scholarly journals Becoming Neolithic. The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition and its impact on the flint and stone industry at Swifterbant (the Netherlands)

2008 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 131-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Izabel Devriendt
Keyword(s):  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Subsistence Strategy ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Neolithic Transition ◽  
Swifterbant Culture ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Grinding Stones ◽  
Stone Industry ◽  
Cereal Cultivation

The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition is traditionally defined by a change in subsistence strategy. New ideas are picked up, and animal husbandry and cereal cultivation are adopted as hunter-gatherers evolve. This article examines whether these economic changes stand on their own or lead to changes in other aspects of life. The study will illustrate the innovations in the flint and stone industry (including ornaments) during the Swifterbant period (5000–3400 BC). These include changing debitage techniques and preferences, and the abandonment of the micro-burin technique, but also the introduction of grinding stones, polished axes and amber ornaments. The significance of these new features will be investigated as characteristics of the changing identity of the Swifterbant Culture.

Continuity or change?

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liz Henty
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Small Area ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Neolithic Transition ◽  
The Bronze Age

General archaeological accounts of Scotland tend to demonstrate broad ideas of the Neolithic transition to farming and the subsequent economic changes in the Bronze Age. Whilst they concentrate on important economic and cultural advancement they tend to lack discussions on cosmological change. This paper looks at one small area in Aberdeenshire to examine four different classes of monument that are found there: long mounds and long cairns; Recumbent Stone Circles; henges and Beaker burial sites. It argues that skyscape archaeology, through the use of archaeoastronomical techniques, can provide clues to cosmological change.

scholarly journals The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western Scotland and its European context

2002 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Bonsall ◽  
D. E. Anderson ◽  
M. G. Macklin
Keyword(s):  
Winter Precipitation ◽  
North West ◽  
Neolithic Transition ◽  
European Context ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Cereal Cultivation

The transition is considered in terms of four related questions: (i) HOW did the shift from foraging to farming happen? (ii) WHY did it happen? (iii) WHEN did it happen? (iv) WHY did it happen WHEN it did? The adoption of farming coincided with a shift to a more continental-type climate with lower winter precipitation, which improved the prospects for cereal cultivation. It is sug- gested that this was a key factor in the transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic across north-west Eu- rope as a whole.

The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in western Scotland: a review and new evidence from Tiree

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Mithen ◽  
Anne Pirie ◽  
Sam Smith ◽  
Karen Wicks
Keyword(s):  
Settlement Patterns ◽  
Skeletal Remains ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Population Replacement ◽  
Dietary Analysis ◽  
Neolithic Transition ◽  
Contradictory Evidence ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Existing Data

Although both the Mesolithic and Neolithic of western Scotland have been studied since the early 20th century, our knowledge of both periods remains limited, as does our understanding of the transition between them – whether this is entirely cultural in nature or involves the arrival of new Neolithic populations and the demise of the indigenous Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. The existing data provide seemingly contradictory evidence, with that from dietary analysis of skeletal remains suggesting population replacement and that from settlement and technology indicating continuity. After reviewing this evidence, this chapter briefly describes ongoing fieldwork in the Inner Hebrides that aims to gain a more complete understanding of Mesolithic settlement patterns, without which there can only be limited progress on understanding the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition.

From Paleolithic Wild Boar to Neolithic Pigs

2020 ◽  
pp. 27-47
Author(s):  
Max D. Price
Keyword(s):  
Wild Boar ◽  
Close Relationships ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Game Management ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Domestic Pigs ◽  
Reliable Source ◽  
Early Relationships

Wild boar are dangerous animals that Paleolithic peoples hunted infrequently for the first million years of human-suid contact. Projectile weapons, nets, and the domestication of dogs allowed Natufian hunter-gatherers (12,500–9700 BC) to find in wild boar a reliable source of food. By the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (9700–8500 BC), human populations had developed close relationships with local wild boar. Intensive hunting or perhaps game management took place at Hallan Çemi in Anatolia, and the introduction of wild boar to Cyprus by at latest 9400 BC indicates the willingness of humans to capture and transport wild boar. At the same time, the presence of sedentary villages and the waste they produced likely attracted wild boar to human habitats. These early relationships between people and suids—game management and commensalism—evolved over the course of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic into full-fledged animal husbandry that, by around 7500 BC, had selected for domestic pigs.

scholarly journals The global geography of human subsistence

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 171897 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Gavin ◽  
Patrick H. Kavanagh ◽  
Hannah J. Haynie ◽  
Claire Bowern ◽  
Carol R. Ember ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Strong Support ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Foraging Strategies ◽  
Human History ◽  
Subsistence Strategy ◽  
Essential Characteristic ◽  
Global Pattern ◽  
Model Inference ◽  
Historical Factors ◽  
Human Subsistence

How humans obtain food has dramatically reshaped ecosystems and altered both the trajectory of human history and the characteristics of human societies. Our species' subsistence varies widely, from predominantly foraging strategies, to plant-based agriculture and animal husbandry. The extent to which environmental, social and historical factors have driven such variation is currently unclear. Prior attempts to resolve long-standing debates on this topic have been hampered by an over-reliance on narrative arguments, small and geographically narrow samples, and by contradictory findings. Here we overcome these methodological limitations by applying multi-model inference tools developed in biogeography to a global dataset (818 societies). Although some have argued that unique conditions and events determine each society's particular subsistence strategy, we find strong support for a general global pattern in which a limited set of environmental, social and historical factors predicts an essential characteristic of all human groups: how we obtain our food.

The Anthropological Context of Euskaro-Caucasian

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Bengtson
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
Human Genetics ◽  
Animal Husbandry ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Caucasus Region ◽  
The North ◽  
Caucasian Family ◽  
Balkan Region ◽  
Spread Of Agriculture

The hypothesis that the Basque language is genetically related to languages in the Caucasus region was developed in the 20th century by respected scholars including C. C. Uhlenbeck, Georges Dumézil, and René Lafon, but has recently fallen into disfavour. The author defends the Euskaro-Caucasian hypothesis in a refined model in which Basque (Euskara) is most closely related to the North Caucasian language family (but not “South Caucasian” = Kartvelian). It is maintained that this hypothesis is not only linguistically convincing, supported by hundreds of basic etymologies, sound correspondences, and shared morphology, but is also consistent with recent results in archaeology and human genetics. Among the Euskaro-Caucasian etymologies is a significant number involving small and large cattle, swine, dairying, grain and pulse crops, and tools and methods of processing crops. These lexical fields are consistent with the spread of agriculture and animal husbandry to Western Europe by means of colonisation by bearers of the Cardial (Impressed Ware) Culture who came from the Anatolian (or possibly Balkan) region, and spoke a language related to Proto-North Caucasian. The well-known genetic distinctiveness of the Basques is a result of centuries of low population size, genetic drift and endogamy, rather than purely Paleolithic ancestry. The present-day Basque people represent a genetic amalgam of the Cardial colonists with indigenous hunter-gatherers, but their Euskaro-Caucasian language is colonial, not indigenous, in origin. Basque is the sole remaining descendant of the Euskaro-Caucasian family in Western Europe, but there is evidence (in the form of substratum words) that this colonial language was formerly more widely spread in other nearby regions (Sardinia, parts of Iberia, France, the Alps, Italy, the Balkans, and perhaps beyond).

scholarly journals Early seventh-millennium AMS dates from domestic seeds in the Initial Neolithic at Franchthi Cave (Argolid, Greece)

Antiquity ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 87 (338) ◽  
pp. 1001-1015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Perlès ◽  
Anita Quiles ◽  
Hélène Valladas
Keyword(s):  
Aegean Sea ◽  
Northern Greece ◽  
Crop Species ◽  
Neolithic Transition ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
South Eastern Europe ◽  
European Neolithic ◽  
Key Sites ◽  
Southern Greece ◽  
Cereal Cultivation

When, and by what route, did farming first reach Europe? A terrestrial model might envisage a gradual advance around the northern fringes of the Aegean, reaching Thrace and Macedonia before continuing southwards to Thessaly and the Peloponnese. New dates from Franchthi Cave in southern Greece, reported here, cast doubt on such a model, indicating that cereal cultivation, involving newly introduced crop species, began during the first half of the seventh millennium BC. This is earlier than in northern Greece and several centuries earlier than in Bulgaria, and suggests that farming spread to south-eastern Europe by a number of different routes, including potentially a maritime, island-hopping connection across the Aegean Sea. The results also illustrate the continuing importance of key sites such as Franchthi to our understanding of the European Neolithic transition, and the additional insights that can emerge from the application of new dating projects to these sites.

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