Cheryl A. Makarewicz

Use of domesticated pigs by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in northwestern Europe.

Mesolithic populations throughout Europe used diverse resource exploitation strategies that focused heavily on collecting and hunting wild prey. Between 5500 and 4200 cal BC, agriculturalists migrated into northwestern Europe bringing a suite of Neolithic technologies including domesticated animals. Here we investigate to what extent Mesolithic Ertebølle communities in northern Germany had access to domestic pigs, possibly through contact with neighbouring Neolithic agricultural groups. We employ a multidisciplinary approach, applying sequencing of ancient mitochondrial and nuclear DNA (coat colour-coding gene MC1R) as well as traditional and geometric morphometric (molar size and shape) analyses in Sus specimens from 17 Neolithic and Ertebølle sites. Our data from 63 ancient pig specimens show that Ertebølle hunter-gatherers acquired domestic pigs of varying size and coat colour that had both Near Eastern and European mitochondrial DNA ancestry. Our results also reveal that domestic pigs were present in the region ~500 years earlier than previously demonstrated.

Emerging genetic patterns of the european neolithic: Perspectives from a late neolithic bell beaker burial site in Germany

The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture in Europe is associated with demographic changes that may have shifted the human gene pool of the region as a result of an influx of Neolithic farmers from the Near East. However, the genetic composition of populations after the earliest Neolithic, when a diverse mosaic of societies that had been fully engaged in agriculture for some time appeared in central Europe, is poorly known. At this period during the Late Neolithic (ca. 2,800-2,000 BC), regionally distinctive burial patterns associated with two different cultural groups emerge, Bell Beaker and Corded Ware, and may reflect differences in how these societies were organized. Ancient DNA analyses of human remains from the Late Neolithic Bell Beaker site of Kromsdorf, Germany showed distinct mitochondrial haplotypes for six individuals, which were classified under the haplogroups I1, K1, T1, U2, U5, and W5, and two males were identified as belonging to the Y haplogroup R1b. In contrast to other Late Neolithic societies in Europe emphasizing maintenance of biological relatedness in mortuary contexts, the diversity of maternal haplotypes evident at Kromsdorf suggests that burial practices of Bell Beaker communities operated outside of social norms based on shared maternal lineages. Furthermore, our data, along with those from previous studies, indicate that modern U5-lineages may have received little, if any, contribution from the Mesolithic or Neolithic mitochondrial gene pool.

Finding Fodder and Tracking Transhumance: Isotopic Detection of Goat Domestication Processes in the Near East

The domestication of several animal taxa in the Near East approximately 10,000 years ago marked a fundamental shift in human-animal interactions that irrevocably transformed the subsistence base of prehistoric societies. Domesticates eventually provided humans with an easily accessible source of animal products including meat, milk, and hair, but the mechanisms by which humans first experimented with and domesticated their animals remain poorly understood. Early animal management strategies included the selective harvesting of juvenile males while promoting female survivorship, but other husbandry practices that contributed to the domestication of animals have proven elusive in the archaeological record. Here we apply a novel multistable isotopic approach (δ13C, δ15N, and δ18O) to bone collagens recovered from goats—one of the first animal domesticates—and wild gazelles from two Early Neolithic sites in the Near East. We show that humans provisioned goats with fodder and mobilized herds to different pastures as early as 8000 cal BC. By enacting these particular husbandry practices, prehistoric humans effectively increased the accessibility and predictability of their own food supply and ultimately came to domesticate multiple animal taxa.

Early Holocene woodland vegetation and human impacts in the arid zone of the southern Levant.

Palynological archives dating from the Pleistocene–Holocene transition are scarce in the arid zone of the southern Levant. Anthracological remains (the carbonized residues of wood fuel use found in archaeological habitation sites) provide an alternative source of information about past vegetation. This paper discusses new and previously available anthracological datasets retrieved from excavated habitation sites in the southern Levant dating to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) period. The available evidence indicates the existence of distinct arboreal floras growing in different ecological niches, which occupied areas that today are either treeless or very sparsely wooded. The anthracological data provide independent confirmation of the hypothesis that early Holocene climate in the southern Levant was significantly moister than at present. Clear North–South and East–West precipitation and associated woodland composition gradients are evidenced. Far from deducing widespread anthropogenic degradation of the regional vegetation, it is suggested that woodland expansion in the semi-arid interiors of the Levant may be attributed to the intensive management of Pistacia woodlands for food, fuel and pasture.

The early management of cattle (Bos taurus) in Neolithic central Anatolia

The authors use metrical, demographic and body part analyses of animal bone assemblages in Anatolia to demonstrate how cattle were incorporated into early Neolithic subsistence economies. Sheep and goats were domesticated in the eighth millennium BC, while aurochs, wild cattle, were long hunted. The earliest domesticated cattle are not noted until the mid-seventh millennium BC, and derive from imported stock domesticated elsewhere. In Anatolia, meanwhile, the aurochs remains large and wild and retains its charisma as a hunted quarry and a stud animal.

Exploring the complexity of domestication: a response to Rowley-Conwy and Zeder

Abstract In their critique of our paper (Krause-Kyora et al. 2013), Rowley-Conwy and Zeder focus on two primary issues. Firstly, they discuss issues associated with the terminology and definitions of animal domestication. Secondly, they question the techniques we employed to explore it. While we completely agree with their points related to terminology, we feel they have misunderstood both the principals and application of shape analyses using geometric morphometrics, and that this misunderstanding undermines their criticism. Having said that, and though our differences are easily overstated, our respective interpretations of the data presented in Krause-Kyora et al. (2013) overlap significantly.

A pastoralist manifesto: breaking stereotypes and re-conceptualizing pastoralism in the Near Eastern Neolithic

Abstract Ever since early forms of pastoralist activity emerged some ten thousand years ago during the Neolithic, pastoralism has played a critical role in shaping the economic, social and political context of the Near East in rural and urban settings alike. However, despite increasing evidence detailing the significant impact pastoralists had on the structure of later proto-urban and urban societies, the significance of nascent pastoralist activities for Neolithic households and communities has so far been largely dismissed. This paper suggests some of the underlying reasons for the disciplinary myopia regarding the contribution of pastoralist activity to broader shifts in Neolithic social and economic organization in the southern Levantine Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (Late PPNB), a period during which dramatic changes in settlement patterns and social organization coincided with the emergence of intensive domestic livestock herding and animal production. In particular, I suggest that the persistent and pernicious stereotype of pastoralism as an unchanging socio-economic mode perched on the edge of subsistence and society has coloured interpretations of pastoralism in the PPNB, in spite of the centrality of pastoral production in these societies. Informed by historical travelogues, archaeological research focused on agricultural production and animal domestication and the dominance of pastoral ecological models that minimize pastoral productive potential, wealth accumulation and social currencies, these stereotypes are uniformly projected onto various pastoralist groups in the region, regardless of their place in time or local cultural context.

More than meat: diversity in caprine harvesting strategies and the emergence of complex production systems during the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B

Abstract This paper examines the diversity of goat and sheep husbandry practices in southern Jordan during the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (Late PPNB), immediately following the domestication of these animals. Although the predominant view is one of sheep and goat husbandry as a relatively simple affair focused on the production of meat through the slaughter of young adult animals, results presented here reveal a multi-faceted system that included use of specialized harvesting strategies, direct manipulation of the caprine diet through provisioning, and the disarticulation of herds. The management strategies used by herders differed between Late PPNB settlements and were variously tuned for the production of dairy, meat, ‘tender meat’, and possibly surplus animals but overall adhered to strategies designed for risk reduction. Such complexity in pastoralist behaviour, and particularly the possibility of surplus production, suggests that a re-evaluation of the role of caprine husbandry in Late PPNB economic and social structures is necessary.

Local adoption of animal husbandry in the southern Levant: An isotopic perspective from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B funerary site of Kfar HaHoresh

Animal husbandry emerged as an important subsistence strategy at various tempos and trajectories across the southern Levant during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (ca. 8500–6500 cal bc). Here, we explore temporal variation in the emergence of animal management strategies, in particular those that alter the composition of the animal diet, west of the Jordan Valley, through carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) isotopic analyses of mountain gazelle, bezoar goat and aurochsen bone collagen from the funerary complex of Kfar HaHoresh. Analyses presented here show an extended range of carbon isotope values in the collagens of Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) goats relative to Middle PPNB goats, which are also enriched in 13C relative to contemporaneous gazelle. This shift may reflect a greater catchment from which morphologically wild goats derived or that some of the goats at Kfar HaHoresh were provided with some fodder. If the latter is the case, then the use of fodder by 7500 cal bc at Kfar HaHoresh is a relatively late development, emerging several hundred years after goat husbandry strategies emphasising a juvenile harvest and fodder provisioning that first came into use in the Mediterranean region of the southern Levant. There is a pronounced enrichment of nitrogen isotopes in Early PPNB aurochsen, ritually important animals derived from a unique feasting deposit, relative to that of gazelle and goats. Though this may reflect more specialised feeding behaviour in aurochsen compared to the other two bovid groups, an alternative interpretation is that the aurochsen ingested enriched 15N from manured pasture, following restriction of their movement by people. These isotopic data support the documented pattern of a delayed adoption of goat husbandry in the lower Galilee region and may point to differential developmental trajectories where some forms of animal management emerged out of ritual rather than subsistence needs.

Geographical variability in northern European sheep wool isotopic composition (δ13C, δ15N, δ2H values)

RATIONALE Light stable isotopic analysis of herbivore proteinaceous tissues (hair, muscle, milk) is critical for authenticating the point of origin of finished agricultural or industrial products in both ancient and modern economies. This study examined the distribution of light stable isotopes in herbivores in northern Europe (Iceland to Finland), which is expected to depend on regional-level environmental inputs (precipitation, temperature) and local variables (vegetation type, fodder type, soil type). METHODS Sheep wool was obtained from animals managed using traditional methods and located across a gradient of northern European environments. Defatted whole-year samples were analysed by isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) for carbon (δ(13) C values), nitrogen (δ(15) N values) and un-exchangeable hydrogen (δ(2) H values) isotopic composition. RESULTS Wool δ(13) C, δ(15) N and δ(2) H values showed the same correlations to local mean annual precipitation and temperature as were expected for graze plants. Wool δ(2) H values were correlated with local modelled meteoric water δ(2) H values, mediated by plant solid tissue and leaf water fractionations. Cluster analysis distinguished wool from Sweden and the Baltic region from more western material. Local variation in vegetation or soil type did not disrupt dependence on climatic variables but did affect geospatial discrimination. CONCLUSIONS Wool isotopic composition in northern Europe is controlled by the effects of local precipitation and temperature on graze plant inputs, and is only weakly affected by pasture type. Copyright