Lietuvos archeologija

The Sub-Neolithic hunter-gatherer-fisher (HGF) groups and Corded Ware (CW) agro-pastoral group interactions within the Lithuanian portion of the Neman Basin around ~3000 BC did not follow the same patterns of agriculturalisation seen elsewhere in Europe during Neolithization. The variation of interaction in this agricultural frontier zone provides valuable insight into the way information exchange between groups drives the exchange of intercultural information and how information exchange between groups ultimately the adaptive morphogenesis of culture. This article’s primary author has already studied this outlier behaviour and the Unified Agricultural Frontier Model (UAFM) was proposed in volume 45 of this journal (Troskosky et al. 2019). The article presented in this volume is a companion piece to the 2019 publication which further explains and tests the mechanics underlying the UAFM. The UAFM applies self-organised criticality (SOC) to the hypothesis that marked cultural shifts are most likely to occur in response to increased levels of stress affect within a society. Stress affect is defined as the dissonance between encultured expectations of reality and phenomenologically lived reality within a population. To test this hypothesis, The Arithmetic Logarithm Illustrating Cultural Exchange (ALICE) model was developed; it provides confirmation that information exchange drives the behaviour of the UAFM across frontier zones. This model provides strong computational confirmation that information drives the behaviour of the UAFM across frontier zones. Theoretically, ALICE supports a general model for information flow between different cultures, facilitating corresponding cultural changes across any frontier. It models how increased levels of stress affect within interacting groups can lead to shifts of societal behaviour marked by a pattern of periods of equilibrium alternating

The aim of the article is to outline the causes, mechanisms, and course of the Neolithisation process in South-Eastern Poland, as seen from a global (macro-) and local (microregional) perspective. It has been assumed that the most effective tool for analyzing this process on a macro scale is a set of concepts and rules constituting the theory of globalization (Hodos 2017). Cultural analysis (Wuthnow 1987), on the other hand, considers conflict as the main driving force of deep changes on a micro scale. Globalization is a form of connectivity that is the price humans pay to access resources that satisfy their desire for status and wellbeing. A common human pursuit is the desire to achieve a higher status and to improve one’s own wellbeing. People, realizing their intentions and aspirations, enter into conflicts which can potentially be one of the main sources of crises, and thus also of cultural change.

South-Eastern Lithuanian Stone Age pottery reflects the way of life, nutrition, social status, artistic expression, and intercommunity relationships of its creators and users. Natural conditions unfavourable for the survival of organic material and the intermingling of artefacts from different periods in sandy settlements limit the ability to precisely date and reconstruct the long, distinctive process of Neolithisation that began in the late 6th millennium bc. Analysing the traces of ceramic vessel use, the structure of the pottery, the coiling and decoration technologies, their changes and reasons, it is possible to understand better the traditions of the Forest Neolithic communities and the encounters of different influences in SE Lithuania.