Milk as a resource: obtaining food repeatedly from living animals
Using milk changed the relationship between households and their livestock. Food could be obtained during a female animal’s life, but production depended on reproduction, care of the young, and access to feed and water. It was not independent of season or herd condition. Milking therefore belonged within a wider system of husbandry rather than being an activity added to meat production without other consequences. It created new possibilities for food supply while requiring additional work and knowledge.
Analysis of pottery from Anatolia and southeastern Europe identified milk use by the seventh millennium BCE, particularly clearly in northwestern Anatolia. The Kuyavian finds therefore do not mark the beginning of all dairying worldwide. Their distinctive contribution is the identification of equipment associated with a particular milk-processing operation. Evidence that a vessel held a dairy product differs from evidence for a specific technological process. The latter brings us closer to the everyday work through which households transformed an available resource into different foods.24
The Kuyavian strainers: a hypothesis put to the test
Fragments of vessels pierced by numerous small holes were recovered from Linear Pottery culture sites. In 1984, Peter Bogucki developed the interpretation that these objects could have separated curds from whey. Comparisons with later vessels and evidence about livestock management supported the proposal. It was a testable functional hypothesis: perforations could allow liquid to drain, but appearance alone did not identify what the vessels had contained.
An important advance came through analysis of organic residues from Kuyavian pottery, published online in 2012 and in the journal’s 2013 volume. The material was associated with the sixth millennium BCE; the familiar description “about seven and a half thousand years ago” rounds that chronology. It does not identify one moment when production began or assign every fragment the same date. Site chronology and archaeological context are as important as the laboratory result. Without them, a product might be identified while its place in history remained uncertain.31
What the chemistry actually identified
Porous pottery can absorb small quantities of fat during use. Some of these compounds, or their degradation products, survive within the ceramic fabric for thousands of years. Investigation considers both chemical composition and the proportions of stable carbon isotopes in selected fatty acids. Differences created by biological processes help distinguish dairy fat from other animal fats. Interpretation rests on several indicators assessed against reference material rather than on a single visible trace.
In the Kuyavian strainers, dairy fats were consistent with the function suggested by the perforations. The agreement between independent observations is stronger evidence than resemblance of shape alone. Researchers did not, however, discover a surviving wheel of cheese or a written recipe. Repeated use could leave a mixed chemical record, and different products preserve with different success. Consequently, the proportion of pottery samples containing detectable dairy fats cannot be converted directly into the percentage of milk in the inhabitants’ overall diet. Vessels record particular activities within a much wider food system.125
Curds and whey: the importance of a simple separation
During cheesemaking, some milk components become concentrated in curds, while liquid whey can be drained away. A perforated vessel retains the thicker fraction and allows part of the liquid to escape. Some dissolved lactose leaves with the whey; this does not automatically create a completely lactose-free product. Processing changes texture, the concentration of components and conditions for subsequent storage. It is a way of managing a resource available at particular times.
The archaeology cannot establish the taste, maturity or coagulation method of every product. Calling it a particular modern cheese, a rennet cheese or a named regional variety would exceed the evidence. Improved keeping qualities also depend on moisture, further treatment and storage conditions: fresh curds do not automatically become resistant to spoilage. The strongest conclusion concerns the separation of milk fractions. Other details remain research questions rather than a reconstructed Neolithic recipe. Recognising that boundary does not lessen the practical ingenuity represented by the equipment.315
Herds, calves and the household working year
Dairying can also leave evidence in animal remains. Age at death can be estimated from features such as tooth eruption and wear. Groups of these observations allow researchers to compare herd-management strategies. An investigation of 19 Linear Pottery culture sites indicated combined exploitation for milk and meat, with regional variation. This does not require us to imagine that specialised farms resembling modern dairy enterprises existed from the outset.
Keeping females through successive calvings, deciding which young animals to retain and providing feed affected the organisation of work. Milking had to accommodate the needs of offspring and the biological rhythm of lactation. Processing the resulting food required equipment, time and the transmission of skills. These economic implications help interpret the discoveries, but they do not reveal an exact daily milk yield. The number of bones, the number of animals and the quantity of milk produced are different measures. Treating them as interchangeable would replace a cautious reconstruction with misleading numerical precision.43
Later Kuyavia: proteins add another strand of evidence
Research published in 2023 examined the later site of Sławęcinek near Inowrocław, associated with the Funnel Beaker culture. Proteins preserved in vessels indicated casein-rich dairy products and the use of milk from different groups of ruminants. The evidence involves cattle and sheep or goats, although not every surviving protein fragment permits identification to species. These fourth-millennium BCE materials do not provide a new date for the earliest sixth-millennium strainers.
Comparing proteins and fats also exposed the limitations of relying on one method. Mixtures of products can alter the isotopic signal of fats while diagnostic peptides still indicate milk. Experiments with modern vessels help assess the traces left by processing. They do not, however, supply a complete recipe or establish rennet use in the ancient samples. The study’s value lies in describing practices more closely and showing how one object can preserve several complementary chemical archives. Evidence recovered by different techniques may answer different questions about the same history of vessel use.5
Dairy foods before widespread lactase persistence
Early milk use does not imply that every adult in Neolithic Europe retained high activity of lactase, the enzyme that digests lactose. Food practices and genetic variants have histories that developed at different rates. Ancient genomes and pottery residues show that dairying was widespread long before genetically inherited lactase persistence reached high frequencies in many European populations. Milk processing is one element in explaining this apparent mismatch between biology and behaviour.
Milk proteins detected in dental calculus from some Neolithic people in Britain provided evidence linked directly to consumers. They do not establish the exact quantity or form of every dairy product eaten. A broader analysis published in 2022 found that the extent of milk use alone did not adequately explain genetic selection; its authors also considered food crises and disease. This is a model of population history, rather than a way to diagnose an ancient individual’s tolerance from one pottery vessel. Separating those levels of explanation helps connect dietary evidence with genetics without reducing either to a simple cause-and-effect story.76
Why dairying matters: different societies, a shared practical challenge
The development of dairy economies was not confined to European villages. Residues in pottery from Takarkori in present-day Libya document milk exploitation during the fifth millennium BCE, in the environment of the former green Sahara. Pastoral lifeways were an important part of that setting. The example shows that the same broad resource could occupy different economic roles and did not everywhere require an identical combination of settled farming, crops and livestock.
Kuyavian strainers provide especially clear evidence for solving a food-processing problem, but they cannot establish the priority of a modern nation. Their makers lived thousands of years before today’s states. For agricultural history, the important development is the transformation of a periodically available raw material into products with different properties. It connects work with animals, culinary skills and household organisation. Archaeology, chemistry and biology together can now recover part of that process while leaving an unknown recipe unknown. The achievement lies in the knowledge embodied in ordinary equipment and repeated daily practice.814
Questions and answers
Was cheese invented in Kuyavia?
That cannot be established. Kuyavian strainers provide very early and strong evidence of milk processing, but the oldest surviving evidence does not automatically identify the place of invention.12
Did researchers find Neolithic cheese itself?
The study discussed here analysed fats preserved in pottery. Their dairy origin and the perforated vessels support an interpretation involving curd draining; this was not the discovery of a surviving lump of cheese.1
Sources
- Mélanie Salque, Peter I. Bogucki, Joanna Pyzel, Iwona Sobkowiak-Tabaka, Ryszard Grygiel, Marzena Szmyt and Richard P. Evershed (2013; online 2012). Earliest evidence for cheese making in the sixth millennium BC in northern Europe
- Richard P. Evershed et al. (2008). Earliest date for milk use in the Near East and southeastern Europe linked to cattle herding
- Peter I. Bogucki (1984). Ceramic sieves of the Linear Pottery culture and their economic implications
- Rosalind E. Gillis et al. (2017). The evolution of dual meat and milk cattle husbandry in Linearbandkeramik societies
- Miranda Evans et al. (2023). Detection of dairy products from multiple taxa in Late Neolithic pottery from Poland: an integrated biomolecular approach CC BY 4.0 · https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Sophy Charlton et al. (2019). New insights into Neolithic milk consumption through proteomic analysis of dental calculus
- Richard P. Evershed et al. (2022). Dairying, diseases and the evolution of lactase persistence in Europe
- Julie Dunne et al. (2012). First dairying in green Saharan Africa in the fifth millennium BC
Approximate dates (c.) describe the nature of the evidence: archaeology dates settlements, layers and remains, not single moments of invention.