Stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes identify nuanced dietary changes from the Bronze and Iron Ages on the Great Hungarian Plain.

The Great Hungarian Plain (GHP) served as a geographic funnel for population mobility throughout prehistory. Genomic and isotopic research demonstrates non-linear genetic turnover and technological shifts between the Copper and Iron Ages of the GHP, which influenced the dietary strategies of numerous cultures that intermixed and overlapped through time. Given the complexities of these prehistoric cultural and demographic processes, this study aims to identify and elucidate diachronic and culture-specific dietary signatures.

Integrating buccal and occlusal dental microwear with isotope analyses for a complete paleodietary reconstruction of Holocene populations from Hungary.

Dietary reconstruction is used to make inferences about the subsistence strategies of ancient human populations, but it may also serve as a proxy to characterise their diverse cultural and technological manifestations. Dental microwear and stable isotope analyses have been shown to be successful techniques for paleodietary reconstruction of ancient populations but, despite yielding complementary dietary information, these techniques have rarely been combined within the same study. Here we present for the first time a comprehensive approach to interpreting ancient lifeways through the results of buccal and occlusal microwear, and δC and δN isotope analyses applied to the same individuals of prehistoric populations of Hungary from the Middle Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age periods.

5000 years of dietary variations of prehistoric farmers in the Great Hungarian Plain.

The development of farming was a catalyst for the evolution of the human diet from the varied subsistence practices of hunter-gatherers to the more globalised food economy we depend upon today. Although there has been considerable research into the dietary changes associated with the initial spread of farming, less attention has been given to how dietary choices continued to develop during subsequent millennia. A paleogenomic time transect for 5 millennia of human occupation in the Great Hungarian Plain spanning from the advent of the Neolithic to the Iron Age, showed major genomic turnovers.