Zoom lecture: Peter Rowley-Conwy — Leaping North: immigrant farmers in Britain and Western Europe
Archaeology and ancient DNA have recently demonstrated that farming arrived in Britain and western Europe with immigrant farmers, not through adoption by local hunter-gatherers. This means that we need to consider the actual process of farming migration: how did people travel with cattle, pigs, sheep, and stores of wheat and barley?
Work in the western Mediterranean shows ‘leapfrog colonisation’ by boat along the coast past pockets of local hunter-gatherers. Britain may be similar: the Irish Sea saw early colonisation from Cornwall to Wales, western Scotland and Northern Ireland. Pockets of hunter-gatherers may have been bypassed in the north Pennines and Outer Hebrides. The boats used must have been more sophisticated than we previously suspected.
Peter Rowley-Conwy is an emeritus professor of environmental archaeology at Durham University. He specialises in hunter-gatherers and the transition to agriculture. He has worked on Mesolithic and Neolithic animal bones in various parts of Europe including Denmark, Italy and Portugal, and the Middle East.
Online event via Zoom.