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.

Parallel palaeogenomic transects reveal complex genetic history of early European farmers.

Ancient DNA studies have established that Neolithic European populations were descended from Anatolian migrants who received a limited amount of admixture from resident hunter-gatherers. Many open questions remain, however, about the spatial and temporal dynamics of population interactions and admixture during the Neolithic period. Here we investigate the population dynamics of Neolithization across Europe using a high-resolution genome-wide ancient DNA dataset with a total of 180 samples, of which 130 are newly reported here, from the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods of Hungary (6000-2900 bc, n = 100), Germany (5500-3000 bc, n = 42) and Spain (5500-2200 bc, n = 38).

Between the Vinča and Worlds: The Diversity of Practices and Identities in the 54th-53rd Centuries cal BC in Southwest Hungary and Beyond.

Perhaps nowhere in European prehistory does the idea of clearly-defined cultural boundaries remain more current than in the initial Neolithic, where the southeast-northwest trend of the spread of farming crosses what is perceived as a sharp divide between the Balkans and central Europe. This corresponds to a distinction between the Vinča culture package, named for a classic site in Serbia, with its characteristic pottery assemblage and absence of longhouses, and the (LBK), with equally diagnostic but different pottery, and its apparently culturally-diagnostic longhouses, extending in a more northerly belt through central Europe westward to the Dutch coast. In this paper we question the concept of such a clear division through a presentation of new data from the site of Szederkény-Kukorica-dűlő.

Tracing the genetic origin of Europe's first farmers reveals insights into their social organization.

Farming was established in Central Europe by the Linearbandkeramik culture (LBK), a well-investigated archaeological horizon, which emerged in the Carpathian Basin, in today's Hungary. However, the genetic background of the LBK genesis is yet unclear. Here we present 9 Y chromosomal and 84 mitochondrial DNA profiles from Mesolithic, Neolithic Starčevo and LBK sites (seventh/sixth millennia BC) from the Carpathian Basin and southeastern Europe.