Bronze Age Delivery! Austrian miners ’dinners were brought to their workplace 3,000 years ago, a study has found
- Experts studied plant and grain remains from the 11th – 9th centuries BC
- They found no evidence of processing or preparation at an old mining site
- This suggests that the food was prepared from the outside and delivered to miners
- Study authors say it contributes to evidence that different communities played specific roles
From Deliveroo to Just Eat, these days we’re spoiled for choice when it comes to takeaway food.
And a new study suggests that our love of takeaways may date back to the Bronze Age.
Researchers have found that miners living in Bronze Age Austria relied heavily on outside food sources to sustain the community.
The team from the Austrian Academy of Sciences found that these copper mining communities were very specialized, made up of artisans and miners.
They would not have been able, or attempted to make their own food, requiring outside delivery to feed them while working in the mines.
Researchers examined plant remains from the Prigglitz-Gasteil mining site in the Eastern Alps and found no evidence of food processing or preparation at the site.
Miners living in Austria’s bronze age relied heavily on outside food sources to sustain the community, according to a new study
They would not be able, or try to make their own food, requiring outside delivery to feed them while working in the mines.
Although some studies have examined the animal – based foods that are common in these communities, few studies have examined plants or their origins.
In this study, lead author Andreas Heiss and colleagues examined plant remains at the alps mining site dating back to the 11th to 9th centuries BC.
They were able to identify several remnants of corn plants demonstrating different processing methods including grinding and dehulling. This confirmed that they were eaten at the site – a bot not made by the miners.
The team found very little evidence of discarded plant debris during processing, such as chaff, or even of the machinery used to process the material.
For the new study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers examined plant remains from the Prigglitz-Gasteil mining site in the Eastern Alps
The community in the Alps was artisans and miners, extracting copper from the land and apparently exporting it to other communities for trade.
Lack of machinery or processing still indicates that much of the site’s off-site grain food was processed and prepared before it was delivered to the miners.
This contributes to evidence that European bronze age communities have been divided into specific groups for different functions.
The community in the alps was artisans and miners, extracting copper from the land and apparently exporting it to other communities for trade.
Researchers examined plant remains from the Prigglitz-Gasteil mining site in the Eastern Alps and found no evidence of food processing or preparation at the site.
Researchers from the Austrian Academy of Sciences found these copper mining communities to be highly specialized, made up of artisans and miners.
It is hoped that this discovery will allow future archaeologists to use the food of specific groups as a tool to understand how these communities lived.
It is said to be an ‘archaeobotanical subject’ that deserves further consideration, beyond the remains of simple plants or animals.
These findings were found based on analyzes of other Bronze Age mining sites in the Eastern Alps, but it is not clear where these delivery foods were first processed, whether in nearby farmland or further afield.
Researchers surveyed a wide area of land around the ancient mining sites to gain a better idea of how bronze age communities functioned, including mining and food delivery.
Lack of machinery or processing still indicates that much of the site’s off-site corn meal was processed and prepared before it was delivered to the miners.
The authors hope that further study of corn plant remains and cooking utensils at Prigglitz-Gasteil and other sites will help by compiling details of how specific sites have been provided by neighboring communities.
The authors say: ‘Food is an artefact – just like an ax, a jug or a table. ‘
By incorporating such culinary products into a ‘classical’ archaeobotany, this study provides not only further evidence of the patterns of consumption in mining since the Bronze Age, but it also helps open the door to prehistoric food a little further. ‘
Details of the discovery were published in the journal PLOS ONE.
WHAT ARE WE TAKING INTO THE BRONZE AGE OF EUROPEAN MAJORITY?
Experts combine data from archeology, anthropology, genetics, and linguistics to identify similar migration patterns.
According to Kurgan’s hypothesis, pictured below, people living on the Pontic steppe north of the Black Sea were the most likely speakers of a Proto-Indo-European language.
Experts combine data from archeology, anthropology, genetics, and linguistics to identify similar migration patterns. Map of suspected Indo-European migrants from 4000–1000 BC
Most of today’s Europeans are descendants of a mixture of European hunter-gatherers, early Anatolian farmers and Steppe herdsmen.
However, the DNA of ancient Siberia is found in European speakers of Uralic languages, such as Estonian and Finnish.
A study in Nature in 2015 suggested a massive migration of people from the north of the Black Sea into Eastern, Central and Western Europe that began at around 2,800 BC.