Community differentiation is a fundamental topic of the social sciences, and its prehistoric origins in Europe are typically assumed to lie among the complex, densely populated societies that ...developed millennia after their Neolithic predecessors. Here we present the earliest, statistically significant evidence for such differentiation among the first farmers of Neolithic Europe. By using strontium isotopic data from more than 300 early Neolithic human skeletons, we find significantly less variance in geographic signatures among males than we find among females, and less variance among burials with ground stone adzes than burials without such adzes. From this, in context with other available evidence, we infer differential land use in early Neolithic central Europe within a patrilocal kinship system.
Assignment of biological sex to skeletal remains is critical in the accurate reconstruction of the past. Analysis of sex-chromosome encoded AMELX and AMELY peptides from the enamel protein amelogenin ...underpins a minimally destructive mass spectrometry (MS) method for sex determination of human remains. However, access to such specialist approaches limits applicability. As a convenient alternative, we generated antibodies that distinguish human AMELX and AMELY. Purified antibodies demonstrated high selectivity and quantitative detection against synthetic peptides by ELISA. Using acid etches of enamel from post-medieval skeletons, antibody determinations corrected osteological uncertainties and matched parallel MS, and for Bronze Age samples where only enamel was preserved, also matched MS analyses. Toward improved throughput, automated stations were applied to analyze 19th-century teeth where sex of individuals was documented, confirming MS can be bypassed. Our immunological tools should underpin development of routine, economical, high-throughput methods for sex determination, potentially even in a field setting.
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•Antibodies can distinguish human sex-chromosome encoded AMELX and AMELY peptides•Immunoassays using dental enamel extracts allow sex determination of human remains•Use of antibodies should allow sex determination to become a more routine activity
Immunology; Methodology in biological sciences; Paleobiology
Bioarchaeological evidence of interpersonal violence and early warfare presents important insights into conflict in past societies. This evidence is critical for understanding the motivations for ...violence and its effects on opposing and competing individuals and groups across time and space. Selecting the Neolithic of northwestern Europe as an area for study, the present paper examines the variation and societal context for the violence recorded in the human skeletal remains from this region as one of the most important elements of human welfare. Compiling data from various sources, it becomes apparent that violence was endemic in Neolithic Europe, sometimes reaching levels of intergroup hostilities that ended in the utter destruction of entire communities. While the precise comparative quantification of healed and unhealed trauma remains a fundamental problem, patterns emerge that see conflict likely fostered by increasing competition between settled and growing communities, e.g., for access to arable land for food production. The further development of contextual information is paramount in order to address hypotheses on the motivations, origins, and evolution of violence as based on the study of human remains, the most direct indicator for actual small- and large-scale violence.
This article will query the ethics of making and displaying photographs of human
remains. In particular, we will focus on the role of photography in constituting
human remains as specimens, and the ...centrality of the creation and circulation
of photographic images to the work of physical anthropology and bioarchaeology.
This work has increasingly become the object of ethical scrutiny, particularly
in the context of a (post)colonial politics of recognition in which indigenous
people seek to recover dominion over their looted material heritage, including
the remains of their dead. This ethical concern extends to the question of how
and under what circumstances we may display photographs of human remains.
Moreover, this is not just a matter of whether and when we should or should not
show photographs of the remains of the dead. It is a question of how these
images are composed and produced. Our discussion of the ethics of the image is,
therefore, indivisible from a consideration of the socio-technical process by
which the photographic image is produced, circulated and consumed.
The Past as a Foreign Country Fibiger, Linda
Historical reflections,
03/2018, Letnik:
44, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Steven Pinker’s thesis on the decline of violence since prehistory has resulted in many popular and scholarly debates on the topic that have ranged—at times even raged—across the disciplinary ...spectrum of evolution, psychology, philosophy, biology, history, and beyond. Those disciplines that made the most substantial contribution to the empirical data underpinning Pinker’s notion of a more violent prehistoric past, namely, archaeology and bioarchaeology/physical anthropology, have not featured as prominently in these discussions as may be expected. This article will focus on some of the issues resulting from Pinker’s oversimplified cross-disciplinary use of bioarchaeological data sets in support of his linear model of the past, a model that, incidentally, has yet to be incorporated into current accounts of violent practices in prehistory.
The Past as a Foreign Country Fibiger, Linda
Historical reflections,
03/2018, Letnik:
44, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Steven Pinker’s thesis on the decline of violence since prehistory has resulted in
many popular and scholarly debates on the topic that have ranged—at times even raged—
across the disciplinary ...spectrum of evolution, psychology, philosophy, biology, history, and
beyond. Those disciplines that made the most substantial contribution to the empirical
data underpinning Pinker’s notion of a more violent prehistoric past, namely, archaeology
and bioarchaeology/physical anthropology, have not featured as prominently in these discussions
as may be expected. This article will focus on some of the issues resulting from
Pinker’s oversimplifi ed cross-disciplinary use of bioarchaeological data sets in support of
his linear model of the past, a model that, incidentally, has yet to be incorporated into current
accounts of violent practices in prehistory.
Ancient microbial genomes can illuminate pathobiont evolution across millenia, with teeth providing a rich substrate. However, the characterization of prehistoric oral pathobiont diversity is ...limited. In Europe, only preagricultural genomes have been subject to phylogenetic analysis, with none compared to more recent archaeological periods. Here, we report well-preserved microbiomes from two 4,000-year-old teeth from an Irish limestone cave. These contained bacteria implicated in periodontitis, as well as Streptococcus mutans, the major cause of caries and rare in the ancient genomic record. Despite deriving from the same individual, these teeth produced divergent Tannerella forsythia genomes, indicating higher levels of strain diversity in prehistoric populations. We find evidence of microbiome dysbiosis, with a disproportionate quantity of S. mutans sequences relative to other oral streptococci. This high abundance allowed for metagenomic assembly, resulting in its first reported ancient genome. Phylogenetic analysis indicates major postmedieval population expansions for both species, highlighting the inordinate impact of recent dietary changes. In T. forsythia, this expansion is associated with the replacement of older lineages, possibly reflecting a genome-wide selective sweep. Accordingly, we see dramatic changes in T. forsythia's virulence repertoire across this period. S. mutans shows a contrasting pattern, with deeply divergent lineages persisting in modern populations. This may be due to its highly recombining nature, allowing for maintenance of diversity through selective episodes. Nonetheless, an explosion in recent coalescences and significantly shorter branch lengths separating bacteriocin-carrying strains indicate major changes in S. mutans demography and function coinciding with sugar popularization during the industrial period.
From about 5500 cal BC to soon after 5000 cal BC, the lifeways of the first farmers of central Europe, the LBK culture (Linearbandkeramik), are seen in distinctive practices of longhouse use, ...settlement forms, landscape choice, subsistence, material culture and mortuary rites. Within the five or more centuries of LBK existence a dynamic sequence of changes can be seen in, for instance, the expansion and increasing density of settlement, progressive regionalisation in pottery decoration, and at the end some signs of stress or even localised crisis. Although showing many features in common across its very broad distribution, however, the LBK phenomenon was not everywhere the same, and there is a complicated mixture of uniformity and diversity. This major study takes a strikingly large regional sample, from northern Hungary westwards along the Danube to Alsace in the upper Rhine valley, and addresses the question of the extent of diversity in the lifeways of developed and late LBK communities, through a wide-ranging study of diet, lifetime mobility, health and physical condition, the presentation of the bodies of the deceased in mortuary ritual. It uses an innovative combination of isotopic (principally carbon, nitrogen and strontium, with some oxygen), osteological and archaeological analysis to address difference and change across the LBK, and to reflect on cultural change in general.
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