Extensive woodland pasturing supported Pitted Ware Complex livestock management systems: Multi-stable isotope evidence from a Neolithic interaction zone

Abstract

Middle Neolithic Pitted Ware Complex (PWC) groups throughout the Baltic coastal areas of Scandinavia almost exclusively exploited marine resources for their subsistence. However, Pitted Ware communities inhabiting eastern Jutland (Denmark) also heavily relied on domesticated livestock, reflecting their close contacts and interactions with neighboring Funnel Beaker agriculturalists. Whether or not these domesticates were managed using husbandry practices designed to intensively enhance livestock production or herded using more extensive management strategies that may have better articulated with seal hunting, shellfish gathering, and fishing activities remains unknown. Here, multi-stable isotopic analyses conducted on bone collagen and enamel apatite from wild and domesticated animal species recovered from Pitted Ware sites in Djursland indicate that hunters regularly sought prey that roamed in deeply canopied forests but extensively pastured their livestock under lightly canopied woodlands while also grazing some animals in more open habitats at moderately high stocking rates. Cattle may have been grazed on crop stubble after the summer harvest but were not fed grassy hay or agricultural by-products during the winter season. Instead, they were provided with leaf fodder sourced from diverse woodland pastures. The use of extensive pasturing regimes for livestock by PWC groups fitted well with the intensive exploitation of marine mammals, fishes, and shellfish as part of a highly resilient, sustainable subsistence complex.