image/svg+xml
169
VIII/2/2017
InterdIscIplInarIa archaeologIca
natural scIences In archaeology
homepage: http://www.iansa.eu
Book reviews
Volume VIII ● Issue 2/2017 ● Pages 169–172
The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe.
Chris Fowler, Jan Harding and Daniela
Hofmann (Eds.)
Oxford University Press (2015), Oxford,
UK, 1166 pp., ISBN 978-0-19954584-1
processes of Neolitization, especially in the
Balkans and Central Europe, followed by
the chapters dealing with the phenomenon
of households and burials, and, fnally, the
chapters connected methodologically with
the scientifc methods used in archaeology,
including economy, subsistence and
bioarchaeology.
2. Mobility, Change, and Interaction
at a Large Scale
The second conceptual part (Part II) of the
handbook starts with Tony Brown, Geof
Bailley and Dave Passmore’s chapter called
Environments and Landscape Change
.
It describes the fundamental natural
constraints that had shaped the European
landscape in the period contemporary
with the process of Neolitization and the
Neolithic period. Despite some scarcity and
lack of information about the development
of vegetation cover, the authors ofer a
detailed picture of climate trends including
deterioration events, which afected
societies several times in the Neolithic
period. The chapter is actually a very good
outline of the natural and anthropogenic
processes that framed transitional Neolithic/
Mesolithic economies and early agricultural
societies in Europe. The description is
not only environmental, but partially
and also surprisingly theoretical in the
way of environmental and landscape
archaeology approaches that encompass
such phenomena as symbolic spaces, high
altitude environments and the potential
skyscapes seen by humans in forested and
open landscapes.
Part II then continues with a thematic
section called “Movement of Plants,
Animals, Ideas, and People”. It includes
fve chapters that describe the general
trends of movements in Neolithic Europe.
Johannes Müller in his chapter
Movement
of Plants, Animals, Ideas, and People in
South-East Europe
describes the Neolithic
and Chalcolithic period in the Balkans and
Carpathian basin. He follows the social and
economic changes during Neolitization and
the introduction of copper metallurgy that
came along later. The frst part discusses
the possibilities and ways of Neolithization
in southeast Europe. It tracks the areas
through the evidence of the frst Neolithic
elements, diferences between Mesolithic
foragers and Neolithic farmers, and seeks to
fnd confrmation of the interactions within
these two social systems and populations.
This issue is followed by Jean Guilaine
in his chapter
The Neolitization of
Mediterranean Europe. Mobility and
Interactions from the Near East to the
Iberian Penisula
. In successive steps he
describes the expansion of the Neolithic
lifestyle: frst of all in the Near East
continued by the spread of the Neolithic
mode of life in the Mediterranean basin.
Making three points, Guilaine suggests
various hypotheses about the reasons for
the abandonment of the Levantine region.
He discusses the issues of demographic
growth, social stress and the environmental
aspect. By the heterogeneity of pottery
styles, and some other indexes such as
settlement organization and hierarchy,
kinds of burials, decoration, and frequency
of fgurines and ritual artefacts, this chapter
highlights the diferences between the Near
East and Western Mediterranean (Cardial
style). Guilaine explains that
“Neolitization
was not a single difusion …”
and points
to the
“periodic breaks in its spread and
the cultural transformation of the original
model”
.
Wolfram Schier in the chapter on
Central
and Eastern Europe
rather traditionally
describes (once again) the basic question
of Neolitization in Central Europe: was
it demic difusion or a spread of ideas?
Or even something more complicated?
Probably yes, as witnessed today by
‘molecular archaeology’. Schier comments
on the diferent arguments of continuity
and discontinuity in the archaeological
record. Current data tend to support that of
the Neolithic economy spreading by demic
difusion around 5600 BC and thus against
‘transmission of ideas’; however, Shier
suggests one way to integrate both models
as do the majority of chapter authors in this
1. Introduction
The topic of this huge volume, with as many
as a thousand pages, is Neolithic Europe –
as seen through the eyes of archaeology
and some closely-related disciplines. As
the book’s preface informs us, it comprises
the work of over seventy authors from
more than forty-fve institutions in ffteen
separate countries. The handbook is divided
into four parts. The frst part (Part I) is an
introduction written by the book’s editors
Chris Fowler, Jan Harding and Daniela
Hofmann, explaining the purpose and
goals of the book, describing the topics of
particular chapters and thematic sections
and ofering some basic explanation.
With such a huge number of chapters, it
is difcult and perhaps inappropriate to
comment on every text in this review. We
have decided to concentrate our attention
on three areas of interest. These are the
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2017 ● VIII/2 ● 169–172
Book Reviews
170
section. Anne Tresset in the chapter
Moving
animals and plants in the Early Neolithic
Europe focuses on Atlantic Europe
, which
was rather on the periphery of the Neolithic
world. Comparing similar and parallel stories
described in this section of the handbook,
she comments on some interesting
phenomena such as the “Mesolithic”
cattle fnd from Ireland depicting bovids
in ceramics that belong to the period of
the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition. As an
archaeozoologist, she freshly records other
interesting phenomena such as the origin
of feral, originally domesticated, animals in
some parts of Europe.
Stephen Shennan in his chapter
Language, Genes, and Cultural Interaction
discusses the history of debate over
farming populations introduced through
a process of indigenous adoption or the
expansion of farming people. His text is a
rare exception in this handbook because,
rather modestly, he comments on the
genetic knowledge, which seems today to
be one of the crucial sources of information
about the biological identity of prehistoric
populations and individuals. Unfortunately,
his research trail ends somewhere around
2010 and is rather insufcient (we suppose
the editorial work on the volume proved
to be long), because recent developments
in genetics have been rapid and dynamic.
However, Shennan correctly outlines the
facts when he summarizes the key story
that the Mesolithic and Neolithic European
populations were diferent in terms of their
genetic-biological origins and identity. The
most valuable part of his chapter from our
perspective is his analysis of the origins
of Indo-European languages. He mentions
the complex mathematical reconstruction
of the Indo-European language dispersal
chronology and his statement that there is
“increasing evidence that Renfrew’s (Colin
Renfrew, Archaeology and Language,
London 1987 – note of reviewers) early
date for Indo-Europeans is correct” could
connect most modern European nations
directly with the Neolithic people.
The second thematic section of part II
ofers four chapters focused on “Sequences
of Cultural Interaction and Cultural
Change”. John Chapman’s chapter
The
Balkan Neolithic and Chalcolithic
describes
the Danubian plain and mountainous
regions between 7000–4000 BC. The core
of his endeavour tracks the development
of social structures in Neolithic society.
Whereas in the “early farmers” stage
domesticated plants and animals of a
most basic level are recorded, the later
“climax period” is characterized by the
deeper stratifcation of society, incoming of
secondary agricultural products, and new
technologies. He demonstrates changes in
personhood by the specifc treatment of
clay fgurines to scale, from gender-neutral
fgurines through to single-gender females/
males and androgynous fgurines. In this
manner Chapman traces the inside world of
the Neolithic society in the Balkans.
Caroline Malone’s chapter
The
Neolithic in Mediterranean Europe
asks
why and how hunter-gatherers in the
environmentally optimal conditions of
the Mediterranean region transformed
themselves into farmers. She follows the
diferences between the eastern and western
Mediterranean in order to explain the role of
material exchanges within Mesolithic and
Neolithic groups. Whereas the development
of the eastern Mediterranean is characterized
by the complex structure of the nascent
Neolithic society, the western parts of
the region was characterized by material
exchange between indigenous people and
Neolithic people. It is especially visible in the
case of their engagement with pottery which
“moved as gift and food containers”. In
such conditions the process of Neolitization
slowly transformed the region from a system
of foraging to one of agriculture.
Relation between the Mesolithic
tradition and the Neolithic society is also
in focus with Detlef Gronenborn and Pavel
Doluchanov’s chapter
Early Neolithic
Manifestation in Central and Eastern
Europe
. Both authors know this region in
detail and therefore the presented chapter
is a very challenging one. They discuss the
relationship between hunter-gatherers and
early farmers in the seventh millennia BC
when contacts in material culture existed,
and then the role of La Hoguette ceramic
style and the possible character of its
bearers. For the later LBK period there is
expanding evidence of parallel Mesolithic
and Neolithic populations in Central
Europe and a diferent mixed economy in
the “Neolithic” of Eastern Europe. They
happily distinguish between the Neolithic
and Eneolithic, the latter system being very
diferent from the frst one. Gronenborn and
Doluchanov do a good job, despite being
more refective of some British scholars (but
not just them only), still rigidly using the
term “Neolithic” for all stages of the post-
Mesolithic prehistory before the Bronze Age.
Nick Thorpe ends Part II of the handbook
with the chapter
The Atlantic Mesolithic-
Neolithic Transition
. He concentrates his
attention on an area that saw a greater degree
of continuity between both hunter-gatherers
and early agricultural populations than did
Central and Southern Europe. This process
is related to the TRB (Trichterbecherkultur,
Funnel Beaker) phenomenon as being the frst
agricultural phase in many Atlantic regions.
He systematically explains what happened
outside of the northern frontier of the LBK
in the diferent regions of Atlantic Europe.
In this part of Europe it is more than obvious
that hunter-gatherers were the main agents
(but not exclusively) of the transformation of
society into agriculturalists.
Part II can be regarded as conceptual, and
we therefore comment on it as a complete
set of chapters. A closer look at its content
sparks the general statement of the reviewers
that the set of chapters is sometimes
thematically overlapping, especially when
solving the principal question of Neolithic
dispersal in Europe. Every chapter focuses
on diferent European regions, so such
an approach seems to concord with the
principle of encyclopaedism. However, one
might expect in part II some general paper
explaining the Neolithic itself. Though it is
missing here, we do not know if this was a
deliberate strategy of the editors or not.
3. Neolithic Worlds and Neolithic
Lifeways
The following huge set of chapters
(Part III) focuses on the Neolithic worlds
and Neolithic lifeways. As mentioned
before, we are not attempting to review
all chapters. As noted, our interest
is thematically specifc, unifying the
highways of the Neolithic dispersal with
the topic of housing and bioarchaelogical
studies. This part of the book, the largest,
is comprised of some crucial themes of
current archaeology, such as settlements,
households, subsistence, materiality, art,
cosmology and personality. It is subdivided
into four sections. The frst section, called
“Houses, Habitation, and Community”, has
seven chapters. We would like to mention
the chapter by Pál Raczky
Settlements in
South-East Europe
, which nicely presents
a useful and substantial outline concerning
tells and horizontal settlements, including
how they are refected in diferent European
languages. Raczky regards tells as a material
manifestation of the community throughout
the entire Neolithic development. One part
of this chapter is devoted to the specifc
relations between tells and horizontal
settlements that lay in the surrounding area.
In the case of this dualistic relationship he
refers to Ian Hodder’s defnitions of the
concepts “domus” and “agrios”. This work
ofers a well-arranged but rather external
overview of tell’s functions.
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2017 ● VIII/2 ● 169–172
Book Reviews
171
Domestic space in the Mediterranean
is the name of a chapter written by
Demetera Papaconstantinou. After a brief
introduction to Neolitization, we come to an
overview of the patterns of domestic areas
and their use across the Mediterranean.
Papaconstantinou begins with well-known
settlements in Greece, followed by those in
Italy and the Iberian Peninsula, returning
her attention to Anatolia, the Levant and
Cyprus. She systematically describes
dating, followed by houses and their
construction, and addresses the question of
which materials have been used and if there
is evidence of human activity inside. The
text ofers a very useful and clear source of
information concerning the domestic space
in this subject area.
Jonathan Last in his chapter
Longhouse
Lifestyles in the Central European Neolithic
focuses on the longhouse phenomenon
of the LBK communities, systematically
describing the genesis of longhouses,
their meaning, life cycles, durability and
architecture. He discusses many important
themes connected with the longhouse
as a possible social structure for its
inhabitants. Attention is paid to diferent
forms of longhouse clustering, which
refect the social organisation of the LBK
societies. Anick Coudart in her chapter
The
Bandkeramik Longhouses
ofers almost the
same topic, but seen from a diferent, more
formal, perspective. She ofers a value
systematics of longhouses: their diferent
functional sections. She understands
longhouses as expressions of the egalitarian
character of LBK society. This aspect is
broadly discussed in the second part of
the chapter. For example, the longhouse is
regarded as an expression of LBK society
norms and an important instrument of
community reproduction.
The second section called “Subsistence
and Social Routine” is notably interesting
for us as well as for the IANSA Journal.
The chapter
Stable Isotopes and Neolithic
Subsistence: Pattern and Variation
by
Rick Schulting ofers the attractive topic
of light stable isotopes in bones, which
defne the ratios between the terrestrial
and coastal/marine sources of an animal or
human diet. He comments on the diferent
diets in particular communities that are
archaeologically distinct, especially in
Central and Northern Europe, the variability
among males, females and children,
lactose intolerance, and other fundamental
questions of current bioarchaeology. Amy
Bogaard and Paul Halstead in their chapter
Subsistence Practices and Social Routine
in Neolithic Southern Europe
shed light
on the radical changes in the human diet
between the late Mesolithic and early
Neolithic in southern Europe. The most
valuable part is entirely methodological.
They comment on the visibility of specifc
phenomena in the bioarchaeological record,
such as landuse, culling patterns, ratios
between domestic and wild animals in the
archaeological data, and other issues. László
Bartosiewicz and Malcolm Lillie in their
chapter
Subsistence Practices in Central
and Eastern Europe
turn their attention
towards the characteristics of the Starčevo
and LBK, and younger communities, in
order to understand how people managed
their resources in variable geographical
conditions, including wetland areas and
drier landscapes with loess deposits. Of
much value are their data from the Ukraine
showing how the Neolithic period here is
broadly connected with the surviving world
of hunter-gatherers. This Mesolithic kind of
subsistence in the Baltic region remained a
protracted period until the Bronze Age. In
the similar text that follows,
Subsistence
Practices in Western and Northern Europe
written by Peter Rowley-Conwy and
Tony Legge, an outline of the knowledge
concerning the wetter and cooler zone of
Europe is given.
The third section of Part III is called
“Materiality and Social Relations”. From this
part of the book, comprising ffteen chapters,
we would like to point out only the last paper,
written by Arkadiusz Marciniak and Joshua
Pollard, titled
Animals and Social Relations
.
From our perspective, it is one of the best
bioarchaeological texts of the handbook,
especially from the methodological point
of view. The authors write concerning the
diference between the traditional scope of
archaeologists regarding animals as subjects
of subsistence, and animals as beings with
a symbolical and social role. The authors
themselves regard animals as “sentient
beings sharing many of the ontological
qualities of people”. As known from earlier
writings of the authors, animals were
regarded as means of exchange, sacrifce
and feasting. They describe the possible
surviving hunter-gatherers modes of thought
concerning animals in early agricultural
communities, their restriction towards just
certain species, and many other aspects
of relations between humans and animals.
Large domesticated animals in the European
Neolithic represent a diferent order of
categorization. The authors fnally trace the
associations of various species with diferent
forms of place, memory and identity.
The fourth section “Monuments, Rock
Art, and Cosmology” comprises nine
chapters, which follow some of the most
visible symbols of the (mostly Late)
Neolithic period: enclosures, chambered
tombs, rock engravings, underground
caves, and others issues, which bear witness
to the Neolithic peoples’ beliefs.
From the perspective of bioarcheology
(and the scope of the IANSA Journal) the
ffth section “Death, Bodies, and Persons”
is rather important and we would like
to mention here three texts. The chapter
Mortuary Practices, Bodies, and Persons
in the Neolithic and Early-Middle Cooper
Age of South-East Europe
by Dušan Borić
is very interesting. He describes in detail
the various burial habits across the various
phases of the Neolithic and Copper Age
in the denoted region. The main questions
here are: how the funeral was executed,
whether something was exceptional, and
what was it? Giving specifc examples,
Borić approaches underground burials,
graves, separate or double burials, and
child interments. He recognizes on which
side were inhumations placed, their gender,
and if there is some preference in their
orientation. Of course, Borić does not miss
out on the goods left in the tomb. Like others,
John Robb in his chapter
Burial and Human
Body Representations in the Mediterranean
Neolithic
begins with a defnition of the
Neolithic period in his focused areas. The
task is separated into three areas: Italy,
The Central Mediterranean Islands, and
Iberia. Methods of burying in phases are
included; however, the main theme is the
human fgure and its preservation through
art. Robb enriches this knowledge not only
with interesting documentation, but also
with unusual events. As an example he
writes about Ötzi’s mummy as substantial
evidence of the human body. Finally,
Daniela Hofmann and Jörg Orschiedt in
their chapter
Mortuary Practices, Bodies,
and Persons in Central Europe
discuss the
notion of personhood, which is hot topic
in current archaeology. Personality usually
refers to how people believed themselves to
be continued in the after life. They introduce
the topic of body and embodiment as a
theoretical concern and daily practice. Such
a view should be a complementary part of
bioarchaeology, informing us about our
biological identity.
4. Conclusion: Debates in Neolithic
Archaeology
The last part of the handbook (Part IV)
summarizes the knowledge within the
whole subject matter. Three diferent
image/svg+xml
IANSA 2017 ● VIII/2 ● 169–172
Book Reviews
172
scholars draw their conclusions on the
content of the book and compare their
own concepts of the Neolithic period. As
Alasdair Whittle writes, it is difcult to sum
up all the chapters in a brief paper. That’s
why he chose just four related topics in his
chapter
Unexpected Histories? South-East
and Central Europe
. In the frst part, with
the issue being “Beginnings”, he draws
on the whole concept of the book and
solves the Neolitization question in several
aspects. Whittle appropriately criticizes the
lack of contributions with DNA analyses
and research in the whole publication.
In the topic Lifestyle and Production, he
highlights the necessity of keeping the
house in its social context, including models
of garden cultivation and scales of animal
breeding. In the third part, Community and
Society, Whittle asks “How to characterize
social relations in any one context?”
He equally emphasizes that everything
changes as time passes. Connected to all of
this is the last part Kinds of History, where
are described problems such as “shared life
and death”, “tensions between household
and community, between descent groups
and community and between local and
outsiders”. Whittle says, it is important
to employ the opportunity to combine
“macro” and “micro” scales. Finally, here is
the one apposite sentence: “It is not only the
big picture which should be in the frame”.
Julian Thomas in his chapter
Commentary: What Do We Mean by
“Neolithic Societies?”
ofers maybe the
most progressive and fruitful view on the
Neolithic. He notes that some researchers
call for a clear defnition of what actually
constitutes a Neolithic society. Is it farming
plus sedentism, increasing population
density, social diferentiations, and
complex mortuary practice? Thomas notes
that these characteristics are at variance
with the extreme diversity of the Neolithic
across Europe. On the most common level,
the Neolithic system could be characterized
by Marschall Sahlins’ “domestic mode of
production”. There are diferences between
the regions of Southeast Europe and
Northwest Europe. In the former region the
early Neolithic should be defned by garden
horticulture with a small number of stock
representing an integrated and coherent
economic system. But for the latter region,
Thomas argues that the Neolithic also means
a shift from plants to animals stimulating
a change from a subsistence economy
to a “wealth-based” economy, as cattle
represent mobile capital. Other diferences
between Southeast and Northwest Europe
are the long-lasting sites in the frst
region and the shortly-lived sites in the
second, where they were supplemented
by the existence of huge monuments with
their role as communal loci. One crucial
statement of Thomas is that “the Neolithic
cannot be defned purely on the basis of
the representation of traits and must be
understood instead in organisational or
structural terms”. In this context, a crucial
and formative phenomenon is the new
arrangement between people and things.
Julian Thomas underpins John Robb’s
statement from 2013 that “the advent of the
Neolithic involved a changing relationship
between people and things, from which it
was increasingly difcult for communities
to extricate themselves”.
Finally, the third scholar, Kristian
Kristiansen in the chapter
The Decline
of the Neolithic and the Rise of Bronze
Age Society
summarises reasons why the
Neolithic transformed itself into the Bronze
Age’s social and economic systems. He
ofers a way of understanding in economical
terms: “What were the historical conditions
or forces that led to the decline of the
Neolithic and the rise of the Bronze Age? I
propose that there is a qualitative diference
between Neolithic and Bronze Age social
formations in prehistoric Europe, which
fundamentally changed both their political
economies. Consequently, once metallurgy
was introduced and became integrated in
the economy, the world would never be the
same, and a Neolithic subsistence was no
longer possible.” Such complex economic
reasoning is for Kristiansen connected with
the origins of the family, personal property
and gender divisions.
We can conclude that The Oxford
Handbook of Neolithic Europe represents
an important contribution to world
literature. Little surprising is the long time
between the completion of some of the
chapters (ready in 2009, revised in 2011)
and the date of fnal publication. In such
circumstances, some very recent knowledge
could not be included. The number of
chapters based on our current knowledge
of geoarchaeological and bioarchaeological
methods is really not very high. On the other
hand, all the chapters have been worked out
precisely and responsibly. Therefore this
volume could be regarded as a valuable
editorial enterprise for an understanding of
Neolithic Europe.
Jaromír Beneš, Tereza Majerovičová