Little is known regarding the first people to enter the Americas and their genetic legacy. Genomic analysis of the oldest human remains from the Americas showed a direct relationship between a Clovis-related ancestral population and all modern Central and South Americans as well as a deep split separating them from North Americans in Canada. We present 91 ancient human genomes from California and Southwestern Ontario and demonstrate the existence of two distinct ancestries in North America, which possibly split south of the ice sheets. A contribution from both of these ancestral populations is found in all modern Central and South Americans. The proportions of these two ancestries in ancient and modern populations are consistent with a coastal dispersal and multiple admixture events.
Despite extensive research on the transition from semimobile hunters and gatherers to sedentary, food-producing villagers in Southwest Asia, associated changes in community organization remain unexplored. Undoubtedly new social and economic mechanisms were necessary to facilitate the success of these larger permanent settlements. The emergence of novel intrasite organizational patterns can be elucidated in the archaeological record through analysis of the built environment. This paper presents an interpretation of temporal transformations in community organization utilizing the results from the detailed analysis of Beidha, one of the most extensively excavated early Neolithic villages in Southwest Asia. It is proposed that the emergence of Neolithic farming villages in Southwest Asia was characterized by two parallel and interrelated organizational trends: a more restricted social network for sharing production and consumption activities, and the development of more formal and institutionalized mechanisms for integrating the community as a whole.
This article reassesses the timing, context, and impetus for the onset of sedentary, complex hunter-gatherers, food production, and village life in the Near East during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. Drawing on recent paleoclimatic and archaeological results, I argue that sedentism and then village life were rapid rather than gradual events that occurred during optimal climatic conditions and took place in resource-rich settings. These two social milestones included fundamental changes in economic strategies, social interaction, and ideology. Only by understanding the interplay between preexisting social institutions and human agency within communities prior to and during these periods of major social change will we be able to understand how and why food production began.
Sex estimation of skeletons is fundamental to many archaeological studies. currently, three approaches are available to estimate sex-osteology, genomics, or proteomics, but little is known about the relative reliability of these methods in applied settings. We present matching osteological, shotgun-genomic, and proteomic data to estimate the sex of 55 individuals, each with an independent radiocarbon date between 2,440 and 100 cal BP, from two ancestral Ohlone sites in Central California. Sex estimation was possible in 100% of this burial sample using proteomics, in 91% using genomics, and in 51% using osteology. Agreement between the methods was high, however conflicts did occur. Genomic sex estimates were 100% consistent with proteomic and osteological estimates when DNA reads were above 100,000 total sequences. However, more than half the samples had DNA read numbers below this threshold, producing high rates of conflict with osteological and proteomic data where nine out of twenty conditional DNA sex estimates conflicted with proteomics. While the DNA signal decreased by an order of magnitude in the older burial samples, there was no decrease in proteomic signal. We conclude that proteomics provides an important complement to osteological and shotgun-genomic sex estimation. Biological sex plays an important role in the human experience, correlating to lifespan, reproduction, and a wide range of other biological factors 1-5. Sex and gender are also fundamental in structuring an array of cultural behaviors, including residence patterns, kinship, economic roles, and identity construction and expression 6-9. How sex interacts with gender and these particular issues is not static and can vary in detail across societies and over time 10-12. It is not surprising that sex is one of the most basic and important measures in bioarchaeological and forensic analyses. Typically, osteological features are used to estimate sex of skeletal remains, and the most widely used marker is the morphology of the os coxae 13-16. However, appropriate markers are not always sufficiently expressed or preserved to estimate sex using morphological criteria 17. A lack of sexually-dimorphic markers is especially acute for skeletons of infants and children who have not undergone puberty. Mortuary practices, such as cremation or secondary burial in charnel houses, can also can impose limitations on the utility of osteological sex estimates 18. The advent of DNA sequencing made it possible to use skeletal remains to estimate the sex of very young individuals; it also expanded sex estimations for fragmentary, pathological, and degraded skeletal materials 19-21. More recently, development of massively parallel DNA sequencing greatly improved genome coverage in archaeological samples 22-25. In addition to providing detailed genetic information, this allows biological sex to be estimated from shotgun sequencing data 25-27. These approaches were an improvement over earlier PCR-based marker
Excavations undertaken at two multi-phase Epipalaeolithic sites in the Wadi el-Jilat (central Jordan) highlight regional diversity in both lithic assemblages and settlement patterns during the late Pleistocene of the southern Levant. New dates from Jilat 6 confirm that an assemblage dominated by geometric triangles was manufactured between 15,500 and 16,700 b.p. (contemporary with the Kebaran) and recent excavations at Jilat 22 have revealed a non-microlithic blade-focussed assemblage with a novel tool form dating to around 13,000 b.p. (contemporary with the geometric Kebaran). The article also addresses the geomorphological/behavioural processes lying behind the formation of extensive late Pleistocene sites in the present steppe/desert transition zone of Jordan.
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