Lateral and vertical pulsed-photon portable luminescence (PPSL) profiling of anthropogenically-altered sediments in rescue excavations of different landscapes

<p>Growing infrastructure development in Israel has increased the number of rescue excavations involving multi-layer archaeological sites and "megasites" in landscapes ranging from dunes to clay-rich soils and yielding prehistoric to early modern finds. The limited time and resources allocated for the excavations requires rapid on-site scientific data, which are used for research during and after excavation, prioritizing artefact treatment, sediment analysis, and absolute and relative dating.</p><p>Lateral and vertical pulsed-photon (portable) OSL (PPSL) profiling of sections of anthropogenically-altered sediments containing feldspar or quartz, provide rapid and partial answers for interpreting depositional processes. These answers allow researchers to discriminate between natural and human-intervened sedimentation, identify relative age and laterally synchronize between similar sediment units, which, in turn, often help to orient the excavation goals. The potential for inhomogeneity of archaeological sediments in some cases constrain the comparability of results and call for complementary analysis of the measured sediments in order to define their inter-compatibility. Independent mineralogical and chemical and textural properties of the sediments affect the inherent luminescence signals and should therefore be analyzed.</p><p>Here we present a PPSL profiling approach combining tailored sedimentological analyses to validate sample comparability in different sedimentological and archaeological settings. The analyses include gamma and FTIR spectroscopy, portable XRF geochemistry, carbon content, particle-size distribution and colorimetry. The complementary data are intended to improve PPSL protocols by characterizing the context inhomogeneity and helping to prioritize samples for OSL dating</p>

Genome-scale sequencing and analysis of human, wolf and bison DNA from 25,000 year-old sediment

Archaeological sediments have been shown to preserve ancient DNA, but so far have not yielded genome-scale information of the magnitude of skeletal remains. We retrieved and analysed human and mammalian low-coverage nuclear and high-coverage mitochondrial genomes from Upper Palaeolithic sediments from Satsurblia cave, western Georgia, dated to 25,000 years ago. First, a human female genome with substantial basal Eurasian ancestry, which was an ancestry component of the majority of post-Ice Age people in the Near East, North Africa, and parts of Europe. Second, a wolf genome that is basal to extant Eurasian wolves and dogs and represents a previously unknown, likely extinct, Caucasian lineage that diverged from the ancestors of modern wolves and dogs before these diversified. Third, a bison genome that is basal to present-day populations, suggesting that population structure has been substantially reshaped since the Last Glacial Maximum. Our results provide new insights into the late Pleistocene genetic histories of these three species, and demonstrate that sediment DNA can be used not only for species identification, but also be a source of genome-wide ancestry information and genetic history.

Dung in the dumps: what we can learn from multi-proxy studies of archaeological dung pellets

A key question in archaeobotany concerns the role of herbivore dung in contributing plant remains to archaeobotanical assemblages. This issue has been discussed for at least 40 years and has motivated several archaeobotanical studies on identifying dung-derived deposition of plant remains. Meanwhile, microarchaeological methods have developed and continue to be developed for detecting dung in archaeological sediments, and multi-proxy methodologies are being used to study the botanical components of dung-associated sediments. Combining these approaches, the authors recently led a study incorporating different botanical proxies (seeds, pollen, phytoliths) with geoarchaeological sedimentary analysis to compare dung pellets and associated sediments. This approach presents a new way to gauge the contribution of dung-derived plant remains in archaeobotanical assemblages, which is further explored in this follow-up paper. The present paper further highlights how multi-proxy archaeobotanical investigation of individual dung pellets can provide information on seasonality, grazing range and herding practices. Their short production and deposition time make herbivore dung pellets time capsules of agropastoral activity, a useful spatio-temporal unit of analysis, and even a type of archaeological context in their own right. Adding different biomolecular and chemical methods to future multi-proxy archaeobotanical investigation of herbivore dung will produce invaluable high-resolution reconstructions of dung microbiomes. Ultimately, unpacking the contents of ancient dung pellets will inform on the species, physical characteristics, diet, niche, and disease agents of the ancient pellets’ producers. Expanded datasets of such dung-derived information will contribute significantly to the study of ecosystem transformation as well as the long-term development of agriculture and pastoralism.

Petrography and Micromorphology Face-to-Face: the Potential of Multivocality in the Study of Earth-Based Archaeological Materials

Soils and sediments are among the most commonly found materials in archaeological contexts, occurring in a myriad of forms. We need only think of pottery, which is a manipulated and fired sediment, or the different earthen deposits that compose the bulk of many sites. Traditionally, the study of the microscopic and compositional characteristics of pottery has been the focus of ceramic archaeometry, while the microstratigraphic analysis of archaeological sediments was always the main task of geoarchaeology. In this paper, the authors explore the potential of a closer collaboration between researchers dealing with the same type of raw material and often using the same methods (optical microscopy), who rarely confront the approaches and expertise of the other field. For this purpose, two samples belonging to the pre-historic and early historic site of Arslantepe were selected for a methodological exercise: a fragment of an andiron and a piece of a double-vaulted oven. Ultimately, the results of this work demonstrate that researchers from both fields can profit from a more intense exchange: one that takes advantage of the expertise developed in answering distinct but complementary research questions, and calls for the blurring of strict inter-disciplinary boundaries.

CoproID predicts the source of coprolites and paleofeces using microbiome composition and host DNA content

Shotgun metagenomics applied to archaeological feces (paleofeces) can bring new insights into the composition and functions of human and animal gut microbiota from the past. However, paleofeces often undergo physical distortions in archaeological sediments, making their source species difficult to identify on the basis of fecal morphology or microscopic features alone. Here we present a reproducible and scalable pipeline using both host and microbial DNA to infer the host source of fecal material. We apply this pipeline to newly sequenced archaeological specimens and show that we are able to distinguish morphologically similar human and canine paleofeces, as well as non-fecal sediments, from a range of archaeological contexts.

Sedimentary Landscape of Mun Valley Prehistoric Site: Construction History of Moated Site of Ban Non Wat, Northeast Thailand

This research examines the sedimentological evidence of human occupation on different cultural layers at the prehistoric archaeological sites in northeast Thailand. This study focuses on the sedimentological characters of stratigraphic layers identified at the prehistoric occupation sites of Ban Non Wat and Nong Hua Raet, to demonstrate the capacity of such analyses to elucidate the modification of sediments by past anthropogenic activity, and eventually to contribute to an enhanced understanding of the behaviour of ancient people. The primary intention of this paper is, therefore, to point out potential uses of particle analysis in identifying human–landscape interventions, testing whether meaningful differentiation is possible, and if not, whether this may nevertheless be used to understand the sedimentological relationships between different features. The study finds that although there is relatively little differentiation between sediments across the archaeological site, some insight is possible in identifying relationships between the natural sediments of the floodplain, the channels associated with the archaeological sites, and the archaeological sediments themselves. It is, for example, now possible to raise new questions regarding the construction history of the sites, the history of human behaviour at these sites, socio-spatial relationships between paleo-social activity and natural resources, and fine-scale landscape associations between sites.

CoproID predicts the source of coprolites and paleofeces using microbiome composition and host DNA content

ABSTRACTShotgun metagenomics applied to archaeological feces (paleofeces) can bring new insights into the composition and functions of human and animal gut microbiota from the past. However, paleofeces often undergo physical distortions in archaeological sediments, making their source species difficult to identify on the basis of fecal morphology or microscopic features alone. Here we present a reproducible and scalable pipeline using both host and microbial DNA to infer the host source of fecal material. We apply this pipeline to newly sequenced archaeological specimens and show that we are able to distinguish morphologically similar human and canine paleofeces, as well as non-fecal sediments, from a range of archaeological contexts.