Indexed in

License and use

Citations

Cited 8 times in

Cited 4 times in

Cited 1 times in

Cited 8 times in

Altmetrics

Grant support

The authors would like to thank Rebeca Revilla for preparing the maps in Fig. 1. We thank Carlos Tornero, for comments on the isotope results, and Janos Dani, for comments on the time-span on Carpathian's Basin Prehistory. We also thank to Anna Szecsenyi-Nagy, Nadine Rohland, David Reich and his wetlab team to kindly provide information of Bronze Age individuals. Samples were collected and prepared within the Horizon 2020Marie Slodowska Curie Actions (IF-2015-703373) project held by B.G. R.H is funded by predoctoral URV Marti-Franques Research Grant (URV 2019PMF-PIPF-59). BG is funded by the Beatriu de Pinos Post-doctoral fellowship (2017 BP 00210) from AGAUR, Government of Catalonia. DF was supported by an Irish Research Council Post-Graduate grant GOIPG/2013/36. A.M. was supported by Goverment of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship Programme grant GOIPG/2015/2275. T.H., K.K and T.S.Z developed their work within the Hungarian Research, Development and Innovation Office (project id. FK128013). The Institut Catala de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolucio Social (IPHES-CERCA) has received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the Maria de Maeztu program for Units of Excellence (CEX2019-000945-M). This project was partially funded by AGAUR (Ref. 2017SGR1040), URV (Ref. 2019PFR-URV-91) and the MICINN/FEDER (Ref. PGC2018-093925-B-C32).

Analysis of institutional authors

Share

Integrating buccal and occlusal dental microwear with isotope analyses for a complete paleodietary reconstruction of Holocene populations from Hungary

Publicated to:Scientific Reports. 11 (1): 7034- - 2021-12-01 11(1), DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-86369-x

Authors: Hernando, Raquel; Gamarra, Beatriz; McCall, Ashley; Cheronet, Olivia; Fernandes, Daniel; Sirak, Kendra; Schmidt, Ryan; Lozano, Marina; Szeniczey, Tamas; Hajdu, Tamas; Barany, Annamaria; Kalli, Andras; Tutkovics, Eszter K.; Kohler, Kitti; Kiss, Krisztian; Koos, Judit; Csengeri, Piroska; Kiraly, Agnes; Horvath, Antonia; Hajdu, Melinda L.; Toth, Krisztian; Patay, Robert; Feeney, Robin N. M.; Pinhasi, Ron;

Affiliations

Abstract

Dietary reconstruction is used to make inferences about the subsistence strategies of ancient human populations, but it may also serve as a proxy to characterise their diverse cultural and technological manifestations. Dental microwear and stable isotope analyses have been shown to be successful techniques for paleodietary reconstruction of ancient populations but, despite yielding complementary dietary information, these techniques have rarely been combined within the same study. Here we present for the first time a comprehensive approach to interpreting ancient lifeways through the results of buccal and occlusal microwear, and delta C-13 and delta N-15 isotope analyses applied to the same individuals of prehistoric populations of Hungary from the Middle Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age periods. This study aimed to (a) assess if the combination of techniques yields a more precise assessment of past dietary and subsistence practices, and (b) contribute to our understanding of the dietary patterns of the prehistoric Hungarian populations. Overall, no correlations between microwear and delta C-13 and delta N-15 isotope variables were observed, except for a relationship between nitrogen and the vertical and horizontal index. However, we found that diachronic differences are influenced by the variation within the period. Particularly, we found differences in microwear and isotope variables between Middle Neolithic sites, indicating that there were different dietary practices among those populations. Additionally, microwear results suggest no changes in the abrasiveness of the diet, neither food processing methods, despite higher C-4 plant resource consumption shown by carbon isotopic signal. Thus, we demonstrate that the integration of dental microwear and carbon and nitrogen stable isotope methodologies can provide complementary information for making inferences about paleodietary habits.

Keywords