Notable paper: Eerkens J et al. 2016. Isotopic and genetic analyses of a mass grave in central California: Implications for precontact hunter-gatherer warfare. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 159:116–125.
Synopsis: Jelmer Eerkens and colleagues examined a mass burial of seven men from the Amador Valley of California around 850 AD. The people in the area at this time were sedentary hunter-gatherers living in small villages, and these seven men appear to have been killed in a violent event. Eerkens and colleagues were able to investigate stable isotopes in the bodies to show that the men came from outside the Amador Valley, and mtDNA established that the men were not close maternal relatives. Further, a slight contrast in the carbon and strontium stable isotopes between bone and teeth shared by the men suggest that they all changed residence locations, possibly together, some time after their third molars finished enamel deposition.
Lithic networks reveal early regionalization in late Pleistocene North America
Authors:
Buchanan et al
Abstract:
North America was colonized by hunter–gatherer populations during the late Pleistocene, and the Clovis culture is the earliest well-documented evidence of this event. Long-standing questions about the colonization process persist, including the extent to which low-density populations maintained contact across the continent and if foraging territories overlapped or were spatially-discrete. Here, we use a network approach to examine the spatial structure of land use associated with the earliest hunter–gatherer populations in North America. In particular, we examine the co-occurrence of raw materials used for stone tool manufacture at archaeological sites across the continent. Using a database of 84 Clovis assemblages we show that there are three large isolated, mostly spatially-discrete, lithic exploitation networks across the continent. These regions closely correspond to previously identified differences in Clovis point form, suggesting that Clovis populations were becoming regionally distinct. This process of cultural diversification that begins in the late Pleistocene, continues to develop into the Holocene.
Stone tools, cooked animal and plant remains and fire pits found at the Monte Verde site in southern Chile provide greater interdisciplinary evidence that the earliest known Americans--a nomadic people adapted to a cold, ice-age environment--were established deep in South America more than 15,000 years ago. The research, led by Tom Dillehay, Rebecca Webb Wilson University Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, appears in the Nov. 18 issue of PLOS ONE.
[...]
The team recovered a total of 39 stone objects and 12 small fire pits associated with bones and some edible plant remains, including nuts and grasses. The bones tended to be small fragments, broken and scorched, indicating that the animals had been cooked. They often came from very large animals, like prehistoric llamas or mastodons, as well as smaller creatures like prehistoric deer and horses. The Monte Verde site was unlikely to have been able to support the kind of vegetation that those animals needed to eat, so they were likely killed and butchered elsewhere. The objects were radiocarbon dated and most were found to range in age from more than 14,000 to almost 19,000 years old.
The wide scattering suggests that the people who created these features were nomadic hunter-gatherers who might have camped for only a night or two before moving on. "Where they're going, we don't know, and where they're coming from, we don't know, but this would have been a passageway from the coast to the foothills of the Andes," Dillehay said. Dillehay believes that they may have come through Monte Verde because the terrain was more walkable than the surrounding bogs and wetlands, and because it provided access to stone to make tools.
Two contemporaneous mitogenomes from terminal Pleistocene burials in eastern Beringia
Authors:
Tackney et al
Abstract:
Pleistocene residential sites with multiple contemporaneous human burials are extremely rare in the Americas. We report mitochondrial genomic variation in the first multiple mitochondrial genomes from a single prehistoric population: two infant burials (USR1 and USR2) from a common interment at the Upward Sun River Site in central Alaska dating to ∼11,500 cal B.P. Using a targeted capture method and next-generation sequencing, we determined that the USR1 infant possessed variants that define mitochondrial lineage C1b, whereas the USR2 genome falls at the root of lineage B2, allowing us to refine younger coalescence age estimates for these two clades. C1b and B2 are rare to absent in modern populations of northern North America. Documentation of these lineages at this location in the Late Pleistocene provides evidence for the extent of mitochondrial diversity in early Beringian populations, which supports the expectations of the Beringian Standstill Model.
pop sci write up.
Paleontologists from the University of Michigan have uncovered a thrilling find only 10 miles south of Ann Arbor near the town of Chelsea, Michigan. A partial skeleton of a 12,000 year old mammoth was discovered—including parts of its skull, tusks, pelvis, and shoulder blades—but that’s not all. Dig leader and University of Michigan professor of paleontology Daniel Fisher said that the site has “excellent evidence of human activity” preserved with the mammoth remains.
Spatiotemporal distribution of Holocene populations in North America
Authors:
Chaput et al
Abstract:
As the Cordilleran and Laurentide Ice Sheets retreated, North America was colonized by human populations; however, the spatial patterns of subsequent population growth are unclear. Temporal frequency distributions of aggregated radiocarbon (14C) dates are used as a proxy of population size and can be used to track this expansion. The Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database contains more than 35,000 14C dates and is used in this study to map the spatiotemporal demographic changes of Holocene populations in North America at a continental scale for the past 13,000 y. We use the kernel method, which converts the spatial distribution of 14C dates into estimates of population density at 500-y intervals. The resulting maps reveal temporally distinct, dynamic patterns associated with paleodemographic trends that correspond well to genetic, archaeological, and ethnohistoric evidence of human occupation. These results have implications for hypothesizing and testing migration routes into and across North America as well as the relative influence of North American populations on the evolution of the North American ecosystem.
Early human use of anadromous salmon in North America at 11,500 y ago
Authors:
Halffman et al
Abstract:
Salmon represented a critical resource for prehistoric foragers along the North Pacific Rim, and continue to be economically and culturally important; however, the origins of salmon exploitation remain unresolved. Here we report 11,500-y-old salmon associated with a cooking hearth and human burials from the Upward Sun River Site, near the modern extreme edge of salmon habitat in central Alaska. This represents the earliest known human use of salmon in North America. Ancient DNA analyses establish the species as Oncorhynchus keta (chum salmon), and stable isotope analyses indicate anadromy, suggesting that salmon runs were established by at least the terminal Pleistocene. The early use of this resource has important implications for Paleoindian land use, economy, and expansions into northwest North America.
