Amy Bogaard. Plant use and crop husbandry in an early Neolithic village: Vaihingen an der Enz, Baden-Wurttemberg.

Tengberg, Margareta

AMY BOGAARD. Plant use and crop husbandry in an early Neolithic village: Vaihingen an der Enz, Baden-Wurttemberg (Frankfurter Archaologische Schriften 16). 391 pages, numerous colour and b&w illustrations. 2011. Bonn: Habelt; 978-3-774-937314 hardback 95 [pounds sterling].

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Amy Bogaard's book on the archaeobotanical remains from Vaihingen an der Enz is the first in a series of volumes that will deal with the results of the investigation of this early Neolithic, or Linearbandkeramik (LBK), settlement located in the middle Neckar region of south-western Germany. Part of the plant material from this site was included in Bogaard's PhD thesis, published in 2004, but the present monograph considers a much larger dataset allowing an in-depth treatment of site-specific questions. While many LBK sites have now been studied from an archaeobotanical perspective, Vaihingen is exceptional both in terms of the scale of excavation and its unusually good preservation of organic remains. The systematic recovery of charred plant remains during ten years of large-scale excavations (1994-2003) offers a unique opportunity to reconstruct the plant economy of an entire village dated to the second half of the sixth millennium BC.

Two introductory chapters precede the archaeobotanical study. The first, authored by the director of the excavations, Rudiger Krause, describes the site, its main features (numerous longhouses, pits, an enclosure ditch, burials) and the special finds. In the second chapter, Hans-Christoph Strien briefly discusses the chronology and social interpretation of the artefacts recovered. Even if short, this chapter is important for understanding some of the subsequent archaeobotanical discussions that raise the question of possible differences in plant use and crop husbandry between groups, or 'clans', identified at the site by variations in architecture, stone industry and ceramic decoration. In Chapter 3, Bogaard presents the general context and the aims of the archaeobotanical study. A summary of previous archaeobotanical work concerning LBK sites and the general issues that they have raised constitutes a dense and well-documented section of great value.

Chapters (4-9), dedicated to the analysis and interpretation of the plant remains from Vaihingen, constitute an example of an archaeobotanical study at its best. The huge corpus (3700 samples of which 669 were selected for full analysis, making this the largest archaeobotanical assemblage known from any LBK site) is analysed in a meticulous manner and according to a rigorous protocol that is explained in a clear and instructive way. Different interpretative methods are put into practice, several of which have previously been developed by the author and her colleagues at the University of Sheffield (UK).

The extensive archaeological documentation obtained at Vaihingen allows consideration of the spatial and chronological distribution of plant remains within the settlement, illustrated by a series of GIS maps. While crop and weed assemblages appear generally consistent throughout the period of occupation, the spatial analysis reveals particular distribution patterns of one cultivated (opium poppy) and two wild (feather grass and brome grass) taxa, interpreted as a possible expression of social differentiation.

The author uses crop composition and the proportion of different types of weed seeds in order to assess various stages in the crop processing sequence. Comparison, by discriminant analysis, of the archaeobotanical results with datasets obtained from ethnoarchaeological work conducted in Greece, allows the identification of most of the Vaihingen samples as by-products resulting from the de-husking and fine sieving of glume wheats (mainly einkorn and emmer). Other issues discussed in this context include harvesting and various crop processing techniques, as well as the processes of deposition and preservation of plant remains on the site.

An issue that has been much debated in the context of the first Neolithic farming communities in Central Europe is the nature of early crop husbandry practices. Different models have been advanced for the Bandkeramik societies: shifting cultivation, extensive farming, floodplain cultivation or intensive garden cultivation. At Vaihingen, questions of permanence, seasonality and intensity of cultivation are approached through the analysis of arable weeds identified in the archaeobotanical assemblage. Combining functional ecology with statistical analysis and comparison with modern ethnobotanical comparanda has proved effective in more general consideration of Neolithic farming in Central Europe (Bogaard 2004). At Vaihingen, the same approach produces a convincing model of intensive management of autumn-sown crops on permanent plots. Of particular interest is the concluding discussion of Chapter 8 ('Crop husbandry practices') where the author uses variations in weed flora, which overlap with different house groups and chronological phases, to speculate on land use changes through time and a possible partition of arable space between social groups.

In conclusion, through a remarkably detailed and diligent analysis of the data, this first monograph on Vaihingen an der Enz brings out a wealth of information on the subsistence economy of an Early Neolithic community in the fertile loess region of Central Europe. It explores every possible aspect of plant use and crop husbandry at the site, approaching questions of daily life as well as agrarian ecology and social differentiation. By virtue of its methodological strength, the book will appeal to any scholar or student of archaeobotany, whether a specialist in Neolithic Europe or not; such a specialised audience is probably also most predisposed to appreciate the rather technical discussions that dominate several of the chapters. Yet anyone interested in the Linearbandkeramik societies and the beginnings of agriculture in Europe more generally will also find interest in this book. Indeed the detailed information obtained at Vaihingen is systematically put in a broader regional context and compared with data from other LBK sites in wide-ranging discussions that take the reader well beyond a narrow, specialist analysis of archaeobotanical data.

Reference

BOGAARD, A. 2004. Neolithic farming in Central Europe. London: Routledge.

MARGARETA TENGBERG

National Museum of Natural History, Paris, France

(Email: tengberg@mnhn.fr)