Pigs, pannage, and the solstice: isotopic insights from prehistoric feasting at Newgrange
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Newgrange, the Neolithic monument and centerpiece of the Brú na Bóinne UNESCO World Heritage complex, is a high-profile example of prehistoric societies’ observation of, and reverence for, solar events. Comparatively little is known about how these concepts were remembered by those using Newgrange over subsequent millennia. While excavations have uncovered large quantities of later material culture, debate continues about what these subsequent activities represent. We combine zooarchaeological, radiocarbon, and isotopic evidence to assess the nature and seasonality of human–animal–environment relationships at Newgrange. Results show a concentration of feasting activity, focused on pigs, dating to 2600–2450 BC and indicate that most pigs were slaughtered shortly after a period of rapid, pannage-fueled weight gain. This seasonal specificity indicates feasting likely occurred in the weeks around the winter solstice and suggests that, centuries after passage tomb construction ended, practices at Newgrange continued to focus on the general winter solstice timeframe. We also connect a unique isotopic signature for mast (tree nuts) with pannage husbandry, a pattern that should allow for reinterpretation of archaeological pig diets and human–woodland relationships across Europe.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".