i6 C U R R E N T A N T H R O i ' ü L o c , Y Volume 28, NumbcT i, Fcbruaiy 1987
in hunting (now in additinn to the breecling «f domestic animals) in regions whcre both the preceding and the succeeding farmmg groups huntcd only occasionally is unknown. Brzesc Kujawski, however, is just one particu-lar ease of this widespread phenomenon, which has clearly nothing to do either with the locally conditioned subsistence stratcgy or with the Mesolithic way of life. 7. The Funnel Beuker culture was üenveil from the local Mesolithic The Funnel Beaker culture is equally well rcprescntcd in the southern zone, and m the early phases the differences from the north are neghgible in what can be compared at present, i.e., mamly pottery, the north, however, lacks certain pottery forms that are abundant in the south In the south the Funnel Beakei culture is certamly ]ust a development of vanous late Lengyel (Proto-Aeneohthic) cultural groups, there is no reason to assume that it was otherwise in the north Wislariski (i98}.fig.4) shows how the earliest Funnel Beaker manifestations are concentrated in regions previ-ously occupied by vanous Lengyel-hke Ncohthic groups and points out that the Funnel Beaker culture draws upon earher "Danubian" traditions both m pottery forms and m economy.
8. Funnel Beaker settlemenls are small, scattered, and often outside the nucroregions inhahited by the Linear Pottery and Brzesc Ku/awski farmers. Tliey regularly appear on sandy wils and rarely exhibit long-term structuren. Quite often, however, they are less than an hout's walk from the earher Neohthic s;£es These char-actenstics, if properly generahzed, apply equally to the Funnel Beaker culture of the southern zone. Scttlements of this culture are certamly much smaller than those of the Linear Pottery, Stroke-Ornamented Ware, or Lengyel cultures (overlookmg the palimpsest effect that Bogucki ignores). As Ruif (1983, 1986) has shown, sites of the Funnel Beaker culture m Bohemia are more evenly dis-tnbuted than those of the Linear Pottery and Stroke-Ornamented Ware cultures, which tend to cluster. They are mostly in new places: of those that could be located exactly, only 5% hè on the same spot as a Linear Pottery site and 13% on the same spot as a Stroke-Ornamented Ware site. That they are still quite close to the scttle-ments of the earher Neohthic cultures may be because the two earher (Neohthic) cultures often occupied brown-earth regions while their Aeneohthic successors (Funnel Beaker, etc.) tended toward black earth (Ruif 1983:63, 66). The difference in soils may not be as pro-nounced as in the north, but one has to bear m mmd that because of edaphic factors the possibihty of choice was different in Kuyavia than in Bohemia. Nevertheless, the settlement patterns of the Funnel Beaker culture of the southern zone obviously underwent changes comparable to those m the north.
9. The long barrows of the northern zone are a logica! consequence of the adoption of agnculture by Mesolithic groups This thesis builds on the apparent absence of such barrows m the southern zone, but this is a mistake. Latdorf (Baalbcrge group) m eastern Germany has a long barrow, and similar mortuary structures have long been known m Moravia (Houstova 19$8),
more-over, recent excavations have uncovered a group of un-mistakable trapezoidal long barrows at the Bohemian site of Brezno (Plemerova 1980). Radiocarbon dates show that they are at least as old as, if not older than, their northern relatives. Such finds are still few because, m the absence of boulders, they wcre easily erased by ploughmg m a landscape mtensively cultivated foi the last millennium. Excavation of hurly large areas sur-rounding grave pits is required to locate the trenches that dehmit the original long barrows, and such excava-tions are rarely done, especially when the grave pits con-tain almost no archaeological finds (except for the skele-tons).
Thus the phenomena that Bogucki considers specific to the "North European Plain" seem to be parallel devel-opments of both the southern and the northern zones of Central Europe. If the individual features are equally at home in the south (where any Mesolithic agent is ex-cluded for obvious reasons), their appearance in the north can be attnbuted neither to the environment nor to Mesolithic peoples. They probably reflect the devel-opment from the Neohthic to the Aeneohthic type of agnculturc that seems to have occurred all over Central Europe (cf. Neustupny 1967, 198s). In my view it is difficult to argue that farmers coming to the northern zone failed to adapt. The Funnel Beaker culture groups are prosperous dcscendents of the Neohthic peoples This is not to say that everythmg was identical m the two zones; m fact it could not have been. But m looking for local adaptations one presumably has to go into fincr details which are still difficult to grasp.
The Mesolithic population might have survived m some regions, and it is the task of future research to ascertam what happened to them. Two clearly emerging examples of how the adoption of elements of farmmg cultures could be mtegrated into the Mesolithic way of life are the late Ertebcille culture (Schwabedissen 1980) and the local groups of the East Baltic area (e g. Loze 1979). These examples seem to differ substantially from what Bogucki supposes for the northern zone of Central Europe. The partial adoption of agnculture by Meso-lithic peoples took place over many centunes; it imphed not only change in settlement patterns but also many changes m artifact assemblages. In no instance is there an overmght conversion of a Mesolithic culture group to the highly sophisticated plough (ard) agnculture whose development in the southern zone took many centur-les and was a logical response to difficulties ansmg withm the Neohthic (i.e., Early Neohthic, accordmg to Bogucki's termmology) economy,
L . I'. L O U W b K O O I J M A N S
Instituut voor l'rehistone, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, Postbus 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherland.s. 25 vin 86
B O G U C K I Agranan Commumtie\ | 17
however, how firm lts foundations are It is more a hy pothesis than a synthesis The basic data are to be found mainly in the author's earlier pubhcations on his re-search in the Brzesc Kujawski microregion, and there fore instead of "North European Plain" one should read "Pohsh Lowlands " In other parts of northern Europe the processes will, as Bogucki remarks, have been different because of ecological and cultural diversity
There are two basic problems the reluctance to adopt agriculture of the mdigenous foragers in the penod dur mg and af ter the Linear Pottery colomzation (4400-4000 o c recahbrated C1 4) and the rather sudden transition
around 3300 H r from foragers to farmers The first prob lern is solved by the now generally accepted picture of late Mesohthic society as a complex of foraging com-ntumties with a successful low risk subsistence system, a high degree of territonahty, (quasi [permanent settle ment, and strong seasonahty in food procurement (Zvelebil 1986) Explanation of the ehange around 3300
B t. is generally found m a crisis of the ecosystem and
the loss of a staple (oysters, seals) and/or the introduc toon of plow agnculture, which was better suited to the sands of the North European Plam (To avoid misunder standing I am suggestmg not that the plow was "in vented" for this reason but only that its availabihty made agnculture more readily acceptable ) There is no uidication that the storage of food playcd a ma)or role in these Late Mesohthic socicties Hazelnuts were indeed collected, but thick layers of shells have been found,
especially in small special activity sites Acorns would,
mcidentally, have been a more rehablc and plausible storage food I wonder, then, whether storage of food playcd j role around 3300 B c
I have firm objections to the suggestions about Mesohthic Neohthic contacts Apart from Ertebolle, hardly any late Mesohthic assemblages from the penod 4000-3000 B c are known from the North European Plain No Mesohthic elements are visible in the flint inventones of the Early Neohthic sites (despite Newell
197^) Bogucki's use of ethnographic analogy and his
Suggestion that there must have been exchangc when furagers and farmers lived m close proximity is, m my opinion, an example of how not to use anthropology in archaeology There is no such thing as an "ethnographic law" m this respect, and the range of orgamzational van ation of prehistorie societies must be considered much
Wlder than that of the (sub)recent sample of primitive
societies (cf Hodder 1982)
A second methodological point is the highly deductive line of reasonmg, especially the fact that only one hy Pothesis is considered and only those data selected that support it For example, the Linear Pottery culture is treated as completely different from the Late Mesohthic and the Lengyel as very similar to it, although both have 'arge residential sites and also presumably many ephem era! ones The idea that the Linear Pottery settlement Pattern reflects a residcntially mobile society and the Lengyel pattern a logistically mobile one seems to me untcnablc, it overstresses minor differences that are not made exphcit The archaeozoological data do scern to
indicate that the Linear Pottery culture m the lowlands relied predommantly on cattle raismg, but the interpre tation of Brzesc Kujawski (and the other Linear Pottery sites?) as a transhumant settlement of farmers of the loess zone must be considered hypothetical The ab sence of house plans might have been caused by postoc cupationai disturbance The relative importancc of huntmg in Lengyel settlements is restncted to Brzesc Kujawski and not found at other Pohsh Lmear Pottery, Stroke-Ornamented pottery, or Lengyel sites (cf Bogucki 1982 56, 84, 86) A similar economie diversity is known from other parts of Europe and throughout the Neohthic Thercfore I am critical of the idea that the exogenous agricultunsts "acquired a better understand ing of the lowland ecosystem" and needed many cen-tunes to do so The Variation can be explamed m a num ber of ways other than "better undcrstanding" or staple food exchange I wonder if it makes sense to say that the "Lengyel subsistence strategy mimicked the Mesohthic exploitation pattern " The parallel of the "buffermg behavior" of Late (?) Mesohthic and Lengyel
seems to me of an academie order and of only very gen eral value It seems to me, then, that there are no con vincing arguments for presenting Lengyel as very differ ent from the Lmear Pottery culture m lts Mesohthic contacts or adaptation to the northern ecological zone The ma)or difference is more pronounced social strati fication as reflected in the differentiation of grave goods The Funnel Beaker culture is a different story Argu ments for Mesohthic origins from the flint inventory and site locations and dimensions seem strong (and quitc different from those for Lengyel') This culture ie places the Lengyel, and the relationships of sites and regions m this phase can be apphed to the precedmg phases only with reservations because of the major eco norme changes that had taken place The presumed semisedentary settlement system of the Late Mesohthic must be considered a prerequisite for the adoption of agnculture, but the process itself must have been tng gered by external or internal cultural or ecological fac tors We can only be astomshed that it occurred simulta neously over a large area Since ecological crises and/or population pressure over such a large area seem un-hkely, the technological argument (plow agnculture) may be the strongest This does not mean, however, that the other factors did not play a role or may not locally (oysters in Denmark, seals in Sweden) have been domi-nant With the Funnel Beaker culture we see in tact a process of unincation (especially prominent in later Beaker times [van der Waals 1984]) in the course of which Lengyel and the presumed Late Mesohthic merge into one new "culture " In view of this disappearance of the Lengyel, the lack of Information on early Funnel Beaker houses, and the appearance of the Kuyavian long barrows, one can predict trapezoidal houses for the early Funnel Beaker occupation m Poland
i8 l C U R R E N T A N T H R O P O L O G Y Volume 2Ü, Nuinher j , February 1987
nch coastal habitats, now huncd bencath ten or more meters of sediments Wc can presume Erteholle-hkc commumties there, but their remains have not yet been found. Stray flmt arrowheads and adzes point to mcidcn-tal use of the sands up to 100 km from the loess zone. Ephemeral "locations" mdicate a home range of up to 30 km from the loess. Interactions with (as yct hardly traced) very late Mesohthic foragcrs are documented at only one site This pattern was mtensified and extended in the subsequent Rossen phase (4ooo-3soo n c.) Around 3300 B.c., sermagrarian commumties with Mesohthic roots ()udgmg from flmt mvcntory and site characteristics) appear m the coastal zone The processes underlymg them are, however, hidden m the black box of the penod 4000-3300 m the region between the loess and the coast. We are now trymg to open that box. It seems that no earher than this phase, that is, about eight centunes after the end of the Linear Pottery, presumably agranan settlements, linked by exchange of mined flmt from the Rijckholt mines m the south, appeared m the Meuse Valley. In spite of the marked differences in ma-tenal culture, an mdigenous development, as opposed to colomzation, must be seriously considered Locally, es-pecially m the wet coastal environments, semiagranan commumties persisted up to the Late Neohthic Vlaar-dmgen culture This very compressed summary of Dutch developments may illustrate the parallels as well as the regional differences m companson with Kuyavia. I hope that these remarks will be eonsidered construc-tive They will, perhaps, be judged the typical reaction of a cautious, data-bound European prehistonan, but l am afraid of overmterpretation of the magmficcnt Brzcsc Kujawski data and of overgenerahzation. We need stud-ies like Bogucki's as Inspiration for further research and as a source of new research goals Thcy show what fac-tors might have played a role and how they might have mteracted. We must be eareful, however, about telling better stories than the data allow
T . D O U G L A S P R I C E
Department of Anthropology, Umversity of Wisconsin, Madison, W;s $?7O6, U.S A. 18 vin 86
The concern of this paper m a nutshell is the relation-ship between hunter-gatherers and early farmers m north-central Europe The issue of forager-farmer m-teraction is a particularly active area of enquiry m Euro-pean prehistory at the moment, and Bogucki's contribu-tion is a useful addicontribu-tion to these studies. Bogucki reviews the current perspectives on h'rst farmers m this area, pomtmg out the differences between exogenous groups such as the Linear Pottery and Lengyel cultures and the mdigenous Mesohthic groups. In this context hè distinguishes the Funnel Beaker as the first mdigenous agranan commumties m the North European Plam The summary of the major characteristics of these assem-blages is useful and provides a background for the theo-retical elaboration concerned with the relationships be-tween these units and exchange bebe-tween farmers and foragers
Much of the discussion m the paper focuses on the Pohsh data with which Bogucki is most familiär. Bo-gucki argues that mdigenous and exogenous groups m this area utilized the environment in different ways. As hè notes, although domesticates appear to have been m-troduced by colomsts, the successful long-term farmmg strategies are developed by mdigenous hunter-gatherers over a penod of 1,000 years or more. The prehistory of early farrmng m Poland is, however, a rather com-phcated base from which to attempt to unravel the rela-tionships between foragers, colomsts, and hunters be-commg farmers. The Mesohthic is known almost exclusively from scatters of hthic matenal, contammg very httle Information on subsistence or settlement pat-tern. Therc are very few data on which to base compara-tive statements Further, the presence of both Danubian and Funnel Beaker in the same general area may obfus-cate rather than clanfy the nature of the relationship between groups. Although Bogucki's view of mteraction and change m this area is mtngumg, it might be significantly enhanced by both more detailed compari-son with areas to the north lacking Danubian Neohthic cultures and the mcorporation of more substantial Infor-mation on the nature of hunter-gatherer adaptations at the threshold of farmmg m northern Europe.
P E T E R R O W L E Y - C O N W Y
Cläre Hall, Cambridge Cßj yAL, England 28 vn 86
Bogucki's article is most welcome. His synthesis (based m part on his own fieldwork) considers the appearance of farmmg m considerable detail, and it achieves its stated aim of providmg alternatives to the view that mdigenous foragers either becamc "Danubian clones" or were sim-ply shouldered out of the way of the march of cultural evolution.
Bogucki distmguishes between two major cultural tra-jectones: an exogenous one, compnsmg the more mobile cattle-herding Linear Pottery culture, and the later mixed-farming Lengyel, with large villages with longhouses (possibly with a hiatus m between at the time of the Stroke-Ornamcnted Ware culture), and an
mdigenous one, running from an increasmgly territorial
late Mesohthic, contmumg alongside the Linear Pottery (httle or no mteraction) and Lengyel (more interaction), and ultimately developmg into the early Funnel Beaker culture towards the end of the Lengyel. My commcnts are directed towards the mdigenous trajectory.
