The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

by Chris Fowler

Yet recently, it has become increasingly clear that the distinction between an agricultural and non-agricultural Neolithic is never absolute, and the dominant manifestations of the Neolithic vary within Europe (Dolukhanov et al. 2005; Gronenborn 2010). Thomas (2003) argues against the concept of a fixed and universal ‘Neolithic package’ and views the Neolithic as a range of various processes, generating considerable variability of subsistence practices. Similar views remain popular amongst scholars in the former USSR who identified the ‘Neolithic culture’ with hunting-gathering communities manifesting a sedentary way of life and large-scale production and use of ceramic ware, polished stone, and bone tools (Oshibkina 1996). Here, pottery becomes the key marker of the Neolithic. Still, though, several writers express scepticism about the relevance of pottery as the prime Neolithic indicator, viewing it rather as a commodity, or as prestige items intended to ‘lure indigenous locals into a new social interaction and value system’ (Malone, this volume).

  The present chapter discusses the emergence of the Neolithic in two distinct, albeit not contrasting, regions of Europe: its central part and its eastern part. The former encompasses the Carpathian basin and the central European low mountain ranges with the loess landscapes. The Rhine, Danube, and Elbe river basins form the hydrological axes of that area. Eastern Europe stretches from the eastern Polish bog and woodland plains to the Russian forest and steppe belts up to the Urals. Both regions are connected through the northern European lowlands. These contrasting environments form the basis for a discussion of farming and non-farming Neolithic lifestyles.

  ENVIRONMENTS

  The western extension of central Europe is marked by the Ardennes and the Vosges mountain ranges, the eastern fringes by the Great Hungarian Plain and the Polish bog and woodland plains. Towards the south, central Europe is delineated by the Alps, towards the north by the North Sea and Baltic coastal plains. Central Europe is divided into three major geographical entities, namely the northern plain, the central mountain ranges, and, towards the south, the Alpine slopes and the northern Alps. These landscapes are drained by south–north flowing river systems (Rhine, Weser, Elbe, Odra, Vistula) and the west–east oriented system of the Danube. Wooded low mountain ranges in the central part interchange with extensive and fertile loess plains.

  Eastern Europe opens up to the east European plain. It includes the Pontic depression, a gigantic trough or foreland tilted towards the Black Sea. The plain is incised by the terraced valleys of major rivers (the Prut, Dniepr, Southern Bug, and Don), often with well-developed estuaries; in some places the loess cover reaches 200m in depth. The river Volga and the impressive North Caspian lowland, lying below sea level, constitute the eastern edge and lead into the Asian steppes and deserts.

  Air-mass circulation provides the key for the physical–geographical peculiarities of both regions. The western area is dominated by moist Atlantic air masses, whilst the east remains controlled by the Siberian and Arctic systems and features chiefly a continental-type climate, with central Europe taking up an intermediate position. Accordingly, one encounters temperate broad-leaved woodland in the west, as opposed to the forest-steppe and treeless steppe in the east. Loess and sandy soils are common in the west (Lang 1994). The soils in the steppes and forest-steppes include the chernozem (or ‘black earth’), which are the richest in Europe (Haase et al. 2007). Notwithstanding their natural fertility, the southern Russian steppe and forest-steppe, prone to droughts, were always high-risk areas in the agricultural sense.

  There is little doubt that the distinction in the environment had a profound effect on subsistence and sociopolitical dynamics. An agricultural economy could be established and sustained only in the regions with suitable natural resources and, first and foremost, agro-climatic potential, i.e. the combination of fertile, easily arable soils, precipitation, and temperature. Thus, central Europe and the southern Russian steppe zones experienced the first shift to farming during the later seventh and throughout the fifth millennium, whilst in the central European northern plain hunting, fishing, and gathering remained the dominant economy until 4000–3800 BC. In north-western Russia the first clear signals of agricultural impact on the vegetation are noted at 2700–2000 BC.

  CENTRAL EUROPE

  Early horticulture and herding

  Farming appears in Europe around 7000 BC on Crete (Efstratiou et al. 2004) and on the Thessalian plain around 6500 BC (Reingruber 2008). The new economy reaches the northern Balkans and the middle Danube basin with Karanovo I-II (6100 to 5800 BC) in Bulgaria, and Starčevo-Körös-Criş in the Carpathian Basin (5900–5500 BC). When, however, farming arrived in central Europe is still a matter of intensive debate (Behre 2007). It is apparent that during the seventh millennium central European late Mesolithic societies were in intensive contact with groups on the Balkan Peninsula and Greece. This evidence so far consists of snails from the Danube, southern France, and the Atlantic coast (Gronenborn 1999; Álvarez Fernández 2003; Lenneis 2010). Furthermore, the site of Arconciel/La Souche in the Swiss Mittelland has recently produced a clay stamp, a pintadera, which resembles south-east European forms (Mauvilly et al. 2008). The snails and the pintadera may be understood as archaeological reflections of continuously operating long-distance networks. Whilst most of the archaeological evidence dates to the later centuries of the seventh millennium, palaeobotanical evidence for possible south-eastern contacts in the form of cereal pollen, Plantago lanceolata, and other weeds already starts at 6700 BC, with the beginning of the late Mesolithic industries in southern central Europe (Tinner et al. 2007). This evidence does not prove the practice of cereal horticulture among otherwise forager groups beyond any doubt, but does suggest its possibility. In any case, remains of domestic animals—apart from dog—have not been recovered.

  Domestic animals do appear in western central Europe around 5600 BC, together with a pottery tradition with stylistic links to southern France. This shows that the late Mesolithic networks of the seventh millennium had been in operation for many centuries and might have facilitated the spread of pottery and domestic animals from coastal settlers up along the Rhône (Fig. 10.1c). This pottery tradition is called La Hoguette after its first accidental discovery at a site in Normandy (Jeunesse 2006). La Hoguette pottery is associated with cereals and domestic animals at the rock shelter site of Bavans in the Doubs valley and also at Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt (Kalis et al. 2001). It is also present on sites of the earliest phase of the Linear Pottery culture. Currently, the La Hoguette tradition is interpreted as manifestations of pastoral groups of a transitional stage between forager and farmer economies, with sheep/goat herding and maybe small-scale horticulture (Gronenborn 2007).

  FIG. 10.1. The spread of the Neolithic in western Eurasia. a) Early Atlantic, b) Middle Atlantic, c) the three streams of Neolithization and the palaeogenetic map of the early Holocene (after Bramanti et al. 2009; Gronenborn 2009b, 2011).

  The Linearbandkeramik

  These forager-pastoralists were in intensive contacts with Linear Pottery culture farmers (German Linearbandkeramik—LBK) who had, by the mid-sixth millennium BC, settled a vast area of the temperate European loess belt from Transdanubia, their apparent area of origin, to the Rhine in the west and to western Ukraine in the east (Fig. 10.1b). LBK expansion occurred in shifts. To the west the earliest phase reached up to the Rhine around 5400 BC, with later phases further west until the terminal phase became finally established in the Paris Basin around 5000 BC. The northern Pontic lowland forms the easternmost extension of LBK sites with a fully fledged farming economy. A considerable number of sites exist in the river basins of the upper and middle Dniestr, the Prut, and the Reut (Larina 2009). Mainova Balka, a settlement in the Southern Bug basin north of Odessa with typical LBK ‘music note’ pottery, is the easternmost site of this type (Sapozhnikov and Sapozhnikova 2008).

  LBK economy was based on farming, with emmer, einkorn, lentils, and peas being the major crops (Kreuz 2007, 2010; Bogaard 2004) and cattle, sheep/goat, pig, and
dog the domesticated animals. It has, in recent years, also become clear through archaeogenetic analyses that apart from dog, all early Neolithic domestic stock originated in the Near East (Edwards et al. 2007; Larson et al. 2007).

  LBK farmsteads were composed of longhouses, seemingly inhabited by lineages of different cultural traditions (Lüning 2005; Strien 2005; Gronenborn 2007). At Vaihingen, south-west Germany, Strien (2005) could distinguish four sections or wards which persisted throughout the duration of the settlement for several hundred years. These sections differed in material culture components such as pottery decoration, but also in lithic artefacts such as arrowhead types. Earliest LBK settlements were few in number and the considerable distances between them were spanned by vast networks, the one distributing Szentgál radiolarite being the most extensive (Mateiciucová 2010).

  Around 5350 BC, LBK societies underwent a transformation with changes in pottery decoration and architecture. Around the same time new territories were settled, like the Rhineland and Alsace in the west, but also the basins of the upper and middle Dniestr, the Prut, and the Reut in the east (Larina 2009). Now the LBK decoration style began to split first into two broad regional traditions, the band-based ‘Flomborn’ style in the west and the line-based ‘music-note’ style in the east (Fig. 10.2). Regional fine-grained settlement analyses show that the number of sites rises, which indicates a population increase (e.g. Zimmermann 2003; Nauk et al. 2006).

  FIG. 10.2. Neolithic cultures in central Europe (the ceramic vessels are not to scale; after Preuss 1996).

  After another two hundred years of continuous settlement growth and further expansions westward into the Hesbaye in Belgium and the Aisne Valley in France, the LBK reaches its climax with densely occupied settlement clusters. Around 5100 BC, LBK societies in the west drift into a period of crisis which manifests itself through several sites with indications of violent conflicts, such as Menneville in the Aisne Valley (Farruggia 2002), Talheim, or Schletz (Wild et al. 2004). Boulestin et al. (2009) argue that some sort of intensive cannibalism was practised at the site of Herxheim in the upper Rhine valley. However, what exactly happened during the fiftieth century BC in the western parts of the LBK oikumene is still unclear. Palaeoclimatic studies show that conditions changed from rather wet to rather dry around 5150 BC and the latest LBK sites appear in upland regions which today would not be settled by farmsteads (Strien and Gronenborn 2005; Gronenborn 2007).

  The middle Neolithic and the early Eneolithic

  By 5000 BC the LBK had vanished across southern central Europe and given way to middle Neolithic cultures such as Hinkelstein and Großgartach in the west, Stichbandkeramik (STK) in the central areas, and Lengyel in eastern and south-eastern central Europe (Jeunesse and Strien 2009; Zápotocká 2007; Pavúk 2007). The longhouse tradition persisted into the new millennium (see Last; Coudart, this volume), but sites are now more concentrated. New phenomena in eastern central Europe are the so-called roundels (German Kreisgrabenanlagen), circular ditch systems which apparently served as ritual centres for village communities (see Petrasch, this volume).

  In western central Europe long barrows, similar to those observed in the Paris Basin in the Cerny group (Duhamel and Mordant 1997), have recently also been found in the middle Neolithic Großgartach culture (Schade-Lindig 2008). This shows that during the first few centuries of the fifth millennium BC central European societies experience sociopolitical changes, although they still persist in a Danubian tradition. The subsequent Rössen culture dominates the period between 4800 and 4600 BC, with extensions into the Paris Basin. Characteristic for Rössen are trapezoidal houses forming small hamlets, sometimes surrounded by enclosures. Hilltops are settled for the first time. Burials are mostly extended and oriented north–south (Lönne 2003; Dammers 2003).

  In eastern central Europe, the Lengyel culture evolves out of the western Carpathian Basin around 5000 BC (Pavúk 1998, 2007). Lengyel is not only associated with roundels and complex enclosure systems (Pavúk 1991; Trnka 2005), but also with richly furnished burials such as from the site of Lengyel itself (Wosinsky 1888) or Aszód (Kalicz 1985). As in the west, social differentiation becomes evident; this may also be inferred for the site of Polgár-Csőszhalom (Anders and Gyöngyvér Nagy 2007). Among the burial goods are copper artefacts, indicating the advent of a novel technology for central Europe. Copper had first been used in south-east Europe during Vinča B, as dates from the Rudna Glava mine indicate (Jovanović 1996). During the mid-fifth millennium, the new technology reaches central Europe with the horizon of the Bischheim and Münchshöfen culture groups. One central European copper extraction and smelting site was identified at Brixlegg near Innsbruck in the Austrian Alps (Bartelheim et al. 2002). At the same time, jadeitite and eclogite were beginning to be mined in Alpine sources, made into axeheads then transported over great distance across western Europe. Axeheads of the Bégude type were reshaped in Morbihan in southern Brittany and then transported eastwards into Germany and to the southern British coast (Pétrequin et al. 2008). The region around Carnac may have become a centre of considerable ritual and political power with a sphere of influence reaching deep into central Europe, similar to the role of Varna for eastern Europe (Pétrequin et al. 2010).

  With the appearance of Bischheim in the west and Münchshofen further east, social, political, and economic changes seem to have occurred across central Europe. Settlements are now aligned along pre-planned streets. These arrangements are particularly well documented in wetland sites, such as Aichbühl or Hornstaad, which appear at this time (Schlichtherle 2004; ‘Lakeside Dwellings of the Circum-Alpine Region’ by Menotti). Changes are also evident in pottery, as decoration decreases. Contacts between southern central Europe and the northern plains now intensify and after 4000 BC the first domesticates appear in the European north. Possibly the expansion of the Michelsberg culture has an influence on this northward shift of the Neolithic (Klassen 2004; Czerniak 2007). With Michelsberg and the now emergent Funnel Beaker culture (German Trichterbecherkultur, TRB) in northern central Europe, the second shift in the process of Neolithization in central Europe commences (Gronenborn 2009a; Schier 2009).

  Michelsberg (4400–3500 BC) is rooted in the Paris Basin, from where it expanded eastwards towards the Rhineland and Westphalia and ultimately to Sachsen-Anhalt, but also to south-western Germany as far as Lake Constance (Seidel and Jeunesse 2000; Geschwinde and Raetzel-Fabian 2009). Sites in the Rhineland and the Neuwied Basin disappear around the thirty-eighth/thirty-seventh century BC, possibly during a crisis period (Arbogast et al. 2006), but persist further south until around 3500 BC.

  Landscape use has completely changed from the preceding middle Neolithic, with higher altitudes settled, and the establishment of extensive hillforts and large enclosures. Many of these enclosures constituted defence systems, maybe marking sites of regional political importance. Open villages and hamlets surrounding the enclosed centres were short-lived and often relocated (Matuschik 1991; Seidel 2008). Unfortunately, the Michelsberg culture has produced only irregular burials of individuals deposited in ditches and reused storage pits (Wahl 2008). More common modes of treating the dead have disappeared from the archaeological record. The exceptionally preserved evidence from Beaurieux in the Aisne Valley shows long barrows for single individuals in richly furnished and elaborate burials (Colas et al. 2007), perhaps indicating a certain degree of sociopolitical stratification. Michelsberg also witnesses the emergence of sites of enormous extent, such as Urmitz (see Petrasch, this volume). Unfortunately, they were excavated before World War II and are extremely badly documented. During the Michelsberg culture the first sub-surface flint mines, for instance at Rijckholt in the Maas valley, are maintained. Salt may also have been extracted and traded over considerable distances (Weller 2002).

  EASTERN EUROPE

  Early Pottery

  The study of ceramic wares constitutes an important resource in studies of the Neolithic. Until recently it was generally accepted that the appeara
nce of pottery in most European countries broadly coincided with the spread of farming (Gibson and Woods 1997). However, numerous fragments of pottery have been recovered from Palaeolithic sites in southern China, directly radiocarbon dated to 16,000–15,000 BP (Zhao and Wu 2000; Pearson 2005; Budja 2007). Pottery from a group of sites in the middle stretches of the Amur river in the Russian Far East shows radiocarbon ages of 13,300–12,300 BP (Kuzmin and Orlova 2000). The pottery at Ust’-Karenga, north of lake Baikal, has been radiocarbon dated to 12,000–11,000 kyr BP (Kuzmin and Vetrov 2007; Kuzmin 2007). Significantly, all these sites are found in the context of exclusively hunting-gathering economies with no evidence of either farming or stock-breeding.

  Similarly, many radiocarbon dates have recently become available for hunting-gathering communities with early pottery in the Russian steppe zone. Pottery appears in the north Caspian area, the middle-lower Volga (Yelshan, c. 7200 BC) and the lower Don (Rakushechnyi Yar; c. 6800 BC). Stable settlement is indicated by sites in the middle-lower Volga (Yelshan) at 6800 BC, and in the Caspian lowland and on the lower Don at c. 6000 BC. The age of Dniepr-Donets and Bug-Dniestr sites lies between 6200 and 5000 BC. Hence, in the majority of cases these sites are either earlier or contemporaneous with the early farming sites of south-eastern or central Europe, suggesting that the origin of ceramics in eastern Europe was independent from the Near East. However, the early appearance of ceramics at the western margins of the central Asian steppe zone and the high degree of perfection make its local invention unlikely. Vybornov (2008) seeks its sources in the trans-Caspian deserts. Significantly, a network of culturally related pottery-bearing foraging sites arose along the waterways further north (Vinogradov 1981). Ultimately, this pottery horizon might have its origins in the early pottery of Siberia and China (Gronenborn 2009b). Future research should be geared towards closing this link.