Evolutionary Demography and the Population History of the European Early Neolithic // Human Biology, April–June 2009, v. 81, nos. 2–3, pp. 339–355.
Stephen Shennan
Abstract In this paper I propose that evolutionary demography and as-
sociated theory from human behavioral ecology provide a strong basis for
explaining the available evidence for the patterns observed in the first agri-
cultural settlement of Europe in the 7th–5th millennium cal. BC, linking to-
gether a variety of what have previously been disconnected observations and
casting doubt on some long-standing existing models. An outline of relevant
aspects of life history theory, which provides the foundation for understand-
ing demography, is followed by a review of large-scale demographic pat-
terns in the early Neolithic, which point to rapid population increase and a
process of demic diffusion. More localized socioeconomic and demographic
patterns suggesting rapid expansion to local carrying capacities and an as-
sociated growth of inequality in the earliest farming communities of central
Europe (the Linear Pottery Culture, or LBK) are then outlined and shown
to correspond to predictions of spatial population ecology and reproductive
skew theory. Existing models of why it took so long for farming to spread
to northern and northwest Europe, which explain the spread in terms of the
gradual disruption of hunter-gatherer ways of life, are then questioned in light
of evidence for population collapse at the end of the LBK. Finally, some
broader implications of the study are presented, including the suggestion that
the pattern of an initial agricultural boom followed by a bust may be relevant
in other parts of the world.
http://www.humbiol.com/pdf/pdfapriljune/SHENNAN%2520HB%252081020312.pdf