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* Received February 2010, revised December 2011
CHAPTER 11
THE ATLANTIC MESOLITHIC–NEOLITHIC TRANSITION
NICK THORPE
INTRODUCTION
THE general background to the question of the nature of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition is of course the broader question of ‘the domestication of Europe’ (Hodder 1990; Thorpe 1996), involving not just the spread of agriculture across Europe, but also new ways of thinking and, in some areas at least, the widespread appearance of monuments for the first time. This general debate has swung between poles of migration and diffusion, but with the majority opinion currently being that different processes were dominant in different parts of Europe, in particular that north-west Europe saw a greater degree of continuity than central Europe or the Mediterranean. This clearly relates to the existence of different rates of expansion of the Neolithic across Europe (Bocquet-Appel et al. 2012).
The chronology and thus identity of the earliest Neolithic is also significantly different from southern Scandinavia down to Iberia, with the Neolithic beginning c. 3900 BC in the former, appearing together with TRB (trichterbecher, or Funnel Beaker) pottery originating in northern Germany (see Müller and Peterson, this volume), and c. 5500 BC in the latter, appearing together with Cardial Ware originating in Italy or southern France (see Malone, this volume; Guilaine, this volume). This has led to some fragmentation of research; thus a significant recent volume on the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition deals only with north-west Europe (Glørstad and Prescott 2009).
The majority of the discussion turns on traditional archaeological forms of evidence; however, one new scientific technique that has the potential to provide new information on the question of what degree of immigration (if any) accompanied the spread of the Neolithic is DNA analysis. This has primarily involved the consideration of human DNA (Pinhasi et al. 2012), but some work has also been carried out on domestic animals (Burger and Thomas 2011). Much of the work has naturally been undertaken on modern samples, for ease of access and absence of contamination concerns, but the difficulty is to relate the patterns observed to any particular period in the past. Ancient DNA is thus more immediately relevant, but small sample size coupled with overenthusiastic interpretation has resulted in useful but scattered observations thus far. For instance, Skoglund et al. (2012) argued that just a single late TRB sample from mainland Sweden compared with three later Neolithic Pitted Ware culture samples from Gotland provided significant evidence concerning the neolithization of Sweden.
SOUTHERN SCANDINAVIA
In southern Scandinavia the area of interest includes Denmark and southern Sweden (mainly the province of Skåne [Scania]) and Oslo fjord in Norway: broadly speaking, the region occupied by the Ertebølle culture. This has long been a transition of wide interest (see papers collected in Fischer and Kristiansen 2002), in part due to the wide range of Mesolithic evidence available, in particular from the remarkable survival of underwater settlement sites (e.g. Tybrind Vig [Andersen 1987]).
The late Mesolithic Ertebølle culture has often been discussed in terms of complex gatherer-hunters, with its evidence for possible sedentism at shell midden sites, artwork, burials and possible cemeteries, and violent conflict (Thorpe 2003). Shell midden sites do not occur on all Scandinavian coasts as a result of the different environmental conditions for shell growth within the Baltic Sea, but where they are found they have been subject to a long history of investigation. This suggests that they were probably semi-permanent o
r permanent settlement locations, although there are very few traces of houses at these sites. Exploitation of resources, especially marine ones, seems to be quite intensive—with expansion into deeper waters, for example—and has been allied with the evidence of tree clearance to suggest a well-developed economy. All this goes to build up a general picture of an economy in which communities were widely engaged in surplus production, some of which, such as trapping animals for their furs and birds for their feathers, may be for external exchange. It is also worth noting that shell middens would steadily build up, becoming more visible from both land and, perhaps more importantly, sea. They would thus become artificial constructions altering the landscape, as they became landmarks for any voyager. In this sense they can be said to have become monuments (Thorpe 1996) and therefore it could be argued that monuments were not an entirely Neolithic phenomenon.
The burial record for the later Mesolithic of southern Scandinavia is remarkably varied and rich (Thorpe 1996), probably the most significant in Mesolithic Europe (Grünberg 2000). There is great variety in burial practice—both inhumation and cremation were practised, with cremation varying from complete to partial. Some individuals received burial at sea; others were interred in covered graves. Many had ochre scattered on them or their clothes. The human contents of the graves also show a wide range of variation. Although most graves contain single burials, there are double inhumations, mass inhumations, and mass cremations. The grave goods also demonstrate considerable variety, both in number and type. As Nielsen and Brinch Petersen (1993) suggested, there are three main burial groups with respect to grave goods: those without any (at least half the total individuals buried), those with some, and those with large numbers of items. There is also a wide range of objects buried, from parts of animals through to stone axes. The original interpretation was that concentrations of late Mesolithic burials were true cemeteries, in the sense of being communal burial grounds set aside from the settlement area. However, the vast majority of these groups of burials are closely associated with settlements (Nielsen and Brinch Petersen 1993; Thorpe 1996), whilst those where no nearby settlement has been identified are or may have been near to shell middens or other sites of occupation that left little trace. If so, the presence of burials could be seen as one manifestation of the significance that these major coastal sites had acquired.