An Archaeological Study of Early Farming Settlements on Iresi Hills

Recent Investigation of an archaeological site in southwest Nigeria during the Late Stone Age revealed additional information about the cultural development of the area. On Iresi Hills two rock shelters (Ajaye and Cherubim & Seraphim) were investigated in two seasons from 2017 to 2018 during which pottery, ground stone axes and microlithics were excavated. Although there is no clear break in the stratigraphy, the findings show clear demarcation between two cultural layers. The upper layer contains pottery, microlithics and ground stone axes, and ochre while the lower layer is characterized by microlithics only. The site presented a date of about Cal 5653 BP which coincides with a short dry period in the area. Tis paper reports the occupation in Iresi, in southwest Nigeria with a view to fill the gap in the chronology and to interrogate the evidence for Late Stone Age in terms of the culture that existed in between 12000YBP of Iwo Eleru and 2000YBP of Itaakpa and the influence of a change in environment of southwest Nigeria and West Africa in general.

RETURNING TO THE RATE OF SPREAD OF EARLY FARMING IN EUROPE: COMMENT ON THE ARTICLE BY MANEN ET AL. (2019) IN RADIOCARBON

ABSTRACTThe aim of the comment is to address the misrepresentations of our work on the Neolithic transitions that are found in a recent article by Manen and coauthors in Radiocarbon. There are a fair number of them as indicated in the comment. The purpose of the comment is (1) to set the record straight, (2) to clarify several misconceptions that have persisted in the literature for some time, and (3) to comment briefly on the convergence between our own recent regional modeling of the spread of early farming along the north coast of the West Mediterranean and the position currently held by Manen and coauthors.

Honey-collecting in prehistoric West Africa from 3500 years ago

Honey and other bee products were likely a sought-after foodstuff for much of human history, with direct chemical evidence for beeswax identified in prehistoric ceramic vessels from Europe, the Near East and Mediterranean North Africa, from the 7th millennium BC. Historical and ethnographic literature from across Africa suggests bee products, honey and larvae, had considerable importance both as a food source and in the making of honey-based drinks. Here, to investigate this, we carry out lipid residue analysis of 458 prehistoric pottery vessels from the Nok culture, Nigeria, West Africa, an area where early farmers and foragers co-existed. We report complex lipid distributions, comprising n-alkanes, n-alkanoic acids and fatty acyl wax esters, which provide direct chemical evidence of bee product exploitation and processing, likely including honey-collecting, in over one third of lipid-yielding Nok ceramic vessels. These findings highlight the probable importance of honey collecting in an early farming context, around 3500 years ago, in West Africa.

Seasonal calving in European Prehistoric cattle and its impacts on milk availability and cheese-making

Present-day domestic cattle are reproductively active throughout the year, which is a major asset for dairy production. Large wild ungulates, in contrast, are seasonal breeders, as were the last historic representatives of the aurochs, the wild ancestors of cattle. Aseasonal reproduction in cattle is a consequence of domestication and herding, but exactly when this capacity developed in domestic cattle is still unknown and the extent to which early farming communities controlled the seasonality of reproduction is debated. Seasonal or aseasonal calving would have shaped the socio-economic practices of ancient farming societies differently, structuring the agropastoral calendar and determining milk availability where dairying is attested. In this study, we reconstruct the calving pattern through the analysis of stable oxygen isotope ratios of cattle tooth enamel from 18 sites across Europe, dating from the 6th mill. cal BC (Early Neolithic) in the Balkans to the 4th mill. cal BC (Middle Neolithic) in Western Europe. Seasonal calving prevailed in Europe between the 6th and 4th millennia cal BC. These results suggest that cattle agropastoral systems in Neolithic Europe were strongly constrained by environmental factors, in particular forage resources. The ensuing fluctuations in milk availability would account for cheese-making, transforming a seasonal milk supply into a storable product.

The Evolution of Plant Harvesting at The Dawn of Agriculture: Perspectives from Sickle Gloss Texture Analyses

Archaeobotanical and genetic analysis of modern plant materials are drawing a complex scenario for the origins of cereal agriculture in the Levant. This paper presents an improved method for the study of early farming harvesting systems based on the texture analysis of gloss observed on sickle blades. We identify different harvesting activities (unripe/semi-ripe/ripe cereal reaping and reed and grass cutting) and evaluate their evolution during the time when plant cultivation activities started and domesticated crops appeared in the Levant (12,800 to 7000 cal BC). The state of maturity of cereals when harvested shifted through time from unripe, to semi-ripe and finally to ripe. Most of these changes in harvesting techniques are explained by the modification of crops during the transition to agriculture. The shift of plant harvesting strategies was neither chronologically linear nor geographically homogeneous. Fully mature cereal harvesting starts to be dominant around 8500 cal BC in Southern Levant and one millennium later in Northern Levant, which fits with the appearance of domestic varieties in the archaeobotanical record. The evolution of plant harvesting better fits with the gradualist model of explanation of cereal agriculture than with the punctuated one.

Keeping the Frontier: Steps “Towards Neolithization” in the Eastern Gulf of Finland

This article is an attempt to understand the driving forces behind the process of Neolithization in the Eastern Europe Forest zone, where the consumption economy existed till the Bronze or even till the Early Iron Age. Main peculiarities of the sociocultural development in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland region (EGF) on the transition from Mesolithic to farming societies (sixth – first ka. BC) are discussed in relation to the changes in material culture, subsistence strategy, communication system and settlement pattern. The process of neolithization lasted there for several thousand years. Overview of the dynamics of the social and cultural development in the region revealed several phases of substantial changes in archeological materials (presumably reflecting considerable sociocultural changes). These changes happened later than in the neighboring territories and were preceded by dramatic environmental transformations that affected prehistoric communities in the coastal zone. For the population of the region, innovations could be considered as not “steps toward,” but “retreat in the face of” neolithization. Resistance of the population of EGF to the innovations could be based on environmental conditions that were extremely favorable for hunter–gatherers’ subsistence, but made farming (especially early farming) rather risky.