Diet at the onset of the Neolithic in northeastern Iberia: An isotope–plant microremain combined study from Cova Bonica (Vallirana, Catalonia)

Abstract

The emergence of Neolithic societies was transformative, impacting many aspects of life, particularly diet. The process of Neolithization in Iberia is increasingly understood as the arrival of new people from the Central Mediterranean, who dispersed along the Iberian coasts introducing cereal production, herding, and Cardial pottery and associated material culture. Although research has clarified aspects of the cultigen-dominated economy of these new people, questions remain due to the limitations of conventional archaeobotanical and archaeozoological methods that tend to produce indirect evidence. The extent to which these early farmers adopted Mesolithic staples, which are often difficult to detect with other methods, remains unclear. Furthermore, questions surround the nature of methods of food preparation Cardial Neolithic people used when incorporating grains into their diet. In this study, we examined direct evidence of the diet from the Iberian Cardial Neolithic site of Cova Bonica (Vallirana, Baix Llobregat, Catalonia) using CN stable isotopes on bone and plant microremains trapped in dental calculus from six human individuals and associated fauna. Isotopes show a diet based on terrestrial C3 resources, with no isotopic evidence of aquatic or C4 resource consumption. Plant microremains (starches and phytoliths) provide evidence of cereal use, as well as of other plant foods. However, perhaps due to Bonica’s early farmers’ choice of grain variety, their grain processing methods, or due to specific dental calculus formation factors, the grain assemblages are rather limited and provide scarce information on food preparation.

Rediscovering Cova de la Sarsa (València, Spain): A Multidisciplinary Approach to One of the Key Early Neolithic Sites in the Western Mediterranean

“…The application of this analytical technique in Mediterranean Iberia and its hinterland has significantly increased during the past decade [91,92], creating an important corpus of dietary data from different chronologies in the region and its hinterland. Studies from the Palaeolithic [93,94], Mesolithic [69,95,96], Neolithic-Chalcolithic [80,[97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110], Bronze Age [99,101,111], Iron Age [112], Punic [113], Roman [105,106] and Medieval [64,106,114,115] periods have been carried out in Mediterranean Iberia. However, until now, only few isotopic data directly dated to the earlier stages of the Neolithic [108], differently to what is observed in Western Iberia [116,117].…”

“…Studies from the Palaeolithic [93,94], Mesolithic [69,95,96], Neolithic-Chalcolithic [80,[97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109][110], Bronze Age [99,101,111], Iron Age [112], Punic [113], Roman [105,106] and Medieval [64,106,114,115] periods have been carried out in Mediterranean Iberia. However, until now, only few isotopic data directly dated to the earlier stages of the Neolithic [108], differently to what is observed in Western Iberia [116,117].…”

Eating through time: Understanding dietary practices across late prehistory in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula

“…The importance attributed to one form of subsistence over the other varies depending on the region and climatic conditions (Díaz-Zorita Bonilla et al, 2019;Fontanals-Coll et al, 2016;García-González et al, 2018;Jones et al, 2019;López-Costas & Alexander, 2019;Riera et al, 2007). However, the complex economic systems of these populations make it challenging to characterize a predominant dietary pattern (Salazar-García et al, 2022). Specifically, during the Late Neolithic to Chalcolithic transition, there was an intensification and specialization in food production, resulting in a relatively homogenized diet with less cereal varieties cultivated, focusing on cultivating naked wheat, naked barley, and legumes (Antolín, 2013;Antolín et al, 2015;Plasencia, 2016).…”

“…The importance attributed to one form of subsistence over the other varies depending on the region and climatic conditions (Díaz‐Zorita Bonilla et al, 2019; Fontanals‐Coll et al, 2016; García‐González et al, 2018; Jones et al, 2019; López‐Costas & Alexander, 2019; Riera et al, 2007). However, the complex economic systems of these populations make it challenging to characterize a predominant dietary pattern (Salazar‐García et al, 2022).…”