The Neolithic is commonly identified by the appearance of farming, initiating a shift from an almost total dependence on wild resources to a diet based primarily on cereals and domesticated animals. It was accompanied by a sedentary mode of life in complex settlements, the erection of elaborate monuments, and the use of pottery and polished stone tools. Farming and sedent-ism revolutionized ways of life of the local communities
Figure 2 Lepenski Vir, Serbia. The anthropomorphic statue.
And their view of the world. They also had demographic consequences manifested in the population increase. Society became more complex and stratified.
The mechanism of neolithization of Europe is one of the most fiercely debated issues in archaeology (see Europe: Neolithic). This new mode of life emerged probably both as a result of immigration of farmers from the south and its adoption by local indigenous foragers. This process was supposedly highly idiosyncratic. Impact of these components onto the overall cultural transformation varied across time and space and the complete ‘Neolithic package’ did not appear fully fledged from the beginning.
Early Neolithic communities came to Europe from the Near East and Anatolia around 7000 BC, and first settled in the southeastern part of the continent in Greece and the Balkans. The early farmers in this region subsisted on barley, wheat, lentils, legumes, sheep, and goats. Farmers inhabited open settlements and lived in free-standing, rectangular houses. As in Anatolia, some large settlements were inhabited for long periods and the continuous construction of buildings at the same place led to the emergence of large settlement mounds (tells). The most densely occupied areas were Thessaly as represented by the settlements of Achilleion, Argissa, Otzaki, or Sesklo, and the Maritsa valley in central-southern Bulgaria with the large tell of Karanovo (Figure 1).
Further north, farmers settled in all central and large parts of lower Danubian region. This stage comprised Starcevo-Cris culture dated to seventh mil-lenium BC. The economic basis of these communities did not differ considerably from their predecessors. People also came to occupy regions little or less settled in the Early Neolithic in this part of Europe such as northern Greece, the lower Danube valley, Bosnia, the Hungarian plain, and the forest-steppe zone of western Ukraine. By about 6000 BC, Neolithic communities moved to the southern part of the Hungarian plain and the east part of the Carpathians. This northward spread of the Balkan style of the Neolithic resulted in the emergence of the K(3r(3s culture in Hungary. Farming groups then spread rapidly from the central Danube region, north along the Elbe, Oder, and Vistula until the southern part of the North European Plain. In this temperate zone, they underwent considerable transformations. This route of colonization was associated with Linear Pottery groups. They occupied mostly river valleys and lived in massive timber longhouses (see Europe, Northern and Western: Early Neolithic Cultures). The move of farmers to this ecological zone was accompanied by the increased significance of cattle, which was probably primarily associated with rituals. They manufactured incised decorated pottery and shoe-last adzes for clearing forests. By 5300 BC, the neolithization of central Europe was complete, albeit the bulk of the landscape remained unoccupied.
A homogenous period of Early Neolithic was followed by more regionalized developments in various ecological zones resulting from disintegration of the Linear Pottery groups and incorporation of elements of local foragers. This process dates back to around 4500 BC. These local phenomena are identified by distinctive pottery styles including the Michelsberg culture between the Rhine delta and the Alps, and the Funnel Beaker Culture in northern and eastern Europe. In this period, people lived in small dwellings that were less substantial than those of the Early Neolithic. They also built circular ditched enclosures with causeways on the perimeter (especially in eastern Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, and Austria), along with earth and stone mortuary structures. During this time, important economic changes such as the introduction of the wheel and plow, wool production, and an increased use of animals for specialized tasks emerged. New economic strategies also manifested in the extensive exploitation of flint mines and the production of large flint tools exported over vast distances as, for example, in Krzemionki Opatowskie (Figure 1).
During the fifth millennium BC, copper metallurgy, specifically smelting of copper from ores, developed independently at several places in southeastern
Europe, especially in the Balkans and the Carpathian Basin. It soon became widely used in human ornamentation and in mortuary items. This period, which in this region lasted between 4500 and 2500 BC, is known as the Copper Age. Copper mines in Rudna Glava in Serbia or in Aibunar in Thrace (Figure 1), along with many others in the region, were discovered and exploited. The demand for copper existed at a considerable distance from its sources, probably reaching c. 1000 km.
The fifth and fourth millenniums BC were marked by the development of cemeteries rather than erection of domestic structures. They comprised a range of different forms, from the earthen barrows and mega-lithic tombs in northern part of the region to the elaborated cemeteries in its southern part. The appearance of large burial grounds such as Tiszapolgiir-Basatanya in Hungary (Figure 1) succeeded burials grouped within the occupation mound and were accompanied by disperse settlement patterns. A spectacular example in which individual graves featured sophisticated gold and copper work was found in Varna on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria (Figure 1). Cemeteries were a means of establishing group identity and instilling a sense of belonging as well as providing a social arena in which these communities could display their wealth and prestige.
Megalithic tombs are known only from the northern part of central Europe and comprised the very eastern margin of this phenomenon associated with the Atlantic coast that stretched from Portugal in the south through the Orkney Isles and Scandinavia in the north and Poland in the east. They consisted of tombs that ranged from simple stone burial chambers beneath small mounds to complex passages and chambers that run beneath large mounds. The earliest of these megaliths date to the early part of the fourth millennium BC. Their meaning is debatable, but it is likely that they functioned as social markers and/or as a resting place for ancestors.
On the Pontic steppes, indigenous hunting and fishing groups started to acquire pottery and domestic cattle from their Neolithic neighbors in the sixth millenium BC. A large Cucuteni-Tripolye complex emerged in the Bug and Dnieper regions in the beginning of the fifth millenium BC. The size of the settlements in the developed phase increased up to 100 ha and the houses up to 200 m2. The platform dwellings (the so-called ploSCadki) were very elaborate and had a regular plan. The Cucuteni-Tripolye groups acquired and used copper extensively. Further developments in eastern part of the region involved the taming and domestication of horses. This process is under the scrutiny of many archaeologists and a number of issues remain unanswered. The site of Dereivka is at the center of this debate as it contained a large number of horse bone remains. Other innovations, such as the use of paired draught technology for wheeled vehicles and light plows along with new breeds of sheep, probably of Caucasian or Near Eastern origin, had a considerable effect on these dry areas north of the Black Sea. Horses and ox-drawn wagons permitted mobility over vast distances. They facilitated the development of pastoralism and the emergence of a large complex known as the Pit Grave culture. It was characterized by chambered burials covered with wooden beams under round barrows or kurgan. Some of these monuments - found from the Urals to the lower Danube - were topped by a stone anthropomorphic stela and occasionally contained wooden wheels or whole wagons. Groups of these people penetrated the Danube region of northern Bulgaria and eastern Hungary.
By 3000 BC, previously dominant and omnipresent ritual structures and monuments such megaliths and ceremonial centers lost their value. The wealth became portable, which marked a rapid change across the region. The focus shifted from places to people and from collective to personal possessions. A manifestation of this change is the Corded Ware culture, with distinctive pottery decorated with impressed cords, that dominated central and eastern Europe. This pottery appeared first on the Pontic steppes and in the eastern part of the North European Plain. These new communities buried their dead in singular, rather than collective graves, which is seen as a sign of differentiation or individualization within a stratified society. Mostly male graves were accompanied by decorated drinking vessels known as beakers and stone axes with a shaft hole and a single, drooping blade, called a ‘battle-axe’. These graves were placed in the center of a circular mound.
Central Europe also formed the eastern fringe of the Bell Beakers phenomenon in the late third millennium BC, known from vast areas of Europe. It is named after decorated drinking cups without handles. Graves were also individual round mounds and contained beakers, daggers, and archery equipment such as triangular barbed-flint arrowheads and wrist-guards of fine stone. The early daggers were made of flint, the later ones of copper, and eventually bronze. The vast distribution of the Bell Beakers across temperate Europe as well as the Mediterranean region was a sign of an increasingly mobile way of life and signaled disintegration of traditional social structures.
World History
