Farmers at the Frontier by Gron Kurt J.;Sørensen Lasse;Rowley-Conwy Peter; & Sørensen & Peter Rowley-Conwy

Author:Gron, Kurt J.;Sørensen, Lasse;Rowley-Conwy, Peter; & Sørensen & Peter Rowley-Conwy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Europe / General
Publisher: Oxbow Books, Limited
Published: 2020-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

Cattle-based agriculture in the Early Neolithic in the Polish lowlands: an outline

Arkadiusz Marciniak

Introduction

The significance of cattle in the Early Neolithic of the Polish lowlands has been discussed for a very long time. Cattle are rightly regarded as the most important domesticated animals (e.g. Marciniak, 2005; Bogucki, 2008), as indicated by the high abundance of their bones in most faunal assemblages dating to this period; usually ranging between c. 50% to 80% of all domestic species (Sobociński, 1984; 1985; Grygiel, 2004). This implies that cattle occupied a dominant place in the life of early farmers, with meat making arguably the biggest contribution to their diet (e.g. Bogucki, 1988; Marciniak, 2005).

However, the evidence employed is significantly reductionist and often used in an unconstrained manner, making the formulated assertions arbitrary and imprecise. Recent years have brought about a significant shift in studies of husbandry practices due to the dynamic development of zooarchaeological studies in combination with stable isotopes, in particular carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and strontium, the study of ceramic lipids and ancient DNA (e.g. Pearson et al., 2007; Hongo et al., 2009, Marciniak, 2014). The application of this multi-proxy approach made it possible to reveal a number of hitherto unrecognised dimensions of animal husbandry practices, in particular animal birthing manipulation, seasonality of food provisioning, animal diets and herd movements as well as the emergence and scale of milk production and consumption (e.g. Salque et al., 2012). Hence, it is now possible to comprehensively recognise and characterise different modes of cattle exploitation and reveal the character of cattle-based agriculture.

Based upon different case studies employing this multi-proxy approach, this chapter aims at presenting the role and significance of cattle in different domains in the lives of the Early Neolithic farmers of the Polish lowlands, including their origin and mastery of the art of herding practices. Furthermore, it aims at scrutinising the significance of different cattle products, including the mode of beef consumption and the introduction of dairying. The results presented in this chapter are largely based upon the recent comprehensive studies of the faunal assemblages from two Early Neolithic settlements at Kopydłowo 8 (Evans and Stewart, 2015; Lisowski, 2015; Pearson, 2015; Roffet-Salque and Evershed, 2015) and Ludwinowo 7 (Johnson et al., 2016; Gillis et al., 2017), in addition to the results of more traditional studies of animal bone assemblages from other sites in the Polish lowlands.

The Early Neolithic of the Polish lowlands

The Early Neolithic communities in central Europe are associated with the Linearbandkultur (LBK). Small groups of early farmers emerged in the Polish lowlands in the first half of the 53rd century BC. After a short initial period, a more extensive establishment of settlement was achieved some time later in the second half of the 53rd century BC. This was either as part of local population growth and infill, as a part of a second wave of migration or through continuing migration (Pyzel, 2010; 2014). The LBK groups disappeared in the last decades of the 51st century cal BC or the earliest decades of the 50th century cal BC (Marciniak et al.

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