Article
Geography, Physical
Steven T. Goldstein, Ceri Shipton, Jennifer M. Miller, Emmanuel Ndiema, Nicole Boivin, Michael Petraglia
Summary: This study examines the relationship between environmental change and the organization of stone tool technology at the Panga ya Saidi Cave site in eastern Kenya, and compares it with other high-resolution records from nearby areas. The results show that the lithic technologies used in lake basins and coastal zones reflect more stable land-use strategies, while the coastal forest area remains consistent throughout the study period. These findings are important for understanding the adaptations of hunter-gatherers and food producers in eastern Africa and for studying long-term human-environment dynamics.
QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS
(2022)
Article
Anthropology
Dorothee G. Drucker, Anne Bridault, Adam Boethius
Summary: This paper is an introduction to a collection of studies on Post-glacial human subsistence and settlement patterns, specifically focusing on the Lateglacial and Early Holocene in Europe. The authors of this special issue used different approaches to provide regional and chronological information about the available biotopes and how human populations utilized them during this time period. Their research sheds light on animal recolonization, changes in habitat for large games, and how humans adapted their diet to new biotopes.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Ashley Smallwood, Randall Haas, Thomas Jennings
Summary: Approximately 9000 years ago at the site of Wilamaya Patjxa in the Andean highlands, both male and female individuals were buried with projectile points, suggesting that large-mammal hunting was a gender neutral activity within that community. A lithic usewear analysis confirmed that the projectile points were indeed used as intended, and also revealed evidence of cutting and hide scraping activities. A new radiocarbon date showed that the male and female individuals were contemporaries, indicating that they existed around the same time between 9.0 and 8.7 cal. ka. These findings support the model of early subsistence practices where both genders participated in hunting large mammals at Wilamaya Patjxa.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2023)
Article
Anthropology
Agustina Massigoge, Daniel J. Rafuse, Juan M. Rodriguez, Rocio F. Torino, Cristian M. Favier Dubois
Summary: The new archaeological data from Las Toscas shallow lake in the Pampas region sheds light on the hunter-gatherer occupations during the Middle and Late Holocene. Activities such as hunting, tool manufacturing, storing mineral pigments, and potentially human burial practices were conducted around the lake. The evidence indicates that this location was a persistent site for hunter-gatherer activities.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Rodrigo Loyola, Valentina Figueroa, Lautaro Nunez, Marco Vasquez, Christian Espindola, Millarca Valenzuela, Manuel Prieto
Summary: This article explores the relationship between ancient Andean hunter-gatherer groups and volcanoes in the highlands of the Atacama Desert. It examines the procurement of various volcanic and subvolcanic rocks by these groups and their integration into mobility and interaction networks.
FRONTIERS IN EARTH SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Anthropology
Consuelo Huidobro Marin, Flavia Morellob, Catalina Contreras Mira
Summary: The study of early lithic assemblages in South America's Southern Cone has shifted from strictly focusing on projectile points to a more diverse range of theoretical and methodological approaches. New analytical techniques have also been used to study various aspects of lithic production and use, such as tool manufacturing, raw material economy, and circulation. Recent studies have examined the earliest human occupations in Southernmost Patagonia and explored early marine expeditions during the Middle Holocene, providing an overview of the lithic technologies used by early hunter-gatherers.
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Eugenio Bortolini, Luca Pagani, Gregorio Oxilia, Cosimo Posth, Federica Fontana, Federica Badino, Tina Saupe, Francesco Montinaro, Davide Margaritora, Matteo Romandini, Federico Lugli, Andrea Papini, Marco Boggioni, Nicola Perrini, Antonio Oxilia, Riccardo Aiese Cigliano, Rosa Barcelona, Davide Visentin, Nicolo Fasser, Simona Arrighi, Carla Figus, Giulia Marciani, Sara Silvestrini, Federico Bernardini, Jessica C. Menghi Sartorio, Luca Fiorenza, Jacopo Moggi Cecchi, Claudio Tuniz, Toomas Kivisild, Fernando Gianfrancesco, Marco Peresani, Christiana L. Scheib, Sahra Talamo, Maurizio D'Esposito, Stefano Benazzi
Summary: Significant cultural and population changes occurred in Southern Europe around 18-17 thousand years ago, as hunter-gatherers gradually recolonized the Alps due to retreat of glaciers. The Late Epigravettian phase saw a replacement of genetic lineages, believed to be influenced by migrations during a warmer climate period about 14.7 thousand years ago. New genetic evidence suggests a population replacement event in Southern Europe, coinciding with major cultural transitions, dated back by at least 3 thousand years compared to previous beliefs.
Article
Geography, Physical
Gyorgy Lengyel, Annamaria Barany, Sandor Beres, Ferenc Cserpak, Mihaly Gasparik, Istvan Major, Mihaly Molnar, Adam Nadachowski, Adrian Nemergut, Jiri Svoboda, Alexander Verpoorte, Piotr Wojtal, Jaroslaw Wilczynski
Summary: This study aimed to refine the chronology of Epigravettian culture in eastern Central Europe by establishing three chronological clusters and analyzing the lithic tool typology and faunal data, revealing differences between different time periods in terms of tool types and characteristics.
QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS
(2021)
Article
Anthropology
Agustin Agnolin
Summary: This paper evaluates the settlement process model in the steppe of Central-West Santa Cruz and provides a larger sample and various indicators to provide a chronological framework for the archaeological record.
CHUNGARA-REVISTA DE ANTROPOLOGIA CHILENA
(2022)
Review
Biology
Andrea Bamberg Migliano, Lucio Vinicius
Summary: This study examines the cognitive mechanisms underlying culture in humans and other great apes and argues that the cultural capabilities of humans are the evolutionary result of transitioning from the ape-like lifestyle to the foraging niche. Recent research suggests that the components of the foraging niche engendered a unique social structure that led to the evolution of cognitive mechanisms underlying cultural evolution, ultimately enabling the production of sophisticated cumulative culture.
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2022)
Article
Biology
Sheina Lew-Levy, Dasa Bombjakova, Annemieke Milks, Francy Kiabiya Ntamboudila, Michelle Anne Kline, Tanya Broesch
Summary: Teaching likely evolved in humans to facilitate the transmission of complex tasks. Costlier teaching types are more frequently observed in spear hunting compared to less costly teaching. Teachers tend to calibrate their teaching based on pupil skill level, but age is a more accessible heuristic than experience.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2022)
Article
Geography, Physical
Dylan Gaffney, Glenn R. Summerhayes, Sindy Luu, James Menzies, Kristina Douglass, Megan Spitzer, Susan Bulmer
Summary: Moving into montane rainforests was a unique behavioral innovation developed by Pleistocene Homo sapiens as they expanded out of Africa and through Southeast Asia and Sahul for the first time. Zooarchaeological evidence from Yuku and Kiowa in the New Guinea Highlands sheds light on past hunting practices, processes of cave deposition, and local paleoenvironment, revealing variability in hunting practices during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene. The integration of zooarchaeological data from the wider Highlands zone contributes to a model of generalist-specialist hunting dynamics and enhances understanding of tropical foraging during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene.
QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS
(2021)
Review
Biology
Adam H. Boyette, Sheina Lew-Levy, Haneul Jang, Vidrige Kandza
Summary: Investigating the human adaptation to the Congo Basin tropical forest can provide insights into human evolution influenced by climate and ecosystem variability. The study synthesizes genetic, palaeoclimatological, linguistic, and historical data to understand the peopling of the region. Forest fragmentation increased genetic and geographical divergence among forest foragers, but long-distance connectivity was maintained. The expansion of Bantu speakers facilitated inter-group links, supported by linguistic shifts and historical evidence. Ethnographic work in the northern Republic of the Congo highlights the role of inter-group links and trade relationships in adaptation to different ecoregions. The cultivation of relational wealth among various groups played a significant role in the initial occupation of the Congo Basin and cultural evolution among contemporary populations.
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2022)
Article
Anthropology
Tabea J. Koch, Patrick Schmidt
Summary: This study verifies the long-distance procurement of flint for the production of exceptional artefacts in the Solutrean culture. Using reflectance infrared spectroscopy, the researchers found that the flint used for the Volgu laurel-leaf points is most similar to flint from the south-eastern Paris Basin, indicating a distance of approximately 170 to 250 km. The findings provide reproducible evidence and have implications for future provenance studies in France.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2022)
Article
Anthropology
Jimena Alberti, Eugenia Carranza
Summary: This paper presents research on scrapers recovered from an archaeological area in Argentina. The study shows that the scrapers were accumulated through fluvial action and exhibits differences in size and wear, indicating different occupation periods in the area.
ESTUDIOS ATACAMENOS
(2023)
Article
Biology
Paul Roscoe, Daniel H. Sandweiss, Erick Robinson
Summary: This study develops the Power Theory, a formal model of political centralization that examines the impact of population density and size on the interactive capacity of political agents. The research conducted on radiocarbon dates from Peru supports the theoretical expectations of the model, but also reveals an artifact distortion previously unnoticed in SPD research.
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Biology
Erick Robinson, R. Kyle Bocinsky, Darcy Bird, Jacob Freeman, Robert L. Kelly
Summary: The American Southwest provides a well-documented case of human population growth and decline, with widespread population collapses observed from AD 1300 to 1600. By comparing multiple palaeodemographic proxies and radiocarbon data, researchers confirmed a decline in human populations across various regions, lending confidence to reconstructions suggesting post-AD 1300 population declines in many parts of North America.
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Chemistry, Analytical
Brecht Laforce, Geraldine Fiers, Hans Vandendriessche, Philippe Crombe, Veerle Cnudde, Laszlo Vincze
Summary: A laboratory-based X-ray fluorescence methodology is presented for standardless quantified analysis, which is valuable for scientific fields such as archaeology and geology. A case study on flint artefacts demonstrates the methodology's importance in provenancing and contributes to database creation for further research.
ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
(2021)
Article
Anthropology
Philippe Crombe, Mathieu Boudin, Mark Van Strydonck
Summary: The success rate of radiocarbon dating on calcined bones is largely determined by the speed of site coverage and the extent of contamination. Sites quickly covered by aeolian, alluvial, or marine sediments generally yield good dating results, while sites that are not covered promptly are at risk of contamination issues, resulting in younger radiocarbon dates than the reference dates.
JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Archaeology
Brian F. Codding, Joan Brenner Coltrain, Lisbeth Louderback, Kenneth Blake Vernon, Kate E. Magargal, Peter M. Yaworsky, Erick Robinson, Simon C. Brewer, Jerry D. Spangler
Summary: The ideal distribution models provide a framework to explain why individuals choose to adopt agriculture leading to its expansion. The research findings indicate that farming first occurred in the more suitable Colorado Plateau region and only spread to the less suitable Great Basin after an increase in population density on the Plateau.
ENVIRONMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY
(2022)
Correction
Anthropology
Jacob Freeman, John M. Anderies, Noelle G. Beckman, Erick Robinson, Jacopo A. Baggio, Darcy Bird, Christopher Nicholson, Judson Byrd Finley, Jose M. Capriles, Adolfo F. Gil, David Byers, Eugenia Gayo, Claudio Latorre
Article
Anthropology
Jacob Freeman, John M. Anderies, Noelle G. Beckman, Erick Robinson, Jacopo A. Baggio, Darcy Bird, Christopher Nicholson, Judson Byrd Finley, Jose M. Capriles, Adolfo F. Gil, David Byers, Eugenia Gayo, Claudio Latorre
Summary: The stability of human populations is influenced by the variability in food production. Agricultural societies that relied on extensive landscape engineering and increased political-economic complexity experienced the most stability and least severe population declines in response to environmental perturbations.
Letter
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Philippe Crombe, Kim Aluwe, Mathieu Boudin, Christophe Snoeck, Liesbeth Messiaen, Dimitri Teetaert
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2022)
Article
Archaeology
Marieke Vannoorenberghe, Dimitri Teetaert, Eric Goemaere, Thibaut Van Acker, Joke Belza, Erwin Meylemans, Frank Vanhaecke, Philippe Crombe
Summary: This paper presents the results of LA-ICP-MS analysis of the clay fraction in pottery and sediments from the Scheldt basin. The elemental concentration results were compared to petrographic analysis to investigate their complementarity. The study found that while LA-ICP-MS analysis can confirm some observations from petrographic analysis, the chemical clustering in ceramics is mainly driven by elemental composition heterogeneity unrelated to clay sources, making petrographic analysis indispensable for clay sourcing.
JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE-REPORTS
(2022)
Article
Anthropology
Hans Vandendriessche, Elliot Van Maldegem, Philippe Crombe
Summary: This paper investigates interconnected artifact clusters at a Belgian Mesolithic site using Bayesian modeling, raw material characterizations, and lithic refitting. The analysis suggests that the site's Early Mesolithic occupation was organized as two diachronic and more or less parallel alignments of artifact clusters.
JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL METHOD AND THEORY
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Anders Bergstrom, David W. G. Stanton, Ulrike H. Taron, Laurent Frantz, Mikkel-Holger S. Sinding, Erik Ersmark, Saskia Pfrengle, Molly Cassatt-Johnstone, Ophelie Lebrasseur, Linus Girdland-Flink, Daniel M. Fernandes, Morgane Ollivier, Leo Speidel, Shyam Gopalakrishnan, Michael V. Westbury, Jazmin Ramos-Madrigal, Tatiana R. Feuerborn, Ella Reiter, Joscha Gretzinger, Susanne C. Muenzel, Pooja Swali, Nicholas J. Conard, Christian Caroe, James Haile, Anna Linderholm, Semyon Androsov, Ian Barnes, Chris Baumann, Norbert Benecke, Herve Bocherens, Selina Brace, Ruth F. Carden, Dorothee G. Drucker, Sergey Fedorov, Mihaly Gasparik, Mietje Germonpre, Semyon Grigoriev, Pam Groves, Stefan T. Hertwig, Varvara V. Ivanova, Luc Janssens, Richard P. Jennings, Aleksei K. Kasparov, Irina V. Kirillova, Islam Kurmaniyazov, Yaroslav V. Kuzmin, Pavel A. Kosintsev, Martina Laznickova-Galetova, Charlotte Leduc, Pavel Nikolskiy, Marc Nussbaumer, Coilin O'Drisceoil, Ludovic Orlando, Alan Outram, Elena Y. Pavlova, Angela R. Perri, Malgorzata Pilot, Vladimir V. Pitulko, Valerii V. Plotnikov, Albert V. Protopopov, Andre Rehazek, Mikhail Sablin, Andaine Seguin-Orlando, Jan Stora, Christian Verjux, Victor F. Zaibert, Grant Zazula, Philippe Crombe, Anders J. Hansen, Eske Willerslev, Jennifer A. Leonard, Anders Gotherstrom, Ron Pinhasi, Verena J. Schuenemann, Michael Hofreiter, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, Beth Shapiro, Greger Larson, Johannes Krause, Love Dalen, Pontus Skoglund
Summary: This article analyzes ancient wolf genomes and finds that wolf populations were highly connected in the late Pleistocene, suggesting a complex history of wolf domestication. Dogs are overall more closely related to ancient wolves from eastern Eurasia, but dogs in the Near East and Africa derive up to half of their ancestry from a distinct population related to modern southwest Eurasian wolves.
Article
Anthropology
Liesbeth Messiaen, Hans Vandendriessche, Philippe Crombe
Summary: This paper presents a detailed analysis of lithic assemblages from four key sites in the Lower-Scheldt basin of NW Belgium. It discusses the Neolithization process in the agro-pastoral frontier of the European loess area, showing both continuity and change in raw material use, lithic technology, and toolkit during the 5th and early 4th millennium cal BC. The study supports the theory of acculturation of indigenous hunter-gatherers under the influence of southern farming groups.
Article
Plant Sciences
Annelies Storme, Luc Allemeersch, Mathieu Boudin, Ignace Bourgeois, Jeroen Verhegge, Philippe Crombe
Summary: This study reconstructs the evolution of depositional and ecological environments as well as regional vegetation near Antwerp by analyzing sedimentological, macrobotanical, and palynological data from two cores. Different phases from the late glacial to the early Holocene were characterized by peat filling in lakes and river channels, with changes in vegetation due to changing climatic conditions.
REVIEW OF PALAEOBOTANY AND PALYNOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Ecology
Florian Lauryssen, Philippe Crombe, Tom Maris, Elliot Van Maldegem, Marijn Van de Broek, Stijn Temmerman, Erik Smolders
Summary: Elevated phosphate concentrations can harm the ecological status in water. This study reconstructed the historical phosphate concentration in the surface water of the Scheldt River using tidal marsh sediment cores as an archive. The pre-industrial background phosphate concentration was found to exceed the current limits.
Article
Archaeology
Eva Halbrucker, Geraldine Fiers, Hans Vandendriessche, Tim De Kock, Veerle Cnudde, Philippe Crombe
Summary: Investigating the impact of heat on lithic tools, especially on the preservation of microwear traces, is crucial; the relationship between raw material characteristics and the degree of burning needs further study; the experimental results help better understand how and why lithics could have ended up in fire.
JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE-REPORTS
(2021)
