Shaping a future of painting: the early Neolithic pottery from Dzhulyunitsa, North Central Bulgaria

This paper presents the somewhat unexpected findings of a preliminary archaeometric study of ‘painted’ early Neolithic pottery from the site of Dzhulyunitsa, north central Bulgaria. While there is still no consensus on the actual model of Neolithisation of this region, expectations are that there would have been a transfer of pottery technology and possible small quantities of painted pottery from the West Anatolian homeland to early Neolithic sites in Bulgaria. However, our findings confound these expectations. Pottery from the earliest levels of the site are all based on local materials: there are no imported wares. There is no evidence of the experimental phase that would be expected as migrant potters learned to adjust to local clays. Instead the pottery is of a very high quality from the outset, using naturally fine clays that do not require temper: though organic material is sometimes added, albeit often in non-functional quantities. What were thought to be dark-painted layers are shown to be simply the high-quality burnishes that can be developed using these micaceous local clays: in some cases with outer surfaces enhanced with ochre. White-slipped and white-on red decorated sherds from the second layer of the site continue to showcase a mastery of local materials, with white pigments base on nearby limestones and marls. But here, petrographic analysis identifies some white-painted wares which are clearly not local, with both bodies and paint compositions pointing to a different provenance and technology. As it continues, this project aims to establish the full range of Dzhulyunitsa pottery fabrics to reconstruct manufacturing technologies and raw material sourcing patterns, for comparison with contemporary sites across the region. </p

The genetic history of the Southern Arc: a bridge between West Asia and Europe

By sequencing 727 ancient individuals from the Southern Arc (Anatolia and its neighbors in Southeastern Europe and West Asia) over 10,000 years, we contextualize its Chalcolithic period and Bronze Age (about 5000 to 1000 BCE), when extensive gene flow entangled it with the Eurasian steppe. Two streams of migration transmitted Caucasus and Anatolian/Levantine ancestry northward, and the Yamnaya pastoralists, formed on the steppe, then spread southward into the Balkans and across the Caucasus into Armenia, where they left numerous patrilineal descendants. Anatolia was transformed by intra?West Asian gene flow, with negligible impact of the later Yamnaya migrations. This contrasts with all other regions where Indo-European languages were spoken, suggesting that the homeland of the Indo-Anatolian language family was in West Asia, with only secondary dispersals of non-Anatolian Indo-Europeans from the steppe. Stories about the peopling?and people?of Southern Europe and West Asia have been passed down for thousands of years, and these stories have contributed to our historical understanding of populations. Genomic data provide the opportunity to truly understand these patterns independently from written history. In a trio of papers, Lazaridis et al. examined more than 700 ancient genomes from across this region, the Southern Arc, spanning 11,000 years, from the earliest farming cultures to post-Medieval times (see the Perspective by Arbuckle and Schwandt). On the basis of these results, the authors suggest that earlier reliance on modern phenotypes and ancient writings and artistic depictions provided an inaccurate picture of early Indo-Europeans, and they provide a revised history of the complex migrations and population integrations that shaped these cultures. ?SNV A web of migrations between Anatolia, its neighbors, and the Steppe suggests a West Asian origin of Indo-Anatolian languages

Ancient DNA from Mesopotamia suggests distinct Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic migrations into Anatolia

We present the first ancient DNA data from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Mesopotamia (Southeastern Turkey and Northern Iraq), Cyprus, and the Northwestern Zagros, along with the first data from Neolithic Armenia. We show that these and neighboring populations were formed through admixture of pre-Neolithic sources related to Anatolian, Caucasus, and Levantine hunter-gatherers, forming a Neolithic continuum of ancestry mirroring the geography of West Asia. By analyzing Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic populations of Anatolia, we show that the former were derived from admixture between Mesopotamian-related and local Epipaleolithic-related sources, but the latter experienced additional Levantine-related gene flow, thus documenting at least two pulses of migration from the Fertile Crescent heartland to the early farmers of Anatolia

The genetic history of the Southern Arc. A bridge between West Asia and Europe

By sequencing 727 ancient individuals from the Southern Arc (Anatolia and its neighbors in Southeastern Europe and West Asia) over 10,000 years, we contextualize its Chalcolithic period and Bronze Age (about 5000 to 1000 BCE), when extensive gene flow entangled it with the Eurasian steppe. Two streams of migration transmitted Caucasus and Anatolian/Levantine ancestry northward, and the Yamnaya pastoralists, formed on the steppe, then spread southward into the Balkans and across the Caucasus into Armenia, where they left numerous patrilineal descendants. Anatolia was transformed by intra-West Asian gene flow, with negligible impact of the later Yamnaya migrations. This contrasts with all other regions where Indo-European languages were spoken, suggesting that the homeland of the IndoAnatolian language family was in West Asia, with only secondary dispersals of non-Anatolian IndoEuropeans from the steppe

A genetic probe into the ancient and medieval history of Southern Europe and West Asia

Literary and archaeological sources have preserved a rich history of Southern Europe and West Asia since the Bronze Age that can be complemented by genetics. Mycenaean period elites in Greece did not differ from the general population and included both people with some steppe ancestry and others, like the Griffin Warrior, without it. Similarly, people in the central area of the Urartian Kingdom around Lake Van lacked the steppe ancestry characteristic of the kingdom's northern provinces. Anatolia exhibited extraordinary continuity down to the Roman and Byzantine periods, with its people serving as the demographic core of much of the Roman Empire, including the city of Rome itself. During medieval times, migrations associated with Slavic and Turkic speakers profoundly affected the region

The genomic history of southeastern Europe

Farming was first introduced to Europe in the mid-seventh millennium bc, and was associated with migrants from Anatolia who settled in the southeast before spreading throughout Europe. Here, to understand the dynamics of this process, we analysed genome-wide ancient DNA data from 225 individuals who lived in southeastern Europe and surrounding regions between 12000 and 500 bc. We document a west-east cline of ancestry in indigenous hunter-gatherers and, in eastern Europe, the early stages in the formation of Bronze Age steppe ancestry. We show that the first farmers of northern and western Europe dispersed through southeastern Europe with limited hunter-gatherer admixture, but that some early groups in the southeast mixed extensively with hunter-gatherers without the sex-biased admixture that prevailed later in the north and west. We also show that southeastern Europe continued to be a nexus between east and west after the arrival of farmers, with intermittent genetic contact with steppe populations occurring up to 2,000 years earlier than the migrations from the steppe that ultimately replaced much of the population of northern Europe.Iain Mathieson … Wolfgang Haak … David Reic