Current Anthropology, December 2009, Volume 50 number 6 is now out, which as will be apparent from the headline, marks no less than 50 years in the field, and there are a number of essays contained therein which reflect on the past, present and future of this publication. Here’s part of editor Mark Aldenderfer’s introduction [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Archaeology’
October 30, 2009
A Cave Shut by Closed Minds? La Carihuela Neanderthals vs. the Junta
Back in August of this year, two words I frequently encountered when trying to visit sites of interest in Andalucía, southern Spain, were“Cerrado” (closed) and “No”, which as a tourist you take in your stride, leg it to the nearest hostelry and reconsider the rest of the day from the perspective of its slightly less [...]
October 29, 2009
Grandma Plays Favourites: X-Chromosome Relatedness and Sex-specific Childhood Mortality – Proceedings of the Royal Society B
As this paper is freely accessible for the next 7 days, I’m posting it here in the hope that as many readers as possible will have time to read it through. Molly Fox et al turn their thoughts to the question of why women are able to live for many years after they able to [...]
October 27, 2009
Sex and the Single Neanderthal: Inter-Species Breeding in the Upper Palaeolithic?
There’s been some coverage of a recent announcement by Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute, who opines that Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans had sexual encounters as they co-habited in Upper Palaeolithic Eurasia from around 42,000 bp to 24,500 bp. The main article is over at the London Times, from which this is an [...]
October 26, 2009
Evidence for food storage and predomestication granaries 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley
Science Daily report on a paper published back in June which I appear to have missed, and as it’s freely accessible at PNAS, I’m pleased to be able to link to it here. This is the abstract:
Food storage is a vital component in the economic and social package that comprises the Neolithic, contributing to plant [...]
October 6, 2009
Variability of Mortuary Practice in MPPNB – Two Papers @ Current Anthropology
Although I haven’t as yet been able to write up the latest origins of agriculture papers in the October 2009 edition of Current Anthropology, there are a couple of papers in earlier editions of the same publication that I want to quickly mention here, as they both deal with contemporary burial and re-burial practices in [...]
September 16, 2009
Neanderthal Hearths at El Salt Reveal Plant And Fish Remains
Julien at A Very Remote Period Indeed has posted a brief note on what looks to be a very important discovery from southern Spain, where archaeologists investigating Neanderthal occupation levels at a Mousterian site called El Salt, dating back at least 60,000 years, have discovered and analysed fat residues and other remains that indicate Neanderthals [...]
September 11, 2009
Flax Fibres Dated to 34,000 Years BP Found at Dzudzuana Cave, Georgia
News of an exciting and illuminating discovery in Georgia, which has revealed that people living 34,000 years ago had mastered the art of making materials from processed wild flax, prompting speculation that such items as ropes, containers and even clothes and shoes were routinely manufactured by anatomically modern humans.
Back in July I wrote a brief [...]
September 10, 2009
Ancient Leishmaniasis From Coyo Oriente Cemetery In Chile
I recently completed a medical parasitology course as part of my medical education. One of the diseases we discussed was leishmaniasis. Leishmaniasis is a zoonotic disease that is transferred to humans from reservoir hosts via the sand fly vector. The sand fly injects the promastigote form of the parasite, and the parasite invades white blood [...]
August 31, 2009
Craniometric Data Supports Demic Diffusion Model for the Spread of Agriculture into Europe – PLoS ONE
Greg Laden points to a paper by Ron Pinhasi and Noreen von Cramon-Taubadel, courtesy of PLoS ONE and which is free to access – here’s the abstract:
Background
The spread of agriculture into Europe and the ancestry of the first European farmers have been subjects of debate and controversy among geneticists, archaeologists, linguists and anthropologists. Debates have [...]
