Book Description
The roots of our lives today in permanent settlements and our diet based on agricultural products lie in the Neolithic. While human groups the world over have cultivated plants and domesticated animals completely independently of one another at different times, Europe's sedentarism, agriculture, and animal husbandry all have their origins in the eastern Mediterranean. The spread of the Neolithic to Central Europe occurred via the Balkan-Carpathian region, travelling primarily through the immigration of population groups, and only partially through the transfer of domesticates, technologies, and ideas. This book's aim is to demonstrate the richness and complexity of the transition of humans from hunting and gathering to agriculture and animal husbandry in South-east Europe, the first region to be affected by this phenomenon, and to discuss its wider theoretical implications. As is now clear, there is no single paradigm for the spread of the Neolithic to Central Europe, but rather a plethora of different neolithisation processes. The spread of Neolithic farmers to Europe was mainly along the Danube and its larger tributaries. Away from these main routes, different neolithisation scenarios can be observed, in which the older Mesolithic populations may have participated differently. From an initial uniformity of the material culture of the South-eastern European Neolithic, local traditions rapidly developed, these displaying a wide diversity of processes and manifestations within material culture. Exploring this against the background of the history of Neolithic research, it is demonstrated that the transition from a life in harmony with nature to productive use and even exploitation thereof is a notion deeply rooted in Western cultural history. This finding demonstrates that summarising the many observable innovations under the heading of the 'Neolithic' does not adequately describe the epoch in its entirety. Rather, the Neolithic represents an experimental phase for a way of life which is valued, at least in the Western world, as a civilising achievement. Nevertheless, history can take a very different course, and has indeed done so in various regions of the world. With the example of South-east Europe, this book reviews these dynamic processes of neolithisation, which began in different places of the world at different times, and, in some cases, still continue today.