ABSTRACT
In the period immediately preceding the introduction of agriculture and a food-producing economy into south-east and central Europe there existed groups of food-gatherers scattered over a variety of terrains. They were distributed especially along the banks of rivers and lakes in areas of sand dunes, and the foothills of mountains, but avoided the loess plains of Europe. In some areas they survived alongside the earliest of the food-producing groups, but there is rarely any evidence to indicate that there was contact between the two. For most of the postglacial food-gathering, or mesolithic, settlements, dating evidence is lacking. In some cases it is possible to relate them to the climatic/vegetational periods of northern Europe from the evidence provided by the pollen remains in the habitation debris. For the most part, however, attempts to construct a chronological framework for these settlements have been based on the morphological classification of their chipped stone tools.
