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The Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) was an important member of Early and Mid-Holocene landscapes and animal communities in Northern Europe. Previous zooarchaeological research has established the alimentary roles of beavers for Mesolithic societies and their importance for fur procurement. In this paper, we develop an integrated biocultural approach to human-beaver interactions, examining the position of humans and beavers in Mesolithic and Early Neolithic multispecies systems. We contextualize beaver landscape agency in hydroactive environments with human behaviour, synthesizing currently available data on mammalian assemblages, ichtyofauna and beaver-related material culture across Northern Europe. This cross-cultural, diachronic analysis reveals previously overlooked facilitations of human behaviour by beaver practices and ecological legacies. We show that long-term trajectories of human-beaver cohabitation differed between northern European regions. While in Southern Scandinavia, human-beaver intersections witnessed major re-organizations during the Mid-Holocene, beavers retained a key role for human societies across Northeastern Europe throughout much of the Holocene and played an important part at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the Dutch wetlands. Divergent pathways are also evidenced by Mesolithic beaver-related material culture, highlighting the cultural keystone status of Castor fiber in higher latitude European landscapes. We argue that this keystone status is grounded in the supply of human hunting, fishing, and gathering affordances by the animals, pointing to the generative commensality between Mesolithic foragers and their beaver neighbours. Taken together, our findings demonstrate the importance of the beaver in the making of Early and Mid-Holocene forager societies in Northern Europe and illustrate the fruitfulness of deploying an integrated multispecies approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suids (Sus sp.) played a crucial role in the transition to farming in northern Europe and, like in many regions, in the Netherlands pig husbandry became an important subsistence activity at Neolithic sites. Yet little is known about wild boar palaeoecology and hunting in the Late Mesolithic Netherlands with which to contextualize this transition. This paper presents the first multi-proxy analysis of archaeological suid remains in the Netherlands. It explores human-suid interactions at the Swifterbant culture sites of Hardinxveld-Giessendam Polderweg and De Bruin (5450–4250 BC) through biometric analysis, estimation of age-at-death, and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis. The results reveal targeted hunting of adult wild boar in the Late Mesolithic (5450–4850 BC), with a possible shift over time towards more juveniles. The wild boar in this period are demonstrated to be of comparably large size to contemporary northern European populations and exhibiting a wide range of dietary regimes. In the final occupational period (4450–4250 BC), small suids are present, possibly domestic pigs, but there is no evidence of pig management. This study demonstrates that the nature of human-suid interactions varied over time, which may have been connected to changing environmental conditions, human mobility, and wild boar behaviour. This study also contributes the first biometric and dietary baseline for mid-Holocene wild boar in the Netherlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

They list 23 - out of a total of 1415 (identified to species) - bone fragments assigned to sheep and/or goat ( I Ovis ammon f. aries/Capra aegagrus f. hircus i ) (Crombé et al. Crombé et al. argue that the specimens were likely not imported but instead provide evidence for local animal husbandry based on the SP 13 sp C and SP 15 sp N ratios of the I Bos i and sheep/goat bone collagen. It comprises four I Bos i , one goat, and one sheep/goat specimen. Table 1 Radiocarbon dates of sheep/goat bones from Bazel "Sluis", Hardinxveld-Giessendam de Bruin, and Brandwijk, shown in Fig. [Extracted from the article]