scholarly journals Distinguishing African bovids using Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS): New peptide markers and insights into Iron Age economies in Zambia

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. e0251061
Author(s):  
Anneke Janzen ◽  
Kristine Korzow Richter ◽  
Ogeto Mwebi ◽  
Samantha Brown ◽  
Veronicah Onduso ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Spectrometry ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Peptide Mass Fingerprinting ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Bone Collagen ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
African Buffalo ◽  
Accurate Identification ◽  
Peptide Mass ◽  
Sub Saharan

Assessing past foodways, subsistence strategies, and environments depends on the accurate identification of animals in the archaeological record. The high rates of fragmentation and often poor preservation of animal bones at many archaeological sites across sub-Saharan Africa have rendered archaeofaunal specimens unidentifiable beyond broad categories, such as “large mammal” or “medium bovid”. Identification of archaeofaunal specimens through Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS), or peptide mass fingerprinting of bone collagen, offers an avenue for identification of morphologically ambiguous or unidentifiable bone fragments from such assemblages. However, application of ZooMS analysis has been hindered by a lack of complete reference peptide markers for African taxa, particularly bovids. Here we present the complete set of confirmed ZooMS peptide markers for members of all African bovid tribes. We also identify two novel peptide markers that can be used to further distinguish between bovid groups. We demonstrate that nearly all African bovid subfamilies are distinguishable using ZooMS methods, and some differences exist between tribes or sub-tribes, as is the case for Bovina (cattle) vs. Bubalina (African buffalo) within the subfamily Bovinae. We use ZooMS analysis to identify specimens from extremely fragmented faunal assemblages from six Late Holocene archaeological sites in Zambia. ZooMS-based identifications reveal greater taxonomic richness than analyses based solely on morphology, and these new identifications illuminate Iron Age subsistence economies c. 2200–500 cal BP. While the Iron Age in Zambia is associated with the transition from hunting and foraging to the development of farming and herding, our results demonstrate the continued reliance on wild bovids among Iron Age communities in central and southwestern Zambia Iron Age and herding focused primarily on cattle. We also outline further potential applications of ZooMS in African archaeology.

New radiocarbon dates for Eastern and Southern Africa

1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. G. Sutton
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Congo Basin ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Eastern And Southern Africa

This article is a follow-up to that of Mr D. W. Phillipson published in this Journal in 1970, and to the six earlier lists compiled for the whole of sub-Saharan Africa by Dr B. M. Fagan. I have endeavoured to include here all radiocarbon dates for archaeological sites of the Iron Age and most of those of the end of the Stone Age in the eastern and southern part of Africa—that is from Ethiopia, the Upper Nile and the Congo Basin southward—which have been published or made available since the preparation of the former articles. Some of these dates are already included in recent numbers of the Journal Radiocarbon, or have been mentioned in publications elsewhere, as indicated in the footnotes. A large proportion of these new dates, however, have not yet been published, and are included here through the agreement of the various individual archaeologists and research bodies, all of whom I wish to thank for their cooperation. In particular, I am indebted to Mr David Phillipson for his willing assistance in providing a number of contacts and relaying information from southern Africa.

scholarly journals Ancient DNA reveals a multistep spread of the first herders into sub-Saharan Africa

Science ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 365 (6448) ◽  
pp. eaaw6275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary E. Prendergast ◽  
Mark Lipson ◽  
Elizabeth A. Sawchuk ◽  
Iñigo Olalde ◽  
Christine A. Ogola ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Multiphase Model ◽  
Later Stone Age ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
Genome Wide Data ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Pastoral Neolithic

How food production first entered eastern Africa ~5000 years ago and the extent to which people moved with livestock is unclear. We present genome-wide data from 41 individuals associated with Later Stone Age, Pastoral Neolithic (PN), and Iron Age contexts in what are now Kenya and Tanzania to examine the genetic impacts of the spreads of herding and farming. Our results support a multiphase model in which admixture between northeastern African–related peoples and eastern African foragers formed multiple pastoralist groups, including a genetically homogeneous PN cluster. Additional admixture with northeastern and western African–related groups occurred by the Iron Age. These findings support several movements of food producers while rejecting models of minimal admixture with foragers and of genetic differentiation between makers of distinct PN artifacts.

scholarly journals Diet and Radiocarbon Dating of Tollund Man: New Analyses of an Iron Age Bog Body from Denmark

Radiocarbon ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (5) ◽  
pp. 1533-1545 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nina H Nielsen ◽  
Bente Philippsen ◽  
Marie Kanstrup ◽  
Jesper Olsen
Keyword(s):  
Mass Spectrometry ◽  
Stable Isotope ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Radiocarbon Dating ◽  
Bone Collagen ◽  
Scientific Investigations ◽  
Bog Body ◽  
General Diet ◽  
Isotope Analyses ◽  
Isotope Measurements

ABSTRACTTollund Man is one of the most famous Iron Age bog bodies due to his well-preserved head. Since he was unearthed in 1950 in Bjældskovdal, Denmark, he has been subjected to several scientific investigations, but until now no attempts to reconstruct his general diet through isotope analyses have been conducted. Furthermore, previous radiocarbon (14C) analyses have only been able to date him broadly to the 3rd–4th century BC. In this study, stable isotope measurements (δ13C, δ15N) on bone collagen from Tollund Man’s femur and rib showed that the diet of Tollund Man was terrestrial-based and that the crops he ate probably were grown on manured fields. Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C dates were obtained on both the <30kDa and >30kDa fractions of ultrafiltered collagen. Results showed that the ultrafiltration removed contamination from older substances from the burial environment. The femur was dated to 2330±23 BP, the rib to 2322±30 BP. These dates statistically agree with a previously published AMS 14C age on skin. By combining the new dates with the previous date of his skin it was possible to narrow down the age of Tollund Man to the period 405–380 cal BC (95.4% confidence interval).

Radiocarbon Dates for Sub-Saharan Africa: VI

1969 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian M. Fagan
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
European Contact ◽  
The Third ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Eastern And Southern Africa

The Sixth List contains many dates from Eastern and Southern Africa. An important sequence of dates from Malawi is published, indicating that the Iron Age there had begun as early as the third century A.D. The beginnings of the Zambian Early Iron Age are well established by the fourth century, while important new dates for ‘Dimple-based’ wares in Rwanda and Kenya place that pottery type within the same time span.The Palabora dates from the Transvaal indicate that the Limpopo valley was settled by Iron Age people by the eighth century, and numerous isolated samples are recorded. The five dates from Ife in Nigeria confirm that the terracotta sculpture there was being made before European contact, while numerous samples for earlier sites are published.

scholarly journals Identification and Phenotypic Characterization of Sphingomonas wittichii Strain RW1 by Peptide Mass Fingerprinting Using Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization-Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry

2005 ◽  
Vol 71 (5) ◽  
pp. 2442-2451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rolf U. Halden ◽  
David R. Colquhoun ◽  
Eric S. Wisniewski
Keyword(s):  
Mass Spectrometry ◽  
Laser Desorption ◽  
Peptide Mass Fingerprinting ◽  
Phenotypic Characterization ◽  
Laser Desorption Ionization ◽  
Ionization Time ◽  
Flight Mass Spectrometry ◽  
Peptide Mass ◽  
Sphingomonas Wittichii

ABSTRACT Mass spectrometry is a potentially attractive means of monitoring the survival and efficacy of bioaugmentation agents, such as the dioxin-mineralizing bacterium Sphingomonas wittichii strain RW1. The biotransformation activity of RW1 phenotypes is determined primarily by the presence and concentration of the dioxin dioxygenase, an enzyme initiating the degradation of both dibenzo-p-dioxin and dibenzofuran (DF). We explored the possibility of identifying and characterizing putative cultures of RW1 by peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF) targeting this characteristic phenotypic biomarker. The proteome from cells of RW1—grown on various media in the presence and absence of DF—was partially purified, tryptically digested, and analyzed using matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry. Mascot online database queries allowed statistically significant identification of RW1 in disrupted, digested cells (P < 0.01 to 0.05) and in digested whole-cell extracts (P < 0.00001 to 0.05) containing hundreds of proteins, as determined by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. Up to 14 peptide ions of the alpha subunit of the dioxin dioxygenase (43% protein coverage) were detected in individual samples. A minimum of 107 DF-grown cells was required to identify dioxin degradation-enabled phenotypes. The technique hinges on the detection of multiple characteristic peptides of a biomarker that can reveal at once the identity and phenotypic properties of the microbial host expressing the protein. The results demonstrate the power of PMF of minimally processed microbial cultures as a sensitive and specific technique for the positive identification and phenotypic characterization of certain microorganisms used in biotechnology and bioremediation.

Two-dimensional electrophoretic analysis of proteins expressed by normal and cancerous human crypts: Application of mass spectrometry to peptide-mass fingerprinting

1994 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 391-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong Ji ◽  
Robert H. Whitehead ◽  
Gavin E. Reid ◽  
Robert L. Moritz ◽  
Larry D. Ward ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mass Spectrometry ◽  
Peptide Mass Fingerprinting ◽  
Electrophoretic Analysis ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Peptide Mass
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