People working on mining sites in the Eastern Alps during the Bronze Age had cooked, bread-based meals delivered to them during the day.
Andreas Heiss at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and his colleagues studied cooked food remains, including refined cereals and finely ground grains, obtained from Prigglitz-Gasteil in the Eastern Alps, a copper mine that was active between 1100 and 900 BC, during the Late Bronze Age.
These types of cereal-based food require preparation to make them edible, including separating grains from husks and then cooking them, but the team found no signs of this kind of work being done at the mine. There was also no evidence of harvesting nearby, suggesting the food must have come from elsewhere.
