The First Farmers of Central Europe: Diversity in LBK Lifeways (Cardiff Studies in Archaeology) - Hardcover

9781842175309: The First Farmers of Central Europe: Diversity in LBK Lifeways (Cardiff Studies in Archaeology)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1842175300 ISBN 13: 9781842175309

Publisher: Oxbow Books, 2013

From about 5500 cal BC to soon after 5000 cal BC, the lifeways of the first farmers of central Europe, the LBK culture (Linearbandkeramik), are seen in distinctive practices of longhouse use, settlement forms, landscape choice, subsistence, material culture and mortuary rites. Within the five or more centuries of LBK existence a dynamic sequence of changes can be seen in, for instance, the expansion and increasing density of settlement, progressive regionalization in pottery decoration, and at the end some signs of stress or even localized crisis. Although showing many features in common across its very broad distribution, however, the LBK phenomenon was not everywhere the same, and there is a complicated mixture of uniformity and diversity.
This major study takes a strikingly large regional sample, from northern Hungary westwards along the Danube to Alsace in the upper Rhine valley, and addresses the question of the extent of diversity in the lifeways of developed and late LBK communities, through a wide-ranging study of diet, lifetime mobility, health and physical condition, the presentation of the bodies of the deceased in mortuary ritual. It uses an innovative combination of isotopic (principally carbon, nitrogen and strontium, with some oxygen), osteological and archaeological analysis to address difference and change across the LBK, and to reflect on cultural change in general.

Table of Contents

1. LBK lifeways: a search for difference (Penny Bickle and Alasdair Whittle)
2. Seeking diversity: methodology (Julie Hamilton, R. Alexander Bentley, Penny Bickle, Linda Fibiger, Robert Hedges, Linda Reynard, Carrie Wright, Philippa Cullen, Christopher Dale, Geoff Nowell and Alasdair Whittle)
3. Hungary (Alasdair Whittle, Alexandra Anders, R. Alexander Bentley, Penny Bickle, Lucy Cramp, L�szl� Dombor�czki, Linda Fibiger, Julie Hamilton, Robert Hedges, N�ndor Kalicz, Zs�fia Eszter Kov�cs, Tibor Marton, Kriszti�n Oross, Ildik� Pap and P�l Raczky)
4. Moravia and western Slovakia (Alasdair Whittle, R. Alexander Bentley, Penny Bickle, Marta Dočkalov�, Linda Fibiger, Julie Hamilton, Robert Hedges, Inna Mateiciucov� and Juraj Pav�k)
5. Austria (Penny Bickle, R. Alexander Bentley, Christoph Blesl, Linda Fibiger, Julie Hamilton, Robert Hedges, Eva Lenneis, Christine Neugebauer-Maresch, Peter Stadler, Maria Teschler-Nicola, Barbara Tiefenb�ck and Alasdair Whittle)
6. Southern Bavaria (Daniela Hofmann, Joachim Pechtl, R. Alexander Bentley, Penny Bickle, Linda Fibiger, Gisela Grupe, Julie Hamilton, Robert Hedges, Michael Schultz and Alasdair Whittle)
7. Baden-W�rttemberg (R. Alexander Bentley, Penny Bickle, Michael Francken, Claudia Gerling, Julie Hamilton, Robert Hedges, Elisabeth Stephan, Joachim Wahl and Alasdair Whittle)
8. Alsace (Penny Bickle, Rose-Marie Arbogast, R. Alexander Bentley, Linda Fibiger, Julie Hamilton, Robert Hedges and Alasdair Whittle)
9. The supra-regional perspective (Robert Hedges, R. Alexander Bentley, Penny Bickle, Philippa Cullen, Christopher Dale, Linda Fibiger, Julie Hamilton, Daniela Hofmann, Geoff Nowell and Alasdair Whittle)
10. Performing LBK Lifeways (Alasdair Whittle and Penny Bickle)

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About the Author:

Penny Bickle is a lecturer in archaeology at the Univerity of York. She holds a PhD from the University of Cardiff. The main focus of her research is Neolithic Europe, especially in the application of bioarchaeological methods to various sites and time periods to inform on issues of identity and social diversity, and how we can use burial practices to uncover the social lives and lifeways of the earliest farmers in Europe.

Alasdair Whittle recently retired from being Distinguished Research Professor in Archaeology at Cardiff University, specialising in the Neolithic period. Over his career he led several major excavations, notably around Avebury and in Hungary. His many publications include Europe in the Neolithic: the Creation of New Worlds (CUP), The Archaeology of People: Dimensions of Neolithic Life (Routledge), and Gathering Time: Dating the Early Neolithic Enclosures of Southern Britain and Ireland (Oxbow, with Frances Healy and Alex Bayliss), which won the British Archaeological Award for Best Book in 2012. He is a Fellow of the British Academy.

Review:

(On the book) "... an extremely welcome contribution on a comprehensive level."

(On the structure of the book) "... the results are summarized and compared and two exemplary individuals are chosen for the presentation of a local lifeway—a vivid and impressive approach."

( On the studies of "traditional material,
biological, and theoretical foci")
"... raises the discussion to a new level based on multidisciplinary and global work with well-defined standards."

"... The First Farmers of Central Europe will surely remain a vivid standard reference not only for global but also for local research on the LBK." (Heiner Schwarzberg European Journal of Archaeology, 18/01/15)

"As an interdisciplinary study combining bioarchaeology and grave good analysis, and as a reflection on uniformity and diversity within 'cultures', "The First Farmers of Central Europe" will be of wide interest to those who are thinking through similar problems in other areas and for other times." (Savannah Jones SirReadaLot.org)

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