Published August 20, 2020 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Living off the land: Terrestrial-based diet and dairying in the Neolithic Balkans

Authors/Creators

  • 1. BioSense Institute, Novi Sad
  • 2. Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, BioSense Institute Novi Sad
  • 3. Organic Geochemistry Unit, School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
  • 4. Arche´ozoologie, arche´obotanique: Socie´te´ s, Pratiques Environnements (AASPE), CNRS - Muse´um national d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France
  • 5. Department of Biology, Bioscience Technology Facility, University of York, York, United Kingdom
  • 6. BioArch, Department of Archaeology, University of York, York, United Kingdom
  • 7. Target Discovery Institute, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
  • 8. BRAMS Facility, School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom
  • 9. Museum of Vojvodina, Novi Sad, Serbia
  • 10. Museum of Macedonia, Skopje, Macedonia
  • 11. The Town Museum of Sombor, Sombor, Serbia
  • 12. National Museum in Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
  • 13. BioSense Institute, Novi Sad; Laboratory for Bioarchaeology, University of Belgrade

Description

The application of biomolecular techniques to archaeological materials from the Balkans is providing valuable new information on the prehistory of the region. This is especially relevant for the study of the neolithisation process in SE Europe, which gradually affected the rest of the continent. Here, to answer questions regarding diet and subsistence practices in early farming societies in the central Balkans, we combine organic residue analyses of archaeological pottery, taxonomic and isotopic study of domestic animal remains and biomolecular analyses of human dental calculus. The results from the analyses of the lipid residues from pottery suggest that milk was processed in ceramic vessels. Dairy products were shown to be part of the subsistence strategies of the earliest Neolithic communities in the region but were of varying importance in different areas of the Balkan. Conversely, milk proteins were not detected within the dental calculus. The molecular and isotopic identification of meat, dairy, plants and beeswax in the pottery lipids also provided insights into the diversity of diet in these early Neolithic communities, mainly based on terrestrial resources. We also present the first compound-specific radiocarbon dates for the region, obtained directly from absorbed organic residues extracted from pottery, identified as dairy lipids.

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Stojanovski et al. (2020) - Living off the land.pdf

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Additional details

Funding

European Commission
BIRTH - Births, mothers and babies: prehistoric fertility in the Balkans between 10000 – 5000 BC 640557