Henry Wright

• PhD
• University of Michigan

Archaeologists have long emphasized the importance of large-scale excavations and multi-year or even decades-long projects at a single site or site complex. Here, we highlight archaeological field strategies, termed coring, profiling, and trenching (CPT), that rely on relatively small-scale excavations or the collection of new samples from intact d...

Open Access Check for updates on crossmark Research articles Collagen fingerprinting traces the introduction of caprines to island Eastern Africa Courtney Culley, Anneke Janzen, Samantha Brown, Mary E. Prendergast, Jesse Wolfhagen, Bourhane Abderemane, Abdallah K. Ali, Othman Haji, Mark C. Horton, Ceri Shipton, Jillian Swift, Tabibou A. Tabibou, He...

Introduced predators currently threaten endemic animals on Madagascar through predation, facilitation of human-led hunts, competition, and disease transmission, but the antiquity and past consequences of these introductions are poorly known. We use directly radiocarbon dated bones of introduced dogs (Canis familiaris) to test whether dogs could hav...

A new fossil site in a previously unexplored part of western Madagascar (the Beanka Protected Area) has yielded remains of many recently extinct vertebrates, including giant lemurs (Babakotia radofilai, Palaeopropithecus kelyus, Pachylemur sp., and Archaeolemur edwardsi), carnivores (Cryptoprocta spelea), the aardvark-like Plesiorycteropus sp., and...

The timing of the human settlement of Madagascar, one of the last large landmasses to be settled by people, remains a key topic of debate in archaeology. Despite decades of research, recent estimates for initial settlement are increasingly divergent and span ca. 9000 years: the widest colonization window for any island within the reliable range of...

Human-mediated biological exchange has had global social and ecological impacts. In sub-Saharan Africa, several domestic and commensal animals were introduced from Asia in the pre-modern period; however, the timing and nature of these introductions remain contentious. One model supports introduction to the eastern African coast after the mid-first...

Human-mediated biological exchange has had global social and ecological impacts. In sub-Saharan Africa, several domestic and commensal animals were introduced from Asia in the pre-modern period; however, the timing and nature of these introductions remain contentious. One model supports introduction to the eastern African coast after the mid-first...

Details of methods used in ancient DNA (aDNA) and Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) collagen fingerprinting analyses. (DOCX)

Total reads used in the BLAST analysis and results of Burrows-Wheeler Alignments (BWA). (DOCX)

Results of experimental study of false positives. Incorrect genus identifications resulting from 500 test "libraries" obtained from whole mtDNA genomes of the genus Gallus. See text for explanation of experimental method. (DOCX)

Reference specimens for ZooMS collagen fingerprinting. (DOCX)

Decision tree illustrating research protocols. Tree illustrates the selection of faunal samples, the order in which specific analyses were applied to each subsample, and result. (TIF)

Landmarks used in dental analysis. R. exulans tooth in occlusal view with simplified diagram to the right. The fixed landmarks are illustrated by large blue circles, sliding semi-landmarks by small red circles. The boundaries of the cusps and the stylids (small flat or saddle like surfaces joining cusps) are difficult to precisely identify, but hav...

Reference specimens for analysis of tooth morphology. (DOCX)

mapDamage analysis of deanimation patterns in bird specimens. For each of the sequenced specimens (specimen numbers indicated by JK0000), mapDamage analysis illustrates C to T (red) and G to A (blue) frequencies of mis-incorporation at 3’ and 5’ ends. (PDF)

Spectra from modern Rattus taxa. MALDI peptide mass fingerprint spectra of collagen tryptic digests from the reference bone material of Rattus rattus (top), Rattus norvegicus (middle) and Rattus exulans (bottom). (TIF)

Sites excavated by the Sealinks Project. (DOCX)

Previously excavated sites included in the present analysis. (DOCX)

Detailed results for bird specimens. Results of multiple ancient DNA analyses, with radiocarbon dates where available. Sites ordered from north to south. (DOCX)

Detailed results for rodent specimens. Results of ancient DNA analysis, ZooMS collagen fingerprinting, and tooth morphology, with radiocarbon dates where available. Sites ordered from north to south. (DOCX)

Spectra from modern rodent genera other than Rattus. A: MALDI peptide mass fingerprint spectra of collagen tryptic digests from the reference bone material of Aethomys kaiseri (top), Mastomys coucha (middle) and Mus minutoides (bottom). B: MALDI peptide mass fingerprint spectra of collagen tryptic digests from the reference bone material of Gerbill...

Example of MALDI peptide mass fingerprint spectra in archaeological samples. Example of MALDI peptide mass fingerprint spectra of collagen tryptic digests from the archaeological samples studied, showing the three most commonly identified types: Rattus rattus (bottom); Group 1 (middle), which most closely resembles Mastomys; and Group 2 (top), whic...

Spectra from unknown taxa in archaeological samples. MALDI peptide mass fingerprint spectra of collagen tryptic digests from archaeological specimens that form groups of unknown taxa. (TIF)

By comparing the Zhou state-building narrative from textual sources with patterns observed in our archaeological survey in the Qufu region, our collaborative research project investigates the role of place memory in the creation or renewal of urban tradition in the Zhou society of the early first millennium BCE. Our study of the regional archaeolog...

Significance The prehistoric settlement of Madagascar by people from distant Southeast Asia has long captured both scholarly and public imagination, but on the ground evidence for this colonization has eluded archaeologists for decades. Our study provides the first, to our knowledge, archaeological evidence for an early Southeast Asian presence in...

This review of papers on the contribution of archaeometry to the understanding of the Uruk Expansion shows that there is very little evidence for the exchange of pottery among the widely scattered Uruk settlement enclaves of IVth millennium Mesopotamia or the similarly scattered settlements of the later Proto-Elamite expansion. The limited evidence...

The Yellow River catchment of northern China was central to the rise of complex societies from the first Neolithic farmers through to early states and empires. These cultural developments brought with them rising populations and increasing intensity of land-use. This region provides an important record of landscape changes that mark the development...

Archaeology is a source of essential data regarding the fundamental nature of human societies. Researchers across the behavioral and social sciences use archeological data in framing foundational arguments. Archaeological evidence frequently undergirds debate on contemporary issues. We propose here to answer “What are archaeology’s most important s...

This article represents a systematic effort to answer the question, What are archaeology’s most important scientific challenges? Starting with a crowd-sourced query directed broadly to the professional community of archaeologists, the authors augmented, prioritized, and refined the responses during a two-day workshop focused specifically on this qu...

Past research on Madagascar indicates that village communities were established about AD 500 by people of both Indonesian and East African heritage. Evidence of earlier visits is scattered and contentious. Recent archaeological excavations in northern Madagascar provide evidence of occupational sites with microlithic stone technologies related to f...

A.“The First Internationalism ” or the “First Dark Age”?

Timothy Pauketat is an emergent figure in Mississippian studies. His many contributions include monographs, such as Temples for Cahokia Lords; books such as The Ascent of Chiefs and Ancient Cahokia and the Mississippian World; edited volumes such as Lords of the Southeast and Cahokia: Domination and Ideology in the Mississippian World; and many pro...

The emergence of states is an enduring focus for anthropologists. Identifying when and under what circumstances this political transformation has occurred in independent cases is necessary if we wish to evaluate competing ideas explaining the origins of states. This has proved difficult, however, in part because the process is not easy to understan...

This first installment of an Atlas of Chiefdoms and Early States assembles data on six clusters of elementary hierarchical polities, coded here to measure the scale of both the political-administrative aspects and the social-economic aspects of these case studies. These six clusters - the Hawaiian archipelago, Madagascar, the interlacustrine region...

This note presents the initial evidence of two small sites of PPN A and later affinity near the Jaghjagh River on the Khabur Plain. Relations to industries from Mureybit, Qermez Dere, and Nemrik are discussed. Cette note fait état de données préliminaires concernant deux petites installations situées près de la rivière Jaghjagh dans la Plaine du Kh...

A database has been assembled with 278 age determinations for Madagascar. Materials 14C dated include pretreated sediments and plant macrofossils from cores and excavations throughout the island, and bones, teeth, or eggshells of most of the extinct megafaunal taxa, including the giant lemurs, hippopotami, and ratites. Additional measurements come...

This international, collaborative, and interdisciplinary archaeological program examines changes in settlement patterns from the early Neolithic to the full development of states (ca. 6500–200 B.C.) in the Yiluo region of central north China. Full-coverage regional surveys are integrated with geoarchaeological investigations, ethnobotanical studies...

To explain the origin of primary states--those which arise in a context of interacting prestate societies--has remained an objective of anthropologists since the publica- tion of Morgan's Ancient Society (35) 100 years ago. It is a fundamental problem which, though it cannot have an ultimate solution, serves as a measure against which to evaluate t...

Archaeological anthropologists increasingly face, in all our endeavors, the problem of expressing and evaluating our ideas about cultural phenomena, in which participants deal with many impacts from parallel and higher-order entities through the recursive—that is, self-redefining—mechanisms that culture allows. New formal models involving “cultural...

A number of archaeologists are making significant advances in the historical archaeology of Southeast Asia. The papers presented in this issue, and the one that preceded it, provide new insights and exciting directions for future research. Peer Reviewed http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44539/1/10761_2004_Article_417784.pdf

In the last 2000 years, changes on the island of Madagascar have resulted in the modification of key environments and the extinction of nearly all large native animals. Humans have long been suspected as the primary cause of this ecological catastrophe, but the exact mechanisms of the island's rapid transformation and the role of natural factors su...

The first Mesopotamian city-states in the Uruk period (ca. 3800-3100 B. C.) pursued a strategy of commercial expansion into neighboring areas of the Zagros Mountains, Syria, and southeastern Anatolia. Recent research in these areas has located several Uruk outposts, in what is apparently the world's earliest-known colonial system. Although some Uru...

Madagascar's culture is a unique fusion of elements drawn from the western, northern, and eastern shores of the Indian Ocean, and its past has fascinated many scholars, yet systematic archaeological research is relatively recent on the island. The oldest traces of visitors are from the first century AD. Coastal settlements, with clear evidence of t...

Qui sont les fondateurs des villes medievales des iles Comores, et en particulier de l'ile de Nzawni? Des commercants musulmans a la recherche de richesses? Des groupes de nobles originaires du Proche-Orient fuyant les luttes politiques? Des professeurs islamistes en quete de nouveau lieux ou adorer leur dieu? A partir d'une etude aussi complete qu...

Although previous volumes of Azania have carried articles and notes on Madagascar and Mozambique as well as allusions to the Comoro Islands (as in Derek Nurse's study of Swahili linguistic history in XVIII), this is the first article specifically on the Archipelago. Being concerned with the earliest recognised human settlements on the Comores, whic...

Sets of carbon-14 age determinations from well-stratified protohistoric contexts relevant to Mesopotamia are discussed. This consideration supports a relatively high chronology, but it is not yet possible to define the absolute chronological limite or duration of any single period or phase prior to the late Third Millennium B.C. More sets of strati...

Among the few materials available to early man was bitumen which he collected from seepages that are especially abundant in the Middle East. When mixed with two or three parts of mineral fines, bitumen makes asphalt, a crude but versatile adhesive. In the large riverine cities of ancient Mesopotamia, asphalt was used as mortar by the ton, but the t...

The composition and distribution of such widely traded materials as obsidian, lapis lazuli, and copper have been studied, but many other materials have yet to be considered. This paper presents a broad study of a series of bituminous asphalts from Southwestern Iran. They were obtained from local natural sources, processed, transported, and fashione...

Les sites anciens des plaines du Khuzistan et du Deh Luran ont livre des outils stratifies dont les sequences peuvent etre comparees avec celles d'autres sites d'Iran de l'Ouest et de Mesopotamie. Il est cependant difficile d'etablir des comparaisons precises entre des regions eloignees en raison des variations regionales dans la ceramique et du ma...

This chapter reviews the way in which reciprocal systems as presently conceptualized by anthropologists could maintain a set equilibrium. Variables related to exchange have figured in proposed explanations of the rise and diversification of egalitarian, ranked, and state-organized societies. Such propositions must remain incomplete and unsatisfacto...

Several widely discussed single-variable explanations of the origin of the state are tested using data from Southwestern Iran. These data demonstrate that increasing population or increasing inter-regional trade alone cannot explain the appearance of specialized governments during the fourth millennium B.C. More complex types of explanation are sug...

That urban society and states arose in Mesopotamia during the Uruk period is widely accepted. The end of the 'Ubaid period and the beginning of the Uruk period have been the object of much work. In fact, though individual workers have attributed particular manifestations to such a transitional period, there is no adequate taxonomic or chronological...

A collection from a small Late Wisconsin site is described. This assemblage exhibits a distinctive core-working technique and a distinctive variety of fluted points. It is dated on geological grounds to between 11,000 B.C. and 9000 B.C. at a time when spruce stands were probably becoming established in the area. The contrasts between this assemblag...