From fish and seal to sheep and cattle: new research into the process of neolithisation in northern Germany

Hartz, Sönke; Lübke, Harald; Terberger, Thomas

doi:10.5871/bacad/9780197264140.003.0027

Cited by 39 publications

(52 citation statements)

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“…Because of the insufficient number of squares (N ¼ 26 < 30), ELP was grouped with the LBK, the most similar culturally and the nearest geographically. (Hartz et al, 2007). Similar finds exist in coastal Poland (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 55%

Understanding the rates of expansion of the farming system in Europe

Bocquet‐Appel¹,

Naji²,

Linden³

et al. 2012

Journal of Archaeological Science

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 55%

Understanding the rates of expansion of the farming system in Europe

Bocquet‐Appel¹,

Naji²,

Linden³

et al. 2012

Journal of Archaeological Science

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“…14.10), while the Danish evidence suggests an absence of change in subsistence until 4000 BC, when not only is the material culture of the Ertebølle culture replaced by that of the Funnel Beaker culture but also the subsistence base for the first time includes domestic plants and animals. In Holstein this transition is dated to 4100 BC, with the advent of the early Funnel Beaker Wangels group (Hartz, Lübke, and Terberger 2007). In other words, the subsistence transition in the Dutch Swifterbant culture seems to have been completed by the time it began farther north.…”

Section: Cereal Cultivation In Northern Europementioning

confidence: 98%

Cereal Cultivation at Swifterbant?

Cappers¹,

Raemaekers²

2008

Current Anthropology

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“…• One could incorporate selective Neolithic elements, obtaining axes, pots, crops, or animals by exchange rather than producing them for oneself (as with axes in the north German Mesolithic [Hartz, Lübke, and Terberger 2007]). • One could maintain, even bolster, a local Mesolithic identity while undergoing parallel internal changes and, indeed, exchanging goods with farmers.…”

Section: A Moment Of Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

“…4700 BC; sporadic domestic animals known during fifth millennium; TRB pottery made locally from 4100 BC, and domesticated animals common; cereals limited until about 3500 BC (Hartz, Lübke, and Terberger 2007). 10…”

Section: Macropattern 3: Irreversibility and The Scale Gapmentioning

confidence: 99%

Material Culture, Landscapes of Action, and Emergent Causation

Robb¹

2013

Current Anthropology

115

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After a century of research, there is still no widely accepted explanation for the spread of farming in Europe. Topdown explanations stress climate change, population increase, or geographic diffusion, but they distort human action reductionistically. Bottom-up explanations stress the local, meaningful choices involved in becoming a farmer, but they do not account for why the Neolithic transition in Europe was so widespread and generally unidirectional. The real problem is theoretical; we need to consider the transformative effects of human-material culture relationships and to relate humans, things, and environments at multiple scales. This article views the Neolithic as a set of new human-material relationships which were experimented with variably but which had unintended consequences resulting in an increasingly coherent, structured, and narrowly based social world. This interplay of local human action and emergent causation made the Neolithic transition difficult to reverse locally; the Neolithic was easy to get into but hard to get out of. On the continental scale, one consequence of this was its slow, patchy, but steady and ultimately almost complete expansion across Europe. As a metamodel, this accommodates current models of the local origin of farming while linking these to emergent large-scale historical patterns.Things inevitably change you as you use them. Consider the Internet. In functional terms, the Internet exists simply to provide information. Yet the paradox everybody experiences is that the Internet increases rather than slakes your thirst for information: the more information the Internet supplies you with, the more you find yourself needing, as your plans and activities anticipate that all knowledge is instantly knowable and communicable. Moreover, instant distance-free knowledge and communication have unintentionally transformed many working lives in both obvious and subtle ways such as accelerating the tempo and omnipresence of work. The Internet has changed our social landscape of action. We could repeat the same argument for every major new technology from metals to the automobile. Yet, surprisingly, nobody has yet seriously considered the transformative potential inherent in the relations between humans and material things in explanations of the origins and spread of farming-surely one of the major transformations of human history.The goal of this article is to propose a new explanation for the spread of farming in Europe. My starting point is the observation above: that material things are not merely neutral objects of human action but have the potential to transform John Robb is Reader in European Prehistory in the Department of Archaeology of Cambridge University (Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3DZ, United Kingdom [Jer39@cam.ac.uk]). This paper was submitted 1 IV 11, accepted 23 IX 12, and electronically published 30 X 13. the lives of the humans using them. If we consider the Neolithic as a new set of material things and techniques, different from Mesolithic ones, surely we need to ...

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From fish and seal to sheep and cattle: new research into the process of neolithisation in northern Germany

Cited by 39 publications

References 0 publications

Understanding the rates of expansion of the farming system in Europe

Understanding the rates of expansion of the farming system in Europe

Cereal Cultivation at Swifterbant?

Material Culture, Landscapes of Action, and Emergent Causation

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