Interrelationship of age and diet in Romania’s oldest human burial

Abstract

In 1968, excavations in the Climente II cave in the Iron Gates gorge of the River Danube in southwest Romania unearthed the skeleton of an adult male. The burial was assumed to be of Late Pleistocene age because of the presence of Late Upper Palaeolithic (LUP) artefacts in the cave. However, there was no strong supporting stratigraphic evidence, and the body position is reminiscent of Early Neolithic burial practice in the region. Here, we report the results of radiocarbon and stable isotope analyses of the Climente II skeleton, which show that the skeleton dates to the Bølling-Allerød Interstadial ~14,500 cal BP. This is several millennia older than any previously dated human remains from the Iron Gates region and confirms its status as the oldest known burial from Romania. The stable isotope results indicate a diet with an emphasis on aquatic resources, contrary to the commonly held view that the LUP inhabitants of the Iron Gates subsisted mainly by hunting large land mammals.

‘Pre-Neolithic’ in Southeast Europe: a Bulgarian perspective

“…Sites such as Padina, Vlasac and Schela Cladovei were hundreds or thousands of square metres in extent with architectural, burial and other evidence of permanent or semi-permanent occupation over centuries or millennia (Radovanovi≤ 1996;Boroneant 2012). Moreover, they were not just a Late Mesolithic phenomenon; paired AMS 14 C dating and stable isotope analyses of human remains indicate that fishing was practised in the Iron Gates (and probably along the entire length of the lower Danube) at least as early as the Late Palaeolithic, became increasingly important during the Mesolithic, and was still significant economically during the Early Neolithic (Bonsall 2008;Bori≤ 2011;Bonsall et al 2012;2015).…”

Food for Thought: Re-Assessing Mesolithic Diets in the Iron Gates

“…In that initial study, the human bone collagen values were compared with modern analogues for animal and plant resources with appropriate fractionation corrections. Further C and N isotope research on human and animal bone was undertaken by Bonsall et al (2000Bonsall et al ( , 2004Bonsall et al ( , 2012Bonsall et al ( , 2015, Grupe et al (2003), Borić et al ( , 2008, Borić and Dimitrijević (2007), Borić and Miracle (2004), and Borić and Price (2013). In total, bone collagen C and N stable isotope data were obtained for more than 160 skeletons from 10 sites, spanning the greater part of the Mesolithic to Early Neolithic time range from ~12,200-5500 cal BC.…”

Holocene climate change and prehistoric settlement in the lower Danube valley

“…Named sites have 14 C dates that were used to generate the summed probability distributions in Figs 2-3. dataset. 14 C data from Bonsall, 2008;Bonsall et al, 1997Bonsall et al, , 2008Bonsall et al, , 2012Bonsall et al, , 2015Borić and Miracle, 2004;Borić and Dimitrijević, 2009;Borić, 2011;Borić and Price, 2013;Dinu et al, 2007. Prior to calibration human bone 14 C ages were corrected for the 'freshwater reservoir effect' using Method 1 of Cook et al (2002), assuming δ 15 N endpoint values for purely terrestrial and purely aquatic diets of +8.3‰ and +17.0‰, respectively (cf. Cook et al, 2009).…”