Committing to Cattle:exploring Variation in Neolithic Cattle Husbandry Practices through Zooarchaeological and Stable Isotopic Analyses

Neolithic cattle husbandry provided farming communities with vital products that brought about everlasting changes to our practices of food production, consumption, storage, transportation, and to concept of wealth. Neolithic cattle herders, similar to modern-day zootechnicians, developed many innovative husbandry practices to achieve desirable traits among livestock. These practices are deeply entangled with, and often driven by, the physiological and behavioural traits of cattle, ecological factors, technological, and sociocultural preferences of the human communities involved. There is little known about the early forms of cattle husbandry due to the incompatibility of the methodologies used in zooarchaeological datasets, and the scarcity of stable isotopic and palaeopathological data on cattle remains from early Neolithic contexts. As a response to these challenges, this study combines an integrated approach of standard zooarchaeological, pathological, and novel multi-stable isotopic (δ18O, δ13C, δ15N) analyses to provide a multi-scalar perspective on the dynamics of cattle farming practices. This revealed patterns linked to the human control exercised over cattle strength, demography, size, grazing environments, mobility, and the reproduction cycle at three pivotal early Neolithic sites in Turkey, Bulgaria, and the Netherlands between 7th and 4th millennium BCE.From a broader perspective, this study confirms a pattern in which the diversity of early cattle husbandry practices is caused by an interplay of biological, environmental, and cultural factors. In return, this has shaped cattle and human biology, socioeconomic behaviours, and the natural environment in different ways