Mobility and communication in the Early Neolithic of Middle Europe – the pottery of Herxheim as indicator for supra-regional sociocultural networks in the final stage of the Linearbandkeramik

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In Herxheim a much bigger amount of pottery with decoration in non-resident regional styles was found than at all other known Bandkeramik sites. The pottery comes, in varying amounts per style, from eight different style provinces which are congruent with the geographical areas of the respective decoration styles. With up to 400 km distance (Northwest Bohemia, upper Elbe valley) as the crow flies, the Elster-Saale-area and Bohemia are the most distant regions represented among the pottery styles at Herxheim. Clay analyses of sherds from various style regions found in Herxheim constrain that the geochemical fingerprints of the raw material the pottery was made from can be distinguished following the various decoration styles present on the respective sherds. Thus we have to suppose that ceramic vessels from diverse geographic areas were brought to Herxheim indicating a high degree of mobility of the Bandkeramik people who were present at Herxheim and left their pottery there. The planned study will zoom in on the topic “early Neolithic mobility” and aims at contributing to this important aspect of the early peasant cultures in Europe. The site of Herxheim with its multitude and wide spectrum of non-local pottery from different regional style-provinces is virtually predestined for such a study.One objective of the study is the amplification of the decoration repertoire of the regional ornamentation styles represented at Herxheim. Considering the rather good state of preservation of many of the vessels it will be possible to create unwindings of whole ornament sets. This might for the first time render it possible to more exactly define similarities as well as differences of the regional Bandkeramik styles and evaluate them statistically (seriation of the decoration motives). In the scope of possible results of such a study is in addition the illustration of development lines that let one style evolve from another one. It might also be possible to show connections between certain of the regional styles. This leads to the second principal object of the study: the analysis of socio-cultural and communicative networks of the late Bandkeramik. Social network analysis (SNA) will be applied, which offers miscellaneous tools for the identification and analysis of socio-cultural networks, among which long since in archaeology approved statistical methods like cluster analysis, seriation and correspondence analysis come into operation. SNA allows for the definition of regional and supraregional networks originating from diverse connections between different human groups, connections that can be of social, economic and/or material specific character. Especially in the differentiated examination of contemporaneous, spatially separated groups the decoration of pottery is an exceptionally appropriate tool for the definition and evaluation of miscellaneous kinds of networks in the world of the early Neolithic peasant communities in Middle Europe.