Animal Resources, Foodways and Cooking Practices during the Neolithic in the Western Mediterranean: An Integrated Archaeozoological Approach

Abstract

Food and cooking practices are fundamental to the existence of human communities, having a direct impact on the way that daily life is organized. At the beginning of the Holocene, the adoption of settled modes of life, the domestication of plants and animals, and the development of pottery, induced important changes in the ways that food was acquired, processed and consumed. The evaluation through archaeozoological analyses of animal management strategies and consumption patterns of a significant sample of Neolithic sites located in the western Mediterranean area (9th–6th millennia cal. BC), have shown a high degree of variability. In this article, the causes of the diversity facing foodways in early farming communities are evaluated, taking account of sociocultural dynamics, regional environmental conditions and animal availability. The integrated analysis of all these aspects contribute to our knowledge of foodways in a period of change, the Neolithic, when new productive processes based on animal husbandry allowed access to a wide range of new foodstuffs. The processing, preparation and consumption of these new foods changed diets significantly, directly influencing health, organization, and the demographic patterns of human populations.