Tribal Times
Sea-level rise in Southwest Greenland as a contributor to Viking abandonment
Marisa Borreggine et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 25 April 2023
Abstract:
The first records of Greenland Vikings date to 985 CE. Archaeological evidence yields insight into how Vikings lived, yet drivers of their disappearance in the 15th century remain enigmatic. Research suggests a combination of environmental and socioeconomic factors, and the climatic shift from the Medieval Warm Period (~900 to 1250 CE) to the Little Ice Age (~1250 to 1900 CE) may have forced them to abandon Greenland. Glacial geomorphology and paleoclimate research suggest that the Southern Greenland Ice Sheet readvanced during Viking occupation, peaking in the Little Ice Age. Counterintuitively, the readvance caused sea-level rise near the ice margin due to increased gravitational attraction toward the ice sheet and crustal subsidence. We estimate ice growth in Southwestern Greenland using geomorphological indicators and lake core data from previous literature. We calculate the effect of ice growth on regional sea level by applying our ice history to a geophysical model of sea level with a resolution of ~1 km across Southwestern Greenland and compare the results to archaeological evidence. The results indicate that sea level rose up to ~3.3 m outside the glaciation zone during Viking settlement, producing shoreline retreat of hundreds of meters. Sea-level rise was progressive and encompassed the entire Eastern Settlement. Moreover, pervasive flooding would have forced abandonment of many coastal sites. These processes likely contributed to the suite of vulnerabilities that led to Viking abandonment of Greenland. Sea-level change thus represents an integral, missing element of the Viking story.
A paleogenome from a Holocene individual supports genetic continuity in Southeast Alaska
Alber Aqil et al.
iScience, 19 May 2023
Abstract:
Many specifics of the population histories of the Indigenous peoples of North America remain contentious owing to a dearth of physical evidence. Only few ancient human genomes have been recovered from the Pacific Northwest Coast, a region increasingly supported as a coastal migration route for the initial peopling of the Americas. Here, we report paleogenomic data from the remains of a ∼3,000-year-old female individual from Southeast Alaska, named Tatóok yík yées sháawat (TYYS). Our results demonstrate at least 3,000 years of matrilineal genetic continuity in Southeast Alaska, and that TYYS is most closely related to ancient and present-day northern Pacific Northwest Coast Indigenous Americans. We find no evidence of Paleo-Inuit (represented by Saqqaq) ancestry in present-day or ancient Pacific Northwest peoples. Instead, our analyses suggest the Saqqaq genome harbors Northern Native American ancestry. This study sheds further light on the human population history of the northern Pacific Northwest Coast.
Human consumption of large herbivore digesta and its implications for foraging theory
Raven Garvey
Evolutionary Anthropology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Vegetal matter undergoing digestion in herbivores' stomachs and intestines, digesta, can be an important source of dietary carbohydrates for human foragers. Digesta significantly increases large herbivores' total caloric yield and broadens their nutritional profile to include three key macronutrients (protein, fat, and carbohydrates) in amounts sufficient to sustain small foraging groups for multiple days without supplementation. Ethnographic reports of routine digesta consumption are limited to high latitudes, but the practice may have had a wider distribution prehistorically. Including this underappreciated resource in our foraging hypotheses and models can substantively change their predictions. Assessing the explanatory power of kilocalorie-centered models relative to ones that attend to humans' other nutritional requirements can help us better address major questions in evolutionary anthropology. This paper explores the foraging implications of digesta in two contexts -- sex-divided subsistence labor and archaeologically observed increases in plant use and sedentism -- using estimates of available protein and carbohydrates in the native tissues and digesta, respectively, of a large ruminant herbivore (Bison bison).
Reconsidering the lives of the earliest Puerto Ricans: Mortuary Archaeology and bioarchaeology of the Ortiz site
William Pestle, Elizabeth Perez & Daniel Koski-Karell
PLoS ONE, April 2023
Abstract:
We possess rather little detailed information on the lives of the first inhabitants of Puerto Rico -- the so-called “Archaic” or “Pre-Arawak” people -- despite more than a century of archeological research. This is particularly true bioarchaeologically, as fewer than twenty burials of the several millennia of the Archaic Age have been recovered, let alone analyzed in any detail. Here, we present the results of archeological, osteological, radiometric, and isotopic analysis of five individuals from the Ortiz site in Cabo Rojo, southwestern Puerto Rico. Study of these previously unpublished remains, which represent a 20–25% increase in the sample size of remains attributed to the period, provides many critical insights into earliest Puerto Rican lifeways, including aspects of mortuary practice, paleodiet, and possibly even social organization. A review of their burial treatment finds a mostly standardized set of mortuary practices, a noteworthy finding given the site’s potential millennium-long use as a mortuary space and the possibly distinct place(s) of origin of the individuals interred there. Although osteological analysis was limited by poor preservation, we were able to reconstruct aspects of the demography that indicate the presence of both male and female adults. Stable isotope analysis revealed dietary differences from later Ceramic Age individuals, while dental pathology indicated heavy masticatory wear attributable to diet and/or non-masticatory function. Perhaps most crucially, direct AMS dating of the remains confirms these as the oldest burials yet recovered from the island, providing us both with a glimpse into the lives of some of the island’s first inhabitants, and with tantalizing clues to the existence of a different degree of cultural “complexity” than is often ascribed to these earliest peoples. The existence of what radiocarbon dates suggest may be a persistent formal cemetery space at the Ortiz site has potentially significant implications concerning the territoriality, mobility, and social organization of the earliest peoples of southwestern Puerto Rico.
Ancient DNA from a lost Negev Highlands desert grape reveals a Late Antiquity wine lineage
Pnina Cohen et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 25 April 2023
Abstract:
Recent excavations of Late Antiquity settlements in the Negev Highlands of southern Israel uncovered a society that established commercial-scale viticulture in an arid environment [D. Fuks et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 117, 19780–19791 (2020)]. We applied target-enriched genome-wide sequencing and radiocarbon dating to examine grapevine pips that were excavated at three of these sites. Our analyses revealed centuries long and continuous grape cultivation in the Southern Levant. The genetically diverse pips also provided clues to ancient cultivation strategies aimed at improving agricultural productivity and ensuring food security. Applying genomic prediction analysis, a pip dated to the eighth century CE was determined to likely be from a white grape, to date the oldest to be identified. In a kinship analysis, another pip was found to be descendant from a modern Greek cultivar and was thus linked with several popular historic wines that were once traded across the Byzantine Empire. These findings shed light on historical Byzantine trading networks and on the genetic contribution of Levantine varieties to the classic Aegean landscape.
A Bronze Age salt production technique from Transylvania and western Ukraine
Valerii Kavruk, Dan Lucian Buzea & Anthony Harding
Antiquity, forthcoming
Abstract:
Across prehistoric Europe several techniques were used to produce salt, including solar evaporation and the briquetage method. Here, the authors focus on a third technique used in Romania and western Ukraine. Building on excavations at Băile Figa and a series of wooden troughs found there, the authors conduct experiments to elucidate how these objects may have been used in salt production: to drip water onto rock salt surfaces to break them up; or to filter and/or concentrate brine by decanting and/or heating. The results demonstrate the troughs are ineffective at concentrating brine, but highly efficient at breaking up rock salt and cleaning the brine of insoluble impurities.