The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

by Chris Fowler

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  Richards, M.P. 2008. Hambledon Hill stable isotope values. In R.J. Mercer and F. Healy (eds), Hambledon Hill, Dorset, England. Excavation and SURVEY of a Neolithic monument complex and its surrounding landscape, 522–527. London: English Heritage Archaeological Reports.

  Richards, M.P., Hedges, R.E.M., Walton, I., Stoddart, S., and Malone, C. 2001. Neolithic diet at the Brochtorff Circle, Malta. European Journal of Archaeology 4, 253–262.

  Richards, M.P. and Schulting, R.J. 2006. Against the grain? A response to Milner et al. (2004). Antiquity 80, 444–458.

  Richards, M.P., Schulting, R.J., and Hedges, R.E.M. 2003. Sharp shift in diet at onset of Neolithic. Nature 425, 366.

  Richards, M.P., and Sheridan, J.A. 2000. New AMS dates on human bone from Mesolithic Oronsay. Antiquity 74, 313–315.

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  Schulting, R.J. 2005. Comme la mer qui se retire: les changements dans l’exploitation des ressources marines du Mésolithique au Néolithique en Bretagne. In G. Marchand and A. Tresset (eds), Unité et diversité des processus de néolithisation sur la façade atlantique de l’Europe (7-4ème millénaires avant J.-C.), 163–171. Paris: Mémoire de la Société Préhistorique Française 36.

  Schulting, R.J. 2008. Foodways and social ecologies from the Early Mesolithic to the Early Bronze Age. In J. Pollard (ed.), Prehistoric Britain, 90–120. London: Blackwell.

  Schulting, R.J. 2011. Mesolithic–Neolithic transitions: an isotopic tour through Europe. In R. Pinhasi and J. Stock (eds), The bioarchaeology of the transition to agriculture, 17–41. New York: Wiley-Liss.

  Schulting, R.J. 2013. On the northwestern fringes: Earlier Neolithic subsistence in Britain and Ireland as seen through faunal remains and stable isotopes. In S. Colledge, J. Conolly, K. Dobney, K. Manning, and S. Shennan (eds), The origins and spread of stock keeping in the Near East and Europe, 313–338. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press.

  Schulting, R.J., Bronk Ramsey, C., Reimer, P.J., Eogan, G., Cleary, K., Cooney, G., and Sheridan, A. In press. Dating the human remains from Knowth. In G. Eogan and K. Cleary (eds), Excavations at Knowth 6: the archaeology of the Large Passage Tomb at Knowth, Co. Meath. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy.

  Schulting, R.J., Chapman, M., and Chapman, E.J. 2013. AMS 14C dating and stable isotope (carbon, nitrogen) analysis of an earlier Neolithic human skeletal assemblage from Hay Wood Cave, Mendip, Somerset. Proceedings of the University of Bristol Spelaeological Society 26, 9–26.

  Schulting, R.J., Fibiger, L., Macphail, R.I., McLaughlin, R., Murray, E.V., Price, C., and Walker, E.A. 2013. Mesolithic and Neolithic humans remains from Foxhole Cave (Gower, South Wales). Antiquaries Journal 93, 1–23.

  Schulting, R.J. and Hamilton, J. 2012. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of human and faunal remains from Champ-Durand à Nieul-sur-l’Autize, Vendée. In R. Joussaume (ed.), Le site néolithique de Champ-Durand à Nieul-sur-l’Autise (Vendée), 527–538. Chauvigny: Association des Publications Chauvinoises.

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  Schulting, R.J. and Richards, M.P. 2001. Dating women and becoming farmers: new palaeodietary and AMS data from the Breton Mesolithic cemeteries of Téviec and Hoëdic. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 20, 314–344.

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  Schulting, R.J. and Richards, M.P. 2002b. The wet, the wild and the domesticated: the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition on the west coast of Scotland. European Journal of Archaeology 5, 147–189.

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  CHAPTER 20

  SUBSISTENCE PRACTICES AND SOCIAL ROUTINE IN NEOLITHIC SOUTHERN EUROPE*

  AMY BOGAARD AND PAUL HALSTEAD

  INTRODUCTION

  ‘SUBSISTENCE’ practices in Neolithic Europe are often subordinated to debate over the agents of Neolithization. This debate equates migrating farmers versus acculturated foragers with rapid versus gradual establishment of farming, a packaged versus piecemeal Neolithic, and ‘economic’ versus ‘ideological’ underpinnings of subsistence change. Framing subsistence as a reflection of origins, however, ignores its potential for inferring the consequences of Neolithization, which are both more significant for understanding long-term social development and more accessible archaeologically. Whilst farmer origins can only be resolved through ancient human DNA, the rhythms, taskscapes, and sociality of subsistence practice offer rich insights into the construction and development of Neolithic societies and social identities.

  This chapter explores Neolithic subsistence practices, land use, and landscape transformation in southern Europe, using relevant datasets such as human skeletal remains for diet, and plant and animal remains for husbandry practices. Because of regional differences in archaeological evidence, formation processes, and research priorities, we focus first on south-east (Greece and the north Balkans—Fig. 20.1) and then south-west Europe (from Dalmatia, through Italy and southern France to Iberia—Fig. 20.2). We conclude by considering what light subsistence practices may shed on social routines at various temporal and spatial scales.

  FIG. 20.1. Sites in south-east Europe mentioned in the text.

  1, Kalythies; 2, Knossos; 3, Alepotrypa; 4, Kouveleiki; 5, Franchthi; 6, Kastria; 7, Zas; 8, Kefala; 9, Kitsos; 10, Skoteini; 11, Theopetra; 12, Youra/Cyclops cave; 13, Makriyalos; 14, Paliambela-Kolindrou; 15, Stavroupoli; 16, Anza; 17, Kovacevo; 18, Slatina; 19, Blagotin; 20, Divostin; 21, Selevac; 22, Vinča; 23, Starčevo; 24, LepenskiVir; 25, Ecsegfalva 23; 26, Méhtelek-Nádas; 27, Polgár-Csőszhalom; 28, Schela Cladovei; 29, Măgura-Buduiasca; 30, Poduri.

  FIG. 20.2. Sites in south-west Europe mentioned in the text.

  1, Grapceva; 2, Danilo; 3, Prokovnik; 4, Bukovic; 5, Tinj-Podlivade; 6, Nin; 7, Pupicina; 8, Mala Triglavca; 9, Ciclame; 10, Zingari; 11, Edera; 12, Mitreo; 13, Nogaredo al Torre; 14, Sammardenchia; 15, Piancada; 16, Molino Casarotto; 17, Lugo di Romagna; 18, Neto-Via Verga; 19, La Marmotta; 20, Villaggio Leopardi; 21, Masseria di Gioia; 22, Mulino Sant’Antonio; 23, Passo di Corvo; 24, Scaloria; 25, Santa Tecchia; 26, Rendina; 27, Ipogeo Manfredi; 28, Torre Sabea; 29, Grotta della Madonna; 30, Grotta del Cavallo; 31, Grotta dell’Uzzo; 32, Grotta del Genovese; 33, Arene Candide; 34, Sion Planta; 35, Clairvaux Station III; 36, La Balme de Thuy; 37, Le Chenet des Pierres; 38, La Grande Rivoire; 39, Pendimoun; 40, Fontbrégoua; 41, Baume Ronze; 42, Baume d’Oulen; 43, Combe Obscure; 44, Roucadour; 45, Portiragnes; 46, Abeurador; 47, Grotte Gazel; 48, Font Juvénal; 49, Bélesta; 50, Dourgne; 51, Pico Ramos; 52, El Mirón; 53, La Vaquera; 54, La Revilla del Campo; 55, La Lámpara; 56, Chaves; 57, Bauma Serrat del Pont; 58, Cova 120; 59, La Draga; 60, Camí de Can Grau; 61, Cova Fosca; 62, Ereta del Pedregal; 63, Cova de la Sarsa; 64, Arenal de la Costa; 65, Jovades; 66, Mas d’Is; 67, Niuet; 68, Cova del Or; 69, Cova de las Cendres; 70, Cerro de la Virgen; 71, Nerja; 72, Cueva del Toro; 73, Cueva de los Murciélagos; 74, Valencina de la Concepción; 75, Zambujal.

  Food remains on late Mesolithic sites across this large area indicate hunting of indigenous mammals (e.g. red deer, boar), fishing and shellfish-gathering (near coasts, lakes, and rivers), and collecting of nuts, fruits, and seeds. Occasional claims of domesticates in Mesolithic levels of caves or rock shelters (e.g. Cyclops and Theopetra, Greece; Abeurador, Fontbrégoua, Dourgne, and Gazel, France; Costa, Spain) appear to be based on misidentification or stratigraphic mixing. At most early Neolithic sites, especially in south-east Europe, bones of domestic sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle predominate alongside cereal and pulse grains; most, if not all, of these domesticates were introduced from south-west Asia. Human skeletal evidence for diet and nutritional health (e.g. Bonsall et al. 2004; Le Bras-Goude et al. 2006; Papathanasiou 2003; Triantaphyllou 2001) offers a coarser, but consistent, picture of radical change in human diet between the late Mesolithic and early Neolithic across much of southern Europe. This transition, in the seventh millennium BC in Greece and sixth millennium in the north Balkans and west Mediterranean, was rapid. Whether it occurred in any one region within a single human generation or over a few centuries is less clear, but apparent examples of gradual change from hunting to herding may again reflect stratigraphic mixing (Bernabeu et al. 2001). Because of the uneven availability of absolute dates, much of the discussion here of the subsequent three to four millennia of the Neolithic uses relative chronology: early (EN), middle (MN), late (LN), and perhaps final (FN) Neolithic. These phases do not have the same absolute dates across southern Europe, although EN usually refers to the first centuries following the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition.

  MODELS AND METHODS

  The nature of settlement constrains subsistence options: increasing community size enlarges the territory needed for subsistence, whilst sedentary behaviour restricts the area exploitable. Accordingly, large sedentary communities need locally concentrated, predictable resources, whilst small mobile groupings can exploit more dispersed, unpredictable options. In south-east Europe, EN sites, concentrated in fertile lowland basins, initially comprised just a few houses, but many developed into deeply stratified and densely inhabited settlement mounds or ‘tells’. These represent long-lived or repeatedly occupied ‘villages’ ranging from several tens to a few hundred inhabitants (Raczky, this volume). Other open sites with more unstable or dispersed residence sometimes developed into ‘flat-extended’ settlements covering tens of hectares, making contemporaneity of housing much harder to gauge; given their large area and short duration, these sites perhaps represent a distinctive form of ‘village’. In the later Neolithic, agriculturally marginal (arid and dissected) parts of southern Greece were colonized by short-lived open sites, often representing a ‘farmstead’ or ‘hamlet’ of one or a few households. In south-west Europe, EN settlements seemingly include equivalents of both small ‘farmsteads’/‘hamlets’ and larger ‘villages’, with the same contrasting implications for subsistence options (Skeates, this volume ch. 41).

  Different types of site also shape the survival and contextual resolution of bioarchaeological evidence. Tells provide better conditions for bones and charred seeds than shallow open-air sites, where seasonal wetting and drying affect deposits. Conversely, on shallow sites, pits and ditches cut into bedrock may combine good organic preservation with clearer contextual definition than is normal in complex tell deposits, although the latter more often preserve invaluable burnt occupation levels. In caves, stable temperatures aid organic preservation, but natural and cultural reworking may conflate deposits. Moreover, caves often had specialized functions (burial, stabling, storage), in contrast to open-air habitation sites. These differences are critical given that evidence for Neolithic settlement and subsistence is overwhelmingly derived from open-air sites in south-east Europe, but extensively from caves and rock shelters in the south-west. A further issue affecting archaeobotanical evidence is the predominance of charred preservation in southern Europe. At rare sites with charred and waterlogged preservation, charring clearly favours stored plant foods used year-round against those eaten in season. Rarity of charred wild plant foods implies that these were not stored staples, therefore, rather than that they were not consumed.

  Models of prehistoric farming in southern Europe have often focused on two perceived characteristics of pre-mechanized farming: extensive cereal agriculture, with plough oxen and tilled fallow; and large seasonally transhumant herds of goats and especially sheep grazing lowland stubble and fallow fields in winter and mountain pastures in summer. T
hese practices were shaped as much by historical contingencies (e.g. inegalitarian land tenure, urban markets), however, as by environmental constraints and technology. Whilst extensive farmers and large-scale herders specialized in ‘cash crops’ (wheat, olive oil, wool, cheese), smallholders practised more intensive, integrated husbandry of a variety of crops and animals, ploughing with cows and/or digging manually, engaging in labour-intensive weeding and cereal–pulse rotation, and producing food and raw materials primarily for domestic consumption. The following discussion explores whether Neolithic land use better matches the large-scale, extensive, specialized or small-scale, intensive, diversified end of this spectrum. Per unit of cultivated land or livestock, ‘intensive’ husbandry is associated with higher yields, but also higher labour inputs, such that ‘extensive’ husbandry on a large scale is the usual basis of surplus production. (Spring sowing of untilled lake or river margins has been claimed to achieve the ideal combination of low inputs and high yields, but recent, opportunistic cases of ‘floodplain cultivation’ resulted in frequent failures as well as occasional bumper harvests.) For domestic self-sufficiency, intensive cultivation on a modest scale is adequate, although animal husbandry is less productive per unit of land than crops so that only a large-scale, specialized herding regime would suffice as the mainstay of subsistence.

  On-site archaeobotanical data, from storage deposits and processing by-products, shed light on crop diversity, with implications for ecological and dietary stability, as well as social contexts and routines of consumption. Some crops are linked with particular management practices (e.g. labour-intensive pulses with small-scale cultivation), but most such associations relate to crop varieties rather than species and are of questionable relevance to the past. The ecological characteristics of arable weeds are a better guide to the nature and management of cultivation areas.