The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

by Chris Fowler

  The interpretative paradigm constructed around the dichotomy ‘civilized/barbarian’ continued to be highly significant in the context of academic controversy over the Neolithization process in south-eastern Europe, and thus pottery—and by proxy the manufacturers of that pottery—was interpreted in that light. It was embedded in two interpretative models: the ‘Balkan–Anatolian cultural complex’ and the ‘frontier model’. Both rely on ideas of inherent differences between European and Oriental materiality and potential. Both maintain a perception of an allochthonous Anatolian population in association with a well-developed farming economy and pottery technology, and an autochthonous Balkan population able to produce only simple and coarse pottery, that selectively adopted crop production and animal husbandry (Benac et al. 1979; Todorova 1998; Garašanin and Radovanović 2001; Perić 2002; Tringham 2000; Zvelebil and Lillie 2000; Lichardus-Itten and Lichardus 2003; Borić and Miracle 2004; Sanev 2004; Boroneanţ and Dinu 2006).

  The work of geneticists in the later twentieth century shifted the focus from phenotype to genotype, from cranial characteristic to classic genetic markers, from races to populations. Based on studies of the genetics of modern populations, Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1994) hypothesized that the transition to farming in Europe correlates with a massive movement of population from the Near East, without substantial genetic contribution from local Mesolithic populations. Since the revolution in the study of the human genome (Renfrew 2000; Renfrew et al. 2000) studies have focussed on detecting specific genetic markers which have been transmitted from prehistoric populations to modern ones. Mitochondrial DNA is present in both sexes, but inherited only in the maternal line; the Y-chromosome is present only in males and inherited exclusively through males (see Jobling et al. 2004). Because they are non-recombinant and highly polymorphic, they are seen as ideal for reconstructing human evolution, population history, and ancestral migration patterns. Thus different human nuclear DNA polymorphic markers (polymorphisms) of modern populations have been used to study genomic diversity, to define maternal and paternal lineage clusters (haplogroups), and to trace their (pre)historic genealogical trees and chronological and spatial trajectories. Particular attention has been drawn to the power of Y-chromosome bi-allelic markers, as they allow the construction of intact haplotypes and thus male-mediated migration can be readily recognized (Goldstein and Chikhi 2002; Richards 2003; O’Rourke 2003). King and Underhill (2002, 714) have argued that Y-chromosome haplogroup J is ‘the best genetic predictor of the appearance of Neolithic painted pottery and figurines at various European sites’. The argument rests on the basic idea, proposed by Cavalli-Sforza et al. (1994), that a south-east–north-west cline of frequencies for selected Y-chromosome markers and associated haplogroups indicates the movement of men with Levantine genetic ancestry, and that this genetic influence coincides with the distribution of early Neolithic cultures in south-eastern Europe.

  However, the invention of ceramics and the introduction of ceramic female and animal statuettes was certainly not within the cultural domain of Levantine hunter-gatherer societies, nor did they only appear on the ‘eve of the appearance of an agricultural economy’, as Cauvin (2000, 25) suggested. He even postulated an inter-linked economic and religious transformation, which explains why hunter-gatherers in villages outside the Levant did not develop subsistence production for themselves: their failure to ‘humanize’ their art and adopt new deities would have prevented them from making the transition to a new type of economy. Accordingly, Europe could not have become Neolithic until the ‘wave of advance’ and ceramic female figurines had reached the Balkans. A significant problem with this general argument is that Eurasian hunter-gatherer cultures had engaged in making ceramic figurines for many millennia before the appearance of food-producing agricultural societies. For instance, in central Europe, an assemblage of 16,000 ceramic objects—more than 850 figural ceramics—have been found in the Gravettian and Pavlovian (Palaeolithic) hunter-gatherer camps at Dolní Vĕstonice, Předmostí, Pavlov I, Krems-Wachtberg and Vela Spila (Verpoorte 2001, 95–100, tab. 5.1; Farbstein 2011; Farbstein et al. 2012). In many parts of Eurasia the introduction of fired-clay vessels first occurred in hunter-gatherer contexts, where it was associated with small-scale sedentary or semi-sedentary communities, millennia before the advent of agriculture (Jordan and Zvelebil 2009; Gronenborn and Dolukhanov, this volume). In western Eurasia the use of ceramics appears in two distinct areas distant from one another contemporarily at c. 7000 BC: in the Near East and in the East European Plain (middle Volga River) (see above). Whilst the first was correlated with the genetically determined Y-chromosome haplogroup J in modern population (King and Underhill 2002), we may assume that the second correlates with the haplogroup N (McDonald 2005; Rootsi et al. 2007; Derenko et al. 2007) (Fig. 28.5). Thus, ceramic technology was reinvented more than once in Eurasian Palaeolithic and Neolithic contexts, and the fact that hunter-gatherer communities did make ceramic vessels underlines the problems with traditional perceptions of pottery as the marker of early Neolithic cultures (e.g. farming communities) and of the south-east–north-west gradient of their dispersal across the Europe.

  FIG. 28.5. The parallel clines of frequencies of Y-chromosome haplogroups J, E and N in modern populations in Europe and initial pottery distributions in Neolithic Europe. The haplogroup distribution is based on McDonald’s World Haplogroups Maps (McDonald 2005) (from Budja 2013, fig. 6).

  Recent genetic studies, indeed, suggest that the modern peopling of Europe was a complex process, and that the view of a single demic event in the early Neolithic is too simplistic. The paternal heritage of the modern population of south-east Europe reveals that the region was both an important source and a recipient of continuous gene flows. The studies of the Y-chromosomal haplogroups J1 (M267), J2 (M172), E (M78), and I (M423) strongly suggest continuous Mesolithic, Neolithic, and post-Neolithic gene flows within south-east Europe and between Europe and the Near East, in both directions. In addition, the low frequency and variance associated with I and E clades in Anatolia and the Middle East support the European Mesolithic origin of these two haplogroups. The Neolithic and post-Neolithic component in the gene pool is most clearly marked by the presence of the J lineages. Its frequency in south-east European populations ranges from 2% to 20% although some lineages may have arrived earlier than the Neolithic, so that the levels of Neolithic immigration might still be overestimated (King et al. 2008; Battaglia et al. 2009). Mitochondrial genome datasets and the timescale for lineages show on the other hand that possible candidates for Neolithic immigration from the Near East would include haplogroups J2a1a and K2a. It seems, however, the immigration was minor (Soares et al. 2010).

  Furthermore, recent phylogenetic analyses of ancient mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal DNA (aDNA) extracted from Mesolithic and Neolithic human remains show that the genetic structure of the European population and the transition to farming cannot be explained by a gradual axial expansion (i.e. demic diffusion) of Levantine Neolithic farmers across Europe and sequential population replacements (Pinhasi et al. 2012). Advances in aDNA methods and next-generation sequencing have allowed new approaches which can directly assess the genetic structure of past European populations. Mitochondrial aDNA analyses now suggest regional variations in population trajectories in Europe, indicating that the process was far more complex and variable than was previously thought (see Bramanti et al. 2009; Burger and Thomas 2011; Haak et al. 2005, 2010; Lacan et al. 2011; Linderholm 2011; Sampietro et al. 2007; Skoglund et al. 2012). Unfortunately, we still do not know what happened to the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer and Neolithic populations in south-east Europe, as no aDNA studies have yet been carried out in the region.

  Parallel archaeogenetic studies in modern population hypothesized that a single mutation –13 910*T (lactase gene) in the human genome which allows adults to consume fresh milk evolved within a group(s) of Neolithic pioneer stockbreeders among whom lactase persistence was rare, but who initially practised dairyi
ng in south-east Europe in the middle of the eighth millennium BP and later migrated towards central and northern Europe to an area inhabited by foragers (Gerbault et al. 2009). These studies suggested that natural selection began to act on a few lactase-persistent individuals of the Starčevo and Körös cultures in the northern Balkans, and then rose rapidly in the gene-culture co-evolutionary process on the wave front of a demic diffusion to central and western Europe in the area of Linear Pottery culture at ‘around 6256–8683 years BP’ (Itan et al. 2009, 7–8; Leonardi et al. 2012, 95). However, both scenarios seem to be unrealistic. The archaeogenetic analysis of Neolithic skeletons suggests that ‘lactase persistence frequency was significantly lower in early Neolithic Europeans than it is today, and may have been zero’ (Leonardi et al. 2012, 93; see also Burger and Thomas 2011). The analysis revealed an absence of the –13 910*T allele in central Europe, in the western Mediterranean and the Baltic in Mesolithic and Neolithic populations (Burger et al. 2007; Burger and Thomas 2011; Lacan et al. 2011; Linderholm 2011; Nagy et al. 2011).

  The analyses of dairy fats in pottery suggest that milking and milk consumption and processing were widely adopted in the Neolithic in Eurasia. Biomolecular analyses of the lipids present in food which become absorbed and trapped in the pores of clay vessels indeed show evidence of dairy production in south-west Asia as early as c. 7000 BC. The apparent intensification of dairy processing in north-west Anatolia at 6500–5500 BC was recognized as an early centre for milk processing, with cow’s milk as the main source of dairy products in this region (Evershed et al. 2008; Thissen et al. 2010). This region had a central position in dispersals of Neolithic subsistence economies into Europe (Brami and Heyd 2011; Özdoğan 2011). However, degraded ruminant fatty acids in pottery suggest milk products and milk processing (i.e. the heating of milk) in the Starčevo-Criş culture at c. 5950–5500 BC and Köros culture at c. 5800–5700 BC (Craig et al. 2005). In northern Adriatic Vlaška culture context (Mala Triglavca) the processing of dairy products in ceramic vessels are well embedded in the time span 5467–5227 BC (Budja et al. 2013, 106–112). In northern Europe in the early Neolithic LBK complex it is dated to c. 5200 and 4900–4800 BC (Salque et al. 2013). The fermented milk products cause fewer or no mal-symptoms to lactase non-persistent individuals. Whilst the lactose content of fresh milk ranges between 4.42–5.15 g/g% in cattle, 4.66–4.82 g/g% in goats and 4.57–5.40 g/g% in sheep, it can be reduced to 50–60% by bacterial fermentation. Some processed milk products (such as cheese and butter) have very low lactose content, ranging from 0–3.7 g/g% (Nagy et al. 2011, 267). The beginning of utilization of lactic acid bacteria can be traced alongside the domestication of sheep, goat, and cattle. In milking and milk processing, the lactococci and lactobacilli were manipulated to initiate the fermentation that converts milk into yogurt, buttermilk, butter, and cheese. These certainly have advantages in storing and transporting dairy products and making them available in times of low milk production on one hand, and making milk available as a nutritional source throughout the entire life of the individuals on the other.

  Overall, the combination of evidence from palaeogenetics and lipid analyses fits with the hypothesis that dairying and milk products consumption emerged before genetic adaptation. The archaeogenetic data appear inconsistent with a ‘demic diffusion’ model and with a hypothesized large Neolithic population replacement within the ‘first demic event’ (see Budja 2013). The Mesolithic–Neolithic transformation in Europe did not involve a single continuous dispersal process from the Near East into Europe; continuous Mesolithic, Neolithic, and post-Neolithic population and culture dynamics within south-east Europe and between Europe and the Near East, in both directions, is far more likely.

  CONCLUDING REMARKS

  Initial pottery distribution in Europe shows two almost contemporary but geographically distinct trajectories. The northern one is embedded in hunter-gatherer contexts; the southern is suggested to be associated with the transition to farming. The pottery assemblages in both contexts differ in vessel shapes, production techniques, and decorations. Vessels with conical bases were never made in south-eastern Europe, whilst coloured decoration never appeared on vessels in north-eastern and north-western Europe. Unpainted and very limited numbers of painted vessels were the first to appear in south-eastern Europe in the seventh millennium BC. Since coloured ornaments were applied to pots in south-eastern Europe, the dichotomy of colour and motif perception within the south-east European early Neolithic and between Europe and Near East becomes evident.

  Geneticists currently suggest that the peopling of Europe is a complex process. Y-chromosomal paternal and mitochondrial maternal lineages in modern populations reveal the signatures of several demographic expansions within Europe over millennia, and gene flow between Europe and western Asia in both directions. These processes have been suggested for the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Chalcolithic periods and seem to be more visible in the frequency of Y-chromosome markers in modern populations in the Balkans and Mediterranean than in other regions. Recent analyses of ancient DNA show a complex picture of varied population trajectories elsewhere in Europe, and whilst such studies are yet to take place in south-eastern Europe a similar picture is to be expected.

  All these data indicate that the processes of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transformation were far more complex and variable than was first thought. We may suggest that the initial pottery distributions in Europe show the widespread and contemporary appearance of different pottery making techniques and ornamental principles within different populations, and cannot be explained as a single continuous dispersal process from the Near East into Europe.

  NOTES

  1.All the 14C data in the text are cal. BC and have been calibrated at 68.2% probability (2 σ), using the OxCal 2.4 programme.

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