When the Mediterranean met the Atlantic. A socio-economic view on Early Neolithic communities in central-southern Portugal

Abstract

The study of the Early Neolithic in Portugal has been receiving increasing attention in the last quarter century, following initial developments in the 1980s that pushed research to new interpretative levels. However, albeit present in some more recent works, reconstructions of social organizational features of these communities have been only marginally attempted. Aiming at providing a first, preliminary view on such issues, it is suggested in this paper that Early Neolithic communities experienced economic (intensive farming exploitation of small plots) and demographic (a sudden population growth followed by decrease and stabilisation) processes as observed elsewhere in Europe. Social inequality is not a permanent trait—likely, these societies went through “ups and downs”, with “ups” occurring after settlement in new areas and “downs” resulting from subsequent fission and dislocation events. Their integration in the broader context of the Neolithic expansion along both rims of the Western Mediterranean is visible not only in shared economic behaviours and options, but also in indirect evidence for maritime transportation of goods. The latter phenomenon also establishes the second half of the 6th millennium BC as the beginning of systematic maritime connections along the Atlantic façade of Europe.