Genetic history of the Iberian Peninsula revealed by dual studies

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IMAGE: Excavation work in progress at the site of Balma Guilanyà. view more 

Credit: CEPAP-UAB

An international team of researchers have analyzed ancient DNA from almost 300 individuals from the Iberian Peninsula, spanning more than 12,000 years, in two studies published today in Current Biology and Science. The first study looked at hunter-gatherers and early farmers living in Iberia between 13,000 and 6000 years ago. The second looked at individuals from the region during all time periods over the last 8000 years. Together, the two papers greatly increase our knowledge about the population history of this unique region.
The Iberian Peninsula has long been thought of as an outlier in the population history of Europe, due to its unique climate and position on the far western edge of the continent. During the last Ice Age, Iberia remained relatively warm, allowing plants and animals - and possibly people - who were forced to retreat from much of the rest of Europe to continue living there. Similarly, over the last 8000 years, Iberia's geographic location, rugged terrain, position on the Mediterranean coast and proximity to North Africa made it unique in comparison to other parts of Europe in its interactions with other regions. Two new studies, published concurrently in Current Biology and Science, analyze a total of almost 300 individuals who lived from about 13,000 to 400 years ago to give unprecedented clarity on the unique population history of the Iberian Peninsula.
Iberian hunter-gatherers show two ancient Paleolithic lineages
For the paper in Current Biology, led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, researchers analyzed 11 hunter-gatherers and Neolithic individuals from Iberia. The oldest newly analyzed individuals are approximately 12,000 years old and were recovered from Balma Guilanyà in Spain.
Earlier evidence had shown that, after the end of the last Ice Age, western and central Europe were dominated by hunter-gatherers with ancestry associated with an approximately 14,000-year-old individual from Villabruna, Italy. Italy is thought to have been a potential refuge for humans during the last Ice Age, like Iberia. The Villabruna-related ancestry largely replaced earlier ancestry in western and central Europe related to 19,000-15,000-year-old individuals associated with what is known as the Magdalenian cultural complex.
Interestingly, the findings of the current study show that both lineages were present in Iberian individuals dating back as far as 19,000 years ago. "We can confirm the survival of an additional Paleolithic lineage that dates back to the Late Ice Age in Iberia," says Wolfgang Haak of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, senior author of the study. "This confirms the role of the Iberian Peninsula as a refuge during the Last Glacial Maximum, not only for fauna and flora but also for human populations."
This suggests that, far from being replaced by Villabruna-related individuals after the last Ice Age, hunter-gatherers in Iberia in fact already had ancestry from Magdalenian- and Villabruna-related sources. The discovery suggests an early connection between two potential refugia, resulting in a genetic ancestry that survived in later Iberian hunter-gatherers.
"The hunter-gatherers from the Iberian Peninsula carry a mix of two older types of genetic ancestry: one that dates back to the Last Glacial Maximum and was once maximized in individuals attributed to Magdalenian culture and another one that is found everywhere in western and central Europe and had replaced the Magdalenian lineage during the Early Holocene everywhere except the Iberian Peninsula," explains Vanessa Villalba-Mouco of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, first author of the study.
The researchers hope that ongoing efforts to decipher the genetic structure of late hunter-gatherer groups across Europe will help to even better understand Europe's past and, in particular, the assimilation of a Neolithic way of life brought about by expanding farmers from the Near East during the Holocene.
Ancient DNA from individuals spanning the last 8000 years helps clarify the history and prehistory of the Iberian Peninsula
The paper published in Science focuses on slightly later time periods, and traces the population history of Iberia over the last 8000 years by analyzing ancient DNA from a huge number of individuals. The study, led by Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute and including Haak and Villalba-Mouco, analyzed 271 ancient Iberians from the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Copper Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age and historical periods. The large number of individuals allowed the team to make more detailed inferences about each time period than previously possible.
The researchers found that during the transition to a sedentary farming life-style, hunter-gatherers in Iberia contributed subtly to the genetic make-up of newly arriving farmers from the Near East. "We can see that there must have been local mixture as the Iberian farmers also carry this dual signature of hunter-gatherer ancestry unique to Iberia," explains Villalba-Mouco.
Between about 2500-2000 BC, the researchers observed the replacement of 40% of Iberia's ancestry and nearly 100% of its Y-chromosomes by people with ancestry from the Pontic Steppe, a region in what is today Ukraine and Russia. Interestingly, the findings show that in the Iron Age, "Steppe ancestry" had spread not only into Indo-European-speaking regions of Iberia but also into non-Indo-European-speaking ones, such as the region inhabited by the Basque. The researchers' analysis suggests that present-day Basques most closely resemble a typical Iberian Iron Age population, including the influx of "Steppe ancestry," but that they were not affected by subsequent genetic contributions that affected the rest of Iberia. This suggests that Basque speakers were equally affected genetically as other groups by the arrival of Steppe populations, but retained their language in any case. It was only after that time that they became relatively isolated genetically from the rest of the Iberian Peninsula.
Additionally, the researchers looked at historical periods, including times when Greek and later Roman settlements existed in Iberia. The researchers found that beginning at least in the Roman period, the ancestry of the peninsula was transformed by gene flow from North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. They found that Greek and Roman settlements tended to be quite multiethnic, with individuals from the central and eastern Mediterranean and North Africa as well as locals, and that these interactions had lasting demographic as well as cultural impacts.
"Beyond the specific insights about Iberia, this study serves as a model for how a high-resolution ancient DNA transect continuing into historical periods can be used to provide a detailed description of the formation of present-day populations," explains Haak. "We hope that future use of similar strategies will provide equally valuable insights in other regions of the world."

Ancient DNA from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) suggests that the Iberian male lineages were almost completely replaced between 4,500 and 4,000 years ago by newcomers originating on the Russian steppe

IMAGE: The University of Huddersfield's Archaeogenetics Research Group joined an international team conducting the study which spanned an 8,000-year period. view more 

Credit: University of Huddersfield

THE University of Huddersfield's Archaeogenetics Research Group has been involved in a major international collaboration documenting the settlement of Iberia over the last eight thousand years, published on 14 March in the journal Science.
The work, which involved 111 researchers from Harvard Medical School in the United States, the Max-Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, and multiple groups in Spain and Portugal, included ancient DNA results from prehistoric Portugal contributed by Huddersfield's Leverhulme Trust doctoral scholar Marina Silva and her supervisory team in Huddersfield and the University of Minho in Braga.
The study shows in detail how Iberia's population has changed drastically over time, from its hunter-gatherer origins before the arrival of farming 7,500 years ago, through to the medieval period and modern times.
Most striking was an influx of new people during the later Copper Age, otherwise known as the Beaker period because of the ubiquitous presence in burials of large drinking vessels, from about 4,500 years ago. By the Early Bronze Age, 500 years later, these newcomers represented about 40% of Iberia's genetic pool - but virtually 100% of their male lineages. This suggests that the newcomers were mainly men, and that - somehow - they all but replaced the men living there previously, whilst the local women survived the takeover.
This is an extraordinary example of sex bias - a phenomenon described previously by Huddersfield's Leverhulme Trust doctoral scholar Marina Silva for India. What is even more striking now is that both Iberia and India had a similar source - a population of early metal-using stock breeders, who lived to the north of the Black Sea on Russian steppe lands, 5,000 years ago. They fanned out in both directions, west across Europe and east into Asia, their pastoralist economy, domesticated horses and wheeled wagons giving them a crucial advantage over the indigenous farming populations. Moreover, they are also thought to have brought the Indo-European languages spoken across Europe and India today.
Around 2,500 BC, the researchers found, Iberians began living alongside newcomers from central Europe who carried recent ancestry from those people on the Russian steppe. Within a few hundred years, the two groups had extensively interbred. This was beautifully exemplified at a Bronze Age site known as the Castillejo de Bonete in Spain, where a woman and man were found buried side by side. Analyses revealed that the woman's ancestry was entirely local, while the man had very recent ancestors from central Europe.
"This is one of the strongest pieces of evidence in ancient-DNA research of sex bias in the prehistoric period," said Iñigo Olalde, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of David Reich at Harvard Medical School and first author of the study.
Marina Silva added: "It's an intriguing situation, because the Beaker culture originated in Portugal and spread across Europe from there - but at the same time, or shortly after, men who probably spoke Indo-European languages were moving in the opposite direction. Resolving the population dynamics in western Europe during the Copper and Bronze Ages is a big step towards understanding the origins of the Celtic languages, which were spoken across western Europe before the rise of the Roman Empire."

Thanks to pig remains, scientists uncover extensive human mobility to sites near Stonehenge

A mutli-isotope analysis of pigs remains found around henge complexes near Stonehenge has revealed the large extent and scale of movements of human communities in Britain during the Late Neolithic. The findings "demonstrate a level of interaction and social complexity not previously appreciated," the authors say, and provide insight into more than a century of debate surrounding the origins of people and animals in the Stonehenge landscape.


Neolithic henge complexes, located in southern Britain, have long been studied for their role as ceremonial centers. Feasts that were unprecedented at the time were held at these locations. Experts have theorized that these events brought in many people beyond the surrounding area of the henge sites, but little is known about the scale and extent of movement surrounding these feasts. Pigs were the main delicacy at these events.





Archaeologists have unearthed evidence of the earliest large-scale celebrations in Britain - with people and animals travelling hundreds of miles for prehistoric feasting rituals.

The study, led by Dr Richard Madgwick of Cardiff University, is the most comprehensive to date and examined the bones of 131 pigs, the prime feasting animals, from four Late Neolithic (c. 2800-2400BC) complexes. Serving the world-famous monuments of Stonehenge and Avebury, the four sites - Durrington Walls, Marden, Mount Pleasant and West Kennet Palisade Enclosures - hosted the very first pan-British events, feasts that drew people and animals from across Britain.

The results show pig bones excavated from these sites were from animals raised as far away as Scotland, North East England and West Wales, as well as numerous other locations across the British Isles. The researchers believe it may have been important for those attending to contribute animals raised locally at their homes.

Before now, the origins of people that took part in rituals at these megalithic monuments and the extent of the population's movements at the time have been long-standing enigmas in British prehistory.

Dr Richard Madgwick, of the School of History, Archaeology and Religion, said: "This study demonstrates a scale of movement and level of social complexity not previously appreciated."
"These gatherings could be seen as the first united cultural events of our island, with people from all corners of Britain descending on the areas around Stonehenge to feast on food that had been specially reared and transported from their homes."

Representing great feats of engineering and labour mobilisation, the Neolithic henge complexes of southern Britain were the focal point for great gatherings in the third millennium BC. Pigs were the prime animal used in feasting and they provide the best indication of where the people who feasted at these sites came from as almost no human remains have been recovered.

Using isotope analysis, which identifies chemical signals from the food and water that animals have consumed, the researchers were able to determine geographical areas where the pigs were raised. The study offers the most detailed picture yet of the degree of mobility across Britain at the time of Stonehenge.

Dr Madgwick said: "Arguably the most startling finding is the efforts that participants invested in contributing pigs that they themselves had raised. Procuring them in the vicinity of the feasting sites would have been relatively easy.

"Pigs are not nearly as well-suited to movement over distance as cattle and transporting them, either slaughtered or on the hoof, over hundreds or even tens of kilometres, would have required a monumental effort.

"This suggests that prescribed contributions were required and that rules dictated that offered pigs must be raised by the feasting participants, accompanying them on their journey, rather than being acquired locally."

Dr Madgwick conducted the research in collaboration with colleagues at the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Cardiff University, along with scientists from the NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory at the British Geological Survey, University of Sheffield and University College London. The project was funded by the British Academy as part of a post-doctoral fellowship and was supported by a NERC Isotope Geosciences Facility Steering Committee grant.

The study, 'Multi-isotope analysis reveals that feasts in the Stonehenge environs and across Wessex drew people and animals from throughout Britain', funded by the British Academy and NERC is published in Science Advances.

How tiny tools may have made us human

IMAGE: The iconic, tear-drop shaped hand axe, which filled a human palm, required a large toolkit to produce (left), in contrast to a toolkit for tiny flakes. view more 

Credit: Emory University

Anthropologists have long made the case that tool-making is one of the key behaviors that separated our human ancestors from other primates. A new paper, however, argues that it was not tool-making that set hominins apart -- it was the miniaturization of tools.
Just as tiny transistors transformed telecommunications a few decades ago, and scientists are now challenged to make them even smaller, our Stone Age ancestors felt the urge to make tiny tools. "It's a need that we've been perennially faced with and driven by," says Justin Pargeter, an anthropologist at Emory University and lead author of the paper. "Miniaturization is the thing that we do."
The journal Evolutionary Anthropology is publishing the paper -- the first comprehensive overview of prehistoric tool miniaturization. It proposes that miniaturization is a central tendency in hominin technologies going back at least 2.6 million years.
"When other apes used stone tools, they chose to go big and stayed in the forests where they evolved," says co-author John Shea, professor of anthropology at Stony Brook University. "Hominins chose to go small, went everywhere, and transformed otherwise hostile habitats to suit our changing needs."
The paper reviews how stone flakes less than an inch in length -- used for piercing, cutting and scraping -- pop up in the archeological record at sites on every continent, going back to some of the earliest known stone tool assemblages. These small stone flakes, Pargeter says, were like the disposable razor blades or paperclips of today -- pervasive, easy to make and easily replaced.
He identifies three inflection points for miniaturization in hominin evolution. The first spike occurred around two million years ago, driven by our ancestors' increasing dependence on stone flakes in place of nails and teeth for cutting, slicing and piercing tasks. A second spike occurred sometime after 100,000 years ago with the development of high-speed weaponry, such as the bow and arrow, which required light-weight stone inserts. A third spike in miniaturization occurred about 17,000 years ago. The last Ice Age was ending, forcing some humans to adapt to rapid climate change, rising sea levels and increased population densities. These changes increased the need to conserve resources, including the rocks and minerals needed to make tools.
A native of South Africa, Pargeter co-directs field work in that country along its rugged and remote Indian Ocean coastline and nearby inland mountains. He is also a post-doctoral fellow in Emory University's Center for Mind, Brain and Culture and the Department of Anthropology's Paleolithic Technology Laboratory. The lab members actually make stone tools to better understand how our ancestors learned these skills, and how that process shaped our evolution. The lab's director, Dietrich Stout, focuses on hand axes, dating back more than 500,000 years. These larger tools are considered a turning point in human biological and cognitive evolution, due to the complexity involved in making them.
Pargeter's work on tiny tools adds another facet to the investigation of human evolution. "He's exploring what may have led to the compulsion to produce these tiny instruments -- essentially the relationship between the tools and the human body, brain and the probable uses of the tools," Stout says.
When looking for a PhD thesis topic, Pargeter first focused on collections of larger implements, considered typical of the Stone Age tool kit. He pored over artifacts from a South African site called Boomplaas that were being held in storage at the Iziko Museum in Cape Town. As he rummaged through a bag labelled as waste -- containing small flakes thought to be left over from making larger tools -- something caught his eye. A sliver of crystal quartz looked like it had been shaped using a highly technical method called pressure flaking.
"It was diminutive, about the size of a small raisin, and weighed less than half a penny," he recalls. "You could literally blow it off your finger."
Pargeter examined the flake under a magnifying glass. He noticed it had a distinctive, stair-step fracture on its tip that previous experimental research showed to be associated with damage caused in hunting.
"It suddenly occurred to me that archeologists may have missed a major component of our stone tool record," Pargeter says. "In our desire to make 'big' discoveries we may have overlooked tiny, but important, details. A whole technology could lay hidden behind our methods, relegated to bags considered waste material."
So how to interpret the use of a tool so tiny that you could easily blow it off your finger?
Pargeter began thinking of this question in terms of the age of the flake -- about 17,000 years -- and the environment at the time. The last Ice Age was ending and massive melting of ice at the poles caused the global sea-level to rise. In parts of South Africa, the rising oceans swallowed an area the size of Ireland. As the coastal marshes and grasslands disappeared -- along with much of the game and aquatic life -- the hunter-gatherers living there fled inland to sites like Boomplaas, currently located about 80 kilometers inland. The mountains around Boomplaas provided permanent springs and other dependable freshwater sources.
The climate, however, was less predictable, with sudden shifts in temperature and rainfall. Vegetation was shifting dramatically, temperatures were rising and large mammals were increasingly scarce. Archaeology from Boomplaas shows that people ate small game like hares and tortoises. These small animals would have been easy to catch, but they provided limited nutritional packages.
"These are low-reward food sources, indicating a foraging stress signal," Pargeter says. "Boomplaas might have even served as a type of refugee camp, with groups of hunter-gatherers moving away from the coast, trying to survive in marginal environments as resources rapidly depleted and climate change ratcheted up."
Arrow points a little less than an inch across were already in the archaeological literature, but the Boomplaas crystal quartz flake was half that size. In order to bring down an animal, Pargeter hypothesized, the Boomplaas flake would need poison on its tip -- derived either from plants or insects -- and a high-speed delivery system, such as a bow and arrow.
Pargeter used his own extensive knowledge of prehistoric tool-making and archaeology to hypothesize that the tiny flake could have been hafted, using a plant-based resin, onto a link shaft, also likely made of a plant-based material, such as a reed. That link shaft, about the length of a finger, would in turn fit onto a light arrow shaft.
"The link shaft goes into the animal, sacrificing the small blade, but the arrow shaft pops out so you can retain this more costly component," he says. "Our ancestors were masters of aerodynamics and acted like engineers, rather than what we think of as 'cave people.' They built redundancy into their technological systems, allowing them to easily repair their tools and to reduce the impact of errors."
Our ancestors were also connoisseurs of the type of fine-grained rocks needed for tool-making.
Supplies of such vital toolmaking raw materials, however, were likely diminished as the rising oceans consumed land and people became more crowded together, driving them to more carefully conserve what they could find on the landscape.
As paleoanthropologists are faced with more than three million years of hominin "stuff," one of the perennial questions they keep seeking to answer is, what makes us humans unique? "We've typically said that tool use makes us human, but that's kind of buckled under," Pargeter says, as evidence of tool use by other animals accumulates.
Macaques, for example, use rocks to smash apart oysters. Chimpanzees use rocks as hammers and anvils to crack nuts and they modify sticks to dig and fish for termites. These tools, however, are large. "The hands of other primates are not evolved for repeated fine manipulation in high-force tasks," Pargeter says. "We've evolved a unique precision grip that ratchets up our ability for miniaturized technology."
Humans are also the masters of dispersing into novel environments, unlike other primates that remained in the landscapes of their ancestors. "Smaller tools are the choice of technology for a mobile, dispersing population," Pargeter says. "When Homo sapiens left Africa they weren't carrying bulky hand axes, but bows and arrows and smaller stone implements."

Researchers find a piece of Palaeolithic art featuring birds and humans

An exceptional milestone in European Palaeolithic rock art

University of Barcelona

IMAGE: Image of the findings with a tracing of the engraved figures on the piece. view more 

Credit: UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA

It is not very common to find representations of scenes instead of individual figures in Palaeolithic art, but it is even harder for these figures to be birds instead of mammals such as goats, deer or horses. So far, historians have only found three scenes of Palaeolithic art featuring humans and birds in Europe.
Now, an article published in the journal L'Anthropologie tells how University of Barcelona researchers found -in the site of Hort de la Bequera (Margalef de Montsant, Priorat)-, an artistic piece from 12,500 years ago in which humans and birds try to interact in a pictorial scene with exceptional traits: figures seem to star a narration on hunting and motherhood. Regarding the Catalan context in particular, this is an important finding regarding the few pieces of Palaeolithic art in Catalonia and it places this territory within the stream of artistic production of the upper Palaeolithic in the Mediterranean.
The piece they found is a 30-centimeter long limestone which shows two human figures and two birds, which the researchers identified as cranes. Since they found the piece in 2011, they underwent all cleaning, restoration and 3D copying procedures to study it in detail. Those figures were engraved in the stone board with a flint tool so that they created an organized composition compared to the other pieces of the same period.
"This is one of the few found scenes so far which suggest the birth of a narrative art in Europe, and this theme is unique, since it combines an image of hunting and a motherhood one: a birth with its young one", says the first signer of the article, ICREA researcher and lecturer at the UB Inés Domingo. "In the represented scene the birds catch the attention, they are copied or chased by two human figures", continues Domingo. "We do not know the meaning of the scene for prehistoric peoples, but what it says is that not only they were regarded as preys but also as a symbol for European Palaeolithic societies", she continues.
"We do not doubt this is an exceptional milestone in European Palaeolithic rock art due its singularity, its excellent conservation and the chances to study it within a general context of excavation", say the authors of the article; members of the Prehistoric Studies and Research Seminar (SERP). Apart from Domingo, other signers are the UB lecturers of Prehistory Pilar García Argüelles, Jordi Nadal, directors of the excavation in Host de la Boquera, Professor Josep Maria Fullola, director of SERP, and José L. Lerma and the researcher Miriam Cabrelles, from Universitat Politècnica de València, who worked on the 3D reproduction of this piece.
Palaeolithic art in Montsant valley The other sites in Europe researchers had found so far with human and bird figures are rock paintings in the site of Lascauz, a perforated baton in Abri Mege (Teyjat, Dordogne), and the Great Hunter plaque in the site of Gönnersdorf (Germany).
SERP researchers have been excavating in the valley of Montsant since 1979, an exceptional area regarding findings of this period of the late upper Palaeolithic. In particular, excavations have taken place in Host de la Boquera since 1998 and it provided a great amount of flint tools and structure such as rooms for a fireplace.
The director of the excavation, Pilar García Argüelles notes that "the findings of the engraved scene are exceptional, and proves the importance of the site and the area regarding Palaeolithic art in the peninsular north-east area; where we can find nearby the only Palaeolithic cave engraving in Catalonia, the deer in the cave of Taverna (Margalef de Montsant), and about 40 kilometres away there is Molí del Salt (Vimbodí), with an interesting series of stone blocks with engraved animals and a representation of huts".
The first to identify the engraving was the co-director of the excavation, Jordi Nadal, who remembers that moment with excitement: "Since the first moment I was aware of the importance of this finding, of its uniqueness; these things do not happen very often, this is seeing a figure that has been forgotten and buried for 12,500 years".

Hundreds of children and llamas sacrificed in a ritual event in 15th century Peru

The largest sacrifice of its kind known from the Americas was associated with heavy rainfall and flooding

IMAGE: Mummified children view more 

Credit: John Verano (2019)

A mass sacrifice at a 15th century archaeological site in Peru saw the ritual killing of over 140 children and over 200 llamas, according to a study released March 6, 2019 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Gabriel Prieto of the National University of Trujillo, Peru and colleagues. This is the largest known mass sacrifice of children - and of llamas - in the New World.

Human and animal sacrifices are known from a variety of ancient cultures, often performed as part of funerary, architectural, or spiritual rituals. Very little evidence of this practice is known from the northern coast of Peru, however. The Huanchaquito-Las Llamas site was part of the Chimú state, which was a dominant culture along the Peruvian coast in the 15th century.

This study reports the findings of excavations between 2011 and 2016 that revealed hundreds of bodies buried in an area of approximately 700 square meters. The human remains were almost entirely children, and the animal remains, all juvenile, were identified as most likely llamas, but possibly alpacas. Anatomical and genetic evidence indicates the children included boys and girls between 5 and 14 years old. Cut marks transecting the sternums and displaced ribs suggest both the children and llamas may have had their chests cut open, possibly during ritual removal of the heart.

The remains were radiocarbon dated to around 1450 AD, during the height of the Chimú state. A thick layer of mud overlaying the burial sediments indicates that this mass killing was preceded, and perhaps inspired, by a major rainstorm or flood. The authors note that this sacrifice was clearly a large investment of resources for the Chimú culture. Through future study, they hope to better understand the ritual through its victims, by analyzing the life histories and cultural origins of the sacrificed children.

Author Verano adds: "This archaeological discovery was a surprise to all of us--we had not seen anything like this before, and there was no suggestion from ethnohistoric sources or historic accounts of child or camelid sacrifices being made on such a scale in northern coastal Peru. We were fortunate to be able to completely excavate the site and to have a multidisciplinary field and laboratory team to do the excavation and preliminary analysis of the material. This site opens a new chapter on the practice of child sacrifice in the ancient world."

Oldest tattoo tool in western North America

IMAGE: This is a close up of a 2,000-year-old cactus spine tattoo tool discovered by WSU archaeologist Andrew Gillreath-Brown. view more 

Credit: Bob Hubner/WSU

PULLMAN, Wash. - Washington State University archaeologists have discovered the oldest tattooing artifact in western North America.
With a handle of skunkbush and a cactus-spine business end, the tool was made around 2,000 years ago by the Ancestral Pueblo people of the Basketmaker II period in what is now southeastern Utah.
Andrew Gillreath-Brown, an anthropology PhD candidate, chanced upon the pen-sized instrument while taking an inventory of archaeological materials that had been sitting in storage for more than 40 years.
He is the lead author of a paper on the tattoo tool which was published today in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
His discovery pushes back the earliest evidence of tattooing in western North America by more than a millennium and gives scientists a rare glimpse into the lives of a prehistoric people whose customs and culture have largely been forgotten.
"Tattooing by prehistoric people in the Southwest is not talked about much because there has not ever been any direct evidence to substantiate it," Gillreath-Brown, 33, said. "This tattoo tool provides us information about past Southwestern culture we did not know before."
Tattooing is an artform and mode of expression common to many indigenous cultures worldwide. However, little is known about when or why the practice began.
This is especially the case in places like the southwestern United States, where no tattoos have been identified on preserved human remains and there are no ancient written accounts of the practice.
Instead, archaeologists have relied on visual depictions in ancient artwork and the identification of tattoo implements to trace the origins of tattooing in the region.
Previously, bundled and hafted, or handled, cactus spine tattoo tools from Arizona and New Mexico provided the best archaeological examples of early tattoo implements from the Southwest. The earliest of these have been dated to between AD 1100-1280.
So when Gillreath-Brown came across a very similar looking implement from a site in Utah that is 1,000 years older, he knew he had found something special.
"When I first pulled it out of the museum box and realized what it might have been I got really excited," said Gillreath-Brown, who himself wears a large sleeve tattoo of a turtle shell rattle, mastodon, water, and forest on his left arm.
The tool consists of a 3 ½ inch wooden skunkbush sumac handle bound at the end with split yucca leaves and holding two parallel cactus spines, stained black at their tips.
"The residue staining from tattoo pigments on the tip was what immediately piqued my interest as being possibly a tattoo tool," Gillreath-Brown said.
Encouraged by Aaron Deter-Wolf, a friend and co-author of the study who had done ancient tattooing and edited several books on the subject, Gillreath-Brown analyzed the tips with a scanning electron microscope, X-ray florescence and energy dispersive ray spectroscopy. For good measure, he did several test tattoos using a replica on pig skin.
He saw the crystalline structure of pigment and determined it likely contained carbon, a common element in body painting and tattooing.
The find, said Gillreath-Brown, "has a great significance for understanding how people managed relationships and how status may have been marked on people in the past during a time when population densities were increasing in the Southwest."