Detlef Gronenborn

LEIZA - Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie · Prehistory

Archaeological evidence suggests that the population dynamics of Mid-Holocene (Late Mesolithic to Initial Bronze Age, ca. 7000–3000 BCE) Europe are characterized by recurrent booms and busts of regional settlement and occupation density. These boom-bust patterns are documented in the temporal distribution of 14C dates and in archaeological settleme...

The spread of farming into Europe some 9000–5000 years ago involved not only the advent of new plants and animals, but also of people, tools, technologies, and knowledge. While they all can be assumed to follow Fickian diffusion gradients, the mechanisms of spread can be quite different: when people migrate, there is mass balance in the number of p...

In European and many African, Middle Eastern and southern Asian populations, lactase persistence (LP) is the most strongly selected monogenic trait to have evolved over the past 10,000 years1. Although the selection of LP and the consumption of prehistoric milk must be linked, considerable uncertainty remains concerning their spatiotemporal configu...

This document contains data sets of the valley depositions of the Loosbach valley and data of the Late Neolithic wetland site of Pestenacker. It consists of raw data and graphical figures of direct push-based electrical conductivity and colour logs and driving core recoveries as well as hand drilling recoveries presented by Köhler et al. ([1]). We...

Human expansion in the course of the Neolithic transition in western Eurasia has been one of the major topics in ancient DNA (aDNA) research in the last ten years. Multiple studies have shown that the spread of agriculture and animal husbandry from the Near East across Europe was accompanied by large-scale human expansions. Moreover, changes in sub...

Archaeological evidence suggests that the demographics of Mid-Holocene (Late Mesolithic to Initial Bronze Age, ca. 7000-3000 BCE) Europe are characterized by recurrent booms and busts of regional settlement and occupation density with an overall tendency towards a gradual population increase. Here, using a spatially-explicit agent-based model, we i...

Sicily is a key region for understanding the agricultural transition in the Mediterranean, due to its central position. Here, we present genomic and stable isotopic data for 19 prehistoric Sicilians covering the Mesolithic to Bronze Age periods (10,700-4,100 yBP). We find that Early Mesolithic hunter-gatherers (HGs) from Sicily are a highly drifted...

Stable isotope signatures of domesticates found on archaeology sites provide information about past human behaviour, such as the evolution and adaptation of husbandry strategies. A dynamic phase in cattle husbandry evolution is during the 6th millennium BCE, where the first cattle herders of central Europe spread rapidly through diverse forested ec...

The reconstruction and understanding of tipping points in environmental systems have become an important issue for the global geoscientific community. This study focuses on the reconstruction of the Holocene deposition history of the Loosbach valley at the Pestenacker site, a Late Neolithic wetland occupation in the northern Alpine forelands of Cen...

A multi-disciplinary research project in north-western Zimbabwe focuses on the Nambya state of the Zimbabwe Culture. The new research suggests that the development of the Nambya state was contemporaneous with other Zimbabwe Culture states and not the result of a direct migration from the Great Zimbabwe state.

As efforts to recognise the Anthropocene as a new epoch of geological time are mounting, the controversial debate about the time of its beginning continues. Here, we suggest the term Palaeoanthropocene for the period between the first, barely recognizable, anthropogenic environmental changes and the industrial revolution when anthropogenically indu...

Doubtlessly the next decades will be amongst the most challenging periods in the history of humankind. In this they bear a tragic component: for the first time humanity as a whole will be challenged by problems induced by humans themselves, by the Anthropocene and its major alterations in the Earth system, one component being global warming. In the...

The development of cultivated landscapes under the influence of food production has decisively shaped the composition and appearance of West African savannas as present today. With trees and shrubs forming an important constituent of such landscapes, and its composition characterizing different types of land-use, anthracology is a tool particularly...

A later fifth-millennium cal BC tumulus at Hofheim-Kapellenberg, Germany - Detlef Gronenborn, Heinrich Thiemeyer, Anja Cramer, Nicolas Antunes, Dieter Neubauer, Pierre Pétrequin

Starting from 12,000 years ago in the Middle East, the Neolithic lifestyle spread across Europe via separate continental and Mediterranean routes. Genomes from early European farmers have shown a clear Near Eastern/Anatolian genetic affinity with limited contribution from hunter-gatherers. However, no genomic data are available from modern-day Fran...

For decades the various chronological entities, the Late Palaeolithic, the Mesolithic and the Neolithic have been understood and treated as separate entities, with the academic communities having operated separately, often with differing methodological and theoretical toolboxes. This has, however, changed gradually in more recent years and nowadays...

The 1oth Archaeological Conference of Central Germany addressed the subject of societies which do not appear to fit into the current understanding of history or which cannot be explained by it. None of the references we know from historical and ethnographic sources really help us to explain monumental earthworks which enclose dozens of hectares of...

The spread of farming into Europe some 9000–5000 years ago involved not only the advent of new plants and animals, but also of people, tools, technologies, and knowledge. While they all can be assumed to follow Fickian diffusion gradients, the mechanisms of spread can be quite different: when people migrate, there is mass balance in the number of p...

While there has been a long been and lively debate about migrations both in the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic migration, Mmigrations or larger population movements during the Mesolithic have not so far not not yet been discussed for the Mesolithic, while the debates have waged for long both for the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic. Focusing on the s...

Inferred European Holocene population size exhibits large fluctuations, particularly around the onset of farming. We attempt to find explanations for these fluctuations by employing the concept of cycling, especially that of the Adaptive Cycle. We base our analysis on chronologically and chorologically highly resolved ceramic and site data from the...

The most profound change in the relationship between humans and their environment was the introduction of agriculture and pastoralism. [....] For an understanding of the expansion process, it appears appropriate to apply a diffusive model. Broadly, these numerical modeling approaches can be catego- rized in correlative, continuous and discrete. Com...

Inferred European Holocene population size exhibits large fluctuations, particularly around the onset of farming. We attempt to find explanations for these fluctuations by employing the concept of cycling, especially that of the Adaptive Cycle. We base our analysis on chronologically and chorologically highly resolved ceramic and site data from the...

Inferred European Holocene population size exhibits large fluctuations, particularly around the onset of farming. We attempt to find explanations for these fluctuations by employing the concept of cycling, especially that of the Adaptive Cycle. We base our analysis on chronologically and chorologically highly resolved ceramic and site data from the...

Significance The Early Neolithic massacre-related mass grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten presented here provides new data and insights for the ongoing discussions of prehistoric warfare in Central Europe. Although several characteristics gleaned from the analysis of the human skeletal remains support and strengthen previous hypotheses based on the fe...

The reanalysis of the burial goods from Langeneichstädt was instigated by a permanent loan request from the Landesmuseum Halle regarding a wooden handle with stone celt which had made it into the collection of the RGZM already during the later 19th century. The goods stem from a Globular Amphorae stone cist with elaborate architecture, a copper rin...

Truly deviant grave features exist with the known Linearbandkeramik (LBK) mass graves from Germany, which share the absence of grave goods, erratic commingling of bodies, a location within a settlement context and suppressed individuality of the dead. They differ markedly from LBK multiple burials found in cemeteries and seem to have been deposited...

Thomas Julian . The birth of Neolithic Britain: an interpretive account. xi+508 pages, 104 b&w illustrations. 2013. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 978-0-19-968196-9 hardback £95. - Volume 88 Issue 341 - Detlef Gronenborn

Einleitung Das Hauptinteresse sozialgeschichtlicher Analy-sen in der Archäologie gilt der Identifikation so-zialer Gruppen und Schichten, wobei eindeutig die Eliten im Mittelpunkt stehen (kritisch dazu: TREBSCHE ET AL. 2007). In diesen Kontext gehört auch das weite Feld ethnischer Interpretationen, das zunehmend mit – berechtigter – Skepsis be-trac...

As efforts to recognize the Anthropocene as a new epoch of geological time are mounting, the controversial debate about the time of its beginning continues. Here, we suggest the term Palaeoanthropocene for the period between the first, barely recognizable, anthropogenic environmental changes and the industrial revolution when anthropogenically indu...

North East Europe harbors a high diversity of cultures and languages, suggesting a complex genetic history. Archaeological, anthropological, and genetic research has revealed a series of influences from Western and Eastern Eurasia in the past. While genetic data from modern-day populations is commonly used to make inferences about their origins and...

North East Europe harbors a high diversity of cultures and languages, suggesting a complex genetic history. Archaeological, anthropological, and genetic research has revealed a series of influences from Western and Eastern Eurasia in the past. While genetic data from modern-day populations is commonly used to make inferences about their origins and...

Die Bestattungssitten der Linearbandkeramik (LBK) können mittlerweile insgesamt als gut erforscht gelten. Insbesondere die Vielzahl der Gräberfelder erlaubt es, eine bandkeramische Standardbestattung zu definieren, die sich im wesentlichen als eine Ost–West-ausgerichtete Hockerbestattung eines einzelnen Individuums mit Grabbeigaben beschreiben läss...

Das Hauptinteresse sozialgeschichtlicher Analysen in der Archäologie gilt der Identifikation sozialer Gruppen und Schichten, wobei eindeutig die Eliten im Mittelpunkt stehen. In jüngerer Zeit wurde vermehrt nach Identität und Distinktion gefragt, für die letztlich das Habitus-Konzept von Pierre Bourdieu wesentlich ist. Zugleich bietet das Habitus-Ko...

Durbi Takusheyi is a burial site composed of at least eight mounds located between the modern towns of Katsina and Daura in northern Nigeria. Parts of the mounds were first excavated in 1907 by Herbert Richmond Palmer in cooperation with the Emir of Katsina and later again in 1992 in the course of a German research project under the lead of Dierk L...

Toby Pillatt is right. Weather is important. Weather is important every day, as is evident from almost every news broadcast we watch or hear. This is not only true for extreme weather situations – which currently abound in the news – but for ordinary weather conditions at any time. The importance is quite clearly reflected in the numerous weather c...

Farming and herding were introduced to Europe from the Near East and Anatolia; there are, however, considerable arguments about the mechanisms of this transition. Were it people who moved and outplaced the indigenous hunter- gatherer groups or admixed with them? Or was it just material and information that moved-the Neolithic Package-consisting of...

Theories about the emergence and spread of farming in western Eurasia have a long research history. Occasionally, climate fluctuations have served as explanations for short-term culture change. However, the entire Holocene climate fluctuation sequence has so far not been regarded. First steps towards a theory which combines the successive stages in...

In recent years, the evidence for culture contact between agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers along the 'frontier zone' of the classic Neolithic of the 'Danubian Tradition' has increased and the scenarios have become much more complex. Inter-group and inter-personal contacts appear to have resulted in a variety of mixed economies, with farming an...

Written from a Central European perspective, this chapter will present a coarse overview of recent developments in studies on early container pottery emergence in Afroeur-asia. In order to understand the wider implications of the technological innovation and its spread to Europe, it is necessary to take a broad view and to investigate the current s...

This chapter discusses the Neolithization process in Central Europe. The process began during the latter half of the seventh millennium cal bc, then experienced a major shift with the expansion of the Linear Pottery Culture (LBK), and ended in the mid-fifth millennium cal bc. During these two thousand years a multi-faceted combination of migrations...

The Europeans who landed on the shores of the South African Cape from the late 15th century onwards encountered local herders whom they later referred to as the Hottentots (now known as the Khoekhoe). There are written references to the settlements and livestock of these pastoralists, but archaeologists have not had much success in discovering any...

In recent years, data on an increasing number of violent conflicts within and between Central European Neolithic societies has come to light through both archaeological and physical anthropological studies. The spectrum of such evidence ranges from occasional incidents of healed trauma in otherwise 'ordinary' burial situations to mass burials of po...

The discovery of mitochondrial type N1a in Central European Neolithic skeletons at a high frequency enabled us to answer the question of whether the modern population is maternally descended from the early farmers instead of addressing the traditional question of the origin of early European farmers.

We analyze statistically representative samples of radiocarbon dates from key Early Neolithic sites in Central Europe belonging to the Linear Pottery Ceramic Culture (LBK), and of pottery-bearing cultures on East European Plain (Yelshanian, Rakushechnyi Yar, Buh-Dniestrian, Serteya and boreal East European Plain). The dates from the LBK sites form...

ORIENTAL ORIGINS OF SACRED KINGSHIP? Das Königtum von Gobir: Götter, Priester, Feste einer sakralen Gesellschaft. By WALTER KÜHME. Hamburg: Dr. Kovač, 2003. Pp. xiv+260. 37 colour photographs. No price given, paperback (ISBN 3-8300-0932-1). - - Volume 46 Issue 2 - DETLEF GRONENBORN

The ancestry of modern Europeans is a subject of debate among geneticists, archaeologists, and anthropologists. A crucial question is the extent to which Europeans are descended from the first European farmers in the Neolithic Age 7500 years ago or from Paleolithic hunter-gatherers who were present in Europe since 40,000 years ago. Here we present...

Although already published some time ago, a transverse arrowhead excavated during the 1980ies at the earliest Linear Pottery site of Friedberg-Bruchenbrücken may now be interpreted as an indication of direct contact between individuals from Western Central Europe and Southern Scandinavia. These contacts took place at the time of the expansion of th...

Throughout the Holocene living conditions in the Chad basin have strongly been influenced by various transgressions and regressions of Lake Chad. In this article we concentrate on selected lake levels and climate fluctuations which had major implications on the settlement history during the later Holocene millennia. These are the ca. 287-290m-trans...

Despite many similarities in methodology and interconnections in research history no overall comparison between the spread of farming to southern African (the Bantu expansion) and temperate continental Europe (the Bandkeramik expansion) has yet been attempted. This article reviews the current state of research in both regions and discusses possible...