Das „Spätmesolithikum" und das initiale Neolithikum in Griechenland - Implikationen für die Neolithisierung der alpinen und circumalpinen Gebiete

Abstract

As far as both the Mesolithic and early Neolithic are concerned, the area that is now Greece provides the missing link between Asia Minor and the Balkans on the one hand and the western Mediterranean on the other. It is thus the key region for any discussion of the Neolithic transition in Central and Western Europe. By approx. 7000 calBC, at the latest, cultural developments in Greece included rectangular microliths, the production of regulär blades by the pressure technique, the cultivation of cereals, animal domestication and pottery. Indeed, the results of the most recent research even point towards the conclusion that all these innovations may have already been introduced into the region 1000 years earlier. Consequently, the initial Neolithic "package" there can be dated as being much earlier than in the rest of Europe. An important condition for this assumption is the fact that the wild forms of einkorn, barley and legumes, and probably also goats and sheep, were indigenous to the area of presentday Greece. Judging from the silex artefacts, it would seem that during this period at least the coastal populations had contacts with the Mediterranean coast of Turkey and the Black Sea region. The initial Neolithic in Greece is contemporaneous with the whole of the socalled "Late Mesolithic" in the Alpine region and the circumalpine areas in presentday Italy, southwestern Germany, France and Switzerland, where the earliest find assemblages date to approx. 7000-6800 calBC. The technical innovations in the manufacture and use of stone artefacts a n d the first systematic use of cereals from then onwards, reflect probably indirect contacts between these populations and the eastern Mediterranean. Even if there is little analysable archaeological evidence from that area partially due to the dramatic rise in sea level after this period the cultural contact zone between Greece and the Alpine region must be sought in the Adriatic and its hinterland.