6,000-Year-Old Cooking Pots Show Gradual Transition

(Above shows a 6,000-year-old cooking pot and wooden spoon that was recovered from the Åmose Bog in Zealand, Denmark. These artifacts are thought to have been votive offerings by the earliest farming communities who lived in this area. Chemical analysis of charred food residues preserved on the inside of a number of these vessels show they were used for processing freshwater fish, which supplemented their fledgling agricultural economy. Credit: Image courtesy of Sönke Hartz)

Once a fisherman, always a fisherman, one might say.

This could have been the sentiment of the people who lived 6,000 years ago in what is today the Western Baltic regions of Northern Europe. Based on a study recently performed by a team of researchers led by Oliver Craig of the University of York and Carl Heron of the University of Bradford, hunter-gatherer humans here may have experienced a gradual rather than a rapid transition to agriculture.

The researchers analyzed cooking residues preserved in 133 ceramic vessels from the Western Baltic regions of Northern Europe to determine if the residues originated from terrestrial food sources, or marine and freshwater organisms. The vessels were chosen from 15 sites dated to approximately 4,000 BC, the time corresponding to the first evidence in the region indicating domestication of animals and plants (agriculture and animal husbandry). The evidence included samples obtained from a 6,000-year-old submerged settlement site excavated by the Archäologisches Landesmuseum in Schleswig off the Baltic coast of Northern Germany. Of the inland sites, about 28 percent of the pots showed residues from aquatic organisms, likely freshwater fish. Of the sites located in coastal areas, one-fifth of the pots showed biochemical traces of aquatic organisms, along with fats and oils normally not present in terrestrial plants and animals.

The study results suggest that fish and other aquatic resources continued to be significantly exploited even after the advent of farming and domestication. Says Craig: "This research provides clear evidence people across the Western Baltic continued to exploit marine and freshwater resources despite the arrival of domesticated animals and plants. Although farming was introduced rapidly across this region, it may not have caused such a dramatic shift from hunter-gatherer life as we previously thought."

The study will also provide a model and foundation for use by future scientists and researchers in the area of ancient pottery analysis. "Our data set represents the first large scale study combining a wide range of molecular evidence and single-compound isotope data to discriminate terrestrial, marine and freshwater resources processed in archaeological ceramics and it provides a template for future investigations into how people used pots in the past," says Carl Heron, team co-leader and Professor of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Bradford.

The research effort consisted of an international team of archaeologists from the University of York, the University of Bradford, the Heritage Agency of Denmark, the National Museum of Denmark, Moesgård Museum (Denmark), Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel (Germany) and the Archäologisches Landesmuseum, Schleswig (Germany). It was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the details, results and conclusions are now published online in the most recent edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

(source: popular-archaeology.com/issue/september-2011/article/6-000-year-old-cooking-pots-show-gradual-transition-to-agriculture-study-reveals )