Towards a social geography of cultivation and plant use in an early farming community: Vaihingen an der Enz, south-west Germany

Abstract

Through integrated analysis of archaeobotanical and artefactual distributions across a settlement, the authors discover ‘neighbourhoods’ using different cultivation areas in the surrounding landscape. Differences between groups also emerge over the life of the settlement in the use of special plants, such as opium poppy and feathergrass. Spatial configurations of cultivation and plant use map out the shifting social geographies of a Neolithic community.

Centralisation and long-term change in farming regimes: Comparing agricultural practices in Neolithic and Iron Age south-west Germany

“…Within these intensive regimes, both the functional weed ecology and crop δ 15 N values indicate considerable variability in soil fertility, disturbance, and manuring intensity, within and between settlements (Bogaard 2004;Bogaard et al 2011;Fraser et al 2013b;Styring et al 2016a Dieckmann et al 2001), but there is no evidence for yokes or ard-ploughs at this time. The earliest wheels appear in the waterlogged deposits of the Alpine foreland at the end of the 4th millennium BC, and the proliferation of roadways preserved in wetlands around the Alps, including at Sipplingen, attest to the growing importance of cattle traction (eg, Schlichtherle 2006).…”

“…Functional weed ecology can reveal the permanence of arable land, and also provide evidence for the level of soil disturbance (due to tillage and weeding; Bogaard 2004). While weed ecology also provides a general index of soil productivity, crop δ 15 N values provide an opportunity to test whether greater nitrogen availability (associated with soil productivity) does indeed result in higher crop δ 15 N values.…”

“…These two approaches are therefore subject to different sources of error and ambiguity, so interpretations that combine evidence from both are more robust and informative than those based on one form of evidence alone (Bogaard 2015b). …”

“…Since change in agricultural intensity can only be detected using a diachronic approach, we also include crop isotope data from four Neolithic sites in the same region ( Fig. 1 & Table 1), plus functional weed ecological data for these and other previously collated samples from Neolithic sites in south-west Germany (Bogaard 2004;2011); there were insufficient archaeobotanical remains dating to the Bronze Age. The Neolithic crop isotope data come from previously published studies by this research group Fraser et al 2013b; Selecting and preparing crop samples for isotope analysis Each crop δ 13 C and δ 15 N value represents a homogenised batch of between four and ten carbonised cereal grains or pulse seeds of the same taxon from the same 'deposit'.…”

“…SOUTH-WEST GERMANY FROM THE NEOLITHIC TO THE EARLY IRON AGE Low levels of woodland perennials in weed assemblages suggest that cultivation was carried out on long-lived plots throughout the Neolithic in south-west Germany (c. 5500-2500 BC; Maier 1999;Brombacher & Jacomet 1997), though there is ongoing discussion about the interpretation of regional pollen data as evidence for shifting cultivation (Rösch 1990;Jacomet 2008;Rösch et al 2014;Jacomet et al 2016). These early agricultural plots were characterised by highly productive and disturbed soils, akin to modern intensively and manually cultivated 'gardens' (Bogaard 2004;Bogaard et al 2011), with adequate area yields achieved through high labour inputs (ie weeding, hoeing, manuring).…”