Neil, S., Evans, J., Montgomery, J., Scarre, C. 2016. Isotopic evidence for residential mobility of farming communities during the transition to agriculture in Britain. Royal Society Open Science. 3: 150522.
Development of agriculture is often assumed to be accompanied by a decline in residential mobilit... more Development of agriculture is often assumed to be accompanied by a decline in residential mobility, and sedentism is frequently proposed to provide the basis for economic intensification, population growth and increasing social complexity. In Britain, however, the nature of the agricultural transition (ca 4000 BC) and its effect on residence patterns has been intensely debated. Some authors attribute the transition to the arrival of populations who practised a system of sedentary intensive mixed farming similar to that of the very earliest agricultural regimes in central Europe, ca 5500 BC, with cultivation of crops in fixed plots and livestock keeping close to permanently occupied farmsteads. Others argue that local hunter–gatherers within Britain adopted selected elements of a farming economy and retained a mobile way of life. We use strontium and oxygen isotope analysis of tooth enamel from an Early Neolithic burial population in Gloucestershire, England, to evaluate the residenc...
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Papers by Jane Evans
A key research question concerns how this upland landscape was exploited and the degree of mobility within and beyond the region. Textual sources for the late republican (1st century BC) and early modern periods (16th century AD+) document the practice of long-distance (horizontal) transhumance, i.e. moving animals between the lowlands during winter months and the uplands during the summer. There is ongoing scholarly debate about if and how such transhumance, crossing multiple territories, would have been possible prior to the imposition of centralised control by the Roman state, or if the movement of animals was much more localised (i.e. vertical transhumance).
To investigate whether horizontal or vertical transhumance was practised during the pre-Roman period, we undertook isotope analysis of the teeth of 12 individuals from three recently excavated cemetery sites of sixth century BC date: Barrea (località Colle Ciglio) and Barrea (località Convento) in the upper Sangro valley, and Tornareccio in the lower Sangro valley (Abruzzo, Italy). Carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios from sequential samples of human dentine were used to provide a timeline of metabolic and dietary change from approximately 2.5 to c.20 years of age. The data were combined with oxygen and strontium isotopes from human enamel to track seasonal migrations during childhood. This research represents the first application of isotopic analysis for human remains of Samnite date.