Multi-isotope evidence for the emergence of cultural alterity in Late Neolithic Europe

The co-existence of cultural identities and their interaction is a fundamental topic of social sciences that is not easily addressed in prehistory. Differences in mortuary treatment often reflect differences in lifestyle and beliefs, and can help approach this issue. Here we present a multi-isotope study to track both diet and mobility through the life histories of 32 broadly coeval Late Neolithic individuals interred in caves and in megalithic graves of a restricted region of northern Iberia. The results show significant differences in infant and child-rearing practices, in subsistence strategies, and in landscape-use between burial locations. From this, we posit that the presence of communities with distinct lifestyles and cultural backgrounds is a primary reason for Late Neolithic variability in burial location in western Europe and provides evidence of an early ‘them and us’ scenario. We argue that such differentiation could have played a role in the building of lasting structures of 28 socioeconomic inequality and, occasionally, violent conflict