Silvia Guimaraes

Institute Milà i Fonatanals CSIC Barcelona · Arcaheology of Social Dynamics

As the effects of global warming become increasingly complex and difficult to manage, the conservation and sustainable use of locally adapted sheep breeds are gaining ground. Portuguese native sheep breeds are important reservoirs of genetic diversity, highly adapted to harsh environments and reared in low input production systems. Genomic data tha...

Log Size Indexes (LSI) allow the increase of the number of data and have been used in a number of zooarchaeological studies since 1950. However, some standards to calculate the log ratios remain unpublished, the calculation of the indexes can be tedious, and it is further hindered by the diversity of data recording practices. The R package ‘zoolog’...

This volume originates in a conference session that took place at the 2018 International Council of Archaeozoology conference in Ankara, Turkey, entitled "Humans and Cattle: Interdisciplinary Perspectives to an Ancient Relationship." The aim of the session was to bring together zooarchaeologists and their colleagues from various other research fiel...

This paper presents the facial reconstruction of a Mesolithic dog whose skeleton was recovered from the Muge shell middens (Portugal) in the 19th century. We used the anatomical deformation approach based on a collection of computer tomography images as an attempt to reconstruct the Muge dog’s head appearance. We faced a few challenges due to the l...

Domesticated dogs have been present in the Iberian Peninsula long before other domesticated species, back to the late Palaeolithic period. Their origin is still uncertain, but dogs were already well established during the Chalcolithic period (ca. 5000–4000 BP). This study employed a multidisciplinary approach comprising osteometric, radiographic an...

The high levels of degradation characteristic of ancient DNA molecules severely hinder the recovery of endogenous DNA fragments and the discovery of genetic variation, limiting downstream population analyses. Optimization of read mapping strategies for ancient DNA is therefore essential to maximize the information we are able to recover from archae...

There are strong interactions between an economic system and its ecological context. In this sense, livestock have been an integral part of human economies since the Neolithic, contributing significantly to the creation and maintenance of agricultural anthropized landscapes. For this reason, in the frame of the ERC-StG project ’ZooMWest’ we collect...

The rise of social complexity in the Mediterranean during late prehistory has been the object of many regional studies. The emergence of increasingly complex social hierarchies took place at different paces in different areas around the Mediterranean-e.g. in the Near East, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Iberia, north Africa-but also different tempos...

Throughout the Western provinces of the Roman Empire, greater economic and political connectivity had a major impact on agricultural production, which grew in scale and specialisation after integration with the Roman state. However, uniquely in Western Europe, farming strategies in Italy began to evolve centuries before the Roman conquest, and many...

Despite the important roles that horses have played in human history, particularly in the spread of languages and cultures, and correspondingly intensive research on this topic, the origin of domestic horses remains elusive. Several domestication centers have been hypothesized, but most of these have been invalidated through recent paleogenetic stu...

In this study, we attempted to carry out a genomic amplification of ancient DNA from four pre-historic Iberian dogs using the Illumina sequencing method; to assign mtDNA sequences to the major dog haplogroups and to characterize some phenotypic traits of these dogs.

The site of Birgelsgaerten in Ostheim (Haut-Rhin, France) was excavated in 2008 by the Pôle d’Archéologie Interdépartemental Rhénan. This rural settlement is located on the edge of a terrace of loess and an alluvial area crossed by a palaeochannel. Around 2500 animal bones were retrieved from the stratigraphie layers attributed to the Early Middle...

The cat has long been important to human societies as a pest-control agent, object of symbolic value and companion animal, but little is known about its domestication process and early anthropogenic dispersal. Here we show, using ancient DNA analysis of geographically and temporally widespread archaeological cat remains, that both the Near Eastern...

Taxonomic over-splitting of extinct or endangered taxa, due to an incomplete knowledge of both skeletal morphological variability and the geographical ranges of past populations, continues to confuse the link between isolated extant populations and their ancestors. This is particularly problematic with the genus Equus. To more reliably determine th...

All tables are presented as separate spreadsheets consolidated into a single Excel file. Table A Description of all samples analyzed Table B Primers used to amplify mitochondrial sequences Table C Description of published sequences used Table D Sample location and results of sPCA analysis Table E Summary statistics for the kiangs and dziggetais of...

Supplementary figures of the phylogenetic analyses followed by the detailed description of the archeological sites and the samples analyzed grouped in a single supporting document. Figure A: Global alignment of all sequences obtained and used for the various analyses Figure B: Diagnostic SNPs of the various clades Figure C: sPCA, distribution of th...

Taxonomic over-splitting of extinct or endangered taxa, due to an incomplete knowledge of both skeletal morphological variability and the geographical ranges of past populations, continues to confuse the link between isolated extant populations and their ancestors. This is particularly problematic with the genus Equus. To more reliably determine th...

Background: Climatic and environmental fluctuations as well as anthropogenic pressure have led to the extinction of much of Europe’s megafauna. The European bison or wisent (Bison bonasus), one of the last wild European large mammals, narrowly escaped extinction at the onset of the 20th century owing to hunting and habitat fragmentation. Little is...

Background Climatic and environmental fluctuations as well as anthropogenic pressure have led to the extinction of much of Europe’s megafauna. The European bison or wisent (Bison bonasus), one of the last wild European large mammals, narrowly escaped extinction at the onset of the 20th century owing to hunting and habitat fragmentation. Little is k...

The origin and dispersal of the domestic cat remain elusive despite its importance to human societies around the world. Archaeological evidence for domestication centers in the Near East and in Egypt is contested, and genetic data on modern cats show that Felis silvestris lybica , the subspecies of wild cat inhabiting at present the Near East and N...

Climatic and environmental fluctuations as well as anthropogenic pressure have led to the extinction of much of Europe’s megafauna. Here we show that the emblematic European bison has experienced several waves of population expansion, contraction and extinction during the last 50,000 years in Europe, culminating in a major reduction of genetic dive...

We present a cost-effective metabarcoding approach, aMPlex Torrent, which relies on an improved multiplex PCR adapted to highly degraded DNA, combining barcoding and next-generation sequencing to simultaneously analyze many heterogeneous samples. We demonstrate the strength of these improvements by generating a phylochronology through the genotypin...

Human gastrointestinal parasites are good indicators for hygienic conditions and health status of past and present individuals and communities. While microscopic analysis of eggs in sediments of archeological sites often allows their taxonomic identification, this method is rarely effective at the species level, and requires both the survival of in...

Pellets of raptors are an important source for the study of the taxonomy, phylogeography and ecological diversity of small vertebrates. Since birds of prey are efficient collecting agents for both rare species and those reluctant to enter traps, they offer an important complement to traditional trapping efforts in the field. The possibility of usin...

Palaeogenetic studies of faunal remains from archaeological sites can provide invaluable information if DNA is preserved. The quantity and quality of the genetic information that can be retrieved critically depends on the biomolecular preser-vation in the fossils. Here we report the assessment of the preservation state of DNA infaunal and human rem...

The available mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) data do not point to clear genetic relationships between current Tuscans and the Bronze-Age inhabitants of Tuscany, the Etruscans. To understand how and when such a genetic discontinuity may have arisen, we extracted and typed the mtDNAs of 27 medieval Tuscans from an initial sample of 61, spanning a period b...

We report the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis of the supposed remains of Francesco Petrarca. The optimal preservation of the remains permitted the retrieval of sufficient mtDNA for genetic analysis. DNA was extracted from a rib and a tooth. MtDNA sequences from the tooth and rib were not identical, suggesting they belonged to different individua...

We report on the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis of the supposed remains of Francesco Petrarca exhumed in November 2003, from the S. Maria Assunta church, in Arquà Padua (Italy) where he died in 1374. The optimal preservation of the remains allowed the retrieval of sufficient mtDNA for genetic analysis. DNA was extracted from a rib and a tooth a...

The recovery of DNA from archaeological remains is now possible to realize due to the advances that have been made in the field. This kind of analysis offers a very important tool for the study of the genetic relationships of extinct organisms with their contemporary relatives. The study of ancient DNA (aDNA) is complex and involves technical probl...