Land Snails as a Diet Diversification Proxy during the Early Upper Palaeolithic in Europe

PLOS ONE, Dec 2019

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.

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Land Snails as a Diet Diversification Proxy during the Early Upper Palaeolithic in Europe

Sanchis Serra A (2014) Land Snails as a Diet Diversification Proxy during the Early Upper Palaeolithic in Europe. PLoS ONE 9(8): e104898. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0104898 Land Snails as a Diet Diversification Proxy during the Early Upper Palaeolithic in Europe Javier Ferna ndez-Lo pez de Pablo 0 Ernestina Badal 0 Carlos Ferrer Garca 0 Alberto Martnez-Ort 0 Alfred Sanchis Serra 0 Nuno Bicho, Universidade do Algarve, Portugal 0 1 Institut Catala` de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolucio Social , Zona Educacional 4 Campus Sescelades (Edifici W3), Tarragona , Spain , 2 A`rea de Prehisto` ria, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) , Tarragona , Spain , 3 Departament de Prehisto` ria i Arqueologia, Facultat de Geografia i Histo` ria, Universitat de Vale`ncia, Vale`ncia, Spain, 4 Museu de Prehisto` ria de Vale`ncia, SIP (Servei d'Investigaci o Prehisto` rica), Diputaci o de Vale`ncia , Vale`ncia, Spain, 5 Museu Valencia` d'Histo` ria Natural & i\ Biotaxa, Valencia , Spain 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 375uC. 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. - Funding: The fieldwork research and the radiocarbon analyses were supported by private funds provided by the Fundacio n Adendia in the framework of the research project named El Poblamiento inicial de Benidorm y la Marina Baixa (Alicante). JFL is supported by a Ramo n y Cajal program postdoctoral research grant (Ref. RYC-2011-09363) of the MINECO Spanish Ministry and the Consolidated Research Groug (Ref. SGR-2014-900) Group dana`lisis de processos socioecolo gics, canvis culturals i dina`miques de Poblacio a la Prehisto` ria. The MINECO Spanish Ministry also funded the research projects Paleoltico Medio final y Paleoltico Superior inicial en la regio n central mediterranea iberica (Valencia y Murcia) (Ref. HAR2012-32703) and Paleoflora iberica en un contexto de complejidad: interacciones fisiograficas, ecolo gicas y evolutivas (Ref.2012CGL-34717) that supported the post-excavation palaeobotanical analyses and the cost of a radiocarbon determination. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or the preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Diet change is a widely debated research topic of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition. Studies on vertebrate prey mobility, size and body biomass suggest that, in many areas of Europe, the first anatomically modern humans (AMH) had a broader diet than Neanderthals, who mainly focused on large- and medium-size herbivores [13]. However, this view has been called into a question by the increasing body of archaeological evidence indicating that Neanderthals subsistence also relied on a varied range of resources including plants, fish, birds, shellfish, tortoises, marine mammals and rabbits [415]. In this context, terrestrial molluscs were not believed to have been of any importance in the study of the dietary change and nutritional ecology during the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition. Unlike the increasing evidence for the consumption of marine molluscs amongst the Neanderthals, there is a no clear signal of land snail exploitation during the Middle Palaeolithic, where terrestrial mollus (...truncated)


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Javier Fernández-López de Pablo, Ernestina Badal, Carlos Ferrer García, Alberto Martínez-Ortí, Alfred Sanchis Serra. Land Snails as a Diet Diversification Proxy during the Early Upper Palaeolithic in Europe, PLOS ONE, 2014, 8, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0104898