International Symposium 

The Carpathian Basin and Its Role in the Neolithisation of the Balkan Peninsula 

Sibiu, 18-20 mai 2007 

The neolithization of south-eastern Europe: hunter's and farmer's cultural and populational trajectories

prof.dr. Miha Budja

The transition to farming in south-eastern Europe is discussed as the palimpsest relates to artefact assemblages, subsistence and archaeogenetic data. We suggest that the dispersal of farming was embedded in the existing, regional pre-Neolithic social structures.  It was set by networks of social relationships and contacts, as well as the traditional, socially and culturally defined principles of inter-generational and inter-community transmission of knowledge. People, through contact, local and/or regional mobility, provided the agency for selective incorporation of innovations such as cultigens, domesticates and pottery, and in a social context allowed for changes to the structural framework.