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Publications (85)
Zoonotic diseases—human diseases of animal origin—represent one of the world's greatest health challenges, both today and in the past. Since the Neolithic, zoonotic diseases have been one of the major factors shaping and influencing human adaptation. Archaeology is ideally situated to provide the long view on human–animal–pathogen relationships thr...
Zoonotic brucellosis from the long view: Can the past contribute to the present? - Robin Bendrey, Guillaume Fournié
Human communities made the transition from hunter-foraging to more sedentary agriculture and herding at multiple locations across Southwest Asia through the Early Neolithic period (ca. 10,000-7000 cal. BC). Societies explored strategies involving increasing management and development of plants, animals, materials, technologies, and ideologies speci...
Today, brucellosis is the most common global bacterial zoonosis, bringing with it a range of significant health and economic consequences, yet it is rarely identified from the archaeological record. Detection and understanding of past zoonoses could be improved by triangulating evidence and proxies generated through different approaches. The comple...
During the fourth millennium BC, public institutions developed at several large settlements across greater Mesopotamia. These are widely acknowledged as the first cities and states, yet surprisingly little is known about their emergence, functioning and demise. Here, the authors present new evidence of public institutions at the site of Shakhi Kora...
This book sketches the first archaeological history of the lower Sirwan/upper Diyala river valley of north-east Iraq and adjacent landscapes over a period of c. 12,000 years, from the earliest signs of human presence until the mid-first millennium BCE, based on data gathered between 2013 and 2023 by the Sirwan Regional Project (SRP). The central re...
Writing a journal article is a different skill to writing a postgraduate thesis or a technical report. Getting published is an important step in academic careers, so it is a key skill to master. It is obviously good to publish completed research, to disseminate the research to wider academic and public communities. Your first publications are often...
We are excited to announce a new category of manuscript in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology: “Osteoarchaeological identification guides”. These are papers that will provide advances in diagnostic criteria for osteoarchaeological research, such as zooarchaeological species identification. They will offer major contributions to method an...
The siege and conquest of ancient cities was a popular topic for epic tales and ballads during the Bronze Age and Iron Age. In their recently published article in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, Cheryl Anderson presents her study of the human remains recovered from the excavations at Kaman-Kalehöyük in Turkey. This ancient town was f...
Archaeological material adds a temporal dimension to evolutionary studies that is valuable for elucidating long-term population stability and evolutionary shifts for species closely associated with humans. Here, a two-dimensional geometric morphometrics approach on first upper molars was applied to modern and archaeological samples to assess the ev...
Over the last 10,000 y, humans have manipulated fallow deer populations with varying outcomes. Persian fallow deer ( Dama mesopotamica ) are now endangered. European fallow deer ( Dama dama ) are globally widespread and are simultaneously considered wild, domestic, endangered, invasive and are even the national animal of Barbuda and Antigua. Despit...
A fascinating study published in this issue by Kalisher and their team examined the remains of those people previously excavated from a cemetery at Ashkelon dating from the 10th-8th centuries BCE. They investigate lifestyle in the population by focussing on the ways they used their teeth. In order to understand how people used their teeth in the pa...
Here we explore the long-term trajectories of human–domestic equid relationships from the domestication of donkeys and horses to the present day. We consider some of the characteristics of these animals that have shaped their relationships with humans, and how the plasticity of these traits has enabled them to adapt to new socio-ecological contexts...
Intermittently we witness how evidence from one academic field can have a significant impact on researchers working in other specialties; in this case, the fields of osteoarchaeology and medical history. In this issue an article by Micarelli et al. (2023) entitled An unprecedented case of cranial surgery in Longobard Italy presents a fascinating ex...
Micromammals, like rodents and shrews, adapt rapidly to take advantage of new food sources, habitats and ecological niches, frequently thriving in anthropogenic environments. Their remains, often retrieved during archaeological investigations, can be a valuable source of information about the past environmental conditions as well as interspecies in...
The One Health concept explicitly acknowledges that the well-being of humans, animals and environments are linked. These relationships are complex and dynamic, evolving through time. Temporal perspectives also frame biological evolution and contextualise changes in our knowledge base and disease mitigation measures.
Book details
Svetlana V Pankova and St John Simpson (eds.) Masters of the Steppe: the Impact of the Scythians and Later Nomad Societies of Eurasia. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2020. Paperback; 802 pages; 604 figures, 21 tables, ISBN: 978-1-78969-647-9
In this issue, Kveiborg and Nørgaard (2022) present detailed palaeopathological evaluation of six Iron Age horses from Denmark found in association with ritually deposited warrior paraphernalia, including large amounts of weaponry and horse harnesses. Based on their context and treatment, these horses are believed to have belonged to defeated armie...
Beveled Rim Bowls (BRBs) are the most iconic and well-known vessel type of ancient Southwest Asia. Roughly and carelessly produced, these conical bowls are attested in their thousands at 4th millennium BCE sites from southern Iraq and the Persian Gulf to the highlands of eastern Turkey and Iran. Questions regarding their function and relationship w...
Understanding the diets of archaeological animal populations can inform on the diverse and complex interactions been past human, animal and plant communities. Stable isotope analysis of animal skeletal structures recovered from archaeological sites is a commonly applied technique to provide dietary insights. In this issue, two papers make valuable...
In this issue we have some fascinating papers that vividly bring to light the interplay between trauma and death in past populations. One study examines the remains of German bomber crews who died during the Battle of Britain from 1940 (Verna et al., 2022). We might expect that some of those aircraft who made it back to their airfields in northern...
Domestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare¹. However, modern domesticated breeds do not descend from the earliest domestic horse lineage associated with archaeological evidence of bridling, milking and corralling2–4 at Botai, Central Asia around 3500 bc³. Other longstanding candidate regions for horse domestic...
Process philosophy offers a metaphysical foundation for domestication studies. This grounding is especially important given the European colonialist origin of ‘domestication’ as a term and 19th century cultural project. We explore the potential of process archaeology for deep-time investigation of domestication relationships, drawing attention to t...
Pigs are one of the earliest domesticated livestock species, first domesticated at least 10,000 years ago. The domestication of wild boar, including associated morphological changes, is a long process over several millennia. Across Southwest Asia, management, domestication and the adaption of the different livestock species was a highly localized p...
The analyses were performed on a right third premolar (P3) of a white rhinoceros female (Ceratotherium simum, Burchell 1817). The specimen was born in captivity at London Zoo (Zoological Society of London), then in the 1970s transferred to Kiev Zoo (Peremohy Avenue), Ukraine, and was kept there until it died at a documented chronological age of 48...
Zoonotic diseases – human diseases of animal origin – represent one of the world’s greatest health challenges, both today and in the past. Since the Neolithic, zoonotic diseases have been one of the major factors shaping and influencing human adaptation. Archaeology is ideally situated to provide the long view on human‐animal‐pathogen relationships...
Coprolites (fossilized faeces) can provide valuable insights into species' diet and related habits. In archaeozoological contexts, they are a potential source of information on human-animal interactions as well as human and animal subsistence. However, despite a broad discussion on coprolites in archaeology, such finds are rarely subject to detaile...
Book details Capriles J M and Tripcevich N (eds.) The Archaeology of Andean Pastoralism Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press; 2016. 280 pages, 87 figures, 25 tables ISBN 978-0-8263-5702-1
Genome-wide analysis of 67 ancient Near Eastern cattle, Bos taurus, remains reveals
regional variation that has since been obscured by admixture in modern populations.
Comparisons of genomes of early domestic cattle to their aurochs progenitors identify
diverse origins with separate introgressions of wild stock. A later region-wide Bronze
Age shift...
Kassite Babylonia counts among the great powers of the Late Bronze Age Near East. Its kings exchanged diplomatic letters with the pharaohs of Egypt and held their own against their Assyrian and Elamite neighbors. Babylonia's internal workings, however, remain understood in their outlines only, as do its elite's expansionary ambitions, the degrees t...
Genome-wide analysis of 67 ancient Near Eastern cattle, Bos taurus, remains reveals regional variation that has since been obscured by admixture in modern populations. Comparisons of genomes of early domestic cattle to their aurochs progenitors identify diverse origins with separate introgressions of wild stock. A later region-wide Bronze Age shift...
Horse and donkey domestication and their use for transportation had profound impacts on past human societies, with repercussions lasting to the present day. The story of these domestications is complex, with notable differences in their emergent pathways. The earliest evidence of horse husbandry is clearly in a context where it was the main animal...
Wild horses thrived across Eurasia until the Last Glacial Maximum to collapse after the beginning of the Holocene. The interplay of climate change, species adaptability to different environments, and human domestication in horse history is still lacking coherent continental-scale analysis integrating different lines of evidence. We assembled tempor...
Supplementary material – Parameters and sensitivity analysis. In this supplementary material we provide further information about the choice and calculation of parameter values, and we describe the results of the sensitivity analysis.
Zoonotic pathogens are frequently hypothesized as emerging with the origins of farming, but evidence of this is elusive in the archaeological records. To explore the potential impact of animal domestication on zoonotic disease dynamics and human infection risk, we developed a model simulating the transmission of Brucella melitensis within early dom...
Kardulias, N (ed.) The Ecology of Pastoralism.
Boulder: University Press of Colorado; 2015. 272 pages, ISBN 978-1-60732-342-6 Abstract: This book presents a rich collection of case studies exploring the ecology of pastoralism. Its aim is to examine the ways in which pastoralism operates as a highly flexible system, through the adaptations of both t...
A range of archaeological and palaeoclimatic studies use isotopic analyses of ungulate hypsodont tooth enamel. Such studies commonly assume a constant growth rate, though this has not been fully tested. Here, we use stable isotope analyses of sequential enamel samples to study horse tooth growth. We fit the data using models corresponding to consta...
This volume presents an ethnoarchaeological study of the Kel Tadrart Tuareg of the central Sahara (south-west Libya). The study not only provides a useful and richly detailed framework for better understanding the archaeological record of this region, but also contributes a wider range of insights on the adaptability of pastoralists to desert envir...
The purpose of this article is to bring together archaeological evidence relating to the consumption of porpoises from excavations at both Dover and Canterbury. A contrast can be drawn between porpoise remains recovered from Anglo-Norman fishermen in Dover and contemporary remains from two sites within the Cathedral Precincts at Canterbury. These d...
A case study of a goat metatarsal exhibiting a complex diaphyseal fracture from Pottery Neolithic Jarmo in the Central Zagros region of the eastern Fertile Crescent is here described and analysed. The Central Zagros is one of the areas with the earliest evidence for goat domestication. The significance of the pathology may be viewed within the cont...
A modelling approach is presented in which archaeological data on the first farmers in central and western Europe, called the Linearbandkeramik (LBK; 5600–4900 cal BC), are cross-analysed with the corresponding environmental data. The purpose of this approach is to reconstruct the geographical expansion and subsequent dissolution of the LBK culture...
The papers brought together in this volume were presented at the Association for Environmental Archaeology, Autumn Conference 2012, held at the University of Reading, UK. This meeting brought together a rich and diverse set of papers on the applications of environmental archaeology to the study of the origins and development of Neolithic
life-ways,...
This paper presents preliminary results from an ethnoarchaeological study of animal husbandry in the modern village of Bestansur, situated in the lower Zagros Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. This research explores how modern families use and manage their livestock within the local landscape and identifies traces of this use. The aim is to provide the...
This article presents the conception and the conceptual results of a modelling representation of the farming systems of the Linearbandkeramik Culture (LBK) Assuming that there were permanent fields (PF) then, we suggest four ways that support the sustainability of such a farming system over time: a generalized pollarding and coppicing of trees to i...
Review of Camels in Asia and North Africa: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on their Past and Present Significance. Eva-Maria Knoll and Pamela Burger, eds. 2012. Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Austrian Academy of Sciences Press), Wien (Vienna). Pp. 298, 111 colour illustrations, 33 black-and-white illustrations. €45.00 (pape...
This article presents the conception and the conceptual results of a modelling representation of the farming systems of the Linearbandkeramik Culture (LBK) Assuming that there were permanent fields (PF) then, we suggest four ways that support the sustainability of such a farming system over time: a generalized pollarding and coppicing of trees to i...
This paper presents direct radiocarbon measurements on horse skeletal remains from the Beaker period settlement at the site of Newgrange in Ireland, finds which have previously been argued as the earliest domestic horses in Ireland. The new determinations date the horse remains to the Irish Iron Age and shed important new light on the introduction...
Porter, A: Mobile Pastoralism and the Formation of Near Eastern Civilizations: Weaving Together Society
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2012
389 pages, ISBN 978-0-521-76443-8
Serial sampling and stable isotope analysis performed along the growth axis of vertebrate tooth enamel records differences attributed to seasonal variation in diet, climate or animal movement. Because several months are required to obtain mature enamel in large mammals, modifications in the isotopic composition of environmental parameters are not i...
There is a period of some 5000 years or so in the prehistory of Europe when horse populations were greatly depleted and perhaps even disappeared in many places. Before this time, during the Upper Palaeolithic, wild horses were common; after, during the Bronze Age, domestic horses were being raised and used across Europe. What happened in between is...
En Asie interieure, tout tourne autour du betail et, parmi le betail, le animal roi, c'est le cheval. Libre et soumis, monte, bate et attele, battu, ereinte et sacrifie, trait, mange et corroye, conte et chante, c'est le cheval tout entier qui est magnifie. (p.16)
Occipital bone lesions on an Iron Age horse cranium from the burial mound of Arzhan 1, Tuva, Central Asia, are described and interpreted. Cavitations around the nuchal ligament attachment site on the skull are interpreted as foci of inflammation and necrosis following local infection. It is suggested that the pathology represents a case of ‘poll-ev...
BackgroundPastoral systems may be envisaged as a product of a number of interacting variables: the characteristics of the animals, the
environment, and of the human culture. Animal physiological and behavioural characteristics affect their suitability to different
climatic, topographical and ecological environments. This paper attempts to advance o...
Horse domestication revolutionized transport, communications, and warfare in prehistory, yet the identification of early domestication
processes has been problematic. Here, we present three independent lines of evidence demonstrating domestication in the Eneolithic
Botai Culture of Kazakhstan, dating to about 3500 B.C.E. Metrical analysis of horse...
This paper presents a pilot study of strontium (Sr) isotope ratios from Iron Age horse tooth enamel samples. It compares 87Sr/86Sr ratios from horse teeth to estimates for local ranges of biologically available strontium, to investigate whether horses were being bred at the sites where their remains were discovered. A horse from Middle Iron Age Roo...
This article describes and interprets pathological changes in two Iron Age horse skeletons from archaeological sites in southern England, which provide evidence of possible bacterial bone infection (bacterial osteomyelitis). The lesions identified in the two horse skeletons are compared to reported cases from veterinary literature, and the potentia...
This article presents methodology for use in analysing archaeological horse remains. The aim of the methodology is to improve understanding of the use of horses in the past. One of the problems in the interpretation of horse use from archaeological bone assemblages is that there is only limited understanding of some of the observable changes to equ...
Pathological changes and other alterations in an Iron Age horse skeleton from Danebury, Hampshire, England are described and used to interpret the possible use of the ani-mal. The low level of pathology present in what is a relatively old animal (c.16-18 years of age at death) suggests that the horse was not heavily used, perhaps employed to pull a...
This article describes alterations to equid lower second premolars and diastemata from a series of known life history equids and a number of archaeological horse specimens from the British Iron Age. Two new methods for recording bit wear are proposed involving the analysis of the extent and morphology of enamel/dentine exposure on the anterior edge...
This article presents a methodology for recording and quantifying the ossification of the interosseous ligaments between the metapodials in horses, including a scoring system for defining stages in the development of this lesion. The method is applied to a sample of ten Przewalski's horse skeletons from the National Museum, Prague. This case study...
An archaeological excavation was conducted on the site of Deptford power stations prior to the redevelopment of the site (National Grid Reference TQ 3760 7780). The excavations followed an evaluation that identified two areas where significant archaeological remains survived.
The first of these excavation areas, on the site of the Trinity House alm...