G11 - Choices versus dietary imperative: Food circulation pathways in the Neolithic

Session Organisers: Kamilla Pawłowska, Joanna Pyzel

Category: Domestication / Subsistence Economy

Session Abstract: Research into past diet has usually focused on the acquisition, production, processing, and consumption of plant and animal products. Yet foodways can also include food circulation, a so-far under researched topic that is, however, imperative to providing a comprehensive insight into diet in the past. This session will focus on food circulation in the Neolithic by considering the border between choice and dietary imperative. Food circulation is one cause of dietary diversity, and can occur in many forms ranging from commensality to trade and exchange. However, tracing food circulation pathways and dietary variability poses methodological challenges in archaeology. Various scales of analysis of dietary evidence can be used in methodological approaches, as can a range of sources (animals, plants, bioarchaeological evidence, and material culture). Evidence from Southwest Asia and Europe that touches on these issues in an archaeological and environmental context is welcome. In particular, we want to consider the following issues: were food choices and circulation the realm of individual or community decisions and to what degree were they the result of cultural traditions? To what extent was choice driven by the availability of resources and the nutritional needs of different consumers, or by other factors such as moral imperatives encoded in nutrition—i.e., the decision of what one should and should not eat? We welcome both studies focusing on the changes that occur along the stratigraphic sequence of a site and studies that compare between sites.

Room: B

07/11/2024

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
13:00 - 13:20	Merryn Dineley	The Importance of Being Malted: Processing Cereals to Make Malt Sugars in the Natufian and the Neolithic
13:20 - 13:40	Kamilla Pawlowska, Joanna Pyzel, Marek Z. Baranski, Mélanie Roffet-Salque	Detecting of commensality in Neolithic Çatalhöyük household: Faunal, architectural and pottery approaches
13:40 - 14:00	David Bloch	“Challenging the Conventional View of the advent and Origins of Agriculture” with the harvesting of common Salt and a Sodium Age that shaped the primitive Industry of Early Neolithic Hunters:
14:00 - 14:20	Agnieszka Czekaj-Zastawny, Anna Rauba-Bukowska, Harry Robson	Early Neolithic diet north of the Carpathians: result of interdisciplinary analysis

Coffee Break

Start Time - End Time	Authors	Title
14:45 - 15:05	Magdalena Moskal Del Hoyo, Magda Kapcia, Gabriela Juzwinska, Maria Litynska-Zajac, Marek Nowak, Anna Glód, Pawel Jarosz, Anita Szczepanek, Maciej Debiec	Plant remains from the Early Neolithic sites of southern Poland: the same diet or dietary variability?
15:05 - 15:25	Marek Nowak, Gabriela Juzwinska, Magda Kapcia, Maria Litynska-Zajac, Magdalena Moskal Del Hoyo, Sylwia Pospula-Wedzicha, Krzysztof Wertz, Jaroslaw Wilczynski	The Significance of Variability in Subsistence Patterns in East-Central Europe Between the Late 6th And Late 4th Millennia BC. The Case of Multicultural Site in Miechów, Southern Poland