Going against the grain? The transition to farming in the Dutch wetlands re-examined (5000–4000 BCE)

In general, the fifth millennium BCE in the Dutch wetlands and southern Scandinavia might be described in similar terms regarding the presence of ceramic hunter-gatherers who evidently had contacts of some kind with central European farming communities. Whereas the end of this millennium saw a relatively swift transition to farming in southern Scandinavia, the Dutch wetlands seem to have taken a different route. Here, the dominant opinion is that of a gradual and earlier start of animal husbandry and cereal cultivation, albeit of a limited economic importance. This contribution will question the Dutch dataset
and discuss new data on the use of ceramics and the date and scale of the start of animal husbandry and cereal cultivation. We conclude that the transition to farming (cereal cultivation and animal husbandry) occurred around 4200 BCE, predating the transition to farming in the UK and southern Scandinavia.