Questioning the relevance of shifting cultivation to Neolithic farming in the loess belt of Europe: evidence from the Hambach Forest experiment

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• 作者：Amy Bogaard
• 关键词：Key words ; Shifting cultivation – ; Hambach Forest – ; Experimental cultivation – ; Archaeobotany – ; Weed ecology
• 刊名：Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
• 出版年：2002
• 出版时间：June 2002
• 年：2002
• 卷：11
• 期：1-2
• 页码：155-168
• 全文大小：1,314 KB
• 刊物类别：Earth and Environmental Science
• 刊物主题：Earth sciences
  Geology
  Anthropology
  
• 出版者：Springer Berlin / Heidelberg
• ISSN：1617-6278

文摘

Despite widespread criticism, the shifting cultivation model continues to inform discussion of Neolithic farming in Europe, beginning with early Neolithic (Linearbandkeramik or LBK) communities concentrated in the loess belt of western-central Europe. Hundreds of LBK and later Neolithic sites have been excavated in this region and many of them sampled for charred plant remains. Archaeobotanical data on the weed floras harvested with crops provide the most direct archaeological evidence of crop husbandry practices, including the permanence of crop fields, but have played a limited role in the debate over shifting cultivation. The Hambach Forest experiment, conducted in the 1970s-80s near Cologne, Germany, provides valuable comparative data on the weed floras growing in newly cleared cultivation plots in an area of longlived mixed oak woodland on loess-based soil. Correspondence analysis of the Hambach weed survey data suggests that weed floras of fields managed under a shifting cultivation regime would be rich in perennial species, including woodland perennials. Comparison of these results with Neolithic weed assemblages from the loess belt of western-central Europe strongly suggests that Neolithic crop fields were not recently cleared of woodland vegetation but were long-established.