The Revolution in Studies of the Neolithic Transition in the West Mediterranean

Abstract

It has long been clear that farming spread into Europe along two different routes, a northern one through the Balkans and Central Europe and a southern one along the northern coast of the Mediterranean. Studies of the northern route represented by the Starčevo–Kőrös–Criș complex in the Balkans and then the Linearbandkeramik, from the western Carpathian Basin to the coast of the English Channel, have been well established for decades. Until recently, however, the Mediterranean expansion west of the Aegean was much less known. Far less work had been carried out and the chronological details, especially those concerning the relationship between the Mesolithic and the Neolithic, were very unclear, not least because the vast majority of radiocarbon dates came from cave and rockshelter sites with complex and often disturbed stratigraphies. In particular, the fact that both Mesolithic and Neolithic material were apparently found in the same layers led to the conclusion that the mechanism of the transition in the Mediterranean must have been the gradual and piecemeal adoption of elements of a farming way of life by local foragers. In the last 20 years our knowledge has been transformed. There has been a revolution in the understanding of the spread of farming in the West Mediterranean, especially in Iberia, thanks to the work of a new generation of archaeologists trained in the methods of modern scientific archaeology, from fieldwork to laboratory analysis and computer-based modelling.