). Its distribution shows that it took root preferentially in some well defined zones (occupied at an early date during the sixth millennium cal BC): the Barcelona region, the area around Cabo de la Nao. At this early stage— c. 5500 cal BC, i.e. in the context of a rapid spread from France—it seems obviously contemporary with the Mesolithic populations strongly implanted in certain neighbouring or continental regions: Upper Aragon, Lower Ebro, Maestrazgo, the central Valencian group, and the Lara-Arenal sector (stage 3 of the evolutionary model of Juan-Cabanilles & Martí Oliver 2002). In a second phase—the latter half of the sixth millennium cal BC —we note, as happened in the southern French evolution, the geographic (and probably also demographic) progress of the farmers, but also the setting in place of a Late Cardial/Early Epicardial duality (stage 4). Initiated at the very start of the Cardial implantation, interaction with the native populations of the ‘Geometric Complex’ led to their progressive conversion to a production economy. At stage 5 of the previously mentioned model (Epicardial), during the first half of the fifth millennium cal BC, the farmers had completely assimilated the native populations and no isolated Mesolithic groups remained. Neolithic colonisation then spread to various points on the Meseta.

Figure 9. Experimental modelling of the Iberian Early Neolithic. After Juan-Cabanilles & Martí Oliver 2002.


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While, as in southern France, research long concentrated on natural cavities, recent work has shown the advantages to be gained from the study of open-air settlements. On the ‘lacustrian’ site of Draga (Gerona), remains of quadrangular dwellings with wooden posts and cob have been identified (Bosch et al. 2000). A research project in the Serpis Basin, in the region of Alcoy, has revealed, at Mas d’Is, the remains of three Cardial huts, one with an apsidal end. Nearby, three concentric ditches, one of which is contemporary with the houses, have been identified (Bernabeu Aubán et al. 2003). These circular structures are reminiscent of certain southern Italian models of the end of the Early Neolithic. Experimental models Over the last few years a whole series of excellent research projects have enormously improved our vision of the Iberian Early Neolithic, especially in the Mediterranean zone. The Neolithisation of this area seems indeed to have occurred from the southern French Cardial which is here the vector of the Neolithic ‘package’. From the two principal settlement poles previously mentioned—the Barcelona region and Cabo de la Nao—the Cardial rapidly spread to zones far inland (see the Chaves cave and Upper Aragon). At a very early date, following a henceforth classical ‘dual’ model, contacts were initiated with the native populations of hunter-gatherers (Geometric Complex). The interaction, combined with certain traditions, gave rise here to the manifestation of specific ‘Pericardial’ cultural features: perpetuation of the lithic characteristics, a statistical rise in double-bevelled segments (‘doble bisel’), a more or less well mastered assimilation of ceramic technology, with pots with no decoration or with a reinterpreted decorative theme, and progressive infiltration of production economy behaviour. It is interesting to note that the effects are not merely one way, in the Cardial/Geometric Complex direction. The presence of double-bevelled segments (‘doble bisel’) in certain Cardial assemblages (as at Chaves) points to either influence from the opposite direction or the mixing of populations. This ‘continental’ Neolithisation of the Geometric Complex could in part fashion the Epicardial, in parallel with a Late Cardial component. Bernabeu considers the Epicardial to be the true creator of the naturalistic Levantine art, a sort of identity reflex when faced with the intrusion of the schematic or macro-schematic art linked to the Neolithic ‘package’ (Bernabeu Aubán 2002).



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THE EPICARDIAL From the western Alps and the lower Rhône valley to Andalusia, the second part of the Early Neolithic is characterised in particular by pottery styles which often associate grooves and impressions arranged in bands, bundles or garlands. Groups of grooved lines edged with dots represent a sort of denominator specific to the whole of this broad western Mediterranean area. Regional stylistic nuances obviously exist over such a zone, still sufficiently evident compared with the classical general features. This Epicardial also developed over several stages; in Languedoc, three are found at Gazel and Saint-Pierre-la-Fage. In a certain number of stratigraphies (at Châteauneuf, Gazel, Camprafaud, Cova del Frare, Cendres, and Cariguela de Piñar), the Epicardial style is established in parallel with the Cardial, which it finally eliminated. This ‘secondary’ stratigraphic position explains the term itself (Escalon de Fonton 1956; Guilaine 1970). The matter of its genesis is more delicate. While a gradual emergence from a Cardial substratum can be acknowledged, we are obliged to recognise that the Epicardial has a character which makes it a fully autonomous culture, not a mere epiphenomenon. The idea of a peripheral component of the Cardial in its very essence cannot be excluded. Whatever the case as far as the mechanisms are concerned (Cardial filiation and/or a ‘peripheralisation’ process for the Cardial), the expansionist strength of the Epicardial is obvious. In the Mediterranean regions, from the Rhône to Andalusia, it finally eliminated the Cardial and covered the whole of the initially Neolithicised area. Its vitality, however, probably related to a certain demographic surge linked to agricultural expansion, led it to colonise large continental regions and to take the frontiers of the Neolithic well beyond the more limited Cardial sphere. Traces are found as far as the Alps (Grande Rivoire) and the Causse region. In the Iberian peninsula, this colonisation is in particular marked by its extension along the valleys of the large rivers flowing towards the Atlantic (Douro, Tagus, Guadiana, Guadalquivir). In so doing, the Epicardial is the vector of the Neolithic package on the central plateaus (Meseta). In western Andalusia and Portugal, the Mediterranean Epicardial appears in the form of a particular facies characterised notably by ornaments presenting panels with ‘spike’ incisions or impressions (Guilaine & Ferreira 1970; Zilhão 1992).

OTHER FACIES Pseudo-Limbourg/Pseudo-Hoguette Some styles cannot be linked with either the Cardial or the Epicardial in their classical form. Thus, a pot decorated with combed bands (at Margineda),



46

another with a pointed base and a motif of impressions on cords (at Gazel) have clear affinities with the Hoguette style (Guilaine & Manen 1997), of which they represent the extreme south-western extension. Similarly, a pot from the cave at Gazel with incised bands associated with garlands or triangles echoes a classical Limbourg theme. These pieces show how many other components, still not particularly apparent, exist in the Early Neolithic of the western Mediterranean.

CONCLUSION The spread of the production economy in the western Mediterranean occurred in a cultural context extremely different from the zone where Neolithisation was born, the Turco-Syrian borders where PPNB, the truly founding culture of the Neolithic, seems to have emerged. Figure 10 sums up some of these differences in the characteristics of dwellings, in the funerary domain and in social functioning. In southern France, the earliest Neolithic manifestations are due to small groups of ‘settlers’ of Italic origin. They are distinguished by the installation of small settlements of limited duration but which were clearly vectors of the ‘Neolithic package’: agriculture, animal husbandry, pottery, polished axes,

Eastern Mediterranean

Western Mediterranean

PPNB

Cardial

Settlements

- Building material : stone and brick - Houses : quadrangular - Strong sedentism (in landnam) - Existence of big villages (Abu

Settlements

- Building material : wood and clay - Houses : circular, quadrangular or in apse - Low sedentism (short duration) - Absence of big villages

Hureyra, Ain Ghazal)

Burials

- Collective graves - First necropolis - Burials in settlement - « Houses of death » Society

- First hierarchisation - Use of figurines - Ceremonial building (cf. Göbekli)

Burials

- No collective graves - No necropolis - Isolated burials in caves - « Invisible dead » Society

- No hierarchisation - Absence of figurines -?

Figure 10. Differences in the characteristics of dwellings, in the funerary domain and in social functioning between the first eastern and the western Mediterranean Neolithic cultures.



47

and so on. It thus seems that the trigger in the beginning was a process of maritime colonisation of Italic origin. The Cardial must henceforth be considered, in France, as a secondary process. Its genesis is still subject to discussion. Three components seem to have played a role in its composition: the previously mentioned Italic substratum, vector of the production economy; the Tyrrhenian Cardial group, perhaps responsible for the band decoration; and a possible native substratum, still poorly known. These three components would then have blended locally in a context of rapid population increase, stimulated by a ‘demographic transition’ resulting from the agro-pastoral practices introduced earlier. It is this hypothesis of ‘demographic stress’ which would have led to the process acquiring a stronger expansionist dynamism. In Spain, where the pioneering Italic culture establishments have not yet been identified, the Cardial, spreading from Provence and Languedoc, seems to have been in its turn the vector of the economic and technical ‘Neolithic package’. Settling first, preferentially, in Catalonia and Valencia, it spread rapidly but sporadically in more continental regions (as seen at Chaves). Lastly, it is interesting to note that in the western Mediterranean the founding of settlements during the Early Neolithic did not lead to their continued existence over a long period, unlike, for example, certain tells in Thessaly or the Balkans or some southern Italian sites, which were occupied or frequented for several millennia throughout the Neolithic. Such a tendency to a lasting territorial attachment does not exist here. During the Cardial, sedentariness seems to have been relative, and the attachment to a given place was periodically called in question. Perhaps this periodic mobility is also responsible for the ‘invisibility’ of the dead. The question of the role played by the last hunter-gatherer communities in Neolithisation will remain a subject for debate until a fuller corpus of data concerning these populations becomes available. At all events, it does not seem that these human groups could have carried much weight on an economic level except for prolonging for a while the hunting-gathering economy. It was, however, on a cultural level that these populations could, in a certain manner, have ‘perpetuated’ themselves in the Neolithic system by means of some persistent ideological features (exclusion of the dead, Columbella ornaments, culture of ‘the wild’ by means of ‘deer tooth’ type pendants or the hunting scenes of Levantine art). After a few hundred years, the various components which had participated in developing the early southern French and Iberian Neolithic seem to have blended in the Epicardial complex, thereafter the only one present throughout the western Mediterranean area.


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Jean Guilaine & Claire Manen REFERENCES

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Neighbours but diverse: social change in north-west Iberia during the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic (5500–4000 cal BC) PABLO ARIAS

INTRODUCTION1 THE IBERIAN PENINSULA is often described as a miniature continent. The complexity of its orography and its geographic situation in a temperate latitude, between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic environmental regions, result in a highly compartmented landscape, with strong contrasts within relatively short distances. This is, indeed, the case in the north-west quadrant of the Peninsula, including Galicia, northern Portugal, the Cantabrian coastal area, the northern Meseta and the Upper Ebro valley. There we can find a wide range of geographical regions, from the flat semi-steppe areas of Central Castile, with its hard continental climate and Mediterranean vegetation, to the green mountainous Cantabrian region, one of the most humid areas of Europe, covered with green meadows and deciduous forests. Without implying in the slightest an environmental determinism, it is obvious that the population involved in the transition to the Neolithic had to face very different conditions. Besides, the Mesolithic backgrounds and degrees of exposure to external influences are very diverse. All this permits us to predict great variability in the transitions to the Neolithic in a relatively restricted area (around 200,000 square km), thus allowing the populations involved to know each other, and to develop complex systems of relationships.

1

This paper is a contribution to the research project ‘El origen de las sociedades campesinas en la fachada atlántica europea’ (HUM2004-06418-C02-00), granted by the Programa Nacional de Humanidades del Plan Nacional de I ⫹ D ⫹ I (2004–2007) of the Spanish Government. I would also like to thank my colleagues Jesús García Gazólaz and Jesús Sesma for allowing me to use unpublished data from their research at Los Cascajos. Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 53–71, © The British Academy 2007.


Pablo Arias

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From another point of view, it is likely that the existence of natural barriers, such as the Cantabrian, Central and Iberian Cordilleras, frequently reaching 2000 m above sea level or more, favoured the territorial behaviour characteristic of Holocene groups. In this paper I will present the available information on the late Mesolithic and the early Neolithic in north-west Iberia (Fig. 1), and discuss its significance when attempting to understand the processes of transition from foraging to peasant societies.

THE UPPER EBRO VALLEY With the present information, the most probable scenario relates the origin of the Neolithic in this part of Europe to the expansion of the Mediterranean Neolithic towards the interior. That gives a paramount importance to the Ebro valley, one of the main routes of communication in the Iberian Peninsula. Actually, within the area analysed in this paper, it is this region

Figure 1. Sites that have provided relevant information on the transition to the Neolithic in north-west Iberia.


SOCIAL CHANGE IN NORTH-WEST IBERIA

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alone that has provided assemblages that might be related to the earliest phase of the Iberian Neolithic, identified archaeologically by the predominance of pottery decorated with impressions of the cockle Cerastoderma edule (cardial ware). Despite the low representativeness of the collection, this might be the case of the cave site of Peña Larga (Fernández Eraso 1997), where the earliest layer has provided 17 sherds of cardial pottery (out of 24 decorated sherds among 460 fragments: Fig. 2). Unfortunately, the only radiocarbon date for this context is too imprecise (I-15150: 6150 ± 230 BP, corresponding to the intervals 5520–4540 cal BC (at 2 sigma) and 5320–4800 cal BC (at 1 sigma).2 Besides, the part of the interval with a highest probability lies

Figure 2.

Sherd of cardial pottery from Peña Larga Cave (from Fernández Eraso 1997).

2

All the radiocarbon dates cited in this paper have been calibrated according to the IntCal04 curve (Reimer et al. 2004), using the 5.0.1 revision of the CALIB program (Stuiver & Reimer 1993).


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clearly below the chronological boundary between the earliest (‘real’ cardial) Neolithic horizon and a later, more complex, phase when this kind of pottery tends to be substituted by assemblages where other types of impressed and incised decorations predominate: the so-called ‘Epicardial’ and the Late Cardial or ‘Neolithic IB’ (around 5300 cal BC: Bernabeu 1999; 2002; JuanCabanilles & Martí 2002; Mestres & Martín 1996). However, around 5200 cal BC, there is a network of Neolithic sites in the Upper Ebro valley, including both the left and the right banks of the river and even some valleys that run up towards the north. This seems to be shown by the amazingly homogeneous radiocarbon dates from Atxoste, Cueva Lóbrega, Los Husos and Los Cascajos, corresponding to contexts with ‘Epicardial’ type assemblages that may be classified as really Neolithic, given the high proportion of domestic animals in the faunal assemblages that have been studied so far. But the situation in this area at the end of the sixth millennium cal BC is relatively complex. On the left bank of the river, which is the best researched, a dense network of Mesolithic sites, located in rock-shelters, has been studied in recent years (Alday 2002). These have provided assemblages comparable with the Geometric Mesolithic of Mediterranean Spain. The role played by the populations which are behind those assemblages in the Neolithisation process has still not been determined exactly. Nevertheless, there are signs suggesting phenomena of acculturation, such as the relative continuity of the population (most of the early Neolithic sites in this area are located in places where there are final Mesolithic occupations: Fuente Hoz, Mendandia, Atxoste, La Peña de Marañón, Kanpanoste Goikoa) and in some cases, it appears that there is a certain continuity between the Mesolithic and Neolithic stone tool assemblages (Alday 1999; Cava 1994). However, the data provided by some early Neolithic sites suggest a certain break or novelty, such as occurs at Peña Larga itself, Los Husos, Cueva Lóbrega or Los Cascajos. The latter is a particularly relevant site. The preliminary reports that have been published so far on this recently excavated open air settlement (García Gazólaz & Sesma 1999; 2001; Peña et al. 2005a) show a clear break with the Mesolithic tradition in funerary behaviour (Fig. 3), lithic technology and settlement pattern. Looking for references in the Mediterranean (mainly Catalonian) Neolithic seems to be the most promising path to understand this site. A particularly interesting case is that of Mendandia, a site located near the main nucleus of Neolithic population at the end of the sixth millennium, where a sequence with three levels containing pottery has been documented (Alday 2005). These are dated respectively to about 6050 (III sup), 5500 (II) and 5400 (I) cal BC. Although they have been described as Neolithic, those contexts have yielded assemblages of a Mesolithic type and only wild species.



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Figure 3. Early Neolithic burial at Los Cascajos. Photo: courtesy of Jesús García Gazólaz and Jesús Sesma.

This suggests the possibility of the existence of long range contacts with the Mediterranean coast that would have allowed new goods to reach these distant, but well communicated interior areas. This hypothesis seems to be confirmed by the presence at this and other Mesolithic sites of adornments made from shells of Columbella rustica, coming from the Mediterranean (Álvarez 2003) or the predominance of evaporitic flint from the middle Ebro Valley at Los Husos (Fernández Eraso et al. 2005). The case of Mendandia is not so exceptional in the region as it might seem to be at first sight. To the north-east, in Navarra, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, there are several sixth millennium cal BC contexts that have been attributed to the Neolithic simply because of the presence of some pottery sherds (Abauntz layer c, Aizpea layer b, and Zatoya layer I). In fact, in none of these is there any sign of agriculture or stock herding, while the industries, except for the very scarce pottery, may be classified as Mesolithic. This suggests that, as in other areas of Atlantic Europe, we may be facing the archaeological evidence of foragers who owned pottery, either because they had learnt how to make it, or because they had acquired some vessels through exchange. Indeed, all these sites have provided Columbella rustica


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shells, both in layers with pottery and in the preceding strata accepted as Mesolithic (Álvarez 2003). In this respect, we may wonder if the inter-relationship could not have worked in both directions. An aspect that has not been sufficiently examined is the expansion of the Helwan technique in the manufacture of geometric microliths. This type of retouch is very characteristic of the early Neolithic in the Ebro valley, and it also appears after the middle of the sixth millennium cal BC at sites in Lower Aragon and Valencia. Generally, this has been interpreted as the addition of another element in the local Neolithic package, spread by the supposed colonisers coming from the Mediterranean coast, together with domestic species and pottery. However, there is evidence against this rather simplistic idea, as some examples of this type of retouch have been found in Mesolithic contexts in the north of the peninsula since the start of the sixth millennium cal BC, as well as there being no logical relation between this particular technique in the manufacture of projectiles and the Neolithic way of life. The hypothesis may be proposed, although not yet tested, that this technique arose among the Mesolithic groups in the western Pyrenees, perhaps derived from a type that is not unusual in the area in the seventh millennium: the triangles with inverse retouch on the short side, sometimes related to the Sonchamp points (Cava 2001). If this were confirmed, it may be proposed that they spread inversely, from the hunter-gatherers in the north to the first Neolithic groups in the east of the Peninsula, following the same routes that pottery, domestic species and Mediterranean shells took, but in the opposite direction.

THE NORTHERN MESETA One of the most significant advances in the knowledge of the Iberian Neolithic in the last few years has been the documentation of what has been called the ‘Interior Neolithic’ (Fernández-Posse 1980). Several research projects have been able to document a network of Neolithic settlements with Epicardial type assemblages dated to the last third of the sixth millennium cal BC. Some of these are located in caves, such as the classic example of La Vaquera (Fig. 4) in Segovia (Estremera 2003), but most of them are open air settlements, like the important sites of La Lámpara and La Revilla del Campo in Soria (Kunst and Rojo 1999) or some contexts documented in palaeosoils sealed by megalithic monuments, like La Velilla and Quintanadueñas. It is even probable that the start of the impressive flint mining activity at Casa Montero, near Madrid, can be attributed to this moment (Consuegra et al. 2004).



Figure 4.

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Early Neolithic impressed pottery from La Vaquera (from Estremera 2003).

Unfortunately, the study of the Neolithisation of the Meseta is seriously complicated by the almost complete absence of Mesolithic remains in the interior of the Peninsula. This has made many researchers propose a model of colonisation in a completely empty territory (Delibes de Castro & Fernández Manzano 2000; Estremera 2003; Kunst & Rojo 1999). As myself and others have developed in more detail elsewhere (Arias et al. 2005), the use of negative arguments, like the ones used for this problem, is very risky, especially when many areas have not been explored yet, and the


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interior Mesolithic has a serious problem of archaeological visibility (there are no clear criteria to assign decontextualised material to this period). In addition, there are signs that indicate the presence of hunter-gatherers in the area. As well as some sites with material that is probably Mesolithic (see Arias et al. 2005 for a detailed analysis), there is certain indirect evidence, such as some absolute dates that are difficult to attribute to Neolithic groups or the presence of ‘mixed’ traits in the early Neolithic of the Meseta.

CANTABRIAN SPAIN Cantabrian Spain is one of the classic areas for Mesolithic studies in the Iberian Peninsula. A dense network of sites is known, particularly on the eastern coast of Asturias, where about a hundred shell middens belonging to this period have been catalogued along some 35 km of coastline (Fano 1998). However, the distribution of the main settlements, generally located 1 or 2 km inland from the present shore, and the palaeoeconomic information, suggest that they were not groups specialised in exploiting only the marine environment, but that they are an example of a broad spectrum economy, centred on hunting and gathering on the coastal platform, complemented with fishing and collecting seafood, and hunting on nearby rocky hills (Arias 1999). Some stable isotope data for coastal sites confirm this hypothesis, showing a diet in which the intake of protein was distributed approximately equally between land and marine food, as the d13C suggests, and the high values of d15N indicating that the latter probably derive more from fish than from invertebrates (Arias & Fano 2005). From this point of view, there is a notable contrast between the isotopic values at coastal sites and those of a well documented inland site: Los Canes, a burial cave with three graves holding five individuals. Despite being only 11 km from the coast, the diet of its inhabitants appears to have come exclusively from terrestrial resources (Fig. 5). This is particularly interesting, in that it confirms the existence of inland populations, which has been a frequent topic for discussion in local prehistory. Equally, the fact that they did not exploit the nearby marine resources suggests a territorial behaviour for these groups, which is consistent with the concentration of graves in the site. The first evidence of the exploitation of domestic species in the area is dated to the first half of the fifth millennium cal BC. Cattle bones associated with impressed ware, similar to that from the Upper Ebro, found at the cave site of Arenaza, have been dated to about 4900 cal BC (Arias & Altuna 1999). At another cave site, El Mirón, a grain of emmer (Triticum dicoccum) has been dated to around 4400 cal BC (Gx-30910: 5550 ± 40 BP; 4460–4340 cal BC) (Peña et al. 2005b; Peña et al. 2005a). It is interesting to point out that



Figure 5.

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Stable isotopes values for Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in Cantabrian Spain.

both sites have yielded assemblages with high percentages of domestic animals (70–80%), which makes one question gradualist hypotheses, such as myself and others have occasionally supported. However, the regional archaeological record for the first half of the fifth millennium cal BC is very complex. Together with those ‘fully Neolithic’ sites, we find numerous contexts showing a total continuity with the Mesolithic, many of which show no signs of domestic species, and even have possible evidence of intensification in gathering, such as the presence of barnacles (Pollicipes cornucopia) in some late middens. At the moment, it is not clear if this is merely a question of


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logistic mobility (specialised settlements corresponding to groups of farmers who continued hunting and gathering in certain places, as has been proposed to explain some Neolithic contexts in the south-east of France: e.g. Binder 1991), or whether we are dealing with a Neolithisation in a mosaic pattern, with groups of farmers and hunter-gatherers living at the same time in nearby areas. In any case, there is an appreciable time difference between the start of the Neolithic in the region and in the neighbouring Upper Ebro (at least four centuries: probably more). These two regions are close to one another, communication (especially in the Basque Country) is easy, and there are signs that even in the Mesolithic there were contacts between the two areas. We can point out, for example, the use of flint from the Ebro valley at some sites in the Basque Country (Fernández Eraso et al. 2005), the presence of marine shells at several Mesolithic sites in the Upper Ebro (Álvarez Fernández 2006) or the existence of technical and stylistic similarities between the assemblages on both sides of the Cordillera (Arias 1991). Helwan technique is particularly interesting in this respect. Some Mesolithic contexts dated to the sixth millennium cal BC, such as Los Canes, have provided microliths made with this technique, characteristic of the Ebro valley Neolithic. This suggests that there could be contacts between the hunter-gatherers of Cantabrian Spain and the earliest farmers in the Upper Ebro, perhaps prolonging in time social networks that already existed before the Neolithisation of the latter region. This allows us to define the last centuries of the Mesolithic in Cantabrian Spain as an example of societies in the availability phase proposed by Zvelebil and Rowley-Conwy (1986; see Zvelebil & Lillie 2000 for a more elaborated version of the model). And probably change reached these societies through these networks, as the available evidence indicates a process of acculturation with a fundamentally indigenous base. The industrial features of the first Neolithic in the Cantabrian Region display considerable continuity with the local Mesolithic. There are also signs of continuity in the symbolic world, as shown by the presence of Asturian picks, a typically Mesolithic tool, used as a grave good in the Asturian burial of Molino de Gasparín, and also in megalithic monuments probably dated to the second half of the fifth millennium cal BC (Arias & Fano 2003). Some singular items point in the same direction, such as some painted cobble stones in early megalithic assemblages, apparently continuing a tradition in the regional Mesolithic (Arias 1991). Two main lines of explanation have been followed to tackle the problem of the causes of the Neolithisation of this area. One relates change with the development of social complexity among the hunter-gatherers, and the other links it to subsistence problems. It is not easy at the moment to respond to this dilemma, although the evidence for the second line is somewhat more



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solid. Despite some signs of social inequality, such as the differences in the grave goods found in the burials of Los Canes, it does not seem that the complex hunter-gatherers model can be applied to the Cantabrian Mesolithic. Besides, for the moment we have no evidence for the diffusion of prestige items or imported goods among these groups. In contrast, the clear signs of dietary stress in the most recent skeleton from Los Canes (María Dolores Garralda, pers. comm.), and the indirect evidence provided by the intensification in the gathering of sea food, or the territoriality itself, in a narrow region, relatively poor in natural resources, where there seems to have been considerable population density in the Mesolithic, all suggest that the system could have been near its limits and that farming might have become a socially acceptable solution.

GALICIA AND NORTHERN PORTUGAL The archaeological information about the Neolithisation of the far northwest of the Peninsula, the Spanish region of Galicia and the former Portuguese provinces of Beira Alta, Douro Litoral, Minho and Trás-osMontes e Alto Douro,3 is scarce and incomplete. In great part, this comes from preservation problems, related to the acidity of the soils which makes the fossilisation of archaeological materials difficult, and it is also probably due, in the case of coastal areas, to structural phenomena that have increased the effect of the Flandrian transgression. The information about the Mesolithic is particularly precarious. In Galicia some very poor sites are known in inland areas like Serra do Xistral or O Bocelo, and perhaps some of the problematic surface finds of lithic materials in coastal areas can be attributed to this period. The situation in the north of Portugal is a little better, as some sites have been studied in recent years, such as the open air settlement at Prazo (Trás-os-Montes: Monteiro-Rodrigues 2000; Monteiro-Rodrigues & Angelucci 2004), with quartz tools associated with problematic sixth millennium cal BC dates (see Zilhão’s comments in Carvalho 2003), or the rock shelter of Buraco de Pala (Sanches 1997). We may add some possible indirect evidence of the activity of the hunter-gatherer groups, like some changes recorded in pollen diagrams for Serra do Xistral in the second half of the seventh millennium cal BC (Ramil 1993). The oldest evidence for the presence of Neolithic groups is probably provided by a series of sites in the area of Beira Alta, like Buraco da Moura de São Romão or Penedo da Penha (Valera 2005). Although so far no absolute 3

In the current administrative division of Portugal, that corresponds, approximately, to the districts of Viana do Castelo, Braga, Porto, Vila Real, Bragança, Guarda, Viseu and Aveiro.


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dates have been published, the characteristic industries (pottery with conical basis and impressed and incised designs comparable with the so-called ‘cultura de las cuevas’ in the Meseta and Andalucia, ‘almagra’ ware) suggest that these sites correspond to the last third of the sixth millennium cal BC or the start of the fifth, which is not surprising if we note their proximity to the well known nucleus of Neolithic population in the limestone massif of Estremadura. The radiocarbon date for the site of Quinta de Assentada (Sac1774: 5870 ± 110 BP; 5000–4490 cal BC), with undecorated spherical-shaped pottery that Valera (2005) attributes to a later phase of the local Neolithic, might confirm this hypothesis. To the north of the river Douro, there is no clear sign of the Neolithic until c. 4750 cal BC, which is the date for contexts with pottery and domesticated vegetable or animal species at Buraco de Pala and Prazo. The Neolithisation process, however, is not clear. The researchers who excavated these sites, where Neolithic levels cover Mesolithic strata, interpret some continuity in settlement patterns and lithic technology as possible evidence for processes of change within the local hunter-gatherer communities (MonteiroRodrigues 2000; Sanches 2003). However, recent studies question this interpretation, arguing that the lithic assemblages of those sites are highly dependent on the limitations of the local raw material (Carvalho 2003). In any case, the change seems to have been relatively rapid, if we consider the high percentages of domesticated species (in particular, the remains of barley, wheat and pulses at Buraco da Pala: Fig. 6), which casts doubts on extremely gradualist models like the one recently proposed by Jorge (1999). Some data obtained further to the north are more difficult to interpret at the moment. Among these we can point out the presence of impressed pottery at coastal sites in the south of Galicia, like A Cunchosa, O Regueiriño or Lavapés, which has been linked with a possible maritime diffusion of the early Neolithic from central Portugal, and even with impressed types on the French Atlantic coast (Suárez Otero 1997). Unfortunately, the context of this pottery is not well defined and in fact in some cases it is not clear whether it can be related to later, Chalcolithic, decorated pottery from the same sites. In fact, the oldest well documented contexts with pottery in Galicia, the sites of Porto dos Valos and A Gándara, dated to the second half of the fifth millennium cal BC, have only provided undecorated sherds (Prieto 2005). Equally problematic is the identification of cereal pollen associated with sixth millennium cal BC dates, such as those from palaeosoils documented below several Galician dolmens (Barbanza, As Rozas, Parxubeira, and As Pereiras) or the questionable site of O Reiro, where a date of c. 5500 cal BC has been obtained for a context with pottery, wild mammals, remains of fish and cereal pollen (Ramil 1973). The stratigraphical association of all these



Figure 6.

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Charred seeds of fava bean (Vicia faba) from Buraco da Pala (from Sanches 1997).

elements is not sufficiently clear, so the presence of agriculture or pottery cannot be proven for such an early date in the far north-west of the Peninsula.

THE REGIONAL SEQUENCE: A PROPOSAL FOR THE TRANSITION TO THE NEOLITHIC IN NORTH-WEST IBERIA In conclusion, the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula provides, in a restricted area, a huge variety of Neolithisation processes, probably interrelated, on an unequal background of Mesolithic populations, with great contrast between densely populated areas, such as the Cantabrian coast or the Upper Ebro, and others with lower densities. It is precisely in one of these densely populated areas where the first contacts appear to have happened. The evidence from Mendandia suggests that, about 5500 cal BC, not much later than the time when the first Neolithic groups were established on the Mediterranean coast, the first pottery could have reached the Upper Ebro. The earliest pots were probably no more than attractive prestige goods, which reached this area through exchange networks, whose existence is proved by the presence of Mediterranean shells in the local Mesolithic.


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However, for a long time, it is not likely that frequent contacts took place. During the second third of the sixth millennium cal BC, the evidence is so scarce that we can only talk of a very limited relationship. The situation changes after 5300/5200 cal BC. At this time there is a rapid advance of the agricultural frontier in the Ebro valley and the Meseta, and perhaps also in central Portugal. It is likely that in some cases there was a true colonisation by groups coming from the east or the south, as suggested by settlements like La Lámpara, Los Cascajos and perhaps the sites in Beira. However, the Mesolithic groups did not remain passive. They are probably responsible for some Neolithic contexts with signs of continuity, and of some of the peculiarities of the local Neolithic. It is more than likely that the establishment of Neolithic groups in the axis of the Ebro Valley intensified the contacts with hunter-gatherer groups in the surrounding area. These relationships would explain the proliferation of pottery in Mesolithic sites in the foothills of the Pyrenees. It is also possible that there were some types of contacts with groups in Cantabrian Spain, although pottery was not adopted, either because the contacts were more sporadic or because there was greater social resistance among these societies. In the first half of the fifth millennium cal BC, the Neolithisation of the north-west of the Peninsula was completed with the adoption of farming in the Cantabrian region, the north of Portugal and perhaps Galicia. It appears that this was carried out basically by the hunter-gatherer groups. Thus, it seems that colonisation was restricted to ecologically more favourable areas, such as the Ebro Valley, whereas in regions where it was more difficult to adapt to the new ways of life, we should look at the local populations as the most likely responsible for the change. In any case, the most recent evidence suggests that it was a relatively rapid process, although the complexity of the situation in the Cantabrian region still has not been explained. Finally, in the second half of the fifth millennium cal BC, a most important change from the symbolic and social point of view happens: the building of the earliest megalithic monuments. Megaliths present some very interesting features in this part of the Iberian Peninsula. The earliest structures appear practically simultaneously in all the regions we have studied in this paper, about 4300 cal BC, and a true explosion in the number of monuments occurs around 4000–3900 cal BC (Arias et al. 2006; Scarre et al. 2003). However, this apparent uniformity hides a great variety. In reality, what unifies this phenomenon is simply the notion of monumentality and probably of funeral collectiveness. But, if we examine the concrete solutions, from both the architectonic and the grave goods points of view, there are huge differences between, on the one hand, Galicia and the north of Portugal, on the other, Cantabrian Spain, and finally the Meseta and Upper Ebro (Fig. 7). This suggests that the ‘arrival’ of megaliths cannot be explained as a simple



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Figure 7. Examples of megaliths from Galicia (1. Casa dos Mouros, La Coruña), the Cantabrian Region (2. Cantos Huecos, Cantabria) and the Upper Ebro valley (3. La Cabaña, Burgos).


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case of diffusion, and much less, as has traditionally been suggested, as a consequence of colonisation. In reality, what spread, in a simultaneous, almost explosive, way was an idea, a concept, and each society interpreted it in its own way, incorporating elements of its own cultural background and its own history. From this point of view, the megaliths can be seen as the end point of the process of deep social change that we call Neolithisation: a process of variable geometry in which the last Mesolithic societies in the north-west of the Peninsula were transformed to give birth to a new world.

REFERENCES ALDAY, A. 1999. Dudas, manipulaciones y certezas para el Mesoneolítico vasco. Zephyrus 52, 129–72. ALDAY, A. 2002. Las unidades industriales mesolíticas en la Alta-Media Cuenca del Ebro. Complutum 13, 19–50. ALDAY, A. 2005. El campamento prehistórico de Mendandia: Ocupaciones mesolíticas y neolíticas entre el 8500 y el 6400 b.p. Vitoria: Diputación Foral de Álava. ÁLVAREZ FERNÁNDEZ, E. 2003. Die Reise der Schnecke Columbella rustica während des Mesolithikums und zu Beginn des Neolithikums in Europa. Archäeologisches Korrespondenzblatt 33, 157–66. ÁLVAREZ FERNÁNDEZ, E. 2006. Los objetos de adorno-colgantes del Paleolítico Superior y del Mesolítico en la Cornisa Cantábrica y en el valle del Ebro. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca (col. Vítor, 195). ARIAS, P. 1991. De cazadores a campesinos. La transición al Neolítico en la región cantábrica. Santander: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Cantabria. ARIAS, P. 1999. The origins of the Neolithic along the Atlantic coast of continental Europe: a survey. Journal of World Prehistory 13, 403–64. ARIAS, P. & ALTUNA, J. 1999. Nuevas dataciones absolutas para el Neolítico de la cueva de Arenaza (Bizkaia). Munibe (Antropologia-Arkeologia) 51, 161–71. ARIAS, P., ARMENDARIZ, A. & TEIRA, L. C. 2006. The megalithic complex in Cantabrian Spain. In A. A. Rodríguez Casal (ed.), Le Mégalithisme Atlantique/The Atlantic Megaliths: Acts of the XIVth UISPP Congress. University of Liège, Belgium, 2–8 September 2001. Symposium 9.4, 11–29. Oxford: Archaeopress (British Archaeological Reports S1521). ARIAS, P., CERRILLO, E. & GÓMEZ PELLÓN, E. 2005. A view from the edges: the Mesolithic settlement of the interior areas of the Iberian Peninsula reconsidered. Paper presented at the 7th International Conference on The Mesolithic in Europe, Belfast, 29 August– 2 September 2005. ARIAS, P. & FANO, M. A. 2003. Shell middens and megaliths: Mesolithic funerary contexts in Cantabrian Spain and their relation to the Neolithic. In G. Burenhult (ed.), Stones and bones. Formal disposal of the dead in Atlantic Europe during the Mesolithic-Neolithic interface 6000–3000 BC. Archaeological Conference in Honour of the Late Professor Michael J. O’Kelly. Proceedings of the Stones and Bones Conference in Sligo, Ireland, May 1–5, 2002, 145–66. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports International Series 1201. ARIAS, P. & FANO, M. A. 2005. Le rôle des ressources marines dans le Mésolithique de la régionb Cantabrique (Espagne): L’apport des isotopes stables. In G. Marchand & A. Tresset (eds), Unité et diversité des processus de néolithisation sur la façade atlantique de l’Europe (6e–4e millénaires avant J.-C. Table Ronde de Nantes 26–27 avril 2002, 173–88. Paris: Société Préhistorique Française (Mémoire 36).



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BERNABEU, J. 1999. Pots, symbols and territories: the archaeological context of the neolihisation in Mediterranean Spain. Documenta Praehistorica 26, 101–19. BERNABEU, J. 2002. The social and symbolic context of Neolithization. In E. Badal, J. Bernabeu & B. Martí (eds), El paisaje en el Neolítico mediterráneo, 209–33. Valencia: Universitat de València (Saguntum extra 5). BINDER, D. 1991. Une économie de chasse au Néolithique ancien: La grotte Lombard à SaintVallier-de-Thiey (Alpes-Maritimes). Paris: CNRS. CARVALHO, A. F. 2003. A emergéncia do Neolítico no actual território português: pressupostos teóricos, modelos interpretativos e a evidência empírica. O Arqueólogo Português, série IV, 21, 65–150. CAVA, A. 1994. El Mesolítico en la cuenca del Ebro. Estado de la cuestión. Zephyrus 47, 65–91. CAVA, A. 2001. La industria lítica. In I. Barandiarán & A. Cava (eds), Cazadores-recolectores en el Pirineo navarro: El sitio de Aizpea entre 8.000 y 6.000 años antes de ahora, 63–147. Vitoria: Universidad del País Vasco. CONSUEGRA, S., GALLEGO, M. M. & CASTAÑEDA, N. 2004. Minería neolítica de sílex de Casa Montero (Vicálvaro, Madrid). Trabajos de Prehistoria 61/2, 127–40. DELIBES, G. & FERNÁNDEZ MANZANO, J. 2000. La trayectoria cultural de la Prehistoria reciente (6400–2500 BP) en la Submeseta Norte española. In P. Bueno, J. L. Cardoso, M. Díaz-Andreu, V. Hurtado, J. Oliveira, S. O. Jorge & V. O. Jorge (eds), Pré-história recente da Península Ibérica. 3º Congresso de Arqueologia Peninsular. Actas, vol. IV, 95–122. Porto: ADECAP. ESTREMERA, M. S. 2003. Primeros agricultores y ganaderos en la Meseta Norte: el Neolítico de la Cueva de La Vaquera (Torreiglesias, Segovia). Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León. FANO, M. A. 1998. El Hábitat Mesolítico en el Cantábrico Occidental. Transformaciones Ambientales y Medio Físico durante el Holoceno Antiguo. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports International Series 732. FERNÁNDEZ ERASO, J. 1997. Excavaciones en el abrigo de Peña Larga (Cripán-Alava). Vitoria: Diputación Foral de Álava. FERNÁNDEZ ERASO, J., MUJIKA, J. A. & TARRIÑO, A. 2005. Relaciones entre la Cornisa Cantábrica y el valle del Ebro durante los inicios del Neolítico en el País Vasco. In P. Arias, R. Ontañón & C. García-Moncó (eds), III Congreso del Neolítico en la Península Ibérica, 201–9. Santander: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Cantabria (Monografías del Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones Prehistóricas de Cantabria 1). FERNÁNDEZ-POSSE, M. D. 1980. Los materiales de la cueva del Aire de Patones (Madrid). Noticiario Arqueológico Hispánico 10, 39–64. GARCÍA GAZÓLAZ, J. & SESMA, J. 1999. Talleres de sílex versus lugares de habitación. Los Cascajos (Los Arcos, Navarra), un ejemplo de neolitización en el Alto Valle del Ebro. In J. Bernabeu & T. Orozco (eds), Actes del II Congrés del Neolític a la Península Ibèrica, 343–50. Valencia: Universitat de València (Saguntum extra 2). GARCÍA GAZÓLAZ, J. & SESMA, J. 2001. Los Cascajos (Los Arcos, Navarra). Intervenciones 1996–1999. Trabajos de Arqueología Navarra 15, 299–306. JORGE, S. O. 1999. Domesticar a terra. As primeiras comunidades agrárias em território português. Lisboa: Gradiva. JUAN-CABANILLES, J. & MARTÍ, B. 2002. Poblamiento y procesos culturales en la Península Ibérica del VII al V milenio A. C. (8000–5500 BP): Una cartografía de la neolitización. In E. Badal, J. Bernabeu & B. Martí (eds), El paisaje en el Neolítico mediterráneo, 45–87. Valencia: Universitat de València (Saguntum extra 5). KUNST, M. & ROJO, M. 1999. El Valle de Ambrona: un ejemplo de la primera colonización neolítica de las tierras del interior peninsular. In J. Bernabeu & T. Orozco (eds), Actes del II Congrés del Neolític a la Península Ibèrica, 259–70. Valencia: Universitat de València (Saguntum extra 2).


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MESTRES, J. S. & MARTÍN, A. 1996. Calibración de las fechas radiocarbónicas y su contribución al estudio del Neolítico catalán. In I Congrés del Neolític a la Península Ibèrica, 791–803. Gavà: Museu de Gavà. MONTEIRO-RODRIGUES, S. 2000. A estação neolítica do Prazo (Freixo de Numão — Norte de Portugal) no contexto do Neolítico Antigo do Noroeste peninsular. Algumas considerações preliminares. In P. Arias, P. Bueno, D. Cruz, J. X. Enríquez, J. de Oliveira & M. J. Sanches (eds), 3º Congresso de Arqueología Peninsular. Actas. Vol. 3: Neolitização e megalitismo da Península Ibérica, 149–80. Porto: ADECAP. MONTEIRO-RODRIGUES, S. & ANGELUCCI, D. E. 2004. New data on the stratigraphy and chronology of the prehistoric site of Prazo (Freixo de Numão). Revista Portuguesa de Arqueologia 7, 39–60. PEÑA, L., ZAPATA, L., GARCÍA GAZÓLAZ, J., GONZÁLEZ MORALES, M. R., SESMA, J. & STRAUS, L. G. 2005a. The spread of agriculture in northern Iberia: new archaeobotanical data from El Mirón cave (Cantabria) and the open-air site of Los Cascajos (Navarra). Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, 14, 268–78. PEÑA, L., ZAPATA, L., IRIARTE, M. J., GONZÁLEZ MORALES, M. R. & STRAUS, L. G. 2005b. The oldest agriculture in northern Atlantic Spain: new evidence from El Mirón Cave (Ramales de la Victoria, Cantabria). Journal of Archaeological Science 32, 579–87. PRIETO, M. P. 2005. La cerámica neolítica en Galicia. Estudio de síntesis desde la perspectiva de la Arqueología del Paisaje. In P. Arias, R. Ontañón & C. García-Moncó (eds), III Congreso del Neolítico en la Península Ibérica, 337–48. Santander: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Cantabria (Monografías del Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones Prehistóricas de Cantabria 1). RAMIL, J. M. 1973. Paradero de Reiro. Cuadernos de Estudios Gallegos 28, 84, 23–31. RAMIL, P. 1993. Evolución climática e historia de la vegetación durante el Pleistoceno Superior y el Holoceno en las regiones montañosas del Noroeste Ibérico. In A. Pérez, L. Guitián & P. Ramil (eds), La evolución del paisaje en las montañas del entorno de los caminos jacobeos, 25–60. Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia. REIMER, P. J., BAILLIE, M. G. L., BARD, E., BAYLISS, A., BECK, J. W., BERTRAND, C. J. H., BLACKWELL, P. G., BUCK, C. E., BURR, G. S., CUTLER, K. B., DAMON, P. E., EDWARDS, R. L., FAIRBANKS, R. G., FRIEDRICH, M., GUILDERSON, T. P., HOGG, A. G., HUGHEN, K. A., KROMER, B., MCCORMAC, F. G., MANNING, S. W., RAMSEY, C. B., REIMER, R. W., REMMELE, S., SOUTHON, J. R., STUIVER, M., TALAMO, S., TAYLOR, F. W., VAN DER PLICHT, J. & WEYHENMEYER, C. E. 2004. IntCal04 terrestrial radiocarbon age calibration, 0–26 kyr BP. Radiocarbon 46/3, 1029–58. SANCHES, M. J. 1997. Pré-história recente de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro: O abrigo do Buraco da Pala (Mirandela) no contexto regional. Porto: Sociedade Portuguesa de Antropologia e Etnologia. SANCHES, M. J. 2003. Sobre a ocupação do Neolítico inicial no Norte de Portugal. In V. S. Gonçalves (ed.), Muita gente poucas antas? Origens, espaços e contextos do Megalitismo. Actas do II Colóquio Internacional sobre Megalitismo, 155–79. Lisboa: Instituto Português de Arqueologia. SCARRE, C., ARIAS, P., BURENHULT, G., FANO, M. A., OOSTERBEEK, L., SCHULTING, R., SHERIDAN, A. & WHITTLE, A. 2003. Megalithic chronologies. In G. Burenhult (ed.), Stones and bones. Formal disposal of the dead in Atlantic Europe during the MesolithicNeolithic interface 6000–3000 BC. Archaeological conference in honour of the late Professor Michael J. O’Kelly. Proceedings of the stones and bones conference in Sligo, Ireland, May 1–5, 2002, 65–111. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports International Series 1201. STUIVER, M. & REIMER, P. J. 1993. Extended 14C data base and revised CALIB 3.0 14C age calibration program. Radiocarbon 35/1, 215–30. SUÁREZ OTERO, J. 1997. Del yacimiento de A Cunchosa al Neolítico en Galicia. Primera aproximación al contexto cultural de la aparición del megalitismo en Galicia. In



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A. Rodríguez Casal (ed.), O Neolítico Atlántico e as orixes do megalitismo, 485–506. Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. VALERA, A. C. 2005. Problemas da Neolitização na bacia interior do Mondego. In P. Arias, R. Ontañón & C. García-Moncó (eds), III Congreso del Neolítico en la Península Ibérica, 945–55. Santander: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Cantabria (Monografías del Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones Prehistóricas de Cantabria 1). ZVELEBIL, M. & LILLIE, M. 2000. Transition to agriculture in eastern Europe. In T. D. Price (ed.), Europe’s first farmers, 57–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ZVELEBIL, M. & ROWLEY-CONWY, P. 1986. Foragers and farmers in Atlantic Europe. In M. Zvelebil (ed.), Hunters in transition: Mesolithic societies of temperate Eurasia and their transition to farming, 67–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



Beyond the models: ‘Neolithisation’ in Central Europe DETLEF GRONENBORN

RESEARCH BY BRITISH AND AMERICAN SCHOLARS on the transition to farming in Central Europe has resulted in a number of models which have been viewed with continuous scepticism in Central Europe. Contrary to the often generalised Anglo-American approaches, particularistic traditions, based methodologically and theoretically on culture history and environmental archaeology, have continued, notably in the German-speaking countries but also in France. These have been substantiated by an ever increasing body of meticulously collected detailed data. This ongoing research by a variety of disciplines on the question of the transition to farming in Central Europe, notably in the western parts along the Rhine valley, has by now resulted in a complex and differentiated picture of the so-called ‘process of Neolithisation’. This process began during the latter half of the seventh millennium cal BC, then experienced a major shift with the expansion of the Linear Pottery Culture (LBK), and ended in the mid-fifth millennium cal BC. During these two thousand years a multi-facetted combination of migrations, adaptations and acculturations, together with socio-political cycling, led to the fundamental transformation of Central European societies from segmented tribes to emergent complex chiefdoms. The trajectories were triggered by external parameters like climatic fluctuations and internal factors such as human agency.

A SLIGHTLY POLEMICAL INTRODUCTION The emergence of farming in the Near East and its spread to Europe is one of the most dramatic and significant processes of economic, social and political change in the history of modern humans. It is therefore unsurprising that this period has received continuous and wide attention in the scholarly



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world; notably English-speaking researchers have often taken broad, indeed global, perspectives. After the early studies by the American geologist Raphael Pumpelly (1908) it was Vere Gordon Childe in his many and diverse works (e.g. Childe 1929) who had studied the spread of farming to Europe. Childe’s interpretation of the expansion had been very influential in the English-speaking world where scenarios had been propagated which saw this period of technical and socio-political innovation connected to massive migration processes. These hypotheses were to be substantiated by genetic studies; well known are the works of Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza (1984), later Chikhi et al. (2002), and of course Renfrew (1987; 1996), who had added a linguistic aspect to the discussions. This ‘migrationist’ position is apparently still shared by a number of American scholars (e.g. Bogucki 2003), while in the United Kingdom the tide has changed and post-processual archaeologies have resulted in ‘indigenist’ standpoints (e.g. Whittle 1996). Only a few UK-based scholars, notably Renfrew himself, continued to adhere to the idea of migration: ‘The model proposed by Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza seemed to me a very compelling one [. . .] for its simplicity and its explicit nature.’ (Renfrew 2003, 328). In most of these studies, regardless whether migrationist or indigenist, the Linear Pottery Culture (LBK) played a major role as the conveyor belt of farming—and, in a way, civilisation—to temperate Europe. Recently, a number of scholars in the English-speaking world have taken an intermediate position in which both migration and acculturation play a role. Renfrew (2002, 11) has adjusted his position, and referring to Central Europe he writes: ‘. . .imagine the farming population becoming established in one of these cells before pioneers move on to the next cell or region, having developed the further adaptive changes in farming techniques. . . . The pattern is then one of numerous, successive stages, in each of which the population grows to a certain level over a period of several generations before the next stage is colonised’. Shortly thereafter Zvelebil (2004, 199) admitted: ‘In 1986 I was convinced that the LBK culture was generated principally by demic diffusion of intrusive farmers from the south-east. My understanding of the problem has now changed. . .The Linear Pottery Culture has many origins—and we should celebrate its cultural and genetic diversity.’ These statements sounded familiar to Central European archaeologists; this was exactly the research agenda which had dominated on the continent for decades. Contrary to the more general theoretical declarations published by British and American researchers, prehistorians in Central Europe had for long taken a particularistic and material-analyses-based standpoint (Scharl 2004). Beginning with Klopffleisch (1884), 1imek (1914) and Palliardi (1914), continuous studies on Early Neolithic material culture allowed the construction of highly differentiated typo-chronological schemes, which served as


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fine-grained scales for further analyses of LBK emergence, expansion and decline. One of the most notable breakthroughs were the studies of Quitta (1960; 1964) who, following Neustupný (1956), not only defined the earliest phase of the Linear Pottery Culture but also suggested the first differentiated model of LBK emergence and expansion (Quitta 1960). Slightly later, Quitta (1964) explained the sudden appearance of earliest LBK sites, with small groups of settlers who would have left the Moravian and Lower Austrian core area of LBK origin and would have migrated in two ‘streams’ towards the west. Thus, 40 years before Zvelebil (Zvelebil & Lillie 2000) had adopted the leap-frog model for LBK expansion, Quitta had formulated the research agenda for Central European archaeology and had sketched the step-wise colonisation of circumscribed biotopes suitable for rain-fed cereal-based farming. Admittedly, Central European Neolithic archaeology has also had its brief yet hefty migrationist-diffusionist debate (Kind 1998; Tillmann 1993), but nowadays an intermediate scenario is preferred by the majority of researchers closely acquainted with Early Neolithic archaeology. Hence, from a continental European perspective, the ongoing debate in the Englishspeaking archaeology and genetics world (e.g. Balter 2005; Richards 2003) is a somewhat curious phenomenon.

THE NEOLITHIC BEFORE THE NEOLITHIC Traditional chronology charts of the Neolithic see the transition to farming for Central Europe somewhere in the earlier to middle sixth millennium cal BC. However, palaeobotanical work undertaken during the 1990s (Beckmann 2004; Erny-Rodmann et al. 1997) has resulted in the resurrection of hypotheses of an earlier onset of attempts of cereal cultivation during a period traditionally called the ‘Late Mesolithic’ and characterised by trapezes and regular blades (Clark 1958; 1980; Gehlen & Schön 2003; 2005; Taute 1973/74). This new style in lithics arrived in continental Europe between 7000 and 6700 cal BC (Gronenborn 1997b) with a possible retardation phase of several hundred years towards the North (Bokelmann 1999). The origins of regular blades and trapezes appear to lie somewhere in Central Asia and might have arrived in Europe via the south Russian steppe zones (Gronenborn 1997a). It is interesting to note that this technological change came after a period of climatic unrest, which is currently only visible in the Greenland ice cores and the oxygen isotope ratios inferred from deep-lake ostracods from the Ammersee in Bavaria (von Grafenstein et al. 1999). This ‘Early-Holocene-Event’ (EHE) appears to have set in around 7500 to 7300 cal BC (Fig. 1) and may be correlated with the ice-raftingdetritus-event 6, one of the cooling cycles which also punctuated the


Figure 1. Cooling cycles of the Holocene with the period of ‘Neolithisation’. A: Holocene Cooling Cycles, proxy data: d18O GISP2 (Alley et al. 1997; Grootes et al. 1993; Meese et al. 1997; Stuiver et al. 1995), d18O Ammersee (von Grafenstein et al. 1999), Cold Events Alps (Haas et al. 1998), Main river oak growth anomalies and deposition rate (Spurk et al. 2002), ice rafting detritus drift ice index (Bond et al. 2001), IRD events (Bond et al. 2001, Heiri et al. 2004). B: Period of Neolithisation (grey shading in chronology bar, LH ⫽ La Hoguette). C: LBK chronology and climate fluctuations (for data refer to Strien & Gronenborn 2005).

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Holocene climate optimum (Bond et al. 2001; Heiri et al. 2004). Whatever may have been the effects of this fluctuation, shortly thereafter Continental Europe experienced a major shift in lithic technology unparalleled in previous or following periods. Equally in temporal proximity to this period of climatic unrest appeared the first farming settlements in south-eastern Europe (Efstratiou et al. 2004; Perlès 2001), and shortly thereafter the earliest cereal-type pollen in Central Europe was associated with Plantago lanceolata at the Soppensee in Switzerland (Lotter 1999). Throughout the seventh millennium cal BC evidence for cereal-type pollen is present at various locations throughout Central and Western Europe (Beckmann 2004; Erny-Rodmann et al. 1997; Gehlen & Schön 2003; Visset et al. 2002; Zapata et al. 2004). These indications, albeit sparse and still debated (Behre 2007), have inspired Jeunesse (2003) to replace the term ‘Late Mesolithic’ with Néolithique Initial for Central Europe. It may then be permissible to postulate that the expansion of farming to the European continent was triggered by a climatically unfavourable period during the later eighth millennium cal BC; equally the rapid spread of the blade-and-trapeze industries may have been initiated by this event. The following seventh millennium cal BC, at least in southern Central Europe, may then be considered as an opening phase of the Neolithisation process (Fig. 1).

LBK ORIGINS AND EARLY EXPANSION Following Neustupný (1956) and Quitta (1960), the LBK emerged in presentday western Hungary in the course of culture contact between a ‘yet unknown’ population of hunter-gatherers, the more southern Starcevo-KörösCris¸ (SKC) groups and later early Vinca. This core territory may also be visible in the distribution area of Transdanubian radiolarites, among them the so-called Szentgál variant, in Mesolithic assemblages (Fig. 2a). The internal chronology of this process of culture transfer and redefinition is still debated in its details (e.g. Bánffy 2004; Kalicz 1995; Lenneis & Stadler 2002; Pavúk 2004; Whittle et al. 2002), but the general scenario of a regional origin of the LBK is still acceptable to most Central European researchers. Clearly, contrary to what many earlier linguistic and genetic studies appear to suggest (e.g. Ammerman & Cavalli-Sforza 1984; Bellwood 2005; Chikhi et al. 2002; Renfrew 1996), most continent-based archaeologists have never considered any notable population expansions across the Balkanic-Central European border. Also, recent ancient mtDNA evidence certainly does not contradict the hypothesis of an emergence of the LBK within a local population in Transdanubia and/or south-west Slovakia, and the expansion from these territories towards the west and north-east (Haak et al. 2005).


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Figure 2. Development of distribution system of Transdanubian radiolarites with extension of earliest LBK. A: Mesolithic (after Mateiciucová 2003; 2004); B: Earliest LBK (after Gronenborn 1999; Mateiciucová 2003; 2004).



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Both the LBK and its eastern Carpathian Basin counterpart, the Alföld Linear Pottery (AVK), could be materially visible representations of two different socio-political entities—maybe tribes in traditional terminology (Fowles 2002; Wenskus 1961)—of which the western one was forced to—or had chosen—to expand. The first migration routes become visible through the expanding network of Transdanubian radiolarites (Fig. 2b) and they followed Late Mesolithic exchange routes, at least towards the west (Gronenborn 1994; 1999, 130–2; Mateiciucová 2004). What exactly initiated this expansion is as yet unknown. Petrasch (2001) considers an enormous population growth but does not take regional contacts and influx of local hunter-gatherers in LBK societies into account. A possible link with the eruption of Mount Mazama in Oregon, one of the largest volcanic eruptions during the Holocene, has been suggested by Strien and Gronenborn (2005) but is, of course, only speculation. The greatest problem is the uncertain date of LBK emergence (Bánffy 2004; Pavúk 2004) but the fifty-seventh century cal BC is a good candidate. In any case, the furthest extension of the LBK I was reached by the midsixth millennium cal BC (Fig. 2b); the loess regions were covered with widely dispersed but tightly connected hamlets and villages, which served as the foci of communication with local hunter-gatherers and hunter-gatherer/pastoralists in the west. Contact between immigrant farmers and local populations is evident from microliths of non-LBK traditions on earliest LBK sites which vary from region to region, particularly along the western margins but also in Bavaria (Gronenborn 1999, 151, fig. 8; 2005). The western margin of the earliest LBK is rather well researched as far as contacts between immigrant farmers and local pastoralists and huntergatherers are concerned (e.g. Gronenborn 1990; 1999; Kind 1997; Jeunesse 2000; Jeunesse & Winter 1998; Strien 2000). This is, certainly, also due to the fact that these contacts are archaeologically much more visible since the local groups used pottery—La Hoguette, Limburg, and the socalled Begleitkeramik—which is easily distinguishable from the LBK. Bruchenbrücken is a site which has become widely known for its evidence of ‘Mesolithic-Neolithic’ contacts; data both from the lithic, as well as the ceramic assemblages, indicate intensive interaction between people manufacturing LBK and those manufacturing La Hoguette ware (Gronenborn 1990; 2005; Lüning et al. 1989). Traditionally, the manufacturers of the former have been interpreted as the farmers of Transdanubian origin; the latter would be pastoralists and hunter-gatherers of possibly local ancestry with cultural links to southern France (Jeunesse 2000). A lithic technology foreign to earliest LBK sites further east and carried out on Maas valley raw materials indicates that male herder/hunter-gatherers worked in the village (Gronenborn 1997a, 77–80). Furthermore, mineralogical analyses of both


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LBK and La Hoguette wares from Bruchenbrücken show that vessels of either ceramic tradition were manufactured out of local clay; hence also women should have lived and worked together (Eisenhauer 2003, 327; and pers. comm.). This supports the evidence from stable isotope analyses also discussed further below (Bentley et al. 2002; 2003; Bentley, this volume). At least during the earliest and earlier LBK whole groups lived and worked side by side in what, from a coarser perspective, appear to be ‘LBK villages’. Little is known about the economy of the manufacturers of La Hoguette pottery. Only the site of Stuttgart Bad-Cannstatt has revealed some aspects (Brunnacker et al. 1967; Kalis et al. 2001; Meurers-Balke & Kalis 2001). Apparently the location was visited by a small group of herder/huntergatherers during the spring and fall of the years between 5480 and 5210 cal BC (Meurers-Balke & Kalis 2001, 634). This group hunted a variety of animals such as roe deer and red deer, aurochs, wild boar and hare but also herded sheep/goats. An earlier excavation had produced possible evidence of cattle (Brunnacker et al. 1967) but the recent re-examination of the site failed to substantiate this (Arie J. Kalis, pers. comm.). Wheat pollen indicates the processing of cereals at or near the site, but the temporal proximity to earliest LBK settlements in the region would allow for possible exchanges with farming communities, and hence it is unclear whether the herders also grew wheat themselves (Strien & Tillmann 2001). La Hoguette pottery disappears during the Flomborn phase east of the Rhine (Lüning et al. 1989; Strien 2000), but certain traces of the pastoralists remain visible in the archaeological record such as triangular points and local elongated trapezes, but also the raw material networks of Maas Valley flint or chert from the Swabian Alb (Gronenborn 2003b; Strien 2000; Strien, pers. comm.). Contacts and exchange between pastoralists/hunter-gatherers and farmers would certainly not only have entailed economic aspects but also worldviews and sacral concepts. Here LBK concepts—which should have differed from those of the pastoralists and hunter-gatherers—might have been more successful. Judging from anthropomorphic and zoomorphic clay figurines, LBK ideology seems to have circled around fertility associated with farming (Petrasch 2002) and may have been promoted by a cast of title holders, who may be represented in some of the anthropomorphic figurines (Fig. 3). These show complicated headgear or hairstyles and dresses which would have been unpractical in day-to-day farming activities and may have been high status insignia. This group could have constituted the LBK elite, composed of title holders perhaps recruited from members of founder lineages (Gronenborn 2003a; Lüning 2005). Certainly, very little has hitherto been said and written about an ‘LBK elite’, except by van de Velde (1993; 1997), and not many scholars would even account for elevated individuals or sub-groups with status ascribed rather


Figure 3. Possible ceremonial structure and anthropomorphic figurine from Bad Nauheim-Nieder Mörlen (after Schade-Lindig 2002; Schade-Lindig & Schwitalla 2003).



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than acquired. Jeunesse (1997) had suggested such a stratum for the later LBK because of the appearance of ‘rich’ burials of adolescents. In addition to these more traditional approaches in social archaeology, an interpretation of some of the anthropomorphic figurines as representations of ancestors (Lüning 2005), and/or high-ranking individuals, may lead to a thorough reconsideration of Early Neolithic socio-political structures. This alleged group of title holders may have formulated, conserved and promoted a belief system which had emerged in Transdanubia and consisted at least partly of Balkanic Neolithic traditions (Höckmann 1972; 1999; Kaufmann 1991). Another material manifestation of LBK belief systems may be the ‘ceremonial structure’ from the site of Bad Nauheim-Nieder Mörlen, north of Frankfurt (Fig. 3). The circular ditch system, erected during LBK II (the Flomborn phase), has a pathway leading to it and its interior appears to have been artificially elevated with a mound structure (Lüning 2005, 284; SchadeLindig & Schwitalla 2003). The site is also famous for the abundance of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines (Schade-Lindig 2002). Whatever these LBK concepts may have been in detail, they would have dominated the multi-tradition farming villages, and the hunter-gatherer and pastoralist communities might have at least partly adopted the new ideas and incorporated them into their worldview. Along with the adoption of an LBK ideology came the loss of much of their traditional material culture, and the former herders and hunter-gatherers disappear in the—despite its diversity—still uniform LBK material canon. If this hypothesis (admittedly still speculative but nevertheless not implausible) of the existence of a religious and political elite during the earlier LBK eventually proves to be correct, we may also consider elite dominance (Renfrew 2002; Zvelebil & Lillie 2000) as an applicable scenario for the Danubian Neolithisation of Temperate Europe, despite the fact that we are dealing with pre-state-level societies. Contacts between farmers and hunter-gatherers were not only directed towards the west but also towards the north—apparently from the earliest LBK onwards (Gronenborn 2005). The lithic assemblage of Bruchenbrücken contained a microlith previously unclear in its attribution, but which can now be identified as an oblique transverse trapeze with a circumscribed distribution in southern Scandinavia and northernmost Germany. This goes in accordance with the appearance of northern lowland or ‘Baltic’ flint at Bruchenbrücken and other northerly earliest LBK sites (Gronenborn 1997a, 114).



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FURTHER EXPANSION TOWARDS THE WEST LBK expansion came to a standstill along the Rhine for a period of several decades. While earliest indications of an LBK-type farming in the Wetterau region date to the mid-sixth-millennium cal BC (Schweizer 2001) the first expansion of the late earliest LBK/earliest Flomborn-type wares (LBK II) to the Rhineland (Heinen et al. 2004) should have occurred around 5400 cal BC (Strien & Gronenborn 2005). The transition between LBK I and LBK II between 5490/5450 and 5370/5350 cal BC can be correlated with a climate decline visible in a number of climate proxies (Schmidt & Gruhle 2003; Strien & Gronenborn 2005). The Flomborn style itself seems to have evolved slightly before the onset of the climate fluctuation, during the decades between 5500 and 5475 cal BC in the Upper Neckar Valley and north-western Bohemia (Strien 2000; Strien & Gronenborn 2005, 140). From these regions the ceramic style expanded in the western part of the LBK oikumene but the earliest LBK must have persisted as a pottery style up to about 5400 cal BC in some regions and is also visible in the Rhenish site of NiederkasselUckendorf. Hence, according to the age-model favoured by Strien and Gronenborn (2005) the expansion across the Rhine and into Alsace and the Rhineland correlates with a climate fluctuation. The new and more westerly regions are settled in the following decades, a process described in detail in Stehli for the Merzbachtal west of Cologne (Stehli 1989). Founder villages are installed in favourable locations on loess soils and serve as core sites from where other hamlets and villages sprang off; they may also have been central places with a certain function as distribution centres for goods such as lithic raw material (Zimmermann 1993; 1995). Other sites east of the Rhine continued with their function as regional centres, but in many locations we see a relocation of villages during the LBK I-LBK II transition. One site which assumes a role as a ‘central place’ is the site of Vaihingen upon Enz in south-western Germany (Bentley et al. 2003; Krause 2001; Krause et al. 1998). Groups with differing material culture traditions lived together in this village, which was fortified during a certain subperiod of the Flomborn phase (Krause 2002; Strien 2005). Vaihingen shows a notable decrease in the number of houses during the change from Flomborn (LBK II) to the middle LBK, a decrease occurring contemporaneously in the Rhineland and also Alsace, which may be linked with another westward advance (Strien & Gronenborn 2005), as the earliest published assemblages in the Marne valley and the Hesbaye date to the middle LBK (Lodewijckx & Bakels 2000; Tarpet & Villes 1996). In absolute terms, LBK II should have ended around 5210/5200 cal BC during a period which seems to have been climatically unfavourable according to what a number of proxy-data suggest. Again, temporal correlations of site occupation and climate fluctuations


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indicate a possible connection between migrations and climatically unstable or adverse periods.

MULTI-TRADITION COMMUNITIES Movement of individuals and groups between farming communities is one way to explain the evidence for imports and also the considerable economic and, perhaps also, social and political variation within and between LBK villages and hamlets. Another way is to consider continuous influx of huntergatherer or pastoralist groups who had not yet been integrated into LBK societies. Such a co-habitation between groups of different origins is also indicated in recent strontium isotope analyses undertaken at a number of sites along the Rhine Valley (Bentley et al. 2002; 2003; 2004; Bentley & Knipper 2005; Bentley, this volume). Apparently whole groups merged during the earlier LBK which supports the archaeological interpretation presented above, and in later phases it seems that mostly females came in from outside. This goes in accordance with hypotheses of a general patrilocality in LBK societies (Eisenhauer 2003). Some of these sub-groups appear to have continued a hunter-gatherer subsistence; evidence exists for late LBK sites in the Paris Basin (Hachem 2000; Sidéra 2001), but hunting also appears to have played a considerable role at the earliest LBK site of Bruchenbrücken with its multi-tradition material culture (Uerpmann 1997). A number of sites in southern Bavaria at the southern margins of the LBK extension also show high percentages of game (Döhle 1993). Game may have been brought into LBK villages by hunter-gatherers who continued their life-way in the densely wooded hilly regions unsuitable for agriculture, and were only visited occasionally by pastoralists; theoretically they could have served as refuge areas but because of various preservation problems, and a somewhat underdeveloped research situation, actual archaeological evidence for such groups is sparse (e.g. Taute 1973/74; Grote 1994; Gehlen 1999). But these upland regions may also have served as pastures for cattle (Kalis & Zimmermann 1988). Indeed, recently Bentley and Knipper (2005; Bentley, this volume) have suggested the existence of pastoralists as sub-groups within LBK villages. In short, what previously appeared as culturally—and by implication ethnically— homogenous LBK villages were in reality focal points of varying cultural traditions with differing regional origins across Central Europe; farmers from Transdanubia were just one component. These complex compositions continued from the earliest LBK throughout and may have been one of the reasons why Early Neolithic societies were faced with a period of economic



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and social crises, which ultimately resulted in considerable culture change and the transition to the Middle Neolithic (Gronenborn 1999, 187–90; 2006).

THE END OF THE LBK Apart from possible internal factors which led to the decline of the LBK, the period also appears to have been characterised by climate fluctuations (Schmidt et al. 2004); these seem to have reached their climax around 5150 to 5100 cal BC and correlate with the emergence of the Hinkelstein pottery tradition (HST) in the Rhine-Hessen area around Mainz (Strien & Gronenborn 2005). From there HST spreads towards the south into the Neckar Valley; this middle Neolithic pottery tradition coexisted with the terminal LBK in adjacent areas. The emergence of the HST may be attributed to social, political and religious changes in late LBK societies that were confronted with climate uncertainties; these uncertainties may have resulted in economic instability such as harvest failures. There are a number of indications for similar problems occurring during the thirty-seventh century cal BC in late Michelsberg communities and lake-shore settlements in Switzerland and south-western Germany (Schibler et al. 1997; Steppan 2003). Harvest failures could have undermined the authority of élites who may have based some of their power on the rituals associated with determining the time of sowing and harvesting. If climatic fluctuations had resulted in a shift of vegetation periods, traditional knowledge would have become useless, élites and values would have become powerless, and societies could have disintegrated (Tainter 2000). Social disintegration may be evident from the sites of Talheim in the Neckar Valley and Schletz in Lower Austria where individuals were killed intentionally and collectively (Wahl & König 1987; Wild et al. 2004). Such periods of social and political unrest would have called forth charismatic individuals who could claim to be able to solve the problems better than the old élite and to reinstate stability, and political change would have been the result. Change in belief concepts is evident in the adoption of a new pottery style, which had repeatedly been assigned to religious change as the motifs resemble human figures in a praying position (Spatz 2003). Also, burial rites changed from the flexed interments practised during the LBK to extended burials (Spatz 1999). Clearly, LBK ideology had changed; those still clinging to the old views were surrounded by the adherents of a new worldview. Conflicts between these groups may have arisen and it may be no coincidence that at the site of Herxheim assemblages of bones in the ditches surrounding the village date to exactly this period. While current interpretations of the excavators would call for a communal burial ground where


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individuals had been brought from far-off LBK regions (Orschiedt et al. 2003), other interpretations consider less humanistic practices of ritual tortures and killings of captives, slaves or witches (Gronenborn 2001; 2006). In whatever way Herxheim may one day be explained, the site served as a supra-regional centre during the terminal LBK for the remaining communities with contacts visible in pottery styles stemming from western Belgium, Hesse, Bavaria, the Elster-Saale Region and 1árka in Bohemia (Jeunesse online). These imports show that the long-term networks in operation since the first expansion of the earliest LBK had been maintained throughout the Early Neolithic, and that terminal LBK societies were still tightly knit together.

NEOLITHISATION CONTINUED Contemporary to the emergence of HST and the final years of the LBK along the Rhine, another advance of the Neolithic of ‘Danubian’ tradition took place. The expansion of LBK towards the west into the Paris Basin has recently been reconsidered by Jeunesse (1998–99; 2001). His rearrangement of the chronological order suggested by Constantin (1985) has a number of considerable consequences for the Neolithisation of western Europe. The LBK advances from the Marne valley towards the Paris Basin where it formed the Rubané Récent du Bassin Parisien (RRBP) shortly before 5000 cal BC, possibly in connection with the climatic unrest during these years (Strien & Gronenborn 2005). In the course of contacts between local huntergatherers and/or herders the group Villeneuve-Saint-Germain emerged and coexisted with RRPB. Both finally formed the RRBP final which again is superseded by the Group de Cerny (Jeunesse 2001). Cerny in particular is an interesting phenomenon as monumental burial mounds have been preserved which, according to Jeunesse’s chronology, date early in the fifth millennium cal BC, and in fact superimpose terminal LBK house structures (Duhamel & Mordant 1997). While the archaeologically preserved burial goods associated with the single individual interments are unimpressive—lithic points, flint axes, bone artefacts and pottery—the mounds reach an extension of several hundred metres and constitute a work effort by a greater number of individuals. With these monumental structures societies had reached a new quantitative stage in individual representation; as said above, chieftaincy might have begun already earlier, with the emergence of a stratum of title holders during the earlier LBK, but now title holders were represented and memorised in monuments erected with considerable effort by a larger community. During the fifth millennium cal BC the Paris Basin constituted an area of cultural activity which served as a point of origin for the eastward expansion of the



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Michelsberg culture (Jeunesse 1998; Seidel & Jeunesse 2000), which may have also had a part in the spread of the Neolithic to the British Isles (Sheridan 2003; Sheridan, this volume; Tresset 2003). It should be noted here that this further expansion of farming towards northern and north-western Europe has also been linked with climate fluctuations (Bonsall et al. 2002). While societies in the Paris Basin underwent changes towards a more differentiated complexity, the process of Neolithisation also reached the northern European lowlands. These regions had gradually been incorporated in a westward ‘stream’ of technological innovation, namely the spread of a pottery horizon which might have its ultimate roots in north-eastern Asia (Dolukhanov et al. 2005). The earliest manifestations of this pottery might be the Elshan tradition in the Samara region in south-eastern Russia (Mamonov 2000) appearing around 7000 cal BC. From there pottery with distinctively pointed bases and flared rims spread westward to the Russian steppe-forest and forest belt and reached the eastern Baltic (Gronenborn 2003c; Hallgren 2003; Timofeev 1998). Ultimately it appears in the western Baltic, and the north-western continental European lowlands (e.g. Crombé et al. 2002; Hartz & Lübke 2005; Louwe Kooijmans 2003; Raemakers 1999). One of the southernmost finds of a vessel with pointed base and flared rim comes from the LBK site of Rosheim in Alsace (Jeunesse & Lefranc 1999). Earlier finds from the Baltic region at the site of Vaihingen indicate continuous north-south contacts throughout the younger LBK (Krause 2002). Flared rim and pointed base pottery is not, at least during the early spread, associated with any kind of farming but was made by hunter-gatherers and fishers: an association to be observed elsewhere in the world in different periods (Rice 1999). Despite the association with hunter-gatherers, such potteryusing traditions are marked as ‘Neolithic’ in the Russian archaeological terminology, for which there is a certain justification if farming is not understood as being central to the definition of the term but rather social complexity (Dolukhanov 1995). Seen from this perspective, the pointed-base horizon constitutes a third element in the Neolithisation process of northern Central Europe (Gronenborn 2003c). Contrary to southern Central Europe, pottery is the first element to appear in this process, and only centuries later is it followed by cultigens (e.g. Kalis & Meurers-Balke 1998; Klassen 2000).

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The earliest phase of the Neolithisation process in Central Europe sets in around 7000 to 6700 cal BC and might have been triggered by the so-called Early-Holocene-Event: a phase of cooling and/or fluctuating climatic conditions. The following seventh millennium cal BC in southern Central Europe


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may be understood as a transitional phase from a hunter-gatherer to farming economy of the classic Neolithic of Danubian tradition which emerged possibly during the fifty-sixth century cal BC. However, before LBK villages sprang up, the western regions became involved in a process which had its origins in southern France prior to the Impressa and Cardial traditions sometime around 5800 cal BC (Gronenborn 1997a; van Willigen 2004). Archaeologically it became manifest in the pottery tradition of La Hoguette, which appears to be associated with groups practising small ruminant pastoralism, but also continued hunting and gathering. The origins of this peculiar pottery tradition remain unclear; north-western Africa is an interesting, yet unexplored, option. LBK expansion and interaction with local populations was a process of wide-reaching advances of small-scale farming groups which settled biotopes favourable for their technology. This expansion constitutes the second phase of the Neolithisation process in southern Central Europe. The LBK settler groups experienced considerable population increase within a relatively short period of time which fostered socio-political differentiation. Perhaps from founder lineages there evolved high-ranking individuals who conserved and promoted a Balkanic-Danubian ideology. This worldview became dominant within the LBK oikumene as local hunter-gatherers and pastoralists were acculturated and assimilated into the multi-tradition settlements. These groups may have continued with their former economy and may be visible as those sub-groups practising predominantly hunting and pastoralism. Such a cultural mélange is currently examined best at the western margins of the LBK along the Rhine, from where the Neolithic of Danubian tradition spread further into the Rhenish lowlands, Dutch Limburg and Alsace, an expansion possibly triggered by a climatic fluctuation. The last expansion towards the west into the Marne valley and the Belgium loess areas also appears to correlate with a new climatically unfavourable period. Further fluctuations in rainfall and temperature may have, among many other internal socio-political and economic reasons, fostered the decline of the LBK towards the end of the sixth millennium cal BC. During these periods we see the appearance of new pottery styles which might indicate the collapse of traditional values and ties. By 5000 cal BC the LBK existed only in a few regions which were, nevertheless, interconnected over hundreds of kilometres. By 4950 cal BC, also, these communities had vanished and Middle Neolithic societies had emerged throughout Central Europe. Now standardised monuments characterised the landscape, the so-called roundels. They may be taken as archaeologically visible representations of a new élite which was able to command the erection and continuous maintenance of massive communal work efforts; newly emerged élites are also evident in the early earthen long barrows in the



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Paris Basin Cerny culture. With this socio-political shift, the process of Neolithisation had reached a third phase. During these centuries the Central European North becomes included in wider processes as pottery from eastern European, and probably Central or Eastern Asian origins, appears in the sites of the hitherto aceramic Ertebølle culture. But while contacts towards the south with LBK farming villages had existed at least since the mid-sixth millennium cal BC it was not until towards the end of the fifth millennium that the northern societies gave more attention to a farming economy. Summing up, it may be stated that the process of ‘Neolithisation’ of Central and Temperate Europe is composed out of three supra-regional traditions which have their origins in the Mesolithic and possibly Palaeolithic social networks: the classic and long-established Danubian tradition with the LBK as its earliest manifestation; the western or occidental composition with its connections to southern France and the Iberian Peninsula and possibly north-west Africa; and the tentatively baptised ‘hyperborean’ tradition of the Russian forest and steppe zones with pottery but without farming. Going back to the slightly polemical introduction, one aspect remains to be dealt with, namely that of language. Throughout the last decades notably Renfrew (1996) and later Bellwood (2005) promoted a model where the dispersal of a farming technology would be linked to the dispersal of languages. These ideas have been received with much criticism and lately Renfrew (2002, 14) has published an appeasement offer: ‘We could certainly postulate a model where at least half of the population in any local area along the way would, at a crucial stage, be composed of incoming farmers from the immediately previous area. The product of this ‘down the line’ phenomenon could be the transmission of the language of the incomers, and yet the significant attenuation of the signal carried on by their genes.’ While this statement is certainly intriguing and indeed intellectually stimulating, it hitherto lacks any robust substantiation from linguistics (e.g. Rexová et al. 2003), and consequently the matter remains largely untouched in Central European archaeology. The uncertain explicatory power of the language-farming-dispersalhypothesis is unfortunate, however, as it would fit well with the élite dominance model: the Indo-European language could have been introduced by the LBK which ideologically dominated local hunter-gatherers and pastoralists; with this ideological domination came linguistic replacement: food for further speculations. As uncertain as the linguistic aspect may be and as little agreement there may exist over it, it is nevertheless intriguing to note, that after many decades of research on the spread of farming and its wider implications for world history, both Anglo-American modellers and Central European empiricists have reached similar conclusions at least for Central Europe. The spread of


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farming is a complicated and differentiated process with considerable local and regional variations. It is also certainly not a process occurring along a supposedly well defined ‘frontier’ but one which lasted for several millennia and which happened in stages. Economic changes were certainly one major point, and socio-political transformations were another: the famousinfamous trajectories towards complexity. As these points have nowadays found widespread agreement among most scholars acquainted with the matter, future research should be geared towards the precise role of a likely triggering force: Holocene climate fluctuations. Note. I am indebted to Alasdair Whittle and Vicki Cummings for inviting me to the conference and for their subtle fine-tuning of the manuscript.

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Beyond ‘migration’ versus ‘acculturation’: new models for the spread of agriculture JOHN ROBB & PRESTON MIRACLE

INTRODUCTION: A DESPERATE PLEA FOR NEW IDEAS THE BEGINNING OF FARMING should be one of the most exciting issues in European prehistory. Instead, it runs repetitively in well-worn ruts. Was it the movement of farmers or was it foragers adopting farming for reasons of their own? These are the choices. Our interpretive logic has remained static for at least two decades, the chart depicting ‘migration’ and ‘acculturation’ zones has been fought to a stable frontier, and scholars on both sides seem puzzled as to what could possibly be done to further the question beyond accumulating further data on their own corners of Europe. For example, in recent discussions of the topic, researchers continue to question the relative importance of ideational versus economic changes (Rowley-Conwy 2004; Thomas 2003), and to accumulate new evidence to track the movement of agriculture (Colledge et al. 2004; Price et al. 2001). But with few exceptions (such as Barnett 2000; Bellwood & Renfrew 2002; Forenbaher & Miracle 2005; Zvelebil 2002), there has been little work on models that move beyond the migration vs. acculturation stalemate. In many ways this is a debate in search of a paradigm shift (cf. Price 2003). Why all this should be so is mysterious, given that some of the most agile minds in archaeology have been writing on the Neolithic transition. What has happened, apparently, has been a case of talking past each other. Because the various schools of thought writing on the issue start from different theoretical propositions—often differing even on what the term ‘Neolithic’ implies— theorists tend to start out with strong a priori views, use the evidence to establish their own position to their own satisfaction, and then get on with writing about what really interests them on their preferred side of the migrationacculturation line (whether this is big-picture spotting of cultural similarities across Europe or an extremely localised view of culture as meaningful experience). As a solution to the practical and political difficulties of academic life, this works ideally. However, among its collateral effects is a willingness to Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 99–115, © The British Academy 2007.


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accept basic terms of argument as a highly polarised dichotomy between only two scenarios, neither of which is actually very plausible. Moreover, evidential tropes are presented as increasingly weary, formalistic claims, rather than with real thought or conviction. The result is a lurking suspicion, in us at least, that probably neither side is right about what actually occurred. This paper aims to open up this theoretical can of worms, working in similar directions to some recent essays in a non-dichotomised, nonessentialising archaeology of Europe in this period. These take two distinct but related directions. One is to re-evaluate standard interpretive tropes in classic cases such as the LBK, and to argue for much more complex processes at the forager-farmer encounter (Gronenborn 1999; 2004; Kind 1998; Modderman 1988; Tillmann 1993). This strategy grapples closely with the complexities of the evidence, and it often involves refreshingly concrete models of social processes, but at times it implicitly accepts traditional parameters of the problem (for instance, that economies such as farming and foraging corresponded to social group identities). A more radical approach is represented by theorists who question the idea that one can define essentialist identities based upon economies (Bailey et al. 2005; Whittle 2003). In keeping with what we hope is a growing critical trend, we first discuss the basic terms of argument critically, then pose several new models, and conclude by discussing—optimistically, we hope—the resolvability of the question. Beyond the Socratic aim of annoying all parties to the debate equally, we hope to open a theoretical space in which Europe between 7000 and 4000 cal BC can be freed of encumbering conceptual baggage and viewed as a real ethnographic landscape.

INTERPRETIVE TROPES: WHAT IS THE STANDARD LOGIC ACTUALLY BASED UPON, IF ANYTHING? At 8000 cal BC Europe was a continent of foragers. At 4000 cal BC it was a continent of farmers. How this happened has been the focus of argument for at least a century (Rudebeck 2000), with causes cited ranging from the desperate need to stave off famine to the inherent perfectibility of human civilisation. However, before archaeologists can explain why the shift happened, we need to describe the social process of how it happened. The question of how has been posed, for at least a century, in terms of two opposed alternatives. Either the Neolithic was carried throughout Europe by the actual movement of farming peoples intruding into a landscape of foragers, or foragers adopted it for their own endogenous reasons once they gained access to it through neighbours who farmed. For the last two decades, these alternatives have been divided spatially as well. Champions of forager adoption have


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generally conceded two or three core areas to migrationists: the initial Neolithic of the Balkans, the LBK, and the initial spread of Impressed/ Cardial Ware throughout the Mediterranean. Conversely, outlying and interstitial areas such as the Alps, Central Iberia, the Atlantic fringe of France, Belgium and the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Britain and Ireland are commonly viewed as places where foragers adopted the Neolithic slowly, late, and often partially (Zvelebil 2002; Zvelebil & Lillie 2000; Zvelebil & RowleyConwy 1986). This approach is certainly an advance over simple monocausal models through its recognition of geographic and temporal variability in rate and mechanism of the adoption of farming. Recent work emphasising the ‘mosaic’ nature of the transition when examined on a fine scale is equally to be applauded. However, if taken too literally, this approach is still founded on a dichotomous view of agriculture as being spread either by migration or by acculturation. Even characterising the spread of agriculture in prehistoric Europe as a fine-grained ‘mosaic’ of small-scale migrations and adoptions carves the map into smaller pieces rather than examining the underlying mechanisms of the spread. It is more finely pixelated but still bichromic. What is this view based upon? Almost all parties use the same canonical criteria (Table 1; Bogucki 2000; Rouse 1958; 1986). There are two principal criteria: the speed with which the Neolithic spreads and whether the complete ‘package’ (horticulture, domestic animals, polished stone tools, pottery and settled villages) spread together or merely as piecemeal traits. More complex interpretations tend to be extrapolations from these tenets; for example, the idea that differences in the contextual usage of Neolithic technologies indicates local adoption by foragers rests upon the same logic of ‘homogeneity equals migration, heterogeneity equals acculturation’. Each of these interpretive tropes rests upon highly questionable assumptions which have, however, received remarkably little critique. Speed of spread first emerged as an issue when radiocarbon dating revealed a consistent, directional spread of farming across Europe at about 1 km/year (Ammerman & Cavalli-Sforza 1973; 1984; Clark 1965). Certain parts of this expansion, particularly the LBK, turned out to move much more rapidly, and Ammerman Table 1.

List of standard interpretive tropes.

Criterion

‘Migration’

‘Acculturation’

Speed

Migrations spread farming quickly

Adoption is a gradual process

Traits transmitted

Transmission of complete Neolithic package, or several unrelated traits

Transmission of incomplete Neolithic package, or only one aspect


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and Cavalli-Sforza admitted that, to sustain this growth, frontier farmers would have to reproduce at a rate approaching the theoretical maximum for human populations. However, three decades of research later, it is clear that LBK farming did not spread through a demographic ‘wave of advance’ but by leap-frogging among patchy, low-density enclaves. Given this, and given the difficulty of providing a satisfactory motive for LBK leap-frogging (Bogucki 2000; 2003), one would think that all bets are off as far as how fast or slow migrating enclaves could reasonably be expected to move (Price 2003). The converse assumption, that forager acculturation would inherently be a slow process, seems to rest, logically enough, upon the idea that each forager group could not adopt farming until it became available from a neighbouring group, hence a long-distance movement of farming would require a long accumulation of such lag times. But as a prima facie assumption, why should we believe that LBK farmers could move an entire village society 20 or 30 km in a decade but that it would take foragers much longer than this to acquire Neolithic ways from their neighbours this distance away? We should also bear in mind that people are mobile for all sorts of reasons besides ‘migration’ (see below). There is abundant and compelling evidence of high residential and logistic mobility among recent foragers, as well as evidence from long-distance transfers of raw materials such as lithics and molluscs that past European foragers were highly mobile. Thus distance might not have been the same for the two groups; foragers would have been more mobile over larger territories, so that 50 km might involve one step of transmission from one foraging group to the next, but many more transmission steps among settled farmers. The other criterion—whether a complete ‘Neolithic package’ or only selected traits is transmitted—has really provided the keystone of interpretation. The logic seems common sense; immigrants will transport all their traits, including unrelated ones and inconsequential cultural baggage, while acculturating foragers will be free to choose what novelties interest them. Granted, the range of lifeways we can actually monitor archaeologically is limited (we lack, for instance, the dress, language and beliefs which often mark immigrants in modern societies) and most are functionally related, for instance pottery, sedentism, axes, and the storage of agricultural produce. We might also note a latent directional teleology through which it is assumed that foragers may adopt farmers’ lifeways but not the reverse. But the real problem here is a remarkable double standard of logic. Migrating farmers carry their physical and conceptual baggage with them like a snail carrying its shell; transmission, for them, is essentially a passive process. Foragers shop at the Neolithic store; transmission is an active act of choice.1 1 In this sense, these two views come pre-aligned with theoretical positions; those viewing culture as an active and meaningful choice are inherently predisposed towards forager acculturation



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How does questioning this assumption actually change our interpretation? To take one example, it is often claimed that the homogeneity of the LBK way of life over great distances indicates it was carried by migrants. But it would be equally logical, and probably more so, to assume that groups separating and meeting new environments and other populations would change their culture as they moved, losing some elements and gaining new ones. If so, we must regard LBK homogeneity not as passive photocopying but as an actively chosen phenomenon, a rigid adherence to uniformity for social reasons, a defiance of distance. Yet once we admit that more sophisticated social motives may influence choices about both farmer-farmer and farmer-forager transmission, the basis of interpretation shifts. LBK homogeneity could equally well be due to migrants anxious about isolation maintaining a network with home or, for that matter, to foragers adopting a package whose uniformity was important to maintain for ideological reasons. To take another example, groups who had pottery or domesticates but who hunted and foraged or used Mesolithic-style lithics are usually seen as acculturating foragers. Yet we might equally well expect migrants into a new region, particularly one with a radically different environment, to learn ways of living there from people already there and to change their way of life accordingly. The biggest assumption of all, of course, is that there are only two possible processes which patterns of transmission must be matched to. This is discussed further below; here we note only that it has become an unconscious term of argument which pre-structures how one must interpret the evidence, for instance in the mandate to resolve and mask ambiguities in order to be able to pronounce any given situation as a result of either ‘migration’ or ‘acculturation’.

SOME BASIC PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION The above discussion comes to the conclusion that for such a traditional and solid-looking edifice, the standard arguments for both ‘migration’ and ‘acculturation’ are based on remarkably little defensible logic. We now attempt some constructive argument.

explanations, while those who view it as passive tradition are inherently predisposed towards migrations. It gives a rather depressing picture of the level of critical debate that it has taken several decades before anyone has apparently raised the idea that transmission from one group of farmers to another is equally well an active social choice.


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Economies ⬆ technologies ⬆ cultures ⬆ identities As a point of departure, it is worth restating the obvious. While we are interested in explaining the spread of the Neolithic (however it is defined), this is our own preoccupation and need not correspond to anything recognised by prehistoric Europeans. In the archaeological imagination, ‘Mesolithic’ and ‘Neolithic’ become self-imposing and inescapable terms of discourse; it is extremely difficult to avoid slipping, unconsciously, from classifying a society archaeologically as ‘Mesolithic’ to assuming that it was in fact ethnographically made up of ‘Mesolithic people’ who must have been socially distinct from ‘Neolithic people’. This archaeological essentialism results in a dichotomous approach to the societies we are trying to understand, and arguably forms the greatest single obstacle towards actually understanding it. An example helps. In ethnohistoric Native North America (Fig. 1), we can draw a moderately clear line between horticulturalists and groups who exclusively foraged. This frontier, however, corresponds poorly with the distribution of permanent (non-mobile) housing, and even less well with the distribution of pottery. It bears no relation at all to aspects of ritual such as the use of sweat lodges for purification, or for that matter to language groups. Our point here is not merely to deconstruct the idea of an inviolable Neolithic ‘package’, a point made many times in recent years. Rather, it is to show how relations between farming and non-farming societies varied immensely, to the degree that using economy-based archaeological classifications such as ‘Neolithic’ and ‘Mesolithic’ to envision what people’s identities were and how they related is highly distorting. In some cases, for instance the Hurons and the Algonquins, or the Pueblos and the Comanches, the edge of farming coincides with a recognised ethnic difference. Such cases seem more common at a sharp ecological frontier (in this case with ecologically specialised trade across it, somewhat as in Zvelebil and Lillie’s model (2000) for the Baltic). In other cases, such as between the semi-farming groups on the eastern Plains and the bison hunters of the Central Plains, they shared many elements of worldview, ritual and material culture, and it is likely that the most marked differences between them had a relatively shallow time depth. In the Eastern Woodlands, groups moving into new environments (from woodlands to prairies, for example) learned to practise new economies as they moved. Other groups varied their economy along a spectrum from foraging to horticulture. Ojibway groups, for example, included groups reliant upon maize gardens and groups living entirely on hunting, fishing and gathering. Here a sharp line between between ‘farmers’ and ‘foragers’ would cut a self-recognised ethnic group in half. Moreover, there were widely shared cultural practices and idioms which cut across all economic boundaries, such as the ritual use of tobacco and sweat lodges.



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Figure 1. The distribution of horticulture, non-mobile houses, pottery, and ritual use of sweat lodges in Native North America (after Driver & Massey 1957).


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Economy was often, perhaps usually, not the main way in which Native American tribes defined themselves and their relations with their neighbours. As this suggests, we need to approach the archaeological record without preconceptions about how people with different economies or material cultures would have interacted. People are always moving Social movement in space is central to explaining the spread of the Neolithic. A second implicit tenet of much Neolithic-transitionology is that societies are closed and static. This underlies the proposition that Neolithic things can move into Mesolithic territories by only two ways: borrowing without the movement of people, or the movement of an entire social group. Even a cursory reading of any ethnohistory reveals this as a fiction. Movement is fundamental to the lives of most foraging groups, and annual routines may include aggregation with other groups as well as with their own kin. Continuing with North American examples, the hunting and fishing Nipissing, for instance, often over-wintered with sedentary Huron farmers. Movement also typifies farmers. Pueblos are often considered the quintessential sedentary farming groups, self-contained islands in the desert. But pueblos typically included people married in from neighbouring pueblos, resident or visiting people from neighbouring forager groups, and individuals and families integrated as refugees or captives. Sometimes quite large groups joined a pueblo en bloc as the survivors of a village decimated in war, as a faction driven out of its home village by internal politics, or simply lured by an economic opportunity or cultural attraction. This fluidity, typical of both farmers and foragers, is driven by many causes, among them the sheer vicissitudes of history, coping with the demographic needs of very small groups, the inherent value of people and their labour, and the need for wide alliances across ecological boundaries. We would draw the following implications, in brief, for understanding the Neolithic transition. First, movement of people was probably an essential vector for the spread of the Neolithic. Our argument here is that artefacts entail detailed systems of social knowledge; things such as domestic animals, shorn of their techno-cultural context, can certainly be used and consumed, but are difficult to reproduce and use fully. Hence ‘Neolithic’ things probably moved with ‘Neolithic’ people to make and use them. But, secondly, the movement of people happened in a great range of forms. The spectrum would have included the movement of individuals and families, the movement of multi-family groups to be integrated into a recipient society, and the movement of entire and self-sufficient societies (Barnett 2000; Forenbaher & Miracle 2005). Much of this movement would not have been understood as



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a migration but as normal social processes common to both foragers and farmers. Of these, the most common forms, which we can assume to have been present in all societies, would have been the relatively invisible movement of individuals and families. Moreover, and importantly, this normal movement of people between groups need not have been directional. We cannot assume that normal people exchange happened only among foragers or farmers and not between them, nor that movement between foraging and farming groups was unidirectional and restricted to the movement of farming groups into forager territory, the movement of forager women to marry farming men, or any other single scenario. Social reproduction for both foragers and farmers As noted above, the standard construal of the problem uses a double standard of logic. To indigenous foragers, culture is a conscious choice; to incoming farmers, culture is passive baggage. This is clearly unjust to our putative Neolithic farmers, whom we must theorise with similar capacity for social and cultural action. In other words, we must consider a Neolithic farmer’s decision of whether to reproduce, modify or give up the traditions of her group as no different from a Mesolithic forager’s decision. The same is true for the decision to live in one’s home, to move to another community, or to move one’s whole community elsewhere. For farmers and foragers equally, and indeed for all the groups between these two stereotyped polarities, living out their history meant continually evaluating and reinventing traditions, and choosing from a repertoire of available possibilities, whatever the historical source of this repertoire was. Social and political models The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition is documented and well interpreted in a number of ways. Traditional archaeologists have regarded it as a change of archaeological ‘cultures’. The transition is often understood principally as an economic shift. Post-processualists have regarded the advent of the Neolithic as a cultural choice, a shift in systems of meaning, decoupled from both large-scale archaeological patterning and economy. All of these are useful ingredients, but what is missing is the idea of social action. Culture-historical models generally treat the transmission of culture from one generation to the next, or from one group to a neighbouring one, as a straightforward and obvious matter, without specifying the social context which determines why it happens in one way and not in any of a myriad of other possibilities. Economic interpretations typically treat Neolithic economy as an ecological adaptation driven by necessity; the people themselves


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do not have particular reasons for choosing to produce what they do in the way they do. While we find treatments of the Neolithic transition as a shift in cultural attitude highly stimulating, they too lack a certain explanatory je ne sais quoi. For example, Mesolithic foragers’ choices are typically interpreted by referring them to generalised traditions and attitudes (such as food preferences, respect for ancestors, and so on), with little consideration of the concrete social relations and reasons, the positioned actions, the cultural micro-politics within which tradition is invoked or reinvented. Among the few models to treat the transition socially have been those of Bender (1978), Price (1995), Hayden (1990), Tillmann (1993) and Zvelebil (1986). The reproduction of society and culture through human agency is a central locus which cannot be omitted here, as it furnishes the common ground upon which cultural and economic understandings of the Neolithic transition meet.

THE RANGE OF POSSIBILITIES: RESULTING ARCHAEOLOGICAL PATTERNS To put the point in concrete terms, consider an encounter between parties with two distinct ways of life. As noted above, this may happen on scales ranging from individuals to entire groups. There are at least four distinct responses each party can have to this difference, including not changing their way of life in any way, heightening differences between the groups, adopting some new techniques or items or adjusting their way of life to integrate or accommodate the other, and adopting all of the new way of life as a complete package. Table 2 presents some expected patterns for how the encounter might unfold. This is simplified in considering only what impact an ‘incoming’ way of life might have on an ‘indigenous’ way of life, rather than vice versa. Moreover, it seems possible, even probable, that more than one of these responses would occur in any given situation; in many contact situations, for example, people simultaneously absorb practices and goods from each other and heighten their own traditions to accentuate the difference between them. Without labouring the obvious, we would point out five implications of this admittedly first step in model-building. 1 One initial conclusion is that the traditional scenarios—‘migration’ and ‘acculturation’—occupy only a small fraction of the total possibility space. The classic migration scenario in particular may represent a relatively uncommon possibility, if societies are rarely as well bounded as it supposes.2 2 Indeed, in assuming a collision between groups with strongly marked boundaries, no history of previous interaction, and little common heritage, a strong migrationist scenario echoes the



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2 A second implication is that many outcomes are equifinal—leaving similar archaeological patterns. For example, using the standard archaeological criteria discussed above, there is no way to differentiate between the classic migration scenario and a wholesale adoption of a new way of life by indigenous people. 3 Following from this, one archaeological priority must be to devise criteria for interpreting a situation which can differentiate between a greater range of possibilities. For example, we must look for patterning at different scales within sites—which requires forms of excavation not commonly employed when it is assumed that sites can be classified as representing homogeneous ways of life. New scientific methods such as the use of stable isotopes to identify mobility patterns may be invaluable in this if the resulting data are not simply to be used to reinforce conventional narratives. 4 Equifinality itself may be telling us something important. The past furnishes material for continual reformulation of tradition in the present. Tracing the historical derivation of a group’s way of life genealogically is our own preoccupation rather than a logical necessity of the past. The fact that a group presents itself archaeologically in a way which does not make its origins transparently evident may be telling us about the choices and priorities involved in their way of life. 5 Given the latitude of possibilities involved in a cultural encounter, the actual outcome must be understood as social in a number of ways. The act of contact is best thought of not as a purely external phenomenon causing a social response, but must have been enmeshed in social relations. Its effects surely depended upon social context (for instance whether the groups involved regarded themselves as related), on the desirability of mobility, aggregation, tradition and similar factors, and upon social agendas within each group. Difference itself may have been an important cultural resource to be valued, shunned or played with. Reinterpreting the LBK: ‘enclave migration’ as cultural reformulation As an illustration, we briefly sketch out a reinterpretation of the classic scenario of LBK ‘migration’. While the LBK’s status as a migration has sometimes been questioned (Gronenborn 1999; 2004; Kind 1998; Modderman 1988; Tillmann 1993; Whittle 1996), it remains the prevailing wisdom that the

conditions of post-Columbian European colonialism in the Americas and elsewhere; even ancient colonial situations such as the Mycenaeans and, later, the Greeks in the Central Mediterranean, would often have involved greater equalities of technology and organisation and much greater mutual comprehensibility in cultural idioms. On the political context of theorising the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, see Pluciennik (2001).



Static frontier between well-bounded ways of life

Blurry, polythetic and moving frontier between ways of life (classic ‘acculturation’ scenario)

Moving frontier between two well-bounded ways of life

None

Piecemeal adoption of specific traits

Adoption of complete lifestyle

Static frontier between ways of life becoming more accentuated

None


Heterogeneity on all scales within and between groups; spread of difference in landscape without clear boundaries

Fine-grained heterogeneity within group; on regional scale, gradual spread of difference within increasingly poorly bounded ways of life

Fine-grained heterogeneity within groups more marked than it was between source communities

Individual


Heterogeneity on all scales within and between groups; spread of difference in landscape without clear boundaries

Heterogeneity within group on household or segment level; on regional scale, gradual spread of difference within increasingly poorly bounded ways of life

Heterogeneity within groups more marked than it was between source communities

Family/ segments

Level of mobility between groups with different ways of life

Some possible models for social interaction where two ways of life meet.

Heightening cultural difference

Table 2.

Response to cultural difference


Moving frontier between two ways of life with halo of blurry spread of difference beyond it

Moving frontier between two well-bounded ways of life (classic ‘migration’ scenario)

Moving frontier between two well-bounded, increasingly differentiated ways of life

Whole group

110 John Robb & Preston Miracle


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LBK was carried from Hungary to France on the backs of westwardlymoving peoples. We do not claim that this reinterpretation is necessarily correct, just that it demonstrates how scenarios radically different from conventional interpretations are equally plausible once we scrutinise the foundations of interpretation critically. For many archaeologists, the LBK is the Neolithic migration. It moves quickly. From its origins in western Hungary around 5500 cal BC, it reached as far west as west-central Germany in little more than two centuries, and by 5000 cal BC at the latest it had arrived in the Low Countries and eastern France. This is a rapid spread by any standard, covering about 1500 km in no more than 500 years—an average of 3 km/year or 75 km/generation. As for the other criteria of migration, LBK economy is overwhelmingly based upon domesticated crops and animals. Moreover, the LBK is marked by a highly consistent set of material things. LBK pots—especially from the first few ‘founding generations’—are similar over a huge area. The same is true for the famous LBK longhouses; these monumental dwellings show a very similar layout throughout the LBK range. This implies a homogeneous sedentary way of life radically different from that of mobile foragers. The standard view, consequently, is that the LBK spread through Central and Western Europe through a real movement of Neolithic colonists. Yet once we begin to question the basis of such interpretations, other views become equally plausible. There are three reasons why it is difficult to defend an interpretation of the LBK as a migration. 1 First, such a rapid spread is demographically difficult to sustain. Even if we acknowledge the lack of any evidence for population pressure to drive a ‘wave of advance’ model, and follow an ‘enclave’ migration model instead, we still have to imagine the frontier communities doubling their size to spawn off a new daughter population every generation. This requires an average growth rate of about 3% per year, close to the theoretical maximum and rarely sustained in any human community for long (Ammerman & Cavalli-Sforza 1984). 2 Secondly, the very uniformity of the LBK is a problem. We argue that homogeneity is not likely to be the ground state of human beings, particularly in small, widely separated, decentralised communities, and there is little reason to presume a priori that each generation moving into new territory would maintain their culture and economy unmodified. If we consider the LBK as created by increasingly distant small groups over about twenty generations, realistically we should expect the pot or house arriving in France to be noticeably different from that leaving Hungary. Even if the accuracy of cultural reproduction were 99% between each generation/move, one would still expect a divergence of almost 20% between initial and final LBK groups. Strong social processes must be at work to prevent replication/transmission errors.


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3 Thirdly, it is difficult to understand the motivation or cause for the LBK as a migration. Discounting population pressure, enclave migration has been ascribed to either idiosyncratic social customs or characteristics of complex adaptive systems (Bogucki 2000) or a strategy for evading the possible inegalitarian social relations possible within Neolithic villages (Zilhão 2003). The former is possible, but seems an ad hoc supposition; the latter begs the question of why the phenomenon is therefore not found much more widely among early farming societies, and why many groups within Neolithic landscapes, where such migration was not an option, do not display evidence of marked inequality. As an alternative scenario, we seek the roots of the LBK in Mesolithic foragers enhancing a Mesolithic lifestyle. Mesolithic Europe was populated by thinly dispersed groups, but they had a tendency to aggregate when exceptionally dense resources allowed it. Sociality was attractive; perhaps not yearround, but in a counterpoint of partial mobility. The Late Mesolithic ‘complex’ hunters of the Atlantic and Baltic coasts show the potential of Mesolithic groups to transform in areas where resources were rich and dense. In contrast, in the thinly settled heartland of Central Europe, resources did not allow large groups to aggregate except in exceptional circumstances such as the Iron Gates. Thus, there was a pre-existing Mesolithic association of food surplus, periodic sedentism, and sociality. The next step is obvious. In areas of dispersed natural resources, when domesticated foods became available, they were slotted into this social role, that of supporting sociality. This role for domesticates has been proposed for Scandinavia by Price (1995), but it can fit foragers in less rich environments as well or better. The new economy would have been transmitted through the normal movement of people between Mesolithic groups; the LBK thus may well have expanded along the lines of pre-existing linkages between Mesolithic populations, which would have been along rivers since they provide corridors for easy movement and surplus resources to underwrite aggregations. With more frequent and permanent aggregation, however, came both economic and political changes. Sociality itself may have been collectively valued rather than simply a tool for ambitious political strategists. Domesticates provided controllable power resources for actualising sociality, at the cost of shifting annual mobility rounds. Loose, flexible relations based upon movement within territory shifted to more rigidly defined ones centred upon specific places, the focus of labour, commitment and identity. And these places and relations required new ways of conceptualising identity. Hence new resources were conceptualised in terms of the construction of new kinds of places. It is thus no accident that house design is one of the icons of unity, with the massive, overbuilt longhouses which have rightly been considered monuments of domestic identity. Likewise, pottery is a socially obvious thing



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used in situations of communal eating and drinking. Moreover, the newly adopted way of life would be understood in terms of a narrative of descent which would trace its connections to the places and groups from which these things were adopted. This may be the importance of the very strong stylistic unity of the LBK pots and houses: surely the result of close attention to uniformity rather than haphazard unthinking reproduction. In this interpretation, LBK farming was adopted rapidly and uniformly by a minority of Mesolithic foragers in very specific environments, for reasons originating in Mesolithic power relations and cultural themes of food, aggregation, and sociality. When they did so, they used Neolithic material culture to underscore the difference between themselves and their predecessors and neighbours. They were creating radical difference as a form of identity politics, severing themselves from local history. It seems unlikely that this claim to exotic origins would be expressed only in material culture. We could well expect revisionist group history—recreating genealogy to create or emphasise myths of exotic descent. Thus, we are arguing, if you showed up at an LBK village and asked them whether their ancestors had come from somewhere else, they would say yes. And they would be wrong.

CONCLUSIONS: TRANSFORMATION OF AN ETHNOGRAPHIC LANDSCAPE Asking ‘did the Neolithic get there by migration or acculturation’ is really the wrong question to ask, and it pre-structures any possible answer in unhelpful ways. It represents only a fraction of possible social interactions, and it imposes an almost irresistible need to think of ‘Neolithic’ people meeting ‘Mesolithic’ people, even though these are our own constructed, essentialising categories rather than necessarily referring to any real social identities (cf. Bailey et al. 2005). Rather, the problem becomes ‘how did each group, whether forager, farmer, or something in between, make use of cultural differences both among themselves and available from their neighbours, to recreate their way of life?’ The source of this repertoire is not irrelevant, but is hardly the only or most important element. Instead, the key is the social logic with which available possibilities were reinvented as actualities. Even if our interest, ultimately, is to trace the historical origin of a way of life, we must approach it by investigating how it was socially reproduced in the first instance. Can this be done? We would like to think, optimistically, that it can. New research questions challenge us to develop new methodologies. For example, our just-so story about the Mesolithic origins of the LBK could presumably be investigated, and differentiated from a migrationist account, in a range of


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ways. Some would involve new forms of data, such as the use of human bone chemistry to track patterns of mobility. It should be emphasised, however, that cutting-edge scientific methods are only as reliable as the interpretive concepts they are used with; there is no point doing twenty-first-century science to support nineteenth-century archaeology. For example, the challenge in this case is to use isotope data to investigate how people moved, without assuming a priori the existence of discrete ‘forager’ and ‘farmer’ groups. Other relevant tactics involve simply re-examining traditional archaeological data such as site locations and ceramics (to take one example, by looking at variability rather than typological identification of pottery). Finally, a major step here is to bridge the traditional divide in how specialists study Mesolithic and Neolithic societies, by theorising social action equally for both.

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HAYDEN, B. 1990. Nimrods, piscators, pluckers, and planters: the emergence of food production. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 9, 31–69. KIND, C.-J. 1998. Komplexe Wildbeuter und frühe Ackerbauern. Bemerkungen zur Ausbreitung der Linearbandkeramik im südlichen Mitteleuropa. Germania 76, 1–24. MODDERMAN, P. J. R. 1998. The Linear Pottery culture: diversity in uniformity. Berichten van het Rijksdienst voor Oudheidkundig Bodemonderzoek 38, 63–140. PLUCIENNIK, M. 2001. Archaeology, anthropology and subsistence. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 7, 741–58. PRICE, T. D. 1995. Social inequality at the origins of agriculture. In T. D. Price & G. M. Feinman (eds), Foundations of social inequality, 129–51. New York: Plenum. PRICE, T. D. 2003. The arrival of agriculture in Europe as seen from the North. In A. Ammerman & P. Biagi (eds), The widening harvest. The Neolithic transition in Europe: looking back looking forward, 273–94. Boston: American Institure of Archaeology. PRICE, T. D., BENTLEY, R. A., LÜNING, J., GRONENBORN, D. & WAHL, J. 2001. Prehistoric human migration in the Linearbandkeramik of Central Europe. Antiquity 75, 593–603. ROUSE, I. 1958. The inference of migrations from anthropological evidence. In R. H. Thompson (ed.), Migrations in New World culture history, 63–8. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ROUSE, I. 1986. Migrations in prehistory: inferring population movement from cultural remains. New Haven: Yale University Press. ROWLEY-CONWY, P. 2004. How the west was lost: a reconsideration of agricultural origins in Britain, Ireland, and Southern Scandinavia. Current Anthropology 45, 83–113. RUDEBECK, E. 2000. Tilling nature, harvesting culture: exploring images of the human being in the transition to agriculture (Acta Archaeologica Lundensia 32). Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International. THOMAS, J. 2003. Thoughts on the ‘repacked’ Neolithic revolution. Antiquity 77, 67–75. TILLMANN, A. 1993. Kontinuitat oder Diskontinuitat? Zur Frage einer bandkeramischen Landnahme im südlichen Mitteleuropa. Archäologische Informationen 16, 157–87. WHITTLE, A. 1996. Europe in the Neolithic. The creation of new worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. WHITTLE, A. 2003. The archaeology of people: dimensions of Neolithic life. London: Routledge. ZILHÃO, J. 2003. The Neolithic transition in Portugal and the role of demic diffusion in the spread of agriculture across West Mediterranean Europe. In A. Ammerman & P. Biagi (eds), The widening harvest. The Neolithic transition in Europe: looking back, looking forward, 207–26. Boston: American Institute of Archaeology. ZVELEBIL, M. 1986. Mesolithic prelude and Neolithic revolution. In M. Zvelebil (ed.), Hunters in transition: Mesolithic societies of temperate Eurasia and their transition to farming, 5–15. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. ZVELEBIL, M. 2002. Demography and the dispersal of early farming populations at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition: linguistic and genetic implications. In P. Bellwood & C. Renfrew (eds), Examining the farming/language dispersal hypothesis, 379–94. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. ZVELEBIL, M. & LILLIE, M. 2000. Transition to agriculture in eastern Europe. In T. D. Price (ed.), Europe’s first farmers, 47–92. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ZVELEBIL, M. & ROWLEY-CONWY, P. 1986. Foragers and farmers in Atlantic Europe. In M. Zvelebil (ed.), Hunters in transition: Mesolithic societies of temperate Eurasia and their transition to farming, 67–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



Mobility, specialisation and community diversity in the Linearbandkeramik: isotopic evidence from the skeletons ALEX BENTLEY

THE THEME OF THIS CONFERENCE VOLUME reflects a growing recognition that the Neolithic in Europe involved—in different proportions in different places—both the colonisation by small groups of farmers and an interaction with hunter-gatherers. Generations of this interaction not only led foragers eventually to adopt farming (e.g. Zvelebil 2002), but enabled early farmers to survive in new surroundings through products and raw materials procured from indigenous groups. Intermarriage between foragers and farmers—as a basic means to maintain alliances (e.g. Fox 1983, 136)—may well be the way in which small, isolated farmer communities survived through the earliest generations, with indigenous groups the only option for exogamous marriage. In fact, indigenous foragers in central Europe may have been as numerous as the very first agriculturalists (Zvelebil 1997; 2002). At the time of the proposed demographic expansion of the Linearbandkeramik (LBK), even the Hungarian Plain was sparsely populated with dispersed settlements (Whittle 1996; Zvelebil & Lillie 2000). The consideration of forager-farmer intermarriage during the initial phases of the Neolithic is an old topic, of course. Even the classic ‘wave of advance’ theory explicitly considered ‘admixture’ between indigenous and colonising groups (Ammerman & Cavalli-Sforza 1984, 82–4), as have subsequent demic diffusion models (e.g. Chickhi et al. 2002; Currat & Excoffier 2005; Eswaran 2002). However, because the genetic effects of early foragerfarmer intermarriages would have multiplied themselves through the hundreds of human generations since the Neolithic (e.g. Bellwood 2005, 260), genetic models that extrapolate backward from modern populations will be highly sensitive to tiny changes in not just the assumed ‘admixture’ rate between hunter-gatherers and farmers (Currat & Excoffier 2005), but also the sexspecific biases in these intermarriages. Adding this small amount of complexity to genetic models could clear up some apparent incongruities in the



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data. For example, geneticists studying the Y-chromosome in modern Europeans often argue that Neolithic farming spread primarily through demic diffusion, or the migrations of the farmers themselves (e.g. Chikhi et al. 2002; King & Underhill 2002). On the other hand, geneticists studying mitochondrial DNA in modern Europeans have argued for a much larger ‘Palaeolithic component’ in modern Europeans, suggesting that the adoption of farming by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers was of prime importance (e.g. Richards 2003; Richards et al. 2000). The apparent discrepancy is most likely due to over-generalising from different sources of evidence. In fact, because the Y-chromosome is inherited strictly along the paternal line, and mtDNA is inherited maternally, a potential solution is a colonisation of small groups of farmers, in which those of whom survived did so by intermarrying with indigenous women (e.g. Bellwood 2005, 260–2; Bentley et al. 2003b). Hundreds of generations later, modern European populations could have inherited their ‘Neolithic’, Near-Eastern Y-chromosome haplotypes from their colonising fathers, and their ‘Palaeolithic’ mitochondrial DNA from their indigenous, hunter-gatherer mothers of Continental Europe. A pioneering ancient DNA study appears to supports this, in that a particular mtDNA haplotype (N1a) found in early Neolithic female skeletons is comparatively rare among modern Europeans (Haak et al. 2005). Population genetic studies are but one example of how explicit consideration of demographic heterogeneity greatly enhances our discussions of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Europe. Much of the progress so far has focused on how things changed for populations as a generalised whole, such as how the diet changed (e.g. Boquet-Appel 2002; Jackes et al. 1997; Richards et al. 2003), or how the LBK archaeological assemblage (longhouses, pottery, domestic animals and plants) appeared suddenly from Hungary to eastern France in a relatively short period in the sixth millennium cal BC (e.g. Gkiasta et al. 2003). With much of the basic ‘where’ and ‘when’ understood for the spread of the LBK (even if the databases are not well coordinated—see Crombé & Van Strydonck 2004; Steele et al. 2004), what is becoming more interesting at this point is the nature and reasons for the regional differences in the early LBK of central Europe (Bogucki 1996; Bogucki & Grygiel 1993; Gronenborn 1998; 1999; 2003; Lüning et al. 1989; Whittle 1996), including geographic differences in ceramic and lithic assemblages (Lüning et al. 1989; Gronenborn 1994), and in animal husbandry and farming (Lüning 2000). Questions of LBK heterogeneity directly relate to how agriculture spread and who it involved. Assessing indigenous involvement is more than a simple modelling of ‘admixture’ rates, not least in terms of when the intermarriage may have taken place. Over time, in areas where foragers were in more frequent contact with farmer communities, foragers may have adopted agricul-


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ture by competing for economic exchange with farmers (e.g. Dennell 1983; Gronenborn 1999; 2003; Jeunesse 2000; Otte & Noiret 2001; Tillmann 1993; Whittle 1996). For example, by considering the geographic distributions of Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in Europe around 6000–5000 cal BC, Lahr et al. (2000) argue that Mesolithic settlement was generally sparser in Central Europe and the Northern European Plains when the first Neolithic groups appeared, but forager populations may well have increased in these regions after farming was established (see Lahr et al. 2000, fig. 8.3). This may have resulted from foragers being attracted to agricultural areas for economic exchange, and entering into what Bailey (1988) termed a symbiosis with farmers. As described by the ‘frontier mobility’ or ‘availability’ model (Zvelebil & Lillie 2000; Zvelebil & Rowley-Conwy 1984), foragers during the early stages of the forager/farmer frontier would have acquired a few domestic animals through trade. Later on, status differences emerged among foragers as they over-exploited their resources in competition to exchange with farmers. As male foragers lost prestige, forager women may have immigrated into the farming communities. Eventually, this social competition induced foragers to adopt farming. An ethno-historical example of this process occurring involves the Muckogodo hunter-gatherers and Masaii pastoralists of southern Africa (Cronk 1989). One way to enhance our understanding of the LBK is to ‘zoom in’ on the generalised picture, and examine patterns of local diversity and specialisation within LBK communities (e.g. Bentley & Shennan 2003; Strein 2000). Within any typical LBK community, we might consider the heterogeneity that existed ethnically, economically, and socially, and how each of those aspects changed through time. Ethnically, the people occupying Central Europe during the LBK were a mix of indigenous and migrant ancestries. Economically, it is doubtful that everyone in each LBK community made pottery, herded livestock and cultivated plants as equal generalists. Did subsistence specialisations, such as livestock herding versus crop cultivation develop over time? Socially, were early LBK communities subdivided in ways that mirrored these specialities or potentially mixed ancestries? This chapter considers the LBK in south-western Germany (Fig. 1), which is an ideal study area regarding questions of community diversity, because it was at or near the frontier zone between foragers and farmers for centuries, c. 5500–5200 cal BC (e.g. Gronenborn 1999; 2003; Jochim 2000; Zvelebil & Rowley-Conwy 1984). The presence of shell-tempered, La Hoguette pottery in terminal Mesolithic contexts in Alsace indicates that indigenous groups were at least in indirect contact with Neolithic (probably Cardial) communities, even if it is debatable whether La Hoguette predates the earliest LBK in southern Germany (e.g. Bogucki 2000; Gronenborn 1999; Jeunesse 1987; Schütz et al. 1992). Flint from the Paris Basin and the Maas


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Figure 1. The Rhine Valley and adjacent areas, showing the extent of early LBK settlement, c. 5300 BC. Sites mentioned in the text include: D Dillingen, F Flomborn, S Schwetzingen, SM Stuttgart-Mülhausen, T Talheim, V Vaihingen. Reproduced by courtesy of the Institute of Archaeology, University College London.



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Valley of the Netherlands, each well within Mesolithic territory during the early LBK, are found in LBK contexts in the Rhine valley, at sites such as Bruchenbrücken, Zimmersheim, Ensisheim, Bischoffsheim and SpechbachLe-Bas (Cziesla 1994; Gronenborn 1999; Jeunesse 1997; Mauvilly 1997). At Bruchenbrücken, the earliest LBK blades have faceted striking platforms with a 70° angle between the striking platform and the dorsal ridge, which is common on Mesolithic blades from the Paris Basin, but not in Earliest LBK blades elsewhere, for which 90° was the norm (Gronenborn 1998). In addition, a pointed base vessel recently discovered at the LBK site of Rosheim in Alsace may derive from the Ertebølle culture or even possibly the Russian steppes (Gronenborn 2003; Jeunesse & LeFranc 1999).

LOCAL EVIDENCE ON THE SCALE OF THE INDIVIDUAL Local diversity in the early European Neolithic can be characterised by studying the skeletons of the people involved, either through craniometrics, ancient DNA, or isotopic analysis, each of which has indicated some degree of indigenous adoption through interaction with early farmers (Bentley et al. 2002; Brace et al. 2006; Haak et al. 2005). In the LBK of central Europe, many of the useful isotopic data so far have come from strontium isotope analysis, which is a way of recovering a geographic ‘signature’ from archaeological tooth enamel, indicating where the animal spent its time during childhood, when the enamel mineral was forming (e.g. Price et al. 2002). Essentially, strontium isotope ratios (hereafter 87Sr/86Sr) are conveyed from weathering rocks, through the soil, into the food chain and ultimately into the skeleton of local animals, without measurable fractionation (change in the ratio) during the process (Capo et al. 1998). Unfortunately, 87Sr/86Sr in such environmental materials such as rocks and soils can be quite variable, and not necessarily representative of the biologically-available values (e.g. Capo et al. 1998; Sillen et al. 1998). However, by averaging the 87Sr/86Sr differences between rocks, soils, parts of individual plants and so on, animals feeding in the same location acquire similar 87Sr/86Sr in their skeletons, with a much smaller variance than in the local soils and plants (Burton et al. 1999; Price et al. 2002). Hence 87Sr/86Sr in the skeletons of animals tend to represent a geographic average of their local, biologically-available strontium (Bentley et al. 2004; Burton et al. 1999; Price et al. 2002). Although tremendously useful for characterising variations within communities, strontium isotopes are rarely an exact ‘signature’ that pinpoints just where a person was born. The strontium isotope ratio in tooth enamel, 87 Sr/86Sr, is simply a number, usually 5 digits, that represents an average of the biologically-available strontium taken in by an animal while the sampled


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enamel was forming. Two people from places with similar geology will acquire similar 5-digit numbers no matter how far apart those places were. Furthermore, if an animal travelled while its enamel formed, then the measured 87Sr/86Sr reflects an average of all the locations visited in the time covered by the enamel sample. If it is possible to sample the enamel in very small increments along its growth axis, then the time resolution is much improved, but in any case, the 87Sr/86Sr reflects an average of strontium intake for some particular time interval. The point is that, rather than treating 87Sr/86Sr as a magic ‘signature’ as it is sometimes portrayed by journalists, a focus on patterns of 87Sr/86Sr variation can shed wonderful insight on prehistoric human mobility, community and diversity. This is especially true when 87Sr/86Sr is combined with other isotopes, such as oxygen and carbon or nitrogen. The trick is to look for statistically-significant patterns of local versus non-local values among groups of different individuals, rather than trying to pinpoint the exact origins of a few individuals. For example, we might find a significantly higher incidence of non-locals among either men or women (suggestive of matrilocality or patrilocality, respectively), among those buried with a certain artefact or in a certain cardinal orientation (indicative of social differences between locals and non-locals), among those from a certain part of the site (characterising ‘neighbourhoods’ within the site), or among those whose skeletons are morphologically distinctive (showing differences in health or possibly even genetic ancestry between locals and non-locals). Furthermore, when paired with measurements on domestic animals, it may be possible that certain isotopic signatures in people were derived from herding animals to the same places. In this way, community diversity, subsistence specialisation and even kinship and marriage patterns can be inferred from the isotopic data, through a knowledge simply of the difference between the local and non-local signatures at a particular study site.

ISOTOPIC RESULTS FROM LBK SKELETONS OF SOUTHERN GERMANY South-western Germany is an ideal study region for strontium isotope analysis of LBK skeletal samples not just for the archaeological regions discussed above, but also for its geology. On both sides of the Upper Rhine Valley are the Vosges and Black Forest uplands, which are underlain by gneisses and granites that have significantly higher 87Sr/86Sr values ( 0.715) than the Jurassic and younger sedimentary rocks ( 0.710) of the regional lowlands (Fig. 2). In the early stages of this project, the expected strontium isotope ratios were predicted from measurements in area rocks and stream waters


Figure 2. Geology of Southern Germany, showing the mean 87Sr/86Sr measured in pig enamel from various archaeological sites (see Bentley & Knipper 2005, table 2). After Bentley & Knipper (2005, fig. 1).



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(listed by Bentley et al. 2003a; Price et al. 2003). Later, after determining that archaeological pig teeth represent well their local, biologically-available isotope values (Bentley et al. 2004), Bentley and Knipper (2005) ‘mapped’ the biologically-available strontium, carbon and oxygen isotopic signatures of prehistoric Southern Germany using archaeological tooth enamel samples from domestic pigs. The mapping shows a marked upland-lowland difference in biologically-available 87Sr/86Sr values, ranging between 0.7086 and 0.7103 in the sedimentary lowlands, and from 0.710 to as high as 0.722 in crystalline uplands of the Odenwald, Black Forest and Bavarian Forest (Fig. 1). In addition, Bentley and Knipper (2005) found that carbon isotopes in the carbonate fraction of pig enamel were generally about 1–2% more enriched in 13C in the uplands. Regarding the LBK human skeletons, after several years of isotope measurements, a regional picture is finally emerging of the change in human mobility patterns over time in early Neolithic southern Germany (Fig. 2). The cumulative results show that shortly after farming arrived after 5500 cal BC, there were many non-locals in each community, mostly with ‘upland’ strontium isotope signatures (Fig. 3). Centuries later, towards 5000 cal BC, there were fewer non-locals overall, and females were more common among the non-locals with upland signatures. As Fig. 3 shows, many of the non-local 87Sr/86Sr values from human enamel are above about 0.7108 (horizontal line), which indicates a significant diet from the uplands. By combining different forms of information,1 Bentley et al. (2003a) determined that foragers who spent a quarter of their childhood in the uplands would acquire a 87Sr/86Sr value above 0.7108, whereas a lowland farmer would be below 0.710, even when allowing for 11% of the farmer diet to be upland-reared meat (meat has less Sr than grain). Since LBK settlements in southern Germany are found almost exclusively in lowland settings, the distribution of flint and ceramic artefacts in BadenWürttemberg indicates that the main stream valleys were densely populated during the early and middle Neolithic, with the uplands not settled until the later Neolithic (Heide 2001). For this reason, the early LBK individuals with upland 87Sr/86Sr values may have been either indigenous hunter-gatherers who joined farmer communities, or pastoralists who spent time in the uplands. Most likely, the upland values represent some of each, and ancient DNA being analysed in some of these samples by Wolfgang Haak (J. Gutenberg Universität, Mainz) may help to resolve these questions. Given the

1 Specifically: (a) a diet derived from Gregg’s (1988) optimal foraging analysis for Neolithic south-western Germany, (b) the approximate Sr contents of those different foods, and (c) generalised estimates of the 87Sr/86Sr in the uplands vs. lowlands.



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archaeological evidence for coexistence and trade between Neolithic and indigenous groups during the early LBK (Gronenborn 1999), the ‘upland’ women in the early LBK are prime candidates for hunter-gatherers who joined farmer communities through marriage (Bentley et al. 2002). Later in the LBK, when farming was predominant, the ‘upland’ males are more likely to have been livestock herders.

SOCIAL DIFFERENCES WITHIN LBK COMMUNITIES The compiled results in Fig. 3 indicate that certain people, having lived partly on upland resources, were buried in socially-distinct ways among communities of people who subsisted primarily on lowland resources. This is because the burials of non-locals show patterns consistent within each site, but different between sites. Also, at several sites most non-locals were buried with the head toward a certain cardinal direction, with that direction particular to each site. At Flomborn (Fig. 4) and at Stuttgart-Mühlhausen (Fig. 5), most of the nonlocals are buried with head pointing west, and at Stuttgart-Mühlhausen the 0.716

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Figure 3. Summary of 87Sr/86Sr in human enamel from Neolithic Germany. Circles, females; triangles, males; squares, child of unknown sex; crosses, pigs (used to map values). Filled (grey) symbols are burials with a shoe-last adze. Sites ordered chronologically include Early Mühlhausen (EM), Flomborn (F), Late Mühlhausen (LM), Schwetzingen (S), Talheim (T), and Dillingen (D). 87Sr/86Sr above about 0.7108 (horizontal line) required significant diet from the uplands.


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Figure 4. 87Sr/86Sr in human tooth enamel from Flomborn. The horizontal axis shows the cardinal direction of the head during burial. Circles, females; triangles, males; squares, unsexed children. The dashed line shows the local range estimated by Bentley et al. (2002).

relative number of these west-pointing non-locals decreases markedly later in the LBK (Fig. 5a vs. 5b). At Schwetzingen (Fig. 6), most of the non-locals point toward north or north-east (Bentley et al. 2002; Price et al. 2001; 2003). Particularly interesting are correlations between 87Sr/86Sr and the inclusion of a shoe-last adze (Schuhleistenkeil), a ground-stone adze that is often found in male LBK burials. At Flomborn (Fig. 4) and Dillingen (Fig. 7), very few of those with non-local 87Sr/86Sr values, male or female, were buried with a shoe-last adze (Flomborn: p 0.13; Dillingen: p 0.01), but adzes were present with most of the ‘local’ males (Bentley et al. 2002). At StuttgartMühlhausen, there are two west-pointing, non-local males with a shoe-last in the early LBK (Fig. 5a), but by the middle LBK, seven out of the eight males with shoe-last adzes are east-pointing (Fig. 5b), and with significantly lower (p 0.10) 87Sr/86Sr, meaning that shoe-last adzes are again associated with locals by this time. The simple reason for this association between the shoelast adze and local (or at least lowland) 87Sr/86Sr values may be that these men were cultivators—as opposed to hunters or livestock herders—and they used the hafted adze for cutting wood or cultivation tasks, perhaps hoeing. As discussed below, the men with upland 87Sr/86Sr values may have herded livestock, and therefore had less use for one of these adzes.



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Figure 5. 87Sr/86Sr in human tooth enamel from Stuttgart-Mühlhausen, during the (a) Early LBK and (b) Mid-Late LBK. The horizontal axis shows the cardinal direction of the head during burial. Circles, females; triangles, males; squares, unsexed children. The dashed line shows the local range estimated by Bentley et al. (2004), from archaeological pig’s teeth at nearby Vaihingen.


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Figure 6. 87Sr/86Sr in human tooth enamel from Schwetzingen. The horizontal axis shows the cardinal direction of the head during burial. Circles, females; triangles, males; squares, unsexed children. The dashed line shows the local range estimated by Bentley et al. (2002). 0.713

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Figure 7. 87Sr/86Sr in human tooth enamel from Dillingen. The horizontal axis shows the cardinal direction of the head during burial. Circles, females; triangles, males; squares, unsexed children. The dashed line shows the local range estimated by Bentley et al. (2002).



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MARRIAGE AND FAMILY IN THE LBK Overall, the strontium isotope analyses of human skeletons from LBK cemeteries in the Upper Rhine valley show a significant proportion of non-local females (Fig. 3). The prevalence of females among the non-locals is most significant at Schwetzingen (p 0.05) and at Dillingen (p 0.14). Although the specific circumstances certainly differed from site to site, the simplest explanation2 is that the kinship system was broadly patrilocal, that is, it was the women who relocated within the exogamous marriage system. Patrilocality would appear to be the most stable kinship system for LBK society because considerable herds of livestock were kept, and ownership of livestock is strongly associated with patrilocality (Holden 2002; Holden & Mace 2003; Holden et al. 2003). There is support for this interpretation also from genetics. By comparing data on the diversity of Y-chromosomes (inherited from the father) and mtDNA (inherited from the mother) among modern Europeans, Seilestad et al. (1998) identified generally greater mobility (i.e. genetic homogeneity across space) among women than among men. Assuming the differences are not artefacts of comparing data from different molecules in different European populations, the most likely explanation is patrilocality during the general prehistory of Europe (Calafell et al. 2000; Seielstad et al. 1998; Stoneking 1998). Although the ancient DNA and isotope results so far do not overlap on many of the same LBK skeletons, Flomborn Burial 13, the one identified by Haak et al. (2005) with ‘Neolithic farmer’ (haplotype N1a) ancestry, was also the only Flomborn woman without an upland strontium isotope signature, and hence the best candidate from this site for a woman of Neolithic farmer ancestry. This is speculating, but it shows how much could be learned by analysing both isotopes and ancient DNA in the same individuals in the future. Isotopic analyses from the site of Talheim, a late LBK community killed in a violent raid, support the patrilineal hypothesis in rather dramatic fashion. The remains of 34 individuals recovered at Talheim (c. 4900–4800 cal BC), in the Neckar valley of Germany, included nine men, seven women, two adults of unknown sex and 16 children, all buried in a single pit 3 m long (Wahl & König 1987; Wild et al. 2004). All show violent injuries as if the victims were killed in a single massacre, and were probably the residents of a village (Wahl & König 1987). Tooth enamel samples of most of these individuals were analysed for strontium, oxygen and carbon isotopes 2

It should be noted that the greater variation in 87Sr/86Sr among Neolithic females is in no way an artefact of any physiological differences between males and females, as strontium isotopes do not fractionate during biological processes, and furthermore, the opposite pattern (local females, non-local males) has in fact been observed for a case study from early agricultural Thailand (Bentley et al. 2005).


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(Bentley et al. n.d.). By plotting the strontium and oxygen isotopes from the Talheim tooth enamel samples, three distinct clusters appear (Fig. 8), which can be considered groups with different childhood origins (whether sedentary or mobile). As Fig. 8 shows, Groups 1 and 2 are quite distinct, with the d18O gap between them about as large as the variation within each group. Of these, Group 1 appears to represent the local community because its 87Sr/86Sr is consistent with the expected local range, and also because it contains all of the young children. It has been argued that the young women from Talheim, notably underrepresented among the remains, were taken away by their captors (e.g. Wild et al. 2004). This is supported by the isotope evidence, as the most striking aspect of Group 1 in Fig. 8 is that it contains no adult females: only males, young children, and an 11-year-old girl. None of the four adult females analysed fell within this local group; although a small sample, given that 10 out of 15 (2⁄3) of the other samples were in Group 1, the probability of this happening by chance alone is less than 2% ( [1⁄3]4). Because there are two adult women in both Group 2 and Group 3, it appears that the women of Group 1 were selectively spared (captured) by the attackers.

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Figure 8. Isotope values in human tooth enamel from Talheim, showing 87Sr/86Sr vs. d18O. Circles, females; triangles, males; squares, young children ( 6 years). Boys and girls ages 6–12 are shown with symbols like the adults, but smaller. The colour shadings denote three groups determined by Bentley et al. (n.d.), including: Group 1 (open), Group 2 (grey), and Outliers (black). To avoid clutter, error bars are shown only for the children, as these are typical errors for all the other measurements. After Bentley et al. (n.d., fig. 5a).



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Remarkably, by combining the isotope data with the results of previous skeletal analyses, it appears that Talheim Group 2 may have been a nuclear family. Figure 9 shows the way in which Alt et al. (1997) summarised their major skeletal-biological results, showing which Talheim individuals possess relatively rare, heritable traits, numbered 164, 333, 554 and 673. The lines in Fig. 9 connect individuals of particular similarity, which may include similarities involving traits other than these four. Of particular interest are a man in his twenties (84-2), a boy (84-23) and a girl both about 11 years old (84-23 and 83-15A), whom Alt et al. (1995, 214–15) postulated may have been a father and his two children. The five individuals of Group 2 include the ‘father’ (84-2) and the 11-year-old ‘daughter’ (83-15A) and, although it did not include the ‘son’ (84-23), Group 2 does contain another 11-year-old boy (83-15B) who seems just as likely to be the ‘son’, as he shares traits 164 and 333 and was linked to the potential father by a line of genetic similarity (Fig. 9). The two adult women in Group 2 include a 20-year old woman

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Figure 9. Diagram of the major skeletal-biological results of Alt et al. (1995; 1997) on the Talheim individuals. Individuals sampled in this study for isotopes are in black, with grey showing individuals not sampled. Similar individuals are connected, with solid lines for 35% similarity, and dashed lines for 25% similarity. Boxes show individuals possessing certain traits (trait numbers are indicated at the bottom of each box). After Alt et al. (1995, fig. 2).


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(84-4, upper left in Fig. 2), who seems a good candidate for the wife of the ‘father’ because she has relatively little genetic similarity with him, which would mean that the ‘children’ inherited traits 164 and 333 paternally. The last member is a 50-year old woman, a potential ‘grandmother’ (83-22D) who could be on the mother’s side, since she too lacks traits 164 and 333. Although this interpretation is partly subjective, it really should be no surprise to discover a family within this community, and the particular group membership of a man, a woman, two similarly aged children, and a woman of the previous generation seems unlikely to be a chance combination. Fox (1983, 27–53) describes the nuclear family as generally viable within patrilineal kinship systems, mainly because men, whose role in matrilineal societies is essentially impregnation, generally commit in patrilineal societies to one wife, in order to control the inheritance of paternal property for their children. From an anthropological perspective, then, the isotopic evidence for patrilocality suggests that nuclear families were possible in the LBK, and reciprocally, the evidence for a nuclear family at Talheim supports the case for patrilineal/patrilocal kinship.

SPECIALISATION AND FAMILIAL OCCUPATIONS IN THE LBK The results from Talheim (Bentley et al. n.d.) yielded one additional revealing pattern involving Group 3. With the four highest 87Sr/86Sr values of the Talheim sample (Fig. 8), Group 3 includes two females (83-10B, 83-20A) and two males (83-7 and 83-18B). The two males were actually identified by Alt et al. (1997) as possible brothers or cousins based on similarities in skeletal morphology. All four were close to 30 years old when they died. Bentley et al. (nd.) also measured carbon isotopes (d13C) in the Talheim sample, and by plotting 87Sr/86Sr vs. d13C (Fig. 10). The data fall into two arrays: a horizontal array with relatively uniform 87Sr/86Sr, and a diagonal array in which 87Sr/86Sr correlates linearly with d13C (r2 0.89 for 10 data points). Group 3 falls exclusively within the diagonal array, and Groups 1 and 2 fall within the horizontal array. Since the regional uplands tend to yield both higher 87Sr/86Sr and higher d13C (Bentley & Knipper 2005), the diagonal array probably aligns with increasingly upland diet contribution. Because certain LBK cattle, sheep and goats from this area (discussed below) yield values significantly above 0.710, we can be fairly sure that LBK livestock were herded into the uplands, including the Black Forest (Kienlin & ValdeNowak 2003; Valde-Nowak 2002; Whittle 1996, 162). Hence the diagonal array in Fig. 10 may represent different consumption of upland-reared meat (see Bentley et al. n.d.), and possibly the livestock herders of the community.



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Figure 10. 87Sr/86Sr and d13C for the Talheim individuals, compared with the presence/absence of the four important non-metric traits identified from skeletal morphology by Alt et al. (1995, 1997), including: 164 and/or 333 (black), 554 (grey), 673 (outlining square) or none of these traits (open). As in Fig. 9, the smaller symbols indicate girls and boys aged 6–12. After Bentley et al. (n.d., fig. 6).

What is most remarkable about Fig. 10 is that, by using the data symbols to represent the genetic traits, we find that all six of the individuals possessing genetic trait 164 and/or 333 plot along the horizontal array, and the three with trait 554 plot along the diagonal array. Although a small sample, this is significant, as the probability that three samples of one description would plot distinctly from six samples of another description by random chance is less than 1%. Also, among the six remaining individuals without any of these four traits, five occur within the diagonal array (Fig. 10). This indicates a correlation between diet, geographic origin and genetic relatedness, suggesting the plausible association of specialised cultivators with the horizontal array and livestock herders with the diagonal array (Group 3), with both specialisations being familial, learned by children from their parent(s). The idea of livestock herders as familial, socially-distinct specialists in the LBK can be further explored at Vaihingen, a settlement occupied from the early (Flomborn) phase of the LBK through to at least the mid-LBK, with the remains of at least 80 longhouses, recovered in the excavations led by Rüdiger Krause. Some time after the settlement was established in the Earliest LBK, Vaihingen was encircled by a ditch roughly 2 m wide, and less


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than a century after that, the ditch was filled in (Krause 2000). During the subsequent LBK phases, at least 80 people were buried in all layers of the ditch fill. Other burials, at least 40, were made within the settlement, often in the lateral trenches next to houses. Since the ditch burials usually contained little more than a few potsherds, and a few individuals apparently were simply thrown into the ditch, they would seem to reflect a social group marginalised from those who were buried (and presumably lived) within the settlement. Strontium isotope analyses of human enamel revealed significantly more ‘non-local’ strontium isotope signatures in human tooth enamel samples from the ditch burials than from the settlement burials (Bentley et al. 2003a). Although it may be that the non-locals were immigrants from other villages, it seems at least as likely that they were livestock herders, especially since the cattle, sheep and goats from Vaihingen show a wide range of 87 Sr/86Sr values. Bentley et al. (2004) found that pigs had the narrowest range of signatures from the site, and were hence locally kept. That study also found, however, a wide range of strontium isotope signatures from cattle, sheep and goats, many of which were pastured into the uplands, such as the Black Forest. In fact, archaeological survey of flint artefacts has shown that people used the Black Forest Mountains probably for summer highland pasturing and leaf-foddering, by the Late Neolithic or before (Kienlin & ValdeNowak 2003; Valde-Nowak 2002). Transhumance at Vaihingen was confirmed by analysing cow enamel samples at regular intervals along the growth axis of the tooth, yielding a continuous 87Sr/86Sr record for the first two years of the cow’s life. The results (Bentley & Knipper 2005) from three Vaihingen cows show that one was clearly taken into the uplands during the summer to pasture, while the other two were taken to different places during the summer (Fig. 11). With further analyses planned, what is so intriguing so far is that the three Vaihingen cows are different; one appears to have gone from the settlement into the uplands and then returned to the settlement, whereas the others seem to have started somewhere away from Vaihingen. It may be that different groups, possibly family lineages, maintained access to different pasture lands of the area. This was the case in historic Corsica, for example, as pastoralists would return to the same pasture land year after year, criss-crossing each other’s paths on the island to their patches, which were distributed for particular historical reasons rather than simply being nearest to their winter settlements. Given the palaeobotanical evidence for intensive gardening in the LBK of this region (Bogaard 2004), there may have been a division of labour between cultivators and pastoralists. It is tempting to propose that men herded the livestock and women tended the gardens, but not only is the relationship between gender and Neolithic labour potentially more complicated than that



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Cow 3822 Cow 3194 Cow 4850

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Figure 11. 87Sr/86Sr in teeth from three different cows at Vaihingen. Cattle teeth grow at different times after birth, with the second molar (M2) growing from about birth to about ten months, and the third molar (M3) growing from about age 10 months to about 2 years old. After Bentley & Knipper (n.d.)

(Peterson 2002), even the four potential livestock herders at Talheim (Group 3 in Fig. 8) include two women. But in any case, the data suggest a link between heredity and subsistence specialisation, the relationship of which with gender and settlement segregation is left to further research.

CONCLUSIONS Isotopic analyses of tooth enamel from early Neolithic skeletons in southern Germany add diversity to the picture of the Neolithic transition in central Europe, which has often been described as a wholesale shift in diet and technology. Taken from several sites in southern Germany spanning most of the LBK era, the isotopic data demonstrate: some degree of immigration from nearby indigenous groups; social differences (in burial orientation and artefact associations) within LBK communities between locals and non-locals; a pattern of patrilocal kinship which supports (via anthropological kinship theory) the potential identification of a ‘nuclear family’ at Talheim; and


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finally, specialisation of subsistence activities, such as livestock herding and cultivating, probably along hereditary lines. In any case, it is clear that early Neolithic settlements in central Europe were not simply manifestations of a homogenous ‘package’, but were diverse communities characterised by many different social and economic roles which archaeology is actually capable now of resolving. Note. I thank Detlef Gronenborn for comments and suggestions, and the following people for their contributions over the years to the work discussed in this paper: T. Douglas Price, Tina Hayes, Corina Knipper, Tim Atkinson, Elisabeth Stephan, Matthew Cooper, Rüdiger Krause, Joachim Wahl, Paul Fullagar, and William M. White.

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Exploiting molecular and isotopic signals at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition RICHARD P. EVERSHED

INTRODUCTION THE PAUCITY OF CULTURAL FINDS at this key stage in human prehistory increases the need to fully and effectively exploit all the sources of evidence that exist. Organic residues, preserved in association with skeletal remains and pottery, have the potential to provide various levels of information relating to diet and subsistence, and thus the wider interactions of ancient humans with their environment. Such organic residues are inherently biochemically complex and, thus, demand rigorous chemical and biochemical methods be employed in their investigation. Further challenges to achieving reliable interpretations, based on such residues, derive from the complexities of human behaviour and the uncertain impacts of taphonomic/diagenetic alterations during deposition and burial. This paper explores the potential to enhance the rigour and level of information retrievable from the biochemical constituents of skeletal remains and pottery by exploiting new sources of molecular and isotopic information. The following possibilities will be addressed: (i) deriving palaeodietary information from human remains via the complementary use of amino acid and lipid components; and (ii) assessing terrestrial and marine contributions to organic residues preserved in skeletal remains and pottery.

COMPOUND-SPECIFIC STABLE ISOTOPE ANALYSIS OF BONE BIOCHEMICAL COMPONENTS Light stable isotopes were first used in archaeology for palaeodietary reconstruction in the late 1970s (Vogel & Van der Merwe 1977). Since then palaeodietary reconstructions, based on bulk carbon and nitrogen isotopes values of the collagen and hydroxyapatite preserved in skeletal remains, have been applied widely to archaeological studies and are discussed in Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 141–164, © The British Academy 2007.


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detail elsewhere in this volume. In brief, the reconstruction of ancient diets in this way is possible because d13C and d15N values of fossil consumer tissues reflect the isotopic signatures of the local environment, specifically the plants that lie at the base of the food chain, i.e. the ‘You are what you eat (or more precisely assimilate)’ principle. Although isotopic analysis may not always allow the precise reconstruction of diet, it can allow discrimination of major dietary trends and niches (Gannes et al. 1998). The vast majority of studies performed to date have used bulk stable isotope values of collagen and apatite. The compound-specific stable carbon isotope approach draws on new technologies and allows access to stable isotope information inaccessible to bulk methods, focusing on individual collagen amino acids, cholesterol and fatty acids. With these possibilities in mind we have explored the use of compound-specific stable isotope methods. Our overarching aim has been to: (i) improve the understanding of the isotope signals carried by the various tissue biochemicals; (ii) glean new information inaccessible to bulk stable isotope analyses, and (iii) add new insights into interpretations based on the widely applied bulk collagen isotope method. In order to achieve this we have rigorously assessed analytical methodologies for compound-specific stable isotope analysis by gas chromatographycombustion-isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GC-C-IRMS; Docherty et al. 2001; Jim et al. 2003a; Jones 2002; Stott & Evershed 1996). We have used animal feeding experiments and mathematical modelling methods to establish how macronutrient compositions and stable isotope values of dietary constituents are reflected in the bone biochemicals, including the amino acids that comprise collagen, cholesterol and fatty acids (Howland 2003; Howland et al. 2003; Jim 2000; Jim et al. 2001; 2003b; 2006; Jones 2002; Stott et al. 1997b) and now are applying these approaches to address a range of archaeological questions (Copley et al. 2004a; Corr et al. 2005). Our investigations have demonstrated widely different turnover times for collagen and lipids, offering the potential for gaining insights into long and short-term dietary change (Copley et al. 2004a; Jim 2000). We have also demonstrated how different bone biochemicals reflect different dietary components, i.e. cholesterol and apatite record d13Cwhole diet, while the bulk stable isotope signal of collagen is biased towards dietary protein sources (Howland et al. 2003; Jim 2000; Jim et al. 2004). Interestingly, by probing the carbon isotope signals of individual amino acids in collagen, from experimental animals (rats and pigs) raised on controlled diets, we have been able to: (i) demonstrate that no detectable fractionation occurs during the assimilation of essential amino acids, and (ii) determine the extent of incorporation of non-protein dietary carbon into de novo synthesised non-essential amino acids (Jim et al. 2006; Jones 2002; Howland et al. 2003).


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Compound-specific stable isotope analyses of the building blocks of complex biopolymers, such as collagen, are essential to unravelling the stable isotope signals expressed in bulk signals. The exploitation of individual collagenous amino acids has great potential in palaeodietary reconstruction, but surprisingly only a handful of studies have determined the d13C values of amino acids from ancient bone collagen (Copley et al. 2004a; Corr et al. 2005; Fogel & Tuross 2003; Hare & Estep 1983; Hare et al. 1991; Tuross et al. 1988). Another advantage of determining compound-specific stable isotope values of amino acids is that the question of contamination can be minimised since: (i) the purity (% compositions of amino acids compared to fresh collagen) of amino acid extracts are routinely assessed as part of the analytical protocol; (ii) compound-specific specific stable isotope values are recorded on-line taking advantage of the high resolution capabilities of GC capillary columns to resolve individual amino acids from any co-extracted impurities; (iii) sample size of collagen, and hence of precious archaeological bone, is greatly reduced since only c. 40 ng of each amino acid is required, with 12 amino acids being determined in a single run; and (iv) whole collagen stable isotope values can be readily reconstructed from the individual amino acid d13C values via mass balance calculations (Jim et al. 2003a). A major argument for developing this line of approach lies in the fact that different dietary components (macronutrients) are used to biosynthesise different bone biochemical components, i.e. lipids versus protein and the different amino acids comprising collagen. Thus, the application of compoundspecific isotopic approaches has the capacity to improve our understanding of the relationship between dietary macronutrient composition and the d13C values of bone components, thereby opening up new levels of dietary information and refining archaeological interpretations (Ambrose 1993; Hare et al. 1991; Jim et al. 2001; 2003b; 2004; 2006).

THE QUESTION OF MARINE FOOD CONSUMPTION BY ANCIENT HUMANS Evidence for changing patterns of marine food consumption by prehistoric peoples, detectable via stable isotope analysis, was first presented by Tauber (1981) as early as 1981, in his report of results from human skeletons from Denmark. This led him to suggest a dramatic change in the diet of Mesolithic humans, who ate mostly marine protein, to Early Neolithic people, who ate none. A more recent report based on an increased sample set appears to confirm this trend (Richards et al. 2003). This recent report has been much debated; indeed a recent issue of the journal Antiquity contained three papers focusing on this question (Hedges 2004; Lidén et al. 2004; Milner et al. 2004).


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Three areas of ambiguity appear to have emerged: (i) the precise definition of the end member d13C values; (ii) the variation in the enrichment of d13C values in food chains; and (iii) interpretation of the collagen isotope signals represented by collagen. It has been acknowledged that there may be a degree of uncertainty in the interpretation of marine diet resulting from these factors (Hedges 2004). We would add at least two further areas of uncertainty. First, that the quality control criterion applied to assess the purity of isolated collagen, i.e. the widely used C/N ratios of 2.9 to 3.4 (DeNiro 1985) or 3.1 to 3.5 (van Klinken 1999), leaves considerable room for exogenous (contaminating) organic matter affecting bulk carbon and nitrogen isotope values, and, secondly, that a linear mixing model appears to be assumed between end member values for marine and terrestrial protein based stable isotope values. It would actually be rather surprising if when humans consumed diets of such diverse biochemical compositions as those comprising marine and terrestrial foods, their tissue (e.g. collagen) isotopic compositions varied according to a simple linear function (Phillips & Koch 2002). This recent controversy concerning the Mesolithic/Neolithic diet transition would seem to emphasise the importance of exploring compoundspecific approaches to palaeodietary reconstruction. Interestingly, we have recently applied the compound-specific approach to the question of marine resource exploitation by the hunter/gatherers from the southern and western Cape Region of South Africa (Corr et al. 2005). Our findings would seem to have relevance on the on-going debate concerning marine food consumption by prehistoric humans in Europe, and highlight many other challenges that exist in determining the consumption of marine resources by prehistoric peoples around the world. In parts of the Cape the arid nature of the environment (⬍400 mm per annum) results in extremely enriched herbivore bone collagen d15N values, which overlap with the isotopic range for marine species; thereby effectively negating interpretations based on this criterion alone (Heaton 1987; Heaton et al. 1986; Schwarcz et al. 1999; Sealy 1997) since herbivore bone collagen d15N values overlap with the range for marine species (Heaton et al. 1986; Sealy et al. 1987). A further problem in this region is the presence of C4 grasses in the terrestrial ecosystem, which is reflected in the high mean bone collagen d13C value of ⫺11⫾1.9 ‰ recorded for many animals for the past 11,000 years. The latter factor largely precludes the use of bulk d13C values of bone collagen to assess the extent of marine food consumption. Our compound-specific methods appear to overcome both these problems and provide support for our decision to pursue this alternative approach. To summarise, we applied GC-C-IRMS to determine d13C values



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for amino acids from the bone collagen of a selection of terrestrial and marine animals. We then investigated the collagen of 26 prehistoric inhabitants of the southern and western Cape recording compound-specific d13C values for five essential (threonine, valine, leucine, isoleucine and phenylalanine) and seven non-essential (alanine, glycine, serine, proline, hydroxyproline, aspatate and glutamate) amino acids, which together constitute 85% of the carbon in bone collagen. The results were then interpreted in the light of models built on the results obtained from the tissues of experimental rats and pigs (Howland 2003; Howland et al. 2003) and rats (Jim et al. 2006; Jones 2002). Interestingly, we revealed a phenomenon that would have remained undetected if only bulk collagen isotope values had been determined. Specifically, unusually high d13C values were observed for glycine in marine mammals, which appear to be inherited in human bone collagen. Enriched glycine d13C values are well known; indeed they account for the relative enrichment of bulk collagen d13C values in mammalian tissues, since glycine contributes 17.5% of the carbon atoms of collagen (Abelson & Hoering 1961; Fogel et al. 1997; Hare & Estep 1983). However, we have observed an additional enrichment in glycine in marine organisms and have proposed this as a new proxy for marine resource consumption by ancient humans (Corr et al. 2005). The basis of the new proxy lies in the fundamentally different metabolic and biosyntheitic pathways of essential and non-essential amino acids. Thus, phenylalanine (essential) and glycine (non essential, although unusually in this case glycine appears to behave as an essential amino acid) preserve very different palaeodietary signals and the difference in their d13C values (D13CGlycine-Phenylalanine) can be exploited to distinguish between marine protein and terrestrial protein consumers. D13CGlycine-Phenylalanine values show strong correlation (R2 ⫽ 0.84; Fig. 1) with collagen d15N values from the same individuals, thereby revealing the potential of this new marine dietary indicator to serve as a substitute for d15N values of whole collagen. This observation alone serves to illustrate the importance of investigating the isotopic signal of bone collagen at the level of individual amino acids. We believe that such investigations hold the key to fully exploiting the potential of the stable isotope values of bone collagen in order to add greater confidence to interpretations based on bulk stable isotope values. Indeed, such compound-specific methods are proving of great value in the fields of ecology (Fantle et al. 1999) and biogeochemistry (Keil & Fogel 2001).


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Figure 1. Plot showing the correspondence between d13CGlycine-Phenylalanine and d15N values of collagen from hunter/gatherers from the south-western Cape, indicating the potential of compound-specific glycine carbon isotope values as new marine dietary proxy.

INTEGRATING PALAEODIETARY PROXIES FROM SKELETAL AND SOFT TISSUE REMAINS Lipids, including cholesterol and to a lesser extent fatty acids, are preserved in skeletal remains, however, these are usually discarded as part of collagen or apatite preparation protocols. The widespread survival of cholesterol archaeological bone was demonstrated in 1995 (Evershed et al. 1995). Archaeological human and animal bones, including a 75,000-year-old whale bone from a permafrost deposit, were found to contain free cholesterol and cholesteryl fatty acyl esters, and diagenetic products (5a and 5b-cholestan-3one, 5a and 5b-cholestanol and cholest-5-en-7-one-3b-ol; Evershed et al. 1995; Stott et al. 1997b). The cholesterol found in bone may derive from either the remnants of the original blood-borne lipid (in the case of vascular bones), the fat component of bone marrow that would have been present at the time of death of the organism or a component of cellular lipids present



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in bone forming cells (Stott et al. 1997a). The use of cholesterol as a palaeodietary indicator has been extensively investigated (Jim et al. 2004; Stott & Evershed 1996; Stott et al. 1997a; 1997b; 1999). The d3C values of cholesterol have been shown to be constant across different skeletal members for a given individual (Stott & Evershed 1996). Assessment of d13C values for cholesterol from animals raised on isotopically distinct diets (Corr 2003; Jim 2000; Jim et al. 2001; 2003b; 2004; Stott et al. 1997a), indicate that: (i) cholesterol is a good indicator of whole diet, (ii) neosynthesis of cholesterol is more significant than assimilation in determining the d13C value of cholesterol, and (iii) bone cholesterol d13C values respond to changes in the isotopic composition of whole diet more rapidly than collagen and apatite, such that cholesterol is an indicator of short-term diet (Stott et al. 1997a; Jim 2000). These results have been applied, alongside collagen and apatite analysis, to address archaeological questions relating to the diets of a range of ancient populations (Copley et al. 2004a; Corr 2003; Howland 2003; Jim 2000; Jones 2002; Stott et al. 1999). The fatty acids present in archaeological bone, teeth and soft tissues have been somewhat less explored as a source of palaeodietary information, although they have been shown to survive in a wide variety of inhumations (Buckley & Evershed 2001; Corr et al. submitted; Evershed 1990; 1992; Evershed & Connolly 1988; 1994; Evershed et al. 1995). This appears due to the low survival rate of bone fatty acids in the archaeological record; fatty acids only seem to be preserved in significant abundances under exceptional burial environments, for example arid and waterlogged sites (Copley et al. 2004a; Evershed & Connolly 1988). Fatty acids present in bone most likely originate from bone marrow fat (Evershed et al. 1995). Feeding studies on rats and pigs raised on isotopically controlled diets, have shown that bone fatty acid d13C values are 13C-depleted by up to 3.4 ‰ with respect to whole diet (Howland et al. 2003; Jim 2000; Jim et al. 2001; 2003b), as a result of a kinetic isotope effect occurring during the oxidation of pyruvate by pyruvate dehydrogenase to acetyl CoA, the common precursor in lipid biosynthesis (DeNiro & Epstein 1977; Hayes 1993). The d13C values of bone fatty acids have recently been used together with those of individual amino acids and apatite as indicators of trends in the management of domesticated animals in Egypt (Copley et al. 2004a). More recent results obtained from compositional and stable isotope analyses of the remains of Kwaday Dän Ts’inchi, a remarkably well-preserved body unearthed from a retreating glacier in the Tatshenshini Alsek Park, British Columbia, Canada, have shown the bones and skin preserve abundant lipids, including cholesterol and fatty acids, in addition to collagen (e.g. Fig. 2). Unusually, the long chain hydroxy acids, 10- and 12-hydroxyeicosanoic acid and the corresponding C22 homologues were detected, which point to


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Figure 2. Partial gas chromatogram of trimethylsilylated total lipid extract of Kwaday Dän Ts’inchi bone. FA denotes fatty acid and IS the internal standard. Peak identities: 1 ⫽ ndodecanoic acid; 2 ⫽ iso-tridecanoic acid; 3 ⫽ n-tridecanoic acid; 4 ⫽ n-tetradecanoic acid; 5 ⫽ anteiso-pentadecanoic acid; 6 ⫽ iso-pentadecanoic acid; 7 ⫽ n-pentadecanoic acid; 8 ⫽ 4,8,12-trimethyltridecanoic acid; 9 ⫽ hexadecenoic acid; 10 ⫽ n-hexadecanoic acid; 11 ⫽ pristanic acid; 12 ⫽ anteiso-heptadecanoic acid; 13 ⫽ iso-heptadecanoic acid; 14 ⫽ nheptadecanoic acid; 15 ⫽ phytanic acid; 16 ⫽ octadecenoic acids; 17 ⫽ n-octadecanoic acid; 18 ⫽ 10-hydroxyhexanoic acid; 19 ⫽ eicosenoic acids; 20 ⫽ 10-hydroxyoctadecanoic acid; 21 ⫽ 12hydroxyoctadecanoic acid; 22 ⫽ docosanoic acids; 23 ⫽ 10-hydroxyeicosanoic acid; 24 ⫽ 12hydroxyeicosanoic acid; 25 ⫽ 10 and 12-hydroxydocosanoic acid; 26 ⫽ cholesta-3,5-diene; 27 ⫽ cholesterol; 28 ⫽ cholest-3-en-4-one; 29 ⫽ n-tetratriacontane (internal standard). The presence of fatty acids of marine origin provides an unexpected new source of palaeodietary information. See Fig. 5 for structures of the isoprenoid fatty acids.

C20:1 and C22:1 being present in the tissues at the time of death, possibly originating from a substantial intake of marine foods by the individual. Additional biomarkers for marine food consumption included the isoprenoidal compounds: phytanic acid, pristanic acid and trimethyltetradecanoic acid (Corr et al. submitted). The d13C values of the cholesterol and collagen components of the skin and bone point to the more rapidly turning over skin components recording the consumption of C3 terrestrial/ fresh-water foods in the months prior to death, while the bone signatures showed high marine protein consumption throughout life (Richards et al. in press).



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ORGANIC RESIDUE ANALYSIS OF PREHISTORIC POTTERY VESSELS During the processing of foodstuffs (e.g. cooking) in unglazed pottery vessels, organic residues can be either adsorbed onto the vessel surface or, more commonly, absorbed into the vessel wall. Extensive investigations, performed over the past two decades, have demonstrated the widespread survival of organic residues in archaeological pottery. For a variety of reasons, but mainly due to their hydrophobic nature and general ubiquity in foodstuffs, absorbed lipids are commonly observed surviving in potsherds for many millennia. Indeed we have observed lipids in the oldest pottery we have so far examined, namely those from prehistoric sites from south-east Europe and the Near East. Our investigations have shown that analyses of both adsorbed and absorbed residues, but most profitably the latter, can lead to the detection of the processing of animal (e.g. Copley et al. 2003; 2005a; 2005b; 2005c; 2005d; Dudd & Evershed 1998; Evershed et al. 1997), plant (Copley et al. 2001; 2005e; Evershed et al. 1991; 1999) and bee (Evershed et al. 2003a; Regert et al. 2001) products. Such analyses can therefore provide rather specific information on the nature of commodities processed in the vessels but also more general information concerning local, or even regional, trends in agricultural practices or evidence of exploitation of natural resources. By far the most common class of organic residue detected in archaeological pottery are degraded animal fats recognised by the high abundances of the C18:0 fatty acid, together with its ubiquitous C16:0 counterpart. A variety of approaches have been employed to identify the sources of animal fats (Evershed et al. 1997; Mottram et al. 1999), but by far the most effective method currently available is compound-specific stable isotope analysis via GC-C-IRMS, which allows the structures of diagnostic (biomarker) components of lipid mixtures to be unambiguously linked to their stable isotope values. As in the case of animal fats, compound-specific d13C values afford insights into the biochemical sources of biomarkers even when their chemical structures are identical. d13C values of fatty acids provide the basis for distinguishing between ruminant (e.g. sheep/goat and cattle) and porcine (pig) adipose fats (Evershed et al. 1997; Mottram et al. 1999). The d13C values exhibited by these animals must reflect their different diets and fundamental differences in their metabolisms and physiologies (Evershed et al. 1999). Especially relevant to detecting the emergence of the Secondary Product Complex as a component of the Neolithisation of Europe (Sherratt 1981; 1983) is the ability to separate ruminant adipose and dairy fats, again distinguished by the d13C values of their fatty acids (Dudd & Evershed 1998). The C18:0 fatty acid in dairy fat is significantly more depleted in 13C than the corresponding compound in


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carcass fats (c. 2.1 ‰; Copley et al. 2003). Fatty acids in ruminant adipose tissues are mainly synthesised from acetate (as acetyl CoA), originating predominantly from the fermentation of dietary carbohydrate in the rumen. In contrast, the mammary gland is incapable of synthesising the C18:0 fatty acid; instead, it is obtained via the remobilisation of adipose fatty acids and directly from the dietary C18 fatty acids, after biohydrogenation in the rumen (Moore & Christie 1981). The difference between the C18:0 fatty acids from ruminant adipose and dairy fat can be explained by the fact that lipids are more depleted in 13C than carbohydrates (DeNiro & Epstein 1977), and approximately 60% of the C18:0 fatty acid in dairy fat are derived via biohydrogenation of dietary unsaturated C18 fatty acids (i.e. C18:1, C18:2 and C18:3) in the rumen. GC-C-IRMS analysis of remnant animal fats of archaeological origin has now been extensively used to address some key questions concerning animal husbandry in prehistory, for example the earliest evidence for dairying in prehistoric Britain and Europe (Copley et al. 2003; 2005a; 2005b; 2005c; 2005d; Craig et al. 2005a; 2005b; Dudd & Evershed 1998), and the exploitation of pigs in the late Neolithic (Mukherjee 2005; Mukherjee et al. in press). A key aspect of the use of stable isotopes in archaeological studies is establishing appropriate comparative collections. For example, animals farmed today cannot be directly compared to those raised in antiquity due to such factors as: (i) intensive farming which has led to animals being fed supplements to enhance their diets and to improve the nutritional quality of their meat and milk (e.g. Chilliard et al. 2001; Lowe et al. 2002; Nürnberg et al. 1998); (ii) selective breeding resulting in changes in the biochemical composition of the tissues of domestic animals; (iii) the burning of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution causing changes in the isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2 (Friedli et al. 1986), resulting in the tissues of modern animals being depleted in 13C compared to their ancient counterpart; and (iv) C4 plants (e.g. maize) having been introduced to Britain and incorporated into animals’ diets, again significantly altering the carbon isotopic composition of animal tissues. Our identifications of remnant animal fats extracted from archaeological pottery have been aided by a carefully assembled database of modern fats (Copley et al. 2003; Dudd & Evershed 1998; Evershed et al. 2003b). The reference animals sampled were selected due to their having been reared on known diets of C3 origin and comprise adipose fat from cattle, sheep and pigs, and milk fat from cattle and sheep. The d13C values obtained from the modern reference animals are adjusted for post-Industrial Revolution effects of fossil fuel burning by the addition of 1.2 ‰ (Friedli et al. 1986). Confidence ellipses (1 s.d.) corresponding to pig adipose, horse, ruminant adipose and ruminant milk provide reference d13C ranges, onto



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which the values for archaeological samples can be overlaid to assess lipid origins (Fig. 3). In areas of the world where C4 plants form a significant contribution to animals’ diets, modern reference animals should be chosen accordingly. The C4 contribution accounted for it by comparing the difference in the D13C values of the C16:0 and C18:0 fatty acids for the reference and archaeological fats (D13C) where D13C ⫽ d13C18:0 ⫺d13C16:0 (Copley et al. 2003; Evershed et al. 1999; Mukherjee et al. 2005). Clearly, many archaeological vessels will have been used to process commodities from more than one type of animal. In order to account for this a mixing model is used to calculate theoretical d13C values. This mathematical model has been used elsewhere for the detection of the mixing of vegetable oils of differing stable carbon isotope composition (Mottram et al. 2003;

Figure 3. Plot of d13C values of the major saturated fatty acids [palmitic (C16:0) and stearic (C18:0) acids] of the adipose fats of modern horse, ruminant (cattle and sheep) adipose and milk fats, and porcine adipose fats. The fields are 1r confidence ellipses. The d13C values have been adjusted for the post-Industrial Revolution effects of fossil fuel burning.


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Woodbury et al. 1995) and sedimentary lipids (Bull et al. 1999), and utilises the percentage abundance of each specific fatty acid and its associated d13C value. Recent work has shown that numerical values for types of animal fat derived from plots of the type shown in Fig. 4 do show reasonable correlations with faunal assessments based on skeletal remains (Copley et al. 2005d; Mukherjee 2005; Mukherjee et al. 2005; in press). Especially relevant in the context of this volume is the observation that 25% of the Neolithic sherds contained dairy fats, confirming that dairying was a major component of prehistoric farming, suggesting that the emergence of dairying in farming communities (the Secondary Products Complex) occurred prior to its introduction to Britain from, say, the end of the fifth millennium cal BC at the earliest. Interestingly, evidence for the processing of bee products, most likely honey, based on the detection of beeswax, and plant products, was also detected in a relatively small number of sherds.

DETECTING MARINE FATS IN POTTERY VESSELS A recent development in the study of animal fats in archaeological pottery has been our recognition of a range of lipid biomarkers for the processing of marine products in pottery vessels. Marine commodities contain high abundances of polyunsaturated fatty acids; indeed, two such polyunsaturated fatty acids, eicosapentaenoic acid (C20:5 n-3) and docosahexaenoic acid (C22:6 n-3), are believed to have health benefits for humans (e.g. Passi et al. 2002), and so it is encouraged that modern diets include a greater consumption of fish. Modern terrestrial and marine-based animal/plant fats and oils are relatively easy to distinguish through their lipid compositions; few terrestrial plants or animal-derived fats contain high abundances of polyunsaturated fatty acids as observed in marine fats/oils (e.g. Rossell 1991). However, unsaturated fatty acids rarely survive as significant components of organic residues in pottery vessels, since they are particularly susceptible to oxidation during vessel use and burial (Evershed 1993). Thus, the use of compositional data derived from unsaturated fatty acids (not only di- and polyunsaturated fatty acids but also monosaturated fatty acids) cannot be used in drawing comparisons between modern reference fats and archaeological lipid residues. Despite these apparent complications, we recently obtained very promising new evidence that the processing of marine animal products can be detected in organic residues from pottery vessels (Copley et al. 2004b; Hansel et al. 2004). The initial pottery vessels investigated were excavated from a coastal site in Brazil, and absorbed lipid residue analysis demonstrated the presence of a range of unusual fatty acid (Figs 5 and 7), phytanic acid


Figure 4. Plots (a) of d13C values of methyl esters of C16:0 and C18:0 fatty acids from the three periods indicated. The ellipses correspond to those discussed above in relation to Fig. 3. Sherds plotting between the represent the mixing of animal products in vessels. Plots (b) of D13C values versus d13C values of C16:0 fatty acid provide a further environment independent method of classifying animal fats.



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Figure 5. Unusual biomarkers of marine fats and oils observed in pottery vessels from coastal sites (Hansel et al. 2004; Copley et al. 2004b). 1 ⫽ 4,8,12-trimethyltridecanoic acid (4,8,12-TMTD); 2 ⫽ phytanic acid (3,7,11,15-tetramethylhexadecanoic acid); 3 ⫽ pristanic acid (2,6,10,14-tetramethylpentadecanoic acid); and 4 to 10 ⫽ x-(o-alkylphenyl)alkanoic acids.

(3,7,11,15-tetramethylhexadecanoic acid), pristanic acid (2,6,10,14-tetramethylpentadecanoic acid) and 4,8,12-TMTD (4,8,12-trimethyltridecanoic acid) in some of the lipid extracts (Hansel et al. 2004). These isoprenoid compounds (already referred to above in relation to Kwaday Dän Ts’inchi) are found in particularly high concentrations in marine animals, and are absent or present in only very low concentrations in some terrestrial organisms (e.g. Ackman & Hooper 1968). Importantly, they have not been detected in sherds analysed in this laboratory obtained from numerous inland archaeological sites, and therefore appear to be a promising indicator for the processing of marine products in the pottery. Further evidence for a marine source was suggested (Hansel et al. 2004) through the presence of x-(o-alkylphenyl)alkanoic acids (Figs 5 and 6) with 16 to 20 carbon atoms; these are fatty acids containing an unusual benzenyl



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m

Figure 6. Partial GC/MS total ion current (TIC; A) and m/z 105 (B) and 290 (C) summed mass chromatograms of the lipid extract of potsherd from a coastal site on Santa Caterina Island, southern Brazil. m/z ⫽ 105 is the dialkylbenzene fragment ion, and m/z ⫽ 290 corresponds to the molecular ion (M⫹.) for x-(o-alkylphenyl)octadecanoic acids. The inset shows the positions of the isomers C to I displayed in the m/z 290 mass chromatogram. n is the length of the alkyl side chain –1 where, for x-(o-alkylphenyl)octadecanoic acids, n ⫹ m ⫽ 10 (modified from Hansel et al. 2004). A ZB1 capillary column was utilised.

moiety within the Alkyl chain. x-(o-alkylphenyl)octadecanoic acids were first detected during the heating of modern cooking oils containing triunsaturated fatty acyl lipids in experiments employed to determine the potential toxicity of frying oils (Michael 1966; 1996). More recently, x-(o-alkylphenyl)octadecanoic acids have been shown to form from methyl linolenic acid through laboratory thermal degradation studies (Matikainen et al. 2003). Figure 7 summarises the reaction scheme leading to their formation; it proceeds with isomerisation and, following a 1,5 hydrogen shift, trans/cis isomerisation occurs, to yield a fully conjugated fatty acid. The cyclic products (4) to (10) are formed via an intramolecular Diels-Alder (IMDA) reaction. Once the cyclodienyl ester has been formed, aromatisation is energetically favourable and occurs rapidly at cooking temperatures. Thus, a product-precursor relationship exists between x-(o-alkylphenyl)alkanoic acids and triunsaturated fatty acids. Since, as noted above, unsaturated fatty acids are unlikely to survive in appreciable concentrations in lipid residues in pottery vessels,


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Figure 7. Scheme (after Hansel et al. 2004) showing the formation of x-(o-alkylphenyl) alkanoic acids from cis, cis, cis-9, 12, 15-octadecatrienoic acid via isomerisation, a 1,5 hydrogen shift and then either a cis/trans isomerisation or a 1,7 hydrogen shift, followed by an intramolecular Diels-Alder (IMDA) reaction and aromatisation. The reaction can occur at 270⬚C over 17 h (Matikainen et al. 2003).

these x-(o-alkylphenyl)alkanoic acids, which are stable compounds, offer a novel means of detecting the processing of commodities containing unsaturated fatty acids. We have recently undertaken laboratory heating experiments to assess whether x-(o-alkylphenyl)alkanoic acids form when pure compounds and triacylglycerol mixtures are heated with a potsherd matrix. The results obtained demonstrate that these compounds form when tri-, di- and monounsaturated fatty acids, but not saturated fatty acids, are heated at 270ºC with potsherd



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(Fig. 7). Distributions obtained are consistent with those seen in lipid residues obtained from potsherds from the coastal archaeological sites of Santa Catarina Island, Brazil and Kasteelberg, South Africa (Copley et al. 2004b; Hansel et al. 2004), thereby confirming that they can serve as indicators for the processing of marine foods, high in marine oils, which contain high abundances of polyunsaturated fatty acids (Copley et al. 2004b; Evershed et al. in press; Hansel et al. 2004). Clearly, much scope exists for investigating the presence or absence of these new marine biomarkers in early Neolithic pottery where, through the use of high sensitivity GC/MS methods, their presence or absence may add substantially to the on-going debate concerning the exploitation or otherwise of marine resources by early agriculturalists/pastoralists.

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS From the foregoing discussion a range of new sources of molecular and isotopic information have been highlighted that show considerable promise for application to studies of changes in diet, resource exploitation and agriculture at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transitions. These new possibilities have been brought about by our efforts to probe the biochemically complex and diagenetically altered organic constituents of skeletal remains and ancient pottery at the molecular level. Such an approach is essential to attain valid interpretations based on such aged and altered materials. In the field of palaeodietary reconstruction, based on skeletal remains, we have demonstrated a range of new biochemical proxies suitable for investigating: (i) whole diet; (ii) specific elements of the diet e.g. protein and energy components; and (iii) long- and short-term dietary variation, applicable to the investigation of ancient diet at any period in human prehistory, provided of course preservation is favourable. Further refinements will be achieved and new proxies will continue to emerge. For example, improvements are ongoing in compound-specific amino acid analyses, with the recent development of a new liquid chromatography LC-IRMS method offering potential advantages over the GC-C-IRMS approach, since no derivatisation (esterification of carboxyl groups/acylation of amino groups) is required. Only acid hydrolysis of the protein is required to provide free amino acids from proteins or peptides and we have already shown that this treatment introduces no significant isotope effect (Jim et al. 2003a). Amino acids separated by aqueous based HPLC are quantitatively converted to CO2 in a reactor containing ammonium peroxodisulphate. Preliminary analyses have shown that such amino acids can be analysed directly on the LC-IRMS systems to provide d13C values, with sensitivities compatible with the concentrations of


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collagen available from many prehistoric skeletal remains (Krummen et al. 2004). Further developments include the possibility of adding compoundspecific d15N and dD determinations to the repertoire of light stable isotopes used in palaeodietary and palaeoecological reconstruction. Both are technically feasible and should help to further unravel and exploit the stable isotope signals carried by a number of biomolecules, including collagenous amino acids. For example, the hydrogen isotope ratios of animal body protein have recently been shown to reflect trophic level (Birchall et al. 2005), with further compound-specific determinations likely to help to identify the biochemical basis of the phenomenon. Additionally, compound-specific dD determinations of fatty acids from pottery will further extend the use of this class of biomolecule. One area of application we are currently exploring is the use of fatty acid dD values, in parallel with d13C values, to distinguish between terrestrial and marine resource exploitation and processing in pottery vessels. Such applications are now possible as a result of the introduction of GC-thermal conversion-IRMS instruments. A further area of application of molecular proxies is that of compoundspecific radiocarbon analysis. Either preparative gas chromatography (Stott et al. 2003) or high performance liquid chromatography (Tripp et al. 2006) can be used to isolate components from complex extracts for radiocarbon analysis. Potential gains in undertaking such analyses include dating early pottery (Berstan 2002; Stott et al. 2003) and skeletal collagen derived amino acids. The latter possibility will allow us to exploit the marine ‘reservoir effect’ or ‘hard water effect’ to improve our understanding of the origins of specific amino acids (Corr et al. 2005). Note. None of the material discussed herein would have been possible without the contributions of members of my research group, past and present. Particular thanks go to Lorna Corr, Mark Copley, Susan Jim, Anna Mukherjee, Mark Howland and Fabrico Hansel, whose recent work features prominently in this contribution. I am also indebted to colleagues in institutions in several continents who have contributed samples, expertise and ideas so generously, and make the undertaking of archaeological research such an enjoyable and infinitely varied endeavour. My collaborators Stanley Ambrose, Bas Payne, Vanessa Straker, Judith Sealy and Mike Richards are thanked for their generous contributions to the original investigations reviewed in this paper. Drs Ian Bull and Robert Berstan are thanked for their expertise and tireless efforts in developing and maintaining the analytical facilities in the Bristol laboratory. None of the work discussed in this contribution would have been possible without the financial support provided by the UK Natural Environment Research Council, English Heritage, The Royal Society and the University of Bristol; their support is gratefully acknowledged.



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Neolithic cattle domestication as seen from ancient DNA RUTH BOLLONGINO & JOACHIM BURGER

INTRODUCTION THE EARLY NEOLITHIC comprises the time when pre-farming people became sedentary and subsequently began to domesticate plants and animals. The first settlers appeared about 12,000 years ago in the Middle and Near East; the Neolithic then expanded all over Europe from about 7000 cal BC onwards. The question is: did the first agro-pastoralists move to Europe, together with their plants and animals, or was it rather a cultural transfer where the Mesolithic people of Europe adopted the idea of domestication? It is possible that animals were imported without major human migration. We know that many plant species, and some animal species, at least sheep and goat, were imported from the Near East, as no wild progenitors existed in Europe. With regard to domestic cattle (B. taurus), however, the situation is different. Its wild ancestor is the aurochs (B. primigenius), which was prevalent all over Europe, Asia and North Africa. Therefore the European aurochs remains a potential progenitor of northern cattle breeds. Even if all cattle were imported, it is still possible that crossbreeding occurred. This could have happened either purposefully (for example, through young female aurochs being caught) or unwillingly (for example, when herds were driven to the forests and the cows could not be kept separate from wild bulls). The most up-to-date knowledge of cattle domestication is the achievement of archaeological and archaeozoological studies. The morphological methods are based on size differences, with domesticated animals usually being smaller compared to their wild relatives. These measurements are sometimes insecure due to sexual dimorphism, high fragmentation of bones, age or the nutritional status of the animals. Morphological methods are limited in the way that these data cannot tell the relation between populations or reveal hybrids. This information can only be received from molecular genetic data.



166


Studies on modern cattle populations already demonstrate the relations of the two major cattle breeds, the humpless taurine cattle (B. taurus) and the Asian humped zebu (B. indicus). Studies by Loftus et al. (1994), Bradley et al. (1996) and MacHugh et al. (1997) showed that these two groups stem from independent domestication events in different geographical regions. Concerning the taurine cattle, recent population studies show that today the genetic diversity is highest in the Near and Middle East (Loftus et al. 1999; Troy et al. 2001). This is an indication of the centre of origin in this region. But modern data can be biased by recent breeding practices and introgression. Only the analysis of ancient samples can help to get at detailed information about prehistoric situations. In this study, we present ancient DNA data from mainly Neolithic bones of both cattle and aurochs from across Central and Eastern Europe.

MATERIALS AND METHOD Samples and amplified loci Altogether 161 ancient bones were analysed. The geographic distribution covers France, Germany, the Balkans and the Near East. Samples are mainly Neolithic but some are dated to the Mesolithic and Bronze Age. Information about origin, age, morphometric classification and haplotypes is given in Table 1. The analysed locus is the HVR I region within the mitochondrial d-loop. The mitochondrial genome is only maternally inherited and does not recombine. Therefore the maternal lineage can be traced back for many generations as changes only occur by mutation. The d-loop is a non-coding region and the lack of selection enables mutations to accumulate at a high rate and therefore the HVR I region is very variable. It is also a prevalent marker for population genetic studies and a large modern dataset for comparison is available. Another advantage of using a mitochondrial marker is the high copy number of the mitochondrial genome. Each cell usually contains only one nucleus but up to several thousands of mitochondrial genomes. This increases the probability of finding sufficient DNA for a successful amplification within ancient samples. In addition, the mitochondrial cytochrome b was amplified from two taurine and two aurochs samples. This marker is a gene and its sequence can be translated into the encoded amino acid sequence, which is mainly of interest for authentification of ancient DNA data.



Atlit Yam, Israel YAM 4

SYR 09

Aswad, Syria

AP 6 AP 7

Bld. 11 Hat.190-210

A375, 92 ADN ZV 120 ZZ124 h. 176 (A208)

25-AP´97 13l 18 26-AP´99 9R 136

416/69

Allendorf, Germany ALL 1

Asagi Pinar, Turkey

65 obj 777 (small) 65 obj 777 (big) 296 obj 3115 62 obj 1246

L146 level2, B1412 Hat. 696.16-696.10

Archaeol. code

ALB 1 ALB 2 ALB 3 ALB 4

Albertfalva, Hungary

Abu Gosh, Israel ABU 2

Archaeological site, Laboratory code

PPNC

Early EPPNB

Karanovo IV

12030-52 cal. BP

Bronze Age, Bell Beaker, 2500 BC

PPNB

Date

L. Kolska Horwitz

C. Edwards, J.-D. Vigne

H. Hongo, M. Özdogan

N. Benecke

Alice Choyke

L. Kolska Horwitz

Given by

Tibia

–

– –

Radius

– – – –

Scapula

Skeletal element

B.p.?

B.p.

B.t. B.t.?

Bos spec.

– – B.p. –

B.p.

Species Morhpol.

–

–

B.t. B.t.

B.p.

B.t. B.p. B.t. B.p.

–

Genetic

– (Continued)

–

T3c Tc

Pc

T3 Pg T3e Pg

–

Haplo-type

Table 1. Archaeological sites, sample names, age, origin, classification and haplotypes for samples used in this study. Haplotype names refer to Fig. 1b. B.p.⫽ Bos primigenius, B.t. ⫽ Bos taurus, Bison b.⫽ Bison bonasus, * ⫽ independent replication in Dublin. ** These Near Eastern samples are replications and were first sequenced by C. J. Edwards at Trinity College, Dublin.

NEOLITHIC CATTLE DOMESTICATION

167

151 23-1

Archaeol. code


CP / 33.116

Cave à L’ours, France CAT 1

CH 02 CH 03 CH 04 CH 11**

CH1996#4 CH1996#3 CH1996#1 CH1996#X1

– –

Budapest, Hungary WIB 1 WIB 2

Catal Höyük, Turkey

–

Berlin, Germany WIB

Berettyószentmárton, Hungary BER 1 56.11.186 BER 2 56.11.426 BER 5 56.11.553 BER 6 56.11.979 BER 8 55.4.132

Bad Abbach, Germany KOEL 1 KOEL 2


7000–6000 BC

3694 BC cal.

Iron Age

Medieval

Late Neolithic

Neolithic

Neolithic 4800–4650 BC

Date

L. Martin, C. Edwards, J.-D. Vigne

Louis Chaix

István Vörös

Norbert Benecke

István Vörös

G. Roth

Given by

Metacarpus Metacarpus Metacarpus Metacarpus

Skull

Rib Rib

–

– – – – –

Radius Humerus

Skeletal element

Bos sp. Bos sp. Bos sp. Bos sp.

B.p.

Bison b. Bison b.

Bison b.

– – – – –

B.p. B.t.

Species Morhpol.

– – – B.t.

B.p.

Bison b. Bison b.

Bison b.

– – – B.t. –

– –

Genetic

– – – T

Pe

– – – T3 –

– –

Haplo-type

168 Ruth Bollongino & Joachim Burger


HK 83:1040 l HK 88:354k HK 83:933 c HK 83:754 o HK 83:702 i

HK 85:142

EIL 7

A367, 92 ADN B x4 F2 (A200) A372, 92 ADN B x3 F2 (A205)

Eilsleben, Germany EIL 1 EIL 2 EIL 4* EIL 5 EIL 6

SYR 06

Dja’de, Syria SYR 01

5000 BC, LBK

Hans-Jürgen Döhle Metacarpus Humerus Humerus, distal Radius, distal Metacarpus, proximal –

–

–

Radius Calcaneus Calcaneus

DG 85-3-46 DG 85-3-11 DG 85-3-10

Tibia, distal H.-P. Uerpmann

Didi Gora, Georgia DID 1 DID2 DID 3

Bronze/Iron Age

Bernburg, 3600 BC Hans-Jürgen Döhle

–

– – – – – – –

Derenburg-Steinkuhlenberg, Germany DER 1 HK 87:183i

L. Chaix


ca. 300 BP (modern bone!)

19 1991 30M 5-13 R 2814 1987 25L 2-39 Lr 87 27M 4-27 G 1991 29M7-15 R2 2372 87 20L 9-46 CH2 91 30M 5-13 R 2672 1991 EF 7-6 Lr1

PPNB, 7000 BC

Chateaux, d’Oex, Switzerland CAD 1

CO 1 CO 2 CO 5 CO 7 CO 9 CO 13 CO 14

Cayönü, Turkey

B.t. B.t. B.p B.p. B.p. B.t

B.p. B.t.

–

–

– – B.t.

B.t.

B.t.

– – – – – B.t.? –

B.t. B.t. B.p. B.p.

–

–

Bos sp. Bos sp. Bos sp.

B.t.

Bos sp.

Bos sp. Bos sp. – Bos sp. – – B.t.?

Ph T3 (Continued)

T3b T3 P1 Ph

–

–

– – Tc

T3

T3

– – – – – – –


169

Copyright © British Academy 2007 – all rights reserved – – –

–

Skull

Tibia Tibia

Mietje Gemonpre

27.500 cal. BC

2230-2 2230-1

Goyet Cave, Belgium BIP 1 BIP 2

Hans-Peter Uerpmann Femur Pelvis Molar Betty Arndt

Species Morhpol.

Bison sp. Bison sp.

B.t. B.p. ? B.p.

– – –


B.p.

B.t.

– – Metacarpus, distal B.t. – B.t. Tibia, distal B.t. Tibia, distal B.p.

Skeletal element

Radius Radius Radius

Oldest LBK

H. Hongo, M. Ödogan

Louis Chaix

L.P. Louwe Kooijmans

Given by

Early LBK

GO 73F-2 90 GO 9-217 GO 73i-1

Goddelau, Germany GOD 1 GOD 2 GOD 3

6200–5500 BC

Mesolithic, 5464 ⫹/⫺ 78 BC

Late Neolith. – Bronze Age

Date

Göttingen FMZ, Germany GOE 1 Obj.1181 F.Nr.6521/2 GOE 3 Obj.1222 F.Nr.806 GOE 4 Obj.777 F.Nr.761

10-FT 700 13 FT-137 14 FT 19/20

?

FT 1 FT 4 FT 5

Fikirtepe, Turkey

ETI 1

Etival, France

EMM

J97 A/B

HK 78:169 HK 85:138 p HK 78:162 HK 88:487 g HK 83:928 l

EIL 8 EIL 9 EIL 12 EIL 13 EIL 14

Emmeloord, Netherlands

Archaeol. code


Bison sp. Bison sp.

– – –

B.t. B.t. B.t.

– – –

B.p.

B.t.

– B.t. B.t. B.t. B.p.

Genetic

– – –

T3 Tc T3

– – –

P

T3b

– T3 T3 T3 Pf

Haplo-type


– –


HC 4 HC 6 HC 8

4-HC ’93 14N 0-21 6-HC ’93 15N 527 8-HC ’99 43

Gr.389-26, Bef. n.v Gr.394 Bef.963 Gr.159 2129

Hilzingen, Germany HIL 1 HIL 3 HIL 5

Hocacesme, Turkey

– –

Herpaly House, Hungary HER 3 HER 4

A402,02Q:4j Est A10 sample’2 (A235)

6700–4000 BC

LBK


Elisabeth Stephan

– – –

Metacarpus Humerus Tooth

– –

–

C. Edwards, J.-D. Vigne

Middle Neolithic A. Choyke

MPPNB-RPPNB

Calcan.

Haloula, Syria SYR 26

Hans-Jürgen Döhle

100 BC, La Tène

97 A SF48

Halle, Germany HAL 1

Radius Tibia

Metacarpus Metacarpus

Radius

L Chaix

3340–3150 BC cal. Louis Chaix

Early-mid. Palaeol.

Grotte du Pardon, France PAR 1 G90.K23:d44:22

Grotte de la Bouloie, France BOU 1 – BOU 2 –

GCH 1 GCH 2

Grotte Champeau, France


B.p. B.p. B.t.

– –

Bos sp.

B.t., B.p. ?

B.p.

B.p. B.p.

B.p. B.p./Bison ?

– – B.t.

– – –

– –

–

B.p.

B.p.

– –

– –

– – T (Continued)

– – –

– –

–

Pa

Ph

– –

– –


171

Ulna

Skeletal element


#201 Hat.175–180

–

– –

Mala Triglavca, Slovenia LJU 1

LJU 2 LJU 3

West R59 Hat.0.82/4.59/0.21

Q 104, Settore-1, US3coll

Lod NY, Israel LOD 1

Kfar Hahoresh, Israel KH 2

Isernia. Italy ISE 2

P47.dec34 917

L. Kolska-Horwitz

Peretto

L. Chaix

Neolithic/Late Neol.? Mesolithic Neolithic/Late Neol.?

Mihael Budja

Ceramic Neolithic L. Kolslka-Horwitz

PPNB

730.000 BP

13680 BP

Incisivi Atlas

Mandibula

Radius

Humerus

Bison?

–

István Vörös

István Vörös

Given by

Igue du Gral, France IGU 1

Late Neolithic

Early Neolithic, Koros

Date

– –

5.5.13.11

Archaeol. code

Hódmezo⬙vásárhely- Gorza, Hung. HOD 2 68.8.47 HOD 4 68.8.68

HOB 2

Hódmezo⬙vásárhelyBodzaspart, Hung.


– –

B.t.

B.t.

B.p.

–

Bison

Bos sp. Bos sp.

–

Species Morhpol.

Bison B.p.

B.t

–

–

–

–

– B.t.

–

Genetic

– Pb

T3

–

–

–

–

– T3

–

Haplo-type



72 / 1678 37 / 1854 111 / 1760 28 / 1832

21 E-8 21 E-10 26-1 21-1

2-2

Mareuil-les-Meaux, France MAR 2 MAR 8 MAR 9 MAR 10

Mezra Tel Eilat, Turkey MEZ 1 MEZ 2 MEZ 3 MEZ 4

Mitterfecking, Germany KOEL 3

NMR 24

NMR 22

NMR 19

NMR 3

Nieder-Mörlen, Germany

10/2. 2507B/26704 EV99/1 4/2. 1162/25890 EV98/2 4/2. 1162/25890 EV98/2 7/1. 877/25191

Neustadt (Schl.), Germany NES 1 LA 156/02 N 100-101 E 118-119 NES 2 LA 156/04 N 100-101 E 116-117

A404

IRQ 02

Maral Tappeh, Iran

H.-P. Uerpmann

Rose-Marie Arbogast

M. Mashkour, C. Edwards, J.-D. Vigne

G. Roth Tibia

– – Phalanx Phalanx

Metatarsus Mandibula Costae Femur

Scapula

Flomborn

Sabine Schade-Lindig

Humerus, prox.

Tooth

Tooth

Humerus, dist.

Scapula

4500–4100 cal. BC S. Hartz, U. Schmölcke Phalanx 1

Münchshöfener Culture

⬎ 6000 BC

Late Neolithic 5000–4900 BC

Chalcolithic

B.t. ?

B.t. ?

B.t. ?

B.t., B.p. ?

B.t.?

Bos sp.

B.t.

B.p. B.t. B.p./Buffalo B.t.

B.t. B.t. B.p. B.p. ?

B.p. ?

B.t.

B.t.

–

B.t.

B.p.

B.p.

–

– – – –

– B.t. – B.t.

–

T3 (Continued)

T3

–

T3f ?

Pf

Ph

–

– – – –

– T3 – Tc

–


173

9 8,A1B

60.9.669 60.9.197 60.9.1316 60.9.1409 60.9.1879

77:193 74:52 77:200

Ros74 VI A 148i

3-16994 95 Niv III 1-15316 1-17508 8145 1-18993 11196 1 Niv II 4522 Niv. IV

Polgár-Cso⬙szhalom, Hungary POL 1 POL 2 POL 3 POL 4 POL 5

Quenstedt, Germany QUE1 QUE 2 QUE 3

Rosenhof, Germany ROS 1

Ruffey-sur-Seille, France RUF 1 RUF 2 RUF 3 RUF 4 RUF 5 RUF 6 RUF 7 RUF 8

Archaeol. code

KAR 1 KAR 3

Orlovez, Bulgaria


Copyright © British Academy 2007 – all rights reserved Skeletal element

– – –

– – – – –

Tibia/Radius Tibia? Humerus Metacarpus Tibia Radius

Metatarsus

S. Hartz, U. Schmölcke Metatarsus

Hans-Jürgen Döhle

István Vörös

– –

Hans-Peter Uerpmann

Given by

Mesolithic R.-M. Arbogast Sauveterrien ancient Sauveterrien ancient Sauveterrien ancient Sauveterrien moyen Sauveterrien moyen Sauveterrien moyen Mésolithique récent Mésolithique récent

4838 ⫹/⫺ 81 cal. BC

Bronze Age

Late Neolithic

earliest Neol., Karanovo

Date

B.p. B.p. B.p. B.p. B.p. B.p. B.p. B.p.

B.t.

B.t. B.t. B.t.

– – – – –

B.t. B.t., B.p. ?

Species Morhpol.

– – – B.p. – – – –

B.p.

B.t. B.t. B.t.

– B.t. – B.t. B.t.

– –

Genetic

– – – Ph – – – –

Pd

T3a T3 Ta

– Tb – T3 T3

– –

Haplo-type



Trebur, Germany TRE 1

IRQ 09

LfD AD EV 1988:79 Grave 90

A419

30/93 27/38

Tel Hreiz, Israel THE 2

Tall-i-Mushki, Iran

4.-3. JT Phase IV, late 3rd. Mill.

TB94 A1077:2/H5 TB95 A1136:2/HS3

TB 03** TB 07**

Middle Neolithic

8.-9. Jt. BC

PN

Chalcolith. BZ

Tell Brak, Syrien

Lengyel, 3000 BC

Neolithic

1159 SBSK 4103.49 SVBA 0625 / 46 SVBA 0625 / 56

47 000 BP

6000 BC Halaf

Oldest LBK

Szegvár-Tüzköves, Hungary SZE 1 72.1.260 SZE 2 72.1.174

Svodín, Slovakia SVO 1 SVO 2 SVO 3*

Fig. 4 Table 9 in Ziegler 1994

Sed A4 aa

Shams-ed-Din, Syria SED

Siegsdorf, Germany Sieg 1

SF 762-14

Schwanfeld, Germany SWA 1 Phalanx 1

Tooth

Holger Göldner

C. Edwards, J.-D. Vigne, M. Mashkour

L. Kolska Horwitz

K. Dobney/ C. Edwards

István Vörös

Humerus

Tooth

Radius

– –

Hans-Peter Uerpmann – – –

W. Rosendahl

H.-P. Uerpmann

H.-P. Uerpmann

B.t.

–

B.t.

Bos sp. Bos sp.

– –

B.t. B.t. B.t.

Bison b.

B.t.

Bos sp.

B.t.

–

–

B.t. B.t.

B.t. B.p.

B.t. B.t. B.p.

Steppe bis.

–

–

T3 (Continued)

–

–

(T?) T3

T3 P

T3 T3 P

–

–


175


VIE 4

VIE 2

Viesenhäuser Hof, Germany VIE 1

TRO 13

TRO 12

TRO 11

TRO 10

TRO 4

TRO 3

Trosly-Breuil, France TRO 2

TRE 4

Bef.9 2111/329 Nr.1317 Bef.2 2423/1752 Nr.588 Bef.4 2510/199 Nr.1301

TB 89 K XX / 23 76 TB 89 K XIX / 9 20 TB 89 K XX / 16 59 TB 90 MXI/8 1/4 SW (10) TB 89 KXIX/5 (16) TB 87 DVIII 21 91 (12) TB 0 87 EV III 27 (13)

LfD AD EV 1988:79 Grave 60 LfD AD EV 1988:79 Gra. 113 LfD AD EV 1988:79 Grave 63

TRE 2

TRE 3

Archaeol. code


middle/younger LBK

late/middle LBK

middle/younger LBK

LBK

Neolithic

Date

Elisabeth Stephan

Rose-Marie Arbogast

Given by

Radius

Humerus

Tibia

Metacarpus

Metacarpus

Metacarpus

Metacarpus

–

–

–

Humerus

- (calf)

Tibia prox.

Skeletal element

B.p.

B.p.

B.t.

B.t.

B.t.

B.t.

B.p.

B.t.?

?

B.t.

B.t.

B.t.

B.t.

Species Morhpol.

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

B.t.

B.t.

–

Genetic

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

T3

T3

–

Haplo-type



LA 518/1998 LA 505, 04 97/8

Ri-E51

Yilan, Türkei YIL

Bef.1 2622/1606, Nr.332 Bef.6 2205/891 Nr.2156 Bef.2 3435/2221 Nr.1853 Bef.6 2840/1362 Nr.5138 Bef.1 2201/944 Nr.5078

Wangels, Holstein, Deutschland WAN 1 WAN 2

VIE 25

VIE 24

VIE 18

VIE 14

VIE 13

3946⫹/⫺79 cal BC ca. 6000 BC

LBK

LBK

middle/younger LBK

middle/younger LBK

late LBK

H.-P. Uerpmann

U. Schmölcke, S. Hartz

1 Phalanx

Metatarsus

Metacarpus

Tibia

Tooth

Humerus

B.p.

B.t. B.t.?

B.t.

B.t.

B.t.

B.t.

B.p.

–

B.t. B.t.

–

–

–

–

–

–

T3 T3d

–

–

–

–

–


177

178


Precautions during ancient DNA analyses The laboratories in Mainz are dedicated to ancient DNA only and fulfil the highest international standard and criteria for DNA clean rooms. The preand post-PCR (polymerase chain reaction) areas are strictly separated in two different buildings. A one-way-system avoids carry-over contamination: persons are only allowed to enter the pre-PCR lab with freshly washed clothes but entry is not permitted if the person has already been to another lab or the office on the same day. In an extra room clothes are changed with special clean room overalls, shoe covers, gloves, facemasks and face shields. All items are irradiated with UV light before they enter the lab. The rooms and workbenches are regularly cleaned with soap and bleach, and UV irradiated over night. The water used for cleaning is irradiated with a water-proof UV bulb for at least ten hours. Sample preparation was performed as follows. First, the bones were irradiated with UV light. In order to remove contaminations, the surface of the bones was removed. Approximately 2 by 1 by 0.5 cm were cut out of the bone and additionally irradiated. All extraction and amplification reactions were accompanied by blank controls. For authentification of the sequences each sample was extracted independently at least two times, followed by one or two PCRs, respectively. Randomly chosen PCR products were cloned. The results were only accepted when all sequences were consistent. For two samples (see Table 1), bone preparation, extraction, PCR and sequencing were independently reproduced in the Smurfit Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin. Extraction, PCR, sequencing and cloning The extraction was performed as described by Burger et al. (2004). The analysed fragment of interest is determined by the use of specific starter molecules (primers). Three different primer pairs for the mitochondrial HVR 1 were designed and none of them were found to amplify human DNA. The third primer system has two different lower primers that give a longer and a shorter product, in order to get a haplogroup determination even for samples where the DNA was highly fragmented. The ancient DNA was amplified by PCR (polymerase chain reaction) technique. The success of the PCR was checked on a 2% agarose gel. Afterwards the DNA was purified, sequenced and subsequently analysed on 310 Genetic Analyzer (Applied Biosystems). Randomly chosen PCR products were additionally cloned in order to monitor possible background contaminations and postmortal sequence damage. Detailed protocols of all steps are described in Bollongino (2005).



179

RESULTS Out of 161 samples, 65 (including seven bison samples for comparison) were reproducibly amplifiable. The success rate within European samples was 52.1%. Within the Near Eastern samples less than 10% were amplifiable, demonstrating the bad DNA preservation in hot climates. Before trying an interpretation of the results of the ancient samples, it is necessary to have a look at extant cattle populations. Modern taurinen cattle can be divided into five groups (T, T1, . . ., T4, as described in Troy et al. 2001), so called haplogroups (see Fig. 1a). A haplogroup comprises all sequences (‘haplotypes’) that can be derived from a specific ancestral sequence. The best way to detect an ancestral sequence is to draw a network (see Fig. 1b). A network represents all types of sequences as circles that are connected through branches. These branches show the positions at which the respective sequences differ from each other. A haplogroup often appears in a starburst pattern, showing the ancestral sequence in the centre. The different sequences within one haplogroup are called haplotypes. A network of the ancient sequences is shown in Fig. 1b. Two major clusters can be identified, one comprising the ancient cattle sequences and the other cluster showing all ancient aurochs. These groups are separated by at

Figure 1a. Skeleton network showing the haplogroups of extant taurine cattle. The numbers indicate the positions of mutations (16.000⫹, the positions refer to the European consensus sequence with the GenBank accession no. NC_001567, Anderson et al. 1982) that define the respective haplogroup (for example haplogroups T3 and T can be distinguished by different bases at the position 16255). Haplogroup T4 can only be found in Eastern Asia, T1 is predominant in Africa. T2 is also present in Europe (but rarely) and the Near East, but could not be found within the ancient data set.


Figure 1b. Median Network of ancient sample sequences. Each circle represents a haplotype; the size is relative to the frequency of the haplotype. Each dash marks a mutation. The haplotypes show a star-like formation with the ancestral sequence in the centre. All haplotypes that descend from one ancestral sequence belong to the same haplogroup (T3⫽ black, T⫽ grey, P⫽ white, P1⫽ sample EIL4). Haplotypes with a question mark indicate samples that could not be amplified for all fragments, thus leaving some insecurity about possible further mutations. The network was drawn using the method described in Bandelt et al. (1995).




181

least nine mutational steps. The cattle sequences belong to the haplogroups T and T3. The majority of the cattle sequences belong to the central haplotype of T3. T3 is the most dominant haplogroup within modern European cattle whereas T is very rare. In the Near East both T and T3 are distributed. The sequences of the ancient samples were compared to modern data from taurine and zebu cattle and European bison in a neighbour-joining tree (Fig. 2). Water buffalo is the outgroup, followed by wisent and zebu. The modern cattle data cluster together with the ancient cattle samples, whereas the ancient aurochs are the neighbour group of taurine cattle. None of the extant sequences belongs to the aurochs clade. One sample (EIL 4) has a very unusual sequence (haplotype P1) and neither belongs to the aurochs nor the cattle cluster. A comparison with the sequences in GenBank (internet database) revealed that it is a Bos sequence, but has no close similarity to any known breed.

Figure 2. Neighbour-joining tree of ancient and modern sequences. The bootstrap values at the branches indicate how many of 100 calculated trees showed exactly this branch. The small letters represent single haplotypes within the respective haplogroup referring to the network in Fig. 1. P1 is the uncommon haplotype of the sample EIL4. The tree was calculated with PAUP (Swofford 2002).


182

Ruth Bollongino & Joachim Burger DISCUSSION

Authentication The sequences are regarded as authentic for the following reasons. Contaminations during the lab procedure can effectively be ruled out, as all extraction and PCR blank controls were blank. Cross contaminations did not occur as both aurochs and cattle samples were extracted and amplified contemporarily, and none of the aurochs samples ever showed a taurine sequence or vice versa. Many of the sequences are unique and the aurochs lineage is extinct, which means that it cannot be found within modern data and thus cannot stem from recent contaminations. The aurochs sequences are identical, or very similar, to those previously published by Bailey et al. (1996) and Troy et al. (2001). All results were extensively reproduced (see materials and methods) and two samples were independently reproduced in Dublin. Random cloning showed that no background contamination could be found. Post-mortem damages, such as deaminations (Gilbert et al. 2003a; 2003b; Hansen et al. 2001; Hofreiter et al. 2001), were ruled out by reproduction of sequences and use of UNG. For four samples (two cattle [SVO 1 and EIL 2] and two aurochs bones [SVO 3 and EIL 6]), an additional amplification of the cytochrome b locus was performed (Czerwinski 2003). In contrast to the d-loop, the cytochrome b is a coding gene and thus can be translated into the amino acid sequence. The translation showed that the amino acid sequence is correct so that reproducible post mortem sequence changes can be excluded (data not shown). Two variable positions could be revealed (positions 14873 and 15134) and both are silent mutations (that is, they do not affect the encoded amino acid), thus underlining the authenticity of the sequences. Additionally, the analysis of the results showed that all data make phylogenetic sense. Genetic distinction of Bos taurus and Bos primigenius A clear difference between B. taurus and B. primigenius is not necessarily expected because the aurochs is the ancestor of the domestic cattle. They share the same molecular background so that a strong genetic similarity would not be surprising. But our data speak for a rather distant relation between the two as both the neighbour-joining tree (Fig. 2) and the network (Fig. 1b) divided all data in two major groups. The large distance of nine mutations suggests a clear genetic difference between cattle and aurochs. We believe that one of the groups (P, see Fig. 1b) represents the aurochs for the following reasons. This group contains only sequences that belong to an



183

extinct lineage while the cattle haplogroups are identical to modern ones. Two samples (ETI 1, RUF 4) date to the Mesolithic, which is definitely prior to the first domestication and shows a typical aurochs haplotype. Our aurochs haplogroup is identical to those that have previously been published by Bailey et al. (1996) and Troy et al. (2001). Furthermore, the majority (90%) of the samples that were analysed by morphometric means supported the genetic classification of the sequences in aurochs and domestic cattle (see Table 1). The distinction between B. taurus and B. primigenius is also revealed by the cytochrome b results. Compared to the d-loop, this locus is very conservative and hardly shows any polymorphisms within one species. The two differences (for positions see above) between cattle and aurochs underline the genetic distance between the two groups. The taxonomic status of the sample EIL 4 cannot be identified completely by the current data. The morphology of the bone is very robust and above the size variation of Neolithic cattle, and therefore the morphometric analysis clearly addresses this sample as an aurochs. It is possible that this individual represents a different population that might stem from another glacial refuge, maybe from a region in Asia, but aurochs sequences from this geographical part of the world are not known yet. The final evaluation of the EIL 4 sample has to be left for future research. Differences in morphometric and genetic classification of Bos taurus and Bos primigenius Within the samples that were morphometrically determined, the consistence with the genetic classification was 90%. Thus both methods confirm each other for the great majority of bones. The few differences can be explained by several possibilities. First, bones of a medium size are difficult to classify due to sexual dimorphism; that is, it is not possible to tell whether the bone comes from a female aurochs or a domestic bull. Secondly, the animal could be a hybrid. For example, if the mother was a domestic cow and the father an aurochs bull, the offspring may have had a rather aurochs-like phenotype, but the mitochondrial matriline would identify it as domestic cattle. In order to solve such a case, an additional analysis of a patrilinear marker is necessary. These loci can be found on the Y-chromosome in the nucleus, but is very difficult due to the very low copy number. Nevertheless, few Y-chromosomal sequences from ancient wild and domestic cattle could be amplified. Unfortunately the investigated locus (zinc finger gene) did not show any polymorphisms. The low variability does not allow us to distinguish patrilines of aurochs and domestic cattle (Bollongino 2005).


184


The origin of European cattle and their relation to the European aurochs The results of this study do not support the theory of an indigenous origin of European domestic cattle. In the case of an independent secondary domestication, the mitochondrial sequences of B. taurus and B. primigenius should be almost identical. But even Early Neolithic cattle samples, like those from Eilsleben and Goddelau in Germany, are very distant from their contemporary aurochs sequences, and thus European aurochs cannot be the progenitors of domestic cattle. So where do domestic cattle originate? A possible centre of origin, from the archaeological and archaeozoological context, is the Anatolian and Near Eastern region. There has also been some discussion, initiated by Bökönyi (1974), about a local domestication in Hungary. We analysed samples from two sites that were addressed as possible domestication centres (Polgár and Berettyószentmárton), plus two additional Hungarian sites (Szegvár-Tüzköves and Albertfalva). But the cattle sequences from these sites (POL 2, POL 4, POL 5, ALB 1, ALB 3 and SZE 1) as well as the aurochs data (SZE 2, ALB 2 and ALB 4) show the same haplogroups as the respective Central European samples and, most importantly, show the same distance too. Therefore our data do not support the theory of an independent domestication in Hungary. As Central Europe and the Balkans can be excluded as domestication centres, the Near East and Anatolia remain the most likely origins. And indeed the ancient samples from this region (TB 07, CH 11, AP6, HC 8) belong either to haplogroup T or T3, whereas the European aurochs haplogroup P can be found in neither ancient nor extant Near Eastern cattle. Even if all cattle were imported into Europe, it is still possible that the European aurochs contributed to the domesticated population by subsequent interbreeding. Genetically, there are two ways of interbreeding: male and female introgression. Female aurochs might be caught as calves and added to the herds in order to compensate for loss due to disease or a harsh winter. But archaeological findings showed that an extensive trading system connected the settlements, and it might have been easier to get domesticated animals from neighbours, rather than taking the risk of introducing the uncontrollable behaviour of wild aurochs. Male introgression could have happened when cattle herds were driven to the forest for feeding and cows were (on purpose or unintentionally) not kept separated from wild bulls. Both ways would leave traces in the genome. Female introgression of wild aurochs cows would have left aurochs matrilines in modern cattle populations. If female introgression occurred, it was a rare event and not a successful one, either. The question of male introgression cannot be answered with the current data as



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no ancient aurochs patrilines are known yet. Such data can only be obtained by analysis of nuclear loci, such as the Y-chromosome, which are, as already mentioned, unfortunately not informative so far. The fact that European wild oxen and domestic cattle are so distant from each other suggests that aurochs populations in Europe are different from those in the Near East. It is completely unknown where the glacial refuges of the aurochs were, but it seems that the post-glacial aurochs repopulation of Europe did not start from Near Eastern regions.

SUMMARY This study revealed ancient mitochondrial data from 40 domestic cattle and 17 aurochs samples (plus ancient bison for comparison), which date mainly to the Neolithic, but which also includes some of Mesolithic and Bronze Age date. A genetic distinction of B. taurus and B. primigenius within Europe could be shown. The large molecular distance between the two groups, even in the Early Neolithic, excludes an independent domestication of European cattle. All European domestic cattle haplogroups could be traced back to the Near East. A suggested secondary domestication centre in Hungary could not be supported. Furthermore, there are no genetic traces of interbreeding of imported cattle and European aurochs. Note. We are very grateful to all the people who provided samples and would like to thank all of them for their wonderful cooperation: Rose-Marie Arbogast, Betty Arndt, Mihael Budja, László Bartosiewicz, Norbert Benecke, Mihael Budja, Louis Chaix, Alice Choyke, Keith Dobney, Hans-Jürgen Döhle, Rudi Fries, Mietje Gemonpre, Holger Göldner, Sönke Hartz, Daniel Helmer, Hitomi Hongo, Liora Kolska Horwitz, L. P. Louwe Kooijmans, Louise Martin, Marjan Mashkour, Jens Lüning, Banu Öksüz, Mehmet Özdogan, Carlo Peretto, Georg Roth, Sabine SchadeLindig, Ulrich Schmölcke, Liesbeth Smits, Reinhold Schoon, Helmut Spatz (†), Elisabeth Stephan, Anne Tresset, Hans-Peter Uerpmann, Jean-Denis Vigne and István Vörös. Furthermore we would like to thank Jean-Denis Vigne, Anne Tresset, Detlef Gronenborn, Helmut Hemmer and our colleagues Barbara Bramanti and Wolfgang Haak, for fruitful discussion and support. We also want to thank Petra Czerwinski for providing the cytochrome b data. Special thanks go to Ceiridwen Edwards and Dan Bradley in Dublin for helpful discussions and proof-reading, as well as their support in data analysis and reproduction of samples. The project is funded by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung and partially funded by the OMLL project by the CNRS, Paris.


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Ruth Bollongino & Joachim Burger REFERENCES

ANDERSON, S., DE BRUIJN, M. H., COULSON, A. R., EPERON, I. C., SANGER, F. & YOUNG, I. G. 1982. Complete sequence of bovine mitochondrial DNA. Conserved features of the mammalian genome. Journal of Molecular Biology 156 (4), 683–717. BAILEY, J. F., RICHARDS, M. B., MACAULEY, V. A., COLSON, I. B., JAMES, I. T., BRADLEY, D. G., HEDGES, R. E. M. & SYKES, B. C. 1996. Ancient DNA suggests a recent expansion of European cattle from a diverse wild progenitor species. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 263, 1467–73. BANDELT, H. J., FORSTER, P., SYKES, B. C. & RICHARDS, M. B. 1995. Mitochondrial portraits of human populations using median networks. Genetics 141, 743–53. BÖKÖNYI, S. 1974. The history of domestic animals in Central and Eastern Europe. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. BOLLONGINO, R. 2005. Die Herkunft der Hausrinder in Europa. Eine aDNA-Studie an neolithischen Knochenfunden. Unpublished Dissertation: Department of Biology, Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz. BRADLEY, D. G., MACHUGH, D. E., CUNNINGHAM, P. & LOFTUS, R. T. 1996. Mitochondrial diversity and the origins of African and European cattle. Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Science USA 93, 5131–5. BURGER, J., ROSENDAHL, W., LOREILLE, O., HEMMER, H., ERIKSSON, T., GÖTHERSTRÖM, A., HILLER, J., COLLINS, M., WESS, T. & ALT, K. W. 2004. Molecular phylogeny of the extinct cave lion. Panthera leo spelaea. Molecular Phylogeny and Evolution 30, 841–9. CZERWINSKI, P. 2003. aDNA-Sequenzierungen des Cytochrom b Gens aus frühneolithischen Knochen des europäischen Auerochsen (Bos primigenius) und Hausrinds (Bos Taurus). Zur Unterscheidung von postmortalen DNA-Schäden und Artefakten von Polymorphismen und zur Authentifizierung von aDNA-Sequenzen. Unpublished Diploma Thesis: Institute of Anthropology, University of Mainz. GILBERT, M. T. P., HANSEN, A. J., WILLERSLEV, E., RUDBECK, L., BARNES, I., LYNNERUP, N. & COOPER, A. 2003a. Distribution patterns of postmortem damage in human mitochondrial DNA. American Journal of Human Genetics 72, 32–47. GILBERT, M. T. P., HANSEN, A. J., WILLERSLEV, E., RUDBECK, L., BARNES, I., LYNNERUP, N. & COOPER, A. 2003b. Characterization of genetic miscoding lesions caused by postmortem damage. American Journal of Human Genetics 72, 48–61. HANSEN, A. J., WILLERSLEV, E., WIUF, C., MOURIER, T. & ARCTANDER, P. 2001. Statistical evidence for miscoding lesions in ancient DNA templates. Molecular Biological Evolution 18 (2), 262–5. HOFREITER, M., JAENICKE, V., SERRE, D., VON HAESELER, A. & PÄÄBO, S. 2001. DNA sequences from multiple amplifications reveal artefacts induced by cytosine deamination in ancient DNA. Nucleic Acids Research 29 (23), 4793–9. LOFTUS, R. T., ERTUGRUL, O., HARBA, A. H., EL-BARODY, M. A. A., MACHUGH, D. E., PARK, S. D. E. & BRADLEY, D. G. 1999. A microsatellite survey of cattle from a centre of origin: the Near East. Molecular Ecology 8, 2015–22. LOFTUS, R. T., MACHUGH, D. E., BRADLEY, D. G., SHARP, P. M. & CUNNINGHAM, P. 1994. Evidence for two independent domestications of cattle. Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Science USA 91, 2757–61. MACHUGH, D. E., SHRIVER, M. D., LOFTUS, R. T., CUNNINGHAM, P. & BRADLEY, D. G. 1997. Microsatellite DNA variation and the evolution, domestication and phylogeography of taurine and zebu cattle (Bos taurus and Bos indicus). Genetics 146, 1071–86.



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SWOFFORD, D. L. 2002. PAUP. Phylogenetic analysis using parsimony. Version 4. Sunderland, Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates. TROY, C. S., MACHUGH, D. E., BAILEY, J. F., MAGEE, D. A., LOFTUS, R. T., CUNNINGHAM, P., CHAMBERLAIN, A. T., SYKES, B. C. & BRADLEY, D. G. 2001. Genetic evidence for a Near-Eastern origin or European cattle. Nature 410, 1088–91.



Substitution of species, techniques and symbols at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Western Europe ANNE TRESSET & JEAN-DENIS VIGNE

INTRODUCTION IT IS OFTEN ASSUMED that the dissemination of the Neolithic way of life, which originated in the Near East, took a more complex turn when arriving in the western part of Europe (Guilaine 2003; Lichardus et al. 1985; Mazurié 2003; Whittle 1977; 1996). This may be partly due, on the one hand, to the late survival of regional Mesolithic societies that probably interacted in some places with incoming farmers, taking on the new way of life and possibly contributing to its dissemination, and on the other to the reunion of the two main neolithisation streams—continental and Mediterranean—in the same area or at least in adjoining territories. The use of new techniques, including ancient DNA (aDNA) and stable isotopes, has shed some light on key aspects of those events at a large scale, such as the appearance of domesticates in Europe and the way it affected human diets. Recent complementary approaches at more local scales have helped to refine general observations on the transformations of man/animal relationships between Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, from biogeographic, zootechnical and symbolic angles. This paper aims at gathering this very rich and polymorphic information in order to set it against what is already known of the neolithisation of Western Europe.

CHRONOLOGICAL BACKGROUND OF DOMESTICATION AND EARLY DIFFUSION OF UNGULATES THROUGH EUROPE Recent research has demonstrated that sheep, goat, cattle and pig were domesticated on the southern slopes of the Eastern Taurus c. 8500 cal BC, during the Early PPNB (Helmer et al. 2005; Peters et al. 1999; 2005; Vigne



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et al. 2003). During the last quarter of the ninth millennium, these domesticates spread from this core region to a large part of the Near East—including Cyprus—(Guilaine et al. 2000; Vigne & Buitenhuis 1999). The birth of a true animal husbandry in the Near East as a major economic activity, however, took place only during the eighth millennium (late middle PPNB and recent PPNB). The European history of husbandry began at the turn of the seventh millennium BC, when this expansion reached the south-eastern margin of Europe, namely Greece and the Balkan region (Guilaine 2003; Mazurié 2003; Perlès 2002). On the European continent, the diffusion of domesticates, together with husbandry techniques, followed two main routes that are now well known and relatively well dated (Fig. 1): the northern coastline of the Mediterranean during the seventh and sixth millennia on the one hand (Guilaine 2003; Vigne & Helmer 1999; Zilhão 2001), and the Danubian corridor and main continental valleys during the sixth and beginning of the fifth millennia, toward the Atlantic Ocean on the other hand (Bogucki 1988; Marchand & Tresset 2005; Mazurié 2003; Tresset 2002; Tresset & Vigne 2001). The two flows might have converged to cross the Channel and the Celtic Sea sometime during the mid-fifth millennium cal BC or at the beginning of the fourth (Milner & Woodman 2005; Tresset 2003; Whittle 1977; Woodman 1986; Woodman & McCarthy 2003).

GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION OF THE WILD ANCESTORS OF DOMESTICATES AND THE CONTRIBUTION OF PALAEOGENETICS TO DOMESTICATION ISSUES The domestic sheep and goat result from the domestication of Oriental Mufflon (Ovis orientalis) and Bezoar goat (Capra aegagrus), respectively. These wild ancestors were not present in Europe. From morphological characters (Uerpmann 1979) and, more recently, DNA analyses (Luikart et al. 2001), it was already known that the European ibexes could not be the ancestors of domestic goats. In addition, it was demonstrated in the 1970s that the present-day Corsico-Sardinian Mufflon was produced by the Neolithic feralisation of domestic sheep in these Mediterranean islands (Poplin 1979; Poplin & Vigne 1983). This has been fully confirmed by DNA investigations (Hassanin et al. 1998; Hiendleder et al. 1998). From there, it was released in the wild to the European mainland during the nineteenth to twentieth century (Bon et al. 1991). Thus, domestic sheep and goat had no native ancestors in Europe. As they are present on this Continent from the start of the Neolithic, they must have been introduced there by the first farmers.


Figure 1. cal BC.

The two main flows of dissemination of domesticates in Europe, as documented by zooarchaeology. Dates are

SUBSTITUTION OF SPECIES, TECHNIQUES AND SYMBOLS


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The aurochs was present virtually everywhere in Europe, Ireland excepted. Thus its domestication could have taken place anywhere on this continent. Work by Bailey et al. (1996) and by Troy et al. (2001) have provided the first known mitochondrial aDNA sequences (control-region) for this extinct species in Europe. Results have revealed a clear difference with sequences obtained from extant breeds of domestic cattle in Europe and the Near East (Troy et al. 2001), suggesting a non-European origin for the domestic form. This hypothesis was also supported by results on extant breeds that can be explained in the light of cattle ancient history. In particular, they revealed a highest genetic diversity in the Near East and a gradual loss of this diversity (bottle-neck effect) north-westward. These features are considered as typically resulting from a domestication event in the region where the diversity is the highest—the Near East in this specific case—and the subsequent diffusion of domesticates. More recent results on the microsatellite diversity of the European present day cattle suggest that the two flows of diffusion, Mediterranean and continental, have had different origins in the Near East (Cymbron et al. 2005). However, several problems persisted: 1 Even if likely, the time of the expansion phenomenon cannot be precisely derived from purely genetic considerations (at least not at a timescale and not with an accuracy relevant to Neolithic studies), and there is no evidence that it was actually a Neolithic event. 2 The aurochs sequences obtained by Bailey et al. and by Troy et al. all came from British animals and there was no guarantee that they were representative of the European aurochs population. Further work on Neolithic domestic cattle and aurochs of the British Isles, Ireland and mainland Europe has been done (Bollongino et al. 2005; Edwards et al. 2004) and many mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences have been obtained on aurochs from continental Europe (Bollongino et al. 2005; Edwards et al. 2007; see also Bollongino & Burger, this volume). Results are all converging to reveal clearly distinct maternal lineages for European domestic cattle on the one hand and aurochs on the other. This is a strong argument to say that there was a very limited (if any) contribution of female European aurochs to Neolithic domestic herds. Thus, local domestication events sensu stricto seem to have been very limited in Europe, as far as bovines are concerned. However, this does not preclude crossbreeding events involving a male aurochs contribution, as mtDNA only reveals the female genetic inheritance. Recent work on the Y Chromosome (documenting the male genetic legacy) of the European aurochs and modern, as well as ancient domestic cattle, from Europe and the Near East (Götherström et al. 2005) suggest that hybridisation of domestic cattle may have taken place at some point during the Neolithic with local aurochs, especially in the northern part



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of Europe. These genetic data are ambiguous in some respects. The fact that some characteristics of paternal descent were shared by European aurochs and European early domestic bovines does not imply that the latter stemmed from the former as long as it has not been demonstrated that these very characteristics were not also shared by Near Eastern animals. However, these data tend to converge with former claims of local domestication, especially beyond the northern borderline of the Linearbandkeramik expansion (Nobis 1975). The small size of bovines found at very late Mesolithic sites (Ertebølle), on which the local domestication hypothesis was based, could thus be reinterpreted as resulting from backcrossing events linked to the arrival of Neolithic farmers in adjacent regions. Palaeogenetic investigation of this issue is currently in progress by Scheue, Bollongino and collaborators (among whom are the authors of the present paper: see also Bollongino & Burger, this volume). Another aspect that still has to be explained concerns the mitochondrial diversity in extent cattle breeds from the British Isles (Troy et al. 2001). It is unexpectedly high in comparison with adjacent parts of mainland Europe, and thus does not fit into the model of expansion derived from the bottleneck pattern perceptible across mainland Europe (see above). Basically, this unexpected diversity could result from at least two different phenomena: the contribution of local female aurochs to domestic herds (see for example Bailey et al. 1996), which subsequently proved to be unlikely, or the admixture of several herds of different origins. This latter hypothesis still has to be investigated on a broad basis. Among diverse scenarios, one would be the contribution of the two main Neolithic streams of dissemination of domesticates and husbandry, respectively Mediterranean and Danubian, which have probably distinct Near Eastern origins (Cymbron et al. 2005), to the constitution of British herds. This possibility of a dual origin for the British (and Irish) Neolithic has been debated in general terms, especially in relation to megalithic monuments (Renfrew 1976; Scarre 1992; Shee-Twohig 1981), and has more recently received further credit with the identification of several distinct continental points of origin for various aspects of the material culture (Fairweather & Ralston 1993; Milner & Woodman 2005; Sheridan 2000; 2003; Tresset 2000; 2003; Woodman & McCarthy 2003). Ongoing worldwide research on the origin of domestic pigs by Larson et al. (2005) has revealed a striking geographic pattern of mtDNA from extant breeds suggesting many distinct domestication events around the world. Data obtained on extant European breeds both suggest an origin distinct from the Near Eastern ones and a strong contribution of the female local wild boar to the constitution of domestic herds. The time of the events involved here is a matter of debate but will certainly be clarified by aDNA work currently in progress by the same authors. However, it is already clear,



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as Larson et al. (2005) are stating, that these results do not exclude the possibility of a diffusion of domestic pigs with the first farmers in Europe, along with domestic bovines, sheep and goat, but, unlike what has been observed for those species, early Near Eastern pig lineages would not have survived until modern times and would have been progressively replaced by locally domesticated animals, at least the female part. This scenario would be very consistent with zooarchaeological data. First, pig was rarely the basis of husbandry in most of early Neolithic communities in Europe, except in the western part of central Europe (Tresset & Vigne 2001), but began to develop to a very large extent at the end of the fifth and the beginning of the fourth millennium in north-western mainland Europe (Arbogast et al. 1991; Augereau et al. 1993; Méniel 1984; Pernaud et al. 2004; Tresset 1996). Secondly, this development of pig husbandry more or less corresponds to an important rise in the mean size of animals (Tresset 1996; Fig. 2). Very few metric data document the early pigs of German and Alsatian LBK sites (Arbogast 1994; Müller 1964), but it is striking that they are all much smaller than their later western counterparts. The rise in the size of domestic pigs could result from several, possibly interlinked, causes among which zootechnical improvements (congruent with the development of pig husbandry) and the incorporation of wild local females to the herds. This latter explanation would have resulted in the contribution of local wild boar mitochondrial sequences to domestic herds. If Neolithic farmers kept doing this over centuries, it is likely that the former domestic sequences originating in the Near East would have been swept away.

THE INTRODUCTION OF DOMESTICATES INTO WESTERN EUROPE: MESOLITHIC AND NEOLITHIC PERSPECTIVES We have investigated the history of the introduction of husbandry in three areas: during the sixth to fifth millennia in Southern France, on the Atlantic façade between 5500 and 4000 cal BC, and c. 4000 cal BC around the Channel. Southern France The analysis of the faunal assemblages of the early Neolithic sites of the north coasts of the Central and Western Mediterranean evidences two very different systems of exploitation (Vigne 2003; Vigne & Helmer 1999). In the large villages of Greece and south-eastern Italy (Puglia), during the second half of the seventh millennium, hunting was very reduced and husbandry was highly specialised on cattle exploitation, for meat and secondarily probably for milk (see preliminary results for Trasano, Matera: Vigne 2006). In


Figure 2. Withers height estimated for domestic pigs in LBK and post-LBK cultures in central and western Europe (after data collected in Tresset 1996).



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other areas of the north-western Mediterranean, i.e. in the Western Impressa and Cardial cultures (late seventh/early sixth millennia), cattle and sheep (and secondarily goat and pig) husbandry was more balanced, and deer and wild boar hunting kept an important role in the economy, irrespective of the type of site considered (either open air or cave/rock shelters). Three nonexclusive lines of interpretation have been proposed (Tresset & Vigne 2001; Vigne 1998): greater density and cultural prevalence of Mesolithic groups, more forested environments, or different techno-economic traditions. But these interpretations did not take into account the earliest phase of the Neolithic in the South of France, i.e. Ligurian Impressa phase which has been evidenced at Pendimoun and Portiragnes (Binder 1995; 2000; Guilaine 2003; Manen 2000; 2002; Manen & Sabatier 2003), as no archaeozoological studies had been done at that time. We recently studied the animal bones of Portiragnes, Pont de RoqueHaute (PRH), which yielded Ligurian Impressa ware dated to c. 5600 cal BC. This site is considered as an early beachhead for the Neolithic colonisation of the Languedoc: all the archaeological data suggest that people came more or less directly from Italy (Guilaine 2003; Manen 2000; see also Guilaine & Manen, this volume). The faunal analysis (Vigne 2007) suggests important differences with the subsequent Cardial system of exploitation: though fishing and shellfish collecting are attested, hunting is nearly absent and husbandry seems very specialised on sheep. As a preliminary reflection, we compared the faunal composition of this Portiragnes-PRH fauna with the ones of three Cardial stratigraphic sequences in the same area (Fig. 3a). Gazel (excavated by J. Guilaine 1976; 2003) is located in the Aude Valley, on the lower slopes of the Montagne Noire, at 250 m above sea level; the cave has been occupied by Mesolithic people, then by Cardial people starting from c. 5500 cal BC (Manen 2002). Faunal analyses have been partly published by Geddes (1980; 1985). Camprafaud (excavated by G. Rodriguez 1985) is located more deeply in the hinterland, at nearly 500 m above sea level; the stratigraphy in the cave describes the evolution of the Neolithic, starting from c. 5300 cal BC. Faunal analyses are due to Poulain-Josien (Rodriguez 1985, 253–356). Dourgne (excavated by J. Guilaine; Guilaine et al. 1993) is also located in the hinterland, in the Corbières Mountains, at 700 m above the sea level; the stratigraphy yielded two main early Neolithic phases. Faunal analyses have been done by Geddes (in Guilaine et al. 1993). The three Cardial-Epicardial sequences have come from cave or rockshelter sites, while the earlier Ligurian Impressa site is an open air one. However, Vigne and Helmer (1999) demonstrated that the difference between cave and open air sites is not the main factor explaining the faunal differences between the sites, and suggested that this difference in the choice of site



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setting should be considered as a consequence of economic strategies rather than a cause. The faunal assemblages of the different layers and sites have been analysed by way of a correspondence analysis of the number of identified specimens (NISP) of cattle, caprines (sheep ⫹ goat), suids (domestic ⫹ wild) and other wild vertebrates, except fish (for the methodology see Vigne & Helmer 1999). The scatter structure is strong (trace⫽0.34). The first axis is determined by an opposition between wild animals and sheep; the second one is determined by high frequencies of cattle and, secondarily, suids. The archaeozoological assemblages scatter following a gradient between three types of faunal compositions (Fig. 3b): Type 1 layers with dominant wild fauna (mostly deer and boar), which indicate hunters or hunting sites; Type 2 layers with mixed wild and well balanced sheep and cattle domestic fauna, which suggests balanced Neolithic subsistence with a secondary but important role for hunting; Type 3 layers with faunas mostly dominated by sheep and goat, i.e. specialised Neolithic subsistence. The early Neolithic Impressa fauna is highly dominated by sheep, and plots at the left extremity of the gradient. This testifies that the first pioneers coming from Italy brought with them their specialised Neolithic subsistence, without hunting and with rather poor fishing and shellfish collecting. The four different phases of the Early Neolithic stratigraphy of Gazel, which describe the Cardial and Epicardial from c. 5500 to c. 4800 cal BC, show a rather specialised Neolithic subsistence, however more balanced than in Portiragnes, hunting being more and more important through time. The two layers at Dourgne are highly dominated by wild animals, and, as already concluded by Guilaine (in Guilaine et al. 1993), clearly represent occupations of Neolithic hunters or temporary settlements of Neolithic groups for hunting expeditions. The six layers of Camprafaud describe the Cardial and Epicardial succession, contemporary with Gazel. But, in contrast to Gazel, the early layers indicate a subsistence mostly dominated by hunting, sheep, cattle and pig becoming more and more important through the stratigraphy. However, even at the end of the Epicardial, i.e. c. 4800 cal BC, the Neolithic subsistence at Camprafaud still included an important element of hunting, together with a non specialised husbandry of sheep, cattle and pig. This time and space pattern suggests a break between the specialised subsistence system that prevailed during the early Impressa stage of neolithisation. This seems to be confirmed by the preliminary results of the analyses of the faunal remains of the Impressa layers at Pendimoun (Daniel Helmer and Lionel Gourichon, pers. comm.).


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Figure 3. Geographical location of the four Early Neolithic sites in the French Languedoc area (a), and (b) projection of F1 ⫻ F2 planes of the correspondence analysis of their taxonomic faunal composition. The different layers or phases of the different sites are abbreviated with the first letter of the name of the site followed by the number of the layer or phase: i.e. C16 means the layer 16 of Camprafaud. For Portiragnes, all the bones of all the contemporaneous pits have been grouped. See further explanations in text.



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This pattern also clearly shows that early Neolithic people in the hinterland, above 400 m, actually adopted domestic species such as sheep and goat. But they integrated them in a completely different system of subsistence, characterised by an important part of hunting which may be considered as a Mesolithic heritage, and by a well balanced husbandry. The latter may be considered as the evidence of a low level of breeding skills, at the opposite end of the spectrum to those of early Impressa people, but it should rather be considered as a cultural choice, which might have been better adapted to the social, cultural and economic traditions of use of natural resources by these local Neolithic people. It seems that each local Cardial population rebuilt its own Neolithic subsistence system, according to its traditions and natural environment. The Atlantic façade Zooarchaeological data collected in Brittany have revealed that late Mesolithic communities (at the end of the sixth millennium cal BC) living by the coast were relying on very diversified marine resources, including mammals, birds, fishes and molluscs (Dupont et al. in press; Schulting et al. 2004; Tresset 2005a). Isotopic data derived from the collagen of a series of human remains coming from the well known cemeteries at Téviec and Hoëdic (Morbihan, Brittany) have revealed very high d13C values (Schulting 2005; Schulting & Richards 2001), confirming the heavy reliance of the late Mesolithic economy on marine resources. The Téviec and Hoëdic cemeteries have also provided many data regarding symbolic aspects of the man/animal relationship. Faunal remains found in graves (Péquart et al. 1937; Tresset 2005a) comprise bird of prey talons (white tailed eagle at Hoëdic), carnivore mandibles, deer antlers, wild boar tusks, ray buckles or exceptionally big fish jaws (for example, one maxilla at Téviec) and mirror the diversity of species exploited for food (Tresset 2005a). Late Mesolithic sites in Ireland (e.g. Ferriter’s Cove, mid fifth millennium; Woodman et al. 1999) and Scotland (Oronsay sites: Mellars 1987; Morton: Coles 1971) display similar trends, and the stable isotope data are congruent with zooarchaeological sources in indicating a heavy reliance on marine resources (Richards & Mellars 1998; Schulting 1999). Domesticates appeared on the north-western margin of Europe between the end of the sixth and the beginning of the fourth millennium cal BC, introduced by the Mediterranean and the Danubian streams. It was probably a complex process, and there is now evidence in Brittany and southern Ireland, at the end of the sixth millennium and during the mid fifth millennium respectively, for the introduction of domesticates in late Mesolithic contexts (Tresset & Vigne 2007; Woodman et al. 1997; 1999; Milner & Woodman


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2005), though the old claims for such events in Brittany (Benard Le Pontois 1929; Bender 1985; Péquart et al. 1937) proved to be relying on incorrect data (Tresset 2000), resulting from mix-ups between Mesolithic and later layers. In Brittany and southern Ireland, domesticates appeared several centuries before the ‘Neolithic package’ and before husbandry techniques. It proved to be appropriate here to dissociate the concepts of domesticates and husbandry techniques, as the occurrence of the former does not imply the presence of the latter (see also Tresset 2002). Whatever form the introduction of domestic animals might have taken, their adoption—gradual or more abrupt— had dramatic effects on people’s diet, especially on the coastline of Europe. Isotopic analyses on human bones in Scotland, Ireland and Brittany have demonstrated the same dramatic shift from a mainly marine to a nearly exclusively terrestrial diet (Richards et al. 2003; Schulting 2005; Schulting et al. 2004). However, zooarchaeological evidence shows that shellfish, fish and seabirds were still exploited, though in much smaller quantities. Interestingly, there are also some changes in the species exploited between the two periods. This is particularly striking regarding seabirds, which are mostly auks and ducks, and sometimes gannets, during the Mesolithic, but are dominated by gulls, shags and cormorants in the Neolithic (Dupont et al. in press; Schulting et al. 2004; Tresset 2005b). The range of marine mollusc species exploited also narrows during the Neolithic (Dupont et al. in press). These elements suggest a qualitative change in the use of wild animals that could have become a seasonal buffering resource for humans, fodder for domesticates, or items of prestige value (including through hunting as a sport). Southern England and the Paris Basin Bibliographic data collected in southern England for the first half of the fourth millennium cal BC, which locally corresponds to the beginnings of the Neolithic, were compared with data elaborated in the Paris Basin for the same period and for the last half of the fifth millennium (locally equivalent to the middle Neolithic). Metrical data obtained in southern England (Armour-Chelu 1991; Grigson 1999) clearly show that domestic cattle were already much smaller than the local aurochs (as documented at Starr Carr: Legge & Rowley-Conwy 1988), which weakens any hypothesis of local domestication and is convergent with aDNA data (see above). The size of these domesticates was similar to their continental contemporary counterparts, suggesting they were originating in the adjacent part of the Continent (Tresset 2003). Faunal spectra observed on either side of the Channel at the same time seem to deliver a convergent picture, as they are very similar (Fig. 4). All this


Figure 4.

Faunal spectra observed on either side of the Channel c. 4000 cal BC (after Tresset 2002; 2003).



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suggests a cultural continuity between the two sides of the Channel at the time of the appearance of husbandry in southern Britain (Tresset 2000; 2003; 2005).

FROM FOOD TO SYMBOLS We have also examined the congruence between economic and symbolic systems in early farming contexts. These two registers do not always mirror each other and their discrepancies can deliver precious information on mental representations of different animal categories and their social value. The Cerny culture that emerged in the Paris Basin shortly before 4500 cal BC, and represented a radical transformation of the Danubian society, was characterised by grave goods evoking hunting activities (arrowheads) and wild animals (bangles made of wild boar tusks, necklaces made of red deer canines, carnivore claws, bird of prey talons) in strong contrast to the economy, which mostly relies on cattle (Tresset 1997; 2005a). Interestingly, these items are very similar to those retrieved in late Mesolithic funerary contexts, as documented at Hoëdic and Téviec in Brittany (Péquart et al. 1937; Péquart & Péquart 1954; Tresset 2005a). They are, at the same time, very different from the grave goods traditionally placed in Danubian graves throughout Europe, that usually consisted of shells (fossil or contemporary), ceramics, lithic and bone tools, colourants and domestic animal joints. Wild animal elements such as carnivore and red deer teeth were scarce (Jeunesse 1997). There is a gap of three to four centuries, at least, between the arrival of the first farmers and the beginning of the Cerny culture in the Paris Basin. However, the contribution of the local Mesolithic societies to the formation of this new culture is considered as plausible by a number of researchers (in Constantin et al. 1997). Conversely to the Cerny case and roughly at the same time, in west-central and south-western France, cultural groups of the midfifth millennium cal BC (Chambon and Monbolo groups as well as contemporary cultures in the same area) crafted pots with horn-like designs, featuring cattle, sheep or goats (see Cassen & L’Helgouac’h 1992 and Tresset 2005a for a survey), but the analysis of faunal samples revealed that domesticates were scarce in the subsistence economy of these societies (Lesur et al. 2000; Tresset 1998; 2001; Fig. 5), which mostly relied on large wild mammals (red and roe deer, aurochs and wild boar). This discrepancy points toward a special value, beyond the economic one, attached to the first domesticates in this region, perhaps because they were of recent acquisition. Following these early manifestations, domestic animals, and especially cattle, became central to the Neolithic symbolic system in the whole of western Europe during the end of the fifth and the fourth millennia cal BC, as they



Figure 5.

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Faunal spectra observed in the south-west of France during the fifth millennium cal BC.

did in the economic system, but as described above, this apparent uniformity can result from very different local histories.

CONCLUDING REMARKS Zooarchaeological syntheses are still too scarce and regionally scattered to provide a general overview of the diverse techno-economical and


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cosmogonic reorganisations produced by the neolithisation waves in western Europe, especially by the introduction of new animals and animal products. However, the increase of conventional osteo-archaeological data, together with more accurate dating methods (by AMS radiocarbon dating), a better understanding of cultural dimensions of faunal assemblages and more diversified analytical information (isotopic and genetic data) raise some hope to do so in the foreseeable future. Today, it is nonetheless possible to say that the use of animals by early Neolithic societies of Western Europe was very diverse through time and space, and that this diversity mainly results from a combination of cultural singularities and diverse histories of interaction between local hunter-gatherers and incoming Neolithic cultures. What arises from all this is that the socalled ‘Neolithic package’ was only rarely adopted as a whole. We have presented examples of probable (though scarce) local domestication, of geographical differences in the rhythm of transfer of domesticates, of different systems of slow recombination of the Neolithic husbandry in the Cardial/ Epicardial culture but of drastic diet changes on the Atlantic façade, of discrepancies between the symbolic appropriation of domestic animals and their actual use as sources of animal proteins. The model of a big wave of diffusion of the Neolithic package (including sheep, goat but also cattle and probably some pigs) is still acceptable at a broad timescale, but at a more precise time resolution (more in accord with social phenomena), it must be refined both in terms of rhythms and modalities. This is clearly visible in western Europe, as in all the peripheral areas, because these territories are far from the initial centres from geographical, ecological and cultural points of view, and because the neolithisation flows acquired there a slower pace. But it is very likely that similarly complex phenomena of local or regional recombination also occurred in places where the neolithisation stream was so fast and so powerful that the interactions with local Mesolithic left very tenuous evidence. Consequently, western Europe probably remains one of the best documented areas to understand the complex and subtle relations between the last hunter-gatherers and early farmers in the management of animal resources during the Neolithic expansion toward the west. As such, it now deserves a complete renewal of anthropozoological analysis, based on the extraordinary set of new evidence recently acquired.



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The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the Paris Basin: a review PIERRE ALLARD

INTRODUCTION THE LAST THIRTY YEARS have seen increasing numbers of excavations of early Neolithic settlements in the main Paris Basin river valleys. These early Neolithic sites can be seen as part of the Danubian period, and specifically belong to the Rubané (LBK) and Villeneuve-Saint-Germain (VSG)-Blicquy cultures. The Paris Basin is also an area with many excavated Mesolithic sites. This paper presents a review of research into neolithisation processes on the westernmost edge of Danubian expansion. The study is mainly based on lithic finds because recent work has greatly improved our knowledge not only of Early Neolithic, but also of Mesolithic, flint industries in the Paris basin. There is no doubt that some of the LBK arrowheads show precise analogies with certain late/final Mesolithic arrowheads (asymmetrical trapezes and triangles with flat inverse retouch and the microburin technique). Yet in the current state of research, it is too restrictive to address the issue simply through arrowheads. A much broader scope of comparison of the two industries is required, integrating all possible levels of analysis. The Paris Basin is located at the limit of the expansion of the two Neolithic trends in Europe. The Rubané culture (Linearbandkeramik) appeared around 5300 cal BC in Alsace and then developed in Champagne (Middle Rubané). Most Rubané sites in the Paris Basin are later (RRBP, around 5000 cal BC). The question of neolithisation in this context concerns diverse aspects such as the chronology of the Danubian sequence (the relation between the Rubané and Villeneuve-Saint-Germain group), the cultural attribution of Limburg and La Hoguette ceramics, and the characterisation of Final Mesolithic industries. If we theoretically accept the existence of all these entities, the cultural context of the end of the sixth millennium cal BC is complex. We must therefore attempt to more clearly define the principal protagonists of this neolithisation (Fig. 1). Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 211–223, © The British Academy 2007.


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Figure 1. The LBK appears at around 5300 cal BC. A majority of sites date to the later LBK phase, called ‘Rubané récent du bassin parisien’ (RRBP). Limburg pottery mostly occurs in this late phase. The early Neolithic ends with the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain, just after the LBK.

THE RUBANÉ CULTURE The Rubané expansion into the Paris basin originates both from Alsace to the south-east, and the Meuse/Moselle regions to the north-east. The Rubané sites are located in the river valleys of the eastern half of the Paris Basin, though a few isolated discoveries show that the Rubané extends outside this main distribution area. At present, the material culture (architecture, ceramics, and so on) of Rubané sites in the Paris Basin resembles that of the western LBK culture, with the exception of a few regional particularities such as the ‘T’ decoration of pots (Ilett & Hachem 2001; Ilett et al. 1982). The lithic debitage is very homogeneous (Allard 2005). It is oriented toward the production of regular blades with parallel edges (detached by indirect percussion), which are relatively short (8–12 cm) and 1.5 to 2.5 cm wide. The technological particularity of this production lies in the systematic preparation of the striking platform by the removal of small flakes. The tools are made principally on blades, though the laminar debitage waste products were also transformed into tools, including the cores which were reused as hammers. True flake debitage does not appear until the final stage of the Rubané (Allard 2005). Though the tools are highly standardised, variations in the frequency of certain types exist in the different settlements (Fig. 2). Lithic raw materials were generally procured on a regional scale (10 to 50 km), which shows that the presence of these materials did not play a role


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Figure 2. The LBK has blade debitage, with a characteristic (facetted) preparation of the striking platform. LBK sites produce a standardised range of tool types. n° 1: blade, 2: core, 3: retouched blade, 4–5: asymmetrical arrowheads, 6–7: splintered pieces, 8: scraper, 9–10: sickles, 11: borer, 12: burin, 13–14: scrapers (tools from Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes, Bucy-le-Long and Berry-au-Bac in the Aisne Valley).


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in the location of Rubané settlements. The circulation of siliceous products attests to the existence of relations between all the zones. The Senonian and Tertiary flints from Champagne represent a higher proportion of the materials procured at the Basse-Alsace and Moselle settlements (Blouet 2005; Mauvilly 2000). The presence of a few Belgian flints (from Ghlin and Hesbaye) in the Aisne and Oise Valleys and at Saint-Dizier in Champagne attests to relations between Belgium and the northern Paris Basin (Allard 2005). Within this homogeneous portrait, which indisputably links the lithic industry of the Paris Basin to the central European Linearbandkeramik culture, there are regional differences within the Paris Basin. In the Paris Basin, burins are present only in the Late Rubané (RRBP): they are absent further east (Plateaux 1986). The sites of the Yonne Valley have a much higher proportion of flake tools than elsewhere in Europe. Arrowheads present certain characteristics that merit further study. Arrowheads in the Aisne/Oise/Yonne area have an asymmetrical triangular or trapezoidal shape with flat inverse retouch at the base. They are often made on blades and produced by the microburin technique. There are also a few transverse arrowheads. In Champagne, asymmetrical points are numerous but the microburin technique is absent in many cases. Symmetrical arrowheads with bifacial retouch, usually on blades, are attested, notably at Juvigny ‘les Grands Traquiers’ (Tappret & Villes 1996). On the Moselle, both types coexist. The asymmetrical points are usually produced without the microburin technique by covering retouch or short, triple side, bifacial removals (Löhr 1994), which is different from the Paris Basin model. In Alsace, symmetrical forms are by far the most common and are made either on flakes or blades. The few asymmetrical arrowheads are very often made from exogenous raw materials from the Paris Basin. The microburin technique is observable on only one arrowhead from Alsace (on a Paris Basin flint: Mauvilly 1997). Symmetrical arrowheads are apparently more frequent in the eastern part of our study region (Fig. 3). The asymmetrical forms are more frequent in the central Paris Basin, as well as in the Belgian LBK, especially in the Hainaut area. Another interesting technical detail of the asymmetrical arrowheads concerns their lateralisation. The right side was more often used in the north-east Paris Basin and in Belgium, while the left side was more frequently used in the Moselle and Alsace zones (Löhr 1994). Further south, both sides were used equally. In summary, the lithic industry corresponds to the central European LBK culture except for a few regional particularities, such as the presence of burins or flake debitage and a high proportion of flake tools in the Yonne sites (Augereau 1993). The arrowheads correspond to those of the western LBK with a few marked regional variations.



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Figure 3. The asymmetrical forms (in grey) are more frequent in the central Paris Basin and also the Belgian LBK, especially the Hainaut area. Another interesting technical detail with the asymmetrical arrowheads concerns lateralisation. The right side was mainly used in the northeast Paris Basin and in Belgium, the left side in the Moselle and Alsace, and both sides equally further south.


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THE VILLENEUVE-SAINT-GERMAIN (VSG) GROUP Here there is a major change in settlement patterns with a significant increase in the number of sites and an extension much farther west. In Belgium, the Blicquy group is closely related to the VSG. The VSG settlements and material culture are clearly derived from the late Rubané, though significant changes occur (Constantin 1985). It is impossible here to present the debate concerning the chronological position of the VSG, but the most recent analyses demonstrate that this group succeeded the Rubané and that its principal elements appear in the final stage of the RRBP (Constantin & Ilett 1997). The lithic industry is particularly convincing in this debate (Allard 2005; Allard & Bostyn in press). This position has since been supported by a new examination of the radiocarbon dates (Dubouloz 2003), which are presented below. The flint industry shows the same kind of blade debitage as the Rubané, but is generally more diverse (Augereau 1993; Bostyn 1994). The more common productions show a duality of short blade and flake debitage production, as well as tool shaping on blocks, generally on local materials. There is no technological distinction from the Rubané productions except the elongation of blades made from Tertiary flint. Flake production, on the other hand, is systematic and dominant in the settlements (Bostyn 1994). Nevertheless, one of the more spectacular changes observed is the production and distribution of long blades of Tertiary flint from the central Paris Basin. Though the circulation of flints was mostly regional and concentrated in the heart of the Paris Basin, an intense network existed between Belgium and the Paris Basin. This network also concerned schist bracelets, which are present at all the settlements. The typology of the tool industry is similar to that of the Rubané with the notable exception of the appearance of tranchets at the end of the VSG (Augereau 1993). On the other hand, the frequency of tool categories changes, with flake tools becoming dominant, especially scrapers and denticulates. Burins become the most frequent blade tools, particularly in the northern Paris Basin (Bostyn 1994). The arrowheads are triangular, or less often asymmetrical trapezoids, fabricated with the microburin technique like those of the Rubané. Symmetrical arrowheads are for the moment unknown in the VSG-Blicquy context. Transverse arrowheads are, in contrast, regularly found in this context. In the sectors where the Danubian sequence is well documented, such as in the Aisne Valley, the arrowheads of the VSG group present the following characteristics (Allard 2005). The preference for right lateralisation of the asymmetrical arrowheads disappears in the VSG group and transverse arrowheads gradually become more frequent: from 2% in the late Rubané to 16% in the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain; inverse retouch at the base and the microburin



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technique become less common; and the frequency of arrowheads drops to only 3%. These features, which begin to disappear in the VSG, are in fact the archaic features that the Rubané arrowheads share with Mesolithic forms.

THE FINAL MESOLITHIC Due to the large number of Mesolithic sites in the Paris Basin, this is one of the best documented regions in Europe. However, many of the flint assemblages studied in the past come from sites located on sandy subsoils with poor preservation. Relative dating is thus difficult and there are few reliable radiocarbon dates. Based on earlier studies of arrowhead typology and debitage types, Rozoy (1978; 1997) and Hinout (1997) proposed various hypotheses concerning the distribution of cultural groups. The final Mesolithic is characterised by Rozoy (1978) through: the debitage of bladelets or regular, narrow blades (known as the Montbani style); evolved arrowheads (trapezoids and triangles) with flat, inverse retouch; and a high percentage of Montbani blades and bladelets (objects with a semi-abrupt retouch that forms notches or concavities). While these authors consider the site of Allée Tortue (Xb for Rozoy & Slachmuylder 1990) at Fère-en-Tardenois as the reference for the late Tardenoisian, they believe it is also possible to distinguish several Mesolithic groups who occupied limited territories. The heart of the Paris Basin is divided into the South and North Tardenoisian by the Seine River (corresponding to a change in the lateralisation of trapezoids), with the Ardennian and Somme groups constituting two entities occupying the north of the zone. The studies of Hinout are often based on these same sites (but not the same excavations) but employing a different method, which relies mostly on statistical analyses. He identified three principal groups with a main separation delimited by the Seine: the Sauveterrian with denticulates to the west of the Seine and the Tardenoisian and the Mauregny to the north-east of the Seine. These three entities existed throughout the entire Mesolithic (Hinout 1997). The contexts considered are unfortunately weak since they are susceptible to disturbances, and the construction of a chrono-cultural sequence based only on the statistical evolution of typological, and sometimes technological, classes is problematical. Therefore, despite a high number of sites, it has not yet been possible to establish a reliable chronological sequence. The real breakthrough regarding the Mesolithic results from more recent work in the Somme Valley by Ducrocq (2001). Here the contexts are more secure and Ducroq has established a reliable sequence for later Mesolithic


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lithic material, supported by radiocarbon dates (Ducrocq 2001, 224–5). By 6500 cal BC, asymmetrical trapezoidal arrowheads appear. They are made with the microburin technique and have a left lateralisation. At around 6000 cal BC, feuille de gui (mistletoe leaf) arrowheads still exist. These are followed by asymmetrical arrowheads with right lateralisation (but with no direct dates). The latest, or final Mesolithic, dating to around 5000 cal BC, has the same arrowheads. The evolution of the late Mesolithic toward the final Mesolithic would therefore be oriented toward an increase in asymmetrical arrowheads relative to arrowheads with skewed bases (à bases décalées). In Ducrocq’s work, the terminal Final Mesolithic is represented by the dated series from Castel (6090 ⫾ 95 BP, 5224–4797 cal BC: Ducrocq 2001, 224–5), which is characterised by Montbani blades and bladelets, triangular or asymmetrical trapezoidal arrowheads with right lateralisation and flat inverse retouch (made with the microburin technique), and oblique truncations.

LIMBURG POTTERY I will not present here the history of research on Limburg pottery (or of La Hoguette pottery on the Rhine), whose stylistic and technical repertoire remains unique relative to the material culture of the Rubané (Constantin 1985; Lüning et al. 1989). Based on ceramics, some researchers have constructed a model that attempts to associate them with Mesolithic groups (characterised by asymmetrical arrowheads with right lateralisation for the Limburg zone and left lateralisation for the La Hoguette zone) that were already modified by the Neolithic influence of the Cardial trend before the arrival of the Rubané (Gronenborn 1990; Jeunesse 1998). However, questions surrounding Limburg pottery are not necessarily the same as those concerning La Hoguette pottery. Its total absence in numerous Mesolithic sites of the Tardenois and the Somme is troubling, and has also been observed for the Hesbaye sector and the Dutch Limburg (Crombé et al. 2005). At present Limburg pottery exists only in Rubané contexts and with a diffusion zone principally concentrated in the RRBP of the Aisne and the Rubané of Hainaut. The hypotheses concerning Limburg pottery have largely surpassed currently available data and are oriented toward the idea of a prominent influence of native populations in the neolithisation of Western Europe, in contrast to a simple colonisation of the Rubané. In the region that interests us, there is no argument to support the former model.



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NEW LEADS TOWARD AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE NEOLITHISATION OF THE PARIS BASIN Radiocarbon dates In terms of radiocarbon dates, there has always been some difficulty with the late Rubané and Villeneuve-Saint-Germain sequence. Nonetheless, a new detailed analysis of the cumulative diagrams of calibrated dates shows a tangible succession between the end of the Rubané and the VSG (Dubouloz 2003). This presentation places the latest Rubané at around 5000 cal BC, with the VSG following shortly after (Fig. 4). This hypothesis is supported by studies of the lithic industry, which indisputably confirm the chronological succession of these two periods (Allard 2005; Allard & Bostyn in press). The radiocarbon dates for the latest Mesolithic in the Somme area are broadly contemporary with the late Rubané (Ducrocq 2001). However, dates are still very rare for northern France. Arrowheads It is already known that arrowheads similar to those of the late Mesolithic exist in the Rubané of the northern Paris Basin (Allard 2005; Ducrocq 2001; Löhr 1994). If we compare late Mesolithic types from the Somme and

Figure 4. C14 dates of RRBP and VSG of the Paris Basin. This recent presentation shows the latest LBK at around 5000 cal BC and the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain shortly after (Dubouloz 2003).


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Tardenois with RRBP types from the Aisne Valley, located just between the two areas, the following points emerge. There are fewer types in the Rubané. There are no oblique truncations in the Rubané. Right lateralisation and flat inverse retouch, two technical details that are extremely common in the Somme Mesolithic, are relatively less common in the Rubané (right lateralisation drops from 100% in the Mesolithic to 71%, while inverse retouch drops to 46%). The blanks used for arrowheads are more varied in the Rubané. Though similar in length, the Rubané arrowheads are generally wider. In conclusion, though the technical and typological convergences are indisputable, it is significant that the Rubané arrowheads of the northern Paris Basin present technical differences from those of the local Mesolithic. They are in fact much more similar to the arrowheads of the Belgian Rubané. Likewise, oblique truncations disappeared and the symmetrical points of the Rubané of Champagne are totally unknown in the local Mesolithic. Thus one has to accept the idea that the Danubian asymmetrical arrowheads were already an integral element of the lithic industry of the western LBK, which developed in the Rhine-Meuse region during a phase earlier than that of the Paris Basin Rubané. Ideally, we would integrate all possible levels of analysis of the lithic industry (raw material procurement, technology, use-wear analysis, and so on). Unfortunately, these studies are lacking for the Paris Basin Mesolithic. Nonetheless, based on current evidence, it is possible to make the following observations (Fig. 5). The raw material procurement patterns are quite different; Mesolithic groups exploited local resources while Rubané populations selected good quality regional materials from a range of 15 to 30 km, sometimes to the detriment of local materials (Allard 2005). The debitage products are different; there are bladelets and narrow blades in the Mesolithic and mostly blades in the Rubané. The tool assemblages are different. Some specific tool types are completely different (for example, Rubané scrapers, borers and burins). The Yonne area, in the southern Paris Basin, is an exception to the general Rubané pattern. Here the Rubané industry is rather different, with a greater use of local flint and true flake debitage, as in the Mesolithic.

CONCLUSION The main results of the study are the following. We now have a better understanding of late Mesolithic industries, especially concerning arrowhead types. The radiocarbon dates show that the late Mesolithic is perhaps partly contemporary with the Rubané. The Late Rubané-VSG sequence is firmly established and we see that the VSG industry is derived from the Rubané,



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Figure 5. Comparison between the Rubané (RRBP) and late Mesolithic (Tardenois and Somme) lithic industries.

with a loss of Mesolithic elements. This suggests that the MesolithicNeolithic interaction in the Paris basin mainly involved the Rubané and was largely completed by the time VSG emerged. Following these results, we can now propose a tentative interpretation of the regional differences observed. In the northern Paris Basin and Belgium, the similarities between Rubané and Mesolithic arrowheads could reflect farmer-forager contacts and interactions following Rubané colonisation in the Rhine-Meuse region. Indeed, as a whole, the lithic industry of the Paris Basin Rubané is most closely comparable with that of the earlier settled neighbouring Rubané zones, and not with that of the Mesolithic (in blade dimensions, raw material procurement and tool assemblages). For this reason, it seems more plausible to speak of a gradual integration of Mesolithic populations who partially maintain a characteristic identity in their arrowheads. It is perhaps this same characteristic identity that is expressed in the Limburg pottery, which would thus belong to the repertoire of the Rubané populations of the Meuse and Aisne areas (and whose technique would originate in that of the Hoguette culture, in principle much earlier). Nonetheless,


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this cannot be seen as more than an integration since the material culture and technical system are clearly that of the Rubané. For example, the unpublished results of the faunal analysis of the site of Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes (Hachem 1996) show that the Rubané populations of the Aisne arrived with complete herds, and were perfectly familiar with the practices of raising and slaughtering domestic animals. Finally, in the southern Paris Basin, the situation appears rather different. Here the additional technical similarities between Rubané and Mesolithic industries possibly reflect a local acculturation of forager groups in areas such as the Yonne. It is indeed in this region that the most significant differences in the LBK lithic industry are currently observable and we must thus preserve the possibility of an alternative hypothesis. Note. I would like to thank M. Ilett (University of Paris I) for his help and for improving the English text. I wish to thank, too, M. O’Farrell for the translation of this paper.

REFERENCES ALLARD, P. 2005. L’industrie lithique des populations rubanées du nord-est de la France et de la Belgique. Rahden: Marie Leidorf. ALLARD, P. & BOSTYN, F. in press. Genèse et évolution des industries lithiques danubiennes du Bassin parisien. In P. Allard, F. Bostyn & A. Zimmermann (eds), Contribution of lithics for early and middle Neolithic chronology in France and neighbouring regions. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. AUGEREAU, A. 1993. Évolution de l’industrie du silex du Vè au IVè millénaire avant J.-C. dans le sud-est du Bassin parisien. Organisation techo-économique du Villeneuve-Saint-Germain au groupe de Noyen. Thèse de Doctorat, Université de Paris I. BLOUET, V. 2005. L’industrie lithique du site Néolithique ancien de Malling. In G. Auxiette & F. Malrain (eds), Hommages à Claudine Pommepuy, Revue Archéologique de Picardie numéro spécial 22, 29–38. BOSTYN, F. 1994. Caractérisation des productions et de la diffusion des industries lithiques du groupe néolithique du Villeneuve-Saint-Germain. Thèse de Doctorat, l’Université de Paris I. CONSTANTIN, C. 1985. Fin du Rubané, céramique du Limbourg et post-rubané. Le néolithique le plus ancien en Bassin parisien et en Hainaut. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. CONSTANTIN, C. & ILETT, M. 1997. Une étape terminale dans le Rubané Récent du Bassin parisien. In C. Jeunesse (ed.), Le Néolithique danubien et ses marges entre Rhin et Seine, 281–300. Strasbourg: Actes du XXIIème colloque interrégional sur le Néolithique supplément de l’Association Pour la Recherche Archéologique en Alsace. CROMBE, P., PERDAEN, Y. & SERGANT, J. 2005. La néolithisation de la Belgique: quelques reflexions. Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française 36, 48–66. DUBOULOZ, J. 2003. Datation absolue du premier Néolithique du Bassin parisien: complément et relecture des données RRBP et VSG. Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française 100, 671–89. DUCROCQ, T. 2001. Le Mésolithique du bassin de la Somme. Lille: Publications du CERP n° 7, Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille.



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GRONENBORN, D. 1990. Mesolithic-Neolithic interactions. The lithic industry of the earliest bandkeramik site Friedberg-Bruchenbrücken, Wetteraukreis (West Germany). In P. M. Vermeersch & P. van Peer (eds), Contribution to the Mesolithic of Europe, 173–82. Leuven: Leuven University Press. HACHEM, L. 1996. La faune rubanée de Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes; essai sur la place de l’animal dans la première société néolithique du Bassin parisien. Thèse de doctorat, Université de Paris I. HINOUT, J. 1997. Évolution des ensembles industriels mésolithiques dans le Bassin parisien par l’analyse des données. In J.-P. Fagnart & A. Thévenin (eds), Le Tardiglaciaire en Europe du Nord-Ouest, 119ème congrès du CTHS, Amiens, 1994, 223–33. Paris: édition du CTHS. ILETT, M., CONSTANTIN, C., COUDART, A. & DEMOULE, J.-P. 1982. The late Bandkeramik of the Aisne valley: environment and spatial organisation. Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia 15, 45–62 ILETT, M. & HACHEM, L. 2001. Le village néolithique de Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes (Aisne, France). In J. Guilaine (ed.), Communautés villageoises du Proche-Orient à l’Atlantique (8000–2000 avant notre ère), 171–86. Paris: Errance. JEUNESSE, C. 1998. La néolithisation de l’Europe occidentale (VIIe–Ve millénaires av. J. C.): nouvelles perspectives. In C. Cupillard & A. Richard (eds), Les derniers chasseurs-cueilleurs du massif jurassien et de ses marges (13000–5500 avant J.-C.), 208–17. Lons-le-Saunier: Centre Jurassien du Patrimoine. LÖHR, H. 1994. Linksflügler und Rechtsflüger in Mittel-und Westeuropa. Der Fortbestand der Verbreitungsgebiete asymmetrischer Pfeilspitzformen als Kontinuitätsbeleg zwischen Meso-und Neolithikum. Trierer Zeitschrift 57, 9–127. LÜNING, J., KLOOS, U. & ALBERT, S. 1989. Westliche Nachbarn der bandkeramischen Kultur: La Hoguette und Limburg. Germania 67, 355–420. MAUVILLY, M. 1997. L’industrie lithique de la culture à céramique linéaire de Haute et de Basse Alsace—état des recherches et bilan provisoire. In C. Jeunesse (ed.), Le Néolithique danubien et ses marges entre Rhin et Seine, 327–58. Strasbourg: Actes du XXIIème colloque interrégional sur le Néolithique, supplément de l’Association pour la Recherche Archéologique en Alsace. MAUVILLY, M. 2000. Le matériel lithique du site de Rosheim ‘Sainte-Odile’ (Bas-Rhin). Première partie—objets en roches siliceuses et apparentées. Cahiers de l’Association pour la Recherche Archéologique en Alsace 16, 67–81. PLATEAUX, M. 1986. L’industrie lithique des premiers agriculteurs dans le nord de la France. In Chipped stone industries of the early farming cultures in Europe. Actes du colloque de Cracow, Archeologia interregionalis, 225–45. ROZOY, J.-G. 1978. Les derniers chasseurs. Charleville-Mézière: Mémoires de la Société Archéologique Champenoise. ROZOY, J.-G. 1997. Territoires sociaux et environnement en France du nord et en Belgique de 14,000 à 6000 b.p. In J.-P. Fagnart & A. Thévenin (eds), Le Tardiglaciaire en Europe du Nord-Ouest, 119ème congrès du CTHS, Amiens, 1994, 429–54. Paris: édition du CTHS. ROZOY, J.-G. & SLACHMUYLDER, J.-L. 1990. L’Allée Tortue à Fère-en-Tardenois (Aisne, France). Site éponyme du Tardenoisien récent. In P. M. Vermeersch & P. van Peer (eds), Contribution to the Mesolithic in Europe, 423–33. Leuven: Leuven University Press. TAPPRET, E. & VILLES, A. 1996. Contribution de la Champagne à l’étude du Néolithique ancien. In P. Duhamel (ed.), La Bourgogne entre les bassins rhénan, rhodanien et parisien — carrefour ou frontières?, 175–256. Revue Archéologique du Centre supplément 14.



Neolithic fragrances: Mesolithic-Neolithic interactions in western France GRÉGOR MARCHAND

THE OBJECT OF THIS PAPER is to consider the Neolithic transition of western France through the relationships between communities of hunter-gatherers and those of farmers. The intention is not so much to place farming pioneers and natives in opposition, but rather to reflect on the traces left by the interactions between technical systems during the ‘availability’ phase (Zvelebil & Rowley-Conwy 1986). The area considered stretches from the Seine to the Garonne, during the period in broad terms from 5500 to 4700 cal BC. The meeting of the two main currents of the west-European Neolithic expansion, coupled with the continued existence (chronologically ill defined) of Mesolithic groups, created a mosaic process which we are only beginning to analyse, region by region. Western France is a region of peneplains and sedimentary basins, marked by large rivers that are the main structuring elements of the landscape and which provide rich biotopes. The Atlantic Ocean was also a fundamental geographical element for the prehistoric communities of the Armorican Massif, as a purveyor of food and particularly of workable flint pebbles. The coast was therefore the focus of numerous human occupations among which are a number of shell middens. The importance of these marine economies, however, has long been over-estimated when attempting to explain the resistance to change of the last Mesolithic communities. Recent work has demonstrated that the impact of human communities was equally significant inland, where they did not depend in any marked degree on the ocean (Gouletquer et al. 1996; Marchand 2003; 2005). The situation I would like to present is made up of complex interactions for which the natural environment forms a framework without ever becoming the main actor. These interactions will be approached via the extensive technical transfers between Mesolithic and Neolithic systems. In interpreting this material, we must be especially wary of taphonomic traps and biases in the evidence, and these will be taken into account here.



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TAPHONOMIC PROBLEMS AND INFORMATION BIASES For a long time, the Atlantic coast of France appeared as a ‘Far West’, where every combination of archaeological elements was possible. This approach gave birth to a variety of models of autochthonous change from Mesolithic to Neolithic: a Neolithic developing from an extremely polymorphic Mesolithic substrate, as for example on the edge of the Massif Central (the so-called ‘Roucadourian’: Roussot-Larroque 1977; 1990); an Atlantic Cardial based on a Sauveterrian substrate, as at La Lède-du-Gurp in Gironde (Roussot-Larroque & Villes 1988); or a retarded Mesolithic, as for example to the north of the Loire estuary (L’Helgouach 1976). In effect, it seemed that the great waves of Neolithic expansion had worn themselves out before reaching the Atlantic shores. The whole scenario was, we should now admit, incomprehensible and those hypotheses have today been discredited. The present-day image of a Brittany steeped in folklore and economically retarded has probably played a crucial part in giving rise to the idea of a Mesolithic people unreceptive to the joys of agriculture. What is more, the high density of Mesolithic sites in western Brittany is a result of the key role accorded to amateur archaeologists (Gouletquer et al. 1996). By contrast, in the south of France, the significance of surface sites is minimised compared to that of rock-shelters and caves. The study of the Neolithic transition must accordingly be approached warily, watching out for such present-day biases and ways of thinking. We must also take into consideration the geomorphological and taphonomic parameters that affect our corpus. With an estimated rise in sea-level of 10 m (Pirazzoli 1991), the coastline of the sixth millennium cal BC has completely disappeared in west-central France, where the continental shelf is shallow. On the other hand, the shell middens of Brittany, set on rocky cliffs bordering deep seas, have at least partially escaped that destruction. Elsewhere, frequent discoveries of Early Neolithic evidence on the beaches of the Vendée or Aquitaine seem in my view to be attributable to conditions of research, rather than to any prehistoric reality. Coastal marshlands, today eroded by the sea, have fossilised these prehistoric traces, which can now be collected on the beaches (Joussaume 1986). The ease of observation, and the frequentation of these beautiful shores by archaeological prospectors, have led to the over-evaluation of discoveries made along the sea shore. They are rather too quickly taken to be Neolithic landing-places, in the manner of ancient Greek trading-posts. When our eyes move inland, to favourable sedimentary contexts such as the peat deposits of La Grange at Surgères (Laporte et al. 2000), we discover that Early Neolithic material is also present there. These biases in what we know must alert us to the danger of overestimating the role of Mesolithic communities in the Neolithic transition.


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They oblige us to reassess the role of the ocean, which so often has been conceived as a medium for rapid movement by boat in the Early Neolithic. By contrast, the hypotheses presented in this paper could be qualified as ‘terrestrial models’.

A STRONG MESOLITHIC IMPRINT Stability of human communities in Brittany in segmented territories In Brittany, our knowledge is no longer limited to the coastal strip that is so well known through the shell middens of Téviec and Hoëdic. Intensive fieldsurveys led by Pierre Gouletquer and his team in Finistère in the 1990s revealed a dense network of sites (Gouletquer et al. 1996); the available corpus now stands at 62 sites with large-blade industries in Brittany, of which 16 have been more or less intensively excavated. Several elements lead us to believe in a certain stability of territories that were of relatively reduced dimensions (Fig. 1). On the coast, the cemeteries of Téviec and Hoëdic reveal the high proportion of marine food in the diet. According to the work of Rick Schulting and Michael Richards this indicates permanent occupations (Schulting & Richards 2001). These results are seemingly corroborated by studies of seasonality on shellfish by Catherine Dupont, which suggest semi-sedentary or sedentary occupations (Dupont 2003). Likewise, the structure of the lithic industries reveals a significantly lower level of arrowhead production at shell midden sites than at logistical sites on cliff tops (without shells). Finally, the scarcity of stone materials of inland origin on the coast also pleads in favour of acquisition territories turned towards the ocean. The organisation of space inland seems to be identical, with large camps and small logistical sites. It should be noticed that mobile settlements are always linked to potentially navigable waterways and they never seek high or, in other words, defensive positions. On this ancient Massif, flint is found only along the coast, in the form of beach pebbles. Late Mesolithic societies inland therefore resorted to a wide variety of stone types in an economic system of a kind hitherto unknown in this area. It is tempting to draw a parallel with the broad-spectrum economy seen in subsistence behaviour. Systems for the distribution of raw materials reached only up to 60 km; they were already much reduced in impact at distances of about 30 km. There seem to have been no contacts between north and south Brittany; in any case, nothing leads us to believe in a territory of seasonal exploitation on such a scale. Finally, three slightly different typological groups correspond closely to these relatively restricted ranges of


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Figure 1. Distribution of several territorial indications for the final Mesolithic of Brittany: symmetrical bitruncation styles and raw-material territories. Black square: geological sites. Grey circles: Mesolithic sites.

around 30 to 50 km. The homogeneity of the technical system over the whole of Brittany implies contact on a large scale, but we must suppose social and cultural integration at levels other than that of a single group travelling around the peninsula, such as through exchanges or periodic encounters. Do these characteristics indicate economic stress or, on the contrary, an age of abundance? The answer depends on the ideological options of the individual archaeologist. In the lithic industries, we can identify two successive typological facies within the Teviecian: the Hoëdic facies at around 5400 to 5200 cal BC and the Beg-er-Vil facies at around 5100 to 5000 cal BC. This later facies sees the supremacy of symmetrical bitruncations (transverse arrowheads) and the appearance of the convex-backed blade. This is markedly different in style from what we know in the rest of France where asymmetrical points domi-



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nate (trapeze, triangle or point). The late date of the Beg-er-Vil facies makes it a technical entity contemporary with the Early Neolithic of west-central France and with the earliest Neolithic of Paris Basin. I shall argue below that these technical mutations are probably the fruit of that coexistence. The distance end to end of the Armorican Peninsula may also have favoured the emergence of a stylistic particularism, rather as with an island. Stability and multiple cultural influence in the Centre-West In contrast to Brittany, the geographical openness of the centre-west resulted in a great diversity of technical influences on the stone tools. The Retzian is a technical entity discovered in the Vendée and in Loire-Atlantique (Fig. 2). Forty sites are known of which four have been excavated. So far, only one date has been obtained, on charcoal, from the site of La Gilardière at Pornic. This falls within the interval 5600–5260 cal BC (6520 ⫾ 120 BP: Tucson 8436). The Late Mesolithic of Poitou, identified mainly at the site of L’Essart at Poitiers, is an entity in its own right defined by several typological features, but is related to the Retzian. The external features which interest us here are the transverse arrowheads of Châtelet and Montclus type. They originate in the Impressed Ware sphere and rapidly become one of the main products of bladelet working in the Late Mesolithic. It appears that the coexistence between Mesolithic and Neolithic communities was long enough for the Neolithic transverse arrowheads to become part of the Mesolithic technical repertoire. Over time, rather than isolated extraneous elements they became an important part of the Mesolithic arrowhead suite. The remainder of the industry corresponds to the production norms of the Montbani type that is found in the rest of France during the latest stages of the Mesolithic. While we are able to demonstrate the limited extent of Late Mesolithic territories in Brittany, economic data for the area between the Loire and the Garonne rivers are extremely incomplete. The importance of marine foods in diet is not so manifest as on the Breton coast, but the coastline of the period has largely been destroyed by the encroachment of the sea. Several elements, however, indicate a strong link to the aquatic environment. Recent work in collaboration with Catherine Dupont, Yves Gruet and Michel Tessier in the region of Pornic (Loire-Atlantique) has shown a system of small logistical sites within a former estuary, but without any shell middens (Fig. 3; Marchand et al. 2002). At the heart of the Poitou region another type of settlement has recently been discovered where activities seem to be characterised by the use of fire (Fig. 4). On an island in the River Clain at L’Essart, more than 50 stone hearths and numerous dismantled hearths were excavated in 2003–2005, extending across an area of approximately 2000 square metres. Over 75% of


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the flint had been burnt, making this an exceptional Mesolithic site; in Brittany the corresponding figure for shell middens is around 25–30%. The poor bone preservation prevents us from determining exactly what the inhabitants were burning so relentlessly, but the proximity of the river suggests activities such as smoking fish. Links with the sea and rivers remind us of Brittany but may here have been associated with different economic structures. In the absence of preserved seeds or bones, it is difficult to address the question of animal or plant domestication and we must remain cautious about the lifestyle of these conveyors of final Mesolithic techniques.

THE EARLIEST NEOLITHIC An ill defined Mediterranean current In the course of palynological sampling, Lionel Visset and his team have discovered cereal pollen in the Morbihan, Loire-Atlantique, Maine-et-Loire and Vendée dating from between 7200 and 5800 cal BC (Visset et al. 1996; 2002). These discoveries pose numerous problems, first, because the pollen comes from coastal environments where it may derive from halophytic plants; and also because the sedimentary contexts of the samples remain questionable. Extremely sporadic and transient, these findings predate the earliest evidence of plant domestication in France (the oldest of them predate the earliest domestication in Europe), and thus constitute a chronological anomaly which requires explanation. For the moment, they should be regarded with considerable suspicion. The earliest Neolithic impact detected through material culture comes from the Impressed Ware cultural complex, originating in the north-west Mediterranean. The traces are extremely diffuse. Fragments of pottery from

Figure 2. A: final Mesolithic sites in Western France; B: early Neolithic sites. 1. Téviec (SaintPierre-les-Quiberon, Morbihan); 2 . Beg-er-Vil (Quiberon, Morbihan); 3. Port-Néhué (Hoëdic, Morbihan); 4. La Gilardière (Préfailles, Loire-Atlantique); 5. L’Essart (Poitiers, Vienne); 6. La Grange (Surgères, Charente-Maritime); 7. Le Cuzoul de Gramat (Gramat, Lot); 8. Les Escabasses (Thémines, Lot); 9. Bellevue (Neulliac) and Le Dillien (Cléguérec, Morbihan); 10. Le Haut-Mée (Saint-Etienne-en-Coglès, Ille-et-Vilaine); 11. Le Boulerot (Beaufort-en-Vallée, Maine-et-Loire); 12. La Bajoulière (Saint-Rémy-la-Varenne, Maine-et-Loire); 13. Bâtard (Brétignolles-sur-Mer, Vendée); 14. Le Rocher (Longueville-Plage); 15. Le Grouin-du-Cou (La Tranche-sur-Mer, Vendée); 16. La Grange (Surgères, Charente-Maritime); 17. Les Ouchettes (Plassay, Charente-Maritime); 18. Germignac (Charente); 19. La Balise (Soulac-sur-Mer, Gironde); 20. La-Lède-du-Gurp (Grayan-et-L’Hôpital, Gironde); 21. Le Bétey (Andernos-lesBains, Gironde); 22. L’abri-des-Rocs (Bellefonds, Vienne); 23. Le Lazzaro (Colombelles, Calvados).


Figure 3. The former estuary of Pornic River (Loire-Atlantique), with Retzian sites on top of the cliff. The ancient sea level at -10 m below actual corresponds to the -7 m level of the hydrographic map.

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Figure 4. L’Essart at Poitiers (Vienne). A: map of the hearths on the site. B: Hearth 14. C: Hearths 20 and 21.


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surface collections and even charcoal, dated by radiocarbon to around 5400 cal BC, have been picked up on strands at low tide. The circumstances of discovery make it impossible to describe the technical systems, though we should note that certain elements of the material culture are spread over a large geographical area (Aquitaine, Poitou-Charentes, and the southern Vendée; Fig. 3). As for the lithic industry, Montclus and Betey arrowheads appear frequently to the south of the Marais poitevin. The former are usually found in Cardial contexts and bear witness to a probable extension of those cultures towards the north-west. The latter are the French equivalent of the triangles and the segments with doble bisel retouch, well known in northern Iberia in established Neolithic contexts (the Geometric Complex). Colonisation by sea is a recurrent hypothesis in France, but it presupposes sailing around the Iberian peninsula. Study of the Cardial industries of Andalucia or Portugal (Carvalho 2002) reveals that they are radically different and obliges us to abandon this idea completely. The diffusion of Neolithic artefacts is the result of an altogether different process, less romantic but more realistic, involving a direct passage from western Languedoc towards the centre-west, with perhaps a later contribution of elements from the Ebro valley via the Pyrenees (Marchand 1999). The presence of a Neolithic of Mediterranean origin is highly likely, although its existence is mainly noticeable ‘in the negative’ through its impact on Late Mesolithic technical systems between 5600 and 5200 cal BC. The dates obtained at Le Grouin-du-Cou in Vendée for Early Neolithic material are identical to that of the Retzian site of La Gilardière at Pornic, but the main corpus of dates falls much later. Only with the site of Les Ouchettes at Plassay in Charente-Maritime, c. 4700 cal BC, are we finally able to document the particular characteristics of the lithic industries of this early Atlantic Neolithic. By this stage the lithic industries are already in a highly-evolved form, and show virtually no link with the Mesolithic (Laporte et al. 2002). All dates for the Early Atlantic Neolithic are contemporary with the Epicardial of Languedoc, and the stylistic traits of pottery decoration are also convergent with those of the latter group. The Central European current: aspects of a colonisation The extension towards the Atlantic of the Early Neolithic of Central European origin forms another current of Neolithic expansion, whose nature is more evident. The arrival of human groups in this case seems beyond question; that much is indicated by the evidence discovered at the sites, and above all by the invariable character of material assemblages. The Late Bandkeramik of the Paris Basin (RRBP) is now recognised on the Caen plain at Le Lazzaro at Colombelles (Billard et al. 2004; Guesquière et al. 2000). Beyond Lower



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Normandy, the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain which follows the RRBP chronologically is itself well documented in the east of the Armorican Massif, at Le Haut-Mée at Saint-Etienne-en-Coglès (Cassen et al. 1998) and at Pluvignon-La Bunelais at Betton recently excavated by Stéphane Blanchet (Blanchet 2003). In the lower Loire valley, the site of Le Boulerot at Beaufort-en-Vallée excavated by Bertrand Poissonnier, and numerous surface finds, also indicate a high density of occupation (Cassen et al. 1999). Finally, recent finds of VilleneuveSaint-Germain sites (Bellevue at Neulliac and Le Dillien at Cléguérec) in the centre of Brittany near Pont-Ivy confirm the extension of that group westwards. Available dates fall at the beginning of the fifth millennium cal BC. The trapezoidal house plans and ceramic styles are identical to those of the classic Villeneuve-Saint-Germain sites. Extensive importation of flint from the Paris Basin into the Armorican Massif immediately places the VilleneuveSaint-Germain in an economic cycle radically different from the Mesolithic cycle, but one that continues up to the final Neolithic. It is interesting to note the way in which the system spreads as the distance of importation increases. Within an initial band, up to 100 km from the sources (a two to four days’ walk), Villeneuve-Saint-Germain technology remains stable, with only an increase in the role of the blades. It is effectively more economical to import blades or preformed cores than raw material. Between 100 and 200 km, acquisition territories change and tools are made from local material, but still with a wide range of imports. The transport capacity of the Villeneuve-SaintGermain system is hence greatly superior to that of the late Mesolithic, but leaving aside this geological determinism, there are no perceptible links between the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain and the Teviecian. The two currents of Neolithic expansion evoked through their lithic industries are very different in their technical traditions. In the RRBP/ Villeneuve-Saint-Germain case, the motor of diffusion seems to be the westward expansion of farming groups, who progressively adapt their economic system to the environment. In the other case, nothing yet permits us to associate a typological unit (Monctlus or Betey arrowheads, or pottery of Mediterranean tradition) with a type of economy and a specific human group.

MESOLITHIC/NEOLITHIC INTERACTIONS: THE REVELATIONS OF TECHNICAL SYSTEMS In the second half of the sixth millennium cal BC, Early Atlantic Neolithic groups coexisted with others of Late Mesolithic type. Early in the fifth millennium cal BC such a coexistence links the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain and the Teviecian communities only in Brittany. We shall leave to one side the


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Epicardial influences on the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain that are particularly visible in ceramic designs, and which gave birth to what is sometimes known as the Augy-Sainte-Pallaye style. Can we grasp the nature of these interactions from archaeological evidence? The character of Mesolithic/Neolithic contacts cannot be determined simply by demonstrating their contemporaneity, since the time-intervals of the radiocarbon method do not allow the discrimination of short-term events. The image of passive hunter-gatherers outside history is one consequence of this unduly limited way of thinking. The Neolithic transition is a functional revolution that completely metamorphoses the tool and its means of production. Its effects cannot be minimised and the Mesolithic and Neolithic techniques in western France differ in the tools, their method of production and their network of stone supply. Scrapers, burins and borers of the Neolithic tool-kit rarely cross the ‘cultural boundaries’, which means that the function they fulfilled did not interest the last hunter-gatherers. An exception must, however, be made for the backed blades of the Teviecian Beg-er-Vil facies, models for which could be found in the Mediterranean Neolithic. Finally, we must note that Neolithic tools could easily have been produced by Mesolithic methods, out of local materials, but the abandonment of the Mesolithic traditions was nonetheless radical. This absence of porosity between technical systems does not extend, however, to the arrowheads; killing is atemporal, cross-cultural and over-rated. The example of the transverse arrowhead must first be considered. It would seem that the Retzian Châtelet arrowhead, elaborated by flat bifacial retouch, owes much to the Montclus type of the Cardial groups, produced by abrupt then flat retouch. The function is the same, it is the way the arrowhead is made that is different (Fig. 5). It is important to note that the Châtelet arrowheads of the Retzian do not have any regional antecedents, and that a Mediterranean origin is the only one possible. The direct adoption of Montclus arrowheads into Mesolithic systems finds striking illustration at L’Essart at Poitiers, where they comprise approximately 20% of arrowheads in a series of asymmetrical trapezes (Fig. 6). Such associations can also be documented in south-western France, for example in level 5 of Cuzoul de Gramat in the Lot (Lacam et al. 1944), at Les Escabasses (Valdeyron 2000) and more generally in the south-west. Finally, as its geographical position would predict, the Retzian plays the role of interface between the Cardial and the Teviecian in the adoption of transverse arrowheads. But once again, in Brittany this technical concept is retranslated into the local technical language, here with retouch that is exclusively abrupt. The multiple metamorphoses of the transverse arrowhead can only be understood if Mesolithic and Neolithic communities remained sufficiently stable for archaeology to be able to perceive them, albeit the sites are of



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Figure 5. Technical transfer from early Neolithic to final Mesolithic in Centre-West: from Montclus arrowhead to Châtelet arrowhead.

mediocre quality. The metamorphoses occur either through direct borrowing, in Poitou or in Aquitaine, or by transfer followed by interpretation in the Retzian and Teviecian. This partial porosity between Mesolithic and Neolithic technical systems—sometimes accompanied by misunderstandings—is not the prerogative of Atlantic regions. In the current state of research, I am almost tempted to reverse the classical conclusion; the Mesolithic areas of the Atlantic Coast, both in Spain and France, seem less active in the Neolithic transition than those of regions further to the east (Fig. 7). The Mesolithic legacy can more easily be observed in the Early Neolithic of the central Paris Basin, of western Languedoc (Barbaza et al. 1984) or of eastern Spain (JuanCabanilles 1985), than in western France. To return to the Montclus arrowhead and to complicate the pattern somewhat, we should note that it only appears in the French Cardial and not in Italy. Its genesis owes much to the local Mesolithic groups of Languedoc (the Gazel-Cuzoul group) as Jean Guilaine, Jean Vaquer and Michel Barbaza have suggested (Barbaza et al. 1984). In this case, we have a pattern of multiple exchanges, first from Mesolithic to Neolithic, and then from Neolithic to Mesolithic, as one proceeds towards the west. The adoption of transverse arrowheads is not a technical improvement or an environmental adaptation, but rather a technical change depending on


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Figure 6. L’Essart at Poitiers (Vienne). Arrowheads. 1–6: Montclus arrowheads; 8–24: trapezoids. Drawings by F. Blanchet.

cultural choice. The reason behind this change in arrowhead design evidently lay in the symbolic domain and the success of the new form was dependent on the social relations at the very heart of Mesolithic society. It supposes first that Mesolithic communities had links of some kind with Neolithic communities: regular exchanges of goods in a complementary economy, integration of Neolithic immigrants, or intermarriages. In this last case, if we suppose that war and hunting are male functions, the Neolithic hunter or warrior would go to the Mesolithic village in a matrilocal postmarital residence pattern. Whatever happened, it means that Mesolithic society is sufficiently open to accept the emergence of this new ethnic identity in close spatial proximity to its own. This partial adoption of Neolithic tools into the Mesolithic system supposes, too, an attractive conception of the Neolithic way of killing and more generally a positive image of the new technical system. In other words, changes in lithic technology may reflect a more general attractiveness of the agro-pastoral way of life to Mesolithic communities. Only the lithics have been preserved but we cannot exclude the exchange of other things such as food or organic implements. The poor state of preservation seen in the



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Figure 7. Technical transfers of arrowheads in several areas of Atlantic Europe.

region leads to chronological imprecision and also to geographical uncertainty. It does not allow us to specify the location of each group in the wider landscape: whether overlapping Mesolithic and Neolithic territories in a small area (one in the valley, one on the plateau, and so on) or disconnected territories across a no-man’s land.


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The archaeological observations presented in this article are to be placed in a general perspective of the arrhythmia of the Neolithic transition, recently formalised by Guilaine (2001). It seems to me, however, that the phases of resistance and of the redefinition of technical entities are not limited only to two or three ‘stops’ on the continent. They can be observed at a regional scale and are multiple in number. The expansion of the Neolithic was a process that fed on those interactions, not to say one which only progressed via those interactions. Arrhythmia is integral to this. Attempting to formalise the technological principles that are observed suggests that contacts between Mesolithic and Neolithic communities form a coherent subject for study that can no longer make do with references to isolated pieces, nor simply with the acknowledgement that there is an overlap between the intervals of confidence of the radiocarbon dates. The imprecision in our mastery of time for this period may well prevent us from getting close to these rhythms of change, but the technical exchanges are sufficient in scale to be evident even after seven thousand years. The transfer mechanisms are particularly visible in the case of the arrowheads, as these are objects which condense a maximum of successive technical actions and where style best expresses itself. These transfers are to be placed within a general framework that recognises two contrasting techno-functional systems. We have therefore to admit that the interactions mainly concern the areas of hunting and warfare, both of which are potentially highly symbolic. Isabelle Sidéra (2000) arrived at similar conclusions in her study of the decorative objects of animal origin in tombs dating from the early Middle Neolithic in the Paris Basin. I have been careful not to evoke the manner in which Mediterranean Neolithic influences spread through western France. It goes without saying that the impact of these earliest communities was slight; saying more than that goes beyond the evidence that is available. Clearly there is still room for more audacious models, for example ceramic-bearing communities living exclusively by hunting and gathering, or again, groups of Retzian shepherds, but these lack the slightest proof. Scattered elements from the Late Mesolithic of the centre-west or of the Paris Basin are found throughout Brittany as far as its western limit. Population movements may also have included movements of hunter-gatherers in an intermingling that is still impossible to describe. If the smell of cereals from the seventh millennium seems to be a delusion that afflicts only a few botanists, certain fragrances from Neolithic material cultures apparently seduced the last Atlantic Mesolithic societies. To the south of the Loire, we find ourselves in the paradoxical situation of grasping



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the earliest Neolithic by its effect on the Mesolithic, more than by its own traces. The transition from the sixth to the fifth millennium cal BC was a period of identity turmoil in Western France, which translated into technical and cultural syncreticisms, following technical and symbolic logics that are still to be explored. To conclude the process, it must be admitted that the technical recomposition of the Middle Neolithic beginning in 4700 cal BC has nothing more to reveal to us of the Mesolithic world. Note. I would like to thank Alasdair Whittle for inviting me to the conference. I am very grateful to Sheila Marchet for the translation, and to Chris Scarre and Rick Schulting for interesting emendations.

REFERENCES BARBAZA, M., GUILAINE, J. & VAQUER, J. 1984. Fondements chrono-culturels du mésolithique en Languedoc Occidental. L’Anthropologie 88, 345–65. BILLARD, C., ALIX, P., BONABEL, L., BONNARDIN, S., BOSTYN, F., CASPAR, J.-P., DEGOBERTIERE, S., DIETSCH-SELLAMI, M.-F., HAMON, C., MARCOUX, N. & MARGUERIE, D. 2004. Le site d’habitat du Néolithique ancien de Colombellles ‘Le Lazzaro’ (Calvados) — Présentation préliminaire. Internéo 5, 29–33. BLANCHET, S. 2003. Betton. ZAC de Pluvignon, La Bunelais. Archéopages 11, 39. CARVALHO, A. F. 2002. Current perspectives on the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic in Portugal. In E. Badal, J. Bernabeu & B. Martí (eds), El paisaje en el Neolítico mediterráneo. Saguntum extra-5, 235–50. CASSEN, S., AUDREN, C., HINGANT, S., LANNUZEL, G. & MARCHAND, G. 1998. L’habitat Villeneuve-Saint-Germain du Haut-Mée (Saint-Etienne-en-Coglès, Ille-et-Vilaine). Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française 95, 41–75. CASSEN, S., MARCHAND, G., MENANTEAU, L., POISSONNIER, B., CADOT, R. & VIAU, Y. 1999. Néolithisation de la France de l’ouest: témoignages Villeneuve-SaintGermain, Cerny et Chambon sur la Loire angevine et atlantique. Gallia Préhistoire 41, 223–51. DUPONT, C. 2003. Les coquillages alimentaires des dépôts et amas coquilliers du Mésolithique récent/final de la façade atlantique de la France: de la fouille à un modèle d’organisation logistique du territoire. Préhistoire, Anthropologie Méditerranéennes 12, 221–38. GOULETQUER, P., KAYSER, O., LE GOFFIC, M., LEOPOLD, P., MARCHAND, G. & MOULLEC, J.-M. 1996. Où sont passés les Mésolithiques côtiers bretons? Bilan 1985–1995 des prospections de surface dans le Finistère. Revue Archéologique de l’Ouest 13, 5–30. GUESQUIERE, E., MARCIGNY, C., GIAZZON, D. & GAUME, E. 2000. Un village rubané en Basse-Normandie? L’évaluation du site de la ZAC du Lazzaro à Colombelles (Calvados). Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française 97, 405–18. GUILAINE, J. 2001. La diffusion de l’agriculture en Europe: une hypothèse arythmique. Zephyrus 53–4, 267–72. JOUSSAUME, R. 1986. La néolithisation du Centre-Ouest. In J. P. Demoule & J. Guilaine (eds), Le Néolithique de la France, 161–79. Paris: Picard. JUAN-CABANILLES, J. 1985. El complejo epipaleolitico geometrico (facies Cocina) y sus relationes con el neolitico antiguo. Saguntum 19, 9–29. LACAM, R., NIEDERLAENDER, A. & VALLOIS, H.-V. 1944. Le gisement mésolithique du Cuzoul de Gramat (Lot). Archives de l’Institut de Paléontologie Humaine 21.


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LAPORTE, L., MARCHAND, G., SELLAMI, F., OBERLIN, C. & BRIDAULT, A. 2000. Les occupations mésolithiques et du Néolithique ancien sur le site de la Grange à Surgères (Charente-Maritime). Revue Archéologique de l’Ouest 17, 101–42. LAPORTE, L., PICQ, C., CAMMAS, C., MARAMBAT, L., GRUET, Y., GENRE, C., MARCHAND, G., FABRE, L. & OBERLIN, C. 2002. Les occupations néolithiques du vallon des Ouchettes (Plassay, Charente-Maritime). Gallia Préhistoire 44, 1–120. L’HELGOUACH, J. 1976. Le tumulus de Dissignac à Saint-Nazaire (Loire-Atlantique) et les problèmes du contact entre le phénomène mégalithique et les sociétés à industrie microlithique. Dissertationes Archaeologicae Gandenses 16, 142–9. MARCHAND, G. 1999. La néolithisation de l’ouest de la France: caractérisation des industries lithiques. British Archaeological Reports International Series 748, 487 p. MARCHAND, G. 2003. Les niveaux coquilliers du Mésolithique final en Bretagne: fonctionnement des habitats côtiers et intégration territoriale. Préhistoire, Anthropologie Méditerranéennes 12, 209–19. MARCHAND, G. 2005. Le Mésolithique final en Bretagne: une combinaison des faits archéologiques. In G. Marchand & A. Tresset (eds), Unité et diversité des processus de néolithisation sur la façade atlantique de l’Europe (7–4ème millénaires avant J.-C.), Mémoire de la Société Préhistorique Française 36, 67–86. Paris: Société préhistorique française (Mémoire 36). MARCHAND, G., DUPONT, C. & TESSIER, M. 2002. Complément d’enquête sur la néolithisation: le site du Porteau-Ouest à Pornic (Loire-Atlantique). Bulletin de l’Association Manche Atlantique pour la Recherche Archéologique dans les Iles 15, 47–66. PIRAZZOLI, P. A. 1991. World atlas of Holocene sea-level changes. Elsevier: Elsevier (Oceanography Series 58). ROUSSOT-LARROQUE, J. 1977. Néolithisation et Néolithique ancien d’Aquitaine. Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française 74, 559–82. ROUSSOT-LARROQUE, J. 1990. Le mystère du Lot (suite): Roucadour et le Roucadourien. In J. Guilaine & X. Gutherz (eds), Autour de Jean Arnal, 55–100. Montpellier: Recherches sur les premières communautés paysannes en Méditerranée occidentale. ROUSSOT-LARROQUE, J. & VILLES, A. 1988. Fouilles pré et protohistoriques à la Lède du Gurp (Grayan-et-L’Hôpital, Gironde). Revue Archéologique de Bordeaux LXXIX, 19–60. SCHULTING, R. & RICHARDS, M. P. 2001. Dating women and becoming farmers: new palaeodietary and AMS dating evidence from the Breton Mesolithic cemeteries of Téviec and Hoëdic. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 20, 314–44. SIDERA, I. 2000. Animaux domestiques, bêtes sauvages et objets en matières animales du Rubané au Michelsberg. De l’économie aux symboles, des techniques à la culture. Gallia Préhistoire 42, 107–42. VALDEYRON, N. 2000. Géographie culturelle du Mésolithique récent/final dans le sud-ouest de la France. In Rencontres méridionales de Préhistoire récente. Troisième session 1998, 23–34. Toulouse: Editions Archives d’Ecologie Préhistorique. VISSET, L., CYPRIEN, A.-L., CARCAUD, N., OUGUERRAM, A., BARBIER, D. & BERNARD, J. 2002. Les prémices d’une agriculture diversifiée à la fin du Mésolithique dans le Val de Loire (Loire armoricaine, France). Compte-rendu Palevol 1, 51–8. VISSET, L., L’HELGOUACH, J. & BERNARD, J. 1996. La tourbière submergée de la pointe de Kerpenhir à Locmariacquer (Morbihan). Etude environnementale et mise en évidence de déforestations et de pratiques agricoles néolithiques. Revue Archéologique de l’Ouest 13, 79–87. ZVELEBIL, M. & ROWLEY-CONWY, P. 1986. Foragers and farmers in Atlantic Europe. In M. Zvelebil (ed.), Hunters in transition: new directions in archaeology, 67–89. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Changing places: monuments and the Neolithic transition in western France CHRIS SCARRE

RECENT DEBATES ABOUT THE Neolithic transition among British archaeologists have become polarised between two contrasting views of the process. On one side are those who argue that the Neolithic way of life developed in a piecemeal way, through the adoption and integration of novel features by indigenous foraging communities. These features included not only cereals and livestock, but ground stone tools, pottery and monuments. It has been argued, indeed, that the change in material culture was more sudden than the change in subsistence practices, and that in southern Britain agriculture may not have become fully established until the Middle Bronze Age (Thomas 1999, 15–17). On the other side of this debate are those who argue that the transition to agriculture was rapid and probably traumatic, and that Neolithic people subsisted mainly on cultivated plants and domestic animals, and were fully sedentary (Rowley-Conwy 2004). Instead of invoking the adoption of Neolithic features by indigenous Mesolithic communities, this latter perspective favours a return to earlier models of population replacement, viewing the Neolithic transition (in Britain at least) as one of incoming farmers displacing and absorbing the native foraging communities. Abrupt change is indicated by analyses of stable isotopes which reveal an abandonment or neglect of marine food sources by Neolithic populations in most areas of north-west Europe, even those living close to the coast, which contrasts with the marine emphasis of Late Mesolithic coastal communities (Schulting 2005; Schulting & Richards 2002a; 2002b). The return to a more radical Neolithic transition implies that the development of monuments, too, must be reconsidered. In constructing monuments, the earliest Neolithic communities of north-west Europe established a pattern of behaviour that set them apart from their Mesolithic antecedents. This is not to deny that Mesolithic communities enculturated the landscapes that they inhabited, attributing special and sometimes sacred significance to rocks, trees, springs and caves. These may in a sense have become ‘monuments’ through the activities and deposits that they attracted. The well Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 243–261, © The British Academy 2007.


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known example of the Stonehenge car park suggests indeed that the construction of post alignments may have a very long pre-Neolithic ancestry (Cleal et al. 1995). Yet claims that the Oronsay shell middens, for example, should be seen as Mesolithic monuments are problematic (Warren, this volume) and Mesolithic demography may simply have been insufficient for the creation of monuments on a significant scale (Rowley-Conwy 2004, S84–S85). Through their sheer numbers and variety, the monuments that began to be shaped and constructed in north-west Europe from the fifth millennium cal BC represent a new phenomenon, one that must betoken the emergence of a novel relationship between people and place. How rapidly this new relationship developed remains uncertain, and several centuries may have elapsed between the introduction of pottery and domesticates and the appearance of the first monuments in many areas. The ‘pre-monument’ Neolithic may have been relatively short: as little as two or three centuries in Britain; perhaps as much as a millennium in Portugal (Jorge 2000; Whittle, this volume). In South Scandinavia, the time interval is less clear. Radiocarbon dates for earthen long barrows cluster in the range 4000–3600 cal BC, although megalithic tombs (‘dolmens’ and passage graves) first appear in significant numbers around 3500 cal BC (Persson & Sjögren 1995). It should be noted that the majority of long barrow dates in Persson and Sjögren’s list are on charcoal, and it is possible that the ‘old wood’ effect is making these monuments appear earlier than they should. A ‘premonument’ Neolithic of one or two centuries would hence be perfectly compatible with this information. The suggestion that monuments were not a feature of the initial Neolithic poses anew the question of the Mesolithic contribution to the earliest Neolithic of Atlantic Europe. Put bluntly, are these monuments the consequence of contact and acculturation between incoming farmers and indigenous hunter-gatherers, as was envisaged twenty years ago (Kinnes 1982)? If so, what was the nature of the Mesolithic contribution? Was it the forms of the monuments themselves, or did it lie more generally in attitudes to materials, places and landscape?

NORTH-WEST FRANCE The appearance of pottery, domesticates and other classic Neolithic features in north-western France is conventionally attributed to contacts in one of two directions: either with the Epicardial communities of southern France and the Ebro valley; or with the Bandkeramik and its successor groups in the Paris Basin and Normandy. In the west French context the most significant of these successor groups is that named after the site of Villeneuve-Saint-


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Figure 1. North-west France showing location of sites mentioned in the text.

Germain. This is marked by a scatter of small longhouse communities across northern France as far as the borders of Brittany which may be dated to the period 4900–4700 cal BC, and can plausibly be interpreted as a movement of colonist farmers (Scarre 2003). One of the most westerly sites of this group is Le Haut-Mée near Fougères (Cassen et al. 1998). This had a classic


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trapezoidal longhouse, represented by the truncated remains of post-holes dug into the loess. There was also a series of pits, in one of which a block of local granite had been placed horizontally (Fig. 2). This block had also been shaped at one end to give it a shouldered form, and the excavators suggested that it was in fact a menhir that had stood alongside the pit before being dismantled and lowered into it. The Le Haut-Mée menhir, if that indeed is what it was, may be an early example of an anthropomorphic standing stone, a foretaste of the Breton megalithic tradition that was to follow. The adjacent pit could have been a grave, though no bone was preserved owing to the acidity of the soil. Like many Villeneuve-Saint-Germain sites, Le Haut-Mée also had a number of polished stone rings, made mainly from locally available schist. One of the stone rings at Le Haut-Mée was, however, of serpentine that came probably

Figure 2. The Early Neolithic longhouse of Le Haut-Mée (Ille-et-Vilaine) showing the shaped granite slab recovered from the possible burial pit (after Cassen et al. 1998).



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from the Ile de Groix, off the southern coast of the Morbihan, where a serpentine production site is known. It seems therefore that the Early Neolithic community of Le Haut-Mée was obtaining raw materials from Late Mesolithic groups in adjacent regions. More generally, it has been suggested that the schist bracelets (and production sites) scattered across Brittany, and destined for the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain communities, may have been produced in part by Mesolithic groups living close to the outcrops (Marchand & Tresset 2004). Other evidence of incipient monumentalism can be found to the south of the Loire in the context of the Epicardial. If the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain sites represent a westward expansion of longhouses, pottery and farming, then the Epicardial south of the Loire may reflect the northward spread of pottery and farming in association perhaps with circular houses (Laporte & Marchand 2004). The earliest pottery of the region is generally held to derive from the Epicardial of southern France; logically this should place these west French sites in the late sixth or early fifth millennium cal BC, though the radiocarbon evidence does not yet provide secure support. Radiocarbon dates from the Grouin du Cou headland at La Tranche-sur-Mer on the Vendée coast overlap in the age range of 5600–5070 cal BC, although reservations have been raised about the relationship between the charcoal samples and the Early Neolithic occupation (Cassen 1993; Joussaume et al. 1986). A date range for these Epicardial sites of western France from the second half of the sixth millennium cal BC into the early fifth millennium cal BC is nonetheless most likely (Laporte 2005). The most important of the Early Neolithic sites south of the Loire is Les Ouchettes (Laporte & Marchand 2004; Laporte & Picq 2002). A pattern of eight shallow postholes in the centre of the excavated area defined an oval structure 7 m across which was interpreted as a house, though one of relatively insubstantial construction. To either side of the door were spreads of pottery, and directly in front was a circular hearth dated to the mid-fifth millennium cal BC, although the ceramic parallels would be more consistent with a date a few centuries earlier. It was close to the house on the western side of the valley that possible traces of a monumental structure were found. A series of seven limestone blocks lay along the foot of the slope, in some cases with possible packing stones around them. Though both the age and the origin of these structures remain open to question, they may be the remains of a fifth millennium alignment of stone blocks (Laporte & Picq 2002). Les Ouchettes is one of the key sites in the development of Neolithic communities in western France, and the character of the pottery indicates links with the south. One reading of the evidence might be that Neolithic features spread northward along the Atlantic coast of France through maritime movement. Such movement could have involved small groups of colonist


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farmers setting to sea in skin-covered boats. It is equally possible, however, that these maritime patterns are simply part of a long established network of coastal connections. This spread of Neolithic features might represent partly the movement of people and partly one of ideas, techniques, social practices and (of course) domesticates, that were quickly adopted by some indigenous communities, and resisted or rejected by others. Above all, however, what we may be witnessing in this area south of the Loire, in the early fifth millennium cal BC, is a renegotiation of social identities that may have been the consequence of these changes. At Germignac, a short distance inland from Les Ouchettes, were found the disturbed remains of a double burial comprising a young adult female and a child of 9–10 years, associated with 3288 shell beads and four perforated polished stone rings (Gaillard & Gomez 1984; Laporte & Gomez de Soto 2001). The fact that the polished stone rings are not of schist distinguishes them from the stone rings common in Villeneuve-Saint-Germain contexts. Burials richly furnished with shell ornaments are known from southern France in Early Neolithic contexts, from the Paris basin in Bandkeramik contexts, and from the Late Mesolithic cemeteries of Téviec and Hoëdic in southern Brittany. The Germignac grave goods may hence have framed a singular identity, one drawing perhaps on regional traditions of some antiquity along with new ideas and practices from the east and south. Though formally Neolithic by virtue of the polished stone rings, there is nothing to exclude the possibility that the woman and child buried at Germignac belonged to an indigenous community rapidly coming to terms with a changing world. Another kind of response is found at other sites in the same region. At La Goumoizière on the east bank of the River Vienne, some 45 km south-east of Poitiers, a small group of cist burials was discovered. These are among the earliest Neolithic structures in this region, dating probably to the second quarter of the fifth millennium cal BC (Airvaux 1996; Patte 1971). They were small box-like structures of limestone slabs and cover stones, partially buried in the ground. Access must have been via the roof, and it is possible that each was covered by a small mound, though of these (despite recent new excavations) nothing survives. The cists held multiple inhumations: six adults and two children in grave 1, six adults and an infant in grave 5. At first sight, it may be tempting to compare grave 2 (containing two children) with the triple child burial of Téviec C. A significant difference, however, lies in the fact that many of the individual corpses had undergone a process of reduction and are incomplete. In grave 5, and possibly in grave 2 also, bundles of bones from other bodies had been placed underneath the principal inhumation to form a kind of cradle for it.



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A second site in the Poitiers region is La Jardelle at Dissay, on the valley floor of the River Clain. The location is very similar to that of La Goumoizière but at La Jardelle there are remains of ten cist graves, three of them lying within elongated ditched enclosures that appear to have been palisade trenches edging a low mound. Two of the three were excavated, and the cist graves were found to contain traces of single inhumations, though these had been badly disturbed by the plough (Fig. 3). Two of the structures have dates of around 4500–4300 cal BC, and thus are perhaps a few centuries later than La Goumoizière (Pautreau et al. 2003). The form of these elongated enclosures invites close comparison with the long enclosures or long mounds of Passy and Balloy in northern Burgundy, which are dated to the mid-fifth millennium BC (Mordant 1998). Thus here at La Jardelle, long funerary enclosures suggest early links with the east. Once again we may be seeing local communities in the process of framing new kinds of identities, and drawing in the process on a diversity of traditions both indigenous and extraneous. During the course of the fifth millennium cal BC, these modest funerary monuments south of the Loire are succeeded by long mounds and passage graves that are often impressive in their size and construction. The earliest may date to the middle of the fifth millennium cal BC (even earlier, if the dates from Bougon are to be believed: Mohen & Scarre 2002). Recent excavations at Prissé-la-Charrière have revealed how in this particular case a massive 100-metre long mound containing two separate passage graves developed from a small dry-stone rotunda enclosing a modest megalithic tomb (Scarre et al. 2003). The Prissé sequence suggests a process of growing and indeed accretional monumentalism during the second half of the fifth millennium cal BC, a process that may have had its origins in modest cist graves of the kind seen at La Goumoizière. The first Neolithic monuments of western France south of the Loire appear on present evidence to date no earlier than the second quarter of the fifth millennium cal BC. They are hence unrelated chronologically to the Neolithic transition in this region, which must be placed at least half a millennium earlier. Thus in this part of western France, there must have been a substantial ‘pre-monument’ Neolithic lasting five centuries or more. It may be significant that links can be drawn between the earliest cist graves and the Cerny monuments of the Paris basin. It was in the context of those connections that new burial traditions appear to have developed. The same is true of Normandy, where Passy-type monuments have been discovered in the Caen plain, notably at Rots and Fleury (Chancerel & Desloges 1998). At Rots, as at La Jardelle and La Goumoizière, stone slabs were used within the grave pit to create a burial cist, a use of stone that is absent in the Passy monuments of the Paris basin. These sites must accordingly be regarded as variations on


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Figure 3. The Neolithic cemetery of La Jardelle at Dissay (Vienne) (after Pautreau et al. 2003).



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a theme, though one that cannot be traced back before the second quarter of the fifth millennium cal BC.

BRITTANY West of Normandy and north of the Loire, the peninsula of Brittany may be viewed as a kind of cul-de-sac in relation to a Neolithic transition spreading from the east and south. It was here, one might expect, that the two traditions—Villeneuve-Saint-Germain and Epicardial—should have met and merged. The particular status of Brittany in this debate is enhanced by two other factors: the number and scale of its Neolithic monuments, and the presence of Late Mesolithic cemeteries that allow the question of continuity to be explored in a way that is not possible for adjacent regions. The cemeteries of Téviec and Hoëdic, both today on small islands off the southern coast of Morbihan, have frequently been cited as possible antecedents for the Breton Neolithic tradition of monumental tombs (e.g. Case 1976; Scarre 1992). The argument draws both on the presence of collective burials and on the construction of small cairns on top of the graves, most notably at Téviec (Péquart et al. 1937). Téviec grave A had an edging of small vertical stone slabs around the base of the grave pit, forming a rudimentary cist; Hoëdic grave K an arrangement of three flat slabs, two placed horizontally over the head of the corpse, and a third standing semi-vertical as if intended as a grave marker (Péquart & Péquart 1954). Cassen cites the semi-vertical stone of Hoëdic grave K in discussing the standing stones of the southern Morbihan, noting that the latter could themselves be the work of the last ‘Mesolithic’ societies, or of societies that had only recently become Neolithic (Cassen et al. 2000, 203–4). The chronology of the Téviec and Hoëdic graves revealed by an AMS dating programme places them in the second half of the sixth millennium cal BC (Schulting 1999; 2005). This dating is especially significant as it makes them contemporary with the earliest Neolithic south of the Loire. The flint industries are attributed to the Téviecien, a Late Mesolithic grouping present throughout Brittany and extending along the south coast as far as the mouth of the River Vilaine (Marchand 1999; 2005; Rozoy 1978). Beyond the Vilaine, in the area of the Loire estuary, the Late Mesolithic is represented by the Retzien. Contact between these Late Mesolithic groups and the earliest Neolithic communities south of the Loire is shown in a number of ways. In the Retzien, alongside Mesolithic flint types, techniques derived from an Early Neolithic of Mediterranean origin are present. In particular, the type of arrowhead known as the ‘armature du Châtelet’ indicates links with Neolithic industries further south. The Retzien may indeed be considered the


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filter between the Breton Mesolithic and the Aquitainian Neolithic of Mediterranean origin (Marchand 2005). The most powerful evidence of contact between the southern Morbihan and neighbouring Neolithic communities is the pit sealed beneath the long mound of Er Grah that contained two complete cattle skeletons (Tresset 2000; 2005; Tresset & Vigne, this volume). Study of the remains indicates that they had been partially defleshed but that the ligaments and vital organs had been left in place. Radiocarbon dates place them in the final centuries of the sixth millennium cal BC; that is to say, in a Late Mesolithic context. It is likely that these cattle were obtained by the Late Mesolithic groups of the region through contact with Neolithic communities south of the Loire. They predate the arrival of the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain communities from the east. The careful deposition of the remains suggests that they were exotic imports, similar in status perhaps to the cattle remains found in a Late Mesolithic context at Ferriter’s Cove in southern Ireland (Tresset 2000; 2005: Woodman et al. 1999). The discovery of two potsherds with rocker pattern decoration beneath the passage grave of La Table des Marchand close to Er Grah provides confirmation of contacts with southern Neolithic groups (Laporte 2005). Given these southern contacts it is difficult to determine whether the cemeteries of Téviec and Hoëdic should be interpreted exclusively in terms of indigenous development among Breton Mesolithic communities or should instead be seen as a response to external pressures and novel concepts. In favour of the latter view is the fact that the cemeteries are found in exactly that part of Brittany where evidence of such contacts has been found. This is also the part of Brittany, with its estuaries and bays, offshore islands and marine-focused Late Mesolithic subsistence economy, that would have been most open to maritime contact with the Loire estuary and areas to the south. It is also the area that is the main focus for the famous decorated standing stones that may be the earliest of the Breton megalithic monuments.

STANDING STONES Brittany is a land of many menhirs. Giot estimates the surviving number of menhirs at probably between 1100 and 1200, with the three western départements of Morbihan, Finistère and Côtes d’Armor being the richest in monuments of this type (Giot in Giot et al. 1998, 531–2). Some are simple irregular blocks of stone, only a metre or two in height, and scarcely distinguishable from ordinary boulders; others, conversely, are tall shapely monoliths, such as the famous menhir of Kerloas, at 9.5 m the tallest prehistoric menhir still standing in western Europe. Its fine shaping, evident from the smoothed



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granite surfaces and the facetting visible on its narrower sides, has been compromised by the lightning strike that truncated its apex. Weighing some 90 tonnes, the Kerloas menhir is testimony to the organisation and commitment of the Neolithic communities who erected it; the probable source of the material is located 2.5 km downslope (Giot in Giot et al. 1998, 516). An early date can be suggested for several of these menhirs. At Saint-Just in central Brittany, three of the large quartz menhirs (nos 17, 19 and 20) of the southern Le Moulin alignment were later enclosed within a rubble platform or cairn; hearths on the ground surface beneath the platform gave early to mid-fifth millennium cal BC dates (5550±120 BP (4570–4100 cal BC) foyer 2; 5660±120 BP (4730–4380 cal BC) foyer 3; 5700±80 BP (4940–4430 cal BC) foyer 4), and while the stratigraphic relationship is not beyond question they may be taken to date the erection of the quartz menhirs (Le Roux et al. 1989, 26–7). The fallen menhir by the entrance to the northern passage at La CroixSaint-Pierre, a kilometre to the west, may be even earlier. Charcoal from its socket gave a date of 6070±80 BP (5270–4740 cal BC) (Briard et al. 1995). A similar date has been suggested for the menhir at Lilia on the north coast of Brittany, which is within the current intertidal zone and is completely submerged at high water. Its visible height is a little over 2 m (2.05 m in Devoir 1912) and its summit is in fact 4.4 m below the level of the highest tides. If we assume that the stone was originally erected on dry ground, it must have been raised at a time when sea level was 6 m or more below its present level. A date of the fifth millennium cal BC at the latest has been proposed on this basis (Le Roux 1997; 1998). Against this proposal, the gradual tectonic uplift to which northern Brittany is subject (Giot 1990, 9), together with uncertainties over past tidal regimes in these deeply inset bays, urge a measure of caution. The most numerous group of potentially early menhirs is located, however, not in central or western Brittany but in the southern Morbihan. Their early dating rests on two lines of evidence. The first comes from the recent excavations at Locmariaquer. These have revealed the sockets of an alignment of menhirs associated with an old ground surface, a long mound (Er Grah), and the massive broken fragments of the Grand Menhir Brisé (L’Helgouach 1997). The second is the recognition that several well known megalithic monuments, mainly passage graves, incorporate menhirs or menhir fragments in their structure. This is an observation which has its origins in the nineteenth century, when writers such as De Closmadeuc and De Mortillet observed that many of the carvings seen in megaliths were partially concealed by neighbouring stones and must have been carved before those were placed in position. De Mortillet in particular concluded that certain stones had originally been carved for a different purpose, but were subsequently reused (Cassen 2000; De Mortillet 1894). The more specific realisation that some had been decorated menhirs goes back to the period


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immediately before the First World War (e.g. Le Rouzic 1914), but took on a new significance in the 1980s with the work of L’Helgouach (L’Helgouach 1983) and with Le Roux’s discoveries at Gavrinis (Le Roux 1984). It would make for a neat and tidy narrative if the earliest menhirs could be shown to be unshaped blocks of stone, close in form and appearance to the natural boulders whose veneration and established significance may have formed the inspiration for the whole standing stone phenomenon. The derivation of menhirs from natural boulders is a step that may easily be envisaged. Indeed, one could imagine that the raising of large unshaped monoliths soon led to the grouping of similar blocks to create ‘megalithic’ tombs and chambers. In this way the veneration of natural boulders might be followed by the raising of standing stones by early Neolithic communities. That much is suggested by the example of Kerlescan, within the same region, where the stone rows appear to have been created simply by levering up and arranging in rows a series of natural blocks and boulders (Sellier 1995). In other cases—at Lostmarc’h on the Crozon peninsula, or at Saint-Just (Scarre 2002)—rows of menhirs were clearly lined up on natural outcrops or pillars, again suggesting that the purpose of the standing stones was to embellish a feature already perceptible in the surface geology. Serge Cassen, too, has remarked a relationship between alignments and rock outcrops in his study of lesser known sites in the Carnac region (Cassen & Vaquero Lastres 2003). The craggy landscapes of Brittany and indeed of other Atlantic coastlines might thus be the source not only of many of the materials but also the inspiration for the whole megalithic tradition of Neolithic north-west Europe. Against this seductive hypothesis, however, is the evidence that many of the earliest menhirs were not brute blocks set on end but were elaborately smoothed, carved and decorated. The earliest menhirs of the southern Morbihan, for example, were not unshaped blocks; many of them carry carved motifs, but no less noteworthy is the fact that their entire surfaces have been shaped and smoothed. Even the massive Grand Menhir Brisé, 20 m tall and weighing 280 tonnes, was ground and pounded into a desired shape, with clearly facetted surfaces. There are in fact three groups of shaped menhirs in Brittany: in northwest Finistère, the Saint-Malo area and the southern Morbihan (Fig. 4) All of them may have been carved and erected within a generation or so, at some point in the early or mid-fifth millennium cal BC. The Morbihan and SaintMalo groups include decorated examples, and all three groups are relatively close to the coast. If coastal traffic was important, then we may wonder whether the creation of menhirs in the southern Morbihan might not have inspired other communities to attempt similar feats. This would be especially relevant if the massive effort represented by the erection of the Grand Menhir Brisé depended upon the drawing together of communities from across the



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Figure 4. Early decorated menhir traditions of Brittany.

whole of Brittany, and perhaps beyond. Is it possible that those who shaped and raised the menhirs of Kerloas in Finistère and of Saint-Samson near Saint-Malo had actually participated in the erection of the Grand Menhir Brisé? If these are indeed the earliest Breton standing stones, then their form would suggest an emphasis on artificiality, on the creation of something striking, new and decidedly unnatural in appearance. The fact that the shaped menhirs of the southern Morbihan can now confidently be assigned to the fifth millennium cal BC opens the possibility that those of Bas-Léon are equally early in date. That does not necessarily mean that they are the earliest menhirs of north-western Finistère, nor that shaped menhirs preceded unshaped standing stones in this region. But it does suggest that no simple sequence of unshaped to shaped stones (pace Tilley 2004, 85) can be applied. Thus, rather than a smooth transition from the veneration of boulders and outcrops, these particular Breton menhirs may have marked a distinct break


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with the past. Whether they are seen as axes or phalluses (Cassen et al. 2000, 657–81; Le Pontois 1929, 71; Tilley 2004), they make no attempt to reproduce natural rocky features.

CONCLUSION The early menhirs of the southern Morbihan date probably to the middle centuries of the fifth millennium cal BC, and a similar dating may be suggested for analogous monuments in other regions of Brittany. Long mounds and chambered tombs began to be constructed at about the same time, or very slightly later. Several authors, drawing overtly or implicitly on the apparent richness of the Late Mesolithic of southern Morbihan, have suggested that some at least of the early menhirs were raised by Late Mesolithic people or their immediate descendants (Whittle 2000, 253), by the very last Mesolithic societies or by societies that had only recently made the transition to the Neolithic way of life (Boujot & Cassen in Cassen et al. 2000, 203). The implication of this conclusion is that the concept of the standing stone may owe something to earlier understandings of the landscape, and to the veneration of natural features such as boulders and rock outcrops. There are many ethnographic examples of these practices, such as the holy stone on the Kanin Nos peninsula of Arctic Russia, venerated by the Nenets people who deposited offerings at its foot (Ovsyannikov & Terebikhin 1994). The derivation of the cult of standing stones from the veneration of natural boulders is in many ways entirely plausible, and boulders and outcrops may indeed have provided the inspiration and meaning that lay behind the construction of megalithic monuments. It remains difficult to determine whether indigenous communities and beliefs played any significant part in this process. South of the Loire, there appears to be an interval of several centuries between the Neolithic transition and the first monuments. It is difficult to argue that these monuments represent the transformation of indigenous practices that were materialised in new ways from the very outset of the Neolithic. In Brittany, the sequence is less clear. The widespread distribution of schist rings (Pailler in Cassen et al. 2000), and the recent discovery of Villeneuve-Saint-Germain sites in the Morbihan interior (Marchand et al. 2006) may suggest that most of the Breton peninsula came within the ambit of early farming communities during the early centuries of the fifth millennium cal BC, though some of the schist rings may date to the middle or later part of that millennium (Pailler in Cassen et al. 2000). Pollen evidence from the Kerpenhir core near Locmariaquer indicated a sudden and dramatic decline in forest cover around the turn of the sixth/fifth millennium cal BC. Although the evidence from this core has been disputed, the possibility that



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forest was cleared and cultivation begun several centuries before the first standing stones were erected cannot be excluded (Visset et al. 1996). Several of the motifs on the decorated standing stones suggest a Neolithic attribution. It is true that the ‘axe-plough’ has been reinterpreted as a whale, and the quadrupeds considered either domestic or wild (Cassen et al. 2000; Whittle 2000). The carvings of axes, however, are representations of an artefact (the polished stone axe) which is unknown from Late Mesolithic contexts. The long mounds that accompany, or shortly follow, the decorated standing stones in the mid-late fifth millennium cal BC can also directly be related to Neolithic forms. The plan of long mounds such as Le Manio 2 in southern Brittany finds a close parallel in the plan of the Villeneuve-SaintGermain longhouse of Le Haut-Mée (Laporte et al. 2002; Laporte & Tinevez 2004). This does not exclude the possibility of an indigenous contribution to these new monument forms. Hodder, for example, argued in Brittany for ‘the subtle interlacing of indigenous principles and the Danubian principles of social domination centred on the dramatic idea of linear monumentality’ (Hodder 1990, 233). Whereas in western France, south of the Loire, there appears to be an interval of several centuries between the Neolithic transition and the earliest monuments, in Brittany the evidence remains ambiguous. Indigenous beliefs and practices may have contributed to the development of Early Neolithic monument forms, but it is also possible that Late Mesolithic communities had already themselves embarked on a process of transformation through prolonged contacts with Neolithic neighbours. As much as a millennium may have separated the first farming communities south of the Loire from the Neolithic transition on the Morbihan coast. The process was one of renegotiation that may have encompassed relationships between people and people, between people and places, and between people and material culture. It was in the course of this that some communities began to commemorate the dead—or perhaps the powers of place—by appropriating and manipulating stones, earth and timbers. The monuments are novel in form, drawing on ideologies of longhouse and axe. They represent something new, but do they also draw upon the past, upon the beliefs and practices of indigenous Late Mesolithic communities? The question is difficult to resolve, given the contrasting materialisations of foraging and farming societies, and the answer may well vary from region to region. In seeking the origin of megalithic monuments, we have remarked how the craggy landscapes of Atlantic Europe may have inspired their construction, as several authors have proposed (Bradley 1998; Scarre 2004; Tilley & Bennett 2001). The new monumentality could as well have been the response of incoming farming communities to these landscapes, however, as a transformation in the behaviour of indigenous foraging groups, who may have


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envisaged these landscapes in entirely different ways. The landscape beliefs of Mesolithic communities might have played a role in the inception of megaliths, but the scarcity of Mesolithic monuments and the presence of a ‘premonument’ Neolithic suggests that it was the advent of farming groups or farming ideologies that laid the crucial foundations.

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The neolithisation of the Scheldt basin in western Belgium PHILIPPE CROMBÉ & BART VANMONTFORT

INTRODUCTION THIS PAPER FOCUSES on the neolithisation process in two different landscape zones of the Scheldt basin extending over western Belgium: first, the northern coversand lowland bordering the Atlantic coast and secondly the southern loess area of Middle Belgium. Although the neolithisation of both areas seems to have had a different course, there is evidence of continuous and increasing contact and interaction between population groups occupying each region. In the loess hill land, neolithisation can be distinguished in two phases, separated by an archaeological hiatus of several centuries. The first phase is related to the arrival of the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) and the Groupe de Blicquy (BQY), while the second is connected with the Michelsberg culture (MK) occupation of the area. Unfortunately, it is difficult to determine the place of local hunter-gatherers in this process. In the sandy lowland, on the other hand, Mesolithic hunter-gatherers culturally belonging to the Swifterbant culture seem to have survived much longer, probably until the end of the fifth millennium cal BC.

LOESS HILL LAND Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic Around 5300 cal BC, the LBK arrives in the Scheldt basin. It is responsible for the first hard evidence of a Neolithic way of life in that area. Settlement sites of these first farmers have been discovered in three settlement clusters (Fig. 1): first, in the Hesbaye region, on the eastern fringe of the Scheldt basin and part of a larger LBK occupation territory including the Graetheide cluster in the Netherlands and the Aldenhovener Platte in Germany; secondly, in the Kleine Gete area where only three sites are known at present; and thirdly,



Figure 1. Map of Belgium indicating the core-areas of the LBK and BQY (hatched zones) and the sites of Oudenaarde (1), Kerkhove (2) and Melsele (3) which yielded isolated finds from the Early Neolithic. The grey shaded area corresponds to the loess area; the sandy lowland is situated north of it.

264 Philippe Crombé & Bart Vanmontfort


THE NEOLITHISATION OF THE SCHELDT BASIN IN BELGIUM 265

in the upper Dendre area, in the western part of the area and separated from Hesbaye by a nearly 100 km stretch, devoid of settlements. Based on the present data, including that recently gathered during archaeological followup of large infrastructural transects through the Scheldt basin, the number and distribution of settlement clusters seem fairly reliable. The area in between these three LBK territories, however, is speckled with stray finds dating from the Early Neolithic period, including adzes and typical LBK arrowheads (Jadin & Hauzeur 2003). A similar image is available for the Groupe de Blicquy, i.e. the second Early Neolithic cultural group in the Scheldt basin. The chronological relationship between LBK and BQY has been the subject of a lively debate, with opinions ranging from an anterior position of BQY, over a more or less complete overlap to an unquestionable posterior position (Constantin & Ilett 1998). Recent radiocarbon dates and the spatial distribution of sites confirm the close chronological connection between the two groups (Fig. 2). However, although recent radiocarbon dates show a possible contemporaneity of BQY sites in the Upper Dendre region and the RRBP sites in the Paris Basin (Jadin & Cahen 2003), the existence of a local overlap between both groups remains an unanswered question (Jadin 2003, 709–10). In this light, the absence of contact finds, and several elements in the relative chronology, hint at the slightly posterior position of the BQY sites. Apart from two sites located near LBK settlements in the Hesbaye region, most BQY settlement sites are located in the upper Dendre region. Similar to the LBK remains, BQY stray finds such as schist bracelets (fragments) and artefacts in a flint raw material typical for this group can be found all over the loam region of the Scheldt basin (Jadin & Hauzeur 2003). Both groups thus seem to have operated in or exploited the entire loess belt from their base settlements in Hesbaye, Kleine Gete and Upper Dendre. Remarkably, the number of stray finds beyond the loess cover is extremely restricted and contrasts with the numerous LBK stray finds on the sandy soils north of the loess in the Meuse valley (Verhart 2000, figs 1.14–15). Two sites deserve wider attention because of their location more to the north within the loess region: Kerkhove (Crombé 1986) and Oudenaarde ‘Donk’ (Parent et al. 1987). Both are situated along the Scheldt River, respectively on top of a Late Glacial wind-blown sandloam ridge and on scroll bars. On the first site, a shallow pit filled with some flint and pottery artefacts can be attributed to the Groupe de Blicquy. It was disclosed on the western fringe of a 10 ha large field surveyed with test trenches. Apart from this pit, no other features could be attributed to the Early Neolithic. It cannot be excluded that the BQY pit is the easternmost remain of a BQY settlement. Nevertheless, given the particular location of the site along the Scheldt River and some 20 km north-west of the known settlement cluster in the upper Dendre region, it should rather be regarded as a particular element in the (logistic) exploitation of the wider


Figure 2. account.

Summed probability distributions of the three chrono-cultural groups in the loess belt of Belgium. Only reliable dates are taken into

266 Philippe Crombé & Bart Vanmontfort



area. Another indication for this is the Early Neolithic grog-tempered vessel that was found during the excavations of Oudenaarde ‘Donk’ some 20 years ago. Originally, it was published as a Middle Neolithic Epi-Roessen pot fragment (Parent et al. 1987), but a new reconstruction and study of the remains revealed it to be of Early Neolithic age. Both fabric and morphology of the vessel fit well with LBK and BQY pottery variability (Fig. 3). Unfortunately, the precise depositional context of the vessel as well as its relationship with the Late Mesolithic flint scatter that was found at the same spot remain unsure. These two sites, both possibly belonging to the Groupe de Blicquy, can be related to the northern contacts and interactions in this phase of the Neolithic as were confirmed by BQY pottery fragments in Swifterbant context at Hardinxveld ‘De Bruin’ (Raemaekers 2001, 147). The Early Neolithic pottery found at Melsele ‘Hof ten Damme’ (see below) should probably be placed in the same perspective. One of the intriguing questions in this respect is what role local hunter-gatherers of the loamy hill land played in this interaction. Unfortunately, data on the final Mesolithic occupation of the area are extremely scarce. In addition to the few sites located in the river floodplains, for example Oudenaarde ‘Donk’, most Mesolithic sites are known from small

Figure 3. Early Neolithic pot found at Oudenaarde ‘Donk’ (photo PAMZOV).


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surface scatters on sandy hilltops of the region; examples of such sites are known at Oeudeghien, Ellezelles, Ronse-Muziekberg and Wodecq-Paradis. Obviously, it is often impossible to determine the precise nature and age of these sites, often being palimpsests. This frequently results in the idea that the loess belt was virtually uninhabited by hunter-gatherers at the time of the LBK arrival. Although taphonomy and post-depositional processes can partially explain the general scarcity of data (Crombé & Cauwe 2001; Gob 1990; Vermeersch 1990), it is beyond doubt that the loess plateaux were at most characterised by a fairly sparse hunter-gatherer occupation (Vanmontfort submitted). Possibly, hunter-gatherer camps were concentrated along the major rivers crossing the loess belt, in contexts that still remain underinvestigated. In any case, the location of LBK and BQY groups outside hunter-gatherer core territory is in favour of a colonisation hypothesis. Middle Neolithic The last LBK and BQY radiocarbon dated sites end around 4800 cal BC. While neighbouring regions, including the Paris Basin and Rhineland are from that moment on occupied by post-LBK groups such as Cerny, Roessen and Bischheim, the Belgian loess belt is characterised by a chronological hiatus until around 4300 cal BC (Fig. 2). Apart from the absence of radiocarbon dated sites, this hiatus is particularly perceptible by the nearly complete absence of Roessen Breitkeile, a common stray find in both loamy and sandy contexts in the Meuse basin. Although the complete absence of occupation during this phase is one of the possible explanations, it is extremely unlikely (Crombé et al. 2005). Rather, it seems that the probably sparse occupation of the region has become archaeologically invisible. This can be due to the particular location of settlement sites in the hardly explored riverine wetlands of the loamy region, similar to the Swifterbant occupation in the sandy lowland (and see below). It is also possible, however, that the lithic toolkit used during this period did not differ fundamentally from that of the post-4300 cal BC Michelsberg people and that surface sites in this region cannot reliably be dated to either of these periods. The difference with the Michelsberg sites that have yielded substantial and datable features as a result of their enclosure building activities might explain the absence of radiocarbon dates from the period between 4800 and 4300 cal BC. By 4300 cal BC, a completely different Neolithic to that of the preceding LBK and BQY groups has set foot in the loess region. Concentrated Siedlungskammer occupation of the Early Neolithic in two or three areas is replaced by a fairly homogeneous distribution over the entire region and by a hierarchised settlement pattern with enclosures and flint mines as central foci (Fig. 4). Large dwelling structures with large and deeply planted posts are


Figure 4. Map of Belgium showing the distribution of Michelsberg sites in the loess belt (grey shaded area) and the northern sandy lowland. Sites mentioned in the text are: Spiere (1), Doel ‘Deurganck’ (2) and Melsele (3).



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no longer constructed. Instead, the absence of clear house structures hints at a more mobile settlement system with less permanent dwellings. Enclosures, although their origin can be traced back to LBK times (Jeunesse 1996), have become the monuments for which a gathering of labour force is implied. In the contrast between the Early Neolithic way of life, as it was imported by the LBK, and the hunter-gatherer existence, as it is presumed to have been, the Middle Neolithic can be regarded as a converged state (Vanmontfort 2004). Apart from the more mobile settlement pattern, several differences in the lithic toolkit confirm this hypothesis, including the contrast between an expedient common tool production and the specialised production of standardised tools. This fits with the view of Thomas (1988) with regard to a second neolithisation wave during the late fifth and early fourth millennia cal BC, once the Neolithic had modified to a state more compatible with north-west European huntergatherer existence. However, from the lack of hunter-gatherer data or sites from the period between the arrival of the LBK and the beginning of the Michelsberg period at 4300 cal BC, it is impossible to verify or reject this hypothesis. Nor can a co-habitation of hunter-gatherers and Michelsberg groups be confirmed. A continuation of hunter-gatherer occupation till at least the end of the fifth millennium cal BC has often been claimed for both loess and sandy regions (and see below). The sites of the loamy region on which such a claim is based are, particularly, Neufvilles (de Heinzelin et al. 1977) and Thieusies (Vermeersch & Walter 1980; Vermeersch et al. 1990), where Mesolithic artefacts were found in the same strata as Michelsberg remains. The site of Neufvilles, however, yielded only artefacts in secondary contexts and a mixture of both older and younger occupation remains could never be excluded. Two recently obtained radiocarbon dates from the site confirmed this situation, with at least a mixture of Middle Mesolithic and Middle Neolithic occupation remains (Vanmontfort et al. 2003). Also at Thieusies, the mixture of residual Mesolithic artefacts and Michelsberg occupation remains cannot entirely be excluded. The particular, locally available flint type that was used to produce the Mesolithic artefacts as well as the typology of the microliths (mistletoe points commonly dated in the Middle Mesolithic) even make this a very plausible hypothesis (Crombé et al. 2005). With no proof of hunter-gatherer activities in the post-LBK era of the loamy region, but with the recognition that it would be very hard to identify their remains outside the riverine wetlands, the question can also be considered from the other side. If the Michelsberg culture in the Belgian loess belt was not the result of local acculturation of hunter-gatherer groups, we should be able to single out an exterior source for this culture group. Until recently, however, the available data did not allow the detailed (stylistic) analysis that would shed light on such a topic. Most sites are known solely as undated flint surface scatters, while pottery assemblages are generally small



and undated. The recently studied enclosure site at Spiere (Vanmontfort 2004; Vanmontfort et al. 2001/2002), on the other hand, did yield a remarkable set of pottery and flint artefacts, dating from the early post-4300 cal BC period and allowing us to tackle this problem. Both technically and stylistically, the pottery occupies an intermediate position between the Chasséen septentrional of northern France and the Michelsberger Kultur of the Rhineland, i.e. neighbouring cultural groups that came into existence at more or less the same time (Vanmontfort 2004; Vanmontfort et al. 2001/2002). Several elements of the lithic toolkit confirm this position, with leaf-shaped arrowheads similar to those of the Rhineland Michelsberg culture and a flake technology with flake axes and massive flake scrapers that are clearly linked with the north-west French Neolithic (Vanmontfort 2004; Vanmontfort et al. 2001/2002). In the absence of an unambiguous source for the ‘Belgian Michelsberg culture’, it seems likely that it was formed as a local adaptation of a Middle Neolithic, strongly influenced by that of the northern Paris Basin. Whether or not it was locally formed in an interaction between neighbouring regions (Schier 1993; Vanmontfort 2004) or formed in the northern Paris Basin (Jeunesse et al. 2004), and quickly migrated to the north after which it was locally translated, is a question that can only be resolved with new sites and reliable radiocarbon dates. The shape of the currently used calibration curve with a plateau at the point of origin of most north-west European Middle Neolithic groups, however, makes it unlikely that this dating technique will ever be able to reach this resolution (Vanmontfort 2004, 300).

THE SANDY LOWLAND The Late Mesolithic In the northern coversand region, numerous sites can be dated to the Late Mesolithic on the basis of techno-typological criteria, such as the presence of different types of mainly broad trapezes and regular blade(let)s, some presenting an irregular and discontinuous utilisation retouch (so-called Montbani-blades). So far only a few of these sites have been excavated, for example at Weelde (Huyghe & Vermeersch 1982), Brecht (Vermeersch et al. 1992) and Oudenaarde (Parent et al. 1987). Unfortunately, these excavations have not yielded highly reliable information concerning the absolute chronology of the Late Mesolithic. The available radiocarbon dates have a rather limited resolution due to problems with sample integrity (bulk samples, charcoal problems, and so on) and site integrity (bioturbated/mixed contexts, palimpsests, natural features, and so on) (Crombé et al. 1999; Crombé & Van Strydonck 2004; Van Strydonck et al. 2001). Therefore it remains currently


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impossible to determine which Mesolithic sites in the sandy lowland were or could have been contemporaneous with the Early Neolithic occupation of the loess or loamy hill land. In addition there are hardly any finds of Early Neolithic objects that point to contact and interaction between both areas and communities. Apart from a few isolated asymmetrical points with ventral basal retouch (so-called LBK-points), only one specific find-context should be mentioned. It concerns the wetland site of Melsele ‘Hof ten Damme’, situated in the Lower Scheldt valley, which yielded a small number of pottery sherds with clear Early Neolithic affinities. The latter (Fig. 5) are characterised by a burnt bone tempering and a decoration pattern consisting of small impressions made with a two-pointed spatula (van Berg et al. 1992). Although the exact cultural attribution is not known so far, it is beyond any doubt that these potsherds belong to an Early Neolithic pottery tradition. Unfortunately these potsherds were found in a severely bioturbated, and hence mixed, horizon, which also includes material evidence from older and younger occupation events. The available radiocarbon dates from this find-layer, albeit mostly obtained on charcoal samples, range between approximately 8000 and 3000 cal BC (Van Strydonck et al. 1995). According to our own observations, made during a short visit (PC), the archaeological material is an admixture of at least three

Figure 5. Decorated, bone-tempered potsherds from the site of Melsele (van Berg et al. 1992).



occupation events: a Late Mesolithic one, a Final Mesolithic one and a Middle Neolithic one (see below). The bone-tempered potsherds might belong to one of these phases, but could also represent a fourth event. In the former case, they may be interpreted as exchanged items, while in the latter case they might reflect extra-territorial visits from Early Neolithic groups (for example stock-herders or hunters) down the Scheldt river. Unfortunately it will never be possible to determine which scenario is the right one. Nevertheless these pottery finds of Melsele, together with the ceramics of Oudenaarde and Kerkhove further upstream (see above) and the Blicquy pottery found at Hardinxveld in the delta of the western Netherlands (Louwe Kooijmans 2001), prove that the Scheldt valley already played a major role in the diffusion of materials from the south to the north, from Neolithic to Mesolithic occupation territory. This will increase even more in later times. The Final Mesolithic (the Swifterbant phase) An important change in the sandy lowland is the appearance of the first locally produced pottery. According to the presently available data, pottery was manufactured by local hunter-gatherers from at least the middle of the fifth millennium cal BC onwards (Fig. 6). In view of the older dating of similar pottery in the adjacent parts of the Netherlands (Raemaekers 1999), an earlier start cannot yet be fully excluded. Four wetland sites situated in the Lower Scheldt floodplain near Antwerp have recently yielded numerous potsherds associated with Late/Final Mesolithic lithic assemblages, dominated by small irregular trapezes and bladelets in Wommersom quartzite as well as charred organic remains of wild resources, such as game (wild boar and red deer), wild plants (hazelnuts, wild apples, sloe plums, acorns and berries from hawthorn) and freshwater fish (mainly carp family). Three sites were discovered underneath thick layers of peat and alluvial clay during construction works along the ‘Deurganck’ dock at Doel (Bats et al. 2003; Crombé 2005; Crombé et al. 2000; Crombé et al. 2004). The fourth site is the already mentioned site of Melsele ‘Hof ten Damme’. So far only one site, Doel ‘Deurganckdok’ sector B, has been securely radiocarbon dated to the second half of the fifth millennium cal BC (Van Strydonck & Crombé 2005). The other sites are still undated (Doel sector-M) or badly dated (Melsele and Doel sector-J/L). The pottery of these four sites (Fig. 7) is mainly tempered with grog and plant material, relatively thick-walled and fired in a reduced followed by an oxidised atmosphere. Morphologically it is dominated by slightly S-shaped vessels provided with a rounded or pointed bottom and to a lesser degree by bowl-shaped vessels. Decoration is very restricted and mostly consists of oblique incisions or impressions on the rim top (so-called Randkerbung) and


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Figure 6. Calibrated radiocarbon dates from two Final Mesolithic (Swifterbant) sites in the ‘Deurganck’ dok at Doel. The food crust dates are on average a few hundred years older than the dates on carbonised remains of seeds, fruits, bone and charcoal. Stable isotope analyses (Craig et al. 2007) have clearly pointed out that this age-difference is due to the presence of some amount of fish in the food crust samples.

round or oval knobs, which are nearly always unperforated. Perforated knobs, a series of small perforations underneath the rim as well as series of fingertop impressions, only occur incidentally. Typologically this pottery, in particular the S-shaped vessels with conical bottoms, presents close similarities with the so-called (Early) Swifterbant pottery typical of The Netherlands



Figure 7.

Two almost complete vessels from the Final Mesolithic sites of Doel ‘Deurganck’.

(Raemaekers 1999) and to a lesser degree with the pointed-bottomed pottery traditions from the Baltic coast (such as Ertebølle and Narva) (Hallgren 2004; Timofeev 1998). A major difference with the latter is the so far total absence of clay lamps in the Belgian assemblages. On the other hand there are also clear similarities with the pottery from Early/Middle Neolithic cultures, for example with the Grossgartach/Blicquy/Villeneuve-Saint-Germain


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cultures and the Roessen/Cerny cultures. These pottery traditions offer good parallels for the Randkerbung and knob decoration as well as for the morphology of the bowl-shaped vessels. Although some influence might have come from northern indigenous pottery traditions, it seems more likely that the basic knowledge of pottery manufacturing was taken over from the southern Neolithic traditions just mentioned. Probably here too, the Scheldt valley was an important corridor in the diffusion of ideas and know-how. This might also be true for the diffusion of other goods, such as cereals. One of the sites excavated in the ‘Deurganck’ dock at Doel (site sector B) yielded a single cereal grain belonging to bread wheat (Bastiaens et al. 2005). Despite the fact that this grain is not yet dated directly, it is clear from its spatial and stratigraphical position that it belongs to the second half of the fifth millennium cal BC. The question arises how this cereal grain got to the site. Was it locally produced or was it brought in from fields situated in another location? In the latter case the question of where these fields were has to be answered. The probability that agriculture was practised at the site itself seems rather unrealistic, due to the wet environment and limited size of the available dry land as well as the fact that only a single grain was recovered. All four sites are indeed located on the highest parts of relatively small coversand ridges, surrounded by a swamp/peat fen that was occasionally inundated by brackish water from the nearby Scheldt river (Deforce et al. 2005). It is doubtful whether in such conditions (with limited dry grounds) farming would have been possible. Arable fields might have been situated in nearby locations outside the peat fen, but these have not yet been located. However, it is questionable whether the pottery producing hunter-gatherers of the fifth millennium cal BC also occupied the dry coversand area of western Belgium. So far there is no clear evidence which points in that direction. According to some scholars (Raemaekers 1999), the absence so far of Swifterbant sites in the dry coversand landscape might be a result of taphonomic factors, such as the bad preservation of weakly fired pottery in acid coversands, or the absence of diagnostic lithic artefacts within the flint industry of the Swifterbant culture. The latter, however, is not valid, because the Belgian sites that are discussed in this paper yielded typical small trapezes which differ considerably from Late Mesolithic ones (Crombé et al. 2002). An important argument against an intense occupation and exploitation of the dry coversand area during the second half of the fifth millennium cal BC is the observed trend towards a decreasing number of sites already from the middle of the eighth millennium cal BC, combined with a concentration along major river valleys. Compared to the Early Mesolithic there is much less evidence for inland occupation and exploitation during the Middle and Late Mesolithic. This pattern has been observed quite convincingly in the north-western part of Belgium (the area of Sandy Flanders) and could be related to major environ-



mental and/or social changes (Crombé et al. in press). In the Campine area a similar shift in site location pattern was observed and could be linked with climatic and hydrological changes during the Early Holocene period; rivers only became a reliable water source from the Boreal period onwards (Vanacker et al. 2001). A third possibility regarding the origin of the bread wheat is that it was obtained through exchange with contemporaneous Neolithic farming communities further upstream in the Scheldt valley. As discussed earlier, agropastoral groups belonging to the Epi-Roessen and Michelsberg culture were already present from 4300 cal BC in the loamy upland as far as the border with the coversand area. Interaction between both communities must have been at least temporarily possible between c. 4300 and 4000 cal BC (see below). Some scholars (Creemers & Vermeersch 1989; Verhart 2000, 113–15; Vermeersch 1987–8; Vermeersch 1990) have postulated interaction from the presence of some Neolithic artefacts/ceramics on Late Mesolithic sites in the sandy lowlands at Weelde, Dilsen, Meeuwen and Opgrimbie; a model has been proposed in which Final Mesolithic hunter-gatherers tended the Michelsberg cattle. Unfortunately this model is exclusively based on information derived from ploughed sites, whose chronological integrity remains very questionable and difficult to evaluate. It is likely that they represent mixed assemblages from Late Mesolithic and Michelsberg occupation phases (and see below). The Early Neolithic? (The Michelsberg phase) Near the end of the fifth millennium cal BC an even more radical change in the material culture occurred, which might be due to increased influence or colonisation from the Michelsberg culture. Important changes can be observed in both the lithic and ceramic inventories. New tool types appeared (Fig. 8), such as leaf-shaped and transverse arrowheads, polished axes and broad regular blades, as well as imported high quality flint, partly originating from the flint mine sites in the loess area (see above). At the same time, typical Final Mesolithic tools and raw materials (for example Wommersom quartzite) seem to disappear completely. Important morphological and technological changes also occurred in the pottery. New Michelsberg/Hazendonk 1/3-inspired vessels were introduced made of clay tempered with mainly crushed flint (in the west) or quartz (in the east). Due to a too limited number of radiocarbon dates this transition in the material culture cannot yet be dated precisely or securely. Nevertheless, the available dates strongly suggest that the shift occurred most probably shortly before or after 4000 cal BC (Fig. 9). This is in agreement with dates from other north-west European countries, where similar material changes have been observed, for example in southern


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Figure 8. Lithic artefacts from the Final Mesolithic (top) and Early Neolithic (bottom) found at Doel ‘Deurganck’.


Figure 9. Calibrated radiocarbon dates related to the transition between the Final Mesolithic (Late Swifterbant culture) and the Early Neolithic (Michelsberg culture) in the sandy lowland. The association between the radiocarbon dates and the Michelsberg finds at Melsele ‘Hof ten Damme’ remains hypothetical.



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England (Whittle, this volume), Scotland (Sheridan, this volume), southern Scandinavia (Fischer 2002), and northern Germany (Hartz et al. 2002; Hartz & Lübke 2004; Hartz et al., this volume). Detailed information on the Early Neolithic settlements is not yet available, as most sites are documented only by small assemblages of surface finds (see above), generally including just a handful of diagnostic Neolithic artefacts. Extensive sites comparable to the Michelsberg settlements in the loamy area, consisting of thousands of lithics spread over many tens of hectares, are absent in the sandy lowlands. Based on the evidence of the sealed Michelsberg site of Doel ‘Deurganck’ dock sector C (Crombé et al. 2000), it can be assumed that Neolithic settlements in the coversand area are much more discrete in surface- and find-density. The partially excavated site of Doel yielded an assemblage of about 300 artefacts, of which only six or seven were diagnostic ones. Other, more recent sites confirm that most Neolithic settlements in the sandy lowlands were small, single house sites. The site of Waardamme (Demeyere et al. 2004) may be a good representation of an average Neolithic settlement in the coversand area. It consists of a single house plan, measuring 20.2 m long, and associated with a lithic assemblage of less than 500 artefacts. Probably such settlements were relocated after some years as a result of the relatively quick exhaustion of the sandy agrarian land. Such ‘wandering farmyards’ are also attested for later periods in the sandy area, in particular during the Early and Middle Bronze Age (Roymans & Fokkens 1991). As these settlements were only occupied for relatively short periods, they produced only small amounts of settlement waste and are archaeologically less visible. Another important problem is related to the introduction of the first domesticates into the sandy lowland. The presently available data do not allow us to date the appearance of the first domesticated animals or plants. So far the only ‘sandy’ site which yielded evidence of domesticated animals is Melsele ‘Hof ten Damme’. In the mixed layer mentioned already, small burnt fragments of cattle and pig (alongside wild game) were collected. Although these have not yet been dated directly, they definitely must be older than the sealing of the layer ultimately during the first half of the third millennium cal BC. It is very tempting to link these bones with the apparently youngest occupation event of the site, which is represented by a (storage?) pit covered with bark, some leaf-shaped arrowheads and flint-tempered pottery. This occupation phase is dated on two bark samples from the pit to the first half of the fourth millennium cal BC and is probably related to a Michelsberg culture occupation.



Late Mesolithic

5500

sandy area

Late Mesolithic

Final Mesolithic (Swifterbant)

Early Neolithic ? (Michelsberg)

Comparison of the chronological schemes in the loess belt and the sandy lowland.

Early Neolithic (LBK/Blicquy)

5000

Figure 10.

Middle Neolithic A (hiatus)

Middle Neolithic B (Epi-Roessen/Michelsberg)

(sand-)loamy area

4500

4000

3500

Cal BC


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Philippe Crombé & Bart Vanmontfort CONCLUSION

There are still important hiatuses in the documentation of the MesolithicNeolithic transition of both the loamy and sandy areas of the Scheldt basin. Nevertheless the difference in neolithisation process of both areas is beyond any doubt (Fig. 10). The Neolithic way of life probably arrived as a package in specific parts of the loess area from 5300 cal BC onwards and gradually spread over the entire region ultimately around 4300 cal BC. It seems possible, but far from proven, that the gradual spread during the early and middle fifth millennium cal BC involved the uptake of local hunter-gatherers in the new way of life. In the sandy lowland, on the other hand, the Neolithic was introduced more gradually and slowly. Mesolithic hunter-gatherer-fishermen, albeit living very close to the Neolithic frontier, probably persisted as long as c. 4000 cal BC. As a result of contact and interaction with southern Neolithic communities they started to make pottery around the middle of the fifth millennium cal BC, but the biggest changes occurred only at the end of this millennium as a result of a further northward expansion of the Michelsberg culture.

REFERENCES BASTIAENS, J., DEFORCE, K., KLINCK, B., MEERSSCHAERT, L., VERBRUGGEN, C. & VRYDAGHS, L. 2005. Palaeobotanical analyses. In P. Crombé (ed.), The last huntergatherer-fishermen in sandy Flanders (NW Belgium); the Verrebroek and Doel excavation projects, Part 1: palaeo-environment, chronology and features, 251–78. Gent: Archaeological Reports Ghent University. BATS, M., CROMBÉ, P., PERDAEN, Y., SERGANT, J., VAN ROEYEN, J.-P. & VAN STRYDONCK, M. 2003. Nieuwe ontdekkingen in het Deurganckdok te Doel (Beveren, Oost-Vlaanderen): Vroeg- en Finaal-Mesolithicum. Notae Prahistoricae 23, 55–9. BRONK RAMSEY, C. 2005. OxCal Program v3.10, http://www.rlaha.ox.ac.uk/oxcal/oxcal.htm. CONSTANTIN, C. & ILETT, M. 1998. Culture de Blicquy — Villeneuve-Saint-Germain, rapports chronologiques avec les cultures rhénanes. Anthropologie et Préhistoire 109, 207–16. CRAIG, O. E., FORSTER, M., ANDERSEN, S., KOCH, E., CROMBÉ, Ph., MILNER, N. J., STERN, B., BAILEY, G. N. & HERON, C. P. 2007. Molecular and isotopic demonstration of the processing of aquatic products in Northern European prehistoric pottery. Archaeometry 49, 135–52. CREEMERS, G. & VERMEERSCH, P. M. 1989. Meeuwen-Donderslagheide: a Middle Neolithic site on the Limburg Kempen Plateau (Belgium). Helinium 29, 206–26. CROMBÉ, P. 1986. Een prehistorische site te Kerkhove (Mesolithicum-Neolithicum). Westvlaamse Archaeologica 2, 3–39. CROMBÉ, P. (ed.) 2005. The last hunter-gatherer-fishermen in sandy Flanders (NW Belgium); the Verrebroek and Doel excavation projects, Part 1: palaeo-environment, chronology and features. Gent: Archaeological Reports Ghent University. CROMBÉ, P., BATS, M., WUYTS, F. & VAN ROEYEN, J.-P. 2004. Een derde vindplaats van de Swifterbantcultuur in het Deurganckdok te Doel (Beveren, Oost-Vlaanderen, België). Notae Praehistoricae 24, 105–7. CROMBÉ, P. & CAUWE, N. 2001. The Mesolithic. Anthropologica et Praehistorica 112, 49–62.


THE NEOLITHISATION OF THE SCHELDT BASIN IN BELGIUM 283 CROMBÉ, P., GROENENDIJK, H. & VAN STRYDONCK, M. 1999. Dating the Mesolithic of the Low Countries: some methodological considerations. Actes du 3ème Congrès International ‘14C et Archéologie’, 6–10 Avril 1998, Lyon, Mémoires de la Société Préhistorique Française 26 and Supplément 1999 de la Revue d’Archéométrie, 57–63. CROMBÉ, P., PERDAEN, Y. & SERGANT, J. 2005. La néolithisation de la Belgique: quelques réflexions. In G. Marchand & A. Tresset (eds), Unité et diversité des processus de néolithisation sur la façade atlantique de l’Europe (6e–4e millénaires avant J.-C.), Table ronde de Nantes, 26–27 Avril 2002, 47–66. Paris: Mémoire de la Société Préhistorique Française 36. CROMBÉ, P., PERDAEN, Y. & SERGANT, J. in press. Le Mésolithique ancien dans l’ouest de la Belgique: quelques réflexions concernant l’occupation du territoire. Actes de la table ronde ‘Le Mésolithique ancien et moyen de la France septentrionale et des pays limitrophes’, Amiens 9–10/10/2004. Paris: Mémoires de la Société Préhistorique Française. CROMBÉ, P., PERDAEN, Y., SERGANT, J., VAN ROEYEN, J.-P. & VAN STRYDONCK, M. 2002. The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the sandy lowlands of Belgium: new evidence. Antiquity 76, 699–706. CROMBÉ, P., VAN ROEYEN, J.-P., SERGANT, J., PERDAEN, Y., CORDEMANS, K. & VAN STRYDONCK, M. 2000. Doel ‘Deurganckdok’ (Flanders, Belgium): settlement traces from the Final Palaeolithic and the Early to Middle Mesolithic. Notae Praehistoricae 20, 111–19. CROMBÉ, P. & VAN STRYDONCK, M. 2004. The Neolithic transition and European population history. Antiquity 78, 708–10. DE HEINZELIN, J., HAESAERTS, P. & DE LAET, S. J. 1977. Le Gué du Plantin (Neufvilles, Hainaut), site néolithique et romain (avec la collaboration de B. Bastin, S. Czepiec, A. Gautier, B. Hulthén, M. Splingaer and A. Van Doorselaer). Dissertationes Archaeologicae Gandenses 17. Brugge: De Tempel. DEFORCE, K., GELORINI, V., VERBRUGGEN, C. & VRYDAGHS, L. 2005. Pollen and phytolith analyses. In P. Crombé (ed.), The last hunter-gatherer-fishermen in sandy Flanders (NW Belgium); the Verrebroek and Doel excavation projects, Part 1: palaeo-environment, chronology and features, 108–26. Gent: Archaeological Reports Ghent University. DEMEYERE, F., BOURGEOIS, J. & CROMBÉ, P. 2004. Plan d’une maison du groupe de Deûle-Escaut à Waardamme (Oostkamp, Flandre occidentale). Notae Praehistoricae 24, 167–73. FISCHER, A. 2002. Food for feasting? An evaluation of explanations of the neolithisation of Denmark and southern Sweden. In A. Fischer & K. Kristiansen (eds), The Neolithisation of Denmark. 150 years of debate, 343–93. Sheffield: J. R. Collis Publications. GOB, A. 1990. Du mésolithique au néolithique en Europe nord-occidentale: un point de vue du mésolithicien. In D. Cahen & M. Otte (eds), Rubané and Cardial, Actes du Colloque de Liège, novembre 1988, 155–9. Liège: ERAUL 39. HALLGREN, F. 2004. The introduction of ceramic technology around the Baltic Sea in the 6th millennium. In H. Knutsson (ed.), Coast to coast — arrival. Results and reflections. Proceedings of the Final Coast to Coast Conference 1–5 October 2002 in Falköping, Sweden, 123–42. Uppsala: Coast to Coast Project. HARTZ, S., HEINRICH D. & LÜBKE H. 2002. Coastal farmers — the neolithisation of northernmost Germany. In A. Fischer & K. Kristiansen (eds), The Neolithisation of Denmark. 150 years of debate, 321–40. Sheffield: J. R. Collis Publications. HARTZ, S. & LÜBKE, H. 2004. Zur chronostratigraphischen Gliederung der Ertebølle-Kultur und frühesten Trichterbecherkultur in der südlichen Mecklenburger Bucht. In H. Lübke, F. Lüth & T. Terberger (eds), Neue Forschungen zur Steinzeit im südlichen Ostseegebiet, 119–43. Lübstorf: Bodendenkmalplege in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 52. HUYGE, D. & VERMEERSCH, P. M. 1982. Late Mesolithic settlement at WeeldePaardsdrank. In P. M. Vermeersch (ed.), Contributions to the study of the Mesolithic of the Belgian Lowland, 115–209. Tervuren: Studia Praehistorica Belgica 1.


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JADIN, I. 2003. Trois petits tours et puis s’en vont. . . La fin de la présence danubienne en Moyenne Belgique (avec la participation de D. Cahen, I. Deramaix, A. Hauzeur, J. Heim, A. Livingstone Smith and J. Verniers). Liège: ERAUL 109. JADIN, I. & CAHEN, D. 2003. Datations radiocarbones et Rubané. Pour un mariage de raison. In I. Jadin, Trois petits tours et puis s’en vont. . . La fin de la présence danubienne en Moyenne Belgique, 523–81. Liège: ERAUL 109. JADIN, I. & HAUZEUR, A. 2003. Des découvertes isolées qui parsèment le territoire. In I. Jadin, Trois petits tours et puis s’en vont. . .La fin de la présence danubienne en Moyenne Belgique, 81–113. Liège: ERAUL 109. JEUNESSE, C. 1996. Les enceintes à fossés interrompus du Néolithique danubien ancien et moyen et leurs relations avec le Néolithique récent. Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 26, 251–61. JEUNESSE, C., LEFRANC, P. & DENAIRE, A. 2004. Groupe de Bischheim, origine du Michelsberg, genèse du groupe d’Entzheim. La transition entre le Néolithique moyen et le Néolithique récent dans les régions rhénanes. Zimmersheim: Cahiers de l’Association pour la Promotion de la Recherche Archéologique en Alsace 18/19. LOUWE KOOIJMANS, L. P. 2001. Hardinxveld-Giessendam Polderweg. Een mesolithisch jachtkamp in het rivierengebied (5500–5000 v.Chr.). Amersfoort: Rapportage Archeologische Monumentenzorg 83. PARENT, J.-P., VAN DER PLAETSEN, P. & VANMOERKERKE, J. 1987. Prehistorische jagers en veetelers aan de Donk te Oudenaarde. Vobov-info 24–5. RAEMAEKERS, D. C. M. 1999. The articulation of a ‘New Neolithic’. The meaning of the Swifterbant culture for the process of neolithisation in the western part of the North European Plain (4900–3400 BC). Leiden: Archaeological Studies Leiden University 3. RAEMAEKERS, D. C. M. 2001. Aardewerk en verbrande klei. In L. P. Louwe Kooijmans (ed.), Hardinxveld-Giessendam De Bruin. Een kampplaats uit het Laat-Mesolithicum en het begin van de Swifterbant-cultuur (5500–4450 v.Chr.), 117–52. Amersfoort: Rapportage Archeologische Monumentenzorg 88. REIMER, P. J., BAILLIE, M. G. L., BARD, E., BAYLISS, A., BECK, I. W., BERTRAND, C. J. H., BLACKWELL, P. G., BUCK, C. E., BURR, G. S., CUTLER, K. B., DAMON, P. E., EDWARDS, R. L., FAIRBANKS, R. G., FRIEDRICH, M., GUILDERSON, T. P., HOGG, A. G., HUGHEN, K. A., KROMER, B., MCCORMAC, G., MANNING, S., BRONK RAMSEY, C., REIMER, R. W., REMMELE, S., SOUTHON, J. R., STUIVER, M., TALAMO, S., TAYLOR, F. W., VAN DER PLICHT, J. & WEYHENMEYER, C. E. 2004. IntCal04 terrestrial radiocarbon age calibration, 0-26 cal kyr BP, Radiocarbon, 46(3), 1029–58. ROYMANS, N. & FOKKENS, H. 1991. Een overzicht van veertig jaar nederzettingsonderzoek in de Lage Landen. In H. Fokkens & N. Roymans (eds), Nederzettingen uit de bronstijd en de vroege ijzertijd in de lage landen, 1–19. Amersfoort: Nederlandse Archeologische Rapporten 13. SCHIER, W. 1993. Das westliche Mitteleuropa an der Wende vom 5. zum 4. Jahrtausend: Kulturwandel durch Kulturkontakt? In A. Lang, H. Parzinger & H. Küster (eds), Kulturen zwischen Ost und West. Festschrift G. Kossack, 19–59. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. THOMAS, J. 1988. Neolithic explanations revisited: the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Britain and South Scandinavia. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 54, 59–66. TIMOFEEV, V. I. 1998. The beginning of the Neolithic in the Eastern Baltic. In M. Zvelebil, L. Domanska & R. Dennell (eds), Harvesting the sea, farming the forest, 225–36. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. VAN BERG, P.-L., KEELEY, L., VAN ROEYEN, J.-P. & VAN HOVE, R. 1992. Le gisement mésolithique de Melsele (Flandre-Orientale, Belgique) et le subnéolithique en Europe occidentale. In C.-T. Le Roux (ed.), Paysans et bâtisseurs; l’émergence du Néolithique atlantique et les origines du mégalithisme, Actes du 17ème Colloque interrégional sur le Néolithique, Vannes, 28–31 octobre 1990, 93–9. Rennes: Revue Archéologique de l’Ouest, supplément 5.


THE NEOLITHISATION OF THE SCHELDT BASIN IN BELGIUM 285 VAN STRYDONCK, M. & CROMBÉ, Ph. 2005. Radiocarbon dating. In P. Crombé (ed.), The last hunter-gatherer-fishermen in sandy Flanders (NW Belgium); the Verrebroek and Doel excavation projects, Part 1: palaeo-environment, chronology and features, 180–212. Gent: Archaeological Reports Ghent University. VAN STRYDONCK, M., CROMBÉ, P. & MAES, A. 2001. The site of Verrebroek ‘Dok ‘ and its contribution to the absolute dating of the Mesolithic in the Low Countries. Radiocarbon 43(2B), 997–1005. VAN STRYDONCK, M., VAN ROEYEN, J.-P., MINNAERT, P. & VERBRUGGEN, C. 1995. Problems in dating stone-age settlements on sandy soils: the Hof ten Damme site near Melsele, Belgium. Radiocarbon 37, 291–7. VANACKER, V., GOVERS, G., VAN PEER, P., VERBEEK, C., DESMET, J. & REYNIERS, J. 2001. Using Monte Carlo simulation for the environmental analysis of small archaeologic datasets, with the Mesolithic in northeast Belgium as a case study. Journal of Archaeological Science 28, 661–9. VANMONTFORT, B. 2004. Converging worlds: the Neolithisation of the Scheldt basin during the late fifth and early fourth millenium cal BC. Unpublished PhD thesis, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. VANMONTFORT, B. submitted. Forager-farmer connections in an ‘unoccupied’ land: The start of the neolithisation process on the western edge of LBK territory. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. VANMONTFORT, B., GEERTS, A.-I., CASSEYAS, C., BAKELS, C. C., BUYDENS, C., DAMBLON, F., LANGOHR, R., VAN NEER, W. & VERMEERSCH, P. M. 2001/2002. De Hel in de tweede helft van het 5de millenium v.Chr. Een midden-Neolithische enclosure te Spiere (prov. West-Vlaanderen). Archeologie in Vlaanderen 8 (2004), 9–77. VANMONTFORT, B., HAESAERTS, P. & JADIN, I. 2003. Deux dates radiocarbone par AMS sur le gisement néolithique du Gué du Plantin (Neufvilles, Province du Hainaut, Belgique). Notae Praehistoricae 23, 173–9. VERHART, L. B. M. 2000. Times fade away.The neolitization of the southern Netherlands in an anthropological and geographical perspective. Leiden: Archaeological Studies Leiden University 6. VERMEERSCH, P. M. 1987–8. Le Michelsberg en Belgique. Acta Archaeologica Lovaniensia 26–27, 1–20. VERMEERSCH, P. M. 1990. La transition du Mésolithique au Néolithique en Basse et Moyenne Belgique. In D. Cahen & M. Otte (eds), Rubané and Cardial, Actes du Colloque de Liège, nov. 1988, 95–103. Liège: ERAUL, 39. VERMEERSCH, P. M., LAUWERS, R. & GENDEL, P. 1992. The Late Mesolithic sites of Brecht-Moordenaarsven (Belgium). Helinium 32, 3–77. VERMEERSCH, P. M., VYNCKIER, G. & WALTER, R. 1990. Thieusies, Ferme de l’Hosté, site Michelsberg.II. Le matériel lithique. Leuven: Studia Praehistorica Belgica 6. VERMEERSCH, P. M. & WALTER, R. 1980. Thieusies, Ferme de Hosté, site Michelsberg. Bruxelles: Archaeologia Belgica 230.



The gradual transition to farming in the Lower Rhine Basin LEENDERT P. LOUWE KOOIJMANS

THE NETHERLANDS ORGANISATION FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH finances a research programme directed to a new synthesis of the transition to farming in the Netherlands, viewed in its wider geographical context, profiting from the new wealth of data made available by modern large-scale field research. The programme encompasses various projects: a critical approach to the sitebound evidence by Luc Amkreutz, a regional approach by Bart Vanmontfort (Leuven), the first physical anthropological and isotopic study of the area by Liesbeth Smits, the acquisition and distribution of raw materials and prestigious items by Leo Verhart, and a re-evaluation of the various sources of palaeobotanical evidence from the delta district by Welmoed Out. This paper is meant as a short interim report, anticipating the synthetic volume planned for the year 2008. Comments are made especially on the seemingly parallel developments at the other end of the North German Plain in the Baltic coastal area.

THE LOWER RHINE BASIN The Lower Rhine Basin embraces all of the Netherlands and Belgium together with the adjacent parts of the Rhineland, Westfalia and Lower Saxony (Fig. 1). We have chosen this arena for our research, since the presentday Netherlands are too restricted to give a sufficient overview of the cultural phenomena in question and so to allow us to understand the processes of interaction properly. It is even argued below that communities as far as the German Baltic coast experienced similar developments. The Lower Rhine Basin is the southern part of a wider long-term geological subsidence area, which centres in the southern North Sea, into which a series of rivers discharge: the Rhine, the Meuse and the Scheldt being the most prominent. The Basin shows a distinct zoning. It consists mainly of a flat sandy plain with Late Glacial coversands at the surface, sandy and Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 287–309, © The British Academy 2007.


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Figure 1. The Lower Rhine Basin with the two major concentrations of sites, in the IJsselmeer Basin and the Rhine/Meuse estuary. Hardinxveld (H) and Schipluiden (S) are two examples of the exchange relations of the gradually transforming communities in the north with the farming communities in the southern loess zone. Location of the Hüde I site indicated in Lower Saxony.

gravely river deposits and occasional Saalian boulder clays in the subsoil. These deposits have been pushed up to hilly ranges by the Saalian ice sheets in some regions like the Veluwe district in the central Netherlands. The Basin has hilly ranges along its southern margins with a zone of loess deposition to the north of it, separating the hills from the sands. Essential for our research is the extensive complex of Holocene deposits at the confluence of the lower courses of the rivers mentioned, a complex consisting of clastic and organic deposits of widely different facies, ranging from coastal marine sediments to sphagnum bogs. It has been named the ‘Rhine-Meuse Delta’, although it extends far beyond the sedimentation area of the rivers. This must have been a region rich in natural resources, plant as well as animal, which were exploited by people, who settled on dry outcrops or sediments, like river levees. The remains have been preserved below several metres of sediments that


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were formed during the continuous rise of sea level and of the ground water table. As such they became waterlogged but also not so easy to prospect. We are generally inclined to stress the contrast between these wetlands and the upland sands, but are nowadays more and more aware as well that the low and gently undulating coversand landscape, intersected by numerous wide and shallow brook valleys, also offered very diverse ecological conditions, comprising a considerable wetland component as well. The main distinction, as compared to the ‘delta’, is the presence of the stretches of light and sandy soils on the coversand ridges, which will have been suited for crop cultivation.

THE STUDY OF NEOLITHISATION The study of neolithisation in this basin is the study of the extension of a subsistence-based food production from the loess belt into the North European Plain, into a landscape that will not have differed so much in climatic terms (although more so in more northern latitudes), but will have differed in other aspects, especially in soil conditions, vegetation and fauna. It was a landscape with a high rate of ecological diversity, with a mosaic of dry and wet microregions, and so was presumably an attractive ground for hunting, fishing and gathering, while the loess zone offered a much less differentiated and more densely wooded landscape, but well suited as it appears to the early hoe cultivation of the Bandkeramik farmers and their successors. While one party in the process (the early farmers) have become known in detail from an early stage of research on the basis of their well preserved settlements, the other party (the foragers and their successors) have not, as a result of the bad preservation of their upland sites and the invisibility of their wetland locations. The upland flint scatters often have a palimpsest character and hardly any organic remains have been preserved. This was a serious drawback for the development of an appropriate model of the transformations that took place as a result of the interaction of both communities. It was mainly the isolated items that found their way into the ‘hunters’ land’ in the north that demonstrated communication, but what went back in return still completely escapes us. For some time the Hüde I site in Lower Saxony (Deichmüller 1965; Raemaekers 1999, 72f) stood alone, but in the last decades a series of stratified settlement sites have been discovered in the delta wetlands, where organic remains have been preserved in large quantities, with artefacts as well as discarded animal remains and plant food. These are the basis for the definition of the Swifterbant culture (Figs 2 and 3). The sites cover now the full trajectory in which the transition took place with the exception of the relatively short phase of 4450–4100 cal BC. We profited



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Figure 2. Chrono-geographical scheme for the Neolithic in the Lower Rhine basin and adjacent areas. Update of a scheme originally presented in 1976. Stages covered by the Hardinxveld and Hazendonk sites indicated with bars.

especially from the more recent discovery of new, highly informative wetland sites during survey in advance of public works, while the funds to excavate and analyse these sites properly are available as a result of the implementation of the Malta Convention in the Netherlands. There is, however, one major problem in the use of these wetland data for our view of the neolithisation process, which is the extent to which these essentially wetland sites can be viewed as representative of developments in a wider region, including the uplands as well, or whether the new evidence should be seen as documenting specific wet environment aspects of the former societies. I concentrate in this paper mainly on the excavated evidence. This survey is, however, just one in a long series of syntheses, like those by Keeley (1992), Thomas (1996) and myself (Louwe Kooijmans 1993b; 1998; 2004). The latest overview is given in the recent handbook on Dutch prehistory (Louwe Kooijmans et al. 2005). Raemaekers (1999) made a thorough analysis of the Swifterbant ceramics, as the basis for the proper definition of this relatively



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Figure 3. Palaeogeography of the Dutch Holocene sedimentation area around 4200 cal BC with sites mentioned in the texts and other selected locations outside the loess zone. 1. Bergumermeer; 2. Jardinga; 3. Gietsenveentje; 4. Bronneger; 5. Heemse; 6. De Gaste; 7. Northeastpolder; 8. Schokkerhaven; 9. Urk; 10. Swifterbant cluster; 11. Hoge Vaart; 12. Voorschoten; 13. Wateringen; 14. Schipluiden; 15. Rijswijk; 16. Ypenburg; 17. Bergschenhoek; 18. Hekelingen; 19. Rhoon; 20. Hardinxveld; 21. Hazendonk; 22. Brandwijk; 23. Zoelen; 24. Ewijk; 25. Wijchen-het Vormer; 26. Grave; 27. Gassel; 28. Kraaienberg; 29. Merselo; 30. Doel-Deurgancksdok; 31. Weelde-Paardsdrank; 32. Meeuwen-Donderslagheide; 33. Geleen-Janskamperveld.


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new cultural entity, and developed the argument of ‘primitive communism’ to describe and explain Swifterbant subsistence. Verhart (2000) followed the process in the Limburg Meuse Valley on the basis of a systematic analysis of the thousands of flint assemblages in that region. He stressed the attraction which artefacts of the dominant farming group will have had for the hunters, in explaining the wide spread of such items outside the farmers’ territories. The extension of the Swifterbant complex in the Scheldt Basin has been documented by the excavations at Doel in the new Antwerp harbour (Crombé 2005; Crombé et al. 2002; see also Crombé & Vanmontfort, this volume).

THE LATE MESOLITHIC Until a few years ago and for want of something better, similar developments for the transition of hunter-gatherers to farmers to those supposed in Denmark were presumed for the Lower Rhine Basin Late Mesolithic, i.e. a shift to a more sedentary society with a strong seasonal exploitation system, although archaeological evidence was almost non-existent and rather different from that in Scandinavia. Shell middens for instance were completely absent. The new sites and reflection on the older evidence tell us now that the Late Mesolithic settlement system is characterised by site diversity as well as the systematic and long-term use of specific locations in the landscape. This holds for the wide artefact spread of Weelde-Paardsdrank, of which just one small cluster was excavated (Huyge & Vermeersch 1982); it is the case with the well-known Bergumermeer site, for which a time depth of roughly a millennium has been documented by radiocarbon dates (Lanting & van der Plicht 1997–8, 136; Newell 1980); and Hoge Vaart, the first location excavated in the modern ‘capital intensive’ style, is also interpreted as an accumulation of multiple use over an extensive period of time (Hogestijn & Peeters 2001). All can be seen as ‘normal’ base camps possibly of seasonal use. Another type of site is formed by concentrations of hundreds of ‘hearth pits’, like Mariënberg (Verlinde in Louwe Kooijmans et al. 2005; Verlinde & Newell in press), conceived as locations where specific processes were carried out, possibly related to food conservation. Similar sites are known from the earlier, Boreal, Mesolithic as well. A third type is the butchering location of Jardinga (Prummel et al. 2002), where game was dismembered. Since different animals are documented and since the excavation is just a cutting of restricted dimensions in a valley floor, which has produced bones at other locations as well, we feel permitted to consider the valley stretch as a micro-region with a special function in the settlement system. Verhart (2000, 55) could demonstrate that communities along the Middle Limburg Meuse Valley shifted their activ-



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ities between two micro-regions of different potential, the one along the river valley floor, the other at a distance of 10 km, along smaller brooks. The most detailed information, however, is given by two sites, close to the village of Hardinxveld-Giessendam, excavated in 1998–9 in advance of the construction of a new railway (Louwe Kooijmans 2001a; 2001b; 2003). They appeared—on the basis of a wide spectrum of palaeoecological indicators— to have been distinct winter base camp locations, the one used for five centuries, the other for a millennium. They are pure Mesolithic in their lower levels and reflect increasing Neolithic elements upwards through the stratigraphy. These are two Late Glacial river dunes with tops at c. -5 m below Dutch OD, which were used as settlement locations in the extensive delta swamps at a time when the water level was several metres lower than these dune tops. The two sites are within 1 km of each other and in the main we consider one to succeed the other, the Polderweg site being occupied mainly in the earlier stages from 5500 to 5000 cal BC, and the De Bruin site continuing down till 4450 cal BC. The natural Holocene stratigraphy of the aquatic deposits alongside the dune allowed the distinction of three main phases of occupation and offered a wealth of ecological, economic and artefactual information, since the occupants had used this zone as a rubbish dump. Main subsistence activities in all phases had been hunting wild boar, trapping beaver and otter (Fig. 4), fishing for pike, and fowling. There are several clear winter indicators and negative scores on summer correlates, leading to the conclusion of exclusive or dominant winter use of the site. The presence of burials of people and dogs, the presence of women and children among the human skeletal material (Fig. 5a), the extent of the site, and the broad flint, bone and antler artefact spectra, are the basis for assuming a base camp function for a number of households, at least in the first phase (5500–5300 cal BC). So the option of a settlement system with seasonal base camps of very long term use has been substantiated at least for this single case of high quality evidence. The model could be extended with the suggestion of summer residences in the upland margin zone, at a distance of 10–20 km, which brings the Dutch territorial pattern close to the Ringkloster-Norsminde model of eastern Jutland (Andersen 1994–5, 50–3). The communities were, in contrast, rather different as regards their material culture, as far as can be assessed from the preserved artefacts. This holds at any rate for the antler industry with its unperforated T-axes and sleeves with and without shaft holes. The slender wooden paddle blades are different in design from those in the north as are important details of the dugout canoe, found at the De Bruin site. The links were distinctly in a southern direction as illustrated by the pointillé design on one of the antler sleeves. That is also documented by the sources of several classes of flint from the southern chalk belt, by the most likely sources of large pieces of quartzitic



294 100%

80%

60%

40%

20%

elk/aurochs/horse/roe red deer wild boar

HardinxveldPolderweg phase 1/2 + 2

HardinxveldPolderweg phase 1

N=402 N=6799 N=344 N=1128

2600

Hardinxveld De Bruin phase 3

N=548

sea mammals otter beaver

4100- .. 3400

Hazendonk levels 1-3

36003400

Swifterbant S3

36003400

Hekelingen 3

Ypenburg

32002800

Hazendonk phase VL2b

Schipluiden

……….

Voorschoten

3200

Ewijk cal BC

Northeastpolder P14

0%

32002800

41004000

40003400

47004450

51005000

55005300

N=623 N=1224 N=3530 N=603

N=534

N=571 N=3520

pig sheep/goat cattle

Figure 4. Faunal spectra from selected Late Mesolithic and Neolithic sites, 5500–3500 cal BC, in the Holocene sedimentation area in two groups: wetland sites to the right and agricultural locations at the left. In both groups spectra are arranged in chronological order. Excluded are antler, dog and all fur animals except otter. Indeterminate pig/wildboar bones are spread over pig and wild boar according to the ratio of these positive identifications. The same holds for cattle/ aurochs. Four factors arise in the interpretation of these data: the stage in the process of neolithisation, the ecozone in which the site was situated, the possible differences in function of the site in the former settlement system, and seasonality. The left group is considered possibly to reflect the upland processes. coastal Schipluiden, Ypenburg, Voorschoten river district Ewijk upland margin Northeastpolder P14 estuarine, marshes Hardinxveld, Hazendonk, Swifterbant, Hekelingen Data from: Clason 1990; Gehasse 1995; Groenman-van Waateringe et al. 1968; Oversteegen et al. in Louwe Kooijmans 2001b; de Vries 2004; Van Wijngaarden-Bakker et al. 2001 in Louwe Kooijmans 2001a; Zeiler 1997 and in Louwe Kooijmans & Jongste 2006.



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rock and small pieces of pyrite in the Ardennes and by the presence of unmistakable bone-tempered Blicquy type of pottery. We conclude—since material culture must be seen as fully independent of wet environmental conditions—that the Hardinxveld community, being embedded in a southern interaction sphere, can be viewed as representative of the communities north of the loess zone and north of the later agricultural frontier along its margins.

FIRST FARMERS IN THE LOESS ZONE, 5500–4300 CAL BC Traditionally the beginning of the Neolithic is marked by the extension of the Bandkeramik culture from the early nucleus in Hessen, through the Rhine corridor to the north. There are a series of arguments to view this expansion first and foremost as a colonisation. First, there are no microliths found in the rich material of any of the large-scale excavations: neither in the Rhineland, nor in Dutch southern Limburg, nor in its earliest stage, like the Geleen-Janskamperveld settlement. Secondly, no transitional complexes between Mesolithic and Bandkeramik are known, and thirdly, the whole Bandkeramik cultural complex contrasts to everything we know of the late Mesolithic. There are two arguments that this stage was preceded by a phase in which these northern regions had contacts with farmer communities further south. One is the use of ‘grey western’ flint—most probably from the South Limburg chalk region—in the earliest Bandkeramik settlements to south of the Rhineland Plateau. The second argument is the site of Sweikhuizen, where people had left some La Hoguette pottery, a pottery type present in the Älteste Bandkeramik (earliest LBK) assemblages to the south, but completely lacking in the slightly later Ältere Bandkeramik (early LBK) of the Rhineland and Limburg. The site shows that the La Hoguette interaction sphere extended to the southern fringe of the Lower Rhine Basin. Either these ‘Hoguettiens’ or the indigenous Mesolithic will have been the intermediary in the acquisition of western flint. It might be superfluous to do so, but it should be stressed in view of some recent discussion that all evidence points to permanent settlements in the middle of clearances in the forests for fields for cereal cultivation. The labour input in the sturdy houses, the communal surrounding enclosing structures and the palaeobotanical evidence on weeds and crops are the main and convincing arguments. These most north-western LBK communities extended into the Belgian Hesbaye, but not farther west, with the exception of the small Wange/ Overhespen enclave and a second cluster in Hainaut, that might best be


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viewed as a pioneer extension from the later LBK community in northern France. This pattern remained the same as material culture developed into Rössen in the east and Blicquy in the west. Most of the Belgian loess zone seems to have remained hunter-gatherer territory.

CONTACTS AND INTRODUCTION, 5500–4450 CAL BC The interference of the Bandkeramik with the northern hunters was restricted in extent and intensity. A zone of c. 30 km of the adjacent sand seems to have been used for herding and/or hunting from Late Bandkeramik times onward. Bandkeramik adzes found their way in small numbers farther north, supposedly in a form of exchange. The well known Rössen Breitkeile have a much denser and wider distribution all over the North European Plain and as such demonstrate more intensive contacts and—hidden behind these wedges—other Neolithic elements and ideas. They were, however, rarely deposited on settlement sites, Hüde I in Lower Saxony being the rare exception in the Lower Rhine Basin (Deichmüller 1965). The introductions can be followed in some detail in the Hardinxveld stratigraphy. The rich material allows us to believe that the lack of evidence in levels below the first occurrence of new elements really reflects a genuine absence of innovations at this stage. Most intriguing is a distinct LBK type of arrowhead, made on a Rijckholt type of flint blade, from phase 1: so with a latest date synchronous with the earliest LBK occupation in southern Limburg. One might even think of the preceding phase for which a Hessen connection has been postulated above. The arrowhead at any rate reflects not only southern links at this stage but contacts with the agrarian communities there as well and so documents the start of an availability stage, sensu Zvelebil (1986). The first pottery in a local style is dated sharply at the Polderweg site around 5000 cal BC and marks the start of the Swifterbant culture, a ceramic Mesolithic stage, comparable to evolved Ertebølle, but three centuries earlier. The same stage has been documented in the extensive excavations at Hoge Vaart, in the IJsselmeer Basin (4900–4800 cal BC) and in the deposition at Bronneger, province of Drenthe (4800–4600 cal BC). It has a counterpart in the early pottery from Schlamersdorf in the German Baltic coastal area, prima facie dated to c. 5300 cal BC. A fresh water reservoir effect should, however, not be excluded in this case, but the pottery certainly precedes the earliest Ertebølle ware in Denmark dated around 4700 cal BC (Andersen 1994–5, 42; Hartz et al. 2002, 330; and see Hartz et al., this volume). Pottery seems to be present at Hüde I from the beginning of its occupation, c. 4700 cal BC (Lanting & van der Plicht 1999–2000, 58; Raemaekers 1999, 89).



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Bones of domestic animals do not occur before phase 3, i.e. between 4700 and 4450 cal BC and more probably late in this phase 3 rather than early (Fig. 4). All four domesticates—cattle, pig, sheep and goat—are represented in low numbers and document animal husbandry by this community. It must be doubted, however, whether the animals were kept on the site itself. The pattern of deposition can better be explained by depositional practices than by consumption, and so chunks of meat might have been brought to the site from the upland and not the animals themselves, which is also more in line with winter conditions in this marsh landscape. As far as crop cultivation is concerned, in spite of sampling and wet sieving directed to the recovery of cereals, no such remains were found. This simply means that cereals —if grown at all—apparently were not brought in, like the chunks of meat. Low percentages of domestic animal bones (2% and cattle only) have similar ages, around 4700 cal BC, again at the German Baltic coast, at the site of Rosenhof (Hartz et al. 2002, 327; and see Hartz et al., this volume). We must realise that the earliest occurrence of these agricultural indicators on isolated dune tops in the delta does not exclude an earlier introduction on the sandy uplands. The present archaeological evidence, however, makes us more surprised about the early dates for the domestic animals than about the absence of cereals, since the expansion of the Neolithic all over the Belgian loess zone and to the north is dated to the phase of the Michelsberg culture and not earlier, i.e. c. 4300 cal BC (and see Crombé & Vanmontfort, this volume).

MICHELSBERG EXPANSION, 4300–3400 CAL BC Turning again to the loess zone, remarkable changes—even disruptions— can be attested in the transition of the Rössen and Blicquy communities into those of the Michelsberg culture (Vanmontfort 2004). It seems that Neolithic society is restructured and that the basic unit shifts to a higher level, from the village in a segmentary society towards groups for which supra-local enclosures have a central function, a development seen over wider tracks of western and northern Europe. It is in this stage, to be dated from 4300 cal BC onward, that the wide spaces between the restricted Neolithic enclaves in Belgium are filled in. Apparently both the Blicquy farmers and all final Mesolithic groups transformed into Michelsberg and changed to a new way of life. The Michelsberg complex also demonstrates an expansion towards the north, beyond the loess zone, into the Limburg Meuse Valley and the Münster Basin. This means a northern shift of the old agricultural frontier which must have had its effect on the local communities beyond.


298

Leendert P. Louwe Kooijmans SWIFTERBANT AND HAZENDONK, c. 4200–3600 CAL BC

The period 4500–4200 cal BC is as yet not covered by any excavation, with the exception of the Bergschenhoek fishing site, but the stage around 4100 cal BC is documented by the earlier work at Swifterbant and the Hazendonk. Detailed pottery analysis (de Roever 2004) demonstrates that the Swifterbant area was exploited before this stage, people using outcropping dune tops as temporary bases. Sites shifted to the levees of fresh tidal gulleys around 4100 cal BC when these became more or less fixed, only for people to leave these locations again as the water level rose and the levees became too wet and were silted over. In the main excavation, at the site S3, two synchronous hut locations could be traced on the basis of multiple renewed fireplaces and the distribution pattern of artefacts. These sites are, in spite of their setting, certainly no simple fishing camps like Bergschenhoek. The animal bones document a wide range of hunting activities, with wild boar, beaver, red deer and otter, in this order, being the most important game (Zeiler 1991; 1997). The inhabitants raised pigs and herded cattle as well and these must have been of roughly equal importance for the meat supply (Fig. 4; Zeiler 1997, table 3). The exact ratios are difficult to establish, however, in view of the difficulties in separating pig and wild boar and the discrepancies between the numbers of identifications and bone weights. The spread of cereal remains (chaff and grains) all over the place demonstrate that cereals were used as a food source as well. The local group can on this basis be characterised as semi-agrarian and be viewed as representing a next stage in the gradual process of neolithisation. It is, however, difficult to establish which function the site or sites had in the settlement system: year-round occupation or summer camps only? A few bones of swans and one bone of beaver are the scarce evidence for winter presence, but space does not allow a full discussion of this problem here. The small and isolated dune top of the Hazendonk was intermittently used as a settlement location from c. 4000 cal BC onward up till late Beaker times. Domestic animals (cattle and pig) and cereals have been attested in most phases, especially in the lowest levels. Cattle has a score of 14% of the number of identifications in this phase, but later never more than a few per cent of all bones (Fig. 4). The main activity of the occupants appears to have been the hunting (or trapping) of beaver, red deer, roe deer, wild boar and otter in rather diverging ratios in the various Neolithic phases. Seasonal indicators do not point to use of the Hazendonk site in a specific season, but rather to its use at various times of the year (Zeiler 1991; 1997). There are two competing interpretations for this site: a seasonal or permanent base camp versus a specialised hunting site. The first option would imply that there would have been communities, which relied for their living for the greater part on the exploitation of natural resources—with fur



299

animals like beaver and otter in a prominent position—even as late as the Late Neolithic, around 2600 cal BC, while groups in other parts of the delta were predominantly or fully agrarian. The second option would mean that the use of the dune tops for the exploitation of the marsh district would have shifted in due course from a seasonal base camp function (as at Hardinxveld) to that of a subordinate special activity site, linked to permanent settlement elsewhere. The author prefers the second option, mainly because the first supposition seems rather unlikely, but also in view of the difference in flint procurement between the various Vlaardingen group settlements in the different delta ecozones. The main problem, however, is the lack of evidence, especially of the supposed ‘permanent settlements elsewhere’ on the sandy uplands south of the wetland district. But both options would mean that a prominent exploitation of natural resources continued up till the end of the Neolithic. Another approach towards the start of crop cultivation has been the detailed pollen analytic investigation of a kettle moor called Gietsenveentje on the Drenthe Plateau (Bakker 2003). The earliest indications for arable weeds and disturbance of the natural vegetation were dated to 4050 cal BC. So the introduction of cereal cultivation seems for the time being to be fixed at c. 4100–4000 cal BC by the presence of charred cereal grains and chaff at Swifterbant S3 and in the lowest Hazendonk level, in combination with the pollen evidence of Gietse Veentje. Again this date matches the first occurrence in the Early TRB assemblage of Wangels on the German Baltic coast, in the form of charred grains and impressions in pottery, together with a faunal assemblage, consisting of about 50% of livestock bones, cattle as well as sheep (Hartz et al. 2002, 328; and see Hartz et al., this volume).

SCHIPLUIDEN, A PERMANENT SETTLEMENT IN THE COASTAL ZONE, 3600–3400 CAL BC An important new anchor site for our view of the neolithisation process was discovered in the subsoil of the former municipality of Schipluiden, close to Delft at a depth of 3–5 m in the preparation of a new water purification plant, and excavated in 2003 preceding its construction (Fig. 5; Louwe Kooijmans & Jongste 2006). The results are complementary to and widen those of earlier investigations at Wateringen (Raemaekers et al. 1997) and Ypenburg (Koot in Louwe Kooijmans et al. 2005) in the same region. Schipluiden involves a rather low (1.5 m) coastal dune, located in a vast coastal plain, at c. 3 km behind the coastline of that time. The dune measured c. 40–120 m and was used as a settlement location in its full extent between c. 3630 and 3380 cal BC. Similar settlements are known from locations in the same Delfland district. This community is characterised by the so-called


Figure 5. Overall plan of the Schipluiden site. Notable are the complex of wells in the north-west, the stretches of surrounding fences and the post clusters all over the dune. Domestic refuse was found in a wide zone all along the south-eastern dune margin.

300 Leendert P. Louwe Kooijmans



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Hazendonk ware, a development in and beyond the southern zone of the Swifterbant culture. As in earlier times their links were predominantly to the south and east, as reflected in the sources of flint and stone. Material culture here thus combined a native pottery tradition with a flint tool kit, including flint axes, of strong southern (Michelsberg) affinities. The Schipluiden settlement consisted of four or five households, each having its fixed yard on the crest of the dune. The community surrounded the entire dune with a fence halfway through the period of occupation, and subsequently maintained the fence by replacing stretches of it once or twice (Fig. 6). The construction of it is seen as a communal effort and as a purposeful structuring of the settlement, separating the wild natural land outside it from the domestic space, and possibly protecting gardens or fields that might have been kept between the houses. It has been calculated that c. 2000 m of straight wooden posts with diameters of c. 6 cm must have been brought to the site for the construction of the first fence in a basically open landscape, with only localised shrubs on the widely spread dunes—a considerable effort. This is the first time that the layout and character of a Neolithic settlement could be determined to the north of the loess zone. So we should not consider it as the beginning of permanent settlement, but merely as the earliest documentation of this. Extensive palaeoecological investigation and modern parallels for the reconstructed landscapes show that the Delfland microregion must have been a rich grazing ground and attracted people for that reason, in spite of the risks of salt incursions from the nearby estuary now and then. People even grew cereals on the salt marshes, but collected a wide range of fruits, tubers and onions from the wild as well. Little can be stated about the relative importance of crop cultivation, but more can be said about the meat supply. In all phases domestic animals (cattle and pig only) account for c. 60% of the number of identified bones, the remaining 40% mainly consisting of wild boar and red deer (Fig. 4). The ratio is more favourable for domesticates in bone weight (70%), seemingly reflecting a rather conventional Neolithic subsistence. The faunal evidence for fowling—mainly waterfowl—is very rich and we should not underestimate the role of fish in this setting between the estuary to the south and the fresh water swamps to the east. That aquatic resources were indeed of great significance is strongly supported by the isotopic evidence of human skeletal remains, pointing towards a fresh water contribution of about half of all proteins (Figs 7a–7b and 8; Budd et al. in prep.). Carrying capacity calculations demonstrate clearly, moreover, that the hunting of large mammals could only contribute 10% of the daily food for the 100–50 people that supposedly inhabited the region. This implies a contribution by cattle and pigs of not more than 20% and makes us conclude that the subsistence of this community still had the character of what I once


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Figure 6. Schipluiden fence traces in the field and an ethnographic reference in the Norsk Folkemuseum, Oslo 1976. Photo by the author.



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Figure 7a. Hardinxveld, burial of an elderly woman in a Late Mesolithic tradition, c. 5500 cal BC.


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Figure 7b. Schipluiden, tightly flexed burial of an adult man in a Middle Neolithic tradition, c. 3500 cal BC. Photos Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden.

called an ‘extended broad spectrum economy’ (Louwe Kooijmans 1993a). We conclude that the change in material culture preceded changes in settlement system and the transformation of subsistence, at least in this coastal region. The fact that these people settled in this region by free will, and that they must have considered it attractive for their preferred way of life, implies that



305

Figure 8. 13C and 15N values of human skeletal material from Schipluiden, compared to the values of farmers, inland and coastal fishers. After Smits in Louwe Kooijmans & Jongste 2006.

we should not consider this economy ‘an adaptation to specific conditions’ but rather see it as representative for the period involved.

CONCLUSION We have given priority in this contribution first and foremost to the presentation of the factual evidence and its interpretation, since we fully agree with Peter Rowley-Conwy (2004) that some explanations of the MesolithicNeolithic transition have moved far away from this basis and can even be contradicted by the data. Our main conclusions from the foregoing accounts are: 1 There has been a long-lasting, static, frontier between the agricultural world in the south and the hunter-gatherers in the north: a long ‘availability phase’ of about seven centuries between 5300 and 4600 cal BC. 2 The Neolithic was not adopted as a package, but piecemeal: the main Neolithic cultural elements preceding the subsistence shift. So the adoption of food production took place within societies of local origin and within the point-based pot tradition of the Swifterbant culture (Table 1).



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Table 1. The neolithisation sequence in the Lower Rhine Basin represented by the first occurrences of Neolithic elements in the Dutch and North German Plain. cal BC

aspect

site, location

c. 3200

first fully agrarian faunal assemblages (cattle ⬎50%), Vlaardingen group end of Swifterbant-Hazendonk pottery traditions permanent settlement, extended broad spectrum economy cereals (cattle ⬍50%), crop cultivation livestock (cattle, pig, sheep, goat ⬍5%) Neolithic flint blades adzes (Breitkeile) first local (point-based) pottery first contacts

Ewijk, Voorschoten

3400 3600 4100–4000 4500 4800 4900–4800 5000 5500–5300

Schipluiden; Hazendonk Schipluiden Swifterbant S3, Gietse Veentje Hardinxveld-De Bruin phase 3 (end?) Hardinxveld-De Bruin phase 2 Hüde I, Dümmer Hardinxveld-Polderweg phase 2 Hardinxveld-Polderweg phase 1

3 There are striking parallels in this sequence of adoption between the Lower Rhine Basin and the German Baltic Zone, where new research documents a similar and synchronous sequence. Both regions might be viewed as just two areas where processes occurring all over the (intermediate) North German plain have been documented by their favourable conditions for preservation. 4 This sequence contrasts with the more abrupt changes in Britain on the one hand and Denmark on the other, around 4000 cal BC. 5 The transition, finally, viewed in a wider geographical context, can be seen as one piece in a mosaic of micro-regional transformations, being the results of region-specific choices of hunter-gatherers in their contacts with early farming communities. Apart from the interpretational problems of the wetland sites, mentioned above, there is another problem in establishing the ‘domestic:wild ratio’ and the application of the 50% criterion of Zvelebil (1986). The questions are: 1 Do we measure in numbers of identified bones or in bone weight, or perhaps the isotope evidence for protein intake? 2 What species do we include in the ‘100% bone sum’? Are dog, antler, small rodents, birds included or excluded? 3 To what extent and on which criteria are pig and wild boar separated? These matters play an important role when we compare faunal assemblages identified by different zoologists at widely different times, as Raemaekers (2003) did. He argued that neolithisation did not take that long, and that the ‘substitution phase’ must have ended around 3600 cal BC and not much later. The ‘50% domestic boundary’ was passed for the first time in his Wateringen 4 site and the same is the case in the later Vlaardingen sites in agriculture-friendly ecozones. This still leaves us, however, with the existence of locations devoted



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for the greater part to the exploitation of natural resources in both phases. The question of whether neolithisation ended 3600 cal BC or continued till the Late Neolithic seems to be above all a matter of definition and choices. The last question to be answered is why the communities in the Lower Rhine Basin and perhaps the whole North German-Dutch Plain reacted so cautiously to the new life style, in contrast to what happened earlier in the loess zone and later in Britain, for example. I have earlier (Louwe Kooijmans 1998) suggested that there will have been a fundamental difference in attitude to the natural environment between the fully ‘domestic’ Bandkeramik and the foragers of the North German-Dutch Plain. They just ‘made other choices’ because of this differences in attitude, but that never can be the sole explanation. The agricultural system which the Bandkeramik offered most probably was not attractive enough to adopt. The transformation into Michelsberg culture meant a new settlement system and possibly also a less rigorous agricultural system. It was at any rate eagerly adopted all over Britain and Denmark, but still piecemeal and without any cultural disruption in the Lower Rhine Basin, where the exploitation of the rich natural resources remained the more attractive alternative. Note. The author thanks Leo Verhart and Luc Amkreutz for their comments on an earlier draft of the text, Liesbeth Smits for the use of Fig. 8, Walter Laan for making the map in Fig. 1 on the basis of the NASA Worldwind data, and Medy Oberendorff for Figs 2, 3 and 6.

REFERENCES ANDERSEN, S. H. 1994–5. Ringkloster. Ertebølle trappers and wild boar hunters in eastern Jutland. A survey. Journal of Danish Archaeology 12, 13–59. BAKKER, R. 2003. The emergence of agriculture on the Drenthe Plateau. A palaeobotanical study supported by high-resolution 14C dating. Bonn: Archäologische Berichte 16. BUDD, P., MILLARD, A. & SMITS, E. in preparation. Isotopic investigation of residential mobility and diet in the Neolithic of the Lower Rhine Basin. CLASON, A. T. 1990. Ewijk, an inland Vlaardingen settlement; Archaeozoology and the amateur archaeologist. In J. Sedlemeier & H. Spycher (eds), Beiträge zur Archäozoologie, Archäologie, Anthropologie, Geologie und Paläontologie, 63–75. Basel: Helbing and Lichtenahn. CROMBÉ, P. (ed.) 2005. The last hunter-gatherer-fishermen in Sandy Flanders (NW Belgium). The Verrebroek and Doel excavation projects (vol. 1). Gent: Archaeological Reports Ghent University 3. CROMBÉ, P., PERDAEN, Y., SERGEANT, J., VAN ROEYEN, J.-P. & VAN STRYDONCK, M. 2002. The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the sandy lowlands of Belgium: new evidence. Antiquity 76, 699–706. DEICHMÜLLER, J. 1965. Die neolithische Moorsiedlung Hüde I am Dümmer, Kreis Grafschaft Diepholz, Vorläufiger Abschlussbericht. Neue Ausgrabungen und Forschungen in Niedersachsen 2, 1–18.


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DE ROEVER, P. 2004. Swifterbant-aardewerk. Een analyse van de neolithische nederzettingen bij Swifterbant, 5e millennium voor Christus. PhD thesis, Groningen University. DE VRIES, L. S. 2004. Luilekkerland aan de kust. De faunaresten van de neolithische nederzetting bij Rijswijk-Ypenburg. Amersfoort: Nederlandse Archeologische Rapporten 106. GEHASSE, E. F. 1995. Ecologisch-archeologisch onderzoek van het Neolithicum en de Vroege Bronstijd in de Noordoostpolder met de nadruk op vindplaats P14. PhD thesis, Amsterdam University. GROENMAN-VAN WAATERINGE, W., VOORRIPS, A. & VAN WIJNGAARDENBAKKER, L. H. 1968. Settlements of the Vlaardingen Culture at Voorschoten and Leidschendam (ecology). Helinium 8, 105–30. HARTZ, S., HEINRICH, D. & LÜBKE, H. (eds) 2002. Coastal farmers — the neolithisation of northernmost Germany. In A. Fischer & K. Kristiansen (eds), The Neolithisation of Denmark. 150 years of debate, 321–40. Sheffield: J. R. Collis Publications. HOGESTIJN, J. W. H. & PEETERS, J. H. M. (eds) 2001. De mesolithische en vroeg-neolithische vindplaats Hoge Vaart-A27 (Flevoland). Amersfoort: Rapportage Archeologische Monumentenzorg 79. HUYGE, D. & VERMEERSCH, P. M. 1982. Late Mesolithic settlement at WeeldePaardsdrank. Studia Prehistorica Belgica 1, 116–209. KEELEY, L. H. 1992. The introduction of agriculture to the western North European plain. In A. B. Gebauer & T. D. Price (eds), Transitions to agriculture in prehistory, 81–95. Madison: Monographs in World Archaeology 4. LANTING, J. N. & VAN DER PLICHT, J. 1997–8. De 14C-chronologie van de Nederlandse pre- en protohistorie II, Mesolithicum. Palaeohistoria 39/40, 99–162. LANTING, J. N. & VAN DER PLICHT, J. 1999–2000. De 14C-chronologie van de Nederlandse pre- en protohistorie III, Neolithicum. Palaeohistoria 41/42, 1–110. LOUWE KOOIJMANS, L. P. 1993a. Wetland exploitation and upland relations of prehistoric communities in the Netherlands. In J. Gardiner (ed.), Flatlands and wetlands: current themes in East Anglian archaeology, 71–116. Norwich: East Anglian Archaeology Report 50. LOUWE KOOIJMANS, L. P. 1993b. The Mesolithic/Neolithic transformation in the Lower Rhine Basin. In P. Bogucki (ed.), Case studies in European prehistory, 95–145. Boca Raton: CRC Press. LOUWE KOOIJMANS, L. P. 1998. Understanding the Mesolithic/Neolithic frontier in the Lower Rhine Basin, 5300–4300 cal BC. In M. Edmonds & C. Richards (eds), Understanding the Neolithic of north-western Europe, 407–27. Glasgow: Cruithne Press. LOUWE KOOIJMANS, L. P. (ed.) 2001a. Hardinxveld-Giessendam, Polderweg. Een jachtkamp uit het Laat-Mesolithicum, 5500–5000 v. Chr. Amersfoort: Rapportage Archeologische Monumentenzorg 83. LOUWE KOOIJMANS, L. P. (ed.) 2001b. Hardinxveld-Giessendam, De Bruin. Een jachtkamp uit het Laat-Mesolithicum en het begin van de Swifterbant-cultuur, 5500–4450 v. Chr. Amersfoort: Rapportage Archeologische Monumentenzorg 85. LOUWE KOOIJMANS, L. P. 2003. The Hardinxveld sites in the Rhine/Meuse delta, 5500–4450 cal BC. In L. Larsson, H. Kindgren, K. Knutsson, D. Leoffler & A. Åkerlund (eds), Mesolithic on the move. Papers presented at the Sixth International Conference on the Mesolithic in Europe, Stockholm 2000, 608–24. Oxford: Oxbow. LOUWE KOOIJMANS, L. P. 2004. Transition to farming along the lower Rhine and Meuse, 5500–3500 BC. In P. Bogucki & P. J. Crabtree (eds), Ancient Europe 8000 BC–AD 1000, Volume 1, The Mesolithic to Copper Age, 286–92. New York: Charles Scriber’s Sons, Thomson Gale. LOUWE KOOIJMANS, L. P. & JONGSTE, P. B. F. (eds) 2006. Schipluiden, a Neolithic settlement on the Dutch North Sea coast, 3600–3400 cal BC. Leiden: Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia 37/38 (2005–6). LOUWE KOOIJMANS, L. P., VAN DER BROEKE, P. W., FOKKENS, H. & VAN GIJN, A. L. (eds) 2005. The prehistory of the Netherlands. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.



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NEWELL, R. R. 1980. Mesolithic dwelling structures: fact and fantasy. In B. Gramsch (ed.), Mesolithikum in Europa. 2e Internationales Symposium Potsdam, 3–8 april 1978, 235–84. Berlin: Veröffentlichungen des Museums für Ur und Frühgeschichte Potsdam 14/15. PRUMMEL, W., NIEKUS, M. J. L. Th., VAN GIJN, A. L. & CAPPERS, R. T. J. 2002. A Late Mesolithic kill site at Jardinga, Netherlands. Antiquity 76, 413–24. RAEMAEKERS, D. C. M. 1999. The articulation of a ‘New Neolithic’. The meaning of the Swifterbant culture for the process of neolithisation in the western part of the North European Plain (4900–3400 BC). Leiden: Archaeological Studies Leiden University 3. RAEMAEKERS, D. C. M. 2003. Cutting a long story short? The process of neolithization in the Dutch delta re-examined. Antiquity 77, 740–8. RAEMAEKERS, D. C. M., BAKELS, C. C., BEERENHOUT, B., VAN GIJN, A. L., HÄNNINEN, K., MOLENAAR, S., PAALMAN, D., VERBRUGGEN, M. & VERMEEREN, C. 1997. Wateringen 4: a coastal settlement of the Middle Neolithic Hazendonk 3 group. Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia 29, 143–91. ROWLEY-CONWY, P. 2004. How the west was lost. A reconsideration of agricultural origins in Britain, Ireland, and southern Scandinavia. Current Anthropology 45 Special Issue, S83–S113. THOMAS, J. 1996. The cultural context of the first use of domesticates in continental central and northwest Europe. In D. R. Harris (ed.), The origins and spread of agriculture and pastoralism in Eurasia, 310–22. London: UCL Press. VANMONTFORT, B. 2004. Converging worlds: the neolithisation of the Scheldt Basin during the late fifth and early fourth millennium cal BC. PhD thesis, Leuven University. VERHART, L. B. M. 2000. Times fade away. The neolithization of the southern Netherlands in an anthropological perspective. Leiden: Archaeological Studies Leiden University 6. VERLINDE, A. D. & NEWELL, R. R. in press. A multi-component complex of Mesolithic settlements with Late Mesolithic grave pits at Mariënberg in Overijssel. Amersfoort: Nederlandse Archeologische Rapporten. ZEILER, J. T. 1991. Hunting and animal husbandry at Neolithic sites in the western and central Netherlands; interaction between man and the environment. Helinium 31, 60–125. ZEILER, J. T. 1997. Hunting, fowling and stock-breeding at Neolithic sites in the western and central Netherlands. PhD thesis, Groningen University. ZVELEBIL, M. 1986. Mesolithic prelude and the Neolithic revolution. In M. Zvelebil (ed.), Hunters in transition. Mesolithic societies of temperate Europe and their transition to farming, 5–15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



Mesolithic myths GRAEME WARREN

GENERALISING COMMENTS ABOUT THE different models of humanity in the Mesolithic and Neolithic are less appropriate than they once were. A perusal of recent conference proceedings suggests that the Mesolithic is awash with landscapes, monuments, natural places and ancestors (e.g. Bevan & Moore 2003; Conneller 2000; Fewster & Zvelebil 2000; Larsson et al. 2003; Young 2000). In fact, there is a sense that the Mesolithic is suffering from Neolithic creep, with interpretations that are successful in one period being extended back. It is important to be clear here, and my concerns are not parochial boundary policing; the increased interest in the period has been exceptionally stimulating. But the character of the evidence for the two periods creates significant differences in the nature of archaeological practice. Put simply, the practice of ‘landscape archaeology’, especially in terms of the working through of key theoretical concepts, is different for periods characterised by such different data sources. This suggests that critical attention is required when models effective in one period are imported into others. These difficulties are compounded when details of the archaeology of the recipient period are not receiving due care. Furthermore, many general models are founded on very old understandings of the nature of the economic base or social process in the Mesolithic. These are open to major question. Finally, a range of new interpretations of the Mesolithic suggests radically new possibilities for understanding ‘going over’. In this context it is appropriate to stress that these new interpretations of the Mesolithic have grown from a very fine-grained attention to materiality (e.g. contributions to Conneller & Warren 2006), and they lead to the creation of a very distinct and original archaeology of the Mesolithic. I would like to substantiate some of these broad claims, and highlight important new trends in Mesolithic archaeology, by presenting some myths. Put crudely, myths are stories that help us to tell stories, or guide other actions. Whilst myths may have their origins in a real event or process, such stories also grow in the telling, and take on a life of their own. And myths, of course, reveal much about the community within which they exist. With this broad definition, I explore three myths of the Mesolithic. The first myth Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 311–328, © The British Academy 2007.


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explores ‘Mesolithic monuments’. The second relates to analytical scale. Finally, I explore myth in early Mesolithic Britain.

MESOLITHIC MONUMENTS? One of the most persistent themes in recent reappraisals of the Mesolithic has been middens. Once treated as little more than an indication of economic organisation, middens are now the monuments of the Mesolithic, with attendant roles in funerary process, territorial claims and feasting (e.g. Cummings 2003; Pollard 1990; 1996). Iconic images, such as the view of Caisteal nan Gillean, Oronsay, used as promotional material for the conference (Fig. 1), have undoubtedly helped establish this equivalency. The distinctive profile of this construction has been compared to many features; some have seen the

Figure 1.

Promotional material for the Going Over conference.


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shape of distant hills mirrored in the midden, others have suggested that the shape is an evocation of a limpet (Mellars 2004). For many, however, the simplest comparison is with later prehistoric tumuli. This comparison, of course, is not new. Symington Grieve recalled of a visit in 1880, that ‘it was a remarkable object, evidently artificial, and gave the impression that it might have been a place of burial’ (cited in Mellars 1987, 117), and excavated the mound hoping to find Neolithic or Bronze Age burials. Such rethinkings of middens have been important in shifting perceptions of Mesolithic archaeology, yet they require critical attention (see debate between Cross 2001 and Woodman 2001). Here I focus primarily on the middens of Oronsay, which have dominated discussion, set into a broader context. The oft-reproduced 1881 photograph or engraving demonstrates the remarkable conical mound of Caisteal nan Gillean I which at the time included over 2 m of midden material. Yet this image is misleading, not least because Caisteal nan Gillean is exceptional, even amongst the Oronsay middens (Mellars 1987, 117–18). The dominant mound is mainly a sand dune, with a thick capping of midden, which was initially set in a complex of dunes of unknown character. Many other large dunes may have existed in the immediate vicinity; some may have also been focal points of activity. Birch and hazel woodland was encroaching on the site. The sea was immediately beneath the midden. Furthermore, the importance of marine foods, as well as the clear evidence of links to the mainland, suggest that sea passage was routine for Mesolithic communities (Mellars 2004; see also Warren 2000). A Mesolithic view of the middens was most likely from the sea. At the least then, our icon is looking in the wrong direction, and this may be a metaphor for our approaches to the transition. More critically, this view radically misrepresents the later Mesolithic landscape. Clearly, these points need substantiation. The monumental status of the Oronsay middens is founded, at least in part, in a perception of the middens playing a dominating role in the landscape. The Oronsay middens occupy a variety of landscape locations, but many are reasonably prominent features today. Cnoc Sligeach ‘is a conspicuous landmark on the north-eastern coast of Oronsay’ (Mellars 1987, 122), located on a rocky outcrop above a grassy coastal plain, the two Caisteal nan Gillean sites occupy commanding positions (Mellars 1987, 153), and Priory is a well defined mound (Mellars 1987, 182), although it is important to note Chatterton’s (2006) argument that most are capped by sand. However, it is not clear that they were prominent in the past. The middens can only be understood in their fifth millennium cal BC environment. As is well known, sea levels were high, and many middens were located immediately adjacent to the shores (for detail see Jardine 1987). At Cnoc Sligeach the midden would have sat on a rocky outcrop almost cut off by the sea at high tide, mixing of


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midden and storm beach material in the lower parts of the section demonstrating just how close the sea was. That the sites were immediately adjacent to the shore does not deny their monumentality, but it does shift our focus a little. Molluscan evidence shows that Cnoc Coig and Caisteal nan Gillean II were constructed on dune surfaces with woodland in the immediate vicinity (Paul 1987), and that ‘woodland was encroaching closer to the midden locations during the period of occupation of both sites’ (Paul 1987, 102). Based on island-wide models this is likely to have been a hazel and birch scrub (Birks 1987). In fact, trampling in and around the edges of the middens may have been responsible for maintaining an open space (Paul 1987). The Oronsay middens are not exceptional in being located in woodland; parallels are found throughout Britain, for example at Morton B, Fife (Coles 1971). The middens were built on to accumulations of dune sand, some of which had stabilised into land surfaces and contain evidence of earlier occupation. Dune systems themselves are hugely dynamic, and extensive evidence of spade cultivation in post-midden levels offers another example of landscape transformation. The sand capping the middens is clearly a very dynamic land form: ‘the entire sequence of post midden levels at Caisteal nan Gillean . . . represents a complex succession of deposition, erosion and soil forming episodes’ (Mellars 1987, 176). For example, the trough between Caisteal nan Gillean I and II that contributes greatly to the prominence of the two sites is an erosive feature. To my knowledge detailed models of the fifth millennium dunescape have not been constructed, and therefore assessing the landscape location of the middens in their contemporary dunescape is very difficult. The hints that are available suggest different associations than some recent discussions might imply. Although some middens are found in higher locations the details of formation suggest complexity. At Cnoc Sligeach, for example, it is argued that: ‘. . .the flattened area on the summit of the hill served as the major focus of human activity on the site, from which the bulk of the shell refuse was conveniently discarded down the steeper slopes of the mound to the south and east’ (Mellars 1987, 205). At Cnoc Coig, Mellars discusses ‘concentrated zones of shell deposition which accumulated immediately adjacent to both a major occupation structure and a complex succession of superimposed hearths’ (Mellars 1987, 227). If anything dominated the Mesolithic landscape it was not the midden. In fact, Chatterton argues that looking more widely across Britain and Ireland many middens are rather ephemeral: lodged into caves, or hollows of rock (Chatterton 2006, 114). Questions of preservation are significant here (Finlayson 2006, 177), but few of the British and Irish middens approach the scale of the southern Scandinavian examples. The large oyster middens of the Forth estuary, for


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example, are complex multiphase features, which may largely date to the Neolithic (Ashmore & Hall 1996; Sloan 1993). These discussions suggest that the ‘monumental’ role of Mesolithic middens may be exaggerated. Of course, many Neolithic monuments were constructed in woodlands, and many writers have stressed the significance of clearings and tree throws (e.g. Brown 1997; 2000; Cummings & Whittle 2003; Edmonds 1999; Evans et al. 1999), and monuments have been considered in their marine context (e.g. Phillips 2003). It is clear that a detailed analysis of the significance of Mesolithic middens within their contemporary landscape could make a substantial contribution to our understanding of wider processes. However, discussion of Mesolithic middens as monuments has been undertaken without this detailed understanding. Recent dating programmes also cast doubt on the funerary associations of many Scottish middens in the Mesolithic. Burials from An Corran include Iron Age individuals (Saville & Hallen 1994) and those from Rasochoille Cave and Carding Mill Bay are often assumed to be Neolithic due to a terrestrial diet and dates in the early–mid fourth millennium cal BC (e.g. Schulting & Richards 2002a). It is important to be critical here. Most dates for human bone from Scottish and Irish shell middens fall in the late fifth and early fourth millennia cal BC, and it is not clear that there is any meaningful distinction between Mesolithic and Neolithic in this context. But a simple equation between middens and funerary associations for hunting and gathering communities in general stretches our data too far, not least because the absence of organic preservation on the majority of sites means that we cannot be sure how other places compared to middens. Fragments of human bodies appear frequently on Mesolithic sites in Europe, and occasionally in Britain (Conneller 2006, with references). Further problems exist with dominant models of funerary process on the Oronsay middens that stress excarnation (e.g. Mellars 1987; Pollard 1996). Meiklejohn and colleagues (2005) argue that the human remains from Cnoc Coig are the result of two phenomena: first, a general European trend for stray human bones to appear on Mesolithic sites with faunal preservation (‘a random taphonomic phenomenon’ (Meiklejohn et al. 2005, 102); and second, a deliberate pattern of deposition involving the bones of the hands and feet. Most importantly, accounts of funerary practices there must include discussion of the placement of human finger bones on top of a seal flipper. Conneller (2006, 161) argues that connections can be drawn between the representation of animal and human body parts throughout the middens and that ‘these lines of evidence suggest that parallels were being drawn between the human body and analogous animal body parts’. Cnoc Coig was therefore a place where equivalencies between humans and other agents (animals) were


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established and where the specifics of these relationships can be analysed. Arguably, our focus on monuments and excarnation, concepts familiar to us from the archaeology of the Neolithic, has distracted us from these aspects of our data. A focus on monumentality has also deflected us from considering the processes by which middens came into being: the presence of hearths and working areas on top of uncomfortable and presumably smelly dumps of shell and other refuse. Minimally, middens are composed of food waste, and we have not accounted for the cultural significance of food (Milner 2006). Middens are a deliberate creation, embodying repeated depositional acts (Warren 2001). At times, it was important to undertake tasks amongst this material. This provides links to other places in the Mesolithic landscape, albeit ones that often fall into a different archaeological class of site: that is, at sites that are not shell middens. At Newton, Islay (McCullagh 1991), for example, during the seventh millennium cal BC a building with a pitched roof and sunken floor appears to have been intermittently filled with midden material, with fires and occupation on these surfaces. The excavators argue that ‘it is difficult to imagine how such deposits accumulated within an active inhabitation, yet the fragile nature of the scorched gravel argues against redeposition of these contexts. It may be that occupation was intermittent between phases within which the sunken floor area received midden material’ (McCullagh 1991, 27). This suggests complex and intimately linked episodes of deposition and activity. Broad parallels also exist at Kinloch (WickhamJones 1990) and Staosnaig (Mithen 2000). Many of the large post-defined buildings (East Barns or Howick, for example) that have recently been discovered in northern Britain are also filled with midden deposits (Gooder 2003; Waddington et al. 2003). These patterns provide links between middens and other sites. The processes involved in depositing culturally altered material and lighting fires within these accumulations appear to have been much more significant to the Mesolithic occupants of Scotland than we have often allowed. These discussions imply that a rather different series of questions can be developed for Mesolithic middens. It is not enough to call them monumental, with all the echoes of Neolithic archaeology which this carries. Middens, understood in the context of other Mesolithic sites, have the potential to tell us how people understood the world and their place within it and how this in turn guided their actions. This kind of context is vital to considering the transition to the Neolithic.


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ANALYTICAL SCALE My second ‘myth’ concerns the analytical scale of narratives about the Mesolithic and the transition to the Neolithic. Most models are constructed at very broad spatio-temporal scales. Commonly, and teleologically, the Mesolithic is defined as a period of time when hunter-gatherers were in transition to farming; or by increasing socio-economic complexity and ‘complex hunter-gatherers’; or by increasing sedentism; or by population growth; or by adaptation to woodlands, or the coasts. Many of these processes are interconnected, and many are seen as relevant to the end of the Mesolithic; in particular the link between maritime adaptations, sedentism and complexity is often seen as ‘pre-adapting’ hunter-gatherers to agriculture. The development of these models within Mesolithic archaeology is picked up in discussions of the nature of the transition and becomes embedded within them. As such, they might be described as myths. I say myths, because there is reason to question many of these generalisations. In Britain, for example, Penny Spikins (1999; 2000) has demonstrated that traditional upland/lowland models of mobility are flawed. Even concepts such as sedentism are the subject of heated debate, with suggestions that classic Ertebølle sites may not have seen permanent occupation (Milner 2003; 2005a; 2005b; Rowley-Conwy 1998). Given the importance of notions of sedentism in the Ertebølle culture to constructions of Mesolithic complexity (Price 1985; Price & Brown 1985; Rowley-Conwy 1983; also Arnold 1996; but see Gould 1985; Warren 2005) and the transition, such reappraisals are of great significance. Put simply, we know much less about the Mesolithic than we think we do. The argument that the Mesolithic sees increased exploitation of maritime resources over time, for instance, has often been mobilised in recent discussions. Notwithstanding concerns about sample sizes and what we can infer from isotopes (Barbarena & Borrero 2005; Hedges 2004; Líden et al. 2004; Milner et al. 2004), such models misrepresent the Mesolithic. Nicky Milner (2006), for example, argues that there is much greater variation in the British and Irish record than most discussions allow. There is also significant spatial variation at differing scales, with arguments, for example, that the late Mesolithic of the Southern Netherlands (Verhart 2000) is characterised by high levels of mobility, and minimal evidence for complexity. Likewise, recent reviews stress that the Mesolithic in Britain and Ireland is not an impoverished rendition of continental themes, but demonstrates a range of distinct expressions of ways of living as a hunter-gatherer at this time (Conneller & Warren 2006). This variation is lost in recent discussion, which may stress a multitude of ways of being Neolithic, but rarely considers hunter-gatherer diversity in any detail.


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At times it seems that the success of models in some parts of Europe becomes the template for how the transition in other areas should be explained. The transition in Southern Scandinavia and the Baltic, for example, is understood in considerable detail. But it is not clear that this provides a meaningful way of interpreting the transition in other areas. Again, the issue here is not that preservation conditions in Britain and Ireland militate against recovering evidence demonstrating social processes similar to those understood in Scandinavia; there is no compelling reason that the evidence should be of this kind. I have suggested elsewhere that the success of huntergatherers in the Baltic in negotiating the transition whilst retaining aspects of hunter-gatherer social organisation may be distinctive (Warren 2004). The stress on the large scale is most problematic in the distinction established between our archaeological accounts and the scales at which people in the past lived their lives (e.g. Whittle 2003). This is highlighted by the increasing resolution of archaeological data. Skeletal analyses, for example, present striking pictures of diet, migration and local complexity (e.g. Bentley et al. 2003; Budd et al. 2004; Price et al. 2001; Richards 2003; Richards & Hedges 1999a; 1999b; Richards & Mellars 1998; Schulting & Richards 2000; 2002a; 2002b; 2003; Wysocki & Whittle 2000; and contributions to this volume). But all too often our accounts are based on normalised data at crude temporal resolution: such as the economy of a shell midden that was occupied for a thousand years (see Jones 2002). For example, recent isotopic analysis of human bone from the late Mesolithic site of Ferriter’s Cove suggests a diet heavily dominated by marine protein (Woodman 2004), whilst the faunal assemblage from the site had included substantial quantities of terrestrial mammals (Woodman et al. 1999): mainly boar, but including domesticated cattle. It should not surprise us that sometimes the data from individuals bears no clear comparison to the normalised picture. But it does, however, raise a substantial archaeological challenge, especially given the key role which considerations of site ‘function’, mainly based on aggregated analyses of faunal remains, have played in the construction of models of Mesolithic settlement. Increased radiocarbon dates and statistical sensitivity allow exceptional refinement of the chronologies of the transitional period, suggesting a framework in which we can try to understand the scales of the processes involved for communities. But all too often issues of scale and process remain frustratingly abstract. Yet a range of work implies that scale is vital to our attempts to make sense of the transition. Through the example of Petso’s Field, Kathy Fewster (2001) has demonstrated that we cannot think about the transition without thinking about individual decisions: to farm or not to farm, to move or to stay, what to build, and where to build it. Others have stressed that the transition involves changes in both directions, and is not sta-


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ble (e.g. Armit & Finlayson 1992; 1996). For all of our stress on ‘personhood’ in the Neolithic (Jones 2005 with references), the constituting of identity in the Mesolithic and the role of these people in structuring the transition remain muted (although for an exception see Fowler 2004). Accounts of change without agents are limited; reducing historical process to the playing out of structures confuses the resolution of our evidence with the processes existing in the past (Sahlins 2004). If the transition requires an understanding of agency then it necessitates a critical appreciation of the contexts within which historical agency became possible. At present this is rarely explored in our discussions.

MYTH IN THE EARLY MESOLITHIC My third myth focuses on Mesolithic worldviews, and asks what role they played in structuring the production, use and deposition of material culture. Of course, interest in how Mesolithic people understood their landscape is not new. In Britain and Ireland there have been increasing numbers of accounts that highlight the importance of symbolism (e.g. contributions to Conneller 2000; Fewster & Zvelebil 2001; Larsson et al. 2003; Young 2000). Arguably these accounts are often insufficiently radical. Recent years have seen yet another reappraisal of Star Carr, stressing both the distinctive character of the site in its immediate landscape context, and a broad suite of European parallels (Chatterton 2003; Conneller 2003; 2004; Conneller & Schadla-Hall 2003). Work in the Vale of Pickering has demonstrated that Star Carr is a very unusual location. Shale and amber beads, axes, barbed points and the famous antler frontlets are all either rare or absent elsewhere in the Vale (Conneller & Schadla-Hall 2003, 102). Chatterton (2003) has argued that the association of barbed points, antler frontlets and beads is common across Europe, and sometimes appears to have involved deliberate deposition into water. Conneller (2004) has argued that the deposits at Star Carr suggest an interest in negotiating human-animal relationships, especially through an interest in the heads of animals and humans suggested by many artefacts. This is not to suggest that Star Carr is a ritual site, simply that some aspects of activity there involved structured deposition of particular kinds of material. But it implies that we cannot understand Star Carr without considering the role of myth in the Mesolithic. Turning our attention to the barbed points recovered on site allows further extension of the argument, In brief, 191 barbed points were recovered from Star Carr of which 187 were manufactured on red deer antler with no evidence for the use of roe deer or elk antler (Fig. 2). Although the function of the barbed points is not known, antler is a resilient material, ideally suited


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Figure 2.

Barbed points from Star Carr (after Clark 1954).


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for uses involving impacts. But the selection of red deer is harder to justify on practical grounds, and appears to be a deliberate choice. Indeed, at a European level, bone barbed points are common (Blankholm 1994, 30, table 2). Conneller has argued that the barbed points can only be understood in connection with the antler frontlets, noting that the tines may have been removed from these not simply to make the frontlets lighter but in order to provide raw material for barbed points. Therefore ‘the life histories of the frontlets were intimately linked with the technical actions of barbed point manufacture’ (Conneller 2003, 83). Production of barbed points involved the removal of a splinter blank and the finishing of this blank through sawing and abrasion. Whilst there is plentiful evidence at Star Carr for the former, and for the deposition of used and broken points, it appears that finishing of blanks took place elsewhere. The production and deposition of barbed points, therefore, are complex; and the complexity of this technical procedure seems to emphasise the process by which the points were brought into being. Gell has argued that the ‘enchantment of technology’ is ‘the power that technical processes have of casting a spell over us’ (Gell 1992, 44), through the ability of an agent to control the powers and forces of production. Often, Gell argues, the power of objects is founded upon ‘their becoming rather than their being’ (Gell 1992, 46) and thus emphasis is placed on the process of production. This model fits well with the complex history of barbed point manufacture and deposition witnessed at Star Carr, where the enchantment of technology appears to be connected to human-animal relationships, and more specifically those between humans and red deer. Thus we cannot understand the production, use and deposition of barbed points in the early Mesolithic landscape without considering the role of myth. We can go further. The broadly contemporary sites found in the Kennet valley, Berkshire, derive from the repeated occupation of a lowland riverine environment over the long term. At the time, the Kennet was a braided stream with an open floodplain overlooked by drier, sometimes wooded, bluffs. The bluffs were a focus for occupation, but some activity appears to have taken place on the floodplain (Ellis et al. 2003; Healey et al. 1992). Most importantly, Thatcham appears to have been a location where some potentially unusual deposits were made, including human bone (Wymer 1962). At Thatcham II an inverted red deer skullcap and antlers were found, standing approximately 30 cm above the Mesolithic land surface, with a battered antler beam propped against it, and knapping waste to one side (Fig. 3; Wymer 1962, 338). The skull appears to have been used as a prop in the manufacture of stone tools through soft-hammer percussion. It is especially striking that red deer skulls are generally rare at Thatcham (Wymer 1962); this was not simply a convenient surface.


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Figure 3. Thatcham II, Berkshire. Inverted red deer antlers overlain with antler beam, tines removed, associated with flint waste flakes and interpreted as a knapping station. Wymer 1962, pl. XLVIII, reproduced with the kind permission of the Prehistoric Society.

This remarkable discovery has received surprisingly little attention. The clear association between stone working and the head of an animal finds resonance with Conneller’s discussion of Star Carr. Following on from the argument that the enchantment of barbed point technology in early Holocene North Yorkshire was achieved through association with red deer, the evidence from Thatcham suggests that, in some circumstances at least, early Mesolithic stone-working was enchanted through similar processes. Myth concretely structured the ways in which at least some stone tools were produced in the Mesolithic. Consequently, we cannot understand the appearance of stone tools in the archaeological record without considering myth. These arguments suggest strongly that myth played a very significant role in Mesolithic life. This is, of course, no surprise. What will be surprising, to some, is that the archaeological record allows us to examine this. That we have not done so is simply a product of the kinds of questions we choose to ask. It is important to think more radically about the implications of these Mesolithic myths. In the examples above I have demonstrated that complex symbolic associations between humans and animals played a role in shaping the creation, use and deposition of archaeological material. And yet most general models for interpreting what Mesolithic sites mean in terms of


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broader systems of settlement or social relations have paid little attention to such issues. It is worth stating explicitly that, in far too many cases, we simply do not understand how the archaeological record came into being. This is not an issue of taphonomy, although clearly this has a role. More crucially we do not understand the cultural decisions lying behind the deposition of material. As a consequence our generalising models are built on the weakest of foundations and require complete reappraisal. Furthermore, it is clear that a reinterpretation of the Mesolithic that adds a symbolic gloss to existing models of economic or social complexity also lies on this poor foundation. A new archaeology of the Mesolithic is required, from the base up.

CONCLUSIONS I have argued that our understandings of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition have often failed to pay sufficient attention to Mesolithic archaeology. Recent years have seen interest in the period, but at times, this has not engaged sufficiently with the characteristics of Mesolithic materials. We fail to understand the role of agency in the transition, not least because our approaches cannot inform us of the conditions within which agency developed. New trends in Mesolithic archaeology in Britain and Ireland are identifying new questions and approaches which offer great potential in addressing such issues. Importantly, one result of this is a distinctive series of interpretations that do not sit easily with current models of the transition. A radically new archaeology of the Mesolithic is beginning to fall into place. This in turn demands a different view of the transition. For example, and very simply, my three disparate myths of the Mesolithic suggest that in the fifth millennium cal BC in the west of Scotland the use and deposition of material culture were structured, in part, through specific understandings of human/animal relationships, and included concern about deposition of ‘midden’ material. In particular, the striking association between humans relying heavily on marine foods and a seal at Cnoc Coig suggests powerful equivalencies being drawn between the human and animal. At the least, this suggests that the new relationships to animals involved in the changes of the transition, perhaps especially in terms of cattle, most likely presented a fundamental challenge to existing understandings of the world. I have argued elsewhere that one way of understanding the presence of ‘Neolithic’ bones and material culture on ‘Mesolithic’ shell middens in the west of Scotland, is that these places played a role in occasional rites of passage that allowed people in transition to a new way of life to hark back to older identities (Warren 2004); middens provided a way of negotiating the transition.


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All too often in considering the transition to agriculture in north-west Europe our thinking and writing fall into binary oppositions: Mesolithic or Neolithic; hunter-gatherer or farmer; immigrant or indigenous; ritual or settlement. These categories have, for many years, provided convenient shorthands, that have allowed us to approximate to the processes existing in the past. More recently, our analytical demands have become greater, and full of confidence. We ask, and hope to be able to answer, questions about how individual lives were woven into and gave form to large-scale events and processes. In a recent review, Peter Rowley-Conwy argued that ‘in essence the Mesolithic has been treated as a way of life and livelihood, the Neolithic as a way of death and ritual. We must, however, accept that the Neolithic too had a domestic way of life and that we have many data casting light upon it’ (Rowley-Conwy 2004, 99). This slightly divisive characterisation misses the point in two ways. First, it is not simply that we must look at life and livelihood in the Neolithic, but also at ritual in the Mesolithic. Secondly, and more importantly, it is clear that we must understand how life and belief were inseparable in both periods. It is only when we understand what life was like in the fifth millennium cal BC that we have any hope of understanding what we might mean by ‘going over’. Note. I would like to thank Alasdair Whittle and Vicki Cummings for their work in organising such a successful and interesting conference. I am grateful to Gabriel Cooney for comments on a previous draft of this paper. Thanks also to the Prehistoric Society for permission to reproduce Fig. 3. Any errors or inconsistencies are solely my responsibility.

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The Neolithic sensory revolution: monumentality and the experience of landscape CHRIS TILLEY

RECENT RESEARCH HAS STRESSED the fundamental role of monuments and material culture as objectifications of new modes of thought and the changing character of social relations during the Neolithic. The Mesolithic/ Neolithic ‘transition’ in Europe has been argued to have been primarily neither technological or economic in character but a matter of changing ideologies or modes of thought mediated through material forms (e.g. Hodder 1990; J. Thomas 1991; 1996; Tilley 1996a). Thus if we are to talk about causality the Neolithic was a matter of mind, a triumph of the will, a new set of ideas, over matter and circumstances, a new way of organising social labour and expressing relationships to others through monument construction, the symbolism of pottery and polished stone axes, and herding domesticates and tilling the soil. In north-west Europe the debate has focused on whether a Neolithic way of life was adopted as a kind of package by final Mesolithic hunter-fisher-gatherers, inspired from the outside through the expansion of farming populations across Europe, or whether the adoption of Neolithic elements was a highly localised, selective, differential and indigenous development, which is my own view (Tilley 1996a). Looked at on a broad scale there were multiple transitions taking place at different times and in different places, so much so that the very conceptual veracity of the terms Mesolithic and Neolithic may inevitably be questioned. What we term the Mesolithic and the Neolithic had hundreds, if not thousands, of different manifestations. Are there any common themes? If Neolithic communities did feel and think differently about the world from those in the Mesolithic what caused the change? In this paper I want to argue that a fundamental part of a new Neolithic ‘mode of thought’ was directly stimulated by fresh forms of sensory experience of place and landscape. If there was a Neolithic ‘revolution’, it entailed a sensory revolution in which through altering the earth people transformed their own experiential



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conditions of existence in a fundamental way. A new sensory experience of place and landscape and new modes of dwelling led directly to new ways of thinking and new sets of cosmological ideas explaining the place of people in the world.

FOREST CLEARANCE AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE A fundamental feature of the Neolithic everywhere is woodland clearance, whether this was to construct monuments, clear the land for settlements and fields, provide grazing for animals, quarry flint or stone, or obtain other raw materials. The character and extent of the forests that clothed much of lowland Europe at the time of the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition have been the subject of much debate. Rackham (1986) argues that the forest was virtually continuous, dark and dense, while others such as Moore (2003) suggest that this is an exaggeration, with much local variation in the character of woodland stands from those that were more dense and clothed to those that were more light and open with glades and clear patches in association with the varying character of soils, rocky areas, streams and marshes, and so on. Woodland clearance, like most ‘Neolithic’ traits, was itself nothing new but was a tradition going back to the late Mesolithic where areas might be burnt off and opened out to manipulate the forest flora and fauna and stimulate browse for ungulates (Mellars 1976; Moore 1996; 2003; Simmons 1975). The primary difference appears to be the extent of this woodland clearance—far greater and more extensive during the Neolithic—and its far more permanent character with many of these woodland clearances being variously maintained by grazing domesticates, the presence of permanent settlements, and marked by monuments. Irrespective of whether or not the forested world of the Mesolithic was uniformly dense and dark, or more open and light, woodland clearance on a fairly massive scale in some areas during the early Neolithic irrevocably altered the environment and with this event new conditions for sensory perception were created. Let us try to imagine, for a moment, the great climax deciduous forests in which the final Mesolithic hunter-gatherer communities of north-west Europe lived: a network of tracks, of small clearings, fire-burnt areas, streams and river valleys, lakes and marshy areas, deep layers of leaf mould in places, different hues of green, fallen trees and tree holes, strong contrasts between shadows and bright shafts of sunlight penetrating the denser areas of the forest canopy, and huge, sometimes monumental, trees of individual character that might be named and significant in themselves. Even if this was a landscape in which open areas existed, it was still one in which people were pri-


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marily forest dwellers: people who lived with trees and understood them, the manner in which they grew and the resources which they could provide. The collective use and management of trees was probably central to sustenance, cosmologies, and the ordering of social life. Activities such as fire clearance thus carried a heavy symbolic load during the Mesolithic and was not just simply a matter of ‘economic’ manipulation (Brown 2000; Edmonds 1999; Moore 2003). For the late Mesolithic forest people, social relations were structured in relation to the complex woodland mosaic itself, connecting together social groups, game, the individual trees, grassland and clearances. The forest constituted an entire field of meaning wrapped around old trees, fallen trees and tree holes, clearings, regenerating areas, trees connected in memory with specific events, trees providing shelter, firewood, a safe place to sleep and a sense of home. Trees were intimately connected with the passage of the seasons, the reckoning of time and human lifecycles: an extension of the lives of those who lived among them. Some forest areas would be drier and lighter and more open, others wetter and more impenetrable. A great cosmic web would probably link persons and animals, trees and water, fish and birds (for ethnographic examples see Garner 2004; Jones & Cloke 2002; Rival 1998). These people were of and in the forest in just the same sense as fish are immersed in the sea. For the most part living in such a forest world meant that vision would be subdued and limited to tens of metres or so, varying somewhat with the seasons (Fig. 1). Even being able to see as far as 50 m would, for the most part, have been a long distance. The only long vistas that might be obtained would be either from forest edge areas or from the tops of high hills across the forest canopy to the tops of other high hills, or, alternatively, looking out from the coast across the sea or from the shore across inland lake and marsh areas, or paddling along straight stretches of river and stream channels. It is precisely in such locations that we tend to find later Mesolithic settlements throughout lowland north-west Europe: on the tops of high hills, on coastal cliffs and by lakes and rivers. For the most part, however, while moving through the forest, vision was drastically curtailed. To the Mesolithic hunter-fisher-gatherers, sound and smell and touch would have been as important, if not more important, than vision in obtaining food and orientating themselves and symbolically relating to the forest world. To hunt and gather food in such a world required the fusion of all the senses, a co-mingling of the audible, the tangible, the visual, and the olfactory. The experience of the world was thus in a primary sense synaesthethic, for one’s very survival might depend as much on sound or smell as sight. Being able to hear a waterfall in the distance, or bird song, or smell the presence of an animal would be fundamental. In many ways this could be characterised as an intimate world in that most of that which could


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Figure 1. A ‘Mesolithic’ pathway through the forest.

be experienced always had to be, quite literally, close to hand. The forest world was a place of sensuous embodied intimacy. If we consider the human senses in terms of their perceptive possibilities, vision provides the greatest spatial reach; one can see much further than one can hear or smell. To be able to touch requires things to be in reach of the



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body. What might be heard or smelt might often not be visible. To the Mesolithic hunter an animal that could be heard or smelt would not be hidden. This contrasts with our modernist sensibilities in which a hidden thing is almost always associated with that which we cannot see. In the forest world sight could rarely be a distanciated gaze. The sense of vision would be associated with things that were close to the body and in many cases needed to be closer than things that could be heard such as the sound of water, of bird song, of people chopping wood. The perceptive possibilities for experiencing the forest would have had important consequences for cognition, for the way people dwelled and thought about their world and their place in it. The forest would have been a smellscape, a soundscape, a visionscape, and the tactile qualities of the vegetation would be fundamental. Landscapes formed from sounds and smells and touch would always have a sense of dynamism and movement: transitory and always changing but linked to memory and meaning. Only a more distanciated spatial gaze from a hilltop across the trees might momentarily freeze such a world below and make it appear static. In a forested landscape the forms and shapes of hills, ridges, spurs, escarpment edges, valleys and coombes can hardly be perceived (Figs 2 and 3). In southern England, for example, the presence of steep escarpment edges in the chalk downlands so visually powerful today in the landscape would be lost (Fig. 4). In the upland areas of south-west England such as Dartmoor or

Figure 2. land.

A deforested area of the East Hill ridge, east Devon revealing the contours of the


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Figure 3. Forested area of the East Hill ridge, east Devon. Note how the form of the ridge is completely obscured.

Figure 4. View across the northern edge of the chalk downlands of Cranborne Chase, southwest Wiltshire. Note the contrast between the form of the spur without trees in the foreground and the tree-clothed escarpment edge in the background concealing its form.



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Bodmin Moor only the tips of the granite tors would be exposed amongst the trees, invisible from below. Trees camouflage and reduce the sense of scale and visual character of the landscape. From a boat one might see the shape of a lake, but in the forest there would be no such equivalent experience of the contours of the land; the shapes of the hills could not be seen. Neolithic forest clearance on a large scale, in some areas, such as on the chalk downlands of southern England (Allen 1995; 1997) permitted vision to become, for the first time, the dominant sense in terms of spatial orientation. The Neolithic ushered in a culture in which the visual became more and more important in relation to the perception of the environment and, in particular, the contours and forms of the land. This is not to suggest that Neolithic sensory experience was not equally synaesthetic at the hearth and in the home, but that visual experience became dominant over all the other senses for the first time in relation to what we can call landscape or the wider environment. Let us consider this further. Clearing the land of trees allowed its profiles and contours to be revealed and in the process permitted a new visual perception of landscape which was simply not possible before. Thus forest clearance, whatever the intention, had the unintended effect of creating a new perceptual experience of the world. It permitted for the first time the spatial fixity of the distanciated gaze over greater and greater areas. A characteristic feature of the early Neolithic in southern England is the construction of monumental enclosures on hilltops: causewayed enclosures such as Windmill Hill (Smith 1965; Whittle et al. 1999), Robin Hood’s Ball (N. Thomas 1964), Hambledon Hill (Mercer 1980), Hembury (Liddell 1936; Todd 1984), Maiden Castle (Sharples 1991; and see Edmonds 1993 for a general review) and stone enclosures such as Carn Brea and Helman Tor (Mercer 1981; 1986) in the far south-west. The causewayed enclosures required the hilltops both to be cleared of trees and extensive digging into the earth to form the banks and ditches. The stone hilltop enclosures of the south-west needed both tree clearance and the construction of encircling stone walls. In both cases the processes involved were dual: removing the mantle of surface vegetation and altering the surface of the earth through moving and accumulating materials. From the cleared high hill tops with enclosures it was often possible to see other such enclosures. It was not just the enclosure banks or walls that became visible in the surrounding landscape but the form, contours and topographic character of the hills on which they were constructed. Building these enclosures thus revealed not just the monument itself but also the form of the hills and landscape in which they were constructed. The experience of the hill, cleared of trees, was as fundamental as the experience of the monument itself. Each complemented the other in a dialectical relationship. Indeed, it can be suggested that hill and monument were each


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other in a relationship of mimesis. The experience of the monument was simultaneously the experience of the hill and vice versa. For example, Hembury (Fig. 5) was revealed as a dramatic spur of the Blackdown Hills in Devon, Hambledon Hill was revealed as a clover-shaped hill island separated from chalk downlands of Cranborne Chase to the east, Maiden Castle, in south Dorset, as another hill island and so on. A visual widening and opening out of the world thus went in tandem with monument construction during the early Neolithic. We know that many early Neolithic long barrows were constructed on grassland that had already been cleared of trees before these monuments were constructed (e.g. Allen 1995, 56; J. Thomas 1991; Whittle 1993). Many, situated high up on ridge tops, were meant to be seen from considerable distances away. That they should be intervisible was an important factor in their location and cannot purely be a matter of coincidence (Griffith 2001; Tilley 1994). During the Mesolithic the same hill tops were undoubtedly significant. Rather predictably flint scatters are frequently found in these locations but monuments were not constructed and forest clearance still remained limited or insignificant. During the Mesolithic the landscape and its elements—huge trees, rocks, waterfalls, caves, lakes and valleys—were in effect the monument. By con-

Figure 5. Hembury Hill, east Devon seen from the south. Trees now obscure the upper slopes of the end of a dramatic spur on which the early Neolithic causewayed enclosure is situated.



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trast, during the Neolithic the monument became part and parcel of the visible landscape and this could only happen in a culture in which visual perception had become extended and widened. For example early Neolithic long barrows and cursus monuments are often deliberately built in places so as to appear to be skylined from other barrows on Salisbury Plain and elsewhere (Tilley, fieldwork in progress). This would make no sense if such monuments were constructed in small and limited woodland clearances. During the earlier Neolithic the landscape itself, now at least partially cleared of trees, was no longer enough. It had to be permanently altered and marked by the presence of monuments. This was accomplished in two main ways. By mimetic relationships the monument was designed to draw out and emphasise fundamental features of the contours of the land which had been revealed through forest clearance. This is why, for example, long barrows characteristically run along, rather than across, the spines of ridges, and megalithic tombs visually reference and/or mimic the forms of nearby rock outcrops (Tilley 1994; 1996b). Pre-existing and enduring templates of experience are thus incorporated into the temporal event of monument construction which through time becomes part of a durable, unchanging and timeless world. By marking relationships the monument, rather than directly referencing pre-existing features of significance in the landscape, creates its own place as a symbolic reference point. This appears to be the case for many of the small—and significantly not very monumental or large—long barrows in southern England which frequently occur in landscapes which are not dramatically defined by striking hills, ridges, rock outcrops, and so on. These monuments created a new set of cultural reference points in the landscape adding to what was already there. Monuments became the new vivid symbols of cosmic order and the landscape became structured and perceived in relation to them: cultural representations of order. Whether the monument bears a mimetic or a marking relationship to landscape, its construction always involves the creation of a new sense of place that later may provide a reference point for the construction of others. So in some cases the primary relationship of the monument will be to pre-existing landscape features. In others the primary relationship will be to other pre-existing monuments. Overall in the Neolithic there appears to be no grand scheme or set of invariant principles at work. The significance of individual monuments was localised, improvised and site-specific. The act of constructing monuments was, however, clearly an attempt to integrate and incorporate the world and to transcend the fragility of corporeal existence into an enduring form that became as much an embedded part of the landscape as the hills and rocks and valleys themselves. In the Mesolithic the relationship of people to landscape was generalised and knowledge was acquired through movement and drawing together knowledges of


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what one experienced as one moved around: rocks, trees, hills, and so on. In the Neolithic this knowledge of landscape became much more site-specific and embodied in monuments which gathered these experiences together (see below). During the Mesolithic social identities were embodied in landscapes as a whole, rather than in terms of particular constructed monuments within those landscapes: generalised rather than specific. Forest clearance and monument construction resulted in both a different experience of the world and a different kind of knowledge of that world. This different kind of knowledge and experience went hand in hand with an increasing social and material interconnectivity: exchanges of ideas, stone and flint axes (themselves iconic of forest clearance), pots and other raw materials from numerous sources on a diversity and material scale in the Neolithic which represents a quantum leap compared with the Mesolithic. A world that was visually opening out became a world that was increasingly interconnected. It is worth pointing out that from the Hembury Hill causewayed enclosure in south-east Devon it would have been possible to see another such enclosure on the Raddon hills to the west. From the Raddon Hill causewayed enclosure both the enclosures on Hembury Hill and High Peak and another hilltop settlement and probable enclosure at Haldon Belvedere were visible. Looking further afield from Hembury you can see to Dartmoor and Exmoor. From Exmoor you can see South Wales, the Mendip Hills and Dartmoor. From Dartmoor you can see Bodmin Moor with its probable Neolithic hilltop enclosures of Rough Tor and Stowe’s Pound. From these hills you can see to Carn Brea, and from there to West Penwith and Land’s End. Vision is the only one of the senses capable of directly connecting together distant places, and my suggestion is that as the experiential importance of the visual increased in relation to the perception and understanding of the landscape, so did flows of people, ideas and raw materials in the Neolithic world. In the final Mesolithic populations lived in and were part of a forest world which was not substantially altered. The Neolithic ushers in a new era in which the world becomes substantially altered and controlled through forest clearance and monument construction, as discussed above. Monument construction, quarrying activities, flint mining, pottery making and a host of other projects all involved digging into the earth. This involved, probably unintentionally, a process of discovery. The large scale construction of monuments during the Neolithic provided new ways to answer a basic set of questions. What is underneath our feet? How do we find out about that which lies beneath the mantle of soil and vegetation that covers the earth? How can we understand distinctive changes in the patterns of plant life that we see around us as we move around? Why do oak and lime and ash grow here? Why does pine and birch and gorse grow there? What happens to the rain when it falls



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from the sky? Why do bogs and springs occur and where does the water flow to? Why are the hills and the ridges situated where they are in the landscape? Why the flat landscapes, why the valleys? What might the different rocks and stones in the landscape that we encounter mean? In the Mesolithic world the only places that rocks (what we call geological features) would be revealed would be: along coastal cliffs; inland on exposed points: cliffs along river valleys and high up in areas without trees, soil and vegetation, such as the tors of south-west England or mountains or hilltops elsewhere. Across vast swathes of lowland England, or Europe, there would be no rock exposures whatsoever. By digging, quarrying, mining, and revealing a hidden landscape through forest clearance, Neolithic populations importantly discovered the rocks beneath their feet and the morphologies of the land across which they moved. Tree clearance also had the effect of intensifying surface water runoff exposing rocks, particularly on hilltops. Herding cattle similarly disturbed the ground, creating exposed hollow ways across areas such as the chalk downlands. Tilling the soil brought to the surface stones hidden in it. All these processes and activities created new sensory experiences of place that were not just visual but also tactile and embodied through all the other senses. As an example I will consider flint.

THE SYMBOLISM OF FLINT The presence of fertility symbols in the Neolithic has long been recognised in the form of flint phalluses and rounded chalk and flint balls which have been recovered and recorded in excavations. But these represent only one small part of a whole repertoire of naturally occurring flint forms which occur on the chalk downlands. In ploughed fields, on areas of disturbed ground and other exposures there is an extraordinary variety of naturally occurring forms of flint. These vary locally and between different areas of the chalk downland. Some of these bear an uncanny resemblance to human bones in their shape, colour and texture. The outer cortex is the off-white colour of old bone and these flints may almost perfectly resemble bone in their form and size. These include flints which resemble human long bones with the ball joint attached, thin curved pieces resembling ribs, and flat and curved bits looking like skull or scapula fragments. Others resemble vertebrae or broken pieces of long bones (Figs 6 and 7). Some flints in size and dimensions look extraordinarily like fleshy fingers. There also occur a wide variety of other sculptural forms which in their shape and profile are suggestive of birds and animals. Today these flints are invariably found in ploughed fields or they are thrown up from rabbit and badger holes dug into Neolithic and Bronze Age barrows. Flints of these forms are far rarer or absent from the only naturally


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Figure 6. Flint ‘femur’ end found in a rabbit hole in a long barrow on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.

occurring flint exposures which occur on the river beds. Such material is also found in the topmost layers of tree holes revealed when trees have blown over. Now the Neolithic involved an opening up of the land and its first cultivation. Such flints would be revealed in the normal course of digging ditches and constructing monuments and tilling the fields. The strong resemblance of these flints to the bones and some of the fleshy parts of the human body would not have gone unnoticed. Such stones that looked like bones would have had to be incorporated into a social and cosmological understanding of the earth, its contents, its fecundicity and the landscape. Constructing new monuments in the early Neolithic would constantly reveal old bones thrown up, having been concealed in the ground. Tilling the ground would also constantly reveal these stone ‘bones’.



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Figure 7. A collection of broken and disarticulated flint ‘bones’ from a ploughed field at Lyscombe Bottom, central south Dorset.

We know that early Neolithic mortuary practices involved the disarticulation and rearrangement of bones within monuments (Shanks & Tilley 1982; J. Thomas 1998; Thomas & Whittle 1986). This had its counterpart in the fragmentary and scattered ‘bones’ found while constructing these very monuments and dispersed across cultivated areas. If the bones being manipulated within the monuments represented the human ancestors of local social groups, then the stone bones may well have represented the fragmentary remains of pre-ancestral beings who lived before people occupied the earth. Thus the activity of transforming the earth had its unintended outcome in revealing the bones of beings who had come before. In field survey work on barrows within the landscape around Stonehenge the frequency with which these ‘bones’ are thrown up from animal burrows and scrapes is quite striking. Some of these ‘bones’ might very well have been deliberately incorporated or deposited within barrows which would therefore contain both human ancestral bones and stone bones from pre-ancestral beings. However, we do not know this from excavations because such stones, apart from the obvious phalluses, have rarely been recorded or mentioned by archaeologists. Being ‘natural’ rather than fashioned artefacts they have ended up discarded on excavation spoil heaps.


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It is worth noting that these quite extraordinary ‘bones’ and sculptural forms are unique to the chalk and occur nowhere else in southern Britain. Where the chalk occurs the stone bones are found. This surely made this chalk downland landscape and the monuments erected within it of great significance. The concentration of early Neolithic causewayed enclosures and long barrows on the chalk downlands of southern England has long been noted by archaeologists and it is from this area that we have the earliest radiocarbon dates (see Whittle, this volume). Perhaps it is no coincidence that the earliest monuments were erected in areas containing old ‘bones’. Neolithic flint mining is an activity that has been almost universally regarded as a search for fine material for making tools that began in the Neolithic. Such an activity may in part have also been motivated by a desire to explore what lay beneath the surface of the ground, and it too would reveal extraordinary flint material of the same character as discussed above.

GATHERING AND INCORPORATING Two general processes seem to be fundamental in the Neolithic in a way not apparent in the Mesolithic: integrating or gathering processes, and incorporating processes. Both brought together people, ideas, raw materials, places and landscapes and provided the foundations for cosmological systems. Monuments such as causewayed enclosures, long barrows and chambered tombs provided focal points for integrative and incorporative processes. At these places raw materials and discrete sensory experiences of other places in surrounding or more distant landscape were brought together through the collection, exchange and deposition of artefacts: stone axes from far away places, pottery such as Hembury Ware incorporating distinctive stone as temper from the Lizard, flints from various local and more distant sources with different qualities of colour, patina, texture, and so on. In other words monuments gathered together places and landscape. Often in the case of stone-built monuments an extraordinary range of stones are used from more distant and localised places in the landscape. The megalithic tombs of the Boyne valley, eastern Ireland, are an excellent example of this, incorporating a wide variety of local rocks—sandstones, schists, limestones in their kerb stones and rocks from far more distant sources: quartz from the Wicklow mountains, mudstones from the Carlingford mountains to the north (Cooney 2000; Mitchell 1992). We might surmise that the wood used to construct the mortuary chambers of earthen long barrows of southern England or Neolithic timber circles might well have come from forest trees with more than localised origins. Monuments integrated and, through their very construction,



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incorporated the world surrounding them. They themselves created new types of sensory experience through these processes.

ANIMALS Acts of monument construction and raw material extraction and processes changed the Neolithic sensory world. There was also a fundamental change in the relationship between people and animals. In the Mesolithic while the relationship between people and animals was interdependent it always, to a certain extent, involved a relationship of distance. Apart from the domestic dog, people did not live with animals. During the Neolithic people did live with their stock and, in particular, with cattle. Living with animals, identifying with animals and their welfare, created a very different, more intimate and enduring, and personalised set of relationships than one can ever imagine having existed between Mesolithic populations and red deer. The cattle keeper would identify his or her life with the animals that she or he kept. Individual animals would become objectifications of human beings in a way that was not possible in relation to game animals that look after themselves. I have already argued that the relationship between people and landscape changed from being generalised (or ‘smooth’) to much more differentiated (or ‘broken’) and site-specific between the Mesolithic and Neolithic. This is directly paralleled by a change in the relationship between people and animals: generalised and more distant in the Mesolithic, individual and personalised in the Neolithic. During the Neolithic social identities became attached to particular monuments and particular domestic animals. The burial of the bones of domestic cattle in monuments together with people effectively incorporates these things together.

CONCLUSIONS My argument in this paper has been that cosmologies explaining the origins and the place of people in the world are ultimately derived from the embodied sensory exploration of that world. Cosmologies make sense and bring order to the minutiae of similarities and differences observed and encountered through dwelling and movement through landscapes. As such, cosmological thought is metaphorical in nature, a primary and originary mode of human reasoning, whose basis is connecting together often disparate experiences through chains of resemblances (Tilley 1999). The Neolithic ushered in a sensory revolution that became integrated into cosmologies that were in turn objectified in monuments and material culture. The Neolithic is all about


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the attempt to incorporate the ‘wild’ into a cultural frame. This is not a significant break from the Mesolithic in that we can always identify a number of Neolithic trends already present: limited forest clearance, limited exchange, and a close relationship with some animals such as the dog. The Mesolithic/Neolithic transition is best expressed as a negotiation of long-term cultural trends that become crystallised in what we term the Neolithic, where they become clearly articulated and durably expressed. Perhaps the key to understanding the Neolithic is that it was the first attempt to totalise disparate sensory experiences, some new, some old, into a coherent cosmological model of the world, objectified in monuments and artefacts, rather than accepting its inherent diversity and fragmentation. Neolithic thought was grounded in new sensory experiences of landscapes and monuments, rocks and stones, animals and plants. The world became much more human-centred and personalised: situated, controlled, constructed, transformed, integrated, incorporated, and connected in relation to place, time and landscape. Through fundamentally altering the earth, clearing trees and constructing monuments, the bones of the land were revealed in a double sense. First, its contours and forms previously masked and hidden by surface vegetation were revealed. Clearing a hill or a spur was simultaneously revealing its form in the landscape. Second, digging into the earth threw up new materials for experience such as flint bones. These double processes of revelation created new sensory experiences which led to a revolution in thought. People created new sensory experiences of the earth and through this process altered themselves. By altering the land, people created new conditions for experiencing it and new materials providing food for thought. Activities such as forest clearance or flint mining or keeping domesticates were far from being just economic transformations for they had profound social and ideological consequences.

REFERENCES ALLEN, M. 1995. Before Stonehenge. In R. Cleal, K. Walker & R. Montague (eds), Stonehenge in its landscape. Twentieth century investigations, 41–56. London: English Heritage. ALLEN, M. 1997. Environment and land-use: the economic development of the communities who built Stonehenge (an economy to support the stones). In B. Cunliffe & C. Renfrew (eds), Science and Stonehenge, 115–44. Oxford: British Academy. BROWN, A. 2000. Floodplain vegetation history: clearings as potential ritual spaces? In A. Fairbairn (ed.), Plants in Neolithic Britain and beyond, 49–62. Oxford: Oxbow. COONEY, G. 2000. Landscapes of Neolithic Ireland. London: Routledge. EDMONDS, M. 1993. Interpreting causewayed enclosures in the past and in the present. In C. Tilley (ed.), Interpretative archaeology, 99–142. Oxford: Berg. EDMONDS, M. 1999. Ancestral geographies of the Neolithic. London: Routledge. GARNER, A. 2004. Living history: trees and metaphors of identity in an English forest. Journal of Material Culture 9, 87–100.



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GRIFFITH, F. 2001. Recent work on Neolithic enclosures in Devon. In T. Darvill & J. Thomas (eds), Neolithic enclosures in Atlantic northwest Europe, 66–77. Oxford: Oxbow. HODDER, I. 1990. The domestication of Europe. Oxford: Blackwell. JONES, O. & CLOKE, P. (eds) 2002. Tree cultures. Oxford: Berg. LIDDELL, D. 1936. Report on the excavations at Hembury Fort (1934 and 1935). Proceedings of the Devon Archaeological Exploration Society 2, 135–76. MELLARS, P. 1976. Fire ecology, animal populations and man: a study of some ecological relationships in prehistory. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 42, 15–45. MERCER, R. 1980. Hambledon Hill: a Neolithic landscape. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. MERCER, R. 1981. Excavations at Carn Brea, Illogan, Cornwall, 1970–3. A Neolithic fortified complex of the third millennium BC. Cornish Archaeology 20, 1–204. MERCER, R. 1986. Excavation of a Neolithic enclosure at Helman Tor. Lanlivery, Cornwall, 1986. Edinburgh: Department of Archaeology Project Paper No 4. MITCHELL, G. 1992. Notes on some non-local cobbles at the entrances to the passage-graves at Newgrange and Knowth, County Meath. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 122, 128–45. MOORE, J. 1996. Damp squib: how to fire a major deciduous forest in an inclement climate. In T. Pollard & A. Morrison (eds), The early prehistory of Scotland, 62–73. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. MOORE, J. 2003. Enculturation through fire: beyond hazelnuts and into the forest. In L. Larsson, H. Kindgren, K. Knutsson, D. Loeffler & A. Åkerlund (eds), Mesolithic on the move, 139–44. Oxford: Oxbow. RACKHAM, O. 1986. The history of the countryside. London: Dent. RIVAL, L. (ed.) 1998. The social life of trees. Oxford: Berg. SHANKS, M. & TILLEY, C. 1982. Ideology, symbolic power and ritual communication: a reinterpretation of Neolithic mortuary practices. In I. Hodder (ed.), Symbolic and structural archaeology, 129–54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. SHARPLES, N. 1991. Maiden Castle: excavations and field survey 1985–1986. London: English Heritage. SIMMONS, I. 1975. Towards an ecology of Mesolithic man in the uplands of Great Britain. Journal of Archaeological Science 2, 1–15. SMITH, I. 1965. Windmill Hill and Avebury. Oxford: Clarendon Press. THOMAS, J. 1991. Rethinking the Neolithic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. THOMAS, J. 1996. Time, culture and identity. London: Routledge. THOMAS, J. 1998. The social significance of Cotswold-Severn burial practices. Man 23, 540–59. THOMAS, J. & WHITTLE, A. 1986. Anatomy of a tomb — West Kennet revisited. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 5, 129–56. THOMAS, N. 1964. The Neolithic causewayed camp at Robin Hood’s Ball, Shrewton. Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine 59, 1–25. TILLEY, C. 1994. A phenomenology of landscape. Oxford: Berg. TILLEY, C. 1996a. An ethnography of the Neolithic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. TILLEY, C. 1996b. The powers of rocks: topography and monument construction on Bodmin Moor. World Archaeology 28, 161–76. TILLEY, C. 1999. Metaphor and material culture. Oxford: Blackwell. TODD, M. 1984. Excavations at Hembury, Devon, 1980–3: a summary report. Antiquaries Journal 64, 251–68. WHITTLE, A. 1993. The Neolithic of the Avebury area: sequence, environment, settlement and monuments. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 12, 29–53. WHITTLE, A., POLLARD, J. & GRIGSON, C. 1999. The harmony of symbols: the Windmill Hill causewayed enclosure, Wiltshire. Oxford: Oxbow.



Houses, bodies and tombs RICHARD BRADLEY

THE PROBLEM WITH HOUSES IN MY DICTIONARY the English language word ‘house’ has seventeen different definitions, at least six of which are in common use today. The French ‘maison’ also has six and the German ‘Haus’ has five. The meanings of these words are much the same in all three languages, and can be identified by the contexts in which they are used. Archaeologists follow a different procedure. Rather than studying the contexts of Neolithic houses, they consider a single interpretation. Nowhere is this more apparent than in accounts of Britain and Ireland, and here this narrow approach has led to difficulties. The house is among the features that are supposed to characterise early farming. Its presence implies sedentism, while its absence suggests a mobile pattern of settlement. That idea raises many problems. What applies to individual houses applies to settlements, too. British archaeologists have been frustrated by their inability to locate what they had expected to find. If people were growing crops and raising livestock, then surely they must have occupied more substantial shelters than mobile huntergatherers, and their living sites ought to be easier to identify. That has been difficult to demonstrate, with the result that at different times a wide variety of earthwork enclosures have been claimed as permanent settlements; ditches and pits have been recruited as subterranean dwellings; and even mortuary monuments have been assigned to the living rather than the dead. That is because it seemed hard to conceive of Neolithic societies who did not construct substantial domestic buildings. Even now there are claims for the existence of Neolithic longhouses in southern England which are all too easily compared with dwellings in mainland Europe. Not only are the English buildings much smaller than their counterparts, they originated many years after those structures had gone out of use and during a period in which Continental houses are actually quite rare. Now the problem has reappeared in a new guise. It is accepted that substantial Neolithic dwellings are uncommon in most parts of Britain and Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 347–355, © The British Academy 2007.


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especially in lowland England, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to argue that they are under-represented because of taphonomic factors. That is because such structures are frequently discovered in Ireland. They are also found (although less often) in both Scotland and Wales. Since the Irish houses are substantial and often well preserved, the English evidence is treated in a different way. Although some examples have been identified, they are so unusual that they have been interpreted as public buildings (Thomas 1996; Topping 1996). Moreover, since there are so few counterparts to the dwellings identified in Ireland, prehistorians have suggested that the character of Neolithic activity was different in each country. The ‘Irish model’ might suggest a pattern of sedentary settlement associated with crop cultivation, whilst an ‘English model’ has been postulated in which settlement was more mobile and stock raising was important (Cooney 2003; Thomas 1999, chapter 2). The archaeology of other regions can be arranged along a continuum extending between these two extremes, but I shall concentrate on these two models here. The survival of houses has been given an importance which it cannot support. I began by saying that the very word ‘house’ carries a wide variety of connotations, but archaeologists have usually limited themselves to its role as a permanent shelter. That seems strange, for existing work on the Continental Neolithic already suggests some other issues which are rarely considered in these islands. The first point to make is that there were unusual features in the development of individual settlements. During the Linearbandkeramik, for example, houses may have been abandoned before they had undergone much maintenance, and were replaced in different positions, so that any one settlement might include a series of standing buildings which shared the same orientations as the abandoned dwellings of the past. It seems as if the sites of older longhouses were avoided when new ones were constructed (Bradley 1998, chapter 3). It is obviously difficult to decide why they were abandoned. It may have happened for purely practical reasons, as individual dwellings became infested by rodents, but it might also have happened for social reasons; perhaps these buildings were polluted because one of the occupants had died. It is becoming apparent that in other regions dwellings were burnt together with their contents and then replaced on the same sites. This practice is well known in the Neolithic archaeology of the Balkans (Stepanovic 1997), but it has also been postulated in southern Scandinavia (Apel et al. 1997). That is particularly revealing as so many of the artefacts found in the local settlements, burials and votive deposits also seem to have been burnt. Another feature that has long been apparent is the use of domestic buildings as a prototype for more monumental structures. This was expressed in


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two very different ways. The first was where the form of a domestic dwelling was reproduced on an extravagant scale. That happened at several different places in the Neolithic and the Copper Age. Obvious examples include the outsize timber buildings associated with the Neolithic enclosure at Hautes Chanvières in the Ardennes (Marolle 1989), or those at Antran or PléchâtelLa-Hersonnais in western France (Pautreau 1994; Tinévez 2002). Such structures were perhaps the ‘great houses’ of an entire community. A better known alternative is for the outline of the Neolithic house to provide the prototype for a stone or earthwork monument. Many people have considered the relationship between Neolithic longhouses and long barrows in Poland, and Laporte and Tinévez (2004) have recently taken the same approach to a number of circular cairns and mounds extending along the Atlantic coastline of western Europe. Perhaps the most obvious example of this relationship is found at Balloy where a number of elongated mounds or enclosures associated with human burials overlie older dwellings (Mordant 1998). Of course, these examples come from quite different contexts. What they show is that any analysis which confines itself to practical considerations will fail to engage with some of the archaeological evidence. Neolithic houses raise more questions than those considered by British researchers. That should have been obvious from the ethnographic literature, but it has not had the influence that it deserves. One starting point is the work of Lévi-Strauss (1979) on what he calls ‘house societies’. He was most concerned with kinship organisation and the emergence of political hierarchies, but his work is particularly important because it reminds us of the other meanings of the word ‘house’. It can stand for the occupants for the building—the household—and even for a line of descent, as in the House of Hapsburg or the House of Bourbon. It can also relate to a wider community, as it does when it applies to the audience in a theatre or the occupants of an Oxbridge college. Gabriel Cooney (2003, 52) sums up the issues in this way: ‘Houses are not only material, but. . .stand for social groups, for continuity’. It is in this broader sense that the term ‘house’ is used in a recent paper by Mary Helms (2004) who discusses the different worldviews of mobile huntergatherers and the first farmers. One might almost say that it is by the construction of houses, both real and metaphorical, that particular groups define their membership and distinguish themselves from others. Their composition is less fluid than that of hunter-gatherer communities and it is maintained over a longer period of time. Such concerns are particularly relevant when people are exploiting an unfamiliar environment, and the new arrangement may also reflect the labour requirements of early agriculture. Perhaps it is one reason why houses are such a conspicuous feature towards the beginning of the Neolithic period.


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A pertinent observation comes from a paper by Janet Carsten and Stephen Hugh-Jones introducing an edited volume devoted to Lévi-Strauss’s ideas. They observe how common it is for houses to be regarded as living creatures and to be thought of in the same terms as human beings, who are born, grow old and die. Like people, houses have biographies of their own: Houses are far from being static material structures. They have animate qualities; they are endowed with spirits or souls, and are imagined in terms of the human body. . . We would place these qualities at the centre of an anthropology of the house which considers houses and their inhabitants as part of one process of living. . .. In certain contexts at least. . .. houses are spoken about as if they were people and people are likened to houses. . .. Given its living qualities and close association with the body, it comes as no surprise that natural processes associated with people, animals or plants may also apply to the house. (Carsten & Hugh-Jones 1995, 37)

BODIES, HOUSES AND TOMBS How does this approach illuminate the contrasts between English and Irish archaeology? It is by no means new to argue that the long mounds and cairns associated with the dead were conceived in the image of the house, although their ultimate prototypes might have been the dwellings of the past. I would like to suggest a closer identification. Perhaps the reason why the field evidence poses so many problems is that the histories of the buildings in which people had lived were reflected by the ways in which their bodies were treated when they died. Here I must outline some regional patterns. At the risk of oversimplification, the remains of houses are found throughout Ireland and are more common in northern and western Scotland (and possibly in Wales) than in other parts of Britain. That statement needs some qualification for there have been fewer excavations in the west than there have in the south and east. It is also important to acknowledge that some of the houses in northern and western Scotland survive because they were built of stone. I shall confine my discussion to the period which saw the construction of rectangular houses and mortuary monuments. It included the construction of causewayed enclosures but perhaps not that of circular buildings. There are other sources of evidence for domestic activity. In lowland Britain most of the relevant evidence comes from pits. They contain a variety of artefacts and animal bones which sometimes exhibit evidence of formal deposition (Thomas 1999, chapter 4; Pollard 2001; Garrow et al. 2005). This material seems to have been selected and there can even be striking differences between the contents of adjacent features. They could have been taken



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from a midden when a living site was abandoned. Little of the assemblage must have remained on the surface as few of these locations can be identified by fieldwalking (Healy 1987). Pit deposits are widely distributed, but are mainly found in lowland Britain, with particularly large concentrations in eastern England. The same practices are evidenced at causewayed enclosures where there is greater evidence of formal deposits. The few excavated houses have not been as productive. By contrast, the buildings in northern and western Britain, and especially those in Ireland, can be associated with larger assemblages, and here there is less evidence for the burial of cultural material in ditches and pits. Instead the houses themselves are dispersed across the landscape, singly or in small groups, and the associated artefacts could be left where they had accumulated. Of course such contrasts do not extend to every site and what I have described are the extremes in a continuous range of variation, but both those patterns are well represented among the results of fieldwork. There is a further contrast that may be relevant here. In lowland Britain where pits deposits are common and houses are rather rare, the artefact assemblage occasionally contains human bones. It is a trend that became much more obvious with the development of causewayed enclosures. That is consistent with the evidence from mortuary monuments which not only include the remains of complete corpses but can also feature certain body parts to the exclusion of others. It seems as if the dead were reduced to disarticulated bones and that some of their remains may have circulated in the same way as portable artefacts (Whittle & Wysocki 1998, 173–6). By contrast, most of the excavated monuments in the south, whether long barrows or megalithic tombs, provide little evidence of ceramics or stone tools. Again it is helpful to contrast this evidence with the situation in Ireland where houses are much more common and isolated pit deposits are unusual. Here substantial numbers of artefacts are associated with court tombs, which probably represent the closest equivalent to the mounds and cairns in Britain. The finds from these sites include substantial collections of pottery and lithic artefacts as well as animal bones, and are often associated with charcoal-rich soil similar to that found in settlements. A number of monuments had been built over living sites, but Humphrey Case (1973) has shown that these deposits were usually placed on top of a deliberately laid floor, meaning that such material must have been introduced after these tombs had been built. Not surprisingly, such deposits are associated with human remains. Other regions in which stone-built tombs are associated with significant quantities of artefacts, especially pottery, include the north and west of Scotland, both of them regions where the remains of houses have been found. That contrast is interesting, but it says little about the treatment of the dead. Although many of the monuments took the form of elongated mounds


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or cairns, there is an important difference in the mortuary rite. Here it is necessary to simplify a complicated picture, but again there are two obvious extremes in a wider range of variation. In some regions bodies were cremated and in others they were allowed to decay. Certain of the burnt bones might result from the combustion of an entire body; others might have been placed in a fire after they had lost their flesh (Henshall & Ritchie 1995, chapter 6). There is little evidence of pyres and what seemed to be a formal cremation rite was often a consequence of burning down the monument itself. What may be most significant is that unburnt bones could circulate as relics in the same manner as portable artefacts. That would be less likely in the case of cremations. The distributions of these two ways of treating the body are rather revealing. The burial of intact corpses is most often found in Britain, where it is commonest in the southern half of the country. That is also where unburnt bones occur at other kinds of site. There is evidence for the burning of wooden mortuary structures along the North Sea coast, and in the megalithic tombs of northern Scotland human bones were exposed to fire but were not reduced to ashes (Kinnes 1992). Along the west coast of Scotland, on the other hand, cremation was often employed. That is not surprising as it was the main way of treating the body in Irish court tombs. Cremation was the dominant rite throughout the distribution of this kind of monument, although I must emphasise that such structures do not extend across the whole of the Neolithic landscape (Cooney 2000, chapter 4). Despite some regional variation, the preservation and circulation of human bones was a particular feature of southern England, but seems to have been practised across a wider area. The use of cremation characterises the Irish sites, but it also extended to parts of northern Britain, where it is more difficult to identify one prevailing rite. That is not to deny that some monuments are associated with both ways of treating the body. There are a few cremations on southern English sites, but these are generally secondary to deposits of unburnt bone (Darvill 2004, 140–57). Similarly, Irish court tombs show evidence for both ways of treating the body, but in this case cremations predominate (Cooney & Grogan 1994, fig. 4.14). A broader distinction applies to mortuary monuments that were burnt down. They are not entirely absent from southern England, but the main group extends northwards from the Yorkshire Wolds into Scotland and, again, occasional examples have been identified in Ireland (Kinnes 1992). Recent work has also shown that in Scotland a number of other structures were set on fire, including massive wooden halls and timber cursus monuments. The most striking contrast in ways of treating the body is between the very areas that show the greatest divergence in the evidence for settlement sites. In southern England houses are rare and pit deposits are more com-



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mon. It is here that there is most evidence for the deployment of unburnt corpses in long barrows and megalithic tombs. Artefacts are not particularly common at these monuments and it seems possible that the residues of older settlements were allowed to decay, and may have been dispersed in the same manner as the remains of the dead (Pollard 2004). In Ireland, on the other hand, houses are commonly found and isolated pit deposits are unusual. The residues of domestic occupation might have been deposited in tombs together with human bones. In this case the bodies were often burnt and there is little to suggest the circulation of relics. One last contrast is important. Dermot Moore (2004) has shown that a high proportion of the Irish houses had been destroyed by fire, whereas there is little to suggest that the settlements in England were burnt down. Although this has been claimed as evidence of warfare, the evidence is actually rather ambiguous, and it seems much more than a coincidence that human corpses should have been treated in exactly the same way as these buildings. Perhaps that is because the careers of particular people and the histories of their houses were in one sense the same. The house was a living creature and its life had to be extinguished in a similar manner to the human body. That may be why, in Ireland, what are apparently domestic assemblages accompanied the dead person to the tomb; they might even have been the contents of a dwelling. By contrast, in southern England, the remains of settlement sites were dispersed in a similar fashion to human bones, some of which were eventually deposited in tombs where finds of artefacts are uncommon (Fig. 1). Irish houses were constructed in a distinctive manner. That may be because they were to play a spectacular role at the end of their lives and those of their occupants. By contrast, the dwellings inhabited in England did not need to do this and might usually have been less substantial. That could be why they have been difficult to find by excavation. These buildings were more than shelters from the elements. They were animated by their involvement in human lives, and when their inhabitants died their treatment followed the same principles as that of human bodies. In England, they decayed and their contents were dispersed. In Ireland, they were burnt down and their contents

Figure 1. The contrasting processes connecting houses, bodies and tombs on either side of the Irish Sea.


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were concentrated in tombs. It is another question why communities chose to follow such different practices, and this needs more research, but it might be wrong to place too much weight on purely practical considerations. The house is a difficult concept and we have only begun to appreciate its full range of meanings. Note. In its original form this paper provoked a lively discussion and I am grateful to the participants for raising a number of issues which I have considered in this version. I must also thank Aaron Watson for producing the figure drawing.

REFERENCES APEL, J., HADEVIK, C. & SUNDSTRÖM, L. 1997. Burning down the house. The transformational use of fire and other aspects of an Early Neolithic TRB site in eastern central Sweden. Tor 29, 5–47. BRADLEY, R. 1998. The significance of monuments. London: Routledge. CARSTEN, J. & HUGH-JONES, S. 1995. Introduction. In J. Carsten & S. Hugh-Jones (eds), About the house: Lévi-Strauss and beyond, 1–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CASE, H. 1973. A ritual site in north-east Ireland. In G. Daniel & P. Kjaerum (eds), Megalithic graves and ritual, 173–96. Moesgård: Jutland Archaeological Society. COONEY, G. 2000. Landscapes of Neolithic Ireland. London: Routledge. COONEY, G. 2003. Rooted or routed? Landscapes of Neolithic settlement in Ireland. In I. Armit, E. Murphy, E. Nelis & D. Simpson (eds), Neolithic settlement in Ireland and western Britain, 47–55. Oxford: Oxbow. COONEY, G. & GROGAN, E. 1994. Irish prehistory — a social perspective. Bray: Wordwell. DARVILL, T. 2004. Long barrows of the Cotswolds and surrounding areas. Stroud: Tempus. GARROW, D., BEADSMORE, E. & KNIGHT, M. 2005. Pit clusters and the temporality of occupation: an Earlier Neolithic site at Kilverstone, Thetford, Norfolk. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 71, 139–57. HEALY, F. 1987. Prediction or prejudice? The relationship between field survey and excavation. In A. Brown & M. Edmonds (eds), Lithic analysis and later British prehistory, 9–18. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. HELMS, M. 2004. Tangible materiality and cosmological others in the development of sedentism. In E. DeMarrais, C. Gosden & C. Renfrew (eds), Rethinking materiality. The engagement of mind with the material world, 117–27. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. HENSHALL, A. & RITCHIE, J. N. G. 1995. The chambered cairns of Sutherland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. KINNES, I. 1992. Non-megalithic long barrows and allied structures in the British Neolithic. London: British Museum. LAPORTE, L. & TINÉVEZ, J-Y. 2004. Neolithic houses and chambered tombs of western France. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 14, 217–34. LÉVI-STRAUSS, C. 1979. La voie des masques. Paris: Plon. MAROLLE, C. 1989. Le village Michelsberg des Hautes Chanvières à Mairy (Ardennes). Gallia Préhistoire 31, 93–117. MOORE, D. 2004. Hostilities in Early Neolithic Ireland: trouble with the new neighbours — the evidence from Ballyharry, County Antrim. In A. Gibson & A. Sheridan (eds), From sickles to circles. Britain and Ireland at the time of Stonehenge, 142–54. Stroud: Tempus.



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MORDANT, C. 1998. Emergence d’une architecture funéraire monumentale (vallées de la Seine et de l’Yonne). In J. Guilaine (ed.), Sépultures d’Occident et genèses des mégalithismes, 73–88. Paris: Errance. PAUTREAU, J-P. 1994. Le grand bâtiment d’Antran (Vienne): une nouvelle attribution chronologique. Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française 91, 418–19. POLLARD, J. 2001. The aesthetics of depositional practice. World Archaeology 33, 315–33. POLLARD, J. 2004. The art of decay and the transformation of substance. In C. Renfrew, C. Gosden & E. DeMarrais (eds), Substance, memory, display. Archaeology and art, 47–62. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. STEPANOVIC, M. 1997. The age of clay. The social dynamics of house destruction. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 16, 334–95. THOMAS, J. 1996. Neolithic houses in mainland Britain and Ireland — a sceptical view. In T. Darvill & J. Thomas (eds), Neolithic houses in northwest Europe and beyond, 1–12. Oxford: Oxbow. THOMAS, J. 1999. Understanding the Neolithic. London: Routledge. TINÉVEZ, J-Y. 2002. The Late Neolithic settlement of La Hersonnais, Pléchatel, in its regional context. In G. Varndell & P. Topping (eds), Enclosures in Neolithic Europe, 37–50. Oxford: Oxbow. TOPPING, P. 1996. Structure and ritual in the Neolithic house. In T. Darvill & J. Thomas (eds), Neolithic houses in northwest Europe and beyond, 1–12. Oxford: Oxbow. WHITTLE, A. & WYSOCKI, M. 1998. Parc le Breos Cwm transepted long cairn, Gower, West Glamorgan: date, contents and context. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 64, 139–82.



Neolithic farming in Britain and central Europe: contrast or continuity? AMY BOGAARD & GLYNIS JONES

INTRODUCTION FARMING IN BRITAIN has been characterised by some authors as transient and sporadic cultivation of food that had a limited economic importance (Edmonds 1999, 16; Entwhistle & Grant 1989; Moffett et al. 1989; Thomas 1999, 23–32; Whittle 2003, 157), and more specifically as production of special or symbolic foods consumed in ritual contexts (Richmond 1999, 34; Thomas 1993; 1999, 23–32; 2003; 2004). Farming in central Europe, by contrast, has been characterised as subsistence cultivation of staple crops (Bogucki 1988, 91–2; Gregg 1988; Gross et al. 1990; Lüning 2000, 179). Much of the literature on Neolithic farming in Britain and central Europe, therefore, suggests a sharp contrast in the nature and purpose of cultivation. It is as though the well established analogy between the central European longhouse and the north-west European long mound (e.g. Hodder 1990, 142–56) implies a transformation in the nature of farming as well: a shift from cultivation for the living in central Europe to cultivation for the ancestors in Britain. Other authors working on Neolithic farming in Britain, however, have maintained that crops provided a major component of daily subsistence, as in central Europe (Jones 2000; Jones & Rowley-Conwy in press; Monk 2000; Rowley-Conwy 2000). There is an immediate problem with polarised views of farming as primarily a ritual or subsistence activity. As ethnographic accounts have repeatedly shown, ritual is superimposed on, or interdigitated with, productive routines, not divorced from them (e.g. Forbes in press; Gudeman 1996; Malinowski 1935; Sahlins 1972). Though various archaeologists have alluded to this complexity—for example, by referring to close links between foodgetting, social image and ideology (e.g. Sherratt 1999, 14), or between ritual and economic activities (e.g. Thomas 1999, 26)—a tendency to treat ritual and subsistence as distinct alternative readings of prehistoric farming is broadly evident in the literature (Bradley 2004). Contrasting views of Neolithic Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 357–375, © The British Academy 2007.


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farming in Britain and central Europe offer a particularly clear example of this tendency. Beyond this theoretical problem, there are also issues relating to interpretation of the primary archaeobotanical evidence for cultivation. The general perception is that evidence for cereal use is ‘rich’ in central Europe and ‘poor’ in Britain (e.g. Entwhistle & Grant 1989; Moffett et al. 1989; Thomas 2004). Evidence for plant use in Britain has increased steadily (Jones & RowleyConwy in press), however, and the data currently available warrant systematic comparison with those from central Europe. The aim of this paper, therefore, is to compare archaeobotanical data from the two regions directly, to see how they differ and where (or whether) they appear to converge. We will focus on three aspects of the archaeobotanical evidence: the occurrence of cereal grain; the occurrence of cereal chaff; and the evidence of arable weed assemblages, which can shed light on growing conditions and crop husbandry practices. For these purposes, we will concentrate on charred (carbonised) material, since this type of preservation is widespread and most relevant to issues surrounding crops and associated weeds (e.g. Green 1982; Jacomet et al. 1989, 132–4). In Britain, we will consider the available evidence from England, Wales and Scotland; in central Europe, we will consider evidence mainly from the western loess belt, though reference will also be made to evidence from the Alpine Foreland. Figure 1 shows the location of sites mentioned in the text. Table 1 provides an overview of the chronology, numbers of sites with archaeobotanical data, and crop spectra for Neolithic Britain and central Europe. Clearly, we are dealing with a longer Neolithic in central Europe, and more sites, but the number of sites in Britain is of a similar order of magnitude; over 100 British sites with archaeobotanical data are now known (Jones & Rowley-Conwy in press, table 1), compared with the 26 included in the last major synthesis by Moffett et al. (1989). The crop spectrum in Britain is narrower than in central Europe, though free-threshing wheat and barley were not in widespread use in the western loess belt until the Middle Neolithic (c. 4900–4400 cal BC) (e.g. Bakels 1991a; Knörzer 1997; Maier 1996). At most sites of the central European Early Neolithic or LBK (Linearbandkeramik, c. 5500–4900 cal BC), a relatively narrow range of crops is attested (einkorn and emmer, pea, lentil, and flax: Kreuz et al. 2005). In Britain, emmer and barley (both naked and hulled) appear to have been the major cereal crops, and flax is attested at some sites (Campbell & Straker 2003; Fairbairn 2000; Jones forthcoming). There is no definite evidence for pulse crops, though largeseeded legumes identified to general categories are quite common and may represent cultivars. There is also recent evidence for opium poppy seeds, from Early Neolithic Raunds (Healy & Harding 2003).


NEOLITHIC FARMING IN BRITAIN AND CENTRAL EUROPE

Figure 1.

Table 1.

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Map showing sites mentioned in the text.

Overview of Neolithic chronology and archaeobotany for Britain and central Europe. Britain

Central Europe

Dates cal BC

4000–25/2200

5500–2300

No. sites sampled

100⫹

300⫹

Crop spectrum

Einkorn, Emmer Naked wheat, Barley Flax, (Opium poppy) Pulses?

Einkorn, Emmer [Naked wheat, Barley] Flax, Opium poppy Pea, Lentil

( ) ⫽ evidence from one site (Raunds) [ ] ⫽ sporadic in the western loess belt prior to the Middle Neolithic (c. 4900–4400 cal BC)

METHODS For Britain, the list of Early through Late Neolithic archaeobotanical assemblages collated by Jones and Rowley-Conwy (in press, table 1) was used in order to compile sample by sample data on charred crop, chaff and potential weed material. The references for all of these sites are given in Jones and


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Rowley-Conwy (in press, table 1). For central Europe, two major assemblages from extensively sampled sites of the LBK —the best investigated phase of the Neolithic as far as charred plant remains are concerned—were used to characterise the occurrence of cereal grain and chaff remains on sites in central Europe. The first site is Vaihingen/Enz, Baden-Württemberg, a well preserved and completely excavated Early Neolithic village (Krause 2000; Bogaard in prep.; see also Bogaard 2004). This site was occupied for several centuries in the second half of the sixth millennium cal BC (see Strien & Gronenborn 2005). Around 650 samples, from a total of 232 separate deposits or features, have been analysed. The second site, also in south-west Germany and dating to the later sixth millennium cal BC, is Ulm-Eggingen (Gregg 1989), where 230 samples containing charred plant remains were recovered from 151 features. Both of these sites were sampled systematically and extensively, providing a good overall picture of the deposition of charred cereal remains. In terms of potential weed data from central Europe, a synthesis of weed-rich samples from Neolithic sites across the western loess belt (Bogaard 2002) was used as a basis on which to characterise assemblages from the area. Though not a complete list of all potential weed taxa recovered from all sites, this dataset provides a good representation of the range of potential weed taxa known from Neolithic sites in the loess belt. In order to compare the occurrence of cereal grain and chaff in the two areas, absolute densities of these items per litre of soil were used. Wherever possible, the ‘unit of analysis’ for the calculation of densities approximated independent ‘behavioural events’ (Jones 1991): that is, separate depositional contexts.1 In order to compare the two regions in terms of their potential arable weed assemblages, ecological characteristics particularly relevant to the permanence of cultivation plots were selected. The relevant characteristics have been identified on the basis of data gathered during the Hambach Forest experiment (Lüning & Meurers-Balke 1980; 1986; Meurers-Balke 1985; Meurers-Balke & Lüning 1990), in which experimental plots cleared of longlived deciduous woodland were cultivated over a six-year period and surveyed immediately prior to harvest time in order to document the weed flora. General habitat association (e.g. woodland, disturbed ground, and so on) and life cycle (annual versus perennial) were used to characterise plots managed as they would be in a shifting cultivation regime (Bogaard 2002). Information

1

It should be noted that, for a few British sites, individual sample data were not available; instead, average densities of items for the whole site were used. For one major British site, The Stumble (Murphy 1988, in press), the amount of soil processed per sample was quantified by weight rather than volume; soil weights were converted to approximate volumes by assuming that 1 kg of soil ⫽ 1 litre of soil.



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on these characteristics for potential weeds in Britain was extracted from Ellenberg et al. (1992), as previously carried out for weeds in central Europe (Bogaard 2002). ‘Potential weeds’ encompass those taxa considered to be arable species today, as well as a broad range of other herbaceous annuals and perennials that may have grown as weeds in the past. Only those identified to species level were considered. As in the analysis of the Hambach weed survey data, trees and shrubs were excluded as they are unlikely to set seed when growing with annual crops (Bogaard 2002).

RESULTS The occurrence of cereal grain The density of cereal remains per litre of soil on British Neolithic sites is often low (Moffett et al. 1989), and this has been interpreted as evidence that cereals played a minor economic role (Entwhistle & Grant 1989; Hey et al. 2003; Thomas 2004). Figure 2a summarises numbers of contexts from British Neolithic sites with cereal grain densities ranging from less than one grain per litre to more than 50 grains per litre. Clearly, most contexts containing any cereal grain tend to be in the lowest density category. It is important to bear in mind, however, that preservation of plant remains by charring depends on contact with fire and is episodic or discontinuous. The result is that many contexts may contain very few or no charred cereals, regardless of their economic importance. Moreover, extensive sampling and flotation tend to produce an abundance of low density samples (Dennell 1976; Jones & Rowley-Conwy in press). Large-scale sampling and wet sieving have been routine components of western LBK excavations for several decades, and have been reported to produce an abundance of low density samples (Bakels 1978; 1991b; Bakels & Rouselle 1985; Jacomet & Kreuz 1999, 294; Kreuz 1990; Kreuz et al. 2005). The largest assemblage available from any single LBK site is that recovered from Vaihingen/Enz (Bogaard 2004; in prep). Grain densities from this site are summarised in Fig. 2b, which shows that at Vaihingen, as in Britain, most contexts with any cereal grain tend to contain less than one grain per litre. High-density grain-rich deposits do occur at some LBK sites (e.g. DresdenNickern, Westeregeln/Staßfurt: Willerding 1980; Lüning 2000, 81; BietigheimBissingen: Piening 1989; Hilzingen: Stika 1991), as in Britain (e.g. Balbridie: Fairweather & Ralston 1993; Building 1 at Lismore Fields: Jones forthcoming; Hambledon Hill: Jones & Legge in press), but the deposits routinely encountered contain very low densities of cereal grain.


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Figure 2. Densities of cereal grains per litre of soil in contexts containing some cereal grain from a. British Neolithic sites (n⫽511), and b. LBK (Early Neolithic) Vaihingen (n⫽211); n ⫽ number of contexts.

It is also worth comparing the presence or absence of cereal grain in close association with buildings in Britain and central Europe. As more buildings have emerged in Britain, it has been noted that grain is sometimes rare or absent in post-holes: the features most closely associated with these structures. For example, the post-holes of the Neolithic structure at Yarnton, Oxfordshire, lacked any cereal grain, though the same was true for the Bronze Age structures on the site (Hey et al. 2003; Robinson 2000). Similarly, the Neolithic Building 2 at Lismore Fields, Derbyshire, was associated with very little cereal grain (Jones forthcoming), while flotation of post-hole fills from the structure at White Horse Stone, Kent (Oxford Archaeology Unit 2000), ‘yielded very little evidence of plant foods’ (Hey et al. 2003, 84). Rarity or absence of cereal grains in post-holes has been used to question the importance of cereals in the domestic economy (Campbell & Straker 2003; Hey et al. 2003; Robinson 2000).



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Post-holes on LBK sites, however, also tend to yield little in the way of cereal grain (Gregg 1989; Kreuz 1990, 134; Kreuz et al. 2005); indeed, partly for this reason, they tend to be sampled less thoroughly than pits. At Ulm-Eggingen, however, numerous post-holes were sampled, along with other settlement features, mainly pits (Gregg 1989). Table 2 summarises the proportions of investigated post-holes and pits that contained cereal grain at Ulm-Eggingen. The clear majority of post-holes (⬎75%) lacked cereal grain altogether, compared with around half of the pits. It appears, therefore, that the occurrence of cereal grain on Neolithic sites in Britain and LBK sites in central Europe is rather similar. Low-density deposits are common, high-density deposits are occasional, and post-holes often lack grain in both areas. The occurrence of cereal chaff In order to consider the occurrence of cereal chaff, it is necessary to review the forms in which it occurs. Threshing of free-threshing wheat and barley immediately releases grain from surrounding chaff, and the chaff element that is most likely to be preserved by charring is the rachis (the central stalk within the cereal ear). Since rachis is separated off from the grain by early processing stages (winnowing, raking, and coarse sieving), which usually take place immediately after threshing, often outside settlements, it may be underrepresented archaeobotanically (Jones 1987). For the glume wheats (einkorn, emmer, spelt), threshing breaks ears into spikelets (with grain still enclosed by glumes); a further dehusking process (e.g. pounding in a deep mortar) releases the grain from the chaff, and glume bases constitute the characteristic chaff element that survives charring. Glume bases are often better represented archaeologically than free-threshing cereal rachis, at least partly because they are generated by a late stage of processing that may take place within settlements on a frequent basis, if glume wheats are stored in the form of spikelets (Hillman 1984; Jones 1987). Despite the common occurrence of free-threshing cereal grain (barley, free-threshing wheat) at some sites, glume wheat glume bases generally constitute the predominant form of chaff on Neolithic sites in both Britain and central Europe (e.g. Bogaard 2004, 68; Brombacher & Jacomet 1997, 240; Jones & Rowley-Conwy in press, table 1; Table 2. The occurrence of cereal grains in pits and post-holes at LBK (Early Neolithic) Ulm-Eggingen. Feature type

Total contexts

% with grain

Pits Post-holes

87 58

45% 22%


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Maier 2001, 58; Moffett et al. 1989) and hence will be the focus of the following discussion. Cereal chaff is widely perceived as lacking in the British Neolithic record (e.g. Richmond 1999, 33; Robinson 2000, 87), and this was certainly the case when Moffett et al. (1989) published their synthesis. On the other hand, archaeobotanical investigations at The Stumble (Murphy 1988; in press) have recovered high frequencies of glume bases. Abundant glume bases were also recovered from Lismore Fields, where some samples were dominated by them (Jones forthcoming), and at Hambledon Hill, where a concentration of probable spikelets of emmer was found (Jones & Legge in press). Densities of glume bases on British Neolithic sites are summarised in Fig. 3a. It is clear that most contexts contain a low density of this material (less than 10 items per litre). The situation at an Early Neolithic site in central Europe such as Vaihingen provides a sharp contrast (Fig. 3b); samples with higher densities of glume bases per litre of soil are abundant. Vaihingen is entirely typical of LBK sites in central Europe, where glume bases are commonly found at a range of low to high densities and often with little or no grain (e.g. Bakels 1991b; Knörzer 1988; Kreuz et al. 2005). Why is charred chaff so much more abundant in central Europe? One common explanation for charring of glume wheat material is that it resulted from accidents during the parching of spikelets to make glumes brittle and ease dehusking (see references summarised by Lüning 2000, 77). Is it possible to argue that accidents during parching were more common in central Europe, resulting in more charred chaff ? The problem with this argument is that parching accidents would result in charred grain and chaff (MeurersBalke & Lüning 1992, 358; Nesbitt & Samuel 1996, 45) whereas, at LBK sites such as Vaihingen, chaff is far more abundant than grain. Moreover, experimental work has shown that parching is not essential for efficient dehusking (Kreuz & Baatz 2003; Lüning 2000, 77; Meurers-Balke & Lüning 1992). In fact, some experimental results suggest that moistening of spikelets makes pounding/dehusking easier (Nesbitt & Samuel 1996). Thus, the frequency of charred chaff cannot be regarded as a simple reflection of the frequency of processing per se. Clearly, therefore, explanations for charred chaff other than spikelet parching must be considered. There are a number of possibilities. One type of explanation is that different optional forms of processing and storage, which could affect the frequency of chaff charring, were practised in Britain and central Europe. For example, the practice of ear singeing to remove awns prior to dehusking is known from recent times in Asturias, Spain, and could potentially lead to some charring of the outer glumes without damaging the inner grain (Peña-Chocarro 1999, 47; pers. comm.; Peña-Chocarro & Zapata 2003). Another possibility is that glume wheats tended to be stored in the



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a.

% contexts

British Neolithic sites

100 80 60 40 20 0 100

Glume bases per litre soil

b.

% contexts

Vaihingen (LBK)

100 80 60 40 20 0 100

Glume bases per litre soil Figure 3. Densities of glume bases per litre of soil in contexts containing some glume material from a. British Neolithic sites (n⫽184), and b. LBK (Early Neolithic) Vaihingen (n⫽232); n ⫽ number of contexts.


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spikelet in central Europe, leading to frequent dehusking on site, as opposed to storage of cleaned grain in Britain. Though the storage of spikelets would not explain charring per se, it might influence the proximity of dehusking activity to household fires. Another type of explanation has to do with the many possible uses of chaff that could affect the frequency of charring (cf. Campbell & Straker 2003, 18; Jones 2000, 80). For example, if chaff by-products from crop processing were routinely fed to livestock in Britain, this fodder material would tend not to become charred (cf. Campbell 2000). Another possibility is that chaff was used as kindling or fuel in central Europe, and/or became charred as the result of some habitual action (e.g. sweeping of ‘refuse’ into the hearth). There is direct evidence for the charring of chaff in domestic hearths at the early fourth millennium BC lakeshore site of Hornstaad-Hörnle in southwest Germany. Here, a major horizon of waterlogged occupation detritus was found to contain numerous discrete concentrations of charred cereal material (mainly glume wheat chaff) mixed with wood charcoal (Maier 2001, 57–9, fig. 45). These concentrations were sometimes found adjacent to clay lenses interpreted as hearths (Maier 2001, 58). It seems plausible, therefore, that these concentrations represent hearth cleanings and that chaff was not charred as part of processing (Maier 2001, 58), but rather as kindling, fuel, sweepings, and so on. Chaff charring in hearths has also been suggested for the LBK (Meurers-Balke & Lüning 1992), though the association with wood charcoal is often less evident. Charcoal is widespread in LBK pit fills but tends to occur at low levels (e.g. Gregg 1991, 212; Knörzer 1988, 835), perhaps as a result of fragmentation resulting from re-deposition and re-working of deposits. To summarise, charred cereal chaff appears to be more common in central Europe than Britain. There are a number of possible explanations for this contrast, including different forms of processing and storage, the use of chaff as fodder in Britain, and the use of chaff as fuel or kindling in central Europe. Perhaps, as Gregg (1991) has suggested, chaff was used as fuel in some form of manufacturing activity in the LBK such as ceramic production (though she stresses the role of straw, which is virtually unknown in the archaeobotanical record for the LBK: Lüning 2000, 83). A further possibility is that chaff charring reflects a habitual action—even a ritualised one— that was widespread in central Europe. If a handful of chaff (the by-product of frequent spikelet dehusking) were tossed or swept on to the domestic hearth each morning, for example, the archaeobotanical effect would be an abundance of charred glume bases. The one explanation for charred chaff that would relate to scale of cereal production—the routine parching of spikelets as part of the dehusking process—can be excluded. It appears, therefore, that it was the differential



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uses and treatment of chaff in Britain and central Europe that resulted in contrasting abundances of charred glume bases in archaeological deposits, rather than the contribution of cereals to the economy. Weed assemblages The third topic to be considered is the nature of crop growing in Britain and central Europe, and in particular the extent to which cultivation plots can be characterised as transient or permanent. Arguments against shifting cultivation in north-west Europe have tended to emphasise that it was ecologically unnecessary or even implausible (Barker 1985, 141–3; Jarman & BayPetersen 1976; Lüning 1980; Modderman 1971; Rowley-Conwy 1981), but this argument does not exclude the practice from consideration, and recent accounts have continued to incorporate such a model (Barrett 1994; Thomas 1999, 23–32; Whittle 1996a; 1996b; 1997). The key question is, were Neolithic farmers perpetuating earlier patterns of mobility and circulation in their cultivation practices, or were people creating new senses of place through investment in particular patches of land? Information on crop growing conditions can be inferred from assemblages of arable weed seeds that occur in charred form along with crop remains (e.g. Jones 1992; 2002; Knörzer 1971; Wasylikowa 1981). The ecology of weeds growing in cultivation plots and harvested with the crops can be used to reconstruct the way in which plots were managed. An experiment conducted in the Hambach Forest near Cologne in the 1970s provides data on the sort of weed flora that is associated with short-term cultivation following forest clearance (see above). Analysis of these weed survey data suggests that woodland species are characteristic of recently cleared plots managed with little or no tillage and weeding (as in a shifting cultivation regime) and that the weed flora is dominated by perennials (Bogaard 2002). Figure 4a summarises the predominant habitats of potential weed taxa from British Neolithic sites. It is evident that the potential weed spectrum is dominated by species of disturbed places; the woodland category is represented by a single taxon, the annual Three-Veined Sandwort (Moehringia trinervia (L.) Clairv.), which occurs in three samples from The Stumble in Essex (Murphy 1988; in press). The weed spectrum in central Europe (Fig. 4b) is very similar, containing mostly species of disturbed habitats and few woodland taxa. Turning to the life cycle of weeds, the proportions of annual and perennial taxa in the British Neolithic (Fig. 5a) show a roughly even split. In central Europe (Fig. 5b), the proportions are similar; if anything, annual taxa are more frequent in Britain. In neither case do these proportions resemble the picture


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Figure 4. Major habitat associations of potential weed taxa from a. British Neolithic sites (n⫽45), and b. Neolithic sites across the western loess belt of central Europe (n⫽109); n ⫽ number of potential weed taxa.

expected for the newly cleared plots of a shifting cultivation regime (c. 72 % perennial taxa in the Hambach experiment: Bogaard 2002, appendix 1). The proportions of annual and perennial weeds can also be evaluated on a sample by sample basis, using the proportions of seeds of each type. Proportions of seeds can be reliably calculated for individual samples that are reasonably rich in potential weed species (e.g. containing at least 30 seeds). This approach was previously applied in central Europe (Bogaard 2002, fig. 6), demonstrating the predominance of annuals on a sample by sample basis. The scope for such an approach in Britain is limited by the small number of weed-rich samples available, but it can be noted that annuals are dominant in six of the seven samples with more than 30 potential weed seeds (Table 3). In conclusion, the weed data do not support the model of shifting cultivation in Britain or in central Europe. Rather than transient plots that were cultivated for a few years only, it appears that the cultivation plots of Neolithic farmers in both areas were maintained for extended periods of



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a.

British Neolithic sites

44 perennial taxa

56

annual taxa

b.

Neolithic sites in the loess belt

48

52

perennial taxa annual taxa

Figure 5. Proportions of annual and perennial potential weed taxa from a. British Neolithic sites (n⫽54), and b. Neolithic sites across the western loess belt of central Europe (n⫽126); n ⫽ number of potential weed taxa.


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Table 3. Proportions of annual potential weed species in seven weed-rich samples (containing at least 30 potential weed seeds) from Neolithic sites in Britain. Site Boghead Isbister Windmill Hill (inner) Beehive Field Farm The Stumble, site B Scord of Brouster 1

Context/sample

168 (L4) 628 pit 502 (fill 503) 203 samples 40–41

Period

No. seeds of potential weed species

% annuals

EN EN EN E/LN E/LN E/LN LN

102 184 44 35 36 31 40

100 69 100 100 36 100 100

time. It is difficult to be precise about the minimum period of time required for the observed Neolithic weed floras to develop, but it can be estimated as at least ten years or more, given that the six-year old plots of the Hambach experiment were still dominated by perennials, despite increasingly intensive tillage measures (Bogaard 2002).

CONCLUSIONS In terms of the scale of cereal production and the permanence of cultivation plots, farming practices in Neolithic Britain and central Europe appear rather similar. What has sometimes been interpreted as ritual practice in one area and subsistence in the other probably represents the same activity. Interpretations of Neolithic farming appear to owe more to preconceived ideas of individual authors (whether oriented towards subsistence or ritual) than to the primary archaeobotanical evidence. The only major difference that has emerged from this comparative study is a contrasting frequency of charred glume wheat glume bases, for which various alternative explanations, both functional and ritual, have been suggested. Whatever the precise causes of this contrast, however, it appears that it is not related to the scale of agricultural production. As ethnographic accounts have demonstrated, farming activities have both productive and socialising/ritualised dimensions. A challenge that remains in both Britain and central Europe is to construct balanced accounts of Neolithic cultivation that combine practical routines and ritualised aspects. Note. We would like to thank Alasdair Whittle for the invitation to speak at the ‘Going Over’ conference; Peter Murphy for allowing us to include his important unpublished dataset from The Stumble; and Peter Rowley-Conwy for jointly assem-



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bling the list of British sites (with Jones). We also thank David Taylor for drawing Figure 1. This paper was presented and written during a period of research leave (for Bogaard) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

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The temporality of transformation: dating the early development of the southern British Neolithic ALASDAIR WHITTLE

CHRONOLOGY AND TEMPORALITY IF WE WANT TO MOVE from general to specific models of sequences of transformation, if we want to understand the interrelationships, tensions and reactions among and between different agents, if we want to recover something of what made the difference between one way of thinking about the world and another or between this way of doing things and that, then we need far better chronologies than the ones to which we have been accustomed and to which we have, through complacency or lack of imagination, resigned ourselves. Despite the strictures of pioneers like Hans Waterbolk (1971) and Ian Kinnes (1985), we have been rather careless for too long about the selection and evaluation of radiocarbon dating samples, and despite the attempts of material culture specialists (e.g. Cleal 2004; Herne 1988; Kinnes 1979; 1992) to achieve more refined sequences with the, in this regard, rather intractable material of Britain, we have been content, in trying to think about the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Britain, to operate within the parameters of very coarse divisions of time: Later Mesolithic, Earlier Neolithic, and so on. In part, this may have been due to a lingering sense of success created by that ‘radiocarbon revolution’ which began to see the emergence of calibrated dates, from the early 1970s onwards, and which fostered perhaps a sense that the main business remaining to be done was that of good explanation (e.g. Renfrew 1973). In part also, for many British prehistorians at least, there may have been a sense in which chronology was not given its proper due (an understandable reaction to the days of culture history when so much effort was expended, in the end to little effect, on the ABC of this and that). One can find this attitude, perhaps unconsciously expressed, in the distinctions made by Tim Ingold in his well known paper on ‘the temporality of the landscape’ (1993). There, Ingold distinguishes between chronology, history and



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temporality. Chronology for him is ‘any regular system of dated time intervals, in which events are said to have taken place’. History is ‘any series of events which may be dated in time’. To introduce the uniting concept of temporality, Ingold makes reference to the McTaggart distinction between Aseries and B-series time, also explored by Gell (1992). In Ingold’s account (1993, 157), ‘Whereas in the B-series, events are treated as isolated happenings, succeeding one another frame by frame, each event in the A-series is seen to encompass a pattern of retensions from the past and protentions for the future’. Another version of this distinction was between abstract and substantial time (Shanks & Tilley 1987, 128). Going on to discuss the flow of life, Ingold argues that we can ‘move from one present to another without having to break through any chronological barrier that might be supposed to separate each present from the next in line’ (Ingold 1993, 159). But this treatment only allows one kind of temporality in human existence, which I would argue is insufficient—of which more below—and it has already begun to consign the construction of chronology, whether intentionally or not, to a second and rather mundane class of activity. This paper therefore has three aims: first, to draw attention to now routine methods of refining radiocarbon chronologies; second, to sketch some of the first results from the application of such methods to early (but not yet really the earliest) parts of the southern British Neolithic sequence; and third, to discuss on a provisional basis the implications of a more refined sequence for our understanding of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition and the very early development of the southern British Neolithic. In so doing, the distinctions between chronology, history and temporality become harder to sustain.

TOWARDS BETTER CHRONOLOGIES When did the southern British Neolithic, or indeed the British Neolithic as a whole, begin? Once upon a time, when apparently early dates from sites like Ballynagilly and pre-elm decline clearances and cereal pollen were talked about, it was possible to entertain the possibility of what would now be a horizon in the mid-fifth millennium cal BC or even earlier. I argued at one stage that such an early start might favour the colonisation hypothesis, but that a later start, at the end of the fifth millennium, would favour the acculturation hypothesis (Whittle 1990). Now, after several critical reviews of the available dates (e.g. Kenney 1993; Kinnes 1985; Schulting 2000; Williams 1989), no one would support such an early horizon as the mid-fifth millennium cal BC, and most accounts have settled for a central figure of around 4000 cal BC. But how reliable is this, how can we look forward to refining it in the future, and what implications do changes in chronology still have?


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I must stress that this is primarily a discussion of things as it were from the Neolithic side, a perspective of ‘having gone over’ as Graeme Warren put it in discussion at the Going Over conference, and it remains a considerable weakness that we still have so little detailed information about the sequence of development in the Late Mesolithic in southern Britain. That said, there are rather few fixed points in time. We can anchor the Sweet Track in the Somerset Levels (Coles & Coles 1986; 1992), plus the attendant jadeite and flint axes and carinated bowls, with its dendrochronological date of 3807/6 BC (Hillam et al. 1990), and both tree ring growth studies and pollen analyses suggest that the track itself had been preceded by a century or more of woodland disturbance or active management (Coles & Coles 1986; 1992; Hillam et al. 1990). Pottery specialists, following Herne (1988), see carinated bowls as the earliest ceramic, but whether this is a single typological class and whether it is all of the same date is an open question (Cleal 2004). Gabriel Cooney (this volume) has suggested of the character of the offshore Early Neolithic as a whole that ‘in broader terms for Britain and Ireland it can be summarised as composed of a similar range of lithic artefacts, carinated bowl pottery, enclosures, wooden mortuary structures under long and round mounds and various types of megalithic tombs, including simple passage tombs/graves, portal tombs/dolmens and varieties of megalithic long cairns’, to be found between 4000 and 3600 cal BC. To that list one could add southern flint mines and western stone axe sources. Much of the dating for all this remains based on small numbers of samples, some of them patently too old (long-lived wood or potentially residual disarticulated bones, for example). Even within that constraint, it has been becoming clearer that not all the elements listed by Cooney need be of exactly the same date. In southern Britain—and also in Ireland as he notes elsewhere in his paper—it is likely that timber structures/houses/halls, such as at Yarnton and White Horse Stone, belong early in the fourth millennium cal BC, perhaps between 3900 and 3700 cal BC (Barclay 2006; Hey & Barclay, this volume). Southern long barrows and causewayed enclosures, for reasons that I will set out below, appear to start at slightly later dates. None of the earliest features are very well established, and I will come back to them in a later part of the paper. For the present, we can note that a further problem for establishing the date of the start of the southern British Neolithic rests in the current practice of simplistic visual inspection and interpretation (‘eyeballing’) of numbers of single dates (Bayliss, Bronk Ramsey et al. 2007). By their very nature, there is likely to be a scatter of dates beyond the actual chronological limits of a given phenomenon, and when we are dealing with single dates or small numbers of dates only, it is very difficult—if not impossible—to determine the real boundaries of events or phenomena without more sophisticated modelling (Bronk Ramsey 2000;


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Steir & Rom 2000). This will continue to afflict those studies based on simple listings of such dates. How then can we do things better? The combination of strictly selected samples of short life and known taphonomy from well known contexts, sufficient numbers of dates, and their interrogation and interpretation within a Bayesian statistical framework, has been applied since the re-dating of Stonehenge (Bayliss et al. 1997; Bayliss, Bronk Ramsey et al. 2007, with references to Bayesian methodology; for the first case study, on Skara Brae, see Buck et al. 1991). It has been extended, with stunning success, to the dating of the causewayed enclosure of Hambledon Hill, Dorset (Healy 2004; Mercer 2004).1 It has since become routine practice within projects supported directly by English Heritage (Bayliss & Bronk Ramsey 2004), is beginning to be adopted more often in some sectors of commercial archaeology, and needs now to be emulated through prehistoric studies everywhere. With these methods, radiocarbon dates from defined contexts, phases and stratigraphic relationships, are assessed against that framework of prior knowledge. The results are interpretative, giving in the technical language of Bayesian statistics posterior density estimates,2 and more than one model can be produced for each site, with differing posterior density estimates. No one model is necessarily true, but it is possible to demonstrate which models are statistically invalid, and the exercise of archaeological judgment remains of paramount importance. Following the establishment of this methodology (Bayliss, Bronk Ramsey et al. 2007) and the success of the Hambledon Hill dating project, it was possible to initiate further projects on the radiocarbon dating of southern British long barrows (Bayliss, Benson et al. 2007; Bayliss, Whittle & Wysocki 2007; Whittle, Bayliss & Wysocki 2007; Whittle, Barclay et al. 2007; Wysocki et al. 2007; see also Meadows et al. 2007) and causewayed enclosures (Whittle, Healy & Bayliss in prep.). I will take these in reverse chronological order.

FROM THE KNOWN TO THE UNKNOWN Causewayed enclosures in southern Britain Within a Bayesian statistical framework, the initiation of the Hambledon Hill causewayed enclosure can be set at around 3650 cal BC or a very little earlier, perhaps at 3670 cal BC (Healy 2004). After this beginning in the thirtyseventh century cal BC, there followed a series of further episodes of con-

1 2

The final report by Roger Mercer and Frances Healy is now in press. By convention presented in italics.



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struction and modification; the great complex was not built in one go, and the Stepleton enclosure, for example, was itself initiated in what is defined as Phase 1b, just before 3600 cal BC, perhaps two generations or so after the first layout of the main enclosure (Healy 2004). The later history of the complex extends down to c. 3300 cal BC. Following the inspiration of this work, a further project was initiated to extend the methodology to other southern British causewayed enclosures. By the time of its completion in late 2007, the project will have achieved well over 400 new radiocarbon dates from up to 30 of the presently known number of around 80 or more such monuments. It is premature to present detailed results as final modelling is only just beginning at the time of writing this paper. It is appropriate to note, however, that it appears very likely that the pattern established for Hambledon Hill is to be found very widely elsewhere in southern Britain. Whatever the date of the start of the southern British Neolithic may be, the thirty-seventh century cal BC horizon of enclosures is comfortably separate from it. Further, it is likely that we will see a rapid establishment across southern Britain of this phenomenon, and that we will detect differences between site histories: some long and episodic like that of Hambledon Hill, but others strikingly short. The already quoted view that we can ‘move from one present to another without having to break through any chronological barrier that might be supposed to separate each present from the next in line’ (Ingold 1993, 159) begins to look implausibly general. There may be a rapid, striking development here. The concentrations of labour and the intense socialities that causewayed enclosures can be seen to invoke do not belong to the very first generations of Neolithic existence in southern Britain. We will discuss again elsewhere, with our final results, the genealogy of the enclosure idea. Did it come from contemporary practice in woodland and settlement (Evans 1988), or did it derive from continental inspiration? In the latter case, we can see broadly comparable interrupted ditched enclosures on the adjacent continent probably from the later fifth millennium cal BC, in northern Chasseen and western Michelsberg contexts, for example at Boury-en-Vexin in the Oise valley (Martinez et al. 1984) or Spiere-de Hel in the middle Scheldt valley (Vanmontfort et al. 2001/2). That leaves a gap of at least at least three centuries before this kind of practice was adopted by southern British communities (interestingly and perhaps significantly, at about the same time as in Denmark, there from c. 3500 cal BC: Andersen 1993; 1997). There are thus many issues for discussion elsewhere, but we can underline for the present purpose that enclosure results so far support a gradualist model for the development of the southern British Neolithic.


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Long barrows in southern Britain A gradualist model is also supported by emerging results for another form of monumentality in southern Britain: that of long barrows. Five important southern long barrows have been dated: West Kennet (Bayliss, Whittle & Wysocki 2007); Wayland’s Smithy (Whittle, Bayliss & Wysocki 2007); Fussell’s Lodge (Wysocki et al. 2007); Ascott-under-Wychwood (Bayliss, Benson et al. 2007; Benson & Whittle 2006); and the Hazleton long cairn (Meadows et al. 2007). Other results are pending from Coldrum, Kent (with the cooperation of Michael Wysocki, Robert Hedges, Tom Higham and Seren Griffiths), and from several monuments in south Wales including Ty Isaf, Pipton, Penywyrlod (Talgarth), and Tinkinswood (with the co-operation of Michael Wysocki). Concentrating on the southern English sites, the emerging pattern is for the first constructions of this kind to appear in the thirty-eighth century cal BC, perhaps after 3800 cal BC or around 3750 cal BC: up to a century or so before causewayed enclosures but still at some interval after the probable start of the southern British Neolithic, depending of course on how that is defined (Whittle, Barclay et al. 2007). It is important to stress the obvious point that our sample of robustly investigated monuments is still very small, but preliminary critical investigation of other comparable dated sites, using the date lists given by Kinnes (1992) and Darvill (2004), does not show any convincing exceptions, though these cannot of course be absolutely excluded yet (Whittle, Barclay et al. 2007). Thus, radiocarbon dates from Burn Ground, also in the Cotswolds, might suggest slightly earlier beginnings (Smith & Brickley 2006), but modelling, further assessment of the taphonomy of samples and more dating are all required. The Long Mound at Raunds, Northamptonshire, has been modelled as belonging to the period between 3940–3780 cal BC by samples preceding and following its construction, although this monument cannot be regarded as precisely dated (Harding & Healy forthcoming; Frances Healy, pers. comm.). Coldrum in Kent (Jessup 1970, with references) has radiocarbon dates on human bone samples going back to the thirty-ninth century cal BC or possibly the fortieth century cal BC but it is unclear whether these date the construction of the small, stonechambered, monument.3 Within the Cotswolds, rotundae and portal dolmens have been suggested as belonging earlier than Cotswold long cairns and barrows as a whole (most recently by Darvill 2004, chapter 2), but there is no certainty at present that this was so (cf. Smith & Brickley 2006). Rotundae (in the case of Sale’s Lot underlain by a timber structure: Barclay 2000) underlie

3

To be published by Alasdair Whittle, Mick Wysocki, Robert Hedges, Tom Higham and Seren Griffiths.



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transepted or other terminal chambered monuments which may themselves not be the earliest form of Cotswold monument (and see below), and could be seen as some kind of monumentalisation of those middens which underlie some lateral chambered Cotswold monuments, including Ascott-underWychwood and Hazleton. While it has been suggested that some portal dolmens in the west and in Ireland may be early (Cummings & Whittle 2004; Cooney 2000), it is far from clear that all or indeed any are very early; and while some of the west Welsh examples do have finds of carinated bowl pottery, we cannot yet say definitely in any one case whether the monument predates c. 3750 cal BC. Finally, we can note that the Whitwell long cairn in the Peak district of Derbyshire was first published with dates going as far back as the late fifth or very early fourth millennium cal BC (Schulting 2000, 30), but has now been dated on fresh samples to a rather later phase.4 In broad terms, of our closely dated monuments Ascott-underWychwood is the earliest, beginning in the mid-thirty-eighth century cal BC, to be followed after two or three generations or so (at 25 years per generation) by Hazleton. Both these two Cotswold monuments have lateral cists or chambers. They go out of use probably in the 3640s or 3630s cal BC and the 3630s or 3620s cal BC respectively. Use of the primary, pre-barrow structure at Fussell’s Lodge long barrow also begins in the thirty-eighth century cal BC, but the long barrow was not constructed until the mid-thirty-seventh century cal BC. The transepted chambers of the West Kennet long barrow probably began to be used for deposition of human remains in the mid-thirty-seventh century cal BC. Wayland’s Smithy I, despite often being seen as an early type of monument (Darvill 2004, 52–6), was not started till the early thirty-sixth century; its transepted phase (II) probably belongs to the thirty-fifth century cal BC. Other well known or more reliably dated monuments such as Hambledon, Haddenham, Lambourn, Nutbane and others fit in around this sort of pattern. It would be unwise to exclude the possibility of similar constructions earlier than the mid-thirty-eighth century cal BC in southern Britain, but at present there is no clear evidence for this. Full details are given elsewhere (Whittle, Barclay et al. 2007) but it is worth stressing the explicit, quantified, probabilistic basis on which much more precise estimates of sequence and duration can be made than have been available for the study of this period so far. We claim that it is possible to offer a sense of events not only to the century but on occasion to a scale of generations. Thus, it is very likely that Ascott-under-Wychwood was the first to be built (80% probable),5 with only a small uncertainty (19.9%) as to 4

I am very grateful to Ian Wall for permission to refer to this re-dating. These estimates and the shorthand names for relationships or events are also by convention given in italics. 5


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whether the Fussell’s Lodge mortuary structure was built slightly earlier. After the initiation of these two sites, Hazleton was constructed (85.7% probable). This occurred 20–95 years after the initial construction of the Ascottunder-Wychwood long barrow (95% probability; Ascott/Haz; Whittle, Barclay et al. 2007, fig. 4), probably 35–75 years later (68% probability). Probably only a generation or two after the construction of Hazleton, West Kennet was built (although this estimate is based only on primary human remains in the chambers). This was 1–55 years later (91% probability) or 110–35 years later (4% probability); const WK/Haz; Whittle, Barclay et al. 2007, fig. 4), or 15–45 years later (68% probability). It is very likely (93.9% probable) that the first phase of Wayland’s Smithy (the mortuary structure) was then constructed, and certain that Wayland’s Smithy II was the last of these monuments to have been constructed (100% probable). Some of these events are modelled in Fig. 1 (after

Figure 1. Probability distributions of dates of major archaeological events at the sites studied in detail in Whittle, Barclay et al. 2007 and related papers (note that some of the tails of these distributions have been truncated to enable detailed examination of the highest areas of probability). The estimates are based on the preferred chronological models defined by Bayliss, Benson et al. (2007, figs 3 and 5–7), Meadows et al. (2007, figs 5–9), Wysocki et al. (2007, figs 10–11), Bayliss, Whittle and Wysocki (2007, figs 4–7) and Whittle, Bayliss, and Wysocki (2007, figs 4–5).



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Whittle, Barclay et al. 2007), and a summary of our preferred model for Ascott-under-Wychwood is given as Fig. 2. This chronology has many implications. Monuments of this kind do not appear to belong to the beginning of the Neolithic, always assuming that there was everywhere a pre-monument phase of some 150 years or more (of which more below). This gradualist development requires a fresh look at the emergence of this kind of practice, which signifies place through construction and commemorates the selected dead through deposition and manipulation. While it has been commonplace to link the idea of long mounds to the much earlier LBK and post-LBK longhouses (Darvill 2004, 73–80, with references), the latter had probably ended in the mid-fifth millennium cal BC, and the widening gap calls into question the chains of memory that would have been required. We might look instead to a broad tradition of comparable constructions on the adjacent continent, from Brittany and Normandy up to southern Scandinavia, the beginnings of which appear to go back to the second half of the fifth millennium cal BC (Midgley 2005), even if particular dates such as those under the Sarnowo mounds appear in need of critical reevaluation. We can also consider a possible link with contemporary or slightly earlier houses/structures/halls in southern Britain itself (a point noted also by Darvill 2004; see also Bradley, this volume).

Figure 2. Overall structure for the main model for the chronology of Ascott-under-Wychwood long barrow (after Bayliss, Benson et al. 2007). The component sections of this model are shown in detail in Bayliss, Benson et al. 2007, figs 5–7. The large square brackets down the left hand side of the figure, along with the OxCal keywords, define the overall model exactly.


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The southern British and Danish sequences (Larsson, this volume; Madsen 1993) appear in this respect, too, to run uncannily in tandem. We should consider afresh, alongside the older models of derivation from deep memory and myth, the contemporary conditions in which people began to give attention in this way to place and the dead. After earlier Mesolithic human depositions in Aveline’s Hole (Schulting & Wysocki 2002), there is nothing visible in Late Mesolithic practice in southern Britain to prepare one for the concentrated depositions of the thirty-eighth century cal BC, though the situation in Denmark is evidently rather more complex (see Larsson, this volume). It can be argued that people began to take stock of new identities and practices by the thirty-eighth century cal BC (Benson & Whittle 2006). Judging by Ascott-under-Wychwood, Fussell’s Lodge and Hazleton, the scale of sociality may have been quite restricted; equally, at least to begin with, new constructions, though possibly appearing quite swiftly, may have been relatively few and far between, and the initial picture at least need not be one of land hunger or overt competition (see also Hey & Barclay, this volume). Part of this trend of making sense of a changing world may have involved ideas circulating very widely in north-west Europe. We have been accustomed to think of contact with the continent only in a narrow pinchpoint of transition, but this is unduly restrictive, and the continental jadeite axe6 deposited beside the Sweet Track, within the 30 years or so after its construction in 3807/6 BC during which it would have been visible (Coles & Coles 1986), is a vivid demonstration of the reality of such continuing connections. Before the monuments Chris Tilley (this volume) has argued that in the Mesolithic the natural setting, including the forest, was the monument in people’s lives. Following the emergent chronology reported here, and persisting with these terms just for the moment (see below), this may have continued into the first part of the Neolithic. We could see the Sweet Track not only as a practical and useful walkway across periodically flooded ground, a route to useful places, but also as a reassembly of the woodland, a monument to knowledge of and familiarity with it, symbolising the importance of being connected and on the move. Many others have noted the symbolic import of very substantial posts in long barrows and similar monuments, and the split trees used in the primary mortuary structure at Wayland’s Smithy suggest, in the chronology presented here, that this was a long-lived and persistent idea.

6

On grounds of appearance and shape, there is no doubt that this is an Alpine import: Alison Sheridan, pers. comm.



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It is easy to assume, as noted earlier in this paper, that new practices— perhaps definable as the use of bowl pottery, an increased production, circulation and use of stone and flint axes, the herding of domesticated animals and cultivation of cereals, and the construction of not insubstantial buildings—began everywhere c. 4000 cal BC. That remains to be demonstrated. It is not to be excluded that in some parts of southern Britain new practices could have gone back to the late fifth millennium cal BC, while in others they might be as late as c. 3900 cal BC or even c. 3800 cal BC, just preceding, say, the initiation of a given local long barrow or cairn or other related monument. There is no obvious sign of pre-mortuary structure activity at Fussell’s Lodge, for example (Ashbee 1966). The difference in date makes a difference to our interpretations of process. There are, however, some reliable indications of Neolithic activity going back to the fortieth century cal BC. The Sweet Track evidence already cited strongly suggests this, though the identity of those responsible for clearance and woodland management is an open issue. The two lateral Cotswold monuments of Ascott-under-Wychwood and Hazleton point in the same direction. Under the long barrow of Ascott-under-Wychwood was a buried soil with quite abundant earlier and sparse later Mesolithic finds, and abundant Neolithic occupation including a concentrated midden (Benson & Whittle 2006; Bayliss, Benson et al. 2007). Two bone samples from the midden, presumably redeposited, gave dates of around 5000 cal BC, and two from a small posthole suggested activity in the last quarter of the fifth millennium cal BC. The pre-barrow Neolithic occupation appears to consist of several discrete episodes of activity occurring during the first quarter of the fourth millennium cal BC. The results suggest that the midden represents a relatively short period of activity, conceivably a single event or a short series of closely connected events. The midden was formed during the second half of the fortieth century cal BC or the thirty-ninth century cal BC. Locally in the area under the primary barrow the occupation ended in 3940–3765 cal BC (95% probability), most probably between 3870–3775 cal BC (68% probability; end_occupation: Bayliss, Benson et al. 2007, fig. 5; Fig. 3 here). In the preferred model, a gap of at least 50 years followed before the initiation of the barrow and its cists (Bayliss, Benson et al. 2007; Benson & Whittle 2006). The construction of the Hazleton North long cairn perhaps followed that of Ascott-under-Wychwood by a couple of generations (Meadows et al. 2007; Whittle, Barclay et al. 2007), again after an interval following pre-cairn Mesolithic and Neolithic activity (Saville 1990), the latter including occupation, a concentrated midden and the building of some kind of small wooden structure. Fewer samples were dated from the Hazleton midden than at Ascott-under-Wychwood, but suggest activity and occupation as far back as the thirty-ninth century cal BC at least (Meadows et al. 2007).


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Figure 3. Probability distributions of dates from the Neolithic pre-barrow occupation at Ascott-under-Wychwood (after Bayliss, Benson et al. 2007). Each distribution represents the relative probability that an event occurs at a particular time. For each of the dates two distributions have been plotted: one in outline, which is the result of simple radiocarbon calibration, and a solid one, based on the chronological model used; the ‘event’ associated with, for example, GrA23933, is the growth of the dated wild boar. Distributions other than those relating to particular samples, correspond to aspects of the model. For example, the distribution ‘end_occupation’ is the posterior density estimate of when the Neolithic occupation beneath the primary barrow ceased. Measurements followed by a question mark have been excluded from the model for reasons explained in Bayliss, Benson et al. 2007, and are simple calibrated dates (Stuiver & Reimer 1993). The large square brackets down the left-hand side along with the OxCal keywords define the overall model exactly.

Further to the west, on the Cotswold edge, pre-enclosure features at Crickley Hill could also be candidates for an early date (Dixon 1988), though work on this is still in progress through the enclosures dating project (Whittle, Healy & Bayliss in prep.). To the south in the upper Thames valley, the occupation at Yarnton may go back to the very early fourth millennium cal BC, and the substantial timber structure there may date on the basis of four radiocarbon dates to c. 3800 cal BC (Hey & Barclay, this volume). Further afield, as reported by Hey and Barclay (this volume, with references), charred cereal remains from the Area 6 midden at Eton, from Woolwich, and from



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the longhouse or structure at White Horse Stone in the Medway Valley, Kent, may also date to the early fourth millennium cal BC. Human bones from the monument at Coldrum, on the other side of the Medway opposite the White Horse Stone timber structure, have also been dated to at least the thirty-ninth century cal BC, and possibly the fortieth century cal BC (see footnote 3), but it is uncertain whether these date the monument itself, and the identity of the people concerned is again an open question. These new data are valuable, but we should note that we cannot yet offer more precise models for these various sites, of the complexity possible at Ascott-under-Wychwood and Hazleton. In the essentialist language of Mesolithic and Neolithic and in the generalising terms of debate so far—a processual legacy?—we have been accustomed to thinking of a single, brief horizon of change, whereas the present data from the Thames valley and its catchment as a whole might just as well speak for a gradual and spatially patchy series of transformations. One other site also gives confidence that Neolithic activity could go back to the earliest fourth millennium cal BC. The natural shaft at Fir Tree Field in Cranborne Chase, Dorset, was infilling from the Mesolithic into the Neolithic (Allen & Green 1998). A Bayesian model (kindly constructed by Derek Hamilton) suggests that the interval between layer 7, with late Mesolithic finds, and layer 6a, with bowl pottery (in turn above 6b, described as Neolithic but without bowl pottery), fell between 4120–3870 cal BC (95% probability: Fig. 4). There is not space here to discuss all relevant dates from southern Britain exhaustively (cf. Griffiths 2003), and anyway the time is ripe for yet another critical evaluation of these. We can note again, first, that claims for very early dates for both long barrows and causewayed enclosures do not stand up to scrutiny, as discussed above. Thus simply listing dates from causewayed enclosures (Cleal 2004, figs 1–2) or from Cotswold long barrows and cairns (Darvill 2004, fig. 32) and simple visual inspection of the results is no longer sufficient (Bayliss, Bronk Ramsey et al. 2007). Ros Cleal has suggested that most enclosures do not date before c. 3650 cal BC (Cleal 2004, 166); she is rightly sceptical of Hembury and indeed Maiden Castle belonging any earlier (Cleal 2004, 169), and both these sites have been included in the current enclosures dating project. Dates from other sites recently discussed in the literature are also open to reassessment. As Cleal (2004, 186) notes, the single date from the Coneybury Anomaly near Stonehenge could be on residual animal bone, while the charcoal used for the dates from Rowden, Dorset, was from oak (Cleal 2004, 173 and 187), and the latest date (Cleal 2004, fig. 3) need suggest only a mid-fourth millennium cal BC date for the carinated bowl assemblage in question. The single date from Flagstones was also on oak (Cleal 2004, 173). On the basis of her critical review, Cleal (2004, 181) perceptively suggests that there could have been a virtually aceramic earliest Neolithic down to c. 3850


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Figure 4. Probability distributions of dates from the stratified sequence in the Fir Tree Field shaft, using data published by Allen and Green (1998). Each distribution represents the relative probability that an event occurs at a particular time. For each of the dates two distributions have been plotted: one in outline, which is the result of simple radiocarbon calibration, and a solid one, based on the chronological model used. OxA-7981 has been excluded from the model (indicated by the ‘?’ next to the laboratory ID), and is likely to be a residual pig femur that eroded into the shaft during the silting in process. The model gives a calculated event transition probability between layers 7 and 6b of 4120–3870 cal BC (95% probability). The large square brackets down the left hand side of the figure, along with the OxCal keywords, define the overall model exactly.

cal BC. That need not apply to Ascott-under-Wychwood, but it could have been the pattern in many other parts of southern Britain. The uncertainties underline how urgently we need fresh results in this field.

FURTHER IMPLICATIONS The account of southern British early Neolithic chronology sketched here has been intended to serve two purposes: to demonstrate how we can confidently begin to separate events into different horizons and centuries in the first half of the fourth millennium cal BC; and to suggest that this emerging but still uncertain sequence calls existing models for the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in southern Britain into question. Recent debate has had three recurrent characteristics. We have been content to use very crude chronologies, and to think within simple, essentialist terms like late Mesolithic and early Neolithic, and we have debated two opposed models, of colonisation and acculturation.



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If the fourth millennium cal BC chronology is beginning to improve, we cannot yet say the same of the fifth millennium cal BC, with the possible exception of regions further north, such as northern England (e.g. Spikins 2002) and perhaps parts of western Scotland (Mithen et al., this volume). It is time to think in terms of more complicated processes, possibly over extended timescales, and in so doing it is time to challenge the essentialist vocabulary which has dominated debate for too long. I have already suggested elsewhere that we should consider a combination of small-scale, filtered colonisation from the adjacent continent and change among indigenous people in southern and other parts of Britain (Whittle 1999; 2003, 150). Cleal (2004, 181) has talked of a ‘contact’ Neolithic, dating to c. ?4100–3850 cal BC. A variation is to suggest regional differences: crudely, more emphasis in central southern Britain on possible colonisation, and more in western Britain on indigenous change (Cummings & Whittle 2004, 88–91). A more radical move is to begin to think now of a whole range of ways in which the identities of all the actors and agents involved were negotiated and recast through changing conditions. There remains little good evidence for the wholesale transference of continental cultural practices. If we look to the Michelsberg culture, for example, we only see partial overlap in the material repertoires (Thomas, this volume). The enclosure site of Spiere-de Hel in the middle Scheldt valley in Flanders— only a little over 100 km from the Kent coast—is a good example. It dates to c. 4000 cal BC (Vanmontfort et al. 2001/2). Its pottery and flint assemblages include deep necked jars and shouldered and even carinated bowls, and polished axes, scrapers and leaf-shaped arrowheads (e.g. Vanmontfort et al. 2001/2, figs 25–7 and 32–5), which would not look out of place in southern and eastern British assemblages of the earlier fourth millennium cal BC, but they also include other jar and bowl forms, and triangular points and long edge-retouched pieces, which certainly would. Equally, there is still no compelling evidence for unmanageably populous landscapes along the breadth of the continent facing Britain, which might have generated large-scale population movement. Southern Scandinavia has a gradualist sequence itself, very like that argued here for southern Britain (Larsson, this volume), while the Dutch estuaries and coast also follow a trajectory of step-by-step change (Louwe Kooijmans, this volume). Neolithic axes and adzes had been moved in numbers into the sandy lowlands of Belgium—really not far from the south-east coast of England—from the sixth into the fifth millennia cal BC (Verhart 2000, figs 3–4), but none of LBK style have so far ever turned up in southern Britain. The process of change was also gradual in western loess areas of Belgium (Crombé & Vanmontfort, this volume). The enclosure at Spiere-de Hel is again a good example. The construction of an enclosure is presumably a significant development in terms of


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local settlement dynamics, but the pollen evidence does not suggest extensive open ground (Vanmontfort et al. 2001/2, fig. 38) and there were few axes. The subsistence evidence suggests some cultivation, gathering and husbandry, especially of pig. The primary fill of the ditch suggests bank collapse, followed by recuts and gradual accumulation of material. We can note also the 20 m-longhouse at Deûle-Escaut, in west Flanders: seemingly on its own (in amongst more extensive Bronze Age features), quite late in date, perhaps c. 3000 cal BC, and the first of its kind to be found in the sandy lowlands (Demeyere et al. 2004; see also Crombé & Vanmontfort this volume). Other regions not far away do have more dense distributions of enclosures belonging to the northern Chasseen-Michelsberg cultural complex, such as the Oise, ‘petite Seine’, lower Marne and Yonne (e.g. Dubouloz et al. 1991; Martinez et al. 1984). These may well comfortably predate southern British enclosures, but their radiocarbon chronology has not so far been established with any reliability or precision. Some sites, on the basis of scattered or individual samples, may not date much before c. 4000 cal BC (Martinez et al. 1984). Another context from slightly further west in northern France, in the lower Eure close to the Seine near Rouen, also suggests a landscape c. 4000 cal BC that was far from over-crowded. Occupation in the vicinity of the site of Louviers (Giligny 2005) probably goes back to the early fifth millennium cal BC Villeneuve-Saint-Germain group, but use of the marshy location itself dates to c. 4400–4300 cal BC and is associated with the Cerny group. More frequent occupation, of northern Chasseen cultural affiliation, dates to c. 4000–3800 cal BC. This was use of wet ground, for passage and discard, and perhaps not principally a settlement in its own right, but the pollen evidence again shows a still well wooded setting (Reckinger 2005), and the animal bones suggest a principal concern with cattle, but also some hunting (Tresset 2005). On the other hand, there is no reason to exclude small-scale, piecemeal and perhaps episodic fissioning from continental communities. This may have been one of the vectors of change in the late fifth and early fourth millennia cal BC. Michelsberg culture chronology as a whole is far from precisely established, though a combination of typological studies and the anchor of north Swiss-south German dendrochronologies strongly suggests that it must date from at least c. 4300 cal BC. Jeunesse (1998; Jeunesse et al. 2004; cf. Dubouloz 1998) has argued for slightly earlier beginnings in northern France. In any event, it is likely that the northern Chasseen-Michelsberg cultural complex had already emerged at some point in the latter part of the fifth millennium cal BC, and thus the likely source of material borrowings and imitations was in place in time for related developments in southern Britain. Although not in southern Britain, the evidence of cattle bone at Ferriter’s Cove on the Dingle peninsula in south-west Ireland in a mid-fifth millennium



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cal BC context (Tresset 2003; Woodman et al. 1999) shows the absence of insular isolation. We cannot definitively establish whether the cattle in question were domesticated or wild, and thus from, say, north-west France or from, say, western Britain, nor can we necessarily suppose that the same conditions of contact obtained for southern Britain as for south-west Ireland with its distinctive history and post-glacial fauna, but it seems extremely unlikely that Ferriter’s Cove was an isolated moment of contact. By the very early fourth millennium BC, there were Atlantic seashells on the shores of the Bodensee (Dieckmann et al. 1997, fig. 22), and Alpine jadeite by the Sweet Track at or immediately after the end of the thirty-ninth century cal BC. Generalising from these sorts of examples, we have every reason to expect widespread and long-range movements by people across landmasses and sea in the late fifth millennium cal BC. So I believe that we can legitimately invoke circumstantial evidence for both processes of small-scale colonisation and indigenous acculturation. Other arguments can also be invoked, but with ambiguous results. One recent line of enquiry has been through isotopic analyses, the general thrust being that radical changes in human diet in coastal areas in Britain must speak for the rapid introduction of new subsistence practices by incoming people (e.g. Schulting 1998; Schulting & Richards 2002). It is not my intention to comment here on the ongoing debate (e.g. Milner et al. 2004; Thomas 2003), except to stress that the date of most of the humans sampled so far is no earlier than the thirty-eighth century cal BC (e.g. from Ascott-under-Wychwood onwards, as set out earlier in this paper), and thus most of the humans sampled so far did not belong to the circumstances perhaps more immediately relevant to the initiation or introduction of new practices. A gradualist perspective can again be suggested. A stronger argument may emerge through genetic studies of cattle. If Neolithic cattle in Britain prove not to be descended from native aurochs, as is being shown elsewhere (Bollongino & Burger, this volume), then there is the interesting question of who might have been more likely to have transported them across the Channel. From an indigenous point of view, there are many continuities that can be invoked. I have already discussed middens, and noted that at Ascott-underWychwood (as elsewhere: see also Hey & Barclay, this volume) the Neolithic occupation and midden were placed where there had been activity in the fifth millennium cal BC and earlier. The Fir Tree Field shaft is also a prime candidate for a place of local interest, episodic activity and deposition continuing from the late fifth into the early fourth millennium cal BC, and might be thought of as an unlikely locale for incoming colonisers to recognise. Importantly, beyond even these arguments, there is a strong case for thinking now of more complex recastings of identities. Humphrey Case, in his celebrated paper (Case 1969), long ago suggested something of the conditions


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of small-scale pioneer colonisation: the initial explorations by individuals, followed by the difficult initial establishment of new practices. Marek Zvelebil and Peter Rowley-Conwy (1986; cf. Zvelebil & Lillie 2000) then offered the indigenous perspective through the availability-substitution model. We need to take both these models further. Case’s scenario lacked any indigenous people, and the availability-substitution model invokes increasingly intense contact between farmers and hunters, but still the maintenance of separate identities. Fissioning from continental communities would have involved renegotiation of identity and reassessment of habitual ‘ontological security’, as both Kostas Kotsakis (2005) and Du8an Boric´ (2005) have suggested recently with reference to notions of frontier existence. Adoption of new practices among indigenous people may also have involved considerable shifts in identity, with the important caveat, following Barnard (this volume), that a ‘hunter-gatherer mode of thought’ could have persisted for long periods of time alongside other changes. The gradual developments suggested here would be compatible with that possibility. As others have commented (e.g. Robb & Miracle, this volume), in the end it may be far more profitable to think of the outcome of such fusions rather than try to track two rigidly defined groups, one Mesolithic and the other Neolithic. Everyone involved in processes of transformation is likely to have been changed by them. There may have been multiple triggers and motives, rather than simply single causes, and new practices may have spread rapidly—though not yet certainly simultaneously—as much because of existing, indigenous networks as through the energy of new arrivals. We need to continue to gather information about continental communities, and we need far more information on indigenous communities in the second half of the fifth millennium cal BC. We need above all a more precise chronology for regional British sequences from the fifth into the fourth millennia cal BC, which will be one of the ways in which we can finally make the old terms Mesolithic and Neolithic redundant. Note. I must acknowledge especially the cooperation and guidance of Alex Bayliss across all the dating projects reported here. For his work on long barrows I am very grateful to Michael Wysocki, and for her ongoing work on causewayed enclosures we are indebted to Frances Healy. Grateful thanks for their cooperation are also due to Alistair Barclay, Don Benson and Lesley McFadyen, as well as to Michael Allen, Philip Dixon, Francis Pryor, Miles Russell, Niall Sharples and other excavators of causewayed enclosures, as well as museum curators too numerous to list here in detail. Derek Hamilton constructed Fig. 4. I also thank Philippe Crombé, Seren Griffiths, Michael Ilett and Alison Sheridan for information. The long barrows datings have been variously supported by English Heritage, the Oxford Research Laboratory, Cadw and the Board of Celtic Studies, and the causewayed enclosures project is funded jointly by English Heritage and the Arts and Humanities Research Council.



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KINNES, I. 1985. Circumstance not context: the Neolithic of Scotland as seen from the outside. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 115, 15–57. KINNES, I. 1992. Non-megalithic long barrows and allied structures in the British Neolithic. London: British Museum. KOTSAKIS, K. 2005. Unsettling the Neolithic: breaking down concepts, boundaries and origins. In D. Bailey, A. Whittle & V. Cummings (eds), (un)settling the Neolithic, 8–15. Oxford: Oxbow. MADSEN, T. 1993. Barrows with timber-built structures. In S. Hvass & B. Storgaard (eds), Digging into the past: 25 years of archaeology in Denmark, 96–9. Aarhus: Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries/Jutland Archaeological Society. MARTINEZ, R., LOMBARDO, J. L. & VERRET, J. 1984. Le site chasséen du Cul-froid à Boury-en-Vexin dans son contexte historique et les apports de la stratigraphie de son fossé. Revue Archéologique de Picardie 1–2 (1984), 269–84. MEADOWS, J., BARCLAY, A. & BAYLISS, A. 2007. A short passage of time: the dating of the Hazleton long cairn revisited. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17.1, supplement, 45–64. MERCER, R. 2004. Enclosure and monumentality, and the Mesolithic-Neolithic continuum. In R. Cleal & J. Pollard (eds), Monuments and material culture. Papers in honour of an Avebury archaeologist: Isobel Smith, 39–46. East Knoyle: Hobnob Press. MIDGLEY, M. 2005. The monumental cemeteries of prehistoric Europe. Stroud: Tempus. MILNER, N., CRAIG, O. E., BAILEY, G. N., PEDERSEN, K. & ANDERSEN, S. H. 2004. Something fishy in the Neolithic? A re-evaluation of stable isotope analysis of Mesolithic and Neolithic coastal populations. Antiquity 78, 9–23. RECKINGER, F. 2005. La sequence palynologique. In F. Giligny (ed.), Un site Néolithique Moyen en zone humide: Louviers ‘La Villette’ (Eure), 29–33. Rennes: Documents Archéologiques de l’Ouest. RENFREW, C. 1973. Before civilization: the radiocarbon revolution and prehistoric Europe. Harmondsworth: Penguin. SAVILLE, A. 1990. Hazleton North: the excavation of a Neolithic long cairn of the CotswoldSevern group. London: English Heritage. SCHULTING, R. J. 1998. Slighting the sea: the transition to farming in northwest Europe. Documenta Praehistorica 25, 203–18. SCHULTING, R. J. 2000. New AMS dates from the Lambourn long barrow and the question of the earliest Neolithic in southern England: repacking the Neolithic package? Oxford Journal of Archaeology 19, 25–35. SCHULTING, R. J. & RICHARDS, M. P. 2002. The wet, the wild and the domesticated: the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition on the west coast of Scotland. Journal of European Archaeology 5, 147–89. SCHULTING, R. J. & WYSOCKI, M. 2002. The Mesolithic human skeletal collection from Aveline’s Hole: a preliminary report. Proceedings of the University of Bristol Spelaeological Society 22, 255–68. SHANKS, M. & TILLEY, C. 1987. Social theory and archaeology. Cambridge: Polity Press. SMITH, M. & BRICKLEY, M. 2006. The date and sequence of use of Neolithic funerary monuments: new AMS dating evidence from the Cotswold-Severn region. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 25, 335–55. SPIKINS, P. A. 2002. Prehistoric people of the Pennines. Reconstructing the lifestyles of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers on Marsden Moor. Leeds: West Yorkshire Archaeology Service. STEIER, P. & ROM, W. 2000. The use of Bayesian statistics for 14C dates of chronologically ordered samples: a critical analysis. Radiocarbon 42, 183–98. STUIVER, M. & REIMER, P. J. 1993. Extended 14C data base and revised CALIB 3.0 14C age calibration program. Radiocarbon 35, 215–30. THOMAS, J. 2003. Thoughts on the ‘repacked’ Neolithic revolution. Antiquity 77, 67–74.


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The Thames Valley in the late fifth and early fourth millennium cal BC: the appearance of domestication and the evidence for change GILL HEY & ALISTAIR BARCLAY

INTRODUCTION IN THIS PAPER, we review the evidence for the late fifth and early fourth millennia cal BC in the Thames Valley, a time of profound change which is traditionally studied by specialists from two very different schools of research. Our task is made more challenging because many sites of this period tend to be small and appear to have been short-lived. As a result, there are few stratigraphic sequences present which would lend themselves to more precise statistical analyses of radiocarbon measurements. In addition, sites with fifth millennium cal BC assemblages are not common and are not easy to interpret. Nevertheless, our interpretation of this period in the region has altered dramatically over the last 15 years. This has come about largely as the result of development-led archaeology and the resulting shift in focus of investigations from areas with well preserved monuments such as Avebury and the Cotswolds to the now well populated river terraces and floodplain (Allen et al. 1997; Cotton & Field 2004; Holgate 1988). Extensive area excavations have taken place on the gravel terraces, for example around Heathrow, Eton and Maidenhead in the Middle Thames (Allen et al. 2004; Ford et al. 2003; Lewis & Welsh 2004) and Yarnton and Shorncote in the Upper Thames (Barclay et al. 1995; Hey in prep.; Laws 2004). These have been supplemented by hundreds of small- and medium-sized investigations and evaluations. While this has resulted in an explosion of new information about site types and distributions, and a greater understanding of the wide range of activities in which people were engaged in the past, the sites have largely been of fourth millennium cal BC date with relatively few sites of the fifth millennium cal BC. Our understanding has also been greatly enhanced by the development of palaeoenvironmental techniques and better radiocarbon dating using a more Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 399–422, © The British Academy 2007.


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critical, integrated approach based on Bayesian modelling (e.g. Bayliss et al. 2007; see also Whittle, this volume). The results of this work are likely to have a profound impact on our understanding of the period under discussion here and will allow for a more precise chronology, perhaps based on timescales as exact as human generations.

TIME AND SEQUENCE There are few late fifth millennium cal BC radiocarbon dates from the Thames Valley, and most of these are single dates or assays on poor sample material (Barton & Roberts 2004, 345–7; Schulting 2000; Williams 1989), for example the date on charcoal from a hearth at Wawcott Site I in the Kennet Valley (BM-449: 5260±130 BP, 4350–3750 cal BC; Froom 1971–2, 27). There are many new dates from the Lower Thames and Thames Estuary on peat and organic-rich deposits (Bates & Whittaker 2004, table 6.2 and appendix I) and some dates are beginning to be acquired during work in the London area (Sidell & Wilkinson 2004), but few of these can be directly associated with human activity. It is possible to say that, at present, there are no well dated hunter-gatherer sites of the late fifth millennium cal BC, and no evidence for domesticates, pottery or monuments before 4000, possibly even 3900 cal BC (Barclay 2006; Whittle et al. 2007). Charred cereal remains of early fourth millennium cal BC date have been recorded beneath the Hazleton North long cairn, from the Area 6 midden at Eton, a pit deposit at Yarnton, from Woolwich, and from the longhouse at White Horse Stone in the Medway Valley, Kent (Allen et al. 2004, 91; Bates & Whittaker 2004, 67; Bayliss & Hey in prep.; Hayden forthcoming; Meadows et al. 2007). Some cereal pollen was also recorded from a basal clay deposit at Daisy Banks, just outside the Abingdon causewayed enclosure. A radiocarbon date of 4350–3750 cal BC (OxA-4559: 5240±110 BP; Parker 1999, 260) was obtained on charcoal and seeds from the bottom of this sequence. Immediately above this layer, there was evidence for major cereal cultivation which may be contemporary with the use of the causewayed enclosure (Adrian Parker, pers. comm.). Occupation sites and middens with pottery, domesticates, polished stone tools and buildings appear between 4000–3800 cal BC; monuments are also constructed at this date but only in a few restricted areas, such as the Cotswolds and the Medway Valley. The greatest phase of monument building (long barrows, causewayed enclosures, mortuary enclosures and cursus monuments) appears to belong to the mid fourth millennium cal BC, c. 3650–3350 cal BC (Barclay 2006; Whittle et al. 2007).


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THE THAMES VALLEY LANDSCAPE The Thames Valley is one of the great river systems of Britain. It extends over 150 km across southern England, and its mouth opens out on to the North Sea and the lowlands of Western Europe, while its headwaters reach into the Cotswold Hills, the Chalk Downs and the Avebury area. It contains a number of diverse and well known areas, including the Thames Estuary and its foreshore, Avebury and the Kennet valley, the Upper and Middle Thames gravels, the Berkshire Downs and the Cotswolds (Fig. 1; Holgate 1988). In the fifth millennium and at the start of the fourth millennium cal BC, a number of significant palaeoenvironmental changes occurred in this area. A marine transgression around the Thames Estuary was followed by a drop in sea level from around 4500 cal BC, allowing the formation of peat and eyots within the river channel (Bates & Whittaker 2004; Siddell & Wilkinson 2004). A fluctuating fluvial regime in the Lower Thames may have made the floodplain less attractive for permanent settlement (Siddell & Wilkinson 2004, 40–1). The elm decline is also evidenced at a number of sites at around 4000 cal BC (Robinson 1999, 269–70; 2000a, 30–2), although it is not always apparent in sequences spanning this period, for example at Runnymede or in parts of central London (Robinson 2000a; Siddell & Wilkinson 2004, 41–3). Sometimes this event seems to be coincident with woodland clearance, as at Daisy Banks, Abingdon (Parker 1995), but it is also apparent in places where clearance did not take place until the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age, for example at Sidlings Copse, north-east of Oxford (Day 1991, 465–7). The link between the elm decline and human activity, in particular clearance for agriculture, remains unproved.

WOODLAND Trees Evidence from the length of the Thames Valley shows that, by the fifth millennium cal BC, the area was covered by mixed deciduous woodland, with alder growing in the valley bottoms and lime, oak, hazel, ash and elm on better-drained soils of the gravel terraces and higher slopes (Day 1991; Robinson 1992, 49–50). Forest cover had become more dense over the course of the previous 3000 years. This picture emerges from a range of pollen and macrobotanical studies stretching from the Cotswolds to the Thames Estuary (Bates & Whittaker 2004; J. Evans et al. 2006; Robinson 1993, 12–14; 2000a; Siddell & Wilkinson 2004).


Figure 1. Map of the Thames Valley and sites mentioned in the text. Based on Holgate 1988, map 2.

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Tree clearance At Runnymede, environmental evidence indicates some clearings in the fifthmillennium forest in the form of open woodland within more dense alder carr (Needham 2000, 193–5), and a similar pattern is suggested at Thatcham (Healy et al. 1992, 70–2). The extent to which hunter-gatherer populations either took advantage of natural clearings where a wider range of plant foods would be available, or created and maintained these deliberately has been widely discussed (e.g. Tipping 2004), but the close association between such environments and hunter-gatherer sites seems inescapable (Bell & Walker 1992, 156–8; Zvelebil 1994). Human interference in this forested landscape is clearly demonstrable from the beginning of the fourth millennium cal BC. Where the evidence exists, however, sites of this date are almost always in small woodland clearings, for example Ascott-under-Wychwood and Hazleton North long cairns (Benson & Whittle 2006; Saville 1990). Woodland recolonisation subsequently occurred on both sites. An early Neolithic long enclosure of arguably slightly later date at Yarnton appears to have had a similar history of clearance in advance of construction followed by woodland regeneration. The general vegetation model for this area in the Upper Thames is one of shifting clearings in woodland against the background of the gradual opening out of the canopy (Hey & Robinson in prep.). A little further downstream, the Drayton Cursus was constructed in a cleared landscape where earlier monuments were present, but there were several phases of regeneration and clearance in the middle and late Neolithic (Barclay et al. 2003). At Eton in the Middle Thames, there is no evidence for widespread clearance in the early fourth millennium cal BC, despite the presence of middens and other contemporary activity nearby (Tim Allen, pers. comm.). A similar picture emerges at Runnymede, where pollen dating to the early fourth millennium cal BC indicates deliberate interference in tree canopy, although plant macrofossils continue to show dense alder woodland (Needham 2000, 193–5; Robinson 2000a, 31–2). In the London area, land clearance is associated with cereal cultivation on some sites in the early fourth millennium cal BC, although adjacent areas appear to have remained wooded (Siddell & Wilkinson 2004, 42). Woodland clearings evidently were important to populations of the fifth millennium cal BC in the Thames Valley, and may have been augmented and maintained by local groups to maximise resource aggregation. This would have provided opportunities for larger-scale gatherings of what may, on a day-to-day basis, have been small groups of people. The extent of clearance increased visibly in the early fourth millennium cal BC, and the scale and


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character of this activity show that this was deliberately undertaken and maintained. Nevertheless, few clearings were long-lasting; rather they shifted across the landscape. The overall impression of the landscape of the mid fourth millennium cal BC is of a mosaic of woodland and clearings (Robinson 2000a, 33), but with few permanently open areas. Where more extensive grassland existed this lay next to monuments which were the scenes of largescale gatherings, such as causewayed enclosures and cursuses (Barclay & Hey 1999). Settlement in woodland Within this forested environment, evidence of fifth and fourth millennium cal BC activity is surprisingly widespread in the Thames Valley and its catchment (Holgate 1988). Sites of this date, however, are often found as artefact scatters and are difficult to interpret as they are without a precise context and rarely associated with environmental evidence. In 1988, Robin Holgate suggested that activity dating to the end of the fifth millennium cal BC tends to be found on higher ground away from the valley floors where the earlier sites were often situated. More recent work in river valleys has shown that there are many more sites in lower topographies than he predicted (see below), but does indicate that later hunter-gatherer sites in these environments are smaller in size, suggesting that people moved in smaller groups or stayed in one place for shorter lengths of time. Increasingly dense forest cover, as witnessed for example at Eton (see below), may have reduced the number of locales with large concentrations of plants and animals and may have made smaller groups more effective at resource maximisation, as suggested for other valley systems in Europe (Whittle 1996, 153). Many sites on higher ground are also small, and Holgate has argued that the restricted range of implements present and the high proportion of microliths (with few or no tranchet axes or axe-sharpening flakes) indicate that these represent seasonally occupied hunting camps (Holgate 1988, 74–6). Based on both ethnographic and archaeological studies, Spikins (2000) has been critical of very simplistic models of Mesolithic land use. She points out the wide variety of potential uses of sites, and the adaptability and flexibility of hunter-gatherer groups in their use of the landscape. Additionally, use-wear analysis has shown that microliths were used for various tasks, not just hunting (Grace 1992, 60–2). Recent work in the region has demonstrated that, away from valley bottoms, sites of varying sizes existed on which a range of activities seem to have taken place, and the site at Windmill Hill near Nettlebed is a good example of this (Boismier & Mepham 1995). It may be better to think of Mesolithic groups as highly knowledgeable exploiters of their environment,



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moving across the landscape according to tradition, taking advantage of seasonal and other natural resources but also of more occasional fluctuations in the availability of different foods. Occasional abundance may have provided opportunities for gatherings of larger numbers of people. In the light of these new ideas, a review of fifth millennium settlement is overdue. Settlement of the early fourth millennium cal BC is also widespread and, although the pattern is more dense than in the fifth millennium, sites are similarly small and appear to have been short-lived. There is remarkably little evidence for occupation of any great duration and certainly little to suggest that individual settlement events lasted for more than a few months except in rare instances. On the other hand, evidence for the reuse of the same site on an episodic basis is rather common. Small discrete groups of features at Yarnton provide good examples of repeated, but short-lived visits to one place (Hey 1997, 106–8). Fifth and fourth millennium cal BC sites also share a similar distribution. Thrupp, Corporation Farm and Gravelly Guy are examples of sites with evidence of fourth millennium use where there had previously been huntergatherer encampments at the forest margin overlooking the floodplain (Holgate 1988, 87; 2004a). At Hazleton and Rollright, fourth millennium activity was preceded by smaller-scale episodes of use, perhaps for hunting (Lambrick 1988, 111–12; Saville 1990, 240), and a similar pattern is present in the Upper Kennet Valley (Pollard 2005; Whittle 1990). The juxtaposition of Mesolithic and early Neolithic sites has also been noted by Field for the Thames further downstream and on the Greensand of the Weald to the south (Field 2004, 156).

RIVERS The river and the riverbank At a time of dense woodland, the Thames and its tributaries would have been major routeways, as well as environments which provided a rich and varied plant and animal food resource (Clarke 1976, 464–5). The importance of these waterways is symbolised by finds of these periods which have been recovered from the river, for example Mesolithic picks and axes downstream of Goring and similar finds from London, including two bone harpoons (T. G. Allen 1995, 117–18; Field 1989; Haughey 2000, 225–8). An important collection of polished stone axes and some early Neolithic pottery have also been found for which a votive interpretation is probable (Bradley 1990, 66–7; Holgate 1988, 283–4 and 311–35). There is slight evidence that the practice of



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depositing human remains in rivers began during the early Neolithic (Allen et al. 2004, 97; Bradley & Gordon 1988, 508). It is noteworthy that many fourth millennium cal BC sites in the area lie close to the river. This is particularly marked along the Middle Thames at Eton, Cippenham, Bray Weir Bank Stud Farm, Bray Marina, Cannon Hill and the Maidenhead Flood Alleviation Scheme, where sites cluster in an area of 6 by 4.5 km near to the river (Fig. 2; Allen et al. 2004; Barnes & Cleal 1995; Bradley et al. 1981; Ford & Taylor 2004; Holgate 1988, 278). In contrast, little has been found in survey on the brickearths to the west of Slough (Ford 1987; Ford & Taylor 2004, 99). At Yarnton in the Upper Thames, early fourth millennium cal BC sites were situated less than 0.5 km from the river on gravel islands in the floodplain, and early sites on the Cotswolds are often at the heads of tributary valleys, for example Ascott-under-Wychwood and Rollright. The continuing importance of these arteries can be seen in the positioning near river confluences of causewayed enclosures and cursuses in the middle and late fourth millennium cal BC respectively (Barclay & Hey 1999, 68–70).

Riv er

0

Th

am

es

2 km

Figure 2.

Early Neolithic sites in the Eton and Dorney area. Based on Allen et al. 2004, fig. 9.2.



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Fifth millennium cal BC sites are often found in similar locations. In the Kennet, major sites have been found on or near the valley floor, including Wawcott and Thatcham, where the range of implements suggests either permanent occupation or seasonal use with a range of tasks being performed (Holgate 1988, 98). At Eton, by 5000 cal BC, lakes and reed fen on the floodplain had silted up and a series of channels flowed through the area on the banks of which levées had formed. Alder carr developed over the backswamps (Allen et al. 2004). Fifth millennium flint scatters have been discovered which, although not dense, were widespread and were mainly found on the levées close to the channel, but sometimes stretching back on to the floodplain perhaps indicating trails leading through the forest (Tim Allen, pers. comm.). In the early fourth millennium cal BC, activity was more widespread than previously but still mainly followed the channel edge, and exhibited a similar pattern of land use (Allen et al. 2004, 85). Although few sites have been investigated over such a scale as Eton, continuity in the location of settlement in riverside locations is apparent elsewhere, for example along the Maidenhead Flood Alleviation Scheme (Allen et al. forthcoming). At Runnymede, traces of late Mesolithic and early Neolithic activity were present on a silt island between two river channels, on an area later covered by middle Neolithic features and in situ refuse (Needham 2000). Although the earlier material remains were not dense, the evidence suggests repeated use of the site throughout this period of time (Needham 2000, 71 and 240). The proximity of early Neolithic to Mesolithic sites has also been noted further down the Thames in the Estuary (Bates & Whittaker 2004, 59; Field 2004, 156). At Yarnton, the picture is more ambiguous. Later Mesolithic flint was recovered during fieldwalking over the central gravel island on which early fourth millennium cal BC features were present from a range of activities. It was found in very small quantities, but its correlation with areas of early Neolithic activity is marked.

FOOD Zvelebil drew attention to the sophisticated use of wild plant resources by hunter-gatherer groups, ranging from opportunistic and incidental plant use to tending and managing wild resources, including burning the woodland (Zvelebil 1994, 37–40). Plant acquisition could have been one of the factors which influenced settlement strategies. There is, however, very limited evidence of plant use in the Thames Valley by hunter-gatherer communities in the fifth millennium cal BC, except for the ubiquitous presence of hazelnut shells on sites with suitable preservation such as Thatcham (Scaife 1992).


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The Neolithic is often taken to be synonymous with cereal cultivation and, as discussed above, cereals appear in the earliest dated fourth millennium cal BC contexts in this region. Intriguingly, most of the evidence for Neolithic cereals comes from contexts of the first half of the fourth millennium cal BC; later Neolithic cereal remains are sparse. At Yarnton, cereals formed around a third of early fourth millennium charred plant foods, whereas in middle and late Neolithic contexts approximately 1% of charred foods retrieved were cereals, the vast majority being gathered wild foods, as is typical of pit deposits in the area (Moffett et al. 1989; see also Bogaard & Jones, this volume). A similar pattern is mirrored at Eton and other sites in the region (Pelling forthcoming; Robinson 2000b, 207). The wide range of edible plants in river valleys and estuaries would have attracted wild animals (Clarke 1976, 464–5). Holgate thought that a shift in the fifth millennium away from marsh and riverside locations in favour of deciduous forest on upper slopes suggested a decrease in fishing and fowling and increased dependence on ungulates. Certainly at Stratford’s Yard, Chesham, all animal bone recovered was of ungulates (wild cattle, red deer, roe deer and wild boar; Grigson 1989) and a similar assemblage was present at Wawcott IV and XXIII (Holgate 1988, 98). However, fishing and fowling are notoriously difficult to detect in the archaeological record, and the absence of fifth millennium cal BC sites in low-lying areas is, as we have seen, not borne out by recent evidence. Domesticated animals—cattle, sheep and pigs—are present in all kinds of deposits of the early fourth millennium cal BC, along with deer and other hunted animals (Serjeantson 2003). Lipids on pots from Ascott-underWychwood, Yarnton, Eton and the Maidenhead Flood Alleviation Scheme show the presence of animal fats from both ruminants and pigs, and also the residues of dairy produce (Copley et al. 2003). At Runnymede, although the alder woodland canopy was largely intact in the early fourth millennium, there was a sharp rise in the number of dung beetles showing concentrations of large domesticated herbivores, probably cattle and pig, grazing in the forest (Robinson 2000a). The evidence for herding as an important activity increases through time, and woodland clearance may have been as much, or more, to do with creating browse as plots for cereal cultivation. If early communities were small in size, turning the wooded environments into open grassland may have been a gradual process.



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ACTS OF DEPOSITION Tree-throw holes In this woodland environment, tree-throw holes are frequently present on sites, and it is not uncommon to find pre-fourth millennium material within them. Tree-throw holes at Gatehampton Farm, Goring, yielded almost entirely Mesolithic flintwork and, on some parts of the site, exclusively later Mesolithic material, even though activity from the early fourth millennium cal BC onwards was present (Brown 1995, 80–1). Substantial assemblages from features at Charlwood in Surrey were probably also mainly from treethrow holes (Ellaby 2004, 15–16 and see sections on fig. 2.3), as were those from Farnham, Surrey (Clark & Rankine 1939). Additionally, some pre-fourth millennium tree-throw holes contain material that appears to have been deliberately placed there, for example those at Eton (Allen et al. 2004, 91). The majority of sites at Eton and on the Maidenhead Flood Alleviation Scheme had evidence for the discard of early fourth millennium material in tree-throw holes (Allen et al. 2004, fig. 9.2 and 91; Allen et al. forthcoming). At Eton, middened material was found that is indistinguishable in character to that found in hollows on the adjacent ground surface. Excavation of the Drayton Cursus revealed a number of tree-throw holes that were filled with burnt and redeposited material which appears to derive from the household, but with some placed deposits representing more special activity (Barclay et al. 2003, 60–7). Deliberate use of tree-throw holes has been proposed for other parts of southern England, as a means by which people registered occupation events within a natural forest environment and in the context of shifting settlement (C. Evans et al. 1999). At Eton and Maidenhead it is possible to interpret a number of these deposits in the same way, perhaps marking the temporary abandonment of an occupation site. Thus, deposition within tree-throw holes appears to be current before the fourth millennium cal BC and continues into the later Neolithic period. However, as pit deposits become more common through the fourth millennium cal BC, the use of tree-throw holes for the discard of material starts to diminish. Middens One activity which persisted in the Thames valley throughout the period under study was the creation of middens. Middens are a well-known phenomenon of the Mesolithic period and are found in Thames Valley contexts, mainly in low-lying elevations where there has been better preservation, for example Wawcott and elsewhere in the Kennet Valley (Holgate 1988, 4).


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Early fourth millennium cal BC middens are also present and the spreads discovered at Eton, in an area where no contemporary structures have been found, are of particular interest. They had their origin in the early fourth millennium cal BC and seem to have had a main period of use of around 200–300 years (c. 3800–3500 cal BC), although they may have lasted for as long as 600 years. The generally highly fragmented pottery, struck flint which had been much reused and soil micromorphology indicating considerable trampling over the midden areas, suggest frequent visits to these sites which may have been areas of provisional discard (Allen et al. 2004, 85–91). This does not seem to be casually deposited material. Items had been collected and brought to these places, perhaps from temporary middens, though whether this was the residue of special events or everyday life is uncertain. There were three middens at Eton, one up to 80 m long, lying within 3 km and all close to the river, in an area with much other contemporary activity (see above). The middens seem to represent episodic but repeated use, perhaps 60 or so individual episodes of deposition over up to 600 years. A similar pattern of periodic use has been suggested for the Mesolithic and early fourth millennium activity at Runnymede (Needham 2000, 240). The middens encountered beneath the long cairns of Ascott-underWychwood and Hazleton North, in the entirely different geographical location of the Cotswold headwaters of the Thames, were situated in places that had been visited by hunter-gatherer groups and were later used for funerary/ceremonial activity. At Hazleton, the abraded and fragmentary character of the finds and the occasional refits scattered over the area of the midden suggested redeposition of rubbish accumulated elsewhere (Saville 1990, 240–1). Material included a wide range of pottery vessels indicating drinking, cooking and storage, cultivated cereals, many hazelnut shells and evidence for the slaughter and consumption of sheep, cattle and pigs nearby. Some human bone was also present. The site then appeared to have been ploughed. It was suggested that this material represented domestic activity overlain after a period of time by the construction of the cairn; whether deliberately or because the area was still relatively clear of trees was uncertain (Saville 1990, 254). Recent post-excavation work on the Ascott-under-Wychwood long barrow suggests that the creation of the midden there was very similar. After a short interval, the midden seems to have been linked in deliberately to the construction of the monument and to the activities that accompanied the foundation of the monument (Benson & Whittle 2006). Analysis of the finds suggests that the midden represents the remains of gatherings of people from a wide area, at which the presentation and sharing of food was an important act. The physical traces of the midden would have been a



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mnemonic of these events. Links between deposits of curated material and later monuments have also been noted in the Avebury area (Pollard 2005, 109–11; Whittle 1990, 107). Pollard has suggested that such sites were projects of accumulation. They would have acted as visible markers of past occupation events and, as they grew in size and age, they would have gained traditional significance (Pollard 1999; 2005; Saville 1990, 254–5). Additionally, they would have been highly fertile places which would have encouraged good plant growth, including plants grown from seeds that had been selected and then discarded on the midden. This may have enhanced their symbolic significance, perhaps conveying notions of fertility and regeneration, as well as making them more distinctive features in the landscape (Bell & Walker 1992, 112; Whittle 1990, 107). Apparent cultivation over the midden at Hazleton North shows that this characteristic was recognised by early populations. The creation of middens, their augmentation through time, their representation of the past and connotations of abundance and fecundity seem to have been features of both fifth and early fourth millennium cal BC populations in the Thames Valley, although this activity diminishes through the fourth millennium. They demonstrate that people made repeated visits to particular locales, probably not on an annual cycle but as part of a traditional routine, and that these patterns of activity were as important to early farmers as to earlier hunter-gatherer groups. Pits Another indicator of the persistent use of particular places in the landscape through this period of time is the presence of pits. Pits have been found on a number of fifth millennium and earlier sites (Mithen 1999, 43). In the Thames Valley, four possible small pits or postholes were found at Stratford’s Yard, Chesham, associated with layers containing struck flint including microliths and microburins and animal bones (Stainton 1989). A possible marker post, 0.85 m deep, was found at Runnymede which was reminiscent of the eighth millennium cal BC post pits found in the Stonehenge car park (M. Allen 1995, 43–7; Needham 2000, 193), and pits or tree-throw holes were also found at Charlwood, Surrey (Ellaby 2004). Nevertheless, pit digging becomes a much more common practice in the fourth millennium cal BC and, in contrast to the formation of middens and deposition in tree-throw holes, it becomes more frequent through time. The extent of pit groups in the area has become more apparent over the last 20 years, as the number and scale of excavations have increased. In 1988, Holgate was able to list 60 Neolithic pits in Oxfordshire, but since that time hundreds have been excavated: over 200 at Yarnton alone.


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Pits sometimes cover extensive areas as at Yarnton, Lake End Road on the Maidenhead Flood Alleviation Scheme, Drayton and Gravelly Guy, and their date ranges indicate repeated use of individual areas over long periods of time (Allen et al. forthcoming; Barclay et al. 2003; Hey in prep.; Lambrick & Allen 2004). Such sites tend to be in river valleys, often quite close to the Thames or its major tributaries. Elsewhere, pits are found as tightly defined clusters, for example at Benson in South Oxfordshire (Pine & Ford 2003) and South Stoke (Timby et al. 2005), perhaps indicating more intensive but less long-lived use of single sites. Very often, however, they are recovered as isolated features or in pairs, perhaps indicating a single visit, and the geographical distribution of these is widespread (e.g. Booth & Simmonds forthcoming; Brady & Lamdin-Whymark forthcoming). It is rare to find the dense clusters of pits that are a feature of early fourth millennium sites of eastern England, such as those investigated at Spong Hill (Healy 1988). Excavation at Yarnton indicates the huge variation in the character of the deposits found within these features; they all have their own individual signature. Many pits contained deposits resembling middened material, with characteristically burnt or blackened soils, highly fragmented and abraded pottery with few refits, flint (usually in much fresher condition) and food remains. Other pits have more highly structured contents, including deposits with very large pieces of pottery from decorated vessels in a wide range of shapes possibly representing feasting sets or pits with fine flint objects (Hey in prep.). In general terms, the pattern of deposition within pits is not one of mundane rubbish disposal, but neither are these features suggestive of large-scale ceremonial events. Most are probably the result of small-scale household rituals commemorated by deposition in the ground, the lasting symbol of individual and personal events (Hey et al. 2003). They could represent the end of individual phases of settlement on particular sites, as suggested for deposits in tree-throw holes in Eastern England (C. Evans et al. 1999). The very careful way in which small amounts of material were selected for use in many pits raises the possibility that these were token deposits, representations of pots, for example, rather than the whole pot itself. Cremated human bone is also found in small quantity, sometimes only around 10 g, and this too could be symbolic. The dead In common with much of the British Isles, no fifth millennium cal BC human remains are known from this area (Schulting 2000). Formal deposits of human bone have been found in early fourth millennium contexts, however, although these are only rarely associated with monuments. One of the most



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striking recent discoveries has been that of a single burial found on the sandy banks of the river Thames at Blackwall, Greater London, within an oaklined grave from the charcoal of which an early date has been obtained, though this gives only a terminus post quem for the context (KIA-20157: 5252 ± 28 BP; 4230–3970 cal BC; GLAAS 2004). A large part of a Carinated Bowl had been placed over the head and another Carinated Bowl was recovered from a nearby pit. Human bone was included as part of a foundation deposit in the Yarnton longhouse (Hey in prep.). Burial within the Cotswold Severn long cairns, and possibly the Medway megalithic burial chambers, also began in the early fourth millennium, but most funerary monuments belong to a slightly later date (Whittle et al. 2007). The early dates suggested for portal dolmens in this area have not yet been confirmed by scientific dating (Darvill 2004, 50). ABOUT THE HOUSE Another new feature of fourth millennium cal BC activity in the area is the presence of houses. There are rare examples of dwellings in Britain predating the fourth millennium, including one that has been claimed at Broom Hill, Hampshire (O’Malley & Jacobi 1978), but no such structures have been recognised in the Thames Valley. One of the exciting developments of the last ten years has been the discovery of early Neolithic buildings in the Thames and Medway valleys. Structures of this date were already known from Gorhambury, Hertfordshire, and Sale’s Lot, Gloucestershire (Holgate 1988, 111–13; Neal et al. 1990; O’Neal 1966), but the new discoveries still only bring the number of substantial houses found in lowland England to around eight. Radiocarbon dates for the houses at Yarnton and White Horse Stone indicate that both were built and used between 3900–3700 cal BC and the same appears to be true of Sale’s Lot. Both the Yarnton and White Horse Stone structures were set in small woodland clearings in areas with only slight evidence for pre-fourth millennium activity (Hayden forthcoming; Hey in prep.). The White Horse Stone and Pilgrim’s Way buildings lay in the same dry valley and may have been intervisible. The Yarnton house, on the other hand, stood in relative isolation as shown by widespread stripping of the surrounding gravel terrace (Hey & Bell 1997, fig. 8). The sizes, shapes and designs of these buildings vary greatly (Fig. 3). The longhouse at Yarnton, was made up of a basic rectangle, 21 by 11 m, divided into two modules with some substantial post-pits which presumably supported the roof. It also had outer lines of smaller posts which may suggest a trapezoidal outer shape and a maximum width of 15 m (Hey in prep.; Hey &


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Figure 3. Early Neolithic houses in south-east England. 1 Yarnton; 2 Lismore Fields; 3 White Horse Stone, 4 Fengate; 5 Sale’s Lot; 6 Gorehambury.



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Bell 1997, fig. 9). The aisled building at White Horse Stone in the Medway Valley was more clearly rectangular in shape and slightly narrower, being some 8 m wide and 20 m long; parts of its outer long walls were defined by slots (Hayden forthcoming). A smaller structure found nearby at Pilgrim’s Way was less well preserved with only postholes surviving, but its similarity to the deeper posthole arrangements of the White Horse Stone house is striking. Several interpretations have been attempted of the possible building beneath the Sale’s Lot long cairn (Darvill 1996, fig. 6.5; Holgate 1988, fig. 6.19), but it is possible to see the gullies, hearth and postholes as belonging to a building like those at Yarnton or White Horse Stone (Barclay 2000). All these houses belong to a common architectural theme of large rectangular roofed timber structures (Darvill & Thomas 1996). The structure at Gorhambury, Hertfordshire was smaller, although it too was rectilinear (Neal et al. 1990, 8–9). It was defined by gullies and was constructed in separate square modules, having parallels with the house discovered at Fengate (Pryor 1974) and some Irish examples (e.g. Logue 2003). The range of early Neolithic buildings types is expanded by a circular structure at Yarnton which has recently been radiocarbon dated to the second quarter of the fourth millennium cal BC (c. 3600 cal BC; Bayliss & Hey in prep.). Other structures at Windmill Hill, Ascott-under-Wychwood and Hazleton North (Benson & Whittle 2006; Saville 1990; Whittle et al. 1999) are less recognisable as buildings and can be interpreted as façades, fences and screens. Whether all these buildings had a common function and were used throughout the year is uncertain, as their large size should not necessarily be taken to indicate permanent settlement (Whittle 2003, 40–4; see also Bradley, this volume). Consideration of the finds from them is not obviously helpful. With the exception of deliberate packing material in one post pit, the Yarnton building was virtually clean of material, even though the soil from all the postholes was sieved. At White Horse Stone, the postholes were found to contain fragmentary material: charred plant remains, charcoal flecks, flint chips and small fragments of animal bone and pottery. Sale’s Lot and Gorhambury yielded similar finds, and all these latter structures appear to be buildings in which small quantities of material accumulated and/or were discarded and were swept into postholes. The general absence of material remains around structures may be explained by careful collection and deposition elsewhere, for example in middens, although these have not yet been found close to houses. Traces of middens at Yarnton were around 450 m from the house, and no midden deposits were found near the White Horse Stone and Pilgrim’s Way structures despite extensive stripping of the surrounding areas. It has been argued that these large structures were not domestic dwellings, but were cult houses or halls for feasting (Thomas 1996). Their size alone,


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perhaps, hints that they were communal buildings able to accommodate more than a single family group. Nevertheless, the structures excavated so far in this area have yielded no obvious feasting debris. Human remains were found associated with the Yarnton structure, however, and a link with mortuary and/or cult activity is possible, although human bone might not have been out of place in any dwelling of this period. Given the range of evidence, it may be more appropriate to think of these buildings as serving more than one purpose and being the locales of formal activities within the domestic sphere (Bradley 2003; this volume).

FINAL THOUGHTS Throughout the period under study, there are strong strands of continuity. The utilisation of tree-throw holes, the small-scale digging of pits, the creation and abandonment of occupation spreads, and the accumulation of occupation material into middens are common to both periods. Holgate (2004b) has noted that the method of working flint is ‘virtually indistinguishable’ throughout except that, at some point, microliths were no longer produced and new tools such as polished axes and leaf-shaped arrowheads appeared. There is a pattern of the recurrent use of particular places in the landscape throughout. The evidence does not seem to be of continuous activity, not even annual events, but seems to represent episodic, repeated visits to sites which had been cleared in the past, may have been marked in some physical way by middens or posts, and which had special significance to communities who lived in the area. People throughout this period shared a common landscape experience of a largely wooded environment in which the river was a dominant feature. They inhabited woodland clearings which were often close to the river or its tributaries. However, in the fourth millennium cal BC, communities began to alter their landscape through increasingly substantial building projects: first houses and then monuments. There was more visible treatment of the dead and deposition of human remains. Clearings became more extensive, perhaps largely for pasture, and small cultivation plots were created. Cereals and domesticated animals, new flint tools and Carinated Bowl are found on all sites from the beginning of the fourth millennium cal BC. Such material is encountered on what can be regarded as traditional sites, for example in midden deposits, and in new constructions such as houses and monuments. It is tempting to try to rationalise this evidence into explanations of either indigenous populations adopting a new way of life, using the evidence of



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continuity (which is strong); or incomers, pioneer farmers, bringing their own material culture and different social practices, as witnessed by the new elements in the archaeological record (which are striking). But perhaps we should not be thinking in terms of either/or but, rather, both. Is it not possible that sites such as White Horse Stone and Yarnton represent the settlements of new people moving into a landscape that is lightly populated by small hunter-gatherer groups? In the case of Yarnton, they may have used land that had been cleared previously, but which was not frequently used, whereas at White Horse Stone new clearings seem to have been created in virgin forest. Existing communities, for example those around Eton, may have continued to inhabit the area following traditional land-use practices. In this context, newcomers may have been few but have had a profound impact on local groups, both physically and socially, leading them to reconsider their identity and social values and, ultimately, to change at least the ways in which traditional values were expressed in the material world. Note. We would like to acknowledge the considerable help of Tim Allen and Chris Hayden of Oxford Archaeology, Mark Robinson of Oxford University, Adrian Parker of Oxford Brookes University and Helen Glass of Rail Link Engineering, in providing information and discussing ideas. We are also grateful to Alasdair Whittle and Vicki Cummings for their encouragement and patience during the production of this paper.

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Mesolithic-Neolithic transitions in Britain: from essence to inhabitation JULIAN THOMAS

INTRODUCTION: ESSENTIALISING THE NEOLITHIC HOW DO WE IDENTIFY the point at which a Mesolithic society becomes a Neolithic one? For the culture-historic archaeology of the earlier twentieth century, this question was relatively straightforward; since a given community’s ‘culture’ was composed of a series of traits, the presence or absence of polished stone tools, ceramics, or domesticated plants and animals could be taken as diagnostic. Yet the recognition of a pre-pottery Neolithic in the Near East complicated matters (Childe 1957, 105). If the Neolithic were to be composed of different elements in different places, it would be more difficult to seek a universal explanation for it. This may be one of the reasons why, as the twentieth century progressed, there was an increasing tendency in the literature to emphasise the place of agriculture as the fundamental core of a Neolithic way of life. That is to say, the Neolithic was progressively essentialised, and presented less as the equipment and practices of a specific social group than as the manifestation of a characteristic stage of economic and technological development. As a result, the existence in north-west Europe of elements such as megalithic tombs, flint mines and earthwork enclosures, which had not been present in the Near East, came to be understood as a different expression of the same essential core. The Neolithic was ultimately the same thing throughout Eurasia. Now, of course, as soon as we define the Neolithic in terms of a particular mode of subsistence, the question of whether the economy is in all cases the base on to which other elements are built is placed beyond the scope of investigation. Material culture and monuments are by definition epiphenomenal. This view is clearly expressed in Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza’s account of the spread of agriculture into Europe (1971). Their intention was to plot the dispersal of cereals across the continent, but in practice they used radiocarbon determinations from the earliest Neolithic layers in a given region, on the grounds that had proper recovery methods been used in all Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 423–439, © The British Academy 2007.


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cases, cereals would have been found. ‘At some of the Neolithic sites used in the measurement’, they state, ‘the presence of cereals is today only inferred and not yet demonstrated directly’ (Ammerman & Cavalli-Sforza 1971, 675). So here, the Neolithic and horticulture had become synonymous, to the point that ‘in fact, ‘early farming’ and Neolithic are virtually equivalent, if we apply an economic definition of the term’ (Ammerman & Cavalli-Sforza 1971, 674). More seriously, Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza’s approach retained an emphasis on the mere presence of particular traits, rather than the degree to which innovations might have affected the lives of those who used them. It was the recognition that individual elements of the Neolithic ‘package’ might have been adopted separately by indigenous hunter-gatherers that occasioned an important re-evaluation of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Europe. Zvelebil and Rowley-Conwy’s (1984; 1986) three-stage model for the adoption of agriculture was considerably more sophisticated than previous views, because it recognised that simply having access to domesticated resources is not the same thing as being dependent upon them. Their argument was that in order to progress from ‘availability’ to ‘substitution’ and ‘consolidation’ there must be a perceived advantage to using cultivated resources, or a crisis in the availability of wild ones. Simply owning a pig or a handful of grain would not make a community Neolithic, and by implication different kinds of relationships prevailed between people and resources at different stages in the process of transition. Interpolating from Zvelebil and Rowley-Conwy’s argument, we could come up with a quasi-Marxist formulation which says that a society ‘becomes Neolithic’ at that point where it becomes dependent on domesticated resources for its biological and social reproduction. None the less, this definition also is unsatisfactory, because it still implies an invariant relationship between subsistence practices and other aspects of culture. The opening of the Neolithic involved some kind of significant change in most regions, but its causes should surely be the object of investigation, and not taken for granted. We should be suspicious of attempts to identify a single, pan-European causal motor, and recognise the possibility that the Neolithic might be quite different in its composition at different times and in different places. However, this need not preclude a systematic approach, even if it is one that has to attend to the fine grain of local sequences. What I want to propose is that the critical changes that we can identify across what we call the ‘Mesolithic-Neolithic transition’ are not limited to the presence or absence of particular resources or artefact types, or even their contribution to the overall diet of a community. Instead, we should address the way that people inhabit a landscape, and the extent to which new material and symbolic media transformed their existence, at the level of everyday tasks, routine movements, and habitual activities. Importantly,


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different facets of this transformation might not all have proceeded at the same rate, and this suggests that the phenomenon is best investigated at the regional scale.

EXPANSION AND STASIS Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza’s ‘wave of advance’ model proposed that agriculture had spread through a process of ‘demic diffusion’, in which slow, continuous expansion was fuelled by population rise, itself the consequence of the greater reliability of cultivated foods as well as the sedentary way of life that they promoted. Yet they noted that the rate of diffusion that they had identified for the Linearbandkeramik was ‘probably too high due to less complete documentation in central than in western Europe’ (Ammerman & Cavalli-Sforza 1971, 684). Subsequent work has demonstrated that the expansion of the Neolithic was not continuous, and that the very rapid dispersal of the Bandkeramik was sandwiched between two phases of comparative standstill. It is arguable that the Bandkeramik initially emerged from a complex pattern of interactions between communities practising a variety of economic regimes, both indigenous and incomers, around the fringes of the Balkan Neolithic during the first half of the sixth millennium cal BC (Bailey 2000, 138; Bánffy 2000; 2004; Whittle 2005; Zvelebil 2004, 48). So we might argue that rather than the LBK representing a seamless continuation of the inexorable expansion of the Neolithic out of the Near East, the colonisation of the loess country of central Europe was underwritten by a prolonged cultural negotiation involving semi-mobile Starcˇevo farmers, waterside Körös sheep-herders, and indigenous hunter-fisher-gatherers. Zvelebil (2004, 45) has recently drawn attention to the importance of ‘frontier zones’ between Mesolithic and Neolithic societies, developing wherever the spread of the Neolithic temporarily halted. We might add that wherever such ‘frontiers’ existed the interchanges that took place between communities with different traditions and social practices would have constituted a crucible of cultural innovation. Such a pattern was also established during the fifth millennium cal BC, following the Bandkeramik expansion. During late LBK, post-LBK and Rössen/Lengyel phases, contact between agricultural and hunter-gatherer groups is documented by the occurrence of pottery, stone points, shaft-hole adzes and bones of domesticated animals in locations increasingly distant from the loess country, in the lower Rhine Basin, in Denmark, and in Poland (Doman´ska 2003, 97; Fischer 1982; Nowak 2001, 582; Raemaekers 1999, 138–9; Verhart & Wansleeben 1997, 69; Zvelebil 2004, 47). I have argued elsewhere that it was out of this interaction between farmers and hunters that a distinct and different kind of Neolithic


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developed, initially through the incorporation of new resources and artefacts into indigenous ways of life, and later in the emergence of a distinctively north-west European Neolithic (Thomas 1996, 135). Taken together, the European sequence suggests an alternation between phases of rapid Neolithic expansion, and episodes of stasis and innovation. While ‘stasis’ or ‘inertia’ might carry a pejorative implication, it is emphasised that periods during which the Neolithic way of life ceased to expand were ones of cultural hybridisation and creativity, emerging out of the dialogue between farming and hunting societies. The beginning of the Neolithic in Britain can undoubtedly be attributed to an episode during which the Neolithic expanded rapidly, following a period of contact and innovation. The cultural change that took place around 4000 cal BC was apparently both swift and thorough, there being no mixed assemblages combining pottery with microliths, for instance (Schulting 2000, 32). While the abruptness of the establishment of Neolithic material culture in Britain has often been commented upon, it is the concomitant disappearance of Mesolithic assemblages that is the more remarkable. For in areas of Europe where an influx of farming people into a zone occupied by hunter-gatherers has been demonstrated, the former appear to have initially occupied ‘enclaves’ on easily worked soils, surrounded by still operative Mesolithic groups: ‘small islands of farmers in the immense sea of foragers’ (Nowak 2001, 590). This pattern is clear in the case of the LBK occupation of Little Poland and Kujavia (Doman´ska 2003; Nowak 2001), while Chris Scarre has recently suggested something rather similar in the case of Villeneuve-Saint-Germain incursions into Normandy and the Loire (2002, 400; this volume). If the Neolithic were brought to the British and Irish islands by continental migrants, they must have either overwhelmed the native population by violence and force of numbers, brought about their decimation by the introduction of new diseases, or incorporated and acculturated them from bridgeheads established on the coast. The view taken here is that each of these scenarios is inherently unlikely, and none adequately explains the available evidence. In the first place, it should be noted that the range of portable artefacts and architectural forms that characterised the earliest Neolithic in Britain cannot all be identified together in a single region of continental Europe. Moreover, it is arguable that British Neolithic assemblages drew selectively on continental ones. The earliest ceramics in Britain show a preference for fine carinated bowls, together with a variety of s-profiled, neutral and inflected forms (Cleal 2004, 165). Plain carinated and ‘pseudo-carinated’ bowls are found in Michelsberg, Chasséo-Michelsberg and Chasséen contexts across north-west Europe,



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but always as a relatively minor element alongside a much wider range of vessel forms, whether tulip-beakers, open-necked globular vessels and lugged flasks, or bag-shaped pots and vase-supports (Boujot & Cassen 1992, 204; Dubouloz 1998, 11; Jeunesse 1998, 35; Louwe Kooijmans 1980). Similarly, leaf-shaped arrowheads are present in the Belgian Michelsberg, but are found there alongside transverse and triangular forms (Raemaekers 1999, 142). The range of artefacts found in the earliest British Neolithic is thus restricted, and does not reflect the wholesale transfer of a continental assemblage across the Channel. Proponents of an externally introduced Neolithic are therefore more likely to argue for a series of independent arrivals of small migrant groups, embarking from different areas and following different routes (Sheridan 2000; 2004). This argument runs up against a further series of difficulties. Why should such modest incursions bring about the sudden extinction (in cultural or biological terms) of the British Mesolithic? If this were to be achieved by ruthless warfare, a massive influx of population would be required, involving a co-ordinated sea-born invasion by groups from across the seaboard of north-west Europe. This sits uneasily with our general understanding of social organisation and decision-making in the European Neolithic, which were anything but state-level polities with centralised authorities presiding over large geographical areas. The possibility of indigenous depopulation being brought about by epidemics of ‘Neolithic diseases’ is equally unlikely. The comparable case of the New World involved much longer periods of biological isolation, and did not result in so thorough a destruction of native American groups that they disappeared from the archaeological record. Even leaving aside these objections, exogamousintroduction arguments cannot explain why, if Neolithic communities had been established on the northern coasts of continental Europe for a number of centuries, they should all have decided simultaneously to migrate to Britain in the period around 4000 cal BC. The only way in which we can make sense of the evidence is by assuming that indigenous Mesolithic populations had a dynamic role in the formation of the British Neolithic, just as hunter-fisher-gatherer groups in the north Balkans had been implicated in the emergence of the Bandkeramik more than a millennium earlier. In both cases, the introduction of the Neolithic into a new set of social and ecological conditions required that it should be reconstituted, and this reconstitution involved an interaction between Mesolithic and Neolithic communities. The sudden appearance of the Neolithic in Britain was a consequence of its having taken on a character that could be readily assimilated by local groups.


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‘BECOMING NEOLITHIC’ This raises the interesting question of how the process of ‘becoming Neolithic’ was understood by prehistoric people. We have suggested that the most important level of change lies in people’s unconsidered, habitual, routine activities, which might be described as practices of inhabitation or dwelling. Such a definition deliberately cuts across any distinction between subsistence and technology on the one hand and ritual and symbolism on the other, as both are fundamentally involved in the way that human beings make themselves at home in the world. In this context it is worth considering the significance of recent studies of prehistoric diet based upon stable isotopes in human bones (Richards 2003; Richards & Hedges 1999; Schulting 1998). In coastal areas at least, these seem to indicate an abrupt change from diets with a major marine element to almost exclusive concentration on terrestrial protein. While some have claimed that this is a signature for the universal adoption of domesticated resources, the method alone cannot sustain such an argument, since it cannot discriminate between wild and domesticated foods (Thomas 2003). Contrary to Peter Rowley-Conwy’s assertions (2004, 91), it is equally possible that the observed pattern documents a cultural repudiation of foods that were positively associated with the Mesolithic. In other words, ceasing to eat sea fish, marine mammals and shellfish might represent an aspect of taking on a new Neolithic identity. As Schulting (2004, 23) argues, such a new identity might have been anchored in the everyday practicalities of keeping cattle, but if the lack of a marine component in British Neolithic diets was as profound as has been implied it seems that there must have been a positive avoidance of forms of nutrition that were readily available. While arguments concerning the dietary incompatibility of fish and cattle meat have been raised, it is to be remembered that such combinations have been common amongst European populations throughout the historical periods. Milner et al. (2004) have provided a series of good reasons for caution over the isotopic results. In particular, the existence of archaeological remains suggesting the continued acquisition of fish and shellfish into the Neolithic period in several parts of Europe (seen in the presence of shell middens and fish bones) demands explanation. However, it is unclear how their suggestion that the shift from marine to terrestrial diets at the start of the Neolithic may have been exaggerated by the introduction of cereal agriculture connects with some other aspects of the isotopic evidence. For Neolithic diets in Britain appear to have been quite diverse. Not only is it unclear that large quantities of cereals were regularly consumed by all Neolithic people, it seems also that a minority of people had a diet that must have contained a very high proportion of meat, without there being any indication that they were also eating marine foods (Richards 2000). Evidently, there is a great deal



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of work still to be done on elucidating the findings of stable isotope studies, and the culinary practices that they reflect may have been more complicated than some commentators have been willing to allow for. If future work does substantiate a rejection of marine foods, this might combine with the scarcity of deer bones at most Neolithic sites—despite the ubiquity of antler picks, and the presence of deer butchery sites remote from settlements in later Neolithic Orkney—to indicate that ‘being Neolithic’ involved explicitly not being Mesolithic (Sharples 2000, 114). That is to say, becoming Neolithic would involve an identity process, working on the same level as, say, ethnicity. Importantly, while this kind of phenomenon may involve moments of explicit choice and identification, it is also carried forward through everyday practices which are unconsidered and habitual (S. Jones 1997, 87). Dietary prohibitions, like modes of dress, gesture and speech, become part of the ‘instinctual’ way that people conduct their lives. We have already discussed the argument that the process of ‘Neolithisation’ could have been initiated in Britain by small groups of colonists arriving by boat, bringing artefacts, livestock and ideas with them (the practicalities of which were admirably mapped out by Humphrey Case in 1969). As we have seen, when compared with either a co-ordinated, largescale invasion or the adoption of Neolithic innovations by indigenous communities, this scenario is least able to account for the vanishing of Mesolithic material culture from the archaeological record. Implicitly or explicitly, the argument proposes that the native population of Britain would have been unfamiliar with domesticates, ceramics, public architecture and polished stone tools, and that it took the arrival of new people to introduce them. In turn, this relies on the long-established idea that Britain and Ireland were culturally isolated from the continent in the later Mesolithic. We can attribute this notion to Roger Jacobi’s studies of the microlithic style-zones which developed during the later Mesolithic (1976, 78). According to Jacobi, there was no evidence of contact between Britain and the continent from the middle of the Mesolithic onwards, when the land-bridge was lost to the rising English Channel. However, Peter Gendel (1984) has demonstrated that similar lithic style-zones emerged in north-east France, Belgium, western Germany and Holland at the same time, without any indication of a lack of contact between communities. Indeed, much recent ethnography has shown that material culture similarity is not an index of social interaction, and that people can readily move from one community to another, in the process discarding one material assemblage and adopting another. Moreover, estimates for the establishment of open water in the Straits of Dover vary from 5800 cal BC down to 3800 cal BC, after the Neolithic had actually begun (Barton & Roberts 2004, 345; Coles 1998, 76). So the temporal coincidence with the foundation of style zones is not proven.


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If lithic style zones were actually a consequence of the emergence of more closely defined social identities in the later Mesolithic, it is highly likely that Mesolithic people in Britain were familiar with developments on the continent, and even that there was a continuous movement and exchange of personnel across the English Channel—which may or may not have existed as a substantial body of water at this time—throughout the Mesolithic and into the Neolithic. In the case of Ireland, contact with the continent is suggested by the presence of domesticated animal bones in Mesolithic contexts at Dalkey Island, Sutton, Kilgreany Cave and Ferriter’s Cove (Woodman & O’Brien 1993). So as Woodman and McCarthy (2003, 36) concede, ‘human movement in either direction need not always be marked by the transfer of stone tools’. That people were moving considerable distances during the fifth millennium cal BC is not in doubt, but this was not necessarily the exclusive prerogative of the members of Neolithic communities. We should remember that Mesolithic people in north-west Europe were accustomed to travelling around the coasts by boat, probably to a greater extent than Neolithic communities who apparently showed less interest in marine foods (Warren 2000). Prolonged contact between British and continental communities would have been important if Neolithic innovations were to be established amongst formerly Mesolithic societies. For while domesticated resources and artefacts could be passed from hand to hand, the skills of nurture and manufacture required to use and reproduce them would have had to be learned. While new types of stone tools could readily have been made by people already versed in flint knapping and pressure-flaking, and the herding of cattle might not have been beyond the abilities of former hunters familiar with the habits of large mammals, both potting and cultivating cereals would have required entirely new skills. These might have been learned through extended visiting or apprenticeship relationships, or acquired through the exchange of marriage partners. Completely new sets of skills, which enabled the production of ceramic vessels and new types of food, are likely to have been understood as magical, and the persons versed in them would have stood out as very special indeed. It is interesting to speculate as to the implications of such special knowledge for gender relations in the earliest Neolithic societies in Britain. Might both potting and the cultivation of cereals have been the prerogative of women?

INHABITING MESOLITHIC AND NEOLITHIC LANDSCAPES IN BRITAIN Accepting that Mesolithic groups in Britain may have been aware (in general terms) both of the existence and the potential of Neolithic ways of life for



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centuries before 4000 cal BC, we need to consider how and why the landscapes of Britain came to be inhabited in new ways. A good place to begin is with the character of the Mesolithic landscape. Tim Ingold (2000, 44) has maintained that hunting and gathering are never merely the acquisition of foodstuffs, but are always embedded in social relationships and an experience and understanding of landscape. Most hunter-gatherers consider that the landscape embodies vital forces and energies, which flow through patterns of reciprocity that link humans, animals, supernatural beings and places. Rather than a hostile environment, the landscape is one that provides for humans, within which animals are a kind of person who give up their flesh and energy, provided that they are treated with respect (Zvelebil 2003, 6). There is every reason to suspect that in general terms the Mesolithic landscape was perceived in these terms, in which material and metaphysical processes were thoroughly bound up with one another (see also Tilley, this volume). Recently, a number of scholars have become sceptical of the traditional view that many of the best known Mesolithic sites were ‘base-camps’, occupied by aggregated communities for part of the year, and from which a variety of logistic tasks were planned and co-ordinated. Instead, we may have a dispersal of tasks across the landscape (Conneller 2000, 140–4; Conneller & Schadla-Hall 2003; Finlayson 2004, 226; Spikins 2000, 111). Star Carr, for instance, has been reinterpreted as a hunting camp. And yet, while many Mesolithic sites were short-lived, and actually avoided after their principal occupation, this was one of a number of places that was returned to repeatedly over many decades. These ‘persistent places’ were set apart not simply because of their subsistence functions, but also because they were sanctioned as locations where a series of critical transformative activities could be performed. In the case of Star Carr, Chantal Conneller (2004, 41) has argued that it was the transformation of animal bodies into artefacts that could extend human agency, like barbed points or antler frontlets, and the later deposition of these items, that was at stake (see also Warren, this volume). Similarly, some of the shell middens of western Scotland were places to which animal bones and antler were taken for the manufacture of tools, and where in some cases complex treatment was afforded to human corpses (Kitchener et al. 2004, 80; J. Pollard 2000, 131; T. Pollard 1996, 204). Arguably, then, Mesolithic landscapes were ones in which human and animal, culture and nature, spiritual and material, were not separated, but which contained special places in which entities and the relationships connecting them could be transformed. My argument is that the beginning of the Neolithic in mainland Britain saw the introduction of domesticates and new forms of material culture into a landscape which otherwise maintained much of its Mesolithic character. In the process, a series of substitutions took place. Many people, not all,


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continued to have a mobile way of life, but herding cattle rather than hunting deer and aurochs (Ray & Thomas 2003). Certain places continued to be important locations to return to, but the critical relationships that were negotiated there were no longer just between humans and animals, but also between the living and the dead. The earliest monuments of the Neolithic were generally small and architecturally unelaborated, at least by comparison with the causewayed enclosures, long mounds, large passage tombs and earthwork cursus monuments which began to be constructed some centuries into the period. The precise chronology awaits refinement (see Whittle, this volume), but these may include simple passage tombs, portal dolmens, postdefined avenues and cursus monuments, large timber halls, and some of the linear timber mortuary structures that would later be incorporated into various barrows and cairns (Darvill 2004, 57; Scarre et al. 2003; Schulting 2000, 28; Thomas 2006; Whittle 2004). Indeed, it might be better to reserve the term ‘monuments’ for those later developments, and describe these early structures instead as ‘public architecture’. Some of these were places at which transformative processes overtook the bodies of the dead (Lucas 1996, 102; Thomas 2000, 660). Yet those dead were not confined to the tombs that were being built, and de-fleshed body parts were curated and circulated between sites of various kinds. This may indicate a degree of continuity with Mesolithic attitudes to the dead. Similarly, at the timber cursus monument at Holm near Dumfries, which dates to the very earliest part of the Neolithic (4000–3900 cal BC), the structure was burned down and rebuilt as many as eight times (Thomas 2004a). Both in the use of the site for processional practices which were essentially rites of passage, and in these repeated events of burning, we can identify a theme of transformation, which was combined with the periodic return to a specific location. Again, this suggests an attitude to place and landscape that had Mesolithic antecedents. In addition, we could point to a series of radiocarbon determinations which suggest that the flint mines of Sussex were already in operation within the opening centuries of the British Neolithic (Ambers & Bowman 2003, 533). As in the Mesolithic, this indicates the elaboration of locations in which materials were transformed into artefacts that could be used to enhance the capabilities of human bodies (Edmonds 1995, 63). Very often, the places to which people returned during the earlier Neolithic were ones that had been occupied during the Mesolithic, although in some cases this may have been many decades earlier. At Hazleton North and Ascott-under-Wychwood, long cairns were built over scatters of Mesolithic artefacts, while at Crarae and Glecknabae, chambered tombs were constructed on top of shell middens (Bryce 1903, 42; Case 1986, 24; Saville 1990, 14; Scott 1961, 7). Similarly, at Fir Tree Field on Down Farm, in northern Dorset, a large natural shaft received deposits of Mesolithic microliths



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and Neolithic bowl sherds at times which may not have been separated by more than a few decades (Allen & Green 1998; see also Whittle, this volume). These spatial associations might be put down to coincidence, but it is notable how much more frequent the presence of both Mesolithic and Neolithic material on the same site is in Britain than in Ireland, a point to which we will return (see Sheridan 2004, 12). It seems likely that for the first four or five centuries of the Neolithic, British landscapes remained ones in which spiritual or metaphysical processes were thoroughly integrated with economic ones, and in which patterns of movement echoed those of the Mesolithic. However, over time, we can identify a process of segmentation and enclosure, in which the sacred or the otherworldly was increasingly separated from everyday life. First, the construction of causewayed enclosures provided a series of arenas within which practices of exchange, the treatment of the dead, and calendrical gatherings could be contained (Oswald et al. 2001; see also Tilley, this volume). Secondly, as Robert Johnston has argued for the Dorset Cursus, the construction of linear enclosures at once sanctified particular ancestral trackways, and rendered them inaccessible (1999, 44). Finally, the closure and blocking of chambered tombs and long barrows brought the circulation of the remains of the dead to an end, and established a new distance between the living and the dead (Thomas 2000). Taken together, we might say that these processes brought about a ‘disenchantment’ of the landscape, in which the magical or the uncanny came to be restricted to particular places (Thomas 2006). This marked a definitive break with Mesolithic patterns of inhabitation. As we have mentioned, this is a sequence that may apply to the British mainland, but not to Ireland. Peter Woodman (2000, 247) has pointed to the fundamental difference between the Mesolithic of Britain and Ireland, arising from the absence of large wild mammals like deer, elk and aurochs in the latter. While the British Mesolithic was regionally diverse and in some places highly mobile, that in Ireland was more specialised and focused on the use of marine, riverine and estuarine environments. Thus the contexts into which Neolithic resources and artefacts were introduced were quite different: something that a check-list approach is bound to overlook (Thomas 2004b). In Ireland, some of the kinds of substitution that took place in Britain were not possible, and it may be that the transition to a landscape organised around the rhythms of agricultural production was swifter, with a consequent dislocation of settlement patterns, resulting in a lack of continuity of occupation (Cooney 2000, 22). The implication of the different pathways followed in Britain and Ireland is that formally similar cultural traits might have an entirely different significance in the two contexts—and indeed, are likely to have varied in more subtle ways from region to region. A case in point is the concept of the house,


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a continental European notion which was deployed in rather different ways on the two islands. In Ireland, timber buildings are very numerous, and while Sarah Cross (2003) has produced convincing arguments that some of these may have had a ceremonial role as feasting halls, it is probable that many were the dwellings of ‘domestic communities’ (Cooney 2000, 66). Those in Britain, and particularly Scotland, are fewer in number, and considerably more monumental in scale, suggesting that they relate to the activities of a larger, and perhaps more dispersed community. Those in the north have all been burnt down, and the comparison with Bandkeramik houses on the continent (which rarely burned at all) and experimental house burnings (which suggest that thorough burning requires the fire to be tended: Bankoff & Winter 1979), as well as the fact that the Claish structure was burned on two occasions (Barclay et al. 2002, 102), indicate that this was deliberate. As such, the practice fits into a broader pattern of the firing of monumental structures in northern Britain, including timber cursuses, the façades of earthern long barrows, and palisaded enclosures. This implies that the large assemblages of cereals discovered at Balbridie, Lismore Fields, Crathes and Claish, but not at the unburned southern sites of Yarnton and White Horse Stone (Fraser & Murray 2005, 1; Garton 1991, 13; Hey et al. 2003, 81; Ralston 1982, 244), were deliberately destroyed as a form of conspicuous consumption, of a valued foodstuff, and thus that their representativeness of broader economic patterns needs to be considered with caution (compare G. Jones 2000, 81). Of course, someone in early Neolithic Britain must have been growing cereals (cf. Bogaard & Jones, this volume), and the probability is that they were at least semi-sedentary. The large timber buildings may have had a role in storage and redistribution, but their scarcity implies that they may have been connected with the activities of one element of a complex society, which also contained more mobile groups engaged in herding and gathering, all linked by bonds of reciprocity and shared ceremonial activities. This would make sense of the evidence for the intensive processing of wild plants at The Stumble in Essex (Murphy 1990), the presence of wild plant remains at many sites (Robinson 2000) (notwithstanding the potential for cereals to be systematically underrepresented: Rowley-Conwy 2000), and the wide diversities in diet that are suggested by the isotopic evidence (Richards 2000). What is more confusing is that the large timber halls in Britain were restricted to the first 400 years of the period, and that similar evidence is comparatively lacking for the following 1200 years. Their construction and use coincide precisely with the period that we have suggested precedes the emergence of a fully Neolithic landscape. It may be that in the first phase of the period the introduction of new resources, which were transformed into foods in new ways, required a new kind of special place within an otherwise mobile and animate landscape.



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This contribution has hoped to argue that our assessment of the impact of the domesticated species and innovative forms of material culture that made up the Eurasian Neolithic is best achieved at the level of the landscape. Neither a list of traits nor an exclusive focus on subsistence economics can give us an appreciation of the extent to which the rhythm and grain of everyday lives were transformed. Ostensibly similar patterns can conceal variable realities, and these need to be addressed at the level through which they were lived.

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SCHULTING, R. J. 2004. An Irish Sea change: some implications for the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. In V. Cummings & C. Fowler (eds), The Neolithic of the Irish Sea: materiality and traditions of practice, 22–8. Oxford: Oxbow. SCOTT, J. G. 1961. The excavation of the chambered cairn at Crarae, Loch Fyneside, Mid Argyll. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 94, 1–27. SHARPLES, N. 2000. Antlers and Orcadian rituals: an ambiguous role for red deer in the Neolithic. In A. Ritchie (ed.), Neolithic Orkney in its European context, 107–16. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. SHERIDAN, A. 2000. Achnacreebeag and its French connections: vive the ‘auld alliance’. In J. C. Henderson (ed.), The prehistory and early history of Atlantic Europe, 1–16. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. SHERIDAN, A. 2004. Neolithic connections along and across the Irish Sea. In V. Cummings & C. Fowler (eds), The Neolithic of the Irish Sea: materiality and traditions of practice, 9–21. Oxford: Oxbow. SPIKINS, P. 2000. Go forth and multiply? Gradual population growth re-assessed — a case study from Mesolithic Northern England. Archaeological Review from Cambridge 17, 99–121. THOMAS, J. S. 1996. Time, culture and identity. London: Routledge. THOMAS, J. S. 2000. Death, identity and the body in Neolithic Britain. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6, 603–17. THOMAS, J. S. 2003. Thoughts on the ‘repacked’ Neolithic revolution. Antiquity 77, 67–74. THOMAS, J. S. 2004a. Materiality and traditions of practice in Neolithic south-west Scotland. In V. Cummings & C. Fowler (eds), The Neolithic of the Irish Sea: materiality and traditions of practice, 174–84. Oxford: Oxbow. THOMAS, J. S. 2004b. Recent debates on the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Britain and Ireland. Documenta Praehistorica 31, 113–30. THOMAS, J. S. 2006. On the origins and development of cursus monuments in Britain. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 72, 229–42. VERHART, L. & WANSLEEBEN, M. 1997. Waste and prestige: the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the Netherlands from a social perspective. Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia 29, 65–73. WARREN, G. M. 2000. Seascapes: boats and inhabitation in the later Mesolithic of western Scotland. In R. Young (ed.), Mesolithic lifeways: current research in Britain and Ireland, 97–104. Leicester: Leicester University Press. WHITTLE, A. 2004. Stones that float to the sky: portal dolmens and their landscapes of memory and myth. In V. Cummings & C. Fowler (eds), The Neolithic of the Irish Sea: materiality and traditions of practice, 81–90. Oxford: Oxbow. WHITTLE, A. 2005. Lived experience in the Early Neolithic of the Great Hungarian Plain. In D. Bailey, A. Whittle & V. Cummings (eds), (un)settling the Neolithic, 64–71. Oxford: Oxbow. WOODMAN, P. 2000. Getting back to basics: transitions to farming in Ireland and Britain. In T. D. Price (ed.), Europe’s first farmers, 219–59. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. WOODMAN, P. C. & MCCARTHY, M. 2003. Contemplating some awful(ly interesting) vistas: importing cattle and red deer into prehistoric Ireland. In I. Armit, E. Murphy, E. Nelis & D. Simpson (eds), Neolithic settlement in Ireland and western Britain, 31–9. Oxford: Oxbow. WOODMAN, P. C. & O’BRIEN, M. 1993. Excavations at Ferriter’s Cove, Co. Kerry: an interim statement. In E. Shee Twohig & M. Ronayne (eds), Past perceptions: the prehistoric archaeology of south-west Ireland, 25–34. Cork: Cork University Press. ZVELEBIL, M. 2003. People behind the lithics: on social structure and ideology of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in Europe. In L. Bevan & J. Moore (eds), Peopling the Mesolithic in a northern environment, 1–26. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports.



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From Picardie to Pickering and Pencraig Hill? New information on the ‘Carinated Bowl Neolithic’ in northern Britain ALISON SHERIDAN

INTRODUCTION ALASDAIR WHITTLE HAS RECENTLY, and pertinently, made a plea for archaeologists in Britain to define very specifically what was going on between 4000 and 3700 cal BC —the crucial period when the traits that we conventionally describe as Neolithic (primarily food production, novel toolkits and technologies, and a new or changed world view reflected, for example, in the construction of funerary monuments) appeared over much of Britain and Ireland (Whittle 2003; this volume). He has lamented that ‘what was going on around 4000 BC remains stubbornly and frustratingly unclear and certainly varied’ (Whittle 2003, 150). This view has been informed by the realisation— thanks to his (and others’) radiocarbon dating of key southern British material (e.g. Healy 2004)—that many of the iconic types of Early Neolithic site such as causewayed enclosures and megalithic tombs do not, by and large, date to the first few centuries of the fourth millennium (Ambers & Housley 1999; Schulting 2000; Whittle & Wysocki 1998). The clearest exception to this might be the Carinated Bowl-associated causewayed enclosure at Magheraboy, Co. Sligo, in north-west Ireland, where seven dates from short-lived species suggest its construction between 4000 and 3700 cal BC: www.nra.ie/Archaeology/ArchaeologyonRoadSchemes/file,808,en.pdf; Ed Danaher, pers. comm. (further dates, and Bayesian modelling, are in hand: Alex Bayliss, pers. comm.). The purpose of this contribution is to highlight the considerable and growing body of evidence for Neolithic activity, reliably dated to between c. 3950/3900 and 3700 cal BC in northern Britain (especially Scotland), that is associated with the use of pottery in the ‘Carinated Bowl’ ceramic tradition (see below for definition). The distribution of this type of pottery extends far beyond the area under review, to encompass much of Britain and much of



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Ireland. The Carinated Bowl-associated Neolithic is one of at least three distinct strands of the earliest Neolithic activity in Britain and Ireland, the others being i) a strand linking north-west France (probably Normandy) with southwest England during the first quarter of the fourth millennium cal BC, and expressed in terms of ceramics and funerary monuments such as the simple passage tomb at Broadsands, Devon (Pailler & Sheridan in press); and ii) a Breton strand, which is found along the Atlantic/Irish Sea façade and seems to have appeared marginally earlier than the Carinated Bowl tradition, between c. 4200 and 3900 cal BC. This is associated with Breton-style pottery and simple megalithic tombs—namely polygonal chambers and simple passage tombs—and has been dealt with in detail elsewhere (e.g. Sheridan 2003a; 2004; 2005; see also Woodman & McCarthy 2003 for an even earlier, short-lived episode of ‘Neolithisation’ c. 4300 cal BC or earlier, its dating being open to debate, linking the west of France and south-west Ireland). All that remains to be added regarding the Breton strand is that the current author’s suspicion that the deep, uncarinated, undecorated bowl from the simple passage tomb at Carreg Samson in south-west Wales (Lynch 1975, fig. 5) should be added to the list of Breton-style pottery, has been confirmed by Breton colleagues (Yvan Pailler and Serge Cassen, pers. comm.). The position taken by this author (contra Thomas 1998; 1999) is that the appearance of the Carinated Bowl-associated Neolithic package (and indeed that of other strands of Neolithisation) is best explained, albeit unfashionably in some quarters, in terms of the arrival of small farming groups from the Continent. An acculturationist, gradualist position on the MesolithicNeolithic transition, as typified by the work of Julian Thomas, simply fails to account for the evidence to hand, as others (e.g. Monk 2000; Cooney 2000; 2001; Rowley-Conwy 2004; Warren 2005) have pointed out. And even though many writers have highlighted the difficulties of pinpointing an area of origin for our hypothetical Continental ‘Carinated Bowl settlers’ (e.g. Kinnes 1988), it will be argued in the final section of this paper that the search is neither fruitless nor hopeless. Wherever calibrated radiocarbon dates are cited, they have been calibrated using OxCal v.3.10, with atmospheric data from Stuiver et al. 1998, and are cited at the two sigma date range.

THE ‘CARINATED BOWL NEOLITHIC’ IN NORTHERN BRITAIN: THE PICTURE IN 2006 Although there have been fewer developer-funded excavations in northern Britain than in southern England or Ireland, they have, nevertheless,


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produced a significant number of Early Neolithic finds in the 21 years since Ian Kinnes published his review of the Scottish Neolithic (Kinnes 1985). Together with chance finds and the results of research-based excavations, over 40 new sites yielding early Carinated Bowl pottery and/or material radiocarbon dated to the first three centuries of the fourth millennium cal BC are known from Scotland alone (Fig. 1; Appendix; and see below for discussion of the dates). These substantially reinforce the previously-known distribution pattern of the ‘Carinated Bowl Neolithic’ in Scotland. Elsewhere in northern Britain, discoveries include settlement evidence excavated by Clive Waddington at various sites in Northumberland, particularly in and around the Milfield Basin (Waddington 1999; 2000; 2001; pers. comm.; Waddington & Passmore 2004, 41–8; www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/ show/ConWebDoc.5819 (but note: the Early Neolithic activity at the Cheviot Quarry is now known to comprise pits, not houses); Waddington & Davies 2002; cf. Miket 1987). And in Wales, the newly discovered second rectangular house at Llandygai, Gwynedd, adds to the small amount of ‘Carinated Bowl Neolithic’ evidence in western Britain (Kenney & Davidson 2006). Some of the recent discoveries have already been published fully (e.g. the ‘hall’ at Claish, Stirling: Barclay et al. 2002). Some have so far only appeared in note form (e.g. in Discovery and Excavation in Scotland), in regional reviews (e.g. Manby et al. 2003, 42–9; Waddington 2000; Waddington & Passmore 2004; Warren 2004) or on websites; and others are yet to be reported on publicly. The brief review presented here (with the kind permission of the excavators) is intended to highlight the amount, range and quality of new evidence at our disposal. The first part of this paper will outline the range of contexts which have produced material radiocarbon dated to the early fourth millennium cal BC and/or early forms of Carinated Bowl pottery over the last 21 years; following sections will discuss the dating evidence, the pottery and other aspects of material culture; a penultimate section will aim to integrate this information within a model of Early Neolithic society; and the final section will address the hypothetical Continental origin of the ‘Carinated Bowl Neolithic’. The main focus of attention will be Scotland, and the paper does not purport to provide an exhaustive corpus of information for northern Britain; nor does it provide a much needed overall distribution map for Carinated Bowl pottery. Such tasks remain to be completed by others; suffice it to say at this point that Rosamund Cleal’s recent review of the earliest Neolithic pottery in Wessex and south-west England (2004) has usefully highlighted the relatively sparse distribution of ‘classic’ traditional Carinated Bowl pottery in that part of Britain.


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Figure 1. Scottish finds, mostly since 1985, of: i) traditional Carinated Bowl pottery (circles); ii) definite and possible examples of ‘North-East style’ CB pottery (squares); iii) other ‘modified CB’ pottery probably of early fourth millennium date (triangles); and iv) other evidence relating to the ‘Carinated Bowl Neolithic’ in Scotland, as discussed in the paper. For key to numbering, and for further details, see Appendix. Un-numbered symbols indicate previous finds of the same kinds of CB pottery, to indicate the overall distribution of this tradition.



TYPES OF FINDSPOT ‘Halls’, houses and settlement evidence in general The recent discoveries confirm and extend the previously known range of evidence for ‘halls’, houses and general settlement evidence (see Barclay 2003 for a recent review of the lowland Scottish evidence; Waddington & Davies 2002 and Waddington & Passmore 2004 for a review of the evidence from Northumberland; and Manby et al. 2003 for a review of the Yorkshire evidence). For the Scottish sites, details of associated pottery and dates are summarised in the Appendix. Space does not permit a discussion about the function of ‘halls’ or houses; suffice it to say that the views expressed by Thomas in his 1996 review of Neolithic houses are not shared by this author. Two new large ‘halls’ have been excavated, at Claish (24 by c. 8.5 m) and at Warren Field, Crathes, Aberdeenshire (c. 20 by 9 m, Fig. 2: Fraser 2005; Murray 2004; 2005a; Murray & Fraser 2005; Murray & Murray 2004). Both are rectangular, internally-partitioned, post-built structures with gently bowed ends, and the discovery of daub at Claish may indicate the former coating of the substantial timber wall uprights. The Claish ‘hall’, and its Scottish and Continental comparanda, have already been discussed at length by Barclay et al. (2002). The Crathes site, excavated in 2004–5, constitutes the

Figure 2. The ‘hall’ at Warren Field, Crathes, Aberdeenshire: aerial photograph by Moira Greig, 2005. Copyright Aberdeenshire Archaeology Service.


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third excavated Early Neolithic ‘hall’ in Scotland, with Balbridie, Aberdeenshire, being the first (Ralston 1982; 1984; Fairweather & Ralston 1993; see also Postscript). All three had been burnt down. Other possible, but unexcavated, parallels—all from the east of Scotland—are known, although the similarity of this structural format to that of British halls of the sixth century AD (Ian Ralston, pers. comm.) means that only excavation can resolve the matter (see Barclay et al. 2002, 108–10 for discussion). A later fourth millennium revival of the ‘hall’-building tradition is suggested by four sites in eastern and east-central Scotland, at Littleour and Carsie Mains, Perth and Kinross (Barclay & Maxwell 1998; Brophy & Barclay 2004) and at Balfarg Riding School 1 and 2, Fife (Barclay & Russell-White 1993; although see Barclay et al. 2002, 110 for a discussion of the Balfarg dating evidence in which the possibility of an Earlier Neolithic date is admitted). The Crathes ‘hall’ is of particular interest as it lies just across the River Dee from Balbridie. While the size, mode of construction and general shape of the ‘hall’ closely echo those of Balbridie and Claish, there are subtle differences between all three structures. There are also signs that structural modifications took place over the life of the Crathes building (Murray 2005a, 12). Some of the smaller Early Neolithic houses in northern Britain are closely comparable, in shape and construction, to those associated with Carinated Bowl pottery and/or early fourth millennium dates elsewhere in Britain and Ireland (e.g. White Horse Stone, Kent: Selkirk 2000; Yarnton, Oxfordshire: Hey 2001; Hey & Barclay, this volume; and many localities in Ireland, as recently discussed by Grogan 2004). Where ground plans can be made out, these tend to be rectangular, the walls being constructed using either the ‘post and panel’ technique (as in the aforementioned, c. 12 by 7 m, rectangular house at Llandygai), or with posts and/or planks set in slot trenches (as at Lismore Fields, Buxton, Derbyshire: Garton 1991). One or two possible, but very fragmentary, examples of the latter were found at Wardend of Durris, Aberdeenshire, just 3.5 km from the Balbridie ‘hall’ (Russell-White 1995; see Appendix for discussion of the dates). There is some variation in the form, size and construction of residential structures. A small, subrectangular, plough-truncated structure that may have been a house was found at Pitlethie Road, Fife, in 2004 (Martin Cook, pers. comm.): here, an area of discoloured soil c. 6 by 3 m in extent was bounded on one side by a line of closely-set posts, c. 20 cm wide, and towards one end of it was a large pit containing a stone axehead and a large elliptical bead of cannel coal or shale (see Sheridan forthcoming a for a discussion of the latter). Further north, at Garthdee Road, Aberdeen, a post-built house of oval shape, c. 11 by 8 m, was excavated in 2005 (Fig. 3: Murray 2005b; Murray & Murray 2005); and further south, near Bolam Lake in Northumberland, a relatively



Figure 3.

The house at Garthdee Road, Aberdeenshire, 2005. Image courtesy of Hilary Murray.

insubstantial post-built rectangular structure, c. 10 by 3.5 m, was interpreted as a temporary residence for transhumant pastoralists (Waddington & Davies 2002). Identification of house structures in northern Britain (as indeed elsewhere in Britain: see for example Clay 2006 on the East Midlands) is hampered by plough-truncation; often all that is left to suggest the former presence of a settlement is a set of pits and/or post- and stake-holes and/or spreads of burnt material (as, for example, at Biggar Common, South Lanarkshire: Johnston 1997; Lesmurdie Road, Elgin: Ian Suddaby, pers. comm.; Pict’s Knowe, Dumfries and Galloway: Thomas 2007; Coupland, Northumberland: Waddington 1999; 2001; pers. comm.; Leven, East Riding of Yorkshire and Marton-le-Moor, North Yorkshire: Manby et al. 2003, 47). Sometimes only a single pit is found (as at Carzield, Dumfries and Galloway: Maynard 1993); and, of course, not all pits need signify domestic activity. A further problem affecting the identification of Early Neolithic house structures is the frequent reuse of sites at later periods. Thus a rectangular house-like structure at Ratho, Midlothian, could be contemporary with the Carinated Bowl pottery found in the vicinity, or with the Northumbrian settlement on the same site (Smith 1995).


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Non-megalithic (NM) long barrows, long mortuary enclosures and cursus monuments Five NM long barrows have been excavated, all producing both Carinated Bowl pottery and radiocarbon dates early in the fourth millennium cal BC (Fig. 4). Four are in eastern Scotland (at Kintore, Aberdeenshire; Fordhouse Barrow, Angus; and Eweford and Pencraig Hill, East Lothian); the fifth, at Biggar Common, in the south. The latter has already been published fully (Johnston 1997); as regards the Kintore monument, only interim results are available but it is clear that both Carinated Bowl pottery and early fourth millennium dates (see Appendix) have been obtained (Cook 2001; Ann MacSween, pers. comm.). The example at Fordhouse Barrow, at the House of Dun, Angus, was not recognised as such at the time of its excavation (due largely to the extent and complexity of subsequent reuse of the site), and only the front part was excavated. However, it is clear from interim reports (Peterson et al. 1996, 6 and fig. 6.1; 1997, especially figs 2 and 3) that activity here had involved the construction of a rectangular timber mortuary structure (cf. Kinnes 1992a), set at roughly right-angles to a slightly concave timber façade, the latter forming part of a long, trapezoidal, timber-defined enclosure. This had all been deliberately burnt down and subsequently covered by an earth and stone mound that had probably followed the shape of the enclosure. On the crest of a hill at Eweford, East Lothian, two probably successive timber mortuary structures, set close behind, and running roughly parallel to, a timber façade, form part of a complex sequence of activities that ended in the construction of a long barrow (www.a1archaeology.com/Sites/ EwefordA5.htm; Lelong & MacGregor in press; MacGregor 2005; MacGregor & Shearer 2002). An initial, roughly oval, mound (devoid of human remains) was cut into by a large cooking pit, suggesting feasting preparatory to the next stage of funerary activities. This was then backfilled and the area covered by a low platform of earth and turf, upon which a timber mortuary structure and façade was constructed. These were burnt down and a second mortuary structure and façade were built and also burnt down. Finally the remains of the mortuary structures were covered by a long, roughly rectangular mound, revetted on one side by drystone walling. Three pits in the vicinity, each containing pottery, suggest monument-related feasting at various times during the fourth and third millennia. A similar, contemporary monument, which also featured the construction and burning of a timber mortuary structure on probably more than one occasion, was found just 10 km away on Pencraig Hill (www.a1archaeology.com/Sites/PenHill.htm; Lelong & MacGregor in press; McLellan 2002; 2005). The presence of the initial oval mound at Eweford, and its replacement by a long cairn, echoes the



Figure 4. Radiocarbon dates (normalised) relating to Scottish non-megalithic long barrows as discussed in the text. All are from single entity samples, reliably associated with their contexts; all except the Fordhouse dates (from oak charcoal) are from short-lived material. Fordhouse OxA-8222–3 are from the outer rings of oak. Most relate to the burning of wooden mortuary structures prior to mound construction. For further details, see datelists in Discovery & Excavation in Scotland 4 (2003), 5 (2004) and 6 (2005) and Appendix.


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structural sequence at Whitwell, Derbyshire (Schulting 2000; and see below on the re-dating of Whitwell, but there the oval mound, like the long cairn, was associated with a mortuary structure). These recently excavated sites are consistent (in construction, distribution, associated material culture and monumental practice) with the wider picture for Early Neolithic non-megalithic long barrows, even though it is becoming increasingly clear, as discussed below, that this tradition was long-lived (Evans & Hodder 2006; Kinnes 1985; 1992a; 1992b; Schulting 2000; Whittle & Wysocki 1998; see also Kinnes 1979 and 2004a on NM round barrows). The dating of these newly excavated sites is discussed below; in the case of Fordhouse Barrow, the dated material consisted of oak charcoal (albeit from the outer rings of a plank in one case), while at the East Lothian sites, short-lived species material was dated. Another aspect of this monument-building tradition—the construction and burning down of roughly rectangular freestanding timber mortuary enclosures, seemingly lacking a subsequent mound (Kinnes 1992a)—is represented among recent discoveries by the long post-built structure with concave façade at Castle Menzies, Perth and Kinross (Halliday 2002). No pottery was found at this site. Other variant forms had previously been excavated at Douglasmuir, Angus (Kendrick 1995; see Cowie 1993 on the pottery), Bannockburn, Stirling (Rideout 1997; with traditional Carinated Bowl pottery) and Inchtuthil, Perth and Kinross (Barclay & Maxwell 1991; with no pottery); virtually all the radiocarbon dates for such sites derive from oak charcoal. The close relationship between long mortuary enclosures and pit- and ditch-defined cursus monuments in Scotland has been discussed by Gordon Barclay (in Kendrick 1995, 38–9), and the relationship between these kinds of monument and bank barrows has been discussed by Kenny Brophy (1998). Cursus monuments—whose numbers in Scotland have increased dramatically, thanks largely to Brophy’s work on the aerial photographic archive (Brophy 1998; 1999; 2005)—are also represented among the sites to produce radiocarbon dates early in the fourth millennium cal BC, although here again the dating evidence derives almost exclusively from oak charcoal samples (see below). Julian Thomas has recently excavated parts of four in Dumfries and Galloway, at Holywood (North and South—of which the latter produced no suitable date samples), Holm, and Dunragit (Thomas et al. 1999; Thomas 2004a; 2004b; 2004c; 2004d), while a fifth was excavated at Upper Largie, Argyll and Bute (Radley 1993; Terry 1997; Ellis 2000). As with the nonmegalithic long barrows, construction followed by burning (or dismantling) and re-building is a key feature of these monuments, and it has been argued that the post-built versions may not have stood for very long (Thomas 2004a). At Holywood North, the erection of the post-built cursus was pre-



ceded by the erection, toppling and burning of an enormous wooden upright. The cursus was then dismantled, re-erected, dismantled, re-erected, burnt and finally enclosed by a ditch (Julian Thomas, pers. comm.; Thomas 2007). Carinated Bowl pottery is associated with the first phase of cursus construction. At Holywood South, activity resulting in the deposition of Carinated Bowl pottery in pits preceded the erection of the bank-and-ditch cursus. A hunting site A chance find of a broken flatbow (Fig. 5), discovered in 1990 high in the Tweedsmuir Hills near Moffat, Dumfries and Galloway, at the appropriately named Rotten Bottom, falls within the time frame in question and offers insights into the interconnectedness of communities at the time (Sheridan 1996; 1999). Its findspot, close to the end of a hanging valley, suggests that the bow broke as its owner (and other archers) took aim at deer that had been driven towards the precipice. Its date of 4040–3640 cal BC (OxA-3540: 5040±100 BP) makes this the earliest bow in Britain and Ireland. Palynological evidence (including that obtained from the vicinity of the findspot by Richard Tipping) has demonstrated that yew did not grow in most of Scotland at that time, so the bow (or its raw material) must have been imported—either from across the Solway Firth in Cumbria, or across the North Channel in Ireland. While there is no unequivocal evidence for prior interaction by Mesolithic foragers with either of these areas, it is clear that early farming communities in this part of Scotland were already importing Cumbrian stone axeheads as early as the thirty-ninth or thirty-eighth century cal BC (as indicated, for example, at the aforementioned Carzield site: Maynard 1993). Axeheads of Irish porcellanite may also have been imported to Scotland as early as this; it is known, from examples found in recently excavated Early Neolithic houses, that they were circulating around Ireland from early in the fourth millennium cal BC. Thus, while one cannot prove that this bow had been the possession of a farmer who was augmenting the food supply by hunting, this remains an intriguing possibility.

THE RADIOCARBON DATING EVIDENCE Developments over the past 21 years have meant that the number of radiocarbon dates from northern Britain that fulfil current criteria of acceptability (e.g. from single entity samples, of short-lived material, definitely associated with the activity of interest), and that relate to the first few centuries of the fourth millennium cal BC, now stands at well over 150. In


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Figure 5. The Rotten Bottom bow fragment (length: 136 cm). Drawing by Marion O’Neil.



Scotland, this state of affairs is thanks largely to the efforts of Historic Scotland’s Patrick Ashmore, as commissioner of many dates and champion of rigour in the selection of samples and interpretation of results (see, for example, Ashmore 1999; 2004; and the Historic Scotland Datelists in Discovery and Excavation in Scotland since 1996). Such is the pace of developments that over 70 new early fourth millennium Scottish dates have been produced since Ashmore’s recent critical review of Scottish Neolithic dates obtained to 2002 (Ashmore 2004). Some of these dates, obtained as series relating to the history of activities at individual sites (e.g. at Garthdee Road, Aberdeenshire), are ripe for the kind of chronological modelling using Bayesian statistics that is currently being used to such impressive effect in southern Britain (cf. Whittle, this volume). Elsewhere, Clive Waddington’s excavations have been addressing the dearth of dating evidence in Northumberland (Waddington & Davies 2002; Waddington 2001); a few new dates have emerged from Yorkshire (Manby et al. 2003); and in Derbyshire, a new programme of radiocarbon dating of the remains from the Whitwell cairn—undertaken to check the validity of the human bone dates obtained in 1994 (as discussed by Schulting 2000)—has revealed that activities there started after 4000 cal BC (more specifically, during the first half of the thirtyeighth century cal BC, according to statistical modelling), not before that date, and are more in line with the newly-obtained Scottish dates for non-megalithic long barrows (Ian Wall and Peter Marshall, pers. comm.). Some of the recently obtained dates, all from short-lived species, most from single entity samples and all reliably associated with Carinated Bowl (CB) pottery, are shown in Fig. 6 (cf. Figs 4 and 7: see also the Appendix for an assessment of the reliability of all the recently-obtained dates). The clear message to emerge from this burgeoning dataset (not just in northern Britain, but also in Ireland) is that CB pottery, and the lifestyle and monuments with which it is associated, is unlikely to have been in use before 4000 cal BC, and is likely to have appeared over large parts of Britain and Ireland between c. 3950/3900 and 3800 cal BC (cf. Ashmore 2004; Warren 2004). Dates that suggest otherwise are either from oak, or from mixed-species samples including charcoal from long-lived species, with a probable ‘old wood’ effect (e.g. at Biggar Common: Ashmore 2004, fig. 11.9). (The ‘old wood’ effect can most clearly be seen in the suites of dates obtained for the Scottish ‘halls’, where those deriving from oak charcoal from structural timbers consistently tend to be earlier than those derived from short-lived species such as cereal grains, relating to the use of the structures: Fig. 7.) The earliest Carinated Bowl-associated date not to have come from oak charcoal or a mixed-species sample —from a pit at Deskford, Moray (AA-42986, 5275±50 BP, 4240–3970 cal BC)—now looks anomalously early when compared with the overall pattern of dates, even though it was obtained from securely stratified charcoal


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Figure 6. Radiocarbon dates (normalised) associated with the use of Carinated Bowl pottery from Scotland and northern England, as discussed in the text; all are from short-lived material and most are from single-entity samples, securely associated with their contexts. For further details, see Appendix.



Figure 7. Radiocarbon dates (normalised) from ‘halls’. Those obtained from oak charcoal are indicated by asterisks; all others are from short-lived material. All are from single-entity samples, securely associated with their contexts. Note: SUERC-4031 is from the upper fill of a pit in an alignment near Crathes ‘hall’, for comparison. For further details, see Discovery & Excavation in Scotland 5 (2004, for Crathes); Fairweather & Ralston 1993 (for Balbridie) and Barclay et al. 2002 (for Claish), and Appendix.


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from a short-lived tree species (alder). According to the excavator, one cannot rule out the possibility that this is residual material (Fraser Hunter, pers. comm.; see Appendix, entry 3, for more information on this site). As regards the pottery, the dating evidence confirms that the strikingly homogeneous ‘traditional CB’ pottery (as defined below) was in widespread contemporaneous use from the fortieth or thirty-ninth century cal BC. In Scotland, the evidence from Garthdee Road, Aberdeenshire, indicates that this type of pottery was still in use at least as late as c. 3700 cal BC (Murray & Murray 2005). Meanwhile, regional variants of CB pottery—most notably Henshall’s ‘North-Eastern’ style in north-east Scotland—seem to have developed relatively quickly, with the dates from the Balbridie ‘hall’ being nearindistinguishable from those for ‘traditional CB’ pottery (including that found just across the river at Crathes). That a similar process of style drift was also occurring at an early date elsewhere is indicated by a date, from hazel charcoal, of 3956–3714 cal BC (UB-6633: 5046±39 BP) for ‘modified CB’ pottery in south-east Ireland (Granny, Co. Waterford: James Eogan, pers. comm.). Continuing use of ‘North-Eastern style’ CB pottery until at least c. 3600 cal BC may be suggested by a radiocarbon date of 4815±45 BP (GrA-23971, 3700–3380 cal BC: Sheridan 2003b), recently obtained from cremated bone from one of the Cairns of Atherb in Aberdeenshire (Milne 1892, 97–105; Henshall 1983). This is believed to have come from a non-megalithic long barrow (Cairn 1), with a mortuary structure that was burnt, leaving a ‘vast quantity’ of cremated bones, burnt arrowheads, along with this type of pottery, securely stratified below the barrow; but because there remains a very slight possibility that the dated bone could have come from the nearby non-megalithic round cairn (No. 2), the association between the date and the pottery is not wholly secure. Regarding non-megalithic funerary monuments, the newly-obtained short-lived species dates obtained for Eweford and Pencraig Hill are particularly important as they confirm that NM long barrows were being constructed as early as around the thirty-ninth century cal BC. The relevant dates, along with those obtained for the NM long barrows at Kintore and Fordhouse, are presented in Fig. 4; of these, the only dates that could be construed as termini post quos for the construction and use of the funerary monuments are SUERC-1367 (5250±60 BP) for Kintore, and SUERC-5280 (5065±35 BP) for Eweford, with the latter apparently dating feasting activities that initiated the funerary activities at this monument. (The Fordhouse barrow may also have been constructed as early as the thirty-ninth century cal BC, but since the relevant dates are from oak charcoal, the possibility of their relating to old wood cannot be ruled out.) This finding is significant for two reasons. First, it lends support to the long-held view that the so-called ‘protomegaliths’ of south-west Scotland, such as at Cairnholy, Dumfries and



Galloway (Piggott & Powell 1949; Scott 1969), and the Clyde cairns of southwest Scotland and their Irish congeners, court tombs (Henshall 1972), represent translations into stone of this non-megalithic monumental tradition. The increasing number of radiocarbon dates relating to the use of Clyde cairns (Schulting 2004; pers. comm.) is consistent with this view. Second, this evidence (along with the evidence from Whitwell—see below) suggests that the practice of constructing NM long barrows may have begun in northern Britain slightly earlier than in southern Britain, where the earliest dated examples are apparently no earlier than c. 3750 cal BC (Whittle, this volume) and where a number seem to have been constructed within the second quarter of the fourth millennium (e.g. at Lambourn, Berkshire and Haddenham, Cambridgeshire: Schulting 2000; Evans & Hodder 2006; Whittle, this volume). The tradition of constructing non-megalithic long barrows in Britain overall would therefore appear to span several centuries. In Scotland, the long-lasting popularity of the long mound format is indicated by monuments such as Camster Long in Caithness (Masters 1997), where a massive trapezoidal horned long cairn was superimposed on two passage tombs at some point after c. 3700 cal BC, and by the Point of Cott in Orkney, where a similar but slightly smaller cairn may well have been constructed around 3600 cal BC (see Barber 1997, 58–60 for a discussion of the radiocarbon dates). It would also appear that the tradition of constructing non-megalithic oval or round mounds in northern Britain (with or without mortuary structures) started early: the recent re-dating of the monument at Whitwell indicates that activities there (including the construction of the oval mound) began in the first half of the thirty-eighth century cal BC (Ian Wall and Peter Marshall, pers. comm.; the new dates relating to the long cairn suggest that its date of construction may be indistinguishable, in radiocarbon terms, from that of the oval mound). Ian Kinnes has suggested (2004b, 142) that the pyre-plus-round mound sites at Boghead and Midtown of Pitglassie, Aberdeenshire, may represent a distinct, possibly regional variant (thereby according with the presence of the regionally-specific ‘North-Eastern style’ of CB pottery at each of these sites). Unfortunately here, as at Pitnacree (where ‘traditional’ CB and a mortuary structure were found under a round mound), the relevant radiocarbon dates were obtained some time ago and most do not meet current criteria for acceptability. (See the Historic Scotland radiocarbon datelist—under www.historic.scotland.gov.uk—for comments on the dates in question.) As regards rectangular mortuary enclosures and cursus monuments, interpretation of the dating evidence is complicated by the fact that virtually all of the extant dates are from oak charcoal, with its possibility of ‘old wood’ effects. Space precludes a detailed discussion here, but the issue is authoritatively dealt with by Patrick Ashmore (in press) who concludes that


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some, at least, of these structures (e.g. Nether Largie) may well have been built between c. 3800 and 3650 cal BC. (At Holywood North, it now seems likely that the first construction of the post-built cursus dates to 3890–3650 cal BC (SUERC-2115: 4960±35 BP; Julian Thomas, pers. comm.) It is too early to propose a firm model of developments, but it seems at least possible that post-built cursus monuments developed from the long mortuary enclosure tradition, and that bank-and-ditch-built cursus monuments (and indeed bank barrows) started to be built slightly later than the post-built structures (cf. Kinnes 1985, 39; and see Barclay & Maxwell 1998 for a discussion of the dating of the Cleaven Dyke bank barrow, Perth and Kinross). The cursus and bank barrow monuments both seem to represent an exaggerated aggrandisement of existing monument forms (namely mortuary enclosures and long barrows respectively). The accumulating evidence confirms the suspicion that Scottish cursus monuments pre-date their southern British counterparts, which mostly seem to belong to the second half of the fourth millennium (Barclay & Bayliss 1999), and raises the possibility that this type of monument originated in Scotland.

THE MATERIAL CULTURE OF THE EARLY FOURTH MILLENNIUM CAL BC IN NORTHERN BRITAIN Pottery The principal characteristics of ‘traditional CB’ pottery (formerly known by various labels, including ‘Grimston ware’) and of ‘modified CB’ pottery have already been presented elsewhere (Sheridan 1995; 2002; cf. Herne 1988), and so will only be summarised here. The ‘traditional CB’ repertoire comprises the following range of vessel forms, all round-based, and not all carinated: Carinated and S-profiled bowls (Fig. 8). These are mostly open (i.e. with gently or more markedly splaying necks) or neutral (i.e. with upright necks), and are found in a variety of sizes including some very large (⬎ 300 mm in rim diameter). Rims are simple, usually rounded, often gently everted and sometimes rolled over; necks vary from straight to gently curving; carinations are usually gentle and sometimes almost imperceptible, although occasional, more sharply-defined examples have been found in association with gentler varieties; and bellies range from shallow to deep (the latter exemplified among the vessels from Newbridge, City of Edinburgh, and Carzield, Dumfries and Galloway: Fig. 8.3–4). Some of these bowls had been used for cooking; others for serving, and some probably for storage. Incidentally, the idea—first aired by Herne (1988, 26) and enthusiastically adopted by others (e.g. Thomas 1999, 99)—that carinated bowls were


Figure 8. Examples of ‘traditional Carinated Bowl’ pottery: carinated and S-profiled bowls. 1. Claish; 2. Biggar Common; 3. Newbridge; 4. Carzield; 5. Auchategan. All illustrations except 5 by Marion O’Neil. Sources: Sheridan 2002; Sheridan in Johnston 1997; courtesy F. Hunter; Sheridan in Maynard 1993; PSAS 109 (1977–8; Marshall).



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prestigious, special-purpose artefacts, not used for utilitarian purposes, is not supported by the evidence. Uncarinated, globular bowls and cups (Fig. 9.1). These are less frequent than carinated and sinuous bowls, and the smaller examples tend to have been made as pinch pots, rather than being coil-built. Rims are gently rounded to pointed, and upright or slightly turned in. Collared jars (Fig. 9.2). These deep vessels with a sinuous, ovoid or globular profile and a short, upright or slightly splaying collar, occur as a rare element. Ceramic spoons have not yet been found in northern Britain, but one fragmentary example is known from Northern Ireland (at Ballymarlagh, Co. Antrim: Davies 1949). Decoration is absent, except for the very occasional use of fingertip fluting (made by running a fingertip across a rim-top or vertically down the

Figure 9. Examples of ‘traditional Carinated Bowl’ pottery: 1. uncarinated bowls and cups; 2. collared jars. Examples with blacked-in sections are from Claish; all others are from Biggar Common. Illustrations by Marion O’Neil. Sources: Sheridan 2002; Sheridan in Johnston 1997.



body while the pot is still wet). This feature can be found on pottery as widelyseparated as in Yorkshire (e.g. Weaverthorpe XLII and Rudston LXI: Newbigin 1937) and Northern Ireland (e.g. Shane’s Castle, Co. Antrim: Sheridan 1985, fig. 5.12), as well as in Scotland (e.g. at the Crathes ‘hall’: Sheridan forthcoming b). Lugs also appear to be absent, with the exception of a vertically-perforated example from the NM round barrow at Pitnacree, Perth and Kinross (Coles & Simpson 1965, fig. 4.2). Although there is some variability in wall thickness and fineness of fabric, a striking feature of traditional CB pottery is the high incidence of remarkably thin-walled (c. 4–10 mm) vessels of very fine fabric (i.e. with small and relatively infrequent lithic inclusions); and also striking is the care taken to smooth the vessel surfaces, with some vessels having been burnished. Considerable skill would have been required to construct a large, open bowl with walls this thin and fabric so fine. The remarkable consistency in the quality of manufacture (as well as in vessel form) between widely separated examples in Britain and Ireland demonstrates that these vessels are the product of a well-established potting tradition, involving norms relating to vessel manufacture. Such norms may have extended to the choice of crushed stone used as a filler, to open the pot to protect from thermal shock: within Scotland, for example, crushed quartz and a crushed granitic stone recur in widely separated assemblages, from Aberdeenshire to East Lothian. In Scotland, the distinctive early variant of ‘modified CB’ pottery known as Henshall’s ‘North-Eastern style’ (Fig. 10; Henshall 1983; 1984; 1997) constitutes a slight modification of the ‘traditional CB’ repertoire, the key differences being the more frequent use of fingertip fluting, plus ripple burnishing (to produce a similar, but more glossy effect, using a burnisher rather than a finger) and occasional incised linear decoration; the modification of existing vessel forms (e.g. by the occasional addition of lugs, or by modifying rim and neck form); and the introduction of new vessel forms. The latter include bagshaped bowls with lugs spaced around the circumference, a short distance below the rim, and also the two decorated collared bipartite vessels from Balbridie, which may yet prove to be the ultimate forerunners of Unstan bowls (Ralston 1982, fig. 1). Examples of this kind of pottery (whose distribution is indicated in Fig. 1) include the assemblages from the NM round mounds at Boghead, Moray (Burl 1984), and at Midtown of Pitglassie, and the NM long barrow at the Cairns of Atherb, Aberdeenshire (Shepherd 1996; Henshall 1983); and, elsewhere in Aberdeenshire, the ‘hall’ at Balbridie and the settlement at Deer’s Den (Alexander 2000; see also Sheridan 2002, table 3 for other examples). Pottery sharing some features in common with ‘North-Eastern style’ CB is known from elsewhere in Scotland (e.g. at The Hirsel, Scottish Borders:


Figure 10. Examples of ‘modified Carinated Bowl’ pottery in the ‘North-East style’: 1. Easterton of Roseisle; 2. Balbridie; 3. Deer’s Den, Kintore; 4. Boghead; 5. Leggatsden Quarry. Sources: 1, 4, 5: Henshall 1983; 2: courtesy of Ian Ralston; 3: Alexander 2000.

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unpublished; and from Clyde cairns in south-west Scotland and from a related type of monument at Cultoquhey, Perth and Kinross (Henshall 1972, 306). There is also a generalised similarity with the modified CB pottery of north-east Ireland (e.g. at Lyles Hill, Co. Antrim: Evans 1953), and this was responsible for the coining of the misleading term ‘Grimston-Lyles Hill ware’ in the past. The resemblance may not be coincidental, but may well be due to the existence of contacts between north-east Scotland and north-east Ireland during the first half of the fourth millennium cal BC. Much more could be added about the evolution of the Carinated Bowl tradition, both in Scotland and elsewhere, but space precludes its discussion here (see, for example, Manby et al. 2003, 49–51 on Yorkshire developments, and Sheridan 1995 on Irish developments). Lithics In the east of Scotland, the small lithic tools in use during the first few centuries of the fourth millennium cal BC have been the subject of detailed study by Graeme Warren (2004; 2005). He concludes that there are significant differences between fourth millennium traditions and those of preceding millennia in Scotland, not just in the presence of novel artefact forms (e.g. leaf-shaped arrowheads and plano-convex knives), but also in patterns of procurement, working and deposition. The novel elements include the curation of platform cores; the bipolar working of local materials; the production of finely-flaked artefacts; and an interest in materials obtained from nonlocal sources, sometimes from a considerable distance—such as the Arran pitchstone as found, for example, at Deer’s Den or the Yorkshire flint found at the Dalladies long barrow, both Aberdeenshire. This latter phenomenon echoes the aforementioned use of an imported yew bow at Rotten Bottom, Dumfries and Galloway; and it is also echoed in the transportation of axeheads (and/or roughouts) over long distances, with fragments of axeheads from Great Langdale in north-west England being found in early fourth millennium contexts at, for example, Carzield in south-west Scotland and Eweford in south-east Scotland. Such evidence indicates that links between different parts of the ‘CB world’ were established at an early date. A similar picture is emerging for the ‘CB Neolithic’ elsewhere. In Ireland, imported Scottish pitchstone was used; axeheads travelled long distances; and distinctive flat green beads made from serpentine pebbles were circulating from one end of the island to the other around 3800–3600 cal BC. In Northumberland, Clive Waddington has noted that non-local flint and stone were being used for the first time, along with novel artefact shapes and manufacturing techniques (Clive Waddington, pers. comm.; Waddington & Passmore 2004, 49). And in the south of England, the discovery of a mint condition axehead,


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made from mined flint believed to have come from one of the southern English mines, beside the Sweet Track, indicates that flint was already being systematically exploited and moved around as early as c. 3800 (see below; Coles et al. 1973). This establishment and maintenance of inter-group contacts is a characteristic that has also been noted among farming communities across the Channel, and it would arguably have served to nurture community identity and co-operation. An even more striking example of the importance of the exotic at this time is provided by the axeheads (and fragments thereof) made from jadeite and related types of Alpine rock that have been found at various localities in Britain and Ireland. Here, however, the significance of these artefacts lay not so much in their role in establishing and maintaining contacts between CBusing communities (although the axeheads could indeed have circulated within Britain and Ireland), as in their power to evoke distant ancestral roots. Although most of the axeheads in question have been stray finds, and none has been discovered during recent excavations, two key pieces of contextual information point towards their association with CB pottery and their use and deposition early in the fourth millennium. The first is the well-known case of the Sweet Track in Somerset, where an axehead was deposited beside a trackway dendro-dated to 3807/3806 BC, not far from finds of CB pottery (Coles & Coles 1986, 59–60, plate VIII; Cleal 2004). The second is the small fragment found in the outer compartment of the Clyde cairn-related ‘protomegalith’ at Cairnholy I, Dumfries and Galloway (Piggott & Powell 1949, fig. 9.1); sherds of a ‘traditional CB’ bowl were found under blocking in the forecourt nearby. The results of a major current international research project into the manufacture, circulation and use of prestige axeheads made of Alpine rock, led by Dr Pierre Pétrequin, reveal that the axeheads found in Britain and Ireland are likely to have been up to several centuries old when deposited here (see, for example, Pétrequin et al. 2002 for a Europe-wide typochronology of Alpine axeheads), and as such they are likely to have had significant biographies. Furthermore, the fragmentary examples seem to have resulted from deliberate fracture, rather than accidental breakage. The presence of these old, carefully-curated and very far-travelled objects—from up to 1800 km away as the crow flies—could be taken to indicate that these are the treasured ancestral relics of early fourth millennium communities, acquired (and circulated) on the Continent and brought to Britain and Ireland as part of the CB Neolithic ‘package’. Their green colour, rarity, longevity and ultimate origin in remote mountain locations could all contribute to their symbolic significance as tokens of group identity. They might also have been accorded talismanic status— as the embodiment of the supernatural power of the ‘magic mountain’ from which they originated—with the ability to safeguard the well-being of the community.



NEW LIFEWAYS, NEW TASKSCAPES, NEW PRACTICES, NEW COSMOLOGY . . . NEW PEOPLE The elements described above—together with the evidence for the use of domesticated plants and animals imported from the Continent (as discussed, for example, by Barclay et al. 2002, 95–8), and for a diet emphatically focused on terrestrial resources, even in coastal areas (Schulting & Richards 2002; Richards 2004; pace Milner et al. 2004 and Evershed, this volume)—constitute striking novelties in every aspect of life. This is as true of CB-associated material outside of northern Britain as it is of the evidence reviewed here. Attempts to interpret the evidence in terms of agency have resulted in a long-standing debate between those who favour acculturation by indigenous communities and those who favour the idea of colonisation by Continental farming groups. Space precludes a lengthy rehearsal of the arguments here; essentially, the main elements of the ‘acculturationist’ position were set out by Julian Thomas in his hugely influential Rethinking the Neolithic in 1991 (cf. Thomas 1996; 1998). Rejecting the idea of colonisation as a throwback to the culture-historical approach of Piggott and others, and struck by the paucity of evidence for house structures in southern England, Thomas argued that the transition to a sedentary, agro-pastoral lifestyle was a slow, gradual process, whereby indigenous forager communities adopted novel resources and practices from the Continent, while accommodating them within a traditional forager world-view. The outcome, according to this view, was a semi-nomadic pastoralist ‘Neolithic’ in which arable agriculture played a minor role; foraging for wild foodstuffs played a major role; and ‘Mesolithic’ traditions with regard to visiting specific locales continued. Although originally developed as a model for southern Britain, this idea was subsequently and uncritically applied (by Thomas and others, e.g. Edmonds 1999, 67–8) to the whole of Britain and Ireland, and continues to be aired in some quarters. The last decade has seen a robust rebuttal of the ‘acculturationist’ model, by among others Gabriel Cooney (regarding the Irish evidence: e.g. Cooney 2001); Gordon Barclay (on house structures and material culture: e.g. Barclay 2004; Barclay et al. 2002); Peter Rowley-Conwy and Mick Monk (on economy and mobility: Monk 2000; Rowley-Conwy 2004); Rick Schulting and Mike Richards (on diet: e.g. Schulting & Richards 2002; Richards 2004; Schulting 2004; cf. Milner et al. 2004); Graeme Warren (on lithics: Warren 2004; 2005); and by the present author (on ceramics and on the speed and extent of the appearance of the ‘CB’ Neolithic: e.g. Sheridan 2004). It appears that a significant body of opinion is now swinging away from the ‘acculturationist’ view towards a qualified acceptance that the ‘CB’ Neolithic appeared relatively rapidly over a wide area, involved a settled agro-pastoral


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lifestyle, and involved some arrival of people from Continental Europe (e.g. Kinnes 2004c; cf. Ashmore 1996, 23–4)—even though some commentators are now attempting to characterise this as an east British phenomenon, arguing that different processes were at work in western Britain and Ireland (e.g. Whittle 2004, 87: ‘It is still legitimate to see major influences from the world of northern France, the Low Countries and the Rhineland and beyond on the formation of the Neolithic of the whole of eastern Britain. . .There may be a case for seeing more colonisation there..’; see also Noble 2006). Without wishing unduly to extend the debate, the key points that convince the present author that we are dealing with a widespread, relatively rapid, diaspora-like colonisation, shortly after 4000 cal BC, by small, CBusing groups of farmers from the Continent are as follows: 1 The broadly contemporary (in radiocarbon terms) appearance, over a very wide area (and not just eastern Britain), of a genuine ‘package’ of novelties, relating to every aspect of life and contrasting with Mesolithic practices and lifestyle; 2 The consistency of the material culture and of practices of procurement and manufacture over this wide area. Taking the ceramic evidence, for example, the formal homogeneity and consistently high quality of manufacture attest the existence of a well established tradition: we are clearly not dealing with a new technology that was being learned, in identical ways, by widely disparate Mesolithic communities; 3 Contrasts in the distribution of Early Neolithic settlements (which, by and large, focus on prime agricultural land) and Mesolithic activity areas; and where there is co-location of Mesolithic and Neolithic activity (as at Garthdee Road, Aberdeenshire), there is a clear chronological separation by several centuries, sometimes millennia, so no continuity of tradition need be invoked; 4 The absence of evidence for any contacts between Mesolithic communities in Britain and Ireland (other than the aforementioned, short-lived southern Irish episode c. 4300 cal BC) and their Continental neighbours; and the absence of a convincing explanation, by acculturationists, as to why widely dispersed and disparate foraging communities should all seek to transform their lives, in the same way, around the same time. (Statements such as ‘This sudden transformation over a very wide area is more easily comprehensible in terms of the adoption of a new repertoire of cultural resources by native communities than of migration or invasion’ (Thomas 1999, 16) are merely bald and unsubstantiated assertions.); 5 The absence of evidence for the kind of gradual transition from foraging to farming as seen, for example, in the Rhine delta (and described by Louwe Kooijmans, this volume).



The description of structures and material culture presented in this paper offers further insights into the nature of our hypothetical colonists. The evidence from settlement structures, cereal remains and monuments is consistent with essentially sedentary communities, concerned with marking and maintaining group identity—and with making and maintaining inter-group connections, probably through individual mobility—in areas rich in agricultural potential. Within this framework there may well have been some transhumance (as suggested by Waddington’s findings in Northumberland), and the use of wild foodstuffs—gathered plants, the Rotten Bottom deer— would have been part of a strategy to optimise the use of available resources. Neither of these activities necessarily indicates a connection with, or derivation from, the indigenous foraging communities. (See Bamforth & Woodman 2004 for a similar reading of the north-east Irish evidence relating to Early Neolithic tool hoard deposition.) The variability of the structural evidence, and in particular the east Scottish ‘hall’ phenomenon, could represent varying responses to the colonists’ circumstances. It may be that in this part of Britain, the size of the incoming groups was sufficiently large to allow the investment of communal labour in large building ventures of this kind (irrespective of how, precisely, the ‘halls’ were then used). This kind of project, like the construction of large funerary monuments (with the iterated performance of construction, destruction and construction) and the construction, deconstruction and (sometimes) reconstruction of other ceremonial monuments, would all serve to cement a sense of community identity. Space does not permit speculation on the question of whether the construction of large enclosures (causewayed or otherwise) was also an option for these communities, contingent on appropriate circumstances. Suffice it to say that the evidence from Ireland (at Magheraboy, and probably slightly later at Donegore Hill, Co. Antrim and Thornhill, Co. Derry: Sheridan 2001; Logue 2003) indicates that it may well have been; and at least one candidate site is known from Scotland, at Leadketty, Perth and Kinross (Brophy 2004; for other candidates in northern Britain, see Barclay 2001, 149 and figs 11.6–7; and Waddington 2001). Finally, the role of jadeite and other Alpine axeheads may well have been to remind these initial settlers of their Continental roots, and to provide them with supernatural protection in their new land. Indeed, they may have instilled in our settlers a desire to recreate the mythically remote ‘magic green mountains’ of their source areas: hence the seeking out and exploitation of mountain sources of axehead stone, such as at Great Langdale. But where on the Continent should we look for the hypothetical place of origin of our ‘CB Neolithic’?


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GOING OVER—FROM PICARDIE (OR PAS DE CALAIS)? Attempts to identify the origin of CB pottery and its associated package of novelties have been made for the best part of a century (e.g. Kendrick 1925), with some commentators (e.g. Whittle 1977; Kinnes 2004c; Barclay et al. 2002) making greater efforts than others to familiarise themselves with the relevant Continental material. The failure to pinpoint a specific candidate area of origin has regularly been remarked upon (e.g. Kinnes 1988; 2004b; 2004c); as has the ‘cousinly’, rather than ‘parental’, relationship between British and Irish carinated bowls and contemporary examples belonging to the Northwest Michelsberg group in the sandy areas of the southern Netherlands (e.g. Louwe Kooijmans 2005). It has to be admitted that it is still not possible to identify a specific area where all the elements of the CB ‘package’ have been found. However, that is not to say that no such area exists; and, thanks to developments in the detailed understanding of late fifth and early fourth millennium archaeology in adjacent parts of the Continent (e.g. thanks to research by Louwe Kooijmans in the Netherlands; by Bart Vanmontfort (2004) and Philippe Crombé (this volume) in Belgium; by Jeunesse et al. (2004) in north-east France; by Martinez and David (1991) on the Northern Chassey (Chasséen septentrional); and by Guy Verron and colleagues in Normandy and Brittany), it is now far easier to narrow down the target area. It is also easier to appreciate the dynamics of cross-Channel social and economic change, and thereby to understand how the spread of agriculture to Britain and Ireland (and indeed also to southern Scandinavia) just after 4000 cal BC fits in with this broader picture. To cut a long story short, the most likely candidate area—as Stuart Piggott had proposed over half a century ago (Piggott 1954, 99)—are the régions of Nord-Pas de Calais and northern Picardie in the north-east of France. Unfortunately, these are the very parts of France where late fifth- and early fourth-millennium developments are the least well documented, in comparison with neighbouring parts of France and the Low Countries. In the latter areas (and in parts of Picardie), the Middle Neolithic ceramic traditions—i.e. the Northern Chassey, the Belgian and Northwest Michelsberg, and Michelsberg-affiliated traditions in the Scheldt Basin—offer some parallels with the CB tradition. (The particularly close parallels of the Northwest Michelsberg in the southern Netherlands have already been noted.) In addition to similarities in the thinness of walls, the general fineness of fabric, the lack of decoration and the care with which surfaces were smoothed, there are parallels for specific vessel forms. Close comparanda for various carinated and S-profiled CB vessels can be found, for example, among Martinez and David’s categories B1, B2, C1, D1 and D2 of Northern



Chassey pottery (1991, figs 7.2 (left), 17 and 18), among Belgian Michelsbergaffiliated pottery from the causewayed enclosure at Spiere-‘de Hel’, in the Scheldt Basin (Vanmontfort 2004, figs 11.58–61); and from other Scheldt Basin findspots such as Lommel-Kattenbos (Vanmontfort 2004, fig. 111.52.2). Collared jars are also an element of these traditions (e.g. Martinez & David 1991, figs 12–14; Vanmontfort 2004, fig. 11.57). Furthermore, the deep, sinuous-profiled bowl from Auchategan, Argyll and Bute (Fig. 8.5) could be lost among the tulip-shaped vessels (Tulpenbecher) of the Michelsberg and Michelsberg-affiliated tradition in general (e.g. at Boitsfort: Vanmontfort 2004, fig. 111.37). However, despite these and other similarities (e.g. in the use of leaf-shaped flint arrowheads over much of the area of interest; in the apparent interconnectedness of communities (Martinez & David 1991, 196–7); in the presence of flint mines, enclosures and even a possible long barrow (at Ottenburg: Vanmontfort 2004, 243)), neither the Northern Chassey nor the Northwest Michelsberg and its affiliated ‘culture/s’, as currently known, offers an exact parallel for the ‘CB Neolithic’. Despite the current absence of proof, it remains a reasonable possibility that ceramic assemblages that more closely match CB pottery (and the accompanying elements of the CB Neolithic ‘package’) remain to be found in Picardie and/or Nord-Pas de Calais. We know, from Vanmontfort’s work on the western and central Scheldt Basin in Belgium, that the ceramic repertoire varied within a single region (Vanmontfort 2004, 336–9); and the apparent absence of long mounds, long mortuary enclosures and ‘halls’ in this part of France can be set against the facts that more research needs to be done on the aerial photographic archive; that the area has seen extensive destruction of archaeology through wars, agriculture and infrastructural development; and that there continue to be very few active researchers on the Neolithic working in these regions. (Compare Piggott’s observation (1954, 99) that ‘there are frequent, if vague, references in French archaeological literature to buttes allongées and similar types of barrows along the northern littoral’; the evidence to which he alluded needs to be investigated.) Recent discoveries elsewhere in northern France have revealed hitherto unsuspected types of structure, such as an early Michelsberg long mortuary enclosure with pit grave, dating to c. 4200 cal BC, at Beaurieux ‘la Plaine’ in the Aisne Valley (Farruggia 2006; Colas et al. in press); and so there may well be similar revelations to come from the north-east of France. In the meantime, it is clear that the end of the fifth millennium cal BC was a time of agricultural expansion after a period of ‘stasis’, when huntergatherer communities in the Netherlands finally switched to farming (Louwe Kooijmans 2005)—most likely thanks to influences from the south-west— and when farming groups, ultimately deriving from the north-east of the Paris Basin, are suspected to have moved north and eastwards (e.g. into the


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Scheldt Basin; cf. Jeunesse 1998; Jeunesse et al. 2004 on population movements). It is also a time when the distribution of jadeite axeheads in northwest Europe expanded, again after an apparent ‘standstill’ (Pétrequin et al. 2002). Louwe Kooijmans (2005, 269) has characterised this period thus: Major social changes were. . .also taking place among the agricultural communities on the other side of the [farming vs foraging] ‘frontier’. These changes were not gradual developments but crises, involving drastic transformations in the communities’ culture. It is tempting to associate some, if not all, of these changes with the confrontation, contacts and exchange of knowledge with the northern native population, although we cannot specify these contacts in any greater detail. The outcome was a ‘Neolithic’ that was apparently acceptable to the native population of large parts of Northern Europe. . .

It seems likely that the colonisation of large parts of Britain and Ireland (and of southern Scandinavia) took place during this turbulent time. A common ‘cultural parentage’/area of ultimate origin for the fully agricultural, early fourth millennium Neolithic of Britain and Ireland, of parts of Belgium and the Netherlands, and of southern Scandinavia, would account for both the long-acknowledged points of similarity between the Neolithic in these areas (e.g. between British and Danish NM funerary monuments: Kinnes 2004b, 140). And if the process of expansion took place over several decades, with localisation occurring rapidly, this would account for the differences between the Neolithics in these areas. Such is the proposed explanation for the ‘CB Neolithic’. What happened elsewhere in Britain between 4000 and 3700 cal BC is another story. Postscript Just as this paper was being finished, news arrived of another new ‘hall’ structure, c. 8 by 22 m, associated with non-residual CB pottery, but this time from the south-west of Scotland, at Lockerbie (Mel Johnson and Magnus Kirby, pers. comm.). It is rectangular with gently rounded ends and with internal partitions. The site has just been excavated by CFA Archaeology, February to April 2006, and the work of dating and assessing this important new discovery remains to be done; the current author has seen the pottery and confirmed its identification. Note. Many of the recently discovered sites have not yet been published fully, and the various excavators (in particular Hilary and Charlie Murray, Gavin MacGregor, Ian Ralston, Tam Ward, Magnus Kirby, Fraser Hunter, Julian Thomas, Clive Waddington and Ian Wall), are warmly thanked for permission to cite information, and to reproduce illustrations. Patrick Ashmore, Roger Mercer and Clive Waddington are thanked for their comments and advice. Robin Turner is thanked for a pre-


THE ‘CARINATED BOWL NEOLITHIC’ IN NORTHERN BRITAIN 471 publication view of Discovery and Excavation in Scotland 6 (additional references for site and/or date reports published in Discovery and Excavation in Scotland are given in the Appendix). The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland is also thanked for granting permission to reproduce pottery drawings, and Moira Greig is thanked for providing an aerial photo of the Crathes ‘hall’. Bart Vanmontfort, Philippe Crombé, Christian Jeunesse and Leendert Louwe Kooijmans are thanked for discussing the Continental evidence, and Renate Ebersbach for providing useful information on the Michelsberg Culture. My old friend and sparring partner Julian Thomas is thanked for discussing cursus dating. Above all, the editors are thanked for their patience and generosity.

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THE ‘CARINATED BOWL NEOLITHIC’ IN NORTHERN BRITAIN 477 SHERIDAN, J. A. 2003a. French Connections I: spreading the marmites thinly. In I. Armit, E. Murphy, E. Nelis & D. D. A. Simpson (eds), Neolithic settlement in Ireland and western Britain, 3–17. Oxford: Oxbow. SHERIDAN, J. A. 2003b. The National Museums’ of Scotland Dating Cremated Bones Project: results obtained during 2002/3. Discovery and Excavation in Scotland 4, 167–9. SHERIDAN, J. A. 2004. Neolithic connections along and across the Irish Sea. In V. Cummings & C. Fowler (eds), The Neolithic of the Irish Sea: materiality and traditions of practice, 9–21. Oxford: Oxbow. SHERIDAN, J. A. 2005. Les éléments d’origine bretonne autour de 4000 av. J.-C. en Écosse: témoignages d’alliance, d’influence, de déplacement, ou quoi d’autre? In G. Marchand & A. Tresset (eds), Unité et diversité des processus de néolithisation sur la façade atlantique de l’Europe (6e–4e millénaires avant J.-C.), 25–37. Paris: Société Préhistorique Française (Mémoire 36). SHERIDAN, J. A. forthcoming a. Fragment of large elliptical Neolithic bead from Structure 3. In M. Cook, ‘Excavations at Pitlethie Road, Leuchars, Fife’. SHERIDAN, J. A. forthcoming b. The pottery. In H. K. Murray & C. Murray, ‘Excavations at Warren Field, Crathes, Aberdeenshire’. SMITH, A. 1995. The excavation of Neolithic, Bronae Age and Early Historic features near Ratho, Edinburgh. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 125, 69–138. STUIVER, M., REIMER, P. J., BARD, E., BECK, J., BURR, G. S., HUGHEN, K. A., KROMER, B., MCCORMAC, G., VAN DER PLICHT, J. & SPURK, M. 1998. INTCAL98 radiocarbon age calibration, 24000–0 cal BP. Radiocarbon 40(3), 1041–83. TERRY, J. 1997 Upper Largie (Kilmartin parish). Discovery and Excavation in Scotland 1997, 19, 21. THOMAS, J. S. 1991. Rethinking the Neolithic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. THOMAS, J. S. 1996. Neolithic houses in mainland Britain and Ireland — a sceptical view. In T. Darvill & J. S. Thomas (eds), Neolithic houses in northwest Europe and beyond, 1–12. Oxford: Oxbow. THOMAS, J. S. 1998. Review of ‘Neolithic landscapes’. Antiquity 72, 455–6. THOMAS, J. S. 1999. Understanding the Neolithic. London and New York: Routledge. THOMAS, J. S. 2004a. The ritual universe. In I. A. G. Shepherd & G. J. Barclay (eds), Scotland in Ancient Europe: the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age of Scotland in their European context, 171–8. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. THOMAS, J. S. 2004b. Holywood Cursus complex. Discovery and Excavation in Scotland 5, 161–2. THOMAS, J. S. 2004c. Holm. Discovery and Excavation in Scotland 5, 161. THOMAS, J. S. 2004d. Dunragit. Discovery and Excavation in Scotland 5, 160–1. THOMAS, J. S. 2007. Place and memory: excavations at the Pict’s Knowe, Holywood and Holm Farm, Dumfries and Galloway, 1994–8. Oxford: Oxbow. THOMAS, J. S., BROPHY, K., FOWLER, C., LEIVERS, M., RONAYNE, M. & WOOD, L. 1999. The Holywood Cursus complex, Dumfries: an interim account 1997. In A. Barclay & J. Harding (eds), Pathways and ceremonies: the cursus monuments of Britain and Ireland, 107–15. Oxford: Oxbow. VANMONTFORT, B. 2004. Converging worlds: the Neolithisation of the Scheldt Basin during the late fifth and early fourth millennium cal BC. Unpublished PhD thesis, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. WADDINGTON, C. 1999. A landscape archaeological study of the Mesolithic-Neolithic in the Milfield Basin, Northumberland. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports (British Series 291). WADDINGTON, C. 2000. Neolithic pottery from Woodbridge Farm, the Old Airfield, Milfield. Archaeologia Aeliana (fifth series) 28, 1–11. WADDINGTON, C. 2001. Breaking out of the morphological straightjacket: Early Neolithic enclosures in northern Britain. Durham Archaeological Journal 16, 1–14.


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WADDINGTON, C. & DAVIES, J. 2002. An Early Neolithic settlement and Late Bronze Age burial cairn near Bolam Lake, Northumberland: fieldwalking, excavation and reconstruction. Archaeologia Aeliana (fifth series) 30, 1–47. WADDINGTON, C. & PASSMORE, D. 2004. Ancient Northumberland. London: English Heritage. WARREN, G. 2004. The start of the Neolithic in Scotland. In I. A. G. Shepherd & G. J. Barclay (eds), Scotland in Ancient Europe: the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age of Scotland in their European context, 91–102. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. WARREN, G. 2005. Autres temps, autres lieux: la fin du Mésolithique et le début du Néolithique dans l’Est de l’Écosse. In G. Marchand & A. Tresset (eds), Unité et diversité des processus de néolithisation sur la façade atlantique de l’Europe (6e–4e millénaires avant J.-C.), 13–23. Paris: Société Préhistorique Française (Mémoire 36). WHITTLE, A. 1977. The Earlier Neolithic of southern England and its continental background. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports (Supplementary Series 35). WHITTLE, A. 2003. The archaeology of people: dimensions of Neolithic life. London and New York: Routledge. WHITTLE, A. 2004. Stones that float to the sky: portal dolmens and their landscapes of memory and myth. In V. Cummings & C. Fowler (eds), The Neolithic of the Irish Sea: materiality and traditions of practice, 81–90. Oxford: Oxbow. WHITTLE, A. & WYSOCKI, M. 1998. Parc le Breos Cwm transepted long cairn, Gower, West Glamorgan: date, contents and context. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 64, 139–82. WOODMAN, P. C. & MCCARTHY, M. 2003. Contemplating some awful(ly interesting) vistas: importing cattle and red deer into prehistoric Ireland. In I. Armit, E. Murphy, E. Nelis & D. D. A. Simpson (eds), Neolithic settlement in Ireland and western Britain, 31–9. Oxford: Oxbow.


Findspot, NGR

Balnuaran of Clava South, Highland (NH 758 444)

Lesmurdie Road, Elgin, Moray (NJ 226 639)

Deskford (Leitchestown Farm), Moray (NJ 210 585)

No

1

2


3

Occupation

Occupation

CB

CB

AA-42986 AA-42989 AA-42987

5200⫾50* 4980⫾50

Poz-5483 Poz-5482

Lab no

5275⫾50

5025⫾35* 2500⫾30

–

Pot type2 Relevant C14 dates BP3

Unknown: stray find CB of pottery, unconnected with later monument

Site type1

From pit with pottery; prob residual From pit in same complex (no pottery) From post-pipe (no pottery)

Both dates from lower fill of pit in which CB pottery had been found in upper fill. Poz-5482 must represent intrusive later material

Comments

(Continued)

Dates: DES 5 (2004), 166 (Hunter); Hunter, pers. comm.

Site report: DES 3 (2002), 83–4 (Suddaby). Dates: DES 5 (2004), 167 (Suddaby)

Bradley, R. 2000. The Good Stones, 87 and illus 87.6. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

Publication4

Findspot numbers are as given in Fig 1. Radiocarbon dates: all from short-lived material (i.e. charcoal or unburnt wood from hazel, willow etc; carbonised hazelnut shell or cereal grain; bone, unburnt or burnt), and all single-entity samples, unless specified otherwise; * ⫽ from, or including, oak charcoal (so danger of ‘old wood’ effect). See below for further notes.

Appendix: Discoveries of early Carinated Bowl pottery, and of other material dating to the early fourth millennium cal BC that may relate to the ‘CB Neolithic’ as discussed in this paper, since 1985 in Scotland (including also finds omitted from, or not fully published in, Kinnes 1985).


Findspot, NGR

Deer’s Den (aka A96 Kintore Bypass and Henderson Drive), Kintore, Aberdeenshire (c. NJ 784 160)

Forest Road, Kintore, Aberdeenshire (NJ 787 151)

Garthdee Road, Aberdeenshire (NJ 923 032)

No

4

5

6

CB NE


Occupation (house)

CB

5020⫾35 4970⫾35 4950⫾35 4935⫾35 4930⫾35 4925⫾35,

5250⫾60 5230⫾50* 5195⫾45* 5080⫾50* 5075⫾45 5040⫾50 4970⫾40 4965⫾40 4895⫾45 4855⫾40 4835⫾40, 4785⫾50

4945⫾40 4940⫾40* 4895⫾40


Occupation (including CB NE a hollow with stakeholes and a possible floor surface); NM long barrow

Occupation

Site type1

SUERC-8617 SUERC-8616 SUERC-8613 SUERC-8607 SUERC-8609 SUERC-8608

SUERC-1367 AA-52419 SUERC-1344 AA-52418 SUERC-1371 AA-52420 SUERC-1384 SUERC-1376 SUERC-1374 SUERC-1323 SUERC-1375 SUERC-1324

OxA-8132 OxA-8131 OxA-8133

Lab no

From hearth, pit and occupation layer, securely associated with CB pottery

First 5 dates from barrow. First 2: tpq for construction. No pottery. Next 2: ditch fill; pottery in same context; SUERC-1371: fill of post-hole under barrow; pottery present. Others: features associated with occupation, all associated with CB NE pottery

From pit fills, associated with CB NE pottery.

Comments

Site report: Murray 2005b. Dates: Murray and Murray 2005

Site report: Dates: DES 4 (2003), 154 (Cook) ; DES 5 (2004), 156–7 (Cook). Not all of the barrow dates are from contexts associated with pottery. See DES date lists for additional early dates for other contexts not associated with pottery. Full discussion of the dates awaits final publication of report

Alexander 2000; DES 3 (2002), 10 (Dunbar); DES 5 (2004), 16 (Hatherley). Dates: DES 1999, 110 Alexander)

Publication4

480 Alison Sheridan

Park Quarry, Durris, Ab’shire (NO 802 979)

Crathes, Warren Field, Ab’shire (NO 7393 9670)

Balbridie, Aberdeenshire (NO 7335 9590)

7

8

9


‘Hall’

‘Hall’ and pit alignment (the latter Mesolithic, reused in the Early Neolithic)

Pit

CB NE

CB

CB

5030⫾60* 5010⫾90 4970⫾60* 4970⫾75* 4940⫾70 4930⫾80* 4820⫾80

5235⫾35* 5205⫾35*, 5065⫾35* 5025⫾35* 5020⫾35 5005⫾35 4990⫾35 4990⫾40 4980⫾35 4975⫾35 4950⫾35 4945⫾35 4945⫾40

–

GU-1828 OxA-1769 GU-1832 GU-1830 OxA-1768 GU-1037 OxA-1767

SUERC-4048 SUERC-4044 SUERC-4049 SUERC-4031 SUERC-4042 SUERC-4030 SUERC-4043 SUERC-4032 SUERC-4038 SUERC-4039 SUERC-4033 SUERC-4034 SUERC-4041

All from level relating to Ralston 1982; 1984; the burning down of the Fairweather & Ralston ‘hall’ (oak charcoal 1993 probably from structural timbers, other samples ⫽ carbonised crab apple, flax seed and oat grain respectively). Pottery securely associated with this structure . Dates cited here exclude those with standard deviations ⬎ ±100 (incl. GU-1038ii, whose s.d. was adjusted upwards). Even though this (Continued)

SUERC-4031 from upper Murray 2004; 2005a; fill of pit in pit alignment Murray and Murray near to ‘hall’ (no pottery); 2004 all others from ‘hall’, some from structural timbers, others from material sealed in pits or post holes. Structure securely associated with CB pottery

DES 1991, 35 (Shepherd and Greig)


Findspot, NGR

Wardend of Durris, Aberdeenshire (NO 752 928)

Dubton Farm, Brechin, Angus (NO 583 604)

Fordhouse Barrow, Angus (NO 6658 6053)

Castle Menzies (Home Farm), Perth and Kinross (NN 8305 4940)

No

10

11


12

13

Long mortuary structure

Non-megalithic long barrow

Occupation

One or more possible house structures

Site type1

–

CB

mod CB

–

5130⫾40* 5093⫾39* 5035⫾70* 5010⫾40*

5035⫾40* 4965⫾40* 4920⫾45*

4990⫾45

5050⫾50*,


OxA-9813 OxA-9987 OxA-9816 OxA-9814

OxA-8222 OxA-8224 OxA-8223

AA-39951

GU-2958

Lab no

Publication4

Peterson et al. 1996; 1997; DES 1999, 111 (Proudfoot)

Cameron, K. 2002, TAFAJ 8, 19–76

All from posts; OxA-9813 Halliday 2002; DES 2 prob. from most northerly (2001), 126 (Carter) of 3 alignments; others from poss. arc

All from structural timbers from mortuary structure; CB pottery associated with funerary activities linked with this structure. OxA-8222–3 from outer rings of oak

From upper fill of large pit associated with food processing; CB pottery from this fill

From Feature 19, a post, Russell-White 1995 associated with smaller posts; a later date of 4360⫾90 (GU-2955) was obtained from planks (mixed species charcoal incl. oak) in a palisade slot

site was mentioned in Kinnes 1985, the CB NE pottery was not, and some of the dates had not yet been determined

Comments

482 Alison Sheridan

Drumoig (Cowbakie Hill and Craigie Hill), Fife (NO 43 25)

Pitlethie Road, Leuchars (NO 4596 2174)

Claish, Stirling (NN 635 065)

Cowie Road, Bannockburn, Stirling (NS 816 901)

14

15

16

17


Long mortuary enclosures

‘Hall’

Probable house

Occupation (include cooking pit and timber-built structure)

CB

CB

–

CB

5145⫾80* 5130⫾60* 5135⫾70* 4830⫾60

5080⫾40* 5000⫾50 4950⫾50 4935⫾40 4930⫾40 4915⫾40 4910⫾45 4910⫾50 4895⫾40 4885⫾50 4855⫾70 4845⫾40

5075⫾40* 4995⫾40

4975⫾40 4870⫾40 4850⫾45 4835⫾45 4775⫾45 4985⫾40 4835⫾45 4830⫾50 4805⫾45

AA-20410 AA-20409 AA-20411 AA-20412

AA-49638 AA-49645 AA-49643 AA-49637 AA-49640 AA-49635 AA-49636 AA-49644 AA-49639 AA-49641 AA-49646 AA-49642

SUERC-6928 SUERC-6923

SUERC-1625 SUERC-1624 SUERC-1591 SUERC-1593 SUERC-1592 SUERC-1632 SUERC-1590 SUERC-1611 SUERC-1601

Site report: DES 1995, 28 (James); DES 1996, 49 (Halliday); DES 1997, 38–9 (Halliday and Simpson); DES 1998, 43 (Halliday). Dates: DES 5 (2004), 164

Barclay et al. 2002

First 3 from lower, Rideout 1997 charcoal fill of pit in pit-defined mortuary enclosure; AA-20412 hazel charcoal from phase 2 fill of another pit in same enclosure (Continued)

All securely associated with the structure (and with the CB pottery in the strucutre); many from layer of in situ burning.

From pit inside probable DES 5 (2004), 63–4 house; no pottery, but (Cook); Cook, pers. fragment of large elliptical comm. bead of ?cannel coal

First 5 dates from features associated with CB pottery (mostly fill of pits, including prob. cooking pit, SUERC-1624); others, from other contemporary features (pit, stake hole; SUERC-1601 from timber-built structure)


Findspot, NGR

Newbridge, City of Edinburgh (NT 123 724)

Ratho Quarry, City of Edinburgh (NT 1281 7107)

Maybury Business Park (Areas B and C), City of Edinburgh (NT 178 720)

Pencraig Hill, East Lothian (NT 568 763)

No

18

19

20

21


Non-megalithic long barrow

Pit; occupation

Pits and possible house/s

Pit or post-hole

Site type1

CB

CB

CB

CB

5025⫾35 5015⫾35 4975⫾35 4965⫾35 4955⫾35

4995⫾55, 4710⫾55

–

5235⫾55* 5010⫾75*


SUERC-7663 SUERC-7657 SUERC-7662 SUERC-7654 SUERC-7656

SUERC-309 SUERC-308

AA-53693 AA-53694

Lab no

Smith 1995

Site report: DES 2 (2001), 44–5. Dates: DES 4 (2003), 159

Publication4

All from features securely associated with funerary activities; CB pottery also associated with the funerary activities.

Site report: DES 3 (2002), 41 (McLellan); Lelong & MacGregor in press. Dates: DES 6 (2005), 170–1 (McLellan).

From pit in Area B. Dates: DES 4 (2003), SUERC-309 is a tpq for 159 (Moloney). the pottery; -308 is charcoal from same fill as CB pottery. Sherds from Area B small and it was not possible to be certain whether they represent ‘traditional’ CB pottery (and are thus associated with the earlier date) or ‘modified CB’ (and are thus probably associated with the later date. The Area C pottery is ‘traditional CB’.

Oak charcoal possibly from post; CB pottery in fill of same post-hole or pit

Comments

484 Alison Sheridan

Eweford, East Lothian (NT 666 777)

The Hirsel, Coldstream, Borders (NT 830 406)

Wester Yardhouses, South Lanarkshire (NT 0042 5079)

Weston, South Lanarkshire (c NT 026 465)

22

23


24

25

Occupation

Residual, in Iron Age souterrain

Occupation

Non-megalithic long barrow and nearby pit

CB

CB

mod CB

CB

–

–

–

5065⫾35 5055⫾35 4960⫾35 4950⫾35 5045⫾35

4945⫾35 4940⫾50 4870⫾50 4800⫾50 SUERC-5280 SUERC-5290 SUERC-5289 SUERC-5286 SUERC-5298

SUERC-7658 SUERC-7910 SUERC-8001 SUERC-7911 Site report: DES 3 (2002), 35 (MacGregor and Shearer); Lelong & MacGregor in press. Dates: DES 6 (2005), 168–9 (MacGregor)

Known since 1923 but omitted from Kinnes’ list

DES 1998, 90 (Ward); www.biggar archaeology.org.uk (interim report as .pdf) (Continued)

Cowie 1993.

Omitted by Kinnes (1985). DES 1984, 1 (Cramp). One vessel, with heavy rim and extensive fingertip fluting, resembles CB NE pottery

First 4 dates from barrow; last from nearby pit. SUERC-5280 from cattle bone in cooking pit, no pottery: prob. dates initiation of funerary activities. Next 3 dates from structural wood associated with funerary activities; CB pottery associated with these activities. SUERC-5298 ⫽ charcoal from fill of nearby pit with CB pottery

SUERC-7911 from cremated human bone from mortuary structure


Findspot, NGR

Weston, Firpark, South Lanarkshire (NT 0276 4659)

Brownsbank Farm, Biggar (NT 080 430)

Melbourne Crossroads (Area 1), South Lanarkshire (NT 086 438)

Carwood Hill (aka Biggar Common East), South Lanarkshire (NT 030 395)

No

26

27

28


29

Occupation

Occupation (incl. pitchstone knapping area)

Occupation

Occupation

Site type1

CB

CB

CB

CB

See comment

–

4960⫾45, 4865⫾45

–


AA-42172 AA-42173

Lab no

DES 1996, 100 (Ward); DES 1997, 76 (Ward). Additional CB sherds have recently been found between Melbourne Crossroads and Brownsbank Farm (Ward, pers. comm.)

DES 1 (2000), 84 (Ward); DES 2 (2001), 90, 126 (Ward)

DES 1998, 90 (Ward); www.biggar archaeology.org.uk (interim report on Weston as .pdf; mentioned on p. 22)

Publication4

There are 5 dates Sheridan in Johnston (including one with a 1997, 220; DES 1996, standard deviation of 140 (Ward). ⬎ ⫾100), but it is uncertain whether the dated material was directly associated with the CB pottery: there seems to be a palimpsest of activities

Hazel charcoal from 2 pits, each associated with CB pottery

Comments

486 Alison Sheridan

Nether Hangingshaw Occupation Farm, Coulter by Biggar, South Lanarkshire (NT 003 331)

31

Occupation and NM long barrow

Biggar Common (aka Biggar Common West), South Lanarkshire (various, around NT 005 385–390)

30

Copyright © British Academy 2007 – all rights reserved CB & mod CB

CB

See comment

5250⫾50* 5150⫾70* 4880⫾50

GU-2985 GU-2986 GU-4276

Only a small amount of ‘traditional CB’ was found. Most of the pottery is modified CB, and apparently relates to the dates of 4780⫾40 (SUERC-3555) and 4615⫾35 (SUERC-3553) for two pits. The ‘traditional CB’ may relate to earlier, but undated, activity

(Continued)

Site report: www.biggar archaeology.org.uk. Dates: DES 6 (2005), 177 (Ward).

First 2 dates: pre-barrow Johnston 1997 activity. GU-4276: occupation, Area 5. See Ashmore 2004, 130–1 on the early dates, obtained from bulk samples of mixed-species charcoal incl. oak; these were from a ‘bonfire’ feature, associated with CB pottery, sealed under the barrow. GU-4276 from bulk sample of mixedspecies charcoal (incl. a little oak) from a charcoal spread — ?food preparation area — associated with CB pottery. There are also 2 later dates for Area 2; these are not necessarily associated with CB pottery


Rotten Bottom, Bow Dumfries and Galloway (NT 146 144)

Lockerbie Academy, ‘Hall’ Dumfries and Galloway (NY 1339 8273)

Carzield, Dumfries and Galloway (NX 9703 8212)

Holm, Dumfries and Galloway (NX 9596 8038)

33

34

35


36

Cursus

Occupation? (Single pit)

Occupation

Annieston (Thankerton Quarry), South Lanarkshire (NS 992 375)

32

Site type1

Findspot, NGR

No

–

CB

CB

–

CB

5095⫾35* 5095⫾50* 5075⫾40* 5025⫾40* 5000⫾40*

5010⫾70

None yet obtained

5040⫾100

–


SUERC-2124 SUERC-2126 SUERC-2131 SUERC-2130 SUERC-2129

Beta-68480

OxA-3540

Lab no

Johnston and Kirby, pers. comm.

Sheridan 1996; 1999

DES 1988, 25 (Brown); Sheridan in Johnston 1997, 220

Publication4

Last 3 dates from posts in post-defined cursus; first 2 sealed in pits of pit-defined cursus that succeeded it

Thomas 2004a; 2004c; 2007

From bulk charcoal Maynard 1993 samples, mixed species, but all from short-lived woods (contra Ashmore 2004). In same pit fill as CB pottery. There was also a date of 4920⫾110, Beta-68481, from similar material but the standard deviation is unacceptably large

Direct date from bow: yew branch, unburnt

Comments

488 Alison Sheridan


Holywood South, Activity pre-cursus Dumfries and Galloway (NX 9489 7966)

Pict’s Knowe, Dumfries and Galloway (NX 9538 7213)

Dunragit, Dumfries and Cursus Galloway (NX 1497 5745)

Cairnderry, Dumfries and Galloway (NX 3159 7993)

38

39

40

41

Activity preBargrennan-type passage tomb construction

Pits: probably occupation

Holywood North, Cursus Dumfries and Galloway (NX 9502 8012)

37

CB

–

CB

CB

CB

–

4890⫾35

4945⫾35 4945⫾35 4900⫾35

–

4960⫾35 4740⫾35* 4725⫾40*

SUERC-2103

SUERC-2093 SUERC-2094 SUERC-2095

SUERC-2115 SUERC-2113 SUERC-2116

Thomas 2007. See also DES 1998, 29–30 (Thomas). Dates: DES 5 (2004), 62 (Thomas)

DES 3, 2002, 30 (Cummings and Fowler); www.cf.ac.uk/hisar/ people/vc/ cdy/interim.html (Continued)

Hazel charcoal believed to Thomas 2004a; 2004d; be associated with burning 2007 of oak post in cursus

Dates from 3 different pits; SUERC-2093–4 from alder charcoal, -2095 from charred hazelnut shell, all in fill of pits; CB pottery present in same fills

Thomas 2004a; 2007; Thomas et al. 1999

SUERC-2115 (hazelnut Thomas 2004a; 2004b; shell) associated with CB 2007; Thomas et al. pottery in post-hole, 1999 relating to 1st phase of cursusconstruction. Others: -2116 probably from large post allegedly pre-dating cursus construction; -2113 from cursus post, whose posthole cuts that for the large post.


Findspot, NGR

Newton, Islay, Argyll and Bute (NR 341 628)

Port Charlotte, Islay, Argyll and Bute (NR 2482 5761)

No

42

43


Occupation/ activity pre-Clyde cairn

Occupation

Site type1

–

CB

5020⫾90 4940⫾90 4660⫾90

4965⫾60*


HAR-3487 HAR-3486 HAR-2836

GU-1952

Lab no

Publication4

All bulk samples of charcoal from mixed short-lived species ⫹ carbonised hazelnut shells, from occupation layer (without pottery) sealed under Clyde cairn. Sherds of 5 undecorated pots were found in the chamber tomb but the pottery type remains to be determined; they are unpublished and in Port Charlotte Museum, Islay. Mentioned (as ‘of unknown affiliation’) by Kinnes 1985.

Harrington, P. & Pierpoint, S. 1980. Port Charlotte chambered cairn, Islay: an interim note. GAJ 7, 113–5

Bulk sample of alder, McCullagh, R. P. 1989, hazel & oak charcoal GAJ 15, 23–51 from pit containing CB pottery; this pit cut by another, without pottery, dated to 4880⫾60*, GU-1951. Pottery mentioned in Kinnes 1985 but as ‘pottery of unknown affiliation’, as then a new discovery.

Comments

490 Alison Sheridan

Upper Largie, Argyll and Bute (NR 8330 9955)

Cursus and avenue

–

5375⫾55* 5220⫾50* 5175⫾55* 5090⫾50* 5090⫾75* 5020⫾55* 4975⫾50* 4935⫾50* 4840⫾50*

AA-43013 AA-48052 AA-43411 AA-43019 AA-43024 AA-43017 AA-43015 AA-43014 AA-43016

Not stated in DES whether single-entity samples. All from posts; AA-48052 from avenue, all others from cursus. Old wood effect probable Site reports: Radley 1993; Terry 1997; Ellis 2000. Dates: DES 3 (2002), 145 (Ellis)

Copyright © British Academy 2007 – all rights reserved (Continued)

Noteworthy exclusions: i) Thomshill, Birnie, Moray: half an uncarinated bowl (DES 2, 2001, 68): more likely to represent modified CB than traditional CB pottery; uncertain whether it pre-dates 3700 BC. ii) Machrie Moor, Arran (Haggarty 1991, PSAS 121): pottery is of modified CB type and is associated with dates suggesting that it dates to around, or after, 3700 BC iii) Ulva Cave, Argyll and Bute: charcoal from pit with carbonised cereal grains, burnt bone, shell, dated to 4990±60 BP (GU-2707), but whether activity was associated with the ‘CB Neolithic’ is unknown. Pottery from elsewhere in the cave identified by Ian Armit as ‘Hebridean Neolithic’ type. Also excluded: i) other finds of modified CB pottery likely to post-date 3700 BC (e.g. Chapelfield, Cowie, Stirling); ii) dated charcoal, not associated with artefacts, that is likely to be residual (e.g. old charcoal in the fill of a later pit); iii) dated material where insufficient information is currently available to assess its significance; iv) material dated to

Note: The pottery from Lochhill and Slewcairn NM long mounds, Dumfries and Galloway, listed by Kinnes 1985 as ‘Pottery of unknown affiliation’, is almost certain to be of ‘traditional CB’ type. Pottery from the old land surface under Camster Long cairn, mentioned in same list, is North-Eastern style CB and may be contemporary with the flecks of charcoal dating to 4950±80 (GU-1707), 4920±125 (GU-1709) and 4915±60 (GU-1708) (Masters, L. 1997, The excavation and restoration of the Camster Long chambered cairn, Caithness, Highland, 1967–80, PSAS 127, 123–83).

Additional possible examples: i) Grantown Road, Forres (Cook, DES 4 (2003), 96 and 6 (2005), 174): No pottery. Two pieces of oak charcoal each dating to 5030±35 BP, and the findspot lies within an area of known CB-related activity, but it is unclear what activity is represented by the dated material. ii) Greenbogs, Monymusk, Aberdeenshire (Greig, DES 1999, 9–10): occupation site with Neolithic pottery: definitive identification of the pottery still to be done. iii) Broomend of Crichie, Aberdeenshire: no pottery, but traces of activity and 2 dates early in 4th millennium (Bradley pers. comm.); more information may emerge from 2006 excavations.

1. ‘Occupation’ relates to general activity assumed to relate to residence (as represented by pits, artefact scatters etc.—although it is acknowledged that some pit-only findspots may not relate to residence). 2. ‘CB’ ⫽ ‘traditional Carinated Bowl’ as defined in this paper; ‘CB NE’ ⫽ modified Carinated Bowl, North-Eastern style; ‘mod CB’ ⫽ other modified Carinated Bowl. 3. ‘Relevant’ ⫽ associated, more or less closely, with pottery and/or structure or object in question. 4. Where entries are not already featured in the main References, the following abbreviations are used here: DES ⫽ Discovery and Excavation in Scotland; PSAS ⫽ Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland; GAJ ⫽ Glasgow Archaeological Journal; TAFAJ ⫽ Tayside and Fife Archaeological Journal.

44


Because many finds of Neolithic material have not yet been published fully, and not all ceramic identifications have been checked, this list cannot purport to be exhaustive. The newly-excavated site at Mid Ross, by Loch Lomond, may for example be associated with CB pottery but this needs to be checked. Further information and comments on the dates cited here, and on other dates, can be found in Discovery and Excavation in Scotland from 1996, and in the Historic Scotland on-line Datelist (www.historicscotland.gov.uk), which covers dates obtained to c. October 2001. For finds of CB pottery prior to 1985, see Kinnes 1985 (and cf. Cowie 1993 for a discussion of CB pottery from eastern and central Scotland). For more information on each site, see the Canmore, the on-line National Monuments Record for Scotland facility (www.rcahms.gov.uk).

this time range but where the pottery is not demonstrably part of the CB tradition (i.e. at West Voe, Shetland: Nigel Melton, pers. comm., and see Ashmore forthcoming for discussion of other dates relating to activity within the first few centuries of the fourth millennium, not associated with CB pottery); v) human skeletal material from the west of Scotland which was found before 1985 but has produced dates within this time range; whether the individuals concerned (from Raschoille Cave) had been users of CB pottery is impossible to determine (see Schulting and Richards 2002).

492 Alison Sheridan


From midden to megalith? The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western Britain VICKI CUMMINGS

INTRODUCTION THE TRANSITION FROM THE Mesolithic to the Neolithic in Britain and Ireland remains one of the most debated and contested transitions of prehistory. Much more complex than a simple transition from hunting and gathering to farming, the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Britain has been discussed not only as an economic and technological transformation, but also an ideological one. In western Britain in particular, with its wealth of Neolithic monuments, considerable emphasis has been placed on the role of monumentality in the transition process. Over the past decade my research has concentrated on the early Neolithic monumental traditions of western Britain, a deliberate focus on areas outside the more ‘luminous’ centres of Wessex, the CotswoldSevern region and Orkney. In this paper I will discuss the transition in western Britain, with an emphasis on the monuments of this region. In particular I will discuss the areas around the Irish Sea—west Wales, the Isle of Man, south-west and western Scotland—as well as referring to the sequence on the other side of the Irish Sea, specifically eastern Ireland.

MODELLING TRANSITIONS Before we look at the evidence from western Britain, some of the theoretical approaches to the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition will be briefly considered. This is in order to highlight the ongoing importance of megaliths in understanding the transition process. Older models considered monuments a crucial part of the Neolithic ‘package’, brought into Britain and Ireland by incoming peoples from Europe (Childe 1940; Hawkes 1940; Piggott 1954). The study of monuments was considered key for locating continental parallels for



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British monuments (Daniel 1941; Davis 1945; Piggott 1954). In more recent decades, models still considered megaliths to be an important part of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. From ideas that monuments were instruments of conversion (Sherratt 1995) to the concept that the Neolithic was an ideological transformation (Thomas 1988), monumentality was considered the material manifestation of a new ideology and a changed sense of identity, thus an intrinsic part of becoming Neolithic (Bradley 1993; 1998; Hodder 1990; Thomas 1991). The idea that native hunter-gatherer populations had an enormous impact on the transition process became popular and it was suggested that the transition in western Britain was fairly slow, indigenous and regionally-specific (Armit & Finlayson 1992; Pluciennik 1998; Thomas 1996; Whittle 1990). As part of this general trend, precursors for monumentality were sought in the British late Mesolithic. Of particular relevance to the sequence in western Britain, and the title of this paper, late Mesolithic shell middens were seen as part of the inspiration for early Neolithic monument construction (Cummings 2003; J. Pollard 2000; T. Pollard 1996; Thomas & Tilley 1993). It has been suggested that middening was in many ways very similar to building a monument; middens were permanent locations in the landscape, locations that could be, and were, returned to repeatedly (e.g. Oronsay: Mellars 1987; but see also Warren, this volume). Furthermore, landscapes were altered by the construction of middens and these sites also saw the manipulation of dead bodies, the deposition of material culture and feasting. All of these are key features of early Neolithic monuments. The concept of monumentality in western Britain and in the UK as a whole, then, has been a major part of considerations of the MesolithicNeolithic transition in all theoretical paradigms of the last century. Whether monuments were simply one part of a Neolithic package brought in by settlers, or inspired by Mesolithic alterations of place, monuments have always been at the forefront of discussions of the transition. Let us now turn to the focus of this paper, the west of Britain.

INTRODUCING WESTERN BRITAIN To begin, there is a very distinctive late Mesolithic sequence in western Britain. There are a number of shell middens found on the shores of western Scotland. The middens on Oronsay (Mellars 1987; Mithen 2000; Mithen et al., this volume) are the best known, but other sites are found around Oban, such as Carding Mill Bay, Ulva Cave and Raschoille (Bonsall 1996). Although these sites have produced a wealth of evidence, including human remains, they have skewed our understanding of the later Mesolithic somewhat, giving the impression that the creation of middens may have been the norm, as


MESOLITHIC-NEOLITHIC TRANSITION IN WESTERN BRITAIN 495

opposed to the exception. This in turn has led to western Britain, and western Scotland in particular, being compared with Scandinavia and with ‘complex’ hunter-gatherers in the ethnographic record. In reality, the vast majority of the evidence from western Britain is for small-scale and mobile huntergatherers in the late Mesolithic utilising a very rich but densely forested world. This is not to detract from the potentially complex set of social relations and identities of these people, but to be wary of applying European or ethnographic models to this region. Turning now to the Neolithic, undoubtedly one of the reasons that there has been such a focus on monumentality in understanding the transition in western Britain is because megaliths are plentiful and in many cases well preserved. This is in contrast to other evidence which has either not been extensively investigated or is absent. There are, for example, few causewayed enclosures (see Oswald et al. 2001). The pottery from western Britain is similar to early Neolithic pottery from the rest of Britain, with Carinated Bowls present within all the local traditions (Sheridan 2004). However, very few Neolithic houses or settlements have been found in western Britain, which is now in direct contrast to Ireland, where increasing numbers are appearing (Armit et al. 2003; Darvill & Thomas 1996). In western Britain there was some continued use of middens where they are known, but for the most part settlement evidence is from lithic scatters alone, and even these are scarce in many areas. The one activity of which we have a much fuller understanding is lithic extraction and movement. The study area contains a considerable number of axe factories: Group I in Cornwall, Group VIII in the Preselis in south-west Wales, Groups VII and XXI from north Wales, Group VI from Langdale in Cumbria, and Group IX from Tievebulliagh and Rathlin Island in northern Ireland (Clough & Cummins 1988). The movement and widespread distribution of axes from these factories are well documented (Bradley & Edmonds 1993; Clough & Cummins 1988). Arran pitchstone and Antrim flint are also found considerable distances from their original source (Saville 1999; Simpson & Meighan 1999). However, in most cases it seems that much of the axe production was later than the very early Neolithic and this evidence is therefore limited for furthering our understanding of the transition. In summary, then, much of the evidence for the early Neolithic in western Britain is from the megalithic monuments, with the known pottery, lithics and domesticates, as well as human bone, often coming from monumental contexts.

MEGALITHS So let us turn now to the megaliths of western Britain. They are plentiful with nearly 200 documented sites in the region, found distributed along the shores


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of the Irish Sea (Fig. 1). There are a number of different types of Neolithic chambered tomb in western Britain. However, not all of these are early Neolithic in date and therefore some traditions are not of relevance to the discussion here. Passage graves, for example, are found in western Britain, with a few examples in Wales (Bryn Celli Ddu and Barclodiad y Gawres) and a small group in south-west Scotland (the Bargrennan sites: Henshall 1972), but these are almost certainly not early Neolithic in date. The large passage graves of Ireland are also later, although there are some small and early examples in Ireland (Cooney 2000). Portal dolmens on the other hand, found principally in Cornwall, west Wales and Ireland, and consisting of a simple chamber made using a large and impressive capstone (Fig. 2), are almost certainly early Neolithic in date (Cummings & Whittle 2004; 2005). The other main group of early Neolithic monument in western Britain is the chambered long cairn. There are a few in Wales and on the Isle of Man, but the main concentration is the old ‘Clyde-Carlingford’ culture (Piggott 1954), the Clyde group, found throughout western Scotland (Henshall 1972) and the court cairns of eastern Ireland (de Valera 1960). Sites consist of divided chambers with impressive façades which create a court or forecourt area. All are set within long cairns (Fig. 2). From all of these different early Neolithic megaliths, finds, where preserved, are much the same and typical for monuments from throughout northwest Europe: human bone, both cremations and inhumations, pottery, typically early Neolithic bowls, some lithics, for example axes or parts of axes, and often exotic stone such as Arran pitchstone, and almost without exception, charcoal, indicating the use of fire at these sites. There is also frequently evidence of early Neolithic activity in the forecourt area and some monuments have earlier activity beneath the cairn.

MEGALITHS AND LANDSCAPE In the past, most scholars have studied these megaliths primarily in terms of their architecture. Similarities and differences in architectural form have informed discussion on the regional classification of these sites, as well as broader debates on origins and the transition (Henshall 1972; Lynch 1969; Scott 1969). Initially inspired by Tilley’s (1994) study of monuments and landscape, my focus on these monuments has been not only in terms of their architecture, but also in relation to their broader setting in the landscape (Cummings 2002; forthcoming; Cummings & Whittle 2004). In particular I have been focusing on the experiences these places can generate for people building, using and engaging with them. Subsequently I have now visited virtually all of the megaliths around the Irish Sea zone, over 350 monuments in



Figure 1. The distribution of the chambered tombs in western Britain and eastern Ireland.


Figure 2. Early Neolithic chambered tombs in western Britain: dolmens Carreg Coetan (top) and Pentre Ifan (bottom), Clyde tombs East Bennan (top) and Cairnholy I (bottom).

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total. The overall aim of this research was to look for small-scale regional variation in both megalithic architecture and also landscape setting, which could potentially enhance our understanding of regionally specific transition processes. The results of the examination of the landscape settings of all of these megaliths were both surprising and unexpected. Early Neolithic monuments throughout western Britain and also in eastern Ireland, the entire Irish Sea zone in fact, are located in very specific and virtually identical parts of the landscape. Monuments are repeatedly positioned in relation to specific landscape features, in particular mountains and water. I have discussed in detail the relationships between the megaliths of western Britain and their broader landscape settings elsewhere (Cummings 2002; forthcoming; Cummings & Whittle 2004), and there is not the space here to go into detail about all these areas, but I want to very briefly summarise some of these relationships. Monuments and mountains There is a very clear relationship between megaliths and mountains (also see Cummings 2004; Cummings & Whittle 2004; Fowler & Cummings 2003). Megaliths are only found in the areas of western Britain which are mountainous and the flatter areas of the Irish Sea zone have notable blanks in the distribution. However, the small number of sites that do exist in flatter areas are very carefully positioned so that distant mountains are actually visible. Furthermore, the relationship between megaliths and mountains is very obvious when you are moving around these landscapes. For example, with the journey up to northern Ireland from Dublin, the landscape is quite flat, and devoid of early Neolithic megaliths, but as soon as the Mournes and Carlingford Mountain are visible, there is a profusion of monuments. However, megaliths are not built in the mountains themselves, but with views of mountains. Therefore, almost without exception, megaliths are positioned in the landscape in order to have views of mountains. In western Scotland, for example, monuments are situated so there are views of the stunning mountains around Loch Lomond and the visually distinctive mountains of Arran (Fig. 3). It is the Arran mountains, in particular, which are visible from a remarkable number of sites across western Scotland. To the north, Ben Cruachan also seems significant (for more details see Cummings forthcoming). A similar relationship between megaliths and mountains is found in Wales, where megaliths cluster around the mountains of north Wales, in particular Snowdonia and the mountains on the Lleyn Peninsula (Fig. 3). In south-west Wales, views are of the Preselis (Cummings & Whittle 2004). This relationship is also found on the other side of the Irish Sea. In north-eastern Ireland, monuments are concentrated in particular


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Figure 3. Views of mountains from monuments: Auchachenna in western Scotland (top), Hen Drefor in west Wales (middle) and Goward court cairn in north-east Ireland (bottom).

around the Antrim Hills to the north and the Mournes to the south (Fig. 3). A number of megaliths are also carefully positioned so that there are views of Black Mountain, Slieve Gullion and Slemish (Cummings forthcoming). Overall, then, megaliths are positioned so that there is a view of mountains from the site. Furthermore, it is not necessarily the highest mountains that are visible from sites, but ones which are visually very distinctive: for



example the mountains of Arran in western Scotland, Slieve Binnian in the Mournes in northern Ireland, and Carn Meini in south-west Wales. Views of water Monuments are not positioned in relation to mountains alone. Many sites also have views of water, in particular rivers and the sea. In western Scotland the distribution of megaliths is coastal, and as such virtually all monuments are positioned with views of the sea or of lochs which are connected to the sea (Fig. 4). Many sites are also found alongside rivers, those that flow down to the nearest loch or sea. As their name suggests, many of the Clyde tombs have views out over the Firth of Clyde. Other sites are located near to streams and I get the sense that these guided people from the sea to the monument along a watercourse, marking out a pathway through the landscape. Similarly the megaliths of west Wales have a coastal distribution and many sites have clear views of the sea (Cummings & Whittle 2004; Fig. 4). Again, the sites that are not positioned with a view of the sea overlook rivers. In north-east Ireland, almost two-thirds of sites have views of the Irish Sea, even though a considerable number of sites are many miles inland (Fig. 4). Time and again, then, megaliths are located with views of loch shores, the sea or are next to rivers. Views of mountains and water may not seem remarkable, yet when one contrasts the settings of stone circles in western Britain with their chambered tomb counterparts, only 7 per cent of stone circles have a view of the sea. It is also interesting that some areas of the Irish Sea zone have no megaliths at all, and for the most part these are the areas which afford views of neither visually striking mountains nor the sea. We know these areas were inhabited in the Neolithic, as evidenced by lithic scatters, but they did not see the construction of megalithic architecture. This is not due to the poor preservation of monuments in these areas, as other types of monument survive in the archaeological record: this is a theme explored in more detail below. General location It is not just the location of megaliths in relation to mountains and water that is repeated throughout the Irish Sea zone. Megaliths are repeatedly positioned in very similar zones of the landscape. They are never located high in the mountains or on beaches, although there are views of these areas. Inland and mountainous areas are avoided. Instead megaliths are positioned on the side of hills between the mountains and the sea, and this means that in one direction there is a wide view, of mountains and water, and in the other the view is closed or restricted. Monuments are also carefully orientated in relation to


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Figure 4. Views of water from monuments: Loch Nell in western Scotland (top), Carreg Samson in west Wales (middle) and Druid’s Stone in north-east Ireland (bottom).



these landscape features, often so that there is a view of water behind the monument as one stands at the entrance, and so that there are views of mountains to one side and a closed view to the other (also see Cummings et al. 2002). The orientation of the cairn opens up views of specific landscape features on entry or exit and also places the viewer so that the long cairn orientation divides the view into two sides. Megaliths are also positioned so that if one approached from downslope, typically from water such as the sea or a river, the monument is highly visible in the landscape on approach. If the approach was from inland, the monument would be virtually invisible until one arrived at the site.

INTERPRETATIONS These observations have reinforced the fact that early Neolithic megaliths across wide areas of Britain share many key features. First, megaliths share many architectural similarities. Throughout western Britain there are only two dominant architectural traditions: dolmens and Clyde tombs, with their court cairn counterparts in northern Ireland. These monuments do exhibit some small regional differences in architectural form, but considering the distances involved, they remain remarkably similar across such a wide area. Similarities in monument form across the Irish Sea zone are particularly noticeable if one engages with the site instead of looking at plans. This is relevant as it seems likely that Neolithic people did not envisage these sites in plan form. They were almost certainly more concerned with the overall effect these sites created. The experience of encountering and engaging with a court cairn in Ireland or a Clyde monument in Scotland is actually very similar, where people would encounter a stone-built and defined forecourt leading to divided chambers. It is also of interest that the finds from these sites are also very similar. Megaliths more or less ubiquitously seem to have been used for the deposition of human bone and other artefacts including burnt material. In many cases it is also notable that objects deposited in the megaliths have come from distant places; Arran pitchstone is found in many of the western Scottish monuments for example (Henshall 1972). On top of this, as I have just outlined, the settings of these monuments are also remarkably similar across massive areas. Sites repeatedly have views of mountains, of water, the sea, rivers and lochs, and are set on the side of hills. Contra Fleming (2005), these sets of carefully orchestrated views are not found throughout the area and sites were clearly very specifically orientated and positioned in the landscape. The experience of the landscape at these sites is therefore very similar throughout the Irish Sea zone. Using and engaging with these megaliths, then, in terms of both architecture and the surrounding landscape may well


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have created remarkably similar engagements with place, whether in western Scotland, west Wales or north-east Ireland. The fact that these monuments are architecturally very similar is interesting, but perhaps not exceptional. After all, other forms of early Neolithic material culture such as Carinated Bowls are found across wide areas of Britain (see Sheridan, this volume). It is perhaps also not surprising that monuments seem to have been used in similar ways, hence their broader name of burial chambers. It is unlikely, however, that these sites were used exclusively for the burial of the dead (Leivers 1999), with other aspects of their use being equally, if not more, important. These were places for the meeting and gathering of people, for feasting, for rites perhaps connected with transformations in status or the lifecycle, and for the manipulation of material culture and personal identity (Brück 2001; Fowler & Cummings 2003; Jones 1998). They were also places for the creation of unique and otherworldly experiences, perhaps for journeying to other realms (Dronfield 1995a; 1995b; Watson 2001). I would argue that it is more unexpected, however, that megaliths are found in virtually identical parts of the landscape, and it leads to the possibilities that the precise location of sites was an intrinsic part of monuments themselves and that these particular places in the landscape were fundamentally connected to the identity and use of the sites. It seems that these places, and these places alone, were appropriate for megalithic construction. So why was the setting of sites between the mountains and sea appropriate? Elsewhere, it has been argued that these places in particular were of significance in local worldviews (Cummings 2002; Cummings & Whittle 2004; 2005; Fowler & Cummings 2003; Tilley 1994; Whittle 2004). As already noted, it is the most visually distinctive mountains that are visible from these megaliths, places that would have been important for moving around the landscape and also part of creation mythology and cosmology. The sea was also likely to have been imbued with significances, as both a connecting substance and highly symbolic natural feature (Bradley 2000; Scarre 2002). The location of megaliths may well have been important nodes in the landscape long before a monument was constructed. This may also go some way, then, to explaining why there are blank areas in western Britain, where no megaliths were constructed. These areas did not have the right ‘sets’ of landscape features and associated mythologies for the construction of such architecture. So what we had were people across these massive swathes of western Britain and eastern Ireland deliberately and knowingly building monuments in very similar ways and in similar parts of the landscape. They were creating places that enabled people to have very similar encounters with these monuments even though they were in quite different parts of the Neolithic world. So how does this inform us about the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the area?



THE IRISH SEA WORLD: A NEW SOCIAL IDENTITY? One interpretation of the data presented above would be that megaliths share so many similarities in form and location that they may have been constructed by people who were in contact and aiming to produce similar monuments. Another observation which adds currency to this argument is that many sites are positioned so that there are views of this wider Irish Sea zone itself. A number of sites have views of distant landmasses. So, for example, sites in south-west Scotland have views of the Isle of Man (Cummings 2002), megaliths in western Scotland have views of Ireland, and sites in Ireland have views of Scotland (Cummings forthcoming). Many sites seem to have been very carefully and deliberately positioned so that these views were present. At Ossian’s Grave in County Antrim, for example, the monument is built so that Kintyre is visible on the horizon (Fig. 5). A few metres downslope and this view would be gone. Another example, Blasthill on Kintyre, is carefully positioned so that Arran is visible in one direction and northern Ireland in the other (Fig. 5). Elsewhere I have also argued that the views of mountains from the megaliths also create wider connections across the wider Irish Sea world (Cummings 2004; and see also Tilley, this volume). From the mountains which are visible from the megaliths, it is possible to see other parts of the Irish Sea world which themselves have concentrations of megaliths. The intervisibility of the mountains of the Irish Sea zone, which are the focus for megalithic construction, means people could literally see other parts of the Irish Sea world. And as we have already seen, many monuments have views over the Irish Sea itself. Could this mean that these monuments represent a broader sense of identity created and shared across this entire area? Could it be that the beginning of the Neolithic saw the emergence of a new identity which was focused on the Irish Sea zone? Could it suggest that the beginning of the Neolithic was, after all, something that happened around the whole of the Irish Sea area in a very similar way? Are these megaliths representative perhaps of an incoming population, with a common origin point, which explains why people from western Scotland to south-west Wales to eastern Ireland knew how and where to build their megaliths? This may be one possibility. However, there are a number of arguments which counter this (see also Mithen et al., this volume). First, the similarity of setting and form over a massive area does not mean that these people were part of the same cultural group with a shared cultural identity. It has been shown that the presence of shared material culture does not necessarily delineate cultural groups (Hodder 1982a; 1982b; Shanks & Tilley 1987; Zvelebil 1996). Secondly, megalithic construction does not happen everywhere within the study area. It was not ubiquitous and all-embracing. As already noted,


Figure 5. Long distance views from Ossian’s Grave, County Antrim, towards Kintyre (top) and Blasthill, Kintyre, towards Ireland and Arran (bottom).

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there are blanks in the distribution, and as already suggested, it may be that it was only appropriate to build megaliths in very specific places or nodes within the landscape which these blank areas do not have. Finally, a closer examination of the dates of these megaliths reveals that these monuments probably had very little to do with the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, even though they have been considered a fundamental part of the Neolithic package in the past. The radiocarbon dates from these sites (older dates as well as more recent dates from a programme by Rick Schulting: pers. comm.), suggest that these monuments were not constructed right at the beginning of the Neolithic (and see Whittle, this volume). It is fair to say that we are still struggling to pinpoint the precise date for the appearance of the Neolithic in western Britain, with the obvious problem of first identifying what the earliest Neolithic actually ‘was’. There is also the distinct possibility that the Neolithic may be different in different areas. Nevertheless, it seems clear that people around the Irish Sea had access to and were using domesticated animals and plants, pottery and other material elements of the Neolithic for 100, 200, even 300 years before they started building megaliths. It is only after a few hundred years that we see the explosion of megalithic construction across a broad area. I suggest, therefore, that the megaliths of the Irish Sea zone are in actual fact not part of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition but a reaction to a process which had already happened, perhaps as many as 12 generations before. This transition then, seems to have involved a change in economy and material culture, but not in its initial stages the widespread construction of megalithic architecture.

CONCLUSIONS So where does that leave us? Although considerations of the MesolithicNeolithic transition in Britain have almost always considered monumentality to be a key element of the transition process, I have suggested this may not actually be the case. Instead, it seems likely that the megaliths of the Irish Sea area were built a couple of hundred years after people started using Neolithic things: cows, pots and axes. In western Britain at least those first few hundred years when people were first using domesticates and pottery remain frustratingly elusive. Nevertheless, the study of megaliths does seem to suggest that a few hundred years after the introduction of domesticates and new material culture there was a reaction which was widespread and dramatic. People around specific parts of the Irish Sea seem to have deliberately constructed monuments in very similar ways and in similar parts of the landscape. One argument might be that whatever the nature of the original transition, the reaction was shared and repeated across a wide area. Perhaps megaliths were


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the result of realising that the world had changed and moved on. Perhaps megaliths were part of a process of creating a new sense of identity, the desire to feel part of a broader Neolithic community. Perhaps this was particularly resonant in areas which had a very rich, yet very specific, landscape mythology. Yet that would be only part of the story. As much as megaliths enabled, they also constrained. Perhaps megaliths could only be constructed in particular ways and particular places, and used in particular ways. In this way, megaliths may simply have fulfilled the diverse needs of many different communities. This research in the landscape settings of megaliths raises as many questions about the nature of the early Neolithic as it addresses, and it is clear that other forms of evidence need to be incorporated into this megalithic picture. But it is clear that after all the debate, a simple transition from midden to megalith may be too simplistic. Note. I would like to thank The Leverhulme Trust, The British Academy, The Board of Celtic Studies and Cardiff University for funding various elements of the research presented here. Many thanks also to Chris Fowler and Alasdair Whittle for offering useful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

REFERENCES ARMIT, I. & FINLAYSON, B. 1992. Hunter-gatherers transformed: the transition to agriculture in northern and western Europe. Antiquity 66, 664–76. ARMIT, I., MURPHY, E., NELIS, E. & SIMPSON, D. (eds) 2003. Neolithic settlement in Ireland and western Britain. Oxford: Oxbow. BONSALL, C. 1996. The ‘Obanian problem’: coastal adaption in the Mesolithic of western Scotland. In T. Pollard & A. Morrison (eds), The early prehistory of Scotland, 183–97. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. BRADLEY, R. 1993. Altering the earth. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. BRADLEY, R. 1998. The significance of monuments: on the shaping of human experience in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe. London: Routledge. BRADLEY, R. 2000. The archaeology of natural places. London: Routledge. BRADLEY, R. & EDMONDS, M. 1993. Interpreting the axe trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. BRÜCK, J. 2001. Monuments, power and personhood in the British Neolithic. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 7, 649–67. CHILDE, V. 1940. Prehistoric communities of the British Isles. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. CLOUGH, T. & CUMMINS, W. (eds) 1988. Stone axe studies: volume two. London: Council for British Archaeology. COONEY, G. 2000. Landscapes of Neolithic Ireland. London: Routledge. CUMMINGS, V. 2002. Between mountains and sea: a reconsideration of the monuments of south-west Scotland. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 68, 125–46. CUMMINGS, V. 2003. Mesolithic world-views of the landscape in western Britain. In L. Larsson, H. Kindgren, K. Knutsson, D. Leoffler & A. Åkerlund (eds), Mesolithic on the move: papers presented at the Sixth International Conference on the Mesolithic in Europe, Stockholm 2000, 74–81. Oxford: Oxbow.


MESOLITHIC-NEOLITHIC TRANSITION IN WESTERN BRITAIN 509 CUMMINGS, V. 2004. Connecting the mountains and sea: the monuments of the eastern Irish Sea zone. In V. Cummings & C. Fowler (eds), The Neolithic of the Irish Sea: materiality and traditions of practice, 29–36. Oxford: Oxbow. CUMMINGS, V. forthcoming. A view from the west: the Neolithic of the Irish Sea zone. Oxford: Oxbow. CUMMINGS, V., JONES, A. & WATSON, A. 2002. In between places: axial symmetry and divided space in the monuments of the Black Mountains, south-east Wales. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 12, 57–70. CUMMINGS, V. & WHITTLE, A. 2004. Places of special virtue: megaliths in the Neolithic landscapes of Wales. Oxford: Oxbow. CUMMINGS, V. & WHITTLE, A. 2005. Pentre Ifan: east or west? The origins of monumentality in Wales and western Britain. In G. Marchand & A. Tresset (eds), Unité et diversité des processus de néolithisation sur la façade atlantique de l’Europe (7ème–4ème millénaires avant J.-C.), 245–56. Société Préhistorique Française: Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française. DANIEL, G. 1941. The dual nature of the megalithic colonisation of prehistoric Europe. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 7, 1–49. DARVILL, T. & THOMAS, J. (eds) 1996. Neolithic houses in northwest Europe and beyond. Oxford: Oxbow. DAVIS, M. 1945. Types of megalithic monuments of the Irish Sea and north channel coastlands: a study in distributions. Antiquaries Journal 25, 125–44. DE VALERA, R. 1960. The court cairns of Ireland. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 60, 9–140. DRONFIELD, J. 1995a. Migraine, light and hallucinogens: the neurocognitive basis of Irish megalithic art. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 14, 261–75. DRONFIELD, J. 1995b. Subjective vision and the source of Irish megalithic art. Antiquity 69, 539–49. FLEMING, A. 2005. Megaliths and post-modernism: the case of Wales. Antiquity 79, 921–32. FOWLER, C. & CUMMINGS, V. 2003. Places of transformation: building monuments from water and stone in the Neolithic of the Irish Sea. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 9, 1–21. HAWKES, C. 1940. The prehistoric foundations of Europe to the Mycenean Age. London: Methuen. HENSHALL, A. 1972. The chambered tombs of Scotland, volume two. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. HODDER, I. 1982a. Symbols in action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. HODDER, I. (ed.) 1982b. Symbolic and structural archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. HODDER, I. 1990. The domestication of Europe. Oxford: Blackwell. JONES, A. 1998. Where eagles dare: landscape, animals and the Neolithic of Orkney. Journal of Material Culture 3, 301–24. LEIVERS, M. 1999. The architecture and context of mortuary practice in the Neolithic period of north Wales. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Southampton. LYNCH, F. 1969. The megalithic tombs of north Wales. In T. Powell, J. Corcoran, F. Lynch & J. Scott, Megalithic enquiries in the west of Britain, 107–48. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. MELLARS, P. 1987. Excavations on Oronsay. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. MITHEN, S. 2000. Mesolithic sedentism on Oronsay: chronological evidence from adjacent islands in the southern Hebrides. Antiquity 74, 298–304. OSWALD, A., DYER, C. & BARBER, M. 2001. The creation of monuments: Neolithic causewayed enclosures in the British Isles. London: English Heritage.


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PIGGOTT, S. 1954. The Neolithic cultures of the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. PLUCIENNIK, M. 1998. Deconstructing the ‘Neolithic’ in the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. In M. Edmonds & C. Richards (eds), Understanding the Neolithic of north-western Europe, 61–83. Glasgow: Cruithne Press. POLLARD, J. 2000. Ancestral places in the Mesolithic landscape. Archaeological Review from Cambridge 17, 123–38. POLLARD, T. 1996. Time and tide: coastal environments, cosmology and ritual practice in early prehistoric Scotland. In T. Pollard & A. Morrison (eds), The early prehistory of Scotland, 198–210. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. SAVILLE, A. 1999. A cache of flint axeheads and other flint artefacts from Auchenhoan, near Campbeltown, Kintyre, Scotland. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 65, 83–123. SCARRE, C. 2002. A pattern of islands: the Neolithic monuments of north-west Brittany. European Journal of Archaeology 5, 24–41. SCOTT, J. 1969. The Clyde cairns of Scotland. In T. Powell, J. Corcoran, F. Lynch & J. Scott, Megalithic enquiries in the west of Britain, 175–222. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. SHANKS, M. & TILLEY, C. 1987. Reconstructing archaeology. London: Routledge. SHERIDAN, A. 2004. Neolithic connections along and across the Irish Sea. In V. Cummings & C. Fowler (eds), The Neolithic of the Irish Sea: materiality and traditions of practice, 9–21. Oxford: Oxbow. SHERRATT, A. 1995. Instruments of conversion? The role of megaliths in the MesolithicNeolithic transition in north-west Europe. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 14, 245–60. SIMPSON, D. & MEIGHAN, I. 1999. Pitchstone — a new trading material in Neolithic Ireland. Archaeology Ireland 13, 26–30. THOMAS, J. 1988. Neolithic explanations revisited: the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Britain and south Scandinavia. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 54, 59–66. THOMAS, J. 1991. Rethinking the Neolithic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. THOMAS, J. 1996. Time, culture and identity. London: Routledge. THOMAS, J. & TILLEY, C. 1993. The axe and the torso: symbolic structures in the Neolithic of Brittany. In C. Tilley (ed.), Interpretative archaeology, 225–324. Oxford: Berg. TILLEY, C. 1994. A phenomenology of landscape. Oxford: Berg. WATSON, A. 2001. The sounds of transformation: acoustics, monuments and ritual in the British Neolithic. In N. Price (ed.), The archaeology of shamanism, 178–92. London: Routledge. WHITTLE, A. 1990. A model for the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the upper Kennet valley, north Wiltshire. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 56, 101–10. WHITTLE, A. 2004. Stones that float to the sky: portal dolmens and their landscapes of memory and myth. In V. Cummings & C. Fowler (eds), The Neolithic of the Irish Sea: materiality and traditions of practice, 81–90. Oxford: Oxbow. ZVELEBIL, M. 1996. Farmers: our ancestors and the identity of Europe. In P. Graves-Brown, S. Jones & C. Gamble (eds), Cultural identity and archaeology, 145–66. London: Routledge.


The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western Scotland: a review and new evidence from Tiree STEVEN MITHEN, ANNE PIRIE, SAM SMITH & KAREN WICKS

INTRODUCTION ALTHOUGH BOTH THE Mesolithic and Neolithic of western Scotland have been studied since the early twentieth century our knowledge of both periods remains limited, as does our understanding of the transition between them— whether this is entirely cultural in nature or involves the arrival of new Neolithic populations and the demise of the indigenous Mesolithic huntergatherers. The existing data provide us with seemingly contradictory evidence, with that from dietary analysis of skeletal remains suggesting population replacement and that from settlement and technology indicating continuity. After reviewing this evidence, this contribution briefly describes ongoing fieldwork in the Inner Hebrides which aims to gain a more complete understanding of Mesolithic settlement patterns, without which there can only be limited progress on understanding the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western Scotland thus provides archaeologists with a significant challenge. We still need to specify what this transition involved with regard to changes in settlement, subsistence, society, ideology and the human population itself, before being able to explain when and why it occurred. In spite of more than a century of research on the Mesolithic and Neolithic of western Scotland our knowledge of the archaeological record remains limited. This partly arises from the nature of the landscape; Mesolithic and Neolithic sites without standing monuments are not easily discovered within landscapes that are predominantly laid to pasture or covered by thick peat and blown sand, and where the coastline has had a complex geomorphological history. Once sites are found, preservation is frequently so poor that they provide little more than scatters of chipped stone that are too easily classified according to preconceived and untested



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ideas of culture history. Moreover, Mesolithic communities are likely to have had spatially extensive patterns of movement, and hence the planning, funding and executing of fieldwork at an appropriate geographical scale in a region of scattered islands and peninsulas are themselves an immense challenge. Nevertheless, the last decade has seen some progress made on the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western Scotland. In this paper we will initially review and interpret the current evidence, focusing on that from the Hebridean islands and highlight the issues of on-going debate. We will then outline some aspects of our ongoing research.

A BRIEF OVERVIEW One of the earlier known sites in Scotland is located on the island of Rum, that of Kinloch Fields with radiocarbon dates of 8000–7350 cal BC (8590 ± 95 BP) and 8200–7000 cal BC (8515 ± 190 BP) (Wickham-Jones 1990; Fig. 1). This has a so-called narrow blade technology involving the production of microliths from blade blanks produced from platform cores, although other forms of core technology, including bipolar methods, are also present within the site’s chipped stone assemblage. Following c. 8000 cal BC, sites with narrow blade technology are known throughout the Inner Hebrides and indicate a substantial Mesolithic presence of mobile hunter-gatherer communities. Such sites have not, as yet, been discovered in the Outer Hebrides, although a Mesolithic presence may be indicated by vegetation change (Edwards 1996). Mesolithic settlement within western Scotland has had a long history of study, with many areas seeing repeated visits by archaeologists at the end of the nineteenth and start of the twentieth centuries: for example, Ludovic Mann and Henderson Bishop on Tiree, Keith MacKewan and Mann again at Risga, and Henderson as well as William Galloway and Mungo Buchanan on Oronsay. In more recent times we should note the campaign of excavations by John Mercer (e.g. 1968; 1971; 1974; 1980) on Jura, the excavations by Paul Mellars (1987) of the Oronsay shell middens, Clive Bonsall’s work in Ulva Cave (Bonsall et al. 1991; 1992), Mull, and Caroline Wickham-Jones’s (1990) excavations at Kinloch Fields, Rum, and more recently her work in the Inner Sound forming the First Settlers Project (Hardy & Wickham-Jones 2003). The Southern Hebrides Mesolithic Project between 1988–98 examined Mesolithic settlement on Islay and Colonsay (Mithen 2000a), while our ongoing Inner Hebrides Archaeological Project is now undertaking survey and test excavation for Mesolithic settlement on Tiree, Coll and north-west Mull. In addition to such fieldwork, studies of the Mesolithic have been pursued by palaeoenvironmental research (Edwards 2000), computational studies (e.g.


A REVIEW AND NEW EVIDENCE FROM TIREE

Figure 1.

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Western Scotland, showing sites referred to in the text.

Lake et al. 1998), experimental archaeology (e.g. Barlow & Mithen 2000; Score & Mithen 2000), theoretical speculation (e.g. Cummings 2003) and a variety of analytical approaches, involving analysis of bone isotopes (e.g. Schulting & Richards 2002) and the radiocarbon dating of artefacts discovered much earlier this century (e.g. Bonsall & Smith 1992).


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With the risk of gross generalisation, this research has demonstrated that Mesolithic communities in the Hebrides were mobile hunter-gatherers, most likely having a diverse economic base involving the use of marine and terrestrial, animal and plant foods. Some have argued that they should be characterised as ‘complex hunter-gatherers’ equivalent to those of the Ertebølle from Denmark (e.g. Armit & Finlayson 1992). We doubt if this is correct and suggest that the Mesolithic communities in the southern Hebrides at least (Islay, Colonsay, Jura and Oronsay) should be considered as generalist foragers, without substantial, let alone permanent, base camps (see Mithen 2000c, 600–20); they were the epitome of what Mithen has termed Thoughtful Foragers (Mithen 1990). A concern with the transition to the Neolithic has been implicit within much of the Mesolithic research referred to above, and has sometimes become the main focus of concern (e.g. Cummings 2003; Schulting & Richards 2002). The main problem we face with explaining this transition is our limited understanding of Neolithic communities. Within Scotland in general, there appears to be a disjuncture in the archaeological record at around 3800–3700 cal BC with the appearance of farming, pottery-making and the formal deposition of the dead within stone-built burial tombs (Ashmore 2004). In northern and eastern Scotland this evidence seems to conform to our traditional ideas of the Neolithic as sedentary, mixed economy farming communities in terms of stone-built structures forming villages in the Orkney islands (Richards 2003) and timber-built structures at Balbridie (Fairweather & Ralston 1993) and Claish Farm (Barclay et al. 2002) in eastern Scotland. The evidence is less substantial and more ambiguous in western Scotland, where it is dominated by burial tombs (Ritchie 1997). One of the earliest of these is the chambered cairn at Port Charlotte, Islay. An assemblage of charcoal fragments, charred hazelnut shell fragments, flint scrapers and animal bones from an old land surface below this cairn has provided three radiocarbon dates, with the oldest at 3980–3640 cal BC (5020 ± 90 BP) and a mean of 3779–3542 cal BC (4890 ± 60 BP) (Harrington & Pierpoint 1980). A date for the construction of the chambered tomb at Crarae, Loch Fyne, has been proposed on the basis of a cockle shell date from the tomb at 4240–3780 cal BC (5545 ± 35 BP), while a human bone from the tomb has been dated to 3640–3380 cal BC (4735 ± 40 BP) (Scott 1961; Schulting & Richards 2002). Charcoal from a pit containing Neolithic pottery from Newton, Islay, was dated to 3940–3640 cal BC (4965 ± 60 BP) (Connock et al. 1993; McCullagh 1989) and that from a Neolithic hollow at Kinloch, Rum, to 3800–3000 cal BC (4725 ± 140 BP). Charcoal from pits with Neolithic pottery at Machrie Moor, Arran, has been dated to 4500–4140 cal BC (5500 ± 70 BP) and 3710–3380 cal BC (4820 ± 50 BP) (Haggerty 1991), with the pollen evidence suggesting the earliest cereal cultivation occurred prior to 4300 cal BC based



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on a radiocarbon age estimate (Robinson & Dickson 1988). Charcoal from a dismantled timber circle at Temple Wood, Kilmartin, has been dated to 4353–3351 cal BC (5025 ±190 BP) while that from structures that are most probably Neolithic houses from Ardnadam and Dunloskin Wood, Argyll, has been dated to 3710–3340 cal BC (4740 ± 90 BP) and 3950–3000 cal BC (4725 ± 150 BP) respectively (Ashmore 1997), with pollen evidence at Ardnadam suggesting pastoralism (Rennie 1984). While the burial tombs, pottery and scant traces of architecture, cereals and bones from domestic animals, indicate a change of lifestyle from that of the Mesolithic, the extent and precise nature of this change remain unclear. One possibility is the arrival of new people herding cattle and sheep, using pottery and possessing quite different cultural values and ideology to those of the indigenous Mesolithic people. In this scenario, the latter would have been entirely replaced, either becoming acculturated or simply dying out. Another possibility is the piecemeal adoption of various Neolithic cultural traits by the Mesolithic foragers as these spread from the east and the south, resulting in a gradual transformation of their lifestyles. To consider some of the key issues concerning this transition and to decide which of these scenarios is most likely, we must begin with the Mesolithic shell middens on Oronsay.

THE ORONSAY MIDDENS, OBANIAN CULTURE AND ISSUES OF CHRONOLOGY The Obanian culture was traditionally characterised as a late phase of the Mesolithic, constituted by shell midden sites on small islands and inside caves in Argyll—notably the sites on Oronsay, Risga and in the caves around Oban (Bonsall 1997). These were characterised as having a distinctive set of artefacts including barbed points, pins, awls, limpet hammers, and a chipped stone technology dominated by bipolar technology and lacking in blade technology and microliths (Lacaille 1954; Woodman 1989). The last decade has seen the Obanian culture systematically dismantled as a chronological phase of the Mesolithic, as its assumed diagnostic traits have been found in sites throughout the Mesolithic period and associated with a narrow blade chipped stone industry (Bonsall 1997; Mithen 2000b, 18–21). For instance, a barbed point from Druimvargie Rockshelter has been dated to 7580–7180 cal BC (8340 ± 80 BP), while the base of a shell midden in Ulva Cave, Mull, has been dated to 6640–6400 cal BC (7660 ± 65 BP). The site of Sand on the Applecross peninsula, Skye, has shell midden deposits associated with a narrow blade technology (Hardy & Wickham-Jones 2003), and microliths have been recognised as prevalent within the assemblage from the Obanian site on


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Risga (Pollard et al. 1996; Pollard 2000). Although the artefactual assemblages from the Oronsay middens have yet to be fully analysed and published, a recent assessment of a sample of chipped stone from Cnoc Coig has indicated the presence of a blade technology (Pirie et al. in press), contrary to the assumption that the Oronsay midden artefacts were entirely bipolar in character. It is no longer possible to characterise the Obanian as a distinct cultural or economic phase of the Mesolithic. Equally, it is also not possible to demonstrate that the Oronsay middens were part of a widespread settlement subsistence system involving the use of terrestrial as well as marine resources—as would be expected for Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. During the course of the Southern Hebrides Mesolithic Project 30 radiocarbon dates were acquired from five Mesolithic sites on Islay and Colonsay, four of which also had later prehistoric occupation. The dates evenly spanned the period 7330–6910 cal BC (8110 ± 60 BP) to 1920–1450 cal BC (3390 ± 90 BP) except for a complete absence between c. 5800–4500 cal BC, and only a single date (from Staosnaig, Colonsay) between c. 5800–3800 cal BC. This hiatus of occupation on Islay and Colonsay (and also on Jura) covers the principal occupation period of the Oronsay middens (Mithen 2000d). This period is unrepresented at all other Mesolithic sites on Islay and Jura, while its palaeoenvironmental record also lacks signs of anthropogenic activity. The idea that there was a Mesolithic abandonment of Islay, Jura and Colonsay for the tiny island of Oronsay between c. 5800–4500 cal BC seems ecologically bizarre. It does, however, appear to be supported by the isotopic analysis of human bone from Cnoc Coig, Oronsay. Schulting and Richards (2000; 2002) presented the results from studies 13 of C and 15N in samples of human bone from two Oronsay midden sites, Cnoc Coig (c. 4600–4300 cal BC) and Caisteal nan Gillean 1 (c. 5200–4300 cal BC). They also provided evidence from the midden at Cardingmill Bay, the samples of which were attributed to the Neolithic and from the Neolithic chambered tomb of Crarae, Loch Fyne. The Oronsay samples, and especially those from Cnoc Coig, provided very strong marine signals with 13C and 15N values equivalent to those found from seal and otter, suggesting a diet with 90% reliance on marine resources, specifically fish rather than sea mammals or shellfish. The Neolithic samples, in contrast, had values indicative of a total reliance on terrestrial resources, suggesting protein from animal stock. Measurements on sulphur isotopes were used by Schulting and Richards (2002) to argue that although the Neolithic people whose bones were deposited in Crarae made no use of marine foods in their diet, they nevertheless lived by the sea. Similar results indicating an absence of protein from marine resources have come from Bonsall’s (2000) studies of the human remains from Raschoille Cave, all of which are dated



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to the Neolithic and appear to have been buried into a Mesolithic shell midden. On the basis of this evidence, Schulting and Richards (2002) proposed that the start of the Neolithic in western Scotland involved a dramatic dietary switch with the rejection of marine foods, especially fish. They recognised that the amount of evidence from Scotland was slight, but noted that similar isotope results have been found in Denmark and suggested that this dietary change is common throughout Atlantic Europe, as protein from herded animals replaced that from fish, molluscs and marine mammals. It remains unclear how this interpretation can be reconciled with the archaeological evidence for Neolithic exploitation of marine resources in Scotland and throughout Atlantic Europe (Hedges 2004; Lidén et al. 2004; Milner et al. 2004). The most problematic evidence in western Scotland is that from the middens at Cardingmill Bay and An Corran, both of which have Neolithic dates on shell and artefacts (Bonsall & Smith 1992; Connock et al. 1993). Schulting and Richards’ (2002) proposal that marine resources were being exploited in the Neolithic for oils and raw materials, with a marginal, if any, use of meat, is not persuasive. Schulting and Richards’ results suggested a completely marine-based diet (with regard to protein) for the final Mesolithic on Oronsay. Had Cnoc Coig been a site within a subsistence-settlement system that covered not only Oronsay but also Colonsay, Jura and Islay, one would have expected that protein from terrestrial resources, notably deer, would have also been represented with the human bone chemistry. The data from a single specimen from Caisteal nan Gillean, on Oronsay, is more conducive to such an interpretation, as it indicated a balanced marine and terrestrial protein intake. Nevertheless the absence of evidence for occupation on Islay, Jura and Colonsay between 5800–4500 cal BC appears to preclude this possibility. Existing evidence (Mellars 1987) suggests a series of periods of intensive occupation and midden deposition associated with, in at least one of the sites (Cnoc Coig), two hut structures and numerous reused hearths. Mellars (2004) suggests that prolonged periods of occupation may have occurred in response to resource stress on neighbouring islands. Preliminary analysis of the chipped stone assemblage (Pirie et al. in press), that shows signs of typical bladelet technology, confirms not only that a Mesolithic technology was continuing up to 4300 cal BC but also raises the possibility that groups on Oronsay were not in any way isolated from more typical Mesolithic technologies, or, perhaps, the activities they represent. However, further analysis of the relationship of features at Cnoc Coig to midden deposition and to artefact assemblages is necessary in order to better understand occupation intensity and duration.


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SETTLEMENT, TECHNOLOGICAL AND ECONOMIC CONTINUITY The final depositions at the Oronsay middens appear to chronologically overlap with the presence of Neolithic activity within western Scotland. According to Switsur and Mellars (1987) the middens were still accumulating at 3800–3700 cal BC, with a date of 4354–3534 cal BC (5150 ± 380 BP) from Caisteal nan Gillean II. These overlap with the first traces of Neolithic settlement in western Scotland. Schulting and Richards (2002) have provided four new AMS dates on human remains from Cnoc Coig and Caisteal nan Gillean II which, when corrected for the marine reservoir effect, range from 4300 to 3800 cal BC. One interpretation of this slight overlap is that there were two populations within western Scotland by 4000–3700 cal BC: indigenous Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who had become restricted to small islands and entirely reliant on marine foods, and Neolithic farmers, practising cultivation, herding cattle and building stone tombs, who were now occupying the larger islands and mainland (Mithen 2000d; Schulting & Richards 2002). Such Neolithic farmers may have either been new immigrants into the region or indigenous Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, who had adopted a new lifestyle following culture contact of various types (e.g. trade, marriage, or oral communication through story-telling) with established Neolithic communities elsewhere. The latter appears more likely in light of evidence for either settlement continuity, as has been stressed by Armit and Finlayson (1992; 1996), or the reuse of Mesolithic sites by Neolithic (and later) people after a period of abandonment, as evident on Islay and Colonsay (Mithen 2000b; 2000d). At Kinloch, Rum, for instance, the archaeological remains attributed to the Mesolithic and Neolithic are virtually identical in terms of their chipped stone technology and types of features, although microliths and blades are less frequent in the Neolithic component (Wickham-Jones 1990). As Armit and Finlayson noted (1992), the interpretation of the Mesolithic remains at Kinloch as the remains of a base camp, and the Neolithic as the peripheral scatter from a more substantial Neolithic settlement located outside of the excavation area, appears to reflect traditional assumptions about these periods rather than to constitute an unbiased interpretation of the evidence. Similarly the Neolithic sites of Carinish on North Uist (Crone 1989) and Alt Chrysal on Barra have no more than pits, ashy spreads, isolated hearths and stone alignments similar to those features at Kinloch and Morton. Armit and Finlayson (1992) suggest that the impression of a much more substantial Neolithic settlement on the small islet of Eilean Domhnuill in Loch Olabhat, North Uist, occupied between c. 3650–3500 cal BC, arises from the superimposition of several occupations within a spatially restricted area.



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Mesolithic-Neolithic continuity regarding site location and possibly site function is also evident from Ulva Cave, where the base of the midden has a date of 6640–6400 cal BC (7660 ± 60 BP), while Neolithic pottery was stratified within its upper layers and charcoal from a pit has been dated to 3950–3650 cal BC (4990 ± 60 BP) (Bonsall et al. 1991; 1992). The midden at Risga, Loch Sunart, has pottery stratified in the upper layers (Pollard 2000), while both Mesolithic and Neolithic activity were located at Newton on Islay (McCullagh 1989). Bolsay Farm on Islay is perhaps the most significant ‘Mesolithic’ site with regard to ‘Neolithic’ activity. This is the largest Mesolithic site excavated by the Southern Hebrides Mesolithic Project, recovering 329,667 pieces of chipped stone that included over 7000 microliths (Mithen et al. 2000a; 2000b). This assemblage has been estimated as no more than 20% of that likely surviving within the soil at this location. The chipped stone assemblage is a classic example of narrow blade technology and, in comparison with other assemblages excavated by the SHMP, is relatively specialised in its range of tools with high frequencies of scalene triangles. It has been interpreted as a hunting camp in a prime location close to a lake and at a break of woodland, one to which Mesolithic hunters repeatedly returned resulting in the massive accumulation of debris—it was evidently a ‘persistent place’ in the landscape (cf. Barton et al. 1995). The site also contains a substantial early Bronze Age pottery assemblage, and a fragment of a Neolithic ground stone axe. Of eight radiocarbon dates, only three fall into the Mesolithic period, with the remainder being distributed between 3640–2080 cal BC (4740 ± 50 BP–3525 ± 80 BP). Once again, we can note the absence of occupation between 5800–4500 cal BC —the principal period of occupation of the Oronsay middens. There are two possible interpretations for the site: the chipped stone may all derive from the Mesolithic, with the later Neolithic and Bronze Age activity involving limited, if any, deposition of chipped stone; alternatively the typical Mesolithic narrow blade technology may have continued in use during the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods, with the site continuing in its Mesolithic role as a hunting camp. We can note here that charcoal from a pit at Staosnaig containing platform cores, blades and microliths was dated to 4360–4064 cal BC (5415 ± 60 BP) (Mithen & Finlay 2000), while a microlithic assemblage at Lussa River, Jura, is associated with a date of 3650–2900 cal BC (4620 ± 140 BP) (Mercer 1971). While ‘Mesolithic’ technology appears present in contexts with Neolithic dates, so too are typologically Neolithic artefacts present in Mesolithic contexts. At Kinloch, a bifacially worked leaf point was found within a pit associated with charred hazelnut shell fragments which provided the earliest dates from the site, 8000–7350 cal BC (8590 ± 95 BP) and 8200–7000 cal BC (8515 ± 190 BP) (Wickham-Jones 1990). Further fragments of such artefacts come


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from the same site, but could not be confidently assigned to either the Mesolithic or Neolithic phase. Leaf shaped arrowheads were also found associated with microliths at Lealt Bay on Jura (Mercer 1968), while another leafshaped and a chip from a polished stone axe of Antrim porcellanite were found with the microlith scatter at Lussa Wood 1 (Armit & Finlayson 1996; Mercer 1968). Similarly, a leaf shaped arrowhead made from Rum bloodstone has been recovered from the ‘Mesolithic’ midden deposits on Risga (Pollard 2000). Raw material distributions appear as widespread in the Neolithic as the Mesolithic (Armit 1992). Pitchstone from Arran is found within sites in the Hebrides and north-east Scotland. Baked mudstones from north-east Skye are found at Northton, Harris, while porcellanite axes deriving from Rathlin Island, Antrim, are widespread throughout the Hebrides. Consequently, if raw material distributions reflect the extent of mobility, there appears no reduction across the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. Indeed, as pitchstone has the most extensive distribution in the Neolithic, one might argue that Neolithic people were more mobile than those of the Mesolithic. A final potential aspect of cultural continuity between the Mesolithic and Neolithic of western Scotland concerns the creation of ‘monuments’ for burial. Archaeologists have traditionally restricted such practices to the Neolithic, but Pollard (1996; 2000), Cummings (2003) and Mellars (2004) have suggested that the Oronsay shell middens may have functioned in a similar manner to the Neolithic stone built tombs; they were artificial constructions on the landscape with substantial visibility which were repeatedly returned to and used for burial. The analogy with Neolithic mounds may seem tenuous, and the Mesolithic burial practices, if indeed this is what they were, were evidently quite different in light of the scattered, fragmented and partial skeletal remains within the middens (see also Warren, this volume). Nevertheless, speculations about the symbolic significance of not only shell middens, but also water, and small islands, are useful reminders of how hunter-gatherers as much as farmers live in culturally created landscapes.

IMPACTS ON THE ENVIRONMENT Although there are traces of cereal use in the Neolithic, there is limited evidence for substantial clearance of vegetation of the type expected for crop cultivation; the Neolithic impact on the vegetation appears little different to that of the Mesolithic. On Islay there is evidence for human disturbance to vegetation both at and before c. 3750 cal BC (5000 BP) (Edwards 2000; Sugden & Edwards 2000). Small-scale disturbance is evident at Loch



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a’Bhogaidh and Newton as early as c. 6430–6200 cal BC (7550–7310 BP). Further small-scale vegetation disturbance is evident at Loch a’Bhogaidh between c. 4020–1980 cal BC (5230–3610 BP), while more substantial clearance appears to occur in the Sorn Valley, Islay, at c. 4010 cal BC (5210 BP). Nevertheless, if these are reflecting clearance, it seems clear that those happening at c. 3750 cal BC (5000 BP) are not substantially different in impact from those at c. 6400 cal BC (7500 BP). The evidence from Loch a’Bhogaidh and Newton shows that only from c. 1830 cal BC (3500 BP) does vegetation clearance become substantial, apparently reflecting the establishment of fully agricultural economies. A similar pattern is evident further north on Rum (Hirons 1990). Between c. 9520–4900 cal BC (10,000–6000 BP), when the landscape remained relatively open with small copses of birch and hazel, together with scattered pine, there is evidence for disturbance to the vegetation in the immediate vicinity of the Mesolithic site. Hirons (1990) suggests that these are likely to have arisen from natural fires. Between c. 5480–2525 cal BC (6500–4000 BP), alder and hazel/bog myrtle increase markedly and the first evidence for human impact on the vegetation is apparent in the form of reduced tree and increased herb frequencies, correlating with charcoal within the sediments. Each of these periods of small-scale clearance lasted about 250 years with seemingly minimal long-term effects. At c. 3420 cal BC (4600 BP) a further impact on the vegetation is seen, with an increase in grass pollen, tree pollen of species favouring open habitats and increased mineral matter within the sediments. A few grains of flax pollen suggest local cultivation. But it is not until c. 2525 cal BC (4000 BP) that there was a major impact on the vegetation. At around this date there was a substantial reduction in tree cover, a build up of slope wash and, at 2570–2150 cal BC (3890 ± 65 BP), the deliberate dumping of stoney silt within a water course. A grain of cereal pollen within the sediment core at this date might suggest that it is only at this time that we have evidence for clearance for agriculture. In summary, there is no evidence for large-scale vegetation clearance of the nature one would expect in cereal-based economies in western Scotland until the start of the Bronze Age. This only occurs with the spread of Beaker pottery through western Scotland, when we find settlements with substantial architecture and extensive field systems. On Islay, for instance, round houses are found at Ardnave at a date of 2280–1900 cal BC (3687 ± 60 BP) (Ritchie & Welfare 1983) while the field systems at An Sithean suggest substantial cultivation (Barber & Brown 1984). Such agricultural activity involving extensive vegetation clearance and causing soil erosion contrasts markedly with that of the Neolithic, during which cereals appear to be a minor supplement to the continued use of wild plants.


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DENSITIES OF CHIPPED STONE AND MOBILITY PATTERNS While the bone isotope data contrast with the other lines of evidence for the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition that we have so far covered, there is one further feature of the archaeological record that appears to show a marked contrast between the two periods: the quantities of chipped stone. As noted above, technological changes between the Mesolithic and Neolithic remain under-determined, most likely involving little more than a shift of emphasis from blade to flake and platform to bipolar cores. But the quantities of chipped stone recovered from sites show a significant decline. The amount recovered from Mesolithic sites in the Hebrides is usually vast: for example, excavations at Kinloch Fields, Rum produced an assemblage of 138,043 pieces (Wickham-Jones 1990); Newton, Islay, 10,809 pieces (McCullagh 1989); Lealt Bay, Jura ‘at least 50,000 pieces’ (Mercer 1968); Bolsay Farm, Islay, 329,667 pieces (Mithen et al. 2000b)—and all of these are no more than samples of the total amount of chipped stone present. In contrast, at Neolithic sites in western Scotland, the quantities of chipped stone are negligible: Auchategan, Argyll, 125; Balloch Hill, Argyll, 196; Eilean an Tighe, North Uist, 27 (Sheridan & Sharples 1992). A similar contrast exists in eastern Scotland (Warren 2004). Various factors might explain this dramatic contrast. It may relate to differing excavation methods between Mesolithic and Neolithic archaeologists, with the former being more inclined to wet sieve large quantities of sediment. Alternatively it may reflect different depositional patterns between the two periods, with Neolithic stone-knapping and/or dumping of debris taking place away from domestic settlements. Another possibility is that a switch in the predominant raw material occurred across the transition from flint to quartz, with the latter being more difficult to recover and identify as worked. Even if all of these factors were playing a role, the reduction in chipped stone is dramatic in light of the evidence that otherwise exists for continuity between the Mesolithic and Neolithic. The most likely explanation for the reduction in chipped stone quantities is that this reflects a change in mobility patterns. If the rate at which chipped stone was generated was equivalent between Mesolithic and Neolithic groups, then the Mesolithic sites must derive from repeated occupations at the same place in the landscape, whereas the rate of Neolithic site reoccupation was minimal. This is likely if the Mesolithic people were reliant on the use of optimal locations for hunting and gathering, and hence repeatedly returned to these, whereas the Neolithic people took their resources with them in the form of herded animals and were far less constrained as to where they would undertake activities. With particular regard to the Western Isles, Armit and Finlayson (1996) have speculated that the Neolithic sites in small



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islets within lochs, such as Eilean Domhnuill and Eilean an Tighe, might represent permanent bases, while sites now found within the peatlands and machair, such as Northton and Carinish, might be transient seasonal camps. Yet Armit’s own description of the house structures in the islets as insubstantial appears to contradict the idea of permanent settlement, and a lifestyle involving high mobility appears more likely.

THE ACQUISITION OF ADDITIONAL DATA The data we have summarised above provide a rather confused picture of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western Scotland; there are some indications of continuity, suggesting gradual cultural evolution of an indigenous population, while data from bone isotopes, artefact densities and the absence of sites contemporary with the Oronsay middens are more suggestive of major social and economic change, possibly involving the arrival of new people reliant on domesticated herds. Further analysis and publication of existing data, most notably that excavated from the Oronsay middens and Ulva Cave, might provide a means to reconcile such apparently contradictory claims. Similarly, informed theoretical speculation, as undertaken by Pollard (2000) and Cummings (2003) is important, although that involving the application of optimal foraging theory (e.g. Mithen 1990) would be of far greater value. Ultimately, however, we need to improve our knowledge of the archaeological record by further survey and excavation for Mesolithic and Neolithic sites. New data are required for addressing at least four key issues. First, we need further information about the Mesolithic settlement systems, especially that involving the Oronsay middens. The absence of known contemporary sites on Islay, Jura and Colonsay may be no more than a factor of discovery; such sites may exist but have not been discovered or dated. Alternatively, this may be a true reflection of the settlement pattern between 6500–5000 BP. But such sites may exist elsewhere, notably in those regions of the Hebrides that have remained relatively unexplored for Mesolithic settlement but are within relatively short distances (for hunter-gatherers) of Oronsay: Tiree, Coll and Mull. On the basis of ethnographic analogy, looking at, for instance, the foragers of Tierra del Fuego who exploited an island archipelago with topographic similarities to western Scotland, we should expect that a single Mesolithic settlement system would have covered the whole of the west coast of Scotland (Mithen 2000c). Second, we need to gain further understanding of environmental change, and especially vegetation history, throughout western Scotland and especially on those relatively unexplored islands. As may be the case in the Western Isles


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(Edwards 1996), the first identification of a human presence may come from the presence of charcoal from human-induced fires in sediment cores or anthropogenically caused impacts on vegetation. However, Tipping’s (2004) caveat, that natural processes are perhaps more likely to drive woodland disturbance in environments that are inherently unstable, emphasises the need for multi-working hypotheses in interpretations of landscape and vegetation change. In this regard, new sediment cores ideally covering the late Pleistocene and early Holocene need to be taken and analysed from suitable deposits on Tiree, Coll and Mull. Third, new fieldwork is required to address the issue of dietary change. While the likelihood of finding new human skeletal remains from either Mesolithic or Neolithic contexts for isotope studies is limited, survey and excavation might reveal the presence of Neolithic (i.e. post-3700 cal BC) occupation sites in coastal situations that would imply the utilisation of marine resources, and ideally provide midden deposits. Fourth, there is the need to gain an improved understanding of stone tool technology, and especially its pattern of chronological change. Without this, we will be unable to draw any inferences regarding settlement patterns because many Hebridean sites will always remain as scatters of chipped stone lacking absolute dates. One of the key questions to resolve is whether platform blade technology involving the manufacture of microliths continued into the Neolithic. Another requirement is to establish the character of the stone tool technology associated with the Oronsay, Risga and Ulva middens. This requires a thorough analysis of those assemblages using the methodology devised for the Southern Hebrides Mesolithic Project (Finlayson et al. 2000), so that useful inter-site comparisons can be made. To address these issues, we have initiated new fieldwork on Tiree, Coll and north-west Mull, and begun analysis of pre-existing museum collections from these islands, as acquired by various collectors during the twentieth century. We have also analysed a sample of the Cnoc Coig assemblage and hope to undertake a complete study of the Oronsay chipped stone, along with samples of the Risga and Ulva assemblages This new project is at an early stage, having completed no more than two weeks of field survey on Tiree, inspection of selected artefact collections in An Iodhlann (Tiree museum), the Hunterian and Kelvingrove Museums, and those found by local residents of the islands. This has led to the identification of potentially important Mesolithic/Neolithic sites at Fiskary Bay and Caolas an-Eilean on Coll, and at Craet Dubh, Penmore on Mull, each of which we intend to explore during fieldwork in 2006 (Fig. 2). Here we report on preliminary results from Tiree.


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Figure 2.

Tiree, Coll and north-west Mull, showing sites referred to in the text.



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Steven Mithen, Anne Pirie, Sam Smith & Karen Wicks WAS THERE MESOLITHIC SETTLEMENT ON TIREE?

Tiree is the outer-most island of the Inner Hebrides, c. 17.5 km long and between 1.5 km and 9.5 km wide, with an area of 60 km sq. It is low-lying, treeless and flat, with three small hills, Ben Hynish (141 m), Beinn Hough (119 m) and Beinn Ceann a’ Mhara (90 m) (Figs 3 and 4). Almost the entire landscape is covered by either pasture or peat. The coast is characterised by a rocky shoreline interspersed with sandy beaches; sand dunes are extensive, almost entirely covered by grass which was deliberately planted in the postwar period as a means to stabilise the sand. Archaeological research on Tiree has been limited. Beveridge (1903) undertook the first systematic description of standing monuments and artefact scatters, while Ludovic Mann made five visits to Tiree and Coll between 1905 and 1921, making substantial collections of chipped stone artefacts which are now located in Kelvingrove museum. In 1912 a tanged point was found in the sand dune area of Balevullin (Livens 1956). The precise circumstances of its recovery are unknown and the point itself can no longer be located, although it is recorded as being in the Hunterian Museum (Ballin & Saville 2002). Typologically, this point has been described as an Ahrensburgian point which would indicate a late glacial presence on the island, between c. 10,500–9500 cal BC. During the second world war, George Holleyman, an RAF Corporal stationed on the island, described a sample of ‘craggans’ (large pottery vessels) from Tiree (Holleyman 1947), and made a substantial collection of metal, pottery and chipped stone artefacts from dune areas, especially Balevullin and Balephuil, which are now curated in An Iodhlann, the island museum. At that time the sand dunes lacked any grass cover, which appears to have exposed numerous scatters of artefacts, all of which are now sealed below a stable, grass-covered landscape (Figs 5 and 6). Ewan MacKie undertook a major excavation of Dun Mor, Vaul, between 1962–4 (Mackie 1974). In 1980 the Royal Commission published their inventory of monuments on Tiree (RCAHMS 1980). In September 2003, Katinka Stentoft (pers. comm.) undertook a survey on the west coast of Tiree for traces of Norse settlement on behalf of AOC Scotland. Our archaeological survey for Mesolithic sites has focused on the dune areas of Tiree’s west coast, although it has attempted to cover the whole island in terms of inspecting any natural or artificial exposure for chipped stone artefacts. The large unstable dunes are subject to substantial blowouts during major storms, while the fixed (i.e. grassed) dunes are only occasionally disturbed, such as by cattle, vehicles and walkers (there are no rabbits on the island). The fragile mat of surface vegetation can be broken through, and the thin rendzina soils (typically 10–20 cm thick) then become damaged. The



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Figure 3. View looking north-west across Tiree from Ben Hynish, located at the southern end of the island.

erosion scars vary in size, but the local farmers tend to repair them by spreading farmyard manure weighted down with beach cobbles, which allow the scars to regenerate before they grow too large. In some areas, however, the erosion has accelerated to the point where large areas of underlying sands have become exposed. The field survey began in 2004 with an intensive investigation of the area of dunes between Loch a’ Phuill, Beinn Ceann a’ Mhara and the beaches of Traigh Bhi and Traigh nan Gilean, between around NGR NL 95500/40500 and 93700/42700. The area was intensively covered in order to locate and examine every erosion scar for potential archaeological material. Approximately 200 erosion scars were investigated in the Loch a’ Phuill dune area. The survey continued by examining the area between Sandaig and Na Carnain. This area was characterised by large, unstable dunes immediately along the coastal fringe and smaller, more stable dunes inland. The major blowout exposures occurred in the unstable dunes along the coast; inland, the dunes were much lower (c. 1–3 m high) and exposures were rare. The area walked was along the coast between NGR NL 94000/44000 and NL 94200/47200, and about 30 exposures were investigated. A further 25 dune blowouts and exposures were investigated between NM 00000/46900 and


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Figure 4. View looking north across Balephuil Bay, Tiree, from Ben Hynish, located at the southern end of the island.

Figure 5. George Holleyman on the sand dunes, most likely at Balevullin, c. 1947 (with thanks to Ad Iodlhann).



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Figure 6. Grass covered dunes at Balevullin, August 2005.

NM 01100/47400. There were a number of likely looking major blowouts, but no artefacts were found in this area. During 2005 all of those localities from which chipped stone was recovered were revisited, and the remainder of the island was walked, examining all exposed sediments for chipped stone artefacts. The vegetation history of Tiree is effectively unknown, other than with regard to gross generalisations about western Scotland as a whole. Peat extraction on Tiree has been substantial; by the early twentieth century Tiree residents were importing peat from Coll. Today peat deposits are relatively scarce on Tiree. During 2004, the project test-cored ten locations, of which only that within the gently sloping reed beds on the western shore of Loch Bhasapoll (NGR NM 966 466) appears to have potential for reconstructing a partial vegetation history of the island. The reed beds cover an area of c. 0.5 ha with a sediment sequence comprising c. 150 cm of humic peaty gleys, capped by c. 40 cm of medium sand with shell fragments and underlain by sands and gravels, the latter potentially representing relict raised beach deposits. In 2004 a Russian peat sampler was used to obtain a sediment core for pollen and micro-charcoal analysis, and in 2005 an additional core sample was collected using a percussion-driven corer for plant macro-fossil analysis


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in order to determine both the local and regional vegetation history for Tiree, and evaluate the nature and extent of human impact on the landscape

TRACES OF MESOLITHIC SETTLEMENT ON TIREE The fieldwork and museum studies identified nineteen previously unreported locations on Tiree from which chipped stone artefacts have been recovered (Mithen et al. 2004; 2005). The provenance of those identified from the museum collections made by Holleyman could not be located beyond a general designation such as ‘Balephuil’ or ‘Balevullin’ as this was the only information present. The majority of these new sites are evidently later prehistoric in date owing to the presence of pottery and in some cases metal work and slag, and will be reported on elsewhere. Some of the artefacts collected by Holleyman are likely to be Mesolithic in date. His collection from Balephuil Bay (designated as TM3) consisted of 25 retouched tools that included 16 small, thumbnail scrapers, a borer with abrupt retouch on both lateral edges and two microliths, a marginally retouched bladelet and a bilaterally retouched irregular bladelet (Fig. 7). This collection also contained two small bifacial pieces on flakes, two notches and one retouched irregular blade. Another of Holleyman’s collections, now designated as TM5 and which lacks any provenance, contained a platform bladelet core (Fig. 8) and a bladelet. The artefacts most likely came from either Balevullin or Balephuil, as these were his main collecting areas. Of the new artefact localities found by our survey, the most likely to be Mesolithic or Neolithic in date is that designated as T1 (Fig. 9). This site was located in the base of a large dune blowout in the dunes at Balephuil Bay (NR NL 94980/40815), and comprised a scatter of worked flint in amongst the cobbles and pebbles of a buried storm beach. The height of the main gravel bench is 5.9 m, with the gravel ridge crest at 6.4–6 m. The scatter was immediately to the north of a relict beach ridge which was orientated eastwest, parallel to the present day shoreline. The ridge was exposed for c. 21 m, and continued under the unstable sand dunes to the east and west. The flints were found in a matrix of blown sand, and all of the visible artefacts were collected over the course of two visits by members of the team in 2004 and one visit in 2005. Following discussion with Katinka Stentoft, it transpired that she had also collected chipped stone from this locality in September 2003, and hence her collection in An Iodhlann was combined with ours to form a single assemblage of 176 pieces (Table 1). No prehistoric pottery was observed at this location, although modern pottery, plastic fragments, asbestos and other modern materials were present.



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Figure 7. Artefacts collected by Holleyman. (a)–(c) scrapers from TM3; (d) broken microlith from TM3; (e) borer from TM3; (f) worked bone point from TM4; (g) single platform bladelet core from TM5. Drawing by Sophie Lamb.


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Figure 8. Single-platform bladelet core collected by Holleyman, probably from Balevullin, from collection TM5.

Figure 9.

Site of T1, Balephuil, Tiree.


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Most of the artefacts had been made from small white beach cobbles of opaque flint, although artefacts made from quartz and marble are also present. These raw materials appear to be naturally present in the beach deposit at this locality. The assemblage is flake dominated (64%) with a significant number of cores (12%) and debris (18%) and few retouched pieces (5%) (Fig. 10). There is no clear evidence of blade/bladelet technologies with the two bladelets being irregular and probably fortuitous. The assemblage also contains a single core trimming element (from a small platform core) and a possible anvil. Analysis of the assemblage reveals two technological traditions, with bipolar (38%) and platform (48%) core types present. The presence of cores, anvils, debitage, debris and retouched tools suggests that all stages of knapping were carried out at this location, using raw material which was immediately present.

Table 1.

Chipped stone from T1, Balephuil, Tiree.

T1, Balephuil, Tiree

n

Flakes

With platform W/out platform Broken Total

Blades

Blades Bladelets Total

0 2 2

Debris

Chips Chunks Total

10 22 32

Cores

Platform Bipolar Fragment CTE Total

10 8 2 1 21

Retouched

Awls Bifacial Burin Notch Marginal retouch Scraper Total

Total


27 53 32 112

1 2 1 1 3 1 9 176

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Figure 10. Chipped stone artefacts from T1. (a) cortical flake with bipolar battering and absence of platform; (b) irregular flake with bipolar battering and irregular ventral face; (c) single-platform, sub-pyramidal, flakelet core; (d) platform core; (e) bipolar core on small pebble; (f) awl. Drawing by Sophie Lamb.



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Platform cores include both sub-pyramidal single platform types and amorphous types, and are generally very small (c. 20 ⫻ 20 ⫻ 20 mm) retaining cortex on at least one surface, confirming that beach cobbles were the raw material source. Bipolar cores range in shape from half cobbles to more characteristic wedge shaped pieces. These pieces frequently retain a high degree of cortex and this, allied to their small size, confirms the use of beach cobbles for this reduction strategy as well. Both bipolar and platform cores show only flake and chip removals, with no sign of blade technology present. Retouched pieces comprise 5% of the assemblage and include bifacial pieces (two), marginally retouched pieces (three), a scraper, a notch, a burin and an awl. Both bifacial pieces are broken and the breaks take the form of burin removals. It is possible that these represent knapping errors. The single deliberate burin has at least two burin removals from the platform remnant; crushing at the distal end suggests the use of an anvil in the manufacture of this piece. The assemblage has some similarities to that from Cnoc Coig, based on an initial assessment of a sample of the latter (Pirie et al. in press). Both share a mixture of bipolar and platform technologies in the exploitation of beach pebbles of flint and quartz. T1 contains a higher proportion of bipolar technology, and more limited indications of a bladelet industry, containing only two irregular bladelets. At Cnoc Coig, and as will be reported fully elsewhere, there are very few actual bladelets, although there are signs of blade-related products such as pieces with previous bladelet removals, cores with several bladelet removals, and core trimming elements. Retouched pieces are very similar between the two assemblages, although T1 contains a smaller proportion of retouched tools (5%, compared to 10% at Cnoc Coig). Both sites contain a range of mainly non-formal retouched tools. However, at Cnoc Coig there are numerous pièces esquillées, so far not present in the T1 assemblage. In making comparisons between these two sites, it is important to appreciate that Cnoc Coig is a large site with spatial and stratigraphic variation in assemblage composition, some components of which lack evidence for bladelet technology. So while the lack of a convincing bladelet industry at T1 makes it difficult to confirm a Mesolithic date for the site, the assemblage is very similar to the assemblages from some parts of Cnoc Coig where blade technology was not present. In addition, T1 probably represents a much briefer occupation, and possibly narrower range of activities, and has no (identified) shell midden in the vicinity. These factors may account for some of the differences in technology and tool class of the assemblages.


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Steven Mithen, Anne Pirie, Sam Smith & Karen Wicks CONCLUSION

Whether or not T1 is contemporary with Cnoc Coig can only be determined by excavation at the site, which may not be possible simply owing to the lack of preservation of any deposits other than the scatter of chipped stone on the raised beach. On-going geophysical survey of the Balephuil dunes by Dr Tim Astin (University of Reading) may reveal further archaeological deposits at this locality which are sealed by sand dune. Some artefacts from the Holleyman collection must surely indicate a Mesolithic presence on the island, but it seems doubtful that the source of these artefacts will ever be located owing to their lack of specific provenance and the almost entire carpet of grass that now covers the sand dunes of Balevullin and Balephuil, seriously inhibiting field survey. We have yet to examine the collections made by Beveridge and Ludovic Mann which are located in the Kelvingrove Museum, and have further fieldwork planned for Tiree relating to later prehistoric and historic settlement, as well as seeking to locate Mesolithic sites. This brief description of results from Tiree exemplifies the initial claim within this chapter: that archaeologists face an immense challenge when trying to understand the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western Scotland. Of the islands we have visited during the course of our current project and the Southern Hebrides Mesolithic Project, Tiree is probably the most difficult of all to survey for Mesolithic sites owing to the intensity of settlement, agriculture and coverage of the extensive dunes by grass. We may, therefore, have to rely on palaeoenvironmental indicators for evidence about a human presence in the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. The situation on Coll and Mull, where fieldwork of the IHAP will focus in 2006, looks more promising with substantial assemblages with platform blade core technology known from three localities, Fiskary Bay, Caolas an-Eilean and Creat Dubh. Although challenging and often frustrating, new fieldwork and the analysis of previously collected or excavated assemblages are essential for making progress towards understanding the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in this region. As described in the first half of this article, the current evidence largely points towards continuity between these periods with a gradual adoption of Neolithic traits by an indigenous hunter-gatherer population, and possibly involving some groups continuing to use Mesolithic technologies while exploiting coastal resources on Oronsay and perhaps other small islands. But such is the state of the evidence that numerous scenarios can currently be proposed and we are unlikely to make substantial progress until further fieldwork has been completed.



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Note. We are grateful to the Argyll Estates for providing permission to undertake our work on the island and especially to Mr Ian Gillies, the Tiree Factor. Our ability to do so was made possible by grants from Historic Scotland and the School of Human and Environmental Sciences, University of Reading. We are also grateful to Dr John Holliday for making the initial contact with SJM and his advice and support during the planning and duration of our work. We also gained very generous help from Catriona Hunter, the curator of An Iodhlann, and from John Bowler, Alasdair Sinclair and Robin Cameron regarding potential archaeological sites and work on the island in general. Following our work Katinka Stentoft of the Kelvingrove Museum kindly provided useful advice and information regarding her own work on Tiree and material within the Kelvingrove Museum. Professor Paul Mellars kindly provided access to the Cnoc Coig assemblage for study. We would also like to thank Alasdair Whittle and Vicki Cummings for inviting us to contribute to this volume and for the comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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Parallel worlds or multi-stranded identities? Considering the process of ‘going over’ in Ireland and the Irish Sea zone GABRIEL COONEY

INTRODUCTION THE TOPIC OF THE Mesolithic-Neolithic transition continues to prompt extensive scholarship, a variety of academic opinions as well as considerable passion, as seen for example in Rowley-Conwy’s (2004) article in the recent special issue of Current Anthropology on agricultural origins and dispersal into Europe and the varied responses to it. However, despite the major research efforts that are being made to understand what ‘going over’ meant, much of the work tends to take place within particular disciplinary fields or research areas with a limited degree of discourse between them, a point that has been well noted with regard to the relationship between palaeoenvironmentalists and archaeologists (e.g. Tipping & Tisdall 2004, 71) but could equally well be made in other contexts. The parallel worlds in the title refer then to the variety of ways in which research in archaeology and related disciplines currently approaches the study of the process of ‘going over’ that is said to mark the MesolithicNeolithic transition. There are a number of reasons for this phenomenon, for example, the increasing extent to which researchers tend to focus on particular themes and explanatory approaches, the fact that the transition marks the interface between different traditions of archaeological scholarship, a point that has been often noted (e.g. Pluciennik 1998; Thomas 1988), and the increasing focus in archaeological research on coming to grips with the variety, messiness and localness of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in contrast to the ‘big picture’ approach taken in other disciplines, for example genetic studies. Another relevant factor is that there have been significant changes over the last thirty years in what are regarded as the most relevant and appropriate data sets to inform us about the transition. The cumulative effect is that Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 543–566, © The British Academy 2007.


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approaches to the problem sometimes seem to run on parallel tracks, rather than informing and being informed by other strands of the discussion. This has resulted in a fragmentation of the discourse and the presentation of very different and partial views of the transition, even in the consideration of particular regions or dimensions of the evidence. Added to this is the paucity of the baseline data on which many of these lines of research actually rely, not just in archaeology (see Kinnes 1988; Woodman 2000a) but also in other areas. For example, in genetics DNA sequences that have been given significant explanatory status for prehistoric events and processes are often determined from small samples of living individuals in particular areas (e.g. Hill et al. 2000; Wilson et al. 2001). While we acknowledge these problems (although their extent can get lost in the translation between disciplines), the approaches that are adopted to facilitate academic analysis and discussion spill over into historical narrative as we still oversimplify the division between foraging and farming societies (Pluciennik 1998, 61), creating a sense of parallel worlds in the past. How then do we progress? What I would like to suggest is that deliberately seeking to engage with different strands of research is both useful and necessary. An unfortunate aspect of the debate around Rowley-Conwy’s (2004) recent valuable review paper is the polarisation of views and approaches as either processual or post-processual, which seems somewhat anachronistic and unhelpful at this stage. Consideration of context and agency, grappling with understanding the messiness and complexity of Neolithic lives (e.g. Whittle 2003), have to go side by side with understanding the constraints of the archaeological record. It is not a case of either empathy or the empirical record, but considering both. This also means that in looking at an area or region such as Ireland we need to take a multi-scalar approach to consider the working out of the relationships between larger-scale processes and the way in which lives were lived out in local contexts and conditions. Discussing the start of the Neolithic in Scotland, Warren (2004, 91) begins by considering Ingold’s (2000) approach to identity. Ingold argues that there are two ways of constructing identity: first genealogical, in which origins provide the basis for identity, and second relational, where it is the construction and maintenance of links between persons and things that are at the heart of who people think they are. These ideas of identity can be regarded as complementary. Helms (1998, 23–54) has pointed out that small-scale societies are always concerned to a greater or lesser extent both with ancestral origins and how the on-going activities of the living, including their treatment of the dead, fit with the past. This sense of identity encompassing past and present was also vividly caught by Arthur Miller, writing about his desire as a playwright to convey a sense of human lives in which past and present are held concurrently, neither ever coming to a stop (Miller 1987, 131). Jones


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(2005, 216) has argued that in different parts of Europe during the Neolithic persons were constituted relationally, through specific sets of connections between people, place(s) and things. In the account below considering the transition in Ireland, these ideas of identity encompassing places, pasts and presents, people and things are seen as providing an important reference point in considering the various strands of evidence and inter-play between large-scale environmental and social processes and lives lived locally.

THE LATER IRISH MESOLITHIC To set the chronological and cultural context it seems appropriate to start with a brief outline of the Irish Later Mesolithic (6500–4000 cal BC). An up-to-date summary is provided as part of the discussion in Costa et al. (2005). The later Mesolithic in Ireland is distinguished by the switch from a composite/ microlith-using tradition to the use of broad blades, and flakes of related form, which were retouched for use as hand-held tools. The best known of these are butt-trimmed forms. Ground stone axes also form part of the lithic assemblage. It has been suggested that many of the stone tools were used for woodworking (Anderson & Johnson 1993; Costa et al. 2005, 20). Lithic production appears to have taken place near sources and tool blanks were brought to occupation areas (Woodman 1987). Much of the material is concentrated in low-lying coastal and wetland areas but some material does occur in more upland areas (Woodman 2003, 10–11). While the dominant view of the Later Mesolithic is a period characterised by low-density, highly mobile settlement (e.g. Woodman & Anderson 1990) with a heavy reliance on gathering and fishing, the evidence is open to suggestions of more extensive activities in some locales (e.g. Cooney & Grogan 1994, 18–24; Costa et al. 2005, 30) and the use of places, such as stone platforms at the edge of lakes, on a persistent, ongoing, renewed basis (e.g. Fredengren 2002, 137). There are indications of the importance of the symbolic dimension to Mesolithic lives in patterns of deliberate deposition and the occurrence of material in unusual contexts, as on the small island of Dalkey off the Dublin coast (see discussion in Leon forthcoming).

THE EARLY IRISH NEOLITHIC The summary given here is based on the discussion in Cooney (2000a, 14–15 with full references). There the early Neolithic was defined in time terms as extending from 4000–3600 cal BC. In material culture terms the period is marked by the use of carinated bowl pottery and what Woodman (1994) has


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identified as a number of key items in the lithic assemblage: leaf-shaped arrowheads, convex end scrapers and plano-convex knives. Ground and polished stone axes made from a wide variety of sources (Cooney & Mandal 1998) are also a feature. It seems probable that organised axe production was taking place at specific sources, the significance of which is returned to below. There is evidence for the use of domesticated animals, especially cattle, and cereals (McCormick 1986; Monk 2000). A range of site types with a wide geographical spread can be dated to this period (Sheridan 1995). Notably these include occupation sites, often with rectangular structures or buildings. Large hill-top enclosures occur (Danaher 2004; Logue 2003; Sheridan 2001) and concepts of enclosure are used at varying scales and with what appears to be varying intent (Cooney 2002). A range of mortuary structures were in use, including megalithic tombs and wooden mortuary structures. The location of sites and activity areas dating to this period suggests recurring patterns and traditions of life based on complex and intimate knowledge of the landscape. It is important to emphasise just how much new data about this period are coming from the major increase in development-led archaeological work in Ireland since the mid-1990s (e.g. the suite of papers on Neolithic structures in Armit et al. 2003). This has the potential to transform our understanding of this period. For a number of reasons, notably the character of the archaeological record, its location and visibility, this work has not enhanced or extended our knowledge of the Later Mesolithic to anything like the same extent (Woodman 2003, 15). We should of course be careful that this is not uncritically seen as a direct reflection of a low level of activity during the Later Mesolithic.

CHANGES IN THIS INSULAR WORLD The focus of this paper is understanding how the changes that we can document between these two periods happened and their consequences. In approaching the archaeological record and human context in which changes occurred we need to understand the multi-stranded nature of identity. It is also worth remembering that the research framework that we use to interpret these changes has a historical trajectory, which influences the way we think about issues. In the late 1960s Case (1969a; 1969b) contributed two papers to the debate on the transition which are still of value and influence. The notion of a short, sharp transition around 4000 cal BC, which is currently widely favoured (e.g. M. P. Richards 2004; Schulting 2000; Schulting & Richards 2002a; 2002b but see Milner et al. 2004), has in effect been mooted in the literature since at least the early 1970s. At that time the basis of change was the elm decline at 3200 bc (uncalibrated) which was seen as a critical turning



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point, even by those who were promoting the idea of a preceding, pioneering phase of the Neolithic (e.g. Edwards & Hirons 1984). But rather than reviewing the course of explanatory discourse over the last few decades, what is more important to do, in the spirit of the challenge set out in my introduction, is to chart what are the major strands of change in the period before and around 4000 cal BC that form the context in which ‘going over’ occurred. Climate change As someone who has been critical in the past (e.g. Cooney 1993; Cooney & Grogan 1994) about the somewhat simplistic way in which accounts of the impact of climatic change on the lives of prehistoric people were often given, it has been salutary to read recent research which is based on very good baseline data and takes a nuanced view of the complexity and diversity of human response to climate change (e.g. Bonsall et al. 2002; McDermott et al. 2001; Tipping & Tisdall 2004). From a number of sources of evidence, for example, changing proportions of ice-rafted detritus in the North Atlantic, lake levels, high charcoal frequencies and peat humification patterns, a major event can be identified at the beginning of the Neolithic period. Bonsall et al. (2002, 15) suggest that the change was associated with drier conditions and an increase in the annual temperature range. Tipping and Tisdall (2004, 73), arguing for a cooler climate, suggested that impacts may have been most keenly appreciated in coastal areas, where a cooling of the seawater may have altered the lifecycle patterns of fish and brought increased storminess. Woodland change In a comprehensive review of the elm decline, Parker et al. (2002) conclude on the basis of dates from 139 sites that it dates to between 6300–5300 cal BP (or broadly 4300–3300 cal BC), but that the probability distribution of the dates indicates that it was a uniform phased event across Britain and Ireland. For Ireland, O’Connell and Molloy (2001, 123) consider the elm decline, a readily identifiable and pronounced feature in most Irish pollen diagrams, as a near-synchronous feature dating to c. 5800 cal BP (3850 cal BC). Current interpretations suggest that both the climatic change discussed above and human activities were involved in the elm decline (e.g. Edwards 2004, 61–3). It seems that around the same time oak populations also decreased in many areas of north-west Europe (Baillie 1995; Leuschner et al. 2002). Now in this scenario where it is difficult to disentangle climatic change, vegetation change and human intervention, there is a possibility of circular argument. Brown (1997) has shown it can be very difficult to know whether early farming activity created woodland clearings or made use of natural openings. What


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Bonsall et al. (2002) suggest is that these changes provided the context for the adoption of agriculture, the indicators of which appear just after 4000 cal BC. As O’Connell and Molloy (2001, 123) put it, ‘Neolithic landnam, when present, invariably follows the elm decline’ (which of course does not exclude the possibility of farming preceding it). Agricultural indicators Monk (2000) has reviewed the evidence of cereal remains from Ireland. There have been further discoveries since his review (see for example Moore 2003), backing up the view that cereals were an integral part of the subsistence economy, at least in Ireland (see Cooney 2000a, 40–1; 2003, 49) from that time. The occurrence and recognition of cereal-type pollen prior to this date continue to raise debate. The cautious view is that this material cannot be seen as indicating farming, as this interpretation has been shown to be unsustainable and that questions remain about the identity and source of the pollen. On the other hand it is argued that the failure of an early pioneer phase of agriculture to leave archaeological traces might be a reasonable, if awkward, assumption (see Edwards 2004, 60; O’Connell & Molloy 2001, 123). The latter view has been recently sustained by the very early dates for domesticated cattle bone as a result of the excavations at Ferriter’s Cove, Co. Kerry (Woodman et al. 1999) and the project to date the Irish Quaternary fauna (Milner & Woodman 2005; Woodman et al. 1997; Woodman & McCarthy 2003). These cattle are clearly introduced (Tresset 2000; 2003) and are significantly earlier than the earliest dates for domesticated sheep, pig and goat after 4000 cal BC. The earlier of two dates from Ferriter’s Cove implies that cattle were brought to Ireland around 4600 cal BC (it seems best to exclude from discussion the very early date from an undiagnostic large bone from Sutton, Co. Dublin). In terms of who brought them the scenarios either involve indigenous hunter-gathers travelling by boat or people coming in the other direction bringing cattle from Brittany, where domesticates appeared around 5000 cal BC (see Milner & Woodman 2005; Tresset 2003; Woodman & McCarthy 2003 for a discussion of the cultural context of these contacts both in Brittany and Ireland). Material culture changes Woodman (2000a, 247–9) remarked that one of the most overlooked aspects of the transition is the contrast between the diversity of Mesolithic lifestyles in Britain and Ireland and the degree of similarity of early Neolithic material culture across the two islands. Now this has to be supplemented by the comment that these similarities are clearest in material dated to after 3800 cal



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and transcend what appears to be very considerable regional diversity in settlement practices. As regards the problem of the period between 4000–3800 cal BC, as Whittle has recently put it: ‘What was going on around 4000 cal BC remains stubbornly and frustratingly unclear and certainly varied’ (Whittle 2003, 150). The relatively uniform culture package that then emerges has been outlined above for Ireland, but in broader terms for Britain and Ireland it can be summarised as composed of a similar range of lithic artefacts, carinated bowl pottery, enclosures, wooden mortuary structures under long and round mounds and various types of megalithic tombs including simple passage tombs/graves, portal tombs/dolmens and varieties of megalithic long cairns. The background to this material is seen as contact with various areas in north-west Europe (a general point and problem long recognised: see Kinnes 1988; Whittle 1977). What has undergone considerable review since the 1970s is the mechanisms by which these contacts occurred. To bring the story up to date, what Whittle (2003, 150) has recently termed filtered, small-scale colonisation and indigenous acculturation operating in tandem, currently seem to offer the best human context for understanding how these material culture changes. Sheridan (2000; 2003a) has suggested that the pottery and megalithic monument at Achnacreebeag near Oban on the west coast of Scotland, with strong parallels in Brittany around 4000 cal BC, offer an example of the former. She has argued, furthermore, that this background might also provide a context for early coastal passage tombs in Wales and Ireland (Sheridan 2003b, 13–14). O’Sullivan (2001, 89–90) in discussing the archaeological and palaeoenvironmental evidence from the Shannon estuary in the early to middle fourth millennium cal BC suggests that it indicates people who were living a ‘foragerfarmer’ lifestyle. So whatever their background people here were accommodating life to take account of both new resources and older lifeways. The type of interaction zone that might have facilitated the inter-operability of both of these processes has been discussed by Woodman and McCarthy (2003, 32–4).

BC

Diet. . .and people? The recent surge of evidence from stable isotope analysis that there was a dramatic shift in diet around 4000 cal BC with a switch from maritime to terrestrial resources, as indicated by changes in the sources of protein in human diets (M. P. Richards et al. 2000; Schulting & Richards 2002a; 2002b), is perhaps the single most influential factor in the major reconsideration of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition that is now taking place. The wider implications of this shift were set out by Schulting (2000, 32–3) in the following manner:


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The people of the earliest Neolithic in Britain built monuments for their dead, used novel resources such as pottery (Herne 1988) and appear to have subsisted primarily on domesticated resources. This suggests that for the most part the adoption of ‘Neolithic traits’ was an all-or-nothing affair in Britain, perhaps forming part of a sociopolitical and/or economic strategy wherein piecemeal adoption did not make sense.

Not surprisingly there is continuing debate about the extent, abruptness and causes of this dietary change (e.g Milner et al. 2004; Lidén et al. 2004; Thomas 2003). It is appropriate to comment here that the principle of equifinality, which Edwards (1989) and Brown (1997) identified as a major problem in the interpretation of human impact in the pollen record, applies even more strongly in the context of human dietary choice and constraints. However, it is widely accepted that at a minimum there is a consistent pattern of a more dominant terrestrial signal in the diets of people after 4000 cal BC compared to before. This does not exclude the consumption of marine food by people during the Neolithic (Hedges 2004, 37; Milner et al. 2004, 18). It is against this background that we can look at the evidence from Ireland. Somewhat surprisingly here in the context of the overall model of Later Mesolithic settlement, the general emphasis on a marine-based diet in the Mesolithic data set from Britain (M. P. Richards 2004, 87), and the small number of human bone samples, the individuals dating to the fifth millennium cal BC from three sites (Ferriter’s Cove, Rockmarshall, Co. Louth and Killuragh Cave, Co. Limerick) indicate a range of reliance on marine resources. This runs from a heavy reliance at Ferriter’s Cove, a less extensive reliance at Rockmarshall and what looks like a reliance on terrestrial/freshwater resources at the inland site of Killuragh Cave, Co. Limerick (Woodman & McCarthy 2003, 33–4). On the other hand the post-4000 cal BC pattern of an emphasis on terrestrial resources (Woodman 2000a, 240, citing the evidence from the skeletal remains in the portal tomb at Poulnabrone, Co. Clare; Schulting 2004, 23) does seem to apply in Ireland also. While the isotopic analysis has had a major impact in recent archaeological debate, facilitating discussion of the transition as short and sharp, the area of biomolecular research where most work is currently being carried out is in genetics. This has led to the proposal of the term ‘archaeogenetics’ to describe the application of genetics to understanding the human past (Renfrew 2000, 3). Considering the genetic evidence it is important to remember the difficulties of using modern data, the limited data sets that are often used, the issue of accurately calculating the rate and character of genetic change over time (the molecular clock) and the consequent problems in tying genetic patterns to specific time spans, let alone specific processes or events in the past (M. P. Richards 2004, 84–5; Zvelebil 2000, 69–74). This is clearly a crucial question in terms of the interpretation of the transition in human



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terms. From their study of DNA of the paternally inherited Y-chromosome, Chickhi et al. (2002, 11013) concluded that large numbers of people were involved in the introduction of farming to Europe. Looking at mtDNA, which is maternally inherited, M. P. Richards et al. (2000, 1251) suggested that the immigrant Neolithic population accounted for less than a quarter of the modern European mtDNA pool. Renfrew (e.g. 1996; 2000, 9) has suggested that the Neolithisation of Europe provides us with a good case study of the relationship between linguistic origins, farming dispersal and the evidence from molecular genetics. The linguistic introduction of proto-IndoEuropean to central and western Europe is envisaged by Renfrew as a result of farming dispersal, which in turn is seen as being reflected in the patterning in the genetic evidence. Turning in more detail to Ireland, it has been suggested that an east to west variation in the Y-chromosome pattern within the island reflects a genetic distinction between people in the west, whose genetic ancestry reflects the indigenous inhabitants since the time of first settlement at 8000 cal BC, and those in the east whose genetics indicate a greater influence of subsequent migrants from the Neolithic period onwards (Hill et al. 2000). Furthermore it has been argued that about 13% of the pattern of mtDNA in Ireland can be attributed to a putative Neolithic origin (McEvoy et al. 2004). This would be consistent with the diminution of the genetic impact of Neolithic migrants towards north-west Europe. McEvoy et al. (2004, 696) go on to suggest that since there is no distinct geographical pattern to the mtDNA of putative Neolithic origin within the island this indicates that the ‘females who arrived after the initial settlement were not restricted to eastfacing regions. . .either they were mobile after arrival in the east or other regions of the island were in direct contact with the continental source populations’. Not surprisingly given the difficulties outlined above, this level of interpretation of modern genetic data as it pertains to the transition is the subject of continuing debate (e.g. Hill et al. 2000; Bradley & Hill 2000; Cooney 2000b; 2001; Ó Donnabháin 2001; Woodman 2000b). It is easier to concur with the broader view that genetic affinities seen in the Atlantic zone of Europe are the result of both a shared ancestry that dates back to recolonisation at the end of the last Ice Age and subsequent contacts (McEvoy et al. 2004).

CONSEQUENCES: ON THE GROUND, IN THE LANDSCAPE, AT HOME The purpose of setting out major strands of change involved in the transition or ‘going over’ is to facilitate discussion of the character and consequences of


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the transition, both in terms of relational identities —how people engaged with each other and the material world—and genealogical identities —how they constructed a sense of who they were and where they came from (and were going). I should stress here immediately that while the focus is on Ireland I do not believe that there was any island-wide sense of identity. As I have argued previously (e.g. Cooney 2000c), the appropriate scale to look at these issues is a regional one, recognising diversity within the island of Ireland and strong linkages between coastal areas that shared the Irish Sea as a contact zone (e.g. Cooney 2004a; Davey 2004; Sheridan 2004). What I also wanted to suggest was a sense of the inter-woven nature of the changes. For example, it might be useful to think in terms of the novel nature of the new domesticated plants and animals that were introduced not so much as individual, separate resources but in terms of a transported landscape (Cooney 2000a, 43; Kirch 2000, 109). This significantly increased the ecological diversity of Ireland given the restricted insular nature of the native fauna and flora (see relevant discussion in Kimball 2000a). Furthermore it provided a new setting at a time when the composition of the woodland landscape was also changing (e.g. Tipping & Tisdall 2004). Those new resources undoubtedly had a special social role as has been argued by a number of authors (e.g. Cross 2003; Thomas 2003), but the clear shift to terrestrial resources indicated by isotopic analysis argues that they formed part of a more fundamental shift in diet and ideas about food. The argument over whether these terrestrial resources could have been wild (Rowley-Conwy 2004; Thomas 2003) does not apply as strongly in Ireland, where the four introduced domesticated species provide the first major suite of terrestrial resources, and where it appears that red deer were introduced at some stage during the Neolithic (McCormick 1999; Woodman & McCarthy 2003, 36–7), a pattern that is replicated in some of the Scottish island groups and is indicative of the complexity of human/animal relationships during the Neolithic (Cooney 2000a, 43). On the other hand the shift in diet did not mean any less focus on coastal zones. This is indicated for example by the concentration of megalithic tombs in coastal areas and by the results of field-walking surveys in various areas, such as Ballylough, Co. Waterford (Green & Zvelebil 1990) and Lough Swilly, Co. Donegal (Kimball 2000b). Because of the character of the evidence such surveys may not be actually very useful in informing us about the transition itself, but they do indicate a continuity of use of coastal areas. These continued to be a significant procurement zone for lithics and other materials (e.g. Hodgers 1994; Woodman 1992). An interesting and potentially very important juxtaposition of activity in the later Mesolithic and Neolithic occurs at Belderg Beg, Co. Mayo which is currently being investigated by Graeme Warren (pers. comm.). All these data make the idea of a turning away



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or ‘slighting’ of the sea seem very unlikely, a point demonstrated in discussion of the importance of the Irish Sea as a zone of movement, contact and communication (Cummings & Fowler 2004). What is clearly the case, however, is that the use of the sea, the coastal zone and their resources now formed part of a different web of relations. For example, Guttman (2005, 234–5) suggests that the fertility of Mesolithic middens may partly explain why such sites were re-settled and cultivated during the Neolithic, and why they were seen as appropriate venues for the deliberate deposition of material, including human bone. An example of the value of thinking about this issue from different perspectives comes from the detailed archaeological and palaeoenvironmental regional study of the Oban area, western Scotland (Macklin et al. 2000). Here Mesolithic settlement in coastal areas does not seem to have resulted in disturbance of the vegetation. This changes around 4000 cal BC with the beginnings of farming, impacting initially in coastal and lowland areas and only later in the uplands. A few kilometres to the north-east is the site of Achnacreebeag, discussed by Sheridan (2000; 2003a) as providing good evidence of what might be termed an episode of leap-frog colonisation (Zilhão 2000) from Brittany. As well as the change in climate seen by Macklin et al. as prompting the shift to the new relationship between people and the landscape, post-4000 cal BC vegetational change may also have been prompted by the presence of new people, giving the basis for the kind of dialectic between the immediate and the distant that Warren (2004, 98) has discussed as an integral part of the formation of identities in the early Neolithic. In terms of the wider occurrence of early passage tombs in coastal areas noted by Sheridan (2003b) and the continued use of islands like Dalkey with a strong, prolonged history of at least periodic use in the Mesolithic (Leon 2005), the coastal zone may also have become a very important place for the re-negotiation and re-imagining of genealogical identities (see Schulting 2004, 26). The consequences of the transition on the inland landscape might also benefit from a sideways look. The issue of the extent to which cereal growing was practised from early in the Neolithic is one of the central questions in the debate about the extent of the role of agriculture in Neolithic lives (e.g. see Rowley-Conwy 2004, 87–90). While the number of cereal macrofossil remains is relatively small, Monk (2000) and Glynis Jones (2000) have argued that they indicate the persistent presence of cereals (see also Bogaard & Jones, this volume). This is supported by the compilation of pollen data from Ireland presented by O’Connell and Molloy (2001, 119; Fig. 1) which is interpreted as showing that cereal-growing was an integral part of Neolithic economic practice in Ireland, but also that there was no site which indicated that it played a substantial role. Tipping (1994) also pointed to the high frequency of cereal pollen in Scotland during the early part of the Neolithic. The concentration


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Figure 1. Frequencies with which 34 pollen profiles from Ireland show pre-elm decline (ED) woodland instability, earlier Neolithic woodland clearance, pastoral activity and cereal growing, and later Neolithic farming and woodland regeneration (from O’Connell & Molloy 2001).

of macrofossil remains of cereals in the centuries after the elm decline (e.g. Monk 2000), combined with the pollen evidence (O’Connell & Molloy 2001, 119; Tipping & Tisdall 2004, 76), raises the question of whether cereal production was in fact particularly concentrated in this part of the Neolithic period, rather than increasing in importance over the duration of the Neolithic as models of the gradual development of farming might suggest (see discussion below). It might be useful to think more broadly about integrating the narratives for this period derived from the pollen and archaeological records. The character of what O’Connell and Molloy (2001) refer to as woodland dynamics was clearly very varied in the earlier Neolithic. There were some places, such as Céide Fields, Co. Mayo, where the impact across much of the period was sustained (over 300–500 years) and substantial, as can be seen in construction of the co-axial field system (Caulfield et al. 1998). In other cases, as at Lough Sheeauns in Connemara, Co. Galway, the impact lasted over a period of up to three centuries, while there are other sites such as Mooghaun Lough, Co. Clare, where there is little or no sign of human impact (O’Connell & Molloy 2001, 119). This backs up the earlier observations by Edwards (1985) regarding a suite of sites investigated in Tyrone. O’Connell and Molloy also point out that there is a corresponding variety in the organisation of earlier Neolithic landscapes. One interesting contrast that they point to is that



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between the field system at Céide and the lack of any similar evidence at Lough Sheeauns where there is, however, a marked concentration of court tombs and portal tombs (de Valera & Ó Nualláin 1972; Gosling 1993), as in the Céide area. The question of whether Céide stands as a unique example of an extensive, well-organised field system in the earlier Neolithic is still an important one. The pollen analysis carried out by O’Connell and Molloy (2001) at Garrynagran about 16 km to the south of Céide suggests that the long-term, substantial human impact on the woodland landscape seen at Céide appears to have been present over a larger area, within which we can include the field system at Rathlackan to the east (see Byrne 1994; Cooney 2000a, 46). This indicates that we should regard the organisation of the landscape into fields as a characteristic of a significant grouping of communities in this region. It is also clear that the earlier Neolithic represents a very distinct period in terms of the dynamics between people and woodland settings. Both Molloy and O’Connell (2001, 123) and Tipping and Tisdall (2004, 76) comment on the evidence for woodland regeneration in the later Neolithic. In the 1970s this evidence was seen as the basis for defining two very different kinds of Neolithic (Bradley 1978; Whittle 1978). Molloy and O’Connell suggest that there may have been an abandonment of farming in some parts of the island of Ireland. Now this is not the place to explore the interesting correlation between this woodland regeneration and changes in the archaeological record, but it does support the idea that the earlier Neolithic was a particular period in terms of human impact on the environment (and environmental change), rather than being the start of a slow, evolving process of change in subsistence patterns which culminated in Bronze Age transformations. The final comment I wanted to make in this section brings us back to the vexed question of settlement practice. One of the striking features of the explosion of development-led archaeological work in Ireland has been the recognition of the range and extent of Neolithic activity across the landscape. Dwelling obviously consisted of a range of practices, resulting in a diversity of archaeological features. One of the recurring features, however, is the discovery of rectangular buildings and they have become a distinguishing feature of the archaeological record of this period, recently reviewed in detail by Grogan (2002; 2004). There are now in the order of 60 of these structures recognised, on more than 30 sites, right across the island (Smyth, pers. comm.). It is also clear that more of these structures will be revealed. Among more recent discoveries are the two structures at Granny, Co. Kilkenny (Hughes 2005). The testing phase along the route of the M3 motorway in Meath has indicated the presence of Neolithic structures in four different locations (Deevy 2005; pers. comm.) Rather than going over points already raised in discussion elsewhere (Cooney 1997; 2000a; 2002; 2003) it might be more useful to look at the role


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and function of these buildings using the inter-woven strands of argument set out above. The dates of the houses are now well established, starting after 4000 cal BC, many of them apparently concentrated in the next couple of hundred years but others, like the second phase of settlement at Knowth in the Boyne Valley, Co. Meath dating to the period 3900–3600 cal BC (Grogan 2004, 111). It does appear that this is an established, repetitive, traditional aspect of life in the earlier Neolithic (Fig. 2). It is difficult to see this development in terms of practice or tradition among indigenous Mesolithic communities. Both as

Figure 2. Plan of early Neolithic houses at Corbally, Co. Kildare (from Purcell 2002). Four other houses were found between 60–100 m to the south-west (Tobin 2003).



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a social construct and context the background of the buildings might be more appropriately sought in the filtered colonisation or acculturation referred to above. After all, the clearest links are with the wider rectangular house tradition in the Neolithic of north-west Europe, which has its ultimate foundations in the Linearbandkeramik. The buildings need to be acknowledged as part of the wider transformation of that tradition which took a range of forms, of which the emergence of long barrows and enclosures have dominated discussion (e.g. Bradley 2002, 29–34). The construction materials were provided by the large-scale use of oak from the surrounding woodland. In itself this may have been as much a manifestation of a changed set of relationships between people and the landscape as was the use of the land for agricultural purposes. In the context of the discussion above, people using these structures may have utilised a variety of subsistence approaches, ranging from a reliance on farming to strategies also involving significant reliance on foraging. The structures occur both as apparently isolated buildings within wider spreads of occupation activity, but also in clusters, for example at Corbally, Co. Kildare (Purcell 2002; Tobin 2003), and in both open and enclosed settings, the latter as at Thornhill, Co. Derry (Logue 2003). Given the association with enclosures such as Thornhill and Magheraboy, Co. Sligo (Danaher 2004), it is clear that the rectangular structures cannot be seen just in terms of a complementary distribution with enclosures (Cross 2003, 201). Cross was writing in the context of the role of these structures as venues for feasting in the same way that enclosures are envisaged as having this as one of their functions (Thomas 1999, 201), but our discussion should recognise these buildings as both domestic and special, where it is the different use of space and food in a familiar context that actually makes the occasion special. In this sense there is no contradiction between the living scenarios and ordinary lives outlined by Grogan (2004, 105–10) and the idea that these were also places of celebration of special times and occasions. The ongoing accumulation of evidence for the number and widespread distribution of these structures supports the idea that people in the earlier Neolithic in Ireland would have perceived them as a key element in the architecture of relational identities. People were living within a house society (Cooney 2003, 51–2). In terms of genealogy, reference has been made to links with enclosures and there are also clear, overt cross-references between rectangular timber houses and structures/mounds/cairns for the dead, as for example at Ballyglass, Co. Mayo (Ó Nualláin 1972). As noted above, enclosures and long barrows in Britain and Ireland are frequently evoked as demonstrating links ultimately back to the Linearbandkeramik and post-LBK traditions (e.g. Bradley 2003, 221; Whittle 2003, 118). The occurrence of what is the most potent signifier of the LBK tradition, the rectangular house, as a central element of relational identity in the many parts of Ireland during the early


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Neolithic suggests, contra the tenor of much recent discussion (e.g. Whittle 2003, 153), that a similar reference back to a past distant in time and space, to a ‘longhouse world’, may have been invoked through the construction and use of these buildings.

MATERIALISING IDENTITIES IN STONE The changes that happen around 4000 cal BC may be the result of both small groups of people coming to Ireland and Britain from coastal and inland areas of north-west Europe (Whittle 2003, 151), and their influence and interaction with indigenous hunter-gatherers (who may well have suffered detrimental health effects: see Doyle & Ó Neill 2003). While there are signs of continuity across the transition, seen in the continued use of specific places, both for habitual and sacred purposes, the continued use of wild food resources and the continued use of particular lithic sources, much is different and new. In the construction of social identities and use of material culture there are references to this local background. But if we think of the range of changes outlined above that were brought into different kinds of lived practice by people living in particular social and geographical settings, it is not surprising that in the Neolithic we see quite different and new kinds of relationships between people, animals, plants and things. By way of both a concluding comment and example, I would like to suggest that we can see this clearly in the working of and relationship with stone at a range of different scales, and for different purposes. This can be woven back into other strands of change. In approaching this issue it might be useful to think of Ingold’s (2000) discussion of the attitude of hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists to their environments. To the hunter-gatherer the environment is seen as giving; with the agriculturalist there tends to be a much greater emphasis on acquisition. Accepting the danger of generalisation and of applying this as a binary opposition to what are patently complex and varied prehistoric realities, it does provide an interesting start point to thinking about different attitudes to working stone before and after 4000 cal BC. In an Irish context it is notable that stone axes were a part of the Mesolithic tool-kit (e.g Woodman et al. 1999, 77–80). It would appear that it was primarily secondary sources that were utilised, in circumstances where people may have regarded cobbles as almost ready-made pre-forms (Cooney 2000a, 195). But significant changes occur around 4000 cal BC. Given the expansion of woodland clearance and landscape management of different kinds, for example coppicing, it seems likely that the axe, as in other parts of north-west Europe, came to be associated with agriculture. The increased demand for axes and their extended



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potential as an object with both functional and symbolic roles can be seen in the increasing number of axes, the range of lithic sources used for their production (Cooney & Mandal 1998), the occasional occurrence of jadeite and other axes from the European mainland and the deliberate production of axes from specific sources that highlighted their special value. It is in this context that the dates for a phase of quarrying activity on Lambay, an island in the Irish Sea off the coast of Dublin, where porphyry (porphyritic andesite) was exploited on a periodic basis over much of the fourth millennium cal BC (Cooney 2005), are of particular interest. Two AMS radiocarbon determinations returned dates of 3780–3640 cal BC (SUERC4129) and 3940–3660 cal BC (SUERC-4131), associated with undecorated, carinated bowl pottery. Here it would seem that organised axe production begins early in the Neolithic. Production at the major sources such as Tievebulliagh and Brockley (porcellanite) in Co. Antrim, north-east Ireland and Great Langdale (tuff) in Cumbria, north-west England is perceived as focused on the mid-fourth millennium cal BC and later (e.g. Malone 2001, 210). However, the occurrence of significant quantities of porcellanite at some of the early rectangular buildings in Ireland, as at Ballyharry, Co. Antrim (Moore 2003), suggests that the exploitation of one or both of the known porcellanite sources began very early in the Neolithic. Similarly the occurrence of tuff axe fragments from Langdale at the Lismore Fields settlement site in the Peak District (see Hind 2004, 141) raises the same possibility in relation to the working of the Langdale tuff source. These and other examples suggest that the contrast between axes that would have been perceived in many parts of Ireland and Britain as being made of non-local sources and axes of locally available stone was a feature of life from very early in the Neolithic. This inter-weaving of the local and the distant can be seen in other aspects of the use of stone, for example in the local exploitation of pitchstone on the island of Arran in the Clyde estuary in Scotland during the Mesolithic and its more widespread occurrence, including across the Irish Sea in Ireland, during the Neolithic (Cooney 2004b, 194). How are we to interpret these patterns? From the point of view of changed relationships with the land following the onset of the Neolithic, it could be argued that what we see in the working of stone at special places is analogous to the idea of deliberate acquisition of, or harvesting of, the rock. The potential metaphoric connections would have been made stronger by the frequent association of axes with activities associated with agriculture. In terms of the significance of objects coming from beyond the local and familiar, Hind (2004, 141), citing Helms (1988), has discussed how such artefacts may be considered as having an exceptional potency and symbolic charge, particularly if they come from special places or sources, such as islands or mountains. These objects may have been of particular importance


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in developing and maintaining relationships within and between communities. Hence the quarrying and procurement of such axes may have defined from the start what it was to be ‘Neolithic’, as opposed to being an aspect of life that developed over the course of the period. This argument would be much more familiar if we were discussing the construction of megalithic monuments. It has been suggested recently that a useful way of viewing early monumental constructions in the west of Britain and Ireland is to see them as an assertion of regional indigenous identity at a time when the world was changing, and when there may have been intrusive pioneer populations in southern and eastern Britain (Whittle 2003, 153). This is built on detailed analyses which it is argued show that the siting of many of these monuments, such as portal dolmens/tombs, make direct reference to the local landscape (e.g. Cummings & Whittle 2004; 2005). This in turn forms the basis for interpreting these monuments as concerned with creation myths, by people long familiar with the regional landscape. Now while this seems like a plausible explanation, it should be examined in the context of what has been said above. There is no background in local late Mesolithic funerary practice for the construction of such monuments, which emerges in the context of a changed world after 4000 cal BC. The very act of working and raising stone in this way is a new practice. Looking at the setting of Achnacreebeag for which a plausible background in north-west France has been suggested, the same argument about a local referencing (see illustration of landscape setting in Sheridan 2003b) could be made. If we see portal tombs or dolmens as having any coherence or meaning as a typological class then it also has to be relevant to this debate that some of them were erected within areas cleared and organised into fields, as at Céide or in areas of longterm clearance, as at Lough Sheeauns. It is also worth remembering that in Ireland portal tombs can be seen as forming part of the long cairn tradition with its accepted European background. The cultural background to the similarities visible in megalithic monuments is difficult to see solely in a late Mesolithic background, when there are limited signs of contact between communities on either side of the Irish Sea. Rather it lies in the web of contacts, travelling between the local, familiar and the distant, exotic, always defined in immediate, lived terms that is a characteristic feature of the area after 4000 cal BC. The construction of megalithic monuments was part of how that world was built. They referred both to local lives and genealogies but also to ideas, materials and people that may have come from very different places. Note. My thanks to Aidan O’Sullivan, Graeme Warren, Peter Woodman, Alison Sheridan, Barbara Leon and Jessica Smyth for reading an earlier draft of the paper. I am grateful to Mary Deevy, Conor McDermott and Jessica Smyth for discussion of aspects of the Neolithic rectangular structures and to Rick Schulting for his



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comments about the isotopic evidence for Neolithic diet from Ireland. I would also like to thank Alasdair Whittle and Vicki Cummings for their editorial patience!

REFERENCES ANDERSON, E. & JOHNSON, G. 1993. A refitting and use-wear analysis of a later Mesolithic flint assemblage from Bay Farm, County Antrim. Archaeomaterials 7, 83–100. ARMIT, I., MURPHY, E., NELIS, E. & SIMPSON, D. (eds) 2003. Neolithic settlement in Ireland and western Britain. Oxford: Oxbow. BAILLIE, M. G. L. 1995. A slice through time: dendrochronology and precision dating. London: Batsford. BONSALL, C., MACKLIN, M. G., ANDERSON, D. E. & PAYTON, R. W. 2002. Climate change and the adoption of agriculture in north-west Europe. European Journal of Archaeology 5, 9–23. BRADLEY, D. & HILL, E. 2000. What’s in a surname? — Geneticists reply. Archaeology Ireland 54, 22–3. BRADLEY, R. 1978. The prehistoric settlement of Britain. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. BRADLEY, R. 2002. The past in prehistoric societies. London: Routledge. BRADLEY, R. 2003. Neolithic expectations. In I. Armit, E. Murphy, E. Nelis & D. Simpson (eds), Neolithic settlement in Ireland and western Britain, 218–22. Oxford: Oxbow. BROWN, T. 1997. Clearances and clearings: deforestation in Mesolithic/Neolithic Britain. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 16, 133–46. BYRNE, G. 1994. Rathlackan, Co. Mayo. In I. Bennett (ed.), Excavations 1993, 61–2. Dublin: Wordwell. CASE, H. J. 1969a. Settlement patterns in the north Irish Neolithic. Ulster Journal of Archaeology 32, 3–27. CASE, H. J. 1969b. Neolithic explanations. Antiquity 43, 176–86. CAULFIELD, S., O’DONNELL, R. G. & MITCHELL, P. I. 1998. Radiocarbon dating of a Neolithic field system at Céide Fields, County Mayo, Ireland. Radiocarbon 40, 629–40. CHIKHI, L., NICHOLS, R. A., BARBUJANI, G. & BEAUMONT, M. A. 2002. Y genetic data support the Neolithic demic diffusion model. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA 99, 11008–13. COONEY, G. 1993. A sense of place in Irish prehistory. Antiquity 67, 632–41. COONEY, G. 1997. Images of settlement and landscape in the Neolithic. In P. Topping (ed.), Neolithic landscapes, 23–31. Oxford: Oxbow COONEY, G. 2000a. Landscapes of Neolithic Ireland. London: Routledge. COONEY, G. 2000b. Genes and Irish origins. Archaeology Ireland 52, 29. COONEY, G. 2000c. Recognising regionality in the Irish Neolithic. In A. Desmond, G. Johnson, J. Sheehan & E. Shee Twohig (eds), New agendas in Irish prehistory, 49–65. Bray: Wordwell. COONEY, G. 2001. Is it all in the genes? Archaeology Ireland 55, 34–5. COONEY, G. 2002. From Lilliput to Brobdingnag: traditions of enclosure in the Irish Neolithic. In G. Varndell & P. Topping (eds), Enclosures in Neolithic Europe, 69–82. Oxford: Oxbow. COONEY, G. 2003. Rooted or routed? Landscapes of Neolithic settlement in Ireland. In I. Armit, E. Murphy, E. Nelis & D. Simpson (eds), Neolithic settlement in Ireland and western Britain, 47–55. Oxford: Oxbow. COONEY, G. 2004a. Neolithic worlds; islands in the Irish Sea. In V. Cummings & C. Fowler (eds), The Neolithic of the Irish Sea: materiality and traditions of practice, 145–59. Oxford: Oxbow.


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From fish and seal to sheep and cattle: new research into the process of neolithisation in northern Germany SÖNKE HARTZ, HARALD LÜBKE & THOMAS TERBERGER

THE BORDER BETWEEN THE Mesolithic and the Neolithic in Central Europe is traditionally defined on the basis of subsistence strategy. It is the development from hunter-gatherer groups in the forests of the early Holocene to the first farmers. The debate on the character of this process has been going on now for over a hundred years. Here we present results of some new research on this subject with an emphasis on northern Germany.1

FROM A COLONISATION MODEL TO A MODEL OF INTERACTION? There is general consensus that the neolithisation of Central Europe was influenced from the Near East, where early farming communities had been established in the ninth millennium cal BC (Fig. 1.A–B). The innovations expanded into the Mediterranean and later to Central Europe (see for example Zimmermann 2002), where early farming settlements can be found in the areas with fertile loess and black earth soils. The introduction of farming in the early Linienbandkeramik in Central Europe (Fig. 1.I) was traditionally explained by colonising farmers from south-eastern Europe. Arguments for this idea were the earlier evidence for farming in the Balkan area, common elements in the material culture and the new common cultivated plants like emmer and one-grained wheat (einkorn). During the last 20 years these ideas could be modified in some aspects. First of all the progress of radiocarbon dating and the calibration possibilities enabled scholars to date the beginning of the Linienbandkeramik to c. 5500 cal BC (Lüning 2002). The following period saw an increasing 1

Dates are calibrated, references are given in a limited number of cases.



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Figure 1. The Neolithic expansion from the Near East to Central Europe in calibrated time scale. The phases in the Near East are given in generalised form (A-B: PPNA-B, c. 9000–7500 cal BC, C: late PPNB/early PN, c. 7500–6900 cal BC). In Central Europe the early (I) and the younger Linienbandkeramik (J) are mapped. Symbol L (c. 6600–6250 cal BC) marks possible earliest (Mesolithic) cereal use in central Switzerland and symbol K (c. 5700–5200 cal BC) indicates the area of western influence (La Hoguette pottery group). Figure after Lüning 2002.

number of Linienbandkeramik sites in the loess areas, and a further clear expansion was connected with the younger Linienbandkeramik (Fig. 1.J). The detection of a wooden well at the younger Linienbandkeramik site ErkelenzKückhoven, constructed at the dendrochronological date of 5090 BC, provided new information on the technology and the absolute chronology of that period (Stäuble 2002). The traditional concept of colonists invading Central Europe in a more or less abandoned area between the Alps and the north European Plain is proposed by some colleagues today. But this scenario cannot be supported by anthropological analyses. Some time ago it was noticed that poppy, one of the plants used by the Linienbandkeramik people, was of western European origin (Lüning 2000). This was a first indication for western influences during the earliest Neolithic which could be confirmed by further archaeological evidence. At the same time new research from a ‘Mesolithic perspective’ stimulated the discussion. Important new aspects can be summarised as follows:


THE PROCESS OF NEOLITHISATION

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1 Pollen analyses in Central Switzerland suggest the first small-scale cereal cultivation at c. 6500 cal BC, and it could be possible that late Mesolithic people (in that area) used cereals much earlier than expected (Fig. 1.L) (Erny-Rodmann et al. 1997).2 2 Besides the south-eastern ‘roots’ of the Central European Neolithic there is evidence for western neighbours of the earliest Linienbandkeramik represented by the La Hoguette (and Limburg) pottery. The La Hoguette pottery finds parallels in France and is influenced by the western Mediterranean early Neolithic (Cardial Ceramic). The La Hoguette neighbours were probably nomadic people keeping sheep and goats, who might have been present up to the river Rhine area some time before the earliest Linienbandkeramik was established (Fig. 1.K) (Lüning 2000; 2002; Zimmermann 2002). 3 Finally, new late Mesolithic sites and elements of continuity in the technology found by the analyses of late Mesolithic and early Neolithic lithic assemblages (Gronenborn 1997; Kind 1998; 2003; Tillmann 1993) indicate a more important role for Late Mesolithic people in the neolithisation process. In conclusion the introduction of the new economy with a package of innovations (sedentary way of life, massive house constructions, pottery, and so on) is here explained by an interactive process between a few people coming in from south-eastern Europe, Mediterranean-influenced groups in the West and the native late Mesolithic people.3 New methods like strontium isotope analyses add some additional information on this process (Price et al. 2001; Bentley, this volume). From the beginning, the expansion of the Linienbandkeramik was dynamic, and within a short period of time islands of early Neolithic settlement were established up to the northern margins of the loess zone near Magdeburg. But how did this process influence the north European Plain?

THE NORTH EUROPEAN PLAIN: DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENT AND DIFFERENT SUBSISTENCE STRATEGY The northern German landscape was formed by glaciation processes. The maximum extent of the last glaciation divides the plain from north-west to

2

It has to be mentioned that the idea of earliest small-scale farming before the Linienbandkeramik is not shared by all botanists (A. Kreuz, pers. comm.). 3 At the conference ‘The Spread of the Neolithic in Europe’ held at Mainz in June 2005 the idea that Mesolithic people had an important role in the Neolithisation process in Central Europe was accepted by most colleagues.


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south-east into an old morainic and a north-eastern young morainic part (Fig. 3). Typical elements of the landscape are the end and ground moraines, the late glacial tunnel valleys and numerous lakes and kettle holes in the young morainic area. Sandy soils and heavy clay soils were widespread that were not suitable for early farming, and so the northern border of the Linienbandkeramik was caused by the different natural settings. This view is supported by the situation in the lower Oder area. Here on both sides of the river we find the northernmost settlements of the (younger) Linienbandkeramik at a distance of c. 120 km from the island of Rügen with some terminal Mesolithic sites (Fig. 2). They were established at c. 5100 cal BC (Heußner 1988) and are limited to an area with fertile (black) soils that are now largely eroded (Fischer-Zujkov 2000). As a conclusion, soil quality was of significance, and secondly, the climatic conditions have to be seen as limiting factors for the (younger) Linienbandkeramik expansion at the time of the Atlantic optimum. The natural environment caused a very different development of the economic system and way of life in northern Germany for about 1500 years.

Figure 2. Northern Central Europe and southern Scandinavia with extension of the Linienbandkeramik (LBK) and the Ertebølle Culture (partly after Czerniak & Kabacinski 1997).



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RESEARCH ON THE TERMINAL MESOLITHIC IN THE NORTH Important research on the terminal Mesolithic and early Neolithic in northwestern Germany was conducted by Schwabedissen in the 1950s at Satrupholmer Moor and at the inland site of Trave valley, but only on a small scale. Later in the 1970s he organised large-scale excavations at the coastal site of Grube-Rosenhof (Fig. 3). With extensive use of conventional radiocarbon dates he developed concepts of the process of neolithisation (e.g. Schwabedissen 1979; 1994). According to his results the early Neolithic was already established on the southern Baltic coast at c. 4400 cal BC. But his results are questioned today. The work of Schwabedissen has to be seen against the background of the more generally known southern Scandinavian research. Denmark has a long tradition of research on the late hunter-gatherer-fishers of the Ertebølle culture (Fig. 2) and on the early farming communities of the early Funnel Beaker culture (e.g. Fischer & Kristiansen 2002; and see Larsson, this volume). So there is a reliable and detailed chrono-stratigraphic framework for cultural development available for that area (Andersen 1995; Vang Petersen

Figure 3. Distribution of important Ertebølle sites in Northern Germany with ice sheet extension of the Last Glacial Maximum and recent coastal sinking values (in mm; values after Dietrich & Liebsch 2000). 1. Travenbrück LA 5. 2. Wangels LA 505. 3. Rosenhof LA 58. 4. Rosenfelde LA 83. 5. Siggeneben-Süd LA 12. 6. Neustadt LA 156. 7. Jäckelberg-Huk (Neuburg/ Poel Fp. 45). 8. Jäckelgrund-Orth (Neuburg/ Poel Fp. 42). 9. Jäckelberg-Nord (Neuburg/ Poel Fp. 16). 10. Timmendorf I and II (Neuburg/Poel Fp. 47/ 12). 11. Parow (Fp. 4). 12. Hansestadt Stralsund (Fp. 225). 13. Drigge (Fp. 7001). 14. Ralswiek-Augustenhof. 15. Lietzow-Buddelin (Saiser Fp. 1).


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1984). Andersen has organised several large-scale excavations of shell middens in northern and north-eastern Jutland on sites like Ertebølle, Bjørnsholm and Norsminde and at inland sites like Ringkloster, while Fischer investigated some inland sites in the famous Amose area on Zealand. They both contributed to a better understanding of all aspects of the terminal Mesolithic and early Neolithic (Andersen 1995; 2000; Fischer 2003). Important information on that period was provided by excavations of graves and cemeteries with some information on the population, mortuary practices and social aspects (Brinch Petersen 1988; Kannegard Nielsen & Brinch Petersen 1993). Underwater excavations, especially at Tybrind Vig and Møllegabet, gave insights into terminal Mesolithic sites (Andersen 1985; Skaarup & Grøn 2004). In conclusion a relatively detailed picture of the terminal Mesolithic period in southern Scandinavia can be presented (Andersen 1995; 2000; Price 2000; and see Larsson, this volume). Research in Denmark was favoured by the natural conditions. As a consequence of the last glaciation Scandinavia is rising and the southern Baltic coast is slightly sinking. Since the Danish islands are close to the zero line, they are only slightly affected by this eustatic process. Because of a rising sea level parallel to the sinking coast, the development of the southern Baltic coast was a relatively complicated process caused by eustatic and isostatic factors. In the late Atlantic and Subboreal period the coast was more like the modern situation (see Janke & Lampe 2000; Lemke 2005). Because of increasing sinking values of the coast towards the west (Fig. 3), we find marked regional differences along the coast. According to new information the coastline of the final Atlantic at c. 4000 cal BC is located c. 3.5 m below sea level in Wismar Bay (Fig. 3), but in the Rügen area to the east, the coast line of that time could be identified at c. 1.7 m below sea level. So we have a difference of almost 2 m within a distance of about 100 km (Lampe et al. 2005). The more difficult access to these sources hampered archaeological research in the southern Baltic. New systematic field work funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft was started in 2002 by the interdisciplinary research group ‘Sincos’ (Sinking Coasts).4 Sincos demonstrated the unexpected potential of sites on land and underwater, in some cases with excellently preserved cultural layers of the period from c. 6000 to 3000 cal BC (Figs 3 and 4). Research was concentrated on the area of eastern Holstein (Oldenburger Graben), the Wismar Bay and on the island of Rügen (Fig. 3). 4

The research group consists of the ‘Baltic Sea Research Centre Warnemünde’, the ‘Archaeological State Museum and State Agency for Archaeological Heritage MecklenburgVorpommern’, the University of Greifswald with different disciplines and some other institutions (representatives: Prof. Dr Jan Harff and Dr F. Lüth; see www.sincos.org).



573

The archaeological part of the project has aimed to provide new and reliable data for the reconstruction of the sea level development, the natural environment and people’s reactions to the changing coastal landscape. Besides the excavation of prehistoric coastal settlements, sea level measurements of the last 150 years were analysed (Fig. 3). With the help of all the new data it will be possible to improve climate models of the past and for the future (Harff et al. 2005a; 2005b).

THE TERMINAL MESOLITHIC ON THE SOUTHERN BALTIC COAST: NEW RESULTS Towards the early Ertebølle culture During the older Mesolithic (Maglemose culture, c. 9500 to 6500 cal BC), northern Germany and the Danish islands were connected by a broad land bridge for long periods of time and archaeological finds show a lot of similarities. With the beginning of the Atlantic period we recognise the rapid sea level rise of the Litorina-transgression with up to c. 2.5 cm per year. This period of dramatically changing landscapes sees the start of the younger Mesolithic, with trapezes as a new projectile form: the Kongemose culture of southern Scandinavia. Coastal settlement sites of that time were not known in the southern Baltic, and this phase is still badly defined in northern Germany. Recent underwater explorations in Wismar Bay have been able to identify younger Mesolithic sites dating before 6000 cal BC at 11 m (Jäckelberg-NNW) and 8.5 m (Jäckelberg-Huk) below present sea level (Figs 3 and 4). The find material shows typical elements of an Early Kongemose phase with trapezes, regular soft-hammer blades and special microblade cores (Lübke 2005a). Further investigations of these sites are necessary to see if marine resources were already available and of importance on the southern Baltic coast at the time of the Kongemose culture. According to new information, the phase of the last hunter-gathererfishers in the Western Baltic—the Ertebølle culture—started in northern Germany, comparable to the Danish area, at c. 5400 cal BC (Fig. 4). Ertebølle sites were in most cases located on shores of protected bights or fjords, but we also know of some inland sites on larger lakes or streams. An early Ertebølle culture inland site dated to c. 5400 to 5200 cal BC has been excavated by S. Hartz (1997) at Travenbrück in Schleswig-Holstein (Fig. 3). The site was situated on a former lake shore, and fish bones demonstrate that fishing was of importance here (Heinrich 1993). In addition, terrestrial animals like red deer, roe deer and wild boar were hunted. An isolated date of c. 5200 cal BC (Hedges et al. 1995) for a fragment of thin-walled pottery


Figure 4. Chronological framework of the Mesolithic and Neolithic in northern Germany and settlement phases of important Ertebølle sites (absolute dating: black; typological dating: grey).

574 Sönke Hartz, Harald Lübke & Thomas Terberger



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from the Travenbrück site is questionable, and so the coastal early Ertebølle culture in northern Germany is characterised by the lack of pottery. In Wismar Bay a group of marine geologists from the Baltic Sea Research Centre Warnemünde and archaeologists from the State Agency for Archaeological Heritage in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern detected a submerged settlement site of the early Ertebølle culture (Jäckelberg-Nord) at 6.5 to 7 m below present sea levels. According to the stratigraphy the site was used for a long period of time. Absolute dating confirms this and places the cultural layer in the last centuries before 5000 cal BC (Fig. 4; Lübke 2005a). Fish remains show the presence of brackish and marine species and reflect the changing landscape due to the Litorina transgression (Schmölcke 2005); there is no evidence for seal hunting in this case. Terrestrial hunting is mainly demonstrated by remains of red deer, roe deer and wild boar. Typical lithic elements are core axes, truncated blades, burins and transverse arrowheads (Fig. 5). A part of a wooden shaft proves the hafting of core axes (Fig. 6.3). Further to the east, close to the Hanseatic town of Stralsund, rescue excavations revealed another new Stone Age site (Fig. 3; Kaute et al. 2005). The site is situated in a typical position at the mouth of a small fjord flowing into the Strelasund between the island of Rügen and the mainland. The excavation documented parts of two successive refuse layers. The lower peaty cultural layer was characterised by some Mesolithic finds, and two dugout canoes were detected parallel to the coast line. They are the first well preserved Mesolithic water craft from the southern Baltic coast.5 The 8 m- and 9 m-long lime wood canoes were flattened by the overlying sediments. Burnt spots indicate the position of a fire place in both dugouts. Oak trees found in the peat layer (with dendrochronological dates of 5128–4888 BC) and radiocarbon results date the craft to c. 4800–4700 cal BC (Lübke 2005c). Red deer antler was an important raw material at that time and we find early evidence of the production of T-shaped antler axes in Stralsund. One axe (Fig. 6.4) was directly dated by radiocarbon analysis to c. 4900 cal BC and is the earliest evidence of this type in northern Germany up to now. T-shaped axes are a typical form of the Ertebølle culture with parallels in southern Neolithic contexts. They appear to be present in the southern Baltic somewhat earlier than in western Denmark; on the eastern Danish islands this axe type is only present in small numbers because of raw material shortages. A short distance away from the Stralsund site in the 1930s, sand dredging in the Strelasund near Drigge yielded 55 bones and antlers (Terberger 1999); small finds and lithics were not collected. The finds are characterised by 5

The earliest proof of a dug-out north of the Alps was found in 1955 at Pesse in the Netherlands and is dated to the Boreal (GrN-486: 8270 ±275 BP; GrN-6257: 8825 ±100 BP: Lanting & van der Plicht 1997/8).


576


Figure 5. Stone artefacts of the early Ertebølle culture from Timmendorf-Nordmole II. 1–3. Truncated blades. 4–7. Arrow heads. 8–10. Core axes. Scale 1:2 (after Lübke 2005a).

several red deer antler fragments from the production of T-shaped axes, and three finds represent used tools of that type. Red deer is the most frequent hunted game, but a seal bone indicates the expected use of marine resources. A single whale bone cannot be taken as a proof that this species was hunted. There are no indications that whales were of relevance for the subsistence strategy on the southern Baltic coast. From Denmark there are some examples of hunted whales, which is probably a consequence of more suitable conditions for whales there. Of more relevance at the Drigge site is a human skull fragment from a very robust male individual dated to c. 5150 cal BC (Fig. 7).



577

Figure 6. Organic artefacts of the early Ertebølle culture from Travenbrück (1–2), JäckelbergNord (3) and Stralsund (4). 1. 4 T-shaped antler axe. 2. Antler harpoon. 3. Part of a wooden shaft. 1 and 4: Scale 1:3; 2–3: Scale 1:2 (1 and 2 after Hartz 1997; 3 after Lübke 2005a; 4 after Kaute et al. 2005).

Several cutmarks running across the skull demonstrate that the man had been scalped. The scalping probably reflects special mortuary practices of that time; cemeteries of the Ertebølle culture were until recently missing in the southern Baltic. From c. 5000 cal BC onwards sites become more numerous. Several new sites with excellent preservation of organic remains were found during underwater archaeological explorations in the Northern Bodden waters off the island of Rügen, which will be further investigated in the near future (Fig. 3; Lübke 2005b). The period until 4750 cal BC is best represented by the sites of Timmendorf-Nordmole II in Wismar Bay and Rosenfelde in the Oldenburger


578

Figure 7.


Skull with cut marks from the site of Drigge (after Terberger 1999).

Graben (Fig. 4; Hartz & Lübke 2005). The lithic finds are now characterised by core axes with rhombic cross-sections (Fig. 5.8–10), and at TimmendorfNordmole II some small flake axes are found. Blades were produced by the soft-hammer technique, and blade tools were formed by large truncated blades (Fig. 5.1–3) and burins; borers were made of thick flakes in most cases. The typical projectile point was the transverse arrow head (Fig. 5.4–7). On some sites we found wooden leister prongs. These composite hunting weapons were used until recently in more or less the same way for eel hunting in muddy ground. Eel was of high economic significance in the period under consideration. Contacts with Neolithic communities in more southern areas were already documented for the early Ertebølle culture.6 A stone axe of a raw material (Wiedaer Schiefer) originating in the Central German upland zone was found at Travenbrück (Hartz 1997), and on the Parow site close to the

6

Long distance contacts are certainly established for the Mesolithic in general and before the Ertebølle culture (for example Fischer 2003). Recently Gronenborn (2005) discussed a transverse arrowhead found in a pit at the earliest Linienbandkeramik site of Friedberg-Bruchenbrücken, Hesse, probably imported from a late Kongemose context.



579

island of Rügen a fragment of younger Linienbandkeramik pottery was collected (c. 5000 cal BC) (Mertens & Schirren 2000; Terberger & Seiler 2005). The decoration indicates that this pot was probably produced far away in the Rhineland (Fig. 15). After 5000 cal BC flat axes and drilled adzes of solid amphibolite (‘Danubian types’) were exchanged from Neolithic communities (Linienbandkeramik, Stichbandkeramik, Rössen) (Klassen 2004). At the Rosenhof site, Hartz (2005) recently found a large drilled amphibolite adze with parts of the wooden shaft in their original position, which has been directly dated to c. 4900–4780 cal BC (Fig. 8.1). It is very probable that the hunter-gatherer-fisher groups of the early Ertebølle culture were aware of the new ideas of Neolithic economy. Jennbert (1994) has suggested that foreign pots probably contained interesting new food types and drinks that were exchanged as gifts with the Ertebølle people. Younger Ertebølle culture (c. 4750–4100 cal BC) At c. 4750 cal BC changes can be detected, but without a major impact on the way of life of the Ertebølle culture. The first part of the younger Ertebølle culture (c. 4750 to 4450 cal BC) is best represented at the Grube-Rosenhof site in the Oldenburger Graben (Figs 3 and 4) (Hartz & Lübke 2005). The first excavations were conducted by Schwabedissen but new field work by Hartz has clarified the stratigraphical situation and the dating of the find layers (Hartz 2005). He excavated about 60 square m of the refuse layers, where c. 4000 fish bones of marine species were identified. They demonstrate, together with seal bones and many eel bones, that marine resources were still of high importance at that time. Terrestrial hunting is documented as well, although some bones at GrubeRosenhof were identified as domesticated cattle. They are AMS-dated to c. 4600 cal BC and could represent the earliest animal husbandry on an Ertebølle site (Hartz et al. 2000; 2002; Schmölcke 2005). There are so far no reliable parallels to that find known from the southern Baltic Ertebølle sites.7 Research is in progress to analyse the genetic pattern of these cattle bones and we will have to see whether the interpretation of early cattle use can be confirmed.8 Recent results of stable isotope analyses on aurochs and early

7

A recently detected find of a cattle tooth from a site on Zealand suggests that domesticated animals were perhaps more widespread at that time in the Ertebølle culture than expected (Sørensen 2005). 8 Genetic analyses could recently demonstrate that the Middle East is the source of Europe’s first domesticated cattle (talk by R. Bollongino, C. J. Edwards, D. Bradley, K. W. Alt, and J. Burger at the conference in Mainz, June 2005).


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Figure 8. Imported rock artefacts (‘Danubian types’). 1. Drilled amphibolite adze with fragment of the wooden shaft from Rosenhof. 2. Drilled amphibolite adze from Neustadt. 3. Flat axe from Lietzw-Buddelin. Scale 1:2 (1 and 2 after Hartz 2005; 3 after Terberger & Seiler 2005).

cattle from southern Scandinavia raise doubts about the identification of the Grube-Rosenhof bones as cattle (Noe-Nygard et al. 2005). The material culture shows changes as well at this time (Hartz & Lübke 2005). A new element was the locally made pottery. This was a thick-walled and pointed-base pottery type with only sparse decoration (Fig. 9.1, and



581

Figure 9. Pottery of the younger Ertebølle culture. 1. Pointed-base vessel (Wangels). 2. Lamp (Wangels). 3–4. Decorated fragments of pointed-base vessels (Timmendorf-Nordmole I). 1: Scale 1:5; 2–4: Scale 1:3 (1 and 2 after Hartz 1997/8; 3 and 4 after Lübke 2005a).

3–4). This pottery is widespread in the younger Ertebølle culture, and lamps are another typical element (Fig. 9.2). The core axes of this period have an oval cross-section and flake axes are of trapezoidal shape (Fig. 10). The other flint tools such as burins, scrapers, truncated blades and rough borers show no difference. A new element was locally produced: rounded shaped and edge-polished axes (Walzenbeile; Fig. 11). There was a greater variability of organic tools represented; wooden prongs and bone points of eel spears, bone and antler harpoons, bone daggers and T-shaped antler axes were typical (Fig. 12). Water craft are indicated by paddle fragments (Hartz and Lübke 2000). Imported finds are represented by amphibolite tools of ‘Danubian type’. On sites in the Rügen area we find single fragments of Stichbandkeramik pottery originating from south-eastern Neolithic communities (Fig. 15). They probably reached the coast around 4500 cal BC (Mertens & Schirren 2000; Terberger & Seiler 2005).


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Figure 10. Stone artefacts of the younger Ertebølle culture from Timmendorf-Nordmole I (1–11) and Lietzow-Buddelin (12–13). 1–6. Arrow heads. 7. Hafted truncated blade. 8. Burin. 9. Truncated blade. 10. Endscraper. 11 and 13. Flake axe. 12. Core axe. Scale 1:2 (1–11 after Lübke 2005a; 12 and 13 after Terberger & Seiler 2005).



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Figure 11. Locally produced rock stone axe (Walzenbeil) of the younger Ertebølle culture. Scale: 1:2 (after Hartz 1997/8).

The final Ertebølle phase from c. 4450 to 4100 cal BC is represented by an increasing number of sites along the southern Baltic Sea coast. The most important sites are Neustadt and Wangels in Eastern Holstein, TimmendorfNordmole I in the Wismar Bay (c. 3.5 m below sea level) and the sites Lietzow-Buddelin and Ralswiek-Augustenhof on the island of Rügen (Fig. 4). The settlement areas were often destroyed by the transgressing sea and so information on that period normally comes from the refuse layers. At Timmendorf-Nordmole I it was possible to excavate a large (2.1 by 0.8 m) submerged pit with a wooden roof construction fallen into it. The pit was probably used for storage purposes.


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Figure 12. Organic finds of the younger Ertebølle culture from Timmendorf-Nordmole I (1–2), Neustadt (3), Wangels (4), Lietzow-Buddelin (5, 8–9) and Ralswiek-Augustenhof (6–7). 1 and 2. Leister prongs. 3. Antler harpoon. 4. T-shaped antler axe. 5. Bone with groove and splinter technique. 6. Bone harpoon. 7. Bone dagger. 8 and 9. Bone points. 1–3, 5–9: Scale 1:2; 4: Scale 1:3 (1 and 2 after Lübke 2005a; 5,8,9 after Terberger & Seiler 2005).

The sites of this phase show continuity in the use of marine resources. Leister prongs are well represented (Fig. 12.1–2), and there is repeated evidence for stationary fishing constructions at the coast line and fish baskets; harpoons were used for the hunting of seals (Fig. 12.3 and 6) which are



585

frequently represented in the faunal record. Hunting of terrestrial game such as red deer, roe deer and wild pig was of additional importance. Besides the typical Ertebølle pottery at Wangels (Hartz 1997/8), a new thin-walled and undecorated type is recorded for this phase. On the western sites flake axes were typical (Fig. 10.11), whereas core axes were still frequent on the Rügen sites (Fig. 10.12), sometimes with trimming of the working edge. The Rügen core axes can be longer than 20 cm and their dimensions come close to polished flint axes (Terberger & Seiler 2005). The good raw material availability with primary flint sources on the north-eastern part of the island favoured the production of such large core axes. Transverse arrowheads with slightly inverse-retouched edges represent the typical projectile form (Fig. 10.1–6). Truncated blades form another element of continuity (Fig. 10.9). At Timmendorf-Nordmole I, a hafted truncated blade with hollow retouch was for the first time detected in the storage pit (Fig. 10.7); the blade was hafted by two halves of a small hazelstick with skilful bast binding (Lübke 2005a). The organic tools were similar to the preceding phase. In a few cases, perforated polished antlers are reported. A piece from the new excavations at Grube Rosenhof shows a simple geometric ornamentation (Hartz 2005). A few bone daggers from Ralswiek-Augustenhof show geometric decoration as well (Fig. 12.7; Klinghardt 1924). The wooden repertoire was variable with, for example, fragments of paddles and dugouts, arrows and bows (Hartz 2005; Labes 2005; Lübke 2003; 2005a). Walzenbeile (Fig. 11) do occur and the imported flat and perforated Danubian amphibolite tools are still represented, for example from Neustadt (Fig. 8.2) and Lietzow-Buddelin (Fig. 8.3). A special imported find had already been detected in the 1920s. This is a bone plate with a geometric decoration from Ralswiek-Augustenhof on Rügen, with close parallels in the Brze´sc´ Kujawski culture in the area of the middle Vistula (Weichsel) river, a distance of c. 500 km to the east (Petzsch 1925; Fig. 15). In the second half of the fifth millennium cal BC this area was influenced by early copper-using cultures in the Balkans and so the first copper objects were imported to more northern areas. It is not impossible that people of the final Ertebølle phase got their hands on the first copper objects (Klassen 2004; Lutz et al. 1998), but until now no such object has been detected on a coastal site.

THE BEGINNING OF THE FUNNEL BEAKER CULTURE: NEW SUBSISTENCE STRATEGY AND NEW POTTERY At 4100 cal BC radical changes of economy and material culture become apparent (Hartz et al. 2000; Hartz & Lübke 2005). The developments of that time can best be explained at the Wangels site in the Oldenburger Graben


586


(Hartz 1997/8; Hartz and Lübke 2005). Now bones of sheep and goat and domesticated cattle are represented in larger numbers (Heinrich 1997/8), and use of cereals is indicated by pollen diagrams as well as by grains in pottery. Marine resources and terrestrial game are still represented but were of less importance. Pottery has a higher quality and shows a variety of new types9 such as funnel beakers and bowls, amphorae and bottles (Fig. 13). At the same time flake and core axes with special trimmed edges continue to exist and demonstrate, together with the organic tools, elements of continuity. Early funnel beakers with simple decoration under the rim were also collected in Parow at the Strelasund. They were AMS-dated to c. 3900 cal BC and represent the earliest Neolithic pottery in the Rügen area. They suggest a comparable development towards the Neolithic in this area. Early Neolithic finds from the nearby Stralsund site show that coastal sites were not abandoned in the early fourth millennium cal BC. Fishing and seal hunting were additional components of the diet, but these sites were probably used only seasonally. In the early Neolithic layer of the Stralsund site, a 12 m-long dugout canoe was documented, representing the longest Stone Age craft of the south-western Baltic (Lübke & Terberger 2005). The most important coastal site of the early Neolithic is Siggeneben-Süd in Schleswig-Holstein, excavated by Meurers-Balke (1983) more than 20 years ago. The site yields early Neolithic material of the period from c. 3800 cal BC onwards. The pottery of funnel beaker type became more variable in form and decoration. Polished flint axes formed a new element, but small flake axes, blade tools and transverse arrow heads were still in use. The new economy further developed towards the middle of the fourth millennium cal BC and coastal sites were of minor relevance. At the same time the development of monumental grave architecture and enclosed sites indicates general changes in northern early Neolithic society.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS The new research results can be summarised as follows: 1 The development from the last hunter-gatherer-fishers to the early farming communities seems to be relatively uniform on the southern Baltic coast.

9 Recently AMS dates of food crusts from pottery have been criticised by Fischer and Heinemeier (2003), because reservoir effects caused by marine food may be expected. A careful analysis of the datings of the pottery from Wangels confirms the dating of the beginning of the early Neolithic reported here (Hartz & Lübke 2005).



587

Figure 13. Pottery of the early Funnel Beaker culture from Wangels (1, 2–4) and Rosenhof (3). 1. Funnel beaker. 2. and 3. Amphora. 4. Bowl. 1, 4: Scale 1:3; 2–3: Scale 1:4 (after Hartz 1997/8; 3 after Schwabedissen 1979).

2 Until c. 4100 cal BC the economy was regularly based on aquatic/ marine resources (fish and seals) and on terrestrial hunted game. Gathering of plant food such as hazelnuts can often be proved and contributed to a stable economic situation in Mesolithic tradition (Fig. 14). 3 The Ertebølle people had (exchange) contacts with early farming communities in southern areas for more than 1000 years (Fig. 15). The cattle bones dated to c. 4600 cal BC from the site Grube-Rosenhof might document isolated imports of domesticated animals, which had no traceable influence on the economic system. 4 From 4100 cal BC onwards we see a change in the economy to domesticated animals and the use of cereals, but the latter were of limited relevance (Fig. 14). Hunting, fishing and gathering were still of some importance. Although we see a marked change at this time, new elements of the economy and material culture such as pottery or polished axes were not introduced as


588

Figure 14.


Economic development at the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic.

a ‘package’, but in steps. In the beginning sheep and goat were important, but in the early Funnel Beaker culture cattle were used as well (Hartz et al. 2000). 5 This process corresponds quite well with the model of an availability phase (until 4100 cal BC), an adaptation or substitution phase (until c. 3500 cal BC) and a consolidation phase (after c. 3500 cal BC) (following Zvelebil 1998). 6 Imported finds mainly demonstrate contacts with early farming communities to the south, but there is also evidence for contacts to the east. Influence on the Ertebølle culture from that area needs further analysis. According to radiocarbon dates, the production of pointed-base pottery started on the south-western Baltic coast at c. 4700 cal BC and was probably introduced from the eastern Baltic (Gronenborn 2003; Hartz 1999; Timofeev 1998; see also Gronenborn, this volume). 7 There are a lot of arguments that the process of neolithisation around 4100 cal BC in northern Germany was an autochthonous development. The economic change took place in the late Atlantic period c. 300 years before the start of the Subboreal, which is connected with a phase of some climatic decline. We propose that the expansion of southern Neolithic societies (the Michelsberg culture) with increasing influence on the coastal areas was of



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Figure 15. Sources of imported finds on sites of the final Mesolithic on the southern Baltic coast. 1. Fragment of Linienbandkeramik pottery probably from the Rhineland (site: Parow). 2. Axe of Wiedaer Schiefer (sites: Travenbrück and Wangels). 3. Adzes of ‘Danubian type’ (sites: Rosenhof, 2x Neustadt, Prohn, Parow and Lietzow-Buddelin). 4. Fragment of Stichbandkeramik pottery (site: Lietzow-Buddelin). 5. Decorated bone plate (site: RalswiekAugustenhof). No scale for finds.

major importance for changes in the subsistence strategy of the Ertebølle culture. The continuity of sites to the earliest Funnel Beaker culture does not support the idea of a severe economic crisis. At the same time the society may have developed towards a better acceptance of new economic elements. 8 Systematic surveys in Wismar Bay demonstrate that such a microregion was continuously used, and in some cases Ertebølle people settled on coastal sites over hundreds of years. 9 Because only limited investigations of settlement areas have taken place and no cemeteries have been detected until now, the basis for a discussion of social aspects is difficult. In several cases the sites are more than 1000 m2 in extent. Such larger sites were probably used all year round by local groups. On the island of Rügen two larger sites within a distance of c. 2 km probably both date to the late phase of the Ertebølle culture, and give a possible indication for settlement density.


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10 In northern Germany Neolithic economy was introduced slightly earlier than in southern Scandinavia (see Fischer & Kristiansen 2002). Because of stronger influences from the south this is not surprising. The southern Baltic coast had a bridge function for its northern neighbours, and this is reflected in a good number of imported amphibolite tools in Denmark (Klassen 2000; 2004). The main route ran across the river Elbe in the west, but influences from the lower Oder across the Rügen-Darss area in the east were probably underestimated in the past. Visits, transports and exchange of goods were organised with dugout canoes along the coast, but we are quite sure that crossing the sea to visit the ‘Danish neighbours’ sometimes took place as well. Note. We would like to thank G. Lidke, Greifswald, and the editors for corrections of the English text. Drawings of the finds were made by J. Freigang (Wismar Bay sites) and J. Vogt/M. Wieczorek (Rügen sites).

REFERENCES ANDERSEN, S. H. 1985. Tybrind Vig. A preliminary report on a submerged Ertebølle settlement on the west coast of Fyn. Journal of Danish Archaeology 4, 52–9. ANDERSEN, S. H. 1995. Coastal adaptation and marine exploitation in Late Mesolithic Denmark—with special emphasis on the Limfjord region. In A. Fischer (ed.), Man and Sea in the Mesolithic. Coastal settlement above and below present sea level, 41–66. Oxford: Oxbow. ANDERSEN, S. H. 2000. Køkkenmøddinger (shell middens) in Denmark: a survey. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 66, 361–84. BRINCH PETERSEN, E. 1988. Ein mesolithisches Grab mit acht Personen von Strøby Egede, Seeland. Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 18, 121–5. CZERNIAK, L. & KABACINSKI, J. 1997. The Ertebølle culture in the Southern Baltic Coast. In D. Król (ed.), The built environment of coastal areas during the Stone Age, 70–9. Gdań sk: The Baltic Sea-Coast Landscapes Seminar 1. DIETRICH, R. & LIEBSCH, G. 2000. Zur Variabilität des Meeresspiegels an der Küste von Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Zeitschrift für Geologische Wissenschaften 28, 615–24. ERNY-RODMANN, Ch., GROSS-KLEE, E., HAAS, J. N., JACOMET, St. & ZOLLER, H. 1997. Früher ‘human impact’ und Ackerbau im Übergangsbereich SpätmesolithikumFrühneolithikum im schweizerischen Mittelland. Jahrbuch der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Ur- und Frühgeschichte 80, 27–56. FISCHER, A. 2003. Exchange: artefacts, people and ideas on the move in Mesolithic Europe. In L. Larsson, H. Kindgren, K. Knutsson, D. Loeffler & A. Åkerlund (eds), Mesolithic on the Move. Papers presented at the Sixth International Conference on the Mesolithic in Europe, 385–7. Oxford: Oxbow. FISCHER, A. & KRISTIANSEN, K. (eds) 2002. The Neolithisation of Denmark. 150 years of debate. Sheffield: Sheffield Archaeological Monographs 12. FISCHER, A. & HEINEMEIER, J. 2003. Freshwater reservoir effect in 14C-dates of food residue on pottery. Radiocarbon 45, 449–66. FISCHER-ZUJKOV, U. 2000. Die Schwarzerden Nordostdeutschlands — ihre Stellung und Entwicklung im holozänen Landschaftswandel. Dissertation, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (see http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/dissertationen/fischer-zujkov-ute-2000–12–05/HTML).



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GRONENBORN, D. 1997. Silexartefakte der ältestbandkeramischen Kultur. Bonn: Universitätsforschungen zur prähistorischen Archäologie 37. GRONENBORN, D. 2003. Migration, acculturation and culture change in western temperate Eurasia, 6500–5000 cal BC. Documenta Praehistorica 30, 79–91. HARFF, J., JÖNS, H. & LÜTH, F. 2005a. Die DFG-Forschergruppe Sinking Coasts (SINCOS). Jahrbuch Bodendenkmalpflege in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 52, 35–42. HARFF, J., LAMPE, R., LEMKE, W. (†), LÜBKE, H., LÜTH, F., MEYER, M. & TAUBER, F. 2005b. The Baltic Sea — a model ocean to study interrelations of geosphere, ecosphere and anthroposphere in the coastal zone. Journal of Coastal Research, SI 39, 441–46. HARTZ, S. 1997. Ertebøllekultur im Travetal. Ausgrabungen auf dem Fundplatz Travenbrück LA 5 (Gemarkung Schlamersdorf), Kreis Stormarn. Ein Vorbericht. Denkmalpflege im Kreis Stormarn III. Stormarner Hefte 20, 171–86. HARTZ, S. 1997/8. Frühbäuerliche Küstensiedlung im westlichen Teil der Oldenburger Grabenniederung (Wangels LA 505). Ein Vorbericht. Offa 54/55, 19–41. HARTZ, S. 1999. Die Steinartefakte des endmesolithischen Fundplatzes Grube-Rosenhof. Schleswig: Untersuchungen und Materialien zur Steinzeit in Schleswig-Holstein aus dem Archäologischen Landesmuseum 2. HARTZ, S. 2005. Aktuelle Forschungen zur Chronologie und Siedlunsgweise der Ertebølle- und frühesten Trichterbecherkultur in Schleswig-Holstein. Bodendenkmalpflege in MecklenburgVorpommern 52, 61–82. HARTZ, S. & LÜBKE, H. 2000. Stone Age paddles from Northern Germany. Basic implements of waterborne subsistence and trade. In Schutz des Kulturerbes unter Wasser. Veränderungen europäischer Lebenskultur durch Fluß- und Seehandel. Beiträge zum Internationalen Kongreß für Unterwasserarchäologie (IKUWA ‘99) 18.–21. Februar 1999 in Sassnitz auf Rügen. Beiträge zur Ur- und Frühgeschichte Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 35, 377–87. Lübstorf: Landesamt für Bodendenkmalpflege Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. HARTZ, S. & LÜBKE, H. 2005. Zur chronostratigraphischen Gliederung der Ertebølle- und frühesten Trichterbecherkultur in der südlichen Mecklenburger Bucht. Bodendenkmalpflege in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 52, 119–44. HARTZ, S., LÜBKE, H. & HEINRICH, D. 2000. Frühe Bauern an der Küste. Neue 14C-Daten und aktuelle Aspekte zum Neolithisierungsprozeß im norddeutschen Ostseeküstengebiet. Prähistorische Zeitschrift 75, 129–52. HARTZ, S., HEINRICH, D. & LÜBKE, H. 2002. Coastal farmers — the neolithisation of northern-most Germany. In A. Fischer & K. Kristiansen (eds), The Neolithisation of Denmark. 150 years of debate, 321–40. Sheffield: J. R. Collis Publications. HEDGES, R. E. M., HOUSLEY R. A., BRONK RAMSEY, C. & VAN KLINKEN, G. J. 1995. Radiocarbon dates from the Oxford AMS system: archaeometry datelist 19. Archaeometry 37, 195–214. HEINRICH, D. 1993. Die Wirbeltierreste vom ellerbekzeitlichen Siedlungsplatz Schlamersdorf LA 5, Kreis Stormarn. Zeitschrift für Archäologie 27, 67–89. HEINRICH, D. 1997/8. Die Tierknochenfunde des frühneolithischen Wohnplatzes Wangels LA 505. Ein Vorbericht. Offa 54/55, 43–8. HEUßNER, K.-U. 1988. Bandkeramische Funde von Zollchow, Kreis Prenzlau. Bodendenkmalpflege in Mecklenburg 36, 7–24. JANKE, W. & LAMPE, R. 2000. The sea-level rise on the south Baltic coast over the past 8000 years—new results and new questions. In Schutz des Kulturerbes unter Wasser. Veränderungen europäischer Lebenskultur durch Fluß- und Seehandel. Kongreß für Unterwasserarchäologie Sassnitz 1999. Beiträge zur Ur- und Frühgeschichte MecklenburgVorpommerns 35, 393–8. Lübstorf: Landesamt für Bodendenkmalpflege MecklenburgVorpommern. JENNBERT, K. 1994. Getreide als Geschenk. Ertebøllekultur und frühneolithische Trichterbecherkultur. In J. Hoika & J. Meurers-Balke (eds), Beiträge zur frühneolithischen


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Mistrust traditions, consider innovations? The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in southern Scandinavia LARS LARSSON

INTRODUCTION THE DISCUSSION INVOLVING the introduction of farming in southern Scandinavia has a tradition of more than 150 years (Fischer & Kristiansen 2002). The relation between continental Europe and southern Scandinavia has been of main interest, especially concerning the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic. A qualified knowledge about the archaeological situation, as well as the tools for interpretation, is of critical importance. This means not only mastering increasing information about the finds and features. Of equal importance is acknowledging the diverse theoretical bases for dealing with the actual material, with contrasting research traditions ranging from Continental positivism to Anglo-Saxon postmodernism. With diverging attitudes and theoretical interests, different categories of finds and features are achieving priority in the interpretations. How different scholars view the relation between wild and domestic as well as nature and culture is of importance for the interpretation of neolithisation (Rudebeck 2000). However, the material on which the interpretations are based remains the common base. Few regions have been so well scrutinised as southern Scandinavia, when considering the process of neolithisation. The primary reason is the good— sometimes exceptional—preservation of sites, in which the variety of archaeological expressions of the societies are so well represented. For scholars working on neolithisation, it might seem that the field of research has been thoroughly ploughed. But from time to time, new aspects are presented and the debate is revitalised. One must also reflect on what we mean by the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic. Two main factors are included: the change in material culture and the change in economic base. It is often postulated that these changes were simultaneous. However, this view should be seen critically.



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As the situation in the Baltic area has been presented (Zvelebil & RowleyConwy 1984), farming was adopted at a varying tempo in different areas. In certain cases we see a rapid change involving both material culture and the economic base, as the acceptance of a new concept of living and thinking occurred. In other regional situations one sees a change involving a longer interval in time, with gradual influences of new economies and a new material culture. In general, this covers two basic models of neolithisation. The first model includes a marked change within the existing societies, and perhaps also involves immigration. In the second model, successional changes of the existing society occurred through exchange of items and information from outside. Generally speaking, one can view these models as two opinions about how societies’ structures and their members’ worldviews are reproduced or changed over time. In general, scholars with a post-processual perspective are attracted to gradual-process models, whereas those more critical of post-processualism are more likely to accept rapid-transformation scenarios (Rowley-Conwy 2004). However, the information points very much in favour of a rapid change which does not mean that the social sphere should be of less importance.

TWO CONTRASTING MODELS OF NEOLITHISATION Two new contributions to the discussion about neolithisation in southern Scandinavia present rather diverging perspectives on the prehistoric introduction of farming. One is the book by Lutz Klassen, who bases a major part of his study on the objects made of raw materials exotic to Scandinavia and the north-western part of Germany (Klassen 2004; see also Klassen 2000). From the dating of these objects in continental Europe as a whole, Klassen recognises seven important phases. The earliest artefacts of non-local raw materials are dated to the middle part of the Ertebølle culture, but the largest number are found in the phase 4300–4000 cal BC, comprising the latest part of the Ertebølle culture (Klassen 2004, Abb. 71). Already during the Late Mesolithic there were ranked societies in south-western Scandinavia, in which the imported objects had loaded symbolic value, just as they did in the farming societies in continental Europe. Through contacts with societies to the south, knowledge about farming was introduced in its totality, although Klassen suggests that it might also have involved movements of a small number of people emigrating from the Michelsberg culture area. The earliest stage of the Funnel Beaker culture emerged on the southwestern coast of the Baltic Sea, with not only a new type of pottery but also with a changed flint technology (Hartz et al. 2002, 324; see also Hartz et al., this volume) (Fig. 1a). The traditional elements from the Ertebølle culture


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had, according to Klassen, a much subordinated role in the new societies. This view is based not only on the material culture but also on the regional division of the early Neolithic that is divergent from the structure of the late Ertebølle culture. The closest contacts in the transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic are linked to the Michelsberg culture, which emerged in Lower Saxony. However, Klassen identifies contacts with Chasséen and the English Neolithic in the development of the Funnel Beaker culture on Jutland (Fig. 1c). In the second example, Anders Fischer has made a detailed presentation and analysis of the categories that have been used in the debate for the last decades concerning the introduction of farming (Fischer 2002). He takes advantage of Koch’s typology by avoiding the traditional regional subdivision in groups (Fischer 2002, 360). In the study of Funnel Beaker pottery, Koch presents a typological sequence of vessel types (Koch 1998). Generally speaking, the elements detected are seen in the outer shape of the vessel, along with an increasing intensity of decoration. However, when residue samples are dated, they do not show an acceptable argument for a chronological sequence, a result that might be explained by the reservoir effect (Fischer 2002, 357). Sites with type 0 vessels date to c. 3950 cal BC, and they include bones from cattle and possibly domestic pig. No polished flint axes are present, but probably stone axes of Ertebølle tradition. Graves are almost completely absent, but some indications point to mortuary practices similar to those of the Mesolithic. Votive finds are few. Sites including vessels of type I (c. 3700 cal BC) are usually referred to as the Oxie-group (Fig. 1b), and they include bones from domesticated animals, cattle, pig and goat/sheep. The location of the sites expanded to inland areas, indicating that farming became a more important part of the economy (L. Larsson 1988). Still, the number of sacrificial deposits were few, even when point-butted, polished flint axes are included. The phase with type II pottery (c. 3600 cal BC) includes sites referred to as the Svaleklint group, in which ritual deposits are more numerous. Type III pottery seems to appear at the same time, is common in votive deposits and appears in earthen long barrows as well. Fischer scrutinises critically the idea that the Neolithic was introduced as an integrated package. If it were, he argues, then it could only have occurred due to migration. The social and ideological structures integral to Neolithic food-producing economies would have been too different to be adopted quickly and cleanly by the in situ Mesolithic societies (Fischer 2002, 361–2). Unfortunately, due to limited available information, the migration hypothesis cannot yet be thoroughly evaluated. There are rather few skeletons dating to the early Neolithic. They present a considerable variation in characteristics, because they represent single finds from separate regions and from a broad time span (Bennike & Alexandersen 2002, 296). The population of humans


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Figure 1a. The different Mesolithic and Neolithic groups in northern continental Europe and Scandinavia during the Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic. The Siggeneben Süd — Stengade II group. From Klassen 2004.

represented in the cemeteries from the Middle and Late Mesolithic has not yielded information about migration and biological diversity, due in part to fragmentary preservation of the skeletal material. Some earthen long barrows graves hold up to four individuals, but they are located on sandy soils where the bone preservation is very poor and the interred are marked by only dark organic stains (Rudebeck 2002).



Figure 1b. The Oxie group.

A food crisis has been suggested as an important factor in triggering the introduction of the new economy, but this is not accepted by Fischer. Evidence for an increasing population is based upon the assumption that the large base camps belong to the late part of the Mesolithic. Yet large base camps are known since the middle part of the Mesolithic during the Kongemose culture (L. Larsson 1980; 1982). Such settlements might have


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Figure 1c. The Volling group.

existed even earlier, from the late part of the Maglemose culture. However, these coastal sites are submerged and badly destroyed by waves and currents (L. Larsson 1999). Nevertheless, intensive occupation in the coastal area was already well established several millennia before the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. Fischer thus favours a more gradualist model, explaining the introduction of animal husbandry and cereal cultivation as elements incorporated during



a long-term process of socio-economic transformation. According to Fischer the importation of prestige objects—made with exotic raw materials—probably triggered an inflationary process in which it gradually became more difficult to obtain material symbols of power in the form of portable artefacts alone. Socially ambitious groups became engaged in the new economies, driven in significant part by social and ceremonial feasting. Based upon finds from the Early Funnel Beaker culture sites, Fischer points to the marked similarities in flint and ceramic artefacts with the Late Ertebølle culture (Fischer 2002, 351–5). While the cooking vessels of the Ertebølle culture and the Funnel Beaker culture share similarities in shape and manufacturing technique, the typical Funnel Beaker types might have had new functions. Fischer regards the introduction of the new shapes of pottery in the Funnel Beaker culture as linked with new ceremonial behaviour, in which a drinking ritual associated with votive practice played a central role (Fischer 2002, 377). Klassen’s argument contrasts in part with Fischer’s. The two scholars agree that the Scandinavian Mesolithic societies during the late Ertebølle culture had a social structure on par with the Neolithic societies to the south. They were incorporated in a widespread interregional network, with the exchange of exotic objects as symbols of social prestige within ranked societies. However, Klassen does not regard the existing worldview of the members of the Ertebølle culture to be of substantial importance. In Klassen’s model the old Mesolithic traditions were abandoned and the ‘Neolithic package’ was accepted by Late Ertebølle societies, without any reservations. The difference between Klassen and Fischer’s explanations reflects contrasting paradigms about how prehistoric social structures and worldviews changed through time.

TERRESTRIAL OR MARINE? The environmental impact of shoreline displacement has been suggested as the decisive factor for the introduction of agriculture in southern Scandinavia (Zvelebil & Rowley-Conwy 1986). Post-glacial shoreline displacements most certainly explain why, in the Mesolithic sequence, oysters declined in frequency while cockle shells increased (Andersen 1995). An associated decline in fish bone frequencies has also been taken as an indication for a significant change in diet with the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. New analyses of the graves from Dragsholm, north-western Zealand, have raised new questions about dietary variability and its socio-economic underpinnings. Two females with ‘typical’ Mesolithic grave goods were found in close association with a male with Funnel Beaker culture grave goods (Brinch Petersen 1974). The 13C


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content of one of the women’s bones reflects a marine-dominated diet, while the man had lived on terrestrial foods. Some scholars regard the values as marking a diachronic change from a marine to terrestrial diet (Richards et al. 2003; Tauber 1981). Others interpret the differences as reflecting gender distinctions in the same society (Fischer 2002; Milner et al. 2004). The diverging opinions arise from how the radiocarbon dates from the graves are treated. In the radiocarbon dating of human bones and organic residues from ceramics, the marine reservoir effect might be an error of importance (Fischer 2002, 356; Persson 1999, 32–3). Even for the dating of pottery residues from inland sites, there may be an age difference between samples from the inside and outside of the vessel (Fischer 2002, 356). This is one of several examples of the problems in using radiocarbon dates for a detailed chronology of the late Ertebølle culture and the early Funnel Beaker culture. The variations we see in the human bone 13C values are substantial, but we must consider that few individuals from the very late Mesolithic and the earliest Neolithic have been sampled (Fischer 2002, fig. 22.4; 2003; 2005). In the Dragsholm case, individuals that were previously dated to the Late Mesolithic achieve a later Neolithic age, when the marine reservoir effect is taken into account. Thus, it appears that there are individuals of contemporaneous age with high as well as low marine dietary components. Yet, in order to clarify the suggestive patterns, radiocarbon assays should be made on different material from well stratified sites before more precise 14C-based models based can be presented. The variation in the standard error provides even less reliability than a calibrated interval of 4100–3800 cal BC. In south-western Scandinavia a shift from marine to terrestrial diet is obvious, when we view developments from a coarse, long-term time perspective—and if we consider the entire Late Ertebølle and Early Neolithic. In certain parts of southern Scandinavia, the contrast between Mesolithic and Neolithic 13C values is less pronounced (Lidén et al. 2004). When it comes to characterising the transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic diets, the significance of these values can be questioned, as they derive from an even larger chronological interval and a wide geographical area. Still, the values indicate that there was not one but several processes operating under neolithisation. The question remains what kind of farming and herding techniques were introduced and practised in the Early Neolithic. From the stable isotopes analyses, it looks as if the transition led to a marked change in diet, although there may have been groups that maintained a more traditional subsistence economy for some time.



THE FIRST INDICATIONS OF FARMING The traces of the Late Ertebølle culture in north-western Germany are associated with cereal pollen and domesticated animal bones. The introduction of these domesticates occurred several centuries earlier than in Denmark to the north (Hartz el al. 2002, 335–6; see also Hartz et al., this volume). However, no influences from farming societies can be seen in flint artefact technology or form. This is generally interpreted as the earliest phase of the neolithisation. The second phase (c. 4100–4000 cal BC) involves the adoption of new vessel types. In the ceramic assemblage only the oval lamps seem to have remained unchanged as a classical element. The flint and stone tools remained in the Ertebølle tradition. At the same time the large settlements were deserted. Small units that raised livestock became predominant. During the third phase (c. 3900–3800 cal BC), polished flint axes were introduced, and other changes within the flint technology become archaeologically evident. In the late Atlantic settlement of northernmost Germany, there are obvious differences in indications for farming from the inland and coastal environments, respectively (Hartz el al. 2002, 324–8). In the former area no pollen indicating agriculture has been detected. No finds of domesticated animals are present at the sites. In the coastal sites Cerealia pollen has been identified, although we should cautiously recognise that certain grass taxa could be mistaken for Cerealia. Large coastal sites include some bones from cattle. Some knowledge about farming probably reached the Mesolithic societies already during the earlier part of the fifth millennium cal BC. However, no major changes took place until several centuries later. The earliest dates for cattle in the northernmost part of Germany and Denmark seem to cluster around about 4700 cal BC. Why did domesticated animals appear at this stage? This is also the date of the earliest pottery. In contrast to stone axes that had an exotic origin, early pottery was fabricated in southern Scandinavia. However, while the knowledge for making stone axes was well established in the Ertebølle tradition, pottery production involved a quite new technique, demanding new social patterns of transmission of knowledge (Jennbert 1984). What is striking is that the special knowledge involved did not imbue pots with a prestigious social value that we can recognise archaeologically. Pots do not appear in Late Mesolithic graves, and their appearance in votive depositions is meagre (Koch 1998, 157). The introduction of a small number of domestic animals might be viewed in the same context as the pottery. The Ertebølle societies simply had an interest in holding some animals in captivity: not only dogs but other species, as well exemplified by finds of foxes (Jonsson 1988, 67). That dogs are included in the Late Mesolithic mortuary practices as single individuals (L. Larsson 1995; 2004) suggests that other non-human species could have held a special position in the societies.


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For example, animals transported over long distances might have been regarded as prestige objects, well integrated in the worldview of the locals.

NATURAL CHANGES AND SOCIAL EFFECTS The most important question is, therefore, why the north-western European population adopted the Neolithic economic elements. Today, the debate focuses on the significance of various factors and their interactions. How did the social environment change? What was the role of over-population? Did increased contact with societies in central Europe influence transformations in the Mesolithic worldview? And considering the importance of these demographic, social and ideological factors, what was the influence of the changing post-glacial physical environment? It should be emphasised that there is no solid evidence that natural factors principally caused the abandonment of the fisher-gatherer-hunter lifeway and the adoption of agriculture. But this is not to say that natural changes did not influence the economic conditions, social life and worldview of Late Mesolithic people. In many presentations of the Mesolithic of northern Europe, one finds a teleological description of the impact of climate change; the climatic shifted progressively from colder conditions during the early part of the Mesolithic to a climatic climax during the later part. Yet studies of ice cores from Greenland give a different picture of the Mesolithic climate. From the onset of the Holocene (c. 9500 cal BC) to 7000 cal BC, temperature rose markedly. In the following millennia, with the exception of the brief, drastic cold episode at about 6200 cal BC (Alley & Ágústdóttir 2005), the general temperature remained constant or even declined somewhat during the rest of the Mesolithic. There is no support for the explanation of the Atlantic flora expansion because of a long-term temperature increase. Nor can shore displacements be linked to changes in global or hemispheric temperature trends. Yet, climate may have played a contributing role right around the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. According to the indications provided by fluctuations in tree line elevation in the Fenno-Scandian mountains, the Atlantic–Subboreal transition was marked by an increase in temperature (Karlén & Kuylenstierna 1996, fig. 2; Karlén & Larsson forthcoming). If this is true, then another important natural change facilitated the introduction of agriculture. With a change of a couple of degrees, the growing season would have been extended by half a month or a full month. Cereals used to growing in a warmer environment would have yielded better harvests than before.



Land and water Shoreline transgressions were factors of importance for Mesolithic Scandinavian societies. A large amount of land was submerged during the Atlantic period. Especially in eastern Denmark, the shoreline displacements caused marked changes in the landscape, creating narrow and deep lagoons. In most cases the post-Pleistocene rising sea levels formed new attractive waters for different fish species, establishing a suitable base for a fishing economy. The human population increased at this time, but it did not appear to create significant pressure on aquatic resources. The introduction of prehistoric farming in Denmark appears to be associated with a marked fall in the tidal amplitude in inland waters, an environmental shift that is sedimentologically recognisable (Strand Petersen 1993). This was caused by the final submergence of the land in the North Sea, creating conditions for a moderate tidal range (Coles 1999). The results of both archaeological inventory studies and excavations show that the settlement pattern shifted significantly across the MesolithicNeolithic transition (L. Larsson 1987; 1988; M. Larsson 1992). We can observe a reduction in the size of the sites. Another difference is in the locational distribution, as sites seem to have spread inland. Much has been written about the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic period, but the cause and effect of the altered landscape have perhaps not received due attention. The concentration and geographical continuity of settlement, which are so characteristic of Late Mesolithic habitation, were based in significant part on the high production of flora and fauna in streams and lagoons. This ensured that a high level of production could be maintained, in spite of an increased exploitation of the environment. But increased sea levels also meant changes in the directions of sea currents, which in turn may have altered the conditions for the formation of beach spurs and sand walls. In certain places, this resulted in an ever more extensive building up, while in others it meant that older sand walls, which protected the high-productive lagoon or delta, were in time washed away. It is during the very late part of the Mesolithic period that sea levels in the central part of the area related to the Ertebølle culture were at their highest. In some places, the lagoons thus came to be cut off from the sea, while other lagoons and deltas became exposed to the full force of the ocean. In both cases, the results were equally dramatic for Mesolithic society. In those lagoons cut off by sand dunes, the exchange of water effectively ceased. A process of re-growth started, and fish production declined drastically. In unprotected lagoons, the islands and shorelines lay open to the immediate onslaught of the sea, and thus the delicate balance between fresh, brackish and sea water was seriously affected. The important transition zone effect


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disappeared. Here, too, the diversity and abundance of fish would have been altered dramatically. All of this came to affect the human settlements, but the effects were not so drastic as to have caused anything in the way of regional famine. Still, the dynamic coastal environment must have caused stress for societies that depended on high productivity of predictable resources near their settlement sites. During the later part of the Atlantic, the intensity of human settlement along lakes and rivers rose notably. This may be explained by a rise in the groundwater level (Noe-Nygaard 1995, 280), but settlement sites in Scania have been found in shore deposits below present lake levels, indicating a low lake surface. Moreover, the present lake levels are the result of intensive levelling, and this might mean that some lakes would have lost their outlets, thereby becoming much less attractive for settlement (L. Larsson 2003a; 2003b). Lake level changes depend in large part on the hydrology of water flow, which could create highly dynamic changes in the lake’s morphology and its ecological productivity. It is notable that the region of apparent origin for the early Neolithic Funnel Beaker culture—north-western coastal Germany and southernmost eastern Denmark—was also particularly subject to isostatic and eustatic shifts in the landmass. The isostatic changes involved a tilting of the entire area south of a diagonal from north-west to south-east through Denmark. On the south-western coast of the Baltic, as much as 6 m has been submerged (Hartz & Lübke 2004, 123–8). Some of the isostatic depression occurred during the Sub-Boreal period, but the most rapid changes occurred in the Late Atlantic. These geological processes probably increased the amount of shoreline environment and favoured an increase in the fish population, but a gradually changing geographic position of settlement sites could have caused intensified stress for the social systems. Elm disease plays an important part in the discussion of the introduction of agriculture. Today, the elm decline is interpreted as a result of elm disease. This phenomenon can be detected all over northern Europe (Friman 1997). According to detailed studies of annually laminated sediments from a mere in south-eastern England, half of the local elm population disappeared within five years (Peglar 1993; Peglar & Birks 1993). In central Scania the elm decline took at most 40 years (Skog & Regnéll 1995). At the present time, southern Sweden is suffering from elm disease; thus it is possible to follow its effects, which in some places are very obvious. Today, a similar elm-specific disease has caused an almost total extinction of elm within about ten years in southern Sweden. The effect is that within a few years, a forest afflicted by elm disease will be transformed into an area of dead tree trunks with rapidly flourishing bushes and other undergrowth. Burning the dead trees would have been a labour-saving way to acquire large areas for cultivation and pasture.



Moreover, a thunderstorm in areas with large amounts of dry wood might have had tremendous consequences for the regional landscape. In southern Scandinavia the elm decline cannot be precisely dated, but it occurred in the early part of the fourth millennium cal BC (Andersen & Lund Rasmussen 1993; Skog & Regnéll 1995). This is contemporaneous with the earliest dating for domesticated livestock (Fischer 2003, table 22:1). The introduction of farming has not been precisely dated; pollen analyses are ambiguous, with some results suggesting the appearance of cereal pollen just before (Göranson 1988; Kostrup 1988), and others just after, the elm decline (Rasmussen 1998). In most cultures signs from supernatural agents are accepted as being of great or even decisive importance for making difficult decisions. It may affect the faith of a single person or the society as a whole. The ravages of elm disease may have seemed like the interference of supernatural forces, probably as a message from the gods that the people should strictly intensify existing practices or shift to a new social order and accept a new relationship between society and nature. This might be the most important aspect of the elm disease for the spread of the Neolithic in large parts of northern and north-western Europe. Who could ignore the signs of the gods? All of these changes in the natural environment did not decisively affect the existence of the human population. However, these changes might have become forces or symbols that influenced the way people acted in Late Mesolithic societies, as they simultaneously maintained contacts with Neolithic societies to the south. Did members of the Mesolithic societies continue to trust traditions, and thereby continue to accept the way of thinking and living as former generations did? Or did natural events—and their perceived supernatural significance and their consequences for creating social stress—make people mistrust the old ways of living and begin to consider accepting innovations? We have meagre knowledge of the mortuary practices during the latest part of the Ertebølle culture and the earliest Neolithic. We do not know when large cemeteries as a phenomenon disappear and individual graves come to be preferred. Most scholars see the change as occurring with the introduction of farming. During a somewhat later part of the Early Neolithic, the earthen long barrow is introduced as a new practice, likely representing a new way of relating to the dead through monumentality. Just a few years ago, these monuments were viewed as a feature found only in western Denmark (Rudebeck 2002). But our knowledge of the situation has changed radically with new excavations, which have proved this type of grave to be rather frequent in other regions (L. Larsson 2002a; 2002b). The first earthen long barrows in Sweden were found under problem-oriented projects, and more were soon identified during rescue excavations (Gidlöf & Johansson 2003; Lindahl Jensen 2002).


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THE NORTHERN PART OF SOUTHERN SCANDINAVIA Although our knowledge about the Late Mesolithic in Europe is certainly rich, we should remember that it is based on a rather small number of sites. Most of them have been identified and excavated under projects with particular research aims. However, in southern Scandinavia rescue excavations have recovered material from a few sites that have proven to be very important for our knowledge of the Late Mesolithic (Albrethsen & Brinch Petersen 1977; Karsten & Knarrström 2003). The salvage excavations at Bøkkebacken revealed the first known Mesolithic cemetery in the region, and subsequent work has since shown that burial grounds were hardly an uncommon feature of the Late Mesolithic landscape (Albrethsen & Brinch Petersen 1977; L. Larsson 2004). The cemetery sites have helped to illuminate Mesolithic mortuary practices, and in doing so, they also pointed the way to a new theoretical conception about these prehistoric foraging societies, which were soon seen as having a more complex social organisation than previously recognised, more on par with the contemporaneous farming communities in continental Europe (Chapman 1981). For some scholars the transition from fishing-hunting-gathering to farming became almost self-evident. Of course, the detailed information we can glean from what we often perceive as spectacular material has sometimes created a glare that hides a representativity bias. And the focus on the more attention-grabbing finds from Scania, Sweden, and Zealand, Denmark, may have led to a substantially lesser interest in Mesolithic/Neolithic transformation of the northern part of southern Scandinavia. It may also be that research in the northern area has been virtually restricted to salvage excavations that have not received much wider attention. Still, excavations of new sites can always provide arenas for questioning existing archaeological prejudices. For example, a settlement site of considerable size has been found at Motala, on the eastern side of the large lake Vättern, near its most important outlet (Gruber 2005). Because of exceptional preservation, house and fishing platform features were uncovered, along with a considerable faunal assemblage. The site parallels the base camps found in south-western Scandinavia, although graves are missing at the Motala site. This may be due to the limited extent of the rescue excavation. However, human skeleton parts were recovered in the occupation deposits, suggesting indirectly that the inhabitants were ritually handling their dead on the settlement site. Once such sites are found, it seems obvious that we should have expected their occurrence. But mental obstacles can limit our view of the Mesolithic. Thus, in recent decades, scholars working in the northern part of southern Scandinavia have (either implicitly or explicitly) regarded the introduction of Neolithic economies as involving a much sharper break with the Mesolithic social traditions. The new discovery of



Mesolithic base camp sites—or central places (L. Larsson 2005)—in the northern area should lead us to question old assumptions. Here, the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition may have had rather similar social dimensions to those suggested for south-western Scandinavia. We can also observe important regional cultural changes that occurred during the Late Mesolithic in different parts of Scandinavia. These dynamics appear to involve both the emergence of sub-regional social boundaries/ ethnic group definition and also reorientation of long-distance exchange networks. For example, there appears to be a notable archaeological change in the Mesolithic of western as well as eastern Sweden around 4500 cal BC, when the micro-blade technique disappears, and distinctive subregional traditions emerge. The latest Mesolithic in the West Coast region of Sweden (Andersson & Wigfors 2004) differs markedly with the contemporaneous material culture of eastern central Sweden, especially seen from the perspective of quartz technology (Lindgren 2004). At the same time a shift in symbolic communication and possibly ethnic distinction might be observed with links between eastern central Sweden and northern Sweden (Knutsson 2004). In the West Coast area artefacts such as transverse arrowheads suggest a link with the Ertebølle culture to the south. However, pottery is not found in this region; nor are stone axe types with a continental European origin. According to the radiocarbon dates from sites with typical Neolithic inventories, the introduction of farming occurred at virtually the same time in central and southern Sweden (Ahlfont et al. 1995; Segerberg 1999; Welinder 1998b) (Fig. 2). However, there is little available supporting evidence in the form of ceramic chronologies. The finds of pottery are so few and badly crushed that a comparison with the pottery types of southern Scandinavia is not currently possible. At sites with better preservation of pottery the form can be comparable to type III of Koch’s typology (Apel et al. 1995, fig. 28). Recent analysis has found no substantial support for arguments that farming was introduced earlier than the transition from the fifth to the fourth millennium cal BC in the west coast and central Swedish areas (Welinder 1998a). The differences between the Mesolithic material culture and that of the new Neolithic are so great that one can certainly talk about the Neolithic being introduced as a package. We also observe a significant shift in site structure. Due to the absence of human remains from these regions, we have no basis for addressing how immigration from the south might have played a role in the transition. The study of the introduction of farming has been linked to discussions about anthropological theoretical models much more than on finds and sites. For example, marriage networks between different exogamous bands have been suggested as a medium for the spread of the knowledge and new ways of life (Jennbert 1984). Marriage alliance relationships are also suggested to


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Figure 2. The distribution of agriculture in Scandinavia during the Early Neolithic.


Figure 3. Major innovations in economy and material culture in Denmark and the southernmost part of Sweden during the Ertebølle Culture and the Early Funnel Beaker Culture. From Fischer 2002 and Sørensen 2005.



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be an important mechanism for agriculture’s further spread to the north (Hallgren 2004). Here, the society in transition is assumed to be based upon non-hierarchical segmentary principles. This approach has been carried out further with stone axe production studies, where raw material was found to be specific for each site. The deposition of thin-butted stone axes at other sites distant from the production source is regarded as the result of periodic movements along generation lines (Sundström 2004). Overall, the Funnel Beaker culture is seen not only as a new economy, but also a material manifestation of the egalitarian ideology put under pressure (Sundström 2004).

CONCLUSION For the individuals participating in the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, one question must have recurrently emerged as a prime concern: ‘Should I mistrust traditions and consider innovations?’ This concern encompassed the introduction of new material culture and new techniques of obtaining food. It also involved new ways of conceiving the world and people’s place in it. And it was affected by important—sometimes catastrophic—changes in the physical environment. In the heat of debate or the detail of daily research, it is perhaps surprisingly easy for academics, regardless of the theoretical ‘stripes’ they bear, to forget that the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition was brought about by the actions of real human beings. How did this transition come about? We can consider some key questions that can help us think about the problem. Were individuals convinced that they were entering into a better way of life? To what extent were people coerced, and how were instruments of power wielded? And as discussed above, how were profound changes in the physical environment seen as messages sent to people from supernatural beings/forces? It must be emphasised that the question of whether to mistrust traditions and consider innovations is not only a matter of concern for prehistoric actors. It is also important for those who are making prehistory today. As has been presented in this chapter, the facts presented for south Scandinavia have been variously interpreted as indicating a rapid introduction of a ‘Neolithic’ package with new ways of thinking and acting, as well as reflecting a mixture of traditions and gradually incorporated innovations. Future research into the transition should focus on combining new problem-oriented excavation with fresh ideas about how the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic occurred. In this project, we should increase our awareness that the transition might show substantial regional variation in how the new way of life was accepted or rejected.



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GÖRANSSON, H. 1988. Pollen analytical investigation at Skateholm, southern Sweden. In L. Larsson (ed.), The Skateholm project. I. Man and environment, 27–33. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International. GRUBER, G. (ed.) 2005. Identities in transition. Mesolithic strategies in the Swedish province of Östergötland. Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet. HALLGREN, F. 2004. The introduction of ceramic technology around the Baltic Sea in the 6th millennium. In H. Knutsson (ed.), Coast to coast — arrival. Proceedings of the Final Coast to Coast Conference 1–5 October 2002 in Falköping, Sweden. Coast to Coast-book 10, 123–42. Uppsala: Coast to Coast Project. HARTZ, S., HEINRICH, D. & LÜBKE, H. 2002. Coastal farmers — the neolithisation of northernmost Germany. In A. Fischer & K. Kristiansen (eds), The Neolithisation of Denmark. 150 years of debate, 321–40. Sheffield: J. R. Collis Publications. HARTZ, S. & LÜBKE, H. 2004. Zur chronostratigraphischen Gliederung det Ertebølle-Kultur und frühesten Trichterbecherkultur in der südlichen Mecklenburger Bucht. In H. Lübke, F. Lüth & T. Terberger (eds), Neue Forschungen zur Steinzeit im südlichen Ostseegebiet, 119–35. Lübstorf: Bodendenkmalplege in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 52. JENNBERT, K. 1984. Den produktiva gåvan. Tradition och innovation i Sydskandinavien för omkring 5300 år sedan. Lund: Gleerup. JONSSON, L. 1988. The vertebrate faunal remains from the Late Atlantic settlement Skateholm in Scania, South Sweden. In L. Larsson (ed.), The Skateholm project. I. Man and environment, 56–88. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International. KARLÉN, W. & KUYLENSTIERNA, J. 1996. On solar forcing of Holocene climate: evidence from Scandinavia. The Holocene 6, 359–65. KARLÉN, W. & LARSSON, L. forthcoming. Mid-Holocene climatic and cultural dynamics in Northern Europe. In D. Sandweiss & K. A. Maasch (eds), Climate change and cultural dynamics: a global perspective on Holocene transitions. San Diego: Academic Press. KARSTEN, P. & KNARRSTRÖM, B. 2003. The Tågerup excavations. Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet. KLASSEN, L. 2000. Frühes Kupfer in Norden. Untersuchungen zu Chronologie, Herkunft und Bedeuterung der Kupferfunde der Nordgruppe der Trichterbecherkultur. Århus: Aarhus University Press. KLASSEN, L. 2004. Jade und Kupfer. Untersuchungen zum Neolithisierungsprozess im westlichen Ostseeraum unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Kulturenentwicklung Europas 5500–3500 BC. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. KNUTSSON, K. 2004. The historical construction of ‘Norrland’. In H. Knutsson (ed.), Coast to coast—arrival. Proceedings of the Final Coast to Coast Conference 1–5 October 2002 in Falköping, Sweden. Coast to Coast-book 10, 45–71. Uppsala: Coast to Coast Project. KOCH, E. 1998. Neolithic bog pots from Zealand, Møn, Lolland and Falster. København: Lyng and Søn. KOSTRUP, E. 1988. Late Atlantic and Early Subboreal vegetational development at Trundholm, Denmark. Journal of Archaeological Science 15, 503–13. LARSSON, L. 1980. Some aspects of the Kongemose culture of Southern Sweden. Papers of the Archaeological Institute University of Lund 1979–80, 5–22. LARSSON, L. 1982. Segebro. En tidigatlantisk boplats vid Sege ås mynning. Malmö: Malmö Museum. LARSSON, L. 1987. Some aspects of cultural relationship and ecological conditions during the late Mesolithic and early Neolithic. In G. Burenhult, A. Carlsson, Å. Hyenstrand & T. Sjøvold (eds), Theoretical approaches to artefacts, settlement and society, 165–76. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. LARSSON, L. 1988. The use of the landscape during the Mesolithic and Neolithic in southern Sweden. Archeologie en Landschap. Bijdragen aan het gelijknamige symposium gehouden op 19


THE MESOLITHIC-NEOLITHIC TRANSITION IN SCANDINAVIA 615 en 20 oktober 1987, ter gelegenheid van het afscheid van H. T. Waterbolk, 31–48. Groningen: Biologisch-Archaeologisch Instituut. LARSSON, L. 1995. Pratiques mortuaires et sépultures de chiens dans les sociétés mésolithiques de Scandinavie méridionale. L’Anthropologie 98, 562–75. LARSSON, L. 1999. Submarine settlement remains on the bottom of the Öresund Strait, Southern Scandinavia. In A. Thevénin (ed.), L´Éurope des derniers chasseurs. Èpipaléolithique et Mésolithique. Peuplement et paléoenvironnement de l´Épipaléolithique et du Mésolithique, 327–34. Grenoble: CTHS. LARSSON, L. 2002a. Långhögar i samhällsperspektiv. In L. Larsson (ed.), Monumentala gravformer ai det äldsta bondesamhället, 147–71. Lund: Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Lund University. LARSSON, L. 2002b. Långhögar i Sydsverige: ? –› ! In L. Larsson (ed.), Monumentala gravformer i det äldsta bondesamhället, 3–5. Lund: Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Lund University. LARSSON, L. 2003a. Land, water and the symbolic aspects of the Mesolithic in southern Scandinavia. Before Farming 2003 no. 4, 215–26. LARSSON, L. 2003b. The Mesolithic of Sweden in retrospective and progressive perspective. In L. Larsson, H. Kindgren, K. Knutsson, D. Loeffler & A. Åkerlund (eds), Mesolithic on the move. Papers presented at the Sixth International Conference on the Mesolithic in Europe, Stockholm 2000, XXII–XXXII. Oxbow: Oxbow. LARSSON, L. 2004. The Mesolithic period in southern Scandinavia: with special reference to burials and cemeteries. In A. Saville (ed.), Mesolithic Scotland and its neighbours. The early Holocene prehistory of Scotland and its British and Irish context and some northern European perspectives, 371–92. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. LARSSON, L. 2005. From blank spot to focal point. An eastern Swedish site from a south Scandinavian perspective. In G. Gruber (ed.), Identities in transition. Mesolithic strategies in the Swedish province of Östergötland, 24–35. Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet. LARSSON, M. 1992. The Early and Middle Neolithic Funnel Beaker Culture in the Ystad area (Southern Scania). Economic and social change, 3100–2300 BC. In L. Larsson, J. Callmer & B. Stjernquist (eds), The archaeology of the cultural landscape. Field work and research in a South Swedish rural region, 17–90. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International. LIDÉN, K., ERIKSSON, G., NORDQVIST, B., GÖTHERSTRÖM, A. & BENDIXEN, E. 2004. ‘The wet and the wild followed by the dry and the tame’ — or did they occur at the same time? Diet in Mesolithic–Neolithic southern Sweden. Antiquity 78, 23–33. LINDAHL JENSEN, B. 2002. Sten vid sten vid sten i Krångeöltofta. En preliminär redogörelse för undersökningarna en en tidneolitisk långhög. In L. Larsson (ed.), Monumentala gravformer i det äldsta bondesamhället, 77–109. Lund: Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Lund University. LINDGREN, C. 2004. Människor och kvarts. Sociala och teknologiska strategier under mesolitkum i östra Mellansverige. Stockholm: Coast to Coast Project. MILNER, N., CRAIG, O. E., BAILEY, G. N., PEDERSEN, K. & ANDERSEN, S. H. 2004. Something fishy in the Neolithic? A re-evaluation of stable isotope analysis of Mesolithic coastal populations. Antiquity 78, 9–22. NOE-NYGARD, N. 1995. Ecological, sedimentary, and geochemical evolution of the late-glacial to postglacial Åmose lacustrine basin, Denmark. Copenhagen: Scandinavian University Press. PEGLAR, S. M. 1993. The mid-Holocene Ulmus decline at Diss Mere, Norfolk, UK: a year-byyear pollen stratigraphy from annual laminations. The Holocene 3, 1–13. PEGLAR, S. M. & BIRKS, H. J. B. 1995. The mid-Holocene Ulmus fall at Diss Mere, southeast England—disease and human impact? Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 2, 61–8. PERSSON, P. 1999. Neolitikums början. Undersökningar kring jordbrukets introduktion i Nordeuropa. Coast to Coast-books 1. Göteborg: Arkeologiska institutionen, Göteborgs Universitet.


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RASMUSSEN, P. 1998. Mid-Holocene vegetation development at the inland Ertebølle settlement at Ringkloster, Eastern Jutland. Journal of Danish Archaeology 12, 65–86. RICHARDS, M. P., PRICE, T. D. & KOCH, E. 2003. The Mesolithic/Neolithic transition in Denmark: new stable isotope data. Current Anthropology 44, 288–94. ROWLEY-CONWY, P. 2004. How the west was lost. A reconsideration of agricultural origins in Britain, Ireland, and Southern Scandinavia. Current Anthropology 45, Supplement, S83–S113. RUDEBECK, E. 2000. Tilling nature — harvesting culture. Exploring images of human being in the transition to agriculture. Lund: Amqvist and Wiksell International. RUDEBECK, E. 2002. Likt och olikt i de sydskandinaviska långhögarna. In L. Larsson (ed.), Monumentala gravformer i det äldsta bondesamhället, 119–46. Lund: Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Lund University. SEGERBERG, A. 1999. Bälinge mossar. Kustbor i uppland under yngre stenålder. Uppsala: Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University. SKOG, G. & REGNÉLL, J. 1995. Precision calendar-year dating of the elm decline in a sphagnum-peat bog in southern Sweden. Radiocarbon 37, 197–202. SØRENSEN, S. 2005. Fra jæger til bonde. In C. Bunte, B. Berglund & L. Larsson (eds), Arkeologi och naturvetenskap, 298–309. Lund: Gyllenstiernska Krapperupsstiftelsen. STRAND PETERSEN, K. 1993. Environmental changes recorded in the Holocene molluscan faunas from Djursland, Denmark. Scripta Geologica, Special issue 2, 359–69. SUNDSTRÖM, L. 2004. A collective in peril. The process of Neolithisation from an eastern central Swedish perspective. In H. Knutsson (ed.), Coast to coast — arrival. Proceedings of the Final Coast to Coast Conference 1–5 October 2002 in Falköping, Sweden. Coast to Coast-book 10, 183–97. Uppsala: Coast to Coast Project. TAUBER, H. 1981. 13C evidence for dietary habits of prehistoric man in Denmark. Nature 292, 332–3. WELINDER, S. 1998a. Neoliticum — Bronsålder 3 900–500 F. Kr. Jordbrukets första femtusen år, 13–236. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur. WELINDER, S. 1998b. Pre-Neolithic farming in the Scandinavan peninsula. In M. Zvelebil, R. Dennell & L. Doman´ska (eds), Harvesting the sea, farming the forest. The emergence of Neolithic societies in the Baltic region, 165–73. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. ZVELEBIL, M. & ROWLEY-CONWY, P. 1984. Transition to farmer in northern Europe: a hunter-gatherer perspective. Norwegian Archaeological Review 17, 104–28. ZVELEBIL, M. & ROWLEY-CONWY, P. 1986. Foragers and farmers in Atlantic Europe. In M. Zvelebil (ed.), Hunters in transition, 67–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Going over: people and their times ALASDAIR WHITTLE

MY SHORT CONCLUDING PAPER in this volume does not aim to be a magisterial overview or a comprehensive summary. The papers presented here— and we could easily have added many more, had there been more time in the conference and more space in this publication—should really speak for themselves of the range and quality of research currently being carried out across north-west Europe relevant to the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. By way of conclusion, however, I would like to add some brief, personal, reflections on what we are doing well and what we could still do better, and thus try to define some of the continuing challenges for future research. There is now a very long history of research on the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, going right back to the Enlightenment philosophers and historians of the eighteenth century. A recent review of the ‘neolithisation’ of Denmark was rightly subtitled 150 Years of Debate (Fischer & Kristiansen 2002). There have been other regional reviews of some of the evidence in recent years (e.g. Ammerman & Biagi 2003; Price 2000; Zvelebil et al. 1998). What do these, and in particular the regionally concentrated set of papers presented here on north-west Europe—from northern Spain to southern Scandinavia—tell us about recent progress in thinking about the MesolithicNeolithic transition? We can take the empirical side of things first. Because of the intensity and variety of both research and development-led investigations, we have now achieved a good working knowledge of the sequences of most regions within the area covered by this volume. In some cases, the bulk of this knowledge has come comparatively recently, though in every instance there is of course a history of earlier research. As examples of this, we could pick out northern Spain, the Rhine-Meuse estuaries, the sandy lowlands of Belgium beyond the loess, or the southern Baltic coast in northern Germany (Arias, this volume; Louwe Kooijmans, this volume; Crombé & Vanmontfort, this volume; Hartz et al., this volume). Naturally the process is continuous, and eastern Scotland, for example (Sheridan, this volume), shows a situation where new information—on the early Neolithic at least—is still rapidly accumulating. In other cases, ongoing research continues to build on existing knowledge, for Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 617–628, © The British Academy 2007.


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example of the broad orbit of the LBK, as far west as and including the Rubané Récent of the Paris Basin. In these instances, we can point to important new awareness of the steps of regional sequences (e.g. Gronenborn, this volume; and see already Gronenborn 1999), including pre-Neolithic change and experimentation, and of variation within LBK/Rubané Récent communities, especially viewed as ‘multi-tradition’ entities (Gronenborn, this volume; cf. Hachem 1995; 1997; 2000). As research has extended, we have become better too at data recovery, with more areas surveyed (though there is still much to do in this regard), larger excavations opened in many instances, and ever finer methods of retrieval more routinely in operation. The comparison between LBK and British early Neolithic cereal and weed assemblages (Bogaard & Jones, this volume) would hardly have been possible a generation ago, even if we could do with still more high-quality data: certainly from early situations on the British side. The range and scope of analysis have extended in other ways too. The addition of strontium isotope analysis to that of C13 and N15 begins to open up further ways to investigate diet and movement of both animals and people (Bentley, this volume), even if there may be important scientific questions still to answer about the assumptions behind strontium analysis (and cf. Milner et al. 2004, for carbon and nitrogen analysis). Taking interpretation as it stands, this analysis offers further support for the multiple constitution of what have been perceived until really quite recently as both closed and static LBK communities. The paper by Richard Evershed (this volume) on compound-specific isotope analysis, including the possibilities for investigating marine resources as well as dairy and meat consumption, reports on another highly significant analytical contribution, which may serve to refine and change how we use such investigations. Two other kinds of analysis are relevant, though their value in detail remains unproven. Inferences from modern genetic data, both Y-chromosomal and mitochrondrial, have been in the literature for a while (e.g. Richards et al. 1996; King & Underhill 2002), and have suggested a picture of populations of mixed descents, of both external and indigenous European descent. Since the timescales are so uncertain in this work, we cannot be sure that the generalised, summary picture derived from it need apply to the band of time that Mesolithic-Neolithic transitions in central and western Europe occupy. Analytically and procedurally, it remains very difficult to get uncontaminated ancient DNA from human remains from this period, though this may be far from impossible (Joachim Burger, pers. comm., Haak et al. 2005); certainly any meaningful larger body of human aDNA data relevant to the MesolithicNeolithic transition looks likely to be available only at some point in the future, if ever. There is a related interpretive point of massive importance, which I will note here and return to below: the relation between genetic


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inheritance and lived identity. Many papers so far appear to assume a simple congruence between the two (e.g. King & Underhill 2002), whereas what was in people’s genes may have had little to do with what they decided and chose, particularly over short timescales of rapid change. By contrast, what is emerging as both attainable and of profound significance, is a detailed knowledge of the genetic descent of the key animal species (Bollongino & Burger, this volume). At least in continental Europe, preservation of ancient DNA appears sufficiently good for meaningful bodies of data to be built up, and the emerging story of the introduction of domestic cattle over very broad regions, without any sign of the local domestications that have often been predicted, is a highly significant new perspective to take into account. The second feature to be highlighted by the conference is that of climate. Its relevance to thinking about the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition is not new: witness the models of Troels-Smith (1960). Its importance has been highlighted elsewhere, both with reference to the Danube Gorges and to Britain (Bonsall et al. 2002; Bonsall et al. 2002/3), in the latter case with the suggestion that climatic amelioration could have enabled the spread of agricultural practices into Britain around 4000 cal BC, previously made difficult by colder winters and cooler, wetter summers. We should not dismiss the relevance of new climatic data (e.g. as reported by Gronenborn, this volume; cf. Strien & Gronenborn 2005) simply as fostering a model of climatic determinism. If the landscape is thought of as offering a set of affordances for human use (Ingold 2000), then basic parameters of climate and weather must always have been of central importance, both for the flow and practices of daily life and for longer-term decision making (see also Larsson, this volume). The challenges, however, must be to identify the key features within patterns of climatic fluctuation, and to relate these in detail and with precision to significant and demonstrable patterns of change in human practice. At present, we need to know more (and this looks likely to fuel more research). In some cases, it looks as though it is being suggested that both further adoptions of agriculture and significant horizons of cultural change (for example at the end of the LBK) followed cold phases, whereas in others, as already noted, the model is of climatic amelioration enabling agricultural adoption. If agricultural practice was stimulated by both cold and warm conditions, was it so sensitive to climatic conditions in the first place? Do climatic conditions affect animal keeping as much as cereal cultivation? And is there not an assumption here, which needs testing in each and every case, that cereal cultivation was from the onset a key feature of new subsistence practices? One way to read the analysis provided by Amy Bogaard and Glynis Jones (this volume), though that would not be their own view, is that cereal cultivation was comparatively muted in both the early Neolithic of Britain and the LBK.


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On the debit side, significant gaps in our knowledge still remain. In many instances, we still know far more about the Neolithic part of regional sequences than the preceding Mesolithic part, though that situation is far from uniform and also far from static. Surveys in Brittany, for example (Gouletquer et al. 1996), or serendipitous further discovery of older deposits in Neolithic excavation at Noyen-sur-Seine in the Paris Basin (Mordant & Mordant 1992), or pollen analyses suggesting possible pre-Neolithic experimentation with cereals in both the Alpine foreland (Erny-Rodmann et al. 1997) and the middle Rhineland (Schweizer 2001), all do much to vary and deepen our knowledge of Mesolithic practices and presences in parts of continental Europe—as opposed to the rich evidence of the Baltic coasts— where detailed evidence has traditionally been scarce. But lacunae remain. While there is obviously a broad understanding of what constitutes or should constitute a late Mesolithic in Britain, our detailed knowledge of fifth millennium cal BC life is painfully thin. In some regions, such as eastern Scotland, it may be legitimate to model a very sparse late Mesolithic presence, succeeded by a much denser and archaeologically more obvious and visible early Neolithic presence (Warren 2001; 2004; Sheridan, this volume). In other regions, such as central-southern England, there are hints of geographically complementary areas of Mesolithic and early Neolithic presence (Barclay 2006). We can make inferences from these patterns according to our preferences and prejudices, but the basic database is very patchy. That observation extends to the potentially highly significant phenomena of La Hoguette and Limburg. Are these just ceramic styles? Can we give them an existence beyond the LBK contexts where they principally occur? Can we see them as some kind of transitional hunter-gatherer-herder group (see Gronenborn, this volume) on the fringes of the LBK and even preceding the LBK? Given the way in which the earliest LBK may have spread through pre-existing networks in central Europe (e.g. Mateiciucová 2004), these are questions we badly need to address with more concerted and directed research. I have indicated in my other paper in this volume that we are far from being able to offer a reliably precise chronology for the beginning of the Neolithic in southern Britain. That observation certainly extends to the rest of Britain and Ireland. We should now begin to worry about the difference between 4100, 4000 or 3900 cal BC. With the steady increase in regional coverage noted above, we could also claim that our knowledge of regional chronologies has vastly improved. That may be generally so, though one can note challenges to the sequence in the Paris Basin (e.g. Jeunesse 1998–9; not, I believe, generally accepted: see for example Dubouloz 2003). But precision is generally lacking. If dates are presented through summing methods, then phenomena may appear to start earlier than they really do (Bayliss et al.



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2007). Is the earliest LBK to be dated earlier than 5500 cal BC, and when did the earliest phase end: at 5400 or 5300 cal BC? When were menhirs first put up in Brittany, the first pots made, and the last depositions put into the graves of Hoëdic and Téviec? Should we date the end of the Ertebølle culture to 4100 cal BC or to slightly later? All these uncertainties and others must affect our understanding of the processes of change involved, particularly if we want to take that understanding to the level of particular groups, generations and even individuals whose specific decisions and choices may have helped to generate large-scale processes, and we need now to give renewed attention to chronological precision. All these advances in knowledge have fuelled debate, but do they also change the nature and terms of the debate? There are three ways of looking at this. First, we could use the steadily increasing and improving data to support one or other of the main models now conventionally and regularly used to explain the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition across central and western Europe: colonisation and acculturation. The data could be used to flesh out early claims (e.g. Case 1969; Modderman 1988) for important indigenous involvement in transitions, since taken further in the availability-substitution model (Zvelebil & Lillie 2000; Zvelebil & Rowley-Conwy 1986), widely applied in areas of ‘secondary’ Neolithic expansion (Southern Scandinavia, the Dutch estuaries, north-west France, and Britain), and even tried on the broad phenomenon of the LBK itself (Kind 1998; Lukes & Zvelebil 2004; Tillmann 1993; Whittle 1996). Without needing to go into detail in the context of this particular concluding paper, the essence of the argument would be to assert the agency of indigenous people, to deconstruct the notion of a unified and uniform Neolithic ‘package’, and to read the evidence as it now stands as insufficient to document a sustained demographic expansion of incomers. There were existing networks of lithic exchange in central Europe, and new fieldwork both in Transdanubia, west of the Danube and east of the Alps (Bánffy 2004), and on the Great Hungarian Plain (Whittle 2005) does not suggest a significant build-up of population in the first half of the sixth millennium cal BC, which in itself might have triggered the LBK phenomenon (Whittle 1996; 2003, 134–6). This view does not need to deny the introduction, sometimes rapid, sometimes slower, of new practices, including in the sphere of subsistence, but it would want to discriminate among new practices, depending on context, and to assert that the whole phenomenon of farmer society was not necessarily created in one go. What it became in the longer term is not automatically a guide to its shifting character in earlier stages. Within this either/or kind of debate, others will wish to use revisions of and additions to the data as support for the older model of colonisation, and a forceful version of that has been presented recently, for southern Scandinavia, Britain and Ireland, by Peter Rowley-Conwy (2004). Here the


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essence of the argument rests on a view of the apparent totality and rapidity of change, which leads then to the inescapable view that that could only have been created by incomers, possessors and inheritors of a cultural tradition already long established behind them as it were, stretching back into southeast Europe and beyond. Whereas the conditions for demographic lift-off might be still obscure in particular situations, alternative models of, for example, ‘leap-frogging’ are available, and new evidence for radical dietary shifts and changes in residence patterns, seen for example in the stable isotope analyses or in the re-evaluation of fixed-plot, intensive, garden cultivation in the LBK and elsewhere (e.g. Bogaard 2004; 2005; Bogaard & Jones, this volume; Jones 2005), combined with what is read as evidence for rapid change, is taken to underscore the reality of new people doing new things: cultivators establishing themselves, generations at a time, in one place. A second response could be to seek compromises between these entrenched positions. As regional coverage expands and deepens, the sheer diversity of the phenomenon of transition as a whole becomes ever more striking. What went on around the bend of the Danube, say, need not have been the same as or have determined events on the north European plain and the Baltic coasts and islands. A much more complicated view would result in a mosaic of kinds of transition: a major demographic incursion here, something more filtered and piecemeal there, and a case or two perhaps of leap-frogging, to be set alongside and integrated with transfers and adoptions of practice through existing networks and among existing populations, rapid changes as the outcome of welcomed change in one area, and slow alterations as the result of prolonged resistance or indifference in another. Sketching the whole of this mosaic would take much more space than I have available here, but diversity could be sought from the beginning of the LBK onwards, within the LBK, a view latent in the literature (though far from explicit or dominant) perhaps as far back as Quitta’s work on älteste LBK pottery (Gronenborn, this volume; cf. Zvelebil 2004). The resultant mixture of actors, traditions and practices could serve to characterise processes of change nearly everywhere; few situations might on this perspective turn out to be wholly the result of the agency of incomers, or few wholly the result of the agency of local people. One might argue, for example, that the people who inhabited the Dutch estuaries and peatlands were an instance of the latter kind of scenario, very gradually, and at their own pace, picking up acquaintance with and use of pottery, pigs, cows and finally cereals (Louwe Kooijmans, this volume). Vicki Cummings and I have suggested elsewhere that we might consider regional variation in processes across southern Britain, with more indigenous contributions to the west, and at least some filtered colonisation in southern England (Cummings & Whittle 2004, 88–91).



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This is challenging enough, and to work though that kind of perspective would be a significant sign, I believe, of maturity and sophistication of interpretation. There is also a third option, more radical still, which I would like to advocate alongside and beyond the mosaic model. This has already been anticipated in various ways (e.g. Whittle 2003, 136; Bailey & Whittle 2005; Borić 2005; Kotsakis 2005; Robb & Miracle, this volume; Thomas, this volume), but it deserves our full attention. Its essence is as follows. What should concern us is not so much the data alone, though they remain of central importance, but how we think about them. Because the debate on the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition is a very old one, it has accumulated a set of established terms and dichotomies, which it is probably now time to abandon. Certainly we should question whether familiar dichotomies such as settled versus mobile, permanent versus seasonal, farmer versus hunter, or complex versus simple, retain any useful analytical charge, without further massive qualification and tighter definition. How do we cope with the diversity that the data increasingly suggest? What about people who move around as well as having bases in longhouses—or indeed in coastal estuaries? What about ways of inhabiting landscapes that shift from generation to generation or even year to year, with the significance of some places retained but that of others coming in and out of focus? What of cultivators who hunt? Hunters who also cultivate? Herders who hunt and cultivate? And what of people whose technology and lifestyle might appear simple, but whose view of themselves and their place in the cosmos was every bit as complicated as that of others? What of those who had adopted new material practices, but still thought about and valued things in older ways (Barnard, this volume)? It seems increasingly unlikely that we can catch the complicated diversity of transformations while still retaining the old labels of ‘Mesolithic’ and ‘Neolithic’. There were simply too many Mesolithics and Neolithics in question. What then are the alternatives, within which future research questions can be framed? Apart from stressing diversity, we need, I suggest, to avoid the temptations of teleology and essentialism. In the long run, what we can crudely call farming societies became dominant (and that can be lamented as a kind of moral fall: Brody 2001) and acquired certain recurrent forms, tendencies and institutions. But that does not reveal what things were like at the beginning or indeed through a series of early transformations, since we cannot apply an ‘essentialist’ model of a single kind of ‘Neolithic’ society in view of the diversity which I have been stressing. Alongside and beyond the possibilities of parallel processes of colonisation and acculturation in all their diversity, there is another possibility, of a spectrum of fusions. If we change the scales of analysis from the broad sweep and the long-term view to what was happening on the ground at any one time, then we could see developments and events as much more contingent;


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because of other histories, at given times and places, new ways of thinking about the world and new resources became available—and could be rejected, resisted, altered or adopted. If we look through overall pattern and final outcomes to the agency of people on the ground, if we introduce a sense of the goals, values, emotions and memory that could have constituted identity, and if we allow identity not to be always immutably fixed, then we can think of varied fusions, rather than simply the playing out of the rigidly separate histories of the incomers and the indigenous. The LBK might be such a fusion from its outset (Whittle 2003, 136), the coming together of networks of indigenous people and Starcevo-Körös populations, which themselves may have been a fusion of identities rather than some kind of pure southern stock. The LBK may then have spread by a combination of linkage through existing networks and by leap-frog colonisation, carried out by people themselves in the process of transforming their identities and practices. This may have continued through to the westward extension of the LBK into the Paris Basin. The LBK was an incorporation of many different people, as papers in this volume have shown. It was not static, and changed considerably through its history, and a reality of porosity and fluidity (as opposed to our frequent perception of uniformity) might have been responsible for the LBK and successors existing alongside other people for long periods of time from the sixth down to the mid and late fifth millennium cal BC. We can think of convergence (Whittle 1996, 208–10) and contact as well as dominance. When further change came in the mid and late fifth millennium cal BC, it is hard to see this as the simple outcome of processes of demographic increase, climatic change or indigenous resource collapse. If we set aside large-scale colonisation now, there may still be a good case in some instances for small-scale, filtered movements, but those may have been conditioned or enabled in the first place by changes among indigenous populations. There may again be much more contingency in the situation than we have allowed for. The world of the LBK longhouse came to an end, perhaps either because it became too socially expensive (Bogucki 1996) or because it absorbed something of the worldview and values of the surrounding indigenous populations (Thomas 1996; Sidéra 2000). While there was perhaps a combination of contact and stasis on the north European Plain in the fifth millennium cal BC, westward expansion into inland Brittany and down the Loire had brought VSG communities close to coastal indigenous people before the mid fifth millennium cal BC, while the longhouse world was still in existence. Some changes were already afoot in the Dutch estuaries after 5000 cal BC (Louwe Kooijmans, this volume). Perhaps, however, it was indigenous people in north-west France who first ‘went over’, and alongside continuing gradual changes in the Dutch estuaries the next to ‘go over’ were probably people in



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the Alpine foreland (Whittle 2003, 143–5), an area generally neglected in discussions of these processes. That change in the Alpine foreland, which I have argued is probably led by indigenous people and produces a very diverse early Neolithic (Whittle 2003, 145–50), can be dated from about 4300 cal BC onwards. It is hard in this case too to specify why things began to change when they did, but it is difficult to resist the circumstantial link between the end of the longhouse world and the beginnings of the Alpine foreland Neolithic. By 4300 cal BC or before, there were probably contacts between north-west France and south-west Ireland, as seen in the Ferriter’s Cove cattle bone, and contacts continued across the north European plain with late Ertebølle communities. Given that this was a connected world, then people in Britain, Ireland and southern Scandinavia could have followed suit, and begun to adopt the practices that were by now becoming widespread everywhere. In this diverse, contingent setting, few identities need have been fixed. Indigenous people were adopting new practices at varying rates, though elements of their thinking may have changed rather more slowly. Small groups of incomers and individual incomers may also have had fluid identities in the circumstances of new surroundings and neighbours (Borić 2005; Kotsakis 2005; cf. Case 1969). This too, in its different way, was a world of incorporation, and multiple fusions may have been at least as characteristic as the maintenance of separate, former identities. This could be seen through the spectrum of early practices in north-west Europe, which could all be seen as ‘instruments of incorporation’, to adapt Andrew Sherratt’s phrase (1995). Tasks of clearance in landscapes best known by local people, the tending of gardens for the cultivation of cereals, perhaps best understood at first by incomers but valued by all for their reproducibility, and the herding of animals, introduced from the outside, down paths and around woodland best known to local people, all take on a different significance from this perspective. The new materialities of pottery and polished stone could also be seen as essentially to do with being connected, in sharing style and food in the one case, and being in exchange with the earth and other people in the other case. I have suggested in my other paper here (Whittle, this volume; cf. Cummings, this volume) that in southern Britain long barrows and long cairns were not built before c. 3800 cal BC and causewayed enclosures not before the thirty-seventh century cal BC. A wider range of monumentality was also probably not constructed in other regions of northwest Europe, such as Brittany and southern Scandinavia, until some time after the first, marked changes in practice. The elaborate public architectures that result may equally be seen as the result of fusions of identity and worldview, the outcome of negotiation and discussion between all the actors involved (see also Cooney, this volume).


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I am not advocating this kind of fusion model as a complete answer for every situation but as the diversity of the evidence increases, it offers a new way of thinking about transformations across the so-called Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. We need now above all to think of broader approaches and to exploit the opportunities for writing much more varied and particularising histories of change.

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