Prehistoric faeces reveal parasites from feasting at Stonehenge

 

IMAGE: MICROSCOPIC EGG OF CAPILLARIID WORM FROM DURRINGTON WALLS. BLACK SCALE BAR REPRESENTS 20 MICROMETRES. view more 

CREDIT: EVILENA ANASTASIOU/UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

A new analysis of ancient faeces found at the site of a prehistoric village near Stonehenge has uncovered evidence of the eggs of parasitic worms, suggesting the inhabitants feasted on the internal organs of cattle and fed leftovers to their dogs.

Durrington Walls was a Neolithic settlement situated just 2.8km from Stonehenge, and dating from around 2500 BC, when much of the famous stone monument was constructed. It is believed that the site housed the people who built Stonehenge.   

A team of archaeologists led by the University of Cambridge investigated nineteen pieces of ancient faeces, or ‘coprolite’, found at Durrington Walls and preserved for over 4,500 years. Five of the coprolites (26%) – one human and four dog – were found to contain the eggs of parasitic worms.

Researchers say it is the earliest evidence for intestinal parasites in the UK where the host species that produced the faeces has also been identified. The findings are published today in the journal Parasitology.  

“This is the first time intestinal parasites have been recovered from Neolithic Britain, and to find them in the environment of Stonehenge is really something,” said study lead author Dr Piers Mitchell from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology.

“The type of parasites we find are compatible with previous evidence for winter feasting on animals during the building of Stonehenge,” he said.

Four of the coprolites, including the human one, contained the eggs of capillariid worms, identified in part by their lemon shape.

While the many types of capillariid around the world infect a wide range of animals, on the rare occasion that a European species infects humans the eggs get lodged in the liver and don’t appear in stool.

The evidence of capillariid eggs in human faeces indicates that the person had eaten the raw or undercooked lungs or liver from an already infected animal, resulting in the parasite’s eggs passing straight through the body.

During excavations of the main ‘midden’ – or dung and refuse heap – at Durrington Walls, archaeologists uncovered pottery and stone tools along with over 38,000 animal bones. Some 90% of the bones were from pigs, with less than 10% from cows. This is also where the partially mineralised faeces used in the study were found.   

“As capillariid worms can infect cattle and other ruminants, it seems that cows may have been the most likely source of the parasite eggs,” said Mitchell.

Previous isotopic analyses of cow teeth from Durrington Walls suggest that some cattle were herded almost 100km from Devon or Wales to the site for large-scale feasting. Patterns of butchery previously identified on cattle bones from the site suggest beef was primarily chopped for stewing, and bone marrow was extracted.

“Finding the eggs of capillariid worms in both human and dog coprolites indicates that the people had been eating the internal organs of infected animals, and also fed the leftovers to their dogs,” said co-author Evilena Anastasiou, who assisted with the research while at Cambridge.

To determine whether the coprolites excavated from the midden were from human or animal faeces, they were analysed for sterols and bile acids at the National Environment Isotope Facility at the University of Bristol.

One of the coprolites belonging to a dog contained the eggs of fish tapeworm, indicating it had previously eaten raw freshwater fish to become infected. However, no other evidence of fish consumption, such as bones, has been found at the site.

“Durrington Walls was occupied on a largely seasonal basis, mainly in winter periods. The dog probably arrived already infected with the parasite,” said Dr Piers Mitchell.

“Isotopic studies of cow bones at the site suggests they came from regions across southern Britain, which was likely also true of the people who lived and worked there.”

The dates for Durrington Walls match those for stage two of the construction of Stonehenge, when the world-famous ‘trilithons’ – two massive vertical stones supporting a third horizontal stone – were erected, most likely by the seasonal residents of this nearby settlement.    

While Durrington Walls was a place of feasting and habitation, as evidenced by the pottery and vast number of animal bones, Stonehenge itself was not, with little found to suggest people lived or ate there en masse.

Prof Mike Parker Pearson from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, who excavated Durrington Walls between 2005 and 2007, added: “This new evidence tells us something new about the people who came here for winter feasts during the construction of Stonehenge.”

“Pork and beef were spit-roasted or boiled in clay pots but it looks as if the offal wasn’t always so well cooked. The population weren’t eating freshwater fish at Durrington Walls, so they must have picked up the tapeworms at their home settlements.”

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JOURNAL

Parasitology

DOI

10.1017/S0031182022000476 

Research confirms eastern Wyoming Paleoindian site as Americas' oldest mine

 Archaeological excavations led by Wyoming’s state archaeologist and involving University of Wyoming researchers have confirmed that an ancient mine in eastern Wyoming was used by humans to produce red ocher starting nearly 13,000 years ago.

That makes the Powars II site at Sunrise in Platte County the oldest documented red ocher mine -- and likely the oldest known mine of any sort -- in all of North and South America. The excavations, completed shortly before the 2020 death of famed UW archaeologist George Frison, confirmed theories he advanced stemming from research he began at the site in 1986.

The findings appear in “In situ evidence for Paleoindian hematite quarrying at the Powars II site (48PL330), Wyoming,” a paper published May 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), one of the world’s most prestigious multidisciplinary scientific journals covering the biological, physical and social sciences.

The paper’s lead author is Wyoming State Archaeologist Spencer Pelton, who became involved in the Powars II project in 2016 when he was a UW doctoral student.

“We have unequivocal evidence for use of this site by early Paleoindians as long as 12,840 years ago and continuing by early Americans for about 1,000 years,” Pelton says. “It’s gratifying that we were finally able to confirm the significance of the Powars II site after decades of work by so many, including Dr. Frison, who learned of the site in the early 1980s and was involved in the research until his death.”

In fact, Frison -- who died in September 2020 as the only UW faculty member ever elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences -- is listed as a co-author of the new paper. Other contributors were George Zeimens, executive director of the Sunrise Historic and Prehistoric Preservation Society; Erin Kelley, a UW graduate and Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist staff member; and UW Ph.D. students Sarah Allaun, Alexander Craib, Chase Mahan and Charles Koenig.

Red ocher, also known as hematite, fulfilled a wide range of functions in Paleoindian societies, including as a pigment in rituals. It has been found at ancient graves, caches, campsites and kill sites in the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains and beyond. The Powars II site is the only red ocher quarry identified in the North American archaeological record north of southern Mexico -- and one of only five such quarries identified in all of the Americas.

Among the artifacts previously discovered at the Powars II site are Clovis points -- believed to be from the first inhabitants of North America -- along with other projectile points, tools and shell beads.

The 2017-2020 excavation led by Pelton -- a 6- by 1-meter trench bisecting a previously undocumented quarry feature -- yielded several thousand more Paleoindian artifacts, along with many well-preserved animal bones and antlers. The animal bones and antlers were used to extract the red ocher in the quarry.

The projectile points come from numerous locations in the region, including from as far away as the Edwards Plateau in Texas, according to the paper. That makes it likely that red ocher found at archaeological sites throughout the American midcontinent came from the Powars II quarry.

“Beyond its status as a quarry, the Powars II artifact assemblage is itself one of the densest and most diverse of any thus far discovered in the early Paleoindian record of the Americas,” Pelton says. “The site contains over 30 chipped stone tools per square meter, some of the oldest canid remains from an American archaeological site and rare or unique artifacts, among other distinctions.”

The researchers say the evidence discovered so far indicates the quarry was used in two primary periods. During the first, dating to as long as 12,840 years ago and lasting several hundred years, people not only quarried red ocher -- using bones and antlers as tools -- but also produced and repaired weapons, along with other activities. After a hiatus of a century or more, the site was occupied by humans who mined red ocher and deposited artifacts in piles in a quarry pit.

“Further excavation of the estimated 800-square-meter remainder of the site will certainly reveal complexity not captured by our sample,” the researchers wrote.

Pelton nominated the Powars II site to the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2201005119 

Rice cultivation recorded at a Neolithic site 8000 years ago

 

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IMAGE: THROUGH THREE-DIMENSIONAL MODELING USING THE AGISOFT PHOTOSCAN SOFTWARE, THE DIRECTIONS OF WATER FLOWS WITHIN AND AROUND THESE FEATURES WERE SIMULATED. GRAPHICS BY ZHENWEI QIU. view more 

CREDIT: ©SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

This study is led by Dr. Zhenwei Qiu (National Museum of China) and Dr. Yijie Zhuang (Institute of Archaeology, University College London). The Hanjing site is situated on the flood plains of the Mid-lower Huai River. Three seasons of field surveys and excavations were carried out by the joint archaeological team of the National Museum of China, Nanjing Museum and Sihong County Museum from 2014 to 2016, with Professor Lina Zhuang as the director. The rice-field-like archaeological features suggest some initial forms of management of local hydrology at Hanjing (see image below). “These features would have facilitated irrigation and drainage in the field, which were crucial for rice cultivation” Zhenwei says.

Microscopic analyses of macro- and micro-plant remains from the Hanjing site were conducted by Zhenwei Qiu at the Institute of Archaeology, National Museum of China. Charred rice grains and spikelet bases recovered by floatation confirmed that domesticated rice and wild rice co-existed at the Hanjing site. The direct radiocarbon dates of charred rice grains fall between 8400-8000 cal. BP. The morphological features of rice phytoliths (Oryza-type bulliform cells and double-peaked Oryza-type glume cells) from rice leaf and husk point to discrepancy of prediction on rice domestication at the Hanjing site.

The team also examined microstructure of some potsherds. Charred remains of rice plants or impressions can be found on the inner and/or outer surfaces as well as in the cross-section of the potsherds. Some translucent residues were identified to be phytolith from rice husk (see image below).

The researchers also carried out lipid analysis of both the food crusts and ceramic matrices. “The pottery vessels were mainly used to process C3-based plants (possibly rice), aquatic foods and terrestrial non-ruminant animals” Dr. Huiyun Rao (Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences) says.

Combined zooarchaeological evidence with the archaeobotanical data, it is clear that hunting, fishing, rice cultivation and wild plant food collection were all important parts of the subsistence economy at Hanjing. “This subsistence economy points to a shared characteristic of the subsistence strategies amongst the Early to Mid-Neolithic sites in the Huai valley, in which hunting and gathering still played a very important role in food production” Qiu says.

The team believes that the Hanjing site presents one of the earliest evidence of rice cultivation and domestication in the Huai River valley, supporting this region as another important center for early development of rice economies that was less well understood, and that might have experienced a different pathway to the beginning and development of rice farming compared to the Middle and Lower Yangtze River regions.

Measurements of Oryza-type bulliform cells and double-peaked Oryza-type glume cells show that these two types of phytoliths hold different significance to predict rice domestication at Hanjing. “This discrepancy of phytolith identification and prediction of rice domestication might be attributed to several analytical and methodological factors, including analytical approaches and sampling issues, statistical methods applied during measurement and data analysis” Qiu says. Future effort is required to further investigate whether such a discrepancy is related to the nature of rice plant physiology in initial rice cultivation or to some other factors.

See the article:

Qiu Z, Zhuang L, Rao H, Lin L, Zhuang Y. 2022. Excavation at Hanjing site yields evidence of early rice cultivation in the Huai River more than 8000 years ago. Science China Earth Sciences, 65(5): 910–920, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-021-9885-x

Bronze Age funeral pyre in Northern Italy may have been used over generations

with cremated remains left in situ as part of complex funerary rituals

 

IMAGE: THE CREMATION PLATFORM DURING THE EXCAVATION OF 1987 (COURTESY OF UFFICIO BENI ARCHEOLOGICI DI BOLZANO). view more 

CREDIT: CRIVELLARO ET AL., 2022, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

Article URL:  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0267532

The archaeological site of Salorno—Dos de la Forca (Bozen, Alto Adige) provides one of the rarest and most significant documentations of cremated human remains preserved from an ancient cremation platform (ustrinum). The pyre area, located along the upper Adige valley, is dated to the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1150–950 BCE) and has yielded an unprecedented quantity of cremated human remains (about 63.5 kg), along with burnt animal bone fragments, shards of pottery, and other grave goods made in bronze and animal bone/antler. This study focuses on the bioanthropological analysis of the human remains and discusses the formation of the unusual burnt deposits at Salorno through comparisons with modern practices and protohistoric and contemporaneous archaeological deposits. The patterning of bone fragmentation and commingling was investigated using spatial data recorded during excavation which, along with the bioanthropological and archaeological data, are used to model and test two hypotheses: Salorno—Dos de la Forca would be the result of A) repeated primary cremations left in situ; or B) of residual material remaining after select elements were removed for internment in urns or burials to unknown depositional sites. By modelling bone weight and demographic data borrowed from regional affine contexts, the authors suggest that this cremation site may have been used over several generations by a small community–perhaps a local elite. With a quantity of human remains that exceeds that of any other coeval contexts interpreted as ustrina, Salorno may be the product of a complex series of rituals in which the human cremains did not receive individual burial, but were left in situ, in a collective/communal place of primary combustion, defining an area of repeated funeral ceremonies involving offerings and libations across a few generations. This would represent a new typological and functional category that adds to the variability of mortuary customs at the end of the Bronze Age in the Alpine are, at a time in which “globalising” social trends may have stimulated the definition of more private identities.

Humans and Neanderthals “Lived Together” 50,000 Years Ago

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Recent research from an Israeli archaeological dig has proven that modern humans and Neanderthals lived together in the Negev desert some 50,000 years ago. Not only that, but the site they excavated, Boker Tachtit, has now been established as the earliest known migration point from Africa for early Homo sapiens from the Levant.

In the Middle Palaeolithic era, 250,000 to 50,000 years ago, two humanoid species lived in the Old World at the same time: Neanderthal man and modern man (Homo sapiens).

The Neanderthals lived in Europe and Central Asia whereas modern man lived in Africa at that time.

As the Israel Antiquities Authority states regarding the ground-breaking findings, “the Middle East, and the region of Israel in particular, were at the limits of the distribution of these two species and they therefore also contain remnants of the two populations at different times.”

The research undertaken at the Boker Tachtit site in Ein Avdat National Park in Israel’s Negev desert has now provided the first proof of the two cultures’ coexistence there and pinpoints—for the first time ever—the exact time when modern humans left Africa.

A recent reexamination of artifacts from the Boker Tachtit site was the subject of a study published on Monday in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The dig was led by researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Max Planck Society, Prof. Elisabetta Boaretto together with Dr. Omry Barzilai of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).

“Boker Tachtit is the first site outside of Africa, which modern man penetrated on his way to the rest of the world, hence the importance of the site, as well as the importance of dating it accurately,” said Dr. Barzilai, the director of excavation at the Boker Tachtit site in the statement.

“The age of the site as dated in the study—50,000 years—indicates that modern man existed in the area of the Negev at the same time as the Neanderthal man, who is known to have lived in it during this period,” he explained.

“There is no doubt that the two species who lived and roamed the Negev were aware of each other’s existence,” Barzilai declared, adding “Our research Boker Tachtit site places an important and unequivocal point of reference on the timeline of human evolution.”

The “recent African origin” theory of human development stipulates that Homo sapiens originated in Africa as early as 270,000 years ago; at different times, humans took either the northern route to Eurasia, passing through the Levant, or several possible southern routes to all the corners of Asia.

Many believe that Homo sapiens even reached Oceania—getting as far as Australia by land at that time.

Scientist believe that DNA research shows the migration of modern humans began from Africa to Asia and Europe and proceeded onward to the rest of the world approximately 60,000 years ago.

Where were Herod the Great's royal alabaster bathtubs quarried?

 From the Middle Bronze Age, Egypt played a crucial role in the appearance of calcite-alabaster artifacts in Israel, and the development of the local gypsum-alabaster industry. The absence of ancient calcite-alabaster quarries in the Southern Levant (modern day Israel and Palestine) led to the assumption that all calcite-alabaster vessels found in the Levant originated from Egypt, while poorer quality vessels made of gypsum were local products.

Until now this long-held assumption was never scientifically tested. But the recent identification of a calcite-alabaster quarry in the Te’omim cave, located on the western slopes of the Jerusalem hills (near modern-day Beit Shemesh, Israel), calls this hypothesis into question. A new study, recently published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, scientifically refutes the hypothesis and, for the first time, allows the distinction between calcite-alabaster originating in Israel from that originating in Egypt. Furthermore, it confirms that calcite-alabaster objects, such as Herod the Great's alabaster bathtubs, were quarried in Israel rather than Egypt.

The research was conducted as part of Ayala Amir’s MA thesis at the Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, supervised by Prof. Boaz Zissu and Prof. Aren M. Maeir, of Bar-Ilan University, and Prof. Amos Frumkin, of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Analytical data were first collected from samples of two well-defined sources, from Egypt and modern-day Israel. The Egyptian sources included both ancient and modern calcite-alabaster samples. The ancient samples were obtained courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria. These ancient vessel remains were collected by the Austrian archaeological expedition to Giza in the nineteenth century CE. The modern Egyptian artifact, made of geological-sourced calcite-alabaster, was bought in a market in Cairo, Egypt in 2013. The calcite-alabaster from Israel included raw material from the Te’omim cave quarry, chips (mining debitage) found in the cave near the quarry, and chips and a stone block (raw material carved to a cube, but not yet used to make a vessel) from Umm el-‘Umdan -- an archaeological site near the Te’omim cave. Additional samples were collected from a speleothem in Natuf cave located in Wadi en-Natuf in western Samaria.

Next, through a multidisciplinary approach, the calcite-alabaster samples from Israel and Egypt were analyzed with the assistance of Prof. Gil Goobes and Prof. Amnon Albeck, of the Department of Chemistry at Bar-Ilan University using four analytic methods, most of which have not been previously used, to determine their origin: inductively coupled plasma (ICP) analysis, routine infra-red (IR) spectroscopy, 1H- and 31P- solid state NMR (ssNMR) experiments and C and O stable isotope ratio analysis to determine their composition and their crystalline structure.

"All four analytical methods applied in the study provided consistent results, clearly distinguishing the Israeli from the Egyptian calcite-alabaster for the first time," said Prof. Albeck of the findings.

The same methods were then applied to two of Herod the Great’s royal bathtubs, which were made of finely worked calcite-alabaster and found in the Kypros fortress and the palace of Herodium, located just south of Jerusalem. The results unequivocally indicated that the bathtubs were quarried in Israel and not in Egypt, the main source of calcite-alabaster in ancient periods.

"The fact that both bathtubs were unequivocally quarried in Israel and not in Egypt, as we would have expected due to the high quality of the stone, was a particular surprise because that means that Herod the Great used local produce, and that the calcite-alabaster industry in Judea in the second half of the first century BC was sufficiently developed and of high enough quality to serve the luxurious standards of Herod, one of the finest builders among the kings of that period," said Prof. Aren Maeir.

The source of calcite-alabaster artifacts cannot be determined by traditional archaeological methods. Furthermore, petrographic analysis, the main method used to determine the source of Israeli calcite-alabaster, shows wide variability in texture, depending on its depositional environment. Consequently, this method could not be used to identify the source of the bathtubs.

"The multidisciplinary approach adopted in this study provides information concerning both the composition and crystalline structure of calcite-alabaster and is significant for understanding and interpreting archaeological findings," said researcher Ayala Amir. "Combining analytic methods with archaeological studies may provide new and fascinating information that could not be obtained by traditional archaeological techniques and enable us to determine the origin of other calcite-alabaster artifacts with much greater confidence," she added.

This study was supported by grants from the Israel Science Foundation and the Israel Ministry of Science and Technology. It is an outgrowth of the research project “Ancient Quarry of Calcite Cave Deposit ('Bahat') in the Jerusalem Hills: Archaeological and Environmental Significances” funded by the Israel Science Foundation and directed by Prof. Boaz Zissu, of Bar-Ilan University, and Prof. Amos Frumkin, of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Ancient DNA gives new insights into 'lost' Indigenous people of Uruguay

 The first whole genome sequences of the ancient people of Uruguay provide a genetic snapshot of Indigenous populations of the region before they were decimated by a series of European military campaigns. PNAS Nexus published the research, led by anthropologists at Emory University and the University of the Republic, Montevideo, Uruguay.

"Our work shows that the Indigenous people of ancient Uruguay exhibit an ancestry that has not been previously detected in South America," says John Lindo, co-corresponding author and an Emory assistant professor of anthropology specializing in ancient DNA. "This contributes to the idea of South America being a place where multi-regional diversity existed, instead of the monolithic idea of a single Native American race across North and South America."

The analyses drew from a DNA sample of a man that dated back 800 years and another from a woman that went back 1,500 years, both well before the 1492 arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. The samples were collected from an archeological site in eastern Uruguay by co-corresponding author Gonzalo Figueiro, a biological anthropologist at the University of the Republic.

The results of the analyses showed a surprising connection to ancient individuals from Panama -- the land bridge that connects North and South America -- and to eastern Brazil, but not to modern Amazonians. These findings support the theory proposed by some archeologists of separate migrations into South America, including one that led to the Amazonian populations and another that led to the populations along the East coast.

"We've now provided genetic evidence that this theory may be correct," Lindo says. "It runs counter to the theory of a single migration that split at the foot of the Andes."

The archeological evidence for human settlement of the area now known as Uruguay, located on the Atlantic coast south of Brazil, goes back more than 10,000 years. European colonizers made initial contact with the Indigenous people of the region in the early 1500s.

During the 1800s, the colonizers launched a series of military campaigns to exterminate the native peoples, culminating in what is known as the massacre at Salsipuedes Creek, in 1831, which targeted an ethnic group called the Charrúa. At that time, the authors write, the term Charrúa was being applied broadly to the remnants of various hunter-gatherer groups in the territory of Uruguay.

"Through these first whole genome sequences of the Indigenous people of the region before the arrival of Europeans, we were able to reconstruct at least a small part of their genetic prehistory," Lindo says.

The work opens the door to modern-day Uruguayans seeking to potentially link themselves genetically to populations that existed in the region before European colonizers arrived. "We would like to gather more DNA samples from ancient archeological sites from all over Uruguay, which would allow people living in the country today to explore a possible genetic connection," Lindo says.

The Lindo ancient DNA lab specializes in mapping little-explored human lineages of the Americas. Most ancient DNA labs are located in Europe, where the cooler climate has better preserved specimens.

Less focus has been put on sequencing ancient DNA from South America. One reason is that warmer, more humid climates throughout much of the continent have made it more challenging to collect usable ancient DNA specimens, although advances in sequencing technology are helping to remove some of these limitations.

"If you're of European descent, you can have your DNA sequenced and use that information to pinpoint where your ancestors are from down to specific villages," Lindo says. "If you are descended from people Indigenous to the Americas you may be able to learn that some chunk of your genome is Native American, but it's unlikely that you can trace a direct lineage because there are not enough ancient DNA references available."

Further complicating the picture, he adds, is the massive disruption caused by the arrival of Europeans given that many civilizations were destroyed and whole populations were killed.

By collaborating closely with Indigenous communities and local archeologists, Lindo hopes to use advanced DNA sequencing techniques to build a free, online portal with increasing numbers of ancient DNA references from the Americas, to help people better explore and understand their ancestry.

Co-authors of the current paper include Emory senior Rosseirys De La Rosa, Andrew Luize Campelo dos Santos (the Federal University of Penambuco, Recife, Brazil), Monica Sans (University of the Republic, Montevideo, Uruguay), and Michael De Giorgio (Florida Atlantic University).

The work was funded by a National Science Foundation CAREER Grant.

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Emory University. Original written by Carol Clark. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. John Lindo, Rosseirys De La Rosa, Andre Luiz Campelo dos Santos, Mónica Sans, Michael DeGiorgio, Gonzalo Figueiro. The genomic prehistory of the indigenous peoples of Uruguay. PNAS Nexus, 2022; DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac047