F.A. Gerritsen

Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians

Ancient DNA makes it possible to observe natural selection directly by analysing samples from populations before, during and after adaptation events. Here we report a genome-wide scan for selection using ancient DNA, capitalizing on the largest ancient DNA data set yet assembled: 230 West Eurasians who lived between 6500 and 300 bc, including 163 with newly reported data. The new samples include, to our knowledge, the first genome-wide ancient DNA from Anatolian Neolithic farmers, whose genetic material we obtained by extracting from petrous bones, and who we show were members of the population that was the source of Europe’s first farmers. We also report a transect of the steppe region in Samara between 5600 and 300 bc, which allows us to identify admixture into the steppe from at least two external sources. We detect selection at loci associated with diet, pigmentation and immunity, and two independent episodes of selection on height.

Genomic insights into the origin of farming in the ancient Near East

We report genome-wide ancient DNA from 44 ancient Near Easterners ranging in time between ~12,000 and 1,400 bc, from Natufian hunter–gatherers to Bronze Age farmers. We show that the earliest populations of the Near East derived around half their ancestry from a ‘Basal Eurasian’ lineage that had little if any Neanderthal admixture and that separated from other non-African lineages before their separation from each other. The first farmers of the southern Levant (Israel and Jordan) and Zagros Mountains (Iran) were strongly genetically differentiated, and each descended from local hunter–gatherers. By the time of the Bronze Age, these two populations and Anatolian-related farmers had mixed with each other and with the hunter–gatherers of Europe to greatly reduce genetic differentiation. The impact of the Near Eastern farmers extended beyond the Near East: farmers related to those of Anatolia spread westward into Europe; farmers related to those of the Levant spread southward into East Africa; farmers related to those of Iran spread northward into the Eurasian steppe; and people related to both the early farmers of Iran and to the pastoralists of the Eurasian steppe spread eastward into South Asia.

Early farmers from across Europe directly descended from Neolithic Aegeans

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.

Optimal Ancient DNA Yields from the Inner Ear Part of the Human Petrous Bone

The invention and development of next or second generation sequencing methods has resulted in a dramatic transformation of ancient DNA research and allowed shotgun sequencing of entire genomes from fossil specimens. However, although there are exceptions, most fossil specimens contain only low (~ 1% or less) percentages of endogenous DNA. The only skeletal element for which a systematically higher endogenous DNA content compared to other skeletal elements has been shown is the petrous part of the temporal bone. In this study we investigate whether (a) different parts of the petrous bone of archaeological human specimens give different percentages of endogenous DNA yields, (b) there are significant differences in average DNA read lengths, damage patterns and total DNA concentration, and (c) it is possible to obtain endogenous ancient DNA from petrous bones from hot environments. We carried out intra-petrous comparisons for ten petrous bones from specimens from Holocene archaeological contexts across Eurasia dated between 10,000-1,800 calibrated years before present (cal. BP). We obtained shotgun DNA sequences from three distinct areas within the petrous: a spongy part of trabecular bone (part A), the dense part of cortical bone encircling the osseous inner ear, or otic capsule (part B), and the dense part within the otic capsule (part C). Our results confirm that dense bone parts of the petrous bone can provide high endogenous aDNA yields and indicate that endogenous DNA fractions for part C can exceed those obtained for part B by up to 65-fold and those from part A by up to 177-fold, while total endogenous DNA concentrations are up to 126-fold and 109-fold higher for these comparisons. Our results also show that while endogenous yields from part C were lower than 1% for samples from hot (both arid and humid) parts, the DNA damage patterns indicate that at least some of the reads originate from ancient DNA molecules, potentially enabling ancient DNA analyses of samples from hot regions that are otherwise not amenable to ancient DNA analyses.

Local Identities : Landscape and Community in the Late Prehistoric Meuse-Demer-Scheldt Region

In dit nieuwe deel in de Amsterdam Archaeological Studies-reeks onderzoekt Fokke Gerritsen hoe kleine groepen mensen - huishoudens en plaatselijke leefgemeenschappen - hun sociale identiteit vormden en bewerkstelligden door het ordenen van het landschap waarin zij zich bevonden. De auteur ontwikkelt een nieuw theoretisch en empirisch perspectief op de vele gebruiken die een collectief gevoel van identiteit en toebehoren creeren zoals huizenbouw en woonomgeving, structurele nederzetting, crematie en begrafenis, land- en akkerbouw, en rituele praktijken. Een uitgesproken diachronische aanpak brengt processen van culturele en sociale verandering in kaart die hiervoor grotendeels onopgemerkt zijn gebleven en die een solide basis vormen voor een meer dynamische geschiedenis van de laat-prehistorische bewoners van het Meuse-Demer-Scheldtgebied.

Landscape Biography as Research Strategy: The Case of the South Netherlands Project

Abstract This paper presents the outline of a biographical approach to landscape as developed in the Netherlands during the last 15 years by archaeologists, thereby integrating perspectives formulated by the social anthropologists Appadurai and Kopytoff and the cultural geographer Samuels. The result is a historicising longue durée perspective, that runs from the later prehistory up to the present-day, and that focuses on the study of the interrelationships between spatial transformations, social and economic changes and the construction of regional and local identities in the region. This approach also offers interesting possibilities for applications in the sphere of heritage management, landscape design and spatial planning. The implementation of this biographical approach to landscape is illustrated by presenting a case-study for the southern Netherlands, a semi-urban region which ranks among the most intensively studied cultural landscapes of Western Europe.

A survey in the Jabbul Plain

The 1996 and 1997 seasons of the Hopkins-Amsterdam project in the Jabbul plain, western Syria, have generated new results on Bronze Age urbanism at Tell Umm el Marra and elucidated longer-term settlement patterns in the Jabbul region. Excavation results have documented the foundation of Umm el-Marra as a regional center in the Early Bronze Age, provided new data on a period of decentralization in Middle Bronze I, and supplied evidence of the regeneration of urbanism in MB II. Faunal and archaeobotanical analysis broaden our understanding of these developments, attesting to an economy overwhelmingly dependent on the steppe environment, with an emphasis on large-scale onager hunting in MB II, Finally, a regional survey provides data on long-term demographic and socioeconomic trends, furnishing an expansive time range and spatial context for our understanding of developmental patterns in the region. The survey results supply new information on the limits of the Uruk expansion, cycles of Bronze Age urbanization, changing patterns of steppe exploitation, and demographic and agricultural extensification in the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods.The 1996 and 1997 seasons of the Hopkins-Amsterdam project in the Jabbul plain, western Syria, have generated new results on Bronze Age urbanism at Tell Umm elMarra and elucidated longer-term settlement patterns in theJabbul region. Excavation results have documented the foundation of Umm el-Marra as a regional center in the Early Bronze Age, provided new data on a period of decentralization in Middle Bronze I, and supplied evidence of the regeneration of urbanism in MB II. Faunal and archaeobotanical analysis broaden our understanding of these developments, attesting to an economy overwhelmingly dependent on the steppe environment, with an emphasis on large-scale onager hunting in MB II. Finally, a regional survey provides data on long-term demographic and socioeconomic trends, furnishing an expansive time range and spatial context for our understanding of developmental patterns in the region. The survey results supply new information on the limits of the Uruk expansion, cycles of Bronze Age urbanization, changing patterns of steppe exploitation, and demographic and agricultural extensification in the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods.*

To build and to abandon

This article argues that the notion of cultural biography presents a key to understanding the social and cultural practices that created archaeological records of domestic architecture, as it brings the close and dynamic relationships between a house and its inhabitants to the fore. To do so it presents a case study of the construction, habitation and abandonment cycles of late prehistoric farmsteads in the southern Netherlands. After discussing typical biographies of farmhouses and the way these are affected by a transformation from a ‘wandering’ to a stable settlement pattern, the perspective is broadened through a comparison with burial practices. These witness a roughly contemporaneous shift from monumental and communal to short-lived and dispersed cemeteries. Finally, it is suggested that we view these contrasting patterns in terms of a transformation of the perception of farmsteads as places in the landscape and land tenure practices.

Landscape, ecology and mentalités: a long-term perspective on developments in the Meuse-Demer-Scheldt region

This study presents a survey of the long-term dynamics with regard to settlement and landscape in the Meuse-Demer-Scheldt region (south Netherlands/north Belgium), thereby using the results of several decades of intensive archaeological fieldwork. In a theoretical sense, this study is inspired by the work of historians from the French Annales school. We use a model of long-term agricultural cycles, set against demographic fluctuations, in an attempt to understand developments within the study region. At the same time, however, we aim to incorporate the social and ideational dimensions of these changes, which are linked to a specific ordering and arrangement of the landscape. Our particular focus is the radical transformation that occurred around the Middle and Late Iron Age, as this had a major impact on the ordering and arrangement of the landscape in later periods.

Settlement and Landscape Transformations in the Amuq Valley, Hatay

A decace of regional survey between 1995 and 2005 in the Amuq Valley in the Hatay province of southern Turkey (fig. 1), following seminal work done in the 1930s (Braidwood 1937), has produced extensive datasets to study the history of human occupation and landscape development in the region. The main insights from the work done by the Amuq Valley Regional Project (AVRP) have been presented recently by Casana and Wilkinson (2005a, in Yener 2005), with significant earlier publications including the University of Chicago dissertation by Jesse Casana (2003), and a multi-authored report on the 1995 to 1998 fieldwork seasons (Yener et al. 2000a). Particularly important results of the project concern the complex interplay between human settlement and environmental history in the later first millennium BCE and the first millennium CE.