Models of population and resource pressure to explain developments such as
technological innovation, increasing cultural complexity and competition and
warfare, have been commonly used in studies of the earlier neolithic
(Bandkeramik and early TRB) of Central Europe, in the
fifth and fourth millennia bc. The usefulness of such models is questioned
for this period, with reference in particular to Central Germany. After
initial colonization, there was no simple pattern of continuous settlement
expansion; rather, initially widespread settlement developed generally into
a more aggregated pattern, with a contraction of the settlement area and
virtually no internal or external expansion of settlement. Models of
environmental change or resource exhaustion to explain these developments
are also challenged, and emphasis placed on social and subsistence changes
which provided the impetus for the dynamics of the settlement pattern.
Changes in settlement, with the emergence of larger villages and enclosures,
culminating in the appearance of major enclosure sites and a break in
settlement continuity in the early TRB, are linked with other developments;
the regionalization of culture, changes in material culture and burial
types, and social organization. The origins of the settlement and social
patterns in this period can be seen, not in the changes forced by external
factors, but in the internal developments of the neolithic groups
themselves.