Strontium isotopes document greater human mobility at the start of the Balkan Neolithic

Abstract

Questions about how farming and the Neolithic way of life spread across Europe have been hotly debated topics in archaeology for decades. For a very long time, two models have dominated the discussion: migrations of farming groups from southwestern Asia versus diffusion of domesticates and new ideas through the existing networks of local forager populations. New strontium isotope data from the Danube Gorges in the north-central Balkans, an area characterized by a rich burial record spanning the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, show a significant increase in nonlocal individuals from ∼6200 calibrated B.C., with several waves of migrants into this region. These results are further enhanced by dietary evidence based on carbon and nitrogen isotopes and an increasingly high chronological resolution obtained on a large sample of directly dated individuals. This dataset provides robust evidence for a brief period of coexistence between indigenous groups and early farmers before farming communities absorbed the foragers completely in the first half of the sixth millennium B.C.forager-farmer interaction | isotope analysis | the Balkans | Lepenski Vir | southeastern Europe

Food for Thought: Re-Assessing Mesolithic Diets in the Iron Gates

“…It should be stressed, however, that the chronological pattern is unlikely to be absolute because of the possibility of the inclusion of immigrants with different dietary patterns (cf. Bonsall et al 2004Bonsall et al , 2008Borić and Price 2013).…”

“…Also, no information is provided on the size of the fish that were analyzed; catfish and sturgeon become more carnivorous as they grow larger, and the bones of large specimens can be expected to show more enriched δ 15 N values. Data compiled from previous studies (Bonsall et al 1997, unpublished;Whittle et al 2002;Grupe et al 2003;Borić and Miracle 2004;Borić and Price 2013) show significant differences in N isotope ratios between the bones of terrestrial mammals and fish recovered from Iron Gates sites. The mean δ 15 N for wild ungulates is 6.1 ± 1.3‰ (n = 62), compared to 9.0 ± 1.9‰ for fish (n = 16), with the highest values recorded for catfish and anadromous sturgeon (up to 12.9‰).…”

“…In that initial study, the human bone collagen values were compared with modern analogues for animal and plant resources with appropriate fractionation corrections. Further C and N isotope research on human and animal bone was undertaken by Bonsall et al (2000Bonsall et al ( , 2004Bonsall et al ( , 2012Bonsall et al ( , 2015, Grupe et al (2003), Borić et al ( , 2008, Borić and Dimitrijević (2007), Borić and Miracle (2004), and Borić and Price (2013). In total, bone collagen C and N stable isotope data were obtained for more than 160 skeletons from 10 sites, spanning the greater part of the Mesolithic to Early Neolithic time range from ~12,200-5500 cal BC.…”

Dental calculus reveals Mesolithic foragers in the Balkans consumed domesticated plant foods

“…BC. During this phase, no evidence for farming or stock-herding has been identified to date (22), although different strands of evidence document contact/interaction with early farming groups (4,13). The site furnished evidence of cultural complexity with numerous dwelling structures with trapezoidal floors and central stone-lined rectangular hearths, sculpted sandstone boulders, ornamented and plane pestles and mortars, and other stone and osseous artifacts and ornaments.…”

Holocene climate change and prehistoric settlement in the lower Danube valley

“…Named sites have 14 C dates that were used to generate the summed probability distributions in Figs 2-3. dataset. 14 C data from Bonsall, 2008;Bonsall et al, 1997Bonsall et al, , 2008Bonsall et al, , 2012Bonsall et al, , 2015Borić and Miracle, 2004;Borić and Dimitrijević, 2009;Borić, 2011;Borić and Price, 2013;Dinu et al, 2007. Prior to calibration human bone 14 C ages were corrected for the 'freshwater reservoir effect' using Method 1 of Cook et al (2002), assuming δ 15 N endpoint values for purely terrestrial and purely aquatic diets of +8.3‰ and +17.0‰, respectively (cf. Cook et al, 2009).…”