Data papers

The Cultural Evolution of Neolithic Europe. EUROEVOL Dataset 1: Sites, Phases and Radiocarbon Data

Authors:

Katie Manning
Email Katie Manning
Sue Colledge
Enrico Crema
Stephen Shennan
Adrian Timpson

Katie Manning, University College London, United Kingdom
ORCID
My research centres on the human response to climatic change and the evolution of dietary specialization in the context of Neolithic Europe and Africa. I am the co-editor of 'African Pottery Roulettes Past and Present: Techniques, Identification and Distribution' and 'The Origins and Spread of Domestic Animals in Southwest Asia and Europe'
Sue Colledge, University College London, United Kingdom
My research focusses on the archaeobotany of early prehistoric sites in southwest Asia and Europe, particularly the management and use of plants prior to and following the inception of Neolithic farming. I am the co-editor of the 'The Origins and Spread of Domestic Plants in Southwest Asia and Europe' and 'The Origins and Spread of Domestic Animals in Southwest Asia and Europe'.
Enrico Crema, University College London, UK, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
I am interested in how biological and cultural processes can shape human history. I obtained my PhD at UCL Institute of Archaeology, where I worked on a thesis on prehistoric settlement pattern in Japan. I then got a post-doc in the EUROEVOL project, where I explored how cultural evolutionary theory can help understand Neolithic Europe by applying a variety of bespoke statistical and computational techniques. My current project seeks to understand the coevolution of human and plant communities in Northern Japan during the mid-Holocene.
Stephen Shennan, University College London, United Kingdom
I am Professor of Theoretical Archaeology at University College London. I have long-standing interests in the Neolithic and Bronze Age prehistory of Europe but since the late 1980s my research has been mainly focussed on exploring the use of method and theory from the study of biological evolution to understand cultural stability and change as an evolutionary process. I was the principal investigator of the project "Cultural Evolution of Neolithic Europe", funded by a European Research Council Advanced Grant. My books include 'Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution' (edited), Genes, Memes and Human History', and 'Quantifying Archaeology'.
Adrian Timpson, University College London, United Kingdom
Adrian Timpson is a Research Associate in the Department of Genetics, Evolution, and Environment at UCL. He has broad interests in all sciences, although recent work has focused on modelling, computer simulation and bespoke statistical analysis in the fields of population genetics and archaeology. Recent posts include the ERC funded ‘EUROEVOL’ and NeoMILK projects.

Abstract

The datasets described in this paper comprise the core spatial and temporal structure of the Cultural Evolution of Neolithic Europe project (EUROEVOL), led by Professor Stephen Shennan, UCL. This is one of three datasets resulting from the EUROEVOL project, the other two comprising the faunal (EUROEVOL Dataset 2) and archaeobotanical (EUROEVOL Dataset 3) data (http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1469811/). The dataset offers the largest repository of archaeological site and radiocarbon data from Neolithic Europe (4,757 sites and 14,053 radiocarbon samples), dating between the late Mesolithic and Early Bronze Age (Figure 1). It also offers the core archaeological information structured at the site and phase level, which provide the primary links between the datasets.

Keywords:

EUROEVOL Neolithic Europe archaeological sites Radiocarbon

Year: 2016
Volume: 5
Page/Article: e2
DOI: 10.5334/joad.40

Published on 15 Feb 2016

Peer Reviewed