Maritime Hunter-Gatherers Adopt Cultivation at the Farming Extreme of Northern Europe 5000 Years Ago

www.nature.com/scientificreports OPEN Received: 12 October 2018 Accepted: 5 March 2019 Published: xx xx xxxx Maritime Hunter-Gatherers Adopt Cultivation at the Farming Extreme of Northern Europe 5000 Years Ago Santeri Vanhanen 1, Stefan Gustafsson2, Håkan Ranheden3, Niclas Björck4, Marianna Kemell 5 & Volker Heyd1 The dynamics of the origins and spread of farming are globally debated in anthropology and archaeology. Lately, numerous aDNA studies have turned the tide in favour of migrations, leaving only a few cases in Neolithic Europe where hunter-gatherers might have adopted agriculture. It is thus widely accepted that agriculture was expanding to its northern extreme in Sweden c. 4000 BC by migrating Funnel Beaker Culture (FBC) farmers. This was followed by intense contacts with local hunter-gatherers, leading to the development of the Pitted Ware Culture (PWC), who nonetheless relied on maritime prey. Here, we present archaeobotanical remains from Sweden and the Åland archipelago (Finland) showing that PWC used free-threshing barley and hulled and free-threshing wheat from c. 3300 BC. We suggest that these hunter-gatherers adopted cultivation from FBC farmers and brought it to islands beyond the 60th parallel north. Based on directly dated grains, land areas suitable for cultivation, and absence of signs of exchange with FBC in Sweden, we argue that PWC cultivated crops in Åland. While we have isotopic and lipid-biomarker proof that their main subsistence was still hunting/fishing/gathering, we argue small-scale cereal use was intended for ritual feasts, when cereal products could have been consumed with pork. The first FBC farmers reached the northernmost extreme of farming in east-central Sweden c. 4000 BC, when terrestrial pollen records show high summer temperatures for northeast Europe and Finland (Fig. 1)1,2. Here, these farmers founded a regional cluster of settlements during the local Early Neolithic (EN) period, c. 4000–3300 BC, and established a mixed-farming economy by cultivating crops using manure3, keeping domestic animals4, and consuming milk products5. Further to the north, Mesolithic hunter-gathering practices persisted, while to the east both western Finland and the Åland Islands were occupied by Comb Ceramic hunter-gatherers. However, indications of farming and population decline have been found in east-central Sweden at the end of the EN6, possibly caused by cooling summer temperatures7. FBC moved southwards from east-central Sweden shifting the northernmost border of farming and was replaced here by the PWC c. 3300 BC8. The origins of the PWC are controversial. In one likely scenario, Comb Ceramic 9 and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers first interacted with FBC during the last centuries of the EN and became specialized maritime hunter-gatherers. The PWC pushed south and westwards during the Middle Neolithic (MN), c. 3300–2300 BC, along the northern Baltic shoreline and adjacent islands, eventually reaching as far west as Denmark and southern Norway10. Around 2800 BC, after the FBC ceased to exist, the Corded Ware Culture (CWC) migrated into the PWC area. The end date for the PWC and CWC is approximately 2300 BC, when the material culture was replaced by the Late Neolithic (LN) culture9. Spanning nearly a millennium virtually unchanged, the PWC maintained a coherent society and a successful economic model. PWC people lived in marine-oriented settlements, commonly dwelled in huts and produced relatively large amounts of ceramic vessels. This speaks to the partly sedentary nature of their habitation, at least for their base camps. These specialist hunter-gatherers obtained the great majority of their subsistence from maritime sources, such as seal, fish, and sea birds8,11,12. Considering the amount of bones, sealing was of paramount importance, causing these peoples to be labelled ‘hard-core sealers’ or even the ‘Inuit of the Baltic’11. 1 Archaeology, Department of Cultures, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 59, Unioninkatu 38, Helsinki, 00014, Finland. 2Arkeologikonsult, Optimusvägen 14, Upplands Väsby, 134 94, Sweden. 3Arkeologerna, Statens historiska museer, Instrumentvägen 19, Hägersten, 126 53, Sweden. 4Arkeologerna, Statens historiska museer, Hållnäsgatan 11, Uppsala, 752 28, Sweden. 5Department of Chemistry, University of Helsinki, 00014, Helsinki, Finland. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to S.V. (email: ) Scientific Reports | (2019) 9:4756 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-41293-z 1 www.nature.com/scientificreports/ www.nature.com/scientificreports Figure 1. Geographical setting of the study area in northern Europe and location of the sites. Distribution of selected archaeological cultures in northern Europe during the Neolithic period8,25,34. Middle Neolithic Pitted Ware Culture (PWC), c. 3500–2300 BC, northern extent of the Early Neolithic Funnel Beaker Culture (FBC), c. 4000–3300 BC, and Middle Neolithic Funnel Beaker Culture megaliths in Sweden, c. 3300–3000 BC. Find locations with numbers demarcate sites where cereal grains have been found and later AMS radiocarbon dated. Cereal grain dates collected NE of Alvastra. More detailed maps provided in Supplementary Figs 1–4. Figure designed by SV and VH. Figure was created by SV using QGIS 3.4. (https://www.qgis.org/) and Natural Earth data (https://www.naturalearthdata.com/). In contrast to the more geometric motifs of contemporary FBC farmers, the PWC had an animistic cosmography similar to the Mesolithic and Comb Ceramic hunter-gatherers of the Baltic13,14. Both FBC and PWC buried their dead in flat inhumation graves with occasional cremations13,14. It was only the FBC farmers in southern Scandinavia who raised megalithic graves8, whereas only the PWC hunter-gatherers used red ochre in their burials14. The PWC burials were mainly egalitarian, though mortuary houses and secondary burials are evidence of complex burial customs13. Osteological measurements have shown that the PWC physiologically adapted to the cold climate, as opposed to other contemporaneous groups15. This dialectic has also been demonstrated in recent ancient DNA studies, which conclude that PWC hunter-gatherers and FBC farmers had different genetic origins16,17, albeit with minor gene exchange18. The PWC population in particular had low genetic diversity, which might speak for a relatively small founder group16,17. However, the genetic samples all come from the islands of Öland and Gotland and from southern Sweden, not from east-central Sweden and the Åland Islands, where societal background, interactions, and ecology are fundamentally different. In east-central Sweden, archaeology records a mutual interaction and exchange system, in which not only do FBC ideas become visible in the form and decoration of PWC ceramics, but also stock animals, more rarely cattle and sheep but frequently pigs, make an appearance in the PWC people’s settlement sites and burials10,19. The question has b (...truncated)