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   Dr Nathalie Brusgaard (brusgaard@archaeo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Jun-2024 00:41:11 JST Dr Nathalie Brusgaard

   • Antiquity

   New evidence for early cattle herding in N Europe 🐄Our research is out in
   @Antiquity
   #scicomm #archaeology #farming #animals

   A 🧵on what we discovered about hunter-gatherers, farmers and cows. Spoiler: we found 2 different herds of cattle! 1/

   https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/early-animal-management-in-northern-europe-multiproxy-evidence-from-swifterbant-the-netherlands/F901950B459C778246635B39A3E5B8B7

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     Dr Nathalie Brusgaard (brusgaard@archaeo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Jun-2024 00:40:59 JST Dr Nathalie Brusgaard

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     No if we're talking about wild animals. But yes if we're talking about cattle! From this point on cattle play a very specific role in Dutch (pre)history - they are managed carefully, exchanged, and become more and more important. So..hunter-gatherer-farmer-cattle herders?😁 12/

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     Dr Nathalie Brusgaard (brusgaard@archaeo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Jun-2024 00:41:00 JST Dr Nathalie Brusgaard

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     So...hunter-gatherer-farmers? It's a term that's been used for the Swifterbant culture before and it's pretty fitting. What's most interesting about our results I think is the new insights into human-animal relationships. Had these relationships changed? 11/

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     Dr Nathalie Brusgaard (brusgaard@archaeo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Jun-2024 00:41:02 JST Dr Nathalie Brusgaard

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     While these people kept cattle, pigs, and sheep - and managed them intensively - and they had crops, their subsistence consisted for a large part of hunted and gathered wild resources, like beavers🦫, wild boar 🐗, and hazelnuts. They made full use of the wetland landscape 10/

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     Dr Nathalie Brusgaard (brusgaard@archaeo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Jun-2024 00:41:03 JST Dr Nathalie Brusgaard

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     So as early as 4240 BC, people of the Swifterbant culture were keeping cattle and sheep and managing them in different ways. Perhaps they brought some of the animals from elsewhere or pastured them in different places. Talk about complex livestock husbandry! 8/

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     Dr Nathalie Brusgaard (brusgaard@archaeo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Jun-2024 00:41:03 JST Dr Nathalie Brusgaard

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     The cattle were domestic and smaller than the cattle from Early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik sites. We also found small domestic pigs that had probably lived on the settlements, foraging on human refuse 🐖 9/

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     Dr Nathalie Brusgaard (brusgaard@archaeo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Jun-2024 00:41:05 JST Dr Nathalie Brusgaard

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     Our biggest discovery? These people weren't just keeping cattle, they had TWO completely different herds of cattle 🐄🐄The isotopes of the cattle (and sheep!) showed that one herd had lived in the forest 🌲 while the other grazed either on salt marshes or on manured fields 💩 7/

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     Dr Nathalie Brusgaard (brusgaard@archaeo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Jun-2024 00:41:06 JST Dr Nathalie Brusgaard

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     We measured the size of the cattle and pig bones to determine whether they were wild or domestic and we carried out stable isotope analysis to find out what these animals were eating 🦴🔬We also analysed the vegetation at the sites 🌿 6/

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     Dr Nathalie Brusgaard (brusgaard@archaeo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Jun-2024 00:41:07 JST Dr Nathalie Brusgaard

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     So were these people farmers or hunter-gatherers? And what does this mean for the human-animal relationships at this time? Farmers can have very different relationships with animals than foragers. We decided to take a closer look at the animal bones found at these sites 🦴🦷 5/

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     Dr Nathalie Brusgaard (brusgaard@archaeo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Jun-2024 00:41:08 JST Dr Nathalie Brusgaard

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     In the Netherlands, hunter-gatherers of the Swifterbant culture start using pottery around 5000 BC and carry out crop agriculture around 4200 BC. But they also hunt, fish, and gather wild resources, and migrate seasonally 🐟🐗🌰 4/

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     Dr Nathalie Brusgaard (brusgaard@archaeo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Jun-2024 00:41:09 JST Dr Nathalie Brusgaard

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     When, where and how humans started farming is one of the BIG questions in archaeology 👩🌾 In N Europe most signs point to it happening ca 4000 BC but it's a muddy picture with a long period of piecemeal adoption of farming practices by hunter-gatherers and/or farmers migrating 3/

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     Dr Nathalie Brusgaard (brusgaard@archaeo.social)'s status on Wednesday, 05-Jun-2024 00:41:10 JST Dr Nathalie Brusgaard

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     This research was part of the EDAN project at @univgroningen funded by NWO.
     Together with Jildou Kooistra, Mans Schepers, Michael Dee, Daan Raemaekers and Canan Cakirlar 2/