Unwritten memories of Dr. Siran Deraniyagala

An appreciation of Dr. Siran Deraniyagala

A Microlithic Assemblage from the Terminal Pleistocene: Alawala Pothgul-lena Rock Shelter in the Wet Zone of Sri Lanka

Stone artifact assemblages have long been used for the identification of ancient cultural connections and trends through space and time. In this endeavor, archaeologists have focused on variations in lithic morphology. Sri Lankan sites dated from 47ka onwards, yield stone tools of the microlithic technological tradition. These complex tools are characterized by an expanding range of geometric tools, non-geometric tools, and the novel exploitation and sourcing of raw materials. From the Wet Zone of western Sri Lanka’s Gampaha District, the rock shelter-cave site of Pothgul-lena (PGL) was excavated in 2008-2009. Stone artifacts recovered from PGL belong to the microlithic tool tradition, an enduring technological tradition that has been in use in Lanka from approximately 50,000 years to early historic times. According to C14 dating, the PGL site has been occupied from the terminal Pleistocene (ca. 14ka) into the mid-Holocene (ca. 6ka). Preliminary analysis of artifacts revealed that they were fashioned using the freehand percussion (soft hammer) technique as well as the bipolar technique. The raw material used to produce microliths was quartz of both the clear and milky variety. A high number of cutters, one-edge cutters, scrapers and non-descript flake tools recovered from the excavation are described in this report

Palaeogenomic analysis of black rat (Rattus rattus) reveals multiple European introductions associated with human economic history

The distribution of the black rat (Rattus rattus) has been heavily influenced by its association with humans. The dispersal history of this non-native commensal rodent across Europe, however, remains poorly understood, and different introductions may have occurred during the Roman and medieval periods. Here, in order to reconstruct the population history of European black rats, we first generate a de novo genome assembly of the black rat. We then sequence 67 ancient and three modern black rat mitogenomes, and 36 ancient and three modern nuclear genomes from archaeological sites spanning the 1st-17th centuries CE in Europe and North Africa. Analyses of our newly reported sequences, together with published mitochondrial DNA sequences, confirm that black rats were introduced into the Mediterranean and Europe from Southwest Asia. Genomic analyses of the ancient rats reveal a population turnover in temperate Europe between the 6th and 10th centuries CE, coincident with an archaeologically attested decline in the black rat population. The near disappearance and re-emergence of black rats in Europe may have been the result of the breakdown of the Roman Empire, the First Plague Pandemic, and/or post-Roman climatic cooling.Peer reviewe

Spice and rice: pepper, cloves and everyday cereal foods at the ancient port of Mantai, Sri Lanka

Lying on the north-west coast of Sri Lanka, the ancient port of Mantai was ideally situated as a 'hub' for trade between East and West from the first millennium BC onwards. Excavations at the site were interrupted by civil war in 1984, delaying publication of these results and leading to the underestimation of Mantai's importance in the development of Early Historic Indian Ocean trade. Renewed excavations in 2009-2010 yielded extensive archaeobotanical remains, which, alongside an improved understanding of the site's chronology, provide important new insights into the development of local and regional trade routes and direct evidence for early trade in the valuable spices upon which later empires were founded

Palaeogenomic analysis of black rat (Rattus rattus) reveals multiple European introductions associated with human economic history

The distribution of the black rat (Rattus rattus) has been heavily influenced by its association with humans. The dispersal history of this non-native commensal rodent across Europe, however, remains poorly understood, and different introductions may have occurred during the Roman and medieval periods. Here, in order to reconstruct the population history of European black rats, we first generate a de novo genome assembly of the black rat. We then sequence 67 ancient and three modern black rat mitogenomes, and 36 ancient and three modern nuclear genomes from archaeological sites spanning the 1st-17th centuries CE in Europe and North Africa. Analyses of our newly reported sequences, together with published mitochondrial DNA sequences, confirm that black rats were introduced into the Mediterranean and Europe from Southwest Asia. Genomic analyses of the ancient rats reveal a population turnover in temperate Europe between the 6th and 10th centuries CE, coincident with an archaeologically attested decline in the black rat population. The near disappearance and re-emergence of black rats in Europe may have been the result of the breakdown of the Roman Empire, the First Plague Pandemic, and/or post-Roman climatic cooling.Peer reviewe