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An offprint from
The Dynamics of Neolithisation in Europe
Studies in honour of Andrew Sherratt
Edited by
Angelos Hadjikoumis, Erick Robinson and Sarah Viner
© OXBOW BOOKS 2011
ISBN 978-1-84217-999-4
Contents
Acknowledgements................................................................................................. vii
Contributors............................................................................................................ix
Foreword..................................................................................................................xi
John O’Shea
Introduction: the dynamics of neolithisation in Europe............................................1
Erick Robinson, Angelos Hadjikoumis, and Sarah Viner
1. Grand narratives and shorter stories................................................................ 10
Alasdair Whittle
2. In constant motion? Recent advances in mathematical modelling
and radiocarbon chronology of the neolithisation of Europe.......................... 25
Marc Vander Linden
3. Time is on my side…..................................................................................... 46
João Zilhão
4. The Neolithic Revolution: an ecological perspective....................................... 66
John C. Barrett
5. Farming regimes in Neolithic Europe: gardening with cows
and other models............................................................................................ 90
Valasia Isaakidou
6. Interpretation of Scirpus from early farming sites in western Asia
and Europe: a cutting sedge of archaeobotanical research?.............................113
Michael Charles
7. Farming, material culture, and ideology: repackaging the Neolithic
of Greece (and Europe).................................................................................. 131
Paul Halstead
8. Enchantment and enchainment in later Balkan prehistory: towards
an aesthetic of precision and geometric order................................................ 152
John Chapman
9. Clutching at straw: the Early Neolithic and the dispersal
of agriculture................................................................................................. 176
Anthony J. Legge and Andrew M. T. Moore
10. ‘Pig-menting’ the Spanish Neolithic.............................................................. 196
Angelos Hadjikoumis
11. The [environ-]mental contexts of earliest Neolithic settlement
and architecture in western Hungary............................................................ 231
Eszter Bánffy and Pál Sümegi
12.
Farming practice and society in the central European Neolithic
and Bronze Age: an archaeobotanical response to the
secondary products revolution model............................................................ 266
Amy Bogaard
13.
Technological traditions and ‘the dialectic of expansion’: contact,
transmission, and neolithisation along the northwestern
fringes of the LBK........................................................................................ 284
Erick Robinson
14. Cattle and pig husbandry in the British Neolithic........................................ 313
Sarah Viner
15. Tracing the future in the past: the introduction of the Neolithic
in eastern Scania – tracking change in a local perspective............................. 353
Anna-Karin Andersson
16. Early farming and the creation of community:
the case of northern Europe...........................................................................364
Magdalena S. Midgley
7
Farming, material culture and ideology: repackaging
the Neolithic of Greece (and Europe)
Paul Halstead
Introduction
That we are still concerned with a problem (neolithisation) created by 19th century
scholars is partly due to the changing connotations of the term ‘Neolithic’. Initially
referring to a toolkit including polished and ground stone and then pottery, it expanded
to encompass farming and sedentary life (Rowley-Conwy 2004, 83). Moreover, these
co-occurring traits were functionally linked: polished stone tools cleared and tilled land;
farming permitted sedentism; and sedentism enabled use of ceramics (Cole 1965).
According to Childe (1957), this way of life, the ideology that underpinned it, and the
culture traits that represented them reached Europe from southwest Asia with colonising
farmers. One focus of subsequent debate has been the contribution to neolithisation of
immigrant farmers (e.g. Ammermann and Cavalli-Sforza 1973; 1984; Bellwood 2005;
Renfrew 2002) and indigenous foragers (e.g. Dennell 1983; Zvelebil 1986; 2005). A
second has been whether neolithisation was essentially an economic shift from foraging
to farming (e.g. Jarman et al. 1982) or an ideological transformation in perceptions of
society, landscape, fauna and flora (e.g. Hodder 1990; Thomas 1999; Whittle 1996a;
Zvelebil 1996). Ideology, though integral to Childe’s colonist model, is now emphasised
over economy mainly by those attributing neolithisation to indigenous foragers.
Entangled in both debates is dispute as to whether ceramics, farming and sedentism
comprised a co-occurring and perhaps systemically related ‘package’ or a suite of traits
that were often adopted piecemeal. The latter position is now mainly held by those
promoting indigenous agents and ideology (Rowley-Conwy 2004, 83–84), but was
previously favoured by palaeoeconomists who argued that local environment shaped
choices between foraging, cultivation and herding (e.g. Barker 1975; Jarman et al. 1982).
In principle, this argument can be resolved empirically. For example, several claims of
pre-Neolithic domesticates are results of misidentification (e.g. Rowley-Conwy 1995)
or stratigraphic mixing (e.g. Zilhão 2001). Likewise, Early Neolithic preference for
hunting in the Carpathian basin (Bökönyi 1971) and selective adoption of domesticates
in the west Mediterranean (Lewthwaite 1986) have evaporated in face of larger samples
(Bartosiewicz 2005; Rowley-Conwy 2000). On the other hand, ceramics appear before
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Paul Halstead
farming in parts of northwest Europe but after farming on Crete, while evidence
for substantial houses and settlements is regionally variable (Sherratt 1990). Future
excavations will doubtless undermine other claims for a piecemeal Neolithic, but also
identify new cases. Both sides in the debate will claim vindication, not least because
there is no agreement on the appropriate scale of analysis.
For those concerned with origins of potting or cultivation, co-occurrence in terminal
Mesolithic or earliest Neolithic levels may be crucial and, on the short time scale of
human agency, the Neolithic is not a take-it-or-leave-it package. The first few centuries
of the Neolithic, however, over most of Europe, are characterised by a shift from
foraging to farming, beginning or elaboration of ceramic production, and radically
more monumental arenas for the living and/or dead. At this broader scale, the Neolithic
‘package’ is strikingly coherent. Using the Neolithic of Greece as a case study, it is
argued that this coherence should be understood in terms of systemic integration rather
than shared (exotic) origins, but that this need not imply dominance of economy over
ideology nor preclude a dynamic role for indigenous foragers.
The Neolithic of Greece
Thanks to large-scale excavations at Sesklo and Dimini (Tsountas 1908; Figure 7.1),
Thessaly in the central mainland shaped the image of the Neolithic of Greece in early
syntheses. The Early Neolithic ‘Sesklo’ culture, with long-lived villages, rectangular
houses, painted pottery and female figurines, recalled Anatolian and east Mediterranean
assemblages and so favoured introduction by oriental colonists (e.g. Childe 1957;
Weinberg 1965). Further excavations, however, demonstrated that the Sesklo culture
(now labelled Middle Neolithic) was preceded by several centuries of Early Neolithic
material culture that less strikingly resembled eastern prototypes (Milojcic 1960;
Theocharis 1967), so bringing the colonist model into question (e.g. Kotsakis 2001; cf.
Perlès 2005). The choice of modern Greece as an analytical unit is arbitrary; different
regions have distinctive, if related, Neolithic culture histories (e.g. Papathanassopoullos
1996), while Crete developed in comparative isolation. Regional diversity is useful,
however, for exploring whether the Neolithic appeared as a package or piecemeal. The
same chronological labels are used here for mainland Greece and Crete (Andreou et
al. 1996; Tomkins 2008):
Early Neolithic (EN) – seventh to early–sixth millennium BC;
Middle Neolithic (MN) – mid–sixth millennium BC;
Late Neolithic (LN) – late–sixth to mid–fifth millennium BC;
Final Neolithic (FN) – mid–fifth to fourth millennium BC.
7. Farming, material culture and ideology
133
Figure 7.1: Map of Greece showing location of archaeological sites mentioned. 1. Knossos, 2. Franchthi,
3. Dendra, 4. Dimini, 5. Sesklo, 6. Tsangli, 7. Soufli, 8. Argissa, 9. Platia Magoula Zarkou, 10.
Theopetra, 11. Servia, 12. Toumba Kremastis Koiladas, 13. Revenia-Korinou, 14. Makriyalos, 15.
Paliambela-Kolindrou, 16. Giannitsa B, 17. Stavroupoli, 18. Sitagroi, 19. Cyclops Cave.
The beginnings of farming
Excavated EN–MN sites routinely yield charred seeds of domesticated cereals and
pulses (Halstead 1994, 204–5, table 1) and bones of domestic sheep, goats, pigs and
cattle (Halstead 1996, 28–29, table 1). Caches of grain indicate harvesting in bulk
of einkorn, emmer, naked barley, lentil, pea, grass pea and bitter vetch. Most or all
of these were exotic to Greece (Zohary and Hopf 2000) and this, coupled with large
grain size, suggests cultivation. Systematic recovery is scarce, so patchy occurrence of
particular crops at individual sites should be attributed to preservation and sampling
rather than selective adoption. Where remains of sheep and goat are distinguished
systematically, all four principal livestock species are almost invariably represented,
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Paul Halstead
even in earliest Aceramic levels at Knossos on Crete (Isaakidou 2008, 95, fig. 6.2). A
possible exception is Franchthi Cave in the southern mainland, where cattle are absent
in the Aceramic Neolithic, but this may be fortuitous as cattle are generally rare in
assemblages from caves and earliest Neolithic open sites (Halstead 1996). Sheep and
goat were not indigenous to Greece and shed milk teeth, indicating corralling of live
animals, confirm close human control at Aceramic Franchthi (Payne 1985). Although
aurochs and boar were indigenous to mainland Greece, domestic cattle and pigs were
probably introduced (Edwards et al. 2007; Larson et al. 2007) and decrease in size
through the Neolithic (von den Driesch 1987), implying relative reproductive isolation
from their larger wild relatives and hence close human control.
How rapidly this recurrent package of domesticates was adopted is obscured by
the scarcity of Mesolithic assemblages. Sheep and goats are reported from Mesolithic
levels at Theopetra Cave in Thessaly (Newton 2003) and, together with pigs smaller
than mainland boar, at Cyclops Cave on the island of Youra (Trantalidou 2008), but
contamination from overlying Neolithic deposits is likely at the former (also KyparissiApostolika and Kotzamani 2005) and not yet excluded at the latter. The sequence is
more fully reported at Franchthi, where the latest Mesolithic deposits, with wild animals
(including red deer and boar – Payne 1985) and plants (including small-seeded cereals
and pulses – Hansen 1991), are followed by the earliest Neolithic with domesticates,
albeit with a stratigraphic hiatus of a few centuries during which domesticates might
have appeared piecemeal. Foraging might also have continued into the later Neolithic in
regions (e.g. western mainland Greece) where Early Neolithic sites seem rare. At known
EN and MN sites, however, domestic plants and animals are ubiquitous and remains
of wild plants and animals extremely scarce (e.g. Halstead 1999; see below; von den
Driesch 1987), suggesting wholesale and rapid adoption of domesticates.
Consideration of how these domesticates were exploited in Greece reinforces the case
for viewing them as a ‘package’. Neolithic mortality patterns for sheep, goat and cattle
do not suggest intensive dairying (e.g. Isaakidou 2006), while reproductive isolation
of domestic from wild cattle and pigs (implied by biometric data) and the difficulty of
detecting early farming in the pollen record (Bottema 1982; Willis and Bennett 1994)
suggest modest numbers of livestock. Compared to grain crops, therefore, domestic
animals made a minor contribution to human diet – a conclusion supported by skeletal
evidence for human health (Papathanasiou 2005; Triantaphyllou 2001). Given initially
fertile soils and settlements of modest size, grain crops were probably grown on a small
scale, compatible with the palynological invisibility of early farming. In ‘traditional’
Mediterranean farming, unequal land ownership and production of surplus for urban
centres encouraged extensive husbandry with low area yields (Halstead 2000). The
projected scale of Neolithic cultivation would have enabled intensive methods (cerealpulse rotation, manuring, weeding) for which there is EN archaeobotanical evidence
in the Balkans and central Europe (Bogaard 2005), but not Greece where weed
assemblages are inadequate for exploring this issue (Valamoti 2004). Domestic livestock
7. Farming, material culture and ideology
135
were probably integral to crop husbandry. First, in a relatively wooded landscape,
the high-quality pasture created by tillage will have attracted livestock, while farmers
surely appreciated the benefits of grazing and manuring stubble and fallow plots. The
dominance of EN assemblages by sheep (the early domesticate least suited to woodland)
and close herding of pigs and cattle (implied by their reproductive isolation from wild
relatives) are consistent with confinement of livestock to arable land. Secondly, intensive
husbandry (with manuring by enclosed livestock) on naturally fertile soils would have
encouraged vigorous early growth of cereals with risk of ‘lodging’ (stem collapse) and
reduced harvest. Recent farmers across the Mediterranean let sheep graze excessively
vigorous crops to retard growth and avoid lodging (Halstead 2006a). Thirdly, cows were
used for traction at EN Knossos (Isaakidou 2006) and perhaps elsewhere in Greece, with
important implications for the intensity of tillage and the production and distribution
of manure (Isaakidou 2008; this volume). Domestic plants and animals on EN sites in
Greece thus arguably represented a ‘package’ not merely in their regular co-occurrence,
but in their close integration in an intensive mixed farming regime.
Permanent or monumental settlement?
For Childe (1957, 60), the Neolithic ‘tell’ mounds of Greece indicated permanent
settlement, while thinner layers in the north Balkans indicated less permanent
habitation. The deep stratigraphy of tells clearly suggests long-term human activity,
but does not demonstrate uninterrupted presence on any time scale. Whittle (1996b)
regarded the EN population of Thessaly as somewhat mobile because houses were
flimsy and occupation layers thin, while late winter/early spring flooding enforced
seasonal abandonment of Platia Magoula Zarkou and other low-lying sites. Flimsy
houses no more indicate mobility, however, than monumental buildings indicate
uninterrupted residence (Whittle 1997). For example, within living memory in the
village of Paliambela-Kolindrou, residents lacking the resources for mudbrick or stone
built flimsy wattle-and-daub houses. Moreover, there is no evidence that Platia Magoula
Zarkou was flooded annually rather than once in several centuries (van Andel et al.
1995), and remains of newborn lambs/kids that probably died in late winter/early
spring imply the settlement was not abandoned every year (Becker 1999).
The ages at death, and hence seasons of slaughter, of young domestic animals
suggest that Neolithic sites in Greece – tells and flat-extended settlements (below)
– were occupied by at least some residents in all or most seasons of the year (Halstead
2005; Isaakidou 2004). Assessment of age is subject to error and season of birth varies
somewhat (Milner 2005), but only special pleading could accommodate available
evidence to seasonal slaughter, and allowance for sowing and harvesting of grain crops
strengthens the case for year-round occupation. If their inhabitants moved seasonally,
different sites should yield complementary evidence, but they differ only in the strength
of evidence for year-round slaughter and this seems to be a product of sample size and
the resolution of available data (Halstead 2005). Animals could have been slaughtered
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Paul Halstead
in winter of one year, spring of another, and so on, so year-round occupation of sites
cannot be demonstrated, but it remains the most parsimonious interpretation of
available evidence.
Whatever tells represent in permanence of residence, they resulted from repeated
investment over centuries or millennia in substantial dwellings. The nature of this
investment – symbolic as well as practical (Sherratt 1990; Andreou and Kotsakis
1986) – is highlighted by comparison with another type of settlement only recently
recognised in large numbers in Greece (Kotsakis 1999). Whereas Neolithic tells are
usually less than two hectares (often < 1 ha) in extent and form a visible mound, ‘flatextended’ sites may cover 50 ha or more and are largely preserved in sub-surface pits
and ditches. Whereas tells are often occupied in successive periods (e.g. EN, MN, LN
and FN at Sesklo A), flat-extended sites often date to a single sub-period (e.g. early LN
at Toumba Kremastis-Koiladas – Hondrogianni-Metoki 2001). Whereas houses on tell
sites are rebuilt above their predecessors, habitation on flat-extended sites shifts laterally
over time (e.g. phases I and II at LN Makriyalos barely overlap – Pappa and Besios
1999). Finally, whereas houses on tells tend to be relatively substantial, free-standing,
rectangular structures of mudbrick or pisé, sometimes with stone foundations (Kotsakis
2006), those on flat-extended sites are oval pit-huts, as at Revenia-Korinou (Besios and
Adaktylou 2006), semi-subterranean round huts, as at Makriyalos (Pappa 2008), or
clusters of rectangular rooms with party walls, as at Sesklo B (Kotsakis 1982). Circuit
walls or ditches often enclosed both types of settlement, although those around flatextended sites inevitably involved substantially more labour.
Tells provided fixed places (Chapman 1994) in the new cultural landscape created
by farming and by patterns of residence that – ‘sedentary’ or otherwise – were surely
constrained by cultivated plots and stored crops to a degree atypical of Mesolithic
southeast Europe. Tells accumulated gradually, however, so the creation of fixed
places was a consequence rather than cause of their formation. Anyway, flat-extended
settlements with massive circuit ditches would have created more visible fixed places.
Tells were the unintended product of repeated investment in individual houses
(Halstead 1999) and there is growing evidence for variability in house form and
construction (e.g. Kotsos and Urem-Kotsou 2006; Pappa 2008). Investment in domestic
architecture tends not only to be greater on tells than flat-extended sites, but also to
increase through the Neolithic. Oval ‘pit-huts’, some at least too small for more than
one or two individuals, have been found at EN Paliambela-Kolindrou (Halstead and
Kotsakis in prep.) and Revenia-Korinou (Besios and Adaktylou 2006) in northern
Greece, at Argissa, Sesklo and Soufli in Thessaly (Theocharis 1973) and at Dendra in
the southern mainland (Protonotariou-Deilaki 1992). Round semi-subterranean huts,
with clearer evidence of roof supports and sometimes large enough to accommodate
a family, have been found at EN Giannitsa B (Chrysostomou 1994), LN Makriyalos
(Pappa and Besios 1999) and LN Stavroupoli (Grammenos and Kotsos 2004). Overall,
sub-surface structures are mainly of earlier Neolithic date (Pappa 2008, 53). Above-
7. Farming, material culture and ideology
137
ground rectangular houses of ‘family’ size are known throughout the Neolithic (Sinos
1971; Theocharis 1973) and MN burnt destructions suggest that each sheltered a
‘household’, in the sense of a small social group sharing residential space, tools (Tsangli
– Wace and Thompson 1912), stored food (Servia – Ridley and Wardle 1979) and food
preparation facilities (MN Sesklo A – Andreou et al. 1996, 540–41). A broad temporal
trend may again be discerned in the extent to which households walled themselves
off from their neighbours (Halstead 1995; 2006b). EN and MN hearths are variously
located within houses or in the open spaces between (see Nanoglou 2008), the latter
implying a willingness to share cooked food with neighbours (cf. Sahlins 1974, 125).
At LN Dimini (Hourmouziadis 1979) and other sites excavated on a smaller scale,
the walling off of groups of buildings perhaps limited sharing of cooked food to close
neighbours. Finally, FN and Early Bronze Age cooking facilities may be hidden within
‘kitchen extensions’ or domestic yards (e.g. Sitagroi – Renfrew 1970). The strength of
this temporal trend should not be overstated, but ‘households’ insulated themselves
from neighbours and advertised their ability to mobilise labour increasingly through
the Neolithic. Tell formation was thus partly a product of increasing household
independence and, consistent with this, over time flat-extended sites were replaced by,
and sometimes developed into, compact tell settlements (Andreou and Kotsakis 1986;
Grammenos 2006).
These trends identify tension between collective and domestic solidarity as a
defining feature of Neolithic society in Greece (Halstead 2006b; Kotsakis 2006).
While ‘domestic’ architecture to varying degrees promoted the household, human
remains are normally disarticulated and scattered, suggesting emphasis in death on
collective identity (Triantaphyllou 2008). The latter pattern, which contrasts sharply
with widespread Bronze Age burial in graves containing individual inhumations or
few partly disarticulated skeletons (Nakou 1995), is clearer on flat-extended than tell
sites, although this may be fortuitous (Triantaphyllou 2008). The labour investment
in collective enclosures at flat-extended sites, however, overshadows that in domestic
architecture to a degree not matched at tell sites.
Elaboration of the ceramic repertoire
The earliest phase of the Neolithic settlement at Knossos was Aceramic (Evans 1968).
Pottery was also absent or very rare in the earliest Neolithic levels at mainland Argissa,
Sesklo and Franchthi (e.g. Perlès 2001). At Knossos, the density of sherds per unit of
deposit (Evans 1973) indicates a steady increase through the Neolithic in rate of discard,
and so presumably production, of pottery. Estimated numbers of vessels produced
per year at Franchthi (Vitelli 1989) and Knossos (Tomkins 2007) tell the same story.
Increased production partly reflects an expanding range of functions, with more use
for cooking and storage in the later Neolithic (e.g. Cullen and Keller 1990; Tomkins
2007, 184; Vitelli 1989), but also a dramatic growth from EN to MN and LN in the
range of tableware forms (e.g. Papathanassopoullos 1996, 110–11, fig. 36).
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Paul Halstead
The expanding range of uses for pottery is of considerable interest, given that
cooking (demonstrably) and storage (inevitably) were practised from the beginning of
the Neolithic. Belated use of pottery for bulk storage may partly have been dictated by
practical concerns; such vessels are secure containers, but difficult to make – even for
experienced potters. On the other hand, their adoption parallels growing evidence for
household independence and so their value was perhaps also symbolic – in drawing
attention to private stored produce (Andreou et al. 1996, 559; Christakis 2008, 123–24;
cf. Cullen and Keller 1990, 200). Cooking pots allow food to be prepared in diverse
ways and, at early LN Makriyalos, a range of shapes implies different cooking methods
(Urem-Kotsou 2006) perhaps appropriate to particular social contexts.
Much of the ceramic repertoire, however, and most of the EN–MN range, was
intended for serving or consuming food and drink (Mee 2007; Vitelli 1989). Flat
bases identify some of this repertoire literally as ‘tableware’ and so perhaps intended
for occasions of some formality (Sherratt 1991; also Tomkins 2007, 182). Decoration
likewise implies that vessels, and their contents, were intended to impress – presumably
in acts of hospitality rather than domestic dining. By early LN, if not before, the range
of shapes in northern Greece includes something like a set of elaborately finished and
highly valued (frequently repaired) black-burnished tableware, again suggesting use in
particular formal contexts (Urem-Kotsou and Kotsakis in press).
Similar vessel forms and decorative styles over quite long distances (e.g. Cullen 1984;
Rondiri 1985; Washburn 1983) suggest that similar norms of commensality (Tomkins
2007, 181), if not networks of reciprocal hospitality, played a part in forging some
common identity on a regional scale. On the other hand, tableware volumes suggest
use by individuals or small groups (of say nuclear or stem family size), although a few
MN vessels are larger (e.g. Mee 2007; Tsirtsoni 2001; Urem-Kotsou 2006). Formal
hospitality, therefore, was apparently conferred on individuals and/or took the form of
inclusion within the household. Tableware and commensality signalled inclusion and
exclusion at several different social scales. For example, in Pit 212 at LN Makriyalos
(Pappa et al. 2004; Urem-Kotsou and Kotsakis 2007), butchered remains of several
hundred animals, deposited rapidly, suggest provision and consumption of meat by the
entire local community, if not a regional gathering. Standardised cooking and serving
vessels emphasised communal solidarity, but their volumes imply preparation for and
serving to groups of household size. At the same time, hundreds of small cups, each
unique in construction and appearance, highlighted individual identity. Tableware and
formal commensality thus played a role in mediating social relationships, inter alia, at
and between the contentious levels of the household and local community.
Other forms of material culture were similarly implicated. Childe highlighted
human figurines with strongly female anatomical features, but there are also a few
‘male’ figurines, some with both female and male features, and many without obvious
indications of biological sex (Mina 2008; Nanoglou 2005). Many of the latter share
formal or stylistic features with ‘female’ figurines, suggesting that most Neolithic human
7. Farming, material culture and ideology
139
figurines in Greece represent females, but distinguish between mature and immature
categories (Mina 2008). Likewise, there is growing skeletal evidence that mortuary
treatment distinguished between adults and juveniles and sometimes between male and
female adults (Triantaphyllou 2008). The association of ‘female’ figurines with particular
forms of body ornamentation (Mina 2008) makes clear that these artefacts projected
distinctions of gender, not biological sex. Age classes, and rites of passage that presumably
marked transition between them, will have promoted cohesion of these early farming
populations at the level of the local community and, judging from preferred forms of
posture and gesture in figurines (Nanoglou 2006), at a regional scale. Intriguingly, from
the earlier to later Neolithic, decreasing emphasis on posture/gesture (Nanoglou 2005)
and a trend in female figurines, from body ornamentation (by painting, tattooing or
scarring) to distinctions signalled by clothing or jewellery, imply greater opportunities
for unequal social differentiation (Mina 2008, 123–25; Nanoglou 2005) that may be
linked to increasing household independence.
The dramatic increase during the Greek Neolithic in volume and variety of durable
material culture, Hodder’s (2004) ‘Neo-thingness’, is thus related in large measure to
negotiation of social relationships and mediation of tensions implicit in the architectural
and settlement record. That most of this material culture was of fired clay may not be
solely an artefact of preservation biases. Methods of constructing and finishing pots,
some vessel forms and many decorative styles, follow wooden or basketry prototypes
(Childe 1957; Tomkins 2007, 186–87), posing the question why ceramic skeuomorphs
of organic containers assumed such importance. The making of ceramics, like the
cooking of food, involved use of fire and the distinction between cooked and raw
food is of widespread cultural importance, signalling the difference between human
and animal consumers (Lévi-Strauss 1970; Wrangham et al. 1999) or between food
to be shared and that which is hoarded (Sahlins 1974, 125). The significance of this
distinction for Neolithic society and material culture is explored below.
Neolithic political economy
Prior to FN marginal colonisation by smaller ‘hamlets’, the Neolithic population of
Greece lived in ‘villages’ comprised of several ‘households’. Investment in collective
enclosures, especially on flat-extended sites, and in ‘domestic’ architecture, especially
on tells, suggests a tension between village and household that was mediated through
various social institutions and associated material culture, but especially through
commensality. Over the four millennia of the Neolithic, individual households can be
discerned archaeologically with increasing confidence, arguably reflecting a long-term
trend from collective to domestic control. Critics perceive the same trend, but emphasise
communal organisation in the earlier Neolithic (Nanoglou 2008; Tomkins 2004; 2007).
Dispute as to whether households can be discerned in the earlier Neolithic is partly due
to ambiguity of evidence. For example, tableware affirmed solidarity at several scales,
just as the enclosure ditch at Makriyalos, dug as a series of pits, probably represented
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Paul Halstead
domestic as well as collective labour (Pappa and Besios 1999). This ambiguity enabled
Neolithic agents to assert both domestic and collective allegiance, despite the inherent
contradiction between these. Indeed, the heavy investment in material assertions of
collective and domestic solidarity arguably reflects the contested nature of both and,
for this reason, homogeneity and conservatism in tableware at EN Knossos cannot
(pace Tomkins 2004, 46–49) be taken as evidence of shared organisation of farming
or ownership of produce.
The tension between domestic and collective means that neither label can be applied
without qualification to any period of the Neolithic and poses the daunting task of
defining archaeologically the extent of domestic and collective authority. To begin
with the latter, the longevity of settlements (especially tells) indicates institutions
or mechanisms that could override tendencies to fission. In addition to age/gender
categories and associated rites of passage, collective participation in mortuary rites is
suggested by secondary scattering of skeletal parts and, at Makriyalos I, by preferential
use of the enclosure ditch for primary burial (Triantaphyllou 2008). The FN shift to
smaller hamlets, after three or four millennia of village life, arguably reflects loosening
of such collective control over social reproduction (Halstead 2008).
Village settlement will have facilitated cooperation in field clearance and protection
of crops and perhaps livestock from predators (cf. Fleming 1985). In LN, the ditch
enclosing flat-extended Makriyalos I arguably fulfilled the latter role (below), while
the cemetery (with hints of secondary mortuary treatment – Triantaphyllou 2008)
200–300 m north of Platia Magoula Zarkou (Gallis 1982) conceivably marked the
outer limits of cultivation around that tell settlement. Protection of crops was perhaps
especially crucial in EN when ‘islands’ of cultivation, like sparse arable plots today in
the Mediterranean mountains, will have been a magnet for boar and the like. Enclosure
of arable land excluded not only wild animals, but also ‘outsiders’ and their livestock.
Whether the earliest farmers were of immigrant or indigenous origin, their enclosure
of land previously open to foragers may sometimes have been contentious. As in
highland New Guinea, the village community probably took collective responsibility
for ‘ownership’ (and if necessary defence) of cleared and cultivated land and, to this
end, the Makriyalos ‘feast(s)’ may simultaneously have cemented alliances within the
regional population and advertised the productivity (and hence manpower) of the
local community.
The contentious issue, for contemporary scholars and Neolithic farmers, is rights
to individual plots of land and the produce thereof. Dependence on labour-intensive
crops with delayed returns would arguably be unstable under collectively organised
production and consumption, especially if (as in Greece) sowing and harvest were
limited to seasonal ‘windows’. Household organisation, directly linking the labour
and fruits of cultivation, would favour greater and more reliable production (Flannery
1972; Halstead 1995). Conversely, Tomkins proposes that EN food production and
storage were controlled collectively (2007, 189) and land ‘held and worked in common
7. Farming, material culture and ideology
141
or distributed to households on an annual basis’ (2007, 192), while Nanoglou (2008,
152) suggests collective ownership of (LN) livestock.
Elsewhere in Europe, well-preserved house destructions (e.g. Jones and RowleyConwy 2007; Maier 1999; Marinova 2007) consistently suggest Neolithic crop storage
at a domestic level. Evidence from Greece is scant and ambiguous: that cited above in
favour of the household model is not incompatible with Tomkins’ suggestion of the
periodic distribution of food from communal stores; conversely, the grain at Aceramic
Knossos underpinning Tomkins’ claim of ‘bulk storage of surplus at a communal
level’ (2007, 189; 2004, 43) was recycled refuse rather than an in situ store (Helbaek
unpublished) and anyway was enough for only a single meal for one person. There is
indirect evidence for ownership of livestock. First, hints that only some households
consumed dairy fats at LN Stavroupoli are more compatible with household than
communal control (Urem-Kotsou and Kotsakis 2007, 239). Secondly, raw materials
for bone tools at LN Makriyalos avoided large wild animals, betraying a conceptual
distinction between wild and domestic (Isaakidou 2003) that perhaps mirrors the
opposition between collective and private ownership (cf. Ingold 1986, 113). This
distinction may lie behind the rarity on EN–MN sites of large game, especially red
deer and boar that are abundant at Mesolithic Franchthi and in some later Neolithic
and Bronze Age assemblages (von den Driesch 1987). There is no ecological reason
for these species to have disappeared during the earlier Neolithic, and EN assemblages
from Paliambela-Kolindrou and Revenia-Korinou include modest numbers of small
mammals (e.g. fox, hare), reptiles, birds and fish that preclude avoidance of the wild.
Among foragers, the obligation to share carcasses usually applies to large game but not
small (Barnard and Woodburn 1991). Large game may be rare on earlier Neolithic
settlements, therefore, because they were shared out and consumed where they were
killed. Small wild animals and domesticates were consumed on settlements, perhaps
because both were ‘private’ property that did not carry obligations to share.
Contrasts in land ownership arguably underlie variability in settlement form. At
flat-extended Makriyalos, the early LN circuit ditch enclosed 28 ha (Pappa and Besios
1999). A wall on its outer edge suggests the ditch literally enclosed people or livestock,
although a shallow outer ditch could have held a palisade that excluded people or
animals. The enclosure was only patchily inhabited, so the ditch did not primarily define
residential space. Likewise, as an overnight pen, 28 ha suitably subdivided could have
held perhaps 100,000 sheep, goats, pigs and cattle – an improbably large number for the
apparently small human population. As enclosed pasture, 28 ha might have sustained
a few dozen sheep year-round (Le Houerou 1977) or a hundred for, say, three months;
the seasonal alternative is consistent with archaeobotanical evidence from charred
animal dung (Valamoti 2007), but not supported by faunal evidence for year-round
slaughter (Halstead 2005). Either way, the low number of animals supported offers an
unconvincing rationale for the labour of enclosure. Finally, as arable plots cultivated
intensively, 28 ha might have produced in excess of 28 tons of grain per year and so
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Paul Halstead
enough to sustain something like 100 persons – a credible figure for the inhabitants
of Makriyalos I. The enclosure of arable plots (probably used periodically as pens and
pasture) is plausible (also Andreou and Kotsakis 1994) and easiest to reconcile with
the labour invested. It would also imply that arable land was under collective control
at this flat-extended site; any ‘private’ rights to individual plots were sufficiently shortterm not to prevent horizontal displacement of habitation. In contemporary highland
New Guinea (Brown 1978, 78–81), however, collective clearance, defence and control
of land are compatible with domestic rights to cultivate and consume the produce of
individual plots. Such domestic rights would be much more advantageous in Neolithic
Greece, where soils would sustain and perhaps benefit from continuous cultivation. For
the same reason, the intensive regime of crop husbandry suggested above would have
encouraged households to seek long-term rights to individual plots (Bogaard 2004).
Tells developed from repeated construction on the same spot and individual houses
were sometimes rebuilt exactly over their predecessors, suggesting transmission over
generations of rights or claims to particular plots (Kotsakis 1999; 2006). Horizontally
stable habitation would have enabled (and was perhaps reinforced by) long-term
‘private’ rights to individual plots of cultivable land and, although there is no direct
evidence that continuity in building plots was matched by rights to arable land (or
scarce infield plots – Isaakidou 2008), the latter would provide a plausible rationale for
labour-intensive claims to ‘ancestral’ house plots. Some collective control must also have
existed: with unrestricted and heritable ‘private’ ownership, accidents of demography
would have resulted in households without land, land without owners and an early
end to tell formation (Isaakidou 2008). Tell and flat-extended settlements, however,
represent opposing ends of an ideological spectrum between private/domestic and
public/collective ownership of land (Kotsakis 1999).
If ‘domestic’ architecture does represent a trend towards household control of crops,
livestock and land, with incentives and opportunities for greater productivity, single
households will have been too small for biological or social reproduction and vulnerable
to periodic economic failure (Sahlins 1974). Increasing household independence was
only viable, therefore, if mechanisms existed to override this in case of need. Arguably,
this was achieved in two ways. First, stylistic homogeneity in tableware suggests that
commensality served to promote communal solidarity and cultivate distant social
contacts. Faunal remains show most animals were slaughtered at a size too large for
domestic consumption, while seasons of slaughter and intensive processing of carcasses
argue against storage or waste on a significant scale (Halstead 2007). Carcasses seem to
have been distributed widely for consumption (and not merely scattered after discard)
because of the dispersal, at Neolithic Knossos and EN Paliambela-Kolindrou, of
articulating skeletal parts other than those not normally separated in butchery (Halstead
2006b; Isaakidou 2004). This did not undermine the principle of household storage,
because the scarcity of butchery marks implies distribution of cooked rather than raw
meat (a distinction perhaps reinforced by presentation in fired clay vessels). The giving
7. Farming, material culture and ideology
143
of food was also restricted to specific social contexts, marked by increasingly elaborate
tableware and the serving of luxury beverages (Urem-Kotsou and Kotsakis in press)
as well as meat. Such context-specific and conditional commensality is fundamentally
different from the generalised obligation to share among immediate-return foragers,
not least in imposing an obligation to reciprocate (Barnard and Woodburn 1991). For
the same reasons, such commensality could cement relations of solidarity but could
not provide bulk subsistence relief to failed households.
Secondly, staple food could have been provided in bulk, without undermining
household storage, if reciprocated by labour (effectively incorporating recipients within
the donor household) or by an obligation of future re-payment (probably over shorter
social distances). Both forms of support are plausible, because the survival of these
early farming communities presupposes that most households produced a ‘normal
surplus’ (Allan 1965), some of which will have compensated for subsequent household
underproduction. Surplus food has a finite ‘shelf life’, however, and may be used to make
beer or fatten animals (the latter compatible with dental microwear at LN Makriyalos
– Mainland and Halstead 2005) for a party that might earn political capital or mobilise
labour (Allan 1965). Alternatively, it might provide rations for additional labourers (e.g.
Richards 1939); in a highly seasonal environment with labour a major constraint on
production, use of normal surplus to recruit workers must have been attractive. In this
context, the apparent concern of Neolithic figurines with female rites of passage may be
related to control by men of women’s labour (cf. Barnard and Woodburn 1991) and,
more specifically, to household control of the labour of its female members.
Though partly speculative, this model accounts plausibly and parsimoniously for the
wealth of Neolithic material culture in Greece (with its focus on settlements, houses,
tableware, female figurines) and for its increasing elaboration through the Neolithic.
It also accounts for the ‘noisiness’ of the trend in domestic architecture. The severity
and frequency of subsistence failure will have varied between settlements, households
(especially if rights to cultivated plots were long-term) and generations, while individual
farmers will have varied in industry, agronomic judgement and altruism. Accordingly, the
balance between collective and domestic organisation surely varied between contemporary
villages and the long-term trend to household independence was sometimes reversed. The
tension between communal and domestic solidarity and control provides the dynamic
behind progressive elaboration of domestic architecture and portable material culture.
Neolithisation
The Neolithic archaeological record of Greece, both settlement/architectural remains
and portable material culture, reveals a society in flux, actively negotiating tensions
between individual, regional and especially household and village scales of identity.
The household and village were social units unknown in the preceding Mesolithic and
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Paul Halstead
these issues of identity were contentious because they embodied rights to exploit, and
obligations to share, land, food and labour. These rights and obligations were in turn
intimately bound up with the practicalities of a farming way of life and, in this sense,
Neolithic culture in Greece was a tightly integrated package of domesticates, agronomic
knowledge, residential practices, social norms and beliefs. The model of a domestic
ideology driving the inception of farming (Hodder 1990) is not supported empirically
in Greece, where domesticates were adopted wholesale and rapidly, while the material
culture suggesting domestic ideology was elaborated over many subsequent centuries.
It is unwise, however, to insist that farming preceded and drove the development of a
Neolithic ideology. Early farming, let alone the early agricultural mode of production,
was much more than a suite of domestic plants and animals. This was a dynamic
package, even if changes in material culture and social organisation are more obvious
than changes in crop or animal husbandry, and the crucial ideological tensions over rights
to resources were surely under active negotiation from the inception of farming.
The Neolithic archaeological record from Greece is very similar to that from the north
Balkans and has quite close parallels in that from southeast Italy. At a more general level,
the Neolithic package was shared across much of the continent: several crop and livestock
species usually appear together and are often associated with, or followed by, dramatically
increased investment in ‘places’ (residential, ceremonial or mortuary) in the landscape
and portable material culture, while much of the latter is plainly geared to negotiation
of social relationships and, particularly, to use of food and drink to this end. The form
of the package, however, and its diachronic development, display considerable regional
variability, suggesting that the cohesion of the package should be understood in terms not
of common origins, but of similar responses to inherent and widely encountered tensions
in the early farming mode of production. Understanding of European neolithisation
has been hampered by polarisation between paradigms (Robb and Miracle 2007) and
groundless fear that a Neolithic ‘package’ represents victory for economy and colonisation
over ideology and adoption. Acknowledgement that Neolithic traits often appear as
a package, however, permits a more contextualised and holistic understanding of the
Neolithic archaeological record and trajectories of neolithisation.
Acknowledgements
I have drawn heavily on work in collaboration with, and unpublished work by, Valasia
Isaakidou, Kostas Kotsakis and Duska Urem-Kotsou. Laszlo Bartosiewicz, Kostas
Christakis, Tracey Cullen, Chris Mee, Stratos Nanoglou, Maria Pappa, Peter RowleyConwy, Katerina Trantalidou and Tania Valamoti kindly provided papers. Amy Bogaard,
Valasia Isaakidou, Peter Tomkins and Duska Urem-Kotsou offered encouraging and
critical comments (in varying proportions) on a draft of the paper. Last but not least,
I am indebted to the inspiring teaching of Andrew Sherratt.
7. Farming, material culture and ideology
145
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