Dushka Urem-Kotsou
Democritus University of Thrace
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Publication
Featured researches published by Dushka Urem-Kotsou.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | 2016
Zuzana Hofmanová; Susanne Kreutzer; Garrett Hellenthal; Christian Sell; Yoan Diekmann; David Díez-del-Molino; Lucy van Dorp; Saioa López; Athanasios Kousathanas; Vivian Link; Karola Kirsanow; Lara M. Cassidy; Rui Martiniano; Melanie Strobel; Amelie Scheu; Kostas Kotsakis; Paul Halstead; Sevi Triantaphyllou; Nina Kyparissi-Apostolika; Dushka Urem-Kotsou; Christina Ziota; Fotini Adaktylou; Shyamalika Gopalan; Dean Bobo; Laura Winkelbach; Jens Blöcher; Martina Unterländer; Christoph Leuenberger; Çiler Çilingiroğlu; Barbara Horejs
Significance One of the most enduring and widely debated questions in prehistoric archaeology concerns the origins of Europe’s earliest farmers: Were they the descendants of local hunter-gatherers, or did they migrate from southwestern Asia, where farming began? We recover genome-wide DNA sequences from early farmers on both the European and Asian sides of the Aegean to reveal an unbroken chain of ancestry leading from central and southwestern Europe back to Greece and northwestern Anatolia. Our study provides the coup de grâce to the notion that farming spread into and across Europe via the dissemination of ideas but without, or with only a limited, migration of people. Farming and sedentism first appeared in southwestern Asia during the early Holocene and later spread to neighboring regions, including Europe, along multiple dispersal routes. Conspicuous uncertainties remain about the relative roles of migration, cultural diffusion, and admixture with local foragers in the early Neolithization of Europe. Here we present paleogenomic data for five Neolithic individuals from northern Greece and northwestern Turkey spanning the time and region of the earliest spread of farming into Europe. We use a novel approach to recalibrate raw reads and call genotypes from ancient DNA and observe striking genetic similarity both among Aegean early farmers and with those from across Europe. Our study demonstrates a direct genetic link between Mediterranean and Central European early farmers and those of Greece and Anatolia, extending the European Neolithic migratory chain all the way back to southwestern Asia.
Antiquity | 2002
Dushka Urem-Kotsou; Ben Stern; Carl Heron; Kostas Kotsakis
The authors discuss the first evidence for the use of birch-bark tar on Late Neolithic pottery from Greece. This appears to have been used for two different purposes, to seal a fracture and to line the interior walls. The authors also discuss other possible uses.
Nature | 2015
Mélanie Roffet-Salque; Martine Regert; Richard P. Evershed; Alan K. Outram; Lucy Cramp; Orestes Decavallas; Julie Dunne; Pascale Gerbault; Simona Mileto; Sigrid Mirabaud; Mirva Pääkkönen; Jessica Smyth; Lucija Šoberl; Helen Whelton; Alfonso Alday-Ruiz; Henrik Asplund; Marta Bartkowiak; Eva Bayer-Niemeier; Lotfi Belhouchet; Federico Bernardini; Mihael Budja; Gabriel Cooney; Miriam Cubas; Ed M. Danaher; Mariana Diniz; László Domboróczki; Cristina Fabbri; Jésus E. González-Urquijo; Jean Guilaine; Slimane Hachi
The pressures on honeybee (Apis mellifera) populations, resulting from threats by modern pesticides, parasites, predators and diseases, have raised awareness of the economic importance and critical role this insect plays in agricultural societies across the globe. However, the association of humans with A. mellifera predates post-industrial-revolution agriculture, as evidenced by the widespread presence of ancient Egyptian bee iconography dating to the Old Kingdom (approximately 2400 bc). There are also indications of Stone Age people harvesting bee products; for example, honey hunting is interpreted from rock art in a prehistoric Holocene context and a beeswax find in a pre-agriculturalist site. However, when and where the regular association of A. mellifera with agriculturalists emerged is unknown. One of the major products of A. mellifera is beeswax, which is composed of a complex suite of lipids including n-alkanes, n-alkanoic acids and fatty acyl wax esters. The composition is highly constant as it is determined genetically through the insect’s biochemistry. Thus, the chemical ‘fingerprint’ of beeswax provides a reliable basis for detecting this commodity in organic residues preserved at archaeological sites, which we now use to trace the exploitation by humans of A. mellifera temporally and spatially. Here we present secure identifications of beeswax in lipid residues preserved in pottery vessels of Neolithic Old World farmers. The geographical range of bee product exploitation is traced in Neolithic Europe, the Near East and North Africa, providing the palaeoecological range of honeybees during prehistory. Temporally, we demonstrate that bee products were exploited continuously, and probably extensively in some regions, at least from the seventh millennium cal bc, likely fulfilling a variety of technological and cultural functions. The close association of A. mellifera with Neolithic farming communities dates to the early onset of agriculture and may provide evidence for the beginnings of a domestication process.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | 2016
Cynthianne Debono Spiteri; Rosalind E. Gillis; Mélanie Roffet-Salque; Laura Castells Navarro; Jean Guilaine; Claire Manen; Italo M. Muntoni; Maria Saña Seguí; Dushka Urem-Kotsou; Helen Whelton; Oliver E. Craig; Jean-Denis Vigne; Richard P. Evershed
Significance This unique research combines the analyses of lipid residues in pottery vessels with slaughter profiles for domesticated ruminants to provide compelling evidence for diverse subsistence strategies in the northern Mediterranean basin during the Neolithic. Our findings show that the exploitation and processing of milk varied across the region, although most communities began to exploit milk as soon as domesticates were introduced between 9,000 and 7,000 y ago. This discovery is especially noteworthy as the shift in human subsistence toward milk production reshaped prehistoric European culture, biology, and economy in ways that are still visible today. In the absence of any direct evidence, the relative importance of meat and dairy productions to Neolithic prehistoric Mediterranean communities has been extensively debated. Here, we combine lipid residue analysis of ceramic vessels with osteo-archaeological age-at-death analysis from 82 northern Mediterranean and Near Eastern sites dating from the seventh to fifth millennia BC to address this question. The findings show variable intensities in dairy and nondairy activities in the Mediterranean region with the slaughter profiles of domesticated ruminants mirroring the results of the organic residue analyses. The finding of milk residues in very early Neolithic pottery (seventh millennium BC) from both the east and west of the region contrasts with much lower intensities in sites of northern Greece, where pig bones are present in higher frequencies compared with other locations. In this region, the slaughter profiles of all domesticated ruminants suggest meat production predominated. Overall, it appears that milk or the by-products of milk was an important foodstuff, which may have contributed significantly to the spread of these cultural groups by providing a nourishing and sustainable product for early farming communities.
World Archaeology | 2017
Dushka Urem-Kotsou
ABSTRACT This paper examines the evidence for the storage of food during the Neolithic in northern Greece. Ecofactual remains point to reliance on cultivated crops and domesticates from the initial phase of the period (mid-seventh millennium), suggesting the importance of the production and storage of normal surplus for the economic and social organization of early farmers. The archaeological record indicates that storage of surplus was controlled by domestic units from the beginning of the Neolithic. There is also evidence for the symbolic importance of crops and domesticates throughout northern Greece, though with a certain diversity among the regions. The characteristics of storage facilities (e.g. types, capacity) and their location indicate chronological differences, but also contemporaneous regional and local varieties in storage practices. Diversity in storage solutions, along with the ritual use of crops and domesticates including in feasting, points to the existence of many specific traditions and local histories within regional cultural frames.
Open Archaeology | 2016
Marianna Lymperaki; Dushka Urem-Kotsou; Stavros Kotsos; Kostas Kotsakis
Abstract Remains of the houses in the Late Neolithic of Northern Greece are as a rule less well preserved than in some other regions of Greece such as Thessaly. The site of Stavroupoli-Thessaloniki is a settlement with a dense habitation pattern, but poorly preserved architecture. Several habitation phases have been distinguished, dating to the Middle and Late Neolithic. Radiocarbon dates place the earlier phase to 5890 B.C. or slightly later. As the domestic unit in Stavroupoli can barely be approached through their architecture, the ceramic wares and particularly the cooking vessels will be used as a proxy to identify households and clarify aspects of their organization. The size of domestic units is approached through capacity of cooking pots, assuming that sharing cooked food on everyday level is a vital element of these units. Also, variability in cooking techniques between houses and possible changes through time will be examined through both the shape and the size of cooking vessels. Finally, Stavroupoli’s cooking pots will be compared with cooking vessels from other contemporaneous sites in order to approach the issue of household on a regional level.
European Journal of Mass Spectrometry | 2011
Evagelia Dimitrakoudi; Sofia Mitkidou; Dushka Urem-Kotsou; Kostas Kotsakis; Julia Stephanidou-Stephanatou; John A. Stratis
A combined gas chromatography–mass spectrometry approach has been used for the characterization of two lumps of resin and 17 adsorbed residues on Roman-age vessels, mainly amphorae, from northern Greece. The data show that a diterpenic resin from plants of the Pinacae family is the main component of the tarry material associated with the analyzed archaeological samples. The identification and mass spectrometric fragmentation of several characteristic diterpenoid biomarkers is discussed. The abundance of secondary products identified in the archaeological samples suggests that the oxidative degradation of abietic acid and dehydroabietic acid to aromatic products was the main pathway. Of particular interest is the presence of characteristic saturated abietane hydrocarbons in one sample, which indicate that a reductive process also occurred on a small scale. The overall similarity in the composition of the residues suggests the common use of pine tar as a waterproofing and sealing agent at different sites in northern Greece during the Roman period.
Cooking up the Past: Food and Culinary Practices in the Neolithic and Bronze Aegean | 2007
Kostas Kotsakis; Dushka Urem-Kotsou
Mikrochimica Acta | 2008
Sophia Mitkidou; Evagelia Dimitrakoudi; Dushka Urem-Kotsou; Despina Papadopoulou; Kostas Kotsakis; John A. Stratis; Ioulia Stephanidou-Stephanatou
Applied Geochemistry | 2006
Ben Stern; Sarah-Jane Clelland; C.C. Nordby; Dushka Urem-Kotsou