Welcome back, everybody!  This is Rick Pettigrew.  Get set for another weekly dose of four top news stories that came out this past week on Archaeologica.  Send us feedback on The Archaeology Channel Facebook page or post a message on our social networking site, ArchaeoSeek!

A new isotope study on burials from Belize rockshelters zeroes in on the development of maize as a staple food in Mesoamerica.  Two new genetic studies in the Caribbean point to diverse sources for the original human population there, but then lots of stability in the region before European contact.  A University of Oregon researcher is studying sea otter bones from the Northwest Coast to inform modern efforts to re-introduce the animal to its original habitat. And skeletal remains from a site in southern Turkey contain DNA that points to population movements from the Caucasus and Central Asia, especially during the Bronze Age.

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And now, here’s Laura Pettigrew with the Audio News from Archaeologica.  We hope you find this to be a valuable part of your day.

Welcome to the Audio News from Archaeologica! I’m Laura Pettigrew and these are the headlines in archaeological and historical news from May 31st through June 6th, 2020.

A team of archaeologists led by Keith Prufer, of the University of New Mexico, has revealed new research showing the slow progress of people’s shift to maize in one of its earliest home regions, the Mesoamerican uplands of Belize.

The new study explored evidence for the time when the early Mesoamericans first became farmers, and to learn how quickly they shifted over to making maize a staple of their diet.

The research starts with evidence from extremely well preserved human skeletons from several rock shelters in Belize.  Analysis of the isotopes in the bones produced new insight on the dates when corn became a key part of people's diet in the Americas.

Radiocarbon dating of the skeletons, followed by isotope analysis of the bone collagen and apatite, teases apart the evidence for what type of diet was eaten.  The results showed that maize made up less than 30 percent of people's diets in the area 4700 years ago, and slowly rose to be 70 percent by about 4000 years ago.

According to Prufer, the isotope values suggest that the sugary juice from maize stalks was the original plant part used, because it was easily fermented into liquor.  For many centuries the cobs and seeds were too small to provide much value.  Later, as humans selected corn plants with larger and larger seeds, and the plants changed genetically to lock this in, the larger cobs, with more and bigger kernels, turned maize into an important food.

As reported by the open-access journal, Science Advances, Prufer’s team assessed the extent of maize in diets among the 52 skeletons they studied by measuring the carbon isotopes in the bones and teeth.  The skeletons included both male and female adults, as well as children, and date from 9600 to about 1000 years ago.

The research included the field excavations, directed by Prufer, as well as an international team of archaeologists, biologists, ecologists and geologists, including colleagues from Belize.  The area of the sites is managed by a nonprofit called the Ya'axche' [YA-ahsh-CHAY] Conservation Trust.

The five-year project included excavation of two remote rockshelter sites in the Bladen Nature Reserve in the Maya Mountains of Belize. 

The team plans to continue by using other new technologies that will probe even deeper, with molecular analysis of ancient DNA, and isotopic analysis of the individual amino acids that are involved in turning food into building blocks of tissues and energy.

Until recently, researchers weren’t sure where the earliest migrants came from when they began moving into the Caribbean region, between 8000 and 5000 years ago.  Now, two new studies suggest that, while multiple waves of migrants entered from both North and South America, the cultural diversity that the first Europeans encountered was the result of local change in stable island populations, not continued immigration.

As reported in Science magazine, the first study comes from a team of researchers who analyzed the DNA of 52 individuals from seven Archaic Age archaeological sites in Cuba.  These skeletal remains covered a range of dates, from 3200 to 700 years ago.  The results show at least two genetic groups, who came from different places.

According to Yadira Chinique de Armas, an archaeologist at the University of Winnipeg and a lead author on the paper, this marks the first evidence showing the early migrants into the Caribbean were not just culturally diverse, but also biologically diverse.  According to Kathrin Nägele, the first author on the paper and an archaeogeneticist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, this suggests that some of the Caribbean’s early inhabitants may have come from North America or Central America, but additional genomes from ancient people who lived in places like Florida and Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula are needed to come closer to confirmation.

The second study, posted this week on the online journal, bioRxiv [pronounced “bio-Archive”], shed light on the question of what happened when another wave of changes swept through the Caribbean about 2800 years ago. 

This study, led by researchers from Harvard and the University of Vienna, examined 184 early Caribbean skeletons from multiple islands.  They found two people who had a mix of genes from both the Ceramic Age, characterized by intensified agriculture and the development of pottery, and earlier Archaic Age peoples, both from Hispaniola; the island that today includes Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Combining the skeletal DNA analysis with modern mitochondrial DNA modeling, and over 50 new radiocarbon dates, the study showed a surprisingly high degree of stable, local populations during the pre-contact Ceramic Period.

Both studies are valuable contributions to understanding the prehistory of the Caribbean, in which the devastating effects of European colonization wiped out much of the region’s complexity and diversity, then brought in new diversity from Europe and Africa.  The new genetic research suggests that the Caribbean was always a mosaic of cultures and ancestries, much of which still endures today.

Before European fur traders decimated sea otter populations from Alaska to Oregon, sea otters were a common animal in the coastal waters.  According to Madonna Moss, an archaeologist at the University of Oregon, at least one tribe, the ancestral Tlingit, probably hunted them for their pelts but not for food.

As reported by online science site Phys dot org, Moss’s research examines traditional use by native populations with an eye to assisting today’s Alaskans, who are dealing with growing numbers of otters, but also Oregonians, who want to reintroduce them along their own coastline.

Moss examined 461 sea otter and 195 seal specimens found among 940 bones previously collected at two of 16 southeast Alaska sites.  She looked at telltale marks from human modification, caused by different uses.

She also observed modern Tlingit skinning and butchering, and interviewed tribal members about their knowledge of ancient practices.  She found little evidence of human consumption, but some results suggesting otter meat was fed to Tlingit dogs.

The two sites were excavated by Moss in the 1980s, as part of research on subsistence economies of the Angoon Tlingit.  The new study allowed her to broaden that out and provide new data to assist Native American colleagues in assessing the new conservation and hunting controversies.

Sea otters were decimated by Euro-American fur traders and by 1911, the otters had disappeared from Oregon.  Efforts to reintroduce sea otters to the Oregon coast failed in the 1970s.  Now a University of Oregon doctoral candidate, Hannah Wellman, one of Moss’s students, is studying the historical ecology of sea otters and cetaceans—whales, dolphins, and porpoises—along the coast to learn what the return of sea otters might mean for Oregon’s coastal ecosystem.

Wellman is studying ancient DNA as well as cut marks on bones from two large archaeological sites excavated near Seaside, Oregon, in the 1960s and 70s.  She’s comparing the Oregon sea otter DNA to modern California otters, as well as sea otter remains from Russia, Alaska, British Columbia, and Washington, hoping to determine whether prehistoric peoples skinned the otters for their pelts, the meat, or both.

According to Moss, whether sea otters are reintroduced on the Pacific Coast, or their numbers steadily increase on their own, First Nations, Native Americans, and Alaska Natives should be involved in planning and decision-making and given priority in terms of resource rights.

In Turkey, the bones of a woman of Central Asian descent were found at the bottom of a deep well.  Damage to her bones shows she died a violent death and was thrown down the well far from her native region, suggesting social unrest as well as population movements that marked this period of prehistory.

As reported by the Turkish news site Daily Sabah, she was one of 110 people whose skeletal remains were excavated in Alalakh, in southern Turkey.  All lived between 7500 and 3000 years ago, when agriculture was beginning to become the economic mainstay, causing greater populations, the rise of city-states, and increased foreign interactions including migration, trade, intermarriage, and war.

An international team of researchers, including Turkish and German archaeologists and geneticists, studied the skeletons for the most detailed understanding of the genetics underlying the population movements in the region during this momentous period of the late Bronze Age.

The results suggest that the local Anatolian population began mixing with peoples from the Caucasus to the northeast, around 6500 BC.  Following 2000 BC, smaller migrations from Mesopotamia brought yet more genetic mixture to the region.  The DNA of the woman in the well shows more long-distance migration at the same time, from Central Asia.

The woman’s DNA showed a Central Asian origin, up to 2000 miles or farther away.  She was about 40 to 45 years old when she was killed by multiple injuries, probably between 1625 and 1511 BC.

According to Philipp Stockhammer, an archaeologist at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, co-director of the Max Planck-Harvard Research Center for the Archaeoscience of the Ancient Mediterranean, and co-author of the study, it’s impossible to determine at this point why she came here or why she was killed.  Long-distance trade, enslavement, and marriage all brought foreigners to new locations.  Any of these could also have led to her murder.  What’s significant to archaeology is her unmistakable evidence that people during this transitional time were crossing great distances, bringing new genes as well as new cultural customs.

We should add that, while this is not mentioned in our source article, the timing of this woman’s appearance in Anatolia matches the arrival of people speaking Indo-European languages, such as the Hittites, who established an empire that included Alalakh.  The Indo-European languages originated in Central Asia and were spreading rapidly in all directions by about 2000 BC.

The new genetic study of the Alalakh population appears in the journal Cell.

That wraps up the news for this week!

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I’m Laura Pettigrew and I’ll see you next week!