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Edited* by Ofer Bar-Yosef, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved January 4, 2013 (received for review July 6, 2012)
Abstract
Questions about how farming and the Neolithic way of life spread across Europe have been hotly debated topics in archaeology for decades. For a very long time, two models have dominated the discussion: migrations of farming groups from southwestern Asia versus diffusion of domesticates and new ideas through the existing networks of local forager populations. New strontium isotope data from the Danube Gorges in the north-central Balkans, an area characterized by a rich burial record spanning the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition, show a significant increase in nonlocal individuals from ∼6200 calibrated B.C., with several waves of migrants into this region. These results are further enhanced by dietary evidence based on carbon and nitrogen isotopes and an increasingly high chronological resolution obtained on a large sample of directly dated individuals. This dataset provides robust evidence for a brief period of coexistence between indigenous groups and early farmers before farming communities absorbed the foragers completely in the first half of the sixth millennium B.C.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: BoricD{at}cardiff.ac.uk.
Author contributions: D.B. and T.D.P. designed research, performed research, analyzed data, and wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
↵*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1211474110/-/DCSupplemental.
- aDepartment of Archaeology and Conservation, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3EU, United Kingdom; and
- bLaboratory for Archaeological Chemistry, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706
Edited* by Ofer Bar-Yosef, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved January 4, 2013 (received for review July 6, 2012)
Abstract
Questions about how farming and the Neolithic way of life spread across Europe have been hotly debated topics in archaeology for decades. For a very long time, two models have dominated the discussion: migrations of farming groups from southwestern Asia versus diffusion of domesticates and new ideas through the existing networks of local forager populations. New strontium isotope data from the Danube Gorges in the north-central Balkans, an area characterized by a rich burial record spanning the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition, show a significant increase in nonlocal individuals from ∼6200 calibrated B.C., with several waves of migrants into this region. These results are further enhanced by dietary evidence based on carbon and nitrogen isotopes and an increasingly high chronological resolution obtained on a large sample of directly dated individuals. This dataset provides robust evidence for a brief period of coexistence between indigenous groups and early farmers before farming communities absorbed the foragers completely in the first half of the sixth millennium B.C.
- forager–farmer interaction
- isotope analysis
- the Balkans
- Lepenski Vir
- southeastern Europe
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: BoricD{at}cardiff.ac.uk.
Author contributions: D.B. and T.D.P. designed research, performed research, analyzed data, and wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
↵*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1211474110/-/DCSupplemental.
Mobility of the first Neolithic farmers in Europe
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