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Alaska, Animals, British Columbia, Washington, Archaeology, Genome, Mitochondrial, and Otters

Genetic analyses are an important contribution to wildlife reintroductions, particularly in the modern context of extirpations and ecological destruction. To address the complex historical ecology of the sea otter ( Enhydra lutris ) and its failed 1970s reintroduction to coastal Oregon, we compared mitochondrial genomes of pre-extirpation Oregon sea otters to extant and historical populations across the range. We sequenced, to our knowledge, the first complete ancient mitogenomes from archaeological Oregon sea otter dentine and historical sea otter dental calculus. Archaeological Oregon sea otters ( n = 20) represent 10 haplotypes, which cluster with haplotypes from Alaska, Washington and British Columbia, and exhibit a clear division from California haplotypes. Our results suggest that extant northern populations are appropriate for future reintroduction efforts. This project demonstrates the feasibility of mitogenome capture and sequencing from non-human dental calculus and the diverse applications of ancient DNA analyses to pressing ecological and conservation topics and the management of at-risk/extirpated species.

Africa, Northern, Demography, Egypt, Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry, Ghana, Glass chemistry, History, Ancient, Humans, Mali, Middle East, Niger, Senegal, South Africa, Archaeology, Commerce history, and Glass history

The presence of glass beads in West African archaeological sites provides important evidence of long-distance trade between this part of the continent and the rest of the world. Until recently, most of these items came from historical Sub-Saharan urban centers, well known for their role in the medieval trans-Saharan trade. We present here the chemical analysis by Laser Ablation-Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) of 16 glass beads found in three rural sites excavated during the past decade: the funerary site of Dourou-Boro and settlement sites of Sadia, in central Mali, as well as the settlement site of Djoutoubaya, in eastern Senegal, in contexts dated between the 7th-9th and the 11th-13th centuries CE. Results show that the raw materials used to manufacture the majority of the glass most probably originated in Egypt, the Levantine coast and the Middle East. One bead is of uncertain provenance and shows similarities with glass found in the Iberian Peninsula and in South Africa. One bead fragment found inside a tomb is a modern production, probably linked to recent plundering. All of these ancient beads were exchanged along the trans-Saharan trade routes active during the rise of the first Sahelian states, such as the Ghana and the Gao kingdoms, and show strong similarities with the other West African bead assemblages that have been analysed. Despite the remoteness of their location in the Dogon Country and in the Falémé River valley, the beads studied were therefore included in the long-distance trade network, via contacts with the urban commercial centers located at the edge of the Sahara along the Niger River and in current southern Mauretania. These results bring a new light on the relationships between international and regional trade in Africa and highlight the complementarity between centres of political and economic power and their peripheries, important because of resources like gold for eastern Senegal.

Animals, Germany, Humans, Isotopes, Strontium, Archaeology, and Strontium Isotopes analysis

In archaeological mobility studies, non-local humans and animals can be identified by means of stable strontium isotope analysis. However, defining the range of local 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios is prerequisite. To achieve this goal, proxy-based mixing models have recently been proposed using 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios measured in modern local vegetation, water and soil samples. Our study complements earlier efforts by introducing archaeological animal bones as an additional proxy. We then evaluate the different modelling approaches by contrasting proxy-results generated for the county of Erding (Upper Bavaria, Germany) with a comprehensive set of strontium measurements obtained from tooth enamel of late antique and early medieval human individuals (n = 49) from the same micro-region. We conclude that current mixing models based on environmental proxies clearly underestimate the locally bioavailable 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios due to the limited sample size of modern environmental specimens and a suit of imponderables inherent to efforts modelling complex geobiological processes. In sum, currently available mixing models are deemed inadequate and can therefore not be recommended.
(Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

DNA, Mitochondrial genetics, Female, Geography, Germany, Haplotypes genetics, Humans, Male, Models, Theoretical, Principal Component Analysis, Sex Determination Analysis, Time Factors, Anthropology, Archaeology, Cemeteries, DNA, Ancient analysis, Hierarchy, Social, and Isotope Labeling

We present a high-resolution cross-disciplinary analysis of kinship structure and social institutions in two Late Copper Age Bell Beaker culture cemeteries of South Germany containing 24 and 18 burials, of which 34 provided genetic information. By combining archaeological, anthropological, genetic and isotopic evidence we are able to document the internal kinship and residency structure of the cemeteries and the socially organizing principles of these local communities. The buried individuals represent four to six generations of two family groups, one nuclear family at the Alburg cemetery, and one seemingly more extended at Irlbach. While likely monogamous, they practiced exogamy, as six out of eight non-locals are women. Maternal genetic diversity is high with 23 different mitochondrial haplotypes from 34 individuals, whereas all males belong to one single Y-chromosome haplogroup without any detectable contribution from Y-chromosomes typical of the farmers who had been the sole inhabitants of the region hundreds of years before. This provides evidence for the society being patrilocal, perhaps as a way of protecting property among the male line, while in-marriage from many different places secured social and political networks and prevented inbreeding. We also find evidence that the communities practiced selection for which of their children (aged 0-14 years) received a proper burial, as buried juveniles were in all but one case boys, suggesting the priority of young males in the cemeteries. This is plausibly linked to the exchange of foster children as part of an expansionist kinship system which is well attested from later Indo-European-speaking cultural groups.

Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry, Humans, Lipids, Plant Leaves, Archaeology, and Ecosystem

Plant wax lipid molecules, chiefly normal (n-) alkanes and n-alkanoic acids, are frequently used as proxies for understanding paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic change. These are regularly analyzed from marine and lake sediments and even more frequently in archaeological contexts, enabling the reconstruction of past environments in direct association with records of past human behavior. Carbon and hydrogen isotope measurements of these compounds are used to trace plant type and water-use efficiency, relative paleotemperature, precipitation, evapotranspiration of leaf and soil moisture, and other physiological and ecological parameters. Plant wax lipids have great potential for answering questions related to human-environment interactions, being for the most part chemically inert and easily recoverable in terrestrial sediments, including those dating back millions of years. The growing use of this technique, and comparison of such data with other paleoenvironmental proxies such as pollen and phytolith analysis and soil carbonate and tooth enamel isotope records, make it essential to establish consistent, best-practice protocols for extracting n-alkanes and n-alkanoic acids from archaeological sediments to provide comparable information for interpreting past climatic, ecosystem, and hydrological changes and their interaction with human societies. © 2020 The Authors. Basic Protocol 1: Total lipid extraction Support Protocol 1: Weighing the total lipid extract Support Protocol 2: Cleaning the PSE extraction cells Alternate Protocol 1: Soxhlet total lipid extraction Alternate Protocol 2: Ultrasonic total lipid extraction Basic Protocol 2: Separation of lipids by aminopropyl column chromatography Basic Protocol 3: Separation of lipids by silver-nitrate-infused silica gel column chromatography Support Protocol 3: Preparation of silica gel infused with 10% silver nitrate Basic Protocol 4: Methylation of n-alkanoic acids Basic Protocol 5: Gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) Basic Protocol 6: Gas chromatography isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GC-IRMS).
(© 2020 The Authors.)

Archaeology history, Ceramics economics, Ceramics history, Climate Change history, Commerce, Culture, History, Ancient, Humans, Israel, Archaeology economics, and Ceramics chemistry

The international scope of the Mediterranean wine trade in Late Antiquity raises important questions concerning sustainability in an ancient international economy and offers a valuable historical precedent to modern globalization. Such questions involve the role of intercontinental commerce in maintaining sustainable production within important supply regions and the vulnerability of peripheral regions believed to have been especially sensitive to environmental and political disturbances. We provide archaeobotanical evidence from trash mounds at three sites in the central Negev Desert, Israel, unraveling the rise and fall of viticulture over the second to eighth centuries of the common era (CE). Using quantitative ceramic data obtained in the same archaeological contexts, we further investigate connections between Negev viticulture and circum-Mediterranean trade. Our findings demonstrate interrelated growth in viticulture and involvement in Mediterranean trade reaching what appears to be a commercial scale in the fourth to mid-sixth centuries. Following a mid-sixth century peak, decline of this system is evident in the mid- to late sixth century, nearly a century before the Islamic conquest. These findings closely correspond with other archaeological evidence for social, economic, and urban growth in the fourth century and decline centered on the mid-sixth century. Contracting markets were a likely proximate cause for the decline; possible triggers include climate change, plague, and wider sociopolitical developments. In long-term historical perspective, the unprecedented commercial florescence of the Late Antique Negev appears to have been unsustainable, reverting to an age-old pattern of smaller-scale settlement and survival-subsistence strategies within a time frame of about two centuries.
(Copyright © 2020 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.)

Agriculture, Animals, Geologic Sediments chemistry, Humans, Israel, Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared, Urbanization, Archaeology, and Waste Management

Sustainable resource management is of central importance among agrarian societies in marginal drylands. In the Negev Desert, Israel, research on agropastoral resource management during Late Antiquity emphasizes intramural settlement contexts and landscape features. The importance of hinterland trash deposits as diachronic archives of resource use and disposal has been overlooked until recently. Without these data, assessments of community-scale responses to societal, economic, and environmental disruption and reconfiguration remain incomplete. In this study, micro-geoarchaeological investigations were conducted on trash mound features at the Byzantine-Early Islamic sites of Shivta, Elusa, and Nesanna to track spatiotemporal trends in the use and disposal of critical agropastoral resources. Refuse derived sediment deposits were characterized using stratigraphy, micro-remains (i.e., livestock dung spherulites, wood ash pseudomorphs, and plant phytoliths), and mineralogy by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Our investigations detected a turning point in the management of herbivore livestock dung, a vital resource in the Negev. We propose that the scarcity of raw dung proxies in the studied deposits relates to the use of this resource as fuel and agricultural fertilizer. Refuse deposits contained dung ash, indicating the widespread use of dung as a sustainable fuel. Sharply contrasting this, raw dung was dumped and incinerated outside the village of Nessana. We discuss how this local shift in dung management corresponds with a growing emphasis on sedentised herding spurred by newly pressed taxation and declining market-oriented agriculture. Our work is among the first to deal with the role of waste management and its significance to economic strategies and urban development during the late Roman Imperial Period and Late Antiquity. The findings contribute to highlighting top-down societal and economic pressures, rather than environmental degradation, as key factors involved in the ruralisation of the Negev agricultural heartland toward the close of Late Antiquity.

Humans, Jordan, Lebanon, Archaeology, and Fossils

Our field data from the Upper Palaeolithic site of Al-Ansab 1 (Jordan) and from a pollen sequence in the Dead Sea elucidate the role that changing Steppe landscapes played in facilitating anatomically modern human populations to enter a major expansion and consolidation phase, known as the "Early Ahmarian", several millennia subsequent to their initial Marine Isotope Stage 4/3 migration from Africa, into the Middle East. The Early Ahmarian techno-cultural unit covers a time range between 45 ka-37 ka BP. With so far more than 50 sites found, the Early Ahmarian is the first fully Upper Palaeolithic techno-cultural unit exclusively and undisputedly related to anatomically modern human populations. In order to better understand the potentially attractive features of the Early Ahmarian environmental context that supported its persistence for over 8,000 years, we carried out a decennial research program in Jordan and in the Dead Sea. This included (1) a geoscientific and archaeological survey program in the Wadi Sabra (Jordan) with a particular focus on excavations at the Early Ahmarian site of Al-Ansab 1 alongside the detailed analysis of Quaternary sediments from the same area and (2) palaeobotanical research based on Quaternary lake deposits from the Dead Sea. Our pollen data from the Dead Sea indicate slow, low frequency vegetational variation with expanding Artemisia steppe, from 60 to 20 ka BP (MIS 3-2). Here, we see a reciprocal assimilation of southern and northern Levantine vegetation zones thereby enhancing a long-lasting south-to-north steppe corridor. The same integration process accelerated about 40 ka ago, when forested areas retreated in the Lebanese Mountains. The process then extended to encompass an area from Southern Lebanon to the Sinai Peninsula. We argue that, at the same time, the carriers of the Early Ahmarian techno-cultural unit extended their habitat from their original Mediterranean biome (in the North) to the Saharo-Arabian biome (to the South). Our excavation of Al-Ansab 1, a campsite at the eastern margins of the Early Ahmarian settlement area, indicates far reaching annual movements of small, highly mobile hunter-gatherer groups. We assume a low degree of settlement complexity, still allowing for habitat extension of the Early Ahmarian into the margins of the Levantine corridor. Due to our radiometric dates, our combined archaeological and environmental record sheds light on an evolved phase of the Early Ahmarian, around 38 ka ago, rather than the starting phase of this techno-cultural unit. Possible application of our model to the starting phase of the Early Ahmarian remains an aspect of future research.

Emigration and Immigration history, History, Ancient, Humans, Portugal, Radiometric Dating, Archaeology, Demography, and Fossils

Documenting the first appearance of modern humans in a given region is key to understanding the dispersal process and the replacement or assimilation of indigenous human populations such as the Neanderthals. The Iberian Peninsula was the last refuge of Neanderthal populations as modern humans advanced across Eurasia. Here we present evidence of an early Aurignacian occupation at Lapa do Picareiro in central Portugal. Diagnostic artifacts were found in a sealed stratigraphic layer dated 41.1 to 38.1 ka cal BP, documenting a modern human presence on the western margin of Iberia ∼5,000 years earlier than previously known. The data indicate a rapid modern human dispersal across southern Europe, reaching the westernmost edge where Neanderthals were thought to persist. The results support the notion of a mosaic process of modern human dispersal and replacement of indigenous Neanderthal populations.
(Copyright © 2020 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.)

Area Under Curve, Regression Analysis, Archaeology, Machine Learning, and Models, Statistical

Predictive models are central to both archaeological research and cultural resource management. Yet, archaeological applications of predictive models are often insufficient due to small training data sets, inadequate statistical techniques, and a lack of theoretical insight to explain the responses of past land use to predictor variables. Here we address these critiques and evaluate the predictive power of four statistical approaches widely used in ecological modeling-generalized linear models, generalized additive models, maximum entropy, and random forests-to predict the locations of Formative Period (2100-650 BP) archaeological sites in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. We assess each modeling approach using a threshold-independent measure, the area under the curve (AUC), and threshold-dependent measures, like the true skill statistic. We find that the majority of the modeling approaches struggle with archaeological datasets due to the frequent lack of true-absence locations, which violates model assumptions of generalized linear models, generalized additive models, and random forests, as well as measures of their predictive power (AUC). Maximum entropy is the only method tested here which is capable of utilizing pseudo-absence points (inferred absence data based on known presence data) and controlling for a non-representative sampling of the landscape, thus making maximum entropy the best modeling approach for common archaeological data when the goal is prediction. Regression-based approaches may be more applicable when prediction is not the goal, given their grounding in well-established statistical theory. Random forests, while the most powerful, is not applicable to archaeological data except in the rare case where true-absence data exist. Our results have significant implications for the application of predictive models by archaeologists for research and conservation purposes and highlight the importance of understanding model assumptions.

Animals, Bayes Theorem, Canada, Dogs, Archaeology, Carbon Isotopes analysis, Diet methods, Feeding Behavior, Fishes physiology, and Nitrogen Isotopes analysis

Domestic dogs are frequently encountered in Indigenous archaeological sites on the Northwest Coast of North America. Although dogs depended on human communities for care and provisioning, archaeologists lack information about the specific foods dogs consumed. Previous research has used stable isotope analysis of dog diets for insight into human subsistence ('canine surrogacy' model) and identified considerable use of marine resources. Here, we use zooarchaeological data to develop and apply a Bayesian mixing model (MixSIAR) to estimate dietary composition from 14 domestic dogs and 13 potential prey taxa from four archaeological sites (2,900-300 BP) in Tseshaht First Nation territory on western Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. Two candidate models that best match zooarchaeological data indicate dogs predominantly consumed salmon and forage fish (35-65%), followed by nearshore fish (4-40%), and marine mammals (2-30%). We compared these isotopic data to dogs across the Northwest Coast, which indicated a pronounced marine diet for Tseshaht dogs and, presumably, their human providers. These results are broadly consistent with the canine surrogacy model as well as help illuminate human participation in pre-industrial marine food webs and the long-term role of fisheries in Indigenous economies and lifeways.

Adult, Female, Greece, History, 15th Century, History, Medieval, Humans, Male, Young Adult, Archaeology, Drinking Water analysis, Human Migration history, Oxygen Isotopes analysis, Paleontology, and Population Dynamics history

In this study a methodology for identifying the geographic origin of unidentified persons, their residence and moving patterns while providing information on lifestyle, diet and socio-economic status by combining stable isotopic data, with the biological information (isotopic composition of the skeleton), is presented. This is accomplished by comparing the oxygen isotopic composition of the spring water that individuals were drinking, during their living period, with the oxygen isotopic composition of their tooth enamel bioapatite. Spring water and teeth samples were collected from individuals from three different areas of Greece: North Greece, Central Greece and South Greece and isotopic analysis of δ 13 C and δ 18 O of tooth enamel bioapatite and δ 18 O of spring water were conducted. For these three areas the isotopic methodology is a promising tool for discriminating the provenance. Furthermore, as a case study, this methodology is applied to two archeological sites of Greece (Medieval-Thebes and Roman-Edessa) in order to determine paleomobility patterns.

Animals, History, Medieval, Humans, Pacific Ocean, Seafood, Aquatic Organisms, Archaeology, Ecology, Paleontology, Population Dynamics, and Technology history

During the last 10 years, we have learned a great deal about the potential for a coastal peopling of the Americas and the importance of marine resources in early economies. Despite research at a growing number of terminal Pleistocene archaeological sites on the Pacific Coast of the Americas, however, important questions remain about the lifeways of early Paleocoastal peoples. Research at CA-SRI-26, a roughly 11,700 year old site on California's Santa Rosa Island, provides new data on Paleoindian technologies, subsistence strategies, and seasonality in an insular maritime setting. Buried beneath approximately two meters of alluvium, much of the site has been lost to erosion, but its remnants have produced chipped stone artifacts (crescents and Channel Island Amol and Channel Island Barbed points) diagnostic of early island Paleocoastal components. The bones of waterfowl and seabirds, fish, and marine mammals, along with small amounts of shellfish document a diverse subsistence strategy. These data support a relatively brief occupation during the wetter "winter" season (late fall to early spring), in an upland location several km from the open coast. When placed in the context of other Paleocoastal sites on the Channel Islands, CA-SRI-26 demonstrates diverse maritime subsistence strategies and a mix of seasonal and more sustained year-round island occupations. Our results add to knowledge about a distinctive island Paleocoastal culture that appears to be related to Western Stemmed Tradition sites widely scattered across western North America.