scholarly journals A Meeting in the Forest: Hunters and Farmers at the Coneybury ‘Anomaly’, Wiltshire

2018 ◽  
Vol 84 ◽  
pp. 111-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt J. Gron ◽  
Peter ROWLEY-CONWY ◽  
Eva Fernandez-Dominguez ◽  
Darren R. Gröcke ◽  
Janet Montgomery ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Stone Tools ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
Faunal Assemblage ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Domestic Species ◽  
Regional Community ◽  
Local Hunter ◽  
Isotope Analyses ◽  
Lines Of Evidence ◽  
Local Farmers

The Coneybury ‘Anomaly’ is an Early Neolithic pit located just south-east of Stonehenge, Wiltshire. Excavations recovered a faunal assemblage unique in its composition, consisting of both wild and domestic species, as well as large quantities of ceramics and stone tools, including a substantial proportion of blades/bladelets. We present a suite of new isotope analyses of the faunal material, together with ancient DNA sex determination, and reconsider the published faunal data to ask: What took place at Coneybury, and who was involved? We argue on the basis of multiple lines of evidence that Coneybury represents the material remains of a gathering organised by a regional community, with participants coming from different areas. One group of attendees provided deer instead of, or in addition to, cattle. We conclude that the most likely scenario is that this group comprised local hunter-gatherers who survived alongside local farmers.

Roots of diversity in aLinearbandkeramikcommunity: isotope evidence at Aiterhofen (Bavaria, Germany)

Antiquity ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 85 (330) ◽  
pp. 1243-1258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Penny Bickle ◽  
Daniela Hofmann ◽  
R. Alexander Bentley ◽  
Robert Hedges ◽  
Julie Hamilton ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Central Europe ◽  
Isotope Analysis ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Mobility Strategies ◽  
Isotope Evidence ◽  
Burial Rites ◽  
Local Hunter

The early Neolithic in northern Central Europe ought to be the theatre in which incoming farmers meet local hunter-gatherers, with greater or lesser impact. By way of contrast, the authors use isotope analysis in a cemetery beside the Danube to describe a peaceful, well-integrated community with a common diet and largely indigenous inhabitants. Men and women may have had different mobility strategies, but the isotopes did not signal special origins or diverse food-producing roles. Other explanations attend the variations in the burial rites of individuals and their distribution into cemetery plots.

Houses and burials at Lepenski Vir

2000 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 330-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivana Radovanović
Keyword(s):  
Dietary Change ◽  
Spatial Patterning ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Burial Practices ◽  
Archaeological Material ◽  
Burial Practice ◽  
Local Hunter

Houses and burials recorded in the settlements of Lepenski Vir I and II and burials previously ascribed to Lepenski Vir III are here discussed in view of the recent analyses of archaeological material and re-analyses of the field burial record from this site. Evidence of pottery in situ in houses of Lepenski Vir I, together with the evidence for important dietary change in the Lepenski Vir community in the course of the second half of the seventh millennium cal BC, reinforces the assumption, made by a number of scholars over several previous decades, of intensive contacts between early Neolithic groups and local hunter-gatherers. Burial practice throughout the seventh and sixth millennia cal BC at Lepenski Vir is thus reanalyzed in this new light. Apart from burials unrelated to architectural remains, five ‘types’ of burial deposition are noted in relation to houses of Lepenski Vir I–II, all but one having a distinct chronological and spatial patterning. The inhabitants' choice of mode of deposition of the deceased is always associated with a certain location in the settlement, sometimes used over several centuries. In the course of their history, these locations were often used for building a particular house or group of houses. The content of such houses is also discussed wherever it was possible. Duality in settlement organization could also be recognized in the burial practices related to settlement architecture. The attribution of the majority of burial remains to early Neolithic Lepenski Vir III is here also questioned in the light of new data and reinterpreted settlement sequences.

scholarly journals Herbivore diets and the anthropogenic environment of early farming in southern Scandinavia

The Holocene ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt J Gron ◽  
Peter Rowley-Conwy
Keyword(s):  
Early Period ◽  
Bone Collagen ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
Human Influence ◽  
Domestic Species ◽  
Southern Scandinavia ◽  
Early Farming ◽  
Dietary Variation ◽  
Funnel Beaker Culture ◽  
Feeding Environments

Farming practice in the first period of the southern Scandinavian Neolithic (Early Neolithic I, Funnel Beaker Culture, 3950–3500 cal. BC) is not well understood. Despite the presence of the first farmers and their domesticated plants and animals, little evidence of profound changes to the landscape such as widespread deforestation has emerged from this crucial early period. Bone collagen dietary stable isotope ratios of wild herbivores from southern Scandinavia are here analysed in order to determine the expected range of dietary variation across the landscape. Coupled with previously published isotope data, differences in dietary variation between wild and domestic species indicate strong human influence on the choice and creation of feeding environments for cattle. In context with palynological and zooarchaeological data, we demonstrate that a human-built agricultural environment was present from the outset of farming in the region, and such a pattern is consistent with the process by which expansion agriculture moves into previously unfarmed regions.

scholarly journals From the Epipalaeolithic into the earliest Neolithic (PPNA) in the South Levant

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 36-52
Author(s):  
Anna Belfer-Cohen ◽  
Nigel Goring-Morris
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Southern Levant ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
The South ◽  
Terminal Pleistocene ◽  
Lines Of Evidence

This paper examines the nature of initial neolithisation indications during the terminal Pleistocene and earliest Holocene in the Southern Levant. This interval corresponds to a period of significant and geographically variable environmental changes in the region. Various lines of evidence are provided to demonstrate the long durée (c. 15 000 years) character of interactions during the Early, Middle and Late Epipalaeolithic that were instrumental to the emergence of the fullyfledged agricultural life ways in the later phases of the Early Neolithic (PPNB).

scholarly journals Effect of population structure and migration when investigating genetic continuity using ancient DNA

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
NM Silva ◽  
S Kreutzer ◽  
C Papageorgopoulou ◽  
M Currat
Keyword(s):  
Population Structure ◽  
Ancient Dna ◽  
Isolated Populations ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Genetic Continuity ◽  
Population Continuity ◽  
Local Hunter ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Genetic Pool

AbstractRecent advances in sequencing techniques provide means to access direct genetic snapshots from the past with ancient DNA data (aDNA) from diverse periods of human prehistory. Comparing samples taken in the same region but at different time periods may indicate if there is continuity in the peopling history of that area or if a large genetic input, such as an immigration wave, has occurred. Here we propose a new modeling approach for investigating population continuity using aDNA, including two fundamental elements in human evolution that were absent from previous methods: population structure and migration. The method also considers the extensive temporal and geographic heterogeneity commonly found in aDNA datasets. We compare our spatially-explicit approach to the previous non-spatial method and show that it is more conservative and thus suitable for testing population continuity, especially when small, isolated populations, such as prehistoric ones, are considered. Moreover, our approach also allows investigating partial population continuity and we apply it to a real dataset of ancient mitochondrial DNA. We estimate that 91% of the current genetic pool in central Europe entered the area with immigrant Neolithic farmers, but a genetic contribution of local hunter-gatherers as large as 83% cannot be entirely ruled out.

Late Foragers and First Farmers (8000–3700 BC)

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bradley ◽  
Colin Haselgrove ◽  
Marc Vander Linden ◽  
Leo Webley
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Neolithic Period ◽  
Monumental Architecture ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Subsistence Economy ◽  
North West ◽  
Wild Resources ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Different Parts

This chapter spans an important period division. It considers both the ‘Mesolithic’ hunter-gatherers of the study area, and the first ‘Neolithic’ farmers. The relationship between them is one of the most important issues to be investigated by prehistoric archaeology, but it is also one of the most contentious. The period between 8000 and 3700 BC saw the change from a reliance on wild resources to a new subsistence economy based on the ownership of domesticated plants and animals. It must have involved completely new forms of social organization. The transition between these phases occurred at different times in different parts of north-west Europe, but in all instances it is where two distinctive kinds of scholarship impinge on one another. To some extent the distinction between these kinds of research is determined by the kinds of evidence that are available. For the most part Mesolithic activity is characterized by hearths, scatters of stone tools, shell middens, and other food remains. In some regions there are graves, but traces of domestic buildings are comparatively rare. There is little sign of more monumental structures. The Neolithic period, on the other hand, is characterized by durable wooden houses, enclosures, mounds, and stone-built tombs, and by a much wider range of artefacts. This contrast has implications for the kinds of research that can be undertaken. With notable exceptions, students of the Mesolithic are most concerned with food production, settlement patterns, and lithic technology and place a particular emphasis on ecology and adaptation. Specialists on the Neolithic period do not neglect these fields, but they are also able to consider monumental architecture. Because they can draw on a wider range of data, their studies extend to ritual and social organization in a way that is more difficult to achieve in the archaeology of foragers. That contrast has become even wider with recent increases in the scale of fieldwork. Mesolithic sites contain comparatively few subsoil features and are difficult to detect by remote sensing or sample excavation.

Genetic Discontinuity Between Local Hunter-Gatherers and Central Europe's First Farmers

Science ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 326 (5949) ◽  
pp. 137-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Bramanti ◽  
M. G. Thomas ◽  
W. Haak ◽  
M. Unterlaender ◽  
P. Jores ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Genetic Discontinuity ◽  
Local Hunter

The Bantu Expansion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koen Bostoen
Keyword(s):  
Late Holocene ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Stone Tools ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Bantu Languages ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Eastern And Southern Africa

The Bantu Expansion stands for the concurrent dispersal of Bantu languages and Bantu-speaking people from an ancestral homeland situated in the Grassfields region in the borderland between current-day Nigeria and Cameroon. During their initial migration across most of Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa, which took place between approximately 5,000 and 1,500 years ago, Bantu speech communities not only introduced new languages in the areas where they immigrated but also new lifestyles, in which initially technological innovations such as pottery making and the use of large stone tools played an important role as did subsequently also farming and metallurgy. Wherever early Bantu speakers started to develop a sedentary way of life, they left an archaeologically visible culture. Once settled, Bantu-speaking newcomers strongly interacted with autochthonous hunter-gatherers, as is still visible in the gene pool and/or the languages of certain present-day Bantu speech communities. The driving forces behind what is the principal linguistic, cultural, and demographic process in Late Holocene Africa are still a matter of debate, but it is increasingly accepted that the climate-induced destruction of the rainforest in West Central Africa around 2,500 years ago gave a boost to the Bantu Expansion.

Isotopic Evidence for Early Maize Cultivation in New York State

1977 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. Vogel ◽  
Nikolaas J. Van Der Merwe
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York State ◽  
Arid Environments ◽  
Plant Food ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
York State ◽  
Maize Cultivation ◽  
Archaeological Materials ◽  
Type C ◽  
Local Hunter

Plants metabolize carbon dioxide photosynthetically either through a 3-carbon (Calvin) or 4-carbon pathway. Most plants are of the C-3 type; C-4 plants are primarily grasses adapted to hot, arid environments. Since C-4 plants have a higher 13C/12C ratio than C-3 plants, animals and humans with a significant C-4 plant food-intake will have higher 13C/12C ratios as well. Maize is a C-4 plant, hence maize cultivators living in predominantly C-3 plant environments should show significant isotopic differences from local hunter-gatherers in their skeletal remains; the importance of maize in their diet should also be measurable. The practicability of this method is demonstrated for New York State archaeological materials and wider implications are mentioned.

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