Stable Isotope Palaeodietary and Radiocarbon Evidence from the Early Neolithic Site of Zemunica, Dalmatia, Croatia

Abstract

The Adriatic Sea and Balkan Peninsula were an important corridor for the spread of agriculture northwards and westwards from the Near East into Europe. Therefore, the pace and nature of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition along the Adriatic coastline has important implications for the movement of new peoples and/or ideas during one of the most eventful periods in European prehistory. We present new Early Neolithic radiocarbon and stable isotope evidence from humans and animals from the Zemunica cave site in Dalmatia, Croatia. The results show that these humans date to the earliest Neolithic in the region, and they have completely terrestrial diets, where the main protein source was most likely to have come from domesticated animals. Data are then compared to previous isotope and archaeological evidence to explore models for the spread of agriculture along the eastern Adriatic coast.

Reconstructing genetic histories and social organisation in Neolithic and Bronze Age Croatia

“…The eastern region of present-day Croatia demarcates the southern edge of the Pannonian Plain (broadly synonymous with the Carpathian Basin), and is intersected by the Danube river, Sava, Drava and other large tributaries that are the site of many prehistoric settlements and formed an important part of communication and exchange networks in this area 11 , 12 . The emergence of the Neolithic here can be traced to the arrival of the Starčevo culture, which spread from present-day Serbia west and northwards into the Carpathian Basin 13 , while at coastal sites the Early Neolithic was marked by the presence of the Impressed Ware culture from about 6000 BCE 14 , 15 (Fig. 1 ).…”

Paleodiet and health in a mass burial population: The stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes from Potočani, a 6,200‐year‐old massacre site in Croatia

“…In comparison to other isotopic data from Neolithic and Copper Age populations in Croatia (Guiry et al, 2017;Lightfoot et al, 2011;Podrug et al, 2013), the Potočani population as a whole is more enriched in δ 13 C and δ 15 N stable isotopes than groups from elsewhere in inland Croatia (Figure 7A, B). This suggests that despite differences within the population of Potočani as highlighted above, people in this population were generally eating more meat or dairy products than other groups nearby (Lightfoot et al, 2011).…”

“…However, other analyses of dietary variation based on carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes are lacking from mass burial sites. Where Neolithic and Copper Age isotopic measurements are available in Croatia, they are largely limited to arid coastal regions with strikingly different climate regimes and vegetation communities (Guiry et al, 2017;Lightfoot et al, 2011;Podrug et al, 2013;Zavodny et al, 2017). More isotopic work on human remains from inland sites in conjunction with increasing isotopic baseline data both regionally and for changes through time is required to better interpret the existing data.…”

Reconstruction of human subsistence and husbandry strategies from the Iberian Early Neolithic: A stable isotope approach

“… (a) Plot of bone collagen δ 13 C and δ 15 N values of different Early Neolithic adult humans from Iberia [Costamar (Salazar‐García, ); Cueva de Nerja (Salazar‐García et al, 2017b); Feixa del Moro (Remolins et al, ) and Cueva de Chaves (this study)]; (b) Plot of bone collagen δ 13 C and δ 15 N values of different Early Neolithic from the Western Mediterranean region [Fontbrégoua (France) (Le Bras‐Goude et al, ), Pendimoun (Le Bras‐Goude et al, ), 3: Zemunica (Croatia) (Guiry et al, ) and Cueva de Chaves (this study)]. The X and Y axes are plotted at different scales in order to make all the samples more visible.…”