New research on ancient Britain contains insights on language, ancestry, kinship, milk

 New research revealing a major migration to the island of Great Britain offers fresh insights into the languages spoken at the time, the ancestry of present-day England and Wales, and even ancient habits of dairy consumption.

 

CAPTION

a photograph of the skeleton of one of the four individuals who we have sequenced who we think is likely to have participated in the migration we detect into southern Britain and to have displaced half the ancestry of the local population. This skeleton was excavated from the site of Cliffs End Farm in Kent.

CREDIT

Wessex Archaeology

The findings are described in Nature by a team of more than 200 international researchers led by Harvard geneticists David Reich and Nick Patterson. Michael Isakov, a Harvard undergraduate who discovered the existence of the 3,000-year-old migration, is one of the co-first authors.

The analysis is one of two Reich-led studies of DNA data from ancient Britain that Nature published on Tuesday. Both highlight technological advances in large-scale genomics and open new windows into the lives of ancient people.

“This shows the power of large-scale genetic data in concert with archaeological and other data to get rich information about our past from a time before writing,” said Reich, a professor in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology and a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. “The studies are not only important for Great Britain, where we now have far more ancient DNA data than in any other region, but also because of what they show about the promise of similar studies elsewhere in the world.”

The researchers analyzed the DNA of 793 newly reported individuals in the largest genome-wide study involving ancient humans. Their findings reveal a large-scale migration likely from somewhere in France to the southern part of Great Britain, or modern-day England and Wales, that eventually replaced about 50 percent of the ancestry of the island during the Late Bronze Age (1200 to 800 B.C.).

The study supports a recent theory that early Celtic languages came to Great Britain from France during the Late Bronze Age. It challenges two prominent theories: that the languages arrived hundreds of years later, in the Iron Age, or 1,500 years earlier at the dawn of the Bronze Age.

Previous research has shown that large-scale movement often accompanied language changes in pre-state societies. The Reich team argues that this untold migration event makes more sense for the spread of early Celtic languages into Britain.

“By using genetic data to document times when there were large-scale movements of people into a region, we can identify plausible times for a language shift,” Reich said. “Known Celtic languages are too similar in their vocabularies to plausibly descend from a common ancestor 4,500 years ago, which is the time of the earlier pulse of large-scale migration, and very little migration occurred in the Iron Age. If you’re a serious scholar, the genetic data should make you adjust your beliefs: downweighting the scenario of early Celtic language coming in the Iron Age [and early Bronze Age] and upweighting the Late Bronze Age.”

As part of the genetic analysis, the researchers found that the ability to digest cow’s milk dramatically increased in Britain from 1200 to 200 B.C., which is about a millennium earlier than it did in central Europe. These findings illuminate a different role for dairy consumption in Britain during this period compared with the rest of mainland Europe. More study is needed to define that role, the researchers said. Increased milk tolerance would have provided a big advantage in the former of higher survival rates among the children of people carrying this genetic adaptation.

The newly discovered ancestry change happened around 3,000 years ago, more than a millennium and a half before the Saxon period. The team was aware of a migration into England at some point during this gap because of an observation they made in research published in 2016. That study showed that contemporary English people have more DNA from early European farmers than people who lived in England about 4,000 years ago. The team set out to collect DNA from later periods to detect the shift.

The discontinuity — a specific point in time when the percentage of farmer ancestry in English genomes changed — was first noticed in the summer of 2019 by Isakov, an applied mathematics concentrator. He had started working as a researcher in Reich’s lab the summer after his first year and was able to increase the statistical power of the group’s ancestry tests. When he noticed some outliers in the data from people living 3,000 years ago, he led a closer analysis and discovered the migration.

“It’s an extraordinary outcome and I’m very happy that I was able to get through it,” said Isakov, who will graduate in May.

The second paper looks at kinship practices of 35 individuals who lived about 5,700 years ago and were buried in a tomb at Hazleton North in Gloucestershire, England. The researchers found a 27-person family — three times larger than the second-largest documented ancient family — whose kin relationships could be precisely determined by analyzing their DNA. The team created a family tree that covered five generations and found examples of polygyny, polyandry, adoption, and a key role for both patrilineal and matrilineal descent.

The lab’s research illustrates the interdisciplinary collaborations that are required to tell the richest stories of the ancient past, Isakov said.

“It’s sort of incredible that we have geneticists, we have statisticians, we have archaeologists, linguists, and even chemical analysis coming together. I think that the fact that we’re able to like merge all these fields and have an actual insight that’s culturally important is a great example of interdisciplinary science.”

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JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-021-04287-4 

More info:

A major new study of ancient DNA has traced the movement of people into southern Britain during the Bronze Age.

In the largest such analysis published to date, scientists examined the DNA of nearly 800 ancient individuals

The new study, led by the University of York, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Vienna, shows that people moving into southern Britain around 1300‒800 BC were responsible for around half the genetic ancestry of subsequent populations.

The combined DNA and archaeological evidence suggests that, rather than a violent invasion or a single migratory event, the genetic structure of the population changed through sustained contacts between mainland Britain and Europe over several centuries, such as the movement of traders, intermarriage, and small scale movements of family groups.

The study finds evidence that the new migrants became thoroughly mixed in to the Southern British population in the period 1000‒875 BC.

The researchers say the origin of these migrants cannot yet be established with certainty, but they are most likely to have come from communities in and around present-day France.

The Middle to Late Bronze Age was a time when settled farming communities expanded across the landscapes of southern Britain, and extensive trade routes developed to allow the movement of metal ores for the production of bronze. 

These new networks linked wide-ranging regions across Europe, as seen from the spread of bronze objects and raw materials.

The study’s lead archaeologist Professor Ian Armit, from the University of York, said: ‘We have long suspected, based on patterns of trade and shared ideologies, that the Middle to Late Bronze Age was a time of intense contacts between communities in Britain and Europe. 

“While we may once have thought that long-distance mobility was restricted to a few individuals, such as traders or small bands of warriors, this new DNA evidence shows that considerable numbers of people were moving, across the whole spectrum of society.”

Some of the earliest genetic outliers have been found in Kent, suggesting that the south-east may have been a focus for movement into Britain. This resonates with previously published isotope evidence from archaeological sites like Cliffs End Farm, where some individuals were shown to have spent their childhoods on the Continent.

The new DNA evidence may also shed light on the long-standing question of when early Celtic languages arrived in Britain.

Since population movement often drives linguistic change, the new DNA evidence significantly strengthens the case for the appearance of Celtic languages in Britain in the Bronze Age. Conversely, the study shows little evidence for large-scale movements of people into Britain during the subsequent Iron Age, which has previously been thought of as the period during which Celtic languages may have spread. 

Professor David Reich, from Harvard Medical School, said: “These findings do not settle the question of the origin of Celtic languages into Britain. However, any reasonable scholar needs to adjust their best guesses about what occurred based on these findings.

“Our results militate against an Iron Age spread of Celtic languages into Britain - the popular “Celtic from the East” hypothesis - and increase the likelihood of a Late Bronze Age arrival from France, a rarely discussed scenario called “Celtic from the Centre.”

A further unexpected finding of the study is a large increase in the frequency of the allele for lactase persistence (a genetic adaptation that allowed people to digest dairy products) in Bronze Age populations in Britain relative to the Continent.

New dates for Viking trade

Solar flare throws light on ancient trade between the Islamic Middle East and the Viking Age

 

IMAGE: PROFESSOR SØREN M. SINDBÆK HAS DIRECTED THE NORTHERN EMPORIUM PROJECT IN THE EMPORIUM RIBE, DENMARK. THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL STRATIGRAPHY OF THE SITES HAS SECURED AN IMPROVED UNDERSTANDING OF GLOBAL TRADE FLOWS IN THE VIKING AGE. PHOTO: THE MUSEUM OF SOUTHWEST JUTLANDview more 

CREDIT: PHOTO: THE MUSEUM OF SOUTHWEST JUTLAND

Mobility shaped the human world profoundly long before the modern age. But archaeologists often struggle to create a timeline for the speed and impact of this mobility. An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Urban Network Evolutions at Aarhus University (UrbNet) has now made a breakthrough by applying new astronomical knowledge about the past activity of the sun to establish an exact time anchor for global links in the year 775 CE.

In collaboration with the Museum of Southwest Jutland in the Northern Emporium Project, the team has conducted a major excavation at Ribe, one of Viking-age Scandinavia’s principal trading towns. Funded by the Carlsberg Foundation, the dig and the subsequent research project were able to establish the exact sequence of the arrival of objects from various corners of the world at the market in Ribe. In this way, they were able to trace the emergence of the vast network of Viking-age trade connections with regions such as North Atlantic Norway, Frankish Western Europe and the Middle East. To obtain a chronology for these events, the team has pioneered a new use of radiocarbon dating.

New use of radiocarbon dating

“The applicability of radiocarbon dating has hitherto been limited due to the broad age ranges of this method. Recently, however, it has been discovered that solar particle events, also known as Miyake events, cause sharp spikes in atmospheric radiocarbon for a single year. They are named after the female Japanese researcher Fusa Miyake, who first identified these events in 2012. When these spikes are identified in detailed records such as tree rings or in an archaeological sequence, it reduces the uncertainty margins considerably,” says lead author Bente Philippsen.

The team applied a new, improved calibration curve, based on annual samples, to identify a 775 CE Miyake event in one floor layer in Ribe. This enabled the team to anchor the entire sequence of layers and 140 radiocarbon dates around this single year.

“This result shows that the expansion of Afro-Eurasian trade networks, characterised by the arrival of large numbers of Middle Eastern beads, can be dated in Ribe with precision to 790±10 CE – coinciding with the beginning of the Viking Age. However, imports brought by ship from Norway were arriving as early as 750 CE,” says Professor Søren Sindbæk, who is also a member of the team.

This groundbreaking result challenges one of the most widely accepted explanations for maritime expansions in the Viking Age – that Scandinavian seafaring took off in response to growing trade with the Middle East through Russia. Maritime networks and long-distance trade were already established decades before impulses from the Middle East caused a further expansion of these networks.

The construction of the new, annual calibration curve is a global effort to which the researchers from UrbNet and the Aarhus AMS Centre at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Aarhus University have contributed.

“The construction of a calibration curve is a huge international effort with contributions from many laboratories around the world. Fusa Miyake’s discovery in 2012 has revolutionized our work, so that we now work with annual time resolution. New calibration curves are recurrently released, most recently in 2020, and Aarhus AMS centre has contributed significantly. The new high-resolution data from the present study will enter into a future update of the calibration curve and thus contribute to improve the precision of archaeological dates worldwide. This will provide better opportunities to understand rapid developments such as trade flows or environmental change in the past,” says Jesper Olsen, Associate Professor at Aarhus AMS Centre.

The global trends revealed by the study are essential for the archaeology of trading towns like Ribe. “The new results enable us to date the influx of new artefacts and far-reaching contacts on a much better background. This will help us to visualise and describe Viking Age Ribe in a way that will have great value for scientists, as well as helping us to present the new insight to the general public,” says Claus Feveile, curator of the Museum of Southwest Jutland.

Background facts

One of the most spectacular episodes of pre-modern global connectivity happened in the period c. 750-1000 CE, when trade with the burgeoning Islamic empire in the Middle East connected virtually all corners of Afro-Eurasia.

The spread of coins, trade beads and other exotic artefacts provides archaeological evidence of the trade links stretching from Southeast Asia and Africa to Siberia and the northernmost corners of Scandinavia. In the north, these long-distance connections mark the beginning of the maritime adventures that define the Viking Age. Researchers have even suggested that it was the arrival of silver and other valuable objects via Eastern Europe which sparked the first Scandinavian Viking expeditions.

It has proven difficult, however, to establish the time of arrival of the Middle Eastern beads and coins in relation to other developments in the Viking world, including the famous raids which shook Western Europe from c. 790.

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DOI

10.1038/s41586-021-04240-5 

Sea level fall led to the decline of pre-Columbian societies 2,000 years ago

Sea level changes caused the decline of one of the longest pre-Columbian coastal societies of the Americas 2000 years ago, known as Sambaqui. This is demonstrated in a study carried out in Brazil by researchers from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA-UAB) and the Department of Prehistory of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

The study, funded by the European project ERC-CoG TRADITION, assessed the stable isotope composition of over 300 human individuals and more than 400 radiocarbon dates from archaeological sites on the southern Brazilian coast. Most of the sites are collective cemeteries built by fishing communities that flourished in the region between 7000 and 1000 years ago. Thousands of sites have already been recorded by archaeologists, who usually find hundreds of human burials, carefully deposited among enormous quantities of fish and shellfish that were consumed and used as grave goods in funerary rituals.

The researchers found a sharp decline in the frequency of archaeological sites from ca. 2200 years ago, which coincided with a major reorganisation of coastal environments in response to a fall in the relative sea level. According to Alice Toso, ICTA-UAB researcher and lead author of the study, "sea level change around 2000 years ago possibly caused a turning point in the carrying capacity of coastal environments that for thousands of years had sustained large indigenous communities along the southern coast of Brazil. The shrinking of coastal ecosystems such as bays and lagoons caused aquatic resources to be less abundant and less predictable, forcing groups to disperse into smaller social units."

André Colonese, ICTA-UAB researcher and senior author of the paper, commented that "the radiocarbon density distribution of these sites suggests the human population declined along Brazil's Atlantic Forest coast around 2000 years ago. Interestingly, instead of abandoning fishing due to less predictable resource distribution, the remaining populations intensified fishing, exploiting in particular species of high trophic level, including sharks and rays. We believe that a fundamental shift in subsistence practices occurred at that time, from community-based (large sharing) to family-based (limited sharing) fishing." The study thus reveals that millennial-scale resilient coastal societies are vulnerable to the societal and economic impacts of environmental thresholds.

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Journal Reference:

1. Alice Toso, Ellen Hallingstad, Krista McGrath, Thiago Fossile, Christine Conlan, Jessica Ferreira, Dione da Rocha Bandeira, Paulo César Fonseca Giannini, Simon-Pierre Gilson, Lucas de Melo Reis Bueno, Murilo Quintans Ribeiro Bastos, Fernanda Mara Borba, Adriana M. P. do Santos, André Carlo Colonese. Fishing intensification as response to Late Holocene socio-ecological instability in southeastern South America. Scientific Reports, 2021; 11 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-02888-7

Discovering sources of Roman silver coinage from the Iberian Peninsula

 Despite its prior status as a luxury commodity, silver became widely used for coinage in the Roman world from the 7th century BCE onward and provided a standardized monetary system for ancient Mediterranean civilizations. However, the sources of silver used to produce Roman coinage have largely been used up, making it difficult to determine which deposits Roman miners exploited.

A new study published in the journal Geology yesterday evaluated silver sources from different mining provinces in the Iberian Peninsula to determine which locations may have been mined for silver to produce Roman coinage.

"The control of silver sources was a major geopolitical issue, and the identification of Roman silver sources may help archaeologists to reconstruct ancient fluxes of precious metals and to answer important historical questions," said Jean Milot, the lead author of this study.

The Iberian Peninsula, which includes modern Spain and Portugal, is host to world-class silver deposits, especially in the southern region. These deposits contain galena, which is the main ore of lead and an important source of silver. To extract silver, the galena ore is smelted and purified, with refined silver for coin minting able to reach a purity of over 95%.

To track the source of Roman silver, the team of researchers analyzed the silver and lead compositions of galena samples from ore deposits across the Iberian Peninsula and compared the results to the chemical signatures of silver Roman coins.

They identified two different types of galena deposits based on the silver elemental composition of the samples: silver-rich galena that would have been a likely source for Roman coinage, and silver-poor galena that would have been exploited for lead only and would have been of lower economic importance.

However, few of the ore samples had a composition that fit the silver elemental composition of the Roman silver coins. Silver-bearing ores spanned a wide range in compositional variability, but Roman coins notably have a very narrow elemental composition range.

Based on the lead elemental signatures of the galena samples, the ore deposits from southeastern Spain best fit the composition of Roman coins, suggesting that these deposits were a major source of Roman silver. Both silver-rich and silver-poor galena deposits were likely exploited here, with the extracted lead from silver-poor galena able to be mixed with other ores to extract silver.

These results based on chemical analyses are also consistent with archaeological evidence for ancient mining exploitation in the region.

This combined analytical toolkit provides a way to distinguish between silver-rich deposits and deposits barren of silver ore, which is critical in understanding the dynamics of silver supply in Roman times.

"This work needs to be extended to the silver-rich region in which coinage was actually invented in the 6th century BCE, Greece and Asia Minor (modern Turkey)," said Milot. "The method we describe here will allow us to recognize the lost ore fields which supplied silver to the Eastern Mediterranean empires from the Bronze Age to the collapse of Hellenistic kingdoms."

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Journal Reference:

1. Jean Milot, Janne Blichert-Toft, Mariano Ayarzagüena Sanz, Chloé Malod-Dognin. Silver isotope and volatile trace element systematics in galena samples from the Iberian Peninsula and the quest for silver sources of Roman coinage. Geology, 2021; DOI: 10.1130/G49690.1

Geological Society of America. "Discovering sources of Roman silver coinage from the Iberian Peninsula." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 17 December 2021.

Ostrich eggshell beads reveal 50,000-year-old social network across Africa

 

IMAGE: DIGITAL MICROSCOPE IMAGES OF ARCHEOLOGICAL OSTRICH EGGSHELL BEADS view more 

CREDIT: JENNIFER MILLER

Humans are social creatures, but little is known about when, how, and why different populations connected in the past. Answering these questions is crucial for interpreting the biological and cultural diversity that we see in human populations today. DNA is a powerful tool for studying genetic interactions between populations, but it can’t address any cultural exchanges within these ancient meetings. Now, scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History have turned to an unexpected source of information—ostrich eggshell beads—to shed light on ancient social networks. In a new study published in Nature, researchers Drs. Jennifer Miller and Yiming Wang report 50,000-years of population connection and isolation, driven by changing rainfall patterns, in southern and eastern Africa.

Ostrich eggshell beads: a window into the past

Ostrich eggshell (OES) beads are ideal artifacts for understanding ancient social relationships. They are the world’s oldest fully manufactured ornaments, meaning that instead of relying on an item’s natural size or shape, humans completely transformed the shells to produce beads. This extensive shaping creates ample opportunities for variations in style. Because different cultures produced beads of different styles, the prehistoric accessories provide researchers a way to trace cultural connections.

“It’s like following a trail of breadcrumbs,” says Miller, lead-author of the study. “The beads are clues, scattered across time and space, just waiting to be noticed.”

To search for signs of population connectivity, Miller and Wang assembled the largest ever database of ostrich eggshell beads. It includes data from more than 1500 individual beads unearthed from 31 sites across southern and eastern Africa, encompassing the last 50,000 years. Gathering this data was a painstakingly slow process that took more than a decade.

Climate change and social networks in the Stone Age

By comparing OES bead characteristics, such as total diameter, aperture diameter and shell thickness, Miller and Wang found that between 50,000 and 33,000 years ago, people in eastern and southern Africa were using nearly identical OES beads. The finding suggests a long-distance social network spanning more than 3,000 km once connected people in the two regions.

“The result is surprising, but the pattern is clear,” says Wang, co-corresponding author of the study. “Throughout the 50,000 years we examined, this is the only time period that the bead characteristics are the same.”

This eastern-southern connection at 50-33,000 years ago is the oldest social network ever identified, and it coincides with a particularly wet period in eastern Africa. However, signs of the regional network disappear by 33,000 years ago, likely triggered by a major shift in global climates. Around the same time that the social network breaks down, eastern Africa experienced a dramatic reduction in precipitation as the tropical rain belt shifted southward. This increased rain in the large area connecting eastern and southern Africa (the Zambezi River catchment), periodically flooding riverbanks, and perhaps creating a geographic barrier that disrupted regional social networks.

“Through this combination of paleoenvironmental proxies, climate models, and archaeological data, we can see the connection between climate change and cultural behavior,” says Wang.

Weaving a story with beads

Together, the results of this work document a 50,000-year-long story about human connections, and the dramatic climate changes that drove people apart. The data even provides new insight into variable social strategies between eastern and southern Africa by documenting different bead-use trajectories through time. These regional responses highlight the flexibility of human behavior and show there’s more than one path to our species’ success.

“These tiny beads have the power to reveal big stories about our past,” says Miller. “We encourage other researchers to build upon this database, and continue exploring evidence for cultural connection in new regions.”

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JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-021-04227-2 

More than 100 underwater animal species found living on 2,200-year-old Mediterranean shipwreck

 

 

IMAGE: RESEARCHERS SAMPLING MARINE ANIMALS FROM THE BRONZE SHIP'S RAM view more 

CREDIT: ISTITUTO CENTRALE PER IL RESTAURO (ICR) - LABORATORY OF BIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION

On March 10, 241 BCE, a sea battle took place near the Aegadian Islands off northwestern Sicily. A fleet equipped by the Roman Republic destroyed a fleet from Carthage, ending the First Punic War in Rome’s favor. But scientists have now shown that this destruction and carnage utimately made a a rich flowering of marine life possible.

In a recent study in Frontiers in Marine Science, they reported finding no fewer than 114 species of animals, coexisting in a complex community, on a ship’s ram from a Carthaginian galley sunk in the battle.

This is the first study of marine life on a very ancient wreck. The ram is not only a priceless archeological find, but also a unique window into the processes by which marine animals colonize empty sites and gradually form mature, stable, diverse communities.

“Shipwrecks are often studied to follow colonization by marine organisms, but few studies have focused on ships that sank more than a century ago”, said last author Dr Sandra Ricci, a senior researcher at Rome’s ‘Istituto Centrale per il Restauro’ (ICR).

Here we study for the first time colonization of a wreck over a period of more than 2,000 years. We show that the ram has ended up hosting a community very similar to the surrounding habitat, due to ‘ecological connectivity’ – free movement by species – between it and the surroundings.”

An archeological marvel

The ram, nicknamed ‘Egadi 13’, was recovered in 2017 from the seabed around 90 meters deep by marine archeologists from the Soprintendenza del Mare della Regione Sicilia, directed by Dr Sebastiano Tusa, in collaboration with divers from the organization Global Underwater Explorers.

It consists of a single, hollow piece of bronze, engraved with an undeciphered Punic inscription, and is around 90cm long, 5cm thick at the front edge, and has a weight of 170kg. Because the ram is hollow, it has accumulated organisms and sediments inside as well as outside.

In 2019, it was cleaned and restored by ICR material scientists. As part of the restoration, all marine animals were collected alongside hardened biological materials and blocks of sediments from inside and outside the ram. These samples were then studied by Ricci and colleagues from ICR, the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy’s National Interuniversity Consortium for Marine Science (CoNISMa) and National Research Council, and the Sapienza University of Rome.

The ‘constructors’

The scientists’ aimed to compare species associated with the ram with those found in natural Mediterranean habitats, and so reconstruct how it had been colonized – mostly by dispersing larvae – from these habitats. Another focus was to understand the mechanisms by which species already established at the ram can allow other species to thrive.

Ricci and colleagues found a species-rich community, structurally and spatially complex, with 114 living invertebrate species. These included 33 species of gastropods, 25 species of bivalves, 33 species of polychaete worms, and 23 species of bryozoans. This species assemblage was statistically most similar to those found in shallow-water detritus beds and seagrass meadows, and on well-lit rocky seabeds and ‘coralligenous’ reefs, which are built on hard substrates in dim light by algae with calcareous skeletons.

“We deduce that the primary ‘constructors’ in this community are organisms such as polychaetes, bryozoans, and a few species of bivalves. Their tubes, valves, and colonies attach themselves directly to the wreck’s surface,” said coauthor Dr Edoardo Casoli from Rome’s Sapienza University.

“Other species, especially bryozoans, act as ‘binders’: their colonies form bridges between the calcareous structures produced by the constructors. Then there are ‘dwellers’, which aren’t attached but move freely between cavities in the superstructure. What we don’t yet know exactly is the order in which these organisms colonize wrecks.”

Corresponding author Dr Maria Flavia Gravina concluded:

“Younger shipwrecks typically host a less diverse community than their environment, with mainly species with a long larval stage which can disperse far. By comparison, our ram is much more representative of the natural habitat: it hosted a diverse community, including species with long and short larval stages, with sexual and asexual reproduction, and with sessile and motile adults, who live in colonies or solitary. We have thus shown that very old shipwrecks such as our ram can act as a novel kind of sampling tool for scientists, which effectively act as a ‘ecological memory’ of colonization.”

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Marine Science

DOI

10.3389/fmars.2021.772499 

Earliest adorned female infant burial in Europe

 

IMAGE: ILLUSTRATION SHOWING THE PLACEMENT OF BEADS AND SHELLS ALONG WITH THE CRANIUM. view more 

CREDIT: CLAUDINE GRAVEL-MIGUEL

Ten thousand years ago, just after the last Ice Age, a group of hunter-gatherers buried an infant girl in an Italian cave. They entombed her with a rich selection of their treasured beads and pendants, and an eagle-owl talon, signaling their grief, and showing that even the youngest females were recognized as full persons in their society. The excavations and analysis of the discovery are published this week in Nature Scientific Reports and offers insight into the early Mesolithic period, from which few recorded burials are known. Claudine Gravel-Miguel, postdoctoral researcher with the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University (ASU) and coauthor on the paper, performed the analysis of the ornaments, which includes over 60 pierced shell beads and four shell pendants.

Mortuary practices offer a window into the worldviews and social structure of past societies. Child funerary treatment provides important insights into who was considered a person and afforded the attributes of an individual self, moral agency, and eligibility for group membership. The seemingly “egalitarian” funerary treatment of this infant female, who the team nicknamed “Neve,” shows that as early as 10,000 years ago in Western Europe, even the youngest females were recognized as full persons in their society.

“The evolution and development of how early humans buried their dead as revealed in the archaeological record has enormous cultural significance,” says Jamie Hodgkins, ASU doctoral graduate and paleoanthropologist at the University of Colorado Denver.

The excavation

Arma Veirana, a cave in the Ligurian pre-Alps of northwestern Italy, is a popular spot for local families to visit. Looters also discovered the site, and their digging exposed the late Pleistocene tools that drew researchers to the area.

The research team started surveying the site in 2015 and discovered the remains during the last week of the 2017 field season. The team of project coordinators includes Italian collaborators Fabio Negrino, University of Genoa, and Stefano Benazzi, University of Bologna, as well as researchers from the University of Montreal, Washington University, University of Ferrara, University of Tubingen, and the Institute of Human Origins.

The first two excavation seasons were spent near the mouth of the cave, exposing stratigraphic layers that contained tools over 50,000 years old typically associated with Neandertals in Europe (Mousterian tools). They also found the remains of ancient meals such as the cut-marked bones of wild boars and elk and bits of charred fat. In addition, they found stone tools that were much more recent and that had likely been eroding from deeper inside the cave. To better understand the stratigraphy of the cave and document its occupation history, the team opened new sections further inside the cave in 2017. As the team explored this new section, they began to unearth pierced shell beads, which Hodgkins examined more carefully back in the lab.

A few days after they found the first bead, one of the excavators uncovered a small piece of the infant’s cranial vault.

“I was excavating in the adjacent square and remember looking over and thinking ‘that’s a weird bone,’” says Gravel-Miguel. “It quickly became clear that not only we were looking at a human cranium, but that it was also of a very young individual. It was an emotional day.”

Using dental tools and a small paint brush, researchers spent that week and the following field season to carefully expose the whole skeleton, which was adorned with articulated lines of pierced shell beads.

“The excavation techniques are state-of-the-art and leave no doubt to the associations of the materials with the skeleton,” said Curtis Marean, who was not involved in the study. Marean is associate director of the Institute of Human Origins and Foundation Professor with the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at ASU.

Important changes in human prehistory

In a series of analyses coordinated across multiple institutions and numerous experts, the team uncovered critical details about the ancient burial. Radiocarbon dating determined that the child lived 10,000 years ago, and amelogenin protein analysis and ancient DNA revealed that the infant was a female belonging to a lineage of European women known as the U5b2b haplogroup.

“There’s a decent record of human burials before around 14,000 years ago,” said Hodgkins. “But the latest Upper Paleolithic period and earliest part of the Mesolithic are more poorly known when it comes to funerary practices. Infant burials are especially rare, so Neve adds important information to help fill this gap.”

“The Mesolithic is particularly interesting,” said coauthor Caley Orr, ASU doctoral graduate and paleoanthropologist and anatomist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “It followed the end of the final Ice Age and represents the last period in Europe when hunting and gathering was the primary way of making a living. So, it’s a really important time period for understanding human prehistory.”

Detailed virtual histology, or study of the tissue and structure, of the infant’s teeth showed that she died 40 to 50 days after birth and that she experienced stress that briefly halted the growth of her teeth 47 days and 28 days before she was born. Carbon and nitrogen analyses of the teeth revealed that the baby’s mother had been nourishing the infant in her womb on a land-based diet.

The child as a member of the community

Gravel-Miguel performed an analysis of the ornaments adorning the infant, which demonstrated the care invested in each piece and showed that many of the ornaments exhibited wear that proves they were passed down to the child from group members. The details of this research—along with further results—are the focus of a separate article, currently under review.

Citing a similar burial of two infants dating to 11,500 years ago at Upward Sun River, Alaska, Hodgkins said the funerary treatment of Neve suggests that the recognition of infant females as full persons has deep origins in a common ancestral culture that was shared by peoples who migrated into Europe and those who migrated to North America. Or it may have arisen in parallel in populations across the planet.

The research, excavation, and analysis were made possible with funding from The Wenner-Gren Foundation, Leakey Foundation, National Geographic Society Waitt Program, Hyde Family Foundations, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, and the Max Planck Society.

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Article: “An infant burial from Arma Veirana in northwestern Italy provides insights into funerary practices and female personhood in early Mesolithic Europe,” Jamie Hodgkins, et al. Nature Scientific Reports 
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-02804-z
Link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-02804-z

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IMAGE: JAMIE HODGKINS, LEAD RESEARCHER, AND TEAM AT THE BURIAL DISCOVERY SITE IN ITALY. view more 

CREDIT: JAMIE HODKINS, PHD, CU DENVER

Working in a cave in Liguria, Italy, an international team of researchers uncovered the oldest documented burial of an infant girl in the European archaeological record. The richly decorated 10,000-year-old burial included over 60 pierced shell beads, four pendants, and an eagle-owl talon alongside the remains. The discovery offers insight into the early Mesolithic period, from which few recorded burials are known, and the seemingly egalitarian funerary treatment of an infant female.

 

“The evolution and development of how early humans buried their dead as revealed in the archaeological record has enormous cultural significance,” says Jamie Hodgkins, PhD, paleoanthropologist and associate professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado Denver.

 

The crew first discovered the burial in 2017 and fully excavated the delicate remains in July 2018. Hodgkins worked alongside her husband Caley Orr, PhD, paleoanthropologist and anatomist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Their team of project codirectors included Italian collaborators Fabio Negrino, University of Genoa, and Stefano Benazzi, University of Bologna, as well as researchers from the University of Montreal, Washington University, University of Ferrara, University of Tubingen, and the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University.

 

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Arma Veirana, a cave in the Ligurian pre-Alps of northwestern Italy, is a popular spot for local families to visit. Looters also discovered the site, and their digging exposed the late Pleistocene tools that drew researchers to the area.

 

The team spent its first two excavation seasons near the mouth of the cave, exposing stratigraphic layers that contained tools over 50,000 years old typically associated with Neandertals in Europe (Mousterian tools). They also found the remains of ancient meals such as the cut-marked bones of wild boars and elk, and bits of charred fat. To better understand the stratigraphy of the cave as it related to the artifacts, the team needed to expose potential Upper Paleolithic deposits that could have been the source of the more recently made stone tools they found eroding down the cave floor.

 

As the team explored the further reaches of the cave, they began to unearth pierced shell beads. Hodgkins was going through the beads back in the lab and knew the team was onto something. A few days later, using dental tools and a small paint brush, the researchers exposed parts of a cranial vault and articulated lines of pierced shell beads.

 

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In a series of analyses coordinated with multiple institutions and numerous experts, the team uncovered several details about the ancient burial. Radiocarbon dating determined that the child, who the team nicknamed “Neve,” lived 10,000 years ago, and amelogenin protein analysis and ancient DNA revealed that the infant was a female belonging to a lineage of European women known as the U5b2b haplogroup.

 

“There’s a decent record of human burials before around 14,000 years ago,” said Hodgkins. “But the latest Upper Paleolithic period and earliest part of the Mesolithic are more poorly known when it comes to funerary practices. Infant burials are especially rare, so Neve adds important information to help fill this gap.”

 

 “The Mesolithic is particularly interesting,” said Orr. “It followed the end of the final Ice Age and represents the last period in Europe when hunting and gathering was the primary way of making a living. So it’s a really important time period for understanding human prehistory.”

 

Detailed virtual histology of the infant’s teeth showed that she died 40–50 days after birth, and that she experienced stress that briefly halted the growth of her teeth 47 days and 28 days before she was born. Carbon and nitrogen analyses of the teeth revealed that the baby’s mother had been nourishing the infant in her womb on a land-based diet.

 

An analysis of the ornaments adorning the infant demonstrated the care invested in each piece and showed that many of the ornaments exhibited wear that proves they were passed down to the child from group members.

 

Along with the burial of a similarly aged female from Upward Sun River in Alaska, Hodgkins said the funerary treatment of Neve suggests that the recognition of infant females as full persons has deep origins in a common ancestral culture that was shared by peoples who migrated into Europe and those who migrated to North America. Or it may have arisen in parallel in populations across the planet.

 

…

 

Mortuary practices offer a window into the worldviews and social structure of past societies. Child funerary treatment provides important insights into who was considered a person and afforded the attributes of an individual self, moral agency, and eligibility for group membership. Neve shows that even the youngest females were recognized as full persons in her society.

 

And because archaeology has historically been viewed through a male lens, Hodgkins worries there are many stories we’ve missed.

 

“Right now, we have the oldest identified female infant burial in Europe,” said Hodgkins. “I hope that quickly becomes untrue. Archaeological reports have tended to focus on male stories and roles, and in doing so have left many people out of the narrative. Protein and DNA analyses are allowing us to better understand the diversity of human personhood and status in the past. Without DNA analysis, this highly decorated infant burial could possibly have been assumed male.”

 

In Western society, archaeologists have historically assumed that figureheads and warriors were male. But DNA analyses have proven the existence of female Viking warriors, nonbinary leaders, and powerful Bronze Age female rulers. Finding a burial like Neve’s is reason to look more critically at archaeology’s past, said Hodgkins. 

“This is about increasing our knowledge of women, but also acknowledging that we as archaeologists can’t understand the past through a singular lens. We need as diverse a perspective as possible because humans are complex.”

The research, excavation, and analysis were made possible with funding from The Wenner-Gren Foundation, Leakey Foundation, National Geographic Society Waitt Program, Hyde Family Foundation, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program, and the Max Planck Society.

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