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'Zvelebil M, Pettitt P, 2008: Human condition, life, and death at an Early Neolithic settlement: bioarchaeological analyses of the Vedrovice Cemetery and their biosocial implications for the spread of agriculture in Central Europe. Anthropologie (Brno) 46, 2-3: 195-218'. |
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| Abstract | | In this final chapter, we discuss the major issues that have informed our research about Vedrovice, place them into the broader context of the LBK origins, and address research questions relating to the emergence of the LBK tradition in terms of both, the population dynamics and population movement on the one hand, and culture change and cultural transmission on the other. We go on to summarize and discuss the results of our collective research relating to the ancestry of the Vedrovice community, the health condition, palaeodemography and nutrition of its inhabitants, their social status and social differentiation, and the transmission of cultural traditions inter-generationally and through contact as the major vehicle of culture change that brought about the development of the LBK culture. We go on to reconstruct life biographies of selected individuals from Vedrovice community in order to illustrate the personal diversity and variability of those who made up the Vedrovice community, and to emphasize that we can, through a combination of biological and cultural analyses, within the bioarchaeological approach and through biosocial archaeology, reconstruct life histories of people who died long ago. At a theoretical level, we stress that it is individuals and their life-long history and experience that collectively create communal histories and transform cultural traditions, leading to cultural innovations that the LBK represents. We conclude that Vedrovice was, in all likelihood, a Neolithic "gateway community", both receiving individuals from afar and maintaining long-distance, extra-regional contacts, and also contributing through out-migration to the generation of other LBK communities in Bohemia. | | | | Keywords | | Mesolithic - Neolithic - Agricultural transition - Bioarchaeology - Vedrovice - LBK - Ancient DNA - Biochemical analyses - Personal identities - Contact-induced culture change - Cultural transmission | | |
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