Isotopic evidence for residential mobility of farming communities during the transition to agriculture in Britain.

Samantha Neil,Jane Evans,Janet Montgomery,Chris Scarre

doi:10.1098/rsos.150522

Abstract

Development of agriculture is often assumed to be accompanied by a decline in residential mobility, and sedentism is frequently proposed to provide the basis for economic intensification, population growth and increasing social complexity. In Britain, however, the nature of the agricultural transition (ca 4000 BC) and its effect on residence patterns has been intensely debated. Some authors attribute the transition to the arrival of populations who practised a system of sedentary intensive mixed farming similar to that of the very earliest agricultural regimes in central Europe, ca 5500 BC, with cultivation of crops in fixed plots and livestock keeping close to permanently occupied farmsteads. Others argue that local hunter–gatherers within Britain adopted selected elements of a farming economy and retained a mobile way of life. We use strontium and oxygen isotope analysis of tooth enamel from an Early Neolithic burial population in Gloucestershire, England, to evaluate the residence patterns of early farmers. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that early farming communities in Britain were residentially mobile and were not fully sedentary. Results highlight the diverse nature of settlement strategies associated with early farming in Europe and are of wider significance to understanding the effect of the transition to agriculture on residence patterns.

Highlights

The transition from hunting and gathering to farming is often considered to be accompanied by a decline in residential mobility as sedentism is assumed to facilitate economic intensification, leading to population expansion and the development2016 The Authors
Some authors attribute development of farming in Britain to the arrival of settled agriculturalists from continental Europe who practised a similar system of intensive mixed agriculture to that of the Linearbandkeramik (LBK), the first farming systems which developed in central Europe from approximately 5500 BC [9,10,11]
A sedentary self-sufficient population subsisting solely on resources obtained from a homogeneous lithological unit such as Oolitic limestone would be predicted to plot on a diagonal mixing array between two sources of dietary strontium: the ratio bioavailable on that lithological unit and that of rainwater [42,87]

Summary

Introduction

The transition from hunting and gathering to farming is often considered to be accompanied by a decline in residential mobility as sedentism is assumed to facilitate economic intensification, leading to population expansion and the development2016 The Authors. The agricultural transition in Britain (ca 4000–3500 BC) is marked by 2 the importation of non-native species of domesticated animals from continental Europe, evidence for cereal cultivation and the appearance of new traditions of pottery manufacturing, lithic technologies and monument construction. Both the processes that facilitated the transition and the nature of the first farming systems associated with it remain intensely debated Cereals are argued to have been a dietary staple [15,16,17] and, due to the demands of cultivation, it is suggested that the first agriculturalists in Britain were fully sedentary [18,19]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion