The Neolithic Revolution in Spain

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With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Michael Barton will conduct exploratory archaeological research in the Alicante region of Eastern Spain. Evidence indicates that between 6,500 and 7,500 years ago, a major transformation took place and cultivation of domestic crops and the herding of animals replaced a hunting and gathering way of life. The data available, however, is limited to archaeological excavations in a small number of caves and rock shelters and no settlements themselves have been located and excavated. In this first stage of a larger project, Dr. Barton and his collaborators will conduct surveys in three river valleys in an attempt to locate such occurrences. A combination of random sampling and directed survey will be employed both to maximize the number of sites discovered and to understand their distribution across the landscape. All sites will be recorded and selected materials recovered. These data will provide the basis to plan future work. The Neolithic Revolution - the domestication of plants and animals - constitutes a major revolution in human cultural development and paved the way for the rise of complex societies. While much archaeological attention has focussed on the "core" or "nuclear" areas where domestication took place, relatively little is understood about its spread to other areas. Two competing models exist to explain how Near Eastern agriculture entered Europe. One group argues that the spread of traits was accompanied by large scale population movements and that people employing new technology moved out of the Near East into Europe. Others believe that change resulted primarily through the spread of ideas and traits rather than people themselves and that the original populations merely adopted and adapted to a new style of life. Dr. Barton will address this issue in his Spanish research and he will focus on sites which date to immediately before and after agriculture and pastoralism appear. This research is important for several reasons. First, it will increase our understanding of a poorly known period in European prehistory. It will provide data of interest to a large number of archaeologists. It will also shed light on how major cultural transformations take place.