Take a seed! Revealing Neolithic landscape and agricultural development in the Carpathian Basin through multivariate statistics and environmental modelling

Abstract

The Carpathian Basin represents the cradle of human agricultural development during the Neolithic period, when large parts were transformed into ‘cultural landscapes’ by first farmers from the Balkans. It is assumed that an Early Neolithic subsistence economy established along the hydrologic systems and on Chernozem soil patches, which developed from loess deposits. However, recent results from soil chemistry and geoarchaeological analyses raised the hypothesis that extensive Chernozem coverage developed from increased land-use activity and that Early Neolithic ‘cultural’ groups were not restricted to loess-covered surfaces but rather preferred hydromorphic soils that formed in the floodplains. This article performs multivariable statistics from large datasets of Neolithic sites in Hungary and allows tracing Early to Late Neolithic site preferences from digital environmental data. Quantitative analyses reveal a strong preference for hydromorphic soils, a significant avoidance of loess-covered areas, and no preference for Chernozem soils throughout the Early Neolithic followed by a strong transformation of site preferences during the Late Neolithic period. These results align with socio-cultural developments, large-scale mobility patterns, and land-use and surface transformation, which shaped the Carpathian Basin and paved the way for the agricultural revolution across Europe.

Locating Mesolithic Hunter-Gatherer Camps in the Carpathian Basin

“…The catchments of these sites were certainly dynamic but were probably not as susceptible to overbank river flooding as traditionally believed (Frolking, 2021;Gyucha et al, 2011). In addition to the economic resources afforded by the oxbows and temporary lakes nearby, there is also recent evidence that it was not chernozem soils in particular that early farmers were targeting when initially settling in the Carpathian Basin, but instead soils broadly comprised of hydromorphic soil compositions (Kempf, 2021). While we have general expectations regarding how Mesolithic and Early Neolithic site location choice differed, no proximity investigation has ever taken place.…”

“…Access to wetlands was certainly important for Early Neolithic farmers, who disproportionately settled in the marshes of what is now the Körös region of the eastern Carpathian Basin (Kempf, 2021;Kosse, 1979). For wetlands and seasonally inundated areas, we use a model for the entire basin produced by the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture in the earlier part of the twentieth century (HIRHMA, 1938).…”

Scales of transformations—Modelling settlement and land-use dynamics in late antique and early medieval Basel, Switzerland

“…Consequently, the data was harmonized, and large parts of the predominantly artificial surface changes were eliminated. Building on this, the DEM was further processed using focal statistics and the GRASS GIS module r.neighbors to smooth the surface by using a moving-window operation with average statistics and a circular neighborhood of 10 m [ 15 , 86 ]. This operation was used to smooth small-scale data gaps after the built-up corrections considering the 0.5x0.5 m resolution of the DEM.…”

“…However, site-specific samples with high stratigraphic and chronological resolution, such as coring profiles, offer the possibility to transfer local data to a wider area under the premises of environmental system functionalities. Within such a system, the location of the archaeological record, can be used to identify potential palaeo-environmental surface and sub-surface conditions and to interpret potential preferences of site location parameters in the catchment of a site, such as elevated areas, particular geological and pedological units, or groundwater levels [13][14][15].…”

Modelling Bias and Environmental Preferences in Archaeological Spatial Analysis

“…Quantitative, digital statistics, and spatial analyses are common tools in archaeological research that focuses on the recognition of patterns in past societies' behavior and particularly settlement distribution and land-use (Brandolini and Carrer, 2021;Carrero-Pazos et al, 2019;GillinGs et al ., 2020;KemPf, 2020dKemPf, , 2021KemPf and Günther, 2023;VerhaGen and Whitley, 2012). In this context, the use of point pattern analysis has become increasingly important to understand the spatiotemporal components behind the socio-cultural, political, and ecological driving factors that control individual and group decision-making processes (BeVan, 2012;Crema et al, 2010).…”