Prehistoric Irrigation in Central Utah: Chronology, Agricultural Economics, and Implications

In 1928, Noel Morss was shown “irrigation ditches” along Pleasant Creek on the Dixie National Forest near Capitol Reef National Park, Utah, by a local guide who contended they were ancient. We relocated the site and mapped the route of an unusual mountain irrigation canal. We conducted excavations and employed OSL and AMS 14C showing historic irrigation, and an earlier event between AD 1460 and 1636. Geomorphic evidence indicates that the canal existed prior to this time, but we cannot date its original construction. The canal is 7.2 km long, originating at 2,450 m asl and terminating at 2,170 m asl. Less than half of the system was hand constructed. We cannot ascribe the prehistoric use-event to an archaeological culture, language, or ethnic group, but the 100+ sites nearby are largely Fremont in cultural affiliation. We also report the results of experimental modeling of the capital and maintenance costs of the system, which holds implications for irrigation north of the Colorado River and farming during the Little Ice Age. The age of the prehistoric canal is consistent with a fragmentary abandonment of farming and continuity between ancient and modern tribes in Utah

Reply to Simon and Reed: Independent and Converging Results Rule Out Historic Disturbance and Confirm Age Constraints for Barrier Canyon Rock Art

We welcome this further discussion of our results on the age of the Great Gallery rock art in the Canyonlands of Utah. The comment by Simon and Reed (1) focuses on just one of the three components of our study (2), which is presented in greater technical detail in ref. 3 and is surely our best-constrained and least-surprising result: the dating of a rock-fall that removed some of the art and thus provides a minimum age. Simon and Reed (1) point out that the Great Gallery panel is not pristine and relate the sordid human history of visitation and possible disturbance to the site. Indeed, being aware of this during our research, one of our initial hypotheses was that the rock fall may be historic. Despite the possibility of recent disturbance to some of the talus boulders, our results document that the rock fall occurred ∼900 y ago, and for the boulder we sampled a scenario of historic disturbance and exposure such as postulated by Simon and Reed (1) can be ruled out

Age of Barrier Canyon-style rock art constrained by cross-cutting relations and luminescence dating techniques

Rock art compels interest from both researchers and a broader public, inspiring many hypotheses about its cultural origin and meaning, but it is notoriously difficult to date numerically. Barrier Canyon-style (BCS) pictographs of the Colorado Plateau are among the most debated examples; hypotheses about its age span the entire Holocene epoch and previous attempts at direct radiocarbon dating have failed. We provide multiple age constraints through the use of cross-cutting relations and new and broadly applicable approaches in optically stimulated luminescence dating at the Great Gallery panel, the type section of BCS art in Canyonlands National Park, southeastern Utah. Alluvial chronostratigraphy constrains the burial and exhumation of the alcove containing the panel, and limits are also set by our related research dating both a rockfall that removed some figures and the rock’s exposure duration before that time. Results provide a maximum possible age, a minimum age, and an exposure time window for the creation of the Great Gallery panel, respectively. The only prior hypothesis not disproven is a late Archaic origin for BCS rock art, although our age result of A.D. ∼1–1100 coincides better with the transition to and rise of the subsequent Fremont culture. This chronology is for the type locality only, and variability in the age of other sites is likely. Nevertheless, results suggest that BCS rock art represents an artistic tradition that spanned cultures and the transition from foraging to farming in the region. Archaeology is focused upon material records, contextualized in time. Rock art is a record with the potential to provide unique insight into the dynamics and evolution of culture, but it generally lacks stratigraphic or chronologic context. Interpretation of the origin and meaning of rock art is indirect at best, or simply speculative. In the case of some pictographs, pigments may include or have enough accessory carbon for accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating (1⇓⇓–4). In other special situations, such as caves, minimum age constraints have been obtained by various techniques of dating material that overlies or entombs rock art (5⇓–7). However, most rock art remains undatable and researchers rely upon stylistic comparison and indirect associations with artifacts at nearby sites (8, 9). The case in point for this study is arguably the most compelling and debated rock art in the United States—the Barrier Canyon style (BCS) of the Colorado Plateau. Previous attempts to derive an absolute chronology have failed and its age remains unknown, with widely ranging hypotheses that have remained untested until now. The continued development of dating techniques offers new possibilities for hypothesis testing. The optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) signals from mineral grains make it possible to date the deposition of most sediment that is exposed to a few seconds of full sunlight before burial, and its use in the earth and cultural sciences has greatly increased (10, 11). Among the latest applications of OSL are techniques dating the outer surfaces of rock clasts that have become shielded from light, including those with archaeological context (12⇓⇓–15). Recent work has furthermore used the “bleaching” profile of decreasing luminescence signal toward the surface of rock to estimate exposure time to sunlight (16, 17). Using these dating tools, we can constrain the age of rock art and gain new insight into past cultures and landscapes. Here, we synthesize results from three approaches to dating the type section of BCS art, the Great Gallery in Canyonlands National Park of southeastern Utah. Through dating the full alluvial stratigraphy and a rockfall event that both have incontrovertible cross-cutting relations with the rock art, and then by determining the exposure duration of a painted rock surface, we greatly narrow the window of time when the rock art was created. These approaches do not require direct sampling of rock art and have strong potential for application to other archaeological and surface processes research. Although our results are only for the type section of BCS art, and chronological variability should be expected for the style across the region, they suggest that BCS art coincides with the transition to agriculture in the northern Colorado Plateau and may not have been limited to a specific archaeological culture

A pleiotropic missense variant in SLC39A8 is associated with Crohn's disease and human gut microbiome composition

Genome-wide association studies have identified 200 inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) loci, but the genetic architecture of Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis remain incompletely defined. Here, we aimed to identify novel associations between IBD and functional genetic variants using the Illumina ExomeChip (San Diego, CA)

Host Genes Related to Paneth Cells and Xenobiotic Metabolism Are Associated with Shifts in Human Ileum-Associated Microbial Composition

The aim of this study was to integrate human clinical, genotype, mRNA microarray and 16 S rRNA sequence data collected on 84 subjects with ileal Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis or control patients without inflammatory bowel diseases in order to interrogate how host-microbial interactions are perturbed in inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Ex-vivo ileal mucosal biopsies were collected from the disease unaffected proximal margin of the ileum resected from patients who were undergoing initial intestinal surgery. Both RNA and DNA were extracted from the mucosal biopsy samples. Patients were genotyped for the three major NOD2 variants (Leufs1007, R702W, and G908R) and the ATG16L1T300A variant. Whole human genome mRNA expression profiles were generated using Agilent microarrays. Microbial composition profiles were determined by 454 pyrosequencing of the V3–V5 hypervariable region of the bacterial 16 S rRNA gene. The results of permutation based multivariate analysis of variance and covariance (MANCOVA) support the hypothesis that host mucosal Paneth cell and xenobiotic metabolism genes play an important role in host microbial interactions

Rare variant analysis of 4241 pulmonary arterial hypertension cases from an international consortium implicates FBLN2, PDGFD, and rare de novo variants in PAH

Abstract: Background: Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a lethal vasculopathy characterized by pathogenic remodeling of pulmonary arterioles leading to increased pulmonary pressures, right ventricular hypertrophy, and heart failure. PAH can be associated with other diseases (APAH: connective tissue diseases, congenital heart disease, and others) but often the etiology is idiopathic (IPAH). Mutations in bone morphogenetic protein receptor 2 (BMPR2) are the cause of most heritable cases but the vast majority of other cases are genetically undefined. Methods: To identify new risk genes, we utilized an international consortium of 4241 PAH cases with exome or genome sequencing data from the National Biological Sample and Data Repository for PAH, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and the UK NIHR BioResource – Rare Diseases Study. The strength of this combined cohort is a doubling of the number of IPAH cases compared to either national cohort alone. We identified protein-coding variants and performed rare variant association analyses in unrelated participants of European ancestry, including 1647 IPAH cases and 18,819 controls. We also analyzed de novo variants in 124 pediatric trios enriched for IPAH and APAH-CHD. Results: Seven genes with rare deleterious variants were associated with IPAH with false discovery rate smaller than 0.1: three known genes (BMPR2, GDF2, and TBX4), two recently identified candidate genes (SOX17, KDR), and two new candidate genes (fibulin 2, FBLN2; platelet-derived growth factor D, PDGFD). The new genes were identified based solely on rare deleterious missense variants, a variant type that could not be adequately assessed in either cohort alone. The candidate genes exhibit expression patterns in lung and heart similar to that of known PAH risk genes, and most variants occur in conserved protein domains. For pediatric PAH, predicted deleterious de novo variants exhibited a significant burden compared to the background mutation rate (2.45×, p = 2.5e−5). At least eight novel pediatric candidate genes carrying de novo variants have plausible roles in lung/heart development. Conclusions: Rare variant analysis of a large international consortium identified two new candidate genes—FBLN2 and PDGFD. The new genes have known functions in vasculogenesis and remodeling. Trio analysis predicted that ~ 15% of pediatric IPAH may be explained by de novo variants

Inherited determinants of Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis phenotypes: a genetic association study

Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are the two major forms of inflammatory bowel disease; treatment strategies have historically been determined by this binary categorisation. Genetic studies have identified 163 susceptibility loci for inflammatory bowel disease, mostly shared between Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. We undertook the largest genotype association study, to date, in widely used clinical subphenotypes of inflammatory bowel disease with the goal of further understanding the biological relations between diseases

The Effects of Grinding Stone Reuse on the Archaeological Record in the Eastern Great Basin

Archaeologists are aware that many factors change archaeological sites after they have been initially deposited. One kind of post-depositional phenomena that could change the material record is the scavenging and reuse of manos and metates from older sites by the later inhabitants of an area. If this has occurred, even on a limited basis, grinding tools may be disproportionately represented on older sites. In this paper I will argue (1) that the scavenging and reuse of grinding stones by hunter-gatherers should be expected on theoretical grounds under many circumstances and that this behavior has occurred in the Great Basin and elsewhere, and (2) that there is a statistically significant bias in the occurrence of grinding stones toward Late Prehistoric sites in the eastern Great Basin. I will then discuss the consequences of such a pattern for archaeological interpretation of site function

New Evidence for Fremont Adaptive Diversity

Excavations in the Sevier Desert of western Utah (Fig. 1) have produced architectural evidence for temporary habitation in small brush, wickiup-type structures between A.D. 1000 and 1100 by people with Fremont material culture. The inventory includes Fremont ceramics, a single corn cob, and projectile points common to, but not exclusive to, Fremont sites (Cottonwood Triangular, Rose Spring Cornernotched, and Desert Side-notched). The site broadens our understanding of Fremont architectural and settlement diversity. Several alternatives for eastern Great Basin Fremont economy are presented in fitting this site into the regional subsistence/settlement pattern(s)