School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, 1 South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3TG, UK.
Analytical, Environmental and Geo-Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, AMGC-WE-VUB, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium.
Sci Adv. 2020 Jan 22;6(4):eaay2169. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aay2169. eCollection 2020 Jan.
The coexistence of cultural identities and their interaction is a fundamental topic of social sciences that is not easily addressed in prehistory. Differences in mortuary treatment can help approach this issue. Here, we present a multi-isotope study to track both diet and mobility through the life histories of 32 broadly coeval Late Neolithic individuals interred in caves and in megalithic graves of a restricted region of northern Iberia. The results show significant differences in infant- and child-rearing practices, in subsistence strategies, and in landscape use between burial locations. From this, we posit that the presence of communities with distinct lifestyles and cultural backgrounds is a primary reason for Late Neolithic variability in burial location in Western Europe and provides evidence of an early "them and us" scenario. We argue that this differentiation could have played a role in the building of lasting structures of socioeconomic inequality and, occasionally, violent conflict.
文化身份的共存及其相互作用是社会科学的一个基本课题，在史前时期不容易解决。丧葬处理的差异可以帮助我们解决这个问题。在这里，我们进行了一项多同位素研究，以追踪 32 位大致同时代的晚期新石器时代个体的饮食和流动性，这些个体被埋葬在洞穴中和伊比利亚半岛北部一个受限制地区的巨石墓中。结果表明，在婴儿和儿童养育实践、生计策略和景观利用方面，墓葬地点存在显著差异。由此，我们认为，具有不同生活方式和文化背景的社区的存在是西欧晚期新石器时代墓葬位置变化的主要原因，并为早期的“他们和我们”情景提供了证据。我们认为，这种分化可能在构建持久的社会经济不平等结构中发挥了作用，并且在某些情况下还导致了暴力冲突。
