Isotope analysis reveals mobility of the earliest cattle herds in northern Europe

Abstract Human mobility was intrinsic to the farming communities of the Linear Pottery culture (c. 5500 − 4900 BCE). Much less is known about the mobility patterns of the earliest farmers north of the Linear Pottery zone, particularly in the Netherlands. Here, people of the Early Neolithic Swifterbant culture combined farming, hunting and gathering from c. 4240 BCE. While human remains for mobility studies are scarce, livestock offer a promising yet underexplored proxy. This research applies inter- and intra-tooth strontium ( 87 Sr/ 86 Sr), oxygen ( δ 18 O), and carbon ( δ 13 C) isotope analysis to cattle, suids, and sheep from the Swifterbant sites S3 and S4. Previous isotope research identified two distinct livestock dietary regimes: animals grazing in floodplain environments and animals grazing in forested settings. The results presented here reveal substantial variability in livestock mobility, including several non-local animals that moved multiple times during their lifetime. Notably, animals associated with the forest-grazing dietary regime display non-local strontium isotope values, whereas individuals linked to floodplain-grazing are predominantly local. These findings provide the first evidence of livestock mobility in northern Europe during the fifth millennium BCE and suggest that the movement of animals was part of broader interaction networks among early farming communities. The study further demonstrates that, in addition to intra-individual isotope variation, intra-population variability in livestock can reveal patterns of mobility and animal management.