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Archaeological research on Irish Neolithic sites (4000–2500 cal BC) have provided a sizeable corpus of information on the nature of diet during the Irish Neolithic. Research has identified a package of crops and livestock, that arrived in Ireland within a demic diffusion framework. Carpology studies, from infrastructure-funded excavations, nearly always of carbonised seeds, have shown widespread evidence of cereal husbandry. Assemblages show a dominance of emmer and lesser amounts of other wheats, hulled and naked barley, flax and hazelnuts, indicating low numbers of species relative to many parts of Europe. Zooarchaeological, stable isotopic and molecular evidence has demonstrated the raising of cattle, with significant amounts of pig and caprines. In contrast, there is little evidence of fish, birds and wild mammals. Patchy evidence hinders attempts to understand how farming and herding spread and adapted to Ireland. For example, archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological assemblages sizes are commonly small and may not be representative. While some have suggested that the seeming paucity of assemblages in the Late Neolithic reflects a trend towards pastoralism, it may also indicate preservation biases.
To complement this dietary record, there has been increasing attention on alternative approaches, including the analysis of dietary remains from dental calculus, mineralised dental plaque. When well preserved, this material can entomb a complex variety of dietary remains such as phytoliths, starches, lipids and proteins as an individualised record of diet, so far not applied in Irish prehistory. In this paper, we report initial microscopy findings of dental calculus from human individuals, inhumed in a variety of Middle, Later Neolithic and Early Bronze Age funerary traditions including Linkardstown, passage and wedge tombs, and cists.

EAA 2023: Abstract

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