Dogs, a crane (not duck) and diet at Star Carr: a response to Schulting and Richards

Abstract

In a recent article in this journal, Schulting and Richards (J Archaeol Sci 29 (2002) 327) present new carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of bones from two dogs ( Canis familiaris) and a common crane ( Grus grus) from the early Mesolithic sites of Star Carr and Seamer Carr, in the Vale of Pickering, north-east England (Excavations at Star Carr (1954); The Mesolithic in Europe (1989) 218). These, they argue, undermine my previous suggestion (J Archaeol Sci 23 (1996) 783) that the δ 13C values for the Seamer dog obtained by Clutton-Brock and Noe-Nygaard (J Archaeol Sci 17 (1990) 643) could be explained by consumption not of marine foods, as originally interpreted, but from a diet that included foods from the freshwater carbonate-rich lake. Here I discuss Schulting and Richard's new results and conclude that neither of the Vale of Pickering dogs need necessarily have consumed marine foods. Furthermore, the choice of a crane to test my suggestion that animals feeding on foods from the lake could have elevated δ 13C values is inappropriate because the diet of this bird is unlikely to have included a significant component of freshwater foods. Schulting and Richard's new data do not, therefore, provide evidence for seasonal movement of early Mesolithic human groups between the coast and the inland lake.