New study conducted in northern Iberia reveals that molluscs contributed significantly more to the diet of Mesolithic peoples living in Atlantic Europe than previously hypothesized.
During the Mesolithic period in Spain, as in other regions of Atlantic Europe, humans increasingly turned to the coasts for sources of food and left behind mounds of discarded mollusc shells, termed ‘shell middens’ by archaeologists. Previous studies have used shell middens to examine the relationship between foraging strategies and climate change, but the role of shellfish in the diets of the last hunter-fisher-gatherers is still little understood.
The current study, published in Quaternary International and led by archaeologists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the University of Cantabria, reconstructs the meat yield of the four main mollusc species recovered at the El Mazo cave shell midden in northern Spain. They find that mollusc meat contributed at least 20 Percent of the meat obtained from hoofed mammals, revealing a much larger role in Mesolithic diets than previously suggested.