Sorting out ceramics : correlating change in the technology of ceramic production with the chronology of 18th and early 19th century western BaTswana towns

The archaeology of the 18th and 19th century western BaTswana towns in the Rustenbutg·Zeerust region of North West Province, South Africa, is important and complex. This period, the late Moloko phase at the end of the Late Iron Age, was a time of significant upheaval. The colonial frontier was advancing, slowly hemming in the BaTswana population. In the mid· 17th century, the climate became cooler and drier, resulting in widespread drought through the beginning of the 18th century. These factors increased inter-group competition over land, access to trade goods and control of agricultural and exchange networks. The sociopolitical response to these political and environmental pressures was large- scale centralization, in which people moved from dispersed village homesteads into expansive stone-walled towns with populations in the thousands. Settlement aggregation had significant effects on the scale of production at these new centres. Whereas earlier, small populations were largely self-supporting in basic needs such as agriculture and pottery manufacture, large, centralized populations required controlled maintenance of food and other natural resources. This trend toward sustainable management likely spread to materials production, as well. This research examines a shift in pottery manufacturing techniques that occurred between the early and late Moloko periods, as evidenced by inclusions of grapWtic and lustrous, platy and fibrous tempers in ceramic samples from town sites that do not occur in ceramics from earlier sites. Comparatively, petrographic data of analyzed potsherds from Marothodi, an early 19th century BaTlokwa town, reveals only two of 42 ceramic samples containing lustrous inclusions and none made of graphitic clay. A number of concepts, drawn from materials science and ethnographic analogy, are put forth to help understand this variation. This shift must be examined in the broader context of aggregation. Craft specialization and standardization might be one solution for providing for the needs of a large population. There are underpinning technological, social, political, economic, environmental and ideological factors that must be considered in understanding and interpreting the production and use of an object. Also implicit in the chafne operatoire of pottery manufacture is human behaviour, technological choice, function, style and social identity. Changes in scale or type of ceramic manufacture must be evaluated in terms of the sociopolitical, cultural and technological context in which they took place. These shifts in pottery production occurred over a relatively short time, but the exact sequence of change over the late Moloko is unknown. While the oral-historical record offers a general indication of when the large stone-walled towns were occupied and abandoned, the beginning and duration of settlement cannot be resolved. This is because radiocarbon, the most common archaeometric method for dating the Late Iron Age, is ineffectual during the late Moloko due to anomalies in atmospheric production ofradiocarbon and acute De Vries effects in the time range AD 1650- 1950. Bayesian radiocarbon calibration can help to refine radiocarbon results, but still the resolution is not precise enough to inform usefully on the late Moloko archaeological record. An alternative dating method is optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), which determines the amount of time passed since a mineral grain was last exposed to heat or light. This research includes a pilot study in dating late Moloko sites by measuring OSL of quartz grains from furnace and midden features for which approximate age is already known though oral-historical records and ceramic seriation. The results of this experiment in OSL dating of the recent past are promising. OSL provides chronological control with the resolution necessary for establishing the settlement and ceramic sequence of late Moloko sites. This constitutes a first step in the future construction of a master archaeomagnetic calibration curve for absolute dating of sites in this region using chronometric data obtained through OSL. Archaeomagnetism is potentially the best method for relative, and eventually absolute, dating of sites in this temporal and geographic context

Fire Suppression Impacts on Fuels and Fire Intensity in the Western U.S.: Insights from Archaeological Luminescence Dating in Northern New Mexico

Here, we show that the last century of fire suppression in the western U.S. has resulted in fire intensities that are unique over more than 900 years of record in ponderosa pine forests (Pinus ponderosa). Specifically, we use the heat-sensitive luminescence signal of archaeological ceramics and tree-ring fire histories to show that a recent fire during mild weather conditions was more intense than anything experienced in centuries of frequent wildfires. We support this with a particularly robust set of optically stimulated luminescence measurements on pottery from an archaeological site in northern New Mexico. The heating effects of an October 2012 CE prescribed fire reset the luminescence signal in all 12 surface samples of archaeological ceramics, whereas none of the 10 samples exposed to at least 14 previous fires (1696–1893 CE) revealed any evidence of past thermal impact. This was true regardless of the fire behavior contexts of the 2012 CE samples (crown, surface, and smoldering fires). It suggests that the fuel characteristics from fire suppression at this site have no analog during the 550 years since the depopulation of this site or the 350 years of preceding occupation of the forested landscape of this region

Trans-ancestry genome-wide association meta-analysis of prostate cancer identifies new susceptibility loci and informs genetic risk prediction.

Prostate cancer is a highly heritable disease with large disparities in incidence rates across ancestry populations. We conducted a multiancestry meta-analysis of prostate cancer genome-wide association studies (107,247 cases and 127,006 controls) and identified 86 new genetic risk variants independently associated with prostate cancer risk, bringing the total to 269 known risk variants. The top genetic risk score (GRS) decile was associated with odds ratios that ranged from 5.06 (95% confidence interval (CI), 4.84-5.29) for men of European ancestry to 3.74 (95% CI, 3.36-4.17) for men of African ancestry. Men of African ancestry were estimated to have a mean GRS that was 2.18-times higher (95% CI, 2.14-2.22), and men of East Asian ancestry 0.73-times lower (95% CI, 0.71-0.76), than men of European ancestry. These findings support the role of germline variation contributing to population differences in prostate cancer risk, with the GRS offering an approach for personalized risk prediction

Characterizing Prostate Cancer Risk Through Multi-Ancestry Genome-Wide Discovery of 187 Novel Risk Variants

The transferability and clinical value of genetic risk scores (GRSs) across populations remain limited due to an imbalance in genetic studies across ancestrally diverse populations. Here we conducted a multi-ancestry genome-wide association study of 156,319 prostate cancer cases and 788,443 controls of European, African, Asian and Hispanic men, reflecting a 57% increase in the number of non-European cases over previous prostate cancer genome-wide association studies. We identified 187 novel risk variants for prostate cancer, increasing the total number of risk variants to 451. An externally replicated multi-ancestry GRS was associated with risk that ranged from 1.8 (per standard deviation) in African ancestry men to 2.2 in European ancestry men. The GRS was associated with a greater risk of aggressive versus non-aggressive disease in men of African ancestry (P = 0.03). Our study presents novel prostate cancer susceptibility loci and a GRS with effective risk stratification across ancestry groups

High global diversity of cycloviruses amongst dragonflies

Members of the family Circoviridae, specifically the genus Circovirus, were thought to infect only vertebrates; however, members of a sister group under the same family, the proposed genusCyclovirus, have been detected recently in insects. In an effort to explore the diversity of cycloviruses and better understand the evolution of these novel ssDNA viruses, here we present five cycloviruses isolated from three dragonfly species (Orthetrum sabina, Xanthocnemis zealandica and Rhionaeschna multicolor) collected in Australia, New Zealand and the USA, respectively. The genomes of these five viruses share similar genome structure to other cycloviruses, with a circular ~1.7 kb genome and two major bidirectionally transcribed ORFs. The genomic sequence data gathered during this study were combined with all cyclovirus genomes available in public databases to identify conserved motifs and regulatory elements in the intergenic regions, as well as determine diversity and recombinant regions within their genomes. The genomes reported here represent four different cyclovirus species, three of which are novel. Our results confirm that cycloviruses circulate widely in winged-insect populations; in eight different cyclovirus species identified in dragonflies to date, some of these exhibit a broad geographical distribution. Recombination analysis revealed both intra-and inter-species recombination events amongst cycloviruses, including genomes recovered from disparate sources (e.g. goat meat and human faeces). Similar to other well-characterized circular ssDNA viruses, recombination may play an important role in cyclovirus evolution

Publisher Correction: Trans-ancestry genome-wide association meta-analysis of prostate cancer identifies new susceptibility loci and informs genetic risk prediction (Nature Genetics, (2021), 53, 1, (65-75), 10.1038/s41588-020-00748-0):Trans-ancestry genome-wide association meta-analysis of prostate cancer identifies new susceptibility loci and informs genetic risk prediction (Nature Genetics, (2021), 53, 1, (65-75), 10.1038/s41588-020-00748-0)

Correction to: Nature Genetics https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-020-00748-0, published online 4 January 2021.In the version of this article originally published, the names of the equally contributing authors and jointly supervising authors were switched. The correct affiliations are: “These authors contributed equally: David V. Conti, Burcu F. Darst. These authors jointly supervised this work: David V. Conti, Rosalind A. Eeles, Zsofia Kote-Jarai, Christopher A. Haiman.” The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article

Characterizing prostate cancer risk through multi-ancestry genome-wide discovery of 187 novel risk variants.

The transferability and clinical value of genetic risk scores (GRSs) across populations remain limited due to an imbalance in genetic studies across ancestrally diverse populations. Here we conducted a multi-ancestry genome-wide association study of 156,319 prostate cancer cases and 788,443 controls of European, African, Asian and Hispanic men, reflecting a 57% increase in the number of non-European cases over previous prostate cancer genome-wide association studies. We identified 187 novel risk variants for prostate cancer, increasing the total number of risk variants to 451. An externally replicated multi-ancestry GRS was associated with risk that ranged from 1.8 (per standard deviation) in African ancestry men to 2.2 in European ancestry men. The GRS was associated with a greater risk of aggressive versus non-aggressive disease in men of African ancestry (P = 0.03). Our study presents novel prostate cancer susceptibility loci and a GRS with effective risk stratification across ancestry groups