Residues found within the round-bottomed vessel suggest it was used to process meat stew.
Artist's impression of Bronze Age Thames-side farming on the Greenwich Peninsula.
Posted on 04/17/2020 9:47:59 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
It is perhaps best-known for its hipsters, but long before Shoreditch became avant garde, it was a place of agriculture and farmers according to evidence from a radiocarbon dating technique that has revealed details about Neolithic London.
The technique proved that the most significant early Neolithic pottery discovered in London is 5,500 years old. It reveals for the first time that the city's prehistoric inhabitants led a less mobile, farming-based lifestyle than their hunter-gathering forebears.
The research, published in Nature, reveals that an area around Shoreditch High Street was once populated by farmers herding their livestock across a once-green landscape. They were possibly linked to migrant groups who first introduced farming to Britain from continental Europe around 4,000 BC...
The technique, developed by scientists at the University of Bristol, is so accurate that it can pinpoint dates to a human life span. It has enabled fatty residues absorbed within the porous walls of the prehistoric pots to be extracted and analysed.
The study of long-expired milk fats and other microscopic food remains confirms they once held cattle and sheep or goat dairy products, including butter and cheese. Such foodstuffs could easily be stored during winter months. There was also evidence of stewed meat, including beef and mutton.
Although the pottery is now in hundreds of fragments, some still bear the fingertip impressions of their original creators...
Noting that the pot residues include herding animals, he added that today's crowded urban site of Shoreditch High Street was once the upper part of the Walbrook Valley, close to running fresh water and immediate resources for flocks and herds. He said: "You might have to imagine some small clearing within a wooded environment. It was a good place to live."
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Residues found within the round-bottomed vessel suggest it was used to process meat stew.
Artist's impression of Bronze Age Thames-side farming on the Greenwich Peninsula.
When you pour a bowl of cereal, you probably aren't considering how humans came to enjoy milk in the first place. But animal milk was essential to east African herders at least 5,000 years ago, according to a new study that uncovers the consumption habits in what is now Kenya and Tanzania -- and sheds a light on human evolution... After excavating pottery at sites throughout east Africa, team members analyzed organic lipid residues left in the pottery and were able to see evidence of milk, meat and plant processing. "(This is) the first direct evidence we've ever had for milk or plant processing by ancient pastoralist societies in eastern Africa," Grillo said.Milk pioneers: East African herders consumed milk 5,000 years ago | Talia Ogliore | April 14, 2020 | The Source | Washington University in St. Louis(that's weird, we all KNOW that lactose intolerance is only absent from the white colonizers!!! /s)
Here are the other GGG topics introduced since the previous Digest ping, nice long list for the first time in a long while:
Is this about the same time that the circular earthworks became common in what is now England? I often wondered if they were part fort and part cattle corral.
You left out the best and most inaccurate part:
Even at that early date SOME people cared about the look
“Honey, I want the roe-deer hoof ware”
“The generic will cost us two skins less, and works just as well”
“I’m the one who has to slave away all day . . . and besides Olga’s husband got her . . .”
p
>>Is this about the same time that the circular earthworks became common in what is now England? I often wondered if they were part fort and part cattle corral.<<
If your cattle were your most valuable asset, you would want a defendable place for them if you were in danger of a raid.
I believe castles also served as a secure place to store grain and such.
Of course, 5,000 years ago the area would have been pastoral.
"He said, Blessed are the cheesemakers,...""
During the Renaissance, it was Christopher Marlowe's home turf.
Yep, theaters were prohibited in London, but Shoreditch was outside the City!
Milk was used for thousands of years apparently.
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