To conclude, the following model can be put forward. During the 6th Millennium cal BC, major parts of the loess region are exploited by a low density of hunter–gatherers. The LBK communities settle at arrival in locations fitting their preferred physical characteristics, but void of hunter–gatherer activity. Evidently,It is important to determine how long it took for indigenous populations and immigrant farmers to warm up to each other. The rate of spread (in km/year; and here) of the Neolithic may imply that by the time the farmer/forager societies started to blend, the wave of advance had already moved far away; the implication of this would be that the Neolithic bearers at the edge would have a smaller contribution from the indigenous populations of the regions they had already passed through.
multiple processes and contact situations may have occurred simultaneously, but in general the arrival of the LBK did not attract hunter–gatherer hunting activity. Their presence rather restrained native activity to regions located farther away from the newly constructed settlements or triggered fundamental changes in the socio-
economic organisation and activity of local hunter–gatherers. Evidence for the subsequent step in the transition dates to approximately one millennium later (Crombé and Vanmontfort, 2007; Vanmontfort, 2007).
There are two competing models, which I name the Rolling Snowball, and the Skipping Stone:
- In the Rolling Snowball model, the farmers pick up indigenous genetic elements as they move across space; gradually the genetic impact of the initiators of the movement is diminished.
- In the Skipping Stone model, farmers move out in search of new territories before they have started to blend with the local foragers; the genetic impact of the initiators of the movement is preserved.
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2008.03.002
Forager–farmer connections in an ‘unoccupied’ land: First contact on the western edge of LBK territory
Bart Vanmontfort et al.
The interaction between local foragers and incoming farmers is one of the hot topics in the study of Europe’s recent prehistory. In Central and Western Europe’s loam region, occupied by the first farmers of the Linearbandkeramik (LBK), hunter–gatherer remains are scarce and consist mostly of surface finds. Hence, the hunter–gatherer occupation and activity on the loess has never been studied in detail. This paper tackles the problem of the visibility of hunter–gatherer activity on the loess belt. An interregional comparison of microlith datasets allows identifying behavioural changes and differences in exploitation intensity. With regard to forager–farmer interaction, a mutual influence in the spatial patterning of activity or settlement is demonstrated.