Diverse prehistoric cattle husbandry strategies in the forests of Central Europe.

During the sixth millennium BCE, the first farmers of Central Europe rapidly expanded across a varied mosaic of forested environments. Such environments would have offered important sources of mineral-rich animal feed and shelter, prompting the question: to what extent did early farmers exploit forests to raise their herds? Here, to resolve this, we have assembled multi-regional datasets, comprising bulk and compound-specific stable isotope values from zooarchaeological remains and pottery, and conducted cross-correlation analyses within a palaeo-environmental framework. Our findings reveal a diversity of pasturing strategies for cattle employed by early farmers, with a notable emphasis on intensive utilization of forests for grazing and seasonal foddering in some regions.

Reconstructing herbivore diets: a multivariate statistical approach to interpreting amino acid nitrogen isotope values.

Recent studies have demonstrated that there exists significant variability in amino acid (AA) δN values of terrestrial plants, discriminating among plant types (i.e., legume seeds, grasses, tree leaves) as well as tissues of the same plant.

Determination of Arginine δN Values in Plant and Animal Proteins by Gas Chromatography-Combustion-Isotope Ratio Mass Spectrometry.

Nitrogen (N) stable isotope techniques are widely used in ecology, archaeology, and forensic science to explore trophic relationships and provenances of organisms and materials, most widely using bulk δN values of whole organisms, tissues, or other materials. However, compound-specific isotope values can provide more diagnostic isotope "fingerprints" and specific information about metabolic processes. Existing techniques for nitrogen isotope analysis allow the determination of δN values of 14 amino acids (AAs), accounting for ca.

Compound-specific δN values express differences in amino acid metabolism in plants of varying lignin content.

Amino acid δN values of foliage of various plant taxa, grown at the experimental farm stations of North Wyke, UK and Bad Lauchstädt, Germany were determined by GC-C-IRMS. The difference between δN values of glutamate (Glx) and phenylalanine (Phe) were found to differ significantly between woody and herbaceous plants, with mean ΔN (i.e.