Weapon grave of Suontaka, Hattula in Finland reveals flexible gender roles in the early middle ages

 

IMAGE: A RECONSTRUCTION DRAWING OF THE SUONTAKA GRAVE. view more 

CREDIT: DRAWING: VERONIKA PASCHENKO.

The modern re-analysis of a weapon grave found in Suontaka, Hattula in Finland over 50 years ago challenges the traditional beliefs about gender roles in the Iron Age and Early Medieval communities and reveals information about the gender expressions of the period. The grave also functions as a proof of how non-binary people  could have been valued and respected members of their communities.

In 1968, a sword with a bronze handle was found at Suontaka Vesitorninmäki, Hattula, Finland during a digging project for a water pipe. The sword lead to the discovery of a grave that was almost a thousand years old, and the grave has since become rather well-known for the objects it contained.

The jewellery inside the grave indicates that the buried individual was dressed in typical female clothing of the period. On the other hand, the person was buried with a sword – possibly two, according to some interpretations – which is often associated with masculinity. Over the decades, the Suontaka grave has been considered to be either a double burial of both a woman and a man, or alternatively, a weapon grave of a female, and therefore a proof of strong female leaders or even female warriors in the Late Iron Age Finland. However, a newly-published study challenges both views.

The study confirmed that only one person had been buried in the grave, and that the person was wearing typical feminine clothes of the period and had a hiltless sword placed on their left hip. 

– The buried individual seems to have been a highly respected member of their community. They had been laid in the grave on a soft feather blanket with valuable furs and objects, says Doctoral Candidate of Archaeology Ulla Moilanen from the University of Turku.

The Analysis Challenges Notions of Traditional Gender Division

The buried individual was studied using an ancient-DNA analysis. The DNA was badly damaged, but the analysis suggested that the buried individual had the sex-chromosomal aneuploidy XXY, i.e. the Klinefelter syndrome.

– According to current data, it is likely that the individual found in Suontaka had the chromosomes XXY, although the DNA results are based on a very small set of data, emphasises Postdoctoral Researcher Elina Salmela from the University of Helsinki.

The clinical symptoms of Klinefelter syndrome vary from one person to another and are often mild enough that the syndrome might go unnoticed. Although a person with XXY chromosomes is usually anatomically a male, the syndrome may also cause e.g. breast growth, diminished muscle mass, or infertility. 

According to Moilanen, the individual buried in Suontaka may be an example of an individual whose social identity settles outside the traditional division of genders. 

– If the characteristics of the Klinefelter syndrome have been evident on the person, they might not have been considered strictly a female or a male in the Early Middle Ages community. The abundant collection of objects buried in the grave is a proof that the person was not only accepted but also valued and respected. However, biology does not directly dictate a person’s self-identity, Moilanen reminds. 

The study also revealed that out of the two swords found in the grave, only one has belonged to the original burial setting. The impressive sword with a bronze handle has probably been hidden in the grave at a later point after the original burial.

– This also emphasises the importance of the person and their memory for their community, Moilanen says.

The peer-reviewed study has been published in the respected journal European Journal of Archaeology.

Sediments from lake in Japan reveal stable climate led to origin of agriculture

 

IMAGE: THE CALM LAKE HAS AN ABIOTIC AND UNDISTURBED LAKE BOTTOM THAT FAVORED THE ACCUMULATION OF ANNUALLY LAYERED SEDIMENTS FOR TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS.view more 

CREDIT: PROFESSOR TAKESHI NAKAGAWA FROM RITSUMEIKAN UNIVERSITY

The development of agriculture was a landmark feat for modern humans. It marked the beginning of a sedentary lifestyle and development of “civilizations.” However, the environmental factors that drove this revolutionary change in how humans lived have been debated until now.

One of the most widely supported theories about the origin of agriculture is that a food shortage crisis brought about by a climatic cooling event that started at ca. 10,900 BC and lasted until ca. 9,700 BC drove humans to adopt agriculture to enhance food production. However, this conventional theory is being questioned: this is because several radiocarbon ages of plant remains that seemed to support the hypothesis were re-assessed recently, and the updated results suggested that the period of climatic cooling coincided with a decline and discontinuation of sedentary life, rather than the beginning of it.

Based on the archaeological observation that agriculture seemed to have originated independently in multiple regions within a few millennia after the end of the last ice age, some researchers believe that the elevated temperature of the post-glacial age resulted in humans adopting agriculture. However, this theory cannot explain why humans did not start agriculture much earlier in tropical regions, where the temperature was already sufficiently high even during the coldest phase of the last ice age.

A very detailed climate reconstruction from ca. 16,000 BC to ca. 8,000 BC, based on analyses of pollen fossils included in the annually layered sediments from Lake Suigetsu, Japan, shed new light on this debate. According to the time-series reconstruction of the climate change through this period, as well as the world’s most accurate chronology of the sediment established by counting annual layers and radiocarbon dating of hundreds of leaf fossils, a research team, led by Takeshi Nakagawa of Ritsumeikan University, Japan, demonstrated that the first attempts of domesticating plants and constructing settlements based on agriculture coincided with periods of relatively warm and, more importantly, stable climate.

The team’s latest data show that the transition from the ice age to the post-glacial age was characterized by alternations between stable and unstable periods. The domestication of plants didn’t start when the warm climate was established in ca. 13,000 BC, but had to wait until the climate stopped oscillating in short intervals and large amplitudes in ca. 12,000 BC.

Agriculture is a subsistence practice that requires planning. But to plan in advance, a stable future is important. When the climate was generally unstable, agriculture was too risky a practice because accurately predicting the weather in the future wasn’t possible, thus making it difficult to select appropriate crops for agriculture. In such climatic conditions, hunting-and-gathering was a more reasonable subsistence strategy than agriculture because the natural ecosystem consists of diverse species from which humans could expect “something” edible, as opposed to the farmlands. These new findings by Nakagawa and colleagues, therefore, challenge the traditional view that agriculture was a revolutionary step forward for the history of humanity. Instead, agriculture and hunting-and-gathering were equally reasonable adaptation strategies, depending on whether the climate was stable or unstable.

Climatic stability has not been actively discussed by paleoclimatologists, partly because annually resolved natural archives of climate change are rare, and because analyzing such archives at a sufficiently high time-resolution inevitably involves extensive effort. The unique sediments from a small lake in Japan, as well as the research team’s two-decade-long efforts to extract information from the sediments, finally paved the way to a new finding that may alter self-image of modern humans.

Neandertal and Denisovan blood groups deciphered

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IMAGE: RH BLOOD GROUP SYSTEM ANALYSIS (+ = FULL RH(D) ANTIGEN ; + PARTIAL = PARTIAL RH(D) ANTIGEN / - = MISSING RH(D) ANTIGEN) SUGGESTED RISK OF HAEMOLYTIC DISEASE OF THE FETUS AND NEWBORN AMONG NEANDERTALS AND REVEALED INTERBREEDING (POSSIBLY IN THE LEVANT), TRACES OF WHICH MIGHT BE FOUND IN MODERN HUMANS FROM AUSTRALIA AND PAPUA NEW GUINEA. IN THREE OF THE INDIVIDUALS, THE PRESENCE OF A ‘NON-SECRETOR’ ALLELE, ASSOCIATED WITH PROTECTION FROM CERTAIN VIRUSES, SUGGESTS SELECTIVE PRESSURE EXERTED BY THE LATTER.view more 

CREDIT: © STÉPHANE MAZIÈRES (PHOTOS: DOUKA ET AL. / MAFESSONI ET AL. / PRÜFER ET AL. / GREEN ET AL.)

Blood group analyses for three Neandertals and one Denisovan by a team from the Anthropologie Bio-Culturelle, Droit, Éthique et Santé research unit (CNRS / Aix-Marseille University / EFS) confirm hypotheses concerning their African origin, Eurasian dispersal, and interbreeding with early Homo sapiens. The researchers also found further evidence of low genetic diversity and possible demographic fragility. Their findings are published in PLOS ONE (28 July 2021).

The extinct hominin lineages of the Neandertals and Denisovans were present throughout Eurasia from 300,000 to 40,000 years ago. Despite prior sequencing of about 15 Neandertal and Denisovan individuals, the study of the genes underlying blood groups had hitherto been neglected. Yet blood group systems were the first markers used by anthropologists to reconstruct the origins of hominin populations, their migrations, and their interbreeding.

In a new study, scientists from the CNRS, Aix-Marseille University, and the French Blood Establishment (EFS) have examined the previously sequenced genomes of one Denisovan and three Neandertal females who lived 100,000 to 40,000 years ago, in order to identify their blood groups and consider what they may reveal about human’s evolutionary history. Of the 40-some known blood group systems, the team concentrated on the seven usually considered for blood transfusion purposes, the most common of which are the ABO (determining the A, B, AB, and O blood types) and Rh systems.

The findings bolster previous hypotheses but also offer new surprises. While it was long thought that Neandertals were all type O—just as chimpanzees are all type A and gorillas all type B—the researchers demonstrated that these ancient hominins already displayed the full range of ABO variability observed in modern humans. Extensive analysis covering other blood group systems turned up alleles that argue in favour of African origins for Neandertals and Denisovans.

Especially surprising is the discovery that the Neandertals harboured a unique Rh allele absent in modern humans—with the notable exceptions of one Aboriginal Australian and one Papuan. Do these two individuals bear testimony to interbreeding of Neandertals and modern humans before the migration of the latter into Southeast Asia?

Finally, this study sheds light on Neandertal demographics. It confirms that these ancient hominins exhibited very little genetic diversity, and that they may have been susceptible to haemolytic disease of the fetus and newborn (erythroblastosis fetalis)—due to maternofetal Rh incompatibility—in cases where Neandertal mothers were carrying the children of Homo sapiens or Denisovan mates. These clues strengthen the hypothesis that low genetic diversity together with low reproductive success contributed to the disappearance of Neandertals.

Bronze Age cemetery reveals history of a high-status woman and her twins

And migration patterns within her Vatya community

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

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IMAGE: LEFT: BONE ASSEMBLAGE FROM BURIAL N. 241A (ADULT FEMALE INDIVIDUAL). RIGHT: BONES ATTRIBUTABLE TO BOTH FOETUSES (N. 241B AND 241C). view more 

CREDIT: CAVAZZUTI ET AL, 2021, PLOS ONE (CC-BY 4.0, HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

Ancient urn graves contain a wealth of information about a high-ranking woman and her Bronze Age Vatya community, according to a study published July 28, 2021 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Claudio Cavazzuti from the University of Bologna, Italy, and Durham University, UK, and colleagues.

People of the Vatya culture that flourished during the Hungarian Early and Middle Bronze Ages (approximately 2200-1450 BCE) customarily cremated the deceased--making the human remains difficult to analyze from a bioarchaeological perspective. In this study, the authors used new osteological sampling strategies to learn more about the people buried in the urnfield cemetery at Szigetszentmiklós-Ürgehegy, one of the largest Middle Bronze Age urn cemeteries in Central Hungary.

Cavazzuti and colleagues analyzed human tissues from 29 graves (three whole burials, or inhumations, and 26 urn cremations) and applied strontium isotope comparison techniques to test if sampled individuals were local to the geographic area. For the majority of sampled graves, each contained the remains of a single individual and simple grave goods made of ceramic or bronze; however, gravesite 241 was of special interest: this grave contained an urn with the cremated remains of an adult woman and two fetuses, buried alongside prestigious grave goods including a golden hair-ring, a bronze neck-ring, and two bone hairpin ornaments.

Though the three inhumed individuals were poorly preserved, the authors were able to confirm these had been adults, though they couldn't determine the sex. Of the 26 cremated individuals, seven appeared to be adult males, 11 adult females, and two appeared to be adults whose sex couldn't be determined. They also identified children's remains: two individuals likely 5-10 years of age, and four individuals ranging from 2-5 years of age--the youngest present aside from the twin fetuses buried with the adult woman in grave 241, which were approximately 28-32 gestational weeks of age. The authors believe the woman in grave 241 may have died due to complications bearing or birthing these twins. Her remains indicate she was 25 to 35 years old at her time of death and the remains were especially carefully collected post-cremation, as her grave exhibited a bone weight 50 percent higher than the average sampled grave. The strontium analysis also revealed she was likely born elsewhere and moved to Szigetszentmiklós in early adolescence, between the ages of 8-13. One other adult woman also appeared non-local to Szigetszentmiklós, with the adult women in general featuring a more varied strontium isotope composition than the adult men, whose isotopes were concentrated in an especially small range--even narrower than those of the children analyzed in the study.

The authors note their findings at the Szigetszentmiklós urnfield reinforce evidence that women, especially of high rank, commonly married outside their immediate group in Bronze Age Central Europe--and confirm the informative potential of strontium isotope analyses even for cremated remains.

The authors add: "Thanks to a wide spectrum of new bioarchaeological methods, techniques and sampling strategies, it is now possible to reconstruct the life-histories of cremated people of the Bronze Age. In this case, the authors investigate the movements and the tragic events of a high-status woman's life, settled along the Danube 4000 years ago, in the territory of modern-day Hungary."

Thomas Cromwell's Tudor London mansion revealed in unprecedented detail

New insights come on anniversary of Cromwell's death and ahead of the final part of the 'Wolf Hall' trilogy which hits West End later this year

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP

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IMAGE: HTTPS://NEWSROOM.TAYLORANDFRANCISGROUP.COM/JOURNALIST-APPLICATION/ view more 

CREDIT: PETER URMSTON

The magnificent London mansion of Thomas Cromwell has been revealed for the first time in an artist's impression, following a new study which examines the building in unprecedented detail.

Dr Nick Holder, a historian and research fellow at English Heritage and the University of Exeter, has scrutinized an exceptionally rich source of information, including letters, leases, surveys and inventories, to present the most thorough insight to-date on "one of the most spectacular private houses" in 1530s London.

Published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the British Archaeological Association, his findings - which have informed the artist's impression created by illustrator Peter Urmston - include floor plans for the mansion, which had 58 rooms plus servants' garrets, and a large garden.

The plans have been released before but the evidence behind them hasn't been presented until now.

Together with an accompanying room-by-room analysis of another of Cromwell's London homes, it provides a fascinating new insight into the life and personality of a man who was one of the architects of the English Reformation and helped engineer the annulment of Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, allowing him to marry Anne Boleyn.

Cromwell, who as Henry VIII's henchman was the most powerful man in England, still captures the public imagination - and inspires novels, including Hilary Mantel's award-winning Wolf Hall series, plays and TV series - today, almost 500 years after his death.

The mansion, next to the Austin Friars monastery in the City of London, cost Cromwell at least £1,600 to build, including around £550 on the land.

Cromwell had lived in Italy and spoke Italian and it is "very likely" the architecture contained fashionable new Italian Renaissance features, says Dr Holder.

Construction began in July 1535 and, like many building projects, there were hitches, including a delay in October the following year when the 80-strong team of workmen was sent to Yorkshire to fight the rebels of the Pilgrimage of Grace uprising.

Cromwell also seems to have undertaken a "land grab", confiscating a 22-foot strip of land to enlarge his garden, which may have had a bowling alley and tennis court.

The mansion, which boasted bedding made cloth of gold, damask and velvet, acted as a family home, an administrative base and a venue for entertainment. It may even have been designed in the anticipation, or perhaps fear, of a visit from the king.

Prestigious visitors would have been guided up the large stair tower to one of the sumptuous first-floor halls, the parlour or the ladies' parlour. The heated halls were decorated with tapestry hangings and one had three distinctive oriel (bay) windows.

The mansion was also a store for Cromwell's personal armoury - in reality enough for a small army. This included several hundred sets of "almayne revettes" (German plate armour for infantry), nearly 100 sallets and bascinets (head-pieces and helmets) and weaponry including 759 bows, complete with hundreds of sheaves of arrows.

Cromwell would, however, have had little time to enjoy his spectacular new home before he was executed for treason in 1540.

He had moved to the mansion from a 14-room neighbouring townhouse, for which he probably paid £4 a year in rent. Documents, including two inventories from Cromwell's tenancy, provide a room-by-room description of this home and its contents, which included 28 rings, three of which Cromwell was wearing at the time of the inventory. They also give an intriguing glimpse into his religious outlook.

Dr Holder says: "We think of Cromwell as Henry VIII's henchman, carrying out his policy, including closing down the monasteries, and we know that by about 1530 Cromwell became one of the new Evangelical Protestants.

"But when you look at the inventory of his house in the 1520s, he doesn't seem such a religious radical, he seems more of a traditional English Catholic.

"He's got various religious paintings on the wall, he's got his own holy relic, which is very much associated with traditional Catholics, not with the new Evangelicals, and he's even got a home altar. In the 1520s he seems like much more of a conventional early Tudor Catholic gentleman."

The coats of arms of his patron Cardinal Wolsey and former patron, Thomas Grey, which were on display in the townhouse, meanwhile, reveal a sense of loyalty beneath Cromwell's ruthless exterior, says Dr Holder.

The exceptionally detailed analysis was made possible thanks to a "treasure trove" of documents held in the archives of the Drapers' Company, the trade group that bought Cromwell's mansion after his death.

Dr Holder adds: "These two houses were the homes of this great man, they were the places where he lived with his wife and two daughters, where his son grew up.? It was also the place he went back to at night after being with Henry VIII at court and just got on with the hard graft of running the country.?

"No one else has looked at these two houses in quite as much detail comparing all the available evidence.? This is about as close as you are going to get to walking down these 16th-century corridors."

Rats and humans migrated from Africa to the Levant over 50,000 years ago

 

The remains of a rat from some tens of thousands of years ago could shed light on the potential existence of a travel corridor of temperate climate from Africa to Europe, Israeli researchers said Tuesday.

The remains of a maned, or crested, rat were found in Israel during excavations in 2016 by archeologists searching for ancient scrolls. Hundreds of bones were found in a cave in the southern Judean Desert.

The researchers said that the presence of the rat’s remains suggested that there may have been a corridor of land to Israel from East Africa with a similarly damp climate to enable to species to survive the migration.

“Genetic proximity allows us to assume that the primitive subspecies also lived in a climatic environment similar to the one in which it lives today,” the researchers said. “Because the same African species came to the Judean Desert through an ancient climatic corridor, it is also likely that humans who migrated from Africa to the Levant at that time were also aided by the same ecological corridor.”

Only one of the bones found at the site could be dated using carbon-dating and was revealed to be from 42,000 years ago.

The remainder of the bones could not be analyzed using this method, meaning that they were over 50,000 years old.

However, researchers at the Geological Survey of Israel were able to date gypsum fragments discovered with the bones, which put the earliest timeframe for the rodent at 120,000 years ago.

The researchers concluded that the rodent lived in the Judean Desert around 42,000 to at least 103,000 years ago.

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Roman road discovered in the Venice lagoon

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The discovery of a Roman road submerged in the Venice Lagoon is reported in Scientific Reports this week. The findings suggest that extensive settlements may have been present in the Venice Lagoon centuries before the founding of Venice began in the fifth century.

During the Roman era, large areas of the Venice Lagoon which are now submerged were accessible by land. Roman artefacts have been found in lagoon islands and waterways, but the extent of human occupation of the lagoon during Roman times has been unclear.

Mapping the lagoon floor using sonar, Fantina Madricardo and colleagues discovered 12 archaeological structures aligned in a northeasterly direction for 1,140 metres, in an area of the lagoon known as the Treporti Channel. The structures were up to 2.7 metres tall and 52.7 metres long. Previous surveys of the Treporti Channel uncovered stones similar to paving stones used by Romans during road construction, indicating that the structures may be aligned along a Roman road. The researchers also discovered an additional four structures in the Treporti Channel that were up to four metres tall and 134.8 metres long. Based on its dimensions and similarity to structures discovered in other areas, the largest of these structures is thought to be a potential harbour structure, such as a dock. Previously collected geological and modelling data indicates that the road is located on a sandy ridge that was above sea level during the Roman era but is now submerged in the lagoon.

The findings suggest that a permanent settlement may have been present in the Treporti Channel during the Roman era. The authors propose that the road may have been linked to a wider network of Roman roads in the Italian Veneto Region and may have been used by travellers and sailors to journey between what is now the city of Chioggia and the Northern Venice Lagoon.

Why weren't New World rabbits domesticated?

Archaeologists find the answer in rabbit social behavior

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - RIVERSIDE

Research News

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IMAGE: THE BONES OF TWO RABBITS FOUND IN THE STOMACH CONTENTS OF AN EAGLE SACRIFICED AT THE SUN PYRAMID IN TEOTIHUACAN, MEXICO. view more 

CREDIT: NAWA SUGIYAMA/UCR

Domesticated rabbits come in all sizes and colors, including tiny Netherland Dwarfs, floppy-eared French lops, Flemish Giants, and fluffy Angoras.

These breeds belong to Europe's only rabbit species, originally limited to the Iberian Peninsula and Southern France and used for meat and fur since the last Ice Age, culminating in domestication about 1,500 years ago.

The Americas, on the other hand, have many rabbit species with ranges throughout both continents. The archaeological record shows rabbits were used as extensively in the Americas as they were on the Iberian Peninsula, with clear archaeological evidence that rabbits were being deliberately raised. Why, then, were rabbits domesticated in Europe and not the Americas?

Recent work by archaeologists Andrew Somerville of Iowa State University and UC Riverside's Nawa Sugiyama found a simple answer: European rabbits live readily in large social groups while American cottontail rabbits do not. The less social nature of American cottontails combined with greater species diversity created a situation where rabbit husbandry did not lead to domestication.

Sugiyama looked to Teotihuacan, a major city in Mexico about 2,000 years ago, where cottontail rabbits comprised 23% of the animal remains during the Classic period. This was more than any other animal used for meat, including wild deer, as well as domesticated turkeys and dogs. The proportion of rabbit bones increased toward the city center, suggesting they were probably being raised, not hunted.

Rabbits were buried at the Sun and Moon Pyramids and are found in the stomach contents of sacrificial carnivores, such as eagles and pumas. Rabbit bones found in the carnivore stomachs contain a type of carbon that indicates a diet unusually rich in corn or cactus, suggesting human-raised rabbits had, in turn, been fed to the carnivores.

"The rabbits were probably fed corn, but the carbon isotopes don't distinguish between corn and cactus, so we can't say for certain," Sugiyama said.

Moreover, 46% of the animal bones excavated in one apartment compound were from rabbits that had been fed a similar diet of agricultural crops, and the amount of phosphate in the floor of one room indicates a location where rabbits urinated and were probably housed. A stone statue of a rabbit was also found in the complex's central plaza, reinforcing the importance of rabbit husbandry to the residents.

A thousand years later, the 16th century Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortez described the sale of rabbits at the Aztec marketplace of Tlateloco. Over at least a millennia of husbandry and extensive use for food, fur, and ritual, however, the rabbits of Mexico did not become domesticated -- a mutualistic, multigenerational relationship characterized by human-controlled reproduction.

To understand why, Somerville compared the behavioral ecology of European rabbits and American cottontails against criteria that "prime" or preadapt animals for domestication. Animals that have been domesticated usually live in groups with resident males. They also have young that imprint easily and require parental care, a promiscuous mating system, tolerance for a wide variety of environments, and low reactivity to humans.

European and American rabbits were similar across all criteria except social behavior. European rabbits live in underground family burrows, called warrens, of up to 20 individuals that include males, who defend their breeding territory from other males. Warrens made it easy for people to locate and manage wild rabbit populations, then mimic those conditions in captivity, where rabbits readily reproduced.

American cottontails, on the other hand, are solitary, live entirely above ground, and tend to fight in enclosures together. Males do not defend a breeding territory and pursue more opportunistic mating strategies.

Somerville and Sugiyama conclude that their solitary nature, tendency to fight in enclosures, dispersed territories, and less predictable mating systems made it possible to raise rabbits without forming the kind of mutual relationship that would eventually give humans enough control over a species to direct its evolution. Greater species diversity also made it less likely that any one of them would become domesticated.