Early Holocene fishing practices in the Iron Gates of the Danube - Adina Boroneanţ

Early Holocene fishing practices in the Iron Gates of the Danube
Adina Boroneanţ
Institute of Archaeology “Vasile Pârvan”, Bucharest
The riverine resources of the Danube were an extremely important part of both the Mesolithic and the Early Neolithic subsistence (ca 10 000- 5500 cal BC) in the Iron Gates of the Danube, and area located at the border between Romania and Serbia, in south-east Europe.
Faunal assemblages from certain sites on both banks contained important quantities of fish bones and bivalves (Unio sp.), although the frequency of species and amounts were highly variable, likely triggered by the methods employed when collecting the bones (hand collecting, dry and wet sieving). The extremely high dependence on fish consumption though, was first indicated by the results of the stable isotope studies when attempting to quantify the fresh-water reservoir effect observed at the Late Mesolithic radiocarbon dates from Schela Cladovei (Romania) in the 1990s. Another important piece of information came only a few years ago, from the study of organic residue in the pottery sherds from a number of Early Neolithic Iron Gates sites. Another recent direction of research - coprolite studies - pointed into the same direction.
But what is the direct evidence when looking at the archaeological assemblages yielded by the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic sites in the Iron Gates? The present lecture aims to take a close look at the resulted finds (stone and osseous industries), the archaeozoological and anthropological studies, and correlate them with similar finds/results from both archaeological excavations at the same chronological horizon but also historical/modern traditional societies where fishing constituted an important subsistence activity. Finally, by looking also at the traditional fishing techniques in the Iron Gates area in recent times (1900s), possible fishing techniques used during the Mesolithic and the Early Neolithic will be suggested, in an attempt to identify both temporal and regional (Upper and Lower Gorges) patterns.