The Ice Age diet of the La Quina 5 Neandertal of southwest France

The La Quina 5 Neandertal individual, dated to late Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 4 or early MIS 3, lived during a particularly cold and arid Ice Age interval, hunting mostly reindeer in open steppe habitats. Stable isotopes indicate the importance of hunted resources for Neandertals, although evidence of plant use also has been discovered. To address the plant food signature in the diet of La Quina 5, we marshal multiple methods, including dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA) and plant microremains analysis. For the DMTA, La Quina 5 is compared to Neandertals from MIS 5 - MIS 3, including Malarnaud, Spy I, Kulna 1, Sveduv stul 1, and several individuals from Hortus cave (n = 5), Krapina (n = 19) and Vindija (n = 4), as well as human foragers, farmers and pastoralists (n = 150). La Quina 5 presents a low value for anisotropy implying the use of heterogeneous masticatory regimes like those characterizing foragers of the Americas. La Quina 5 also has a low complexity value indicating a plant-poor diet, and may have relied significantly on hunted resources perhaps necessary in the cold glacial interval of lower temperatures during Heinrich Stadial 6. Nevertheless, plant microremains are preserved in the dental calculus, including starch grains from grass seeds and plant underground storage organs, demonstrating the importance of plant foods in Paleolithic diets even if temporally or spatially dispersed. (C) 2022 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.