Abstract
The appearance of farming, from its inception in the Near East around 12000 years ago, finally reached the northwestern extremes of Europe by the fourth millennium BC or shortly thereafter. Various models have been invoked to explain the Neolithization of northern Europe; however, resolving these different scenarios has proved problematic due to poor faunal preservation and the lack of specificity achievable for commonly applied proxies. Here, we present new multi-proxy evidence, which qualitatively and quantitatively maps subsistence change in the northeast Atlantic archipelagos from the Late Mesolithic into the Neolithic and beyond. A model involving significant retention of hunter-gatherer-fisher influences was tested against one of the dominant adoptions of farming using a novel suite of lipid biomarkers, including dihydroxy fatty acids, v-(o-alkylphenyl)-alkanoic acids and stable carbon isotope signatures of individual fatty acids preserved in cooking vessels. These new findings, together with archaeozoo-logical and human skeletal collagen bulk stable carbon isotope proxies, unequivocally confirm rejection of marine resources by early farmers coinciding with the adoption of intensive dairy farming. This pattern of Neolithization contrasts markedly to that occurring contemporaneously in the Baltic, suggesting that geographically distinct ecological and cultural influences dictated the evolution of subsistence practices at this critical phase of European prehistory.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 20132822 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
Volume | 281 |
Issue number | 1780 |
Early online date | 12 Feb 2014 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 7 Apr 2014 |
Bibliographical note
We are grateful to the following for providing samples and advice: Mike Parker Pearson; Tim Darvill; Tom Dawson; Shetland Museum and Archives; UHI, Orkney College; National Museums, Scotland; Manx National Heritage; Museum nan Eilean (Stornoway); Clive Waddington and Archaeological Research Services Ltd; and Jersey Heritage. We are grateful to Ian Armit, Fiona Shapland and Historic Scotland for stable isotope data and radiocarbon dates obtained for Iron Age Scotland. We are grateful to Alison Kuhl and James Williams for technical support. We also thank Mark Thomas for very useful discussions and the anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on the manuscript.Funding statement
This research was funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NE/F021054/1), with research on the Irish material funded by EU FP7 (Marie Curie Actions) under REA grant agreement no. 273462.
Keywords
- Archaeology
- Biomarkers
- Lipids
- Neolithic diet
- Pottery
- Stable carbon isotopes