Research Towards a social geography of cultivation and plant use in an early farming community: Vaihingen an der Enz, south-west Germany Amy Bogaard 1 , R¨ udiger Krause 2 & Hans-Christoph Strien 3 Through integrated analysis of archaeo- botanical and artefactual distributions across a settlement, the authors discover ‘neigh- bourhoods’ using different cultivation areas in the surrounding landscape. Differences between groups also emerge over the life of the settlement in the use of special plants, such as opium poppy and feathergrass. Spatial configurations of cultivation and plant use map out the shifting social geographies of a Neolithic community. Keywords: Germany, Vaihingen an der Enz, Neolithic, LBK, agriculture, archaeobotany, plant use, poppy Introduction In this paper we consider how early farming practice and plant use articulated with social relationships — within an individual longhouse, a household group or neighbourhood, local community or wider regional network. Although the material culture of the early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik (LBK) is remarkably uniform over its enormous geographical range, from Ukraine to the Paris basin, close artefactual analysis suggests a complex web of identities that variously bound communities together and threatened to break them apart. A large archaeobotanical dataset resulting from extensive sampling of a virtually complete 1 School of Archaeology, 36 Beaumont Street, Oxford, OX1 2PG, UK (Email: amy.bogaard@arch.ox.ac.uk) 2 Institut f¨ ur Arch¨ aologische Wissenschaften, Vor- und Fr¨ uhgeschichte, Gr¨ uneburgplatz 1, 60323 Frankfurt (Main), Germany 3 Altbachstr. 30, 53501 Grafschaft, Germany Received: 28 May 2010; Accepted: 9 August 2010; Revised 20 August 2010 ANTIQUITY 85 (2011): 395–416 http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/085/ant0850395.htm 395