The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

by Chris Fowler

  Pottery

  Pottery emerged some time after farming in the eastern Mediterranean, but often was the first signal of Neolithic change in the west (Table 9.1). Thus pottery cannot be considered a key marker of Neolithization, but a commodity within it. Earlier scholarship used pots to define people or their cultures, but now function, value, style, residues, material, technology, and so on are significant approaches.

  Table 9.1 Pottery emergence across the Mediterranean, indicating some of the earliest dated pottery sites.

  The presence of pottery in the western Mediterranean implies Mesolithic acquisition, rather than production (Binder 2000; Barnett 2000; Perlès 2001, 108; Whittle 1996). Ceramics may have moved as gift and food containers between incoming colonizing farming groups and indigenous populations during a slow filtering process of acculturation (e.g. Lewthwaite 1982, 1985, 1989). Selected items crossed the frontier between farming and indigenous groups, such as fine Cardial decorated pottery. Pottery, amongst other commodities, symbolized the prestige defining the food and feast of the incomers and lured indigenous locals into new social interaction and value systems. Pottery soon reflected local identities and cultural styles through distinctive forms (e.g. handles, footed vessels, painted, scratched, or modelled decoration). Modelled forms and ritual symbolism became distinctive in the Balkans and Malta (Trump and Cilia 2002), whilst elaborate decorative vessels circulated locally and more distantly in complex exchange networks anticipating later Neolithic–Eneolithic networks.

  Lithics

  Neolithic blade technology (longer, wider flakes suitable for pressure flaking) and polished and ground flint and hard stone tools (axes, adzes, and chisels, hollowed ground stone vessels) were distinctive innovations. Flint mines such as those at Defensola (Gargano), Monti Lessini (northern Italy), and Casa Montero (central Spain) imply organized early large-scale exploitation in the sixth to fifth millennia. Complex exchange networks moved utilitarian and prestige materials and objects over great distances, most famously with island obsidian (from Melos, Lipari, Pantelleria, Sardinia, and Palmarola), for several millennia. Exploitation began before Neolithic influence on Melos (as attested at Franchthi Cave, Perlès 2001, 36) and possibly also on Lipari.

  Regional developments

  Anatolia was a principal filter for Neolithic economic and technological knowledge in the eighth to seventh millennia BC. Pottery, obsidian use, cattle, mud-brick and other building methods, figurative art, and social complexity were all transmitted to the Aegean and Balkan zones. Cyprus, exploited by hunter-gatherers from the tenth millennium BC, was settled by the mid-ninth millennium BC and is the first island documenting the importation of domesticates (Peltenburg 2004; Peltenburg et al. 2001). Its combination of Levantine and Anatolian elements suggest settlers from these areas. The Aegean and Balkans represent the first major footholds for farming within mainland Europe, transferred via western Anatolia and Thrace (Özdoğan 1998). Crete (Isaakidou and Tomkins 2008), in parallel to Cyprus, shows earlier exploitation, an aceramic Neolithic settlement phase at Knossos, and indigenous developments at several sites from as early as 7000 BC. Island hopping and settlement then became a regular pattern across the Aegean, the Adriatic, and the western Mediterranean, spreading some Neolithic elements quite rapidly—new technologies (pottery especially) travelled to the far west of the Mediterranean within a millennium of first appearing—but the dating of these earliest maritime expeditions still needs chronological investigation. Island size and proximity are important factors in the early access and exploitation of otherwise vulnerable new territories (Cherry 1981, 1990; Broodbank 1999, 2000, 2008), and Mesolithic exploitation of obsidian on Melos, and the hunting of indigenous fauna on Sardinia and Corsica (Costa et al. 2003), imply many islands were known before Neolithic colonists ventured west.

  The extensive lowlands of the south-eastern Balkans were ideal for farming, and across Thessaly and Macedonia dense lake-focused tell settlement developed (Perlès 2001). House-building techniques, although derived from the Levant and Anatolia, were adapted to the different conditions, resulting in smaller, rectangular mud/wattle structures with pitched roofs. Inland and upland zones of the Balkans and western Europe, with their harsher climatic conditions, longer winter seasons, higher rainfall, and rocky mountainous terrain to which Levantine species and lifestyle were unsuited, meant low returns and poor reliability. This resulted in a dual model of adaptation and Neolithization west and north of southern Greece and across south-western Europe. This zone may be further divided between the prime agricultural alluvial, coastal, and riverine lands of early permanent Neolithic settlement, which attracted colonization by farmers as the population grew, and the uplands (Pindos, Alps, Apennines, Massif Central, Pyrenees, Meseta, Atlas). In addition, productive traditional landscapes (lakes, forests, estuaries) retained a strong Mesolithic presence long after farming communities became established. These communities obtained Neolithic elements from settled neighbours, such as incised and painted pottery, and adopted sheep/goat pastoralism and perhaps marriage partners, alongside hunting and foraging. Direct colonization is likely between the Dalmatian coast and southern Italy, bearing Balkan-style pottery, domestic plants, and animals. This movement into the central Mediterranean clearly influenced indigenous groups as far away as north Sicily and Liguria by c. 6000 BC, with pottery in Mesolithic caves such as Uzzo, Arene Candide, and Praia a Mare (Maggi 1997). In the main settlement zones, substantial ditched settlements developed on the Apulian Tavoliere by the early sixth millennium BC and in east Sicily by the mid-sixth millennium BC (Malone 2003). Ephemeral settlement soon extended across southern and central Italy and Sicily, displacing or absorbing indigenous communities, with mixed farming and pottery at sites like San Marco in Umbria. The process of adoption became slower and was resisted for longer by indigenous groups in the Po Valley, the Alpine fringe, and southern France (c. 5900–5500 BC), where fishing, hunting, and gathering persisted alongside new semi-permanent settlement and Neolithic elements (especially Cardial pottery and ovicaprids, Binder 2000). A dual economy is evidenced by cereals at Aberador cave in Languedoc and by sheep/goat at Grotte de Gazel, Azzura Cave, and Château-Les-Martigues (Geddes 1983).

  Mediterranean Spain offered different conditions and the ‘dual model’ of colonization and indigenous Mesolithic occupation certainly applies (Chapman 2008, 16; Bernabeu 2002). Large estuaries (e.g. the Ebro) and coastal areas provided ideal Mesolithic resources at sites such as Cova de l’Or and Covade Les Cendres (Bernabeu 1989), whilst dense settlement and intensive ‘garden’ cultivation developed in ‘empty’ parts of coastal Valencia. Further south a more mobile pattern of small settlements, as shown by survey in the Ronda basin, exploited a combination of wild and grown foods. The harsh conditions of the Meseta delayed Neolithic settlement until c. 5000 BC, evident first in caves, then open sites like Los Barruecos. Much of the region may have been sparsely populated (Zilhao 1993; 2000, 144–145) until agriculture became fully established.

  The introduction of agriculture to Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic islands implies colonization by maritime groups. Mesolithic prospection of the two large islands may begin as early as the eighth to seventh millennia BC, but pottery and domesticates date only from the early sixth millennium BC, implying a slow adoption of farming and settlement (e.g. the cave of Filiestru in north-west Sardinia, Trump et al. 1983; and Basi in Corsica had pottery and domesticates). The much smaller and more remote Balearic islands show no human activity before the late fifth/early fourth millennia BC. The pattern of Neolithic spread, adoption, indigenous transformation, colonization, isolation, connectivity, and inter-connectivity across land and seascapes remains an active area of discussion, where no one explanation explains the enormous regional complexity, and long-lived Mesolithic practices still challenge established ideas about colonists from the east (Barker 2005; Cherry 1981, 1990; Rainbird 1999).

  The southern rim of the Mediterranean, normally disregarded by European prehistor
y, also absorbed elements of Neolithic economy and culture. Fringed by the Sahara and the dry Atlas mountains, only the coastal zone could sustain farming or dense populations. In spite of the proximity of early domesticates in the Levant, groups in Egypt only adopted domesticates, herding, and cultivation alongside hunting and fishing in the early fifth millennium BC at Nile delta sites like Merimde and a millennium later at Hemamieh, further south (Hassan 1998; Barker 2006, 292). A ‘pastoral Neolithic’ (Barich 1987) dominated along the coast of north Africa and the Maghreb, with herding and intensive management of wild Barbary sheep, cattle, gazelle, and hartebeest in the earlier Holocene (Smith 1998). The recently surveyed Tadrat Acacus of south-west Libya (Barker 2006, 294–300) produced Neolithic pottery, lithics, and cave shelters. Abundant rock art in areas now desert attests to the short episode of economic opportunity between c. 6000 and 4000 BC, when the climate was optimally suited to a Neolithic way of life. Pastoralism rather than foraging/hunting and cultivating may actually have been a response to growing aridity that made cultivation unreliable. Indeed, the mobile economy solution, much as recorded by Braudel (1972) millennia later, was the subsistence strategy most suited to the marginal zones of the Mediterranean over its long history.

  ORIGINS AND MODELS

  Numerous publications have explored the general theme of economic and social change fundamental to Neolithization (e.g. Cowan and Watson 1992; Gebauer and Price 1992; Harris 1996) and presented models of varying relevance to the Mediterranean region. Theoretical interest is always on the original locations of domestication, not the secondary ones like the Mediterranean. Here the subtle processes that slowly transformed the region from foraging to agriculture have not been effectively addressed by explicit explanatory models. Figure 9.2 summarizes stages of economic transformation identified by recent researchers. Current approaches favour multistranded cause and effect models, applying a combination of environmental and social factors to the problem of understanding, although not necessarily explaining, Neolithic adoption and change.

  FIG. 9.2. Diagram summarizing explanatory models for the spread of farming.

  Explanatory models for the spread of farming employ environment, population, technological innovation, colonization–migration, and social models (Fig. 9.2). Population pressure on resources triggering an economic response towards intensification of food procurement has long been identified as a likely factor. So has environmental change, which might generate the same response or result in genetic mutation and new food opportunities from modified plants and animals. Both factors can lead to migration, invention, and social–economic change. More recent ideas, borrowing from anthropology, have examined the role of social pressure and competition, emulation, prestige feasting, novelty, ritual consumption, and the role of the home/domus in sedentism and changing ideas about food.

  Interest in the origins of plants, animals, and farming in the early twentieth century generated important debate that became active in the 1950s–60s with the possibilities of absolute dating. Grahame Clark’s (1965) original model plotted new 14C dates for the earliest occurrence of domestic plants and animals on the map of the Mediterranean and Europe. The ‘Wave of Advance’ model (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza 1971, 1973, 1984) expanded this idea and is still being modified as new data come to light (Guilaine 2007, 171; Schmidt 2007; Zeder 2008). Renfrew added the origins of languages (Renfrew 1987; see Shennan, this volume) to this emerging spatial approach, implying that farming and population movement were the trigger to Indo-European language migration. Other cultural elements have been easier to plot, and forms of pottery and houses, lithic technologies, and raw materials may collectively imply a specific ‘cultural’ identity. Some models seek to explain how and why populations colonize new territory and cross social and economic frontiers (Alexander 1977), including biogeographical approaches relating to island colonization, population densities, size, and distance (Cherry 1981; 1990; Broodbank and Strasser 1991; Rainbird 1999). Islands hold particular interest for archaeological models, given their defined space and identity. John Evans (1973) recognized the usefulness of this approach to Mediterranean islands, suggesting they were ‘laboratories’ for exploring social change, an idea developed by fieldwork on, for example, Malta, Sardinia, Sicily, Crete, and Cyprus.

  Current approaches aim to go beyond simply charting distance, maritime abilities, or even availability of new foods by exploring the many social and cultural factors in the world of Mesolithic–Neolithic peoples. The take-up of new ideas, values, foods, and emerging social organization was reflected in the continued development of distinctive Neolithic societies over the succeeding millennia. These post-processual approaches have examined how status foods and competitive feasting, ‘elite dominance’, or indigenous responses (e.g. Hayden 1992) might have encouraged communities to add innovations to their cultural and economic repertoire, as well as forming a distinctive Neolithic (and Mediterranean) civilization. In the eastern Mediterranean, settlement itself may have marked the boundary between indigenous and colonist, as defined village concentrations appeared. But as the sense of place and tight community became more diffuse the further west one travelled, other markers became significant in defining identities and origins. In the west Mediterranean, large monuments, whilst mostly intended for burial of ancestors, also marked the different identity between farmers, semi-farmers, pastoralists, and transforming indigenous groups. These identities ultimately shaped the long-term development of the very distinctive regional Neolithic cultures populating the Mediterranean for the next three millennia, also influencing neighbouring northern, western, and central Europe.

  REFERENCES

  Alexander, J. 1977. The ‘frontier’ concept in prehistory: the end of the moving frontier. In V. Megaw (ed.), Hunters, gatherers and the first farmers beyond Europe, 25–40. Leicester: Leicester University Press.

  Ammerman, A. 1985. The Acconia Survey: Neolithic settlement and the obsidian trade. London: Institute of Archaeology.

  Ammerman, A. and Cavalli-Sforza, L. 1971. Measuring the rate of spread of farming in Europe. Man 6, 674–688.

  Ammerman, A. and Cavalli-Sforza, L. 1973. A population model for the diffusion of early farming in Europe. In C. Renfrew (ed.), The explanation of culture change, 343–357. London: Duckworth.

  Ammerman, A. and Cavalli-Sforza, L. 1984. The Neolithic transition and the genetics of population in Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

  Aurenche, O. 2007. Das ‘goldene Dreieck’ und die Anfänge des Neolitikums im Orient. In Badisches Landsmuseum Karlsruhe (ed.), Vor 12,000 Jahren in Anatolien. Die ältesten Monumente der Menschheit, 50–53. Stuttgart: Theiss.

  Bar Yosef, O. 1995. The earliest food producers: pre-pottery Neolithic 8000–5000 BC. In T. Levy (ed.), The archaeology of society in the Holy Land, 190–204. Leicester: Leicester University Press.

  Barich, B. and Baistrocci, M. (eds) 1987. Archaeology and environment in the Libyan Sahara. The excavations in the Tadrat Acacus, 1978–83. Oxford: Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology 23, British Archaeological Reports.

  Barker, G. 1995. A Mediterranean valley: landscape archaeology and annales history in the Biferno Valley. Leicester: Leicester University Press.

  Barker, G. 2005. Agriculture, pastoralism and Mediterranean landscapes in prehistory. In E. Blake and B. Knapp (eds), The archaeology of Mediterranean prehistory, 46–76. Oxford: Blackwell.

  Barker, G. 2006. The agricultural revolution in prehistory: why did foragers become farmers? Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  Barnett, W.K. 2000. Cardial pottery and the agricultural transition in Mediterranean Europe. In T.D. Price (ed.), Europe’s first farmers, 93–116. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Bernabeu, J. 1989. La tradicién cultural de las Cerémicas Impresas en la Zona Oriental de la Península Ibérica. Valencia: Diputación de Valencia.

  Bernabeu, J. 2002. The social and symbolic context of Neolithization. Saguntum Extra 5, 209–233.

  Bi
agi, P. (ed.) 1990. The Neolithisation of the alpine region. Brescia: Museo Civico di Scienze Naturali di Brescia.

  Binder, D. 2000. Mesolithic and Neolithic interactions in southern France and northern Italy: new data and current hypotheses. In T.D. Price (ed.), Europe’s first farmers, 117–182. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Binford, L. 1968. Post-Pleistocene adaptations. In. S. Binford and L. Binford (eds), New perspectives in archaeology, PAGE. Chicago: Aldine.

  Bogucki, P. 1988. Forest farmers and stockherders. Early agriculture and its consequences in north-central Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Bogucki, P. 1999. Early agricultural societies. In G. Barker (ed.), The companion encyclopedia of Archaeology, 839–869. London: Routledge.

  Braudel, F. 1972 [1949]. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the age of Philip II. London: Fontana.

  Broodbank, C. 1999. Colonization and configuration in the insular Neolithic of the Aegean. In P. Halstead (ed.), Neolithic society in Greece, 15–41. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.