ABSTRACT
The ways in which people built their social environments and managed their natural world during the two millennia after 5500 BC were marked with the continuity, expansion and acceleration of the trends that had developed from the previous millennium. As with the previous millennium there is variation between the different regions in how these changes and continuities occurred. Patterns of behaviour and activity that had developed earlier in other areas now appeared for the first time in new places, as in the emergence of tell villages in northern Bulgaria and southern Romania. In other regions some new developments appear infrequently, if at all, for example, the very limited role of tells in the western Balkans. Acceleration of economic patterns follows a pattern of broader similarities across regions.
