Introduction

Agriculture came to north-central Europe somewhat over 7000 years ago. In the last century of archaeological research, we have been able to establish the archaeological record of these communities in some detail and have adequate, but not perfect, control over their chronology. The “how” and “why” of the establishment of these agricultural communities have been much more elusive. Since 1980, concerted research in many different parts of north-central Europe has been focused on the earliest farming communities (Bogucki and Grygiel 1993). The first goal of this chapter will be to review the current status of this research and establish a baseline for knowledge as the new millennium begins.

A central issue, as it is in all the chapters in this volume, is whether agricultural communities in north-central Europe spread through colonization by populations which had originated elsewhere or through the adoption of Neolithic economy and technology by indigenous foraging peoples. For reasons which will be explained more fully below, the current evidence strongly favors colonization as the mechanism of agricultural dispersal in this region. The second goal of this chapter will be to argue this point against competing hypotheses.

The final goal of this chapter is much more ambitious. Explanations for the dispersal of the first farming communities in north-central Europe, and especially for its rapidity, have all been unsatisfactory and often not supportable with empirical evidence. An attempt will be made here to introduce a framework for considering this dispersal as a member of a category of phenomena called “complex adaptive systems” which exhibit a number of common properties (Waldrop 1992).