Helina S. Woldekiros’s research while affiliated with Washington University in St. Louis and other places

Anthropological and biophysical processes have shaped livestock genomes over Millenia and can explain their current geographic distribution and genetic divergence. We analyzed 57 Ethiopian indigenous domestic goat genomes alongside 67 equivalents of east, west, and north-west African, European, South Asian, Middle East, and wild Bezoar goats. Cluster, ADMIXTURE (K = 4) and phylogenetic analysis revealed four genetic groups comprising African, European, South Asian, and wild Bezoar goats. The Middle Eastern goats had an admixed genome of these four genetic groups. At K = 5, the West African Dwarf and Moroccan goats were separated from East African goats demonstrating a likely historical legacy of goat arrival and dispersal into Africa via the coastal Mediterranean Sea and the Horn of Africa. FST, XP-EHH, and Hp analysis revealed signatures of selection in Ethiopian goats overlaying genes for thermo-sensitivity, oxidative stress response, high-altitude hypoxic adaptation, reproductive fitness, pathogen defence, immunity, pigmentation, DNA repair, modulation of renal function and integrated fluid and electrolyte homeostasis. Notable examples include TRPV1 (a nociception gene); PTPMT1 (a critical hypoxia survival gene); RETREG (a regulator of reticulophagy during starvation), and WNK4 (a molecular switch for osmoregulation). These results suggest that human-mediated translocations and adaptation to contrasting environments are shaping indigenous African goat genomes.

Domestic goats are distributed worldwide, with approximately 35% of the one billion world goat population occurring in Africa. Ethiopia has 52.5 million goats, ~99.9% of which are considered indigenous landraces deriving from animals introduced to the Horn of Africa in the distant past by nomadic herders. They have continued to be managed by smallholder farmers and semi-mobile pastoralists throughout the region. We report here 57 goat genomes from 12 Ethiopian goat populations sampled from different agro-climates. The data were generated through sequencing DNA samples on the Illumina NovaSeq 6000 platform at a mean depth of 9.71x and 150 bp pair-end reads. In total, ~2 terabytes of raw data were generated, and 99.8% of the clean reads mapped successfully against the goat reference genome assembly at a coverage of 99.6%. About 24.76 million SNPs were generated. These SNPs can be used to study the population structure and genome dynamics of goats at the country, regional, and global levels to shed light on the species’ evolutionary trajectory.

The earliest settlements and states in the Horn of Africa were founded in mid to high-elevation areas by farmers and herders who were pioneers in agriculture and herding. Even today, places between mid- and high-elevation remain densely populated. The ancient Pre-Aksumites and Aksumites (1600 cal BCE–800 cal CE) of the north Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands established one of the most powerful states in the Horn of Africa in these high elevation areas through control of long-distance trade and intensive and extensive agriculture. However, despite the fact that agriculture was a significant source of wealth and subsistence for these ancient polities, there has been little research into the agricultural strategies of Pre-Aksumite and Aksumite societies. Using archaeological and faunal data collected from the site of Mezber dating from 1600 cal BCE to 400 cal CE, as well as prevsiously published data, this article provides zooarchaeological evidence for the earliest farming practices in the Horn of Africa. The research demonstrates a resilient highland agricultural strategy based on multispecies animal and plant resources, similar to most tropical agricultural systems today. A second important strategy of Pre-Aksumite farmers was the incorporation of both indigenous and exogenous plants and animals into their subsistance strategies. The Mezber site also offers one of the most thoroughly collected data to support multispecies farming practice in the north Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands.

[Full access to the article free until 21 Aug 2022 here: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1fLHI,rVDBbx8S -- after that, please email me for a copy] Abstract: The publication of data relevant to prehistoric socio-economies in southern Central Asia is growing, and it intersects with long-standing questions about how mixed farming-herding subsistence economies were organized on local and regional scales. We present new faunal data from the campsite of Ojakly in south-central Turkmenistan, dated to the Late Bronze Age (1900-1500 BCE). We situate the zooarchaeological data within the site's overall excavation results and against similarly-contextualized fauna and archaeological remains from culturally-related sites, particularly those reported from the BMAC/Oxus site of Gonur-depe. Despite some overlaps in the domestic animal species utilized at Ojakly and at nearby farming-focused sites in the Murghab, there is a clear contrast in terms of the subsistence focus and practices, beyond what would be expected if these groups were specialized economic subsets of a single socio-cultural tradition. The faunal patterns at Ojakly are consistent with a pastoral population that exclusively managed mixed herds as a full-time subsistence strategy. The analysis presented here fits within the vein of identifying localized socioeconomic adaptations of mobile pastoralists, especially as they blur traditional notions of "nomadic" and "farming" economies. At the same time, they add to larger datasets of temporal and regional relevance, and they are discussed within broader patterns known from published material.

Determining the age of bird remains after the cessation of growth is challenging due to the absence of techniques such as tooth eruption and wear available for mammals. Without these techniques it is difficult to reconstruct hunting strategies, husbandry regimes and wider human‐animal relationships. This paper presents a new method, developed from a collection (n = 71) of known‐age specimens of domestic fowl (Gallus gallus domesticus L. 1758), for assessing age based on the fusion and size of the tarsometatarsal spur. Using this method we reconstruct the demographics of domestic fowl from Iron Age to Early Modern sites in Britain to reveal the changing dynamics of human‐domestic fowl relationships. We highlight the advanced age that cockerels often attained in their early history and how their life expectancies have subsequently declined.

Beta Samati: discovery and excavation of an Aksumite town—Corrigendum - Volume 94 Issue 373 - Michael J. Harrower, Ioana A. Dumitru, Cinzia Perlingieri, Smiti Nathan, Kifle Zerue, Jessica L. Lamont, Alessandro Bausi, Jennifer L. Swerida, Jacob L. Bongers, Helina S. Woldekiros, Laurel A. Poolman, Christie M. Pohl, Steven A. Brandt, Elizabeth A. Peterson