Wrapping grains in leaves: from tomb to table

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Science China Press

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The East I chamber of the Wuwangdun Tomb (A) and the plant bundle (B), note the floating plant bundles in the water surface. Phytoliths (C 1-9 and 11, 12) and pollen (C 12) from the plant bundles indicating Poaceae plant remains dominated the plant bundle. Plant seeds (D) remains illustrated the full husk condition. Specific details of phytoliths, pollen and seeds can be found in the supplementary of the article.

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Credit: Yong Ge

The research team, led by Dr. Yong Ge from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Dr. Fan Yang from the National Center for Archaeology, conducted systematic archaeobotanical analyses of the plant bundles unearthed from the Wuwangdun Tomb. Their findings suggest that these plant bundles may represent a possible precursor of zongzi, the well-known traditional Chinese food.

The study revealed that the plant bundles were wrapped in oak (Quercus dentata) leaves, stuffed with rice (Oryza sativa), millets (Panicum miliaceum and Setaria italica), and other cereals (species not yet determined), and bound with cordage made from grass leaves (subfamilies Panicoideae and Arundinoideae). Structurally, they are identical to modern zongzi, which are typically wrapped in bamboo (Indocalamus tessellatus) leaves, filled with glutinous rice, and tied with cordage made from Chinese iris (Iris lactea) leaves. Notably, however, the grains found in the archaeological bundles were unhulled and the bundles still contained inflorescence remains, suggesting that these bundles were not intended for consumption but rather served as funerary offerings—a key distinction from their modern counterparts.

Dated to approximately 2,200 years ago, these plant bundles fall within both the historical period of the Chu State and the same geographic region associated with the legend of Qu Yuan. According to the legend, people threw zongzi into the Miluo River—where Qu Yuan drowned himself—to prevent fish from consuming his body. This legend not only reflects the use of zongzi in commemorating the dead but also aligns remarkably well with the funerary context of the archaeological discovery.

Prior to this study, the only unequivocal archaeological evidence of typical zongzi came from a tomb dating back about 1,000 years to the Song Dynasty, with specimens nearly the same to modern ones. The Wuwangdun finds, could potentially extend the known history of zongzi by another millennium. Over this 1,000-year timespan, the structure and function of zongzi appear to have undergone a significant transformation—from ritual offerings to everyday food. In modern times, zongzi has diversified greatly: wrapping materials vary according to local resources, ranging from banana leaves to bamboo tubes, and fillings have expanded to include everything from sago to seafood. While cultural innovation has never ceased, the deep-rooted origin of this tradition may now be finally elucidated.

This discovery not only enhances our understanding of ancient funerary rituals but also bridges historical records with archaeological evidence, offering tangible proof of China's long and splendid cultural traditions.

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Journal

National Science Review

DOI

10.1093/nsr/nwag504 

 

Human-driven fires have shaped the Amazonian forest for over 10,000 years

 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Pensoft Publishers

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a. Map of Amazonian sites with 1329 14C AMS dated charcoal fragments or burned archaeological material used in the summed probability analyses. Sites are color coded by geographic region: central (CA), eastern (EA), northwestern (WAN), southwestern (WAS), southern (SA) Amazonia, and Guiana Shield (GS). Symbols denote new 14C dates from this study (squares inside dashed boxes), and previously published 14C dates from soil charcoal surveys (circles) and archaeological surveys (triangles). Symbol size indicates the number of 14C dates at each site. Tree cover is shown as the fractional tree cover in proportions ranging from 0 to 1 for the year 2020 (Liu et al. 2024); b. Frequencies of 14C dates over the last 12,000 years for this study (left), previously published dated soil charcoal fragments from paleoecological surveys (center), or previously published dated material from archaeological sites (right).

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Credit: McMichael et al., 2026

New research is dismantling the long-standing myth of the "pristine" Amazon. A reconstruction of 10,000 years of Amazonian pyrogeography, based on 1,361 radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dates across 303 sites - including soil charcoal and burned archaeological material - shows that fire in the rainforest is almost exclusively a human-driven phenomenon, not a natural one. Over the last two millennia, human-ignited fire has driven vegetation change on a scale comparable to major climatic shifts, such as deglaciation or the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna. The research has been published in the open-access, peer-reviewed Frontiers of Biogeography journal.

The human spark

Amazonian fires rarely, if ever, ignite without human input. In the pre-human evolutionary history of these wet forests, fire was an exceptional rarity.

Glacial-aged paleoecological reconstructions from sites like the Hill of Six Lakes in Brazil and the Serra Sul dos Carajás reveal that charcoal was either entirely absent or present in only minuscule amounts before human arrival. Even more striking, the Campo Libre sediment core on the Andean slopes of Ecuador showed a total absence of fire for 30,000 years, ending only when humans appeared on the landscape around 4,500 years ago.

In their paper, the researchers, describes the arrival of humans as the introduction of fire to a "naïve landscape." Because Amazonian plants are evolutionarily fire-sensitive, the introduction of regular burning by a fire-using species fundamentally altered a system that had been stable since the late Pleistocene.

The ignition timeline

By compiling and analysing 1,361 (¹⁴C) radiocarbon-dated charcoal fragments and archaeological materials, researchers mapped a history of human-driven fire across Amazonia that unfolded over three phases of the Holocene. 

Between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago, fires were highly restricted, occurring primarily within the basin's peripheral areas and along the main channel of the Amazon River. This localised footprint shifted dramatically between 6,000 and 4,000 years ago, as the geographic spread of fire and occupation sites accelerated sharply across most regions - a development that coincided with the onset of early maize cultivation in northwestern and southwestern Amazonia. 

Finally, between 3,000 and 2,000 years ago, fire reached the deep interior of the basin: though central Amazonia had remained a relatively fire-free refuge for thousands of years while the periphery burned, it was ultimately transformed as expanding human influence and fire-use reached the very heart of the forest. 

The dying fire

This human-driven fire history is marked by a dramatic, two-phase decline over the last 700 years. 

First, an initial decrease in fire frequency 600 to 700 years ago which supports the "early abandonment" of lands several centuries before European arrival. Physical evidence from lake sediments shows a significant "pollen surge" during this window, signaling massive reforestation and a major pre-Columbian shift in land use or site abandonment.

The second and larger decline followed the "Great Dying" after A.D. 1541, when disease, warfare, and enslavement killed an estimated 90-95% of Indigenous peoples in the Americas. As ignitions vanished with the population, the forest entered a second, more extensive phase of recovery. 

The ecological legacy of 10 000 years of fire

These changing fire patterns - particularly over the last two millennia - led to an increase in human-caused fires, which spread across all regions and accelerated changes in vegetation. Ultimately, this left a profound ecological imprint that has strongly shaped today’s plant communities by selectively favoring fire-tolerant species, such as palms, over fire-sensitive vegetation.

The restructuring of Amazonian pyrogeography over the last 2,000 years has likely played a large role in shaping modern forests. The intensification of fire during this period induced rates and magnitudes of vegetation change that are comparable to major climatic shifts. The impact was subtle,  favoring species that were already there but showed the most fire tolerance, such as some palms, but this pressure has undoubtedly changed the configuration of Amazonian plant communities.

- the team explained in their research article

Citation:

McMichael CNH, Heijink BM, Witteveen NH, Zwarts A, Bush MB (2026) The pyrogeography of Amazonia: a Holocene perspective. Frontiers of Biogeography 19: e169863. https://doi.org/10.21425/fob.19.169863

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Cacao may have been consumed at feasts in the 12th century by Mississippian people in the city of Etowah

 The discovery that people living at the great Ancestral Pueblo site of Chaco Canyon consumed cacao changed our understanding of the history of chocolate by demonstrating that networks moving cacao reached beyond Central and South America north at least into the American Southwest. Until now, clear evidence that people of the equally impressive Mississippian civilization east of the Mississippi River consumed chocolate has been lacking. 

This study presents the first evidence that cacao consumption was part of the Mississippian world at roughly the same time as it appeared at Chaco. We present evidence that samples from two Etowah Complicated Stamped pottery sherds recovered from 11th to 12th century contexts at the Etowah site in the modern state of Georgia contained highly fragmented ancient Theobroma cacao DNA. 

Etowah is an Indigenous city located in the modern US state of Georgia that, at its peak in the 14th century, was one of the most important centers in the Mississippian world. Two centuries before that peak, Etowah’s inhabitants began construction of the site’s first earthen platform mound, excavating earth and filling the borrow pits with feasting remains. 

The evidence for cacao consumption comes from these early feasting contexts. This discovery at Etowah asks us to broaden our understanding of the networks that distributed cacao throughout the Americas before European colonization.

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Dental calculus proteomics uncovers rich food access among premodern commoners in Osaka

 What did ordinary people really eat in premodern Japan, beyond the dishes described in cookbooks and the bones discarded at urban waste pits? Reconstructing past diets at the level of individual food items is remarkably difficult. Traditional archaeological approaches and stable isotope analysis of human skeletons reveal broad dietary categories – such as reliance on marine fish and C3 plants. But they cannot show which specific taxa or tissues each person consumed, nor how access differed between social groups in a stratified society like premodern Japan.

A research team comprising researchers from the Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI), Aomori Public University, Kyushu University, and other institutions turned to an alternative source of evidence: ancient dental calculus, the hardened plaque that still adheres to the teeth of skeletal remains. Using palaeoproteomic methods on calculus from eight adult commoners buried in the Umeda cemetery, north of present‑day JR Osaka Station, they analyzed both bone collagen stable isotope ratios and food‑derived proteins entrapped in the calculus to reconstruct individual diets in premodern Osaka.

Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios showed that these individuals had typical urban premodern diets based on terrestrial plants and marine resources. The real novelty came from the dental calculus proteomics. From the eight individuals, the researchers identified 38 dietary proteins from 17 taxa, including nine fish taxa, several terrestrial and marine mammals, and multiple plants. Red sea bream (Pagrus major) muscle proteins were detected in six of the eight individuals, indicating direct consumption of a fish that historical sources describe as a luxury item. Proteins from flatfishes such as tonguefish (Soleidae), still important in Kansai and Seto Inland Sea cuisine today, were also found.

In addition, proteins from salmonids – cold‑water fish that do not naturally inhabit Osaka Bay – were identified in some individuals. This result provides direct evidence that commoners consumed marine products transported over long distances, likely via the coastal shipping routes that linked Hokkaido and the Japan Sea coast to Osaka. Dental calculus from three individuals contained proteins from non‑human terrestrial mammals, supporting historical accounts that meat from wild quadrupeds was eaten under the guise of “medicinal meat” despite formal taboos. The team also detected proteins from cotton seeds, which are normally inedible but can be processed into cottonseed oil. This suggests that everyday oil products derived from cotton – widely cultivated around Osaka in the Edo period – were possible part of commoners’ diets.

Taken together, these results show that even relatively poor urban commoners buried in the Umeda cemetery had access to an unexpectedly diverse range of foods, including luxury species and products from distant regions. The study highlights how Osaka’s role as the “Kitchen of the Realm” – a major hub for the production, redistribution and trade of foodstuffs from across western Japan – translated into real dietary diversity at the level of ordinary city dwellers.

The authors emphasize that the eight individuals analyzed represent only a tiny fraction of the thousands of skeletons from Umeda cemetery and the hundreds of thousands of people who lived in Osaka during the premodern period. Future work applying dental calculus proteomics to samurai, rural communities with less developed food distribution, other cities such as Edo and Kyoto, and earlier phases of the premodern period will allow us to compare dietary diversity across status, region, and time. More broadly, the study illustrates that local food cultures – such as Kansai’s long‑standing taste for sea bream and tonguefish – have roots extending back centuries, which can only be revealed by carefully analyzing irreplaceable cultural heritage materials like human bones and associated dental calculus.

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Journal

Anthropological Science

DOI

10.1537/ase.260519 

Uncovering the evolution of Edo-period Japanese ceramic jars

  

Caption

AI-assisted shape analysis of Edo-period Ogame jars reveals how ceramic production became increasingly standardized while adapting to different every day and burial functions as well as key historical events.

Credit

Institute of Science Tokyo

Edo-period “Ogame” (“large jars”) became increasingly standardized over time, developing distinct shapes for everyday and burial use, reports a new archeological study from Institute of Science Tokyo, Japan. Using AI-assisted techniques and geometric morphometrics, the researcher analyzed 243 historic vessels to quantitatively track these changes. The findings provide the first quantitative evidence that major Edo-period historical events influenced not only expensive porcelains production but also everyday ceramics, offering new insights into early modern Japanese society.

Archeological artifacts offer valuable insights into the history of past societies. These reveal not only technological developments but also the changing economic systems, cultural traditions, and everyday practices of the people who lived during that time. Pottery is one of the most informative archaeological materials because its shape often reflects not only how it was manufactured and used, but also the broader historical developments that shaped its production. However, identifying subtle changes in ceramic forms has traditionally relied on visual comparisons, making it difficult to quantitatively trace how pottery evolved over time and what these changes reveal about past societies.

Investigating this, Associate Professor James Frances Loftus from the Institute of Future Science, the Institute for Liberal Arts and the School of Environment and Society, Institute of Science Tokyo (Science Tokyo), Japan, investigated how the shapes of large ceramic vessels known as “Ogame” evolved during Japan's Edo period (1603–1868). Published in the journal Open Archaeology on 19 August, 2026, the study combines Geometric Morphometrics (GMM) (quantitative measurement and analysis of shape) with a Random Forest machine learning model to analyze the shapes of 243 jars recovered from 11 kiln and mortuary sites across the Saga and Fukuoka regions of Japan. The artificial intelligence (AI)-based approach also enabled the researcher to classify jars that lacked secure dates, addressing a longstanding challenge in historical archaeology.

“Even ordinary household pottery can preserve a surprisingly rich record of technological and social change,” explains Loftus. “By combining GMM with machine learning, this study was able to quantify subtle changes in pottery shape that would have been difficult to recognize consistently through visual observation alone.”

Ogame were indispensable containers in early modern Japan, serving a wide range of purposes including storing water and soy sauce, transporting agricultural fertilizers, collecting human waste, and even functioning as burial jars. Supporting both everyday life and burial practices, these versatile vessels played an important role throughout Edo-period society. Although previous studies have shown that the consolidation of Tokugawa domain control, the Qing maritime trade ban, and the expansion of domestic production networks transformed the production and distribution of porcelain, far less attention has been paid to whether these same historical developments also influenced everyday utilitarian ceramics such as Ogame. To measure the differences in their morphology, researcher digitized the outlines of each vessel using Elliptical Fourier Analysis, which is a GMM technique that captures subtle changes in shape. He then trained a Random Forest model to classify undated jars into different chronological stages based on these morphological characteristics.

The results revealed that jars produced during the early 17th century displayed considerable variation in shape, whereas vessels made during the 18th century became increasingly uniform. This transition coincided with major historical developments, including the consolidation of the Tokugawa shogunate, the Qing maritime trade ban, and the expansion of domestic production networks. While archaeologists have long argued that these developments transformed ceramic production, this study provides the first quantitative evidence demonstrating that these broader historical changes were reflected in the evolving forms of everyday pottery. These shifts in patterns suggest that increasing regulation and specialization of ceramic workshops shaped production, while allowing the vessels to be adapted for specific cultural needs.

The researcher also discovered that the shape of vessels reflected differences in function. Jars recovered from the kiln sites generally had broad shoulders, flared rims, and relatively compact lower bodies, making them well suited for storing and transporting liquids and fertilizers. In contrast, the jars which were excavated from burial sites displayed taller, narrower, and more enclosed structures, indicating that they were deliberately designed or selected for funerary purposes rather than simply being reused from domestic settings.

“This study provides the first quantitative evidence that Edo-period Ogame became increasingly standardized over time while also adapting to different functions in response to broader historical developments. Furthermore, it highlights the potential of AI-assisted shape analysis to reveal how subtle changes in pottery morphology reflect wider technological, social, economic, and political change,” says Loftus.

Written historical records often focus on political elites and major events, whereas everyday artifacts such as Ogame offer valuable evidence of the lives of ordinary people. By combining archaeological expertise with AI-assisted analysis, the study demonstrates how material culture can complement historical records to reveal social and economic changes that might otherwise remain hidden.

In the future, Loftus hopes to integrate quantitative shape analysis with other archaeological science techniques, such as portable X-ray fluorescence and compositional analyses, to investigate Edo-period ceramics as well as pottery from different regions and time periods, providing a more quantitative framework for archaeological research worldwide. Integrating GMM with machine learning could help archaeologists reconstruct the manufacturing systems and also study the cultural interactions with greater scientific accuracy—opening new possibilities for understanding past societies through the objects they created.

 

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Reference
Title: Water, Soy Sauce, Feces, and Death: A Geometric Morphometric and Machine Learning Analysis of Edo-Period Ogame Jars, Japan
Journal: Open Archaeology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/opar-2025-0083

Oases in the desert of Arabia created 'brands' already in the Bronze Age

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Drone photo of the oasis of Qurayyah.

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Credit: Marta Luciani, Qurayyah Joint Archaeological Project CCBY 4.0

Did brands exist before modern society, in non-capitalistic economies? An international team led by Marta Luciani of the University of Vienna has provided unexpected discoveries about trade during the Bronze Age: yes, brands did indeed exist 3,200 years ago. Findings in the oasis of Qurayyah in Northwestern Arabia offer unprecedented insights into the production of a two-color painted pottery. The researchers demonstrated that the vessels were so distinctive, appealing and sought-after that for all purposes they must be considered a 'brand'. The results were recently published in the journal PLOS One. The team included members of M.I.T., the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, OeAI/OeAW, TU Wien and University of Sydney with the support of the Heritage Commission of the Saudi Ministry of Culture.

An international team led by Marta Luciani from the University of Vienna in collaboration with Pamela Fragnoli (OeAI/OeAW) and Johannes H. Sterba (TU Wien) analyzed several dozen Bronze Age pottery vessels from the oasis of Qurayyah in Northwestern Arabia. The researchers were able to dispel old misconceptions about the famous 'Midianite Pottery' and for the first time prove that the pottery's origin was in fact the oasis of Qurayyah. 

"Our discovery sheds light on how even in the arid environment of desert oases, where essential resources such as clay, water and fuel were scarce, local communities already in the Bronze Age were far from marginal but participated in wider networks of technological know-how shared with neighboring regions, such as the Southern Levant and Syria. Oasis-dwellers were resourceful and inventive enough to create their own ceramic repertoire: to cherish at home and eventually export abroad", says study lead Marta Luciani from the Department of Prehistoric and Historical Archaeology of the University of Vienna. 

Criteria for identifying antique brands have been developed

Key to this pioneering research was determining the criteria necessary to identify ancient brands: visual identity, material consistency, technological continuity, centralized production, export circulation, local imitation, intentional commercial scope and cultural reputation.

"Thus our study's implications stretch beyond archaeology and the long-term relationship between humans and natural resources in climatically extreme regions into fields such as the economic mechanisms mediating producer-consumer relationships across time and space", adds Luciani, archaeologist and team leader at the Human Evolution and Archaeological Science (HEAS) network at the University of Vienna. 

"Decisive for this first-time discovery was our interdisciplinary and multi-scalar approach, combining examination of stratified material, vessel-shaping technology, petrographic analysis of ceramic thin sections under the polarizing microscope" explains Pamela Fragnoli, Head of the Ceramic Lab of the Austrian Archaeological Institute at the Austrian Academy of Science (OeAI/OeAW), "cross-checked with chemical fingerprinting of the vessels' composition, down their trace elements obtained via Neutron Activation Analysis" adds Johannes H. Sterba, Head of the Center for Labelling and Isotope Production at the TU Wien.

Doralice Klainscek, PhD candidate at the University of Vienna and study co-author, specifies: "The first set of Qurayyah Painted Ware was produced 3,600 years ago. Our most striking discovery was ascertaining that painted pottery production continued, by constantly evolving (Fig. 2). Four centuries on, ca. 3,200 years ago they manufactured a flourishing repertoire of painted animals and human rituals (Fig. 3): this became the brand that was exported over hundreds of kilometers north to the Southern Levant, to sites like Tell el-Kheleifeh and even the Timna sanctuary of the Egyptian goddess Hathor, and south to North Arabia. But Qurayyah's potting tradition did not stop and continued to be based in the oasis for another thousand years well into the final Iron Age". 

Summary: 

• An interdisciplinary approach to analyze antique vessels found in the oasis of Qurayyah in Northwestern Arabia offers unprecedented insights into brand making and trade in the Bronze age. 
• The researchers concluded that the painted pottery (formerly known as 'Midianite Pottery') was so distinctive, appealing and sought-after that for all purposes it must be considered a 'brand'. 
• Identifying the following criteria: visual identity, material consistency, technological continuity, centralized production, export circulation, local imitation, intentional commercial scope and cultural reputation allowed the scholars to demonstrate how an ancient brand was created. 
• The study's implications stretch beyond archaeology into fields such as the economic mechanisms mediating producer-consumer relationships. 

Bear remains challenge long-held theory on farming’s arrival in Ireland and Great Britain

 

New research led by University College Dublin has rewritten a key chapter in Irish prehistory, revealing that bones long thought to mark the beginning of farming in Ireland belong to bear and wild boar, not cattle.

For more than 30 years, animal remains discovered during excavations at Ferriter's Cove, a small bay on the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, and dated to the end of the Mesolithic period (8000-4000 BCE) have been cited as proof that before agriculture became established in Ireland, there was contact between its Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and Europe's Neolithic farming communities.

Believed to be bone fragments belonging to cattle, the find is considered to be the earliest evidence for the presence of domesticated farm animals for the islands of Ireland and Britain.

Now, UCD researchers have shown the famous bones were never cattle at all but belonged to a bear and wild boar.

Detailed in the latest edition of PAST, the newsletter of the Prehistoric Society, the discovery removes one of the most significant pieces of evidence for when agriculture developed in Ireland or Great Britain, and likely forces a rethink of when and how their communities moved from Mesolithic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to Neolithic farming societies.

The new findings are part of a Research Ireland-funded postdoctoral project at the UCD School of Archaeology, led by Dr Martin Moucheron, under the mentorship of Professor Graeme Warren, which is re-examining important Mesolithic archaeological sites using modern scientific techniques.

The new research is part of a Research Ireland-funded postdoctoral project at the UCD School of Archaeology, led by Dr Martin Moucheron, under the mentorship of Professor Graeme Warren, which is re-examining important Mesolithic archaeological sites using modern scientific techniques.

“For at least four millennia hunting and gathering people lived on the island, and there is a common conception that they left little trace and that we know very little about them - unlike the megaliths of Neolithic farmers, who are portrayed in ways that feel very familiar in Ireland,” said Dr Moucheron.

“But there is much we can understand about Mesolithic people just by going back to the sites and material we have, and by looking at them with new eyes and new techniques - and an open mind.”

Ferriter's Cove has occupied a central place in debates about Ireland's prehistoric past since excavations in the 1980s and 1990s uncovered several bone fragments initially identified as domesticated cattle.

The presence of such remains, the so-called "Kerry Cow", contradicted existing theories of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in Ireland, and, ever since, have been cited as evidence that its Mesolithic communities had established links with early farmers arriving from Continental Europe.

In collaboration with Dr(s) Benjamin Gearey, Barra Ó Donnabháin, and Margaret McCarthy, from University College Cork, and Kate Kanne (UCD), the original archaeological material from Ferriter’s Cove, which is now stored at UCC, were sent to the CNRS lab in Lille, France, to undergo biomolecular analysis.

Using a technique known as ZooMS that identifies species through proteins preserved in ancient bone collagen, the results found the fragments were not from domesticated cattle as originally thought but instead came from a bear and a wild boar.

As a result, there is currently no archaeological evidence to support the idea that domesticated cattle, and by extension, early farming communities, had reached or influenced Ireland before 4000 BC.

“Ferriter’s Cove is an iconic archaeological site, originally excavated by the Late Professor Peter Woodman, Department of Archaeology, UCC; this new collaboration with colleagues at UCD marks an exciting new phase of research and these remarkable results are set to change our understanding of the earliest evidence for agriculture in Ireland," said Dr Gearey. 

Professor Warren added: “These exciting results show the real value in going back to key sites with new analytical techniques - which can change the stories we tell about our past”

Beyond rewriting one of Ireland's best-known archaeological narratives, the study highlights the value of revisiting important archaeological collections with modern scientific methods, demonstrating how advances can challenge long-held assumptions and reshape the understanding of the past.

Further analyses are now underway to determine whether the bear remains belonged to brown bears or polar bears, with the hope of providing new insights into prehistoric Ireland’s bear populations prior to their extinction during the Bronze Age.