Expansion of the farming system occurred in several well differentiated spurts, crossing the Taurus barrier around 8000 calBC, the southern Adriatic barrier around 6700–6100 BC, and the central European agro-ecological barrier around 6100–5600 BC, and reaching the last peripheral zones towards 5000–4000 calBC.
If the overall expansion of the farming system was determined by the Neolithic Demographic Transition (NDT), i.e. by demographic pressure, what determined the rate of expansion? What is the link between the rate of expansion, the farming system and demographic density?
Bocquet-Appel et al. (2012) addresses this issue of dfferent rates of expansion of farming system in terms of 21 geo-ecological, climatic and cultural factors and forager population, via an ordinary least square regression technique (OLS). In second approach the variability of the rate of expansion is analyzed in terms of specific pattern identified for the ceramic culture areas, via a cluster analysis.
As a first approach, the issue of the different rates of expansion of the farming system on the map is addressed in terms of geo-ecological, climatic and cultural factors and forager populations. On the Europe-wide scale, what were the main factors that influenced the rate of expansion of the farming system, given that the rate of expansion was not the same in the cultural areas identified by ceramics?
As a second approach, the variability of the rate of expansion is analyzed in terms of specific patterns identified for the ceramic culture areas. On this more regional scale, can such patterns be recognized? If so, do they express different farming systems and if so, which ones? If the overall expansion of the farming system was determined by the NDT, i.e. by demographic pressure, what determined the rate of expansion?
What is the link between the rate of expansion, the farming system and demographic density?
The data collected for this study were as follows:
i) geographical, with the geographical coordinates and the relief and rivers that were favourable or unfavourable to the penetration of the farming system
ii) ecological, with temperatures and biomes expressing soils that were favourable or unfavourable to domesticated plants and animal species,
iii) the traditional ceramic markers considered as proxies for cultural systems with different expansion rates,
iv) population, with the presence or absence of a Mesolithic population of indigenous foragers causing (or not) resistance to the Neolithic expansion, v) chronology, which expresses variations in the timing of expansion rates.
I will use same parameters when I will talk about how is it seen from the East Adriatic (South East Europe) perspective based on the data we have.
Despite nearly 100 years of investigation, the process, character, and diversity of Southeastern European ‘neolithization’ remain largely unknown – perhaps due to the bias in the record toward sites that would have been unsuitable all for farming (we will come to this later)
Geographical variables could be one of the most important factors when we talk about neolithisation process. Reason for this is the fact that Eastern Adriatic cost (Dalmatia) is mostly made of karst environment as part of a Dinaric karst system. In fact the Dinaric karst hosts the largest number of poljes (130) of any karst terrain, while bedrock structure and polje morphology continue toco-evolve due to tectonic activity in the Adriatic microplate. Poljes are karst landforms, valleys with steep-sides and flat-bottoms. Though they occur in many well-developed karst terrains, the central Dalmatian polje-karst hosts the largest concentration of poljes of any region in the world. According to that Cyntia Fadem (2009) propose that in this region Neolithic subsistence choices evolved coincident with geomorphology, granting the central Dalmatian polje-karst preference in Neolithic occupation, and its fields subsequent predominance in archaeological site location. The better we understand the geologic matrices of cultural change, the closer we will be to understanding cultural evolution itself.
Ecological variables
In Central Europe, the Mesolithic seems to have a weak role in the transition to farming, as indicated by the probable low density of a population that depended on forest cover. On the Balkan–Danubian axis, the low density of the Mesolithic archaeological data, taken as a proxy for demographic density, as well as the lack of archaeological evidence of contacts between foragers and farmers, suggest that in fact, ecological barriers had the main negative influence on the rate of expansion.Bocquet-Appel et al. (2012) represented ecological variables on the estimated distribution of biomes in Europe, during the Holocene at 8000–7000 CalBP and at 6000-4000 CalBP. Where the palaeobotanical data are concerned, the European peninsula was mainly covered in cool temperate forest (closed forest including mixed conifer and broadleaved forest), with a relatively low ungulate biomass, except in some zones with aquatic, river or marine biomass and sedentary occupation (ex: Iron Door, Tagus estuary, Scandinavian coasts, Dniepr), and also the coastal Mediterranean and north-eastern Black Sea areas. A multi-proxy lake core study from the Isle of Mljet, Croatia indicates a wet (pluvial) phase from 8.4-4.5 ka, with tephra deposition occurring at 7.3 ka, a dry period at 7.1 ka, and the transition to the current xeric moisture regime (most of annual precipitation falling in winter) between 6.3 and 5.5 ka.
This is important when they talk about intensive and extensive agriculture system. Correlation between ecosystem, agricultural system, demography and rate of expansion. The intensive LBK agricultural system in an ecosystem made up almost exclusively of mixed temperate closed forest, is
associated with high demographic density and a slow and homogeneous average rate of expansion (0.821 km/yr, σ = 0.575). The extensive Mediterranean agricultural system, in an ecosystem comprising 55% of mixed forest (1.623 km/y, σ = 1.173 km/yr) and 45% Mediterranean vegetation (3.332 km/yr, σ = 3.740), is associated with low demographic density and an appreciably faster and more heterogeneous average rate of expansion compared to the LBK.
At the regional geographical scale of a ceramic culture area, the OLS and the tree diagram show two main patterns for the rate of expansion of the farming system. The first, running in a NW to SE latitudinal direction, represents a slowly expanding farming system probably conveyed by groups moving on foot in mainly or even exclusively closed ecosystems. The second pattern represents the faster speeds of groups using sea-going craft along the long coastal limits of their expansion front, whether the nature of the inland ecosystems these groups came from or progressed to later were open or closed. The cool, dry climatic event of 8200 calBP marks an acceleration of the expansion rate and the emergence on the Anatolian-Greek bridge of marine expansion, which could not previously be distinguished from the inland expansion rate.
The expansion rate is negatively correlated with the intensification gradient of the agricultural system, as well as with demographic density. Expansion is slow in closed ecosystems with an intensive farming system and relatively high demographic density. Conversely, expansion is fast in open ecosystems with an extensive farming system and relatively lower demographic density. But the responses of farming groups to the historical circumstances encountered during their expansion, in particular the physical barriers of the sea and the demands of sailing across them, produced higher rates of expansion, by geographical zone, than those of their farming systems in their natural surroundings inland.
When we talk abot available dates for East Adriatic (based on the Impressed ware finds) and the spread of neolithic package they correlate with expansion rates proposed by Bocquet-Appel et al. (2012) (see
http://arheologija.ff.uni-lj.si/documenta/pdf33/forenbaher_miracle33.pdf). Unfortunately dates that are presented in this peper by Forenbaher & Miracle are almost of no use if we want to talk about neolithisation process, because of the limited data and lack of early neolithic sites along the cost. they can only tell us that neolithic package sprad rapidly across Adriatic but almost nothing about why and how.
Current explanatory models for universal agricultural diffusion are human migration (the influx of farmers equipped with the necessary cultigens, livestock, and tools) and technology migration (the movement of cultigens and tools through natural and cultural process). Fort and Méndez presented reaction-diffusion equations for population dynamics to describe the human migration model. Davison et al. adapted these equations to include ecological variables, and Dolukhanov et al. suggest modification to account for interaction with local foraging populations. General origins of agriculture and Southeast Europe-specific research are both shifting toward more complex models of neolithization, in which human behavioral ecology is coming to the fore. This evolutionary paradigm is founded on the understanding that environmental attributes and their variance are as large a part of human adaptation as selection itself.
Incorporating ideas of energy budget and subsistence strategy into origins-of-agriculture research means considering the costs and benefits of changes in technology and subsistence strategy. Although environmental variables are being considered in current research on the spread of the Neolithic, general discussion and speculation of environmental conditions does not constitute a cost-benefit analysis. This is not to say that climate is the only selective force that acted on Neolithic foragers and farmers, but that it is a vital force, and one of great prominence in current Neolithic explanatory models for Southeast Europe and worldwide. Increasingly, researchers in behavioral ecology are realizing the need for better measures of environment, the need to consider not only environmental attribute averages, as traditionally applied in evolutionary models (productivity, heterogeneity, etc.), but the scale and predictability of these attributes’ variability. If researchers seek to explain the persistence of agricultural subsistence technologies and behaviours, they must observe them at appropriate scales and in selective context, asking:
• Can we deduce the ecological context of the transition from foragingto farming in this
place and time? and
• Can we isolate the environmental attributesthat would have selected for agricultural
subsistence choices?
