Notices by Dr Nathalie Brusgaard (brusgaard@archaeo.social)

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

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

Happy #EarthDay2024! Here's to all creatures - big and small - who make our planet an amazing place for humans and nonhumans to live. The past demonstrates that we wouldn't have thrived without them

1st major finding: beavers are everywhere! They were a large component of forager subsistence. But where they all but disappear from the Southern Scandinavian record, their presence remains strong in the Netherlands and NE Europe 3/

Beaver teeth and mandibles were also used as tools and teeth as pendants. Perhaps people imitated beaver woodworking and the use of these artefacts brought beaver and human perspectives closer together 4/

Beavers co-occur in the archaeological record with mammals that thrive in beaver environments, such as otters 🦦, wild boar 🐗, and muskrats. We propose that foragers purposefully sought out beaver landscapes to benefit from these interspecies relationships 5/

The positive effects of beavers on fish communities is also visible in the ichtyho-faunal record 🐟. Beavers provided fishing affordances for foragers, that continued long after other cultural changes had occurred 6/

📷 Dutch National Museum of Antiquities

We argue that beavers shaped human lives and environments. Much of human prehistory in the Mid-Holocene can be reframed as the result of these developing human-beaver convivialities 7/

We think that this multispecies approach provides new perspectives for studying past #ecosystems and human co-habitation in them. And we hope to contribute new insights to current #rewilding schemes 8/8

Read our paper here for more!
https://doi.org/10.1177/09596836231200444

Beavers shaped human lives and environments in the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic of Northern Europe.

A 🧵

New paper out by Shumon Hussain and myself: https://doi.org/10.1177/09596836231200444
@universiteitleiden @mscactions

https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2023/10/beavers-had-a-big-influence-on-how-people-in-the-stone-age-lived
#scicomm #beavers #science