The Diet and Health Status of the Early Neolithic Communities of the Central Balkans (6200-5200 Bc)

UNIVERSITY OF BELGRADE FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY Jelena D. Jovanović THE DIET AND HEALTH STATUS OF THE EARLY NEOLITHIC COMMUNITIES OF THE CENTRAL BALKANS (6200-5200 BC) Doctoral Dissertation Belgrade, 2017 UNIVERZITET U BEOGRADU FILOZOFSKI FAKULTET Jelena D. Jovanović ISHRANA I ZDRAVSTVENI STATUS STANOVNIKA CENTRALNOG BALKANA U RANOM NEOLITU (6200.-5200. G. PRE N.E.) doktorska disertacija Beograd, 2017 Thesis Supervisor: Dr Sofija Stefanović, Professor, Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Serbia; Biosense Institute, University of Novi Sad, Serbia Dissertation Committee: Dr Gwenaëlle Goude, researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), France Dr Marko Porčić, Associate professor, Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Serbia; Biosense Institute, University of Novi Sad, Serbia Dr Jasna Vuković, Assistant professor, Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Serbia Date of defense: Acknowledgements I would like to express sincere gratitude to my PhD supervisor Prof. Sofija Stefanović for her support, guidance and encouragement over the past several years. She introduces me to the one of the most exciting periods in human evolution, the Mesolithic-Neolithic Transition, and provided me with the opportunity to work with the Danube Gorges skeletal collection. I very much appreciate the contribution she made to this project in terms of time, ideas and funding; her help made my PhD-related work much more productive and stimulating than it would have been without it. She welcomed me to the project “Bioarchaeology of Ancient Europe: humans, animals and plants in the prehistory of Serbia” (Ref: III 47001) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia within which I partially conducted my PhD research. I am also deeply indebted to Dr Gwenaëlle Goude for crucial advice and a critical eye throughout the research and the dissertation writing processes. Her thorough and insightful comments on the first drafts of thesis broadened my perspective and significantly improved this dissertation. I am also grateful to her for encouraging me to explore dietary pathways through stable isotope analysis and for providing me with excellent training and facilities in the LAMPEA laboratory in Aix en Provence. My heartfelt thanks to Dr Marko Porčić (Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Archaeology, University of Belgrade), for the help, support and very useful discussions throughout my PhD studies. I would also like to thank Dr Dragana Rančić from the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Belgrade who kindly shared her knowledge and the workspace in which I conducted starch grain analysis under her guidance. I am grateful to Dr Dragana Filipović (Institute for Balkan Studies, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts) for valuable advice on the use of plants in prehistory. This dissertation would not have been possible without the assistance of many people and institutions, each of whom deserve special thanks. I am grateful to Divna Gačić and ĐorĎe Gačić (City Museum of Novi Sad), Prof. Nenad Tasić (Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Archaeology, University of Belgrade), Lidija Balj (Museum of Vojvodina), Dragan AnĎelić (Provincial Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, Vojvodina), Sneţana Marinković (National Museum, Zrenjanin) and Dr Andrej Starović (National Museum in Belgrade) for the help and access to the studied material. I would also like to thank to my friend and colleague Camille de Becdelièvre. Not only was he there for me to hear my ideas and answer questions regarding my thesis, he has also been a great friend and I will always remember the time we spent together in Serbia, France and through Europe. I am grateful to my friend and colleague Jelena Bulatović for useful advices and all support. I would also like to thank to all my other friends and colleagues of the Laboratory for Bioarcheology at the University of Belgrade: Tamara Blagojević, Mina Amzirkov, Kristina Penezić, Ivana Ţivaljević, Dr Sonja Vuković, Prof. Vesna Dimitrijević, Jelena Marković; and Dr Stefan Milošević and Dr Dragana Filipović for English corrections of the thesis and very useful comments. I am also grateful to Dr Estelle Herrscher from the LAMPEA laboratory for help and fruitful discussions. Lastly, I would like to thank my dear friends Tanja, Maja, Jelena S., Jelena K., Miki, and the family who encouraged and inspired me in so many ways through the last several years. I am particularly grateful to my parents, Marina and Dragan, and my fiancé Mladen for their unconditional love, understanding and constant support, and for not letting me give in. The diet and health status of the Early Neolithic communities of the Central Balkans (6200-5200 BC) Abstract With climatic improvement at the beginning of the Holocene, small human groups across the world experienced important changes that over the following several millennia significantly impacted their lifestyles. The process began of the transition from mobile foragers to sedentary agro-pastoralists and, in a few thousand years, the world population increased. This process is known as the Neolithic Demographic Transition and represents one of the major events in human prehistory which significantly influenced human biology, dietary choices and health patterns. The new, Neolithic way of life spread from the Near East through western Anatolia to central Europe. The Balkans represents one of the key areas for studying the process of Neolithisation, as it is located at the crossroad between the Near East and central Europe. However, biological and cultural mechanisms behind the process of Neolithisation in the central Balkans are poorly understood. This thesis gives the first direct insights into how the process of Neolithisation in the Central Balkans influenced human lifestyle, particularly the diet and health. For the first time, the data from the Central Balkans and from Europe are compared, which helps better understand the dynamics of the Neolithisation process across the continent. This research focuses on examination of the diet and health status of 267 humans whose skeletal remains were recovered from 14 Mesolithic and Neolithic sites across the Central Balkans. The study focuses on two geographic regions: 1) the Danube Gorges (sites Padina, Lepenski Vir, Vlasac, Hajdučka Vodenica and Ajmana), where Mesolithic-Neolithic continuity of occupation has been attested for the period 9500- 5500 cal BC; and 2) the regions to the west from the Danube Gorges, the territory of the Central Balkans (Golokut-Vizić, Klisa, Sremski Karlovci, Perlez-Batka, Obreţ-Baštine and Starčevo) and the southern part of the Great Pannonian Plain (Vinča-Belo Brdo, Grivac and Rudnik Kosovski) where Early Neolithic period lasted from 6200 to 5200 cal BC. Over this period, the inhabitants of these areas underwent Neolithic transformations which included major changes in the lifestyle. The changes included the beginning of a fully sedentary way of life, cultivation of domestic plants and breeding of animals. Many scholars hypothesized that these changes, seen not only in the Central Balkan region but also across whole Europe, had a positive effect on female reproductive system and that, as a result, within few thousand years the world population significantly increased. In fact, one of the key explanations for the causes of Neolithic Demographic Transition emphasises the changes in female nutrition – from protein-based diet to diet dominated by carbohydrates. Thus the aim of this thesis was to determine whether the Early Neolithic in the Central Balkans saw changes in human diet which could have had impact on fertility rates and the overall population health. Therefore, the first hypothesis underlying the study is that Neolithic people in the study region had less protein and more carbohydrates in their diet. This assumption is tested through the stable isotope and starch grain analysis, as well as through macroscopic examination of dental caries and calculus deposits. The rise in fertility was also followed by a general decline in health status in the Neolithic which is reflected in the higher occurrence of various skeletal and dental pathological conditions. Thus, the second hypothesis is that the transition to food production resulted in the overall health decline. This is tested through macroscopic analysis of non-specific stress indicators (cribra orbitalia, porotic hyperostosis, dental enamel hypoplasia), as well as through the analysis of ante mortem tooth loss and the presence of caries and dental calculus. Since this study focuses on two geographic regions that differ in subsistence economy, the third hypothesis is that the Neolithic groups occupying the Gorges and the groups who lived to the west from the Gorges differed in their dietary choices and health patterns. The stable isotope analysis showed that, at the beginning of 7th millennium, the Danube Gorges hunter-fisher-gatherers, which were strongly reliant on aquatic resources and wild game, experienced a change seen in the increase in consumption of terrestrial resources (which entailed smaller intake of aquatic proteins and possibly more carbohydrates in the diet); this was noted at some sites from the Neolithic period. However, in the Danube Gorges, this was a gradual process since many Neolithic individuals remained reliant on aquatic products. In contrast, the stable isotope values of the Neolithic

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