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
too far removed geographically to be relevant, and in any case there are Paligorskite beads from Lepenski Vir III b, the only possible sources for which seem to be the Urals or Anatolia. The issue here is, however, the nature of the assumptions made concerning a) the evidence for the presence of mesolithic occupation over Central and Eastern Europe as a whole, and b) the nature of the succession between the mesolithic and neolithic modes. The assumption for a) seems to be that if certain very limited stone types are not known from certain restricted situations, then there is no occupation. The assumption for the relationship between the mesolithic and neolithic is then further vitiated by the classification which separates them so rigorously in the first place. One solution is a simple distributional dissociation between the mesolithic and neolithic, and this must seem both superficial and unrealistic. It is not surprising that settlements of the type represented during the mesolithic have come to light predominantly from the more obvious contexts, and not from areas of subsequent soil formation and removal. But the growing number of sites makes it increasingly difficult to maintain that „. . . the hunting/fishing population in Temperate Europe was in almost every case absent from the areas settled by the earliest agricultural communities . . . ”<36). I have tried already to emphasise that local ecological differences are certainly important, but it becomes a question of how far one is prepared to refine the enclaves or reservations within which the mesolithic peoples are supposed to have existed. Sites like Cuina Turcului and Schela Cladovei<37) Lepenski Vir; the mesolithic burials from Obristvi in Bohemia*381; the sites at Ciumeçti36 37 38 (39) 40 * 42 ; the stonework of Glavanesti Veche(4,)) : the forty mesolithic sites known from the Bandkeramik area of Thuringia142 ) ; the Bandkeramik from a carp-fishing site on the upper Danube at Lautereck(43) — all these, and others, at least indicate that the problem cannot be disposed of by simple dissociation. It is the dating of mesolithic industries in the Atlantic period which is crucial, and unsatis(36) R. TRINGHAM, A preliminary study of the early neolithic and latest mesolithic blade industries in South East and Central Europe. Coles and Simpson Ed. 1968, 67. and map p. 49. (37) E. COMÇA, Das Banater Neolithikum im Lichte der neuen Forschungen. MFMÉ 1969, 29 — 38. (38) E. VLCEK, Staroholocénni Kostrove Pohrby z obristvi и Mëlnika (Early Holocene skeleton burials from Obristvi near Melnik). Anthropozoikum 5, 1955, 233-286, Pl. XV. (39) A. PÄUNESCU, Pereziski tardenoiskoi kulturi v drevnem neolité v Ciumesti. Dacia 7, 1963, 467 — 475. (40) ID., Си privire la perioda de sf’rsit a epipaleoliticul in nordvestul si nord-estul Rominiei si unele persistente ale lui ín neoliticul veche. SCIV 15, 1964, 332. Compare the „bullet cores” of the local Pontic Tardenoision from eg. Grebeniki. Cf. P.I. BORISKOVSKY, Problemele Paleoliticul Superior si mezoliticului de pe coasta de nord-vest a Marii Negre. SCIV 15, 1964, 5- 17, fig. 5. (42) R. FEUSTEL, AuF 1958, 170. (43) W. TAUTE, Palaeohistoria 12, 1967, 483. factory, while a claim that much of Europe was depopulated at that time — that „the Atlantic forest as such was an unfavourable environment for man”1441 — seems equally unsatisfactory. Such a statement — about the mesolithic — is in fact also a statement about the Bandkeramik. The implied attribution of the whole early neolithic phenomenon to an event, such as a movement of people on the very large scale which would be necessary, is too momentous to be immediately acceptable. Although there are many aspects of this whole subject which I have not yet explored adequately, let us conclude by examining this question. It is in fact one of the advantages of prehistory that it hardly ever needs to explain the past in terms of events, and indeed it should not seek to do so. Nobody denies that events took place, but the evidence from archaeological sites cannot be taken literally. The Literalist interpretation of the past comes out in some current archaeological writing. It is seen in the invasions, imports, revolutions, inventions and other explanations which seek in general to explain change in terms of events and without reference to evolutionary process. There is little doubt that, in the perspective of processes of long-term change revealed by prehistory, evolution is more important than episodic revolutions. The success of any detectable event depends on its relevance to the evolutionary situation, and without this condition it can have no impact. The conspicuous success of the First Temperate Neolithic or of the Bandkeramik may be seen in these terms, and the subsequent successful differentiation of these bases emphasizes their initial relevance. It is sometimes asked why the developments associated with the neolithic did not occur earlier, in the course of the Palaeolithic period ? Important changes of emphasis must in fact have occurred during this period, as between the middle and upper Palaeolithic for example. However, the question is not this but rather why the neolithic development took place at all. An important part of the answer, both to this problem and to that of why it took place when it did, may lie in the realm of population studies. The fact that we are still grappling with this question underlines its fundamental importance. We are as a species almost too successful. By the Neothermal period aggregations of human population, such as those round the great spring at Jericho, or attested by the cemeteries of the Natufian, had become conspicuous features of certain areas of the world. Large villages based on hunting, like those of the Ukrainian Gravettian at M e z i r i c h, e. g.(4S) had been known for some time, and continued even during the seventh millenium, as at Mureyba’at or Bouqras in the Near East(46), to afford a satisfactory solution (44) H. T. WATERBOLK, Food Production in Prehistoric Europe. Science 162, 6 Dec. 1968, 1096. (45) I. G. PIDOPLIÖKO, Pozdnepaleolitichesfcie Zilista iz Kostei Mamonta na Ukraine. Kiev 1969, 162 p. (46) J. G. NANDRIS, Early Neothermal Sites in the Near Est and Anatolia. Memoria Antiquitatis T, Piatra Neamt, 1970.
