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REVIEW BY MS
Migrations are back. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, large-scale population movements were frequently the go-to explanation for the appearance in the archaeological record of new ways of doing things – be it novel building styles, burials, or household goods. This was an era when it was believed that ‘pots equal people’, with shifts in material culture serving as a proxy for shifts in populations. In the second half of the 20th century, though, the penchant for citing migration or invasion as the explanation for such changes fell out of vogue. While migration never truly disappeared from the archaeological narrative, in many cases it was sidelined by an increased interest in trade as a way for goods and ideas to circulate. The link between pots and people was broken.
Today, a whole new set of data are available to tackle this subject. As we enter what has been styled the ‘Third Science Revolution in Archaeology’, techniques such as ancient DNA and isotope analysis are providing stunning insights into the lineages of individuals and the regions where they spent their formative years. The fruits of this work are a level of detail that just a few decades ago seemed entirely out of reach of archaeological methods. The volume under review capitalises on these advances in bioarchaeology by integrating them with more traditional archaeological evidence, while also mixing in anthropological and theoretical perspectives. The result is not simply a return to one-size-fits-all interpretations of pots and people. Instead, the new narratives presented here illustrate the extraordinary complexity of human migration.
Readers are left in no doubt about the significance of such movement to understanding the ebbs and flows of our past. ‘People move’, the text declares at the outset, before going on to observe that ‘the journey of humankind is one of three million years of emigration and immigration. In a way, we could classify the human being as Homo migrans, at least from a long-term perspective.’ Of that journey, this volume focuses on Eurasia during the last 3,000 years BC. The contents consist of individual chapters penned by respected specialists, who tackle topics as varied as ‘Bronze Age travellers’ and ‘marriage, motherhood, and mobility in Bronze and Iron Age central Europe’. These subjects – and many more – are covered in a scholarly style, and the reader will benefit from some pre-existing knowledge of the groups and methods under discussion. Even so, the volume successfully makes a massive body of fresh information available to a wide audience. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the knowledge being opened up by new scientific approaches or in this critical phase in the development of Europe.
One of the great strengths of the holistic approach adopted here is that it allows us to see migrations as they unfold across huge regions, leaving telltale variations in genetic make-up in their wake, while also shedding light on what it meant for individuals living in this world. Looking at the period from 3100-2450 BC, for instance, reveals how at least three – and possibly four – distinct episodes of westwards migration occurred. This left sizeable chunks of Europe experiencing cultural transformation every 150-200 years or so, and that is without factoring in the evidence for further episodes of eastwards migration during this era. Speed can also be eye-opening. Movement traceable from the Black Sea to the Rhine over a period of about 150 years between 3050-2900 BC, for instance, contrasts with the millennium it took Neolithic farming to cover the similar distance from the Aegean to the Rhine.
The spread of Bell Beakers has long been linked to mobility and migration, and here new methods are revealing intriguing insights into society. In Central Europe, for example, males were routinely buried with their heads pointing north, while females were orientated south. Examining aDNA, though, shows that some youthful individuals buried in the male position were biologically female, and vice versa. This has raised various questions about the status of these younger people, including whether ‘some males were raised as females, perhaps because male gender was not ascribed until a certain age or status had been achieved…’.
Being able to see that migration was under way is not the same as understanding what caused it, of course. Here a range of historical and ethnographic parallels can help to narrow the field. It is observed that movements can be influenced by an intricate web of push and pull factors, with the former ranging all the way from war, famine, disease, and forced relocation, through to humiliation and annoyance. As one contribution observed, ‘the basic issue is not whether migration existed, but what are the forms of migration with which we are dealing.’ To have reached this point shows how far archaeology itself has come.
Rethinking migrations in late prehistoric Eurasia
Manuel Fernández-Götz, Courtney Nimura, Philipp Stockhammer, and Rachel Cartwright (eds)
British Academy, £85
ISBN 978-0197267356
