Enriqueta Vento Mir – Pierre Guerin koord.: Early Farmers in Europe - A korai földművelők Európában (1999)

Introduction

The process of the european neolithisation i.e. the spread of the neolithic material throughout Europe is in the focus of attention since the 1920's. On theoretical basis it was generally supposed from the beginning, that the near eastern neolithic finds are precede the europeans and in the process of scattering the neolithic novelties the ethnical migration played the main part, although in those questions as whether who, how and to where wandered and which were the main stages of wandering, there were debates. Till the 1950's and 1960's the main theory was that there were ethnical movement from the Near East to Southeast-Europe, and from there, as from a secondaiy radiative center, further to Western- and Central-Europe, from where the Neolithic of Northern-Europe was descended. Based on historical data, provided by the king lists of Egypt and Mesopotamia, the beginning of the European Neolithic was placed around 3000 B.C. and the process of the spreading of the neolithic novelties, such as the foodproduction, the permanent settlements and the new tool industry, w

ras thought to have caused a rapid revolutionary transition, the promoters of which were the wanderers. From the mid 1950's the radiocarbon dating metod turned over the 'short' chronology based upon historical dates, since some find-contexts of key importance went back nearly 2000 years in time to the 3000 B.C., which was considered earlier as initial date. The given contradiction between the traditional and the radiocarbon dating methods was deepened in the 1970s when some radiocarbon dates calibrated with dendrochronology proved to be still older. This contradiction, anyway, caused disturbances just in the question of the main stages of the neolithisation process, since the precedence of the NeatEast to Europe was remained even in the mirror of the calibrated Cl4 dates. In this way only the joining points had to be redifined. The need for that was expressed already in the 1960'S and 1970's and because of the majority of the specialists accepted the natural scientific dating-method, by the 1980's the new chronological horizons were outlined according to that. On the ruins of the old theories new models were developed, and beside the ethnical migration, the theses of local adoption and independent invention were taken into account and the possibilities of local mesolithic-neolithic transitions came to the front and their research became intensive. The new or processual archaeology, developed from the 1960's, and some new trends inspired by that, such as the encomie archaeology and geoarchaeology in the 1970s and 1980's, or the postprocessual archaeology in the 1990's are handling and examining the archaeological remains from ever newer point of views. Nowadays, the research is focusing not just exclusively on chronological questions, but paying attention to the environmental, economical, social and spiritual backgrounds as well and more and more comprehensive studies are born. Especially important, that from the 1980s on, the number of large-scale excavations, with large open surfaces and wide spectrum of find collections, have been constantly growing and in the examination of the find material, the exact natural scientific methods getting ever larger role. 11