Explanatory models on the origins of the Neolithic period

The explanatory models on the origins of the Neolithic can be classified between ap-proaches based on migrationist or diffusionist models, in which the movement of the population of Neolithic groups is fundamental to explain the extension of the new way of life throughout Europe, and the autochthonist or indigenist models, a theoretical pos-tulate that explains the process of neolitization based on the development of the "indig-enous" mesolithic populations themselves, where the movement of the population has a very secondary, if not existing, role in this process. With the new findings and the ex-tension of dates, a series of intermediate proposals were developed that would justify a foreign beginning of implantation of these new economic practices in certain sites ac-companied by an internal development of the autochthonous populations. Among the proposals that give preminence to the movement of the population, we find the model of démica diffusion, which starts from the first available radiocarbon dating (Clark 1965), detecting a pattern that indicated the expansion of the Neolithic in Europe through the Danube from the southeast, and a later influence in the northern European plain and southern Scandinavia. In the 1970s and 1980s, one of the best-known and most debated neolithic models on the European continent (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza 1984) would be described and referred to as the "advance wave". This model is based on the inexist-ence of an autochthonous domestication in Europe, and on the material and chronolog-ical evidences that suggested an expansion of the Neolithic through the continent, with a clear gradation in an east-west direction. The term demic diffusion was coined by these authors to define the type of displacement experienced by the first Neolithic communi-ties, which would not be properly a mass migration, as suggested by genetic analysis, nor a colonization. Rather, it would be a progressive infiltration of individuals or small groups (Bogaard, 2004)(Ammerman 2003: 7). The cultural diffusion would be the other responsible for the Neolithic expansion, understood as the transmission of these tech-nological innovations between the local groups, without population geographical dis-placement (Marchand & Perrin, 2017). Finally, the causes of this diffusion mechanism were specified in three points: the local growth of the population, the local migratory activity and the delay time. All of them are closely related and start from the assumption

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that the population growth of the first Neolithic communities was high and after a pe-riod of delay, demographic pressure makes emigration necessary. The application of the demic diffusion to the reality of the Iberian Peninsula has given rise to the "dual model"

(Bernabeu 1997). According to this model, those responsible for peninsular neolitization would be colonizing neolithic communities that would reach the Iberian Peninsula from the western Mediterranean. The discovery and dating of sites such as El Barranquet (Oliva, Valencia) or Mas d'Is (Penàguila, Alicante) (Bernabeu et al. 2009), relates these contexts with different enclaves of the Italian region of Liguria and the French coast, as in Arene Candide (Liguria, Italy) or Abri Pendimoun (Alpes-maritimes, France) (Guilaine

& Manen, 2012). Like the démic diffusion, this proposal opts for a mixed model at the time of explaining the neolitization of the territory, in which the knowledge of the pop-ulation and the information is combined (Bernabeu 2002). This model is argued on the basis of the significant increase in settlements from 5600 cal BC (Bernabeu et al. 2015), the use of demographic proxies and population density trends have been reported in other regions of Europe (Boquet-Appel 2008, Shennan et al. 2013), where the arrival of agriculture and livestock coincides with the rapid increase in settlements with contem-porary radiocarbon dating (McClure et al. 2014)(Boquet-Appel 2012).

In the diffusionist interpretative line are the models of Pídola colonization (leapfrog col-onization), which defend a neolithic expansion through phenomena of pioneer coloni-zation on a small scale, but discontinuous in space. These proposals arose from the cri-tique of certain aspects of demic diffusion, such as the gradual expansion in the occupa-tion of space and random expansion in its direcoccupa-tion, when the data showed a punctuated and directional spatial pattern, centered in areas near water sources with fertile soils for agricultural development (Sherrat 1980: 87, Van Andel and Runnels 1995: 481). Within this group of proposals, a "pioneering maritime colonization model" was proposed to explain the neolitization of the Iberian Peninsula (Zilhão 1997, 2001). Its fundamental idea is that the Ancient Neolithic in the western Mediterranean is characterized both by the presence of ceramics with cardiac decoration and by a population that presents a discontinuous geographical distribution but a synchronic chronology fruit of a fast and long distance maritime colonization.

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Finally, an arrhythmic model of neolitization in Europe was proposed that is out of step with time and with a discontinuous speed (Guilaine & Manen, 2012)(Guilaine 2001).

These pauses correspond to moments of "cultural mutation". The causes of these inter-ruptions are due to the varied European environments that imply an adaptation and the search of suitable means to be colonized (Guilaine 2001: 269). All these circumstances would provoke a slowing down of the process and would open a period of transfor-mation of these "primary cultures" that would culminate with a new period of expan-sion, which would follow two great routes of transmission through Europe, one conti-nental and the other Mediterranean. In some areas, after a rapid maritime propagation, a slower diffusion towards the interior would take place, as in the central plateau of the Iberian Peninsula, whose neolitization would take place at the same time as the "cardial navigators" (Guilaine 2001: 272). However, the latest data available for the interior of the Iberian Peninsula make a revision necessary, as they show that neolitization in this area occurred at the same time as the Neolithic Cardial of the Levantine area (Rojo Guerra et al. 2008).

All these models have received numerous criticisms, especially when they have been intended to be applied on a regional or local scale. In the first place, the existence of continuities of the archaeological record in the Iberian Peninsula that question this rup-ture of material culrup-ture in the model of demic diffusion, based on the lithic industry (Barandiarán and Cava 2000), the style of certain ceramics (Alday et al. 2009) or rock art (Vincent 1990), among other aspects. Secondly, the lack of visible population growth in the archaeological record (Guilaine, 2018; Guilaine & Manen, 2012)(Bernabeu et al.

2009). Finally, a common criticism of diffusionist models has been their tendency to un-derestimate the level of economic and social development of Mesolithic hunter-gath-erer-fishers. On the contrary, the archaeological record shows stable, prosperous, often semi-sedentary hunter-gatherer-fishermen communities capable of maintaining rela-tively high population densities (Soto & Alday, 2017)(Zvelebil 2001: 382) with apprecia-ble levels of socioeconomic complexity (Sassaman 2004).

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In the Iberian Peninsula, alternatives to "diffusionist" models can be considered mixed models. In them a certain degree of population mobility is admitted, but a gradual evo-lution of local groups towards their full neolitization is advocated. One of the most in-fluential proposals in the Iberian Peninsula has been the "capillary diffusion model" de-fined by Vincent (1990). From a Marxist theoretical framework, the "Neolithic Revolu-tion" is conceived as the process by means of which the "primitive" and "egalitarian"

social formations, based on hunting and gathering economies, are transformed into agrarian societies in which processes of growing social differentiation are developed.

Faced with the inter-annual and seasonal variability of hunting and gathering, solutions were put into practice to deal with this danger: the investment of work increased, the complexity of resource management increased, and storage developed. In this context, agriculture and livestock would be assumed as guarantors of an important yield for the subsistence of the group, not so much as an "optimization of production", but as one of the multiple "stabilization techniques" that they developed for this purpose (Vincent 1990: 263). The progressive consolidation of agriculture would originate what he calls

"agricultural trap" (Vincent 1990: 275), a dependence on the place where important work investments have been made, whose yield is not immediate, but is collected after some time.

Also from the theoretical coordinates of Marxism, a theoretical model has been pro-posed in recent years in the area of the Bay of Cadiz that proposes the emergence of the autochthonous and independent production economy in that region, as a result of an internal dynamic of the communities of hunter-gatherer-fishermen and that could ma-terialize with the excavations at the site of El Retamar (Puerto Real, Cadiz) (Ramos 2005).

From historical-cultural theoretical perspectives, some researchers have put forward some hypotheses based on the archaeological work carried out in the Ebro Valley. For Alday (1996), continuity is one of the main characteristics of the Neolithic process, which is why he groups the Final Mesolithic and the Ancient Neolithic in the so-called "first cultural cycle". The Mesolithic settlers themselves will be the agents of change, influ-enced by the circulation of ideas, goods and people (Alday 2012, Alday et al. 2017).

Therefore, the economy of production would be progressively adopted.

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As a synthesis, we see that, given the different dynamics that are developed in a con-temporary way, regional variability in Europe cannot be explained with any single model proposed until now. In recent years a whole series of excellent research projects on the Ancient Neolithic have been carried out in the Iberian Peninsula. From recent data, ne-olitization in this area seems to have occurred around 5600 cal BC from the French Car-dial and spread south along the Mediterranean coast, with sites such as Mas d'Is (5617-5485 cal BC) (Bernabeu Aubán et al. 2018), to the inland areas (Rojo Guerra et al. 2008).

Likewise, recent data on bones of fauna identified as domestic in the Cave of Nerja, offer chronologies around 5600 cal BC (Martins et al. 2015) with the presence of boquique, which would indicate entry by different routes, north and south (Bernabeu Aubán et al.

2018)(García-Puchol et al. 2018). According to the dual model, all this would be accom-panied by an immediate substitution of subsistence practices in certain sites, given the existence of mesolithic remnants in the northern peninsular zones up to 5300 cal BC (Martínez-de-Lagrán, 2012). This would not imply a massive arrival of population, but rather an acculturation that a posteriori would culminate in a symbiosis with the popu-lations of Mesolithic tradition (Guilaine, 2018).