Researchers at the University of York are examining a remarkably preserved 6,000-year-old cooking pot and wooden spoon which were recovered from the Åmose bog in Zealand, Denmark, to discover our dietry development.

The research, led by Oliver Craig and Carl Heron from Bradford University, also included an international team of archaeologists from Denmark and Germany.

The team has analysed cooking residues preserved in 133 ceramic vessels from the Western Baltic regions of Northern Europe to establish whether these residues were from terrestrial, marine or freshwater organisms.

Chemical analysis of charred food residues preserved on the inside of a number of these vessels show they were used for processing freshwater fish, which supplemented their fledgling agricultural diet.

Around one-fifth of coastal pots contained other biochemical traces of aquatic organisms, including fats and oils absent in terrestrial animals and plants. At inland sites, 28 per cent of pots contained residues from aquatic organisms, which appeared to be from freshwater fish.

Dr Oliver Craig, of the Department of Archaeology at York, said: “This research provides clear evidence people across the Western Baltic continued to exploit marine and freshwater resources despite the arrival of domesticated animals and plants. Although farming was introduced rapidly across this region, it may not have caused such a dramatic shift from hunter-gatherer life as we previously thought.”