Domesticated animals formed an important element of farming practices in prehistoric Britain, a fact revealed through the quantity and variety of animal bone typically found at archaeological sites. However, it is not known whether the ruminant animals were raised purely for their tissues (e.g., meat) or alternatively were exploited principally for their milk. Absorbed organic residues from pottery from 14 British prehistoric sites were investigated for evidence of the processing of dairy products. Our ability to detect dairy fats rests on the observation that the ␦ 13 C values of the C18:0 fatty acids in ruminant dairy fats are Ϸ2.3‰ lower than in ruminant adipose fats. This difference can be ascribed to (i) the inability of the mammary gland to biosynthesize C 18:0; (ii) the biohydrogenation of dietary unsaturated fatty acids in the rumen; and (iii) differences (i.e., 8.1‰) in the ␦ 13 C values of the plant dietary fatty acids and carbohydrates. The lipids from a total of 958 archaeological pottery vessels were extracted, and the compound-specific ␦ 13 C values of preserved fatty acids (C16:0 and C18:0) were determined via gas chromatography-combustion-isotope ratio mass spectrometry. The results provide direct evidence for the exploitation of domesticated ruminant animals for dairy products at all Neolithic, Bronze Age, and Iron Age settlements in Britain. Most significantly, studies of pottery from a range of key early Neolithic sites confirmed that dairying was a widespread activity in this period and therefore probably well developed when farming was introduced into Britain in the fifth millennium B.C. There is little doubt that domesticated cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs were an integral part of early Neolithic farming in Britain. However, difficulties in establishing whether they were exploited for dairy products, wool, and traction, the so-called ''secondary products'' (1), has proved to be a major hurdle in our understanding of the evolution of prehistoric economies. The recognition by early farmers that animals could be reared for their milk would have had major impacts on diet, health, and subsistence economy (2). As such, it is of great archaeological and scientific interest to determine how these domesticates were utilized in antiquity: were they valued primarily as a meat source, were they exploited for their ''secondary products'' such as milk, or were different economic strategies used to maximize the production of both commodities? Evidence for dairying in prehistory is currently limited to certain specialist vessels, e.g., putative cheese strainers (3), and evidence from faunal remains of herds that are suggestive of dairying (4, 5). However, direct chemical evidence for widespread dairying at prehistoric sites anywhere in the world is currently lacking.Degraded animal fats, recognized by the high abundances of n-hexadecanoic (C 16:0 ) and n-octadecanoic (C 18:0 ) acids, are preserved widely within archaeological pottery, particularly those vessels involved in the preparation, consumption, and...

The domestication of cattle, sheep and goats had already taken place in the Near East by the eighth millennium bc. Although there would have been considerable economic and nutritional gains from using these animals for their milk and other products from living animals-that is, traction and wool-the first clear evidence for these appears much later, from the late fifth and fourth millennia bc. Hence, the timing and region in which milking was first practised remain unknown. Organic residues preserved in archaeological pottery have provided direct evidence for the use of milk in the fourth millennium in Britain, and in the sixth millennium in eastern Europe, based on the delta(13)C values of the major fatty acids of milk fat. Here we apply this approach to more than 2,200 pottery vessels from sites in the Near East and southeastern Europe dating from the fifth to the seventh millennia bc. We show that milk was in use by the seventh millennium; this is the earliest direct evidence to date. Milking was particularly important in northwestern Anatolia, pointing to regional differences linked with conditions more favourable to cattle compared to other regions, where sheep and goats were relatively common and milk use less important. The latter is supported by correlations between the fat type and animal bone evidence.

Animal fats are preserved at archaeological sites in association with unglazed pottery, human and animal remains, and other deposits or hoards. High-temperature gas chromatography (HT-GC) and combined HT-GC/mass spectrometry (HT-GC/MS) has confirmed the presence of animal fats in lipid extracts of artifacts. Degradation products and pathways have been discerned through the analyses of archaeological finds and the products of laboratory and field-based decay experiments. The origins of preserved fats have been determined through detailed compositional analysis of their component fatty acids by GC, by GC/MS of dimethyl disulfide derivatives of monoenoic components, and by GC-combustion-isotope ratio-MS (GC-C-IRMS), to derive diagenetically robust delta(13)C values. Regiospecific analysis of intact triacylglycerols by high-performance liquid chromatography/MS (HPLC/MS), with atmospheric pressure chemical ionization, provides a further criterion for establishing the origin of fats. Preparative GC has been employed to isolate individual fatty acids from archaeological pottery in sufficient amounts for (14)C dating.

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