Strategic and sporadic marine consumption at the onset of the Neolithic: increasing temporal resolution in the isotope evidence

Abstract

Stable isotope analysis has provided crucial new insights into dietary change at the Neolithic transition in north-west Europe, indicating an unexpectedly sudden and radical shift from marine to terrestrial resources in coastal and island locations. Investigations of early Neolithic skeletal material from Sumburgh on Shetland, at the far-flung margins of the Neolithic world, suggest that this general pattern may mask significant subtle detail. Analysis of juvenile dentine reveals the consumption of marine foods on an occasional basis. This suggests that marine foods may have been consumed as a crucial supplementary resource in times of famine, when the newly introduced cereal crops failed to cope with the demanding climate of Shetland. This isotopic evidence is consistent with the presence of marine food debris in contemporary middens. The occasional and contingent nature of marine food consumption underlines how, even on Shetland, the shift from marine to terrestrial diet was a key element in the Neolithic transition

Using Stable Isotopes and a Bayesian Mixing Model (FRUITS) to Investigate Diet at the Early Neolithic Site of Carding Mill Bay, Scotland

“…In comparison, the incremental dentine method , which was employed by Montgomery et al (2013) to detect periodic returns to marine resources by Scottish Neolithic individuals, picks up relatively short-lived changes in eating habits, but only while the teeth are forming. Alternative approaches to reconstructing diet have been utilized in response to the issues associated with analyzing human bone collagen.…”

The Role of Stone in Island Societies in Neolithic Atlantic Europe: Creating Places and Cultural Landscapes

“…The impetus to begin organized production of axes and other objects from specific sources appears to be tied in with the shift to agriculture and its implied transformation of landscape, in which the axe became an important functional and symbolic asset (e.g., Whittle, 2003;Whittle et al, 2011). Even though in island environments forest clearance may have been a relatively rapid process (see Sheridan, 2012) and island life is likely to have focused on foraging as well as farming (e.g., Montgomery et al, 2013), the entanglement of axes as an aspect of what being Neolithic meant may have been what brought about the initial quest to exploit particular resources.…”

Difference in Death? A Lost Neolithic Inhumation Cemetery with Britain’s Earliest Case of Rickets, at Balevullin, Western Scotland

“…Samples of core enamel, cleaned of all surfaces and adhering dentine, were removed for strontium, oxygen, and carbon isotope analysis following the procedure detailed in Montgomery (2002). The remaining tooth was bisected and one half subjected to carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of incremental dentine sections following the procedure of Beaumont et al (2013) in order to investigate more closely diet over the period of childhood when active rickets was inferred from the osteological evidence. As dentine does not turnover or remodel in the manner of bone, isotopic signals from early childhood are preserved (Beaumont et al 2013 …”

“…Errors bars indicate analytical precision of ±0.2‰ (1σ) and are within symbol for enamel carbonate. Regression lines for C 3 , C 4 and marine diets are reproduced from Kellner and Schoeninger (2007) THE PREHISTORIC SOCIETY Bulk bone, enamel, or dentine measurements, however, are averaged values over an often uncertain number of years and offer poor temporal resolution (Beaumont et al 2013;Montgomery et al 2013). To investigate whether there was any underlying childhood dietary evidence that might assist in the understanding of the environmental or physiological factors that contributed to the palaeopathological evidence for the Balevullin skeleton, a δ 13 C and δ 15 N dietary life-history profile between the ages of 3.5 and 14.5 years was produced from the incremental dentine sections (Fig.…”

“…Given the consistently flat δ 13 C profile until the age of 14.5 years, this rise in δ 15 N may reflect a dietary or physiological change, such as an increased consumption of high-trophic level terrestrial protein (eg, omnivorous rather than herbivorous animal protein or human milk) or nutritional and/or physiological stress (Fuller et al 2006;Beaumont et al 2013). The high strontium concentration found in the tooth enamel would perhaps mitigate against a high-meat diet because the amount of strontium in skeletal tissues is lower in carnivores than herbivores in a foodchain due to : if an individual was consuming a largely meat-based diet or meat from omnivores or carnivores, they would be expected to have low strontium concentrations.…”