The arrival of millets to the Atlantic coast of northern Iberia

Biomolecular evidence for changing millet reliance in Late Bronze Age central Germany

The Bronze Age of Central Europe was a period of major social, economic, political and ideological change. The arrival of millet is often seen as part of wider Bronze Age connectivity, yet understanding of the subsistence regimes underpinning this dynamic period remains poor for this region, in large part due to a dominance of cremation funerary rites, which hinder biomolecular studies. Here, we apply stable isotope analysis, radiocarbon dating and archaeobotanical analysis to two Late Bronze Age (LBA) sites, Esperstedt and Kuckenburg, in central Germany, where human remains were inhumed rather than cremated. We find that people buried at these sites did not consume millet before the Middle Bronze Age (MBA) (ca. 1600 BCE). However, by the early LBA (ca. 1300-1050 BCE) people consumed millet, often in substantial quantities. This consumption appears to have subsequently diminished or ceased around 1050-800 BCE, despite charred millet grains still being found in the archaeological deposits from this period. The arrival of millet in this region, followed by a surge in consumption spanning two centuries, indicates a complex interplay of cultural and economic factors, as well as a potential use of millet to buffer changes in aridity in a region increasingly prone to crop failure in the face of climate change today.

Direct evidence of plant consumption in Neolithic Eastern Sudan from dental calculus analysis

The Neolithic communities of Eastern Sudan combined intensive pastoralism with plant exploitation as their main subsistence strategies. However, to date, it remains unclear which plant species were part of the human diet during the Neolithic. This contribution presents direct data on plant consumption in Eastern Sudan from the Early to Late Neolithic, obtained through the analysis of microdebris inclusions in the dental calculus of 37 individuals, integrated by dentoalveolar pathology analysis of 78 individuals, from the sites UA53 (4th millennium BCE) and Mahal Teglinos (3rd-2nd millennium BCE), located in the Gash Delta/Kassala region. Dental calculus inclusions indicate a diverse intake of cereals, legumes, and tubers during the Middle Neolithic, thus supporting the hypothesis of high reliance on plant resources. Dentoalveolar pathologies, possibly related to the consumption of carbohydrate-rich foods, have also been recorded. For the Late Neolithic, consistent with the shift towards aridity that occurred in the Middle/Late Holocene, dental calculus exclusively indicates the exploitation of sorghum and tubers-species well adapted to arid conditions-showing how the Neolithic communities modified their subsistence in response to environmental changes. Evidence of plant processing techniques, such as cooking/heating, was also revealed from the dental calculus analysis.