A turning point in the Bronze Age: the diet was changed and the society was transformed

The bioarchaeological investigation of the Bronze Age cemetery of Tiszafüred-Majoroshalom has shed new light on an important period in Central European history. An international research team – led by Tamás Hajdu, associate professor at the Department of Anthropology at ELTE and Claudio Cavazzuti, senior assistant professor at the University of Bologna, has shown that around 1500 BC, radical changes occurred in people’s lives: they ate and lived differently, and the social system was also reorganized.

The multidisciplinary research was based on the Bronze Age cemetery excavated at Tiszafüred-Majoroshalom, which was used both in the Middle Bronze Age (Füzesabony culture) and in the Late Bronze Age (Tumulus culture). These finds allowed the researchers to compare the subsistence strategies before and after the change of era.

The research team, led by Tamás Hajdu and supported by the Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office, sought to answer whether the spread of the Tumulus culture meant the arrival of new groups, or whether the autochtonous people continued their lives, and only the material culture changed. In addition, they also examined whether the archaeologically observed settlement changes around 1500 BC indicate a change in lifestyle: whether people began to follow a lifestyle involving mainly animal husbandry and frequent migration instead of settled farming.

The most important results of the research:

Diet changed: According to nitrogen stable isotope studies, people's food consumption was much more diverse during the Middle Bronze Age, and differences within society were also more evident in their diet - especially in access to animal proteins. This difference decreased in the Late Bronze Age, and the diet became more uniform but poorer.

Broomcorn millet was introduced: According to carbon isotope analyses, the consumption of millet, a plant that can be grown quickly and has a high energy content, began at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age. The data from the Tiszafüred Bronze Age cemetery indicate the earliest known consumption of millet in Europe.

Mobility decreased: According to the results of strontium isotope investigations, the populations of the Middle and Late Bronze Age Tiszafüred had different mobility patterns. In the Late Bronze Age, fewer immigrants were identified and they arrived from different migration source than before. While in the Middle Bronze Age, beside the locals, several immigrants were observed among the people living in Tiszafüred, and they most likely did not come from too far away (e.g. the Upper Tisza region, the northern part of the Carpathians), while in the Late Bronze Age, the settlers may have come from other geographical regions (e.g. Transdanubia or the Southern Carpathians). Based on radiocarbon dating, immigration began as early as the 1500s BC, which supports that the communities living further west had indeed reached the Great Hungarian Plain at the time of the appearance of the Tumulus culture.

Social relations changed: At the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, the long time-used tell-settlements were abandoned and people lived in less centralized settlement networks. This change created a looser, less structured social system – which is also reflected in dietary habits. According to microremains found in dental calculi and the aforementioned isotopic analyses, significantly less animal protein was consumed during this period than before, which contradicts the previous idea that people belonging to the Tumulus culture were mainly engaged in animal husbandry.

The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, clearly refutes the previous idea that Tumulus culture people were mostly pastoralists. The research results show that the changes associated with the emergence of the Tumulus culture (around 1500 BC) – such as the observed differences in people's lifestyles, burial customs and settlements – can only be truly understood if traditional archaeological and anthropological studies are combined with modern bioarchaeological analyses.