‘Sons of athelings given to the earth’: Infant Mortality within Anglo-Saxon Mortuary Geography

FOR 20 OR MORE YEARS early Anglo-Saxon archaeologists have believed children are underrepresented in the cemetery evidence. They conclude that excavation misses small bones, that previous attitudes to reporting overlook the very young, or that infants and children were buried elsewhere. This is all well and good, but we must be careful of oversimplifying compound social and cultural responses to childhood and infant mortality. Previous approaches have offered methodological quandaries in the face of this under-representation. However, proportionally more infants were placed in large cemeteries and sometimes in specific zones. This trend is statistically significant and is therefore unlikely to result entirely from preservation or excavation problems. Early medieval cemeteries were part of regional mortuary geographies and provided places to stage events that promoted social cohesion across kinship systems extending over tribal territories. This paper argues that patterns in early Anglo-Saxon infant burial were the result of female mobility. Many women probably travelled locally to marry in a union which reinforced existing social networks. For an expectant mother, however, the safest place to give birth was with experience women in her maternal home. Infant identities were affected by personal and legal association with their mother’s parental kindred, so when an infant died in childbirth or months and years later, it was their mother’s identity which dictated burial location. As a result, cemeteries central to tribal identities became places to bury the sons and daughters of a regional tribal aristocracy

Timing and pace of dairying inception and animal husbandry practices across Holocene North Africa

The timing and extent of the adoption and exploitation of domesticates and their secondary products, across Holocene North Africa, has long been the subject of debate. The three distinct areas within the region, Mediterranean north Africa, the Nile Valley and the Sahara, each with extremely diverse environments and ecologies, demonstrate differing trajectories to pastoralism. Here, we address this question using a combination of faunal evidence and organic residue analyses of c. 300 archaeological vessels from sites in Algeria, Libya and Sudan. This synthesis of new and published data provides a broad regional and chronological perspective on the scale and intensity of domestic animal exploitation and the inception of dairying practices in Holocene North Africa. Following the introduction of domesticated animals into the region our results confirm a hiatus of around one thousand years before the adoption of a full pastoral economy, which appears first in the Libyan Sahara, at c. 5200 BCE, subsequently appearing at c. 4600 BCE in the Nile Valley and at 4400–3900 BCE in Mediterranean north Africa

Is the genus Cissus (Vitaceae) monophyletic? Evidence from plastid and nuclear ribosomal DNA

The trnL (UAA) intron and ITS1 region were sequenced to investigate relationships among the five genera of Vitaceae present in Australia relative to Vitis. Congruent results, were obtained between separate and combined data sets, with all major clades being shared among trees. All bootstrap consensus trees obtained from single sequences or combined analysis strongly suggest that Cissus is polyphyletic, corroborating the morphological inconsistencies reported previously., p Cissus opaca and Clematicissus angustissima consistently grouped in a common clade. A further four taxa (C. antarctica, C. hypoglauca, C. oblonga, and C. sterculiifolia) also grouped within a clade disjunct from the main Cissus clade. Our results suggest that these five species currently classified as Cissus should be segregated from the genus. Of further interest is the close relationship between Cayratia and Tetrastigma. Overall, the results presented provide new insights into the relationships within a number of Vitaceae genera and suggest directions for future studies

An updated estimate of intergeneric phylogenetic relationships in the Australian Vitaceae

Previous molecular studies have suggested that the genus Cissus (Vitaceae) is not monophyletic. The majority of species are grouped, but four Australian taxa (Cissus antarctica Vent., Cissus hypoglauca A. Gray, Cissus oblonga (Benth.) Planch., and Cissus sterculiifolia (F. Muell. ex Benth.) Planch.) form a distinct clade and Cissus opaca has now been recognized as belonging to the genus Clematicissus (Clematicissus opaca (F. Muell.) Jackes & Rossetto). Here, we investigate relationships among the Australian Vitaceae by parsimony and Bayesian analysis of plastid trnL-trnF and nuclear internal transcribed spacer sequences and include a range of taxa that had not been previously investigated. We find no support for a close relationship between Nothocissus and the four distinct Australian Cissus, as suggested in previous morphology-based treatments. We find a robust sister relationship between Clematicissus and at least two southern American Cissus (Cissus tweediana (Baker) Planch. and Cissus striata Ruiz & Pav.), suggesting a possible origin from an ancient southern progenitor. Finally, this study confirms the paraphyletic nature of Cayratia, with species occurring in two clades, both with Australian and non-Australian species. The necessity in future studies for data from additional and more tractable nuclear loci is also noted

Fossil Hominids From Laetolil Beds

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/62755/1/262460a0.pd