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Projekt Druckansicht

Esskulturen: Interdisziplinäre Forschungen zur Lebensmitteltechnologie und Ernährungswirtschaft im Frühen Neolithikum Südosteuropas

Fachliche Zuordnung Ur- und Frühgeschichte (weltweit)
Förderung Förderung von 2013 bis 2017
Projektkennung Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 242126187
 
Erstellungsjahr 2019

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

The earliest successful introduction of domestic plants and animals in Europe beyond their ecological homeland took place in the interior of the Balkans during the early sixth millennium BC. Here, within a few centuries, pioneer farmers spread northwards into areas with significantly different and hitherto unfamiliar environmental conditions. In this process, the Balkans acted as a unique „laboratory“ for the adaptation of Mediterranean farming to higher latitudes. The transformation in farming which took place in the interior of the Balkans in the early sixth millennium BC was instrumental to the succeeding spread of the originally Mediterranean crop and livestock system across the entire European continent. The „Food Cultures“ project aimed to characterise the changes in food procurement and food processing technology which accompanied this dispersal to higher latitudes. The project was designed to reveal variation in the subsistence and food technology of the earliest farming communities in southeast Europe by studying sites in three areas of contrasting cultural and biogeographic conditions - Thrace in the southern Balkans (Karanovo I period), Šumadija in the central Balkans and Transdanubia in the western Carpathian Basin (Starčevo period). The research methodology comprised four key components: (i) analysis of absorbed organic residues in pottery, (ii) stable isotope analysis of faunal remains, (iii) plant microfossil (starch and phytolith) analysis of grinding tools, and (iv) formal analysis of artefacts. Our research team included experts in the areas of prehistoric archaeology, organic residue analysis, stable isotope research, plant microfossil research, zooarchaeology and archaeobotany. The project findings added substantially to our understanding of the „Mediterranean“ and „First Temperate“ farming systems, providing direct evidence for notable differences in herding practices, plant and animal foodstuffs and food-related techniques from a range of archaeological and bioarchaeological archives. Our research demonstrated that shifts with latitude occurred in grinding technology, the exploitation of dairy products, the strategies of animal feeding and breeding, and the preferences for specific species of crops and livestock. These results raised a series of new questions around the climate-subsistence correlation, which need to be addressed by developing robust quantitative models based on combined environmental, archaeological and bioarchaeological data.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

 
 

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