by Chris Fowler
Here we caution against any understanding of animals during the period that might define them simply as economic resources. Their management brought about new rhythms of life, new roles and responsibilities, new gender roles and patterns of inheritance, and new potentials for sociality and sharing. However, the presence of animals also contributed to social tensions and some final comment should be made on the potential for increased inter-group conflict brought about by livestock keeping. Being both mobile and valuable—‘wealth-on-the-hoof’—herds of cattle and flocks of sheep almost certainly became targets for raiding. Indeed, with relatively low settlement densities in many regions, it may have been the acquisition and control over animals rather than land or other resources that was most contested. Evidence for interpersonal violence in Neolithic and Chalcolithic Europe is growing steadily (e.g. Whittle 2003, 38–39; Schulting and Wysocki 2005; Ivanova 2006), and ranges from individual instances of blunt trauma and arrow wounds to the dramatic massacre deposits of the LBK at Talheim (Wahl and König 1987). The motivations behind individual and group conflict can be highly varied and include retribution over dishonour and suspicions of witchcraft among other causes. Theft commonly invokes violent response, and animals would have been amongst the most prestigious of ‘goods’ that could be taken, invoking the most vehement of reprisals. There could be a strong link to male status and displays of prowess, acquired both through participation in livestock raids and acts of retaliation. Perhaps it is not surprising that some of the strongest evidence for interpersonal violence relates to those times and places—for instance, the developed LBK and British early Neolithic—when people and animals were aggregating at enclosures, and when both opportunities and tensions presented themselves.
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* Received October 2009, revised December 2011
Monuments, Rock Art, and Cosmology
CHAPTER 40
CENTRAL EUROPEAN ENCLOSURES*
JÖRG PETRASCH
IN central Europe, Neolithic enclosures have been known for over a century (Woldřich 1886). Initially, they were a very rare kind of site, which was also reflected in their interpretation. However, due to the numerous excavations and intensive prospection of the last three decades, the number of enclosures has risen so dramatically that they are now regarded as a regular feature—a typical trait—of the central European Neolithic.
Enclosures are an own, very specific site category, clearly different from all other archaeological features, such as settlements or burials. Their two most salient features are their main construction material, earth—they essentially consist of ditches and banks—and the fact that they enclose a specific area. The German archaeological term Erdwerk (earthwork) emphasizes the first point, whereas accurate translations of the English term ‘enclosure’ (i.e. Einhegung, Einfriedung), stressing the second defining characteristic, were only rarely used in German-language literature and are no longer current today. Other expressions occasionally used in central European publications, such as Befestigung (fortification), Burg (castle), or even Festung (fortress), are interpretations already strongly influenced by medieval and modern analogies and should not be used as synonyms for the largely neutral terms of enclosure/Erdwerk.
Alongside ‘enclosure’, the term ‘ditch system’ (Grabenanlage) is also used, occasionally as a synonym for the exact same sites. Logically, in this terminology, monuments consisting exclusively of palisades do not count as enclosures. This is unhelpful. On the one hand, there are sites where palisades seem to have replaced ditches and surrounded habitations or empty areas outside settlements. On the other hand, most enclosures consist of a combination of ditches and palisades. Concerning fences, however, it is often ambiguous whether they can be classified as an enclosure—they are either just within or just outside this category. Yet fences have rarely been studied, a remarkable fact given the numerous large-area excavations in central Europe. Their classification must hence remain open for now.
Neolithic enclosures are not only found in central Europe, but all over the continent (cf. Topping and Varndell 2002; Burgess et al. 1988). Yet nowhere are they as numerous and as diverse as here. This is probably due to several equally important reasons. In many central European regions, archaeological research traditions go back over a century. All countries now have constitutionally enshrined, regulated monument protection. Large-scale rescue excavations must be carried out in advance of gas pipeline, motorway, industrial, and residential construction, and especially also prior to open-cast lignite mining. The excavations prior to motorway construction in Hungary strikingly illustrate how quickly this kind of heritage management practice can change the character of the known archaeology. Modern prospections methods, s
uch as aerial photography and geophysical surveys, have also significantly enlarged our knowledge base. Of the more than 200 middle-Neolithic roundels, the best-studied enclosures to date (see below), only a few would be known without these field methods (Petrasch 2012).
Further reasons for the large number of Neolithic sites in central Europe are the natural environment and its modern agricultural exploitation. In the Neolithic, especially in its early and middle phases, softly rolling landscapes with a loess substrate, covered by fertile brown and black earth, were preferentially settled. Loess is widespread in central Europe, and especially in the south can be very deep. Loess is also eminently suitable for ditch digging, as negative features are relatively stable but can nevertheless be easily excavated. Modern wine cellars, common from southern Moravia into Transylvania, clearly illustrate this. They can be several hundreds of metres long and last for centuries without additional support. Alongside earth, wood was the most important construction material for Neolithic enclosures, but stone was rarely used. This clearly differentiates central Europe from other regions, most notably the Mediterranean where, due to the different subsoils, stone was the obvious construction material and was used much more often. Stone walls are also less susceptible to erosion, stronger in the Mediterranean than north of the Alps, introducing a further preservational bias. Today, the central European loess landscapes are mostly intensively farmed. Whilst this is unfavourable for the above-ground preservation of enclosures, it actually increases the chances of recognizing them when they exist only as sub-surface features. Indeed, of the hundreds of enclosures, only few boast upstanding remains, quite in contrast to northern and north-western Europe, where the higher proportion of pasture offers substantially better preservation conditions.