Transmission of lithic and ceramic technical know-how in the Early Neolithic of central-western Europe: Shedding Light on the Social Mechanisms underlying Cultural Transition

Abstract

Research on the European Neolithisation agrees that a process of colonisation throughout the sixth millennium BC underlies the spread of agricultural ways of life on the continent. From central to central-western Europe, this colonisation path is characterised by one single cultural entity, the so-called Linear Pottery Culture (LBK). At the transition between the sixth and fifth millennia BC, the LBK breaks apart into a mosaic of “post-LBK” cultural groups through mechanisms that are not entirely understood. To contribute to a better understanding of the social processes underlying this transition, here we conduct an integrated analysis of the lithic and ceramic technical sub-systems attributed to the LBK and post-LBK in Middle Belgium, a region with unrivalled material evidence. We use the technical gestures carried out by the early farmers to produce their lithic tool blanks and ceramics as proxies to shed light on (i) the modalities of technical know-how intergenerational transmission, (ii) the possible exogenous influences within the technical system, (iii) the trajectories of the social groups involved in the LBK-BQY/VSG transition. Our results reveal that several overlapping mechanisms were at work during this cultural transition. While lithic and ceramic general technical trends are clearly transmitted from one period to another attesting to a clear filiation between the LBK and post-LBK, both the lithic and ceramic detailed sequences of technical gestures tend to hybridize after the transition. This reveals close and prolonged interactions between groups of producers from different learning network, most likely stemming from population inputs during the cultural transition.