Ritual and economic activity during the Neolithic in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany: an approach to combine archaeological and palynological evidence

Abstract

Detecting the intensity of human activities relating to ritual and subsistence behaviours is a daunting challenge in cases where settlement sites are not readily detectable in the archaeological record. We explore the utility of using palynological and archaeological data derived from monumental burial complexes in order to better understand the relationship between ritual activity and subsistence activities. Our case study focuses on the late Funnel Beaker (3500–2900 cal BC) and Single Grave periods (2900–2200 cal BC) in northern Germany. Here, high values for ritual activities correlated significantly with high values for economically induced landscape opening for the megalithic period (3500–3100 cal BC). In the Single Grave Period, an overall agreement of general trends between the two proxies can be observed, i.e. a declining trend in economic activity is generally associated with decreasing evidence for ritual activities and vice versa. Furthermore, our results suggest regional variation in the intensities of ritual and economic activity during both the Funnel Beaker and the Single Grave periods. We postulate a Funnel Beaker core area in the eastern part of the study area, where interdependent economic and ritual structures formed a basis for a stable socio-economic system which inherited the resilience to the adoption of innovations and new ideologies. In the western part, Funnel Beaker groups with a less intensive economic impact and a weaker interlinkage of ritual and economic activities were more open to ritual innovations emerging after 2900 cal BC, as expressed by the construction of Single Grave burials.