in the crop stores indicate eff ective and careful tillage and
high fertility, as would be expected in small-scale intensive
cultivation located near the settlement. It appears that cere-
als were harvested by cutting with a harvesting knife about
a hand’s breadth below the cereal ear and spread out in the
roof space of each house for drying. Aft er threshing outside
the village, the crop would be processed for food prepara-
tion on a daily basis. Carbonized lumps of cereal-based food
were found, including porridge-like food of ground wheat
grains and bread of fi nely milled fl our. Botanical remains in
preserved human feces indicate that people ate a combina-
tion of cereals and wild plant foods.
Th e clear example at Hornstaad-Hörnle of what the an-
thropologist Marshall Sahlins called the domestic mode of
production (production by the household for its own use)
provides insights into the social consequences of early agri-
culture in Neolithic Europe. Households undoubtedly coop-
erated in certain activities, and similarity of house layout and
size refl ects relative equality between families. Nevertheless,
imbalances in household production must have occurred,
and there is evidence of diff erences between houses in access
to rare goods, such as copper objects. Th e very insistence on
house uniformity may have functioned to discourage emerg-
ing inequalities and tensions between families. Under certain
conditions, such tensions led to new social formations in the
Bronze and Iron Ages.
AGRICULTURE IN THE BRONZE AND IRON AGES
Th e European Bronze Age (ca. 2200–800 b.c.e.) and the Iron
Age (ca. 800 b.c.e.–100 c.e.) occupy a shorter chronological
span than the Neolithic Period, which stretched back some
5,000 years earlier. Th e quickening pace of economic and so-
cial change, however, makes these episodes crucial to an un-
derstanding of early agricultural development in Europe.
Th e most dramatic change occurred in that part of Eu-
rope where agriculture had the longest history: the Aegean.
Halstead has charted the emergence of increasingly complex
society from the early agricultural villages of the Greek Neo-
lithic. Social advantages gained by the most successful farm-
ers eventually led to the formation of an elite social stratum
in the late Neolithic Period and Bronze Age. Furthermore,
the growth of larger settlements encouraged more effi cient
means of cultivating larger and more distant fi elds. Harnessed
to a simple plow, powerful teams of oxen are capable of tilling
soil at a much faster rate than is possible by hand and hence
can produce large-scale surplus—that is, far more food than
is needed by those carrying out the farming tasks. In par-
allel with ox-drawn plow agriculture, large-scale herding of
wool-bearing sheep developed to produce woolen textiles for
exchange. Other surpluses included luxury products, such as
wine and olive oil–based perfume. All of these developments
are refl ected in the earliest European written records to have
been deciphered fully—the Linear B tablets of the Late Bronze
Age Mycenaean palaces, mostly preserved in destruction lay-
ers of the 13th century b.c.e. Th ese surplus-oriented systems
emerged under special conditions, however; elsewhere in the
Aegean, beyond the sphere of the palaces, small-scale inten-
sive agriculture of the Neolithic type continued.
Agricultural features generally associated with the
Bronze Age in Europe include the use of animals for muscle
power, transport, wool, and dairying; the diversifi cation of
the seed-crop spectrum with spelt wheat, millet, and broad
bean; and the establishment of olive, vine, and fi g cultivation
in the Mediterranean. Horse bones are increasingly common
on archaeological sites of this time period, and decorated
bridle pieces suggest that horses played an important role in
social display. Aspects of the radical social change seen in the
Aegean Bronze Age developed elsewhere in Europe, visible
most clearly in the emergence of elaborate elite burials. Th is
trend toward increasingly complex society was based in part
on the ability to produce and mobilize agricultural surpluses.
Th e introduction of bronze and, later, iron tool making had
a direct impact on agriculture. Metal sickles could be used
to bring in the harvest more effi ciently than previous meth-
ods of collection by hand or with stone sick les—an important
development, making larger scale cultivation and harvesting
more feasible.
A general phenomenon of Bronze Age Europe, visible in
diff erent ways from the Aegean to Britain, is expansion of the
agricultural landscape to include increasingly marginal areas
with thinner, poorer soils. Th is marginal colonization may
have had diverse local causes, but its environmental conse-
quences were oft en dramatic. In Britain, for example, upland
clearance for cultivation and herding, evidenced by pollen
records and clearance cairns (piles of stones cleared to make
way for cultivation), accelerated the formation of heath and
moorland areas that persist to this day. Many of these land-
scapes were eventually abandoned for agriculture owing toIron farming tools of the Iron Age, from the Stantonbury Hill hillfort,
Somerset, England (© Th e Trustees of the British Museum)agriculture: Europe 35