Multiproxy-proxy investigation of a unique Bronze Age deposit of broomcorn millet and human remains at a bog site in Bohemia, Czech Republic

The deposition of broomcorn millet plants (Panicum miliaceum), found in the wetland of the Zahájí site in the Czech Republic, belongs to the oldest millet findings in Central Europe. Its appearance in a newly formed shallow lake in a small brook valley located in the populated lowland area was accompanied by a curious finding of a human fingernail (both dated ca. 1400-1300 BC); their joint presence in the same layer does not appear accidental. Although a wealth of contextual information has been gleaned from multi-proxy investigations (such as sediment lithostratigraphy, geo and water chemistry, pollen, plant macrofossils, aquatic invertebrae and organic residua analyses, and aDNA of millet and the fingernail), archaeological interpretation of the find is highly challenging having no known analogies in the European/wider context so far. We present some possible scenarios of what might have happened, including certain forms of ritual behaviour or reverence for millet, a crop that has only recently spread in central Europe around the mid-2nd millennium BC following its rapid westward migration from southeastern Asia.