Rough Past
Summary justice or the King's will? The first case of formal facial mutilation from Anglo-Saxon England
Garrard Cole et al.
Antiquity, October 2020, Pages 1263-1277
Abstract:
Intentional facial disfigurement is documented in archaeological contexts around the world. Here, the authors present the first archaeological evidence for intentional facial mutilation from Anglo-Saxon England -- comprising the removal of the nose, upper lip and possible scalping -- inflicted upon a young adult female. The injuries are consistent with documented punishments for female offenders. Although such mutilations do not appear in the written record until the tenth century AD, the instance reported here suggests that the practice may have emerged a century earlier. This case is examined in the context of a wider consideration of the motivations and significance of facial disfigurement in past societies.
Firing up the furnace: New insights on metallurgical practices in the Chalcolithic Southern Levant from a recently discovered copper-smelting workshop at Horvat Beter (Israel)
Dana Ackerfeld et al.
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent discoveries at Horvat Beter (Beersheva, Israel) shed new light on the earliest phase of Southern Levantine metallurgy (second half of the 5th millennium BCE). Multiple fragments of furnaces, crucibles and slag were excavated, and found to represent an extensive copper smelting workshop located within a distinct quarter of a settlement. Typological and chemical analyses revealed a two-stage technology (furnace-based primary smelting followed by melting/refining in crucibles), and lead isotope analysis indicated that the ore originated exclusively from Wadi Faynan (MBS Formation), more than 100 km away. These observations strengthen previous suggestions that metallurgy in this region started with furnace-based technology (possibly not locally invented). Furthermore, the absence of any artifact related to the contemporary industry of copper-based alloys indicates a high degree of craft specialization, and together with other regional observations testifies to the important role of metallurgy in the society of the Beer-sheba Valley during this formative time.
Make a desert and call it peace: Massacre at the Iberian Iron Age village of La Hoya
Teresa Fernández-Crespo et al.
Antiquity, October 2020, Pages 1245-1262
Abstract:
Once considered rare, archaeological examples of violence in prehistoric Europe have accumulated over recent decades, with new discoveries providing evidence of large-scale, organised warfare among pre- and protohistoric populations. One example is La Hoya in north-central Iberia. Between the mid fourth and late third centuries BC, the site was subjected to a violent attack, its inhabitants killed and the settlement burned. Here the authors present osteological analyses for a massacre: decapitations, amputations and other sharp-force injuries affecting a wide cross section of the community. They interpret the massacre as an instance of conflict between rival local communities, contributing to a growing picture of the scale and nature of violence in Iron Age Europe.
Neanderthal introgression reintroduced functional ancestral alleles lost in Eurasian populations
David Rinker et al.
Nature Ecology & Evolution, October 2020, Pages 1332–1341
Abstract:
Neanderthal ancestry remains across modern Eurasian genomes and introgressed sequences influence diverse phenotypes. Here, we demonstrate that introgressed sequences reintroduced thousands of ancestral alleles that were lost in Eurasian populations before introgression. Our simulations and variant effect predictions argue that these reintroduced alleles (RAs) are more likely to be tolerated by modern humans than are introgressed Neanderthal-derived alleles (NDAs) due to their distinct evolutionary histories. Consistent with this, we show enrichment for RAs and depletion for NDAs on introgressed haplotypes with expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) and phenotype associations. Analysis of available cross-population eQTLs and massively parallel reporter assay data show that RAs commonly influence gene expression independent of linked NDAs. We further validate these independent effects for one RA in vitro. Finally, we demonstrate that NDAs are depleted for regulatory activity compared to RAs, while RAs have activity levels similar to non-introgressed variants. In summary, our study reveals that Neanderthal introgression reintroduced thousands of lost ancestral variants with gene regulatory activity and that these RAs were more tolerated than NDAs. Thus, RAs and their distinct evolutionary histories must be considered when evaluating the effects of introgression.