News: European hunter‑gatherers ate a more diverse diet than previously thought

News from the wires, our occasional series on recent history and archaeology research...

Prehistoric Europeans had surprisingly complex cuisines, new research shows. 

Example of Mesolithic pot used in the study.
Credit: Lara González Carreteri
(CC-BY-4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)


Thousands of years ago, European communities used a variety of plant and animal products to create elaborate meals, according to a study by Lara González Carretero of the University of York and colleagues.

A common technique for interpreting the diets of ancient cultures involves analyzing fatty residues in ancient pottery. This method is limited, however, as it mostly provides insights only into animal remains. In this study in PLoS One, the authors combined multiple techniques, including microscopic examination and chemical analysis, to identify the remains of plants that were eaten by ancient European hunter-gatherers.

Researchers examined organic remains found in 58 pieces of pottery uncovered at 13 archaeological sites across Northern and Eastern Europe dating between the 6th and 3rd millennium BC. This approach recovered tissue samples of a wide variety of plants, including grasses, berries, leaves, and seeds. In many cases, plant remains were found alongside those of animals, most often fish and other seafood. The exact mixtures and ingredients varied from region to region, most likely reflecting which resources were locally available as well as local cultural practices.

The findings emphasize the important role of plants and aquatic foods in the diets of early Europeans. They also support the idea that these communities regularly used pottery technology for food preparation and that each culture had their own complex culinary traditions. The research demonstrates that combining multiple analytical techniques can yield detailed insights overlooked by traditional methods, particularly when it comes to the plants that ancient peoples were eating.

Experimental cooking with modern replica pottery vessels to recreate prehistoric recipes.
Credit: Lara González Carreteri (CC-BY-4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)

The authors add: “While conventional chemical analysis tends to highlight the animal-based components of ancient meals, our combined microscopic approach has brought these prehistoric recipes back into focus. We found that hunter-gatherer-fishers were not living on fish alone; they were actively processing and consuming a wide variety of plants."

See the full study.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Victorian post boxes

Image
Familiar, but not mundane They are among our most familiar items of street furniture; indeed there are more than 115,000 throughout the UK. Yet how many of us walk past a post box without considering how long it might have been there? Letter boxes have been a feature of our streets since the 1850s, when demand for postal services grew following the introduction of the Penny Post in 1840. The novelist Anthony Trollope is remembered as the Post Office official responsible for recommending the introduction of pillar boxes to allow easier posting of private letters. These were first installed on the Channel Islands in 1852, though were introduced to the mainland the following year. Wall boxes started to appear a few years later. Early boxes were green, but red had become the standard colour by 1879. Here are a selection of boxes, both pillar and wall variety, bearing the VR (Victoria Regina) cipher of Queen Victoria. Enjoy a little slice of everyday Victorian history: Abingdon wall b...
Read more

Meeting the Tandragee Idol

Image
My first encounter with the Tandragee stone idol was with a replica in the Ulster Museum in Belfast. Replica in Ulster Museum (author's photo, all rights reserved) This curious little figure probably caught my eye because of its name, Tandragee being the village best known as the Northern Irish home of Tayto potato crisps. Peering at the figure a little more closely it seemed to be clutching its left arm (so I thought) with what looked like a smile, sitting beside another stone figure of a bear-like animal. I was astonished to discover that the original Tandragee idol wasn’t in another museum but had a much more unlikely home. Beneath a plaque commemorating a late 19th century archbishop of Ireland, worshippers and visitors to St Patrick’s Church of Ireland Cathedral in Armagh can see the Tandragee idol in all its glory sitting on a low stone plinth in a side aisle. The cathedral houses other pre-Christian idols in its crypt (judging by photos on Flickr, these have also been on dis...
Read more

Mapping Belfast's hidden river Farset

Image
The Farset is the now mostly underground river that is said to give Belfast its name*. There has been talk of 'daylighting' the river in places, ie uncovering it from its culverted fate to flow openly again. This could boost nature and air quality and also potentially alleviate flood risk. Belfast's underground rivers have been linked to some of the flooding experienced by the city. Most articles about the Farset focus on the stretch from High Street to the Lagan. While it's not universally known that a river of some importance in the city's development once flowed here, I'm betting a fair few High Street shoppers know of its existence underfoot. But on the Google Map below I've expanded outwards to try to map some of the Farset's known locations along its whole course, while guessing at a few more. " The lost river that gave Belfast its name " is an interesting 2013 article from the Belfast Telegraph  which has provided the basis for many ...
Read more