What about Dinner? Chemical and Microresidue Analysis Reveals the Function of Late Neolithic Ceramic Pans.

The Late Neolithic palafitte site, Ustie na Drim, in the northern part of Lake Ohrid (North Macedonia), excavated in 1962, offered ceramic fragments of large, flat, elongated pans. These artifacts could be dated by relative chronology to roughly around 5200-5000 BC. According to their shape and technological traits, the ceramic pans were probably used for baking. The attached materials on the surface of studied pan fragments were sampled for consequent chemical and microscopical analyses (i.e., analyses of starch, phytoliths, and microscopic animal remains). An immunological method revealed the presence of pork proteins in samples. The presence of organic residues of animal origin was, moreover, confirmed by the detection of cholesterol using gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry. Analysis of detected microscopic botanical objects revealed starch grains of several plants (i.e., oak, cattail, and grasses). An interesting find was the hair of a beetle larva, which could be interpreted contextually as the khapra beetle, a pest of grain and flour. Based on our data, we suppose that the ceramic pans from Ustie na Drim were used for the preparation of meals containing meat from common livestock in combination with cereals and wild plants.

Extensive archaeobotanical data estimate carrying capacity, duration, and land use of the Late Bronze Age settlement site Breznice (Czech Republic).

The reconstruction of the settlement´s hinterland and acquisition of plant resources is one of the crucial questions in the field of environmental archaeology. Our study is focused on the reconstruction of the settlement's structure and character of the environment from which the site drew resources. These research questions were addressed by the interpretation of plant macroremains, charcoals, and the results of the spatial model. We have focused on the maximum size of the settlement that the surrounding countryside was able to withstand. Our results clearly demonstrated significant deforestation and intensive land use in the vicinity of the Late Bronze Age study site. As the weed taxa showed, a wide range of crops was grown in rather dry or less often in damp fields. Based on our archaeobotanical results, we were able to reconstruct several types of grasslands: dry pastures and fallow fields on plateaus and slopes, wet pastures or meadows in the floodplain. Acidophilous oak forests, alluvial forests, and shrubs were reconstructed as the most common forest habitats in the vicinity of the study site. Based on the archaeological knowledge of the region, we assume relatively low population density during the Late Bronze Age, and thus only a small part of the more or less forested landscape was significantly affected by human activities.