Youri Van den Hurk

• Doctor of Philosophy
• PhD Student at University College London

The origins and prehistory of domestic sheep (Ovis aries) are incompletely understood; to address this, we generated data from 118 ancient genomes spanning 12,000 years sampled from across Eurasia. Genomes from Central Türkiye ~8000 BCE are genetically proximal to the domestic origins of sheep but do not fully explain the ancestry of later populati...

van den Hurk, Youri / Küchelmann, Hans Christian / Spindler, Luke (2024): Digging into a Biocultural Archive. The Potential and Urgency of Research on Historical Whale Bones Illustrated by Examples from Bremen. – Deutsches Schifffahrtsarchiv 41, 253-264 ...................................................................................................

The identification of archaeological cetacean specimens to the species level often presents challenges, primarily due to the frequent fragmentation of their remains. This limitation hampers our ability to comprehensively understand the spatiotemporal distributions of cetaceans in the past and constrains our knowledge of early whaling activities. To...

Between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, many small cetaceans (particularly dolphins) were killed in large numbers off the coasts of Europe and North Africa, due to perceived competition with fisheries. Dolphins were long considered as pests, responsible for reduced fish catches and damage to fishing gear. This conflict was particularly acut...

The walrus, Odobenus rosmarus, is an iconic pinniped and predominant molluscivore that is well adapted to Arctic and subarctic environments. Its circumpolar distribution, large body size and ivory tusks facilitated its vital role as food, raw material (for tools and art), income, and cultural influence on many Arctic Indigenous communities for mill...

Identification of the taxonomic origin of bone tools is an important, but often complicated, component of studying past societies. The species used for bone tool production provide insight into what species were exploited, potentially how, and for what purpose. Additionally, the choice of species may have important implications for the place of the...

Archaeological faunal remains provide key insights into human societies in the past, alongside information on previous resource utilisation and exploitation of wildlife populations. The great whales (Mysticete and sperm whales) were hunted unsustainably throughout the 16th - 20th centuries (herein defined as the modern period) leading to large popu...

Marine historical ecology provides a means to establish baselines to inform current fisheries management. Groupers (Epinephelidae) are key species for fisheries in the Mediterranean, which have been heavily overfished. Species abundance and distribution prior to the 20th century in the Mediterranean remains poorly known. To reconstruct the past bio...

Taxonomic identification of whale bones found during archaeological excavations is problematic due to their typically fragmented state. This difficulty limits understanding of both the past spatio-temporal distributions of whale populations and of possible early whaling activities. To overcome this challenge, we performed zooarchaeology by mass spe...

The recent exploitation of marine species is relatively well documented and understood in terms of impacts on species abundance, distribution, and resource use. In contrast, ancient exploitation of marine mammals remains poorly documented; in part, because a detailed meta-analysis of their presence in the zooarchaeological record is lacking. This i...

Suids (Sus sp.) played a crucial role in the transition to farming in northern Europe and, like in many regions, in the Netherlands pig husbandry became an important subsistence activity at Neolithic sites. Yet little is known about wild boar palaeoecology and hunting in the Late Mesolithic Netherlands with which to contextualize this transition. T...

Cetacean remains have been recovered from archaeological sites all over Europe, but are especially abundant in Scotland. These remains originate from all periods and have often been worked into artefacts or tools, including chopping blocks, plaques, combs, pegs, snecks and perforated vertebral epiphyseal discs. It still remains unclear which specie...

One hundred years of zooarchaeology in Groningen. In 1920, Albert Egges van Giffen founded the Biologisch-Archaeologisch Instituut. Even back in 1920, zooarchaeology was a main component of the institute’s research focus and van Giffen started a zooarchaeological reference collection. The zooarchaeology collection gradually expanded, and zooarchaeo...

Cetacean (whale, dolphin, and porpoise) remains are occasionally encountered at Roman and medieval sites in London and are regularly the topic of medieval historical sources. These sources are often concerned with whale strandings and the subsequent claims on the carcass by the king, queen, or other members of the nobility or clergy with jurisdicti...

Cattle were of great importance for the Neolithic farmers of southeastern Europe, in particular as farming expanded towards the well-watered regions of Džuljunica (ca. 6200–5500 cal. BCE), one of the earliest known Neolithic settlements in northeastern Bulgaria. The clear stratigraphy and the substantial Bos assemblage from Džuljunica Provided us w...

Medieval historical sources suggest that cetacean exploitation was, for large parts of Europe, restricted to the social elite. This appears to have also been the case for the Netherlands and Flanders. It remains unclear, however, how frequently active hunting was undertaken, and which species were targeted. Zooarchaeological cetacean remains are of...

More than fifty years ago, Anneke T. Clason published the first English-language archaeozoological study on Dutch faunal assemblages. Inspired by the anniversary of this landmark publication, this paper presents a status overview of Dutch archaeozoology organized in twelve themes (e.g. rituals, Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, medieval period). The...

Archaeological evidence indicates that pig domestication had begun by ∼10,500 y before the present (BP) in the Near East, and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) suggests that pigs arrived in Europe alongside farmers ∼8,500 y BP. A few thousand years after the introduction of Near Eastern pigs into Europe, however, their characteristic mtDNA signature disapp...

Archaeological evidence indicates that pig domestication had begun by ∼10,500 y before the present (BP) in the Near East, and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) suggests that pigs arrived in Europe alongside farmers ∼8,500 y BP. A few thousand years after the introduction of Near Eastern pigs into Europe, however, their characteristic mtDNA signature disapp...

A bulla tympanica of a grey whale (Eschrichtius robustus) from Wijster (Dr.) The animal remains from the native Romanperiod village at Wijster (province of Drenthe) were published by Dr Anneke T. Clason in 1967. Most of the remains are poorly preserved cattle and horse bone fragments. About half of them come from animal graves in farmyards or along...

The Bulgarian site Džuljunica-Smărdeš, dating to 6205-5529 cal. BC, is one of the oldest Neolithic sites in Europe. Both domestic cattle and caprines are present in the zooarchaeological assemblage, but Sus, in contrast, is extremely rare. It is not known if the earliest Neolithic people in Europe did rear domestic pigs, practised some form of pig...

The Bulgarian site Džuljunica-Smărdeš, dating to 6205-5529 cal. BC, is one of the oldest Neolithic sites in Europe. Both domestic cattle and caprines are present in the zooarchaeological assemblage, but Sus, in contrast, is extremely rare. It is not known if the earliest Neolithic people in Europe did rear domestic pigs, practised some form of pig...

Over the last few centuries, many cetacean species have witnessed dramatic global declines due to industrial overharvesting and other anthropogenic influences, and thus are key targets for conservation. Whale bones recovered from archaeological and palaeontological contexts can provide essential baseline information on the past geographical distrib...

Mammals This report presents summary information about the mammals in the Groningen University, Institute of Archaeology Zooarchaeological Research and Teaching Collections. It includes an overview of the amount and types of specimens, information on breeds, exotic and extinct species, geographic origin, and statistics about the IUCN status of the...

The zooarchaeological reference collection of the Groningen Institute of Archaeology (University of Groningen, Netherlands): The birds Overview A total of 2151 bird specimens are present in the reference collection at the Groninger Institute of Archaeology (GIA) comprising at least 428 different species of birds from 85 different family groups

The zooarchaeological reference collection of the Groningen Institute of Archaeology (University of Groningen, Netherlands): The Fish Overview A total of 732 fish specimens are present in the reference collection at the Groningen Institute of Archaeology (GIA) comprising at least 118 different species of fish from 53 different families.

Overview of the reptiles and amphibians present in the zooarchaeological reference collection of the Groningen Institute for Archaeology.