@article{10902/27934,
year = {2022},
month = {11},
url = {https://hdl.handle.net/10902/27934},
abstract = {Despite being one of the most important crops in the recent prehistory of Eurasia, the arrival and exploitation of millets in the westernmost part of Europe are still largely underexplored. Here and for the first time, we report multipronged biomolecular evidence of millet consumption along the Atlantic façade of northern Iberia through a combination of radiocarbon dating, stable isotopes, and dental calculus analyses on the human individuals found in the burial site of El Espinoso cave (Asturias, Spain). The high-resolution chronological framework established for individuals placed the burials between 1235 and 1099 cal. BC. The discovery of high ?13C values on their bone collagen and the identification of polyhedral starch grains within their dental plaque underline the relevance of C4 plants in their diet and highlights the timing of the systematic consumption of millets in the Late Bronze Age. Our data support previous regional archaeobotanical evidence and establish a more precise chronology of the dispersal of millets into northern Iberia during the Bronze Age, becoming an essential crop until the arrival of maize from America after AD 1492. This study emphasizes the importance of multidisciplinary methods to ascertain the origin and development of agricultural practices during recent prehistory.},
organization = {This study is part of B.G.R.’s Doctoral dissertation, supervised by A.B.M.A. and M.R.G.M. This research is funded
by the research projects of the Spanish Economy, Industry and Competitiveness Ministry HAR2016-75605-R to
M.R.G.M. and HAR2017- 84997-P to A.B.M.A. Part of this research, including the stable isotope analyses, was
funded by the ERC Consolidator Grant (SUBSILIENCE ref. 818299), awarded to A.B.M.A. Analysis of dental
calculus was carried out in the framework of the ERC Starting Grant (HIDDEN FOODS ref. 639286), awarded
to E.C. The authors would like to thank C. García de Castro and B. López for giving information and allowing
the sampling of Los Cinchos cave. We are grateful to L. Agudo Perez for her invaluable help during the collagen
extraction protocols. The authors wish to acknowledge Dr Lawrence G. Straus (University of New Mexico) for
editing the English version of this manuscript. Finally, we also thanks to two anonymous reviewers for their
constructive comments that improved the manuscript.},
publisher = {Nature Publishing Group},
publisher = {Scientific Reports, 2022, 12, 18589},
title = {The arrival of millets to the Atlantic coast of northern Iberia},
author = {González Rabanal, Borja and Marín Arroyo, Ana Belén and Cristiani, Emanuela and Zupancich, Andrea and González Morales, Manuel R.},
}