| 1. |
- Eriksson, Gunilla, et al.
(författare)
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Dietary life histories in Stone Age Northern Europe
- 2013
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Ingår i: Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0278-4165 .- 1090-2686. ; 32:3, s. 288-302
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present here a framework for using stable isotope analysis of bone and teeth to study individual life history. A sampling strategy and analytical approach for stable carbon and nitrogen analysis of bone and dentine collagen optimised for intra-individual purposes is put forward. The rationale behind this strategy, various requirements and constrains, and recommendations on how to modify it according to variations in material and analytical instrumentation, are discussed and explained in detail. Based on intra-individual data for 131 human individuals from Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in Northern Europe, we consider the sources and various kinds of variation one is likely to find, and how the data can be explained and transformed into an archaeologically meaningful interpretation. It is concluded that the use of stable isotope analysis to trace individual life history is not limited to carefully excavated, neatly preserved, single burials with articulate skeletal remains. Even collective burials, disturbed graves, disarticulated human remains in cultural layers, or other depositions that deviate from what is often considered as a proper burial, offer the possibility to look at individual life biographies.
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| 2. |
- Eriksson, Gunilla, et al.
(författare)
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Same island, different diet : Cultural evolution of food practice on Öland, Sweden, from the Mesolithic to the Roman Period
- 2008
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Ingår i: Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0278-4165 .- 1090-2686. ; 27:4, s. 520-543
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in north-west Europe has been described as rapid and uniform, entailing a swift shift from the use of marine and other wild resources to domesticated terrestrial resources. Here, we approach the when, what and how of this transition on a regional level, using empirical data from Öland, an island in the Baltic Sea off the Swedish east coast, and also monitor changes that occurred after the shift. Radiocarbon dating and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses of bones and teeth from 123 human individuals, along with faunal isotope data from 27 species, applying to nine sites on Öland and covering a time span from the Mesolithic to the Roman Period, demonstrate a great diversity in food practices, mainly governed by culture and independent of climatic changes. There was a marked dietary shift during the second half of the third millennium from a mixed marine diet to the use of exclusively terrestrial resources, interpreted as marking the large-scale introduction of farming. Contrary to previous claims, this took place at the end of the Neolithic and not at the onset. Our data also show that culturally induced dietary transitions occurred continuously throughout prehistory. The availability of high-resolution data on various levels, from intra-individual to inter-population, makes stable isotope analysis a powerful tool for studying the evolution of food practices.
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| 3. |
- Fornander, Elin, et al.
(författare)
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Wild at heart : Approaching Pitted Ware identity, economy and cosmology through stable isotopes in skeletal material from the Neolithic site Korsnäs in Eastern Central Sweden
- 2008
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Ingår i: Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0278-4165 .- 1090-2686. ; 27:3, s. 281-297
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Middle Neolithic Pitted Ware Culture on the Baltic Sea islands comprised a common identity distinguished, in part, by an almost exclusively marine diet. Based on evidence from the first stable isotope analysis on Pitted Ware skeletal material from the Eastern Central Swedish mainland, we suggest that this identity was shared by PWC groups in the archipelago of the west side of the Baltic. Fifty-six faunal and 26 human bone and dentine samples originating from the Pitted Ware site Korsnäs in Södermanland, Sweden were analysed, and the data clearly shows that the diet of the Korsnäs people was marine, predominantly based on seal. The isotope data further indicate that the pig bones found in large quantities on the site emanate from wild boar rather than domestic pigs. The large representation of pig on several Pitted Ware sites, which cannot be explained in terms of economy, is interpreted as the results of occasional hunting of and ritual feasting on wild boar, indicating that the animal held a prominent position, alongside seal, in the hunting identity and cosmology of the Pitted Ware people. Further, eleven new radiocarbon dates are presented, placing the Korsnäs site, with a large probability, within Middle Neolithic A.
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| 4. |
- Harris, Alison J. T., 1982-, et al.
(författare)
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Archives of human-dog relationships : Genetic and stable isotope analysis of Arctic fur clothing
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0278-4165 .- 1090-2686. ; 59
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Among Indigenous populations of the Arctic, domestic dogs (Canislupus familiaris) were social actors aiding in traction and subsistence activities. Less commonly, dogs fulfilled a fur-bearing role in both the North American and Siberian Arctic. Examples of garments featuring dog skins were collected during the 19th-20th centuries and are now curated by the National Museum of Denmark. We sequenced the mitochondrial genomes of macroscopically identified dog skin garments. We conducted stable carbon and nitrogen isotope ratio analysis of the dog furs and of fur samples from contemporaneous pelts of Arctic (C. lupus arctos) and grey (C. lupus) wolves. Despite the presence of biocides used to protect the fur clothing during storage, we extracted well-preserved DNA using a minimally-invasive sampling protocol. Unexpectedly, the mtDNA genomes of one-third of the samples were consistent with wild taxa, rather than domestic dogs. The strong marine component in the diets of North American dogs distinguished them from Greenland and Canadian wolves, but Siberian dogs consumed diets that were isotopically similar to wild species. We found that dog provisioning practices were variable across the Siberian and North American Arctic, but in all cases, involved considerable human labor.
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| 5. |
- Howcroft, Rachel, et al.
(författare)
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Infant feeding practices at the Pitted Ware Culture site of Ajvide, Gotland
- 2014
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Ingår i: Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0278-4165 .- 1090-2686. ; 42, s. 42-53
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The infant feeding practices used at the Pitted Ware Culture (PWC) site of Ajvide on the Baltic island of Gotland were investigated using carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratio analysis. The PWC weremarine hunters with a seal-based economy who lived in the Baltic region during the Middle Neolithic, and were contemporary with the farming Funnel Beaker and Boat Axe Cultures. The carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios of bone collagen from adult females (14 individuals) and bone and dentine collagen from subadult individuals (23 individuals, 55 samples) from Ajvide were analysed. The results showed that the majority of infants continued breastfeeding into the third or fourth year of life. There was some variation in the types of supplementary foods used and the timing of their introduction, perhaps due to seasonal variation in the availability of different resources. One infant, a neonate, had carbonand nitrogen isotope ratios indicative of a much more terrestrial diet than usually consumed by the PWC, suggesting contact with the Neolithic farming populations in the Baltic region. Comparison of the results from Ajvide to those from other PWC sites in the Baltic region reveals that both adult and subadult dietary practices differed slightly between sites.
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| 6. |
- Kjällquist, Mathilda, et al.
(författare)
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Mesolithic mobility and social contact networks in south Scandinavia around 7000 BCE : Lithic raw materials and isotopic proveniencing of human remains from Norje Sunnansund, Sweden
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0278-4165 .- 1090-2686. ; 53, s. 186-201
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent research provides new perspectives on large-scale Early Holocene human interaction within Eurasia, based on ancient DNA or lithic technology. But the extent of regional human mobility is not well known. In this study, we combined two different approaches to investigate regional mobility and social networks in southern Scandinavia. We analyzed strontium isotopes in human teeth and regional lithic raw material use and technology from a Mesolithic site, Norje Sunnansund in southern Sweden (7000 BCE). The lithic raw material composition at the site, and previous archaeological studies, indicated that the inhabitants mainly had utilized an area stretching 30 km southward. The isotopic analysis indicated that at least half of the analyzed individuals had a non-local origin, based on the local isotope signature, but that possibly only a few individuals originated outside the area defined by lithic acquisition. Those few isotopic values and the presence of lithic material as non-local flint and East Swedish microblade-cores in quartz, suggested that people also traveled far, but probably more sporadically. The combined analyzes revealed the complexity of late Boreal hunter-gatherers in South Scandinavia - although some groups appear to have had a limited geographical mobility, contact networks seem to have stretched over long distances.
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| 7. |
- Lansing, John Stephen, et al.
(författare)
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An ongoing Austronesian expansion in Island Southeast Asia
- 2011
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Ingår i: Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. - : Elsevier. - 0278-4165 .- 1090-2686. ; 30:3, s. 262-272
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Austronesian expansion into Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific was the last and most far-reaching prehistoric human migration. Austronesian languages replaced indigenous languages over nearly half the globe, yet the absolute number of Austronesian colonists was small. Recently, geneticists have identified large geographic disparities in the relative proportions of Asian ancestry across different genetic systems (NRY, mitochondrial DNA, autosomes and X chromosomes) in Austronesian-speaking societies of Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Surprisingly, a substantial genetic discontinuity occurs in the middle of a continuous chain of islands that form the southern arc of the Indonesian archipelago, near the geographic center of the Austronesian world. In the absence of geographic barriers to migration, this genetic boundary and swathe of Austronesian language replacement must have emerged from social behavior. Drawing on decades of comparative ethnological research inspired by F.A.E. van Wouden's structural model of Austronesian social organization, later codified by Claude Levi-Strauss as "House societies" ("societes a maison"), we propose a two-stage ethnographic model in which the appearance of matrilocal "House societies" during the initial phase of the Austronesian expansion, and the subsequent disappearance of "House societies" in lowland rice-growing regions, accounts for the observed linguistic, genetic and cultural patterns.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Manninen, Mikael A., et al.
(författare)
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Early postglacial hunter-gatherers show environmentally driven "false logistic" growth in a low productivity environment
- 2023
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Ingår i: Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. - : Elsevier. - 0278-4165 .- 1090-2686. ; 70
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Studies that employ probability distributions of radiocarbon dates to study past population size often use exponential increase in radiocarbon dates with time as a standard of comparison for detecting population fluctuations. We show that in the case of early postglacial interior Scandinavia, however, the summed probability distribution of radiocarbon dates has best fit with a S-shaped logistic growth curve. Despite the logistic growth model having solid grounding in ecological theory, we further argue that what our data indicate is not logistic growth in the population ecological sense but "false logistic" growth that mainly follows from climatic and environmental forcing. In the initial postglacial phase, 9500-7500 BCE, human settlement was located almost exclusively along the Scandinavian Atlantic coast and the use of the mountainous interior remained low. Thereafter the formation of separate inland adaptations resulted in population growth in tandem with increasing climatic warming and environmental productivity. Some millennia later, when environmental productivity started to decrease after the Holocene Thermal Maximum, hunter-gatherer population size in interior Scandi-navia reached a plateau that lasted at least 2000 years. Lowering productivity prevented any population growth that would be detectable in the available archaeological record.
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| 10. |
- Manninen, Mikael, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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Lithic raw material diversification as an adaptive strategy : Technology, mobility, and site structure in Late Mesolithic northernmost Europe
- 2014
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Ingår i: Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. - : Elsevier. - 0278-4165 .- 1090-2686. ; 33, s. 84-98
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Formal technologies and intensified reduction are often seen as responses to increased mobility and low abundance of lithic raw material of good flakeability and controllability. Although patterns of lithic raw material availability and occurrence are in many ways analogous to those of subsistence resources, resource diversification, an adaptive strategy commonly discussed in relation to food procurement, is rarely discussed in connection to changes in lithic resource availability and technology. We present a case from northernmost Europe in which pronounced differences in raw material availability caused by a distinct geological setting existed within a relatively small area. We conclude that restricted availability of high-quality raw material due, for instance, to increased mobility or changes in the size or location of the foraging range does not necessarily lead to formalization and intensification and can, in certain situations, as in the studied case, lead to the application of an adaptive strategy that can be called raw material diversification. This strategy entails a widening of the raw material base to include raw materials of lower workability and a consequent alteration of existing technological concepts, often in the form of simplification and informalization.
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