Plenty of food but no stones and metals

Abstract

This study examines the socio-cultural development of northwestern Banat during the Neolithic and Eneolithic, from the perspective of resource use. The region’s fertile soils and abundant food resources, but the lack of stone sources or metal ores, provide an ideal setting for investigating local exploitation of resources and long-distance exchange. An interdisciplinary analysis of floral, faunal, soil, lithic, and metallic resources reveals that changes in resource availability and exploitation were closely intertwined with transformations in settlement patterns, architecture, social organisation, burial customs, subsistence, and craft production. Resource use thus provides an important analytical framework for understanding the processes of socio-cultural transformation.