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UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG—An archaeological expedition from the University of Gothenburg has discovered one of the richest graves from the Late Bronze Age ever found on the island of Cyprus. The grave and its offering pit, located adjacent to the Bronze Age city of Hala Sultan Tekke, contained many fantastic gold objects such as a diadem, pearls, earrings and Egyptian scarabs, as well as more than 100 richly ornamented ceramic vessels. The objects, which originate from several adjacent cultures, confirm the central role of Cyprus in long-distance trade.

Hala Sultan Tekke, a Bronze Age city from 1600-1150 BC that covered an area of up to 50 hectares, had far-reaching trade connections that included Sweden. Peter Fischer, professor of Cypriote archaeology at the University of Gothenburg, has led the excavations performed by the Swedish Cyprus expedition for seven seasons since 2010.

‘The excavations in May and June this year were the most successful to date. We discovered an older city quarter from around 1250 BC and outside the city we found an incredibly rich grave, one of the richest in Cyprus from this period, and an offering pit next to it. The fact that we have discovered a burial site from the Late Bronze Age is quite sensational, since those who died around this time were usually buried within the settlement,’ says Fischer.

The area where the grave was found is exposed to erosion caused by farming. Prior to the excavation, a so-called geophysical survey was performed using radar equipment able to identify what is in the ground down to a depth of two meters. The surveying revealed almost 100 underground ‘pits’, some of which turned out to be wells, some offering pits and – as this year – a grave.

‘Wells are usually one meter in diameter, but this structure was 4 x 3 meters. The grave seems to be a family tomb for eight children ages 5-10 years and nine adults, of whom the oldest was about 40 years old. The life expectancy was much shorter back then than it is today,’ says Fischer.

The archaeologists found over 100 ceramic vessels and several gold finds, including a diadem, beads, earrings and Egyptian scarabs (picture 1), in the grave and the offering pit. The finds also include gemstones and five cylinder seals, some produced locally and some from Syria and Mesopotamia, as well as a bronze dagger.

The archaeologists assign the greatest importance to the more than 140 complete ceramic vessels, most of which were decorated with spectacular illustrations of, for example, people sitting in a chariot drawn by two horses and a woman wearing a beautiful dress. There were also vases decorated with religious symbols and animal illustrations of, for example, fish. Many of the vessels were imported mainly from Greece and Crete but also from Anatolia, or the equivalence of present-day Turkey.

‘The pottery carries a lot of archaeological information. There were for example high-class Mycenaean imports, meaning pottery from Greece, dated to 1500-1300 BC. The motif of the woman, possibly a goddess, is Minoan, which means it is from Crete, but the vase was manufactured in Greece. Back in those days, Crete was becoming a Greek “colony”,’ says Fischer.

According to Fischer, the painting of the woman’s dress is highly advanced and shows how wealthy women dressed around this time. The motif can also be found on frescos in the Palace of Knossos in Heraklion, Crete. Other finds are from Egypt. Two of the stone scarabs are gold-mounted and one features hieroglyphs spelling ‘men-kheper-re’ next to an illustration of a pharaoh. This has given the archaeologists a unique opportunity to tie the roughly 3,500-year-old find to a historic person. The inscription refers to Egypt’s most powerful pharaoh Thutmose III (1479-1425 BC), during whose reign Egypt peaked in size and influence as he conquered both Syria and parts of Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq.

‘We also found evidence in the city of large-scale manufacturing and purple-dying of textiles. These products were used in the trade with the high cultures in Egypt, Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Crete and Greece, which explains the rich imported finds.

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A Mycenaean (Greek) vessel with fish motifs, c. 1300 BC. Credit: Peter Fischer.

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An amulet of faience with the Egyptian God Bes. Credit: Peter Fischer.

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A gold-mounted scarab of steatite, likely Egyptian 19th Dynasty, c. 13th century BC. Credit: Peter Fischer.

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What is most interesting about the finds is the dating: they are from 1500/1400 BC, but the researchers have still only found the burial site but not the city from this period.

‘It must have been a rich city judging from the grave we found this year. But it is most likely located closer to the burial site in an area that still has not been explored,’ says Fischer.

This year’s excavation period is over and until next year’s on-site work begins, the researchers have some intense processing of finds to look forward to.

‘In spring 2017 we’ll continue our uncovering of parts of the city and the burial site. As the integrity of both areas is threatened by agricultural activities, there is a need for quick action to secure our shared cultural heritage before it is destroyed forever,’ says Fischer.

Source: University of Gothenburg press release.

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Travel and learn with Far Horizons.

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

Archaeologists under the auspices of the Agsu Archaeological Expedition of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan have uncovered an early Medieval settlement at the present-day town of Agsu in Azerbaijan.  

Beginning in 2014, the excavations have revealed 2000 sq/m representing cultural layers of the third to fourth centuries, AD. Digging to a depth of 2.5-3 meters in separate squares, archaeologists encountered houses and administrative buildings, stone-planked roads, and large ceramic vessels. Other artifacts included copper and silver Roman, Sassanid, and Byzantine coins; bronze and agate seals; dice stones; rare snail-shaped pottery; original ceramic-ware; bone samples; golden jewelry; fragments of gray grinding stones; graters; sling stones; and cutting tools.

The explorations have defined a town that covered 12 hectares, encircled with magnificent Sassanid period fortress walls made of adobe. All edifices studied within the town were constructed with river stone and adobe, although some baked brick was encountered in upper layer materials.  

For monument conservation purposes, samples were submitted to the Calabria University of Italy for analyses. Conservation will depend on the results of analyses outcomes, applying nanomaterials.    

Explorations in 2015 showed that the ruins were actually those of Mehravan Town, which has been cited in historical sources. This was a town representing the historic Albanian State’s prosperity, mostly a military-administrative center of the Mehranids, who were Girdiman feudals. 

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 Above and below: Archaeologists at work on the site. Courtesy MIRAS Social Organization in Support of Studying of Cultural Heritage.

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 The excavations have revealed 2000 sq/m representing cultural layers of the third to fourth centuries, AD. Courtesy MIRAS Social Organization in Support of Studying of Cultural Heritage.

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 Above and below: Pottery and other artifact finds from the excavations. Courtesy MIRAS Social Organization in Support of Studying of Cultural Heritage.

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Celebrating and Learning from the Past

Since 2014 an archaeological festival (see www.dayofarchaeology.com) has been held in Azerbaijan under the initiative of the MIRAS (Social Organization in Support of Studying of Cultural Heritage, Azerbaijan). The festival is held every year in the Medieval Agsu Town, with participation of archaeologists, ethnographers, epigraphers, and art historians, as well as volunteers of cultural heritage from the Baku, Agsu, Shamakhi, and Ismayilli regions of Azerbaijan, and also local residents.    

The exhibition, “Urban civilization in early Middle Ages-Mehrevan walled town”, was opened in the windows and podiums of the Juma Mosque in the Medieval Agsu Town Archeological Tourism Complex on 29 July, 2016. The exposition reflected the results of archaeological excavations in the Mehravan walled town conducted during the 2013-2015 seasons. PhD archaeologist Fariz Khalilli stated that rich artifacts – such as bronze jewelry items; iron tools; agate seals; coins of Rome, Byzantine and Sassanids; backgammon stones and dice; and bone, stone and glass items, are exhibited. The exhibition will be open at the Juma Mosque for a year.      

A one-act play called  “Join us”, screened by writer Arzu Soltan and intended for children, was performed by pupils from Agsu. This play encouraged children to be involved in archaeological research and concludes with students’ opportunity to participate in archaeological excavations. The performance was conducted in the main square of Medieval Agsu Town. 

At the conference hall of Medievel Agsu Town Archaeological Tourism Complex, epigrapher Habiba Aliyeva and archaeologist Elmira Abbasova lectured about “Pottery to Applied Art: What Do Ornaments Deal With?”. In this workshop, Azerbaijan’s rich history of art, the variety of ornaments and their existence, were discussed with questions  answered. 

Handicrafts of women from Gagali, Bico and Gashad villages were also exhibited there within the project “The Role of Women in Rural Lifestyle Development”, financed by the Council of State Support to Non-Governmental Organizations under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan and realized by the MIRAS Social Organization in Support of Studying of Cultural Heritage.

Source: Adapted and edited from a news release of the MIRAS Social Organization in Support of Studying of Cultural Heritage.

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The excavations are conducted with support from the MIRAS Social Organization in Support of Studying of Cultural Heritage.

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Read more in-depth articles about archaeology with a premium subscription to Popular Archaeology Magazine. 

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Travel and learn with Far Horizons.

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

FACULTY OF SCIENCE – UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN—The established theory about the route by which Ice Age peoples first reached the present-day United States has been challenged by an unprecedented study which concludes that their supposed entry route was “biologically unviable”.

The first people to reach the Americas crossed via an ancient land bridge between Siberia and Alaska but then, according to conventional wisdom, had to wait until two huge ice sheets that covered what is now Canada started to recede, creating the so-called “ice-free corridor” which enabled them to move south.

In a new study published in the journal Nature, however, an international team of researchers used ancient DNA extracted from a crucial pinch-point within this corridor to investigate how its ecosystem evolved as the glaciers began to retreat. They created a comprehensive picture showing how and when different flora and fauna emerged and the once ice-covered landscape became a viable passageway. No prehistoric reconstruction project like it has ever been attempted before.

The researchers conclude that while people may well have travelled this corridor after about 12,600 years ago, it would have been impassable earlier than that, as the corridor lacked crucial resources, such as wood for fuel and tools, and game animals which were essential to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

If this is true, then it means that the first Americans, who were present south of the ice sheets long before 12,600 years ago, must have made the journey south by another route. The study’s authors suggest that they probably migrated along the Pacific coast.

Who these people were is still widely disputed. Archaeologists agree, however, that early inhabitants of the modern-day contiguous United States included the so-called “Clovis” culture, which first appear in the archaeological record over 13,000 years ago. And the new study argues that the ice-free corridor would have been completely impassable at that time.

The research was led by Professor Eske Willerslev, an evolutionary geneticist from Centre for GeoGenetics, University of Copenhagen and University of Cambridge, who also hold posts at St John’s College and the Wellcome Sanger Institute.

“The bottom line is that even though the physical corridor was open by 13,000 years ago, it was several hundred years before it was possible to use it,” Willerslev said.

“That means that the first people entering what is now the US, Central and South America must have taken a different route. Whether you believe these people were Clovis, or someone else, they simply could not have come through the corridor, as long claimed.”

Mikkel Winther Pedersen, a PhD student at the Centre for GeoGenetics, University of Copenhagen, who conducted the molecular analysis, added: “The ice-free corridor was long considered the principal entry route for the first Americans. Our results reveal that it simply opened up too late for that to have been possible.”

The corridor is thought to have been about 1,500 kilometres long, and emerged east of the Rocky Mountains 13,000 years ago in present-day western Canada, as two great ice sheets – the Cordilleran and Laurentide, retreated.

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 Map outlining the opening of the human migration routes in North America revealed by the results presented in this study.  Credit: Mikkel Winther Pedersen

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 A present day view north in the area where the retreating ice sheets created the ice free corridor more than 13,000 years ago. Credit: Mikkel Winther Pedersen

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On paper, this fits well with the argument that Clovis people were the first to disperse across the Americas. The first evidence for this culture, which is named after distinctive stone tools found near Clovis, New Mexico, also dates from roughly the same time, although many archaeologists now believe that other people arrived earlier.

“What nobody has looked at is when the corridor became biologically viable,” Willerslev said. “When could they actually have survived the long and difficult journey through it?”

The conclusion reached by Willerslev and his colleagues is that the journey would have been impossible until about 12,600 years ago. Their research focused on a “bottleneck”, one of the last parts of the corridor to become ice-free, and now partly covered by Charlie Lake in British Columbia, and Spring Lake, Alberta – both part of Canada’s Peace River drainage basin.

The team gathered evidence including radiocarbon dates, pollen, macrofossils and DNA taken from lake sediment cores, which they obtained standing on the frozen lake surface during the winter season. Willerslev’s own PhD, 13 years ago, demonstrated that it is possible to extract ancient plant and mammalian DNA from sediments, as it contains preserved molecular fossils from substances such as tissue, urine, and faeces.

Having acquired the DNA, the group then applied a technique termed “shotgun sequencing”. “Instead of looking for specific pieces of DNA from individual species, we basically sequenced everything in there, from bacteria to animals,” Willerslev said. “It’s amazing what you can get out of this. We found evidence of fish, eagles, mammals and plants. It shows how effective this approach can be to reconstruct past environments.”

This approach allowed the team to see, with remarkable precision, how the bottleneck’s ecosystem developed. Crucially, it showed that before about 12,600 years ago, there were no plants, nor animals, in the corridor, meaning that humans passing through it would not have had resources vital to survive.

Around 12,600 years ago, steppe vegetation started to appear, followed quickly by animals such as bison, woolly mammoth, jackrabbits and voles. Importantly 11,500 years ago, the researchers identified a transition to a “parkland ecosystem” – a landscape densely populated by trees, as well as moose, elk and bald-headed eagles, which would have offered crucial resources for migrating humans.

Somewhere in between, the lakes in the area were populated by fish, including several identifiable species such as pike and perch. Finally, about 10,000 years ago, the area transitioned again, this time into boreal forest, characterised by spruce and pine.

The fact that Clovis was clearly present south of the corridor before 12,600 years ago means that they could not have travelled through it. David Meltzer, an archaeologist at Southern Methodist University and a co-author on the study, said: “There is compelling evidence that Clovis was preceded by an earlier and possibly separate population, but either way, the first people to reach the Americas in Ice Age times would have found the corridor itself impassable.”

“Most likely, you would say that the evidence points to their having travelled down the Pacific Coast,” Willerslev added. “That now seems the most likely scenario.”

Source: Press release of the University of Copenhagen.

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The paper, Postglacial viability and colonization in North America’s ice-free corridor, was published in the journal Nature on 10. August 2016. DOI: 10.1038/nature19085

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Read more in-depth articles about archaeology with a premium subscription to Popular Archaeology Magazine. 

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Travel and learn with Far Horizons.

____________________________________________

 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

Anapa, August 9, 2016 – Archaeologists under the auspices of the Oleg Deripaska Volnoe Delo Foundation and the Russian Academy of Sciences‘ Institute of Archaeology have discovered fragments of a marble stele carrying an inscription of the ancient Persian King Darius I. Found among the remains of the ancient town of Phanagoria, an ancient Greek city near Crimea and the Black Sea in the Krasnodar region of Southern Russia, the stele is dated to the first half of the 5th century B.C.E. 

The decoded inscriptions (shown right), in the ancient Persian language, state they were made in the name of the Persian King Darius I, who lived from 550-486 B.C. The text contains a previously unregistered word and, roughly interpreted, identifies the ancient city of Miletus, one of the biggest cities in Ionia, a region later known as Asia Minor. Miletus stood at the head of the so-called Ionian uprising of Greek city states against Darius I. It was suppressed in 494 B.C.

Archaeologists suggest the king erected a marble stele in the city after his victory over the Greeks. The monument featured an incribed text procaiming the king’s triumph. Later on, suggest the archaeologists, a fragment of the overturned and broken stele reached Phanagoria, quite possibly as ballast on a ship that called into the Phanagoria port, as there is no natural stone of the kind on the Taman peninsula.  “The inscription on the stele made in the name of King Darius I is evidently devoted to the crushing of the Ionian revolt,” says Vladimir Kuznetsov, director of the Phanagorian expedition. “The discovery places Phanagoria in the context of one of the most important events of ancient history, which had far-reaching consequences for the Greeks as well as the Persians, and makes it possible to trace the connections of this colony with other parts of the Greek world and analyze its significance in advancing Hellenistic civilization on the Black Sea coast.”

The stele is currently undergoing scrutiny at the restoration laboratory of the Phanagoria Research and Cultural Center. 

Apart from the stele, archeologists have uncovered the remains of ancient fortress walls in the acropolis. Among the recent discoveries made at Phanagoria are remains of a palace of Mithradates VI dated the 1^st century B.C.; an ancient naval ram used by the army of Mithradates VI; a tomb with a stepped ceiling; the oldest temple unearthed on Russian territory, dating back to the 5th century B.C.; and a number of submerged objects, such as the ancient city’s streets covered with sand, port structures, and ship debris.

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 Bird’s eye panorama of the Phanagoria archaeological site. Courtesy Oleg Deripaska Volnoe Delo Foundation and the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archaeology.

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 Remains of a building dated to the 5th century, with Roman holes. Courtesy Oleg Deripaska Volnoe Delo Foundation and the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archaeology.

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 Part of Phanagoria’s ancient center. Courtesy Oleg Deripaska Volnoe Delo Foundation and the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archaeology.

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The excavations cover several areas, including the 2,500-square-meter acropolis at the center of the ancient city, the eastern necropolis, an ancient cemetery that served as a burial place from the very founding of the city, and a submerged part of the city. What makes the expedition unique is the mix of diversified specialists working together. Apart from archeologists and historians, there are anthropologists, soil scientists, paleozoologists, numismatists and other researchers. A complex approach to the study of Phanagoria’s cultural relics has shed light on understanding the residents’ way of living, religious beliefs, economic cooperation, as well as their roles in military conflicts.

Phanagoria was one of the major monumental cities on presnt-day Russian soil. Founded in the mid-sixth century B.C. by Greek colonists, the city has long been one of two capitals of the Bosporan Kingdom, an ancient state located in eastern Crimea and the Taman Peninsula. Phanagoria was the major economic and cultural center of the Black Sea region, one of the biggest Greek cities, the first capital of the Great Bulgaria, and one of the main cities of Khazar Kaganate. It was also an ancient center of Christianity. Saint Andrew was believed to preach in Phanagoria. The city boasts the largest Jewish community in the Black Sea region: the first synagogue in Russia was built in Phanagoria in the 16th century C.E. 

In the 9-10th centuries, the residents abandoned the city for reasons still unknown. Phanagoria is surrounded by Russia’s largest necropolis, covering an area of over 300 hectares. The total volume of the cultural layers is 2.5 million cubic meters of soil; the layer’s depth is up to seven meters. No single building has been erected in the city since ancient times, which has helped preserve the ruins and the historical artifacts.

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 Above and below, the prolific array of artifacts unearthed at Phanagoria. Courtesy Oleg Deripaska Volnoe Delo Foundation and the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Archaeology.

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Regular archeological expeditions have been conducted in Phanagoria since the late 1930s. As of now, only two percent of the city’s territory has been revealed. 

Source: Edited and adapted from the subject press release.

Image, second from top, right: Inscription mentioning Darius I. 

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The Volnoe Delo Foundation, one of Russia’s biggest privately-held charity funds, is run by businessman and industrialist Oleg Deripaska. It has supported research activities in the 2550-year-old city of Phanagoria since 2004. The Foundation has allocated over $10 million to Phanagoria fieldwork over the past 12 years. Now Phanagoria is one of the best equipped archeological expeditions in Russia, with its own scientific and cultural center, up-to-date equipment for above-ground and underwater excavation and a diverse team of specialists involved in the fieldwork.

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Read more in-depth articles about archaeology with a premium subscription to Popular Archaeology Magazine. 

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Travel and learn with Far Horizons.

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 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

Everyone knows it as the Burren. Lush green vegetation pockmarks its otherwise ruggedly beautiful yet curiously desolate grey limestone pavement — a pavement initially laid down as sediments of a tropical sea more than 350 million years ago, but much more recently sculpted by Ice Age glaciation ‘only’ 10,000 years ago. Characterized by criss-crossing cracks known as “grikes”, which also leave isolated rocks called “clints”, it is a unique panorama that marks a distinguishing feature of Ireland’s western geography.  Edmund Ludlow, a 17th century English parliamentarian, once described the Burren as “a country where there is not enough water to drown a man, wood enough to hang one, nor earth enough to bury him…… and yet their cattle are very fat; for the grass growing in turfs of earth, of two or three foot square, that lie between the rocks, which are of limestone, is very sweet and nourishing.”  And to this day, a healthy and thriving population of cattle and sheep remain prominent players on the Burren landscape. 

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 Above and below: The Burren countryside. Top image courtesy Kate Leonard. Bottom image HEireann, Wikimedia Commons

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Needless to say, the Burren draws tourists.

And archaeologists. 

This is because the Burren is rich with historical and archaeological sites. Archaeologists and historians have documented more than 90 megalithic tombs and approximately 500 ringforts – such as Cahercommaun, a cashel which sits on the edge of an inland cliff, and the astonishingly well-preserved Caherconnell Cashel (Stone Fort). It is a tapestry of human presence extending back before the written word. 

At this writing, a team of archaeologists and students are busy at work, methodically digging at the Caherconnell Cashel site. They can be seen crouched on their knees atop grey stone and soil, scraping and slicing carefully down with their trowels to expose stone floor surfaces, wall structures, and other features that testify to a long Medieval period occupation. 

“Caherconnell Cashel is a possible royal settlement occupied from 10^th century to the 15^th/16^th century AD,” says Kate Leonard*, a supervising archaeologist who worked at the site during the summer of 2016. “The cashel is a drystone (no mortar) enclosure: a 4m-high limestone wall enclosing a circular area that contained dwellings, the enclosure having an east-facing entrance. Already the excavations in the interior of the cashel have revealed evidence for a series of occupation and building phases that indicate a long period of use.” 

The 1200+ Medieval artifacts thus far uncovered include clothes-fastening pins of bone, iron and bronze; iron shears; knives and other tools; whetstones and quernstones; glass and amber beads; a silver finger ring; iron and bronze buckles; a bronze tuning peg from a harp; iron arrowheads; and intricately carved bone hair combs. 

And plenty of animal remains.

“The underlying limestone bedrock of the region creates an alkaline condition (non-acidic) that preserves bone wonderfully,” continues Leonard. “As a result, there is a large animal bone assemblage from the site that tells us the cashel’s occupants throughout the Medieval period had a varied diet including pig, sheep/goat and cow milk products and meat, fish, shellfish, domestic poultry and their eggs. The meat in their diet was supplemented with gathered herbs, fruits and nuts, like the ever present hazelnut, and cereal grains like barley, oats, rye and wheat ground by hand into flour and/or meal using heavy stone rotary querns.” 

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 Above: A view of the Caherconnell Cashel (stone fort). Dabhoireann, Wikimedia Commons. Below, views of the Caherconnell Cashel by Kate Leonard.

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The recent excavations at Caherconnell began in 2007 with a trial excavation. Results were promising, so in 2010 archaeology field school excavations began under the direction of Dr. Michelle Comber. Those excavations have revealed structures and artifacts which include stone walls, animal bone and finely worked metal objects that all together are beginning to tell the story of the Gaelic people who lived and worked here during Medieval times. “It is a story not fully told through written history,” says Leonard. The finds are helping to paint a fuller picture of the day-to-day lifestyle of these people, who lived in a time when, says Leonard, the written narrative has been dominated by the history, politics, archaeology, and documented architecture of the Anglo-Normans who invaded Ireland beginning in the 12^th century AD.

Because the limestone bedrock is close to the topsoil, the team has been able to uncover a large area in a relatively short period of time, exposing much of the interior features of the stone fort, affording a rapidly developing picture of its foundations and layout, including new structures. “I was digging in an area of the site where the foundations of a round structure, and associated internal features, were revealed that likely dates to the earliest occupation of the cashel – the 10^th century AD,” says Leonard. Site director Comber suggests that this structure was ancillary to the centrally located dwelling house within the stone circle of the cashel, and that it may have also functioned later as a place for storage and/or refuse disposal. “The workshop idea relates to the discovery of some metalworking slag inside the structure, and a furnace and metalworking hearth on the north side of the structure,” says Comber. “A stone-lined hearth inside the structure contained more non-industrial charcoal, charred hazelnut shells, and regular small fragments of burned animal bone.”  Additionally uncovered features are raising new questions. “Secondary activity relates to the quarrying of a large pit within the structure – with a concentration of charcoal and carbonized material in its lower fill, and frequent large animal bones in the upper fill,” adds Comber. “There is the possibility of a flue leading into this pit, which would suggest its primary use as a cereal-drying kiln.” Comber believes further investigation may shed more light on this.  

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Above: Field school team members excavating at the site of the Caherconnell Cashel. Courtesy Kate Leonard 

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 Above: Because the underlying limestone bedrock is relatively close to the topsoil, field school members can make significant progress uncovering new features within the cashel. Courtesy Kate Leonard

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 Archaeologist Kate Leonard on site on a wet day at the Caherconnell Cashel. Courtesy Kate Leonard

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Most significantly, archaeologists hope that the results of the excavation will help unfold a new chapter in the ongoing search for the unwritten history of the Gaelic people who inhabited Ireland. “It is very important that the story of the native population is put back into the narrative of Medieval Ireland,” says Leonard. And given that so many of today’s population can trace their roots to Gaelic ancestry, this is no small statement.

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*Leonard’s time at Caherconnell was brief, as she is engaged in a global year-long journey to work at twelve different archaeological sites in 12 separate countries. She calls her project Global Archaeology: A Year of Digs. Caherconnell now makes the 7th stop on her global trek. 

Popular Archaeology will be following and reporting on Leonard’s worldwide experiences periodically throughout 2016 as she hops from one location to another during her global journey. To continue the work, however, Leonard will need financial support from donors. Readers interested in reading about and supporting her self-directed Global Archaeology crowdfunded project can learn more at gofundme.com/globalarchaeology.

See more about Leonard’s experience at Caherconnell here, and you may also read more about the site and the project at its website.  

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Read more in-depth articles about archaeology with a premium subscription to Popular Archaeology Magazine. 

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Travel and learn with Far Horizons.

____________________________________________

 This richly illustrated issue includes the following stories: Recent findings shedding new light on the whereabouts of the remains of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great; how an archaeologist-sculptor is bringing bones of the dead back to life; archaeologists uncovering town life at the dawn of civilization; an exclusive interview with internationally acclaimed archaeologist James M. Adovasio about what makes the Meadowcroft Rockshelter prominent in the ongoing search for the first Americans; what archaeologists are finding at the site of the ancient city of Gath, the home town of the biblical Philistine giant, Goliath; and how scientists are redrawing the picture of human evolution in Europe.  Find it on Amazon.com.

PENN STATE, UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.—While the Minoan culture on Crete was just beginning, woolly mammoths were disappearing from St. Paul Island, Alaska, according to an international team of scientists who have dated this extinction to 5,600 years ago.

“It’s amazing that everything turned out so precisely with dating of extinction at 5,600 plus or minus 100 years,” said Russell Graham, professor of geosciences, Penn State.”

St. Paul Island lies about 400 miles north of the Aleutian Islands and was part of the Bering Land Bridge before sea level rose when the last glacial period ended. Previous researchers radiocarbon-dated remains of five mammoths to about 6,480 years ago, but there was no way to know if these were the last five animals.

The researchers used a variety of proxies to date the demise of the mammoths on the island. Proxies are things in the environment that can be used to independently document the presence of an organism, even though they are not parts of it. In this study, three different spores from fungi that grow on large animal dung were extracted from lake cores and used to determine when the mammoths were no longer on the island. Proxies in sediments from cores from a lake near the cave were used to determine the time of the demise of the mammoth population.

“We see a reduction in the three species of fungus, all of which are associated with the dung of large animals,” said Graham. “These spores are a marker for the presence of large animals like mammoths.”

Beside the mammoths, the only animals appearing on the island in “prehistoric” times were arctic foxes, shrews and polar bears, and there is no evidence of polar bears before 4,000 years ago. Humans did not arrive on the island until 1787 C.E. The only large mammals present were mammoths.

Sediment DNA from the lake cores showed the presence of mammoth DNA until 5,650 years ago, plus or minus 80 years. After that time, there is no mammoth DNA and so no mammoths on the island. The youngest of the newly dated mammoth remains’ dates fall within the mammoth DNA range and the fungal spore dates as well.

Using state-of-the-art methods for radiocarbon dating, the researchers used 14 newly recovered remains from various areas on the island to help document the time of extinction.

“The St. Paul mammoth demise is now one of the best-dated prehistoric extinctions, ” the researchers report today (August 1) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers also used environmental proxies to investigate habitat changes at the time of extinction. The island, which formed between 14,700 and 13,500 years ago rapidly shrank until 9,000 years ago and continued slowly shrinking until 6,000 years ago and now is only 42 square miles in area. While large animals like mammoths became extinct on the continents about 12,000 years ago due to climate change and habitat restructuring, the process was different on the island.

The shrinking of the island concentrated the mammoths in a smaller area and diminished available water. Pollen from the lake cores indicate that the area around the lake was denuded of vegetation by the mammoths. Like elephants today, when the water became cloudy and turgid, the mammoths probably dug holes nearby to obtain cleaner water. Both of these things increased erosion in the area and helped fill in the lake, decreasing the available water even more.

After the extinction of the mammoths, the cores show that erosion stopped and vegetation returned to the area. In essence, the mammoths contributed to their own demise.

The researchers note that this research “highlights freshwater limitation as an overlooked extinction driver and underscores the vulnerability of small island populations to environmental change, even in the absence of human influence,”

Source: Penn State University news release.

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 Reconstructed mammoth. Matt Boulton, Wikimedia Commons

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Also working on this project from Penn State were Soumaya Belmecheri, former postdoctoral fellow now at the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research, University of Arizona; Brendan J. Culleton, research associate in anthropology; and Lee Newsom, associate professor of anthropology.

The team also consisted of Kyungcheol Choy, Ruth Rawcliffe, and Émilie Saulnier-Talbot, Alaska Stable Isotope Center; and Matthew J. Wooller, Alaska Stable Isotope Center and School of Fisheries and Ocean Science, University of Alaska, Fairbanks; Lauren J. Davies, Duane Froese, University of Alberta; Peter D. Heintzman, Beth Shapiro and Joshua D. Kapp, University of California, Santa Cruz; Carrie Hritz, AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow; and Yue Wang and John W. Williams, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The National Science Foundation supported this work.

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DURHAM UNIVERSITY—An adolescent orangutan called Rocky could provide the key to understanding how speech in humans evolved from the time of the ancestral great apes, according to new research.

In an imitation “do-as-I-do” game, eleven-year-old Rocky, who was eight at the time of the research, was able to copy the pitch and tone of sounds made by researchers to make vowel-like calls.

The discovery, led by Dr Adriano Lameira of Durham University, UK, shows that orangutans could have the ability to control their voices.

It might answer the argument about whether or not spoken language stemmed from early human ancestors.

Previously it was thought that great apes – our closest relatives – could not learn to produce new sounds and because speech is a learned behaviour it could not have originated from them.

The findings are published today (Wednesday, July 27) in the journal Scientific Reports.

Rocky was studied at Indianapolis Zoo, Indiana, USA, where he is currently housed, between April and May 2012, and all steps were taken to ensure his routine and environment were not disrupted.

During the study, a researcher made random sounds with variations in the tone or pitch of her voice which Rocky then mimicked.

The research team compared these sounds against the largest available database of orangutan calls collected from over 12,000 hours of observations of more than 120 orangutans from 15 wild and captive populations.

They were able to conclude that the sounds made by Rocky were different compared to the sounds on the database, showing that he was able to learn new sounds and control the action of his voice in a “conversational” context.

Dr Lameira, who was not a member of Durham University staff at the time of the research but joined the Department of Anthropology in 2015, said: “It’s not clear how spoken language evolved from the communication systems of the ancestral great apes.

“Instead of learning new sounds, it has been presumed that sounds made by great apes are driven by arousal over which they have no control, but our research proves that orangutans have the potential capacity to control the action of their voices.

“This indicates that the voice control shown by humans could derive from an evolutionary ancestor with similar voice control capacities as those found in orangutans and in all great apes more generally.

“This opens up the potential for us to learn more about the vocal capacities of early hominids that lived before the split between the orangutan and human lineages to see how the vocal system evolved towards full-blown speech in humans.”

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 Image courtesy Zyance, Wikimedia Commons

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The research also involved the Pongo Foundation (Netherlands); Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Germany); Liverpool John Moores University (UK); University of Amsterdam (Netherlands); Indianapolis Zoo (USA); George Mason University (USA); Indiana University (USA).

It builds on a previous study led by Dr Lameira when he was based at the University of Amsterdam.

In that study, published in January 2015, it was reported that a female orangutan called Tilda at Cologne Zoo, in Germany, was able to make sounds comparable to human consonant and vowel-like calls at the same rhythm and pace as human speech.

Source: News release of Durham University

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Mathematical modeling suggests that fire use by early humans during the Pleistocene may have allowed tuberculosis to emerge as a transmissible human disease, possibly through increased susceptibility to lung infection due to smoke inhalation and increased opportunities for disease transmission in gatherings around community fires; the recent study* findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest that cultural innovation and altered living conditions can influence the emergence of infectious diseases.

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UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE—An ancient latrine near a desert in north-western China has revealed the first archaeological evidence that travellers along the Silk Road were responsible for the spread of infectious diseases along huge distances of the route 2,000 years ago.

Cambridge researchers Hui-Yuan Yeh and Piers Mitchell used microscopy to study preserved faeces on ancient ‘personal hygiene sticks’ (used for wiping away faeces from the anus) in the latrine at what was a large Silk Road relay station on the eastern margins of the Tamrin Basin, a region that contains the Taklamakan desert. The latrine is thought to date from 111 BC (Han Dynasty) and was in use until 109 AD.

They found that eggs from four species of parasitic worm (helminths) were present: roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides), whipworm (Trichuris trichiura), tapeworm (Taenia sp.), and Chinese liver fluke (Clonorchis sinensis).

Chinese liver fluke is a parasitic flatworm that causes abdominal pain, diarrhoea, jaundice and liver cancer. It requires well-watered, marshy areas to complete its life cycle. Xuanquanzhi relay station was located at the eastern end of the arid Tamrin Basin, an area that contains the fearsome Taklamakan Desert. The liver fluke could not have been endemic in this dry region.

In fact, based on the current prevalence of the Chinese liver fluke, its closest endemic area to the latrine’s location in Dunhuang is around 1,500km away, and the species is most common in Guandong Province – some 2,000km from Dunhuang.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, who conducted the study, suggest that the traveller infected with this liver fluke must have journeyed an enormous distance, and suggest the discovery provides the first reliable evidence for long distance travel with an infectious disease along the Silk Road.

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 These are 2,000-year-old personal hygiene sticks with remains of cloth, excavated from the latrine at Xuanquanzhi. Credit: Hui-Yuan Yeh. Reproduced from the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

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 Egg of Chinese liver fluke discovered in the latrine at Xuanquanzhi, viewed using microscopy. Dimensions 29 x 16 micrometers. Credit: The Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

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The findings are published today in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.

“When I first saw the Chinese liver fluke egg down the microscope I knew that we had made a momentous discovery,” said Hui-Yuan Yeh, one of the study’s authors. “Our study is the first to use archaeological evidence from a site on the Silk Road to demonstrate that travellers were taking infectious diseases with them over these huge distances.”

The Silk Road (or Silk Route) came to prominence during the Han Dynasty in China (202 BC – AD 220) as merchants, explorers, soldiers and government officials journeyed between East Asia and the Middle East/Mediterranean region.

Researchers have previously suggested that diseases such as bubonic plague, anthrax and leprosy might have been carried by ancient travellers along the legendary trading route, as similar strains have been found in China and Europe.

“Until now there has been no proof that the Silk Road was responsible for the spread of infectious diseases. They could instead have spread between China and Europe via India to the south, or via Mongolia and Russia to the north,” says study lead Piers Mitchell.

The Cambridge team worked alongside Chinese researchers Ruilin Mao and Hui Wang from the Gansu Institute for Cultural Relics and Archaeology, who originally excavated the ancient latrine and relay station in Ganzu Province.

The stop was a popular one on the Silk Road with travellers staying there and government officials using the facility to change their horses and deliver letters. While excavating the latrine, the Chinese team found the personal hygiene sticks with cloth wrapped round one end.

Added Mitchell: “Finding evidence for this species in the latrine indicates that a traveller had come here from a region of China with plenty of water, where the parasite was endemic. This proves for the first time that travellers along the Silk Road really were responsible for the spread of infectious disease along this route in the past.”

Source: University of Cambridge news release.

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UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN—AUSTIN, Texas – Some of the bacteria in our guts were passed down over millions of years, since before we were human, suggesting that evolution plays a larger role than previously known in people’s intestinal-microbe makeup, according to a new study in the journal Science.

The bacteria that the researchers studied guide the early development of our intestines, train our immune systems to fight pathogens and may even affect our moods and behavior.

The research, which included an international team of scientists, was led by Howard Ochman, a professor of integrative biology at The University of Texas at Austin, and Andrew Moeller, a former graduate student at UT Austin, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.

“It’s surprising that our gut microbes, which we could get from many sources in the environment, have actually been co-evolving inside us for such a long time,” says Ochman, who noted that the microbes were passed down over hundreds of thousands of host generations.

As humans and the African great apes evolved into distinct species from a common ancestor, bacteria present in their common ancestor also evolved into distinct strains associated with each host, the scientists found.

Adding further weight to the analysis, the scientists found genetic evidence that the bacteria split into distinct strains at about the same times as their hosts were splitting into distinct species. One such bacterial split happened about 15.6 million years ago as the gorilla lineage diverged from the other hominids. The other bacterial split happened about 5.3 million years ago as the human lineage separated from the lineage leading to chimps and bonobos.

“We’ve known for a long time that humans and our closest relatives, the great apes, harbor these bacteria in our guts,” says Moeller, “and the biggest question we wanted to answer is, where did these bacteria come from? Did we get them from our environment or from our evolutionary history? And how long have they persisted in host lineages?”

Before this study, scientists disagreed about whether strains of gut microbes have continued within individual hominid lineages over timescales long enough to lead to cospeciation, a process by which two species evolve in parallel. The persistence of some microbes might have been threatened by changes in diet, geography or the use of antibiotics.

The researchers studied fecal samples collected from wild African great apes–chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas–and also from people living in Connecticut. Fossil and genetic evidence have established that all four species, known as hominids, evolved from a common ancestor that lived more than 10 million years ago.

Fecal samples contain microbes shed from a host animal’s gut. The scientists used gene sequencing to analyze all the different versions of one specific bacterial gene present in each fecal sample. From these data, they reconstructed evolutionary trees for three groups of gut bacteria that make up over 20 percent of the human gut microbiome.

For two of those groups, Bacteriodaceae and Bifidobacteriaceae, the bacterial evolutionary trees closely resemble the hominid evolutionary tree. There are some subtle differences, however, such as an individual bacterial strain disappearing from one of the four host species over time.

The third bacterial family tree, for a group known as Lachnospiraceae, was more complicated. There were apparently at least four times when these bacteria were transferred between different host species. The researchers speculate that because these bacteria form spores and can thus survive outside their hosts for long periods, they were easily passed between species.

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 An artist’s rendition of bacteria that live in the gut of people and their closest relatives. A new study finds that these microbes have lived—and evolved—with us since before we were human.  Credit: The University of Texas at Austin. Illustration by Jenna Luecke.

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The researchers are not certain how these three ancient strains of microbes were passed down from one host generation to the next for millions of years. Prior research shows that we receive our first inoculation of gut microbes from our mothers as we pass through the birth canal. Throughout life, we also receive microbes from social interactions. The researchers suspect both modes of transmission are responsible for maintaining our multigenerational relationship with our bacterial BFFs.

“What’s most exciting to me is the possibility that this codiversification between bacteria and hosts could extend much further back in time,” says Moeller. “Maybe we can trace our gut microbes back to our common ancestors with all mammals, all reptiles, all amphibians, maybe even all vertebrates. If that’s true, it’s amazing.”

Source: University of Texas at Austin news release.

In addition to Ochman and Moeller, the study’s co-authors are: Alejandro Caro-Quintero at Corpoicá C.I Tibaitata (Colombia); Deus Mjungu at the Gombe Stream Research Center (Tanzania); Alexander Georgiev at Northwestern University and Harvard University; Elizabeth Lonsdorf at Franklin & Marshall College; Martin Muller at the University of New Mexico; Anne Pusey at Duke University; Martine Peeters at the University of Montpellier (France); and Beatrice Hahn at the University of Pennsylvania.

This work was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Agence Nationale de Recherche sur le Sida, the Jane Goodall Institute, the Arthur L. Greene Fund and Harvard University.

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Chimpanzees who travel are more frequent tool users, according to new findings from the University of Neuchâtel and the University of Geneva, Switzerland, to be published in eLife.

Hawa is a wild chimpanzee from the Budongo Forest in Uganda who burns up a lot of energy travelling, which he has learnt to replenish with a dose of honey. His friend Squibs makes less of an effort to roam and has not acquired the skills needed to enjoy this high-energy treat. This pattern was repeated in other members of the study group over seven years of observation.

A low quantity of ripe fruit also increases chimpanzees’ motivation to acquire new foraging skills, but the effect is less pronounced than travel.

“Our results show that travel fosters tool use in wild chimpanzees and it may also have been a driving force in early technological evolution by humans,” says Dr Thibaud Gruber from the University of Geneva.

The team reviewed data from nine other chimpanzee communities to confirm the pattern. Chimpanzees’ closest relative, the Bonobo, travels around the same average distance as the Sonso and other Ugandan chimpanzees and uses a similar set of tools. Gorillas and most orangutans show limited or no feeding-related tool use and spend significantly less time travelling per day on the ground compared to chimpanzees. In contrast, modern human hunter-gatherers walk on average 11.4-14.1 km per day and use many more tools than any of the great apes.

Gruber studied 70 individuals of the Sonso community of chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii, known for its limited tool use behaviour. This made them ideal subjects to study how tool use emerges. The only feeding-related tools they use are folded leaves, usually to collect water, and moss to soak up mineral deposits from a clay pit. 52 of them engaged with the experiment.

“After seven years of field work, I had a massive amount of data and there was clear variation in how chimpanzees engaged with the experiment. I thought it would be interesting to analyse why,” says Gruber.

He deployed the “honey trap experiment”. The Sonso chimpanzees already used their fingers to take honey from bees’ nests, with limited success. In the “honey trap” experiment, a hole is drilled into a log and partially filled with this tempting prize so it can only be accessed with an implement. Most of the individuals who successfully extracted honey employed the community’s habitual tool, a folded leaf sponge, while two used a stick. A total of 21 instances of tool use were observed in 11 individuals.

The team reviewed the data against a whole range of variables including the quantity of ripe fruits eaten and the average daily distance the chimpanzees travelled.

“We didn’t expect travel to be that important, and were surprised that it had an even greater influence than if they fed less on their preferred food of ripe fruits,” says Gruber.

The team conclude that travel created an extra need for high-energy food while the challenge of inaccessible honey created an opportunity for innovation. The team did not analyse the potential influence of social learning to influence it. In 2011, Gruber and a colleague Catherine Hobaiter from the University of St Andrews discovered that the community’s use of moss as a sponge emerged from one individual named Nick, whose behavior was copied by a dominant female and quickly spread.

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 Chimpanzees in Kibale National Park. Credit: Andrew Bernard

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The study also reveals the influence of local ecology in the development of tool use. The Budongo Forest has provided a rich environment for chimpanzees, which could explain the previous lack of tool use in the Sonso community. However, in the last few decades, the food supply has steadily decreased.

It has been suggested that the development of tool use and sociality in early humans could likewise have been adaptive responses to heightened habitat instability caused by climate change.

“When times are changing, you have to adapt your behavior and our data illustrate that chimps will pay more attention to the possibilities offered by their environment in more demanding periods,” says Gruber.

Source: News release of eLife.

The paper ‘Travel fosters tool use in wild chimpanzees’ can be freely accessed online at http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.16371. 

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UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER—A project led by archaeologists from the British Museum and the University of Leicester has discovered remarkable evidence which shows how the first generations of Europeans to arrive in the Americas engaged with indigenous peoples and their spiritual beliefs deep inside the caves of a remote Caribbean island.

Recent fieldwork by a collaborative Anglo-Puerto Rican* team has uncovered new evidence in the Caribbean of an early religious dialogue between Europeans and Native Americans.

A large collection of early colonial inscriptions and commentaries written by named individuals within a cave system of pre-existing indigenous spiritual iconography provides dramatic new insights into the tone and personal context of this momentous time of encounter.

In a paper, published in Antiquity, researchers have provided new understandings about the formation of emergent cultural identities in the Caribbean that challenge historic accounts of indigenous extinction.

The island of Mona, on a key Atlantic route from Europe to the Americas, was at the heart of sixteenth-century Spanish colonial projects and was recorded by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage in AD 1494.

Communities on the island were exposed to the earliest waves of European impact during a critical period of transformation and the forging of new identities.

A team of researchers led by Dr Jago Cooper (British Museum) and Dr Alice Samson (University of Leicester) has been studying the island – which is one of the most cavernous regions, per square kilometre, in the world.

The team, which has just completed its 2016 season, includes students from Puerto Rico and the UK carrying out dissertations in Climate Science, Archaeology, and History.

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 Image of the cave discoveries. Credit: University of Leicester

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Since 2013, exploration and survey of around 70 cave systems—part of an interdisciplinary study of past human activity on Mona Island—has revealed that Mona’s caves include the greatest diversity of preserved indigenous iconography in the Caribbean, with thousands of motifs recorded in darkzone chambers far from cave entrances.

In the astonishing cave discussed in this paper more than 30 historic inscriptions include named individuals, phrases in Latin and Spanish, dates and Christian symbols that occur within a series of connecting chambers all within the area of indigenous iconography.

This account of spiritual encounters provides a rare, personalised insight into intercultural religious dynamics in the early Americas.

Dr Alice Samson from the University of Leicester School of Archaeology and Ancient History said: “Increasing use of interdisciplinary approaches and archaeometric analyses have provided new understandings of colonial processes that are more nuanced than mere oppression, domination and, in the case of the Caribbean, indigenous extinction.

“This not only provides a counterpoint to official metropolitan histories, but also tracks the beginnings of new religious engagements and transforming cultural identities in the Americas.”

Dr Jago Cooper from the British Museum added: “This research reveals a new perspective on the personal encounter between indigenous populations and the first generations of Europeans in the Americas.

“This is a unique site that helps us to understand the origins of cultural identity in the Americas, the start of a process that continues right up to the modern day.”

Source: University of Leicester news release.

*The British Museum, the School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester, US Coastal Cave Survey , the Puerto Rican Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, Centre of Advanced Studies of Puerto Rico and the Caribe, and University of Puerto Rico.

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BAR-ILAN UNIVERSITY—An international team of researchers has succeeded for the first time in sequencing the genome of Chalcolithic barley grains. This is the oldest plant genome to be reconstructed to date. The 6,000-year-old seeds were retrieved from Yoram Cave in the southern cliff of Masada fortress in the Judean Desert in Israel, close to the Dead Sea. Genetically, the prehistoric barley is very similar to present-day barley grown in the Southern Levant, supporting the existing hypothesis of barley domestication having occurred in the Upper Jordan Valley.

Members of the research team are from the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK) in Gatersleben, Germany; Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel; Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel; the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany; and the University of Haifa, Israel; The James Hutton Institute, UK; University of California, Santa Cruz, USA; University of Minnesota St. Paul, USA; University of Tübingen, Germany.

The analyzed grains, together with tens of thousands of other plant remains, were retrieved during a systematic archaeological excavation headed by Uri Davidovich, from the Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Nimrod Marom, from Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa, Israel. The archaeobotanical analysis was led by Ehud Weiss, of Bar-Ilan University. The cave is very difficult to access and was used only for a short time by humans, some 6,000 years ago, probably as ephemeral refuge.

Oldest plant genome reconstructed to date

Most examination of archaeobotanical findings has been limited to the comparison of ancient and present-day specimens based on their morphology. Up to now, only prehistoric corn has been genetically reconstructed. In this research, the team succeeded in sequencing the complete genome of the 6,000-year-old barley grains. The results are now published in the online version of the journal Nature Genetics.

“These archaeological remains provided a unique opportunity for us to finally sequence a Chalcolithic plant genome. The genetic material has been well-preserved for several millennia due to the extreme dryness of the region,” explains Ehud Weiss, of Bar-Ilan University. In order to determine the age of the ancient seeds, the researchers split the grains and subjected half of them to radiocarbon dating while the other half was used to extract the ancient DNA. “For us, ancient DNA works like a time capsule that allows us to travel back in history and look into the domestication of crop plants at distinct time points in the past,” explains Johannes Krause, Director of the Department of Archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena. The genome of Chalcolithic barley grains is the oldest plant genome to be reconstructed to date.

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 Right: Photograph during excavation exhibiting excellent dry preservation of plant remains Left: A well-preserved, desiccated barley grain found at Yoram Cave  Credit: Uri Davidovich

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Domestication of barley completed very early

Wheat and barley were already grown 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, a sickle-shaped region stretching from present-day Iraq and Iran through Turkey and Syria into Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. Up to this day, the wild forms of these two crops persist in the region and are among the major model species studied at the Institute of Evolution in the University of Haifa. “It was from there that grain farming originated and later spread to Europe, Asia and North Africa,” explains Tzion Fahima, of the University of Haifa.

“Our analyses show that the seeds cultivated 6,000 years ago greatly differ genetically from the wild forms we find today in the region. However, they show considerable genetic overlap with present-day domesticated lines from the region,” explains Nils Stein, who directed the comparison of the ancient genome with modern genomes at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Gatersleben, with the support of Robbie Waugh and colleagues at the James Hutton Institute, Dundee, Scotland, and Gary Muehlbauer, University of Minnesota, USA. “This demonstrates that the domestication of barley in the Fertile Crescent was already well advanced very early.”

The comparison of the ancient seeds with wild forms from the region and with so-called ‘landraces’ (i.e., local barley lines grown by farmers in the Near East) enabled to geographically suggest, according to Tzion Fahima and his colleagues at the University of Haifa and Israel’s Tel-Hai College, “the origin of the domestication of barley within the Upper Jordan Valley – a hypothesis that is also supported by two archaeological sites in the surrounding area where the hitherto earliest remains of barley cultivation have been found.

Immigrants “trust” in extant landraces

Also the genetic overlap with present-day domesticated lines from the region is revealing to the researchers. “This similarity is an amazing finding considering to what extent the climate, but also the local flora and fauna, as well as the agricultural methods, have changed over this long period of time,” says Martin Mascher, from the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, the lead author of the study. The researchers therefore assume that conquerors and immigrants coming to the region did not bring their own crop seeds from their former homelands, but continued cultivating the locally adapted extant landraces.

New insights into the origins of our crop plants

Combining archaeology, archaeobotany, genetics and computational genomics in an interdisciplinary study has produced novel insights into the origins of our crop plants. “This is just the beginning of a new and exciting line of research,” predicts Verena Schuenemann, from Tuebingen University, the second lead author of the study. “DNA-analysis of archaeological remains of prehistoric plants will provide us with novel insights into the origin, domestication and spread of crop plants.”

Source: Bar-Ilan University news release.

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