Living Well Together investigates the development of the Neolithic in southeast and central Europe from 6500-3500 cal BC with special reference to the manifestations of settling down. A collection of reports and comments on recent fieldwork in the region, Living Well Together? provides 14 tightly written and targeted papers presenting interpretive discussions from important excavations and reassessments of our understanding of the Neolithic. Each paper makes a significant contribution to existing knowledge about the period, and the book, like its companion (Un)settling the Neolithic (Oxbow 2005) will be a benchmark text for work in this region. The reports in Living Well Together? play out the critical questions posed in the earlier volume: how should one interpret settlement; what of the difference between tells and flat sites; what do we mean by permanent occupation; can we avoid the assumptions that underlie claims for year-round residence or seasonal occupation; why, in some regions and at some times, did people maintain residence for so many generations that monumental tell settlements grew to dominate the visual and social landscape; what would a viewshed analysis of tells reveal; what are the dynamics of households in Neolithic Greece; how should we see the emergence of pottery in terms of material culture; and what were the origins of the LBK, and how can we understand its development? The volume's authors have succeeded in attacking existing thought, in provoking new discussion and in creating new paths to understanding the nature of human existence in the Neolithic. Together they set a new agenda for studying the Neolithic across and beyond southeastern and central Europe.

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• 1. Living well together? Questions of definition and scale in the Neolithic of south-east and central Europe
  • First farmers, settlement, colonisation, and origins of the Neolithic
  • Issues of scale
  • Definition/terminology
  • Boundaries
  • Where are the people?
  • Future research
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
• 2. Ilıpınar and Menteşe: early settlement in the eastern Marmara region
  • Introduction
  • Buildings and village layout at Ilıpınar
  • Buildings and village layout at Menteşe
  • Burying the dead
  • Dating evidence
  • Acknowledgements
  • Bibliography
• 3. Household dynamics and variability in the Neolithic of Greece: the case for a bottom-up approach
  • Household and variability: some theoretical considerations
  • Household variability in Neolithic Greece
  • Household morphology
  • Household activity
  • Household ideology
  • Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Bibliography
• 4. Tell settlements: a pattern of landscape occupation in the Lower Danube
  • Introduction
  • Context
  • Research objectives
  • Tell settlements and the floodplain
  • Tell settlement connections
  • Around the Vităneşti tell
  • Conclusions
  • Catalogue of Neolithic tells in western Muntenia
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
• 5. Late Neolithic spatial differentiation at Polgár-Csőszhalom, eastern Hungary
  • Introduction
  • Tell settlements
  • Horizontal settlements and circular ditches
  • The relationship between tells and horizontal settlements
  • Ditch and palisades: the Linear Pottery culture
  • Lengyel culture ditch systems
  • Polgár-Csőszhalom in the late Neolithic of the Carpathian Basin
  • Differential uses of space: tell and external settlement
  • Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
• 6. Uivar: a late Neolithic–early Eneolithic fortified tell site in western Romania
  • Aim and scope of the project
  • The site of Uivar
  • Defensive system
  • Domestic architecture
  • Ritual practice in and around the settlement
  • Finds and regional context
  • Dating
  • Environmental evidence and economic issues
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Bibliography
• 7. Meet the ancestors: settlement histories in the Neolithic
  • Introduction
  • Pioneer communities
  • The single-household site
  • The hamlet
  • The village
  • Discussion
  • Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
• 8. The view from the village: the context of tell mapping and habitual visibility
  • Introduction
  • The contribution of a landscape approach to tell research
  • A GIS-based approach to landscape
  • A research method for tell landscapes
  • A case study of six tells in southern Romania
  • A framework for interpretation
  • The social significance of the observed patterns
  • Conclusions
  • Note
  • Bibliography
• 9. Early Neolithic pottery production in Romania: Gura Baciului and Şeuşa La-Cărarea Morii (Transylvania) - Michela Spataro
  • Introduction
  • The project
  • The Transylvanian sites: Gura Baciului
  • Şeuşa La-Cărarea Morii
  • Technological choices
  • Starčevo-Criş: continuity in vessel production?
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
• 10. Material culture traditions and identity
  • Introduction
  • Traditions and pottery manufacture
  • Pottery
  • Early Neolithic pottery production in the Carpathian Basin: an archaeometric approach
  • Pottery, seasonality and mobility
  • Discussion
  • Bibliography
• 11. Sedentary pastoral gatherers in the early Neolithic: architectural, botanical, and zoological evidence for mobile economies from Foeni-Salaş, south-west Romania
  • Introduction
  • The site of Foeni-Salaş
  • Physical geography and surroundings
  • Taphonomy
  • Main stratigraphic sequence
  • Starčevo-Criş features
  • Reconstructing structure type and location
  • Chronology
  • Architecture
  • Faunal evidence for mobility
  • Harvest profiles and settlement mobility
  • Paleobotanical analysis
  • Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
• 12. Crop husbandry and its social significance in the Körös and LBK cultures
  • Introduction
  • Archaeobotanical evidence for crop husbandry at Ecsegfalva Site 23
  • The social importance of cultivation in the Körös and LBK periods
  • Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
• 13. Inter-generational transmission of culture and LBK origins: some indications from eastern-central Europe
  • Introduction
  • Inter-generational transmission of culture
  • Material culture, identity, habitus, and agency
  • Models of inter-generational transmission of cultural knowledge
  • Comments on the indigenist versus the integrationist approach
  • Mesolithic settlement
  • Earliest LBK
  • Vedrovice: a case study in east-central Europe
  • Vedrovice and the models of inter-generational transmission of cultural knowledge
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Bibliography
• 14. The boundary in western Transdanubia: variations of migration and adaptation
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
• 15. Perspectives on the beginnings of the earliest LBK in east-central Europe
  • Introduction
  • Houses and internal organisation of the settlements
  • Internal organisation of the settlement
  • Micro-regional structures
  • Conclusions about the beginnings of the LBK
  • Bibliography