The Wild Side of the Neolithic : A study of Pitted Ware diet and ideology through analysis of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in skeletal material from Korsnäs, Grödinge parish, Södermanland

Abstract: The Pitted Ware Culture site Korsnäs in Södermanland, Sweden presents a, for the region, unique amount of preserved organic material suitable for chemical analyses. Human and faunal skeletal material has been subjected to stable isotope analysis with the aim of examining whether the diet of the Korsnäs people correlates with the seal-based subsistence of Pitted Ware Culture groups on the Baltic islands. Further, the relationship between the faunal assemblage and the human diet has been studied, and the debated question of whether the Pitted Ware people kept domestic pigs has been addressed. Ten new radiocarbon dates are presented, which place the excavated area of the site in Middle Neolithic A, with a continuity of several hundred years. The results show that the diet of the Korsnäs people was predominantly based on seal, and seal hunting was probably an essential part of the Pitted Ware Culture identity. Based on the dietary pattern of the species, it is argued that the pigs were not domestic. The faunal assemblage, dominated by seal and pig bones, does not correlate with the dietary pattern, and it is suggested that wild boar might have been hunted and sacrificed and/or ritually eaten on certain occasions.