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Water and Gruel — not Bread: Discovering the Diet of Early Neolithic Farmers in Scandinavia Recent archaeological findings at a Neolithic site on the Danish island of Funen, dating back 5,500 years, have uncovered grinding stones and early cereal grains. However, new research indicates that the people living there did not use these stones for grinding the grains. Instead of baking bread, they are thought to have made porridge or gruel from the grains.
Grinding stones are flat stones that are used as a surface for grinding food items, typically with a smaller stone.
During excavations at a site from the Early Neolithic Funnel Beaker Culture in Frydenlund, southeast of Haarby on Funen, archaeologists found fourteen such grinding stones (see fact box at the bottom).
You can explore 3D images of 11 different grinding stones from the Frydenlund location here (they can be rotated using your mouse).
Additionally, more than 5,000 charred grain remnants of naked barley, emmer wheat, and durum wheat were discovered.
One might assume that the people from 5,500 years ago used these stones to turn their grains into flour for baking. This has been a common assumption regarding grinding stones from that historical period.
But that was not the case.
A team of international researchers from Denmark, Germany, and Spain have analyzed both the grains and the grinding stones, concluding that the stones were not utilized for grinding cereals.
They examined tiny mineral plant remains (known as phytoliths) and starch grains found in the small crevices of the stones. Interestingly, no evidence was found indicating that cereals were ground.
The stones contained only a few phytoliths, and any starch grains present were from wild plants rather than from cultivated cereals.
“We haven’t pinpointed the exact plants that the starch grains come from. We’ve merely ruled out the more obvious options — the cereals found at the site that were not ground, as well as a variety of foraged plants, including hazelnuts,” explains Welmoed Out, an archaeobotanist at the Moesgaard Museum.
Together with senior researcher Dr. Niels H. Andersen from the Moesgaard Museum, she led this study, which was recently published in the scientific journal Vegetation History and Archaeobotany.
The intended use of the grinding stones remains speculative, particularly since there are no distinct wear patterns typically associated with grinding grain.
“The quern stones that show signs of pushing motions appeared 500 years later. The grinding stones we assessed were used with pestles made of stone, similar to crushing in a mortar. We also found these pestles at the site, which were round and thick, resembling stone sausages. However, we haven’t conducted phytolith or starch analyses on them,” Niels H. Andersen explains.
This study marks the first instance where advanced phytolith and starch analysis techniques have been applied to grinding stones linked to Northern Europe’s initial farmers. The findings uphold a hypothesis previously suggested by botanists and archaeologists after discovering remnants of grains historically prepared as porridge and gruel: that the earliest farmers relied on a diet of water and gruel, along with berries, nuts, roots, and meat. And, yes, they probably consumed water as well. According to Niels H. Andersen, no clear evidence of beer brewing has been documented in Denmark prior to the Bronze Age.
However, the two researchers from Moesgaard Museum stress: “This study only examines one settlement. Although it aligns with other discoveries from the Funnel Beaker Culture, we can’t dismiss the possibility of obtaining different results from other archaeological sites utilizing this method.”
Facts:
- The Funnel Beaker Culture represents an early agricultural culture in Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe from around 4000-2800 BCE, marking the advent of farming and livestock management in Scandinavia. The culture is named after the distinctive funnel-shaped clay beakers that are commonly found.
- The find at Southern Funen is the largest collection of grinding stones and grains from the Funnel Beaker Culture across the entire region it covered.
- This study was conducted in partnership with researchers from Moesgaard Museum, Aarhus University in Denmark, Kiel University in Germany, and the Spanish National Research Council (IMF-CSIC) in Barcelona.
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