Data copyright © Dr Naomi Belshaw, Prof Nicky Milner unless otherwise stated
This work is licensed under the ADS Terms of Use and Access.
Prof
Nicky
Milner
Department of Archaeology
University of York
King's Manor
Exhibition Square
York
YO1 7EP
England
Tel: 01904 323940
Fax: 01904 323902
This project was funded by the AHRB from 2002-2005. It aimed to examine the role of marine resources and especially shellfish in the diet and economy of prehistoric hunters and gatherers living in Northwest Europe between about 8000 and 5000 years ago and the influence of these patterns on the spread and adoption of agriculture after about 5000 years ago.
This involved:
This archive presents the database which was constructed for Naomi Belshaw's PhD project on the distribution of coastal sites in Scotland between 9000 and 3000 cal BC in relation to sea level change, resource availability and past archaeological research.
This project opened up an international debate about the sources of evidence used to assess palaeodietary changes in prehistory, especially stable isotope evidence derived from human bone, through a re-assessment of the stable isotope evidence across the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Northwest Europe and a critical evaluation of the resulting generalisations that have been made about the contribution of marine resources in the different periods.
In particular, it was shown that the isotope evidence is in conflict with other archaeological sources of palaeodietary evidence, and thus demonstrated the need for a critical evaluation of all types of evidence and the need for more detailed and sensitive investigations that take account of smaller scale variations in diet, the structure, function and location of midden deposits, and the varying environmental opportunities and constraints of different times and places. More specifically, we have shown that marine resources continued to play an important role in early Neolithic economies supposedly based on agriculture, especially in Denmark, and have cast doubts on the model of a sudden and sharp replacement of Mesolithic economies dominated by marine resources to Neolithic ones dominated by agricultural products (and by extension and implication the various theories that purport to 'explain' this sharp and sudden shift).
We have successfully extended methods of seasonality and age-structure analysis, originally pioneered on the oyster remains in the Mesolithic and Neolithic deposits of the Danish shell- midden site of Norsminde, to other species (particularly the common cockle, Cerastoderma edule), and to other sites, in particular the Danish shell mounds of Krabbesholm and Bjørnsholm (both of which have substantial Neolithic shell-midden deposits as well as Mesolithic deposits).
We have also carried out new studies on stable isotope ecology (looking at the stable isotope composition of both archaeological and modern specimens of different types of marine resources), and experimented with new biomolecular methods, particularly sulphur isotopes, and the analysis of lipid and protein residues adhering to ceramics and, and applied some of these to material in a variety of archaeological contexts, in order to resolve some of the ambiguities associated with existing palaeoeconomic and palaeodietary evidence.