http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== < Main Page Chapter 11 The Expansion of Farming The expansion of farming into the more northerly and higher altitude areas of Europe was part of the regionalisation of earlier broad-based cultures like that of the Linear Band Pottery people. To people not over-familiar with archaeology it seems rather amusing that people belonging to a specific culture are referred to by the feature of their culture which is most obvious to the archaeologist. As examples see `Pitted Ware', Funnel Ware' or `Tumulus people' below. We, of course, will never know their proper names since writing was not used by them so they will have to go down in history under their nicknames! Some time in the later fifth millennium BC the first agriculturalists in northern Poland used the characteristic Funnel Beaker pottery. They were mixed farmers, specializing in cattle raising, and buried their dead, often with stone 'battle-axes', in single graves. The Funnel Beaker culture spread through most of central Europe in four regional groups: in the Netherlands, in Germany, in the Czech Republic where copper was being worked and in Denmark and Sweden.the collective name for these groups is the TRB (Trichterbecher) culture. In southern Denmark Funnel Beakers were not the earliest pottery or indeed their makers the earliest farmers. The Ertebølle culture which was supplanted from c4600BC had included the farming of cereals and cattle and the production of pottery from c4600BC. In northern Denmark the single graves are more common but in the south the first Scandinavian megalithic collective tombs were being built before 3000BC. Further north, in Sweden and Finland, Pitted Ware users had appeared on the coast around 3350BC and later spread south into Sweden and Denmark. Baltic seals were caught, other prey was hunted on land, and cereals and pigs were raised. It was a long-lasting way of life, surviving into the first millennium BCE In Switzerland after 4000BC there was a link between the Pfyn culture in the east and the Cortaillod to the west. The Pfyn people were working copper and exporting metal artefacts to their western neighbours, one of the striking early examples of exchange systems. Cortaillod, the type-site for the culture to the west, was a village built on the edge of Lake Neuchâtel whose waters later rose and overwhelmed the houses. From it and similar archaeological underwater sites it has been possible to construct a picture of an economy which demonstrates a surprising range of crops and collected foodstuffs. Cereals, beans, lentils, flax, strawberries. water-chestnuts, duck, salmon, perch, carp, domestic and wild animals contributed to the diet and examples of a range of organic materials retrieved from these sites can be seen at the Neuchâtel Museum. They include actual bread and a large number of wooden articles. During the late fourth millenium, so-called 'status kits' begin to appear in single graves. These consist of beakers, high quality flintwork and metal goods. In northern Europe, for example, the Funnel Beakers in graves gave way to Corded Ware beakers alongside 'battle-axes' and were accompanied by fine flint daggers. Further west the Bell Beakers were accompanied by copper knives or daggers. Many people see these graves as those of a wealthier 'upper-class' especially when graves contain amber buttons and gold objects as well. The first farmers in Britain arrived in a land populated by hunter-gatherers leading a mesolithic way of life. As far as archaeology goes, the mesolithic people were anonymous and shy, but although the new farmers were as anonymous they were not shy, at least, not as far as the landscape was concerned. They shaped it for their agricultural needs and decorated it with their massive ritual monuments. When did they arrive? Precisely, it is difficult to tell. We are aware of their presence round about 4600BC but they must have arrived some time before. A conventional date of c4800BC will have to suffice for the moment. The earliest radiocarbon date we have for a farming settlement in the British Isles comes from Ballynagilly (Co.Tyrone) in Northern Ireland with a date of c4580BCE. Here a partly plank-built house stood on a hilltop before it was burnt down. Around it was the cleared plot that was being cultivated Further west in Co. Mayo lies the finest example of an early Neolithic landscape in Europe. At Céide large numbers of fields have been uncovered over the generations by turf (peat) cutting. Investigation has established that they extend over at least ten square kilometres. Some are as large as two hectares and must have been used to pasture cattle, other smaller ones were cultivated with a primitive plough to produce crops of wheat and barley. So far a single round house has been uncovered. It was timber-built, about six metres in diameter and a radio-carbon date from the hearth beside the house has produced a date of a few centuries before 3000BCE. One of the most interesting comments made by the investigator is that the appearance of the Neolithic countryside must have been very similar to the patchwork of fields that characterise Ireland and, indeed, most of Britain today. It is usually thought that farmers in Britain at first left only ephemeral settlement traces at this stage and may have moved frequently from one spot to another as they exhausted the soil. The most common indicators of their presence are pits, not rubbish pits or storage pits like those in the Iron Age but apparently 'placements' - deposits of stone tools or animal skulls for ritual purposes like those discovered around Windmill Hill causewayed enclosure in Wiltshire. Neolithic houses so far identified in Britain have been elusive and small but examples of the size of those on the Continent are now being recognised in England, Scotland and Wales One, c.25m by c12m, was excavated at Balbridie near Aberdeen and in Wales, two examples at Llandygai date to between 4500 and 3900BCE and are around 12m in length and 7m externally and were divided into compartments and are large enough to accommodate the farmer, his family, equipment and animals under the same roof.. The relatively sudden appearance in various parts of Britain of Continental neolithic traits of pottery making, `long houses' and the agricultural way of life argues for an immigration, perhaps only of a few groups but, it seems, landing at various points around the coasts of the British islands. One area in Britain that sheds light on this early way of life surrounds Windmill Hill and Avebury on the chalk downs of Wiltshire. Here farmers cleared the scrub and planted their spelt wheat and barley in the thin soil. A settlement site has been discovered on Windmill Hill overlooking the Kennet valley. Pits, postholes perhaps for huts, and hearths were excavated and the bones of dogs and cattle lay around. A radiocarbon determination calibrated to c3750BCE gives us an idea of the period of occupation. Because of rapid erosion on the open chalk downs, few Neolithic soil layers remain and even the upper layers of the underlying chalk have disappeared during the last five thousand years. This makes any surviving neolithic surface very precious. A few such survive where they have been protected under barrows and banks and provide pollen grains and snail samples which can yield important information. Pollen grains are produced in enormous quantities by all plants and trees and are practically indestructible. Varying quantities of different pollens at various levels in excavations show how the plant population of a given spot has changed throughout time. Different species of snails live in different environments so that their shells found in archaeological contexts can provide a clue to the ecology of the period. The snail and pollen diagrams obtained from soils buried under the bank of Avebury henge in Wiltshire and at Fallahogy (Co. Londonderry) demonstrate a common sequence of clearance and farming. Examination of the soil under two earthen long barrows in Wiltshire have shown that they were built on grassland round about 4000BC. Under South Street long barrow marks made by a plough show that, at a stage before the land was used for pasture, crops were being grown on the spot. The plough marks were made by an ard, a primitive plough that did not turn the soil over but only dug a furrow. An example of such a device has recently been discovered in Scotland near Dumfries and is dated provisionally to c4000BC. In order to till the soil adequately the ground had to be ploughed twice, the second ploughing at right-angles to the first. This technique is known as cross-ploughing and can result in squarish fields which are described rather mysteriously as Celtic fields and do not appear unambiguously in the archaeological landscape until the middle of the Bronze Age. Crops grown in the area of the barrows were spelt wheat and barley while cattle, pigs (decreasing in numbers) and sheep and/or goats (increasing) were raised in a landscape of clearings that were continually growing in size. During the early Neolithic a central meeting-place described as a causewayed camp or interrupted ditched enclosure was built over an abandoned settlement on Windmill Hill and another to the south-east on Overton Hill. Their construction must have been a co-operative effort by several small groups living in the area. At Windmill Hill, excavations have shown that three concentric banks and ditches were built. In the ditches a variety of material have been found, some of it originating a good distance from Wiltshire. Polished axeheads of igneous rock quarried in Cornwall, the Lake District, North Wales and in Pembrokeshire have been uncovered together with pottery made in Cornwall and in the Bath/Frome area, thirty miles away. Outside the enclosure, placement pits containing animal skulls, flints and burnt material have recently been excavated. So far no adequate explanation for these deposits has been put forward but household debris and the material described above buried in the ditches has been identified as offerings at a fana, a sacred spot where the spirits of fertility and good fortune could be approached. Etton (Cambridgeshire), which is the most fully excavated causewayed camp, not only produced deposits in the ditches like Windmill Hill, but also clusters of placement material in the interior. These causewayed enclosures are increasingly being recognised throughout northern and western Europe. They were obviously places of assembly but it is difficult to say more than that. The evidence so far seems to suggest that the fifty or so in England that have been identified were built for differing purposes. For example, excavations at the Hambledon Hill enclosure in Dorset show that it was used as a place of excarnation where bodies were exposed to allow the flesh to rot off before disposal. When this had taken place, and after the local wildlife had taken their share, the remains, usually not much more than the skull and long bones, would have been gathered up and placed in a depository like a barrow. People of the Neolithic period of course had no scientific explanations for the phenomena of the natural world. They saw the passage of the seasons, the rhythms of birth, growth and death as a system ordained and kept in operation by supernatural forces. The need to placate these spirits, to ensure the continuity of existence of themselves and their animals and crops must lie at the root of their strong fixation with fertility. Death must have been a difficult phenomenon for them to cope with and perhaps explains the importance of the barrows as foci for funerary deposition, possibly ritual and perhaps a means of ancestor veneration which enabled the dead to remain in the community in some form. We can compare the situation in the south of England during the early Neolithic with that in the Orkneys. On the island of Rousay the megalithic chambered tombs are particularly well preserved. They stand on the higher ground above the cultivated slopes that run down to the sea and it is easy as Professor Colin Renfrew has said to visualize a territory of a few hundred acres that could have been the ancestral land of a couple of dozen people whose communal tomb built on the height above announced their identity and their ownership of the area. A number of their stone-built living sites survive. One on Rousay is at Rinyo but the best-known, on the Mainland island, is Skara Brae, a small neolithic village with covered passages that served as lanes between the houses. The seven houses are almost identical with built-in furniture made of the same stone slabs used to construct the houses. Beds, cupboards, hearths and seats attest the standard of comfort demanded by these people who not only grew grain and raised cattle, sheep, pigs, goats and dogs but also caught fish and ate large quantities of shellfish. Skara Brae has now been dated to c3000BC. One of most significant features of the Neolithic for archaeologists, if not for other students, is the first appearance of pottery in Britain. The earliest pottery is pretty poor stuff and was probably fired in a bonfire but as kilns came into use in the late prehistoric period the quality and quantity of pottery improved. Manufacturing areas can sometimes be located by examination of the fillers in the clay which were added to aid the transmission of heat through the thickness of the pot walls during the firing process in the bonfires and primitive kilns of the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods. Calcite, quartz, flint, chert, mica, shells, carbon, sand and crushed pottery (grog) can all be recognized and geological deposits of these materials are used to suggest places of origin of the pottery. The earliest widely distributed pottery is known as the Grimston/Lyles Hill series. It is found in the Midlands, northern England and in Northern Ireland where at Ballynagilly in Co Tyrone it is dated to c4580BC. In this context the word `distributed' should not be taken to mean that pottery was carried from producers to customers like modern goods but to indicate an area where pots of similar shape and style were customarily made by individual local potters. In the south of England other types of pottery became popular; Hembury pottery by c4210BC and Windmill Hill ware by 3700BC. All these early pottery types consist of plain bowls but not long afterwards the first decorated bowls appear when Abingdon ware came into existence c3110BC. A major activity of the time that has left little archaeological traces is the working of timber. It was easier for the carpenter to split his material when it was green rather than dividing it up in other ways. Cutting through large scantlings must have been a lengthy process akin to chipping stone. Evidence of split timber in the early Neolithic has been suggested at Fussell's Lodge earthen long barrow and been found in a burnt-out hut at Ballynagilly in Co Fermanagh as well as at later times in Continental burials. Splitting timber requires a wedge and it may be that the stone axeheads of the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods and the metal axeheads of the Beaker and Early Bronze Age periods were utilised for this purpose as well as for chopping. Industries in the Neolithic period can be recognised in the quarrying or digging for particular types of stone. The quarries in western highland Britain and their widely-distributed axeheads have been mentioned in connection with Windmill Hill but similar production sites existed in Ireland and in Brittany and their products were also distributed in Britain. Flint mines are another feature of the period. Shafts dug to reach good-quality flint could be up to eleven metres deep and in the Grimes Graves area of Norfolk hundreds of such shafts were sunk. Similar places existed in Wiltshire and Sussex from 4000BC and in the chalk regions of northern Europe. At Rijckholt in the Netherlands mine-shafts were up to 16m deep and it has been estimated by the excavators that there may have been 5000 of them dug, yielding enough flint for 153 million axeheads! Further east flint was mined in parts of central Europe and in Russia. Some of these products could have been carried along the timber trackways laid over tracts of boggy countryside in the Netherlands and in the Levels of northern Somerset. The Sweet Track in the latter place has been dated precisely by dendochronology to 3807 and 3806BC. Recently a neolithic trackway has been found in east London running across the Hackney marshes towards the River Thames. The Beginnings of Metallurgy in Europe [LINK] main page [LINK] Wider Contacts [LINK]