The Archaeology and Paleoecology of the Aubrey Clovis Site (41DN479) Denton County, Texas

This report contains the results of interdisciplinary investigations of the Aubrey Clovis Site (41DN479}, located at Lake Ray Roberts, Denton County, Texas, and conducted by the Center for Environmental Archaeology, University of North Texas for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District. Exposed by construction of the artificial outlet channel for the reservoir, the site is a multi-cluster complex of archaeological features and artifact-fauna! concentrations buried 7-9 meters below the flood plain of the Elm Fork Trinity River. The Clovis-age materials are geologically situated on a paleo surface within a 14 m thick sequence of late Quaternary deposits, associated with spring, lacustrine, alluvial and colluvial sedimentary environments. A stratigraphically consistent set of 23 radiocarbon ages establishes a sound chronometric frame for these deposits between 1.6 Ka and 14.2 Ka. The Clovis occupations are directly dated by two radiocarbon ages of ca. 11,550 Ka determined on charcoal from a hearth. These ages are securely bracketed by stratigraphically and numerically consistent ages above and below, within the period of ca. 12,300 to 10,940 Ka. Paleoenvironmental reconstructions for the periods before, during and after Clovis occupations have been afforded by pollen, insects, mollusks, vertebrate faunas as well as sedimentary and geochemical data. In the early post-glacial period, the site environs was a cool grassland with moderate effective precipitation, that evolved towards significantly warmer and drier conditions prior to Clovis occupations. The environment ameliorated at about the time of occupations, but exhibited a maximum of Late Quaternary mammalian biodiversity. Clovis artifacts and faunas occur in multiple clusters, including ·camps 8 and F that contain ca. 9,800 lithic artifacts, over 4,000 fauna! remains and features including hearths, lithic concentrations and a pit considered to be a well. These concentrations were adjacent to a Clovis-age pond and river. Bison bones and associated artifacts indicate a butchering (and kill ?) locus on the pond shore opposite Camp 8 . Subsistence data from the camps indicate exploitation of a broad set of animals, ranging from mega-mammals (Bison and possibly Mammoth) down to small game, fish and birds. Lithic artifacts show procurement from a minimum of almost 200 km from the site, with materials dominated by Tecovas quartzite, white Novachert and Edwards chert, and including chalcedony, Alibates chert, and Morrison or Dakota sandstone. The assemblage is dominated by repair and maintenance debris associated with bifacial and unifacial tools. Latest stage manufacture is indicated for a biface(s), while all other activities were apparently performed with only resharpening/ repair of other stone tools. Detailed spatial patterning indicates quite well differentiated activities within and between these occupation clusters. Overall, the uniquely detailed record of Clovis occupations at Aubrey registers an adaptive strategy characterized by high mobility, broad exploitation of dispersed, variable resources, long-distance raw material procurement coupled with efficient blank and tool depletion, and a probable combination of functional flexibility and strong within group task differentiation and integratio

Multichannel read-out for arrays of metallic magnetic calorimeters

Metallic magnetic micro-calorimeters (MMCs) operated at millikelvin temperature offer the possibility to achieve eV-scale energy resolution with high stopping power for X-rays and massive particles in an energy range up to several tens of keV. This motivates their use in a wide range of applications in fields as particle physics, atomic and molecular physics. Present detector systems consist of MMC arrays read out by 32 two-stage SQUID read-out channels. In contrast to the design of the detector array and consequently the design of the front-end SQUIDs, which need to be optimised for the physics case and the particles to be detected in a given experiment, the read-out chain can be standardised. We present our new standardised 32-channel parallel read-out for the operation of MMC arrays to be operated in a dilution refrigerator. The read-out system consists of a detector module, whose design depends on the particular application, an amplifier module, ribbon cables from room temperature to the millikelvin platform and a data acquisition system. In particular, we describe the realisation of the read-out system prepared for the ECHo-1k experiment for the operation of two 64-pixel arrays. The same read-out concept is also used for the maXs detector systems, developed for the study of the de-excitation of highly charged heavy ions by X-rays, as well as for the MOCCA system, developed for the energy and position sensitive detection of neutral molecular fragments for the study of fragmentation when molecular ions recombine with electrons. The choice of standard modular components for the operation of 32-channel MMC arrays offer the flexibility to upgrade detector modules without the need of any changes in the read-out system and the possibility to individually exchange parts in case of damages or failures

Early Pleistocene enamel proteome from Dmanisi resolves Stephanorhinus phylogeny

The sequencing of ancient DNA has enabled the reconstruction of speciation, migration and admixture events for extinct taxa. However, the irreversible post-mortem degradation2 of ancient DNA has so far limited its recovery—outside permafrost areas—to specimens that are not older than approximately 0.5 million years (Myr). By contrast, tandem mass spectrometry has enabled the sequencing of approximately 1.5-Myr-old collagen type I, and suggested the presence of protein residues in fossils of the Cretaceous period—although with limited phylogenetic use. In the absence of molecular evidence, the speciation of several extinct species of the Early and Middle Pleistocene epoch remains contentious. Here we address the phylogenetic relationships of the Eurasian Rhinocerotidae of the Pleistocene epoch, using the proteome of dental enamel from a Stephanorhinus tooth that is approximately 1.77-Myr old, recovered from the archaeological site of Dmanisi (South Caucasus, Georgia). Molecular phylogenetic analyses place this Stephanorhinus as a sister group to the clade formed by the woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis) and Merck’s rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis). We show that Coelodonta evolved from an early Stephanorhinus lineage, and that this latter genus includes at least two distinct evolutionary lines. The genus Stephanorhinus is therefore currently paraphyletic, and its systematic revision is needed. We demonstrate that sequencing the proteome of Early Pleistocene dental enamel overcomes the limitations of phylogenetic inference based on ancient collagen or DNA. Our approach also provides additional information about the sex and taxonomic assignment of other specimens from Dmanisi. Our findings reveal that proteomic investigation of ancient dental enamel—which is the hardest tissue in vertebrates, and is highly abundant in the fossil record—can push the reconstruction of molecular evolution further back into the Early Pleistocene epoch, beyond the currently known limits of ancient DNA preservation

A Spatial Distribution Study of Faunal Remains from Two Lower Magdalenian Occupation Levels in El Mirón Cave, Cantabria, Spain

Abstract: Human behaviour can be reconstructed by analysing specific activities and campsite organization using spatial analysis. The dense occupation layers of the Lower Cantabrian Magdalenian in the Northern Spain reveal varied aspects of Upper Palaeolithic lifeways, including evidence of specific localized activities. The outer vestibule of El Mirón cave has a particularly rich and intact Lower Magdalenian occupation horizon, Levels 15–17. The excavations in the outer vestibule “Cabin” area of the site revealed excellent bone preservation. Artefacts and faunal remains were individually recorded and sediments water-screened to yield a large sample of archaeological finds and spatial data. Zooarchaeological analysis provided the taxonomic, anatomic and taphonomic determination of the faunal individual finds. Smaller animal remains were categorized and counted; special attention was given to the identification of anthropogenic modifications such as burnt bones or bone flakes. These small refuse items are considered to be useful, in situ indicators of localized activities. The spatial distribution analysis of this dense and complex palimpsest of El Mirón Lower Cantabrian Magdalenian layers required GIS based methods including density analysis, heatmaps and cluster analysis. Based on the spatial distribution of Level 15 and 16 faunal remains, different activity areas were identified comprising hearth, working and dropping zones. These results imply the deliberately segregated use of space within the Lower Cantabrian Magdalenian site area, in which bone-processing activities played a central rol

The spatial structure of lithic landscapes : the late holocene record of east-central Argentina as a case study

Fil: Barrientos, Gustavo. División Antropología. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. Universidad Nacional de La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Catella, Luciana. División Arqueología. Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo. Universidad Nacional de La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Oliva, Fernando. Centro Estudios Arqueológicos Regionales. Facultad de Humanidades y Artes. Universidad Nacional de Rosario; Argentin

Neurocranium versus Face: A Morphometric Approach with Classical Anthropometric Variables for Characterizing Patterns of Cranial Integration in Extant Hominoids and Extinct Hominins

The relative importance of the two main cranial complexes, the neurocranium and the splanchnocranium, has been examined in the five species of extant hominoids and in a huge sample of extinct hominins using six standard craniometric variables that measure the length, width and height of each cranial module. Factor analysis and two-block partial least squares were used for establishing the major patterns of developmental and evolutionary integration between both cranial modules. The results obtained show that all extant hominoids (including the anatomically modern humans) share a conserved pattern of developmental integration, a result that agrees with previous studies. The pattern of evolutionary integration between both cranial modules in australopiths runs in parallel to developmental integration. In contrast, the pattern of evolutionary and developmental integration of the species of the genus Homo is the opposite, which is probably the consequence of distinctive selective regimes for both hominin groups.JAPC, JMJA and PP received fundings from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Gobierno de España (http://www.idi.mineco.gob.es), project CGL2011-30334, and Consejería de Economía, Innovación, Ciencia y Empleo, Junta de Andalucía, España (http://www.juntadeandalucia.es/organismo​s/economiainnovacioncienciayempleo.html), project P11-HUM-7248 and Research Groups RNM-146 and HUM-607