Paul Halstead

The University of Sheffield | Sheffield · Department of Archaeology

Food security depends on the ability of staple crops to tolerate new abiotic and biotic pressures. Wheat, barley, and other small grains face substantial yield losses under all climate change scenarios. Intra-plot diversification is an important strategy for smallholder farmers to mitigate losses due to variable environmental conditions. While this...

The aim of the study is to investigate mitochondrial diversity in Neolithic Greece and its relation to hunter-gatherers and farmers who populated the Danubian Neolithic expansion axis. We sequenced 42 mitochondrial palaeogenomes from Greece and analysed them together with European set of 328 mtDNA sequences dating from the Early to the Final Neolit...

Excavations at Knossos have uncovered faunal and archaeobotanical archives spanning the Neolithic and Bronze Age (7th–2nd millennia bce ), during which one of Europe’s earliest known farming settlements developed into its first major urban settlement and centre of one of its oldest regional states. Through stable isotope (δ ¹³ C, δ ¹⁵ N) analysis o...

The Cycladic, the Minoan, and the Helladic (Mycenaean) cultures define the Bronze Age (BA) of Greece. Urbanism, complex social structures, craft and agricultural specialization, and the earliest forms of writing characterize this iconic period. We sequenced six Early to Middle BA whole genomes, along with 11 mitochondrial genomes, sampled from the...

New stable carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) isotope values of charred plant and bone collagen remains from 6th mill. BCE Halai, central Greece, together with datasets from 6th mill. BCE Kouphovouno, southern Greece, and later 6th/early 5th mill. BCE Makriyalos, northern Greece, demonstrate how early farming communities in mainland Greece adapted m...

Animal bones from the earlier Neolithic open-air settlement at Tsoungiza, Ancient Nemea, are dominated by sheep and secondarily by pigs and goats, with cattle scarce and dogs absent. Slaughter ages suggest management of sheep/goat for meat more than milk production. Sparse evidence for wild animals is restricted to foxes and hares. Domesticate carc...

Linear B administrative documents of the late second millennium BC from urban Knossos, Crete, reveal that spatially extensive and centrally monitored sheep flocks and wool production played a fundamental role in Mycenaean palatial economy. Here we employ multi-isotope (δ 13 C, δ 18 O, 87 Sr/ 86 Sr) analysis of sequentially sampled sheep and goat to...

Animal mobility is a common strategy to overcome scarcity of food and the related over-grazing of pastures. It is also essential to reduce the inbreeding rate of animal populations, which is known to have a negative impact on fertility and productivity. The present paper shows the geographic range of sheep provisioning in different phases of occupa...

The tell site ‘Plateia Magoula Prodromos’, a type site for the early Neolithic in Greece, is located in the broad alluvial plain of western Thessaly, central Greece. It was rescue excavated in the early 70’s. Regretfully, only short excavation reports with little contextual information are available, while the stratigraphy of a trench is the only p...

Strontium isotope ratios are widely used in archaeology to differentiate between local and non-local populations. Herein, strontium isotope ratios of 36 human tooth enamels from seven archaeological sites spanning the Early to Late Neolithic of northern Greece (7th-5th millennia B.C.E.) were analysed with the aim of providing new information relati...

The aim of this study is to investigate livestock husbandry and its relationship to the mobilization of domestic animals for slaughter at large communal feasting events, in Late Neolithic Makriyalos, northern Greece. A multi-isotope approach is built that integrates analysis of: • δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N values of human and animal bone collagen for understa...

All plant and bone collagen δ13C and δ15N values obtained in Stage 1. (XLSX)

FTIR spectrum of MKS104. (TIF)

Supplementary materials and methods. Details of instrument measurement and data normalization. (DOCX)

Contextual information of bone collagen and plant samples measured in Stage 1. (XLSX)

Cattle δ13C and δ18O values obtained in Stage 2. (XLSX)

87Sr/86Sr ratios of modern vegetation from coastal northern Pieria. The samples were collected from seven geological zones within 15 km of the archaeological site. The measurements are used to establish the ‘local range’ of 87Sr/86Sr ratios. For descriptions of the zones and location of sampling points, see Fig 6. 2σ uncertainty of the 87Sr/86Sr ra...

FTIR spectrum of MKS015. (TIF)

Matching mandibular collagen δ13C and δ15N values and average intra-tooth enamel δ13C values of individuals analyzed in Stage 2. Standard deviation (SD) of collagen values indicates the instrument error attached to each measurement, while the SD of average enamel values indicates intra-tooth variability. (XLSX)

Sheep δ13C and δ18O values obtained in Stage 2. (XLSX)

The open-air settlement of Revenia-Korinou has yielded the largest Early Neolithic (7th millennium BC) faunal assemblage to date from Greece. The assemblage, recovered from numerous pits, is heavily dominated by domestic sheep, goats, pigs and cattle. Here we focus on the evidence for butchery and consumption of animals, to explore how carcass prod...

Taking the Neolithic of northern Greece, and particularly the Late Neolithic flat-extended site of Makriyalos I, as a case study, we explore the challenges and potential of using multiple evidential categories and diagnostic tools to investigate human diet and commensality. This requires integration of datasets from several specialized sub-discipli...

We use stable isotope analysis of crop, faunal and human remains to investigate agricultural strategies and diet at EBA-LBA Archontiko and MBA-LBA Thessaloniki Toumba. Crop production strategies varied between settlements, phases and species; flexibility is also apparent within the crop stores of individual houses. Escalating manuring intensity at...

Significance One of the most enduring and widely debated questions in prehistoric archaeology concerns the origins of Europe’s earliest farmers: Were they the descendants of local hunter-gatherers, or did they migrate from southwestern Asia, where farming began? We recover genome-wide DNA sequences from early farmers on both the European and Asian...

Commensality - Eating and drinking together in a common physical and social setting – is a central element in people’s everyday lives. This makes commensality a particularly important theme within which to explore social relations, social reproduction and the working of politics whether in the present or the past. Archaeological attention has been...

Als Vorarbeit für eine diachrone Untersuchung des Spektrums kommensaler Verhaltensweisen vom Neolithikum bis zur Bronzezeit in Griechenland beschätigt sich dieser Beitrag mit der Beziehung zwischen einfachen, häuslichen und förmlicheren Mahlzeiten im heutigen ländlichen Griechenland. Die Analyse gegenwärtiger Praktiken unterstreicht die Rolle, die...

The burnt sacrifice of bare (defleshed) bones, described in Homer's Odyssey and well documented from Archaic and Classical Greece, is now clearly attested by burnt faunal remains from the 'Palace of Nestor' at Mycenaean Pylos. This evidence is of great importance for understanding both the historical role of sacrifice in Greek religion and the sign...

An established method of estimating the trophic level of an organism is through stable isotope analysis of its tissues and those of its diet. This method has been used in archaeology to reconstruct past human diet from the stable nitrogen isotope (δ15N) values of human and herbivore bone collagen. However, this approach, using the 15N-enrichment of...

Farming and sedentism first appear in southwest Asia during the early Holocene and later spread to neighboring regions, including Europe, along multiple dispersal routes. Conspicuous uncertainties remain about the relative roles of migration, cultural diffusion and admixture with local foragers in the early Neolithisation of Europe. Here we present...

From Archaic Greece until the Late Roman Empire (c. 800 BCE to c. 500 CE), food was more than a physical necessity; it was a critical factor in politics, economics and culture. On the one hand, the Mediterranean landscape and climate encouraged particular crops – notably cereals, vines and olives – but, with the risks of crop failure ever-present,...

Increasingly diverse applications of ‘archaeological science’ are providing more or less direct evidence for aspects of Neolithic life that, until recently, archaeologists explored using very remote proxy measures (for example, settlement locations as evidence for land use). Nonetheless, many applications of new (and old) analytical techniques cont...

Farmers inspected growing crops en route to other tasks and responded to problems arising from year-to- year variation in weather and pests superimposed upon crop husbandry practices (rotation) in the Mediterranean. This chapter explores such reactive measures and proactive practices on an interannual timescale, intermediate between the annual roun...

This chapter describes the harvesting of principal cereals and pulses around Kolofana and explores variations on this process in other parts of the Mediterranean and considers some related quantitative issues. It documents important regional and tactical variations in when, what, how, and how many to reap and in the treatment of crops between harve...

Despite many common features in the tillage and sowing of fields for Old World cereals and pulses in the Mediterranean, there are also important variations in several interrelated aspects: the type of tool used for tillage and what (or who) provides the labor to operate it, how often and when the ground is tilled, and the method and timing of sowin...

This chapter explores the interplay between capital resources on a generational timescale and the webs of interdependence binding households to each other and to wider communities. It examines how farming households could extend or effect long-term improvements to cultivable land by clearance, deep tillage, terracing, enclosure, drainage, or instal...

This chapter explores the contexts of crop-processing decisions, organized broadly in terms of successive processing stages. Variability in crop processing across the Mediterranean such as at Amorgos and other places, is reviewed in the chapter for successive stages of processing, from threshing to storage and preparation for consumption; some quan...

Premechanized Mediterranean farmers exhibited considerable local and regional variability in tools and practices. Farmers also faced “real” choices, between alternatives with contrasting, but not determinant, costs and benefits. The costs and benefits of such alternatives were routinely understood and frequently acted upon, contrary to widespread d...

Stable carbon isotope analysis of plant remains is a promising tool for researchers studying palaeoclimate and past agricultural systems. The potential of the technique is clear: it offers a direct measure of the water conditions in which plants grew. In this paper, we assess how reliably stable carbon isotope discrimination can be used to infer wa...

For obvious reasons of location, Greece has long been regarded as the conduit through which farming, and perhaps farmers, spread from southwest Asia into Europe; and in the 1950s and 1960s, sites such as Argissa and Knossos (figure 7.1) were central to zooarchaeological studies of the beginnings of stock-keeping (Boessneck 1962; Higgs and Jarman 19...

This paper explores the impact of animal manure application on the δ15N values of a broad range of crops (cereals and pulses), under a range of manuring levels/regimes and at a series of locations extending from northwest Europe to the eastern Mediterranean. We included both agricultural field experiments and areas where ‘traditional’ farming is pr...

Nakassis et al., in their contribution to this Forum, ar-gue that the term "redistribution" has been used with a range of meanings in the context of the Aegean Bronze Age and so obscures rather than illuminates the emer-gence and functioning of political economies. They call for detailed empirical investigation rather than reliance on ambiguous ide...

‘Traditional’ pig husbandry in Greece is discussed, drawing on personal observations and interviews with retired herders. Informants managed mainly unimproved pigs (with some wild or improved admixture) on a range of scales (from specialist breeding to fattening a pig for domestic consumption) and in various ecological settings (highland/lowland; w...

One of Andrew Sherratt’s most influential contributions to European prehistory was his model of a 4th–3rd millennium BC ‘secondary products revolution’ (SPR), in which early Neolithic consumption of domestic deadstock was supplemented by exploitation of livestock for renewable milk, wool and labour. While little relevant bioarchaeological evidence...

Variations in the 13C/12C ratios of wheat grain at different spatial and temporal scales are examined by analysis of modern samples, including harvests of einkorn and durum wheat from Greece, and serve as a guide to interpreting data for Bronze Age grains from Assiros Toumba. The normal distribution and low variability of δ13C values of einkorn fro...

No Until recently, osteological studies into ancient diet and health have primarily focused upon human remains. As a result, these areas of research are still in their infancy in the field zoo-archaeology. Animals have paid a heavy price for many major human advances, such as those in agriculture and transport. This use (and often abuse) of animals...

Insight into the relative importance of sheep and goat herding and of the economic significance of each species (i.e., milk vs. meat vs. wool) in Medieval Greenland is obtained through the application of Halstead et al.'s (2002) criteria for the identification of adult ovicaprine mandibles to faunal assemblages from three Norse farmsteads: Sandnes,...

Fine Neo lithic ce ramics fr om Greece are wide ly interp reted in terms of ceremonia l eat- ing and dr inking, w hile the spatial o rganisati on of set tlement s uggests t hat such commensal ity playe d a signifi cant role in shapi ng social relation ships. Fa unal evid ence impl ies consu mption of many do- mestic an imals in large-sca le commen...

This paper presents a ceremonial feasting deposit from Late Helladic IIIA2 Tsoungiza. The dominance of head and foot bones from at least six cattle suggests on-site butchery, with the possibility that the meat was distributed for consumption elsewhere. The pottery fulfills most of the criteria proposed here for recognizing feasting activities in ce...

Faunal evidence for feasting: burnt offerings from the Palace of Nestor at Pylos

Hebridean sites of the coastal sand cliffs and associated machair, or sandy plain have been known for many years. Artefacts and ecofacts of various types have long been collected from archaeological sites in the eroding sand-cliffs of the machairs of the Outer Hebrides. Early in 1983, personnel of the then Central Excavation Unit of Historic Scotla...

The region of Asturias, northwest Spain, is highly unusual in that a cereal crop (spelt wheat) is cultivated on a garden scale using horticultural methods. A floristic survey was made of the weeds in 65 spelt plots in this region. The ecological attributes of the weed species were then measured and compared to an earlier study of the functional cha...

A Food Utility Index (FUI) is presented for European wild boar (Sus scrofa L.), derived from the experimental butchery of two individuals of differing ages. The results differ from FUIs produced for other species because of the different conformation of the species. Application of the FUI to the wild boar assemblage from the Mesolithic site of Ring...

Diagnostic criteria are described for the taxonomic discrimination of adult mandibles of sheep (Ovis aries) and goat (Capra hircus). These criteria, based on morphological distinctions in the mandible, permanent premolars (P3–P4) and molars (M1–M3), have been successfully tested on a large and diverse body of modern reference material. In conjuncti...

Hay malting and hay meadows have long been of fundamental ecological, economic and social importance in temperate Europe. A variety of archaeological sources suggests that hay making may date back to the Iron Age, but direct archaeobotanical evidence for this practice is problematic. Past grassland communities are imperfectly represented and preser...

According to Linear B texts from Knossos, the sheep which the palace kept for wool were far too numerous to have been reared from recorded flocks of breeding ewes. The wool flocks are dominated by castrated males (wethers) but also include ewes, yearlings, old sheep and ‘deficits’. Following Killen, deficits often occur as round numbers and so repr...

A question of broad economic and social significance is the extent to which farming in prehistoric times, and perhaps even in historical times, was characterised by cultivation on a small scale and with intensive methods. Archaeobotanically, a distinction may be possible between intensive and extensive cultivation on the basis of the weed seeds ass...

As recently as the first half of this century, leaf- and twig-fodder cut from trees played a major role in animal husbandry across most of Europe and, in many areas, stored leafy hay was of critical importance to the survival of stalled livestock over winter (e.g. Brockmann-Jerosch, 1936; Radley, 1961; Spray, 1981; Salvi, 1982; Sigaut, 1982; Haas a...

Recent strategies of animal husbandry in Greece range from pastoralism to mixed farming. Pastoralists tend to keep larger herds, schedule grazing to enhance nutrition and productivity, and specialize in particular products for exchange. Each of these tendencies has implications for the species and age/sex composition of livestock which are amenable...