Neolithic Collapse

markesmith

A few sources have talked of the collapse in activity in the mid-Neolithic, about 3,500 BC. Sources on Scottish prehistory reckon that Ekla, the Icelandic volcano, was a cause of this and that the population halved.

What are your thoughts on this? Reckon it had anything to do with the change in pollen count in Ireland? And would it have had a similar effect on population?

Interested to hear your opinions

slowburner

Hekla?

M.G.L. Baillie gives dates of 3195 and 2345 BC for severe cold events based on dendrochronological evidence but cautions against a direct link to volcanic eruptions.
(see here)

robp

have you read
Whitehouse, N., et al. "Neolithic agriculture on the European western frontier: the boom and bust of early farming in Ireland." Journal of Archaeological Science (2013)?

Abstract

A multi-disciplinary study assessing the evidence for agriculture in Neolithic Ireland is presented, examining the timing, extent and nature of settlement and farming. Bayesian analyses of palaeoenvironmental and archaeological 14C data have allowed us to re-examine evidential strands within a strong chronological framework. While the nature and timing of the very beginning of the Neolithic in Ireland is still debated, our results – based on new Bayesian chronologies of plant macro-remains – are consistent with a rapid and abrupt transition to agriculture from c. 3750 cal BC, though there are hints of earlier Neolithic presence at a number of sites.

We have emphatically confirmed the start of extensive Neolithic settlement in Ireland with the existence of a distinct ‘house horizon’, dating to 3720-3620 cal BC, lasting for up to a century. Cereals were being consumed at many sites during this period, with emmer wheat dominant, but also barley (naked and hulled), as well as occasional evidence for einkorn wheat, naked wheat and flax. The earliest farmers in Ireland, like farmers elsewhere across NW Europe, were not engaged in shifting cultivation, but practised longer-term fixed-plot agriculture. The association between early agriculture and the Elm Decline seen in many pollen diagrams shows that this latter event was not synchronous across all sites investigated, starting earlier in the north compared with the west, but that there is a strong coincidence with early agriculture at many sites.

After this early boom, there are changes in the nature of settlement records; aside from passage tombs, the evidence for activity between 3400-3100 cal BC is limited. From 3400 cal BC, we see a decrease in the frequency of cereal evidence and an increase in some wild resources (e.g. fruits, but not nuts, in the records), alongside evidence for re-afforestation in pollen diagrams (3500–3000 cal BC). Changes occur at a time of worsening climatic conditions, as shown in Irish bog oak and reconstructed bog surface wetness records, although the links between the various records, and assessment of causes and effects, will require further investigation and may prove complex. This period seems to have been one of environmental, landscape, settlement and economic change. The later 4th millennium BC emerges as a period that would benefit from focused research attention, particularly as the observed changes in Ireland seem to have parallels in Britain and further afield.

markesmith

That's an interesting abstract. Also was wondering if the eruption at Santorini that destroyed Minoan civilisation had any effect on Ireland. Think Wiki mentioned that European Oak was affected here, and pine trees in Scotland.

dubhthach

Dienekes has a post about a recent one:

Regional population collapse followed initial agriculture booms in mid-Holocene Europe
(Stephen Shennan, Sean S. Downey, Adrian Timpson, Kevan Edinborough, Sue Colledge, Tim Kerig, Katie Manning & Mark G. Thomas)

Abstract

Following its initial arrival in SE Europe 8,500 years ago agriculture spread throughout the continent, changing food production and consumption patterns and increasing population densities. Here we show that, in contrast to the steady population growth usually assumed, the introduction of agriculture into Europe was followed by a boom-and-bust pattern in the density of regional populations. We demonstrate that summed calibrated radiocarbon date distributions and simulation can be used to test the significance of these demographic booms and busts in the context of uncertainty in the radiocarbon date calibration curve and archaeological sampling. We report these results for Central and Northwest Europe between 8,000 and 4,000 cal. BP and investigate the relationship between these patterns and climate. However, we find no evidence to support a relationship. Our results thus suggest that the demographic patterns may have arisen from endogenous causes, although this remains speculative.

http://dienekes.blogspot.ie/2013/10/neolithic-boom-followed-by-later.html

Paper itself:
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131001/ncomms3486/full/ncomms3486.html