Neolithic Europe
Ca. 8,000-4,000 B.P.
Neolithic
Neolithic Revolution: Domestication of Plants
and Animals in the Old World.
Defined by the presence of sedentary villages
and domesticated plants and animals.
The Neolithic in other parts of the Old World
is defined by the appearance of these
characteristics at different times
– some parts of the world were still largely "preagricultural" early in this century.
Neolithic expansion from 7-6,000 BP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Neolithic_Expansion.gif
Neolithic economies emerge in
Europe ca. 8000-6000 RCYBP
Origins debated
– Local development?
– Diffusion from SW Asia?
Neolithic economies spread rapidly
– Generally earlier in southern & eastern Europe
– Neolithic communities vary greatly across space &
through time
By 6000-5000 BP most all of Europe was
utilizing Neolithic lifeways
Neolithic Climate
The origins and history of European Neolithic
culture are closely connected with the
postglacial climate and forest development.
The increasing temperature after the late Dryas
period during the Pre-Boreal and the Boreal (c.
8000-5500 BC, determined by radiocarbon
dating) caused a remarkable change in late
glacial flora and fauna.
The zones
Neolithic farming in Europe developed on its own
lines in the four different ecological zones.
These are:
– the Mediterranean zone of evergreen forest and winter
rains;
– north of the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Balkans, the
temperate zone of deciduous forest and evenly distributed
annual rainfall;
– still farther north the circumpolar taiga, or coniferous forest
(the only zone to remain free of agriculture and stock
breeding);
– and to the southeast the western end of the Eurasian
Steppe.
Three major divisions of the
temperate zone
Divisions
– western Europe, from the Atlantic to the Vosges and Alps and
including the British Isles;
– the loesslands of central Europe, including the Ukraine and
limited by the Balkans and the Harz;
– and the northern province, that portion of the Eurasiatic plain
lying between the Rhine and the Vistula and including Denmark
and southern Sweden.
The Neolithic communities that arose by 6000 BC must
have developed from indigenous Mesolithic hunters and
fishers.
European technology and economy also had an original
ideological superstructure expressed in monuments,
ceramics, and personal ornaments.
Cultural elements
Rural economy
In each of the above-mentioned provinces, the
archaeological record begins with the early
stages of farming, as in Thessaly.
In the Mediterranean zone
– early farming is connected with cardium pottery
(decorated by shell impressions of Cardium edule),
– cultivation of the land having been proved by pollenanalytical methods in France, as elsewhere in
temperate Europe, while
– northern Germany and southern Scandinavia revealed
grain prints in potsherds (Ertebølle-Ellerbek).
Houses
Dwelling houses in Greece, Sicily, and the
Iberian Peninsula were built, as in the
Middle East, of pisé, or mud brick, on
stone foundations.
But in the Balkans and throughout the
temperate zone, wood was used for the
construction of gabled houses, stout posts
serving to support the ridgepole and the
walls of split saplings or wattle and daub.
Example of Wood construction
Housing Continued
Around the Alps such two-roomed houses and, less
often, one-roomed huts were raised on piles above the
shores of lakes or on platforms laid on peat mosses.
– These are the world-famous Swiss "lake-dwellings"
(Uferrandsiedlungen) that have yielded such precious collections
of the organic substances from wood to bread that are otherwise
missing from the archaeological record.
In northern Europe, too, the earliest villages consisted of
two parallel, long communal houses, but these were
subdivided by cross walls into 20 or more apartments,
each with a separate door.
Stone tools
Carpenters used celts (ax or adz heads) edged by
grinding and polishing of fine-grained rock or of flint
where that material was available in large nodules.
In Greece and the Balkans, all over central Europe and
the Ukraine, and throughout the taiga, adzes were used
exclusively, as in the earlier Baltic Mesolithic; in northern
and Western Europe axes were preferred.
In the Iberian Peninsula axes and adzes occur in equal
numbers in early Neolithic graves, but the proportion of
axes increased later. Often in Western Europe, and
occasionally in Greece and Cyprus, celts were mounted
with the aid of antler sleeves inserted between the stone
head and the wooden handle--a device that was already
employed in the northern European Mesolithic.
Stone Tools Continued
In Spain, the British Isles, and northern Europe ax heads
were simply stuck into or through straight wooden shafts,
but adz heads must always have been mounted on a
knee shaft (a crooked stick), a method regularly used for
ax heads, too, by the Bronze Age.
Ax heads like those in modern use, with a hole for the
shaft, were rarely used for tools, but the Danubian
peasants on the loesslands may sometimes have
mounted adzes in this manner.
They certainly knew how to perforate stone, using a
tubular borer (a reed or bone with sand as an abrasive).
From them the technique was adopted by various
secondary Neolithic tribes in northern Europe for the
manufacture of so-called battle-axes.
Ax factories and flint mines
Celts, or axes, were manufactured in factories where specially suitable rock
outcrops occurred, and they were traded over great distances.
Products of the factories at Graig Lwyd, Penmaenmawr, North Wales, were
transported to Wiltshire and Anglesey, those of Tievebulliagh on the Antrim
coast to Limerick, Kent, Aberdeen, and the Hebrides.
Similarly, large nodules of good flint were secured by mining in Poland,
Denmark, The Netherlands, England, Belgium, France, Portugal, and Sicily.
The mine shafts, which were cut through solid chalk sometimes to a depth
of six meters (20 feet) with the aid only of antler picks and bone shovels,
may be simple pits, but often regular galleries branching from them follow
the seams of big nodules.
– Although the miners appreciated the necessity of leaving pillars to support the
roof, skeletons of workers killed by falls have been discovered at Cissbury,
Spiennes, and elsewhere.
– In the British Isles and Denmark, at least, there is evidence that the ax factories
and flint mines were exploited and the products distributed by trade, for example,
to the northern parts of Sweden. Still, the operators and distributors need
nowhere be regarded as full-time specialists.
Flint Mine in Spiennes, Belgium
Pottery and Art
Neolithic art, except among the hunter-fishers of the
taiga, was geometric.
It is best illustrated by the decoration of pottery. Pots,
which were always handmade, were painted in
southeastern Europe, southern Italy, and Sicily;
elsewhere they were adorned with incised, impressed, or
stamped patterns.
Many designs are skeuomorphic--i.e., they enhance the
pot's similarity to vessels of basketry, skin, or other
material.
But on the loesslands of central Europe and the Ukraine
and in the Balkans, spirals and meanders were favourite
motifs.
Trade
While Neolithic societies could be completely selfsufficient, growing their own food and making all essential
equipment from local materials, luxury objects were
transmitted quite long distances by some sort of trade.
Ornaments made of the shells of the Mediterranean
mussel, Spondylus gaederopus, are found all across the
Balkans, up the Danube Valley, and even on the Saale
and the Main.
Products of factories and flint mines were, as stated,
traded widely throughout a single province, such as the
British Isles, and some especially valued raw materials-the yellow flint of Grand-Pressigny (France), the obsidian
of Melos and the Lipari Islands--became objects of
"international trade" as much as shells.
But the most prized object of commerce was the amber of
Jutland and Poland.
Neolithic Defined
Sedentary Communities
Ceramics
Stone Celts and Axes
Domestic Foods
Stone and Earthworks
Structures and Sites
Long-barrows were common early Neolithic elongated earthen tombs
with interior timber or stone chambers containing multiple cremation
burials.
Passage Graves were another kind of early Neolithic collective tomb
with an internal stone passage covered by a circular earthen mound.
Causewayed Camps were large early Neolithic centers evidently used
for gathering, feasting and ritual.
– They were surrounded by a number of circles of discontinuous ditches
with gaps (causeways) allowing access.
– By the late Neolithic these had evidently been replaced as regional
centres by henges.
– These were large sites surrounded by circular earthen ditches and banks
and contained circular and other arrangements of standing timber and
stones.
– By the late Neolithic there was also a change from multiple burials to
individual burials in usually smaller earthen mounds or barrows.
Important examples of tribal centers of Neolithic settlement include
Skara Brae in the Orkneys, Clava in Eastern Scotland, and Oslonki,
Poland .
Skara Brae-Orkney Islands,
Scotland
Informatin from http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/skarabrae/index.html
Orkney Map
Skara Brae
Buried into the southern shore of Sandwick's Bay o' Skaill
is the Neolithic village of Skara Brae - one of Orkney's
most visited sites and rightly regarded as one of the most
remarkable monuments in Europe.
In the winter of 1850, a great storm battered Orkney.
Nothing particularly unusual about that, but on this
occasion the combination of Orkney's notorious winds and
extremely high tides stripped the grass from a large mound
known as Skerrabra. This revealed the outline of a series
of stone buildings that intrigued the local laird, William Watt
of Skaill, who began an excavation of the site.
By 1868, the remains of four ancient houses had been
unearthed but Skerrabra was abandoned, remaining
udisturbed until 1925 when another storm damaged some
of the previously excavated structures.
Skara Brae Housing
Early Houses
were circular
Each house shares
the same basic
design - a large
square room with a
central fireplace, a
bed on either side
and a shelved
dresser on the wall
opposite the
doorway.
The later houses followed
the same design as their
predecessors but on a
larger scale. The shape of
the houses changed
slightly, becoming more
rectangular with rounded
internal corners, and the
beds were no longer built
into the wall but protruded
into the main living area.
http://www.stonepages.com/tour/skarabraeqtvr.html
Passages
A winding network of passages low, narrow stone
passage linked the houses of Skara Brae.
This meant it was possible to travel from one house to
another without having to step outside - not a bad thing
in the midst of an Orkney winter!
Just over one metre high, the low passages were roofed
with stone slabs before being covered over with
insulating midden.
The height of the passages not only helped minimise
drafts but could have served a symbolic, or even
defensive, purpose, forcing the person entering the
village to kneel or stoop.
Life in Skara Brae
Life in Skara Brae was probably quite comfortable by Neolithic
standards. The villagers were settled farmers who, cultivating the
land and raising livestock, were entirely self-sufficient.
Bones found within the midden surrounding the houses shows that
cattle and sheep formed the main part of the Skara Brae diet, with
barley and wheat grown in the surrounding fields.
To compliment their farming produce, fish and shellfish were
harvested in great quantities - and perhaps kept fresh within custombuilt tanks within the houses.
The island's red deer and boar were also hunted for their meat and
skins. Seal meat was consumed and, on the odd occasions when
they found a beached whale, its meat would have provided a
welcome feast.
They probably also the collected the eggs of sea-birds and possibly
even the birds themselves - a task that took place in the islands until
fairly recently.
Religion
They left no written records of their beliefs and religious
practices so we are forced to make assumptions based
on various objects and clues found at the sites they
visited and used on a regular basis.
Skara Brae's similarity to the architecture of the nearby
tombs shows that ritual formed a considerable part of
everyday life and in death. Given the effort put into the
construction of these tombs we can also say with a
degree of certainty that the dead were very important to
the Neolithic Orcadians.
It seems likely, therefore, that some form of ancestor
worship took place but whether this took precedence
over the veneration over a pantheon of deities is
obviously not known.
•The most enigmatic objects
found in Skara Brae were four
intricately carved stone balls.
These items served no obvious
practical purpose so are thought
to have a ritual or symbolic
purpose.
•Although we really have no
clear idea as to the purpose of
the stone balls a few other
examples have been found in
Orkney, with around 400 found
across Scotland.
•The most widely accepted
theory regarding these objects
is that they were symbols of
status, marking the owners as
significant within the society.
•It has even been suggested
that the knobbly stones may
represent the sun with rays of
sunlight emanating from the
central orb.
Why was Skara Brae Abandoned?
A common misconception is that Skara Brae was abandoned in the face of an
apocalyptic disaster that caused the inhabitants to flee.
This dramatic idea was proposed by Professor Gordon Childe, the archaeologist
who excavated the village in 1928, and like a Northern Pompeii, it immediately
caught the public's imagination.
Instead, it is now thought the fall of Skara Brae was simply abandoned because
Neolithic society in Orkney was changing. This change brought about different
ideas and a completely different set of values and way of life. From the construction
of the henge monuments at Brodgar and Stenness and the construction of
Maeshowe, we can see the emergence of an elite ruling body who had the power to
control the labour of a number of people.
With this development, the need for all-enclosed village communities disappeared where once families depended on their tight-knit, little village communities they now
were part of a larger, more widespread community, controlled by powerful tribal or
spiritual leaders.
Over time families dispersed across the landscape, settling once again in single
individual dwellings. As more and more of these younger people drifted from the
villages they were not replaced.
It seems more likely that those who remained within the ancient village of Skara
Brae gradually grew older and died.
Burial chambers of the Neolithic
Clava cairns, in North East Scotland, near
Inverness.
The north-east chamber
The south-western cairn
Plan of Clava
The two cairns at Clava, with the ring cairn between
them
At Clava, two main tombs are laid out, open to the visitor,
one at each end of the complex. Both have their
entrance passage pointing in the same direction, so that
on Mid-winter's day, the rays of the setting sun point right
down the passage.
Between the two main cairns is a monument of a rather
different type known as a ring cairn. Here there is no
entrance passage, and at the centre, instead of a closed
chamber there is an open unroofed area where
ceremonies could take place.
Map of Clava
The ring cairn
The second stone has some 'cupmarks' near the bottom,
small circular depressions, laboriously carved out for
some ritual purpose.
The recent radiocarbon dates show that the tombs were
much later than expected: instead of being at the very
beginning of the Neolithic, they come right at the very
end, at around 2,000 BC.
They also confirm that the whole cemetery was built at
much the same time, in a single operation.
The ring cairn
The ring cairn at Clava under excavation.
Archaeological Research at Oslonki, Poland
From 1989 to 1994, six seasons of archaeological
research took place at the site of Oslonki (pronounced
ohs-won-key) in north-central Poland.
Oslonki is located about 120 kilometers northwest of
Warsaw and about 20 kilometers west of the city of
Wloclawek.
Archaeological research at Oslonki focuses on the study
of the earliest farmers of the North European Plain,
continuing work begun in 1976 at the nearby site of
Brzesc Kujawski.
Excavations by a team of Polish and American
archaeologists have revealed a large village occupied
just before 4000 B.C. with longhouses and graves.
In order to understand more fully how these early
farmers lived, it is important to study not only their
settlement and graves but also how they used and
changed the local environment.
Neolithic in Poland
Between 7,000 and 5,000 years ago, farming villages were established in
Poland and other parts of central Europe.
The understanding of the earliest European farmers is important since they
represent the first instance of domesticated plants and animals being grown
outside their native regions in the Near East.
he first agricultural communities in Poland probably arrived from south of
the Carpathians, but they quickly adapted to the new soils and landforms of
the Polish uplands and plains.
Excavations at Oslonki have revealed a large settlement of these early
farmers with well-preserved archaeological remains.
Nearly 30 trapezoidal longhouses and over 80 graves make it one of the
richest such settlements in archaeological finds from all of central Europe.
Of particular note is a grave excavated in 1990 with an extraordinary
amount of copper, among the earliest metal in central Europe, including a
copper diadem.
In 1992, a grave of an archer with five bone arrow points in a quiver worn at
his back was found. A ditched enclosure and palisade, also discovered in
1992, fortified the settlement (photo above right). Oslonki is among a
number of fortified Neolithic settlements in north-central Europe
Excavations at Oslonki