Weed finds as indicators for the cultivation regime of the early Neolithic Bandkeramik culture?

Abstract

Ethnographic data combined with the characteristics of the weed species from Bandkeramik settlement sites give hints for the reconstruction of Early Neolithic agricultural practises in Central Europe. In contrast to the Balkan situation with a high diversity in cultivated crops, Bandkeramik field management can be reconstructed as a simple agricultural system with emphasis on summer crop growing. Permanent fields were treated with hoes, digging sticks or similar tools, sown in spring and grazed in autumn and winter. The intensity of field management seems to increase through time as shown by diachrone comparison of archaeobotanical data from Neolithic, Iron Age and Roman times. The absence of winter-cereals such as naked wheat, grown in the Balkan Peninsula, gives a hint of a certain emphasis on stock breeding. Summer crop growing would have had the advantage that the Bandkeramik fields could be grazed after harvest until next spring and would therefore be manured at the same time.

Agricultural change in Copper Age Croatia (ca. 4500–2500 cal B.C)?

“…Unfortunately, methods to examine what crop husbandry regimes may have been practiced (i.e. weeding, manuring, tillage) in the region are restricted by poor quality datasets (see Bogaard 2004;Kreuz and Schäfer 2011 for reconstructions at Neolithic sites in central Europe). However, the continuation of crop agriculture would tie in with the recent isotope and lipid residue analysis, which suggested the emergence of smaller independent farmsteads with a similar herding strategy to that of the late Neolithic (Giblin 2009(Giblin , 2014Giblin et al 2013, Hoekman-Sites andGiblin 2012).…”

Neolithic farming in north-western Europe: archaeobotanical evidence from Ireland

“…Management of agricultural plots was investigated by analysing the ecological characteristics of potential arable weeds (Wasylikowa, 1981;Engelmark, 1995;Rösch, 2000;Bogaard, 2002;Bogaard and Jones, 2007;Kreuz and Schäfer, 2011). This approach is particularly relevant for exploring Neolithic data, as it can provide insights into whether plots were managed under a shifting cultivation regime, as implied by characterisations of Neolithic farming as transient (for example, Edmonds, 1999;Thomas, 2008), or under a more intensive management system.…”

The First Farmers of Ukraine: an Archaeobotanical Investigation and AMS Dating of Wheat Grains from the Ratniv-2 Site

“…A few seeds of timothy-grass (Phleum pretense) were also identified. These are a few species of a typical assortment of weeds found in most of the LBK sites (Kreuz et al 2005;Kreuz and Schäfer, 2011).…”