Creating Communities: New Advances in Central European Neolithic Research

The aim of this book is to raise questions about the investigation of identity, community and change in prehistory, and to challenge the current state of debate in Central European Neolithic archaeology. Although the LBK is one of the best researched Neolithic cultures in Europe, here the material is used in order to further explore the interconnection between individuals, households, settlements and regions, explicitly addressing questions of Neolithic society and lived experience. By embracing a variety of approaches and voices, this volume draws out some of the cross-cutting concerns which unite LBK studies in their different regional research contexts and paves the way for further debate on the subject.

Table of Contents

Introduction: researching across borders (Penny Bickle and Daniela Hofmann)
Diverging trajectories? Forager-farmer interaction in the southern part of the Lower Rhine area and the applicability of contact models (Luc Amkreutz, Bart Vanmontfort and Leo Verhart)
Frontier settlements of the LBK in central Belgium (Marc Lodewijckx, with Corrie Bakels)
The extreme eastern periphery of the Linearbandkeramik: the landscape and geographical contexts (Olga Larina)
Settlement history of the Linear Band Pottery culture in Kuyavia (Joanna Pyzel)
The exchange of LBK adze blades in central Europe: an example for economic investigations in archaeology (Britta Ramminger)
Settlement history, land use and social networks of early Neolithic communities in western Germany (Erich Classen)
First reflections on the exploitation of animals in Villeneuve-Saint-Germain society at the end of the early Neolithic in the Paris Basin (France) (Lisandre Bedault)
Scene by the brook: early Neolithic landscape perspectives in the Paris Basin (Penny Bickle)
Mobility in a sedentary society: insights from isotope analysis of LBK human and animal teeth (Corina Knipper)
New aspects and models for Bandkeramik settlement research (Oliver Ruck)
A monumental prestige patchwork (Joachim Pechtl)
The LBK settlement with pit enclosure at Herxheim near Landau (Palatinate) (Andrea Zeeb-Lanz, Rose-Marie Arbogast, Fabian Haack, Miriam Haidle, Christian Jeunesse, Jorg Orschiedt, Dirk Schimmelpfennig and Samuel van Willigen)
Cemetery and settlement burial in the Lower Bavarian LBK (Daniela Hofmann)
Bone temper in early Neolithic vessels from southern Poland. Examinations using Scanning Microscopy (Anna Rauba-Bukowska)
The people who lived in longhouses: what's the big idea? (Alasdair Whittle)

Daniela Hofmann has obtained her PhD from Cardiff University and is currently Junior Professor at Hamburg University, Germany. She has published extensively on funerary archaeology, as well as the figurines and domestic architecture of the central European Neolithic, but she is also interested in instances of structured deposition and in spheres of exchange.

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.