Despite the numerous studies proposing early human population expansions from Africa into Arabia during the Late Pleistocene, no archaeological sites have yet been discovered in Arabia that resemble ...a specific African industry, which would indicate demographic exchange across the Red Sea. Here we report the discovery of a buried site and more than 100 new surface scatters in the Dhofar region of Oman belonging to a regionally-specific African lithic industry--the late Nubian Complex--known previously only from the northeast and Horn of Africa during Marine Isotope Stage 5, ∼128,000 to 74,000 years ago. Two optically stimulated luminescence age estimates from the open-air site of Aybut Al Auwal in Oman place the Arabian Nubian Complex at ∼106,000 years ago, providing archaeological evidence for the presence of a distinct northeast African Middle Stone Age technocomplex in southern Arabia sometime in the first half of Marine Isotope Stage 5.
Human activities have affected the surrounding natural ecosystems, including belowground microorganisms, for millennia. Their short‐ and medium‐term effects on the diversity and the composition of ...soil microbial communities are well‐documented, but their lasting effects remain unknown. When unoccupied for centuries, archaeological sites are appropriate for studying the long‐term effects of past human occupancy on natural ecosystems, including the soil compartment. In this work, the soil chemical and bacterial compositions were compared between the Roman fort of Hegra (Saudi Arabia) abandoned for 1500 years, and a preserved area located at 120 m of the southern wall of the Roman fort where no human occupancy was detected. We show that the four centuries of human occupancy have deeply and lastingly modified both the soil chemical and bacterial compositions inside the Roman fort. We also highlight different bacterial putative functions between the two areas, notably associated with human occupancy. Finally, this work shows that the use of soils from archaeological sites causes little disruption and can bring relevant information, at a large scale, during the initial surveys of archaeological sites.
When unoccupied for centuries, archaeological sites are appropriate for studying the long‐term effects of past human occupancy on natural ecosystems, including the soil compartment. In this work, we show that four centuries of human occupancy have deeply and lastingly modified both the soil chemical and bacterial compositions inside a Roman fort in Saudi Arabia. We also highlight that archaeological sediments can bring relevant information on human occupancy, at a large scale, during the initial surveys of archaeological sites.
Human behavioral ecology has proven a valuable theoretical framework for evaluating the archaeological record of human population expansion the world over. To evaluate hypotheses for the late ...Pleistocene human colonization of the Americas, we need to address a typical assumption built into those models: static landscape knowledge. By taking landscape knowledge as the predicting variable, rather than a constant, we can explore the behavioral mechanisms involved in the interaction of humans with new and unfamiliar environments. Acknowledging the process of adaptation produces contrasting and readily testable hypotheses for human population expansion. As a case study, we use an ideal free distribution model to test competing hypotheses for the colonization of Southeast Alaska. Our results indicate that Southeast Alaska was likely colonized by humans prior to their appearance in the extant archaeological record in the early Holocene. The locations of our oldest archaeological sites in the early Holocene are best explained as the result of a well-established population matching their settlement locations to rising sea level.
Archaeological remains are valuable relative sea-level (RSL) indicators in Israel, a tectonically stable coast with minor isostatic inputs. Previous research has used archaeological indicators to ...argue for centennial sea-level fluctuations. Here, we place archaeological indicators in a quality-controlled dataset where all indicators have consistently calculated vertical and chronological uncertainties, and we subject the data to statistical analysis. We combine the archaeological data with bio-construction data from Dendropoma petraeum colonial vermetids. The final dataset consists of 99 relative sea-level index points and 12 limiting points from the last 4000 a. The temporal distribution of the index points is uneven; Israel has only four index points before 2000 a BP. We apply an Errors-In-Variables Integrated Gaussian Process (EIV IGP) to the index points to model the evolution of RSL. Results show RSL in Israel rose from −0.8 ± 0.5 m at ∼2750 a BP (Iron Age) to 0.0 ± 0.1 m by ∼1850 a BP (Roman period) at 0.8 mm/a, and continued rising to 0.1 ± 0.1 m until ∼1600 a BP (Byzantine Period). RSL then fell to −0.3 ± 0.1 m by 0.5 mm/a until ∼650 a BP (Late Arab period), before returning to present levels at a rate of 0.4 mm/a. The re-assessed Israeli record supports centennial-scale RSL fluctuations during the last 3000 a BP, although the magnitude of the RSL fall during the last 2000 a BP is 50% less. The new Israel RSL record demonstrates correspondence with regional climate proxies. This quality-controlled Israeli RSL dataset can serve as a reference for comparisons with other sea-level records from the Eastern Mediterranean.
•112 Israeli sea-level indicators are presented with IGCP standard metadata.•Archaeological remains are valuable sea-level indicator in Israel.•A Bayesian model with errors-in-variables integrated Gaussian process is applied.•Sea-level records in Israel show centennial fluctuations during the last 2 ka.•The reassessed Israeli data can be a reference for other East Mediterranean studies.
We report the earliest and the most abundant archaeobotanical assemblage of southwest Asian grain crops from Early Bronze Age Central Asia, recovered from the Chap II site in Kyrgyzstan. The ...archaeobotanical remains consist of thousands of cultivated grains dating to the mid-late third millennium BCE. The recovery of cereal chaff and weeds suggest local cultivation at 2000 m.a.s.l., as crops first spread to the mountains of Central Asia. The site's inhabitants possibly cultivated two types of free-threshing wheats, glume wheats, and hulled and naked barleys. Highly compact caryopses of wheat and barley grains represent distinct morphotypes of cereals adapted to highland environments. While additional macrobotanical evidence is needed to confirm the presence of glume wheats at Chap II, the possible identification of glume wheats at Chap II may represent their most eastern distribution in Central Asia. Based on the presence of weed species, we argue that the past environment of Chap II was characterized by an open mountain landscape, where animal grazing likely took place, which may have been further modified by people irrigating agricultural fields. This research suggests that early farmers in the mountains of Central Asia cultivated compact morphotypes of southwest Asian crops during the initial eastward dispersal of agricultural technologies, which likely played a critical role in shaping montane adaptations and dynamic interaction networks between farming societies across highland and lowland cultivation zones.
Notes how stone artifacts are often the most abundant class of objects found in archaeological sites but their consistent identification is limited by the number of experienced analysts available. ...Reports a machine learning based technology for stone artifact identification as part of a solution to the lack of such experts directed at distinguishing worked stone objects from naturally occurring lithic clasts. Provides a data set from three case study locations from Egypt, Australia, and New Zealand (Te Mataku archaeological site Ahuahu, New Zealand) which were used to train and test a machine learning model based on an openly available PyTorch implementation of Faster R-CNN ResNet 50. Looks at the level of agreement between the model and original human derived classifications. Discusses how machine learning neural networks could provide the potential to consistently assess the composition of large archaeological assemblages composed of objects modified in a variety of ways. Source: National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, licensed by the Department of Internal Affairs for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
The sedimentary infilling of the moat surrounding the Villaggio Piccolo of the Terramara Santa Rosa di Poviglio was analysed in order to obtain palaeoenvironmental inferences from sediments and ...pollen assemblage. The high-resolution stratigraphic sequence preserves evidence of the environmental changes that occurred in the Po Plain, in Northern Italy, during the Late Holocene. Our interdisciplinary approach permitted to study climatic and anthropic contributions to the environmental changes in this region. The relationships between these changes and land-use changes were investigated focussing on adaptive strategies of the Terramare people during the Middle and Recent Bronze ages (1550–1170 yr BC). The Terramare are archaeological remains of banked and moated villages, located in the central alluvial plain of the Po river. The Terramara of Santa Rosa consists of two adjoining settlements (Villaggio Grande and Villaggio Piccolo); the moat that separates the two parts of the site is c. 23 m large and reaches a maximum depth of 4 m from the extant ground level. The stratigraphic sequence VP/VG exposed by archaeological excavation inside the moat was sampled for pedosedimentary, thin section, and pollen analyses. Chronology is based on archaeological evidence, stratigraphic correlations and radiocarbon dating. Pedosedimentary features and biological records (pollen of aquatics and algal remains) demonstrate that shallow water, probably subjected to seasonal water-level oscillations, has always been present in the moat. In the lower units of the sequence, the laminations indicate standing water, while occurrence of reworked pollen testified the supply of sediments to the plain from catchment zones located in the Apennine. Open vegetation was widespread; economy was based on wood management, fruit collection on the wild or from cultivated woody plants, crop fields with a fairly diversified set of cereals especially increasing in variety during dryness or phases of water crisis. Probably, grapevines were cultivated near the moat, where the wet habitat was favourable to the growing of wild plants. The extraordinary high-resolution of this sequence makes visible the management of woods (including coppicing) at the Middle Bronze and early Recent Bronze ages. The economy of Santa Rosa di Poviglio should have been probably less based on animal breeding than it was in the other Terramare villages already studied for pollen. This research also confirms the chronological correspondence between an environment stressed by dry conditions and the collapse of the Terramare civilization.
•A story of climate and people is narrated by geoarchaeology and palynology.•Terramare culture developed during the Middle and Recent Bronze age in Po Plain.•A high-resolution pollen record was taken from a moat of archaeological site.•Santa Rosa di Poviglio economy relies on hydraulic systems and agriculture.•Wood management was a strategic subsistence economy during the Bronze Age.
Stable isotope proxies measured in the proteinaceous fraction of archaeological mollusc shell represents an increasingly important archive for reconstructing past ecological and biogeochemical ...conditions of nearshore environments. A major issue, however, is understanding the impact of diagenetic alteration in sub-fossil shell isotope values. “Bulk” stable isotope values of nitrogen (δ15N), and especially carbon (δ13C) often shift strongly with increasing C/N ratios in degraded shell, resulting in unreliable data. Here, we examine preservation of an entirely new set of shell paleo-proxies, compound-specific isotopes of amino acids (CSI-AA). We examine carbon (δ13CAA) and nitrogen (δ15NAA) patterns and values from the organic fraction of California mussel (Mytilus californianus) shells from the California Channel Islands. Archaeological shell samples ranging in age from ca. 6,100 to 250 cal BP exhibiting a wide range of degradation states were collected from varied depositional environments (e.g., exposed coastal bluff, buried strata, etc.), and were directly compared to modern shells of the same species and region.
Our results indicate organic matter C/N ratios as the best bulk diagnostic indicator of the relative degradation state of shell organic fraction, including changes at the molecular level. Modern shell organic C/N ratios ranged from 2.8 to 3.5, while those in archaeological shell were substantially elevated (3.4–9.5), exhibiting strong and significant negative correlations with bulk δ13C values, weight %C, and weight %N, and a significant but weaker correlation with δ15 N values. An additional “cleaning” step using weak NaOH helped to remove possible exogenous contaminants and improved bulk values of some samples. However, relative molar AA abundances revealed that some AAs, especially the two most abundant, Glycine and Alanine, progressively decreased with increasing C/N ratio. The loss of these amino acids permanently alters bulk isotope values regardless of removal of contaminants. Modeling the bulk isotope change expected due to amino acid molar composition showed major and predictable shifts in bulk δ13C values from selected AA loss, and similarly large but far more variable impacts from exogenous contaminants.
In contrast to bulk data, key CSI-AA values and patterns remained almost entirely unaltered, even in the most degraded shell samples, closely matching expected biosynthetic isotope patterns in modern mussel shell. AA isotope proxies for “baseline” (δ15N-Phenylalanine and average δ13C-Essential AAs) and planktonic trophic structure (δ15N-Glutamic Acid and δ15N-Phenylalanine) were not statistically altered with degradation in any sample. Overall, we conclude that while bulk isotopes, particularly δ13C, are very likely to be unreliable in archaeological or subfossil shell with C/N ratios higher than ∼4.0, CSI-AA proxies can still be used to reconstruct past climatic and ecological conditions of the nearshore marine environment.
This paper develops a regional dataset of change at 381 settlements for Lycia-Pamphylia in southwest Anatolia (Turkey) from volume 8 of the Tabula Imperii Byzantini-a compilation of historical ...toponyms and archaeological evidence. This region is rich in archaeological remains and high-quality paleo-climatic and -environmental archives. Our archaeological synthesis enables direct comparison of these datasets to discuss current hypotheses of climate impacts on historical societies. A Roman Climatic Optimum, characterized by warmer and wetter conditions, facilitating Roman expansion in the 1.sup.st -2.sup.nd centuries CE cannot be supported here, as Early Byzantine settlement did not benefit from enhanced precipitation in the 4.sup.th -6.sup.th centuries CE as often supposed. However, widespread settlement decline in a period with challenging archaeological chronologies (c. 550-650 CE) was likely caused by a "perfect storm" of environmental, climatic, seismic, pathogenic and socio-economic factors, though a shift to drier conditions from c. 460 CE appears to have preceded other factors by at least a century.
Coastal heritage and archaeological sites are part of a complex system of socioenvironmental processes whose conditions are placed at risk from increasing climate-change pressures and impacts. ...Cultural-heritage managers are working to increase understanding of these pressures and create ways to assess, mitigate, and/or adapt to change. Coastal-zone assessments (CZA) are a recognized methodology in several national management plans to gather detailed data in order to provide an informed assessment of current resources and any associated hazards and risks. A collaborative and innovative partnership is seeking to expand on current CZA models by integrating social, historical, and geomorphological criteria into archaeological site assessment, with aims toward the development of a resource-priority index for coastal-heritage managers in Ireland.
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