Search results for "Pal"
showing 10 items of 11479 documents
Paleogenetic and morphometric analysis of a Mesolithic individual from Grotta d'Oriente: An oldest genetic legacy for the first modern humans in Sici…
2020
Abstract Grotta d’Oriente, a coastal cave located on the island of Favignana (Sicily, Italy) is a key site for the study of the early human colonization of Sicily. Inside the cave, during different field excavations, three burials attributable to the Late Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic were found. The Mesolithic Oriente B individual, directly dated at 9,377 ± 25 uncal BP, was previously assigned to HV1 haplogroup using a traditional approach. However, it is well known that PCR based methods are prone to erroneous haplotype or haplogroup determination. In order to redefine the mitochondrial lineage of this Mesolithic hunter-gatherer and explore its phylogenetic position, we target-enriche…
Steroids aid in human decomposition fluid identification in soils of temporary mass graves from World War II
2020
Abstract Steroids are widely used for the detection of faecal matter and also – in recent years – for characterising human decomposition in the terrestrial environment. Until now it was not clear whether all commonly used faecal (i.e. 5β-stanols, 5β-stanones and bile acids) and tissue derived steroids (i.e. cholesterol, 5α-cholestanol and 5α-cholestanone) could reveal the presence of human decomposition products in temporary graves. In this study, soil was sampled from three putative mass graves where concentration camp prisoners were temporarily buried for 10 months at the end of World War II (1944 – 45). We hypothesised that soil from the putative temporary mass graves exhibits elevated c…
Late Quaternary coastal uplift of southwestern Sicily, central Mediterranean sea
2021
Abstract Mapping and luminescence aging of raised marine terraces and aeolian ridges along an ∼90 km coastal stretch in southwestern Sicily provide the first quantitative assessment of vertical tectonic deformation in this region, which spans the frontal part of an active thrust belt. We recognized a staircase of eleven terraces and nine related aeolian ridges. The elevation profile of terraces parallel to the coast shows a >90 km long bell-shaped pattern, onto which shorter-wavelength (∼10 km long) undulations are superimposed. Luminescence ages from terraced beach deposits and aeolian sediments constrain the position of paleoshorelines formed during MIS 5e, 7a and 7c, with a maximum uplif…
Earliest evidence of Neolithic collective burials from Eastern Iberia: Radiocarbon dating at the archaeolgoical site of Les Llometes (Alicante, Spain)
2016
AbstractIn the Valencia region of Spain, the dominant use of natural caves for collective burials during the Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods has been documented. Collective burials are central to the hypothesis about social relationships in Copper Age societies from Iberia, and key to interpreting kinship-based societies. Les Llometes (Alcoi, Alicante) is one of the biggest collective burial sites existing in eastern Iberia. This article presents the direct14C dates on 25 skeletal remains at the site. The results indicate that the site was used as a burial place from the end of the 5th millennium cal BC until the end of the 4th millennium cal BC, and is a first milestone for future …
El yacimiento calcolítico de Karea en el contexto de las cuevas sepulcrales de Gipuzkoa (País Vasco)
2018
En el yacimiento arqueológico de Karea (Aia, Gipuzkoa), integrado por las cavidades contiguas de Karea-A y Karea-B, se recuperaron numerosos restos cerámicos y faunísticos (Karea-A) y vestigios de una inhumación calcolítica (Karea-B). El presente trabajo se ha vertebrado en dos ejes. En primer lugar, el estudio de ambos depósitos mediante diferentes disciplinas: (1) estudio antropológico; (2) estudio del ajuar, compuesto por restos cerámicos y faunísticos; (3) identificación antracológica de los restos leñosos recuperados en el depósito funerario y por último, (4) estudios isotópicos que nos han permitido obtener datos de la alimentación (δ13C y δ15N) y procedencia (87Sr/86Sr) del sujeto in…
Dating Late Paleolithic Harpoons from Lake Lubāns, Latvia
2014
Over 3000 prehistoric bone and antler artifacts, collected in the late 1930s from the former lakebed of Lake Lubāns, are held by the National History Museum of Latvia. This collection is remarkable not only as one of the largest known assemblages of bone implements in northern Europe, but also in terms of diversity of forms. The most elaborately worked objects include harpoons, often with two rows of barbs and spade-shaped bases, which are believed to date to the Late Paleolithic, and to be among the oldest organic artifacts ever found in Latvia. Four broken specimens were sampled in 2011 for accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating, stable isotope analysis, and taxonomic attribution by Z…
Dead wood gathering among Neanderthal groups: Charcoal evidence from Abric del Pastor and El Salt (Eastern Iberia)
2017
International audience; We present here a new approach combining the microscopic characterization of fungal decay features and the fragmentation degree of the charcoal remains from Middle Palaeolithic combustion structures: features H4 and H11 from Abric del Pastor, unit IV (>75 ka BP) and features H50 and H57 from El Salt, unit Xb (ca. 52 ka BP), Eastern Iberia. The observation of wood degradation patterns that occurred prior to charring followed by their quantitative analysis according to previous experimental studies revealed differences between the alteration degrees of the firewood used in the hearths, highlighting the existence of firewood acquisition criteria based on dead wood gathe…
Climate, environment and human behaviour in the Middle Palaeolithic of Abrigo de la Quebrada (Valencia, Spain): The evidence from charred plant and m…
2019
Abstract The Abrigo de la Quebrada rock shelter was occupied by Neanderthal groups during the early Upper Pleistocene, yielding evidence for their subsistence practices and local resource exploitation. This paper focuses on the plant macroremains and the micromammals, which provide information about occupation patterns, the surrounding landscape, the use of resources, and the environment. Mountain pine forests and permanent grass formations containing humid zones and open spaces that would have harboured an eurythermal microfauna were the dominant landscape type. Cold-climate pines provided most of the firewood. The data are consistent with a recurrent, seasonal occupation pattern, in which…
A combined dietary approach using isotope and dental buccal-microwear analysis of human remains from the Neolithic, Roman and Medieval periods from t…
2016
Stable isotope and dental-microwear analysis are methods commonly used to reconstruct dietary habits in modern and ancient human populations. However, it is rare that they are both used together in the same study, and here both methods are combined to obtain information on human dietary habits from the site of Tossal de les Basses (Alicante, Spain) through time. Middle Neolithic, Late Roman and Medieval (Islamic) individuals have been analyzed for carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios of bone collagen, as well as for buccal-dental microwear. Overall, δ13C and δ15N isotopic values show that for all periods the diet was mainly based on C3 terrestrial resources. However, the isotopic signa…
Late Weichselian and Holocene record of the paleoenvironmental changes in a small river valley in Central Poland
2016
Abstract: The developmental history, from the Oldest Dryas to the Late Holocene, of a paleolake and mire located in a river valley in Central Poland was studied using high-resolution records of pollen, macrofossils, Cladocera, sedimentology, and geochemistry from a 14 C dated sediment core. We inferred temperature and water level dynamics using cladocerans and palynological and geochemical methods were employed to investigate natural fluvial activity, particularly for these elements that are difficult to find through sedimentological methods. Our research demonstrates how climate fluctuation in the Late Glacial and Holocene periods influenced the development of a paleolake and mire in a sma…