The spread of farming from western Asia to Europe had profound long-term social and ecological impacts, but identification of the specific nature of Neolithic land management practices and the dietary contribution of early crops has been problematic. Here, we present previously undescribed stable isotope determinations of charred cereals and pulses from 13 Neolithic sites across Europe (dating ca. 5900–2400 cal B.C.), which show that early farmers used livestock manure and water management to enhance crop yields. Intensive manuring inextricably linked plant cultivation and animal herding and contributed to the remarkable resilience of these combined practices across diverse climatic zones. Critically, our findings suggest that commonly applied paleodietary interpretations of human and herbivore δ15N values have systematically underestimated the contribution of crop-derived protein to early farmer diets.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/110/31/12589.full.pdf

Crop manuring and intensive land management by Europe’s first farmers

The accumulation of recent data from archaeobotany, archaeozoology and Neolithic excavations from across South Asia warrants a new overview of early agriculture in the subcontinent This paper attempts a synthesis of these data while recommending further systematic work and methodological developments The evidence for origins and dispersals of important crops and livestock from Southwest Asia into South Asia is reviewed In addition evidence for indigenous plant and animal domestication in India is presented Evidence for probable indigenous agricultural developments in Gujarat, the Middle Ganges, Eastern India, and Southern India are reviewed An attempt is made to highlight regions of important frontiers of interaction between early farmers and hunter-gatherers The current evidence suggests that the Neolithic trajectories in different parts of South Asia differ from each other Indigenous centers of plant domestication in India also differ from the often discussed trajectory of Southwest Asia, while suggesting some similarities with agricultural origins in Africa and Eastern North America as well as secondary agricultural developments on the peripheries of Eurasia

http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/%7Etcrndfu/articles/JWP20.pdf

Agricultural Origins and Frontiers in South Asia: A Working Synthesis

While the series of events that shaped the transition between foraging societies and food producers are well described for Central and Southern Europe, genetic evidence from Northern Europe surrounding the Baltic Sea is still sparse. Here, we report genome-wide DNA data from 38 ancient North Europeans ranging from ~9500 to 2200 years before present. Our analysis provides genetic evidence that hunter-gatherers settled Scandinavia via two routes. We reveal that the first Scandinavian farmers derive their ancestry from Anatolia 1000 years earlier than previously demonstrated. The range of Mesolithic Western hunter-gatherers extended to the east of the Baltic Sea, where these populations persisted without gene-flow from Central European farmers during the Early and Middle Neolithic. The arrival of steppe pastoralists in the Late Neolithic introduced a major shift in economy and mediated the spread of a new ancestry associated with the Corded Ware Complex in Northern Europe.

/pdf/the-genetic-prehistory-of-the-baltic-sea-region-1m9a1k3hyh.pdf

The genetic prehistory of the Baltic Sea region

We review the origins and dispersal of rice in Asia based on a data base of 443 archaeobotanical reports. Evidence is considered in terms of quality, and especially whether there are data indicatin...

The contribution of rice agriculture and livestock pastoralism to prehistoric methane levels: An archaeological assessment

This paper rewrites the early history of Britain, showing that while the cultivation of cereals arrived there in about 4000 cal BC, it did not last. Between 3300 and 1500 BC Britons became largely pastoral, reverting only with a major upsurge of agricultural activity in the Middle Bronze Age. This loss of interest in arable farming was accompanied by a decline in population, seen by the authors as having a climatic impetus. But they also point to this period as the time of construction of the great megalithic monuments, including Stonehenge. We are left wondering whether pastoralism was all that bad, and whether it was one intrusion after another that set the agenda on the island.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0003598X00047864

Did Neolithic farming fail? The case for a Bronze Age agricultural revolution in the British Isles

Post-processual views of the transition to agriculture in North-western Europe have sought to decouple ideology and subsistence economy as a means of protecting the status of ideology as the sole cause of change. Ideology(as reflected in material culture and monument building) changed abruptly. To achieve the required decoupling, subsistence is therefore portrayed as having changed slowly. This implies three things: (I) 'Mesolithic foragers were gradually intensifying their subsistence economy. (2) Neolithic people subsisted mainly on wild animals and plants and were nomadic. (3) Subsistence change across the ideological transition was slow, continuous, and seamless. Many other scholars, although not post-processualists, have come to accept these three points. But as the post-processual view has become the consensus, the data from Britain, Ireland, and southern Scandinavia have all been leading in the opposite direction: (I) There is no reason to think that Mesolithic foragers were intensifying economically. (2) Neolithic people subsisted mainly on cultivated plants and domestic animals and were fully sedentary. (3) The transition to agriculture was rapid and probably traumatic. The current consensus has yet to incorporate these data into its explanatory framework.

How the west was lost: A reconsideration of agricultural origins in Britain, Ireland, and southern Scandinavia. Commentaries. Author's reply

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How the west was lost: A reconsideration of agricultural origins in Britain, Ireland, and southern Scandinavia. Commentaries. Author's reply