Anta 1 de Val da Laje – the first direct view of diet, dairying practice and socio-economic aspects of pottery use in the final Neolithic of central Portugal
2020
Stojanovski, Darko | Roffet-Salque, Mélanie | Casanova, Emmanuelle | Knowles, Timothy | Oosterbeek, Luís | Evershed, Richard P. | Cruz, Ana | Thissen, Laurens | Arzarello, Marta
This article presents the results of the first dedicated study of organic residues in Portugal, extracted from pottery excavated from Anta 1 de Val da Laje passage grave. We fully exploit the organic residue extract, to obtain information regarding the diet of the people and their relationship with the environment, the socio-economic aspects of an otherwise elusive society, and we also used a new methodology to obtain direct absolute dates for the pottery, the residue extract being the only datable organic material from the site. Our results suggest a community with diet based on terrestrial resources, that was fully benefitting from a range of domestic animals including their secondary products. We present the first direct evidence of not only meat consumption, but also milk and dairy production in Iberia. The compound-specific radiocarbon dating methodology, opens a door to possibilities for investigating otherwise poorly dated archaeological phenomena in the Iberian Peninsula.
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