No compelling evidence for early small-scale animal husbandry in Atlantic NW Europe

Crombé et al. 1 present data which in their opinion provide indications for local animal husbandry in the northwest European lowlands as early as 4800/4600 cal BC. Their argument is built on radiocarbon ( 14 C) and stable isotope analyses of bones attributed to sheep/goat and cattle from the site of Bazel “Sluis”, northwest Belgium. Focussing on the bone remains, we argue that their conclusions are unsupported due to lack of direct evidence for a local origin of the animals and uncertainty about the domestic status of the cattle. We propose that the Bazel assemblage provides important new data for the study of the role of domesticates in the 5th millennium cal BC, but that it does not provide new insights into the timing of incipient animal husbandry outside the loess belt. Instead, it leaves room for multiple models of cultural behaviour.