The roles of demic diffusion and/or local adoption in the transitions toward agropastoral neolithic lifeways in the Scheldt basin

De rol van kolonisatie en/of acculturatie in de overgang naar een agropastorale neolithische levenswijze in het Scheldebekken
Begin - Einde 
2015 - 2019 (lopend)
Type 

Tabgroup

Abstract

This project finally enables the full examination of five of the earliest agricultural sites ever excavated in the sandy lowlands of Flanders. Focus on material culture finds such as pottery and stone tools will complement recently conducted environmental analyses and therefore facilitate synthetic inquiry into whether earliest farming in Flanders was established by local adoption of domesticates by indigenous hunter-fisher-gatherers or colonization by farmers from the Southern loamy areas. The project fills a critical gap in research on the transition to agriculture between the Central European Loess belt and the Northern European Plain and British Isles, as the sandy lowlands were potentially a transitional node between one colonization event from the Central European loamy area and another into the British Isles. This project will enable the first ever synthetic study on the relationships between the earliest pottery assemblages of Limbourg, LBK, Swifterbant, and Michelsberg pottery and their corresponding lithic assemblages, which will yield important information on how early agriculture spread along the North Sea basin-English Channel corridor, and also possibly how it spread into the British Isles.

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