Multipronged dental analyses reveal dietary differences in last foragers and first farmers at Grotta Continenza, central Italy (15,500–7000 BP)

Abstract

This paper provides results from a suite of analyses made on human dental material from the Late Palaeolithic to Neolithic strata of the cave site of Grotta Continenza situated in the Fucino Basin of the Abruzzo region of central Italy. The available human remains from this site provide a unique possibility to study ways in which forager versus farmer lifeways affected human odonto-skeletal remains. The main aim of our study is to understand palaeodietary patterns and their changes over time as reflected in teeth. These analyses involve a review of metrics and oral pathologies, micro-fossils preserved in the mineralized dental plaque, macrowear, and buccal microwear. Our results suggest that these complementary approaches support the assumption about a critical change in dental conditions and status with the introduction of Neolithic foodstuff and habits. However, we warn that different methodologies applied here provide data at different scales of resolution for detecting such changes and a multipronged approach to the study of dental collections is needed for a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of diachronic changes.

Genomic ancestry, diet and microbiomes of Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers from San Teodoro cave (Sicily, Italy)

“…However, the differentiation between the San Teodoro and early farmer oral microbiomes and the lack of plant proteins found in the samples analysed could suggest low plant intake in this Upper Palaeolithic community. Still, this result confirms that the dietary habits of Epigravettian hunter-gatherers included some plant foods, as suggested in other archaeological contexts in Northern and Central Italy 39,46 . The identification of proteins matching the genus of Capra, which could possibly belong to ibex, opens speculations on the dynamics of human populations of Sicily in the Late Glacial and can contribute to the study of mobility of Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers between the island and the Italian peninsula or some trade between Calabria and Sicily.…”

Tracking the transition to agriculture in Southern Europe through ancient DNA analysis of dental calculus

“…This pathway was also detected in the chimpanzees, which primarily adopt plant-based feeding strategies ( 53 ). Recent microbotanical evidence proved that plants represented a substantial fraction of the diet of Mesolithic foragers from the Danube Gorges and Grotta Continenza ( 54 , 55 ), and this may be reflected by a higher representation in their oral microbiomes of functional activities associated with the breakdown of dietary glycans.…”

Wild cereal grain consumption among Early Holocene foragers of the Balkans predates the arrival of agriculture

“…Research on mineralized dental plaque has significantly advanced our awareness about ancient pre-agrarian food choices in Europe, Asia and also in Africa, thanks to its potential to preserve plant micro-remains (Buckley et al, 2014;Cristiani et al, 2018Cristiani et al, , 2016Cummings et al, 2018;Nava et al, 2021;Norström et al, 2019). However, in many archaeological cases dating to early prehistory, preservation or recovery biases render plant food evidence invisible.…”