Take a seed! Revealing Neolithic landscape and agricultural development in the Carpathian Basin through multivariate statistics and environmental modelling.

Radu Iovita,Michael Kempf

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0258206

Abstract

The Carpathian Basin represents the cradle of human agricultural development during the Neolithic period, when large parts were transformed into 'cultural landscapes' by first farmers from the Balkans. It is assumed that an Early Neolithic subsistence economy established along the hydrologic systems and on Chernozem soil patches, which developed from loess deposits. However, recent results from soil chemistry and geoarchaeological analyses raised the hypothesis that extensive Chernozem coverage developed from increased land-use activity and that Early Neolithic 'cultural' groups were not restricted to loess-covered surfaces but rather preferred hydromorphic soils that formed in the floodplains. This article performs multivariable statistics from large datasets of Neolithic sites in Hungary and allows tracing Early to Late Neolithic site preferences from digital environmental data. Quantitative analyses reveal a strong preference for hydromorphic soils, a significant avoidance of loess-covered areas, and no preference for Chernozem soils throughout the Early Neolithic followed by a strong transformation of site preferences during the Late Neolithic period. These results align with socio-cultural developments, large-scale mobility patterns, and land-use and surface transformation, which shaped the Carpathian Basin and paved the way for the agricultural revolution across Europe.

Highlights

Agricultural development in the Carpathian Basin played a major role in the transformation to an early domestic subsistence economy during the Neolithic period when it was transformed into a ‘cultural landscape’ by first farmers from the Balkans [1,2,3,4]
The sites were analyzed for their spatial behavior and Complete Spatial Randomness (CSR) using Point Pattern Analysis (PPA) such as Intensity or Kernel Density Estimates (KDE) and simulation envelopes such as the inhomogeneous G-Function and Ripley’s K-Function [79,80,81,82,83,84] (Figs 4 and 5)
From the PPA and intensity estimates (KDE), the clustered distribution patterns can be observed for all point samples

Summary

Introduction

Agricultural development in the Carpathian Basin played a major role in the transformation to an early domestic subsistence economy during the Neolithic period when it was transformed into a ‘cultural landscape’ by first farmers from the Balkans [1,2,3,4]. This stage became the starting point for the expansion towards the continent’s northerly and westerly regions, which were formerly populated by scattered hunter-gatherer groups [5, 6]. The Carpathian Basin marked the northernmost boundary of the expansion of the Anatolian-Balkanic agricultural civilisation, as embodied by the Koros, Criş and Starčevo ‘cultural complexes’ in the first half

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion