Tim Kerig

Table of contents

Preface

Introducing Economic Archaeology: Examples from Neolithic agriculture and Hallstatt princely tombs
Tim Kerig

Theories of Consumption
Perspectives from economic anthropology
Martin Rössler

The society in the making
The house and the household in the Danubian Neolithic of the Central European lowlands
Arkadiusz Marciniak

The value of things - The production and circulation of Alpine jade axes during the 5th – 4th millenia in a European perspective
Pierre Pétrequin, Serge Cassen, Michel Errera, Lutz Klassen, Anne−Marie Pétrequin, Alison Sheridan

From the Alps to Brittany and Scandinavia: The grand tour in the Neolithic
Magdalena S. Midgley

The economics of Neolithic swidden cultivation: Results of an experimental long−term project in Forchtenberg (Baden−Württemberg, Germany)
Wolfram Schier, Otto Ehrmann, Manfred Rösch, Arno Bogenrieder, Mathias Hall, Ludger Herrmann, Erhard Schulz

Land use and food production in Central Europe from the Neolithic to the medieval period - Change of landscape, soils and agricultural systems according to archaeobotanical data
Manfred Rösch

Evaluation of economic activity through palynological data: Modelling agricultural pressure on landscape (REVEALS and LOVE)
Jutta Lechterbeck

Quantitative approaches to reconstructing prehistoric stock breeding
Renate Ebersbach

Coping with crises I: Subsistence variety and resilience in the Late Neolithic lakeshore settlement Arbon Bleiche 3 (Switzerland)
Thomas Doppler, Sandra Pichler, Brigitte Röder, Jörg Schibler

Coping with crises II: The impact of social aspects on vulnerability and resilience
Brigitte Röder, Sandra Pichler, Thomas Doppler

Dispersed communities and diverse strategies
Late Neolithic economy on the Polish Lowland (3500−2500 BC)
Marzena Szmyt, Janusz Czebreszuk

Short settled Neolithic sites in the mountains − economy or religious practice? Case studies from the Polish Carpathians and German Mid−Mountains
Pawel Valde−Nowak

Prehistoric flint mining and the enigma of early economies
Jacek Lech

Bronze Age copper production in the Alps:
Organisation and social hierarchies in mining communities
Rüdiger Krause

Bohemia as a model territory for research on transport and trade in prehistory
Vladimír Salač

The Hellenistic to Roman Mediterranean: A proto−capitalist Revolution?
John Bintliff

Technology, land use and transformations in Scandinavian landscapes, c. 800–1300 AD 295
Ingvild Øye

Performance in experimental archaeology -
Any possibility for unambiguous statements?
Roeland Paardekooper

Summing it up: What is the intermediate total in European economic archaeology?
Tim Kerig, Andreas Zimmermann

List of contributors

Abstract
In a previous study we presented a new method that used summed probability distributions (SPD) of radiocarbon dates as a proxy for population levels, and Monte-Carlo simulation to test the significance of the observed fluctuations in the context of uncertainty in the calibration curve and archaeological sampling. The method allowed us to identify periods of significant short-term population change, caveated with the fact that around 5% of these periods were false positives. In this study we present an improvement to the method by applying a criterion to remove these false positives from both the simulated and observed distributions, resulting in a substantial improvement to both its sensitivity and specificity. We also demonstrate that the method is extremely robust in the face of small sample sizes. Finally we apply this improved method to radiocarbon datasets from 12 European regions, covering the period 8000 to 4000 BP. As in our previous study, the results reveal a boom-bust pattern for most regions, with population levels rising rapidly after the local arrival of farming, followed by a crash to levels much lower than the peak. The prevalence of this phenomenon, combined with the dissimilarity and lack of synchronicity in the general shapes of the
regional SPDs, supports the hypothesis of endogenous causes.

The transformation of natural landscapes in Middle Europe began in the Neolithic as a result of the introduction of food-producing economies. This paper
examines the relation between land-cover and demographic change in a regionally restricted case study. The study area is the Western Lake Constance
area which has very detailed palynological as well as archaeological records. We compare land-cover change derived from nine pollen records using a
pseudo-biomisation approach with 14C date probability density functions from archaeological sites which serve as a demographic proxy. We chose the
Lake Constance area as a regional example where the pollen signal integrates a larger spatial pattern. The land-cover reconstructions for this region show
first notable impacts at the Middle to Young Neolithic transition. The beginning of the Bronze Age is characterised by increases of arable land and pasture/
meadow, whereas the deciduous woodland decreases dramatically. Changes in the land-cover classes show a correlation with the 14C density curve:
the correlation is best with secondary woodland in the Young Neolithic which reflects the lake shore settlement dynamics. In the Early Bronze Age, the
radiocarbon density correlates with open land-cover classes, such as pasture, meadow and arable land, reflecting a change in the land-use strategy. The
close overall correspondence between the two archives implies that population dynamics and land-cover change were intrinsically linked. We therefore
see human impact as a key driver for vegetation change in the Neolithic. Climate might have an influence on vegetation development, but the changes
caused by human land use are clearly detectable from Neolithic times, at least in these densely settled, mid-altitude landscapes.

Recently there has been growing interest in characterising population structure in
cultural data in the context of ongoing debates about the potential of cultural group
selection as an evolutionary process. Here we use archaeological data for this
purpose, which brings in a temporal as well as spatial dimension. We analyse two
distinct material cultures (pottery and personal ornaments) from Neolithic Europe, in
order to: a) determine whether archaeologically defined “cultures” exhibit marked
discontinuities in space and time, supporting the existence of a population structure,
or merely isolation-by-distance; and b) investigate the extent to which cultures can be
conceived as structuring “cores” or as multiple and historically independent
“packages”. Our results support the existence of a robust population structure
comparable to previous studies on human culture, and shows how the two material
cultures exhibit profound differences in their spatial and temporal structuring,
signalling different evolutionary trajectories.

Archaeologists have long sought appropriate ways to describe the duration and floruit of archaeological cultures in statistical terms. Thus far, chronological reasoning has been largely reliant on typological sequences. Using summed probability distributions, the authors here compare radiocarbon dates for a series of European Neolithic cultures with their generally accepted ‘standard’ date ranges and with the greater precision afforded by dendrochronology, where that is available. The resulting analysis gives a new and more accurate description of the duration and intensity of European Neolithic cultures.

"The Europe wide spread of what has been called the Bell Beaker phenomenon remains an enigma of
European prehistory. While most of the recent research stresses the ideological aspects of using Bell
Beaker material culture, here we take a regional and economical perspective. We look for the
chronological relationships and the economic choices of the Bell Beaker phase and of its closest
neighbours in time and space: the Late Neolithic Corded Ware and the Early Bronze Age. We focus on
the regional archaeological settlement history and present the hitherto richest European Bell Beakerassociated
collection of palaeobotanical macro-remains, together with our high-resolution palynological
work on annually laminated lake sediments. These different lines of evidence are tied together by an
absolute chronology derived from new radiocarbon accelerated mass spectrometry (AMS) dates (now
more than 200) and from the dendrodates from the World Heritage wet preserved pile dwellings. We show
the preceding Late Neolithic, the actual Bell Beaker, and the following Early Bronze age economies each
relying on different agricultural strategies that focus on distinct parts of the landscape. There is no link
obvious between Late Neolithic and Bell Beaker, but there is between Bell Beaker and Early Bronze Age.
Related to different modes of production, differences in ideology become visible in food preferences as
well as in other parts of the material culture. We conclude that the Bell Beaker economy represents a reorientation
of the mode of production focusing on single, rather small farmsteads which often do not leave
a distinct signal in the archaeological record."

Archaeologists have long sought appropriate ways to describe the duration and floruit of archaeological cultures in statistical terms. Thus far, chronological reasoning has been largely reliant on typological sequences. Using summed probability distributions, the authors here compare radiocarbon dates for a series of European Neolithic cultures with their generally accepted ‘standard’ date ranges and with the greater precision afforded by dendrochronology, where that is available. The resulting analysis gives a new and more accurate description of the duration and intensity of European Neolithic cultures.

Transitions, such as the one from the Upper to Late Palaeolithic in Europe, are episodes of cultural and demographic change, which raise questions about possible causal connections between environmental changes and human behaviour. The workshop The Upper-Late Palaeolithic Transition in Western Central Europe. Typology, Technology, Environment and Demography, organised by the Collaborative Research Centre 806, focused on discussing and disentangling these aspects. Experts from seven European countries reported the current state of knowledge and recent research on typology, technology, ecology, and population dynamics during the Upper to Late Palaeolithic transition (14,700 – 13,500 calBP) in north-western Europe. The presentations concerning the methods of palaeodemography included examples from the European Palaeolithic and Neolithic.

Situated in the Alpine Foreland, Lake Steisslingen provides sediments covering the last 16,000 sidereal years. The exceptional value as an environmental archive is due to large laminated sections, found in several long cores. Counting of organic varves allowed the establishment of a detailed varve-based age model. A high-resolution pollen analysis for the period 5457 BC to 813 AD was carried out and compared with an archaeological mapping of a 5 km radius around Lake Steisslingen. The combined interpretation of the palynological and archaeological evidence facilitates a reconstruction of the settlement history and the evolution of the landscape over the last eight millenia. Several important aspects of vegetational and settlement history are illuminated: The mathematical ordination method of correspondence analysis is used to extract the main dimension of explanation from the pollen data. A single curve is generated and thought to reflect human impact. The validity of this assumed proxy is tested against the vegetational and archaeological evidence of the micro-scale area since Neolithic times. From the Steisslingen example, we conclude that human impact is the most important and, in a mathematical sense, continuous factor in vegetational development of those landscapes, which are settled since prehistoric times.

The field of cultural evolution has seen a great deal of theoretical development and increasing empirical work in the last decade. Up to now there has been no substantive attempt to bring the different subfields of cultural evolutionary theory and method together in an integrated fashion. This project aims to do this for the first time in a large-scale case-study, providing the basis for a new account of the role of farming in transforming early European societies, c.6000-2000 cal BC. It will address specific questions concerning the links between demographic, economic, social and cultural patterns and processes. Our results will contribute to making archaeology part of the broader inter-disciplinary endeavour of evolutionary social science. The project's basis is the creation of a GIS database of a standardised set of data, conceptualised and analysed in a framework which transcends the local investigatory traditions in different parts of Europe, following the model of the databases of Early Neolithic plant and faunal evidence from SW Asia and Europe recently created by Prof. Shennan and colleagues. This project depends on the the richness of data already collected by researchers all over Europe. Contributing to the database gives access to its content. Prof. Stephen Shennan (Institute of Archaeology London) is the Principal Investigator, well known for his research on the European Neolithic and Bronze Age and for his work on developing approaches to explaining the past based on evolutionary theory. Dr Kevan Edinborough (previously Simon Fraser University Vancouver, Canada) collects and analyses radiocarbon data from Mesolithic and Neolithic archaeological sites for the western half of temperate Europe. He constructs calibration models using specific sets of dates to address particular questions, often concerning the earliest and latest dates for particular phenomena. Dr Edinborough uses summed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates as proxies for regionally scaled population variation, and investigates the factors that may confound this method, such as site formation processes. Dr Tim Kerig (previously University of Cologne, Germany) collects and analyses data on exchange patterns and other cultural attributes. He creates databases of geo-referenced cultural data for the Neolithic of Central and Western Europe, for example finds of exchanged material of known source, burials, ceramic attributes, characteristics of monuments. Dr Kerig carries out statistical analyses of specific sets of cultural data to address particular questions (e.g. he is interested in exchange networks and ornament / pottery design, respectively). He also relates spatial and temporal trends in cultural data to patterning in other dimensions that the project is addressing, for example ecology and demography. Dr Sean Downey (previously Stanford University, US) will create and manage the GIS database as well as carrying out more complex analytical procedures, including spatial and phylogenetic analyses and evolutionary modelling. He will create and maintain the overall GIS database for linking together the geo-referenced data sets collected by the other project researchers and will link them to other spatial data coverages, for example climate and elevation data. Dr Sue Colledge is the project archaeobotanist. She has previously worked on a project creating and analysing a database of plant macroremains from early Neolithic sites from SW Asia to NW Europe, and on a similar project collecting faunal data, the Origin and Spread of Stock Keeping (OSSK). She will be compiling archaeobotanical and pollen data for the project database and carrying out data analyses. Dr Katie Manning is the project faunal analyst. For her PhD she worked on subsistence patterns in Mali. She has also previously worked on the early Neolithic OSSK faunal project. She will be compiling the faunal database for the project and carrying out data analyses. Case-study: Radiocarbon evidence indicates that migrants introduced farming to Britain Cultural Evolution of Neolithic Europe: The 4 year ERC-Project EUROEVOL at ucl, London Archaeologists disagree about how farming began in Britain. Some argue it was a result of indigenous groups adopting domesticates and cultigens via trade and exchange. Others contend it was the consequenceof a migration of farmers from mainland Europe. To shed light on this debate, we used radiocarbon dates to estimate changes in population density between 8000 and 4000 cal BP. We found evidence for a marked and rapid increase in population density coincident with the appearance of cultigens around 6000 cal BP. We also found evidence that this increase occurred first in southern England and shortly afterwards in central Scotland. These findings are best explained by groups of farmers from the Continent independently colonizing England and Scotland, and therefore strongly support the migrant farmers hypothesis. Fig. 2. Spatial density of the full set of dates between 6100 and 5300 cal BP in 100-year time slices. Date densities were binned in intervals of 100 years and weighted two dimensional kernel density estimation performed for each timeslice

Zu den beeindruckendsten neolithischen Kulturerscheinungen gehören zweifellos Bergwerke. Wir werden ein Modell der Abbautätigkeit der europäischen Silexbergwerke (aus England und Schottland, Frankreich, den Beneluxstaaten, Deutschland, der Tschechischen Republik, der Schweiz, Schweden und Dänemark, Polen, Weissrussland und Litauen) entwerfen, wobei die summierten Wahrscheinlichkeiten kalibrierter Radiokarbondaten aus Bergwerksschächten als Ausgangspunkt dienen. Eine neue und konservative Methode zur Darstellung von 14C Daten erlaubt die Zusammenfassung dieser Daten in einer Kurve, deren Mutungsintervall sowohl Maschinen/Laborfehlern als auch Schwankungen in der Kalibrationskurve Rechnung trägt. In die Berechnungen gingen insgesamt 518 Radiocarbondaten von 57 Fundorten ein. Der Rechenweg wird kurz vorgestellt, wobei u.a. Monte Carlo Sampling und Loess Modelling zur Angabe eines Mittelwertes und eines 95% Mutungsintervalles führen. Wir argumentieren, dass diese Daten als Index für die Intensität der Abbautätigkeit über die Zeit verwendet werden können und das dabei wesentliche Trends der europäischen Wirtschaftsentwicklung im Zeitbereich 6000 calBC bis 2000 calBC erkennbar werden. Diese Trends entsprechen zeitlich den kulturhistorischen Perioden des zentraleuropäischen Neolithikums (Alt-, Mittel-, Jung-, Spät- und Endneolithikum); auch können diese Trends zu demographischen Proxies in Relation gesetzt werden. Wir interpretieren die Schwankungen der Aktivitäten im Bergbau als Schwankungen in der Intensität neolithischer Austauschbeziehungen. Die Arbeiten wurden ermöglicht durch den ERC Advanced Research Grant #28973498237.

"Tim Kerig / Jutta Lechterbeck, Ackerbauliche Betriebssysteme im Strukturgleichungsmodell: Erfahrungen mit einem konfirmatorischen Verfahren anhand von Beispielen aus Neolithikum und Eisenzeit
Archäologische Modellvorstellungen sind häufig historisch oder ethnographisch inspiriert, wobei nicht direkt beobachtbaren Parametern („latente Variablen“) eine große Bedeutung zukommt. Solche latenten Variablen können z. B. Angaben zur Bevölkerungsdichte, zur Intensität des Kultgeschehens oder zur Akzeptanz von Neuerungen sein; eine typische Aussage wäre etwa „auf den durch Bevölkerungsanstieg verursachten sozialen Stress wird mit vermehrtem Kult und einer Ablehnung des Fremden reagiert“.
Zur Überprüfung solcher Hypothesengebilde wurden insbesondere in den Kognitions-, Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften kausalanalytische Verfahren entwickelt. Wir berichten hier von Erfahrungen mit sog. Kovarianzstrukturanalysen, wie sie zumeist unter dem Stichwort Strukturgleichungsmodell (SEM) firmieren: Es handelt sich um Mehrgleichungsmodelle, die dazu konzipiert sind, eine Theorie („Strukturmodell“) konfirmatorisch abzusichern. Testbare Hypothesen dienen zur Formulierung von quantitativ überprüfbaren Aussagen („Messmodelle“). Entscheidend ist dabei, dass das gesamte System der Hypothesen durch Gleichungen verbunden und daher auch in seiner Gesamtheit zugleich überprüfbar gemacht wird.
Das Verfahren kann in erster Näherung als Schätzverfahren für die Anpassungsgüte eines Modells an die empirischen Daten verstanden und als eine Kombination von Faktoren- und Regressionsanalysen beschrieben werden. Eine Reihe von Software steht hier für unterschiedliche Anwendungen zur Verfügung (PRELIS/LISREL, NEUSREL, AMOS für Windows, daneben OpenMx in R). Die Ansprüche an die empirischen Daten als Grundlage des Messmodells sind hinsichtlich Umfang und Spezifikation (klassischerweise unabhängig, multinormalverteilt, lineare Zusammenhänge u.a.) der Eigenschaften als hoch zu bezeichnen, so dass wir nicht von einer allgemeinen Anwendbarkeit in der Archäologie ausgehen; fruchtbar könnten die Methoden bei der Auswertung großer bestehender Datenmengen vor allem dann werden, wenn Sie zur Prüfung komplexer Theorien oder zukünftig als Teil explorativer Prozeduren genutzt werden.
Unser Strukturmodell bezieht sich auf die mitteleuropäische Pflanzenproduktion vor Einführung des Pfluges sowie auf pflugbauliche Betriebssysteme, beziehungsweise auf deren jeweilige Nebeneffekte, für die Messmodelle erstellt werden können. Das Strukturmodell wurde anhand von historischen und ethnographischen Daten erstellt. Es wird zunehmend durch Schätzungen - u.a. lineares Programmieren - in seinen Restriktionen bestimmt (DFG Projekt „Ökonometrie des mitteleuropäischen Neolithikums“). Die Messmodelle nutzen archäobotanische, insbesondere palynologische Daten (DFG Projekt „Vegetationsgeschichtliche und archäobotanische Untersuchungen zur neolithischen und bronzezeitlichen Landnutzung am Bodensee“). Es werden besonders die Erfahrungen mit der Erstellung von Messmodellen referiert werden. Der Vortrag ist als Bericht zu work in progress zu verstehen.

Lit.: K. G. Jöreskog / D. Sörbom, LISREL 7: A Guide to the Program and Applications (Chicago 1989). B. M. Byrne, Structural Equation Modeling with AMOS. Basic Concepts, Applications, and Programming. Multivariate Applications Series (Mahwah 2001). -- R. B. Kline, Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling (New York 2005)."