After Rome: insights on the formation of Central European societies

 

An international research team led by JGU has analysed genomes from the period around the end of the Western Roman Empire. The study provides new insights into a time of profound change in Central Europe and has been published in the journal Nature.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Johannes Gutenberg Universitaet Mainz

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A woman's skull, approximately 1,400 years old, discovered during the excavation of her grave in what is now Ergoldsbach. Using a tiny bone fragment from the skull, palaeogeneticists at JGU reconstructed the deceased's complete genome.

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Credit: photo/©: Richter/Kreisarchäologie Landshut

Many of today's villages and towns in Central Europe trace their origins to settlements that emerged after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, often on former Roman territory or in the immediate vicinity of the Limes, the former imperial frontier. Since the nineteenth century this period was often associated with the idea of large migrating groups of Germanic peoples. However, historical research has long since moved away from the concept of a unified Germanic identity and large-scale migration events. An international research team led by anthropologist and population geneticist Professor Dr. Joachim Burger from the Institute of Organismic and Molecular Evolution at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has now analysed genomes of individuals from the former Roman frontier zone between 400 and 700 AD in southern Germany. Their results provide unexpectedly detailed insights into a period of major transformation. The findings have been published in the journal Nature.

The interdisciplinary study involved around sixty researchers from a range of European institutions, including JGU, the University of Tübingen, the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, the University of Freiburg in Germany, the Bavarian State Collections of Natural History, and several other institutions. The researchers come from fields such as population genetics, bioinformatics, anthropology, history and archaeology. The study focused on genomes from skeletal remains found in so called row grave cemeteries, burial sites that became widespread from the mid fifth century across northern Gaul, western and southern Germany, and as far as Hungary.

Two population groups in the Roman frontier region

In total the team analysed 258 genomes from present day Bavaria and Hesse and compared them with a reference dataset of around 2,900 ancient, early medieval and modern genomes from northern and southern Germany. The results show that even in the late Roman period, before the collapse of Roman rule, individuals were buried in cemeteries in what is now southern Germany whose genetic ancestry originated in northern Europe, for example at sites such as Altheim near Landshut and Büttelborn near Darmstadt. This is a surprising finding. At first glance it appears to confirm the established idea of a large-scale Germanic migration, but further analyses lead to a different interpretation.

According to Dr. Jens Blöcher, population geneticist at JGU and one of the two first authors of the study, people from northern regions had already moved south in small groups long before the end of the Western Roman Empire and had gradually adopted Roman ways of life. Many of them appear to have lived separately from the rest of the population, likely as agricultural workers, and tended to marry within their own groups, thereby maintaining the genetic signatures of their ancestry.

The other first author, Dr. Leonardo Vallini, also a population geneticist at JGU, adds that Roman administrative practices may have contributed to this separation. Land was often allocated to incoming groups under specific conditions, including restrictions on marriage, in order to manage integration and maintain control.

For the first time the research team also genetically characterised the population of a Roman military settlement. This population was highly diverse genetically, reflecting centuries of movement and exchange across Europe and even from Asia.

After the end of the Western Roman Empire the two population groups merged rapidly

Joachim Burger, senior author of the study, describes the period after around 470 AD as a turning point. With the collapse of Roman state structures insecurity increased and with it population mobility. People who had previously lived in cities or military settlements moved into rural areas, where they encountered groups with northern European ancestry. These groups formed new communities and began to bury their dead together in shared row grave cemeteries. Burger notes that there is continuity of population components from late antiquity, but also a clear process of merging between previously separated groups.

The old image of a large-scale Germanic migration is no longer supported

The new findings suggest a pattern of regional mobility and gradual integration. According to Professor Dr. Steffen Patzold, medieval historian at the University of Tübingen, the results – based on entirely new scientific data – confirm that the traditional view of large, coordinated migrations of Germanic peoples is inaccurate. Instead, the genomic data point to movements of smaller groups, families, or even individuals. Patzold emphasizes that the evidence indicates these movements were not mass migrations, but rather the result of smaller-scale relocations. The study was initiated jointly by Patzold together with his Tübingen colleagues, Professor Dr. Mischa Meier and Professor Dr. Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner.

The origins of European family structures

From the genomic data the researchers were able to reconstruct family relationships and show how new family structures emerged during this period of demographic change. According to Joachim Burger, the rapid formation of families across the two groups suggests a shared cultural framework, which he identifies as the late Roman cultural sphere. Long before the political end of the Roman Empire, both groups were already culturally connected through life within the imperial system.

The reconstructed family trees also provide detailed insights into household structures of the time. Households were mainly composed of nuclear families rather than extended clans. Marriages were monogamous, close kin marriages were avoided, and descent was traced through both maternal and paternal lines. According to Steffen Patzold, these patterns correspond closely to late antique written sources and demonstrate the lasting influence of late Roman social norms into the early medieval period.

Genetic foundations of southern Germany

From the seventh century onwards, these processes resulted in a population that is genetically very similar to that of present-day southern Germany. The northern ancestry component became increasingly prominent while both original groups contributed to the genetic structure of the region. According to Joachim Burger, this development shows how the upheavals of late antiquity gradually formed the basis of the population structure of central Europe that can still be observed today.

The study was funded by the German Research Foundation within the research group Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages at the University of Tübingen and by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The collaboration included Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, the University of Freiburg in Germany, the Bavarian State Collections of Natural History, the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments, the Hesse State Office for Monument Preservation, the Musée de l Homme and the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris, as well as additional partners in Germany, England, Spain, Italy, Austria, Serbia and Switzerland.

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Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-026-10437-3 

How the Nile helped an ancient Sudanese city thrive for centuries

 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

University of Michigan

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Panoramic view of Jebel Barkal (ancient Napata), a UNESCO World Heritage site in northern Sudan, with its sandstone outcrop and royal pyramids.

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Credit: Gregory Tucker

ANN ARBOR—The ancient city of Napata, located in what is now Sudan, was a major urban and cultural center of Kush, an ancient empire in Nubia.

University of Michigan archaeologists and earth scientists examined the land underlying the city to determine what geological processes might have led to the city's successful settlement. Their findings suggest Napata, which flourished from about 800 BCE to 100 CE, owed its staying power to a relatively stable Nile, which deposited millennia of clay and built up a thick and fertile floodplain, creating a landscape that reduced flood risk while maintaining access to water.

The U-M study, led by archaeologist Geoff Emberling, geomorphologist Jan Peeters and El-Hassan Ahmed Mohammed, who along with Emberling directs the Jebel Barkal Archaeological Project, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The Napata site is one of The Klinsky Expeditions, a series of five archaeological field projects funded by U-M alum Steve Klinsky.

"Scholars have looked at the association between changes in climate and local environment and their impact on societies, including their political development and economic systems," said Emberling, a research scientist at the U-M Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. "But this hasn't been done in Sudan, and we've missed a key tool to help us not only understand the rise and fall of individual settlements, but also the broader history of the rise and fall of the Empire of Kush. This is really the first systematic geomorphological study in Sudan that relates to these ancient cultures."

Kush was an important player in the ancient world, Emberling said. The empire was mentioned in the Bible, by the Greek historian Herodotus, and interacted with Egypt, the Assyrians, Greeks, Persians and with the Roman Empire. After the Egyptian empire collapsed at around 1200 BCE, the Kushite dynasty came into power, based at what's now called Jebel Barkal, whose ancient name was Napata. There, at the foot of an ancient sandstone outcrop, the Kushites built palaces, pyramids and temples. Now, Jebel Barkal is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

"They were part of that whole world system, yet because of a history of relatively lower investment in research in Sudan, some very basic questions haven't been addressed," Emberling said. "We might think we know all we need to know about the Nile because there's been a fair amount of research in Egypt. But in Sudan, the way the Nile works is different."

The gentling of the Nile

In Sudan, the geology of the region creates rapids, waterfalls and islands along the Nile that disrupt travel and fragment settlements, according to Emberling. To understand the geology underlying Jebel Barkal, Peeters led a research team including a group of local Sudanese that drilled 26 sediment cores across the river valley in which the city is situated. 

The team collected samples every 10 centimeters, with the boreholes eventually reaching between five and 13 meters deep. Using a technique called optically stimulated luminescence dating, which dates samples by determining the last time sand grains were exposed to light, the researchers were able to peer into 12,500 years of Nile history.

For the first 8,000 years of this period, the Nile carved its own valley, according to Peeters. Then, about 4,000 years ago, the valley leveled out, allowing the river to start depositing sediment and building up the valley floor. From that time period on, the river has been relatively stable—composing a layer of fertile clay and silt about 10 meters thick. 

The researchers say another geologic feature, the Nile's Fourth Cataract, also helped the river slow and allowed it to drop sediment at the site where Napata would eventually thrive. The cataracts of the Nile are stretches of islands and fast-moving rapids. The Fourth Cataract lies just upstream of Jebel Barkal, and Peeters surmises that much of the river's energy dissipates over the stretch of this cataract, allowing the river to deposit sediment and become relatively stable for 4,000 years.

"Where sediments accumulate shapes where people can live, farm, and carry out cultural and religious practices,” Peeters said. 

The precarity of war

The researchers say this work is ongoing, even as Sudan experiences its current war. Sudanese archaeologists, members of Sudan's antiquities department, known as the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums, have been carrying out work at Jebel Barkal, guided by Emberling and others abroad.

"Despite all the difficulties and hardship of Sudan, because of the ongoing war, research is continuing through the efforts of our local collaborators," Peeters said. "Their work is central to the project, which places strong emphasis on community engagement and collaboration with Sudanese researcher.

Co-authors include Timotheus Winkels, Pawel Wolf, Tim Skuldbøl, Elizabeth Chamberlain, Saskia Büchner-Matthews and Sami Elamin.

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2529986123 

Roman shipwreck reveals fascinating history of repairs throughout the Adriatic

Researchers analyzing pollen trapped in the waterproofing layers of long sunken Roman Republic ship find proof that it may have been patched up successively at different locations throughout the Adriatic Sea

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Frontiers

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View of the excavation of the bow area of the Ilovik-Paržine 1 shipwreck. In the foreground, the cargo of logs and amphoras can be seen. Archaeologists are working near the structure of the bow complex.

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Credit: Adriboats © L. Damelet, CNRS/CCJ

Ever since humans have embarked on sea voyages, they needed to ensure vessels were waterproof, resistant to salty seawater, and could withstand microorganisms or sea-dwellers like worms. Until the mid-20th century, however, the study of non-wood materials used to build ships was overlooked. Even today little work has been done on materials used for waterproofing.

Now, in a new Frontiers in Materials study, researchers in France and Croatia have examined the protective coating of the Roman Republic shipwreck Ilovik–Paržine 1 that sank around 2,200 years ago off the coast of what is now Croatia.

“In archaeology little attention is paid to organic waterproofing materials. Yet they are essential for navigation at sea or on rivers and are true witnesses of past naval technologies,” said first author Dr Armelle Charrié, an archaeometrist at the Laboratory of Mass Spectrometry of Interactions and Systems in Strasbourg. “Studying the coatings, we found two different kinds on this vessel: one made of pine tar, also called pitch, and the other of a mixture of pine tar and beeswax. Analysis of pollen in the coating made it possible to identify the plant taxa present in the immediate environment during the construction or repairs of the ship.”

Resin and wax

The wreck was discovered in 2016 and since then the ship itself and its cargo has been examined multiple times. The current study, however, is the first to combine pollen and molecular analyses to characterize the ship’s coating and vegetation present during its production and application on the hull. The work is a collaboration between the Department for Underwater Archaeology of the Croatian Conservation Institute and the ‘ADRIBOATS’ program of the Centre Camille Jullian at Aix-Marseille University in France.

“Some regions throughout the Adriatic have particular characteristics that led local populations to develop a specific shipbuilding style,” said Charrié. “Only studies like ours offer an overview into these traditions which bear witness to genuine know-how and diverse traditions.”

To examine the coatings, researchers carried out structural, molecular, and pollen analyses using techniques that identify and quantify unknown components in an organic mixture such as mass spectrometry.

Using 10 coating samples, the team identified the biological origin of natural substances used for the ship’s coating by molecular analysis. This ‘molecular fingerprint’ analysis showed molecules characteristic of pine trees, indicating that the main component of all coating samples was heated coniferous resin or coniferous tar, also called pitch. One sample, however, showed that at least some of the coating was made from a different composition of materials, namely beeswax and tar. This mixture – known to Greek shipbuilders as zopissa – improves the adhesive’s flexibility and is easier to apply when hot.

Trapped in pitch

Pitch is adhesive by nature and can trap and preserve pollen from the surrounding landscapes. Analyzing these traces and their respective abundances allowed the researchers to narrow down possible regions where the pitch could have been produced and re-applied during refurbishments.

Pollen from coating samples from the Ilovik–Paržine 1 reflected a high diversity of environments. The identified landscapes included those characteristic of the Mediterranean and Adriatic coasts and valleys, with forests of holly oak and pine as well as matorral – a kind of Mediterranean shrubland – where olive and hazel trees grow. The presence of alder and ash points to vegetation growing close to river- and seashores, which can be found near the coast or in the nearby hinterland. Fir and beech were present in small proportions, too. This vegetation is found in mountainous regions and typical of the north-eastern coastal regions of the Adriatic Sea where the mountain ranges of Istria and Dalmatia are not far.

The team’s findings also indicated that the ship likely underwent four to five distinct batches of coatings. The ship’s stern and central part was covered by the same coating, whereas three batches at the bow were distinct from one another. This, too, could indicate that the ship was patched up successively using materials sourced from various locations throughout the Mediterranean.

Previous research using the ship’s ballast identified Brundisium – today Brindisi – on the south-eastern coast of Italy as the ship’s place of construction. Pollen analysis also suggests that some of the coatings were applied close to there. Other coating layers, however, could have been applied on the north-eastern Adriatic coast, where the shipwreck was discovered.

“While it seems obvious that ships sailing long distances need repairs, it’s simply not easy to demonstrate this,” concluded Charrié. “Pollen has been very useful in identifying different coatings where the molecular profiles were identical.”

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Journal

Frontiers in Materials

DOI

10.3389/fmats.2026.1758862 

Modern humans share genomic innovations for complex language with Neanderthals

In a first-of-its-kind finding, researchers at University of Iowa Health Care discovered that specific genetic sequences have an outsized impact on humans’ language abilities and that these sequences evolved before humans and Neanderthals diverged.  

The study’s senior author Jacob Michaelson, PhD, Roy J. Carver Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience with the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, describes language as a defining trait of Homo sapiens. While other animals communicate in various ways, humans’ propensity for developing and improvising language is unique to earth’s dominant species. The research, conducted by Michaelson’s team, including first author Lucas Casten, PhD, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany, aims to understand how the development of human language was shaped by genetic regulatory sequences known as Human Ancestor Quickly Evolved Regions (HAQERs). 

“What we’re seeing is how a very small part of the genome can have an outsized influence, not just on who we were as a species, but on who we are as individuals,” Michaelson says, noting that HAQERs represent less than a tenth of a percent of the genome but drive roughly 200 times more impact on language ability than any other genomic region. 

These parts of the genome serve as instructions for building the “hardware” of the brain, while language represents the “software.”  

Ancient genetic innovations 

The new study, published April 22 in Science Advances, has its foundation in work done in the 1990s by Bruce Tomblin, PhD, now professor emeritus of the UI Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. Tomblin studied a cohort of 350 Iowa students to better understand their language abilities. Tomblin meticulously documented the students’ language abilities, and he also collected saliva, preserving their DNA for future gene sequencing. That process was completed by Michaelson’s lab in NIH-funded research, allowing the researchers to look at the differences in DNA and how gene variations affected the student’s language skills.  

Through that analysis, they started examining the broader impact of HAQERs on a person’s ability to communicate using language. 

“These aren't genes we're talking about. They're regulatory regions that act like the volume knob on genes,” Michaelson explains, adding that the findings quickly connected with a seminal study from over 20 years ago that identified the FOXP2 gene, a transcription factor, which was initially suspected as playing a major role in language impairment. “So, if the HAQERs are like volume knobs that can be turned, FOXP2 is one of the hands that is turning these volume knobs.”  

To further understand the impact of HAQERs, the team developed an evolutionary-stratified polygenic score (ES-PGS) that partitioned genetic effects based on their evolutionary origins. Using computational genetics, the team examined 65 million years of evolutionary history. 

As it turns out, these “volume knobs” were present in Neanderthals and may have even been a bit more prominent than they are in us today. This finding was striking to the team as it reveals how HAQERS are ancient innovations that shape language, even though the overall cognitive abilities of Neanderthals were likely far different than modern day humans.  

“This HAQERs aspect, a sliver of the genome, has remained relatively constant, even as other aspects have been going up and up and up to make modern humans smarter and smarter,” Michaelson says. "We can say humans at least had the ‘hardware’ for language earlier than what we previously thought.” 

Michaelson adds that when layered with the archaeological evidence that Neanderthals had culture and organized social structures, it’s heavily implied that some form of complex communication existed.  

But it also begs the question that if HAQERs are so beneficial for language, why did they remain constant rather than continue to evolve into new gene variants?  

An evolutionary tradeoff  

The answer lies in the phenomenon known as balancing selection. In this case, HAQERs’ genetic signal plateaued while other signals for cognitive abilities continue to change as modern humans evolved. According to Michaelson’s team, HAQERs promote fetal brain development in ways that also increase the size of the brain and therefore the skull. Prior to modern medicine, there was a clear ceiling for how big a baby's head could get before delivery became catastrophically dangerous for both mother and child, increasing mortality for both.  

“We think that early humans maxed out this pathway to developing the kind of brain that could be a vessel for language and they hit that ceiling pretty early on and then remained stable, while other aspects of genetics that improve brain development for higher intelligence but don’t directly affect fetal brain size, continued to evolve,” Michaelson says.  

Essentially, humans underwent an evolutionary tradeoff where the “hardware” for language couldn't be optimized any further through HAQERs without increased mortality among mothers and infants.  

Disentangling environmental factors from genetics  

Michaelson's lab looks to further this research with additional studies involving the cohort of children analyzed by Tomblin. Because that original investigation occurred roughly 30 years ago, those participants now have families of their own, offering an expanded sample for genetic research. 

“One of the things we're interested in is disentangling the environmental input from the genetic input, when thinking about how a child masters language,” Michaelson says, noting that children raised in a linguistically rich environment may present with higher language capabilities. “Using that family structure, we hope to separate the direct genetic effects on language and what researchers call ‘genetic nurture’ where the parents’ genetics influence the environment they create for their kids.”  

Michaelson notes that the UI has access to sophisticated, statistical tools that will help parse out the part of a child’s language learning ability that is purely environmental, something that would be valuable from a clinical perspective.  

Michaelson has submitted a grant with Kristi Hendrickson, PhD, associate professor of communication sciences and disorders, to complete this study.  

In addition to Michaelson, Casten, and Tomblin, the team included current and former UI researchers Dabney Hofammann, Savantha Thenuwara, Allison Momany, Marlea O’Brien, Jeffery C. Murray, and Tanner Koomar (now with Recursion Pharmaceuticals). Taylor R. Thomas of the Center for Genomic Research at Massachusetts General Hospital and Jin-Young Koh of the University of Maryland were also part of the team.  

The research was funded in part by grants from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, both part of the National Institutes of Health, and the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust. 

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.aed5260 

 

What did people eat and drink in the Bronze Age South Caucasus?

 

Dairy products, wine, and beyond: foodways and culinary practices of Kura-Araxes communities

Peer-Reviewed Publication

University of Bonn

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Bottom: Red-black and black-polished vessels from Qaraçinar, Azerbaijan. 

 

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Credit: Photos: A. Decaix, ANR SWEED and the Mission “Boyuk Kesik” & ANR KUR(A)GAN

What culinary practices prevailed in the South Caucasus during the Bronze Age? The cuisine was remarkably diverse. This is what an international research team from the Universities of Bonn and Bari, along with other scientific institutions such as the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences report. The new evidence highlights a multi-ingredient cuisine alongside the central role of dairy products, fruit, and grape-based beverages in Kura-Araxes communities. The findings have now been published in the journal PNAS.

The Kura-Araxes culture is named after the two main rivers of the South Caucasus, the Kura and the Araxes, which flow into the Caspian Sea. This prehistoric cultural tradition emerged in the South Caucasus around the mid-4th millennium BCE and expanded to become the most widespread cultural phenomenon in Southwest Asia by the early to mid-3rd millennium BCE. It developed within small-scale, household-based communities, in sharp contrast to the contemporaneous urban trajectories of early state and hierarchical societies of Mesopotamia.

“By combining technological, morphological, use-wear, and biomolecular analyses of 52 ceramic vessels from the Kura-Araxes settlement of Qaraçinar (Azerbaijan), dated to ca. 2800–2600 BCE, and integrating these results with botanical and faunal data, we explored a wide range of material evidence to reconstruct Kura-Araxes foodways and culinary practices,” explains Maxime Rageot, biomolecular archaeologist at the University of Bonn. The scientist is also a member of the transdisciplinary research areas “Present Pasts” and “Life & Health” at the University of Bonn.

Characteristic Pottery

“Pottery, central to this research, was one of the most distinctive expressions of the Kura-Araxes tradition and a key marker of its expansion. It played a crucial role in processes of social integration and in the cultural reproduction of Kura-Araxes communities across space and time,” adds Giulio Palumbi, prehistoric archaeologist at the University of Bari and the CNRS, who leads the excavation project. Qaraçinar, located on the eastern piedmont of the Lesser Caucasus, was excavated between 2019 and 2024 in collaboration with Muzaffar Huseynov and Bakhtiyar Jalilov from the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences.

Residues in Ceramic Vessels as a Starting Point

Exceptionally well-preserved organic residues in pottery provided robust biomolecular evidence for the preparation and consumption of fruit and grape products, plant oils and waxes, conifer resins, dairy products, and other ruminant fats. The researchers also identified markers of thermal processing, consistent with repeated cooking activities. These findings demonstrate the prominent role of dairy products and ruminant fats in Kura-Araxes dietary and culinary practices, including the transformation of milk into secondary products.

The results also shed new light on the role and significance of grape-based beverages and their modes of consumption within Kura-Araxes communities. Wine may have been consumed, sometimes flavored with conifer resins. Within the non-hierarchical structure of Kura-Araxes society, this locally available product (potentially even collected from wild grapevines) does not appear to have been associated with elite or prestige consumption, in contrast to contemporaneous Mesopotamian contexts.

Diverse Uses of Grapes and Fruits

Grapes and other fruit products (fermented and non-fermented) were not only identified in drinking/serving vessels but also in numerous cooking pots as well as in some large storage jars, suggesting multiple culinary purposes, such as flavoring or sweetening dishes, and possibly acting as catalysts in biochemical processes like cheesemaking. In addition, Pinaceae resins may have been used both as flavoring agents and as preservatives for food and drink.

The identification of millet-based food or drink in Kura-Araxes pottery at Qaraçinar suggests long-distance connections with eastern regions, as millet was cultivated in Central Asia during this period but had not previously been documented so early and so far to the west. Furthermore, this research reveals for the first time a functional distinction between pottery types: Monochrome wares appear to have been used mainly for cooking, whereas Red-Black Burnished vessels were likely dedicated to the consumption of raw dairy products and fruit- or grape-based beverages, including wine.

Together, these findings provide new insights into the daily life and culinary traditions of the Kura-Araxes communities. “The diversity of the cuisine was accessible to all, as the society was characterized by low levels of social stratification,” says Rageot. The results also open new perspectives for future research, suggesting that the expansion of the Kura-Araxes tradition may have also involved the spread of distinctive culinary practices originating in the South Caucasus.