Mobility and Social Change: Understanding the European Neolithic Period after the Archaeogenetic Revolution

Abstract

This paper discusses and synthesizes the consequences of the archaeogenetic revolution to our understanding of mobility and social change during the Neolithic period in Europe (6500–2000 BC). In spite of major obstacles to a productive integration of archaeological and anthropological knowledge with ancient DNA data, larger changes in the European gene pool are detected and taken as indications for large-scale migrations during two major periods: the Early Neolithic expansion into Europe (6500–4000 BC) and the third millennium BC “steppe migration.” Rather than massive migration events, I argue that both major genetic turnovers are better understood in terms of small-scale mobility and human movement in systems of population circulation, social fission and fusion of communities, and translocal interaction, which together add up to a large-scale signal. At the same time, I argue that both upticks in mobility are initiated by the two most consequential social transformations that took place in Eurasia, namely the emergence of farming, animal husbandry, and sedentary village life during the Neolithic revolution and the emergence of systems of centralized political organization during the process of urbanization and early state formation in southwest Asia.

Cultured Milk

“…In the latter case, whey proteins were found in calculus from adult individuals despite absence of lactase persistence during this time (Brace et al 2019;Mathieson et al 2015). In the third millennium BCE Corded Ware and Bell Beaker Cultures, however, migration from the Northern Pontic region (Allentoft et al 2015;Haak et al 2015) not only increased mobility (Furholt 2018(Furholt , 2021 but also changed the genetic makeup in comparison to the Neolithic and may have introduced lactase persistence in Europe (Mathieson et al 2015). Milk lipids and whey protein from a Corded Ware vessel (Kučera et al 2018) confirm dairying as a component in the diet of related populations.…”

“…By that time, mega-sites of the incipient Near Eastern Neolithic with their collaborating inhabitants had been replaced by individual and, to a degree, competing households as the main socioeconomic unit (Hodder 2014). This transition to what has been termed "noncorrespondence" societies (Furholt 2017) can be seen in connection to the full integration of plant and animal husbandry (Bogaard 2005) in what has tentatively been termed the Second Neolithic Revolution (Düring 2011;Gopher 2012).…”

Self-Organized Cultural Cycles and the Uncertainty of Archaeological Thought

“…This debate returned to the key topics of world archaeology during the ongoing Third Science Revolution in archaeology, as defined by K. Kristiansen (2014). The aDNA and strontium isotope data significantly bias current understandings of culture change towards migrationist explanations (e.g., Furholt, 2021). At the same time, fine-grained chronologies based on the large series of AMS dates provide a strong ground for testing the evolutionary models.…”

Estimating human mobility in Holocene Western Eurasia with large-scale ancient genomic data

“…The emergence, change and distribution of human ancestry components – mediated by the mobility of their hosts – is in fact one of its most important research questions (e.g. [Haa+15; Lip+18; Fle+19]), causing fruitful and corrective friction with the humanities [Fur18; GF20; Fur21]. While so far much archaeogenetic research focuses on particular cultural-historical contexts, the recent growth of published ancient DNA samples from all around the world enables a new category of quantitative meta analysis.…”