The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

by Chris Fowler

  This pottery horizon then spreads from the Russian steppe zone into the forest zone northwards up to the Baltic coast and from there westward until its final outliers are reached with the Ertebølle and Swifterbant traditions (Timofeev 1998; Hartz et al. 2007; Gronenborn 2009b; Gronenborn 2014).

  The Yelshan and Rakushechnyi Yar

  Based primarily on pottery styles, several local cultures are identified in the south-east European plain. Yelshan has been identified in the middle Volga basin, near Samara. Yelshan pottery was manufactured from the local sandy clay, with naturally occurring organic matter and small mollusc shell fragments. Vessels had round or pointed bottoms and straight rims with flat, round, or pointed edges, later developing into S-profiled rims. The majority of vessels were undecorated, but incised lines, pit impressions, or short notches forming zigzag patterns occasionally occur. Several vessels were decorated by a belt of pits and ‘pearl’ impressions beneath the rim (Vybornov 2008).

  The majority of pottery vessels from Rakushechnyi Yar sites on the lower Don bear no ornament. Decorated vessels constitute 10–11% in the lowermost level, but reach up to 47% in the upper Neolithic ones. Decoration was usually restricted to the upper part of the vessel and consisted of the impressions of stamps, including fish bones and shell rims. The simplest ornamental patterns were found in the lowermost levels and usually consist of incised lines and isolated triangular, oval, and rhomboid impressions forming parallel rows beneath the rim. In upper Neolithic levels, the patterns include zigzag lines formed by comb impressions. Still later appear herringbone patterns formed by incised lines (Fig. 10.3).

  FIG. 10.3. Neolithic cultures in eastern Europe and Siberia (the ceramic vessels are not to scale; after Preuss 1996; Dolukhanov and Timofeev 1993).

  The early pottery-bearing sites in the Russian European plain were nearly exclusively seasonal settlements, often with recognizable post-framed domestic structures. They were located either on river floodplains or in the immediate vicinity of ephemeral lakes (as on the north Caspian lowland).

  The existing evidence suggests that the bulk of the meat diet was obtained by hunting wild ungulates (saiga antelope, aurochs, red deer, roe deer, onager) and water fowl. The lower Don sites also include numerous fish remains: pikeperch (most frequent), sheatfish, carp, roach, sturgeon, and pike, alongside concentrations of edible molluscs, mostly the gastropod snail Viviparus dilluvianus Kunth and the mussel Unio pictorum Linn.

  Several pot sherds from Bug-Dniestr culture sites (Baz’kov Ostrov, Sokol’tsy, Mit’kov Ostrov, Savran’, Ladyzhin, Zan’kovtsy, Mikulina Broyaka, Shumilovo) have revealed imprints of cultivated plants: emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum), hulled barley (Hordeum vulgare), millet (Panicum miliaceum), and two supposed linen seeds (Linum usitatissimum). An easily identifiable imprint of an emmer spikelet was found on a pot sherd from Zan’kovtsy (Kotova 2003; Pashkevich and Gerasimenko 2009). There is little doubt that the subsistence of the Dniepr-Donets groups was essentially based on hunting and food collecting, with special importance for freshwater fishing. There is evidence for stock breeding, particularly in the southern areas. Domesticated species prevail among the animal remains of the Buz’ki site, where cattle dominate (28%), followed by sheep/goat (2%) and pig (2.5%). Some impressions of cultivated cereals on pottery have also been identified as belonging to hulled wheats (einkorn and emmer), hulled barley, oat, bitter vetch, and possibly peas (Kotova 2003).

  Based on the occurrence of ‘hoe-like’ bone implements and cereal impressions on pottery, several writers (Danilenko 1969; Markevich 1974; Kotova 2003) view these sites as reflecting a transitional stage between forager-type and farming economies. An alternative view (Dolukhanov 1978) considers them as belonging to groups of foragers involved in intensive contacts with neighbouring farming communities.

  The Russian Forest belt, the Baltic coast and beyond

  ‘Early Neolithic’ cultures on the Pontic lowland and forest-steppe of the east European plain (Sursk, Dniepr-Donets, Bug-Dniestr, and others) feature developed pottery-making. In their earlier stage, they shared common elements, such as conic and flat-bottom vessels ornamented by strokes and incised lines (Kotova 2003). Conic pointed-bottom wares are also characteristic for the pottery traditions of the Russian forest zones and Baltic coast such as Upper Volga or Narva, and equally of Sperrings or the Early Northern Comb Ware (ENCW) of Karelia and the Kola peninsula (Piezonka 2008; Skandfer 2009). This typical shape is also evident further west in Ertebølle and Swifterbant (Hartz et al. 2007).

  THE ‘NEOLITHIZATION’ OF WESTERN EURASIA

  For many decades the discussion around the Neolithization of western Eurasia has circled around the question of to what degree population movements would have contributed to the spread of farming and animal husbandry (e.g. Richards 2003; Renfrew 2003; Zvelebil 2000; Whittle 2007). Those who acknowledged population movements discussed possible exchange and interaction processes between the immigrant groups and the local Mesolithic hunter-gatherers (Gronenborn 2007; Zvelebil and Lillie 2000). With the new archaeogenetic analyses on skeletal material, the discussion can now move to a firmer basis. On the basis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), inherited along the female line, Haak et al. (2010) were recently able to show that the early Neolithic central European LBK population is related to the present-day population in Anatolia and was possibly quite distinct from the European Palaeolithic and Mesolithic populations. Based on analyses of the Y-chromosomal male side, Balaresque et al. (2010) argue that the haplogroup R1b1b2—predominant in modern European males—would have spread from a source region in Anatolia. Its appearance in Europe may be linked with the spread of farming.

  The genetic evidence therefore supports those hypotheses which have been in favour of considerable migration by humans of an ultimately Near Eastern origin in connection with the introduction of farming and animal husbandry to Europe. However, when this immigrant population began to arrive in Europe is still unclear. A few late Mesolithic samples, such as those from Hohlestein and Dürrnberg in Germany, share the mtDNA haplotype U, which is predominant in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic population of central and northern Europe (Bramanti et al. 2009), but this haplotype is virtually absent from the LBK sample (Haak et al. 2010). However, at least for western central Europe there is considerable archaeological evidence of interaction between the LBK and hunter-gatherers or hunter-gatherer-pastoralists of the La Hoguette tradition (Gronenborn 2007). So possibly, archaeological entities such as the late and terminal Mesolithic and La Hoguette may actually already have been constituted largely by newcomers and may have arrived in Europe as early as the seventh millennium (Gronenborn 2014). They would not show up genetically in LBK samples, even if culturally they were hunter-gatherers. The situation towards the north is different: indications of personal exchange and cohabitation are limited and populations seem to have mixed to a greater extent only during the fourth millennium BC (Bramanti et al. 2009; Lübke et al. 2007).

  The next question, then, is why people moved. One answer may lie in recently recognized Holocene cooling events of which the so-called ‘8200 ky BP event’ (6400–6000 BC) was the most prominent (Weninger 2006). These cooling events might have determined the spread rate of the Neolithic expansion through externally triggered crises (Gronenborn 2007, 2009a). Following this hypothesis, the spread of agriculture until the mid-Holocene occurred in the context of unstable climatic conditions with repeated cold spells and dry episodes. The Neolithization of central Europe may then be seen as a long-term step-wise transition following streams which had their points of origin far outside Europe itself (Guilaine 2001; Gronenborn 2009b; Bocquet-Appel et al. 2009; Schier 2009) (Fig. 10.1c). Uncertain—at this point—are the origins and mechanisms of the spread of pottery within eastern European hunter-gatherer societies. However, for this region climatic fluctuations are also being discussed as triggering forces for phases of innovation (Kotova 2009).

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