Mining and Dining: Prehistoric Diets in the Salt Mines of Hallstatt
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by HEAS Team Leader Kerstin Kowarik
The FWF-funded project Mining and Dining investigates the dietary habits of Bronze and Iron Age miners through the analysis of exceptionally well-preserved human excrement recovered from the prehistoric salt mines of Hallstatt, Austria. The aim is to produce high-resolution, individual dietary profiles, offering new insights into nutrition, health, and everyday life in the Metal Ages.
By combining archaeobotanical, parasitological, genetic, and proteomic analyses, the project examines 50 individual palaeofaeces to explore:
• the diversity and complexity of prehistoric miners‘ diets,
• long-term dietary patterns via gut microbiome composition,
• the consumption of fermented and dairy products,
• and possible correlations between diet and biological sex.
This integrated, multi-method approach opens up a new perspective on prehistoric food culture – from cooking and consumption practices to health and social structures – and highlights the unique scientific potential of salt-preserved palaeofaeces.
Project Details
Mining and Dining is funded by the FWF Joint Projects Programme (Austria–South Tyrol) and carried out under the joint leadership of the Austrian Archaeological Institute (OeAI, Austrian Academy of Sciences) and the Institute for Mummy Studies (Eurac Research, Bolzano).
Research partners include:
• Natural History Museum Vienna
• Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna
• Geosphere Austria
• Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle (USA)
• MedUni Vienna
• University of Trento
Principal Investigators
Kerstin Kowarik (OeAI, ÖAW)
Frank Maixner (Eurac Research)
Funding
FWF Joint Projects Austria–South Tyrol
→ FWF Project No. [10.55776/PIN4721024]
→ Autonomous Province of Bozen/Bolzano – South Tyrol
(Accordo nr. 11/34/2025, D53C23004210003)
