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GSSI, the world leading manufacturer of ground penetrating radar (GPR) equipment, is continuing their partnership with the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation. GSSI archaeologists Dan Welch and Peter Leach brought new GPR equipment to remotely sense what lies beneath Jamestown. Jamestown –known for being the first permanent English settlement in the New World – will be commemorating the 400^th-anniversary of the first representative government and arrival of the first Africans in 2019. To honor these two events, the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation is excavating two sites where these events took place in 1619.

Last spring, Dan and Peter joined Senior archaeologist Dave Givens to help define the landscape of the first Africans. The Angela site, named after one of the first Angolans to arrive in 1619, is located in the “town” portion of Jamestown, a 40-acre landscape that remains largely unexplored. Located on National Park Service (NPS) property, the site consists of seven acres of garden, domestic quarters and storehouses all belonging to Angela’s owner, wealthy Jamestonian Captain William Pierce. “Our goal is to define the lost, 17^th-century landscape in which Angela lived,” said Givens. Archaeologists from GSSI, NPS and Jamestown Rediscovery conducted a GPR survey in part of the town, which was a huge success. “We found more than could be expected of the town,” said Givens “it was a needle in a stack of needles.” The results of the survey not only clearly defined numerous buildings, boundary ditches, and post holes, but it also added critical information on how the town was laid out. 

Building on the success of the work on the first Africans, Dan and Peter returned to Jamestown this summer to help solve a new problem: the site of the first General Assembly in the New World. This site is located inside the Memorial Church, a brick structure built over the original foundation in 1906. Under the floor of the modern church were at least three iterations of churches, all built on top of an original timber-framed structure constructed in 1617. It was in this church that the democratic experiment of representative government first met in 1619. The goal of the archaeologists is to define the 1617 church and the location where the assembly met prior to the space being converted into a museum in the spring of 2019.

It was at the Church dig site that the GSSI and Jamestown Rediscovery team collaborated to answer some critical questions. “The inside of the Church has centuries of material and remains buried inside; essentially making it a time capsule,” Givens said, “We needed to know which (tile) floors were constructed first without digging away the delicate fabric of the structure.” Although the archaeologists are learning as much as they can through excavations, the goal is to preserve as much as possible for the future. “Non-invasive techniques, like GPR, are critical to allowing us to understand this cradle of democracy.” Givens added.

Dan and Peter brought a GPR system that isn’t normally used in archaeology – the StructureScan Mini XT with the Palm XT antenna. The Mini XT is often used in the remote sensing of rebar, post-tension cables and conduits. This high-frequency GPR system was suspected to be able to give higher resolution of local areas in the church to define activity spaces related to the first representative government in 1619.

A specific part of this survey included burials located in areas that denoted high status. Jamestown records indicate that one burial of interest may be the remains of Sir George Yeardly. The StructureScan Mini XT and Palm XT were used to create high-resolution imagery of the skeletal remains prior to excavation. “This is the first time that we have imaged a human skeleton in such detail with GPR. It’s a big deal because it’s not supposed to be possible. I’m excited to see where this type of survey can be used in the archaeology and forensic fields.” Leach stated.

Following excavation of the remains, the FBI and Professor Turi King will conduct DNA tests on the teeth and skeletal remains. Jamestown Rediscovery will continue their research and archaeological dig of the site.

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Above and below: Archaeologists apply new GPR technology to reveal what lies beneath at Jamestown.

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For more information on GSSI, visit www.geophysical.com. Also for more information on the initial media coverage of the church dig, visit https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/jamestown-skeleton-unearthed-only-timeand-sciencewill-reveal-his-true-identity-180969748/ or https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44944073?SThisFB.

About GSSI

Geophysical Survey Systems, Inc. is the world leader in the development, manufacture, and sale of ground penetrating radar (GPR) equipment, primarily for the concrete inspection, utility mapping and locating, road and bridge deck evaluation, geophysics, and archaeology markets. Our equipment is used all over the world to explore the subsurface of the earth and to inspect infrastructure systems non-destructively. GSSI created the first commercial GPR system over 45 years ago and continues to provide the widest range and highest quality GPR equipment available today.

If you liked this article, you may like Digging the Roots of American Slavery, a premium article about the archaeology of the roots of American slavery at Jamestown, published at Popular Archaeology.

UNIVERSITY OF ZURICH—Neanderthals are often depicted as having straight spines and poor posture. However, these prehistoric humans were more similar to us than many assume. University of Zurich researchers have shown that Neanderthals walked upright just like modern humans – thanks to a virtual reconstruction of the pelvis and spine of a very well-preserved Neanderthal skeleton found in France.

An upright, well-balanced posture is one of the defining features of Homo sapiens. In contrast, the first reconstructions of Neanderthals made in the early 20th century depicted them as only walking partially upright. These reconstructions were based on the largely preserved skeleton of an elderly male Neanderthal unearthed in La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France.

Changing perspectives

Since the 1950s, scientists have known that the image of the Neanderthal as a hunched over caveman is not an accurate one. Their similarities to ourselves – both in evolutionary and behavioral terms – have also long been known, but in recent years the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. “Focusing on the differences is back in fashion,” says Martin Haeusler, UZH specialist in evolutionary medicine. For instance, recent studies have used a few isolated vertebrae to conclude that Neanderthals did not yet possess a well-developed double S-shaped spine.

However, a virtual reconstruction of the skeleton from La Chapelle-aux-Saints has now delivered evidence to the contrary. This computer-generated anatomical model was created by the research group led by Martin Haeusler from the University of Zurich and included Erik Trinkaus from Washington University in St. Louis. The researchers were able to show that both the individual in question as well as Neanderthals in general had a curved lumbar region and neck – just like the humans of today.

Sacrum, vertebrae and signs of wear as evidence

When reconstructing the pelvis, the researchers discovered that the sacrum was positioned in the same way as in modern humans. This led them to conclude that Neanderthals possessed a lumbar region with a well-developed curvature. By putting together the individual lumbar and cervical vertebrae, they were able to discern that the spinal curvature was even more pronounced. The very close contact between the spinous processes – the bony projections off the back of each vertebra – became clear, as did the prominent wear marks that were in part caused by the curvature of the spine.

Recognizing similarities

Wear marks in the hip joint of the La Chapelle-aux-Saints skeleton also pointed to the Neanderthals having an upright posture similar to that of modern humans. “The stress on the hip joint and the position of the pelvis is no different than ours,” says Haeusler. This finding is also supported by analyses of other Neanderthal skeletons with sufficient remnants of vertebrae and pelvic bones. “On the whole, there is hardly any evidence that would point to Neanderthals having a fundamentally different anatomy,” explains Haeusler. “Now is the time to recognize the basic similarities between Neanderthals and modern humans and to switch the focus to the subtle biological and behavioral changes that occurred in humans in the late Pleistocene.”

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Virtual reconstruction of the skeleton found in La Chapelle-aux-Saints, based on high-resolution 3D surface scans of the spine and pelvis. Martin Häusler, UZH

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Article Source: University of Zurich news release

AKSON RUSSIAN SCIENCE COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION—Russian scientists studied the Zhokhov site of ancient people, which is located in the high-latitude Arctic, and described in detail the way of life of the ancient people who had lived there. It turned out that, despite the sparsely populated area, the ancient people had communicated with representatives of other territories and had even exchanged various objects with them through some kind of the fairs.

The Arctic is the coldest part of our planet, where there are no favorable conditions for life. The Arctic regions of the Earth are hardly populated by humans, although in some countries, including Russia, the United States and Norway, there are industrial zones. These zones increase the average population density to 0.35 people / km2 but basically it does not exceed 0.03-0.04 people / km2.

Zhokhov Island, located at 76º N in the New Siberian Islands, 440 kilometers north of the modern coast of the East Siberian Sea, belongs to the High Arctic. Here, the Zhokhov site was discovered, considered the earliest evidence for human habitation in the High Arctic. The settlement was daed to 9300-8600 years ago, where 25-50 people lived permanently. In the remote past, Zhokhov island was a part of a vast plain formed due to significant sea level drop during the Last Glacial Maximum. Because of the post-glacial sea-level rise, this plain was flooded and eroded. At present, the Zhokhov site is located in the south-western part of modern Zhokhov island, near the foot of a low (about 120 m) hill protecting it from the severe north-west wind. This place was very convenient for the ancient people. The hill served as an observation point, and because of the proximity to the coast, they always had a supply of wood, carried in by the sea.

The scientists conducted excavations in permafrost and have already investigated a significant part of the site – 571 square meters. In the course of work, many tools were found made of stone, bones, horns, tusks and wood. These are different tools, items of hunting weapons, details of sleds and diverse home utensils. Among the lithic artifacts there are many microprismatic blades, which served as blades for composite tools that served as spear/dart/arrow points and knives. Most of them had been produced of various silicious rocks of local origin, while some of them were made of exotic raw materials unusual for this part of the world, such as obsidian or volcanic glass. The researchers found 79 such items. The ancient people appreciated this material for the best splitting ability among other rocks and valued them for their extremely thin and sharp cutting edges. This material is also highly appreciated by the researchers because each deposit of obsidian has its own unique geochemical signature, which helps in locating the source of the material. With this, it is possible to determine how it moved spatially and thus we can learn more about the life of ancient people.

However, there is no obsidian source nearby Zhokhov Island. The closest area with such a source is near Krasnoye lake in the lower reaches of the Anadyr River in Chukotka, which is some 1,500 km away in a straight line, and the actual travel easily could be more than 2,000 km. It would seem that the ancient people could not travel such a distance physically.

The authors studied the unearthed obsidian objects by the X-ray Fluorescence method. This is a non-destructive examination method that allows one to determine the geochemical properties of the samples and thus determine source locations the using the unique signatures.

“We found that a particular obsidian type was coming to Zhokhov Island from the area of the Krasnoye Lake. This is a considerable distance, and it is hard to imagine that the ancient people could have possibly made such trips some 9000 years ago. Most likely, they met other people at the intermediate points and exchanged products made of obsidian, or enjoyed primitive trade,” said one of the authors of the article, Vladimir Pitulko, RSF project’s principal investigator, Ph.D. in history, senior researcher at the Paleolithic Department of the Institute for the History of Material Culture, Russian Science Foundation.

The researchers also analyzed more than 54,000 faunal remains of hunting and reconstructed the yearly economic cycle of the inhabitants of the Zhokhov site. The occupants of the site were classic terrestrial hunters who practiced reindeer hunting. However, in the winter they hunted polar bears sleeping in bear lairs. For them, that was reliable and a stable way of obtaining a food supply, as bear dens were plentiful in this area.

Previously, scientists investigated the bones of medium-sized canids; these bones indicate the presence of a well-formed dog that lived together with the people of the Zhokhov site. In addition, these animals are similar in size and body weight to the modern breed of sled dogs. Findings of parts of sleds in the form of runners provide evidence that the inhabitants of these territories had a well developed transport system. Thanks to that system, the inhabitants of the Zhokhov site travelled to nearby territories, which were still part of the mainland at that time, and maintained relations with their inhabitants.

Vladimir Pitulko also noted that sites in the mouths of Kolyma and Indigirka rivers could serve as the intermediate points in that trade. In this case, the distance between the exchange points was about 700 km, which is quite possible to travel in the early spring by sled dogs.

Such “meetings” turned into fairs later on as the inhabitants of the north of Eastern Siberia organized them in the 18th-19th centuries, but not only for the exchange of goods. The exchange of information was considered to be of much more importance. In any case, the material evidence for this on Zhokhov island is presented with a minimum of findings. Probably an important result of such meetings was the marriage contacts necessary to secure biological stability of small groups of people who lead a rather isolated life.

“The results of our research* indicate a high level of sociocultural relations that existed among the ancient population of the Arctic in Eastern Siberia 9000 years ago, and about the engagement of people from the Zhokhov site. These people who lived on the edge of the earth were not isolated. On the contrary, contacts within these societies were much more developed than previously thought,” concluded Vladimir Pitulko.

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Products from obsidian found at the Zhokhov site. Vladimir V. Pitulko et al

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Skull of a dog found at the Zhokhov site. Vladimir V. Pitulko et al.

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Article Source: Edited from the AKSON RUSSIAN SCIENCE COMMUNICATION ASSOCIATION news release

*The published study: https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2019.2

If you liked this article, you may also like Pushing the Prehistoric Fringe, a free premium article published previously at Popular Archaeology.

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Segedunum Roman Fort and Museum—A new archaeological report hailed as the definitive full account of the excavations of Hadrian’s Wall at its eastern end has just been published.

Hadrian’s Wall at Wallsend is written by Paul Bidwell OBE, former Head of Archaeology at Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (TWAM), and encapsulates the knowledge gleaned from 28 years of intermittent excavations around Segedunum Roman Fort, Wallsend in North Tyneside.  Taking place between 1988 and 2015, these digs culminated in the Treasury-funded project that saw the rediscovery of the fort’s baths as well as the public display of the full stretch of Wall remains.

The Hadrian’s Wall at Wallsend report represents an account of one of the most comprehensively excavated sections of Hadrian’s Wall anywhere along its 73 mile length.

Paul Bidwell, author, and President of The Arbeia Society said:

 “It has been a privilege to draw together the results of so many years work by so many people. The results are a great advance in our understanding of how Hadrian’s Wall was built and of its later history. They also show that the remains of the Wall in urban Tyneside are just as important as the better-preserved lengths in rural Northumberland.”

Paul Bidwell was Head of Archaeology at TWAM until retirement. He has led and published excavations in Exeter and along Hadrian’s Wall, including at South Shields, Vindolanda, Newcastle, Chesters and Willowford; and has been a contributor to many other publications on aspects of Roman Archaeology, including Roman ceramics.

The driving force behind one of the UK’s most ambitious and controversial reconstruction projects at Arbeia, South Shields Roman Fort, 31 years ago Paul Bidwell led the charge to recreate a fort gate house in its original foundations.

The report has been published by TWAM with The Arbeia Society, a registered charity established in 1992 to support research into and promotion of Roman archaeology in North East England.

North Tyneside’s Elected Mayor, Norma Redfearn CBE, said:

“We welcome the publication of this report. It’s a significant achievement by Paul and one that will help to enrich our knowledge and understanding of one of our most precious heritage sites.”

 Iain Watson, Director of TWAM said:

 “This is a very significant contribution to the body of knowledge of Hadrian’s Wallsend, a huge undertaking, bringing together and translating into contemporary context 28 years of archaeological findings. We congratulate Paul and look forward to the report’s reception.”

Segedunum Roman Fort and Museum is now a visitor attraction incorporating a museum and an extensively excavated Roman ‘archaeological park’ fort site, overlooked by a 35m viewing tower attracting around 50,000 visits a year.

1,900 years ago it was the edge of the Roman Empire, the very cusp of the eastern end of the Empire’s northern frontier. Segedunum – meaning ‘strong place’ – sat on a plateau overlooking the north bank of the River Tyne, the spot chosen strategically to command views east down the river to the coast at South Shields and two miles up the river toward Newcastle upon Tyne.

The 73 mile wall, now a World Heritage Site, was constructed on the orders of Emperor Hadrian in AD122 and originally ended at the River Tyne’s lowest bridgeable point – Newcastle upon Tyne – until two or three years later when it was extended to Wallsend.

Only 7% of the original wall is visible today and only about 0.5% of its entire length has been excavated using modern archaeological techniques, though much more can be seen of the forts, milecastles, turrets and bridges along its line.

The 80 meter stretch at Wallsend that has been scrutinized by archaeologists over the years lies 50 meters west of the Segedunum fort. Its first contemporary digs were led by the late Charles Daniels of Newcastle University in the mid-1970s. 

The Wall at Wallsend, 2.26m wide, was built without mortar but with carefully-laid courses of stone work. Separate groups of legionaries built lengths of 30 Roman feet (about 9m). They were also tasked with building an aqueduct which ran through the Wall and supplied the baths outside the fort. Markers for building plots running up to the back of the Wall were also found. They show that a settlement containing civilian and some military buildings was laid out at the same time that the Wall and the adjacent fort were built.

In the early third century the Wall at Segedunum was destroyed by a catastrophic flood which also washed away part of the baths and undermined the fort wall. The aqueduct was replaced and the Wall rebuilt, probably on the instructions of Septimius Severus in about AD 208; this emperor, rather than Hadrian, was credited by late-Roman writers as the original builder of the Wall. Shorter lengths of the Wall collapsed and were rebuilt on three subsequent occasions. One of these later reconstructions reused masonry from various buildings, including one of the fort gates, a temple possibly dedicated to Diana, and a bath house.

The volume also includes an account of the building of the replica section of Hadrian’s Wall at Segedunum, constructed in 1996.

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Wallsend Culvert taking aqueduct channel through the wall in 2000. Segedunum Roman Fort and Museum

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Article Source: Edited from Segedunum Roman Fort and Museum news release

FECYT – SPANISH FOUNDATION FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY—In the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, between the third and second millennium BC, a widespread funeral practice consisted in burying humans with animals. Scientists have discovered that both foxes and dogs were domesticated, as their diet was similar to that of their owners.

The discovery of four foxes and a large number of dogs at the Can Roqueta (Barcelona) and Minferri (Lleida) sites stands out among the many examples of tombs in different parts of the north-eastern peninsula. These burials reveal a generalized funeral practice that proliferated in the Early to Middle Bronze Age: that of burying humans together with domestic animals.

What is most striking about these sites is the way of burying the dead in large silos, along with their dogs and a few foxes. “We discovered that in some cases the dogs received a special kind of food. We believe this is linked to their function as working dogs. Besides, one of the foxes shows signs of having already been a domestic animal in those times,” Aurora Grandal-d’Anglade, co-author of a study on the relationship between humans and dogs through their diet published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, has said to to Sinc.

By means of studying stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in bone collagen, as well as archaeological, archaeobiological and anthropological studies, researchers have been able to compare the diets of buried animals with their owners´ diet. A total of 37 dogs, 19 domestic ungulates and 64 humans were analyzed. The results indicate that the dogs’ diet was similar to that of humans.

The isotopic study of the Minferri foxes shows a varied diet: in some cases it looks similar to that of the dogs at that site, and in another it looks more like that of a wild animal or one that had little contact with humans.

“The case of the Can Roqueta fox is very special, because it is an old animal, with a broken leg. The fracture is still in its healing process, and shows signs of having been immobilized (cured) by humans. The feeding of this animal is very unusual, as it is more akin to a puppy dog’s. We interpret it as a domestic animal that lived for a long time with humans,” explains Grandal.

Large dogs used for transporting loads

The study* points out that, in some particular cases in Can Roqueta, there was a specific cereal-rich food preparation for larger dogs probably used for carrying loads, and for at least one of the foxes.

“These specimens also show signs of disorders in the spinal column linked to the transport of heavy objects. Humans were probably looking for a high-carbohydrate diet because the animals developed a more active job, which required immediate calorie expenditure. It may seem strange that dogs were basically fed with cereals, but this was already recommended by the first-century Hispano-Roman agronomist Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella , in his work De re rustica”, says Silvia Albizuri Canadell, co-author of the work and archaeozoologist at the University of Barcelona.

Other animals, such as cows, sheep or goats are noted for an herbivorous diet. Their function was probably to provide milk, meat or wool rather than serve as a work force. “The horse was not yet widespread in those societies, no traces of it can be found until later times,” adds the scientist.

In general, humans and dogs show somewhat higher isotopic signals than ungulates, which indicates a certain (not very high) consumption of animal protein, “not necessarily much meat; they could be, for example, derived from milk,” explains Grandal. Archaeological objects included sieves that served as ‘cheese making devices’.

Moreover, men seem to have included more meat than women in their diet. As for dogs, their diet may have been mainly from leftovers of what humans ate, mostly more similar to that of women and children. “That’s why we thought they were more linked to these domestic environments,” says the researcher. There are many ethnographic parallels that indicate this relationship between women and dogs.

Feeding and treatment of foxes and dogs

The fundamental role of dogs during the Bronze Age, when livestock, along with agriculture, constituted the basis of the economy, was that of the surveillance and guidance of herds. They were also responsible for taking care of human settlements, given the risk posed by the frequent presence of dangerous animals such as wolves or bears.

“The characteristics of dogs include their great intelligence, easy trainability and, undoubtedly, their defensive behavior. As if that were not enough, this animal was used until the nineteenth century AD in North America, Canada and Europe for light transport on its back and for dragging carts and sleds. It also functioned as a pack animal on the Peninsula during the Bronze Age,” Albizuri Canadell claims.

Some archaeological specimens from North America show bone disorders that stem from the pulling of ‘travois’. There are also accounts by the first colonizers of the use of dogs in these tasks by Indian populations until the nineteenth century AD, although they had not been identified in Europe until a few years ago.

“It was the Can Roqueta specimens under study that triggered the alarm about the use of this animal for light loads since antiquity, and they’re an exceptional case in Europe,” says Albizuri Canadell.

Similar pathologies have also been recently identified in the vertebrae of Siberian Palaeolithic dogs, leading one to think that one of the first tasks since their early domestication was the pulling of sleds and travois, in addition to hunting.

Its role as a transport animal in the first migrations and human movements through glacial Europe could have been fundamental and much more important than believed until recently.

The reason for animal offerings

Exceptional findings, such as those of tomb #88 and #405 of the Minferri site (Lleida), show that during the Bronze Age there were already well-differentiated funeral treatments in human communities.

“In the two structures mentioned above, the remains of three individuals were found together with animal offerings. In tomb #88 there was the body of an old man with the remains of a whole cow and the legs of up to seven goats. The remains of a young woman with the offering of a whole goat, two foxes and a bovine horn were also found,” states Ariadna Nieto Espinet, an archaeologist from the University of Lleida and also the co-author of the study.

Structure #405 uncovered the body of an individual, possibly a woman, accompanied by the whole bodies of two bovines and two dogs. “We still don’t know why only a few people would have had the right or privilege to be buried with this type of offering, unlike what happens with the vast majority of burials,” the expert points out.

In Can Roqueta, clear differences have also been observed in the deposits of domestic animals within the tombs of adults, both men and women, which are even reflected in children’s tombs. From this we can infer the existence of an inheritance of social status from birth.

“It is tempting to think that if we understand domestic animals as a very important part of the agro- pastoral agro-shepherding economy of the Bronze Age and of the belongings of some people in life, these could be an indicator of the wealth of the deceased individual or of his clan or family,” argues Nieto Espinet.

“It seems that species such as bovines and dogs, two of the most recurring animals in funeral offerings, are those that might have played a fundamental role in the economy and work as well as in the symbolic world, becoming elements of ostentation, prestige and protection,” she concludes.

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Artistic representation of a woman of the Bronze Age accompanied by a dog and a fox. J. A. Peñas

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Article Source: FECYT – SPANISH FOUNDATION FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY news release

*Aurora Grandal-d’Anglade, Silvia Albizuri, Ariadna Nieto, Tona Majó, Bibiana Agustí, Natalia Alonso, Ferran Antolín, Joan B. López, Andreu Moya, Alba Rodríguez y Antoni Palomo. “Dogs and foxes in Early-Middle Bronze Age funerary structures in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula: human control of canid diet at the sites of Can Roqueta (Barcelona) and Minferri (Lleida)” Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS—Long before Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and even MySpace, early Mississippian Mound cultures in America’s southern Appalachian Mountains shared artistic trends and technologies across regional networks that functioned in similar ways as modern social media, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

“Just as we have our own networks of ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, societies that existed in North America between 1,200 and 350 years ago had their own information sharing networks,” said Jacob Lulewicz, lecturer of archaeology in the Department of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences.

“Our study found a way to reconstruct these indigenous communication networks,” he said. “Our analysis shows how these networks laid the groundwork for Native American political systems that began developing as far back as 600 A.D.”

Embargoed for release Feb. 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study utilizes sophisticated social network analysis to map social and political connections that helped unite friends and families in dozens of Native American villages well before the arrival of European explorers.

The findings are based on a messaging archive that is preserved not in bytes, but in bits of pottery sherds — fragments — unearthed over many years in archaeology digs at dozens of Mississippian culture sites scattered across southern Appalachia.

Focusing on subtle evolving changes in the technologies used to temper and strengthen pottery and the cultural symbols used to decorate them, the study provides a detailed chronological map of how new pottery techniques signified connections between these communities.

The ceramics database includes 276,626 sherds from 43 sites across eastern Tennessee, and 88,705 sherds from 41 sites across northern Georgia. The collection represents pottery created between 800 and 1650 A.D., a period that saw the gradual emergence and later decline of powerful chiefdoms that controlled wide networks of villages in the region.

The study focuses on villages clustered around the site of Etowah in Bartow County, Georgia, an important Mississippian community that included several low earthen mounds with large ceremonial buildings. It served as the regional seat of social, political, economic and religious power across the region — influence that reached its peak between 1050 to 1325 A.D.

These chiefdoms were still in place when the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto became one of the first Europeans to visit the region in 1540 A.D.

De Soto’s accounts of autonomous villages loosely bound together under the influence of a single powerful chief, then residing at the town of Coosa in what is today northern Georgia, have long influenced how historians characterize the social and political structures of these and other early Eastern North American societies.

Lulewicz’ findings suggest that the ruling elites drew their power from social networks created by the masses.

The emergence of powerful Native American chiefdoms and the centralized leadership, elaborate religious movements and institutionalized inequality that came with them, he argues, were built upon foundations created by the wider, pre-existing social networks of common people — systems that proved to be more stable and durable than any interactions dictated by elite chiefs.

“What I show in the paper is that while we see things like the emergence of super powerful chiefs and the rise of major economic inequalities, the very foundations of society — especially relationships and networks of kinship and family and reciprocity — remained virtually unchanged over 1,000 years,” Lulewicz said. “That is, even though elite interests and political strategies waxed and waned and collapsed and flourished, very basic relationships and networks were some of the strongest, most durable aspects of society.”

His findings suggest that strong social connections between common people have always played an important role in helping societies guard themselves against the vagaries of unpredictable leaders and ruling classes.

Pointing to the role that digital social networks and social media play in contemporary revolutions, and how modern states are often quick to monitor, control or even shut down access to these virtual networks, shows that our connections continue to be valuable social instruments, he said.

“This is super interesting — at least to me as a social scientist — for understanding how political movements actually play out,” he said. “It doesn’t come down to any particular, innate attribute of leaders and elites. What is comes down to is how those individuals are able to leverage the networks in which they are embedded. Even though chiefs emerge at about 1000 A.D., over the next 650 years, chiefs actually shift their strategies of political and economic control. They tap into different parts of their networks, or leverage their connections in very different ways throughout time.”

“Because these very basic networks were so durable, they allowed these societies — especially common people — to buffer against and mediate the uncertainties associated with major political and economic change. They may have said, ‘You go live on top of that huge mound and do your sacred rituals, and we will go about life as usual for the most part.’ These communication networks served as a social constant for these people and allowed their cultures to persist for thousands of years even across transformations that could have been catastrophic.”

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A map of the southern Appalachian region, with the archaeological sites used in this study indicated. The sites are spread across both eastern Tennessee and northern Georgia and date to the period between AD 800 and 1650. Jacob Lulewicz

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Examples of the kinds of pottery produced by people living across southern Appalachia between AD 800 and 1650. The unique symbols were stamped onto the pottery when the clay was still wet using carved wooden paddles. These designs, along with the varying characteristics of the specific kinds of clay used to produce the pottery, were used to reconstruct social networks among these communities. Jacob Lulewicz

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Article Source: Washington University in St. Louis news release

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY—Neanderthals’ diets are highly debated: they are traditionally considered carnivores and hunters of large mammals, but this hypothesis has recently been challenged by numerous pieces of evidence of plant consumption. Ancient diets are often reconstructed using nitrogen isotope ratios, a tracer of the trophic level, the position an organism occupies in a food chain. Neanderthals are apparently occupying a high position in terrestrial food chains, exhibiting slightly higher ratios than carnivores (like hyenas, wolves or foxes) found at the same sites. It has been suggested that these slightly higher values were due to the consumption of mammoth or putrid meat. And we also know some examples of cannibalism for different Neanderthal sites.

Paleolithic modern humans, who arrived in France shortly after the Neanderthals had disappeared, exhibit even higher nitrogen isotope ratios than Neanderthals. This is classically interpreted as the signature of freshwater fish consumption. Fishing is supposed to be a typical modern human activity, but again, a debate exists whether or not Neanderthals were eating aquatic resources. When Klervia Jaouen, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and first author of the study, and collaborators discovered high nitrogen isotope ratios in the collagen of two Neanderthals falling in the range of modern humans, they wondered whether this could a signature of regular fish consumption.

The Neanderthals come from Les Cottés and Grotte du Renne, in France, two sites where no fish remains have been found. However, the measurements were performed on a tooth root, which recorded the diet between four to eight years of the individual’s life, and on a bone of a one-year-old baby. These high nitrogen isotope ratios could also indicate that the Neanderthals were not weaned at this age, contradicting in the case of the Les Cottés Neanderthal (the one whose tooth root was analyzed) former pieces of evidence of early weaning around one year of age. In other words, many explanations (e.g. freshwater fish consumption, putrid meat, late weaning or even cannibalism) could account for such high values, and identifying the factor involved could change our understanding of Neanderthals’ lifestyles.

Analysis of amino acids

In order to explain these exceptionally high nitrogen isotope ratios, Jaouen and collaborators decided to use a novel isotope technique. Compound-specific isotope analyses (CSIA) allow to separately analyze the amino acids contained in the collagen. Some of the amino acid isotope compositions are influenced by environmental factors and the isotope ratios of the food eaten. Other amino acid isotope ratios are in addition influenced by the trophic level. The combination of these amino acid isotope ratios allows to decipher the contribution of the environment and the trophic level to the final isotope composition of the collagen.

“Using this technique, we discovered that the Neanderthal of Les Cottés had a purely terrestrial carnivore diet: she was not a late weaned child or a regular fish eater, and her people seem to have mostly hunted reindeers and horses”, says Jaouen. “We also confirmed that the Grotte du Renne Neanderthal was a breastfeeding baby whose mother was a meat eater”. Interestingly, this conclusion matches with the observations of the zooarcheologists.

The study also illustrates the importance of this new isotope technique for future investigations into ancient human and Neanderthal diets. Using compound-specific isotope analysis allowed the researchers not to misinterpret the global nitrogen isotope ratio which was exceptionally high. Michael P. Richards of the Simon Fraser University in Canada comments: “Previous isotope results indicated a primarily carnivorous diet for Neanderthals, which matches the extensive archaeological record of animal remains found and deposited by Neanderthals. There has recently been some frankly bizarre interpretations of the bulk isotope data ranging from Neanderthals primarily subsisting on aquatic plants to eating each other, both in direct contrast to the archaeological evidence. These new compound-specific isotope measurements confirm earlier interpretations of Neanderthal diets as being composed of mainly large herbivores, although of course they also consumed other foods such as plants.”

Monotonous diet

In addition to confirming the Neanderthals as terrestrial carnivores, this work seems to indicate that these hominins had a very monotonous diet over time, even once they had started to change their material industry, possibly under the influence of modern humans. The baby Neanderthal of Grotte du Renne was indeed found associated to the Châtelperronian, a lithic technology similar to that of modern humans. Late Neanderthals were therefore very humanlike, painting caves and wearing necklaces, but unlike their sister species, did not seem to enjoy fishing.

Jean-Jacques Hublin, director of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, comments: “This study confirms that when Homo sapiens arrived in Europe and met Neanderthals, they were in direct competition for the exploitation of large mammals”. “The systematic use of the combination of CSIA and radiocarbon dating will help to understand if the two species really had the same subsistence strategies during those crucial times”, concludes Sahra Talamo, a researcher at the Leipzig Max Planck Institute.

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Tooth of an adult Neanderthal from Les Cottés in France. Her diet consisted mainly of the meat of large herbivore mammals. © MPI f. Evolutionary Anthropology/ A. Le Cabec

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Article Source: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology news release

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MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY—A multidisciplinary study has found evidence for humans hunting small mammals in the forests of Sri Lanka at least 45,000 years ago. The researchers discovered the remains of small mammals, including primates, with evidence of cut-marks and burning at the oldest archaeological site occupied by humans in Sri Lanka, alongside sophisticated bone and stone tools. The hunting of such animals is an example of the uniquely human adaptability that allowed H. sapiens to rapidly colonize a series of extreme environments apparently untouched by its hominin relatives.

In a new paper published in Nature Communications, an international team of scientists has revealed novel evidence for the unique adaptability of Homo sapiens. The study, led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, alongside colleagues from Sri Lankan and other international institutions, shows that human populations were able to specialize in the hunting of small arboreal animals for tens of thousands of years. This is the oldest and longest record of sophisticated, active primate hunting by foragers. This work also highlights the distinctive ecological capacities of H. sapiens relative to its hominin ancestors and relatives.

Tropical rainforests: a unique challenge

Recent research has demonstrated that our species adapted to a diversity of extreme environments as they spread around the world, including deserts, high altitude settings, palaeoarctic conditions, and tropical forests. Previously, however, discussion of the migration of our species into Europe, the Middle East, and Asia has often focused on our increased efficiency in hunting, butchering, and consuming medium to large game in open ‘savanna’ settings. Alternatively, coastal settings have been seen as important sources of protein, stimulating human evolution and migration.

Tropical rainforests have been somewhat neglected in discussions of human migrations and dispersal. In public and academic perception, these environments are often seen as isolated barriers to human movement, with disease, dangerous animals, and limited resources all posing challenges. In particular, when compared to the large animals of open savannas, small, fast forest monkeys and squirrels are difficult to capture and provide smaller amounts of protein.

Small mammals and hunting complexity

The procurement of small mammals has long been considered a feature of technological and behavioral ‘complexity’ or ‘modernity’ unique to our species. Previous research in Europe and West Asia has linked increased capture and consumption of agile small mammals both to human population growth and to climatically-driven crises. Traditionally, these have been considered to be particularly extreme ~20,000 years ago.

However, the onset and behavioral context of small mammal hunting in other parts of the world, particularly Asia, has remained poorly studied. This is particularly the case outside of temperate environments. “Over the last two decades, research has highlighted human occupation of tropical rainforests in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Melanesia at least as early as 45,000 years ago, so the potential for human reliance on small mammals in these settings prior to 20,000 years ago seems likely,” says co-senior author Dr. Patrick Roberts of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

A Sri Lankan specialty

Sri Lanka has been a prominent part of discussions of early human adaptations to tropical rainforests, though there has been a general lack of systematic, detailed analysis of animal remains associated with archaeological sites on the island. For the current study, the researchers produced new chronological information, analysis of animal remains, and studies of lithic and bone tool assemblages from Fa-Hien Lena Cave, the site of the earliest fossil and archaeological evidence of H. sapiens in Sri Lanka.

“The results demonstrate specialized, sophisticated hunting of semi-arboreal and arboreal monkey and squirrel populations from 45,000 years ago in a tropical rainforest environment,” says Oshan Wedage, lead author of the study, of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. Co-author Dr. Noel Amano, also of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, adds, “This was complemented by sophisticated bone tool technologies which were, in turn, created from the bones of hunted monkeys.”

Fine-tuned adaptations, not ‘monkey business’

Together, the results of this new work demonstrate a highly tuned focus on monkey and other small mammal hunting over 45,000 years. A sustained focus on adult monkeys throughout this time period suggests that this strategy continued to be sustainable during this lengthy period and that the tropical rainforests were not over-taxed by human presence and practices.

“This ‘monkey menu’ was not a one-off, and the use of these difficult-to-catch resources is one more example of the behavioral and technological flexibility of H. sapiens,” says Prof. Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, a senior author of the study. Further detailed analysis of the tools and animal remains left behind by early members of our species promises to yield more insights into the variety of strategies that enabled H. sapiens to colonize the world’s continents and left us the last hominin standing.

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Exterior view of the entrance of Fa-Hien Lena cave in Sri Lanka. O. Wedage

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Tools manufactured from monkey bones and teeth recovered from the Late Pleistocene layers of Fa Hien Cave, Sri Lanka. N. Amano

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Gray tufted langur (S. priam), one of the monkey species targeted by early humans that settled in Fa Hien Cave, Sri Lanka. O. Wedage

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Article Source: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History news release

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UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON—Excavations at two quarries in Wales, known to be the source of the Stonehenge ‘bluestones’, provide new evidence of megalith quarrying 5,000 years ago, according to a new UCL-led study.

Geologists have long known that 42 of Stonehenge’s smaller stones, known as ‘bluestones’, came from the Preseli hills in Pembrokeshire, west Wales. Now a new study published in Antiquity pinpoints the exact locations of two of these quarries and reveals when and how the stones were quarried.

The discovery has been made by a team of archaeologists and geologists from UCL, Bournemouth University, University of Southampton, University of the Highlands and Islands and National Museum of Wales, which have been investigating the sites for eight years.

Professor Mike Parker Pearson (UCL Archaeology) and leader of the team, said: “What’s really exciting about these discoveries is that they take us a step closer to unlocking Stonehenge’s greatest mystery – why its stones came from so far away.”

“Every other Neolithic monument in Europe was built of megaliths brought from no more than 10 miles away.

We’re now looking to find out just what was so special about the Preseli hills 5,000 years ago, and whether there were any important stone circles here, built before the bluestones were moved to Stonehenge.”

The largest quarry was found almost 180 miles away from Stonehenge on the outcrop of Carn Goedog, on the north slope of the Preseli hills.

“This was the dominant source of Stonehenge’s spotted dolerite, so-called because it has white spots in the igneous blue rock. At least five of Stonehenge’s bluestones, and probably more, came from Carn Goedog,” said geologist Dr Richard Bevins (National Museum of Wales).

In the valley below Carn Goedog, another outcrop at Craig Rhos-y-felin was identified by Dr Bevins and fellow geologist Dr Rob Ixer (UCL Archaeology) as the source of one of the types of rhyolite – another type of igneous rock – found at Stonehenge.

According to the new study*, the bluestone outcrops are formed of natural, vertical pillars. These could be eased off the rock face by opening up the vertical joints between each pillar. Unlike stone quarries in ancient Egypt, where obelisks were carved out of the solid rock, the Welsh quarries were easier to exploit.

Neolithic quarry workers needed only to insert wedges into the ready-made joints between pillars, then lower each pillar to the foot of the outcrop.

Although most of their equipment is likely to have consisted of perishable ropes and wooden wedges, mallets and levers, they left behind other tools such as hammer stones and stone wedges.

“The stone wedges are made of imported mudstone, much softer than the hard dolerite pillars. An engineering colleague has suggested that hammering in a hard wedge could have created stress fractures, causing the thin pillars to crack. Using a soft wedge means that, if anything were to break, it would be the wedge and not the pillar,” said Professor Parker Pearson.

Archaeological excavations at the foot of both outcrops uncovered the remains of man-made stone and earth platforms, with each platform’s outer edge terminating in a vertical drop of about a metre.

“Bluestone pillars could be eased down onto this platform, which acted as a loading bay for lowering them onto wooden sledges before dragging them away,” said Professor Colin Richards (University of the Highlands and Islands), who has excavated Britain’s only other identified megalith quarry in the Orkney islands, off the north coast of Scotland.

An important aim of Professor Parker Pearson’s team was to date megalith-quarrying at the two outcrops. In the soft sediment of a hollowed-out track leading from the loading bay at Craig Rhos-y-felin, and on the artificial platform at Carn Goedog, the team recovered pieces of charcoal dating to around 3000 BC.

The team now thinks that Stonehenge was initially a circle of rough, unworked bluestone pillars set in pits known as the Aubrey Holes, near Stonehenge, and that the sarsens (sandstone blocks) were added some 500 years later.

The new discoveries also cast doubt on a popular theory that the bluestones were transported by sea to Stonehenge.

“Some people think that the bluestones were taken southwards to Milford Haven and placed on rafts or slung between boats and then paddled up the Bristol Channel and along the Bristol Avon towards Salisbury Plain. But these quarries are on the north side of the Preseli hills so the megaliths could have simply gone overland all the way to Salisbury Plain,” said Professor Kate Welham (Bournemouth University).

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The Stonehenge quarry. UCL

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Article Source: University College London news release

*’Megalith quarries for Stonehenge’s bluestones’–Mike Parker Pearson, Josh Pollard, Colin Richards, Kate Welham, Chris Casswell, Charles French, Duncan Schlee, Dave Shaw, Ellen Simmons, Adam Stanford, Richard Bevins & Rob Ixer.

PENN STATE—Australia has the highest rate of mammal extinction in the world. Resettlement of indigenous communities resulted in the spread of invasive species, the absence of human-set fires, and a general cascade in the interconnected food web that led to the largest mammalian extinction event ever recorded. In this case, the absence of direct human activity on the landscape may be the cause of the extinctions, according to a Penn State anthropologist.

“I was motivated by the mystery that has occurred in the last 50 years in Australia,” said Rebecca Bliege Bird, professor of anthropology, Penn State. “The extinction of small-bodied mammals does not follow the same pattern we usually see with people changing the landscape and animals disappearing.”

Australia’s Western Desert, where Bird and her team work, is the homeland of the Martu, the traditional owners of a large region of the Little and Great Sandy Desert. During the mid-20th century, many Martu groups were first contacted in the process of establishing a missile testing range and resettled in missions and pastoral stations beyond their desert home. During their hiatus from the land, many native animals went extinct.

In the 1980s, many families returned to the desert to reestablish their land rights. They returned to livelihoods centered around hunting and gathering. Today, in a hybrid economy of commercial and customary resources, many Martu continue their traditional subsistence and burning practices in support of cultural commitments to their country.

Twenty-eight Australian endemic land mammal species have become extinct since European settlement. Local extinctions of mammals include the burrowing bettong and the banded hare wallaby, both of which were ubiquitous in the desert before the indigenous exodus, Bird told attendees at the 2019 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science today (Feb. 17) in Washington, D.C.

“During the pre-1950, pre-contact period, Martu had more generalized diets than any animal species in the region,” said Bird. “When people returned, they were still the most generalized, but many plant and animal species were dropped from the diet.”

She also notes that prior to European settlement, the dingo, a native Australian dog, was part of Martu life. The patchy landscape created by Martu hunting fires may have been important for dingo survival. Without people, the dingo did not flourish and could not exclude populations of smaller invasive predators—cats and foxes—that threatened to consume all the native wildlife.

Bird and her team looked at the food webs—interactions of who eats what and who feeds whom, including humans—for the pre-contact and for the post-evacuation years. Comparisons of these webs show that the absence of indigenous hunters in the web makes it easier for invasive species to infiltrate the area and for some native animals to become endangered or extinct. This is most likely linked to the importance of traditional landscape burning practices, said Bird.

Indigenous Australians in the arid center of the continent often use fire to facilitate their hunting success. Much of Australia’s arid center is dominated by a hummock grass called spinifex.

In areas where Martu hunt more actively, hunting fires increase the patchiness of vegetation at different stages of regrowth, and buffer the spread of wildfires. Spinifex grasslands where Martu do not often hunt, exhibit a fire regime with much larger fires. Under an indigenous fire regime, the patchiness of the landscape boosts populations of native species such as dingo, monitor lizard and kangaroo, even after accounting for mortality due to hunting.

“The absence of humans creates big holes in the network,” said Bird. “Invading becomes easier for invasive species and it becomes easier for them to cause extinctions.” The National Science Foundation and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology supported this work.

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Satellite view of Australia. Wikimedia Commons

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Article Source: Penn State University news release

SANTA FE INSTITUTE—In two back-to-back symposia at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, Feb. 17 at 1:30 and 3:30 PM respectively, a cross-disciplinary cohort of scientists presented the first comprehensive investigations of how humans interacted with plant and animal species in different cultures worldwide through time. By compiling and comparing detailed data from pre-industrial and modern societies, the researchers are sketching a picture of humans’ roles and impacts in sustainable and unsustainable socio-ecological systems.

“Almost all food webs that have been compiled and studied have been put together without including humans,” says Jennifer Dunne (Santa Fe Institute), an ecologist and complex systems scientist who is leading the project with archaeologist Stefani Crabtree (Santa Fe Institute and Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity). “It takes a lot of time and effort to put these kinds of detailed data together. So even though ecologists have been studying food webs for decades, we’re only now in a position where we can start to rigorously compare human roles and impacts across different systems to understand sustainability in new kinds of ways,” says Dunne.

What do we learn when we do include humans?

As part of her presentation during the second symposium, Dunne revealed initial results from a comparison of food webs that explicitly include humans across several socioecological systems. Three are pre-industrial systems —the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, the Pueblo U.S. Southwest, and the Western Desert of Australia, and one is modern—the Tagus Estuary of Portugal. Given the diversity of cultures, ecologies, climates, and time periods represented in the data, Dunne suggests that we can start to learn “something more general about human roles in, and impacts on, ecosystems” by comparing these systems. For example, humans are often super-generalists compared to other predators—they feed on a huge variety of different species.

In some systems, humans as super-generalist predators can fit into ecosystems without causing extinctions or major environmental degradation. For example, according to Dunne’s pioneering analysis published in Scientific Reports in 2016, the Sanak Island (Alaska) Aleut fed on a whopping 122 of 513 taxa in the nearshore marine ecosystem. However, like other predators, they switched from their favorite prey—sea lions—to shellfish, kelp, or whatever was readily available when the weather did not allow them to hunt in open water. “Prey-switching is very stabilizing for food webs,” Dunne explains, “because it allows prey taxa populations to recover from exploitation, as the predator’s focus shifts to other prey that are easier to forage or hunt given current conditions.” That, plus limited use of hunting technology and other factors helped to minimize potential negative impacts of humans on the Sanak ecosystem—during approximately 7,000 years of human habitation, there is no evidence for any long-term local extinctions.

Humans also stabilized the desert ecosystem of Western Australia, where Crabtree and Rebecca Bliege Bird (Pennsylvania State University) are examining how the Martu Aboriginal foragers are embedded in their surrounding ecosystems. According to Crabtree, Martu Aboriginal foragers stabilized their ecosystem by providing several ecosystem services such as lighting small brush fires to expose the burrows of small prey. The scorched patches left on the landscape served as natural fire breaks against larger, more devastating wildfires. When the Martu were removed from their homeland in the mid-20th century, wildfires increased dramatically in size, and several small mammals, like the Rufous Hare-wallaby, went extinct.

Bird presented a newly published network analysis for the Aboriginal foragers during the first symposium, following Andrew Dugmore (University of Edinburgh) and George Hambrecht’s (University of Maryland) presentation of how Norse people in Iceland and Greenland used governance to mitigate anthropogenic degradation of the ecosystem.

Just as humans can have a stabilizing effect on their ecosystems, they can also play a destructive role. In the first symposium, archaeologist Jennifer Kahn (College of William and Mary) presented her ongoing historical analysis of the French Polynesian islands, including two cases where human interactions with their surroundings led to markedly different outcomes—both for the ecosystems and the societies embedded within them.

Crabtree, in the second symposium, presented her analysis of the 700-year trajectory of the Ancestral Pueblo people in the Southwest U.S., and the extent to which human interactions with the ecosystem eventually led them to depopulate the region.

Iain McKechnie (University of Victoria and Hakai Institute) then presented anthropological and archaeological data that illustrates the resilience of the indigenous peoples of the North American Northwest Coast as they interacted with both marine and terrestrial species.

In the final talk, Dunne cross-compared these and other systems and synthesized what we know, so far, about humanity’s roles across ecosystems and time periods. In addition to presenting new results about human roles in food webs, she also discussed new work that moves beyond feeding interactions to consider the myriad ways that humans interact with biodiversity in both simple and complex ways, for example by using species for medicine, shelter, tools, clothing, fuel, ritual purposes, and trade.

“Understanding ecosystems with humans as part of them is essential,” Crabtree says. “We’re not going anywhere. We are here to stay. We are going to keep impacting ecosystems, and we need to understand the ways that our impacts can lead to more sustainable and resilient systems.”

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In this depiction of the nearshore food web of Sanak Island, Alaska, spheres represent species or groups of species, and the links between them show feeding relationships. The colors of the spheres indicate types of taxa: green shows algae; blue shows seagrass, lichen, protozoa, bacteria, and detritus; yellow shows invertebrates such as snails, crabs, mussels, and octopus; orange shows fishes; purple shows birds; and red shows mammals such as sea otters. The red node near the center top of the image represents human hunter-gatherers (Aleut). It is the first comprehensive food web to include Homo sapiens. Image created by J.A. Dunne

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Article Source: Santa Fe Institute news release

UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA—Coinciding with the Pit Grave culture (4200-3600 years before our era), coming from Southern Europe, the Neolithic communities of the north-eastern Iberian Peninsula started a ceremonial activity related to the sacrifice and burial of dogs. The high amount of cases that are recorded in Catalonia suggests it was a general practice and it proves the tight relationship between humans and these animals, which, apart from being buried next to them, were fed a similar diet to humans’.

This is the conclusion of a research study* led by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the University of Barcelona (UB), which provides new data to describe and understand the presence of dogs in sacred and funerary spaces of the middle Neolithic in the Iberian Peninsula, and gets an insight on the relation between humans and these animals. The study has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

The study analyzes the remains of twenty-six dogs found in funerary structures from four sites and necropolises of the Barcelona region, and has conducted an isotopic analysis for eighteen of them, to determine whether the relation with their owners included other aspects, such as a control of their diet.

Dogs were aged between one month and six years old, predominating those between twelve and eighteen years old, and had homogeneous sizes, between forty and fifty centimeters high. These were mainly buried in circular graves, together or near the humans, although some have been found separately in nearby graves and one was found at the entrance of the mortuary chamber. The skeletons were semi-complete in anatomical connection -only one was found as full, near a kid- without bone fractures or marks due to manipulation by evisceration, or any signs of predators.

“Choosing young animals aged up to one year old suggests there was an intention in the sacrifice. Although we can think it was for human consumption, the fact that these were buried near humans suggests there was an intention and a direct relation with death and the funerary ritual”, says Silvia Albizuri, researcher from the Prehistoric Studies and Research Seminar (SERP) of the UB and first author of the article. “This hypothesis is consistent, in addition, with the fact that they are found in an area of cultural influence that gives a symbolic value to the dog during that period, such as Southern France or Northern Italy”.

A diet rich in cereal and vegetables, controlled by humans

The isotopic study of the remains and its comparison with humans’ and other herbivorous animals’ diet in the site shows the diet of most of these animals was similar to the diet of humans, with a high presence of cereal, such as corn, and vegetables. In two puppies and two adult dogs, nutrition was mainly vegetarian and only a few cases had a diet rich in animal protein.

“These data show a close coexistence between dogs and humans, and probably a specific preparation of their nutrition, which is clear in the cases of a diet based on vegetables. They would probably do so to obtain a better control of their tasks on security and to save the time they would have to spend looking for food. This management would explain the homogeneity of the size of the animals”, says Eulàlia Subirà, researcher in the Research Group on Biological Anthropology (GREAB) of UAB.

Little-studied animals

The presence of dogs in prehistoric disposal structures is not common, which makes it a little-studied group among domestic animals. Their presence in graves is even lower. This is why the presence of these skeletons in anatomical connection like the ones in this study is considered exceptional.

There have been older cases of individual isolated burials in the Iberian Peninsula, but only later documented as a general practice related to the funerary ritual. This ritual spread and lasted during a hundred years, until the Iron Age.

Regarding food, there are only a few studies, with some cases of mixed diets in France, Anatolia and China. “Recently, we saw dogs have ten genes with a key function for starch and fat digestion, which would make the carbohydrates assimilation more efficient than its ancestor’s, the wolf. Our study helps to reach the conclusion that during the Neolithic, several vegetables were introduced to their nutrition”, notes Eulàlia Subirà.

The study allows reinforcing the idea that dogs played an important role in the economy of Neolithic populations, taking care of herds and settlements. That may be the vital relation that turned them into a companion in death or symbols in funerary rituals, the researchers conclude.

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Top: remains of adult dog in partial anatomical connection in La Serreta. Bottom: dog in anatomical connection between human skeletons, in the necropolis Bòbila Madurell. UB-UAB

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Article Source: University of Barcelona news release

*Albizuri, S.; Nadal, J.; Martín, P.; Gibaja, J. F.; Martín Cólliga, A.; Esteve, X.; Oms, X.; Martí, M.; Pou, R.; López-Onaindia, D., i Subirà, M. E. “Dogs in funerary contexts during the Middle Neolithic in the northeastern Iberian Peninsula (5th-early 4th millennium BCE)”. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, April 2019.

UNIVERSITY OF SEVILLE—The prestigious international journal Quaternary Science Reviews has just published a paper which has involved the participation of Gibraltarian scientists from The Gibraltar National Museum alongside colleagues from Spain, Portugal and Japan. The results which have been published come from an area of the Catalan Bay Sand Dune.

This work started ten years ago, when the first dates using the OSL method were obtained. It is then that the first traces of footprints left by vertebrates were found. In subsequent years the successive natural collapse of sand has revealed further material and has permitted a detailed study including new dates.

The sand sheets in the rampant dunes above Catalan Bay are a relic of the last glaciation, when sea level was up to 120 metres below present levels and a great field of dunes extended eastwards from the base of the Rock. The identified footprints correspond to species which are known, from fossil material, to have inhabited Gibraltar. The identified footprints correspond to Red Deer, Ibex, Aurochs, Leopard and Straight-tusked Elephant. In addition the scientists have found the footprint of a young human (106-126 cm in height), possibly Neanderthal, which dates to around 29 thousand years ago. It would coincide with late Neanderthal dates from Gorham’s Cave.

If confirmed to be Neanderthal, these dunes would become only the second site in the world with footprints attributed to these humans, the other being Vartop Cave in Romania. These findings add further international importance to the Gibraltar Pleistocene heritage, declared of World Heritage Value in 2016.

The research was supported by HM Government of Gibraltar under the Gibraltar Caves Project and the annual excavations in the Gibraltar Caves, with additional support to the external scientists from the Spanish EU project MICINN-FEDER: CGL2010-15810/BTE.

Minister for Heritage John Cortes MP commented, “This is extraordinary research and gives us an incredible insight into the wildlife community of Gibraltar’s past. We should all take a moment to imagine the scene when these animals walked across our landscape. It helps us understand the importance of looking after our heritage. I congratulate the research team on uncovering this fascinating, hidden evidence of our Rock’s past.”

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The place where the footprint was found. Universidad de Sevilla

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Article Source: University of Seville news release

If you liked this article, you may like The Last Neanderthals, a premium article published in Popular Archaeology.

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FIELD MUSEUM—About eight hundred years ago, a ship sank in the Java Sea off the coast of the islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. There are no written records saying where the ship was going or where it came from–the only clues are the mostly-disintegrated structure of the vessel and its cargo, which was discovered on the seabed in the 1980s. Since the wreck’s recovery in the 1990s, researchers have been piecing together the world that the Java Sea Shipwreck was part of. In a new study in the Journal of Archaeological Science, archaeologists have demonstrated a new way to tell where the ceramic cargo of the ship originally came from: by zapping it with an X-ray gun.

“It’s amazing that we can pinpoint the production area of materials from an 800-year-old shipwreck,” says Wenpeng Xu, the study’s lead author, a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which has a joint graduate program in Anthropology with the Field Museum. “It helps us learn the details of trade relationships–knowing how people interacted in the past is very important for us to understand the present.”

The Field Museum is home to an estimated 7,500 pieces of cargo recovered from the wreck, including the 60 ceramic pieces from the shipwreck analyzed in this study: bowls and boxes made of porcelain covered in a bluish-white glaze called qingbai. Based on the style of the ceramics, scientists knew that it came from southeastern China, but style alone isn’t enough to pinpoint a piece’s origin because many kilns produced similar-looking pieces. By comparing the chemical makeups of ceramics from the wreck and from different kiln sites in China, the researchers were able to more precisely determine where the ceramics were made.

Ceramics from different sites have different chemical compositions because of variations in the elements present in that region’s clay or in the recipes that potters used to mix their clay. If a piece of pottery from the shipwreck matches the pottery found at an archaeological site, it’s a pretty safe bet that the pottery originated there. “Each kiln site uses its own materials and ingredients for clay–that’s what makes each sample’s fingerprint unique,” explains Xu. “If the fingerprint of the sample matches the fingerprint of the kiln site, then it’s highly possible that that’s where the sample came from.” This is where the X-ray gun comes in.

“We used a portable X-ray fluorescence detector–it looks a lot like a ray gun,” says Lisa Niziolek, Field Museum Boone Research Scientist and co-author of the study. The science behind the compositional analysis is complex, but Niziolek breaks it down: “You’re shooting X-rays into a material you’re interested in. It excites the material’s atoms. Energy goes flying out, and this measures that energy. Different elements have different signatures of energy that comes back out.”

Knowing the precise origins of cargo on the ship reveals the size and complexity of trade networks at the time. The ceramics in the study were created over 2,000 miles from where the ship sank–about the distance between New York and Las Vegas.

“A key that’s emerging is that the shipwreck tells us that there were huge trade networks in the 12th and 13th centuries,” says Field Museum MacArthur Curator of Anthropology and study co-author Gary Feinman. “We’re taught to associate vast trade networks with Europeans like Magellan and Marco Polo, but Europeans weren’t a big part of this network that went from Asia to Africa. Globalization isn’t just a recent phenomenon–it’s not just Eurocentric, not just tied to modern capitalism. The ancient world was more interconnected than a lot of people thought.”

“People often refer to shipwrecks as time capsules, but the Java Sea Wreck is more than just that,” says Niziolek. “A time capsule represents a moment frozen in time, but that ignores the way these results reveal these vast and changing socioeconomic networks.”

Feinman agrees: “It’s almost the opposite of a nice, bounded time capsule, it’s more like a window that opens up to a wide horizon and tells us how this material came onto this ship before it sank.”

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Ceramic bowls in situ at the Java Sea Shipwreck site. Field Museum, Anthropology. Photographer Pacific Sea Resources.

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Ceramics from the Field Museum’s Java Sea Shipwreck collection being analyzed by portable X-ray fluorescence. Field Museum. Photographer Kate Golembiewski.

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Article Source: Field Museum news release

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS—Since the beginning of archaeology, researchers have combed the globe searching for evidence of the first domesticated crops. Painstakingly extracting charred bits of barley, wheat, millet and rice from the remains of ancient hearths and campfires, they’ve published studies contending that a particular region or country was among the first to bring some ancient grain into cultivation.

Now, an international team of scientists, led by Xinyi Liu of Washington University in St. Louis, has consolidated findings from hundreds of these studies to plot a detailed map of how ancient cereal crops spread from isolated pockets of first cultivation to become dietary staples in civilizations across the Old World.

“The very fact that the ‘food globalization’ in prehistory spanned more than three thousand years indicates perhaps a major driver of the process was the perpetual needs of the poor rather than more ephemeral cultural choices of the powerful in the Neolithic and Bronze Age,” said Liu, assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences.

Forthcoming Feb. 15 in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, the study illustrates the current scientific consensus on the prehistoric food globalization process that transformed diets across Eurasia and Northern Africa between 7,000 and 3,500 years ago.

Co-authors include researchers from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom; Zheijiang University in China; the Lithuanian Institute of History; the Smithsonian Institution; and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing.

The study suggests that food globalization in prehistoric times was driven not by exotic appetities of ruling elites, but by the relentless, season-to-season ingenuity of poor peasant farmers looking for new ways to put just a little more food on their tables.

“Recent research developments shift the focus from chronology and routes to the drivers of the ‘food globalization’ process and considers the context in which agricultural and dietary innovations arose and what agents were involved,” Liu said. “These studies emphasize the role played by the primary agents of agricultural production, the ordinary farmers in the past.”

By trying new types of seed, plowing fields a little further up or down the mountain or shifting planting and harvest times, peasant farmers used a trial-and-error approach to overcome climatic challenges and expand the geographic boundaries of where certain grains could be planted. Gradually, this experimentation led to vastly improved yields as farmers learned to extend the growing season by planting both spring and fall crops in the same fields.

While many people are familiar with the global spread of food crops following the exploration of the New World — a process known as the Columbian Exchange — Liu contends that the prehistoric food globalization process had an equally dramatic impact on food cultivation in the Old World.

Wheat and barley moved from southwest Asia to Europe, India and China, while broom and foxtail millet moved in the other direction: from China to the West. Rice traveled across East, South and Southeast Asia; African millets and sorghum moved across sub-Saharan Africa and across the Indian Ocean, Liu said.

“While much of the exotic foods we enjoy today are the results of modern trade networks, the food globalization process clearly has its roots in prehistory,” Liu said. “Food globalization was well underway before the Columbia Exchange and the Islamic Agricultural Revolution. It predates even the earliest material evidence of trans-Eurasian contact, such as the Silk Route, by millennia.”

Liu’s study traces the farm-to-table journeys of mainstay cereal crops as they criss-crossed continents of the Old World in three distinct waves:

Before 5000 B.C., early farming communities sprang up in isolated pockets of fertile foothills and stream drainage basins where conditions were optimal for cultivating wild grains that originated nearby. Crop dispersals are generally limited to neighboring regions that are broadly compatible in terms of climate and seasonality.

Between 5000 and 2500 B.C., farmers found ways to push cultivation of various grains across wide regions where crop-compatible weather systems were contained within and separated by major mountain systems, such as those associated with the Tibetan Plateau and the Tianshan Mountains.

Between 2500 and 1500 B.C., farmers found ways to move beyond natural and climatic barriers that had long separated east and west, north and south — mastering the cultivation of grains that had evolved to flourish in the extreme elevations of the Tibetan Plateau or the drenching rains of Asian monsoons. Previously isolated agricultural systems were brought together, ushering in a new kind of agriculture in which the planting of both local and exotic crops enables multiple cropping and extended growing seasons.

“The whole process is not only about adoption but also about ‘rejection,’ reflect a range of choices that different communities made, sometimes driven by ecological expediency in novel environments, sometimes by culinary conservatism,” Liu said. “As the old Chinese saying goes: For what has been long united, it will fall apart, and for what has been long divided, it will come together eventually.”

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Prehistoric peasant farmers expanded the cultivation of domestic grains into extreme climate regions of the Old World, such as this barley field in Zuoni County, Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. Xinyi Liu/Washington University in St. Louis

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Article Source: Washington University in St. Louis news release

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, EVANSTON, Ill.—A new study may resolve an old debate about how tough the Vikings actually were.

Although TV and movies paint Vikings as robust souls, braving subzero temperatures in fur pelts and iron helmets, new evidence indicates they might have been basking in 50-degree summer weather when they settled in Greenland.

After reconstructing southern Greenland’s climate record over the past 3,000 years, a Northwestern University team found that it was relatively warm when the Norse lived there between 985 and 1450 C.E., compared to the previous and following centuries.

“People have speculated that the Norse settled in Greenland during an unusually, fortuitously warm period, but there weren’t any detailed local temperature reconstructions that fully confirmed that. And some recent work suggested that the opposite was true,” said Northwestern’s Yarrow Axford, the study’s senior author. “So this has been a bit of a climate mystery.”

Now that climate mystery finally has been solved.

The study is published in the journal Geology. Axford is an associate professor of Earth and planetary sciences in Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. The study is a part of Northwestern Ph.D. candidate G. Everett Lasher’s dissertation research, based in Axford’s lab.

To reconstruct past climate, the researchers studied lake sediment cores collected near Norse settlements outside of Narsaq in southern Greenland. Because lake sediment forms by an incremental buildup of annual layers of mud, these cores contain archives of the past. By looking through the layers, researchers can pinpoint climate clues from eons ago.

For this study, Lasher analyzed the chemistry of a mix of lake fly species, called chironomids, trapped inside the layers of sediment. By looking at the oxygen isotopes within the flies’ preserved exoskeletons, the team pieced together a picture of the past. This method allowed the team to reconstruct climate change over hundreds of years or less, making it the first study to quantify past temperature changes in the so-called Norse Eastern Settlement.

“The oxygen isotopes we measure from the chironomids record past lake water isotopes in which the bugs grew, and that lake water comes from precipitation falling over the lake,” said Lasher, first author of the paper. “The oxygen isotopes in precipitation are partly controlled by temperature, so we examined the change in oxygen isotopes through time to infer how temperature might have changed.”

Because recent studies concluded that some glaciers were advancing around Greenland and nearby Arctic Canada during the time Vikings lived in southern Greenland, Axford and Lasher expected their data to indicate a much colder climate. Instead, they found that a brief warm period interrupted a consistent cooling climate trend driven by changes in Earth’s orbit. Near the end of the warm period, the climate was exceptionally erratic and unstable with record high and low temperatures that preceded Viking abandonment of Greenland. Overall, the climate was about 1.5-degrees Celsius warmer than the surrounding cooling centuries. This warmer period was similar to southern Greenland’s temperatures today, which hover around 10-degrees Celsius (50-degrees Fahrenheit) in summer.

In another surprise, Axford and Lasher found that the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)—a natural fluctuation in atmospheric pressure that is often responsible for climate anomalies in the region—probably was not in a dominantly positive phase for multiple Medieval centuries as had been hypothesized. (When the NAO is in its positive phase, it brings cold air to much of Greenland.)

“We found that the NAO could not explain Medieval climatic changes at our site,” Lasher said. “That might call into question its use in explaining long-term climate change over the last 3,000 years elsewhere.”

So what did cause the Vikings’ fortuitously warm climate? Lasher and Axford aren’t sure but speculate it might have been caused by warmer ocean currents in the region. The new data will be useful for climate modelers and climate researchers as they seek to understand and predict what might be in store for Greenland’s ice sheet as Earth warms rapidly in the future.

“Unlike warming over the past century, which is global, Medieval warmth was localized,” Axford said. “We wanted to investigate what was happening in southern Greenland at that time because it’s a climatically complex part of the world where counterintuitive things can happen.”

The Norse settlements in Greenland collapsed as local climate apparently became exceptionally erratic, and then ultimately consistently cold. But Axford and Lasher will leave it to the archaeologists to determine whether or not climate played a role in their departure.

“We went in with a hypothesis that we wouldn’t see warmth in this time period, in which case we might have had to explain how the Norse were hearty, robust folk who settled in Greenland during a cold snap,” Lasher said. “Instead, we found evidence for warmth. Later, as their settlements died out, apparently there was climatic instability. Maybe they weren’t as resilient to climate change as Greenland’s indigenous people, but climate is just one of many things that might have played a role.”

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Recovering a sediment core. Amanda Morris

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Article Source: Northwestern University news release