distinctive regional traditions

[P Prentice]

....I feel it would be more useful to gather data in big databases, then ask the databases whether such theories could have been so.


How about thousands of charred grains that were artificially manured and irrigated. How could a nomadic people produce these? Unless of course they set up automatic irrigation/ manuring machinery?

In your eluded ritual-based economy, what were the people eating?

when will the databases be big enough? where's the fun in that - for us?
thousands of charred grains artificially manured??
i am happy to talk about a diverse neolithic with discreet areas of semi permanent settlement where pioneer agriculturalists from europe set up farmsteads or took to shepherding amongst the mesolithic indiginous. i would see the production of cereal crop as a much later development that slowly spread from the later neolithic. i think the transition was mostly about controling livestock and the slow process of transforming the wildwood into fodder.
ritual based economy?? not ever