The 8200 cal BP abrupt environmental change and the Neolithic transition: A Mediterranean perspective

Detection of diffusion and contact zones of early farming in Europe from the space-time distribution of 14C dates

The beginnings of the Neolithic way of life in Europe and the role played by the Anatolian Peninsula in this process are much-debated issues that involve a number of distinct topics. In this debate, it should not be overlooked that distinct from Europe, at least a portion of the Anatolian plateau had been part of the “Neolithic world” for at least 4,000 years before the appearance of the earliest claimed Neolithic culture in Europe. Accordingly, in viewing the interaction between southeastern Europe and the Aegean with the Anatolian Peninsula, the core area of primary Neolithization has to be considered.

Archaeological Evidence on the Westward Expansion of Farming Communities from Eastern Anatolia to the Aegean and the Balkans

After a century of research, there is still no widely accepted explanation for the spread of farming in Europe. Top-down explanations stress climate change, population increase, or geographic diffusion, but they distort human action reductionistically. Bottom-up explanations stress the local, meaningful choices involved in becoming a farmer, but they do not account for why the Neolithic transition in Europe was so widespread and generally unidirectional. The real problem is theoretical; we need to consider the transformative effects of human–material culture relationships and to relate humans, things, and environments at multiple scales. This article views the Neolithic as a set of new human-material relationships which were experimented with variably but which had unintended consequences resulting in an increasingly coherent, structured, and narrowly based social world. This interplay of local human action and emergent causation made the Neolithic transition difficult to reverse locally; the Neolithic wa...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/673859

Material Culture, Landscapes of Action, and Emergent Causation

ion and selection, fi gurines 249–251 Aegean region 502–525

A companion to gender prehistory

Rapid Rivers and Slow Seas? New data for the radiocarbon chronology of the Balkan peninsula

Book description: Eighteen papers from a 2005 conference at UCL, which aim to give a picture of current research into the Starcevo-Cris material culture, the earliest central Balkan Neolithic culture. Key topics include the origin and spread of the Neolithic, settlement patterns and subsistence strategies of the first farmers, their technology and material cultureand their ideology and social organisation.

/pdf/a-short-walk-through-the-balkans-the-first-farmers-of-the-2yw9hm8ukp.pdf

A short walk through the Balkans: the first farmers of the Carpathian basin and adjacent regions

New observations on the radiocarbon chronology of the Starčevo- Criş and Körös cultures

The importance O/lIle Trieste K{mi{ (norrlt -eastem Iraly) and its re!arcd terrirories in rhe Neolithi zation process o/lile Adri(l/ic Basin is lIIai"ty due 10 Ihe lacr tha! Ihis is Ihe ollly area where traces 01 interrelatiol1ships betwecn rhe {ast fllllller-gatherers al/d fhe Jirst ¡armen have IIndollbtedfy beel/ deteNed. FUrlhermore ,/¡is is Ihe ollly regían where . arolllu/ rhe middlc 01 ¡he scvel1th miflCll lliulIJ BP, rhree d!f!erent aspects , tite Coste/no vian. rhe Impressed \Vare al/d fhe Dani!o al/e were active {HU/lO a cerlaiJl exren! mllglr/y conlemporal/eol/s. /n rhis papel; lite proh/cms 01 {he car/y afld //Iiddle Holqcene 01 rhe Trieste Kars! are cOflsidered in fhe broader I'iew 01 ¡he Mesolithic/Neoli¡hic lfOnsirion inlhe Adrialic . Along Ihe coaSlS o/ IlIis basin. lroces oj Late Mesolirhic seU/emenl are quite rareo Thi~' jau highly colltrasts with the evidellce prol'ided by {he firsl Neolithic. Impressed lVare villages somelimes very abllndanl especially in lhe Aplllia/l Penil/sula.

/pdf/the-mesolithic-neolithic-transition-in-north-eastern-italy-4r4btg0wo5.pdf

M. Spataro

Papers

Rapid Rivers and Slow Seas? New data for the radiocarbon chronology of the Balkan peninsula

A short walk through the Balkans: the first farmers of the Carpathian basin and adjacent regions

New observations on the radiocarbon chronology of the Starčevo- Criş and Körös cultures

The Mesolithic/Neolithic transition in north eastern Italy and in the Adriatic Basin

A Buddhist Town at Seeraj in Upper Sindh (Khairpur, Pakistan): Historical, Chronological, Archaeometrical and Archaeobotanical Aspects