Cuisine of early farmers revealed by analysis of proteins in pottery from Çatalhöyük

Knowledge of the diet of people living in the prehistoric settlement of Çatalhöyük almost 8000 years ago has been complemented in astonishing scope and detail by analyzing proteins from their ceramic bowls and jars. Using this new approach, an international team of researchers has determined that vessels from this early farming site in central Anatolia, in what is now Turkey, contained cereals, legumes, dairy products and meat, in some cases narrowing food items down to specific species.

An international team led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, the Freie Universität Berlin and the University of York has uncovered details about the diet of early farmers in the central Anatolian settlement of Çatalhöyük. By analyzing proteins from residues in ancient pots and jars excavated from the site, the researchers were able to find evidence of foods that were eaten there. Although previous studies have looked at pot residues from the site, this was the first to use proteins, which can be used to identify plants and animals more specifically, sometimes down to the species level.

One of the key early farming sites in the Old World

Çatalhöyük was a large settlement inhabited from about 7100 BC to 5600 BC by early farmers, and is located in what is now central Turkey. The site showcases a fascinating layout in which houses were built directly next to each other in every direction and stands out for its excellent preservation of finds. After over 25 years of excavation and analysis, it is considered one of the best-researched early farming sites in the Old World.

For this study, the researchers analyzed vessel sherds from the West Mound of Çatalhöyük, dating to a narrow timeframe of 5900-5800 BC towards the end of the site's occupation. The vessel sherds analyzed came from open bowls and jars, as shown by reconstructions and had calcified residues on the inside surfaces. In this region today, limescale residue on the inside of cooking pots is very common. The researchers used state-of-the-art protein analyses on samples taken from various parts of the ceramics, including the residue deposits, to determine what the vessels held.

Food proteins left behind in ceramic bowls and jars

The analysis revealed that the vessels contained grains, legumes, meat and dairy products. The dairy products were shown to have come mostly from sheep and goats, and also from the bovine (cattle) family. While bones from these animals are found across the site and earlier lipid analyses have identified milk fats in vessels, this is the first time researchers have been able to identify which animals were actually being used for their milk. In line with the plant remains found, the cereals included barley and wheat, and the legumes included peas and vetches. The non-dairy animal products, which might have included meat and blood, came primarily from the goat and sheep family, and in some cases from bovines and deer. Interestingly, many of the pots contain evidence of multiple food types in a single vessel, suggesting that the residents mixed foods in their cuisine, potentially as porridges or soups, or that some vessels were used sequentially for different food items, or both.

Early cheese-making

One particular vessel however, a jar, only had evidence for dairy products, in the form of proteins found in the whey portion of milk. "This is particularly interesting because it suggests that the residents may have been using dairy production methods that separated fresh milk into curds and whey. It also suggests that they had a special vessel for holding the whey afterwards, meaning that they used the whey for additional purposes after the curd was separated," states Jessica Hendy, lead author, of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

These results show that dairying has been ongoing in this area since at least the 6th millennium BC, and that people used the milk of multiple difference species of animal, including cow, sheep and goat.

However, the researchers emphasize that based on the archaeological record an even greater variety of foods, especially plant foods, were likely eaten at Çatalhöyük, which either were not contained in the vessels they studied or are not present in the databases they use to identify proteins.

The "shotgun" proteomic approaches used by the researchers are heavily dependent on reference sequence databases, and many plant species are not represented or have limited representation. "For example, there are only 6 protein sequences for vetch in the databases. For wheat, there are almost 145,000," explains Hendy. "An important aspect of future work will need to be expanding these databases with more reference sequences."

The potential of protein analysis on archaeological ceramics

Other molecular techniques applied to ancient pottery can reveal broad classes of food - such as evidence of dairy or animal fat - but an analysis of proteins allows a much more detailed picture of past cuisine.

The results of this study show the power of protein analyses, which can identify foodstuffs in situ down to the species level, in samples as old as 8000 years. In particular, the residues on the insides of the ceramics were exceptionally well-preserved and contained a wealth of information. The removal of these residues can be a common practice among archaeologists as part of the preservation and cleaning process.

"These results highlight how valuable these deposits can be, and we encourage colleagues to retain them during post-excavation processing and cleaning," states Eva Rosenstock of the Freie Universität Berlin and the senior author of the study.

Broad genetic variation on the Pontic-Caspian Steppe

The genetic variation within the Scythian nomad group is so broad that it must be explained with the group assimilating people it came in contact with. This is shown in a new study on Bronze and Iron Age genetics of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, situated in the Black Sea region. The article is published in the scientific journal Science Advances.

"There is so much genetic variation among the Scythians, it seems that you didn't have to be born a Scyth to be a part of their community", says Anders Götherström, Professor at the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, Stockholm University.

This is likely the strategy needed for the group to have been able to grow as fast, expand as vast and to remain established for as long as they did. The findings emphasize the importance of assimilation to maintain Scythian dominance around the Black Sea region.

"It also sheds light on their attitude towards conquered people. Scythians are often thought of as an extremely aggressive group, but their gradual genetic expansion show us that they were also a group prepared to interact with and take in new people. For example, in one burial ground we found individuals of different genetic background buried according to Scythian tradition. This tells us that Scythians seem to have incorporated people from other groups into their families and their community", says Maja Krzewi?ska researcher at the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, Stockholm University.

The Pontic-Caspian Steppe - a dynamic place

The vast area of the Pontic-Caspian Steppe region has worked as a motor for demographic events throughout Eurasia, especially in the western part of the meta-continent. Crucial events in European history and prehistory can be traced back to people of the Steppe. Including the invention of horseback riding, chariots, a new type of warfare and the spread of Indo-European languages.

"The Central Eurasian Steppe seems to have been a very dynamic place. An important geographical region which acted both as a melting-pot and a nursery of people, as well as communicative and technological innovations. This is where people met, shared ideas and genes. From this 'pit-stop' genes and ideas were spread from the East to the West", says Gül?ah Merve K?l?nç researcher at the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, Stockholm University.

A gradual genetic mix
 
An international research team, led from Stockholm University, have investigated genomic data from 35 individuals, spanning 2 200 years. The material mainly consists of human remains from the southern Urals and central Eurasian Steppe. The researchers have analyzed DNA from four different nomadic groups; Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians and Bronze Age Srubanya individuals.

Even though a couple of the groups had an early history somewhere else all the groups share genetic background and follow each other chronologically. The Cimmerians were displaced by the Scythians and those in return were followed by the Sarmatians.

"It's not one group completely displacing another. The expansion process seems to have been more gradual. First from Altai to southern Urals, and thereafter further west. It suggests that the Pontic-Caspian Steppe served as a natural transition point and the source of w estern nomads, despite their cultural roots stretching further east", says Maja Krzewi?ska researcher at the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, Stockholm University.

Archaeologists find the earliest use of nutmeg as a food

IMAGE: Burke Museum Archaeology Curator Peter Lape (left) and Daud Tanudirjo (right) excavating a layer at the site with the earliest known cooking use of nutmeg. view more 

Credit: Andrew Lawless

As all things pumpkin spice arrive in grocery store aisles and on restaurant menus, a new study published in the journal Asian Perspectives describes the earliest-known use of nutmeg as a food ingredient.

Found at an archaeological site on Pulau Ay, a small island in the Banda Islands, central Maluku, Indonesia, the nutmeg was found as residue on ceramic potsherds and is estimated to be 3,500 years old -- about 2,000 years older than the previously known use of the spice.

The study and two excavations in 2007 and 2009 were led by Peter Lape, professor of anthropology at the University of Washington and curator of archaeology at the Burke Museum, in collaboration with colleagues from Universitas Gadjah Mada in Indonesia, the University of New South Wales in Australia and others.

The Pulau Ay archaeological site was occupied from 2,300 to 3,500 years ago, with animal bones, earthenware pottery, stone tools, and post molds of possible housing structures found. The variety of artifacts discovered provides evidence of changes in how people utilized marine food resources, pottery and domestic animals over time.

Over the first 500 years at the site, people shifted from a predominately fish-based diet to primarily eating domesticated pigs. In addition, pottery was initially thin-walled vessels adapted for storage of liquids that may have allowed people to survive on this water-poor island. A few hundred years later, thicker-walled pottery better adapted for cooking appears along with pig bones.

"This site shows us how people adapted to living on these small tropical islands in stages, from occasional use as fishing camps to permanent occupation," Lape said. "It's also fascinating to see such early use of nutmeg, a spice that changed the world a few thousand years later."

It was on the pottery where Lape's co-authors Judith Field and Adelle Coster found not only the nutmeg, but also residue from six other plants including sago and purple yam. These plants could have been collected from wild plants, or possibly cultivated through farming.

Pulau Ay is a small island lacking both indigenous land mammals and surface water. It likely would not have supported a permanent human population that did not have the technological advantages of domestic animals and water storage.

However, by surveying additional archaeological sites, the study's authors suggest that the island was regularly visited by people targeting its rich marine reef resources for several thousand years before more permanent populations were established in the early Neolithic, the later part of the Stone Age.

The most likely homeland for these visitors is the nearest large island of Seram, 100 kilometers to the east. People who possessed sufficient knowledge of Pulau Ay and the seafaring skills to make regular return trips there would seem to be likely candidates for the first Neolithic settlers as well.

Sometime around 2,300 years ago, the site was largely or totally abandoned, and no other sites in the

Banda Islands have so far been found that date to the period between 2,300 and 1,500 years ago. Future work aims to answer why these remote islands, which attracted the settlement of people who were quite connected to other places before and after this period, would have been abandoned for 800 years.

Studies of sites like this one can help illuminate the complex cultural processes at work during the Neolithic period, which saw the introduction of many new plants, animals and technologies to the islands of Southeast Asia. The results from this site show that these changes did not happen all at once, but rather were gradually adopted and adapted to allow people to utilize these tropical island seascapes in new ways.

As for the nutmeg, understanding its earliest origins of human use helps connect the dots to later international trades. By the 14th century (and possibly earlier), long-distance traders were traveling to Banda to obtain nutmeg; this valuable spice brought the Banda Islands international renown during the early modern era.

The find provides a new perspective on a key ingredient that is still a valuable commodity today--especially in a multi-billion dollar industry of fall-themed foods and beverages.

Neanderthal healthcare practices crucial to survival

Research at the University of York has suggested that Neanderthals embraced healthcare practices, such as assisting in cases of serious injury and the challenges of childbirth.

Healthcare practices in this period of human evolution have often been studied alongside complex cultural behaviour, mostly based around research into rituals and symbols associated with death. This new study, however, sets out, for the first time, that healthcare could have had a more strategic role in Neanderthal survival.

Previous research at the University of York has already suggested that compassion and caring for the injured and dying could have been a factor in the development of healthcare practices, but further investigation has now shown that there was evolutionary drivers behind it too.

Researchers investigated the skeletal remains of more than 30 individuals where minor and serious injuries were evident, but did not lead to loss of life. The samples displayed several episodes of injury and recovery, suggesting that Neanderthals must have had a well-developed system of care in order to survive.

Dr Penny Spikins, from the University of York's Department of Archaeology, said: "Neanderthals faced multiple threats to their lives, particularly from large and dangerous animals, but in popular culture Neanderthals have such a brutish and strong image that we haven't really thought too deeply about their vulnerabilities before now.

"We have evidence of healthcare dating back 1.6 million years ago, but we think it probably goes further back than this. We wanted to investigate whether healthcare in Neanderthals was more than a cultural practice; was it something they just did or was it more fundamental to their strategies for survival?

"The high level of injury and recovery from serious conditions, such as a broken leg, suggests that others must have collaborated in their care and helped not only to ease pain, but to fight for their survival in such a way that they could regain health and actively participate in the group again."

It is generally accepted that more than 80% of the skeletal remains known to archaeologists display several injuries, some of which may have required simple remedies, such as food and rest, and others that would have required serious levels of care due to a high risk to life.

Neanderthals lived in small groups, so any one loss of life was particularly significant to the survival of the whole community. Injury, over disease, was the most common threat, as Neanderthals didn't live in the type of environment, or in large enough communities, to be at high risk from pathogens.
Neanderthal women, however, were at risk from difficulties in childbirth. The shape of their pelvis and the size and shape of a child's head was similar to that of modern-day humans, so it is assumed that they would also have encountered some common issues in childbirth.

Dr Spikins said: "It is likely that they would have had assisted childbirth; the role that we now attribute to midwives. Without support, they probably could not have survived the toll that the death rate of mothers and babies could have taken on their communities.

"When we look at the daily risks and dangers involved in hunting and finding food, as well as in childbirth in respect to their small hunting communities, it is not surprising that they would develop practices to improve health and reduce mortality risk.

"We can start to see healthcare as a pattern of evolutionary significant collaborative behaviour, alongside hunting together, food sharing and parenting. In this we can see why providing healthcare to those in need today is such an important part of human life."

Researchers now aim to expand this work to look at potential methods of healthcare and how far back healthcare practices can be traced.

Lidar survey 'compels' revaluation of aspects of ancient Maya society

An airborne laser mapping survey of over 2,000 square kilometers of northern Guatemala - the largest such survey to date of this region - "compels" a revaluation of Maya demography, agriculture, and political economy, according to its authors.

The lidar survey data, which identified over 61,000 ancient structures hidden amidst the dense tropical forests of the region, was further analyzed by multi-national, interdisciplinary teams, whose interpretations of urban and rural density and transportation networks, among other facets, suggest that future field work should involve a reevaluation of settlement and land use of the Classic lowland Maya.

Lidar, a technology that uses pulses of laser light to map land cover and topography in 3-D, has allowed archaeologists to study ancient Maya society on a regional scale. Due to the heavily forested areas throughout much of the central Maya Lowlands, discovering new sites is difficult - fully mapping and characterizing a single settlement can take many years. As such, data concerning ancient Maya urbanism, population, land use and socio-political complexity has been limited.

Aerial lidar survey, however, can map large areas of the ground surface below the forest canopy quickly and in detail, recording ancient structures, roadways or agricultural features at a landscape scale. Here, Marcello Canuto and colleagues present the results of what they call the largest lidar survey to date of the lowland Maya region. Canuto et al. mapped 12 separate areas in Petén, Guatemala, to characterize Maya settlement, from cities to hinterland, across varied regions of the Maya Lowlands.

Using the data, authors estimate upwards of 11 million people lived throughout the Maya Lowlands during the Late Classic Period (650 - 800 CE), numbers in agreement with previous estimates. But populations of such scale would have required some degree of agricultural intensification - the extent of which has previously been unknown for the region - to sustain them, say the authors.

Their work now demonstrates that a great deal of the wetlands throughout the region were heavily modified for agricultural use. What's more, networks of roadways connected distant cities and towns - some of which were heavily fortified, an unexpected finding according to the authors. In a related Perspective, Anabel Ford and Sherman Horn caution against relying solely on lidar data and suggest it should not replace traditional "boots on the ground" archaeological survey methods.

Violence in pre-Columbian Panama

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One of two cases of healed blows to the cranium from the Playa Venado excavations. Most of the evidence of violence was interpreted by Harvard archaeologist, Samuel Lothrop based on body positioning in graves at the site. Smithsonian post-doctoral fellow, Nicole Smith-Guzmán, found no examples of trauma that occurred near the time of death among the skeletons in the collection.

Credit: Nicole Smith-Guzmán, STRI

Buried alive. Butchered. Decapitated. Hacked. Mutilated. Killed. Archaeologist Samuel K. Lothrop did not obfuscate when describing what he thought had happened to the 220 bodies his expedition excavated from Panama's Playa Venado site in 1951. The only problem is that Lothrop likely got it wrong. A new evaluation of the site's remains by Smithsonian archaeologists revealed no signs of trauma at or near time of death. The burial site likely tells a more culturally nuanced story.

 

The "long-overdue" reexamination of the Playa Venado site, which dates to 500-900 A.D. and is located near the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal, revealed no evidence of ritual killing, said Nicole E. Smith-Guzmán, post-doctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). Lothrop's misinterpretations are likely due to the era of "Romantic archaeology," underdeveloped methods for mortuary studies and literal readings of Spanish accounts of indigenous peoples after European contact.

"We now realize that many of these Spanish chroniclers were motivated to show the indigenous populations they encountered as 'uncivilized' and in need of conquering," said Smith-Guzmán, adding that many accounts of sacrifice and cannibalism have not been confirmed by the archaeological record. "Rather than an example of violent death and careless deposition, Playa Venado presents an example of how pre-Columbian societies in the Isthmo-Colombian area showed respect and care for their kin after death."

The article, co-authored by STRI staff archaeologist Richard Cooke, was published in Latin American Antiquity. But Lothrop's 1954 paper, "Suicide, sacrifice and mutilations in burials at Venado Beach, Panama," left its mark on the annals of Panamanian archaeology. It has been cited more than 35 times as evidence of violence, cannibalism or trophy decapitation. Some authors have used the paper to suggest Playa Venado is a mass burial site or a manifestation of conflict.
In defense of Lothrop, who was an archaeologist with Harvard University's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Enthnology, bioarchaeology (the study of human remains from archaeological contexts) did not exist as a sub-discipline until two decades after his work concluded at Playa Venado. Today's practitioners also benefit from methods developed in the 1980s and 1990s.
Lothrop's careful documentation and preservation of remains made reevaluation possible. Remains from more than 70 individuals from Playa Venado are at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, sent there by Lothrop for osteological evaluation.
Upon examination, Smith-Guzmán found only wounds that showed signs of healing well before the individuals died, including blows to the head and a dislocated thumb. Various broken bones and disarticulated remains discovered by Lothrop more likely explained by normal processes of decomposition and secondary burial of remains, which is believed to have a common ancestor-veneration practice in pre-Colombian Panama.
Evidence suggests certain people's remains were preserved for long periods of time before being buried in ritual contexts. "At Playa Venado, we see a lot of evidence of adults being buried next to urns containing children, multiple burials including one primary and one secondary burial, and disturbance of previously laid graves in order to inter another individual in association," said Smith-Guzmán.
"The uniform burial positioning and the absence of perimortem (around the time of death) trauma stands in contradiction to Lothrop's interpretation of violent death at the site," said Smith-Guzmán, who also used evidence from other archaeological sites around Panama about burial rites as part of the investigation. "There are low rates of trauma in general, and the open mouths of skeletons Lothrop noted are more easily explained by normal muscle relaxation after death and decay."
Smith-Guzmán and Cooke's reassessment of the Playa Venado burials suggests that ideas about widespread violence in pre-Columbian Panama need to be reconsidered. The research is part of a larger, interdisciplinary site reanalysis that will be published by the Dumbarton Oaks Museum in Washington, D.C..

South East Asian population boom 4,000 years ago

Researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) have uncovered a previously unconfirmed population boom across South East Asia that occurred 4,000 years ago, thanks to a new method for measuring prehistoric population growth.

Using the new population measurement method, which utilises human skeletal remains, they have been able to prove a significant rapid increase in growth across populations in Thailand, China and Vietnam during the Neolithic Period, and a second subsequent rise in the Iron Age.

Lead researcher Clare McFadden, a PhD Scholar with the ANU School of Archaeology and Anthropology, said the population trend was consistent across samples taken from 15 locations.

"We saw huge population growth associated with the agricultural transition," McFadden said.

"Up until about 4,000 years ago you have hunter gatherer type populations, then you have the introduction and intensification of agriculture.

"Agricultural transition has been widely studied around the world and we consistently see significant population growth as a result."

The reason these population changes have never been quantified before is the tools used to measure prehistoric populations were all designed for Europe and the Americas where archaeological conditions are different to Asia.

Ms McFadden said the difference comes down to how children are represented in population numbers.

"For skeletal remains in Europe and America we often see the complete absence of infants and children, they are very poorly represented," she said.

"The preservation isn't good - small bones don't preserve well. Children are also thought to often be buried in a different cemetery to adults.

"So the method researchers used to measure populations excluded children because they didn't have accurate representation."

Ms McFadden said her new method for determining the rate of natural population increase takes into account the proportion of infants and children compared to the total population. This way researchers were able to bring population growth figures in line with other archaeological evidence in the region which suggested a rapid rise.

"In South East Asia and the Pacific, we actually have pretty good preservation of bones from children," she said.

"The skeletal evidence was there, we were seeing populations with huge numbers of infants and children compared to the adult populations, which suggests it was a growing population at that time. But the existing tools weren't detecting that growth.

"The trends the new tool found aligned perfectly with what researchers expect to see in response to agriculture."

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The study has been published in a paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science.