Touching the void. Comments on Martin Furholt’s “Massive migrations?”

Comment on article by Martin Furholt, "Massive Migrations? The Impact of Recent aDNA Studies on our View of Third Millennium Europe

New contributions to the absolute chronology at the Early Eneolithic cultures in the central Balkans.

In this study we present new absolute dates for the Early Eneolithic in Serbia. Four of them confirm the recently obtained dates from that period (Bubanj-Hum I culture) but two samples (from Mokranjske stene and Bubanj) provide somewhat later dates for this period, although their stratigraphic context makes their interpretation difficult. Pottery from those sites, besides the typical examples, also shows particular stylistic and typological characteristics that resemble Galatin or Sãlcuþa IV cultures, so one can presume that the Bubanj-Hum I culture in Serbia may have lasted longer than what is generally assumed

A long hard road… Reviewing the evidence for environmental change and population history in the eastern Adriatic and western Balkans during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene

The eastern Adriatic and western Balkans are key areas for assessing the environmental and population history of Europe during the Late Pleistocene and early Holocene. It has been argued that the Balkan region served as a Late Glacial refugium for humans, animals, and plants, much like Iberia and the Italian Peninsula and in contrast to the harsh conditions of Eastern and Central Europe. As post-glacial amelioration occurred and sea level rose, these regions to the north and west of the Balkan Mountains became forested and were populated by Mesolithic forager-fishers. Meanwhile, to the south, the domestication of plants and animals in the Near East began to cause large-scale environmental as well as lifestyle changes. Even as the Balkan Peninsula was a likely crossroads on the route for the spread of agriculture and herding from Southwest Asia into Europe, issues such as pre-Neolithic settlement, the discussion of human-environment interactions, and the role of climate events such as the 11.4, 9.3, and 8.2 ka cal BP in this critical landscape are often overlooked. Efforts to counter this challenge have been hampered by an apparent lack of data, so that the region hardly occurs in distribution maps. In part this is due to patchy research and a complicated political history, which have contributed to a fragmented archaeological and paleoecological record. Yet, as we show here, there is in fact plenty of evidence available for review. We present a survey of different proxies for environment and settlement throughout the Late Pleistocene and into the Early Holocene, combining radiocarbon data with zooarchaeological, lithic, and palynological records. By mapping this evidence, we are able to discuss the impact of climate change during the Pleistocene/Holocene transition and consider the role of environment and landscape on human population distribution at this crossroads in place and time. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd and INQU

New absolute dates as a contribution to the study of the Late Bronze Age Chronology in the Central Balkans

The paper presents three Late Bronze Age absolute dates from contexts located in the territory of western Serbia and northern Republic of Macedonia, and discusses them together with further absolute dates from the same period, which will be published shortly by one of the authors and other colleagues. On the basis of these dates the Late Bronze Age chronology is discussed together with cultural aspects of the groups representative of this period in the Central Balkans

Space Competition and Time Delays in Human Range Expansions. Application to the Neolithic Transition

Space competition effects are well-known in many microbiological and ecological systems. Here we analyze such an effect in human populations. The Neolithic transition (change from foraging to farming) was mainly the outcome of a demographic process that spread gradually throughout Europe from the Near East. In Northern Europe, archaeological data show a slowdown on the Neolithic rate of spread that can be related to a high indigenous (Mesolithic) population density hindering the advance as a result of the space competition between the two populations. We measure this slowdown from a database of 902 Early Neolithic sites and develop a time-delayed reaction-diffusion model with space competition between Neolithic and Mesolithic populations, to predict the observed speeds. The comparison of the predicted speed with the observations and with a previous non-delayed model show that both effects, the time delay effect due to the generation lag and the space competition between populations, are crucial in order to understand the observations

Kurt J. Gron, Lasse Sørensen and Peter Rowley-Conwy, eds. Farmers at the Frontier: A Pan-European Perspective on Neolithisation (Oxford & Philadelphia: Oxbow Books, 2020, xiii and 447p., 107 figs., hbk, ISBN 978-1-78925-140-1)

Book revie

Population history in third-millennium-BC Europe: assessing the contribution of genetics

Several recent high-profile aDNA studies have claimed to have identified major migrations during the third millennium BC in Europe. This contribution offers a brief review of these studies, and especially their role in understanding the genetic make-up of modern European populations. Although the technical sophistication of aDNA studies is beyond doubt, the underlying archaeological assumptions prove relatively naive and the findings at odd with more ‘traditional’ archaeological data. Although the existence of past migrations needs to be acknowledged and fully considered by archaeologists, it does not offer either a robust explanatory factor or an enduring platform for interdisciplinary dialogue between archaeology and genetics. Alternative hypotheses are briefly explored

Radiocarbon dating the 3rd millennium BC in the central Balkans: a re-examination of the Early Bronze Age sequence

Long-standing archaeological narratives suggest that the 3rd millennium cal BC is a key period in Mediterranean and European prehistory, characterised by the development of extensive interaction networks. In the Balkans for instance, the identification of such interactions relies solely upon typological arguments associated with conflicting local terminologies. Through a combination of 25 new radiocarbon dates and re-examination of the existing documentation, this paper defines the absolute chronology for groups which were previously only broadly framed into the 3rd millennium BC central Balkans (modern-day Serbia and North Macedonia). These absolute dates allow us to establish with greater clarity the chronological relations between different cultural groups that represent the main cultural units of the central Balkans sequence for the 3rd millennium cal BC: Coțofeni-Kostolac, Bubanj-Hum II, Belotić-Bela Crkva, Armenochori, and Bubanj Hum III. When comparing together the chronologies for material culture, funerary treatment of the body funerary architecture, there are no easily discernable patterns. We observe instead a complex mix of traits criss-crossing over a wide area encompassing the Pannonian basin, the central Balkans and the Greek peninsula

Dispersals as demographic processes: testing and describing the spread of the Neolithic in the Balkans

Although population history and dispersal are back at the forefront of the archaeological agenda, they are often studied in relative isolation. This con- tribution aims at combining both dimensions, as population dispersal is, by definition, a demographic process. Using a case-study drawn from the Early Neolithic of South-Eastern Europe, we use radiocarbon dates to jointly investigate changes in speed and population size linked to the new food pro- duction economy and demonstrate that the spread of farming in this region corresponds to a density-dependent dispersal process. The implications of this characterization are evaluated in the discussion. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Cross-disciplinary approaches to prehistoric demography’