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Land Snails as a Diet Diversification Proxy during the Early Upper Palaeolithic in Europe
Despite the ubiquity of terrestrial gastropods in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene archaeological record, it is still unknown when and how this type of invertebrate resource was incorporated into human diets. In this paper, we report the oldest evidence of land snail exploitation as a food resource...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4139308/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25141047 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0104898 |
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author | Fernández-López de Pablo, Javier Badal, Ernestina Ferrer García, Carlos Martínez-Ortí, Alberto Sanchis Serra, Alfred |
author_facet | Fernández-López de Pablo, Javier Badal, Ernestina Ferrer García, Carlos Martínez-Ortí, Alberto Sanchis Serra, Alfred |
author_sort | Fernández-López de Pablo, Javier |
collection | PubMed |
description | Despite the ubiquity of terrestrial gastropods in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene archaeological record, it is still unknown when and how this type of invertebrate resource was incorporated into human diets. In this paper, we report the oldest evidence of land snail exploitation as a food resource in Europe dated to 31.3-26.9 ka yr cal BP from the recently discovered site of Cova de la Barriada (eastern Iberian Peninsula). Mono-specific accumulations of large Iberus alonensis land snails (Ferussac 1821) were found in three different archaeological levels in association with combustion structures, along with lithic and faunal assemblages. Using a new analytical protocol based on taphonomic, microX-Ray Diffractometer (DXR) and biometric analyses, we investigated the patterns of selection, consumption and accumulation of land snails at the site. The results display a strong mono-specific gathering of adult individuals, most of them older than 55 weeks, which were roasted in ambers of pine and juniper under 375°C. This case study uncovers new patterns of invertebrate exploitation during the Gravettian in southwestern Europe without known precedents in the Middle Palaeolithic nor the Aurignacian. In the Mediterranean context, such an early occurrence contrasts with the neighbouring areas of Morocco, France, Italy and the Balkans, where the systematic nutritional use of land snails appears approximately 10,000 years later during the Iberomaurisian and the Late Epigravettian. The appearance of this new subsistence activity in the eastern and southern regions of Spain was coeval to other demographically driven transformations in the archaeological record, suggesting different chronological patterns of resource intensification and diet broadening along the Upper Palaeolithic in the Mediterranean basin. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4139308 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-41393082014-08-25 Land Snails as a Diet Diversification Proxy during the Early Upper Palaeolithic in Europe Fernández-López de Pablo, Javier Badal, Ernestina Ferrer García, Carlos Martínez-Ortí, Alberto Sanchis Serra, Alfred PLoS One Research Article Despite the ubiquity of terrestrial gastropods in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene archaeological record, it is still unknown when and how this type of invertebrate resource was incorporated into human diets. In this paper, we report the oldest evidence of land snail exploitation as a food resource in Europe dated to 31.3-26.9 ka yr cal BP from the recently discovered site of Cova de la Barriada (eastern Iberian Peninsula). Mono-specific accumulations of large Iberus alonensis land snails (Ferussac 1821) were found in three different archaeological levels in association with combustion structures, along with lithic and faunal assemblages. Using a new analytical protocol based on taphonomic, microX-Ray Diffractometer (DXR) and biometric analyses, we investigated the patterns of selection, consumption and accumulation of land snails at the site. The results display a strong mono-specific gathering of adult individuals, most of them older than 55 weeks, which were roasted in ambers of pine and juniper under 375°C. This case study uncovers new patterns of invertebrate exploitation during the Gravettian in southwestern Europe without known precedents in the Middle Palaeolithic nor the Aurignacian. In the Mediterranean context, such an early occurrence contrasts with the neighbouring areas of Morocco, France, Italy and the Balkans, where the systematic nutritional use of land snails appears approximately 10,000 years later during the Iberomaurisian and the Late Epigravettian. The appearance of this new subsistence activity in the eastern and southern regions of Spain was coeval to other demographically driven transformations in the archaeological record, suggesting different chronological patterns of resource intensification and diet broadening along the Upper Palaeolithic in the Mediterranean basin. Public Library of Science 2014-08-20 /pmc/articles/PMC4139308/ /pubmed/25141047 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0104898 Text en © 2014 Fernández-López de Pablo et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Fernández-López de Pablo, Javier Badal, Ernestina Ferrer García, Carlos Martínez-Ortí, Alberto Sanchis Serra, Alfred Land Snails as a Diet Diversification Proxy during the Early Upper Palaeolithic in Europe |
title | Land Snails as a Diet Diversification Proxy during the Early Upper Palaeolithic in Europe |
title_full | Land Snails as a Diet Diversification Proxy during the Early Upper Palaeolithic in Europe |
title_fullStr | Land Snails as a Diet Diversification Proxy during the Early Upper Palaeolithic in Europe |
title_full_unstemmed | Land Snails as a Diet Diversification Proxy during the Early Upper Palaeolithic in Europe |
title_short | Land Snails as a Diet Diversification Proxy during the Early Upper Palaeolithic in Europe |
title_sort | land snails as a diet diversification proxy during the early upper palaeolithic in europe |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4139308/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25141047 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0104898 |
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