Collective secondary cremation in a pit grave: a unique funerary context in Portuguese Chalcolithic burial practices

Perdigões is a large site with a set of ditched enclosures located at Reguengos de Monsaraz, Alentejo, South Portugal. Recently at the central area of this site burnt human remains were found in a pit (#16). This structure had inside human remains, animal bones (namely pig, sheep or goat, cattle, dog, deer and rabbit), shards, ivory idols and arrowheads. All have been subjected to fire and later deposited in that pit, resulting in a secondary disposal of human bones. The recovered fragmented human bones (4845.18 g) correspond to a minimal number of 9 individuals: 6 adults and 3 sub-adults. The aim of this work is to document and interpret this funerary context based on the study of the recovered human remains. For that purpose, observations of all alterations due to fire, such as colour change and type of bone distortion, as well as anthropological data were collected. The data obtained suggest that these human remains were probably intentionally cremated, carefully collected and finally deposited in this pit. The cremation was conducted on probably complete corpses, some of them still fairly fresh and fleshed, as some bones presented thumbnail fractures. The collective cremation of the pit 16 represents an unprecedented funerary context for Portuguese, and Iberian Peninsula, Chalcolithic burial practices. Moreover, it is an example of the increasing diversity of mortuary practices of Chalcolithic human populations described in present Portuguese territory, as well as, in the Iberian Peninsula.O recinto dos Perdigões, localizado em Reguengos de Monsaraz, no sul de Portugal, tem revelado desde 1997 diversos contextos funerários do Neolítico final e Calcolítico. Na sua área central foi identificado uma fossa (16), contendo restos ósseos humanos, cerâmica e fauna diversa. A respectiva escavação veio revelar tratar-se de um depósito secundário correspondendo ao despejo de restos de ossos humanos cremados, restos faunísticos (porco, ovelha ou cabra, vaca, cão, cervo e coelho) e cerca de meia centena de pontas de seta e fragmentos de ídolos em marfim, material que se apresentava também intensamente queimado. Neste trabalho serão apresentados os resultados do estudo laboratorial dos restos ósseos humanos. Este revelou que todo o espólio ósseo humano (4845.18 gr) esteve sujeito à acção de fogo, de diversa intensidade. Predominam os vestígios ósseos sujeitos a altas temperaturas (> 900°), revelado pelas alterações registadas em termos de cor, tipo de fracturas e deformações. Este espólio terá pertencido a um mínimo de 9 indivíduos, 3 dos quais faleceram antes de atingir a idade adulta. A fossa 16, um contexto secundário e colectivo de cremação representa um contexto funerário único do Calcolítico Português, bem como de toda a Península Ibérica. Constitui mais um exemplo da crescente diversidade de práticas funerárias descritas para esta região da Europa

Dietas dos Indivíduos de Pardais 3 no Contexto do Interior Alentejano

Dietas de 3 indivíduos recuperados na Pardais 3 no contexto do Interior Alentejan

The preburning condition of Chalcolithic cremated human remains from the Perdigoes enclosures (Portugal)

The Iberian Chalcolithic displayed a remarkable variety of funerary practices, which has been related to interpopulation differences, intrapopulation social-cultural differences, and complex multistage funerary rituals. Perdigoes, a Chalcolithic set of ditched enclosures, reflects such diversity including a wide array of funerary practices. Among those practices is cremation, which, despite relatively rare, is represented in different structures in Perdigoes. One of these structures (Pit 40) presents an unparalleled high minimum number of individuals (n = 240), contrasting with nearby and coeval structures. In this study, we analyse heat-induced bone changes and other archaeothanatological variables to tentatively assess the preburning condition of the human remains. The results of Pit 40 are also compared with other comparable contexts to assess if this unique context presents further funerary differences relative to those other contexts in, for example, body processing. Our results suggest preferential cremation of fleshed human remains, but burning of at least a minority of skeletonised remains and deposition of possibly unburned remains also likely occurred. Body processing appears to be comparable with that of the cremation contexts of Perdigoes but contrasts with that of another nearby context (Dolmen of Olival da Pega 2b) in which burned bones were also found.Portuguese Foundation for Science and TechnologyPortuguese Foundation for Science and Technology [PEst-OE/SADG/UI0283/2013, POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016766, PTDC/EPH-ARQ/0798/2014, PTDC/IVC-ANT/1201/2014, SFRH/BPD/84268/2012]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Integration and segregation across large-scale intrinsic brain networks as a marker of sustained attention and task-unrelated thought

Sustained attention is a fundamental cognitive process that can be decoupled from distinct external events, and instead emerges from ongoing intrinsic large-scale network interdependencies fluctuating over seconds to minutes. Lapses of sustained attention are commonly associated with the subjective experience of mind wandering and task-unrelated thoughts. Little is known about how fluctuations in information processing underpin sustained attention, nor how mind wandering undermines this information processing. To overcome this, we used fMRI to investigate brain activity during subjects’ performance (n=29) of a cognitive task that was optimized to detect and isolate continuous fluctuations in both sustained attention (via motor responses) and task-unrelated thought (via subjective reports). We then investigated sustained attention with respect to global attributes of communication throughout the functional architecture, i.e., by the segregation and integration of information processing across large scale-networks. Further, we determined how task-unrelated thoughts related to these global information processing markers of sustained attention. The results show that optimal states of sustained attention favor both enhanced segregation and reduced integration of information processing in several task-related large-scale cortical systems with concurrent reduced segregation and enhanced integration in the auditory and sensorimotor systems. Higher degree of mind wandering was associated with losses of the favored segregation and integration of specific subsystems in our sustained attention model. Taken together, we demonstrate that intrinsic ongoing neural fluctuations are characterized by two converging communication modes throughout the global functional architecture, which give rise to optimal and suboptimal attention states. We discuss how these results might potentially serve as neural markers for clinically abnormal attention

Dietas dos Indivíduos de Pardais 3 no Contexto do Interior Alentejano

Dietas dos Indivíduos de Pardais 3 no Contexto do Interior Alentejan

Abordagem às Paleodietas e Mobilidade dos Indivíduos do Sepulcro 4 no Contexto dos Perdigões e do Interior Alentejano

Abordagem às Paleodietas e Mobilidade dos Indivíduos do Sepulcro 4 no Contexto dos Perdigões e do Interior Alentejan

Zinc and other metals deficiencies and risk of type 1 diabetes: an ecological study in the high risk Sardinia island

Type 1 diabetes incidence presents a decreasing gradient in Europe from the Nordic countries to the Mediterranean ones. Exception to this gradient is represented by Sardinia, the second largest Mediterranean island whose population shows the highest incidence in Europe, after Finland. The genetic features of this population have created a fertile ground for the epidemic of the disease, however, as well as being strikingly high, the incidence rate has suddenly presented a continuous increase from the '50s, not explainable by accumulation of new genetic variants. Several environmental factors have been taken into account, possibly interacting with the genetic/epigenetic scenario, but there are no strong evidences to date

Boosting mobility performance with multi-path TCP

Proceeding of: Future Network & Mobile Summit 2010, 16 - 18 June 2010, Florence, ItalyFourth Generation mobile devices incorporate multiple interfaces with diverse access technologies. The current Mobile IP protocol fails to support the enhanced fault tolerance capabilities that are enabled by the availability of multiple interfaces. In particular, established Mobile IP communications cannot be preserved through outages affecting the Home Address. In this paper we describe an architecture for mobile host multihoming that enables transport layer survivability through multiple failure modes. The proposed approach relies on the cooperation between Mobile IP and Multi-Path TCP and aims to fully support multihoming and extend roaming capabilities of mobile devices.This research was supported by Trilogy (http://www.trilogy-project.org), a research project (ICT-216372) partially funded by the European Community under its Seventh Framework Programme.European Community's Seventh Framework ProgramNo publicad