Hunter-gatherer carbohydrate consumption: plant roots and rhizomes as staple foods in Mesolithic Europe

ABSTRACT

Carbohydrate consumption in hunter-gatherer societies has been much debated, with dietary estimates from studies of modern hunter-gatherers used as a reference standard for modern human nutrition. However, relatively little is known about the role of carbohydrates in past hunter-gatherer diets in temperate Europe because farming has been the main mode of subsistence since early prehistory. Plant roots and rhizomes provide a major source of carbohydrates and archaeological evidence indicates that these resources were gathered, perhaps routinely for food by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in Europe. This paper considers whether roots/rhizomes in Europe contained sufficient carbohydrates and energy to be utilised as staple foods using new food composition data, and considers the suitability of roots/rhizomes for intensive exploitation. The results reveal that the carbohydrate and energy content of wild roots/rhizomes can be higher than in cultivated potatoes, showing that they could have provided a major carbohydrate and energy source for hunter-gatherers in Europe.

KEYWORDS:

• Hunter-gatherers
• Mesolithic
• roots
• rhizomes
• carbohydrates
• energy

Acknowledgments

I am very grateful to Peter Rowley-Conwy and Mike Church for their advice and support during this research. I would like to thank Christopher Murgatroy of Foodtest Laboratories for conducting the food composition analyses and to thank Eileen Gibney of the UCD Institute of Food and Health for her very helpful advice on calculating calorific values. I am also very grateful to the Durham University Botanic Gardens, Mugdock Country Park and Mr. and Mrs. Lawson for permission to collect the wild plant roots. Thanks very much to Peter Rowley-Conwy, Mike Church and Graeme Warren for commenting on a draft of the paper and James Walker for his useful suggestions. I am also very grateful to Annette Øvrelid for taking the photo for Figure 2. Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments. Finally, special thanks go to Arthur Anderson, Chris Davis and Kristen Hopper for putting up with the bracken and bulrush boiling and to Charlotte O’Brien and Lorn Elliot for tolerating the Ramsons drying!

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) funded PhD Studentship [AH/I503757/1] and the food composition analyses were funded by a Durham University, Durham Doctoral Fellowship Stellar Student Award awarded to Rosie Bishop.

Notes on contributors

Rosie R. Bishop

Rosie R. Bishop is Førsteamanuensis i Paleobotanikk (Associate Professor in Palaeobotany) at the Arkeologisk Museum at the University of Stavanger, Norway. She is an archaeobotanist and environmental archaeologist, and her research focuses on the archaeology of Scotland, North-West Europe and the North Atlantic islands. Her main research interest is the changing nature of the relationship between people, plants and the environment in hunter-gatherer and early farming societies.