 Good morning, and thank you for the invitation. I think it wasn't like it was, right? I didn't sign up myself. Thank you. Well, thank you for this invitation then. I have 15 minutes to introduce you to what we're doing at one of the major German archaeology research institutions of the somewhat clumsy name Römisch-Germanisch-Zentralmuseum. I'm thinking about changing it to make it more adaptable to an international community. But, well, let's just go. Well, you all know, or most of you know, that the Neolithic expansion has been debated. The reasons behind the Neolithic expansion has been debated for probably over a hundred, maybe more, 120 years, apparently, in the late 1980s, citations where people already debated why those farmers came in eventually, and that has been a topic in research for a century. Now, also this paper will be concerned with a minute detail of this expansion, why and how it happened. I will be focusing on the region where I always focus on Western-Central Europe. I like it here within that box. We will look at three time periods, which are determined by the archaeology itself, the early Neolithic of the famous, infamous linear pottery culture, the middle Neolithic, that's the succeeding cultures in the tradition of the early Neolithic linear pottery culture, and then the what some people call young Neolithic and German Jung Neolithic, it's a clumsy name again, but the young Neolithic characterised mainly by the Mischersberg culture. There is a major difference between the early Neolithic, while the early Neolithic populations, we know that from the genetist work, came from Hungary and moved westwards basically, they also moved eastwards, for our case, Mischersberg is now believed to have emerged somewhere in the Paris Basin, between the Paris Basin and the Ardennes or the Eiffel Mountain range, and from their expanded eastwards. So there's two counter movements of populations within that time period, and there's basically these three major archaeological entities that are of major concern here in our presentation. We have been using the adaptive cycles, again famous and infamous at the same time, they were introduced in archaeology in the early 2000s, they have made it to Germany about 10 years later, that's a usual delay, something is invented in North America, and then it gets picked up in Germany about 10 to 15 years later, it happened the same way with the adaptive cycles, and since about 2008, 2010, we've been thinking about how we could use the concept of adaptive cycles and the interlink concept of resilience in explaining the dynamics of the Neolithic expansion and these three periods that we see in the early to young Neolithic. Resilience is a major operating force, so to speak, in the adaptive cycle concept, but both adaptive cycles and resilience and probably by now most of you know have the problem that they're just intuitive metaphors. We can think about those things, but it is very difficult to find those metaphors in the archaeological record, which eventually you need to do to apply them directly and robustly. So the major question that we've asked ourselves over the years is right down there, how to define, classify and measure resilience as a major force, and as a social phenomenon in the archaeological record because the adaptive cycles, if you look at the literatures on adaptive cycles, there's a number of factors that have been used in looking for those cycles, those factors might come out of the field of economics, out of the field of population dynamics, Steven Shannon's group's work is famous for that, although he doesn't use adaptive cycles or hasn't used adaptive cycles so far. Then we have questions of land use, also very much used in that field, and we have added the component of what we call social diversity. We think that one of the major resilience factors in those cyclical fluctuations throughout history might have been a component that we call social diversity, or if archaeological resolution permits, social identity. We all know that social matters, particularly identity matters that have been debated, we all remember in the 1980s, early 1990s, and then we abandoned talking about identity, mostly ethnologists and cultural anthropologists, we abandoned talking about identity to a greater extent because it's so very difficult to find in the archaeological record. The thing is that identity is something that fluctuates within yourself, you have various levels of identity, and it fluctuates through time, identities change rather quickly, and that makes it very difficult to find identities, long-run identities in the archaeological record. But apart from things like body decoration, which reflects personal identity to some extent, and which is rarely preserved in the archaeological record, we do have occasionally good evidence, for instance, from pottery decoration. Pottery decoration might reflect certain levels of identity on a personal level and on a more group-oriented level, at least in some periods for sometimes, not always, obviously, not always, but in some periods and sometimes. So we choose, as we lack the body decoration, well, we do have some in the early Neolithic, we look at pottery time series in order to see whether we can use them for understanding fluctuations in social diversity or social identity. We use, apply, the theory promoted by Touchfield and Turner, social psychologists that have established a complex theory about how identity works on the personal level and moves from that personal level to the group level. I could lecture about this for hours, I can't, obviously, so I go on to the next slide. The problem is to adapt this theory to the archaeological record and we came up with just being published, they understand I have the final proofs on my little cell phone. We have established, sort of what we're trying to establish a methodology of how to find these concepts of social diversity or if archaeological resolution permits social identity in the archaeological record and we found that we can work better for most periods with the concept of social diversity. However, you need to keep in mind that this is an aggregate parameter, it is composed of various levels, so it is something that we might not be able to really find on the ground, but that's something more on an abstract... I don't know, that's my wife. Sorry, I need to... Yeah, it's an aggregate parameter that is somewhat... many people have, German colleagues have problems with it, to reach that level of abstraction from the archaeological record. It is nothing that you can really find on the ground, but something that we need to look at from a more loftier level, I should say, but the archaeological data just becomes denser at this level. So, let's look at the case studies. We have the earliest linear pottery culture, which has been researched for, again, 120 years. These are simple farming, lineage-based societies with dispersed settlements and they don't have any marked hierarchies. At least we haven't found any so far. They cover most of Central Europe and we look at the most western part of it there. We look at the state of Baden-Württemberg, boxed right there at the border to the French... to the French phenomenon of the early Neolithic. And we look at the pottery explicitly and we were able, particularly my colleague Christoph Striehm was able to come up with a robust, really, we think robust database saying that parts of the motives in the pottery actually reflect sort of lineage association of those that have made the pots. We think that women mostly have made the pots, so it is basically women lineage identity that is reflected in these motives and then we have the larger band motives, which characterize the linear pottery culture and this reflects something that we cannot understand immediately on the ground, but we think that this reflects somewhat social diversity. And we can see from those curves, it's blurred from here. Is it also blurred from far away? It's good? All right. You can see the curve number B, that's the individual, they are lineage emphasis, thus this high A-Baden-Württemberg at the beginning of the LPK and then it drops down all of a sudden without no apparent reason. We don't understand why it drops there, whereas what we call the social diversity is low at the beginning, then it rises and then it drops again and this drop is sort of enforced by a major drop at the end of the fifth millennium. These are those grey shades and down there are the climate proxies. So we see that the social mechanisms within these simple farming societies apparently work on their own. There's nothing external that would explain this drop right there in the middle, nor the rise. We have climate fluctuations, but they can't be really linked with our high chronological scheme. So all we see is that this major drop, and it was a major drop, that this major drop had enforced really these social processes and at the same time that we see sort of a return to societies becoming more rigid. That's the explanation. We took that from Iroquo research that societies become more rigid. At the same time we see the population curve rise. Apparently the increase in societal rigidity was favorable for the population curve, which then again means that those general templates that we always use for adaptive cycle or any cycle theory can be taken down into individual cycles which have individual tipping points which are time-length. So we stopped with this model which was published in 2017. We were forced by the reviewers to publish it. I was a bit hesitant, but we've stopped with it right there. So we see that there's a social diversity dynamic which would probably precede population dynamics in simple farming societies. We will research that in other examples in the near future. And we've taken from Peter Turchin the basic template of integrative and less integrative cycles where this is actually published with Peter together. So we've used some of his terminology and adapted it to our terminology with the adaptive cycle and came up with this combined template. Our point is that social dynamics are time-lagged to population dynamics which means population dynamics doesn't tell you everything. Usually population dynamics are total. Relation to population is important, obviously, but those extremely difficult to graph social dynamics might be the actual critical interest. That's our idea. Next example, 500 to 1,000 years later, middle neolithic, again, simple farmers, clear-sight therapies, status markers, elites at least in some areas and marked social therapies. There are some objections to this, but in general. Let's just take it as in general. We've adapted the same methodology. You see the early neolithic cycles right there. Unfortunately, the middle neolithic dataset does not allow us without an enormous amount of time investment which we haven't been able to to come to population calculation. So we've just taken the diversity motive, diversity curve again, and this is the curve that we came up with. And again, you see the stylistic diversity rises with the beginning of the neolithic then comes to a tipping point and then drops again. So we suggest the same social mechanisms are in operation. We have rigid societies at the beginning. Then those societies become more diverse in their social thinking as I said is an aggregate component and then those societies towards the end become rigid again. We were all surprised that this corresponds well to the precipitation curve in the area, but we don't have any explanation for it right now. We need to adjust the chronology a bit to see what is actually behind it. So, all right. We see that these, if I can now, I'm almost there. We see that the social diversity curve is a force operating in itself and here it is again somewhat linked to the precipitation curve something we cannot really describe right now. It may just be that, you know, the drop periods were infavorable for these super farming societies and the more it rained until it rained too much those societies were able to grow in a way and then it became drier again and the societies turned to rigidity. We'll have to see. All right. The next level as I said emerged in the perispacing to our dens and then moved westward or eastward. These were agri-pastoralists. They have clear-sighted hierarchies status-markers, elites at least for the early periods, and marked social hierarchies, particularly evident from the genetic work right now. This is the simple curve that we came up for this period because unfortunately, Michel Spurg is all young eolithic pottery in central Germany. It's very simple. There's almost no decoration. It's just form variation and we cannot come up with a high motive resolution as we have for the previous 2000 years. So we're stopped really simply with a coarse pottery chronology but it also follows basically the same template that we've seen before. We have an early simple pottery tradition then it becomes more diverse with forms and then it drops again to a very simple, just a few starts at the very end and then combined with the site number count sort of population proxy. It's not the same, unfortunately, the same methodology as we applied for the previous 2000 years cannot be applied here anymore but we see the same general dynamics happen and they also can be linked to the same final proxy and through it gets all the way prior and the final point is just like with the LBK is linked to a brief draw period. So we come up with this three cycle model and we propose that social dynamics out of the data, hard data that went from the LBK, that social dynamics really are the forcing agent for the entire three cycle early to young Neolithic data that we have in central Europe. Thank you very much. I must, I'm not through yet. The second part of our talk how much really can be calculated to social components in general is being presented by my colleague Kai Wilts in session 140. I don't want to instruct you obviously I just thought I'll let you know in room CCCB 11a there Kai comes up he uses a different data set but the same cycles and came up with an idea of how to calculate the percentage of the social component in those cyclical movements.