Our goal in this paper is to examine the socioecological dynamics of the Early Neolithic period in Iberia in order to test the usefulness of temporal probability curves built from dated sites as a relative proxy for exploring possible links between trends in population patterns and climatic fluctuations. We compare the information for the entire Iberian Peninsula with four Mediterranean regions, investigating the climate-population relationships that emerge when we zoom into particular regions. We evaluate climatic and other possible causes of similarities in the shapes of temporal probability curves across the Peninsula, associated with demographic changes in the early Neolithic sequence. Changes in subsistence patterns identified in empirical data from sites like Cendres cave (Alicante province), together with computational modeling that simulates long-term socio-ecological processes, suggest key variables that can help account for local dynamics. Theoretical approaches from Complex System Theory and Evolutionary Archaeology can help us to better understand evolutionary processes including the spread of farming.
Recent approaches have described the evolutionary dynamics of the first Neolithic societies as a cycle of rise and fall. Several authors, using mainly c14 dates as a demographic proxy, identified a general pattern of a boom in population coincident with the arrival of food production economies followed by a rapid decline some centuries afterward in multiple European regions. Concerning Iberia, we also noted that this phenomenon correlates with an initial development of archeological entities (i.e., "cultures") over large areas (e.g., the Impresso-Cardial in West Mediterranean), followed by a phase of "cultural fragmentation" by the end of Early Neolithic. This results in a picture of higher cultural diversity as an effect of more limited spread of cultural artifacts. In this work, we propose to apply a network approach to the analysis of material culture. In particular, we consider the spatiotemporal patterns of material culture as an emergent effect of local interaction processes. As recent research has pointed out, the spatiotemporal variability of material culture is an emergent phenomenon resulting from individual and group interactions whose structure resembles those of spatially structured complex networks. Our results suggest that the observed global patterns could be explained by the network dynamics, especially by structural (measured as the betweenness centrality) and geographical position of some nodes. The appearance and disappearance of nodes in specific positions correlate with the observed changes in the pattern of material culture distribution throughout the Early Neolithic (c. 7700-6700 cal BP) in East Iberia. In our view, this could be explained by the special role played by those nodes facilitating or limiting the information flow over the entire network. Network growth and posterior fragmentation seem to be the key drivers behind these dynamics.
The agricultural way of life spreads throughout Europe via two main routes: the Danube corridor and the Mediterranean basin. Current archaeological literature describes the arrival to the Western Mediterranean as a rapid process which involves both demic and cultural models, and in this regard, the dispersal movement has been investigated using mathematical models, where the key factors are time and space. In this work, we have created a compilation of all available radiocarbon dates for the whole of Iberia, in order to draw a chronological series of maps to illustrate temporal and spatial patterns in the neolithisation process. The maps were prepared by calculating the calibrated 14C date probability density curves, as a proxy to show the spatial dynamics of the last hunter-gatherers and first farmers. Several scholars have pointed out problems linked with the variability of samples, such as the overrepresentation of some sites, the degree of regional research, the nature of the dated samples and above all the archaeological context, but we are confident that the selected dates, after applying some filters and statistical protocols, constitute a good way to approach settlement spatial patterns in Iberia at the time of the neolithisation process.
In this paper, we compile recent14C dates related to the Neolithic transition in Mediterranean Iberia and present a Bayesian chronological approach for testing thedual model, a mixed model proposed to explain the spread of farming and husbandry processes in eastern Iberia. The dual model postulates the coexistence of agricultural pioneers and indigenous Mesolithic foraging groups in the Middle Holocene. We test this general model with more regional models of four geographical areas (Northeast, Upper, and Middle Ebro Valley, and Eastern and South/Southeastern regions) and present a filtered summed probability of all14C dates known in the region in order to compare socioecological dynamics over a long period. Finally, we discuss the results and analyze how certain specific characteristics of sites and their chronologies can serve for timing the Neolithic expansion in Mediterranean Iberia.
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