Impacts of the Neolithic Demographic Transition on Linear Pottery Culture Settlement

Abstract

This study aims to look for a new signal of the demographic transition linked in time to the installation and development of an agro-pastoral lifestyle. Demographic growth has always been a component of models for the spread, during the second half of the sixth millenium BC, of the Linear Pottery Culture (LBK), and the analysis of the space-time distribution of sites appears to confirm the hypothesis. Now a different signal is used here to examine in terms of quantitative trends the strength and rate of supposed growth: household size, measured by house groundplan surface-area. This criterion is particularly suitable because the data for houses are more accurate and manageable on a large scale than the data for the sites themselves. Thus the research issue can be addressed with a representative and uniform sample.While the demographic transition is a phenomenon in itself, its coherence can best be gauged by measuring the time passing (dt) after the start of the process in each locality (time zero: t0). The intention here is to look for intrinsic trends in the strength and rate of the process.Using time-spans of 100 or 50 years, changes in the ground surface-areas of 505 houses (433 for the shorter time-span) from the different regions of LBK Europe show a curve with a sharp increase in the first two centuries of a Neolithic economy, with values falling back over the following one or two centuries. A possible rise occurs again up to 450-500 years after the start of the process, but the evidence for this needs completing. So it seems that the average size of the "family" living under the same roof (household) increases considerably for two centuries after t0 and then decreases, before rising again at roughly dt = 500.This growth and decline is visible at a continental scale, as well as at local (Bylany, Merzbachtal) and subregional scale (Aisne, Meuse/lower Rhine), in the same rate and proportions. The trend thus appears universally valid for the LBK.The local data (Merzbachtal) suggest two correlated phenomena: a population density threshold per village and community fission once this was crossed. Further evidence suggests that the process involved the largest households rather than the

Evolutionary Demography and the Population History of the European Early Neolithic

“…On the basis of studies of the number, size, and density of settlements of the LBK in central Europe, Petrasch (2001Petrasch ( , 2005 has calculated extremely high population growth rates between 0.9% and 2.7% for these fi rst farming societies. Detailed fi eldwork in Germany in the western Rhineland has enabled this growth and expansion process to be traced on a local scale (e.g., Zimmermann 2002; see also Dubouloz 2008).…”

Les villages du Néolithique ancien en Alsace. Un état de la recherche

“…Selon le modèle d'occupation accepté ici, le nombre de maisons contemporaines composant le village de Bischofsheim s'élèvent à six pour la partie fouillée et aux alentours d'une douzaine au maximum, si l'on etime que seule une moitié du site a été reconnue. Les diverses etimations du nombre d'individus contituant la maisonnée rubanée, bien que fondées sur des modèles ethnographiques, retent théoriques et très diicile à manipuler (Dubouloz, 2008). Tout au plus peut-on, en prenant en compte la moyenne parfois avancée de 13 habitants par maison (ibid.…”

Revisiting and modelling the woodland farming system of the early Neolithic Linear Pottery Culture (LBK), 5600–4900 b.c.

“…Considering that archaeological fields were planted in areas with very low populations (Dubouloz 2008) dominated by woodland as shown by the presence of Phleum pratense (Bakels 2009), the field density can be considered to have been very low. Due to low sowing density, we may consider that mixing pulses and cereals improves nitrogen-related fertility more than alternating them within the same field (Eichhorn et al 2006;Malézieux et al 2009).…”

“…Thus, as highlighted by Dubouloz (2008), an average LBK household with 8-10 persons would have required 3.2-4 m 3 per year. This value is also found in other sources in the literature, such as Lindroos (2011) or Ola (2011.We estimate that woodland can generate an average firewood production of easy to gather and relatively dry 10 cm wood pieces (Dufraisse 2008), of around 1 m 3 /ha per year (Marsinko et al 1984).…”

“…15 houses. If we roughly consider a maximum occupation of 8-10 people per house as proposed by Dubouloz (2008), or 5-7 people across the whole of the LBK territory according to Ebersbach and Schade (2004), these quite populated sites therefore had a population of 120 to 150 people, requiring an average area of 400-500 ha (Mazoyer and Roudart 1997). If we concede that the land was organised concentrically from the site, it implies that fields were at least 1.2 km from the settlement, quite a long distance for people living in wooded country with high land availability.…”