BRONZE AGE ARCHAEOLOGY AND COSMOLOGY: DIALOGUES AT THE CROSSROADS

The article is a historiographical exposé on lifelong scientific dialogues between Klavs Randsborg and the author that have shaped the current understanding of Nordic Bronze Age beliefs. Through the demonstration of wide‐ranging contacts across Europe and beyond – till Egypt and Mesopotamia, the article shows how these interactions have nourished the Nordic cosmology and tastes and impacted local ideologies. Metals, amber and glass were not only coveted commodities but engines of lively communication networks.     

KLAVS AND THE KEPHALLENIA PROJECT

Klavs Randsborg undertook major and influential research in many epochs and countries. The present article focuses on his contribution to the landscape and town‐scape history of Greece through his impressive and thorough researches on the Ionian island of Kephallenia.     

ARCHAEOLOGY AND THE SEARCH FOR HOMERIC ITHACA: THE CASE OF MYCENAEAN KEPHALONIA

This short article on a large subject is presented as a tribute to Klavs Randsborg, because of his involvement in the 1990s with the archaeology of Kephalonia at the time of the resurgence of the debate over the identification of the island with Homeric Ithaca, to which he himself contributed some thoughts. It briefly traces the history of the controversy about the Homeric geography and topography from its origins and discusses the evidence that has made Kephalonia a contender for the homeland of Odysseus. The intention is not to offer yet another hypothesis about the location of Homeric Ithaca, but to consider and question the role of archaeology in the debate, in view of the high expectations of Homeric realists.     

Neolithic economy in central Europe

This article presents a survey of Neolithic economy, land use, trade, natural environment, and usage of plant and animal resources in central Europe, 5415–2240 B.C. (4500–1800 bc). Early, Middle A and B and Late Neolithic materials are summarized and compared. The earliest farmers expanded from southern Hungary and adjacent areas into central Europe over a relatively short time period, 100–200 years. They occupied areas only with good soils; thus probably hunters and gatherers continued to exist in many regions of central Europe. There is an increase in population and more upland areas are exploited for farming during the Middle Neolithic A and B periods. By the Middle Neolithic B period, low-level hierarchical or ranked societies appear in some regions of central Europe. The Late Neolithic may represent a modification of the mixed farming strategy observed during the earlier periods. Perhaps the herding of domestic animals became more important.     

RE‐THINKING TWO MID‐BYZANTINE CASTLES ON KEPHALLÉNIA

In the early to mid‐1990s in a pre‐GIS era, Klavs Randsborg with a team from the University of Copenhagen directed a wide‐ranging survey of the Ionian (Greek) island of Kephallénia. Randsborg punctiliously published the multi‐period sites he discovered, and analysed the results, paying special attention to the island's archaic Greek sites but also later medieval afterlife of certain of these sites, including the castles re‐occupying Paleókastro (Sami) and Pronnoi (2002). Since the Kephallénia survey was made, new research in the early 2000s on castles and Byzantine urbanism in the western Balkans has significantly expanded the base of knowledge. With this new evidence, it is now possible to provide new interpretations of the Paleókastro, Sami and Paleókastro, Pronnoi castles that in turn shed new light on the management of Kephallénia in the Mid‐Byzantine period.     

Mobility and Social Change: Understanding the European Neolithic Period after the Archaeogenetic Revolution

This paper discusses and synthesizes the consequences of the archaeogenetic revolution to our understanding of mobility and social change during the Neolithic period in Europe (6500–2000 BC). In spite of major obstacles to a productive integration of archaeological and anthropological knowledge with ancient DNA data, larger changes in the European gene pool are detected and taken as indications for large-scale migrations during two major periods: the Early Neolithic expansion into Europe (6500–4000 BC) and the third millennium BC “steppe migration.” Rather than massive migration events, I argue that both major genetic turnovers are better understood in terms of small-scale mobility and human movement in systems of population circulation, social fission and fusion of communities, and translocal interaction, which together add up to a large-scale signal. At the same time, I argue that both upticks in mobility are initiated by the two most consequential social transformations that took place in Eurasia, namely the emergence of farming, animal husbandry, and sedentary village life during the Neolithic revolution and the emergence of systems of centralized political organization during the process of urbanization and early state formation in southwest Asia.

     

Chenopodium Seeds in Open-Air Archaeological Sites – How to Not Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater

ABSTRACT

Differentiating between charred and uncharred plant remains may appear straightforward but for some taxa (here fat-hen, Chenopodium album type) can be very problematic. Recognition of the preservation state is obviously crucial for archaeobotanical data derived from dry, open-air sites. Fat-hen as a common weed, is also one of the most important components of a persistent soil seed bank. It is also a well-known food plant, gathered or cultivated. Numerous findings of fat-hen seeds in unclear states of preservation were noted in the Early Neolithic sites of the Linear Pottery culture in Kuyavia (N Europe). In previous studies such specimens were omitted as probably uncharred. Re-examination of Neolithic finds of fat-hen from that region showed the link of their abundancy with the earliest phases of the Neolithic occupation. The plant probably played an important role in the diet of the early Neolithic settlers there. It may indicate intensive use of local, open, fertile, probably alluvial areas. Distinguishing between ancient and modern specimens of that common weedy plant, producing large amounts of small, black, resistant seeds is thus very important, holding a great potential to shed new light on the origins of agricultural societies in this part of northern Europe.     

THE RADIOCARBON CHRONOLOGY OF THE NEOLITHIC AND COPPER AGE OF NORTHERN ITALY

Summary. Until twenty years ago the chronology of the Neolithic and Copper Age settlement of Northern Italy was almost exclusively based on the stratigraphical sequence of the Arene Candide cave in Liguria. The research carried out since the sixties has strongly increased our knowledge of the earliest farming communities and the first copper using people who inhabited the country between the end of the seventh and the beginning of the fourth millennium BP. This article considers the available evidence for this period which is now supported by a good set of radiocarbon dates.     

TWENTY YEARS AFTER “ABSOLUTE CHRONOLOGY: ARCHAEOLOGICAL EUROPE 2500‐500 BC” NEW DATA ON ITALIAN PROTOHISTORY

The article is a tribute to the pioneering role of Klavs Randsborg in the early Nineties in search for a new comprehensive chronology for Italian and European prehistory based on a combination of dendrodates with C14 dates. The debate of the last 25 years on this matter is presented, demonstrating a scholarly split, in particular in Italy. At the same time, an Italian peculiarity, the presence of layers of volcanic eruptions mixed with archaeological deposits is proposed as a sort of meeting ground for opponents and proponents of absolute chronology and a way to pair it with known cultural phenomena.     

Ecological constraints on the first prehistoric farmers in Europe

The Neolithic Revolution, which witnessed the transformation of hunter–gatherer groups into farming communities, is traditionally viewed as the event that allowed human groups to create systems of production that, in the long run, led to present-day societies. Despite the large corpus of research focused on the mechanisms and outcomes of the Neolithic transition, relatively little effort has been devoted to evaluating whether particular production-oriented adaptations could be integrated into a broad range of ecological conditions, and if specific cultural traditions differed ecologically. In order to investigate whether the differences between the adaptations and geographic distributions of three major Early Neolithic archaeological cultures are related to the exploitation of different suites of environmental conditions, we apply genetic algorithm and maximum entropy ecological niche modeling techniques to reconstruct and compare the ecological niches within which three principal Neolithic cultures (Impressed Ware, Cardial Ware, and Linearbandkeramik) spread across Europe between ca. 8000 and 7000 cal yr BP. Results show that these cultures occupied mutually exclusive suites of environmental conditions and, thus, were adapted to distinct and essentially non-overlapping ecological niches. We argue that the historical processes behind the Neolithization of Europe were influenced by environmental factors predisposing occupation of regions most suited to specific cultural adaptations.     

‘ORGANIC TEMPER’ AND THE EARLY NEOLITHIC POTTERY PRODUCTION: INTERPRETATIONAL CHALLENGES

Well-preserved plant remains found in clay bodies of Early Neolithic pottery of Southeastern Europe have been largely understudied. The characteristics and provenance of this ‘organic temper’ remain mostly unknown, making interpretations obscure. Based on a range of research methods, this article explores the macro and micro plant remains within the pottery clays, considering such aspects as the use of domesticated versus wild plants and actual functional temper versus organic inclusions as background noise. This innovative approach is applied to explore three different Early Neolithic Balkan sites, demonstrating the importance in distinguishing between (a) deliberate addition of selected temper as a technological prerequisite; (b) sporadic occurrence of plant parts in (domestic) areas where pottery was made, (c) natural characteristics of the local clays containing organics and used as raw materials, and (d) plant use pointing towards more specific pottery-making techniques. Possible misinterpretations and pitfalls are discussed in using the applied integrated methodology, thus revealing crucial details on the variability of the technological approaches applied during the Early Neolithic of Southeastern Europe.     

DANIEL BRUUN: A DANISH TOPOGRAPHER‐ANTIQUARIAN ASTRIDE THE WORLD STAGE

One of the most remarkable contributions to our understanding of the Norse cultures of the North Atlantic was that of Daniel Bruun (1856–1931). A child of an innovative, prominent family from central Jutland, he received a military education and became a skilled cartographer. A dream from his youth to study Norse culture in Greenland was finally realised in 1894 when he conducted an impressive field campaign in the so‐called Eastern Settlement. In the following years, he pursued his observations in Norse Greenland with comparative studies in Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Norway. On his initiative, and to a wide extent based on material collected by himself, the North Atlantic cultures were presented as a section of the Danish contribution to the World Exhibition of 1900 in Paris. His adventurous life, however, was not confined to the North Atlantic, but also included travels in Africa, Siberia, Asia, and North America. In many ways, the energy and curiosity of Daniel Bruun can be compared to that of recently departed Klavs Randsborg, to whose memory this article is dedicated.     

A Variation on a Basic Theme: The Transition to Farming in Southern Central Europe

This paper attempts to summarize the past years of research on the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in Central Europe and to review recent discussions about the origin and spread of the Early Neolithic. Particular emphasis is given to the debate about migration or diffusion. A combined migrationist/diffusionist model is presented, arguing for an emergence of a farming economy among hunter-gatherer populations in Transdanubia and the subsequent spread of this economy through migration. The new settlers interacted with local Mesolithic groups and adopted and incorporated local material culture and sometimes even aspects of local Mesolithic economy, a process which continued throughout the Early Neolithic. With time, population increase, subsequent competition for resources, and climatic instability led to a destabilization of traditional Early Neolithic society and finally to the outbreak of severe intercommunity violence. The only escape from mutual extinction was a rearrangement of subsistence and social and political structures, possibly with contributions from surviving Terminal Mesolithic groups.     

WEST OF THE BEST: ROCK ART AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES IN THE DORO !NAWAS REGION OF NORTHWEST NAMIBIA

The Northwest of Namibia bears a concentration of rock art that is among the highest in the world. One of the centres is Twyfelfontein, a cluster of sites surrounding a waterhole at the eastern fringe of the Namib Desert, classified as the prime rock engraving site in southern Africa and designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Recent prospections in the desert west of Twyfelfontein have resulted in the discovery of engravings and paintings that exceed those at the UNESCO site, both in quantity and quality. Our contribution to this volume in memory of Klavs Randsborg introduces this newly discovered archaeological landscape and discusses the connection between water ‐ a rare commodity in the desert environment ‐ and the rich array of rock art and other archaeological features found here.     

Jiangzhai: Social and economic organization of a Middle Neolithic Chinese village

The Early Yangshao period (5000–4000 BC) village of Jiangzhai is the most completely excavated and reported of any early agricultural community in the middle reaches of northern China’s Yellow River Valley. This comprehensive dataset can better our understanding of early agricultural village societies and complex society development, especially the emergence of economic inequality. Analyses of Jiangzhai’s architectural remains and their arrangement; estimates of household population, storage capacity, and animal consumption; and analyses of household artifact assemblages are used to reconstruct the social and economic organization of this important Neolithic settlement. Our analyses suggest that differences in economic organization at the household level are responsible for patterns of intra-settlement economic differentiation previously attributed to higher-order “corporate” institutions. Rather than a segmental society composed of redundant homologous units, Jiangzhai displays substantial variability among residential sectors and constituent households in terms of activity emphases and surplus accumulation. Substantial intrasite variation in socioeconomic organization has previously been thought characteristic only of more complex Late Neolithic societies in the middle Yellow River Valley region.     

Breaking the Bond: Investigating The Neolithic Expansion in Asia Minor in the Seventh Millennium BC

In the early seventh millennium BC an expansion of the Neolithic economy and sedentism took place in Asia Minor. This occurred nearly two millennia after the emergence of Neolithic societies in southern central Anatolia, which raises the question of how this expansion occurred, and why it came about at this particular moment. This paper considers various elements that might have played a role in this expansion episode, such as climate change, demography, and agricultural and social changes.     

The transition to farming in Eastern and Northern Europe

This paper presents a general survey of the transition to farming in Eastern and Northern Europe, approached within the framework of the availability model and treated from the perspective of local (Mesolithic) hunting and gathering communities. We argue that in Eastern and Northern Europe, the transition to farming was a slow process, which occurred through the adoption of exogenous cultigens and domesticates by the local hunter-gatherer populations, who may have been already engaged in some form of husbandry of the local resources. Contact and exchange with the Neolithic and later Bronze Age of Central Europe had a profound and prolonged influence on the process of the adoption of farming in Eastern and Northern Europe. During the slow process of transition, mixed hunting-farming societies emerged, which could be regarded as having a characteristic social and economic organization of their own (i.e., neither Mesolithic nor Neolithic). In conclusion, we argue for continuity in population and in social and economic traditions from the hunter-gatherer past until recent antiquity and, in some areas, into the historical period.     

Learning by Experience: The Flint Mines of Southern England and Their Continental Origins

Since the discovery of prehistoric flint mines across Europe during the nineteenth century, mining has been recognized as a central component of the Neolithic ‘package’. In the south of Britain a small group of mines date to the early fourth millennium BC, posing a problem for traditional interpretations of the Early Neolithic, as they appear a significant period of time before other Neolithic monuments. This paper will look at evidence preserved in the mines of southern England, examining whether these sites demonstrate flint‐mining techniques already practised in Continental Europe. Central to the research is a notion that complex activities, such as mining, involve long periods of trial and error before evolving into an accomplished working methodology.     

Architectural Discourse and Social Transformation During the Early Neolithic of Southeast Anatolia

Within the Near Eastern research canon, the transition to more sedentary lifestyles during the Neolithic is often framed as an economic necessity, linked to plant and animal domestication, climatic change and population stress. In such a framework, an increasingly complex social structure, arising in response to the increasingly complex relations of agricultural production, is presumed. For example, some researchers would argue that feasting-based rituals became an arena of social control and an increasingly complex society began to emerge around ritual leadership and monumental ritual architecture. Yet the research projects conducted at many Near Eastern sites indicate neither that sedentism can be directly linked to the requirements of agriculture, nor that the presence of monumental architecture can be successfully associated with social control based on unequal redistribution of agricultural surplus. While ritual activity appears to be central during the Neolithic, two important questions remain to be explored: (1) what exactly did the rituals control, given that the societies under consideration are commonly perceived to have an ‘egalitarian’ ethos?; and (2) what happened to the ritual control in the second half of the PPNB, when ritual architecture completely disappears from the archaeological record at a time of increased reliance on agriculture? Through a critical review of the use of terms like ‘sedentism’, ‘egalitarianism’ and ‘ritual’, I argue that the architecture of the Early Neolithic is related to the management of social relationships through symbolic place-making activities. Based on a comparative review of burial activity, building continuity and the use of symbolic imagery, I examine the symbolic construction of some of the earliest examples of long-term occupational focus in southeast Anatolia, such as Hallan Çemi, Demirköy, Körtik Tepe, Hasankeyf Höyük, Gusir Höyük, Göbekli Tepe, Çayönü and Neval? Çori, in an attempt to understand the social factors behind the emergence and demise of Early Neolithic monumental architecture. The evidence from the above-mentioned sites suggests that Early Neolithic place-making reflects community formation at a variety of scales, at the center of which lay the continuous reinvention of kinship concepts. While some sites, with concentrations of burials, may have become the locus for construction of more intimate local place-based networks, other sites, such as Göbekli Tepe, may have integrated the extended networks. Arguably, the formation of large scale networks during the PPNA posed a threat to local groups. Thus, a focus on local group formation and close control of social exchanges may have begun during the early PPNB, and the places such as Göbekli Tepe may have fallen out of use during this process. In the context of the symbolism and figurine evidence, I further argue that sex and gender may have become important issues, both in the formation of place-communities during the late PPNA—early PPNB, and in the emergence of autonomous households during the later PPNB.     

Modelling the effect of Mesolithic populations on the slowdown of the Neolithic transition

The expansion of the Neolithic transition in Europe took place gradually from the Near East across the whole continent. At Northern Europe, observations show a slowdown in the speed of the Neolithic front in comparison to other regions of the continent. It has been suggested that the presence of high population densities of hunter-gatherers at the North could have been the main cause for this slowdown. This proposal has recently been described by a mathematical model that takes into account: (i) the resistance opposed by the Mesolithic populations to the advance of Neolithic populations in their territory, and (ii) a limitation on the population growth dynamics due to the competition for space and resources. But these two effects are not equally responsible for the slowdown of the spread. Indeed, here we show that the limitation on the population growth dynamics seems to have been the main cause of the delay of the expansion of farming in Northern Europe.