Carbon isotope analysis (δ 13 C) was performed on collagen extracted from 54 domestic cattle (Bos taurus) and 20 red deer (Cervus elaphus) bones from the Neolithic (3913-2586 BC) andBronze Age (1950-950 cal. BC) layers of the lakeshore site Zurich-Mozartstrasse located in the lower Lake Zurich basin, Switzerland. We observed shifts in the δ 13 C of both domestic cattle and red deer over two millennia. Mean δ 13 C values of red deer changed from -24.1 ± 0.7‰ to -22.5 ± 0.3‰, while mean δ 13 C values of domestic cattle showed minor changes from -22.7 ± 1.3‰ to -22.1 ± 0.3‰. Our data suggest that in the early 4 th millennium BC the landscape was densely forested with red deer feeding in closed habitats and cattle grazing in more open landscapes. Forest was also a food resource for some young cattle as indicated by the lower δ 13 C values of non-adult relative to adult animals. This points to a greater diversity of herding strategies and feeding techniques compared to the later periods. The landscape was still rather forested towards the mid-3 rd millennium BC, with no obvious changes in the habitat use of the large herbivores. However, the carbon isotopes suggest a clearly reduced forest cover in the 2 nd millennium BC with red deer using similar open feeding grounds as domestic cattle. Our study demonstrates that the stable carbon isotope composition of © 2015. This manuscript version is made available under the Elsevier user license http://www.elsevier.com/open-access/userlicense/1.0/ archeological bone material from large herbivores can provide integrative constraints on paleoenvironmental and vegetation changes, prehistoric animal management and land-use.

The settlement record of the Neolithic of the northern Alpine foreland is used to address the question of what difference having high-resolution chronology — in this case principally provided by dendrochronology — makes to the kinds of narrative we seek to write about the Neolithic. In a search for detailed histories, three kinds of scale are examined. The longer-term development of cultural patterns and boundaries is found to correlate very imprecisely with the character and architecture of settlements. Individual houses and settlements were generally short-lived, suggesting considerable fluidity in social relations at the local level. Greater continuity can be found in the landscape, perhaps involving more than individual communities. We argue that the particular history of the northern Alpine foreland is best understood by interweaving multiple temporal scales, an approach that will need to be extended to other case studies.

The study of migration within the Roman Empire has been a focus of the bioarchaeological and biogeochemical research during the last decade. The possible association of diet and sex, age, and funerary treatment during the 1 st-4 th centuries AD have been extensively explored in Britain, and Central-Southern Italy. Conversely, no knowledge is available about these processes for the North of the Italian Peninsula. In the present work we analyse a set (N=16) of Roman inhumations from Bologna (Northern Italy, 1 st-4 th c. AD), some of which are characterized by unusual features (prone depositions, transfixion of the skeleton by iron nails). Analysis of strontium, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon isotopes is used to test for the possible correlation between funerary treatment, geographic origin, and diet. Here we provide the first biogeochemical data for a Northern Italian Imperial sample, wherein our results show no clear association between these variables, suggesting that funerary variability, at least in the analysed context, was shaped by a variety of heterogeneous factors, and not a representation of vertical social differences or differential geographic origins