The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

by Chris Fowler

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  CHAPTER 22

  SUBSISTENCE PRACTICES IN WESTERN AND NORTHERN EUROPE

  PETER ROWLEY-CONWY AND TONY LEGGE†

  INTRODUCTION

  THIS chapter considers domestic animals and plants in the Neolithic of western and northern Europe. Perhaps no other region on the planet has seen research as intensive and as long term, but despite this the nature and significance of early agriculture is still keenly debated. There is little agreement even on many of the basic issues: how rapidly was agriculture established as the dominant way of life in the various parts of the region? In what proportions did immigrant farmers and indigenous foragers contribute their genes to Europe’s later population? Were any of the major plants or animals locally domesticated? Our information often remains patchy and sometimes contradictory, but current work is transforming our understanding of these issues.

  We start with the northern and western parts of the Linearbandkeramik (LBK). This farming culture originated in the Hungarian Plain c. 5700 BC, and spread west to the Paris Basin in a couple of centuries (Schier, this volume). This parallels the very rapid near-contemporary Cardial farming spread round the central and western Mediterranean coasts (Bogaard and Halstead, this volume). West of the Alps, the two axes slowed and converged, and farming reached the Biscayan coast of France by c. 5000 BC. To the north of the LBK, the spread of farming stopped for 1,500 years, after which it again spread remarkably rapidly at c. 4000 BC, reaching Ireland, Scotland, and Scandinavia as far north as Oslo and Stockholm.

  ENERGETICS

  Hunter-gatherers are often (but not always) mobile, exploiting seasonal resources in different places. Large-scale food storage is rare. Farming systems imposed quite different needs. Neolithic farmers made their living mainly from their domestic animals and plants, and these involved much smaller areas of land. Cereals were grown in small fields cleared of vegetation, no doubt initially assisted by rooting domestic pigs. The domestic animals were closely managed. Food storage was the key to the growth and dispersal of the Neolithic way of life. The farmers would have stored substantial amounts of cereals and processed milk products. This imposed a largely sedentary life, with people tied to their fields and food stores. Farming thus brought about profound social change.

  Neolithic farming could extract much more energy from a given area than foraging. Hunter-gatherers usually gain about 10–15 times more food energy than they expend obtaining it. Traditional farmers do better, gaining 20–40 times the energy they expend (Leach 1976). One Neolithic family could satisfy their food needs from the cultivation of just a couple of hectares. A hypothetical farming village of 100 people would utilize perhaps 150–200ha, though grazing wo
uld use additional land. The population density of farmers on suitable land would clearly be very much higher than that of hunter-gatherers.

  Farming thus brought about a profound change in population density. Most hunter-gatherers have low population densities, due to the constraints of lean seasons (Rowley-Conwy and Layton 2011). The situation has been quite different in farming societies. Sedentary groups can wean children much earlier, because stored cereals and milk products provide ideal weaning foods; in consequence each woman could have multiple births. The parish records of British villages reveal that only a century or two ago families of 10, 12, or even more children were quite common. Once farming was firmly established, there was no return to earlier ways.

  METHODS AND INTERPRETATIONS

  Neolithic agriculture is studied through the remains of the animals and plants themselves. Preservation and recovery of these is problematic: animal bones often preserve fairly well unless soil conditions are too acidic, whilst plant tissues normally decay rapidly. On most European farming settlements we only see plant remains that have been exposed to fire and which survive by charring, a taphonomic window that it is vital we bear in mind.

  The differential size of bone fragments means that excavated samples may be biased: excavators using trowels will find most cattle bones, but fewer sheep and even fewer chicken bones. A sieving regime is thus a vital ingredient of any excavation strategy (Legge and Hacker 2010). This should include sub-sampling with a smaller mesh to find very small bones; only a 1mm sieve mesh will recover small fish such as herring in the proper proportion (Enghoff 2011, table 41).

  Charred plant remains are more difficult to recover systematically. A burnt cereal store is usually visible during excavation, but lower-density samples such as those in middens or back-filled pits are not. Hazelnut shell fragments are more visible than cereal grains. Such factors are clearly likely to lead to bias. A systematic approach to recovery by flotation is therefore essential, preferably done on a large scale during the excavation itself. Various kinds of recovery unit are employed (Jarman et al. 1972). A consistent regime such as sampling 10% of all contexts should be the norm (van der Veen and Fieller 1982).