During the first millennium ad, Europe saw much socio-environmental change, which is reflected in the archaeological and palaeoecological evidence. Using published and new isotope data from across western Europe, the author examines changing resource use from c. ad 350 to 1200. The geographical limits of millet and substantial marine consumption are identified and comparisons between childhood and adult diets made across regions. Cross-cultural interaction at a broad scale is emphasized and patterns within early medieval England form the subject of an in-depth case study. While doubt is cast onto the uptake of marine resource consumption in England following the Fish Event Horizon, changes in agricultural practices, the impact of Christianization, and the role of freshwater fish in diets are explored. The author's hierarchical meta-analytical approach enables identification of human–environment interactions, with significant implications for changing foodways in Europe during the first millennium ad.

Stable isotope measurements and radiocarbon dates on 54 burials from northern Scotland document trends in marine protein consumption from the late Iron Age to the end of the Middle Ages. They illuminate how local environmental and cultural contingencies interrelated with a pan-European trend towards more intensive fishing around the end of the first millennium AD. Little use was made of marine foods in late Iron Age Orkney despite its maritime setting. Significant fish consumption appeared in the Viking Age (ninth to eleventh centuries AD), first in the case of some men buried with grave-goods of Scandinavian style but soon among both sexes in ‘Christian’ burials. There was then a peak in marine protein consumption from approximately the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries AD, particularly among men, after which the importance of fish-eating returned to Viking Age levels. The causes of these developments probably entailed a complex relationship between ethnicity, gender, Christian fasting practices, population growth, long-range fish trade and environmental change.

From Neolithic Malta, there is evidence of increasing population size accompanied by increasingly elaborate material culture, including the famous megalithic architecture. Stoddart et al. (1993) argued that social tensions and controls increased as food resources diminished. One important requirement of this argument is that the Neolithic inhabitants of Malta depended entirely on domesticated plants and animals for subsistence and therefore, with increased population sizes, the poor agricultural potential of these islands was stretched. However, it is possible that the consumption of wild foods, particularly marine resources, in the Neolithic would make up any shortfall in the agricultural foods. A direct way of measuring the amounts of marine protein in human diets is through chemical analysis of human bone. Stable isotope analyses undertaken on seven Accelerator Mass Spectrometer (AMS) radiocarbon dated humans from the Neolithic at the Brochtorff Circle indicated that there is no evidence for the significant use of marine foods by these Neolithic individuals. These new data indicate that agricultural foods were the dietary staple for this sample of the Maltese Neolithic population and therefore support the argument that increasing population during the Neolithic could have resulted in increasing resource stress.