Agriculture and Environment at Servia
pages prepared by R.N.L.B.Hubbard
The prehistoric environment
At Servia the Haliakmon flows in a
wide valley that lies several hundred metres below the surrounding uplands, and
which gives it a fairly mild winter climate. The soils are deep, calcareous,
well-drained, and fertile. Pollen analyses from other places in Greece show
that, like most equivalent parts of temperate Europe, it was originally covered
in mixed oak woodland. Direct evidence about the environment from the
excavations comes from charcoal, and from the fruits
of wild plants that were collected by the occupants of the prehistoric
settlement. A cast in burnt daub recorded oak leaves, but this gives no
indication of the extent of the woodland, just that oaks of the Quercus
pedunculifolia-robur group were present in the Middle Neolithic. Indirect
evidence comes from terrestrial snail faunas and
wild animal bones. Also, the architecture of the
site bears witness to the ready availability of wood throughout the Neolithic
and Bronze Age occupations.
The first, (late) Early Neolithic,
settlement was a few hundred metres east of the main prehistoric site, where the
river runs wide but shallow, and is relatively easily forded. The vegetation may
have been thinner here, but it seems likely that the danger of flooding soon led
the villagers to move up to the spur of limestone above the perennial spring,
where the river is constricted. This marshy lower area would have been
well-suited to the retting of flax, which was grown from the beginning.
The main settlement would have been
surrounded (where it did not face the river) by wildwood, in which deciduous
oaks predominated. The site probably was at the focus of a scatter of fields,
clearings, and glades a couple of kilometres in diameter, which spread (as time
passed and the settlement grew) to the south along the line of communication
towards the modern town of Servia.
Opposite the site on the other side
of the river are low rocky hillsides, whose shallow soils would always have
supported thinner vegetation, and probably carried a higher proportion of the
wild fruit trees that the natives exploited.
Agriculture and pastoralism
Pastoralism
The initial results of the
archaeozoological investigations confirmed that the usual south-eastern European
Neolithic repertoire of farm animals were represented - mainly sheep, with some
goats; pigs; and some cattle. Hunting was responsible for a minority of the
large mammal bones, but perhaps somewhat higher proportions than found at
comparable sites.
Agriculture
The Middle and earlier Late Neolithic
periods in Greece are distinguished by a remarkably diverse repertoire of crops.
Apart from the millets, chick peas, broad beans, rye, oats, and bread wheat,
almost every common crop plant is recorded as having been grown to some extent
at some time, and most of them were being grown simultaneously most of the time.
It gives the impression of a stable and prosperous agricultural economy, well
capable of producing the surpluses that the luxury items found in the
excavations imply.
Although the archaeobotany of Servia
seems to record a considerable degree of continuity, there are certain
widespread patterns that seem to indicate pulses of new human immigration, or at
the least, innovation. For instance peas, two-seeded
einkorn, two-row hulled barley, and bitter
vetch, together with the absence of six-row
naked barley distinguish the Early Neolithic agriculture from all but
the earliest phases of the Middle Neolithic. Peas and bitter vetch re-appear in
the Late Neolithic, possibly accompanying vine. Given the tendency of people to
be very conservative about what they eat, it seems not unlikely that these
agricultural patterns sometimes reflect movement of human populations.
In general, the agriculture of Neolithic Servia bears the distinct similarity with that of Thessaly that one would expect from the similarities in the pottery traditions. However, there are enough differences that one must expect generalisations of this kind to need modification in the light of further information.
Food is not the only thing in life,
even though it is rather essential, nor are edible plants the only ones whose
remains appear on archaeological sites. Flax (Linum)
yields both oil from its seeds and fibre from its stems (but not usually both at
the same time - the stems are harvested before the seeds are ripe when linen is
to be made). The record of Linum throughout Europe and the Near East is
sporadic, with voluminous finds and odd specimens turning up erratically from
the earliest times. This is because the way it is used means that it is not
normally exposed to the fossilising processes of archaeology, and is
consequently severely under-represented. The same appears to be true of broad
beans (Vicia faba), which seem to have been eaten green and under-ripe as
a mange tout vegetable until Iron Age times. Thus we cannot be certain
that broad beans were not being grown and eaten at Servia, although there is no
record of them at present in Neolithic Greece. They were found in early contexts
in Cyprus (Khirokitia) and south Italy (Rendina), so their use would not be
improbable. The discovery of a single broad bean impression from a Middle
Neolithic context in Greece would imply that broad beans were 'there, but
invisible' at Servia and elsewhere.
Vine and coriander are plants found at Servia that seem to have been imported initially, and later cultivated locally.
Finally, there are the weed seeds. These, of course, represent the ecology of fields, which partly reflect the local ecology, but mainly agriculture. As such, the weed seeds found in prehistoric sites throughout Europe are rather monotonous, as one is seeing the plants that can exploit the possibilities of this kind of niche, which are carried back to the site with the crops, and which are liable to be burned as the various inedible components of the crops are removed by parching, threshing, sieving, and winnowing.
Among the weeds, we may also treat (for convenience) the remains of other wild
plants, not associated with agricultural activities, which have found their way
onto fires, and thence to rubbish deposits. They involve a few tree taxa
recorded in the Early Neolithic deposits.
Early Neolithic Middle Neolithic Late Neolithic