Kemmelberg

Late hunter-gatherers and first farmers

With hunter-gatherers spread across the globe at the end of the most recent ice age, the climate was changing rapidly. Many of the larger mammals (megafauna) such as mammoths were in grave trouble, unable to cope with the sudden disappearance of much of their normal food supply as plant life changed to suit ambient temperatures.

In addition, humans were overenthusiastic in their hunting, with the combined result that a great swathe of megafauna became extinct well before the emergence of agriculture.

Partially due to the extinction of some of their favoured hunted species - and perhaps purely out of necessity for survival - humans focused increasingly on eating plants which they learned to cultivate through trial and error.

Fig 1: Examples of plants which were consumed or used by early farmers, involving beans and lentils (top), and poppy and flax (bottom).

Already-domesticated sheep, goats, and cows were imported into Western Europe from the Near East from about 7000 BC onwards.

The domesticated pig also originally came to Europe from the Near East. When the wild boar was domesticated in Western Europe, this would lead to the replacement of the imported pig. Aurochs, a large wild bovine also found in Europe, was not domesticated.

Later, a limited number of other species followed the route towards domestication, such as chickens, a species of bird which had originated in the jungles of South-East Asia. Hunting had not completely disappeared once humans became farmers in the Neolithic. Wild boar and aurochs, for example, were still hunted and not only as a source of food, but also for social or prestige-related reasons. Ornaments were made from boar tusks, for example.

Fig 2: Aurochs and wild boar, undomesticated animals which were still hunted in the Neolithic.

As farmers, people were able to more efficiently provide for their food needs over time. The further process of selecting plants and animals to domesticate and develop also led to an increase in production levels.

What began fairly innocently grew into today's state of affairs in which, for example, the world contains one billion pigs, one and-a-half billion cows, and twenty-five billion chickens, about three for every human on the planet.

In 2015, the combined biomass of all wild land and marine mammals was only four percent of the total world mammal mass. Human biomass represented nearly ten times the wild mammal mass in the same year, as compared to only a few tenths of one percent some ten thousand years ago, prior to the start of the Neolithic.

Livestock and domestic animals now constitute about two-thirds of the total mammalian biomass on the planet. What began as an alternative to hunting and fishing - perhaps out of necessity - evolved into an almost all-encompassing way of providing food, which may ultimately endanger humanity itself.

Just under seven thousand years ago, the first farmers from the Near East migrated to Europe in search of new, fertile land to cultivate. Starting out with the Sesklo culture in the lower Balkans, they travelled either along the Mediterranean coast or along the Danube, meeting hunter-gatherers along the way.

Fig 3: Neolithic expansion in Europe.

The view that the introduction of food production (agriculture and animal husbandry) quickly and completely replaced food acquisition (hunting and gathering) is certainly not applicable to all regions.

Some hunter-gatherers traded with farmers while others combined both forms of food acquisition. Still other groups never switched to agriculture due to their beliefs and values. The two sides did sometimes mix though. DNA research shows that early farmers sometimes had offspring with late hunter-gatherers.

Fig 4: The grave of a woman carrying about 55% hunter-gatherer ancestry (5480-5360 BC), Pendimoun (Castellar in France).

Massacre sites in Germany (Talheim, Halberstadt, and Schöneck-Kilianstädten) and Austria (Asparn-Schletz) show that early farmer communities did not always live peacefully side-by-side. Unquestionable evidence of mass killings of entire communities, with the abduction of younger women, was found in both cited countries. It is suspected that the perpetrators of this violence were members of a neighbouring farmer community.

Fig 5: The mass grave at Halberstadt (Germany) in situ. The skeletons have been coloured and numbered for better distinction.

When farmers arrived in new areas of Europe, the existing hunter-gatherer population must have interacted to some extent as modern Europeans carry their genes.

Europe-wide studies of ancient DNA have revealed what has been branded a Mesolithic revival, which began around 4500 BC. As time passed, genetic elements of hunter-gatherers became more and more a part of the genome of farmers. Genetic studies and excavation data suggest that individuals with a string hunter-gatherer lineage may have been treated as inferiors.

Fig 6: Dumped person (1), more likely to be descended from hunter-gatherers than person buried with care (2), from Gougenheim in France.

First farmers on the Kemmelberg

After a very long period which witnessed the passage of small groups of wandering hunter-gatherers, from around 4000 BC the Kemmelberg evolved into the permanent home of much larger groups of migrant farmers: cattle breeders to be specific.

The arrival of the first farmers on the Kemmelberg had already been preceded in present-day Belgium by the settlement of the Linear Ceramics culture (otherwise known as the Linear Pottery culture, early Neolithic, locally dated to 5300-4800 BC) in the Meuse-Geer region and the Dender region (loam areas in eastern and western-central Belgium respectively).

Fig 7: The distribution of Linear Ceramics (Linear Pottery & Blicquy Group), the Loam region (Loess) and rivers in Belgium.

After a subsequent hiatus in habitation - albeit with a possible Mesolithic occupation of the site which lasted several centuries during the Middle Neolithic I (4800-4400 BC) - it was only around 4000 BC that sedentary farmers from a southerly direction chose the Kemmelberg as their site, in an environment which was presumably frequented by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.

This event marked a turning point for the landscape as a result of the onset of gradual and widespread deforestation. The impact of the construction of many Neolithic houses, together with the creation of small fields and the construction of all kinds of fences, certainly left a visible mark on the landscape.

In experimental archaeology, houses are often built on the basis of archaeological data. For example, in 2012 an experiment was run in the Netherlands when a small, two-aisled Neolithic house was built with the dimensions of 3.8 metres in width and 9.1 metres in length. It had a rectangular ground plan, with the design being based on excavations near Haamstede-Brabers.

For the reconstruction, eighty-seven young thin ash trees were needed for the skeleton, 750 willow shoots for the braiding and tying, 240 bundles of reeds for the roofing, 1,500 litres of clay and sand for lining the walls, and six deer hides for the smoke vents and the door, among other things.

This was the construction of a relatively small house. Such houses probably required upkeep or repair after a decade or two, if they had not already been destroyed by fire. In 2019, therefore, the reconstructed house was set on fire as a further experiment. This made it possible to document the archaeological relevance of the fire remains.

Fig 8: House reconstruction at Haamstede-Brabers in the Netherlands.

Fig 9: The same house, a few minutes after the start of the fire.

The creation of fields and cattle-breeding meant a revolutionary change in the region, taking on a way of life in which hunting, fishing, and other natural means of gathering food had lost much of their impact. The new basis for life was the cultivation of domesticated plants and animals, and the production of tableware and weaving.

Exchange contacts with neighbours were intensified, whether distant or not - a process which was already under way prior to the Neolithic. In the following millennia, between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age (2200-800 BC), all of this would eventually evolve via a large-scale supra-regional transformation into the cultural landscape we know today.

The geographically broad area in which the inhabitants of the Kemmelberg lived exhibited material elements of its own, along with others, which referred to neighbouring cultural areas. By studying this habitat, the Kemmelberg can now be understood as being integrated into a far-reaching environment in the south-western part of the Scheldt basin, specifically the department of Hauts-de-France in France and the province of West Flanders in Belgium.

There, communities with a common identity were developed from the south of the country. Based on the characteristics of those tools and objects which have been found, archaeologists have classified the first farmers on the Kemmelberg as being part of the Spiere Group (4400-3800 BC) in Middle Neolithic II. The Spiere Group is related to other Neolithic cultures, such as the northern Chasséen in northern France and the Michelsberg Culture (4400-3500 BC), along with others in the Paris basin and in eastern Belgium.

Fig 10: Site distribution within the sphere of influence of the Spiere Group and the Belgian Michelsberg.

Continued in Part 2

 

REFERENCES:
Baudewijn B - Studie van het lithisch materiaal van de neolithische site op de Kemmelberg (Ongepubliceerde licentiaatsverhandeling KU Leuven (unpublished), 1982, in Dutch)

Beau A et al - Multi-scale ancient DNA analyses confirm the western origin of Michelsberg Farmers and document probable practices of human sacrifice (PLOS One, 5 July 2017)

Bostyn F, Monchablon C, Praud I, & Vanmontfort B - Le Néolithique moyen II dans le sud-ouest du Bassin de l'Escaut: nouveaux éléments dans le groupe de Spiere (Revue archéologique de Picardie, Le Néolithique du Nord de la France dans son contexte européen, n° spécial 28, 55-76, 2011, in French)

Chure G et al - The Anthropocene by the numbers: a quantitative snapshot of humanity's influence on the Planet (2021)

Collin J-P, Collet H, Denis S, & Putman J L - Notes sur deux grandes lames en silex trouvées au Kemmelberg (Notae Praehistoricae, 39, 133-141, 2019, in French)

Meyer C, Knipper C, Nicklisch N, et al - Early Neolithic executions indicated by clustered cranial trauma in the mass grave of Halberstadt (Nat Commun 9, 2472, 2018 - see external links)

Putman R, Soenen M, & Tieghem G - De prehistorie (Roumegoux Y & J Termote (Red), Kemmel-Cassel. De vroegste bewoningsgeschiedenis van de Vlaamse heuvels, Westvlaamse Archaeologica 9/2, 25-38, 1993, in Dutch)

Seidel U & Jeunesse C - À propos d'un tesson du Néolithique récent de la vallée du Neckar. La technique du bouton au repoussé et la question de la diffusion du Michelsberg (Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française, tome 97, 229-237, 2000, in French)

Van Doorselaer A - Kemmelberg (W-Vl): Neolithische bewoningssporen en IJzertijd-bergvesting (Archeologie 1972/2, 79-80, in Dutch)

Van Doorselaer A - Kemmelberg (W-Vl): Neolithisch (Archeologie 1977/2, 75, in Dutch)

Vanmontfort B - Les Flandres durant la fin du 4e et le début du 3e millénaire avant notre ère. Inhabitées ou invisibles pour l'archéologie? (Anthropologica et Praehistorica, 115, 2004, 9 -25, in French)

Vanmontfort B - Converging worlds. The Neolithisation of the Scheldt basin during the late fifth and early fourth millennium cal BC (Ongepubliceerd proefschrift ingediend tot het behalen van de graad Doctor in de Archeologie aan de KU Leuven, Unpublished, 2004)

Vanmontfort B - Can we attribute the Middle Neolithic in the Scheldt and Middle Meuse basins to the Michelsberg Culture? (In Duhamel, P (Ed), Impacts interculturels au Néolithique moyen. Du terroir au territoire: sociétés et espaces, ARTEHIS Éditions, 2006)

RELATED KEMMELBERG LINKS:
Earliest Humans
Neolithic Enclosures

EXTERNAL LINKS:
Nat Commun 9
Western origin of the Michelsberg farmers...
Neolithic migrants and hunter-gatherers
Potential interactions between Mesolithics and Neolithics
When the First Farmers Arrived in Europe, Inequality Evolved (Scientific American)
Collective violence in Early Neolithic Central Europe
Premières occupations du Néolithique ancien dans le Nord-Ouest de la France (in French)
Les Flandres durant la fin du 4" (PDF, in French)
Le Néolithique moyen II dans le sud-ouest du Bassin de l'Escaut (in French)
The Human Impacts Database
Humanity's Influence on the Planet
Stone Age-like house (re)construction burned...
L'élevage d'animaux domestiqués (in French)
Neolithic flint mines of Spiennes
UNESCO - Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes
How To Make A Prehistoric Flint Axe | Stone Age Technology (YouTube)

RELATED HISTORY FILES LINKS:
Early Cultures of Europe
Neolithic Farmer Cultures in Europe
Sesklo Culture
Bell Beaker Culture
Modern Belgium
Modern Netherlands

 

Text copyright © Archeo Kemmelberg. An original feature for the History Files: Kemmelberg.