Lively landscapes: Sex- and age-related differences in diet and land use characterising a Late Bronze-Early Iron Age community from Tilburg, the Netherlands

Abstract

The Late Bronze-Early Iron Age (LBA-EIA) urnfield of Tilburg-Udenhoutseweg yielded 229 cremation graves with various features. This large cemetery is a unique opportunity to reconstruct LBA-EIA population dynamics in the southeast of the Netherlands, where few of such large urnfields have been excavated. The combination of demographic data, strontium isotope ratios (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) of 109 selected cremation deposits, spatial organisation, and radiocarbon dates allows for the reconstruction of the social organisation of the past population from Tilburg-Udenhoutseweg. Although no age- or sex related pattern in spatial organisation or radiocarbon dating could be observed, the difference between the nonadult mean ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr of the diaphysis (0.7112), the female mean (0.7107), and the male mean (0.7099), is statistically significant. Both females and nonadults have ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr that suggest a divergent diet, indicating age- and sex-related local/regional mobility and/or preferential landscape use, whereby a strict sense of patrilocality appears to be lacking. One nonadult yielded ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr currently not found in the Netherlands (0.7146), suggesting the existing social networks to span across a large area, potentially towards the south of Belgium. Future study of the grave goods will increase our understanding of the extend of the social networks and the exchange of people, goods, and ideas.