Wetlands and the Transition to Agriculture in Europe: The Southern Albania Neolithic Archaeological Project

在美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）的支持下，苏珊·e·艾伦博士（Susan E. Allen）和一个由同事组成的国际团队将对人类经济史上的一个关键转变——农业在起源中心以外的广泛传播和采用——进行为期三个季节的考古和古环境研究。本研究特别关注了大约9000年前欧洲向农业的过渡，并验证了最早的农民优先选择湿地过渡带作为定居和农业用地的假设。虽然湿地在世界不同地区许多主要农业中心植物最初驯化过程中的重要性得到了广泛承认，但它们在农业向这些中心以外扩散过程中的重要性却被过分关注土著居民和移民农民在这一过程中的作用所掩盖。因此，很少有人考虑早期农民在各种空间、社会和时间背景下处理环境变量的方式。通过采用生态方法，强调早期农民对关键地点的刻意选择，并认识到农业战略在时间和空间上的变化是农业扩散的关键方面，该项目旨在测试从欧洲放射性碳年代中出现的从东南到西北的时间跨越模式的广泛模型。巴尔干东南部处于这一转变的前沿，是了解欧洲向农业转变的关键地区。为了实现他们的目标，研究小组将从位于阿尔巴尼亚南部前湿地环境和邻近环境的新石器时代早期遗址中恢复相关数据。研究的重点是在Vashtëmi遗址重新挖掘、地表调查和取芯。Vashtëmi是根据小组2006年的地表调查和取芯结果选择的，这些结果表明，恢复与他们的研究问题有关的数据具有很大的潜力，并且由于该地点靠近科帕拉达市并毗邻一条主要高速公路，非法开发对该地点构成了潜在威胁。该团队将恢复植物和动物遗骸，其他有机材料，以及地形变化的证据，这将使他们能够重建现场的环境和土地利用实践。特别重要的是收集14C的资料，以便为欧洲经委会建立一个区域年表，这是不可能的。该项目的知识价值和更广泛的影响在以下四个方面尤为明显：1)了解欧洲向农业的过渡以及早期农业实践的可变性，由于该关键地区植物和动物遗骸和放射性碳年代的缺乏，人们对这一点知之甚少；2)研究湿地在这一转变中的重要性及其在人类历史上长期和广泛的文化意义；3)抢救可能有重要价值的考古资料，以免被非法发展破坏；4)为阿尔巴尼亚青年提供环境考古学培训机会，以便促进将这些方法纳入阿尔巴尼亚的标准考古实践，并为整个欧洲史前考古学作出贡献。

With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Susan E. Allen and an international team of colleagues will conduct three seasons of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research on a critical shift in human economic history, the widespread dispersal and adoption of agriculture beyond its centers of origin. In particular, this research focuses on the transition to agriculture in Europe approximately 9,000 years ago and tests the hypothesis that the earliest farmers preferentially selected wetland ecotones for settlement and agricultural land use. While the significance of wetlands in the process of initial domestication of plants in many primary centers of agriculture in different areas of the world is widely acknowledged, their importance in the dispersal of agriculture beyond those centers has been obscured by the disproportionate attention given to documenting the role of indigenous populations and immigrant farmers in this process. In consequence, there has been little consideration of the way that early farmers negotiated environmental variables in various spatial, social, and temporal contexts. By adopting an ecological approach that emphasizes early farmers' deliberate selection of key locations and recognizes variation found in agricultural strategies across time and space as key aspects of the dispersal of farming, the project is designed to test the broad model of a time-transgressive pattern from southeast to northwest that emerges from radiocarbon dates for Europe. Situated at the leading edge of this transition, the southeastern Balkans are a key area for understanding the shift to agriculture in Europe. To address their objectives, the team will recover relevant data from Early Neolithic (EN) sites located in a former wetland setting and adjacent environmental settings in Southern Albania. Research focuses on renewed excavation, surface survey, and coring at the site of Vashtëmi. Vashtëmi was selected on the basis of results from the team's surface survey and coring in 2006 that demonstrate high potential for recovering the data relevant for their research question and the potential threat posed to the site by illicit development due to its location near the city of Korça and adjacent to a major highway. The team will recover plant and animal remains, other organic materials, and evidence of landform changes that will enable them to reconstruct the site's environment and land use practices. Of particular importance is the collection of materials datable by 14C in order to construct a regional chronology for the EN which has not yet been possible. The intellectual merits and broader impacts of this project are particularly apparent in four areas: 1) understanding the transition to agriculture in Europe and variability among early farming practices, which are poorly understood due to the paucity of floral and faunal remains and radiocarbon dates in this key region; 2) examining the importance of wetlands in this transition and their long-term and widespread cultural significance in human history; 3) salvaging potentially significant archaeological data from destruction by unauthorized development; and 4), offering environmental archaeology training opportunities for young Albanians in order to foster the incorporation of these methods into standard archaeological practice in Albania and contributing to European prehistoric archaeology as a whole.