Ricardo Fernandes

Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History · Archaeology

Here, we present the North American Repository for Archaeological Isotopes (NARIA), the largest open-access compilation of previously reported isotopic measurements (n = 28,374) from bioarchaeological samples in North America (i.e., Canada, Greenland, Mexico, and the United States of America) covering a time-frame of more than 12,000 years. This da...

The histories of African crops remain poorly understood despite their contemporary importance. Integration of crops from western, eastern and northern Africa probably first occurred in the Great Lakes Region of eastern Africa; however, little is known about when and how these agricultural systems coalesced. This article presents archaeobotanical an...

In the first part of the study, the authors reviewed and evaluated archaeofaunal, archaeological, iconographical, and historiographical information from the Neolithic Period up to the end of the nineteenth century. The domesticated horse (Equus Caballus) was imported to the island at the end of the 3rd millennium B.C.E. and ca 1500 B.C.E. was an in...

This paper presents an archaeozoological dataset listing numbers of identified fragments for domestic cattle, sheep/goat, pig and horse from archaeological sites in the Netherlands dating from the Bronze Age to the Early Medieval period (c. 2000 BC – AD 1050) [1]. In addition to fragment numbers per species, the geo-referenced dataset includes chro...

Recent advances in interdisciplinary archaeological research in Arabia have focused on the evolution and historical development of regional human populations as well as the diverse patterns of cultural change, migration, and adaptations to environmental fluctuations. Obtaining a comprehensive understanding of cultural developments such as the emerg...

Synecdemus Novus is a dataset of published archaeological sites, buildings, and associated markers located in Crete and dating between the Late Roman Period (3rd century C.E.) and the Venetian domination of the island (1204 C.E.). The dataset, consisting of 1234 entries, lists the location, spatial coordinates, type of the site/building/marker, chr...

The origins and dispersal of the chicken across the ancient world remains one of the most enigmatic questions regarding Eurasian domesticated animals. The lack of agreement concerning timing and centers of origin is due to issues with morphological identifications, a lack of direct dating, and poor preservation of thin, brittle bird bones. Here we...

We gathered evidence on the occurrence of equines in the island of Crete from the Neolithic until 1895. We relied on published archaeological and osteological records plus on historical written documents. Our dataset includes a description of the type of evidence, where this was located, and the associated absolute and relative chronologies. The co...

Millet is a highly adaptable plant whose cultivation dramatically altered ancient economies in northern Asia. The adoption of millet is associated with increased subsistence reliability in semi-arid settings and perceived as a cultigen compatible with pastoralism. Here, we examine the pace of millet’s transmission and locales of adoption by compili...

The present article introduces Zanadamu, a comprehensive geo-temporal-referenced dataset that amalgamates all published stable isotope carbon and oxygen measurements on tooth enamel from African hominins, dated between 4.4 and 0.005 Ma. Zanadamu serves as a research tool for investigating hominin evolution by facilitating the examination of how dif...

The extreme environments of the Tibetan Plateau offer considerable challenges to human survival, demanding novel adaptations. While the role of biological and agricultural adaptations in enabling early human colonization of the plateau has been widely discussed, the contribution of pastoralism is less well understood, especially the dairy pastorali...

Domesticated yaks endure as iconic symbols of high-altitude frozen landscapes, where herding communities depend on their high-fat milk, transport, dung, and natural fibers. While there is established proteomic evidence for ancient consumption of ruminant and horse milk in the mountains and steppes of northern Eurasia, yak dairy products have yet to...

The RomAniDat data community is a network of experts from diverse fields including archaeozoology, archaeology, and history, who collaborate on the collection of faunal data from the Roman period. Compiled data is made available via Pandora, a new technological platform that allows for the building of data communities where its members directly man...

AfriArch is an archaeological and paleoenvironmental data community designed to integrate datasets related to human-environmental interactions in Holocene Africa. Here we present a dataset of bioarchaeological stable isotope (C/N/O) and radiocarbon measurements from African archaeological sites spanning the Holocene. Modern measurements, when repor...

Santiago de Compostela is, together with Rome and Jerusalem, one of the three main pilgrimage and religious centres for Catholicism. The belief that the remains of St James the Great, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ, is buried there has stimulated, since their reported discovery in the 9th century AD, a significant flow of people from ac...

Stable isotope analysis of teeth and bones is regularly applied by archeologists and paleoanthropologists seeking to reconstruct diets, ecologies, and environments of past hominin populations. Moving beyond the now prevalent study of stable isotope ratios from bulk materials, researchers are increasingly turning to stable isotope ratios of individu...

The origins and dispersal of the chicken across the ancient world remains one of the most enigmatic questions regarding Eurasian domesticated animals1,2. The lack of agreement regarding the timing and center of origin is due, in large part, to issues with morphological identifications, a lack of direct dating, and poor preservation of thin bird bon...

The period from c. AD 900 to AD 1300 in southern Africa is characterized by transitions from small-scale Iron Age mixed economy communities to the beginnings of more intensive food production and eventually the emergence of complex polities. In Zambia, this coincides with the appearance of larger and more permanent agro-pastoralist villages that be...

During the Early Bronze Age, populations of the western Eurasian steppe expanded across an immense area of northern Eurasia. Combined archaeological and genetic evidence supports widespread Early Bronze Age population movements out of the Pontic–Caspian steppe that resulted in gene flow across vast distances, linking populations of Yamnaya pastoral...

The remains of those who perished at Herculaneum in 79 CE offer a unique opportunity to examine lifeways across an ancient community who lived and died together. Historical sources often allude to differential access to foodstuffs across Roman society but provide no direct or quantitative information. By determining the stable isotope values of ami...

The introduction of farming had far-reaching impacts on health, social structure and demography. Although the spread of domesticated plants and animals has been extensively tracked, it is unclear how these nascent economies developed within different environmental and cultural settings. Using molecular and isotopic analysis of lipids from pottery,...

Populations in Mongolia from the late second millennium B.C.E. through the Mongol Empire are traditionally assumed, by archaeologists and historians, to have maintained a highly specialized horse-facilitated form of mobile pastoralism. Until recently, a dearth of direct evidence for prehistoric human diet and subsistence economies in Mongolia has r...

A synthetic history of human land use Humans began to leave lasting impacts on Earth's surface starting 10,000 to 8000 years ago. Through a synthetic collaboration with archaeologists around the globe, Stephens et al. compiled a comprehensive picture of the trajectory of human land use worldwide during the Holocene (see the Perspective by Roberts)....

The practice of agriculture across the Mediterranean basin has had significant social and economic consequences, including the development of social inequalities. To inform on plant water status and thus on agricultural management techniques and environmental conditions during the first half of the second millennium BCE, we measured stable carbon i...

The analysis of lipids (fats, oils and waxes) absorbed within archaeological pottery has revolutionized the study of past diets and culinary practices. However, this technique can lack taxonomic and tissue specificity and is often unable to disentangle signatures resulting from the mixing of different food products. Here, we extract ancient protein...

The ancient Greek world emerged during the Bronze Age and was part of a network of cultures intertwined within the Mediterranean region. Its development was determined by multiple causes but heavily influenced by close interactions with the peoples and cultures of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Ancient Greek political and social dynamics have been prim...

The number of published δ15N and δ13C stable isotope determinations on archaeological human skeletal material has now reached numbers that allow for statistical analyses. Our study draws on data collected for a recent publication (Scheibner 2016) and additional entries, amounting to more than 2500 individuals of at least infans II age to ensure a p...

Stable carbon and oxygen isotope analysis of human and animal tooth enamel carbonate has been applied in paleodietary, paleoecological, and paleoenvironmental research from recent historical periods back to over 10 million years ago. Bulk approaches provide a representative sample for the period of enamel mineralization, while sequential samples wi...

This paper describes IsoArcH, a new web-based database of isotopic data for bioarchaeological samples from the Graeco-Roman world and its margins. IsoArcH was designed as a cooperative platform for the dissemination of isotopic data and associated archaeological information. IsoArcH follows the open access model and is freely accessible online (htt...

IsoArcH is a new open-access and cooperative web-based repository for isotopic data and associated archaeological information of bioarchaeological samples from the Graeco-Roman world and its fringes (http://www.isoarch.eu). Created for paleodietary, paleomobility and paleoenvironmental reconstruction research purposes, IsoArcH gathers up 17,000 pub...

Isotopic proxies (e.g. δ13C, δ15N, δ18O, δ34S, 87Sr/86Sr, 14C) are increasingly applied in Roman archaeology to provide additional valuable information on a wide range of past human activities. Examples include, among others, the reconstruction of past human subsistence or mobility and animal or crop management practices. As isotopic data for the R...

Les isotopes stables sont aujourd’hui des outils d’investigation couramment employés pour appréhender les régimes alimentaires, les schémas de mobilité, les activités agricoles, les pratiques d’élevage, et les changements environnementaux durant l’Antiquité. Face à l’augmentation exponentielle des études abordant ces thématiques et des données isot...

Stable isotope analysis has been utilized in archaeology since the 1970s, yet standardized protocols for terminology, sampling, pretreatment evaluation, calibration, quality assurance and control, data presentation, and graphical or statistical treatment still remain lacking in archaeological applications. Here, we present recommendations and requi...

La necrópolis del oppidum de Monte Bernorio fue uno de los primeros cementerios de la Edad del Hierro excavados en España. No obstante, la atención a los excepcionales materiales metálicos descubiertos en ella, unido a la escasez de restos relacionados con los rituales, ha impedido conocer hasta este momento qué tipo de ceremonias funerarias se des...

Carbon isotope measurements of individual fatty acids (C16:0 and C18:0) recovered from archaeological pottery vessels are widely used in archaeology to investigate past culinary and economic practices. Typically, such isotope measurements are matched with reference to food sources for straightforward source identification, or simple linear models a...

RATIONALE: Isotopic analysis of archaeological charred plant remains offers useful archaeological information. However, adequate sample pre-treatment protocols may be necessary to provide a contamination-free isotopic signal while limiting sample loss and achieving a high throughput. Under these constraints research was undertaken to compare the pe...

Carbon is one of the most abundant elements in the biosphere, and a key element for understanding how consumer and resource relationships affect ecosystem functioning. To trace carbon sources, ecologists predominantly rely on stable carbon ratios but variable ¹³ C baselines and diet‐to‐consumer offsets can lead to ambiguous results. To improve sour...

AMS-radiocarbon measurements of amino acids can potentially provide more reliable radiocarbon dates than bulk collagen analysis. Nonetheless, the applicability of such an approach is often limited by the low-throughput of existing isolation methods and difficulties in determining the contamination introduced during the separation process. A novel t...

A multidisciplinary research project was undertaken to investigate the subsistence strategies adopted by populations living in the vicinity of Lake Shagara in the forest zone of Eastern Europe during the Eneolithic period and the Bronze Age. The analyses focused on the graves from the Shagara cemetery located near Lake Shagara.

Se presentan los análisis del contexto funerario del sitio El Gaucho, a partir de un enfoque interdisciplinario. Este sitio se ubica cronológicamente en el período Arcaico VI (3500 -1500 cal a.p.) en la costa de Taltal- Paposo (Salazar et al. 2015). La particularidad del hallazgo reside en que fue descubierto y levantado por aficionados, resguardad...

From material culture evidence dating as early as 7500 cal BC, it has been established that populations from the interfluvic coast in northern Chile adapted to a maritime economic livelihood. During the 2nd millennium BC, local populations began to experience major social changes arising mainly from an increase in contacts with agropastoral populat...

The island cemetery site of Ostorf (Germany) consists of individual human graves containing Funnel Beaker ceramics dating to the Early or Middle Neolithic. However, previous isotope and radiocarbon analysis demonstrated that the Ostorf individuals had a diet rich in freshwater fish. The present study was undertaken to quantitatively reconstruct the...

Quantitative individual human diet reconstruction using isotopic data and a Bayesian approach typically requires the inclusion of several model parameters, such as individual isotopic data, isotopic and macronutrient composition of food groups, diet-to-tissue isotopic offsets and dietary routing. In an archaeological context, sparse data may hamper...

Preface—Radiocarbon and Diet: Aquatic Food Resources and Reservoir Effects - Volume 57 Issue 4 - Ricardo Fernandes, John Meadows, Alexander Dreves

Aquatic landscapes such as rivers, lakes, and seas played an important role in past human behaviour, affecting modes of subsistence, patterns of mobility, access to material resources, and technological choices and their developments. The interaction with aquatic landscapes was also influential in the establishment of economic and social structures...

Stable isotope analysis represents the principal scientific technique used in the reconstruction of ancient human diet. Characterisation of human diet requires that the isotopic baseline is established, i.e. the isotopic signals of consumed food groups. However, cooking may alter the bulk isotopic signal of food groups through the selective loss of...

Radiocarbon reservoir effects (RREs) are observed when the 14 C concentration of aquatic reservoirs is lower than the contemporary atmosphere. Within these reservoirs, aquatic species will also have a 14 C depleted signal, and humans feeding on these species will show a dietary RRE. Human dietary RREs are often viewed as a problem for the establish...

Significance Recent investigation of several mammalian hosts suggests that their intestinal bacterial communities display evidence of clusters characterized by differences in specific bacterial taxa, a concept referred to as enterotypes. By performing stable isotope analysis of environmental samples, monitoring communities during dietary shifts, an...

Human and animal diet reconstruction studies that rely on tissue chemical signatures aim at providing estimates on the relative intake of potential food groups. However, several sources of uncertainty need to be considered when handling data. Bayesian mixing models provide a natural platform to handle diverse sources of uncertainty while allowing t...

Ancient bone bioapatite is a potential source of diverse and significant elemental and isotopic data that could be used to provide information on ancient chronologies, paleoenvironments, and paleodiets. However, buried bone bioapatite often undergoes diagenesis and foreign contaminants alter the original biogenic signal. Though different meth...

Understanding the origins of gut microbial community structure is critical for the identification and interpretation of potential fitness-related traits for the host. The presence of community clusters characterized by differences in the abundance of signature taxa, referred to as enterotypes, is a debated concept first reported in humans and later...

The study of archaeological artefacts using deployed in situ analytical instruments presents some obvious advantages. Including, obtaining an immediate feedback that can be used to redefine in real-time fieldwork strategies. Ideally analytical field instruments should also have characteristics that limit damage to the studied artefact.Here, we pres...

This paper investigates the correlation between monthly average temperatures and tithe leasing dates in the Low Countries between 1600 and 1810. The information was obtained from manorial tithe leasing records distributed across the Netherlands and Belgium. Similar research in France and in Switzerland relied on annual dates of grape harvest as a t...

Recently, several case studies have demonstrated the presence of human radiocarbon dietary reservoir effects in inland contexts. Freshwater reservoir effects present a high degree of variability, making it difficult to define local reservoir effect reference values necessary for correcting chronologies based on 14C dating of human bone material. He...

The current study considers a mixed environmental/historical statistical model to establish a probabil-ity map for settlement locations in Crete's Malia-Lasithi region during the Minoan Protopalatial period. The work represents the continuation of previous research that focused on site location choices during the Protopalatial and whereby a compari...

Carbon stable isotope ratios (δ 13 C), measured in human bone collagen (δ 13 C collagen) and bioapatite (δ 13 C bioapatite), are commonly used indicators in ancient human diet reconstruc-tion. The underlying assumption is that human tissues broadly reflect the δ 13 C signal of dietary food sources (δ 13 C diet) plus an isotopic offset. However, int...

This volume contains thirty-five papers from a 2010 conference on landscape archaeology focusing on the definition of landscape as used by processual archaeologists, earth scientists, and most historical geographers, in contrast to the definition favored by postprocessual archaeologists, cultural geographers, and anthropologists. This tension provi...

Archaeological bone undergoes alterations after burial (diagenesis) that constitute a problem for the survival of archaeological information. A common method to assess this alteration is Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR). However, the commonly applied method (FTIR–KBr) is destructive and sample preparation may influence the results. Th...