Equid use and provision during the Early Iron Age in Can Roqueta (NE Iberian Peninsula). Zooarchaeological study and first strontium isotope results

This article reports the results of a zooarchaeological study (including, mortality profiles, and anatomical and pathological descriptions) of the Early Iron Age (8th-6th c. BC) equid remains at the Can Roqueta site (Sabadell, Barcelona), together with the first strontium isotope results to determine their geographical origin. The zooarchaeological study reveals a remarkable number of equid remains at the site, the bone pathologies of which suggest their use for riding, drafting and load-carrying. The mortality and sex profiles point to the presence of adult animals, while the absence of neonatal and juvenile remains raises the question as to whether these individuals may have originated from other sites specialised in equid breeding. The strontium values obtained from six individuals suggest that some equids were reared in a geological area with a similar strontium signature to that of the Vallès area, where the site is located. However, three equids present a different strontium signature, pointing to a possibly different geographical origin

La fauna del jaciment de Mas d'en Gual (el Vendrell, Baix Penedès) en el context dels assentaments especialitzats d'època ibèrica.

[cat] En aquest article es presenten els resultats de l'estudi arqueozoològic de les restes de mamífer i malacofaunístiques recuperades a Mas d'en Gual (el Vendrell), amb especial incidència en les característiques tafonòmiques i la significació del conjunt. Les restes permeten ampliar el corpus de dades osteomètriques a jaciments ibèrics, així com millorar el coneixement sobre l'alimentació i la gestió dels residus als petits jaciments rurals d'aquest període.[eng] Diet and the treatment of waste in the Iberian small rural settlements of Catalonia (5th-2nd centuries BC) is still fairly known. The present study aims to contribute to this issue, together to provide osteometrical data for the late Iron Age. Zooarchaeological results are presented (mammals and molluscs), with special attention to taphonomical characteristics and the assemblage signification

Cooperation and competition in social anthropology

The emergence of cooperation in human societies has received ample academic attention from different disciplines, and is usually considered as an adaptive response to competition over scarce resources. In this article, the authors review the specific contribution that social anthropology has made to this field of research. They propose that social anthropology has contributed to this field through the description of systems that have regulated both cooperation and competition in traditional societies: (1) hunter-gatherer societies, where generalized reciprocity dominates; (2) prestige economies, which includes the exchange of valuables in specific spheres, primitive money, agonistic institutions in tribes; and last, (3) 'moral economies' in peasant communities, where cooperation and competition coexist but never at the cost of putting at risk the reproduction of the community itself or of some of its members. The three systems share the basic mechanism of reciprocity that allows for the maintenance of equality, as well as the very language for regulating competition in unequal prestige or moral economies. This pervasive presence of reciprocity as a moral norm would reveal its basic role in human evolution, and, likely, its co-evolution with ritual forms of social exchang

Prácticas alimentarias en la Edad del Hierro en Cataluña

The aim of this paper is to provide a state of the research on the eating habits concerning the Iron Age populations of Catalonia, with particular attention to the Iberian period, under the Museu d’Arqueologia de Catalunya project “Eating and Drinking in the periphery of the Graeco-Roman world: cultural and food habits of the northern Iberian (6th-2nd cent. BCE)”. The main goal of this project is the study of food habits in the Catalan Iberian world from a global and interdisciplinary approach that considers all aspects of the food phenomenon (technical, instrumental, social, cognitive) as an expression of a specific cultural reality

Dual and Opposite Costimulatory Targeting with a Novel Human Fusion Recombinant Protein Effectively Prevents Renal Warm Ischemia Reperfusion Injury and Allograft Rejection in Murine Models

Many studies have shown both the CD28-D80/86 costimulatory pathway and the PD-1-PD-L1/L2 coinhibitory pathway to be important signals in modulating or decreasing the inflammatory profile in ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) or in a solid organ transplant setting. The importance of these two opposing pathways and their potential synergistic effect led our group to design a human fusion recombinant protein with CTLA4 and PD-L2 domains named HYBRI. The objective of our study was to determine the HYBRI binding to the postulated ligands of CTLA4 (CD80) and PD-L2 (PD-1) using the Surface Plasmon Resonance technique and to evaluate the in vivo HYBRI effects on two representative kidney inflammatory models-rat renal IRI and allogeneic kidney transplant. The Surface Plasmon Resonance assay demonstrated the avidity and binding of HYBRI to its targets. HYBRI treatment in the models exerted a high functional and morphological improvement. HYBRI produced a significant amelioration of renal function on day one and two after bilateral warm ischemia and on days seven and nine after transplant, clearly prolonging the animal survival in a life-sustaining renal allograft model. In both models, a significant reduction in histological damage and CD3 and CD68 infiltrating cells was observed. HYBRI decreased the circulating inflammatory cytokines and enriched the FoxP3 peripheral circulating, apart from reducing renal inflammation. In conclusion, the dual and opposite costimulatory targeting with that novel protein offers a good microenvironment profile to protect the ischemic process in the kidney and to prevent the kidney rejection, increasing the animal's chances of survival. HYBRI largely prevents the progression of inflammation in these rat models

El projecte de recerca arqueològica a Althiburos i els seus encontorns (El Kef, Tunísia)

El coneixement de la protohistòria del Magrib oriental –entenent com a tal l’edat del bronze i la primera edat del ferro, és a dir, el segon i el primer mil·lennis aC, de la zona que correspon a les actuals Tunísia i Algèria oriental– presenta un veritable buit. Això és evident si es compara amb l’estat de la recerca sobre el mateix període a Europa, i potser encara més amb el coneixement sobre el paleolític i el neolític al nord d’Àfrica. Per al final d’aquest període, les fonts escrites gregues i romanes aporten dades abundants sobre els regnes númides i les seves relacions complexes amb Cartago i, més tard, amb Roma. Si bé existeix documentació arqueològica sobre aquests regnes, el cert és que presenta llacunes molt importants, i que, remuntant en el temps, tenim un desconeixement gairebé absolut sobre aquesta zona des de finals del III mil·lenni aC