Neolithic industry

The Linear Bandware Ceramic culture (LBK), with their economic focus on cattle, is considered the first phase of the Neolithic conversion of Mesolithic (Hunter Gatherer) Europe.  The LBK made their way onto the word stage beginning roughly 5500 BC.  By 4500 BC (toward the end of the LBK culture--although archaeological finds in Belgium suggest LBK existed as late as 4100 BC), Neolithic farmers had pushed westward over the Danube's narrow headwaters from the Vinča culture's central Balkans homeland, and down the Rhine to the North Sea coast and Lower Belgium where it met a different set of trade nodes...and a different interaction with Mesolithic residents of Europe.

Grooved Ware, Campbeltown Museum April 15, 2019

As for Orkney, it is generally believed to have been first settled in the Neolithic roughly between 3800 BC - 3600 BC.  Though it does exist, only a paucity of evidence has been found of earlier Mesolithic occupation in Orkney, or for that matter in Caithness and north Scotland in general.  Absence of evidence, of course, is not evidence of absence.  

For example, recent electromagnetic induction surveys around Stonehenge revealed thousands of pits used by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers dating to about 8200 BC.  And serendipitous finds of the Happisbrurgh footprints in Norfolk show human ancestors (Homo erectus) were present in Britain as far back as c. 950,000 years ago.

Paleo-genetic analyses suggest that Neolithic Belgium was a key source population in Orkney's settlement.  Orkney is thought to have been settled directly from Flanders and Lower Belgium, bypassing the British mainland altogether.  This necessarily implies oceanic navigation and relatively long trade routes.

Given its Middle to Late Neolithic settlement date, Orkney was not settled by the Linear Bandware (LBK) culture, Europe's pioneer farmers.  Paleo-genetic evidence suggests Orkney was settled from Flanders (Belgium and France) apparently by the LBK's successor, the Michelsberg (MICH) culture.  MICH flourished from c. 4400 BC to 3500 BC, with an approximate ending date roughly contemporary with Orkney's initial settlement.  Since 1954 AD, a Belgium Michelsberg pottery assemblage in the British Isles has been speculated, to show an unambiguous link to the signature Grooved Ware pottery culture.  To date, such evidence has yet to be discovered.  It remains a key interest for Scottish archaeologists.   

The Michelsberg were western Europeans.  Their initial homeland was roughly northeastern France.  Their type-sites, however, are concentrated in Germany's Neckar basin, a main tributary of the Rhine, near Heidelberg.  The MICH pushed their settlements eastward up the Rhine, distributing along both sides of the Rhine.  Evidently, the Michelsberg "absorbed" former LBK riparian lands.  The expansion seems to have occurred by violent means, possibly reflected in ring dyke and causeway "fort" enclosures.

Michelsberg shared little if any cultural affinity (or genetic ties) with the LBK.  Genetically, the Michelsberg were associated with Neolithic farmers from the Paris Basin; but they also carried significant hunter-gatherer (Mesolithic) ancestry.  DNA tests suggest 40% to 50%. 

Cattle remained a principal trade commodity with the MICH, as did flint.  So, although they may not have had a cultural or genetic affinity with the LBK, economically the Michelsberg connected with LBK's cattle-oriented and fairly mobile economy.  United by cattle...and parted by flint axes. 

Extent of Spiennes flint mines; image Spiennes Museum

In Lower Belgium, the MICH operated an industrial scale site--namely, the flint mines at  Spiennes (now a UNESCO World Heritage site).  These mines were the largest and perhaps earliest Neolithic flint mines in Europe.  Michelsberg people are thus considered the oldest miners in the world, though they were first and foremost farmers.  At Spiennes, Lower Belgium, they discovered rich and relatively deep deposits of high quality flint.  This substantial resource was exploited for over 1800 years...with some exploitation continuing as late as the Iron Age, and perhaps one could say into modern times as surface flint was exploited for gun flints in the 19th century AD. 

The Neolithic Spiennes industrial mines covered over a hundred hectares and more than ten thousand shafts, some of which were cut over 52 feet in depth and required ventilation, which the Neolithic MICH "engineers" achieved by dual shafts sunk side by side and by mining in the winter which provides more optimal ventilation. 

Cache of Spiennes flint long blades; image Spiennes museum

Their extraction process was also ingenious.  Enormous blocks of deep flint weighing over half a ton were undercut to free them. These blocks were left supported by rock columns and wood struts.  Once sufficiently undercut, the supports were removed and the flint blocks fell to the mine gallery floor, where they were then broken up for tool cores and removed from the mine.  

Part of the Michelsberg flint tool industry included specialized workshops (basically manufacturing villages in which mining and tool making skills concentrated) to produce the rough outs, polished flints, picks as well as long blades (up to a foot in length).  An exclusive shop produced axe heads and chisels.  Large flint blocks were required to create the signature Michelsberg highly standardized weapons and tools.  And the Spiennes flint resource was abundant enough to afford the MICH an extreme level of quality control.  Spiennes miners rejected many tons of flint at the bottom of their mining shafts that were not the very best quality and size.  On the surface today are scattered millions of worked flint pieces.  [See: http://journals.ed.ac.uk/lithicstudies/article/view/1821/2481]

Neolithic understanding of society was advanced well beyond that of just the local village.  They could conceptualize far more than modern humans give credit.  The Neolithic was "cosmological" as modern archaeologists style it.  Indeed, to settle distant Orkney, they had to be.  In any case, production of flint tools and weapons at Spiennes far exceeded the local village needs.  And thus, trade networks must have existed.  Neolithic trade nodes are currently poorly understood, reliant upon needle in haystack finds.  Locally, Spiennes flint was obviously the main raw material for tools.  But Spiennes polished axes, blades and large flakes have been identified as far as 160 km (roughly 100 miles) from the mines.  Doubtless, MICH trade reached further afield--and like their pottery assemblage, trade routes remain to be discovered in evidence.  Whether this will be discovered in Orkney must await future archaeologists.    

Rat b*stards--Belgium voles in Orkney

A firm believer in human necessity as the mother of invention, whether or not early Neolithic settlers of Orkney had a proto-written language system ultimately comes down to whether their society had need of it.  Had Neolithic society become sophisticated or complicated enough to have a need to record or tally?  Did it have a need to transmit information remotely to a broader group than merely the family or clan?  Story telling around the campfire hearth is one thing.  Oral tradition need not require literacy.  But dealing with distant trade routes and multiple social interactions among substantial settlements is altogether a different matter.

"Marked" stone; BCC image Ness of Brodgar excavation

As with most things today, archaeology has entered a technological revolution.  Classical archaeology--detailed stratigraphy and context--has yet to be dethroned.  Nor will it likely be.  One still needs boots on the ground and trowels in hands, so to speak.   That said, advanced analytical tools now allow for increasingly precise dating of humankind's timeline and ancestry.  

Genetic tracing advancements now permit information simply unknowable in archaeology practiced even as little as a decade or two ago.  Paleo-genetic analyses of ancient human remains now make it possible to peer deeply into prehistoric ancestors with an almost unfathomable level of detail and across a mind boggling expanse of time--tens of thousands of years.  By way of reference, most Europeans today descend in part from haplogroup G2a, as discussed here:  https://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplogroup_G2a_Y-DNA.shtml#Neolithic  

The Orkney vole, image courtesy BCC

The Orkney vole (Microtus arvalis orcadensis), a small ground dwelling, grass eating rodent, is yet another example with applicability to Orkney's history.  The vole (rat b*stards as we irately call them here in grazing land Idaho) is invasive.  It was most likely introduced to Orkney mistakenly by Neolithic farmers and traders from the European continent in fresh cut bedding hay or livestock fodder.  

With few predators in Neolithic Orkney, the vole naturalized in the island ecosystem.  So sharp was the invasive colonization by the vole, its presence or absence has become an archaeological marker for the middle 4th millennium BC in Orkney.  It is a dichotomous key.  

Because the vole did not appear in the bio-record of Orkney until after c. 3300 BC, the short take is that wherever evidence of the Orkney vole exists in Neolithic stratum those layers can be no earlier than the vole's introduction.  Conversely, if the vole is absent, the Neolithic layers must be earlier than c. 3300 BC.

"Barnhouse" Neolithic village rock slab walls-April 11, 2022

Curiously, the vole was introduced into Orkney roughly the same time Orkney's Neolithic people shifted to building with stone versus their earlier more temporary wood post construction.  Neolithic settlement in Orkney took hold and became more permanent.  

Apparently, their settlements were substantial enough to support long distant trade and interaction.  Orcadian finds indicating extensive trade routes are a Cumbrian axe head and Arran pitchstone, as well as pottery in the Grooved Ware style (which originated in Orkney) having been found as far away as Knowth Cairns in the Boyne Valley (County Meath, Ireland) c. 3100 BC.

Indeed, Orkney is considered somewhat akin to  Britain's Neolithic capital, with stone henges and Grooved Ware pottery originating in Orkney then being adopted in Britain and Ireland...a southward cultural movement that is counter to general assumptions made by earlier archaeologists. 

In any case, "pre-vole" layers are associated with Orkney's first Neolithic settlers, who colonized Orkney c. 3800 BC - 3600 BC.  Biological dating using the vole's presence is an old school archaeological method, to be sure.  But this "vole marker" now melds with biotechnology.  Paleo-geneticists only within the last five or ten years or so have identified the Orkney rodent's likely continental origin.  

It turns out the Okney vole hailed from a population in Stalhille, Begium.  Stalhille (roughly meaning 'cattle corral hill') is located in present day West Flanders, about a mile from the Noordede River, which empties into the North Sea at Oostende.  So, Stalhille potentially linked to extensive Neolithic maritime trade and in particular with cattle.  Early Neolithic farmers in Orkney were bringing in cattle and thus establishing stock rearing as the "economic" basis of their culture.

Standing Stones of Stenness--April 11, 2022 

This is important because without the means of available Neolithic oceanic navigation a vole from Belgium could not have realistically colonized Orkney.  While "sweepstakes colonization" (i.e. all conditions, however improbable, are met to permit successful colonization from accidental floating debris) cannot "absolutely" be ruled out, still it is generally accepted that the Orkney vole was more probably introduced by Neolithic humans via ocean going trade.  And key along with oceanic navigation would be a Neolithic developed cattle trade, with its fresh cut hay aboard--becoming the rat b*stard (vole) vector to Orkney. 

So, the question becomes two-fold.  (1)  Did Neolithic people possess the ability to navigate open water trade routes in vessels capable of transporting their livestock and introducing the Orkney vole in the process? (2)  Did they have a developed and substantial enough "market" for cattle and other trade goods?  The answer is yes to both, as will be addressed next post.

Severely miscalculated--Neolithic proto-written language? (Part 1)

Whether Neolithic "incised art" found scratched into stones at Wideford and Cuween cairns, at Skara Brae, Barnhouse and Stenness is a type of written proto-written language would be no surprise.

Site description of Wideford Hill cairn Neolithic "marks"

The level of sophistication demonstrated by our Stone Age predecessors in site after site is remarkable.  Too often in our chauvinism of time, we presume restrictions upon the KSA (knowledge, skills and abilities) of Stone Age predecessors.  "Oh, they couldn't have done this or that; they were primitive in mind."  And so on. 

It is as if we presume a barrier exists between modern day humans and those generations in prehistory before us.  

But are we really so different?  Did they not love as dear?  Are we not just as covetous? Were they any less oppressive, or we any more compassionate?  Could they not imagine just as well?  In our hubris, our generation ignores the Prophet Jeremiah's question on the nature of humankind:  "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?"  Jeremiah 13:23.

This two part post will use maritime trade in Neolithic Orkney as an example of how we too often short change our creative Neolithic forebears.  Archaeologists have long been mistaken regarding humankind's navigation of the seas, for example.  Humans (H. sapiens as well as H. erectus) took to the seas many tens of thousands of years earlier than once the discipline of archaeology believed. 

Site description Cuween cairn Neolithic "marks"

As Boston University archaeologist Curtis Runnels admits after excavations on Crete left little doubt about Paleolithic era oceanic navigation of H. erectus, "We severely miscalculated."

By similar measure, "conventional thought" presumes Orkney's Neolithic people did not possess a written language "system".  Or at least that seemed to be the opinion of a docent at Skara Brae, a Late Neolithic village on Mainland Orkney in which "incised art" or "marks" were uncovered.  "Oh, they couldn't have..."  

Self sure of his purported expertise, the docent barely contained a sneer at the mere question.  With all the air of absolutism, what flowed from the fellow was an insufferable ten or more minutes of an oral dissertation.  Bottom line:  not possible...at least according to that guy.   

Diagram of Neolithic Skara Brae "marks"

Actually, what was not possible was interruption to the War & Peace length homily from the fellow. Now admittedly, many of the Neolithic "marks" at Skara Brae appeared to be merely decorative designs.  But not all of them.  

Two are uniquely different--an incised three spiked mace head type of object, and a stone "bed" inside one of the Neolithic houses.   Perhaps a mere layman's opinion here, but an outright dismissal of the Orkney Neolithic people possessing a proto-written language seems to be..."severely miscalculated".  

Enduring the gentleman's intolerable elitism, it was clear.  No conversational exchange would happen.  So we moved on.  We began our tour of Skara Brae ourselves, leaving the fellow in mid-sentence, or perhaps mid-chapter.  He had the final word, assuming he ever got to it.

Site description other Cuween cairn "marks"

Like navigation on the seas, Neolithic use of written language or symbolic "marks" occurred much earlier than once was assumed.  By its nature, archaeology discovers more and more with each new dig.  An expanding Neolithic repository puts previous "absolute" assumptions--like those dismissing an earlier Neolithic proto-written language--into question.  

From T. Nacevski--undeciphered Vinča written symbols

Had there been room in the docent's effuse oration, I would have noted the existence of early Neolithic "marks" on the Tărtăria tablets (c. 5300 BC, Vinča culture) and on their pottery.  Once dismissed by established western archaeology, these Vinča marks are now generally considered evidence of a rudimentary language.  Its abstract symbols on the Tărtăria tablets are comparable with script of Late Predynastic Mesopotamia (Uruk III--c. 4000 - 3100 BC)...over a millennium after the Vinča culture.

Advanced for its day, the Vinča culture (c. 5700 BC - 4500 BC) smelted copper well before metallurgy was attributed to Anatolia and the Fertile Crescent.  Their joinery (which has been preserved in several well casings sunk into Danubian riparian farmstead sites) was extraordinary...dovetail, mortise and tenon...all created with stone and bone tools evidencing superior craftsmanship.  

Neolithic built-in cabinets Skara Brae April 12,2022

As to our chauvinism in time, first is the unfounded presumption that all prehistoric human social development necessarily "has to" spring forth from the Fertile Crescent...to include proto-written language.  Second, Vinča culture began in the north central Balkans, west Hungary and Romania; as such, it has received much less attention in ethnocentric western European Neolithic study.  Worse, the Vinča site was unearthed by a Serbian archaeologist Miloje Vasićs (1908)...one of "those" non-Western Europeans.  

While conclusions may be disputed, it does seem the Vinča culture had a proto-writing system well before its innovation was attributed to Mesopotamia.   

Skara Brae--April 12, 2022

The "country sister" of the Vinča was the Linear Band Ware (LBK) people (c. 5500 BC - 4500 BC).  These were Neolithic frontier ranchers and farmers on the western perimeter of the Vinča culture who  pushed westward up the Danube and into "frontier" Mesolithic Europe.  Initially, their principal trade was down river, behind them.  But with westward expansion, over the narrow headwaters of the Danube and down the Rhine to the North Sea, trade route distances grew.  

The extended trade routes gave rise to a new industry...the beginning of a dairy industry, and specifically cheese making.  The LBK's principal trade commodity was cattle--and increasingly more for dairy than for meat.  They did trade leather, a valuable by-product of cattle husbanding, but cattle were evermore valued as draft animals for opening new agricultural ground deeper in western Europe.  Milk is highly perishable.  So necessity developed cheese making, providing the LBK with a form of "self stable" dairy commodities for trade.  In this, the LBK also left an indelible genetic imprint in Europe--namely, lactose tolerance.  The trait affords competitive advantages that are limited in other parts of the world.

Skara Brae house and hearth--April 12, 2022

Agriculturally, the LBK planted small plots or gardens--more as subsistence agriculture than commodity trade.  Crops included emmer and einkorn wheat, peas, lentils and barley.  They also grew hemp and flax for rope and cloth, and poppies apparently for medicine.  Domestically, the LBK manufactured linear incised pottery, hence the name of the culture.  The incised lines imitated painted (and complicated) Vinča pottery.

At the least, the Neolithic "marks" in the Vinča pottery (also known as Old Danube Script) may "only" be potter's or perhaps owner's marks.  But these convey meaning even so.  And there are unique Vinča symbols placed at the base of their pottery possibly indicating the contents, or perhaps its trade destination, which alone implies geographical knowledge of widespread trade routes.  Lastly, "comb-like" symbols evidently were a form of counting, evidence of early Neolithic use of mathematics in trade.  No surprise, since many Neolithic standing stone monuments are oriented with solar or lunar cycles which entails observational mathematics. 

 

"Streets" of Skara Brae--April 12, 2022

These may have been primitive people, yes.  But they were by no means ignorant.  And the Orkney Neolithic people apparently had far more extensive contact (via oceanic trade) with continental Europe than has been widely presumed, specifically with Belgium.  So to dismiss out of hand all Neolithic "incised art" on Orkney's monuments and to presume that no proto-written language existed at this time is preemptive at best, or presumptive, if not downright "severely miscalculated".