Climate Change and Socio-Political Crises: Some Cases from Neolithic Central Europe

Abstract

In recent years, data on an increasing number of violent conflicts within and between Central European Neolithic societies has come to light through both archaeological and physical anthropological studies. The spectrum of such evidence ranges from occasional incidents of healed trauma in otherwise 'ordinary' burial situations to mass burials of possibly tortured and certainly massacred villagers. There appears to be a temporal correlation between periods of increased violence/warfare and climatically unstable periods. Evidence is presented for three periods beginning with the so-called Initial Neolithic up to the earlier Eneolithic.