Water, Animals and Agricultural Technology: A Study of Settlement Patterns and Economic Change in Neolithic Southern Greece

Abstract

This study, based on evidence from archaeological surveys and excavations in southern Greece, demonstrates two major shifts in the subsistence economy during the Neolithic. I n the EN and MN periods the presence of large villages in locations near reliable water-sources and permanently moist or seasonally flooded soils of high and sustained productivity illustrates a village farming economy concentrating on arable agriculture. The first economic shift occurred in the late MN-LN with occupation of highland caves and islands, indicating increased sheep/goat pastoralism, fishing, and perhaps hunting, with a reduced number of farming villages present in the plains. The second shift took place in the FN-EBA, when a dispersal of agricultural settlements into dry upland regions indicates expanding plough agriculture and pastoralism, important factors contributing to the development of the flourishing EBA economy. The expansion of settlement was most marked in southeastern Greece, and it is suggested here that the extensive grazing areas provided by the open vegetation and mountainous terrain of this dry region, and its relative scarcity of wellwatered fertile lowlands, may have stimulated the LN-FN expansion of pastoralism.

European Regional Studies: A Coming of Age?

“…What is interesting about Johnson's model is that events in Greece seem to have been paralleled in other parts of Europe . Generally speaking, the spread of agriculture was indeed a complex process, but as more regional-scale survey data are collected (Johnson [1996], e.g., combined in his analysis the results of several recently published Greek survey projects), the spread and evolution of Neolithic settlement appears to have followed similar trajectories in various places throughout Europe, from Britain to Greece, from Portugal to Germany.…”

“…Furthermore, Van Andel (Van Andel et al, 1997), along with Zangger (1991), working with various archaeological survey projects (e.g., the Southern Argolid Survey Project , the BerbatiLimnes Archaeological Project [Wells, 1990]) have managed to identify periods of past soil erosion in Greece that may have greatly damaged Neolithic and Early Bronze Age agricultural systems. As described by Johnson (1996), as the Greek Neolithic ended and the Early Bronze Age began, upland areas were denuded and soils were damaged causing catastrophic erosion (Van Andel et al, 1990;Zangger, 1994). It may be that soil erosion contributed to an Early Bronze Age economic "collapse" and subsequent contraction of settlement, at the same time eroding earlier sites or obscuring them under mantles of displaced earth.…”

“…Our ability to investigate broad regional patterns and to ask "big" questions about politics and economy has been questioned because of the relatively small size of many European surveys (Blanton, 2000(Blanton, , 2001. In response, some archaeologists are now attempting to combine data from various survey projects in order to create a larger picture, an approach first pioneered by Susan Alcock (1993; see also Cherry and Parkinson, 2003;Davis, 2004;Johnson, 1996). Alcock and Cherry recently sponsored a conference-"Side-By-Side Survey"-at the University of Michigan on the subject of combining survey data sets (Alcock and Cherry, 2004).…”

“…According to Johnson (1996), the Greek Neolithic unfolded in a series of shifts. At first, farming settlements were situated to take advantage of good water and alluvial soils, but in the late Middle Neolithic and early Late Neolithic many of these settings were abandoned and settlement moved upland in the south or into previously unoccupied space in the north (Johnson, 1996, p. 284).…”

“…The evidence from burials also indicates the hardening of social hierarchies. Throughout Greece, the expansion of population and settlement was accompanied by intensified agriculture and a spread of farming into marginal environments (Johnson, 1996). The clearing of forests led to cataclysmic soil erosion, thereby precipitating environmental and economic collapse (Van Andel et al, 1990;Zangger, 1994).…”