Archaeological eggshell is a commonly recorded, yet underutilized material for understanding human-environment interaction in the past. In addition to the use of archaeological eggshell as a paleoenvironmental proxy, archaeologists have innovated important new approaches to the study of archaeological avian eggshell, including the application of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) for the characterization

Hydraulicity is a well-known characteristic of mortars and plasters from the Roman, Late Roman, and Medieval periods, while the use of hydraulic mortars in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and Central Mexico in particular, has not received equal attention. To address this issue, in this paper, we discuss the problem of hydraulicity and suggest a method to study it in Mesoamerican plasters. To prove the effectiveness

This paper examines how ancient DNA data can enhance radiocarbon dating. Because there is a limit to the number of years that can separate the dates of death of related individuals, the ability to identify relatives through ancient DNA analysis can serve as a constraint on radiocarbon date range estimates. To determine the number of years that can separate related individuals, we modeled maximums derived

A constant and intense debate in South American archaeology stands on the origin and patterns of food production of ancient populations and the correlation of both aspects with demographic growth and social complexity. Some studies associated population growth with the shift from foraging to agricultural practices in hotspots on the continent. This association has been confronted by a number of studies

In the mid-Holocene (5000 - 3000 cal B.P.), Native American groups constructed shell rings, a type of circular midden, in coastal areas of the American Southeast. These deposits provide important insights into Native American socioeconomic organization but are also quite rare: only about 50 such rings have been documented to date. Recent work using automated LiDAR analysis demonstrates that many more

Assuming that strontium (Sr) isotope ratios in trees mirror the bedrock isotope signal, between-site 87Sr/86Sr comparisons can serve as a powerful tool in archaeological wood provenance studies. Here we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this approach using Sr isotope data for bedrock, trees and rainfall collected at seven sites in the Czech Republic. The study included basalt, durbachite, granite

Provenance studies of archaeological ceramics based on their elemental composition illuminate the production and distribution of pottery vessels and, in the case of transport containers, of the commodities that they contained. A basic assumption is that the elemental composition of ceramics from a specific workshop or production area can be distinguished from other production groups, mainly because

The present study investigates for the first time a largely forgotten pyrotechnology for manufacturing artificial millstones for Persian windmills and querns from Islamic period Sistan, a region in southeastern Iran. The unusual characteristics of these materials result from melting a sand-clay mixture at high temperatures. A unique experimental and multianalytical method was developed to understand

This study employs an array of quantitative methods to analyze village agricultural practices during a time of regional urban abandonment at the end of the Early Bronze Age in the Southern Levant. Coordinated cluster and canonical discriminant analyses of stratified archaeobotanical assemblages from the village of Tell Abu en-Ni'aj, Jordan support a detailed portrait of changing crop management at

For almost 300 years wealthy Palmyrenes commemorated their deceased with portraits set up in elaborate family tombs. Now we can use this wealth of information to reconstruct the historical trajectories of the city's elite. We present an extensive analysis of over 3500 funerary portraits and other funerary data collected in the Palmyra Portrait Project and contrasted with other sources of data on the

The funerary Bronze Age culture in the Belgian part of the Meuse valley is poorly understood due to the challenging nature of cremation deposits that dominate the archaeological record. Only a few sites were analysed in that region, limiting the possibilities to reconstruct the development of Bronze Age populations in Belgium. Due to its good preservation and detailed excavation reports, the site of

Human-induced environmental changes have increased rapidly during the Holocene and have reached alarming levels today. Consequently, it is crucial to better understand the impact of humans and climate on the faunas and floras through time. Understanding the direct and underlying effect of past human activity not only contributes to improving our knowledge of human history but also provides insights

The analysis of lipids and other biomolecules preserved in archaeological artefacts, using chromatographic and mass spectrometric techniques, is a powerful approach, which has provided unprecedented insights into the diet and cultural practices of past populations. In more recent years, the now-mature field of organic residue analysis (ORA) has entered a new phase, undertaking large scale analyses

The transdimensional Bayesian method AH-RJMCMC applied to archeomagnetic intensity data available in the Balkans and the Near East allows us to estimate the variations in intensity of the geomagnetic field in Upper Mesopotamia during the 7th and 6th millennia BCE (Late Neolithic), with adequate treatment of the dating and intensity uncertainties. The results for the 6th millennium BCE appear particularly

In the 19th and early to mid-20th centuries, a rush to better understand the European Palaeolithic led to the substantive removal of deposits from limestone caves. In the 21st century the situation has changed. Many caves are now excavated, leaving behind a human-made environment of diminished cave sediments and large spoil heaps, with the latter now targeted by those searching for artefacts missed

Archaeological ceramics are a rich source of ancient biomolecules and their analysis provides valuable information with regard to ancient diet. Traditionally, biomolecular analyses on archaeological ceramics have focused on lipid analysis, with milk, ruminant and non-ruminant adipose fats, plant resins, as well as both marine fish and marine mammals among the resources successfully identified. However

The carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotopic compositions of bone and tooth collagen provide a powerful tool for studying past biological, environmental, and cultural phenomena. Collagen has a well-understood chemical composition that has enabled the development of invaluable quality control (QC) criteria for isotopic data – something that is extremely rare among biogeochemical research on ancient

The causes of prehistoric inter-group violence have been a subject of long-standing debate in archaeology, anthropology, and other disciplines. Although population pressure has been considered as a major factor, due to the lack of available prehistoric data, few studies have directly examined its effect so far. In the present study, we used data on skeletal remains from the middle Yayoi period of the

Provenance determination of archaeological remains is a valuable tool for reconstruction of past exchange networks. Among these materials, oyster shells are ubiquitous in sites from all prehistorical and historical periods. Thus, they seem to be promising candidates for provenance identification as they include chemical elements from the environment in their shells, which implies that an elemental

We investigated human-suid interactions to understand how suids could coexist with humans in the Ryukyu Islands, Japan, for centuries despite the limited carrying capacity of each island and their overlapping nutritional needs with humans. We carried out dental microwear texture analysis (DMTA) and geometric morphometric (GMM) analysis on suid remains excavated from different localities on the Ryukyu

The role of animal economies, and particularly the provisioning of feasts, in supporting the rise and maintenance of social complexity are topics of global interest in anthropology. This study investigates how people chose to provision feasts during the late Neolithic Halaf Period in Northern Mesopotamia (ca. 6000-5300 cal. BCE). Zooarcheological assemblages from the Halaf site of Domuztepe (ca. 6000-5450 cal

A growing number of studies strive to examine wooden archaeological remains recovered from Norse sites in the North Atlantic, contributing to a better understanding of patterns in both wood exploitation and woodland management. Despite the limited diversity and abundance of trees in the North Atlantic islands, the Medieval Norse kept using wood in most everyday activities including the construction

El Portalón de Cueva Mayor located in the UNESCO World Heritage Centre of Atapuerca, is a unique reference Late Prehistory archaeological site in the Iberian Peninsula, covering some 7 kyr of Holocene occupations. Herein we present the study of lipid residue analyses from 108 pottery sherds coupled with faunal kill-off patterns from the Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age periods to gain new insights

Paleoindian Clovis points are a well-studied type whose size and shape at first use are reasonably documented. Yet Clovis points probably suffered damage and experienced reduction in use. Points are divisible into modules, which may have undergone different degrees of reduction, generating allometry—changing shape with changing size—distinct from original size and shape. Recognizing allometry improves

The focus of archaeologists on reconstructing exchange and communication networks in the past resulted in the enormous improvement of methods for analyzing material flows and detecting trade routes. However, our understanding of the determinants of trade patterns over time and space is still limited. To help tackle this issue, we study through regression analysis the rich economic and institutional

This paper presents the results of an inter-comparative study in view of assessing the reliability of radiocarbon dates obtained on calcined bones from open-air Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sites. The results demonstrate that the success rate is largely dependent on site-taphonomy, in particular the speed of covering of the site. Sites quickly covered by aeolian, alluvial or marine sediments yield on

The composition of the diet of ancient humans is commonly estimated by measuring the δ13C and δ15N ratios of collagen extracted from human bone. Because bone has been subjected to diagenesis during burial it is possible that its isotopic composition has been altered. DeNiro (1985) showed that if collagen has an atomic C/N ratio outside the interval 2.9 to 3.6, then it may show aberrant isotopic values

Horses and donkeys have had a far-reaching impact on human history, providing mechanical power for agriculture and transportation. Their F1-hybrids, especially mules, have also been of considerable importance due to their exceptional strength, endurance and resistance. The reconstruction of the respective role that horses, donkeys and mules played in past societies requires prior identification of

Coinage production of ancient powers such as Athens and Rome is usually inferred from die statistics of monetary issues. The present work applies a Kaplan-Meier analysis of resistance to failure to 29 sets of well-documented monetary issues. The failure rate function assumes a U-shaped form known in reliability engineering literature as the ‘bathtub curve’. With the geometric distribution of die failure

Archaeological types have been derogatorily characterized as descriptive, but they must be descriptive in terms of pertinent attributes to be analytically useful. Classifying artifacts has long been (and still is) referred to as “pigeon holing” because some formal variation is masked by the categorization process. Recent discussions of the “tyranny of typologies” echo such concerns. Such caricatures

The affiliation of complex, i.e., mechanically delivered projectiles, with Anatomically Modern Humans has led to a growing interest in the origin of these weapons in different geographic regions. The focus of these inquiries comprise processes related to human evolution, in particular trajectories of human expansion out of Africa, where the earliest complex projectiles had been documented. While the

Attempts to identify a ‘homeland’ for our species from genetic data are widespread in the academic literature. However, even when putting aside the question of whether a ‘homeland’ is a useful concept, there are a number of inferential pitfalls in attempting to identify the geographic origin of a species from contemporary patterns of genetic variation. These include making strong claims from weakly

Traditional methods for estimating age-at-death of caprines are based on dental and epiphyseal fusion data and known to produce rather wide age intervals. In order to better interpret prenatal to early infantile mortality of sheep in prehistoric assemblages more precise age predictions are needed. We address this issue using a Generalized Additive Model (GAM) developed on humerus measurements of unborn

Recently, proteomic analysis of sex-specific amelogenin peptides in tooth enamel has been proposed as a promising new method for the assignment of sex to human skeletal remains in archaeological and forensic settings. The method was initially based on the surface acid etching of tooth enamel and subsequent identification of a marker peptide that could be attributed to sex-chromosome specific amelogenins

Biomolecular sex estimation promises to fill a major gap in the bioarchaeological record by providing estimates of biological sex for skeletal remains with degraded or ambiguous osteological sex-specific markers. Genomic and proteomic sex estimation, like all analytical methods, have limitations and require frameworks to address the problems of low signal samples and the inevitable conflicting results

Radiological examination of an ancient mummy said to have been found in royal tombs in Thebes, Upper Egypt, has proved it is the body of a pregnant woman. She came from the elite of Theban community and was carefully mummified, wrapped in fabrics, and equipped with a rich set of amulets. Closer examination has revealed that the woman died between 20 and 30 years of age together with the fetus in age

In this study, we present an alternate approach to archaeological typology, using deep learning to classify digital images of decorated pottery sherds into an existing typological framework. The study focuses on a specific kind of ancient painted pottery from the American Southwest, Tusayan White Ware, but we believe it has broader implications for a wide range of geographical settings and artifact

Here we document a 1000-year fungal record from the raised-field region of the Llanos de Moxos, a seasonally inundated forest-savanna mosaic in the Bolivian Amazon. Fungi are extremely sensitive to changes in vegetation due to their close relationship with the local environment, providing a useful proxy for past local vegetation and land-use change. Here the remains of fungal non-pollen palynomorphs

The morphological differentiation of African bovids in highly fragmented zooarchaeological assemblages is a major hindrance to reconstructing the nature and spread of pastoralism in sub-Saharan Africa. Here we employ collagen peptide mass fingerprinting, known as Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS), coupled with recently published African ZooMS reference datasets, to identify domesticates and

The Balkan Peninsula played a crucial role for the introduction of metallurgy during the Copper Age and numerous archaeometallurgical examinations have delivered highly interesting insights on this topic. However, there is a lack of systematic analytical research on copper ore smelting and metal exchange for the later Bronze Age. In this paper we focus on the first archaeometallurgical results of slags

The Kirigamine area is one of the major obsidian sources in the Chubu-kanto region of central Japan, and is regarded as an important archaeological study area for improving the understanding of historical changes in human–environment interactions related to obsidian procurement activities during the Upper Paleolithic. Previous studies have presented a model for the relationship between human activities

Bulk δ15N and δ13C values of proteinaceous tissues are being increasingly used in bioarchaeological studies to elucidate the physio-pathological status of ancient individuals. This method has not always been successful. The present study aims to explore the novel use of single amino acid carbon isotope analysis in palaeopathology by investigating the effect of a serious infectious disease, tuberculosis

We present a workflow to conduct a full characterization of medium to coarse-grained igneous rocks, using portable, non-invasive, and reproducible approaches. This includes: (i) Image Analysis (IA) to quantify mineral phase proportions, grain size distribution using the Weka trainable machine learning algorithm. (ii) Portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (PXRF, Bruker Tracer IV) to quantify the

Glass mosaic decorations were used throughout the medieval Mediterranean as a powerful medium to convey religious and political agendas, yet we know next to nothing about the source of the materials and the transmission of the necessary technical know-how. Mosaics are generally considered a Byzantine art form, not least due to their prominence in Byzantine church architecture and because medieval Islamic

Current methodologies for radiocarbon dating of mortars typically use mechanical and chemical separation to isolate fractions of carbon dioxide from suitable lime binder carbonates. These methods have a moderate frequency of success, but difficulties are often encountered with (a) secondary crystallisation, (b) the presence of incompletely burnt limestone or limestone aggregate, and (c) more complex

It is generally believed that early agriculture on the Korean Peninsula was established during the Mumun period (1500–100 BC). While previous studies on agriculture in prehistoric Korea have relied on cultivated plant remains from archaeological sites, only a few isotopic studies have been conducted on Mumun individuals due to poor bone preservation during this period. Here, we measured bulk carbon

Zooarchaeologists have relied upon various approaches to study the impacts of harvest pressure and environmental change on ungulate populations, such as analysis of prey mortality patterns and morphometrics. Analysis of ancient DNA from ungulate bones and bone fragments from archaeological sites provides an additional means for studying prey population dynamics related to environmental change and human

The use of detailed meteorological data with sailing software, in conjunction with sailing the Ma'agan Mikhael II replica ship, has engendered the development of a method for examining maritime mobility of single-masted square sail Mediterranean merchantmen in the Graeco-Roman period, with the initial objective of mapping direct, open sea, return sailing routes from the Levant that a priori lie contrary

Demographic profiling of a population of sheep buried in toto in the Ptolemaic-Early Roman animal necropolis at Syene/Aswan (Upper Egypt) revealed significantly higher age estimates based on tooth eruption and wear than those based on epiphyseal fusion. Since located in an arid landscape with occasionally heavy dust loads, one plausible assumption would be that at Syene, dental abrasion may have been

The addition of temper in the pottery manufacturing process is attested since Prehistoric Times and is still a production choice adopted in the ceramic industry. When the temper is composed of minerals and rocks which outcrop in regions distant from each other, new questions about the production technology arise. Such situations can be explained by considering the recycling of imported rocks, including

The hard and soft tissue remains of a pre-Hispanic population of the Gran Canaria Island at six different archaeological localities were studied using 14C dating and stable isotope compositions. Radiocarbon dating indicates island occupation ranging from the beginning of the 7th to the mid-14th century. We analyzed the oxygen isotope compositions of apatite phosphate bones of some pre-Hispanic individuals