Raquel Hernando, a Juan de la Cierva researcher associated with the European project TIED2TEETH, at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), is the lead author of a paper published in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology, in which the teeth of 84 adult individuals found at eight sites in the northeast Iberian Peninsula were analyzed to offer new perspectives on the diet of these populations in recent prehistory.

This study shows that the mixed diet of the agropastoral groups of this period, which covers from the Middle Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age, was made up of cereals with regular intake of meat or dairy products, though each group had its own dietary specialization.

A rare dye made from snails for the robes of the Roman elite almost 2,000 years ago has been unearthed at a cricket club.

The chunk of Tyrian purple, roughly the size of a ping pong ball, was dug up at Carlisle Cricket Club as part of ongoing yearly excavations.

A Roman bathhouse was discovered at the site in 2017 and in the last three years 2,000 items including pottery, weapons, coins and semi-precious stones have been found.

Flint is on mastodon: @[email protected]

I liked JRE years before covid, but stopped for obvious reasons. Finally got around to listening to this. He did an excellent job, worth a listen I promise!

It has long been thought that meat played an important role in the diet of hunter-gatherers before the Neolithic transition. However, due to the scarcity of well-preserved human remains from Paleolithic sites, little information exists about the dietary habits of pre-agricultural human groups. A new study challenges this notion by presenting compelling isotopic evidence of a strong preference for plants among 15,000-year-old hunter-gatherers from Morocco. This is the first time a significant amount of plant consumption has been measured for a pre-agricultural population, shedding new light on the dietary practices of ancient human societies.

The emergence in the Neolithic of patrilineal social systems, in which children are affiliated with their father's lineage, may explain a spectacular decline in the genetic diversity of the Y chromosome observed worldwide between 3,000 and 5,000 years ago.

In a study published today in Nature Communications, a team of scientists from the CNRS, MNHN and Université Paris Cité suggest that these patrilineal organizations had a greater impact on the Y chromosome than mortality during conflict.

A trove of artifacts — including cannonballs and coins — were recently found among the ruins of a centuries-old fort on a Caribbean island.

The discoveries were made during an archaeological excavation of Fort Gustav, a historic military outpost perched atop a hill on Saint Barthelemy.

Constructed during the late 18th century, the fort was occupied at various times by the French and Swedish militaries.

The researchers turned to caves under Harrat Khaybar, a vast basalt plain pocked with volcanic craters in northwestern Saudi Arabia. The caves were made by lava as it flowed from nearby volcanoes, forming rocky tunnels as it cooled.

An excavation near the entrance of one cave produced more than 600 animal and human bones and 44 stone-tool fragments. The oldest stone tools dated back to as many as 10,000 years ago, and the oldest human bone fragments were almost 7,000 years old. The study was published on 17 April in PLoS ONE1.

The distribution of samples suggests that people did not live in the cave for long periods, but stayed there occasionally. Nearby rock art depicts people with goats and sheep. The drawings are difficult to date, but they support the fossil evidence that people used the cave as a place to rest and shelter their herds. Even today, farmers seek shade and water in underground lava tubes for themselves and their animals, says Stewart.

The murder of sacrificial victims by "incaprettamento" — tying their neck to their legs bent behind their back, so that they effectively strangled themselves — seems to have been a tradition across much of Neolithic Europe, with a new study identifying more than a dozen such murders over more than 2,000 years.

The study comes after a reassessment of an ancient tomb that was discovered more than 20 years ago at Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux near Avignon, in southern France. The tomb mimics a silo, or pit where grain was stored, and it held the remains of three women who were buried there about 5,500 years ago.

The new study, published Wednesday (April 10) in the journal Science Advances, reinterprets the positions of two of the skeletons and suggests the individuals were deliberately killed — first by tying them up in the manner called "incaprettamento" and then by burying them while they were still alive, perhaps for an agricultural ritual.