New theoretical discourses in the discussion of the Neolithisation process in South Scandinavia during the late 5th and early 4th millennium BC – an identification of learning processes, communities of practise and migrations

Abstract

In this paper, it is argued that agriculture is a very complex technology, which takes a long time to learn, thus making it very difficult for agrarian practises to spread as ideas. Instead, based on a detailed survey of primary agrarian evidence (direct 14C dates of cereals and domesticated animals) and secondary evidence of material culture (polished axes and pottery), it is claimed that the expansions of agrarian practises in South Scandinavia are associated with the migration of farmers who were related to the Michelsberg Culture. These incoming farmers had the appropriate skills and the ability to teach the indigenous hunter-gatherer populations about agriculture by establishing communities of practice, a fact which supports the theory of integrationism. The engagement in these communities of practise changed the identity and material culture of the immigrating farmers, as well as the indigenous hunter-gatherers, thus creating new agrarian societies in South Scandinavia which were interconnected in a regional as well as larger European network.

Assessing the importance of cultural diffusion in the Bantu spread into southeastern Africa

“…This conclusion agrees and reinforces the hypothesis, postulated previously [29], according to which when animal and plant domestication spread in the form of farming economics, the driving mechanism is demic diffusion (as observed here,in Europe [26, 51], eastern and southeastern Asia [53]), whereas herding might be easier to learn, allowing the main driving mechanism to be cultural diffusion in the spread of pastoralism (as observed in southwestern Africa [29]). Interestingly, this hypothesis (i.e., mainly demic diffusion for farming versus mainly cultural diffusion for herding) agrees with the work by Sørensen, who has argued that herding is substantially easier and faster to adopt by hunter-gatherers than farming [54]. Moreover, for some hunter-gatherer populations it has been reported that some individuals tried to establish themselves on an agricultural basis (after learning the techniques by assisting their agricultural neighbors), but all of them failed.…”