Abstract
Investigation of human diet during the Neolithic has often been limited to a few archaeological cultures or single sites. In order to provide insight into the development of human food consumption and husbandry strategies, our study explores bone collagen carbon and nitrogen isotope data from 466 human and 105 faunal individuals from 26 sites in central Germany. It is the most extensive data set to date from an enclosed geographic microregion, covering 4,000 years of agricultural history from the Early Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age. The animal data show that a variety of pastures and dietary resources were explored, but that these changed remarkably little over time. In the human δ15N however we found a significant increase with time across the different archaeological cultures. This trend could be observed in all time periods and archaeological cultures (Bell Beaker phenomenon excluded), even on continuously populated sites. Since there was no such trend in faunal isotope values, we were able largely to exclude manuring as the cause of this effect. Based on the rich interdisciplinary data from this region and archaeological period we can argue that meat consumption increased with the increasing duration of farming subsistence.In δ13C, we could not observe any clear increasing or decreasing trends during the archaeological time periods, either for humans or for animals, which would have suggested significant changes in the environment and landscape use. We discovered sex-related dietary differences, with males of all archaeological periods having higher δ15N values than females, and an age-related increasing consumption of animal protein. An initial decrease of δ15N-values at the age of 1–2 years reveals partial weaning, while complete weaning took place at the age of 3–4 years.
Highlights
Dietary evolution is fundamental to human history [1]
The results of the stable isotope analyses are consistent with epidemiological data on caries frequency, which indicate the highest proportions of carbohydrates in the human diet in the Early Neolithic (EN) and the lowest in the Early Bronze Age (EBA) [19]
These findings may have been due to an increased consumption of either meat or dairy products
Summary
Dietary evolution is fundamental to human history [1]. Throughout most of that history, people lived as hunter-gatherers and used a range of plants and animals in their natural environment. The beginning of agriculture and animal husbandry irreversibly resulted in the most radical change in human economic and subsistence strategies and the largest social modification in the history of humankind [2]. There is evidence for large-scale migrations at the end of the Neolithic and in the Early Bronze Age in the form of fundamental changes in the archaeological record [7,12]. These ground-breaking insights into population dynamics in central Europe raise fundamental questions regarding their impact on human subsistence strategies during the Neolithic, starting with the establishment of the food-producing economic system and ending in the Early Bronze Age
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