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The discovery locations of the barbed points and their probable sand source locations beneath the North Sea. The specimens are identified by ZooMS number; P29 and P03 are the points identified as made of human bone (map after Hijma and Cohen, 2011; photos R.J. Looman, RMO, Leiden; graphic design by J. Porck).
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Barbed bone points originally deposited in Doggerland are regularly collected from the shores of the Netherlands. Their typology and direct ¹⁴C dating suggest they are of Mesolithic age. However, the species of which the barbed points were made cannot be identified based on morphological criteria. The bones used to produce the barbed points have be...
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... one thousand barbed bone/antler points have been collected from Doggerland and attributed to the Mesolithic (Amkreutz and Spit- hoven, 2019;Spithoven, 2015Spithoven, , 2018. Our sample consists of 10 barbed points. The recovery locations of these points and their estimated source locations in Doggerland are indicated in Fig. 1. Geologically, the sediments derive from the Rhine and Scheldt delta that evolved from a fluvial valley with lowland marshes to an estuarine and brackish fluvialtidal inlet during the early Holocene ( Hijma and Cohen, ...
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... range 700-3500 m/z. The raw data was converted by Flex Analysis (Bruker) into .txt files. The triplicate spectra were merged for each sample Table 1 Results of 14 C dating and stable isotopes from the barbed points. ZM = Zandmotor; MV1 and MV2 = Maasvlakte 1 and 2; HvH = Hoek van Holland; Ro = Rockanje; StH = Strand ter Heijde (for locations, see Fig. 1). E = empty, i.e. no collagen preserved, Coll. = collagen. * radiocarbon ages cannot be calibrated because of the unknown reservoir effect of humans consuming aquatic resources in the Dutch deltas (Van der through R (version 3.5.1) (R Core Team, 2018), and taxonomic identifications proceeded, using mMass ( Strohalm et al., 2010), ...
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... biomarkers for the identification of humans are unique and not shared with other species present in Mesolithic Northwest Europe. However, organic material deriving from humans is a common contaminant in biomolecular studies (Hendy et al., 2018). Following Buckley et al. (2009), several measures were taken to ensure the authenticity of the results of this study: 1) each extract was analysed in triplicate, reducing the risk of contamination during MALDI-TOF MS analysis, and these replicates all produced identical results; 2) each specimen was analysed using two extraction protocols in parallel, and produced identical results; 3) the destructive samples consisted of both inner and outer layers of the bone, reducing the influence of surface contamination. ...
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... barbed points studied here likely come from different Mesolithic find locations as they were collected on several artificial deposits spread along circa 20 kms of coast, and their colour and density indicate they have experienced different diagenetic histories (Fig. 1). Their 14 C ages indicate that they mainly date to the Early Mesolithic. In turn, our sample of barbed points is to be seen as a random sample of Mesolithic barbed points from the Dutch shore. Being a random sample, it is interesting that it only consists of several Cervus elaphus, one Cervus elaphus/Alces alces and of Homo sapiens. As ...
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Cervids living in high latitudes have evolved to thrive in ecosystems that experience dramatic seasonal changes. Understanding these seasonal adaptations is important for reconstructing cervid life histories, ecosystem dynamics, and responses in the distant and not-so-distant past to changing seasonality caused by climate change. Cervid antlers pro...
Citations
... less than 2cm, often recovered through screening) can remain almost completely unstudied from a zooarchaeological and taphonomic perspective (also see Raymond et al. 2024). There- ZooMS studies to identify special objects (Bradfield et al. 2019;Dekker et al. 2021;Desmond et al. 2018;Evans et al. 2023;Hansen et al. 2024;Martisius et al. 2020;McGrath et al. 2019;Surovell et al. 2024) or find human remains (Brown et al. 2016;Devièse et al. 2017;Hublin et al. 2020;Welker et al. 2016), ZooMS is now also being applied untargeted, aimed at identifying large portions of the non-diagnostic fauna in a Paleolithic assemblage (Brown et al. 2021c;Pothier-Bouchard et al. 2020;Raymond et al. 2024;Ruebens et al. 2022;2023;Sinet-Mathiot et al. 2019;2023;Xia et al. 2024). These large-scale proteomic analyses of morphologically unidentifiable bone remains are generating vast amounts of taxonomic and complementary data. ...
... Targeted ZooMS studies focus on identifying a specific set of samples. This includes special objects made out of bone, ivory, or antler (Dekker et al. 2021;Desmond et al. 2018;Martisius et al. 2020;Tomasso et al. 2018), closely related species that are difficult to identify morphologically Evans et al. 2016;Jeanjean et al. 2023) ...
Advances in biomolecular methods, in particular the study of ancient proteins (paleoproteomics), have revolutionized how we can taxonomically identify archaeological bone fragments. Alongside traditional zooarchaeo-logical assignments based on the visual inspection of morphological criteria, variations in collagen type I amino acid sequences can now be used to distinguish which animal a bone fragment belonged to. Using MALDI-ToF mass spectrometry, this method, known as Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS), is now being applied regularly to archaeological faunal assemblages and, often at a large-scale, at Paleolithic sites. However, detailed explorations of how these ZooMS datasets can best be integrated with zooarchaeological and taphonomic data are only in their infancy. To further advance this field, we hosted a workshop at the University of Kent in 2023, bringing together both zooarchaeologists and ZooMS specialists, to showcase and discuss various ways of integrating ZooMS and zoo-archaeological data, especially within Paleolithic contexts. This special issue results from the papers presented at this workshop. In this introductory paper we reflect on the open discussion sessions that formed an essential part of the workshop. First, we discuss a series of methodological challenges; this includes the recording of zooar-chaeology and taphonomy on morphologically unidentifiable bone fragments, ZooMS study design and sample selection, pre-screening and sampling, pre-treatment and collagen extraction, and the acquisition, processing, and
interpretation of MALDI data. Second, we delve deeper into the interpretive potential, and the wealth of future research directions, of a full contribution of ZooMS to a range of zooarchaeological research topics. In concordance with the seven research papers in this issue, this introduction illustrates how a well-designed
study, integrating zooarchaeological and taphonomic observations across both the morphological and ZooMS identified fractions, cannot only increase the number of identifiable specimens at a site, but also provide novel insights into site formation histories, collection biases, carnivore behavior, environmental conditions, and past human subsistence, including site use, seasonality, carcass transport, prey preference, and butchery practices.
... Moreover, usewear analysis was performed before destructive sampling to prevent any interference following. The combination of use-wear analysis and proteomic analysis is becoming more common and should be considered as a 'best practice' (Bradfield et al., 2019;Dekker et al., 2021;Orłowska et al., 2023;Hansen, Sierra, et al., 2024). Considering that even some minimally invasive sampling protocols for ZooMS may obscure traces of use it is vital that use-wear analysis is performed in advance to prevent the loss of valuable information regarding the use of the tool Hansen, Dekker, et al., 2024). ...
... Palaeoproteomic techniques, both minimally invasive and destructive, have been applied in a number of previous studies to study species selection in the production of osseous tools. These studies demonstrate how palaeoproteomic techniques can be used to reveal the use of unexpected species for bone tool production (Surovell et al., 2024), such as human bone (McGrath et al., 2019;Dekker et al., 2021), as well as the intentional selection of certain species (Desmond et al., 2018;Martisius et al., 2020;Bradfield et al., 2021;Adamczak et al., 2021). ...
... Owing to the destructive nature of sampling, and archaeological artefacts being increasingly sampled (Dekker et al., 2021;Mannermaa et al., 2022;Rey-Iglesia et al., 2023), it is paramount that a proper sampling strategy and workflow are applied, which are ideally based on empirical data. Comparative studies on, among others, extraction methods (Gilbert et al., 2024a;Mylopotamitaki et al., 2023), digestion durations (Le Meillour et al., 2024), and protease choice Lanigan et al., 2020) have already shown that such research has the potential to significantly improve workflows and establish best practices without compromising the scientific output. ...
... All points have been recovered ex situ and have been collected on beaches and reclaimed land such as the Maasvlakte (Rotterdam). The level of preservation of many points is quite high, however private collectors and museums sometimes use industrial glue to preserve the points which leads to wear traces being obscured (Spithoven 2018;Dekker et al. 2021). The points can be subdivided in a distinct small and large size category (Verhart 1986;Spithoven 2016). ...
... To investigate the raw material selection for the barbed points in more detail, 13 barbed points were analysed with ZooMS (Dekker et al. 2021;Aleo et al. 2023). For 12 of them, identification was possible. ...
... The presence of points made from human bones and the large number of points made from red deer (cf. Dekker et al. 2021) signal an active selection for raw materials. Given the availability of alternative raw materials the selection seems to fall in this last category, which will be further explored in the discussion. ...
Bone and antler points, found on Dutch beaches, give a new insight in life on Mesolithic Doggerland. Doggerland is the North sea basin, stretching from the Netherlands to Great Britain, Norway and Denmark, once part of Europe’s mainland. After the last glaciation it was dry land inhabited by hunter-gatherers, until around the beginning of the Mesolithic (10,000 cal. BC), sea levels began to rise. This lasted until around 6050 cal. BC, when Doggerland was completely drowned. Due to the submersion, Doggerland holds the most complete archaeological record of human presence in Mesolithic Northwestern Europe. This archaeological record is however disturbed by sand extraction for beach reinforcements, which use sand from areas off the coast of South-Holland. Therefore remains from Doggerland, such as flint, osseous artefacts and even human remains, are found on Dutch beaches. Artefact biographies provide new insights on Doggerland’s inhabitants. Most artefacts are made of bone or antler, with (barbed) points being the largest part of the assemblage. Many of these bone and antler points were studied by the authors to construct their artefact biography: from raw material to discard or deposition. Material selection was studied using ZooMS, showing that there may be a preference for the use of red deer as raw material. Furthermore, ZooMS analysis identified two points made of human bone, highlighting the possible symbolic and cultural meaning of these objects. The production process of grinding the points on stone (and scraping with flint), cutting barbs with flint and hafting them using a combination of fibres and birch tar was inferred through techno-functional analysis. A high degree of wear on the points and reworked barbs on some, suggests that they were (heavily) curated weapon tips. Most were probably used as arrowheads, based on their small size. This suggests hunting with bow and arrow was an important subsistence strategy in Mesolithic Doggerland. Eventually, the points were deposited, either left behind or lost. Nowadays, they are found again, starting their second use-life.
... Recent analysis of Mesolithic bone points from the submerged coastal area of the Netherlands indicated that most of these points were made from deer bone. It was suggested that these animals were not selected for utilitarian purposes, rather it seemed that these preferences were culturally determined (Dekker et al., 2021). It has also been suggested that white tailed eagles (Haliaeetus albicilla) were hunted in the Rhine-Meuse Delta during the Mesolithic and Neolithic because of the symbolic significance of this animal (Amkreutz and Corbey 2008, 176-178). ...
This paper explores the application of use-wear analysis on flint tools for the reconstruction of bone-working toolkits. Lithics from three Neolithic Vlaardingen Culture (3400-2500 BCE) sites were analysed. We successfully identified toolkits used in the production of bone tools. Combining our results with zooarchaeological data, we conclude that the metapodium technique was only practiced on sites where deer was hunted, and deer bones were thus available. When deer were not, or barely, hunted, bone-working was limited to ad hoc tool production. Widely available cattle metapodia, which could provide a substitute for deer metapodia, especially for the production of chisels, were generally not used to make tools using the metapodium technique. Culturally determined preferences, for the use of specific raw materials, thus determined technological choices made by the inhabitants of these sites.
... Compared with other biomolecular identification methods such as aDNA analyses, ZooMS allows for a more rapid, minimally destructive, and cost-effective approach, that could provide results on heavily fragmented, processed, and degraded material (Buckley, 2018;Richter et al., 2022). The method has been applied to bone assemblages from museum collections as a complement to or even substitute technique for morphology-based identification of fragmented and worked bones (Desmond et al., 2018;Martisius et al., 2020;Dekker et al., 2021). ZooMS has also been applied to various archaeological materials other than bone, including ivory (Coutu et al., 2016), eggshell (Stewart et al., 2013), antler (Ashby et al., 2015), baleen (O'Connor et al., 2015) and leather objects (Ebsen et al., 2019), demonstrating the broad applicability of the method. ...
Museum legacy collections, often derived from large-scale archaeological excavations, can serve as paleoenvironmental archives of Late Pleistocene megafaunal composition and dynamics. Many of these collections, however, contain large quantities of highly fragmented and morphologically indistinct bones that cannot be identified to a specific taxon and are therefore of limited use to paleoenvironmental and archaeological analyses. Here, we explore the potential of Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) to identify fossil bone fragments and complement morphological identifications in legacy collections housed at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. To undertake this work, we collected fragmented bone specimens of Late Pleistocene megafauna from six archaeological sites in Colorado that are currently housed in the Department of Anthropology, and then performed pilot ZooMS screening. Our analysis successfully retrieved taxonomic information from 80% of the analyzed material, highlighting the potential of future ZooMS studies on museum collections to investigate human-megafaunal interactions in late Pleistocene North America.
... Studies on the typology and technology of barbed points have increased in recent years (Dekker et al., 2021;Fano et al., 2013;Julien, 1977Julien, , 1982Julien, , 1995Julien, , 1999Julien and Orliac, 2003;Langley, 2014;Weniger, 1992, 2000, Tsirintoulaki et al., 2023Estevez & Vila, 2013). However, specific studies on the typology and use of barbed points are relatively scarce, particularly in the Cantabrian Region (Ugarte, 2019). ...
Magdalenian barbed points have been an enigma in prehistoric research since its beginnings. We still do not know their function, and no precise and updated typology defines these tools based on all their morphological characteristics. Throughout research history, numerous hypotheses about their use and taxonomic characteri-sation have been outlined, but the lack of microscopic, statistical, and experimental analyses, in addition to issues with the archaeological record, have prevented most of these uncertainties from being resolved. The present study addresses the state of the art and confronts the different existing hypotheses about the chronology and typology of these tools. A total of 106 barbed points from the Cantabrian region in the Iberian Peninsula were analysed morphometrically with an innovative 2D methodology, followed by multivariate statistical analysis to objectively characterize the morphology of the points. Based on these analyses, a new typology is proposed that corresponds to the main historiographical trend regarding the differentiation of this type of tool.
... Direct 14 C dates on 15 barbed points from Dutch Doggerland confirmed their attribution to the Mesolithic period, roughly between 9950-7300 years ago [10,26]. The first large-scale study of these objects was conducted by Verhart [27]. ...
... One point was found at Pijnacker, which is located roughly 20 km from the coast, during the construction of a residential area [28]. Most of the points are owned by private collectors except for four (NSM22,26,28,29) that belong to the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (Leiden, NL). ...
... The geographical location and age narrowed this down to either bison or aurochs [61]. Even though exceptions are possible, such as three Danish brown bear points [6] and two Doggerland human bone points [26], blanks for bone tools were generally derived from herbivores hunted and brought to the sites [62]. ...
Osseous barbed and unbarbed points are commonly recovered from the Dutch North Sea and other Mesolithic sites of northern Europe. Interpreted as elements of projectile weaponry, barbed points are considered by archaeologists to be a technological innovation in the hunting equipment of hunter-gatherers. However, debate about their exact use and identification of the targeted prey species is still ongoing. To shed light on the function of these tools, we analysed a sample of 17 artefacts from the Netherlands with a multi-disciplinary approach encompassing morphometric, functional, and chemical analysis. ¹⁴C-AMS dating yielded the oldest date for a barbed point from the Dutch coast (⁓13000 cal. BP). The observation of microwear traces preserved on the tools provides solid evidence to interpret the function of barbed and unbarbed points. We show that there were two distinct tool categories. 1) Barbed points hafted with birch tar and animal or vegetal binding were likely projectile tips for terrestrial and aquatic hunting. We provide strong clues to support the link between small barbed points and fishing using wear traces. 2) Points without barbs served as perforators for animal hides. Our results highlight the importance of use-wear and residue analysis to reconstruct prehistoric hunting activities. The functional interpretation of projectile points must also rely on microwear traces and not merely on the association with faunal remains, historical sources, and ethnographic comparisons.
... Barbed points were present throughout the prehistory of Europe, at the Magdalenian sites in Western Europe (Julien, 1982;Langley et al., 2016) and the Final Palaeolithic sites in Poland (Orłowska and Osipowicz, 2018), Denmark, Germany, Lithuania and Latvia (Zagorska, 2006). They were also noted in the Mesolithic of the Balkans (Montenegro (Cristiani and Borić, 2016); Serbia (Srejović and Letica, 1978;Vitezović, 2011)), at Russian sites (Skakun et al., 2011;Lozovski et al., 2013;Zhilin, 2019;Zhilin and Savchenko, 2020), Estonia or Latvia (David, 2003(David, , 2005, Norway (Bergsvik and David, 2015), Sweden (Gummesson and Molin, 2019;Larsson et al., 2019), Netherlands (Dekker et al., 2021), England (Conneller, 2004) and Germany (David, 2019). Their presence was also noted during the Neolithic in Russia (Lozovski et al., 2013) and the Baltic area (Osipowicz et al., 2019), Switzerland, Germany and France (Ramseyer, 1995). ...
... Here there is a slight risk that differential lighting may cause chromatic misinterpretations. The analytical criteria for the technological and functional interpretation of the marks were established based upon comparisons with recent publications on barbed points over time from various areas of the world (Pétillon, 2009;Lozovski et al., 2013;Cristiani and Borić, 2016;Langley et al., 2016;Orłowska and Osipowicz, 2018;Zhilin, 2019;Zhilin and Savchenko, 2020;Dekker et al., 2021;David et al., 2022). ...
At Gumelniţa settlements north of the Danube (second half of the 5th millennium BC and beginning of the 4th millennium BC), barbed points are artefacts constantly present in the archaeological assemblages. They are mainly made on red deer antlers, selected based on their width, particularly adapted to the production of barbed points. Their manufacturing includes three stages: surface regularization following the cutting of the blank, preform shaping and finally, cutting out the specific elements (barbs, protuberances, etc.). The pointed end was shaped by longitudinal scraping, becoming conical or biconvex. The morphology of the proximal end is indicative of several types of hafting. The barbs and protuberances were created using the same procedure (cutting) and the central perforations were carried out by drilling from both sides, resulting in bi-conical perforations. A particular and rare type of barbed point lacks the specific system for the fixation of a thread, as the proximal part continues the shaft. The present study aims to reconstruct the variants of the chaîne opératoire (from raw material to finished pieces), the maintenance/recycling/repair strategies and the possible ways of using the barbed points in the area of interest based on use-wear marks and comparisons with ethnographic examples.
... The reliability of ZooMS as a method for species identification has been independently confirmed in several studies (e.g. Welker et al., 2015;Martisius et al., 2020;Dekker et al., 2021). Technological and functional studies were conducted using traceological analysis, micro-computed tomography, and experimental archaeological methods. ...
This article presents the results of a multifaceted study of a Palaeolithic hammer made of antler, found in Biśnik Cave in southern Poland. It is the only tool of this type known from this period in Polish prehistory. The results of the 14C dating on the object verifies previous assumptions relating to its chronology and cultural affiliation. The results of Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) analysis allow us to provide further details in relation to the raw material used in the production of the artefact. This article also presents the results of a detailed traceological study which allow us to interpret the production and function of the tool. This analysis was conducted using Micro CT, alongside varying types of microscopy. The results of all these analyses are then compared and contrasted according to the current knowledge regarding these tool types to provide a broader context for the interpretation of this important artefact.
