Journal of Archaeological Science 34 (2007) 1339e1345
http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jas
Prehistoric population history: from the Late Glacial to the
Late Neolithic in Central and Northern Europe
Stephen Shennan*, Kevan Edinborough
Institute of Archaeology and AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity, University College London, 31e34 Gordon Square,
London WC1H 0PY, UK
Received 19 September 2006; accepted 31 October 2006
Abstract
Summed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates are used to make inferences about the history of population fluctuations from the
Mesolithic to the late Neolithic for three countries in central and northern Europe: Germany, Poland and Denmark. Two different methods
of summing the dates produce very similar overall patterns. The validity of the aggregate patterns is supported by a number of regional studies
based on other lines of evidence. The dramatic rise in population associated with the arrival of farming in these areas that is visible in the date
distributions is not surprising. Much more unexpected are the fluctuations during the course of the Neolithic, and especially the indications of
a drop in population at the end of the LBK early Neolithic that lasted for nearly a millennium. Possible reasons for the pattern are discussed.
Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Mesolithic; Neolithic; Radiocarbon dates; Population history
1. Introduction
In a recent paper Gamble et al. (2005) used the S2AGES database of radiocarbon dates for the period from c. 25e8 ka that
they had compiled for western and northern Europe to propose
an outline of the population history of the region during the
Late Glacial period. The object of this paper is to follow up
that study, albeit it on a more limited geographical scale, by
adopting essentially the same approach to trace regional population histories in three areas of Central and Northern Europe
up into the Neolithic, and in particular beyond the Neolithic
transition on which earlier radiocarbon work by one of us
was focussed (Gkiasta et al., 2003). In our view the results reveal some striking patterns which have significant implications
for our understanding not just of the beginning of the Neolithic
but more importantly what happened after it.
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Shennan).
0305-4403/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jas.2006.10.031
The data on which the arguments of Gamble et al. are based
are the calibrated median values of individual determinations
and the summed relative probabilities of the dates. While
they note the potential shortcomings of using dates as data
in this way, not least the problem that some site-phases have
far more dates than others, they argue, convincingly in our
view, that the large sample of dates available to them makes
it legitimate to regard ‘the major troughs and peaks in the frequency distribution [as] representing proxy falls and rises in
human activity and/or population respectively’ (Gamble
et al., 2005, 197).
On this basis they identified a series of five population
‘events’ e defined as ‘discrete and definable trends in the
proxy data, from which we infer significant changes in the
number and/or distribution of human populations’ (ibid.,
197) e over the period c. 25e10 ka (see especially ibid.,
Figs. 3e5). A refugium stage in southern Europe (25e
19 ka BP) was followed by an initial demic expansion
(19.5e16 ka BP), and a main demic expansion into northern
Europe (16e14 ka BP). This in turn was succeeded in northern
Europe by what is interpreted as a period of population stasis
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rather than decline (14e12.9 ka BP), until the onset of the
Younger Dryas is associated with a definite population contraction (12.9e11.5 ka BP), a time when populations in southern Europe conversely increase (ibid., Fig. 5). The beginning
of the Holocene then corresponds to renewed population
growth in the northern half of Europe, although not universally; central Europe appears to be an exception.
The paper makes it very clear that expansion and dispersal
are not restricted to populations dependent on a Neolithic
mode of subsistence. Hunter-gatherer populations, like agricultural ones, responded to new reproductive and colonising
opportunities and equally had to cope with periods of adversity. These expansions and contractions were clearly related
to climate change, but not necessarily in a straightforward
way, as the authors demonstrate. Whether or not any aspects
of the cultural assemblages of these populations related to
identity marking is immaterial; the repeated expansions and
contractions resulted in changes in cultural assemblages, and
the cultural patterns associated with larger populations are
clearer and more robust (ibid., 208).
The aim of this paper is to trace the early-mid Holocene
population history of central and northern Europe, to identify
its cultural implications and in particular to see first, whether
the beginning of the Neolithic represented a major break from
what had gone before in terms of demographic patterns, and
second, what happened subsequently to regional populations.
It is only now that the data are becoming available to look
at the Mesolithic and the Neolithic, so long the province of
different specialists and treated in different ways, in a comparable fashion.
2. Data
Four databases were used to obtain relevant dates for central and northern Europe. The first was the S2AGES database
itself, kindly made available by the Gamble team. For the
Neolithic the RADON (Furholt et al., 2002) and LBK Neolithic databases were downloaded from the CALPAL website
(Weninger et al., 2005a). The fourth dataset was extrapolated
from a database of south Scandinavian radiometric data compiled by Edinborough as part of his PhD (Edinborough,
2004).
In the first instance the four radiometric data-bases were
cross-referenced, checked and collated, then the 14C results
were divided by archaeological phase. After all available European data-sets were evaluated a decision was made to focus
our case-study on data from Germany, Denmark and Poland,
as these countries had dates in sufficient numbers to give robust patterns (Table 1, Figs. 2 and 3). While modern countries
remain rather generalised geographical subdivisions, we regard them as satisfactory for the purpose of identifying broad
patterns and in the absence of the latitude and longitude data
which would enable us to identify the location of each site.
They certainly provide a basis for the generation of hypotheses
to focus future work and in fact, as we will show below, the
aggregate patterns are borne out by more localised ones where
Table 1
Summary of data
Country
Number
of 14C
results
Archaeological
site phases
represented
Dates/
site
phase
Germany
Poland
Denmark
Total
1709
214
388
2311
294
65
152
511
5.8
3.2
2.5
the data are available. A total of 2311 radiometric results were
used in the final analysis.
As we have already noted above, in using radiocarbon date
distributions in the same way as Gamble et al. (2005) and others
(e.g. Weninger et al., 2005b) we are subscribing to the view that
if we have large numbers of dates valid patterns will emerge
which can be taken as indicative of general patterns in population history. While some dates may be incorrect, or incorrectly
related to their supposed context, these will be the exception
rather than the rule and will not determine the aggregate pattern.
More important perhaps is the representativeness of the dates, in
that the probability of having a sample to date from a given
period should bear roughly the same relation to the number of
sites occupied for all periods. If sites of a given period have
been more often destroyed, are much more difficult to find, or
are less often excavated or dated then we will not have a completely valid picture. The degree of representativeness of what
we have is something we will never know for certain although
we can certainly take measures to improve our assessment of
it. In the present case the biggest issue is probably the question
of comparability between Mesolithic and Neolithic dates.
Denmark presents a particular problem here because of its
very large extent of coast, its complex sea level history and
the likelihood that it was aquatic resources that provided the
basis for high Mesolithic population densities. However, as
the results presented below will show, it would require an enormous increase in the number of dated late Mesolithic sites in
relation to early Neolithic ones e at least a fivefold increase e
to significantly shift the pattern visible here. Moreover, it should
not be assumed that Mesolithic sites are more difficult to discover than early Neolithic ones or any smaller; Mesolithic shell
middens, for example, are often large and extremely visible,
while, to the extent that hunter-gatherer groups were more
mobile than ones based mainly on farming, they would actually
generate more occupation sites. Away from areas with aquatic
resources, which would be true of most of Germany and Poland,
there are good ecological reasons to believe that population
levels would have been low (Binford, 2001, chapter 6; see also
Schmölke, 2005). Once again, the underrepresentation of Mesolithic dated site-phases would have to be on a massive scale to
change the picture presented below.
It is our view then that there is safety in numbers as far as
dates are concerned, especially in areas with long and intensive histories of research, such as those considered here, and
that the date probability distributions presented provide a basis
for characterising broad population trends. The results below
provide some evidence in favour of this argument.
S. Shennan, K. Edinborough / Journal of Archaeological Science 34 (2007) 1339e1345
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3. Method
4. Results
Initially the same method was used as that adopted by Gamble et al. (2005). The probability distributions of the dates for
each country were simply summed using CALPAL and the
summed probabilities plotted. As those authors argued, summing date probability distributions in this way should generate
a reasonably good population proxy given enough representative samples. However, as both Gamble et al. (2005) and several
of the commentators on their paper point out, the summing
method lumps together raw data without accounting for the
fact that some site phases have far more dates than others,
thus bias may be created by including data from certain (usually
recently excavated) site-phases with many dates, together with
site-phases with only a few or just one radiometric result. In order to avoid this problem, where there were multiple dates from
a given site-phase the R_Combine function from Oxcal (Bronk
Ramsey, 2005) was used to obtain a pooled mean date for the
site-phase; the probabilities of these mean dates were then
summed using CALPAL and the results plotted. While obtaining mean dates in this way will potentially introduce some distortion into estimates of the date of site-phases and will tend to
underplay the variability in the data, it does provide a better basis for regional diachronic analysis. In this case it was possible
to compare the two versions of the date (and therefore hypothesised population) distribution, to see whether the different
methods made any substantive difference. In the future it would
be quite reasonable to constrain the R_Combine dates generated for each archaeological phase with higher-quality results
as they become available, and to remove older e.g. problematic
charcoal samples, if strictly necessary.
Both Sum and R_Combine methods were used in the final
analysis. It was decided through trial and error modelling with
both software packages, that CALPAL was more suited than
Oxcal to dealing with the large numbers of summed date
distributions involved, as CALPAL results can be shown on
the same scale, in the same run of the program. Moreover,
CALPAL can deal with ten sets of up to a 1000 14C results
simultaneously using the Multigroup function (Weninger,
2005a). Germany (n ¼ 1709 dates) still remained problematic
as CALPAL can only handle up to 1000 results. However, this
provided a basis for assessing the robustness of the patterning
in the German data. 1000 German results were selected using
a random number generator in EXCEL, and the experiment
was replicated thirty times. The results of a sample of five
runs are shown in Fig. 1 and were highly consistent. It was
concluded that, broadly speaking, any of the German Sum
runs were likely to provide a reasonably good population
proxy, insofar as any raw Sum data could do so, as random
samples of 14C results generated a similar distribution curve
over multiple runs. It is difficult to explain away these results
in terms of unreliable dates or unrepresentative samples, or as
an artefact of the shape of the calibration curve, when results
are so consistent. In addition to the robustness of the German
data, the Danish results generated by the CALPAL model runs
correlated broadly with results from a fine-grained south Scandinavian analysis (Edinborough, 2004; forthcoming).
Fig. 2 shows the results for the summed probabilities of all
the radiocarbon dates for the period from 7000e2000 cal BC
in the selected countries; Fig. 3 the results for the dataset in
which the Oxcal R_Combine function has been used to obtain
a single date for each site phase for which multiple determinations
are available. It is immediately apparent that in all three areas the
two patterns are essentially the same as one another. There are
more small scale fluctuations in the single-date-per-site-phase
picture but it is difficult to say whether this arises because the
smaller sample size in the latter case produces more chance fluctuations, or because having a single date per site-phase removes
some of the smearing effect of multiple different determinations.
The main difference between the two pictures is that for Germany
the raw summed probabilities (Fig. 2) indicate that the population
peak for the whole period was in the early Neolithic LBK phase,
just before 5000 cal BC, while the single date per site-phase data
(Fig. 3) show the highest population levels in the late Neolithic,
from c. 3500 cal BC. In our view the single date per site-phase
data are to be preferred, for the reasons already stated, and the
sample size remains large (n ¼ 294); below this argument is
supported on other grounds, but too much should not be
made of the differences.
The description of the results that follows will be based in
all cases on the R_Combine results shown in Fig. 3. It is important to note that the heights of the curves are normalised
within each region, so they cannot be compared between
one region and another.
Starting with the earliest periods and working to the right,
a number of features may be observed. In all cases the Mesolithic population shows fluctuations, but immediately before
the beginning of the Neolithic it is actually lower than it was
in some earlier phases. If one compares the maximum Mesolithic peak with the first Neolithic peak in each region, the Mesolithic peak in Denmark is proportionally the highest, which
is likely to be a reflection of the significance of aquatic resources in Denmark and the high populations they are capable
of supporting (cf. Schmölke, 2005). As noted above, while
there may be some doubt about the comparability of the Mesolithic and Neolithic proxy population patterns, the bias against
the former in favour of dates for the latter would have to be
massive to alter the obvious inference to be made from the figure. The Danish pattern is basically the same as that produced
in a similar radiocarbon exercise for Denmark and Sweden by
Persson (1998, reproduced in Price, 2003). The beginning of
the Neolithic is strikingly apparent in all three areas: the start
of the LBK in Germany at c. 5500 cal BC, slightly later in
Poland; and the beginning of the TRB Neolithic in Denmark
at just after 4000 cal BC. In all cases there is a rapid rise in
population to a ceiling; in Germany and Denmark this is basically maintained for some time; the marked dip in the Polish
R_Combine data may or may not be a sampling artefact.
After 5000 cal BC the German data suggest a remarkable
decline in population, to a fraction of its maximum LBK levels,
lasting, with one or two fluctuations, until after 3500 cal BC.
Poland shows a very similar picture although the decline is
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Fig. 1. Sample date probability distributions from five runs of 996 randomly selected German
14
C results using CALPAL.
Fig. 2. CALPAL sum model of 14C Results from all databases by country. Note that all results are calculated using IntCal04 curve (Reimer et al., 2004), The
relative probability heights of the distributions [P rel] are shown on the Y axis and the X axis is in calibrated radiocarbon years. Note that five 14C results
have been rejected by CALPAL, so the number of dates is not identical to that shown in Table 1.
S. Shennan, K. Edinborough / Journal of Archaeological Science 34 (2007) 1339e1345
1343
Fig. 3. CALPAL sum model of each mean phase date calculated using OxCal R_Combine, by country.
not as striking. In Denmark there is no such marked crash although there is a decline to just over half the maximum
3500 cal BC value at c. 3000 BC, roughly at the transition between the Middle Neolithic TRB and the Single Grave Culture.
A slight upturn follows, with a more marked decline after
2500 BC. In Poland a sudden rise to a peak at 3500 BC is followed by a decline to a much lower level in the centuries after
3000 BC, corresponding to the various local Polish versions of
the Corded Ware. Germany by contrast shows a rapid rise to
a new population plateau at c. 3400 BC, maintained until
2500 BC, followed by a marked dip and then a rapid rise again
at a time corresponding to the Bell Beaker culture and the beginning of the early Bronze Age. The pattern in the final centuries of the third millennium BC should be treated with some
caution, since in southern Germany and Poland at least this is
already the beginning of the Early Bronze Age, so it is possible
that not all available dates have been included.
One general feature to note is that the different regions are
by no means perfectly in phase with one another as far as population patterns are concerned. The Danish Neolithic population expansion is at a time when Poland and Germany remain
low in comparison to the LBK. The Polish peak at 3500 BC
precedes the later German rise and while the latter remains
high for 1000 years, the Polish peak is followed by a decline.
5. Discussion
As Gamble et al. (2005) did for the Late Glacial, we have
demonstrated a complex population history. It seems that
hunter-gatherer population levels fluctuated during the earlier
Holocene, presumably at least partly in response to climatic
fluctuations, but were at historically low levels immediately
prior to the local beginning of farming; this is especially striking in Denmark. The beginning of the Neolithic sees a rapid
rise in population to a ceiling, indicating the reaching of
some sort of carrying capacity at which births and deaths are
essentially in balance, just as the classic demographic growth
models predict. In the case of Germany the large-scale picture
presented here of a rapid rise to a ceiling is mirrored at the local scale by the settlement history of the Aldenhovener Platte
and elsewhere (Zimmermann, 2002; Strien and Gronenborn,
2005, 140, Fig. 3); this supports the validity of the large scale
pattern. It seems hard to see this as anything other than demic
diffusion, in a situation where these areas were wide open for
the LBK subsistence system to colonise. Beyond the agricultural frontier there would have been few hunter-gatherers to interact with, but any who were absorbed into the LBK would
have joined and contributed to the demographic wave, in the
way modelled by Currat and Excoffier (2005) for its genetic
consequences. This could also account for the occurrence of
arrowheads with apparently Mesolithic antecedents in early
LBK assemblages (Gronenborn, 1997).
However, the LBK agricultural system was not sustained. In
the centuries after 5000 BC there was a population crash of enormous magnitude. As with the LBK population increase, the
crash is also very visible at a local level, again justifying belief
in the reality of the aggregate radiocarbon pattern. It is seen,
for example, in the abandonment of the Aldenhovener Platte region of western Germany (Zimmermann, 2002) and of the LBK
areas of the Netherlands (Richter, 1997; cited in Bakels, in press)
at the end of the LBK, as well as in pollen and settlement evidence from Hesse (Schweizer, 2003; Eisenhauer, 1994) showing
a marked decrease in occupation intensity at the end of the LBK,
continuing for a considerable time. The reasons for it remain unclear although there has been much discussion of the role of conflict. Even more puzzling is the fact that levels remained low for
1500 years. What was it that kept carrying capacity levels so
much lower than LBK levels for so long? Climatic conditions
seem likely to be one factor as their influence on Neolithic subsistence and settlement patterns is becoming increasingly apparent (see e.g. Arbogast et al., 2006; Maise, 2005), but even if they
are not the whole story the fact that both Germany and Poland
show essentially the same pattern of low population levels
between c. 4700 and 3500 cal BC indicates that any explanation
must involve processes operating at an appropriate large spatial
scale. While continuing conflict might have kept population
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levels low, for a variety of reasons, in specific areas, it is hard to
imagine it being the key factor at the large scale required.
The pattern also has a bearing on explanations of the spread
of farming into southern Scandinavia. The favoured explanation in recent years, at least in Anglophone countries, has
been Zvelebil’s (1996) argument that farming populations disrupted hunting and gathering ways of life in various ways. However, while that may have been true of the impact of the LBK in
and around the areas it occupied, the population picture presented here does not corroborate that suggestion for the period
around 4000 cal BC when farming took off in southern Scandinavia. The beginning of the TRB Neolithic occurs at a time
when population levels in Germany were not increasing but
were low, and had been for more than 500 years. Thus there
is no reason to believe that disruption of hunter-gatherer ways
of life would have increased at this time. Bonsall et al. (2001)
have suggested a climatic explanation based on a temperature
amelioration that made growing crops more viable further
north, although on the evidence presented here it did not
make any difference to Germany or Poland at this time. In
any event, the intense cultural floruit of the Danish TRB, with
its elaborate tombs, causewayed enclosures, richly decorated
pottery and evidence of connections to the south in the form
of imported metal items, coincides with the population peak.
In the case of the later Neolithic patterning, from c. 3500 BC,
when populations rise again, the reality of the aggregate picture
is again supported by regional evidence, in this case from both
northern Germany and the north Alpine area of southern Germany and eastern Switzerland (cf. also Müller, 2001 for the Middle Elbe-Saale area). In the former area pollen evidence points to
an unprecedented intensity of agricultural use (Kalis and
Meurers-Balke, 2005). In the latter, dendrochronological evidence from lake villages indicates increased settlement in the
late fourth millennium (see e.g. Wolf, 2002) and detailed archaeobotanical work points to increasing agricultural intensification
at the same time (Schibler et al., 1997). The date of this phenomenon is particularly interesting because it coincides with the
plough and wheel diffusion of Sherratt’s (1981) ‘Secondary
Products Revolution’; it is therefore tempting to associate the
new, higher populations sustainable, at least for a while, with
these innovations. The different demographic patterns characterising the three regions in the centuries after 3000 BC, and
all associated with the transition to Corded Ware and related cultures, are also striking. In Denmark there appears to be a dip followed by a rise to previous levels; in Poland there is a general
decline and in Germany no sign of any change at all until the
marked dip and rise in the middle of the third millennium (cf.
Furholt, 2003; Müller, 2003 for suggestions of continuity from
the late Neolithic to the Corded Ware in Germany), which, perhaps significantly, corresponds to the beginning of the Bell
Beaker phase.
a regional scale, especially if the method of combining dates to
give one date per site-phase is adopted. Certainly new sites
will be discovered and dates obtained that will alter the specific
patterns presented here but it will take a great deal to alter the
general patterns, given that all three of these countries are extremely well researched. It is also possible that if the dates are
disaggregated down to individual settlement regions then the aggregate data presented here will turn out to represent a rather spurious picture based on putting together a lot of very different local
situations. However, we do not think this is an argument against
offering a provisional picture and we are encouraged by the fact
that, for Germany at least, the aggregate picture is paralleled at
a more local level in the various case-studies cited. Our suggestions can obviously be tested by more detailed work in the future.
That the appearance of the LBK marked a major population
increase in the areas where it is found is well established.
What the data make clear is the extremely low levels of Mesolithic population prior to this arrival; the implication being
that existing hunter-gatherer populations only made a significant contribution demographically, genetically and culturally
to the extent that they were incorporated into the advancing
LBK demographic wave.
However, the most significant result, we would argue, is the
demonstration of the drastic demographic decline at the end of
the LBK and the long subsequent period of relatively low population levels. Explaining the reasons for this now becomes
a major issue. The decline suggested here on the basis of the
radiocarbon evidence also fits in with an increasing number
of indications from other sources that far from being the foundation of the subsequent Neolithic across large parts of central,
northern and northwestern Europe, in some respects at least it
actually left little trace. Thus, the recent ancient DNA study of
LBK samples (Haak et al., 2005) suggested that the most frequent mtDNA variant was one which is extremely rare in the
region in modern populations. Archaeobotanical studies are
also making it increasingly apparent that the LBK crop exploitation system was an unusual one which did not have any descendants (Coward et al., unpublished paper; Bakels, in press).
Finally, as one of us emphasised in a previous paper
(Shennan, 2000), the provocative history of population fluctuations suggested here makes it clearer than ever that we cannot
explain regional culture historical patterns without first understanding regional demography and its impact on cultural
transmission.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Clive Gamble and his colleagues
for making available to us the S2AGES database and Ole
Gron, Ulrike Sommer, Johannes Mueller, Clive Gamble,
Paul Pettitt and Mark Thomas for their comments, although
we have not always followed their wise counsels.
6. Conclusions
This paper is admittedly speculative but, like Gamble et al.
(2005), we believe that, given large enough numbers, radiocarbon dates can be used as proxies for population history at
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