Vulture Archaeology

Bearded vultures (Gypaetus barbatus) nest on cliffs, often inside caves and rock shelters where over many years they accumulate much organic debris, some of it man made. The dry high-altitude climate preserves these artifacts and specimens for centuries. Between 2008-2014 scientists studied 12 vulture nests found in the mountains of southern Spain. They catalogued all the items they found and carbon-dated them. They counted 2,117 bones, 86 hooves, 43 eggshells, 23 items constructed by people from esparto grass, 72 pieces of leather, 1 crossbow bolt, 1 wooden lance, slingshots, rope, and basket fragments. Some of these items dated to the Middle Ages and were 600 years old. People in this area made shoes from esparto grass and whole shoes were found in nests. The vultures used these items to line their nests and keep eggs and nestlings warm. The crossbow bolt and wooden lance were likely from carcasses of scavenged animals.

Bearded vulture and old vulture nest. From the below referenced study.

Bearded vulture range map.

Bearded vultures drop bones, tortoises, and small animals from great altitudes to break them for easier consumption.

Unlike most species of vultures, bearded vultures have feathers on their neck because they consume a cleaner diet of just bone and not rotting flesh.

Some manmade items found in bearded vulture nests excavated in southern Spain where the species has been extirpated for at least 70 years.

Bearded vultures are huge birds weighing up to 17 lbs. Unlike other species of vultures, they have feathered necks and actively hunt prey for a significant part of their diet, making them quite unique. Bones make up 70%-90% of their diet–also different from other vultures that primarily eat flesh. This explains why they have feathers on their neck. They don’t have to stick their heads in rotting flesh. They carry bones to great heights and drop them, so the bone will break, exposing the nutrient rich marrow. They do the same thing to living prey, including tortoises, hyraxes, marmots, hares, and even monitor lizards. (That must be terrifying for these small animals. Nature is monstrous.) They are known to knock ibex and goats off cliffs–another way they actively hunt prey.

Bearded vultures no longer occur in southern Spain. They were extirpated there over 70 years ago. Today, they live in the Himalayas and parts of Africa, and they have been reintroduced to the Alps.

Reference:

Margalida, A. et. al.

“The Bearded Vulture as an Accumulator of Historical Remains: Insight for Future Ecological Biocultural Studies”

The Scientific Naturalist September 2025

https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.70191

Neolithic Lake Villages in Europe

I wonder what life was like in Neolithic Europe when it was still mostly wilderness. People began practicing agriculture, and they became more sedentary, but this must have been difficult. They grew wheat, rye, barley, peas, flax, and poppy seeds. These crops had to be defended from wild boar, deer, bear, crows, and other seed-eating birds. Livestock had to be protected from wolves and bears. Moreover, village outcasts likely rummaged through the crops as well. Perhaps the biggest threat to not only their food supply, but their lives, came from nomadic tribes traveling on horseback from distant lands. These strangers pillaged, raped, and robbed. Motivations varied but clearly some tribes participated in these heinous acts from a sense of joyous cruelty. As a defensive adaptation, some sedentary people built their villages on stilts or piles over marshes or lakes. They surrounded these villages with walls of upright logs, and they used canoes to access the village from land. Gates could keep the villages relatively safe from invading barbarians traveling on horses. They weren’t impregnable, but invaders would need to build a fleet of canoes and also find a way to breech the walls.

In Europe archaeologists often find the remains of houses built over lakes that people lived in thousands of years ago.

Location of some lakes in Europe where the remains of villages built on stilts have been found. The Jura region of Switzerland has the most sites, but this defensive adaptation was used all over Europe. Map from the below referenced study.

Artist’s representation of a Neolithic lake village. During winter when the lake froze they could just walk over the ice. Nomadic raiders may have roamed less during brutal European winters.

Lake villages must have been neat places to live with a beautiful view of the lake. Hearths kept the insides of homes warm. Archaeologists have found collapsed walls where tools were hung. Houses had trap doors where people crapped, pissed, and dumped their garbage. The waste likely attracted fish and turtles–an easily accessed form of protein. If crops failed or were destroyed, the lakes offered these 2 sources of protein as well as ducks and geese and edible aquatic plants. Archaeologists sift through the organic matter from these former sites and find remains of some of the wild plants they ate. Crabapple and hazelnut are the most common items found, but lake dwellers also ate strawberries, black berries, raspberries, elderberries, beechnuts, acorns, common reed seeds (Phragamites), spinach relatives, turnip, garlic mustard, pine nuts, and blackthorn (a relative similar to sour plums).

The oldest known site of a lake village (also known as pile dwellings) is in Albania, and it dates to 7900 years ago. The practice spread across Europe, and sites of former lake villages are found in Germany, France, and Austria. The Jura region in Switzerland has the most sites–more than 50. The practice spread all the way to Great Britain where they are known as crannaries. People ceased building lake villages in Europe about 2000 years ago, and these structures rotted and collapsed into the lake for archaeologists to find thousands of years after they were abandoned.

Reference:

Colledge, S.; and J. Conolly

“Wild Plant Use in European Neolithic Subsistence Economics: A formal assessment of Preservation Bias and the Implication for Understanding Changes in Plant Distribution”

Quaternary Science Review 101 October 2014