DENTAL MICROWEAR SIGNATURES OF AN EARLY LBK POPULATION FROM VEDROVICE, MORAVIA, THE CZECH REPUBLIC

Deciphering the dietary habits of past people is fundamental to understanding their subsistence economy and their way of life. Gaining information on diets of the past can be achieved in several ways. In this study, the dental microwear signatures from twenty-two individuals from the early LBK site of Vedrovice, the Czech Republic, was examined to infer the diet regime for each individual as well as for the population as a whole. The microwear pattern suggests a diet that required a fair amount of compression forces: the population had a high proportion of pit features which were fairly large in size, and the striation features were on average wide but fairly short. There was also evidence of a fair amount of shearing forces: the high standard deviation for striation lengths suggests an inclusion of tough and resilient food sources in the daily diet that required much grinding. No significant differences in the dental microwear pattern were detected between the sexes, although females tended to have more features on average that were of smaller dimensions. This suggests that there were only minimal differences in the diet of males and females. The dental microwear signatures of the population reflect a highly heterogeneous diet showing similarities to both huntergatherer societies and early settled populations showing an increasing reliance on domesticated plants and animal species. Based on the dental microwear signatures, it is very likely that the people of the early LBK site of Vedrovice had not yet fully embraced agriculture and reliance on domesticated species.