title: Strontium isotopes document greater human mobility at the start of the Balkan Neolithic.
abstract: Questions about how farming and the Neolithic way of life spread across Europe have been hotly debated topics in archaeology for decades. For a very long time, two models have dominated the discussion: migrations of farming groups from southwestern Asia versus diffusion of domesticates and new ideas through the existing networks of local forager populations. New strontium isotope data from the Danube Gorges in the north-central Balkans, an area characterized by a rich burial record spanning the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, show a significant increase in nonlocal individuals from ∼6200 calibrated B.C., with several waves of migrants into this region. These results are further enhanced by dietary evidence based on carbon and nitrogen isotopes and an increasingly high chronological resolution obtained on a large sample of directly dated individuals. This dataset provides robust evidence for a brief period of coexistence between indigenous groups and early farmers before farming communities absorbed the foragers completely in the first half of the sixth millennium B.C.
authors: Department of Archaeology and Conservation, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3EU, United Kingdom. BoricD@cardiff.ac.uk
authors: Dušan
authors: D
authors: Borić
authors: T Douglas
authors: TD
authors: Price
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001106:Archaeology; D063368:Balkan Peninsula; D005260:Female; D005843:Geography; D055593:Geological Phenomena; D063426:Human Migration; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009587:Nitrogen Isotopes; D055110:Radiometric Dating; D013325:Strontium Isotopes; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D009587:Nitrogen Isotopes; D013325:Strontium Isotopes
references: PLoS Biol. 2005 Dec;3(12):e410
references: 16292981
references: Am J Hum Genet. 2009 Jun;84(6):740-59
references: 19500773
references: Curr Biol. 2010 Feb 23;20(4):R174-83
references: 20178764
references: Naturwissenschaften. 2012 Apr;99(4):321-5
references: 22349495