DOI chapter:
Grenzgänger, traders and the last hunter-gatherers of the North European Plain
DOI chapter:Hofmann, Daniela; Peeters, Hans; Meyer, Ann-Katrin: Crosstown traffic: contemplating mobility, interaction and migration among foragers and early farmers
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.66745#0285
284
Crosstown traffic: contemplating mobility, interaction and migration among foragers and early farmers
Assuming the idea put forward by Gron / So-
rensen (2018) is correct and the Final Mesolithic
population of the Ertebolle region was motivated
to take up farming and cattle herding by migrating
settlers from the south, then the southern Ertebolle
‘borderlands’ must have played an important role as
a contact or negotiation corridor through which mi-
grating individuals must have passed. Genetic data
from Ertebolle and Early Funnel Beaker contexts
from northern Germany could help sharpen the pic-
ture, but so far most of the genetic evidence comes
from Denmark or Sweden and stems from later peri-
ods (Skoglund et al. 2012; Brotherton et al. 2013;
Malmstrom et al. 2015). It is interesting that the data
indicate little interbreeding. In this respect the observ-
able continuity between the Final Mesolithic and Early
Neolithic (see above) hints at a more complicated
scenario in which hunter-gatherers and their willing-
ness to take up new technologies and ideas played a
more important role in the diffusion of innovations
than migratory processes by Neolithic settlers alone
could explain.
Furthermore, the model by Gron / Sorensen
(2018) leaves important questions: How many in-
coming settlers are we talking about in a year, or in
the course of several years? Why did they come in
the first place? The complexity of the neolithisation
process is perhaps better understood by asking why a
Neolithic mode of subsistence was attractive to well-
established hunter-gatherer-fishers. What influenced
their decisions to try out new technologies and sub-
sistence practices and to welcome migrating settlers
with a different cultural and economic background?
Although no final conclusion is as yet possible, it is
always important to consider both sides, that of the
mover and that of the recipient (of either new ideas,
technologies or migrating settlers), and to acknowl-
edge that we are dealing with many different scales of
perspective as well as variable inter- and intra-group
dynamics. The new data for migration should certainly
not tempt us to flip our narratives by 180 degrees, and
to allocate all the agency to incoming farmers instead
of hunter-gatherers. Instead, existing Ertebolle patterns
of relatedness and of living in the landscape would
have been crucial to the outcome of any Neolithic
colonisation venture, and this Ertebolle background
was in itself very varied.
Discussion and conclusions
Our three case studies show a range of possible in-
teraction patterns when foragers and farmers meet.
Referring back to our Figure 2, in the LBK case, there
was a large cultural distance between incoming farm-
ers and resident hunter-gatherers, and in the interior
of central Europe at least this was also paired with
a large demographic imbalance. How the transition
worked from the hunter-gatherer perspective was thus
strongly dependent on how the LBK developed. Cur-
rently, it seems likely that the Earliest LBK expansion
was characterised by a relatively greater pressure to-
wards conformity and assimilation within LBK society,
making any more balanced integration rather difficult,
but leaving reasonable opportunities for foragers to
continue relatively undisturbed in other parts of the
landscape. Yet this (perhaps uneasy) truce was not to
last. As LBK settlers occupied more and more niches,
remaining forager communities may have been re-
duced to a kind of ‘home diaspora’, living in increas-
ingly circumscribed areas and with their accustomed
movement patterns disrupted. At this point, we can
start to discuss whether such groups should be consid-
ered marginalised, and whether they managed to sur-
vive for any length of time. At the same time, continu-
ing westward expansion by mobile LBK groups may
have involved settlers from different settlements who
underwent a process of acculturation, mixing their
traditions to create a new, shared one. In these settings,
there was also more room for interaction with hunter-
gatherers, as the pottery in particular shows. Here, a
more balanced reciprocity was achieved, although
creolisation may still be an appropriate term if we as-
sume an imbalance in power relations - something that
needs to be researched further. Households on LBK
sites continued to produce non-LBK styles of pottery,
and there are signs of mutual interaction. In time, a
new, fusion identity developed, perhaps fundamental
for creating some of the LBK successor cultures, such
as the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain (e.g Jeunesse et al.
2019, 98-99). Overall, as LBK and forager societies
changed, so did possible patterns of contact.
In contrast, both in the Low Countries and in the
Ertebolle case, the differences between farmers and
foragers were less marked, but have on occasion been
overstated due to our own disciplinary propensity for
categorisation. In the Low Countries, there has been
a tendency to interpret contact finds, sturdily built
houses and so on differently, depending on whether
they turn up on a ‘hunter’ or a ‘farmer’ site. However,
foragers and farmers both enacted their relationship
to territory through practices which combined a range
of economic strategies, and therefore both societies
shared a degree of mobility. In addition, the forager
landscape had long been dynamic and changing, both
as a result of technological adaptations and environ-
mental change. In such a context, a new and broad-
Crosstown traffic: contemplating mobility, interaction and migration among foragers and early farmers
Assuming the idea put forward by Gron / So-
rensen (2018) is correct and the Final Mesolithic
population of the Ertebolle region was motivated
to take up farming and cattle herding by migrating
settlers from the south, then the southern Ertebolle
‘borderlands’ must have played an important role as
a contact or negotiation corridor through which mi-
grating individuals must have passed. Genetic data
from Ertebolle and Early Funnel Beaker contexts
from northern Germany could help sharpen the pic-
ture, but so far most of the genetic evidence comes
from Denmark or Sweden and stems from later peri-
ods (Skoglund et al. 2012; Brotherton et al. 2013;
Malmstrom et al. 2015). It is interesting that the data
indicate little interbreeding. In this respect the observ-
able continuity between the Final Mesolithic and Early
Neolithic (see above) hints at a more complicated
scenario in which hunter-gatherers and their willing-
ness to take up new technologies and ideas played a
more important role in the diffusion of innovations
than migratory processes by Neolithic settlers alone
could explain.
Furthermore, the model by Gron / Sorensen
(2018) leaves important questions: How many in-
coming settlers are we talking about in a year, or in
the course of several years? Why did they come in
the first place? The complexity of the neolithisation
process is perhaps better understood by asking why a
Neolithic mode of subsistence was attractive to well-
established hunter-gatherer-fishers. What influenced
their decisions to try out new technologies and sub-
sistence practices and to welcome migrating settlers
with a different cultural and economic background?
Although no final conclusion is as yet possible, it is
always important to consider both sides, that of the
mover and that of the recipient (of either new ideas,
technologies or migrating settlers), and to acknowl-
edge that we are dealing with many different scales of
perspective as well as variable inter- and intra-group
dynamics. The new data for migration should certainly
not tempt us to flip our narratives by 180 degrees, and
to allocate all the agency to incoming farmers instead
of hunter-gatherers. Instead, existing Ertebolle patterns
of relatedness and of living in the landscape would
have been crucial to the outcome of any Neolithic
colonisation venture, and this Ertebolle background
was in itself very varied.
Discussion and conclusions
Our three case studies show a range of possible in-
teraction patterns when foragers and farmers meet.
Referring back to our Figure 2, in the LBK case, there
was a large cultural distance between incoming farm-
ers and resident hunter-gatherers, and in the interior
of central Europe at least this was also paired with
a large demographic imbalance. How the transition
worked from the hunter-gatherer perspective was thus
strongly dependent on how the LBK developed. Cur-
rently, it seems likely that the Earliest LBK expansion
was characterised by a relatively greater pressure to-
wards conformity and assimilation within LBK society,
making any more balanced integration rather difficult,
but leaving reasonable opportunities for foragers to
continue relatively undisturbed in other parts of the
landscape. Yet this (perhaps uneasy) truce was not to
last. As LBK settlers occupied more and more niches,
remaining forager communities may have been re-
duced to a kind of ‘home diaspora’, living in increas-
ingly circumscribed areas and with their accustomed
movement patterns disrupted. At this point, we can
start to discuss whether such groups should be consid-
ered marginalised, and whether they managed to sur-
vive for any length of time. At the same time, continu-
ing westward expansion by mobile LBK groups may
have involved settlers from different settlements who
underwent a process of acculturation, mixing their
traditions to create a new, shared one. In these settings,
there was also more room for interaction with hunter-
gatherers, as the pottery in particular shows. Here, a
more balanced reciprocity was achieved, although
creolisation may still be an appropriate term if we as-
sume an imbalance in power relations - something that
needs to be researched further. Households on LBK
sites continued to produce non-LBK styles of pottery,
and there are signs of mutual interaction. In time, a
new, fusion identity developed, perhaps fundamental
for creating some of the LBK successor cultures, such
as the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain (e.g Jeunesse et al.
2019, 98-99). Overall, as LBK and forager societies
changed, so did possible patterns of contact.
In contrast, both in the Low Countries and in the
Ertebolle case, the differences between farmers and
foragers were less marked, but have on occasion been
overstated due to our own disciplinary propensity for
categorisation. In the Low Countries, there has been
a tendency to interpret contact finds, sturdily built
houses and so on differently, depending on whether
they turn up on a ‘hunter’ or a ‘farmer’ site. However,
foragers and farmers both enacted their relationship
to territory through practices which combined a range
of economic strategies, and therefore both societies
shared a degree of mobility. In addition, the forager
landscape had long been dynamic and changing, both
as a result of technological adaptations and environ-
mental change. In such a context, a new and broad-