The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

by Chris Fowler

  The question of late Mesolithic societies adopting agro-pastoral techniques ahead of the Neolithic colonization front, through long-distance contacts, has also been investigated on the basis of domestic animal remains. Old claims for domestic sheep or goat bones in Mesolithic contexts at Beg an Dorchenn in Brittany (as well as in the Gazel and Dourgne caves, southern France) were shown to be either later intrusions or misidentifications (Tresset 2000, 2003; Vigne 2007). A number of cattle and sheep remains have been identified in late Mesolithic contexts in Ireland (e.g. Tresset 2003 for a review), but most were derived from shell middens where stratigraphies are always complex and the attribution of an element to one level or another is often unreliable. Fortunately, a large radiocarbon dating project (Woodman et al. 1997) has provided direct dates for most of these remains. It has shown that only a cattle bone from the Mesolithic site of Ferriter’s Cove (Woodman et al. 1999), located on the south-western coastline of Ireland, provides a reliable basis for discussing the acquisition by Mesolithic people of domesticates from Neolithic groups. The Ferriter’s Cove cattle bone has been radiocarbon dated to the mid fifth millennium BC, a time at which the Neolithic way of life had not yet reached Ireland. Aurochs seem to have been absent from Ireland during both the Pleistocene and Holocene, providing no possibility of confusion with the wild bovine form (and no basis for a putative local domestication). All this points towards a single possibility: that the bovine in question originated on the Continent, but the means by which it came to Ireland is obscure. Diverse possibilities have been discussed elsewhere (Tresset 2002, 2003; Woodman and McCarthy 2003; Woodman and Milner 2005), including the early colonization of Ireland, unsuccessful in the long term, by continental farmers from areas closest to Ireland (western France, western Spain, Portugal). Their lack of success could account for the absence of evidence for early Neolithic settlements, which may have been restricted to the coastline and then buried or destroyed by the subsequent sea-level rise in this region (Tresset 2003). Introduced domestic cattle might have survived as a feral population (a possibility which is not unlikely, as illustrated by the feralization of domestic sheep in Corsica by the end of the Neolithic; Vigne 1988) and been hunted by local Mesolithic groups. The next earliest date obtained for Irish cattle comes from Kilgreany Cave, Co. Waterford, where a cattle bone has been dated to c. 4000 BC (Woodman et al. 1997). This roughly corresponds to the very beginnings of the Neolithic in Ireland (Cooney 2000) and is probably part of the package introduced with the Neolithic culture. The mitochondrial aDNA sequence obtained from this bone (Edwards et al. 2004) belongs to the T3 haplogroup and allows the origin of its maternal lineage to be traced back to continental Europe and ultimately the Near East.

  DOMESTICATES AND CULTIGENS: DIFFUSION RHYTHMS AND CULTURAL IDENTITIES

  As illustrated above, there is evidence for complex phenomena in the adoption of farming practices in north-western Europe. However, the broad picture is one of abrupt unsynchronized change over an important part of the territory considered. This can be broadly situated in the framework of the diffusion process described by Coward et al. (2007) for cultigens in the Near East and Europe: the transmission of the crop package along the routes of Neolithic dissemination is marked by a series of cultigen and weed losses and (re)appearances which can be linked to population contacts (e.g. between Mediterranean and Danubian routes), cultural preferences, technical changes, and environmental adaptations.

  The north-western part of the Continent

  In the south of the Netherlands, Belgium, and the Paris Basin, a radical change in subsistence economies was closely linked to the arrival of the LBK from central Europe between the last centuries of the sixth millennium BC and the beginning of the fifth. It was responsible for introducing domestic bovids (cattle, sheep, goat), two species of pulses (lentil, pea), two wheat species (emmer, einkorn), and naked barley to north-western Europe; flax (Linum usitassimum) and opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) are also found occasionally at LBK sites (Knörzer 1971; Bakels 1978, 1999, 2000, 2009; Poplin et al. 1986; Tresset 2003; Pernaud et al. 2004; Bedault and Hachem 2008; Tresset et al. 2009; Salavert 2011). All of these—except the poppy—originate in south-eastern Europe and can ultimately be traced back to the Near East (Zohary and Hopf 2000; Colledge et al. 2005; Bakels 2009). The poppy is believed to have originated in the western Mediterranean, but the means by which it was brought to the western fringe of central Europe remain unclear.

  Western France presents a more complex situation. The scarcity of post-Mesolithic zooarchaeological assemblages prior to the end of the fourth millennium prevents any attempt to construct complex reliable scenarios of domesticate introduction, but two relatively well-dated assemblages do suggest a date during the first centuries of the fifth millennium BC for this introduction. Remains of a small, presumably domestic, bovine have been found in one of the dry-stone structures associated with inhumations at the base of the St Michel tumulus at Carnac in the Morbihan (Le Rouzic 1932; Tresset 2002) and human remains found in the chambers have been dated to the first centuries of the fifth millennium BC (Schulting et al. 2009). A hearth and a pit in tight stratigraphic relation to two complete bovines, presumed domestic from their morphology, buried under the Er Grah tumulus at Locmariaquer, Morbihan, were dated to the sixth/fifth millennia BC transition (Le Roux 2006; Tresset and Vigne 2006). The re-dating of several well-documented late Mesolithic regional assemblages and the subsequent redefinition of the late Mesolithic chronology (Marchand et al. 2009; Perrin et al. 2009) leads us to believe that the Breton Mesolithic ended earlier than previously thought, and certainly before the end of the sixth millennium BC, thereby precluding the Mesolithic/Neolithic interaction previously proposed to explain the presence of domesticates at Locmariaquer in what was thought to be a late Mesolithic horizon (Tresset and Vigne 2006). South of the Loire valley, preservation conditions are better, and so more animal remains have survived than is the case for Brittany. The early Neolithic assemblages (fifth millennium BC) from western central France all display the same characteristics: they are dominated by wild animal remains, even after the introduction of a Neolithic way of life to the region, as revealed by associated material culture. Yet the existence of small numbers of domesticate remains proves that domestic animals had already been introduced to this region and had been adopted to some extent at least (GENACO 1998; Eneau et al. 1998; Lesur et al. 2001). Most intriguingly, contemporary pottery designs which developed in this region very often contain schematic representations of cattle and small stock horns, in an apparent paradox that has not been completely explained so far (Tresset 2005).

  Relatively little is known about the appearance of cultigens in western France as plant remains from this region are rare for the beginning of the Neolithic. Assemblages found in the palaeosoils of monuments at Dissignac, Sandun, and Vivoin in the Loire-Atlantique and Sarthe (Gebhart and Marguerie 1993; Marinval 1993; Ghesquière 2003), at Lannec er Gadouer in the Morbihan (Dietsch-Sellami 2000), and at Ernes and Hébécrevon in Calvados and Manche (Marinval 1993) are notably characterized by the presence of bread wheat (Triticum aestivo-compactum) associated with cereals known in contexts further east. This enrichment of the spectra very likely signals contact with the Mediterranean world (Marinval 1990, 1993; Bakels 1990). Except for the Dissignac palaeosoil, possibly dating from the beginning of the fifth millennium BC, the sites mentioned previously are all dated c. 4700–4400 BC. They thus probably postdate the appearance of a Neolithic way of life in western France by a few centuries.

  Britain

  Domestic plants and animals appeared shortly after 4000 BC in southern England (e.g. at Runnymede Bridge, Surrey; Serjeantson 1996; Windmill Hill, Wiltshire; Whittle et al. 1999; Maiden Castle, Dorset; Sharples 1991). Domestic plants, at least, are also represented in Scotland (e.g. at Balbridie, Aberdeenshire; Fairweather and Ralston 1993) and in the Midlands (Lismore Fields, Derbyshire; Jones and Rowley-Conwy 2007). In southern England, early Neolithic sites yield cattle, sheep,
goat, and pig, together with cultigens such as emmer, bread wheat, and barley. Further north, at Lismore Fields and Balbridie, flax (Linum usitatissimum) is also represented (a find of this species from Balbridie has been directly radiocarbon dated to 3800/3900 BC). The means by which Britain was Neolithicized have been debated for decades: some authors favour Mesolithic acculturation, with the slow incorporation of domesticates and cultigens into the economy (e.g. Bender 1985; Zvelebil and Rowley-Conwy 1986; Thomas 2003), whilst others support colonization by continental farmers and the abrupt appearance of farming together with the introduction of cultigens and domestic stock at the turn of the fourth millennium (e.g. Sheridan 2000, 2003; Tresset 2000, 2003; Tresset and Vigne 2007). The hypothesis of immigrant farmers introducing the ‘Neolithic package’ from mainland Europe is supported by close similarities between the material culture (e.g. pottery styles, Sheridan 2000, 2003), faunal spectra (Tresset 2000, 2003), and cultigen assemblages (Fairweather and Ralston 1993; Fairbairn 2000; Jones and Rowley-Conwy 2007) in northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany in the last part of the fifth millennium and the beginning of the fourth millennium, and in Britain shortly after 4000 BC. A recent demographic simulation based on an extensive database of radiocarbon dates for the late Mesolithic and the Neolithic of Britain (Collard et al. 2010) concluded that the major increase observed in England and central Scotland just after 4000 BC in radiocarbon date densities was best explained by a massive arrival of human populations in these regions.

  Whichever position is adopted, the foreign origin of domestic bovids (cattle, sheep, goat) and cereals is well established. The maternal lineages of British Neolithic cattle are proven to be completely distinct from those of local aurochs on the basis of aDNA analyses, and cannot stem directly from them (Edwards et al. 2004, 2007). Barley can be traced back to the Near East and Middle East on a molecular basis, and the other taxa had no Holocene ancestors in Europe (see above: Early domesticates and cultigens in Europe). The composition of animal bone assemblages and plant remains in southern England at the start of the Neolithic point towards the Paris Basin as the region of their origin (Tresset 2003). Plant remains found further north, at Lismore Fields and Balbridie, contain small quantities of flax, a plant as yet unknown in the Neolithic of the Paris Basin, but present further east in LBK and later fifth millennium contexts (Bakels 1978, 2009; Kreuz 1990, 2007), pointing towards this latter region for its introduction. Multiple points of origin for a Neolithic way of life have already been suggested for Britain on the basis of material culture (Sheridan 2003).

  Ireland

  There is no evidence of any farming development following the early introduction of domestic cattle at Ferriter’s Cove mentioned above, and it is not until the turn of the fourth millennium that we find further evidence of domesticates, associated this time with cultigens and Neolithic material culture. Zooarchaeological and archaeobotanical data are scarce in the Irish Neolithic, and it is thus difficult to confirm (or infer) the absence of domestic animals and plants during the period 4500–4000 BC, as absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. However, if we exclude the cattle bone at Kilgreany Cave, Co. Waterford, which was not found in a secure Neolithic context, we can see that other findings are clearly connected to Neolithic material culture. The remains of several early Neolithic houses, dated to the first centuries of the fourth millennium BC, have lately been discovered throughout Ireland (see Brophy, this volume). Cattle and sheep remains have been found in some of them (notably at Tankardstown, Co. Limerick, and at Cloghers, Co. Kerry; Gowen 1988; Kiely 2003). Many of these houses also yielded charred cereal grains: emmer and barley have been found at Ballyharry, Co. Antrim (Moore 2003), and at Tankardstown, Co. Limerick (Monk 2000). Interestingly, bread wheat has been found, together with barley, at Drummery Lower, Co. Donegal (Dunne 2003), and at Cloghers, Co. Kerry (O’Drisceoil 2003). As seen above, bread wheat was well represented in western France during the fifth millennium, where it is believed to have been introduced via a connection with the Mediterranean; its presence on the western coast of Ireland could suggest either an introduction from Scotland, where it is known in the early Neolithic, or directly from contact with the western fringe of mainland Europe.

  FROM INTRODUCTION TO ACCLIMATIZATION: THE INVISIBLE WALL

  Adapting biological cycles and conditions of plant and animal development to non-Mediterranean environments was probably among the most important challenges faced by Neolithic farmers. Diets and birth seasons in animals, and growing conditions and flowering time in cereals and pulses, would have been profoundly affected by the transfer of these living organisms to new environments with climatic characteristics, circadian rhythms, vegetation types, and soil qualities very different from the ones that prevailed in the areas which saw the birth of husbandry and agriculture. In particular, difficulties probably arose when animals and plants left the Mediterranean area and began their expansion northward. As we can still observe today, traditionally bred unimproved cattle and sheep have slightly different birth seasons along a south–north gradient in Europe. This lag is essentially due to differences in the seasonal availability of vegetation, which modulates the timing of the reproductive cycle in cattle, or to differences in the seasonal day length at different latitudes of Europe, which strongly drives the reproductive cycle in sheep. Such differences have been highlighted between the sheep of the Paris Basin and the Orkney Isles during the fourth millennium BC using a methodology based on the isotopic analysis (δ18O) of the crown of the tooth of different individuals (Balasse and Tresset 2007). This method allows comparison of the stages of development of these teeth at a given season of the year, and, consequently, differences in the birth season to be estimated (Balasse et al. 2003). The results suggest that adjustments of the reproductive cycle (e.g. a later onset and a tight synchronization of individual cycles in some cases) had taken place before the fourth millennium BC or just after in northern Scotland. A similar methodology—but this time using δ13C—has revealed that some of the Neolithic sheep from Orkney had also been fed on marine resources—very likely seaweed—during winter (Balasse et al. 2006). This constitutes a strong adaptation to the marine environment and predates by several millennia the oldest known writings on this practice (Fleuriot 1986).

  Cereal growing probably underwent similar adaptation to local conditions: the current distribution of photoperiod-responsive and -non-responsive variants of barley in Europe shows a clear pattern along a south–north gradient. The non-responsive variant is dominant in the north and the responsive variant in the south. Both forms exist in the wild, and allow the flowering time to be driven by or divorced from day length. Recently it has been suggested on molecular grounds that the clearly differentiated distribution of these variants in Europe resulted from a differential selection within the plant populations conveyed along the two main routes of Neolithic dissemination after they had both reached Europe (Cockram et al. 2007; Jones et al. 2008, 2013).

  ESCAPED ORGANISMS, STOWAWAYS, AND INVADERS

  Domesticates and cultigens were deliberately moved across Europe by migrant farmers, but a number of species may have escaped human control at an early stage of this diffusion and colonized new territories by themselves. Feral animals might just as easily have survived the desertion of some territories after Neolithic colonies failed to establish, as suggested above for the cattle from Ferriter’s Cove.

  Plant and animal production, storage, and the accumulation of foodstuffs by Neolithic farmers would have attracted unwelcome organisms such as weeds, commensal animals, parasites, and diverse germs. These would have been introduced to new territories along with farming practices and domestic species. Palaeoparasitological studies of samples from the Alpine region have clearly established a link between the arrival of new farming populations and the appearance of new parasites during the middle to late Neolithic (Le Bailly et al. 2007). Although no comparable evidence yet exists for north-western Europe, it seems extremely likely that human
movement also conveyed new parasites to these areas. Recent syntheses have shown that the house mouse (Mus musculus ssp.) became a commensal in the Near East as a correlate of sedentarization and the development of cereal storage during the Natufian—that is, before the emergence of the Neolithic sensu stricto (Cucchi et al. 2005). They subsequently followed the initial expansion of farmers, but once in Europe their spread slowed down and stopped in south-eastern Europe for several millennia, only reaching western Europe well after the end of the Neolithic. The earliest evidence of their presence in continental Europe is at Bucasani Tell, Romania, c. 3500 BC (Cucchi et al. 2011), associated with a wide spectrum of small native mammals such as field mice (species of the genus Apodemus), voles (genus Microtus and Arvicola), hamsters (Cricetus cricetus), and shrews (in this case species of the genus Crocidura). Such a spectrum is yet to be identified at any site in western Europe, but a number of species of these genera probably lived in close contact with humans and human installations in this region. This is notably suggested by their introduction to a number of islands during the Neolithic. The Orkney vole (Microtus arvalis orcadensis) is an emblematic example of these processes. M. arvalis is today absent from mainland Britain, and there is no evidence to suggest its presence there during the Holocene: its appearance in Neolithic Orkney is thought to result from its accidental introduction by boat (Corbet 1961; Haynes et al. 2003; Thaw et al. 2004; Cucchi et al. 2009; Martinovka et al. 2013). Wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus) has also been reported from several Orcadian Neolithic sites, suggesting their early introduction to these islands (Corbet 1979; Sutherland 1983; Yalden 1999), and pigmy shrew (Sorex minutus) is thought to have been introduced to Ireland during the Neolithic according to both molecular and zooarchaeological findings (Mascheretti et al. 2003; McDevitt et al. 2009).