The spread of farming in the Eastern Adriatic

Abstract

The authors present a new, two-stage model of the spread of farming along the eastern Adriatic coast based on the first appearance of pottery. The initial stage was a very rapid dispersal, perhaps by ‘leapfrog colonisation’, associated with cave sites in southern Dalmatia. The second stage was a slower agropastoral expansion associated with cave and open-air sites along the northern coast. Migration was a significant factor in the process. The mountainous hinterland formed an agricultural frontier zone, where farming was adopted piecemeal by indigenous groups.

Y-chromosomal evidence of the cultural diffusion of agriculture in southeast Europe

“…The first appearance of pottery in the Adriatic region was in Corfu at 6500 BC and reached the northern most Adriatic B1000 years later. 21 29 Interestingly, J-DYS445-6 and J-M92 (a sub-lineage of M67), both have expansion times between 7000 and 8000 years ago (Table 1), consistent with the dating of the arrival of the first farmers to the Balkans. The first detection of milk residue in ceramic pottery occurs in sites from northwest Anatolia 7000 -8500 years ago, 58 an age that approximates the Hg-expansion times.…”

“…Such an interpretation finds support in the 'dispersal model' of Impressed Ware in which the 'Neolithic package' was acquired by native groups and subsequently diffused by interactions between farmers and foragers. 67 Although southeast Europe shows considerable archaeological evidence of the Neolithic transition, 20 our Y-chromosome results provide biological evidence of complexity 21 in the transition to farming in terms of the contrasting influences of pioneering agriculturalists and Mesolithic foragers.…”

“…21 Thus, the question to address is the following: can we detect presentday signals of interactions between indigenous Mesolithic people and agricultural colonists in the southeast European gene pool? In this regard, particularly useful are Y-chromosome markers, whose distribution is often highly correlated with their phylogeny.…”

A long hard road… Reviewing the evidence for environmental change and population history in the eastern Adriatic and western Balkans during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene

“…Special finds include three child burials, a number of adult burials, pierced Columbella shells, and stone tools crafted from Italian flint. There is debate over the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition at the site, as ceramics and domestic ovicaprines overlap with Mesolithic-type material, and dates for the Neolithic are very early, suggesting a coastal route for the spread of agricultural lifestyles (Forenbaher and Miracle, 2005).…”

“…Across the entire Adriatic zone, the SCDPDs do not reveal any marked fluctuation, but detailed examination of the radiocarbon record points to a lack of data for the final centuries of the 9 th mill cal BP (Figure 4). First recognised more than ten years ago (Forenbaher and Miracle, 2005), this documentary gap has since persisted despite the addition of numerous dates from different sites . However, its interpretation remains open: given the still limited amount of evidence, it is not possible to rule out the effect of research biases.…”