GRAIN ECONOMY, FOOD REGIMES AND AGRICULTURAL INNOVATIONS IN THE BRONZE AGE EUROPE (2800-1000 BC)
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2021-03-31

The process of Neolithization in Europe and beyond generally can be seen as the emergence of very stable cultural adaptations; pottery making and sedentary agriculture with stock breeding. Looking from the isotopic perspective, however, the same pro-cess resulted also in strong unification of dietary practices over millennia in the whole of Europe. The Neolithic diet was, in some sense ”frozen in time”, and did not evolve in any spectacular manner for centuries. The pottery traditions may have varied in dis-tant regions of the continent, but the content of the dish was similar. Therefore complementary δ15N/δ13C isotopic values can be found in Neolithic bone materials across the whole of Europe, from Britain to Greece and from Portugal to Russia.The situation changed rapidly in the Early Bronze Age due to huge shifts in agriculture, through transmission of diverse organ-izational  models,  technologies,  and  socio-political  traditions.  The  civilizational  ”success”  of  the  Bronze  Age  was  grounded  on  numerous choices that were made by individuals and communities in the process of deciding what to eat. The Bronze Age con-sumption model enabled meeting human needs and wants, introducing selectiveness, excessiveness and food taboos. This new model encompassed a broad spectrum of need fulfillment activities, including status acquisition, identity formation, and social class identification. The rapid growth of metal-using consumer societies was accompanied by agricultural productivity, promot-ing technical progress and the optimum utilization of labor. The isotopic data from the Bronze Age shows, therefore, higher vari-ability and multidirectional regimes.In this presentation, I will focus on dietary practices in several Bronze Age populations based on isotopic data covering ca. 250 individuals from my own research in recent years. The isotopic datasets cover, among others the Unetice Culture Group (Poland and Czechia; 2300-1600 BC), the Tumulus (1600-1200 BC), Trzciniec (1900-1200 BC) and Lusatian cultures (1300-500 BC).


Author(s): Pokutta, Dalia (Stockholm University, Dept. of Archaeology, Archaeological Research Laboratory)