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Isotopic signatures and hereditary traits: snapshot of a Neolithic community in Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

R. Alexander Bentley ,
Joachim Wahl ,
T. Douglas Price  and
Tim C. Atkinson
R. Alexander Bentley
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Durham University, 43 Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HN, UK (Email: r.a.bentley@durham.ac.uk)
Joachim Wahl
Affiliation:
RP Stuttgart, Landesamt für Denkmalpflege, Osteologie, Stromeyersdorfstraße 3, D-78467, Konstanz, Germany (Email: Joachim.Wahl@rps.bwl.de)
T. Douglas Price
Affiliation:
Department. of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, 1180 Observatory Dr., Madison, WI 53706-1393, USA (Email: tdprice@wisc.edu)
Tim C. Atkinson
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Sciences, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK (Email: t.atkinson@ucl.ac.uk)
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Extract

A group of Linearbandkeramik people at Talheim, Germany were previously found to have died at the same time, probably in a massacre, and the authors were able to ask some searching questions of their skeletons. The isotope signatures of strontium, oxygen and carbon, which gave information on diet and childhood region, showed up three groups which correlated with hereditary traits (derived previously from the analysis of the teeth). In the local group, there were many local children but no adult women, suggesting they had been selectively taken alive at the time of the massacre. Another group, with isotope signatures derived from upland areas, includes two men who may have been closely related. A third group has a composition suggestive of a nuclear family. The variations of one type of isotope signature with another suggested subtle interpretations, such as transhumance, and a probable labour division in the community between stockholders and cultivators. Here we see the ever-growing potential of these new methods for writing the ‘biographies’ of prehistoric skeletons.

Keywords

NeolithicGermanyLBKTalheimisotope analysishereditary traitstrans-humance
Type
Research article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 82 , Issue 316 , June 2008 , pp. 290 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2008

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