Fitz Jenő (szerk.): Die aktuellen Fragen der Bandkeramik - István Király Múzeum közelményei. A. sorozat 18. A Pannon konferenciák aktái 1. (Székesfehérvár, 1972)
J. Nandris: Kapcsolatok a mérsékelt égőr legkorábbi újkőkora és a vonaldíszes kerámia között
a much more secure knowledge of environmental history than at present obtains. It is already apparent that, over a long period of time, many of them must be contemporary with those of the earliest farmers. It is likely that absence of evidence for these inconspicuous sites is not good evidence of their absence, either from a geographical area or from a period of time. Emphasis is given to this point by the recent researches of Higgs on the Greek Palaeolithic.<34)At the time this work was begun about two Greek Palaeolithic sites were known, neither very informative. In a period of ten years this number has been raised to 120 sites, ranging from the Mousterian to the Mesolithic, and adding a considerable amount to the environmental framework. The period of mesolithic settlement involved in north-west Europe is at least that from the retreat of the ice sheet from the Fenno-Scandian moraine, at the end of the ninth millennium, which here conventionally marks the beginning of the Neothermal. From this time until the beginning of the First Temperate Neolithic is a period of nearly three millennia; to the beginnings of the Bandkeramik of nearly four; and to the late Tardenoisian is nearly five thousand yearly five thousand years of formally Mesolithic occupation of Temperate Europe. In south east Europe, where the Neothermal began earlier, these dates must be increased substantially. This was no brief episode, even on the scale of time provided by radiocarbon dating, while for those who reject this time-scale the difficulties are even greater, the void separating the neolithic from the Palaeolithic even more formideble. The overlap in time between the Mesolithic and the Bandkeramik alone is probably well over a millennium. During the course of this period the two types of remains are found in the same areas, perhaps on the same sites, faced by the same weather, surrounded by the same animals and vegetation. The situation in the Danube Gorges, eg. at Padina or Lepenski Vir, clearly illustrates this case. We are prone to emphasize the morphological differences between their remains without giving due weight to the fact that functionally speaking they were exploiting different aspects of the same environment. Where both modes are represented on the same site it is clear that these functions coincided at one locality. We ought therefore to consider occupational and seasonal differences where possible. We can hardly postulate a complete cessation of all mesolithic activity with the emergence of the earliest neolithic. All these circumstances may have unduly affected interpretations of the mesolithic settlement of Central and Eastern Europe. It was generally held that the neolithic farmers occupied the lowland river valleys and terraces appropriate to their economy, while mesolithic hunters were restricted to sandy heath- 34 (34) E. HIGGS et, al., The Climate, Environment and Industries of Stone Age Greece. Parti., PPS 1964, 199 — 244.; Part. II., PPS 1966, 1 -29.; Part III., PPS 1967, I - 29. lands and the caves of the upland zones. The environmental requirements of the one were assumed conveniently enough not to have conflicted with the requirements of the other. That the neolithic occupation of Europe shows no signs of conflict between human groups until well into the late neolithic seemed to confirm this explanation. But it must appear to imply also that the mesolithic occupation of the continent had already become restricted to, and specialised within, these confined environments before the emergence of the neolithic. This seems curious when we consider that the most plausible basic hypothesis for explaining the Transitional cultures sees them as forest adaptations by Epi-Palaeolithic hunters. For these people the rich Late Glacial environment and the herding animals which it supported had failed, giving way from the beginning of the Neothermal to the encroachments of the forest. The explanation asks us to believe that this adaptation had itself failed at the moment when the forest had reached a climax in the Altithermal, at the point when the great wooden houses of the Bandkeramik peoples began to encroach on what was then an apparently inexhaustible supply of timber. There is no evidence to suggest such an adaptive failure, indeed the blade and trapeze industries themselves suggest the contrary. Nor are the villages of neolithic peoples confined to the lowlands, as the Starcevo site at Lepenski Vir alone serves to show. Other evidence indicates that neolithic peoples both exploited and lived in upland environments, and even in sandy areas, as at Nosa near Subotica. The discovery of the site at Lepenski Vir also serves as a reminder that the pre-neolithic populations of Europe were not solely the practitioners of a certain lithic technology, living in caves or on sand dunes. It is difficult here to dissociate them geographically from the overlying levels of First Temperate Neolithic, and functionally speaking both were exploiting the same rather specialised environmental situation. The fact that the pre-neolithic settlement at Lepenski Vir is located on a sandy beach does not of course imply that the whole adaptation was to this ecology. It clearly was not; apart from the fishing specialisation, red deer are important, with many other woodland animals. It also reminds us that it is not only in stonework that a mesolithic inheritance may be apparent. The long chisel — based bone points from the site, and from other sites of the First Temperate Neolithic, not only seem to support a presumption for the use of the bow, but may be seen as part of a series going back to Magdalenian VI types. They are precisely paralleled in the mesolithic of Shigir in the Urals<35> where they have usually been regarded as arrow points, and this makes it plausible to attribute the use of the bow to First Temperate Neolithic peoples. It would be untrue to say that the Urals are (35) J. G. NANDRIS, The Prehistoric, Archaeology of South East Europe. . . PI. 85. 67
