Colonization and Succession: The Earlier Neolithic of Central Europe

Abstract

Models of population and resource pressure to explain developments such as technological innovation, increasing cultural complexity and competition and warfare, have been commonly used in studies of the earlier neolithic (Bandkeramikand early TRB) of Central Europe, in the fifth and fourth millennia bc. The usefulness of such models is questioned for this period, with reference in particular to Central Germany. After initial colonization, there was no simple pattern of continuous settlement expansion; rather, initially widespread settlement developed generally into a more aggregated pattern, with a contraction of the settlement area and virtually no internal or external expansion of settlement. Models of environmental change or resource exhaustion to explain these developments are also challenged, and emphasis placed on social and subsistence changes which provided the impetus for the dynamics of the settlement pattern. Changes in settlement, with the emergence of larger villages and enclosures, culminating in the appearance of major enclosure sites and a break in settlement continuity in the early TRB, are linked with other developments; the regionalization of culture, changes in material culture and burial types, and social organization. The origins of the settlement and social patterns in this period can be seen, not in the changes forced by external factors, but in the internal developments of the neolithic groups themselves.

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