INTRODUCTION

Between about 5000 and 2000 B. C. prehistoric society in Europe transformed itselfyet again. What had been a collection of pioneer farmers and foragers on the brink of agriculture became a series of developed farming and herding societies. Although each part of Europe was different, there were several widespread developments. Agriculture became a stable economic system, and in each area a sustainable mix of cultivated plants and livestock permitted farming hamlets to be self-sufficient. People ceased to consider their herds simply as tame sources of meat and began to see them increasingly as providers of useful products while still alive, such as milk, wool, and pulling power. Alongside stone, bone, and pottery, metals came to be used first for ornaments and then for tools. Finally, people began to invest considerable effort in ceremonial behavior, which manifested in the form of burial monuments, ritual locations, and the first use of bogs for offerings.

Archaeologists in Europe call this period by a variety of names. It perhaps is most common in continental Europe to regard it as the later part of the Neolithic period; thus, “Late Neolithic” generally is appropriate as a universal designation for these societies. In northern Europe and the British Isles, where agriculture arrived the latest, this period spans virtually the entire Neolithic; for this reason, local divisions into Early, Middle, and Late Neolithic are more compressed. In southeastern, southern, and central Europe, where copper came into use as the earliest metal, archaeologists often speak of the “Copper Age” (or “Chalcolithic,” from a combination of Greek words for “copper” and “stone”). Finally, especially in older publications, the term “Eneolithic” is used in southeastern Europe, although it is falling out of favor in more general application.

AGRICULTURE SUCCEEDS

After the initial period of agricultural dispersal, communities that relied on domesticated plants and animals became ubiquitous throughout Europe, except in the most remote northern regions. In only one area, coastal Sweden and the island of Gotland, was there a relatively brief abandonment of cultivation in favor of a return to an economy based on marine resources. Everywhere else, a combination of farming and stock herding succeeded as the dominant economic strategy.

Agriculture is inherently risky. Weather can cause variations in crop yields, while livestock can become ill or be stolen. Risks, however, can be calculated, and educated gambles can be made. Farmers and herders are astutely aware of their environment and can assess the risks that they are taking. As farming came to be ubiquitous uncertainty—the simple inability to know what is going to happen next—diminished. Within a few centuries of the initial use of domesticated plants and animals in a region, the Late Neolithic farming communities had accumulated a store of knowledge and experience that enabled them to deal with risk rather than uncertainty, which had important implications for other aspects of social life.

Once much of the uncertainty had been removed from agriculture and an appropriate mix of domesticated plants and animals for a particular region had been established, people could devote more attention to aspects of life other than making sure they were fed. Attachments developed to particular locations and territories, and it was necessary to define clearly who was kin and who was not, so that fields and grazing lands could remain in the family. Trading relationships emerged between communities, but raiding and conflict also were a part of life, as people strove for social and economic advantages. More attention could be paid to public ceremony and the creation of sacred locations for burial and ritual.

SECONDARY ANIMAL PRODUCTS

Although dairying had been practiced in many areas in earlier centuries, it was during the later part of the Neolithic that livestock came to be valued for the products that they could provide while they continued to live. Just as domestication required a shift in the relationship between people and animals from hunting to tending, the use of so-called secondary products, such as milk, wool, and pulling power required a change in how animals were viewed. No longer were they valuable just for the meat and leather that could be obtained from them only once, when they were killed. Cattle, sheep, and goats could furnish important resources throughout much of their lives, before making their final contribution to the human diet when they died. Pigs, of course, afforded no such secondary products, so they continued to serve exclusively as sources of meat and hides.

When the living animal became valuable, it began to be viewed as a true source of wealth. A household with sheep and goats to produce milk and wool had additional resources at its disposal. Milk could be made into cheese, which could be stored longer, while wool offered new possibilities for garments and furnishings. The greatest advance, however, was the use of cattle to pull plows and wagons. Plows could break through tough soils that previously had been difficult to cultivate and also increased the area that a single household could plant. Wagons could move harvested crops, firewood, animal carcasses, and many other large, bulky items easily across land. Using animal traction, a household could expand the amount of labor at its disposal.

On the steppes that connect Europe and Asia horses were domesticated c. 4500 b. c., affording new transportation possibilities. In particular, the combination of horse riding and an economy based on herds of sheep permitted the development of the system of nomadic pastoralism that came to characterize this region for several subsequent millennia. One result of animals’ taking on value was that the possibilities increased for imbalances in household wealth to emerge. Some families may have been able to amass larger herds than others, while others may simply have been unlucky or foolish in the ways in which they managed their resources. It is possible that the roots of the social inequality that emerged more clearly in later periods of European prehistory had their roots in the Late Neolithic.

MANY TYPES OF SETTLEMENTS

One of the most remarkable aspects of Late Neolithic Europe is the diversity seen in settlements. They range from large collections of many houses to groups of only a few structures, from tightly clustered agglomerations to widely dispersed farmsteads. In certain places, such as the Balkans, settlements with clay houses were continually rebuilt in the same location, forming mounds, or tells, while in northern and western Europe, the rebuilding and relocating of timber structures resulted in little significant accumulation of debris. If timber was not available, houses and even their interior furnishings were made from stone, as in the remarkable settlements on the Orkney Islands.

The variation in Late Neolithic settlements is additional evidence for strong local attachments and the emergence of regional customs and traditions in domestic architecture. Houses are square, rectangular, oval, or round, depending on local styles and the materials available. There also are clear local preferences for settlement locations. For example, in the lake basins of the Alpine foreland, houses were built on piles driven into the soft mud of the lake shores, whereas on the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, settlements with longhouses were erected along streams at the fall line, where the interior plateau meets the narrow coastal plain. In some areas, settlements were constructed on defensible points in the terrain or were surrounded by ditches and palisades; elsewhere they were open and easily approached.

In general, however, it is possible to say that the houses of Late Neolithic Europe and their inhabitants were grouped into what might be called “hamlets.” It is unlikely that there was any longterm political leader of such a community, and their constituent households were still relatively autonomous. They needed to act together on occasion, and in such situations, temporary leaders might emerge. It is still too early, however, to see much evidence of hereditary social ranking, which did not become apparent until the Bronze Age.

THE QUEST FOR COPPER

The Late Neolithic inhabitants of Europe had mastered the art of pottery manufacture, which was the first process that resulted in the chemical transformation of a raw material to a new state from which it could not revert to its natural form. Once potters had achieved temperatures that were high enough to smelt metals from their native ores, the same principles of “pyrotechnology” were applied to minerals. Copper became the first metal to find its way into common use in Late Neolithic Europe. When smelted from its ore, copper could be hammered and cast into shiny ornaments and tools.

Between 4500 and 3000 B. C., copper use became exceptionally common in southeastern Europe and on the Iberian Peninsula. Miners followed copper seams, heating and then dashing cold water on the metal-bearing rocks to fracture them. The smelted copper then was transported over long distances. For example, the copper used at sites in north-central Poland came from as yet undetermined sources in the Carpathians, as least 500 kilometers away.

Most Late Neolithic copper was made into ornaments, such as beads, bracelets, and pendants. Making these ornaments was relatively simple, since the copper could be hammered into sheets and strips and then rolled. One burial at Oslonki in northern Poland contained a headdress around the skull made from several dozen copper strips that had been bent around a belt of leather or cloth. Later, copper was cast into tools, such as the massive copper axes found in the great cemeteries of the Carpathian Basin, such as Tiszapolgar in Hungary. By the end of the fourth millennium B. C., coppersmiths were able to manufacture relatively graceful tools, such as the copper axe carried by the Iceman whose corpse was found in the Alps in 1991.

The greatest number of Late Neolithic copper artifacts are in graves and hoards, where they were deliberately buried. This practice removed copper from circulation in society and enhanced its value and desirability even more. In many regions the possession of copper ornaments and tools became another way for a household to accumulate and display its wealth.

RITUAL, CEREMONY,

AND MONUMENTS

Perhaps the most spectacular development of Late Neolithic Europe was the establishment of clear locations for ritual and the building of public monuments. The landscape was transformed not just by clearing land for fields and pastures but also by investing particular locations with profound meanings. The Irish archaeologist Gabriel Cooney has written of “sacred landscapes” in which natural and artificial features held particular significance for generations of prehistoric inhabitants. Everywhere in Europe, Late Neolithic peoples created these sacred landscapes. In Denmark and northern Poland offerings began to be deposited in bogs and marshy depressions. High in the Carpathians, circular ditched enclosures probably were places where ceremonies were held. On the Salisbury Plain in England, the first bank and ditch was constructed at Stonehenge, and to the north there was the great stone circle at Avebury. Enigmatic standing stones called “menhirs” began to be erected at many locations in Brittany.

Perhaps the most impressive expression of Late Neolithic ceremonial architecture was the construction of large stone burial monuments called “mega-lithic tombs” in an arc reaching from Sweden in the north through France, Britain, and Ireland and south to Spain and Portugal. Tens of thousands of megalithic tombs were built, using large boulders to form chambers and passages that were covered over with mounds of earth or cairns of stones. Most megalithic tombs were collective burial monuments, in which deceased members of a community or a clan were buried together. They were opened repeatedly, and the bones of earlier generations were pushed aside to make space for new corpses.

Although their basic function seems clear, archaeologists continue to debate the broader significance of megalithic tombs for Neolithic society.

CONCLUSION

During the Late Neolithic we begin to see the traces of regional variation and local identity that persisted throughout later prehistoric times. Such economic practices as the use of secondary animal products and patterns of long-distance trade began to emerge. The landscape was restructured dramatically, yet people continued to live in fairly small communities with relatively few differences in access to status, power, and wealth. Nonetheless, Europe during the Late Neolithic finally starts to become “recognizable” to us, as we look backward from the twenty-first century, much more familiar than the worlds of the postglacial hunter-gathers or the pioneer farmers of earlier millennia.

Peter Bogucki