, 2013, Forenbaher and Miracle, 2006, Greenfield, 2008, Legge and Moore, 2011, Manning et al., 2013, Miracle and Forenbaher, 2006, Özdoğan, 2011, Tringham and Krstić, 1990 and Tringham, 2000). Furthermore, current research suggests that the diffusion of food production was not a simple, straightforward process; different regions underwent distinct histories with varying types of farming

adaptations. In some parts of the Balkans, farming appears as a ‘package’ with a full commitment to plant and animal husbandry as a subsistence system and substantial villages with centuries click here (and in some cases millennia) of occupation (e.g., Bailey, 2000, Legge and Moore, 2011, Marijanović, 2009, Moore et al., 2007 and Perlès, 2001). Other areas display a much greater diversity in both subsistence practices and degree of sedentism, such as in the Iron Gates region, where settled farming communities along the Danube emphasized aquatic resources (Bonsall et al., 2008), or parts of Romania where semi-sedentary pastoral gatherers interacted with more sedentary farmers (Greenfield and Jongsma, 2008), and possibly with indigenous hunter-gatherer groups (Bailey, 2000, Borić and Price, 2013 and Tringham, 2000). The connections between these regions and the

variations in the mechanisms are selleck kinase inhibitor still a matter of debate. Cultural affinities based on ceramic styles point to the Balkans as a departure point for farming traditions throughout Europe, with interior trajectories exemplified by people who produced

Starčevo pottery toward central Europe, and Mediterranean linkages in the form of Impresso wares (pottery decorated with shell and non-shell impressions) throughout the Adriatic and into the Western Mediterranean ( Rowley-Conwy, Uroporphyrinogen III synthase 2011; see also Manning et al., 2013). In this way, the Balkan Peninsula is an ideal area to examine the varied effects of agricultural production on landscapes, human and animal populations, and issues of degradation. This diversity, however, also poses some key challenges in identifying regional trends within the forest of specific or local historicity. In all cases, early farming villages in the Balkans share some basic features of sedentary life and reliance on domesticated plants and animals for subsistence. Specifics in the relative proportions of domestic species in bone assemblages from these sites, the contribution of wild species to diets, and the interplay between species reflect not only variations in cultural adaptations but also ecological dynamics in interior and coastal regions. Table 1 and Fig. 2 summarize the available published data on the relative proportions of wild and domestic animals at a number of Early Neolithic villages in the region.