What changed? Lifeways, kinship, and gender across the 6th and 5th Millenniums cal BC

Description

To those working outside of the European Neolithic, the 6th and 5th millennium, after the initial transition to farming, can appear to be characterised by a blur of ceramic cultures, which come and go without much change in the substance of social and economic life. We can see this evidently in the lower numbers of bioarchaeological projects targeting the 5th millennium (though thankfully this situation is now changing). The end of the LBK, alongside varied approaches to radiocarbon dates, emphatically demonstrates that this is not the case and change is a constant feature of prehistory. This suggests that some of the challenges of explanation may lie in our ability to theorise change in prehistoric societies, rather than always crises of their making.

As we refine regional and chronological sequences, our understanding of what changed in pottery styles, exchange networks, and house layouts has grown, yet we rarely ask what this meant for the lives of those who lived at this time. This presentation will therefore explicitly explore how lifeways changed across the fragmentation of the Linearbandkeramik culture (LBK) and subsequent development of multiple ceramic traditions across the 5th millennium. It will compare the biomolecular datasets for either side of the end of the LBK with the funerary sphere to consider change at the scale of lifeways. Drawing on this, it will consider the extent to which kinship and forms of identity, such as gender, changed. This discussion will then be used to reflect on how we can better theorise social change during the Neolithic at multiple scales.

Period	25 Mar 2025
Event title	Kiel Conference 2025: Scales of social, environmental and cultural change in Past Socieites: Scales of social, environmental and cultural change in Past Socieites
Event type	Conference
Location	Kiel, GermanyShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International