The Bell Beaker multiple burial pit of La Atalayuela (La Rioja, Spain): stable isotope insights into diet, identity and mortuary practices in Chalcolithic Iberia.

Investigating prehistoric diet and lifeways of early farmers in central northern Spain (3000–1500 CAL BC) using stable isotope techniques

“…In the studied sample, if C 4 plants were a component of human diet, then they were not being consumed in sufficient quantities to register in the bone collagen record. Other studies of Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age diets in Spain show similar results with C 3 signatures evidence in Neolithic and Chalcolithic Iberia (Fernández-Crespo and Schulting 2017;Fernández-Crespo et al 2018;Fontanals-Coll et al 2015;Sarasketa-Gartzia et al 2018).…”

“…The tentative results from this, also indicate that the individuals buried at Arroyal I are not necessarily all local to the area and supports other evidence for population movement within the Iberian Peninsula during the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age periods. A similar hypothesis was proposed at the Chalcolithic site of La Atalayuela in La Rioja, where two individuals interred at the site with outlying δ 13 C values were interpreted as potentially being from different regions (Fernández-Crespo et al 2018) again suggesting population fluidity within different regions in Prehistoric Northern Spain.…”

“…Although there have been numerous applications of this technique in Prehistoric Europe (e.g. Richards et al 1998;Schulting et al 2010;Oelze et al 2011;Tafuri et al 2009), it is only in recent years that this subject has received attention in Spain, with studies attempting to redress this balance in the Mediterranean Coast (Salazar-García et al 2014) and the Basque Country in the north of Iberia (Fernández-Crespo and Schulting 2017;Fernández-Crespo et al 2018;Fontanals-Coll et al 2015;Sarasketa-Gartzia et al 2018).…”

The Bell Beaker Phenomenon in Europe

“…There are few exceptions to this pattern, and the site of El Ventorro, published in 1992, remains unmatched with its twenty-three pits, two huts, and traces of copper smelting (Priego & Querro 1992). As elsewhere in the Iberian Peninsula and contemporary non-Bell Beaker areas (e.g., Valera et al 2019;Aranda Jiménez, et al 2022), the funerary record in the Meseta features a combination of reused megalithic dolmens and caves alongside funerary pits, and the practice of both collective and individual burials (Bueno Ramírez et al 2005; see also Fernández-Crespo et al 2019). In addition to bell beakers and numerous other ceramic types, grave good assemblages include several types of ornament (e.g., V-perforated buttons), weapons (e.g., copper daggers, stone wristguards, or slender copper points known as Palmela points, e.g., Soriano et al 2021), and miniature vessels probably made on purpose for children (Herrero-Corral et al 2019).…”

Diet, mobility and death of Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic groups of the Cantabrian Region (northern Spain). A multidisciplinary approach towards studying the Los Avellanos I and II burial caves

“…Initial isotopic studies in the Cantabrian Region explored the dietary behaviour of Mesolithic individuals at the sites of Los Canes, Poza l'Egua, Colomba, J3, La Braña Arintero, Cotero de la Mina (Neolithic) and La Garma A (Bronze Age) (Arias, 2005;Arias and Schulting, 2010). During the last decade this scientific technique has been increasingly applied to other archaeological sites in this region to explore the origin and spread of farming practices at sites including Santimamiñe, Pico Ramos (Sarasketa-Gartzia et al, 2018), El Abrigo de La Castañera (Jones et al, 2019a), Ondarre (Fernández-Crespo et al, 2017) or Karea (Aranburu-Mendizabal et al, 2018) and, in the adjacent regions of Galicia in Cova do Santo (López-Costas et al, 2015), Burgos in Fuente Celada, El Arroyal I, El Hornazo and Ferrocarril-La Dehesa sites (Jones et al, 2019a) and Álava province, from remains at Fuente Hoz, Kurtzebide (Sarasketa-Gartzia et al, 2019), La Atayuela (Fernández-Crespo et al, 2018), Las Yurdinas II, Los Husos, Peña Larga, El Sotillo, Alto de la Huesera, La Chabola de la Hechicera and Longar (Fernández-Crespo and Schulting 2017). A recent review of δ 13 C and δ 15 N evidence available from the Iberian Peninsula has demonstrated high variability in Mesolithic diets, and heterogeneity in Neolithic diets, with a broad spectrum of resources being used, demonstrating the need to understand sites within their local contexts (Cubas et al, 2018).…”