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The Dutch wetlands witness the gradual adoption of Neolithic novelties by foraging societies during the Swifterbant period. Recent analyses provide new insights into the subsistence palette of Middle Swifterbant societies. Small-scale livestock herding and cultivation are in evidence at this time, but their importance if unclear. Within the framework of PAGES Land-use at 6000BP project, we aim to translate the information on resource exploitation into information on land-use that can be incorporated into global climate modelling efforts, with attention for the importance of agriculture. A reconstruction of patterns of resource exploitation and their land-use dimensions is complicated by methodological issues in comparing the results of varied recent investigations. Analyses of organic residues in ceramics have attested to the cooking of aquatic foods, ruminant meat, porcine meat, as well as rare cases of dairy. In terms of vegetative matter, some ceramics exclusively yielded evidence of wild plants, while others preserve cereal remains. Elevated δ15N values of human were interpreted as demonstrating an important aquatic component of the diet well into the 4th millennium BC. Yet recent assays on livestock remains suggest grazing on salt marshes partly accounts for the human values. Finally, renewed archaeozoological investigations have shown the early presence of domestic animals to be more limited than previously thought. We discuss the relative importance of exploited resources to produce a best-fit interpretation of changing patterns of land-use during the Middle Swifterbant phase. Our review combines recent archaeological data with wider data on anthropogenic influence on the landscape. Combining the results of plant macroremains, information from pollen cores about vegetation development, the structure of faunal assemblages, and finds of arable fields and dairy residue, we suggest the most parsimonious interpretation is one of a limited land-use footprint of cultivation and livestock keeping in Dutch wetlands between 4600 and 3900 BCE.

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Sowing the seed? Human impact and plant subsistence in Dutch wetlands during the Late Mesolithic and Early and Middle Neolithic (5500-3400 cal BC). The understanding of the neolithisation process in the Netherlands has increased considerably during the last decades. A coherent overview of the archaeobotanical research on the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture was, however, lacking until now. This thesis aims to provide a better understanding of the neolithisation process in the Dutch wetlands by means of the reconstruction of the natural vegetation, human impact, plant use and cultivation practises at the time of the Late Mesolithic, the Swifterbant culture and the Hazendonk group. The study is a literature study based on the analysis of published and unpublished data on pollen, seeds and fruits, wood, charcoal and tubers from four wetland regions. The extensive botanical data sets of recently excavated sites have been combined and compared with evidence of earlier investigations, resulting in a coherent overview and new interpretations. The evidence from the Dutch wetlands has furthermore been compared with that of comparable cultural groups in Northwestern Europe.

Lit.opg.