Going Over: The Mesolithic-Neolithic Transition in North West Europe

632 Pages·2007·44.22 MB·English

by  Alasdair Whittle

Going Over

The Mesolithic-Neolithic
Transition in North-West Europe

Edited by
Alasdair Whittle & Vicki Cummings

Proceedings of the British Academy 144, 2007
Contents

Alasdair Whittle Preface xvi
Alasdair Whittle & Vicki Cummings Introduction: transitions and transformations 1-4
Alan Barnard From Mesolithic to Neolithic modes of thought 5-19
Jean Guilaine & Claire Manen From Mesolithic to Early Neolithic in the western Mediterranean 21-51
Pablo Arias Neighbours but diverse: social change in north-west Iberia during the 53-71
transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic (5500–4000 cal BC)
Detlef Gronenborn Beyond the models: 'Neolithisation' in Central Europe 73-98
John Robb & Preston Miracle Beyond 'migration' versus 'acculturation': new models for the spread of 99-115
agriculture
Alex Bentley Mobility, specialisation and community diversity in the Linearbandkeramik: 117-140
isotopic evidence from the skeletons
Richard P Evershed Exploiting molecular and isotopic signals at the Mesolithic-Neolithic 141-164
transition
Ruth Bollongino & Joachim Burger Neolithic cattle domestication as seen from ancient DNA 165-187
Anne Tresset & Jean-Denis Vigne Substitution of species, techniques and symbols at the Mesolithic-Neolithic 189-210
transition in Western Europe
Pierre Allard The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the Paris Basin: a review 211-223
Grégor Marchand Neolithic fragrances : Mesolithic-Neolithic interactions in western France 225-242
Chris Scarre Changing places: monuments and the Neolithic transition in western France 243-261
Philippe Crombé & Bart Vanmontfort The neolithisation of the Scheldt basin in western Belgium 263-285
Leendert P Louwe Kooijmans The gradual transition to farming in the Lower Rhine Basin 287-309
Graeme Warren Mesolithic myths 311-328
Chris Tilley The Neolithic sensory revolution: monumentality and the experience of 329-345
landscape
Richard Bradley Houses, bodies and tombs 347-355
Amy Bogaard & Glynis Jones Neolithic farming in Britain and central Europe: contrast or continuity? 357-375
Alasdair Whittle The temporality of transformation: dating the early development of the 377-398
southern British Neolithic
Gill Hey & Alistair Barclay The Thames Valley in the late fifth and early fourth millennium cal BC: the 399-422
appearance of domestication and the evidence for change
Julian Thomas Mesolithic-Neolithic transitions in Britain: from essence to inhabitation 423-439
Alison Sheridan From Picardie to Pickering and Pencraig Hill? New information on the 441-492
'Carinated Bowl Neolithic' in northern Britain
Vicki Cummings From midden to megalith? The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western 493-510
Britain
Steven Mithen, Anne Pirie, Sam Smith & The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western Scotland: a review and new 511-541
Karen Wicks, evidence from Tiree
Gabriel Cooney Parallel worlds or multi-stranded identities? Considering the process of 543-566
'going over' in Ireland and the Irish Sea zone
Sönke Hartz, Harald Lübke & Thomas From fish and seal to sheep and cattle: new research into the process of 567-594
Terberger neolithisation in northern Germany
Lars Larsson Mistrust traditions, consider innovations? The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition 595-616
in southern Scandinavia
Alasdair Whittle Going over: people and their times 617-628
Preface
In proposing this conference to The British Academy I am grateful first to
fellow members of Section H7 for their encouragement, and especially to
Professor Paul Mellars for his advice and guidance.I would like to thank the
Research Committee and the Publications Committee of The British
Academy for their support,Angela Pusey for her help in the setting up of the
conference,and James Rivington and Amritpal Bangard for their help in the
publication of these papers. We are also grateful to Hilary Meeks for her
expert copy editing. The conference took place in Cardiff University on
16–18 May 2005,and I am grateful to my colleagues Liz Walker,Sue Virgo,
Ian Dennis and Steve Mills for their various inputs, as well as to Vicki
Cummings for her help throughout.Daniela Hofmann looked after registra-
tion and accounts, and she, Ollie Harris, Jessica Mills, Andy Cochrane and
Penny Bickle gave invaluable support during the conference itself. Finally,
Vicki and I would like to thank all the contributors for their efforts to submit
papers promptly and to schedule.
ALASDAIR WHITTLE
Cardiff School of History and Archaeology
Cardiff University
June 2006
Copyright © British Academy 2007 – all rights reserved
Introduction: transitions and
transformations
ALASDAIR WHITTLE & VICKI CUMMINGS
THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT, in the long run and on a global scale, the transi-
tion from hunter-gatherer existence to farming society has had profound con-
sequences for mankind. A world of vastly increased numbers, developed
social hierarchy, institutional diversity, technological innovation, and social
forms such as states and empires,is scarcely conceivable to us on the basis of
subsistence provided by hunting and gathering, even though there are inter-
esting examples of hunter-gatherer social complexity such as found on the
North-west Coast of America. In these terms, adopting farming, settling
down,and becoming Neolithic,constituted one of the big changes in human
history, with big consequences, the effects of which we are still experiencing
today.The transformation can even be seen in moral terms,as a kind of fall
from a state of grace in the world of hunters and foragers,where different val-
ues and ideals prevailed,promoting sharing among people,creatures and the
earth itself (Brody 2001): a view that resonates today in an era of humanly
induced climate change.
Archaeology can identify,in broad terms,when these processes of change
and their subsequent consequences began, in a series of regional early
Holocene sequences around the globe. The situation in Europe appears
dependent on earlier developments in the Near East. As far as central and
north-west Europe is concerned,we can state with some confidence,after well
over a century of research in many areas, that there were no farmers before
6000 cal BC,and very few hunter-gatherers after 4000 cal BCexcept in periph-
eral regions. Surely, the optimist might claim, we are getting better not only
at the timescales,but also at understanding the main features of transforma-
tion:the connections with south-east Europe and beyond there with the Near
East,the spread of agriculture,sedentism and related new material practices,
the adaptations and adoptions of the people already there in the face of or in
reaction to incoming population,and the resultant,steady increase in social
complexity. Some might even argue that we are getting better at grasping
the major mechanisms and stimuli of change, such as leapfrog or targeted
Proceedings ofthe British Academy144,1–4,© The British Academy 2007.
Copyright © British Academy 2007 – all rights reserved
2 Alasdair Whittle & Vicki Cummings
colonisation in search of prime conditions for agricultural life, on the one
hand,or responses to abrupt and major alterations in climatic conditions,on
the other.
In this perspective,the terms of debate have long been fixed,and the task
is to sift existing evidence and to win new data,in order further to refine the
timescales—above all to grasp the moment of transition from one kind of
existence to another—and to weigh in the balance the competing claims,
region by region, for a dominant role by colonisers or indigenous people.
That kind of debate has certainly been more complicated since the contribu-
tion of indigenous people was seriously acknowledged,which we could date
back to the appearance of the Man the huntervolume (Lee & DeVore 1968).
It has also become more interesting over the last 30–40 years as more and
more evidence has been made available, region by region, by a combination
of research and contract/rescue investigations.
How long-term processes have ended,however,does not tell us automat-
ically how they began.The consequence of this teleological fallacy is that our
narratives are given a predetermined form,shaped by long-term outcomes on
the one hand and a globalising perspective on the other.We therefore tend to
look for particular moments of transition, to privilege certain features such
as subsistence, residence, population and social complexity from the outset
and to discuss north-west Europe in the terms of everywhere else. What if
other things were in play in our particular area (and indeed elsewhere),inclu-
ding novel ways of thinking about the world,about time,about identity and
about sociality? What if the connections with elsewhere were not so much to
do with dependence as contingency:making use of what happened to become
available through other histories? What if new practices could be adopted
while existing, older ways of thinking—about self, others and the natural
world—were still dominant? What if the processes of change required or
resulted in complex mergings of both identity and practice,which our essen-
tialising labels of hunter-gatherers versus farmers, or worse still Mesolithic
versus Neolithic, are simply inadequate to signify? What if we started with
the radical premise that most or all societies in the post-glacial period—
whatever their subsistence or technological base—were normally in a state of
transformation, which would offer a quite different perspective on the holy
grail of finding moments of Mesolithic-Neolithic transition?
With these starting points,our enquiry in north-west Europe could trans-
form itself from being a footnote to large-scale,global processes whose char-
acter and consequences had already been largely determined, and become
instead a detailed, particularising case study of change in specific human
societies, in particular times and places. As such, it can be seen as a contri-
bution also to contemporary debate in archaeology about the play between
Copyright © British Academy 2007 – all rights reserved
INTRODUCTION 3
agency and structure, the place of individual actors, and the meaning and
significance of diversity.
The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition has been investigated in Denmark for
some 150 years (Fischer & Kristiansen 2002), and Enlightenment philoso-
phers such as Rousseau and Hume had already speculated extensively about
the shape and nature of social development.The dominant twentieth-century
trope was rapid and extensive change brought from the outside,but in north-
west and central Europe an allowance for the contribution of indigenous
people can be traced back to the effects of Lee and DeVore (1968), sugges-
tions by figures such as Humphrey Case (1976) and Pieter Modderman
(1988), and modelling by Marek Zvelebil and Peter Rowley-Conwy (1986),
among others.Other important and relevant recent theoretical trends to note
include debates on agency (e.g.Barrett 2001),dwelling (e.g.Ingold 2000) and
personhood (e.g. Fowler 2004; cf. Bailey & Whittle 2005; Pluciennik 1998).
Because the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition has long been in focus,there have
been many reviews of it, which it is not our intention here to list in detail.
There have been other good, recent collections of papers, but with either
rather broad European (e.g. Ammerman & Biagi 2003; Price 2000) or more
concentrated regional coverage (e.g.Marchand & Tresset 2005;Zvelebil et al.
1998).We have to go much further back in the literature to find a compara-
ble regional coverage to that offered in the papers here, to the ‘closed shop’
of the former Atlantic Colloquium (e.g. Palaeohistoria 12 of 1966, and de
Laet 1976).
While we have arranged the order of papers largely on a geographical
basis,this volume also offers a wider range of approaches,which we believe
is another distinctive feature.It was as important for us to include discussion
of isotopic and aDNA analyses or plant remains and animal bone assem-
blages,for example,as to assemble a coherent regional coverage from north-
ern Spain to southern Scandinavia. It has not been possible for every
thematic treatment presented at the conference itself to be included in the
volume, and if space were not a limitation we could have commissioned yet
more regional syntheses.We do not claim that the volume as a whole presents
a new consensus on the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in north-west
Europe.Some authors argue vigorously for the colonisation model (see also
Rowley-Conwy 2004),and others just as strongly for the indigenist perspec-
tive;some at least may agree with our own view of the complexities involved
and the likely resultant fusions of identities and practices.All would agree,we
think,about the diversity of the processes involved,and that sense of varia-
tion on not a single but several themes will act,we hope,as a spur to further
investigation and interpretation of this most intriguing and challenging of
changes.
Copyright © British Academy 2007 – all rights reserved
4 Alasdair Whittle & Vicki Cummings
REFERENCES
AMMERMAN,A.J.& BIAGI,P.(eds) 2003.The widening harvest.The Neolithic transition in
Europe:looking back,looking forward.Boston:American Institute ofArchaeology.
BAILEY,D.& WHITTLE,A.2005.Unsettling the Neolithic:breaking down concepts,bound-
aries and origins.In D.Bailey,A.Whittle & V.Cummings (eds),(un)settling the Neolithic,
1–7.Oxford:Oxbow.
BARRETT,J.C.2001.Agency,the duality of structure,and the problem of the archaeological
record.In I.Hodder (ed.),Archaeological theory today,141–64.Oxford:Blackwell.
BRODY,H.2001.The other side ofEden:hunter-gatherers,farmers and the shaping ofthe world.
London:Faber and Faber.
CASE,H.J.1976.Acculturation and the Earlier Neolithic in western Europe.In S.J.de Laet
(ed.),Acculturation and continuity in Atlantic Europe,45–58.Brugge:de Tempel.
DE LAET,S.J.(ed.) 1976.Acculturation and continuity in Atlantic Europe.Brugge:de Tempel.
FISCHER,A.& KRISTIANSEN,K.(eds) 2002.The Neolithisation of Denmark.150 years of
debate.Sheffield:J.R.Collis Publications.
FOWLER, C. 2004. The archaeology of personhood: an anthropological approach. London:
Routledge.
INGOLD, T. 2000. The perception of the environment: essays in livelihood, dwelling and skill.
London:Routledge.
LEE,R.B.& DEVORE,I.(eds) 1968.Man the hunter.Chicago:Aldine.
MARCHAND,G.& TRESSET,A.(eds) 2005.Unité et diversité du processus de Néolithisation
de la façade atlantique de l’Europe (7e–4emillénaires avant notre ère).Paris:Mémoire 36 de
la Société Préhistorique Française.
MODDERMAN,P.J.R.1988.The Linear Pottery culture:diversity in uniformity.Berichten van
het Rijksdienst voor Oudheidkundig Bodemonderzoek38,63–140.
PLUCIENNIK,M.1998.Deconstructing ‘the Neolithic’in the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition.
In M.Edmonds & C.Richards (eds),Understanding the Neolithic of north-western Europe,
61–83.Glasgow:Cruithne Press.
PRICE,T.D.(ed.) 2000.Europe’s first farmers.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
ROWLEY-CONWY,P.2004.How the west was lost:a reconsideration ofagricultural origins in
Britain,Ireland and southern Scandinavia.Current Anthropology45,Supplement August-
October 2004,83–113.
ZVELEBIL,M.,DENNELL,R.& DOMAN´SKA,L.(eds) 1998.Harvesting the sea,farming
the forest: the emergence of Neolithic societies in the Baltic region. Sheffield: Sheffield
Academic Press.
ZVELEBIL,M.& ROWLEY-CONWY,P.1986.Foragers and farmers in Atlantic Europe.In
M.Zvelebil (ed.),Hunters in transition:Mesolithic societies in temperate Eurasia and their
transition to farming,67–93.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.
Copyright © British Academy 2007 – all rights reserved
From Mesolithic to Neolithic
modes of thought
ALAN BARNARD
THIS PAPER HAS ITS ORIGIN in the comparative study of an observed
‘Mesolithic’to ‘Neolithic’-type transition (actually in African tool-tradition
terms,Later Stone Age to Iron Age):the present-day shift from hunting and
gathering to agro-pastoralism in southern Africa. But before entering into
comparisons between Europe and Africa,let me make two disclaimers.First,
the paper is not specifically concerned with theories of the spread of herding
or farming.Indeed,my model is not contingent on any particular perspective
in archaeological theory or model of neolithisation (such as ‘wave of
advance’or ‘indigenous development’). It could prove useful under various
theoretical banners in reinterpreting aspects of the archaeological record
with reference to economics, sociality, politics, land use, and inter-group
interactions in the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. Secondly, the paper is
concerned not with direct ethnographic analogy, but rather with relational
analogy.
A relational analogy involves comparable archaeological periods, and it
involvesequivalentsetsof structuralrelations.Comparableheremeansliter-
ally compare-able; it does not mean identical. The pitfalls of crude ethno-
graphicanalogyareavoidedbecausethemodelisstructuralandnotdependent
onethnographicorarchaeologicaldetail.
SOUTHERN AFRICAN/EUROPEAN COMPARISONS
My own field of research is as a social anthropologist among hunter-
gatherers, part-time hunter-gatherers, and former hunter-gatherers (and
some herding groups) in southern Africa. These groups are comparable in
many ways to north-west European Mesolithic populations.The surrounding
agro-pastoral populations are similarly comparable to European Neolithic
peoples.
Proceedings ofthe British Academy144,5–19,© The British Academy 2007.
Copyright © British Academy 2007 – all rights reserved
6 Alan Barnard
A word on the history of archaeology in the two regions is worthwhile.In
north-west Europe,the term ‘Neolithic’is attributed to Lubbock (1865,1–2),
who made the contrast between the Neolithic and Palaeolithic ages.
‘Mesolithic’was first used a year later,by Westrop,though what he described
was more the Upper Palaeolithic than what we call today the Mesolithic.
Piette in the 1880s and 1890s began to uncover the Mesolithic as we know it,
but used other terms for the periods he described (Bahn 1996,122–3;Daniel
1975,123–30).Read (1911,347) mentions the ‘Mesolithic’(in inverted com-
mas) as an attempt to bridge the gap between Palaeolithic and Neolithic,but
asserts that ‘it would not seem probable that the missing links will occur at all
events as far north as Britain’.
In southern Africa,early archaeologists sought to fit what they found into
European paradigms (Deacon 1990). Scholars at first used the terms
‘Palaeolithic’ and ‘Neolithic’, though the Cambridge anthropologist A. C.
Haddon, on a visit in 1905, argued that South African archaeology must
develop its own understandings of its ‘Stone Age’.Leading amateur archae-
ologists of the following decade, such as Johnson and Péringey, would only
go half way and used a mixture of local and European terminology.Péringey
died in 1924, and this gave the first professional, A. J. H. Goodwin, the
chance to go through his collection. Goodwin first presented his specifically
southern African typology in 1925,and by 1929 his detailed classification of
Stone Age cultures was complete (Goodwin & Van Riet Lowe 1929).It is the
one still in use.
The comparable ages then are,for Europe the modified Lubbock scheme
with Mesolithic and Neolithic,and for southern Africa the Goodwin scheme
comprising for our purposes here his Later Stone Age (or Late Stone Age,in
contemporary ethnography, Bushmen or San) and the Iron Age (Bantu-
speaking agro-pastoralists). I stress that the southern African Later Stone
Age is analogous to the European Mesolithic,not the Neolithic.The south-
ern African Iron Age is analogous to the European Neolithic, not the
European Iron Age (in modern usage,southern Africa has no ‘Neolithic’and
no ‘Bronze Age’).
NEOLITHISATION:MODELS FROM SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
The next question, if I can employ the word ‘neolithisation’ in a southern
African context,is when such ‘neolithisation’began there among its hunter-
gatherer population. The traditional view among southern African ethnog-
raphers of so-called Bushman or San groups (actually a diverse set of
populations) is that it begins now; processes comparable to neolithisation
have been witnessed a great many times by several ethnographers in the last
Copyright © British Academy 2007 – all rights reserved