Diet and subsistence in Bronze Age pastoral communities from the southern Russian steppes and the North Caucasus.

ABSTRACT: The flanks of the Caucasus Mountains and the steppe landscape to their north offered highly productive grasslands for Bronze Age herders and their flocks of sheep, goat, and cattle. While the archaeological evidence points to a largely pastoral lifestyle, knowledge regarding the general composition of human diets and their variation across landscapes and during the different phases of the Bronze Age is still restricted. Human and animal skeletal remains from the burial mounds that dominate the archaeological landscape and their stable isotope compositions are major sources of dietary information. Here, we present stable carbon and nitrogen isotope data of bone collagen of 105 human and 50 animal individuals from the 5th millennium BC to the Sarmatian period, with a strong focus on the Bron

SUBMITTER: Knipper C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7556513 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature