Reconstructing Late Neolithic Lifeways Using Multi-Isotope Analyses Of Human Enamel, Dentine, And Bone From The Legaire Sur Megalithic Grave, Spain. Session 45: Interpreting Neolithic Lifeways: The Impact Of Current Theoretical Knowledge And Multidisciplinary Approaches On Understandings Of Neolithic Europe And Western Asia.

Isotopic analyses have cemented themselves as important tools for reconstructing the lifeways of prehistoric people. In recent years, the development of multi-tissue and incremental sampling, alongside multi-isotope approaches means that we can now recreate these lifeways in greater detail than ever before. Instead of representing individuals with one sample, multi-sampling can track the intricacies of how diet and mobility may change over a lifetime. This has been paramount to understand the prehistoric way of life, as, we can now recreate age-related changes in diet and mobility, as well as certain anthropological behaviours (i.e., weaning practices), which were previously unobservable without a written record. The study presented here combined the use of multi-tissue sampling (bone collagen, tooth enamel, and tooth dentine) with incremental sampling, in order to track age-related changes in multi-isotope proxies (C, N, O, Sr) within 19 Neolithic individuals from the Legaire Sur megalithic grave, Álava, Spain (ca. 3400–2300 BC). The aim was to reconstruct diet and mobility histories of the people who occupied Legaire at that time to the highest resolution physically possible. To reconstruct dietary lifeways, our approach combined the incremental dentine sampling of 19 55 permanent molars alongside 18 bulk bone collagen samples. The results allowed us to model not only complex age-related changes in diet, but also the varying breastfeeding strategies implemented at Neolithic and Copper Age Legaire. Further, mobility lifeways were demonstrated through the tracking of O and Sr isotope variations from the enamel of serially forming molars (M1, M2, & M3). These results indicated a varying level of geographical mobility, dependant on individual. For the first time, we present these integrated dietary and mobility profiles of each individual from this recently excavated site, discuss what these reveal about the complex lifeways at Neolithic Legaire, and review the potential of our methods.