De mains méridionales en mains septentrionales

Abstract

This article looks anew at the ways in which Mediterranean know-how and artefacts reached Neolithic Northern France, around 5100 BC. An examination of the contexts, the nature and the rate of propagation of such transfers suggests that settlement was the vector of transmission of material culture from south to north. The operative hypotheses are as follows : First of all, that the Mediterranean part of the linear band culture of the Parisian Basin is not the product of direct exchanges but is the legacy of an earlier encounter of the two cultures in a different spatial context (which cannot be placed or dated with any precision). Secondly, that Mediterranean traditions were carried by actual individuals initially linked with cardial ceramics, mingled with people linked to banded ceramics, and this heterogeneous group moved up to settle in the Parisian Basin. And finally that the enhanced Mediterranean influences detectable in the culture that followed the Line Band culture chronologically in the Parisian basin (the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain) are a sign of regional settlement of populations originally hailing from the south, be it Burgundy or around Clermont-Farrand. In this context, the Parisian basin Neolithic seems historically to have been the product of a merging of the two major western Neolithic cultures : Line Band and Cardial.

Keywords

• Bone tools
• Cardial
• Ceramics
• Cultural transmission processes
• France
• Line Band