Highlights d Genome-wide analysis of 110 ancient individuals from the Near East d Gene pools of Anatolia and Caucasus were biologically connected 6500 BCE d Gene flow from neighboring populations in Northern Levant during 3 rd millennium BCE d One individual of likely Central Asian origin in 2 nd millennium BCE Northern Levant
Since initial applications of strontium isotope human sourcing in the early 1990s, the use of the method has steadily increased in archaeology and in anthropology more broadly. Despite this trend, the collection of necessary baseline environmental data has not been standardized and sometimes does not occur at all. A thorough environmental sampling strategy will ensure that all the variability within a selected region is documented, which is a critical step to improving the accuracy of sourcing studies. Furthermore, shared strontium baseline data collections are needed to improve the intercomparability of datasets and results. This paper provides a case study from a semiarid region in northwestern New Mexico, USA, highlighting the need for a bottom-up approach to baseline data collection (from bedrock to animal) and describes the methods of pre-field planning and collecting, including rationales for what samples to collect for Sr isotope baseline data. The authors hope that this paper will lay a foundation for the implementation and standardization of Sr isotope baseline data collecting, which does not currently exist.
Archaeological and archaeogenetic evidence points to the Pontic–Caspian steppe zone between the Caucasus and the Black Sea as the crucible from which the earliest steppe pastoralist societies arose and spread, ultimately influencing populations from Europe to Inner Asia. However, little is known about their economic foundations and the factors that may have contributed to their extensive mobility. Here, we investigate dietary proteins within the dental calculus proteomes of 45 individuals spanning the Neolithic to Greco-Roman periods in the Pontic–Caspian Steppe and neighbouring South Caucasus, Oka–Volga–Don and East Urals regions. We find that sheep dairying accompanies the earliest forms of Eneolithic pastoralism in the North Caucasus. During the fourth millennium bc, Maykop and early Yamnaya populations also focused dairying exclusively on sheep while reserving cattle for traction and other purposes. We observe a breakdown in livestock specialization and an economic diversification of dairy herds coinciding with aridification during the subsequent late Yamnaya and North Caucasus Culture phases, followed by severe climate deterioration during the Catacomb and Lola periods. The need for additional pastures to support these herds may have driven the heightened mobility of the Middle and Late Bronze Age periods. Following a hiatus of more than 500 years, the North Caucasian steppe was repopulated by Early Iron Age societies with a broad mobile dairy economy, including a new focus on horse milking.
The causes, consequences, and timing of the rise of moralizing religions in world history have been the focus of intense debate. Progress has been limited by the availability of quantitative data to test competing theories, by divergent ideas regarding both predictor and outcomes variables, and by differences of opinion over methodology. To address all these problems, we utilize Seshat: Global History Databank, a large storehouse of information designed to test theories concerning the evolutionary drivers of social complexity. In addition to the Big Gods hypothesis, which proposes that moralizing religion contributed to the success of increasingly large-scale complex societies, we consider the role of warfare, animal husbandry, and agricultural productivity in the rise of moralizing religions. Using a broad range of new measures of belief in moralizing supernatural punishment, we find strong support for previous research showing that such beliefs did not drive the rise of social complexity. By contrast, our analyses indicate that intergroup warfare, supported by resource availability, played a major role in the evolution of both social complexity and moralizing religions. Thus, the correlation between social complexity and moralizing religion would seem to result from shared evolutionary drivers, rather than from direct causal relationships between these two variables.
This report describes the current canonical time-series dataset named "Equinox2020," a subset of Seshat: Global History Databank data for a well-curated list of polities and variables available on the Seshat Data Browser. The report provides an introduction to the methods and procedures of the Seshat project relating to the curation and release of the Equinox2020 dataset.
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