Closing round-table of the MSH Mondes project iNSTaNT

Documenta …, 2007

2020

One of the last chapters in the long course of human evolution was the shift from hunting and gathering to the production of food or strategies of subsistence based on farming and the herding of animals. In Southwest Asia, the first steps towards the origins of agriculture began some 12,000 years ago and then spread over most regions of Europe during the span of time from about 10,400 years ago (the start of the so-called PPNB on the island of Cyprus) through around 6,000 years ago. The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview on the research that we have done on the question of the Neolithic transition in Europe, which began when Luca CavalliSforza, a leading figure in the field of human population genetics, and I began to work in collaboration at the University of Pavia in November of 1970. This draft forms the basis of my paper as part of the Festschrift prepared for the 45th anniversary of Ryszard Grygiel and Peter Bogucki's scientific cooperation.

R. Gleser/D. Hofmann, Contacts, boundaries and innovation in the 5th millennium, 2019

The article follows the methodological approach to define - not a "culture" - but "ceramic styles", then dating this "style groups" by radiometric dates and then map epirossen and Michelsberg ceramics on the level of vessels. This was done for Baden-Württemberg in the South of Germany, showing a rather mixed picture of styles for the horizon MK I, followed by "closed" style regions during horizon MK II. This was interpreted on the level of "function of decorated vessels", as only this part of "material culture" was investigated. The idea is, decorated vessels lost by and by their place and importance for social interactions, but got more a reaffirmative function for group identity. The fifth millennium is characterized by far-flung contacts and a veritable flood of innovations. While its beginning is still strongly reminiscent of a broadly Line-arbandkeramik way of life, at its end we find new, interregionally valid forms of symbolism, representation and ritual behaviour, changes in the settlement system, in architecture and in routine life. Yet, these interregional tendencies are paired with a profusion of increasingly small-scale archaeological cultures, many of them defined through pottery only. This tension between large-scale interaction and more local developments remains ill understood, largely because interregional comparisons are lacking. Contributors in this volume provide up-to-date regional overviews of the main developments in the fifth millennium and discuss, amongst others, in how far ceramically-defined 'cultures' can be seen as spatially coherent social groups with their own way of life and worldview, and how processes of innovation can be understood. Case studies range from the Neolithisation of the Netherlands, hunter-gatherer-farmer fusions in the Polish Lowlands, to the Italian Neolithic. Amongst others, they cover the circulation of stone disc-rings in western Europe, the formation of post-LBK societies in central Europe and the reliability of pottery as an indicator for social transformations.

Quaternary International, 2020

This special issue of Quaternary International contains a selection of contributions from the international Conference entitled “LBK & Vinča - Formation and Transformation of Early Neolithic Lifestyles in Europe in the second half of the 6th millennium BC” held from 21st to 23rd of March, 2019 in Tübingen (Germany).

The essay describes major movements of people and ideas in central and eastern Europe during the sixth to third millennium BC. For the sixth millennium, Neolithization itself is the main issue, the debate about which reflects changing attitudes in central European archaeology over the past two decades. The spread of a solarcosmological ideology is suggested at the beginning of the fifth millennium, manifested in circular enclosures with astronomical orientations. In the late fifth and early fourth millennium the Neolithic economy and areas of habitation are considerably enlarged in central Europe, suggesting new agricultural techniques. The later fourth and early third millennium was a time of far-reaching innovation with the development of wheeled transport; in contrast to earlier opinions an origin in the Pontic steppe zone seems highly probable. The latest large-scale movement of ideas and/or people considered here is the diffusion of the Corded Ware culture, and with it, a new gender-specific ideology, reflected in its rigid burial customs.

2014

Since that time, a whole series of models of the process of Neolithisation in europe has been developed. These models, whether one-sided or complex and attempting to detail the transition from a foraging lifestyle to a productive economy, can be divided into three main groups depending on whether local (hunter-gatherer communities) or foreign populations (early farmers) play the decisive role: 1. the first group explains the appearance of the Neolithic in europe through the arrival of colonists from the already Neolithised regions of the Near east and south-east europe (the diffusionist model and the migration model). This view was treated in detail by Childe in his book The Dawn of European Civilisation, published in London in 192 , and was for long the dominant paradigm. 2. the second group of models envisages the beginnings of the productive economy as the uptake of Neolithic ideas by the local forager populations (the acculturation model). 3. the last group accords importance to...

Archaeopress Archaeology, 2021

A large amount of papers have been proposed during the 18th UISPP Congress. It has become tradition to propose that some of them be presented in general sessions for each period, and one of these sessions was dedicated to the Neolithic and the Bronze age. Here we present eight papers related to this session, the majority concerning the Neolithi and one the Bronze age period.Neolithic studies are promoted on behalf of the UISPP Commission ‘Neolithic Civilizations of the Mediterranean and Europe‘ during the 18th Congress, and a large amount of communications have been proposed in many sessions.

2020

One of the last chapters in the long course of human evolution was the shift from hunting and gathering to the production of food or strategies of subsistence based on farming and the herding of animals. In Southwest Asia, the first steps towards the origins of agriculture began some 12,000 years ago and then spread over most regions of Europe during the span of time from about 10,400 years ago (the start of the so-called PPNB on the island of Cyprus) through around 6,000 years ago. The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview on the research that we have done on the question of the Neolithic transition in Europe, which began when Luca CavalliSforza, a leading figure in the field of human population genetics, and I began to work in collaboration at the University of Pavia in November of 1970. In a matter of a few days, we sketched out what would amount to taking a completely new approach to the problem (Ammerman 2003). Below more will be said about our first attempt at measurin...