The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

by Chris Fowler

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  CHAPTER 56

  THE DECLINE OF THE NEOLITHIC AND THE RISE OF BRONZE AGE SOCIETY

  KRISTIAN KRISTIANSEN

  THEORETICAL OUTLINE

  IN this contribution I propose that there existed world historical epochs during the prehistory and early history of western Eurasia where communities, even when not directly connected to each other, shared basic conditions that enabled and constrained their evolutionary potential. The Neolithic and the Bronze Age represent such world historical epochs, and it is therefore pertinent to raise the question: what were the historical conditions or forces that led to the decline of the Neolithic and the rise of the Bronze Age? In raising this question I propose that there is a qualitative difference between Neolithic and Bronze Age social formations in prehistoric Europe, which fundamentally changed both their worldviews and 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. This, however, is disputed by some (Kienlin and Zimmermann 2012; Kienlin 2012), and I shall therefore explicitly make a comparison between seemingly similar tell societies in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age in the Carpathian basin to make my point clear. The transition also needs to be discussed, as the term Chalcolithic or Copper Age is often used to characterize much of the fourth millennium BC in this region. I shall argue that the adaptation of metallurgy and new ideas about property and inheritance inspired by the expanding urban societies in Mesopotamia and its hinterland enabled this transformation.

  My theoretical point of departure is thus a combination of World System theory, here summarized in the concept ‘historical epochs’, and a political economy approach (Earle and Kristiansen 2010). I consequently employ a scalar approach that weds an understanding of the political economy of local communities with the larger historical forces which indirectly governed their existence, even if this was beyond their knowledge. In accordance with Marx, history is shaped under conditions inherited from the past and therefore not of our own choosing, and yet the accumulated force of multiple individual choices may change the direction of that history, when conditions are ripe. Therefore we need to understand those conditions that govern and motivate either stability or change: in short, the political economy.

  According to Kristiansen and Earle (in press):

  a political economy approach seeks to understand the linkage between the society’s economy, power, and institutional structure as it unfolds both vertically (complexity) and horizontally (networks). In simple terms, this approach identifies the different horizontal and vertical social groups and their associations with contrasting interests. Fundamental is to understand the potential for different social segments to control in part the flows of resources that are used to support (finance) the political standing of different social segments. This ability to control economic flows in both subsistence and wealth depended on the creation of social institutions with specific cultural formations most importantly involving property rights and the formation of a new type of warrior aristocracy/institution to protect them. This approach is based on a Marxist analysis generalized to the new economic contexts of prehistory (see Friedman and Rowlands 1977; Kristiansen 1998, chapter 3; Ekholm and Friedman 2008; Earle 2013). To this we add an analysis and interpretation of the social institutions that were new to the Bronze Age in order to secure long-distance trade and political stability, but also the potentially disruptive forces that may destroy such political networks.

  In the following this theoretical and interpretative framework will be used to explore how Neolithic and Bronze Age economies and social systems differed. However, this demands further theoretical elaboration, not least regarding how different forms of social complexity operate.

  COMPLEXITY IN NEOLITHIC AND BRONZE AGE POLITICAL ECONOMIES

  The study of complexity is linked up with the old question of how power and inequality comes about. Under what circumstances will a majority of people hand over their power to a minority of people (Earle 1997; Flannery and Marcus 2012)? Both Neolithic and Bronze Age societies were complex; the question is how they differ in their complexity. It obviously depends on how one defines complexity. I define complexity as the structured and institutionalized distribution of power. Access to power thus becomes increasingly unequal when complexity increases (example: elites versus commoners). Complexity is both vertical and horizontal, and the forms of integration involved in these arrangements define the limits and potential of power. Interacting systems are therefore the object of analysis, just as we need to employ a scalar approach that allows us to move from local to global and back.

  We can distinguish between two forms of complexity: centralized and decentralized (Kristiansen 1984, 1998, fig. 18; Kristiansen and Larsson 2005, chapter 8.1). These are their main attributes:

  •Centralized: hierarchical structure around major centres; power and ownership concentrated; leadership and wealth concentrated—a staple finance system controlling resources essential to subsistence; vertical cosmology.

  �
�Decentralized: complexity without major centres; power and ownership distributed spatially; leadership and wealth movable—a wealth finance system driven by acquisition of prestige goods and gift exchanges; horizontal cosmology.

  The two forms were always intertwined, but with one or the other dominant.

  With this as a starting point I shall briefly explore how Neolithic and Bronze Age complexity was linked to different political economies in their integration of vertical and horizontal differentiation. I shall mainly refer to later Neolithic societies of the fifth and fourth millennium BC (cf. Heyd 2012). In the Neolithic we see the formation of some large settlements with high population figures in certain regions; however, these were not systematically connected, and in the long term they collapsed, rather than expanded. Here lies a major difference in complexity compared to the Bronze Age. Two factors were decisive: essential raw material could be obtained locally, with the exception of some prestige goods. There was no development of permanent higher-level institutions in charge of trade and alliance formation. There was consequently no development of interregional economic dependency and division of labour of the kind observed during the Bronze Age.

  We may thus define most late Neolithic/Copper Age societies as regional political economies that were able to build up and control rather large populations in areas of high productivity. Good examples are the Tripolje mega-sites, or the tell settlements in east central Europe and the Balkans, or the mega-sites in Spain and Portugal, with fortified settlements interspersed by huge (several hundred hectare) settlements with enclosure ditches, such as Valencina de la Conception (Garcia and Morillo-Barroso 2013; Marquez-Romero and Jiménez-Jáimez 2013). Among tell settlements in east-central Europe we typically find a two-tier settlement structure, such as the Polgár-Csőszhalom site in Hungary in the Tizsa region. A central tell (2–3ha), with a ritual circular structure and—in my interpretation—chiefly houses, is surrounded by a large 25ha settlement presumably of commoners (Raczky et al. 2011, figs 2 and 9). Some megalithic communities can now be demonstrated to have exploited and drawn in livestock from non-megalithic areas within economies operating at a regional scale (Sjögren and Price 2013). These may have involved a degree of centralization. Certain forms of prestige goods, such as jade axes, were distributed over large regions in Europe, with a typical fall-off curve from the centre (Klassen et al. 2011, abb. 7, 9, and 18), indicating prestige good exchange rather than trade and therefore not the ability to control other regional economies/chiefdoms. Therefore we should rather characterize these later Neolithic regional economies as territorial chiefdoms, spanning from simple to complex. This is based on an anthropological model in which chiefdoms are ranked societies where power is institutionalized and hereditary within chiefly lineages; competition and social mobility exists in such communities, although there is often a division between ‘chiefs’, ‘commoners’, and ‘unfree’ persons.

  When we compare mobility in Neolithic and Bronze Age societies, we find that mobility was a dominant feature of both, but increased in the Bronze Age (Müller 2013b, tab. 3), especially during the early Bronze Age. Only the pioneer early Neolithic period can show a similar degree of mobility. It is likely that Bronze Age population figures were substantially higher than those in the Neolithic due to the fact that settlements were now continuously occupied, and encompassed much larger areas (Müller 2013b, figs 8 and 9; Rassmann 2011). This also allowed long-distance trade networks to develop and be sustained between many stable centres of inhabitation. This defines a major structural difference compared to the Neolithic, where trade and exchange networks remained regional. Contrary to this, Bronze Age metal trade was regular and organized/institutionalized, and it was interregional—universally so in Europe by c. 1600 BC. Few mining areas produced the bulk of metal to be systematically distributed via long-distance trade to all communities, yet huge quantities of copper were circulated on an annual basis. We may thus define Bronze Age political economies as interregional and decentralized, spanning from ranked to stratified societies in Fried’s terminology. They were part of a widespread metal economy where regional divisions of labour played a crucial role, and where chiefly institutions were sustained by tribute and warrior retinues. Before we probe more deeply into these structural differences, let us take a look at the decisive transformation from later Neolithic to Bronze Age social formations.

  THE DECLINE OF NEOLITHIC ECONOMIES AND THE EXPANSION OF NEW DECENTRALIZED ECONOMIES: CORDED WARE AND BELL BEAKERS

  More than 10 years ago Janusz Kruk and Saunas Milisauskas (1999) published an inspiring book on the rise and fall of Neolithic societies. Here they pointed to a global crisis in temperate Neolithic economies around 3000 BC, which in some regions led to a renewed expansion of non-Neolithic economies, such as Pitted Ware, and to the expansion of pastoral Yamna/Corded Ware groups that also introduced some metalworking (Hansen 2011; Heyd 2011, 2012). Subsequently, this decline has been confirmed using thousands of C14 dates as a measure of population/settlement density, which in northern and western Europe shows a marked decline after 3000 BC, with a few exceptions (Shennan et al. 2013). One conclusion to be derived from these observations is that the expansion of a new social formation of Yamna/Corded Ware groups was helped by the crisis, which had then seriously diminished the power of Neolithic communities. In this respect Yamna and Corded Ware represented the expansion of a Bronze Age social formation into former Neolithic terrain, where most groups would live on a mixed stone/metal economy for another millennium, and where for some centuries old and new cultural identities and oppositions were maintained (Czebreszuk and Szmyt 2011). How did this Neolithic crisis or transformation come about?

  In the western steppe in the fifth to fourth millennium stratified Chalcolithic societies were developing in the Balkan–Carpathian region, only to collapse or be transformed during the later part of the fourth millennium BC (Chernykh 1992, chapter 2; Sherratt 2003). They adopted copper production on a limited scale, but with the potential to expand exchange networks and ultimately change the economy. However, they were not able to transform either economy or exchange network in the long run (Müller 2013a; Chapman 2013). Instead a combined ecological/economic crisis set in around 3000 BC, but beginning even earlier around the Black Sea, when the mega-settlements of the Tripolje culture gradually collapsed.

  Stretching from the Romanian Black Sea coast to the north-east of the Dniester–Dnieper Rivers, the proto-urban communities of the Tripolje culture created a barrier towards the west during this period. It represents what Mallory (1998) has called the first of three fault lines to be passed in order to explain the expansion of Indo-European languages. But more importantly they provide the demographic foundation for the later peopling of the steppe and the light soils of central and northern Europe. These proto-urban communities were organized around fortified settlements with two-storey houses arranged in concentric circles, the largest settlements being from 100–400ha, and containing 5,000–15,000 people (Videjko 1995; Chapman 2012). Each community with satellite settlements would hold from 6,000–20,000 people, and a local group of several communities from 10,000 to 35,000 people. Their interaction with steppe communities and later abandonment or transformation into pastoral groups from the later fourth millennium onwards is still a matter of debate (Dergachev 2000; Chapman 2002; Manzura 2005), but it opened up an opportunity for a westward expansion into central and northern Europe of the new social and economic practices (Johannsen and Laursen 2010). It culminated in the formation of the Corded Ware culture shortly after 3000 BC (Czebreszuk and Müller 2001), whose rapid expansion is reflected in its ritual coherence over vast regions (Fuhrholt 2011, abb. 10). Some have called this a ‘barbarization’ or decline of the Neolithic (Kruk and Milisauskas 1999; Rassamakin 1999, 125ff, 154), but it represented a major transformation from centralized to decentralized economies.

  The expansion of this mobile agro-pastoral economy was rapid and sometimes dramatic, as evidenced in a recently analysed m
ultiple burial from Saxony-Anhalt, the result of a massacre on a small family group of 13 individuals (Meyer et al. 2009; Haak et al. 2008). During the early and middle Neolithic periods there were still large forest reserves preserved in Europe, although mainly on lighter soils. However, during the early third millennium BC these areas were colonized by expanding pastoral herders and warriors with an apparently never-ending appetite for new pastures, who rapidly burned down the forests to create grazing lands for their animals, as evidenced in pollen diagrams (Andersen 1995, 1998; Odgaard 1994; Kremenetski 2003). The expansion could have been helped also by climatic changes (Paschkevych 2012). As land-use was extensive it demanded much larger tracts of open land to feed people and animals than in a more sedentary (centralized) agrarian economy, and to facilitate communication and travels they employed ox-drawn, four-wheeled wagons (Burmeister 2004). The mobile lifestyle is also exemplified by the use of mats, tents, and wagons, which are sometimes found in burials (Ecsedy 1994; Shislina 2008, figs 27 and 28). Strontium isotope evidence of migration of individuals is beginning to emerge and sustain archaeological interpretations (Gerling et al. 2012; Irrgeher et al. 2012; de Jong et al. 2010). In western Jutland the decimation of the forest during less than one hundred years and the creation of open grassland and heath is due to a massive immigration of a new population, the Single Grave culture, with a new economy and social organization that demanded open land for their grazing herds (Kristiansen 1989).

  The newcomers practiced some cultivation of cereals, especially barley (Robinson and Kempfner 1987), but the economy was based primarily on animal products, as reflected in diet (Kolar et al. 2012), and they expanded through a combination of warfare and recruitment of new members through clientships (forged through gifts and ethnic incorporation) and other means of social dominance. For instance, language was replaced in some areas due to mass migrations (Anthony 2007; Kristinsson 2012), as in western Jutland. Small houses or huts appeared during the later stage of the Corded Ware and Single Grave culture (Liversage 1987; Müller et al. 2009).