Historical weaning practices for infants have had significant implications for birth spacing and survival rates, thereby influencing population levels and growth in various socio-economic contexts. It is believed that breastfeeding was more prolonged among hunter-gatherers, at least partly due to a lack of suitable weaning foods compared to those available to agriculturalists. Research on Neolithic populations in Latvia shows that the average age at which children were fully weaned was around three years. Following the introduction of farming in the Bronze Age (1800 – 500 cal BC), all aspects of everyday life changed, including the health of the population, particularly women. However, little attention has been given to the impact on breastfeeding.
To investigate how these changes manifested in weaning patterns during the Bronze Age, stable isotope analyses were performed by measuring carbon (13C) and nitrogen (15N) of sequential dentine samples from the first permanent molars. This method aligns tooth sampling with age by following a scheme based on average growth rates in dentine regions.
The preliminary results consist of analyses of individuals from the Late Bronze Age Ķivutkalns site (800 – 680 cal BC). These results show that the period of exclusive breastfeeding was very similar to that in the Neolithic period. However, the age at which weaning is completed is approximately eight months younger overall. This suggests that the interval between pregnancies was shorter, placing an additional burden on mothers' bodies, as reflected by the higher incidence of dental pathologies in women at the Ķivutkalns site compared to hunter-gatherer communities in previous periods. Nevertheless, further studies are needed to evaluate the extent to which farming impacted weaning practices and women’s health.

First Author: Anna Batraga

Co-Authors: Gunita Zariņa, Lauma Buša

Keywords:
Latvia
Bronze Age
Weaning
Stable isotopes
Health