Humans may have undergone a gradual rather than an abrupt¹（突然的） transition from fishing, hunting and gathering² to farming, according to a new study of ancient pottery³. Researchers at the University of York and the University of Bradford analysed cooking residues⁴ preserved in 133 ceramic⁵（陶瓷的） vessels⁶ from the Western Baltic regions of Northern Europe to establish whether these residues were from terrestrial, marine⁷ or freshwater organisms.

The research led by Oliver Craig (York) and Carl Heron (Bradford) included an international team of archaeologists from The Heritage Agency of Denmark, The National Museum of Denmark, Moesgård Museum (Denmark), Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel (Germany) and the Archäologisches Landesmuseum, Schleswig (Germany).

The project team studied ceramic pots from 15 sites dating to around 4,000 BC- the time when the first evidence of domesticated⁸ animals and plants was found in the region. The research, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, is published online in the latest edition of the Proceedings⁹ of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The research team found that fish and other aquatic¹⁰（水生的） resources continued to be exploited after the advent¹¹ of farming and domestication¹², with pots from coastal¹³ locations containing residues enriched in a form of carbon found in marine organisms.

Around one-fifth of coastal pots contained other biochemical traces of aquatic organisms, including fats and oils absent in terrestrial animals and plants. At inland sites, 28 percent of pots contained residues from aquatic organisms, which appeared to be from freshwater fish.

Lead author Dr Oliver Craig, of the Department of Archaeology¹⁴ at York, said: "This research provides clear evidence people across the Western Baltic continued to exploit marine and freshwater resources despite the arrival of domesticated animals and plants. Although farming was introduced rapidly across this region, it may not have caused such a dramatic shift from hunter-gatherer life as we previously¹⁵ thought."

Carl Heron, Professor of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Bradford, said: "Our data set represents the first large scale study combining a wide range of molecular¹⁶ evidence and single-compound isotope¹⁷ data to discriminate¹⁸ terrestrial, marine and freshwater resources processed in archaeological ceramics¹⁹ and it provides a template for future investigations²⁰ into how people used pots in the past."