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LBK), 5600–4900 B.C Mehdi Saqalli, Aurélie Salavert, Stéphanie Bréhard, Robin Bendrey, Jean-Denis Vigne, Anne Tresset

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LBK), 5600–4900 B.C Mehdi Saqalli, Aurélie Salavert, Stéphanie Bréhard, Robin Bendrey, Jean-Denis Vigne, Anne Tresset Revisiting and modelling the woodland farming system of the early Neolithic Linear Pottery Culture (LBK), 5600–4900 B.C Mehdi Saqalli, Aurélie Salavert, Stéphanie Bréhard, Robin Bendrey, Jean-Denis Vigne, Anne Tresset To cite this version: Mehdi Saqalli, Aurélie Salavert, Stéphanie Bréhard, Robin Bendrey, Jean-Denis Vigne, et al.. Revisit- ing and modelling the woodland farming system of the early Neolithic Linear Pottery Culture (LBK), 5600–4900 B.C. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany, Springer Verlag, 2014, 23 (Supplement 1), pp.37-50. 10.1007/s00334-014-0436-4. hal-01354330 HAL Id: hal-01354330 https://hal-univ-tlse2.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01354330 Submitted on 18 Aug 2016 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Veget Hist Archaeobot DOI 10.1007/s00334-014-0436-4 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Revisiting and modelling the woodland farming system of the early Neolithic Linear Pottery Culture (LBK), 5600–4900 B.C. Mehdi Saqalli • Aure´lie Salavert • Ste´phanie Bre´hard • Robin Bendrey • Jean-Denis Vigne • Anne Tresset Received: 2 July 2013 / Accepted: 18 January 2014 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014 Abstract This article presents the conception and the Keywords Farming system Á LBK Á Conceptual conceptual results of a modelling representation of the modelling Á Crops and livestock integration farming systems of the Linearbandkeramik Culture (LBK). Assuming that there were permanent fields (PF) then, we suggest four ways that support the sustainability of such a Introduction farming system over time: a generalized pollarding and coppicing of trees to increase the productivity of woodland The Linearbandkeramik Culture (LBK) was the earliest areas for foddering more livestock, which itself can then agropastoralist society to settle in central and northwest- provide more manure for the fields, a generalized use of ern continental Europe, between 5600 and 4900 B.C., pulses grown together with cereals during the same crop- bringing with it a fairly homogeneous material culture as ping season, thereby reducing the needs for manure. Along well as stable architectural standards. Pottery typology with assumptions limiting bias on village and family indicates that its origin lies in the Balkan-Carpathian area, organizations, the conceptual model which we propose for especially the late phase of the Starcˇevo complex. The human environment in the LBK aims to be sustainable for LBK first expanded eastwards and westwards as far as long periods and can thereby overcome doubts about the Ukraine and the Rhine valley around 5400 B.C., before PFs hypothesis for the LBK farming system. Thanks to a reaching the central Paris Basin around 5050 B.C. and reconstruction of the climate of western Europe and the Normandy after 5000 B.C. (Crombe´ Ph and Vanmontfort consequent vegetation pattern and productivity arising 2007). from it, we propose a protocol of experiments and vali- Although the ‘‘LBK crop package’’ is well known, the dation procedures for both testing the PFs hypothesis and LBK farming system is still under discussion. A shifting defining its eco-geographical area. cultivation (SC) model has long been considered by numerous authors to be the best one to explain the spread of the Neolithic lifestyle into the wooded areas across Communicated by W. Schier. Europe (Childe 1929; Boserup 1976; Mazoyer and Roudart 1997). Technical investment is low, with no ploughing, and M. Saqalli (&) CNRS (UMR 5602 GEODE) Maison de la Recherche de it would have produced high yields, although a great deal l’Universite´ du Mirail, 5, Alle´es A. Machado, of labour would have been needed to prepare the land for 31058 Toulouse Cedex 1, France sowing. It is the most parsimonious model regarding the e-mail: [email protected] rarest resource, that of labour. A. Salavert Á S. Bre´hard Á J.-D. Vigne Á A. Tresset It has been accepted for a long time that a system of SC MNHN (CNRS UMR 7209 Arche´ozoologie, Arche´obotanique), was practised by the first agro-pastoral societies of central 55 rue Buffon - CP 56, 75005 Paris, France and northwestern Europe (Bogucki and Grygiel 1993; Bogaard 2002), while the first alternative proposals for R. Bendrey Department of Archaeology, University of Reading, permanent cultivation go back to the early 1970s (Mod- Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AH, UK derman 1971;Kruk1973;Lu¨ning 1980, 2000; Rowley- 123 Veget Hist Archaeobot Conwy 1981). More recently, the analyses of several LBK • Was the PF system stable enough in terms of long term weed assemblages have provided the most reliable evi- soil conditions for the maintenance of adequately fertile dence so far for the discussion of farming practices. It was fields? As formalised by Bogaard (2005) or Ebersbach found that the proportion of annual plants on LBK settle- and Schade (2004), this system appears threatened by ments is far beyond what could be expected for a SC its major constraint, the need to maintain fertility with farming system (Bogaard 2002, 2004; Bogaard and Jones manure-providing livestock (Bogaard et al. 2013), itself 2007). This permanent field (PF) hypothesis implies higher constrained by forage availability in the woodland- labour input than in the slash and burn SC system, and dominated temperate Europe of that time (Bogucki yields would have been lower. It also implies more tech- 1982). nical investment in the maintenance of long-term land Archaeobotanical and archaeozoological data provide fertility. evidence to preferentially select one of the two systems. The purpose of this paper is therefore to: This issue can therefore be solved by the use of present-day • discuss the conditions in which a PFs farming system or well documented past agronomy, agroforestry and ani- could have been sustainable in the LBK social and mal husbandry, albeit contextualised and adapted to our environmental context, in the light of available study. This requires the use of information from farming evidence, systems that have largely not integrated elements from the • formalise the methodology we use for building a agricultural revolutions of the 17th century, namely fodder- farming system model that fulfils the above conditions. only crops. Such mechanisms, practices, dynamics and rationalities are used by inference for integration into our Solving this problem is equivalent to disproving one or modelling process. other of the two models, SC and PF, if we hypothesise that The conceptualisation of the LBK farming system pre- only one farming system pattern was practised. The sus- sented in this paper is a product of the reflections within the tainability of any given model must be tested according to framework of the OBRESOC project, funded by ANR the demographic and agro-environmental conditions of (Agence Nationale de la Recherche). This project attempts LBK society across time and space. Thus, we propose to to simulate the expansion of LBK culture in temperate test the main model limitations: Europe and the farming system model set out here, estab- • Did SC support the whole LBK population including lishes one of the key modules of this general OBRESOC densely populated sites? As formalised by the promot- simulation. ers of the SC hypothesis, Childe (1929), Boserup (1976) and Mazoyer and Roudart (1997), this system is limited by its major constraint, the need for a vast Conceptualising a farming system and settlement territory in which long rotation could occur, thereby limiting human density. In fact, according to Mazoyer Composition of the cereal package and Roudart (1997, p. 113), the maximum density that such a system could support is 10 inhabitants/km2. The major crops which formed the basis of the LBK However, sites such as Langweiler 8 (Boelicke et al. economy originated in the Near East, where domestication 1988) and Vaihingen an der Enz (Krause 2003) began during the 10th millennium B.C. (Fuller et al. 2011; persisted for a period of at least three centuries, with Willcox and Stordeur 2012). The number of taxa of culti- a permanent occupation of ca. 15 houses. If we roughly vated plants and weeds significantly decreased from the consider a maximum occupation of 8–10 people per Near East to the west of the LBK culture diffusion area in house as proposed by Dubouloz (2008), or 5–7 people the Paris Basin, through south-eastern Europe (Colledge across the whole of the LBK territory according to and Conolly 2007; Coward et al. 2008), from ten crops in Ebersbach and Schade (2004), these quite populated Bulgaria to five in central Europe (Kreuz et al. 2005). This sites therefore had a population of 120 to 150 people, was probably due to both climatic and technological fac- requiring an average area of 400–500 ha (Mazoyer and tors. Indeed, the abandonment of Triticum aestivum/turgi- Roudart 1997). If we concede that the land was dum (free-threshing wheat), part of the Near East crop organised concentrically from the site, it implies that package and less difficult to dehusk than hulled wheat, fields were at least 1.2 km from the settlement, quite a could be explained by the fact that the glumes of hulled long distance for people living in wooded country with wheat provide a better protection to the grain in wet con- high land availability. This simple calculation allows us ditions (Colledge and Conolly 2007). Thus, the LBK to question the ability of the SC system to maintain farming economy can be seen as the product of the adap- populations over the LBK period.
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