The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

by Chris Fowler

  It has been suggested that husbandry and hunting were of similar importance in Körös culture subsistence. However, assemblages with over 1,000 identifiable bones from Hungary and Serbia almost invariably contain 60–80% caprine remains, some cattle, but only little pig, dog, or game (Bartosiewicz 2005, 52). Romanian Criş assemblages reinforce this impression (El Susi 2007, 30; Bindea 2008). In contrast, the importance of hunting is often argued on the basis of small, atypical assemblages. Apparently, Körös herders lived in dispersed hamlets and maintained near-monocultural sheep husbandry for some 300 years, although sheep may have been ill adapted to the marshy environment. These early communities hardly ever hunted and rarely even gathered shed antler for tools (Makkay 1990; Choyke 2007). Opportunistic fowling, including the probable use of feathers and the gathering of eggs, was a constant feature of Neolithic subsistence in the floodplains of Hungary and Romania (Gál 2007), and aquatic resources were consistently exploited. Early Neolithic communities gathered small carp-like fish, pike, and mussels in residual flood pools (Bartosiewicz 2007), whilst by the late Neolithic bone and boar tusk hooks and antler harpoons indicate active fishing (Choyke and Bartosiewicz 1994).

  During the middle Neolithic (c. 5600–5000 BC), the contribution of pig remains becomes comparable to that of caprines in the Hungarian Plain (Bartosiewicz 2005, table 6.1). This may indicate a late trend towards local domestication of wild pigs, as mtDNA analyses suggest for other parts of Europe (Larson et al. 2007, 15276). Bökönyi (1985) hypothesized a late Neolithic cattle ‘domestication fever’ in Hungary around 5250–4250 BC, but mtDNA shows that the Körös aurochs population was genetically separate from domestic cattle of Near Eastern origins (Edwards et al. 2007, 329). Aurochs hunting became significant during the late Neolithic, although animal keeping was already well-established. Contemporary settlement structures, including tells, reflect a complex social organization, possibly making hunting an important way of confirming social status. Prestige objects (Siklósi 2004) such as boar tusks and stag canine pendants, and the bone imitations of the latter (Choyke 2001), also show the increasing cultural importance of game in the south-eastern Carpathian Basin.

  Early farming communities of the LBK (c. 5600–4900 BC) may have been very mobile, and cattle dominate faunal assemblages (see Bickle and Hofmann 2007 and references therein). This shift away from caprines towards cattle and pig is probably an adaptation to differing environmental zones (i.e. Balkans versus central Europe), but may also be determined by varying attitudes towards available species, differing management requirements, and differences in meat yields and secondary products.

  In the lowlands of northern Poland and north-eastern Germany, less substantial post-built structures take the place of the characteristic longhouses of the loess (seen as related to storage). Subsistence is based primarily on cattle, with pig and caprines occurring at significant frequencies. Cereals are dominated by emmer and a proportion of the diet is obtained from wild resources (terrestrial and aquatic) (Bogucki and Grygiel 1993). Milisauskas (2002, 162) suggests that the role of hunting has been underplayed. LBK studies in Germany have long benefited from the analysis of subsistence (Lüning 1991, 2000), with ground-breaking general work by Müller (1964) followed by more detailed analyses in the upper Danube catchment (Pucher 1987; Uerpmann and Uerpmann 1997).

  Later LBK faunal assemblages in the German and Polish lowlands, as well as in the Eneolithic of Slovakia (Ambros 1986) and Hungary (Bökönyi 1961–1963), are discussed under the general heading of the Lengyel culture. Long-term agricultural settlements, with the characteristic trapezoidal longhouses, do not occur until c. 4400 BC in central Poland (Bogucki and Grygiel 1993, 414). In contrast to the conventional wild/domestic dichotomy, Marciniak (2005, tables 7.1 and 8.1) has studied differences in carcass treatment between domesticates at LBK sites in Kujavia and Małopolska. He observed differences between cattle and pigs on the one hand and sheep and goats on the other. Lengyel culture sites in Kujavia and Wielkopolska show a different pattern and more hunting, a trend seen elsewhere in central Europe. In the north, animal exploitation by people of the Funnel Beaker (TRB) culture is discussed in general terms by Midgley (1992, 369–384). She has shown that hunting played an important role in the economy, but this was more pronounced in the north than in the TRB’s more southern and south-eastern areas. Environmental (predominance of loess in southern regions) and possibly even cultural factors influenced this situation. Midgley (1992, 375–376) characterizes the TRB economy as based on mixed farming, supplemented by hunting and gathering. In general, red deer dominate the wild fauna and cattle the domesticated element, but as might be anticipated there are inter-regional and inter-site differences, and the relative proportion of wild resources decreases towards the later TRB (Midgley 1992, 377). More recently, Marciniak (2005) has traced the dynamic development of middle Neolithic farming and its stabilization in the Funnel Beaker territory from an ethnologically informed perspective, wherein interpretations of animal exploitation are embedded in a theoretical discourse on the role of animals in the everyday social structuring of farming communities. This work has moved beyond the fundamental aspects of animals as elements of subsistence strategies and explores amongst other things themes of agency, identity, and space and place. Fundamentally, however, it provides a similar, albeit more nuanced picture of the TRB culture as developed by Midgley. Both offer important insights into the nature of continuity and change from the earlier Neolithic to the cultural developments that characterize the TRB.

  In late Mesolithic Switzerland (6700–5500 BC), there is no evidence of domesticated animals, but pollen data and macrofossils suggest minor pre-Neolithic agricultural activity on the Swiss Plateau (Haas 1996; Tinner et al. 2007). The lack of high resolution scanning in the identification of cerealia in earlier work means caution should be exercised here (Edwards and McIntosh 1988). However, responding to Behre (2007), Tinner et al. (2008, 1468) argue that ‘relying uniquely on the pollen signal, the onset of the Neolithic in Switzerland would be placed at ca. 6700 cal. BC, which indeed is in contradiction with the conventional paradigm in archaeology’, which dates the onset of the Swiss Neolithic to c. 5500–5200 BC (Tinner et al. 2007). Imported sea shells indicate Mediterranean contacts along the Rhône (Nielsen 1997), and the concept of agriculture could have arrived along the same route. Domesticates occur from 5500 BC, whilst pollen diagrams show ‘conventional’ Neolithic cultivation at c. 5400–5000 BC. On the Swiss Plateau, Neolithic deforestation is evident in the palynological record at around 4400–4000 BC, as lakeshores were being settled (Erny-Rodmann et al. 1997; Nielsen 1997, 2003). Agriculture dominates subsistence only after c. 4500 BC (Stöckli 1998). Waterlogged deposits at pile-dwellings have enriched this picture, and were key for developing archaeozoology and archaeobotany as disciplines (Rütimeyer 1861; Heer 1866), but these sites date mostly to the late Neolithic (c. 4300 BC).

  Whilst proportions between domestic animals vary between eastern and western Switzerland, at around 3900 BC and after 37501 BC red deer bone reaches around 60% in food refuse (Schibler et al. 1997, 178–179), apparently due to an agricultural crisis visible in declining grain harvests and the increasing contribution of wild plants (Jacomet 2007). This is also reflected in raw material management in occupation layers dendro-dated to 4300–2571 BC. At earlier settlements (4300–3100 BC) bone tools were common, and antler originated from both hunting and gathering. Antler sleeves, used as shock absorbers between the stone axe blades and wooden handles, attained importance during the fourth millennium BC. Later inhabitants increasingly gathered shed antler (Schibler et al. 1997; de Capitani et al. 2002), a sign of systematic raw material management. Juvenile deer significantly contributed to assemblages around 3600 BC, possibly indicating over-hunting. By 3100 BC, even small antler tines were manufactured into sleeves and commonly curated (Schibler 2001, 85–87). Corded Ware levels (c. 2750 BC) yielded significantly more antler sleeves, but red deer bone became minimal. These changes show the s
ubtle interplay between technical innovation, shifting subsistence patterns, and environmental change.

  As a long-term trend throughout central Europe, Sherratt (1983) suggested a shift to the ‘secondary’ production of milk, wool, and animal labour, supporting increasing social complexity. However, the earliest use and functions of these products represent different motivations. Milk and wool utilization seemingly began earlier than animal traction (Lüning 1979/80). Caprine or cow milk residue has been detected on sherds from early Neolithic Ecsegfalva in Hungary and Schela Cladovei in Romania (Craig et al. 2005), and whilst the diffusion of dairying into the rest of Europe remains debated, biochemical evidence is available from middle Neolithic France (Chasséen Septentrional culture; early fourth millennium BC) (Balasse et al. 1997) and late Neolithic Switzerland (3384–3370 BC) (Spangenberg et al. 2006). By the end of the Neolithic, finds from waterlogged contexts, such as a yoke fragment from Switzerland (Jacomet and Schibler 2006, 142, fig. 1) and a wheel with axle from Slovenia (Velusček 2006), coincide with the increase of articular disorders in cattle, partly related to draught exploitation (Bartosiewicz 2006). Ploughing and wheeled transport enabled increased agricultural production, facilitating the accumulation and redistribution of surplus.

  UKRAINE

  It is still valid that often ‘the first appearance of pottery and polished stone tools is taken as automatic evidence that hunting and gathering had been replaced by farming’ (Dennell 1985, 153; see also Telegin 1987; Jacobs 1993; Lillie 1996). Yet generally in Ukraine there is continuity between the Mesolithic and early Neolithic.

  Thus, the sixth millennium BC Bug-Dniester culture, originating in the forested valleys of the Bug, Dniester, and Prut rivers (Zvelebil and Dolukhanov 1991, 252) and extending across Moldova and into Ukraine (Dergachev et al. 1991), continued using Mesolithic lithic industries. Hunting, fishing and gathering constitute the main subsistence elements. Remains of wild pig, red and roe deer, fish, and edible molluscs (riverine mussel) are common. In addition to collected food, there is evidence for the extensive use of grasses and some exploitation of domesticates (Zvelebil and Dolukhanov 1991, 260). Subsistence data have been recovered from 11 sites in the southern Bug and Dniester valleys (Zvelebil and Lillie 2000, 74). Domestic animals are probably imported in the earlier stage of the culture (accounting for <20% of faunal assemblages), sheep and goat are generally absent (Tringham 1971, 98), and wild plants are gathered (possibly with some management/cultivation?) (Zvelebil and Lillie 2000). The incorporation of domesticates into subsistence strategies is uneven and piecemeal between c. 5700–5000 BC. Even in the latest stages of the Bug-Dniester culture, domesticates seldom exceed 50% of the assemblages (Telegin et al. 2003), although Milisauskas (2002, 150) suggests an agricultural component from as early as c. 6000 BC.

  Artefacts and economic evidence indicate contacts with the Körös-Criş and LBK farming communities to the west and north-west (Dolukhanov 1984, 341) during the second stage of the Bug-Dniester culture, whilst early Bug-Dniester sites are contemporary with pre-Körös-Criş groups (Kotova 2003). At c. 6200 BC, Körös-Criş sites in Romania and Moldova exhibit features with Mesolithic antecedents in stone and bone tool technology, domestic architecture, and economy (Zvelebil and Lillie 2000, 72). In general, the numbers of domesticates on these sites are somewhat lower than in areas further south and south-west (Tringham 1971; Demoule and Perlès 1993; Perlès 2001) or within the Carpathian Basin, and wild plants, and occasionally animals, are significant components of the subsistence economy. Faunal assemblages at the Criş site of Sakarovka on the right bank of the Solonets, which ultimately drains into the Dniester, include pig, red deer, and cattle, with some caprines, roe deer, elk, and wild horse as subsidiary components. Whilst cereals were not recovered, sickles suggest possible cultivation, or at least the harvesting of wild grasses (Dergachev et al. 1991, 10).

  East of the Bug-Dniester cultural area, the Dnieper-Donets culture also developed from Mesolithic groups (Telegin and Titova 1998; Telegin et al. 2002). At later Mesolithic sites in the Dnieper region (e.g. Kukrek culture), ceramics are associated with Mesolithic type lithics, indicating that Mesolithic groups are influential in the development of the ‘Neolithic’ here (Zaliznyak 1997). The earliest Neolithic element is the Surskaia culture (also sometimes spelled Sursko or Surskii) dated to c. 6200 BC (Telegin et al. 2003), which extensively exploits the rich fish resources of the Dnieper, along with some domesticated cattle and pig (Telegin 1987, 318). Kotova (2003) offers a detailed re-consideration of culture groupings in the Ukraine.

  The Dnieper-Donets culture (including its Mesolithic precursors and its variants) has been the subject of a considerable number of new dating, dietary isotope, and palaeopathological analyses aimed at understanding subsistence throughout its development (c. 5500–4000 BC) (Telegin et al. 2002, 2003; Lillie 1996, 1998; Lillie and Richards 2000; Lillie et al. 2003, 2011; Lillie and Jacobs 2006). Of the over 800 Mesolithic and Neolithic skeletons recovered (Konduktorova 1974, 12), the c. 300 suitably preserved examples have provided important insights into chronology, diet, and subsistence across the Mesolithic-Eneolithic periods (between c. 7000–3700 BC). Recent dating work (Lillie et al. 2009) has also included evidence from mammalian and fish remains from middle and lower Dnieper basin sites. This has shown that freshwater resources (e.g. carp and pearl roach) are influencing the radiocarbon determinations obtained on human bone, with preliminary evidence of a freshwater reservoir effect across the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition (similar to the Danubian Iron Gates; Bonsall et al. 2000) and across the Neolithic to Eneolithic periods. At c. 5100 BC, sites such as Dereivka I and Yasinovatka show a marked offset between terrestrial mammal, human, and fish samples from the same burial context. Offsets between human and red deer samples span c. 250 radiocarbon years at Dereivka I and c. 470 years at Yasinovatka (Lillie et al. 2009). Thus, previous dates on human remains from the cemeteries of the Dnieper Basin could be several centuries too old at the onset of the Neolithic, a situation also observed at Schela Cladovei, downstream from the Danubian Iron Gates in Romania (Cook et al. 2002, 81).

  The increased levels of freshwater resource consumption by the hunter- fisher-gatherers in the valleys of the Dnieper and Donets systems could be a socio-economic ‘buffering’ reaction against the new resources (i.e. domesticates) becoming available at this time through, for instance, population movements along the Black Sea coast and the expansion of agricultural communities (Anthony 2007; Dolukhanov and Shilik 2007). At the Dnieper Rapids cemeteries—similarly to those in the Iron Gates—later Mesolithic populations consumed a greater proportion of freshwater resources compared to early Neolithic groups (Fig. 21.2). The late Mesolithic population consumed terrestrial resources (e.g. red deer, roe deer, horse, wild boar) with a significant input from freshwater fish, with the contribution of the latter lessening slightly in the early Neolithic, although the broad range of wild animal species continued to be exploited into the Neolithic period, alongside cattle, caprines and pig. There is evident variability in individual diets, but this is not unusual, as different subsistence regimes are to be expected where social situations may have been mediated through the procuring, allocating, and controlling of resources (Lillie 2003).

  FIG. 21.2. Stable isotope analysis of Ukrainian (Vasilyevka II, Marievka, Dereivka, and Yasinovatka) and Latvian (Zvejnieki) late Mesolithic (LM) and early Neolithic (EN) human and faunal remains (after Lillie and Jacobs 2006; Budd et al. in press; Eriksson 2006; Eriksson et al. 2003).

  During the Neolithic period, the stable isotope ratios for Yasinovatka (Lillie et al. 2009, table 5) demonstrate higher δ15N values than those from Dereivka I. At 11.4–13‰, these ratios are closer to those from the Danubian Iron Gates sites (δ15N at c. 14 or 15‰, and δ13C at c.−23‰), which for Bonsall et al. (1997) indicate a diet based heavily on river fish. Stable isotope analyses on the populations of the middle and lower Dnieper basin are ongoing, but significantly, the freshwater reservoir effect so far seems
dissipated towards the Neolithic–Eneolithic transition (c. 4500–3700 BC) (Lillie et al. 2009), perhaps reflecting the increasing importance of domesticates (predominantly animals, i.e. cattle, pig, and caprines). Recent debate regarding the adoption of domesticated cereals in Dnieper-Donets stage II primarily revolves around seed impressions (wheat and barley) in pottery fabrics (e.g. Kotova 2003). However, at present, the available evidence is insufficient to indicate that domesticated cereals formed an important element in subsistence during the earlier Neolithic period (see e.g. Motuzaite Matuzeviciute et al. 2009; Motuzaite Matuzeviciute 2012).

  Towards the middle Neolithic, and the Eneolithic/Copper Age in Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania, the Tripolye culture (Trypillia in Ukrainian) develops through a combination of initial influences from the Balkan-Danube region and later Neolithic contacts with the Körös and Turdaş cultures (Lillie 2008; Korvin-Piotrovskiy 2008). The Trypillia subsistence economy is based on the husbandry of cattle, caprines, and pigs, alongside cultivation of wheat, barley, millet, and legumes. Gathering, hunting, and fishing occur everywhere, and at some sites, such as Kolomyïshchina II, wild animals make up a significant proportion of the assemblage (Lillie 2008, 14). This situation resonates with the idea of the hybridization of mixed hunter-gatherer/farming groups at frontier zones during the initial expansion of agriculture (e.g. Thomas 2004; Zvelebil 2006), although the Trypillia culture is relatively unique due to the development of ‘mega-sites’, such as Nebelivka, Talljanki, and Maydanetskoe, which contain up to 1000 buildings (Kruts 2008a, 2008b). The central European TRB also occurred in Ukraine at this time, and, as with many central European middle Neolithic communities, its economy is characterized by mixed agro-pastoralism with wild fauna contributing to varying degrees (Milisauskas and Kruk 2002, 209).