Reconstructing dietary practices at Tell Kamid el-Loz (Lebanon) during the Bronze and Iron Age III / Persian to Hellenistic periods using plant micro-remains from dental calculus and stable isotope analysis of bone collagen

Shira Gur-Arieh; Stefanie Eisenmann; Amanda G Henry; Mary Lucas; Daniela Lenz; Ptolemaios Paxinos; Hélène Weber; Lionello F Morandi; Jeffery R Stone; Michael Schultz; Patrick Roberts; Philipp W Stockhammer

doi:10.1007/s12520-024-02000-w

Reconstructing dietary practices at Tell Kamid el-Loz (Lebanon) during the Bronze and Iron Age III / Persian to Hellenistic periods using plant micro-remains from dental calculus and stable isotope analysis of bone collagen

Archaeol Anthropol Sci. 2024;16(8):127. doi: 10.1007/s12520-024-02000-w. Epub 2024 Jul 24.

Authors

Shira Gur-Arieh¹, Stefanie Eisenmann², Amanda G Henry³, Mary Lucas^{4

5}, Daniela Lenz¹, Ptolemaios Paxinos^{6

7}, Hélène Weber⁶, Lionello F Morandi^{8

9}, Jeffery R Stone¹⁰, Michael Schultz^{11

12}, Patrick Roberts^{4

13}, Philipp W Stockhammer^{1

14}

Affiliations

¹ Institute for Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology and Archaeology of the Roman Provinces, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, Munich, Germany.
² Seminar for the Old Testament, Faculty of Theology, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
³ Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.
⁴ isoTROPIC Research Group, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena, Germany.
⁵ The Arctic University Museum of Norway, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway.
⁶ Institute for Palaeoanatomy, Domestication Research and History of the Veterinary Medicine, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany.
⁷ Staatssammlung für Paläoanatomie, Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns, Munich, Germany.
⁸ Archaeometry Research Group, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
⁹ Department of Civilisations and Forms of Knowledge, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
¹⁰ Department of Earth and Environmental Systems, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN USA.
¹¹ Institute of Anatomy and Embryology, University Medical School Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
¹² Institute of Biology and Chemistry, University of Hildesheim, Hildesheim, Germany.
¹³ Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena, Germany.
¹⁴ Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.

Abstract

Tell Kamid el-Loz (Lebanon) was an important Bronze Age urban center that dominated one of the central crossroads of the Ancient Near East, connecting Egypt and the Levant with northern Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and Syria, as well as the interior with the Mediterranean coast. However, by the early Iron Age, the site had shrunk to a small rural settlement. Later, in the Iron Age III / Persian-Hellenistic, only enigmatic pits and a large cemetery remained. In this paper, we analyzed plant micro-remains from the dental calculus of 15 individuals (3 from the Middle Bronze Age II and 12 from the Iron Age III / Persian-Hellenistic) and δ ¹³C and δ ¹⁵N stable isotope data from tbulk bone collagen of 74 individuals (10 from the Middle Bronze Age II and 64 from the Iron Age III / Persian-Hellenistic) and 13 Late Bronze Age animal bones (7 Ovis/Capra and 6 Bos). Our results indicate general stability of human diet throughout the Middle Bronze Age II and the Iron III / Persian-Hellenistic periods, with a reliance on C₃ plant crops and terrestrial animals also consuming C₃ plants. In the later period, the plant micro-remains indicate the consumption of C₄ plants and sedges, and the stable isotope analysis indicates differences in diet between males and females.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12520-024-02000-w.

Keywords: Bone collagen; Dental calculus; Diet; Iron Age III / Persian-Hellenistic; Kamid el-Loz; Levant; Middle Bronze Age; Stable isotope analysis.