Thoughts on the `repacked' Neolithic revolution. (Research).

Thoughts on the `repacked' Neolithic revolution. (Research). Introduction In recent years a number of publications have made a case for thereinstatement of a view of the British Neolithic in which an integrated`package' of cultural innovations and economic practices wasintroduced abruptly from continental Europe (Richards and Hedges 1999;Schulting 2000). In its original form, this perspective presented theNeolithic as essentially composed of a subsistence economy A subsistence economy is an economy in which a group generally obtains the necessities of life, but do not attempt to accumulate wealth. In such a system, a concept of wealth does not exist, and only minimal surpluses generally are created, therefore there is a reliance on renewal , which wastransported from the Near East to Britain in only marginally modifiedform (e.g. Cole 1965). This economy then provided a productive base,which allowed the development of ceramics, field monuments, and socialhierarchies (Case 1969; Legge 1989). It follows that these culturalchanges were epiphenomenal, and Neolithic subsistence practicerelatively homogeneous. It may be that these revisionist re��vi��sion��ism?n.1. Advocacy of the revision of an accepted, usually long-standing view, theory, or doctrine, especially a revision of historical events and movements.2. arguments donot require us entirely to return to such a position. None the less,their claims deserve a degree of critical evaluation, given thecriticisms that have been raised against the notion of a homogeneousNeolithic package over the past two decades (e.g. Pluciennik 1998). Addressing the re-dating of a number of Neolithic sites which hadhitherto appeared uncharacteristically early, Rick Schulting (2000)points to the increasingly sharp interface that is being drawn betweenthe Mesolithic and Neolithic in Britain. Schulting calls on new evidencewhich implies that microlithic mi��cro��lith?n. ArchaeologyA very small blade made of flaked stone and used as a tool, especially in the European Mesolithic Period.mi technologies survived into the laterMesolithic, and yet notes that there are no known examples of microlithsand pottery occurring together (ibid.: 32). On this basis, he suggeststhat there was little overlap between Mesolithic and Neolithic ways oflife in southern Britain. Moreover, he implies that there was littleregional variation in the date of the inception of the Neolithicthroughout the country. Schulting concludes that calls for the unpacking of the Neolithic `package' and the need to consider its constituents independently .... may be premature. Rather, it may be reiterated that the people of the earliest Neolithic in Britain built monuments for their dead, used novel technologies such as pottery .... and appear to have subsisted primarily on domesticated resources. This suggests that the adoption of `Neolithic' traits was for the most part an all-or-nothing affair in Britain (2000: 32-3). These themes of the swiftness of the transition to the Neolithicand the significance of domesticated do��mes��ti��cate?tr.v. do��mes��ti��cat��ed, do��mes��ti��cat��ing, do��mes��ti��cates1. To cause to feel comfortable at home; make domestic.2. To adopt or make fit for domestic use or life.3. a. resources are also addressed byMichael Richards and Robert Hedges, in their study of stable isotope stable isotopen.An isotope of an element that shows no tendency to undergo radioactive breakdown. measurements from early Neolithic human bones, used as an indicator ofdiet (1999). Richards and Hedges argue that while they have littledirect evidence for later Mesolithic diet in southern Britain, theexistence of shell middens attributable to this period suggest thatmarine foods would have made a substantial contribution to nutrition, atleast in coastal areas. They go on to assert that if [[delta].sup.13] analysis of Neolithic human bones indicates there is a lack of marine foods, then we can infer that there was a fairly rapid change in diet as marine foods were replaced by terrestrial foods, most likely the new domesticates that appear at this time (Richards and Hedges 1999: 892, emphasis mine). And indeed, on the basis of analyses conducted on 78 humanskeletons, it appears that no human skeleton The human skeleton consists of both fused and individual bones supported and supplemented by ligaments, tendons, muscles and cartilage. Fused bones include those of the pelvis and the cranium. Osteocytes are present in the bone matrix. dated to after 5400 BPshows any evidence that marine protein contributed to diet, as therelevant [[delta].sup.13] values are all close to -20 [per thousand].Richards and Hedges contend that this pattern could be explained eitherby the replacement of one human population by another (presumably pre��sum��a��ble?adj.That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. continental) one, or by a very rapid change of diet on the part of anindigenous population. However, a gradual change of diet, associatedwith a slow or piecemeal adoption of agriculture, is effectively ruledout (Richards and Hedges 1999: 894). Richards and Hedges infer that associated with the introduction Neolithic material culture into Britain, either by immigrants or adopted by indigenous peoples, there was a move away from the use of marine resources, even at coastal sites. It may be possible that this is due to a rapid change in diet away from wild foods to one in which the new Neolithic domesticated plants and animals predominated (Richards and Hedges 1999: 895-6). Richards and Hedges do not categorically claim that the beginningof the Neolithic saw the universal adoption of domesticates in Britain:they merely present this as a possibility. However, the arguments thatmight explain such a change are familiar enough: either marine resourceswere rendered redundant by a new and more productive economic system, oralternatively the adoption of agriculture imposed a new seasonal cycleof activity which resulted in scheduling difficulties. That is to say,access to marine foods became incompatible with the tending andharvesting of terrestrial domesticates. Of course, the notion that the onset of the British Neolithic wasboth sudden and relatively late (c. 4000 BC) has already informed anumber of different arguments (Kinnes 1988; Thomas 1988). One corollaryof this point is that both Neolithic material culture and domesticatedresources had both been present in northern France and the Low Countriesfor a very long time before they were adopted in Britain. This meansthat models based on a simple expansion of population (`demicdiffusion') are highly questionable. The revelation that theNeolithic appears to have been introduced to the whole of Britainvirtually instantaneously only makes it more difficult to sustain simpleexplanations based on population movement or economic change. IfNeolithic people had already been in Atlantic Europe Atlantic Europe is a geographical and anthropological term for the western portion of Europe which borders the Atlantic Ocean. At its widest definition, it comprises Spain, Portugal, north and western France, and the British Isles. for a millennium,why should they suddenly decide to migrate into Britain? Conversely, ifthe indigenous population of Britain had been aware of these Neolithicpeople and their subsistence practices for generations, why should theysuddenly have chosen to adopt them? And why should all of the diverseMesolithic communities of Britain all have decided to take upagriculture at once? My contention is that some other change ofcircumstance must have occurred at around 4000 BC for such a sweepingand synchronous change to have taken place. Touch not the fish? Returning for the moment to the issue of stable isotope analysis,it is important to remember precisely what this evidence is telling us.The analysis of human bone by this method provides a gross indication ofthe main types of protein ingested by a person during their last tenyears of life or so. Stable isotopes can distinguish between diets basedon plant and animal protein, and between marine and terrestrial sources(Richards 2000: 124). Of course, no such technique can distinguishbetween wild and domesticated resources. Domestication domesticationProcess of hereditary reorganization of wild animals and plants into forms more accommodating to the interests of people. In its strictest sense, it refers to the initial stage of human mastery of wild animals and plants. is first andforemost a social relationship between human beings and other species.While this relationship may lead to morphological changes in plants andanimals over the long term, through the process of selective breeding This article focuses on selective breeding in domesticated animals. For alternate uses, see artificial selection.Selective breeding in domesticated animals is the process of developing a cultivated breed over time. ,there is no fundamental biological characteristic that discriminatesbetween wild and tame species. Consequentially, while Richards andHedges have clearly demonstrated that coastal communities in southernBritain stopped eating marine foods at the start of the Neolithic, theirfurther suggestion that these foods might have been replaced bydomesticates is not necessarily substantiated. It is worth pursuing the ramifications of this abandonment ofmarine resources a little further. One feature of the start of theNeolithic that is widely accepted is that the main domesticated specieswere introduced to the British Isles British Isles:see Great Britain; Ireland. from elsewhere. Some at least ofthe cattle, sheep and pigs were probably brought from the continent,even if they were later bred with feral feraluntamed; often used in the sense of having escaped from domesticity and run wild. creatures. Cereal crops lieoutside of their area of natural occurrence in Atlantic Europe, and mustcertainly have come across the Channel. Case (1969) and Fairbairn (2000)have drawn out some of the implications of this movement of animals Movement of Animals (or On the Motion of Animals or De Motu Animalium) is a text by Aristotle on the general principles of motion in animals. External links at ReiPublicae On the Motion of Animals, translated by A. S. L. andplants, which involve the existence of sea-going craft and of extendednetworks of communication and exchange. A connected point lies in theevidence for contact across the Irish Sea Irish Sea,arm of the Atlantic Ocean, c.40,000 sq mi (103,600 sq km), 130 mi (209 km) long and up to c.140 mi (230 km) wide, lying between Ireland and Great Britain. It is connected with the Atlantic by the North Channel and (on the south) by St. George's Channel. during the earlier Neolithic.The existence of portal dolmens, simple passage tombs and plaincarinated car��i��nat��edadj.Carinate. pottery in both western Britain and Ireland has long beenacknowledged (Lynch 1989: 4-6). More recently, causewayed enclosures(Sheridan 2001) and cursus monuments (Newman 1999) have been identifiedin Ireland. The existence of Irish cursuses is particularly significant,for this class of monument does not appear to have a continental origin.It follows that it is now difficult to sustain a view that the Britishand Irish `Neolithics' were separate and parallel phenomena,derived from a common `donor culture' on the continent. Moreover,the occurrence of stone axes from both Cumbria and Tievebulliagh on theIsle of Man Noun 1. Isle of Man - one of the British Isles in the Irish SeaManBritish Isles - Great Britain and Ireland and adjacent islands in the north Atlantic demonstrates that sea-borne contact around the Irish Sea wasrelatively common during the Neolithic (Coope and Garrad 1988). The point that I wish to draw from this evidence is that Neolithicpeople in Britain had both the capability and the opportunity to accessa rich source of food, in the form of deep-sea fishing. A relatedobservation is made by Fowler and Cummings (forthcoming), who have notedthe presence of marine shells in and around the chambers of numerousmegalithic meg��a��lith?n.A very large stone used in various prehistoric architectures or monumental styles, notably in western Europe during the second millennium b.c. tombs in the areas surrounding the Irish Sea. In both Walesand Scotland, shells of cockles cocklessaponariaofficinalis. , mussels, limpets, whelks and oystershave been recovered from early Neolithic funerary fu��ner��ar��y?adj.Of or suitable for a funeral or burial.[Latin fner contexts, often invery large quantities. If the absence of marine protein in Neolithic diets was as completeas Richards and Hedges suggest, this implies far more than a drift away Verb 1. drift away - lose personal contact over time; "The two women, who had been roommates in college, drifted apart after they got married"drift apart from shoreline resources, occasioned by new subsistence strategies. Onthe contrary, for people who were routinely taking to the sea, andacquiring marine shells, to have abstained from the consumption ofmarine foods implies a positive rejection. Such a complete shift indietary preferences can perhaps best be explained by a culturalprohibition on marine foods. This kind of prohibition or taboo is quitecommon ethnographically (e.g. Simoons 1974), yet is generally linked tothe conceptual ordering of particular species (Douglas 1966). Forinstance, the Rangi of Tanzania forbade the eating of fish because, asscaled creatures, they were conceptually equivalent to snakes (Kesby1979: 46). For Neolithic people to have ingested no marine protein atall would have required the avoidance of not only fish, but also sealsand shellfish. This implies a fundamental change in the relationshipbetween human beings and the sea at the start of the Neolithic. Ofcourse, recent work has begun to reveal that the disposal of the dead inrivers was comparatively common in the Neolithic (Parker Pearson 2000:203; Bradley and Gordon 1988). If the understanding was that thesebodies would ultimately find their way to the sea, this would itselfsuggest a new conception of the oceans and their contents. Thatsea-creatures might have been in some way identified with the dead is anintriguing possibility, but is not necessary to my argument (seeRichards and Thomas forthcoming). An alternative possibility is that thecritical change at the start of the Neolithic in Britain involved notrelations between people and the sea, but between people and people. Ifduring the earliest Neolithic the consumption of domesticated foods wasless a staple diet than a marker of identity, so the rejection of marinefoods might also have been bound up with the assumption of a newcultural identification (`being Neolithic'). Subsistence diversity If the establishment of a new subsistence base is not the onlyreason that we can give for the abandonment of marine resources, theargument that they were necessarily replaced with domesticates issomewhat compromised. There is little argument that pottery, fieldmonuments and polished stone tools became widespread within a very shorttime at the start of the British Neolithic, or even that domesticateswere widely available. However, the notion of a uniform and abrupt shiftto dependence on domesticates as staples flies in the face of growingevidence of regional diversity in subsistence practice, and of the verygradual emergence of a fully agricultural landscape. This much issupported by other aspects of the stable isotope evidence. Discussingthe human bone samples from the Hambledon Hill Hambledon Hill is a prehistoric hill fort in Dorset, England, situated in the Blackmore Vale five miles north of Blandford Forum. The hill is a Chalk outcrop separated from the Dorset Downs and Cranborne Chase ridge by the River Stour. causewayed enclosure Causewayed enclosures are a type of large prehistoric earthworks common to the early Neolithic Europe. More than 100 examples are recorded in France, 70 in England and further sites are known in Scandinavia, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Northern Ireland and Slovakia. andfrom three chambered tombs in southern Britain, Richards (2000: 128)notes that while the results from each of the tombs indicates ahomogeneous diet, those from the enclosure are more varied.[[delta].sup.15] N values at Hambledon Hill indicate that while somepersons ate a great deal of meat, others consumed more plant foods. Oneway of rationalising these results is to suggest that each tomb may havecontained bodies drawn from a single local community (or even a singlekin group), while the enclosure sample represents a series of separategroups with diverse food economies. As Richards concludes, different subsistence regimes were followed in different areas by different communities and at a regional and national scale the picture is more one of a `mosaic' of adaptations (Richards 2000: 132). Is such a `mosaic' easily reconciled with the picture of thesudden inception of a Neolithic based upon a homogeneous regime of mixedagriculture? I suggest not. Moreover, the archaeobotanical evidenceindicates that while cereal crops were grown in many parts of Britain,wild species were still extensively gathered in most areas (Robinson2000). Further, there are no traces of pulses or rye in NeolithicBritain (Fairbairn 2000: 109), and while both wheat and barley weregrown and animal protein probably made some contribution to diet (seebelow), this would at least have raised difficulties in establishing aviable system of crop rotation. Indeed, there are serious naturalconstraints upon the growing of cereals under temperate northernconditions (McLaren 2000: 97), and this further reduces the likelihoodof a universal and synchronic syn��chron��ic?adj.1. Synchronous.2. Of or relating to the study of phenomena, such as linguistic features, or of events of a particular time, without reference to their historical context. adoption of domesticated plants This is a list of plants that have been domesticated by humans.The list includes species or larger formal and informal botanical categories that include at least some domesticated individuals. asstaples. Arguments for the `normality' of cereal-based economies in theBritish Neolithic have been made on the basis of a number of spectacularfinds of large quantities of carbonised grain (Jones 2000: 81). Ofthese, the material from Hambledon Hill was recovered from what isundoubtedly a monument used for ceremonial purposes, while the findsfrom Balbridie and Lismore Fields are not unequivocally `domestic'.The identification of the Balbridie structure (Fairweather and Ralston1993) as a dwelling house rests on a parallel with the timberlong-houses of the central European Neolithic, which are severalhundreds of years older. The building is a colossal, isolated timberconstruction, associated with no field system or outbuildings. Moreover,both Balbridie and another similar structure at Claish Farm (Barclay,Brophy and McGregor 2002a) had burned down, which resulted in thepreservation of the grain. It is significant that the deliberate burningof timber uprights is a very widespread feature of the use of earlyNeolithic ceremonial timber monuments in lowland Scotland and fartherafield (Barclay and Maxwell 1991: 38; Evans and Simpson 1991, 8;Kendrick 1995: 33; Thomas 2000). While it is open to interpretationwhether the Balbridie and Claish Farm structures were intentionallyburned, it is very unlikely that they were representative ofcontemporary dwellings, and more probable that they had a functionconnected with the activities of a group larger than a household(Barclay, Brophy and McGregor 2002b: 24). In this respect, the verylarge timber halls of northern Britain can perhaps be fruitfullycontrasted with the large number of much smaller rectangular houses thatare being found in some parts of Ireland (Grogan 1996), and for which arather stronger case can be made as dwellings. This again draws ourattention to the considerable variability of residence, mobility andsubsistence practices in Neolithic north-west Europe. If very large concentrations of cereals in Neolithic Britain wereprimarily located in ceremonial contexts, this would support thecontention that they were sometimes used as special-purpose foods. Inthis connection, Dineley and Dineley's (2000) arguments regardingthe use of cereals in the brewing of ale may be pertinent. This may alsoexplain why some Neolithic cultivation appears to have been episodic andshort-lived, rather than involving the establishment of long-lived fieldsystems. From `package' to `repertoire' While I would argue that for many Neolithic communities in Britainboth the meat of domesticated animals This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.Please help Wikipedia by adding references. See the for details.This article has been tagged since September 2007.This is a list of animals which have been domesticated by humans. and cereal products werespecial-purpose foods rather than everyday staples (although theconsumption of dairy products dairy productsdairy npl → produits laitierdairy productsdairy npl → Milchprodukte pl, Molkereiprodukte pland cattle blood represent further partsof the equation), I do not wish to imply that they all relied upon wildfoods. Rather, the case is one for economic diversity. This diversity, Icontend, contradicts any conception of a fixed and universal Neolithic`package'. Schulting is doubtless correct when he implies that theNeolithic was not composed of a series of utterly unrelated traits.There was indeed a systematic connection between the different elements,and it may be right to imagine communities `buying in' to a new wayof doing things, rather than simply adding new material forms to anexisting way of life. The Neolithic was above all transformational, inthat it had to be performed. That is, each element changed the way inwhich people did things. However, the social and culturaltransformations involved were not uniform, and while the differentaspects of the Neolithic tended to co-occur the adoption of the entiresuite was not mandatory either. This point can most easily be substantiated with reference tomonuments, which are perhaps the most archaeologically conspicuouselement of the British Neolithic. It is increasingly recognised thatearth, timber and stone constructions were an integral part of theNeolithic, rather than a superfluous means of displaying wealth orstatus (Schulting 2000: 30). But despite this, not all Neolithiccommunities built or had access to the full range of monumental forms.Causewayed enclosures, for instance, are absent from much of northernBritain, and cursus monuments are highly localised in theirdistribution. In some areas, Neolithic flint scatters are present wheremonuments are entirely absent (Shennan 1981: 111-3). Some of these areasmay have been complementary zones, visited seasonally by mobile groupswhose monuments were located elsewhere. But it is hard to escape theconclusion that some Neolithic communities just didn't buildmonuments at all. Monument-building was a social strategy, which had theeffect of bringing people together to labour and to engage in ritualobservances, while simultaneously dividing them in other ways. Butsimilar effects could be achieved in other ways: the circulation andmanipulation of fine portable artefacts, for instance. This in turnwould imply that the significance of particular types of artefacts, suchas polished stone axes, would have varied from region to region andcommunity to community, as their centrality to the process of socialreproduction varied. Just as monument-building was widespread but not universal in theearlier Neolithic, so we can imagine that other aspects of the Neolithiccultural assemblage were widely accessible after 4000 BC, but notuniversally adopted. Still less should we imagine that they were used inthe same ways, or given the same meanings. This being the case, it maybe less appropriate to talk of a Neolithic `package' than aNeolithic `repertoire', an interrelated set of material andsymbolic resources from which different communities could draw indifferent ways. The synchronic appearance of these resources indifferent parts of Britain can best be explained by the establishment ofnew networks of contact and exchange, within which cultural innovationscould circulate. If new relationships of exchange and alliance werebeing formed over comparatively long distances, it is necessary toconsider again the role that the movement of population might have hadin the beginning of the British Neolithic. Without returning to modelsof migration or invasion, it is entirely possible that the period saw anincreased movement of personnel. The forging of new social relationshipsbetween communities would almost certainly have involved the exchange ofmarriage partners, corvee cor��v��e?n.1. Labor exacted by a local authority for little or no pay or instead of taxes and used especially in the maintenance of roads.2. A day of unpaid work required of a vassal by a feudal lord. labour, and other forms of movement betweengroups. This would have meant the circulation of persons betweenestablished communities, rather than the wholesale relocation ofpopulations. Moreover, the process need not have been unidirectional,involving a simple influx of persons into Britain. The inception of the Neolithic period Neolithic periodor New Stone Age.The term neolithic is used, especially in archaeology and anthropology, to designate a stage of cultural evolution or technological development characterized by the use of stone tools, the existence of in Britain involved thesudden and synchronous appearance of a new cultural repertoire,including monuments, portable artefacts, and domesticated plants andanimals. Not all of these have direct continental parallels, implyingthat the process involved inventiveness and bricolage bri��co��lage?n.Something made or put together using whatever materials happen to be available: "Even the decor is a bricolage, a mix of this and that"Los Angeles Times. on the part of theindigenous population. The domesticates, of course, must have beenintroduced from continental Europe. However, the diversity of Neolithicsubsistence practice indicates that they were used in a variety ofdifferent ways: sometimes as staples, sometimes as special-purposefoods, sometimes alongside wild foods. Acknowledgements My thanks to Gordon Barclay, Chris Fowler Chris Fowler (born August 23 1962) is a sports broadcaster for ESPN known best for his work on College GameDay for college football. Since 1989, Fowler has been the primary studio host for college football and men's college basketball on ESPN. , Colin Richards and MikeRichards For other people named Michael Richards, see Michael Richards (disambiguation).Michael "Mike" Richards (born 11 February, 1985 in Kenora, Ontario) is a Canadian professional ice hockey center who currently plays for the Philadelphia Flyers for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. References BARCLAY, G.J., BROPHY, K. AND MACGREGOR, G. 2002a A Neolithicbuilding at Claish Farm, near Callander, Stiling Council, Scotland, UK.Antiquity 76, 23-4. 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Julian Thomas * * School of Art History & Archaeology, University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a university located in Manchester, England. With over 40,000 students studying 500 academic programmes, more than 10,000 staff and an annual income of nearly ��600 million it is the largest single-site University in the United Kingdom and receives Received 11 February 2002, Accepted 3 January 2003, Revised 22January 2003