Hungarian Neolithic landscapes, crops and diet – Signs of cultural decisions?

Abstract

During the second half of the 6th millennium BC the Transdanubian Linear Pottery Culture (Linearbandkeramik, LBK) spread to a large area of Central Europe. This farming subsistence included parts of an agricultural system characteristic of the Early Neolithic Starčevo-Körös-Çris culture complex, setting at the same time new emphases on crop growing, stock farming and diet. Food culture belongs to the fundamental elements of human social behaviour. The use or refusal of particular crops, domestic animals as well as collected plant and animal foods from the wild is based on different strategies and food traditions and related creative processes needed. Archaeobotanical data allow a comparison of the Early and Middle Neolithic crop spectra from 21 Hungarian Neolithic sites with 39 from the Early Neolithic western LBK in Austria and Germany. The differences found between these groups are discussed and whether they result from the available regional ecological conditions or rather from cultural culinary identities.