In European and many African, Middle Eastern and Southern Asian populations lactase persistence (LP) is the most strongly selected monogenic trait to have evolved over the last 10,000 years 1 . While LP selection and prehistoric milk consumption must be linked, considerable uncertainty remains concerning their spatiotemporal configuration and specific interactions 2,3 . We provide detailed distributions of milk exploitation across Europe over the last 9k years using c. 7,000 pottery fat residues from >550 archaeological sites. European milk use was widespread from the Neolithic period onwards but varied spatially and temporally in intensity. Surprisingly, comparison of model likelihoods indicates that LP selection varying with levels of prehistoric milk exploitation provides no better explanation of LP allele frequency trajectories than uniform selection since the Neolithic. In the UK Biobank 4,5 cohort of ~500K contemporary Europeans, LP genotype was only weakly associated with milk consumption and did not show consistent associations with improved fitness or health indicators. This suggests other hypotheses on the beneficial effects of LP should be considered for its rapid frequency increase. We propose that lactase non-persistent individuals consumed milk when it became available, but that under particular conditions and microbiological milieux this was disadvantageous, driving LP selection in prehistoric Europe. Comparison of model likelihoods indicates that population fluctuations, settlement density and wild animal exploitationproxies for these driversprovide better explanations of LP selection than the extent of milk exploitation. These findings offer new perspectives on prehistoric milk exploitation and LP evolution.
The deposition of Early Neolithic material within tree-throw hollows in described, and the possible role of fallen trunks as places of occupation, settlement foci and landscape markers is discussed. Having implications for the interpretation of ubiquitous later Mesolithic pit dwellings, the evidence suggests a continuity of forest 'identity'. Accordingly, patterns of clearances are also explored in relationship to modes of occupation, and the employment of 'big wood' in Neolithic monuments discussed.
This paper presents the results of a programme of research on an unusual group of prehistoric stone settings located on Exmoor, south-west England. Taking a variety of semi-geometric and apparently random forms, a total of 59 settings have been identified, with new discoveries taking place on a regular basis. These stone settings are remarkable for their diminutive size, with component stones often standing to heights of 100 mm or less, a factor which has led to their being termed ‘minilithic’. Through reference to the results of a programme of geophysical survey and small-scale excavation targeted upon a particularly rich cluster of settings around the upper reaches of Badgworthy Water, issues of morphology, dating, relationships, and the implications of the Exmoor miniliths for developing understandings monumentality are discussed.
An archaeology of aesthetics can be more than a study of past artistic evaluation. It can be extended to encompass an understanding of styles of action considered proper and ef cacious, and which drew in a knowledgeable and skilful fashion on speci c understandings of the world and the order of things. Through the detail of selected depositional contexts in the British Neolithic, it is shown how the deliberate burial of artefacts and other materials was undertaken with such forms of aesthetic value in mind. In an 'aesthetics of deposition', a perception of effectiveness was intimately related to the effort and care expended upon the appropriate selection, arrangement and burial of things. While individual objects may not in themselves have been ascribed an aesthetic quality, their bringing together and arrangement in burial did serve to create aesthetic effects. In a post-Duchampian tradition they could even be seen as artworks. KeywordsAesthetics; deposition; material agency; Neolithic Britain. The archaeology of depositionThe manner in which materials, be they artefacts, animal or human remains, make up con gurations of archaeological evidence is far from unproblematic. Throughout the later prehistory of Europe evidence of the formal burial of objects (sometimes pre gured by deliberate breakage (Chapman 2000a)), and their structured spatial and compositional arrangement in deposits is commonplace. Numerous examples could be cited, from the wholesale deposition of metalwork in hoards and watery contexts in the Bronze Age (Bradley 1990), to the careful selection and burial of occupation debris in pits, enclosure ditches and other contexts in the Neolithic (Thomas 1999a: ch. 4;Chapman 2000b) and Iron Age (Hill 1995). At one level, such depositional practices are indicative of kinds of materiality and rationality among prehistoric peoples very different from our own (Brück 1999). That objects were discarded in a manner we would not recognize as 'functional' is telling of our encounter with different systems of value. We know, from both ethnographic
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