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An offprint from The Dynamics of Neolithisation in Europe Studies in honour of Andrew Sherratt Edited by Angelos Hadjikoumis, Erick Robinson and Sarah Viner © OXBOW BOOKS 2011 ISBN 978-1-84217-999-4 Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................ vii Contributors ...........................................................................................................ix Foreword .................................................................................................................xi John O’Shea Introduction: the dynamics of neolithisation in Europe ...........................................1 Erick Robinson, Angelos Hadjikoumis, and Sarah Viner 1. Grand narratives and shorter stories ............................................................... 10 Alasdair Whittle 2. In constant motion? Recent advances in mathematical modelling and radiocarbon chronology of the neolithisation of Europe ......................... 25 Marc Vander Linden 3. Time is on my side… .................................................................................... 46 João Zilhão 4. The Neolithic Revolution: an ecological perspective ...................................... 66 John C. Barrett 5. Farming regimes in Neolithic Europe: gardening with cows and other models ........................................................................................... 90 Valasia Isaakidou 6. Interpretation of Scirpus from early farming sites in western Asia and Europe: a cutting sedge of archaeobotanical research? ............................113 Michael Charles 7. Farming, material culture, and ideology: repackaging the Neolithic of Greece (and Europe) .................................................................................131 Paul Halstead 8. Enchantment and enchainment in later Balkan prehistory: towards an aesthetic of precision and geometric order ...............................................152 John Chapman 9. Clutching at straw: the Early Neolithic and the dispersal of agriculture ................................................................................................176 Anthony J. Legge and Andrew M. T. Moore 10. ‘Pig-menting’ the Spanish Neolithic.............................................................. 196 Angelos Hadjikoumis 11. The [environ-]mental contexts of earliest Neolithic settlement and architecture in western Hungary ........................................................... 231 Eszter Bánffy and Pál Sümegi 12. Farming practice and society in the central European Neolithic and Bronze Age: an archaeobotanical response to the secondary products revolution model ........................................................... 266 Amy Bogaard 13. Technological traditions and ‘the dialectic of expansion’: contact, transmission, and neolithisation along the northwestern fringes of the LBK ....................................................................................... 284 Erick Robinson 14. Cattle and pig husbandry in the British Neolithic ....................................... 313 Sarah Viner 15. Tracing the future in the past: the introduction of the Neolithic in eastern Scania – tracking change in a local perspective ............................ 353 Anna-Karin Andersson 16. Early farming and the creation of community: the case of northern Europe ..........................................................................364 Magdalena S. Midgley 7 Farming, material culture and ideology: repackaging the Neolithic of Greece (and Europe) Paul Halstead Introduction Th at we are still concerned with a problem (neolithisation) created by 19th century scholars is partly due to the changing connotations of the term ‘Neolithic’. Initially referring to a toolkit including polished and ground stone and then pottery, it expanded to encompass farming and sedentary life (Rowley-Conwy 2004, 83). Moreover, these co-occurring traits were functionally linked: polished stone tools cleared and tilled land; farming permitted sedentism; and sedentism enabled use of ceramics (Cole 1965). According to Childe (1957), this way of life, the ideology that underpinned it, and the culture traits that represented them reached Europe from southwest Asia with colonising farmers. One focus of subsequent debate has been the contribution to neolithisation of immigrant farmers (e.g. Ammermann and Cavalli-Sforza 1973; 1984; Bellwood 2005; Renfrew 2002) and indigenous foragers (e.g. Dennell 1983; Zvelebil 1986; 2005). A second has been whether neolithisation was essentially an economic shift from foraging to farming (e.g. Jarman et al. 1982) or an ideological transformation in perceptions of society, landscape, fauna and fl ora (e.g. Hodder 1990; Th omas 1999; Whittle 1996a; Zvelebil 1996). Ideology, though integral to Childe’s colonist model, is now emphasised over economy mainly by those attributing neolithisation to indigenous foragers. Entangled in both debates is dispute as to whether ceramics, farming and sedentism comprised a co-occurring and perhaps systemically related ‘package’ or a suite of traits that were often adopted piecemeal. Th e latter position is now mainly held by those promoting indigenous agents and ideology (Rowley-Conwy 2004, 83–84), but was previously favoured by palaeoeconomists who argued that local environment shaped choices between foraging, cultivation and herding (e.g. Barker 1975; Jarman et al. 1982). In principle, this argument can be resolved empirically. For example, several claims of pre-Neolithic domesticates are results of misidentifi cation (e.g. Rowley-Conwy 1995) or stratigraphic mixing (e.g. Zilhão 2001). Likewise, Early Neolithic preference for hunting in the Carpathian basin (Bökönyi 1971) and selective adoption of domesticates in the west Mediterranean (Lewthwaite 1986) have evaporated in face of larger samples (Bartosiewicz 2005; Rowley-Conwy 2000). On the other hand, ceramics appear before 132 Paul Halstead farming in parts of northwest Europe but after farming on Crete, while evidence for substantial houses and settlements is regionally variable (Sherratt 1990). Future excavations will doubtless undermine other claims for a piecemeal Neolithic, but also identify new cases. Both sides in the debate will claim vindication, not least because there is no agreement on the appropriate scale of analysis. For those concerned with origins of potting or cultivation, co-occurrence in terminal Mesolithic or earliest Neolithic levels may be crucial and, on the short time scale of human agency, the Neolithic is not a take-it-or-leave-it package. Th e fi rst few centuries of the Neolithic, however, over most of Europe, are characterised by a shift from foraging to farming, beginning or elaboration of ceramic production, and radically more monumental arenas for the living and/or dead. At this broader scale, the Neolithic ‘package’ is strikingly coherent. Using the Neolithic of Greece as a case study, it is argued that this coherence should be understood in terms of systemic integration rather than shared (exotic) origins, but that this need not imply dominance of economy over ideology nor preclude a dynamic role for indigenous foragers. Th e Neolithic of Greece Th anks to large-scale excavations at Sesklo and Dimini (Tsountas 1908; Figure 7.1), Th essaly in the central mainland shaped the image of the Neolithic of Greece in early syntheses. Th e Early Neolithic ‘Sesklo’ culture, with long-lived villages, rectangular houses, painted pottery and female fi gurines, recalled Anatolian and east Mediterranean assemblages and so favoured introduction by oriental colonists (e.g. Childe 1957; Weinberg 1965). Further excavations, however, demonstrated that the Sesklo culture (now labelled Middle Neolithic) was preceded by several centuries of Early Neolithic material culture that less strikingly resembled eastern prototypes (Milojcic 1960; Th eocharis 1967), so bringing the colonist model into question (e.g. Kotsakis 2001; cf. Perlès 2005). Th e choice of modern Greece as an analytical unit is arbitrary; diff erent regions have distinctive, if related, Neolithic culture histories (e.g. Papathanassopoullos 1996), while Crete developed in comparative isolation. Regional diversity is useful, however, for exploring whether the Neolithic appeared as a package or piecemeal. Th e same chronological labels are used here for mainland Greece and Crete (Andreou et al. 1996; Tomkins 2008): Early Neolithic (EN) – seventh to early–sixth millennium BC; Middle Neolithic (MN) – mid–sixth millennium BC; Late Neolithic (LN) – late–sixth to mid–fi fth millennium BC; Final Neolithic (FN) – mid–fi fth to fourth millennium BC. 7. Farming, material culture and ideology 133 Figure 7.1: Map of Greece showing location of archaeological sites mentioned. 1. Knossos, 2. Franchthi, 3. Dendra, 4. Dimini, 5. Sesklo, 6. Tsangli, 7. Soufl i, 8. Argissa, 9. Platia Magoula Zarkou, 10. Th eopetra, 11. Servia, 12. Toumba Kremastis Koiladas, 13. Revenia-Korinou, 14. Makriyalos, 15. Paliambela-Kolindrou, 16. Giannitsa B, 17.