The Kodjadermen-Gumelnița-Karonovo VI human group (KGK VI) reached its maximal extension around 4500 BC, covering a large area comprised between southern Ukraine and northern Greece. Afterward, its distribution gradually receded, before vanishing altogether at the end of the fifth - early fourth millenniums BC. This study seeks to investigate the role of individual mobility during this process by performing strontium isotopic analyses on the human remains found at Gumelnița, Romania. It provides 87Sr/86Sr values for 21 human tooth enamel samples from 17 different individuals, together with those of 60 plant samples from 20 different locations (15 in Romania and 5 in Bulgaria) that were used to create a bioavailable strontium (BASr) baseline of the region. To obtain reliable sex estimations, proteomic analysis of amelogenin of human tooth enamel were also performed on seven individuals. According to the results, four individuals, three females and one male, should be considered as non-local, and may have spent their childhood on the southern bank of the Danube River. These data suggest that individual mobility was particularly prevalent during the last centuries of the fifth millennium, when the KGK VI complex was undergoing a process of disintegration. Main Text.

'Vasile Pârvan' Institute of Archaeology Romanian Academy Bucharest Romania

Archaeology Environmental changes and Geo Chemistry Research Group Vrije Universiteit Brussel Pleinlaan 2 Brussels 1050 Belgium

ArchaeoSciences Platform University of Bucharest Bucharest Romania

Biomedical Engineering Laboratory Kyoto Institute of Technology Matsugasaki Kyoto 606 8585 Japan

Bucharest Municipality Museum Bucharest Romania

Department of Anthropology Faculty of Science Masaryk University Kotlářská 2 Brno Brno 611 37 Czech Republic

Department of Anthropology University of South Florida Tampa USA

Department of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences University of Trieste via L Giorgieri 1 Trieste 34127 Italy

Francisc J Rainer Institute of Anthropology Bucharest Romania

Institute for the Advanced Study of Culture and the Environment University of South Florida Tampa USA

National History Museum of Romania Bucharest Romania

National Interuniversity Consortium of Materials Science and Technology Via G Giusti 9 Firenze 50121 Italy

Research Centre for Advanced Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine Magna Graecia University of Catanzaro Catanzaro Italy

School of Complex Adaptive Systems Arizona State University Tempe USA

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