Toy story: homophily, transmission and the use of simple models in assessing variability in the archaeological record

The interpretation of spatial and temporal patterns in the archaeological record remains a long-standing issue in the discipline. Amongst many methods and interpretations, modelling of ‘biased transmission’ has proved a successful strategy to tackle this problem. Here, we investigate a type of biased transmission, homophily, that is the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others. In contrast to other social sciences, homophily remains underused in archaeology. In order to fill this gap, we develop six distinct variants of a well-established modelling framework borrowed from social science, Axelrod’s Cultural Dissemination Model. These so-called toy models are abstract models used for theory-building and aim at exploring the interplay between homophily and various factors (e.g. addition of spatial features such as mountains and coastlines, diffusion of innovations and population spread). The relevance and implications of each ‘toy model’ for archaeological reasoning are then discussed

Absolute dating of Copper and Early Bronze Age levels on the eponymous archaeological site Bubanj (South-Eastern Serbia).

This paper reports the first radiocarbon dates obtained for the Eneolithic / Bronze Age site of Bubanj, Serbia. Despite featuring prominently in the existing typo-chronological schemes for south Eastern Europe, the history of research and recent large-scale destruction of the site had prevented so far the acquisition of samples from secure archaeological contexts. We fill this documentary gap by presenting ten new radiocarbon dates, covering the late 5th, 4th and 3rd millennium cal. BC. These dates are compared to the existing documentation from the literature, in order to assess the place of Bubanj within its wider archaeological context

Agent-Based Modelling for Archaeology: Simulating the Complexity of Society.

Book Review

The Bell Beaker Phenomenon in Europe. A Harmony of Difference

Covering vast swathes of Europe, the Bell Beaker Phenomenon has enjoyed a privileged status in the history of archaeology and is often referred to as a key period in the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age partly due to the emergence of social élites. After a brief presentation of the historiography of the Bell Beaker phenomenon, this Element offers a synthetic account of the available evidence structured on a regional basis. Following the renewed interest in human mobility generated by stable isotopes and ancient DNA studies, the central thesis developed here is that the Bell Beaker Phenomenon can adequately be described as a metapopulation, a concept borrowed from population ecology. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core

Between the Danube and the Deep Blue Sea : zooarchaeological meta-analysis reveals variability in the spread and development of Neolithic farming across the western Balkans

The first spread of farming practices into Europe in the Neolithic period involves two distinct 'streams', respectively around the Mediterranean littoral and along the Danube corridor to central Europe. In this paper we explore variation in Neolithic animal use practices within and between these streams, focusing on the first region in which they are clearly distinct (and yet still in close proximity): the western Balkans. We employ rigorous and reproducible meta-analysis of all available zooarchaeological data from the region to test hypotheses (a) that each stream featured a coherent 'package' of herding and hunting practices in the earliest Neolithic, and (b) that these subsequently diverged in response to local conditions and changing cultural preferences. The results partially uphold these hypotheses, while underlining that Neolithisation was a complex and varied process. A coherent, stable, caprine-based 'package' is seen in the coastal stream, albeit with some diversification linked to expansion northwards and inland. Accounting for a severe, systematic bias in bone recovery methodology between streams, we show that sheep and goats also played a major role across the continental stream in the earliest Neolithic (c.6100-5800 BC). This was followed by a geographically staggered transition over c.500 years to an economy focused on cattle, with significant levels of hunting in some areas – a pattern we interpret in terms of gradual adaptation to local conditions, perhaps mediated by varying degrees of cultural conservatism. Subsequent westward expansion carried with it elements of this new pattern, which persisted through the middle and late Neolithic

Absolute Datierung der Fundstelle Buban, Ausgrabungen 2008-2014

Während der Ausgrabungen von 2008. bis 2014. sind auf der Fundstelle Bubanj aus allen Komplexen und Kulturschichten viele Proben für eine Radiokrabon-Datierung (C14) gesammelt worden. Davon sind zehn Proben datiert worden und die Resultate in dieser Arbeit präsentiert.Aufgrund deren Datierungen wird festgestellt, dass die Siedlungen der Bubanj-Hum I Kultur auf dieser Fundstelle zwischen der Mitte des 44. und Mitte des 43. Jahrhunderts existierten; Die Černavoda-Boleraz-Baden Manifestation dauerte zwischen der ersten Hälfte des 34.und der ersten Hälfte des 33. Jh. v. Chr.; die Gemeinschaften der Coţofeni-Kostolac Kultur siedelten auf der Fundstelle während des letzten Viertels des 4. Jahrtausends und vielleicht auch am Anfang des 3. Jahrtausends v. Chr. Die jüngste Schicht dieser Fundstelle, die der Bubanj-Hum III Kultur, bzw. der Frühbronzezeit gehört, wird in den Zeitraum zwischen der Mitte des letzten Viertels des 3. Jahrtausends bis zur Mitte des ersten Viertels des 2. Jahrtausends v. Chr. bestimm

Comparing and modeling the spread of early farming across Europe

We review modeling approaches and meta-analyses of the archaeology on the introduction of domesticated plants and animals across Europe. Variation in the rates of diffusion, human demography and farming systems suggest complex patterns of land-use and land-cover changes

Along the Rivers and into the Plain: Early Crop Diversity in the Central and Western Balkans and Its Relationship with Environmental and Cultural Variables

Agriculture is a complex and dynamic socio-ecological system shaped by environmental, economic, and social factors. The crop resource pool is its key component and one that best reflects environmental limitations and socio-economic concerns of the farmers. This pertains in particular to small-scale subsistence production, as was practised by Neolithic farmers. We investigated if and how the environment and cultural complexes shaped the spectrum and diversity of crops cultivated by Neolithic farmers in the central-western Balkans and on the Hungarian Plain. We did so by exploring patterns in crop diversity between biogeographical regions and cultural complexes using multivariate statistical analyses. We also examined the spectrum of wild-gathered plant resources in the same way. We found that the number of species in Neolithic plant assemblages is correlated with sampling intensity (the number and volume of samples), but that this applies to all archaeological cultures. Late Neolithic communities of the central and western Balkans exploited a large pool of plant resources, whose spectrum was somewhat different between archaeological cultures. By comparison, the earliest Neolithic tradition in the region, the Starcevo-Koros-Cris phenomenon, seems to have used a comparatively narrower range of crops and wild plants, as did the Linearbandkeramik culture on the Hungarian Plain

Assessing anthropogenic influence on fire history during the Holocene in the Iberian Peninsula

The relative importance of climate change and human activities in influencing regional fire regimes during the Holocene is still a matter of debate. The introduction of agriculture during the Neolithic provides an opportunity to examine the impact of human activities on fire regimes. Here, we examine changes in fire regimes across Iberia between 10,000 and 3500 cal. BP, reconstructed using sedimentary charcoal records. We compare the regional fire history with estimates of changes in population size, reconstructed based on summed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates on archaeological material. We also compare the fire records and population reconstructions with the timing of the onset of agriculture across the region as indicated by archaeological data. For Iberia as a whole, there are two intervals of rapid population increase centred on ca. 7400 and ca. 5400 cal. BP. Periods of rapid population growth, either for the region as a whole or more locally, do not closely align with changes in charcoal accumulation. Charcoal accumulation had already begun to increase ca. 400 years prior to the onset of the Neolithic and continued to increase for ca. 750 years afterwards, indicating that changes in fire are not directly associated with the introduction of agriculture. Similarly, there is no direct relationship between changes in charcoal accumulation and later intervals of rapid population growth. There is also no significant relationship between population size and charcoal accumulation across the period of analysis. Our analyses show that the introduction of agriculture and subsequent increases in population are not directly linked with changes in fire regimes in Iberia and support the idea that changes in fire are largely driven by other factors such as climate

Beyond broad strokes: sociocultural insights from the study of ancient genomes

The amount of sequence data obtained from ancient samples has dramatically expanded in the last decade, and so have the type of questions that can now be addressed using ancient DNA. In the field of human history, while ancient DNA has provided answers to long-standing debates about major movements of people, it has also recently begun to inform on other important facets of the human experience. The field is now moving from mostly fixating on large-scale supra-regional studies to also taking a more local perspective, shedding light on socioeconomic processes, inheritance rules, marriage practices and technological diffusion. In this review, we summarize recent studies showcasing these types of insights, focusing on methods used to infer sociocultural aspects of human behaviour. This often involves working across disciplines that have, until recently, evolved in separation. We argue that multidisciplinary dialogue is crucial for a more integrated and richer reconstruction of human history, as it can yield extraordinary insights about past societies, reproductive behaviors and even lifestyle habits that would not have been possible to obtain otherwise