Back to the Future? Presenting archaeology at the Green Man Festival

In the summer of 2011, Cardiff Osteoarchaeology Research Group was invited to present a number of archaeological engagement activities at the Green Man music festival as part of the Einstein’s Garden science learning area. The project, called Back to the Future?: Animals and archaeology in Einstein’s Garden comprised a number of activities, designed to cater for a wide range of ages as the festival audience typically includes young people and families. Over four days more than 2000 people visited the stall. This paper will briefly outline the activities presented, and will reflect on the challenges posed by outreach at a music festival, in particular how to hook the main festival demographic, and how to evaluate success

Norse Animal Husbandry in Liminal Environments: Stable Isotope Evidence from the Scottish North Atlantic Islands

This paper employs ?13C and ?15N analysis of bone collagen to explore animal management at large Norse settlement sites in the liminal environments of the Scottish North Atlantic Islands. The Norse period was a time of social, cultural and economic change; the need to feed an expanding population and the demand for trade meant that domestic stock were a crucial resource. Our results indicate that rearing animals in these challenging insular environments required careful management. At all sites, the diet and movement of domestic cattle and sheep were highly similar and carefully controlled and, despite many of the analysed settlements lying close to the coast, there was no use of shorefront grazing or fodder resources. In contrast, pig rearing strategies varied across the island groups. In the Western Isles pig diets were diverse, indicative of household or ad hoc management, whilst on Orkney all pigs consumed a more restricted diet based primarily on terrestrial protein. A comparison of red deer with domestic stock on the Western Isles indicates that both groups were exploiting similar grazing niches.This research was undertaken by the authors at Cardiff University as part of a PhD project. The authors would like to thank Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) for funding this research [grant number NE/ F021054/1, PI Richard Evershed], and the NERC Life Sciences Mass Spectrometry Facility in East Kilbride [grant number EK158-03/10] for their financial assistance to analyse these specimens

Progressive dehydration in decomposing bone: a potential tool for forensic anthropology

The aim of this pilot study was to determine whether collagen and/or water content of bone vary during soft tissue putrefaction by thermogravimetric analysis with a view to eventually developing a possible forensic application to determine post-mortem interval. Porcine bone decomposed in a shallow burial showed an approximate difference in average mass loss of 15  ± 8% when heated between 22 and 100 °C, compared to 14 ± 3% for porcine bone decomposed in a surface deposition, equating to water loss. Mass loss showed peaks at 0, 250–500 and 1200–1500 cumulative cooling degree days’ (CCDD) deposition for the experimental porcine bone. Should these measurements prove consistent in future studies on a wider variety of porcine and eventually human skeletal elements, they may have potential to be corroborated with other data when determining post-mortem interval, especially with disarticulated bones. A downward trend in mass loss was apparent within shallow burial and surface deposition scenarios (inclusive of freeze-dried controls) for the thermolysis of collagen (and other proteins) between 220 and 650 °C during thermogravimetric analysis. This was inconsistent within the time frame examined (0–1450 cumulative cooling degree days), and so demonstrates less potential as an indicator of post-mortem interval during soft tissue putrefaction

Quantifying microcracks on fractured bone surfaces - potential use in forensic anthropology

Bone fracture surface morphology (FSM) can provide valuable information on the cause of failure in forensic and archaeological applications and it depends primarily on three factors, the loading conditions (like strain rate), the ambient conditions (wet or dry bone material) and the quality of bone material itself. The quality of bone material evidently changes in taphonomy as a result of the decomposition process and that in turn is expected to affect FSM. Porcine bones were fractured by a standardised impact during the course of soft tissue decomposition, at 28-day intervals, over 140 days (equivalent to 638 cooling degree days). Measurements of the associated microcracks on the fractured cortical bone surfaces indicated a progressive increase in mean length during decomposition from around 180 µm to 375 µm. The morphology of these microcracks also altered, from multiple intersecting microcracks emanating from a central point at 0-28 cumulative cooling degree days, to longer linear cracks appearing to track lamellae as soft tissue decomposition progressed. The implications of these findings are that taphonomic changes of bone may offer the real possibility of distinguishing perimortem and taphonomic damage and also provide a new surrogate parameter for estimation of post-mortem interval (PMI) in forensics

Using combined biomolecular methods to explore whale exploitation and social aggregation in hunter–gatherer–fisher society in Tierra del Fuego

Cetaceans were an important food and raw material resource for the South American hunter–gatherer–fisher (HGF) communities of Tierra del Fuego. Historic ethnographic evidence suggests that relatively mobile HGF groups came together in large numbers to exploit carcasses from individual cetacean stranding events. Substantial accumulations of whale bones within shell middens in the Lanashuaia locality of the Beagle Channel suggests that these social aggregation events may also have occurred in pre-historic periods. The difficulty in assigning taxonomic identifications to the fragmentary whale remains, however, made it difficult to explicitly test this hypothesis. Here, we applied two different biomolecular techniques, collagen peptide mass fingerprinting (ZooMS) and ancient mitochondrial DNA analysis to 42 archeological bone fragments from the Lanashuaia locality to provide accurate species identifications. There was a clear correspondence between ZooMS and DNA results, identifying five different cetacean species (Southern bottlenose, blue, humpback, right, and sei whale) as well as human and sea lion remains. The biomolecular results were not conclusively consistent with HGF social aggregation, revealing an unexpectedly diverse range of cetaceans within the Lanashuaia middens. However, the results could not fully refute the hypothesis that cetacean remains can be used as anthropic markers of aggregation events, as the observed species and haplotypes revealed potential shared exploitation of some whale resources between midden sites

Isotopic analysis of faunal material from South Uist, Western Isles, Scotland

This paper reports on the results from stable isotope analysis of faunal bone collagen from a number of Iron Age and later sites on the island of South Uist, in the Western Isles, Scotland. This preliminary investigation into the isotopic signatures of the fauna is part of a larger project to model the interaction between humans, animals, and the broader environment in the Western Isles. The results demonstrate that the island fauna data fall within the range of expected results for the UK, with the terrestrial herbivorous diets of cattle and sheep confi rmed. The isotopic composition for pigs suggests that some of these animals had an omnivorous diet, whilst a single red deer value might be suggestive of the consumption of marine foods, such as by grazing on seaweed. However, further analysis is needed in order to verify this anomalous isotopic ratio

Nonlinear landscape and cultural response to sea-level rise

Dataset S1 (separate file). Relative sea-level database for Scilly comprising directly dated radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence samples with corresponding metainformation (lithostratigraphy, elevation, depositional environment and indicative meaning interpretations, paleotidal range change and sea-level calculations) following the ‘HOLSEA’ (‘Geographic Variability of Holocene Relative Sea Level’) protocol (Khan et al., 2019*). Dataset S2 (separate file). Table containing pollen results as relative abundance (genus level), modelled ages and age uncertainty for pollen samples, landcover index results (community cluster numbers and nMDS ordination axes 1 and 2), foraminifera results as species counts and transfer function results as paleomarsh elevations with uncertainty (1σ). Foraminifera samples with low test concentrations have indicative ranges (from mean high water neap tides to highest astronomical tides) in place of paleomarsh elevation estimations. Foraminifera abbreviations: H.wil – Haplophragmoides wilbertii ; J.mac – Jadammina macrescens ; M.fus – Miliammina fusca ; P.ipo – Polysaccammina ipohalina ; T.inf – Trochammina infalta ; T.och – Trochammina ochracea ; A.bat - Ammonia batavus ; A.mam – Asterigerinata mamilla ; B.var – Bolivina variablis; E.cri – Elphidium crispum ; E.wil – Elphidium Williamsoni ; F.spp. – Fissurina spp. ; Elphidium spp. ; H.ger – Haynesina germanica ; L.lob – Lobatula lobatula ; O.spp. – Oolha spp. ; Q.sem – Quinqueloculina seminula; R.spp. – Rosalina spp.. Dataset S3 (separate file). Database containing three worksheets for developing archaeological indices for Scilly. ‘SWBritain’ – Radiocarbon dates from Devon and Cornwall used to develop a summed probability distribution curve as an estimate of population demographic variation in Southwest Britain. ‘NWFrance’ - Radiocarbon dates from Brittany and Normandy used to develop a summed probability distribution curve as an estimate of population demography in Northwest France. ‘Scilly’ – Archaeological monuments from Scilly used to develop a probabilistic index of population variability.The article associated with these datasets is located in ORE at: http://hdl.handle.net/10871/123489Rising sea levels have been associated with human migration and behavioral shifts throughout prehistory, often with an emphasis on landscape submergence and consequent societal collapse. However, the assumption that future sea-level rise will drive similar adaptive responses is overly simplistic. Whilst the change from land to sea represents a dramatic and permanent shift for pre-existing human populations, the process of change is driven by a complex set of physical and cultural processes with long transitional phases of landscape and socio-economic change. Here we use reconstructions of prehistoric sea-level rise, paleogeographies, terrestrial landscape change and human population dynamics to show how the gradual inundation of an island archipelago resulted in decidedly non-linear landscape and cultural responses to rising sea-levels. Interpretation of past and future responses to sea-level change requires a better understanding of local physical and societal contexts to assess plausible human response patterns in the future.Historic EnglandWelsh GovernmentHigher Education Funding Council for Wale

Data sharing reveals complexity in the westward spread of domestic animals across Neolithic Turkey

This study presents the results of a major data integration project bringing together primary archaeozoological data for over 200,000 faunal specimens excavated from seventeen sites in Turkey spanning the Epipaleolithic through Chalcolithic periods, c. 18,000-4,000 cal BC, in order to document the initial westward spread of domestic livestock across Neolithic central and western Turkey. From these shared datasets we demonstrate that the westward expansion of Neolithic subsistence technologies combined multiple routes and pulses but did not involve a set 'package' comprising all four livestock species including sheep, goat, cattle and pig. Instead, Neolithic animal economies in the study regions are shown to be more diverse than deduced previously using quantitatively more limited datasets. Moreover, during the transition to agro-pastoral economies interactions between domestic stock and local wild fauna continued. Through publication of datasets with Open Context (opencontext.org), this project emphasizes the benefits of data sharing and web-based dissemination of large primary data sets for exploring major questions in archaeology (Alternative Language Abstract S1)

Feasting on fore-limbs: Conspicuous consumption and identity in later prehistoric Britain

The discovery in Llanmaes, South Wales, of a large midden dating from the Early Iron Age provided an opportunity to deepen our understanding of feasting in late prehistoric Britain. But the dominance of right fore-limbs of pigs in the faunal assemblage has raised questions about the social processes represented by this activity. The evidence suggests a move away from conspicuous consumption by an Early Iron Age elite towards a more community-focused event designed to galvanise social relations at a time when the breakdown of bronze exchange networks was challenging the social order