The common imagery of prehistoric people is either rooting through dirt for grubs and picking berries, or hunting mastodons with spears. Those are both true but some also had a good variety in meals. They were also fishers, not just hunter-gatherers.

A new study analyzed remains found on 58 pieces of pottery from 13 archaeological sites of mesolithic natives, dating between the 6th and 3rd millennium BC, from the Don river Basin to the Baltics to the Upper Volga - near lakes, rivers, lagoons, and the coast. Using microscopic examination and chemical analysis the resulting work went beyond detecting fatty residues of animal remains and found ancient pre-European hunter-gatherer-fishers had meals of fish plus a wide variety of wild grasses, legumes, fruits or berries, green vegetables, and roots/tubers.


Map of sites a pottery sherd with preserved food crust. 

That led to lipid analysis of 74 food crust samples. As you'd expect, mixtures and ingredients varied from region to region, reflecting which resources were locally available. It also hints that each culture had their own culinary traditions. 

The two beliefs in anthropology are that pottery for certain foods was determined by local availability, or whether they also included social traditions. Similarities between the Volga and Dnieper-Dvina region suggest a geographic signal rather than just available food, which could be a proxy for culture. The common traits in manufacture suggest social traditions were evident.

Citation: González Carretero L, Lucquin A, Robson HK, McLaughlin TR, Dolbunova E, Lundy J, et al. (2026) Selective culinary uses of plant foods by Northern and Eastern European hunter-gatherer-fishers. PLoS One 21(3): e0342740. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0342740