One of Earliest Farming Sites - Vashtëmi, Albania

University of Cincinnati research is revealing early farming in a former wetlands region that was largely cut off from Western researchers until recently. The UC collaboration with the Southern Albania Neolithic Archaeological Project (SANAP) will be presented April 20 at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA).

Susan Allen, a professor in the UC Department of Anthropology who co-directs SANAP, says she and co-director Ilirjan Gjipali of the Albanian Institute of Archaeology created the project in order to address a gap not only in Albanian archaeology, but in the archaeology in Eastern Europe as a whole, by focusing attention on the initial transition to farming in the region.

"For Albania, there has been a significant gap in documenting the Early Neolithic (EN), the earliest phase of farming in the region," explains Allen. "While several EN sites were excavated in Albania in the '70s and '80s, plant and animal remains - the keys to exploring early farming - were not recovered from the sites, and sites were not dated with the use of radiocarbon techniques," Allen says.

"At that time (under communist leader Enver Hoxha), Albania was closed to outside collaborations and methodologies that were rapidly developing elsewhere in Europe, such as environmental archaeology and radiocarbon dating. The country began forming closer ties with the West following Hoxha's death in 1985 and the fall of communism in 1989, paving the way for international collaborations such as SANAP, which has pushed back the chronology of the Albanian Early Neolithic and helped to reveal how early farmers interacted with the landscape."

The findings show that Vashtëmi, located in southeastern Albania, was occupied around 6,500 cal BC, making it one of the earliest farming sites in Europe. The location of early sites such as Vashtëmi near wetland edges suggests that the earliest farmers in Europe preferentially selected such resource-rich settings to establish pioneer farming villages.

During this earliest phase of farming in Europe, farming was on a small scale and employed plant and animal domesticates from the Near East. At Vashtëmi, the researchers have found cereal-based agriculture including emmer, einkorn and barley; animals such as pigs, cattle and sheep or goats (the two are hard to tell apart for many bones of the skeleton); and deer, wild pig, rabbit, turtle, several species of fish and eels. What seems evident is that the earliest farmers in the region cast a wide net for food resources, rather than relying primarily on crops and domesticated animals, as is widely assumed.

Allen was awarded a $191,806 (BCS- 0917960) grant from the National Science Foundation to launch the project in 2010.

Albania: Agriculture Goes Beyond Its Roots

Anthropology professor earns NSF grant to dig in Albanian wetlands.

Date: 10/11/2010
By: Ryan Varney
Phone: (513) 556-0142
Photos By: Susan Allen
Susan Allen, field service assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, researches paleoenvironmental issues in Southeastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean among other areas.

This summer, she received a National Science Foundation grant of $191,806 to visit Albania and study the widespread dispersal and adoption of agriculture beyond its roots.

Professor Susan Allen and UC anthropology senior Kathleen Forste (left) visited the Vashtëmi dig site in southern Albania.

Your project is titled “Wetlands and the Transition to Agriculture in Europe: The Southern Albania Neolithic Archaeological Project.” Can you provide a little background on the purpose of this project?

I noticed in the literature that scholars commonly cited wetland environments in explanations for why agriculture developed in key centers around the world, such as Mesoamerica, East Asia and the Eastern Woodlands of North America. But they had largely ignored their role in shaping the adoption of farming in other areas. 

So what I am really interested in is addressing this question by looking at the transition to farming in Europe, which is not one of the centers of “pristine” origins. The site we are excavating, Vashtëmi, is at the leading edge of the shift to agriculture in Europe, in an area of the southern Balkans that was once part of a series of vast wetlands that stretch into present-day Greece and Macedonia. 

Now that you’re back from Albania and have had some time to reflect, what stands out most clearly about your experience?

What stands out most clearly is the urgent need for projects like this one, due to the rapid pace of development and the ineffectiveness and lack of enforcement of the recently implemented Albanian heritage laws in the current political climate. I was devastated to see that someone had started to build a house right on the site itself. Thankfully, the owner agreed to delay construction and allowed us to excavate in a small area within the house. 

The research team studied the Vashtëmi site for clues about agricultural migration.

So, were you able to draw any conclusions regarding the shift to agriculture in Europe?

I have to say that what I have now are more questions than conclusions! One of the very interesting discoveries is the diversity of meat-eating represented on the site. In the trash deposits we excavated, we found a surprisingly high diversity of wild animals—turtle, red deer, roe deer, boar, hare and fish—recovered only because of the specific methodology that we are using, as well as a possible lion bone. The domesticated animals we identified include sheep, goat, pig, cow and dog. 

One issue that really intrigues me is the role of cattle in the southern Balkans and the question of the beginning of dairying, which has recently been placed slightly later (around 5500 B.C.) in the Central Balkans according to DNA evidence. At present, what is clear is that the earliest farmers in the area were not wholly reliant on domesticated plants and animals, but also made use of wild resources from a diversity of habitats. So the transition, whether local or by colonization, was neither abrupt nor immediate.

Is there a similar habitat here in the U.S. that might help us better visualize your dig site?

Well, people hear about the project and they expect something totally different on the ground than the reality. One of the tragic environmental legacies of the Communist period throughout the Balkans is the widespread drainage of wetlands. The Maliq wetland, where we are working, suffered the same fate. So today, you’d need to picture a Midwestern cornfield, but place it in a broad agricultural valley surrounded by beautiful mountains on all sides. When it was first occupied around 8,500 years ago, the site would have been located in an area with a mosaic of streams and marshes, a short distance from a broad open lake filled with a great abundance of eels, other fish and waterfowl.

One of the goals of the project was to offer environmental archaeological training for young Albanians. How was your experience working with Albanian students?

It was fantastic! I got to know some of these students as participants in an Environmental Archaeology course that I taught in Albania in 2006-07 while there on a Fulbright Fellowship. The students who worked with us have a remarkable passion for archaeology, despite limited prospects for career advancement or economic gain. They worked very hard and were thrilled to learn a lot of new skills and approaches that they can take with them to any excavation—in Albania or elsewhere. I should also add that the American students—including three from UC—also did really well in the field.

Were any of these items a part of your dig apparel:  fedora, bullwhip, revolver, leather satchel?

Only when absolutely necessary of course, but only my wardrobe specialist knows for sure!