Session: #176

Theme & Session Format

Theme:
2. [Re]integration
Session format:
Regular session

Title & Content

Title:
Ornaments as a Key to Understanding the Hunter-Gatherer to Farming Transition in Europe
Content:
The transition from hunter-gatherer to farming-based subsistence systems involved both group mobility and the transmission of ideas and associated practices from western Asia across Europe over the course of several millennia. As mobile artefacts closely associated with the human body, personal ornaments accompanied humans as an element of identity. The expression of personal and group identities as well as technological knowledge and knowhow were a crucial part of ornamentation related practices and it seems that people kept this knowledge alive during processes of change. For example, stone bracelets associated with early farming communities during their spread from western Asia to western Europe have already shown that material culture was important for the structuring of Neolithic identities for settlers in different regions and that these expressions of identity were temporally and spatially persistent. Technologies and knowledge were adapted to different environments, material sources and lifeways to create regional styles.
This session intends to gather Mesolithic and Neolithic specialists in the same place to discuss all the issues related to ornaments and their links with changes, continuity and interactions in the Neolithization process. We will explore evidence for changes and continuities in ornamentation practices, technologies and materials through this complex period of economic and social transformation using examples from across Europe and western Asia. We invite papers exploring any aspect of ornamentation production, use, theoretical and practical approaches to their interpretation particularly with reference to the human-ornament relationship, construction of identities, consideration of environments and material choices, and interactions engendered by or shaped using personal ornaments in their many forms. This session aims to place ornamentation at the centre of the Neolithization process as a vital source of information about the relationship between hunter-gatherer and farming communities.
Keywords:
ornaments, Mesolithic, Neolithic, mobility, Neolithization process, cultural identity
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:

Organisers

Main organiser:
Francisco MartĂ­nez-Sevilla (Spain) 1
Co-organisers:
Emma Baysal (Turkey) 2
Affiliations:
1. University of Alcalá
2. Ankara University