The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

by Chris Fowler

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  Movement of Plants, Animals, Ideas, and People

  CHAPTER 3

  MOVEMENT OF PLANTS, ANIMALS, IDEAS, AND PEOPLE IN SOUTH-EAST EUROPE

  JOHANNES MÜLLER

  THE domestication and adaptation of local environs were important to the movement and mobility of plants, animals, ideas, and people during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of south-east Europe, but much also depends on social processes, including inter-group relations and the ‘domestication’ of human behaviour caused by Neolithic economies and ideologies. Population size is especially significant given the necessity to manage subsistence and raw material supplies around domestic sites, and indeed even perhaps a vital precondition for the mobility of people and animals, the spread of new items and customs, and the development of novel ideas. Once started, this movement will be affected by exogamic marriage practices, village alliances to organize transhumance, and the needs and opportunities to gain raw materials. Given these preconditions and social processes, it is hardly surprising that mobility and innovation varied greatly throughout the Neolithic and Chalcolithic, and whilst as archaeologists we observe such processes on a sub-continental scale, regional case studies are often more helpful in explaining this change. The spread of the Neolithic production sphere and ideology during the early Neolithic, the population pressure of late Neolithic society, and the introduction of copper metallurgy during the Chalcolithic constitute three aspects of mobility which will be described, explored, and questioned in the context of one regional case study.

  NEOLITHIZATION IN SOUTH-EAST EUROPE: MOVEMENT AND INTERNAL MOBILITY

  For nearly a century, different archaeological schools have debated the Neolithization of south-east Europe, repeatedly emphasizing the diverse and complicated processes involved (Lichter and Meric 2005; Spataro and Biagi 2007; Perlès 2001; Reingruber 2008). Whilst the introduction of domesticated plants and animal husbandry are economic proxies for the earliest stages of Neolithic societies, new ideologies, which develop a changing lifestyle, are linked to the introduction of novel goods and novel symbols in south-east Europe.

  The domestication of cereals started at around 10,000 BC in the Near East, whilst the domestication of sheep, goat, and cattle took place later at around 8000 BC in the southern Levant (cf. Guilaine, this volume; Lichter 2007). Without discussing the rea
sons behind these processes, the outcome is clear—the domestication of animals and plants was linked to the domestication of humans, with a sedentary existence, the exploitation and over-exploitation of local environments, and a rapid demographic growth resulting in the expansion of the new lifestyle, as well as perhaps to changes in ecology and climate. The following movement of people, plants, and animals started on a slow but impressive scale in north Mesopotamia.

  Rapid Neolithization in Cyprus and Anatolia gave rise to new settlement agglomerations (Peltenburg et al. 2000; Peltenburg and Wasse 2004; Knapp 2008; Özdogan 1997). Within a favourable environment, the clusters of Neolithic hamlets and villages shaped agricultural core areas: tell settlements were founded, cereal cultivation and animal husbandry practised, and surrounding raw materials exploited for tool manufacture.

  The subsequent ‘Neolithic wave’ took two forms. One was westward via the marine world of the Mediterranean, the other was by ‘terrestrial’ drift across south-east Europe and central Europe (Price 2000; Bocquet-Appel et al. 2009). Even though there is now some consensus about the time scale and direction of these processes, the character of change is still much debated. In regard to south-east Europe, one viewpoint emphasizes the step-by-step introduction of Neolithic economy and ideology along Epipalaeolithic and Mesolithic communication networks, with the consequence that the introduction of different Neolithic elements differed spatially. According to this interpretation, Neolithization is largely perceived as the acculturation of foraging communities as they select Neolithic elements and integrate them without major social changes in their economic system and society (e.g. Chapman 1994a, 135; Kotsakis 2001). Another viewpoint envisages ‘leap-frogging colonization’ whereby small groups of people move into agriculturally suitable core areas in south-east Europe, which then become central spots for further regional developments (e.g. Biagi et al. 2005). The Neolithic therefore ‘arrives’ as a package along with a new people, both being distinguishable from those with a forager background (if still present and not depopulated by new germs and epidemic diseases). Others emphasize both viewpoints with the arrival of new groups and the acculturation of fishers and foragers as these communities interact. The archaeological evidence certainly points to a mosaic of social changes and movements which differed from region to region (Budja 2005; Whittle 2004).