For More Information

If you’re interested in learning more about the Mesolithic, check out the sources listed below.  I’ve used a lot of them in this blog.

The Mesolithic in general:

The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age by Richard Rudgley, 1999, is a very good book.  While it doesn’t cover diet very well, it provides a good overview of technological developments during all of the Stone Ages: http://www.amazon.com/The-Lost-Civilizations-Stone-Age/dp/0684862700

Microburin’s blog at http://microburin.com/

Check out what the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History has: http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/behavior/food

For more information about Tybrind Vig in particular, look here:

Kubiak-Marten’s fascinating article on the plant remains found: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23417650

An article by Torben Malm about the excavations at Tybrind Vig: http://www.abc.se/~pa/publ/tybrind.htm

And here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the Ertebølle Culture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erteb%C3%B8lle_culture

For Franchthi cave, look here:

Dartmouth has a very informative page: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~prehistory/aegean/?page_id=107

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchthi_Cave

Archaeology.about.com has some basic information about the excavations: http://archaeology.about.com/od/archa13/a/franchthi.htm

Mathilda’s Anthropology Blog provides a good, in depth summary of artifacts and remains found at the site during all periods of its occupation: http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/inhabited-for-17000-years-franchthi-cave-greece/

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of information about El Collado (other than for hotels), but there are two scientific articles:

Guixé, Richards, and Subirà wrote an article called “Palaeodiets of Humans and Fauna at the Spanish Mesoolithic Site of El Collado” in 2006: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/504170

Alrousan, Al-Shorman, Galbany, and Perez-Perez wrote an article discussing microwear on teeth and stable isotopic analysis called “Buccal dental microwear and stable isotopes of El Collado: A Mesolithic site from Spain”: http://hrcak.srce.hr/file/154093

For Mount Sandel:

Irish Archaeology has an amazing page: http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/07/mount-sandel-a-mesolithic-campsite/

Rachel MacLean’s article “Eat Your Greens: An Eamination of the Potential Diet Available in Ireland during the Mesolithic” from 1993 covers a lot of sites, including Mount Sandel: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20568181

Mesolithic Diet Across Europe

So, what were people eating in Mesolithic Europe?  A variety of foods, including fish, plants, and land animals.  In the Paleolithic, people were mainly eating big game and gathering plants; unfortunately, most of the megafauna became extinct in Europe around the time of the last Ice Age, when the Mesolithic began.  This could have been one of the triggers that caused people to change their diets; people had to adapt and find other sources of food, or die out (which, obviously, didn't happen).  Instead of specializing in just a few species, like the Neolithic farmers would, the Mesolithic people ate a wide range of food.  They ate whatever was available, and diet could change seasonally, like at the Irish site of Mount Sandel.  While it seems that many populations primarily ate fish, like at Tybrind Vig, Denmark, and at Mount Sandel, other populations didn’t.  Despite the fact that both El Collado, Spain, and Franchthi Cave in Greece are both located on coasts, people tended to eat land animals and plants more than they ate fish.  It could be because the Atlantic and the River Bann both produced more fish than the Mediterranean did, it could be a matter of cultural preference for terrestrial resources rather than marine ones, or there could be another reason.  Whatever the case may be, it’s clear that people during the Mesolithic weren’t on the Atkins diet or a high carb diet, but rather a “see food” diet: whatever food they saw around them was what they ate.

Image of fish skeleton from Franchthi Cave taken from Dartmouth Aegean Prehistoric Archaeology: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~prehistory/aegean/?page_id=107

Juggling a Variety of Foods: Mount Sandel

Image from Irish Archaeology: http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/07/mount-sandel-a-mesolithic-campsite/

Mount Sandel is the oldest archaeological site in Ireland, dating to 7,000 BC.  It’s located in Northern Ireland, close to the River Bann.  There were huts thatched presumably with wood and containing a central hearth placed all over the site.  Most of the animal remains are fish, which includes salmon, trout, eel, bass, and flounder, all of which could have been caught in the River Bann.  Wooden racks for drying and smoking the fish were found at the site, showing that people were preparing them for storage.  The local population also ate some mammals, mostly wild boar, but also the occasional hare and wolf or dog.  People weren’t just eating fish, though; there are a lot of remains of hazelnuts, vetch, goosegrass, wild crab apple, and white water lily, in addition to many, many others.  Different species of plants would have been available at different parts of the year, so the fact that they all appear at the site shows that people were staying there year-round, and that their diet changed seasonally.  However, even with the seasonal changes, the occupants at Mount Sandel fished and gathered more than they hunted.

Image from Archaeological Consultancy Ltd: http://www.archaeologicalconsultancy.com/projects_clowanstown1.asp

Something Fishy in the Site of El Collado?

Image from Guixe, Richards, & Subira "Palaeodiets of Humans and Fauna at the Spanish Mesolithic Site of El Collado," 2006: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/504170

El Collado is the largest Mesolithic site in Spain, located near the eastern coast.  Due to its location and the fact that a shell midden is nearby, people have assumed that marine resources were a huge portion of people’s diets.  However, this actually isn’t true.  Guixé, Richards, and Subirà are three scientists who analyzed the skeletons of fifteen individuals and cattle from around 7,500 BP.  Bones contain carbon and nitrogen, which break down into isotopes at a steady rate over time after the individual’s death.  The isotopes accumulate within the body at a steady rate while the individual’s alive, but the rates can change based on people’s diets.  Carnivores have more nitrogen in their bodies, because they absorb the nitrogen from the bodies of their prey, which contain more nitrogen than the plants that their prey eat (interestingly, babies that are breastfed actually present as cannibals, because they’re getting a high amount of nitrogen from their mothers).  Organisms that eat a marine diet as opposed to a terrestrial one also contain more nitrogen.  Guixé, Richards, and Subirà looked at the ratios of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in human bones, and they saw that only two people were eating a huge amount of seafood.  Everyone else was eating mostly terrestrial resources.  It could be that the Mediterranean just didn’t have as many edible fish as the Atlantic, but it seems that people were eating more land animals like cattle than marine food.

Doe, A Deer: The Diet at Franchthi Cave

Image taken from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchthi_Cave

Franchthi cave is in southeastern Argolis, Greece.  The cave was continuously occupied from 20,000-3,000 BC, from the Paleolithic through the Neolithic.  It was excavated by T.W. Jacobsen from 1967-1979.  The site is really significant because it has some of the earliest evidence of agriculture in Greece.  The Mesolithic period is divided up into two phases, because people were eating different things over time.  In the first phase, people were eating mostly red deer, some pig, and very few other things.  However, there are some small fish bones.  In the second phase, people are still eating mostly red deer and the occasional pig, but the fish bones here are large, possibly tuna.  The site contains lentils, vetch, pistachios, almonds, wild oat seeds, wild barley seeds, wild pears, and peas during the Mesolithic.  The number of pistachios increase around 8,000 BC, and wild oats and barley become more common after 7,000 BC.  There are equid and caprine bones (horse, goat, and sheep species) during the Mesolithic, but the number of these decrease around 8,000 BC, which could suggest that people were choosing to eat other things (like more pistachios), or that the surrounding landscape was turning into open forests.  In connection to the large fish bones lots of obsidian from Melos was also found at the site.  This shows that people were able to travel across seas to trade for the obsidian, and the size of the fish bones may suggest that people practiced deep-sea fishing.  However, there isn’t a substantial amount of the large fish bones, so it can be argued that people drove the fish into shallow water and caught them with clubs or spears.  The site shows that Greeks ate a variety of plants during the Mesolithic, but most of their protein came from red deer and pigs, not fish.

Image from Wikipedia article about red deer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_deer

A Seafood Diet at Tybrind Vig?

Image taken from "Late Mesolithic coastal fishing practices: the evidence from Tybrind Vig, Denmark" by Clive Bonsall, 2007: http://www.academia.edu/297660/Late_Mesolithic_coastal_fishing_practices_the_evidence_from_Tybrind_Vig_Denmark_2007_

Tybrind Vig is a Danish submerged site on the west coast of the island Fynen.  It was excavated from 1978-1988 by Søren Andersen and teams of scuba divers.  It was populated by hunter-gatherers from 5600-4000 BC.  Most of the artifacts found there belong to the Ertebølle Culture (this is a culture of hunter-gatherer-fishers who made pottery from around 5300-3950 BC in Southern Scandinavian).  Hazel stakes that were used to build fish traps and the remains of a wickerwork trap were found at the site, along with many fish hooks made of bone and fishing spears.  Lots of fish bones from several species were also found.  People were using a variety of methods to fish, including trapping, spear fishing, and angling.

So, it’s clear that fishing was a very important component of people’s diet.  But was it the main component?  Charred remains of sea beets, acorns, and hazelnuts were found at the site, suggesting that these were cooked and eaten.  The acorn and hazelnut shells may have been used as fuel.  Several types of wild berries and fruit, such as raspberries, dewberries, wild strawberries, and crab apples were found among the waterlogged remains.  Most of the plants found grow in the summer and autumn, so the population would have had to be there during those times to harvest them.  One paleoethnobotanist (person who studies how ancient cultures used plants), Lucyna Kubiak-Martens, has argued (in a descriptively titled article, “The plant food component of the diet at the late Mesolithic (Ertebølle) settlement at Tybrind Vig, Denmark,” published 1999; see the For More Information post for a link)  that the abundance of edible plant remains shows that people were eating more plants than fish.  In either case, it’s clear that people were eating a variety of local foods, instead of specializing in big game hunting (like in the Paleolithic) or farming a few cereals (like in the Neolithic).

What is the Mesolithic?

The term Mesolithic means “Middle Stone Age,” and it’s between the Paleolithic (“Old Stone Age”) and the Neolithic (“New Stone Age”) periods.

Image from http://www.costatropical.net/Almunecar/Almunecar_History_Prehistoric.asp

It’s often thought of as a transition period between the other two, since a lot of things (diet, technology, architecture, where people live) change from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic.  During the Paleolithic, people were usually hunting and gathering, and they had eventually developed agriculture by the beginning of the Neolithic.  However, defining the Mesolithic is a little more complicated than that. 

The Paleolithic ended with the last Ice Age (10,500 years ago) (Rudgley 1999: 10-11), so that’s usually considered the starting point of the Mesolithic in Africa, Europe, and Asia.  It’s harder to assign a date to the end, though, because the different time periods are classified based on traits.  Farming is a defining feature of the Neolithic and is a clear sign that the Mesolithic has ended, but it shows up at different times in different places.  For example, it starts in the Near East around 10,000 years ago, but it shows up in Britain and other far-flung places after 4,000 BC (Rudgley 1999: 10-11).  So, when talking about Europe at least, scholars usually say that the Mesolithic occurred roughly from 11,000-5,000 BC, because most of the evidence for the Mesolithic is from this time period, and it’s just easier to have a rough chronology in mind.

Regardless of when exactly the Mesolithic began and ended, the Mesolithic was a significant change from the Paleolithic.  Europe was warming up from the previous Ice Age, and a lot of new land was available to people.  Glaciers across Europe had melted, so the coastline had changed drastically.  People started living along the coast and had boats that they used for fishing and for long-distance trade.  There’s more evidence for cooperation in the form of communal buildings and trade, but also for increased violence between groups.  Pottery was developed.  In the midst of all these changes, did the diets change as well?

Purpose

This blog has two purposes.  First, it’s to provide information to anyone who’s interested in learning more about what people were eating in Europe during the Mesolithic.  Second, it’s to document my work as I try to answer these two research questions :

            1. What were people eating in Europe during the Mesolithic?

            2. Did people in different locations eat different foods?