Introduction

Food resources from animals and plants provided the necessities of life for any population, whatever period in history or geographical position. Raw material for clothes and tools had also to be gained from animals and plants. Activities of procurement, farming, and husbandry were necessarily imbedded within particular social organisations (Chapter 5). Different natural geographic, environmental and climatologically prerequisites have resulted in a variety of subsistence strategies and organisation outcomes. By comparing the results of archaeozoological and macro-botanical case study analysis from settlements in three contrasting regions of Europe, we can propose general tendencies for agrarian economy, and subsistence patterns can be suggested. The comparative analyses focus on production, consumption, and trade by studying the development of animal and plant exploitation as reflected in bone material and botanical remains. Consumption versus production and the balance between supply and demand are discussed as well as signs of surplus production and exchange.

Archaeozoological and archaeobotanical macro-botanical analyses carried out as part of our broad study (Chapter 1) have generated rich raw data and information. Together with information from other major studies, results document developments during the period ca 2400 to 1400 BC in Hungary, 1500 to 500 BC in Scandinavia, and 600 to 300 BC in Sicily. The main goal here is to describe subsistence strategies in three different kinds of societies in geographically widely separate parts of Europe. The majority of the animal bones and plant remains found within the settlements can be considered normal everyday household waste, reflecting animal and plant exploitation, mainly connected to agricultural and subsistence strategies. In all areas, procurement mixed both animal husbandry and cereal production; wild resources, although of little importance as a food, were used for tools and ritual. Of particular importance, the mixes of crops and animals varied from one locale to the next, reflecting local adaptation within the general mix of European domesticates, and the mix varied from period to period, reflecting intensification in land use. A key conclusion is that animal husbandry dominated the subsistence strategies in Southern Scandinavia and Hungary, and that the animal mixes and patterns of culling document trade in animal products locally and perhaps at a distance.