Rebecca Fraser

The spread of farming from western Asia to Europe had profound long-term social and ecological impacts, but identification of the specific nature of Neolithic land management practices and the dietary contribution of early crops has been problematic. Here, we present previously undescribed stable isotope determinations of charred cereals and pulses from 13 Neolithic sites across Europe (dating ca. 5900-2400 cal B.C.), which show that early farmers used livestock manure and water management to enhance crop yields. Intensive manuring inextricably linked plant cultivation and animal herding and contributed to the remarkable resilience of these combined practices across diverse climatic zones. Critically, our findings suggest that commonly applied paleodietary interpretations of human and herbivore δ(15)N values have systematically underestimated the contribution of crop-derived protein to early farmer diets.

Stable carbon isotope analysis of plant remains is a promising tool for researchers studying palaeoclimate and past agricultural systems. The potential of the technique is clear: it offers a direct measure of the water conditions in which plants grew. In this paper, we assess how reliably stable carbon isotope discrimination can be used to infer water conditions, through the analysis of present-day crop plants grown at multiple locations across the Mediterranean and south-west Asia. The key findings are that: (1) ∆¹³C, as expected, provides an indication of water conditions, (2) even for plants grown in similar conditions there is variation in ∆¹³C and (3) ∆¹³C may reflect crop water status for a period beginning well before the grain filling period. A new framework is presented which increases the robustness with which ∆¹³C values of plant remains can be interpreted in terms of the water conditions in which ancient crops grew.

In this paper we reconstruct the palaeodietary setting of LBK Vaihingen an der Enz, south-west Germany (later sixth millennium cal. bc) using δ13C and δ15N values of human and faunal bone collagen and of charred plant remains from cereal crops (e.g. emmer and einkorn wheat) and pulses (lentil and pea). Our examination of this Neolithic dietary ‘food web’ incorporates crop δ15N values within a linear-mixing model to examine the estimated proportions of animal and plant protein in the human diet. We interpret the stable isotope dietary model outcomes together with accompanying archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological evidence to shed light on the role of crops in land use strategies and human diet, and conclude that (manured) crops probably formed the dominant protein source.