Ancient Lives, New Stories: Current Research on the Ancient Near East - Introduction

The first edition of the London Postgraduate Conference for the Ancient Near East (LPCANE) took place on 1st and 2nd December 2018 at the British Museum in London. It bore the title Ancient Lives, New Stories: Current Research on the Ancient Near East, which aimed to highlight how new research and new approaches can shed light on hotly debated topics of the past and open new avenues of research. Aimed at graduate students (Master’s and PhD) and early career researchers, the primary objective of this event was to create a forum of discussion for emerging scholars to showcase their research at any stage of progress and to foster exchange between the diverse disciplines working on the Ancient Near East, including Archaeology, Assyriology, Anthropology, Historiography, Conservation and Museum Studies. Near Eastern Archaeology, Assyriology and sister disciplines often tread separate paths in spite of having a common focus of attention. Thus, in this conference we aimed to highlight overlapping ideas and the interaction and complementarity between the knowledge derived from material culture, textual sources and other types of studies, and collaboration among scholars from different disciplines was facilitated and encouraged. The chronological periods under consideration were the Palaeolithic to the Islamic conquest, and the geographical scope, Anatolia to Afghanistan and the Caucasus to the Arabian Peninsula.&nbsp

Investigation of late Pleistocene and early Holocene palaeoenvironmental change at El Mirón cave (Cantabria, Spain): insights from carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of red deer

Abstract: El Mirón Cavewas occupied by humans for over 40,000 years. Evidence of LateMousterian,Gravettian, Solutrean, Magdalenian, Azilian, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age and Mediaeval occupations has been found in the cave. Understanding the local environmental conditions during the occupations is crucial for gaining an insight into the lifeways of El Mirón's inhabitants as they relied on the surrounding region and its natural resources for their subsistence. 170 bones of hunted red deer recovered from the cave were sampled for carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analyses with the aim of reconstructing the palaeoenvironment and palaeoclimate during the human occupation. The results show that the surrounding landscape underwent considerable environmental change during the Late Pleistocene and Early to Mid-Holocene. Shifts in d13C values between the Last Glacial Maximum, Heinrich stadial 1, Heinrich event 1, the Late-glacial interstadial and the onset of the Holocene are likely to reflect changes in water availability and temperature. Deer d15N generally increased over time indicating the regeneration of soil biological activity and nitrogen cycling, which was temporarily halted during the Younger Dryas. Comparison of the El Mirón results with those of 300 deer from other regions of Europe shows geographical variations in the timing and magnitude of the variation in d13C and d15N values. This variation tracks local climate (temperature andwater availability) and environmental (vegetation and forest development) change