Human Migration in Early Neolithic Europe

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下。道格拉斯·普莱斯和亚历山大·本特利将继续他们对中欧最早农民的考古骨骼的分析。他们将试图区分解释欧洲农业出现的两种假设：实际人口的传播与思想在本质上不流动的群体之间的传播。由于农业突然出现在中欧，并伴随着一系列其他文化项目，如独特的陶瓷风格，许多考古学家认为这是人类迁徙的证据。然而，其他研究人员指出，人类具有适应性，可以接受新的行为模式，可能是思想而不是人在移动。为了在这些选择中做出选择，Price博士和Bentley博士将继续研究相关人群骨骼中的同位素值。骨骼和牙齿中锶的两种同位素的比例提供了这个人生活的地质环境的记录。由于骨组织在一个人的一生中不断被替换，而牙齿的竞争在青少年时期就开始了，因此，通过测量骨骼和牙齿之间锶同位素比率的差异，可以识别出一个移民。然后，移民牙齿中的外来信号可以根据地区地质情况追溯到可能的起源地区。在他们迄今为止的研究中，分析表明，两种模型的混合最能解释骨骼数据。这表明，最初很可能是少数移民将农业带入欧洲，但欧洲土著对农业的采用也发挥了重要作用。为了改进这些初步发现，研究小组将把分析范围扩大到更多的骨骼。为了创建锶和铅同位素特征的基线“地图”，研究人员将分析从德国西南部和法国东部邻近研究区域的不同地质省份收集的考古动物牙齿。在此基础上，他们希望确定移民的来源地。这项研究之所以重要，有几个原因。它将提供对欧洲史前重要时期和开创性事件的深入了解。它将揭示推动文化变迁的基本过程，并有助于开发一种分析工具，可能适用于世界许多地区的一系列广泛的考古问题

With National Science Foundation support Drs. T. Douglas Price and R. Alexander Bentley will continue their analysis of archaeological skeletons of the earliest farmers in Central Europe. They will attempt to distinguish between two hypotheses which account for the appearance of agriculture in Europe: the spread of actual populations vs. the spread of ideas across essentially immobile groups. Because agriculture appears suddenly in Central Europe and is accompanied by a suite of other cultural items such as distinctive ceramic styles, many archaeologists have accepted this as evidence of human migration. Other researchers however have noted that humans are adaptable, can accept new modes of behavior and that it may have been ideas rather than people which moved. To select between these options Drs Price and Bentley will continue their examination of isotope values in skeletons from relevant populations. The ratio of two isotopes of strontium in bones and teeth provides a record of the geological environment in which the person lived. Since bone tissue is replaced continually over an individual's lifetime while the competition of teeth is set at adolescence, a measured difference in the strontium isotope ratio between bones and teeth can identify an immigrant. The foreign signal in an immigrant's tooth can then be traced to a likely region of origin based on regional geology. In their research to date, analyses have indicated that a mixture of the two models best explains the skeletal data. These suggest that most likely a small number of migrants may have initially brought farming into Europe, but its adoption by indigenous Europeans also played a major role. To improve on these preliminary finding the team will expand the analysis to a larger number of skeletons. In order to create a baseline "map" of strontium and also lead isotope signatures, the researchers will analyze archaeological animal teeth collected from different geological provinces in regions adjacent to the study area in southwestern Germany and eastern France. On this basis they hope to identify immigrants' points of origin.This research is important for several reasons. It will provide insight into an important time period and seminal event in European prehistory. It will shed light on the basic processes which drive culture change and help to develop an analytic tool potentially applicable to a wide array of archaeological questions in many parts of the world