DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY Document a Praehist orica XL VI Document a Praehist orica XL VI EDITOR Mihael Budja ISSN 1408–967X (Print) ISSN 1854–2492 (Online) LJUBLJANA 2019 DOCUMENTA PRAEHISTORICA XLVI (2019) Urednika/Editors: Prof. Dr. Mihael Budja, urednik/editor, mihael.budja@ff.uni-lj.si Bojan Kambiè, tehnièni urednik/technical editor, bojan.kambic@amis.net Uredniški odbor/Editorial board: Maja Andriè, Institute of Archaeology, ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, Slovenia Mihael Budja, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Slovenia Canan Çakirlar, University of Groningen, Faculty of Arts, Netherlands Ekaterina Dolbunova, The State Hermitage Museum, The department of archaeology of Eastern Europe and Siberia, Saint-Petersburg, Russian Federation Ya-Mei Hou, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropolgy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China Dimitrij Mlekuž Vrhovnik, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Slovenia; Institute for the protection of the cultural heritage of Slovenia, Ljubljana, Slovenia Simona Petru, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Slovenia Žiga Šmit, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of mathematics and physics, Slovenia Katherine Willis, University of Oxford, United Kingdom Andreja Žibrat Gašpariè, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Slovenia To delo je ponujeno pod licenco Creative Commons Priznanje avtorstva-Deljenje pod enakimi pogoji 4.0 Mednarodna licenca/This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 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Documenta Prehistorica je vkljuèena v Evropski referenèni seznam za humanistiène vede (SCOPUS, ERIH PLUS in DOAJ) in sodeluje v omrežju CrossRef (http://www.crossref.org/), ki omogoèa povezovanje referenc med založniki. The Documenta Praehistorica is indexed in the European Reference Index for Humanities (SCOPUS, ERIH PLUS and DOAJ). The journal participates in CrossRef (http://www.crossref.org/), the collaborative, cross-publisher reference linking service. E-izdaja. Publikacija je v digitalni obliki prosto dostopna na https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/DocumentaPraehistorica E-edition. The publication is freely available in digital form at https://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/DocumentaPraehistorica Gavrinis passage tomb CONTENTS Oksana Yanshina Understanding the specific nature of the East Asia Neolithic transition Mark J. Hudson 30 Towards a prehistory of the Great Divergence> the Bronze Age roots of Japan’s premodern economy Hojjat Darabi, Tobias Richter, and Peder Mortensen 44 Neolithisation process in the central Zagros> Asiab and Ganj Dareh revisited Fokke Gerritsen, Rana Özbal 58 Barcin Höyük, a seventh millennium settlement in the Eastern Marmara region of Turkey Barbara Horejs 68 Long and short revolutions towards the Neolithic in western Anatolia and Aegean Nataliya A. Tsvetkova 84 The beginning of the Neolithic on the Upper Volga (Russia) Marek Nowak 102 The first vs. second stage of neolithisation in Polish territories (to say nothing of the third|) Nataliya Yu. Petrova 128 The development of Neolithic pottery technology in Eastern Jazira and the Zagros Mountains Deniz Sari, Semsettin Akyol 138 The Early Neolithic pottery of Keçiçayiri and its place in the North-western Anatolian Neolithisation process Lily Bonga 158 Early ceramic styles and technologies in the Aegean and the Balkans> retrospect and prospects Ekaterina Kashina, Nataliya Yu. Petrova 174 The Kargopol type ceramics – the first pottery of the northern part of the East European Plain| Noémi Beljak Pa.inová, Tatiana Daráková 184 The state of Early Linear Pottery Culture research in Slovakia Hans-Christoph Strien 204 ‘Robust chronologies’ or ‘Bayesian illusion’| Some critical remarks on the use of chronological modelling Dmytro Haskevych, Eiko Endo, Dai Kunikita, and Olexandr Yanevich 216 New AMS dates from the Sub-Neolithic sites in the Southern Buh area (Ukraine) and problems in the Buh-Dnister Culture chronology Petro Pesonen, Markku Oinonen 246 The chronology of Jäkärlä Ware – Bayesian interpretation of the old and new radiocarbon dates from Early and Middle Neolithic southwest Finland Dimitrij Mleku. Vrhovnik 268 Neolithic and Copper Age settlement dynamics in the Western Carpathian Basin and Eastern Alps Kristina Penezi., Marko Por.i., Jelena Jovanovi., Petra Kathrin Urban, Ursula Wittwer-Backofen, and Sofija Stefanovi. 284 Quantifying prehistoric physiological stress using the TCA method> preliminary results from the Central Balkans Yaroslav V. Kuzmin 296 Obsidian provenance studies in the far eastern and northeastern regions of Russia and exchange networks in the prehistory of Northeast Asia> a review Serge Cassen, Carlos Rodríguez-Rellán, Ramon Fábregas Valcarce, Valentin Grimaud, Yvan Pailler, and Bettina Schulz Paulsson 308 Real and ideal European maritime transfers along the Atlantic coast during the Neolithic Jiying Liu, Hong Chen, and Yiming Shen 326 Use-wear experimental studies for differentiating flint tools processing bamboo from wood Laura Dietrich, Dörte Rokitta-Krumnow, and Oliver Dietrich 340 The meaning of projectile points in the Late Neolithic of the Northern Levant. A case study from the settlement of Shir, Syria Sonja Ka.ar 352 Impressed Ware blade production of Northern Dalmatia (Eastern Adriatic, Croatia) in the context of Neolithisation Marianna A. Kulkova, Alexandr A. Vybornov, Aleksandr Yudin, Nataliya Doga, and Aleksandr Popov 376 New interdisciplinary research on Neolithic-Eneolithic sites in the Low Volga River region Arkadii Korolev, Anna Kochkina, and Dmitry Stashenkov 388 The Early Eneolithic burial ground at Ekaterinovsky Cape in the forest-steppe Volga region Monica Ma¢rga¢rit, Ma¢da¢lina Dimache 398 Personal adornments from the Eneolithic necropolis of Chirnogi-S¸uvit¸a Iorgulescu (Romania)> a picture of symbolism in prehistoric communities Akbar Abedi, Reza Heidari, Salah Salimi, and Nasir Eskandari 414 New Uruk finds in NW Iran> Hasanlu VIII-VII and no Kura-Araxes culture evidence in southern parts of Lake Urmia Saeid Bahramiyan 424 Probable evidence of a Middle Palaeolithic site in the northern parts of the Susiana Plain, Khuzestan, Iran Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) Understanding the specific nature of the East Asia Neolithic transition Oksana Yanshina Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of Russian Academy of Sciences, Sankt Peterburg, RU oyanshina@mail.ru ABSTRACT – The main subject of this article is to define the specific nature of the Palaeolithic-Neoli­thic transition in East Asia. A comparative analysis of regional East Asian data was run in order to achieve this. As a result, three dissimilar models of the Neolithic transition were distinguished: Meso-Neolithic, Subneolithic, and Neolithic proper. The first and last are similar to their counterparts in the western part of Eurasia, but the Subneolithic is unique for East Asia. Regarding chronology, two stages of Neolithic transition can be clearly recognized in this region. The new Subneolithic type of hunter-gatherer cultures occurred during the first stage around the Sea of Japan. At the second stage, the transition to food production started in central and north-central China. In between, there was a cultural, spatial and temporal gap splitting up the transitional process into two isolated episodes. KEY WORDS – East Asia; Palaeolithic-Neolithic transition; Neolithic; Subneolithic; Meso-Neolithic; origin of pottery Razumevanje posebne narave prehoda v neolitik na obmo;ju Vzhodne Azije IZVLE.EK – V .lanku razpravljamo o posebni naravi prehoda med paleolitikom in neolitikom na ob-mo.ju Vzhodne Azije. Pri tem smo si pomagali s primerjalno analizo podatkov, pridobljenih na tem obmo.ju. Kot rezultat predstavljamo tri razli.ne modele prehoda v neolitik: mezo-neolitik, pod-neo­litik in pravi neolitik. Prvi in zadnji sta podobna procesom v zahodnem delu Evrazije, medtem ko je pod-neolitik pojav, zna.ilen le za Vzhodno Azijo. Tukaj lahko na podlagi kronologije jasno razlo-.imo dve stopnji prehoda v neolitik. Sprva se je nova oblika pod-neolitika oblikovala med lovci in nabiralci na obmo.ju Japonskega morja. V drugi stopnji pa se za.ne pridelava hrane na obmo.ju osrednje in na severnem delu osrednje Kitajske. Med obema stopnjama je kulturna, prostorska in .asovna prekinitev, ki proces prehoda v neolitik deli na dva lo.ena pojava. KLJU.NE BESEDE – Vzhodna Azija; prehod paleolitik-neolitik; pod-neolitik; mezo-neolitik; izvor lon- .enine Introduction Recent discoveries provide increasing evidence that 2015; Budja 2006; 2016; Jordan, Zvelebil 2009; many human achievements, previously consid-ered Huyseco et al. 2009, Hommel 2012; Gibbs, Jordan to be a product of the Neolithic agrarian revolution, 2013; Cohen 2013; 2017). A huge number of stud-were made before it happened (Barnett, Hoppes ies have been made to explain the new facts and 1995; Roosevelt 1995; Close 1995; Rice 1999; Jes-link them with the traditional point of view, and as se 2003; Keally et al. 2003; Kuzmin 2006; 2010; a result a new paradigm began to take a shape in DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.1 Understanding the specific nature of the East Asia Neolithic transition the literature, radically changing our understand­ing of the Neolithic (Zeder 2009; 2011; Fuller et al. 2011; Finlayson 2013; Özdogan 2010; 2014; Uchi­yama et al. 2014; Nordqvist, Kriiska 2015; Gibbs, Jordan 2016). Two statements constitute its core. One of them postulates the multiplicity of the Neo­lithic forms and their ways of evolving, whereas the second call into question the revolutionary nature of the Neolithisation, since new data indicate that this process was protracted and not as influential as previously considered. It should be noted these new views are coming ra­pidly into ascendance, and are recurrently ex-pressed by different scholars and with different rationales. It seems that right now a new Neolithic concept is being formed. Accordingly, the Neolithic turns from a global phenomenon with a single set of innova­tions into some kind of ‘patchwork’ phenomenon consisting of many different regional forms. In this vision, the long polycentric process of Neolithic de­velopment substitutes the Neolithic burst in a core area with subsequent transmission of the ready-made package of Neolithic innovations beyond its borders. It is quite understandable that the new perspectives are based to a large extent on data from East Asia, as the Neolithic transition began there with the ad­vent of pottery and ended with the develop-ment of agriculture, while in West Asia, providing a clas­sic case of Neolithic research, this sequence was re­versed (Björk 1998; Bar-Yozef 2011a; Kuzmin 2013; Gibbs 2015; Gibbs, Jordan 2016; Fuller, Stevens 2017). This indicates a clear discrepancy between the eastern and western pathways of the Neolithic transition. However, does this observation cover all features separating East and West Asia? In this paper, I will attempt to summarize the data concerning this question. My analysis shows that spatio-temporal dynamics of the Neolithic transition and its region­al differences also deserve our attention from this point of view. However, before starting, some preliminary remarks have to be made with regard to the terms and ap­proaches taken in this study. In a broad sense, the Neolithic transition means people’s shift from the Palaeolithic to Neolithic way of life. But the under­standing of the latter has been changing drastically in recent years. Nowadays the question of what was the endpoint of this process thus arises in almost every research lying in the scope of Neolithic stud­ies. The traditional point of view takes agriculture as the terminus of the Neolithic transition, while ano­ther widespread position sees pottery as the end­point. However, the concept of the multifarious Neo­lithic seems to infer that there is no one proper answer to this question. In the present study, I would prefer to avoid the ge­neralizations that hide beneath the question above. First, in my opinion, we have to document and com­prehend all possible regional variants of the Neo­lithic. Therefore, my task here is only to explore what is, in fact, the Neolithic transition in East Asia. However, even in this case it is necessary to define this process at least to outline the dataset relevant to this task. In this way, I propose to abide by the local schemes of interpreting the Neolithic. From this, the Neolithic transition is considered here as moving from what local researchers regard as its starting point to what they understand under the term Neolithic. It also has to be added that East Asia is extremely extensive and diverse in both cultural and climatic terms. For this reason, in order to make out the shared features of the Neolithic transition in this vast area it is necessary first to define its regional peculiarities. My analysis shows three regional mo­dels of the Neolithic transition can be clearly rec­ognized in East Asia: the Subneolithic in the Sea of Japan area, the Neolithic proper in central and north-central China, and the Meso-Neolithic in the Circum-Baikal region. Other territories did not generate any special forms of the Neolithic transition and might be characterized as laggards in this context (Eerkens, Lipo 2014). Thus, further in this article regional data will be first presented so that they reflect a general sequence of the Neolithic transition in each of the three areas mentioned, and then an attempt to designate a re-gion-wide scheme will be made. Finally, the assess­ment of this scheme will be done in comparison with the general pattern of the Neolithic transition according to its classical understanding registered in West Asia and implied the shift to farming. Regions around the Sea of Japan The Sea of Japan basin introduces the first model which is related to forming sedentary hunter-gath-erer-fisher cultures, and therefore it can be defined as Subneolithic. A wide range of innovations emerg­ed here during the course of the Neolithic transi­tion. A little later, they will constitute the hallmark Oksana Yanshina Fig. 1. Spatio-temporal distribution of pottery-bearing sites during the Neolithic transition (based on 14C dates run on charcoal, bone or pottery charred crust). In the Japanese archipelago only the main sites have been marked due to their immense number. of the ‘northern’ Neolithic and partly of the agrarian Osipovka culture in the Low Amur River, and the one. Three phases can be traced in the development Gromatukha culture in the Middle Amur River (Fig. of this scenario of the Neolithic transition. 1). Even the very first sites differed significantly from the surrounding Upper Palaeolithic ones, but over The first phase is marked out by the sudden emer-time these differences became more and more pro-gence of just three cultures of an absolutely new nounced, and to the end of this phase the whole type: Incipient Jomon in the Japanese archipelago, suite of Neolithic novelties was already engendered. Understanding the specific nature of the East Asia Neolithic transition The data from the Japanese archipelago, which is the most studied of all three areas examined in this paper, shows in detail the course of the Neolithic transition during this phase (Keally 1991; Kenrick 1995; Imamura 1996; Mizoguchi 2002; Sato, Tsu­tsumi 2002; Keally et al. 2003; Habu 2004; Koba­yashi 2004; Pearson 2006; Kanner 2009; National Museum of Japanese History 2009; Kanomata 2010; Nakazawa et al. 2011; Sato et al. 2011; Ni-shida 2002; Kudo, Kumon 2012; Craig et al. 2013; Morisaki, Sato 2014; Seguchi 2014; Morisaki et al. 2015; Lucquin et al. 2016; Sato, Natsuki 2017; Mo-risaki, Natsuki 2017; Otsuka 2017; Ikawa-Smith 2017; Kanner, Taniguchi 2017; Morisaki et al. 2018). The new type of sites came into existence on the north of the Paleo-Honshu Island just before the Bolling-Allerod warming. Soon after, the fast prolife­ration and at the same time enhancement of the new culture began. During this process, the highly evolv­ed toolkit arose looking rather precocious or outpac­ing the time. It includes pottery, the rejection of mi-croblade techniques in favour of a less demanding flake industry, the rejection of composite tools and shift to simple stone tools with facial secondary pro­cessing, partly polished axes and adzes, bifacial tools used as spearheads and arrowheads, new types of cutting and scraping tools, and abraders. The appearance of this package of novelties took place against the background of changes in subsis­tence strategies and in a way of life as a whole, but in this field the transition did not keep up such a fast pace. At the current stage of knowledge, reloca­tion of residential camps to the margins of rivers or lakes, reducing the dependence on stone raw mate­rials of high quality, thickening of cultural deposi­tions, expansion of social networks, and to some extent ascending the ritual behavior scale indicate these changes and signalize the outset of sedentari­zation process and moving to a broader economy. The next set of novelties appeared a bit later during the Allerod warming on the southern part of mod­ern Kyushu. Here, in more favourable climatic con­ditions, plant gathering, mainly of acorns, became a focus for local people (Habu 2004; Shibutani 2009; 2011; Kudo 2014; 2015; Noshiro et al. 2016). In ad­dition, grinding tools, storage pits, semi-subterranean dwellings, and village-like settlements occurred for the first time here (Imamura 1996; Habu 2004; Shinto 2006; Pearson 2006; Morisaki, Sato 2014; Izuka, Izuho 2017; Morisaki et al. 2018). It should be noted also that the process of Neolithi­sation was to a certain extent geographically uneven in the Japanese archipelago. The first Incipient Jo-mon sites arose on the North of Honshu, i.e. on the periphery of areas that were the most mastered by people developing the microblade industries. More­over, where the microblade industries occurred earlier and evolved more than elsewhere, they per­sisted the longest. For example, on Hokkaido, the local people refused to adopt pottery and many other innovative changes during this phase, while on the south of Kyushu they conserved only micro-blade techniques. Moreover, on Hokkaido, and dur­ing this phase, the local people refused to adopt pot­tery and other innovative changes, while on the south of Kyushu people conserved only microblade techniques for a long term. The archaeological data from the Amur River does not contradict these observations (Derevyanko, Med-vedev 1995; 2006; Lapshina 1999; Kuzmin 2003; 2005; Kuzmin, Shewkomud 2003; Shewkomud, Yanshina 2010a; 2010b; 2012; Yanshina 2008; 2014). The Osipovsky sites appeared suddenly at the very outset of the Bolling-Allerod warming, and with­in an area which was not settled at all before. All of them were tied to the mainstream of the Amur Ri­ver whose water level was 10m higher at that time than today. To the end of the development of the Osipovka culture, we can see semi-subterranean household structures (like pits with unknown pur­poses, postholes, fireplaces, and possibly dwellings), stationary and portable ritual objects, signs of long­term habitation (e.g., palimpsests of settlement structures), and well established tool assemblages which include pottery and steady series of polished axes, bifacial spearheads and arrowheads, the new types of cutting and scraping tools, and abraders. Unfortunately, the timeline and scope of variety of the Gromatukha culture are poorly studied. It should be added that throughout the first phase the traditional Upper Palaeolithic cultures continued to develop around of Sea of Japan, but occupying the other areas. Thus, they are known not only in Hokkaido but also in Sakhalin, Primorye, and Korea. Then over time, some of the novelties began to pe­netrate there, as mainly represented by arrowheads and axes (Vasil’yevsky et al. 1997; Kajiwara, Kono­nenko 1999; Cohen 2003; Vasilevsky 2008; Bae 2010; 2017; Otsuka 2017). The second phase (10 000–8000 14C bp) coincided with the first two or one and half millennia of the Oksana Yanshina Holocene. It started with the more or less rapid dis­appearance of three pioneering cultures of the pre­vious phase, though this process was also uneven throughout the region. On the south of the Japanese archipelago it started slightly earlier under the impact of the Younger Dryas cooling (Nakazawa et al. 2011; Morisaki, Natsuki 2017). The Incipient Jomon camps totally disappeared here during this climatic event. At the same time, to the north, it seems this cooling had not such a damaging influence. On Honshu the number of sites reduced sharply but the Incipient Jomon culture survived, and on this basis the sub­sequent variants of Jomon culture were formed to further evolve the preceding achievements. During this phase, plant gathering and dwelling pits spread across all Paleo-Honshu while remaining rare. In ad­dition, shell mounds and special fishing equipment (fishhooks, net weights, etc.) appeared for the first time at this phase, signalling the final establishment of the new subsistence strategies. However, there were no indications of the previous dynamism. In the more northern areas, on the contrary, the Younger Dryas cooling coincided with the flourish­ing of the Osipovka culture occurred at the middle stage of its development. But with the onset of the Holocene, the Gromatukha and Osipovka cultures vanished, leaving no traces (Shewkomud, Yanshina 2012.231–244). The latest dates of the former vary within 9680±80 and 9150±80 14C bp (Derevianko et al. 2017); the latest dates of the latter are 9810± 80 and 9430±70 14C bp (Fukuda et al. 2014) (Fig. 2). Thereafter and somewhere concurrently, a very pronounced gap in the archaeological records oc­curred along the Amur River and also in Sakhalin, Hokkaido, Primorye, and Korea with only a few ex­ceptions: Ustinovka-3 in Primorye (Garkovik 1996; Derevyanko, Tabarev 2006), Yamikhta in the north­east part of the Amur River region (Fukuda et al. 2014), and Taiso-6 in Hokkaido (Obihiro City Board of Education 2005). Therefore, it is not known how the subsequent events developed in this area as a whole. The third phase (8000–5500 14C bp) comes with ap­pearance across all the given area the fully-devel­oped Neolithic sites or rather Subneolithic (Japan: Habu 2004; Imamura 1996; Nishida 2002; Matsu­moto et al. 2017; Morisaki et al. 2018; Amur river: Derevyanko, Medvedev 2006; Shewkomud, Kuzmin 2009; Shewkomud, Yanshina 2012.31–244; Primor-ye: Andreeva 1991; Dyakov 1992; Zhushchikhov­ skaya 2006; Batarshev 2009; Sakhalin: Grishchen­ko 2011; Vasilevsky, Shubina 2006; Kuzmin et al. 2012; see also Kuzmin 2005). These inherit the whole set of innovations developed earlier by the groups of Osipovka, Gromatukha, and Incipient Jo-mon cultures, but differ by the presence of a more pronounced ritual activity, including a regular bur­ial practice, though not in all areas, as well as larg­er settlements with semi-subterranean dwellings. Subsistence practices become more developed and steady. According to the Japanese data, the economy acquires a complex nature, which makes it possible to efficiently exploit different seasonal resources without permanent residential movement. The shift to food production occurs here many millennia later, in each of the areas at a different time and in a diffe­rent mode. Circum-Baikal region The Circum-Baikal region represents the second mo­del and demonstrates one more way of forming a new type of hunter-gatherer-fisher cultures. Like in the previous case, this process can also be split into several phases. However, some general remarks have to be made before proceeding to describe them in detail. First, the Baikal region is the only in East Asia where the presence of ceramics in the Late Pleistocene as­semblages is still disputed. This greatly complicates an understanding of the general pattern of Neoli­thic transition in this area. It is not possible to cha­racterize all of the controversial points of this dis­cussion, since they can be found in various publi­cations (Konstantinov 1994; 2009; Razgil’deeva et al. 2010; Vetrov 2010; Hommel 2012; Hommel et al. 2017). Secondly, the Neolithic transition in the given area ran with some important differences between two opposite sides of Lake Baikal, i.e. Transbaikalia and Gisbaikalia. In the former, during the last millen­nia of the Pleistocene, the steady and continuous de­velopment of human culture is recorded up to the Holocene (Konstantinov 1994; Buvit et al. 2016), whereas in the latter there was a deep recession in the development reflected in a total reduction in the number of sites up to their complete disappearance (Berdnikova 2012). The situation, however, changed drastically with the onset of the Holocene. 14C dated sites vanished in Transbaikalia (Konstantinov et al. 2016; see also Buvit et al. 2016), but in contrast the powerful Mesolithic culture arose in Gisbaikalia Understanding the specific nature of the East Asia Neolithic transition Fig. 2. Schematic representation of the Amur River radiocarbon date database referring to the Palaeoli­thic-Neolithic transition. Note the gap between the dates of the Gromatukha-Osipovka and the Neolithic site and differences between dates for the charcoal, organic temper, and food crust. (Berdnikova et al. 2014; Losey, Nomokonova 2017). Due to this feature, the overall picture of the Neoli­thic transition can be comprehended only if both sides of Lake Baikal will be taken into considera­tion, though the early pottery is known only in the Transbaikalia, that normally falls into the focus of East Asia Neolithic studies (Fig. 1). Thirdly, there is increasing evidence the territory adjacent to Lake Baikal was the easternmost point of the influence of the European Upper Palaeolithic (dwelling constructions, anthropomorphous and zoomorphic figurines, burials, etc.). It is interesting in this context that this area, in addition, is the only in East Asia where a Mesolithic period very similar to the European one is clearly distinguished (Kol’tsov 1989; Konstantinov 1994). The characteristic of this period is the new type of hunter-gatherer-fisher cul­tures forming at the interstice between the Upper Palaeolithic and the appearance of pottery. These cultures evolved toward the Neolithic quite slowly, holding many Upper Palaeolithic traits and adapt­ing incrementally to new environments and a more mobile way of life. Therefore, this model of the tran­sition to the Neolithic can be labelled under the ban­ner of Meso-Neolithic. The first phase (12 700–10 300 14C bp) started with the appearance of pottery in Transbaikalia (Kuz-min, Vetrov 2007; Razgil’deeva et al. 2013; Tsyde-nova et al. 2017). It occurred in the assemblages with the microblade industries represented by two traditions based on edge-shaped and wedge-shaped microcores (Tashak 2005; Tabarev, Gladyshev 2012; Pavlenok 2015; Tsydenova, Piezonka 2015). The former is called Selenginskaya, and it is considered to be local in origin. The overwhelming majority of sites located in the south of Transbaikalia are attri­buted to this tradition, and these are concentrated within the Selenga and Chikoy river systems. The se­cond tradition is known as Chikoiskaya, and its ori­gins have yet to be established, with sites mainly in the north of Transbaikalia (see exception: Moroz 2014a). Oksana Yanshina Looking at the data as a whole, one can see in Trans-baikalia a rather sharp rise in the total number of archaeological sites coinciding with this phase (Bu­vit et al. 2016.Fig. 2). From this point of view, it looks like a single episode in the prehistory of this area. The shared trends in cultural development throughout this time also confirm this proposal, as outlined below. Firstly, a very sophisticated house-building practice known from the earlier Upper Palaeolithic records of Circum-Baikal Asia began to decay at this stage (Konstantinov 1994; 2001; Aseev 2003; Philatov 2016). This tendency is clearly distinguished at the multi-layered sites of Transbaikalia, such as Stude­noe-1 and Ust’-Menza-1. Here, large, steady in shape multi-fireplace structures represent the earliest of dwellings. They had a clear-cut layout and borders lined with stones. However, by around 13 000 14C bp they had already started degrading and turned into single-fireplace objects, and with each next ho­rizon of the sites their construction elements were becoming more and more featureless. This tendency reaches its apogee in the horizons with pottery: re­sidential structures here are distinguished solely by the concentration of finds near fireplaces. The gen­eral thinning of cultural deposits corresponds to these changes as well (Konstantinov 1994.150). Secondly, some changes in the subsistence strategies also occurred at this phase. To begin with, fish bones and fishing tools appear here for the first time. Thus, fish bones are found in the Ust-Kyakhta-17, layers 2–6 (Tashak 2005), Oshurkovo, layer 3, Ust-Menza-1, layers 11–12, 9, Studenoe-1, layers 10–11 (Konstan­tinov 1994.148). Dace, roach, burbot, and pike were identified from bones recovered at the sites located along the Chikoi River. Bone fishhooks were found in the Ust-Kyakhta-3 site (Aseev 2006), Ust-Kyakhta­17, layer 3 (Pavlenok 2015.147), Studenoe-1, layers 10–11 (Konstantinov 1994.80–81). Two bone har­poons were documented as well in layer 3 of Oshur­kovo (Konstantinov 1994.149). Interestingly, in the horizons with pottery such clear evidence of fishing has not yet been found. Besides, some changes in the design of the composite tools appeared at this phase. In spears or darts (Konstantinov 1994.184). At the Stu­denoe-1, a double-edge shaft was found in the same layer with pottery (layer 9), but not in the upper ho­rizons (Ibid. 81–84). Thirdly, some changes are noted in microblade indu­stries themselves (Antonova 2012; 2015; Moroz 2014b). Apart from the ongoing microblade minia­turization, the transition to raw materials of lower quality mentioned in the literature, there was also a change in microcore proportions, the improvement of microblade cutting, and the advent of points known as the Kyakhta type. It is worth noting that all these features characterize only the sites located in the south of Transbaikalia. On these grounds, researchers combined them in the same cultural and chronological unit with an appro­ximate age of 13–10 000 14C bp (Moroz 2014; Pav­lenok 2015). How these observations fit the more northern sites situated in the mouth of the Karenga River remains unclear. In addition, some time seems to pass between the starting of this culture and the coming of pottery, but it is difficult to determine how protracted this timelag was (Tab. 1; Konstantinov 1994; Kuzmin, Vetrov 2007; Razgil’deeva et al. 2013). Moving people to a more mobile way of life is sug­gested to be a general tendency of the Neolithic tran­sition in the Circum-Baikal area. This statement is in good correlation with some of the traits above, such as the miniaturization of microblades, simplification of house-building practices, and thinning of cultural deposits, while it does not fit well with others, such as the advent of pottery, birth of a fishing economy, and shift to a raw material of lower quality. This dis­crepancy stresses the complex nature of the proces­ses happening in the given area in the course of the Neolithic transition. The second phase started with the onset of the Ho­locene (10 300–7500 14C bp). Two main events de­signate this period. On the one hand, there is evi­dence signalling the crash of cultural development in Transbaikalia, which was less pronounced in its Ust’-Karenga-12 Ust’-Menza-1 Studenoe-1 addition to large one-edged shafts for mi­ Pre-ceramic 12 880±130– 11 820±120– 12 330±60– croblades, their smaller-sized variety with a double-edge came into existence, as found layers Ceramic layers 12 710±380 12 180±60– 10 600±110 10 380±250 11 550±50 (food crust) 10 775±140 10 780±150– 10 400±155 at Ust-Menza-1, layer 12, Studenoe-1, layer 11, Ust-Kyakhta-17, layer 3 (Pavlenok 2015. Tab. 1. Chronology of pre-ceramic and ceramic-bearing la­ 147). It is suggested that they were used for yers of the Transbaikalia Late Pleistocene sites. Understanding the specific nature of the East Asia Neolithic transition very northern part (Teten’kin 2010) (Fig. 3). In­deed, the 14C dates of this age are almost absent in the current dataset (Konstantinov et al. 2016; see also Buvit et al. 2016). The few exceptions repre­sent the dates derived from unclear stratigraphic, planigraphical and cultural contexts. On the other hand, multi-layered sites, like the Transbaikalia ones of the previous phase, came into existence in the Gis­baikal (Berdnikova et al. 2014; Losey, Nomokono­va 2017). They are considered in the frame of the Mesolithic epoch, which means pottery completely disappeared in the Circum-Baikal region at the sec­ond phase. The early Holocene assemblages of the Gisbaikal are typical for the classic Mesolithic epoch. The sites can be clustered into a few geographically isolated areas. Most of them concentrate on the north and south of Angara Region, and also on the west coast of Lake Baikal, by being tied to the edges of water holes. Their perfect stratigraphy allows tracing the incre­mental transformation of culture during this phase (Kol’tsov 1989; Bazaliyskiy 2012; Rogovskoy, Kuz­netsov 2013; Bocharova et al. 2014; Berdnikov et al. 2014; Berdnikov 2016; Losey, Nomokonova 2017). The cultural remains are mainly clustered around fireplaces, forming clear outlined spots. The dwell-ing-like structures are absent, but pits filled with ash and fish bones have been discovered. Hunting and fishing were the primary subsistence strategies. Faunal remains represent roe and red deer, and much more rarely elk and boar; however, the key tendency of the economic activity was the adoption of fishing. The increase in its significance is seen from the lowest to more and more upper horizons: the number of fish bones and fish tools accrue, sim­ple fishhooks change to more effective composed tools, harpoons of a new design and weights also ap­pear. Sturgeon, pike, burbot were the main objects of fishing. The role of seal was also growing in the course of this phase. The sites tied directly to Lake Baikal are broadly interpreted as seasonal fishers’ camps. The stone industries and tool assemblages also be­came more advanced, but most novelties arose only at the end of the phase. The progress in prismatic splitting and burin techniques was the principal ten­dency of that time, although bone and horn process­ing also flourished. The percentage of blade tools was high. Firstly the mid- and multi-facets burins and then their polyhedric varieties replaced the cor­ner ones. New techniques also emerged: grinding, drilling, bifacial processing. In addition, axes and adzes, including the ones with polished working edges, arrowheads, knives, as well as various deco­rative pendants appeared to supplement the assem­blages. The third phase (7500 14C bp and onward) termed Neolithic in local schemes came with the advent of pottery and burials. And once again, some discrep­ancies between two opposite sides of Lake Baikal can be seen at this time. In Transbaikalia, this phase introduces only burial sites though with no pottery (Lbova, Zhambaltarova 2009). Dated habitation sites are still absent here up to approx. 5000 14C bp, and exceptions, once more, are few and obscure. (Aseev 2003; Hommel 2012; Konstantinov et al. 2016). In Gisbaikal, conversely, pottery and burials penetrated gradually into local assemblages starting yet in the Mesolithic phase (Weber 1995; Bazaliy­skiy 2012; Berdnikov 2016; Berdnikov et al. 2017). Thus, single burials appeared at the end of the Meso­lithic, while pottery-bearing sites coexisted with the aceramic ones for some time. For this reason, draw­ing a clear-cut border between the Mesolithic and Neolithic phases is not possible in this region. Be­sides, the subsistence strategies did not change sig­nificantly during Neolithic: deer, fish and seal were the staple foods at that time. The way of life also continued without pronounced changes. The next noticeable shift in cultural development in the Circum-Baikal region occurred only much later, around 3000 14C bp. It was related to the arrival of pastoralist practices into this area and the rise the influence of nomadic culture. Central and North-Central China The archaeological records of China represent the third model related to the forming of agricultural communities. Since China was the only region in East Asia where the proper Neolithic formed, it has drawn the strongest attention of international scho­lars. As a consequence, many aspects of the Neolithic transition in China have been reappraised in recent years (Cohen 2003; 2011; 2013; 2014; 2017; Bar-Yosef 2011a; Zhao 2011; Liu, Chen 2012; Shelach-Lavi 2015; Wagner, Tarasov 2014; Zhuang 2015; Liu X. et al. 2009; 2015; Liu L. 2015; Lu T. 2010; 2012; Wang et al. 2016; Lu H. 2017; Stevens, Ful­ler 2017; Crawford 2017; Chen, Yu 2017; He et al. 2017; etc.). And again, three phases can be seen in the course of food production forming. Oksana Yanshina Fig. 3. Schematic representation of the Circum-Baikal radiocarbon date database referring to the Palaeo­lithic-Neolithic transition (A), and distribution of the number of dates under each millennium (B). Note the rise in the number of sites and dates during the 13th to 11th millennia (B) and Early Holocene gap in the records (A). The first phase (17/11 000–8200 14C bp) is marked In South China, a new cultural tradition was formed by the appearance of pottery and some other novel-in the middle reaches of the Pearl River. People con-ties, but this process proceeded with many differ-tinued to dwell in caves and use pebble tools, like ences in North and South China, and possibly asyn-their Paleolithic predecessors, but pottery along with chronously (Fig. 1). partly polished bone and shell tools, and oversized Understanding the specific nature of the East Asia Neolithic transition waste shells evidenced the advent of profound changes in their life. The chronology of this mo­ment is unclear and still under discussion (Kuzmin 2013a; 2017; Cohen 2013; Cohen et al. 2017; Izu­ka 2018; Yanshina, Sobolev 2018). The recent 14C dating refers it approx. to the Last Glacial Maximum (Boaretto et al. 2009; Wu et al. 2012), whereas more conservative assessments, based chiefly on cross-cul­tural comparisons, point out to the Pleistocene-Holo­cene boundary (MacNeish 1999; Zhao 1998; Wu et al. 2005; Chen 1999; Chi 1999). Later, but how much later it is unknown, isolated burials appeared there as well. Pottery has very distinctive appearances with no resemblance to any other known from that time outside of China (Yanshina 2017). So, it seems all the southern sites represent a homogeneous and well-clustered culture. Only a few sites are known outside it’s areal, i.e. Xianrendong, Diaotonghuan, and Yuchanyan caves located in the juxtaposed Yang­tze River basin. Interestingly, they show at the same time the most advanced assemblages: the majority of pottery, all finds of rice, and some progressive traits in stone tool manufacture were registered there. In the North, emerging of pottery and partly polished stone axes indicates the arrival of the new phase. How­ever, in contrast to the South, these novelties spread across a much wider area and turned to be embedded into at least two different cultural contexts. The first and the earliest one is represented by the sites dated to the Bolling-Allerod warming and hou­sed at the very north of Manchuria: Taoshan (Yang et al. 2017; Zou et al. 2018), Xiaonanshan (Heilong­jiang Provincial Museum 1972; Barton 2009), Hou­taomuga (Kunikita et al. 2017; Wang, Sebillaud 2019). Due to their location close to the Osipovka and Gromatukha cultures, pottery and stone tools pecu­liarities, they have to be considered as part of the Amur River cultures increasingly focusing on fishing (Kunikita et al. 2013; 2017). Thus, these sites might hardly characterize the forming of agriculture in China itself. The second context is of greater interest from this point of view. It’s related to the sites located along the eastern slope of the Loess Plateau, they are lim­ited in number and seemingly reflect small discon­nected groups of people. Grinding tools were found at all of the sites, being their only shared trait. In other respects, they were a rather heterogeneous and showed quite different assemblages with vary­ing chronology and degree of ‘neolithization’. From this perspective, three kinds of sites might be dis­tinguished there. The earliest one, dated to the Bol­ling-Allerod warming like on the North of Manchu­ria, is represented by the Yujiagou site with only one neolithic novelty, i.e. pottery. Then, at the very outset of the Holocene or a bit earlier, more ‘neoli­thisized’ kind of sites appeared in the Hebei province (Nanzhuangtou, Zhuannian, Donghulin, Yujiagou) (Liu, Chen 2012; Shelach-Lavi 2015) and in the up­per stream of Huaihe River (Lingjing, Lijiagou) (Li et al. 2017). Finally, sites with assemblages similar to the early Neolithic Houli and Xinglongwa cultures arose in Shandong Province (Zhangmatun, Bianbian-dong) (Wu et al. 2014; Sun et al. 2014) and in the south of Manchuria respectively (Xiaohexi culture sites) (Wagner 2006), being dated, however, a little before them. Their stone assemblages keep the Upper Palaeolithic microblade industries, though at some this was al­ready not the case. The settlement structures differ­ing from the Palaeolithic are registered, but they have no repeated traits. It might be pits filled with ash and organics; fireplaces filled with stones or ani­mal bones, or coal and burnt clay concentrations. Pottery at some instances looks like the ceramics of the Amur River (Yujiagou, Nanzhuangtou), but in others it shares some traits with ceramics of the Jo-mon culture (Lijiagou) or is featureless and therefore remains without any analogies (Lingjing, Zhuannian, Donghulin). In general, as opposed to the South, the North sites appear to reflect a rather feeble and dissipated pro­cess. At the same time, it cannot exclude that this im­pression is partly the result of the information scarci­ty. Changes in the subsistence strategies at this phase are the main focus of scholars, since they are looking for the roots of Chinese agriculture. In the southern part of China, these changes were nonetheless the most pronounced in the field of hunter-gatherer acti­vities. Here, the gathering of freshwater molluscs de­veloped and gained impetus. With regard to gathe­ring plants, rice remains were discovered at some of the sites housed along the Yangtze River, but only very few in number (Zhao 1998; Lu T. 2009; 2010; 2012). In the northern part of China, conversely, plant gathering started to thrive, as can be seen from increasing number of grinding tools with starch re­mains of cereal, nuts, acorns and root crops, although hunting seemed to be the main activity (Liu, Chen 2012; Yang et al. 2012; 2014; 2015; Liu 2015; Wang et al. 2016). It should be stressed here in reference Oksana Yanshina to the plants found at this phase in both parts of China that their position along the path between wild and domesticated forms remains an open ques­tion, but in any case, the practice of plant gathering only started to form as a regular part of the subsi­stence during this phase. The second phase (8200–6000 14C bp) started with the ‘sudden’ appearance of early agricultural com­munities, first in the low and middle parts of the Yangtze River, and then in more and more northern areas up to the southern part of Manchuria. Despite the fact that their examination has been ongoing for several decades, in recent years there have been ma­jor changes in the assessments in this field. This is due to the fact that the economies of such communi­ties have turned out to correspond to only incipient or low-level agriculture (Smith 2001), as indicated by a whole range of data. Firstly, recent studies revealed that the millet and rice domestication process was only at its very start­ing point at this time. The earliest remains of these plants found at the sites show either evi-dence that they were at the very beginning of the transforma­tion process, or have questionable status (Fuller et al. 2008a; Jones, Liu 2009; Zhao 2011; Barnes 2015; Stevens, Fuller 2017; Crawford 2017). Secondly, paleobotanical assemblages point to the fact that millet and rice constituted only a minor part of the people’s diets, no more than 20% based on va­rious evidence, whereas nuts, acorns and root crops dominated. Similar results follow from the isotopic studies of North China, showing no more than 20– 25% of the diet was from millet (Li, Chen 2012; Chen, Yu 2017). Thirdly, tool assemblages also match well with new assessments, though north and south sites differ in this regard (Liu, Chen 2012; Chen, Yu 2017). In North China, apart from the grinding equipment, specialized polished sickle-like knives were also used, and their proportion increased over the time. Such tools has not been registered at all in the lower part of the Yangtze River, while ordinary flint flakes which could be used as sickles are known in its mid­dle stream. In contrast, grinding tools were absent in the middle part of the Yangtze River, but present in its lower course. It is interesting that they marked­ly differed from the ones being in circulation in North China. Moreover, in both rivers basins there were no special tools for soil preparation (Fuller et al. 2008; Makibayashi 2014). Fourthly, palynological data also indicate the low-productive nature of farming, albeit indirectly. Ac­cording to the results of recent studies, at this stage there was no reduction in the area occupied by forests, which is usually observed under intensive agricultural management (Ren 2007). The content of coal and weeds remains relatively low as well. It should be noted it is hard if not impossible to trace any dynamics in the cultural development dur­ing this phase. This is especially true when it comes to the process of agriculture evolving, as well as set­tlements, dwellings and other indicators of lifestyle. They remained almost unchanged throughout the phase up to the stage of the Yangshuo culture, while tool assemblages developed a bit more dynamically (Liu, Chen 2012; Chen, Yu 2017). The third phase (6000–5500 14C bp and onward) comes with the appearance of much more devel­oped cultures like the Yangshuo, Hemudu, and Daxi. Absolutely all indicators mentioned above changed drastically at this stage (see reviews in Liu, Chen 2012; Shelach-Lavi 2015), mirroring as well the es­tablishment of much more intensive agriculture (Barton 2009; Stevens, Fuller 2017). Concurrently, there was a sharp increase in the population which is assessed based on the rise in total amount of ar­chaeological sites, their size and the areas occupied by farmers (Li et al. 2009; Wu et al. 2014; Hosner et al. 2016; Lu et al. 2018). Many sources also indi­cate the rising complication of social life and ritual practices (Liu 2005; Shelach-Lavi 2015). Moreover at this phase, although with some delay in the south, we see the spreading of agriculture into new areas due to the growth of its influence and the opportu­nities to engage in it (Zhang, Hung 2010; 2013; Ful­ler et al. 2007.325–326). Such tripartition of the Neolithic transition is not something new, and the specific nature of its three consequent phases are obvious to all specialists. The major problem in this field concerns searching for the roots of Chinese agriculture. The first agricultu­ral communities show only the incipient level of agri­culture, but other constituents of the Neolithic pack­age they possessed were already very sophisticated, although their origins still remain unclear. Thus, the early agriculturalists of China lived in vil-lage-like settlements or in proper villages. The big­gest of them included tens of dwellings, burials and hundreds of household pits; they were often orga­nized according to a well-defined layout, had pot­ Understanding the specific nature of the East Asia Neolithic transition tery kilns, and were enclosed by ditches. Their pot­tery was of high quality and differed much from the previous types, except that which originated in South China. Its shapes were surprisingly diversified, as they were already well adapted to special functions; their set and painted patterns was typical for farm­ers over all of Eurasia, but diverged significantly from the vessels of the surrounding hunter-gather­ers. Advanced burial practices also appeared at this phase along with other kinds of ritual activity, while less pronounced. The cemeteries were located as a rule near the habitation sites and featured steady ce­remonial traits with regard to the shape and dispo­sition of graves, set of grave goods, body position of dead and their orientation, post-mortem manipula­tions, sacrificial offerings, etc. Distinguishing the Neolithic transition in East and West Asia For a start, let us look at the general timeline of the Neolithic transition in East Asia. Summing up the above data, we can get the scheme where two stages are clearly distinguished (Fig. 4). The first concerns the forming of more sophisticated and equipped cul­tures of hunter-gatherer-fishers. It seems this process started earlier and was more fast-paced and more in­novative in the Japanese archipelago. Here, we can trace two successive phases of the transition with different suites of the novelties: the first in the north of Honshu and the second in the south of Kyushu (Fig. 4). The second stage concerned the transition to food production, and this process was explicitly concentrated in central and north-central China. Be­tween these two stages, we can also see a cultural, spatial and temporal gap in records splitting up the Neolithic transition into two seemingly isolated epi­sodes. This is why it is hard to conceive it as an in­cremental and coherent process, as we can observe in West Asia. Next, we can see that in each of the East Asia regions considered above, the transition to the Neolithic was run according to its own distinctive scenario. In each of the regions we have an individual set of novelties which differs in each case in a special manner from the classical package formed in West Asia. However, if we take East Asia as a whole and consider what specific innovations, where and in what sequence arose during the Neolithic transition, we will see a process that differs little from that is known in the Near East. It will become obvious that the Neolithic transition in both regions had the same vector and went through the same stages: (1) the broad spec­trum economy (Binford 1968; Flannery 1969; Ze­der 2012); (2) low-level food production (Smith 2001); (3) the establish-ment of fully developed agri­culture, i.e. based primarily on domesticated species (Asouti, Fuller 2013; Stevens, Fuller 2017; Freeman et al. 2015). The terms used above are based mainly on the West Asia data. Nonetheless, in East Asia researchers also use them or their equivalents widely, though pre­dominately to interpret the Chinese materials (see, for example, the broad spectrum revolution: Habu 2004; Lu 2006; Prendergast et al. 2009; Elston et al. 2011; Shelach-Lavi 2015.52–66; Morgan et al. 2017.18; low level production: Crawford 2006; Bar­ton 2009; Bettinger et al. 2010; Liu, Chen 2012.125, 168; Shelach-Lavi 2015. 149; Pan et al. 2017.366– 367). Herewith, if the con­cept of low-level produc­tion seems in good corre­spondence with East Asia records, then this might not be so obvious with re­spect to the concept of a broad-spectrum revolu­tion. This is particularly the case with regard to Ja­pan, Far East Russia, and Transbaikalia, and special research is required to il­luminate this question. In the almost complete ab­sence of zooarchaeological Oksana Yanshina reflecting the Terminal Pleistocene in these regions, chiefly technological changes can be used there as the marks of resource spectrum broadening or re­source intensification. Further, on the basis of these observations we can synchronize the events related to the Neolithic tran­sition in both East and West Asia (Tab. 2). The synchronization shows clearly that the Neolithic transition started in East Asia approximately at the same time as in West Asia, i.e. on the eve of the Bol­ling-Allerod warming, but ended much later. At the dawn of the Holocene, this lag became more notice­able. Despite the early appearance of pottery together with other innovations mentioned above, the domes­tication process began and ended in East Asia later, and it concerns as well a sedentary way of life, inten­sive agriculture, and its transmission into new areas occupied by hunter-gatherers. What were the reasons for this lag? It appears dif­ferent economic strategies underlay the Neolithic transition in West and East Asia during its first steps. The Natufian culture had a complex subsistence prac­tice, and from the very beginning it had been dis­tinctly specializing in harvesting plant resources (Weiss et al. 2004), but in East Asia this was not the case. Here, in the first instance, a more advanced culture of hunter-gatherer-fishers was established, and only after this did cultures somewhat similar in their economy to the Natufian one appear on the south of Kyushu, but with no time to gain strength since their development was soon interrupted by the Younger Dryas cooling. This climatic event equally affected the plant gather­ing in both West and East Asia (Bar-Yosef 2011b). In the former, it led to the decline of the Natufian cul­ture, but at the same time to the dissemination of its main achievements. On these grounds, the PPN cul­tures arose soon after. In East Asia, plant gathering, which had already starting later, was interrupted, and for a much more extended time, including into the Early Holocene. It seems also that on the Japa­nese archipelago, given its geographical setting, the successful evolution of plant resource specialization into intensive agriculture was a priori impossible or at least much more difficult (Bleed, Matsui 2010). Perhaps due to these circumstances, in East Asia plant resources fell into the focus of subsistence prac­tices only much later, and in a more relevant place, namely China. West Asia Cal bp East Asia Cal bp Broad spectrum Natufian 15 000–11500 Proto-Jomon 16000–11 500 economy Low level PPN 11 500–8200 Peiligang 8200–6800 production The core-area displacement from the Japanese archi­pelago and Amur river region to China during the process of Neolithization, most likely, also influenced its pace, and this concerns not only the development of plant gathering itself. In Western Asia we can also see such a displacement, but it was accompanied by a continuity in cultural development, whereas in East Asia it coincided with a deep spatial, temporal and moreover cultural gap. To date, no clearly expressed cultural links between China and the Japanese archipelago (or Amur River region) are yet visible in the course of Neolithiza­tion. The data on the two first Holocene millennia are not within the main research focus, and also re­main too scarce. We do not know if there was a relay-like transmission of cultural baggage, or if the early agriculturalists started moving to food produc­tion based only on the achievements of their local ancestors. The latter, however, were rather moderate in comparison to those framed in the southern part of the Japanese archipelago. Nonetheless, early agri­cultural communities appeared to be well-formed in China, and due to the gap mentioned it is still dif­ficult to find the origins of their high culture. This is in sharp contrast to West Asia, where we see an in­cremental moving to more and more sophisticated cultures. One more feature becomes obvious when compar­ing the western and eastern trajectories of the Neo­lithic transition, and this concerns the so-called Sub-neolithic cultures. According to most definitions, they possess all, almost all, or some of the Neolithic novel­ties, except agriculture, though we do not understand the whole Intensive PN .8200 Yangshuo .6800 agriculture Tab. 2. Rough synchronization of the main steps of Neolithic transition in East and West Asia. spectrum of their varieties. How­ever, it appears our compara­tive analysis permits us to solid­ly differentiate them into two main kinds: Meso-Neolithic and Subneolithic. It seems they dif­fer chiefly by the extent of se­dentarization as indicated by Understanding the specific nature of the East Asia Neolithic transition the presence/absence of village-like settlements. From this, we might see the notional sequence ‘Me­solithic- Subneolithic-Neolithic’ where pottery distin­guishes the Mesolithic and Subneolithic, but agri­culture separates the Neolithic and Subneolithic. Be­sides, it sounds like this partitioning is relevant not only for East Asia, but also for most of Eurasia. In the West, both Subneolithic and Meso-Neolithic cultures become ubiquitous only after intensive agri­culture develops in the Near East. Moreover, it is well known that their advent was caused by the influ­ence of agriculturalists. Conversely, in the East, Sub-neolithic and Meso-Neolithic cultures arose across the whole area more or less simultaneously with the first low-level agriculture communities. This means that their forming started even earlier. In East Asia, the pioneering hunter-gatherer-fisher cultures of the first stage of the Neolithic transition engendered the whole range of Neolithic innovations, and possibly imparted them to the early agriculturalists, but not the reverse. This fact makes the Neolithic transition in East Asia unique, and not only due to the earlier appearance of pottery. It emerged together with other novelties typical for the Neolithic, Meso-Neoli­thic and Subneolithic cultures of all Eurasia. Conclusions Taking stock of all the above data and considera­tions, we can reach the following conclusions. Firstly, there were three dissimilar models of the Neolithic transition in East Asia: the Meso-Neolithic in the Circum-Baikal region, the Subneolithic in the Sea of Japan area, and the Neolithic in China. They vary widely, but at the same time, have an impor­tant commonality concerning the suite of Neolithic novelties. In each region we observe their individual set, but it always remains within the frame of the classic Neolithic package. Thus, in light of this pat­tern, the main question is why the transition to the Neolithic was so similar in different regions. Secondly, two stages and two centres might be clear­ly recognized during the Neolithic transition in East Asia. The early stage concerned the so-called broad spectrum revolution leading to the origin of more sophisticated and newly equipped hunter-gatherer-fisher cultures. This process was rather diffuse, but seems to have started earlier and was more fast-paced and more innovative in the Japanese archipe­lago. At the second stage, the transition to food pro­duction started in central and north-central China. There we observe further progressive development toward the Neolithic, and China clearly becomes the centre of the Neolithization process. Between the stages, there is a clear cultural, spatial and temporal gap splitting up the Neolithization process into two isolated episodes. However, a more comprehensive analysis of the records bearing on the first millennia of Holocene is needed to assess whether this gap is artificial or reflects an objective picture Thirdly, the early emergence of pottery was not the only feature of the East Asia Neolithic transition. Most crucially, it appeared together with other nov­elties typical for the classic Neolithic package. More­over, they were all embedded in a process leading to the forming of a new type of hunter-gatherer-fish­er culture known in the literature as the Subneoli­thic. It seems the early dates of pottery acted as a red herring in Neolithic studies, hindering the un­derstanding of this pattern. In addition, this process occurred at the end of the first stage mentioned above, i.e. prior to early agriculture. Further, for a long time afterward the relationships between the first agriculturalists and surrounding Subneolithic communities were not like those between the centre and periphery, and this shift happened only after several thousands of years when intensive agricul­ture had been established. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author gratefully acknowledges various collea­gues and friends for their assistance in this study. First of all, I would like to thank I. Y. Shewkomud, Onuki Shizuo, V. M. Vetrov, Y. V. Kuzmin, A. A. Tsyde-nova, O. L. Moreva, M. V. Konstantinov, I. Y. Razgilde­eva, A. V. Garkovik, A. P. Derevyanko, S. P. Nesterov, A. V. Tabarev, A. A. Vasilevsky, S. V. Grishchenko, O. A. Shubina, Masahiro Fukuda, Isao Usuki, S. Shinya, P. Hommel, and many others for helpful discussions, valuable suggestions and making the foreign papers available to me. My thanks go also to M. Budja and A. Vybornov for an invitation to contribute to this vo­lume. 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Multi-crop cereal agriculture combining rice, millet, wheat and barley with a minor contribution from domes­ticated animals spread from Bronze Age Korea to Japan at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. This agricultural system gradually expanded through the archipelago while engendering new economic niches centred on trade, raiding and specialized fishing. From the 5th century AD the horse became widely used for warfare, transport and overseas trade. While alluvial rice farming provided staple finance for the early state, it is argued here that the concept of the ‘maritime mode of production’ better explains economic processes in the nonstate spaces of Japan until the early 17th century. Despite this diversity in socio-economic formations, the post-Bronze Age globalization of food in Japan appears to have been delayed compared to many other regions of Eurasia and to have been less impacted by elite consumption. Further research is required to confirm this sugges­tion, and the essay outlines several areas where archaeological research could contribute to debates over the ‘Great Divergence’ and the economic development of the modern world. KEY WORDS – agriculture; globalisation; mode of production; Great Divergence; Bronze Age; Japan K prazgodovini velikega razhajanja> izvor japonske predmoderne ekonomije v bronasti dobi IZVLE.EK – V prispevku razpravljamo o tem, da so se prvotne dru.beno-ekonomske oblike predmo­derne Japonske oblikovale v .asu bronaste dobe, in sicer s procesi starodobne globalizacije v Evra­ziji. Poljedelstvo s .tevilnimi vrstami .it, ki vklju.ujejo ri., proso, p.enico in je.men, in z manj.im dele.em udoma.enih .ivali se je .irilo iz bronastodobne Koreje na Japonsko na za.etku 1. tiso.let­ja pr. n. .t. Tak.en poljedelski sistem se je postopoma .iril .ez celotno oto.je, kar je povzro.ilo nove ekonomske ni.e, osredoto.ene na trgovanje, roparske napade in specializiran ribolov. Od 5. stoletja n. .t. se je raz.irila uporaba konjev pri vojskovanju, transportu in .ezmorskem trgovanju. Medtem ko je pridelava ri.a na naplavinah nudila stabilno financiranje za prve dr.ave, v .lanku razpravlja-mo o tem, da lahko ekonomske procese za obmo.ja na Japonskem, ki so bila izven teh dr.av, do za-.etka 17. stoletja bolje razlo.imo s konceptom ‘morskega na.ina proizvodnje’. Kljub tak.ni razno­likosti v dru.beno-ekonomskih oblikah se zdi, da se je po-bronastodobna globalizacija v prehrani na Japonskem v primerjavi z drugimi regijami v Evraziji zgodila z zamikom in je bila pod manj.im vpli­vom porabe elit. To bo treba potrditi z dodatnimi raziskavami, na kar opozorimo tudi v prispevku in okvirno predstavimo, na kak.en na.in bi lahko arheolo.ke raziskave prispevale k razpravam o ‘velikem razhajanju’ in ekonomskemu razvoju modernega sveta. KLJU.NE BESEDE – poljedelstvo; globalizacija; na.in proizvodnje; veliko razhajanje; bronasta doba; Japonska DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.2 Towards a prehistory of the Great Divergence> the Bronze Age roots of Japan’s premodern economy Introduction The premodern economy of the Japanese archipel­ago has received considerable attention from eco­nomic historians who have attempted to explain why Japan was the first Asian country to industri­alize. Many such historians have concluded that pre-modern Japan was characterized by relatively high living standards and economic growth until the so-called ‘Great Divergence’ of the early modern era (Hanley 1983; Pomeranz 2000). Recently, Jean-Pa­scal Bassino et al. (2019) found that even during the 19th century living standards and productivity in Japan remained high as compared to the rest of Asia. Despite its unquestioned importance in understand­ing the origins of industrialization, however, compa­rative research on premodern Japanese economic history has tended to emphasize shared similarities with Europe, such as markets, institutions, and the rise of capitalism. This research also relies heavily on documentary records produced by state bureau­cracies. As a result, differences in premodern socio­economic formations between Japan and the rest of Eurasia – especially those formations which receive little attention in state records and are primarily known from archaeology-remain less well under­stood. Historians of Japan have long used archaeo­logical findings in their work (e.g., Farris 1998; Wakita 2001). However, recent years have seen sig­nificant changes in our understanding of many as­pects of the archaeology of early Japan, and these changes necessitate a re-evaluation of several as­pects of economic history. This essay argues that feudal or peasant modes of production were not the only game in town in pre-modern Japan. In a preliminary attempt to develop a ‘prehistory’ of the Great Divergence, I discuss the roots and evolution of socio-economic formations in Japan from c. 900 BC to AD 1640 from a primarily archaeological perspective using Scott’s (2017) ideas about post-Bronze Age resistance to alluvial states and Johan Ling et al.’s (2018) concept of the ‘mari­time mode of production’. The essay summarises current understandings of the relevant issues but also identifies areas where future research is re­quired. Bronze Age agriculture The Neolithic Jomon cultures of the Japanese Islands had combined hunter-gathering with the manage­ment and cultivation of several native plants, inclu­ding adzuki (Vigna angularis var. angularis), soy­beans (Glycine max) and barnyard millet (Echino­chloa esculenta) (Nakayama 2010; Crawford 2011; Obata 2016). Millet farming reached southern Ko­rea from northeast China by around 3500 BC (Lee 2011; 2017). Jomon populations must have been aware of this, because one of the earliest Korean sites with evidence of millet is Tongsamdong, a site on the south coast of the peninsula long-known for remains relating to Neolithic interaction between Korea and Japan (Sample 1974; Bausch 2017). However, the Neolithic millet agriculture found on the Korean peninsula was not adopted in Japan, and it was not until the beginning of the 1st millennium BC when a new complex of mixed cereal agriculture spread from Bronze Age Korea to Kyushu, giving rise to the cultures of the Yayoi period (c. 900 BC – AD 250). This agricultural complex included rice (Oryza sativa), both broomcorn (Panicum milia­ceum) and foxtail (Setaria italica) millet as well as wheat (Triticum aestivum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) (Nakayama 2010; Nasu, Momohara 2016). The first millennium BC agricultural expansion to Japan built on preceding Neolithic networks across the Korea Strait (Bausch 2017), but involved new Bronze Age globalizations. While it was earlier as­sumed that agriculture reached Japan from the Yangzi basin of southern China (e.g., Egami 1964), in fact it was a combination of southern and north­ern Chinese farming systems, as well as West Asian crops (notably wheat and barley), which spread to the Japanese Islands (Stevens, Fuller 2017). The mixed nature of Japanese agriculture is clear even from mythological texts produced by the Yamato state. The Nihon Shoki (AD 720) describes how Uke­mochi no kami, the goddess of food, transmitted a range of important foodstuffs after her death: “On the crown of her head there had been produced the ox and the horse; on the top of her forehead there had been produced millet; over her eyebrows there had been produced the silkworm; within her eyes there had been produced panic [broomcorn millet]; in her belly there had been produced rice; in her ge­nitals there had been produced wheat, large beans and small beans.” (Aston 1972.I. 32–33). Moreover, the Yamato state issued a number of of­ficial directives between 715 and 840 encouraging the cultivation of crops other than rice (Tab. 1). Despite this, there is still a pervasive emphasis on rice in many archaeological writings on Japan, ulti­mately reflecting the way the ancient state used rice to define Japanese ethnic identity (Batten 2003). Mark J. Hudson Shin’ichiro Fujio (2013) defined the Yayoi as a culture which se­lected irrigated paddy-field rice cultivation as its basis of produc­tion and which engaged in ‘Ya­yoi rituals’ to maintain that pro­duction base. This interpretation leads Fujio to conclude that less than half of the Japanese archipe­lago fits his own definition. Al­though he presents this as a cri­tique of a simplistic association between rice and the Yayoi, Fu­jio is unable to develop an alter­native framework which takes full account of social and econo- Year Decree 715 Each adult male shall additionally sow barley and millet 722 For warding off famine, plant late-ripening millet, buckwheat, barley and wheat 723 Sow and harvest barley and wheat 766 Plant barley and wheat 767 Expand the cultivation of mulberry 820 Plant barley and wheat 839 Sow buckwheat and millet 840 Cultivate dry fields. For support in bad years, plant two kinds of millet (kibi .broomcorn] and takakibi .sorghum]), barnyard grass, barley, large and small beans, and even sesame Tab. 1. “Measures for the Increased Production of Miscellaneous Grains” issued by the Japanese state 715–840 (adapted from Kimura 2018). mic diversity in Bronze Age Japan, leading him to follow Tsuyoshi Fujimoto (1988) in positing the exi­stence of ‘blurred’ or ‘fuzzy’ cultural zones surround­ing the Yayoi. Areas of ancient Japan with wet rice cultivation are assumed to be the norm and are termed the ‘central culture’ zone by both Fujimoto (1988) and Fujio (2013). The spread of agriculture from north Kyushu across the Japanese archipelago was not especially rapid. Some readers will note that this statement contra­dicts my earlier evaluations of a fast expansion (Hud­son 1990; 1999), and a short explanation is in order. Firstly, recent radiocarbon dating puts the beginning of the Yayoi period some five centuries earlier than previously assumed (Fujio 2011). According to cur­rent chronologies, therefore, the Yayoi period lasts some 1200 years, a time span which is almost as long as the 1500 years of the following Kofun through early modern eras (Kawamura 2018). Latest esti­mates plot the spread of Yayoi culture as follows: north Kyushu by the end of the 10th century BC, Shi­koku and the central Inland Sea in the 8th century, the Kinai (Osaka-Kyoto) region in the 7th, the Tokai and Hokuriku in the 6th, and the Chobu, Kanto and southern Tohoku in the 3rd century BC (Segawa 2017.19). Rice paddy fields were constructed in Ao­mori in the northern Tohoku in the 4th century BC but rice growing in this region was quickly aban­doned, only to return centuries later. Agriculture did not reach the Ryukyu Islands in the south until the 10th century AD (Takamiya et al. 2016). In Hokka­ido, barley is known from sites of the Iron Age Okhotsk culture (Leipe et al. 2017). In the 9th cen­tury, the cultivation of barley, wheat and broomcorn and foxtail millet has been confirmed from the Sap­poro area (Crawford, Yoshizaki 1986). The medie­val period saw a further expansion of crops from Honshu into Hokkaido (Yamamoto 1996), but a full-scale transition to agriculture across Hokkaido did not occur until the settler colonial period of the late 19th century. In some regions of Japan, agriculture seems to have spread as a package with the Bronze Age Yayoi culture. In other areas it is possible that local hunter-gatherers took up farming themselves (Fujio 2011), although the evidence for the latter is largely circumstantial. The speed of agricultural colonization is, of course, relative. Compared to Japan, for example, the spread of farming across Britain and Ireland seems to have been extremely fast (Bocquet-Appel et al. 2012; Shennan 2018), perhaps taking only some 300 ra­diocarbon years (Whittle et al. 2011) despite a larg­er surface area (c. 312 773km2 for Britain and Ire­land compared to c. 283 542km2 for Honshu, Kyu­shu and Shikoku). On the ground, settlement by far­mers would have depended on local geographic con­ditions and, in the case of Japan, the actual areas suitable for early farming would have been extreme­ly limited due to the mountainous topography. It has been suggested that the rapid Neolithic coloni­zation of Britain was aided by a series of separate migrations from the continent (Whittle et al. 2011). Such a scenario also seems likely for Yayoi Japan, although further research is required on specific routes. Another point is that the speed of an initial agricultural colonization needs to be balanced against evidence for later abandonment and re-introduc­tions. In Britain, it has been proposed that cereal farming was abandoned in many areas after five centuries, only to be re-introduced in the Bronze Age (Stevens, Fuller 2012). With the exception of the northern Tohoku region mentioned above, this possibility has yet to be seriously considered by Ja­panese archaeologists, who define Yayoi farming on Towards a prehistory of the Great Divergence> the Bronze Age roots of Japan’s premodern economy the basis of its irreversibility (Fujio 2013). As com­pared to Neolithic Britain, however, the late arrival of farming in Japan probably gave it greater flexi­bility and resilience (cf. Fuller, Lucas 2017). Domesticated animals played a relatively minor part in the initial Bronze Age expansion of agriculture to Japan. The pig was the main such animal associated with the introduction of cereal agriculture in the Ya-yoi period, but the status of pigs in Bronze Age Japan has been controversial (Hongo 2017). Some pigs were probably introduced from Korea at this time, but extensive inter-breeding with wild boar proba­bly occurred. Pigs are also known in the Iron Age Okhotsk culture in Hokkaido (Hudson 2004). Dome­sticated chickens first appear in the Middle Yayoi (c. 400 BC–AD 100), but are rare until the Middle Ages. In Yayoi Japan, only some 13 chicken bones (NISP) have been discovered from seven sites (Eda 2018). Chickens are archaeologically more common by the early modern Tokugawa period and comprise 22% of avifauna excavated from Tokugawa sites (Ni­imi 2008). However, this figure is significantly lower than at European sites from the same time period (Tab. 2). Horses were introduced to Japan in the late 4th or 5th centuries (Sasaki 2018). Cattle bones also appear from the 5th century, becoming more widespread from the 6th (Hongo 2017). According to the Nihon Shoki, an envoy from the Korean state of Paekche presented a camel, a donkey and two goats to the Japanese court in 599. Another camel was given by the state of Koguryo¢ in 618, but none of these ani­mals became common in Japan until much later, and camels were never integrated into the Japanese land­scape. Goats were, however, common in Okinawa and the islands of northwest Kyushu from the me­dieval period (Thiede 1998; Toizumi 2018). Archaeological evidence is crucial to understanding the role of domesticated animals in ancient Japan, since historical texts sometimes borrow Chinese expressions about animals. An entry in the Nihon Shoki, for example, describes a prosperous nation as one where “a measure of rice was sold for one piece of silver, and horses and kine covered the moors”, but the translator of this text takes “the whole passage to be a flight of the author’s fancy, stimulated by his recollections of Chinese litera­ture” (Aston 1972.I.391). One example where texts and archaeology match well is the domestic cat. Cats are first mentioned in the diary of the late 9th-cen­tury emperor Uda, and the first archaeological evi­dence for this animal in Japan dates to the 10th cen­tury at the Kannonji site in Tokushima (Yamane 2008). Cats were initially associated with the aristo­cracy, and from the Kamakura period (1185–1333) were used by shrines and temples to keep rats from damaging sutras and other documents (Yamane 2008.86). A scarcity of domesticated animals has been pro­posed as a distinctive feature of the premodern Ja­panese economy, most vociferously by the environ­mental archaeologist Yoshinori Yasuda (2006). While Yasuda’s writings have been widely critiqued for their nationalistic interpretations of the Japanese past (Reitan 2017), there is a need for further em­pirical research on at least five issues to determine just how distinctive patterns of domesticated ani­mal usage in premodern Japan really were: (1) his­torical differences between domesticated animal uti­lization in Japan and neighbouring areas such as Ko­ Site\location Period % G. gallus domesticus Chicken sample size (NISP) Source Japan Tokugawa (1603–1868) 22.1 1605 Niimi 2008 Savvatiev Monastery, Tver oblast, Russia 14–16th centuries 46.66 7 Zinoviev 2019 Gdansk, Poland 16–18th centuries 45 190 Makowiecki, Gotfredsen 2002 Middle Volga, Russia (3 sites) 16–17th centuries 50.97 236 Galimova et al. 2013 St. Anne’s Square, Belfast, N. Ireland 17th-early 20th centuries 56.25 18 Fothergill 2017 Santa Clara-a-Velha Convent, Coimbra, Portugal 17th century .63 1462 Moreno-Garcia, Detry 2010 Stafford Castle, UK 19th century 70.77 491 Thomas 2011 Tab. 2. Percentage of Gallus domesticus as a total of all avian fauna from early modern Japan and Europe. Unidentified avian fauna were removed from the totals before calculating the percentages. Mark J. Hudson rea; (2) actual numbers of domesticated animals in Japan; (3) the extent to which wild animals and birds were eaten as an alternative to domesticates; (4) the role of commercialization and capitalism in promoting meat consumption; and (5) the influence of elite political controls over diet. All of these issues require evidence from zooarchaeology, which some­times does not match that from the historical record (Albarella 1999). From the Neolithic period, domesticated animals were widely adopted across Eurasia but actual pat­terns of utilization were variable and were influ­enced by regional ecological and historical condi­tions (Manning et al. 2013; Balasse et al. 2017; Zeder 2017). The animals that were domesticated in West Asia in the 8th millennium BC spread to Eu­rope north of the Mediterranean through a series of cultural and biological adaptations including dairy­ing and an increased reliance on cattle at the ex­pense of ovicaprids (Ethier et al. 2017). Pigs were also domesticated in China but spread more slowly to Northeast Asia, including Korea, the Russian Far East and Japan (Kuzmin 1997). Some Japanese his­torians such as Nakazawa (2009) see a major diffe­rence between domestic animal exploitation in Ja­pan and that in China and Korea, yet Korea remains poorly understood in this respect. European histo­rians tend to emphasize low levels of domestic ani­mal usage across East Asia as a whole. Eric Jones (2003) argued that the European accumulation of capital in the form of livestock was one cause of what he called The European Miracle. Kenneth Po-meranz (2000.32–35) claims that the scarcity of do­mestic animals in many parts of Asia had little ef­fect on economic development, but further research is needed to support this argument for the ancient and medieval periods. The consumption of animals in premodern Japan must be understood in relation to questions of poli­tical control by the emperor and social elites, as well as complex histories of social taboos. It has been argued that at least until the 9th century – when Bud­dhist ideas gained greater influence amongst the aristocracy – abstinence from killing animals and eating meat served as a type of magico-ritual means of avoiding disasters (Harada 1993; Nakazawa 2009). Prohibitions against the use of certain resour­ces were also a way by which elites could control their subjects. The late 13th century Azuma Kagami contains prohibitions against burning moorland to hunt animals and against using oil cakes to poison rivers to catch fish (Taniguchi 2014). Various social taboos were also associated with fish. According to the mid-18th century Efu fuzokushi, “tuna, sweet potato, pumpkin, and such are exceedingly low class foods, and even commoners are ashamed to eat them openly” (Sakurai 2017.680). The presence of good pastureland in many areas of eastern Japan meant that horses were more com­monly raised there than in the west of the country. This difference extended to animals used in agricul­tural work, with cattle being more common in most of western Japan, whereas horses were more fre­quently used in east Japan as well as in southern Kyushu and southern Shikoku (Kono 2009). In the ancient period, horses were raised on official gov­ernment ranches, but also in nonstate spaces by groups such as the Emishi of the northern Tohoku (Matsumoto 2018). The barbarian niche and the maritime mode of production Even in Europe, premodern history has for the most part adopted a land-based perspective (Rüdiger 2017) and – notwithstanding the influential critiques of Amino (2012) and others – this remains true for Japan. In this context, the term ‘land-based’ may be less useful that the concept of ‘nonstate spaces’ de­veloped by James Scott (2009; 2017). Although the term ‘feudalism’ is rarely used in more recent Japa­nese historiography, there is still an assumption that the economy centred around aristocratic landlords who obtained a surplus from dependent peasants. Chris Wickham (2005.304), an historian of medie­val Europe, has proposed a ‘peasant mode of pro­duction’ for “societies in which peasants are most­ly independent producers, and the local rich and powerful are dominant only over a minority of the peasantry, or are partly direct producers them­selves”. However, this concept seems difficult to ap­ply to Japan. In an alternative approach, which would appear to be more relevant to the Japanese context, Ling et al. (2018) have proposed a ‘maritime mode of production’ which combined agricultural production with new maritime, warrior and trading dynamics. Although Ling and colleagues illustrate this model with Bronze and Viking Age examples from Scandi­navia, they suggest that the maritime mode of pro­duction was more widespread, and briefly note com­parative examples from Island Southeast Asia, Ocea­nia, and the Northwest Coast of North America. As in Europe, land-based power in Japan has often been contrasted with the opposing, ‘dangerous’ world Towards a prehistory of the Great Divergence> the Bronze Age roots of Japan’s premodern economy of pirates and others who attempted to live in non-state spaces. In a much-cited work, Shosuke Murai (1993) saw medieval pirate/traders as ‘marginal men’. This framework derives in part from the ‘agra­rian fundamentalism’ of Confucian thought, which was perhaps less strict in Japan than in Korea or China (Amino 2012), yet I believe this opposition between the land and the sea in Japanese history to be over-stated. Ling et al.’s (2018) maritime mode of production emphasizes that maritime raiding and trading could incorporate an agricultural sector owned by free farmers and chieftains. New maritime adaptations had to some extent de­veloped in Japan from the Late Jomon period, before farming had been introduced from Korea, with a new emphasis on offshore resources such as tuna, marlin and sharks (Toizumi 2008). However, the ar­rival of agriculture and immigrant populations in the Yayoi transformed post-Jomon economies in the archipelago, opening up new opportunities which – following the logic of Scott (2017) – might be termed the ‘barbarian niche’ (Hudson in press). In Hokka­ido, Epi-Jomon groups focused on sea bottom fish, especially Pleuronectinae and Japanese halibut (Pa-ralichthys olivaceus), as well as swordfish (Segawa 2017). All of these were difficult and dangerous spe­cies to fish, and it can be assumed that opportunities for trade were a major stimulus. From Hokkaido down to Kyushu, abalone also became a very com­mon trade item, a pattern that continued into the Tokugawa period. The long-distance connections be­tween maritime-oriented populations along the coast of the Sea of Japan is shown by various categories of archaeological evidence including shell beads and rock art (Hudson, Barnes 1991; Segawa 2017). Cer­tain Japanese rock and tomb art motifs from this pe­riod mirror Indo-European mythological themes con­nected to ships, horses and the sun (Segawa 2017; cf. Kristiansen 2012), and it has yet to be explained how such influences might have reached the archi­pelago. The post-Jomon ‘barbarian niche’ did not only in­volve maritime resources. As noted above, horses were also important in many ‘peripheral’ (meaning peripheral to the Yamato state) regions of Japan. The early 8th century gazetteer, the Hizen no Kuni Fudoki, mentions that maritime-based peoples in the Goto Islands of Nagasaki raised horses and cattle (Aoki 1997.265). Mountain bandits were also com­mon in many areas of the archipelago. But it was the sea-based ‘pirates’ and traders who developed enormous power across Japan and into the broader East Asia region (Amino 2012; Carré 2017; Oxen-boell 2005; in press; Shapinsky 2009; 2014; Smits 2018). Medieval Japan can be characterized by pro­cesses of political decentralization and economic commercialization (Yamamura 1990), yet the pi­rates served to promote ‘connectivity’ (Horden, Pur­cell 2000) across the region. Forest products, in­cluding furs and timber, were important items of commerce with China and Korea, as were slaves (Nelson 2004; Totman 2014; von Verschuer 2006). Archaeology is crucial to our understanding of this trade. A recently published example is Deryugin’s (2018) suggestion that petroleum for lighting was traded from northern Japan to the state of Parhae in northern Korea and the Russian Far East. As early as 668, the Nihon Shoki mentions that “the province of Koshi [the modern Hokuriku region] presented to the Emperor burning earth and burning water”, items that are assumed to be coal and petroleum (Aston 1972.II.289). Of course, the sea also supported state power in early Japan, but its role in this respect seems to have undergone significant changes over time. Guillaume Carré (2017) argues that “the Yamato court was not particularly interested in the sea” between the 8th and 12th centuries, although he notes that internal seaways were used to collect taxes. In earlier centu­ries, however, the sea had been important as a route to attempted territorial expansion through frequent attacks on the Korean peninsula, as described in the Nihon Shoki. The historian Gari Ledyard (1975) even called the early Japanese state the ‘Thalasso­cracy of Wa’, although he never published a full argu­ment in support of this concept. Food globalization and the economy of premo­dern Japan Background remarks The long-distance exchange of ancient foods has become an important topic of research in recent ar­chaeology (Boivin 2017; Boivin et al. 2012; Liu, Jones 2014). Research on the ancient globalization of food can provide new perspectives on the ques­tion of wealth disparities across Eurasia. Many early travellers from Europe remarked that Asian societies were characterized by profligate aristocracies who exploited poor peasants (Jones 2003.5). Further re­search is needed on how the Japanese Islands articu­lated with premodern processes of globalization, but it seems hard to avoid the impression that those processes were often quite delayed with respect to the rest of Eurasia. Even rice, that most symbolic of Mark J. Hudson crops in Japan, reached the archipelago very late. By comparison, imported rice has been found at a num­ber of Roman sites in Europe from at least the 1st century AD (Reed, Lelekovi. 2019), a date that is not significantly different from many parts of east­ern Japan. The slow rate of the globalization of food in early Japan appears to mirror that of other techno­logies, such as wheeled transport. The oldest wood­en wheel in Europe, from the Ljubljana marshes, dates to around 3150 BC. Very sophisticated wood­working technologies were found in Neolithic and Bronze Age Japan, but the wheel and wheeled trans­port were probably not introduced until the middle of the 1st millennium AD. Chariots were never used in Japan, and the emperor and aristocracy do not seem to have used wheeled transport for political display until as late as the 10th century (Nakazawa 2009.6). Several new crops and varieties did have a major economic impact in premodern Japan. Champa rice (Oryza sativa indica var. spontanea or perennis), introduced from south China sometime between 1100 and 1300, not only produced higher yields but was also more resistant to disease, drought and flooding (Farris 2006.132). Champa rice also be­came popular, because its taste made it less attrac­tive to aristocratic tax demands (Totman 2014.126). The introduction of the pumpkin and sweet potato shows the importance of contact with the European trading nations in the late 16th and early 17th cen­turies, a time of considerable agricultural change in parts of Europe (Grau-Sologestoa, Albarella 2019). Some plants did not take off widely upon their first arrival in Japan. Cotton is said to have first been in­troduced to Japan in 799 by a man from Southeast Asia. In the following year, the court ordered cotton to be grown in several provinces but this was not followed, and cotton was not widely grown until it was re-introduced from Korea in the 15th century (von Verschuer 2016.26). DNA evidence suggests that melons (Cucumis melo L.), which appear to have first reached Japan at the end of the 1st mil­lennium BC, were re-introduced on several occa­sions thereafter, but underwent intensified artificial selection for desired traits after around AD 1000 (Tanaka et al. 2016). One explanation for the apparently slow rate of food globalization in Japan may relate to different atti­tudes and ideologies of state control. Von Verschuer (2016) notes that until the 17th century the Japanese government hardly ever provided peasants with technical assistance or manuals on agricultural im­provement, even though the large Chinese litera­ture on such matters was known in Japan. Von Ver­schuer’s (2016.13) suggested explanation that “the Japanese mentality put zeal before technical abili­ty” begs the question of why the ancient and medie­val state in Japan was so weak in that respect. A hypothesis for future consideration is that – from the perspective of food globalization – Japanese elites had a relatively low influence over the intro­duction and spread of new food items. Testing this hypothesis would provide new perspectives on the role of the profligate consumption by Asian elites proposed by Jones (2003) and others. The role of commercial fisheries The globalization of food does not just involve the transfer of exotic items, but the whole process by which new foodstuffs are incorporated into the broa­der social and economic structures of a particular culture. This process may have important knock-on effects on social change beyond food. As an example, in this section I briefly consider fish and fisheries. Japanese elites enjoyed an extensive culture of ban­quets. The abbot of the Chorakuji temple in modern Gunma is said to have attended more than 100 such banquets in 1565 alone (von Verschuer 2017). Fol­lowing Buddhist precepts some of these meals were vegetarian, but Japanese elites were also major con­sumers of seafood in feasts and banquets. Zooar­chaeological analyses from the residence of the Ouchi family in Yamaguchi has shown that around AD 1500, as well as ducks, pheasants, sparrows, rab­bits, otters, martens and badgers, a huge variety of marine and river resources was consumed, including scorpion fish (Scorpaenidae), Asian sea bass (Lateo­labrax sp.), Carangidae mackerels, sweetfish (Pleco­glossus altivelis), sharks, rays (Myliobatiformes), pike congers (Muraenesocidae), Serranidae sea bass­es and groupers, grunts (Haemulidae), surfperch (Embiotocidae), salmonids, tuna and bonito (Scom­bridae), sardines, carp, abalone, horned turban shell (Turbo cornutus) and the Asian rapa whelk (Rapa­na venosa) (Kitajima 2014). Elite sites of the early modern Tokugawa period are also marked by a large diversity of marine remains. For example, the Mi­nistry of Post and Telecommunications Iikura Annex site in Tokyo, the location of Tokugawa daimyo re­sidences of the Yonezawa and Usuki domains, pro­duced 25 types of fish and 18 types of shellfish (Sa­kurai 2017). The medieval expansion of offshore fishing has been seen as one important factor in the economic Towards a prehistory of the Great Divergence> the Bronze Age roots of Japan’s premodern economy rise of Europe (Jones 2003.75). In Asia, by contrast, Jones (2003.167–168) argues that the available fi­sheries were much less rich: “Asians were simply not provided with as good marine fishing-grounds as the North Sea and the far side of the Atlantic of­fered to Europeans.” Japan is noted as an exception to this generalization, but Jones provides no discus­sion of the historical role of fisheries in Japan. Based on contemporary data from the Food and Agricul­ture Organization of the United Nations, fisheries in the northwest Pacific accounted for 29% of global marine capture in 2016; the north Atlantic by con­trast comprised only 13% (Fig. 1). Although Japan is most conveniently located to access northwest Pa­cific fisheries, access from China and Korea would also have been possible had such an economy deve­loped in those countries. Archaeology has played an important role in under­standing the historical commercialization of fishing (Pitcher, Lam 2015). Zooarchaeological evidence shows a rapid increase in offshore catches of herring and cod in northwest Europe after around AD 1000 (Barrett et al. 2004; Galloway 2017). Long-term trends in fisheries in Japan are quantitatively less well understood, but a broad outline is known from the work of Toizumi (2008) and others (Fig. 2). What stands out from these trends is the great variety of fishing adaptations found in Japan over time. Some of this variation no doubt reflects environmental factors and, from the medieval period, it is possible to identify the growing commercialization of fish­eries, yet the overall diversity is still high. In Europe, herring from Britain were being traded to France and Germany by at least the 12th century AD (Barrett 2018.130). The increasing commercia­lization of fisheries in Europe probably derived from a range of factors, including Christian fasting regu­lations, population growth and urbanism, and de­clining freshwater fish resources (Hoffmann 1996; 2002; Barrett et al. 2004). It is presently unclear to what extent similar factors affected fisheries in Ja­pan. Various social taboos surrounding the killing and eating of animals in Japan might be assumed to have encouraged fish consumption, but this relation­ship needs to be investigated using long-term zoo-archaeological sequences. Jun’ya Sakurai (2017.680) claims that the fish most preferred by the Japanese during the medieval period was carp, whereas red Jo—mon • Pottery used to process marine foods • Salmon exploitation • Large shell mounds with inshore (e.g., Acanthopagrus schlegelii & Lateolabrax japonicus) and offshore (e.g., Katsuwonus pelamis) fish in addition to shellfish • Freshwater species exploited, especially in western Japan Yayoi • Big decline in shell mounds • 'Jomon type' offshore fishing continues in NW Kyushu, Hokkaido and along Pacific coast of Tohoku • Carp raised in rice paddy fields Kofun-Heian • Specialist processing of K. pelamis, abalone and other resources used for tax payments • Small-scale shell middens in Kanto region • Large Corbicula sp. midden at Kaminagahama (Shimane) Medieval • Tuna, Scomberomorus niphonius, Coryphaena hippurus and Pagrus major common at Kamakura and other urban sites • Blood clam (Anadara broughtonii) middens around Osa­ka Bay suggest new netting techniques • Growing commercial-isation, salmon trade in Hokkaido Early Modern • Heavy exploitaion of Tokyo Bay to feed Edo • Dominance of Pagrus major in Kanto follows medieval trend, but matched by increased variety of exploited fish • Decline in Meretrix lusoria and increase in Venerupis phi-lippinarum and Mactra chinensis possibly linked with ur­ban pollution • Dried herring imported from Hokkaido as fertliser Fig. 2. Major trends in Japanese fisheries exploita­tion from the Jomon to early modern periods. Based on Toizumi (2008), Habu et al. (2011), Hudson (1994), Nakajima et al. (2010), Onishi (2014), and other sources. Mark J. Hudson sea bream (Pagrus major) became the most popular fish in the early modern era. This shift might reflect medieval over-exploitation of freshwater fish, but the Japanese fisheries record is charac­terized by high regional and chronolo­gical diversity and more research is needed. By the early modern Tokuga­wa period, however, it is known from the historical record that various fishery conservation methods had already been introduced (Takahashi 2009), presum­ably as a result of over-fishing in earlier times. Figure 3 shows a decline in the number of shell middens in Japan from the Bronze Age Ya-argued that Bronze Age globalization established yoi period. Figures for the Jomon to Kofun periods mixed cereal farming in the Japanese Islands and are taken from Nakao Sakazume (1959). As noted by also stimulated the formation of new, ‘post-Jomon’ Junko Habu et al. (2011), based on more recent data economies filling what I have called the ‘barbarian actual shell midden numbers are likely to be higher, niche’. Continuing globalization over the historic pe-but the overall trend shown here can be assumed to riod was important, but further research is needed to reflect long-term changes in the use of marine re-explore the role of elite consumption in that pro-sources. An important caveat, however, is that many cess. A discussion of historic transformations in Ja­Jomon shell mounds are located on higher ground panese fisheries was used to illustrate this problem. and have been less disturbed by modern coastal de­velopment. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research Conclusions The field of Japanese history is entering an exciting and innovation programme (grant agreement No. new phase wherein interdisciplinary and revisionist 646612) granted to M. Robbeets. The author thanks approaches are beginning to transform traditional Jean-Pascal Bassino and Junzo Uchiyama for shar- understandings. Recent books by Takuro Segawa ing publications and ideas and Miha Budja for his (2017) and Gregor Smits (2018) can be cited as continued support. examples of this trend. This exploratory essay has . References Albarella U. 1999. ‘The mystery of husbandry’: medieval animals and the problem of integrating historical and ar­chaeological evidence. Antiquity 73: 867–875. Amino Y. 2012. Rethinking Japanese History. Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan. Ann Arbor. Aoki M. Y. 1997. 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Internatio­nal Journal of Osteoarchaeology 29(2): 356–360. https://doi.org/10.1002/oa.2741 back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) Neolithisation process in the central Zagros> Asiab and Ganj Dareh revisited Hojjat Darabi 1, Tobias Richter2, and Peder Mortensen2 1 Department of Archaeology, Razi University, Kermanshah, IR hojjatdarabi@gmail.com< h.darabi@razi.ac.ir 2 Centre for the Study of Early Agricultural Societies, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, DK ABSTRACT – In the 1960–70s, fieldwork in the central Zagros Mountains produced evidence of early Holocene Neolithic settlements in this mountainous zone along the ‘Eastern wing’ of the Fertile Cre­scent. Following a long hiatus in fieldwork, new investigations have highlighted once more the po­tential of the transitional Neolithic (c. 9600–8000 BC) and early Neolithic (c. 8000–7000 BC) se­quence in this region. However, some of the pivotal sites that had originally been excavated in the 1960–70s were not published in adequate detail, leaving many questions unanswered. Recent field­work at Asiab and Ganj Dareh directed by the authors has sought to address the issues raised by these previously unpublished excavations. Here we summarise the results of our recent work at these two sites and discuss their implications for our understanding of neolithisation in the central Zagros. KEY WORDS – Zagros; neolithisation; Asiab; Ganj Dareh; early domestication Proces neolitizacije v osrednjem delu Zagrosa> ponovni pregled najdi[; Asiab in Ganj Dareh IZVLE.EK – Izkopavanja v 60. in 70. letih 20. stoletja v osrednjem delu gorovja Zagros, t.j. v goratem predelu na vzhodnem kraku rodovitnega polmeseca, so odkrila zgodnje holocenske neolitske naselbi­ne. Po dalj.i prekinitvi so nove raziskave ponovno izpostavile potenciale za preu.evanje obdobja prehodnega neolitika (ok. 9600–8000 pr.n..t.) in zgodnjega neolitika (ok. 8000–7000 pr.n..t.) v tej regiji. Nekatera klju.na najdi..a, ki so bila prvotno izkopana v 60. in 70. letih 20. stoletja, do danes .e niso bila natan.no objavljena, zato ostajajo .tevilna vpra.anja povezana s temi najdi..i .e odprta. Avtorji prispevka so .eleli z novimi izkopavanji na najdi..ih Asiab in Ganj Dareh pridobiti nove po­datke in odgovore na nere.ena vpra.anja iz starej.ih neobjavljenih raziskav. V prispevku predstav­ljamo rezultate izkopavanj na obeh najdi..ih in razpravljamo o njuni vlogi pri razumevanju pro-cesa neolitizacije v osrednjem Zagrosu. KLJU.NE BESEDE – Zagros; neolitizacija; Asiab; Ganj Dareh; zgodnja domestikacija Introduction Recent debates concerning the development of the that the eastern wing of the Fertile Crescent, includ-Neolithic in southwest Asia have centred on whether ing the central Zagros, was a distinct ‘eco-cultural’ plant cultivation and associated cultural character-zone that experienced trajectories different to the istics emerged rapidly first in an Upper Euphrates western wing, despite some more or less contem-‘core area’, and whether this process was driven by poraneous evolutions that it shared with other parts environmental, demographic, socio-economic or cul-of the Fertile Crescent (e.g., see Koz³owski, Auren­tural-symbolic factors. In this regard, it is argued che 2005; Zeder 2011). Likewise, recent research DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.3 Neolithisation process in the central Zagros> Asiab and Ganj Dareh revisited across southwest Asia has demonstrated the extent of the regional diversity of early cultivator-gatherer-farming societies between the 10th and 8th millennia BC (see Arranz-Otaegui et al. 2018; Weide et al. 2018). In the eastern wing, early cultivation of key founder crops has been suggested for a number of early Neolithic sites in the central Zagros (see Riehl et al. 2012; 2013; 2015), as well as elsewhere out­side the so-called ‘Golden Triangle’ of the Upper Eu­phrates and the Levantine corridor (see Koz³owski, Aurenche 2005; Fuller et al. 2011; Nesbitt 2002), calling into question the idea of a single coherent core area of early plant cultivation. This once again highlights the importance of the Zagros region in investigating neolithisation in southwest Asia. Pione­ering fieldwork in this region was directed by the late Robert Braidwood in the 1940–50s, he and his team of interdisciplinary specialists investigated early domestication and the emergence of sedentary way of life (see Braidwood 1961; Braidwood et al. 1961; 1983). Unlike his work in Iraqi Kurdistan (cf. Braidwood, Howe 1960; Braidwood et al. 1983) Braidwood’s subsequent Iranian Prehistoric Project (IPP) was never fully published. Nevertheless, exca­vations at Warwasi, Asiab and Sarab laid the founda­tions for later fieldwork in the Iranian Zagros (Fig. 1). In 1963, Peder Mortensen located aceramic and ceramic Neolithic deposits in a deep trench at Tapeh Guran and then discovered additional Epipalaeoli­thic and Neolithic sites in the Huleilan Valley during a survey in 1973–74 (Meldgaard et al. 1963; Mor­tensen 1974; 2014). At the same time, Frank Hole excavated Ali Kosh and Chogha Sefid in the Deh Lu-ran plain (Hole et al. 1969; Hole 1977). The longest fieldwork, however, was directed by Philip E. L. Smith (1976) who excavated a large area at Ganj Da­reh during five seasons between 1965 and 1974. Levine surveyed the Mahidasht Plain in 1975 (Le­vine 1976; Levine, McDonald 1977) and made a brief sounding at Tapeh Sarab in 1976 (McDonald 1979). Both Smith and Mortensen investigated an area between Harsin, Bisotun and the confluence of the Qara Su and Gamasiab rivers in 1977 which was accompanied by sounding at three Neolithic sites (Mortensen, Smith 1977; Smith, Mortensen 1980). The latest important excavation, prior to the 1980s, was undertaken by Judith Pullar (1990) at Tapeh Abdul Hosein in 1978. Over the following two de­cades, fieldwork ceased due to regional instability. Although this first phase of fieldwork demonstrat­ed the presence of aceramic Neolithic settlements in the central Zagros, many questions concerning their emergence and development with respect to external versus internal cultural influences, the subsistence Hojjat Darabi, Tobias Richter, and Peder Mortensen economy and settlement pattern, as well as the chro­nology, were only partially answered or not answer­ed at all. By the late 2000s new fieldwork projects were ini­tiated in the central Zagros at Sheikh-e Abad (Mat­thews et al. 2013), East Chia Sabz (Darabi et al. 2011; 2013), Chogha Golan (Conard et al. 2013) and Kelek-e Asad Morad (Moradi et al. 2016). Based on evidence gained from these excavations, discussion on the better understanding of neolithisation in the central Zagros began to emerge (see Darabi 2015). Although these recent studies have produced new insights into the emergence of Neolithic economies and societies in this region, some of the previously excavated sites present us with a number of ambi­guities, which we will discuss in more detail below. Moreover, most of the sites that have been investi­gated to date have focused on aceramic or ceramic Neolithic occupations, but very few Epipalaeolithic sites have thus far been investigated. It is for these reasons that a new project entitled “Tracking Cultu­ral and Environmental Change: The Epipalaeoli­thic and Neolithic in the Seimarreh Valley, central Zagros” (TCEC) was initiated in 20161 . Following a short introduction of the aims of the new project, this article discusses the preliminary results from the project’s new excavations at Asiab and Ganj Da­reh, two famous sites originally excavated in the 1960–70s. TCEC project Despite recent efforts to investigate the onset of the Neolithic and the nature of neolithisation in the cen­tral Zagros, little is known about the preceding late Epipalaeolithic societies that occupied this region prior to the Neolithic. Although previous research had demonstrated that a number of Epipalaeolithic settle­ments exist in the region (Braidwood 1960; 1961; Smith 1967; Mortensen 1993; Olszewski 1993a; 1993b), none of these were comprehensively pub­lished, and little is known about the economy, pa-laeoenvironment or society of these groups. A chro­nological gap still exists between the late Epipalaeo­lithic and the early Neolithic in the central Zagros that has to yet be explained, though recent investi­gations at Sheikh-e Abad and Chogha Golan have pushed backed the emergence of early settlements to the 10th millennium BC (Matthews et al. 2013; Riehl et al. 2013). It is still unclear whether this gap is due to a genuine absence of late Epipalaeolithic settlement in the region because of the harsh condi­tions of the Younger Dryas, or if this is simply be­cause of a lack of investigated sites. Recent work at rockshelter and cave sites in the Kermanshah area has only yielded ephemeral evidence for Epipalaeo­lithic occupations (Heydari-Guran, personal commu­nication, 2017). Thus, the overall objective of the TCEC project is to obtain a better understanding of the role played by the central Zagros in the neolithi­sation process during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene periods (c. 13 500–6000 cal BC). In addi­tion to reconnaissance surveys the project aims to re-investigate some previously excavated sites using small-scale excavations in combination with up-to-date archaeological methods (e.g., high-resolution Accelerator Mass Spectrometry dating, ancient DNA analysis, micromorphology and botanical flotation) that were not available in the 1960–70s. A further goal is to reconstruct the late Pleistocene and early Holocene landscapes in the central Zagros to gain a better understanding of the impact of macro-climatic changes on late Pleistocene and early Holocene com­munities in the region. Furthermore, the project aims to establish a detailed chronology of the transition from the Epipalaeolithic to the Neolithic in the cen­tral Zagros where, unlike its westward neighbours, suffers from a precise chronological frame. In this respect, in the first phase of the project two previ­ously excavated sites were revisited: Asiab and Ganj Dareh. Asiab Asiab was first excavated by Bruce Howe under the overall direction of Robert Braidwood in 1960 (Braidwood 1960; 1961; Braidwood et al. 1961). Although Asiab is well-known there is a significant lack of secure knowledge about the site. Since there is no detailed final publication of the excavations very little information is available about the strati­graphy of the site, specific features, the material cul­ture, fauna or botanical remains. The nature of the occupation (short-term versus long-term), the func­tion of the circular cut in the basal layers (refuse pit versus building, see below), the date of the occupa­tion, and the nature of the site’s economy – both with respect to animals and plants – is largely based on partial, incomplete reports and little solid data. 1 In 2014, Peder Mortensen and Tobias Richter were asked by the board of the C. L. David Foundation and Collection to look into re-initiating research into the late Epipalaeolithic and early Neolithic in the central Zagros, leading on from Peder Mortensen and Philip Smith’s surveys in the Harsin basin during the 1970s (Smith, Mortensen 1980; Mortensen, Smith 1977). Subsequently, the current joint Iranian-Danish project was set up. Neolithisation process in the central Zagros> Asiab and Ganj Dareh revisited Flotation for botanical remains was not carried out during the original excavations, as the technique was unknown at the time. The previous absolute dates from Asiab range from 9310–6528 cal BC (Bangsga­ard et al. 2019), reflecting a very long range. Given the lack of a published stratigraphic sequence there are great uncertainties over the provenience of the dated samples, in addition to issues surrounding the dating methods used and the type of sample mate­rial dated. It is due to these reasons that the TCEC project decided to return to Asiab in 2016 to relo­cate, re-excavate and record Bruce Howe’s 1960 ex­cavation area, and to open up a new area to obtain stratified finds and samples from the site. A particu­lar focus was on the recovery of charred plant ma­terials, as the original excavations did not sample for this particular material, whereas it is now of vi­tal importance to reconstruct ancient environmental regimes and plant-based subsistence (Darabi et al. 2018). The site of Asiab is located at 1304m a. s. l. on the east side of the Qara Su river, c. 0.5km south of the village of Bijaneh and 0.7km from the modern out­skirts of Kermanshah (Fig. 2). It is situated on a Pleis­tocene river terrace, which is now c. 5m above the current floodplain of the Qara Su River. While no plan of the excavation areas or trenches was pub­lished, Howe states in one of the only more detailed descriptions of the excavation that 130m2 of the site were exposed in a series of smaller and larger tren­ches and areas (Howe 1983). The largest excavation area measured 6 x 8m. At the base of this main area Howe exposed one quarter of a circular feature that had been excavated into the virgin soil during the Neolithic. In the interior of this feature he discov­ered numerous pits and two human burials (Howe 1983). In this report, the stratigraphy was only de­scribed in very basic terms and Howe voiced uncer­tainty over the interpretation of the circular feature he had exposed, calling it either the remains of a building or a refuse pit. In 2016, the priority was to relocate the previous main excavation area that Howe dug in 1960. Three areas were opened up: Area I on the northern part of the terrace, Area II at the western edge of the ter­race and Area III in the central part of the terrace (Fig. 3). While Area I yielded no significant archaeo­logical features, Area II was a narrow trench exca­vated to better understand the stratigraphy of the sediment above the conglomerate that forms the Pleistocene terrace. Area III became the main focus of our excavations. This area was laid out to mea­sure 15 x 15m, and after removing topsoil the in-filled excavation area of Bruce Howe from 1960 be­came visible. Following the removal of the backfill, which was dry-sieved on site, the feature previously reported by Howe was once again revealed (Fig. 4). The circular feature was associated with a number of postholes and pits that Howe seems to have exca­vated back in 1960. In the northeast of the Howe area excavations revealed a pit that was not exca­vated or simply missed during the original excava­tion. This pit contained skulls and mandibles of 19 wild boars, as well as a single deer antler and the cranium of an Asiatic brown bear (Bangsgaard et al. 2019). The 19 boar skulls and mandibles were all aligned in an east-west orientation and tightly packed together. They were clearly placed in the pit in this fashion intentionally with convincing symbo­lic connotations. The pit was sealed with the spoil from its excavation and appears to have been imme­diately buried after the placement had been made. Hojjat Darabi, Tobias Richter, and Peder Mortensen A succession of two floor layers, which Howe did not report in any of the publications, were recorded in both the north and east section of the area. Their presence together with the numerous postholes clear­ly suggest that the circular feature is the remnant of a Neolithic building. It is important to note that both in this area, and in the newly established excavation area adjacent to it (see below), there was conside­rable evidence for bioturbation: vertical ‘shafts’ dis­turbing the archaeological sequence were noticeable in the sections. These shafts led into animal burrows that crisscrossed Howe’s area, as well as the new ex­cavation area. This suggests considerable disturbance in the Asiab stratigraphic sequence. To further expose this structure, and also to recover in situ archaeological remains, a 5 x 5m excavation was opened next to Howe’s area (Fig. 5). In this area the circular feature continued, but we were able to trace it from much higher in the sequence. The fea­ture became visible immediately beneath the plough zone horizon. Further excavation showed that the feature was cut into the sub-soil to a depth of 1.2m, whereas in Howe’s 1960 area the cut was only pre­served to a height of c. 0.3m. This suggests that Howe did not notice the feature immediately and did not trace its contour, but truncated the upper 0.9–1m of it. Our excavation in the new area showed that the feature was infilled by a substantial mid­den deposit which, as previously noted, was heavi­ly disturbed by animal burrows. These burrows con­tinued all the way down to the floor of the structure, where we found a series of collapsed animal tunnels crisscrossing the floor of the structure. Along the edge of the sunken feature a pisé bench or wall had been built that followed the circular shape of the cut. We therefore believe that the circular cut is a ‘construction cut’ into which a wall made of pisé and potentially other materials had been set. Some ant­lers were incorporated into the pisé feature. Inside the structure we found the remnants of a mud-plas­ter floor, confirming the observation from the north and east sections in Howe’s area. In one area a shal­low depression had been shaped in the floor, paint­ed with red pigment (presumably ochre), and a cat­tle horn core placed inside. The discovery of post- and stakeholes, as well as in situ floors inside the cir­cular feature demonstrates that this was indeed a (semi)subterranean, sunken building of considerable di­mensions. This building may have had a ‘special’ character: its consid­erable size measuring 10m in diame­ter, the pit with dozens of placed wild boar skulls, caches of antlers, as well as the single horn core placed in a plastered depression stained with ochre, all suggest that this building may have had a ceremonial, symbolic or communal function. The lithic assemblage recovered from the excavation is quite homogenous. Cores are mostly uni-directional sin­gle platform bladelet and flake sam­ples, with some opposed platform cores and flake cores also present. Bladelets and flakes are most com­mon, while blades are much fewer in quantity. Amongst the retouched pie­ces, backed, utilized and retouched bladelets are common, as well as re­touched blades. Techno-typologically, these criteria suggest that the Asiab assemblage can be grouped under the Neolithisation process in the central Zagros> Asiab and Ganj Dareh revisited ‘Pre-M’lefatian industry’, a transitional lithic tradi­tion that links the preceding Zarzian to succeeding early M’lefatian tradition. Faunal material analysed to date provides evidence for a variation of species, including Caprines, boar, aurochs, rodents, hedgehog, birds, tortoise, crab and fish. At present there is no evidence of animal man­agement (Bansgaard et al. 2019), although analysis of the faunal material continues. The preliminary analyses of the plant macroremains indicates the predominance of small-seeded grasses (Poaceae), which are found in >90 of the samples. Medium and large-seeded grasses like wild oat, feather-grass, me-dusahead, and brome are also present, as well as wild barley and wheat. Amongst the wild plants there are some edible species like club-rush, along with crucifers and polygonaceae. Despite the pres­ence of plants commonly consi­dered as ‘weeds of cultivated crops’ there is no firm evidence for plant cultivation at the site. The wood charcoal recovered from the excavations suggests the presence of woodland-steppe ve­getation with pistachio and al­mond. Nine new Accelerator Mass Spec­trometry dates are now available from Asiab, which allow us to eva­luate some of the previous dates obtained from the site. Howe (1983) obtained four dates from Asiab which placed the occupa­tion between c. 9300–7600 cal BC (68.2% probability). However, these dates are suspect because their proveniences are unknown, the sample material is unspeci­fied and bulk radiocarbon dating was used. A second round of dates obtained from collagen samples of animal bones from the 1960 excavation by Melinda Zeder and Brian Hesse (2000; Zeder 2008) using Accelerator Mass Spectro­metry dating produced dates fal­ling between c. 9120–6530 cal BC (68.2% probability). Our new series of nine dates, however, produced a range falling between c. 9750–9300 cal BC (68.2%). All of these dates were obtained from point provenienced samples of charred plant matter that was identified to species or, if identification was not possible, only short-lived parts of plants were selected. Our new dates clearly indicate that the oc­cupation of Asiab fell into the earliest part of the Ho­locene, right at the conventional start of the Neoli­thic era. Ganj Dareh Ganj Dareh is situated c. 8km west of the city of Har-sin in the Kermanshah province, c. 32km east of Asiab at an altitude of 1400m a.s.l. The mound is in a small side valley where a small stream has forged a passage through the Deraz Kouh and Boreh Kouh Mountains. In fact, the valley in which the site lies is the only natural break or passage through the moun­tain range for several kilometres in a northwest-sout- Hojjat Darabi, Tobias Richter, and Peder Mortensen heast direction. Ganj Dareh is a settlement mound that rises c. 6m above an alluvial floodplain situated between steeply rising limestone cliffs (Fig. 6). The availability of local chert, fresh water and fertile soil as well as suitability of the valley for hunting offered an environmental niche that seems to have been an attractive settlement location. Smith’s excavations at Ganj Dareh concentrated on the central, southern and western parts of the mound, exposing approx. 21% of the site (Fig. 7). Smith sub-divided the strati­graphy of the site into five major levels: A, B, C, D and E (from top to bottom). Despite these substan­tial excavations, however, the results were only pre­liminarily and briefly published in a series of reports and articles (see Smith 1967, 1968a-b; 1970; 1971; 1972a-b; 1972b; 1974, 1975; 1976; 1978; 1983; 1990). Although subsequent analyses of the animal and human bones added to our knowledge in asso­ciation with chronology and the issue of initial herd­ing of goats at the site (see Zeder 1999; Zeder, Hes­se 2000; Meiklejohn et al. 2017) the lack of a final, comprehensive report left many questions unan­swered. These include questions about the chronol­ogy of the site, the changes in architecture and evi­dence for plant cultivation. Therefore, the general objectives of the TCEC project were to re-investigate the chronology, questions about sedentism, goat do­mestication, pre-domestic cultivation, pottery emer­gence and delineation of the site limit (see Darabi et al. 2017). In 2017, work concentrated on an area to the north of Smith’s central excavation. The section that re­mained from the original excavations was first clean­ed and recorded. In order to study the full stratigraphic sequence of the mound a 9m long and 3m wide trench was opened, target­ed over the top of the mound and the collapsed/backfilled main area of Smith’s excavation. The area was labelled Area A and sub­divided into A1 (top part of the trench) and A2 (lower part of the trench) (Fig. 8). The overall goal was to record the entire stratigra­phic sequence in a stepped trench. In A1 our excavations targeted Smith’s levels A-C, which had not been well described in the exist­ing reports of the excavations. Our work revealed solid remains of pisé and mud-brick walls in the upper levels suggesting the presence of a number of distinct buildings. This con­trasts with Smith’s assessment of Levels A-C, which he described as being largely unclear. Area A2 tar­geted Smith’s earlier levels D-E. Around two meters of archaeological deposits were excavated in this area. Most of the burned deposit between the two areas was left unexcavated until the following sea­son in 2018. A new area (Area B) was opened to the west of the mound adjacent to the location of the so-called West Cut, where Smith had found pits that he attributed to Level E. Our aim in opening this area was to determine the chronological relationship be­tween the pits found by Smith and the lowest phase in Area A. Excavations in Area B, which measured 2 x 2m resulted in the discovery of architectural re­mains that appeared to be linked, on the basis of material culture recovered, to the upper phases A-C on the mound. Moreover, in order to delineate the site, 17 test pits were dug around it. The delineation showed that the original limit of Ganj Dareh was c. 0.7ha, much larger than what had previously been thought, i.e. 1300m2 (cf. Smith 1972b.183; 1975. 179). In 2018, the unexcavated portion between Areas A1 and A2 was focused on to establish a stratigraphic link between the upper and lower sequence. The majority of the archaeological remains excavated here can be correlated with Smith’s Level D. They appear to have been burned at a high temperature, which turned the deposit into a reddish-brown in colour. In fact, the burned deposit is entirely com­posed of building materials, including plastered floors and walls built of pisé and mud-bricks. As no Neolithisation process in the central Zagros> Asiab and Ganj Dareh revisited Fig. 7. Locations of the excavated areas in the 1960–70s; note the pits (level E) exposed in the west cut and plan of the buildings (Level D) in the central part of the mound (modified after Merret 2004.178, Fig. 9/1). solid evidence of the Level E had been exposed in the 2017 season, a new excavation area (Area D), 4 x 4m in size, was targeted over the north edge of the ‘West Cut’. In addition to relocating the eastern border of Smith’s ‘West Cut’, we were also able to document a sequence of in situ archaeological de­posits overlying Level E (Fig. 9). This included a se­ries of architectural remains not previously reported by Smith. However, the most important find was the exposure of the pits excavated by Smith that he identified as Level E. Some of these pits had not been fully excavated by Smith and provided a unique op­portunity to sample for finds, as well as samples for radiocarbon dating. These pits were cut into the vir­gin soil and it is still unclear whether they consist of the earliest remains of the site, as believed by Smith, or are associated with later levels. The chipped stones of Ganj Dareh that were recov­ered from previous excavations have already been analysed (see Nishiaki 2016; Thomalsky 2016). Our own analysis of the material recovered in 2017 and 2018 shows that the predominant raw material used for flaking is of local origin, namely radiolarian chert, mostly of a reddish-brown colour. The indus­try is characterised by the predominance of nibbled tools. Subsequently, backed, retouched and notched pieces and scrapers are present. Tool production was predominantly geared towards informal tool types, with a significant presence of microlithic backed bla­delet types. The Ganj Dareh lithic assemblage falls into the general Early M’lefatian Kermanshah group (Koz³owski 1994; 1999; Nishiaki 2016), and ap­pears quite similar to the East Chia Sabz assemblage recently reported in detail (Nishiaki, Darabi 2018). Zooarchaeological analysis shows that the mammal species were dominated by goats. Other species in­clude wild aurochs, deer, boar, fox and hare. Work on avifaunal remains is still ongoing, but partrid­ges are well represented (Bansgaard, Yeomans in prep.). Previous work on the faunal material from the original excavations at Ganj Dareh suggested that goats were managed at the site as an early stage in the aceramic Neolithic (cf. Hesse 1978; Zeder, Hesse 2000; Zeder 2008). The preliminary data thus far available from the recent excavations suggests that – on the basis of the mortality profile – there is a high presence of foetal or pullus age bones. This may underline the argument for early goat manage­ment. Moreover, mud-bricks with impressed hoof prints also suggest the presence of goats at the set­tlement during construction work, further support­ing the idea of management. The preliminary analyses of the plant macro-remains from Ganj Dareh was carried out in the latest phases: A-C (no remains from the pits have been analysed yet). In comparison to Asiab, a change is observed with the predominance of large-seeded grasses, pri­marily barley. However, feathergrass seem to have been consumed as well as the seeds appear frag­mented. Lentils are also present, along with small-seeded legumes that could potentially constitute fodder remains. In terms of wood charcoal, wood-land-steppe vegetation with pistachio and almond Hojjat Darabi, Tobias Richter, and Peder Mortensen predominates the assemblage (Arranz-Otaegui in prep.). Ganj Dareh has so far been radiocarbon dated in se­veral stages. First, all of the dates acquired by Smith (1990) relied on charred plant material and range from c. 10 500–7000 cal BC. However, the dates are not internally consistent. Smith reported that “the earliest level (E) has produced both the earliest and some of the youngest dates in the site” (Smith 1990. 324). Other samples have also produced dates that appear to be inconsistent with their stratigraphic po­sition. The exact provenance of many of these dates is uncertain. Furthermore, most were obtained using bulk carbon dating and in most cases the dated ma­terial was not identified prior to dating. Second, Ze­der and Hesse (2000) obtained an additional series of 12 AMS dates taken from collagen samples of goat bones from the site ranging from c. 8240–7610 cal BC. These dates suggested a much shorter period of occupation for the site. They argued that the site was only occupied for a period of 100–200 years. These dates also showed no hiatus in occupation be-tween Levels E and D. Third, Christopher Meikle-john et al. (2017) recently obtained another five dates from collagen in human bones that fall be­tween c. 8200–7750 cal BC, confirming Zeder and Hesse’s chronology. The real issue for all of these dates, however, is that due to the lack of a final pub­lication the contextual stratigraphic information is non-existent. Thus, all of the dates are somewhat suspect. This makes it vital that additional dates from secure, well-identified and recorded, stratified contexts are obtained, using the latest advanced AMS dating techniques available. We recovered a new series of samples from Areas A and B and some of the test pits dug around the site for delineation in 2017. These were recently dated at the Aarhus AMS Centre and suggest a range of dates between 8200– 7600 cal BC (68.2% probability). However, this se­quence of dates is not yet complete, as the portion of the stratigraphic sequence between A1 and A2 has yet to be dated, and because no dates are yet available for Area D. However, the dates do show that the occupation in Area B corresponds to Levels A-C at the top of the mound. This suggests that dur­ing this phase, between c. 7800–7600 cal BC, the occupation spread from the mound to the surround­ing area. Further analysis of the recently recovered samples from Ganj Dareh is underway to finalise the chronological assessment of the site. Conclusions The recent excavations at Asiab and Ganj Dareh have started to provide us with significant new insights into the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture in the central Zagros. However, current achievements are still preliminary and require fur­ther detailed analysis. At Asiab, Bruce Howe’s main trench was relocated and documented. Moreover, the new excavation area suggests that the cut was originally a circular, semi-subterranean structure that probably represent a communal building – a type of structure that is common at many other early acera­mic Neolithic sites in southwest Asia. Judging from new AMS dates it can be stated that the emergence of communal buildings pre-dates the emergence of early domesticates in the eastern wing of the Fertile Crescent. As such, neolithization in the central Zag-ros should not entirely be limited to an investigation of early domestication and sedentary life while, de­spite the Levant and Anatolia, other ritual and social dimensions of the life of communities have obvious­ly been overlooked at a regional scale. However, un­like previous views suggesting the initial manage­ment of goats at Asiab (cf. Bökönyi 1977; Zeder Neolithisation process in the central Zagros> Asiab and Ganj Dareh revisited 2008) new zoo-archaeological analysis shows no evi­dence of animal management or domestication (Bansgaard et al. 2019). Likewise, no evidence indi­cating cultivation of plants has yet been found. This type of subsistence strategy is consistent with other contemporaneous sites across the Zagros and Taurus arc, where the earliest settlements were still based on hunting and gathering while turning to sedentary life in the 10th millennium BC when the environ­ment had improved after the end of the Younger Dryas. However, the nature of the transition from seasonality to sedentary life is still poorly understood in the Zagros region. Generally speaking, the new finds from Asiab are all aligned with the Transitional Neolithic period (c. 9600–8000 BC) during which the foundations were laid for the subsequent early Neolithic (c. 8000–7000 BC) in the central Zagros. The ambiguities associated with the stratigraphy and chronology at Ganj Dareh, are now being addressed. Due to the complexity of the stratigraphic sequence, however, further radiocarbon dating and analysis of the site formation processes are needed to fully evaluate the previous phasing of Ganj Dareh’s occu­pations. The new stratigraphic sequence will allow us to study diachronic develop­ments in architecture, material culture and economy at the site in unprecedented detail. The mid­dle phase of occupation in Area A, previously known as Level D, appears to have some evidence for large-scale destruction that seems to have been resulted from a massive fire. In terms of chro­nology, our new results show that the site was continuously under occupation for roughly 600 years (c. 8200–7600 BC), a duration longer than what was already suggested (cf. Zeder, Hesse 2000; Meiklejohn et al. 2017). Also, de­lineation of the site has attested to an area larger than the previ­ous estimation. In this regard, it seems that due to continuous oc­cupation and deposition the site was so raised through time that its surrounding areas were final­ly prioritised by the latest inhabi­tants and then abandoned forev­er around the mid-8th millenni­um BC, a time in which the ear­liest occupations appeared in the lowland south-western Iran. Based on the new data, it is believed that the earliest occupants of Ganj Da­reh were herding goats. This is consistent with the previous evidence (cf. Hesse 1978; 1984; Zeder, Hesse 2000; Zeder 2008). Although the presence of cereals is notable at the site the nature of crop do­mestication still needs further analysis. Ganj Dareh was already suggested to have yielded early evidence of two-row barley (Van Zeist et al. 1984). The que­stions of barley domestication and also pre-domes­tic cultivation of plants, however, need to be given further attention in future. It has recently been sug­gested that pre-domestic cultivation did not happen across the Zagros region (see Weide et al. 2018). Although this idea once again shows a tendency for the out-modelled issue of diffusion of agriculture stemming from culture-historical concepts, further data is required to investigate the mechanism of tran­sition to early domestication at a local scale. There­fore, the transitional Neolithic sites such as Asiab, Chogha Golan and Sheikh-e Abad should attract par­ticular attention to track synchronous cultural and environmental changes at the dawn of the Holocene era in the Zagros. Hojjat Darabi, Tobias Richter, and Peder Mortensen ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We wish to express out gratitude to the C. L. David Foundation and Collection for financial supporting of the TCEC project. We are also thankful to the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism of Iran (RICHT) and the Iranian Centre for Archaeological Research (ICAR) for giving permission to carry out excavations at Asiab and Ganj Dareh. We would also like to express thanks to Razi University, for providing us with infra­structural support in Kermanshah, and University of Copenhagen, for also supporting the project. We would like to thank office of Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism of Kermanshah and its representatives. 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Science 287: 2254–2257. https://doi.org/10/1126/science.287.5461.2254 back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) Barcin Höyük, a seventh millennium settlement in the Eastern Marmara region of Turkey Fokke Gerritsen1, Rana Özbal 2 1 Netherlands Institute in Turkey, Istanbul, TR fa.gerritsen@nit-istanbul.org 2 Koç University, Istanbul, TR rozbal@ku.edu.tr ABSTRACT – Recent excavations at the site of Barcin Höyük provide a detailed view of a settlement founded and inhabited during the early stages of the Neolithic of the Marmara Region of northwest­ern Anatolia. The occupation history of the site complements and extends further back in time the regional sequence as it had been established for the eastern Marmara Region on the basis of exca­vations at nearby Mentese, Aktopraklik and Ilipinar, and Fikirtepe and Pendik in the Istanbul envi­rons. The site of Barcin Höyük is therefore of critical importance for our understanding of the ini­tial neolithisation of northwestern Anatolia. This paper summarizes some of the main findings of the Barcin Höyük excavations with regard to the Neolithic occupation phases. KEY WORDS – neolithisation; spread of farming; Northwestern Anatolia; settlement; migration Barcin Höyük, naselbina iz 7. tiso;letja v regiji Vzhodna Marmara v Tur;iji IZVLE.EK – Na podlagi nedavnih izkopavanj na najdi..u Barcin Höyük dobimo bolj natan.en vpo­gled v naselbino, ki je bila osnovana in poseljena v .asu zgodnjega obdobja neolitika v regiji Mar­mara na obmo.ju severozahodne Anatolije. Poselitvena zgodovina tega najdi..a tako dopolnjuje regionalno sekvenco, ki je bila postavljena za obmo.je Vzhodne Marmare na podlagi izkopavanj na bli.njih najdi..ih Mentessse, Aktopraklik in Ilipinar ter na najdi..ih Fikirtepe in Pendik blizu Istan­bula, ter jo celo postavlja v zgodnej.e obdobje kot doslej domnevano. Najdi..e Barcin Höyük je tako izredno pomembno za razumevanje za.etne neolitizacije severozahodne Anatolije. V .lanku povze­mamo podatke o glavnih odkritjih pri izkopavanjih na najdi..u glede na poselitvene faze, vezane na obdobje neolitika. KLJU.NE BESEDE – neolitizacija; prehod na kmetovanje; severozahodna Anatolija; naselbina; prese­ljevanje Introduction Research on the pre-Bronze Age cultures of the Mar-cin Höyük have been conducted as part of this ef­mara Region began relatively early in the history of fort. Barcin Höyük was first recognized as a prehi-Anatolian archaeology, and has seen concerted ef-storic site and recorded as Yenisehir II in surveys by forts over the last few decades to document through James Mellaart and David French (Mellaart 1955; a number of excavations the early cultural history of French 1967). Following long-term excavations dur-the region and to build provisional neolithisation ing the 1980s and 1990s at the 6th millennium site models for this region at the transition between of Ilipinar (Roodenberg 1995; Roodenberg, Thissen Anatolia and Europa (Fig. 1). The excavations at Bar-2001; Roodenberg, Alpaslan Roodenberg 2008) and DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.4 Barcin Höyük, a seventh millennium settlement in the Eastern Marmara region of Turkey soundings at the 7th millennium site of Mentese (Ro­odenberg 1999), Jacob Roodenberg initiated excava­tions at Barcin Höyük in 2005. In 2007 the authors of this article took over responsibility and conducted nine consecutive excavation campaigns until 2015. The project has taken place under the auspices of the Netherlands Institute in Turkey, in close part­nerships with colleagues at Turkish universities, in particular at Koç University, Bogaziçi University and Ege University, and in collaboration with an interna­tional team of specialist researchers. At present, the project team is preparing specialist studies and final publications. Environmental setting The site of Barcin Höyük is currently located among arable fields in the centre of the Yenisehir Plain. Well into the 20th century AD, the valley bottom was prone to seasonal flooding. A small lake a few kilo-metres to the west of the site existed until 1950, when a drainage canal was dug to drain the lake water and the surrounding swamps (Aksoy, Özügül 2014). Palynologists Bottema and Woldring of Gro­ningen University cored the dried lakebed for pol­len and published a vegetation sequence covering much of the early Holocene period (Bottema, Wold-ring 1995; Bottema et al. 2001). A small program of coring on and around the mound was carried out to reconstruct the local environmen­tal conditions during the Neolithic. Geoarcheologists Sjoerd Kluiving, Mark Groenhuijzen and Michiel Kün­zel of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam established that the first settlers selected a slight natural elevation of coarse sand at the northern edge of a lake or marsh (Groenhuijzen et al. 2015). Nearby access to a wet­land environment to the south of the settlement, as well as drier terrain to the north, may have been a consideration in the selection of the site loca­tion. During the centuries of Neolithic occupation, the edge of this lake or marsh appears to have withdrawn further away from the edge of the mound. Subsequent millennia indicate fluctuations in the distance of the site to nearby standing or flowing water. As the outcome of a complex history of deposi­tion and removal of sediment, the current level of the plain 100m away from the edge of the mound at c. 225.20m lies 1.2m higher than the base of the mound at 224.00m. General occupation history The current archaeological site consists of two low mounds connected by a saddle covering an area of about 1.7ha. The smaller, western mound was not excavated. Surface collections indicate that occupa­tion there postdates the Bronze Age. On the eastern mound, excavations concentrated on a transect run­ning from the centre down the southern slope of the mound. Contiguous areas between 250 and 550m2 were exposed of each of the Neolithic occupation phases. The excavations established that, following the abandonment of the Neolithic settlement, parts of the site were intermittently reoccupied. This in­cludes brief occupation episodes during the Middle Chalcolithic Period, the Late Chalcolithic Period (Ger­ritsen et al. 2010; Özbal et al. 2017), the Early Bronze Age, and the Early to Middle Bronze transition. Mound formation during these periods was limited. A last phase of use of the site occurred during the Byzantine Period, when the eastern mound was used as a burial ground (Alpaslan Roodenberg 2009; Ro­odenberg 2009). Neolithic architecture and settlement layout The Neolithic settlement existed continuously for ap­proximately six centuries. Based on a combination of stratigraphic observations, building horizons, ce- Fokke Gerritsen, Rana Özbal ramic developments and 14C dates, this period has been subdivided into seven phases, labelled from old to young: VIe, VId1, VId2, VId3, VIc, VIb and VIa. The architecture shows a significant degree of con­tinuity throughout much of the occupation period, with rectangular buildings made of wood and loam. The structural timber is placed in foundation ditches for the walls and in postholes for roof bearing posts. Loam is used to fill the spaces between and around rows of wall posts in order to create closed walls. Evidence of wattling is strikingly absent, even in cases where buildings burnt down and yielded ample impressions of building wood in the burnt loam de­bris. Entrances are located in the long sides of the buildings. The architecture of the oldest building phase (VIe) appears to differ somewhat from the later phases, making use of heavy posts set in indi­vidual postholes rather than in foundation ditches. In terms of settlement layout, however, the general pattern established in phase VIe was adhered to throughout the following phases until an apparent reorganization of settlement space in VIb. During the early phases, VIe and VId1 (c. 6600–6400 cal BC), there was a row of buildings oriented East-West, facing a large open space, that dipped into a natural depression, probably with fur­ther architecture beyond the depression to the south (Fig. 2). In the course of the early phases, the depression became filled up with midden deposits. During the middle phases, VId2, VId3 and VIc (c. 6400–6200 cal BC), houses continued to be erected in the same central East-West strip, and the open space to the south continued to be used for outdoor activities, including fire pits and other installations. The courtyard was also frequently used to bury adult indivi­duals in flexed position in simple pit graves (Alpaslan Roodenberg et al. 2013). Infants tended to be buried inside or in the direct vi­cinity of the houses. During the middle phas­es, the southern part of the courtyard became built up. The architectural remains and instal­lations in this area are less well preserved than in the central part, but appear to have been of the same rectangular type, with post-rows set in foundation ditches as elsewhere in the settlement. Similarly, there is evidence for one or multiple buildings appearing to the north of the central buildings, separated by an open space. Judging by the limited exca­vated area, therefore, it appears that the number of buildings in the settlement expanded during the mid­dle phases of occupation, possibly connected to an increase in the population. With the transition from VIc to VIb, around 6200 cal BC, new buildings appear in two of the areas that had functioned as open courtyard areas during all previous centuries of occupation. Assuming that the former courtyards had been communally used until then, this suggests a reorganization of settlement space connected to new property practices. The ar­chitecture of VIb again consists of post-row build­ings, but these now stand individually rather than agglomerated, as before (Gerritsen et al. 2013a.Fig. 6). They appear to have had small annexes or side rooms attached to them. Architectural remains of phase VIa are very fragmentary, and it is impossible to say to what extent the spatial layout continues the pattern established in phase VIb. Subsistence economy Studies of the subsistence economy are ongoing, but preliminary results of palaeobotanical and archaeo- Barcin Höyük, a seventh millennium settlement in the Eastern Marmara region of Turkey zoological analyses indicate that its main compo­nents were agriculture and animal husbandry. There appear to have been minor changes in the relative importance of specific crops and animals, but it is clear that the first settlers were farmers and that this remained the case throughout the habitation history of the settlement. The botanical samples analysed to date number over 450 (1318 liters of soil), with an overrepresentation of samples from the early phases VIe and VId1 (Cap­pers, Balci n.d.; Balci et al. 2019). The samples re­present a broad array of settlement contexts: indoor and outdoor surfaces and deposits, ovens, hearths and storage features, as well as pits and midden fills. With the exception of a single store of charred lentils from Structure 2a in phase VId1, crops stores were not encountered. This suggests that viewed together, the samples give a representative picture of plants that were brought to the settlement and were pro­cessed and consumed there. Cultivated plant species included a wide range of cereals (Einkorn, Emmer, Bread/Hard Wheat, hulled and naked barley) and pulses (lentil, pea, and chickpea), bitter vetch and flax. Additionally, hazelnut and blackberry count among the economic plants exploited at Barcin Hö­yük. The animal economy relied largely on domesticated cattle, sheep and goat, with the first two being more frequent than the third (Galik 2013; Würtenberger 2012). With slight variations between the phases of the occupation history, wild animals are always a minor component of about 15%. They include fallow and roe deer, wild boar, hare, fox, birds, terrapins, small rodents, fish and molluscs. Domesticated pig is absent in the Neolithic faunal assemblages from Bar­cin Höyük, supporting an emerging picture of the adoption of pig husbandry in the Marmara Region not before the Early Chalcolithic period (Arbuckle et al. 2014.Fig. 1). Pottery The ceramic assemblages of Neolithic Barcin Höyük provide a rich source to study the development of a ceramic tradition in the Eastern Marmara Region. This material has been and continues to be studied by Laurens Thissen (Thissen et al. 2010; Gerritsen et al. 2013b; De Groot et al. 2018). In Phase VIe, pottery was made and used in small quantities. The central area of the settlement with structures 24 and 25 yielded only a handful of sherds. The midden deposits in the depression excavated in L13 and M13 produced slightly larger numbers, mostly deriving from the upper deposits of VIe. Among these same VIe midden deposits, fire cracked stones occur in large quantities, whereas they are quite rare in levels following phase VIe. This has been interpreted as an indication that the earliest settlers relied mostly on hot-rock cooking techniques, and that subsequent generations abandoned this in favour of using cooking pots (Gerritsen et al. 2013a. 58; 2013b.72–73). The low intensity of ceramic production during phase VIe notwithstanding, the earliest settlers were ac­complished potters. They made holemouth pots and bowls in schist tempered wares with burnished sur­faces in light buff and greyish colours. During phase VId1, vessels walls become harder and thinner, while the repertoire of forms remains restricted. There is a switch to crushed calcite as the main tempering agent. Greatly increased quantities of sherds com­pared to VIe indicate a significant increase in the le­vel of production in VId1. During subsequent phases VId2 and VId3, the range of shapes increases, with bowls and pots with light S-profiles. Surfaces tend to have pastel colours in phase VId2 and darker colours in VId3, highly burnished as before. Ceramic traditions continue to develop during the later phases of occupation (VIc, VIb and VIa). New forms such as pots with four vertically pierced lugs or two lug handles and four-legged Fikirtepe boxes become common. There is now a greater variety in tempering additives, including quartz and sand. Dark, burnished surfaces are sometimes decorated with simple incised geometric patterns. Overall, the ceramic assemblages of Barcin Höyük convey the development of gradual change within a consistent tradition (see Thissen in Gerritsen et al. 2013a; 2013b). Changes are introduced by building on and transforming existing practices of produc­tion rather than by radical changes. Comparisons with the ceramic assemblages of other 7th millenni­um sites in the eastern Marmara Region are difficult to make with any precision because of the still limit­ed extent of publication of ceramics from stratigra­phic sequences. Nevertheless, it is clear that much of the ceramic sequence at Barcin Höyük predates what is termed Archaic and Classical Fikirtepe (Özdo­gan 1999; 2019.Fig. 3). Barcin Höyük phases VIb and VIa, with their globular pots with pierced lugs and handles and Fikirtepe boxes show the best re­semblances to the Fikirtepe traditions. This suggests Fokke Gerritsen, Rana Özbal that the Barcin Höyük ceramic sequence can be taken to represent the precursors and early stages of the Late Neolithic and Early Chalcolithic Fikirtepe tradi­tion (Fig. 3). Beyond the eastern Marmara Region, parallels for the earliest Barcin Höyük ceramics (es­pecially VIe) can be found at Demircihüyük (Seeher 1987) and Keçiçayiri (Akyol 2018) in nearby inland northwestern Anatolia. Lipid residue analyses An extensive program of lipid residue analysis on the ceramics from Barcin Höyük has been carried out under the direction of Hadi Özbal of Bogaziçi University, Istanbul. Preliminary reports have ap­peared (Thissen et al. 2010; Özbal H. et al. 2012; 2014) and a final publication of the results is in pre­paration. From over 1000 sampled sherds, lipid re­sidues were successfully extracted and identified from 174. These represent all phases of the Neolithic occupation history and include small numbers of sherds from the brief Middle and Late Chalcolithic re-occupation phases of the site. The analyses demonstrate that using ceramic vessels for milk processing occurred from phase VIe on­wards. With minor variations between phases, the percentage of sherds with residues of milk fats is around or above 50%. These findings substantiate the suggestion made by Evershed and his team that dairying became an important element of subsis­tence strategies in the Marmara Region, earlier and more dominantly than in other regions of Anatolia and southeastern Europe (Evershed et al. 2008). The lipid residue data from Barcin Höyük corroborate the faunal data. Aside from the milk lipids the data yielded numerous samples with ruminant adipose fats. Only small amounts of non-ruminant fats were discovered. Lithic technologies A large assemblage of some 17 000 pieces of flint and obsidian has been studied and is currently being prepared for publication by Ivan Gatsov and Petran­ka Nedelcheva (preliminary studies in Gatsov, Nedel­cheva 2009; 2016; in print; Gatsov et al. 2012). Among the Barcin Höyük raw material, flint is much more common than obsidian, but during some of the occupation phases obsidian represents as much as a quarter of the assemblage. A preliminary study using pXRF points to Central Anatolia as the dominant source area for obsidian, possibly supplemented by materials acquired from Melos (Mili. 2014) and un­identified sources (perhaps Galatian: Bigazzi et al. 1995; 1998.80–86). Based on the research conducted by Gatsov and Ne-delcheva, it is clear that lithic production at Barcin Höyük connects very well with the traditions that characterize the assemblages from sites of the Fikir­tepe horizon, both typologically and technologically (Gatsov 2003; Gatsov, Nedelcheva 2009; 2016; Gat­sov et al. 2012). Unidirectional blade cores, including bullet cores, are characteristic elements of the assem­blage, as well as the blades and bladelets struck from them. Semi-circular and circular end-scrapers as well as high and macro end-scrapers are common among the tools. Sickle blades, blade perforators and drills, as well as a small number of trapezes also occur. There is evidence for pressure blade production, in­direct percussion and direct percussion. Small finds The excavations at Barcin Höyük have yielded a large assemblage of finely made bone tools. Particu­larly striking are the spoons, which differ from spa­tulas in their pronounced distinction between the handle and spoon bowl (Erdalkiran 2016). Beads are made of stone and shell (Baysal 2014). Whereas in the earlier levels, dentalium shell beads dominate the assemblage, in the later levels turquoise colour-ed beads, probably made of bone, become common (Bursali et al. 2017). Baked and unbaked clay hu­man figurines occur in small numbers, from differ­ent levels of occupation (Gerritsen et al. 2013a; Öz­bal, Gerritsen 2019.Fig. 9). In general, all categories of small finds, including also the ground stone tools and axes, display a de­velopment from a limited range of types, shapes and raw materials during the pioneer phases of VIe and VId1, to a much wider variety during the middle and late levels. Human DNA studies A total of 130 Neolithic graves were excavated at Barcin Höyük. A selection of the human skeletal re­mains from Barcin Höyük has been used for a series of genetic studies that focused on the grand narra­tive question of the nature of the expansion of farm­ing from Anatolia and the Near East to Europe (Ma-thieson et al. 2015; Hofmanová et al. 2016; Lazari-dis et al. 2016). Conducted at a time when full ge­nomic analyses from Anatolia and the Near East were Barcin Höyük, a seventh millennium settlement in the Eastern Marmara region of Turkey only just beginning to produce results, the skeletal remains from Barcin Höyük have been instrumental in establishing an ‘Anatolian Farmer’ genetic profile. Comparisons with genetic profiles of European hun­ter-gatherers and European Neolithic farmers from Hungary, Germany and the Iberian Peninsula show­ed that early European farmers derived almost all of their genetic ancestry from Anatolian farmers. This has now provided a strong case for migration-based theories of the expansion of farming to Europe. Additional studies have used the genetic data from Barcin Höyük to track the genetic histories within Anatolia and the Near East. On present evidence, it appears that people at Barcin Höyük were geneti­cally closely related to 9th and 8th millennium groups in Central Anatolia (Boncuklu), but also that as a group they were genetically more diverse than Cen­tral Anatolian groups, perhaps incorporating a mo­dest genetic influx from populations from or geneti­cally similar to the Levant (Kilinç et al. 2016; 2017). In the coming years new data will undoubtedly ex­pand and refine this emerging picture of complex genetic histories. Regional and inter-regional setting The full-fledged farming economy of the earliest in­habitants of Barcin Höyük is the strongest indication that the settlers were newcomers to the region. Any acculturation processes of an indigenous po­pulation would be observable in the faunal and botanical assemblages, as well as in dif­ferent artefact categories and architectural remains, but indications of this are absent. Given the 14C dates that place the founda­tion of Barcin Höyük at around 6600 cal BC, it is clear that the site stands at the start of Neolithic presence in the region (Fig. 3), and therefore that the settlers at Barcin Höyük must have moved here as im­migrants from outside the eastern Marmara Region (Özbal, Gerritsen 2019). Mainly on the basis of parallel developments in cera­mic traditions, the Anatolian Corridor can be identified as the most likely route along which this population entered the region, with ancestral roots probably in western Central Anatolia and Çatalhöyük, and with intermediate sites such as Keçiçayiri and Demircihüyük as nodes in the network of the earliest pioneers that settled in the Mar­mara Region (Fig. 1). Whether there existed early contacts with the Lakes District, as sug­gested by Mehmet Özdogan (2019.320), is more dif­ficult to establish. For the Fikirtepe Horizon, and specifically for the sites in the Istanbul environs, an indigenous compo­nent in the population has been suggested (Karul 2017.8; Özdogan 1999.210; 2019.320). This idea is based on a combination of evidence for Epipalaeoli­thic or Mesolithic hunter-gatherer groups in the re­gion (the Agaçli group) and elements in the food economy and architecture at Neolithic sites like Fi­kirtepe and Pendik that do not seem to have their origins in a Neolithic way of life (Özdogan 1999. 215). Different aspects of the idea of the Fikirtepe Horizon as a merging of indigenous and Neolithic traditions are being re-evaluated by various authors in light of new data (Çakirlar 2013; Özbal, Gerritsen 2019). Regardless of the nature of this cultural inter­action elsewhere in the eastern Marmara Region, it is clear that hunter-gatherer influence in the Barcin Höyük community was very minimal at most, and probably completely absent. In the course of the second half of the 7th millenni­um, there appears to have been an increase in the number of settlements in the eastern Marmara Re­gion, possibly as a result of a continuing influx of people from inland Anatolia as well as from indige­nous population growth over the course of several centuries. The shared material culture traditions of Fokke Gerritsen, Rana Özbal these settlements inhabited during the final centu-blades, and obsidian is completely absent at sites ries before 6000 cal BC and into the beginning of like Asagipinar, although some coastal sites have the 6th millennium cal BC have given rise to the term yielded small quantities (Özdogan 2014.42). Diffe-Fikirtepe Horizon or Fikirtepe Culture (Özdogan ring burial customs are another indication of this re­1979; 1983; 2013; Karul 2019). Although there re-gional boundary. If we consider burials as reflective main site-specific differences and intra-regional dis-of societal beliefs then it is noteworthy that no bu-tinctions, the later levels of Barcin Höyük, VIb and rials have been uncovered from western Marmara VIa, share this regional identity with other sites in sites, whereas Barcin and other sites in the eastern the eastern Marmara Region. The long stratigraphic Marmara, including Ilipinar, Fikirtepe, Pendik, and sequence of Barcin Höyük shows, moreover, that the Yenikapi, have ample evidence for human inhuma-genesis of the Fikirtepe Culture took place gradually tions within and near the settlements. over the course of several centuries. This final point on cultural boundaries can serve as In sharp contrast to the growing body of evidence a useful reminder of the need to maintain a critical, for cultural interaction and interconnected develop-archaeological outlook on neolithisation processes. ments within the eastern Marmara Region and with The new genetic paradigm that points to migration inland central-western Anatolia, we find many diffe-as a major mechanism in the expansion of farming rences in material culture with eastern Thrace and (see above) leaves many archaeological questions the western Marmara Region (Özdogan 2019). There unaddressed, questions about how and why people appears to have been a distinct and lasting cultural interacted and migrated, and about why they on boundary to the west of Istanbul. Asagipinar, in east-occasion they also maintained cultural boundaries ern Thrace, displays very different material culture that prevented mobility and interaction. Both are as-traditions than sites that belong to the Fikirtepe Ho-pects of the history of the spread of Neolithic ways rizon, and the lithic data show this very clearly (Gat-of life from Anatolia to Europe. sov et al. 2017). While the eastern Marmara assem­blages, including Barcin Höyük described above, yielded microblade assemblages and pressure flaked ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS bullet cores, the Thracian side of Turkey (with the The Barcin Höyük Excavations were conducted with exception of a few sites along the coast) have no evi- permission from the Turkish Ministry of Culture and dence of pressure flaking (Özdogan 2014). Likewise, Tourism. Funding for the excavations and research sites like Barcin and other eastern Marmara sites was received from NWO (Netherlands Organization have consistent access to obsidian mostly from Cen- for Scientific Research), National Geographic, and tral Anatolia. 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Thissen L., Özbal H., Türkekul-Biyik A., Gerritsen F., and Özbal R. 2010. The land of milk? Approaching Dietary pre­ferences of Late Neolithic communities in NW Anatolia. Leiden Journal of Pottery Studies 26: 157–172. Würtenberger D. 2012. Archäozoologische analysen am fundmaterial des Barcin Höyüks im vergleich mit aus­gewählten fundstellen des 7. und 6. Jt. v. Chr. in Nord-west- und Westanatolien. Unpublished MA thesis. Univer­sity of Vienna. Vienna. back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) Long and short revolutions towards the Neolithic in western Anatolia and Aegean Barbara Horejs Institute for Oriental and European Archaeology, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, AT barbara.horejs@oeaw.ac.at ABSTRACT – This paper provides an overview of our current knowledge about the transformation towards the Neolithic in western Anatolia and the Aegean, and offers a narrative for their interpre­tation. Within the longue durée perspective of the long revolution in the Near East, the first millen­nia of the Holocene of the Aegean and western Anatolia are contrasted with each other. Economic strategies, environmental conditions, technologies, raw material procurement and cultural practices in the Aegean Mesolithic and the Pre-Neolithic times in western Anatolia are analysed to classify potential similarities and differences. The evidence of new cultural and symbolic practices, eco­nomies, and technologies in the seventh millennium is discussed as the paradox of a short revolu­tion embedded in a long-term process of interaction, knowledge-transfer and adaptation, setting the scene for the Neolithic pioneers establishing a new social life. KEY WORDS – Neolithic pioneers; social life; practices; technologies; western Anatolia Dolge in kratke revolucije k neolitiku v zahodni Anatoliji in v Egejskem morju IZVLE.EK – V .lanku predstavljamo pregled trenutnih podatkov o spremembah, ki so vodile k neoli­tiku na obmo.ju zahodne Anatolije in Egejskega morja, ter ponujamo pripovedi za njihovo inter-pretacijo. V okviru perspektive dolgoro.nih zgodovinskih procesov (fr. longue durée) na Bli.njem Vzhodu, Prvo tiso.letje v holocenu je v okviru perspektive dolgoro.nih zgodovinskih procesov (fr. longue durée) na Bli.njem Vzhodu potekalo razli.no na obmo.ju Egejskega morja in v zahodni Ana-toliji. Za ovrednotenje morebitnih podobnosti in razlik med mezolitikom na obmo.ju Egejskega mor­ja in pred-neolitikom na obmo.ju zahodne Anatolije smo ovrednotili gospodarske strategije, okoljske pogoje, tehnologije, oskrbo s surovinami in kulturne obi.aje. V .lanku nadalje razpravljamo o novih kulturnih in simbolnih obi.ajih, gospodarstvih in tehnologijah v sedmem tiso.letju, ki predstavljajo paradoks kratke revolucije, ki je zakoreninjena v dolgoro.nih procesih interakcije, prenosa znanj in prilagoditev, kar je omogo.ilo neolitskim pionirjem vzpostavitev novega dru.benega .ivljenja. KLJU.NE BESEDE – neolitski pionirji; dru.beno .ivljenje; obi.aji; tehnologije; zahodna Anatolija Dedicated to Klaus Schmidt (†) who inspired Neolithic research far beyond Anatolia Introduction Decades of intensive research, discoveries of new cial transformation process is doubtlessly evident, sites and an interdisciplinary approach in late Pleis-fundamentals other than changes in the economy tocene and early Holocene archaeology are strongly have been integrated into the discussion and opened linked with Gordon Childe’s ‘Neolithic Revolution’ significant, new horizons (Schmidt 2006). Cognitive concept. While the revolutionary aspect of the cru-and cultural changes have been defined as pivotal DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.5 Long and short revolutions towards the Neolithic in western Anatolia and Aegean agents of change as well. Following Trevor Watkins (2005) concept, the “Neolithic Revolution can be understood as the discovery by humans of the po­tential of material culture for the storage and transmission of ideas and concepts, elements of symbolic reference”. This cultural and cognitive ap­proach additionally extended the timeline by push­ing the beginning of the revolution further back into the Epipaleolithic, when the transformation of new social life began in south-west Asia c. 23 000 years ago (Watkins 2010; 2018). The societies in the re­gions of western Anatolia and the Aegean faced these fundamental changes in a different way and later in time, but were related with the long revolution in many ways. The ‘farming frontier’ between central Anatolia in the 9th millennium BC and the regions further west reflects the diverse pathways towards the Neolithic, where a lag of c. 2000 years is evident in the current data sets (Brami, Zanotti 2015; Bra-mi, Horejs in press). The mosaic-like pattern in west­ern Anatolia and the Aegean shows the diverse tra­jectories in the transformation process of the Neoli­thisation. There are nevertheless some similarities and differences in the communities’ ways of manag­ing cultural and social life, adopting new subsistence strategies, and integrating new technologies, that allow the incorporation of the regions into a broad­er narrative. Diversities in Aegean and Anatolian archaeology The early Holocene in the Aegean and western Ana­tolia (modern Greece and western Turkey) is now­adays embedded in a different narrative than the core zones of the Levant and Mesopotamia. Although situated in direct proximity of central Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean – both parts of the Neoli­thic core zones – the long-term transformation be­tween 10 000 and 6000 BC in these cores is dis­cussed differently and mostly separately. The acad­emic segregation of east from west in discussions of the Neolithisation process, especially in Aegean ar­chaeology, developed in the few last decades for se­veral reasons, including the influence of post-proces­sualist theories and the tendency towards national or regional specialization in archaeology. This de­coupling process might additionally lie in the strong influence of Near Eastern and Anatolian archaeology in the early days of the spectacular discoveries of Kathleen M. Kenyon, Robert J. Braidwood, James Mellaart and other pioneers, only very simply sum­marized here as the concept of ‘ex oriente lux’ (Kot­sakis 2008). Since the first excavations of the old­est Neolithic settlements on the Greek mainland in the 1950s’ by Demetrios Theocharis and Vladimir Miloj.i. (Miloj.i. 1950; Theocharis 1973), the im­pact of new information from the Near East on re­search in Greece has understandably been enor­mous. Not only the exchange of knowledge on a per­sonal level, but also the terminology and cultural concept of Neolithisation as defined in the Levant were integrated into interpretations of the early Neolithic of the Greek mainland, mainly in Thessaly, and in Knossos on Crete (Kotsakis 2008; Reingru­ber 2015). While discussions about the evidence and dating of the so-called Preceramic or Aceramic pha­ses in the early Neolithic rooted in these early days are still ongoing, the model of an Aegean Neolithic pathway that is different from the Levant is now widely accepted. Scholars working in western Anatolia have had dif­ferent conceptualizations of the long-term process of Neolithisation. The early excavations of James Mel-laart in Hacilar in the 1950s (Mellaart 1958; 1970; Brami, Heyd 2011), followed by Refik Duru’s inves­tigations in the Lake District (recently: Duru 2012) and Mehmet Özdogan’s early work in the Marmara region and in Turkish Thrace were strongly influ­enced by the results of research in the rest of Ana­tolia, and frequently contextualized with the various regions of the huge landmass (e.g., Özdogan et al. 2012). The additional establishment of a Turkish-in­ternational academic community, especially since the 1970s, has also led to an intensification of western Anatolian investigations regarding prehistory, again embedded in new discoveries in central and south­east Anatolia (e.g., Özdogan, Basgelen 1999; Lichter 2005). While field investigations of the early Holo­cene in western Turkey have increased considerably since then, with a few exceptions (e.g., Franchthi Cave, Knossos, Paliambela, Youra Cave, Maroulas) fieldwork in Greece stagnated. The archaeological community working in Greece focused instead more on detail, but crucial studies on a micro-level high­light the complex trajectories and adaptation pro­cess, particularly regarding early Holocene material, involving profound social, demographic, cultural and economic changes (e.g., Perles 2001; 2003a; Séfé­riades 2007; Kotsakis 2003; Souvatzi 2008; Tran-dalidou 2003; Galanidou 2011; Reingruber 2011). This brief overview explains the different chronolo­gical and cultural concepts as well as the diverse available data sets for the first millennia in the Ho­locene in Aegean Greece on the one hand, and in western Turkey on the other. The dialectic research tradition of both regions handicapped their compre­ Barbara Horejs hensive integration, especially with our longue durée perspective on the topic. Thanks to several new stu­dies that overcome this artificial segregation, we are now able to combine various results and new data (e.g., Lichter 2005; Özdogan 2010; Perles et al. 2013; Guilaine 2013; Çilingiroglu, Çakirlar 2013; Weninger et al. 2014; Kotsakis 2014; Horejs et al. 2015; Carter et al. 2016; Horejs 2016; 2017; Koz-³owski 2016; Çilingiroglu 2016; Reingruber 2017; Mili. 2018; Brami, Horejs in press). The Aegean coastal zones of modern Greece and Turkey are slow­ly coming together again as Mesolithic-Neolithic re­search re-evaluates both old and new concepts about the crucial early Holocene cultural developments. The Aegean Mesolithic: Time of foragers, fish-er(wo)men and seafarers The time between 9000 and 7000 BC in the Aegean is characterized by mobile and seasonally based for­agers (recently: Reingruber 2017). Our current know­ledge is based on about 20 known sites along the Aegean coasts and on the islands, including Crete and the southern coast of Turkey (Fig. 1). Thanks to studies and fieldwork by various scholars, the main cultural components of the Aegean Meso­lithic in the 9th and 10th millennia BC were slowly brought to light with respect to the economy, mobi­lity, exchange, resource management, technologies Fig. 1. The Aegean Meso­lithic and western Ana­tolia Pre-Neolithic sites dating between 10 000 and 7000 BC and the Neolithic pioneer sites starting around 6700 BC (after Horejs in press. Fig. 2 with modifica­tions). 1 A gacli; 2 Asar­kaya; 3 Belbasi; 4 Bel-dibi; 5 Çalca; 6 Cyclops Cave (Youra); 7 Domali; 8 Gavdos; 9 Girmeler; 10 Gümü sdere; 11 Kal­kanli; 12 Karain; 13 Ke­çiçayiri; 14 Kerame; 15 Klissoura; 16 Koukou; 17 Livari; 18 Maroulas; 19 Mordo gan; 20 Muslu­çesme, 21 Öküzini; 22 Ouriakos; 23 Plakias; 24 Sidari; 25 Theopetra; 26Üçdutlar; 27 U gurlu; 28 Ulbrich; 29 Zaimis (map made by M. Börner, OREA). and other aspects, although many questions are still open and require more primary data (Galanidou, Perles 2003; Galanidou 2011; Sampson 2010; 2014; Perles et al. 1990; Koz³owski 2016; Reingruber 2011; 2017; Carter et al. 2016). In summarizing the main conclusions of Mesolithic research, we are faced with the remains of mobile groups who probably based themselves in seasonal camps. The Aegean is­lands appear to have been visited and used seaso­nally but intensively by foragers and fishermen, as attested at a few sites. A multi-seasonal or even year-round occupation of island sites is attested, such as on the islands of Youra, Naxos, Ikaria, Kythnos and Crete (Sampson et al. 2010; Strasser et al. 2010; Carter et al. 2014; 2016). We can assume the use of other islands and sites as well, which today lie below sea-level, as recognized for example at Youra (Efstratiou 2014.79). Currently, early island occupa­tion around the Pleistocene-Holocene transition is attested only in the northern Aegean, as at Ouriakos on Lemnos (Efstratiou et al. 2014). This picture may change, when more field data becomes available from the central and southern Aegean. The Mesoli­thic as currently known in the central and southern Aegean basin belongs mainly to the 9th and 8th mil-lennia BC, also defined as the ‘Aegean Mesolithic’ (Koz³owski 2016). A semi-sedentary lifestyle has been suggested for these societies based on the preserved architectural Long and short revolutions towards the Neolithic in western Anatolia and Aegean remains. The best example is Maroulas on Kythnos, which is dated to the first half of the 9th millennium BC. Circular and oval structures with stone pave­ments and enclosures, partially constructed with stone-tiles at the bottom, are reconstructed as huts with central posts and structured entrance areas (Sampson 2010.102, Figs. 98–101). About 27 of these dwellings represent at least a multi-seasonal occupation and are used for domestic activities (Sampson et al. 2010; Koz³owski 2016). Burials un­derneath the stone pavements of these huts and next to it represent a group of six children and 19 adults. The economy of the Aegean Mesolithic was based on a subsistence strategy in which foraging played an important role alongside fishing of coastal and sea­sonal off-shore fish, including tuna. The evidence of grinding stones at Maroulas indicates the intensive use of plant foods processed at the site. The pres­ence of pre-/semi-domesticated or domesticated pigs and caprines at Cyclopes Cave and Maroulas in Meso­lithic times, as suggested by Katerina Trantalidou (2003; 2010), is based on very scarce data and view­ed sceptically by various scholars (e.g., Koz³owski 2016). Neither species is local and both have to be brought to the islands by people (Trantalidou 2011). If the early evidence is affirmed by additional evi­dence and further analyses, the introduction of do­mesticates into the Aegean would have taken place at about the same date as their appearance in Cy­prus (Vigne et al. 2012; 2014). Whatever the situa­tion concerning the introduction of certain species, based mainly on results from Maroulas and the Cy­clopes Cave (Trandalidou 2011), the economy of the island populations is based mainly on marine fishing and foraging, hunting birds as well as gath­ering snails. Finally, the lithic industry of the Aegean Mesolithic seems to be its own technological com­plex, based on a flake industry, with retouched flakes, splintered pieces, backed blades and microliths (Ka­czanowska, Koz³owski 2008; Koz³owski 2016). Re­cent investigations on the Aegean coast of Turkey re­vealed the new open-air site of Mordogan on the Ka­raburun Peninsula near Izmir, which shows the same kind of industry (Çilingiroglu et al. 2016). Çiler Çi­lingiroglu has convincingly argued for an Aegean Mesolithic complex that includes the Anatolian coastal zone (Çilingiroglu 2016), and she now offers the first evidence of a Mesolithic population in the cen­tre of the Aegean coast of Turkey. The evidence for intensive Mesolithic seafaring in the Aegean Sea implies highly connected mobile groups, occupying sites on the islands and partially also the shores at least multi-seasonally, partially perhaps also round-year. A network of voyaging groups is in­dicated by the intensively used obsidian from sour­ces on Melos and Giali (Ammermann 2014) (Fig. 1). Although we have no information on their commu­nication systems, and are far from a detailed resolu­tion of the chronological situation of the Aegean Me­solithic, the agents of the obsidian exploration offer us a small indirect insight into these societies. The knowledge of both island sources had to be trans­mitted down the generations and between groups. This information had to be embedded in a whole package of nautical knowledge including the routes, navigation, winds and currents, seasonal weather conditions, landing options, available water sources, transport facilities and much more (Broodbank 2013; Cherry et al. 2017). It is therefore safe to assume that these maritime societies not only developed a distinct system of mobility in their marine environ­ment, but also established a package of nautical knowledge as a fundamental Mesolithic capability that was sustained over many generations. These Mesolithic Aegean networks seem to come in contact with the eastern Mediterranean, at least spo­radically (e.g., Horejs et al. 2015; Koz³owski 2016). These contacts are indicated by some elements adopted in the Mesolithic Aegean that most proba­bly came from Cyprus and the Levant, as recently argued by Koz³owski (2016). These are the circular dwellings with stone foundations and floors, burials underneath the floors and next to the dwellings, evidence of grinding stones and plant processing as well as a few stone vessel fragments. Another poten­tial side-effect of these contacts between the Aegean Mesolithic and Cyprus is seen in some aspects of the stone industry, which is interpreted as a potential western influence on Cyprus (Ammerman 2014; Koz³owski 2016). It has been suggested (Kacza­nowska, Koz³owski 2014) that the lithic assemblage of Nissi Beach, based on a pebble-flake industry and the production of certain tools such as arched-backed pieces, denticulates, and notches, may be evidence for close connections between Cyprus and the Ae­gean Mesolithic. The seafaring groups of the Aegean Mesolithic had certainly established maritime net­works in the 9th millennium BC, which appears to coincide with the existence of the eastern Mediterra­nean maritime network. We are therefore faced with an Aegean Mesolithic society organized in mobile groups and based on a foraging, fishing and hunting economy, which stands in strong contrast to the contemporaneous Pre-Pot­ Barbara Horejs tery-Neolithic cultures of the Levant and central and southeast Anatolia. Aside from the few presumably adopted elements mentioned above, the economic, cultural and social characteristics of the PPN socie­ties are not evident in the Aegean Mesolithic (Fig. 2). Although the mobile or semi-mobile populations of the Aegean islands and the littorals came into con­tact with the PPN societies of Cyprus and the Le­vant, the direct transfer of the classic Neolithic vil­lage society and farming economy is not recogniz­able in the 9th and 8th millennia BC. Neither the complex early PPN symbolism nor the practice of farming, herding and sedentary settlements is to be found in the Aegean Mesolithic. Indeed, one may wonder why and how a population with an estab­lished economic niche system founded on a mari­time mobility, resource system and subsistence stra­tegy should integrate and adopt the new Neolithic strategies into their way of life. The island environ­mental conditions offer the ideal world system for the Aegean Mesolithic maritime societies, and are not at all suitable for farming, herding or permanent set­tlement. It is therefore not surprising that the first year-round Neolithic farmers on the islands (as dis­tinct from the mainland coasts) are a quite late phe­nomenon, not arriving before 6th or even 5th millen­nia BC. Even after the establishment of the Neolithic in the surrounding coastal zones of the Aegean in the early 7th millennia BC, the new economic system did not reach the islands immediately. Crete, as the larg­est Aegean island, is the only exception, where an early Neolithic economy is attested at Knossos in the early 7th millennium BC (Douka et al. 2017). How­ever, the Knossos pioneer phase did not lead to a dispersal of farming and herding communities in Crete, and it appears to have lasted for only a short time at Knossos. The Neolithic at Knossos succeeded only after a hiatus of about 1000 years, probably again related to the incoming of new people, as re­cently suggested by Katerina Douka et al. (2017). If an interaction existed between the mobile mari­time foragers and the Neolithic farmers in the 7th millennium BC, how it may have operated, and how long both systems might have existed in parallel, is unfortunately unknown. At least in the 9th and 8th millennia BC we are confronted with two different cultural world systems, an Aegean Mesolithic on the one hand, and a Neolithic in the ‘core zones’ of Southwest Asia on the other hand, with well-estab­lished and long-term seaborne contacts preparing the foundations for the later Neolithic dispersal (Brood-bank 2013; Simmons 2014; Horejs et al. 2015; Dou­ka et al. 2017). Western Anatolia in Pre-Neolithic times Thanks to new investigations in northern, central and southern areas of western Anatolia, the scat­tered data of the Pre-Neolithic is slowly coming to­gether, although many questions remain un-answer­ed. Based on current data, around 15 sites probably dating between 10 000 BC and the beginning of the Neolithic at around 6700 BC are spatially clustered on the coast of western Anatolia. This clustering pro­bably reflects the regional distribution of surveys and field investigations. The higher sea level and the related geographical and climatological settings in the Younger Dryas and early Holocene revealed a closer proximity between the northeast Aegean is­lands of Gökçeada, Bozcaada, Lesbos, Lemnos and Samothrace, as well as to the Gallipoli Peninsula. While they were presumably still connected with the mainland in the Older Dryas about 16 000 years ago, the Pleistocene sea level rise led to the islands’ setting and the increasing distance between them and the mainland (Özbek, Erdogu 2014). The lithic assemblages – though still based on a few sites – show that the landscape of the Bosporus northern shore as well as the Marmara coastal zones in the south and the Gallipoli Peninsula including the is­land Lemnos were used in Epi-Palaeolithic and Meso­lithic times (Gatsov, Özdogan 1994; Efstratiou et al. 2014). Moreover, a clear chronological distinction based on survey materials is currently not possible (Mili. 2018); the so-called Agaçli Group in north­west Anatolia might represent the remains of mobile pre-Neolithic societies, while the other surveyed sites in Çanakkale and Balikesir provinces may attest the initial movements of so-called ‘forerunners’ of the Neolithisation taking place in the region (Özdogan 2008; 2011). The flake-based lithic industry of Üçdüt­lar might give us a first indicator for potential con­nections to the Aegean Mesolithic (see above), al­though they do not appear comparable based on the current state of knowledge, as summarized by the experts (Özbek, Erdogu 2014). The southwest Anatolian coastal littoral and its wider hinterland provide new evidence of semi-mobile or even permanent foragers and hunter communities in the Girmeler Cave (Takaoglu et al. 2014). Their remains of plastered floors and dwellings with hearths and pits suggest the continuous use of a site where domestic activities took place. Though based on a complete hunting and foraging economy, plant processing is indicated by grinding stones, as also known from the contemporaneous Aegean Mesoli­thic. The late 9th and 8th millennia BC site might Long and short revolutions towards the Neolithic in western Anatolia and Aegean represent only the tip of the iceberg of terrestrial hunter-foragers in the region. The 8th millennium BC sequences of plastered floors have been related to inner Anatolian PPN traditions, such as those best presented in Asikli (Takaoglu et al. 2014). As recent­ly suggested by Çilingiroglu (2016), the hunter-ga­therers of Öküzini Cave probably reflect early for-ager-farmer interaction related to the pioneers who founded the first Neolithic farming sites in the Aegean in the period between 7000 and 6600 BC. So far, there is no evidence for the earlier adoption of do­mesticated crops and herded animals. As in the Aegean Mesolithic, we might imagine terrestrial hun­ter-foragers with probable contacts to central Anato­lia on the one hand, and to the Aegean Mesolithic groups on the other hand. The southern coast of Anatolia should play a particularly crucial role in our understanding of the Neolithic dispersal, but till now early farmers and herders have not been de­tected, although in my view they can be expected to exist and are still awaiting discovery. The more in­land sites around the Lake District (like Bademagaci and Höyücek) are not directly connected to the coast, and most probably date a few generations later than the pioneer groups coming along the southern Ana­tolian coast (Clare, Weninger 2014.11). The recent­ly detected site with a Mesolithic flake-based lithic industry in Mordogan on the Karaburun Peninsula mentioned above provides the first evidence for hunter-foragers on the central Aegean coast of Tur­key. The first studies of the surface materials pin­point the strong relations to the Aegean Mesolithic in a raw material and techno-typological sense (Çi­lingiroglu et al. 2016). Although we await future ana­lyses of the site’s chronology and economic data, evidence of hunter-foragers (and probably also fisher­men) can be expected for the Izmir region as well. How these early Holocene hunter-foragers of western Anatolia were culturally connected to the PPN far­mers and herders of the ‘core zone’ further east re­mains an open question. So far, we can recognize some influences in cultural practices, such as the plastered floors in the southwest mentioned above, also interpreted as an indicator of a sedentary life­style. But the most essential economic foundation for sedentism – farming and herding – was not adopted by these communities for a long time. The western Anatolian hunter-foragers between 10 000 and 7000 BC apparently lack any transformation or experi­mental phases in their economy. The adopted social-cultural techniques, such as (wild) plant processing and the erection of dwellings, might reflect occa­sional contacts with the Neolithic in the east, and highlight a potential long-term connectivity in these millennia that prepares the ground for the arrival of the new social and economic strategies of the Neoli­thic a little after 7000 cal BC. Similarities and differences in the early Holo­cene Overall, the Aegean Mesolithic and the Pre-Neolithic western Anatolia offer a heterogeneous picture in the early Holocene, with lots of unknown aspects re­garding their populations in these millennia. Never­theless, the currently available data allows us to note some similarities and differences, which I will try to summarize without over-simplifying a complex story covering about three millennia. The main common feature is to be seen in their economic strategies, which remain connected to mobility and differ in re­lation to distinct environmental conditions. Together with foraging, hunting of small animals on the Ae­gean islands and of large mammals on the mainland in Greece and Turkey forms the economic backbone. The important role of fishing for the island econo­mies is also attested for coastal communities, as in the fishing at Franchthi or shell collecting in Üçdüt­lar (Rose 1995; Perles 2003b; 2019; Stiner, Munro 2011; Özbek, Erdogu 2014). The processing of wild plants is another common economic aspect, indi­rectly evident by the use of grinding implements. The erection of huts and dwellings with floor-se­quences indicating potential permanent or at least repeated use is known from a few sites in the vast area. Although contacts with the Neolithic econo­mies in the eastern Mediterranean and inland Ana­tolia are indicated, their farming subsistence sys­tems were not adopted either in western Anatolia or the Aegean before about 6700/6600 BC. The Aegean and western Anatolian hunter-foragers appear to have continued their long-established subsistence practices without any evidence of transformation, experimentation or adaptation to farming or herd­ing. Finally, the almost complete lack of symbolism remains astonishing in relation to the complex sym­bolic systems of the neighbouring PPNs world (Fig. 2). However, the absence of any symbolic material does not imply communities without a multifaceted sys­tem of beliefs. Rather, the lack of evidence confronts us with the problematic visibility of these aspects in early Holocene hunter-forager-fishing societies. The differences between the regions can be recog­nized in the lithic technologies, raw material procu­rement (local versus non-local) and some cultural Barbara Horejs practices (e.g., plastered floors, burials), which are expected to increase in respect of the number and types of differences with more data in the future. Finally, the concept of the Mesolithic as a culturally and chronologically defined period is widely ac­cepted in the Aegean and on the Greek mainland, related to continental European research history (e.g., Perles 2019). The western Anatolian sites are strongly connected with the Near Eastern tradition, where the Epipaleolithic before the early PPN period is a well-established cultural concept (Watkins 2018). The merging of both research traditions in western Turkey reflects the complexity of late Pleistocene/ early Holocene archaeology in the region. Both con­cepts – Epipaleolithic in the Near Eastern and Meso­lithic in the Aegean case – are currently applied to western Anatolian sites. Future studies will hopeful-ly show the expected high number of regional dif­ferences and how potential cultural varieties can be interpreted to gain a deeper insight into the popula­tions before the fundamental change into the Neoli­thic way of life took place. The abrupt arrival of the Neolithic The Neolithic way of life appears to start abruptly in the Aegean and in western Anatolia, already fully de­ veloped in all main aspects, such as farming, herd­ ing and sedentary life (Fig. 2). A few sites around the Aegean Sea and in inland western Anatolia rep­ resent the first Neolithic farming communities, re­ cently defined as pioneers (Horejs et al. 2015): Bar­ cin Höyük, Ulucak, Çukuriçi, Ugurlu, Knossos, Fran- chthi and perhaps Paliambela (Fig. 1). They all date within the timeframe of 7000 to 6600 cal BC; unfortunately a more precise date cannot be achieved due to a plateau in the current radiocarbon cali­bration curves. Site-based mo-delling revealed the most pro­bable date for most of these sites is around 6700 cal BC (Weninger et al. 2014; Perles et al. 2013; Horejs et al. 2015; Brami, Zanotti 2015; Mania-tis 2014; Douka et al. 2017; for a different modelling see Guilbeau et al. 2019). How­ever, we are currently aware of only a few early Neolithic sites founded before 6600 cal BC, whereas the majority of Neolithic farming sites devel­oped after this. The first ap­pearance of these early farm­ers in diverse landscapes and environments, such as the Ae­gean littorals, the Gökçeada Island and the Marmara Sea in western Anatolia, as well as diverse cultural contexts, sug­gests different trajectories. Although we have to take in­to account the likelihood of di­verse processes, the abrupt ap­pearance of farming and herd­ing societies suggests a gener­al pattern of Neolithic expan­sion, as stated often and by se­ Long and short revolutions towards the Neolithic in western Anatolia and Aegean veral scholars (e.g., Perles 2003a; Özdogan 2011; 2014; Guilaine 2013; Weninger et al. 2014; Brami, Zanotti 2015; Brami, Horejs in press). The pioneer sites around the Aegean Sea were most probably founded by newcomers and brought the new Neoli­thic subsistence strategies (as well as the animals and plants) together with other social and cultural elements (Fig. 2). This pioneer phenomenon, also described as the ‘maritime colonization model’ (Ho­rejs et al. 2015), may over-simplify the initiation of a complex process beginning immediately after the arrival of new groups, involving interactions be­tween the newcomers and indigenous groups, and adaptation to local environmental conditions (recent­ly Guilbeau et al. 2019). Further, the process of groups from different origins searching for new land over a period of several centuries can hardly be summarized as a singular event. This is apparent in inland Anatolia, as well as for Crete and Cyprus, where several waves of moving groups are evident (Özdogan 2008; Vigne et al. 2012; Douka et al. 2017). The Aegean pioneer sites show crucial economic and social aspects in common that clearly belong to the earliest Neolithic lifestyle in our region, and stand in strong contrast to the earlier Aegean Mesolithic. These new Neolithic aspects are four-tier husbandry, the planting of domestic cereals and pulses, perma­nent habitation in house architecture and new mate-rial-related technologies (Fig. 2; e.g., Çilingiroglu 2016). The whole bundle of innovations – the ‘Neo­lithic package’ – is related to a broader package of skills and knowledge affecting all crucial aspects of individual and community life. To start with, there was a new way of life in rectangular mud-built hou­ses, as at Çukuriçi XIII, Ulucak VI and probably also in Knossos X. As Çilingiroglu (2016) has recently pointed out, the technology of lime-plastered floors is limited to Anatolian mainland sites (continuing through the later stages of the Neolithic), as seen at Çukuriçi, Ulucak, Bademagaçi and Hacilar, and is not found on the Greek mainland or on Crete. This re­gionally distinct phenomenon may indicate different origins; the evidence of plaster in floor-sequences at the Pre-Neolithic Girmeler Cave in southwest Ana­tolia (Takaoglu et al. 2014) points to the probable route along the Anatolian coast and the incorpora­tion of the 9th and 8th millennia BC foragers into both inland Anatolian and maritime networks. Red plaster appears to be restricted to the foundation horizons of the pioneer sites, as attested in Ulucak VI and Çukuriçi XIII. The deposition of red lumps in­side the Çukuriçi XIII house additionally supports the practice of using this pigmenting technology by the early settlers. As Çilingiroglu convincingly argues, the use of red plaster found no place among the Epi-palaeolithic hunter-gatherers of Southwest Asia, but is characteristic of later Pre-Pottery Neolithic settle­ments. The houses of the early pioneers were the centres for domestic activities, evident in food pro­cessing, storage and fire installations such as hearths. This new kind of architecture included sequences of floors, which indicate permanent occupation and pe­riodic renewal; the material evidence shows us that these were house-based societies representing a new form of social life. The restricted extent of the exca­vated area of the earliest levels at almost all the pio­neer sites is a limiting factor preventing any kind of population estimate; we cannot definitely describe them as early ‘villages’. The concept of Neolithic vil­lages is currently not attested before 6600–6500 BC (Fig. 2). Rather, we are probably dealing with small groups of pioneers, living together in house-related communities. While this general pattern is attested at the western Anatolian sites (Ulucak VI, Çukuriçi XIII) and probably also in early Knossos, the pio­neers of the same period in the northern Aegean, evident in Paliambela, initially practiced a different settlement strategy based mainly on pit structures (Maniatis 2014; Katsanis et al. 2008). The excava­tion analyses by Kostas Kotsakis and his team will show if these pit complexes represent local adapta­tions of the new social life, or served as the initial stages of a semi-mobile or permanent habitation stra­tegy, representing another trajectory within the wi­der dispersal. Subsistence strategies mark the new Neolithic economy The pioneers’ subsistence was based on a fully deve­loped farming and herding economy with many essential details in common. It has frequently been pointed out that the four domesticates – sheep, goat, cattle and pigs – are evident in most of the pioneer sites, as for example at Franchthi, Knossos, Çukuri­çi and Ulucak, and represent a series of complimen­tary sets of developed herding strategies (e.g., Ar-buckle et al. 2014; Horejs et al. 2015; Munro, Sti­ner 2015; Çilingiroglu 2016). The evidence of a comparable economy at Bademagaci and Ugurlu V dates slightly later, and is probably not related to the earliest introduction (Clare, Weninger 2014; Atici et al. 2017). Although the wild ancestors of domesticates are evident at least as far west as the Aegean coast of Anatolia and the island of Gökçea­da, the stock-keeping economy is complete and pre­ Barbara Horejs sent from the beginning, with no experimental or transformation phases (Çakirlar 2012; Galik, Ho-rejs 2011; Horejs et al. 2015; Galik in press). Ben­jamin S. Arbuckle et al. (2014) have argued convin­cingly for the dispersal of the four-part herding eco­nomy along the Mediterranean coasts, bypassing central Anatolia (where cattle and pigs are not evi­dent). The lack of domesticated pigs at the pioneer site of Barcin Höyük in northwest Anatolia and in the later dated Ugurlu V gives additional support to this model; instead, in the earliest phase of Barcin Höyük wild boar were hunted (Arbuckle et al. 2014; Gerritsen, Özbal 2016; Atici et al. 2017). New zoo-archaeological and stable isotope data from Ugurlu V in the northeast Aegean are suggesting a founder population of the sheep and goat stock from the mainland, or at least from more arid zones than the western Anatolian coast (Pilaar Birch et al. 2019). The Çukuriçi sample highlights an additional econo­mic aspect of the stock-keeping and farming commu­nity related to maritime sources. From the founding of the site onwards fishing and diving for shells played an important role in providing nutrition (Ho­rejs 2012; Horejs et al. 2015; Galik, Horejs 2011; Galik in press). Inshore fish, such as sea bream, sea bass, groupers and bluefish, as well as pelagic fish like tuna and chondrichthyes (stingray), are evident (Fig. 3). A variety of bivalves, like lagoon cockles, corneus wedge clams, venus shells, carpet shells, noble pen-shells, ark clams, bearded ark clams, mussels, oys­ters, spondylus, date shells and paddocks as well as a wide variety of marine gastropods are attested in the assemblage. These indicate different practices of collecting, diving and fishing with distinct equip­ment, experience and knowledge of seasonal condi­tions. The role of fishing in the former Aegean Me­solithic economies has been discussed above and is evident in fish remains (e.g., Franchthi) as well as in fishing equipment, like hooks (e.g., Youra). The maritime exploi­tation skills might indicate a knowledge transfer from or even an adaptation process of local Aegean economies by the Neolithic newcomers. They may have brought fishing ex­pertise with them, bearing in mind the evidence in Neoli­thic Cyprus (Vigne et al. 2014). Overall, hunting was practiced only in small amounts and herding dominates the economy in the Neolithic pio­neer sites. Cultivation of crops is evident at the pio­neer sites, but published data is still rather scarce and it is difficult to form a clear picture (Çilingirog­lu et al. 2012; Perles et al. 2013; Horejs et al. 2015). The botanical analyses of Ulucak, Franchthi and Çu­kuriçi reveal heterogeneous data of einkorn and em-mer wheat, barley, free-threshing wheat and pulses. New technologies and exotic items A package of new lithic technologies and distinctive tools is attested at some of the Neolithic pioneer sites (Mili. 2018; Mili., Horejs 2017; Guilbeau et al. 2019). Most important is the use of pressure-flaking technology in producing chipped stone tools, mainly blades and bladelets, which is absent before 6700 BC. The flake-based industry of the Mesolithic Aegean, as well as the diverse technological industries in Pre-Neolithic western Anatolia, appear to continue, but are first supplemented and soon afterwards domi­nated by pressure blade making (recently Guilbeau et al. 2019). Together with the adoption of a new production technique, some atypical tool types like lunates and foliate points (not known in the Mesoli­thic Aegean) appear in the founding phase of the pioneer site Çukuriçi Höyük XIII. The whole lithic package indicates an origin in the east Mediterra­nean, the Levant and north Mesopotamia, and prob­ably represents the arrival of lithic industries from outside the region (Perles 2001; Horejs et al. 2015; Mili. 2018). A few other objects in the material as­semblages of the newcomers’ sites around the Aegean Sea seem to incorporate narratives, materials and technologies that cannot be related to the local tra­ditions of the Mesolithic Aegean (for earlier orna­ments see Perles 2019). As recently recognized by Çilingiroglu (2016.36), the very few symbolic items and special objects in the early Neolithic are all por- Long and short revolutions towards the Neolithic in western Anatolia and Aegean table. The well-made stone bracelets (Çukuriçi and Knossos), a malachite bead (Çukuriçi), and pierced circular beads (Ulucak and Çukuriçi) are rare finds; they appear exotic in the Aegean and may have ar­rived with the newcomers, or via extensive exchange networks (Horejs in press). The evidence of ceramic vessel production in the pioneers’ founding phases is either very rare or com­pletely lacking, as pointed out several times (Perles 2001.83; Reingruber 2015; Horejs et al. 2015; Çi­lingiroglu 2016; Douka et al. 2017). Pottery produc­tion does not play any role at the beginning of this process, especially in the coastal sites of the Aegean Sea, where it is totally lacking in Ulucak VI and evi­dent only as small fragments potentially represent­ing later intrusions in Çukuriçi XIII. The impact of ceramics appears different in Barcin Höyük, a pio­neer site at the southern Marmara Sea, where pot­tery containers are evident from the beginning (Ger­ritsen et al. 2013; Gerritsen, Özbal 2016; de Groot et al. 2017). The early practice of pottery-making perhaps points to the Marmara Sea pioneers’ relation to central Anatolia, where the presence of a much longer ceramic tradition has recently been argued (Fletcher et al. 2017). An overview of all the archaeological data regarding settlement and architecture, subsistence, imported raw materials, ground-stone tools, status objects, li­thic technology, special crafts and symbolic represen­tations illustrates the abrupt arrival represented by the pioneer sites of Ulucak VI and Çukuriçi XIII (Fig. 2). The integration of Mesolithic Aegean and Pre-Neo­lithic western Anatolian evidence into this overview clearly demonstrates that only very few aspects of the new Neolithic social life can be attested in our region before the arrival of the newcomers. The long and short revolutions The paradox of a short revolution within the long­term process of the Neolithisation can probably be related to the distinct cultural conditions in the Ae­gean Mesolithic and the Pre-Neolithic western Anato­lian world(s), where the idea of a long revolution is hardly tenable on present evidence. The long-estab­lished hunter-forager-fisher communities of the early millennia of the Holocene seem to encounter the contemporary farmers and herders in inland Anato­lia, as well as via maritime networks. A few cultural practices (e.g., plastered floors, stone vessels) indi­cate potential forager-farmer interactions within ter­restrial Anatolia, such as between Cappadocia and the coastal zones of southwest Turkey (Fig. 2). The implementation of (wild) plant processing with grind­ing stones within the subsistence strategy of those Pre-Neolithic societies probably reflects knowledge-transfer and adaptation based on these contacts via terrestrial and maritime routes. The impact of this interaction on the hunter-forager-fishers presumably included other social-cultural aspects as well, which are not visible in the archaeological record. The evi­dence of semi-sedentary habitation with dwellings of multi-seasonal or even permanent use might reflect a crucial shift in the cohabitation of the communities. The evidence of such dwellings and floor-sequences are usually seen as Neolithic influences (Sampson 2010; Takaoglu et al. 2014; Koz³owski 2016). Fur­ther analyses and new field data will perhaps indi­cate whether the adoption of a semi-sedentary life­style did in fact lead on to house-based communities before 7000 BC. The lack of evidence for this is not surprising in the context of the economic background, in which mobility played a crucial part, at least for the maritime communities of the Aegean. The dis­tinctive Aegean Mesolithic system of seasonally mo­bile groups, using their environmental conditions in a highly specialized and sustainable way, appears unsuited to the adoption of farming and herding strategies. The economic system of Pre-Neolithic western Ana­tolia differed in many aspects and could therefore more easily integrate new subsistence strategies. The founding of the first farming and herding commu­nities on the mainland of Greece and western Turkey took place in areas well suited to agriculture, in areas generally different from the formerly used penin­sulas or caves (with the exception of the Franchthi Cave, where an initial Neolithic is evident). The coa­stal zones of southwest Anatolia, which have been only sketchily investigated thus far, are likely to of­fer new data on pioneers in the future, and possibly for older occupations than those presently known. The interactions via overland and maritime routes may indicate a long-term process of communication between hunter-foragers and farmers, involving the adoption of a few cultural and subsistence practices and some related ideas, technologies and perhaps also worldviews. The suggested exploration phase by sea and land may form a crucial first stage in a longue durée process (Özdogan 2010; Broodbank 2013; Horejs et al. 2015; Çilingiroglu 2016). The archaeologically invisible seafaring and travelling groups searching for new land and new options are hardly a singular event in time. We can envision a continuous and ongoing process of small-scale mi­ Barbara Horejs gration, which is observable at Knossos (Douka et al. 2017). It is in this short revolutionary perspective that the first farming and herding communities ap­pear after 7000 BC. This sudden appearance of more or less contemporaneous settlements is on the one hand an abrupt event occurring between 7000 and 6600 BC, which on the other hand marks the end of a long-term process of exploration, communication, knowledge-transfer and adaptation. The paradox of this ‘sudden event’ within the long revolution pro­cess has been argued as resulting from maritime and terrestrial colonization by Neolithic pioneers (Brood-bank 2013; Horejs et al. 2015; Douka et al. 2017). Recent genetic studies additionally support this colo­nization model (Hofmanová et al. 2016) by demon­strating close relations between the agricultural com­munities in Anatolia, Greece and continental Europe with common ancestors (recently Lazaridis et al. 2016; Mathieson et al. 2018). These new genetic data convincingly demonstrate the movement of people from Anatolia into Europe during the intensification phase of the Neolithic (Mathieson et al. 2018), al­though timespan, frequency, and not at least poten­tial ‘origins’ are still matter of debate. The origins within the core zone may be several and various, differing between the regions of inland western Ana­tolia and the Aegean littoral. More detailed studies of the material relations of Franchthi (Perles 2005) and Çukuriçi (Horejs et al. 2015; Mili. 2018) indi­cate a starting point in the eastern Mediterranean (including the Levant and north Mesopotamia), at least for those two pioneer sites. Movement of peo­ple is therefore the current best-fitting model for the Neolithisation of the Aegean and western Anatolia according to both the archaeolo­gical and DNA data in my view (for a diffe­rent view s. Guilbeau et al. 2019). The trig­ger for these developments remains an open question and our model requires further re­search (Brami, Horejs in press). Since the first farmers and herders arrived in the region after 7000 BC, the dispersal within the Greek mainland, the Aegean litto­rals and within western Anatolia took place within a few generations (with the excep­tion of Crete). The next generation of far­mers extended their activity zones, cultivat­ed various new micro-regions and were li­ving in house-based communities embed­ded in village-based systems. From 6500 BC onwards, an increase in settlements seems to reflect a demographic boom (see Shen­nan et al. 2013 for the phenomenon in continental Europe). Regional groups emerged with their own identities, as the Anatolian Aegean coastal group de­monstrates (Horejs 2016). Various settlements in this micro-region over some 500–700 years shared economic strategies, means of raw material procure­ment and distribution, socio-cultural practices, the style and technology of pottery production and sev­eral other material technologies. These Neolithic communities continued some traditional aspects of subsistence and sourcing, such as fishing and shell-fishing and obsidian exchange, both of which origi­nate in the Mesolithic period (Fig. 2). The established Aegean obsidian networks seem to form the basis for the succeeding raw material exchange systems of the Neolithic village-based communities. Targeted sea­faring based on well-established nautical knowledge and skills was integrated into the Neolithic system, as has been recently shown for the procurement of jadeite from the island of Syros (Fig. 4), with distri­bution reaching Çukuriçi in the 7th millennium BC (Sorensen et al. 2017; Schwall et al. in press). We do not know how long the hunting-foraging-fish­ing seafaring societies in the Aegean Sea continued to exist alongside the farming-herding communities. The newcomers may not have immediately affected their environmental conditions and related econo­mic and social systems. While the new Neolithic life of the Greek mainland and western Anatolia increas­ed rapidly among the succeeding generations of far­mers and herders, for at least another millennium most of the Aegean islands remained untouched by these crucial cultural, economic and social changes. Long and short revolutions towards the Neolithic in western Anatolia and Aegean ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The paper was originally written in 2016 as chapter for a book about “The Long Revolution” initiated by Klaus Schmidt and Trevor Watkins years before, which could unfortunately not be realized. My sincere thanks go to all my colleagues involved in this project and especially to Trevor Watkins for his tremendous editing work, in­spiring feedback during the meetings and his support to create a broader narrative. I would like to thank Bog-dana Mili. and Alfred Galik for crucial discussions and the whole Çukuriçi team for the engagement in our field work and ongoing data analyses. Many thanks are addressed to Felix Ostmann and Maria Röcklinger for the creation of the figures and to Mario Börner for designing the map. I am very thankful to the funding of our re­search by the European Research Council (ERC project 263339), the Austrian Science Fund (FWF projects Y528 and P25825) and the OREA institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Finally, I thank Roderick Salisbury, Trevor Watkins and Clare Burke for English corrections at different stages of this manuscript. . References Ammerman A. J. 2014. Setting our sights on the distant horizon. Eurasian Prehistory 11 (1–2): 203–236. Arbuckle B. S. and 22 co-authors. 2014. Data sharing re­veals complexity in the westward spread of domestic ani­mals across Neolithic Turkey. PLoS ONE 9(9): e107824. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/jou rnal.pone.0099845. Atici L., Pilaar Birch S. E., and Erdogu B. 2017. 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The Epipaleolithic-Neolithic as the pivotal trans­formation of human history. Documenta Praehistorica 45: 14–29. https://doi.org/10.4312/dp.45.2 Weninger B., Clare L., Gerritsen F., Horejs B., Krauß R., Linstädter J., Özbal R., and Rohling E. J. 2014. Neolithisa­tion of the Aegean and Southeast Europe during the 6600– 6000 cal BC period of Rapid Climate Change. Documenta Praehistorica 41: 1–31. https://doi.org/10.4312/dp.41.1 back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) The beginning of the Neolithic on the Upper Volga (Russia) Nataliya A. Tsvetkova The Russian Museum of Ethnography, Sankt Petersburg, RU n-tsvetkova@yandex.ru ABSTRACT – The appearance of the Neolithic in the Upper Volga region is to be associated with in­filtrations of notch-ware pottery-makers into the indigenous Mesolithic populations. Most likely the first vessels were imported into the region as final goods. The undistinguished differences between the Final Mesolithic and the Early Neolithic stone industries prove that this invasion was not a large-scale one. This episode should be regarded as transitional from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic (i.e., as part of the process of Neolithisation). The non-ornamented/notch-ware ceramics tradition first established in the local cultural environment was soon after discontinued by the appearance of the populations with multi-compound comb-ware pottery about 6500–6400 uncal BP. KEY WORDS – Upper Volga region; Initial Neolithic; neolithisation; cultural genesis Za;etek neolitika na obmo;ju zgornjega toka reke Volge (Rusija) IZVLE.EK – Pojav neolitika na obmo.ju zgornjega toka reke Volge povezujemo z vdiranjem nosilcev lon.enine z vrezi na obmo.je domorodnih mezolitskih populacij. Najverjetneje so prve lon.ene po­sode na obmo.je prinesli kot kon.ne izdelke. Glede na podobnost izdelave pozno mezolitskih in zgod­nje neolitskih kamnitih orodij sklepamo, da vdor ni bil obse.en. To obdobje obravnavamo kot obdob­je tranzicije med mezolitikom in neolitikom (to je del procesa neolitizacije). Neokra.ena keramika in keramika z vrezi, ki so se kot prve pojavile v lokalnem kulturnem okolju, je kmalu zamenjal po­jav lon.enine z veliko sestavinami in okra.en z glavni.enjem v .asu 6500 do 6400 pred sedanjostjo. KLJU.NE BESEDE – obmo.je zgornje reke Volge; za.etni neolitik; neolitizacija; kulturna geneza Introduction The beginning of the Neolithic in the forest zone was marked by the earliest pottery appearance in the material culture. In the Upper Volga region, which combines the territories from the Volga headwaters along with the Valdai Lakeland to the confluence of the Oka and the Volga, this event took place c. 7100– 7000 BP (here and below all 14C dates are uncali­brated BP). The initial stage of the Neolithic corre­sponds to the early phase of the Upper Volga archa­eological culture. The latter’s main feature is pottery either non-ornamented or decorated with small dots and notches (simple puncture ware) (Fig. 1). The transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic on the Upper Volga is currently interpreted as the Butovo Mesolithic culture (see more detail in Kol’tsov, Zhi­lin 1999) evolution into the Upper Volga Early Neo­lithic culture (see more detail in Kraynov 1973; 1996; Kraynov et al. 1973; Kraynov, Khotinskiy 1977; Kraynov, Kostyleva 1988) with the immix­ture of the newcomers population skilled in mak­ing clay ware (Kostyleva 2003.213). The stone assemblage of the early phase of the Up­per Volga culture is characterized by finds from the sites Okayomovo 5 and 18/III, Ozerki 5/III, Belivo 2, Al’ba, Davydkovskaya, and Shadrino IV. The typical DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.6 The beginning of the Neolithic on the Upper Volga (Russia) features are: (1) usage of flakes as main tools blanks; (2) decrease of the percentage of blades compared with the Final Mesolithic; (3) predominance of irre­gular blades; (4) diversity in core forms; (5) produc­tion of arrowheads and cutting tools on blades; (6) rare slotted bone tools accompanied by microblade inserts, mostly with sharpened margins or with backed edges/ends, and oblique points; (7) arrow­heads with a distinct tang and willow-leaf points two-side trimmed on the tip and haft or those with edge contour retouching; (8) variously shaped scra­pers which are predominant in the tools categories; (9) angle burins on breaks, predominantly made on flakes and occasionally on blades; (10) single dihe­dral burins and burins of other types; (11) chopping tools being manufactured by both knapping and polishing; (12) diverse knives, notch-scrapes, borers, combined tools (Engovatova et al. 1998.18; Kol’­tsov, Zhilin 1999.82). Such a very general characteristic of the stone in­dustry of the initial phase of the Neolithic of the Up­per Volga, until recently, was considered sufficient. It was declared that the Butovo and the Upper-Vol­ga culture succession was proved. The stone indus­try of the Final Butovo culture characterized in detail also provides a comprehensive notion about the early Upper-Volga culture assemblages (Zhilin 1994; Kol’tsov, Zhilin 1999.82). The situation changed after a technological analysis revealed the variations of the early Upper-Volga non­ornamented/simple-puncture ware ceramics when compared with the later pseudo-corded ware with comb-stamped decoration of the middle and late phases of the culture (Tsetlin 1996). Now it has been established that the Upper-Volga potters em­ployed a multicomponent clay with varying recipes of ‘clay + chamotte + organics’ and ‘clay + chamotte + organics + granite grus’. Moreover, the use of cha­motte is considered as a marker of the Upper Volga culture. Alexander A. Bobrinsky (1978.71–72) estab­lished that the appearance of multi-compound tech­nological traditions (multicomponent temper to the clay paste) at the initial stages of pottery-making was induced by cultural mixing of the simple tradition bearers (one-component temper to the clay paste). The appearance of granite grus temper in the late stage of the Upper Volga culture is explained through contacts of the local population with the bearers of the pit-comb ware traditions. Organics as temper were used in the early Upper-Volga pottery with sim­ple puncture or non-ornamented ware. This was ac­cepted as the basis for distinguishing the Volga-Oka culture identified by Yuriy B. Tsetlin (2008.37) as an independent cultural unit preceding chronologically the Upper Volga culture. However, the concept of the Volga-Oka culture was criticized. Elena Kostyleva et al. (2002.41) suggest­ed: “…for the initial stage of pottery-making, when technological practices were still evolving and were not sustainable, there is no need to associate the appearance of one or another admixture in the Fig. 1. The pottery either non-ornamented or decorated with small dots and notches (simple puncture ware): 1, 2 Okayomovo 18/III; 3–5 Sakhtysh IIa/IIg; 6–17 Kotchishche II; 18 Shchepochnik (photo and drawing by the author). Nataliya A. Tsvetkova pottery with a foreign cultural influence. This lat­ter is possible only in conditions of stable, long-es­tablished technological traditions. Therefore, it seems to us an inappropriate attempt ... to single out the early stage of the Upper Volga culture into a special autochthonous Volga-Oka culture ... More­over, the proposing of a new archaeological culture requires more solid substantiation than the data on the ceramics production technology.” The last years research has confirmed the heteroge­neity of the Upper Volga culture components. The technical and typological analyses of the stone in­dustry made it possible to distinguish two qualitati­vely different stone inventory groups in terms of technology, each of which is accompanied by hetero­geneous pottery types, according to Tsetlin. For the first and earlier industry (from 7100–7000 to 6600– 6500 BP), the significant role of blades and the sec­ondary treatment with the minimum modification of blanks are typical. This feature is clearly expressed in the shapes of arrowheads having a slightly re­touched tip and haft or retouched over a contour of the blade blank covering less than 3/4 of its surface. These assemblages correspond to the 1st phase of the Upper Volga culture (the Volga-Oka culture ac­cording to Tsetlin), and are accompanied by early pottery with sparse puncture-ware ornamentation. The second group of artefacts originate from of the evolved and late Upper Volga culture sites (6600/ 6500–6000/5900 BP) and are characterized by the use of flakes as basic blanks, the continuous retouch­ing of points (arrowheads, spearheads, darts) and also knives, as well as by spread of the thin-bifaces technique. It is accompanied by pottery with pseu-do-corded and comb-ware ornamentations (Tsvetko­va 2012). The stone inventories of the reference Volga-Oka culture sites of Zales’e 1, Ust’-Valdayka, Yazykovo 1, Somino 2, Ivanovskoye III, V,and VII, Sakhtysh I, II, and VIII, Kosyachevo 1 & 2, Zav’yalka 1, Malaya Lamna 1, Strelka 1, Borinka 2, Volosovo. Korenets. Teren’kovo III. Zhabki 3. Belivo 2, and Davydkov­skaya (Tsetlin 1996) have still not been researched. In the present study, a detailed characterization of the stone industry of the initial stage of the Neolithic of the Upper Volga is presented. On the basis of the data obtained, the validity of distinguishing the ar­tefacts of the initial stage into a separate archaeolo­gical culture is analyzed. Sources Collections of stone artifacts (7521 items; Tab. 1) from nine sites were used, in which only non-deco­rated/simple puncture-ware ceramics were present in the Early Neolithic cultural layers. The following sites deposited in the subaqual and subaerial sedi­ments (‘on sands’) have such a feature: Alekseyev­skoye I, Davydkovskaya, Kotchishche I, Nilova Pu-styn’, Shadrino IV, and peat-bog sites of Zamostje 2/4a, Okayomovo 18/III, Sakhtysh IIa/IIr, and Stano­voye 4/II (excavation 2 of 1998), dating to 7030± 100 BP (GIN-8378) (Fig. 2). There is a widespread opinion among researchers about the admixture presence of the Final-Mesolithic artefacts in the cultural layers of these sites (Kosty­leva 2003.213). As proof, examples for the peat-bog sites are given of the overlapping of the early Neo­lithic finds on the Mesolithic ones without stratifica­tion, with rare exceptions, by sterile layers. It is how­ever practically impossible to prove the presence of such an admixture, since the differences between Fig. 2. The map of research area: 1 Kotchishche I, Nilova Pustyn’; 2 Ozerki 5/IV; 3 Berendeevo III; 4 Da­vydkovskaya; 5 Zamostje 2/upper mesolithic layer, Zamostje 2/4a; 6 Ivanovskoye VII/IIa; 7 Shadrino IV; 8 Alekseyevskoye I; 9 Sakhtysh IIa/IIg; 10 Okayomovo 4/III, 5, 18a, 18/III; 11 Stanovoye 4/II; 12 Bezvod­noye 10; 13 Nushpoly 11; 14 Novoshino; 5 Elin Bor (composed by the author). The beginning of the Neolithic on the Upper Volga (Russia) No. Sites Age (BP) Age (cal BC) Index Sample 1 Zamostye 2\4a 6385±150 5621–5008 SPb-719 Sherd with “retreating spatula” decor, food-crust 2 Zamostye 2\4a 6485±150 5712–5079 SPb-728 Undecorated sherd, food-crust 3 Zamostye 2\4a 6720±150 5973–5376 SPb-725 Undecorated sherd, food-crust 4 Zamostye 2\4a 6975±100 6024–5672 SPb-721 Undecorated sherd, food-crust 5 Zamostye 2\4a 7030±100 6076–5718 SPb-723 Undecorated sherd, food-crust 6 Zamostye 2\4a 7105±150 6342–5676 SPb-722 Undecorated sherd, food-crust 7 Okayomovo 18\III 6800±60 5813–5617 GIN-8416 elk skull 8 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 6753±150 5986–5389 SPb-1453 food-crust 9 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 6874±150 6033–5522 SPb-1450 food-crust 10 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 6920±150 6074–5554 SPb-1451 food-crust 11 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 7065±150 6231–5667 SPb-1448 food-crust 12 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 7088±150 6246–5669 SPb-1449 food-crust 13 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 7037±27 5991–5849 KIA-39309 food-crust 14 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 7018±45 6000–5794 KIA-39308 food-crust 15 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 6860±31 5835–5669 KIA-39301 food-crust 16 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 6847±31 5801–5662 KIA-39300 food-crust 17 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 7356±30 6353–6090 KIA-39310 food-crust 18 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 7072±36 6019–5887 KIA-39311 food-crust 19 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 6395±28 5469–5319 KIA-39312 food-crust 20 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 6371±30 5467–5305 KIA-39313 food-crust 21 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 6740±90 5804–5487 Ki-14556 sherd 22 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 6690±90 5739–5478 Ki-14554 sherd 23 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 6410±90 5544–5213 Ki-14557 sherd 24 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 6830±40 5791–5638 GIN-12985 sherd 25 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 6960±40 5917–5741 GIN-12986 sherd 26 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg 7220±70 6231–5986 GIN-12984 sherd 27 Stanovoe 4\II 7030±100 6076–5718 (GIN-8378) board Tab. 1. Radiocarbon dates for sites of the Initial Neolithic in the Upper Volga region (see Radiouglerod­naya khronologiya 2016). the stone industries of the Final Mesolithic and Early Neolithic are hardly noticeable, being identified re­liably only through comparative statistics of the col­lections. Meanwhile, finds of early pottery in the cul­tural layer are a convincing argument in favour of the chronological position of a site. The artefacts Characteristic of the initial stage of the Neolithic of the Upper Volga is the predominant use of flint of different colours and quality extracted from Carbo­niferous Age deposits. Among these raw materials, the light-violet staritsa flint is easily distinguishable. Its outcrops on the Volga are known in the Tver’ re­gion. Tools made from it are found at the sites of Kotchishche I, Nilova Pustyn’, Okayomovo 18/III, and Shadrino IV. An insignificant percentage of arte-facts from the sites under consideration are manu­factured from imported material of high quality sourced from Cretaceous deposits. For instance, at the camp-site of Davydkovskaya, semitransparent light-grey and black flint with a chalk cortex was found (Sidorov 1973). Besides, tools made from quartzite, slate, sandstone, etc., were also used. Summarising the data on the stone industry of the initial Neolithic of the Upper Volga region, the fol­lowing characteristics are worth mentioning. Most of the cores from sites of this period are made using the volumetric knapping technique (prismatic co­res). The volumetric cores are represented by six broad-faced cores and twelve narrow-faced cores (Tab. 3; Fig. 3.6–7, 11–12, 15–18, 20–22, 24). Cores of a conventionally mixed type (three items; Fig. 3. 23) and amorphous cores (three items) are rather rare. Cores of irregular knapping were found in Oka­yomovo 18/III – two items and Davydkovskaya – one item. The methods of producing blanks differed. The deep and uneven negatives of flaking on cores and un­trimmed striking platforms of the latter indicate the use of a hard hammerstone. At the same time, facet­ing of striking platforms and reduction of the plat­form overhangs on the cores can have resulted from the use of a soft hammerstone or a punch. Some cores for microblades have an angle of flaking close to 90°, suggesting a high probability of the use of a pressure technique. The single clearly identified core (pencil-shaped) with pressure knapping comes from Nataliya A. Tsvetkova Categories Alekseevskoe 1DavydkovskayaZamostje 2\4aKotchishche INilova Pustyn’Okayemovo 18\IIISakhtysh IIa\IIgStanovoe 4\IIShadrino IVTotal Precores – 3 – – – 1 – – – 4 Coreoutlines 2 10 1 3 – 3 – 2 3 24 Core-shaped chunk 6 1 4 7 1 – 5 – 3 27 Flakes (including framents) 133 2267 1808 1510 114 62 12 15 113 6034 Blades (including framents) 23 554 165 128 3 19 – 1 80 973 Abrasives – – – – – 3 2 1 – 6 Sinkers – – – – – – 2 – – 2 Hammerstones – 2 – 1 – – 4 – – 7 Slate saws 1 – – – – – 1 – – 2 Retouchers – 2 – 1 – – – – – 3 Arrowheads (including framents) 1 3 5 5 1 3 – – 1 19 Spear and darts points – – 1 2 – – – – – 3 Borers 3 5 27 6 – 2 – – – 43 Woodworking tools 4 4 3 1 1 3 2 1 19 preforms of woodworking tools 1 1 1 – – 2 1 – 6 Burins 2 11 1 6 – 5 – – 3 28 Scrapers 5 53 27 34 1 5 2 3 16 146 Inserts 5 4 9 – – 2 1 6 27 Blades with regular retouch 3 3 24 14 – 1 – – 10 55 Flakes with regular retouch 5 1 4 – 2 1 – – 1 14 Combined tools 1 – 2 1 – 4 – – 1 9 Undiagnostic tools 1 – – – – – – – – 1 Fragments of tools – 2 – 1 – – – 2 5 Blades with unregular retouch 5 1 – 1 – 1 – 1 14 23 Flakes with unregular retouch 1 – – – – – 4 – 31 36 Raw materials 1 – – – – – 3 1 – 5 Total 203 2927 2081 1722 122 113 40 28 285 7521 Tab. 2. Distribution of categories of stone tools at the sites of the initial Neolithic in the Upper Volga region (composed by the author). the site Shadrino IV (Fig. 2.16). The platforms of all the prismatic cores are formed either by a single strike or show trimming negatives. The overhangs on most of the cores are not reduced. Considerable numbers of the cores are strongly exhausted. Blades/microblades as potential blanks (with nega­tives of previous longitudinal removals) are mostly fragmented and have an irregular faceting of the dorsal surface (Tab. 4). The percentage of tools made from blades varies within a broad range from 17.5% to 50% (Alekseyev­skoye I: 45% of all the lithics with secondary work­ing; Davydkovskaya: 22.6%; Zamostje 2/4a: 17.5%; Kotchishche I: 39%; Nilova Pustyn’: 25%; Okayomovo 18/III: 50%; Stanovoye 4/II: 14%; Shadrino IV: 36%). For comparison, at sites of the Final Mesolithic in the region the values of the same indicator vary from 35% to 54% (Sakhtysh 14/Ib: 35%; Okayomovo 18a: 54%; Zamostje 2: 21%; Okayomovo 4: 35%; Okayo­movo 5: 53%; Ivanovskoye VII/IIa, Ivanovskoye 3: 31%) (Tsvetkova 2012). Artefacts marking the Initial Neolithic – arrowheads with a distinct tang (two items; Fig. 3.46, 49) or leaf-like shape (seven items; Fig. 3.39–41, 43, 47, 48, 50) are manufactured from blades or microblades with a slight modification of the blank by means of retou­ching (the haft and tip treatment). The proportions of the arrowheads are either very elongated (three items) or medium sized (six items). Single arrow­heads are manufactured in the same technological tradition made on flakes (Kotchishche I; Fig. 3.40) and a blade-flake (Davydkovskaya; Fig. 3.43) as blanks. The single point from Kotchishche I is the only tool of elongated proportions with contour re­touching that is due to the character of the blank (flake) which required a greater modification in the manufacture of the instrument, rather than just treat­ment of the tip, and the haft might be considered as an individual form. The unifacial points on blades also found at excavations of the site of Kotchishche I (Fig. 3.44, 45) can be considered in a similar fash­ion, and such points are also known in the Final Mesolithic of the region. For example, the unifacial points come from the Early-Neolithic layer of Za­ The beginning of the Neolithic on the Upper Volga (Russia) Tab. 3. Types of regular cores from the Initial Neolithic sites in the Upper Volga basin (composed by the author). mostje 2 – from that area of the settlement where defining of the initial Neolithic strata from the whole Early-Neolithic horizon was impossible. The fragment of the bifacial arrowhead tip from the site Shadri-no IV, taking into account the presence of a single pit-comb ware vessel fragment, seemed to be an ad­mixture of the Evolve Neolithic (Fig. 3.38; Tsvetko­va 2014b.48). The bifacial point from Kotchishche I, according to the character of the secondary treat­ment, undoubtedly also belongs to the Evolved Neo­lithic. Its occurrence could be explained by the adja­cent location of later settlements close to Kotchi­shche I. The spear and javelins points are rare in the Initial Neolithic. Two of them are bifaces from sites Kotchi­shche I and Zamostje 2/4a (Fig. 3.37). The third item is one with dorsal continuous retouch and ventral semi-abrupt micro retouch covering 3/4 of the point contour, was recovered from Kotchishche I (Fig. 3. 36). At the same site, a tool fragment interpreted as a point tip was encountered. By the nature of the secondary treatment, it is an admixture of the Evolv­ed Neolithic which came from the nearby later site (see above). The other two bifaces, considering the context of their finding, belong to the Early Neolithic. End-scarpers with a convex edge (type 1) are charac­teristic of the stone industry of the initial Neolithic of the Upper Volga region. The quantity of such tools made on flakes exceeds that of scrapers on blades by 2.5 times. End scrapers with a straight edge (type 2), ‘nosed’ scrapers (type 3) and ogival forms (type 3) are rare (Tab. 5). Despite the fact that they do not compose a significant series, they can also be fully considered as characteristic of the initial phase of the Neolithic in the Upper Volga region. Microscra­pers are represented by end forms in the sites Sha- Sites distal fragsmedial fragsproximal fragsdihedraltrihedraltetrahedralpentahedralregular facettedirregular facettedintactcortical width\thicknessof blades (mm) number ofblades total number ofblades in theassemblage Alekseyevskoye I 2 18 3 6 13 4 – 8 15 – 6 7–15, 30\2–4 23 205 Davydkovskaya + + + + + | | + + | | 4–10\| 554 3217 Zamostje 2\4a 14 21 16 + + | | + + 10 | | 165 311 Kotchishche I + + + 59 61 5 3 10 118 11 14 6–29\8–11 128 1721 Okayomovo 18\III – 2 – 3 – – – 1 2 1 – 12–15\ 2–5 3 122 Nilova Pustyn’ 5 12 2 10 6 3 – 4 15 2 – 6–32\2–6 19 113 Sakhtysh IIa\IIg – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Stanovoye IV – 1 – – 1 – – – – – – 12\2 1 26 Shadrino IV + 29 + | | | 2 + 2 + + 14 6–9, 16–17\| 80 306 Total 21 83 21 78 81 12 5 25 15041 20 – 973 6021 Tab. 4. Techno-morphological parameters of the blades from the Initial Neolithic sites on Upper Volga (composed by the author). Nataliya A. Tsvetkova drino IV and Davydkovskaya assemblages (Fig. 4.16– 17, 26, 29–32). Side-scrapers are unknown among the collections from the sites under consideration (see in more detail in Tsvetkova 2015a). Amorphous scrapers i.e. tools on flakes and their fragments with irregular retouch imitating a scraper working edge constitute 1/8 of the total quantity of scrapers from the Initial Neolithic sites (Tab. 5). Thus the notion that by the beginning of the Neolithic the numbers of amorphous scrapers in the inventories of sites in­creases substantially seems to be incorrect (Kol’tsov, Zhilin 1999.64; Tsvetkova 2015a.358). This period is characterized by angle burins bevelled on a break. There are twice as many burins on blades as burins on flakes (Tab. 6). As a rule these are tools with a single bevel. Dihedral burins and retouched ones are single. A single example of a combination burin was found (Davydkovskaya) conjoining dihe­dral and angle types in the same piece (Fig. 4.20). The total number of the tools made on blades and flakes is 17 and 10, respectively (see more detail in Tsvetkova 2014a). Inserts are represented at sites of the Initial Neoli­thic by nine microblade types of the thirteen iden­tified for the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic of the Upper Volga (Fig. 4.1–11; Tab. 7). Regression of mi-croblade technology in the Initial Neolithic, com­pared with the Mesolithic, has not been observed. In the stone industry of the Early Mesolithic, the per­centage of inserts varies from 1.1% to 35% among the tools with secondary treatment. In the Middle Mesolithic this characteristic ranges from 1.1% to 20%, while at sites of the Final Mesolithic it does not exceed 1.3%. Early Neolithic microblade-inserts con­stituted from 0.4% to 13% of such tools. These val­ues indicate the absence of clear relationship be­tween the age of the site and the number of inserts. It must be also taken into consideration that micro-blades without secondary treatment can be poten­tial inserts (Tsvetkova 2017). Insert weapons were used on the Upper Volga dur­ing the entire Mesolithic and Early Neolithic periods. Some tool types, e.g., flat and needle-shaped bone points equipped with inserts, were used through­out all the considered Mesolithic-Neolithic periods. Some of them, e.g., the points with a triangular tip without barbs slotted on the haft, do not constitute considerable series and each is an individual form. Thus for the initial Neolithic, five types of bone tools with slots are known, of which three (narrow flat­tened points, one-winged points with a barb and straight daggers) were used since the Preboreal pe­riod and one (points with a biconical head) since the beginning with the Boreal period (Tsvetkova 2017). Borers are represented by tools with a distinct or casual beak. No relation between the type of the blank (blade/flake) and the form of the borers is traceable. The quantities of borers made from blades and flakes are equal. Borers with a distinct piercing tip were found at the sites of Alekseyevskoye I (one item; Fig. 3.2), Davydkovskaya (one item; Fig. 3.13), Kotchishche I (three items; Fig. 3.3, 9). The borers with an indistinct tip come from collections from Alekseyevskoye I (two items; Fig. 3.4), Davydkovska-ya (four items; Fig. 3.10), Zamostje 2/4a (two items; in total, 24 borers and three drills were found in layer 4a at the settlement of Zamostje 2; since their detailed description is not reported, in the present article the statistics include only the illustrated tools from the literature (Lozovskaya, Lozovskii 2015; Fig. 3.14) for Kotchishche I (three items; Fig. 3.1, 8) and Okayomovo 18/III (two items; Fig. 3.5). Tab. 5. Ratio of groups and types of scrapers at the sites of the initial Neolithic of the Upper Volga region (composed by the author). The beginning of the Neolithic on the Upper Volga (Russia) Fig. 3. The stone tools from the sites of The Initial Neolithic in The Upper Volga region: 1, 3, 6, 8, 9, 21, 24, 27, 31, 36, 40, 44, 45, 48 Kotchishche I; 2, 4, 12, 20, 29, 30, 42, 47 Alekseevskoye I (Tsvetkova 2014b); 5, 39, 49, 50 Okayomovo 18/III (Zhilin 1997); 7, 10, 13, 15, 18, 26, 28, 32, 43, 46 Davydkovskaya (Sido­rov 1973); 14, 19, 37 Zamostje 2/4a (Lozovskaya, Lozovskii 2015); 16, 23, 25, 38 Shadrino IV (Tsvetko­va 2014b); 17, 22, 35 Stanovoye 4/II; 33, 34 Sakhtysh IIa/IIg (Tsvetkova 2013); 41 Nilova Pustyn’ (Tsvet­kova 2018). 1–4, 6, 8, 9, 12, 16, 17, 20–24, 27, 29–31, 33–36, 38, 40–42, 44, 45, 47, 48 drawn by the author. Tab. 6. Ratio of groups and types of burins at the sites of the initial Neolithic on the Upper Volga (composed by the author). Combination tools are found in the following variants: ‘scraper + bu-rin’, ‘burin + knife’, ‘burin + push-plane’, and ‘burin + borer’ (Alekse­evskoye I, Zamost’e 2/4a, Okaye­movo 18/III, Kotchichshe I, Shad-rino IV). In the opinion of Vladimir V. Sidorov, the so-called ‘cores-bu­rins’ are typical for the Early Neoli­thic. In terms of their technical and morphological characteristics, the­se artefacts are either core-shaped pieces or strongly exhausted cores (Tsvetkova 2014a.264). There are also known finds of tools used for the production of tools: ab­rasives (Okayamovo 18/III, Sakh­tysh IIa/IIg, Stanovoye 4/II), ham-merstones (Kotchishche I, Sakhtysh IIa/IIg), slate saws (Alekseevskoe I, There are five times as many axes than adzes. Tra­pezoid tools are the most widely distributed among both categories. Artefacts of triangular or rectan­gular form are found as single examples. The tech­nology of manufacture of wood-working tools of the Early Neolithic involves the application of bifacial flaking and abrasive treatment by means of various techniques. Among the latter the ‘flake-axe’ tech­nique is of note, where a large flake is used as a tool blank. The distal end of such a flake with mini­mal treatment would have been intended for a work­ing edge. Such a blank had the ventral surface trim­med on the lateral sides which were first worked with transversal flaking (Tarasov 2009.125). Two artefacts manufactured using this technique have been encountered (Kotchishche I; Fig. 3.27, 31). Four types woodworking tools are disting-Zamostje 2, Sakhtysh IIa/IIg ), and retouchers (Davyd­kovskaya, Kotchishche I) (Tab. 1; see more detail in Tsvetkova 2015b). Thus the stone industry of the Initial Neolithic of the Upper Volga region should be considered as based on the blade-flake blanks knapping technique. Discussion The characteristics of the stone industry based on the finds from the sites with exclusively unornament­ed/simple puncture-ware pottery make our notions about this time much more precise. Primarily this concerns the role of blade knapping in the industry of the Initial Neolithic. As already mentioned above, Microblades uished according to the manner of treat­ment: tools with bifacial treatment (Fig. 3. 28–29), tools with treatment of the dorsal Sites surface and ventral trimming with flat re­touch (Fig. 3.27, 31), axes and adzes with an bifacial treatment combined with grinding with marginalmicro-retouchwith tinymarginal retouchwith sharpeningmarginal retouchblunted marginalretouchwith retouched endtransverse truncationwith retouched endoblique truncationTotal (Fig. 3.33–34, 42), and polished tools (Fig. Alekseyevskoye I 4 – – – – 1 5 3.25, 32, 35; Tab. 8). The variant-forming Davydkovskaya 2 – 2 – – – Okayomovo 18\III 1 1 2 attributes are the proportions of the tools (see more detail in Tsvetkova 2013.205). Stanovoye IV\II 1 – – – – – 1 Shadrino IV 2 1 1 2 – 6 Blades and flakes with regular abrupt/semi-Total 9 1 4 2 1 1 18 abrupt and sharpening retouch are repre­sented by series in various combinations: Tab. 7. Ratio of inserts types on the sites of the early Neoli-unilateral, bilateral and alternate. thic of the Upper Volga (composed by the author). The beginning of the Neolithic on the Upper Volga (Russia) Fig. 4. The stone tools from the sites of The Initial Neolithic in The Upper Volga region: 1, 2, 4, 17 Alekse­evskoye I (Tsvetkova 2014b); 3 Stanovoye 4/II; 5, 19, 12, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 33, 34, 36, 38–41 Kotchishche I; 6, 15, 20, 21, 31 Davydkovskaya (Sidorov 1973); 13, 14, 18, 9, 11, 37 Okayomovo 18/III (Zhilin 1997); 7, 8, 10, 16, 26, 29, 30, 32 Shadrino IV (Tsvetkova 2014b); 23 Nilova Pustyn’ (Tsvetkova 2018); 35 Zamost­je 2/4a (Lozovskaya, Lozovskii 2015). 1–5, 10, 12, 17, 19, 22–25, 27, 28, 29, 33, 34, 36, 38–41 drawn by the author. researchers regard the regress in the technology of making blades and microblades as a distinctive fea­ture of this period. Observations of the author show that the estimate of the percentage ratio of blades, microblades and products made from them, in com­parison with flakes and tools on flakes, in the stone industries of the Mesolithic and Neolithic Upper Vol­ga is rather artificial in a certain sense, and associ­ated with incomplete and unequal sources, i.e. main­ly of the source studies character (Tsvetkova 2017). Firstly, the sites differ from one another through their functional features. Indeed, they are certainly represented by hunting camps, workshops, dwelling settlements, places for butchering hunted prey, etc. Secondly, they differ in the duration and frequency of habitation and/or visitation episodes. Moreover, they have been studied to different extents. On the other hand, the percentage of tools on blades, the presence of cores for blades and microblades, the quantity of blades as potential blanks and the high percentage of tools on blades in collections from sites of the Early Mesolithic and Initial Neolithic con­vincingly suggest that the tradition of manufacturing tools on a standardized blade-blank was practised in this region for 3500 years, since the Preboreal peri­od. Its existence was not affected in any way by dif­ferences in the quality of the raw materials used or dependence on the location of the sites in different areas of flint accessibility (Zhilin 1998). The microblade technology on the Upper Volga falls out of use together with the composite armature af­ter 6500–6400 BP. For that period, a transfor­mation of the stone industry from blade-flake to exclusively flake is recorded, as well as the appearance of other categories of bifaces. These bifaces were produced in particular by the bifacial thinning technique (Engovatova et al. 1998). In our case, we can state the suc­cessive existence in the Early Neolithic of the region of two different technological and cul­tural traditions for tool manufacture that are alternatives to each other. In the same period, the ornamentation of ceramic pottery also changes significantly, as comb-ware ornamen­tation replaces the simple-puncture elements. At present, the results of pottery technological analyses have proved that the bearers of the traditions of the Early Neolithic archaeologi­cal cultures of the central part of European Russia who manufactured ware with simple-puncture and combed ornamentation were not related (see more detail in Smirnov 1988; Ivanishcheva 2004; Tsetlin 2007). The aban­doning of the microblade technique by people of the Upper Volga region can be more logi­cally explained through the displacement of the population that took place 6500–6400 BP rather than through the loss of the skills of making blades. Nataliya A. Tsvetkova Groups Types Alekseyevskoye I Davydkovskaya Zamostje 2\4a Kotchishche I Nilova Pustyn’ Okayomovo 18\III Sakhtysh IIa\IIg Stanovoye IV\II Shadrino IV Total Axes Type 1 1 2 – – – 1 – 1 – 5 Type 2 – – 1 – – – – – – 1 Type 3 2 – 1 – – – 2 1 – 6 Type 4 – – – – – – – 1 – 1 Type 1 – – – – – – – – – – Type 2 – – – – – – – – – – Type 3 – 1 – – – – – – – 1 Type 4 – – – – – – – – – – Type 1 – – – – – – – – – – Type 2 – – – 1 – – – – – 1 Type 3 – – – – – – – – – – Type 4 – – – – – – – – – – Type 1 – – – – – – – – – – Type 2 – – – – – – – – – – Type 3 – – – – – – 1 – – 1 Type 4 – 1 – – – – – – – 1 Type 1 – – – – – – – – – – Adzes Type 2 – – – – – – – – – – Type 3 – – – – – – – – – – Type 4 – – – – – – – – 1 1 Type 1 – – – – – – – – – – Type 2 – – – – – – – – – – Type 3 – – – – – – – – – – Type 4 – – – – – – – – – – Total 3 4 2 1 – 1 3 3 1 18 Tab. 8. Woodworking tools from the initial Neolithic sites The identity of the stone industries of the ini- the Upper Volga (composed by the author). tial Neolithic and Final Mesolithic allows us to define the details of the Neolithisation in the Upper Volga region. The phenomenon of the appearance of ceramics in the material culture of hunter-fisher-ga­therers remains not completely clear. The three ear­liest centres of pottery-making are known in the Eu­ropean part of Russia. From there, the ‘cultural im­pulses’ spread to the Upper Volga region as a result of migrations of the populations. The appearance of the first ceramic vessels on the Upper Volga is asso­ciated with the advancement of the population from the southern/south-eastern regions (Nikitin 2008; Viskalin 2015). The conclusions on the movements of groups of peo­ple who mastered the skills of making ceramic pot­tery are based on studies of the technology and orna­mentation of ceramics. No detailed comparison of the Mesolithic with the Early Neolithic stone indus­try based on the types of tools has been so far con­ducted for the Volga-Oka interfluve region. It is be­lieved that, in similar natural climatic and economic conditions, a difficulty arises in identification of cul­tural variations in the lithic assemblages on the Me-solithic/Neolithic turn (Nikitin 2008.308). Mean­while, the necessity of such a comparison is clear since the heterogeneity in the typological composi­tion of the Final Mesolithic and Early Neolithic tool assemblages can suggest either mass changes in the population (migrations) or one-time infiltrations (e. g., marital connections or guest contacts). The dated sites with relatively ‘pure’ complexes of the Final Mesolithic period on the Upper Volga in­clude those (Tab. 9): Bezvodnoye 10, Berendeyevo 3, Zamostje 2/Upper Mesolithic layer, Ivanovskoye VII/IIa, Nushpoly 11, Ozerki 5/IV, Okayomovo 4/III, Okayomovo 5, and Okayomovo 18a (Tab. 9). Based on the results of palynologic analysis, materials from the sites Novoshino and Yelin Bor/II (Kol’tsov, Zhi­lin 1999.72), (Fig. 1) are dated to the beginning of the Atlanticum. A comparison of the types of tools typical of the final Mesolithic and early Neolithic of the region is shown in Figures 5 and 6. No differences are traceable in the primary knapping when compared with the preceding period. Com­ The beginning of the Neolithic on the Upper Volga (Russia) No. Sites Age (BP) Age (cal BC) Index Sample Source 1 Bezvodnoye 10 6920±380 6607–5191 GIN-5442 charcoal 1 2 Berendeevo 3 7770±100 6843–6436 LE-1556 wooden platform 1 3 Zamostje 2\up. mes. layer 7450±100 6467–6088 GIN–6565 peat 2 4 Zamostje 2\up. mes. layer 7200±90 6247–5892 GIN–7988 bone 2 5 Zamostje 2\up. mes. layer 7380±60 6392–6094 GIN–6565 wood 2 6 Zamostje 2\up. mes. layer 7050±60 6033–5789 GIN–10068 wood 3 7 Zamostje 2\up. mes. layer 7270±120 6406–5973 LE–9524 wood 3 8 Zamostje 2\up. mes. layer 7350±45 6274–6079 LE–10090 wood 3 9 Zamostje 2\up. mes. layer 7380±60 6392–6094 GIN-6201 wood 3 10 Zamostje 2\up. mes. layer 7400±75 6420–6095 LE–10260 wood 3 11 Zamostje 2\up. mes. layer 7440±60 6438–6214 LE–10092 wood 3 12 Zamostje 2\up. mes. layer 7450±70 6453–6211 LE–10091 wood 3 13 Zamostje 2\up. mes. layer 7460±20 6399–6327 LE–10094 wood 3 14 Zamostje 2\up. mes. layer 7100±120 6217–5743 GIN–10066 sapropel 3 15 Ivanovskoye VII\IIa 7530±150 6660–6064 GIN–9361 peat 4 16 Ivanovskoye VII\IIa 7320±190 6533–5836 GIN–9369 peat 4 17 Ivanovskoye VII\IIa 7375±170 6590–5974 LE–1261 peat 4 18 Ivanovskoye VII\IIa 7490±120 6535–6088 LE–1260 peat 4 19 Ivanovskoye VII\IIa 7520±60 6465–6248 GIN–9361 peat 4 20 Nushpoly 11 7310±40 6237–6072 GIN–6657 pole wood 5 21 Ozerki 5\IV 7410+90 6435–6084 GIN-6659 charcoal 1 22 Ozerki 5\IV 7120±50 6072–5897 GIN-7217 worked wood 6 23 Ozerki 5\IV 7190+180 6413–5737 GIN-6660 charcoal 6 24 Ozerki 5\IV 7310+120 6424–5989 GIN-7218 worked wood 6 25 Okayomovo 4\III 7490+50 6440–6246 GIN-6204 worked wood 1 26 Okayomovo 5 7910±80 7049–6629 GIN-6191 gyttja peat 1 27 Okayomovo 5 7730±60 6657–6457 GIN-6192 gyttja peat 1 28 Okayomovo 18a 7420±50 6422–6214 GIN-6656_ wooden pole 5 Tab. 9. Radiocarbon dates for sites of the Final Meolithic in the Upper Volga region. Sources: 1 Kol’tsov, Zhilin 1999; 2 Lozovskii 2003; 3 Lozovskii et al. 2014; 4 Zhilin et al. 2002; 5 Zhilin 1997; 6 Zhilin 2006. parison of the types of tools also demonstrates the absence of differences between the stone industries of the Final Mesolithic and Early Neolithic, suggest­ing a cultural continuity of the populations during these epochs. No new types of stone tools are known at the sites with the unornamented/simple puncture ware pottery. Vladimir M. Lozovskiy considered the appearance of the denticulate retouch as an Early Neolithic novelty (Lozovskii, Mazurkevich 2014). However, it is found only on the tools from Zamost­je 2 in a layer containing mixed simple puncture, pseudo-corded and combed ware sherds. Such a rare use of this kind of retouching indicates that the den-ticulate retouching as a technique is classless for the early Neolithic of the Upper Volga basin. The beginning of the Neolithic period on the Upper Volga is marked by the appearance of pottery at 7100–7000 BP without any transformation of the stone industry. The first pottery in combination with the blade- and flake-based industry was in use until 6500–6400 BP. It is obvious that the stone assem­blage and pottery of that chronological span differ from the later Early Neolithic complexes of the Up­per Volga region (phases II and III of the develop­ment of the Upper Volga culture). Tsetlin proposed a designation of Volga-Oka archaeological culture for the artefacts of the Initial Neolithic (Tsetlin 1996). However, it must be considered as a Final-Mesolithic culture, and pottery appears in its later stage. Its low­er chronological limit is defined by the appearance of pottery about 7100–7000 BP, while the upper one by the appearance of the technology of making thin bifaces and the distribution of ware with pseudo-corded and combed ornamentation along with the disuse of insert weapons at about 6500–6400 BP. In the territories adjacent to the Upper Volga region archaeologists also note the appearance of flake stone industries, points of arrows/darts and biface knives at c. 6500 BP, together with a synchronous spread of traditions of manufacturing comb-ware pot­tery made of clay mass with a complex composition (Tsvetkova 2014c.368). Both of the categories of sources bear a distinct typological similarity with the artefacts of the Upper Volga. An exception is the Ka­ramyshevo culture on the Upper Don. It is characte­rized by a flake-based stone industry and ceramics with puncture-ware ornamentation. However the question of the type of stone industry of the Kara­myshevo archaeological culture still remains open, because of the absence of clearly stratified multi-la­yer sites in the upper reaches of the Don (Tsvetko­va 2011.133). Nataliya A. Tsvetkova Thus we are dealing with a situation where very si­milar features of the stone assemblages and pottery are encountered throughout a vast territory. Their similarity, despite belonging to different archaeolo­gical cultures, is so significant (Nikitin 2008) that there is no possibility to define the boundaries of their areas. Valeriy V. Nikitin characterizes the inter­relations between the bearers of the initial Neolithic cultures of the forest and forest-steppe zones as kin­dred ones, and proposes considering archaeological cultures of the initial Neolithic in this territory as parts of a single historical and cultural unity (Nikitin 2008.310). While this idea seems logical and reaso­nable, a question arises as to the territorial bounda­ries of the community of the early simple puncture-ornamented ware, since it is also a marker of the ini­tial phase of the Early Neolithic far beyond the lim­its of the Volga basin. Conclusions The transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic on the Upper Volga according to the results of the stone assemblage studies of the Final Mesolithic and Initial Neolithic must be associated with sporadic contacts between the autochthonous population and the bearers of the skills of manufacturing clay ware The beginning of the Neolithic on the Upper Volga (Russia) with simple-puncture ornamentation. Most possibly, the first ware penetrated into the region ready-made, as is suggested by (1) the small number of vessels at the sites, (2) finds of flat bases of technologically completely modelled pottery uncharacteristic of the forest Neolithic, and (3) temper of coarse-sized cha­motte in the earlier ware, suggesting an advanced technology of pottery-making based on the tradition of the use of ‘old’ ware. Since the earliest pottery ap­pears on the Upper Volga virtually simultaneously without traces of its local manufacture, it is quite evident that it was imported. The absence of diffe­rences between the stone industries of the Final Me­solithic and Initial Neolithic on the Upper Volga de­monstrates that there was no massed inflow of peo­ple to this region. Otherwise, in the stone industry of the Early Neolithic, new types of tools and, pos­sibly, new techniques of working stone would have emerged that is not observed in reality. Considering the cultural status of the materials of the Initial Neolithic of the Upper Volga region, it must be recognized that the Volga-Oka artefacts can nei­ther be attributed to a particular archaeological cul­ture nor to some conventional unit of subdivision of archaeological evidence, implying “an aggregate of materials (complexes and separate finds) from one or, more often, many sites characterized, on the one hand, by an internal uniformity while, on the other hand, it markedly differs in its character and Nataliya A. Tsvetkova the types of artefacts represented in it from the Having got into the Mesolithic environment, the tra-complexes not included into it” (Vasil’ev et al. 2007. dition of manufacture of early simple puncture-ware 230). The absence of assemblages of culture-defining was of no long duration, being interrupted by the in-tools among the artefacts of the Initial Neolithic of flow of people possessing the skills of manufacturing the Upper Volga region and adjoining territories, on pottery with comb-ware ornamentation made of clay the one hand, and, on the other, the impossibility of mass with a complex composition. The episodes cha-defining distinct borders of the areas of archaeolog-racterized by the appearance (7100/7000–6800 uncal ical cultures of that period suggest a single cultural BP) and distribution (6800–6400 uncal BP) of pot-unity of the early puncture-ware pottery. This unity tery with sparse simple-puncture ornamentation (Za-is characterized by a blade- and flake-based stone retskaya, Kostyleva 2008.13) without essential chan­techno-complex as “an aggregate of archaeological ges in the form of stone and bone artefacts can be sites/groups of sites distinguishable at one level of considered as a transition period between the Meso-archaeological periodization within definite space-lithic and Neolithic representing the process of Neoli-time and environmental limits” (Lisitsyn 2014.91). thisation. The transition to the Neolithic marked by The archaeological cultures now known should be a change of the economic structure, formation of a considered as conventional geographic subdivisions local centre of pottery-making and distribution of the of the cultural oecumene of the early puncture-ware technique of manufacturing thin bifaces took place pottery, each of which possesses individual features later, and was related with the replacement of the within common technological lithic and pottery-mak-population on the Upper Volga about 6500–6400 BP. ing traditions. . References Bobrinsky A. A. 1978. Goncharstvo Vostochnoi Evropy. Nauka. Moscow. (in Russian) Engovatova A. V., Zhilin M. G., and Spiridonova E. A. 1998. Khronologiia verkhnevolzhskoi ranneneolitiches­koi kultury (po materialam mnogosloinykh pamiatnikov Volgo-Okskogo mezhdurechia). Rossiyskaia arkheologiya 2: 11–21. (in Russian) Ivanishcheva M. V. 2004. Khronologiya pamyatnikov ran-nego neolita Iuzhnogo Prionezhia. In V. I. 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(in Russian) back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) The first vs. second stage of neolithisation in Polish territories (to say nothing of the third|) Marek Nowak Institute of Archaeology, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, PL mniauj@interia.pl ABSTRACT – The origins of the Neolithic in Polish territories are associated with migrations of groups of the Linear Band Pottery culture (LBK) after the mid-6th millennium BC. Communities of this cul­ture only settled in enclaves distinguished by ecological conditions favourable to farming (‘LBK neo­lithisation’). This situation persisted into the 5th millennium BC, when these enclaves were inhabit­ed by post-Linear groups. This state of affairs changed from c. 4000 BC onwards due to the forma­tion and spectacular territorial expansion of the Funnel Beaker culture (TRB). In the territories under consideration this expansion covered the areas previously inhabited by both hunter-gatherers (‘TRB neolithisation’) and farmers. Some of the Late Mesolithic hunter-gatherers did not accept TRB patterns. They successfully carried on their traditional lifestyle until the Early Bronze Age although some changes in their material culture are visible (including ‘ceramisation’). KEY WORDS – Poland; neolithisation; LBK; TRB; para-Neolithic Primerjava prve in druge stopnje neolitizacije na obmo;ju Poljske (da o tretji sploh ne govorimo) IZVLE.EK – Za.etki neolitika na obmo.ju Poljske so povezani z migracijami skupin linearno traka­ste kulture (LTK) v drugi polovici 6. tiso.letja pr. n. .t. Te skupine so se naselile v enklavah, za kate-re so zna.ilne ekolo.ke razmere ugodne za kmetijsko (‘neolitizacija LTK’). Tak.no stanje se je ohra­nilo do 5. tiso.letja pr. n. .t., ko so te enklave poselile po-linearne skupine. Poselitev se je bistveno spremenila .ele od ok. 4000 pr. n. .t. naprej z oblikovanjem in spektakularnim .irjenjem nosilcev kulture lijakastih .a.. Na Poljskem je ta poselitev zajela tudi obmo.ja, ki so jih pred tem poseljevali tako lovci in nabiralci (‘neolitizacija kulture lijakastih .a.’) kot poljedelci. Nekatere skupine pozno mezolitskih lovcev in nabiralcev niso sprejele vzorca kulture lijakastih .a. in so uspe.no ohranili svoj na.in .ivljenja vse do zgodnje bronaste dobe, .eprav lahko zaznamo nekatere spremembe v njihovi materialni kulturi (tudi ‘keramizacijo’). KLJU.NE BESEDE – Poljska; neolitizacija; linearno trakasta kultura; kultura lijakastih .a.; para-neolitik The present-day territory of Poland (Fig. 1) was and long time, coming into various interactions in the is situated in the borderland of different environ-process. This situation is fairly unique for the entire mental (Rdzany 2014) but also different cultural, European continent. prehistoric, and historic formations (Davies 2005). In the period discussed here this resulted in differ-As in other parts of Central Europe, the origins of ent types of Neolithic culture, and different faces of the Neolithic in the region in question are associat­neolithisation. These variants of the Neolithic and ed with the appearance of the Linear Band Pottery neolithisation developed in parallel for a relatively culture (LBK) (Fig. 2) after the mid-6th millennium DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.7 The first vs. second stage of neolithisation in Polish territories (to say nothing of the third|) BC (Czekaj-Zastawny 2008; 2009; 2017; Grygiel 2004; Kulczycka-Leciejewiczowa 2000; Pyzel 2010). We still do not have genetic data from the ‘Polish’ LBK. However, such data from nearby Hun­gary, Austria, and Germany (Ammerman et al. 2006; Bra-manti et al. 2009; Brandt et al. 2015; Burger et al. 2006; Haak et al. 2005; 2010; 2015; Lazaridis et al. 2014; Lipson et al. 2017; Mathieson et al. 2018; Szécsényi-Nagy et al. 2015) demonstrate genetic dissimilarities between LBK and central-European, hunter-gatherer populations and the predominance of the so-called north-western Anatolian Neo­lithic component among the former ones. In conjunction with distinct similarities and even uniformities in material culture between the LBK north and south of the Carpa­thians and Sudetes (compare, for example, Czekaj-Zastawny 2014; 2017; and Pavlù, Zápotocká 2007; 2013), this makes migra­tions from the south the most probable scenario of the origins of the LBK in Polish territories. On the other hand, a very modest but quite pervasive pro­portion of hunter-gatherer ancestry in quoted, Euro­pean genetic data (i.e. including even the Balkan Neolithic) should be emphasized. Thus, some con­tacts between incoming early farmers and local hun­ter-gatherers had to exist, even if these were only casual sexual contacts. It is also characteristic that participation of the hunter-gatherer component is higher in Germany than in Transdanubia (Lipson et al. 2017). This would mean that during the LBK spread outside the ‘cradle’ area, the Neolithic-Meso­lithic contacts became more intense. Consequently, such a scenario can be also applied to the LBK spread in the Vistula and Oder basins. Perhaps it is worth noting here that genetic data obtained in the 21st century have demonstrated that classical constructs – deriving inter alia from the works by Vere G. Childe (e.g., 1929; 1947) as well as Albert J. Ammerman and Luigi L. Cavalli-Sforza (e.g., Ammermann, Cavalli-Sforza 1984; Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994) – which presented the LBK as a continuation of the Anatolian-Balkan First Neolithic, in principle seem to be true (cf. Hofmann 2015). Certainly, many details of these constructs were amended or eradicated due to new data, both gene­tic and archaeological ones. For instance, the crys­tallisation processes of the LBK that took place in the north-western parts of the Carpathian Basin fil­tered and changed the First Temperate Neolithic (FTN) cultural pattern (e.g., Bánffy 2004; 2006; 2019; Bickle et al. 2013; Stadler, Kotova 2010; Whittle et al. 2013), regardless of how they are interpreted. However, for a follower of the allochtonic position the ‘Mesolithic’ hypotheses, which assumed substan­tial or even exclusive role of Mesolithic acculturation (e.g., Bánffy 2004; 2006; Bánffy et al. 2007; Bent­ley et al. 2013; Mateiciucová 2008; Whittle 1996. 150–152), currently do not seem particularly con­vincing. Perhaps it is characteristic that in the very recent publication by Eszter Bánffy (2019) the par­ticular emphasis has been placed on transformations between Star.evo-Körös and LBK in the patterns of architecture and husbandry. As a matter of fact, the latter hypotheses have never become fully entrenched in Central European cul­ture-historical archaeology (cf. Gronenborn 2007). Marek Nowak Therefore, the followers of the cul­ture-historical approach may undoub­tedly take some satisfaction from the fact that its traditional analyti­cal methods have proven to be not so completely useless after all. This does not mean that the consciously and unconsciously used paradigms of culture-historical archaeology, re­levant in this context, should always be considered as true. To such para­digms belong, for example, convic­tions about the decisive role of mi­gration in cultural changes and – as a consequence – the negligible parti­cipation of hunter-gatherers in neo­lithisation. In light of the currently available ra­diocarbon dates we can draw a pic­ture of a very rapid initial expansion that started in western Lesser Poland and proceeded along the Vistula Ri­ver to Kuyavia and Che³mno Land as well as eastward, to the upper Bug River basin (Fig. 3). In both cases this expansion basically took place in the 54th century BC. This fits very well to the scheme proposed a few years ago by Janos Jakucs et al. (2016), despite the fact that their research hardly used absolute dates of the LBK from Poland. Another axis of LBK migrations – Wroc³aw – Poz­nañ – Kuyavia/Che³mno Land/Western Pomerania – started to function later. One way or another, this means that the beginnings of LBK in Polish territories, and not only here (cf. Jakucs et al. 2016), should be placed later than previously believed, that is around 5400 BC at the earliest. In the cited publication the beginnings of the LBK ‘formative phase’ around 5500 BC, or perhaps within the 56th century BC, are re­ferred only to Transdanubia and Lower Austria (Ja­kucs et al. 2016.323–324, 329). One should also raise another issue here, one not re­lated to the territory of present-day Poland alone. When speaking of the LBK, we usually have in mind the image of a great LBK ‘empire’, stretching conti­nuously from the Paris Basin to western Ukraine, and even to Moldova and the eastern part of Walla­chia. This is mainly due to a map developed by Jens Lüning (1988), later repeatedly reproduced and used in many publications (e.g., Bogucki, Grygiel 1993), although this was naturally not the only cartogra­phic depiction functioning in the literature (e.g., Price, Bentley 2005.Fig. 3). However, Lüning’s map is a far-reaching simplification, because the real pic­ture of LBK distribution looks quite different. Com­munities of that culture first and foremost settled zones with a prevalence of ecological conditions fa-vourable to farming. As a consequence, LBK sites distinctly concentrate within enclaves (‘islands’) of different sizes, even very small ones. Such enclaves were separated by vast areas with either a very low density of LBK settlement or literally deprived of it (e.g., Czekaj-Zastawny 2009; Kulczycka-Leciejewi­czowa 1993). The patchy character of the early farm­ing spread was certainly noticed (cf. Robb 2013. 658), but it was reflected relatively poorly in gener­al interpretations. As a matter of fact, the appealing idea, one that is repeatedly presented in such general contributions, The first vs. second stage of neolithisation in Polish territories (to say nothing of the third|) of a single, uninterrupted front between the Neoli­thic and Mesolithic populations running latitudi­nally across the whole of Central Europe (e.g., Fer-nández et al. 2014; Silva, Vander Linden 2017) is untrue. In fact, the borderline between these two formations was incomparably longer and had a far more complex course, particularly during the peak of LBK development. The relation between these two cultural entities can also alternatively be pre­sented as a co-existence of two communication sys­tems (Fig. 4) (Koz³owski, Nowak 2018a; 2018b). On the other hand, one should emphasize that LBK communities did not cling to the most fertile soils. Recent years have produced a growing body of LBK finds from sandy soils, and not only from lowlands. Strikingly, however, these sites are always situated close to fertile soils, not further than a few kilome­tres away, and sometimes simply in sandy enclaves within such soils (e.g., Pyzel 2010). As in other central European countries, the LBK in Poland comprises all elements of what is known as the Neolithic Package (Czekaj-Zastawny 2017; Gry­giel 2004). It is significant (particularly from the per­spective of the LBK origins) that these elements, in full suite and in evident predom­inance, are distinctly record-able even from the very be­ginning of this culture. In other words, the LBK appear­ed in Polish territories as a developed, operational cultu­ral model. We can only ex­press, one more time after many authors, our bewilder­ment at the far-reaching styli­stic uniformity within the ar­chaeological unit that covered vast territories of central Eu­rope, including Poland, and some neighbouring areas. Sig­nificant similarities in terms of diet, health conditions and residence patterns have also been underlined (e.g., Hedges et al. 2013). This does not mean that all LBK constitu­ents were identical, and that there were no local specifici­ties and outliers (Whittle, Bi-ckle 2013). It is somewhat paradoxical that in the archaeological literature the LBK consti­tutes perhaps the most textbook example of a Neo­lithic formation and Neolithic Package in central Europe, despite its early position within this period. This is perhaps best illustrated by highly typical LBK houses, commonly called longhouses (although not all of them are actually long) (Fig. 5). As a matter of fact, they are the most solid, durable, and evident house constructions throughout the whole central European Neolithic (sensu largo, i.e. including also the Eneolithic). One may wonder whether this im­plies some unique position of such houses in the set­tlement and social structures of LBK communities. Unfortunately, although these structures have been very comprehensively described and many interest­ing interpretations have been proposed (e.g., Ha-mon et al. 2013; Lüning 1988; Modderman 1988; Oross et al. 2016; Pavlù 2000; Pyzel 2010; 2012; Rück 2007; 2012; Werra 2010; 2012), one can hard­ly argue that this has brought us closer to any clear conclusions concerning their function or even the number of people living in such houses. The remains of perhaps more than 500 have already been unco­vered in Poland. They are known from LBK settle­ Marek Nowak ments of different sizes and are situated in different environments. Nevertheless, one should emphasize that there are sites where remains of such houses have not been identified (Fig. 6). It is hard to solve the problem whether in all such cases these remains were destroyed by erosional processes or there exist­ed some LBK settlements without longhouses. Cultural and spatial arrangements typical for Polish territories during the LBK period also persisted in the 5th millennium BC. Different Neolithic groups of a post-Linear character, which traditionally have also been called Younger Danubian Communities, still concentrated within the same enclaves (Kadrow 2017; Nowak 2009). As in other areas previously oc­cupied by the LBK, the uniformisation of pottery can no longer be observed (cf. Robb 2013.665), a phe­nomenon which was already detectable at the close of the LBK development1 . In other aspects of the cultural system, however, no radical transformation can be seen. The fundamental patterns of settlement and economy seem to have remained largely un­changed. For example, situations where sites used in the LBK period were also used, albeit not necessar­ily uninterruptedly, by Younger Danubian commu­nities, were commonplace (see for instance again Miechów 3 – Figs. 7, 8). Undoubtedly, some areas outside these enclaves were penetrated and even set­tled and exploited by Neolithic groups, like some parts of Greater Poland, eastern Pomerania or even Mazuria. However, this does not undermine the fact that until the end of the 5th millennium BC at least approx. 70% of the territory under discussion still remained beyond the extent of compact Neolithic settlement (Koz³owski, Nowak 2018b). However, in the second half of the 5th millennium BC pottery appears outside the context of Younger Danubian communities. Technologically and stylis­tically it stands very close to east-European Neolithic units, for instance the Dnieper-Doniec or Narva cul­tures. We should mention here early Zedmar cera­mics in the Masurian Lake District (Kozicka 2017), Fig. 4. Confrontation of the first farmers and the late hunter-gatherers in east-central Europe (Koz-³owski, Nowak 2018b). A the first contact: the LBK (1–2) and the Late Mesolithic cultures (3) (B Beu­ronien, Km Komornica, Ch-P Chojnice-Pieñki, Ja Janis³awice, Knd Kunda); B the road map of the 6th millennium BC (1 the Early Neolithic ‘motor­ways’ and delivery roads; 2 the Mesolithic paths). 1 The side effect is that a number of cultural units have been distinguished in the archaeology of Poland in the 5th millennium BC, some of which are rather poorly defined. This drives discussions on taxonomical divisions, with new propositions overlying pre­vious ones. For example, the same archaeological phenomenon is referred to as the Brzeœ. Kujawski group, Brzeœ. Kujawski culture, Late Linear Band Pottery culture (phases II and III), Brzeœ. Kujawski group of the Lengyel culture, etc. Since these discussions are generally carried out only in Polish-language literature, they remain largely unknown outside this milieu. As a result, archaeologists from other countries may have an impression of terminological chaos, and sometimes use some of the terms in a simply incorrect manner (e.g., regarding the above-mentioned cultural unit as a late phase of LBK). Perhaps the best remedy for this situation (re­gardless of the general terms mentioned above, such as post-Linear or Younger Danubian Communities) is to apply the most clas­sic approach, in which the decline of LBK is followed by the development of the Stroked Pottery culture in western Poland in the first half of the 5th millennium BC, and the so-called Lengyel-Polgár cycle/complex. The latter term covers more than a dozen small­er groups developing in the 5th and early 4th millennia BC throughout most of Poland (within the enclaves discussed in the text). The trait shared by these groups is their strong dependence on cultural patterns created in that time in the Lengyel and Tisa cul­tural centres. The first vs. second stage of neolithisation in Polish territories (to say nothing of the third|) and single vessels of the Dubi.iai (Prypat’-Neman) type in north-east Poland (Józwiak 2003; Kempisty, Sulgostowska 1991) (Fig. 9). As for the spread of this phenomenon, which was independent of the FTN/LBK and Cardial/Impressa neolithisations, it progressed, generally speaking, among local, hunter-gatherer populations by way of acculturation. This is also demonstrated by ‘new’ ge­netic data from the Baltic countries (Mittnik et al. 2018) and slightly ‘older’ data, including several samples from north-east Poland (Bramanti et al. 2009). Certainly, some movements of the hunter-ga­therer groups cannot be ruled out. However, it is necessary to underline that this east-European Neolithic, including the Polish sites, differs considerably from, for example, Balkan FTN or LBK or post-Linear units. In practice, it is pottery that constitutes the only element of the Neolithic Package present there (e.g., Piezonka 2015; Rimantiene 1992; 1994). In other words, in the eastern European lite­rature the term ‘Neolithic’ has a very different meaning as compared to in the central or western European literature. Actually, we are dealing here with the incompatibility of no­tional apparatuses used with respect to the discussed period by different schools of research. More precisely, we are dealing with differently un­derstood Neolithics, if we insist on using the term Neolithic at all. To complicate the issue further, a similar phenomenon, i.e. the pres­ence of pottery in the hunter-gath­erer context dated to the 5th millen­nium BC, was recorded in the north­ern fringes of Poland (Fig. 10). One should mention in this context at least three sites: Tanowo (Galiñski 2016), D¹bki (Kabaciñski et al. 2015), and Rzucewo (Król 2018). The beginnings of this phenomenon can be dated at c. 4800/4700 BC, at least in the case of D¹bki. The pot­tery in question is more or less sim­ilar to the pottery of the Ertebolle culture (EBK). Combined with the dating this is interesting, as this means that this pottery is not much later than the EBK proper (Hartz, Lübke 2005; 2006; Hartz et al. 2000; Terberger 2006). We must not forget, however, that the dating of EBK and similar pottery is generally problematic due to the partic­ularly strong impact of the marine reservoir effect. Nevertheless, it needs to be stressed that in D¹bki, Tanowo, and Rzucewo the pottery appears in the context of the local Mesolithic. In terms of the flint industry, this is not EBK but the post-Maglemose Chojnice-Pieñki culture, in its developed phase. As regards these finds, from the eastern European perspective we could say that we are dealing here with neolithisation and the Neolithic. However, it is extremely telling that the investigators of D¹bki, Ta-nowo, or Rzucewo never used such terms. For them it was first and foremost an example of ceramisation of local Late Mesolithic groups. The same approach Marek Nowak currently prevails with respect to several similar northern German sites, and actually to the entire EBK as such. The relation between the Ertebolle pottery (sensu largo) and the pottery of the east-European Neoli­thic is another issue, and different views have been expressed in this respect (such as Czerniak, Pyzel 2011; Dumpe et al. 2011; Kabaciñski, Terberger 2011). These potteries are indeed similar, although no obvious intermediate link can be identified in the southern Baltic basin. Perhaps D¹bki could be such a link given the possibly early occurrence of pottery in this site. However, to discuss the issue in more de­tail is beyond the scope of this paper, and we only hint at a possible solution. Contacts between farming and hunting-gathering groups seem to have been rather limited during the 5th millennium BC, similar to the situation in the se­cond half of the 6th millennium BC. They are evi­denced by single finds of pottery and stone tools be­longing to older and younger ‘Danubians’ beyond their oecumene, including those in direct hunter-ga­therer contexts (see, for example, the Neolithic pot­tery in D¹bki – Czekaj-Zastawny 2015; Czekaj-Za­stawny et al. 2011; Dudka, Szczepanki-Gumiñski 2011). Undoubtedly, it is worth paying a little more atten­tion to some types of stone artefacts, which seem to reveal a little more about the potential Neolithic-Me­solithic relations at that time. Polished stone imple­ments (axes and adzes) are a permanent element of the LBK cultural system, but also of the post-Linear ones (the latter fact is often forgotten). They were made mainly of Sudeten rocks, particularly amphi­bolites (Cholewa 2004; Prostøednik et al. 2005). Sporadically, we can also find tools of this kind made of erratic rocks, which suggest that local production was rarely undertaken (Prinke, Skoczylas 1980). Stone tools from Sudeten rocks are widespread with­in the LBK and post-Linear units (e.g., Ramminger 2009). There had to exist an organized distribution network for them that served all clusters of ‘Older’ and ‘Younger’ Danubians, more or less distant from the Sudeten Mountains. Perhaps this system contri­buted to maintaining a mental and ideological com­monality among these areas (the notion of an ‘ima­gined community’ proposed by Alasdair Whittle and Penny Bickle (2013) seems to be a good description of this phenomenon). We can suppose their non-uti­litarian significance, due to their frequent presence in male graves. In this respect, let us mention the re- Fig. 6. The LBK settlement at the multi-period site 3 in Miechów against the blurred background of features belonging to other archaeological units; the LBK features are highlighted by graphic sym­bols. 1 features with longer axis over 5m; 2 fea­tures with longer axis 3–5m; 3 features with long­er axis 1–3m; 4 features with longer axis less than 1m; 5 extremely elongated features (mostly burials). The first vs. second stage of neolithisation in Polish territories (to say nothing of the third|) Fig. 7. The settlement of the Lublin-Volhynian cul­ture (late stage of the Younger Danubian commu-nities/Lengyel-Polgár complex) at the multi-period site 3 in Miechów against the blurred background of features belonging to other archaeological units; the Lublin-Volhynian features are highlighted by graphic symbols. 1features with longer axis over 5m; 2 features with longer axis 3–5m; 3 features with longer axis 1–3m; 4 features with longer axis less than 1m; 5 extremely elongated features. cent, exceptionally interesting discovery of a crema­tion burial ground in Modlniczka 5 (Czekaj-Zastawny, Przyby³a 2012), where stone adzes constituted the only category of grave goods (although, of course, the identification of sex was not possible there). However, more important for us is the fact that these items are also present in areas beyond the compact range of the Linear and post-Linear settlements, stret­ching from the Netherlands to Pomerania and central Poland. By convention, these areas can be called a Mesolithic oecumene. The map published several times by Marek Zvelebil (1998.Fig. 1.6; 2001.Fig. 4) is very meaningful here, and should be supplement­ed for Poland with data by Kazimierz Siuchniñski (1969), Andrzej Prinke and Janusz Skoczylas (1980) and Jolanta Ilkiewicz (2005). All these records show that numbers of finds of this kind are very high: pro­bably hundreds, if not thousands. The problem is that the vast majority of these finds are devoid of archaeological context, i.e. they were not found directly in Mesolithic sites. Danubian axes and adzes found directly in such contexts are rather rare, and are actually limited to only a few sites in northern Germany and Denmark, while in Poland only the site of D¹bki can be noted. This observation, however, confirms the supposition resulting from the cartography of ‘Danubian’ stone tools, which is that they in any case entered the Mesolithic environ­ment. We can therefore hypothesize that these pro­ducts were an element of Neolithic-Mesolithic inter­actions (mainly commercial?), which did not take into account the ‘cultural’ borders. Another possible hint on Neolithic-Mesolithic con­tacts are Mesolithic traces in the maternal genetic pool of the Younger Danubian groups in Kuyavia (vide the sites of Os³onki, Konary, Krusza Zamkowa, Brzeœ. Kujawski – Juras et al. 2017; Lorkiewicz et al. 2015), although, as stated in a recent study by Da­niel M. Fernandes et al. (2018), the Brzeœ. Kujawski group (excluding two outliers) is certainly composed of the same genetic component present among Ana­tolian and LBK Early Neolithic farmers. Summing up the above discussion, one can conclude that, until the end of the 5th millennium BC, the cul­tural picture of Polish territories was shaped by three main components. First, there were enclaves settled by Older and Younger Danubian communities, which represented a complete Neolithic Package, as well as ‘routes’ and ‘motorways’ connecting them. Second, in the 5th millennium BC, most likely in its second Marek Nowak half, the east-European Neolithic en­croached from the east, while in the northern peripheries we can observe a similar process, this time according to the Ertebolle patterns. In both ca­ses it was first and foremost the ce­ramisation of the local Mesolithic sub­stratum. However, the adoption of pottery by hunter-gatherer groups was still a very local and limited phe­nomenon. Finally, the third compo­nent of this picture is obviously the late, non-ceramised Mesolithic com­munities, which in that time were still present everywhere (Koz³owski, Nowak 2018a; 2018b; Nowak 2009), even in the south (Nowak et al. in press; Pazdur et al. 2004). From the late 5th millennium BC on­wards, complex cultural transforma­tions started to take place in the Vis­tula and Oder basins. They were as­sociated with the spread of a new model of farming culture throughout most of the discussed part of Europe, and not only the above-mentioned fertile enclaves. This new model, known to archaeologists as the Fun­nel Beaker culture (TRB) (Fig. 11), actually covered a much larger area, from the Netherlands to western Ukraine, including the south-Scandi­navian zone, where it marked the beginning of the Neolithic. In the Vistula and Oder basins, as in other territories within the TRB range, we can observe a phenomenon that can be called a fill­ing-in of the landscape. A very large number of TRB sites are known, many more than those of the Danu­bian cultures (which in itself is puzzling), and they have been recorded in nearly all ecological zones, not only in the most fertile areas, as preferred by previous Neolithic settlement. This makes TRB the first Neolithic culture to have covered the previous­ly not Neolithicized areas in the Vistula and Oder ba­sins, which de facto means most of the territory of our interest. Therefore, this phenomenon, i.e. the spread of the ‘Beaker’ Neolithic to areas outside pre­vious Neolithic (Danubian) occupation, was once called the second stage of Neolithisation (Nowak 2001; 2009). In the end, this process proved per­haps even more important than the first Neolithisa­tion. One way or another the Neolithic formation eventually filled, in a relatively compact manner, the majority of the Polish territories around the mid-4th millennium BC. As an example of this filling in of the landscape one can present the case of central Greater Poland (Wier­zbicki 2013). There are more than 3100 TRB sites and fewer than 150 sites of LBK and Younger Danu­bian Neolithic in the region, with TRB sites covering this area more or less uniformly (Fig. 12). The basic problem associated with the described pro­cess is the genesis of TRB and the mechanism of its spread. This is surely one of the most controversial issues of the central European Neolithic, and it has long been discussed and analysed (such as Czerniak 1994; 2018; Grygiel 2016; Ja¿d¿ewski 1936; Koœko The first vs. second stage of neolithisation in Polish territories (to say nothing of the third|) 1981; Kowalczyk 1970; Kukawka 2015; Nowak 2009; 2017; Wiœlañski 1979a), of course not only with respect to the territory of Poland (e.g., Fischer 2003). Without going into details, it should be em-phasised that all these discussions are somewhat flawed due to their local scales. For example, the ge­nesis of TRB in Denmark has been analysed as if the scholars were unaware that TRB also existed out­side its northern group, or outside Denmark. And likewise, discussions on the issue carried out in Po­land, hardly ever reach beyond the borders of Po­land, as if the archaeologists have forgotten that TRB is present also elsewhere, for example in south­ern Sweden, the Netherlands, or Moravia. At present, the chronological antecedence within the whole range of TRB should for­mally be given to the zone of the south-west­ern Baltic coast, since radiocarbon dates recently obtained there point to c. 4200– 4000/3950 BC. One should mention here the sites of Wangels, Parow, Stralsund, Ba-abe (Kotula et al. 2015b), Neustadt (Glykou 2016), and perhaps Lübeck-Genin (Hartz 2015), Flintbek 48 (Mischka et al. 2015) and Hamburg-Boberg 15 (Thielen, Rammin­ger 2015) in Germany as well as – again! – Tanowo, D¹bki, and Rzucewo (Galiñski 2016; Kabaciñski et al. 2015; Król 2018) in Poland. These sites produced remains of the early TRB, which seem to appear in the already quoted context of local hunter-ga­therers that had undergone ceramisation se­veral hundred years earlier. As mentioned above, to the east of the lower Oder River these groups, from the point of view of flint knapping, can be identified as belonging to the evolved Chojnice-Pieñki tradition, while to the west of this river they belong to the EBK tradition. Pottery revealing traits of both EBK (or rather its local derivative) and TRB, such as so-called transitional ves­sels from D¹bki (Czekaj-Zastawny, Kaba­ciñski 2015) and Rzucewo (Czekaj-Zastaw­ny, Kabaciñski 2018), and perhaps some forms from Tanowo (Galiñski 2016), is sig­nificant in this context (Fig. 13). However, a detailed analysis of publications presenting the above-mentioned ‘Polish’ sites (Koz³owski, Nowak 2018b) shows that the absolute age determinations for the earliest TRB phases are far from unam­biguous, unlike quite many of the interpre­tations developed on their basis. This stems from the fact that all archaeological materials in these sites are vertically, and to certain degree also horizontally, mixed. Pottery fragments described as ‘of the EBK type’ and ‘of the TRB type’ (and in D¹b­ki also other single sherds assigned to LBK, Stroke Band Pottery culture, Brzeœ. Kujawski culture, and Bodrogkeresztúr culture) were found virtually to­gether. Similarly, 14C dates are also mixed (e.g., the majority of 14C dates in D¹bki originate from pot­tery), i.e. it is difficult to notice any arrangement consistent with the stratigraphy or depth (e.g., Ko­tula et al. 2015a.Fig. 6). As a result, as Andreas Ko­tula writes in another paper from the monograph on the D¹bki site: “[…] in most cases the excavation Marek Nowak context does not contribute to the dat­ing, and nearly all finds could poten­tially be of Mesolithic or Early Neolithic age” (Kotula 2015.177). This conclusion should be extended to the sites of Tano­wo and Rzucewo as well. Thus, one can reasonably conclude that we do not have a proper insight into the chronology of the earliest TRB occupa­tion in these sites, as smaller or greater reservations concerning the context can be expressed with respect to all the men­tioned dates, not to mention the impact of the marine reservoir effect. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the dating of the appearance of TRB pottery to c. 4200–4000/3950 BC (Galiñski 2016. Tab. 3; Kotula et al. 2015a.122–123, 133) has been determined by the cited authors on the basis of the chronology of analogical early TRB phenomena in northern Germany, rather than on the basis of the 14C dates themselves. In other words, ‘Polish’ dates pointing to the mentioned period have been inter­preted as representing TRB rather than Late Mesolithic, because it is with this chronological horizon that the German researchers link the beginnings of TRB in northern Germany. Naturally, such a per analogiam hypothesis is fully admis­sible and logical. However, it needs to be emphasised that a number of other, alternative hypotheses can be formulated as well, including one positing that the dates within the 4200–4000 BC range, are actually connected still with late, cera­mised Mesolithic communities, while the beginnings of TRB should be dated later, say to 4000–3800 BC or even 3800/3700 BC. Whether our general approach to the chronology of the pottery from D¹bki, Tanowo, and Rzucewo is correct is another issue. Is this approach not overly burdened with stereotypes and habits of culture-historical classifications, which hamper the proper understanding of the analysed processes? In his analysis of the Mesolithic pottery from D¹bki, A. Ko­tula very strongly emphasizes that this pottery is technologically very similar to TRB pottery (Kotula 2015.177–178). He even concludes that “the main distinguishing criterion between the Late Mesoli­thic pointed bottom pots and Early Neolithic Fun­nel Beaker vessels is the vessel shape, but many of the sherds have comparable technological features. For this reason it is difficult to securely attribute pieces without specific characteristics of shape or decoration to one or the other type” (Kotula 2015. 178). Now, it seems clear that these sites represent some kind of an occupational, economic, social, and ideological continuum, spanning basically the 5th and early 4th millennia BC, and supplemented with pottery at least from the middle of the 5th millenni­um BC. The manufacture and use of this pottery is therefore also a continuum of a kind, into which we try to fit our traditional terminological bricks of EBK and TRB (to put it simply). In the case of the three sites discussed here, such ‘Beaker’ bricks are basi­cally no more than certain changes in vessel shapes (but were they common?), maybe stemming from a slightly different manner of using the vessels, or some novelties in vessel decoration. The mentioned transitional pottery is particularly telling in this con­text (Czekaj-Zastawny, Kabaciñski 2015; 2018). Yet, in this particular setting, these changes and no­ The first vs. second stage of neolithisation in Polish territories (to say nothing of the third|) velties, which for us formally mark TRB, did not bring about any significant change. The pottery, which can formally be labelled as EBK and TRB, can be seen as certain types, variants of the same state of pottery, produced and used by hunter-gatherer communities from the south-western coasts of the Baltic Sea throughout the 5th and early 4th millennia BC. This pottery was changing gradually, with chan­ges in manners of food preparation and consump­tion inspired by external influences. The changes which appear to us as ‘culture-making’ and therefore significant were not perceived as such by the men­tioned communities. As a result, one can express a view, which basically repeats in a more cautious manner the opinion ex­pressed by the author in 2009 (Nowak 2009), that the south-west Baltic centre can likely be interpreted as the area where the original (first of all ceramic) version of the phenomenon known to us as the Fun­nel Beaker culture was formed, and that this took place between c. 4200 and 4000 BC. A correction is needed to the monograph from 2009 regarding the extent of this centre – it would stretch from Holstein to eastern Pomerania. The crystallisation of the ‘Beaker’ patterns would be based on a strictly local, hun­ter-gatherer (proto-Neolithic – see fur­ther in the text) demographic and cul­tural substrate. In my opinion, one cannot subscribe to the view (Czekaj-Zastawny, Kabaciñski 2015; 2018; Czerniak 2018; Kotula et al. 2015a) positing that Tanowo, D¹bki, or Rzucewo are connected exclusively with the northern group, and even are of ‘genetic’ importance for it. This can hardly be imagined in practice for rea­sons of geography. If the results of pro­cesses taking place there could affect ter­ritories to the north-west, why could they not affect those to the south or south­east (see, for example, Sorensen 2015. Fig. 11)? However, from what has been written here it emerges that the south-west Bal­tic cradle of TRB in the last two centu­ries of the 5th millennium BC is just one possible option. If we date the appear­ance of the Beaker traits in this area to a later period, e.g., around 3800/3700 BC, it will turn out that the beginnings of TRB may have been earlier in the Polish Lowland, where they date to 3950/3900 BC at the earliest (Kukawka 2015; Nowak 2017; Papiernik, Brzejszczak 2018). In this interpretation, the TRB traits in the south­west Baltic area would originate from the south, exactly from the Polish Plain. As a reflection of the early TRB ‘expansion’ towards the Baltic shores one could interpret for example the site of Bielawki in eastern Pomerania (Czerniak, Rzepecki 2016). This hypothesis, however, creates a problem on a broad­er scale, as it implies that the earliest sites of the northern group, in northern Germany and Denmark, must be even later (c. 3700 BC?), which seems in­consistent with the current state of knowledge. It also stands in opposition to those hypotheses and views which apparently extend the cradle of TRB to the west, even as far as the Netherlands. Within the core area defined in this way, covering a very large Marek Nowak longitudinal span, the crystallisation of the ‘Funnel Beaker’ patterns is believed to have been first initi­ated (c. 4200–4100 BC) in the west, i.e. in the Ne­therlands, with ceramized Swifterbant communities as the substrate (Raemaekers 2015; Ten Anscher 2015). In this approach, in northern Germany these processes would be dated to c. 4100 BC (Ten An-scher 2015.Fig. 15); by implication, ‘Polish’ sites should be given later dates, say around 4000 BC. The transformations of local hunter-gatherers into TRB is consequently seen as resulting from influen­ces from, and contacts with, farming communities of the already formed Neolithic (the Michelsberg in particular) (Gron, Sorensen 2018; Sorensen 2015; Ten Anscher 2015), which means they are similar to ‘our’ Pomeranian phenomena. Views are even ex­pressed positing the presence of ‘Michelsberg’ set­tlers, as in the case of Flintbek 15 site (Mischka et al. 2015), or more generally the agrarian (migration-related) and material (e.g., axes with thin butts) Mi-chelsberg impulses (Sorensen 2015). The hypotheses promoting this area of TRB formation corroborate (but by no means prove) the idea of a south-western Baltic cradle which extended to the coastal part of Pomerania as well. Consequently, we are of the opinion that it is still possible to assume that the zone extending along the south-western coast of the Baltic Sea was the area in which the new cultural model was formed around 4200/4000 BC, and from this zone this model spread to remaining parts of east-central Europe. This mo­del was comprised of such elements as: (i) a flexible farming-herding economy, easily adaptable to diffe­rent environmental conditions but at the same time showing a tendency to significant transformation of these conditions in some places (Kruk, Milisauskas 1999; Nowak 2009; Wierzbicki 2013); (ii) a relati­vely stable, but at the same time flexible and envi­ronmentally universal settlement pattern (Czerniak 1994; Dreczko 2019; Król 2017; Wierzbicki 2013); (iii) ‘Funnel Beaker’ pottery; and (iv) monumental and communal burial rites (Król 2011; Libera, Tunia 2006; Rzepecki 2011). With time and during the TRB expansion the model was surely improved and supplemented – for example, the monumental form of the burial rite appeared with some delay in rela­tion to the beginnings of TRB. To some extent the spread of the ‘Funnel Beaker’ Neolithic attributes to the remaining part of Poland took place by means of leapfrog expansion2 and ecological infiltration, advancing from the north-west starting from c. 4100/4000 BC. Yet, these processes were surely not the only ones responsible for the fur­ther spread of this cultural model throughout Po­ 2 The terms and notions used in this and subsequent paragraphs have been developed by Zvelebil (Zvelebil 2001.2; cf. also Zvelebil, Lillie 2000.62–63). The first vs. second stage of neolithisation in Polish territories (to say nothing of the third|) land. The appeal of this model ensured its wide ac­ceptance among populations representing various cultural milieus, both the Mesolithic and Younger Danubian groups (Fig. 14). First of all, early TRB attributes were spread among local hunter-gatherer populations by contact and frontier mobility, and perhaps also as a result of pro­cesses resembling the domination of elites, and by c. 3650–3500 BC they had gained predominance among some of these populations. The process was facilitated by long lasting local co-existence of farm­ing and hunting-gathering populations; after all, even limited contacts resulted in transmission of Neolithic ideas and patterns, and the practical knowledge they entailed. Secondly, parallel with the processes described above, these attributes were also spread among Neolithic Lengyel-Polgár groups who sporadically infiltrated areas outside the ‘old farming’ enclaves; the mecha­nisms of the spread were the same. In ‘old farming’ enclaves in the Polish Lowland the hitherto prevailing Neolithic culture was ‘liquidated’. The processes responsible included migration, diffu­sion, and infiltration of the ‘Meso/Neolithic’ TRB po­pulation, but perhaps most importantly ‘frontier’ con­tacts maintained among early TRB and late Lengyel-Polgár (cf. Lorkiewicz 2012. 45–54). In turn, in Lesser Poland and Silesia the ‘liquidation’ of the previous Neolithic culture was the result of leap­frog colonisation, frontier mobility, and infiltration. These processes were com­pleted around 3600–3500 BC. To sum up, we can figuratively say that TRB (or TRB package) was a kind of a mantle which wrapped various groups and different cultural traditions (cf. also Robb 2013.666). The fact that the TRB patterns also gained general acceptance among post-Linear, Neolithic groups is equally as fa­scinating as the TRB neolithisation of Late Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. This phenomenon is – frankly – not yet well understood and frequently neglected. This is because TRB is commonly re­garded as a cultural unit par excellence of ‘northern’ or ‘lowland’ affiliation, while it actually reaches as far south as the middle Danube (near Vienna). In fact, TRB in ‘southern’ loess uplands reflects a blooming society or societies, as illustrated for instance by the micro region around the site of Bronocice in western Les­ser Poland (Kruk et al. 1996). It is quite common for many Linear and post-Linear sites there to have been occupied by TRB people as well, as was the case with site 3 in Miechów (Fig. 15). This example demon­strates, by the way, that these TRB settlements quite often seem to be larger and much more populated. It should be emphasised that Mesolithic and Neoli­thic echoes are fairly well perceived in TRB flint in­dustries (Koz³owski, Nowak 2018a), and that in fact there is no such thing as a specific TRB flint indus­try. Regional or even local groupings are characte­rized by their separate variants, which originate from earlier backgrounds, be it Late Mesolithic or Neoli­thic (i.e. Younger Danubian) (Fig. 16). Unfortunately, as yet there is not much genetic data for TRB in Polish territories. In the above-quoted publication (Fernandes et al. 2018) we can read, based on only three skeletons from Kuyavia, that the TRB individuals shared a genetic composition similar to that of the Brzeœ.-Kujawski group indivi­duals, but with a slightly higher hunter-gatherer com­ponent. This actually corroborates quite well the Marek Nowak view positing population conti­nuity between a local branch of the Brzeœ. Kujawski culture and TRB. To compare, in central Ger­many the relation between early Neolithic and Mesolithic compo­nents seems to be at a roughly si­milar level (Brandt et al. 2015; Haak et al. 2015); therefore a si­milar interpretation can be pro­posed. On the other hand, Scan­dinavian data, admittedly again very scarce, suggests the predo­minance of ‘southern’ Neolithic genetic clusters with only some admixture of local hunter-gathe­rers (Skoglund et al. 2012; 2014), which does not fit well with the patterns of material culture of the northern TRB. The TRB does not make the end of the story. As we know, inde­pendent, non-Neolithic ceramic phenomena were already present in the area under consideration in the 5th millennium BC. But in the 4th (and actually also the 3rd) millennium BC they significantly grew in importance. This process is not particularly well-unders­tood, and its chronology remains far from clear as well. Perhaps this is due to its ‘non-Neolithic’ nature – it simply does not attract sufficient attention from special- Fig. 14. The spread of the TRB in east-central Europe. 1–2 main en­claves of settlement of the late stage of the Lengyel-Polgár complex (1 Lengel branch sensu largo; 2 Polgár branch sensu largo); 3 area of the TRB crystallisation, c. 4200–4000 BC; 3–4 extent of the TRB c. 4000– 3900 BC; 3–5 extent of the TRB c. 3800/3700 BC; 3–6 extent of the TRB after c. 3700/3600 BC; 7 sites with pottery of the EBK and similar to the EBK (T Tanowo 3, D D¹bki 9, KD Koszalin-Dzier¿êcino, Ch Chobie-nice, RZ Rzucewo); 8 selected sites with early pottery of the TRB (T Ta-nowo 3, K Kosin 6, R Renice 5–6, D D¹bki 9, RZ Rzucewo, B Bielawki 5, £ £¹cko 6, SK Strzelce Krzy¿anna 56, RK Redecz Krukowy 20, S Sar­ nowo 1). ists interested in the Neolithic. The phenomenon is re­presented in surprisingly vast areas (Fig. 17), through­out of almost all Poland, as some works demonstrate (Józwiak 2003; Józwiak, Domaradzka 2011; Wiœ­lañski 1979b). In archaeological terms the sites and materials linked with this phenomenon are repre­sented mainly by the Neman culture (Fig. 18) and lo­cally in the Mazuria by the Zedmar culture. Some­times this phenomenon has been symbolically denot­ed in Polish literature as the ‘Forest Neolithic’, after works by El¿bieta Kempisty (1973; 1983). It conti­nued to flourish in the 3rd millennium BC as well, as can be seen, for instance, in the recently published, very important site of Gr¹dy Woniecko (Wawrusie­wicz et al. 2017). As previously mentioned, agriculture played no role among ‘Forest Neolithic’ communities, with pottery still remaining the only formal reference to the Neo­lithic (in the classical meaning). This pottery is cha­racterized by a certain duality. On the one hand, some of it is similar to the pottery of comparable groupings in eastern Europe, but on the other hand, another part demonstrates mixed features of the ‘Forest Neolithic’ and local Neolithic cultures. This branch was distinguished in the early 1970s by Kempisty (1973) as the so-called Linin type. Interes­tingly, four sub-types of Linin pottery were distin­guished, due to the presence of Funnel Beaker, Glo­bular Amphorae, Corded Ware, and Early Bronze elements there (cf. also Józwiak 2003). This also de­monstrates that hunter-gatherer groups still existed in the late 3rd millennium BC, and that some contacts with Middle and Late Neolithic as well as Early Bronze Age communities were maintained. This is also evidenced by imports of TRB ceramic in some The first vs. second stage of neolithisation in Polish territories (to say nothing of the third|) Fig. 15. The TRB settlement at the multi-period site 3 in Miechów against the blurred background of features belonging to other archaeological units; the TRB features are highlighted by graphic sym­bols. 1 features with longer axis over 5m; 2 fea­tures with longer axis 3–5m; 3 features with longer axis 1–3m; 4 features with longer axis less than 1m; 5 extremely elongated features (mostly burials). ‘Forest Neolithic’ sites (Gumiñski 2011), as well as by the presence of ‘Forest’ ornaments and vessels in many TRB sites, particularly in Che³mno Land (Adam­czak et al. 2018; Kukawka 2010). When considering the origins of this phenomenon (the ‘second’, so-called southern tradition in Piezon­ka 2015.566, Fig. 13), the above-mentioned issue of flint inventories is of utmost importance. Specifical­ly, ‘Forest Neolithic’ pottery routinely co-exists with chipped lithics of the Late Mesolithic type. In the east these lithics belong to the Janis³awice tradition (e.g., Kempisty, Wiêckowska 1983; Wawrusiewicz et al. 2017), and in the west to the Komornica one (e.g., Kabaciñski 2016; cf. also Koz³owski, Nowak 2018a; 2018b) (Fig. 19). We can assume, by the way, that such correlations have very often passed unno­ticed by modern archaeologists because in the re­search practice this has been considered to be a re­sult of secondary mixing, and consequently these pottery fragments and flints were regarded as sep­arate. Very often they landed in separate sections of different regional or even archaeological museums. It turns out that, as a result of such an approach, the materials of the Neman culture in Poland are practi­cally devoid of flint materials. In the light of current knowledge this is not possible, so the described prac­tice was wrong. Consequently, ‘Forest Neolithic’ pot­tery should be combined with local late-Janis³awice and late-Komornica flint artefacts. In such a situation, the strict separation between the Mesolithic and ‘Forest Neolithic’ loses its original sense, the two being just two branches of the same phenomenon, that is to say of the hunting-gathering populations operating in the Middle Holocene fo­rests of the Vistula and Oder basins. The patterns of ceramic production were only transmitted from the east and south-east. These patterns were at the same time adapted and changed on the spot to some ex­tent, among other things as an effect of contacts with the said Neolithic units. The phenomenon under dis­cussion developed from the late 5th millennium BC until the Early Bronze Age, simultaneously with agri­cultural groups. Summing up, we should answer the question of whe­ther two or perhaps three separate forms of neoli­thisation took place in Polish territories. At first glance, attempts to answer this question may seem a purely academic discussion, since the notions of the ‘Neolithic’ and ‘neolithisation’ are our creations. Were they in any way relevant for the populations of the time? We do not know, but it does not seem Marek Nowak very likely. On the other hand, we know that people, even in historic times, have ra­rely been aware of long-lasting processes. We might ask, for example, who in the Eng­land of the late 18th century was aware they were witnessing the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and its early impact? Therefore, I believe we are entitled to ana­lyse and classify various forms and variants of the neolithisation processes, irrespective of whether they were noticed by the people of that time. Thus, it seems it is justified to speak about the differences between – so to say – LBK and TRB types of neolithisation. The LBK neolithisation is basically a migra­tion with a ready, complete Neolithic Pack­age, originating entirely from the outside (people, ideas, material culture). Its inher­ent elements are a strict ecological selec­tion of areas for settlement, as well as set­tlement and economic behaviours requir­ing a relatively small space. On the other hand, neolithisation of the TRB type operated on a local hunting-gathering basis, which had already been slightly ce­ramicised. Although very few novelties in the history of mankind were completely in­dependent and new, in general the TRB Neolithic model should be considered as an independent product. Among others, this model con­sisted of: (i) flexible settlement and economic beha­viours, highly adaptable to different ecological con­ditions, (ii) a subsistence model usually requiring large spaces, (iii) domination of agriculture, with local deviations from this rule, and (iv) great impor­tance of sepulchral monuments acting as visible so­cial and ideological symbols, which were organizing the space. This TRB model turned out to be so attrac­tive that it was also taken over by the last Younger Danubian communities. However, only some of the Late Mesolithic hunter-gatherers accepted Funnel Beaker patterns. The re­mainder (c. 30/40% – perhaps ‘science fiction’, but based on a numerical relation between ‘Forest Neo­lithic’ sites and Late Mesolithic and earlier TRB ones) successfully carried on a traditional subsistence life­style, gradually supplementing it with pottery. While this fact would suffice to include this phenomenon in the Neolithic from the eastern European archaeo-logical perspective, it is debatable whether this can be done from the perspective of more Western ar­chaeology. Seeking an answer to this question, it should be noted that in these communities pottery was produced and used very commonly indeed. If we consider that a prerequisite for including a given unit in the Neolithic is the presence in it of only one or several elements of the Neolithic Package on a pre­dominant level, not necessarily including food pro­duction, and if we regard the Neolithic as a new state of mind, then these conditions are fulfilled here. What is equally important, and fascinating, is that the communities in question never adopted or imi­tated to any significant extent the strictly Neolithic pottery, nor the Neolithic patterns of pottery produc­tion and ornamentation. The pottery was always pro­duced and decorated in a separate and distinct man­ner. It seems like the idea of pottery production it­self was borrowed from the Neolithic neighbours, while the methods of implementing this idea were The first vs. second stage of neolithisation in Polish territories (to say nothing of the third|) not. If the details of the pottery production system were borrowed from somebody at all, it was from the neighbours/kinsmen from the east, and perhaps, in the second half of the 5th mil­lennium BC, from the north-west. Let us also add that here and there a num­ber of other novelties appear in these com­munities, e.g., flint tools with surface re­touching, including spear- and arrowheads, flint inserts or, in places, more frequent use of the same place for settlement. Although these are not direct determinants of the Neolithic, they demonstrate that ceramics was not the one and only thing that had changed in relation to the Mesolithic. Fur­thermore, as a result of more and more in­tensive contacts and interactions with the ‘proper’ Neolithic these people became well-aware that it was possible to cultivate land and raise animals, but they quite conscious­ly did not exploit that possibility. All these factors suggest the existence of a third, independent process, say of the east-European type of Neolithisation, which in­volved certain widening of the pre­vious spectrum of material culture and the emergence of a new (in re­lation to the classical Mesolithic one) state of consciousness regarding their own place in the universe. Therefore, the cultural model formed as a result of this neolithisation, in the condi­tions of the territory under conside­ration in the 5th, 4th, and 3rd millen­nia BC, might be included in the Neo­lithic. However, if we decide that the pre­sence, and actually predominance, of a farming-herding economy is a con­dition necessary for labelling a pre­historic phenomenon as Neolithic, then the ‘Forest Neolithic’ obviously cannot be classed as such. Similarly, the processes behind its formation cannot be called neolithisation. This does not change the fact, however, that the above-described transforma­tions in material culture and menta­lity were progressing at a slower or faster pace, which means that the communities undergoing these trans­formations can hardly be called strictly Mesolithic. In my opinion it would be justified to use the term Marek Nowak ‘para- Neolithic’ (quite frequently used in the litera­ture, although in different contexts and meanings), or perhaps even ‘alternative Neolithic’. They describe a formation which cannot be included either in the classic Mesolithic or the classic Neolithic, one which marks an alternative trajectory of development in the age of the Neolithic and neolithisation. One should only keep in mind that the notions of ‘para-’ or ‘alter­native-‘ do not have a pejorative meaning here; these were not ‘defective Neolithics’. These were simply phenomena different from the Neolithic and diffe­rent from the Mesolithic, distinct and specific in themselves. The term ‘proto-Neolithic’, on the other hand, should in my opinion be used to describe the relatively few hunter-gatherer, ‘ceramicised’ groups which clearly were the demographic substrate upon which Neoli­thic communities developed in the late 5th and 4th millennia BC. In Poland, this would be the situations recorded in D¹bki, Tanowo, and Rzucewo. Thus, to conclude, we might state that in territories of present-day Poland groups of Neolithic farmers coexisted with Late Mesolithic/proto-Neolithic/para-Neolithic hunter-gatherers throughout the whole of the Neolithic. These two worlds coexisted in close geographical proximity, although not necessarily maintaining close contacts, until the Early Bronze Age. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was supported by the National Science Centre of Poland (Narodowe Centrum Nauki) within the framework of the project “Cultural changes in the environment of loess uplands. 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Cambridge: 57–93. back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) The development of Neolithic pottery technology in Eastern Jazira and the Zagros Mountains Nataliya Yu. Petrova State Historical museum, Moscow, RU petrovanatalya7@mail.ru ABSTRACT – The origins of pottery technology in Eastern Jazira and the Zagros Mountains can be seen as a process of several stages, from unfired clay and plaster vessels to the fully ceramic tech­nologies of the Proto-Hassuna period. This paper reviews this process and presents a technological analysis of Proto-Hassuna ceramics to investigate the relationships between the pottery traditions at sites in Eastern Jazira and the western part of the Zagros Mountains. KEY WORDS – Neolithic pottery technology; Near East; Proto-Hassuna Razvoj neolitske lon;arske tehnologije na obmo;ju vzhodne Jazire in gorovja Zagros IZVLE.EK – Izvor lon.arske tehnologije na obmo.ju vzhodne Jazire in gorovja Zagros lahko opazuje-mo kot proces, ki je potekal v nekaj stopnjah, in sicer od ne.gane gline in posod iz mavca do polno razvite tehnologije keramike v obdobju Proto-Hassuna. V .lanku pregledamo te procese in predsta­vimo tehnolo.ko analizo proto-hassunske keramike, s katero preu.ujemo tudi odnose med lon.arski-mi tradicijami na najdi..ih na obmo.ju vzhodne Jazire in zahodnega dela gorovja Zagros. KLJU.NE BESEDE – neolitska lon.arska tehnologija; Bli.nji Vzhod; Proto-Hassuna Introduction The emergence of ceramics in the eastern part of Northern Mesopotamia (Jazira) and the Zagros Moun­tains (Northern Iraq and Western Iran) is recorded between the 8th and 7th millennia BC. However, the origins of pottery technology in this region began long before the emergence of fired vessels, and went through several stages in its development. This process can be traced at sites such as Ganj Dareh (Smith 1974), Ali Kosh vessels (Hole et al. 1969), Tepe Guran (Mortensen 2014) in the valleys of the Zagros Mountains and Tell Magzalia in Eastern Jezi­ra. For more than a millennium before the first fired vessels of the Pottery Neolithic there is clear evi­dence of vessels of both unfired clay and gypsum/ lime plaster. The wide distribution of fired ceramics in the region occurred from the middle of 7th millen­nium BC in Eastern Jazira in settlements related to the Proto-Hassuna period. This paper explores the technological traditions in which these vessels were made. The Zagros Mountains Unfired clay vessels (the end of 9th to the 7th millennia BC) The earliest examples of vessels in this region were found in the Zagros Mountains of Western Iran in the Ganj Dareh settlement (layers E and D). This small, but very important mound not far from Ker-manshah, dates from the end of 9th to the begin­ning of the 8th millennia BC (Mellaart 1975.78; Da­rabi 2015.P. 31; Bernbeck 2017.101). These large DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.8 The development of Neolithic pottery technology in Eastern Jazira and the Zagros Mountains vessels (80–100cm high) of unfired clay were often built into the interior walls of the houses. Philip E. L. Smith (1990) describes these as either storage ves­sels or house construction details. One clay fragment from a small vessel with impressions was found in level E (Pre-Pottery Neolithic/PPNB) (Smith 1974. 207). The first fired vessels were associated with le­vel D, but these were found only in burned houses and represented by large unfired vessels (Smith 1974.207; 1990.332). We have little information about the technology of unfired clay vessels, though it is known that the vessels from Ganj Dareh level D were made from ‘clay with plant inclusions’ (Mel­laart 1975.78). Pamela Vandiver (1987.16) studied these ceramics in particular, and noted the use of slab construction. Gypsum and lime vessels (around the turn of the 7th millennium BC) The calcination of gypsum or limestone to produce a plastic mass with water and some admixtures re­presents an alternative approach to container tech­nology. Vessels made of gypsum and calcareous clay were found in Ali Kosh settlement in Iran, where the application of slab construction and the use of wick­er basket moulds, which left imprints on the surface of some gypsum and lime vessels, has been noted (Kingery et al. 1988.219–227; Nilhamn, Koek 2013. 292). Such vessels were also found at the Magzalia settlement in Northern Iraq, dated to the beginning of the 7th millennium BC (Bader 1993a.61–62). The use of these resources was regionally variable. For example, only vessels of gypsum have been identi­fied within the territory of Zagros (Choga Sefid and Ali Kosh settlements) (Miyake 2016.120). Although the tradition of making vessels from gyp­sum was short-lived, during the Proto-Hassuna pe­riod, the tradition of applying lime to clay vessels re­mained. A similar coating both on one and on both sides of the vessel is present on containers from the Tell Sotto, Kultepe and Yarimtepe I settlements in Northern Iraq. It was also noted in the settlements of this period in Syria (Nieuwehuyse, Dooijes 2008. 162, 169) and on the ceramics of the Jarmo settle­ment (Adams 1983.215). The use of gypsum as a coating for baskets (for example, the settlement of Umm Dabagiya) also continued into the Proto-Has­suna period (Kirkbride 1972.4, Pl. VI). The first fired vessels (around the turn of the 8th to 7th millennia BC) There is no clear starting point for the appearance of the first fired ceramic vessels at Ganj Dareh. Pos­sibly it happened during the formation of level D at the settlement, which dates no later than 7750 cal BC (Bernbeck 2017.101). Early ceramics are also re­corded at Tepe Guran, Ali Kosh and Tepe Mahtaj set­ Nataliya Yu. Petrova tlements. The finds from Ali Kosh date to the last third of the 8th to 7th millennia BC (Darabi 2012. 104). Plant inclusions were noted in the pottery of Ali Kosh as the main temper added to these vessels (Hole et al. 1969.109–115). However, the earliest ceramics on Tepe Guran (7100–6800 cal BC) con­tained no identifiable admixtures (Bernbeck 2017. 101; Mellaart 1975.86). By the beginning of 7th millennium BC, ceramics were already widespread in the Zagros Mountains, at Tepe Guran (younger layers), Ganj Dareh (layer B), Tepe Sarab, Qaleh Rostam (phases III and II), at Tal-e-Mushki in Western Iran and at Jarmo in East­ern Iraq (Bernbeck 2017.107–108; Braidwood, Ho­we 1960.38–49; Mellaart 1975.86). Published ac­counts of the ceramics of Tepe Guran and Tepe Sa­rab note that these vessels were tempered with coarse plant inclusions. James Mellart considered it was a straw tempering (Bernbeck 2017.101; Mel-laart 1975.86–87). Vandiver (1987.16, 18) noted the use of slab construction in the ceramics of Ganj Da­reh level B. However, nothing is known about its fabric composition. Jarmo pottery is divided into early and late phases. Frederick Matson (1960.68) studied the Jarmo cera­mics in detail. The technology of pottery was similar in both phases and characterized by the presence of dung as the primary temper. Matson identified thin plant inclusions up to 5mm length and c. 1mm wide with longitudinal lines and round holes with grain prints in the ceramic body (Matson 1955.355; 1960.68). Pottery of the early phase has analogies in Tepe Guran and Tepe Sarab. Later vessels are coar­ser, having both organic and abundant lime mineral inclusions of large size and high frequency. Accord­ing to a number of researchers, this type of vessels have close parallels in the Proto-Hassuna ceramics of Northern Mesopotamia (Bader 1975.105–110; Adam 1983.215; Bernbeck 2017.103, 105). Ancient pottery of Northern Iraq The evidence of transition from the Pre-Pottery Neo­lithic to the Pottery Neolithic in Northern Iraq is clear in the material from Tell Magzalia in Northern Iraq, and can be dated the beginning of the 7th millenni­um BC based on excavations carried out by Nikolay Bader (1993) in the 1970s. Large unfired storage ves­sels (65cm high, 45cm in diameter) were identified in the first level of the settlement (720–780cm). These vessels have a circular hole c. 10cm in diame­ter at the bottom, and the author suggested they were used for grain storage (Bader 1989.61–62, Fig. 18.2; 1993a.12–13). The first fired ceramics frag­ments were recorded at a depth of 470cm. Unfortu­nately, little is known about them. Moreover, large heaps of raw, unprocessed clay were found in the different levels of the tell (Bader 1989.61, 105, Pl. 41.13, 14, 20, 21;1993a.19, Fig. 2.12; Bader, Le Miere 2013.515). Pottery of the Proto-Hassuna period The wide distribution of ceramics in the Northern Mesopotamia region is associated with the Proto-Hassuna period. These have been found at Tell Sot-to, Kultepe, Yarimtepe I, Umm Dabaghiyah, Tell Has-suna, Telul eth Thalathat, Ginnig, Shimshara in North­ern Iraq; Tell Seker al-Aheimar, Tell Kashkashok II, Tell Hazna II, Tell Bouqras in Easten Syria; Salat Ca­mi Yani and Sumaki Huyyuk in the headwaters of Euphrates in Turkey and a number of other sites (Bader, Le Miere 2013.513; Le Miere 2000; Nieuwe­huyse 2013.114)1. There is no consensus regarding the origins of the Proto-Hassuna culture. Various features of material culture, including analogues in ceramic form and or­namentation, were associated with the Jarmo settle­ment (Zagross) (Bader 1993b.48). There is also the opinion that Proto-Hassuna ceramics originated from the ceramics of the Pre-Proto Hassuna period. This is based on the successive occurrence of pottery bear­ing layers from these periods at Tell Seker-al-Ahei-mar in Eastern Syria. Researchers note that the cera­mics of Pre-Proto-Hassuna period differ from those of the Proto-Hassuna period in both forms and the presence of a large amount of exclusive mineral in­clusions (Bader, Le Miere 2013.520; Nishiaki, Le Miere 2005.67). Proto-Hassuna ceramics are usually defined by re­searchers as ‘coarse ware’, with red paint, slip and appliqué ornament. The technology used for making the vessels is usually described as follows. Raw material – it is generally agreed that the mate­rial for production was clay with a small amount of mineral inclusions (calcite and sand) (Bader et al. 1994; Campbell, Baird 1990.70; Kirkbride 1972.8). The pottery paste contains a large amount of plant 1 Tell Sotto, Kultepe (Bader 1993); Yarimtepe I (Munchaev, Merpert 1993; Bashilov et al. 1980); Umm Dabaghiyah (Kirkbride 1972); Tell Hassuna (Lloyd, Safar 1945); Tell Ginnig (Campbell, Baird 1990); Tell Hazna II (Munchaev et al. 1993); Tell Kashka­shok II (Matsutani 1991); Tell Seker al-Aheimar (Nishiaki, Le Miere 2005). The development of Neolithic pottery technology in Eastern Jazira and the Zagros Mountains Fig. 1. Proto-Hassuna vessels: 1 Tell Sotto, 1974, II-D-1, 220cm deep, level 3, I.2.a 491 KP-417962; 2 Tell Sotto, 1973, 10-B-1, level 5, I.2.a 636 KP-418107; 3 Yarim Tepe I, level 12, I.2.a483 KP 417954. inclusions (Telul eth Thalathat, Tell Seker al-Aheimar, tell Sotto, Kultepe and Yarimtepe I (Bader 1989. 218; Bader, Le Miere 2013.516, 518; Nieuwehuyse 2013.120), which is sometimes called straw (Tell Sotto, Tell Hassuna, Tell Kaskashok II (Bader 1989. 138; Lloyd, Safar 1945.276; Maeda 1991.20). Ves­sels from Yarimtepe I, Umm Dabagiyah and Ginnig smaller plant inclusions in addition to straw (Bashi­lov et al. 1980.43–64; Campbell, Baird 1990.70; Kirkbride 1972.8). Oliver Nieuwehuyse suggested the possible presence of dung in the Proto-Hassuna pottery paste (Nieuwehuyse 2013.125). Construction – vessels were made with the coiling (Campbell, Baird 1990.70; Kirkbride 1972.8) or slab construction techniques (Campbell, Baird 1990. 70). Fuad Safar, who excavated the Tell Hassuna, suggested that the bases of large vessels with ribs were made in pits, and then built up from this (Lloyd, Safar 1945.277). Surface treatment – ves­sels were smoothed by grass (Kirkbride 1972.8), and sometimes burnished (Campbell, Baird 1990. 70; Kirkbride 1972.8; Nieuwehuyse 2013.120). Fi­ring – the vessels were fired at low temperature (Campbell, Baird 1990.70; Bashilov et al. 1980.43– 66). During the excavations of Tell Sotto a large ves­sel burned in a pit was identified (Bader 1989.140). Pottery of Tell Sotto and Yarim Tepe I Technological analysis according to the me­thod of Alexander Bobrinsky The settlements of Yarim Tepe I and Tell Sotto were excavated by the Soviet archaeological expedition in Northern Iraq under the authotity of Rauf M. Mun-chayev, Nikolai Ya. Merpert and Otto N. Bader from 1969 to 1976 (Merpert 1993; Merpert, Munchaev 1993; Bader 1993b). Both settlements may be dated to the second half of the 7th millennium BC. Recent 14C dates obtained for the Proto-Hassuna period in the lower level of the Yarim Tepe I settlement are 6220 to 6071 cal BC (7280 ± 30BP) (Yutsis-Akimo­va et al. 2018.51). The technology of ceramics of the Tell Sotto and Kul­tepe settlements was first analysed by Bobrinsky, who considered both the qualities of the raw mate­rials and the pottery paste. As a result, several types of medium and high plasticity clays with limestone as a supplement to local clays were identified. The main additive to the clay during production was dried animal dung of goats, sheep and cows. This was identified from the remains of very small orga­nic inclusions up to 0.5mm long and 0.1–0.2mm wide, with smooth rounded margins. The concentra­tion of these remains and voids from them in the ceramic fabric ranged from 40 to 70% (mostly 50 to 60%) (Bobrinsky 1989.327–334). Bobrinsky (2006. 415) noted that in addition to dung, straw and hay were often added to the pottery paste. Firing is cha­racterised by a rapid rise in temperature and short duration, which corresponds to the conditions typi­cal of pit firing (Bobrinsky 1989.334). My technological analysis of Proto-Hassuna ceramics based on materials from Yarim Tepe I (levels 12–11; fragments from 149 vessels and one whole vessel) and Tell Sotto (level 2; fragments from 40 vessels and two whole vessels2 ) found dates earlier than the Proto-Hassuna levels of Yarim Tepe I, and two whole vessels from levels 3 and 5 (Fig. 1)3 . Micro­scopic4 analysis of the surface and of cross-sections 2 Forty ceramics samples previously studied by Aleksandr Bobrinsky. 3 The ceramics collection of Yarim Tepe I and Tell Sotto is located in the Russian Institute of Archaeology. Three whole vessels stored in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow (Yarim Tepe I - I.2.a483 KP 417954; Tell Sotto - I.2.a 491 KP-417962; I.2.a 636 KP-418107). 4 Binocular microscope MBS-10, stereo microscope Carl Zeiss 2000-C and metallographic microscope Olympus MX 51. Nataliya Yu. Petrova of ceramic samples from all stages of pottery pro­duction was conducted according to the method of Bobrinsky (1978; 1999; see also Tsetlin 2017). A study of raw materials and pottery paste, methods of construction, vessel surface treatment, and firing was performed. During the study of clay selection the degree of ferrugination as well as quantity and composition of natural inclusions were determined. The organic temper was classified according to its type. The quantity and size of the mineral inclusions influences the plasticity of clay, so this was taken into account by potters when choosing clay. The me­thods of temper processing and temper concentra­tion were determined. Analysis of ceramics included the re-firing of samples in a muffle furnace under identical conditions (850°C) to determine the rela­tive degree of clay ferrugination. At this temperature clay ferrugination reaches its maximum level and does not change with an increase in the firing tem­perature. Besides this, ceramics from excavations were com­pared with experimental samples. A series of experi­ments was carried out with different kinds of orga­nic tempers containing the following plant residues: fresh grass, hay, straw, and the dung of cows, sheep and goats in different concentrations. In addition, experiments with different types of construction and surface treatment methods were performed (Petro­va 2012; 2016). The raw materials The vessels from the Tell Sotto settlement were made from ferruginous clay with limestone with a small amount of rounded fine-medium sand: 0.1–0.25 and 0.25–0.5mm (for coarse vessels) and with average quantity of mineral inclusions – rounded fine and medium quartz sand (0.1–0.25 and 0.25–0.5mm), white/light grey colour in a concentration of no more than 1:5 (for thinner vessels) (Lopatina, Kaz-dim 2010.47). The vessels from Yarim tepe I – main­ly from moderately ferruginous clay with the addi­tion of limestone and an average quantity of mine­ral inclusions. The pottery paste Ceramics were divided into two groups. The first group (90% of the collection) contains pottery with a mixture of clay and dung. At Tell Sotto the concen­tration of the dung in ceramics ranged from 40 to 70% of all pottery paste, and at Yarim Tepe I from 20 to 40%, depending on the type of vessel. The dung is indicated with the presence of various types of very small plant residues and voids with rounded Fig. 2. The raw materials and pottery paste: 1 the Proto-Hassuna ceramics without any specially ad­ded temper; 2, 4 the presence of dung in Proto-Has­suna ceramics: Microscopic photo – very small plant residues with rounded ends and a degree of disin­tegration – Yarim Tepe I, pit 73 in the virgin soil, pocket 232 No. 10; Tell Sotto, 1974, Level 2; 3 the presence of dung in Proto-Hassuna ceramics: var­ious types of very small plant residues in pottery paste in high concentration: Tell Sotto, 1974, II-B­4, Level 2, P.75, N.2. ends and some degree of disintegration (Fig. 2.2–4). The coarser and larger vessels were made with the addition of organic inclusions in a greater concentra­tion. The presence of larger plant residues — hay, dried or fresh grass combined with dung – was iden­tified. The second group includes only thin-walled bowls and does not contain dung in the pottery paste, only clay without any specially added temper (Fig. 2.1). The construction methods Vessels built out with coils and slabs. Spiral coils were detected in from 40 to 60% of the studied ves­sels and were used in the construction of various ves­sel categories. In most cases, thick-walled (1cm or more) vessels were made of coils (Fig. 3). The coil height is from 1.5 to 3.5cm, depending on the size of the vessel. In two cases it was possible to define The development of Neolithic pottery technology in Eastern Jazira and the Zagros Mountains the diameter of the coil as 2.6–2.8cm. Sometimes the torsion introduced during the rolling of the coils can be observed within the section. A single-layer slab construction was used in both thick-walled (up to 20% of cases) and thin-walled vessels of all cate­gories (approx. 60–70% of all cases). The slab size is approx. 1.5 x 3.5–4.5cm (Fig. 4). In some cases the vessels’ external surfaces were knocked out with a flat paddle. On the inner surface of some vessels there were various static prints, probably from a model or lining (Fig. 5). The use of coils and slabs together (coils – in the lower part of the vessel, slabs – in the upper part) was detected once at the Tell Sotto settlement. The surfaces The surfacesof the vessels were first treated with grass, and then sometimes with leather. In many cases lime or plaster coating was applied. Sometimes intentional burnishing is also apparent. Firing The middle layer of potsherds has a light grey or slightly reddish colour. The transition between lay­ers of potsherds with different degrees of firing of is often indistinct. These features indicate that ceramic products have reached temperatures of at least 650° with a long dwell time at the highest temperature and then a slow cooling rate. These conditions are typical of pit firing but also of simple kitchen ovens, which were found at Tell Sotto (Bader 1989.140). Decoration Various appliqué ornaments (mainly on storage ves­sels and pots), red paint, obtained probably on the basis of ochre, and the slip from less ferruginous clay (for decorating bowls and, more rarely, pots) were used. Ceramics of other Proto-Hassuna sites In addition to the samples from Yarim Tepe I and Tell Sotto, ceramics samples from Umm Dabaghiyah, Tell Hazna II, Tell Sekeral-Aheimar and Tell Kashka­hok II were analysed. All of them contain dung in different concentrations depending on the type of vessel: thinner vessels (jugs and bowls), from 10– 20% to 20–30%, and more coarse vessels (pots and griddles), from 30–40%. It seems that in many cases, as mentioned above, where the authors wrote about the presence of finer inclusions than straw in the ceramics of the Proto-Hassuna, it could actually have been dung temper (Bashilov et al. 1980.43–64; Campbell, Baird 1990. 70; Kirkbride 1972.8). Indeed, based on the results of ceramics technology studies (Bobrinsky 1998. 327–334, 2006.415; Petrova 2012; 2016), we can conclude that the presence of dung was in fact the main tradition of paste preparation for the produc­tion of early ceramics in this region. With regard to construction, two different traditions are observed: coiling and mould-based slab building (evidence of which is visible on the inner surfaces of only these vessels). Conclusion As a result of studying all available sources (in both the literature and directly by examining fragments of ceramics), it is possible to make a conclusion about the similarity of technological ceramic traditions be­ Nataliya Yu. Petrova tween the settlements of the Proto-Hassuna period located in the eastern part of Northern Mesopotamia (Jazira) and settlements located in the western part of the Zagros Mountains. The best example is the Jarmo settlement, where both similar technological traditions (the presence of dung as temper, applying lime to clay vessels), and common features in the morphology and ornamentation of vessels are docu­mented. The presence of dung in Jarmo ceramics from levels situated lower than the Proto-Hassuna phase (Mat-son 1955.355; 1960.68) is evidence of the deep roots of this tradition in Zagros. The presence of plant or organic matter (probable dung temper) was commonly noted by a number of researchers at set­tlements in Iran and Iraq (Bader 1989.218; Bader, Le Miere 2013.516, 518; Bashilov et al. 1980.43–64; Bernbeck 2017.101; Campbell, Baird 1990.70; Kirk-bride 1972.8; Lloyd, Safar 1945.276; Maeda 1991. 20; Matson 1960.68; Mellaart 1975.86–87; Nieuwe­huyse 2013.125). It is also possible that there could have been a link between the Proto-Hassuna ceramics originating from Northern Mesopotamia and the organic-tem­pered ceramics found at the Taurus Mountain set­tlements. Further studies are needed to explore this matter in detail. The link between the Proto-Hassuna ceramics and the Pre-Proto-Hassuna ceramics from the territory of Syria, however, looks doubtful, be­cause of differences in morphology and in traditions of ceramic technology, where the exclusive use of mineral temper in high concentrations has been found (Bader, Le Miere 2013.517). ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am particularly grateful to the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences: to Prof. R. M. Mun-chaev and Dr. Sh.A. Amirov for providing access to the ceramic material from Yarim Tepe I and Tell Sotto and to documentation associated with their excavation; and Dr. Yu. B. Tsetlin, the chief of Laboratory “History of Ceramics” for much advice and assistance in my work. I’m very thankful to the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts: to Dr. G. Yu. Kolganova and Dr. B. I. Perlov for their assistance in the analysis of three additional vessels from these sites; and D. A. Popova for help with photos. I’m very grateful to CNRS, Maison de l’Orient and Dr. M. Le Miere (Laboratory of Ceramics) for the opportunity to study the ceramic material of the Umm Dabaghiyah, Tell Hazna II, Tell Sekeral-Aheimar, and Tell Kashkahok II settlements, and for their help in consultations. I would also like to thank my colleagues from the State Historical Museum: Dr. E. A. Kashina, A. A. Simonenko, A. A. Strokov for help in my work. The development of Neolithic pottery technology in Eastern Jazira and the Zagros Mountains References Adams R. McC. 1983. The Jarmo stone and pottery vessel industries. In L. S. Braidwood, R. J. Braidwood, B. Howe, Ch. A. Reed, and P. J. Watson (eds.), Prehistoric archaeo­logy along the Zagros flanks. 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L. 1974. Ganj Dareh tepe. Paleorient 2(1): 207–209. 1990. Architectural innovation and experimentation at Ganj Dareh, Iran. Word Archaeology 21(3): 323–335. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.1990.9980111 Matsutani T. (ed.) 1991. Tell Kashkashok. The excava­tion at tell No. II. The Institute of Oriental culture. The University of Tokio. Tokio. Petrova N. Yu. 2012. A technological study of Hassuna cul­ture ceramics (Yarim Tepe I settlement). Documenta Pra­ehistorica 39: 75–81. https://doi.org/10.4312/dp.39.5 2016. Tehnologicheskoe izuchenie keramiki poselenija Yarim Tepe I (periodi Proto-Hassuni I Arhaicheskoy Hassuni). Kratkie soobshenia Instituta Archeologii 242: 48–59. Tauber H. 1970. Radiocarborn dating of potsheds from Tell Shimshara. In Mortensen P., Tell Shimshara (eds.), The Hassuna period. The Royal Danish Academy of Sci­ence and Letters, Hist.- Filos. Skr., vol. 5.2. Copenhagen. Tsetlin Yu. B. 2017. 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Physics of Earth and Planetary Interiors 282: 49–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pepi.2018.07.002 back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) The Early Neolithic pottery of Keçiçayiri and its place in the North-western Anatolian Neolithisation process Deniz Sari1, S¸emsettin Akyol2 1 Department of Protohistory and Near Eastern Archaeology, Bilecik S¸ eyh Edebali University, Bilecik, TR deniz.sari@bilecik.edu.tr 2 Department of Archaeology, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Çanakkale, TR ABSTRACT – The region of Inner North-western Anatolia was a key node in the transmission of the Neolithic lifestyle from the Near East to Marmara, and from there to the Balkans and the rest of Eu­rope. It formed the intersection between several important routes and trade networks, and the set­tlement of Keçiçayiri, the subject of this paper, had an essential role in the transfer of cultural ele­ments during the Neolithic. The settlement is located on a natural communication route that con­nects the region of Emirdag-Bolvadin with Eskisehir across the mountainous area of Phrygia, between the distribution areas of the Hacilar and Fikirtepe cultural groups. Finds from the site in­clude both Pre-Pottery Neolithic material and Early Neolithic ceramics, and it is therefore among the earliest permanent settlements of the Eskisehir region, and contains some of the earliest evidence for the Neolithisation process. In this paper, the pottery assemblage of the Early Neolithic settlement at Keçiçayiri is discussed, and its place in the spread of Neolithisation from the Near East to North­western Anatolia is evaluated when compared to other known sites. KEY WORDS – Neolithisation; Early Neolithic pottery; Anatolia; Phrygian highlands; Keçiçayiri Zgodnjeneolitska lon;enina z najdi[;a Keçiçayiri in njen polo/aj v procesu neolitizacije severozahodne Anatolije IZVLE.EK – Obmo.je notranje severozahodne Anatolije je bilo klju.no prese.i..e prenosa neolit­skega na.ina .ivljenja iz Bli.njega Vzhoda na obmo.je Marmarskega morja in naprej na Balkan in v Evropo. Tukaj je bilo pomembno se.i..e med .tevilnimi pomembnimi potmi in trgovskimi mre.a-mi, pri .emer je imelo najdi..e Keçiçayiri, ki ga obravnavamo v .lanku, pomembno vlogo pri pre­nosu kulturnih elementov v .asu neolitika. Naselbina se nahaja na naravni komunikacijski poti, ki povezuje regiji Emirdag-Bolvadin in Eskisehir preko goratega predela Frigije, in sicer med podro.je-ma distribucije kulturnih skupin Hacilar in Fikirtepe. Najdbe vklju.ujejo tako material iz obdobja predkerami.nega neolitika kot keramiko iz zgodnjega neolitika, kar pomeni, da je najdi..e Keçiça­yiri eno najstarej.ih stalnih naselbin na obmo.ju Eskisehir in vklju.uje najstarej.e dokaze o proce­su neolitizacije tega prostora. V .lanku predstavljamo zgodnjeneolitsko lon.enino iz te naselbine in njen polo.aj pri .iritvi neolitizacije iz Bli.njega Vzhoda proti severozahodni Anatoliji, pri .emer oce­njujemo njen polo.aj v primerjavi z drugimi znanimi najdi..i tega .asa. KLJU.NE BESEDE – neolitizacija; zgodnjeneolitska lon.enina; Anatolija; Frigijsko vi.avje; Keçiçayiri DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.9 The Early Neolithic pottery of Keçiçayiri and its place in the North-western Anatolian Neolithisation process Introduction Following the end of the Last Ice Age, people in the Near East who had subsisted by hunting and for­aging began a transition into a lifestyle that includ­ed permanent settlement and food production, the first step of a radical alteration that would ultima­tely be adopted by much of humanity. The earliest Pre-Pottery Neolithic settlements yet identified, and thus the earliest core regions for the transition into farming, are in the Zagros Mountains of modern Iran, the Levant, at Çayönü near the Taurus Moun­tains and on the Konya Plain in Turkey. Excavations carried out at settlements such as Can Hasan, Asikli Höyük and Musular indicate that the earliest areas of incipient food production outside the Fertile Cre­scent seem to have been in the Konya Plain and mountainous area to the east of it. Perhaps the most notable of these is Asikli Höyük, near Aksaray, where a few Pre-Pottery Neolithic settlement phases show an overlapping stratigraphy (Özbasaran, Cutting 2007.55), but the Neolithisation process continued at such sites as Çatalhöyük, near Çumra, which shows many overlapping Early Neolithic layers. Ongoing work in the west of the Konya Plain has greatly cla­rified the comparative chronologies of the Early and Late Neolithic Periods (Gérard et al. 2002).1 Recent excavations in Western Anatolia (Fig. 1) have demonstrated that this area had a role in reshaping the cultures of the Neolithic, rather than simply act­ing as a bridge for the transition of the Neolithic life­style. Mehmet Özdogan, for example, states that the Neolithic cultures that developed in Western Anato­lia and spread to the Balkans and Europe were the predecessors of the European Neolithic, and thus defines Western Anatolia as a Neo­lithic core region (Özdogan M. 2007.418). Excavations at Bade­magaci, in the Lakes District, and at Ulucak, Yesilova and Çukuriçi, near the Aegean, show that mate­rial culture which was clearly in­fluenced by Central Anatolian Neo­lithic developed differently in the south than in the north. Material from Aktopraklik, Ilipinar, Barcin Höyük and Yenikapi are represen­tative of the northern Fikirtepe culture and the Neolithisation of The settlement of Keçiçayiri, the subject of this pa­per, is situated on a natural communication route that connects Central Anatolia with Eskisehir, in the mountains of Phrygia, and the southern Marmara coastline beyond. Keçiçayiri was one of the first per­manent settlements in this part of the world, and finds show that it was inhabited from the Pre-Pot­tery Neolithic to the Roman Period. Brief overview of the Neolithisation of North­western Anatolia Despite increasing research, it is clear that there is still much that is unknown about the process of Neo­lithisation of Western Anatolia, and there are many ways to approach it. Mehmet Özdogan regards the process of Neolithisation in the Near East, Aegean and Balkans as a series of geographical/cultural zo­nes (Özdogan M. 2014; 2016). The earliest lie to the east of the Central Anatolian Basin, and are regard­ed as the regions that saw the formation and devel­opment of the Neolithic lifestyle (10 400–7200 BC): Northern Syria and the Levant (Zone A1), Northern Iraq and Western Iran (Zone A2), and South-eastern Anatolia (Zone A3). From the early 7th millennium BC, the Neolithic lifestyle began to spread rapidly, probably due to the effects of geographical, climatic, and social dynamics, and in this period many set­tlements were abandoned in the east while people moved west. As such, data about the next phases of the Neolithic lifestyle are encountered in the Anato­lian Lakes District (Zone B1) and Aegean (Zone B2), in which the number of settlements greatly increas­ed, and in Inner Western Anatolia (Zone C1) and to the Marmara region. Fig. 1. Major Anatolian Neolithic sites of Western Anatolia. 1 For current 14C dates see http://www.14sea.org. Deniz Sari, S¸emsettin Akyol the east of the Sea of Marmara (Zone C2). The trend seems to be that the Neolithic lifestyle spread along two paths from the Lakes District, with one contin­uing south to the Aegean coast and the other cross­ing the Anatolian Plateau to the Sakarya River basin (Özdogan M. 2014.36; 2016.54–55). Recent data has amply demonstrated that Neolithisa­tion is closely connected with climatic oscillations (Weninger et al. 2014). A period of rapid climate change now known as the 8.2-k event saw a period of rapid cooling that lasted up to 600 years, Phase A from 6600 to 6300 BC and Phase B from 6300 to 6000 BC. Phase A corresponds to the period when pottery was used first in the Near East and when a number of Pre-Pottery Neolithic settlements were abandoned (Weninger et al. 2014.13–14). By Phase B, there were a greatly increased number of settle­ments in Western Anatolia (Özdogan, Gatsov 1998. 211). The earliest traces of the pre-Neolithic Period in North-western Anatolia have been discovered in the Çatalca-Kocaeli district to the north of the Sea of Marmara. These appear in sites that reflect the ele­ments of the Agaçli culture, a late Mesolithic phase from the 8th millennium BC (Özdogan, Gatsov 1994; 1998.210, 213). The lithic material of this phase is similar to the Neolithic examples that followed, in­cluding microlite tools created using pressure techni­ques reminiscent of the epigravettian tradition, and chipped stone tools with prismatic blade cores. It is probable that the lithic toolkit of the Mesolithic Aga­çli culture was adopted by the Neolithic Fikirtepe one (Özdogan M. 1999.203). Yet evidence from settlements such as Keçiçayiri, Kalkanli, and Asarkaya situated in the district of Eskisehir shows that some communities followed ceramic tradi­tions that originated from Central Ana­tolia and used very different chipped stone tool technologies to those living further north. These tools are from contexts that date to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, and come from a different tradition to the microlilte tools of the Agaçli culture of Mesolithic Period, or the Pendik and Fikirtepe cultures that followed. They are characterized by macro blades, macro perforator and chipped discs (Özdogan, Gatsov 1998. 213–214). Macro blades and macro perforator are closer to the traditions seen in material from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Pe­riod of Konya Plain. This suggests that there were connections with North-western Anatolia during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (Özdogan, Gatsov 1998; Efe 2005; Efe et al. 2012). The chipped stone tools known from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Konya Plain seem to have been part of a long tradition, especially in the eastern parts of the plain in the district of Eskisehir. Keçiçayiri, Kal­kanli, and Asarkaya are situated at the western ex­tremity of the culture’s distribution area (Efe 2005. 112). These settlements, which contain the first tra­ces of Neolithisation in the area, are located in high, somewhat mountainous areas that are more suitable to hunting and animal husbandry than to agriculture (Özdogan M. 1997.18). Traces of pottery appear for the first time in the Konya Plain during the early 7th millennium BC, in Levels XI–VIII at Çatalhöyük, which have been dated to 7000–6700/6600 BC. It is represented by straw-and grit tempered coarse ware, thick-walled simple profile bowls, and holemouth jars (Özdöl 2006.130– 153). The earliest traces of pottery in the Lakes Di­strict are seen shortly thereafter, in the EN I/8–9 la­yers at Bademagaci, dated to 7050–6705 BC (Duru 2007.349). By the middle of the 7th millennium BC there were some innovations in the pottery tradition found in Levels VII–IV of Çatalhöyük (6700/6600– 6400/6300 BC), which were a development of the earlier styles and have been defined as the ‘Middle Tradition’ (Özdöl 2006.153–205). Among these de­velopments are the ledge-rimmed bowls, ‘s’-profile bowls, squat-necked pots, and pierced lugs that be­came distinctive elements for dating settlements in Western Anatolia. The features of the Middle Tradi- The Early Neolithic pottery of Keçiçayiri and its place in the North-western Anatolian Neolithisation process Fig. 3. Topographical plan and trenches of Keçiçayiri. tion of the Konya Plain are found in the pottery of Inner North-western Anatolia a few centuries later. These are the earliest ceramic forms from this re­gion, from a period called the Initial Neolithic (Özdo­gan E. 2015.51, Fig. 6; 2016.271, Fig. 2; Erdogu et al. 2015.34). Radiocarbon and relative dates are consistent for the pottery of the western part of the Konya Plain and that of the Inner North-western Anatolia from Keçiçayiri and Demircihöyük, in the district of Eskisehir, and Layers VIe and VId (6570– 6330 BC) at Barcin, where they have been attrib­uted to a pre-Fikirtepe culture (Gerritsen et al. 2016. 200). Holemouth jars and ledge-rim pots indicate that these ceramics originated in the tradition found earlier at Çatalhöyük. It appears to have arrived on the Aegean coast one or two centuries earlier still, having been dated at Ulucak VI to 6750–6600 BC (Çilingiroglu 2012.18) and at Çukuriçi XII–XI to approx. 6772–6489 BC (Horejs et al. 2015.302). In the next phase, the settlements of Mentese 3 Ba­sal and Aktopraklik C were founded to the south of the Sea of Marmara, followed soon after by Fikirte­pe and Pendik to its north. This phase began around 6300 BC and corresponds to the Late Neolithic lay­ers III–O at Çatalhöyük (6400/6300–6000 BC), and has been called the ‘Late Tradition’ (Özdöl Kutlu 2014). The pottery parallels the Middle Neolithic Pe­riod in Northnorth-western Anatolia (Özdogan E. 2016.Fig. 2), and retains the elements of pottery from the ‘Archaic Fikirtepe culture’. These elements include ‘s’-profile bowls and squat-necked pots also known from the Middle Tradition of Çatalhöyük, along with rectangular or triangular cultic wares with incised decoration known as ‘Fikirtepe box’ forms. The Late Neolithic phase began c. 6000 BC and last­ed until around 5750 BC. It was in this phase that two different cultural regions coalesced in Western Anatolia: the Fikirtepe culture that extends along a region that included the eastern parts of the Sea of Marmara and the Sakarya Basin directly to the south­east, and the Hacilar culture that developed in South­western Anatolia and is characterized by a red-on-cream pottery tradition. Fikirtepe ceramics originated in the monochrome tra­dition of Central Anatolia, which was found across the whole of Western Anatolia in the previous phase, but merged with local elements and developed to take on a new identity. This interpretation is based on surface surveys at the settlements of Akmakça, Findikkayabasi (Efe 1990.409), and Hacihamza (Efe 1994.574) in the western part of the Anatolian pla­teau, where Fikirtepe pottery, including elements Deniz Sari, S¸emsettin Akyol such as Fikirtepe box forms, have been found to­gether with red-on-cream wares. As such, the plain of Eskisehir, incuding Demircihöyük, seems to have been at the border between classical Fikirtepe cul­ture and those of the Hacilar culture. Some pieces of typical Fikirtepe wares have been found in sur­face surveys to the north of this region, such as Ah-medet I–II (Efe et al. 2015.497) and Bahçelievler (Efe et al. 2015.499) in the district of Bilecik, where no traces of painted pottery have been encountered. The location of Keçiçayiri and its excavation history The settlement of Keçiçayiri is located in the moun­tainous southern part of the province of Eskisehir, in an area known as the Phrygian Highlands (Fig. 2). It lies 5km southwest of the village of Bardakçi and approx. 18km south of Seyitgazi. A stream, the Esen, rises beside the village of Yazilikaya and connects to the Sakarya River after passing Keçiçayiri, flowing through a somewhat rough lowland area surround­ed by low mountains. Two rocky hills of Neogene chalk, named Cibirada and Aralikada, border the plain to the east of the Esen. Quaternary alluviums are located in the vicinity of Cibirada. The Keçiçayi­ri settlement area surrounds the western foot of this hill, and its fields lie to the northeast on the plain. Keçiçayiri was first visited by the head of Eskisehir Museum in 1977, and was officially registered after some illegal excavations by treasure hunters had EBA III – – – x Late EBA II – – – x Late Chalcolithic – – x – Early Neolithic x – – x Aceramic Neolithic x x – – Upper Palaeolithic x – – – Periods Northwest Mound Terrace Cibirada fields Roman x x x – Fig. 4. The stratigraphy of Keçiçayiri. been reported to the authorities. It was then exam­ined a few times during surface surveys undertaken by Turan Efe from 1988 to 1995, which included the provinces of Bilecik, Eskisehir and Kütahya, and some materials were collected from it (Efe 1997. 217). From 2006 to 2009, with permission from the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Mu­seums and financial support from The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜB_TAK; SOBAG Proje No 106K111), rescue excavations were carried out under the direction of the head of Eski­sehir Museum and with Efe as the scientific consul­tant (Efe, Türkteki 2007.75; Efe et al. 2011; Fidan 2016; Efe, Tuna 2017; Sari 2017). Stratigraphy and excavation Excavations at Keçiçayiri were independently car­ried out in four different areas (Fig. 3): the Mound, the Terrace, the North-western Fields, and the Hill Fig. 5. The flint core dated Pre-Pottery Neolithic and Early Neolithic sherds from trenches other than the Hill of Cibirada. The Early Neolithic pottery of Keçiçayiri and its place in the North-western Anatolian Neolithisation process of Cibirada (Efe et al. 2011.10). There was a layer of Roman period material on the surfaces of all areas other than the Hill. The excavation areas and the pe­riods they include are shown in Figure 4. Mound The area named the Mound or Höyük is a natural hill, and there was only 50cm of cultural accumu­lation on it. Some stone artefacts that might belong to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Period were found there, including a discoidal core and end-scrapers (Efe et al. 2012.229, Figs. 5–6), along with remains from the Roman Period. Pits carved into the bedrock at the northern end of a Roman Period building were probably the remains of Pre-Pottery Neolithic Period structures that were demolished during the con­struction of the Roman one. Many scraps of stone and animal bones were found around these pits (Efe et al. 2011.11). Terrace A round structure from the Roman Pe­riod was found 100m northeast of the Mound and approx. 200m southwest of the Hill of Cibirada, and named the Ter­race (Efe et al. 2011.12). A sounding opened here reached the bedrock, upon which were two damaged human skele­tons. Two vessels, apparently grave goods, were found along with these ske­letons, and have been dated to the Late Chalcolithic Period (Efe 2008.245). North-western Fields The area called the North-western Fields lies on the plain, approx. 750–800m northwest of the Hill of Cibirada. These fields saw extensive use during the Ro­man Period, but prehistoric remains were reached there in two trenches (b­ 88 and part of b-87). Two supeimposed prehistoric layers were found beneath the Roman ones in trench b-88. The up­ per layer was homogenous and dark in colour without architecture, while the one below was a pebbly layer contain­ ing some chipped stone material. Two round depressions in the pebbly layer might point to an intermediary phase (Fig. 5a). A naviform and a flake core (Fig. 5b) of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Pe­ riod are probably the most important finds from this area (Efe et al. 2012. Figs. 3–4), though a few Early Neolithic sherds were also collected from the upper prehistoric layer (Fig. 5c–d), one of which had a ledge-rim and was thus typical of the period (Efe et al. 2011.12–13). The stratigraphy and Neolithic architecture of Cibirada The Hill of Cibirada is situated on the eastern bor­der of the plain, approx. 45m higher than the Mound and Terrace (Fig. 6), and the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (EBA) stratigraphies of Keçiçayiri were obtained from this area. The main settlement at Ci­birada was an EBA fortification, approx. 120 x 100m in size, which was surrounded by a wall that was built to follow the natural contours of the hill. Pot­tery and other finds from the settlement show that it dates to the second half of the 3rd millennium BC (Efe, Tuna 2017; Fidan 2016; Sari 2017). Two EBA II structures, named Rooms 15 and 16, were found in squares AV-1, AY-1 and AZ-1 in the Deniz Sari, S¸emsettin Akyol Fig. 8. The stratigrapgy of Cibirada, Trench AY 1, western and southern profiles, Room 15. north of the settlement (Fig. 7). They appear to have been destroyed in a fire. Beneath a thin homoge­neous layer containing a mixture of EBA II and Early Neolithic material, there is a Neolithic layer on the bedrock (Fig. 8). The structures were defined by three north-south walls, built directly onto the bedrock and following the slope of the hill, so that the northern end was approx. 50cm lower than the southern one. Over­lain by these walls was the only architectural re­mains of the Neolithic Period to be found, a struc­ture with a round or oval plan carved into the bed­rock and approx. 60cm in depth and 5m in diame­ter (Fig. 9). The majority of this structure is still beneath the EBA II walls, but part of its southern extent was re­vealed during excavation. It consisted of two courses of small- to medium-sized stones surrounding a pit that had been cut into the bed­rock. No traces of mudbrick or post-holes were found, but the soil matrix contained pottery and many ground- and chip­ped stone tools were discover­ed lying in situ on the bedrock. Chipped discs made from tabu­lar flint, retouched blades, and end-scrapers were found with pottery from the Early Neoli­thic Period on the Hill of Cibi­rada (Fig. 10). These tools were generally shaped by indirect percussion, though direct per­cussion was also used for fla­kes (Gatsov et al. 2016.2). The pressure flaking which was de­veloped from the previous Pre-Pottery Neolithic phase is used subsequently for bullet core fragments; this connects the Konya plain with Keçiçayiri and Barcin VIe–VIe/d (Gatsov et al. 2016.3) and then to Aktopraklik C (Karul 2017.66–67; Özdogan M. 2014.42, Fig. 7) to the south of the Sea of Marmara. The Early Neolithic pottery assemblages from Keçi­çayiri, discussed in greater detail in the sections that follow, also support this opinion. The Neolithic pottery of Keçiçayiri Neolithic pottery had been found in square b-88 in the North-western Fields and in squares AV-1, AY-1, and AZ-1 on the Hill of Cibirada. The number of pie­ces in North-western Fields was limited, with only eight body sherds and one ledge-rim piece that might be dated to the Neolithic Period being found in this area (Fig. 5c–d). The Hill of Cibirada yielded a great­er number, and 522 pieces dating to this period and The Early Neolithic pottery of Keçiçayiri and its place in the North-western Anatolian Neolithisation process 55 of the assemblage are diagnostic. These were found across an area of roughly 100m2, in strata that were on average 60cm deep. The ware groups The 522 Neolithic sherds have been identified as belonging to three main ware groups: Red Slipped Wares, Dark Faced Wares, and Coarse Wares. Coarse Wares represented 60% of the pottery, and are thus the most common ware group from the settlement, though most were amorphous pieces. Dark Faced Wares were the next most common, at 35%, while Red Slipped Wares were sparsely represented, at only 5%. There is, however, a margin of error be­cause it was not always easy to distinguish which pie­ces might belong to a given ware group (Fig. 11). Red Slipped Wares The surfaces of Red Slipped pieces were better pre­served than those of the other ware groups due to their slip and burnishing. The surface colours were typically red and reddish brown, though in some pieces the colour was closer to a shade of brown. Some pieces were speckled due to secondary combu­stion. The paste was more readily observable than in Coarse and Dark Faced Wares, though no cores were found. Mica was commonly used as a temper, but thin or gritty straw tempers were also visible (Fig. 12a). Red Slipped ware was mainly used for simple profile bowls, ‘s’-profile bowls, closed vessels, and long necked pots. Dark Faced Wares This group was only the second most commonly re­presented group of Neolithic pottery, but 43 of the 55 diagnostic pieces (78%) were Dark Faced Ware. Blemishes on the surface were generally corrected by non-slipped plaster that was burnished to vary­ing degrees. Accordingly, some pieces have smooth and bright surfaces, while others have matte surfa­ces that are less well-finished. A variety of dark browns were dominant among the surface colours, but there were light-brown faced pieces as well, and some had multiple colours due to secondary com­bustion. The paste was generally mid-brown, though some samples were beige and dark brown, while others had a grey or black core. Mica was used as a temper in almost every piece, and could be seen on the surfaces of some. Thin grit temper was used in thin-walled wares, and rough grit and some straw temper in thick-walled wares (Fig. 12b). A variety of forms were observed, including simple profile bowls, ledge-rim bowls, ‘s’-profile bowls, closed vessels, squat necked pots, long necked pots, and lids. Verti-cal handles, horizontal handles, vertical lugs and pierced lugs were seen. Coarse Wares The surfaces of Coarse Wares were not generally well-finished, and slip and burnish were not used on this ware group. Some 72% of these pieces were multi-coloured in grey and black due to secondary combustion, so although it is not easy to determine the original colour of this ware type it is almost cer­tain that dark colours were dominant, albeit that some light brown/beige shades were seen. The co-lour of the paste also ranged from shades of light brown/beige to dark brown/black, with some sam­ples showing light grey pastes and black cores. Rough grit, mica, and limestone were used as inclu­sions. Straw-based tempers were seen but were un­common, though many samples showed straw nega­tives on the surface (Fig. 12c). So far as it is possible to determine, the majority of Coarse Ware pieces were storage- and kitchen wares. Almost all of the pieces found were body sherds, with only three base pieces that might be considered diagnostic. Pottery forms The amount of pottery obtained from the Neolithic layer is not high, and the diagnostic sample is limit­ed. Most of the Early Neolithic pottery from Keçiça­yiri can be reconstructed as bowls and jars, along with a handful of lids and handles (Fig. 13). Deniz Sari, S¸emsettin Akyol Bowls As noted, most of the bowl forms at the settlement (Pl. 1.1–10) were of Dark Faced Ware, along with a few of Red Slipped Ware. They have been subdivid­ed typologically into three groups: simple profile bowls (Fig. 13.1a), ledge-rim bowls (Fig. 13.1b), and ‘s’-profile bowls (Fig. 13.1c). Simple profile bowls made up 30% of the Neolithic bowls, most of which were of Dark Faced Ware. Their profiles either show a slight outward curve or are vertical (Pl. 1.1–3). Ledge-rim bowls have a broadly similar form, but have an internal ledge around their rims, which probably allowed a lid or cover to be placed on them (Pl. 1.4–7). All of the ledge-rim bowls at Keçiçayiri were Dark Faced Ware. ‘S’-profile bowls (Pl. 1.8–10) also made up 30% of the bowls at the settlement, and most were Dark Faced Ware but a few Red Slipped Ware samples were seen. The mouths and body parts of ‘s’-profile bowls were normally well-finished, though some were quite rough. Jars There were two subgroups of jar – closed jars and necked jars – the surfaces of which were generally dark and burnished. The majority of the base and body sherds from the settlement were jars. Closed jars (Fig. 13.2a) were the most common type, mak­ing up 65% of all forms of jar at the settlement. This form narrows at the mouth, which has a horizontal profile, and normally a globular body, and is one of the characteristic forms of the Neolithic Period (Pl. 1.11–13, Pl. 2.14–21). Closed jars were probably used for storage. The majority were again Dark Faced Ware, with a limited number of Red Slipped Ware examples. Necked jars (Fig. 13. 2b) differ from closed jars in that a neck arches upward from the body (Pl. 2.22– 27). The majority of these rims were of Dark Faced Ware, with Red Slipped Ware in limited numbers. Necked jars have two subgroups according to the length of the necks: ‘squat’ necked jars (Fig. 13.2b1; Pl. 2.22–24) and ‘long’ necked jars (Fig. 13.2b; Pl. 2.25–27). Some ‘long’ necked jars also had vertical handles (Pl. 4.51). Lids Covers or lids were probably used with ledge-rim bowls or on cooking vessels. The surfaces of the samples found at Keçiçayiri were well burnished and all of them were of Dark Faced Ware. One of was 15cm and another was 17cm in diameter. This form does not show much variety, having sharp edges and rising in the centre to form a low dome (Pl. 4.47–48). Handles, lugs, and bases All examples are Dark Faced Ware. Handles are ver­tical (Pl. 4.51) or horizontal (Pl. 4.49). Lugs are ver­tical (Pl. 4.50) and some of them are pierced (Pl. 4.52–54). Bases were the most common diagnostic in the sample (Fig. 11), comprising nearly half of the Dark Faced Ware and Coarse Ware, though two Red Slipped Ware base sherds have been found. All bases should be regarded as belonging to jar forms due to ware, base types, rising angles, and diameters. Some The Early Neolithic pottery of Keçiçayiri and its place in the North-western Anatolian Neolithisation process of the bases were very rough and thick, though there were also some that were thinner, and more care had been taken during their manufacture. Comparisons with other sites Although the short-term rescue excavations conduct­ed at Keçiçayiri allowed important archaeological data to be retrieved, it was not possible to take ad­vantage of radiocarbon dating methods to produce an absolute chronology. Comparative chronologies are possible, however, notably with Çatalhöyük, one of the starting points for Neolithisation in Western Anatolia, but also with Demircihöyük in the far west of the Plain of Eskisehir, some 90km northeast of Keçiçayiri, and with Barcin Höyük in the Plain of Ye-nisehir, 180km from Keçiçayiri in the same direction. The radiocarbon data taken from stratigraphic levels at Barcin Höyük is particularly significant for the chronology of Keçiçayiri. Çatalhöyük The pottery of Keçiçayiri can be seen as a develop­ment and variety of the pottery from levels VII–IV at Çatalhöyük, where the most common groups are straw tempered dark wares, dark faced burnished wares, and grey granular red-slipped wares (Özdöl 2006. 154). The dark faced wares and red slip­ped wares with grey scrapings on them are similar to those from Keçiçayiri both in terms of paste and surface treatment. The pottery from level III at Çatalhöyük shows that dark faced wares continue from previous levels but also see a de­crease, with lighter and red surfaces tak­ing their place (Özdöl 2006.161). Vessel walls became thinner at Çatalhö­yük from level VIII, and from level VII there was an increase in form types and ware groups. Closed vessels continued to develop from previous levels (Özdöl 2016.Pl. 25), particularly in level VI (Öz­döl 2006.Pl. 24) where they are a good match with those from Keçiçayiri. Sim­ple profile bowls continued into levels VII–IV, again developing from previous phases. Ledge-rim bowls appear in level VI (Özdöl 2006.Pl. 31.2, 32.2–3, 33.3, 36.3, 37.2–3), and are very similar to those at Keçiçayiri. Pierced lugs also ap­pear in level VI. These forms appearing in levels VII and especially VI continued to develop through to level III, where ‘s’-profile and external rim bowls take the place of the closed vessels commonly seen from level XI (Özdöl 2006.Pl. 126). Demircihöyük Ware A, a mica schist tempered and red-slipped ware from Demircihöyük, is believed to correspond to le­vels XII–IX of Çatalhöyük, and Ware B, which has intense mica temper, grey- to greyish-beige faces, and shining surfaces due to this mica temper, corre­sponds to levels IX–VI. The forms represented among Ware A include ledge-rims (Seeher 1987.Pl. 1.1–7), closed mouths (Seeher 1987.Pl. 1.8–9), lids (Seeher 1987.Pl. 1.16–19), horizontal lugs (Seeher 1987.Pl. 1.10) and straight bases (Seeher 1987.Pl. 1.11–15). Different forms are known from Ware B at Demirci­höyük, including necked pots (particularly the ‘squat’ necked subgroup; Seeher 1987.Pl. 2.12, 15–18), ‘S’­profile bowls (Seeher 1987.Pl. 3.4–5) and pierced lugs (Seeher 1987.Pl. 2.11). Barcin Höyük Finds from phase VIe, the earliest Neolithic phase at Barcin Höyük (c. 6570 BC), have been compared to Deniz Sari, S¸emsettin Akyol those from Demircihöyük Ware B and appear to predate level VI at Çatalhö­yük (Gerritsen et al. 2013.73). The pot­tery of Barcin VIe is represented by sim­ple profile bowls and closed vessels (Ger­ritsen et al. 2013.Fig. 17.1–7), while one of the more notable forms found in phase VIe has been identified as a proto­type for Fikirtepe box forms (Gerritsen et al. 2013.Fig. 17.9–10). The first ledge-rim bowls appear at the transition be­tween phases VIe and VId, alongside profile bowls and closed vessels (Gerrit-sen et al. 2013.Fig. 18.1–5), as do ‘s’-pro­file bowls, necked pots, and pierced lugs (Gerritsen et al. 2013.Fig. 18.6–15). A painted and decorated vessel, and samples of four-footed and incrusted Fi­kirtepe box forms (but without white paste fill) were also among the new forms from the Barcin phase VId (Gerritsen et al. 2013.Fig. 19.7–8). Aktopraklik Aktopraklik is located in Akçalar, 4km east of Lake Ulubat and approx. 30km from Bursa. It is situated at the western edge of a corridor running from Eski­sehir to Bozüyük and Bursa that connects Central Anatolia to the northwest (Karul 2017.81). The ear­liest settlement was in Area C, and its earliest phas­es, which have been dated between 6380 and 6250 BC, have architecture that consists of round- or oval wattle and daub buildings with a sunken floor. The walls are sometimes supported by a line of stone from the lower end (Karul 2017.90, Fig. 53). Despite the fact that wattle and daub superstructure is not evidenced in Keçiçayiri, Aktopraklik is the closest pa­rallel of oval structure carved into the bedrock found at Cibirada of Keçiçayiri. Closed vessels, ledge-rim pots (Avci 2010.Pl. 18), ‘s’-profile bowls, and pierced lugs (Karul 2017.92, Fig. 56) were also found in this phase at Aktopraklik. Relative chronology Light faced coarse wares were common in the earliest levels at Çatalhöyük, but disappeared at the end of level VII, after which dark faced wares became domi­nant. The pottery from level VI at Çatalhöyük closely resemble those at Keçiçayiri, when ledge-rim pieces, pierced lugs, and especially closed vessels and ‘squat’ necked pots started to appear. The earliest samples of ‘s’-profiles are from levels VI and III of Çatalhöyük, and became more developed in level II, and this sug­gests that the settlement of Keçiçayiri was roughly contemporary with levels III and II of Çatalhöyük. Fig. 14. Form comparison. The Early Neolithic pottery of Keçiçayiri and its place in the North-western Anatolian Neolithisation process Wares A and B of Demircihöyük do not show many similarities with the ware types at Keçiçayiri, but almost all forms in the Demircihöyük A show parallels with those from Keçiçayiri. Most notable are the ledge-rims and closed vessels, which imply that Ke­çiçayiri was contemporary with the Ware A at Demircihöyük, while the existence of ‘s’-profiles, one of the most characteristic forms of Demirci­höyük Ware B, indicates that settle­ment at Keçiçayiri continued into this phase. Light coloured wares dominate the earliest level of Barcin Höyük, level VIe, and these are reminiscent of the coarse wares at Keçiçayiri, albeit that the latter lacks diagnostics. Dark faced wares began to appear at the transition between phases VIe and VId at Barcin Höyük, and these show many similarities with those from Keçi­çayiri. Notably, the walls of ledge-rim vessels and closed vessels from phase VId became thinner, paral­leling the repertoire of ware and form at Keçiçayiri. These data suggest that Keçiçayiri was settled concur­rently with Barcin Höyük phase VIe. Additionally, the ‘s’-profile bowls, necked pots, and pierced lugs that appeared in phase Barcin VId and continued into phase VIc show Keçiçayiri was still occupied at this time. Similar elements seen in the early stages of Aktopraklik C imply that it was also settled at this time, as do the oval structures, which further suggest cultural connections with Keçiçayiri. Pottery of Phase VId at Barcin shows similarities with Keçiçayiri, but there are also differences. The painted and decorated sherds found here and the incrusted Fikirtepe box differ from anything found at Keçiçayiri, though a non-decorated Fikirtepe box was found at Keçiçayiri during an early surface sur­vey (Efe 2005.Fig. 8). Comparative data and a sug­gested chronology are presented in fgures 14 and 15. Conclusions While the Agaçli culture was present on the Bosphou­rus and Western Black Sea coasts during the Mesoli­thic Period, there is no evidence for settlements to the south of the Sea of Marmara or in inland west­ern Anatolia, where Keçiçayiri is located. As the area transitioned into the next phase, traces of Pre-Pottery Neolithic at lasting settlements – which had a longer tradition in the east of the Konya Plain – begin to appear along the natural route that connects Central Anatolia to Eskisehir and then to Southern Marma­ra. Keçiçayiri is one such settlement, and along with the introduction of pottery it had a different lithic tradition to that of the previous Agaçli culture, such as macro blades and chipped discs. Its location at the easternmost point of the corridor from the Ana­tolian plateau to the Sea of Marmara is consistent with its place in the Neolithisation process of North­western Anatolia. During the first half of the 7th millennium BC, the occurrence of pottery influenced by the western part of Konya Plain appeared in this area, signifying the beginning of the Early Neolithic Period in North­western Anatolia. This early pottery seems to have spread quite rapidly, appearing within a few centu­ries in areas along the south-eastern coast of the Sea of Marmara, and then its northern coast. In this con­text, it can be shown that Keçiçayiri was settled during the period concurrent with Çatalhöyük VI–IV and with Barcin Höyük layers VIe to VId. It can there­fore be dated to 6700/6600–6300 BC, after which time it was abandoned. The results of the research outlined above are de­monstrated by what might be the earliest Neolithic architecture among the highlands along this corri­dor, on the Hill of Cibirada at Keçiçayiri, represent­ed by a stone architecture with round structures dug into the bedrock. This architecture was accompanied by many grinding stones, chipped stones, and blades found in situ, as well as pottery from a monochrome tradition that included holemouth jars, simple profile bowls, ledge-rim bowls and jars, ‘s’-profile bowls, necked jars, pierced-lugs, and prototypes of the so-called Fikirtepe boxes. This ceramic tradition origi­ Deniz Sari, S¸emsettin Akyol nated on the Konya Plain, and became common on the whole of Western Anatolia during the Early Neolithic, including North­western Anatolia, the Lakes Dis­trict, and the Aegean Coast. Regional differences had not yet begun to be form at this time. This process began around 6300 BC, as the Lakes District in the south began to adopt a painted pottery tradition, perhaps influ­enced by further away, from the Eastern Mediterranean. But there is no evidence of such an influ­ence in North-western Anatolia, and it is here that the Early Neo­lithic monochrome pottery from the Konya Plain continued to develop, becoming integrated with local elements and finally transforming into Fikirtepe culture. The lack of evidence for these later cultural elements at Keçiçayiri suggests that settlement there came to an end just before these regional cultures, or the Archaic Fikirtepe culture, developed. Accordingly, it may be claimed that Keçiçayiri was settled roughly between 6600 and 6300 BC. This period corresponds to the first stage of the Neolithic expansion to the Western Anatolia. There was no longer an occupation at Ke­çiçayiri around 6300 to 6000 BC, but there were set­tlements in the northern part of the Eskisehir plain (Demircihöyük, Ahmedet I–II, Bahçelievler) and the eastern part of the Sea of Marmara, some of which (Barcin, Aktopraklik, Pendik, Fikirtepe, Yenikapi) were newly established (Fig. 16). 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A New Look at the Introduction of the Neolithic Way of Life in Southeastern Europe. Changing Para­digms of the Expansion of the Neolithic Way of Life. Documenta Praehistorica 41: 33–49. https://doi.org/10.4312/dp.41.2 2016. Neolitik Dönem ve Göç – Arkeolojik Veriler Açi­sindan Bir Degerlendirme. Aktüel Arkeoloji 54: 48–59. Özdogan M., Gatsov I. 1994. Some Epi Paleolithic Sites from NW Turkey Agacli Domali and Gumusdere. Anatoli-ca XX: 97–120. Özdogan M., Gatsov I. 1998. The Aceramic Neolithic Pe­riod in Western Turkey and in the Aegean. Anatolica XXIV: 209–232. Özdöl S. 2006. Anadolu’da Erken Neolitik Dönem çanak çömlek kültürleri ve Çatalhöyük örnegi. Unpublished · PhD Thesis. Ege University. Izmir. Özdöl Kutlu S. 2014. Reconsidering the Late Neolithic Pottery of the Anatolian Plateau: Current Evidence from Çatalhöyük. Türkiye Bilimler Akademisi Arkeoloji Der-gisi 17: 25–48. Sari D. 2017. Frigya Daglik Bölgesi’nde Yer Alan Keçiça­yiri Ilk Tunç Çagi II Kalesi Küçük Buluntulari. Arkeoloji Dergisi 22: 117–147. Seeher J. 1987. Demircihüyük, Band III,1, Die Keramik 1, A. Die Neolithische und Chalkolithische Keramik, B. Die Frühbronzezeitliche Keramik Der Älteren Phasen (bis Phase G). Verlag Philipp von Zabern. Mainz Am Rhein. Weninger B., Clare L., Gerritsen F., Horejs B., Krauß R., Lin-städter J., Özbal R., and Rohling E. J. 2014. Neolithisation of the Aegean and Southeast Europe During the 6600– 6000 calBC Period of Rapid Climate Change. Documenta Praehistorica 41: 1–31. https://doi.org/10.4312/dp.41.1 The Early Neolithic pottery of Keçiçayiri and its place in the North-western Anatolian Neolithisation process Pl. 1. 1. AY-1. 247. Simple profile bowl. Dark faced ware. Black biscuit with straw and stone inclusions. Light brown surface burnished, mottled black; 2. AY-1. 250. Simple profile bowl. Dark faced ware. Micaceous black biscuit with some small stone and straw inclusions. Light brown surface burnished; 3. AY-1. 250. Simple profile bowl. Red Slipped Ware. Micaceous light brown biscuit with small stone and chalk inclusions. Red slipped surface burnished; 4. AY-1. 198. Ledge-rim bowl. Dark Faced Ware. Mica-ceous light brown biscuit with small stone inclusions. Dark brown surface burnished; 5. AY-1. 260. Ledge-rim bowl. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous black biscuit with some coarse stone inclusions. Light brown surface burnished; 6. AY/AZ-1. 280. Ledge-rim bowl. Coarse Ware. Micaceous dark brow biscuit with coarse stone and chalk inclusions. Light brown surface unburnished; 7. AY/AZ-1. 267. Ledge-rim bowl. Dark Faced Ware. Light brown surface unburnished. Brown biscuit with small stone and chalk inclusions; 8. AY/AZ-1. 291. ‘S’-profile bowls. Dark Faced Ware. Light brown biscuit with straw and chalk inclusions. Reddish brown surface burnished, black mottled on the rim; 9. AY-1. 226. ‘S’-profile bowls. Red Slipped Ware. Micaceous biscuit with small stone inclusions. Red slipped surface on exterior and interior; 10. AY/AZ-1. 267. ‘S’-profile bowls. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous dark brown biscuit with small stone and chalk inclusions. Black surface fine burnished; 11. AY-1. 244. Hole-mouthed jar. Dark Faced Ware. Mica-ceous dark brown biscuit with small stone and straw inclusions. Brown surfaces burnished; 12. AY/AZ-1. 267. Hole-mouthed jar. Coarse Ware. Dense micaceous light brown biscuit with stone inclusions. Buff surface unburnished; 13. AY/AZ-1. 278. Hole-mouthed jar. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous brown biscuit with small stone inclusions. Light brown surface burnished. Deniz Sari, S¸emsettin Akyol Pl. 2. 14. AY-1. 247. Hole-mouthed jar. Dark Faced Ware. Black biscuit with small stone and scarcely straw inclusions. Brown surfaces burnished, mottled; 15. AY-1. 282. Hole-mouthed jar. Dark Faced Ware. Mica-ceous black biscuit with small stone inclusions. Greyish brown surface wet-smoothed; 16. AY-1. 247. Hole-mouthed jar. Dark Faced Ware. Brown biscuit with coarse stone inclusions. Brown surface wet-smoothed; 17. AY/AZ-1. 272. Hole-mouthed jar. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous brown biscuit with coarse stone inclu­sions. Brown surfaces burnished, brilliant on exterior; 18. AY-1. 247. Hole-mouthed jar. Red Slipped Ware. Red slipped on both surfaces. Micaceous black biscuit with small stone and chalk inclusions; 19. AY-1. 244. Hole-mouthed jar. Red Slipped Ware. Micaceous black biscuit with small stone inclusions. Maroon slipped surface burnished; 20. AY-1. 247. Hole-mouthed jar. Red Slipped Ware. Micaceous black biscuit with small stone inclusions. Maroon slipped surface burnished; 21. AY-1. 260. Dark Faced Ware. Greyish brown surface smoothed on exterior. Micaceous black biscuit with small stone inclusions; 22. AY/AZ-1. 241. Squat-necked jar. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous black biscuit with small stone and chalk inclusions. Dark brown surface burnished; 23. AY/AZ-1. 241. Squat-necked jar. Red Slipped Ware. Red slipped surface, mottled on rim. Black biscuit with small stone and chalk inclusions; 24. AY-1. 282. Squat-necked jar. Dark Faced Ware Greyish brown surface smoothed on exterior. Micaceous dark brown biscuit with coarse stone inclusions; 25. AY/AZ-1. 272. Necked jar. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous blackish brown biscuit with small stone inclusions. Dark brown surface fine burnished; 26. AY-1. 226. Necked jar. Red Slip­ped Ware. Red slipped surface burnished. Micaceous light brown biscuit with stone inclusions; 27. AY-1. 226. Necked jar. Dark Faced Ware. Brown biscuit with small stone inclusions. Light brown surface bur­nished. The Early Neolithic pottery of Keçiçayiri and its place in the North-western Anatolian Neolithisation process Pl. 3. 28. AY-1. 247. Base. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous black biscuit with stone inclusions. Greyish brown surface wet-smoothed; 29. AY-1. 260. Base. Dark Faced Ware. Brown surface burnished on lower body. Black biscuit with stone inclusions; 30. AY/AZ-1. 278. Base. Dark Faced Ware. Light brown biscuit with stone inclusions. Light brown surface burnished on lower body; 31. AY-1. 247. Base. Dark Faced Ware. Dark brown biscuit with stone inclusions. Light brown surface burnished on lower body; 32. AV-1/2. 32. Base. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous light brown biscuit with small stone inclusions. Light brown surface burnished on lower body; 33. AV-1/2. 32. Base. Dark Faced Ware. Dark brown biscuit with stone inclu­sions. Light brown surface burnished on lower body; 34. AY-1. 247. Base. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous black biscuit with stone inclusions. Dark brown surface burnished on lower body; 35. AY/AZ-1. 291. Base. Coarse Ware. Micaceous brown biscuit with coarse stone inclusions. Light brown surface unburnished on lower body; 36. AY/AZ-1. 267. Base. Dark Faced Ware. Brown biscuit with coarse stone inclusions. Brown chalky surface; 37. AY/AZ-1. 278. Base. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous black biscuit with stone inclusions. Brown surface burnished on lower body; 38. AY/AZ-1. 278. Base. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous dark brown biscuit with stone inclusions. Brown surface fine burnished on lower body; 39. AY/AZ-1. 241. Base. Red Slipped Ware. Light brown biscuit with small stone inclusions. Red slipped surface burnished; 40. AY/AZ-1. 280. Base. Coarse Ware. Dark brown biscuit with coarse stone inclusions and slightly mica-ceous. Dark brown surface unburnished; 41. AY/AZ-1. 241. Base. Dark Faced Ware. Brown biscuit with stone inclusions and slightly micaceous. Brown surface unburnished; 42. AY-1. 228. Base. Red Slipped Ware. Light brown biscuit with small stone inclusions and slightly micaceous. Red slipped surface bur­nished; 43. AY/AZ-1. 267. Base. Coarse Ware. Brown biscuit with stone inclusions and slightly micaceous. Light brown surface unburnished; 44. AY-1. 250. Base. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous brown biscuit with stone inclusions. Dark brown surface unburnished; 45. AY/AZ-1. 241. Base. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous brown biscuit with stone inclusions. Light brown surface smoothed; 46. AY-1. 247. Base. Dark Faced Ware. Black biscuit with small stone inclusions and slightly micaceous. Blackish brown surface burnished. Deniz Sari, S¸emsettin Akyol Pl. 4. 47. AV-1/2. 40. Lid. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous dark brown biscuit with stone inclusions. Brown surface smoothed; 48. AY-1. 228. Lid. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous brown biscuit with stone inclusions. Light brown surface smoothed; 49. AY/AZ-1. 278. Horizontal handle. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous light brown biscuit with stone inclusions. Light brown surface smoothed; 50. AY-1. 259. Horizontal lug. Dark Faced Ware. Brown biscuit slightly micaceous with stone inclusions. Light brown surface burnished, black mottled below the lug; 51. AY/AZ-1. 278. Vertical handle. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous dark brown biscuit with small stone inclusions. Light brown surface burnished; 52. AY/AZ-1. 278. Pierced lug. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous dark brown biscuit with small stone inclusions. Greyish brown surface burnished; 53. AY-1. 275. Pierced lug. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous brown biscuit with small stone inclusions. Light brown surface burnished; 54. AY-1. 259. Pierced lug. Dark Faced Ware. Micaceous brown biscuit with coarse stone inclusions with a black core. Dark brown surface burnished. back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) Early ceramic styles and technologies in the Aegean and the Balkans> retrospect and prospects Lily Bonga Institute for Aegean Prehistory, Study Center for East Crete, Pacheia Ammos, GR lilybonga@gmail.com ABSTRACT – Ceramics have always played a central role in defining the Neolithic period in south­eastern Europe. Early Neolithic ceramic assemblages, forming techniques, clay recipes, shapes, decora­tion, and vessel function have been traditionally used to establish the chronology and cultural groups of a region based on a handful of purported type-sites. This paper presents a critical review of the literature on Early Neolithic pottery in Greece, highlighting how preconceptions shaped the research and interpretation of the data of not only the ceramics themselves, but also how those interpretive conclusions were projected into other aspects of Early Neolithic life, such as the gender and status of potters and the socio-functional use of pottery. The recent reevaluation of old and new absolute dates through Bayesian analysis, statistical modelling, and stratigraphic considerations has also helped to pro­vide a more nuanced use of relative pottery chronologies. New archaeological evidence from Northern Greece as well as reevaluations of Knossos and the Franchthi Cave are highlighted. KEY WORDS – chronology; pottery; Impresso; Knossos; Franchthi; Greek Macedonia Zgodnji kerami;ni stili in tehnologije na obmo;ju Egejskega morja in Balkana> pogled nazaj in naprej IZVLE.EK – V jugovzhodni Evropi je imela keramika pri opredeljevanju neolitika vedno osrednjo vlo-go. Na podlagi podatkov, pridobljenih na malo.tevilnih domnevno tipi.nih najdi..ih, se je v tej regiji za vzpostavljanje kronologije in kulturnih skupin tradicionalno uporabljalo zgodnje neolitske kerami.­ne zbire, tehnike oblikovanja, lon.arske recepte, oblike, okras in namembnost posod. V .lanku po­nudimo kriti.no presojo literature o zgodnje neolitski lon.enini v Gr.iji, pri .emer izpostavljamo na-.ine, kako so pristranski pogledi oblikovali raziskave in interpretacije razli.ne vrste podatkov, ne samo same keramike, ampak tudi kako so s tak.nimi zaklju.ki interpretirali tudi druge vidike zgodnje neo­litskega .ivljenja kot sta spol in status lon.arjev ter dru.beno-funkcionalna raba lon.enine. Za bolj raznoliko rabo relativnih kronologij, ki temeljijo na lon.enini, si lahko pomagamo predvsem z nedavno predstavljenimi novimi ovrednotenji starih in novih absolutnih datumov, ki so bili izvedeni z Bayeso­vo analizo, ter s statisti.nim modeliranjem in ovrednotenjem stratigrafije. V .lanku predstavljamo tudi nove arheolo.ke podatke iz severne Gr.ije ter ponovno ovrednotenje podatkov iz Knossosa na Kreti in jame Franchthi na Peloponezu. KLJU.NE BESEDE – kronologija; lon.enina; Impresso; Knossos; Franchthi; gr.ka Makedonija Introduction The Neolithic period in Greece was traditionally be-leion, the Franchthi Cave, and Knossos on Crete (Fig. lieved to have begun around 7000 BC based on early 1). This early date seemed to support the relative absolute dates from the 1960s from a handful of si-chronology and led to comparisons between the tes, including Nea Nikomedia, Argissa, Sesklo, Achil-Near East, Anatolia, and southeastern Europe. It also DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.10 Early ceramic styles and technologies in the Aegean and the Balkans> retrospect and prospects paved the way for pejorative descriptions of the pot­tery as primitive and simple, fitting presumed evo­lutionary paradigms of technological development. This fact is evident in the names (Frühkeramikum, Proto-Sesklo, Vor-Sesklo) and their definitions (early pottery, early painted, developed monochrome) of the first relative chronology for the Early Neolithic period for Thessaly. These sites have served as type-sites for the Early Neolithic period in their respec­tive regions ever since, but can no longer do so, as recent work in Northern Greece, Crete, the Cyclades, and Western Anatolia has expanded and enhanced the dataset. Traditional chronology of the Early Neolithic period in Greece The traditional relative chronology of Neolithic Gre­ece was primarily created in Thessaly due to early excavation and survey work in the area, and was based on surface treatment and decoration (Tsoun­tas 1908; Wace, Thompson 1912). The relative chronology for Thessaly was established by Vladimir Miloj.i. (1959) and it became canonical (Theocharis 1973). Scholars in Central and Southern Greece (e.g., Weinberg 1962; 1970) tried to correlate their cera­mics to those of Thessaly as based on Miloj.i.’s sys­tem, but did not make chronological subdivisions based on decorated ceramics. Early Neolithic Greek Macedonia was unknown in Mi­loj.i.’s time. Concerning the Early Neolithic, a tripartite system was estab­lished. It consists of the Frühke- Fig. 1. Neolithic sites menti­oned in the text with absolute dates within 6600–5900 cal BC. Numbers 3, 6, 7 without ab­solute dates. 1 Ulucak Höyük; 2 Çukuriçi Höyük; 3 Pelekita Cave, Crete; 4 Knossos, Crete; 5 Akrotiri, Santorini; 6 Ayia Gala, Chios; 7 Emporio, Chios; 8 Dikili Tash; 9 Giannitsa B; 10 Axios A; 11 Nea Nikomedia; 12 Kolindros- Paliambela; 13 Revenia-Korinos; 14 Servia-Va­rytimidis; 15 Mavropigi-Filo­tsairi; 16 Theopetra Cave; 17 Prodromos; 18 Otzaki Magou-la; 19 Argissa Magoula; 20 Ses­klo; 21 Achilleion; 22 Franch­thi Cave. ramikum, a purely monochrome phase, the Proto-Sesklo with developed monochrome pottery and li­mited use of painting, and the Vor-Sesklo (Pre-Ses­klo) in which painted pottery was more common than before. In this traditional scheme, the first painted pottery in Greece was conceived of as red-painted decoration, typically red or reddish or buff-coloured surfaces. Miloj.i. (1960) later argued for the existence of a Pre-Ceramic phase in Greece of chronological sig­nificance in the Balkans based on analogy with the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) of the Near East. Late, the ‘Magoulitsa sub-phase’ was added at the end of Vor-Sesklo based on the finds from Otzaki Magoula (Miloj.i.-von Zumbusch 1971; Müller 1988; 1994; Reingruber 2011; 2015). The ‘Magoulitsa phase or culture’ was defined by the use of impressed, in­cised, and finger-pinched decoration, subdivided into an earlier (‘barbotine’) and a later (‘cardium’) phase (Miloj.i.-von Zumbusch 1971.146–148; Rein-gruber et al. 2017.41–42). It was thought to be of Balkan influence (Miloj.i., Miloj.i.-von Zumbusch 1971.82ff) and allowed for correlations between the two regions (Miloj.i. 1959.10–11, 31–32) as this type of decoration was recognized since the begin­ning of the 20th century as an “independent cultu­ral phenomenon in the northern Balkans” (e.g., ‘nail-decorated horizon’; Childe 1929.75–76, 79; ‘Na­ Lily Bonga gelgeritzte’; Banner 1929; 1935.122–123; Raczky 2012.9). As the culture-history approach fell out of fashion, the tripartite chronology of Early Neolithic Thes­saly was relabelled under the more neutral divisions of Early Neolithic 1, 2, and 3 (Wijnen 1981). Later, the ‘Preceramic’ was renamed ‘Initial Neolithic’ (Per-les 2001.43, n. 8). Local regional differences in cera­mics also began to be considered within Thessaly, such as the disappearance of painted pottery by the end of the Proto-Sesklo phase at some sites in and directly around the plain of Larisa, like Sesklo and Argissa Magoula. Yet in the Vor-Sesklo period, paint­ed pottery, “at sites in or around the plain of Kar­ditsa it does not vanish, but coexists with plastic decoration” (Wijnen 1981.36). Lastly, what is significant about the relative chrono­logy of Greece as established by Miloj.i. (1949a; 1949b; 1950/51; 1959) is that his chronology was used as a template of cultural development for the whole of south-eastern Europe in the Neolithic (e.g., Star.evo in Serbia, Körös in Hungary, Cris in Roma­nia) despite some objections (e.g., Nandris 1970; Schubert 1999; 2005) (Fig. 2). For instance, by analogy with Greece, a hypothetical monochrome phase was proposed for the definition of Proto-Star­.evo phase (Srejovi. 1973) and Star.evo Ia (Laza-rovici 1979). Miloj.i.’s four-stage relative chronolo­gy for the Neolithic period was also subsequently modified in its application in other regions (e.g., Arandjelovi.-Gara.anin 1954; Grbi. 1957; Dimitri­jevi. 1969; 1974; Srejovi. 1971; Makkay 1965; 1969; 1987). Aspects related to the Impresso-style Impressed, incised, and finger-pinched decora­tion of the ‘Magoulitsa phase’ is today refer­red to in the literature of Neolithization of Eu­rope under the umbrel­la term of ‘impresso’, which encompasses all types of plastic surface decoration irrespective of the fabric, vessel shape, method of sur­face manipulation (fin­ger or tool), stylistic differences (dense vs. sparse, organized into motifs vs. random), or precise chronological correlations (Vukovi. 2013.661–666), and is cited as evidence of connectivity and mobility between vast geogra­phic areas (e.g., Adriatic, Balkans, Anatolia, North Africa, the Near East, and the Black Sea) (Çilingirog­lu 2010; 2016; Gaskevych 2010; 2011; Güldogan 2010). The term ‘impresso’ was originally used to describe pottery decorated with incisions made with point­ed tools and impressions of cockle shells (formerly classed as Cardium edulis but now classified as Ce-rastoderma edule) in the Early Neolithic period of the Adriatic; impressions of fingernails, fingertips, and finger-pinches were rarely used in this region. Conversely, in the Balkans, cockle shells were ne­ver used for impressions (Coleman 1992.254); in­stead ‘pseudo-impresso’ or ‘comb-impressed’ was used to describe impressions and incisions made with tools or fingers (Vukovi. 2013.658). The cera­mic tradition in the central Balkans also remained distinct from that of the Adriatic coastline (both style and manufacturing techniques) (Spataro 2009). The subcategory of ‘barbotine’ (barbotin) was thou­ght to be a chronological marker for the Early Neo­lithic Balkan-Anatolian complex in the Central Bal­kans (e.g., proto-Star.evo) (Vukovi. 2013.671). Bar-botine was defined as an additive decorative style in which wet clay slurry is added to create a lumpy, irregular surface, sometimes with ridges or rows in ornamental compositions (stepped, channelled, ar­caded) (Aran.elovi.-Gara.anin 1954); pseudo-bar- Early ceramic styles and technologies in the Aegean and the Balkans> retrospect and prospects botine is defined as a slurry surface and small clay granules (Vukovi. 2013.662). Several other descrip­tive terms or phrase have been applied (e.g., ‘wheat-grain’: Dimitrijevic 1974.67; Sekere. 1974.192; ‘fir branches’: Benac 1979.380; “an endless flock of birds in flight”: Vetni. 1974.130). The distinction between ‘impresso’ and ‘barbotine’ found in the lite­rature was believed to have chronological meaning, but this is no longer the case (Vukovi. 2013.660). Complicating the picture is the fact that the terms ‘impresso’ and ‘barbotine’ are used differently in Gre­ece from the rest of the Balkans. In Greece, the ‘impresso’ pottery associated with the ‘Magoulitsa phase or culture’ of the Vor-Seklo period was subdivided into an early ‘barbotine’ phase con­sisting of finger pinches and nail impressions and a later ‘cardium’ phase, in which tools were used to create the impressions, excluding the use of cockle shells (Reingruber et al. 2017.41–42). These sub-phases were based on Otzaki Magoula (Müller 1988; 1994; Reingruber 2011) but were not grounded on stratigraphic reality (Reingruber et al. 2017.42), nor does the small amount of highly curated published material add much to support to this claim (Tsitrsto­ni 2009.45). Furthermore, the ceramic sequence of the ‘Magouli­tsa phase’ as found at Otzaki was not confirmed at Sesklo, where painted pottery disappeared before the end of the period, when parts of the settlement were destroyed by fire (Andreou et al. 1996.540; Wijnen 1981.11) and perhaps followed by a hiatus during Vor-Sesklo period (Wijnen 1981). It has also been suggested that the absence of the ‘Magoulitsa phase’ at Sesklo or other sites in eastern Thessaly is not chronological, but rather geographical, as im­pressed, incised, and finger-pinched pottery is doc­umented in Thessaly both at the end of the Early Neolithic (e.g., Nessonis I, Gediki, Argissa Magoula, Otzaki Magoula) and in the beginning of the Middle Neolithic (e.g., Magoulitsa, Achilleion, Bardali, Kou­troulou Magoula). Therefore, any distribution maps of Early Neolithic sites based on Gallis’ Atlas (Gallis 1992) should be seriously questioned because they were constructed using relatively dated sites based on the presence or absence of monochrome, painted, or impresso decoration of surface sherds (Reingru­ber 2011.297). A greater degree of ceramic variability is now rec­ognized both at the intra site and regional levels (Kotsakis 1983; 2008) within the same chronologi­cal period (Gallis 1987; Coleman 1992), which sug­gests that comparative conclusions from excavation sequences presumed to be typical (e.g., as Mottier 1981 does with Otzaki) should not be taken as rep­resentative of the wider region (Andreou et al. 1996. 542). Current chronology of the Early Neolithic pe­riod in Greece The main weakness in Miloj.i.’s relative chronology was its complete lack of absolute dates, which were also absent from the rest of south-eastern Europe. Current absolute dates from Thessaly and Macedo­nia date the Early Neolithic period to c. 6500–5900 BC (Reingruber et al. 2017; Tsirtsoni 2016; Mania-tis 2014; Perles et al. 2013; Lespez et al. 2013; Dou­ka et al. 2017; Perles 2001.109–110), although some sites may begin as early as c. 6600 BC. These dates are comparable to new data from western Turkey (Anatolia). Current absolute dating of the Pre-Ceramic phase prevents its definition of being contemporary with the PPN Pre-pottery Neolithic of the Near East of Cy­prus (Reingruber 2015.153–154). This phase also remains to be securely documented anywhere in Greece, as its definition was primarily based on small areas of exposure in thin strata just above bedrock, or sterile soil and often with ‘intrusive’ sherds or other ceramic material such as figurines (Nandris 1970.196–201; Reingruber 2008; 2011; 2015; Rein-gruber, Thissen 2009; Bloedow 1992–1993; Nowi­cki 2014.48–60). Similarly, neither a Pre-Ceramic nor an Early Mono­chrome (ger. Frühkeramikum) phase is found else­where in areas to the north (e.g., Republic of North­ern Macedonia: Stojanovski et al. 2014; Naumov 2009.4); Albania (e.g., Vlush, Konispol Cave: perso­nal comm.; Adoni 2018); Bulgaria (e.g., Krainitsi I, Koprivets I and Polyanitsa-platato I: Krauß et al. 2014.52; Stefanova 1996; Krauß 2006.161–162; 2008.119–121; 2011); and probably Hungary and Romania (Biagi, Spataro 2005). The existence of an Early Monochrome (Frühkerami­kum) phase can also be questioned on the same con­tentious criteria as the Pre-ceramic deposits (e.g., li­mited exposure, thin deposits, small sample). Given the supposed rarity of early painted pottery in the Vor-Sesklo phase in general, and the fact that this early painted decoration was often applied only on a small part of the vessel (e.g., near rims), it cannot be convincingly argued that painted pottery was not Lily Bonga in use. A more accurate statement would be that painted pottery was not found in the lowest levels of small horizontal exposure, often in secondary re­fuse pits. Yet the use of painted pottery cannot be ruled out due to these small sample sizes and con­texts (e.g., in pits). Giving these individual site phases/levels chronolo­gical meaning beyond the site level by making them into regional phases of long temporal duration may be an artificial construction by modern archaeolo­gists. For instance, Karen D. Vitelli (1993b.46, n. 18) has pointed out how excavation methodology affects the data; without the sherds recovered from siev­ing, the earliest levels at the Franchthi Cave were monochrome and the ceramic development appear­ed to conform to the Thessalian sequence, but when she added the sherds recovered from sieving, this development was invalidated. In contrast to the ex­cavation procedures of the Franchthi Cave, where dry and wet sieving were employed, the material from Sesklo was not even dry sieved (Wijnen 1981. 17), which may have impacted its interpretation. New evidence from Greek Macedonia New data from Northern Greece highlights the need to carefully integrate excavation stratigraphy with ceramics and absolute dates, as well as identify re­gional differences with the same period. For instance at Mavropigi-Filotsairi in Western Macedonia, the ex­cavators identified three phases belonging to the Early Neolithic period; these phases seem supported by absolute date. These phases were primarily based on the stratigraphy of a central feature of the site (the central origma), which was interpreted as a semi-subterranean house that eventually became a ground-level structure (Karamitrou-Mentessidi et al. 2016.51–53). On its own, a simple presentation of the stratigraphy and ceramics from the central origma would also ap­pear to follow the Thessalian sequence, with the lowest levels above sterile soil devoid of ceramics but containing other cultural remains, followed by thin levels with monochrome pottery, and later le­vels that included painted, impressed, and incised pottery (Bonga 2017). Yet upon close inspection of the sherds (e.g., a few joins between Phase I and the first passes of Phase II and the nature of the sherds themselves: small, abraded, reused, use of red-slip), the lack of complete vessels, and the rarity of com­plete profiles suggests that these pieces were dis­carded material that may or may not date to one temporal moment. Similar depositional practices were suggested at the Franchthi Cave, where most deposits were determined to be secondary and sug­gestive of periodic cleaning of areas rather than containing material from a specific activity (Vitelli 1993b.31). When other deposits at Mavropigi-Filotsairi are taken into account, other complications arise. The use of red-painted pottery on a white slip made of a calca­reous material, though rare, is documented in the Vor-Sesklo phase both at Paliambela (Saridaki et al. 2019) and at Mavropigi-Filotsairi (Bonga 2017.378); this type of decoration is characteristic of the Middle Neolithic in Thessaly. The distinction between the use of painted decoration on a slip, white slip, or unburnished surface may be related to regional dif­ferences and/or chronological ones.1 For example, white-on-red painted pottery in the traditional rel­ative chronology was characteristic of the Middle Neolithic in Thessaly. Yet this type of decoration in the Vor-Sesklo period appears in Central Macedonia at Nea Nikomedia (Yiouni 1996), Axos A (Chrysosto-mou 1996), and Yiannitsa B (Chrysostomou 1997), together with impresso. These sites date to c. 6300/ 6200 BC (Maniatis 2014.Fig. 2; Maniatis et al. 2015. Fig. 4). White-on-red painted pottery from Mavropigi-Filotsa­iri was found in pit 106 and assigned to Phase II by the excavators. The precise date of the appearance of this type of pottery is unclear as the pit was used over time, but the absolute date c. 6200 BC based on charred seeds (OxA-31863, 6222±83 BC) may be an indicator. The central orgima in Phase II did not contain white-painted pottery. What is interesting at Mavropigi-Filotsairi is the fact that the technology (red slip, white paint) to produce white-on-red deco­ration was known since the Proto-Sesklo phase, as the characteristic pottery of Mavropigi-Filotsairi in­cludes polychrome-painted pottery consisting of broad areas of motifs painted in red on a tan back­ 1 Creating a distinction on the use of slips in general and as a background for painted pottery requires more investigation thanis possible based on small assemblages or applying one site (e.g., Sesklo) as a paradigm, even within a region. While a limited use of slips is documented at Sesklo in all phases and areas of the settlement, slips of various composition were used at sites in the plain of Larisa (e.g., Argissa, Otzaki, Soufli, and Melissochori Magoula) and slips were regularly used at Achilleion (Dimoula 2017. 211, 213, 215). A similar variability in the use of slips is seen in Central Macedonia at Revenia, where slips were rare while at Pa-laiambela slips were common, including the use of white slip (calcareous material) (Saridaki et al. 2019). Early ceramic styles and technologies in the Aegean and the Balkans> retrospect and prospects ground and outlined in white paint (Fig. 3). Polychrome and red-pained pottery was prefer­red over white-on-red. The impressed, incised, and finger-pinched pottery at Mav­ropigi-Filotsairi dates 100–200 years earlier than that of ‘Ma-goulitsa phase’ c. 6400/6300 BC (e.g., pit A, DEM-1680; west­ern origma DEM-2697/MAMS­21104; burial 3, in the central origma, OxA-V02365-54/S-EVA 10096). Many different types of surface treatments were used (Fig. 4) and this type of decoration was used alongside monochrome and painted pottery. Similarly, while few in number within a small area and sample size, decorated pot­tery consisting of both red-painted and finger-pinch­ed decoration was documented in two pits (629, 630) with early dates at Paliambela (Papadakou 2011; Papadakou et al. 2015).2 These sites show the development of decorated pottery at some sites in Central and Macedonia does not match the tradi­tional Thessalian sequence in terms of development or date. Recent re-evaluations of the Franchthi Cave in the Argolid (Peloponnese) At the Franchthi Cave, Vitelli (1993a.37) defined de­posits below pottery-bearing levels as Ceramic Phase Zero and the Ceramic Interphase 0/1 as units in each sequence located between lower deposits that con­tained no pottery (FCP 0) and upper deposits that contained all of the Franchthi Ceramic Phase 1 va­rieties. Ceramic Phase Zero is called Initial Neolithic by other scholars who conducted secondary research, but not primary analysis of the ceramic assemblage itself (e.g., Perles 2001; Perles et al. 2013; Reingru­ber, Thissen 2009; 2016). An examination of the absolute dates and contexts from the Franchthi Cave revealed the Final Mesoli­thic layers (Franchthi Lithic Phase X) overlap with the dates for Initial Neolithic layers (c. 6700–6400 BC; Reingruber, Thissen 2016; Perles et al. 2013), and this was followed by a gap in dates of at least 500 years (up to 700 years; Reingruber, Thissen 2009.758) when the cave was re-occupied around or after 5900 BC based on these dates and ceramic pa­rallels.3 These gaps were perceptible in the ceramics, but were dismissed by Vitelli (1993b.26).4 It is also worth noting that the Franchthi Cave is per­haps better described as rock shelter or abri with a small open-air site adjacent (Paralia). It is not a dark, damp, cavernous cave like those used in later peri­ods of the Neolithic (e.g., Skoteino, Alepotrypa, Ayia Triada); nor is it an open-air settlement, and these differences of context must be taken into account. The Franchthi Cave is also located on the coast, un­ 2 The interpretive situation at Palaimbela is based on absolute dates from burned animal bones (unspecified species) found in two Early Neolithic pits (629, 631) that have been interpreted as semi-subterranean pit-dwellings (Maniatis et al. 2015.151). Pit 629 yielded one date (DEM-2462/MAMS-12513) of c. 6400–6200 BC (another date DEM-2461/MAMS-12512) is listed as coming from over rather than within the pit itself). Pit 629 was 2.48 x 2.10m in size (Maniatis et al. 2015.151) and contained 8.12 kilograms of pottery, consisting of 439 sherds, only one of which was red-painted without the use of a white slip (Papadakou 2011.93). Pit 629 does not seem to be a totally closed deposit, however, as historical pit 606 cuts into its southern part and because the two dates (DEM-2464/MAMS-12515, DEM-2465/MAMS12516) from pit 627 antedate pit 629, even though pit 629 is depicted on the plan (Maniatis et al. 2015.Fig. 1; Papadakou 2011.237, Fig. 2) as later than pit 627 (pit 627 is also cut into by historical pit 607 in the northern part). Pit 630 yielded three dates (DEM-2458/MAMS-12509, DEM-2459/MAMS12510, DEM-2460/ MAMS12511) falling around 6600–6400 BC (Maniatis et al. 2015.Fig. 1). The pit was approx. 1.7 x 1.07m in size and contained 1.32 kilos of pottery, consisting of 187 sherds, six of which were decorated with finger and nail pinching (Papadakou 2011.90). 3 Other gaps in the stratigraphy are also confirmed by the absolute dates, such as before Franchthi Ceramic Phase 4 (c. 5200 BC) in the beginning of the Late Neolithic (Reingruber 2008.23, Tab. 1.6; 2017; Reingruber, Thissen 2016). 4 Similar reevaluations of key Neolithic sites in later periods throughout Greece (e.g., Skoteini, Sarakenos, Cyclops, and Franchthi Caves, Dikili Tash, Sitagroi, and Servia) have also demonstrated that previous observations about the continuity of stratigraphy and ceramics cannot be substantiated (Coleman 2011.17–19; Coleman, Facorellis 2018; Nowicki 2014; Tsitrsoni 2016; 2017; Reingruber, Thissen 2009). Lily Bonga Fig. 4. Early Neolithic impressed, incised, and finger-pinched pottery from Phase II in the central origma at Mavropigi-Filotsairi. like most caves, and this location (also next to fresh­water springs) is probably related to the function of the cave. Yet like other caves in Greece, it was ne­ver used for permanent habitation but rather for short stays for various reasons (e.g., illness, ritual, herding, and refuge from inclement weather). These facts change how Franchthi Cave was tradi­tionally interpreted in terms not only of its date, use, and duration, but also affect the interpretation of the artefacts, such as the ceramics. For instance, it was interpreted that only a limited amount of pot­tery (c. 12 or 13 pots a year) was produced (Vitelli 1993b.210) by female specialists, and was thus high­ly valuable and used in symbolic rituals rather than for daily food-related activities (e.g., storage, proces­sing, cooking) (Vitelli 1993a.254–255; 1999.188, 191–192, 196). These hypotheses were turned into theory by a series of archaeometric studies of sites in Thessaly (e.g., Wijnen 1981; Bjork 1995; Gardner 1978) and Central Macedonia (e.g., Yiouni 1996), and subsequently accepted as fact (e.g., Perles 2009). Some of these statements, however, are not applica­ble to other sites because of the dissonance between them either due to differences in dating or type of site (cave vs. open air settlement). For instance, a higher rate of vessel production was proposed at Nea Nikomedia (c. 25 to 90 per year) using a diffe­rent methodology (Yiouni 2004.4; 1996.186), which is more in line with the quantity of ceramic produc­tion and use at open-air Early Neolithic sites (Yiouni 2004.10, nn. 38, 39). Similarly, the technological simplicity (e.g., use of temper, surface treatment, method of firing) of past interpretations must be questioned as new evidence from the early Middle Neolithic period (e.g., Magoula Imvrou Pigadi (Kypa­rissi-Apostolika 2012), Magoula Rizava (Krahtopou­lou et al. 2018), and Kouphovouno (Ballut et al. 2017) suggests that kiln use was well established and probably began in the Early Neolithic period. Crete: traditional chronology and terminology Crete is often left out discussions of Neolithic Greece in general due to its peculiar traditional chronology and terminology. The relative chronology was almost exclusively defined in a small area within the Cen­tral Court of the Palace of Minos at Knossos excavat­ed in the late 1950s and early 1960s (Evans 1964), and by another team in 1997 (Efstratiou et al. 2013); other areas were excavated or explored in soundings and used to fill-in or check the Central Court se­quence. The chronology of Knossos was established by Fur­ness (1953) and built upon by John D. Evans (1964). This relative sequence used its own periodization terminology that did not match that of mainland Greece (or Anatolia), despite the existence of abso­lute dates from Evan’s excavations since the late 1950s to help do so (nor did his subsequent experi­ence in the Cyclades at Saliagos change his views). As a result, the levels and material labelled as Early Early ceramic styles and technologies in the Aegean and the Balkans> retrospect and prospects Neolithic in fact correspond with the Early, Middle, and Late Neolithic periods on the mainland in terms of absolute dates (Evans 1964). The lowest level at Knossos was labelled ‘Aceramic’ as a parallel to the Near East and mainland Greece. The ceramics used to create the relative chronology (Furness 1953; Evans 1964; Tomkins 2007) was based primarily on deco­rated sherds, as undiagonstic and undecorated sherds were discarded. Much of the material was also iden­tified as secondary refuse from exterior spaces or dumped from levelling the surface of the site. The ce­ramics from 1997 excavation remain unpublished. The incongruous terminology and periodization was partially rectified by Peter D. Tomkins (2007.12; 2008), who tried to correlate the pottery groups from Knossos “on the basis of imports, exports, sty­listic parallels and, wherever possible, radiocarbon dates to other Neolithic assemblages from else­where in Crete” to be more in line with dates and assemblages from mainland Greece, the Aegean is­lands and the Anatolian-Aegean coast. It should be noted that Tomkins himself did not apply his chro­nology and phases in his doctoral dissertation (Tom-kins 2001) or any of his publications before 2007 (Tomkins, Day 2001; Tomkins et al. 2004), and that any articles that refer to these phases are outdated. Similarly, the Early Neolithic Houses of Sir Arthur Evans (Evans 1921) in the Central Court in fact real­ly date to the Early Minoan period. Furthermore, this new phasing and dating has not been universally adopted. Even as a co-editor of the volume on Neolithic Crete, which includes Tomkins’ (2008) detailing of the historiography of ceramic stu­dies at Knossos and the reasoning for his (2007) changes, few of the articles in the volume actually adopted his changes; others adhered to the old chro­nology (e.g., Galanidou, Manteli 2008, Strasser 2008; and the other co-editor, Isaakidou 2008) or followed their own systems (e.g., Todaro, Di Tonto 2008, Nowicki 2008). This failure of acceptance by other scholars is perhaps in part due to the fact that Tomkins (2007) did not publish any new material and even reused Evan’s 1964 illustrations. Lastly, some of the parallels made by Tomkins (2007) are not all correctly dated, a fact which he may address in the future, as indicated in a footnote in which the Neolithic phase-names are changed and/or combi­ned, and different absolute dates given but without further explanation (Tomkins 2018.129, n. 1).5 The Early Neolithic on Crete revised: Knossos central court strata X, IX and levels 38, 39 The reevaluation of absolute dates, stratigraphy, and ceramics at Knossos mirrors that of the Franchthi Cave. First, what initially appeared to be early dates of c. 7000 BC for Stratum X (Reingruber 2015.151; Reingruber, Thissen 2016b) are likely mistaken be­cause the first occupation of Knossos should date closer to 6610 BC (Reingruber, Thissen 2009.758– 760; Douka et al. 2017), which is in accordance with dates from site both the southern Aegean (e.g., Franchthi, Çukuriçi Höyük, and Ulucak) and north­ern Greece (e.g., Paliambela, Mavropigi-Filotsairi), and integrates Knossos into the earliest stage of the Early Neolithic in the wider Aegean.6 Second, there are neither dates for Stratum IX, which was previously believed to date to the Early Neolithic period, nor dates from the Middle Neolithic period. The next group of absolute dates from Knos­sos occur after 5300 BC (Reingruber, Thissen 2016; Douka et al. 2017.315) “an estimate that is not in conflict with the material culture of the surroun­ding areas”, in terms of shapes and ornaments, par­ticularly the Aegean islands (e.g., Tigani on Samos, Agia Gala on Chios, Akrotiri on Santorini) and west­ern Anatolia (Reingruber, Thissen 2009.760–761).7 5 On numerous occasions Tomkins promises future clarification of such statements in publications which remain to appear, includ­ing (2008.27) a “completed re-evaluation of spatial (and thus demographic) development at Knossos (Tomkins in prep. with no further information)” and full publication “of Neolithic material from the British School excavations (e.g., ceramics, chipped stone, ground stone axes, faunal remains)” using with new chronology (e.g., Tomkins, in preparation as “Neolithic Knossos: Early, Middle and Late Ceramics and Stratigraphy” and “Neolithic Knossos: Final Neolithic I-IV Ceramics and Stratigraphy”). (Tomkins 2007.12). A “new typology of EN forms” to be presented elsewhere (Tomkins et al. 2004.57 with no further informa­tion) and a “new set of RC dates from Knossos in preparation (personal communication Peter Tomkins, 30 May 2015)” (Rein­gruber 2015.151) also awaits publication. 6 The Theopetra Cave could be another similar case in which early Neolithic absolute dates are followed by a gap of occupation fol­lowed by reuse of the cave within the middle of the Early Neolithic period) and in which the Mesolithic-Neolithic is not a con­tiguous transition, although the cave stratigraphy is known to be disturbed by both natural and anthropogenic processes and full publication of the stratigraphy and pottery is not yet available (Kyparissi-Apostolika 2000a; 2000b;2012; Facorellis, Maniatis 2000; Facorellis et al. 2001). 7 Recent re-excavation of the Pelekita Cave near Katos Zakros, Crete as also yielded similar Late Neolithic pottery, which according to Knossos would be dated to the Early and Middle Neolithic based on Tomkins’ (2007) chronology (Bonga 2019). Lily Bonga Due to the fact that Knossos was abandoned for 1000–1500 years (Douka et al. 2017.317; Reingru­ber et al. 2017.150; Reingruber 2015.154), conti­nuing to use the 7000 BC date (or limit?) for Stra­tum X (e.g., 7000–6600 BC: Tomkins 2007; 7000– 6500/6400 BC: Tomkins 2014; 7000–6500: Tom-kins 2018; 7030–6780 BC: Facorellis, Maniatis 2013.199) is in error (Reingruber, Thissen 2016), as is maintaining that “from the IN [Initial Neoli­thic] onwards habitation at Knossos seems to have been continuous and permanent” with “no obvious breaks in the stratigraphical and cultural sequen­ces” (Tomkins 2008.21, 30; Tomkins 2007.9, 21; following Evans 1968.275). Once again, “the rela­tive chronological system of Knossos has to be re­evaluated in a general Aegean perspective” (Rein­gruber, Thissen 2016). Regarding the often discussed nature of the lowest levels (Stratum X, Levels 38 and 39) at Knossos (es­pecially Reingruber 2011; 2015; Reingruber, This-sen 2009; 2016; Evans 1964; 1971; Efstratiou et al. 2013; Tomkins 2007; Winder 1991; Bloedow 1991; Nowicki 2014), it seems increasingly unlikely that these levels represent an ‘Aceramic’ phase, as mud-brick and ceramic figurines were found in these le­vels and based on analogies with sites on the main­land formerly considered to as Aceramic or Pre-cera­mic pre-ceramic as based on parallels with the PPN Pre-pottery period of the Near East or Cyprus. Conclusion Absolute dates from Western and Central Macedonia have pushed back the beginning of ‘impresso’ and painted pottery. In Southern Greece new dates on old samples and the application of Bayesian statis­tical analysis have demonstrated the lack of Early Neolithic occupation at both the Franchthi Cave and Knossos, aside from brief visitations at the very be­ginning of the period. Gaps in occupation at sites are also increasingly being recognized based on these refined dates, re-examination of stratigraphy, and ceramic analysis. Current studies of early ceramics are also beginning to overturn the old simplistic narratives of decora­tive and technological evolution. It is now demon­strated that early ceramics were a fully developed technology, although not standardized as in later pe­riods of the Neolithic (e.g., Dimoula 2017; Pentede­ka, Dimoula 2009). More complex and nuanced ap­proaches to understanding depositional processes and cultural choice are necessary in approaching the dating and nature of Early Neolithic Greece as a so­cially embedded process located in a particular place and time within a certain social space (Kotsakis 2003). The recent work on re-evaluating absolute dates through Bayesian statistical analysis and modelling is a useful way to move forward on refining chrono­logies at the region level and enables the accurate comparison of sites across wider geographical re­gions, within and outside of modern Greece. By fo­cusing on smaller regions, perhaps patterns within these smaller areas can be better understood, with the individual site stratigraphy more accurately cor­related with contemporaneous neighbouring sites. Of course, the excavation of broader areas of hori­zontal exposure of early sites and larger sample si­zes are also necessary before constructing arguments or plugging-in data to fit preconceived expectations. Site and regional schemes, however, must take cau­tion to not falsely be integrated into the wider world of Neolithic Greece (e.g., Franchthi Cave) or isolated from it (e.g., Knossos and Crete). 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This type of ceramics had a wide distribution and was made uniformly, at least concerning vessel capa­cities and basic decoration patterns, probably reflecting the birch bark vessel features. We recognize this phenomenon as key to understand how the process of ceramic production emerged in the zone of Russian boreal forest. KEY WORDS – Early Neolithic; hunter-gatherer-fishers; pottery; East European Plain Northern part Keramika tipa Kargopol – prva lon;enina na severnem delu Vzhodnoevropskega ni/avja IZVLE.EK – Manj.a skupina zgodnje keramike je bila odkrita med leti 1930 in 1990, vendar so jo v preteklosti podcenjevali kot vir podatkov, ki ka.e na neposreden izvor kerami.ne proizvodnje na ob-mo.ju borealnih gozdov ok. 5500–5000 pr. n. .t. Keramika tipa Kargopol ka.e zelo arhai.ne tehno­lo.ke zna.ilnosti: raven rob ustja z okroglimi vbodi pod ustjem in lon.arsko maso z dodanim pes­kom. Keramika tega tipa je bila raz.irjena na ve.jem obmo.ju in je izdelana enovito, vsaj kar se ti.e prostornine posod in osnovnih okrasnih motivov, ki verjetno posnemajo videz posod iz brezovega lubja. Pojav te lon.enine razumemo kot klju.en pri razumevanju na.inov, kako se je kerami.na pro-izvodnja pojavila na obmo.ju ruskih borealnih gozdov. KLJU.NE BESEDE – zgodnji neolitik; lovci – nabiralci – ribi.i; lon.enina; severni del Vzhodnoevrop­skega ni.avja Introduction In this paper we have made an attempt to analyse by length, which seems to be the most outstanding a small group of Neolithic ceramics which was not lenght for Russian Stone Age (Neolithic) ceramics, the focus of previous studies in Russian papers con-based on current knowledge. We are waiting to ob-cerning the northern part of the East European Plain, tain the 14C dating results for organic residues on but was only sporadically mentioned. According to the inner sides of ceramic fragments in the near our new study of the morphology and technology of future, which would allow us to check the argu-these type of ceramics, we assume that these materi-ments proposed in this work and provide more firm als reflect the early, initial phase of ceramic produc-proof of our ideas. tion in the vast territory stretching from the Onega Lake to the west to the Pechora River downstream The northern part of the East European Plain has an to the east, thus covering a zone of around 1000km enormous area (nearly 1 400 000km2), and consists DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.11 The Kargopol type ceramics – the first pottery of the northern part of the East European Plain| of several large administrative units of Russian Fe­deration (Fig. 1): the Republic of Karelia, the Mur­mansk, Arkhangelsk and Vologda Regions, the Re­public of Komi and the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous district. Obviously, archaeological surveys have only been made locally here, and while a long series of large material collections obtained in the 20th cen­tury is available in the various capital cities’ local museums, most of these have still not been fully studied. This territory was populated immediately after the end of the last glaciation (Subetto et al. 2002). Most of the related sites were situated within lake depressions, and have been found to contain multi-layer settlement materials of different epochs, sometimes not clearly stratified or even totally mixed in sandy sediments. This settlement pattern is typi­cal for the whole boreal forest zone of the East Eu­ropean Plain in prehistory, populated by hunter-ga­therer-fishers, living in the conditions of a moderate continental climate (Oshibkina 2003). Our particular interest in the Early Neolithic history of this area rose after the new 14C dating results ob­tained for the burials at the Kubenino site (Arkhan­gelsk region), which were previously dated to the 4th millennium BC. However, in the course of recent collaboration with Finnish colleagues, these burials were dated to c. 5000 BC (Ahola et al. in press). That is why we started to ponder which types of ceram­ics might have existed there at such an early period, at the hypothesized border between the Final Meso­lithic and Early Neolithic, the last being distingui­shed by the presence of pottery while the whole toolkit seeming­ly stayed the same (Gerasimov, Kriiska 2018.307). Aleksandr Zhulnikov (Republic of Karelia, Petrozavodsk) (pers. comm., March 2017) gave us the first data about the special and rare sherds of the so-called Kar­gopol type, and we started to ex­plore its historiography deeper. These ceramics were first docu­mented by Aleksandr Brussov during his excavations of the Ka­ravaikha site (Vologda Region) in the early 1950s (Brussov 1961). Some other researchers have al­so found the same pottery frag­ments, but attributed them to the Bronze Age or even Iron Age (Foss 1952; Burov 1967). Com­ing after Brussov, in a series of recent studies the Kargopol type ceramics were described more accura­tely by their morphology and technology, but again no one declared their innovative and archaic prove­nance, recognizing them only as a synchronous va­riant of Pitted Ware or Pit-Comb Ware – the huge conglomerate of ceramic types spread along the whole territory of the East European Plain forest zone (Lobanova 1997; Ivanischeva 2014). Though in some studies the Kargopol type ceramics from the territory of the Republic of Komi were recognized as one of the earliest ceramic types there (Kosinskaya 1997; Karmanov, Volokitin 2004). To date we have made a technological analysis of 22 ceramic fragments from the Karavaikha site, and additionally studied the morphology of c. 30 frag­ments from the same site and several neighbouring ones, which are kept in the State Historical Museum (Moscow) collections. It is still not possible to count the total number of fragments based on the litera­ture, and instead we can only produce approximate figures. According to Nadezhda Lobanova, 400 frag­ments are known for the whole Karelian territory (Lobanova 1997.86). For each settlement, it doesn’t matter in which region it was situated, the number of the Kargopol type sherds can vary from one to se­veral dozen (Ivanischeva 2014). It seems that the scale of production for these vessels was much smal­ler than that seen with the main younger Neolithic ceramic types in Northern Russia, like the Pitted Ware, Pit-Comb and Comb-Pit Ware. Ekaterina Kashina, Nataliya Yu. Petrova It should be noted than no one has yet discussed whether this type of ceramics could have been the oldest pottery in the territory of the northern part of the East European Plain. The first reason why no one has discussed this is obviously the multi-layered character of this pottery’s find contexts: usually it has been found mixed with younger finds of Pitted and Pit-Comb Ware, or even younger, depending on the site. Only at the Karavaikha site (Arkhangelsk re­gion) and at the group of Karelian sites in the Vodlo-zero microregion, has it been possible to detect it in the lowest part of the cultural layers, but again mixed with younger ceramic types (Brussov 1961; Kos­menko 1992.122). Another reason is the lack of technological studies for this type of pottery: most descriptions are based on superficial inspections by researchers who are not familiar with the methodo­logy of archaeological ceramic studies (Kosinskaya 1997; Lobanova 1997; Ivanischeva 2014). That is why we applied this approach here, based on me­thods developed in the USSR and later in Russia by Aleksandr A. Bobrinsky and Yuri B. Tsetlin (Bobrin-sky 1978; 1999; Tsetlin 2017). Technological analysis of the Kargopol’ type pottery After looking through the State Historical Museum collections (based on excavations by Brussov of Ka­ravaikha and Kubenino in 1952 and 1961 and by Maria Foss of the site in the mouth of the Olga Ri­ver), we obtained 22 fragments of the Kargopol type pottery for further analysis. Microscopic trasologi-cal analysis of the surface and of cross-sections of ceramic samples at all stages of pottery technology was carried out using the method devised by Bob-rinsky (Bobrinsky 1978; 1999), with a binocular mi­croscope MBS-10, stereo-microscope Carl Zeiss 2000­C and metallographic microscope Olympus MX 51. A study of raw materials and pottery paste, methods of construction, vessel surface treatment, and firing was performed (Fig. 1). Samples of modern clay from sites Karavaikha III and IV were taken to explore the natural mineral inclusions. These samples togeth­er with ancient ones were re-fired in a muffle fur­nace under identical conditions (850°C), which al­lowed us to determine the relative degree of clay ferrugination and detect evidence of organic solu­tion as one of the paste components. Vessel diameters vary from 10 to 36cm with 0.3– 0.7cm thick walls, which agrees with Lobanova’s mea­surements of Karelian fragments (Lobanova 1997). In four cases a crust was detected on the inner sides of four relatively large vessels, having a diameter from 23 to 35cm. All rims are straight and decorat­ed in a particular way. It seems that the vessel bod­ies were not decorated at all, but in order to avoid mistakes in Early Neolithic pottery detection (as Ka­ravaikha is in fact a multilayer site), we did not study the undecorated walls, concentrating only on rim fragments. Thus we have absolutely no relevant data on the Kargopol type vessel bottoms. Medium-fer­ruginous clay with the average quantity of mineral inclusions was used, with visible plant inclusions as imprints of 0.7–0.8mm in length, pointing to the use of silt clay as a raw material (Vasilieva 2011). The deliberately added inclusions are represented by non-rounded smooth sand (units or conglomerates) and by the organic solution of unknown origin (the amorphous or filamentary cavities) (Fig. 1.1–2). The slab construction is evident, with slabs measuring 2–3cm length; then vessels were paddled, as the slabs had a rather thin cross-section (Fig. 1.3–4). The surface treatment of the vessels was obviously made by fingers and some firm tool, probably made of bone, which made the sand particles glossy on the outer surface. The lightness of the outer layers of clay paste, detected not deeper than 1mm, could witness the short stay at the heating temperature (at least 650°C), and the sharp colour difference be­tween outer and inner layers indicates fast cooling. The Kargopol type of vessel decoration is simple and consists of only two motifs: a row of pierced round holes made before firing, and a row of short incisions at one or both rim edges. Pierced holes were made from the outer side at 0.3–0.9cm below the rim edge, and the spaces between them are from 0.5 to 1.6cm. Two kinds of holes were distinguished according to their diameter: small (1.5–2mm) and large (3–4mm). Short incisions, usually made on both sides of the rim edge, can be vertical or slight­ly inclined to the left or right. No correlation be­tween hole sizes and incisions were detected. Such a composition is recognized as a ‘proto-décor’, reflec­ting the raw, initial stage of the potters’ knowledge about methods of vessel decoration (Tsetlin 2002). The pierced holes were inherent to ceramic vessels over a huge territory at the initial stage of pottery production all over the world, and researchers give different explanations of their purpose, e.g., aesthe­tic, to hang the vessel, to attach a lid, or technolo­gical traces in the case of a wicker mould used for vessel modelling. We detected neither traces of me­chanical hole damage, nor wicker mould traces, that The Kargopol type ceramics – the first pottery of the northern part of the East European Plain| is why we propose the following explanation of the Kargopol type vessel decoration. Most likely an imitation of organic material contai­ners (e.g., the birch bark vessels) took place, where the edge was strengthened by sewing a narrow band over the container’s edge (Tsetlin 2002). In collec­tions at the State Historical Museum there is a birch bark container fragment from the Middle Trans-Urals settlement Gorbunovo, dated to the Early Bronze Age, 3rd millennium BC (Kashina, Chairkina 2012), where those traces of sewing are clearly visible, re­miniscent of holes and incisions in the Kargopol type ceramics (Fig. 2.1–2). According to ethnographic data on traditional North Eurasian and North American communities, making birch bark items was a typical female handicraft, being technically very close to sewing. The making of birch bark containers in­cluded sewing, and those items were always among women’s personal belongings even after getting mar­ried or divorced (Chernetsov 1964; Croft, Mathewes 2013). A number of researchers maintain that the making of hunter-gatherer pottery was a predomi­nantly female handicraft, and we completely agree with them (Tsetlin 1998; Zhulnikov 2006). Accor­dingly, Stone Age birch bark handicraft and pottery production were very close to each other, and both birch bark containers and the Kargopol type vessels (as we reconstruct moderate volumes for some of them) could have been simply taken from one site to another, and this is how these ceramics may have travelled considerable distances. As a result of our study, we have some evidence that the Kargopol type ceramics could have been the ear­liest pottery in the territory of the northern part of the East European Plain: . simple pottery paste recipes, the minimal delibe­ rate sand admixture; . simple decoration, the so-called ‘proto-décor’ stage. We also have preliminary proof which enables us to speak not only of the abstract ‘genetic ties’ between the Kargopol type ceramics and the Sperrings, the Pitted Ware, and the Pit-Comb Ware, dispersed over the northern part of the East European Plain. We re­cognize the similarity of their recipes, as we con­cluded after analysing the narrow random series of Karavaikha site ceramic fragments which belong to all three mentioned groups. Finally, we can make an assumption that according to its technological featu­res the Kargopol type ceramics could have been older than other ceramic types on this list, and per­haps even given rise to them. Morphological analysis of the Kargopol type pottery Despite the rarity of these type of ceramics, their fragmentation, and absence of clear archaeological settlement/burial contexts, it has several clear mor­phological traits which help to separate it from the whole ceramic assemblage at multi-layered sites: a straight rim, pierced holes in a horizontal row, and incisions along the rim edges. Observing the data concerning our museum materials, other museum collections and publications, we found multiple va­riations of Kargopol pottery decoration besides the basic elements of holes and incisions (for this finding we are grateful to Aleksandr Zhulnikov and Ekateri­na Dubovtseva for their valuable data and photos of the Arkhangelsk and Syktyvkar museum materials). Four variants of the Kargopol type ceramics were di­stinguished (Fig. 3), as follows. . Variant 1. Vessel fragments have only the basic de­coration elements – pierced holes in a horizontal Ekaterina Kashina, Nataliya Yu. Petrova row and incisions along the rim edges. This variant is widely spread over the territory of the northern part of the East European Plain, from the Onega Lake Eastern shore area to the Pechora River downstream. The amount of fragments at each site differed from one piece to several dozen (Fig. 4.1–6); . Variant 2. Besides the basic elements, a row of shallow rounded pins was made on the rim. How­ever, only two such fragments are known so far, at the sites Vodla V and Yavronga I (Fig. 4.7); . Variant 3. Besides the basic elements, shallow rounded pins can also be placed between each basic hole, in a number from one to four pins. Only six such fragments are known date, from the at sites Yerpin Pudas I, Karavaikha, Vshivaya Tonya and Yavronga I (3 pieces) (Fig. 4.8–10). . Variant 4. Besides the basic elements, multiple ele­ments and motifs made using different kinds of stamps have also been found. This variant has been discovered at many sites over a wide area. The total number of fragments is not known, but it seems to be quite numerous, especially in the Republics of Ka­relia and Komi (Fig. 5.1–4). In two cases a mixture of variants occurred: the Ku-benino site fragment combined variants 3 and 4, the Yavronga I site fragment combined variants 2 and 3 (Fig. 5.5–6). There are also some distribution features. At the Ka­relian sites with the well represented variant 4 no basic variant 1 sherds were detected, according to Lobanova’s data, except at only one site, Vodla V, where the variant 1 coexists with variants 2 and 4. On the other hand, at the sites to the east from the Kubenino settlement to the Pechora River basin both variants 1 and 4 coexist at all sites (Lobanova 1997; Kosinskaya 1997.168–169). We still have not explored some other archaeological site collections of the huge Arkhangelsk region and the Republic of Komi, which have been mentioned in passing in the literature (Ivanischeva 2014). More­over, some similar materials could be detected in the multi-layered site collections of Eastern Finland, in the Kainuu area, situated very close to the western­most point with Kargopol type ware – at the Chera­nga III site in Karelia (Lobanova 1997.87). Discussion A preliminary overview of the Kargopol type ways of distribution and change could be explained as fol­lows: the very first vessels (variant 1) emerged in the Onega River basin area (Kubenino and the neigh-bouring sites). Then this tradition moved further both to the west (to Karelia) and to the east – pro­bably up to the Pechora River basin. Later, the pro­cess of decoration complexity was triggered, causing the emergence of other variants (2 and 3) right in the initial zone. The flourishing of the most sophisticated and probably most numerous vari­ant 4 could have appeared la­ter, but in broader area like Ka­relia (west) and Komi (east). In the decoration patterns inher­ent to variant 4, the features of later ceramic types of the Neo­lithic epoch can already be ob­served (Kosinskaya 1997; Ger­man 2002). The Kargopol type ceramics were disseminated over a sur­prisingly huge territory, around 1000km in length (Fig. 3). We suppose that the tradition of making this pottery moved step by step from one lake depres­sion to another, thus forming segments not longer than 200 to 300km. The distribution of The Kargopol type ceramics – the first pottery of the northern part of the East European Plain| these vessels probably happened not only by matri­monial ties, but also by the vessels direct transport, as they sometimes had rather modest volumes. The small number of finds could reflect different cir­cumstances: . the Early Neolithic communities were seemingly rather small; the moderate vessel size noted for some of the vessels, along with the known presence of food crust, point to the cooking function, but for only a small number of people, possibly members of one small family; . the production of vessels was limited, probably due to their innovative character; ceramic vessels were probably recognized as a novelty by local com­munities within these huge territories. The longitudinal character of the distribution of Kar­gopol type ceramics has also drawn our attention, being dispersed along the directions west-east/east-west, pointing at the particular marriage alliances and directions of goods exchange in the northern part of the East European Plain. It reminds us of the ways in which some other artefacts, ideas and tradi­tions moved, e.g., the Eastern Baltic amber orna­ments, ceramic vessels of Comb Ware with human heads on the rim and with stamped waterfowl ima­ges turned right instead of left (Zhulnikov 2008; un­published data of E. Kashina). Though these examples belong to the 4th millennium BC, to­ gether with the case of the Kar­ gopol type vessels they seem­ ingly represent some regular­ ity, which still needs to be ap­ propriately explained in future work. Another example, al­ though not really of longitudi­ nal character, are the rare finds of wooden skis decorated with sculptural elk heads on the front part, found at three sites of the northern part of the East European Plain (Ivanov­ skoye III, Veretye, and Vis I) and dated to approx. 6000– 5000 BC (Burov 1989). The di­ stance between sites is 500– 700km as the crow flies, and the clear morphological simi­ larity of these ski fragments points to the fact that the makers knew the exact way and manner of their production, obviously having direct contacts with each other. Thus, the Kargopol type ceramics are a precious re­source for revealing of social interactions between the inhabitants of lake depressions during the Early Neolithic. This raises some issues for future research: about the estimated level sedentarism, the popula­tion number, the directions of social connections and their probable changes in time and space. The Kargopol type ceramics relations inside the whole East European Plain Which places took these ceramics in the general con­text of the East European Early Neolithic epoch? It would be of great interest to establish the reasons and circumstances of their emergence at a particular moment and area, namely in the north of East Euro­pean Plain, and their relations with previous cera­mic types of neighbouring territories, primarily the southern ones. According to a handful of studies, per­formed at the central and southern parts of East Eu­ropean Plain, the earliest known ceramic vessels ap­peared here around 6000 BC, seemingly spreading their influence further to the north (Zaitseva et al. 2016). The given millennia (6th to 5th millennia BC) are of great research interest from a different pers­pective, being not only the era of first appearance of Ekaterina Kashina, Nataliya Yu. Petrova ceramics and their dissemination all over the East European forest zone, but also the increase in sedentarism and associated population growth. Also, at the beginning of the 5th mil­lennium a general change of ceramic traditions together with the replace­ment of blades by flakes and the use of bifacial technology in flintknap-ping took place. The explanation of an obvious change in lifestyles due only to Atlantic climate conditions does not seem sufficient, and these processes could have had some deep­er reasons. Returning to ceramics, as a result of southern influence the so-called Ver­khnevolzhskaya (or Upper Volga) ce­ramic type emerged and spread over a large territory in the central part of East European Plain, including the Volga-Oka interfluve and the Valdai Upland, united by the presence of fine clay paste with grog, a smooth surface and different decoration patterns, from only pierced holes under the rim to sophisticated narrow stamp compositions covering the whole surface of the vessel (Kraynov 1996.166– 172). A series of recent studies focused on interpreting the new AMS dates, made on ceramic residues/food crusts, sometimes aiming to represent the most an­cient appearance of ceramics at the given areas (Zai­tseva et al. 2016). But from our point of view, the represented data frequently lack any firm bases, such as an archaeological context and other AMS data which could help to verify the vessel crust dates. The weakest point of those studies’ conclu­sions about the start of mass ceramic production of the Upper-Volga ceramic type around 6000 cal BC is seen when we look at the highly reliable corpus of the Finnish first ceramics dating results, which con­sists of a large number of crust dates, verified by the dates of associated contexts (Nordqvist, Mökkönen 2017). By the way, the given data fully coincide those of Karelian researchers (Tarasov et al. 2017) and the main conclusion is that the first pottery, namely the Säräisniemi I and Sperrings I types, oc­curred in Karelia and Finland no earlier than 5000 cal BC. The question arises: how to explain such an incredibly slow movement of the initial pottery mak­ing tradition (over a period of one thousand years) from the central to northern parts of Russia (e.g., from the Upper Volga to the Onega Lake area) in the conditions of a plain landscape, rich in waterways (Gerasimov, Kriiska 2018.309)? The simplest ans­wer is that it is necessary to revise the whole assem­blage of 14C dates of the Upper Volga ceramic type: the time of its appearance and distribution was pro­bably not earlier than mid-6th millennium BC, and then the idea of ceramic production could move quickly further to the north. It was supposed by researchers that undecorated vessels and those with pierced holes around the rim zone were the earliest in different parts of north Eurasia (Tsetlin 2002), as well as at the East Euro­pean Plain. The Upper Volga ceramic type vessels from the Middle Volga, Upper Volga and Tver Volga regions have a steady and universal grog admixture in their clay paste, together with a universal decora­tion motif – the row of pierced holes under the rim, the last feature reminiscent of the Kargopol type de­coration. Were the Upper Volga ceramics a proto­type for the Kargopol type? Absolutely not: a charac­teristic of the Kargopol type is the total absence of grog together with the presence of rim incisions, a unique and highly recognizable decoration motif along with pierced holes. According to this, we can observe no similarity between these two types of Early Neolithic ceramics. The Kargopol type recipe was obviously invented quite independently. The Kargopol type ceramics – the first pottery of the northern part of the East European Plain| We present here only a simplified view of the pro-several of the earliest ceramic types existed simulta­cess of the development of the first pottery from the neously at different areas of the northern part of the south to the north of the East European Plain. In East European Plain, and the Kargopol’ type itself reality, the distribution of the very first local ceramic probably slightly overlapped the initial period of the types could have been much more patchy and diffe-Pitted Ware (and Pit-Comb Ware), at least in Karelia rentiated. Aside from the basic Early Neolithic types and the Onega River basin around 5200–4900 BC. from the East European Plain, each represented by Nevertheless, the Kargopol type, based on its mor-numerous ceramic fragments, there obviously exist-phological and technological characteristics, could ed some other variants, known from an extremely have been the earliest in the northern regions. We small number of sherds, dispersed very locally, will try and look into this further by performing AMS which contradict some of the conclusions on the al-residue dating on these materials in the near future. ready distinguished ceramic types’ basic traits. The good northern examples are those found at the bor-More illustrations can be obtained from ders or inside the zone of the Kargopol type distri-https://www.academia.edu/37660053 bution: the earliest Sukhona River basin ceramic type demonstrates the same pottery paste but the ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS different decoration patterns (Nedomolkina, Pie-We are grateful to Prof. Mihael Budja for the invita­ zonka 2016). The earliest Tudozero Lake (neighbou­tion to the Ljubljana seminar, and to our Russian col- ring the Onega Lake from the east) ceramic type de- leagues Prof. A. Vybornov, Dr. A. Zhulnikov, Dr. V. Kar­ monstrates the absence of grog and a local decora­ manov, Dr. N. Lobanova, Dr. A. Tarasov, Dr. N. Nedo­ tion pattern (Ivanischeva et al. 2016). Some earli­ molkina, PhD candidates E. Dubovtseva, N. Kosoru- est Komi Republic types contain grog (Karmanov, kova and M. Ivanischeva, and to Dr. habil. Y. Tsetlin Volokitin 2004.5), which was supported by Dubov- for their kind help and advice. tseva (pers. comm., October 2018). Thus, seemingly . References Ahola M., Kashina E., and Mannermaa K. in press. Hunter-gatherer prone burials of the Kubenino site, NW Russia (c. 4900 cal BC) – Normative or deviant burials? In M. Ma-rila, K. Mannermaa, M. Ahola, and M. Lavento (eds.), Ar­chaeology and Analogy: proceedings of the VIII Baltic archaeological seminar (BASE), Archaeology and ana­logy. Held at the Tvärminne zoological station, Finland, November 30th–December 3rd, 2017. Interarcheologia 6. University of Tartu. Tartu. Bobrinsky A. A. 1978. Goncharstvo Vostochnoy Yevropy. Nauka. Moscow. (in Russian) 1999. Goncharnaya technologiya kak ob’ekt istoriko­kulturnogo izucheniya. In A. Bobrinsky (ed.), Aktualnie problemi izuchenija drevnego goncharstva. Samara Pedagogical State University. Samara: 5–109. (in Russian) Brussov A. Y. 1961. Karavayevskaya stoyanka. In A. 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V., Bjorkman L., Solovieva N., Wastegaerd S., Possnert G., and Khomutova V. 2002. Climate and environment on the Ka­relian Isthmus, northwestern Russia, 13 000–9000 cal. yrs BP. Boreas 31: 1–19. Tarasov A., Nordqvist K., Mökkönen T., and Khoroshun T. 2017. Radiocarbon chronology of the Neolithic-Eneolithic period in the Karelian Republic (Russia). Documenta Prae­historica 44: 98–121. https://doi.org.10.4312/dp.44.7 Tsetlin Y. B. 1998. Kulturniye kontakty v drevnosti (ob-schaya sistematika i otrazhenye ikh v kulturnykh traditsi­yakh goncharov). Tverskoy Archeologicheskiy Sbornik 3: 50–63. (in Russian) 2002. Proiskhozhdeniye graficheskikh sposobov dekori­rovaniya posudy (postanovka problemy). Tverskoy Ar-cheologicheskiy Sbornik 5: 231–240. (in Russian) 2017. Ceramic investigations in Russia: scientific ap­proaches, pottery productions structure, modern possi­bilities and some research results. Journal of Nordic Archaeological Science 17: 65–81. Vasilieva I. N. 2011. The Early Neolithic pottery of the Volga-Ural region (based on the materials of the Elshan­ka culture). Archaeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia (39)2: 70–81. Zaitseva G. I., Lozovskaya O. V., Vybornov A. A., and Ma-zurkevich A. N. (eds.) 2016. Radiocarbon Neolithic chro­nology of Eastern Europe in the VII–III millennium BC. Svitok. Smolensk. Zhulnikov A. M. 2006. Asbest kak pokazatel’ svyazey drev­nego naseleniya Karelii. Tverskoy Archeologicheskiy Sbor­nik 6(1): 330–333. (in Russian) 2008. Obmen yantaryom v Severnoy Yevrope v III tys. do n.e. kak factor sotsialnogo vzaimodeystviya. In G. A. Khlopachev (ed.), Problemy biologicheskoy i kulturnoy adaptatsii chelovecheskikh populyatsiy. Vol. 1. Archeo­logiya: adaptatsionniye srtategii drevnego naseleniya Severnoy Yevrazii: syryo i priyomy obrabotki. Nauka. St. Peterburg: 134–145. (in Russian) back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) The state of Early Linear Pottery Culture research in Slovakia Noémi Beljak Pa/inová, Tatiana Daráková Department of Archaeology, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Nitra, SK nbpazinova@ukf.sk, tanadarakova@gmail.com ABSTRACT – The article focuses on the current state of research of the first Neolithic culture in Slo­vakia. So far around 70 sites are known from Slovakia dated to the Early Linear Pottery Culture and the Early Eastern Linear Pottery Culture. Most of the sites are known only from surface collections, and in only four cases have dwellings been documented. Settlement features/pits have been discover­ed at around half the sites. Finally, we know graves from only four (and possibly five) sites. In the article we deal also with the elaboration of the Early LPC/ELPC material culture. We discuss pottery from the point of view of typology and decoration and other types of findings, such as chipped stone industry, ground and polished stones, small clay artefacts, daub, animal bones etc., are not omitted either. The goal is to evaluate the research possibilities of the Early LPC/ELPC in Slovakia. KEY WORDS – Slovakia; Early Linear Pottery culture; settlement; material culture; current state Stanje raziskav zgodnje kulture linearno trakaste keramike na Slova[kem IZVLE.EK – V .lanku se osredoto.ava na trenutno stanje raziskav prve neolitske kulture na Slova.­kem. Do danes poznamo 70 slova.kih najdi.., ki datirajo v .as zgodnje kulture linearno trakaste kera-mike in zgodnje vzhodne kulture linearne keramike. Ve.ina najdi.. predstavlja povr.inske najdbe in le na .tirih najdi..ih so bili odkriti sledovi domovanj. Naselbinske strukture/jame so bile dokumen­tirane na pribli.no polovici najdi... Grobove poznamo iz .tirih, morda petih najdi... V .lanku pred­stavljava tudi obdelavo materialne kulture zgodnje LTK in vzhodne LTK. Lon.enino predstavljava iz vidika tipologije in okrasa, pri .emer ne zanemarjava tudi druge vrste najdb, kot so kamnita orodja, polirani kamni, majhni kerami.ni predmeti, hi.ni lep, .ivalske kosti itd. Cilj preiskave je oceniti raz­iskovalni potencial zgodnje LTK in vzhodne LTK na Slova.kem. KLJU.NE BESEDE – Slova.ka; zgodnja kultura linearno trakaste keramike; naselbina; materialna kul­tura; trenutno stanje Introduction Linear Pottery Culture (hereinafter LPC) represents ly by a homogenous style of pottery shapes and de-the oldest known culture of the Neolithic in the ter-coration. The region of the Middle Danube is consi­ritory of Slovakia. It is the period of first Neolithic dered to be the primary region of the LPC around societies and a new form of cultural expression. The 5500/5400 cal BC, when its formative phase started. Neolithic in Central Europe is dated to the period be-Development of the LPC in the territory of Slovakia tween the middle of the 6th and the second half of as well as in the whole of Europe can be divided – the 5th millennia, and in many regions it is associat-on the basis of regional differences and diversity of ed with first farmers. The LPC is characterized main-the terrain – into the western LPC spread in south- DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.12 The state of Early Linear Pottery Culture research in Slovakia western Slovakia following from the settlement in the northern part of Transdanubia and/or in Lower Austria and the Eastern Linear Pottery culture (he­reinafter ELPC) in eastern Slovakia, which is part of the Alföld Linear Pottery culture (hereinafter ALPC) formed in the Upper Tisza region in the second quar­ter of the 6th millennium BC. The genesis of the Early LPC is not unambiguous. On one hand, there are opinions which see its origin un­der influence of the Vin.a culture from the Star.evo culture primarily south of Balaton Lake in Transda­nubia (e.g., Pavlù 2012.95; Bánffy 2004; Bánffy, Oross 2009.223–224, 227, Tab. I; Marton, Oross 2012.233–236) or in the wider region of Transdanu­bia, western parts of Austria (primarily Lower Au­stria), and southwestern Slovakia (Lenneis 2010. 190–193). On the other hand, there is an opinion that the Early LPC started as early as the Star.evo culture in the territory north of the Star.evo settle­ments along the Danube as far as southwestern Slo­vakia, not in Transdanubia south of Balaton Lake (Pavúk 2014.199–207, Map 3; Pavúk, Farka. 2013). The greatest interest of investigators in the Early LPC/ELPC in the territory of Slovakia was in the 1970s and 1980s, and since then less and less at­tention has been paid to the culture, except for the Moravany site in the Eastern Slovak Lowland. In the article we thus deal with previously published infor­mation from domestic as well as foreign literature. Unprocessed and previously unpublished material or information passed orally was not included in the data. Mostly, brief reports occur in works informing the occurrence of finds during surface collections or rescue excavations. There are no summarizing publi­cations (except for the Early ELPC site Moravany) about sites with long-term research (e.g., sites Zem­plínske Kop.any, Ko.ice, Senica). The fact that most finds were obtained from multicultural sites with do­minant material from other cultures is also a deter­mining factor in identification of the Early LPC/ELPC culture. In such cases, often only a notice of occur­rence of this culture is found in the literature, with­out any further information. Research history Although the period of the Late Stone Age in Slova­kia first attracted attention as early as the 19th cen­tury, almost no records have been preserved from those first – often amateur – researches (for more information see, e.g., Pavúk, .i.ka 1971.320). The first systematic review of prehistoric periods includ­ing cultures from the Neolithic and Aeneolithic in Slovakia was published by Jan Eisner (1933) be­tween the world wars. It presents nine sites be­longing to the LPC– Gajary, Devínska Nová Ves, .ek­lís, Gocnod, Hurbanovo, Zelene., Borovce, Stráne, and Moravany (Eisner 1933.14–15). Later, Vojtech Budinský-Kri.ka (1947) published a work called Slo­vakia in the Late Stone Age (in Slovak: Slovensko v mlad.ej dobe kamennej), where he included Be.e­òová, Blesovce, Behynce, Lúky, Gergel’ová, Gocnod, Zelene., Gajary among LPC sites (Budinský-Kri.ka 1947.56). The new ELPC sites of Lú.ky, Oreské, Kapu.any, Cej­kov, Michalovce, and Ko.ice-Barca were discovered by surveys in eastern Slovakia in the 1950s (Andel 1955.148, 150; Hájek 1957). The first destructive research was carried out in 1951 at the site of Ko-.ice-Barca III, where a settlement of the Bükk cul­ture (Middle Neolithic) was studied; eight features with exclusively Linear Pottery finds were also un­covered. Unfortunately, only incomplete pottery data without division by features was published from the site (.i.ka 1989.12). It was only after the discovery of Barca III type in eastern Slovakia that interest in study of the Alföld pottery increased, since similarities in their shapes and decorations were obvious (Pavúk, .i.ka 1971. 322). The Linear Pottery from eastern Slovakia, which follows from the pottery of Barca III type, also corresponds with finds of the Alföld pottery. The difference in names is only due to geographical reasons (To.ík 1970.74). The Michalovce-Hrádok site, where seven features were studied in 1954, is important because the col­lection of finds comprised material from the older phase of ELPC and sherds of protolinear character and from the younger phase of ELPC (.i.ka 1989. 15). Fragmentary material of the Early ELPC was di­scovered in the 1950s at the sites of Lú.ky and Zem­plínske Kop.any (Pavúk, .i.ka 1971.327; Vizdal, Paulík 1959). On the basis of results of these inves­tigations, Kop.any was indicated as a regional group within the older phase of ELPC in the Eastern Slo­vak Lowland (.i.ka 1989.67). Several new investigations were carried out in the western part of Slovakia at Early LPC sites in Hurba­novo (Pavol .aplovi. in 1956), Vel’ký Grob (Bohu­slav Chropovský in 1986), .achtice (Titus Kolník and Jozef Paulík in 1959) and, e.g., Milanovce (Juraj Pa-vúk in 1961). Such research considerably extended Noémi Beljak Pa/inová, Tatiana Daráková our knowledge of the culture. The first summarizing study about the Early LPC in Slovakia or its relative chronology was elaborated by Pavúk (1962; 1980. 11). In the eastern part of Slovakia, the sites of Vel’ké Ra.­kovce, Hutníky, Valaliky, Komárovce, Bla.ice and Ko-.ice-Barca, Svetlá III (Bánesz, Lichardus 1969.204– 207) and .e.ejovce (.i.ka 1989.15) were added to the list of the Early ELPC sites. In 1975–1976, re­search continued in Ko.ice-Barca (Budinský-Kri.ka 1976.46–54), Bara (.i.ka 1989.148), .e.ejovce (.a­plovi. et al. 1978.62–70), Vel’ké Trakany (.i.ka 1989.170) as well as the rescue excavations in .bin­ce (.i.ka 1989.178). The first study on ELPC was published by Karol Andel (1955), and then others by Jan Lichardus (1986; 1970; 1972) and in more detail by Stanislav .i.ka (1982; 1989) and Marián Vizdal (1997a; 1997b). In western Slovakia, rescue excavations were carried out in the 1970s at the sites of Krakovany (Sedlák 1975.98), Nevidzany (Bátora 1976.25–26), .ataj (Pavúk 1976.177–182), Blatné (Pavúk 1978.192– 195), Komjatice (To.ík 1978.246–272), or Cífer-Pác (Kolník 1980a.142–155; 1980b.106–111); they suc­cessfully enriched the previously known finds from the Early LPC. Since 1980, destructive research continued in east­ern Slovakia in the Ko.ice basin at the sites of .e.e­jovce (.i.ka 1981.236–289) and Vel’ké Ra.kovce (Bánesz 1981.23–26). In Malé Ra.kovce (Vizdal 1988.140–141), only a surface collection was carried out with a positive result for the Early ELPC. Rescue excavations were carried out at three new sites – .e-l’ovce (Vizdal 1986.141), Slavkovce (Vizdal 1990. 69–170) and Zbudza (Vizdal 1986.237–238). The results of the rescue excavations at Ko.ice-.ervený rak site in 1980 are important; there, protolinear pottery and the middle Neolithic Tiszadob Group pot­tery was identified (Kaminská et al. 2008.83). Finds from the Ko.ice, Galgovec site (Kaminská 1998), Slavkovce (Vizdal 1996.187–188; Skiba et al. 1996), Zalu.ice (Vizdal 1996.186–187) and .daòa (Bére. 1996) were added by the end of the previous centu­ry from eastern Slovakia. Also important is the site of Slavkovce, where the presence of the oldest Neo­lithic population in eastern Slovakia (the Szatmár Group) was found (Vizdal 1997a.50). New sites were also found in the last decades of the 20th century in western Slovakia. Surface collections and rescue excavations extended the number of known sites with the Early LPC by e.g., Borovce (Sta..íková-.tukovská 1988.173–190), Kátov (Dra­ho.ová 1987.39–40), Bratislava, Mlynská ulica street (Egyházy-Jurovská, Farka. 1987.41), Bernolákovo (Farka. 1987.42), Slovenský Grob (Marková 1988. 89). New finds were obtained in the districts of Tr-nava, Senica, Nové Zámky and Nitra, however, sur­face excavations or accidental finds prevailed. Se­veral features with material were uncovered in Senec (Farka. 1995.5–22) or in Mojzesovo (Ruttkay 1997. 140). Material of the Early LPC was first found in the southern part of central Slovakia in Tornal’a, for­merly called .afárikovo (Kovács 1984.45), Bátka (Kovács 1982.165–168) and in the central Gran (Hron) river basin in Ladomerská Vieska (Mosný, .i.ka 1997). While the first two sites can be attrib­uted to the ELPC, Ladomerská Vieska can be consi­dered as the northernmost site of the Early LPC in Slovakia and classified in the Bíòa phase. Since the turn of the century, only the site of Mora-vany was systematically studied in eastern Slovakia (e.g., Kaczanowska et al. 2003; Kalicki et al. 2004. 95; 2005; Koz³owski et al. 2003). Material from the ELPC was detected as part of surveys in Kendice (Horváthová 2017), Zemplín (Horváthová, Hreha 2017) and in Vel’ký .ari. (Vizdal, Derfiòák 2006); however, most of the finds can be classified as part of the middle Neolithic Tiszadob Group. In the western part of Slovakia, surface surveys de­tected new sites in Kozárovce (Ivani. 2002.79–80) and Cho. (Bielich 2004.34), while accidental finds contributed to our knowledge of Borovce (Ver.ík 2002.224), Dolné Kr.kany (Ruttkayová 2004.161), and Stupava (Farka. 2012.7–12). Several new fea­tures were also found in Senica-Sotina (Farka. 2008. 57–58) and Hurbanovo-Bohatá (Bøezinová, Pa.ino­vá 2011.100). Chronology of the Early LPC/ELPC in Slovakia (Table 1) The relative chronology of the Early LPC in Slovakia is first of all defined by different features and deco­ration of the surface of vessels. Quality data or stra­tified finds have been absent for a long time. The first classification of material from the Early LPC in Slovakia was done by Pavúk (1962). He divided finds from the sites in western Slovakia into two stages. The first stage was further divided into two phases: Ia and Ib. The first one was characterized by the ma­terial from Milanovce and Hurbanovo, and the sec­ond phase represented transition between the sta­ The state of Early Linear Pottery Culture research in Slovakia ges (Pavúk 1962.17). After the source fund had been extended, two more phases were added to the divi­sion (Pavúk 1980.8–10, 44–45), while the author himself emphasized that the classification did not present final knowledge of the development of the Early LPC; it rather presented certain moments of development (Pavúk 1980.47). Typical decoration and surface texture of the pottery were taken as a basis for a four-phase division by the eponymous sites of Nitra, Hurbanovo, Bíòa and Milanovce. In ge­neral, we can say that the Early LPC pottery con­tained a lot of organic admixture and thick-walled material prevailed. The Hurbanovo phase was char­acterized by wide cannelures which occurred also on the pottery from Bíòa, while in Milanovce this element was absent. Nail scratches which were more frequent in the first three phases with dominance in Hurbanovo (nail scratches in form of a cereal ear) and in Bíòa were also absent in the Milanovce phase. The phase of Bíòa is the best researched and docu­mented one. Its specific shape is a biconical vessel with a slightly thickened and offset rim and a dis­tinct bend on the belly (Pavúk 2004.16). The thick-walled pottery contains mainly semiglobular shapes decorated mostly with wide lines and engravings. The so-called Schlickbewurf (mud slip) is mentioned as an important chronological element. The latest development phase of the Early LPC, called Mila­novce, is characterized by a globular vessel without a distinct bend on the belly on which three perforat­ed vertical handles appear. The circumferential deco­ration is made of a wavy, often multiple grooving and a row of shallow dimples under the rims of glo­bular vessels is a new element (Pavúk 2004.18). Currently, a three-phase division of the Early LPC is accepted in Western Slovakia (Pavúk 2004.18; 2007; Pavúk, Farka. 2013). The first one is a forma­tive phase called Pre-Bí-òa (including finds from the Nitra and Hurbano­vo phases). It is follow­ed by the Bíòa phase it­self with the typical bico­nical vessels and Schlick­bewurf technique appli­ed on thick-walled ves­sels. The last phase is Post-Bíòa (= Milanovce phase), which – accord­ ing to Pavúk (2018) – starts the expansion of the LPC all over Europe. The ELPC has been analysed in the context of the overall evaluation of the Neolithic development in Slovakia1 (Lichardus 1970; Pavúk, .i.ka 1971; 1980) or as primary study (monograph by .i.ka 1989). Later the pottery of the ELPC in the Eastern Slovak Lowland (sites of Malé Ra.kovce, Slavkovce, Zbudza and Zalu.ice) was evaluated by Marián Viz-dal (1997a.43–141), who also introduced a new scheme of the development of the ELPC in the Zem­plín region and synchronized it with the develop­ment on the territory of north-eastern Hungary and Transcarpathian Ukraine. Other authors also dealt with the culture classification (e.g., Strobel 1997) or with selected issues of the ELPC (Lichardus 1964; 1972; Koz³owski, Nowak 2010; Nowak et al. 2010; Pavúk 1994; 2004; Piatni.ková 2010; 2015). The site of Ko.ice-.ervený rak, where pottery with style and technological features analogous with the Körös culture was identified, is important for the ge­nesis of the old Neolithic in Eastern Slovakia. The site belongs to the group of the northernmost sites representing the transitory period between the Kö­rös culture and the Early ELPC (Kaminská et al. 2008.90), and the site qualifies as a representative of the Méhtelek Group in the territory of Slovakia (Pavúk 2004.42–43). In the eastern territories of Slovakia the ALPC/ELPC spread to the north in its second phase. In the third and fourth phases two distinct cultural groups or units occurred, represented by the Tiszadob, Bükk and Szakálhát pottery (typical engraved ornaments), and black painted ware of the Esztár, Ra.kovce, Pis­ 1 Earlier works dealing with the Neolithic and Aeneolithic development on the territory of present-day Slovakia originally declared that the oldest Neolithic relics in east Slovakia would be the finds from Michalovce, site ‘Hradok’ (features 2 and 3). Based on these, Lichardus introduced the term ‘protolinear pottery’ into the professional literature (Lichardus 1970.75; 1972.1–15). Noémi Beljak Pa/inová, Tatiana Daráková colt and Lumea Noua¢ Groups (further Piatni.ková 2015.161–165; Raczky, Anders 2003.156–158). The ELPC development begins within so called Proto-Linear Pottery stage (the site Ko.ice-.ervený rak in the Ko.ice Basin), followed by the Early ELPC Bar-ca III Group (south part of the Ko.ice Basin) and Kop.any Group (Eastern Slovak Lowland) in the western Tisza region (.i.ka 1979.81–87; 1989.62– 69). After the Barca III and Kop.any Groups, the de­velopment continued with the evolution of the Tisza­dob and Ra.kovce Groups, and subsequently to their phases representing the late and also the final stage of the ELPC (.i.ka 1989.129–135). The oldest Neolithic occupation on the Eastern Slo­vak Lowland is represented by the Proto-Kop.any phase (Vizdal 1997a.43–71). It is actually a transitio­nal phase in the ELPC genesis, in which, besides the older traditions, the ceramic material is represented by elements that are typical throughout the further development, in the groups Kop.any and Ra.kovce. The following Kop.any Group is defined on the basis of finds from feature 9 at the eponymous site of Zem­plínske Kop.any, and from other sites known at that time (.i.ka 1982.262–263; 1989.67–74). To other significant sites belong in the Eastern Slo­vak Lowland (Zemplín region) Slavkovce (Szatmár II Group) and Moravany considered as one of the earliest sites of the ELPC (e.g., Koz³owski, Nowak 2010.73–79; Koz³owski et al. 2003; Nowak et al. 2010; Vizdal 1997a.50–55, etc.). To conclude this chapter, it is necessary to mention the absolute data of Early LPC/ELPC sites in Slova­kia. Not only is there not enough such data, but the reliability of dating is also a problem, since mainly charcoal – not bones or cereals which could pro­vide more reliable data – were used for radiocarbon measuring. In general, we only have information on the ELPC. Ko.ice-.ervený rak belongs to the oldest known sites indicating the transition from the Kö­rös culture to the ELPC (Kaminská 2008.88). Two dates are available from the site (6190 ± 40 BP and 6520 ± 50 BP), and the second sample in particular presents 5563–5372 cal BC. Currently, the Neoli­thic settlement in Slavkovce is the oldest evidence of prehistoric farmers in the territory of eastern Slova­kia (6630±90 BP; Koz³owski, Nowak 2010.82). The data obtained from Zemplínske Kop.any (Pavúk, .i.­ka 1980.146) suggested the occurrence of the Early ELPC around 5491–5297 cal BC. The latest data comes from the Moravany site (28 dates refer to ELPC; Nowak et al. 2010.Tab. 7; Nowak 2015.216– 219, Tab. VII-1). The highest level of probability was associated with a period of c. 5500–5250 BC, while the lowest was connected with c. 5050/5000–4700 BC. In this case the foundation of the Moravany set­tlement was between 5600 and 5400 BC (the fixed starting point of the settlement should be at c. 5500 BC) and for the end of settlement the proposed range was 5200–5150 BC (Nowak 2015.220–228). For example the established chronology of the first stage of ALPC, i.e. the Szatmár group dated to c. 5600 BC (Domboróczki 2009; 2010). Knowledge source The Early LPC in western Slovakia has been found at approx. 39 sites, and in central Slovakia there are three sites (two of them belong to the ELPC). The Early ELPC in Eastern Slovakia has been document­ed at least at 28 sites. The finds from western and central Slovakia mainly come from surface collec­tions (60%), while other finds were at rescue ex­cavations. In the eastern part of the country, rescue excavations were carried out at more than half of the sites, while surface collections and accidental finds appear at less than a third of sites. A systema­tic research in eastern Slovakia was carried out at the site of Moravany (latest Koz³owski et al. 2015). In all, 70 sites with the Early LPC (ELPC) have been recorded in the territory of Slovakia (Fig. 1), occur­ring in 20 districts. The highest number has been re­corded in the Ko.ice District (min. 17 sites), which is followed by Michalovce District (11 sites), with both are situated in eastern Slovakia. In western Slo­vakia, the Early LPC is mentioned nine times in the Senec District, eight times in the Nové Zámky District and seven times in the Senica District and Nitra Di­strict. In other areas, the number decreases signifi­cantly. The Early LPC/ELPC sites are mostly located on the Danubian and Eastern Slovak Lowlands. Settlements are situated in dry, warm climatic zones and dry chernozem soils predominate (in some areas sites are found on sandy subsoil). Overall, the most fer­tile sites for settlement were chosen at regular dis­tances along larger rivers and less frequently on their tributaries, in lowlands close to water sources (Tóth et al. 2011.310–312). Localization of sites does not exceed an altitude of more than 250m a.s.l. The sought natural environment was very similar in both developmental stages of the culture (Early and Late LPC), and sites were often in the same location, thus containing mixed material. The state of Early Linear Pottery Culture research in Slovakia Fig. 1. Sites with finds of the Early Linear Pottery culture (squares) and Early Eastern Linear Pottery cul­ture (circles) in Slovakia: 1 Bara; 2 Bátka; 3 Bernolákovo; 4 Bíòa; 5 Blatné (.trky); 6 Bla.ice/Bohdanov­ce; 7 Borovce; 8 Bratislava (Mlynská ulica); 9 Cífer-Pác; 10 .achtice; 11 .ataj; 12 .e.ejovce (Gemerské); 13 .e.ejovce (Balász); 14 .e.ejovce (Rigó); 15 .echynce; 16 .el’ovce; 17 Horný Vinodol; 18 Hul; 19 Hur­banovo (Bacherov majer); 20 Hurbanovo-Bohatá; 21 Hútniky; 22 Cho.a; 23 Jel.ovce; 24–26 Kátlovce; 27 Kátov; 28 Komárovce; 29 Komjatice; 30 Ko.ice (Galgovec); 31–32 Ko.ice-Barca; 33 Ko.ice-.aca; 34 Kozá­rovce; 35 Krakovany; 36 Kunov; 37 Ladomerská Vieska; 38 Ludanice; 39 Malé Ra.kovce; 40 Maòa; 41 Mi-lanovce (Vel’ký Kýr); 43 Mojzesovo; 44 Moravany (Stredné Pole); 45 Nevidzany; 46 Nitra; 47 Nitra-Dolné Kr.kany; 48 Nové Sady; 49 Plavecké Pohradie; 50 Senec; 51–52 Senica – Sotina; 53 Slavkovce (Hru.tiny); 54 Slavkovce (Pánska Pa.it’); 55 Slavkovce; 56 Slovenský Grob; 57 Stupava; 58 Tornal’a (.afárikovo); 59 Valaliky; 60 Vel’ké Kapu.any; 61–62 Vel’ké Ra.kovce; 63 Vel’ké Trakany; 64 Vel’ký Cetín; 65 Vel’ký Grob; 66 Zalu.ice (Malé Zalu.ice); 67 Zbudza; 68 Zemplínske Kop.any; 69 .bince; 70 .d’aòa. All documented sites of the Early LPC/ELPC in Slo­vakia are settlements. Burials were only document­ed in the western part of Slovakia in three cases, however they were polycultural sites also settled in the Late LPC and even later. A child skeleton burial was discovered in feature 114/86 in Bratislava, Mlyn­ská ulica Street (Egyházy-Jurovská, Farka. 1987. 41). Two other skeleton burials of children were do­cumented in .ataj (Pavúk 1976.178) and three crouched burials are mentioned in Bíòa (To.ík 1970. 26–27). All of them represent burials at settlements. Besides, an accidental find of a skull and several bones discovered together with typical Early LPC pottery came from a private estate in Maòa, where they were discovered by the owner during the dig­ging of pits (Samuel 2001.172). It is possible that an unrecognized grave find was found in Stupava (Farka. 2012.7–12), where an assemblage contain­ing pottery (two vessels, sherds, adze, sandstone plate) was found by accident during construction work for a family house. The surface collection in Bátka in central Slovakia brought – besides frag­ments of the Early ELPC pottery – fragments of a hu­man skull (Kovács 1982.166). The finds suggest the possible presence of burials. Nevertheless, there has been no investigation at the site so far. The research of the Early ELPC site in Zalu.ice in eastern Slovakia in the years 1991–1995 was enabled by low water levels in the Zemplínska .írava water reservoir. An crouching adult individual was found at a depth of 0.55m under thick daub layer (floor?) in feature 1/ 91, belonging to the Kop.any Group (Vizdal 2005. 173). Immovable archaeological sources in the form of dwellings, settlement features (storage or waste pits, clay pits) post-holes etc. from the Early LPC are rare. Complexes of features and post-holes at the Senica-Sotina site were interpreted as possible remnants of an Early LPC house oriented NNE – SSW (Fig. 2). There, a sunken outdoor oven was also documented (Farka. 2009.62). A semi-sunken pithouse of a rec­tangular shape from the Early ELPC is mentioned from Zbudza (Vizdal 1986.236). Feature 3/94 (4.4m x 2.5m) with an uneven bottom (0.15–0.7m deep) and with pole pits from the site of Zalu.ice is also considered to be a semi-sunken pithouse (Vizdal 1996.186–187). Nevertheless, it is not clear in either of the features if they had a residential function. The occurrence of possible hearths is interesting as well, Noémi Beljak Pa/inová, Tatiana Daráková since there are mentions of orange soil with char­coal and traces of burning at the Early LPC site of Cífer-Pác (Kolník 1980a.143) and three Early ELPC sites – Moravany (Kaminská et al. 2004.95; Nowak 2015.45, 61, Fig. III-6), Ko.ice-Barca (Bánesz, Li-chardus 1969.291; .i.ka 1989.153) and .e.ejovce (.i.ka 1980.205). A separate oven situated near sun­ken features is also documented by destroyed earth remains at the settlement with protolinear pottery in Ko.ice-.ervený rak (.i.ka 1989.49; Kaminská et al. 2008.83–84). The presence of various settlement features (only ra­rely characterized as storage pits or clay pits) was identified at least on half of the sites (altogether 131 features). The shapes of the features are mostly de­scribed as irregular or regularly oval, irregularly cir­cular and trapeziums. As far as their sizes are con­cerned, we can see great variance. The average size of the features reached approx. 2–3 x 1–2m and they were 0.8–1m deep. The largest features within the Early ELPC include feature 3/95 from Slavkovce (length 9m, depth 1.6–2m; Vizdal 1996.187–188), feature 3 in Ko.ice-Barca III (3.6 x 4.55m, depth 0.3m; .i.ka 1989.152–154), feature 3/85 in .el’ovce (length 4.8m; depth c. 1m; Vizdal 1986.243), and feature 9 in Zemplínske Kop.any (10.4 x 2–2.5m, depth 0.6m; .i.ka 1989.172). In Moravany there are five features with exceptionally large dimensions: 1/98, 2/99, 3/01, 10/01 (with hearth), 1/06 (Nowak et al. 2015.43, Figs. III-3; III-4; III-5; III-6, III-7; Fig. III-8). Their plans can roughly be described as irre­gular ovals or trapeziums, and their dimensions vary from 7 to 10m and from 4 to 5m along the longer and shorter axes, respectively. In cross-section, these features can be described as hollow-shaped. Their bottoms reached c. 0.95–1m below the ground, as much as 1.7m in the case of feature 1/06. As for the function of the features found in Moravany, the most obvious interpretations are workshops processing obsidian and other lithic raw materials. This seems particularly likely in the case of features 1/98 and 2/99 (Nowak et al. 2015.61). In the western part of the country, the largest fea­tures of the Early LPC include feature 1/86 in Ber-nolákovo (2.1 x 4.8m, depth 2,48m; Farka. 1987. 42), feature 76 in Hurbanovo-Bohatá (6 x 7m, depth 0.4–0.8m; Bøezinová, Pa.inová 2011.26), feature 300 with oven in Cífer-Pác (4.2 x 2.2m, depth 0,9m; Kolník 1980a.143) and feature 14 in Milanovce (3.3 x 2.6m, depth 1.3m; Pavúk 1980.27, 11). It is clear by the amount of finding types document­ed at Early LPC/ELPC sites that there was pottery – the main indicator of cultural classification – present at each of them. Chipped stone industry occurred at 21 sites, ground stones and polished products were found at 17 sites. Animal bones are reliably present at 11 sites – processed bones or bone industry were present at four sites. Miniature items are mentioned 13 times and daub is only mentioned at eight sites. Material culture Pottery Recently the pottery (forms, ornamental techniques) from the Early ELPC site Moravany (Vizdal et al. 2015.85–92, 94–126, Tab. IV-7) was thoroughly ana­lysed and evaluated, while the typological develop­ment of Early ELPC pottery in the Eastern Slovak Lowland (analysed assemblages from Moravany, Ma-lé Ra.kovce, Zálu.ice, Slavkovce, Zbudza) was also reviewed and interpreted (Vizdal 1997a; Vizdal et al. 2015.90–94). It was proposed that the stylistic-typological categories such as proto-Kop.any, Kop-.any, Ra.kovce, etc., should tentatively be seen as pottery styles (fashions), they should not be automa­tically taken as successive phases of ELPC develop­ment in the Eastern Slovak Lowland. To the basic pot­tery forms of the ELPC belong: pots (barrel-shaped and conical pots), bowls (conical bowls, deep bul­ The state of Early Linear Pottery Culture research in Slovakia bous bowls, low-thick-walled bowls/ pans), plates, pedestalled vessels/ bowls, cups and small beakers, ves­sels with neck, storage vessels (Viz­dal et al. 2015.86–88). The published pottery represents a collection of 474 fragments in the western part of Slovakia from ap­prox. 40 Early LPC sites, from which we could typologically classify 181 finds. This collection was divided in­to seven basic vessel types (or in more detail identified sub-types). Bi-conical vessels (72 specimens) were the most frequent in the collection, followed by semiglobular vessels (31 specimens). The third group – globu­lar vessels (barrel-shaped pots) – con­tained 28 specimens and the richly represented pottery forms also inclu­ded bowls (23 specimens). Other forms were less frequent – vessels on pedestals (14 specimens), pot-like vessels (five specimens), and vessels with neck (eight specimens). Division of the sites according to their location within Slovakia shows differences in the occurrence of the types of finds. We do not come ac­ross all types present in the western part of Slovakia at the sites in East-Fig. 3. Biconical vessels of the Early Linear Pottery culture in West­ ern Slovakia. 1 Hurbanovo-Bohatá (after Bøezinová, Pa.inová 2011. ern Slovakia, and vice versa. Biconi­ 234, Tab. XXXII); 2 Bíòa (after Pavúk 1980.20, Abb. 7.12); 3 Bíòa cal vessels (Fig. 3) are a good exam­ (after Pavúk 1980.19, Abb. 6.4); 4 Bernolákovo (after Pavúk, Far- ple; they are completely absent in ka. 2013.219, Abb. 4.7); 5 Bíòa (after Pavúk 1980.19, Abb. 6.1); 6 Eastern Slovakia. Vessels/bowls on Nitra (after Pavúk 1980.17, Abb. 4.2); 7 Bíòa (after Pavúk 1980.19, pedestals are recorded in the east-Abb. 6.3); 8 Hurbanovo (after Pavúk 1980.36, Abb. 17.2); 9 Bíòa ern as well as western part of the ter-(after Pavúk 1980.19, Abb. 5.2). ritory, although tall hollow pedestals are typical of the western territory. As for various demonstrated by an example of sites from the East-bowls, their occurrence is mostly evenly distributed. ern Slovak Lowland. In Moravany, the share of or-Although, for example, tall bowls are more common namented pottery in features is less than 6%. Va­in the Early LPC, bowls with low thick almost verti-lues higher than 25% were recorded in most of the cal profiles of walls (pans) and plates are recorded features in Zalu.ice, while pottery from feature1/ only in the Early ELPC. Vessels with neck and pots 1988 in Malé Ra.kovice consisted as much as 42.9% (semiglobular and barrel-shaped) are represented in of decorated sherds (Vizdal 1997a; 1997b). both territories (Fig. 4). For the purpose of this article we analysed in terms Pottery decoration of decoration 873 published fragments from 53 Statistical evaluation of the share of ornamented ves-sites (36 Early LPC sites and 17 Early ELPC sites), ex-sels in total pottery production encounters problems cept from the settlement at Moravany, whose cera-posed by huge differences in its representation at mic material (6705 fragments altogether, various particular locations and even features. This can be kinds of decoration identified on the surfaces of 356 Noémi Beljak Pa/inová, Tatiana Daráková fragments – 5.3%) was recently analysed (Vizdal et al. 2015.113). Engraved decoration was applied on almost half of the analysed pottery (47%). Where the documenta­tion of the material allowed, it was possible to also identify fine (thick and thin) engraved decoration more in detail (4%) and decoration in the form of grooving (3%). Impressed decoration included short incised lines (4%), pinching (3%), impressed dim­ples – finger-tipped hollows (3%), and – in two cases in the Early LPC also circular stamps. Painted decoration was very rare and occurred ex­clusively in the ELPC in Eastern Slovakia. It used only black paint (5%), uniquely combined with en­graved decoration (Slavkovce 0.6%; Malé Ra.kovce 3.97%). The diversity of ornamental motifs made by black painting or its combination with engraving is best illustrated by feature 1/1988 from Malé Ra.kov­ce, where this technique was applied on 28.93% of all the sherds – 45% within ornamented artefacts (Vizdal 1997a). Appliqué (plastic) decoration in the form of knobs (breast-shaped, cylindrical, flat circular, tongue-shap­ed, etc.) which were mainly functional (of practical importance) were present on 16% of the pottery col­lection. Only on a small number of fragments (5%) were combinations of a knob and ornamentation in the form of thick engraving, scratch- Fig. 4. Globular (barrel-shaped) vessels of the Early Linear Pottery Culture (1–4) and Early Eastern Linear Pottery Culture (5–7). 1 Maòa (after Samuel 2001.297, obr. 104); 2 Senica-Sotina (Farka. 2008.207, obr. 37.3); 3 Hurbanovo-Bohatá (after Bøezinová, Pa.i­nová 2011.256, Tab. LIV.2); 4 Bernolákovo (after Pavúk, Farka. 2013.219, Abb. 4.4); 5 Moravany (after Vizdal et al. 2015.130, Pl. IV-4.6); 6 Zbudza (after Vizdal 1986.342, obr. 109.2); 7 .el’ovce (after Vizdal 1986.361, obr. 131.2). es and hollows documented. Appli­qué (plastic) bands (strips) and cor­dons were present on 3–4% of pot­tery. The collection also contained very rare handles. Small clay artefacts (Fig. 5) First in this category, we must men­tion anthropomorphic figurines, in­cluding examples applied on vessels. Their presence was recorded in the Early LPC at five sites: .ataj (Pavúk 1970.31, Tab. VII.3a, b; 1976), Mila­novce (Pavúk 1980.10), Vel’ký Grob (To.ík 1970.31; Pavúk 1970.31, Tab. VII.2), Vel’ké Trakany (.i.ka 1989. 170), Cífer-Pác (Kolník 1978.129, obr. 70.1; 1980a.143). One exem­plar was discovered in Central Slo­vakia in Tornal’a (Kovács 1984.5– 6) as well as in the east in Ko.ice-Barca III (.i.ka 1989.154) and in Zemplínske Kop.any (.i.ka 1989. 174–175). We must not forget the appliqué anthropomorphic scenes on a storage vessel from the proto-Linear site of Ko.ice-.ervený rak (Kaminská 2008.86, Fig. 7, 8; Be-ljak Pa.inová 2018.15). Other clay finds include various pen­ dants and bracelets known from the Early ELPC. They occurred in Ko.ice, where the inventory was comple­mented with clay pearls (Kaminská 1998.94). In Zbudza, the most nota­ble finds are a necklace comprising 24 beads, nine tooth-shaped and four The state of Early Linear Pottery Culture research in Slovakia fang-shaped pendants. Fragments of bracelets dis­covered at this site were perforated, which suggests their possible use in a necklace (Vizdal 1986.238). Bracelets were recorded in Valaliky as well, where a fragment of a horn-shaped clay artefact also comes from (.i.ka 1989.168). Besides the presence of clay rings, pendants also occur in Vel’ké Trakany (.i.ka 1989.170). We can also see various types of pen­dants in .el’ovce (Vizdal 1986.241) and Zemplínske Kop.any (.i.ka 1989.174–175, Pl. 13.12). A num­ber of almost identical specimens of long, longitu­dinally drilled cylindrical pendants were found in Zalu.ice (Vizdal 1997b.Pl. IV-49.6) and Moravany (Vizdal et al. 2015.88). Types of pottery products which suggest the pres­ence of textile production and weaver’s equipment are loom weights and spindle whorls. They were found at Early ELPC sites in Ko.ice (Kaminská 1998. 94) and Zbudza (Vizdal 1986.238) and at Early LPC site in Bíòa (Pavúk 1980.10). Chipped stone industry This group of finds is the second most frequent group represented at the sites of the Early LPC/ELPC in Slo­vakia. Occurrence of these artefacts was document­ed in cadastral areas of 21 villages. Twelve sites were situated in the eastern part of the country, while nine come from its western part. The determining factor is that at five sites the finds come from sur­face collections or surveys. Data such as number, de­scription or types of industry are not stated for al­most quarter of the sites. From other sites, we only have partial information on the occurrence of a cer­tain number of chipped industry without further data. From the Early ELPC site Moravany a total of 5142 chipped stone artefacts have been investigated. Ap­proximately one third of the artefacts were blades and flakes, tools were about 10%, chips between 20 and 30%, and cores were no more than 5% (Kacza­nowska et al. 2015). These finds were also quantita­tively compared with other related sites (Slavkovce, Zbudza, Zalu.ice, Zemplínske Kop.a­ ny) in the vicinity (Nowak et al. 2010.Tabs. 1, 2). The distinctive do­minance of obsidian is clear (over 80%), followed by limnoquartzites, radiolarites and hornstone. Sites of the Early ELPC in the Eastern Slovak Lowland represent three types of quantitative structure of assembla­ges: Type 1 (blades with lateral re­touch, retouched flakes, end-scrap­ers, trapezes and other microliths) – in this group belong Moravany, younger assemblages from Zalu.ice and Kop.any; Type 2 (retouched fla­kes, retouched blades, end-scrapers, trapezes and other microlithic forms) – represented by finds from Slavkov­ce; Type 3 (retouched blades, end-scrapers, retouched flakes, trapezes and other microlithic forms) – occurs at Zbudza and in the older phase of the settlement at Zalu.ice (Kacza­nowska et al. 2015.173). At Morava­ny blades with lateral retouch pre­dominate, which is also typical for other sites of the ELPC in the Eastern Slovak Lowland (Slavkovce, Zbudza, Zalu.ice, Kop.any). On the other hand, in the Ko.ice Basin at the site of .e.ejovce (Koz³owski 1989) a somewhat higher proportion of end-scrapers than other forms with late- Fig. 5. Small clay artefacts. Anthropomorphic applied figurines of the Early Linear Pottery culture: 1 Cífer Pác (after Kolník 1980b. 296, obr. 54.1); 4 Cífer Pác (after Kolník 1980a.337, obr. 73.1). Pendants of the Early Eastern Linear Pottery culture: 2 Zbudza (af­ter Vizdal 1986.345, obr. 112.6); 3 Moravany (after Vizdal et al. 2015.140, Pl. IV-14.4); 5 Zbudza (after Vizdal 1986.345, obr. 112.5); 6 Moravany (after Vizdal et al. 2015.140, Pl. IV-14.13); 7 Zemplín­ske Kop.any (after .i.ka 1989.Tab. 11.10). Noémi Beljak Pa/inová, Tatiana Daráková ral retouch was registered. Interesting is the disco­very of a depot of unworked obsidian concretions (34 concretions that, together, weigh 13.5kg) in feature F/1988 in the Early ELPC site Slavkovce, while the total proportion of obsidian at this site is 96.0% (Vizdal 1990.170; Kaczanowska, Koz³owski 1997). We should also mention the unusual disco­very of a notched drill from the .e.ejovce site which was found during surface collection (Kaminská 1982. 142). Other finds of chipped stone industry also ap­peared during surface collections at Early ELPC sites in Bara (.i.ka 1989), .el’ovce (Vizdal 1986.241), Ko.ice-Galgovec (Budinský-Kri.ka 1976.46–54), Ko-.ice-Barca (Bánesz, Lichardus 1969), Vel’ké Ra.kov­ce (.i.ka 1989; Bánesz 1981.23–26) and Vel’ké Tra­kany (.i.ka 1989.170). However, their exact num­ber or raw material composition is not specified. The total minimum number of chipped stone indus­try finds of the Early LPC in the territory of West­ern Slovakia is 50. Exact amount of finds is men­tioned in Bernolákovo (43 specimens; Pavúk, Far­ka. 2013), Borovce (four flakes; Sta..íková-.tukov­ská 1988.175) and Senec (one blade, two flakes; Far­ka. 1995). Certain number of chipped industry with­out further data comes from Bíòa (Pavúk 1980), Blatné (Pavúk 1978.192; 1988.5–8), Bratislava – Mlynská ulica Street (Egyházy-Jurovská, Farka. 1987.41), Kátov (Draho.ová 1987.40), Mojzesovo (Ruttkay 1997.140) and Senica-Sotina (Farka. 2008. 57; 2009.69). Among raw materials, obsidian pre­vailed (over 80%). Ground and polished stones/artefacts The occurrence of ground and polished stones at Early LPC/ELPC sites is not common. Finds (5 axes, 16 hammerstones, 4 pounders, 20 grinding stones fragments, 12 plaquettes or flat stones, 19 fragments of pebbles) from the Moravany site in Eastern Slova­kia have been comprehensively evaluated (Kacza­nowska et al. 2015.175–179, Tab. V-8). All raw ma­terials (sandstone, chalk, quartzite, tuff, hornstone, gaize, diatomite) come from local gravels (pebbles) and/or from an area 30–50km around the Moravany site (Kaczanowska et al. 2015.178). Besides Moravany ground and polished stone arte-facts were recorded in the western part of Slovakia on at least eleven sites and in the east at another five sites (Tab. 2). Most often (nine times) adzes are mentioned closely followed by axes (seven times). Less common are grinders (three pieces), grinding plates (three pieces), chip (one piece) and grinding stones (three pieces). Except for Moravany (Kaczanowska et al. 2015. 190–196, Pl. V-11–V-17) very few displayed speci­mens from the analysed period are known. We found only three pieces from the .achtice site (Kol­ník, Paulík 1959.96, Tab. I.1–3) and two from Stu-pava (Farka. 2012.obr. 2: 1, 5). Finds from Hurba­novo-Bohatá have been specified and analysed (Bøe­zinová, Pa.inová 2011.136–140), where grinders were made from quartz fluvial pebbles, grinding plates from phillite and grinding stones from sand­stone or andesit. Osteological material and bone tools Animal bones occurred at only two sites of the Early ELPC – Vel’ké Ra.kovce (five bones including a frag­ment of mandible; Bánesz 1981.25) and Moravany (small bones; Kaminská 2003.68–69). Within the territory of Western Slovakia (Early LPC), animal bones were present at nine sites – Senec (Farka. 1995.6); Senica-Sotina (Farka. 2008.57); Mojzesovo (Ruttkay 1997.140); Slovenský Grob (Marková 1988.89); Bernolákovo (Pavúk, Farka. 2013.218); .ataj (Pavúk 1976.178); Borovce (Sta..íková-.tu­kovská 1988.174); Hurbanovo-Bohatá (Bøezinová, Pa.inová 2011.150–151); Bíòa (Pavúk 1980.10). Identified animal bones from Borovce and Hurba­novo-Bohatá point to beef cattle, swine and goat/ sheep. Besides these species, game in the form of a deer bone occurred in Borovce. The rare representa­tion of osteological material depends on the proper­ties of soil at the sites, which influence the preser­vation of such material. For instance, in the Senica-Sotina site there were rather decayed and eroded bones under the related conditions, and mainly tooth enamel was detected (Farka. 2008.57). Processed animal bones occurred very rarely at the sites of the Early LPC. A bone spatula was only found in feature 3 in Hurbanovo-Bohatá, where there were three features with animal bones (Bøezinová, Pa.i­nová 2011.167, Tab. LXIX.12). Bone tools were more frequent in Bíòa and Milanovce (Pavúk 1980. Abb. 16; To.ík 1970.31). In Cífer-Pác a 7.5cm long perforated bear tooth was recorded in feature 300 and a bone spatula was found in feature 360 (Kol­ník 1980a.145, 333, obr. 73.2, 5). Daub Among the features of the Early LPC, daub was reli­ably detected at three sites – Hurbanovo-Bohatá (pie­ces of surface daub in feature 73; Bøezinová, Pa.ino­vá 2011.104), Senica-Sotina (with imprints of wattle construction, Farka. 2009.62) and in Borovce (daub layer of 110 x 90 x 136cm in feature 2; Sta..íková­.tukovská 1988.174). Information on four small lumps of daub without specification comes from feature 1/93 in Senec (Farka. 1995.6). In the Early ELPC, a higher number of daub pie­ces or daub in form of layers occurred in Slav-kovce (Skiba et al. 1996.104–105), .el’ovce (Vizdal 1986.241), Ko.ice-Barca, Svetlá III (Bá­nesz, Lichardus 1969.291) and Moravany (Ka­minská 2003.69; Nowak 2015.59–61, Fig. III­19). On the latter site, daub appeared in a total of 16 features out of 39, while worth noting is the presence of daub lumps bearing structural imprints in features 1/98, 3/99–2000, 9/01, 4/ 02, and 7/01 (Nowak et al. 2015.61). Paleobotanical samples and results In Slovakia there are only a small number of samples with finds of grown plants from the Early LPC/ELPC (for more details see Hajnalo­vá 2007.297; 2011.142–143; Lityñska-Zajac 1997; Lityñska-Zajac et al. 2008; Moskal-del Hoyo et al. 2015). Carbonized remains come from Borovce, Moravany, Blatné and Hurbano­vo-Bohatá, imprints on daub and pottery come from Nitra-Dolné Kr.kany, Ko.ice-.ervený rak, Moravany, Zálu.ice and Slavkovce. In south­western Slovakia, we have documented einkorn wheat (Triticum monococcum), emmer (Triti-cum dicoccum) and spelt (Triticum cf. spel­ta). In Eastern Slovakia, barley (Hordeum vul­gare) and pea (Pisum sativum) are added to the einkorn wheat and emmer. Although flax (Linum usitassimum) is absent among the finds, finds of spindle whorls suggest its prob­able production. Discussion and conclusion The aim of this work was to point to the con­dition of research into the Early LPC/ELPC in the territory of Slovakia. It was preceded by col­lecting and processing of sites with relevant ar­chaeological material known from the litera­ture. It is clear from the obtained data that the first stage of Neolithic occupation in Slovakia is not often represented. Another negative is that in most cases only brief information on the oc­currence of the Early LPC/ELPC material is pub­lished without more detailed analysis, or with­out more specific data. The collection of finds from the first Neolithic culture from the territory of Slovakia represents site cultural affiliation research method amounth adze axe chip grinder grinding plate grinding stone source 1 Bernolákovo Early LPC rescue excavation not speciefied Farka[ 1987.42 2 Blatné Early LPC rescue excavation not speciefied Pavúk 1988.6 Bánesz, Lichardus 1969.96< 3 :achtice Early LPC surface collection 4 2 1 1 – – – Kolník, Paulík 1959 4 :e;ejovce Early ELPC rescue excavation not specified {i[ka 1980.206 Br¡ezinová, Pa/inová 5 Hurbanovo-Bohatá Early LPC rescue excavation | – – – 1 1 1 2011.135–136 6 Kátlovce Early LPC surface collection 3 2 1 – – – – Bátora 1993.23–24 7 Kátov Early LPC surface collection 2 – 2 – – – – Draho[ová 1987.40 8 Malé Ra[kovce Early ELPC surface collection not specified Vizdal 1988.141 9 Milanovce Early LPC rescue excavation not speciefied To;ík 1970.30 10 Mojzesovo Early LPC rescue excavation not speciefied Ruttkay 1997.140 Pichlerová 1961.32< 11 Senica – Sotina Early LPC systematic research 2 1 1 – – – – Farka[ 2008.57 12 Slavkovce Early ELPC trenches 2 – – – – – 2 Skiba et al. 1996.104 13 Slovensky Grob Early LPC surface collection 3 1 – – 1 1 – Marková 1988.89 The state of Early Linear Pottery Culture research in Slovakia 14 Stupava Early LPC accidental find 2 1 – – – 1 – Farka[ 2012.9, obr. 2.1, 5 15 Valaliky Early ELPC trenches 1 – – – – 1 – {i[ka 1989.168 16 Zemplínske Kop;any Early ELPC rescue excavation 4 2 2 – – – – {i[ka 1989.171 Tab. 2. Representation of the polished stone types at Early LPC/ELPC sites in Slovakia (except the Moravany site). Noémi Beljak Pa/inová, Tatiana Daráková at least 70 sites; only a few of them have been stud­ied by systematic or rescue excavations. Despite this, we cannot ignore the potential for investigation of this culture in the studied area. The initial collection which we worked with is not ideal. Part of the material was obtained during sur­face collections and surveys. However, we must also emphasize that most sites are polycultural, with younger material prevailing. The sites of Malé Ra.­kovce (Vizdal 1988.140–141), Blatné (Pavúk 1988. 6) and Mojzesovo (Ruttkay 1970.140) are good evi­dence of the importance of surface collections from the aspect of the investigation’s further potential. Nevertheless, the number of identified features of the Early LPC/ELPC within the subsequent research was small in comparison with other periods. In the eastern part of Slovakia only three sites (Zalu.ice, Moravany, Zemplínske Kop.any) and in the western part five sites (Cífer-Pác, Senec-Blatné, .ataj, Senica, Hurbanovo-Bohatá) were investigated to a slightly greater extent, but even there the excavations most­ly covered only a small part of the estimated total area. The collecting and processing of the Early LPC/ELPC finds from Slovakia has resulted in a collection con­taining various settlement features (77%), hearths and ovens (8%), pole pits (6%), dwellings (5%), clay pits (4%) among immovable finds. As for movable finds (besides pottery which was present at all sites), chipped stone industry (39%), ground and polished stone industry (22%), and animal bones (19%) were predominant. Less than 15% of finds were small clay artefacts, daub, and bone industry. From the material culture we first focused on pot­tery. The remarkable absence of biconical vessels and vessels/bowls on tall pedestals in the eastern part of the country cannot be ignored. Globular (barrel-shaped) and semiglobular vessels/pots, just like bowls, are represented in almost identical num­bers in the Early LPC and ELPC collections. We must also take the following into consideration – only a small collection of Early LPC finds was used for typo­logy and compared with recently processed Early ELPC pottery (Vizdal 1997a; Vizdal et al. 2015). This corresponds with the information value of the finds presented in the article. The pottery material was not processed only on the basis of forms but also by de­coration. Pottery decoration points to frequent ap­plication of mainly engraved lines on almost half of decorated fragments. Impressed decoration was less frequent (13%). Painting (black paint; combination of painting and engraved lines) had a 5% share in the collection and occurred only in the eastern part of Slovakia. Appliqué (plastic) elements such as knobs, lugs, bands, cordons had an almost 25% share. In some cases perforations on the vessel bodies also occurred. After pottery, chipped stone industry was the sec­ond most frequently represented group of finds, with occurrence in the cadastral areas of 21 villages. As for raw materials, obsidian was most often used (with the related analyses better known from Early ELPC sites in the Eastern Slovak Lowland), while the range of finds included end-scrapers, retouched bla­des, flakes, cores and – rarely – lumps. Polished stones and ground stones were mentioned rarely (only at 17 sites altogether), and their exact numbers from the sites are unknown. Mainly adzes and axes were reported. Animal bones and bone in­dustry, like small clay artefacts, were only insignifi­cantly represented. However, we must point to the occurrence of anthropomorphic figurines at a min­imum of eight sites. Discovered pieces of daub are also reported from eight sites, but their occurrence specifically at the sites of Senica (Western Slovakia) and Moravany (Eastern Slovakia) is important. Twig impressions on daub lumps suggesting timber-fra­med buildings have been found at these sites. The presence of dwellings at the Early LPC settle­ments in Slovakia is minimal. The low number of identified houses is undoubtedly associated with the low amount of systematic research or with the res­cue excavations carried out over only small areas. Analogous sites in the neighbouring countries, e.g., in Austria Brunn am Gebirge II (Lenneis 2004; Stad­ler 2005), Mold bei Horn (Lenneis 2003; Hofmann, Lenneis 2017), Rosenburg im Kamptal (Lenneis 2009), Neckenmarkt und Strögen (Lenneis 2001); Vedrovice-Za dvorem (Podborský et al. 2002), Popù­vky (Bálek 2002) and Brno-Ivanovice (.i.máø 1998) in Moravia; or Szentgyörgyvölgy-Pityerdomb (Bánffy 2004; 2005; Bánffy, Réti 2008) and Bala­tonszárszó–Kis-Erdei dülõ (Oross 2010) in central and southern Transdanubia and Dunakeszi–Székes­dülõ (Horváth 2002; 2004) on the left bank of the Danube north from Budapest, show that detection of residential features is considerably complicated by their sparse distribution within settlements. An important site that can bring new knowledge about the settlements of the Early LPC culture in Western Slovakia (Zahorie region) is Senica-Sotina The state of Early Linear Pottery Culture research in Slovakia (hung. Szotinafalva), where a part of a house ground the impression that even at a distance of a minimum plan was identified (Fig. 2; Farka. 2009.62). Its di-of 50km from the centre of the Early LPC settlement mensions and characteristics (outer pits, external in southwestern Slovakia, it is possible to trace the hearth, orientation) are comparable to residential evidence of settlement from the beginning of the buildings (two houses with dimensions of 7–8.5m x Neolithic period. 13–15m) excavated in Szentgyörgyvölgy – Pityer­domb in southern Transdanubia (Bánffy 2004.176– Similarly, in the eastern part of central Slovakia (the 177). Gemer region), there are also a few surface collec­ tions (Bátka and Tornal’a sites) of the Early ELPC. Similarly, in Eastern Slovakia (e.g., Zbudza: Vizdal It is therefore necessary to monitor the presence or 1986; 1990; Zalu.ice: Vizdal 1996; Moravany: No-absence of these early finds during future research wak et al. 2015), features whose interpretation en-in the central part of the country, which will clarify courages the presence of houses were uncovered. our knowledge about the first farmers in the terri-We therefore believe that it is only a matter of time tory of what is today Slovakia. before settlements (including dwelling houses) dat­ed to Early LPC/ELPC can also be explored to an adequate extent in Slovakia. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The writing of this paper has been supported by Finally, it is necessary to mention the potential of re- Grant VEGA No. 2/0018/19. This work was supported search in to the focal culture in the territory of cen- by the Slovak Research and Development Agency un­ tral Slovakia. 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Kra­ków: 85–162. back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) ‘Robust chronologies’ or ‘Bayesian illusion’| Some critical remarks on the use of chronological modelling Hans-Christoph Strien Institut für Altertumswissenschaften, Vor- und frühgeschichtliche Archäologie, Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz, DE strien@uni-mainz.de ABSTRACT – The explanatory power of Bayesian chronological modelling is often overestimated, leading to an uncritical belief in the reliability of each isolated model without the necessary look at archaeological connections between different models. The methodical pitfalls of this approach, espe­cially in combination with inaccurate use of typochronological methods, are highlighted for Linear Pottery Culture (ger. Linienbandkeramik – LBK) and Middle Neolithic chronological models from Central Europe (Jakucs et al. 2016; Denaire et al. 2017; Bánffy et al. 2018). A more critical approach to Bayesian modelling, considering possible mathematical artefacts and the deficits of the actual cal­ibration curve as well as the inherent imprecision of the used typochronological dates, seems to be required. KEY WORDS – 14C; Bayesian modelling; Correspondence Analysis; Central Europe; Early Neolithic; chronology ‘Robustne kronologije’ ali ‘Bayesova iluzija'| Nekaj kriti;nih pripomb na uporabo kronolo[kega modeliranja IZVLE.EK – Mo., ki jo nudi Bayesovo kronolo.ko modeliranje za razlago, je pogosto precenjena, kar vodi v nekriti.no zaupanje v zanesljivost vsakega posameznega modela, ne da bi se pri tem upo.te-vale arheolo.ke povezave med posameznimi modeli. Metodolo.ke zanke tak.nega pristopa, predvsem ob nenatan.ni uporabi tipolo.ko-kronolo.kih metod, se ka.ejo predvsem pri preu.evanju kulture li­nearno trakaste keramike (nem. Linienbandkeramik – LBK) in kronolo.kih modelov za srednji neo­litik v Centralni Evropi (Jakucs et al. 2016; Denaire et al. 2017; Bánffy et al. 2018). .e upo.tevamo mo.ne matemati.ne izdelke in primanjkljaje dejanske kalibracijske krivulje kot tudi nelo.ljivo ne­natan.nost uporabljenih tipolo.ko-kronolo.kih datumov, lahko sklepamo, da potrebujemo bolj kriti-.en pristop k Bayesovemu modeliranju. KLJU.NE BESEDE – 14C; Bayesovo modeliranje; koresponden.na analiza; Centralna Evropa; zgodnji neolitik; kronologija Until the 1960s, typochronology of the Early and came the standard for new relative chronologies Middle Neolithic in Central Europe was mainly based since about 1970 (Dohrn-Ihmig 1974; Meier-Arendt on descriptive typologies and individual judgements 1975). Finally, a consensus about the relative chro-by expert archaeologists (Tichý 1960; 1962; Meier-nology of the Early and Middle Neolithic was achi-Arendt 1966). However, standardized typologies and eved around 1990 (Stehli 1994; Spatz 1996; Strien combinations of the types were already used during 2000; all PhD theses completed 1989–1991), com-the 1930s (Buttler, Haberey 1936), with the method bining regional seriation-based chronologies, clas-being later refined by Pieter J. R. Modderman (1970). sical typological linking and sometimes additional Statistics-based methods using such typologies be-supra-regional seriations (Stehli, Strien 1986; Steh- DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.13 ‘Robust chronologies’ or ‘Bayesian illusion’| Some critical remarks on the use of chronological modelling li 1994). This was complemented by first modelling of 14C dates, mainly aiming at estimates for the ab­solute duration of the LBK as a whole and of the house generations of the compound model (ger. Wohnplatzmodel; Stehli 1989). The estimated abso­lute date for the LBK of the lower Rhine Valley (5300–4950 cal BC) was soon confirmed by dendro-chronological dates from the Kückhoven wells (Fig. 2). Later on, other regional chronologies were added (e.g., Lefranc 2007; Denaire 2009; Pechtl 2009), but without great changes for the overall scheme. In the south-east, until recently chronologies relied mainly upon individual typochronological estima­tion (e.g., Pavúk 1980; .i.maø 1998; 2002; Marton, Oross 2012.Fig. 10). While the start of the early LBK (known also as Flom-born and Notenkopf phase) somewhere around 5300 BC is widely accepted, the absolute date of the for­mation and expansion of the earliest LBK (eLBK) remains contested, with postulated dates up to 5700 BC, but rarely later than 5500 BC. The model of an at least partial parallelization of earliest and early LBK based mainly upon 14C dates from taphonomi­cally problematic contexts (Stäuble 2005; Cladders, Stäuble 2003) has not received general approval. However, recently the previous consensus on the re­lative and absolute chronology of the beginning as well as the end of LBK was disturbed by the ap­proach of formal modelling of 14C dates, applying Bayesian statistics. The first attempts (Jakucs et al. 2016; Denaire et al. 2017), postulating an unexpec­tedly late start of the expansion of the eLBK around 5350 cal BC, and a long-lasting hiatus between the final LBK and the beginning of the Middle Neolithic, provoked concerns (Strien 2017). Consequently, this led to a reply in which the claims of the criticized papers were restated (Bánffy et al. 2018). The prob­lems with 14C-dates on bone collagen (as discussed in Strien 2017) were rejected by the authors, main­ly based on the conviction that 14C dating is techni­cally mature to a degree excluding major problems. This point shall be addressed below with additional evidence. To come to an overall sound line of argument, it is helpful to briefly review some statements of Eszter Bánffy et al. (2018) concerning the alleged methodi­cal deficits of my line of argument: . The absolute chronology proposed by Hans-Chri­stoph Strien (2017) is not “based on informal in­spection of selected radiocarbon dates” (Bánffy et al. 2018.121) nor on the “selective use of visual in­spection of radiocarbon dates” (Bánffy et al. 2018. 128), but explicitly based on omitting all 14C dates (Strien 2018.17–18, 27–28). The exclusive use of quantitatively modelled 14C-data series (e.g., Strien 1989a) was proposed as a standard procedure long ago (Strien 2000.70–71). . The succession of house generations as a base for my absolute chronology is not “identified only by study of ceramic motifs” (Bánffy et al. 2018.130), but also by detailed studies of site-formation proces­ses (Strien 2018.94–95, 97–98 and further; illustrat­ed Strien 2014.Abb. 1–2): “The knowledge of the stylistic development is fundamental for this pur­pose, but it is supplemented by other, independent information such as the position of pits relative to houses, spatial relations between houses, and stra­tigraphy” (Strien 1989b.364–365; own translation; in more detail and with comprehensive literature cf. Zimmermann 2012.12–13). . It should be noted that using (1) the lowest exist­ing estimate for the number of inhabitants of a house, (2) a low estimate for the mean number of houses per settlement based on a model with a low dura­tion of houses (23–25 years), (3) only actually known settlements, and (4), a very high population growth to calculate the minimum number of immigrated people is usually termed a ‘conservative estimate’ and not (Bánffy et al. 2018.129) ‘demographic spe­culations’. What should be discussed in more detail are some other points: ‘robust chronologies’ require dates with a statistical error as small as possible, which in 14C­dating is at first hand a technical problem. However, the statistical error of a typochronological date in the case of Neolithic ceramics is mainly a function of the number of sherds found in the feature. In con­sequence, using Correspondence Analysis (hereafter CA) is no guarantee for a ‘robust chronology’ of all dated features; a critical look at dates based on small samples is necessary. In regions not reached by mo­dern statistical methods of relative dating the uncer­tainties of individual typochronological judgement enlarge the potential errors considerably. Looking first at the Transdanubian earliest LBK (eLBK), the only available CA consists of all accessi­ble features of this phase from all over Central Eu­rope (Strien 2018). The alleged earlier date of the so-called ‘formative phase’ compared to the Bíòa phase and the expansion horizon, which plays a cen­ Hans-Christoph Strien tral role in the argument of János Jakucs et al. (2016), is in clear contradiction to the results of this CA (Fig. 1), showing an anteriority of Bí-òa, not ‘formative phase’ in­ventories. The detailed results of the CA might be question­ed for edge effects (as discus­sed in Strien 2018.24–25), but an earlier start of Bíòa (Donau-eLBK) seems most probable, although a synchro­nous start remains possible, and the reverse sequence can be excluded1 . These results are backed by maps (Strien 2018.Abb. B4-B5) showing that contemporaneity between the ‘formative phase’ and Bíòa phase, and even some early Moravian sites, all synchronized by CA, is geographically plausible. It remains to be noted that: . The only argument for the anteriority of the ‘for­mative phase’ mentioned by the authors, the pres­ence of Star.evo-like pottery at Szentgyörgyvölgy-Pityerdomb and “the Star.evo presence in southern Trandanubia and the Balaton, ending perhaps in the 56th century” (Bánffy et al. 2018.128), is some­what surprising since not less than five out of the 11 authors of this paper had strongly dismissed this in another paper only a few months earlier (Jakucs et al. 2018): at Versend-Gilencsa Star.evo and early (not ‘formative’ nor earliest!) LBK were shown to have been contemporaneous in some households, following formal modelling as late as 5200 cal BC (Jakucs et al. 2018.112), far beyond the suggested start of the Earliest LBK at about 5350 cal BC. It re­mains unexplained why Bánffy et al. (2018) never­theless claim an end date of Star.evo anterior to the Earliest LBK and in consequence also for the ‘forma­tive phase’, in straight contradiction to their own paper. . At Szentgyörgyvölgy-Pityerdomb, the main site of the ‘formative phase’, i.e. pit 16 and together with pit 11 forming the long pit of house 1 (house num­bers according to Lüning 2016), provided one of the earliest inventories from the site according to the CA2 . One of the pots shows a motif composed of three lines, forming an arc standing on the carina­tion of the biconical bowl (Bánffy 2004.138.141, Fig. 71). The same motif in the same position on re­cipients of related form is not only well known from but most typical for the Bíòa phase (Pavúk 1980); the technical differences (narrow, smoothed and finely incised lines instead of broad deeply incised lines) at the same time link it with early Vin.a par­allels (Horváth 2006). After all, there is no argument left for the postulat­ed anteriority of the so-called ‘formative phase’, but manifold evidence against it. Bánffy et al. (2018. 128), complain that this “simply reduces the pro­posed ‘formative phase’ to a regional variant” – in fact it simply is a regional variant. The term should in consequence be disregarded as misleading; the phase preceding the expansion of eLBK is consti­tuted not only of the earliest pits of the sites in the region between western Balaton and Vienna (only the earliest part of the so-called ‘formative phase’), but by all Bíòa phase sites, too. Changing to the Alsatian chronology, Anthony De-naire et al. (2017) tend to an uncritical optimism concerning the reliability of CA dates and at the same time to a readiness to adjust them without mathe­matical foundation, as may be shown by some exam­ples: . In the case of Osthouse 227, a single pot is dated to a stylistic phase most probably (84% probability) 1 In fact, including the inventories from Brunn 2, published after finishing this paper (Stadler, Kotova 2019) at first sight shows a synchronisation of Brunn 2 with Biòa phase and again no anteriority. 2 I can judge the ceramic finds from Pityerdomb only from the published photographs and given descriptions. The direct access to these finds I requested for my study (Strien 2018) was unfortunately denied. ‘Robust chronologies’ or ‘Bayesian illusion’| Some critical remarks on the use of chronological modelling Fig. 2. Chronological table putting together different results of formal modelling (for details see text). spanning not more than 10 years according to the formal modelling (Denaire et al. 2017.1106). Dating single pots poses methodical problems like possi­ble stylistic interdependencies of rim and body deco­ration (Strien 1984.23, Abb. 11) – the main reason why single pots should be excluded from a CA of features (Strien 2000.46). This weak point is com­bined with a second potential source of dating prob­lems: the assumption that ceramic from graves is re­presentative of the style in use at the time of the funeral. This assumption excludes the possibility that ceramic was produced or at least selected for funerary purposes, the decoration following rules somewhat different from those for everyday items. Indeed, there are hints in this direction at least for the Niedermerz cemetery (Frirdich 1994.336–340). The idea that typochronology based on such a nar­row and problematic base could reach a precision in the range of one decade or less is in remarkable con­trast with the negative attitude towards the much more refined identification of house generations of an estimated 25 years shown by the same authors. . In the case of KV107 not only the small number of decorated sherds (Denaire 2013) poses problems, as its typochronological date had also been deter­mined quite arbitrarily by drawing in the projection 1./2.EV of the CA diagonal phase boundaries at strange angles, changing the position of KV107 from between phases IIB and IIC to the beginning of phase III (Denaire et al. 2017.Fig. 5; one may also ask why Bisch 1735 is dated to IVa1 and not to IVa2 where its position in CA fits better) – connecting chronology in this way with 1. and 2.EV of a CA at the same time is at best unusual, and would have re­quired some solid justification. . Another highly problematic methodical handling is shown by the last example: Talheim and the phase to which it can be dated (8A of the Württemberg chronology) had until now always been attributed to late LBK (Strien et al. 2014.Fig. 5; Lefranc 2007. Tab. 14; Jeunesse, Strien 2009.Fig. 1), correspond­ing to phases IVa2 or IVb of the Alsatian chronology – dating it without any explanation to the final LBK3 is not what usually is understood under the term ‘robust chronology’, but looks more like arbitrarily arranging the relative position to fit the 14C dates to the authors’ own chronological ideas. After all, the results of CAs are treated in very diffe­rent manners by Denaire et al. (2017) and Bánffy et 3 ‘Strien 9’ (Denaire et al. 2017.1132); phase 9 has never been found in the whole Neckar Valley; in the region Unterland/ Kraich­gau, where Talheim is, even phase 8B is not attested (Strien 2011.20). Hans-Christoph Strien al. (2018): sometimes accepted even for statistical­ly problematic inventories (Osthouse 227 in Alsace), sometimes ‘corrected’ (features KV107 and Bisch 1735 in Alsace, Talheim), sometimes completely ig­nored (‘formative phase’ of LBK) – this is far from “using a rigorous statistical methodology”, as clai­med by Bánffy et al. (2018.130), for combining 14C dating and archaeological evidence. But ‘robust chronologies’ require reliable 14C dates, too, not changed by later alterations of the dated material. Two thirds of the paper (Bánffy et al. 2018. 121–128) provide a lucid argument as to why on both methodological and technical grounds 14C dates are supposedly highly reliable. In practice, things are a bit different, as some examples show. The first is the start of eLBK expansion, dated by Jakucs et al. (2016) to c. 5350 cal BC, and questioned by me on the grounds of contradictory 14C dates. The simplest method, if my conclusions on the reliability of col­lagen dates were wrong, is a comparison of bone-based with charcoal-and-cereal-based formal model-ling, and this was not chosen – for obvious reasons, as may be shown. As the original code has not been published, the models had to be rebuilt online (Bronk Ramsey 2009a; 2009b; https://c14.arch.ox. ac.uk/oxcal/OxCal.html, Version 4.3). The recon­ structed model 2 produces results that are not iden­tical but close to those of Jakucs et al. (2016) (Tab. 1). The differences may be caused by minor errors in typing and by the use of different releases of OxCal. Then the model was split in two (Appendi­ces 1–2), one version with the collagen dates and a second one with the dates on botanical material. The result is quite clear and supports my position: using collagen, the start of the expansion phase is dated to c. 5290 cal BC (the absolute dates mentioned in this paper are the median values according to OxCal; Tab. 1; Fig. 2), about the same date as for the start of Flomborn in Alsace; using botanical dates, the start goes back to c. 5395 cal BC, with a better over­all agreement for the latter. Approaching the correct archaeological model, i.e. removing the ‘formative phase’ from the botanical dates, results in a start date for the expansion of 5425 cal BC (Fig. 2). Changing the model by putting all dates from features dated by CA to the pre-ex­pansion horizon in a new ‘formative phase’ alters the results only slightly and therefore is not shown here (5290 cal BC for collagen, 5400 cal BC for cereals/ charcoal), with a date for the start of the pre-expan­sion horizon of 5325 cal BC and 5440 calBC, respec­tively. Evidently, there is a difference between the collagen and botanical dates, the latter giving a date that is more plausible, although too late compared with my archaeological findings. Anyhow, it should be noticed that none of the formal models present­ed here is meant to present a correct alternative. They are only used to highlight the problems of the disputed models. The deficits of the calibration curve, making all actually possible models insecure, will be discussed below. Another point is the end date for eLBK, left open by Jakucs et al. (2016) as the models produced dates in the 52nd/51st centuries cal BC. The authors bypas­sed the problem by claiming that “for that, a much better data set is required” (Jakucs et al. 2016.318). It remains unexplained why the same dataset should produce robust estimates for the start, but obvious­ly unrealistic ones for the end of eLBK. On the other hand a very simple method for estimating an end date was omitted: the 14C dates from Vedrovice and Kleinhadersdorf from phase Ib were included as eLBK – why not take phase IIa from these sites plus Alsatian Phases IIb/IIc as post-eLBK? The explana­tion might be the unwelcome result: Using the mo­del of Jakucs et al. (2016), as above, but excluding all eLBK dates later than 6100 BP as intrusions and including the dates of seven graves from Vedrovice and Kleinhadersdorf and 11 pits from Alsace as LBK II (Appendix 3), the new model shows low overall agreement (A = 36), mainly caused by the two ear­liest Alsatian dates (SUERC-46497, OxA-27805). Re- Jakucs et al. 2016 reconstructed model collagen only botanical material only median probability start formative c. 5500 5518 – 5516 – boundary formative\earliest c. 5350 5357 5291 5395 5427 end earliest 5113 5190 5052 5040 overall agreement (A) 79 63 85 104 95.4% range start formative 5625–5480 5590–5479 – 5610–5477 boundary formative\earliest 5395–5320 5397–5322 5340–5231 5442–5351 5517–5348 end earliest 5164–5043 5224–5127 5152–4950 5142–4933 Tab. 1. Formal modelling of eLBK. Variants of Model 2 from Jakucz et al. 2016 (see text): own online reconstruction and separate modelling of collagen and botanical dates (dates cal BC). ‘Robust chronologies’ or ‘Bayesian illusion’| Some critical remarks on the use of chronological modelling moving them, the overall agreement is much better (A = 71), without changing the results (Fig. 2): the end of eLBK/ start of LBK II is dating to 5161 cal BC (95.4%: 5201–5106 cal BC), the end of LBK II to 5018 cal BC (95.4%: 5135– 4948; 68.2%: 5046–4985 cal BC). In other words: the end of LBK II in this model is with a probability of more than 85% later than the second well from Kückhoven, dating to late LBK, and the start of LBK II in this model is later than the end of it in the model of Denaire et al. (2017), although 9 and Oxford Poznan SUERC median of probability Start Hinkelstein 4827 4795 4764 Hi\Großgartach 4737 4740 4696 GG\Planig-Friedberg 4701 4653 4644 PF\Rössen 4651 4582 4580 Rössen\Bischheim 4563 4492 4494 End Bischheim 4195 4390 4256 95% range Start Hinkelstein 4990–4726 4919–4721 4901–4698 Hi\Großgartach 4785–4712 4791–4700 4729–4627 GG\Planig-Friedberg 4723–4673 4707–4582 4689–4595 PF\Rössen 4697–4589 4667–4508 4646–4526 Rössen\Bischheim 4559–4400 4570–4409 4545–4412 End Bischheim 4326–3912 4489–4246 4324–4146 11, respectively, of the 16/18 measure-Tab. 2. Laboratory differences in Alsatian Middle Neolithic ments are the same. Beyond this obvi-models (dates cal BC). Dates from Denaire et al. 2017.Tab. 2; ous difference we need not discuss the Oxford Hinkelstein dates from Trebur (Spatz 1999.214). implications of an end date of eLBK about the same time as the late LBK phase IVa1 in Alsace (‘around 5160 cal BC’ according to Denaire et al. (2017.1106)) to realize a contradiction between the archaeological and 14C chronologies, which had been denied by Bánffy et al. (2018). The last example relates to the question of the inter­nal chronology of Großgartach in Alsace. Here for­mal modelling produced a result according to which the typochronological phases could not be establi­shed as chronological units4 . Denaire et al. (2017. 1114) concluded that “alternative explanations have now to be found for contemporary variation”. With a bit more scepticism a possible methodological ex­planation can be found: running separate models with the Oxford, Poznan and SUERC dates (Brue­bach-Oberbergen and BORS not included) highlights differences between laboratories (Tab. 2). The Ox­ford dates are nearest to the usual expectations, with boundaries between main phases 40–70 years ear­lier compared to SUERC dates (except the end of Bi-schheim), which on the other hand are the only se­ries in accordance with the typochronology of Groß­gartach. The reason for the laboratory differences as well as for the lack of chronological differentia­tion of the Großgartach sequence might admittedly be haphazard, but problems with collagen dates can­not be excluded, which regrettably cannot be check­ed without 14C dates from botanical material. In addition, the SUERC dates (Appendices 4–5) de­monstrate another factor, the influence of purely mathematical effects on the results, seemingly com­pletely ignored by the authors: . Comparing the difference between the median of the boundaries (as an estimate of phase duration), there are important differences between a model se­parating the Großgartach phases and the model tak­ing Großgartach as one phase (Tab. 3; Fig. 3). The question of how fine-grained the development of ce­ramic styles is differentiated in the regional chrono­logy is of greater importance for the modelled start and end dates of the typochronological units, and even more for the relation between their time spans. This may be an extreme case as the number of dates is quite low, but first experiments with other data sets showed that it is a common effect. . Even more, sometimes the addition of more pha­ses at the end of a sequence also influences the start date of the whole sequence (Tab. 3). The changes usually seem to be in a range that is at first sight ne­gligible (rarely more than 40 years), but the moment the start or end of the model are inflicted by a pla­teau the consequences might be quite significant. . And finally OxCal does not produce absolutely sta­ble results: changing the input order of dates within one phase sometimes slightly changes the results. Even without laboratory differences the three poten­tial mathematical artefacts identified here further weaken the illusion of ‘robust chronologies’. In the light of the aforementioned problems, the se­ries from Szederkeny should be reconsidered: here the displayed LBK finds show a clear typochronolo­gical sequence, from Bíòa in the eastern part (Jakucs, 4 Nevertheless Denaire et al. (2017.1128), claim: “The radiocarbon dates are in good agreement with the sequences suggested by the seriations in both the LBK and Middle Neolithic periods”, although for the latter this obviously is not the case. Hans-Christoph Strien Voicsek 2015.Fig. 10, 11) to a probably late eLBK in the middle (Jakucs et al. 2016.Fig. 8, 8.9) and post-eLBK in the western part (Jakucs et al. 2016. Fig. 9, 1.2; even Notenkopf decoration is mentioned, Jakucs et al. 2016.281). The formal modelling nev­ertheless shows no chronological difference (Jakucs et al. 2016.293–298). This implies that three or four different typochronological or geographical units of the LBK (earliest phase – Bíòa in the eastern part, Milanovce there and/or in the central part – Noten­kopf and Malo Korenovo in the western settlement), plus Vin.a A and Ra.i.te are all present at the same time within a few hundred meters, but with restrict­ed contacts between them. Here again the Oxford dates show no sequence of the different parts, whe­reas modelling only SUERC and MAMS dates (Appen­dix 6) produces a different picture similar to that de­veloped at Balatonszarszo (Tab. 4; Fig. 4). A sequence for the eastern-central-western part is in sufficient overall agreement with the dates (A = 73). Of course the low number of dates per part of the settlement (and as a consequence that the differences between the laboratories might as well be pure chance) ex­cludes any definite conclusion on the contempora­neity or sequence of the three parts based exclusive­ly on 14C, as both models are in accordance with the dates. Nevertheless we should take into account prob­lems with collagen dates, as seen for the Alsatian Mid­dle Neolithic, possibly based on diagenetic processes and the resulting difficulties in removing later conta­minations, as typochronology postulates a sequence. The two last examples clearly reveal the major me­thodical deficit of the TOTL project, the refusal to date botanical material for the sake of minimizing taphonomic risks at the cost of lack of control for possible problems with collagen dates. Given the very small number of dates the question of the start date of the Central European Middle Neo­lithic will not be discussed here in detail, as a hand­ful of new dates – especially based on botanical ma­terial – from early Hinkelstein contexts might change the picture entirely. It should only be remarked, that: . Even Bánffy et al. (2018.130) had to admit that there is at least one contact between late LBK and Hinkelstein (Köln-Lindenthal) – the overall number of contacts is irrelevant the moment this single con­tact is undisputed, so a contemporaneity between late LBK and Hinkelstein cannot be rebutted. short model> short model> long model> difference Hinkelstein- Großgartach- Hinkelstein- highest\ Planig-Friedberg Bischheim Bischheim lowest all dates calBC fine-grained coarse-grained fine-grained coarse-grained fine-grained coarse-grained Start Hinkelstein 4734 4752 4753 4763 29 Hi\Großgartach 4710 4696 4715 4688 4712 4697 27 Großgartach 2\3 4688 4685 4686 3 Großgartach 3\4 4670 4661 4661 9 Großgartach 4\5 4653 4639 4639 14 GG\Planig-Friedberg 4633 4655 4619 4632 4619 4645 36 PF\Rössen 4614 4611 4576 4579 4576 4580 38 Rössen\Bischheim 4495 4495 4495 4494 1 End Bischheim 4265 4252 4267 4256 15 . The alleged “evi­dence for contacts be­tween users of late LBK and Hinkelstein pottery” in the Worms region has never been shown; the cited pa­pers and books did not present anything of this kind, only Walter Meier-Arendt (1975) postulates, based on merely typological ar­guments, a develop- Tab. 3. SUERC dates for Alsatian Middle Neolithic: models with different num­ber of phases and difference fine-grained vs. coarse-grained typochronology. ment from LBK IV (!) Großgartach 1: no dates. to Hinkelstein I, a view ‘Robust chronologies’ or ‘Bayesian illusion’| Some critical remarks on the use of chronological modelling adopted by other authors only by cit­ing it. For the undeniable typological connections between late LBK and Hinkelstein (Spatz 1996.474–475) examples from Worms and its imme­diate surroundings are missing, they are more general late and latest Northwestern LBK – so within the same time range as the ‘mixed as­semblages’ rejected by the authors. Even when interpreted as an evolu­tionary sequence instead of contacts they are no argument for a hiatus. . A phase ‘VI’, in any case indispensable to render possible the alleged contacts in the Worms region when postulating a hiatus between LBK V and Hin­kelstein in the neighbouring regions, has never been described by any author familiar with the LBK around the estuaries of Neckar and Main5 . The only inven­tories of late LBK from Worms which have been claimed to be near the beginning of Hinkelstein (Me-ier-Arendt 1972) can be dated to Phase IV (Strien 2000.66). . The use of CA and more generally the typochro­nological approach does in no way “tend … to gloss over any possible disruptions or hiatuses” (Bánffy 2018.131). This statement reflects an obvious mis­understanding of the two cited articles (Shennan, Wilkinson 20016 ; Pechtl 2015), which do not sug­gest anything like this. In contrast, CA tends to over­estimate any disruptions, as experiments with test data sets have shown (Strien 2000.41–47). Rapid in­novations are such disruptions, causing larger dis­tances on the 1.EV between stratigraphically imme­diately neighbouring units, as demonstrated at Vin­.a-Belo Brdo (Schier 2001) – a well-known effect that has served for the differentiation of stylistic pha­ses for some decades (e.g., Schmidgen-Hager 1993. m 68.3% 95.4% Start East 5321 5335–5305 5374–5241 East\Central 5286 5309–5268 5311–5238 Central\West 5253 5272–5227 5300–5224 End West 5182 5209–5162 5217–5018 Tab. 4. Szederkeny: median and ranges of the dates (cal BC) of the boundaries between the three parts of the settlement based on SUERC and MAMS dates only. 89), disproving speculations about “default perspec­tives of slow change”. It may be remarked that a slow change from the Early to Middle Neolithic has never been discussed, although the question of how to explain the obviously rapid change between LBK and Hinkelstein has been noted (e.g., Spatz 2003; Strien et al. 2014.254–255). And when typological similarities and – be it a single one – contact finds suggest it, continuity is indeed and should be the de­fault perspective compared to a large-scale and long­time hiatus (the whole Rhine Valley and its tributa­ries, deserted for up to two centuries: Denaire et al. 2017.1132, 1136), especially if the only argument for this hiatus is a handful of 14C dates. 5 Phase VI of the chronology (Lindig 2002) is synchronized with Phase IVb in Lower Alsace, Phase 8A/B in Württemberg (Lefranc 2007.Tab. 14). 6 The observed effects have recently been interpreted as indicators of social diversity (Gronenborn et al. 2017; 2018; Peters, Zim­mermann 2017). Hans-Christoph Strien A last point to be mentioned is the high stylistic modelled phase length difference number of degree of confidence in the actual cali-phases –1. mean +1. start\end (medians) 14C dates bration curve demonstrated by the au-IVb 30 50 70 67.5 15 thors. Looking at known problems, e.g., IVa2 1 5.5 10 12.5 2 IVa1 5 15 25 32.5 4 inaccuracies of the calibration curve III 15 32.5 50 40 9 around the time of the Thera eruption IIc 1 13 25 25 5 (Pearson et al. 2018) and within the IIb 5 20 35 50 6 LBK plateau (Weninger 2019), a more sum 57 136 215 227.5 modest judgement concerning the al-rs 0.8571 0.9429 0.9857 0.8857 legedly ‘robust’ models would perhaps have been appropriate. The low density Tab. 5. Estimated phase lengths of the Alsatian LBK sequence (after Denaire et al. 2017), number of 14C dates per phase and of measurements (IntCal13: 483 dates Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient for the relation num- for the range 4050–6050 cal BC), low ber of dates to phase length. density of interlaboratory dating, and the extreme smoothing of the IntCal13 curve com­pared to IntCal98 – all well-known facts – exclude any reliable dating, especially within plateaus. In consequence the idea that the duration of the styl­istic phases of Alsatian LBK, all boundaries between them laying within the plateau around the 52nd cen­tury cal BC, could be reliably estimated at the actual state is highly dubious, so doubts concerning, for example, the duration of phase IVa2 of “only 1–15 years (95% probability)” (Denaire et al. 2017. 1106), based on two (!) 14C dates (plus one outlier and two old charcoal dates, another date arbitrarily put to Phase IVa1, as shown above), seem to be nei­ther overcautious nor overcritical but self-evident, even when neglecting the fact that the stylistic pha­ses are found by a CA with its inherent statistical dat­ing errors, consisting of inventories from several sites and different functional and social contexts, with individual filling histories, which makes typo-chronological divisions at this fine-grained level high­ly improbable. Even more, further OxCal mathema­tical artefacts become visible: (1) for unknown rea­sons the given estimates for the duration (e.g., “pro­bably for 5–35 years (68% probability)” for phase IIb; Denaire et al. 2017.1104) are evidently too short, even the sum of the upper boundaries of the 68%-ranges lying slightly below the estimated over­all duration (Tab. 5), and (2) there is a correlation between the number of 14C dates per phase and their length according to Bayesian modelling. Using the means of the modelled boundaries between phases for calculation of durations (Tab. 5) the correlation is clearly significant (Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient: rs = 0.8857, n = 6, p = 0.01; Fig. 5); using the above mentioned modelled phase lengths, rs is even higher (Tab. 5). Oxcal seemingly distributes the dates more or less evenly along the plateau of the IntCal13 curve. Using even numbers of dates per phase would not cure the fault but produce equal phase lengths. A robust estimate of phase lengths in the plateau, using the IntCal13 curve, is mathemat­ically impossible. A completely new model for settle­ment organisation, based on so slippery ground (Le-franc, Denaire 2018) will necessarily be highly spe­culative and no serious alternative to existing models. The models of Jakucs et al. (2016) and Denaire (2017), suffering from methodological deficits in the typochronologies on the one hand, and an uncritical attitude towards the reliability of 14C dates and de­ficits of the present calibration curve as well as a lack of awareness of mathematical artefacts in Baye­sian modelling on the other, are far from being ‘ro­bust chronologies’, as claimed by Bánffy et al. (2018). A patchwork of contradictory chronologies for different parts of the Danubian sequence in diffe­rent regions and even at single sites (as shown in Fig. 2) is no chronological model of any explanato­ry value. The conclusion of the authors concerning the greater effectiveness of “our collective efforts … if the strengths of the various approaches review­ed in this paper were to be applied more regularly and more systematically” (Bánffy et al. 2018.131) can only be underlined. Bayesian statistics will pro­vide a highly valuable instrument for absolute chro­nology once the main requirements are fulfilled: a precise calibration curve, better control of factors in­fluencing dates, better knowledge of mathematical properties – presently this instrument only produces an illusion of robustness. Appendices 1–6 are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp.46.13 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to Detlef Gronenborn for critical discussion and linguistic support, and thanks to Bernhard We-ninger for his helpful and inspiring review. 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Dresden: 11–19. back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) New AMS dates from the Sub-Neolithic sites in the Southern Buh area (Ukraine) and problems in the Buh-Dnister Culture chronology Dmytro Haskevych1, Eiko Endo2, Dai Kunikita3, and Olexandr Yanevich1 1 Institute of Archaeology of NAS of Ukraine, Kyiv, UA dmytro.haskevych@gmail.com< janevic_a@ukr.net 2 Meiji University, Tokyo, JP endosalt@yahoo.co.jp 3 The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, JP dkunikita@yahoo.co.jp ABSTRACT – Ideas about the origin of the Buh-Dnister Culture under the influence of the Danube Early Neolithic were questioned by series of radiocarbon dates falling into the second half of the 7th millennium BC measured on bones at the Kyiv laboratory in 1998–2004. To start addressing this problem, 11 AMS dates on organic inclusions in the ceramic paste and charred residues on the sur­face of vessels were obtained at the Tokyo University laboratory. Apart from two heavily overesti­mated values, measured on samples with very low carbon content, they fall into the range of the 60th–46th century BC that correspond better to the primary views of this chronology. However, the issues of the time and direction of spreading of the first pottery in the region need further research. KEY WORDS – Neolithic; Buh-Dnister culture; radiocarbon dating; pottery; stratigraphy Novi AMS datumi iz sub-neolitskih najdi[; na obmo;ju ju/nega dela reke Bug (Ukrajina) in te/ave s kronologijo kulture Bug-Dnester IZVLE.EK – Zaradi vrste radiokarbonskih datumov, ki sodijo v .as druge polovice 7. tiso.letja pr. n. .t. in so jih izmerili na kosteh v Kijevskem laboratoriju med leti 1998 do 2004, smo podvomili v za­misli o izvoru kulture Bug – Dnester pod vplivom Donavskega zgodnjega neolitika. Da bi lahko raz­re.ili to vpra.anje, smo v univerzitetnem laboratoriju v Tokiju pridobili 11 AMS datumov iz organ-skih vklju.kov v lon.arskih masah in zoglenelih organskih ostankov na povr.inah posod. Razen dveh izredno precenjenih vrednosti, ki smo jih izmerili na vzorcih z nizko vsebnostjo ogljika, padejo da­tumi v razpon od 60. do 46. stoletja pr. n. .t., kar je bolj v skladu s prvotnimi stali..i o tej kronolo­giji. Ne glede na te rezultate pa bo potrebno .as in smer .iritve prve lon.enine v tej regiji .e dodatno preu.iti. KLJU.NE BESEDE – neolitik; kultura Bug – Dnester; radiokarbonsko datiranje; lon.enina; stratigra­fija DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.14 New AMS dates from the Sub-Neolithic sites in the Southern Buh area (Ukraine) and problems in the Buh-Dnister Culture chronology Introduction The Neolithisation process, defined as the spread of sedentary lifestyle and farming is one of the main is­sues in prehistory. In Eastern Europe, a key area for its study is the basin of the Dnister1 and Southern Buh Rivers, which flow into the Black Sea to the east of the Carpathians. There, Neolithic farming incom­ers from the Balkan-Danube area directly contacted with indigenous groups. The evidence of such inter­action, marked in archaeological records from the local sites, became a reason for distinguishing the Buh-Dnister Culture (henceforth, BDC). To make the timing and the route of dispersal of crops in Ukraine clear a special archaeobotanical pro­ject was carried out by a joint Japanese-Ukrainian team in 2016–20192 . Within its framework early published information about imprints of cultivated plants on the BDC pottery has been checked. Re-iden­tification using a refined impression method has not found any reliable imprints of cereals and pulses (Endo et al. in prep.). This confirms that in terms of the availability model of the agricultural transition (Zvelebil, Rowley-Conwy 1984; 1986) the BDC bear­ers should likely be recognised as a community at the availability stage throughout their existence. Therefore, following some researchers (e.g., Derga­chev et al. 1991), it would be more correct to call the culture not Neolithic but Para-Neolithic or Sub-Neolithic. These terms have long been used by archa­eologists from Poland, Finland, and the Baltic states to refer to hunting-gathering semi-mobile societies manufacturing pottery and polished stone tools. Re­cently, Oleksandr Gorelik asserts the need for the consistent use of such terms regarding the cultures of 7th–6th millennium BC in the southern part of Eastern Europe (Gorelik 2019). Thus, in the men­tioned time, the ‘real’ Neolithic with a farming eco­nomy is represented here only by groups of incom­ers from the Balkans-Danube-Carpathians region, correlated with the cultures of Cris and Linear-Band Pottery, and in the 5th millennium BC the Trypillia Culture. In the course of the project, the team was confront­ed with questions about the age of vessels, on the surfaces of which they were looking for the imprints. But, in the case of the BDC, it could not be answer­ed exactly, since both its relative chronology and absolute dates have caused heated discussion during the last two decades. As an attempt to start clarifying this problem, two samples of carbonized crust and nine samples of organic inclusions in ceramic paste have been measured using the AMS method at the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory of the University Museum of the University of Tokyo. Overview of the BDC chronology research The BDC area covers part of both the Southern Buh and the Dnister River basins within the forest-steppe and steppe zones in present-day Ukraine and Moldo­va (Fig. 1). To date, about 70 monuments of the cul­ture are known there. Only 15 of those are in the Dnister area, the rest are in the Southern Buh area. A few characteristic BDC vessels were also found on some sites of other cultures in neighbouring regions, where they are considered as so-called ‘imported’ goods. According to the specifics of the material, three local variants of the culture are distinguished – in the Buh forest-steppe area, in the Buh steppe area, and the Dnister area. Field research and source criticism Sub-Neolithic materials were discovered for the first time in the Southern Buh area between 1928–1931. But they were not published properly and almost all were lost during World War II. The BDC was distin­guished by Valentyn Danylenko during his research in the forest-steppe part of the Buh area in 1949– 1961 (Danilenko 1969.46–174). The majority of the BDC sites situated on the Dnister riverbanks were researched by Vsevolod Markevich in the north of Moldova in the 1960s (Markevich 1974) and Valen­tin Dergachev, Olga Larina, and Klaus-Peter Wechler in the 1990s (Larina et al. 1997; Wechler et al. 1998; Larina 2006). Mykola Tovkailo has excavated sever­al BDC sites in the Southern Buh steppe since 1980 (Tovkajlo 1996; Tovkaylo 2005; 2010; 2014). Leo­nid Zalizniak (Zaliznyak et al. 2013.194–257), Dmy­tro Haskevych (2006; Gaskevych, Zhuravlev 2008; Czerniak et al. 2013), and Dmytro Kiosak (2016. 137–141; Kiosak, Salavert 2018.120–122) have in­vestigated the BDC in the Southern Buh forest-steppe in the 21st century. 1 In the article all Ukrainian geographical names and derived names of archaeological monuments and cultures are given according to their writing in Ukrainian, not the Russian commonly used earlier. The same applies to the names of researchers, except for the references. Out of a dozen ways of romanizing the Ukrainian alphabet, the standard adopted by Ukrainian government in 2010 is used here. 2 The work was supported by the Japan Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research Program (KAKENHI Research Project 16K03166, princi­pal investigator – Eiko Endo). Dmytro Haskevych, Eiko Endo, Dai Kunikita, and Olexandr Yanevich Most of the researched monuments are located in a river floodplain on the edge of periodically flooded river terraces, or just on riverbanks and is­lands. Often, they are near mouths of tributaries – brooks and small ri­vers. A lot of the sites in the Buh area are near river rapids. In those places, rivers break over the granite ridges of the Ukrainian Crystalline Massif forming canyons with steep sides. The shallow but wide and fast rivers flow on among large granite blocks and islands. Such areas are well-suit­ed for fishing. The convenient places on the banks were settled many times. As a result, monuments with thick cultural levels, rich in finds of diverse time and cultures, arose there. Fig. 1. Map of the 14C dated BDC sites. 1 Ta¢ta¢ra¢uca Noua¢ XIV; 2 Ta¢­The conditions of the rapid parts of ta¢ra¢uca Noua¢ XV; 3 Soroca V; 4 Soroca II; 5 Soroca III; 6 Hirzho-the river valleys promote the con-ve; 7 Pechera I; 8 Ziankivtsi II; 9 Sokiltsi II; 10 Sokiltsi I; 11 Hlyn­ ske I; 12 Mytkiv Ostriv; 13 Bazkiv Ostriv; 14 Shumyliv-Cherniatka; struction of hydroelectric power sta­ 15 Savran; 16 Melnychna Krucha; 17 Mykolyna Broiaka; 18 Pu- tions at such locations. In the BDC hach II; 19 Gard III; 20 Gard; 21 Tashlyk II; 22 Dobrianka 3; 23 area, 13 stations are built on the Buh Dobrianka 1. and its tributaries, and three stations on the Dnister. Constructions of several of these were preceded by archaeological explorations of the terrain before it was submerged. Danylenko’s field­work was carried out for this reason. As a result, al­most all of the important large-scale excavated BDC sites are submerged now. Moreover, many identified but not investigated settlements, as well as the terri­tories most suitable for occupation, were submerged on both the Southern Buh and Dnister. The current excavation by Tovkailo at the site of Gard on the Southern Buh River is being done as it will be sub­merged in the future, too. In general, the situation reminds us of the loss of the famous original settle­ments and burial grounds in the Iron Gates area on the Danube, although repeated many times here. The specificity of the rescue excavations has deter­mined the state of archaeological records. In the So­viet Union, such field works were carried out in a hurry, obeyed the needs of construction, not sci­ence. The Soviet mentality of the administration and archaeologists was aimed at obtaining impressive quantitative rather than quality results. As such, sci­entists frequently preferred the excavation of monu­ments with the largest number of finds, not possibly more interesting archaeological contexts. Many of those sites are places of continual occupation, over-saturated with mixed materials from different peri­ods. The aim of doing the work more cheaply and quickly uncovering a wide area often led to the ex­cavation of settlements, where the cultural layers lay at a low depth and therefore were heavily damaged by nature and man. Some collections include finds from the surface of absolutely destroyed monuments. In contrast, sites with ‘pure’ cultural layers poorly loaded by finds, but well-preserved by thick sediment deposits, were investigated in a small area. Insufficient funding and the atmosphere of haste and negligence in research often led to the involve­ment of unskilled personnel, non-compliance with fieldwork procedures, and a deficiency of field doc­umentation – lack of drawings of excavations and cross-sections, plans of sites, photos, and depth mea­surements. Later, this was followed by the loss of a considerable portion of the finds, mainly faunal re­mains and pottery. The publication of the materials was also incomplete and tendentious. For many sites, no topographical plans, drawings of excavations, fi­gures of the majority of finds, or statistics were pro­vided. Errors and contradictions in records and the ignoring of facts not fitting the paradigms of the time are quite frequent (Gaskevych 2013.6–9; 2015). Moreover, archaeologists have been disregarding any critical analysis of the sources for decades and have made their conclusions based on the study of New AMS dates from the Sub-Neolithic sites in the Southern Buh area (Ukraine) and problems in the Buh-Dnister Culture chronology artificially sorted collections and imperfect publica­tions. The building of hydroelectric power stations has not only submerged many monuments but also changed the water regime of the Southern Buh and Dnister rivers with regard to their stopping spring floods, thus eroding the banks. This has led to covering of the floodplain with trees and bushes. Due to this the discovery of new sites has become more complicat­ed. One of this article’s authors has found only a few new BDC sites suitable for excavation during almost two decades of prospecting. The slow accumulation of new applicable materials makes it necessary to work with old collections of destroyed and sub­merged monuments, despite their imperfections. Therefore, the absolute dating of such sites is an im­portant task for current researchers. History of absolute dating The radiocarbon dating of the BDC began at the end of the 1960s when four dates for two monuments located near the city of Soroca on the Dnister River were measured at the Berlin laboratory (Quitta, Kohl 1969.250). Twenty years later, a sample from the settlement of Puhach II was measured at the Kyiv laboratory (Tovkajlo 1996.24) and a sample from the Hirzhove site at the Leningrad one (Stanko, Sve­zhentsev 1988.117). In 1997–1998, Gliwice and Kiel radiocarbon laboratories provided three convention­al and five AMS dates for three monuments from the territory of Moldova, respectively (Larina et al. 1997.109; Wechler 2001.29–30). In 1997–2004, 30 conventional dates of the Buh area sites, investigat­ed in the 1950–1980s, were measured at the Kyiv la­boratory (Videiko, Kovalyukh 1998; Burdo 2002; Kotova 2003.130–133, 139–140; Manko 2006.18– 19). Another 20 conventional dates measured at the Kyiv laboratory and four AMS dates obtained at the Groningen and Oxford ones in 2005–2010 are con­nected with the recent work at sites Dobrianka-1, Dobrianka-3 (Zaliznyak, Manko 2004.141, 145; Biagi et al. 2007.27; Lillie et al. 2009.260), Gard (Tovkaylo 2010.214; 2014.231), and Tashlyk II (Fo­menko et al. 2014.Tab. 3). More recently, two AMS dates have been measured at the Poznan laboratory on charcoal from a new excavation on the site of Melnychna Krucha (Kiosak, Salavert 2018.122). At present, in sum 71 dates measured on samples from the BDC sites have been published (Tab. 1; Fig. 1). Among these, four dates of the so-called ‘acera­mic’ sites Ziankivtsi II and Soroca II, levels 2 and 3, and the bottom level in the Gard site are confident­ly linked to the Mesolithic. Two other dates mea­sured directly on the early Trypillian pottery from so-called ‘syncretic’ complex in Gard are confidently linked to the Eneolithic. Eight more dates turned out to be very much older or younger than expected, and are considered ‘non-Neolithic’ without discus­sion. They show real cultural stratigraphy in the sites, where finds of different periods are mixed. It should be emphasized, that all the eight were mea­sured at European laboratories (and are almost half the dates obtained there for BDC sites) and were published by European researchers (Wechler 2001. 29–30; Biagi et al. 2007.27; Lillie et al. 2009.260). In contrast, in a large set of 51 Kyiv dates, clear ‘non-Neolithic’ values are not present at all. These results are never even mentioned by Ukrainian authors, which is especially suspect. It seems the problem concerning stratigraphy was either unnoticed or ca­refully hidden by these researchers. Possible belonging to the BDC as such is thus sup­posed for only 57 dates, which may be subjected to further analysis. A high limit of the oldest date reach­es the 65th century BC, and a low limit of the young­est date the 47th century BC3 . But there is no con­cordance of opinion concerning the timeframe of the BDC. After the publication of a large series of Kyiv dates in 1998, the specialists divided into two opposing camps. This cleavage was deepened by new Kyiv dates over the next decade. One camp ap­proved the dates pointing to the 60th–47th centu­ries BC, measured abroad and at the Kyiv laborato­ry before 1998. And the other thinks that the set of new Kyiv dates, measured since 1998 and pointing to the 65th–50th centuries BC is right. The terms ‘old chronology’ and ‘new chronology’ thus began to be used in publications. The reason for scepticism re­garding the ‘new’ dates is not only their inconsisten­cy with the time of the BDC start and end measured at the European laboratories, but their inconsistency with the relative chronology of the culture, too. Relative chronology The first BDC periodization was proposed by Dany­lenko (1969). He divided the culture into seven pha­ses, grouped into three periods (Tab. 2). In con­structing this scheme he relied on the specificity of the pottery, which was regarded as the main chro­ 3 All 14C dates in the article are calibrated using software OxCal v 4.3.2 (Bronk Ramsey 2017) and the IntCal13 atmospheric curve (Reimer et al. 2013) and given a 95.4% confidence level (2.). Dmytro Haskevych, Eiko Endo, Dai Kunikita, and Olexandr Yanevich nological marker. But his criteria for pottery group­ing are often incomprehensible, since clear defini­tions of types were substituted for description of a few of the brightest vessels or generalized descrip­tions of some ceramic group from the monument that was becoming eponymous. The earliest Ziankiv­tsi non-pottery phase is associating with the late Me­solithic now. Two other phases, the Sokiltsi and Khmelnyk, looked somewhat unconvincing even in Danylenko opinion (Danilenko 1969.150–151). Soon after they were disproved by the majority of spe­cialists (e.g., Tringham 1971.97, 100–101; Telegin 1977.89). Thus, somewhat schematically, the perio­dization scheme proposed by Danylenko consists of a sequence of four variant of pottery. The Skybyntsi type pottery was correlated with the earliest BDC period. Typically it is made in a trun­cated egg-shape and decorated by parallel incised lines forming wavy bundles and meander patterns filled with incised crosshatching or stroke impres­sions. According to Danylenko, their common featu­res are the use of silt paste containing organic fibres and coarse shell fragments, as well as their pointed bottoms. These were considered as evidence of their eastern, Azov-Caspian steppe origin in a time before Balkan influences had reached the region (Danilen­ko 1969.150–151). The next period was characterized by pottery of the Pechera type. These vessels are made of ceramic paste of the same composition but have a flat base. Their relatively late age was determined by similari­ty to the Cris pottery from Romania, due to their glo­bular and elongated globular shapes, surface treat­ments, decoration with pinches, fingernail impres­sions and various plastic applications as a rule com­bined with incised zigzag patterns. Their synchro­nous development was supported by discovering at sites of Pechera I, Sokiltsi VI, and Hlynske I, where a number of burnished Cris-like vessels made of fine-structure paste has been documented (Danilenko 1969.152–153), which are now interpreted as real Cris ‘imports’ (e.g., Wechler 2001.274, 275, 278). According to Danylenko, the Pechera pottery was re­placed by the Samchyntsi type vessels. They are cha­racterized by a pointed or round bottom, the pres­ence of gravel and stones in the ceramic paste, deco­ration by imprints of various notched and comb-like stamps, as well as the lines scratched by them. He thought that the origin of the Samchyntsi tradition was linked to the Eastern European forest zone. Its time of appearance was correlated with the ‘music-note’ phase of the Linear-Band Pottery Culture (hen­ceforth, LBPC), because of the finding of numerous Samchyntsi vessels and two LBPC bowls at one depth in the Bazkiv Ostriv site (Danilenko 1969.66, 156, 207). The Savran type pottery, correlated with the latest period of the BDC, was indistinctly defined by Da­nylenko as characterised by flat and pointed bot­toms as well as “almost unlimited domination of an impressed linear decoration” (Danilenko 1969. 154). When describing finds of the Savran period, Danylenko did not mention the materials of other cultures among them. Thus, he justified their late age only by stratigraphic observations at the monu­ments of Bazkiv Ostiv, Mytkiv Ostriv, Sokiltsi II and Ziankivtsi II. Later, six other periodization schemes for the whole culture or its local variants were proposed by Ruth Tringham (1971.97), Dmytro Telehin (Telegin 1977. 90), Klaus-Peter Wechler (2001.30–31, 52–54), Mar-kevich (1974.127–143), Nadiia Kotova (2003.30– 32), Tovkailo (Tovkaylo 2014.235–239), Ihor Sa­pozhnikov and Halina Sapozhnikova (Sapozhnikov, Sapozhnikova 2005.92). However, they consisted mainly of the renaming, correction and mechanical merging of Danylenko’s phases and periods (Tab. 2). But they did not touch on the basic sequence of his scheme, which was agreed by all the researchers. In a maximally general view, this erupted into the com­mon belief that the dominant type of admixture in clay divides the BDC sites in the Buh area into two groups: the earlier with numerous vessels tempered by coarse shell, and the later with isolated cases of its use or without such pottery. Ultimately it was re­flected in the simple two-part periodization (Koto­va 2003.30–32). The difference in the researchers’ views is the synchronization of the neighbouring cul­tures with BDC pottery types, as well as indirect ab­solute dating of the lasts. Indirect absolute dating of the pottery types The analysis of publications allows us to distinguish two approaches to indirect absolute dating of the BDC pottery types. They are different by the source of the radiocarbon dates used. The external approach leans on the pottery typolo­gy and the finds of mutually ‘imported’ vessels. On the basis of the latter, radiocarbon dates of corres­ponding neighbouring cultures are projected to the BDC sites. This method arose long ago, and was the only one possible before the beginning of the mass New AMS dates from the Sub-Neolithic sites in the Southern Buh area (Ukraine) and problems in the Buh-Dnister Culture chronology radiocarbon dating of BDC. Its followers synchro­nize the Skybyntsi and Pechera pottery with the Cris materials from Moldovian and Romanian sites, dated to the range of the 59th–54th centuries BC. Vessels of the Samchyntsi type are synchronized with LBPC sites, dated to range of 54th–50th centuries BC, and the Savran type initially with LBPC, and then with early Trypillya settlements, which start appearing c. the 48th century BC in Ukraine. The origin of the cul­ture is linked by supporters with the Balkans-Danube region (Tovkaylo 2005.44–49; 2014.235–239; Gas-kevych 2007; Zaliznyak et al. 2013.249–250). The internal approach leans, first of all, on the mass series of the ‘new’ radiocarbon dates measured on bones and projected onto certain groups of BDC pot­tery. But the basis of this approach is the same tra­ditional conception about the sequence of the pot­tery types. Thus, its followers project the high dates of the 7th millennium BC onto the Skybyntsi and Pechera vessels, and low dates in the range the 59th– 53th centuries BC onto the Samchyntsi and Savran ware. Consequently, the first two types are consid­ered by them as preceding the Cris Culture, and the second two as synchronous with the Cris and par­tially LBPC (Kotova 2003.30, 56). In fact, these re­searchers have just shifted the whole traditional se­quence of pottery types several centuries deeper. Lo­gically, they and their adherents support the idea of the non-Danube origin of the culture, since the Neo­lithic dated to 6400 BC is not found to the west (e.g., Reingruber 2017.93–94). Followers of the first approach criticized the second one because of the well-known presence of typical Pechera pottery at Cris settlements of Moldova, dated to the middle of the 6th millennium BC (Der­gachev, Larina 2015.176–180), as well as discover­ing the typical LBPC pottery together with the Sam-chyntsi and Savran vessels on the BDC sites of Baz­kiv Ostriv (Danilenko 1969.66), Shchurivtsi-Porih (Gaskevych 2008b.170), Dobrianka-3 (Zaliznyak et al. 2013.234), Gard (Tovkaylo 2014.201–202), Ta¢ta¢­ra¢uca Noua¢ XV (Larina 2006), and vice-versa, the BDC pottery on the LBPC settlements of Maynova Balka (Larina et al. 1999.27), Rusestii Noi I (Marke­vich 1973.25), and Gura Camencii VI (Larina 1999. 104). But these researchers could not explain the ‘new’ Kyiv dates pointing to the beginning of the BDC being around the middle of the 7th millennium BC, before the start of Neolithisation in the Danube-Prut region; and its ending before the beginning of the Precucuteni-Trypillya Culture. Therefore, they questioned the validity of the ‘new’ Kyiv dates as such. Afterwards, this distrust extended to all dates from the Kyiv laboratory, although many of them do not contradict the measurements of other laborato­ries and synchronization data. The situation has come to a standstill, and one way out could be an attempt to re-view the BDC periodization, as well as the direct dating of vessels of various types. Attempts at revising the traditional views In the early 2000s, one of this article’s authors was a follower of the external approach and one of the steady critics of the ‘new’ Kyiv dates (Gaskevych 2007). But his excavation, collating of the old collec­tions, a study of archaeological context and the typo­logical analysis of finds have enabled him to try transforming some of the traditional views concern­ing the BDC to eliminate the inconsistency in its dat­ing. First, all of the available finds of vessel bottoms from the Southern Buh monuments were analysed (Gaskevych 2008a). It was established that in fact among the pottery attributed by Danylenko to the Skybyntsi type only one pot from the Bazkiv Ostriv site has a pointed bottom. It is made of paste with­out shells and adorned with meander decoration. It has reaffirmed the unlikely nature of chronological opposition of the Skybyntsi and flat-bottomed Pe­chera types (Telegin 1977.90; Wechler 2001.52) that allowed considering of all the vessels with coarse shell inclusions as synchronous with the Cris settle­ments in Moldova. On the contrary, all the Samchyn­tsi type vessels turned out to have pointed and round bottoms. Since analogies to these are absent in the Danube Neolithic, a question about distingui­shing a specific tradition (or even culture) with a ge­nesis different from the BDC, and an area wider than its own, was raised (Gaskevych 2008a; 2008b; 2010; 2011). Second, re-excavation of two ‘classical’ sites on both the Buh (Pechera I) and the Dnister (Tsekynivka) was carried out (Czerniak et al. 2013). The results and critical consideration of the archaeological con­text from old excavations testified to the poor state of cultural stratigraphy on most BDC monuments. No reliable closed contexts such as pits or semi-subter­ranean houses have been documented in the South­ern Buh area. Vessels of different types are spaced apart planigraphically, which does not allow us to assert a sequence of their getting in sediments at some monuments, which were published as ‘well-stratified’ before (Gaskevych, Kiosak 2011.202; Gas-kevych 2017a.88–90). But in most cases, they lay Dmytro Haskevych, Eiko Endo, Dai Kunikita, and Olexandr Yanevich mixed (Gaskevych 2013.11–13). Consequently, the bones used for radiocarbon dating were frequently found next to the pottery of different types (e.g., Gaskevych 2017c.200–201). The observation of real cultural stratigraphy has allowed us to assume that the high measurements on bones do not date the Cris-like Pechera vessels, but the round-bottomed Samchyntsi ones decorated with a comb. Since the presence of domesticates in the BDC was generally not questioned a decade ago, analogies were looked for in the southern Mediter­ranean. There, pottery similar to the Samchyntsi and dated before the 6th millennium BC is in the Middle East (Balossy Restelly 2006) and Northern Africa (Jesse 2010). Therefore, a hypothesis about the ma­rine expansion of the earliest Impresso traditions to the North-Pontic region in the period preceding Bal­kanization was put forward. This was facilitated by the discovery of pottery with Cardium decoration and an admixture of the valves of brackish water ostracods Ciprideis torosa littoralis (Brady 1864) in the collections of some BDC monuments (Gaske­vych 2010; 2011; Tovkaylo 2012). Consequently, it was assumed that the pointed- and round-bottomed comb decorated vessels were one of the first types of pottery in a significant part of the territory of Ukraine and became one of the main background pottery types there. In the contact zone with the western agricultural population, the traditions of Cris, Alföld, Vin.a, Dudesti cultures influenced it at different times. They determined the appearance of various local decoration styles (but not phases) such as the Skybyntsi, Pechera, Savran, and some other nameless ones. Afterward, the almost complete absence of Southern Buh forest-steppe Mesolithic monuments has attract­ed attention. The only exception is the late Mesoli­thic level in the Ziankivtsi II site (Danilenko 1969. 90). Its ‘new’ radiocarbon date points to the same range as the most ancient Kyiv dates of the BDC set­tlements Sokiltsi II, Bazkiv Ostriv, Mytkiv Ostriv, and Pechera I. Therefore, it was assumed that late Meso­lithic finds could form palimpsests with slightly younger finds of the BDC on those and some other sites (Gaskevych 2012; 2014.10). A series of charac­teristic flint tools of the Late Mesolithic Kukrek Cul­ture, which were discovered there earlier (Gaske­vych 2005; 2012), support this conclusion. It logi­cally explains the early Kyiv measurements of the BDC without a far-fetched hypothesis about the very early marine diffusion of Impresso pottery. So, the latter could start in the North-Pontic area synchro­nously with the Northern and Western Mediterra­nean in the 6th millennium BC. Thus, the state of the majority of sources allows the creation of various explanatory models correlating different types of finds with any dates on bones and demolishing traditional views concerning the origin and development of the BDC. Under these circum­stances, almost the only way one can avoid specula­tion and check the existing chronology and periodi­zation as well as the suggested hypotheses is direct radiocarbon dating on pottery. Direct radiocarbon dating on pottery Today, the 16 conventional dates on organic inclu­sions in 15 pottery samples from four BDC monu­ments (Dobrianka-1, Dobrianka-3, Gard, Hirzhove), and two AMS dates on carbonized crust on the sur­face of one vessel from the Ta¢ta¢ra¢uca Noua¢ XV site, have been published. Of these, the last two were measured at the Kiel and 16 other at the Kyiv labo­ratory. Unfortunately, a detailed description of the decoration and ceramic paste composition, as well as a well-reasoned attribution to some type of pot­tery, is not given for all samples. The too large stan­dard errors (±140–230 years) of some measure­ments seriously diminish their utility. But even these dates allow us to question the established views on the relative and, partially, absolute chronology of certain pottery types, and the BDC as a whole. In this sense the dates for the sites of Gard, Dobrianka-1 and Hirzhove are very significant. The settlement and burial ground of Gard, located in the steppe Southern Buh region, were excavated by Tovkaylo over the last 12 years. He identified two BDC horizons, separated by a ‘relatively sterile’ layer on some part of the monument’s area. The re­searcher believes that the lower horizon is characte­rized by the finds of ‘early Neolithic’ pottery of the Pechera type, which he typologically synchronizes to phases III and IV of the Cris Culture, according to its subdivision by Gheorghe Lazarovici (1984). But an LBPC vessel with the ‘music-note’ decoration was also found there. The upper horizon he characteri­zes by the finds of ‘Late Neolithic’ pottery of the Sav-ran type, as well as of the early Trypillia pottery of the Sabatynivka II type (Tovkaylo 2014). Two dates of the second to third quarter of the 6th millennium BC were measured on the samples of the ‘early’ BDC pottery, one of which (Ki-14789) is made of paste with coarse shell fragments. The dates on three sam­ples of the ‘late Neolithic’ pottery pointed to the same time range (Tab. 1). The location of the ‘early’ New AMS dates from the Sub-Neolithic sites in the Southern Buh area (Ukraine) and problems in the Buh-Dnister Culture chronology sample Ki-14790 and the ‘late’ one Ki-14791 in the same square and depth (Tovkaylo 2010.Tab. 2) also indirectly confirms at least partial synchronization of the measured vessels of the Pechera and Savran types. The site of Dobrianka-1, located in the Sinyuha Ri­ver basin between the BDC and Kyiv-Cherkasy cul­ture areas, was investigated by Zalizniak’s expedi­tion in 2001–2006. A representative flint complex of the Mesolithic Kukrek culture and fragments of no less than 10 vessels with some characteristics of pot­tery from steppe BDC sites were found there. The stratigraphic position of the Sub-Neolithic materials is uncertain (Zaliznyak et al. 2013.195–214). The fragments of two vessels – one with two-pronged stamp impressions and other with a pointed bottom and gridlines decoration – were measured for the dates Ki-14798: 6880±90 BP and Ki-14799: 6730± 90 BP, respectively (Manko 2013.216; 2016.271, 278). The age of the first sample, attributed to the Samchyntsi type (Zaliznyak et al. 2013.214, Fig. 14.6), turns out to be older than the Pechera and Savran type pottery from the Gard site, and the se­cond one coincides with them in time. The settlement of Hirzhove is located on the Kuchur­gan River (left tributary of the Dnister River) in the steppe zone. It was excavated by Pavel Boriskovskiy and Volodymyr Stanko in 1961–1963. They repre­sented the site as a classic monument of the Late Me­solithic Hrebenyky culture. But the ‘Neolithic hori­zon’ with characteristic geometric microlithics and some fragments of BDC pottery with comb impres­sions, which were referred by Danylenko to the Samchyntsi type, is mentioned in publications, too (Stanko 1966; 1967). Two ‘new’ Kyiv dates that fall into the last quarter of the 7th millennium BC were measured on the same potsherd in 2004 (Manko 2006.19). They were used as one of the rationales for the early appearance of the Samchyntsi type pot­tery in the region (Gaskevych 2011.282). Re-publishing of the site by Vladyslav Petrenko pro­ved the finds of all periods lay mixed at a depth up to 0.5m in the soil layer disturbed by deep plough­ing. One fragment of the LBPC vessel and more than 100 potsherds of BDC pottery were attributed by Pe­trenko in the collection. Description and drawing of the measured sample, published for the first time, has shown that the potsherd is adorned with a dou­ble line and a parallel row of simple impressions (Petrenko 2012.235–236, Fig. 4.1). This decoration is not typical for the Samchyntsi style, and this rather shattered the idea about the antecedence of pottery with comb impressions in the Northern Black Sea area. Thus, if we consider the direct dating on only more-less well-published pottery samples, the earliest is measuring on the vessel of an unattributed type from Hirzhove. Somewhat younger are the Samchyntsi vessels from Dobrianka-1. Vessels with some Cris characteristics and coarse shell fragments in the paste from Gard are, as expected, synchronous with the Cris sites of Moldova and dated back to the mid­dle of the 6th millennium BC. The Savran pottery from Gard also points to this time. The above dates are contrary to all periodization schemes of the BDC created over a half-century. Therefore they have been met with disapproval and been ignored by most followers of both external and internal approaches. The first justify this by scep­ticism about the Kyiv laboratory, where the dates were measured (Zaliznyak et al. 2013.249; Tovkay-lo 2014), and the second by the unreliability of the measured material (Kotova 2015.13). Doubts about the reliability of measurements in the Kyiv labora­tory can easily be verified by dating in other labora­tories, as is done later in this article. But the disad­vantages of direct dating on pottery are well-known and it cannot be overcome. Therefore, possible dis­tortions of the real age of the samples should be taken into account. Sample description Eleven samples – nine fragments of pottery with or­ganic inclusions in the paste and two charred resi­dues on the pottery surface – were selected from col­lections of three sites. Shumyliv-Cherniatka The monument is situated at 48°29’17.69”N, 29°40’ 33.54”E on the high part of the floodplain on the left bank of the Southern Buh River between the vil­lages of Shumyliv and Cherniatka (both – Bershad district, Vinnytsia region) near large rapids. It was investigated by Danylenko in 1960. The surface was heavily destroyed by the construction of a hydro­electric power station dam. According to published data, an area of more than 300m2 has been uncov­ered. A few clusters of the Sub-Neolithic and early Trypillia materials lay at a depth of 0.5–0.8m in a la­yer of “dense grey-green loam” treated by the resear­cher as “ancient meadow-type soil” (Danilenko 1969.121–125). Dmytro Haskevych, Eiko Endo, Dai Kunikita, and Olexandr Yanevich According to our preliminary calculations, the col­lection stored in the Institute of Archaeology of NAS of Ukraine now includes 450 potsherds of roughly dozen Sub-Neolithic pots and 314 fragments of no less than 19 early Trypillian vessels, 303 knapped flints, two not flint pebbles, and two pieces of bones. Where the other 1397 intact and broken animals’ bones and seven processed bones mentioned in the field documentation are stored is unknown. Perhaps they are lost. Danylenko attributed the site to the Savran phase (Danilenko 1969.121). This monument has been chosen for sampling be­cause it allows us to check widespread views about the partial synchronism of the late BDC and early Trypillia culture (e.g., Tringham 1971.167–168; Tov­kaylo 2005.39, 40). Second, a fragment of BDC ves­sel with an extremely rare carbonized crust has been found in the collection. Two samples taken from the site collection have been measured. Shum 1t The sample is a fragment of a wall (field inventory No. 183, square 26G, without depth mark) of the vessel, which is represented by 128 fragments stored in the collection. The vessel was probably a pot with a cylindrical upper body of about 30cm diameter, and inverted conical bottom part. The rim is slightly everted. The lip is rounded, straight. The bottom is missing. The wall thickness is 0.6–0.8cm. The pottery paste contains a lot of sharp-cornered gravel (up to 0.6cm), sand and organic fibres as well as a little crushed shell (up to 0.6cm). The outer surface is light reddish brown, pale red, grey, very dark grey. The inner one is very dark grey, pinkish grey, light red­dish brown, grey. The colour of the fractures is vari­ous, irregular. Both faces of the rim are roughly smo­othed with a notched tool that left characteristic tra­ces in many places. The body is smoothed better. No decoration is observed on the preserved part of the vessel (Fig. 2). Shum 1c The thin coat of charred organic residue in the form of two dark brown spots, each less 1cm2 large, was scraped off the inner surface of the potsherd, which is the sample of Shum 1t. Hlynske I The site situated roughly at 48°44’27.19”N, 29°5’ 14.55”E is now flooded by waters of the Ladyzhin hydropower station reservoir. Neolithic finds were collected by Pavlo Khavliuk and Danylenko on the surface of a more than 100m part of the right lower (about 3m high) terrace of the Buh River, to the south of the Hlynske village (Nemyriv district, Vin-nytsia region) in 1955 and 1957. They cleaned sec­tion of steep terrace edge 35m in length in 1957. That year, two small trenches (Complex 1 on 22m2 and Complex 2 on 6m2) were investigated at oppo­site ends of the cleaned area. All the sources about the monument are Khavliuk and Danylenko’s field documentation and a very incomplete description in Danylenko’s monograph (1969. 105–107). The collection is stored in the In­stitute of Archaeology of NAS of Ukraine. Its Sub-Neolithic part consists of 160 fragments of 16 ves­sels, 82 flint artefacts, one bone tool, and six animal bones. A comparison of the finds and field records shows the presence of almost all the pottery and flints, but most of the bones are missing. The pottery is subdivided into three types: the Sam-chyntsi, Pechera, and Cris-like. The location of vessel fragments discovered on the surface was described very roughly, and the stratigraphic sequence of diffe­rent type pottery from trenches has not been record­ed. Thus, both Danylenko’s statement that the Hlyn­ske I is a stratified settlement with the Pechera and Samchyntsi phases of occupation (Danilenko 1969. 107), and the note about the site ‘bottom layer’ re­peating by Kotova (2002.22; 2003.30; 2015.40, 41, New AMS dates from the Sub-Neolithic sites in the Southern Buh area (Ukraine) and problems in the Buh-Dnister Culture chronology 102) are in fact unfounded. However, the absence of the Samchyntsi type pottery in the relatively well-preserved Complex 1, uncovered in a layer of yellow loam at the of depth 3.1m, was strictly ascertained (Danilenko 1969.106; Gaskevych 2017a.107). Complex 1 in the monument of Hlynske I has been chosen for sampling because two vessels very simi­lar to Cris-Körös fine pottery or even imported from the area of that culture were found there. Their shards lay around stone fireplaces close to the frag­ments of the Skybyntsi and Pechera type vessels (Fig. 3). This allows for checking the possible syn­chronism of the mentioned types of pottery. Two sampled potsherds from the site have been mea­sured. Hlyn-2t The sample is a fragment of a wall (collection inven­tory No. 93, field inventory No. 9, Complex 1, square 2–3/a, without depth mark) of vessel 16. There are five debris of this vessel in the collection. All were found in a compact cluster in marginal squares in the Complex 1 and the outcrop of a fluvial terrace edge. The largest fragment lay on the stone fireplace in square 1/a (Fig. 3). The vessel can be reconstruct­ed as a biconical bowl with a pronounced body cor­ner. The maximum diameter is 15cm; the height of the extant part is 10.5cm. The rim is vertical, slight­ly thinned; the lip is rounded, straight. There are remnants of a broken pedestal foot base on the bot­tom surface. As far back as Neolithic times fractures of the pedestal were rasped off to make the vessel steady. The wall thickness is 0.5–0.9cm. The pottery paste is soapy and flaky. It consists of clay, contain­ing a small amount of organic matter and very fine slightly micaceous sand. The external surface was smoothed, covered in slip and burnished. But now it is eroded off in many places. Its colour is dark grey, brown, very dark greyish brown, black. The in­ner surface is smooth; very dark grey, black. The frac­tures are dark grey. Decoration – hardly observable knobs on the body corner (Fig. 4). In the late 1950s the vessel was reconstructed in an artisanal way. In this process, some part of the surface was washed off and treated with abrasive. Hlyn-3t The sample is a small decorated fragment of a wall (collection inventory No. 51, field inventory No. 8, Complex 1, square 4/b, without depth mark) of ves­sel 7. In the collection, this vessel is represented by 21 fragments. They were found within the whole area of Complex 1 as well as in the outcrop and cleaning of the terrace edge. Probably, the vessel had a cylindrical body with a maximum diameter of about 20cm. The rim is outwardly thinned and slight­ly inverted. The lip is rounded, straight. The bottom is missing. The wall thickness is 0.8–1.2cm. The pot­tery paste is well-kneaded. It contains small amounts of coarse fragments of shells (up to 1.0cm) and ve­getable fibres. Both surfaces are smooth, with re­mains of burnishing preserved in some places. The colour is light reddish brown and pinkish grey with greyish brown spots. Fractures are black. The vessel is decorated with zones, contoured by curved both superficial impressed and deeply cut lines 0.1–0.2cm thick. The row of densely arranged pits imprinted by a tubular stamp of 0.4cm diameter is along the lines from the outside of zones. The surface within these zones is filled with a grid pattern drawn with diagonal lines of the previ­ously mentioned nature (Fig. 5). The figure, which these zones form, cannot be recognized. Per­haps, it is irregular like on a well-known pot from the Mytkiv Ost-riv site (Danilenko 1969.Fig. 33, 34.2; Wechler 2001.Taf. 5.5). Bazkiv Ostriv The monument situated roughly at 48°33’06.72”N, 29°21’30.27”E is now submerged by waters of the Hlybochek hydropower plant reservoir. It was investigated by Danylenko on the same name is- Dmytro Haskevych, Eiko Endo, Dai Kunikita, and Olexandr Yanevich land to 3.5m high in the middle of a rapid part of the Southern Buh River near the village of Skybynt­si (Trostianets district, Vinnytsia region) in 1959. The site description, published by Danylenko, is very brief. The pottery of the Skybyntsi, Samchyntsi and Savran types, each associated with a distinct layer, were recorded by him there (Danilenko 1969.62– 69). Later Kotova considered the site as the best in the BDC owing to the representativeness of its col­lection and accuracy of its stratigraphy, although she distinguished only two cultural layers there (Kotova 2003.26–29). All available sources regarding the site have been re-analysed recently (Gaskevych 2017c). An area of over 300m2 was investigated there during a mere 28 workdays. The Sub-Neolithic materials were found in a layer of sediment described by Danylenko as ‘yellow-grey loess-silty loam’. It was of different thick­ness and occurred at varying depths in different parts of the monument. The excavated area of a to­tal of 247m2 was drawn on the plans including marks of 3381 finds – 1353 fragments of pottery, 487 flint artefacts, 1509 bones and bone tools, 32 shaped and not-shaped stones of not-flint rock. But today, the settlement collection stored in the Insti­tute of Archaeology of NAS of Ukraine consists of only 1403 labelled items including 701 fragments of 90 vessels, 665 flint and three not-flint stone arte-facts, 34 animal bones, bone and antler tools. Ano­ther 375 intact and broken bones of animals and fish are stored in the Palaeontology Department of the National Museum of Natural History of NAS of Ukraine. However, the lack of field labels reduces their value for analysis. The rest of the materials are considered lost. A comparison of nine stratigraphic sections of the trenches allows two important conclusions. The first – a slight declivity of the ancient surface is recorded on the settlement. The second – because of the ab­sence of precise topographic instruments all depths were measured from the datum line, drawn on diffe­rent walls of the trenches at varied absolute depths. So, nominally identical depths of finds from differ­ent parts of the site may in fact (along the absolute calculations) also be different. Thus, a vertical se­quence of finds from various depths measured from only the same drawn datum line is correct. Because of the above, the site stratigraphy has been analysed from the number of finds marked on the field drawings, for each of nine zones numbered from II to X and representing stages of increasing the excavation area (Fig. 6). A small area of each zone allows disregarding the natural declivity of the an­cient surface, and the use of the same datum lines New AMS dates from the Sub-Neolithic sites in the Southern Buh area (Ukraine) and problems in the Buh-Dnister Culture chronology allows comparing the depths of finds more or less reliably. The number of finds from different depths shows a possible presence of three horizons of con­centration increase – two with pottery (Sub-Neoli­thic) and one non-pottery (Mesolithic). No ‘sterile’ la­yers between them have been recorded. The different estimated ages of the two possible ce­ramic layers in Bazkiv Ostriv suppose the typologi­cal difference of their pottery. The depth of only large available fragments has been taken as the cri­terion for linking vessels to excavation levels. This approach is based on two postulates: the position of larger potsherds in sediments is more stable; im­pacts of the forces which move fragments in sedi­ments break them at the same time (Tsetlin 1991. 27). So, 93 potsherds larger 20cm2 have been ana­lysed. They represent 31 BDC, 1 LBPC, and 4 Trypil­lian vessels. The analysis results have shown the arising of two recognised ceramic horizons at some zones owing to the way of recording the depth of the finds. In other zones, differences in the pottery types from both ho­rizons are absent or not detected due to the loss of most shards. Thus, the presence of evident cultural layers mentioned by Danylenko and Kotova has not been confirmed. Instead, considerable mixing of ma­terials, attributed by them to different periods of the culture, has been established. The recorded vertical sequence of the compact clusters of several vessel shards contradicts traditional views concerning a se­quence of the BDC pottery types. It is in concor­dance with the organic combining of technological and decorative characteristics, traditionally attrib­uted to the different periods, noted for some vessels (Gaskevych 2017c.199). The site of Bazkiv Ostriv has been chosen for sam­pling because fragments of two LBPC vessels were found there. It allows checking Danylenko’s views about the synchronism of the ‘music-note’ wares and Samchyntsi pottery (Danilenko 1969.66, 154). Se­cond, a series of seven radiocarbon dates on animal bones was measured for the site at Kyiv laboratory in 1998 and 2000 (Telegin et al. 2000; Kotova 2002). It allows comparing the results obtained on different materials at different laboratories. Seven samples taken from the site collection have been measured. Bazk-4t The sample is a decorated fragment of a wall (with­out inventory No., square B’/5, depth –1.03m) of vessel 23. There are only six fragments of this ves­sel in the collection now. Half of them were found in square B’/5 in zone VI at a depth of 1.03m (Figs. 6, 7). But a compact cluster of 15 potshards is mark­ed in this place and depth on the field plan. Proba­bly the vessel was a semisphere shape. The rim of about 18cm diameter is slightly tapered. The lip is rounded, and, in some places, flattened. The bottom part is missing. The wall thickness is 0.7–0.9cm. The pottery paste contains an admixture of organic fib-res, waterworn fine sand and a large amount of shell fragments (up to 0.8cm). The outer surface is well smoothed; dark reddish grey, greyish brown Fig. 6. Bazkiv Ostriv. Excavations scheme with margins of the zones and samples location. Dmytro Haskevych, Eiko Endo, Dai Kunikita, and Olexandr Yanevich and dark brown. The inner surface is well smooth-Bazk-6t ed; brown, greyish brown, very dark greyish brown, pinkish grey. Fractures are black. Decoration – a solid zone filled with pinches (twin fingernail im­pressions) covering the whole body except the edge and the bottom part (Fig. 8). Bazk-5t The sample is a fragment of a wall (field inventory No. 1, square B’/6, depth 0.9m) of vessel 1. In the collection, the vessel is represented by 31 fragments found within zones I, V, VI, VII, with 16 laying in a sufficiently compact cluster in squares A’–B’/5–7 in zone VI at a depth of 0.9–0.99m (Figs. 6, 7). The ves­sel is reconstructed as a pot with a slightly everted rim of 22cm diameter and hemispherical low part with a maximum diameter of 22cm too. The rim is thinned. The lip is rounded, straight. The bottom is missing. The wall thickness varies from 0.6cm to 1.0cm. The pottery paste contains an abundant ad­mixture of thin organic fibres, some quantity of the waterworn pebbles and sand as well as grog in the form of small rounded clots of unburnt white clay. The outer surface is well smoothed; very dark grey­ish brown, greyish brown, brown, reddish brown. The inner one is black, very dark grey, very dark gre­yish brown. The fractures are black. Decoration – two horizontal belts consisting of parallel rows of notched stamp impressions, separated from one ano­ther by a horizontal zigzag pattern drawn using the same comb stamp (Fig. 9). The closest analogy to this composition is a decoration of the best Samchyntsi type pot – vessel 3 from the eponymous Samchyntsi I site (Gaskevych 2010.217, Fig. 2; 2011.Fig. 3.3). The sample is a decorated fragment of a wall (square ./6, without inventory No. and a depth mark) of vessel 22. There are 20 fragments of this vessel in the collection. Most of them were found in a com­pact cluster in square ./7 in zone VIII at a depth of 0.8–0.89m (Figs. 6, 7). The vessel can be reconstruct­ed as a pot of truncated ovaloid (egg-like) shape. The maximum diameter is 19cm; the height is at least 21cm. The slightly thinned rim is inverted. The lip is flat, straight. The bottom is missing. The wall thick­ness is 0.6–0.9cm. The pottery paste contains an ad­mixture of thin organic fibres, a small amount of sharp-cornered gravel and shell fragments (up to 0.7cm). The outer surface is well smoothed; reddish grey, brown, greyish brown, very dark grey. Slight burnishing (self-slip) is preserved in some places. The inner surfaces are well smoothed; very dark gre­yish brown, very dark grey, greyish brown. Fractu­res are black. Decoration – a zigzag composition co­vering the whole vessel except the rim edge and the bottom part. It is formed of horizontal belts filled with parallel diagonal deep incised lines less 1mm wide. Deep pits made using a ribbed-end stamp are on the lip (Fig. 10). There are imprints of elderberry (cf. Sambucus) seeds on the outer surface (Endo et al. in prep.). Bazk-7t The sample is a decorated fragment of a wall (field inventory No. 210, sq. C/14, depth 0.7m) of vessel 21. There are 19 fragments of this vessel in the col­lection. Most of them were found in a compact clus­ter in zone X at a depth of 0.9–0.99m (Figs. 6, 7). Fig. 7. Bazkiv Ostriv. Scheme of the vertical location of the sherds of dated vessels. New AMS dates from the Sub-Neolithic sites in the Southern Buh area (Ukraine) and problems in the Buh-Dnister Culture chronology The vessel can be reconstructed as a pot with a slight­ly inverted rim, cylindrical upper part with a diame­ter of about 30cm, which is connected to the invert­ed conical lower part through a pronounced body corner. The lip is rounded, straight. The bottom is missing. The wall thickness is 0.8–1.0cm. The pot­tery paste contains an admixture of thin organic fib-res, isolated waterworn pebbles, a lot of large frag­ments of shells (up to 0.7cm). The outer surface is slightly burnished (self-slip); pinkish grey, red, dark brown. The inner surface is well smoothed, grey. The fractures are black. Decoration – composition of vertical bundles consisting of seven parallel wavy deep incised lines 2–3mm wide. Each line begins and ends with a deep pit (Fig. 11). Bazk-8t The sample is a fragment of a wall (field inventory No. 6, square F/1–2, depth 0.7m) of vessel 2. In the collection, the vessel is represented by 32 fragments found within zones III, IV, V, VI. But the majority of them lay in the sufficiently compact cluster in squares U–H/1–4 in zones III and V at a depth of 0.5–0.79m (Figs. 6, 7). The vessel is reconstructed as a pot with a truncated ovaloid body of maximum diameter 22cm. The everted rim is of 19cm diame­ter. The lip is rounded, slightly undulate. The bot­tom is missing. The wall thickness is 0.6–0.8cm. The pottery paste contains a lot of sharp-cornered gravel (up to 0.6cm), sand and organic fibres as well as a little mica and small grains of red ochre. The outer surface is reddish brown, pinkish grey, greyish brown. The inner one is black, very dark grey, dark reddish grey, pinkish grey. The fractures are gener­ally black. Both surfaces are well smoothed and slightly burnished (self-slip). Decoration – grid con­sisting of bundles of diagonal lines superficial in­cised by a notched stamp on the exterior rim face; rectangular zones filled with horizontal rows of im­pressions made with that stamp on the vessel body; and sparse diagonal lines drawn by the same stamp on the bottom part (Fig. 12). Bazk-9t The sample is a decorated fragment of a wall (field inventory No. 38, square B/5, depth –0.65) of vessel 39. There are 12 fragments of this vessel in the col­lection. They were found within zones II and IV. Ex­cept for two shards, the rest lay at a depth of 0.6– 0.79m (Figs. 6, 7). Only the restricted upper part of the probably truncated ovaloid vessel has been pre­served. The maximum diameter is 19cm. The verti­cal rim is of 13cm diameter. The lip is rounded, straight. The wall thickness varies from 0.5cm to 1cm. Pottery paste is oversaturated with sharp-cor­nered gravel (up to 0.4cm), sand and mica. A small amount of thin organic fibres is there too. The outer surface is well smoothed; light reddish brown, gre­yish brown, very dark greyish brown. The inner one and fractures are black. Decoration – a diagonal grid pattern, which is on all available potsherds. It is formed of superficial incised lines of 1–2mm wide. One horizontal row of comb stamp impressions is on the thinned interior rim edge (Fig. 13). Bazk-9c The sample of charred organic residue in the form of a very thin black coating was scraped off the in­ner surface of the potsherd, which is the sample of Bazk-9t. Method Sample preparation for radiocarbon dating was con­ducted following the methods of Yoshida et al. Dmytro Haskevych, Eiko Endo, Dai Kunikita, and Olexandr Yanevich (2004). About several millimetres of the potsherd’s surface was shaved using a grinder, and then thrown away to remove impurities on the earthen vessel. The sample of about 200–300mg was cut off by using a diamond cutter, corresponding to 0.5cm2 of 1cm thickness. The potsherd was divided into exterior and interior surface portions and the internal black portions were subjected to a series of experiments. To remove the contaminants for 14C dating, samples were subjected to acid-alkali-acid (AAA) pre-treat­ment at 80°C. The process was the same as that de­scribed in Kunikita et al. (2007). The rates of chemi­cal treatment for specimens are shown in Table 3. The concentration of the alkali treatment for the potsherd (organic temper in pottery) was adjusted to prevent the specimens from being slightly co-loured by it. The concentration of the alkali treat­ment for the charred remains on pottery was also kept to a level at which the sample did not dissolve completely. The rate of CO2 in the refinement was kept within a range of 0.6–5.6% for a potsherd. The potsherd (organic temper in pottery) can be dated using the black-coloured inside part at 1.5–2.5% con­tent (Yoshida et al. 2004). The measurements were taken using the compact AMS of the University Mu­seum at the University of Tokyo. The radiocarbon results were calibrated using OxCal v4.3.2 (Bronk Ramsey 2017; Bronk Ramsey, Lee 2013). Results and discussion The results of the analysis are shown in Table 4. But before using them for clarification of the issue of the timeframe of the different BDC pottery traditions a preliminary assessment of their reliability should be carried out. It consists of the mutual verification of information obtained in various ways. Therefore we will consider the question of possible distortion of the real age of the samples and compare these data with the typological characteristics of the cor­responding vessels and the stratigraphic context in which they were found. Possible distortion of true age of the samples The origin of the carbon-containing materials in the pottery can be problematic, and it is important to verify if those materials are directly related to the archaeological context. Therefore, first, there is dis­tinction to be made: is it indeed the direct dating of vegetable fibres, more or less contemporaneous with the production of the pot, or is it rather the carbon fraction of the sherd that has been dated? It is be­lieved that geological signals are always difficult to separate completely from the archaeological ones, especially in those sherds that do contain not enough organic temper (Kulkova 2014.117). Thus, the rela­tive carbon content in the measured samples plays a key role. A value of about 2–3% is considered as such that the effect of the ‘old’ carbon from clay may be ignored (Yoshida et al. 2004.716). Examining our samples from this view, only three measurements on fragments of vessel 22 (Fig. 10) and 39 (Fig. 13) from Bazkiv Ostriv as well as the New AMS dates from the Sub-Neolithic sites in the Southern Buh area (Ukraine) and problems in the Buh-Dnister Culture chronology vessel from Shumyliv-Cherniatka (Fig. 2) can be re­cognized as the most reliable (Tab. 3; Fig. 14). The reliability of three more measurements on samples with the same CO2 content of 1.1% is moderate. These are obtained on fragments of vessel 16 from Hlynske I (Fig. 4), vessel 1 (Fig. 9) and vessel 2 (Fig. 12) from Bazkiv Ostriv. Measurements on samples of vessel 7 from Hlynske I (Fig. 5), vessel 23 (Fig. 8), and vessel 21 (Fig. 11) from Bazkiv Ostriv with a CO2 content of 0.6–0.7% are the least reliable. It is noteworthy that these two samples gave the most controversial dates of the first half of 7th millennium BC. Perhaps they are heavily overestimated due to the age of the geological carbon in their clay matrix. Second, the real age of archaeological carbon, which is simultaneous with the time of manufacture and use of vessels, can be distorted by several factors (overviews: Bonsall et al. 2002; Philippsen 2015. 160–162). The main one is the freshwater reservoir effect (FRE). The most important mechanism of its origin is the dissolution of carbonate minerals, due to hard water, and thus the ‘hardwater effect’. From such water, dissolved inorganic carbon gets into aquatic vegetation and further along the food chain into the organisms of molluscs, fish, crawfishes, tur­tles and river mammals. Therefore, the inclusions of river silt, algae and mollusc shells to ceramic paste can overestimate its true age. Today, laboratory studies on the composition of the ceramic paste of vessels from more than a dozen BDC monuments have been published. For example, according to Alexander Bobrinsky and Irina Vasilye­va’s identification, all 57 vessels they studied from eight BDC sites from the forest-steppe Buh area were made of river clay. Among them, 13 vessels are from Bazkiv Ostriv, six from Hlynske I and seven from Shumyliv-Cherniatka. In describing all the sam­ples the presence of waterworn fine sand and “voids by the liquid organic fraction of silt” was noted. Imprints of algae were on all samples except one. Mollusc shells were found in the paste of most ves­sels (Bobrinsky, Vasilyeva 1998.216). Frequent use of silt, as well as the presence of imprints of ‘aquat­ic vegetation’ on 86% of the pottery from the Ta¢ta¢­ra¢uca Noua¢ XV settlement, is mentioned by Larina. She also notes an admixture of crushed shells and small river pebbles in the ceramic paste (Larina 2006.37–38). But linking these results with concrete vessels and even with the type of pottery is impossi­ble, since drawings or photos of the analysed sam­ples have not been published. Examining our nine pottery samples according to the above criteria visible with the naked eye in the fractures of corresponding vessels, the presence of shells is noted in five cases, rounded sand (possibly taken along with river mud) – in three cases, prints of thin, twisted curly threadlike fibres (algae?) – in eight cases (Tab. 5). On this basis, the vessels with lower carbon content also look potentially the most susceptible to the FRE, which increases our doubts about the validity of very old dates, measured on their shards. The FRE distortion of a vessel’s age can arise also due to penetration of the broth of cooked aquatic flora and fauna into its pottery structure as well as due to formation of a charred crust of the food of aquatic origin on its surface. Such contamination can be detected by special lipid residue analysis. Sam­ples of eight of the nine measured vessels have al- Dmytro Haskevych, Eiko Endo, Dai Kunikita, and Olexandr Yanevich ready been transferred for such research, which is carried out by an international team led by Prof. Carl Heron within the scope of the project “The Innovation, Dispersal and Use of Ceramics in NW Eurasia”. Also, the ‘old wood’ effect can arise if carbon was sorbed from the fuel during the firing process when the clay paste had not yet hardened. In a similar way, during food cooking, the soot of old trees can get in­to the burnt food crust, overestimating its true age. Taking into account these factors, which make the real age of the samples seem older, each of the dates we obtained (especially on samples with low carbon content and an abundance of freshwater shells) should be considered as not a precise time period, but terminus post quem – the earliest possible date of the corresponding vessel. Various contaminations may have occurred due to young carbon getting into the potsherds from the surrounding soil matrix. It can dissolve in water and percolate through sediments, accumulating in both pottery paste and carbonized crust, underestimating their true age. Thorough chemical sample prepara­tion usually ensures the removal of humic acids from the pore structure of the ceramic matrix, as well as from food carbon deposits on ceramics (Kulkova 2014.119). However, in this regard, the two young­est dates for the vessel from Shumyliv-Cherniatka deserve special attention. Danilenko’s words about discovering it in grey-green sediments interpreted as ‘ancient meadow-type soil’ are worrying, as this dif­fers from the ‘yellow-grey loess-like loams’ which contained the finds in the Hlynske I and Bazkiv Os-triv. Therefore, the slight young carbon effect cannot be ruled out completely here. Comparing the new dates with absolute chro­nology and archaeological context The plot of our dates clearly shows that they group four separate clusters (Figs. 14, 15). The first cluster is formed by two dates, falling into the second quarter of the 7th millennium BC. Today, they are the earliest for the culture as a whole, and are even somewhat earlier than the dates of the Late Mesolithic monuments of Soroca II, layer 2 and 3; Ziankivtsi II, the lower layer (Tab. 1). The first date, TKA-21090: 7795±30 BP (6686–6532 cal BC), was measured on vessel 7 with the Skybyn­tsi type characteristics from the Hlynske I site (Fig. 5). Danylenko referred it to the Pechera phase of his periodization due to the finding of the Cris-like bowl there. However, the discussed date turned out to be at least 500 years older than the result of direct dat­ing on the mentioned bowl. Thus, either we are deal­ing with a palimpsest, or with some distortion of the true age of the sample. The latter seems more likely because of the extremely low carbon content and abundance of shell in its pottery paste. Also, it is sup­ported by the stratigraphic position of the few mate­ New AMS dates from the Sub-Neolithic sites in the Southern Buh area (Ukraine) and problems in the Buh-Dnister Culture chronology rials in Complex 1, forming a cultural layer lying at a depth of more than 3m. Moreover, it is noteworthy that not one flint artefact characteristic to the local Mesolithic Kukrek culture was found there (Gaske­vych 2017a). Pottery contemporaneous with the date under dis­cussion is known in Europe only in the Rakushech­nyi Yar site on the Lower Don River, the Kairshak-Tenteksor group monuments near the Volga River delta, the sites of the Elshanka Culture on the Mid­dle Volga, as well as in the Serteya sites in the basin of the upper Western Dvina River. But the style of those vessels is defined as predominantly no deco­rated, or decorated in a way which shows no close analogies to the ornamentation of vessel 7 from the Hlynske I (Vybornov 2008; Mazurkevich, Dolbuno­va 2015). The only archaic-looking feature that brings them together is the rows of small pits set along in­cised lines. However, smoothly curved meander in­cised compositions themselves are characteristic not of the eastern hunter-gatherers, but the Danube-Car­pathians farming cultures of the linear circle dated no earlier than the middle of 6th millennium BC. The second date, TKA-20829: 7710±25 BP (6597– 6477 cal BC), was measured on vessel 23 with pin­ches from Bazkiv Ostriv (Fig. 8). There, it lay deeper than the other 11 dated items with known depths (Fig. 7). Since its discovery, it has been considered one of the oldest pots of the culture. But at the same time, Danylenko linked the origin of the decoration with pinches in the BDC with influence from the Cris-Körös-Star.evo area (Danilenko 1969.68–69). That simple pattern is known almost everywhere in the Balkans-Danube-Carpathians during all the Early Neolithic periods. In particular, vessels with pinches are in the materials of the most eastern Cris monu­ments located in Moldova, approx. 130km from Baz­kiv Ostriv (Dergachev, Larina 2015.Tab. 10, 32, 49, 80). However, the age of the measured fragment turned out to be older not only than their 14C dates (Kovalenko 2017.157, 158, Tab. 1), but all reliable dates of the Early Neolithic monuments in the whole Danube catchment (Thissen 2009). In areas east of the Buh, prototypes of this decoration are also not known. Therefore, such an old date should be ex­plained either by distortion of the true age due to the extremely low carbon content and presence of shell temper, or by an unlikely direct cultural impact from the Near East, where vessels of similar shape adorned with pinches and fingertip impressions are found at some sites dated to the first half of the 7th millennium BC, for example, Tell el-Kerkh (horizon Rouj 2a-2b) in the Rouj River basin in North-Western Syria (Tsuneki 2012.34–36). The next cluster is formed by four dates that point to the first half of 6th millennium BC. The first date, TKA-20828: 7080±30 BP (6016–5899 cal BC), was measured on sherds of the possible Cris ‘import’ vessel 16 from Complex 1 in the Hlynske I site (Fig. 4). Its main features are the dark burni­ Dmytro Haskevych, Eiko Endo, Dai Kunikita, and Olexandr Yanevich shing, carinated form, and a pedestal. Based on this, Kotova (2015.61) has seen analogies to it in several partially preserved bowls with a more-less pronounc­ed body corner from the Koprivets and Blagotin site in the Balkans, dated to a slightly older time than our date shows. The bottom shape of these bowls is un­known. The closest analogies of vessel 16 in terms of technology, form, decor, and metric parameters are noted in the materials of the Körös monuments of Eastern Hungary (Gaskevych 2008a.294; 2017a. 107), for example, Furta-Csátó (Makkay 1990.Pl. 3, 5; Makkay et al. 2007.Fig. 132.7–9, Fig. 134.6). Due to the presence of pottery with so-called ‘Protovin-.a’ traits there, they may be synchronous with the early phases of the Vin.a culture, dated no earlier than 5300 BC (Reingruber 2018.85–88), or slightly precede them. In this case, the joint occurrence of vessels 16 and 7 (with some possible traits of the li­near pottery) within Complex 1 does not cause con­tradictions. Therefore, in general, the discussed date may be considered overestimated due to the distor­tion of its true age. Based on the composition of the clay paste (Tab. 5) and the likely use as ‘tableware’ rather than ‘kitchenware’, it is least affected by FRE. On the other hand, the probable western or south­western origin of this vessel may indicate that it was made in the limestone and chalk rich landscapes of the Moldavian and Moesian Platform, or mountain systems of the southern and western Carpathians, where the powdered carbonaceous bedrock with no radiocarbon content could get into the pottery paste directly. However, verification of these assumptions requires special in-depth analyses using natural sci­ence methods. The second date, TKA-20832: 6970±25 BP (5972– 5769 cal BC), was measured on vessel 21 with ver­tical incised wavy lines (Fig. 11), which was found in the western part of the Bazkiv Ostriv settlement. On zone X, its large fragments lay compactly at a depth of 0.9–0.99m corresponding to the oldest (the Skybyntsi after Danylenko) layer. The “fragment of red deer horn” with a younger date of 6580±80 BP (Ki-8169) was found above in this zone (Fig. 7). This is in favour of the possible reality of the discussed date, despite the extremely low carbon content and abundance of coarse shell fragments in the clay paste of the sample. A distant analogy of this pot decora­tion may be seen in a vessel from the ‘lower Neoli­thic’ layer in Gard, the direct dates on the pottery from which fall into the second and third quarter of the 6th millennium BC. Parallel wavy lines on the upper cylindrical part of the body of that vessel were also grouped into bundles of seven pieces each (Tov­kaylo 2014.Fig. 11.2). But an admixture of very coarse sand and granules, not shells, is in its paste. The third date, TKA-20830: 6855±30 BP (5807–5666 cal BC), was measured on vessel 1 with comb impres­sions (Fig. 9) from the northern part of Bazkiv Ost-riv. There, in zone VI, its large fragments lay com­pactly 10cm above the large fragments of vessel 23 given one of the earliest dates. However, bone sam­ples measured to the end of the 7th millennium BC (Ki-6652 and Ki-8166) lay 10–20cm above discussed vessel 1 (Fig. 7). Despite this, Kotova has attributed the last to the ‘upper Neolithic’ layer, but the dates – to the ‘lower’ one (Kotova 2003.208, Fig. 42.1). For us, this fact may be explained either by the mixture of materials of different times in that part of the mo­nument or by significant distortion of the real age of the bones due, for example, to FRE. Anyway, this date questions the traditional synchronization of the Samchyntsi-type pottery exclusively with the post-Cris time. This is in agreement with the deep occur­rence of the vessel that was found nearby shards of the Skybyntsi type pottery. The latter probably ex­plains why such a representative well-preserved ves­sel has never been mentioned and published by Da­nylenko, the author of the BDC basic periodization. The fourth date, TKA-20831: 6625±25 BP (5621– 5514 cal BC), was measured on vessel 22 with in­cised linear zigzag decoration (Fig. 10) from zone VIII in Bazkiv Ostriv. There, its large fragments lay above vessel 21 with a slightly older date (Fig. 7). The pot under discussion was published by Danylen­ko as belonging to the Skybyntsi-type (Danilenko 1969.70). The motif of its decoration has analogies among the vessels from the nearest Cris monuments in Romanian Moldova (Ursulescu 1984.Pl.15.5, 43. 25; Comsa 1991.Fig.4.3, 14, 17; Popusoi 2005.Fig. 59.4, 72.7, 73.2, 82.8, 83.4, 83.7, 95.4, 102.5, 109.1), and the neighbouring Republic of Moldova (Derga­chev, Larina 2015.Tab. 20.8, 50.4,11,13,14, 76.3,4). The radiocarbon age of Trestiana, Level I (GrN-17003: 6665±45 BP) and Sacarovka 1 (including one con­ventional Kyiv date Ki-13899a: 6590±180 BP on or­ganic inclusions in pottery paste) fall in the range 5840–5450 BC (Mantu 1995.226; Kovalenko 2017. Tab. 1) that is roughly synchronous with the date of vessel 22. In addition, the date coincides with the direct dates on pottery with the same admixture of coarse shell fragments from the Gard site (Tovkaylo 2014.199–201). The third cluster is formed by three dates of the Sam-chyntsi-type vessels from the Bazkiv Ostriv site, fal­ New AMS dates from the Sub-Neolithic sites in the Southern Buh area (Ukraine) and problems in the Buh-Dnister Culture chronology ling into the end of the 6th to the beginning of 5th millennia BC. The first date, TKA-20833: 6190±35BP (5288–5030 cal BC), was measured on potsherd of vessel 2 deco­rated with comb impressions (Fig. 12). Large frag­ments of the LBPC fine bowl were found at the same depth with a large fragment of this vessel in zone IV. The second date, TKA-20834: 6040±25 BP (5211– 5000 cal BC), and the third date, TKA-21091: 6145± 35 BP (5003–4847 cal BC), were measured on orga­nic inclusions in pottery paste and charred residues on the inner surface of vessel 39 with the incised diagonal grid pattern (Fig. 13). Its large fragments were found at the same depth with large fragments of the above-mentioned LBPC bowl in zone II (Figs. 6, 7). Since all three dates concur to the time of lo­cal LBPC monuments with a ‘musical note’ pottery (Sapozhnikov, Sapozhnikova 2005.91.Tab. 1; Kio­sak, Salavert 2018.122) their age can be considered true. In addition, the first date is consistent with the conclusion about the presence of painted vessels re­producing the Szakálhát culture ceramics from the Tisza River basin on the monument (Gaskevych 2017b). Finally, the fourth cluster is formed by two dates, TKA-20826: 5725±30 BP (4683–4491 cal BC) and TKA-20827: 5805±25 BP (4723–4558 cal BC), mea­sured on Savran-type vessel from Shumyliv-Cher­niatka (Fig. 2). They point to the second quarter of the 5th millennium BC; those are the youngest reli­able measurements for the BDC. Excavating the site Danylenko noted the occurrence of materials of both the BDC, and Trypillia A of the Sabatynivka II type at the same depth, but not mentioned their pos­sible synchronism. However, our dates fall into the range that coincides with the generally accepted dat­ing of the Precucuteni II – Trypillia AIII (Mantu 1995.228; Rassamakin 2012.22–24), and they are even much younger than the range of Kyiv dates on bones from the eponymous Sabatynivka II settle­ment (Telegin et al. 2000.66). Thus, it confirms Trin­gham and Tovkaylo’s views concerning the long­term synchronism of the late Buh-Dnister and early Trypillia monuments in the Buh area. With that, as­suming the finds of BDC and Trypillia A form a ho­mogeneous complex in the Shumyliv-Cherniatka (as has been asserted by Tovkaylo regarding the sites of Gard, Gard III, Puhach I, and others) seems too bold. The issue of the BDC pottery types time frame Summing up the assessment of the reliability of dates from both a technical point of view and their correspondence to the typology and archaeological context, it should be recognized that the most valid in our series are the five youngest dates for two ves­sels of the Samchyntsi type and one of the Savran type. They are obtained on samples with satisfacto­ry carbon content. There are no (Bazkiv Ostriv) or just a small number (Shumyliv-Cherniatka) of shells in their pottery paste. Also, the dates of the Samchyn­tsi vessels correspond to their occurrence on the same level with the LBPC materials in Bazkiv Ostriv, and the Savran vessel – with Trypillia finds in Shu-myliv-Cherniatka. Moreover, the reliability of four of them is confirmed by the coincidence of the dates measured, one on carbonized crust on the surface and the other on organic inclusions in the paste of the same vessels. So, two dates from Shumyliv-Cher­niatka giving with 95% confidence level showed sig­nificant overlap in the interval of 4683–4558 cal BC. Although the overlap of the dates of vessel 39 from Bazkiv Ostriv is only three years in the range 5003– 5000 cal BC, these results are very close, too. It thus seems that these dates correspond to their real age. These dates turned out to be much younger than the Kyiv dates obtained on bones from the ‘upper Neo­lithic’ layer from Bazkiv Ostriv, the ‘dwelling’ from the eponymous Savran site, the ‘late Neolithic’ or the ‘Savran phase’ settlements of Mykolyna Broiaka, Puhach II and Gard III. Three possible explanations can be proposed for this contradiction. . A reassessment of the age of dates on bones due to the influence of FRE cannot be ruled out. Publi­shing a large set consisting of 33 Kyiv dates mea­sured on bones, the researchers mentioned the spe­cies of corresponding animals in five cases only. These are two samples of the omnivorous wild boar and two samples of the horns of the herbivorous deer from Bazkiv Ostriv, as well as one sample of the herbivorous Bos or Equus from Hirzhove (Tab. 1). Thus, the most reliable Kyiv dates on bones are the last three only. Of these, two dates for Bazkiv Ostriv fall into the second and third quarters of the 6th millennium BC, and the date for Hirzhove into the second half of the 7th millennium BC. Any of the other dates on the animal bones could be measured by a sample that is the remains of a wild or domes­tic animal constantly or occasionally feeding on aqua­tic plants, animals, and mollusks. This is evidenced by the published species identification of the bones from nine Southern Buh monuments with mixed materials of different times (Bazkiv Ostriv, Mytkiv Ostriv, Mykolyna Broiaka, Puhach I, Puhach II, Gard III, Gard IV, Nova Mykolaivka-1, Dobrianka-3). In particular, a turtle, otter, beaver, bear, badger, wild Dmytro Haskevych, Eiko Endo, Dai Kunikita, and Olexandr Yanevich boar, domestic pig, and dog are included in these lists (Danilenko 1969.Tab. 1; Tovkaylo 2005.Tab. 6.1; Gaskevych, Zhuravlev 2008.174; Zaliznyak et al. 2013.245). Humans are also omnivorous mam­mals who eat fish. Burials associated with the BDC were found on the Southern Buh sites Samchyntsi I, Gaivoron-Polizhok (Solgutiv Ostriv), Sokiltsi VI (Gas­kevych 2015), and Dobrianka-3 (Zaliznyak et al. 2013.242). The date was measured only for the bur­ial from Dobrianka-3. It falls into the last quarter of the 7th millennium BC (Lillie et al. 2009.260). How­ever, it cannot be ruled out that some unidentified human bones could be found on this and other sites and were 14C dated. Therefore, all Kyiv dates, made on the basis of material which is referred to in publi­cations as just ‘animal bone’, are generally doubtful. . The uncertainty or lack of real cultural stratigra­phy, as well as the mixing of materials of different times on many monuments, could lead to the erro­neous correlation of the complexes of finds to the ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ layers and become the cause of the contradiction under discussion. . It is possible that the real time-space of the exis­tence of the Samchyntsi and Savran type pottery was longer than is traditionally considered. In this case, both groups of the corresponding dates may be correct, but the relative chronology that correlates such vessels with only the post-Cris time is errone­ous. This explanation is also supported by our less reliable AMS date on vessel 1 from Bazkiv Ostriv (Fig. 9), as well as Kyiv dates on the pottery from Gard and Dobrianka-1. Even more complicated is the issue of the dating of the Skybyntsi and Pechera type pottery. The date on the only Skybyntsi-type sample with satisfactory car­bon content, obtained from vessel 22 in Bazkiv Ost-riv (Fig. 10), points to the third quarter of the 6th millennium BC. This is entirely consistent with the dates for the Cris settlements Sacarovka 1 and Tresti­ana, Level I (Mantu 1995.226; Kovalenko 2017.Tab. 1), recognized as ‘Cris IV’ after the Lasarovici periodi­zation, or phenomenon like the ‘Gla¢va¢nesti culture’ or ‘Prut-Danube culture’, after Agathe Reingruber (2016.169; 2017.96–97). The established synchroni­zation does not contradict the traditional view of the dating of the beginning of the BDC and its ori­gin under the Balkan-Carpathian influence. It also corresponds to direct Kyiv dates on the Pechera type pottery from Gard. Thus, a comparison of this ves­sel with the Kyiv dates of the second half of the 7th millennium BC, measured on the ‘animal bones’ from the ‘lower layer’ of the site (Kotova 2003.27– 28, 205), seems erroneous. Perhaps this was due to the mixing of the Skybyntsi finds with unrecognized late Mesolithic materials or a distortion of the real age of bones (which were published without identi­fication) influenced by the FRE. Unfortunately, all the other dates for the Skybyntsi and Pechera type pottery were measured on the samples with medium or very low carbon content (Tab. 3), which undermines their reliability. Thus, for example, the strong influence of ‘geological’ car­bon can be clearly revealed for the date of the cari­nated bowl with features of the Vin.a traditions from Hlynske I (Fig. 4). Such influence could even more strongly change the real age of the two oldest samples with an abundance of shell in their pottery paste (Figs. 5, 8). Therefore, the chronology of the corresponding vessels should be determined taking into account typological arguments. Today, various possible scenarios of the origin and spread of the earliest pottery in the vast territory of Eastern Europe are debated. More traditionally it is seen as a component of the cultural complex of the Middle East agricultural population who moved to the northern Balkans and south-western Carpathian basin. It is believed that such pottery is not earlier 6200 BC (Budja 2009.126). For more ancient cera­mic production three variants are proposed. Two of them are: its independent invention by mobile and semi-mobile hunter-gatherers in many centres in Eu­rasia and Africa; or its spreading to local foragers from one starting point that arose in East Asia as early as the Pleistocene around 14 500 BC (over­views: Jordan, Zvelebil 2009; Budja 2013). The main common features of this old pottery are a pointed or conical base, the predominantly bag-like form, cover­ing of the whole outer surface by impressed decora­tion or another relief-like structure (Piezonka 2015. 286–287). According to a recently proposed third variant, one part of the oldest East European pot­tery is a component of a near-eastern ‘Neolithic pack­age’, which had already arrived here directly from one or more unknown sources in the first quarter of the 7th millennium BC, and the other component is the result of its further development by indigenous hunter-gatherers (Mazurkevich, Dolbunova 2015). An important argument for this is the predominant­ly flat bottom shape of the most ancient vessels in various parts of the region. Paradoxically, among BDC pottery in the Southern Buh area ‘archaic’ features of the oldest forager ce­ New AMS dates from the Sub-Neolithic sites in the Southern Buh area (Ukraine) and problems in the Buh-Dnister Culture chronology ramics are more typical of exclusively point- and round-bottomed vessels of the Samchyntsi type, and have given reliable direct dates of the end of 6th mil­lennium BC. In contrast, there is only one reliable point-bottomed vessel (No. 38 from Bazkiv Ostriv) among the earlier pottery of the Skybyntsi and Pe­chera type. It is decorated with smoothly curved meander compositions formed by bundles of incised lines (Danilenko 1969.Fig. 24.4,6). This ornamental pattern has no analogies within foragers’ assembla­ges to the north or east, but is a characteristic feature of some cultures of the linear circle, such as the Tisza­dob Group and Bükk Culture in the Carpathian Basin (e.g., Piatnicková 2015). Perhaps it and some other peculiar forms of decoration, for example, vertical wavy lines covering the whole of a vessel’s surface, appeared earlier not in the west, but just in the Southern Buh, which was proposed by Reingruber (2018.90). Therefore, to determine the place of ori­gin and the distribution vector of the described traditions, reliable direct dating of the BDC pottery should be continued. Conclusion and prospects The set of 11 new AMS dates has given a wide scat­ter of their values within the entire period outlined by the previous BDC dates. Moreover, the two results of the second quarter of the 7th millennium BC are beyond it and may potentially be the oldest dates of the culture. However, analysis of the samples from the aspect of carbon content, their susceptibility to the influence of the FRE, correspondence to the stra­tigraphy of the sites and typology of materials de­tected only six more credible dates. Their order on the timeline coincides with generally accepted ideas about the sequence of existence of the different BDC pottery types. The youngest is the vessel of the Sav-ran type from Shumyliv-Cherniatka that gave two dates, which fall into the range of 4723–4491 cal BC, when the Trypillia culture bearers already popu­lated the region. Two vessels of the Samchyntsi type from Bazkiv Ostriv gave three dates within the range of 5288–4847 cal BC, which corresponds to their finding next to fragments of fine ‘music-note’ bowls of the LBPC. The vessel of the Skybyntsi type from Bazkiv Ostriv gave the oldest plausible date of 5621– 5514 cal BC, which corresponds to the age of the Cris monuments in neighbouring Moldova. From a perspective of the problem that arose two decades ago after the publication of the ‘new’ Kyiv dates measured on bones, the AMS Tokyo dates bet­ter correspond not to the latter, but the primary, tra­ditional, absolute chronology of the BDC, and con­ventional Kyiv dates on pottery. Most likely the dates on a bone, pointing to the second half of the 7th mil­lennium BC, are related to the Final Mesolithic finds not separated by excavators in the palimpsests of some Southern Buh settlements in the 1950s, or sampling the bones of animals, exposed to the FRE. Thus, it appears that the long-discussed problem of the BDC chronology is concerned with not only the material of samples, as is considered now, but with the interpretation of results. In quick pursuit of im­pressive publications, numerous radiocarbon dates were offhandedly compared with the unlikely strati­graphy of settlements, and doubtful periodization schemes created under the paradigms of stadial de­velopment more than half a century ago. Of course, 11 new dates can by no means be suffi­cient for reliably dating the three corresponding sites, not to speak of a whole BDC. They can only be the beginning of a long process aimed at the crea­tion of a model that could be advanced for future testing. In such a study, particular attention should be paid to the question of the age of pottery with the high amount of shell, given the old values, which show dates from our series. Is it a cultural trait of older pottery, where shell temper has dominated? Or is it a technical shortcoming in the dating process? Another important issue is the time of appearance of the archaic-looking point- and round-bottomed pottery of the Samchyntsi type. Is it the oldest in the region, or do the previous dates measured on such vessels convey the age of the geological component in their ceramic paste? To answer these and other questions, new direct 14C dating on pottery, accom­panied by its petrographical, physical and chemical studies, and in particular lipid analysis, should be conducted. Also, if possible, detailed information about the species of animals whose bones were measured at Kyiv laboratory earlier and the locali­zation of corresponding samples in the sites should be found and published for further analysis. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We thank staff of the Micro Analysis Laboratory, Tan­dem Accelerator (MALT) and Radiocarbon Dating La­boratory, the University Museum, the University of Tokyo. 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Dmytro Haskevych, Eiko Endo, Dai Kunikita, and Olexandr Yanevich Appendix Tab. 1. The dates measured on samples from the BDC sites. Site Context Lab No Material 14C age Calibrated age Reference BP cal BC (2. ) Bazkiv Ostriv square B’\8, Ki-8166 animal bone – 7410±65 6426–6100 Kotova 2002.103< depth 80cm ‘bone polisher’ Gaskevych 2017.200 Bazkiv Ostriv square JA\12, Ki-8167 animal bone – 7270±70 6336–6004 Kotova 2002.103< depth 80cm ‘bone awl’ (|) Gaskevych 2017.200 Bazkiv Ostriv square G’\7, Ki-6651 animal bone – 7235±60 6224–6009 Telegin et al. 2000.64< depth 80cm ‘boar tusk’ (|) Burdo 2002.433 Bazkiv Ostriv depth 90cm Ki-6696 animal bone – 7215±55 6216–6002 Telegin et al. 2000.64< ‘boar tusk’ Burdo 2002.432 Bazkiv Ostriv square JU\7 Ki-6652 animal bone – 7160±55 6207–5912 Telegin et al. 2000.63, 64< depth 80cm ‘bone polisher’(|) Burdo 2002.433 Bazkiv Ostriv square U\4 Ki-8168 animal bone – 6720±70 5736–5514 Kotova 2002.104< ‘antler hoe’ Gaskevych 2017.200 Bazkiv Ostriv square {\14, Ki-8169 animal bone – 6580±80 5644–5374 Kotova 2002.104< depth 60cm ‘antler’ Gaskevych 2017.200 Dobrianka-1 Ki-14798 organic inclu­ 6880±90 5978–5631 Manko 2013.216 sions in pottery Dobrianka-1 Ki-14799 organic inclu­ 6730±90 5786–5485 Manko 2013.216 sions in pottery Dobrianka-1 Ki-9833 organic inclu­ 6530±140 5714–5224 Manko 2006.17 sions in pottery Dobrianka-1 Ki-9834 organic inclu­ 6360±150 5616–4991 Zaliznyak, Manko 2004.141 sions in pottery Dobrianka-3 trench 3, OxA-17490 animal bone 9115±45 8454–8252 Lillie et al. 2009.260 depth 1.0m (Bos primigenius) Dobrianka-3 Ki-11105 animal bone 7400±130 6474–6016 Zaliznyak, Manko 2004.145 Dobrianka-3 Ki-11104 animal bone 7320±130 6441–5933 Zaliznyak, Manko 2004.145 Dobrianka-3 trench 3, OxA-X- human bone 7297±39 6230–6070 Lillie et al. 2009.260 depth 1.2m 2222-33 Dobrianka-3 Ki-11108 organic inclu­ 7260±170 6452–5808 Zaliznyak, Manko 2004.145 sions in pottery Dobrianka-3 Ki-11106 organic inclu­ 7070±150 6232–5668 Zaliznyak, Manko 2004.145 sions in pottery Dobrianka-3 Ki-11107 organic inclu­ 7050±160 6232–5642 Zaliznyak, Manko 2004.145 sions in pottery Dobrianka-3 Ki-11103 animal bone 7030±120 6202–5670 Zaliznyak, Manko 2004.145 Dobrianka-3 GrA-33115 animal bone 4400±35 3308–2910 Biagi et al. 2007.27 Dobrianka-3 GrA-33117 animal bone 3595±35 2113–1831 Biagi et al. 2007.27 Gard square IX-9, Ki-14796* animal bone 7640±90 6655–6264 Tovkaylo 2010.Tab. 2 depth 1.4–1.5m Gard square IV-100, Ki-14797 ‘Early Neolithic 6980±80 6006–5723 Tovkaylo 2010.Tab. 2 depth 1.4–1.5m layer’ soil Gard square IX-16, Ki-14791 organic inclusions 6710±80 5734–5489 Tovkaylo 2010.Tab. 2 depth 1.3–1.4m in the ‘late’ BDC pottery Gard square IX-16, Ki-14790 organic inclusions 6630±90 5721–5385 Tovkaylo 2010.Tab. 2 depth 1.3–1.4m in the ‘early’ BDC pottery with sand and granules admixture Gard square IX-39, Ki-14789 organic inclusions 6480±80 5612–5310 Tovkaylo 2010.Tab. 2 depth 1.1–1.2m in the ‘early’ BDC pottery with coarse shell fragments admixture New AMS dates from the Sub-Neolithic sites in the Southern Buh area (Ukraine) and problems in the Buh-Dnister Culture chronology Site Context Lab No Material 14C age Calibrated age Reference BP cal BC (2. ) Gard square IX-29, Ki-14792 organic inclusions 6520±80 5618–5338 Tovkaylo 2010.Tab. 2 depth 1.2–1.3m in the ‘late’ BDC pottery with Ostra-cods admixture Gard square IV-70, Ki-14793 organic inclusions 6400±90 5546–5210 Tovkaylo 2010.Tab. 2 depth 1.2–1.3m in the ‘late’ BDC pottery Gard square IV-97, Ki-14794 organic inclusions 6360±80 5486–5080 Tovkaylo 2010.Tab. 2 depth 1.2–1.3m in the Trypillia A pottery Gard square IV-87, Ki-14795 organic inclusions 6170±80 5312–4910 Tovkaylo 2010.Tab. 2 depth 1.2–1.3m in the Trypillia A pottery Gard III square 8 Ki-6655 animal bone 6930±55 5976–5716 Telegin et al. 2000.64 Gard III Ki-6650 animal bone 6865±50 5875–5650 Telegin et al. 2000.63 Gard III trench 7 Ki-6687 animal bone 6640±50 5636–5486 Telegin et al. 2000.64 Hirzhove trench IV, Ki-11240 animal bone 7390±100 6435–6065 Manko 2006.19 spit 1 (Bos or Equus) Hirzhove trench II, Ki-11241 organic inclusions 7280±170 6465–5812 Manko 2006.19 spit 1 in pottery Hirzhove trench II, Ki-11743** organic inclusions 7200±220 6466–5668 Manko 2006.19 spit 1 in pottery Hirzhove Le-1703 animal bone 7050±60 6032–5789 Stanko, Svezhentsev 1988.117 Melnychna 2012, the base Poz-67496 charcoal 7520±50 6461–6252 Kiosak, Salavert 2018.122 Krucha of stratigraphi-(Angiosperm) cal unit 3, depth 200cm Melnychna 2012, the base Poz-67497 charcoal (Fraxinus) 7380±40 6380–6100 Kiosak, Salavert 2018.122 Krucha of stratigra­ phical unit 2 Mykolyna square 1, Ki-8171 animal bone 6520±70 5618–5356 Kotova 2002.104 Broiaka depth 120cm Mytkiv Ostriv depth 125cm Ki-6695 animal bone 7375±60 6388–6090 Telegin et al. 2000.64 Pechera I Ki-6693 animal bone 7305±50 6328–6054 Telegin et al. 2000.64 Pechera I Ki-6692 animal bone 7260±65 6240–6008 Telegin et al. 2000.64 Pechera I square ?\7, Ki-8164 animal bone 7205±70 6227–5930 Kotova 2002.103 depth 70cm Puhach II trench 2, Ki-6656 animal bone 6895±50 5890–5674 Telegin et al. 2000.63 depth 2.5–2.6m Puhach II square XIX-51 Ki-6657 animal bone 6810±60 5836–5622 Telegin et al. 2000.63 Puhach II Ki-6649 animal bone 6780±50 5752–5616 Telegin et al. 2000.63 Puhach II Ki-6648 animal bone 6740±65 5741–5534 Telegin et al. 2000.63 Puhach II trench 1, Ki-6679 animal bone 6560±50 5621–5390 Telegin et al. 2000.64 depth 2.8–2.9m Puhach II trench 1, Ki-6678 animal bone 6520±60 5615–5363 Telegin et al. 2000.64 depth 2.4–2.5m Puhach II Ki-3030 charcoal 5920±60 4962–4619 Tovkajlo 1996.24 Savran Ki-6654 animal bone 6985±60 5986–5744 Telegin et al. 2000.64 Savran “dwelling” 2 Ki-6653 animal bone 6920±50 5969–5716 Telegin et al. 2000.64 Sokiltsi I Complex 1 Ki-8165 animal bone 7260±80 6350–5988 Kotova 2002.103 Sokiltsi II depth 140cm Ki-6697 animal bone 7470±60 6438–6232 Telegin et al. 2000.64 Sokiltsi II depth 120cm Ki-6698 animal bone 7405±55 6416–6102 Telegin et al. 2000.64 Soroca II layer 3 Bln-588* charcoal (Fraxinus sp.) 7515±120 6596–6099 Quitta, Kohl, 1969.250 Soroca II layer 2 Bln-587* charcoal (Ulmus sp.) 7420±80 6435–6097 Quitta, Kohl, 1969.250 Soroca II 1964, from pit Bln-586 charcoal 6830±150 5998–5491 Quitta, Kohl, 1969.250 within upper (Fraxinus sp.) layer I< depth 3.3–3.5m Dmytro Haskevych, Eiko Endo, Dai Kunikita, and Olexandr Yanevich Site Context Lab No Material 14C age BP Calibrated age Reference cal BC (2.) Soroca III KiA-4159 horse tooth 9950±70 9758–9713 Wechler 2001.29 Soroca III Gd-11297 shell 8430±90 7602–7192 Wechler 2001.29 Soroca III Soroca III || KiA-4158 || deer bone 6750±100 5560±60 5840–5488 4526–4273 Yanushevich 1989.609 Wechler 2001.29 Soroca V Tashlyk II 1966, from fireplace at 2 m depth square III-23, depth 2.34m Bln-589 Ki-10789 charcoal (Fraxinus sp.) animal bone 6495±100 6160±60 5631–5235 5292–4948 Quitta, Kohl 1969.250 Fomenko et al. 2014.Tab. 3 Ta¢ta¢ra¢uca Noua¢ XIV Gd-9697 animal bone 5370±170 4548–3796 Wechler 2001.29 Ta¢ta¢ra¢uca square D26 KiA-3705b food crust 6340±70 5478–5081 Wechler 2001.30 Noua¢ XV “bottom” (on *** shell midden 10), depth 1.10m Ta¢ta¢ra¢uca square D26 KiA-3705a food crust 5960±230 5366–4362 Wechler 2001.30 Noua¢ XV “bottom” (on shell midden 10), depth 1.10m Ta¢ta¢ra¢uca Noua¢ XV square E15, depth 1.25m, within shell KiA-4160 antler 5900±40 4882–4690 Wechler 2001.30 midden Ta¢ta¢ra¢uca Gd-9693 animal bone 5220±70 4242–3811 Wechler 2001.29 Noua¢ XV Ziankivtsi II Ki-6694* animal bone 7540±65 6494–6244 Telegin et al. 2000.64 * – dates, which were originally linked with the Final Mesolithic (or “Pre-Pottery Neolithic”) materials ** – repeated dating of sample Ki-11241 *** – repeated dating of sample KiA-3705a dark shading – too high or low dates, which are considered ‘non-Neolithic’ without discussion Tab. 2. Comparing of the BDC periodization schemes. New AMS dates from the Sub-Neolithic sites in the Southern Buh area (Ukraine) and problems in the Buh-Dnister Culture chronology Sample Sample Residue after AAA Residue after AAA Oxidation CO2 weight CO2 content No. weight (mg) treatment (mg) treatment (%) weight (mg) (mg) (%) Shum-1c 5.3 1.5 27.8 1.5 0.7 49.0 Shum-1t 188.5 93.4 49.6 66.1 2.3 3.5 Hlyn-2t 233.5 132.4 56.7 77.7 0.9 1.1 Hlyn-3t 291.2 207.1 71.1 100.0 0.6 0.6 Bazk-4t 257.5 164.5 63.9 53.0 0.4 0.7 Bazk-5t 273.9 195.0 71.2 91.8 1.0 1.1 Bazk-6t 211.6 127.9 60.4 83.7 2.0 2.4 Bazk-7t 324.4 223.3 68.8 97.6 0.7 0.7 Bazk-8t 229.0 122.1 53.3 84.7 1.0 1.1 Bazk-9c 7.8 2.6 33.0 0.8 0.2 21.3 Bazk-9t 197.1 99.6 50.5 66.2 3.7 5.6 Tab. 3. Chemical treatments of the samples. Sample Vessel Figure Material 14C age Calibrated age Lab No .13C No No BP (1.) cal BC (2.) (‰, AMS) Shumyliv-Cherniatka Shum-1c – 2 Charred residues (inner) 5725±30 4683–4491 TKA-20826 –23.6±0.2 Shum-1t – 2 Organic inclusions in the pottery paste 5805±25 4723–4558 TKA-20827 –29.5±0.2 Hlynske I Hlyn-2t 16 4 Organic inclusions in the pottery paste 7080±30 6016–5899 TKA-20828 –24.2±0.3 Hlyn-3t 7 5 Organic inclusions in the pottery paste 7795±30 6686–6532 TKA-21090 –22.7±0.5 Bazkiv Ostriv Bazk-4t 23 8 Organic inclusions in the pottery paste 7710±25 6597–6477 TKA-20829 –25.8±0.4 Bazk-5t 1 9 Organic inclusions in the pottery paste 6855±30 5807–5666 TKA-20830 –26.4±0.5 Bazk-6t 22 10 Organic inclusions in the pottery paste 6625±25 5621–5514 TKA-20831 –28.4±0.2 Bazk-7t 21 11 Organic inclusions in the pottery paste 6970±25 5972–5769 TKA-20832 –24.8±0.3 Bazk-8t 2 12 Organic inclusions in the pottery paste 6190±35 5288–5030 TKA-20833 –24.0±0.6 Bazk-9t 39 13 Organic inclusions in the pottery paste 6040±25 5211–5000 TKA-20834 –28.2±0.3 Bazk-9c 39 13 Charred residues (inner) 6145±35 5003–4847 TKA-21091 –23.0±0.4 Tab. 4. Radiocarbon ages of the samples. Sample Calibrated age Vessel No Pottery type Shell Waterworn sand Impressions of algae| No cal BC (2.) and gravel Shumyliv-Cherniatka Shum-1c Shum-1t Hlynske I Hlyn-2t Hlyn-3t Bazkiv Ostriv Bazk-4t Bazk-5t Bazk-6t Bazk-7t Bazk-8t Bazk-9c Bazk-9t 4683–4491 4723–4558 6016–5899 6686–6532 6597–6477 5807–5666 5621–5514 5972–5769 5288–5030 5003–4847 5211–5000 – 16 7 23 1 22 21 2 39 Savran Pechera-Kris¸| Pechera-Skybyntsi| Skybyntsi Samchyntsi Skybyntsi Skybyntsi Samchyntsi Samchyntsi + – + + – + + – – – – – + + – + – – + – + + + + + + + Tab. 5. Admixtures of possible aquatic origin in the pottery paste of dated vessels. back to contents back to contents 245 Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) The chronology of Jäkärlä Ware – Bayesian interpretation of the old and new radiocarbon dates from Early and Middle Neolithic southwest Finland Petro Pesonen1, Markku Oinonen 2 1 Department of Biology, University of Turku, Turku, FI petro.pesonen@utu.fi 2 Laboratory of Chronology, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, FI markku.j.oinonen@helsinki.fi ABSTRACT – The chronology of the eastern Fennoscandian Neolithic is organized with the help of pottery styles, one of which is southwestern Finnish Jäkärlä Ware. In this paper a number of new radiocarbon dates connected with Jäkärlä Ware and other relevant ceramic groups are presented and discussed. The radiocarbon dates of each group are modelled within a Bayesian chronological framework. Also, the potential reservoir effect in charred crust dates is estimated for each date based on stable carbon isotopic ratios of the crust samples and incorporated into models. Jäkärlä Ware ap­pears to be a short-living and quite a isolated group, which had no chronological contacts with Sper-rings 1–2 Wares, but with possible coexistence with Middle Neolithic Typical Comb Ware. Jäkärlä Ware is partly simultaneous with eastern Finnish asbestos-tempered Kaunissaari Ware, and forms with it a short chronological horizon in the turn of the Early and Middle Neolithic of eastern Fennoscandia. KEY WORDS – Bayesian modelling; Early and Middle Neolithic; Eastern Fennoscandia; chronology; radiocarbon dates Kronologija posod tipa Jäkärlä – Bayesova interpretacija starih in novih radiokarbonskih datumov iz ;asa zgodnjega in srednjega neolitika na obmo;ju JZ Finske IZVLE.EK – Neolitska kronologija na obmo.ju vzhodne Fenoskandije je organizirana s pomo.jo okrasov na lon.enini, ene izmed njih so tudi posode tipa Jäkärlä iz obmo.ja jugo zahodne Finske. V .lanku predstavljamo in razpravljamo o .tevilnih novih radiokarbonskih datumih, vezanih na te posode in druge pomembne kerami.ne skupine. Datume vsake od predstavljenih kerami.nih skupin smo modelirali z Bayesovim kronolo.kim okvirjem. Ocenjujemo tudi morebitne efekte rezervoarja na podlagi razmerij stabilnih izotopov ogljika pri datumih, pridobljenih iz zoglenelih organskih os­tankov na keramiki, kar smo nato vklju.ili tudi v modeliranje. Posode tipa Jäkärlä ka.ejo na skup­nost, ki je .ivela izolirano in le kratko .asovno obdobje ter ni imela nobenih kronolo.kih povezav s posodami tipa Sperrings 1-2, opa.amo pa dolo.eno sobivanje s srednje neolitskimi posodami z zna-.ilnim glavni.astim okrasom. Posode tipa Jäkärlä so tudi so.asne s posodami Kaunissaari iz obmo.­ja vzhodne Finske, ki imajo dodan azbest, in skupaj z njimi sestavlja kratek .asovni horizont na pre­hodu zgodnjega v srednji neolitik na obmo.ju vzhodne Fenoskandije. KLJU.NE BESEDE – Bayesovo modeliranje; zgodnji in srednji neolitik; vzhodna Fenoskandija; kro­nologija; radiokarbonski datumi DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.15 The chronology of Jäkärlä Ware – Bayesian interpretation of the old and new radiocarbon dates from Early and Middle Neolithic ... Introduction Jäkärlä Ware, or Jäkärlä pottery, is a special Early Neolithic group of ceramics with a distinctively south­western Finnish distribution. Traditionally, Jäkärlä Ware has been dated contemporary with the young­er style of Early Comb Ware (Sperrings 2 or Ka 1:2) and the beginning of Typical Comb Ware (Ka 2) in Finland. What makes Jäkärlä Ware sites diffe­rent, e.g., to certain sub-groups within Sperrings 2, is the more differentiated stone tool inventory than in these groups, giving grounds to call Jäkärlä Ware sites a separate group differing from the Early Comb Ware sites. The chronology of the Jäkärlä group has been a sub­ject of discussion ever since the realization of its typological peculiarity among other comb ceramic groups. First, Jäkärlä Ware was interpreted as a lo­cal south-western Finnish variant of Early Comb Ware 1:2, but chronologically belonging to the time of Typical Comb Ware because Jäkärlä Ware was found together with Typical Comb Ware in the Eura Lammila site (Europaeus-Äyräpää 1930.178–179). In the eponymic Turku Jäkärlä site the style is succe­eded by Typical Comb Ware, and Europaeus-Äyrä­pää saw Jäkärlä Ware as a delayed phenomenon of Ka 1:2. This was the state of art formulated in var­ious studies between the 1910s and 1960s before the advent of radiocarbon dating (e.g., Europaeus 1916; 1917; 1922; 1925; 1926; Europaeus-Äyräpää 1930; Riska 1945; Luho 1948; 1952; Meinander 1965; Edgren 1966). A notion put forward especial­ly by Tove Riska (1945) was that in southwestern Finland Jäkärlä ceramics replaced style Ka 2:1 of Typical Comb Ware, rather rare in SW Finland, and was thus succeeded by style Ka 2:2 of Typical Comb Ware. The first radiocarbon dates of charcoal samples from the Jäkärlä Ware sites were produced at the advent of the methodology in Finland from Sauvo Nummen­harju (six pcs) and Eura (Honkilahti) Kolmhaara (five pcs). The Nummenharju datings spanned from 6000 to 5000 BP, two Kolmhaara dates were from c. 5450–5400 BP, and the others clearly dating to a later period. Carl F. Meinander, who published the dates, used the median value for Nummenharju, 5625 BP, as a date for Jäkärlä group (Meinander 1971). The next set of radiocarbon dates from the Jäkärlä context were derived only twenty years later. Seven charcoal samples were dated in 1990 after a small-scale text excavation on the Jäkärlä site Nöjis in Dragsfjärd (now Kemiönsaari). Curiously enough, these dates are generally younger than the ones from Nummenharju and spanning over 600 radio­carbon years, the median value being 4710 BP (e.g., Asplund 1995). In 1969, Ari Siiriäinen dated the Jäkärlä group ac­cording to shoreline chronology into the periods of Ka 1:2 and Ka 2:1. The dating was not unambigu­ous, but nevertheless it showed that Jäkärlä Ware would belong to the end period of the Ka 1:2 rather than to its beginning (Siiriäinen 1969.65–66). Later, Siiriäinen pointed out that the radiocarbon dates from Nummenharju are generally too old for the shoreline chronology, showing that the younger limit of the dates is of the age expected while the older limit is at least 500 years more than expected (Siiriäinen 1973.11). In the chronological diagram, Jäkärlä Ware remained an entity without a begin­ning or an end (Siiriäinen 1973.18). The strong dis­crepancy between the radiocarbon dates and the shoreline position of the Nummenharju site has been pointed out more recently (Tiitinen 2011.60). In se­veral studies, the problems with the geological shore­line curves for the Southwest Finland have also been put forth (Lehtonen 2005; Asplund 2006; Tiitinen 2011). The chronological position and the development succession of the Jäkärlä ceramics have been dis­cussed most extensively by Henrik Asplund (e.g., 1990; 1995; 1997; 1998). He maintains the validity of Nummenharju and Nöjis radiocarbon dates, buil­ding a line of succession between Ka 1:1 and Pyhe­ensilta Ware, via Jäkärlä Ware. Pyheensilta Ware is a Late Neolithic ceramic group with some common traits and technology with Jäkärlä Ware. Moreover, the connection between Jäkärlä Ware and Uskela Ware (style Ka 3:1 of Late Comb Ware) was proposed earlier (Vikkula 1981.65–67). With this background of mixed cultural connections and long time span of c. 1500 years, it is obvious that the dating and also the cultural position of the Jäkärlä Ware is far from clear. In this paper an at­tempt to give this group a solid chronological back­ground is made and some notes on the cultural affi­liations of the group are also presented. The new ra­diocarbon dates from short-lived materials combined with those from other sources provide us with the possibility to examine the shoreline chronology once more. In this paper the phase chronology of Jäkärlä Ware is established with a Bayesian approach built in the Oxcal calibration programme (Bronk Ramsey Petro Pesonen, Markku Oinonen 2009a) that allows for coherent testable quantitative estimates for timing of cultural phases. This same approach is used for other ceramic/cultural groups in the typo-chronological environment in the Early and Middle Neolithic southwestern Finland. Essential ceramic groups in this connection are Sperrings 1 and 2 (Early Comb Ware 1 and 2), Typical Comb Ware and Late Comb Ware. Early and Middle Neolithic ceramic types in Eastern Fennoscandia The earliest Neolithic ceramics in southwestern Fin­land are called Sperrings Ware or Early Comb Ware. Its origins lie in the Comb-stamp decorated ceramic traditions developed in the northern taiga zone of Eurasia, first appearing c. 6000–5500 cal BC in the north-eastern part of European Russia (Karmanov et al. 2014), with possible predecessors even further east (Vybornov et al. 2014; Kosinskaya 2014). Sper-rings Ware has its ceramic roots in the Upper-Volga area, where it developed and from where it spread to north-western Russia and Finland (Piezonka 2015; Nordqvist 2018). The earlier Sperrings 1 Ware tradi­tion continued in the later Sperrings 2 Ware, which was however limited mainly to Finland, and not to Karelia, where Pit-Comb Ware prevailed after Sper-rings 1 ceramics (Nordqvist, Mökkönen 2016). In southwestern Finland the succession of ceramic types and/or cultures continued with Typical Comb Ware and Late Comb Ware, of which Late Comb Ware is a markedly southern/western coast type, while several ceramic types after Typical Comb Ware appeared in­land (e.g., Carpelan 1979; Vikkula 1981; Nordqvist 2018). Some of the prominent sites of the Sperrings 1 Ware (Early Comb Ware 1 or Ka 1:1, Fig. 1a) are known in Southwest Finland, e.g., Kokemäki Kraviojankan-gas site in Satakunta. It seems that Sperrings 1 Ware does not have chronologically much in common with the Jäkärlä Ware, even though the earliest dates from Sauvo Nummenharju site would fit into this pe­riod (e.g., Pesonen et al. 2012). In contrast, Sper-rings 2 Ware (Early Comb Ware 2 or Ka 1:2, Fig. 1.b-c) has often been considered as a contemporary phenomenon with the Jäkärlä Ware and these both as later developments following Sperrings 1 Ware. Within this sequence of events, Typical Comb Ware was thought as an interference disturbing the deve­lopment. However, the people producing Typical Comb Ware and Jäkärlä Ware were speculated to have lived together in the same area for some time (e.g., Meinander 1965; Edgren 1966; Asplund 1995; 1998). This situation of cultural melange makes it interesting to try to find out the chronological niches of these other ceramic groups in southwest Finland during the time. Sperrings 1 Ware was the earliest type of ceramic in southern Finland, and it spread all the way to south­ern Lapland and Russian Karelia. Sperrings 1 Ware is roughly contemporaneous with the northern Sä­räisniemi 1 Ware. These two ceramic styles also have a common distribution in northern Ostrobothnia, southern Lapland and Russian Karelia (e.g., Piezon­ka 2015). In an earlier study (Pesonen et al. 2012) the chronological boundaries for Sperrings 1 cera­mics were defined for the northern and southern part of the eastern Fennoscandia separately. In the southern part of the distribution area Sperrings 1 Ware was dated c. 5145–4400 cal BC with the conti­nuation of Sperrings 2 Ware c. 4400–4175 cal BC. Typical Comb Ware (Ka 2; Fig. 1h) succeeded earlier ceramic types in many areas, and did not spread any further north than Sperrings Ware did. Among other things, the more or less common distribution has led to the assumption that there was a continuum from Sperrings to Typical Comb Ware, even though the central cultural attributes within these two cera­mic carrying traditions differ a lot. For example, the use of semi-subterranean houses, richly furnished graves and contacts to the amber and flint areas are almost extinct within Sperrings Ware while they are common in Typical Comb Ware sites (e.g., Meinan­der 1984; Carpelan 1999; Pesonen 2002; Nordqvist, Mökkönen 2015; Mökkönen, Nordqvist 2016). Late Comb Ware was the third stage in the Äyräpää’s succession of comb ceramics. It was first defined as a ‘degenerated style’ of Typical Comb Ware (Euro­paeus-Äyräpää 1930.183). Later on, this pejorative denomination was largely rejected and the role of Late Comb Ware and its connections realized (e.g., Vikkula 1981). In particular, a possible stylistic and chronological connection between Jäkärlä and Late Comb Ware has been suggested (e.g., Asplund 1995; 1998). Jäkärlä Ware and its setting in southwestern Finland Jäkärlä Ware characteristics Jäkärlä ceramics, i.e. Jäkärlä Ware of the Jäkärlä group, was defined according to ceramics analysed from 22 settlement sites known by 1965 (Edgren 1966). The ceramics are the most important factor The chronology of Jäkärlä Ware – Bayesian interpretation of the old and new radiocarbon dates from Early and Middle Neolithic ... Fig. 1. Examples of radiocarbon dated ceramics in this study. a Sper-rings 1 Ware, Porvoo Böle (KM 17074:724, Hela-3177, 5884±43 BP); b Sperrings 2 Ware, Raasepori Tim-merkärr (KM 31635:210, Hela-3170, 5614±41 BP; c Sperrings 2 Ware, Es-poo Kläppkärr (KM 31107:399, He­la-3173, 5439±43 BP); d Jäkärlä Wa­re, Espoo Mynt (KM 13594:392, Hela­3166, 5210±40 BP); e Jäkärlä Ware, Turku Jäkärlä (KM 8063:107, Hela­3169, 5119±42 BP); f Jäkärlä Ware, Lieto Kukkarkoski II (KM 16879:161, Hela-3176, 5130±40 BP, MRE corre­cted 5096±43 BP); g inner surface of Jäkärlä Ware, Lieto Merola (KM 16879:28, Hela-3172, 5002±40 BP, MRE corrected 4992±40 BP); and h Typical Comb Ware, Nousiainen Ku-konharja 2 (KM 38207:21, Hela- 3178, 4829±40 BP, MRE corrected 4560± 137 BP). that constitutes the Jäkärlä group, as no other artefact group or solid struc­ture is present in all sites. The diatom poor clay used in Jäkärlä ceramics is of glacial origin. Such clay deposits are available in the surroundings of many Jäkärlä sites. Jäkärlä ceramic sherds are often very porous, which points to the use of organic substances in tempering. These mate­rials have obviously been dissolved during the tap-honomic process in the ground. In some sherds, however, survived pieces of Cardium-shells have been detected among temper material. The firing of Jäkärlä pots presumably happened at a relatively low temperature as the sherds are often grey. Some­times the surface of the wall has been split away, and this indicates the use of an extra clay slip on the sur­face (Edgren 1966.107–109). The technological choi­ces are different from the other Early Neolithic pot­teries, where, for example, Sperrings 1–2 pots are often tempered with rock minerals. The forms of the vessels follow the standard comb ceramic forms, where the most common type is a round-bottomed, unprofiled large jar. Sometimes the rim-part is bent a little inwards. A few occurrences of flat-bottomed jars exist, and some small, low bowl-like vessels and miniature vessels also occur (Ed­gren 1966.109; 1983). The decoration of Jäkärlä pots covers the whole ves­sel body, but the rim top decoration occurs very ra­rely. This is also a common trait in Sperrings 1–2 Wares and Säräisniemi 1 Ware of northern Finland, while in other later or contemporary ceramics Early Asbestos Ware and Typical Comb Ware rim top deco­ration is dominant. The most common decoration stamps are comb stamps, twisted cord stamps, tube stamps and oval or grain-shaped stamps (e.g., Fig. 1.d-f). The comb stamps are most common, and they are usually oval-shaped and relatively wide. The de­coration is overall horizontal (Edgren 1966.110– 111). The most distinct peculiarities of Jäkärlä Ware com­pared to roughly contemporaneous and geographi­cally overlapping ceramic styles (Typical Comb Ware, Sperrings Ware 1–2) are the organic temper mater­ial, poorly fired clay (grey in colour), the use of broad and oval comb stamps, and the absence of pit stamps and the rim top decoration. These fea­tures make it possible to distinguish Jäkärlä Ware from other ceramic styles in the find material. However, the typological difference between Jäkär­lä Ware and Sperrings 2 Ware is sometimes very dif­ficult to decipher. The use of organic temper is not a rare occurrence in Sperrings 2 Ware, either. Some­times, only the decoration with broad and oval stamps in Jäkärlä Ware separates it from Sperrings Petro Pesonen, Markku Oinonen 2 Ware, which is usually decorated with long comb stamps or lines (Rankama 1982). The geographical distribution and natural environment of Jäkärlä Ware sites Judging by its distribution, Jäkärlä ceramics are a characteristically southwestern Finnish phenome­non. Of the c. 50 sites,1 a vast majority are situated in the southwestern provinces of Varsinais-Suomi and Satakunta (Fig. 2). A number of sites are also spread along the southern coast of Uusimaa and Kymenlaakso, and the most eastern site is situated in Virolahti, near the Russian border. There are two sites on the Aland Islands and a few sites in the pro­vinces of South and North Ostrobothnia, the north­ernmost site lies in Kalajoki, in North Ostrobothnia. Due to the rebounding of the earth’s crust after the Ice Age, the sites are today in the inland, but all the evidence points to the fact that they were without exception once maritime and coastal sites. In the Middle Holocene, during the Jäkärlä period, the climate was optimal and this contributed to in­creased productivity and greater availability of na­tural resources. The forests were composed mainly of pine and broad-leaved trees, with water chestnut thriving in small ponds, etc. (e.g., Tallavaara 2015. 48–49; Tallavaara, Seppä 2012). The Jäkärlä sites were situated at the coast, near to both maritime and terrestrial resources (e.g., Tiitinen 2011). The lipid analyses conducted recently on Jäkärlä ceramics also show the use of both resources (Papakosta, Pesonen 2019; Pääkkönen et al. 2016). The Jäkärlä pottery was obviously used for cooking both terrestrial and aquatic products. So far there have been no osteological analyses connected di­rectly with Jäkärlä Ware. In the eponymous Turku Jäkärlä site, seal and fish dominate, but the oste­ologial material is limited and the context is mixed (Pääkkönen et al. 2016.70). The aquatic/maritime orientation of the Jäkärlä group and its ceramics must be kept in mind. The radiocarbon dates con­ducted on the Jäkärlä pottery food crust are thus vul­nerable to the marine reservoir effect (see later). Pure contexts of Jäkärlä Ware are rare. For a long time only the Sauvo Nummenharju site was known, but later other sites with only Jäkärlä ceramics were discovered, e.g., Kemiönsaari Nöjis (Asplund 1990; 1995). But from the chronological point of view, the mixed sites also tell stories. In Finnish coastal con­ditions, the mixing of chronologically different cul­tural items principally happens only during a fairly limited time period, when the shoreline was still close enough to the settlement site. The mixing thus gives a chronological hint for the dating of Jäkärlä Ware. Of the c. 50 sites with Jäkärlä ceramics, two are mixed with Sperrings 1 Ware, ten with Sperrings 2 Ware and 20 with Typical Comb Ware. Late Comb Ware (aka. Uskela ceramics) occurs in eight sites to­gether with Jäkärlä Ware, Corded Ware at 11 sites and Pyheensilta Ware at six sites. Bronze Age and Iron Age ceramics are also featured in some sites. It thus seems that Jäkärlä Ware would have a common geographical contact mainly with Sperrings 2 Ware and Typical Comb Ware. Material and methods Radiocarbon dating procedures For this paper, 18 samples from charred crust of ceramics and burnt bone were radiocarbon dated (eight samples of Jäkärlä Ware, two samples of Sper-rings 1 Ware, four samples of Sperrings 2 Ware and four samples of Typical Comb Ware). The chemical pretreatment protocol for the charred crust samples followed an acid-alkali-acid (AAA) treatment (Taylor, Bar-Yosef 2014.93). The protocol for burnt bones was according to Dorien Lanting et al. (2001). The pre-treated samples were converted to CO2 either by combusting (charred crusts) or acid release (burnt bones) after which the CO2 samples were converted to graphite targets (Slota et al. 1986) by chemical reduction. The AMS radiocarbon measurements were carried out by the Uppsala Tandem Laboratory (Pos-snert 1984) on these graphite targets. All conver­sions to calendar years were performed using the Oxcal software (Bronk-Ramsey 2009a) and with the Intcal13 radiocarbon calibration curve (Reimer et al. 2013). The data selection Additional radiocarbon dates were gathered from the database collected during the Argeopop-project (Pesonen, Sundell 2011) and most of these have al­ready been published in several papers (e.g., Peso-nen et al. 2012; Oinonen et al. 2014). The original dates are reproduced in Appendices (1–2). Even though Jäkärlä Ware is the focus of this paper, it is necessary to also deal with the other ceramic groups relevant in this connection, which are Sperrings 1 Ware, Sperrings 2 Ware, Typical Comb Ware and Late Comb Ware. The Sperrings 1–2 and Late Comb 1 The exact number of sites is not fixed, as the identification of Jäkärlä Ware in some sites remains uncertain. The chronology of Jäkärlä Ware – Bayesian interpretation of the old and new radiocarbon dates from Early and Middle Neolithic ... Ware dates are so far so few that only Typical Comb vered (Appendix 1 at http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp. Ware could be studied separately for southwestern 46.15). Inevitably, many of these sites are multipe-Finland, with regard to the main distribution area of riodic, and thus a large proportion of the radiocar-Jäkärlä Ware. Sperrings 1–2 Wares and Late Comb bon dates lack a proper context. Altogether 31 dates Ware were studied for the whole area of Finland. from 11 archaeological sites were deduced to be in close contact with the Jäkärlä pottery (‘class 2’ dates; There are currently 69 radiocarbon dates available see later). Of these, ten dates are charred crust from from sites where Jäkärlä Ware has also been disco-the pottery surface, one is a burnt bone date, one is Fig. 2. Early and Middle Neolithic ceramics in Finland. A The distribution of Jäkärlä Ware in the former coast of the Baltic Sea. The list of sites is in Appendix 3 at http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp.46.15; B The first half of the Early Neolithic. 1 Sperrings 1 Ware; 2 Säräisniemi 1 Ware; C The second half of Early Neoli­thic. 1 Sperrings 2 Ware; 2 Asbestos-tempered Sperrings 2 and Kaunissaari Wares; 3 Jäkärlä Ware; D Early Middle Neolithic. 1 Typical Comb Ware. The distribution of the Late Comb Ware (Uskela Ware) coincides roughly with that of Jäkärlä Ware, though several variants of Late Comb Ware are present also in the Fin­nish inland and Baltic States (e.g., Nordqvist 2018). Maps B-D from Nordqvist, Mökkönen 2017, published with a permission from the authors. Original design of maps B-D by Kerkko Nordqvist, modified by Petro Pesonen. Petro Pesonen, Markku Oinonen a charred nut date and the rest are traditional char­coal dates. Most of the charred crust dates and the single burnt bone dating were performed for this pa­per, with the exception of one crust date from the Turku Jäkärlä site (Pääkkönen et al. 2016) and two crust dates from the Nousiainen Kukonharju 2 site made earlier (unpublished).2 Most of the charcoal dates have already been published (Meinander 1971; Asplund 1995), but one date from the Turku Jäkärlä site has been published only in the date list and in the related open-access database (Junno et al. 2015). Three dates from the Nousiainen Rauannniittu site and three dates from the Eura Kolmhaara site have not been published before.3 For the other periods similar screening of dates was applied, even though it is sometimes difficult for the samples from multiperiod sites. For the Sperrings 1 and 2 Wares, those dates sampled from gyttja layers or having unknown origin were left out altogether. The same applies in principle also to the Typical and Late Comb Ware dates. Because the charcoal dates typically have much larg­er error margins and also because of potential error sources in the samples themselves, the calibration runs were performed for each period also just on charred crust and birch bark dates. Luckily, the cor­pus of crust and birch bark tar dates has gradually grown, so these kind of general, phasewise dating schemes are now possible to make. Altogether 350 dates were applied in this study (Jäkärlä dates in­cluded in the count), and of these 152 are charred crust and birch bark tar dates (see Appendix 2 at http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp.46.15). As for the Jä­kärlä dates, most of these have also been published earlier in various papers and in the open-access data­base (www.oasisnorth.org/14carhu), but some are published for the first time in this paper with the per­mission of the original samplers. Radiocarbon dates in Jäkärlä Ware context Charcoal dates from Jäkärlä sites have a wide chro­nological variation spanning from 5990±180 BP (Hel-48) to 4490±120 BP (Hel-2816), while more re­liable charred crust dates show a much shorter time-slice for the ceramics from 5230±41 BP (Hela-2660) to 5055±41 BP (Hela-3076). One charred crust date (7450±49 BP; Hela-3075) is over 2000 radiocarbon years older than the other crust dates and 2400 ra­diocarbon years older than the other charred crust dating from the same site (5055±41 BP; Hela-3076). It turned out, however, that there was probably some glue or conservation liquid in the dated sherd (glued together from two pieces), which may have contami­nated the result as the glue was probably made of fossil (i.e. old radiocarbon-free) material, and was thus likely resistant against the chemical pretreat­ment. When calibrated, the mean result is 6325±55 cal BC,4 which is more than 1000 years older than any ceramic date from Finland and neighbouring areas. This date is thus rejected as potentially conta­minated. The other charred crust dates seem to be reliable as far as it is possible to judge from the suc­cessful analysis procedure and results. The charcoal datings of Jäkärlä Ware are problema­tic, as 1500 radiocarbon years for an otherwise very local and even an ‘introvert’ cultural feature seems to be an unexpectedly long time period. In the fol­lowing, the reliability of the each charcoal series is discussed. According to shoreline chronology, the older end of the Sauvo Nummenharju dating series seem in par­ticular to be anomalously old (Siiriäinen 1973.11). Siiriäinen observed, that “it may be a question of the excessive dispersion which has been generally observed in datings obtained from the hearth charcoal of settlements” (Siiriäinen 1973.11 with references). Nummenharju remains an enigmatic site, as the context of the samples seems to be fair­ly good. One further reason to suspect the charcoal dates of the site is however a new burnt bone result from the area (Hela-3165; 4926±35), which is c. 100 radiocarbon years younger than any of the charcoal dates from the site and it obviously fits fairly well also in the shoreline chronology (cf. Tiitinen 2011). However, the .13C-value of the burnt bone is con­siderably higher than any other values in the data set, –12.7 ‰. This resembles a highly marine value, and probably shows the conservation of the marine signal in the sample despite the burning process (see discussion on the burnt bone dates below). In contrast, the dating series from the Kemiönsaari Nöjis site is from the lower end of the whole se­quence, with a span of c. 600 radiocarbon years. 2 The dates from Nousiainen Kukonharju 2 were initiated by Simo Vanhatalo, Finnish Heritage Agency (Vanhatalo 2010). 3 The dates from Nousiainen Rauanniittu were initiated by Simo Vanhatalo (Vanhatalo 1991), and the dating from Eura Kolmha­ara by Päivi Kankkunen, of the Finnish Heritage Agency (Kankkunen 2005). 4 In this paper, all calibrations are made with Oxcal v. 4 or later (Bronk Ramsey 2009a) and the atmospheric data is from Reimer et al. (2013). The chronology of Jäkärlä Ware – Bayesian interpretation of the old and new radiocarbon dates from Early and Middle Neolithic ... charred birch black chewing burnt charred charcoal wood altogether crust bark tar paint resin bone nut shell Sperrings 1 35 5 1 8 33 82 Sperrings 2 18 8 26 Jäkärlä (class 1 and 2) 10 1 1 19 31 Typical Comb Ware 24 48 13 12 2 84 5 188 Late Comb Ware 9 3 1 2 8 23 altogether 96 56 1 13 22 5 152 5 350 Tab. 1. The radiocarbon dates and sample material in each ceramic group. There is no clear information how the Nöjis dates were obtained, but by the nature of the excavation (test pitting) it is reasonable to suspect they are char­coal pieces collected from the cultural layer, which are not very reliable in normal circumstances as they may as well derive from forest fires and the like. However, most of the Nöjis datings are in fairly good accordance with the shoreline chronology. One of the oldest datings in the Jäkärlä series is a charcoal dating from the Eura Kolmhaara site (5850± 90; Hel-4612). There are many other dates, but they are usually thought to belong to the Typical Comb Ware phase of the site. However, it is noteworthy, that there are also two quite early Typical Comb Ware context dates which were also dated in the same era as the above-mentioned Sauvo Nummen­harju dates (Hel-39, 5430±160 BP and Hel-20, 5410± 150 BP). These are 250 radiocarbon years older than the oldest charred crust Typical Comb Ware date from Kolmhaara (Hela-362; 5155±60 BP), which itself is almost 400 radiocarbon years older than two AMS-dates from charcoal and charred nut from the site (Hela-651, 4775±65 BP and Hela-650, 4710± 55 BP), which are from the Munasaari part of the site, interpreted primarily as a Jäkärlä group part in the Kolmhaara site. There thus seems to be a pat­tern which gives older dates for those radiocarbon dates conducted in the early years of radiocarbon dating in Finland, but also a pattern which gives old dates for the charcoal samples in the region in gen­eral when using the conventional dating method. It is however obvious that, judging from the Kolmha­ara dates alone, the Jäkärlä and Typical Comb Ware are contemporaneous phenomena. According to the excavation report, the above-mentioned old date Hel-4612 is from a fireplace stratigraphically below the other fireplaces in the site, which were dated to the Jäkärlä period (Kankkunen 2005) giving grounds for rejecting this date from the Jäkärlä context. The other two dates (Hela-650 and Hela-651) are from the same excavation and are interpreted to derive from a Jäkärlä context. However, these two dates are considerably younger than the other dates of the site and other dates with Jäkärlä contexts elsewhere. Thus a doubt arises as to whether they truly repre­sent Jäkärlä Ware. The Nousiainen Rauanniittu site might be a pure Jä­kärlä group site, or at least no other ceramic types have been found in the site so far. The site was test excavated in 1988 (Vanhatalo 1991). The excava­tion is well documented and the radiocarbon dates seem to be from reliable contexts in the fireplaces. The importance of the site is further attested by the presence of a potential pithouse in the site, which is unique if truly assigned to the Jäkärlä group. Apart from two charred crust dates, one charcoal date from the Turku Jäkärlä site also exists. This was collected in 1985, but on the basis of the excavation report alone (Salo, Laukkanen 1986) the context of the date is impossible to define, so this date is eventu­ally rejected. After such scrutiny only 15 dates were thought reli­able enough, and most probably connected with the Jäkärlä Ware (class 1 dates). However, it is useful to make runs also with all 31 dates (class 2 dates) in order to see how great an effect the new dates real­ly have on the dating of the whole cultural group. Radiocarbon dates in Sperrings 1–2 Ware, Typical Comb Ware and Late Comb Ware con­texts Sperrings 1 and 2 Wares are also present in the Ka­relian Republic and Leningrad oblast in Russia (Ger­man 2009; Nordqvist, Mökkönen 2016). A number of radiocarbon dates also derive from this region and these were used in this study too. Altogether 82 radiocarbon dates are from the Sperrings 1 con­text and 26 from the Sperrings 2 context. Five Sper-rings 1 Ware dates and six Sperrings 2 Ware dates are published for the first time in this study, and six of these samples were dated by the authors for this work. The seven oldest radiocarbon dates are from Sperrings 1 contexts in the Karelian Republic and Leningrad oblast, and six of these are from char­coal samples and one from a burnt bone sample Petro Pesonen, Markku Oinonen (e.g., Piezonka 2008; German 2009; Nordqvist, Mökkönen 2016). The burnt bone from Sulgu 2 site is the oldest of all, 6670±35 BP (KIA-35900), but it may well derive from settlement use in Mesolithic times (Piezonka 2008). The oldest context date from Finland is from a burnt bone sample in the Erolan­niemi site in Kontiolahti, eastern Finland, 6267±44 BP (Hela-2557), and the oldest charred crust date is from the Uja III site in the Karelian Republic, Russia, dated to 6225±40 BP (GrA-63566; Nordqvist, Mök­könen 2016). The contact period between Sperrings 1 and 2 Wares has previously been studied with the help of Baye­sian modelling with a two-phase model, and the boundary between successive phases was estimated to be c. 4400 cal BC (Pesonen et al. 2012). There is a group of radiocarbon dates younger than this limit in the Sperrings 1 context, and a number of dates older than this in the Sperrings 2 context. The youngest date within the Sperrings 1 context is from the Haasiinniemi site in Lieksa, eastern Finland, dated to 5240±110 BP (Hel-3574), and oldest date within the Sperrings 2 context is from the Kivimäki site in Pielavesi, central Finland, dated to 5680±40 BP (GrA-62077). Thus major overlap may occur for several reasons: 1) a true, slow shift of styles, 2) problems in defining the ceramic styles, and 3) prob­lems in specifying the context of the sample. Sperrings 2 dates are not as numerous as Sperrings 1, but there are now enough of them to form a pic­ture of its chronological framework. The youngest Sperrings 2 dates are clearly overlapping with the Ty­pical Comb Ware dates, but it is noteworthy that none of the direct datings (charred crust and birch bark tar) overlap, as the youngest Sperrings 2 charr­ed crust is from the Summassaari Uimaranta site in central Finland and dated to 5335±45 BP (Hela-642), while the oldest Typical Comb Ware charred crust is from the Törmävaara site in northern Finland and dated to 5160±100 BP (Hela-78). Typical Comb Ware is present in great numbers also in northwest Russia, the Baltic states and to some extent also in Sweden. Accordingly, a number of ra­diocarbon dates exist also from these regions, but for the purpose of this study only some samples from Leningrad oblast and the Karelian Republic were taken along in the study, as there are many Typical Comb Ware contexts and direct dates from Finland and a few more would not add much to the corpus. As already noted, a number of early Typical Comb Ware contexts dates are available, with the earliest example from the Autioniemi site in Hankasalmi and dated to 5500±170 BP (Hel-30). It was noted al­ready at the end of the 1990s that the early dates derived from charcoal are in strong conflict with the birch bark tar and the charred crust dates (Pesonen 1999), and this remains the case. The earliest set of Typical Comb Ware context dates are likely outliers. The youngest Typical Comb Ware date is from a mul­tiperiod site of Naarajärvi in Pieksämäki, central Fin­land, dated to 4200±190 BP (Hel-1926), and there are a number of other dates almost as young as this. There is again a strong overlap between Typical Comb Ware and Late Comb Ware dates, as the oldest Late Comb Ware date from the Maarinkunnas site in Vantaa, southern Finland, is 4940±70 BP (Hela-259). The overlap is significant and really comprises the younger part of the whole Typical Comb Ware se­quence of dates. The problems in direct seriation of these two ceramic types have already been noted (Leskinen 2003; Räihälä 1996). This overlap may have similar causes as the overlap between Sperrings 1 and 2 dates. Late Comb Ware is here understood predominantly as Uskela Ware (as defined by Vikku-la 1981), because the late forms of Comb Ware and their connection with the other Middle Neolithic ce­ramic types (e.g., Kierikki, Zalavruga, Orovnavolok and Voynavolok Wares) are not fully understood and studied in the Finnish assemblages (Mökkönen, Nord­qvist 2018). The distribution of Late Comb Ware (of the Uskela-type) is extended to the Karelian Isth­mus (Kholkina 2018), but obviously it is mainly a coastal type with other ceramic types dominating in inland Finland during the Late Middle Neolithic. The youngest Late Comb Ware context date is from the Ostrobothnia, Bläckisasen site in Kokkola, and dated to 4200±60 BP (Su-1568), i.e. to the same time as the youngest Typical Comb Ware context date from Naarajärvi in Pieksämäki (see above). Reservoir effect and other potential error sour­ces There are many potential error sources affecting the radiocarbon dating results. Besides the obvious po­tential error sources in sampling, which indeed is one of the most crucial points in the radiocarbon dat­ing procedure, some other error sources in the dated material itself are also a risk. One of the most chal­lenging ones is the so-called reservoir effect. Radio­carbon dating is based on comparison of the mea­sured radiocarbon content of a sample to the known past atmospheric radiocarbon contents. If all the car­bon in aquatic environments would be based on just dissolved atmospheric carbon dioxide into water, The chronology of Jäkärlä Ware – Bayesian interpretation of the old and new radiocarbon dates from Early and Middle Neolithic ... the radiocarbon content of the aquatic and atmos­pheric carbon would resemble each other. However, aquatic organisms, marine in particular, contain typi­cally less radiocarbon compared to contemporane­ously-living terrestrial organisms due to old dissolv­ed organic carbon in water, to the slower aquatic carbon cycle and to dissolved inorganic carbon from limestone bedrocks. These result in older values for the dates than expected if aquatic carbon is involved. The amount of marine reservoir effect (MRE) within the Baltic Sea varies according to the assumed geo­graphical origin of carbon from c. 400 radiocarbon years at the Danish Straits to c. 25–50 radiocarbon years at the bottom of the Bothnian Bay (Lougheed et al. 2013). In the marine conditions of the north­ern Baltic Sea (between 59° and 66°N latitude), the current average value of the MRE is estimated as 231±113 radiocarbon years (N = 8, CHRONO Marine database, http://calib.org/marine/; Appendix 4 at http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp.46.15).5 One possibil­ity to estimate this systematic offset is to make a cor­rection based on the stable isotope signals (.13C and .15N) in the dated material. The isotopic ratios reflect the marine or terrestrial origin of the food in­gredients present in the crust sample, and it is pos­sible to scale down the maximal reservoir effect in each sample based on this data (Pesonen et al. 2012; Oinonen et al. 2013a). The .13C values of the eight Jäkärlä charred crust dates vary between –27.1 and –19.5‰.6 These val­ues are in line with the other charred crust values obtained in Finland (Pesonen et al. 2012.665). Ge­nerally, the average value for terrestrial samples in the food residue is about –26‰ (Fischer, Heineme­ier 2003.460–461; Pesonen et al. 2012). As the Jä­kärlä sites have been considered to situate at the marine shoreline, it is assumed that aquatic influ­ence is essentially also marine, and thus any poten­tial freshwater influence would be minimal. Four of the charred crust dates have values over –26‰, but only the samples from the Nousiainen Kukonharju 2 site have a clear marine signature (–19.5 and –20.8‰) and the potential of the reservoir effect must thus be considered. Interestingly, another one of these Kukonharju 2 dates is the oldest crust date of Jäkärlä Ware. The reservoir effect correction with the procedure explained in Pesonen et al. (2012) has been applied, and corrected values for the four Jä­kärlä crust dates used in the model runs. To perform comparable chronological analysis to our previous work, Pesonen et al. (2012), we have adopted .13C = –19.3 ± 2.0‰ as the 100% marine isotopic signature. The isotopic baseline values for the Bothnian Sea and Bothnian Bay are different for marine animals on both sides of the Quark (a strait between Bothnian Bay and Bothnian Sea). This means that for correction of the reservoir effect, in addition to the different maximal MRE, different iso­topic values should also be used for maximal 100% marine share in the correction procedure for differ­ent parts of the Baltic Sea. Obviously, these would slightly affect the outcome of the reservoir correc­tion procedure. The maximally terrestrial .13C value (–26 ± 1‰) is based on measurements on terrestri­al material and is robust (e.g., Fischer, Heinemeier 2003; Pesonen et al. 2012.665–666). A sensitivity analysis has been made by assuming a .13C value of –15.9 ± 2.0‰ as representing the 100% marine con­tent in the crust. The value is derived from an open access database (www.oasisnorth.org/diana; Etu-Sih­vola et al. 2019). The isotopic signature for the flesh of the marine animals was deduced as .13C = –15.9 ± 1.8‰ for the areas south of the Quark (lat. 56– 63°N) based on bone collagen data and by assuming a collagen – flesh isotopic offset of –1‰ (Fernandes 2016). The results of the sensitivity analysis show only minor effects in the modelled boundary values. The maximum effect observed is 95 years for the start boundary of the Late Comb Ware crust and birch bark tar dates, obviously caused by several very high ma­rine signals in crust samples. This makes the indivi­dual corrected dates and corresponding model result slightly younger when the alternative 100% marine isotopic value is adopted. For all the other bounda­ries, the changes due to this alternative selection were within the original uncertainty estimates. Al­though an extensive pairwise marine terrestrial sam­ple comparison approach could also cross check our results in the future (e.g., Edinborough et al. 2016), this is well beyond the scope of the present study. In the meantime, we conclude that the modelling re­sults, except for Late Comb Ware, are not significant­ly affected by the assumed isotopic signature for a 100% marine crust. We also note that this kind of ap­proach is crucial to improving the analysis procedure. 5 In Pesonen et al. (2012) the MRE was defined as 279±77 years according to values then available from the whole Baltic Sea basin. Now it was possible to choose only the eight northernmost datapoints that better refer to Finnish conditions, thanks to new mea­surements by Lougheed et al. (2013). The Northern Baltic Sea data is from studies by Olsson (1980) and Lougheed et al. (2013). 6 Here, the rejected date (Hela-3075) is not considered. The .13C-isotope value of Ua-46150 (Turku Jäkärlä; Pääkkönen et al. 2016) has not been reported. Petro Pesonen, Markku Oinonen Although bone is prone to a confounding reservoir effect through the food chain, there is a strong possi­bility that burnt (or cremated) bone dates actually represent the age of the wood burned in the pyre (Hüls et al. 2010; Van Strydonck et al. 2010; Olsen et al. 2012). In fact, the original study by Lanting (2001) compared burnt bone dates to charcoal dates from the same contexts. If the carbon of the inorga­nic component of burnt bones is replaced by char­coal carbon, then the radiocarbon measurements of the samples would still be coeval. Thus, burnt bone dates should have the same potential errors as tradi­tional charcoal dates, which in principle should not carry any other error sources except the possible old wood effect. At the same time, the replacement of the animal carbon signal by the wood carbon signal would eliminate the possible reservoir effect in the burnt bone dates. No burnt bone radiocarbon dates have thus been corrected for the reservoir effect in this paper. Bayesian modelling of the archaeological dates Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates was pione­ered in Britain during the 1990s and 2000s (e.g., Buck et al. 1991; Bayliss 2009; 2015; Bronk Ramsey 2009a) and in Scandinavia (e.g., Edinborough 2009), and modelling of a series of dates has become a stan­dard procedure in many archaeological projects. Such modelling, with archaeological a priori consi­derations on the order, is especially useful in stra­tigraphic contexts (e.g., Oinonen et al. 2013b). Ar­chaeological phases, technological traits, fashions and ‘cultures’ can be understood as stratigraphic units as well, and these phases and the underlying assumptions can be scrutinized and tested with new Bayesian approaches (e.g., Edinborough et al. 2015). This was also the presupposition in several earlier works, where Säräisniemi 1, Sperrings 1–2, Early As­bestos Ware and Typical Comb Ware phases were discussed and the dates of these modelled (Pesonen et al. 2012; Oinonen et al. 2014). Moreover, analys­ing dates within a consistent Bayesian framework allows for building comparable time spectra of ar­chaeological events, such as the beginnings and ends of cultural phases, and to study their temporal rela­tions. In the earlier studies, the models were created with Oxcal software (Bronk Ramsey 2009a), which has extensive built-in capabilities for creating and run­ning models with different parameters. Oxcal is the most widely used programme for Bayesian model-ling in archaeology (Bayliss 2015). The current on-line version Oxcal 4.3 was selected for this study, and a simple model with end and start boundaries (Boundary-command in Oxcal language) was used for each ceramic phase (cf. Edinborough 2009). Outlier analysis (Bronk Ramsey 2009b) was employ­ed in the early stages of the project to recognize those outliers which were not obvious even from the start.7 Eventually only one date, Hela-3075 (see above), was hand-picked and removed from the mo­dels. Results The results of the runs are presented in Table 2 and Figures 3–4. With the Jäkärlä Ware, the 15 samples classified as class 1 were treated first and they gave mean value limits for Jäkärlä Ware from 4055±50 cal BC (start) to 3550±65 cal BC (end). With all 31 dates (class 2), the time scale is considerably broad­er, c. 4700–3350 cal BC. Here the Sauvo Nummen­harju dates and the earliest Eura Kolmhaara dates are the ones pulling the start boundary earlier. The Nummenharju dates are certainly problematic, as the oldest date is c. 4900 cal BC (Hel 48; 5990±180 BP), when the water level of the Baltic Sea was still several meters above the site (e.g., Siiriäinen 1973; Eronen et al. 2001.28 Fig. 7; Hatakka, Glückert 2000). The lower end of Jäkärlä model is dictated by two earlier mentioned dates from the Eura Kolm­haara Munasaari site, obtained in the 2005 excava­tion (Hela-650 and Hela-651). The reservoir correc­tion of the four ‘marine’ charred crust dates does not change the model results much. First of all, the amount is small, and even though single dates may contain even 200 years individual MRE correction, their effect on the model result depends on their temporal position within the phase. Moreover, by having larger uncertainties the corrected dates result in wider and more evenly spread calendar-year pro­bability distributions. The Jäkärlä run was also performed for the charred crust datings only (with the anomalous Mynämäki Aisti crust date Hela-3075 left out), and these mean values give 4035±40 cal BC to 3885±55 cal BC. With the reservoir correction the values are almost same, only the end date going a little later, 3830±80 cal BC. These values are very interesting and are dis­cussed below. This is perhaps the ‘safest’ core phase 7 There are a number of radiocarbon dates from Typical Comb Ware sites, that probably reflect later occupation phases at the site. These dates are not used in the runs, nor are they presented in Appendix 2 at http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp.46.15 The chronology of Jäkärlä Ware – Bayesian interpretation of the old and new radiocarbon dates from Early and Middle Neolithic ... dating for the Jäkärlä ceramics sequence, i.e. 4030– 3830 cal BC. A similar procedure was also performed for the other Early and Early Middle Neolithic ceramic groups in Finland. In recent years, new radiocarbon dates have been accumulated and the situation has greatly im­proved, especially in the case of Sperrings 1 and 2 ceramics, while the already large amount of Typi­cal Comb Ware dates has been growing even more extensive. Only Late Comb Ware does not have so many new dates. The Sperrings 1 phase dating has a significant dif­ference when one uses the whole dataset with con­text dates compared to charred crust and birch bark tar dates. The mean boundaries for the whole data­set with MRE correction from 5560±40 to 4170±45 cal BC, while crust and birch bark dates give from 5155±50 to 4335±50 cal BC. A number of Sperrings 1 charcoal dates from northwest Russia skew the start boundary to Mesolithic times, while a group of char­coal dates from Finnish sites are younger than the youngest Sperrings 1 crust date from the Timmerkärr site in Raasepori, southern Finland (Hela-3175, 5451± 44 BP). Ten of the charred crust dates show marine inference by their carbon stable isotope values and were corrected accordingly. On the basis of the char­red crust and birch bark tar dates, we give Sperrings 1 a phase dating of c. 5155–4335 cal BC. With Sperrings 2 dates the basis for the analysis is not so strong, only 27 dates are connected with the style in Finland and Karelian Isthmus. However, in this case, accounting for the small number of con­text dates, there is no great discrepancy between the dates from whole dataset and crust and birch bark tar dates. The run with all dates gives us mean value boundaries (with reservoir correction of five charred crust dates) of 4525±40 and 4050±110 cal BC, while the crust and birch bark tar run results in 4510±40 to 4225±50 cal BC. The latter, fairly con­cise and short phase, is based on 19 dates, which gives the dating of the phase c. 4510–4225 cal BC. The Typical Comb Ware run is based on total of 183 radiocarbon dates, mostly from Finland, but some also from northwest Russia. The large corpus gives more reliability to the model, where the whole data­set with reservoir correction gives mean values be­tween 3920±30 and 3345±45 cal BC, while 70 dates on crust and birch bark tar values are 3800±25 to 3545±30 cal BC. As there are so many radiocarbon dates connected with Typical Comb Ware, it was possible to also make a test run for the Southwest Finnish Typical Comb Ware separately.8 The results give a slightly shorter phase to the whole dataset, 3900±60 to 3445±85 cal BC, but a slightly longer phase for crust and birch bark tar, 3840±90 to 3440± 105 cal BC. While the southwest Finnish Typical Comb Ware consists of only 10 crust and birch bark tar dates, the values from the whole distribution area are considered as the dating for the whole phase, i.e. 3800–3545 cal BC. However, it is interesting to note that the Southwest Finnish dates in particu­lar raise the possibility for an overlap between Typi­cal Comb Ware and Jäkärlä Ware. Within Typical Comb Ware, 16 charred crust dates were corrected for the reservoir effect. Late Comb Ware dates are from the coastal area of Finland and six stable carbon isotope values in the crust reflect the marine components in it, and thus a need for the reservoir estimate in the dates. This is shown in the results of the runs, where in the crust and birch bark tar runs the difference between un­corrected and corrected dates is almost 200 years in the start boundary mean values. This emphasizes the importance of marine resources within the Late Comb Ware culture. With reservoir corrected dates, the result of the runs for the whole dataset is 3660± 75 to 2940±125 cal BC and for crust and birch bark tar dates the values are 3540±95 to 3195±100 cal BC. The dating for Late Comb Ware in Finland and the Karelian Isthmus would be c. 3540–3195 cal BC. Taking into account the sensitivity analysis with an alternative 100% marine limit, the span of Late Comb Ware would be c. 3635–3165 cal BC. The results clearly show that the large range espe­cially in charcoal dates distorts the chronological picture, and that the dates from the charred crust or birch bark tar in the surface of the ceramic itself form a much more concise and coherent sequence. The application of the reservoir effect correction changes the date limits to some extent, but rarely more than some tens of years. The greatest differ­ence seems to be for Late Comb Ware, where the beginning of the use of this type of ceramic is almost 200 years younger with the correction applied than it would be without it. The indicated marine orien­tation in the use of Late Comb Ware pots is an inte­resting observation and calls for studies into the eco­logical strategies adopted during this stage. 8 Southwest Finland comprising in this case three counties: Uusimaa, Finland Proper and Satakunta. Petro Pesonen, Markku Oinonen Without Without Without With With With reservoir reservoir reservoir reservoir reservoir reservoir correction, correction, correction, correction, correction, correction,95% Jäkärlä class 1 mean value (calBC) 4070±50 68% HPD region (calBC) 4090–4020 95% HPD region (calBC) 4180–3995 mean value (calBC) 4055±50 68% HPD region (calBC) 4080–4000 HPD region (calBC) 4160–3980 dates (n = 15) 3550±60 3620–3525 3635–3425 3550±65 3620–3525 3635–3420 Jäkärlä class 2 4700±105 4780–4575 4910–4500 4700±110 4780–4575 4915–4505 * dates (n = 30) 3355±105 3475–3285 3550–3135 3350±110 3475–3280 3550–3120 Jäkärlä only crust 4035±40 4055–3990 4105–3975 4030±50 4050–3980 4120–3960 ** (n = 9) 3885±55 3945–3870 3955–3770 3830±80 3930–3790 3950–3675 Sperrings 1 \ 5555±40 5590–5515 5620–5490 5560±40 5595–5515 5630–5490 Ka 1>1 all (n = 82) 4175±45 4243–4155 4325–4080 4170±45 4225–4150 4235–4075 Sperrings 1 \ Ka 1>1 5160±50 5195–5095 5260–5070 5155±50 5190–5095 5250–5070 crust and bbt (n=40) 4340±50 4425–4295 4435–4255 4335±50 4405–4285 4435–4255 Sperrings 2 \ 4525±35 4550–4485 4460–4525 4525±40 4550–4485 4605–4460 Ka 1>2 all (n = 26) 4075±110 4215–3915 4225–3865 4050±110 4205–3900 4220–3855 Sperrings 2 \ Ka 1>2 4510±35 4540–4475 4556–4420 4510±40 4540–4475 4600–4415 crust and bbt (n=18) 4240±40 4290–4210 4353–4101 4225±50 4290–4200 4310–4125 TCW all (n = 188) 3930±30 3950–3905 3970–3880 3920±30 3950–3895 3965–xxxx 3335±20 3345–3325 3355–3310 3345±45 3350–3320 3475–3300 TCW crust and birch 3825±25 3840–3800 3885–3780 3800±25 3825–3780 3840–xxxx bark tar (n = 72) 3550±30 3580–3525 3600–3500 3545±30 3585–3530 xxxx–3495 TCW SW Finland all 3900±50 3950–3845 3990–3810 3900±60 3970–3840 4005–3780 (n = 34) 3530±60 3605–3500 3620–3420 3445±85 3535–3375 3600–3285 TCW SW Finland 3920±75 3970–3830 4075–3800 3840±90 3890–3730 4000–xxxx crust and bbt (n = 10) 3560±65 3635–3530 3655–3420 3440±105 3565–3365 xxxx–3260 Late CW all (n = 23) 3735±70 3785–3660 3890–3595 3660±75 3720–3580 3825–xxxx 2905±115 3065–2780 3250–2675 2940±125 3080–2805 3235–2730 Late CW crust and 3710±85 3795–3640 3875–3540 3540±95 3630–3395 3715–3380 bbt (n = 12) 3140±100 3275–3060 3325–2950 3195±100 3325–3140 3340–3000 * Hela-3075 left out< ** Hela-3075 left out Tab. 2. The resulting table of the analysis. The models used are so-called single-phase models (see Peso-nen et al. 2012.Tab. 2). The first and last values in the given cell are the start boundary and the end boundary, respectively, while xxxx denotes that the boundary could not be solved. In the analysis, OxCal 4.2 was used (Bronk Ramsey 2009a), with the calibration curve IntCal 13 (Reimer et al. 2013). Those val­ues marked in bold are used for the further analysis and describing the most probable boundaries for the use-period of given ceramic types. TCW = Typical Comb Ware; CW = Comb Ware. In summary, our radiocarbon results provide a signi­ficantly more robust chronological framework for the Early and Middle Neolithic ceramic groups in Finland and Eastern Fennoscandia, because of the new charred crust and birch bark tar measurements. Discussion Shoreline dating of Jäkärlä Ware and related ceramics The shoreline chronology of the Baltic Sea is based on observations on shore formations and pollen and the diatom stratigraphy of bogs. For the absolute chronology, radiocarbon dates of several lake isola­tion horizons have been used. For southwest Fin­land, the basic work was accomplished in 1976 by Gunnar Glückert. New material and dates were pre­sented by Matti Eronen et al. (2001) and Lassi Ha-takka and Gunnart Glückert (2000). The last menti­oned study shows the calibrated shore diagrams for five separate areas in southwest Finland. These dia­grams have aroused some concern among archaeo­logists who feel that calibrated shore diagrams give too old dates for the shorebound archaeological sites, especially Stone Age settlement sites (Lehtonen 2005; Asplund 2006; Tiitinen 2011). Henrik Asplund has illustrated the problem by ten­tatively re-calibrating the old isolation radiocarbon dates presented by Glückert (1976). This shoreline diagram fits much better with the radiocarbon date from the Turku Jäkärlä site and the Typical Comb Ware (Ka 2) and Earlier Late Comb Ware (Ka 3:1/ Uskela Ware) occupation zone levels at the same site than with the diagram presented by Hatakka and Glückert (2000) (Asplund 2006.5, Fig. 2). The chronology of Jäkärlä Ware – Bayesian interpretation of the old and new radiocarbon dates from Early and Middle Neolithic ... One problem in testing the shoreline diagrams has been the lack of reliable archaeological radiocarbon dates that could be used to correlate the diagrams (Asplund 2006.4). In the present paper a number of new radiocarbon dates are from the Turku region, the area covered in Asplund’s paper, thus giving a possibi­lity to evaluate the shoreline diagrams once more. The diagram was reproduced from Asplund’s paper (2006.5, Fig. 2).9 The radiocarbon dates of Jäkärlä, Typical Comb Ware (Ka 2) and Late Comb Ware (Ka 3) were calibrated and their mean value was plotted on the diagram, which shows both the calibrated old curve with error margins (68.2%) by Glückert (1976) and the new calibrated curve by Hatakka and Glü­ckert (2000). It is obvious that the radiocarbon dates settle better with the old curve than the new curve (Fig. 5). The height difference between the lower limits of the sites and the mean curve of the Glü­ckert (1976) varies between 0 and 5.5m, while the same variation between the lower limits and the curve by Hatakka and Glückert (2000) is c. 1.5– 10m.10 On the basis of the new radiocarbon dates, it seems that the curve presented by Glückert (1976) is a better fit with the archaeological material. New datings from the other sites and the calibration and re-evaluation of the new isolation dates in Eronen et al. (2001) and Hatakka and Glückert (2000) would probably further improve the shoreline diagrams in Southwestern Finland. Jäkärlä Ware among the Early and Middle Neolithic ceramic traditions in eastern Fenno­scandia The new date ranges give a chance to further dis­cuss the cultural succession between ceramic assem­blages, cultures or even populations (cf. Figs. 3–4). According to the new results, the transformation of Sperrings 1 to Sperrings 2 happened between c. 4500–4300 cal BC. In the earlier work, by assuming phase independence, the end of Sperrings 1 was dated to 4360±60 cal BC and the beginning of Sper-rings 2 to 4365±95 cal BC (Pesonen et al. 2012), but new dates favour an earlier beginning for Sperrings 2 (especially the Pielavesi Kivimäki site (Nordqvist, Mökkönen 2016)).11 The Bayesian model takes ac­count of the new dates in a reasonable way. While the new dates push the end of Sperrings 1 to an even younger direction, until 4335±50 cal BC, and the beginning of Sperrings 2 to 4510±40 cal BC, a direct succession from Sperrings 1 to Sperrings 2 does not seem probable anymore (cf. Pesonen et al. 2012) as the two ceramic styles clearly overlap chro­nologically. Still, we would suggest a closer style ana­lysis of these ceramics and see whether all the style determinations are still valid and in line with each Fig. 3. The posterior probability distributions for the start and end boundaries of each ceramic group. The distributions are from the Bayesian model runs with crust and birch bark tar datings with reservoir correction applied (Tab. 2). 9 The original calibrations were kindly given for the author’s use by Henrik Asplund, which is acknowledged. 10 The definition of the lower limit of the site is often based on the very superficial notion in the Register of the Ancient Monu­ments and in some cases in the literature. The limit cannot thus be taken as an accurate measurement. 11 The model in Pesonen et al. (2012) was created two-ways: as a single-phase model and as a two-phase model. The referred dates are single-phase model (independent) boundaries. Petro Pesonen, Markku Oinonen Fig. 4. The date ranges for the studied ceramic types. The shading implies 95%, 68% HPD region and mean values for the model runs with reservoir correction applied. TCW = Typical Comb Ware, LCW = Late Comb Ware. other. Further dates would further illuminate the overlapping period between Sperrings 1 and 2 Wares. Perhaps the most interesting result is the time-gap between the end of Sperrings 2 Ware and the be­ginning of Jäkärlä Ware. According to Jäkärlä Ware crust dates (and also class 1 dates), Jäkärlä Ware starts 4030±50 cal BC while Sperrings 2 Ware ends 4225±50 cal BC. This implies that a connection be­tween Sperrings Ware and Jäkärlä Ware is not plau­sible (cf. Figs. 3–4) undermining the old idea of Jä­kärlä Ware being a subgroup of Sperrings 2 Ware. However, a new question arises: where does the Jä­kärlä Ware come from? The end of Jäkärlä Ware is dated according to crust dates to 3830±80 cal BC, but with the other (class 2) dates counted in, to a much later time, until 3350± 110 cal BC. According to shoreline chronology, the shorter chronology is more suitable for Jäkärlä Ware. Furthermore, there are in practice only the two Eura Kolmhaara dates (Hela-650 and Hela-651) and the set of Kemiönsaari Nöjis dates, which pull the range too young for the end boundary. Typical Comb Ware has a lot of dates, and corres­pondingly the Bayesian model gives quite sharp boundaries for this tradition. There is no big diffe­rence in the beginning of Typical Comb Ware in any of the model alternatives. The boundaries given by charred crust and birch bark tar dates from the whole country confirm that Typical Comb Ware starts c. 3800 cal BC. It is interesting that the end of Jäkärlä Ware and the beginning of Typical Comb Ware actually overlap, and this indicates their par­tial contemporaneity. This observation allows for a question as to whether these two ceramic groups are also archaeologically connected in time and space. One key site in this potential connection is Aisti in Mynämäki, which has yielded crust dates for both Jä­kärlä Ware and Typical Comb Ware. Jäkärlä sherd was dated 5055±41 BP (Hela-3076) and Typical Comb Ware sherd 5071±42 BP (Hela-3077). How­ever, after reservoir correction the latter is slightly younger, 5006±53 BP. As the individual calendar-year probability distributions overlap, ceramics have possibly been used contemporaneously at the same site. Another interesting site is Kukonharju 2 in Nou­sianen, with two crust dates from Jäkärlä of 5230± 41 BP (Hela-2660) and 5177±37 BP (Hela-2661), and one crust date from Typical Comb Ware of 4829±40 BP (Hela-3178). The Jäkärlä dates are much young­er when corrected, 5051±97 BP and 4953±116 BP, respectively, but the Typical Comb Ware date goes even younger to 4560±137 BP. So, at this site, the pattern seems to be quite clear and no contempora­neity is observed. These are the only two sites where both Jäkärlä Ware and Typical Comb Ware charred crust or birch bark tar dates are available. The beginning of Late Comb Ware is fairly concise regardless of dating material, though the crust and birch bark tar set gives a c. 100 years younger start for the style, c. 3540 cal BC. The most interesting thing is that the end of Typical Comb Ware (accord­ing to crust and birch bark tar dates) is put at almost exactly the same date. This suggests these two cera­mic groups follow each other chronologically. The RE correction especially affects the Late Comb Ware dates. Without correction, the beginning of Late Comb Ware would be almost 200 years older. The apparent chronological overlap of Typical and Late The chronology of Jäkärlä Ware – Bayesian interpretation of the old and new radiocarbon dates from Early and Middle Neolithic ... Fig. 5. The shoreline diagrams by Glückert (1976) and Hatakka and Glückert (2000) with radiocarbon dates and elevation of sites in Turku region. The radiocarbon dates with calibrated mean values: Jäkärlä dates – 1 Sauvo Nummenharju, Hela-3165 (4926±35 BP, 3704±30 cal BC); 2 Nousiainen Rauanniittu, Hel-2662 (5190±110 BP, 4015±143 cal BC); 3 Nousiainen Rauanniittu, Hel-2664 (5040±110 BP, 3841± 118 cal BC); 4 Nousiainen Rauanniittu Hel-2663 (4900±110 BP, 3700±134 cal BC); 5 Turku Jäkärlä, Ua-46150 (5195±56 BP, 4019±86 cal BC); 6 Turku Jäkärlä, Hela-3169 (5119±42 BP, 3895±62 cal BC); 7 Lieto Kukkarkoski II, Hela-3176 (5130±40 BP, reservoir corrected 5096±43 BP, 3879±56 cal BC); 8 Mynämäki Aisti, Hela-3076 (5055±41 BP, 3861±59 cal BC); 9 Nousiainen Kukonharja 2, Hela-2660 (5230±41 BP, reservoir corrected 5051±97 BP, 3847±105 cal BC); 10 Lieto Merola, Hela-3172 (5002±40 BP, reservoir corrected 4992±40 BP, 3787±72 cal BC); 11 Nousiainen Kukonharja 2, Hela-2661 (5177±37 BP, reservoir corrected 4953±116 BP, 3762±110 cal BC); Typical Comb Ware dates – 12 Lieto Kukkarkoski I, Hela-118 (5060±65 BP, 3853±75 cal BC); 13 Lieto Kukkarkoski I, Hel-832 (4880±150 BP, 3671±180 cal BC); 14 Lieto Kukkarkoski I, Hel-831 (4310±170 BP, 2964±249 cal BC); 15 Mynämäki Aisti, Hela-3077 (5071± 42 BP, reservoir corrected 5006±53 BP, 3810±78 cal BC); 16 Nousiainen Kukonharja 2, Hela-3178 (4829± 40 BP, reservoir corrected 4560±137 BP, 3270±189 cal BC); and Late Comb Ware date – 17 Nousiainen Kuuvanvuori, Hela-979 (4775±55 BP, 3546±76 cal BC). Comb Ware is a problem recognized in earlier publi­cations (e.g., Leskinen 2003; Leskinen, Pesonen 2008; Räihälä 1996) but understandable in the light of reservoir effect, which particularly affects the old­est Late Comb Ware dates from the sites Maarinkun­nas in Vantaa and Kuuvanvuori in Nousiainen. This corresponds well with the lipid and isotope studies performed for Typical and Late Comb Ware pots showing substantial use of marine food (Leskinen 2003; Pesonen, Leskinen 2009; Cramp et al. 2014) which agrees with the high .13C – values in the food crusts of these items. Conclusions Our new dates and their modelling inside a Bayesian framework give a clear and concise picture of the chronological position of southwestern Finnish Jäkär­lä Ware. The use period of this ceramic type is dated to c. 4030–3830 cal BC, which is a considerably shorter period than previous radiocarbon dates have lead us to think. According to this study the model dating of Sperrings 1 Ware is c. 5155–4335 cal BC and Sperrings 2 Ware 4510–4225 cal BC. These fig­ures are fairly consistent with earlier studies (Peso­nen et al. 2012; Nordqvist, Mökkönen 2017), and would imply an overlap period between Sperrings 1 and 2 ceramics. However, there is no overlap what­soever between the periods of Sperrings 2 and Jä­kärlä Wares. The dating of Typical Comb Ware was already fixed in earlier studies (Pesonen 1999; 2004; Oinonen et al. 2014), and now the borders are only closing in so that the Typical Comb Ware begins c. 3800 cal BC and ends soon after, c. 3545 cal BC. Ac­cording to the data in this study, the production of Late Comb Ware begins right after Typical Comb Ware and lasts until c. 3195 cal BC. Several consequences on the chronological succes­sion of ceramic types follow from the results. First, Jäkärlä pottery is chronologically (and spatially) a limited phenomenon, which does not seem to have roots in Sperrings (Ka 1:1 or Ka 1:2) pottery, which must be sought elsewhere. So far, there are no para­ Petro Pesonen, Markku Oinonen gons for Jäkärlä Ware. Secondly, Jäkärlä pottery may ‘Early Asbestos Ware’ should be rejected, and the have existed contemporaneously with Typical Comb terms ‘asbestos-tempered Sperrings 2 Ware’ and Ware, but the scenario is still not clear with regard ‘Kaunissaari Ware’ should probably be used instead to these two styles. Most likely Jäkärlä pottery and (Nordqvist 2018). This division carries chronological its users were there sometime together with Typi-significance. Although not yet studied, it is possible cal Comb Ware, before the Jäkärlä tradition finally that Kaunissaari-type Early Asbestos Ware is young-ceased. The situation may have been somewhat si-er than asbestos-tempered Sperrings 2 Ware, and in-milar to the circumstances in eastern Finland and deed may overlap chronologically with Jäkärlä Ware. between Early Asbestos Ware and Typical Comb A geographical gap still separates two ceramic tradi-Ware (cf. Oinonen et al. 2014). Thirdly, we find it tions, but the possible connection is worthy of fur-very unlikely that Jäkärlä pottery and Late Comb ther investigation, and may reveal a hitherto un-Ware (or any other Middle or Late Neolithic pottery known typo-chronological period that exists between type) would have any chronological contacts with Sperrings 1–2 Wares and Typical Comb Ware. each other. The few dates pointing to the late exis­tence of Jäkärlä pottery are from Nöjis and Kolmha-The Appendices 1–4 are available at ara sites, but they are both controversial and unfit http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp.46.15 for the shoreline chronology as well. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The new chronology for the Jäkärlä Ware also im­plies that the sometimes postulated (e.g., Pesonen The authors wishes to thank Päivi Kankkunen and 1996; 2001) connection between eastern Finnish Simo Vanhatalo, of the Finnish Heritage Agency, for letting us use their unpublished radiocarbon dates in Early Asbestos Ware and Jäkärlä Ware is difficult to this study and Henrik Asplund, University of Turku, understand. Early Asbestos Ware was produced be- for help with the manuscript. Miikka Tallavaara is tween c. 4670–3845 cal BC (Oinonen et al. 2014), thanked for the help in the mathematics. The study i.e. starting long before Jäkärlä Ware and coming to has partly been financed by the Emil Aaltonen Foun- end along with the appearance of Typical Comb dation. Ware. According to the new interpretation the term . References Aalto M., Taavitsainen J.-P., and Vuorela I. 1981. 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It focuses on the spatial process of spread, movement, aggregation and segregation in the time frame between 8500 and 5000 cal BP. The distribution of Neolithic and Copper Age sites in the study area is clustered and patchy. The first Neolithic settlements appear as isolated islands or en­claves which then slowly expand to fill neighbouring regions. After 6300 cal BP the study area expe­rienced a significant reduction in the extent of settlement systems, associated with the Late Neolithic to Copper Age transition. KEY WORDS – Neolithic; Copper Age; Carpathian Basin; East Alps; settlement patterns; radiocarbon dating; demography; modelling Neolitske in bakrenodobne poselitvene dinamike v zahodni Panonski ni/ini in vzhodnih Alpah IZVLE.EK – .lanek se posve.a prostorsko-.asovnim vzorcem neolitske in bakrenodobne poselitve za­hodne Panonske ni.ine in vzhodnih Alp s pomo.jo prostorsko eksplicitne rabe radiokarbonskih da­tumov. Analizira prostorske procese .irjenja, gibanja, zdru.evanja in razdru.evanja v .asovnem loku med 8000 in 5000 pred sedanjostjo. Neolitska in bakrenodobna najdi.. se pojavljajo v neenakomer­nih skupkih. Prve neolitska poselitev se pojavi v obliki izoliranih otokov ali enklav, ki se po.asi .iri­jo v okolico. Po 6300 pred sedanjostjo lahko zaznamo upad poselitve, ki ga povezujemo s prehodom iz poznega neolitika v bakreno dobo. KLJU.NE BESEDE – neolitik; bakrena doba; Panonska ni.ina; vzhodne Alpe; poselitveni vzorci; radio-karbonsko datiranje; demografija; modeliranje Introduction What we call the Neolithic is shorthand for several (Robb 2013). The Neolithic assemblage originated in historical processes on different time and spatial the Near East, where by 9500 cal BP people had scales. Nevertheless, the Neolithic is not just a con-domesticated all the major crops and animals. They struct, it is real and has some kind of downward cau-started to make and use new things, including pot-sality on all the historical processes that make it. tery, figurines, polished stone axes and houses, be-The historical processes behind the Neolithic are a gun to live in villages and practice new rituals. result of the formation and development of a relati­vely stable and resilient assemblage of human-mate-What is a proper scale to study the Neolithic? Behind rial relationships which develops in an increasingly the long-term directionality and near irreversibility structured, organized and consistent social world of the process is the great local variability seen in DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.16 Neolithic and Copper Age settlement dynamics in the Western Carpathian Basin and Eastern Alps the archaeological record across Europe. On the broad scale, we can see a process of the movement of groups of people and new material assemblage from the southeast towards northwest over a span of several millennia, which resulted in a uniform and coherent thing we call the Neolithic (Robb 2013; 2014). By about 9000 cal BP this assemblage had spread to south-eastern Europe. The Neolithic assemblage spread rapidly from the Aegean through the Balkans, along the northern coast of the Mediterranean, and across the Northern European Plain. The spread in other areas was slower. There are regions which did not become Neolithic for up to a millennium after their initial contact with farmers. The spread of the Neolithic assemblage was first es­timated to be around 1 kilometre per year, covering the distance between the Levant and Scotland in about 3000 years (Ammerman, Cavali-Sforza 1984). More recent research has refined this picture sub­stantially (e.g., Gkiasta et al. 2004; Bocquet-Appel et al. 2009; Fort 2015). Recent research has also de­monstrated that this was not a uniform, ‘wave of ad­vance’. Most archaeologically demonstrable move­ments of people seem to be leap-frog migrations in which small groups leave their community to es­tablish enclave settlements in suitable environments. This is best seen in percolation of the LBK settle­ments in the river valleys of Central and Western Europe and the spread of Impressa settlements over the Mediterranean. With the recent development of AMS dating and accu­mulation of data, it is possible to access the dynam­ics of spread in much finer temporal and spatial resolutions. A large quantity of AMS radiocarbon data – each individually dating a single event of the end metabolism of an organism – transforms into a new quality, allowing us to glimpse larger spatial and temporal patterns. This radiocarbon ‘Big Data’ allows us to approach the Neolithic as a set of local historical trajectories, each with its own speed, tem­po and rhythm. It enables us to change the narrative of gradually spreading Neolithic assemblage to a se­ries of regional or local responses and actions be­hind the larger process. In this way, the Neolithic becomes less a uniform process, driven by a single, perhaps evolutionary principle (Shennan 2018), but instead a true historical development. The Neolithic also gains temporal depth. Instead of a narrative of the spread of a formed Neolithic assemblage, we can begin to appreciate the complexity of social proces­ses and transformations in the established Neolithic societies (Hofmann, Gleser 2019). The aim of the paper is to approach the process of Neolithic and Copper Age settlement of the Western Carpathian Basin and Eastern Alps based on the avai­lable radiocarbon data. It applies spatially explicit use of radiocarbon dates to understand spatiotem­poral trends. We are interested in the spatial pro­cess of the spread, movement, aggregation and seg­regation in the time frame between 8500 and 5000 cal BP. The settlement dynamics proxies that revealed these processes’ dynamics are based on the temporal fre­quencies of radiocarbon-dated archaeological sites, which are represented as summed probability densi­ties (SPDs). The underlying assumption is that the number and distribution of radiocarbon dates in time and space indicate the existence of settlement systems and reflect demography, as more people and more settlements result in more activity and more radiocarbon dates. This is an explorative study. Its goal and focus are to identify large spatio-temporal patterns in the pro­cess of Neolithic settlement in the area around the Eastern Alps and not to test mono-causal explana­tions for dynamic processes of cultural change. In this way, it is an open-ended study without definite explanations. Materials, methods and assumptions The study area covers around 170 000km2 and en­compasses the western part of the Danube water­shed above the Danube – Sava confluence. This in­cludes the western part of the Carpathian basin, Eas­tern Alps and north-eastern section of the Dinaric Alps. The study area was divided into grid cells over which we summarized spatial variables. Hexagon cell shapes were chosen as regular hexagons are the closest shape to a circle that can be used in a tessellation. Hexagons have reduced edge effects and have iden­tical neighbouring cells, each sharing one of the six equal length sides. Furthermore, the distance be­tween centres is the same for all the neighbours. A database of 141 sites with available absolute dates from the Neolithic and Copper Age was compiled for the study area. The observed mean distance be­tween sites is around 11km, while the expected Dimitrij Mleku/ Vrhovnik mean distance is around 20km, indicating the clus­tered distribution of dated sites. This also dictated the spatial resolution of the study. Grid cell diameter was chosen to be 25km, with each grid cell covering ap­prox. 520km2. In this way, the diameter of grid cell is aproximately a double mean distance between sites. The study area is covered with 320 grid cells. Due to the highly clustered distribution, only 77 grid cells are occupied with sites, forming several distinctive clusters. Most of the grid cells are occupied with only one site (43 grid cells, with a median one site per grid and a third quartile of two sites per grid cell), with the densest grid cell occupied by nine sites. At this resolution, we assume that each grid cell re­presents the area of a regional settlement system (Kowalewski 2016) or settlement cluster (Parkin­son 2002.397–398). A regional settlement system is defined here as interacting interdependent groups of people. It contains several (or several tens of) set­tlements and communities, tied manly with an ex­change of various kinds into “regionally-integrated social networks” (Parkinson 2002.395) A database of 815 radiocarbon dates from Neolithic and Copper Age contexts between around 8000 and 5000 cal BP was compiled for all sites in the study area. Neolithic and Copper Age contexts were de­fined on their material assemblage (presence of hou­ses, pottery, domestic animals, and plants); pragma­tically this means that they were already assigned to one of the regional Neolithic or Copper Age cultures (LBK, Star.evo, Lengyel, etc.) by the authors of the original publications. In order to uphold the quality of the database, all problematic dates (dates that seem too early or too late for a given context) and dates with standard deviations greater than 100 years were discarded, resulting in 750 dates being used in the analysis (see Appendix at http://dx.doi.org/10. 4312/dp.46.16). The settlement proxies used in the study are based on the temporal frequencies of radiocarbon-dated archaeological sites, which are represented as sum­med probability densities (SPDs). This proxy assumes that the temporal frequencies of dates in a given site indicate relative human population size and density of occupation at the site. The SPDs are mainly used Neolithic and Copper Age settlement dynamics in the Western Carpathian Basin and Eastern Alps in demographic studies, while here they are used in a slightly more general way as indicators of grid cell occupation and therefore the existence of regional settlement system in a grid cell. There are several potential issues associated with the use of summed probability densities, which are sum­marized by Alan N. Williams (2012), mainly being problems of sample size, intra-site sampling, tapho­nomic loss and calibration effects. Two fundamental assumptions of the method are that the radiocarbon dates used in these analyses are associated with occupation events; and that the number of dates from a region represents the occu­pation events in the region. The first assumption is based on the logic of the selection of archaeological samples for dating. The second assumption is not necessarily true, as radiocarbon samples are not col­lected randomly between and within sites, and the process is heavily biased by sampling intensity and history of research. The collection of radiocarbon dates is always driven by specific research interests, and consequently the number of dates coming from different phases on the same site may often be a con­sequence of the research questions being asked. However, this bias is to some degree offset by aggre­gation of data. The working assumption of summed probability analysis is that a sufficiently large regio­nal sample of radiocarbon dates will counteract any problems at the site level, and that multiple small non-systematic samples from a large assemblage of sites constitute a quasi-random sample of regional trends in occupation (Williams 2012.580). In order to address this bias, the radiocarbon dates are binned (or aggregated) within grid cells. Radio­carbon dates are first binned into grid cell phases and then sorted in decreasing order within each grid cell phase (Shennan et al. 2013; Timpson et al. 2014). The dates within a given grid cell phase were further subdivided into bins if the difference be­tween two adjacent dates was greater 200 radiocar­bon years. The dates are first calibrated and summed within bins, with a bin sum normalized to the area of 1, and the resulting bin sums are then summed and normalized to produce the final SPD curve for a Dimitrij Mleku/ Vrhovnik grid cell. This procedure controls for research bias when it comes to the frequency of samples per site or site phase, but it does not control for the bias stemming from the different regional histories of research. All analysis was performed in an R statistical environ­ment (R Core Team 2018), using the rcarbon pack­age for radiocarbon calibration (using the IntCal13 radiocarbon curve; Reimer et al. 2013) and SPD ana­lysis (Bevan 2018) and sp package for spatial ana­lysis (Bivand et al. 2013). For each grid cell, a normalized summed calibrated radiocarbon probability distribution was calculated. The number of radiocarbon dates varies from one per grid cell (9 grid cells) to 88 radiocarbon dates per grid cell with a median value of four dates per grid and third quartile at eleven dates per grid cell. The ranges were calculated on the basis of the high­est probability density and are the shortest ranges that include 95% of the probability in the probabi­lity density function. The lower 95% range endpoint date was taken as the start of the Neolithic at a particular grid cell. This was then used to estimate the spread of the Neoli­thic across the study area using kriging interpolation (see Brami, Zanotti 2015). Kriging is a two-stage geostatistical method which begins with analysis of the gathered data to estab­lish the predictability of values from place to place. This results in a graph known as a semivariogram which models the difference between a value at one location and the value at another location accord­ing to the distance and direction between them (Chi­lés, Delfiner 2012.147–150). Based upon these, it estimates values at those locations which have not been sampled. The technique uses a weighted aver­age of neighbouring samples to estimate the un­known value at a given location. Weights are opti­mised using the semivariogram model, the location of the samples and all the relevant inter-relation­ships between known and unknown values. The technique can also asses the uncertainty of the pre­dictions. Kriging data in our study consists of grid cell cen­troids with the date for a beginning of the Neolithic occupation, calculated using the procedure described above. Grid cells with only one radiocarbon date were excluded from the interpolation. The result of kriging is an interpolated surface with values for the earliest estimated date of Neolithic settlement with a spatial resolution of 12.5km. This data was used to compute the direction and speed of the spread of the Neolithic. The aspect and slope for 12.5km large grid cell were computed on a smoothed surface. The slope is in this study is de­fined as the rate of change between adjacent cells, expressed as the time to traverse from each cell to its neighbours, while aspect is defined as the direc­tion of maximum slope from each cell to each of its neighbours. Slope and aspect were visualized as a vector field, with the size of each vector indicating the speed and direction of spread. SPDs were also used for crude demographic estima­tion, which is the most common use of summed cali­brated radiocarbon probability distributions. In most of the palaeodemographic sites in studies, SPDs are summed together to an empirical SPD that is treated as a proxy for demographic dynamics. Therefore, it is a number of sites and extents of activity at a parti­cular site that provide a proxy for demographic growth. Empirical SPDs are compared to theoretical growth curves to test the statistical significance of the empirical SPD curve (Shennan 2009; Por.i. et al. 2016; Blagojevi. et al. 2017). In this study the normalized SPDs for each grid cell are summed together. SPDs were thus aggregated or binned over grid cells. This approach offsets bias in the selection of regional research histories. Thus, a grid cell with one site has the same weight as a grid cell with many sites, as we assume that the difference in a number of sites is a direct result of sampling bias. The assumption is that each grid cell (and there­fore local settlement system) has the same maximum population (which is of course not necessarily true). In this way, SPDs provide only a dynamic compo­nent, an indication of a change in settlement inten­sity over the grid cell, while the number of grid cells provides the main proxy into overall demographic dynamics. Although this is an explorative study, we compared the empirical SPD curve against the theoretical null model of population growth. The null model assumes that the underlying population was stationary. Stati­stically significant positive local deviations from the null model (peaks) occur between 6860 and 6180 cal BP, while significant negative local deviations (dips) appear at 8000–7630 cal BP, 5880–5730 cal BP, 5450–5390 cal BP and 5350–5260 cal BP. Neolithic and Copper Age settlement dynamics in the Western Carpathian Basin and Eastern Alps We also the compared empirical SPD curve for the study area with the SPD created from the subset of dates from the SE Alps area. The idea was to evalu­ate regional variations in settlement trends (see Timpson et al. 2015; Crema et al. 2016), and to test whether differences between curves are statistically significant, possibly indicating different settlement trends in the SE Alps area. We found significant po­sitive local deviations (higher settlement intensity in the SE Alps area) at 6390–5940 cal BP, 5880–5780 cal BP and 5600–5390 cal BP and significant nega­tive local deviation (lower settlement intensity in SE Alps) at 7810–6850 cal BP. Another similar, even simpler graph is the number of grid cells occupied at a particular time. This esti­mate gives the extent of the settlement system and can provide insight into the spatial dynamics in terms of the expansion and contraction of regional settlement systems. It was constructed by counting grid cells where there is an indication of occupation (with 95% probability) for every century, and sum­marized in a graph. Results The patchy distribution of occupied grid cells re­flects the uneven density of Neolithic sites in the study area (Figs. 2–3). Grid cells are agglomerated into several contiguous clusters, two in Slavonia, a large one stretching across the SE Alps, across West­ern and Central Transdanubia, and a third in the Vienna basin. There are also some curious gaps, an especially large one in the Alps, but also smaller gaps in the middle reach of the Sava (Posavina) and Dra­va rivers (Podravina), parts of Southern and Central Transdanubia and Styrian basin. This is probably a result of research bias, as most of the new dates are from recent research, especially in relation to the Slovenian and Hungarian motorway construction programme. However, it also reflects a deeper pattern, as Neolithic sites seem to avoid hilly and mountainous terrain. When we plot each grid cell with the dates of earli­est occupation (Fig. 3) it can be noted that the ear- Dimitrij Mleku/ Vrhovnik liest grid cells are concentrated in the SE edge of the study area (mainly Slavonia around 8000 cal BP), but isolated grids cells with very early dates are spread all over the study area. It seems that within 500 years after the first appearance of the Neolithic in Slavonia, Neolithic sites can be found all over the study area, except the Alps. Thus we have the earli­est appearance of Neolithic settlements after 8040 cal BP in Slavonia (Sopot: Krznari. .krivanko 2011), then after 7830 cal BP in the Vienna basin (Brunn am Gebirge: Stadler, Kotova 2010), after 7780 cal BP in the Budapest area, and after 7590 cal BP in western Transdanubia, at the edge of the SE Alps (Szentgyörgy-Pityerdomb: Bánffy 2004). There seem to be two possible corridors of expansion from the Slavonian core area, one along the Danube and the other on along Drava River and then along the east­ern edge of the Alps. The first Neolithic thus appears as isolated islands or enclaves of Neolithic settlements which then slowly expand to fill neighbouring regions. However, there are some areas, especially the SE Alps west of the Mur River, which are consistently settled much later than their neighbours. The spatio-temporal pattern of the 2000-year long process of the formation of Neolithic settlement sys­tems in the study area is clearly visible on the map of the estimated age of the arrival of the Neolithic (Fig. 4). The core area for the spread of the Neolithic is that between the Sava and Drava. From the origin in Sla­vonia, the Neolithic expands in two prongs, one along the Danube and the other along the Drava, Mur and eastern foothills of the Alps. This expansion is in the form of several very early enclaves with a much ear­lier appearance of the Neolithic than the surround­ing areas, such as those enclaves along the Danube, Vienna basin and Western Transdanubia. Those en­claves are limited one or two grid cells, and might in some cases reflect the research bias. What we see is a very crude remnant of a string of small communi­ties stretching along expansion corridors. There are also some backwater areas with much later Neolithic occupation. The most prominent being the area of the Alps and the smaller area around Bala-ton lake. While those small backwater areas are most probably the result of research bias, the Alps area Neolithic and Copper Age settlement dynamics in the Western Carpathian Basin and Eastern Alps does not seem to be an artefact. A large number of dates from the SE Alps indicate the relatively late ar­rival of the Neolithic with rapid expansion along ri­ver valleys. Dense isochrones indicate the existence of a statio­nary border, most prominently on the edges of Car­pathian Basin and the Alps, along the lower course of the Mur river, where the Neolithic expansion to­ward the west halted for almost 500 years with a stationary border, and more than 1000 years with a stationary border on the western edge of the Vienna basin toward the Alps. The distance and shape between isochrones encode the rhythm, tempo and direction of the process, which can more clearly be visualized as a vector field (Fig. 5). The overall speed of the process seems to be quite rapid. The study area was crossed in a direction from SE to NW in around 200 years, as the 370km distance between Sopot in Slavonia and Brunn am Gebirge in the Vienna basin was covered in a span of around 210 years, which gives an average speed of Neolithic expansion of about 1.7km per year. Thus is a speed of enclave colonization over the study area that reflects the high mobility of early Neolithic com­munities. The local speed of expansion was estimated to be from 0.025 to around 5km per year, with the medi­an speed around 0.15km per year. The local speeds estimated in this study indicate other processes, a relatively slow expansion around core regions and enclaves that filled the landscape. The estimated speed of expansion is the highest in the areas of no data, such as the Alps and middle reach of the Sava, where it slows down when en­counters Alpine foothills, once it reaches the area where we have more data. This points to significant gaps in the data. The general direction of expansion is mostly from the core areas and enclaves toward surrounding re­gions. Even so, it looks that the main direction of spread is from SE to NE. Although the spatial resolution is quite low, it seems that the main corridors of expansion are the river valleys of Danube, Drava, and the Sava. Dimitrij Mleku/ Vrhovnik Expansion along the Mur and Drava Rivers slows down until an over 500-year long standstill of the stationary border when settlements reach the foot­hills of the Alps. However, after the border was bre­ached it expands very rapidly into the hilly fringe of SE Alps. This expansion happens at roughly the same time as the expansion of the Neolithic along the Sava River into the SE Alps, and might be a part of the same process. Based on the analysed data we can identify at least two processes behind the pattern. The first is the establishment of enclaves which happened in the first 500 years and then spread relatively slowly from there. In some areas, especially on the western fringe of the Carpathian Basin, we can observe the formation of a stationary border for almost 500 to 1000 years, followed by quick spread into the Alpine foothills. The general SPD curve constructed from the SPD curves for each grid cell thus reflects the settlement and demographic dynamics in the study area (Fig. 6). The curve shows a rapid increase from 8000 to 7500 cal BP with another push after 7000 cal BP when the curve reaches a peak at around 6300 cal BP. After 6500 and especially after 6000 there is a pronounced dip in the curve, with small increase and local peak just before 5500 cal BP followed by a slow decrease until the end of time frame. Main peak and dips are statistically significant. This curve might overrepresent the earliest dates due to the research bias, as re­search strategy is usually fo­cused mainly on the oldest and the earliest dates and con­texts. Nevertheless, the SPD curve reflects some trends, the most interesting being the ra­pid decline after 6300 cal BP. The fast rise and peak are consistent with the Neolithic demographic transition model (Bocquet-Appel 2011), which postulates fast growth at the border, followed by a drop a few centuries layer. The same pattern is found in other re­gions all over Europe (Shen­nan et al. 2013). More interesting are regional differences in the process. The curve for the SE Alps rises rapidly just after 7000 cal BP. Most of the growth in the study area between 7000 and 6300 cal BP can be attributed to the expansion and growth in the SE Alps area in this period. There is also proportionally less decline than elsewhere after 6300 cal BP, where especially after 6000 cal BP the SE Alps contribute most of the va­lue to the overall curve. Those differences from the study area are statistically significant Another estimate shows the number of occupied grid cells at 100-year intervals (Fig. 6). This is a si­milar although simplified estimate of the extent of Neolithic settlement in the study area. The curve shows a steady increase in the number of occupied grid cells starts around 8000 cal BP and reaches a peak around 6500 cal BP. After 6300 cal BP, begin­ning of the Copper Age in the study area, the curve experiences fast decline with some fluctuations after 6000 cal BP. Overall it seems that the extent of the Copper Age settlement systems is approximately half that of the maximum extent of Neolithic settle­ment around 6500 cal BP in the study area. In contrast to the study area, the SE Alps experien­ces different dynamics. Fast expansion into the SE Alps starts just after 7000 cal BP and reaches a peak at around 6500 cal BP, like the curve for the over­all study area. It looks as if the main contribution to the overall extent of settlement after 7000 cal BP can be attributed to the expansion into the SE Alps. When, after 6500 cal BP the curve experiences a no­table and rapid drop, the reduction in the SE Alps is Neolithic and Copper Age settlement dynamics in the Western Carpathian Basin and Eastern Alps not as significant as in the overall study area. After the drop stabilises at around 6000 cal BP, the SE Alpine area con­tributes a large number of grid cells to the overall study area, as up to half of the grid cells in the study come from the area of the SE Alps. This might be exacerbated by the research bias, as this is the period of the appearance of Neolithic in Slovenia, where a lot of dating effort was fo­cused. The Late Neolithic has received much less focus else­where. However, even consi­dering this research bias, the area of the SE Alps experien­ces different dynamics than the rest of the study area. The spatial pattern of this process is clearly shown in a sequence of settled grid cell maps at 500-year intervals (Fig. 7). Neolithic settlement starts as sparse isolated grid cells in Slavonia, along the Danube, Bosnia and at the eastern edge of the Alps. Between 7000 and 6500 cal BP we can observe a process of expansion around already established grid cells. The first clusters of grid cells are formed in Slavonia, in the area between the Sava and Drava and at the east­ern edge of the Alps, between the rivers Balaton and Mur. The time slice between 7000 and 6500 cal BP is marked by expansion into the SE Alps, with a fur­ther process of expansion in other areas. This is also the period where we can observe the abandonment of the first grid cells. This process continues after 6000 cal BP, with continuous expansion into the SE Alps and extensive abandonment of grid cells in the lower reaches of the Sava, Drava and Danube. The general decline in the settled grid cell density conti­nues toward 5000 cal BP. Discussion Alasdair Whittle in his discussion of long-term and large-scale processes suggests three interweaved processes behind the formation of European Neoli­thic settlement patterns. There is the first phase of primary agricultural colonization, followed by the second phase of internal infilling and continued ex-ternal expansion, followed in turn by the final phase of ‘packing’ (Whittle 1987.34). The picture painted here is a bit more intricate. Com­plex spatio-temporal processes can be decomposed into three basic processes, spread, then movement, and aggregation or segregation (O’Sullivan, Perry 2013). Although the present study observes these processes at a very low spatial and temporal resolu­tion it is still possible to appreciate the complexity and identify the main components. The spread pro­cesses include growth, diffusion and percolation, and they all refer to the expansion of a common boundary or fronts of a phenomenon, such as the expansion of a gas into a vacuum, forest fire or spread of animal species in a new environment (O’Sullivan, Perry 2013.133–168). Movement refers to the spread of individual entities, and can be seen as the secession of shifts which relocate an entity (single molecule of gas, fire, or individual animal or human) from one location to another. These walks can be random (as in case of isolated gas molecules) or, more often, influenced by the environment or other entities (O’Sullivan, Perry 2013.97–131). Ag­gregation and segregation are two facets of the same process, driven by a tendency of similar elements to group together in space or dissimilar elements to se­parate in space (O’Sullivan, Perry 2013.57–95). The process of the formation of Neolithic settlement systems in the study area was not a swift, uniform transition that established stable Neolithic settlement system in the course of a few centuries. It was not an even diffusion of Neolithic settlements, filling the Dimitrij Mleku/ Vrhovnik landscape of the study area. Instead, as already argued by Marek Zvelebil (2001.1), it was a complex interaction of several processes with their own dyna­mics and time depth, which included both movement and contact, combining in a very complex and long historical trajectory, embedded in the existing social and historical conditions. In this sense, the social context of the agricultural transition in the study area had structure and agency. The formation of Neo­lithic settlement systems in the study area lasted se­veral millennia and included lives over tens of gene­rations. The process was probably experienced more as continuity than one of disjuncture and change (Hofmann, Gleser 2019). The spread of Neolithic settlements was part of a wider phenomenon, the Neolithisation of Europe. However, the spread of specific material assemblage associated with Neolithic was not uniform. Instead, the edge of the process observed in a study area has a ragged, swirly, pixelated border (Robb 2014.33). The Neolithic material assemblage percolated along different paths, with the establishment of pioneer communities at the front. The discontinuous spread and establishment of enclaves point to the key role of movement and personal and group mobility in the process. Spread involved the movement of small groups or even individuals (see Zvelebil 2001.2A). These movements usually do not have a single ori­gin point, creating a perplexing pattern of “migra­tions without a homeland” (Robb 2014.658–659). What drives such groups onward is poorly known (but see Hofmann 2016). Movement seems to fol­low the natural corridors in a landscape, especially river valleys. Here, the Danube, Sava, Drava, and Mur seem to be main lines along which Neolithic communities moved forward. Rapid enclave move­ments tend to halt when they encounter either dif­ferent environments (Alpine foothills) or dense for­ager settlements (possibly Alpine foothills and the Balaton Area; see Bánffy 2006.130–136). The result­ing frontiers lasted a long time, and may include the movement of individuals, families or small groups of people across the border. The third process is the aggregation or segregation of Neolithic settlements, which created a patchy land­scape of a structured, organized and consistent Neo­lithic social world surrounded by untamed, wild landscape. There are two general factors behind the process, one is the environment while the other is demographic and social. Initial enclave colonization targeted specific environmental niches. After the for­mation of initial or core settlements, a gradual pro- Fig. 8. The extent of Neolithic and Copper Age set­tlement systems in the study area in 500-year time slices. Dark grid cells indicate occupation while light indicates abandoned grid cells. cess of aggregation continues as a slow infill of the landscape around initial settlements, creating Side-lungskammern of Neolithic settlements. The move­ment of people and things between settlements and patches connected them in the social landscape, Neolithic and Copper Age settlement dynamics in the Western Carpathian Basin and Eastern Alps prone to shifting patterns of interaction and integra­tion. There are several centripetal and centrifugal forces leading to either integration or fissioning of groups. These changes are reflected in a settlement pattern and may be a driving force behind other processes, such as movement and spread. The dynamics of the Neolithic spread and the mo­vement of individuals and small groups were deter­mined to an extent by social processes in already settled regions. This is especially pronounced in the case of the secondary expansion of Neolithic settle­ment systems into the SE Alps. Around 6700 cal BP there is a pronounced change in the settlement systems in the Balkans with the ap­pearance of stratified tell sites, large nucleated settle­ments and large cemetery grounds (Hofmann, Gle­ser 2019.24–29). In the study area, this process is very well documented with the dynamics in Alsón­yék-Bátaszék in south-west Hungary, where the set­tlement that formed in the Star.evo phase experien­ces sudden large-scale expansion around 6800 cal BP with the erection of settlement with 122 houses and cemetery with around 2300 graves. It is just one of several substantial Lengyel culture sites in the neighbourhood which include both cemeteries and settlements. Alsónyék-Bátaszék became a large aggre­gation of people, with a population that suddenly in­creased almost fifty-fold. This aggregation stayed in place for only one generation, followed by an equal­ly fast dispersal (Osztás et al. 2012; 2013; 2016). This process coincides with the Neolithic expansion into the SE Alps, especially the area of modern Slo­venia, which started after 7000 BP. It is marked by a relatively fast expansion along the Sava River, es­tablishment of settlements in the river valleys and plains. This is followed by the expansion along Dra­va and Mur river valleys into the Alps. This process of expansion into the Alpine river valleys continues for almost 500 years. The same pattern of breach of long-standing frontiers is also visible elsewhere in the study area. A resurgence of Mesolithic ancestry in the Late Neo­lithic has already been noted all over Europe, al­though in some places this process was limited. Ge­netic signatures associated with European hunter-gatherers (mitochondrial U-haplotypes) reappear in central Europe during the 7th and 6th millennium BP (Haak et al. 2015; Bollongino 2013; Fu et al. 2016; Lipson et al. 2017). The possible origins of this re­surgence are currently not yet clear, however, it might be associated with the expansion of Neolithic communities into previously marginal areas, new contacts with Mesolithic hunter-gatherer communi­ties that could have been accompanied by increased genetic exchange with more central areas. On the other hand, it seems that by around 6600 cal BP, tell and nucleated sites which previously cha­racterized most of the Carpathian Basin were sud­denly abandoned. The transition from Late Neolithic to Copper Age is marked by a change from nucleat­ed to a dispersed settlement pattern. In the whole Carpathian Basin previously nucleated sites were replaced by smaller, flat settlements, largely charac­terized by shallow single-layer occupation deposits, along with a change from intramural burials to large extramural cemeteries (Parkinson 2002.391–394; Bori. 2015.157). This seems to be a wider process that occurred almost simultaneously over the study area. This process of segregation can be detected all over the study area. Initial Neolithic settlements in Lahi­nja river valley and Krupsko polje in Bela Krajina, Slovenia targeted fertile soils and were established soon after 7000 cal BP. In the mid-6th millennium BP there is an expansion from core areas into the drier Karst hinterland, with new sites that were oc­cupied less intensively and for shorter periods and the formation of enclosed upland sites (Budja 1995; Mason 1995). However, initial settlements, such as Moverna vas, were not abandoned. The pattern of smaller dispersed settlements in the Early Copper Age, despite possible research biases regarding the visibility of small dispersed sites, could suggest a drop in population levels, even if the num­ber of individual sites increases. However, the demo­graphic decline did not affect all areas equally, but is much more pronounced in core areas of Slavonia, while newly settled areas peripheral areas seem to experience much less severe declines. Attempts to explain these discontinuities by simple boom-boost cycles of population dynamics (caused by climate change which affected subsistence practi­ces, ultimately lowering reproductive success; Shen­nan 2009; 2013; 2018) seem overly simplistic and theoretically impoverished. If the Neolithic was a hi­storical process (in contrast to an evolutionary epi­sode) the explanations must take into account the nature of social interaction and the way it is stabi­lized by the use of durable material resources and symbols. Material resources fix the way individuals Dimitrij Mleku/ Vrhovnik interact, behave and move, and dictate new skills, ha­bits and actions. They impose new physical techni­ques, training and disciplines, making individuals be­come productive members of a specific assemblage. The spatial segregation processes that mark the tran­sition from Late Neolithic to Copper are obviously connected to increased residential mobility, as re­flected in the dispersed settlement pattern and occu­pation of new areas with newly founded settlements. It is difficult to identify the mechanisms behind the centrifugal forces which caused the segregation of previously dependent and closely-knit communities at a larger regional level (Bori. 2015.189–193). It might be the result of a restructuring of a Neolithic assemblage which becomes destabilized with the introduction of new components such as copper me­tallurgy and the growing importance of domestic cat­tle and pastoral economy (Orton 2012). After all, assemblages are precarious composite entities that just about hold together because all their parts hap­pen to be in the right places, doing the right things to achieve this. Adding and swapping new elements in an assemblage can cause non-linear transitions to occur (DeLanda 2006.10–11). Conclusion The paper approached large spatio-temporal trends in the formation and change of regional settlement sys­tems in the Western part of the Carpathian Basin area around the Eastern Alps in the Neolithic and Copper Age. We were interested in the spatial processes of spread, movement, aggregation and segregation in the time frame between 8500 and 5000 cal BP. The distribution of Neolithic and Copper Age sites in the study area is clustered and patchy. The first Neo­lithic thus appears as isolated islands or enclaves of Neolithic settlements which then slowly expand to fill neighbouring regions. The core area for the spread of the Neolithic is that between the Sava and Drava. From the origin in Sla­vonia, the Neolithic expands in two prongs, one along the Danube and the other along the Drava, Mur and eastern foothills of the Alps. This expansion is in the form of several enclaves with much earlier appearance of the Neolithic than surrounding areas, such as ones along the Danube, Vienna basin and Western Transdanubia. There are also some backwater areas with much later Neolithic settlement. The most prominent being the area of the Eastern Alps. We identified the existence of stationary borders, most prominently on the edges of Carpathian basin and the Alps, along the lower course of the Mur River, where the Neolithic expan­sion toward the west halted for almost 500 years. However, once the border was breached it expands very rapidly into the hilly fringe of SE Alps. Fast ex­pansion into SE Alps starts just after 7000 cal BP and reaches a peak at around 6500 cal BP, which is also the period of the maximum extent of Neolithic settle­ment systems in the study area. After 6300 cal BP study area experiences a signifi­cant reduction in the extent of settlement systems, associated with the Late Neolithic to Copper Age transition. This was a significant decrease in the ex­tent of settlements system, but not all areas were af­fected to the same extent. Appendix is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/dp.46.16 Neolithic and Copper Age settlement dynamics in the Western Carpathian Basin and Eastern Alps References Ammerman A. J., Cavali-Sforza L. L. 1984. The Neolithic transition and the genetics of population in Europe. Princeton University Press. Princeton (NJ). Bánffy E. 2004. The 6th millennium BC boundary in western Transdanubia and its role in the central Euro­pean transition (The Szentgyörgyvölgy-Pityerdomb set­tlement). 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Documenta Praehi­storica 28: 2–26. https://doi.org/10.4312/dp.28.1 back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) Quantifying prehistoric physiological stress using the TCA method> preliminary results from the Central Balkans Kristina Penezic´ 1, Marko Por;ic´ 2,1, Jelena Jovanovic´ 2,1, Petra Kathrin Urban3, Ursula ´ 1,2 Wittwer-Backofen3, and Sofija Stefanovic 1 Biosense Institute, Novi Sad, RS kristina.penezic@biosense.rs< sofija.stefanovic@biosense.rs 2 Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, RS mporcic@f.bg.ac.rs< jelena.jovanovic@biosense.rs 3 Institute for Biological Anthropology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, DE petra.urban@anthropologie.uni-freiburg.de< uwittwer@anthropologie.uni-freiburg.de ABSTRACT – The Neolithic way of life was accompanied by an increase in various forms of physio­logical stress (e.g. disease, malnutrition). Here we use the method of tooth cementum annulation (TCA) analysis in order to detect physiological stress that is probably related to calcium metabolism. The TCA method is applied to a sample of teeth from three Mesolithic and five Neolithic individuals from the Central Balkans. The average number of physiological stress episodes is higher in the Neo­lithic group – but the statistical significance of this result cannot be evaluated due to the small sam­ple size, therefore these results should be taken as preliminary. KEY WORDS – stress-layers; tooth cementum annulation (TCA); Mesolithic; Neolithic; Central Balkans Kvantificiranje fiziolo[kega stresa v prazgodovini s pomo;jo metode anulacije zobnega cementa (TCA)> preliminarni rezultati iz osrednjega Balkana IZVLE.EK – .ivljenje v neolitiku je spremljal porast razli.nih oblik fiziolo.kega stresa (npr. bolezni, podhranjenost). Predstavljamo uporabo analitske metode anulacije zobnega cementa (TCA), s katero lahko odkrivamo fiziolo.ki stres, ki je verjetno povezan s presnovo kalcija. Metodo smo uporabili pri analizah vzorcev treh mezolitskih in petih neolitskih posameznikov iz osrednjega Balkana. Povpre.­no .tevilo fiziolo.kih epizodnih stresov je v neolitski skupini ve.je – vendar zaradi majhnega .tevila vzorcev tega rezultata statisti.no ne moremo ovrednotiti in ga predstavljamo kot preliminarnega. KLJU.NE BESEDE – plasti-stresov; metoda anulacije zobnega cementa (angl. TCA); mezolitik; neolitik; osrednji Balkan Introduction One of the major events in human prehistory was significant increase of the world population, the de-the transition from hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agri-mographic process known as the Neolithic demogra-cultural food production in the Holocene, which sig-phic transition (Bocquet-Appel 2008; 2011). nificantly influenced the way of life in this era. This transition was followed by the beginning of a fully Moreover, with an increase in population size an sedentary way of living, the cultivation of domestic overall decline in health has also been documented plants and breeding of animals. Many scholars have worldwide (Cohen, Armelagos 1984; Cohen, Crane-hypothesized that these changes had a dramatic im-Kramer 2007). Usually named among the main caus-pact on population size and structure, resulting in a es of this decline are changes in diet, a limited food DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.17 Quantifying prehistoric physiological stress using the TCA method> preliminary results from the Central Balkans range, and the low level of food quality (Cohen 2008). Besides changes in diet, an increase in ferti­lity with narrow birth spacing, increased sedentism and life in villages close to domestic animals, result­ed in poor hygienic conditions and higher rates of zoonotic disease (Bocquet-Appel 2008; Stock, Pin-hasi 2011). Studies across Europe based on human skeletal re­mains document a general decline in health status (Jaro.ova, Do.kalova 2008; Wittwer-Backofen, To-mo 2008; Papathanasiou 2011; Stock, Pinhasi 2011; Ash et al. 2016; Jovanovi. 2017). These show that around 50% of the individuals examined had some kind of growth disruption as a consequence of the new lifestyle in the Neolithic period, while in the Mesolithic only 20% of individuals were affected by growth risk factors during childhood (Jaro.ova, Do.kalova 2008; Wittwer-Backofen, Tomo 2008; Papathanasiou 2011). A recent study with a focus on the diet and health of Mesolithic-Neolithic inhabi­tants of the central Balkan region also showed that Early Neolithic people had limited nutritional resour­ces and a greater prevalence of various dental and skeletal pathological conditions, as well as growth disturbances (Jovanovi. 2017). Stable isotope val­ues show that, at the beginning of the 7th millenni­um, hunter-fisher-gatherers from the central Balkans, mainly dependent on aquatic resources, increased their consumption of terrestrial resources (Bonsall et al. 1997; Grupe et al. 2003; Bori. et al. 2004; Neh­lich et al. 2010; de Becdelievre et al. 2015; Jovano­vi. 2017). At the same time, the frequency of caries increased, possibly due to a diet rich in carbohydra­tes (Turner 1979; Powell 1979; Larsen, Griffin 1991; Larsen 1995). Furthermore, analysis of micro-plant fossils (starch grains) found in dental calculus lends weight to the argument that Neolithic people in the Central Balkans started to consume more terrestrial resources, and probably significant amounts of car­bohydrates (Jovanovi. 2017). This dietary shift and poor hygienic conditions in the Neolithic Central Bal­kans resulted in the higher incidence of non-specif­ic stress markers such as enamel hypoplasia, cribra orbitalia, and porotic hyperostosis (Jovanovi. 2017). In this paper, we address the aspects of the Meso­lithic-Neolithic transition related to health by looking at the changes caused by physiological stress at the microscopic level. We apply the method of tooth ce­mentum annulation analysis to a sample of Mesoli­thic and Neolithic individuals from the Central Bal­kans. We expect the frequency of variation in the ce­mentum layers as indicators of physiological stress to be higher in the Neolithic than in the Mesolithic sample, as predicted by theory and previous empiri­cal studies. Archaeological context Mesolithic and Early Neolithic sites have been disco­vered on the territory of the Central Balkans (Fig. 1). One of the key areas is the Danube Gorges, where a series of settlements yielded well-preserved archaeo­logical remains which document the chronological continuity of occupation along the Danube River from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic (10 000–5500 cal BC) (Radovanovi. 1996; Roksandi. 2000; Bori. 1999; 2002a; 2002b; Bori., Miracle 2004; Bori., Stefanovi. 2004; Bori., Dimitrijevi. 2009). The Mesolithic-Neolithic sequence in the Danube Gor­ges is characterized by a specific material culture, in­cluding complex settlement architecture (trapezoi­dal buildings), sculpted sandstone boulders, and spe­cific mortuary rites (Srejovi. 1972; Radovanovi. 1996; Jovanovi. 2008; Bori. 2011; 2016). Archaeo­logical excavations of these sites uncovered more than 500 human skeletons (Roksandi. 2000; Bori. et al. 2004; Stefanovi. in press). The inhabitants of these sites were semi-sedentary hunter-fisher gatherers, who settled in the vicinity of natural whirlpools which provided good hunting and fishing spots (Bori. 2002; .ivaljevi. 2012). During the Mesolithic and transitional Mesolithic-Neolithic phases the economy was mainly based on aquatic resources (Clason 1980; Bartosiewicz et al. 1995; 2001; 2008; Dinu 2010; Bori. 2011; Dimitri­jevi. et al. 2016) and wild game (Bökönyi 1972; 1978; Dimitrijevi. 2000; 2008). In the Early Neoli­thic (post c. 5900 cal BC) domesticated animals (cat­tle, ovicaprid, pig) started to appear (Bori., Dimitri­jevi. 2007). In addition, in the Neolithic period peo­ple included more plants in their diet, possibly ce­reals (Filipovi. et al. 2017). The only domesticated animal that appeared before the Neolithic is the dog, locally domesticated during the Mesolithic (Bökö­nyi 1978; Dimitrijevi., Vukovi. 2015). During the Neolithic phase, hunter-fisher-gatherer communities in the Danube Gorges began to have intensive contacts with first farmers in the region (Bori. 2002; Bori., Dimitrijevi. 2007; Bori., Price 2013). The beginning of the sixth millennium BC in the western central Balkan region is associated with the Early Neolithic Star.evo culture (6200–5200 cal BC) (Whittle et al. 2002). Aquatic resources and wild Kristina Penezic´, Marko Por;ic´, Jelena Jovanovic´, Petra Kathrin Urban, Ursula Wittwer-Backofen, and Sofija Stefanovic´ game still played a significant role in the diet of Neo­lithic inhabitants of the Danube Gorges, as indicated by stable isotope and archaeozoological analyses (Bori. et al. 2004; Bori., Dimitrijevi. 2006; Bori. 2008; 2011). Animal husbandry and stock-breeding played a major role in subsistence, but wild game re­mains (red deer, roe deer, wild boar, and aurochs) were also found (Bökönyi 1974; 1984; 1988; Clason 1980; Vörös 1980; Greenfield 1993; Bla.i. 1985; 1992; 2005; Arnold, Greenfield 2006). Cultivated cereals (such as wheat and barley) and pulses (len­tils, peas), were also identified at some Early Neoli­thic sites (Filipovi., Obradovi. 2013). Although there is a large number of excavated sites, burials are very rare (Bori. 2014). They are mostly found as single inhumations in a flexed position, located within the settlement. Tooth cementum Tooth cementum has a principal function of anchor­ing the tooth in the jaw, attaching the fibre of the pe­riodontal membrane to the tooth root surface (Con-don et al. 1986; Liebermann 1994). Tooth cemen­tum surrounds the dentine and forms in annual la­yers, with the first deposited layer defining the ce­mento-dentine junction. The cementum extends from the enamel-dentine junction to the apex of the root, varying from a thin layer close to the tooth crown up to 0.5mm thickness at the apex at older age (Schrö­der 2000). Incremental bands, annual layers, or cementum growth layers (Klevezal’, Myrick 1984) are rhyth­mic depositions of the tooth cementum. They con­sist of alternating dark and bright lines, differing in mineralization as seen under transmitting light mi­croscopy (Wittwer-Backofen 2012). These deposi­tions are seasonal, and are visible in a broad variety of mammalian species (Grue, Jansen 1976, 1979; Lieberman 1993, 1994; Grupe et al. 2012). In hu­mans, structured appositional growth of the tooth cementum can be seen in the acellular extrinsic fi­bre cementum concentrated in the middle third sec­tion of the root (Wittwer-Backofen 2012). Compared to morphological traits correlated to age, the advantage of this method is the often better pre­servation of teeth compared to bones. Tooth cemen­tum is less vulnerable to decomposition processes than osteological remains (Grupe et al. 2012). For adults, this age estimation method resulted in more precise ages than estimates based on standard mac­roscopic indicators of age (Grosskopf 1990; Wittwer-Backofen et al. 2004; Naji et al. 2016). An indivi­dual’s chronological age is estimated by adding the average age of tooth root formation by tooth type and sex to the mean number of counted incremen­tal layers, or by applying a mathematical algorithm which comes close to this procedure (Wittwer-Backo-fen et al. 2004; Grupe et al. 2012; Gupta et al. 2014). Under optimal conditions, TCA provides a highly pre­cise age at death estimate with an error margin of ±2.5 years (Wittwer-Backofen et al. 2004), or addi­tionally a determination of the season of death (Kle­vezal’, Shishlina 2001; Wedel 2007). Due to its strict appositional growth, the acellular extrinsic fibre cementum is a valuable tool for the reconstruction of certain life-history parameters (Ka­gerer, Grupe 2001). More specifically, TCA layers differ from each other in width and appearance, and it is assumed that these irregularities are formed as a response to life-events of physiological stress re­lated to the sensitive calcium metabolism. Further clinical studies into the origin of these pat­terns showed that surgery performed on the spine and/or bones, and other orthopaedic interventions, renal disease, tuberculosis, and pregnancies leave a visible mark in the tooth cementum (Kagerer 2000; Kagerer, Grupe 2001; Caplazi 2004), suggesting that stress layers could be interpreted as reflecting specific life-events. However, diabetes, thyroid disor­ders, metabolic bone diseases such as osteoporosis, malnutrition, rachitis, periodontal disease, or leprosy do not leave visible traits in the dental cementum (Kagerer 2000; Kagerer, Grupe 2001; Bertrand et al. 2016; Broucker et al. 2016). Another study on captive great apes showed that extreme weather lea­ves marks, too (Cipriano 2002). This was explained by the lack of sunlight, caused during a long cold winter, leading to reduced vitamin D levels. What all these occurrences have in common is their impact on the calcium metabolism. Conditions such as kid­ney diseases and traumas mobilize calcium in the body and influence the concentration of available calcium (Kagerer, Grupe 2001). Pregnancy and lac­tation are processes that are energetically costly (Medill et al. 2010), and these physiological de­mands as well as increased hormone activity also cause alterations in the cementum layers. An in­creased thickness of cementum layers is also con­nected with weaning or menarche, as well as with dry and rainy seasons in baboons (Dirks et al. 2002). Even in periods of extreme calcium demand, such as pregnancy or lactation, the growth process of the in­cremental layers is not interrupted, leading to the Quantifying prehistoric physiological stress using the TCA method> preliminary results from the Central Balkans fact that the number of AEFC layers is closely cor­related to chronological age and does not depend on major life events or living conditions. Correlation of stress markers and pregnancies has been docu­mented in humans (Kagerer, Grupe 2001; Künzie, Wittwer-Backofen 2008). During pregnancies, due to low levels of metabolically available calcium, the cementum layers are still produced but appear diffe­rently mineralized, broader, and with higher or low­er translucency than other layers (Kagerer, Grupe 2001). Peter Kagerer and Gisela Grupe (2001.79) showed that in all cases of pregnant women the “translucent layers corresponded exactly with the age when the female had been pregnant, inter-birth intervals were maintained and exactly data-ble”. Besides humans, these changes in cementum have been detected in polar bears (Medill et al. 2010), dolphins (genus Stenella) (Klevezal’, Myrick 1984), great apes (Cipriano 2002) and black bears (Carrel 1994). These layers are described as “hypomineralized in­cremental lines”, “conspicuous incremental lines” or “broad and translucent layers” (Kagerer, Grupe 2001), “irregularities in terms of hypomineralized bands”, and “influence on the quality of incremen­tal lines”, and “stress-related variation in line qua­lity” (Cipriano 2002). As these lines do refer to a certain stress-related life-events, in this study they will be referred to as stress layers. However, despite the vast evidence of the occurrence of cementum la­yers that correspond to life-events, a standardized methodological approach for the determination of such stress layers is not available yet. The variation of these layers involves two features: (1) disparities in width of the layers, with stress events supposed to result in broader layers, and (2) difference of optical appearance under transmitting light microscopy, with a greater contrast between dark and bright lines, i.e. the stress-related layers are broader and appear darker. To count the pairs of light and dark lines that represent one year in age determination, we use the dark lines as markers as they are easier to determine visually. The first line, the eruption line, is also a dark one. When it comes to the darker appearance of the lay­ers, there are no strict criteria for the definition of a layer being darker or lighter, whereas the width of the respective cementum layer can be evaluated by measurements. It thus rather depends on the sub­jective impression of the observer. This leads to high­ly subjective determinations of potential stress lay­ers. Galina A. Klevezal’ and Albert C. Myrick (1984. 104) described in their research the dentine of to­othed whales and dolphins that consist of numerous layers having different optical densities. The varia­tions in optical appearance are described as subjec­tive: “DSLs (deep stained layers) in males were subtly different in character from those observed in females. Nevertheless, clear distinctions between DSLs in males and in females were difficult to de­scribe, and we have here used the same definition for both sexes.” In their study the presence of ‘doubt­ful’ layers is noted, emphasizing that the criterion for that description is subjective (Klevezal’, Myrick 1984). As an indicator for a determination of a stress layer the presence and visibility of striking incremental layers through all sections of the same tooth (Kage­rer, Grupe 2001) is suggested. Materials, methods and results Sample description Eight archaeological specimens (currently investi­gated at the Laboratory for Bioarchaeology, Depart­ment of Archaeology, Faculty of Philosophy, Univer­sity of Belgrade) from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods were analysed for tooth cementum stress la­yers (Tab. 1). All samples are from individuals with­out visible traumata and from secure archaeological contexts. They originate from excavated archaeolo­gical sites that have clear prehistoric contexts (Fig. 1). For some directly dated individuals a radiocar­bon date is available, whereas others are assigned to a period (Mesolithic or Neolithic) based on the dat­ing of the entire site and the burial position. In the Danube Gorges, Mesolithic individuals are buried in supine position, whereas Neolithic individuals are buried in flexed position lying on their sides (Bori. 2011). As a preparatory first step, all samples were photographed, 3D scanned, and a cast was made of each tooth before the sample preparation took place. TCA sample preparation Only single-rooted teeth were investigated. The ge­neral protocol for the preparation of samples was based on the work of Ursula Wittwer-Backofen (2012). Teeth were embedded into Biodur epoxy resin (Biodur E12 resin with hardener E1 in the ratio 100:28) and the middle third of the tooth was cut cross-sectionally with a slice thickness of 80µm using a Leica 1600 rotating diamond microtome. This resulted in 7 to 17 sections per tooth. Each section was observed visually and individually by Kristina Penezic´, Marko Por;ic´, Jelena Jovanovic´, Petra Kathrin Urban, Ursula Wittwer-Backofen, and Sofija Stefanovic´ Archaeological Grave Sex Tooth Macroscopic TCA age Period Absolute date site (FDI) age estimate estimate 95% CI (reference) Vlasac 38 Female 42 30–59 70 ± 2.5 Mesolithic 7514–7351 cal BC (this study) Vlasac 24 Male 21 25–29 44 ± 2.5 Mesolithic 6640–6220 cal BC (Boric´ 2011) Padina 18b Female 35 .30 65 ± 2.5 Mesolithic 9115–8555 cal BC (Mathieson et al. 2018) Vin;a–Belo brdo VII Female 43 15–18 23 ± 2.5 Neolithic 5565–5470 cal BC (Tasic´ et al. 2015) Lepenski Vir 66 Male 22 25–30 34 ± 2.5 Neolithic 5995–5848 cal BC (this study) Lepenski Vir 8 Female 44 30–49 36 ± 2.5 Neolithic 5990–5790 cal BC (Bonsall et al. 2015) Ajmana 11 Female 41 .30 60 ± 2.5 Neolithic \ Lepenski Vir 9 Female 13 .15 55 ± 2.5 Neolithic 5980–5740 cal BC (Bonsall et al. 2015) Tab. 1. Samples analysed for tooth cementum stress layers (where no date for the specific individual was available field was marked with “/”, this individual was assigned to a period according to burial posi­ tion and the dating of the site). the first author using the transmission light micro­scope Leica DM RXA 2 with magnifications of 20x and 40x. Photographs of all regions of interest were taken using a digital tubus camera Leica DC 250 and saved in a database. Each pair of light and dark cementum layers was counted for the age at death estimation (SFig. 1–SFig. 8 at http://dx.doi.org/ 10.4312/dp.46.17). Three sections from each tooth were selected for stress layer evaluation. The average number of layers was calculated by averaging the number of layers counted covering all sections (total number of sections for each tooth). One representa­tive photo from each section was analysed. Age at death is calculated by adding the sex-specific average age of tooth root eruption for the respective tooth type, as noted in Pe­ter Adler (1967), to the average number of cementum layers counted on all sections. Methods for stress layer determination We used two different methods for the de­termination of stress layers according to their width and colour of appearance. Both me­thods are based on the assumption that ce­mentum layers influenced by physiological stress show a significantly broader exten­sion compared to regular cementum layers. The verification and counting of stress lay­ers was a blind procedure in the sense that the researcher making the count did not know which particular tooth was being ana­lysed. This measure was taken in order to avoid preconceptions about the sex and the period that the samples come from (Neolithic or Mesolithic), and to avoid these expecta­tions influencing the results. Method 1 consists of measuring each pair of dark and bright layers (Fig. 2) by using the Leica software Image measurement tool. The detailed measure­ments (i.e. the thickness of the pair of lines) were taken from three selected sections of the same tooth. For each section the average width of layers and the corresponding standard deviation was calculated. All layers with values greater than the average +1 stan­dard deviation value were defined as stress layers. This method indicated stress layers based on their differing width, independent of their visual appear­ance or observer determination. Quantifying prehistoric physiological stress using the TCA method> preliminary results from the Central Balkans Method 2 is based on calculating the average thick­ness of the incremental layers by measuring the thickness of the whole cement band at four different areas of a section. This procedure was done on three sections from the same tooth. The average value of the thickness of the band was divided by the num­ber of layers counted from the specific section. Stress layers were determined visually by the observer, se­lecting layers that appeared wider and darker. Only these pre-determined layers were measured, and if their thickness was greater than the average incre­mental layer thickness, it was described as a stress layer. This method relies on the observer’s pre-selec­tion of stress layers. In order to compare the results yielded by the diffe­rent methods we compared the number of stress la­yers determined by each of the two approaches and counted the number of matches. Matching layers are those classified as stress layers by both methods ap­plied to the same section and position in the cemen­tum band. The percentage of matching stress layers for each section is presented in Table 2. As the match between the number and position of stress layers identified is very high (see the Results section) it was decided to use only the first method, as it is more ob­jective (in that it does not involve the subjective pre-selection of layers). Verifying and counting stress layers After identification of the stress layers for each sec­tion and each tooth, the next step was the verifica­tion of the appearance of cementum stress layers on an individual level. A stress layer was considered as verified on an individual level if it appeared in the same position on at least two out of three sections of one tooth. Therefore, the total number of stress la­yers per individual (each individual is represented by a single tooth) is the total number of verified stress layers. In order to compare the positions of stress la­yers from different sections (which have different cementum band widths) the following procedure is applied (see Figure 3 for the illustration of the pro­cedure): . The sections are represented visually – each count­ed cementum layer is represented by a rectangle, stress layers marked in green. . In order to make the sections of different widths comparable, they are stretched to same length. . In order for a stress layer to be verified and count­ed, there have to be at least two layers at the same relative position (i.e. there is at least some overlap between the layers). The cementum band thickness profiles for each individual are shown in the Supple­mentary Material (SFig. 9–SFig. 16 at http://dx.doi. org/10.4312/dp.46.17). The evaluation of stress lay­ ers per individual was made according to this proce­dure, as shown in Figure 3. Calculation of individual burden of stress Cementum layer anomalies are indicators of stress burden, and the number of verified stress layers needs to be statistically corrected for the total num­ber of TCA layers. This is done in order to account for the differences in age between individuals (as older individuals had more chance to experience stress). It is implemented by dividing the number of verified stress layers by the individual total number of TCA layers. Strictly speaking this is not an age correction, as the eruption time for different teeth may differ, therefore the differences in the total number of layers may not directly reflect differences in age, but for practical purposes it is equivalent to age correction given that differences in tooth erup­tion times are a few years at most. The resulting va­lue can be interpreted as a number of verified stress layers per year of life covering the period after the specific tooth erupted. Results The stress layers are present in all individuals inves­tigated in this study, with the number varying be­ Kristina Penezic´, Marko Por;ic´, Jelena Jovanovic´, Petra Kathrin Urban, Ursula Wittwer-Backofen, and Sofija Stefanovic´ tween two and 11 per person. The num­ber of stress layers identified per person is consistent over all sections and between the methods. The results of the compari­son of the two methods are presented in Table 2. The percentage of matching lay­ers varies between 67 and 100 percent, with the mean value of 93.6 percent. In 64 percent of cases (sections) there is a full match between the layers identified as stress layers by both methods. Fig. 3. Illustration of the stress layer verification: different rows represent different sections of the same tooth; stress la­yers (determined either by Method 1 or Method 2) in each sec- The results show that both methods of tion are marked in green; despite the fact that more than one stress layer identification yielded identical stress layer is identified in each section individually (green or very similar results in the majority of rectangles), there is only one verified stress layer for this cases. However, it should be emphasized tooth, as only two layers from sections 2 and 3 overlap (the that this convergence refers only to the verified stress layer is marked). two specific protocols for classifying ce­mentum layers as stress layers – it should not be in-wer of the test are too low for meaningful analysis, terpreted as a measure of the absolute validity of any therefore we only report trends. of the methods in terms of discriminating between the real stress layers and those not affected. The lat-Discussion and conclusion ter can only be achieved by a clinical study where the medical history of an individual is known. In this study, we explored the tooth cementum stress layers from the perspective of the differences in The number of verified stress layers is correlated with health and general stress between the Mesolithic and the total number of TCA layers (r = 0.675, p = 0.033, see Fig. 4) which Individual Section Method 1, Method 2, Nr. of Percent Nr. Nr. of stress Nr. of stress matching matching is not surprising given that, whatev- layers layers layers er the etiology of stress layers is, Vlasac 38 1 7 8 7 87.5 longer lifespan means more oppor- Vlasac 38 2 6 7 6 85.71 tunity for stress layers to occur. The Vlasac 38 3 9 9 9 100 values of the number of verified Vlasac 24 1 4 4 4 100 stress layers per year of life (after tooth eruption) for each individual are presented in Table 3. The range of values is between 0.04 and 0.13 for the Mesolithic group, and be­tween 0.08 and 0.15 for the Neoli­thic group. The average values of the number of verified stress layers cor­rected for the total number of veri­fied stress layers (number of veri­fied stress layers per year of life after tooth eruption) are 0.085 and 0.1 for the Mesolithic and the Neo- Vlasac 24 2 4 4 4 100 Vlasac 24 3 6 6 6 100 Padina 18b 1 6 6 6 100 Padina 18b 2 3 3 3 100 Padina 18b 3 4 4 4 100 Vin;a VII 1 3 3 3 100 Vin;a VII 2 2 2 2 100 Vin;a VII 3 2 2 2 100 Vin;a VII 4 2 3 2 66.67 Lepenski Vir 66 1 6 7 6 85.71 Lepenski Vir 66 2 4 5 4 80 Lepenski Vir 66 3 4 5 4 80 Lepenski Vir 8 1 4 4 4 100 Lepenski Vir 8 2 5 5 5 100 Lepenski Vir 8 3 5 6 5 83.33 Ajmana 11 1 10 10 10 100 Ajmana 11 2 5 5 5 100 Ajmana 11 3 11 11 11 100 Lepenski Vir 9 1 9 9 9 100 Lepenski Vir 9 2 7 6 5 83.33 lithic groups, respectively. Therefore, the average number of verified stress layers per year of life after tooth eruption is higher in the Neo­lithic than in the Mesolithic, but there is a substantial degree of overlap (Fig. 5). No statistical tests are per­formed as the sample size and po- Lepenski Vir 9 3 7 8 7 87.5 Tab. 2. Comparison of the two methods for the identification of ce­mentum band stress layers. Quantifying prehistoric physiological stress using the TCA method> preliminary results from the Central Balkans Neolithic populations. As expected, the number of stress layers when corrected for the total number of TCA layers is higher in the Neolithic group than in the Mesolithic group, but the statistical significance of this trend cannot be evaluated due to low sample size. The results are also consistent with the picture of the Neolithic Demographic Transition formulated by Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel (2008; 2011), if some of the detected stress layers are induced by pregnan- Fig. 5. Boxplot showing the distribution of the num­ber of verified stress layers per year by chronolo­gical phases. cies. They might suggest both increased fertility, as the major driving force for Neolithic population growth, and increased burden of disease, as demon­strated by Ursula Wittwer-Backofen and Nicolas Tomo (2008). This would imply that TCA-based ana­lysis of physiological stress can make a substantial contribution to the field of paleodemography. As teeth are among the most durable elements of the skeleton, in terms of resistance to decay and preser­vation, the analysis of TCA stress layers can be used in situations when the application of macroscopic methods of recording physiological stress is preclud­ed due to missing bones. Moreover, some conditions detectable with macroscopic methods, such as hypo-plasia, occur early in life, usually Archaeological site Grave Sex Period Total number of verified stress layers Number of stress layers per year Vlasac 38 Female Mesolithic 7 0.13 Vlasac 24 Male Mesolithic 3 0.08 Padina 18b Female Mesolithic 2 0.04 Vin;a–Belo brdo VII Female Neolithic 1 0.08 Lepenski Vir 66 Male Neolithic 2 0.08 Lepenski Vir 8 Female Neolithic 3 0.12 Ajmana 11 Female Neolithic 5 0.09 Lepenski Vir 9 Female Neolithic 7 0.15 prior to permanent teeth eruption, whereas stress episodes that should theoretically be reflected in the cementum bands could oc­cur later in life. To further support these first observations, a larger sample size will be evaluated in the next step in order to confirm or refute our preliminary results concerning the differences be­tween the Mesolithic and the Neo- Tab. 3. Number of verified stress layers per year of life (after tooth lithic populations with a statisti-eruption) for each individual. cally relevant sample. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We are grateful to Jugoslav Pendi. for his help with Fig. 1. This research is a result of the Project “BIRTH: Births, mothers and babies: prehistoric fertility in the Balkans between 10 000–5000 BC”, funded by the European Re­search Council (Grant Agreement No. 640557; Principal Investigator: SS). Kristina Penezic´, Marko Por;ic´, Jelena Jovanovic´, Petra Kathrin Urban, Ursula Wittwer-Backofen, and Sofija Stefanovic´ References Adler P. 1967. Die Chronologie der Gebissentwicklung. In E. Harndt, H. Weyers (eds.), Zahn-, Mund- und Kieferheil­kunde im Kindesalter. Die Quintessenz. Berlin: 38–74. Arnold E. R., Greenfield H. J. 2006. The Origins of Trans-humant Pastoralism in Temperate Southeastern Europe. British Archaeological Reports IS 1538. Archaeopress. Oxford. 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(ed.), Harmony of Nature and Spirituality in Stones (Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference in Kragujevac, Serbia, March 15–16, 2012). Stone Audio Association. Belgrade: 195–206. back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) Obsidian provenance studies in the far eastern and north­eastern regions of Russia and exchange networks in the prehistory of Northeast Asia> a review Yaroslav V. Kuzmin Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, RU kuzmin@fulbrightmail.org< kuzmin_yv@igm.nsc.ru ABSTRACT – This overview is based on the results of 25+ years of provenance studies to identify the sources of high-quality volcanic glass (obsidian) in prehistoric cultural complexes of the far eastern and northeastern regions of Russia (Maritime Province, the Amur River basin, Sakhalin Island, the Kurile Islands, Kamchatka Peninsula, Chukotka region, the Kolyma River basin, and the High Arctic), as well as in adjacent parts of Northeast Asia (Hokkaido Island, the Korean Peninsula, and Manchu­ria). The extended networks of obsidian exchange in antiquity are reconstructed for the southern Russian Far East and Northeastern Siberia. A possible mechanism of long-distance obsidian exchange/ trade in Northeastern Siberia is suggested. KEY WORDS – obsidian; provenance study; prehistoric exchange; far eastern Russia; Northeastern Siberia {tudije provenience obsidiana na obmo;ju ruskega Daljnega Vzhoda in v severovzhodni Rusiji ter mre/e menjav v prazgodovini v severovzhodni Aziji> pregled IZVLE.EK – Pri.ujo.a presoja je osnovana na rezultatih ve. kot 25 let .tudij provenience pri iskanju izvorov visoko kakovostnega vulkanskega stekla (obsidiana) v prazgodovinskih kulturnih kompleksih na ruskem Daljnem Vzhodu in v regijah severovzhodne Rusije (obmorske province, obmo.je reke Amur, otok Sahalin, Kurilsko oto.je, polotok Kam.atka, obmo.je .ukotka, obmo.je reke Kolime in Arkti.no vi.avje) kot tudi v sosednjih delih severovzhodne Azije (otok Hokkaido, Korejski polotok in Man.uri­ja). Za obmo.ji ju.nega dela ruskega Daljnega Vzhoda in severovzhodno Sibirijo smo .e rekonstru­irali raz.irjeno mre.o menjave obsidiana v preteklosti. Predlagamo pa mo.ne mehanizme menjav/ trgovine z obsidianom na dalj.e razdalje na obmo.ju severovzhodne Sibirije. KLJU.NE BESEDE – obsidian; provenienca; prazgodovinska menjava; ruski Daljni Vzhod; severo­ vzhodna Sibirija Introduction Research on the provenance of artefacts made of of obsidian source studies in the 1970s to 2010s, waterless volcanic glass (obsidian) began at the mo-following the pioneering works of the 1960s, was dern methodological level in the 1960s, first in the due to the fact that almost every source of obsidian Mediterranean (Cann, Renfrew 1964) and afterwards has a unique ‘geochemical portrait (signature)’ (i.e. in the Americas, Europe, East Africa, Oceania, and the content of several chemical elements) which can East and Southeast Asia (see bibliographies: Skin-be determined using analytical methods (Williams­ner, Tremaine 1993; Pollmann 1999). The success Thorpe 1995; Glascock et al. 1998; Shackley 2005; DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.18 Obsidian provenance studies in the far eastern and northeastern regions of Russia and exchange networks in the prehistory of ... Carter 2014). The establishment of primary sources for obsidian artefacts is very important for under­standing the patterns of ancient migrations and con­tacts. Obsidian is quite common in the far eastern and northeastern regions of Russia, in the prehistoric as­semblages of Kamchatka Peninsula, Chukotka region, Primorye (Maritime) Province, Sakhalin Island, and Kurile Islands (Kuzmin 2010; 2014; Grebennikov et al. 2018). In other parts of eastern Russia – the Amur River basin, northern coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, the basins of the Kolyma and Indigirka rivers, and the High Arctic (Kuzmin 2014; Pitulko et al. 2019) – obsidian tools are also present but are not numerous. Actual studies of archaeological obsidian in these regions only began in the early 1990s (Glascock et al. 1996; Shackley et al. 1996), even though in east­ern Russia the presence of such artefacts has been known since the end of the nineteenth century (Kuz-min 2014.144). In this overview, brief information on the current state-of-the-art in obsidian provenance research in eastern Russia is presented, based on the latest summaries (Kuzmin 2010; 2011; 2012; 2014; 2017; 2019). Methodology of obsidian provenance research and the materials used Since the 1960s (Cann, Renfrew 1964; Parks, Tieh 1966; Griffin et al. 1969), the identification of obsi­dian sources for archaeological materials has been conducted by comparing the geochemical composi­tion (mainly of trace elements – U, Th, Ta, Hf, Lu, Yb, Dy, Tb, Eu, Sm, Nd, and some others) of obsidian from primary sources and archaeological assemblages (see Glascock et al. 1998; Shackley 2005). One of the most important conditions for the interpreta­tion of geochemical data is the use of uniform analy­tical standards, although this is not always the case; therefore, data from different laboratories often can­not be compared (see review: Suda et al. 2018a). In our case studies described here, all measurements for eastern Russia were performed in one laborato­ry, the Research Reactor Center of the University of Missouri (Columbia, MO, USA) (Glascock et al. 2007), using the same methodology (Glascock et al. 1998). This makes it possible to conduct a direct comparison of the results obtained for both primary (‘geological’) locales of obsidian and artefacts. Two main analytical techniques for the geochemical analysis of obsidian in eastern Russia were used by our informal Russian-US group: (1) Neutron Activa­tion Analysis (NAA); and (2) X-ray Fluorescence (XRF). Full descriptions of these methods were given previously (Kuzmin, Glascock 2014; Kuzmin et al. 2002a; 2008; Glascock et al. 2011; Grebennikov et al. 2018), and here I refer to these publications for more details. As for the research strategy employed by our group since 1992, we initially identified, using XRF and NAA, the geochemical groups for a few do­zen obsidian artefacts from Primorye Province and the Amur River basin. This made it possible to find out about the number of primary obsidian sources which were exploited (Glascock et al. 1996; Shac­kley et al. 1996). Afterwards, all major primary sour­ces of obsidian in these regions were examined by NAA (Kuzmin et al. 2002a; Popov et al. 2005; Glas-cock et al. 2011; Kuzmin et al. 2013). First, the full version of NAA, which allows the determination of 28 elements with high precision (one part-per-mil­lion, or 10–4%), was used. When the ‘geochemical signatures’ of the main sources were established, it was possible to use the abridged version of NAA (with measurement of the content of 7–12 elements) for the examination of artefacts only, due to the relatively high cost of the full NAA and its destruc­tive nature (samples become radioactive and need to be utilised as low-level nuclear waste). Other analytical methods used by different groups of South Korean, Australian and US scholars in east­ern Russia and adjacent Northeast Asia were Proton-Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) and Proton-Induced Gamma-ray Emission (PIGME) (Kim et al. 2007; Doelman et al. 2008); portable XRF and a laser ab­lation version of the Inductively Coupled Plasma – Mass Spectrometry (LA–ICP–MS) (Phillips 2010); and a Prompt Gamma Activation Analysis (PGAA) (Jwa et al. 2018). As a result of the comparison based on established statistical procedures (Glascock et al. 1998), com­mon geochemical groups for sources and archaeolo­gical samples were identified (Kuzmin, Glascock 2014). This made it possible to determine with a high degree of reliability from where the ancient people acquired obsidian. This information consti­tutes a solid basis for the reconstruction of the pro­curement and exchange of raw materials in the pre­historic cultural complexes of the entire Northeast Asia. Various groups of scientists up to early 2019 have analysed about 3110 samples of obsidian from far eastern and northeastern Russia, as well as from adjacent parts of Northeast Asia – the Korean Penin­ Yaroslav V. Kuzmin sula, Northeast China (Manchuria), and Hokkaido Is­land (Tab. 1) (see Kuzmin, Popov 2000; Popov et al. 2005; Kim et al. 2007; Doelman et al. 2008; 2012; 2014; Phillips 2010; Jia et al. 2010; 2013; Kuzmin 2014; Kuzmin, Glascock 2014; Kim 2014; Lee, Kim 2015; Lynch et al. 2016, 2018; Kuzmin et al. 2018; Grebennikov et al. 2018; Chang, Kim 2018; Pitulko et al. 2019). Due to the plethora of in­formation on obsidian geochemistry for the Honshu and Kyushu islands of Japan, available mostly in Ja­panese only (Sugihara 2014), these regions are ex­cluded from this overview; some English summaries have recently been published and can serve as pri­mary data (see Tsutsumi 2010; Obata et al. 2010; Ikeya 2014; 2015; Sato, Yakushige 2014; Shiba 2014; Shimada 2014; Shimada et al. 2017; Suda et al. 2018b). Results and discussion Sources of obsidian in Primorye Province In the southern part of Primorye Province, the main primary source of obsidian (more precisely, water­less volcanic glass) is the Shkotovo (Basaltic) Pla­teau (Tab. 1, Fig. 1). High quality volcanic glass is associated here with basic rocks (basalts and ande-site-basalts), unlike the majority of sources in North­east Asia which are part of acidic rocks (mainly rhyo-lites) in volcanic arc positions (Kuzmin et al. 2013; Wada et al. 2014). Although basaltic glasses have been known in Primorye for a long time (Petrov, Za­murueva 1960), their detailed study only began in the 1990s (Kuzmin et al. 2002a). During the erup­tion of molten basalt, pillow lavas were formed at the contact of the hot basalt mass and cold water or solid surface. Due to rapid cooling of the lava, spherical (‘pillow-shaped’) bodies with a diameter of 1–5m were created (Doelman et al. 2012). The surface layer of pillow lava consists of volcanic glass. Obsidian on the Shkotovo Plateau is present in the form of hyaloclastites, a material formed during the fragmentation of the glassy outer part of pillow lava blocks. Welded crusts with volcanic glass are also known in this region; they are relatively thin (up to 0.3–0.5m) horizons of non-crystallised glass at the contact of the lava flow and the underlying surface. Another primary source of volcanic glass of acidic (rhyolite) composition is located in the basin of the Gladkaya River in the extreme southwestern part of Primorye (Kuzmin et al. 2002a), but it was not wide­ly exploited in prehistory (Kuzmin 2014; Doelman et al. 2014). Obsidian source on the Korean Peninsula As far as we know today, the single primary obsidi­an source in Korea of alkaline composition is situat­ed near the modern Paektusan Volcano (Popov et al. in press). It was originally recognised by Kuzmin et al. (2002a) and Vladimir K. Popov et al. (2005), but for a long time our knowledge was based exclusi­vely on archaeological materials (i.e. obsidian arte-facts). Only a handful of ‘geological’ samples with unknown exact location – somewhere within the northern part of Korea, called today the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea – were analysed in the early-mid 2010s (Kim 2014.169; Yi, Jwa, 2016; Jwa et al. 2018; Popov et al. in press). Regions Geological samples Archaeological samples Main obsidian sources* Primorye (Maritime) Province 102 390 BP, PA Amur River basin 12 39 OP, BP, SH-OK Sakhalin Island – 206 SH-OK, AK Kamchatka Peninsula 63 444 KAM-01 – KAM-15 Kurile Islands – 773 SH-OK, KAM-01, KAM-02, KAM-04, KAM-05, KAM-07 Chukotka 37 216 LK, KAM-01, KAM-03, KAM-08, VAK Siberian Arctic (Zhokhov I.) – 14 LK Manchuria (Northeast China) – 533 PA, BP Korean Peninsula 14 211 PA, KO Hokkaido Island 53 – SH-OK, AK, TM Number of samples 281 2826 3107** * BP Basaltic Plateau< PA Paektusan Volcano region< OP Obluchie Plateau< SH-OK Shirataki and Oketo< AK Akaigawa< KAM-01 – KAM-15 various Kamchatkan sources (see for details> Grebennikov, Kuzmin 2017)< LK Lake Krasnoe< VAK Vakarevo type< KO Koshidake< TM Tokachi-Mitsumata. ** Total number of obsidian samples analysed for this overview (see text for references). Tab. 1. Number of samples analysed for each region of Northeast Asia (1992–2019), and major obsidian sources used in prehistory. Obsidian provenance studies in the far eastern and northeastern regions of Russia and exchange networks in the prehistory of ... Fig. 1. Prehistoric obsidian exchange/trade networks in the southern Russian Far East and neighbouring Northeast Asia (after Kuzmin 2017, modified). Nevertheless, all these data testify in favour of a sin­gle geochemical group which reflects the ‘geochemi­cal signature’ of a primary source. Based on compre­hensive analysis of all available evidence, it is con­cluded that the primary obsidian locale previously named ‘Paektusan’ or PNK1 is situated somewhere south of the Paektusan Volcano (Fig. 1). It is hoped that in the near future it will be possible to pinpoint the exact position of this important source in the lo­gistically difficult region of North Korea. Sources of obsidian in the Amur River basin The major primary source of volcanic glass in the Amur River basin is known from the Obluchie Pla­teau, where it is confined to basaltic hyaloclastites (Glascock et al. 2011) (Tab. 1; Fig. 1); its geological position is similar to the Shkotovo Plateau. There are also data about the existence of another kind of ba­saltic obsidian in this region, but the exact location of its source is still unknown. In the meantime, we called it ‘Samarga’ (Kuzmin 2014.Fig. 6.1), and sug­gest that it is situated in the Samarga River basin, the northern part of Primorye Province (Kuzmin et al. 2002a; Glascock et al. 2011). Sources of obsidian on Hokkaido Island Our informal Russian-US-Japanese group conducted NAA analyses of four major obsidian sources on Hok­kaido Island – Shirataki (with two sub-sources), Oke-to (with two sub-sources), Akaigawa, and Tokachi-Mitsumata (Kuzmin et al. 2002b; 2013; Kuzmin, Glascock 2007). Other primary obsidian locales from Hokkaido (around 17 in number), consisting of c. 17–20 geochemical groups, were investigated by Keiji Wada et al. (2014) and Jeffrey R. Ferguson et al. (2014). All these sources are situated in a volca­nic arc setting (Wakita 2013; Wada et al. 2014). Sources of obsidian on Kamchatka Peninsula The Kamchatka Peninsula of eastern Russia is one of the few regions in the world with a high concentra­tion of obsidian sources, along with the Japanese Islands (Kannari et al. 2014.Fig. 4.2) and Mesoame­rica (Glascock et al. 1998; 2010). Today, at least 30 to 40 locales of acidic volcanic glass (associated with rhyolites and rhyodacites) are known in Kamchatka (Grebennikov, Kuzmin 2017; Grebennikov et al. 2010). They are genetically related to the volcanism of the subduction zone of the Kurile-Kamchatkan arc (see Khain 1994). The major problem in the geolo­gical investigations of this region is its remoteness, and the logistical aspect of fieldwork is difficult and costly. Currently, our Russian-US group has determined the geochemical composition of only 16 primary sour­ces of Kamchatkan obsidian (Grebennikov, Kuzmin 2017). This is due to the difficulty of carrying out Yaroslav V. Kuzmin fieldwork in the Sredinny Range which is devoid of roads and settlements (Grebennikov et al. 2010. 90). Sources are usually lava flows, extrusive (em­bedded in other rocks) bodies and pyroclastic flows. Of the 30 to 40 primary locales, 14 sources were actively used in prehistory. Obsidian source in the Chukotka region (North­eastern Siberia) It has been known for a long time that an obsidian source exists on Lake Krasnoe (with krasnoe mean­ing ‘red’) in the lower reaches of the Anadyr River (Nasedkin 1983) (Fig. 2), but more precise informa­tion about it was non-existent before our fieldwork in 2009. As a result of a survey and study of obsidi­an and other rocks on the shore and around Lake Krasnoe, we were able to obtain reliable data on the geology and geochemistry of this source (Popov et al. 2017; Grebennikov et al. 2018). Obsidian in Chu­kotka is part of the rhyolites of the West Koryak vol­canic belt, and it can be found as pebbles and small boulders on the eastern shore of the lake; the pri­mary source is perhaps currently under water (Gre­bennikov et al. 2018.609). Prehistoric obsidian exchange networks in the far eastern and northeastern regions of Russia One of the main tasks of studying obsidian for ar­chaeological purposes is to establish the patterns of its acquisition from primary sources, which allows reliable reconstructions of obsidian exchange net­works, as well as human contacts and migrations in prehistory (Williams-Thorpe 1995; see also Kuzmin 2012; 2015; 2017). Currently, the existence of seve­ral large-scale exchange systems has been established (using obsidian as a commodity) for the southern part of the Russian Far East and adjacent regions, and for Northeastern Siberia (Figs. 1–2). Obsidian in these regions was most intensively exploited in the Stone Age – the Upper Palaeolithic (c. 25 000– 12 000 years ago) and the Neolithic (c. 12 000–3000 years ago) (Kuzmin 2011; 2015). In the Bronze and Early Iron ages (c. 3000–1500 years ago), the value of obsidian as a raw material almost vanished, with the exception of Kamchatka and the Siberian Arctic, where the ancient populations continued to use it until the arrival of Russian settlers in the 17th–18th centuries AD, who introduced metals. Three obsidian exchange networks have been recon­structed in the mainland Russian Far East (Fig. 1; Tab. 1), centred around the sources of the Shkotovo and Obluchie plateaus, and the Paektusan Volcano. While obsidian from the Shkotovo Plateau and the Paektusan sources is widely distributed in the re­gion, including Primorye, the Korean Peninsula, Man­churia, and the Amur River basin, the Obluchie Pla­teau supplied only the Amur River basin. The distan­ces from the sources to the utilisation sites in Pri­morye and the Amur River basin range from a few kilometres to 660–700km in a straight line, and for the Paektusan obsidian network it is even further, up to 800km (Fig. 1). The extensive exchange of ob­sidian centred around the Paektusan source was ini­tially established by our group in the early 2000s (Kuzmin et al. 2002a); subsequent studies confirm­ed this conclusion (Doelman et al. 2008; 2012). In insular Russian Far East – Sakhalin Island and the Kurile Islands – the main sources of obsidian were Shirataki and Oketo locales on Hokkaido Island (Fig. 1). Obsidian from the Shirataki source was also de­tected on the mainland (lower reaches of the Amur River), and it was brought there c. 8000 years ago (Glascock et al. 2011). The distance from the Hok­kaido sources to the utilisation sites in some cases exceeds 1000km in a straight line. For the Kurile Is­lands, the use of obsidian from several Kamchatkan sources has been established (Fig. 1), with distances of up to 1400–1500km as the crow flies. These ob­sidian exchange networks are an example of the su­per-long transport of raw materials, and their exis­tence would be impossible without the use of water­craft from c. 10 000 years ago onwards (Kuzmin 2016; 2017). Based on current knowledge on obsidian sourcing in insular Northeast Asia, one can confidently say that obsidian from sources in the Japanese Islands almost never reached the mainland part of the region, except the lower Amur River basin (Kuzmin et al. 2013) and the southernmost part of the Korean Peninsula (Kim 2014; Kim et al. 2007; Lee, Kim 2015). As for the latter, the main supplier of obsidian was the Ko­shidake source in northern Kyushu Island; it was also transported to the Ryukyu Archipelago in later prehistory (Obata et al. 2010; Kuzmin 2010.Fig. 8.8). The use of watercraft for the creation of this net­work since the Upper Palaeolithic is evident, because even during the Last Glacial Maximum, c. 27 000– 23 000 years ago, the Korea (Tsushima) Strait be­tween the Korean Peninsula and Kyushu Island exi­sted, with c. 20km width (Kuzmin 2017.Fig. 4). Research conducted on the Kamchatka Peninsula by our group allowed us to reconstruct several obsidian exchange networks, with distances from sources to utilisation sites up to 600–650km in a straight line. Obsidian provenance studies in the far eastern and northeastern regions of Russia and exchange networks in the prehistory of ... Fig. 2. Distribution of obsidian of the Lake Krasnoe source in Northeastern Siberia and Alaska (modified from Kuzmin 2019 and Pitulko et al. 2019). Red circles are sites with geochemically-characterised obsid­ian artefacts belonging to the Lake Krasnoe source. The study of the obsidian sources in Kamchatka is still in its initial stage, primarily due to the high cost of fieldwork in the more remote parts of the peninsula where the majority of sources are located. Currently, on the basis of general geological and geochemical data, the most promising areas that require research have been identified (Grebennikov, Kuzmin 2017). Northeastern Siberia (Chukotka and adjacent areas) is a relatively new territory for the study of obsidian sources at the modern methodological level. Accord­ing to the results of geochemical analyses of c. 220 artefacts from the Chukotka region, a single source of obsidian was found, at Lake Krasnoe (Grebenni­kov et al. 2018). The raw materials from this locale spread beyond Chukotka – to the Koryak Uplands, the basin of the Kolyma River, and Alaska (Greben­nikov et al. 2018; Kuzmin et al. 2018; Rasic 2016) (Fig. 2). The distance from the source to the utilisa­tion sites in some cases exceeds 1000km in a straight line. The latest data from this region were obtained for the Zhokhov site in the High Arctic (76°N latitude). Here 79 obsidian artefacts were found in the Meso­lithic cultural layer, dated to c. 8900–8600 years ago (Pitulko, Pavlova 2016). A provenance study of 14 artefacts showed that the raw material of all of them originated from the Lake Krasnoe source (Pitulko et al. 2019). The straight distance between site and the source is c. 1500km; considering the coastline of the Arctic Ocean at the time of human occupation, it would be c. 2000km (Fig. 2; Pitulko et al. 2019. Fig. 7). The obsidian from the Zhokhov site along with other archaeological localities in Northeastern Siberia (Kuzmin et al. 2018) is evidence of the su­per-long-distance transport of raw material. It also shows that the size of the human interaction sphere in the Mesolithic of the Siberian Arctic was very large, up to c. 4 000 000km2 (Pitulko et al. 2019). An important feature of obsidian exploitation by an­cient humans in the eastern regions of Russia is the use of this raw material from several sources at a given site from the same cultural component; such cases have been repeatedly noted in Kamchatka, Pri­morye, Sakhalin Island and the Kurile Islands (Kuz-min 2014). The clearest example in this respect is Yaroslav V. Kuzmin the multilayered Ushki site cluster in Kamchatka (Kuzmin et al. 2008). In the Late Pleistocene Layer 7 (dated to c. 12 600–17 400 years ago), seven sources of obsidian were identified. In the Final Pleistocene Layer 6 (dated to c. 11 900–12 900 years ago), the use of obsidian from four primary sources was de­tected. In the Holocene strata 5–1 (dated to c. 300– 10 100 years ago), obsidian from one to six sources was determined. The distance from the site to the sources of obsidian is c. 140–260km in a straight line, and the sources are c. 250–500km apart. This complex strategy in the acquisition of valuable raw material in the harsh sub-Arctic environment, reve­aled after obsidian provenance research done by our group (see Kuzmin et al. 2008; Grebennikov, Kuz-min 2017; Grebennikov et al. 2010), represents a striking pattern of human adaptation to the natural environment in northeastern Russia in the late Up­per Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic. One of the most important aspects in the study of the acquisition and use of archaeological obsidian is the mechanism for acquiring raw material from remote sources. In the southern Russian Far East, the travel distance of obsidian pebbles transported by rivers is up to 30–50km downstream from the source (Pantukhina 2007). Because today the pres­ence of long-distance movement of obsidian, which greatly exceeds the range of obsidian transport by natural agents, is well-established (Figs. 1–2; Tab. 1), the issues related to exchange of this high-quality raw material are of great significance. Studies done in the Mediterranean and Near East in the 1960s (Renfrew 1975) allowed the creation of the ‘down­the-line’ concept of prehistoric trade/exchange. The main components of this concept are: (1) a supply zone, with a radius of up to 300km from the centre where the utilisation site is located, with the share of obsidian in the composition of the raw materials up to 80%; and (2) a contact zone beyond the sup­ply zone, inhabitants of which could not easily visit the sources of obsidian due to the large distance to them, and they exchanged (traded) obsidian with people of the supply zone; the share of obsidian ran­ges from 30–40% to 0.1%. In many cases established by our group for eastern Russia, the archaeological obsidians are separated from the primary sources by distances greater than c. 300km (Figs. 1–2), and this is evidence of well-developed exchange/trade networks, especially in Northeastern Siberia where the raw material from an obsidian source of Lake Krasnoe was spread in an enormously large area, with straight distances be­tween end points up to c. 2000–2250km (Fig. 2). This kind of obsidian spread across an enormously large region can be called ‘super-long-distance’ ex­change. It would be impossible to maintain the acqui­sition of obsidian from so remote a source without primitive trade and/or exchange, as is also evident in some other parts of Asia (Campbell, Healey 2018) and other continents (Haines, Glascock 2013). The reconstruction of exchange/trade networks re­quires a detailed study of the petrographic composi­tion of stone artefacts, and technical and technolo­gical investigation of obsidian products (tools, along with flakes and other sub-products), in order to un­derstand the nature of raw materials brought to uti­lisation sites – in the form of either angular blocks, cores or finished products. Using the Zhokhov site (Mesolithic, c. 8900–8600 years ago) as a case study, one can conclude that obsidian was used for making microblades (Pitulko et al. 2019). No obsidian cores were found, although it seems that microblade ma­nufacture occurred at the site. Therefore, obsidian appeared at the Zhokhov site in a semi-ready form (cores and blades). Other rocks from the Zhokhov site, including local flint and sandstone, and ‘exotic’ chalcedony, were also used as raw materials for the manufacture of microblades by pressure flaking (Pi-tulko et al. 2012). The technological analysis of the lithics concluded that the raw material was not in the form of blocks, but prepared cores and large bla­des were transported to the site. This is true in terms of both local and ‘exotic’ rocks (Pitulko et al. 2012. 240). Some information on the distribution of obsidian ar­tefacts and their typological characteristics exists for other parts of Northeastern Siberia (Fig. 2). At archa­eological sites in the lower Kolyma River course dated to the Neolithic (c. 7000–3000 years ago), the main obsidian artefacts are blades and their frag­ments, flakes, insets, and arrowheads, while a few obsidian prismatic cores were also recovered (Kuz-min et al. 2018). It seems that obsidian was brought to the lower Kolyma River region from far away in the form of cores, and blade-making was perform­ed locally. The high value of obsidian as an ‘exotic’ raw material forced prehistoric people to use cores to complete exhaustion. Several sites with obsidian were excavated at the Lake Tytyl’ cluster in western Chukotka (Kiryak 2010), and they belong to the Me­solithic (c. 11 200 years ago) and Neolithic (c. 4800 years ago). Some of the artefacts (the exact num­ber is unknown, but it is relatively small), especial­ly points, are made of obsidian. It was suggested Obsidian provenance studies in the far eastern and northeastern regions of Russia and exchange networks in the prehistory of ... that this area may have served as a ‘hub’ for the exchange of obsidian between the source in eastern Chukotka and the Kolyma River basin and territo­ries west of the Kolyma River (Pitulko et al. 2019) (see Fig. 2). Because in the Kolyma River and Lake Tytyl’ regions obsidian was traded as an ‘exotic’ raw material with populations near the source located at Lake Krasnoe (Grebennikov et al. 2018; Kuzmin et al. 2018) – at least c. 400–800 km away in a straight line – the exchange of it was carried out as prepared cores and tools rather than unworked pieces. As far as I know, similar work has not yet been car­ried out in far eastern Russia. Some of the steps taken in this direction for the southern Russian Far East and Manchuria (see Doelman et al. 2008; 2012; 2014) are still at a very preliminary stage. Conclusions Over the last 25+ years, significant progress has been achieved in obsidian provenance research in eastern Russia. The main networks of prehistoric ex­change / trade of obsidian were reconstructed in the continental and insular parts of the southern Rus­sian Far East; more work is underway in the north­ern part of the Russian Far East (Kamchatka Pen­insula) and in Northeastern Siberia. However, several issues still remain unresolved. The lack of standardisation for geochemical analyses con­ducted by different researchers has often made it impossible to compare the results obtained. To over­come this problem, a parallel analysis of obsidian source samples from Hokkaido Island was conduct­ed in several laboratories, followed by interpreta­tion of the results and determination of the optimal analytical strategy (Suda et al. 2018a). The Kam­chatka Peninsula remains the least studied region in eastern Russia in terms of the provenance of archa­eological obsidian; the exact positions of seven sour­ces used in prehistory are currently unknown (Gre­bennikov, Kuzmin 2017). The question of the me­chanism of obsidian exchange between the popula­tions near the sources and those who lived at a con­siderable distance from the primary obsidian locales requires in-depth study. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study was conducted on the State Assignment of the Sobolev Institute of Geology and Mineralogy, Sibe­rian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, with funding provided by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation. I am grateful to several colleagues for long-term collabora­tion, especially to Dr. Vladimir K. Popov (deceased), Dr. Michael D. Glascock, Dr. Andrei V. Grebennikov, and Dr. Vladimir V. Pitulko; to Prof. Emeriti Akira Ono and Jong-Chan Kim; and to Prof. Clive Oppen­heimer. I am grateful to Prof. Mihael Budja for the invitation to participate in this volume, and to an anonymous reviewer for useful comments. Dr. Susan Keates kindly corrected the grammar, although all possible mistakes belong to me. . References Campbell S., Healey E. 2018. Diversity in obsidian use in the prehistoric and early historic Middle East. Quaternary International 468: 141–154. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2017.09.023 Cann J. 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Quaternary International 392: 37–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.08.012 back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) Real and ideal European maritime transfers along the Atlantic coast during the Neolithic Serge Cassen1, Carlos Rodríguez-Rellán2, Ramon Fábregas Valcarce3, Valentin Grimaud 4, Yvan Pailler5, and Bettina Schulz Paulsson6 1 CNRS, Laboratoire de recherche Archéologie et Architectures (umr6566), Université de Nantes, Nantes, FR serge.cassen@univ-nantes.fr 2 Departamento de Historia, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Praza da Universidade, Santiago de Compostela, ES carlos.rellan@usc.es 3 Departamento de Historia. Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Praza da Universidade, Santiago de Compostela, ES ramon.fabregas@usc.es 4 Laboratoire de recherche Archéologie et Architectures, Université de Nantes, Nantes, FR valentin.grimaud@univ-nantes.fr 5 INRAP Grand Ouest (umr8215), Institut Universitaire Européen de la Mer, Plouzané, FR yvan.pailler@inrap.fr 6 Institutionen för historiska studier\arkeologi, Göteborgs universitet, Göteborg, SE bettina.schulz.paulsson@gu.se ABSTRACT – The history of research on the Neolithic of the Atlantic façade shows how speculation about prehistoric mobility, especially across the sea, is mainly based on three types of archaeological evidence: megalithic monuments, rare stones, and pottery decoration. With the aim of approaching the issue from other perspectives, we have focused on the Morbihan area, a focal point of the Euro­pean Neolithic during the mid-5th millennium BC. The analysis of this area has allowed us to grasp which objects, ideas and beliefs may have been desired, adopted and imitated at the time. We shall begin with an architectural concept, the standing stone. These were sometimes engraved with signs that can be directly compared between Brittany, Galicia (NW Spain) and Portugal, but for which there are no intermediate parallels in other areas of the French or Spanish coast. The unique accu­mulation and transformation of polished blades made of Alpine rocks and found inside tombs or in other sort of depositions in the Carnac region allowed us to establish a second link with Galicia and the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula, where certain types of the axes were imitated using a set of different rocks (sillimanite, amphibolite). Finally, the variscites and turquoises from different Spa­nish regions were used for the manufacture of beads and pendants at the Carnacean tombs, without it being possible – once again – to retrieve similar objects in the intermediate areas. The mastery of direct Atlantic sea routes is posed as an explanation for this geographical distribution. But, beyond the information drawn from specific artefacts – whose presence/absence should not be used in excess as an argument to endorse or underrate such movements across the ocean – we will return to a more poetic and universal phenomenon: the spell of the sea. Therefore, we will focus on the depictions of boats on the stelae of Morbihan to open such a debate. KEY WORDS – Neolithic; maritime transfers; jade; Callais; symbolic representations DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.19 Real and ideal European maritime transfers along the Atlantic coast during the Neolithic Resni;en in idealen evropski morski transfer ob Atlantski obali v neolitiku IZVLE.EK – Zgodovina raziskav obdobja neolitika ob Atlantski obali ka.e na to, da so domneve o premikih ljudi v prazgodovini, predvsem premiki po morju, osnovani predvsem na treh vrstah ar­heolo.kih podatkov: na megalitskih spomenikih, na redkih kamninah in na okrasu na lon.enini. V .lanku se bomo te teme lotili iz drugega vidika, in sicer se bomo osredoto.ili na obmo.je departmaja Morbihan, ki je bil v sredi..u dogajanja v evropskem neolitiku v sredini 5. tiso.letja pr. n. .t. Z ana­lizo tega obmo.ja la.je razumemo, katere objekte, ideje in verovanja so v tem obdobju ljudje najbolj pogosto .eleli, posvojili in posnemali. Za.eli bomo z arhitekturnim konceptom, menhirji/stoje.imi kamni. Tak.ni kamni imajo ob.asno gravure z znaki, ki jih lahko neposredno ve.emo na obmo.je Bretanje, Galicije (SZ .panija) in Portugalske, medtem ko nimajo primerjav v vmesnih obmo.jih ob francoski in .panski obali. Enkraten zbir in preoblikovanje glajenih rezil, izdelanih na kamninah iz Alp, ki so bila odkrita v grobnicah ali drugih depozicijah na obmo.ju Carnaca, predstavlja drugo povezavo z obmo.jem Galicije in Atlantsko obalo na Iberskem polotoku, kjer so bili najdeni posnet­ki nekaterih tipov sekir, izdelani iz razli.nih kamnin (silimanit, amfibolit). Tudi jagode in obeski, najdeni v grobnicah v Carnacu v Bretanju, so bili izdelani iz mineralov variscita in turkiza, ki izvi­rata iz .panskih regij, medtem ko tak.ni predmeti – ponovno – na vmesnih obmo.jih niso bili od­kriti. Tak.na geografska porazdelitev se razlaga z obvladovanjem neposrednih morskih poti po Atlantiku v prazgodovini. Kljub informacijam, ki jih dobimo s tak.nimi posebnimi najdbami – kate­rih prisotnost/odsotnost naj ne bi preve. pogosto uporabljali kot argument v podporo ali podcenje­vanje tak.nih premikov po oceanu – se bomo vrnili na bolj poeti.en in univerzalen fenomen: .arob­nost morja. Pri tem se bomo osredoto.ili in razpravljali predvsem na upodobitve ladij na stelah, naj­denih na obmo.ju departmaja Morbihan. KLJU.NE BESEDE – neolitik; morski transfer; .ad; Callais; simbolne upodobitve Foreword. A comparison. In order to properly deal with the request made by the organizers of a recent seminar in Sweden (Göte­borg, June 8–10, 2018), namely, the issue of long distance contacts along the Atlantic façade of Europe in the second half of the 5th millennium BC, a simple comparison of objects, materials and representations was conducted based on three types of data: . First, on the circulation of rare materials, such as specific rocks with an Iberian origin (variscite/tur­quoise, probably sillimanite) used for the manu­facture of tools and ornaments, in parallel with the phenomenon of the terrestrial distribution of axes and rings made of Alpine rocks; . Second, through the analysis of ceramic produc­tion, technical features and specific decoration pat­terns, seemingly shared between distant areas; . Third, based on a specific type of architectural structure (the standing stone) and of different signs engraved on its surface, whose shared char­acteristics in different European lands cannot be easily conceived without a direct relationship. Such a comparative exercise, and the role attributed to the ocean, connects with a tradition of research that goes back to the first descriptions of the mega­lithic monuments of Brittany. Thus, in the year 1760, the Comte de Caylus concluded – while observing the distribution of the Breton megaliths along the sea coast – that they had their origin in people com­ing by boat from Northern Europe through coastal journeys. Later, Joseph Déchelette (1908.626) evok­ed ‘unnamed seafarers’ to explain both the Atlantic diffusion of megaliths and that of the Neolithic idols coming from the Mediterranean through the Gades pass. This author was followed – among others – by Thomas William Mansell De Guérin (1920), who in­terpreted the settlement of the Channel Islands as the result of diffusion of people from South Brittany, as seen in the related ceramics, jadeite and fibrolite axes, together with the worship of a female divinity. This was before Daryll Forde suggested, in 1930, the existence of these terrestrial and maritime move­ments – especially from Galicia and Portugal – based on the megaliths in ‘tholos’, the ‘callais’ and the axes made of ‘green rocks’ (Fig. 1). Less boldly, Vere Gor­don Childe (1942) and Glyn Daniel (1941) consid­ Serge Cassen, Carlos Rodríguez-Rellán, Ramon Fábregas Valcarce, Valentin Grimaud, Yvan Pailler, and Bettina Schulz Paulsson ered that Carnac and Spain were connected only through inland routes, while traveling by sea across the Mediterranean posed no conceptual problems for these authors. Our exercise will, therefore, be conducted on part of the Atlantic coast of Europe. Since this synthesis will be anchored in the 5th millennium BC, the referen­ces will not focus on Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales (for such possibilities from northern France, see Sheridan, Pailler 2011). The starting point will be the Carnac area, in the southern coast of Brit­tany, a region chosen due to its complexity, since it was the most dynamic centre in Western France for several centuries. A node that, regardless of the quantitative and qualitative scale of our observation, can only be defined as truly exceptional. The data, as we will see, cannot be interpreted without con­sidering the hypothesis of maritime movements, and the control of such routes as a source of wealth. This possibility of seafaring over long distances will ulti­mately be tested by accounting for the power of the imaginary carried by the Ocean. Objects-signs, weapons and adornments Considering yet again the sites of Morbihan that pro­vided particularly unique objects, these are located in a quite small geographical area, barely 100km2 around the protected bay of Quiberon, the real Mor­bihan (in Breton: the ‘small sea’). The Carnacean tumuli There are, in this region of Western France, more than one hundred earthen mounds (circular or elon­gated) containing individual (e.g., Bovelann 2) or multiple burials (e.g., Mané Lud central) dug into pits or arranged in stone or wood cists. The dimen­sions of these mounds vary between 5m in diame­ter and 180m long, and a maximum height (current­ly) ranging from 50cm to 3m. Among such monu­ments, three stand out for their isolation in the land­scape, gigantic proportions and for the quantity and quality of the objects made of jade and callais they contained. These funerary spaces have no structured access and preserved the remains of only one indi­vidual. The volumes of their tumuli are extraordi­nary: Saint-Michel in Carnac (35 000m3), Tumiac in Arzon (16 000m3) and Mané er Hroëck in Locmaria­quer (14 600m3); while their maximum height rises between 10 and 15m above the ground (Cassen et al. 2011). The current state of knowledge suggests Mané er Hroëck was the oldest of the three, followed by Tumiac and – finally – Saint-Michel. The last two have radiocarbon dates available (about 4500 cal BC), obtained from diverse samples and by different researchers (Cassen et al. 2012; 2019; Pétrequin et al. 2012a; Schulz Paulsson et al. 2019). Jade polished blades and their imitations At the origin of the term ‘Neolithic’, enunciated by John Lubbock in 1865, the jade polished blades of Morbihan were the objects used to illustrate the con- Fig. 1. Terrestrial and maritime diffusion of megalithic tombs, ‘green stone’ axes and ‘callais’, after Forde 1930; terrestrial diffusion of megaliths and metallurgy after Childe 1942 (French edition 1961), and af­ter Daniel 1941 (CAD by S. Cassen). Real and ideal European maritime transfers along the Atlantic coast during the Neolithic cept of ‘new stone’, specifically those of the Largue­ven hoard and the tumulus of Tumiac, discovered in 1808 and 1853. The recent study of such magnifi­cent objects has shown that the geological origin of the rocks used for making them (jadeitite, eclogite, omphacitite) was mainly located on the Italian side of the Alps. Their distribution is widespread across Western Europe, with extensions towards the Black Sea and another dynamic focus existing at the time, centred on Varna (Bulgaria) (Pétrequin et al. 2012c). A maritime ‘trade’ is the obvious explanation for the transfer of these polished blades from the con­tinent to the British Isles (Piggott 1953), while river navigation probably sped their dissemination on the mainland (Camps 1976). In order to illustrate this phenomenon, both in its deep insertion in the material culture of the Carnac region and in its impact at a European scale, we shall turn to a very specific type of axe found both in the Carnacean tumuli and in the local contempo­rary hoards: the butt-perforated Tumiac type. This is a Morbihan invention, a local transformation – by repolishing – of a ground blade transferred from the Alpine regions. One of these Tumiac axes has been found in the Iberian Peninsula, in Vilapedre, Galicia (NW Spain) (Fig. 2; Fábregas et al. 2012). It is an object clearly made of jadeitite that travelled from Brittany after its repolish­ing (being, therefore, a secondary transfer). Most interestingly, there are no known intermediate finds along the northern coast of Spain. The Tumiac axes were reproduc­ed, in their general lines, in north­western Spain and Portugal, re­sulting in the so-called Cangas type axes (Fig. 2). The Cangas are triangular, very elongated and occasionally fusiform axes; as in the original model, their butt is always perforated. The raw materials used were mainly sillimanite and amphibolite (Pé­trequin et al. 2012b). Their ma­nufacture and dissemination dates back to the transition be­tween the 5th and 4th millennia BC. This phenomenon of imita­tion is also visible in other areas of Europe, as in the case of the Zug blades, mainly made of ser­pentinite, whose presence underlines the penetrat­ing force of the objects-symbols from Morbihan in areas such as Switzerland. Surprisingly, we have identified a typical Cangas axe in Brittany that deserves further investigation after its original publication (Le Guern 2011). Found in Rest Louët, south of the town of Plévin (Finistere) in the 1980s, its raw material was initially identified as fibrolite, probably due to its fibrous appearance (Fig. 3). Revisited in 2014 by one of the current authors (YP), nephrite was considered the most pro­bable raw material. This new examination allowed us to verify that despite the extensive alteration of the material the surfaces still had mirror polished areas. The perforation is biconical; part of the edge and the end of the heel have been broken since the discovery of the artefact, but the restoration con­ducted by the owner took into account the original morphology (L = 20.4cm; W = 4.21cm; T = 1.45cm; diameter of the perforation on the upper face). After a new macroscopic examination in 2018, nephrite was also discarded as the raw material for the axe, and Pierre Pétrequin pointed out the possibility of the rock being made of amphibolite. Due to the im­possibility of carrying out a spectroradiometric ana- Serge Cassen, Carlos Rodríguez-Rellán, Ramon Fábregas Valcarce, Valentin Grimaud, Yvan Pailler, and Bettina Schulz Paulsson lysis (the owner not allowing the movement of the piece), a series of pXRF analyses were therefore con­ducted on the surface of the axe. At the same time and for comparison purposes, measurements were taken on the nephrite ring of Languidic (Morbihan) that is in the museum of Carnac (Fig. 4). This bra­celet was considered for a long time to be made of serpentinite, but it turned out to be a piece of retro-morphosed nephrite, similar to that of the Valais sources (Pétrequin et al. 2015). In the absence of re­liable references for Europe, the issue of nephrite is difficult to address; still, after the analyses had been conducted, the idea of nephrite as the raw ma­terial was discarded for the Rest Louët Cangas-style axe. The pXRF results (Si = 25.80; Mg = 13.24; Ca = 8.30; Fe = 3.02; Al = 0.41) are compatible with those of a calcium amphibole. Unfortunately, the geological origin of that piece can­not be ascertained for now, since the sources are quite diverse in Western Europe. However, in order to find similarities with the Plévin axe, we must turn to the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish objects chosen for comparison (Fig. 3) came from Río Fortes – made of sillimanite – and Silleda – made of actinolite (part of the calcium amphibole group). The latter is not a perforated blade, but its appearance is quite similar to that of the axe found in Brittany. Regardless of the raw material, the axe from Plévin obviously contri­butes to the open discussion regarding the transfer of objects during the Neolithic, particularly along this plausible maritime route be­tween Galicia and southern Brittany. The location of this object, still unique in Western France, is not trivial either, since it is at almost the exact meeting point of the depart­ments of Finistere, Côtes-d’Ar­mor and Morbihan, this is – therefore – one of those im­portant topographical points in connection with the sharing of waters, which are known as neuralgic places in the land­scape, subject to all kinds of dangers and therefore requir­ing protective object (Cassen 2014). This apparently ‘ter­restrial’ location of the Plévin axe must therefore be re­viewed in the light of these natural outlets in the English Channel and Atlantic. Variscite and turquoise beads and pendants These semi-precious rocks are, of course, one of the emblematic materials among the Carnacean grave goods, such as those from Mané er Hroëck, which contains the largest number of pearls and pendants and the biggest average weight per object for the mid-5th millennium BC in Western Europe. The pre­sence of variscite in France is attested from the be­ginning of the 5th millennium BC, but only in two tombs: Les Monts, in Plichancourt (Marne; Querré et al. 2008) and Lazzaro, in Colombelles (Calvados; Billard et al. 2014), both dating back to the latest Linear Pottery (Fig. 5; Cassen et al. 2019). These two pendants have an Andalusian origin (Encinasola, Hu­elva). Far fewer pearls and pendants are found from the more recent Castellic phase, and – of course – only a small number of tombs from the beginning of the 4th millennium BC still contain some of these items, especially in Poitou-Charentes, except for pendants. To determine the origin of these objects, whose al­leged source had been considered to be near Nantes (Loire-Atlantique), a series of analyses (PIXE, using the accelerator belonging to the Louvre Museum) were conducted on several hundred pearls and pen­dants (Querré et al. 2008). For comparison purpo­ses and with the aim of developing a reference sys­tem, natural samples from French and European oc­currences were analysed under the same conditions. The conclusions reached (Querré et al. 2019) are the following: Real and ideal European maritime transfers along the Atlantic coast during the Neolithic . None of the beads came from variscite sources known in France; . Every piece found in Armorica came from Iberian sources, but not from the classic and expected one (Can Tintorer, in Catalonia), but in the earlier pe­riods from those of Encinasola, in Andalusia, 1600km from Morbihan, or from Palazuelo de las Cuevas, in Zamora province. Ceramic signs The Castellic pottery (L’Helgouac’h 1971) is dis­tributed across the South Armorica area and recalls the monumental contexts described above. Approxi­mately 50 domestic and funerary sites make up a collection otherwise little analysed during the 20th century, given the impossibility of reconstituting vessels like those from the passage graves that were (and remain) the main source of information about the Neolithic (from 1890 to 1990). The excavation of the Lannec er Gadouer mound (Boujot, Cassen 2000) and the works on the set of stelae close to the Grand Menhir (Cassen et al. 2009) helped to narrow the chronological range of Castellic’s two phases (4600–4300 and 4300–4000 BC). Taking into account the secondary transfers origi­nating from the Morbihan area detected when ana­lysing some objects-symbols (weapons and adorn­ments), the next logical step is to focus on the pot­tery. This is considered to evolve more quickly (in terms of both morphology and decorative patterns), while seldom moving across long distances. How­ever, the ceramics in the Channel Islands seem to be directly related to the Morbihan tradition, using spe­cific decorative techniques (including the common use of seashells of Gibbula magus and Mytilus edulis on the carenes and necks of the vessels – Cassen, François 2009). This relative similitude suggests a remote relation probably based on seafaring. The existence of maritime connections on the grounds of similar pottery traditions was also suggested by Childe (1932), who noted the relationship of the in­terlocking arches obtained by grooving among the vessels of the tomb of Mané Hui (Carnac) and those from Beacharra in Scotland, or in the funerary mo­nument of Fontenay-le-Marmion (Calvados). We must bear in mind, however, that other approaches put forward by this author are today considered without foundation. Most researchers discredited this diffu­sionist model and justly criticize such decontextua­lized comparisons of ceramic traditions, especially dubious when associated with ideological proposals (Bailloud 1975). Turning to southwestern Europe, other ceramic signs lend support to our case. A vessel found in the tomb of Dombate in Cabana de Bergantinos (Spain – Bel-lo Diéguez 1997) poses another interesting ques­tion. Originally classified as a Bell Beaker by the ex­cavators, it was subsequently linked to the early Neo­lithic assemblages of the Paris Basin (Suárez Otero 1997.492). In fact, both parallels were established without conducting the relevant comparisons with the records of these two chronological horizons (Cas-sen et al. 2012). Several arguments favour a Castel­lic model for this pot: a carinated shape, a concave Fig. 4. Principle component analysis of the elemental composition of the Plévin axe (Côtes-d’Armor, France) compared to the nephrite reference material based on PXRF measurements. Serge Cassen, Carlos Rodríguez-Rellán, Ramon Fábregas Valcarce, Valentin Grimaud, Yvan Pailler, and Bettina Schulz Paulsson neck and the carination itself marked by horizontal lines made of punctuations done by using the apex of Hinia reticulata, one of the two types of shell used at Lannec er Gadouer, the Table des Marchands and Er Grah, just to confine ourselves to recently studied Castellic assemblages in Morbihan. This ves­sel goes back to the first stage of Dombate’s funer­ary architectural design, going back at least to 3800 BC, according to the 14C dates. Whatever the status of this vessel (transfer, imitation, reinterpretation), it offers additional evidence of direct relationships with Morbihan that the engravings on the slabs of Dombate definitely confirm. But before approaching the representations on mo­noliths, we must stress the existence of decorative motifs in pottery that could support our investigation of maritime relations. Three sites in Brittany will be compared: two of them provided vessels with a si­milar morphology and decoration, the third offers a graphic equivalent, but this time engraved on the wall of a burial chamber. Carn and Guennoc Islands (Finistere, France) Carn Island is famous for preserving a Neolithic cairn covering three fairly well-preserved burial chambers dating back to the early 4th millennium BC (Giot 1987). In the central tomb, a thin-walled vessel is decorated with a ‘moustache’ that has been interpreted merely as a handle. We propose to com­pare this ‘crescent’ shape to a similar figure recently discovered on another island in this same geographi­cal area, Île Guennoc, which is equally famous for preserving several cairns and chambers of remark­able height. From the fifteen or so known chambers, only one engraving – heavily eroded – has been lo­cated at the chamber B of cairn II, seemingly repre­senting a quadrangular pattern and, above all, a me­ander carved beside a large sign – a portion of a disc – that we relate to the ‘crescent’ shapes interpreted as ‘unmanned boats’ (Cassen 2007). With the aim of ensuring these analogies, we will fo­cus on another vessel discovered in the South-Armo­rican coastline. In Kervihan (Saint-Pierre-Quiberon), Fig. 5. Origins of the Callais in Neolithic tombs and depositions of northern France; Western-European di­stribution of the ‘crook’ and ‘cetacean’ signs (after Cassen, Vaquero Lastres 2000; Cassen et al. 2019). Real and ideal European maritime transfers along the Atlantic coast during the Neolithic 5km southwest of Carnac, 200m from the sea and exactly on the watershed divide between the Atlan­tic side to the west and the Bay of Quiberon to the east, a set of about forty stelae was still standing around 1868, before farmers destroyed most of them. In 1888, only three of them remained intact, including a 6m long example (Lavenot 1888). While digging at the foot of one of these, Abbé Collet dis­covered a vessel (Closmadeuc 1868), and we are re­producing his drawing here for the first time (Fig. 6; Vannes Museum, ref. IM0418). A decoration of wavy lines, a typical Castellic technique, can be identified in three successive execution phases: (1) a first wave Fig. 6. The ’crescent’ sign on Middle Neolithic cera­mics from coastal Brittany: Carn island, central chamber (Ploudalmézeau, Finistere; after Giot 1987), Kervihan standing stones row (Saint- Pier-re-Quiberon, Morbihan – Vannes Museum n°418), Guennoc island, slab C4, chamber B, cairn II (Lan-deda, Finistere) (CAD by S. Cassen). sign was drawn on the neck, above the maximum diameter underlined by a large groove; (2) two curved lines are subsequently incised, joined by their ends in order to form a portion of a disc, or ‘cre­scent’; (3) a second wavy sign was then superim­posed, offset with the previous one. There is no doubt that this ‘crescent’ motif is autonomous, not simply a rough assembly of lines. We believe this portion of disk to be the representation of an un­manned boat. Thus, the image in high relief from Carn island is represented here in a carved-out ver­sion. In spite of such a technical difference, the exi­stence of a same intention of representation in two distinct ceramic traditions of the late 5th and early 4th millennia and echoed by the figures engraved on stelae, seems a plausible conclusion. Stelae and symbolic representations Another dimension of the proposed problem can be addressed through the analysis of the standing stones. As it is well known, assembled in straight or curvilinear lines, many of these structures are locat­ed in close contact with Carnacean tumuli, as in Ma-né er Hroëck, or keeping a more distant relationship, as in Mont Saint-Michel and Tumiac. Of course, the spatial juxtaposition of these exceptional monumen­talities is part of the process of distinction and un­productive expenditure that is specific to this part of the Brittany coast in the mid-5th millennium BC. In addition to this architectural dimension, we must take also into consideration the issue of the engraved symbolic representations. This part of the phenome­non has long remained difficult to tackle due to the reuse of stelae in the passage graves of the early 4th millennium BC. Let us therefore continue our com­parison based on these iconographic programs, es­sentially chosen because of the similarities found be­tween Morbihan and the western areas of the Ibe­rian Peninsula. Materials A detour in Morbihan, focused not on the signs but on the material used, is essential before considering the ‘technical’ possibility of these long-distance con­tacts. Thus, the orthogneiss – a coarse-grained gra­nite – employed as raw material for the largest ste­lae of Arzon, Crac’h, Saint-Philibert and Locmaria­quer (Querré et al. 2006; Bonniol, Cassen 2009) has its closest source at the Rhuys peninsula (Pen Castel). The challenge posed by the majority of the blocks is not the distance covered during their transportation (5 or 10km as the crow flies is not an exceptional distance among European megaliths) but the weight Serge Cassen, Carlos Rodríguez-Rellán, Ramon Fábregas Valcarce, Valentin Grimaud, Yvan Pailler, and Bettina Schulz Paulsson transported, as in the case of the 330t of the Grand Menhir. In addition, there are the deep rias with strong tidal currents that had to be crossed. The feat is even more obvious in the case of the Runélo stela, weighing between 27 and 29t, trans­ported to the summit of Belle-Ile-en-Mer, 60km as the crow flies from its geological source, and at least 40km offshore. Like the Grand Menhir, such a dis­placement cannot be conceived by simply resorting to dugout canoes, even if these were juxtaposed, as pointed out by Le Roux (1997). We thus must sug­gest that these populations must have mastered re­latively complex naval techniques (e.g., sewn panel boats) in order to carry such a heavy cargo during open sea navigation (Cassen et al. 2016). The depictions The image, nowadays as in the past, if it is ‘thought’, is not and cannot be reduced to the sole function of being an illustration. We therefore consider the image as an instrument of investigation, and – conse­quently – as a tool for producing knowledge of re­ality (Péquignot 2006.48). Among the European in­ventory of the least ambiguous motifs, seven types of engravings present on monoliths will be used to enrich our comparison. The ‘crook’/a throwing stick This sign is the most frequent within the Armorican corpus, and it is very often associated with the de­piction of hafted polished blades. With the possible exception of reused slabs in the Bronze Age burial mounds of Old Parks, Kirkoswald (Cumbria), which would require a new survey in order to confirm the similarity of their crooks with the mod­els in Western France (Becken­sall 1999.135), this sign is known only on the stelae lo­cated in the Algarve and Alen­tejo regions, in Portugal (Cala-do 1997; Gonçalves 1999; Go-mes 2011). The relationship with the Armorican specimens was suggested early on (Siret 1920). In this sense, a similar positioning of the instrument on the surface of the monoliths can be noted in both regions (Fig. 7). As in Brittany, the sign described in Portugal should be understood as a throwing stick and not as the shepherd’s peaceful instrument. The ‘square’/the representation of a space This sign, present on the Armorican stelae as well as on the orthostats of passage graves, was usually de­picted as though ‘leaning’ (with respect to a horizon­tal axis parallel to the ground), creating an unde­niably dynamic effect, often under the noticeable action of a mobile neighbouring sign (crook, crois-sant-boat). The most obvious analogies lead us once again to the Alentejo (Fig. 7), where the usual tendency to­wards anthropomorphism lends it the function of a ‘nose’ (Gomes 1997a). The representation of a space seems to be a more likely hypothesis, no matter for the moment whether it is a territory, an island, a par­cel or a dwelling. The ‘crescent’/an unmanned boat Often assimilated to bovine horns by Breton archa­eologists, we have compared this sign to what Gu­stave de Closmadeuc called the ‘pectiniform’ in 1873. Adrien de Mortillet interpreted such pectiniform as a ‘boat with crew’ in 1894. We therefore bring these two graphic forms close together simply due to the fact that they share the sign of the boat according to two quite distinct, even opposite, regimes of rep­resentations in the universal history of human soci­eties (Cassen 2007): on the one hand a boat with crew, with a figure systematically dominating the Real and ideal European maritime transfers along the Atlantic coast during the Neolithic others; on the other, a boat without oars or crew. We argue that the truncated disc represented in some Alentejo steles is equivalent to an unmanned boat, all the more so since its association with the quad­rangular sign, as well as with the crook sign, reinfor­ces the connection, going well beyond the formal si­milarities of simple geometric arrangements. The ‘axe plough’/a sperm whale The ‘axe plough’ is a major sign within the Armori-can megalithic art corpus. Its different graphic units have been deconstructed in order to understand and place them better within a process of recognition that takes into consideration the space occupied by the sign, its structural relationship with neighbour­ing signs and the geographical and archaeological context of the findings (Cassen,Vaquero Lastres 2000; Whittle 2000). Not simply a cetacean, but a sperm whale may be precisely identified. In order to ensure the archaeological coherence of this hypothesis, we have tried to find a similar dy­namic line in the European record, and it was to­wards Galicia and northern Portugal that the best connections appeared, through a sign called ‘The Thing’ (Shee Twohig 1981). The already mentioned passage grave of Dombate is of great interest in this respect, as it reproduces several components of the Morbihan model: (1) superimposition, around 3800 BC, of a passage grave over an earlier mound sur­rounding a tomb without permanent access; (2) reuse of stelae as slabs; (3) stelae depicting a group of cetaceans (Fig. 8). The bow Until now, the depiction of this throwing weapon was confined to the Armorican peninsula and the Channel Islands (Guernsey), always inside passage graves and twice in a clearly secondary position (Ile Longue, Le Déhus). The painted representation in the Juncais passage grave (Portugal), where a hunt­ing scene with an archer was depicted, is of uncer­tain date (Shee Twohig 1981) and we will wait until it is better established. Fig. 8. Variations and diversity of cetacean engravings (sperm whales) on re-used stelae in the passage tombs of north-western Iberia and Western France. Comparisons of some significant graphic units in the current world of the representations (after Cassen, Vaquero Lastres 2000; Cassen 2007). Serge Cassen, Carlos Rodríguez-Rellán, Ramon Fábregas Valcarce, Valentin Grimaud, Yvan Pailler, and Bettina Schulz Paulsson However, the careful survey of monolith No 10 of Vale Maria do Meio (Alentejo) has allowed us to identify a bow for the first time, an object similar to those existing in the Armorican repertoire (Cas-sen et al. 2015). Not only its design matches exact­ly that of the l’Ile Longue in Morbihan (Fig. 9), but the direct association with the ‘crook’ and ‘square’ signs in the same composition (Calado 2004) fol­lows a pattern similar to that found on orthostat 13 of Mané Kerioned B, in Carnac. The ‘mother goddess’/a phallus Very few standing stones in Brittany offer a natu­rally phallic aspect (Barnenez H, Kermaillard), and none do so explicitly during the 5th millennium BC, i.e. carved with realistic anatomical details. The only possible exception is a monolith with a decorated end, discovered in the extension of the Early Neoli­thic house of Le Haut Mée (Cassen et al. 1998). In contrast, the engraving usually known as ‘shield di­vinity’, ‘mother goddess’, etc., considered to be a fe­male being since the 19th century (Gimbutas 1989. 247; Briard 1991.184; Le Roux, Lecerf 2003.26; Mohen 2009.101, 137; Sergent 2011.35), sometimes an indeterminate entity between female and male (L’Helgouac’h 1991.543), will be reinterpreted as a phallic form, much more consistent with the original architectural context and in accordance with the structural analysis associating the other signs (Cas-sen 2000). The standing stone, explicitly shaped for phallic re­presentation (glans, meatus), is present in Galicia (Gargantáns), but even more visible in southern Por­tugal (Gomes 1997; 2011) and may be dated back to the 5th millennium BC despite the un­certainty of their stratigraphic contexts (Calado et al. 2003). Wavy lines, interpreted as sna­kes, are frequently reproduced vertically along the length of the penis. The snake Without always achieving the degree of fidelity to the true ani­mal that we recognize in Gavri­nis or Manio 2 in Morbihan, the Portuguese snakes engraved on stelae (Gomes 1994; Bueno Ra­mirez, Balbín Behrmann 1995) are indeed an additional ele­ment to be added to the semi­otic comparison. We would like to extend the anal­ogy to all those regions along the European Atlantic coast where it is present, Galicia as well as the areas around the Irish Sea, but because of its banality and geometric simplification, which may lead to confu­sion with the representation of water, we will not dwell on this topic here. Summing up, several of the essential signs of the Morbihan corpus of megalithic art dated back to the first half and mid-5th millennium BC are also iden­tified in Galicia and Portugal, not in isolation and on the basis of vague similarities but within relations of opposition and complementarity shared between these regions, excluding – in the present state of knowledge – the other sectors of the Spanish (Astu­rias, Cantabria, Basque Country) and French (Aqui­taine, Charente) coasts. The charm of the sea Through weapons and ornaments diverted from their function, then through pottery decorations and symbolic representations on standing stones, seve­ral combined arguments contribute to establish a di­rect, verifiable relationship between Morbihan and the westernmost Atlantic coast of the Iberian Penin­sula from the mid-5th millennium BC. So far, no comparable intermediate parallels are known on the coasts of the Gulf of Biscay. Therefore, since the existence of coastal navigation has been clearly ac­cepted in those areas (Callaghan, Scarre 2009; Fá­bregas et al. 2012; Philippe 2018), we must also consider, as a matter of principle, that maritime re­lations, even those exceptional and more or less di- Real and ideal European maritime transfers along the Atlantic coast during the Neolithic rect, took place between these regions in the Neo­lithic. Although still hypothetical at that time, the existence of a direct route between Cape Ortegal and Southern Brittany is referred to by classical au­thors (Strabo I. 4. 5 and Tacitus in Agricola 10 and 11). The ‘Arimaspea’, a poem written around the 7th or 6th century BC, or the Phoenician sailors leaving Cadiz/Tartessos at the beginning of the 1st millen­nium BC, are also testimonies in favour of these At­lantic voyages to Northern Europe (Plumet 2004). In other words, this direct route (depending on the seasons), accepted for the Late Bronze and the Iron Age, implies an older human experience. In this respect, Galicia probably played an important role as a crossroads of communication routes from the interior (towards the variscite mines of the Za­mora region, sillimanite from the mountains north of Madrid), or by coast from Andalusia (variscite mines of Encinasola) via Portugal and the key region of Evora. In Galicia, the funerary mounds of Forno dos Mouros, Chousa Nova and Illade 0 are worth men­tioning for three main reasons: they are not passage graves; they contained variscite ornaments, a jadeite pendant, polished axes made on sillimanite, and – lastly – a long, polished adze planted vertically; while being dated back to the 4500–4300, 4300–4200 and 4300–4000 BC, respectively (Manana Borrazás 2005; Domínguez-Bella, Bóveda 2011; Vaquero Las-tres 1999). This link between Southern Armorica and Galicia is visible, from an archaeological point of view, two or three centuries after a relationship can be indirectly guessed. Such phenomenon of delayed chronology could of course be repeated in the British Isles and Ireland. The fragment of a perforated schist bracelet found at Peak Camp (Darvill et al. 2011), only 10km from the Severn Estuary facing the Irish Sea, clearly refers to an ornament specific of the Early Neolithic period in northwestern France. It alone testifies to this palimpsest that is so difficult to decipher (of course, the similar ‘pendentifs arciformes’ of the Pa­ris basin are late Neolithic). The reader may therefore understand that the quest for the physical object, or for the appropriate and accurate archaeometric measurement, is not enough to construct a historical scenario. And, if crossing the English Channel or the Irish Sea did not pose any problems in the 4th millennium BC (Garrow, Sturt 2011), why couldn’t it be the same during the 5th? Let us return to this possibility. “Océan. Tas de pierres” In his posthumous writings, dated between 1816 and 1883 and gathered under this poetic title, Vic­tor Hugo stated that the greatest realities, the most complex, the true, the only ones perhaps, are logi­cally those which are always and perpetually pre- Serge Cassen, Carlos Rodríguez-Rellán, Ramon Fábregas Valcarce, Valentin Grimaud, Yvan Pailler, and Bettina Schulz Paulsson sent, “there is no real thing but the ideal” (Hugo 1942.193). We have previously pointed out how the transport of huge blocks raises the question of what kind of boats may have moved them at sea. Could the de­pictions of boats in Morbihan help us to conceive these trips? Let us recall the example of the ortho-stats of some Morbihan passage graves that preserve such symbolic figures (Fig. 10). It would be misguid­ed to attempt to discover here the technical details of naval architecture ensuring the movement on the high seas, even if steering oars seem well repre­sented. On the other hand, the depiction of a boat with crew and a steering oar, as if caught in a whirl­wind (Fig. 11) present in the slab L4 of Gavrinis (Larmor-Baden), can – in turn – influence the inter­pretation of these concentric arcs that, by intuition, we had linked to the representation of water. Beside this ‘crewed’ version, we have previously pro­posed that the ‘crescent’ depicted on several stelae in Morbihan could be interpreted as an unmanned boat. The latter interpretation – with or without standing humans in its interior – is present in both the Celtic mythology of Western Europe and in the Breton legends. Opposing life with death, it is crucial to think about the fundamental reasons for going to sea, real or ideal. In this respect, we must recall the text of Procope written in the 6th century: “The fishermen and other inhabitants of Gaul who are in front of the island of Brittany are responsible for passing through it the souls of the dead, and for this reason exempt from taxation” (The War of Real and ideal European maritime transfers along the Atlantic coast during the Neolithic the Goths 1, IV, c. 20). It is therefore likely that the funeral journey must have been a part of the world of representations of the Neolithic societies in West­ern Europe. In this respect, it is significant to point out that the ‘naviform’ plan of the burial mound sur­rounding certain tombs at the end of the 4th millen­nium BC in Brittany is closely correlated with such a belief system. The Viking tombs in Sweden (ship settings), from the 6th century onwards, were built following a similar solution (Fig. 12). Whether the journey is by river or sea, there is little doubt that the long-distance acquisition of socially valued goods may have granted a form of social pre­stige in compensation for the dangers involved in the journey. But we may also miss the essential, i.e. the charm of the sea, if we were to remain in search of a solely economic interest. The utility of sailing on the ocean is not clear enough to force prehistoric man to dig a canoe out of a tree trunk, to stretch ani­mal skins on a pole frame, or to tie wooden boards together. No utility can legitimize the immense risk of entering the sea in order to approach another land for the first time. To engage in navigation, you need a powerful interest. However, the real power­ful interests are the chimerical ones, the interests that we dream about, not those that we calculate. These are the fabulous interests. And what could be more fabulous than to experience the end of a life, to go and to explore the end of a world? ... Because the first sailor was the first living man who was as brave as a dead man (Bachelard 1942), and is not the hero of the sea also a hero of death? It is often said that death is a journey and travel is a form of death ... “To leave is to die a little”, says the French proverb. To die is really to leave, and one can only leave well, courageously, clearly, by following the course of the water, the current of the broad ri­ver joining the River of the Dead. Only this kind of death is fabulous, only this departure is an adven­ture. If for the unconscious, a dead person is really an absent person, only the navigator of death is a dead man who can be dreamed of indefinitely. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We thank Y. Ling and R. Chacon for their invitation and their excellent welcome in Göteborg University; P. Pétrequin kindly gave us a first visual diagnosis of the rock of Plévin, and C. Le Guern, Y. Cocoual and E. Vigier (Carnac Museum) allowed us to analyse this axe under the best conditions; the Kervihan vessel could be studied with the help of C. Le Pennec (Van­nes Museum); the survey of the engravings at Guen­noc benefited from a topographic survey led by F. Cousseau. Finally, many thanks to C. Obeltz for shar­ing the results of his surveys in the Quiberon penin­sula. The authors must also acknowledge and express thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their com­ments. . References Bachelard G. 1942. L’eau et les reves : essai sur l’imag­ination de la matiere. José Corti, 1978. Paris. Bailloud G. 1975. Les Céramiques cannelées du Néolithi­que armoricain. Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française 72: 343–367. Beckensall S. 1999. British prehistoric rock art. Tempus Publishing Ltd. Stroud. Bello Diéguez J. M. 1997. 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Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10(2): 243–259. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774300000093 back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) Use-wear experimental studies for differentiating flint tools processing bamboo from wood Jiying Liu, Hong Chen *, and Yiming Shen 1 Institute of Cultural Heritage and Museology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, PRC hollychen@zju.edu.cn ABSTRACT – Bamboo is widespread in south China and is one of the major organic resources in daily use through history due to its similar potential use value as wood. Due to the unfavourable preserva­tion conditions and taphonomic alteration, the rare discovery of well-preserved organic remains from Palaeolithic sites means there is a lack of direct studies on the technology and behaviour of early prehistoric humans. Use-wear analysis has been proved as a reliable method to detect evidence left by working wood and bamboo on stone artefacts. This study aims to provide an experimental reference of use-wear features and patterns to identify and interpret the exploration of bamboo and wood resources in prehistory. In this experiment, 12 flint flakes were selected for processing bamboo stems and pine branches with working motions of whittling, sawing, and chopping. The results show that the use-wear features, including edge scarring, edge rounding, and polish, of bamboo-working and wood-working are distinctive. Edge scarring is closely related to the working motion, and mod­erate bright to very bright polish is a significant feature associated with bamboo-working. It is pos­sible to distinguish wear traces caused by bamboo-working from those by wood-processing through a combination of low-power and high-power techniques under a 3D digital microscope. KEY WORDS – use-wear analysis; experimental study; flints; bamboo-working; wood-working Poskusne [tudije sledov uporabe za razlo;evanje kamnitih orodij, uporabljenih za obdelavo bambusa, od tistih, za obdelavo lesa IZVLE.EK – Bambus je .iroko raz.irjen na jugu Kitajske in je eden od poglavitnih organskih virov, ki je podobno kot les v dnevni rabi skozi celotno zgodovino. Zaradi neugodnih pogojev v depoziciji in tafonomskih sprememb so dobro ohranjeni organski ostanki na paleolitskih najdi..ih redki, kar pomeni, da imamo na voljo malo neposrednih .tudij o tehnologiji in obna.anju zgodnjih ljudi. Analiza sledov uporabe na kamnitih orodjih se je izkazala za zanesljivo metodo pri prepoznavanju dokazov o obdelavi lesa in bambusa. V pri.ujo.i .tudiji predstavljamo referen.ne podatke, pridobljene s posku­si, o zna.ilnih sledovih in vzorcih uporabe na orodjih, da bi lahko prepoznali in razlagali uporabo bambusa in lesa kot vira surovin v prazgodovini. Pri poskusu smo izbrali 12 kamnitih odbitkov za obdelavo bambusovih debla in vej, pri .emer smo orodje uporabljali za rezanje, .aganje in sekanje. Rezultati ka.ejo, da lahko jasno razlo.imo sledove uporabe, ki vklju.ujejo po.kodbe na robu, nastanek zaobljenega roba in poliranje povr.ine, pri delu z bambusom, od tistih, nastalih pri delu z lesom. Po.­kodbe na robu orodij so tesno povezane z delovnimi gibi, medtem ko lahko srednje do zelo svetla poli­rana obmo.ja povezujemo z obdelavo bambusa. Ugotavljamo, da lahko na podlagi kombinacije razli.­nih tehnik, ki jih opazujemo pod 3D digitalnim mikroskopom, jasno razlo.imo, ali je bilo kamnito orodje uporabljeno pri delu s bambusom ali lesom. KLJU.NE BESEDE – analiza sledov uporabe; poskusne .tudije; kamnita orodja; obdelava bambusa; obdelava lesa * Corresponding author DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.20 Use-wear experimental studies for differentiating flint tools processing bamboo from wood Introduction Early in 1958, Grahame Clark mentioned Stanley R. Mitchell’s (1949) ethnological observation of Austra­lian aborigines and pointed out that the most impor­tant use of stone tools is most likely the making of wooden weapons and utensils. Archaeologists have discovered, though rare, a few preserved wooden implements from Palaeolithic sites, as far back as the Gesher Benot Ya’aqov assemblage with a date of 780000 BP (Belitzky et al. 1991; Goren-Inbar et al. 1992) as well as at the Schöningen site (Thieme 1997; Schoch et al. 2015) and Lehringen site (Mar-shack 1998) in Germany. Three pieces of pencil-shaped pointed wooden objects with smooth surfa­ces and longitudinal scars were uncovered from the Ohalo II site in Israel. The excavators speculated these were flaked and shaved by some sharp knives (Nadel et al. 2006). Richard W. Yerkes et al. (2012) claimed that light stone tools might be used to plane, shave and clean branches rather than heavier tasks like felling trees or splitting large logs. Stone tools are generally regarded as the best evi­dence of human technology in prehistory. The dis­coveries mentioned above have proved that imple­ments and objects made of wooden or organic ma­terials might have long coexisted with, or been even earlier than, stone tools as the main tools in prehi­story. Due to the unfavourable preservation condi­tions and taphonomic alteration, well-preserved or­ganic remains are rarely uncovered in Palaeolithic sites, resulting in a lack of direct studies on the tech­nology and behaviour of early prehistoric humans. A functional study might thus be a good complemen­tary path to understand this kind of information through use-wear and residue analyses. Use-wear analysis, which refers to the study of wear traces on the edges and/or surfaces of archaeological artefacts caused by use (e.g., Odell 2004; Fullagar, Matherson 2013), is considered as one of the keys to the functional interpretation of archaeological re­cords (Sterud 1978). Various working tasks and con­tact materials of the archaeological tools, as well as the economic, social and cultural implications for hu­man behaviour, can be recognized based on the re­sults of such analysis, and many use-wear studies have successfully identified use-traces in relation to wood-working on stone artefacts from Palaeolithic sites (Keeley 1980; Odell 1996; Chen et al. 2002; 2014; Lemorini et al. 2014; Liu, Chen 2016). Bamboo is widespread in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. Though classified into the grass fam­ily Poaceae, bamboo stems are usually woody and hollow and are light and durable, with a great po­tential for production and utilization in daily life. Some scholars have proposed a ‘bamboo hypothesis’ to explain the lithic industry in Prehistoric Southeast Asia, proposing that stone tools might coexist with light organic materials like bamboo (Solheim 1972; Pope 1989; Reynolds 2007). A few micro-wear stu­dies showed evidence related to plant material pro­cessing, which is widely interpreted as a result of bamboo-working (Teodosio 2006; Pawlik 2010; Xhauflair, Pawlik 2010). In ancient China bamboo had notable economic and cultural significance. According to ethnoecological data, bamboo stems have been used as important raw materials for numerous functions such as buil­ding houses and making crafts over a long period of time (e.g., Wang et al. 1990; Liao 1996). The earliest archaeological evidence of bamboo objects in China to date was uncovered from the Qianshanyang Neo­lithic site, dating back to 4700 years ago, including bamboo pieces and implements such as bamboo mats (Zhejiang 1960; 2010). Hermine Xhauflair et al. (2016) conducted a series of replicated experiments particularly adapted to the specific lithic materials and vegetation of Southeast Asia. They aimed to provide a reference for identify­ing bamboo-working traces on archaeological stone tools, but the characteristics and pattern of use-wear relevant to bamboo-working are not clear yet, espe­cially in Chinese archaeological studies. This is pro­bably due to the inadequate experimental interpre­tative criteria concerning various working tasks on bamboo. More importantly, it is difficult to distin­guish bamboo-working traces from those caused by wood or other hard organic materials (Mijares 2001; Blench 2013). The development of use-wear analysis is not only characterized by establishing a reference collection, but also by the effort of those who try to improve the accuracy in the identification and recording of wear traces. Low-power and high-power are two tra­ditional approaches of use-wear analysis. The low-power method (5–100x), using a stereomicroscope, focuses on the identification and interpretation of the edge scarring and edge rounding as indicators of working activities and contact materials if possible (e.g., Tringham et al. 1974; Odell 1977). The high-power or microscopic method (100–1000x), using a metallurgical microscope or scan electronic micro­scope, allows distinguishing and classifying different types of materials, in more detailed but limited areas, Jiying Liu, Hong Chen, and Yiming Shen with the emphasis on the observation of polish and striations (e.g., Keeley 1980; Vaughan 1985). These two approaches are complementary, and each of them has strengths and limitations (Odell 2001). During the last decades, researchers have gradually attempted to use both techniques to improve the methodology of use-wear analysis (e.g., Grace 1996; Lombard 2005; Van Gijn 2010; Macdonald 2013). A stereomicroscope is used to examine and ascertain the relationship between the distribution of wear traces on the overall tool, and an incident light mi­croscope is mainly for the identification of the fun­ction. The combination of both magnifications allows a more comprehensive analysis. However, how to in­tegrate those two techniques in a more effective way is still under exploration. Controlled experiment is considered crucial to im­prove the standardization of use-wear analysis and the rationality of functional interpretation. This study carried out a set of experiments to better un­derstand the use-wear resulting from bamboo-work­ing, attempting to distinguish it from that by wood­working. Employing a 3D digital microscope, we wish to provide a set of experimental criteria of use-wear features and patterns for identifying, in a more practical way, possible organic resources exploration and interpreting the functions of stone tools in pre­history. Experimental program This study is first aimed at understanding the use-wear features and patterns on flint artefacts result­ing from bamboo-working under a 3D ultra-depth microscope, and secondly to differentiate the bam­boo-working use-wear from the wood-working use-wear. Experimental aim and design As defined by George H. Odell (1981), whittling/ shaving is a motion transversal to the working edge at an acute angle, whereas cutting/sawing is a mo­tion longitudinal to the working edge in a position approximately perpendicular to the contact materi­als. Wood whittling/shaving often results in conti­guous feather-terminated scars mainly on one side, which sometimes have a conchoidal shape (Hou 1992). Wood cutting/sawing usually produces large and medium longitudinal scars directionally on both surfaces of a tool (Chen et al. 2008), and the work­ing edge displays regular denticulation. Twelve flakes with unretouched edges were selected as specimens in this experimental program (Fig. 1). The raw material of the specimens is flint collected from Danjiang River (Henan Province) in the central part of China. Among these specimens, two smaller flakes with sharp straight edges were used for whit­tling, and those flakes with larger edge angles for chopping. The flakes for sawing have relatively long and sharp edges that are straight or almost straight. Bamboo and pine branches were chosen as the con­tact materials, as these are readily available in most parts of southern China. Considering the possible working tasks performed on bamboo and wood in the prehistoric period, three working motions were determined: chopping, sawing and whittling. To have Use-wear experimental studies for differentiating flint tools processing bamboo from wood a better understanding of the formation of wear traces during usage, we also conducted multi-stage experiments (Odell et al. 1980; Chen et al. 2013) for every specimen. The duration of each experiment, the total time cost for processing the material with each specimen, was 30 minutes. A group of students was invited to participate in the experiments in the laboratory. Given the detailed plan of the experimental program, they were shown how to perform the working tasks prior to the be­ginning of the experiments, and throughout the pro­cess their operations were closely monitored. One goal of our experiments is to understand the corre­lation between wear traces and contact materials and working motions, thus possible variables which would affect the wear traces were strictly controlled: every specimen had to be operated by a certain ex­perimenter with the same supposed working motion and direction and with a steady force. Analytical protocol Two types of microscopes were employed in this ex­periment. The primary examination of specimens was carried out with a Nikon SMZ800 stereomicro-scope with magnifications ranging from 10x to 63x, which allowed us to identify the overall distribution of the edge scarring, edge rounding and sometimes polish across the employable edge. All the experi­mental specimens were then observed and photo­graphed under a 3D digital microscope Keyence VHX-5000 with magnifications between 20x and 200x. This is an optical microscope with the func­tion of live depth composition, which integrates ob­servation, image capture, and measurement capabi­lities, enabling detection of wear traces in a wider area with higher magnification at the same time. Compared to the approach of integrating two diffe­rent kinds of microscopes, the automatic scanning and image stitching capacity of this equipment helps ease the workload considerably. The recording criteria of use-wear patterns in this study consist of micro-fractural scarring, edge round­ing, polish and striations. Scarring is documented and analysed by size (Chen 2011), termination (Ho Ho Committee 1979), distribution pattern (Zhang et al. 2010) and location. Edge rounding, an indica­tor of the presence of abrasion, is divided into light, medium and heavy according to the extent of wear (Odell 1996). Polish is described mainly by bright­ness, the texture of the surface and the presence or absence of certain topographic features (Keeley 1980). Striations are often seen as linear traces indi­cating possible motions and directions of tool use. The presence of striations varies, and experimental specimens do not exhibit them in most cases (Lom­bard 2005). Full-scale cleaning is necessary for each specimen after each periodic experimental operation and be­fore observation under the microscope. The experi­menter must wear powder-free gloves while han­dling the specimens during the whole experiment to avoid any possible contamination. First, each spe­cimen was immersed in a warm detergent solution for 10–20 minutes. Then, JP-010T Sonic Cleanser was used to make each specimen sink in an ultrasonic bath of clean water for 10–20 minutes. The next step is cleaning each piece with an alcohol solution to remove finger grease. Finally, the specimens were placed in an ultrasonic tank with clean water for another 10–20 minutes and left to dry in the air. The residue that remained on several specimens after processing wood was difficult to remove, and thus additional cleaning was conducted before the final step, and this was immersion in warm NaOH (20–30%) for 10–20 minutes. According to Lawrence Keeley (1980), experimental tools are not required to remove the mineral deposits, and thus the 10% HCl solution was not used in our experiments. It is worth noting that special care must be taken to pro­tect the employable edge of the specimen from con­tacting with the ultrasonic tank during the cleaning process. Experimental procedure The basic information of the specimens was docu­mented in detail, including: (1) morphological fea­tures, technological characteristics, morphometric parameters and raw material colours of the experi­mental specimens; (2) working motions; (3) condi­tions of contact materials; and (4) the gender and grip strength of the operators. Macroscopic photos were taken to record the orig­inal state of each specimen. Microscopic photos of the selected working edges before use were taken in several main magnifications of 20x, 50x or 100x, 200x. Meanwhile, the overall shapes of specimens were sketched to mark the employable locations. The whole process of every task was divided into six 5-min sections to ensure the working efficiency of each operator. Details concerning operation times, processing efficiency and alteration of the employ­able edges, modification of the contact materials were recorded during each interval. Based on this Jiying Liu, Hong Chen, and Yiming Shen information, each specimen was assigned to be ob­served under the microscope after every 15 minutes to record the wear traces. After cleaning, each specimen was examined under the stereomicroscope (Nikon SMZ800), and then under the 3D digital microscope (Keyence VHX-5000) from low to high magnifications, in order to compare the results with their former conditions and be pho­tographed. The characteristics of scarring, edge rou­nding, polish and striations were also described. Results A total of twelve specimens developed wear traces after use, and the results of microscopic observation are presented in the following (Tab. 1). Use-wear resulting from bamboo-working Sawing bamboo Three specimens were selected for sawing bamboo stems and show recognizable use-wear after 30 mi­nutes of use (Fig. 2.a1, a2, b1, b2). The medium and small scars, associated with a few large ones, distri­bute continuously along the edge bifacially. Most are oblique to the transversal axis of the edge, showing feathered and snapped terminations. Some rolled-over scars (Odell 1996; Chen et al. 2008), which re­fer to the scars observed on dorsal or ventral sur­faces, initiate from the opposite surface. The edge for sawing dry bamboo exhibits relatively more scars than the one for sawing fresh bamboo stems. The moderate to highly bright polish is observed on both surfaces, mainly displaying on the elevated parts of the edge. Some polish links together as small zo­nes. The most developed and extensive polish, cha­racterized as very bright and smooth, was discovered on the flakes for sawing fresh bamboo. In such ca­ses, the well-linked polish extends over the bulged parts of the edge Specimen No. and less bright polish is present in-nutes. The use-wear is described as follows, includ­ing resulting from chopping dry and fresh bamboo stems (Fig. 2.c1, c2, d1, d2). Stepped scars mainly of medium and large size dis­tribute unevenly either on the dorsal or ventral sur­faces, a few are overlapped. Small feathered scars scatter along the very edge. Heavy rounding developed on both surfaces, which makes the edge ridge become dull. The specimen for chopping fresh bamboo displays bright polish in a relatively limited area. The polish seems not well-linked but forms a domed shape, and most scatters near the small scars. No apparent striations were identified. Whittling fresh bamboo Specimen No. DJK-SY:3 was used for whittling fresh bamboo stems over 30 minutes. Small and medium feathered scars are continuously distributed main­ly on the dorsal surface – the non-contact surface – of the working edge. Several scars are oblique to the transversal axis of the edge. Inside the large and intrusive feathered and hinged scars, small feather­ed scars were observed. There are also a few medi­um stepped scars with rolled-over appearance. The overall margin of the contact edge appears denticu-lated. The employable edge on the non-contact sur­face shows light and medium rounding, with heav­ier rounding on the elevated part. Polish and stria­tions were not recognized (Fig. 2.e1, e2). Use-wear resulting from wood-working Sawing wood After 30 minutes of use, use-wear was observed on the three experimental specimens for sawing pine (Fig. 3.a1, a2, b1, b2). Both surfaces of the employ­able edge are dominated by feathered and snapped Working Duration Action Contact material motion (min) (strikes) DJK-SY>2 Dry bamboo stem sawing 30 3357 side some scars. Heavy rounding was DJK-SY>6 Dry bamboo stem chopping 30 2515 observed on the employable edges DJK-SY>3 Fresh bamboo stem whittling 30 1695 of these three specimens. Except for DJK-SY>4 Fresh bamboo stem sawing 30 2249 some short striations parallel to the DJK-SY>5 Fresh bamboo stem sawing 30 3013 working edge found occasionally on DJK-SY>13 Fresh bamboo stem chopping 30 2549 the specimen for sawing fresh bam-DJK-SY>14 Dry pine branch whittling 30 2129 DJK-SY>9 Dry pine branch sawing 30 2789 boo stems, no apparent striations DJK-SY>8 Dry pine branch chopping 30 2651 were recognized. DJK-SY>10 Fresh pine branch sawing 30 2253 DJK-SY>15 Fresh pine branch sawing 30 2948 Chopping bamboo DJK-SY>11 Fresh pine branch chopping 30 2586 Two specimens were selected for chopping bamboo stems over 30 mi-Tab. 1. Basic information of the experiments undertaken. Use-wear experimental studies for differentiating flint tools processing bamboo from wood Fig. 2. Use-wear resulting from bamboo-working. a1 sawing dry bamboo (No. DJK-SY:2), scarring D40x; a2 polish, 30min, V400x; b1 sawing fresh bamboo (No. DJK-SY:4), scarring D40x; b2 polish, 30min D400x; c1 chopping dry bamboo (No. DJK-SY:6), scarring D30x; c2 rounding, 30min, R30x; d1 chopping fresh bamboo (No. DJK-SY:13), scarring V30x; d2 rounding, 30min, R50x; e1 whittling fresh bamboo (No. DJK­SY:3), scarring D40x; e2 rounding, 30min, R50x. Jiying Liu, Hong Chen, and Yiming Shen scars in large, medium and small sizes. A few large scars occur in rolled-over appearance. The small scars distribute more closely to the edge margin. Some unevenly distributed scars in association with hinged terminations were also found on the speci­men used for sawing dry pine. For the specimen sawing fresh pine, scars with occasional stepped ter­minations are distributed continuously. The specimen for sawing dry pine (No. DJK-SY:9) shows heavy rounding, while the one for sawing fresh pine (No. DJK-SY:10) presents medium round­ing. Moderate bright to bright polish was observed on both surfaces of the edge, of which some devel­oped polishes with the occurrence of short lines. More developed polish appears on the specimen for sawing fresh pine, and very bright and smooth polish is only observed on the elevated part of the edge. In this case, no obvious striations were observed. Chopping wood The specimens No. DJK-SY:8 and No. DJK-SY:11 were used for experimentally chopping dry and fresh pine branches for about 30 minutes (Fig. 3.c1, c2, d1, d2). Small feathered scars, and medium scars with step­ped and snapped terminations, distribute unevenly on these two specimens. Scars on the specimen for chopping dry pine are mainly on the dorsal surface, while several notches of different sizes distribute on the ventral surface. Both specimens exhibit medium and heavy round­ing on the used edges, and the specimen for chop­ping fresh pine shows heavier rounding. Moderate bright and dull polish were identified on both spec­imens, with few striations. Whittling dry wood One flake (No. DJK-SY:14) was used for whittling dry pine for around 30 minutes and presents obvious use-wear (Fig. 3.e1, e2). Scars were mainly observed on the non-contact side of the working edge, the dorsal surface, and these are medium and small scars with feathered and step­ped terminations in relatively continuous distribu­tion with few overlapping. There are also several hinged scars scattering along the dorsal side. The overall shape of the edge margin of the ventral con­tact surface appears denticulated. Most part of the working edge shows medium round­ing, while the elevated part of edge ridge displays heavy rounding. Only the contact surface of the working edge presents moderate bright and rough polish. Striations were not identified. Discussion The experimental results suggest that wear traces caused by bamboo-working and wood-working are distinctive. According to multi-stage experiments, the formation of scarring and polish appears diffe­rently. For the working motions of sawing and chop­ping, most scars were produced within the first 15 minutes, allowing the easy identification of working tasks. In the latter 15-min stage, only some small feathered scars were produced along the edge mar­gin. On the other hand, the polish becomes more and more developed over the whole 30 minutes. Use-wear features and patterns of bamboo-working The bamboo-working experiments by Armand S. B. Mijares (2001), as well as Xhauflair and his collea­gues (2016), show that medium to very large micro-fractural scarring, mainly in stepped terminations, would occur; the polish created by bamboo-working is well-developed, which is smooth and bright, very domed and often well-linked; and numerous brush-stroke striations were also produced, though not on every specimen. According to our results from the bamboo-working experiments, besides the stepped scars, feathered and snapped scars were also recognized on every specimen. The small scars in feathered termination tend to distribute continuously along the edge mar­gin. The features of scarring are complex, which might be affected by working motions. Continuous­ly distributed scars often occur during whittling and sawing, while uneven and overlapped scars appear with chopping. Rolled-over scars (Odell 1996; Chen et al. 2008), also described as hinged cross-section scars (Xhauflair et al. 2016), appear frequently. Pro­cessing dry bamboo stem tends to produce hinged-terminated scars. Medium to heavy rounding usu­ally occurs on the edges of tools used for bamboo-working. Moderate to very bright polish is a significant fea­ture of use-wear in connection with bamboo-work­ing (Fig. 4). The extent of polish expands when it is well-developed; the polish on the elevated part of the edge appears linked together, but the linkage of polish caused by chopping is much poorer. Polish produced by processing fresh bamboo is generally Use-wear experimental studies for differentiating flint tools processing bamboo from wood Fig. 3. Use-wear resulting from wood-working. a1 sawing dry pine (No. DJK-SY:9), scarring V30x; a2 po­lish, 30min, V400x; b1 sawing fresh pine (No. DJK-SY:10), scarring V30x; b2 polish, 30min D400x; c1 chop­ping dry pine (No. DJK-SY:8), scarring D30x; c2 rounding, 30min, R50x; d1 chopping fresh pine (No. DJK­SY:11), scarring D50x; d2 rounding, 30min, R60x; e1 whittling dry wood (No. DJK-SY:14), scarring; e2 rounding, 30min, R100x. Jiying Liu, Hong Chen, and Yiming Shen more developed than that by dry bamboo, but an exception is found on one specimen for sawing fresh bamboo, which develops polish less bright than that resulting from sawing dry bamboo. Based on the dy­namic observation of the multi-stage experiments, it can be suggested that the development of use-wear is more probably affected by working intensity. No apparent striations were observed under the op­tical microscope in our experiment. The development and appearance of the striations might be influen­ced by various factors, which needs to be further ex­plored in the future. Use-wear features and patterns of wood-work­ing Many experimental and archaeological studies have been conducted to explore the characteristics of wood­working traces. It is summarized that the use-wear resulting from working on woody materials of me­dium hardness mainly consists of two categories: first, the more common smooth, bright and domed polish with occasional flat striations (Shea 1992; Yerkes et al. 2003; 2012); second, the continuous distribution of shallow feathered scars of large and/or medium size, and especially with the typical marks of rolled-over shaped scars along the working edges (see Chen et al. 2008.Fig. 3.8; Odell 1981; 1996; Shen 2001). Comparison of use-wear patterns between bam­boo-working and wood-working Our experiments show that there are some similarities and differences between the use-wear resulting from bam­boo-working and wood-work­ing on flints (Fig. 5). Rolled-over scars are com­monly produced by process­ing both bamboo and wood, and are indicative of working with other woody materials, as suggested in previous ex­periments (e.g., Odell 1996; Shen 2001; Chen et al. 2008). The characteristics of micro-fractural scarring, especially its distribution patterns, are in close relation to the work­ing motion. The patterns of scars caused by whittling and sawing these two materials are similar. More differences can be observed on the specimens for chopping ac­tivity: bamboo-chopping tends to produce more scars with stepped termination and overlapped distribu­tion, while scars produced by chopping wood are re­latively smaller, presenting some medium and small notches on the edge ridge. Hinged scars often exist in association with processing dry wood and bam­boo. It has been demonstrated by a large number of ex­periments that a distinctive polish can be formed by different types of wood and various working mo­tions. Usually bright or very bright with a smooth texture, the surface of the polish is rarely flat but appears to have a fluted or domed morphology (e.g., Keeley 1980; Shen 2001; Wang 2008). Similar featu­res correspond to the polish produced on specimens for bamboo-sawing and bamboo-chopping. More si­milarities exist on the edge rounding, which is cha­racterized by medium and heavy rounding. In addition, rough and moderate bright polish was observed in the wood-working experiments. How­ever, under approximately the same conditions the range and distribution of polish resulting from bam­boo-working are more extensive and well-linked. In the sawing task, bamboo polish tends to link toge­ther and seems like a net in a zone, but wood polish tends to form numerous short lines. Bamboo polish is brighter than wood polish caused by chopping. Ge­nerally, soft and fresh wood or bamboo produces Use-wear experimental studies for differentiating flint tools processing bamboo from wood more polish on the tool surface than hard and dry wood or bam­boo after the same use duration (also see Keeley 1980; Vaughan 1985). Conclusion The experiments and results de­scribed above indicate that the features and patterns of micro-fractural scarring, edge round­ing and polish caused by bam­boo-working and wood-work­ing could be identified under the 3D digital microscope. Based on our experiment and other similar studies, it is de­monstrated that more similari- Fig. 5. Comparison between the use-wear resulting from bamboo-work- ties exist between the use-wear ing and wood-working. a1 sawing fresh bamboo (No. DJK-SY:4), 30min, resulting from bamboo-working well-linked brighter polish, D400x; a2 chopping dry bamboo (No. DJK-and wood-working on flints, in-SY:6), stepped and overlapped scarring, 30min, D30x; a3 chopping cluding the pattern and distribu-fresh bamboo (No. DJK-SY:13), 30min, stepped scarring, V30x; b1 saw-tion of scarring, as well as edge ing fresh pine (No. DJK-SY:10), 30min, bright polish, D400x; b2 chop­ ping dry pine (No. DJK- SY:8), 30min, scarring, D30x; b3 chopping rounding. The distinction and fresh pine (No. DJK-SY:11), 30min, scarring, D50x. connection to working motions appear stronger than that to the contact materials. The characteristics of scarring can be used to under­stand the movement of tools, the brightness, mor­phology, and distribution of polish are also useful to identify the specific working motion. Notably, there are a few differences allowing us to distinguish the use-wear caused by bamboo-working from that by wood-working, which should be con­sidered in terms of a set of features rather than a single element. The most obvious distinction is that more stepped and overlapped scars and brighter po­lish are produced by bamboo-working than wood­working. Moreover, the range and distribution of po­lish resulting from bamboo-working are more exten­sive and well-linked. In the case of sawing activity, bamboo polish tends to link together and seems like a net in a zone, but wood polish tends to form nu­merous short lines. Although the resulting bamboo-working polish seems like that from reed processing (see Vaughan 1985; Jensen 1994), it is distinguish­able when the light edge rounding and small feath­ered scarring are taken into consideration. It is worth noting that striations are often seen as linear indicators of working motion in the high-po­wer analysis. However, our experimental results show that the distribution of scarring and polish is closely related to the specific movement of the tools, which could be used to infer the working motion. The absence of striations on most specimens might be attributed to the raw material or other factors. This study also proves that the optical 3D digital microscope used in this work has great potential to conduct integrative use-wear analysis. The capabili­ties of live depth composition and advanced imag­ing enable observation and documentation of wear traces and their formation with more details and in more extensive areas on tools. The presentation and description of traces can be more readily perceived and easily understood, which could be helpful for analysing a large sample of stone tools. Since nume­rous variables might influence the development of use-wear, more experiments and use-wear analyses on archaeological stone tools are needed in the fu­ture. Jiying Liu, Hong Chen, and Yiming Shen ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This paper was supported by the Provincial Social Science Foundation of Zhejiang (Grant No. 18NDJC165YB), The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central University, National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 15CKG003), Provincial Science Foundation of Zhejiang (Grant No. LY16D020001), and Zhijiang Junior So­cial Science Scholars Program of Zhejiang Province. Thanks to Professor Guoding Song at the Department of Scientific History and Archaeometry, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, for providing us with stone raw materials to manufacture experimental specimens. We would also like to thank all the operators from the De­partment of Cultural Heritage and Museology, Zhejiang University for helping in conducting the experiments. . References Belitzky S., Goren-Inbar N., and Werker E. 1991. A middle Pleistocene wooden plank with man-made polish. Jour­nal of Human Evolution 20: 349–353. Blench R. 2013. 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A case study from the settlement of Shir, Syria Laura Dietrich, Dörte Rokitta-Krumnow, and Oliver Dietrich German Archaeological Institute, Orient-Department, Berlin, DE ldietrich@zedat.fu-berlin.de doerte.rokitta-krumnow@dainst.de< oliver.dietrich@dainst.de ABSTRACT – Our contribution explores the possibilities of inferring the functions of Late Neolithic projectile points from the settlement of Shir, Syria. Use-wear and metrical values are applied to dif­ferentiate between arrowheads, darts and thrusting spears, followed by a discussion of hints for use for hunting or as weapons for interpersonal conflict. Weapons get larger and more visible exactly in the moment when hunting declines as a basis for subsistence. This economical transformation would have produced considerable change for individuals who previously defined themselves as hunters. The social practice of hunting may (at least partially) have been substituted by prowess in interper­sonal conflict. KEY WORDS – Neolithic; Near East; projectile points; Shir; warfare Pomen projektilov v ;asu poznega neolitika v severnem Levantu. {tudijski primer iz najdi[;a Shir v Siriji IZVLE.EK – V prispevku raziskujemo mo.nosti, kako sklepamo o namenu pozno neolitskih projekti­lov iz najdi..a Shir v Siriji. Za razlikovanje med pu..i.nimi konicami, pu..icami in sulicami smo uporabili analizo sledov uporabe in metri.ne podatke, vse to pa nadgradili z razpravo o sledovih uporabe pri lovu ali kot oro.je pri medosebnih spopadih. Oro.je postane namre. ve.je in bolj opaz-no ravno v trenutku, ko se zmanj.a vloga lova kot osnovnega sredstva za pre.ivetje. Tak.na gospodar-ska preobrazba bi pomenila znatno spremembo za posameznike, ki so se pred tem identificirali pred­vsem kot lovci. Dru.ben obi.aj lova bi lahko bil (vsaj deloma) nadome..en s spretnostjo v medoseb­nih spopadih. KLJU.NE BESEDE – neolitik; Bli.nji Vzhod; projektili; Shir; vojskovanje Introduction Conflict and warfare studies have constituted impor-defensive buildings, phenomena of site abandon-tant research focusses within archaeology in recent ment, spatial analysis of site distribution and evi-years (Guilaine, Zammit 2005; Livingstone Smith dence for trauma in bones are among the proposed 2009; Martin, Frayer 1997; Meller, Schefzik 2015; archaeological markers for conflict (Ferguson 2013; Thorpe 2005). The origin and genesis of interperso-Glencross, Boz 2014; Müller-Neuhof 2005.129–163; nal conflicts, war, their forms and probable causes, Müller-Neuhof 2014a). Based on these finds or on and their traces in the archaeological record are ethnographic analogies, generalized as well as small-much debated also for the Near Eastern Neolithic scale conflicts with mostly economic causes were pro­(Clare 2010; Müller-Neuhof 2005; 2014a; 2014b). posed for this epoch and region (Clare 2010; Mül-Site structures, the existence of fortifications or of ler-Neuhof 2014a). DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.21 The meaning of projectile points in the Late Neolithic of the Northern Levant. A case study from the settlement of Shir, Syria Weapons as a conflict marker were taken into consi­deration to a lesser degree. This is partly due to the difficult differentiation between weapons used for conflict and those used for hunting (with the ex­ception of maceheads, for which an use in hunting would be less likely) – in an epoch in which hunt­ing still represents a major basis of subsistence (Mül­ler-Neuhof 2014a-b; Scheibner 2016). This is parti­cularly the case for the Early Neolithic (Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN), 9600–7000 BC) of the Levant. A stronger possibility of linking weapons and conflict seems to exist only toward the end of the Neolithic, in the Late PPNB and Early Pottery Neolithic (PN) (c. 7500 to 6000/5600 BC) (Hours et al. 1994). A supra-regional, general change of the subsistence basis takes place during that period, marked by the declin­ing importance of hunting (and therefore of the use of weapons in this scope) and the completion of the domestication processes both of animals and plants (Abbo et al. 2017; Asouti, Fuller 2013; Vigne 2015), the extended cultivation of plants, animal husbandry and the exploitation of milk (Evershed et al. 2008; Russell 2010; Scheibner 2016.110–125, 210–218, with bibliography), the invention of pottery (Nieu­wenhuyse 2009; Nieuwenhuyse et al. 2010) and the spread of food storage (Bartl 2004). Archaeozoolo­gical records show a decline in the number of bones of wild animals in the finds along with a simulta­neous rise in the number of bones of domesticated animals (Scheibner 2016.235, Fig. 4.47–48). It is not entirely clear how demography and settle­ments evolved at the end of the PPNB in the North­ern Levant, and most probably major regional dif­ferences in their development have to be assumed. Some reconstruction models include a reduction of settlement sizes and densities in the Late Neolithic (Bocquet-Appel, Bar-Yosef 2008). Furthermore, re-gionalization and an interruption of the long-distance trade networks of the PPNB (Asouti 2006) have been postulated (e.g., Watkins 2008). Severe climate change (the 8.2k-event: Verheyden et al. 2008; We-ninger et al. 2005) was also suggested, followed by the development and spread of pastoralism as a sub­sistence strategy (e.g., Russell 2010). Climate change and subsequent lack of resources are assumed to have caused social stress, resulting in supra-regional, ‘politically’ motivated inter-group conflicts and large-scale migrations through Anatolia, to the West (Clare et al. 2008; Clare, Weninger 2016). The most representative weapons in Neolithic assem­blages, including the Late Neolithic, are ‘projectile points’, i.e. pointed weapons, which have been ad­dressed as arrows, darts and spears; sling stones are also numerous (Borrell, .tefanisko 2016; Gopher 1994; Korfmann 1972; Müller-Neuhof 2005.167– 207; Rosenberg 2009; Shea 2006; 2013.238–249). The notion of ‘projectile points’ comprises triangu­lar to biconical pieces of flint, usually between 2 to 10cm long and less than 3cm wide (Shea 2013.238). The development of the shapes of projectile points from the Epipaleolithic to the Late Neolithic in the Levant does not seem to follow one common, supra-regional line; major differences between the South­ern and the Northern Levant were noticed (Shea 2013.238–249). These include discrepancies in sha­pes, which could have a functional or stylistic mean­ing (Gopher 1994.22), and a disparity in their sizes, with north Levantine points being generally larger (Borrell, .tefanisko 2016.138). Elongated points were usually associated with the Middle PPNB (Bor­rell, .tefanisko 2016 with further reading), while for the PN a reduction in length was postulated (Shea 2013.248–249), following a short-time growth in the Late PPNB (Cauvin 1978). Regional and chrono­logical variability and changes in the shapes of the projectile points have been explained either by ma­jor changes in hunting techniques, implying morpho­logical and technological transformations, by shifts in weapon technologies and functions – or simply by stylistic reasons (Gopher 1994.22; Müller-Neuhof 2005.177–181). It has also been stressed that some objects, addressed as ‘projectile points’, were in fact used for different tasks based on their shapes (Ast­ruc, Russell 2013.338; Müller Neuhof 2014b with bibliography) and use-wear analyses seem to con­firm this hypothesis in some cases (Coskunsu, Le-morini 2001). Multifunctionality (weapon-tools or tool-weapons: see Chapman 1999) is very likely, and exclusions of functions cannot be made easily through functional macro- and microscopic analyses of use-wear. These analyses reflect often only the last steps in the biography of an object. Previous analytical approaches focused on typological distinc­tions and metrical analysis. The latter were used to differentiate between different weapon categories like arrows, darts and spears by way of comparing the dimensions of archaeological finds to ethnogra­phic data (Hughes 1998; Shea 2006; Shott 1997; Sisk, Shea 2011; Thomas 1978). The present study aims to decipher possible func­tions and social roles of projectile points from the Late Neolithic site of Shir, Syria. The site is particu­larly suitable for this analysis due to its long strati­graphical and chronological sequence and a high quantity of projectile points. Also projectile points Laura Dietrich, Dörte Rokitta-Krumnow, and Oliver Dietrich made from bone, which seem to be very rare, consti­tute an important part of the analysis. The Neolithic settlement of Shir Shir is located c. 12km northwest of the city of Hama on a 30m high, natural terrace above the Orontes tributary Sarut. The site, with an overall size of 4ha, was discovered in 2005 during the Orontes survey conducted by the Damascus Branch of the German Archaeological Institute under the direction of Karin Bartl in cooperation with the Syrian Department of Antiquities. Excavations were undertaken in three areas of the site between 2006 and 2010, accumulat­ing to a total of 2350m2 excavated (Bartl et al. 2008; 2009; 2012; Nieuwenhuyse 2009; Rokitta-Krum-now 2012). Settlement activities date exclusively to the 7th millennium BC. An earlier settlement phase was excavated in the southern area (7000 to 6600 BC), a later phase in the central and northern areas (6600 to 6200/6100 BC). As far as could be recon­structed from the excavations and the geophysical prospections, Shir represents a typical Late Neolithic village from the Northern Levant with several clus­ters of houses. The site’s special importance arises from an exceptionally long settlement history of nearly 800 years, covering the Late Neolithic period, its very well preserved stratigraphy, the very early occurrence of pottery on site (dark faced burnished ware and later coarse ware: Nieuwenhuyse 2009), and evidence for significant changes in architecture with the appearance of large, specialized buildings for storage (Bartl 2014; 2017; Dietrich in prep.; Dietrich, Lelek Tvetmarken 2015). The Southern Area was excavated most extensively. Here, six subsequent layers were noticed, ranging from the early to middle 7th millennium. The earli­er layers (I-III) are mainly characterized by single-room buildings, sometimes with annexes and much of the daily activities going on outside the houses. The later layers (IV-VI) yielded multi-room buildings with inner courtyards (Bartl 2017; Pfeiffer in print). The functional interpretation of projectile points More than 190 projectile points have been found in this area. Most of them were made of flint. Only 48 items are fully preserved of the total number of 172 flint points. Most of the broken pieces show signs of impact, e.g., burin-like blows, hinting at an inter­pretation as projectile points and not as awls or drills. The types are dominated by large ‘Amuq-1 and ‘Amuq-2 points followed by Ugarit and Byblos points; one Bouqras point and three Levallois points complete the assemblage (Rokitta-Krumnow 2012) (Fig. 1). The persistence of PPN lithic reduction tech­niques in the PN period is noticeable, and, for exam­ple, naviform core-and-blade technology producing long bidirectional blades is present at all stages of oc­ cupation (Rokitta-Krumnow 2011). Projectiles of flint show a high varia­bility in size and weight (Fig. 2), rang­ing from 3.3g to 26.4g weight and 4.2cm to 11.8cm size. Projectile points made from bone are generally rare in Neolithic assembla­ges, or they have not been recogniz­ed as such so far. Experimental stu­dies as well as ethnographic exam­ples have pointed out the high effec­tivity of bone projectiles (Letour­neux, Pétillon 2008; Waguespack et al. 2009), which lends some proba­bility to the latter explanation. At Shir, fifteen bone projectile points were identified, and an additional twelve objects may possibly be ad­dressed as such. Osseous points imi­tate the lithic projectiles in shape (Fig. 3). Use-wear traces like broken tips hint at their use as projectiles. This specific use-wear was also ob­ The meaning of projectile points in the Late Neolithic of the Northern Levant. A case study from the settlement of Shir, Syria served with objects classified as awls based on their shapes, but is not typical for that category of tools. Other traces of use-wear include splinters on one end and to a lesser extent fissures along the shaft. Bone projectile points have relatively symmetrical shapes and are well-balanced through their wide blade with pointed ends. Hence, the shape displays aerodynamic characteristics. This is not the case with objects classified as awls, so we consider this specific shape as being diagnostic for an interpretation as pro­jectile points. Typical awls in Shir have tubular shafts, made from an entire or half hollow long bone with one pointed end. It is however difficult to differen­tiate between fragmented projectile points and awl fragments. It is therefore assumed that among the objects classified as awls several projectile points are hidden. This is again tentative evidence for the origi­nal number of bone projectile points being higher. We are aware that our identification of the tools’ functions as projectile points is based on shapes and macroscopic use-wear analysis and is missing micro-scopic analyses. Microscopic exa­mination was planned but then not possible because of the poli­tical situation in Syria. Also, as mentioned above, observable tra­ces often only reflect the last of a long series of uses of any given tool. However, the great quantity of other pointed osseous tools used as drills in Shir and a cer­tain standardization of their forms may constitute arguments to exclude the differently shap­ed lithic and aerodynamic bone points from this category. As mentioned above, size and weight have been used as indicators to distinguish between different kinds of projectile points. In some mechanical cal­culations, mass is an important parameter for the distinction between arrowhead and spear (Borrell, .tefanisko 2016; Sisk, Shea 2011). These calcula­tions are based on the assumption that, in the case of a bow and arrow, there is a firm relationship be­tween the arrow shaft, the arrowhead, and the bow. Accordingly, the arrowhead should not exceed 12% of the total weight of the arrow shaft (Beckhoff 1966) in order to hit the target. Korfmann (1972.33– 35) confirmed these estimates by applying a relation of 1:7 between arrow and arrowhead. There is also a firm relationship between a bow and the weight of an arrow, with the consequence that the weight of an arrowhead can be estimated, too. The most practical weight for an arrowhead is estimated at c. 8g, although this applies only to modern-day bows with complex designs. A weight up to 5g may be esti­mated for prehistoric arrowheads; ethnographic stu­dies and calculations have affirmed such approxima­ tions (Bretzke et al. 2006; Cattelain 1997). This value will also be applied in the following discussion. As for projectiles catapulted with spear-throwers, ethnographic stud­ies and experiments on weights de­fine an ideal weight-range between 9g and 70g (Bretzke et al. 2006; Hu­ghes 1998). By adding feathers, the weight of a dart can be reduced (Hu­ghes 1998). Following these schemes for inter­preting projectile weights, a total of 21 points made from bone and 45 Laura Dietrich, Dörte Rokitta-Krumnow, and Oliver Dietrich from stone from Shir were analysed (Figs. 4 and 5). Despite the small numerical basis, an interesting picture emerged about the development of the pro­jectile points. It can be recognized that in the early Layers III and IV as well as in Layer V the weights noticeably locate within the lower (especially bone projectile points) as well as median zones, that is, within the range of possible arrowheads and darts for spear-throwers. The weight values for spear-thro­wers increase already in Layer Vb and even more so in Layer VI (Fig. 4). In order to clarify this picture, reference was also made to size parameters in the analysis. Various stu­dies on projectiles do not pay sole regard to the length, but far more to the surface area of the cross-section. This ‘area’ is referred to as the ‘tip cross-sec­tional surface’ (TCSA), a parameter which basically links size and shape of the projectile with the beha­viour at the moment of its penetration into animal or human tissue, and the thus expended energy (Bor­rell, .tefanisko 2016; Sisk, Shea 2011; Hughes 1998; Shea 2006; Thomas 1978). The TCSA value is calculated with the formula 0.5 x maximum width x thickness. Points with a low value are smaller, thin­ner and penetrate tissue more quickly. A higher va­lue, on the other hand, is indicative of wider and thic­ker points. Based on ethnographic metric data from North America and Australia (Borrell, .tefanisko 2016.140, Tab. 1; Bretzke et al. 2006.70; Shott 1997; Thomas 1978), TCSA values between 13 and 53 for arrows and 20 and 174, e.g., an average between 57 and 103 for darts can be expected (Borrell, .tefanis­ko 2016.140, Tab. 1). Values for thrusting spears range between 79 and 257 (Bretzke et al. 2006.70; Shea 2006) and between 7 and 222 for experimental­ly produced spears (Borrell, .tefanisko 2016.Tab. 1). Cycles of recycling and reshaping could not be taken into consideration in the present analysis. The development of TCSA-values for Shir results in a pattern similar to that of the development of weights (Fig. 5). Smaller, thinner projectiles that would usu­ally be used as arrowheads and spear-thrower darts appear mainly in Layers III-IV and less so in Layer V, while larger, wider projectiles are represented pre­dominantly in Layer VI. Prestige weapons in a changing world One possible way of interpreting this result based on the above mentioned weight differences among the darts with and without feathers is to view the lighter, smaller projectiles in the early layers as ar­rowheads and feathered spear-thrower darts, and the heavier ones in Layer VI and the later settlement as spear-thrower darts without feathers or as spear­heads. They are already present in the early layers, albeit only in small numbers, but markedly increa­se in Layer VI. According to Shea’s experiments, the values shown in Figures 3 and 4 (11g or 79mm) may represent the lower boundary of the value zone for thrusting spears (Bretzke et al. 2006.70; Shea 2006), while by contrast throwing spears may weigh less (Bretzke et al. 2006.73). These considerations lead to two more interpretational possibilities: . During the periods of the earlier layers at Shir (III–IV, partly V), arrowheads, darts and feathered darts were produced. Thrusting spears were either rarely made, or made from perishable material, such as wood. . During the periods corresponding to the later la­yers, especially Layer VI, arrowheads declined, while darts and/or throwing spears continued to be uti­lized. A change in the basic procurement of raw ma­terials cannot be assumed, as the often-employed flint was locally available. This ‘enlargement’ of spears could therefore signal an increased utiliza­tion of thrusting spears. Thrusting spears can be used both as short-range as well as long-range weapons. If the coeval development of daggers and maceheads – appearing only in the later layers (Fig. 6) – is con­sidered, which served primarily as short-range wea­pons and probably had social implications, being used as prestige-weapons (Müller-Neuhof 2005.196), then the development of large projectile points, pos­sibly for spears, may be linked to this process. Surprisingly, this development is opposed to the ge­neral development of other formal lithic tools, which decrease in size (Rokitta-Krumnow 2011) (Fig. 7). Apparently, the projectile points seem to have play­ed an important role in the community, since their development follows the opposite direction. Com­parisons to other sites in the Northern Levant with several occupational phases show a general devel­opment toward longer points at the End of the Early PN (Rokitta-Krumnow 2011.222, Fig. 12; Mezraa Teleilat: Coskunsu 2007; Tell el-Kerkh: Arimura 2004; Ain el-Kerkh: Arimura 2007; Tell Halula: Bor­rell 2006). This is accompanied by a loss of formal tools in favour of ad-hoc and expedient tools (Rokit-ta-Krumnow 2011.290). How can we interpret the possible appearance of large, probably prestige weapons in Shir? The deve­ The meaning of projectile points in the Late Neolithic of the Northern Levant. A case study from the settlement of Shir, Syria lopment of larger projectile points in the Late PPNB in the Northern Levant has been linked with the (possible ritual) hunting of larger animals like au­rochs (Cauvin 1978). Deposits of auroch bones in archaeological finds seem to confirm the special sig­nificance of the hunting and consumption of these animals in social activities like feasting (Pöllath et al. 2018; Russell, Martin 2005; Russell et al. 2009). The archaeozoological analyses from Shir are still in progress, but some deposits of aurochs bones were observed. However, as a general trend a reduction in the per­centage of hunted animals is noticeable between the Early and the Late Neolithic in the Levant (Scheibner 2016.235–237, Fig. 4.47; 4.48). Bones of domesti­cated animals constitute about 70% of the assembla­ges in the Late Neolithic, and hint at a maximum use of domestic animals in this time and a decrease of the contribution of wild animals to the food spectrum. Also, a constant reduction of game size from the Upper Palaeoli­thic to Late Neolithic is noti­ceable (Scheibner 2016.212– 217). This general develop­ment apparently does not co­incide with the development of the length of arrowheads and spears. The most charac­teristic weapon and one of the most characteristic objects of the Early Neolithic (PPNB) are large tanged points made on bidirectional blades (Ab­bes 2003; Borrell, .tefanisko 2016), used for middle-sized game, while for example du­ring the Natufian small lithic-tipped projectiles coincide with large game in archaeo-zoological assemblages (Boc­quentin, Bar-Yosef 2004; Yes-hurun, Yaroshevich 2014). Thus, there is no simple cor­relation between small pro­jectile points and small ani­mals on one side, and large projectile points and large animals on the other. Additio­nally, assuming that the large points actually represent darts and/or spears, then their ex­ clusive use for subsistence hunting would signify a lower range in variation and a lesser ability to adapt hunting techniques than with the combined utiliza­tion of spears/sling shots and the bow and arrow, as the latter are far more versatile and possess several technical advantages (Churchill 1993; Whittaker 2013). Taking the association of larger projectile points with other weapons in the later layers from Shir into account, a more complex significance is proposed, centring on representation within (ritual) hunting and interpersonal conflict. In the numerous murals at the contemporary set­tlement of Çatalhöyük, Anatolia, wild animals and hunting scenes predominate (Hodder 2006.195– 204). Depictions at Çatalhöyük show large danger­ous animals surrounded by small hunters, who at­tack them with different kinds of weapons (bows Laura Dietrich, Dörte Rokitta-Krumnow, and Oliver Dietrich and possibly bolas are visible, spears and other projectile wea­pons like boomerangs are also present: Hodder 2006.197, Fig. 84, 94, Fig. 38). Such scenes have occasionally been interpret­ed as attempts to transfer the strength of the large dangerous animals to human beings (Hod­der 2006.197–198; Lewis-Wil­liams 2004), or from a perspec­tive of ritually acquiring hunting skills (Hodder 2006.197, Fig. 84), as a successful hunt not only would have an important symbo­lic meaning but would also bear the bonus for individuals or even dominant groups of gaining social prestige (Hod­der 2006.203–204). The weapons depicted at Ça­talhöyük (Hodder 2006.94, Fig. 38) are clearly rec­ognizable, as the individuals are habitually shown with their hands raised and their weapons aiming at the animals. Such representations denote a con­scious manner of depicting the action as the main subject. Along the same lines, it is likewise conceiva­ble that at Shir weapons were made larger in order to render them more visible. Symbolically, an ampli­fication of human strength in battle with wild ani­mals or human opponents would thus be achieved through an enlargement of the size of the weapons. The later projectile points from Shir would conse­quently not only reveal specific activities, but also specific groups of agents, with regard to age/stage of initiation, gender, clan, etc. (Carter 2011). Armed conflict between human beings is not directly archaeologically attested at Shir (for example through burnt layers, fortified complexes, large depots of sling stones). However, conflict and demonstrations of power by small groups or individuals can be assum­ed for the period in question on a supra-regional echelon (Clare 2010; Clare et al. 2008). To sum up, at the end of the PPNB and Early PN in the Northern Levant, large visible weapons appear. This phenomenon could have a connection to hunt­ing, but it appears exactly at the moment when hunt­ing declines as a basis for subsistence. This transfor­mation would have produced considerable change regarding the social roles of individuals, who previ­ously defined themselves as hunters. It seems possi­ble that the social practice of hunting was (at least partially) substituted by prowess in interpersonal conflict as a means to perpetuate and reinforce iden­tities in this situation of change, or transform aspects of them into a new one, that of the warrior, defend­ing the new settlements and their agriculturally used hinterlands. Symbolically charged weapons of im­pressive size could have played a significant role here. Large-scale conflict on a supra-regional level does not need to be proposed or pro­ven for this scenario, rather an interpretation of the use of these weapons especially for conflict on the local level with­in smaller groups seems pro­bable. These conflicts might be individually motivated and may have had a denotation in the individual development of a single person, generating social status and (new) social identities. The meaning of projectile points in the Late Neolithic of the Northern Levant. A case study from the settlement of Shir, Syria ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The settlement of Shir was excavated by the German Archaeological Institute, Damascus Branch of the Orient-Department (project leader Karin Bartl) in cooperation with the Direction Générale des Antiquités et de Musées (DGAM, Damascus). Work was funded by the German Research Foundation. . References Abbes F. 2003. Les Outillages Néolithiques en Syrie Du Nord. Méthode de débitage et gestion laminaire durant le PPNB. 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Journal of Archaeological Science 44: 61–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2014.01.019 back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) Impressed Ware blade production of Northern Dalmatia (Eastern Adriatic, Croatia) in the context of Neolithisation Sonja Ka;ar Laboratoire TRACES UMR 5608, Université de Toulouse 2 – Jean Jaures, Toulouse, FR sonja.kacar@gmail.com ABSTRACT – The lithic assemblages from the principal early Neolithic sites in Northern Dalmatia have been analysed with respect to the technological aspects and principles of schéma and chaîne opératoire, débitage economy and raw material economy. Northern Dalmatia, the most fertile region of the Eastern Adriatic, hosts the most important Neolithic open-air sites. Early Neolithic is associat­ed with the Impressed Ware culture and dates back to c. 6000–5400 cal BC. The Early Neolithic lithic assemblages are characterized by the pressure blade production techniques on high-quality Gargano cherts reflecting important socio-economic and technical mutations that are specific to the Neolithic. Moreover, the almost exclusive reliance on these exogenous cherts emphasizes the social aspects of such networks and reinforces the idea of cultural uniformity of Dalmatian and Apulian Impressed Ware. KEY WORDS – lithic technology; Neolithisation; Dalmatia; Adriatic; Impressed ware; pressure flaking; Castelnovian Izdelava klin tipa Impresso v severni Dalmaciji (Vzhodni Jadran, Hrva[ka) v kontekstu neolitizacije IZVLE.EK – Analizirali smo zbire kamnitih orodij iz najpomembnej.ih zgodnje neolitskih najdi.. v severni Dalmaciji, pri .emer smo upo.tevali predvsem tehnolo.ke aspekte in principa schéma in chaîne opératoire, ekonomijo kamnitega odpada in ekonomijo surovin. Najpomembnej.a neolitska najdi..a na prostem so locirana v Severni Dalmaciji, ki je najbolj rodovitna regija na Vzhodnem Ja­dranu. Zgodnji neolitik tukaj povezujemo s kulturo Impresso, ki datira v .as ok. 6000 do 5400 pr. n. .t. Zgodnje neolitski zbiri kamnitih orodij so vezani na tehnologijo izdelave klin izdelanih iz visoko kakovostnih ro.encev, ki prihajajo iz polotoka Gargano v Italiji, kar odseva pomembne dru.beno­ekonomske in tehni.ne spremembe, ki so specifi.ne za obdobje neolitika. Poleg tega uporaba ro.en-ca, ki prihaja skoraj izklju.no iz drugih pokrajin, poudarja dru.bene vidike tak.nih mre. in krepi idejo o kulturni enotnosti v dalmatinski in apulski kulturi Imresso. KLJU.NE BESEDE – tehnologija izdelave kamnitih orodij; neolitizacija; Dalmacija; Jadran; izdelki tipa Impresso; tehnika lomljenja pod pritiskom; kultura Castelnovian Introduction In the context of European Prehistory, studies of the focusing on typological observations (Korona 2009). lithic industries of the Early Neolithic period in Dal-More detailed data is available from Southern Dalma­matia have long been neglected or have been limit-tian cave sites, but the assemblages are small and/or ed to typological aspects (.e.uk 1974; 1976; Müller from insecure contexts (Perho., Altherr 2011; Fo­1994; Bass 1998). Regarding Northern Dalmatia, renbaher, Perho. 2015; 2017; .o.i. Klind.i. et al. only one study, that from the open-air site Crno Vri-2015). Recently, Zlatko Perho. and Sta.o Forenba-lo, has been published in detail, but again mostly her opened new areas of research that consider the DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.22 Impressed Ware blade production of Northern Dalmatia (Eastern Adriatic, Croatia) in the context of Neolithisation typo-technological aspects together with the raw ma­terial economy and modalities of distribution (Fo-renbaher, Perho. 2015; 2017). However, synthesis work on the Early Neolithic as­semblages combining both techno-typological aspects (concepts of schéma opératoire and chaîne opéra­toire) and the débitage economy with raw material economy is still lacking. Lithic assemblages reflect the intentions of prehis­toric knappers and the procedures they performed in their project realization, i.e. the choice of raw ma­terials, methods and techniques employed, etc. While in some Mesolithic societies (i.e. the Early Mesoli­thic of the Balkans) their conceptual and operative schemes often depend on techno-environmental fac­tors, with the Neolithic the socio-cultural aspects of lithic productions are emphasized (cf. Inizan et al. 1999; Perles 2009). Therefore, the study of the Early Neolithic chipped stone assemblages not only informs us of the techno-economical needs of the first farmers, but illustrates their social and ideological choices and relations. The strategies of the lithic production can reveal the contacts and interactions between the groups and their social and symbolic conceptions, but can also represent the routes and mechanisms of Neolithisa­tion (Perles 2009; Forenbaher, Perho. 2017). Moreover, in the context of Neolithisation, the study of chipped stone industries is essential to our under­standing of the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition. In Fig. 1. Map of the main Dalmatian and Apulian impressed ware sites and the other sites mentioned in text. Framed: study area. Dotted lines: the hy­pothesized position of coastline during the 6th millennium BC (based on bathymetric charts and the presumption that the sea level was –10 to –15m lower than today (cf. Suri. 2006; Fontana et al. 2014). Dots: open-air sites, stars: caves. 1 Pokrovnik, 2 Ze­munica, 3 Vela spila, 4 Na-kovana, 5 Gudnja, 6 Crve­na Stijena, 7 Coppa Nevi-gata, 8 Rippa Tetta, 9 Mas-seria Giufredda, 10 Rendi- contrast to pottery, lithic production is an industry that the last hunter-gatherers and first farmers have in common. It consequently appears the most suit­able production to evidence plausible generic links between those two types of societies. Did the first farming communities use the same methods and techniques in their lithic production as the last hun­ter-gatherers? Do the general schémas opératoires differ from Neolithic to Mesolithic sites? Are there notable differences in strategies of raw material pro­curement from a diachronical perspective? In the literature dealing with the Mesolithic/Neoli­thic transition in the Eastern Adriatic, chipped stone industries have served either as evidence of cultural continuity (J. K. Koz³owski 1982; S. Koz³owski 2009; Marijanovi. 2007; 2009; Korona 2009) or for cultu­ral rupture (Müller 1994). Typology was the only basis for such claims, while the hypothesis for ‘con­tinuity’ was mostly founded on Montenegrin cave assemblages (Crvena Stijena, Odmut) (Benac 1955; Markovi. 1985; J. K. Koz³owski 1982; S. Koz³owski 2009; Marijanovi. 2009). Obviously, however, the uncertain stratigraphic contexts of the Montenegrin assemblages cannot be used as one reference data­base for the whole Eastern Adriatic. In general, lithic assemblages from Dalmatia reflect the complex strategies of lithic production as seen in the complex economy of raw material and a certain degree of techno-economic specialisation (Forenba-her, Perho. 2017; Mazzucco et al. 2018; Podrug et al. in press a; in press b; Ka.ar 2019). This paper aims to examine the strategies of blade production na, 11 Pulo di Molfetta, 12 Scamuso, 13 Su.ac (background map designed by F. Tessier). Sonja Ka;ar in order to investigate its techno-economic and social aspects. As such it attempts to shed some new light on Neolithisation in the region. Materials and methods This study is based on Neolithic lithic assemblages from some main Impressed-ware sites in the .ibenik and Zadar regions (Northern Dalmatia): Ra.inovac, Vrbica, Konjevrate, Crno Vrilo, Tinj and Polje Ni.e Vrcelja (Fig. 1). All the sites are open-air settlements, but the degree of research differs among them, as well as excavation strategies and methods employed. Konjevrate, Vrbica and Polje Ni.e Vrcelja were part of rescue excavations where large surfaces were open: c. 487m2 in Polje Ni.e Vrcelja, c. 160m2 in Konjevra­te and c. 50m2 in Vrbica (Brusi. 1995; Men.u.i. 1998; Podrug 2013; Horvat 2015). Systematic exca­vations were carried on Crno Vrilo, where a total of 550m2 excavated area has yielded the remains of a Neolithic village with rectangular houses (Marijano­vi. 2009). Trial excavations were conducted in Tinj and Ra.ino­vac (Chapman et al. 1996; Podrug et al. in press a). In the latter only a small surface was open (4m2). Except Vrbica, which lacks the organic material, all the sites were radiocarbon dated (Tab. 1). All 14C dates mentioned in text have been recali­brated in OxCal v4.3 (Bronk Ramsey 2009) and Int Cal13 (Reimer et al. 2013). However, some dates and namely those obtained for Tinj should be dis­missed, as they show high standard deviation. Radio­carbon chronology ranges from the very beginning of 6th millennium calBC to the c. 5400 calBC. The earliest dates, around 6000/5900 cal BC, have been obtained from Ra.inovac in .ibenik county. Crno Vrilo and Konjevrate can be placed roughly between 5800 and 5500 cal BC. The youngest dates are ob­tained from Polje Ni.e Vrcelja, placing its occupation to the very end of the impressed-ware phase, c. 5500–5400 cal BC. Despite the lack of 14C dates for the Vrbica assemblage, the presence of one bifacial retouched point, typical for the Danilo phase and Danilo-like sickle insert (Mazzucco et al. 2018), might suggest its affiliation with the later phase of Impressed ware culture. Following this, it should be noted that the majority of Early Neolithic material studied in this work be­longs to the later phase of Impressed ware (from c. 5800 cal BC), while only one assemblage (Ra.inovac) can be dated to the very beginning of the Neolithic in the Adriatic region (c. 6000 cal BC) (Forenbaher et al. 2013; Forenbaher, Miracle 2014; McClure et al. 2014; Podrug et al. in press). However, the Ra.inovac assemblage doesn’t show any significant difference from the technological and petrological points of view with other, younger as­semblages. Moreover, according to available publi­shed data, as well as from the author’s personal ob­servations, the Early Neolithic assemblages of South­ern Dalmatia, dated between c. 6000 to 5500 cal BC, are probably characterized by the same schéma opé­ratoire, i.e. the same technology and raw material economy (Bass 1998; Marijanovi. 2005; Forenba-her, Kaiser 2008; Forenbaher, Perho. 2015; 2017; Drni. et al. 2018; Mazzucco et al. 2018). Thus, although this paper deals with the Early Neo­lithic lithic production of Northern Dalmatia, broad­er conclusions can be drawn that will concern the whole of Dalmatia. The question of the origin of the Neolithic chert in­dustries and its place within the discussion of Neoli­thisation is limited, since the Late Mesolithic sites are absent from the region. The only site in Dalmatia where Late Mesolithic occupation is clearly attested is Vela Spila on the island of Kor.ula, but the small quantities of collected lithic material do not allow any techno-typological and cultural attribution (.e­.uk, Radi. 2005; Vukosavljevi. 2012). However, when discussing the relevance of lithic studies in the Neolithisation process, in order to compare the Impressed ware industries with the previous periods, we refer to the Castelnovian lithic production strate­gies of adjacent regions (Collina 2009; Binder et al. 2012; Ferrari 2011; Ka.ar 2019). The Castelnovian techno-complex developed during the 7th millenni­um BC and characterizes the Late Mesolithic lithic assemblages of the central-western Mediterranean, but is absent from Croatia and Greece (Koz³owski 2009; Marchand, Perrin 2017). While its absence from Greece can be interpreted by the early pres­ence of Neolithic colons in this region (from c. 6700 cal BC), its absence from the Croatian littoral (both Dalmatia and Istria) is curious because analo­gous industries have been found in the neighbouring regions (Italian and Slovenian Karst, Po valley, Mon­tenegro) (Biagi 2003; Turk 2000; Mihailovi. 2009; Koz³owski 2009; Ferrari 2011; Kaczanowska, Koz-³owski 2017; Ka.ar 2019). We therefore think that the absence of Castelnovian finds along the Croatian coast is due to a lack of research and preservation Impressed Ware blade production of Northern Dalmatia (Eastern Adriatic, Croatia) in the context of Neolithisation Site Location County Stratigraphic Unit Analysis Laboratory Nr BP cal BC 2 sigma Material Comment Reference Crno Vrilo Zekic´, Ninski Dra[evac Zadar County B\IX\ 1 (upper part) 14 C Z-3399 7560 120 6651 6207 animal bone not reliable Marijanovic´ 2009 Crno Vrilo Zekic´, Ninski Dra[evac Zadar County A\IA\sterile (lower part) 14 C Z-3398 6400 110 5563 5205 animal bone not reliable Marijanovic´ 2009 Crno Vrilo Zekic´, Ninski Dra[evac Zadar County A\IA\1 (upper part) AMS Beta-222405 6500 60 5561 5338 bone collagen too young| Marijanovic´ 2009 Crno Vrilo Zekic´, Ninski Dra[evac Zadar County A\1A\ sterile (lower part) AMS Beta-222406 6820 50 5803 5629 bone collagen Marijanovic´ 2009 Crno Vrilo Zekic´, Ninski Dra[evac Zadar County A\1A\ sterile (lower part) AMS Poz-18395 6900 40 5881 5716 bone collagen Marijanovic´ 2009 Crno Vrilo Zekic´, Ninski Dra[evac Zadar County A\1A\1 (upper part) AMS Poz-18393 6925 35 5886 5731 bone collagen questionable Marijanovic´ 2009 Tinj Tinj, Benkovac Zadar County I (pit 1) 14 C GrN-15236 6980 160 6126 5619 high standard deviation Chapman et al. 1991 Tinj Tinj, Benkovac Zadar County I (pit 2) 14 C GrN-15237 6670 260 6081 5046 high standard deviation Chapman et al. 1991 Tinj Tinj, Benkovac Zadar County I (pit 3) 14 C GrN-15238 6280 210 5624 4770 high standard deviation Chapman et al. 1991 Polje ni/e Vrcelja Vrcelji, Benkovac Zadar County trench 1, upper part 14 C Beta-293840 6520 40 5559 5461 charcoral Horvat 2015 Polje ni/e Vrcelja Vrcelji, Benkovac Zadar County lower part 14 C Beta-293835 6480 50 5529 5331 animal bone Horvat 2015 Ra[inovac Piramatovci, Bribir {ibenik-Knin County SU 3 (upper part) AMS PSU-5612, UCIAMS-127394 7060 25 6001 5895 bone bos taurus McClure et al. 2014 Ra[inovac Piramatovci, Bribir {ibenik-Knin County SU 3 (lower part) AMS PSU-6492, UCIAMS-158546 7065 25 6004 5898 bone capra Podrug et al. in press a Konjevrate Konjevrate, {ibenik {ibenik-Knin County trench I, arbitrary layer 1 AMS PSU-5291, UCIAMS-116203 6655 25 5630 5537 bone ovis aries McClure et al. 2014 Konjevrate Konjevrate, {ibenik {ibenik-Knin County trench I, arbitrary layer 3 AMS PSU-5557, UCIAMS-119838 6175 30 5218 5038 bone ovis aries too late for Impressed ware McClure et al. 2014 Konjevrate Konjevrate, {ibenik {ibenik-Knin County trench III\ arbitrary layer 4 AMS PSUAMS-1431 6985 30 5980 5778 bone bos taurus McClure et al. 2018b Konjevrate Konjevrate, {ibenik {ibenik-Knin County bb\ arbitrary layer 8 AMS PSUAMS-1432 6950 45 5974 5733 mamal bone McClure et al. 2018b Konjevrate Konjevrate, {ibenik {ibenik-Knin County bb\ arbitrary layer 7 AMS PSUAMS-1433 7000 30 5984 5806 bone Capra hircus McClure et al. 2018b Tab. 1. Radiocarbon dates associated with Early Neolithic assemblages of Northern Dalmatia. Sonja Ka;ar factors (the sites could have been submerged due to the Holocene sea-level rise or buried under allu­vial deposits). Lithic analyses have been carried out according to the concepts of chaîne and schéma opératoire, dé­bitage economy and raw material economy (Leroi-Gourhan 1965; Pelegrin 1988; Inizian 1980; Perles 1980; 1990; 1991; Inizan et al. 1999; Soressi, Gene-ste 2011). When describing stone tools, the typol­ogy established by Didier Binder and further devel­oped by Thomas Perrin is generally used, but in its simplified form (Binder 1987; Perrin et al. 2017). Although the raw material was examined macrosco­pically by the author according to the protocol estab­lished by Bressy in 2003, we are here largely relying on the published and unpublished work of Perho. (Perho. 2009ab; Perho., Altherr 2011; Forenba-her, Perho. 2015; 2017; Vukosavljevi. et al. 2014; Vukosavljevi., Perho. 2017; Vujevi. et al. 2017; Perho., Ruka 2017). However, as his petrographic analysis on the assemblages mentioned in this arti­cle is still in progress, the results presented here should be considered preliminary. Our data will soon be correlated for a final publication, and here I take the opportunity to thank Perho. for allowing me use some of his preliminary results. Northern Dalmatia – geographic framework and subsistence strategies Northern Dalmatia, as a central part of the Eastern Adriatic region, includes Zadar and .ibenik-Knin county, and spreads roughly from the southern edge of the Velebit mountain to the north to Krka River to the south. In the west, the region includes the Ad­riatic Sea and the Dalmatian islands (from Pag to Zlarin) and, on the east, it spreads to the Dinara mountains which constitute the natural border be­tween Croatia and Bosnia. Unlike the Italian coast­line, which is low and accessible, the Croatian coast is well indented and high (the Dinaric mountain range falls abruptly towards the coast, except for few narrow coastal plains). The relief of Northern Dalmatia is, compared to other parts of the region, less pronounced and characterized by the relative richness of the plains, in particular Ravni Kotari and poljes around .ibenik. Almost all known Dalmatian open-air sites are situ­ated here, on the fertile soils and always close to water sources (Fig. 2). The region seems to have been rather densely pop­ulated during the Early Neolithic, with at least 20 open air-sites identified, the occupational sequence of 11 of which was confirmed by excavations (Hor-vat 2017; Podrug et al. in press a). There is still one obvious lack of data to inventory the zooarchaeological and archeobotanical record of the Early Neolithic in Northern Dalmatia, although in the present state of research, analysis broadly shows that the economy of the early Neolithic popu­lation was dominated by ovicaprines for a combined milk-meat husbandry strategy, and that agriculture is based on emmer, einkorn and barley (Radovi. 2011; Reed 2015; McClure et al. 2018a). According to the faunal record, it seems that hunt­ing and fishing played only a marginal role, although lithic kits might indicate this practice, notably with the presence of hunting equipment like trapeze ar­rowheads. However, trapeze arrowheads could have also been used in warfare or for some other pur­poses. The paucity of fishing equipment could be explained by the distance of the sites from the larg­er waterbodies, as well as by the perishability of the osseous material, but it can also reflect cultural choi­ces. In this regard, it is worth mentioning the results from the stable isotope analyses conducted recently on Early Neolithic humans from Zemunica cave (near Split in Southern Dalmatia), which show that the diet of these individuals was completely terres­trial, consisting mainly of domesticated animals (Guiry et al. 2017). Impressed Ware blade production of Northern Dalmatia (Eastern Adriatic, Croatia) in the context of Neolithisation The Neolithisation of the Eastern Adriatic The Neolithisation of the Eastern Adriatic region begins at the onset of the 6th millennium and it is associated with the Impressed ware culture. During period, the same culture, with some regional diffe­rences in ceramic production which evolved over time, spread on the Italian shore of the Adriatic. The earliest Neolithic sites of Northern Dalmatia are dated from the beginning of 6th millennium. They are thus contemporary with the oldest Neolithic oc­cupations of the Eastern Adriatic. In the light of new radiocarbon dates, Sta.o Forenbaher and Preston Miracle (2014) recently revisited their former model of Neolithisation (Forenbaher, Miracle 2005; 2006) arguing that some interactions between local fora­gers and newcomer farmers (whose presence seems only evidenced in caves) took place all over the Ad­riatic coast during the beginning of 6th millennium and that the real colonization (settlement founda­tion) occurred about 150 year later (c. 5900–5800 cal BC), moving progressively from the south to the north. Recent field research conducted in Northern Dalma­tia slightly modified this model. The early dates for open-air sites like Ra.inovac and Pokrovnik appear to corroborate the simultaneity of cave and open-air settlements (Müller 1994; McClure et al. 2014), and challenge the proposed anteriority of cave sites over open-air sites (Batovi. 1979; Forenbaher, Miracle 2014; Forenbaher, Perho. 2017.202). The distinc­tion between cave and open-air sites is purely func­tional (McClure et al. 2014.1036), whereas only the latter can precisely reflect the Neolithic way of life (Guilaine 2005.60). Still, the majority of the open-air sites do not belong to the earliest phase of the Neolithic occupation, but are dated a few centuries later, between 5800 to 5400 cal BC. Moreover, Forenbaher and Miracle reopened the que­stion of the possible west-east direction of coloni­zation (from Apulia to Dalmatia), since the radiocar­bon dates obtained for South Italian villages are somewhat older than the Dalmatian ones (Müller 1994.259; Forenbaher, Miracle 2014.238, Forenba-her, Perho. 2015.66; 2017.202–204). However, as already mentioned, the new dates obtained from Pokrovnik and Ra.inovac place the foundation of those villages at the beginning of 6th millennium, which sets them as contemporaneous to the South Italian sites. It must be noted that those ‘early’ dates from Apulia (cf. Rendina, Masseria Giufreda and Pu-lo di Molfetta), are problematic, as they show large standard deviations and/or are coming from inse­cure or later contexts (Guilaine et al. 2003.372; Ra-dina 2007; Collina 2009.52,57; Guilbeau 2010.71). Moreover, all the recently obtained radiocarbon dates from the earliest Neolithic occupations of Apulia are still slightly younger then the Dalmatian ones (Bin­der et al. 2017). Thus, if one relies on firm data, the reliable current radiocarbon dates suggest a temporal priority to the Eastern Adriatic open-air sites. However, considering the latest discoveries in the strategies of raw material procurement, pointing to sources on the Gargano promontory, the possibility of Apulian influences in the Neolithisation process in Dalmatia should not be rejected (Forenbaher, Perho. 2015; 2017; Podrug et al. in press a). Nevertheless, while the richness of Neolithic sites confirms that that colonization played a major role in establishing a Neolithic way of life, evidence for the presence of last hunter-fisher-gatherers in the Eastern Adriatic is still pretty scarce. In the litera­ture, the open-air site of Lokve is sometimes referred to as Castelnovian (Kom.o 2007.66; Mihailovi. 2009.103; Kaczanowska, Koz³owski 2017.203). However, the related material collected from unse-cure contexts (see Kom.o 2009.292) displays impor­tant heterogeneity in the both raw material econo­my and typo-technology (Ka.ar 2019). As already mentioned, thus far, Castelnovian is ab­sent from Dalmatia. Further research is needed in order to demonstrate whether this outlines an histo­rical reality or if this situation is related to some other factors, such as, for example, some shift in the settlement pattern and/or loss of the sites by marine transgression, lack of research, and so on. Lithic production strategies in the Early Neoli­thic of South-eastern Europe and the Central Mediterranean ‘Prismatic blade technology’ or ‘long blade techno­logy’ is often considered to be a part of the so called ‘Neolithic package’, and thus one of the elements that transmits from the Near East to Europe. Without going into further discussion about the con­cept of this ‘package’ and its content, one cannot but Sonja Ka;ar notice the sudden presence of long blades in Neoli­thic contexts all over South-eastern Europe. In order to obtain blade blanks two main knapping techniques are generally used during the European Neolithic: indirect percussion and pressure flaking. The technique of pressure flaking consists of apply­ing great force on one precise point on the platform in order to obtain blades or bladelets. Indirect per­cussion involves the application of an intermediary tool, called a ‘punch’, which can be made of wood, antler or bone (Inizan et al. 1999.32). The main advantage of pressure flaking and indirect percussion over direct percussion is greater produc­tivity and profitability. They both allow a Prehisto­ric knapper to maximize their production since they will obtain a considerable number of blades from a single block. The identification of the two techniques is possible due to experimental work by several archaeologists, like François Bordes, Don Crabtree, Jacques Texier, and Jacques Pelegrin. There are some general mor­phological criteria that individualized the two tech­niques (cf. Inizan et al. 1999; Pelegrin 2012). Thus, the pressure technique is identified by the regular­ity and standardization of blade products. This regu­larity is due to the immobilization of the core and the pressure force that is continuous and intense. Hence, a straight profile, parallel edges and ridges and a constant thickness characterize the blades. On the other hand, blades obtained by indirect percussion are in general larger, but less standardized and cha­racterized by a curved profile. However, as archaeo­logical and experimental examples show, blades ob­tained by indirect percussion can also be very regu­lar, whereas the pressure flaked blades could show high variation in regularity. Besides, one must bear in mind that experimentation conducted with pres­sure flaking is much better documented than experi­mentation on indirect percussion. Although the concept of pressure flaking was known since the Upper Palaeolithic, the two techniques were widely used in blade production since the Late Me­solithic (Binder, Perles 1990; Inizan et al. 1999). Pressure flaking was widespread during the Late Me­solithic Castelnovian culture in the Mediterranean (Binder 1987; 2010). The closest Castelnovian indu­stries to the region, those from Montenegro, are also characterized by pressure flaking (Ka.ar 2019). Du­ring the Neolithic, this technique is also common all over the Mediterranean (Binder 1987; 2007; 2010; Perles 1990; 2001; Horejs et al. 2015) and at least in some parts of South-eastern Europe like Bos­nia and Serbia (I. Jovanovi. pers. comm.). The indirect percussion or ‘punch’ technique is pre­sent during the Late Mesolithic in Southern and Northern Europe (Allard 2007.219; Perrin 2009. 518; Ferrari 2011), but it seems marginal in the Castelnovian of Montenegro (Ka.ar 2019). During the Neolithic, it became the common technique for blade production in different regions of Europe. In­direct percussion is well attested in the Early Neoli­thic Star.evo-Körös culture (Mateiciucová 2007.701; .o.i.-Klind.i., Karavani. 2004.26; Karavani. et al. 2010.15; pers. comm. J. Pelegrin and I. Jovano­vi., personal observations). In the Early Neolithic of Bulgaria (Karanovo I-II), it is a common technique for obtaining long blades (Gurova 2014). However, this technique was not exclusive for producing long and large blanks, since the Star.evo-Körös assem­blages are characterized by bladelets (Mateiciucová 2007; .o.i.-Klind.i., Karavani. 2004; Karavani. et al. 2010; personal observations). Large butts, some­times concave, pronounced bulbs together with a certain irregularity of blanks, point rather to the use of indirect percussion. As demonstrated above, the archaeological evidence shows that the use of so-called complex débitage techniques (pressure and indirect percussion) is not a Neolithic novelty, but appears from the Late Meso­lithic. However, the almost systematic use of exoge­nous rocks in this production, as recorded in some parts of the South-eastern Europe, is an element spe­cific to the Neolithic. The exploitation of exogenous raw materials certain­ly began in the Mesolithic (or in the final Palaeoli­thic), as evidenced, for example, by the Melian obsi­dian which circulates in the Aegean, but unlike the Neolithic, the production on these exogenous rocks does not differ from that of local rocks, since they are both characterized by an simple technical invest­ment (for an expedient production of flakes, see Perles 1990; 1991; 2009). In Central and Western Europe, so-called ‘Carpathian’ obsidian and Wommerssom quartzite also appear to circulate over a larger area before the Neolithic (Ma-teiciucová 2007; Koz³owski 2009). Nevertheless, as claimed by Catherine Perles (2009. 558), “[…] there is no economy of raw materials, Impressed Ware blade production of Northern Dalmatia (Eastern Adriatic, Croatia) in the context of Neolithisation in the sense of a differential exploitation”. These exogenous rocks have therefore been exploited in the same way as the local raw material. Conversely, from the Neolithic, a more ‘complex’ raw material economy is implemented, and this change in the exploitation strategies of raw materials is linked to social or economic factors (Perles 1990; 1991; 2009. 558–563). From the very beginning of the Neolithic (c. 6700– 6000 cal BC), several raw material distribution net­works were operating in the Central Mediterranean and the Balkans (Fig. 3). Those networks differ according to the extension of the network concerned, i.e. according to the distri­bution area: some may be considered local and/or re­gional (for example the ‘Marche’ cherts or the North­ern Bosnian rocks, ‘chocolate flints’ from Northern Greece, Mont Lessini cherts), and others interregio­nal (obsidian from Melos and Lipari, Gargano cherts). Nevertheless, at this stage, the characterization of these networks is limited and requires more in-depth regional studies. Moreover, the size of the territory alone is not sufficient to distinguish a regional net­work from an inter-regional one, but other factors, such as geographical constraints, must be taken into account (for example, ‘Carpathian’ obsidian circu­lates over an territory of significant size, but geogra­phically this is the relatively easily crossed Panno- Fig. 3. Illustration of known raw material di­stribution networks in the Central Mediterra­nean and the Balkans, during the Early/Middle Neolithic, between c. 6700 and 5000 cal BC (the displayed dates in­dicate the beginning of distribution in the Neo­lithic). Dotted lines: ma­ximum extension of the network in the Early Neo­lithic (light dotted lines with titles in bold repre­sent obsidian distribu­tion networks). A ques­tion mark (?) indicates the presence of high qua­lity chert of unknown, nian Basin). In Figure 3 we have tried to trace these networks, which in our opinion can indicate not only the contacts between distinct geographical groups, but could also illustrate the routes and directions of Neolithization. In some cases these exogenous rocks of regional/in­terregional origin (‘Silex blond’ from Greece, ‘Balkan flint’/‘white-spotted flint’ in the Central Balkans and Gargano cherts in Southern Italy and Dalmatia) have been exploited in a different way than local cherts, indicating a complex form of techno-economic pro­duction (Perles 1990; 2009; Collina 2009; Guilbeau 2010; Forenbaher, Perho. 2015; Guilbeau, Perles 2016; Gurova et al. 2016; Ka.ar 2019). Gargano cherts – an important element of Southern Italian and Dalmatian Impressed Ware culture Recent research has shown that artefacts made from Gargano cherts are recorded at many Early Neolithic sites of Southern Italy (namely from the Northern Apulian Tavoliere region, as well as from Northern Basilicata and Eastern Calabria) and Dalmatia, evi­dencing that those important source deposits have been used since the very beginning of the Neolithic, from c. 6000 cal BC (Collina 2009; 2015; Guilbeau 2011; 2012; Forenbaher, Perho. 2015; 2017; Taran­tini 2016; Mazzucco et al. 2018; Ka.ar 2019). but probable exogenous origin. An asterisk (*) indicate the existence of pre-Neolithic networks (accord­ing to Perles 1987; 1990; 2004; 2009; Kom.o 2006; Mateiciucová 2007; Kaczanowska, Koz³owski 2008; Collina 2009; Guilbeau 2010, 2011; Guilbeau, Erdogu 2011; .o.i.-Klind.i. 2011; Reingruber 2011; Gurova 2012,2014; Gurova et al. 2016; Conati Barbaro et al. 2014; Freund 2014; 2018; .ari. 2014; Forenbaher, Perho. 2015,2017; Kozlowski, Kaczanowska 2015; Tykot 2014; Dogiama 2018; Starnini et al. 2018; Po-drug et al. in press a; background map by F. Tessier). Sonja Ka;ar The Gargano promontory, covering an area of about 2000km2, is situated on the western shore of Adria­tic in the vicinity of the Tavoliere plain, where one of the earliest Neolithic sites in Italy were documented. A large network of at least twenty mining sites have been discovered, mostly located on the north-eastern part of the Gargano promontory (between Vieste and Peschici), whose exploitation was dated from the Early Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age, c. 6000–2000 cal BC (Di Lernia et al. 1995; Galiberti 2005; Ta-rantini, Galiberti 2011; Tarantini et al. 2016). Three geological Gargano formations were exploited by prehistoric miners: the Maiolica, Scaglia and Peschici formations (Tarantini et al. 2017). In this region ho-mogenous cherts are abundant, and occur either as large lenticular nodules (Peschici Nummulite plat­form) or in the form of spherical and irregular nod­ules (Maiolica and Scaglia) (for details see Taranti­ni et al. 2017). The Defensola site, situated on the Gargano promon­tory, is considered to be the oldest mine in Europe. Radiocarbon dates indicate that this underground mine was used at least from c. 5800–5700 cal BC (Di Lernia et al. 1995.126–130; Guilbeau 2010.51; Ta-rantini et al. 2017.253) and many Impressa sherds have been collected from here. With regard to the current state of research, there is no evidence pointing to the complex exploitation of such cherts (from the primary sources requiring mi­ning activities) during the Mesolithic. The organisation of lithic blade production in Neolithic Northern Dalmatia The organisation of lithic production, reflected in the prehistoric knapper’s intentions, implies the concept of schéma and chaîne opératoire as well as the con­cepts of raw-material economy and débitage econo­my, and thus examines the lithic artefacts, from their extraction to final consumption (Leroi-Gourhan 1965; Inizan 1980; Perles 1980; 1990; Soressi, Ge-neste 2011). Raw material procurement Due to the pioneering work of Perho., systematic geoarchaeological and petrographic investigations of chert outcrops and artefacts were initiated in the region (Perho. 2009ab; Perho., Altherr 2011; Fo­renbaher, Perho. 2015, 2017; Vukosavljevi. et al. 2014; Vukosavljevi., Perho. 2017; Vujevi. et al. 2017). According to recent research, during the Neolithic the Gargano cherts (and specifically the Maiolica-type cherts of Upper Jurassic–Lower Cretaceous age) were almost exclusively used in the production of blades (Forenbaher, Perho. 2015; 2017.193; Maz­zucco et al. 2018; Podrug et al. in press a; in press b; Ka.ar 2019; pers.com. Z. Perho.). Nevertheless, detailed petrographic characterisation and source identification are often problematic, since a thick white patina covers the majority of artefacts (Forenbaher, Perho. 2015; 2017; Podrug et al. in press a; in press b; Ka.ar 2019). However, that is not the case for the artefacts from Crno Vrilo, as their pri­mary appearance has stayed unchanged. This assem­blage shows an important variability in the colour and structure of this Upper Cretaceous chert that might indicate different sources of procurement with­in the Gargano area, although these claims need to be confirmed by more detailed petrographic analysis. It is important to note that, despite the existence of the seemingly well-organized network of Gargano chert distribution, the Lipari obsidian does not reach the Dalmatian shore before the Middle Neolithic Da­nilo culture (Tykot 2015; Podrug et al. in press b). Besides this exogenous chert, the local Dalmatian cherts are also represented but in smaller quantities and almost exclusively evidenced by flakes and de­bris. The site of Konjevrate seems to be an exception, since local cherts prevail in the assemblage, but its stratigraphy was recently revisited confirming the pre-Neolithic attribution of these industries (Podrug, Ka.ar in press). Lithic blade production From the very beginning of the Neolithic period in the Eastern Adriatic, the lithic production was orien­tated towards blade production (Müller 1994; Foren­baher, Perho. 2015; 2017; Mazzuco et al. 2018; Po-drug et al. in press a). The regularity of the blade edges and ridges and con­stant thickness indicate the use of pressure flaking. According to the lithic assemblages under study here, an average prismatic blade would have been around 14.6mm wide and about 3.8mm thick, and its aver­age length around 48.4 ±22.3mm (Tab. 4). Figure 4 indicates that the débitage aimed to produce blade-lets and blades between 10 and 16mm wide. Based on his experiments, Pelegrin has defined se­veral pressure flaking processes related to the width Impressed Ware blade production of Northern Dalmatia (Eastern Adriatic, Croatia) in the context of Neolithisation of the blade blanks (Pelegrin 1988; 2012.468). The wider the blade is, the stronger must be the pressure exerted to detach the blade. Thus different tools were used in order to develop pressure of different in­tensities, with each tool corresponding to a certain ‘mode’ (for details see Pelegrin 1988; 2012.468). Most (60%) of the Early Neolithic blades from our assemblages evidence the use of a long crutch used in a standing position (mode 4, according to Pele-grin), as their width is between 12 and 16mm – and several pieces reach almost 20mm in width (Fig. 4). The best examples of large blades come from Crno Vrilo, where a few blades of impressive dimensions are preserved. The longest complete example mea­sures 156mm (Korona 2009.154). Along with these specimens there are dozens of pieces whose width exceeds 20mm (Fig. 4). According to Pelegrin’s expe­riments, these specimens could not be detached by abdominal pressure alone (mode 4), since the long crutch used in the standing position cannot provide the necessary pressure. According to traditional experiments, those blades could have been made by indirect percussion or by a more complex pressure mode (mode 5, according to Pelegrin), which consists of the use of a lever de­vice. However, recently, Heredia managed to obtain, in a non-systematic way and with certain difficulties, a few of larger blades (up to 28mm) by abdominal pressure alone, using the crutch with a copper tip in the standing position (mode 4, according to Pelegrin; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kvgaEH-Ll0). While pressure flaking characterizes the Dalmatian blade production, the use of indirect percussion is harder to demonstrate. However, we think that for some specimens, and especially those detached in order to repair the knapping surface (Pl. 2.1–4), the use of indirect percussion cannot be ruled out. On the other hand, the regularity and straightness of some blanks and their constant thickness point in­stead to the use of lever pressure (mode 5, accord­ing to Pelegrin; Pl. 1.1,2,4). The use of lever pres­sure is usually suggested for the production from later periods, for example, the Chalcolithic big bla­des from Karanovo V-VI (Manolakakis 1994). How­ever, such broad blanks are reported since the Early Neolithic in Southern Italy (Guilbeau 2011; Collina 2015) and in Greece (Perles 1990; Guilbeau, Perles 2016). Although the blade cores are absent from the assem­blages, the morphology of the blade blanks can in­dicate their form. They were of cylindrical or sub-conical shapes and débitage was always unipolar. The proximal parts of the blades (butts) indicate that the preparation of the striking platform was not systematic (butts are mostly plain and compose 45% of the assemblage, followed by linear with 25%), but the overhangs were carefully removed. Except in Crno Vrilo, lithic finds are scarcely repre­sented in the Dalmatian Early Neolithic assemblages, making the reconstruction of schéma and chaines opératoire somewhat difficult. However, it seems that the Dalmatian assemblages display always par­tial chaînes opératoires, i.e. some technical stages are always missing. Indeed, as already mentioned, the blade cores are always absent while the scarcity of cortical pieces, especially the large and thick ones pointing to decortication, trimming and shaping of the cores, implies that the first stages of reduction occurred somewhere else. Nevertheless, in the assemblages we studied, at least for some sites, there are some elements pointing to the possibility of in situ production. The presence of flakes, cortical flakes and debris, and specifically of technological pieces as core tablets, crested blades, overshot blades and core renewal flakes and blades, could indicate the local production of blades (Tab. 2). The presence of flakes (especially those bearing lami­nar negatives on the dorsal side) indicates in situ production, but one must keep in mind that pres­sure flaking produces few flakes. In this, the flakes are usually produced during the first stages of chaîne opératoire, i.e. core preparation, while small correc­tions of débitage surface/striking platform are most often realized by detachments of thin laminar flakes or small bladelets (Pl. 1.15). The presence, although rare (only 13 pieces from Crno Vrilo assemblage) of flakes bearing laminar negatives on the dorsal side, but which seem not to have been detached in order to rejuvenate the core, might indicate that, after blade production, the exploitation of the cores con­tinues in order to obtain flakes. These flakes, as well as those made of local cherts, could suggest an ad hoc or expedient production, with the expedient pro­ducts being those that “have been manufactured, used, and discarded over a relatively short time pe­riod” (Binford 1977). If this was a case, we can con­sider that the Early Neolithic people from Dalmatia were acquiring (more or less prepared) cores, and not exclusively finished semi-products. We have noted at least three flake cores on Gargano chert (Tab. 2; Pl. 1.16). Sonja Ka;ar However, we cannot conclude that all the blades were produced in situ. While this may be suggested for blades obtained by abdominal pressure flaking (mode 4), for large blades (.20 mm), and especial­ly if we consider that they were produced by lever pressure, the introduction as finished semi-products could not be ruled out. Following criteria established by Perles (1990.27; 2001.208) the lever pressured blades suggest high technological investment and obvious socio-economical specialization. Those blades must have been produced by specialized, well-trained knappers possessing the necessary equipment and who invested time in order to obtain the important knowledge and know-how needed for mastering the Superior chert GarganoMediocre local chertThermally alteredPatinated\indeterm.\otherTotal Blanc Superior chert GarganoMediocre local chertThermally alteredPatinated\indeterm.\otherTotal Blanc Blades 16 2 18 Blades 10 2 9 21 Cortical blades 4 4 Cortical blades 1 2 3 Core renewal blades 4 4 Core renewal blades 3 1 4 Vrbica Ra[inovac Tinj-Podlivade Flakes 35 1 4 40 Cortical flakes 4 4 Core renewal flakes 4 4 Cores Debris 21 2 3 26 Small flakes (.1cm) 11 Konjevrate 88–90 campaign Crno Vrilo Sector A Polje ni/e Vrcelja Burin spalls 1 1 Flakes 30 7 15 52 Cortical flakes 4 4 8 Core renewal flakes 10 7 17 Core 1 1 Debris 25 5 20 50 Tested blocs Chips 1 1 3 5 Total 89 3 9 101 Tested blocs 1 2 3 Blades 11 1 1 13 Total 86 3 14 62 165 Burin spalls 1 1 Blades 200 29 26 255 Core renewal blades 1 1 Cortical blades 14 1 2 17 Flakes 12 12 1 2 27 Core renewal blades 10 2 3 15 Cortical flakes 4 2 6 Core renewal flakes 3 1 4 Cores 1 1 Debris 5 10 2 17 Small flakes (.1cm) Tested blocs Burin spalls 21 1 22 Total 33 27 2 870 Flakes 405 82 79 48 614 Cortical flakes 47 21 9 6 83 Core renewal flakes 135 23 7 165 tablet 9 2 1 12 Core 1 10 1 12 Debris 96 25 38 21 180 Blades 40 40 Small flakes (.1cm) 32 436 Cortical blades 9 9 Tested blocs 1 1 Core renewal blades 4 1 5 Total 970 141 183 118 1412 Flakes 24 3 27 Blades 12 34 2 48 Cortical flakes 3 1 4 Cortical blades 1 6 7 Core renewal flakes 6 6 Core 1 1 2 Debris 2 3 1 6 Core renewal blades 3 13 1 17 Burin spalls 3 3 Flakes 24 228 11 44 307 Total 89 4 699 Cortical flakes 3 74 4 9 90 Core renewal flakes 8 66 3 7 84 Cores and fragments 1 67 4 72 – of which for blades 18 Small flakes (.1cm) Tested blocs Tab. 2. Lithic assemblage breakdown by main raw material groups and technological categories (sim­ plified). The group ‘patinated, indeterminate, other’ Debris and natural 2 155 7 16 180 pieces Small flakes (.1cm) clusters the raw materials which could not be iden- Tested blocs 5 Total 54 651 25 83 813 tified due to heavy patina or raw material types for which only a few pieces have been found. For this paper different types of local/regional cherts from Konjevrate were regrouped together as ‘local cherts’ since, according to new excavations, these industries are pre-Neolithic. The technical group ‘core-renewal flakes’ clusters flakes testifying to blade débitage (elements of reparations and flakes with blade’s negatives). Impressed Ware blade production of Northern Dalmatia (Eastern Adriatic, Croatia) in the context of Neolithisation core preparation as the techno­logically most demanding part of the chaîne opératoire. But is it possible to demonst­rate that one population of bla­des (and namely the ‘large’ ones) were introduced as fini­shed semi-products while oth­ers were produced in situ? For example, in the Crno Vrilo assemblage cortical and core-renewal blades, i.e. pieces that might indicate in situ produc­tion, are represented with 32 pieces, whereas the width of eight specimens exceeds 20mm (Fig. 5). Two different hypothesis can be proposed to explain the presence of those specimens. According to the first, the production occurred in situ and those specimens point to the beginning of blade débitage or to the core renewal (technical pieces). The second hypothesis implies that the production occurred somewhere else (and not on the site) and that the blades that we consider today as ‘technical’ were also circulating as finished products. This was sometimes observed in other Neolithic contexts, like in the Chas-séen of Southern France. Here the regular presence of core renewal blades suggests that the robustness of blanks is sought more than their regularity (Léa 2004.135, 147, 164, 169). Besides, in the Crno Vrilo assemblage six specimens that refer either to cortical or core renewal blades (including two ‘larges’ ones) are retouched and/or glossy, while seven others (in­cluding two ‘larges’ ones) have very worn edges, pro­bably indicating their use. Moreover, use-wear ana­lysis of the harvesting techniques on the Dalmatian impressed ware assemblages has shown that the dif­ferent types of blades and bladelets (central, cortical and technical) have been intentionally segmented for use as sickle elements (Mazzucco et al. 2018). On the other hand, and since we consider that for some technical pieces the use of indirect percussion cannot be ruled out, it is possible that some large blades were produced in situ while others (made by lever pressure flaking) could have been introduced as finished semi-products. Future research is needed to clarify the matter. Tools With the introduction of farming, the technical needs of prehistoric societies changed, as witnessed in the lithic tool assemblages. The lithic débitage was now orientated towards blade production in order to ob­tain long, regular and thin blanks that can could hafted onto the wooden or bone handles as sickle implements. The traces of use and the dullness of once sharp edges indicate that the majority of bla­des were used blank. The intensive use of blank bla­des in various activities could produce non-intenti­onal retouch. For that reason, exhaustive typological analyses of Neolithic lithic assemblages are not ne­cessary, but a combined typo-functional approach is needed. Impressed ware assemblages from Northern Dalma­tia indicate that the tools are mostly made on bla­des (Tab. 3). In most cases (46%) the retouches were not carefully made and the majority of tools can be regrouped as ‘pieces with irregular removals’. Other tool groups can be divided as follows: blades with continuous semi-abrupt retouches (11%), blades and bladelets with abrupt retouches (less frequent 6%), drills and ‘becs’ (pointed blades with abrupt and semi-abrupt retouches: 7%), truncations (2%), bitrunca­tions and geometrical trapezes (6%, almost exclu­sively symmetrical, with no use of the microburin technique), and burins and burin spalls (almost only evidenced in the Crno Vrilo assemblage, where it re­presents 19% of all tools). Glossy blades are well re­presented in almost all assemblages (33% of all tools). In Crno Vrilo, for example, 21% of all blades from sector A are characterized by a so-called ‘sickle-gloss’, although their presumed function is yet to be characterized. The notched blades, the typical tools of Castelnovian assemblages, with notches resulting from a voluntary Sonja Ka;ar retouch (Gassin et al. 2013), are almost completely absent from Early Neolithic lithic as­semblages. On the other hand, the production of trapezes continued during the impress­ed ware phase, and these bi-truncated blade fragments are represented with at least 14 pieces (Tab. 3). However, the Castelnovian trapezes are usu­ally made with the microbu­rin technique and are symmet­rical, whereas the Early Neoli­thic ones do not use this tech­nique and are less standard­ized as they generally come in various forms and shapes. Tools made on flakes will not be discussed here, but it can be stated that flake assemblages consist mainly of expedient tools characterized by retouched flakes, scrapers and splintered pieces. Early Neolithic lithic production and its rele­vance to the Neolithisation of the Eastern Ad­riatic From the very beginning of the Neolithic period in both Dalmatia and Apulia, the blade production is characterized by pressure flaking on Gargano cherts (Collina 2009; 2015; Guilbeau 2010; 2011; Foren­baher, Perho. 2015; 2017; Mazzucco et al. 2018; Podrug et al. in press a; Ka.ar 2019). Indirect percussion seems to be used to a much les­ser extent and perhaps mainly for repairing the knap-ping surface or detaching the blades, which would have been too difficult to detach by pressure (Colli-na 2009; 2015; Ka.ar 2019). As we have seen, both techniques are known from the Late Mesolithic, but the Early Neolithic lithic pro­duction is characterized by more complex procure­ment strategies, as evidenced in the development of sophisticated raw material economy (Binder 1987; Perles 1990; 1991; 2009; Allard 2007.219; Perrin 2009: 518; Perrin, Binder 2014; Ka.ar 2019). There is no evidences of complex mining during the Mesolithic, neither on the Italian nor Croatian sides of the Adriatic. It is true that the Mesolithic sites and specifically those belonging to its late phase are ra­ther scarce in the Adriatic region, but even where the Castelnovian is surely attested (Uzzo, Latronico, Ede-ra, Crvena Stijena, Odmut) there are no indications of complex strategies involving interregional net­works of raw material procurement (Collina 2009; Mihailovi. 2009; Ka.ar 2019). Instead, the produc­tion of blade blanks relies on local sources of procu­rement, such as pebbles of small to medium size. The dominance of Gargano cherts in Dalmatia and Apulia assemblages reinforces the idea of cultural unity under the (Italo-Dalmatian) impressed ware Crno Ra[inovac Vrbica Tinj Vrcelji Konjevrate Konjevrate TOTAL % Vrilo Gargano other Pieces with irregular removals 72 4 12 5 3 4 3 103 46 Notched pieces 4 1 5 2,2 Pieces with abrupt retouch 8 2 1 2 13 5,8 Pieces with semi-abrupt retouch 13 2 3 1 6 25 11,2 Borers and drills 14 1 15 6,7 Truncations 4 1 5 2,3 Bitruncations 8 1 4 1 14 6,3 Burins and burin spalls 29 1 2 3 35 15,6 Scrapers 3 3 3 9 4 Total tools on blades 155 10 18 9 9 6 17 224 100 of which glossy blades 61 1 6 2 2 1 73 32,5 Tab. 3. Tools on blades: typological breakdown. Impressed Ware blade production of Northern Dalmatia (Eastern Adriatic, Croatia) in the context of Neolithisation Early Neolithic Impressed Ware Lenght (mm) Width (mm) Thickness (mm) Ra[inovac no. Minimum Maximum Average SD 1 37,6 37,6 37,6 14 7,1 24,5 13,3 4,6 14 1,6 5,9 3,6 1,1 Vrbica no. Minimum Maximum Average SD 6 31,9 71,8 55 17,4 54 6 24,3 15,2 3,7 54 1,7 10,6 4,3 1,9 Crno Vrilo (Sector A) no. Minimum Maximum Average SD 33 28,8 132,5 50,9 21,5 280 4,1 27,8 14,1 5,1 287 0,9 8,5 3,7 1,3 Tinj-Podlivade no. Minimum Maximum Average SD 2 9,1 84,6 46,9 53,4 26 4,1 31,5 16,8 6,1 26 2,3 7 4,1 1,4 Polje ni/e Vrcelja no. Minimum Maximum Average SD 7 17,3 50,3 34,2 10,7 28 5,5 19,3 12,8 3,3 28 1,8 8,6 3,7 1,7 Konjevrate (campaign 1988-1990) no. Minimum Maximum Average SD 1 36,4 36,4 36,4 15 6,9 26,3 14 4,2 15 1,6 8,3 4 1,9 All sites no. Minimum Maximum Average SD 50 9,1 132,5 48,4 22,3 417 4,1 31,5 14,6 4,6 424 0,9 10,6 3,8 1,4 Tab. 4. Blades and bladelets metric data. The length was measured only for complete specimens. ceramic style. The Gargano network spread over South Italy and Dalmatia at the same time, and since the very start of the 6th millennium BC (Collina 2009; 2015; Guilbeau 2010; 2011; Forenbaher, Per­ho. 2015; 2017). This date points to the very beginning of the Neoli­thisation of the whole Adriatic region. The presence of Gargano cherts in Eastern Adriatic assemblages raises many questions, especially why and how this raw material arrived in Dalmatia. Was it necessary because of the lack of good quality raw material or the lack of (locational) knowledge? Or was it a choice due to the social and/or symbolic value of exogenous material? First of all, according to Perho.’s research there are no comparable (by quality and nodule size) cherts in the Dalmatia, nor in the adjacent regions (Perho. 2009ab; Perho., Altherr 2011; Forenbaher, Perho. 2015; 2017.205; Vukosavljevi. et al. 2014; Vuko­savljevi., Perho. 2017; Vujevi. et al. 2017; Podrug et al. in press a; in press b)1 . This implies that Gar-gano cherts were a rare good. In this sense, the pre­ference for Gargano cherts in Dalmatia can be inter­preted by a relative poverty of raw material suitable for complex pressure flaking (Forenbaher, Perho. 2017.204–205; Mazzucco et al. 2018; Ka.ar 2019). However, this does not imply that the Gargano chert distribution has only an economic (utilitarian) role and thus the social aspects of such networks cannot be neglected (Perles 1990; 2001; 2007; 2009; Foren­baher, Perho. 2017.206; Ka.ar 2019). On the con­trary, the hypothesis of a cultural choice, revealing a social rather than a techical logic (Perles 2009), must be privileged. Or, as Forenbaher and Perho. re­cently concluded “Perhaps the true value and pur­pose of the trans-Adriatic exchange of Gargano cherts was to maintain social networks that link­ed the small farming communities scattered around the Adriatic shores and islands” (Forenbaher, Per­ho. 2017.206). According to the same authors, the existence of a Gargano network of distribution from the very be­ginning of the 6th millennium might hint to the West-East direction of Neolithisation (from Apulia to Dal­matia), supporting the hypothesis that migration played an important role in spread of farming (Fo-renbaher, Perho. 2017.204). In this sense the domination of Gargano cherts in the southern Dalmatia as documented in Nakovana cave was interpreted as indicating that the early Neo­lithic occupants of the cave were recent arrivals, not yet possessing the necessary locational knowledge (Forenbaher, Perho. 2015.66; 2017.204). However, although these claims sound plausible, one should keep in mind that reliable current radiocar­bon dates show no temporal priority of Italian sites and that many data points are probably lost due to the Holocene sea-level rise. 1 However, according to Perho.’s publication (2009b.48, Fig. 2), one can note the existance of good-quality chert of non-negligible size (c. 10cm) in southern Dalmatia (Stra.in.ica, Vela Luka, Kor.ula). Sonja Ka;ar In order to understand the nature of social interac­tions between western and eastern shores of Adria­tic which might illustrate the alternative routes of Neolithisation, it is necessary to see in which form Gargano cherts arrived in Dalmatia (as finished semi-products or as blade cores) and how they were dis­tributed (by direct or indirect procurement?). Unfortunately, we have seen that, according the cur­rent state of research, it is not clear in which form Gargano cherts reach Dalmatia. However, unlike Fo­renbaher and Perho. (2015; 2017), who concluded that the Gargano blades arrived as finished semi-products, we think that the presence of some ele­ments pointing to blade production in situ might also indicate the acquisition of cores, i.e. blade blanks were not exclusively imported. This implies that the chaines opératoires of the Dal­matian and South Italian assemblages do not differ substantially, since the Gargano cherts were intro­duced into the Italian sites as partially worked blocs/ cores in the initial phase or finished blanks, and ne­ver as raw materials (Collina 2009; Guilbeau 2010; 2011). It can thus be presumed that the first phases of re­duction (decortication and trimming) were conduct­ed near or inside the mines (Di Lerna et al. 1995; Tarantini et al. 2016). The shaped blocs, or even more or less finished cores, could then be distributed over the land and sea. This preparation would faci­litate transportation (since the merchandise would have been less heavy) and at the same time ensure the quality of the blocs (cf. Perles 1990.27). But how were the cherts further distributed? As al­ready mentioned, all the southern Italian assemblages that have been studied with regard to the raw mate­rial economy, and even those situated closest to the Gargano mines (Ripa Tetta) or closest to the littoral (Scamuso), lack any evidence of primal reduction (Collina 2009; 2015). Following this and taking into account the important presence of Gargano arte-facts at the Crno Vrilo site, a simple down-the-line distribution (Renfrew 1984) should be ruled out. Besides, the long-distance procurement that requires navigation skills and some complex logistical organi­sation provides more supports for the idea of trade than direct acquisition (Perles 1990.17–23; 1992. 116). It is therefore reasonable to assume that the Garga-no mines were held and exploited by a limited group of specialist who controlled the chert distribution as well (Tarantini et al. 2016). If the chert was distributed in the form of more and less prepared cores, then this implies that the most demanding part of the débitage (core preparation) occurred out of the consumer sites. The consumer sites would then receive prepared cores and only needed to detach the blades. This final task – blade detaching – is actually the easiest part of pressure flaking débitage (Binder, Perles 1990.266; Perles 2007.57; Abbes 2013). However, we cannot exclude the possibility of inter­mediary site(s) where the blades were produced for trade. One part of Gargano artefacts was probably circulated as finished products and the lever pres­sured blades could have been traded this way (Col-lina 2009; 2015; Forenbaher, Perho. 2015; 2017; Mazzucco et al. 2018; Ka.ar 2019). Those sites could have been located on the coast and thus today would be submerged. The blades manufactured with lever pressure seem to be present in Dalmatia since the very beginning of the Neolithic. They are reported at the oldest lev­els of Pokrovnik, dated to c. 6000 cal BC (Mazzuco et al. 2018). The technique of lever pressure is un­doubtedly a Neolithic innovation: it is recorded in a few Neolithic contexts, but never earlier (Pelegrin 2006; Guilbeau, Perles 2016.3). To sum up, although the size and the means of the Gargano chert distribution network and its relevance to the Neolithisation dispersion routes have yet to be solved, it is clear that this complex economy of raw material reflects social choices that are specific to the Neolithic. Moreover, even though the pressure blade flaking technology emerged in the Balkans during the 7th millennium, as witnessed in the Montenegrin Late Mesolithic Castelnovian industries (with the blank size pointing to the use of a short crutch, mode 3, according to Pelegrin 1988; 2012), at the onset of Neolithic period more complex modes (modes 4 and 5 according to Pelegrin 1988; 2012) of pressure flak­ing were developed in connection with a new inter­regional procurement network centred in the Garga-no area. It thus seems that we may be dealing with two distant phenomena of probably different ori­gins. The origin of Castelnovian pressure blade pro­duction might be in North Africa (Marchand, Per-rin 2017), whereas impressed ware pressure blade production is closely connected to processes of Neo­ Impressed Ware blade production of Northern Dalmatia (Eastern Adriatic, Croatia) in the context of Neolithisation lithisation. The latter shows great connections with ware culture and the new type of economy, based on Italian impressed ware industries and Greek Early subsistence production. The beginning of the Neoli-Neolithic industries, both in complex raw material thic period in Dalmatia is thus characterized by pro-procurement strategies and production techniques, found economic, technical, social and cultural chan-and might thus originate from the Near-East (Turkey ges that also affected lithic assemblages, since the or Levant) (Perles 1990; 2001; Binder 2007; Guil-earliest impressed ware lithic production shows no beau 2010; 2011; 2017; Guilbeau, Perles 2016; Ho-links to the previous periods. rejs et al. 2015). In other words, the Early Neolithic blade production of Dalmatian impressed ware should be considered as integral part of the Neoli- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS thic package, showing no connections to the Cas­ telnovian or any other Mesolithic lithic traditions. The author would like to thank Zlatko Perho., Sta.o Forenbaher, Catherine Commenge, Denis Guilbeau, Emil Podrug, Thomas Perrin, Nicolas Tardy, Frede- Conclusion ric Abbes, Jacqueline Balen, Marcel Buri., Natalija .ondi., Ivana Galovi., Kristina Horvat, Jelena Jo- Interactions between the eastern and western shores vi., Florine Marchand, Sarah McClure, Jean Vaquer, of the Adriatic seemed to have maintained the Neoli- Jakov Vu.i. and Dario Vujevi. for their help and to thisation process in this part of Mediterranean: the a reviewer, Boris Kavur, for his comments, which importation of Gargano cherts in Dalmatian lithic as- have helped to improve the paper. semblages parallels the expansion of the Impressed . References Abbes F. 2013. Quelques réflexions sur les débitages de lame de silex par pression. ArchéOrient- Le Blog (Hypo­theses.org), 27 septembre 2013. http://archeorient.hypotheses.org/1672 Allard P. 2007. Mesolithic- Neolithic transition in Paris Ba­sin: A review. In A. 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Lithic raw material pro­curement of the Late Epigravettian hunter-gatherers from Kopa.ina Cave (island of Bra., Dalmatia, Croatia). Quater­nary International 450: 164–185. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2016.09.017 Impressed Ware blade production of Northern Dalmatia (Eastern Adriatic, Croatia) in the context of Neolithisation Pl. 1. Early Neolithic lithic assemblages from Northern Dalmatia. 1–4, 9–11,15 Crno Vrilo: lever pres­sured blades (1–2 and possibly 3–4) and pressure flaked blades, mode 4 (9–12, 15); 5, 6, 8 Ra.inovac blades and core renewal flake (core tablet); 7, 13 Vrbica: core renewal flake (core fragment) and crested blade; 12, 14 Konjevrate: blade and crested blade; 16. Vrbica flake core. N. 1, 2, 5 and 12 are retouched (1 notched bladed, 2 burin, 5 blade with abrupt retouch, and 12 borer) and 9–11 are glossy. All artefacts are on presumed Gargano flint. Sonja Ka;ar Pl. 2. Early Neolithic blades from Northern Dalmatia. Blades testifying to core renewal (1, 3, 4, 5) and cortical blade (2); 1– 4 (1, 2 Vrbica; 3 Tinj; 4 Konjevrate) are probably made by indirect percussion and 5 (Ra.inovac) probably by direct percussion. Pressure flaked blades: 6 Konjevrate and 7 Polje Ni.e Vrce­lja. Pressure flaked bifacial point from Vrbica (8). All artefacts are on presumed Gargano flint. back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) New interdisciplinary research on Neolithic-Eneolithic sites in the Low Volga River region Marianna A. Kulkova1, Alexandr A. Vybornov2, Aleksandr Yudin3, Nataliya Doga 2, and Aleksandr Popov2 1 Herzen State University, Sankt Petesburg, RU kulkova@mail.ru 2 Samara State University of Social Sciences and Education, Samara, RU 3 Research and Production Center on the Historical and Cultural Heritage of the Saratov Region, Saratov, RU ABSTRACT – The Neolithic and Eneolithic sites in the Low Volga River region have been poorly in­vestigated in comparison with other territories due to a small number of excavated sites. On the Algay site and the Oroshaemoe I settlement there is evidence of the earliest appearance of Neolithic pottery and the first sign of domestication in the Eneolithic period within the Volgo-Ural territory. Archaeological, lithological, grain-size analyses, mineralogical-geochemical methods and radiocar­bon dating of cultural deposits have been applied to reconstruct the palaeoenvironment in the Holo­cene in this area. The results show that the landscape-climatic conditions in the steppe area of the Lower Volga basin strongly affected the development and adaptation of ancient societies. KEY WORDS – Neolithic; domestication; Eneolithic; Low Volga River region; geochemical indication; Holocene climate; steppe Nove interdisciplinarne raziskave neolitskih in eneolitskih najdi[; na obmo;ju Spodnje Volge IZVLE.EK – Neolitska in eneolitska najdi..a na obmo.ju Spodnje Volge so bila v preteklosti zaradi malo.tevilnih izkopavanj slab.e raziskana v primerjavi z drugimi regijami. Na najdi..ih Algay in Oroshaemoe I smo odkrili najstarej.i pojav neolitske lon.enine in prve znake domestikacije v obdob­ju eneolitika na obmo.ju Volge in Urala. Za rekonstruiranje holocenskega paleookolja na tem ob-mo.ju smo uporabili arheolo.ke, litolo.ke metode, analize velikosti zrn, mineralo.ko-geokemi.ne metode in radiokarbonsko datiranje kulturnih ostalin. Rezultati ka.ejo, da so okoljski in klimatski pogoji na obmo.ju stepe ob Spodnji Volgi mo.no vplivali na razvoj in prilagoditve preteklih dru.b. KLJU.NE BESEDE – neolitik; domestikacija; eneolitik; obmo.je Spodnje Volge; geokemi.ne indikacije; klima v holocenu; stepa Introduction The Low Volga River region borders Middle Asia and region have been poorly investigated in comparison Caucuses, where the ceramic manufacture and pro-with other territories (Yudin 2004; 2012). As a ducing economy appeared very early on. The steppe result of this the distinctive features of human deve-Povolzhie connects the steppe-forest and forest zones lopment in this territory are still under discussion. as far as the Don River region and Ural. Therefore There is only some information available about pa-the study of archaeological sites on the territory of laeogeography during the Holocene in this region the Low Volga River region is important. Besides, (Spiridonova, Aleshinskaya 1999). In this context the Neolithic and Eneolithic sites in the Povolzhie an interdisciplinary approach to the study of these DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.23 New interdisciplinary research on Neolithic-Eneolithic sites in the Low Volga River region sites is needed. Some processes in the development of ancient soci­eties were connected with palaeo-climatic changes during the Holo­cene (Budja 2015; Kulkova 2007), and these changes were significant in the steppe zone. The Algay site and the Oroshae­moe settlement located in the Ale-xandrovsky district of Saratovska-ya oblast’, on the right bank of Bolshoy Uzen’ River are currently being excavated (Fig. 1), and from 2014–2018 the multidisciplinary investigations were conducted on these sites (Vybornov et al. 2015a; 2015b; 2016a; 2016b; 2017a; 2017b; 2018a; 2018b; 2018c). The Oroshaemoe site has a special emphasis in the whole archaeolo­gical context, as here well-defin­ed layers of archaeological and li­thological stratigraphic succession were documented. The cultural layers with Neolithic and Eneolithic finds are divided by sterile horizons (Fig. 2). On the Algay site and the Oroshaemoe I settlement there is evidence of the earliest appearance of Neo­lithic pottery and the first sign of domestication in the Eneolithic period on the Volgo-Ural territory (Vy­bornov et al. 2016a). It is thus interesting to con­sider the climatic conditions in these periods. Materials and methods On both sites complex, detailed investigations of lithological and cultural deposits from the cross-sec­tions were carried out. Archaeological, lithological, grain-size analyses, mineralogical-geochemical me­thods and radiocarbon dating (Tab. 1) were applied for deposit investigations. The lithology of deposits is presented in Figures 3 and 4. Samples for analysis were taken from each 5cm cross-section. The chemical composition of loess loam deposits from cross-sections on the Algay and Oroshaemoe I sites was determined by XRF-WD analysis using the Spectroscan Max equipment. Probing was carried out with a fine-grained fraction of <0.25mm which was ground in an agate mortar into powder state. The tablets for XRF analysis were pressed by means of a hydraulic press using boric acid. The data on the chemical composition (Tabs. 2 and 4) was calculated by means of the principle com­ponent method for determination of landscape-cli­matic factors that influenced the sedimentation. The key concept of factor analysis is that multiple ob­served variables have similar patterns of responses, because they are all associated with a latent variable. The number of principal components was deter­mined according to how complex our model will be. The factor corresponding to the largest eigenvalue (7.143237 and 7.833615 for Algay and Oroshaemoe, respectively) accounts for approx. 28.57% and 31.33% (Tabs. 3 and 5) of the total variance. The second fac­tor corresponding to the second eigenvalue (4.909768 and 5.180147) accounts for approx. 19.64% and 20.72% of the total variance, and so on. When ana­lysing correlation matrices, the sum of the eigenva­lues is equal to the number of (active) variables from which the factors were extracted (computed). We used two main factors of the four that were cal­culated for determination of sedimentation characte­ristics for both sites: . FI (CaO, Sr/Al2O3,SiO2, MnO, Fe2O3) shows the an­tagonism between elements of the carbonate group (CaO, Sr) and the group of aluminosilicate minerals (clay minerals, quartz) and iron, manganese oxides (Al2O3,SiO2, MnO, Fe2O3). The positive factor loading corresponds to carbonate precipitation that occurred Marianna A. Kulkova, Alexandr A. Vybornov, Aleksandr Yudin, Nataliya Doga, and Aleksandr Popov in the period of arid conditions, while the clay mine­rals and iron-manganese oxides with negative load­ing are formed in humid climatic conditions (Kulko­va 2012). The first factor characterizes the change in relative precipitation. The positive loading of this factor describes the dry climatic conditions and the negative loading indicates wet conditions (Figs. 3– 4). This interpretation is confirmed by other geoche­mical indicators connected with the relative humid­ity, like the Chemical Index Alteration (CIA = Al2O3/ (Al2O3 + CaO + Na2O + K2O) (Nesbitt, Young 1982) and the CaO/MgO ratio. The index of CIA shows the alteration of aluminosilicate minerals as a result of weathering. The CaO/MgO ratio indicates increasing of CaO vs MgO in the carbonate component in the periods of prevailing dry conditions. . FII (P2O5, Zn, MgO/TiO2, La, Zr) shows the antago­nism between elements of biogenic processes (P2O5, Zn, MgO) and heavy, accessory minerals (TiO2, La, Zr). This factor is connected with the relative tempe­rature changes. The biogenic complexes are formed in the loam loess deposits together with organics during warm periods, and the accumulation of heavy minerals connects with a coarse grain sediment frac­tion accumulating during cold conditions. So, the po­sitive loading of the second factor indicates the warm conditions and the negative loading is the cold con­ditions. Besides, the relative temperature variations are marked by the distribution of zirconium (Zr) in the deposits of cross-sections and the distribution of titanium modules (TiO2/Al2O3) (Yudovich, Kertis 2000). The high titanium content in this case indi­cates the accumulation of heavy titanium minerals in the psammitic fraction, while the increasing alumina compo- Site nent is characteristic of the peli-cisely. This is important for reconstruction of the en­vironment and human migration. The radiocarbon dates were obtained on different organic materials from various cultural layers. The results are presented in the Table 1. Chronological phases for the different cultural traditions on the Algay site were calculated by means of Bayesian sta­tistics with the help of OxCal 4.2 (Bronk Ramsey 2009) (Fig. 5). Results The archaeological characteristics of the Algay and Oroshaemoe I sites The Oroshaemoe I site The upper cultural layer on the Oroshaemoe I site comprises ceramics and stone tools, which have ana­ 14C date Calendar age 2. Lab index Material (BP) (cal BC) Algay 5875±60 SPb_1968 4571–4558 animal bone tic fraction. The alumina enrich- Algay 6245± 32 AAR 21891 5309–5076 food crusts ment of the pelitic fraction as a Algay 6284±100 SPb-2038 5472–5018 animal bone rule is formed in the conditions Algay 6318±33 AAR–21892 5361–5221 animal bone of intense chemical weathering Algay 6490±40 Poz-76004 5527–5367 charcoal Algay 6479±70 SPb_1477 5560–5316 animal bone with a warm and humid climate. Algay 6360±250 SPb_1411 5742–4723 charcoal Algay 6605±32 AAR-21893 5617–5487 charcoal For assessment of an ancient an- Algay 6577±80 SPb_1478 5641–5374 animal bone thropogenic impact the indicator Algay 6654±80 SPb_1509 5708–5479 animal bone of P2O5antr = P2O5/(P2O5 + Na2O) Algay 6820±80 SPb_1510 5889–5614 animal bone (Kulkova 2012) was used. Incre-Algay 6800 ±40 Poz-65198 5741–5631 food crusts Algay 7284±80 SPb_2144 6271–6008 humic acids ases in this indicator are correlat­ ed with the cultural horizons and remains of bones and ceramics (Figs. 3–4). It is worth noting that geochemical markers allow us to correlate climatic episodes with anthropogenic activity very pre- Oroshaemoe I 5806±26 UGAMS-23059 4724–4557 animal bone Oroshaemoe I 5934±100 SPb_2091 5060–4547 animal bone Oroshaemoe I 7010±110 SPb_2143 6072–5674 charcoal Oroshaemoe I 7245±60 SPb_2141 6227–6015 charcoal Tab. 1. Radiocarbon dates on organics from the cultural layers of the Algay and Oroshaemoe I sites. New interdisciplinary research on Neolithic-Eneolithic sites in the Low Volga River region Fig. 3 Lithology and stratigraphy of a cross-section at the Algay site with geochemical indicators of the palaeoenvironment. logies with materials of the Khvalynskaya Eneolithic culture (Vybornov 2010; Vybornov et al. 2015b; Yu-din 2012). This is supported by the radiocarbon dates of c. 4725 cal BC obtained on the kulan (Equ-us hemionus; Asian wild ass) bones from this layer. The development of Khvalynskaya culture corre­sponds to this time. This layer and the next bottom cultural layer are separated by a sterile horizon with­out any finds. The next cultural horizon belongs to the Cis-Caspian culture (Yudin 2012; Vybornov et al. 2015a; 2015b). Ceramics were made of fat silt clay tempered with crushed shells of freshwater molluscs. Vessels have flat bottoms and the upper part of the corollas has a thick edge. The decoration consists of a combina­tion of comb-stamp prints with incised lines (Fig. 6). Stone tools were made of quartzite. The massive stone blanks were produced by the technique of re­inforced extraction. Stone tools are presented by dif­ferent types of scrapers, knifes, perforators and arrow points in the shape of fish (Fig. 7). Taking in­to account the radiocarbon age of the cultural layer, the forming of this horizon lasted about 200 years. Marianna A. Kulkova, Alexandr A. Vybornov, Aleksandr Yudin, Nataliya Doga, and Aleksandr Popov The radiocarbon dates of the artefacts from Factor-1 Factor-2 Factor-3 Factor-4 this layer lie in the interval of c. 5000– TiO2 –0.525397 –0.374604 0.638549 0.012623 4700 cal BC (Tab. 1). The bones of domes- V 0.143179 0.103815 0.606115 –0.507017 tic sheep and goat were also found in this Cr –0.675516 –0.304983 –0.174911 –0.206581 horizon, while below this layer a sterile ho- MnO –0.792146 –0.216703 0.180964 –0.104813 rizon without finds was registered. Fetot Co –0.713308 0.090292 0.253115 –0.539679 0.545018 0.511056 –0.014104 0.312753 Ni –0.502823 0.325697 0.692857 0.010736 One more cultural horizon was recovered Cu –0.184474 –0.300061 0.791513 –0.315741 below the sterile layer. This cultural layer Zn –0.097698 0.801005 0.361113 0.221405 comprises artefacts similar to those of the Sr 0.646855 –0.416596 0.365335 –0.031197 Orlovskaya Neolithic culture (Yudin 2004). Pb –0.234403 0.650516 –0.177654 –0.464782 The clay wares have the same shape as the pottery of the Cis-Caspian culture. As a rule CaO Al2O3 SiO2 0.832749 –0.826869 –0.815570 –0.113885 0.370054 –0.166060 0.214682 –0.021148 –0.474301 –0.079583 –0.017131 –0.027936 they are flat-bottom vessels with thickening P2O5 0.429003 0.782884 0.137864 0.210849 on the inner part of the corolla which has K2O –0.492875 0.595141 –0.096002 0.439756 a decoration. The ornamental compositions MgO 0.042608 0.686980 0.484446 0.147126 are presented by horizontal and inclined Rb –0.714046 0.238823 –0.010265 0.343295 incised rows of lines and pins, as well as horizontal zigzags (Fig. 8). The stone tools Ba La Y –0.462564 –0.434701 –0.696520 0.227406 –0.489385 –0.231848 –0.066073 –0.207699 0.140597 –0.371593 0.198198 0.029511 were made of grey and black flint. The tools Zr –0.471691 –0.228049 –0.302956 0.105400 were produced from plates and flakes. In Nb 0.450337 0.265520 0.085704 0.559210 the stone tool collection there are scrapers Na2O 0.419005 0.413458 –0.182563 –0.469158 of different types, points and geometric mi- As 0.078930 –0.718983 0.288837 0.280350 croliths (Fig. 8). The time of the appearance of the carriers of these cultural traditions Expl.Var Prp.Totl 7.143237 0.285729 4.909768 0.196391 3.616330 0.144653 1.960236 0.078409 is c. 6200–5900 cal BC (Tab. 1). This is the Tab. 2. Algay site. Factor loadings (unrotated) extraction: first stage of the Orlovskaya culture and principal components. the appearance of pottery in this region. The Algay site The archaeological materials that have been found on the Algay site give additional information with regard to the Oroshaemoe I site about the develop­ment of people at this place. In the lower cultural layer on the Algay site, straight wall wares with flat bottoms were found. They are ornamented by pins in a triangular manner with incised lines and notch­es. The compositions are presented by horizontal rows and zigzags (Fig. 9). The flint tools include pla­tes and flakes. Scrapers of different types, points, geometric microliths and segments with geluanian retouching are most common (Fig. 9). One of main types of retouching is the geluanian retouching. This type includes the sharpening of microliths and seg­ments from two sides. The chronological period of Eigenvalue % Total-variance Cumulative-Eigenvalue Cumulative % 1 7.143237 28.57295 7.14324 28.57295 2 4.909768 19.63907 12.05300 48.21202 3 3.616330 14.46532 15.66934 62.67734 4 1.960236 7.84095 17.62957 70.51829 Tab. 3. Algay site. Eigenvalues extraction: princi­pal components. this cultural era is from 5900 to 5700 cal BC (Vybor­nov et al. 2017a; 2017b; Yudin et al. 2016). There­by this is the later stage of the Orlovskaya cultural development in comparison with the lower layer on the Oroshaemoe I site. In the upper of this horizon there is a thin sterile la­yer and the next cultural layer also contains artefacts of the Orlovskaya culture, although the finds have some differences from the Orlovskaya bottom layer. Especially ceramics vessels show significant differen­ces. On the inner part of the corolla there is a thick­ening with oval-shaped impressed decoration. This complex decorative composition on the ware walls was first observed in the Orlovskaya cultural tradi­tion (Fig. 10). The stone industry forms from this la­yer have substantially changed, and microliths with a trapezium shape and dorsal retouching were found (Fig. 10). Several radiocarbon dates were obtained for this cultural layer, and they are in the interval from 5500 to 5300 cal BC (Tab. 1). A thin sterile in­terlayer separates the cultural layer of later stage of the Orlovskaya culture from the next Cis-Caspian cul­ture. Ceramics and tools made of quartzite were dis­covered in the Cis-Caspian culture layer dated to 4800–4700 cal BC (Tab. 1). New interdisciplinary research on Neolithic-Eneolithic sites in the Low Volga River region The reconstruction of palaeoclimatic condi-6000 cal BC. The first evidence of carriers of the Or-tions during the Holocene lovskaya culture are around this time. The Oroshaemoe I site At the depth of 280–265cm loess loam with carbo­nate inclusions was discovered (Fig. 4). The sedi­mentation at the depth of 270–260cm was during the ending of a cold and dry event and the transi­tion to moderately humid and warm conditions. In Figure 4 there is a trend from negative to positive for F2 and the transition from positive to negative for F1. These climatic conditions occurred about c. At the depth of 265–243cm grey-beige loess loam is recorded. The radiocarbon age of this horizon is c. 5900–5600 cal BC. High anthropogenic activity was registered in this layer. The occupation of the site by carriers of the Orlovskaya cultural traditions begins exactly in this period. Loess loam with a beige colour with carbonate inclu­sions is deposited at a depth of 243–150cm. In this Fig. 4 Lithology and stratigraphy of a cross-section at the Oroshaemoe 1 settlement with geochemical indi­cators of the palaeoenvironment. Marianna A. Kulkova, Alexandr A. Vybornov, Aleksandr Yudin, Nataliya Doga, and Aleksandr Popov horizon low anthropogenic impact was re­ Factor-1 Factor-2 Factor-3 Factor-4 gistered. The maximum period of aridiza­ TiO2 –0.778071 –0.361129 –0.046335 –0.048206 tion and warm climatic conditions are mark-V –0.413724 –0.233325 0.514376 0.104239 ed on the basis of the geochemical indica-Cr –0.375471 –0.393625 0.157189 0.188755 MnO –0.928402 –0.022105 –0.150060 0.141842 tors in these deposits. Especially strong arid Fetot –0.911664 –0.360517 –0.028562 –0.110745 conditions with carbonate formation are re- Co –0.238642 –0.718360 –0.251143 0.372272 gistered at the depth of 200–150cm on the Ni –0.789704 0.018054 0.142277 –0.461662 basis of the F1 positive results. This episode Cu –0.402804 –0.755680 –0.302772 0.081161 coincides to c. 5050 cal BC. Zn –0.860105 0.350439 –0.110814 –0.099737 Sr 0.289314 –0.746120 –0.332121 –0.312762 Pb –0.102168 0.045123 –0.848618 –0.219134 The dark-beige loess loam is recorded at CaO 0.720024 –0.320048 0.156392 –0.436712 the depth of 150–120cm. The climatic con­ Al2O3 –0.791232 0.499724 0.011110 –0.269376 ditions at the beginning of this sedimenta­ SiO2 –0.206384 0.867991 –0.036818 0.084382 tion period were cold and humid, and both P2O5 –0.465666 0.755840 –0.048370 –0.039471 F1 and F2 are negative. At the end of this K2O –0.624663 0.654979 0.141454 0.221338 period of sedimentation there is a transition MgO –0.187295 –0.076565 –0.223522 –0.843921 to the humid and warm conditions. This is Rb –0.857427 –0.348934 –0.156778 0.004863 Ba –0.454333 –0.279516 0.534705 0.042600 registered on the basis of the positive value La –0.346207 –0.292131 0.469610 –0.048956 of F2. The anthropogenic activity is high. Y –0.801067 –0.202919 –0.102270 –0.002583 The artefacts of the Cis-Caspian culture are Zr 0.018071 0.502598 –0.242704 0.337912 dated to c. 5000–4700 cal BC. The climat- Nb 0.001422 –0.079008 –0.722107 0.192327 ic Holocene maximum probably correlates Na2O 0.116133 0.305007 0.232280 –0.639645 with this period. As –0.008519 –0.388506 0.572406 0.066714 Expl.Var 7.833615 5.180147 2.934171 2.197460 Prp.Totl 0.313345 0.207206 0.117367 0.087898 The next event of maximum aridization and high temperatures was recorded in the de- Tab. 4. Oroshaemoe site. Factor loadings (unrotated) extrac- posits of the light-beige loess loam at the tion: principal components. depth of 100–70cm. Again, the high posi­tive values of F1 and F2 show this. This was short-term episode with rapid sedimentation, and the level of anthropogenic activity was low. The transition from a dry to humid climatic period is marked in the deposits at the depth of 65–40cm. The F1 values show a trend from positive to negative. The upper layer (45–20cm) is presented by the hu­mus interlayer in the deposits of loess loam which were sedimented during warm and humid conditi­ons. The F1 values are negative while those for F2 are positive. The anthropogenic activity rises again. The radiocarbon age of organic artefacts from this layer is 4700–4336 cal BC. This was the period of the development of the Khvalynskaya Eneolithic culture. The Algay site In the bottom part of the cross-section (210–196cm) on the Algay site (Fig. 3) there is brown sandy loam. The climatic conditions were at this time moderate­ly wet. The values of F1 and F2 are close to zero. The formation of grey loess loam on the depth of 196–147cm was during a moderately humid and warm climate with a short-term episode of cooling. The warm episode is registered at the depth of 180– 170cm on the basis of increasing F2 values. The an­thropogenic loading is low. At the depth of 147–130cm humified loess loam with artefacts from the Orlovskaya culture was de­posited. On the basis of geochemistry this layer is characterized by high anthropogenic loading. The climatic conditions are recorded as humid and warm (negative F1 and positive F2). The radiocarbon dates for this layer lie in the interval of 5800–5650 cal BC. In Figure 3 the Bayesian model of the distribution of the radiocarbon dates for this site is presented. It should be noted that several groupings of dates are divided by lacunae. The first lacuna falls on the ra­diocarbon ‘plateau’ of 5656–5566 cal BC. This epi­sode correlates with the period of temperature de- Eigenvalue % Total-variance Cumulative-Eigenvalue Cumulative % 1 7.833615 31.33446 7.83362 31.33446 2 5.180147 20.72059 13.01376 52.05505 3 2.934171 11.73669 15.94793 63.79173 4 2.197460 8.78984 18.14539 72.58157 Tab. 5. Oroshaemoe site. Eigenvalues extraction: principal components. New interdisciplinary research on Neolithic-Eneolithic sites in the Low Volga River region Fig. 5. Chronological phases for the different cultural traditions at the Algay site. creasing and aridization that is registered by the geo­chemical indicators in deposits at the depth of 127– 132cm. These conditions are supported by the nega­tive values of F1 and F2. At the depth of 130–90cm light brown loess loam was sedimented. The climatic conditions in this peri­od were warm with a trend to aridization. There are high, positive values of F1. High levels of higher an­thropogenic activity are revealed at the depth of 130– 120cm. The radiocarbon dates on artefacts from this layer are from 5600 to 5470 cal BC. Decreasing anthropogenic activity was registered at the depth of 120–113cm. This period corresponds with cooling and dry climatic conditions according to the negative values of F2 and high positive values of F1. The radiocarbon ‘plateau’ of 5470–5400 cal BC correlates to the climatic deterioration. The next peak of anthropogenic activity is recorded at the depth of 110–90cm. This coincides with the cultural layer dated to 5350–5120 cal BC. Increasing temperature and humidity occurred in the period of sedimentation at the depth of 100–105cm. This epi­sode is marked by positive values of F2 and a tran­sition from negative to positive values of F1. The de­posits at the depth of 100–90cm were formed in mo­derately cold conditions with increasing aridity (high positive values of F1) during 5120–5050 cal BC. This interval also falls on the radiocarbon ‘plateau’. The maximum of aridization and high temperatures occurred according to geochemical data in the peri­od of light beige loam forming at the depth of 85– 75cm. This is marked by high positive values of both F1 and F2. Low anthropogenic activity was revealed in this layer, and this episode can be dated to around 5050–4900 cal BC. The next period of high anthropogenic activity con­cerns 4900–4366 cal BC, and this is recorded in the deposits at the depth of 80–55cm. This stage is cha­racterized by a humid and cold climate (negative Marianna A. Kulkova, Alexandr A. Vybornov, Aleksandr Yudin, Nataliya Doga, and Aleksandr Popov values for both F1 and F2), but at the end there is marked the transition to humid and warm conditions (positive values of F2). Discussion The local features of the Oroshaeomoe I site located on the riverbank were more favourable for certain types of house­hold activities during humid periods. This place was protected from winds and therefore the local humidity was higher than on the Algay site. At Algay, situated in an elevated place, a low rate of sedimentation was recorded in the periods of aridization. The intensive rate of weathering in this area resulted in the lower accumulation of deposits. Con­versely, at the Oroshaemoe I site the thickness of deposits is greater, especial­ly for sedimentation during arid periods. According to Nataliya S. Bolikhovskaya (2011) the Early stage of the Atlantic pe­riod about c. 7000–6600 BC in the Low Povolzhie region is similar to the humid stage of the Middle Subboreal warming. The transgressive stage of the New-Caspian ba­sin is registered about 7000 BC. The eleva­tion of the water level in this period was 16–20m. Around 6600–6400 BC a short pe­riod of aridization occurred and cold clima­tic conditions were recorded. In this period the decreasing of broadleaf forest and the spreading of non-turfed areas has been found (Bolikhovskaya 2011). The climatic deterioration was also chronicled c. 6200– 6000 BC in the forest areas of the steppe zones of Eastern Europe (Spiridonova, Ale-shinskaya 1999). After this event the cli­mate became more favourable, but general­ly it was dry conditions. According to the geochemical indicators, in the area of the Algay and Oroshaemoe sites the climate around c. 6000 cal BC was hu­mid and warm. The anthropogenic impact on the Algay site was in this period low, in contrast to the Oroshemoe site where the first evidence of a people was found. Based on the archaeological data, in this period the carriers of the Orlovskaya Neolithic cul­ture appeared in this region. The climatic New interdisciplinary research on Neolithic-Eneolithic sites in the Low Volga River region conditions in this time were favourable. The period of c. 6400–5100 BC, according to pollen analysis provided by Bolikhovskaya (2011), is characterized as warm and mod­erately dry in the Low Volga region. At c. 6200–3580 BC the rate of alluvium accumu­lation in the floodplains of small rivers of the Kalachskaya hilltop decreased (Sicheva 1999). The regressive phase of the New-Cas­pian basin around c. 5900–5200 BC was at an altitude of –28m. Open areas and a di­versity of grass types and broad-leaved fo­rests (linden, elm, beech, alder) were spre­ading. Cereals and grass prevailed. Accord­ing to E. A. Spiridonova (1991), at 5500– 5200 BC in the northern part of the central part of Eastern Europe the forest area pre­vailed, and in the southern part the steppe zones were spreading. At the Algay site, according to geochemical markers, the beginning of aridization ap­peared during c. 5656–5566 cal BC. Some increase in humidity is registered about 5350–5120 cal BC (Fig. 3). An increase in anthropogenic activity was also noted in this period. The maximum of aridization was recorded in the deposits dated to 5050– 4900 cal BC on the Algay site. These layers did not contain any cultural finds and the anthropogenic impact is low according to geochemical indicators. According to Natalia P. Gerasimenko (1997), the climatic Holocene optimum in the steppe zone was registered during 5500–4500 BC. Bolikhovskaya (2011), on the other hand, suggests that the climatic optimum was 5100–4000 BC. The transgression in the New-Caspian basin increased to reach 18– 28m in c. 5060–3980 BC. We register the transition to warm and hu­mid conditions at c. 5060–4547 cal BC. These conditions probably correlate with the Holocene climatic maximum in the steppe zone. The high anthropogenic activity in the deposits corresponds to this time. The arte-facts of the Cis-Caspian archaeological cul­ture were found in this layer. Strong aridization occurred around 4700– 4500 cal BC, based on the geochemical indi­cators. According to Bolikhovskaya (2011), the aridization of the steppe was registered at c. 4500– 4400 BC, and this was the main factor in rapid decrease of the Caspian water level. After the climatic aridization at the Oroshaemoe site the transition to more favoura­ble conditions resulted in the appearance of people from the Khvalynskaya Eneolithic culture at 4725–4336 cal BC. Marianna A. Kulkova, Alexandr A. Vybornov, Aleksandr Yudin, Nataliya Doga, and Aleksandr Popov Conclusion The landscape-climatic con­ditions in the steppe area of the Lower Volga basin strongly impacted the devel-The next event of maximum aridization correlates opment of ancient societies. In this paper we consi-with sterile horizons on both sites at c. 5100–4900 dered the adaptation of people in the past to envi-cal BC when the people abandoned this territory. ronmental conditions in this region. The new stage of anthropogenic activity is present-The first evidence of the Orlovskaya Neolithic cul-ed at Oroshaemoe the most clearly. This is the appea­ture is around 6200 cal BC. In this period there was rance of the Cis-Caspian culture (4900–4800 cal BC), the transition to moderately humid and warm condi-the first with domestic animals. tions that lasted till c. 6000 cal BC. A sterile horizon without artefacts was sedimented at c. 6000–5900 The humid and warm conditions changed within a cal BC in the period with the maximum of aridization. short period (around 100 years) due to aridization, and this caused the forming of a sterile layer. The The second stage of Orlovskaya culture development development of the Khvalynskaya Eneolithic culture was registered at 5800–5500 cal BC on the Algay is dated to 4700–4400 cal BC. site. In this period the climate was humid and warm. The decrease in anthropogenic activity correlates with cold and dry conditions at 5660–5560 cal BC. In the later stage of the Orlovskaya culture (5300– ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 5200 cal BC) the climate was more humid and warm- This article was prepared in the framework of the er, and there were significant changes in the mater- project 33.1907 of Government assignment of the Rus­ ial culture of this stage. The influence of carriers with sian Federation Ministry of Education and Science new cultural traditions in this period is probably re- and the RFFR project 18-09-00040. flected in these changes. . References Bolikhovskaya N. S. 2011. Evoluziya klimata I landshaf­tov Nizhnego Povolzhya v golozene. Vestnik Moskovsko-go Universiteta. Seriya 5. Geografiya 2: 13–27. (in Rus­sian) Budja M. 2015. Archaeology and rapid climate changes from the collapse concept to a panarchy interpretative model. Documenta Praehistorica 42: 171–184. https://doi.org/10.4312/dp.42.11 Bronk Ramsey C. 2009. Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon dates. Radiocarbon 51(1): 337–360. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0033822200033865 Gerasimenko N. P. 1997. Environmental and climatic changes between 3 and 5 ka BP in southern Ukraine. 3th Millenium BC Clim. In H. N. Dalfes, G. Kukla, and H. Weiss (eds.), Third Millennium BC Climate Change and Old World Collapse. Nato ASI Subseries I, Vol. 49. Springer-Verlag. Berlin Heidelberg: 371–399. New interdisciplinary research on Neolithic-Eneolithic sites in the Low Volga River region Kulkova M. A. 2007. Klimaticheskie katastrophy v rannem i srednem golozene I ih vliyanie na drevnie soobshestva. Radiouglerod v archeologicheskih I paleoekologicheskih issledovaniyah. Institut Vysokomolekulyarnykh Soyedi­neniy Rossiyskoy akademii nauk. St. Petersburg: 316–333. (in Russian) 2012. Metodi prikladnih paleolandshaftnih geohimi­cheskih issledovanii. Herzen University Press. Saint-Pe­tersburg: 152. (in Russian) Nesbitt H. W., Young G. M. 1982. Early Proterozoic cli­mates and plate motions inferred from major chemistry of lutites. Nature 299: 715–717. Spiridonova E. A. 1991. Evoluziya rastitelnogo pokrova basseina Dona v verhnem Pleistozene-Golozene. Nauka Press. Moscow: 221. (in Russian) Spiridonova E. A., Aleshinskaya A. S. 1999. Periodizaziya neolita-eneolita Evropeiskoy Rossii po dannim palinolo­gichaskogo analiza. Rossiyskaya Arheologiya 1: 23–33. (in Russian) Sicheva S. A. 1999. Ritmi pochvoobrazovaniya i osadkona­kopleniya v golozene (svodka 14C dannih). Pochvovede­nie 6: 677–687. (in Russian) Vybornov A. A. 2010. On the correlation of natural pro­cesses in the Neolitic Volgo-Kama. Documenta Praehisto­rica 37: 293–298. https://doi.org/10.4312/dp.37.25 Vybornov A., Kosintsev P., and Kulkova M. 2015a. The origin of farming in Lower Volga Region. Documenta Pra­ehistorica 42: 67–75. https://doi.org/10.4312\dp.42.3 Vybornov A. A., Yudin A. I., Vasilieva I. N., Kosintsev P. A., Kulkova M. A., Goslar T., and Doga N. 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(in Russian) back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) The Early Eneolithic burial ground at Ekaterinovsky Cape in the forest-steppe Volga region Arkadii Korolev 1, Anna Kochkina 2, and Dmitry Stashenkov2 1 Samara State University of Social Sciences and Education, Samara, RU arkorolev@gmail.com 2 Samara Regional History Museum of P. V. Alabin, Samara, RU archeo@list.ru ABSTRACT – The Ekaterinovsky Cape burial ground is located on the territory of the Samara region of Russia on the left bank of the River Volga. The excavation of the burial ground was carried out in 2013–2018. During this time we studied 100 graves, including sacrificial sites with ceramics of collar type and sacrificial complexes. Most of the skeletons were in an extended position on their backs. There are some skeletons on their backs with legs bent at the knees, secondary burials and separate burials of skulls. Ochre was used. The inventory included beads made from shells, stone pro­ducts, animal teeth, bones and horns. There we distinguished graves with stone sceptres and zoo-morphic rods made from the horn. The burial ground belongs to the Samara culture and dates from the second half of the 6th millennium BC. KEY WORDS – Early Eneolithic; Samara culture; Ekaterinovsky cape burial ground Zgodnje eneolitsko grobi[;e na rtu Ekaterinovski na obmo;ju gozdne stepe ob Volgi IZVLE.EK – Grobi..e na rtu Ekaterinovski se nahaja na obmo.ju samarske regije v Rusiji na levi strani reke Volge. Izkopavanje grobi..a smo izvedli med leti 2013 in 2018. Odkrili smo 100 grobov, vklju.no s prostori .rtvenih obredov s keramiko z ovratniki in .rtvenimi kompleksi. Ve.ina skele­tov je bila v iztegnjenem polo.aju na hrbtu. Nekaj skeletov je polo.enih na hrbet s skr.enimi noga-mi, nekaj je tudi sekundarnih pokopov in lo.enih pokopov lobanj. Tudi okra je bila uporabljena. Med najdbami so jagode, izdelane iz .koljk, kamniti izdelki, .ivalski zobje, kosti in rogovi. Prepoznali smo tudi pokope s kamnitimi sceptri in zoomorfnimi palicami iz ro.evine. Grobi..e sodi v kulturo Sama­ra in datira v drugo polovico 6. tiso.letja pr. n. .t. KLJU.NE BESEDE – zgodnji eneolitik; kultura Samara; grobi..e rt Ekaterinovski Introduction The Ekaterinovsky Cape burial ground is located on The burial ground was opened in 2013 by Anna the territory of the Samara region of the Russian Fe-Kochkina and Dmitry Stashenkov (Kochkina 2015. deration on the left bank of the Volga River (Fig. 1). 495–496). Further excavations lasting from 2013– The burial ground is located near the village Ekateri-2018 were carried out by an expedition of the Sama­novka and occupies the northern edge of a small ele-ra Regional History Museum and Samara State Uni­vation in the middle part of the cape, which is formed versity of Social Sciences and Education under the by a sharp bend of the Bezenchuk River (Fig. 2). guidance of the authors of the article. The total area DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.24 The Early Eneolithic burial ground at Ekaterinovsky Cape in the forest-steppe Volga region of the excavation was 318m2. There were 101 graves that we stu­died, only one grave (No. 12) relates to a later time. The burial ground contains valuable materials with re­gard to burial rites and inventory, anthropological and genetic compo­sition of the buried people, emer­gence of cattle breeding in the Volga region, social relations and chrono­logy of the late Neolithic and Eneoli­thic. Many artefacts from the inven­tory of graves are unique and are of great importance for the analysis of primitive art and religion. In this ar­ticle we present new materials and research results of this burial ground. The stratigraphy Stratigraphy and description of lay­ers: 1) turf up to 10cm; 2) a layer of activity from the last century up to 40cm; 3) black dense loam, up to 40cm; 4) brown-grey dense loam, up to 25cm; 5) brown continental clay (Fig. 3). The graves are in the bottom of the la­yer of brown-grey loam and in the upper part of the continental clay. Both layers are disturbed by shrew-mice. The northern part of the burial ground was de­stroyed during road reconstruction works. In this part the depth of graves was 5–20cm from the sur­face, in the central, southern and western parts it increased to 50–80cm, and in the east it reached 120cm. The filling of the grave pits, as a rule, did not stand out against the background of the sur­rounding soil. Sometimes a darker spot of filling was recorded in the place of the burial pit, but it usually did not coincide with its edges. Ochre was a good marker of graves or sacrificial sites. The ochre-coloured soil or clusters of ochre grains in­dicated a burial pit or sacrifi­cial site. The degree of colo­uring of skeletons with ochre is different. Graves with ‘rich’ and numerous inventories were plentifully covered with ochre. Often there were only single spots or grains of ochre in the graves. The pit of grave 31 was localized by spots of red ochre and darker filling. Due to the bright colour of the soil grave 79 was reveal-ed (Fig. 4). Among the graves located on the peri­phery of the burial ground, ochre is less common and in smaller quantities. In some graves ochre was not used at all. The funeral rites As a rule, the graves are individual (Fig. 5), but some paired ones were also found, for example, 70–71 (Fig. 6). Sometimes the placement of graves is in se­veral layers. For example, three graves (63, 64, 68) were located one above the other in three layers. Some cases of partial overlapping of one skeleton by another have also been recorded; e.g., part of grave 31 is covered by grave 20 located above it (Fig. 7). Arkadii Korolev, Anna Kochkina, and Dmitry Stashenkov These observations provide us an opportunity to clarify the sequence of formation of the burial ground. There are groups of compactly locat­ed graves with equally oriented ske­letons. Often such groups form rows that are not very even and differ in the number of graves (Fig. 7). Cases of early grave infringement are rare. It can be assumed that the graves were designated by some signs. How­ever, no traces of gravestones were found. Some of the graves, mainly in the central and eastern parts of the burial ground, do not form rows. They are represented by whole ske­letons and their fragments, as well as only by the skulls. The position of the skeletons provides a basis for the selection of ritual groups. It should be noted that in the destroyed graves it is not always possible to trace the positions of skeletons. However, skele­tons extended on their backs dominate the burial ground. Arms are usually extended along the skele­ton, while hands are located near the pelvic bones or lie on the pelvic bones. They constitute the first group (Fig. 8). The sculls of skeletons are oriented to the south-east, east, northeast, and sometimes to the north. The second group of skeletons is characterized by crouched position on the back with the knees raised. This group is smaller and not so uniform. The posi­tion of skeletons from graves 85 and 86 shows that they were located on their backs with legs bent at the knees. The heads were on a small earthen ‘pil­low’ or were resting on the edge of the pit. For the skele­ton of grave 81, the bones of the legs are slightly bent. The skeleton from grave 90 with a stone cross-shaped sceptre is assigned to this group in the half-sitting position. The skeleton from grave 23 was in a crouched position with a blockage on its right side (Fig. 8). The skeleton from the half-ruined grave 52 is also includ­ed in this group, because of a stone bracelet located on the humerus (Fig. 9.1). Bracelets worn on the hands of the bu-ried were found in the Nalchik grave (Kruglov 1941. Figs. 33–34). The same bracelets was found from the I Khvalynsky burial ground (Agapov et al. 1990. 106, Fig. 10.6), the destroyed Ivanovsky burial ground (Morgunova 1979.17, Fig. 3.23–30), grave in Krivoluchye (Vasiliev 1981.106.1–2), which con­tained a sceptre similar to those of the Hvalynskaya culture. The reasons for the differences in the posi­tions of skeletons are yet to be clarified, but the signs are characteristic of burial rituals from the Khvalynsko-Srednestnogovskoe time. The graves of the second group are noted in the central and east­ern parts of the burial ground. Despite the differences in the positions of the buried in the first and second groups in the Ekaterinovsky Cape burial ground, and some differences in the grave inventory, they are not entirely dissimilar to each other. There are cases when the skeletons of the first group were touched, but not destroyed, when arranging the graves of the second group. For The Early Eneolithic burial ground at Ekaterinovsky Cape in the forest-steppe Volga region example, the crouched skele­ton from grave 23 is close to the graves 24 and 25 (Fig. 8). So, the time difference be­tween the construction of the graves of the first and second groups cannot be significant. It is thus impossible to ex­clude the possibility that these graves can belong to the same time period. The depth of the graves, the absence of a noti­ceable filling of the burial pit, the condition of the bones and the inventory are the same. For example, the cross-shap­ed sceptre from the half-head grave 90 is typologically close to the cross-shaped sceptre from grave 45. The shell bead from the crouched grave 23 is not very different from si­milar beads from extended graves. Products made of tu­bular bones were found in the graves of both groups. It is more difficult to assign separate burials of skulls to one of these groups, which, as a rule, are not ac­companied by inventory. Such burials may include one skull, two, or three. Such graves are mainly localized in the central and eastern parts of the burial ground. The secondary burial ceremony was clearly manifested in grave 79, which consisted of compactly folded bones from two men and a woman covered with red ochre (Fig. 4). The grave was accompanied by a stone discoid scep­tre (Fig. 9.2). The burial ground contains mostly adult male and female graves, with few children. The anthropolo­gical study of skeletons is complicated by the poor preservation of bones and is not completed. How­ever, for the most significant graves such definitions were made (Khokhlov 2018.78). For grave 45 a gra­phic reconstruction of the skull was performed (Ko­rolev et al. 2018.299). The funeral inventory The distribution of inventory in graves is uneven. There is a large group of graves without inventory, and as a rule they are not ochre coloured or are only slightly coloured. Such graves were located through­out the burial ground. More than half of the graves are with inventory, and they are often painted with ochre. According to the total number of items found in the graves, beads made from Unio shells are the most numerous. These are disc-shaped with a hole in the centre and their size is 0.6–0.9cm. Beads were found in men’s, women’s and children’s graves. In some graves, small beads were preserved in situ; judging by their location, they were sewn onto clothing. Sometimes in the graves there was one bead each, in others several dozen; for example, grave 49 had 27 beads, grave 40 had 261 beads, while grave 31 had more than a thousand beads (Fig. 10.1). Other items found in the graves are: pendants (Fig. 10.2), pierced seashells (Fig. 10.4–5), and beads made of brown and green stones (Fig. 10.3). Beads in graves are less common than adzes. Graves with stone adzes are the most numerous in the burial ground. In one grave there can be up to four adzes. These are made of flint limestone, flint, and stones of green colour (Fig. 11) their size is from 5 to 19cm in length. As a rule, adzes have a polished surface and are well sharpened, but there are also ones processed only with chips. Many adzes were Arkadii Korolev, Anna Kochkina, and Dmitry Stashenkov broken during the commis­sion of the burial rite, as rep­resented by debris. Often they were broken by a strong strike. Fragments of broken adzes were found in the graves and cultural layer. Such actions are associated with the rite of spoi­lage of things recorded in the burial grounds of the Mariu­pol time at Sjezzhee (Vasiliev, Matveeva 1979.152) and Li-poviy gully (Vasiliev 1985.11– 12). Adzes are in the invento­ry of both private and extra­ordinary graves. Knife-shaped plates of flint and quartzite are from 0.6 to 3.5cm in width and up to 18cm in length. Pla­tes with and without retouch­ing were found in graves, both with ordinary and with ‘pres­tigious’ inventory (Fig. 12). Stone sceptres and rods made from horn were found in the graves with knives 45 and 46 (Fig. 13.2; 14). Stone products include small rings. They are often represented by fragments, but there are also whole copies (Fig. 13.1). There are single small pendants made of stone. In one case, a stone slab with an ab­rasive surface was found in grave 16. Products from boar tusks are quite numerous. These include large plaques of canines with and without holes at the ends, with ornament. A large group con­sists of plaques from the canine of a boar with cuts along the edges, holes and a protrusion (Figs. 15.1; 16.3). There are adornments of marmot teeth, which, ap­parently, were sewn onto clo­thing (Fig. 15.6–11). Marten fangs usually have cuttings on the root on one or two sides, but there are examples with holes and there are fangs without treatment (Fig. 15.2– 5). Beaver’s cutters often have transverse cuts near the ends. In the graves there are vari­ous products made of animal bones: plates with protrusions and holes, fragments of zoo-morphic figures, rings of tubu­lar bones, tubes (Fig. 15.12), daggers, pendants and large plates of horns. In the extraordinary grave 17 a hol­low object carved from a horn was found, in which there were three wedge-shaped objects also made of a horn. This grave included a horn staff in the form of an elk’s head, a large plate with holes from a boar’s tusk, small bone plates and beads from shells. The large tusk of a boar with holes at its ends was located on the vertebrae of the deceased. Wands from the horn in the form of heads of birds, elks, and other animals, the form of which is difficult to determine, are of great interest. In grave 45 there were bones of a sacrificial domesticated animal, a young goat (Korolev et al. 2018.297). Bones of a The Early Eneolithic burial ground at Ekaterinovsky Cape in the forest-steppe Volga region sheep and a horse were found in the cultural layer and in some graves. It is difficult to prove their direct connection to the graves, since the bones of animals could enter the filling of the pits from the cultural layer. The problem of horse domestication in the Eneolithic remains unresolved (Anthony 2007; Ko­sintsev, Kuznetsov 2013.405–408). Therefore, the question of whether horse bones found in a burial ground belong to domesticated animals or not re­mains open. According to the presence of ‘presti­gious’ items and the amount of inventory in the bu­rial ground, extraordinary graves were identified in the first group. Distinctive features are stone tops of sceptres, zoomorphic tops of wands from elk horn and other individual items. In total, 15 stone sceptres were found in graves 18, 40, 45, 46, 52, 69, 71, 76, 79, 90, and 93 (Fig. 13.2). In grave 45, three stone sceptres were found, i.e. a zoomorphic, cruci­form, round-flattened and a rod of horn in the form of a bird’s head. Also two sceptres were found aside from the graves as part of the sacrificial complexes. Zoomorphic wands or pommel hammers from horn were found in graves 19, 40, 45, and 46 (Fig. 14). Another such wand was found in the sacrificial complex near grave 76 (Fig. 16.1). Some of these products are poorly pre­served, such as those from grave 55, and it is possible that there were more zoomorphic products. In some cases, the reason for de­termining the originality of the grave was either the rarity or high number of items found there. For example, in grave 9 there was a bone dagger, marten teeth, and a beaver’s cutter. Grave 31 was made in a deep hole and contained a record number of shell beads, as well as pendants, bone rings and incisors of the marmot. In grave 41, polished rings of tubular bones, flint adzes, shell beads, and incisors of the marmot were found. In grave 74 there were two large horn plates on pelvic bones. An important feature of the Ekateri­novsky Cape burial ground is the sacrificial sites and complexes, and these often contained ochre-colo­ured ceramics. The vessels were used for funeral feasts, they were exhibited in specially organized places near the graves, and often overlapped them. Places of increased concentration of ceramics were noted along the territory of the burial ground from east to west. The dishes were made of clay with an admixture of a crushed shell (Vasilyeva 2019.33– 46). The vessels had corolla with a specific thicken­ing on the outer side – the ‘collar’ and the bottom of a rounded and flattened shape. The ornament is mainly made with comb and rope stamps; there are small holes and drawn lines (Fig. 17). Sacrificial complexes do not include human bones and are usually located near the graves. They differ Arkadii Korolev, Anna Kochkina, and Dmitry Stashenkov in the composition of their invento­ry, and sometimes contain items si­milar to those found in graves or in­clude a set of original items. For ex­ample, in the square of 5 was found a number of things including pieces of broken stone scepter and beads made of shells. The complex, found in square 48, consisted of a large, zoomorphic hammerhead from horn, a fragment of a second blade, a bone wedge, beaver incisors, and shell beads. These complexes are fully con­sistent with the sets of things from graves 40 and 45. The complex of things found in square 74 includes two flint tips of darts with a notched base and knife-like plate-inserts. The tips are typologically close to the blanks of the tips from grave 86 of the second group, with these things being found together for the first time. Analysing the sacrificial com­plexes it is necessary to mention that in grave 45, besides the sacrificial animal, the bones of the legs of ot­her individuals were also found. Cultural affiliation, analogies and chronology The cultural affiliation of the burial ground is determined by the combi­nation of signs of the grave. First of all we should mention that the first group of graves is of the Mariupol-sky type, and this provides a reason­able basis for considering the fra­mework of the Samara culture. The Neolithic or Eneolithic epoch is com­plicated. It has been found that there are no metal products for the early pastoralists of the Pricaspian, Sama­ra and Khvalynsky, which is associ­ated with the beginning of the Eneo­lithic in the Lower and Middle Vol­ga. The materials found in the Ekate­rinovsky Cape burial ground are si­milar to those studied in the Volga region in Sjezzhee (Vasiliev, Matve­eva 1979). The main features of the burial rite (spine-stretched position, ochre, orientation in the eastern sec­tor), the inventory (plates from boar’s The Early Eneolithic burial ground at Ekaterinovsky Cape in the forest-steppe Volga region canine teeth, pendants made from animal teeth, bone products, shell and stone beads, knife-shaped plates, and in some cases sceptres) bring together the Ekaterinovsky Cape burial ground with the Ma­riupol (Makarenko 1933), Yasinovatsky (Telegin 1991), and Nikolsky burial grounds of Dnieper re­gion (Telegin 1961.20–26). The second group of gra­ves are more similar to Murzikhinsky burial ground (half-sitting burial in a pose, stone rings, leaf-shaped tips; Chizhevsky 2008.367–371) and I and II Khva­lynsky burial ground (crouched on the back of the burial, ochre, sceptres with side ledges, stone brace­lets, plates from boar’s tusk, shell beads, tips with a truncated base, bone rings and tubules, knife-like pla­tes of flint, small adzes; Agapov et al. 1990). Boar tusk pectoral, a bracelet ring are similar to the Nal­chik burial ground (Kruglov et al. 1941). Stone bra­celets, shell beads, lines, and pendants make the bu­rial ground more similar to the graves at Krivoluchje (Va­siliev 1981.106). The operation time of the bu­rial ground is pre-determined by close analogies and dates obtained from the bones of skeletons and fragments of ceramics. The date DeA-8214 6442±34 BP (5470–5380 cal BC at 1.) was obtained from a human tooth. This corresponds to the date obtain­ed from fragments of ceramics from the sacrificial site of the burial ground (Korolev et al. 2019 29), and is close to the date of the human bone from grave 45 (Korolev et al. 2018.300). The dates ob­tained have a relatively narrow chronological range of approx. 5480–5219 cal BC. The dates obtained on human bones from the Ekaterinovsky Cape burial ground are similar to those for burial grounds at Vasilyevka 5, Nikolskoe, and Yasynuvatka (Kotova 2018.57–60). The main characteristics of the funer­al rite and inventory also have the closest analogies with the materials of stage 1B and the second stage of the Azov-Dnieper culture (Kotova 2002.25). But for a number of samples from human bones in the burial grounds of the Azov-Dnieper culture a reser­voir effect is established, which can reach 400–500 years (Kotova 2018.58). Therefore, before making Arkadii Korolev, Anna Kochkina, and Dmitry Stashenkov any final conclusions it is necessary to find out the presence of a reservoir ef­fect in the human bones found in the Ekaterinovsky Cape burial ground. Conclusion It should be emphasized that the sig­nificance of the Ekaterinovsky Cape bu­rial ground is determined by a number of circumstances. A large number of graves and numerous funeral goods are a representative basis for analysis and analogies. Characteristic features of the funeral rite and inventory give grounds for its inclusion in the burial grounds of the Mariupol historical and cultural re­gion. In the spatial aspect, the contacts of the popu­lation of the steppe Volga region with those of the Azov region and the Dnieper in the late Neolithic and early Eneolithic became clearer. The presence in the materials of the burial ground of crouched burials allowed us to combine the materials of the earlier period of the S’ezzhinsky type and the later Khvalynsky. This is an important chronological as­pect of the study of this burial ground. The chrono­logy of the burial ground is determined by the first radiocarbon dates, which allow it to be synchronized with stage 1B and the second stage of the Azov-Dnieper culture. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The work was carried out with the support of state assignment No. 33.1907.2017/Pch. The Early Eneolithic burial ground at Ekaterinovsky Cape in the forest-steppe Volga region Reference Agapov S. A., Vasiliev I. B., and Pestrikova V. I. 1990. Khvalynskiy eneoliticheskiy mogilnik. Saratovsky uni­versitet. Saratov. (in Russian) Anthony D. W. 2007. The Horse, the Wheel and Langu­age: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton University Press. Princeton and Oxford. Chizhevsky A. A. 2008. Pogrebeniya epohi eneolita Mur­zihinskogo II mogilnika. In A. P. Derevyanko, N. A. Ma-karov (eds.), Trudy II (XVIII) Vserossiyskogo arkheolo­gicheskogo s’ezda v Suzdale 2008 g. I. Nauka Publ. Mos­cow: 367–371 (in Russian) Khokhlov A. A. 2018. Predvaritelnye rezultaty issledovani-ya paleoantropologicheskikh materialov gruntovogo ne­kropolya Ekaterinovsky mys (po raskopkam 2014– 2017). In XXI Uralskoe soveschanie. Materialy vserossiyskoy nauchnoy konferenscii. Samarskiy Gosudarstvennyy Sotsi­al’no-Pedagogicheskiy Universitet. Samara: 40–42. (in Rus­sian) Kochkina A. F. 2015. Razvedochnye raboty v Samarskoi oblasti. Arkheologicheskie otkrytiya 2010–2013. Institut Archeologii Rossiyskaya akademiya nauk. Moscow: 495– 496. (in Russian) Korolev A. I., Kochkina A. F., Stashenkov D. A., Khokhlov A. A., and Roslyakova N. V. 2018. The Unique Burial of the Ekaterinovsky Cape Early Eneolithic Cemetery in the Middle Volga Region. In Late Prehistory of Eurasia: So­cial Models and Cult Practices. Stratum plus N. 2. Archaeo­logy and Cultural Anthropology. St. Petersburg-Kishinev­Odessa-Bucharest: 285–302. Korolev A. I., Kochkina A. F., and Stashenkov D. A. 2019. Keramika gruntovogo mogil’nika Yekaterinovskiy mys (po materialam raskopok (2013–2016 gg). Povolzhskaya ark-heologiya 1(27): 18–33. (in Russian with English summa­ry) https://doi.org/10.24852/2019.1.27.18.32 Kosintsev P., Kuznetsov P. 2013. Comment on “The Earli­est Horse Harnessing and Milking”. In Tiragetia. Archaeo­logie Istorie Antica¢. Serie Noua¢. Vol. VII (XXII). Muzeul National de Istorie a Moldovei. Chisina¢u: 405–408. Kotova N. S. 2002. Neolitizasciya Ukrainye. Institut Ar-cheologii Natsional’na Akademiia nauk Ukrainy. Lugansk. (in Russian) 2018. Revisiting the Neolithic chronology of the Dnie-per steppe region with consideration of a reservoir ef­fect for human skeletal material. Sprawozdania arheo­logiczne 70: 47–66. https://doi.org/10.23858/SA70.2018.003 Kruglov A. P., Piotrovsky B. B., and Podgaetsky G. V. 1941. Mogilnik v g. Nalchike. Materialy i issledovaniya po ar­heologii SSSR: 67–147. (in Russian) Makarenko M. 1933. Mariupolsky mogilnik. Vseukrain­skiy arkheologicheskiy komitet (VUAK). Kiev. (in Russian) Morgunova N. L. 1979. Ivanovskay duna na reke Tok v Orenburgskoy oblasti. Drevnya istoriya Povolzhya. Kui­byshev: 15–24. (in Russian) Telegin D. Ya. 1961. Nikolsky mogilnik epohi neolita-medi v Nadporozzhie. Kratkie soobsheniya Instituta Arheolo­gii 11: 20–26. (in Russian) 1991. Neoliticheskye mogilniki Mariupolskogo tipa. Naukova dumka. Kiev. (in Russian) Vasiliev I. B. 1981. Eneolit Povolzhya (step and lesostep). Izdania Kuibyshevkog Gosudarstvenog Univerzita. Kuiby­shev. (in Russian) 1985. Mogilnik mariupolskogo vremeni Lipovy Ovrag na severe Saratovskoy oblasti. Drevnosti Srednego Po-volzhya. Kuibyshev: 3–19. (in Russian) Vasiliev I. B., Matveeva G. I. 1979. Mogilnik u s. Syezzhee na r. Samare. Sovetskaja arheologija 4: 147–166. (in Rus­sian) Vasilyeva I. N. 2019. O tekhnologii izgotovleniya kerami­ki Eneoliticheskogo mogil’nika Yekaterinovskiy mys. Po-volzhskaya arkheologiya 1(27): 33–47. (in Russian with English summary) https://doi.org/10.24852/2019.1.27.33.46 back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) Personal adornments from the Eneolithic necropolis of Chirnogi-S¸uvit¸a Iorgulescu (Romania)> a picture of symbolism in prehistoric communities Monica Ma¢rga¢rit1,2, Ma¢da¢lina Dimache3 1 Valahia University of Târgovis¸te, Târgovis¸te, RO 2 “Vasile Pârvan” Institute of Archaeology, Romanian Academy, Bucharest, RO monicamargarit@yahoo.com 3 Museum of Gumelnit¸a Civilization, Oltenit¸a, RO dimachemadalina@yahoo.com ABSTRACT – The Necropolis of Chirnogi – Suvita Iorgulescu (Ca¢la¢rasi county) was located on the high terrace of the Danube and was investigated by Done Serba¢nescu (in 1989) by means of the archaeological excavations carried out for the construction of the Danube-Bucharest Channel. For this study, we analysed the archaeological assemblage preserved in the Museum of Gumelnita civi­lization from Oltenita (Ca¢la¢rasi county) coming from 10 graves, out of a total of 58, which are at­tributed to the Gumelnita culture (the second half of the 5th millennium BC). The personal adorn­ments are mainly bracelets made of Spondylus valve (16 specimens) which appear in most of the graves, along with an equal number of perforated plates made of Sus scrofa canine, this time the pieces being grouped into two graves. The funeral inventory is complemented by small cylindrical, tubular or biconvex beads, made of various raw materials: Spondylus valve, bone, malachite, coop­er and green slate. At the technical level, attention is drawn towards the technological transforma­tion scheme of the raw material, which is extremely uniform for the two main categories of orna­ments. Also, the analysed pieces showed different degrees of use-wear, demonstrating on the one hand that they were worn before the deposition in graves, and on the other that the accumulation of these items took place over time. KEY WORDS – Gumelnita culture; raw materials; technological transformation schemes; use-wear marks Osebni okras na eneolitskem grobi[;u Chirnogi-S¸uvit¸a Iorgulescu (Romunija)> podoba simbolizma v prazgodovinskih skupnostih IZVLE.EK – Grobi..e Chirnogi-Suvita Iorgulescu (okraj Ca¢la¢rasi, Romunija) se nahaja na visoki te­rasi nad Donavo in ga je izkopaval Done Serba¢nescu (leta 1989) v okviru raziskav ob izkopu kana-la Donava – Bukare.ta. Za ta prispevek smo analizirali arheolo.ki zbir, ki je shranjen v Muzeju ci­vilizacije Gumelnita v Olteniti (okraj Ca¢la¢rasi), in ga sestavljajo najdbe iz 10 grobov od skupno 58, ki so pripisani kulturi Gumelnita (druga polovica 5. tiso.letja pr. n. .t.). Osebni okras sestavljajo predvsem zapestnice, izdelane iz zaklopk Spondylusa (16 primerkov), ki so navzo.e v ve.ini grobov skupaj z enakim .tevilom preluknjanih plo..ic, izdelanih iz kaninov divje svinje, v tem primeru so najdbe zdru.ene v dveh grobovih. Grobni inventar dopolnjujejo majhne cilindri.ne, valjaste ali bi-konveksne jagode, izdelane iz razli.nih surovin: zaklopk Spondylusa, kosti, malahita, bakra ali zele­nega skrilavca. Iz vidika izdelave se posve.amo shemi tehnolo.kega preoblikovanja surovin, ki de­luje zelo poenoteno pri obeh glavnih kategorijah okrasa. Predmeti, ki smo jih analizirali, ka.ejo tudi razli.ne stopnje sledov uporabe, kar po eni strani ka.e na njihovo uporabo preden so bili odlo.eni v grob in po drugi strani ka.e na zbiranje teh predmetov skozi .as. KLJU.NE BESEDE – kultura Gumelnita; surovine; shema tehnolo.kega preoblikovanja; sledovi uporabe DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.25 Personal adornments from the Eneolithic necropolis of Chirnogi-S¸uvit¸a Iorgulescu (Romania)> a picture of symbolism ... Introduction For traditional societies personal adornments have many connotations: they play a central role in the affirmation of identity and represent a visual land­mark of belonging to a community, social class, sex or age group (e.g., Preston-Whyte 1994; Sciama, Eicher 1998; Trubitt 2003; Siklosi 2004; Vanhae­ren 2005; etc.). So, according to the context, they can display for each owner a different message. Ge­nerally, the need for individualization in compari­son to the others seems to prevail, and this trans­lates into the use of exotic raw materials brought from long distances or of local raw materials that were difficult to obtain, or which did not have a cer­tain significance in dietary habits. Given this multi­tude of meanings, special emphasis has been laid on the remarkable importance of such ornaments in the reconstruction of social structures within prehistoric communities, the identification of geographic boun­daries and, implicitly, the exchange system practiced in these ancient societies (e.g., Newell et al. 1990; Taborin 1993; Séferiades 1996; Trubitt 2003; Van-haeren, d’Errico 2006; Szabó et al. 2007; Rigaud 2011; Rigaud et al. 2015). Equally, their study also offers information regarding the technical and eco­nomic aspects specific to a human group. The eco­nomic aspects introduce into the discussion issues concerning the means of acquiring the raw materi­als, while the technical ones have to do with the identification of the processing marks and their in­tegration in the operational sequence. Starting from these general considerations about the nature of the information which the study of personal adornments can offer us, the aim of this paper is to evalu­ate the artefacts discovered in the graves attributed to the Gumelnita culture (in the se­cond half of the 5th millenni­um BC), from the necropolis of Chirnogi-Suvita Iorgulescu. For this study, we analysed the archaeological assemblage preserved in the Museum of Gumelnita civilization from Oltenita (Ca¢la¢rasi county) com­ing from 10 graves out of a total of 58 from this period (Serba¢nescu 1996; 2008). We have adopted the following ces of raw material acquisition (local and exotic), drawing the technological transformation schemes of the raw materials and the identification of use-wear marks which would indicate the use of artefacts prior to the depositing as funeral inventory. The methodology used in this study relied on macro­scopic and microscopic analysis of the technological and use-wear marks found on the archaeological items. The personal ornaments were microscopically examined using a Keyence VHX-600 digital micro­scope, with magnifications ranging from 30x to 150x, while the images were taken using a micro­scope digital camera. The analytical criteria for the technological and functional interpretations were established by referring to recent publications on the use of personal ornaments in prehistoric contexts (e.g., Bonnardin 2009; Rigaud 2011; 2013; Cristia­ni, Bori. 2012; Vanhaeren et al. 2013; Cristiani et al. 2014; Tata et al. 2014; Rigaud et al. 2015; Lang­ley, O’Connor 2016; Clark et al. 2018; Guzzo Falci et al. 2018). Archaeological background The necropolis of Chirnogi-Suvita Iorgulescu (Fig. 1) was placed on the high terrace of the Danube River in south-east Romania, north of the Balkan Peninsu­la. It is situated in the vicinity of the multilayered settlement of Ca¢scioarele and several Neolithic ne­cropolises around Chirnogi area. Based on the ar­chaeological features uncovered within the necrop­olis of Chirnogi, it was determined as belonging to the Eneolithic Gumelnita culture (in the second half goals: determining the sour-Fig. 1. Location of the Chirnogi-Suvita Iorgulescu necropolis. Monica Ma¢rga¢rit, Ma¢da¢lina Dimache of 5th millennium BC), part of the Kojadermen-Gumelnita-Karanovo VI culture (Serba¢­nescu 1996; 2008). It was discovered by Barbu Ionescu in 1961 when exca­vations of terraces were car­ried out in the area. He made the first archaeological sur­veys and found a grave in a crouched position. Done Ser-ba¢nescu undertook rescue ar­chaeological excavations in 1989 on the occasion of the excavations carried out for the construction of the Danu-be-Bucharest Channel (Ba¢lte­anu, Cantemir 1991). As a result of these, 74 graves from various historical peri­ods have been discovered. Most of the graves belonged to the Gumelnita culture, 58 graves, with three graves from post-Neolithic periods, while for 13 graves the fune-no archaeological data has been published to allow ral inventory was missing and could not be attrib-the correlation of the skeletons with the various fu­uted to a historical period (Serba¢nescu 1996). nerary inventories. Thus, at this point, we know from what graves come the adornments but cannot asso-According to the anthropolo­gical data (Ba¢lteanu, Cante­mir 1992), 62 skeletons were discovered in the Chirnogi-Su-vita Iorgulescu necropolis, with these from 36 men and 13 women, with 13 of indeter­minate sex. Most were mature people (37 skeletons), follow­ed by young adults (20–30 years, 11 skeletons), with chil­dren and adolescents being represented by 10 skeletons. The bodies were buried in a crouched position, predomi­nantly oriented towards ESE. The graves were oval-shaped and irregular, their depth, compared to the current le­vel, being –0.10/–1.00m. Although there are two an­thropological studies (Ba¢lte­anu, Cantemir 1991; 1992), Personal adornments from the Eneolithic necropolis of Chirnogi-S¸uvit¸a Iorgulescu (Romania)> a picture of symbolism ... ciate them with a skeleton. We also do not have data on their position in the graves or in relation to the skeleton, or if the graves contained other offerings. Consequently, we cannot make any considerations about the eventual distribution of ornaments by age or gender. Funeral inventory Grave no. 3 contains four bracelets made of Spon­dylus valve as funeral inventory. The first bracelet (Fig. 2A) is complete, medium preserved on its sur­face. The natural edge of the valve was retained and removed from the convex area by abrasion. The exter­nal surface of the bracelet was also adjusted by abrasion (Fig. 2B). This side still preserves small red spots, but much of the exterior layer was remov­ed by the shaping procedure. The same procedure was also applied to the internal side, at the level of the cardinal pla­teau, in order to completely eliminate the cardinal teeth and pits and to confer the rec­tangular section of the piece. The bracelet presents a perfo­ration at the level of the pits (Fig. 2C) which ensures the catching of a thread, so a small use-wear depression has been formed towards the end (Fig. 2D). The wall of the hole and the internal side are strongly smoothed and the surface is fine to the touch – pro­bably due to use-wear/friction (Fig. 2E-F). The outer diameter of the piece is 70mm and the inner diame­ ter is 53.8mm. The second bracelet (Fig. 3A) is not so well preserv­ ed, having side deposits that almost entirely cover the natural red colour on its exterior. The valve mo­ dification procedure is similar to the previous piece, only not so rigorous, in the sense that it still bears traces of cardinal pits and teeth. In spite of the sur­ face deposits, we identified marks specific to the shaping operation on the exterior side, very visible compared to other specimens (Fig. 3B-C). Nevertheless, we were not able to identify any use-wear marks of this piece under the microscope. The outside diameter is 66.2mm and the inside diameter is 47 mm. Similarly to the first item, the third one (Fig. 4A) was rigo­rously abraded (Fig. 4B), eli­minating the total cardinal plateau as well as the red ex­terior layer. The bracelet is degraded, with deposits on the external face, so we could not identify any use-wear marks Monica Ma¢rga¢rit, Ma¢da¢lina Dimache (Fig. 4C). Morphometric data are as follows: an outer dia­meter of 64mm, and inner dia­meter of 52mm. The last item (Fig. 5A) is well preserved, allowing data to be obtained on the presence of use-wear. In this case, a portion of the cardinal pla­teau is still present on the in­ternal side. The exterior side was also carefully shaped (Fig. 5 B-C), but an oval, not rectan­gular section was created, like in the other examples describ­ed above. Even though the in­ternal side has significant de­posits, in small areas we were able to identify use-wear marks (Fig. 5D), probably rotation was obtained (Fig. 7B, E, H, K). In a second resulting from the skin/clothes friction process. The stage, the surface was shaped by abrasion (Fig. 7C, outer morphometry of the piece is 65.6mm and the F, I, L) to give the pieces their circular shape. The inner one is 46mm. beads show use-wear marks, which confirms they were worn. The perforations have small depressions, Grave no. 7 contained a single bracelet (Fig. 6A), similar to those found in the grave no. No. Raw Diameter Thickness Perforation material (mm) (mm) diameter (mm) 3. The item is complete, very well preserv- 1 Spondylus 7.80 5.75 3.17 ed, without significant deposits on the sur­ 2 Spondylus 7.58 4.72 3.02 face. There is an identical technological pro­ 3 Spondylus 5.52 2.65 2.40 cedure with regard to the raw material 4 Spondylus 4.80 2.95 2.38 transformation, after which the piece acquir-5 Spondylus 4.12 2.03 1.92 ed an oval section at the ventral level and a 6 Spondylus 4.84 3.58 2.20 7 Spondylus 4.32 5.78 2.44 rectangular section at the umbo area. The 8 Spondylus 5.12 3.95 2.06 external side retains areas of red colour 9 Spondylus 3.97 2.42 1.52 with a special aesthetic impact (Fig. 6B). 10 Spondylus 4.54 1.76 1.88 Both the perforation wall and the internal 11 Bone 4.20 1.98 2.04 side have a regular fine surface with a ma-12 Bone 5.40 3.20 2.48 13 Bone 5.20 2.90 2.16 croscopic polish (Fig. 6C-D), indicating the 14 Bone 5.80 2.30 2.20 piece was worn before becoming a funeral 15 Malachite 5.16 2.72 1.54 inventory. The outer diameter of the bra­ 16 Malachite 4.26 1.62 1.48 celet is 84mm and the inside diameter is 17 Malachite 4.38 1.92 1.28 65.2mm. 18 Malachite 3.90 1.74 1.56 19 Malachite 4.10 2.23 2.04 20 Malachite 4.64 1.56 2.25 The grave inventory is completed with 30 21 Green slate 5.52 2.88 2.46 beads (Fig. 7A), of which: 20 are cylindrical, 22 Green slate 5.06 2.50 2.24 nine biconvex and one tubular. The mor­ 23 Green slate 6.65 2.94 2.45 phological differences are mainly given by 24 Green slate 4.52 2.48 2.20 the shaping procedure which created the 25 Green slate 4.49 1.42 2.17 26 Green slate 5.25 3.09 1.90 rectilinear or convex sides. All items have a 27 Green slate 4.53 1.94 2.16 circular perforation in the centre. We could 28 Green slate 5.59 2.76 2.24 not identify debitage marks for any of the 29 Green slate 3.96 1.80 1.83 specimens, due to subsequent technological 30 Green slate 5 2.48 2.23 interventions. From the raw material block, a blank which was perforated by bifacial Tab. 1. Sizes of the beads discovered in grave no. 7. Personal adornments from the Eneolithic necropolis of Chirnogi-S¸uvit¸a Iorgulescu (Romania)> a picture of symbolism ... Fig. 7. A beads made of various raw materials; B, E, H, K perforation details; C, F, I, L abrasion marks; D, G, J, M use-wear depressions at perforations level. Monica Ma¢rga¢rit, Ma¢da¢lina Dimache characterized by a wall defor­mation, the disappearance of rotation scratches and a ma­croscopic polish (Fig. 7D, G, J, M). This type of use-wear ap­peared as a result of placing several pieces on a thread in the form of necklaces or bra­celets. The morphometric data are presented in the Table 1. Grave no. 15 is similar to no. 3, having four bracelets made of Spondylus valve, of which there are two full pieces and two fractured ones. The tech­nological transformation sche­me of the valve is identical, except the method of shaping at the umbo level, which determined an oval (two items) or rectangular (two items) section. One of the pieces is very well preserved (Fig. 8A-B), with a use-wear area on the internal wall characterized by ma­croscopic polish and perpendicular fine scratches (Fig. 8C-D), also indicating in this case the previous use of the bracelet before its deposition as a funeral item. The dimensions of the items are as follows: 1. outer diameter 73mm, inner diameter 56mm; 2. out­er diameter 73mm, inner diameter 58mm; 3. outer diameter 68.5mm, inner diameter 56mm; 4. outer diameter 78mm; inner diameter 63.59mm. Two bracelets made of Spondylus valve were inven­toried in grave no. 16. The surface of the first item is rather damaged. As a result of abrasion, the piece has a rectangular section at the um-bo level. The outside diameter of the piece is 86mm and the inner diameter 63mm. The se­cond bracelet (Fig. 9A) is ex­ceptionally well preserved and has, in addition, a more intense abrasion (Fig. 9B), the wall be­ing very thin with a circular section. The use-wear of the piece is advanced, with macro­scopic polish on the inner wall and the internal side (Fig. 9C­D). The outside diameter of the piece is 79mm and the inner diameter is 66mm. Grave no. 17 contained a sin­gle bracelet from the Spondy-lus valve (Fig. 10A). It is intact and differs from the previously described specimens given the obvious preservation of a part of the cardinal plateau, which creates a special morphology. Being that well pre­served, we could identify on its external side scrat­ches resulting from the abrasion procedure (Fig. 10B). The use-wear is characterized by an intense polish and scratches perpendicular to the hole bracelet (Fig. 10C-D). The outside diameter is 77mm and the inner diameter 63.5mm. The funeral inventory is much more complex in the case of this grave, being composed of nine perforat­ed plates made of Sus scrofa canines (Fig. 11). Un­fortunately, the whole assemblage has a relatively degraded surface and, moreover, the pieces were co- Personal adornments from the Eneolithic necropolis of Chirnogi-S¸uvit¸a Iorgulescu (Romania)> a picture of symbolism ... No. Length Medium Thickness Medium diameter of (mm) width (mm) of perforation piece (mm) (mm) 1 49 8.6 3.8 4 2 48.2 13.2 3.6 4 3 50.8 14 4.6 4.8 4 51 9.6 4.3 3.8 5 61 14 5.2 4.8 6 55 15 5 4.5 7 47 13 4 4.3 8 46 18.2 4 5.2 9 45.3 17 4.6 4.4 Tab. 2. Dimensions of perforated plates made of Sus scrofa canines found in grave no. 17. vered with a layer of varnish which, in some cases, cracked away from the tooth’s enamel through de­hydration. However, the detailed analysis allowed us to reconstitute the technological transformation schemes of the raw material as well as the gripping system of the pieces. Two of the specimens have a triangular morphology (Fig. 11A, C). The other seven plates (Fig. 11B, D-I) have a quasi-rectangular mor­phology, a convex-concave section with biconcave edges. Regardless of morphology, the same proce­dures were used to obtain the finished items. The tooth was cut longitudinally and the scraping did not help us identify the procedures due to the shape of debitage edges, overlaid with abrasion (Fig. 12A­B). Transversally, the segmentation at both ends was achieved by sawing. The procedure is illustrat­ed by several marks left at the periphery of the seg­mentation plane (Fig. 12C-D), which was then abrad­ed. The internal side of the plates has been adjust­ed by abrasion (Fig. 12E-F). Three or four perfora­tions – on each item – were made by bifacial rota­tion (Fig. 12G-H). It was not possible to identi­fy the use-wear marks due to the fact that the pieces were covered with varnish. It has become obvious that the only element of use-wear identifi­cation consists in changes of the initial volume comprising small depressions at the per­foration level, identified on the internal side in the area between the perforations as­sociated with the disappear­ance of rotation scratches (Fig. 12I-K). On the external side, the use-wear resides in the formation of a small flatten­ed facet associated on some specimens (probably with an advanced use-wear) with the appearance of a small depression (Fig. 12L). The use-wear details show us the individual sewing of the perforated pla­tes. Morphometric data are as follows (Tab. 2). A Spondylus bracelet was discovered in grave no. 36, unfortunately fractured and poorly preserved. The natural shape has been preserved and has been removed from the convex side through an identical procedure to the one showed for the bracelets des­cribed above. The outer diameter is 88mm and the inner diameter is 76mm. The same raw material was also used to make two tubular beads (Fig. 13A). They have a circular section and parallel rectilinear sides. We could not identify marks of the debitage opera­tion because of the technological interventions dur­ing the shaping operation. In addition, the items have a degraded surface (Fig. 13B). The perforation was made by bifacial rotation. The rotation scratches are difficult to identify within the perforation (Fig. 13C). The morphology of the extremities is general­ly strongly rounded with the appearance of a small concavity (Fig. 13D). We assume this area was affect- No. Length Medium Thickness Medium diameter of (mm) width (mm) of perforation piece (mm) (mm) 1 44 13 4 4,8 2 53 17,5 4 4,5 3 54 16 3,8 4,5 4 50 15,6 3,5 4,2 5 64,4 17,6 4,5 4,8 6 54 15,6 4 4 7 50 17 4 4m5 Tab. 3. Dimensions of perforated plates made of Sus scrofa canines found in grave no. 36. Monica Ma¢rga¢rit, Ma¢da¢lina Dimache ed by use-wear. Morphometric data for the two beads are as follows: 1. length 21.6mm, dia­meter 5.5mm, perforation dia­meter 3.7mm; 2. length 16mm, diameter 5.5mm, perforation diameter 3.5mm. Seven perforated plates made of Sus scrofa canines were also discovered in this grave (Fig. 14). The pieces have an appro­ximately rectangular morpho­logy, a convex-concave section and biconcave edges. A longitu­dinal bipartition of the tooth was applied in order to obtain the blank. We were not able to identify the debitage procedu­res due to the shaping of the edges by abrasion (Fig. 15A-B). The interior side was also cle­aned through abrasion (four pieces) (Fig. 15C), longitudinal scraping (1 piece) (Fig. 15D) or combining both tech­niques (two pieces). Segmentation was performed by sawing (Fig. 15E) which was then overlaid with abrasion (Fig. 15F). At the corners, four perforations were made by bifacial rotation. Unlike the items from the previous grave, where the use-wear was quite unitary for all the specimens, in this case we deal Grave no. Raw material Typological category Number of pieces M3 Spondylus bracelet 4 M7 Spondylus bracelet tubular bead biconvex bead cylindrical bead 1 1 2 7 bone cylindrical bead 4 malachite biconvex bead 6 green slate cylindrical bead biconvex bead 9 1 M15 Spondylus bracelet 4 M16 Spondylus bracelet 2 M17 Spondylus bracelet 1 Sus scrofa tooth perforated plate 9 M36 Spondylus bracelet tubular bead 1 2 Sus scrofa tooth perforated plate 7 copper circular bead 2 M64 Spondylus bracelet 2 M68 copper circular bead 1 M69 Spondylus bracelet 1 M71 copper circular bead 1 Tab. 4. The funeral inventory according to the grave number. with different degrees of use-wear. Thus, we have specimens for which the perforations preserve the rotation scratches with no depression development in the peripheral area, the use-wear being absent (Fig. 15G-I). There are also items where the wear depression starts to form (Fig. 15J) or items charac­terized by the development of depressions (both on the internal and external sides) (Fig. 15K-L), which illustrate long-term use. The gripping system is iden­tical to the perforated plates from grave no. 17, which means individual sewing. From the same grave, there are two circular beads made of copper foil (Fig. 13E). The overlapping area of the foil edges is still visible (Fig. 13F-G). Even on this type of objects a deformation of the initial vol­ume can be identified, as a result of their use. Thus, at one of the specimens the perforation is deform­ed, with the appearance of a small concavity (Fig. 13H), while the end has a smoothed aspect, most likely resulting from the friction and pressure of the thread. The dimensions of the items are as follows: 1. length 7.8mm, diameter 6.4mm, inner diameter 4.3mm; 2. length 4.4mm, diameter 4.1mm, and in­ner diameter 1.9mm. Grave no. 64 contains two thin Spondylus valve bracelets, unfortunately quite degraded in the sur­face, so technological and use-wear marks are diffi­cult to be identified. However, the same method of Personal adornments from the Eneolithic necropolis of Chirnogi-S¸uvit¸a Iorgulescu (Romania)> a picture of symbolism ... abrasion appears clearly on both sides, with the eli­mination of the cardinal plateau, the pieces gaining a circular section. We were able to detect the mor­phometric data for one piece: outer diameter 76mm and inner diameter 51mm, the other being fractu­red. In grave no. 68 a single personal adornment was identified, a circular bead of copper foil. A small con­cavity on the extremity resulting from the use-wear of the piece is visible. Its diameter is 8.8mm, the thick­ness of 7.3mm, and the inner diameter of 5.7mm. Grave no. 69 containes a Spondylus bracelet (Fig. 16A), very well preserved. An abrasion was applied to the entire surface (Fig. 16B-C), eliminating most of the cardinal plateau (Fig. 16D). The item has a rectan­gular section at this level. On the internal side and on the walls of the opening the surface is smoothed. This procedure is marked by a powerful macroscopic po­lish and fine scratches (Fig. 16E-G). The outer diame­ter is 82mm and the inner diameter is 62.5mm. Finally, in grave no. 71 a circular copper bead was discovered (Fig. 17A-C), unfortunately fractured. Its Monica Ma¢rga¢rit, Ma¢da¢lina Dimache dimensions are: 9mm diame­ter, 6.8mm length, and 6mm inner diameter. Discussion Spondylus valve was mainly processed into bracelets (16 items). We assume this type of adornment has a significant value since a whole valve was used for a single bracelet, in contrast to the small beads – several pieces of this type be­ing produced from a single valve. The study of these items (regardless of their place of occurrence) proves a special unity of the technological transformational scheme, illu­strating a true ‘fashion’ with regard to thin bracelets. More­over, the existence of this fa­shion is confirmed by the pre­sence of at least one bracelet in almost each grave. The two valves composing the mollusc are different in shape and thickness (Borrello, Micheli 2004). The left valve (the upper one) is quite fine, more round­ed, shaped like a lid, having small ears on each side of the ligament and a relief of prominent thorns all over its surface. On the right valve (the lower one), which is longer and thicker, concentric lamellas are developed in relief. These different morphological aspects have generated constraints and determined the selection in order to create a certain type of ob­ject. Thus, for the bracelets discovered in the necro­polis of Chirnogi, only the left valve could be used to obtain bracelets with a round morphology, while for making beads it seems the right valve has been used (Tsuneki 1989). A method of processing through abrasion was ap­plied to all specimens. On the external side, the me­dian area of the valve was removed. The valve was also abraded on the internal side in order to remove the cardinal plateau. The scratches specific to the shaping procedure are difficult to identify due to the valve structure and various forms of surface damage. Specimens with a better preserved exterior have a Fig. 14. Perforated plates made of Sus scrofa cani­nes (grave no. 36). Personal adornments from the Eneolithic necropolis of Chirnogi-S¸uvit¸a Iorgulescu (Romania)> a picture of symbolism ... fine area to touch, with a macroscopic polish on the internal side. The issue regarding the origin of this mollusc spe­cies has not yet been resolved. Michel L. Séferiades (1996; 2000; 2010) and Paul Halstead (1993) thus consider they are of Mediterranean origin, denying the existence of this species in the Black Sea. In con­trast, Henrietta Todorova (2002) speaks about the possibility of a Black Sea origin. A practice often en­countered with a series of prehistoric communities is that of using fossil species as well, yet the dif­ferentiation between the living valves and the fos­sil ones can only be made using isotopic analyses (Shakelton, Renfrew 1970; Shakelton, Elderfield 1990; Vanhaeren et al. 2004). The studies carried out so far (Bajnóczi et al. 2013) indicate that, at the level of the European Neolithic, the used blanks were bivalves coming from the Mediterranean Sea and not from fossil deposits or from the Black Sea. Another specific element to the Chirnogi communi­ty is the perforated plates of Sus scrofa canine. Again, it draws our attention to the technological scheme Monica Ma¢rga¢rit, Ma¢da¢lina Dimache of raw material transforma­tion, which proves to be extre­mely unitary. A bipartite de­bitage method was used, com­bined with a segmentation de­bitage. If in the first case we could not determine the tech­niques, in the case of segmen­tation the sawing technique was used. The surface modifi­cation procedures were abra­sion and scraping combined on certain items, while the only volume modification pro­cedure was the perforation with a single technological va­riant: the bifacial rotation. We have identified marks that show these pieces have been worn in the form of appliqués sewn to the garments, before being deposited in the graves. However, the degree of use-wear is variable among items, indicating the pieces were sewn at different time intervals. The small beads of various raw materials also illus­trate similar procedures applied mainly in the shap­ing operation, with the execution of a bifacial rota­tion perforation and a fine abrasion to give the piece the desired shape. These beads were clearly worn, showing small depressions at the periphery of the perforation resulting from the gripping system. The pieces were placed on a thread in the form of neck­laces. The identification of the sources for the raw materi­al used to create adornments is crucial because, may­be more than any other artefact category, an adorn­ment may provide indicators in connection to the limits within which the human groups moved or in connec­tion to their exchange net­works. Being exclusively pie­ces from the funeral inven­tory, they had reached the finishing stage of their pro­cessing. Thus, in the case of plates of Sus scrofa canines or beads of lithic materials, bone and copper, we cannot say whether they were made by the local community or if they reached it through exchanges. Only in the case of the Spondylus valve can we assume this is an import. The variables which can be invoked are those of a direct import of raw material or of the already finished pieces and, at the same time, of direct exchange or movement from group to group (kula-like exchanges, as those from Polynesia). The archaeological evidence supports the existence of specialized centres in the processing of Spondylus valves, especially on the actual territory of Greece, Montenegro, Albania and Croatia (Séfe­riades 2010). For other territories, the rarity and importance of this valve obligated the communities to recycle the raw material in the situation of the fragmentation of the pieces – see the case of Hârso- Personal adornments from the Eneolithic necropolis of Chirnogi-S¸uvit¸a Iorgulescu (Romania)> a picture of symbolism ... va (Romania) (Galbenu 1963) or Omurtag (Bulga-grave no. 36 the degree of use-wear varies between ria) (Gaydarska et al. 2004). Moreover, the proba-items, demonstrating their accumulation over the ble difficulty in procuring this raw material forced years. the Chirnogi community to imitate the ornaments of this raw material in bone, as we have seen in grave This study provides us with a picture of the symbo-no. 7. The situation is not unique, as it is also iden-lism in the human community at Chirnogi from the tified in the necropolis of Sultana-Malu Rosu (Laza¢r second half of the 5th millennium BC, for which two et al. 2009). types of personal adornments – the thin bracelets of Spondylus valve and the perforated plates of the Following this analysis, it is clear that the assemblage Scrofa scrofa canine – seem to have been ‘prestige has an advanced degree of use-wear, demonstrating goods’ whose symbolism continued beyond the that the artefacts were worn before their deposition death of the person. in graves. The existence of use-wear marks on the specimens identified in prehistoric graves was also ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS recorded in other studies (e.g., Beldiman et al. 2008; Polloni 2008; Bonnardin 2009; Ma¢rga¢rit, Vintila¢ Many thanks are due to Alexandra Dolea (Austrian 2015; Laza¢r et al. 2018, etc.) and it seems to be a Academy of Sciences) and Gina Sa¢ndulescu for read- common practice, so we cannot assume these kinds ing this paper and for the English translation impro-of ornaments were created for the unique purpose vement. This work was supported by a grant of the Mi­nistry of Research and Innovation, CNCS–UEFISCDI, of being deposited in graves. Another important ob- project number PN-III-P1-1.1-TE-2016-0182, within servation related to the studied archaeological as- PNCDI III and by a research grant developed with the semblage is the variable degree of use-wear of items financial support of the Recurring Donors Fund at the from the same archaeological context, i.e. the boar disposal of the Romanian Academy and managed by tooth perforated plates found in two graves. As we the “PATRIMONIU” Foundation GAR-UM-2019-II-2.1-1 have already pointed out, the plates in grave no. 7 (project no. GAR-UM-2019-II-2.1-1/15.10.2019). have an advanced and quite unitary wear, while in . References Bajnóczi B., Schöll-Barna G., Kalicz N., Siklósi Zs., Hour-mouziadis G. H., Ifantidis F., Kyparissi-Apostolika A., Pap-pa M., Veropoulidou R., and Ziota Ch. 2013. Tracing the source of Late Neolithic Spondylus shell ornaments by sta­ble isotope geochemistry and cathodoluminescence mi­croscopy. 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Journal of Hu­man Evolution 64: 500–517. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2013.02.001 back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) New Uruk finds in NW Iran> Hasanlu VIII-VII and no Kura-Araxes culture evidence in southern parts of Lake Urmia Akbar Abedi1, Reza Heidari2, Salah Salimi3, and Nasir Eskandari4 1 Archaeology and Archaeometry Department, Tabriz Islamic Art University, Tabriz, IR akbar.abedi@tabriziau.ac.ir 2 Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization of Western Azerbaijan Province, Urmia, IR re.heydari@gmail.com 3 Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Tehran, Tehran, IR salahsalimi@gmail.com 4 Department of Archaeology, University of Tehran, Tehran, IR nasireskandari@gmail.com ABSTRACT – During 2007 archaeological survey of Little Zab River in Sardasht district in northwest Iran, six typical Uruk (Uruk-related) sites were brought to light. One of the important ones is Tepe Badamyar Rabat, with typical Bevelled Rim Bowls pottery that is considered as the first evidence of Uruk materials in northwest Iran. In addition to Rabat, the Uruk materials found in Tepe Baghi, Tepe Waliv, Tepe Molla Yousef, Tepe Lavin and Tepe Goman provide an opportunity for studying the one millennium gap between Hasanlu VIIIA (Pisdeli) and VIIC (Kura-Araxes) in the southern parts of Lake Urmia, which is seen as a key unknown period in the archaeology of NW Iran. The Uruk evidence found in the mentioned sites mainly belongs to the Middle and Late Uruk periods (3600/3500–3100 BC). KEY WORDS – Little Zab River; Uruk, Hasanlu VIIIA (Pisdeli)/VIIC (Kura-Araxes); NW Iran; border­ land Nove najdbe obdobja Uruk v SZ Iranu> Hasanlu VIII-VII in odsotnost dokazov o kulturi Kura-Araxes v ju/nih predelih jezera Urmia IZVLE.EK – Pri arheolo.kem pregledu na obmo.ju reke Malo Zab v okraju Sardasht v severozahod­nem Iranu so leta 2007 odkrili .est tipi.nih najdi.. obdobja Uruk (oz. z Urukom povezanih najdi..). Izmed teh je najbolj pomembno najdi..e Tepe Badamyar Rabat, kjer so odkrili lon.ene sklede s po-.evnim robom, ki so pomembna zna.ilnost materiala obdobja Uruk v severozahodnem Iranu. Po-memben je tudi vpogled v najdbe obdobja Uruk z drugih najdi.. Tepe Baghi, Tepe Walvin, Tepe Mol-la Yousef, Tepe Lavin in Tepe Goman; le-te namre. omogo.ajo raziskave tiso.letne prekinitve med fazama Hasanlu VIIIA (Pisdeli) in VIIC (Kura-Araxes) na ju.nem delu jezera Urmia, ki je klju.na neznanka pri preu.evanju arheologije SZ Irana. Najdbe obdobja Uruk na teh najdi..ih lahko datira-mo v fazi srednjega do poznega obdobja Uruk (3600/3500–3100 BC). KLJU.NE BESEDE – reka Mali Zab; Uruk; Hasanlu VIIIA (Pisdeli)/VIIC (Kura-Araxes); SZ Iran; obmej-no obmo.je DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.26 New Uruk finds in NW Iran> Hasanlu VIII-VII and no Kura-Araxes culture evidence in southern parts of Lake Urmia Introduction The transition process between the Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age (Kura-Araxes phenomena) is one of the least known, yet most important eras in the ancient history and chronological table of NW Iran. Previous studies in NW Iran demonstrated that the 4th millennium BC (mid-4th to end of 3rd millen­nium BC) remains among the least understood pe­riods of development in the prehistory of the region. According to the Hasanlu chronological sequence, the period between Hasanlu VIIIA (called as Pisdeli) and VIIC (EBA synchronic with Kura-Araxes culture) spans one thousand years, but the existence of only two periods (Pisdeli and Kura-Araxes) during this time raises some questions, because, based on recent excavations, four different periods and phases (LC1­3 and Kura-Araxes I) have been brought to light dur­ing Hasanlu VIIIA and VIIC (Maziar 2010; Abedi et al. 2014; 2015; Abedi, Omrani 2015; Abedi 2017). This chronological problem is considered as one of the largest gaps in our understanding of the develop­mental sequence of NW Iran (Voigt, Dyson 1992; Danti et al. 2004; Helwing 2004). In northern parts of the Lake Urmia and especially in the Middle Arax-es Basin, this chronological issue has been clarified and resolved due to absolute 14C radiocarbon dating of Kul Tepe Jolfa and Dava Göz Khoy for this time span (Abedi et al. 2014; Abedi, Omrani 2015). Also according to new research in the eastern and west­ern parts of Lake Urmia, the new chronology can be applied for this interval in these regions. One of the most obscure parts of NW Iran during Hasanlu VIIIA (Pisdeli) and VIIC (EBA) is the southern parts of Lake Urmia, with a millennium long (c. 4000/3900–3000 BC) gap in our understanding (Voigt, Dyson 1992). Several questions can be raised about this problem. First, were the southern plains of Lake Urmia during this time completely abandoned and vacant? If not, which cultures existed in this part of NW Iran? What was the nature of these cultures and what was their relationship with the Kura-Araxes and Uruk tribes? These were the questions raised by Michael Danti et al. (2014) after analysis of Hasanlu materials when identifying the transition from the Late Chalolithic to EBA. These findings not only established a good opportu­nity for revising the NW Iran chronological table, but also a good basis for studying the inter-regional rela­tionships of NW Iranian communities with southern and northern Mesopotamian societies during the 4th millennium BC. This article aims to introduce seve­ral newly found and typical Uruk sites in the south­ern part of the Lake Urmia, with detailed emphasis on new pottery, lithic and special finds at Tepe Ba-damyar Rabat. The present paper also aims to expose the position of Uruk phenomena in NW Iran chrono­logical framework and the interregional relation­ships with adjacent areas. The present study seeks to answer the questions raised above and aims to address the presence of Uruk (-related) culture in NW Iran, a topic that has not been addressed in any of archaeological research on this area. This research will introduce the typical Uruk-related site of Badamyar with its typical pot­tery items of Bevelled Rim Bowls (hereafter BRBs), and will also introduce all of the surveyed Uruk-re­lated sites in NW Iran, and especially those in the Lit­tle Zab River basin, while the importance and distri­bution map of the region will discussed. Archaeological background of southern Lake Urmia The first archaeological studies in the southern parts of the Lake Urmia were started in 1936 by Sir Aurel Stein, with a survey and six days of excavation at Tepe Dinkhah, where he found eastern Khabur items which were comparable with Hasanlu VI, and he systematically surveyed the Hasan-Ali Tepe in the connection road of Ushnaviyeh to Naghadeh, find­ing special Bronze Age painted ware (Steint 1940). His archaeological activities continued at Geoy Tepe Urmia. The first scientific archaeological studies con­cerning the EBA period in NW Iran began with the works of Frank Earp in 1903, who opened four Bronze Age tombs (Crawford 1975), and continued with the work of Theodore Bortun Brown in 1948 who spent six weeks excavating in eight separate trenches (Brown 1951). In 1949 Carleton Coon con­ducted a Palaeolithic cave survey in NW Iran, and started his excavation at Temtemeh cave at the Naz­loo Chay River Basin close to Esmail Agha village (Coon 1951). Excavations continued at other sites, such as Hasanlu (Dyson 1965; 1968; 1972; 1976; Dyson, Muscarella 1989) in the southern Lake Ur-mia region, directed by Robert Dyson, Hajji Firuz (Voigt 1983), Dalma (Hamlin 1975) and Pisdeli (Dy-son, Young 1960). Studies subsequent to these early excavations led to identification of the Late Neoli­thic period in Hajji Firuz (6th millennium BC), pre­viously regarded as belonging to the cultural hori­zon of Hassuna in Mesopotamia (Voigt 1983). Re­search in the region was continued by Ralph S. So-lecki in 1969 (Solecki 1969) and then by Regnar Akbar Abedi, Reza Heidari, Salah Salimi, and Nasir Eskandari Kearton (1969), introducing around 300 archaeo­logical sites from the prehistoric to Islamic periods. During 1971 a new survey was begun by Stuart Swiny (1975), who started from NW Iran and moved to the central Zagros, introducing 93 sites. The survey of NW Iran was continued by Wolfram Kleiss and Stephan Kroll, especially around Ushnaviyeh-Naqa­deh, Piranshahr-Sardasht and Mahabad-Miandoab (Kroll 1994; 2004; 2005). After the Iranian Revolu­tion several different projects were carried out in the region. In 2008 an archaeological survey was conducted by Ali Binandeh along the Little Zab Ri­ver Basin and Simineh Rud revealed the settlement patterns of the region during the Neolithic to the Islamic eras (Binandeh et al. 2012). The excavation at Tepe Lavin should be considered one of the im­portant excavation projects in the Piranshahr region (Binandeh et al. 2012). The excavations in dam ar­chaeological projects such as Sardasht (Fallahian, Nozhati 2016) Silveh (Abedi 2017a) and Kanisib should also be considered important scientific pro­jects for better understanding of the archaeology of the region from the Neolithic to the Islamic eras. However, the earliest and closest survey in the Sar­dasht region (where the research data come from) was launched at Tepe Rabat, and this revealed the best Manaeean evidence in NW Iran (Kargar, Bi-nandeh 2009; Heidari 2006). During the second sea­son of excavation at Tepe Rabat, the archaeological mission conducted a survey around the Rabat area, and they found the first evidence of BRBs and 17 archaeological sites (Heidari 2006). In 2007 a sur­vey was also carried out to assess the settlement pat­tern of the region along Little Zab River, with 34 ar­chaeological sites found during two seasons and six of these containing Uruk-related materials (Heida­ri 2007). The rescue project of the Sardasht Dam re­ported by Fallahian introduced five archaeological excavation sites, all of which are located on the banks of the Little Zab River. Both Tepe Baghi (Fal-lahian, Nozhati 2016) and Tepe Mollawosu (Binan­deh 2016) were found to have Uruk-related materi­als during this project. Tepe Badamyar Rabat, the Uruk-related site in NW Iran Rabat is a city in the central district of Sardasht coun­ty, the west Azerbaijan province of Iran. In Rabat there are five archaeological sites numbered as 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Site number 4, which is called as Tepe Badamyar Rabat (45°32’13”E; 36°12’32”N; 1141m asl; Figs. 1–3) is located exactly 800m northeast of the city of Rabat. Tepe Badamyar Rabat is a single period Uruk-related site about 1ha in extent and is situated on the slope of a natural mound. The site New Uruk finds in NW Iran> Hasanlu VIII-VII and no Kura-Araxes culture evidence in southern parts of Lake Urmia was originally discovered by an expedition to the Sardasht in western Azerbaijan pro­vince in 2006 and 2007 under the supervi­sion of Reza Heidari (Heidari 2006; 2007), and was later reported by Ali Binandeh (2016) and R. Heidari and Reyhaneh Afifi (2011). They introduced Badamyar Rabat as a 4th millennium Uruk or Uruk-related site with typical BRBs. Afterwards, during a Lit­tle Zab River basin survey, Binandeh repor­ted Badamyar as one of the typical Uruk si­tes in NW Iran and the Little Zab River ba­sin (Binandeh 2016). A recent survey carried out by the authors (Heidari 2006; 2007; Heidari, Afifi 2011) provided the opportunity for a detailed study of the site. Tepe Badamyar Rabat is a single period Uruk (-related) site with typ­ical BRB pottery as a unique index for the comparative dating of the site to the Uruk period. As this site is a single period one it thus gives an opportunity for focusing on the data as derived from a single period (Figs. 2–3). Uruk and Uruk-related evidence in Lit­tle Zab Basin, NW Iran The Little (or Lower) Zab River, along with the Great (or Upper) Zab, constitute two major branches of the Tigris River. Little Zab origi­nates from highlands of Piranshahr county in NW Iran and runs in the NW-SE direction, joining the Tigris just south of Al Zab in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. The river is approx. 400km (250mi) long and drains an area of c. 22 000km2 (8500sq mi). This river is permanent and its water is drinkable (Khezri 2000.130). Despite the importance of this river in the formation of various ar­chaeological settlements, and its men­tions in Mesopotamian texts, only one important research-based archa­eological survey has been done here (Binandeh et al. 2012; Binandeh 2016). Evidence of Uruk materials in the Sardasht region has been report­ed from Tepe Baghi, Tepe Waliw, Tepe Molla Yousef and Tepe Badam­yar Rabat (Heidari 2006; 2007; Hei­dari, Afifi 2011). Binandeh also re­ported on Uruk materials in Tepe La-vin (Noberi et al. 2012), and intro­duced Tepe Gooman as another Uruk-related site during a Little Zab River survey (Binan­deh et al. 2012; Binandeh 2016) (Fig. 2). The Uruk-related materials of Tepe Badamyar Rabat Sardasht During 2006 and 2007 a surface survey was con­ducted (Heidari 2006; 2007; Heidari, Afifi 2011) Akbar Abedi, Reza Heidari, Salah Salimi, and Nasir Eskandari Fig. 4. Late Chalcolithic/Uruk pottery assemblage of Tepe Badamyar Rabat. at the site to better understand the cultural materials and periodization of the site using the available evi­dence. In this regard typical materials have been found, among which Bevelled Rim Bowls (BRBs) could be considered as an important indicator of the relative chronology of the assemblages, attributing them to the famous Uruk period. Details of the find­ings will discussed below, and these are mostly pot­tery, lithic artefacts and small items such as orna­mental lithic beads. Pottery assemblage of Tepe Badamyar Rabat During the 2006 and 2007 survey, a total of 350 pot­sherds were collected and sampled from the Uruk period in Tepe Badamyar Rabat. The great majority of the pottery is handmade (97%). The fabric is cha­racterised by mixed chaff and grit (331 = 85.5%) temper; in chaff-tempered cases, the chaff is fine to medium, which invariably produces a chaff-faced ef­fect. Most of the pottery sherds are under-fired (84%), which indicates a lack of control of the heat­ing of the kiln. The pottery is mostly orange coloured (5YR-7/8) (88%), while the colours of the mono­chrome ware range from orange and brown, to buff (12%). The section can be monochrome and show a grey core. Most of the potsherds are simple and un­decorated, and in only two samples decoration is in­cised under the rim. The majority of the samples are typical rim and floor sherds. Mostly the forms of rims are simple, but there are also different styles, with everted, inverted and vertical types of rim used during pottery production. Two different forms of footed and round and flat-based pottery (jars, bowls) are evident in the assem­blages. Footed jars and bowls are predominant in the pottery assemblages. Spouted vessels could be considered as important part of the ceramic find­ings. Three broad shape and form categories can be distinguished from the Uruk Period at the site: bowls, pots and jars. Small bowls and jar are most numer­ous in all strata, and there are also large storage jars (Fig. 4). What is most important in the pottery as­semblage is the existence of 20 typical BRBs (Fig. 5). These all are handmade, coarse in treatment, under-fired with mixed inclusion temper. These BRBs have a close similarity with the Late Uruk Godin VI-V ma­terials (Young 1969; Gopnik, Rothman 2011). BRBs were reported by Heidari (2006; 2007; Heidari, Afifi 2011) for the first time in NW Iran during the Little Zab River survey. Later, Uruk materials were found in another survey at Little Zab River (Binandeh et al. 2012) and Tepe Lavin Piranshahr (Noberi et al. 2012). Lithic artefacts of Tepe Badamyar Rabat During the 2006 and 2007 survey of the site, 32 li­thic artefacts were collected in addition to pottery New Uruk finds in NW Iran> Hasanlu VIII-VII and no Kura-Araxes culture evidence in southern parts of Lake Urmia (Fig. 6). The lithic assemblages contained blades, micro-blades, flakes, and cores. Almost all the lithic findings of the Uruk period in Tepe Badamyar are made of chert, though there are four obsidian pie­ces in the assemblage. In most archaeological sites of south of Lake Urmia, obsidian has been reported as an item imported from the north (Armenia) and northwest (eastern Turkey), as reported in Tepe La-vin Piranshahr (Noberi et al. 2012). Small finds According to the survey it seems that only a small part of the site can be interpreted as a cemetery lo­cated at the slope of the mound. Surface of the site has been gradually washed away because of rain and annual flooding, and nowadays the site is also disrupted as ploughing agricultural land causes the dispersion of bones, beads and pottery. In the ceme­tery part of the site a lot of human and animal bones are visible. A detailed survey of this part revealed six ornamental stone beads (Fig. 7). Discussion A social, political, technical and economic revolutions caused many changes in southern Mesopotamia (now southern Iraq) and Southwest Iran at the turn of the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. This period is marked by the appearance of the city, the state and writing, making the transition between these two millennia a pivotal period in evolutionary thinking, and in that between prehistory and history. The end of the 4th millennium BC in SW Iran is thus characterized by the emergence of state and writing, a period which was the outcome of the ‘Proto-Urban Revolution’ and the result of a long process begin­ning from the 5th millennium. The term ‘Proto-Ela-mite’ originally referred to a script system, different from the Mesopotamian one, at the end of the 4th millennium. It is currently used to describe a period, a ‘culture’ and a ‘civilization’. Based on the Uruk mo­del and its proto-urban expansion from south Meso­potamia (4th millennium BC), the term has also been used to refer to a parallel phenomenon in Iran be­tween 3300/3100 and 2800/2600 BC. These two phenomena (Uruk and Proto-Elamite) are clearly dif­ferent in terms of chronology, material culture, script, and artistic originality. Nevertheless they are undoubtedly connected. New discoveries and studies have lead several scholars to a deconstruction of the Proto-Elamite phenomenon, whose terminology was used to define a theoretical generalization of the ‘Ur­ban Revolution’ over a large area and during a short time period. This idea suggests a significant change in Iranian society, which is supported by the archaeo­logical evidence (Naccaro 2017). The Uruk culture from 4100 to 3200 BC spread from southern Mesopotamia and appeared along the Tigris and Euphrates in Syria, and distributed up to the Fig. 5. Uruk-related Bevelled Rim Bowls pottery of Tepe Badamyar Rabat. Akbar Abedi, Reza Heidari, Salah Salimi, and Nasir Eskandari Fig. 6. Lithic artefacts of Tepe Badamyar Rabat with four obsidian artefacts. west and southwest of Iran. Beside the whole mate­rial cultural, the Uruk phenomena is especially known for BRBs (Wright, Johnson 1975; Oates 1985; Mil­lard 1988). Roughly 75% of all ceramics found with Uruk culture sites are BRBs, so two major aspects make them historically significant to archaeologists. First, they are one of the earliest signs of mass pro­duction of a single product in history. Second, their suspected use as a form of payment to workers is another historic milestone, because there is no evi­dence of rationed payments before these (Millard 1988; Potts 2009). BRBs are small, undecorated, mass-produced clay bowls most common in the 4th millennium BC. They constitute roughly three quarters of all ceramics found in Uruk culture sites, and are therefore a uni­que and reliable indicator of the presence of the Uruk culture in ancient Mesopotamia. BRBs origi­nated in the city state of Uruk in the mid-4th millen­nium BC. As the Uruk culture expanded so did the production and use of these bowls. Although BRBs are considered a characteristic Mesopotamian cera­mic leitfossil of the mid- to late-4th millennium BC, the first BRBs ever reported were actually discovered in Iran, at Susa, during the seasons of 1897/98 and 1898/99 (de Morgan 1900.Figs. 91, 118, 121). In the winter of 1902/3 at least one complete BRB, la­ter displayed in the Louvre, was recovered by Gau­tier and Lampre at Tepe Musiyan (Burton Brown 1946.36). The first BRBs in Mesopotamia were found at Tell Abu Shahrein (ancient Eridu) in 1918 (Camp­bell Thompson 1920.Figs. 3.4, 4.10), then six BRBs were found at Jamdat Nasr (Mackay 1931.Pl. 67.22– 23). According to Marc Van De Mieroop (2004) and Daniel Potts (2009), “Examples have been excavat­ ed in the Zagros Mountains (e.g., Godin Tepe, Cho­ga Gavaneh), in northern (e.g., Tepe, Ozbeki, Tepe Sialk), central (e.g., Tepe Yahiya), and southern Iran (e.g., Nurabad). They were even found on the modern coast of Pakistan near the Gulf of Oman (Miri Qalat)” (Fig. 1). During the Late Chalolictich 1–3 (c. 4500–3700 BC) the most northern, western and southern parts of the Lake Urima region had a close relationship with northern Mesopotamian societies. Shortly after LC3 (around 4000 BC) this connection pattern disap­peared and most of the southern parts of the Lake Urmia were abandoned and vacated. During the mid­4th millennium BC a new connection was established between the western parts of Lake Urmia Late Chal­colithic societies and Eastern Anatolia (Voigt 1989. 286). At the end of the Pisdeli period (c. 4000 BC), the Ushnu-Solduz valley was abandoned by seden­tary farmers for some time. In the Urmia plain there is also a chronological gap between the sites. Pottery evidence shows that during the second half of the New Uruk finds in NW Iran> Hasanlu VIII-VII and no Kura-Araxes culture evidence in southern parts of Lake Urmia 4th millennium BC, the northern Mesopotamian re­lated material can be divided into three major zo­nes.1 As Danti et al. (2004), as well as Mary M. Voigt (1989), suggest, the Ushnu-Solduz valley acts as a border zone between different forms of socio-econo­mic organization from south and north Mesopota­mia and the Kura-Araxes culture of the northern parts. It seems clear that the important strategic lo­cation of this region that it can be considered as an important border zone. As already mentioned, there is a huge gap in our understanding of the area from the south of the Lake Urima region, and especially Ushnu-Solduz, during Hasanlu VIIIA (Pisdeli) and VIIC (Kura-Araxes). North-western Iran, and especially the southern parts where we know how it fits into the Hasanlu se­quence, has strong Mesopotamian ties interspersed with episodes of northern, southern and eastern connection (Danti et al. 2004; Levine 1977; Dyson 1969). The distribution of related settlements with­in the Urmia basin suggests that Ushnu-Solduz was in some periods an important boundary area, a point of contact and sometimes conflict. In times of con­flict the valley may have served as a buffer zone, its settlements abandoned and the countryside empty or used by nomadic herders (Danti et al. 2004.584). New Uruk findings in Sardasht and the Little Zab Ri­ver basin demonstrate that the huge gap between Hasanlu VIIIA and VIIC could be the result of inaccu­rate and incomprehensive surveys in the whole of this region. Conclusion The Uruk phenomena is one of the well-known cul­tural periods in Mesopotamia, southwest and west­ern Iran, but to date has not been reported in north­western Iran. A new survey in the Little Zab River basin and especially in Tepe Badamyar Rabat, which is probable single period site with typical BRBs in this region, has raised the importance of this pheno­mena in north-western Iran. According to the chro­nology of pottery material, it seems clear that the assemblage should be dated to the second half of the 4th millennium BC, and it shows close tie with the same material that has been found in western Iran, especially from Godin VI and V. BRBs help to date the assemblage to the Middle or Late Uruk pe­riod, although we need more detailed excavation to better understand the site chronology and sequence. The discovery of Uruk finds in NW Iran has present­ed a new research site that can help to overcome the current chronological ambiguities, although many of the issues may remain impossible to clarify. New ar­chaeological evidence from Rabat and other Uruk-related sites in the Little Zab River basin will defini­tely change researchers’ attitudes toward this large chronological gap between Hasanlu VIIIA and VIIC, and it is likely that, with further research, more de­tails and new finds (e.g., the Uruk culture) will emerge in the south Lake Urmia, which is often con­sidered one of the most important archaeological and chronological ambiguities in this area and in northern Mesopotamia in general. The present study was able to clarify some of the potential trade-eco­nomic communications in the 4th millennium BC between the northwest of Iran, northern Mesopota­mia and Eastern Anatolian communities, and it is hoped that with further excavation at this site the cultures of the area will be better identified and de­scribed. Based on discussion outlined above, the rich agricultural intermountain area as well as strategic location of the Ushnu-Solduz valley were, most like­ly, one of the main factors why this place was the boundary between the political and economic insti­tutions of Mesopotamia and north-west Iran. Tepe Gawra shares numerous elements of material culture with the north-western Iran highland region; at the same time, the Gawra ceramic assemblage is surpri­singly distinct from those of the surrounding Uruk/ Jemdet Nasr settlements. One plausible interpreta­tion of Gawra is that it was a trading centre linking the Anatolian/Azerbaijani zone with Mesopotamia during the 4th millennium BC. Finally, the emer­gence of the Kura-Aras culture in the northwest of Iran and the Caucasus on the one hand, and the east of Anatolia on the other, created another border area between the land south of Lake Urmia, and espe­cially the plains of Ushu-Solduz and the northern parts of Lake Urmia. This new findings suggests the coexistence of the Kura-Araxian in the north and the Uruk in the south. 1 One zone, centred in the intermontane valleys of western Azerbaijan and eastern Anatolia, can be defined on the basis of mono­chrome painted pottery and distinctive moulded ceramics. The second zone, lying primarily in the lowlands and foothills to the south, has been defined based on well-known Uruk (and perhaps Jemdet Nasr) ceramic types. A third zone, located in the central Zagros mountains, can be tentatively defined based on the occurrence of ceramics best known as the Godin VI assemblage, found at sites from Luristan to eastern Azerbaijan (Voigt 1989.287). Akbar Abedi, Reza Heidari, Salah Salimi, and Nasir Eskandari References Abedi A. 2017a. Excavation at at Tepe Silveh Piran­shahr: First Preliminary Report. Unpublished report pre­pared for Iranian Center for Archaeology. Teheran. 2017b. 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Ameri­can Anthropologist 77(2): 267–289. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1975.77.2.02a00020 back to contents back to contents Documenta Praehistorica XLVI (2019) Probable evidence of a Middle Palaeolithic site in the northern parts of the Susiana Plain, Khuzestan, Iran Saeid Bahramiyan 1,2 1 Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Literature and Humanity, University of Tehran, Tehran, IR 2 Laboratoire Archéorient, Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée, Jean Pouilloux, L'université Lumiere Lyon 2, Lyon, FR Bahramiyan.Saeid@gmail.com ABSTRACT – There is a considerable body of studies regarding the activities of the Pleistocene human population in the Zagros and Alborz regions of Iran, as well as significant progress in the Palaeo­lithic studies in other regions, such as the foothills, plains and deserts’ margins. However, some of these peripheral regions and foothills are still neglected, and the information about the Palaeolithic period in these areas is limited. Khuzestan province, especially its northern regions, is one of these unstudied regions, yet the limited information about this region seems very interesting. Khervali, located on the western foothills of the Zagros Mountains and on the northern heights of Susa, nearby the western bank of the Karkheh River, is one of the few Palaeolithic sites identified in recent years. The site was identified in 2012 and was systemically surveyed. Due to the extension of the site and the distribution of the artefacts, sampling all the site was not feasible, therefore, four sections of the site were chosen for taking the samples and a total of 330 stone artefacts were collected. The results of the techno-typology analyses, as well as the frequency of the flakes, the Levallois samples and dif­ferent types of scrapers, revealed that the artefacts date to the middle Palaeolithic period, with consi­derable access to the local raw materials. KEY WORDS – Khervali; Middle Palaeolithic; north of Susiana Plain; conglomerate formation; acces­sibility; raw material Verjeten dokaz o srednje paleolitskem najdi[;u v severnem delu ravnine Susiana, Kuzestan, Iran IZVLE.EK – .tevilne .tudije se ukvarjajo z vpra.anjem aktivnosti ljudi v .asu paleolitika v gorovju Zagros in regiji Alborz v Iranu, velik pa je tudi napredek pri paleolitskih .tudijah na drugih obmo.­jih kot so predgorja, ravnine in obronki pu..av. Ne glede na to .e vedno ostajajo obrobna obmo.ja in predgorja, ki so manj raziskana in imamo o njih le malo podatkov iz .asa paleolitika. Tak.no ob-mo.je je tudi severni del Kuzestana, .eprav so ti podatki zelo zanimivi. Eno redkih prepoznanih pa-leolitskih najdi.. je Kervali, ki se nahaja v zahodnem predgorju Zagrosa in na severnih vi.avjih Suse. Najdi..e je bilo odkrito in sistemati.no raziskano leta 2012. Je zelo veliko in ima veliko povr.inskih artefaktov, kar pomeni, da ni bilo mo. izvesti vzor.enja na celotni povr.ini, ampak smo le-to razde­lili na .tiri dele in pobrali 330 kamnitih artefaktov. Na podlagi rezultatov tehnolo.ko-tipolo.ke ana­lize, pogostnosti kamnitih odlomkov, vzorcev orodij, izdelanih z Levallois tehniko in razli.nih pras­kal, smo lahko najdbe datirali v .as srednjega paleolitika in sklepamo, da so imeli takratni ljudje do-ber dostop do lokalnih surovin. KLJU.NE BESEDE – Kervali; srednji paleolitik; severni del ravnine Susiana; formacija konglomerata; dostopnost; surovina DOI> 10.4312\dp.46.27 Probable evidence of a Middle Palaeolithic site in the northern parts of the Susiana Plain, Khuzestan, Iran Introduction Despite one century of studies of the Palaeolithic pe­riod in Iran, there are still many regions which have remained less known compared to the Zagros and Alborz mountainous areas. Khuzestan province is one of these unknown areas, specially its northern and north-western regions, with the exception of the Pabdeh cave excavation (Girshman 1949; 1951; 1993.10). There have been several reports about the Palaeolithic finds in recent years (Dinarvand et al. 2012; Dinarvand, Mehranpour 2015; Ahmadzadeh Shouhani 2014; Sheykh no date; Alipour 2012; 2014; Alipour, Nadali Kahish 2014), although most of the archaeological research in southwestern Iran and Khuzestan province is focused on the more re­cent prehistoric and historical periods, and only few archaeological studies are dedicated to the Palaeoli­thic. As a result, our knowledge about the Palaeoli­thic period compared to the more recent periods of this region is incomplete, while Palaeolithic studies of areas such as Zagros and Albourz tend to be more advanced compared to those of Khuzestan province. An archaeological survey was conducted in 2012 by Loqman Ahmadzadeh Shouhani (Ahmadzadeh Shou­hani 2014), on the western bank of Karkheh River (the city of Susa) with the aim of identifying and re­gistering archaeological sites in the area. The survey produced 72 new sites that were identified and re­corded. One of the identified sites was a valley known as ‘Khervali’ with a considerable distribution of stone artefacts, which makes it the first and only known Palaeolithic site on the western side of Karkheh Ri­ver and also one of the few Palaeolithic sites of the northern Susiana plain (Fig. 1). Regarding the lack of information about the Palaeo­lithic period of this region and the location of this site between the western foothills of Zagros and the plains, this site can be a major source of information about the Palaeolithic period of this region. Palaeolithic research background in the Khu­zestan Province Despite Palaeolithic studies starting in Iran more than a century ago by De-Morgan in the north of the territory (Vahdati Nasab 2011) there is little infor­mation about the Palaeolithic of the Iranian Plateau, and until the past few decades Palaeolithic studies in Iran were focused on the Alborz and Zagros moun­tainous areas. The Iranian plateau has many geomor­phological variations, and the foothills, the margins of the plains and the deserts, in addition to the mountainous areas, have high value in terms of ar­chaeological remains and studies, as suggested by the results of recent Palaeolithic studies (Vahdati Nasab et al. 2009; 2010; 2013; Vahdati Nasab, Ha-shemi 2016; Darabi et al. 2012; Biglari et al. 2000; 2009; Alibaigi et al. 2010; Shidrang 2009; Conard et al. 2009; Heydari Guran, Ghasidian 2011; Hey-dari Guran et al. 2009; 2015; Bahramiyan, Ahmad-zadeh Shouhani 2016; Zeynivand 2017; Biglari 2004a; 2004b; Biglari, Shidrang 2016). Unfortunately, Palaeolithic stu­dies have not been the priority of archaeological research in Khuzestan province, and few studies have been conducted in this regard. This is despite the location of this region on the west of Zagros mountains and the accessibility of environmen­tal resources such as permanent rivers, plains, mountainous re­gions, hills and foothills, all of which can be considered as sig­nificant factors in attracting Ple­istocene human populations. Roman Girshman conducted the Early Palaeolithic studies in Khu­zestan in Pebdeh cave, located in the Lali region (northern Khu­zestan), and he discovered seve- Saeid Bahramiyan ral simple stone artefacts (Girshman 1949; 1951; 1993.10.465, Fig. 1). The next major study was con­ducted by Henry T. Wright (1979) in the north-east­ern region of Khuzestan, in Gol and Iveh plains, as part of the rescue project of the archeological sites behind the Shahid Abbadpour (formerly Reza Shah) dam. As a result of his study a number of Palaeoli­thic and also more recent prehistoric and historical periods were discovered. In 2004, a survey in Izeh was conducted by Cyrus Barfi and a rock shelter near the Eshkaft-e Kulfarah was identified with the same name and a total of 27 stone artefacts from The upper Palaeolithic and Epi-palaeolithic were discovered (Barfi 2010). During the follow-up surveys conducted by Mozhgan Jayez in 2007 (Jayez 2007), the Izeh region was surveyed once again for Palaeolithic remains, and 54 sites in­cluding caves and rock shelters with stone artefacts dating back to the Epipalaeolithic and Early Neoli­thic were discovered, and their distribution patterns studied (Niknami et al. 2009; Niknami, Jayez 2008). Jayez conducted another archaeological survey in 2008 on the Pion plain, located in the northwest of the Izeh plain, in order to identify and register all of the archaeological sites, and as the result she identi­fied 19 sites from the upper Palaeolithic to Epipala­eolithic period (Jayez et al. 2012; 2013). The northern and north-western regions of Khuze­stan province (e.g., northern piedmonts of the cities of Susa and Dezful) have attracted some Palaeoli­thic researchers in recent years, which has resulted in the identification of many Palaeolithic sites and remains. In 2008, Mohammad Sheyk conducted the first survey with the aim of identifying and studying the Palaeolithic settlement patterns on the eastern banks of Karkheh River, and he discovered 5300 stone artefacts from different Palaeolithic periods (Sheykh, publication year is not available; Vahda-ti Nasab, pers. comm.), which revealed the signifi­cance of the region during this time. The results of the previous Palaeolithic studies in northern Khuze­stan (north of the Susiana plain) also show the im­portance of this less known region in this period. Another survey was conducted in 2010 by Yusef Di-narvand on the eastern banks of the Dez River, on the northern heights of Dezful, in the Shahyun re­gion, and two lower and middle Palaeolithic sites, with stone artefacts such as cores, flakes, denticulate and Levallois pieces being discovered (Dinarvand et al. 2012; Dinarvand, Mehranpour 2015). Despite the recent Palaeolithic surveys and excava­tions in Khuzestan plain, there are still many un­known and unstudied regions in the area that need to be examined, such as the western banks of the Karkheh River. In the intense study project of “The archaeological study of the western banks of Kar­kheh River” conducted by Loqhman Ahmadzadeh Shouhani in 2012, a number of artefacts and archa­eological sites from the Palaeolithic, Chalcolithic and other recent periods were discovered (Ahmadzadeh Shouhani 2014). Of all the 72 identified sites, only the site at the Khervali Valley was attributed to the Palaeolithic period, due to the considerable distribu­tion of stone artefacts. This valley is located to the north of the city of Susa and on the west of the Kar­kheh regulatory dam, which is the main subject of the present paper. Probable evidence of a Middle Palaeolithic site in the northern parts of the Susiana Plain, Khuzestan, Iran Alireza Sardari Zarchi also conducted another archaeolo­gical survey in October 2012, in the cities of Masjed Solei-man and Andika located in north-eastern Khuzestan pro­vince. This survey was part of the project of the archaeo­logical map of Iran and re­sulted in discovering several Middle and Upper Palaeolithic and Epipalaeolithic sites (Sar­dari Zarchi 2013.68–86; 2014). Mehdi Alipour conduc­ted another survey in 2013, with the objective of identify­ing and studying the settle­ment patterns of the Palaeoli­thic period in northern Khu­zestan, Sardasht district, and on the north-eastern Dezful (Alipour 2012). He decided to conduct his survey in circular areas of 200m diameter and managed to dis­cover 1450 stone artefacts from 55 areas, and fur­ther studies showed the utilization of the Levallois technique in their production, dated back to the Mid­dle Palaeolithic. As mentioned above, the western bank of Karkheh River (in Susiana plain) is less known than the east­ern bank of the river, and the few archaeological studies which have been conducted on this area are mostly focused on the more recent prehistoric and historical periods (e.g., Mecquenem 1943.141, Fig. 106; Adams 1962; Wenke 1975–76.13–221), the only study with relevant finds to the Palaeolithic pe­riod was conducted by Ahmadzadeh Shouhani, which resulted in the identification of the Khervali site and its Palaeolithic artefacts. The geographical location of Khervali The Khervali site with the geographical coordinates of N: 32°25’49.5529”, E: 48°07’33.6804”, and the di­mensions of 2320x630m is located 130 to 160m a.s.l. The site is situated to the north of the city of Susa, on the way of the connecting road between Andimeshk to Deh Luran, after the Naderi Bridge and 950m from the western gate of the regulatory dam of Karkheh River (Fig. 2). The site is an open valley in terms of topographical characteristics and has a relatively flat surface with a slight north-west­ern – south-eastern slope that forms several hills which are known as Khervali hills based on the geo- logical maps of Iranian Oil Company (Iranian Oil Operating Companies DEZFUL 1967). Based on the geological evidence, the high elevation of the site has preserved it from the sedimentation processes of the Khuzestan plain and sedimentary deposits of the Holocene period. Besides, the site is formed on the Bakhtyari Conglomerate Formation (Fig. 3), covered in round pieces of sandstone and chert stones. A seasonal river originates from the northern heights of the valley and flows through the centre of the site and finally joins the Karkheh River. The construction of the asphalt road at the middle of the valley in order to access the Karkheh dam and also the construction of a military barracks in the southern parts, as well as the extensive excavation operations by the dam’s construction machinery, have done irreversible damage and destroyed the major sections of the site (Fig. 4). The survey methodology and the results The process of mapping and preparing a cross-sector plan of the site with mapping cameras was not pos­sible due to the size of the site as well as the previ­ously mentioned damage and destruction, with a lack of time also being an issue. Therefore, after an intensive and overall survey on the site and study­ing the concentration and distribution of the arte-facts, four different sections were chosen for further studies and sampling. The selected sections were higher than the dried bed of the river and they were consequently preserved from the natural sedimenta­ Saeid Bahramiyan tion processes or human construction on the site. A circle with a diameter of 20m was designated as the boundary of each section, their coordinates were registered via GPS devices and they were named Locus 1, 3, 4 and 51 . The sampling was done by four different people in order to avoid personal bias or preconception in choosing the artefacts. Finally, a total number of 330 stone artefacts, including cores, core fragments, blank debitages, tools and debris were collected from the four selected sections (lo­cus). Table 1 shows the number and the percentages of the collected artefacts. Palaeolithic artefacts As indicated in Table 1, among the 155 pieces of cores and core fragments, 37 pieces are the core, and 20 pieces are the core/chopper2 , which are mainly made of rubble, and based on their frequen­cy are divided into the three groups of flake cores (53 pieces), blade cores (two pieces) and bladelet cores (two pieces) that have been reduced by unidi­rectional and irregular techniques (Figs. 7–8). The abundance of fragment cores (98 pieces) among the assemblage was an interesting point in the artefacts of the site, which indicated that the core reduction and tool making process had been done on the site (Shen 1997.11). Another 76 pieces of tools (23.03% of the collected artefacts) included retouched pieces, notch/denticulate and some kinds of the scraper (Dé­jéte, single side scraper, heavy duty scraper and transverses) (Fig. 5). The flake tools, with a total number of 73, or 96.05% of the tools, are the most abundant blank types of the collection, and then the two blades (2.63%), and one bladelet (1.32%), are the next most frequent collect­ed tools. The limited number of the blades and bladelets is relevant to the rare frequency of blade cores (3.51%) and bladelet cores (3.51%) on the site (Fig. 6). Besides the tools collected from the site that are produced by flaking Typology Number % Core\Core Frag. 155 46.97 Debitage 73 22.12 Tools 76 23.03 Debris 26 7.88 Total 330 100 Tab. 1. Number and percent of Khervali artefacts. techniques from the core, a total of 73 blank debi­tages were also collected among the artefacts, and 71 pieces of these (97.26% of the collected blank debitages) were produced by flaking techniques (ex­cept for several cases of the Lovallois technique) and two pieces (2.74%) were produced by a blade removing technique from the core, and had been made with a similar technique to that seen with other tools and cores (Fig. 6). Relative chronology of Khervali Based on the collected artefacts, and the lack of low­er Palaeolithic indicating elements such as the Acheu-lean hand-axes or bifaces and picks, with the excep­tion of existing core choppers and cores, and the abundant evidence of using the flaking and Lovallois techniques, as well as the frequency of scrappers and notch/denticulate in the collected items, and also the lack of upper Palaeolithic elements such as 1 The section of Locus 2 is attributed to a collection of artefacts scattered on the dried river bed which passes through the Kherva­li Valley. Regarding the unsystematic nature of the survey and sampling, this collection was not mixed with other systematically collected artefacts. 2 Since the choppers are one of the major forms of cores (Shea 2013.50), the choppers are categorized as cores in the collected ar­tefacts of this site. Probable evidence of a Middle Palaeolithic site in the northern parts of the Susiana Plain, Khuzestan, Iran end scrapers, burin, high amount of retouched bla­des and Dufour3 (Olszewski, Dibble 2006.367), we believe that this site dates back to the middle Palae­olithic. The raw material resources The accessibility of the raw material resources was one of the key factors in choosing the location of prehistoric settlements (Heydari 2004). Therefore, studying the material and structure of the raw ma­terials (stone) utilized to produce the tools and ar­tefacts in the site, as well as the geological features Fig. 6. The used techniques for core reduction and knapping in the Khervali site. of each region, play major roles in finding out where the resources originated and also speculating about the exploitation methods in the prehistoric sites, specially Palaeolithic ones. Examining the collected stone artefacts in the present study revealed that the raw materials utilized in the Khervali Valley are mostly flint (pieces of chert, Jasper, Opal) and rarely river rubble like sandstone or quartz. Most of the ar­tefacts are made of light brown or crimson flints, and in some cases green and red or grey and cream ones. These are the main lithological features of the Bakh­tyari Conglomerate Formation4 , dating back to the Cretaceous, Eocene and Oligocene geological peri- Fig. 7. Some of the collected artefacts from the Khervali site: 1 core/chopper; 2 flake core; 3 heavy duty scraper; 4–5 Levallois flake; 6–7 denticulate flake; 8 scraper with heavy retouch; 9 déjéte; 10 single-sided scraper; 11 transverse scraper. 3 It should be mentioned that the existence of blades and bladelets is not very surprising in the lower and middle Paleolithic pe­riods (Wojtczak 2014.27–33). 4 This formation is named after the Bakhtyari tribe and is characterized by alluvial-foothill sediments derived from altitude erosion, including conglomerates and calcareous sandstones. Saeid Bahramiyan ods (Darvishzadeh 1991.660), and their outcrops have been reported in the western Zog­ros mountains and the north­ern regions of Khuzestan, par­ticularly in the northern parts of Susiana (Dinarvand, Meh­ranpour 2015; Bahramiyan, Ahmadzadeh Shouhani 2016), Deh Luran (Zeynivand 2017) and Mehran plains (Darabi et al. 2012). Besides the results of the precise typo-technological analyses on the stone artefacts of the Khervali site, which re­vealed the existence of a work­shop with great accessibility to the raw materials (Bahrami­yan 2015), this site is also lo­cated on the Bakhtyari Conglo­merate Formation (Fig. 3), which obviously demonstrates the direct access of the settlers to the raw material resources needed to produce their artefacts. Conclusion Despite one century of Palaeolithic studies in Iran, Khuzestan province is one of the regions that have remained in darkness, compared to more studied re­gions such as Zagros and Alborz. Khuzestan province in general, and its northern region (Susiana plain) in particular have in Iranian archaeological studies a major role, although Palaeolithic in the region, un­like the more recent periods, is not well studied. The little knowledge we have comes from recent studies, yet the results are very interesting and there are many reports about sites from different Palaeolithic periods, in Susiana plain and its northern regions such as the heights between the Susiana plain and western foothills of Zagros. The main points about these sites is their location nearby permanent and seasonal water resources, and on the Bakhtyari Con­glomerate Formation in this interstitial area, which shows the relation between these sites and the acces­sibility to raw material sources, which could be reach­ed often and easily in order to support tool-making activities. The recently discovered site of Kherveli is one of the rare identified Palaeolithic sites in the northern Susiana plain with two main features: its exceptional geographical location between the Zag-ros mountains and the lowlands of Khuzestan, an in­terstitial area whose Palaeolithic history is still un-known; second, the direct and definite relation of the location of the site with the accessibility to the raw materials on the Bakhtyari Conglomerate For­mation, with its high density of raw materials. There­fore, it seems that more specialized and focused stud­ies in these areas with the aim of the identification of Palaeolithic sites and analysing their settlement patterns from a wider perspective (the highlands and the plains) can result in significant finds on how the Pleistocene human populations distributed and adapt­ed to their environment, as well as the patterns uti­lized in manufacturing stone artefacts, exploiting raw materials and the probable role of the location of the sites between the mountains and the plains. Probable evidence of a Middle Palaeolithic site in the northern parts of the Susiana Plain, Khuzestan, Iran References Adams R. M. 1962. Agriculture and Urban Life in Early Southwestern Iran. Science New series 136(3511): 109– 122. Aghanabati S. A. 2006. Geology of Iran. Geological Sur­vey and Mineral Explorations of Iran (GSI) Publication. Tehran. (in Persian) Ahmadzadeh Shouhani L. 2014. 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