The Spread of Farming Economy in the Western Mediterranean: A Short Reply to Ammerman (2021)

Abstract

Manen et al. provide here a reply to the critical comment published by A. J. Ammerman regarding their article “The Neolithic Transition in the Western Mediterranean: a complex and non-linear diffusion process—the radiocarbon record revisited,” published in 2019 in Radiocarbon. They also use this occasion to reaffirm the need to elaborate novel interpretive frameworks that combine both geo-chronological and cultural data.

Dispersal distances and cultural effects in the spread of the Neolithic along the northern Mediterranean coast

“…Such a variation is perfectly possible, although it does not rule out the viability to estimate an average spread rate (as done by Isern et al 2017 and in the present paper). There is some controversy on this issue and several related ones (Ammerman 2021;Manen et al 2021). For our purposes here, it is enough to mention that a model with an average spread rate on the one hand (Isern et al 2017) and a model with a variable spread rate (arrhythmic model) on the other (Manen et al 2019) are perfectly compatible; i.e., both of them can be valid for the same case study (the arrhythmic model being obviously more detailed).…”