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ST JOHN’S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—A ball of 4,000-year-old hair frozen in time tangled around a whalebone comb led to the first ever reconstruction of an ancient human genome just over a decade ago.

The hair, which was preserved in arctic permafrost in Greenland, was collected in the 1980s and stored at a museum in Denmark. It wasn’t until 2010 that evolutionary biologist Professor Eske Willerslev was able to use pioneering shotgun DNA sequencing to reconstruct the genetic history of the hair.

He found it came from a man from the earliest known people to settle in Greenland known as the Saqqaq culture. It was the first time scientists had recovered an entire ancient human genome.

Now a review of the first decade of ancient genomics of the Americas published in Nature today (June 16 2021) written by Professor Willerslev, a Fellow of St John’s College, University of Cambridge, and director of The Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre, University of Copenhagen, with one of his longstanding collaborators Professor David Meltzer, an archaeologist based at Southern Methodist University, Texas, shows how the world’s first analysis of an ancient genome sparked an incredible ‘decade of discovery’.

Professor Willerslev said: “The last ten years has been full of surprises in the understanding of the peopling of the Americas – I often feel like a child at Christmas waiting to see what exciting DNA present I am about to unwrap! What has really blown my mind is how resilient and capable the early humans we have sequenced DNA from were – they occupied extremely different environments and often populated them in a short space of time.

“We were taught in school that people would stay put until the population grew to a level where the resources were exhausted. But we found people were spreading around the world just to explore, to discover, to have adventures.

“The last 10 years have shown us a lot about our history and what it means to be human. We won’t ever see that depth of human experience on this planet again – people entered new areas with absolutely no idea of what was in front of them. It tells us a lot about human adaptability and how humans behave.”

For decades, scientists relied on archaeological findings to reconstruct the past and theories weren’t always accurate. It was previously thought that there were early non-Native American people in the Americas but the ancient DNA analysis so far has shown that all of the ancient remains found are more closely related to contemporary Native Americans than to any other population anywhere else in the world.

Professor Meltzer, who worked on the review with Professor Willerslev while the former was at St John’s College as a Beaufort Visiting Scholar added: “Genomic evidence has shown connections that we didn’t know existed between different cultures and populations and the absence of connections that we thought did exist. Human population history has been far more complex than previously thought.

“A lot of what has been discovered about the peopling of the Americas could not have been predicted. We have seen how rapidly people were moving around the world. When they have a continent to themselves, there was nothing to hold them back. There was a selective advantage to seeing what was over the next hill.”

In 2013, scientists mapped the genome of a four-year-old boy who died in south-central Siberia 24,000 years ago. The burial of an Upper Palaeolithic Siberian child was discovered in the 1920s by Russian archaeologists near the village of Mal’ta, along the Belaya river. Sequencing of the Mal’ta genome was key as it showed the existence of a previously unsampled population that contributed to the ancestry of Siberian and Native American populations.

Two years later, Professor Willerslev and his team published the first ancient Native American genome, sequenced from the remains of a baby boy ceremonially buried more than 12,000 years ago in Anzick, Montana.

In 2015, their ancient genomic analysis was able to solve the mystery of Kennewick Man, one of the oldest and most complete skeletons ever found in the Americas, and one of the most controversial.

The 9,000-year-old remains had been surrounded by a storm of controversy when legal jurisdiction over the skeleton became the focus of a decade of lawsuits between five Native American tribes, who claimed ownership of the man they called Ancient One, and the United States Army Corps of Engineers.

Professor Willerslev, who has rightly learnt to be mindful of cultural sensitivities when searching for ancient DNA, has spent much of the past decade talking to tribal community members to explain his work in detail and seek their support.

This meant he was able to agree with members of the Colville Tribe, based in Washington State where the remains were found, that they would donate some of their DNA to allow Professor Willerslev and his team to establish if there was a genetic link between them and Kennewick Man.

Jackie Cook, a descendant of the Colville Tribe and the repatriation specialist for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, said: “We had spent nearly 20 years trying to have the Ancient One repatriated to us. There has been a long history of distrust between scientists and our Native American tribes but when Eske presented to us about his DNA work on the Anzick child, the hair on my arms stood up.

“We knew we shouldn’t have to agree to DNA testing, and there were concerns that we would have to do it every time to prove cultural affiliation, but our Council members discussed it with the elders and it was agreed that any tribal member who wanted to provide DNA for the study could.”

The Kennewick Man genome, like the Anzick baby, revealed the man was a direct ancestor of living Native Americans. The Ancient One was duly returned to the tribes and reburied.

Cook added: “We took a risk but it worked out. It was remarkable to work with Eske and we felt honored, relieved and humbled to be able to resolve such an important case. We had oral stories that have passed down through the generations for thousands of years that we call coyote stories – teaching stories. These stories were from our ancestors about living alongside woolly mammoths and witnessing a series of floods and volcanoes erupting. As a tribe, we have always embraced science but not all history is discovered through science.”

Work led by Professor Willerslev was also able to identify the origins of the world’s oldest natural mummy called Spirit Cave. Scientists discovered the ancient human skeleton back in 1940 but it wasn’t until 2018 that a striking discovery was made that unlocked the secrets of the Ice Age tribe in the Americas.

The revelation came as part of a study that genetically analyzed the DNA of a series of famous and controversial ancient remains across North and South America including Spirit Cave, the Lovelock skeletons, the Lagoa Santa remains, an Inca mummy, and the oldest remains in Chilean Patagonia.

Scientists sequenced 15 ancient genomes spanning from Alaska to Patagonia and were able to track the movements of the first humans as they spread across the Americas at ‘astonishing’ speed during the Ice Age and also how they interacted with each other in the following millennia.

The team of academics not only discovered that the Spirit Cave remains was a Native American but they were able to dismiss a longstanding theory that a group called Paleoamericans existed in North America before Native Americans. Spirit Cave was returned to The Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, a group of Native Americans based in Nevada, for burial.

Professor Willerslev added: “Over the past decade human history has been fundamentally changed thanks to ancient genomic analysis – and the incredible findings have only just begun.”

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Professor Eske Willerslev with Donna and Joey, two members of the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone tribe, discussing the Spirit Cave individual. Linus Mørk/Magus Film.

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Article Source: ST JOHN’S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE news release

If you liked this article, you may also like Spirit Cave: The World’s Oldest Natural Mummy, an in-depth premium article published previously at Popular Archaeology.

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UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE—An international research team led by Professor Dr Frank Schäbitz has published a climate reconstruction of the last 200,000 years for Ethiopia. This means that high-resolution data are now available for the period when early Homo sapiens, our ancestors, made their way from Africa to Europe and Asia. Schäbitz and his colleagues determined the dates using a drill core of lake sediments deposited in southern Ethiopia’s Chew Bahir Basin, which lies near human fossil sites. Temporal resolution of the samples, reaching nearly 10 years, revealed that from 200,000 to 125,000 years before our time, the climate there was relatively wet, providing enough water and thus abundant plant and animal food resources in the lowlands of East Africa. From 125,000 to 60,000 years ago, it gradually became drier, and particularly dry between 60,000 to 14,000 years ago. The data now obtained fit well with genetic findings, according to which our direct genetic ancestors (‘African Eve’) left Africa ‘successfully’ during a wet phase about 70,000 to 50,000 years ago.

The article ‘Hydroclimate changes in eastern Africa over the past 200,000 years may have influenced early human dispersal’ has appeared in Nature Communications.

Scientists collect information about the environment from lake sediments because, in the best case, sediments are flushed into lakes relatively continuously from the catchment through erosion. In addition to mineral components, sediments include organic material and remains of organisms living in the lake. If lake sediments from suitable lakes can be drilled, these ‘proxy data’ can be used to draw conclusions about environmental conditions at the time, and thus help to reconstruct the climate.

From November to December 2014, the researchers recovered an approximately 300 meter long drill core from the Chew Bahir Basin in southern Ethiopia, which dries out during the dry season. In its entirety, the drill core dates back to about 620,000 years. ‘This enables us to chronologically cover the entire evolutionary history of Homo sapiens in Africa. The work now published on the last 200,000 years of this drill core thus provides very good evidence of the environmental and climate history during the migration of our ancestors,’ Schäbitz explained.

‘Some of our proxies allow time resolution for specific decades in large sections of the core, which has not been done before for this part of Africa. That way we can capture very short-term climate changes representing less than a human lifetime,’ he said. The drill core reveals that the climate of East Africa was largely influenced by changes in solar insolation, which led to either wet or dry climate conditions. From 200,000 to 125,000 years ago, the climate was generally relatively favorable, i.e., the lowlands provided enough water and thus abundant plant and animal food resources for our ancestors. Under such conditions, people could move relatively easily over long distances and even reach the Arabian Peninsula, as evidenced by the oldest fossil finds there (about 175,000 years ago). From 125,000 to 60,000 years ago, however, it gradually became drier, and then particularly dry between 60,000 to 14,000 years ago, with the lake drying up completely several times.

‘However, during this period in particular, quite striking, short-term moisture fluctuations can also be observed, the temporal patterns of which are reminiscent of cold-warm climate fluctuations known from Greenland ice cores. So the people who lived in East Africa at that time were exposed to extreme changes in their environments,’ Schäbitz said. ‘It is interesting that just in the period from 60,000 to 14,000 years ago, when the lowlands of East Africa were repeatedly particularly dry, numerous archaeological findings in the high altitudes of the Ethiopian mountains bear witness to the presence of our ancestors there.’ In addition, the weapons and tools of these people also evolved during this time period (transition from Middle to Late Paleolithic in Africa). ‘We suspect that the greater “environmental stress” at lower elevations forced this development,’ the scientist noted.

Furthermore, the scientists noted that the last major wet phase which we can see in the core fits well in time with the genetic findings: It shows that our direct genetic ancestors ‘successfully’ left Africa about 70,000 to 50,000 years ago. Their descendants probably reached southeastern Europe 50,000 to 40,000 years ago, where they encountered Neanderthals.

‘We hypothesize that the evidence of dry-humid climate fluctuations in East Africa found in our drill core had a significant impact on the evolution and mobility of our ancestors,’ said Schäbitz. ‘Migration out of Africa was possible several times during the last 200,000 years, during periods when the climate was wetter, and has led to the spread of our ancestors as far as Europe. During the particularly dry phases of the recent past, starting around 60,000 years ago, Homo sapiens groups repeatedly managed to survive in the high altitudes of mountainous Ethiopia.’

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Ethiopian landscape. Pixabay

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE news release.

The publication with 20 international co-authors was a result of subproject A3 of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 806 ‘Our Way to Europe’ at the University of Cologne, which was granted in 2009 and cooperates closely with the UoC’s Institute for Prehistory and Early History as well as the Universities of Bonn and Aachen. The aim of the CRC is to understand the reasons for the migration history of our ancestors (Homo sapiens) from Africa to Europe. The Chew Bahir Deep Drilling Project is associated with the international ‘Hominin Site and Paleolakes Drilling Project’ (HSPDP).

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THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM—A team of archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) made a rare discovery when they unearthed a small clay seal impression dating back some 7000 years. The impression, with two different geometric stamps imprinted on it, was discovered in Tel Tsaf, a prehistoric village located in Israel’s Beit She’an Valley up north.

The discovery was made as part of a dig that took place between 2004 and 2007 and was led by HU’s Professor Yosef Garfinkel along with two of his students, Professor David Ben Shlomo and Dr. Michael Freikman, both of whom are now researchers at Ariel University. One hundred and fifty clay sealings were originally found at the site, with one being particularly rare and of distinct, historic importance. The object was published in the journal Levant.

Sealings, also known as bulla, are made of a small piece of clay were used in historical times to seal and sign letters and to prevent others from reading their contents. The sealing found in Tel Tsaf is particularly significant because it is the first evidence of the use of seals to mark shipments or to close silos or barns. When a barn door was opened, its seal impression would break – a telltale sign that someone had been there and that the contents inside had been touched or taken. “Even today, similar types of sealing are used to prevent tampering and theft,” explained Garfinkel. “It turns out that this was already in use 7,000 years ago by land owners and local administrators to protect their property.”

Measuring less than a centimeter wide, the fragment was found in great condition due to the dry climate of the Beit She’an valley. The sealing is marked by symmetrical lines. While many sealings found in First Temple Jerusalem (ca. 2,600 years ago) include a personal name and sometimes biblical figures, the sealing from Tel Tsaf is from a prehistoric era, when writing was not yet in use. Those seals were decorated with geometric shapes instead of letters. The fact that there are two different stamps on the seal impression may indicate a form of commercial activity where the two different people were involved in the transaction.

The found fragment underwent extensive analysis before researchers could determine that it was indeed a seal impression. According to Garfinkel, this is the earliest evidence that seals were used in Israel approximately 7,000 years ago to sign deliveries and keep store rooms closed. While seals have been found in that region dating back to 8,500 years ago, seal impressions from that time have not been found.

Based on a careful scientific analysis of the sealing’s clay, the researchers found it wasn’t locally sourced but came from a location at least ten kilometers away. Other archeological finds at the site reveal evidence that the Tel Tsaf residents were in contact with populations far beyond ancient Israel. “At this very site we have evidence of contact with peoples from Mesopotamia, Turkey, Egypt and Caucasia,” Garfinkel added. “There is no prehistoric site anywhere in the Middle East that reveals evidence of such long-distance trade in exotic items as what we found at this particular site.”

The site also yielded clues that the area was home to people of considerable wealth who built up large stores of ingredients and materials, indicating considerable social development. This evidence points to Tel Tsaf as having been a key position in the region that served both local communities and people passing through. “We hope that continued excavations at Tel Tsaf and other places from the same time period will yield additional evidence to help us understand the impact of a regional authority in the southern Levant,” concluded Garfinkel.

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Rounded silos at Tel Tsaf. Boaz Garfinkel

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Tel Tsaf seal and a modern impression. Vladimir Nichen

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Article Source: THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM news release.

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American Association for the Advancement of Science—In a Perspective, Bernardo Flores and Carolina Levis discuss the positive feedback between local peoples and food availability in tropical forests. Although they were once considered to be harsh and inhospitable environments, largely devoid of large populations, a growing body of research shows that, for more than 13,000 years, humans have resided and thrived in tropical forest environments, transforming the natural landscapes into forest gardens. Even the Amazon – a region often regarded as a paragon of pristine tropical forest – is dominated by edible plant species closely associated with humans. Flores and Levis highlight the social-ecological system of these tropical forests whereby local people enriched the forest with edible plant species, and the highly productive forests increased overall food availability, allowing forest societies to expand. According to the authors, leveraging this ancient relationship by ensuring local peoples’ access to their ancestral forest lands could help efforts to conserve these sensitive environments while also boosting food security and sovereignty in tropical regions. Globally, more than a billion people rely on forest resources for food, particularly in tropical regions. Indigenous and local peoples of these regions have historically – sometimes for thousands of years – contributed to the enrichment of forests with food. Even today, their territories act as buffers against deforestation and landscape degradation. “For this ancient feedback to continue functioning, societies need to recognize indigenous and local peoples’ rights to their ancestral forest land,” write Flores and Levis.

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Forest dominated by the palm Attalea spectabilis on anthropogenic dark soils at the Tapajós River,
Brazilian Amazon. © Carolina Levis

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Domesticated forest on the former Mayan city of Coba, Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. © Bernardo Flores

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Forest with domesticated species on anthropogenic dark soils at the Tapajós River, Brazilian Amazon. © Carolina Levis

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Domesticated forest dominated by the Brazil nut tree on anthropogenic dark soils at the Tefé River,
Brazilian Amazon. © Bernardo Oliveira

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This research appears in the 11 June 2021 issue of Science. Science is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

Article Source: AAAS news release. 

If you liked this article, you may also like The Milpa Way In this article, a filmmaker explores how Maya forest gardeners are shedding new light on the ancient Maya collapse—a major feature article published previously at Popular Archaeology.

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TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP—Indigenous Māori people may have set eyes on Antarctic waters and perhaps the continent as early as the 7th century, new research published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand shows.

Over the last 200 years, narratives about the Antarctic have been of those carried out by predominantly European male explorers.

However, this new study uncovers the story of the deep-rooted connections of Māori (and Polynesian) people with Antarctica dating back as far as the seventh century and continuing into the present day.

“We found connections to Antarctica and its waters have been occurring since the earliest traditional voyaging, and later through participation in European-led voyaging and exploration, contemporary scientific research, fishing, and more for centuries,” explains lead author Dr Priscilla Wehi, from Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research the organization which led the project, alongside researchers from Te R?nanga o Ngāi Tahu.

“Our exploration begins to construct a richer and more inclusive picture of Antarctica’s relationship with humanity and builds a platform on which much wider conversations about New Zealand relationships with Antarctica can be furthered.”

The study was compiled by a team of researchers who scanned literature and integrated this with oral histories. The outcome is a compiled record of Māori presence in, and perspectives of, Antarctic narratives and exploration, which – the team states – “plays an important role” to fill knowledge gaps about both Māori and Antarctic exploration.

And these stories start as far back as 1,320 years ago.

“We find Polynesian narratives of voyaging between the islands include voyaging into Antarctic waters by Hui Te Rangiora (also known as ?i Te Rangiora) and his crew on the vessel Te Ivi o Atea, likely in the early seventh century,” Wehi says.

“These navigational accomplishments are widely acknowledged; and Māori navigators are described as traversing the Pacific much as Western explorers might a lake.

“In some narratives, Hui Te Rangiora and his crew continued south. A long way south. In so doing, they likely set eyes on Antarctic waters and perhaps the continent.”

Other evidence gathered includes Māori carvings, which depict both voyagers and navigational and astronomical knowledge.

“As well,” Wehi says, “a ‘pou whakairo’ (translating as carved post), represents Tamarereti as protector of the southern oceans stands on the southernmost tip of the South Island of New Zealand at Bluff. Ngāi Tahu, the largest tribal group in the South Island, and other tribal groups or iwi also cherish other oral repositories of knowledge in relation to these early explorers and voyagers.”

These Māori narratives of connections with Antarctic were not limited to these early voyages either. Rather, voyaging and expedition was shown to continue to the present day; “but is rarely acknowledged or highlighted,” Wehi says.

And this research, she hopes, will begin more on the path to ensure inclusion of Māori in future relationships with Antarctica.

“Taking account of responsibilities to under-represented groups, and particularly Māori as Treaty partners, is important for both contemporary and future programs of Antarctic research, as well as for future exploration of New Zealand’s obligations within the Antarctic Treaty System.”

Concluding, she says: “Growing more Māori Antarctic scientists and incorporating Māori perspectives will add depth to New Zealand’s research programs and ultimately the protection and management of Antarctica.”

Further evidence of Māori exploration is likely to enter the public domain in future as tribal researchers partner with iwi to share these narratives, and Māori leadership in Antarctic research grows more visible, including that of the Kāhui Māori in the Antarctic Science Platform.

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The view of Te Kaiwhakatere o te Raki looking outward across the Ross Ice Shelf. © A short scan of Māori journeys to Antarctica / Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand

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Article Source: TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP news release.

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UNIVERSITY OF NORTH FLORIDA—UNF archaeology researchers are uncovering the lost Indigenous NE Florida settlement of Sarabay

Jacksonville, Fla. – The University of North Florida archaeology team is now fairly confident they have located the lost Indigenous northeast Florida community of Sarabay, a settlement mentioned in both French and Spanish documents dating to the 1560s but had not been discovered until now.

The type and amounts of Indigenous pottery the team is finding combined with the type and dates for European artifacts as well as cartographic map evidence strongly supports this location as the late 16th/early 17th century Mocama settlement.

The researchers have opened large excavation blocks with many exciting new artifact finds and are currently searching for evidence of houses and public architecture. The students, led by Dr. Keith Ashley, UNF Archaeology Lab director and assistant professor, have recently recovered more than 50 pieces of early Spanish pottery as well as Indigenous pottery that dates to the late 1500s or early 1600s. They have also recovered bone, stone and shell artifacts as well as burned corn cob fragments.

Expanding upon UNF excavations conducted at the southern end of Big Talbot Island in 1998, 1999, and 2020, the UNF research team has completed what is likely the most extensive excavations at a Mocama-Timucua site in northeastern Florida history.

This dig is part of the UNF Archaeology Lab’s ongoing Mocama Archaeological Project. This study focuses on the Mocama-speaking Timucua Indians who lived along the Atlantic coast of northern Florida at the time on European arrival in 1562. The Mocama were among the first indigenous populations encountered by European explorers in the 1560s.

The team hopes to ultimately confirm the discovery of Sarabay by finding evidence of houses and public architecture. They will continue to explore and learn about Sarabay’s physical layout during continuing fieldwork projects over the next three years.

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UNF Archaeology Lab at the dig site. University of North Florida

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF NORTH FLORIDA news release

About University of North Florida

The University of North Florida is a nationally ranked university located on a beautiful 1,381-acre campus in Jacksonville surrounded by nature. Serving more than 17,000 students, UNF features six colleges of distinction with innovative programs in high-demand fields. UNF students receive individualized attention from faculty and gain valuable real-world experience engaging with community partners. A top public university, UNF prepares students to make a difference in Florida and around the globe. Learn more at http://www.unf.edu.

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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—Analyzing charcoal and phytolith records of soil cores from nonflooded, nonriverine forests in northeastern Peru, researchers found* that the forests were not significantly altered by anthropogenic activity in pre-Columbian history, and material remains of ancient cultures, such as ceramics and stone tools, were also absent from soil samples; the findings suggest that over the last 5,000 years indigenous societies in northeastern Peru helped maintain regional forest integrity and biodiversity, according to the authors.

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Ancient plant microfossils called phytoliths from northeastern Peru. Dolores R. Piperno.

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Article Source: PNAS news release

*”A 5,000-year vegetation and fire history for tierra firme forests in the Medio Putumayo-Algodón watersheds, northeastern Peru,” by Dolores R. Piperno et al.

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UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE—Accurate soft tissue measurements are critical when making reconstructions of human ancestors, a new study from the University of Adelaide and Arizona State University has found.

“Reconstructing extinct members of the Hominidae, or hominids, including their facial soft tissue, has become increasingly popular with many approximations of their faces presented in museum exhibitions, popular science publications and at conference presentations worldwide,” said lead author PhD student Ryan M. Campbell from the University of Adelaide.

“It is essential that accurate facial soft tissue thickness measurements are used when reconstructing the faces of hominids to reduce the variability exhibited in reconstructions of the same individuals.”

Hominids have been readily accepted to line the halls of even the most trusted institutions. They are predominantly used for disseminating scientific information to the public in museum displays and students in university courses, which will influence the way humanity is perceived and defined more generally.

“Up until now soft tissue reconstruction has been based on mean tissue depth measurements which does not take into account variation in tissue depths between individuals,” says Mr Campbell.

In this study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, the authors have formulated a facial soft tissue thickness dataset for adult chimpanzees, and a set of regression equations that can be used to reconstruct the soft tissues for ancient hominids, such as those dated from 4.0 to 1.2 million years ago.

The study was co-authored by Gabriel Vinas, a Master of Fine Arts candidate at Arizona State University who handles the sculpting in the lab.

“Correlations have been found and multiple regression models have been used to generate equations for improving estimations of soft tissue thickness from craniometrics in modern humans,” he said.

“We looked at tissue depths in present day chimpanzees to identify correlations in skin and bone.”

This article represents the first time that such a collection of tissue depth data has been collected and presented for chimpanzees in a systematic manner.

“The soft tissue thickness data for chimpanzees are freely available for anyone to download on Figshare.

“The equations, which resulted directly from this research, are also included and can be implemented in future practitioners’ reconstructions,” said Mr Campbell.

“This research is invaluable for future efforts reconstructing ancient hominids, as well as for comparative studies within and outside the discipline of biological/physical anthropology.”

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The soft tissue for these approximations of hominid faces was predicted using equations developed by the authors. No facial features are present in the ancient hominid (C), as the authors admit their equations say nothing about them. Ryan M. Campbell.

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Cephalometric landmarks — measurements of the skull — are critical for accurate measurements of facial soft tissue such as in these numerous landmarks positioned on the skull of a chimpanzee. Ryan M. Campbell

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE news release

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UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI—”Ornaments composed of elk teeth suspended from or sown on to clothing emit a loud rattling noise when moving,” says auditory archaeologist and Academy of Finland Research Fellow Riitta Rainio from the University of Helsinki. “Wearing such rattlers while dancing makes it easier to immerse yourself in the soundscape, eventually letting the sound and rhythm take control of your movements. It is as if the dancer is led in the dance by someone.”

Rainio is well versed in the topic, as she danced, for research purposes, for six consecutive hours, wearing elk tooth ornaments produced according to the Stone Age model. Rainio and artist Juha Valkeapää held a performance to find out what kind of wear marks are formed in the teeth when they bang against each other and move in all directions. The sound of a tooth rattler can be clear and bright or loud and pounding, depending on the number and quality of the teeth, as well as the intensity of movement.

Microanalysis demonstrates that tooth wear marks are the result of dancing

The teeth worn out by dancing were analyzed for any microscopic marks before and after the dancing. These marks were then compared to the findings made in the Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov graves by Evgeny Girya, an archaeologist specialized in micro-marks at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Girya documented and analyzed the wear marks in the elk teeth found in four graves chosen for the experiment. Comparing the chips, hollows, cuts and smoothened surfaces of the teeth, he observed a clear resemblance between teeth worn out by dancing and the Stone Age teeth. However, the marks in the Stone Age teeth were deeper and more extensive. According to Girya, the results show that the marks are the result of similar activity.

“As the Stone Age teeth were worn for years or even decades, it’s no surprise that their marks are so distinctive,” Girya says.

Associate Professor of Archaeology Kristiina Mannermaa from the University of Helsinki is excited by the research findings.

“Elk tooth rattlers are fascinating, since they transport modern people to a soundscape that is thousands of years old and to its emotional rhythms that guide the body. You can close your eyes, listen to the sound of the rattlers and drift on the soundwaves to a lakeside campfire in the world of Stone Age hunter-gatherers.”

A total of 177 graves of women, men and children have been found in the Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov burial site, of which more than half contain several elk tooth ornaments, some of them composed of as many as over 300 individual teeth.

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Adult male from grave 76a in Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov drawn as if he were alive during a dance session: 140 elk teeth on the chest, waist, pelvis, and thighs rattle rhythmically and loudly. Artist Tom Bjorklund

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI news release

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UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK—Stone tools have been made by humans and their ancestors for millions of years. For archaeologists these rocky remnants – lithic artifacts and flakes – are of key importance. Because of their high preservation potential they are among the most common findings in archaeological excavations. Worldwide, numerical dating of these lithic artifacts, especially when they occur as surface findings, remains a major challenge. Usually, stone tools cannot be dated directly, but only when they are embedded in sediment layers together with, for example, organic material. The age of such organic material can be constrained via the radiocarbon technique. If such datable organic remains are missing or if stone artifacts lack a stratified sedimentary context, but rather occur as scattered surface artefacts, numerical dating becomes very difficult or is simply impossible. “The earth’s surface is highly dynamic and erosion and redeposition of material, especially over long timescales, is common. A precise age determination of lithic artifacts that occur as surface finds has therefore hardly been possible so far. Many aspects of ancient human behavior have only been preserved as surface finds, hence cannot be dated precisely with currently available dating methods. By further developing the Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating technique, we can now, for the first time, carry out precise, and direct age measurements on lithic artifacts. In our current study we used stone artifacts from an archaeological surface site in south-central Tibet”, explains Michael Meyer, head of the Luminescence Laboratory at the Department of Geology at the University of Innsbruck and one of the main authors of the study now published in the renowned journal Science Advances. OSL dating is based on the measurement of light stored in natural minerals and is one of the most important absolute dating tools in archaeology and the earth sciences. “This dating method uses natural light signals that accumulate over time in natural dosimeters, such as quartz and feldspar grains that are important constituents of sediments, as well as rocks and lithic artifacts. These minerals can be imagined as miniaturized clocks. Each grain is a tiny clock that can be ‘read-out’ under controlled laboratory conditions. The light signal allows us to infer the age of the archaeological sediment layer or artifact. The more light, the older the sample,” says the geologist. “In this study, we have now taken a new approach and focused not on sediment grains of sand, but – for the first time – on stone artifacts themselves.”

Quarrying activities more than 5,000 years ago

Due to its extreme environmental and climatic conditions the dry highlands of Tibet are considered to be one of the last regions on earth that were occupied by humans. When exactly peopling of this remote and rather extreme environments occurred has caused a lot of scientific debate over the course of the last decade. In 2017, Michael Meyer dated the famous human foot and hand prints of Chusang in the central part of the Tibetan plateau to an age between 8,000 and 12,000 years. In the current study, Meyer and his team analyzed archaeological finds from southern Tibet in the Innsbruck OSL Laboratory: The excavation site Su-re is located immediately north of the Mount Everest-Cho Oyu massif in the so-called Tingri graben at an elevation of 4450 meters. Surface artifacts are particularly common in Tibet. To date them, the researcher used the so-called “Rock Surface Burial Dating” technique and applied it to lithic surface artifacts. This method determines the point in time when the stone artifact was discarded by humans and at least partly covered by earth. “With our luminescence method, we can look inside the stone and create a continuous age-depth profile. The inside of a rock has never been exposed to sunlight, so we have a saturated luminescence signal there and an infinite high age. However, if the rock surface is exposed to daylight for a long enough time, the signal in the top millimeters or centimeters of the rock will be erased. This happens during knapping, when the stone tool is produced, and also during the subsequent artifact use by humans. When the artifact is then discarded and at least partially buried in sediment and shielded from light, the luminescence signal in this artifact surface recharges. By measuring this depth-dependent luminescence signal in the rock surfaces, we can calculate the age of the artifact discard, taking into account the dynamics of local earth surface processes. Such an approach allows us to date stone artifacts directly, even if they occur as surface finds,” Meyer explains. The analyses on the surface artifacts from southern Tibet revealed an age between 5,200 and 5,500 years. “We assume that the artifact findings at Su-re are related to quarrying activities at this site”. Very old sites have been discovered in the central part of the Plateau, however, for southern sector of the Tibetan Plateau, Su-re is currently to oldest securely dated site.

For Michael Meyer, the analysis of these Tibetan artifacts is just the beginning: “This OSL-based method opens up new vistas in archaeological dating and holds great potential also for sites on other continents that preserve lithic artifacts in a favorable setting,” concludes the geologist.

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The excavation site Su-re is located immediately north of the Mount Everest-Cho Oyu massif (on the left) in the so-called Tingri graben at an elevation of 4,450 meters. Luke Gliganic

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Fieldwork on site on the Tibetan Plateau: sampling of surface artifacts under black lightproof cover. Michael Meyer

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Article Source: UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK news release

*L.A. Gliganic, M.C. Meyer, J.-H. May, M.S. Aldenderfer, P. Tropper: Direct dating of lithic surface artifacts using luminescence. Sci. Adv. 7, eabb3424 (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb3424

**OSL Laboratory at the Department of Geology, University of Innsbruck, Austria: https://quaternary.uibk.ac.at/Research/Current-Research/Luminescence-geochronology.aspx

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The summer exhibition ‘Temples of Malta’ at the Dutch Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (the national museum of antiquities) presents Malta’s rich prehistoric culture: a world of temples and tombs. The temples of Malta are the most ancient free-standing buildings in the world, 1,000 years older than the pyramids. In Leiden, archaeological finds from burial sites and sacred places will show how much the builders, Malta’s prehistoric farmers, were capable of achieving thousands of years ago. Their great engineering skills, their rituals, their religion, and the abrupt end of their way of life are still shrouded in a veil of mystery. The exhibition will run from 5 June until 31 October 2021. Tickets must be reserved prior to your visit at www.rmo.nl

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‘Temples of Malta’ is a survey exhibition about the culture of Malta’s prehistoric islanders from 3600 to 2500 BC, with a special emphasis on megalithic temples. A video feed from a robot camera hovering over temple models creates the illusion of visiting in person. The displays will also include parts of temple decorations, tools, decorated pottery, and jewellery. The final object in the exhibition will be one of the smallest and perhaps the most relevant to the present day: a two-centimeter-high sculpture from 3200 BC. Found at Tarxien Temples, it represents two people in a loving embrace – a timeless expression of the human need for contact and affection.

The exhibition design plays with the contrast between Malta’s colossal monuments and the small scale and intimacy of the objects found there. Large but sometimes also remarkably small, Malta’s famous ‘fat ladies’ owe that name to the lush curves of their bodies. But although these figures are usually seen as women, and sometimes even as mother goddesses, recent theories tell us they may well be men or asexual persons. The figures were found in graves and temples. Three examples will be on display in Leiden. The exhibition will explore the questions surrounding their appearance, their meaning, and their gender identity.

Temple culture

The group of Maltese islands, of which Malta and Gozo are the largest, lies just south of Sicily. They form a small country – about twice the area of Washington, DC, or slightly smaller than the Isle of Wight – but their earliest history is grand and intriguing. Malta was first settled around 5900 BC, probably by farmers from Sicily. Because of their isolation in the Mediterranean, the islands developed their own unique and fascinating culture between 3600 and 2500 BC (the Temple period). The largest and most striking remains are complex temple buildings from sites such as the UNESCO-recognized Ġgantija, Tarxien, Ħaġar Qim, Mnajdra, Ta’ Ħaġrat and Skorba, as well as underground burial sites (hypogea) carved out of rock. The largest stone is more than six meters long and weighs over twenty tonnes. Even now, little is known about the exact role of the temples or the rituals performed there. After almost 1,000 years of prosperity, the islands fell on harder times, and the temples and sculptures were deliberately damaged, broken, and burned. For a century, the islands appear to have remained uninhabited. This sudden end to the temple culture may have resulted from overpopulation and exhaustion of natural resources. Perhaps Maltese civilization was the victim of its own success.

Exhibition

Temples of Malta will run from 5 June to 31 October 2021. The exhibition will be accompanied by a booklet (Dutch and English) and a program of talks and guided tours, available both in the museum and online. Tickets must be reserved prior to your visit at www.rmo.nl.

The exhibition was made by Heritage Malta and the National Museum of Archaeology in Malta, in partnership with the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden. It features objects from Malta’s national collections and museums. The exhibition is supported by the Malta Tourism Authority. The Rijksmuseum van Oudheden is supported by the BankGiro Loterij.

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Image courtesy Rijksmuseum van Oudheden.

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Article Source: Rijksmuseum van Oudheden news release

‘Temples of Malta’, 5 June – 31 October 2021

Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Rapenburg 28, Leiden, www.rmo.nl, facebook.com/Oudheden

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IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY—AMES, Iowa – An unexpected discovery by an Iowa State University researcher suggests that the first humans may have arrived in North America more than 30,000 years ago – nearly 20,000 years earlier than originally thought.

Andrew Somerville, an assistant professor of anthropology in world languages and cultures, says he and his colleagues made the discovery while studying the origins of agriculture in the Tehuacan Valley in Mexico. As part of that work, they wanted to establish a date for the earliest human occupation of the Coxcatlan Cave in the valley, so they obtained radiocarbon dates for several rabbit and deer bones that were collected from the cave in the 1960s as part of the Tehuacan Archaeological-Botanical Project. The dates for the bones suddenly took Somerville and his colleagues in a different direction with their work.

The date ranges for the bone samples from the base of the cave ranged from 33,448 to 28,279 years old. The results are published in the academic journal Latin American Antiquity. Somerville says even though previous studies had not dated items from the bottom of the cave, he was not expecting such old ages. The findings add to the debate over a long-standing theory that the first humans crossed the Bering Land Bridge into the Americas 13,000 years ago.

“We weren’t trying to weigh in on this debate or even find really old samples. We were just trying to situate our agricultural study with a firmer timeline,” Somerville said. “We were surprised to find these really old dates at the bottom of the cave, and it means that we need to take a closer look at the artifacts recovered from those levels.”

Somerville says the findings provide researchers with a better understanding of the chronology of the region. Previous studies relied on charcoal and plant samples, but he says the bones were a better material for dating. However, questions still remain. Most importantly, is there a human link to the bottom layer of the cave where the bones were found?

To answer that question, Somerville and Matthew Hill, ISU associate professor of anthropology, plan to take a closer look at the bone samples for evidence of cut marks that indicate the bones were butchered by a stone tool or human, or thermal alternations that suggest the bones were boiled or roasted over fire. He says the possible stone tools from the early levels of the cave may also yield clues.

“Determining whether the stone artifacts were products of human manufacture or if they were just naturally chipped stones would be one way to get to the bottom of this,” Somerville said. “If we can find strong evidence that humans did in fact make and use these tools, that’s another way we can move forward.”

Year-long journey to even find the bones

Not only was this discovery unexpected, but the process of tracking down the animal bones to take samples was more than Somerville anticipated. The collection of artifacts from the 1960s Tehuacan Archaeological-Botanical Project was distributed to different museums and labs in Mexico and the United States, and it was unclear where the animal bones were sent.

After a year of emails and cold calls, Somerville and his collaborator, Isabel Casar from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, had a potential lead for a lab in Mexico City. The lab director, Joaquin Arroyo-Cabrales, agreed to give Somerville and Casar a tour to help search for the missing collection. The tour proved to be beneficial. Among the countless boxes of artifacts, they found what they were looking for.

“Having spent months trying to locate the bones, we were excited to find them tucked away on the bottom shelf in a dark corner of the lab,” Somerville said. “At the time, we felt that was a great discovery, we had no idea it would lead to this.”

Once he located the bones, Somerville got permission from the Mexican government to take small samples – about 3/4 inch in length and 1/4 inch in width – from 17 bones (eight rabbits and nine deer) for radiocarbon dating. If closer examination of the bones provides evidence of a human link, Somerville says it will change what we know about the timing and how the first people came to America.

“Pushing the arrival of humans in North America back to over 30,000 years ago would mean that humans were already in North America prior to the period of the Last Glacial Maximum, when the Ice Age was at its absolute worst,” Somerville said. “Large parts of North America would have been inhospitable to human populations. The glaciers would have completely blocked any passage over land coming from Alaska and Canada, which means people probably would have had to come to the Americas by boats down the Pacific coast.”

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One of the rabbit bones dated for the study. Andrew Somerville, Iowa State University

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Article Source: IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY news release

Isabel Casar, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and Joaquín Arroyo-Cabrales, a researcher with the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico, contributed to this research. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—While it is widely accepted that climate change drove the evolution of our species in Africa, the exact character of that climate change and its impacts are not well understood. Glacial-interglacial cycles strongly impact patterns of climate change in many parts of the world, and were also assumed to regulate environmental changes in Africa during the critical period of human evolution over the last ~1 million years. The ecosystem changes driven by these glacial cycles are thought to have stimulated the evolution and dispersal of early humans.

A paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) this week challenges this view. Dr. Kaboth-Bahr and an international group of multidisciplinary collaborators identified ancient El Niño-like weather patterns as the drivers of major climate changes in Africa. This allowed the group to re-evaluate the existing climatic framework of human evolution.

Walking with the rain

Dr. Kaboth-Bahr and her colleagues integrated 11 climate archives from all across Africa covering the past 620 thousand years to generate a comprehensive spatial picture of when and where wet or dry conditions prevailed over the continent. “We were surprised to find a distinct climatic east-west ‘seesaw’ very akin to the pattern produced by the weather phenomena of El Niño, that today profoundly influences precipitation distribution in Africa,” explains Dr. Kaboth-Bahr, who led the study.

The authors infer that the effects of the tropical Pacific Ocean on the so-called “Walker Circulation” – a belt of convection cells along the equator that impact the rainfall and aridity of the tropics – were the prime driver of this climate seesaw. The data clearly shows that the wet and dry regions shifted between the east and west of the African continent on timescales of approximately 100,000 years, with each of the climatic shifts being accompanied by major turnovers in flora and mammal fauna.

“This alternation between dry and wet periods appeared to have governed the dispersion and evolution of vegetation as well as mammals in eastern and western Africa,” explains Dr. Kaboth-Bahr. “The resultant environmental patchwork was likely to have been a critical component of human evolution and early demography as well.”

The scientists are keen to point that although climate change was certainly not the sole factor driving early human evolution, the new study nevertheless provides a novel perspective on the tight link between environmental fluctuations and the origin of our early ancestors.

“We see many species of pan-African mammals whose distributions match the patterns we identify, and whose evolutionary history seems to articulate with the wet-dry oscillations between eastern and western Africa,” adds Dr. Eleanor Scerri, one of the co-authors and an evolutionary archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany. “These animals preserve the signals of the environments that humans evolved in, and it seems likely that our human ancestors may have been similarly subdivided across Africa as they were subject to the same environmental pressures.”

Ecotones: the transitional regions between different ecological zones

The scientists’ work suggests that a seesaw-like pattern of rainfall alternating between eastern and western Africa probably had the effect of creating critically important ecotonal regions – the buffer zones between different ecological zones, such as grassland and forest.

“Ecotones provided diverse, resource-rich and stable environmental settings thought to have been important to early modern humans,” adds Dr. Kaboth-Bahr. “They certainly seem to have been important to other faunal communities.”

To the scientists, this suggests that Africa’s interior regions may have been critically important for fostering long-term population continuity. “We see the archaeological signatures of early members of our species all across Africa,” says Dr. Scerri, “but innovations come and go and are often re-invented, suggesting that our deep population history saw a constant saw-tooth like pattern of local population growth and collapse. Ecotonal regions may have provided areas for longer term population continuity, ensuring that the larger human population kept going, even if local populations often went extinct.”

“Re-evaluating these patterns of stasis, change and extinction through a new climatic framework will yield new insights into the deep human past,” says Dr. Kaboth Bahr. “This does not mean that people were helpless in the face of climatic changes, but shifting habitat availability would certainly have impacted patterns of demography, and ultimately the genetic exchanges that underpin human evolution.”

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The Ngorongoro on the edge of the Serengeti in Tanzania is home to abundant wildlife. Climate change, however, leads to dramatic water scarcity, vegetation changes, loss of biodiversity and recurring diseases that threaten the fragile ecosystem. Prof. Martin Trauth, University of Potsdam

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The alkaline Nakuru Lake in Kenya is rich in the cyanobacterium Spirulina platensis, the basic food of the Lesser Flamingo. However, due to increasing rainfall in the region in recent years, the bacterium and with it the flamingos are disappearing. Prof. Martin Trauth, University of Potsdam

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Today a saline mudflat, the Chew Bahir Basin in southern Ethiopia once held an extensive paleo-lake during humid phases. Scientific deep drilling from the current playa surface produced a ~620,000-year long sedimentary record providing insights into the intense shifts of eastern Africa’s highly variable hydroclimate. Annett Jungiger, University of Tübingen

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Article Source: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY news release

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CNRS—Since its discovery in the 1960s, the Jebel Sahaba cemetery (Nile Valley, Sudan), 13 millennia old, was considered to be one of the oldest testimonies to prehistoric warfare. However, scientists from the CNRS and the University of Toulouse – Jean Jaurès1 have re-analyzed the bones preserved in the British Museum (London) and re-evaluated their archaeological context. The results, published in Scientific Reports on May 27, 2021, show that it was not a single armed conflict but rather a succession of violent episodes, probably exacerbated by climate change.

Many individuals buried at Jebel Sahaba bear injuries, half of them caused by projectiles, the points of which were found in the bones or the fill where the body was located. The interpretation as evidence of mass death due to a single armed conflict, however, remained debated until a team of anthropologists, prehistorians and geochemists undertook a new study of the thousands of bones, about a hundred associated lithic pieces and the entire burial complex (now submerged by Lake Aswan) from 2013 to 2019. 

The bones of 61 individuals were re-examined, including microscopic analysis, in order to distinguish traces of injury from damage produced after burial. About a hundred new lesions, both healed and unhealed, were identified, some with previously unrecognized lithic flakes still embedded in the bones. In addition to the 20 individuals already identified, 21 other skeletons have lesions, almost all suggestive of interpersonal violence, such as traces of projectile impact or fractures. In addition, 16 individuals have both healed and unhealed injuries, suggesting repeated episodes of violence over the course of a person’s life rather than a single conflict. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that some skeletons appear to have been disturbed by later burials. Surprisingly, men, women and children seem to have been treated indiscriminately in terms of the number and type of injuries or the projectiles direction.

These new data also reveal that the majority of lesions were produced by composite projectiles, throwing weapons (arrows or spears) composed of several sharp lithic pieces, some of which are laterally embedded. The presence of variously sharpened points, with variations in the orientation of the cutting edge, suggests that the intended purpose was to lacerate and bleed the victim.

These new results reject the hypothesis of a disaster cemetery linked to a single war. Instead, this site indicates a succession of limited raids or ambushes against these hunter-fisher-gatherers, at a time of major climatic variations (end of the last ice age and beginning of the African humid period). The concentration of archaeological sites of different cultures in such a limited area of the Nile Valley at this time suggests that this region must have been a refuge area for human populations subject to these climatic fluctuations. Competition for resources is therefore probably one of the causes of the conflicts witnessed in the Jebel Sahaba cemetery. This analysis, which changes the history of violence in prehistory, invites us to reconsider other sites from the same period.

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Archival photograph illustrating the double grave of individuals JS 20 and JS 21 with pencils indicating the position of associated lithic artifacts. © Wendorf Archive, British Museum.

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Study of human remains from Jebel Sahaba in the Department of Egypt and Sudan, British Museum (London).
Microscopic analysis of bone lesions and anthropological study by Marie-Hélène Dias-Meirinho (left) and Isabelle Crevecoeur (right). © Marie-Hélène Dias-Meirinho

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Projectile impact puncture with an embedded lithic fragment in the posterior surface of the left hip bone of individual JS 21. © Isabelle Crevecoeur/Marie-Hélène Dias-Meirinho

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Article Source: CNRS news release

*New insights on interpersonal violence in the Late Pleistocene based on the Nile valley cemetery of Jebel Sahaba, Isabelle Crevecoeur, Marie‑Hélène Dias‑Meirinho, Antoine Zazzo, Daniel Antoine & François Bon. Scientific Reports, 27 May 2021. DOI : 10.1038/s41598-021-89386-y 

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TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP—Ancient Judeans commonly ate non-kosher fish surrounding the time that such food was prohibited in the Bible, suggests a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Tel Aviv.

This finding sheds new light on the origin of Old Testament dietary laws that are still observed by many Jews today. Among these rules is a ban on eating any species of fish which lacks scales or fins.

The study reports an analysis of ancient fish bones from 30 archaeological sites in Israel and Sinai which date to the more than 2,000-year span from the Late Bronze Age (1550-1130 BCE) until the end of the Byzantine period (640 CE).

The authors say the results call for a rethink of assumptions that long-held traditions were the basis for the food laws outlined in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.

“The ban on finless and scaleless fish deviated from longstanding Judean dietary habits”, says Yonatan Adler from Ariel University.

“The Biblical writers appear to have prohibited this food despite the fact that non-kosher fish were often found on the Judean menu. There is little reason to think that an old and widespread dietary taboo lay at the root of this ban”.

The Old Testament was penned at different times, beginning in the centuries before the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE and into Hellenistic times (332-63 BCE). A set of passages repeated twice forbids the eating of certain species of fish.

The Book of Leviticus states: “Everything in the waters that does not have fins and scales is detestable to you”, and Deuteronomy decrees that ‘…whatever does not have fins and scales you shall not eat; it is unclean for you.’

In both, the references immediately follow a prohibition on ‘unclean’ pig which has received wide scholarly attention. However, the origins and early history of the seafood ban have not been explored in detail until now.

The authors in this study set out to discover when and how the fish prohibition first arose, and if it was predated by an earlier taboo practiced prior to the editing of the Old Testament passages. They also sought to establish the extent to which the rule was obeyed.

Adler’s co-author Omri Lernau from Haifa University analysed thousands of fish remains from dozens of sites in the southern Levant. At many Judean sites dating to the Iron Age (1130-586 BCE), including at the Judean capital city of Jerusalem, bone assemblages included significant proportions of non-kosher fish remains. Another key discovery was evidence of non-kosher fish consumption in Jerusalem during the Persian era (539-332 BCE).

Non-kosher fish bones were mostly absent from Judean settlements dating to the Roman era and later. The authors note that sporadic non-kosher fish remains from this later time may indicate ‘some degree of non-observance among Judeans’.

The authors now intend to analyze more fish from around this timeframe to establish when Judeans began to avoid eating scaleless fish and how strictly the prohibition was kept.

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Jerusalem, ancient and modern. EvgeniT, Pixabay

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Article Source: TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP news release

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COLUMBIA, Mo.—Passports are a tangible way of showing where one has traveled, as the stamps provide a chronological order that traces an individual’s journey across international borders. When an object’s origins are not readily apparent, a variety of sources can be relied upon to learn more, which might include labels, sales receipts, foreign translations, oral histories, GPS coordinates and itemized personal possessions.

That documentation is an example of provenance, or the origins of an object and where it has traveled throughout history. Sarah Buchanan, an assistant professor in the University of Missouri’s College of Education, is an archivist, a professional who assesses, collects and preserves various artifacts and archives them to better understand their origin and cultural heritage.

With a three-year grant, Buchanan is investigating ways to conduct provenance research more efficiently, inclusively and transparently, both on MU’s campus and abroad. In a recently published study, Buchanan collaborated with Sara Mohr, a doctoral student at Brown University who reads and translates Assyrian, to create an online bibliography and corresponding map of ancient tablets located in universities throughout the United States, including six tablets inside MU’s Ellis Library.

The tablets were written in cuneiform, the first writing system ever used by humans. It was first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia around 3,200 B.C.E in modern-day Iraq. Written on clay tablets, the writing system was used to document things like trade, business and religious activities at ancient temples.

“We identified cuneiform tablets at Brown University that complement the six we have here at Mizzou, and when we look at all of them together, we have a fuller, more compelling story about the societal context of their creation,” Buchanan said. “If we only look at ours, it is like reading a page of a book that is half cut out. Their combination shows how powerful digitizing these artifacts can be, as it allows us to analyze two tablets side by side online that are otherwise thousands of miles apart.”

The importance of provenance extends well beyond cuneiform tablets. Buchanan’s research also includes studying rare books and manuscripts, audio recordings, Native American and indigenous collections, artwork, photos, and videos.

“Provenance shapes the stories that are told about objects and their owners,” Buchanan said. “Artifacts and archives are a form of our history. They shed light on our cultural heritage that roots us as humans in where we have been and where we are going.”

Museums can use provenance to assess the authenticity of collections on display. In Washington, D.C., officials from the Museum of the Bible accepted donated antiquities, including alleged fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls– ancient Jewish manuscripts with significant religious ties to the Hebrew Bible and Judaism– that turned out to be fake.

After suspicions that the fragments were created recently, an investigation by independent researchers, which was funded by the museum itself, confirmed in November 2019 that all of the displayed fragments were modern forgeries.

“Unfortunate situations like this show why provenance research is so important, as there is a real accountability issue when artifacts, photographs or artwork are found to be doctored or forged,” Buchanan said. “This work will help give a wider range of artifacts a clearer provenance so that we can be sure when pieces are exhibited in museums, that they truly are what we say they are and can be attributed back to a specific time and place.”

Provenance can also help play a role in repatriation, or the return of a valued item to its place of origin. In 2018, Bowling Green State University announced that ancient mosaics housed in the university’s Wolfe Center for the Arts purchased in good faith with the belief that they were excavated from ancient Antioch had actually been looted in the 1960s from Zeugma and later sold on the black market.

After years of talks between the university and the Turkish government, the 12 mosaics were returned to Turkey, where they are now on display at the Zeugma Mosaic Museum, the largest mosaic museum in the world.

“As archivists, we are tasked with determining how, where and when these historic objects traveled across land and time,” Buchanan said. “Traditionally, institutions tend to display only items that have clear provenance. As we refine our methods of researching provenance, we will be able to narrate a greater number and variety of previously unstudied artifacts and share them with new audiences.”

Because America’s history is closely intertwined with immigration and the oppression of minority groups, provenance research can help archivists tell more complete stories—the good, the bad and the ugly—surrounding artifacts with murky history.

“Provenance can help us confront our history when it comes to topics like war, colonialism and land acknowledgments,” Buchanan said. “By uncovering a greater number of artifacts, we can properly tell more stories so that more cultures are represented, particularly the cultures of traditionally marginalized groups like Native Americans.”

Through conversations with Native American tribes, Buchanan has learned the power of collaboration and civil discourse in facilitating more inclusive storytelling.

“There is always the potential for repatriation,” Buchanan said. “However, we have also learned that several Native American tribes are open to particular artifacts remaining here at Mizzou’s Museum of Anthropology, where climate controls and procedures are in place to properly care for the artifacts.”

As a professor in the College of Education’s School of Information Science & Learning Technologies, Buchanan teaches graduate students in the archival studies emphasis of MU’s Master of Library and Information Science program.

In 2018, she supervised graduate students in the program as they inventoried and digitized audio recordings with KOPN, a community radio station in Columbia, Missouri. The recordings cover interviews with political figures such as Angela Davis, and social topics such as the feminist movement in the 1970s. The collection of recordings was recently featured by GBH, the NPR radio affiliate in Boston, and the Library of Congress in March for Women’s History Month.

“This grant will help us get tools into the hands of archivists so we can be more responsive to our communities and make our collections meaningful to their work.” Buchanan said.

As technology has advanced, the value of provenance in documenting ownership of rare items has transferred to the digital world online. Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, have become increasingly popular and raised more than a few eyebrows in mainstream media. They are digital tokens attached to online items such as videos, photos or artwork that document their authenticity and original ownership, a clear way to show that they have not been altered or faked.

“I am passionate about teaching the next generation of archivists,” Buchanan said. “Studying cuneiform in America is just the tip of the iceberg. The more we learn going forward, the better we can tell stories about a wide variety of items’ origin in a clear and compelling way.”

Editor’s note: “A Bibliography of Cuneiform Tablet Editions in United States Colleges and Universities through 2020” was recently published in the Journal of Open Humanities Data. Funding for the study and Buchanan’s Early Career Development grant was provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The cuneiform tablets located in Ellis Library can be viewed and read further here.

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Buchanan’s provenance research includes digitizing ancient clay tablets for public use. University of Missouri

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Article Source: University of Missouri news release

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American Association for the Advancement of Science—First published in 1871, Charles Darwin’s “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex” has laid the foundations for human evolutionary studies. In this Review*, Peter Richerson and colleagues show how modern research into human origins and cultural evolution reflect the ideas that first emerged in Darwin’s work 150 years ago. Richerson et al. discuss three key Darwinian insights that have been reinforced by modern science. The first is that we share many characteristics (genetic, developmental, physiological, morphological, cognitive, and psychological) with our closest relatives, the anthropoid apes. The second is that humans have a talent for high-level cooperation reinforced by morality and social norms. The third is that we have greatly expanded the social learning capacity that we see already in other primates.

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Photographic portrait of Charles Darwin. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: AAAS news release

*”Modern theories of human evolution foreshadowed by Darwin’s Descent of Man,” by P.J. Richerson at University of California, Davis in Davis, CA; S. Gavrilets at University of Tennessee in Knoxville, TN; F.B.M. de Waal at Emory University in Atlanta, GA.

NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY—Archaeologists at Northern Arizona University are hoping a new technology they helped pioneer will change the way scientists study the broken pieces left behind by ancient societies.

The team from NAU’s Department of Anthropology have succeeded in teaching computers to perform a complex task many scientists who study ancient societies have long dreamt of: rapidly and consistently sorting thousands of pottery designs into multiple stylistic categories. By using a form of machine learning known as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), the archaeologists created a computerized method that roughly emulates the thought processes of the human mind in analyzing visual information.

“Now, using digital photographs of pottery, computers can accomplish what used to involve hundreds of hours of tedious, painstaking and eye-straining work by archaeologists who physically sorted pieces of broken pottery into groups, in a fraction of the time and with greater consistency,” said Leszek Pawlowicz, adjunct faculty in the Department of Anthropology. He and anthropology professor Chris Downum began researching the feasibility of using a computer to accurately classify broken pieces of pottery, known as sherds, into known pottery types in 2016. Results of their research are reported in the June issue of the peer-reviewed publication Journal of Archaeological Science.

“On many of the thousands of archaeological sites scattered across the American Southwest, archaeologists will often find broken fragments of pottery known as sherds. Many of these sherds will have designs that can be sorted into previously-defined stylistic categories, called ‘types,’ that have been correlated with both the general time period they were manufactured and the locations where they were made” Downum said. “These provide archaeologists with critical information about the time a site was occupied, the cultural group with which it was associated and other groups with whom they interacted.”

The research relied on recent breakthroughs in the use of machine learning to classify images by type, specifically CNNs. CNNs are now a mainstay in computer image recognition, being used for everything from X-ray images for medical conditions and matching images in search engines to self-driving cars. Pawlowicz and Downum reasoned that if CNNs can be used to identify things like breeds of dogs and products a consumer might like, why not apply this approach to the analysis of ancient pottery?

Until now, the process of recognizing diagnostic design features on pottery has been difficult and time-consuming. It could involve months or years of training to master and correctly apply the design categories to tiny pieces of a broken pot. Worse, the process was prone to human error because expert archaeologists often disagree over which type is represented by a sherd, and might find it difficult to express their decision-making process in words. An anonymous peer reviewer of the article called this “the dirty secret in archaeology that no one talks about enough.”

Determined to create a more efficient process, Pawlowicz and Downum gathered thousands of pictures of pottery fragments with a specific set of identifying physical characteristics, known as Tusayan White Ware, common across much of northeast Arizona and nearby states. They then recruited four of the Southwest’s top pottery experts to identify the pottery design type for every sherd and create a ‘training set’ of sherds from which the machine can learn. Finally, they trained the machine to learn pottery types by focusing on the pottery specimens the archaeologists agreed on.

“The results were remarkable,” Pawlowicz said. “In a relatively short period of time, the computer trained itself to identify pottery with an accuracy comparable to, and sometimes better than, the human experts.”

For the four archaeologists with decades of experience sorting tens of thousands of actual potsherds, the machine outperformed two of them and was comparable with the other two. Even more impressive, the machine was able to do what many archaeologists can have difficulty with: describing why it made the classification decisions that it did. Using color-coded heat maps of sherds, the machine pointed out the design features that it used to make its classification decisions, thereby providing a visual record of its “thoughts.”

“An exciting spinoff of this process was the ability of the computer to find nearly exact matches of particular snippets of pottery designs represented on individual sherds,” Downum said. “Using CNN-derived similarity measures for designs, the machine was able to search through thousands of images to find the most similar counterpart of an individual pottery design.”

Pawlowicz and Downum believe this ability could allow a computer to find scattered pieces of a single broken pot in a multitude of similar sherds from an ancient trash dump or conduct a region-wide analysis of stylistic similarities and differences across multiple ancient communities. The approach might also be better able to associate particular pottery designs from excavated structures which have been dated using the tree-ring method.

Their research is already receiving high praise.

“I fervently hope that Southwestern archaeologists will adopt this approach and do so quickly. It just makes so much sense,” said Stephen Plog, emeritus professor of archaeology at the University of Virginia and author of the book “Stylistic Variation In Prehistoric Ceramics.” “We learned a ton from the old system, but it has lasted beyond its usefulness, and it’s time to transform how we analyze ceramic designs.”

The researchers are exploring practical applications of the CNN model’s classification expertise and are working on additional journal articles to share the technology with other archaeologists. They hope this new approach to archaeological analysis of pottery can be applied to other types of ancient artifacts, and that archaeology can enter a new phase of machine classification that results in greater efficiency of archaeological efforts and more effective methods of teaching pottery designs to new generations of students.

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A “river” of Tusayan White Ware sherds, showing the change in type designs from oldest at left to youngest at right. Deep learning allows for accurate and repeatable categorization of these sherd types. Chris Downum

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Article Source: NORTHERN ARIZONA UNIVERSITY news release

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PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—Researchers surveyed 25 archaeological sites in the Bears Ears region of southeastern Utah between 2017 and 2019, and found that at least 31 plant species of importance to local Native American tribes were recorded at archaeological sites, despite being uncommon across the wider landscape; the findings suggest that ancient human transportation and cultivation of native plants influenced modern plant diversity, and tribal expertise for plant conservation efforts may help restore archaeo-ecosystems, according to the authors.

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A two-story Puebloan habitation in the Bears Ears region of southeastern Utah. Kari Gillen (photographer).

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Article Source: PNAS news release

*“Plant species richness at archaeological sites suggests ecological legacy of Indigenous subsistence on the Colorado Plateau,” by Bruce M. Pavlik et al.

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Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz—When it comes to ancient Roman imperial architecture, most people usually have a mental image of white marble statues, columns, or slabs. While it is true that many buildings and squares at that time were decorated with marble, it was frequently not white but colored marble that was employed, such as the green-veined Cipollino Verde, which was extracted on the Greek island of Euboea. Because marble was very expensive, it was often placed in thin slabs as a cladding over other, cheaper stones. “To date, however, no actual remains of marble workshops from the Roman imperial era have been found, so little is known about marble processing during this period,” said Professor Cees Passchier of the Institute of Geosciences at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). Together with other researchers based in Mainz, Turkey, and Canada, he has now finished analyzing the marble cladding of a second century A.D. Roman villa. As the researchers detail in the online edition of the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, they utilized special software normally used for the 3D modeling of geological structures. They discovered that the material loss during marble slab production at the time was likely lower than it is today.

The researchers examined, photographed, and measured 54 restored slabs of Cipollino Verde, each measuring around 1.3 square meters, which had been used to decorate the walls of a villa in ancient Ephesus on the west coast of Turkey. In view of the saw marks on one of the slabs, they were able to infer that these slabs had been cut in a water-powered sawmill, in effect using what we today know as hydraulic metal saws. Using reconstructions based on the slab patterns, the research team was also able to conclude that a total of 40 slabs had been sawn from a single marble block weighing three to four tons. They had been subsequently mounted on the walls in the order in which they were produced and arranged in book-matched pairs side by side, producing a symmetrical pattern. Finally, with the help of the software, the researchers created a three-dimensional model of the marble block, which in turn enabled them to draw conclusions about the material wastage during the production of the slabs. “The slabs are about 16 millimeters thick and the gaps between them, caused by sawing and subsequent polishing, are about 8 millimeters wide. This material loss attributable to production equates to around one third and is therefore less than the rates now commonly associated with many forms of modern marble production,” Passchier pointed out. “We can therefore conclude that marble extraction during the imperial period was remarkably efficient.”

The researchers also found that although 42 slabs had been sawn from one original marble block, two had not been fixed to the walls of the hall. “The arrangement of the slabs on the villa walls suggests these slabs were most likely broken, possibly during polishing or their subsequent transportation,” added Passchier. “This would mean that the amount lost due to breakage would be 5 percent, which would also be an astonishingly low figure.” This small loss leads Passchier to assume that the entire marble block had been transported to Ephesus and that the slabs were then cut and polished there.

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Hall of the ancient Roman villa in Ephesus with its restored marble slabs, which have now been examined in more detail. ©: Sinan Ilhan

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One of the analyzed pairs of marble slabs, arranged in typical book-matched fashion. ©: Cees W. Passchier

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Article Source: Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz news release

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