ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the region in the northern border area of the Alps, stretching from the western Alps over the French Jura, to eastern Bavaria. The few sites with quantifiable archaeobotanical investigations from the Austrian pre-alpine areas are treated in Kohler-Schneider. In the second half of the 5th millennium BC there are new developments in the area. Several locally restricted cultural groups are traceable in the archaeological material in the area concerned. All the cultural groups show influences partly from the west and partly from the east, although the relative contribution from each differs depending on the region in question. Knowledge of these archaeological details is a fundamental element of this chapter, the main goals of which are to provide an analytical synthesis and to examine how the cultivated plant, spectrum reflects relative eastern and western cultural influences. The chapter considers almost exclusively site-based data derived from the identification of plant macro-remains.
