A team of scientists, led by Dr. Simon Hammann and Dr. Lucy Cramp at the University of Bristol’s Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, has uncovered intriguing new insights into the diet of people living in Neolithic Britain and found evidence that cereals, including wheat, were cooked in pots.
The consumption of domesticated plants and animals first emerged in Britain and Ireland in the centuries around 4000 BCE, and it accompanies other novel traditions, practices and technology, including the use of pottery and new settlement and funerary practices.
The peer-reviewed study, published in Nature Communications, found that cereals were cooked in pots and mixed with dairy products and occasionally meat, probably to create early forms of gruel and stew.
Using chemical analysis of ancient and incredibly well-preserved pottery, found in the waters surrounding small artificial islands called "crannogs" in Scotland, researchers discovered that the people visiting these crannogs used smaller pots to cook cereals with milk and larger pots for meat-based dishes.
By using a highly sensitive approach to analyze organic residues extracted from Neolithic pottery, researchers were able to directly detect specific molecular biomarkers of the cereals that were cooked in the vessels themselves.
“It’s very exciting to see that cereal biomarkers in pots can actually survive under favorable conditions in samples from the time when cereals (and pottery) were introduced in Britain. Our lipid-based molecular method can complement archaeobotanical methods to investigate the introduction and spread of cereal agriculture,” Dr. Hammann said.
Cereal cultivation in Britain was probably introduced by migrant farmers from continental Europe, this is evidenced by some, often sparse, recovery of preserved cereal grains and other debris found at Neolithic sites.
Ceremonial Cereal
Another intriguing discovery the study found was the fact that many of the pots analyzed had intricate decorations, which could suggest they may have had some sort of ceremonial use.
Since the actual function of the crannogs themselves is also not yet fully understood, with some being far too small for permanent residence, the research provides new insights into possible ways these constructions were used.
“This research gives us a window into the culinary traditions of early farmers living at the northwestern edge of Europe, whose lifeways are little understood. It gives us the first glimpse of the sorts of practices that were associated with these enigmatic islet locations,” Dr. Cramp explained.
“This research gives us a window into the culinary traditions of early farmers living at the northwestern edge of Europe, whose lifeways are little understood. It gives us the first glimpse of the sorts of practices that were associated with these enigmatic islet locations,”
Dr. Lucy Cramp
Crannog sites in the Outer Hebrides are currently the focus of the four-year Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded ‘Islands of Stone’ project, directed by two of the paper's authors, Duncan Garrow from the University of Reading and Fraser Sturt from the University of Southampton, along with Angela Gannon, Historic Environment Scotland.