51 Clive Bonsall, Rosemary Lennon, Kathleen McSweeney and Catriona Stewart Department of Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom Douglas Harkness NERC Radiocarbon Laboratory, National Engineering Laboratory, East Kilbride, Glasgow, United Kingdom Vasile Boroneanþ Institute of Archaeology, Bucharest, Romania László Bartosiewicz Institute of Archaeological Sciences, Loránd Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary Robert Payton Department of Agriculture and Environmental Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom John Chapman Department of Archaeology, University of Durham, United Kingdom J. C. Bonsall and R. J. Lennon, Department of Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Old High School, Infirmary Street, Edinburgh EH1 1LT, Great Britain Journal of European Archaeology (1997) 5.1:50–92 M ESOLITHIC AND EARLY NEOLITHIC IN THE IRON GATES: A PALAEODIETARY PERSPECTIVE INTRODUCTION The study of subsistence is acknowledged to be one of the most important fields of archaeological research. Throughout human history the search for food has taken precedence over other activities important for survival and, as Price (1989:49) observed, has probably influenced many aspects of human society including group size, social organisation, residence patterns, settlement location and tech- nology.