0000000000606713
AUTHOR
Arkadiusz Marciniak
Correction for Frantz et al., Ancient pigs reveal a near-complete genomic turnover following their introduction to Europe
Significance Archaeological evidence indicates that domestic pigs arrived in Europe, alongside farmers from the Near East ∼8,500 y ago, yet mitochondrial genomes of modern European pigs are derived from European wild boars. To address this conundrum, we obtained mitochondrial and nuclear data from modern and ancient Near Eastern and European pigs. Our analyses indicate that, aside from a coat color gene, most Near Eastern ancestry in the genomes of European domestic pigs disappeared over 3,000 y as a result of interbreeding with local wild boars. This implies that pigs were not domesticated independently in Europe, yet the first 2,500 y of human-mediated selection applied by Near Eastern Ne…
Teaching Archaeological Heritage Management: Towards a Change in Paradigms
The concept of archaeological heritage management (AHM) has been key to wider archaeological research and preservation agendas for some decades. Many universities and other education providers now offer what is best termed heritage management education (HME) in various forms. The emphasis is commonly on archaeological aspects of heritage in a broad sense and different terms are often interchangeable in practice. In an innovative working-conference held in Tampere, Finland, we initiated a debate on what the components of AHM as a course or curriculum should include. We brought together international specialists and discussed connected questions around policy, practice, research and teaching/…
Ancient pigs reveal a near-complete genomic turnover following their introduction to Europe
International audience; 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 disappeared and was replaced by haplotypes associated with European wild boars. This turnover could be accounted for by substantial gene flow from local Euro-pean wild boars, although it is also possible that European wild boars were domesticated independently without any genetic contribution from the Near East. To test these hyp…