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Touch not the fish: the Mesolithic-Neolithic change of diet and its significance

Part of: Zooarchaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

M.P. Richards  and
R.J. Schulting
M.P. Richards
Affiliation:
1Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, D-04105, Germany, and Department of Archaeology, University of Durham, South Road, Durhom, DH1 3LE, UK (Email: richards@eva.mpg.de)
R.J. Schulting
Affiliation:
2School of Archaeology and Palaeoecology, The Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT7 1NN, UK (Email: r.schulting@qub.ac.uk)
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Stable isotope analysis has startled the archaeological community by showing a rapid and widespread change from a marine to terrestrial diet (ie from fish to domesticated plants and animals) as people moved from a Mesolithic to a Neolithic culture. This could be a consequence of domestication, or as Julian Thomas (2003) proposed, of a kind of taboo (‘Touch not the fish’). In a key challenge, Nicky Milner and her colleagues (2004) questioned the reality of this nutritional revolution, contrasting the message of the bones and shells found on settlement sites, with the isotope measurements in the bones of people. Here Mike Richards and Rick Schulting, champions of the diet-revolution, strongly reinforce the arguments. The change was real, it seems: so what does it mean? Milner and colleagues respond.

Keywords

Northern EuropeMesolithicstable isotopesdiettaboo
Type
Debate
Information
Antiquity , Volume 80 , Issue 308 , 1 June 2006 , pp. 444 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2006

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