Herd management and subsistence practices as inferred from isotopic analysis of animals and plants at Bronze Age Politiko-Troullia, Cyprus.

The Bronze Age village of Politiko-Troullia, located in the foothills of the copper-bearing Troodos mountains of central Cyprus, was occupied ~2050-1850 cal BCE. Excavated evidence shows that community activities included copper metallurgy (ore processing, smelting and casting), crop cultivation, and rearing of livestock. Faunal analysis reveals day-to-day subsistence practices that included consumption of sheep, goat, cattle, and pig, as well as community-scale ritual feasting focused on fallow deer, Dama dama mesopotamica. In this paper, we present bone collagen stable isotope data from these taxa to infer how these animals were managed. We incorporate stable isotope baselines calculated from modern cereal grains and compare these to archaeological seeds from Politiko-Troullia. Mean values of δ13C and δ15N cluster for livestock consistent with a diet of C3 plants, with a wider range in goats that suggests free-browsing herds. Higher δ15N values in cattle may reflect supplemental feeding or grazing in manured fields. Plant isotope values suggest livestock diets were predominantly composed of cultivated taxa. In contrast, deer and pig bones produce more negative mean δ13C and δ15N values suggesting that the villagers of Politiko-Troullia complemented their management of domesticated animals with hunting of wild deer and feral pigs in the woodlands surrounding their village.

A solution to the challenges of interdisciplinary aggregation and use of specimen-level trait data.

Understanding variation of traits within and among species through time and across space is central to many questions in biology. Many resources assemble species-level trait data, but the data and metadata underlying those trait measurements are often not reported. Here, we introduce FuTRES (Functional Trait Resource for Environmental Studies; pronounced few-tress), an online datastore and community resource for individual-level trait reporting that utilizes a semantic framework. FuTRES already stores millions of trait measurements for paleobiological, zooarchaeological, and modern specimens, with a current focus on mammals. We compare dynamically derived extant mammal species' body size measurements in FuTRES with summary values from other compilations, highlighting potential issues with simply reporting a single mean estimate. We then show that individual-level data improve estimates of body mass-including uncertainty-for zooarchaeological specimens. FuTRES facilitates trait data integration and discoverability, accelerating new research agendas, especially scaling from intra- to interspecific trait variability.

Localized management of non-indigenous animal domesticates in Northwestern China during the Bronze Age.

The movements of ancient crop and animal domesticates across prehistoric Eurasia are well-documented in the archaeological record. What is less well understood are the precise mechanisms that farmers and herders employed to incorporate newly introduced domesticates into their long-standing husbandry and culinary traditions. This paper presents stable isotope values (δ13C, δ15N) of humans, animals, and a small number of plants from the Hexi Corridor, a key region that facilitated the movement of ancient crops between Central and East Asia. The data show that the role of animal products in human diets was more significant than previously thought. In addition, the diets of domestic herbivores (sheep/goat, and cattle) suggest that these two groups of domesticates were managed in distinct ways in the two main ecozones of the Hexi Corridor: the drier Northwestern region and the wetter Southeastern region. Whereas sheep and goat diets are consistent with consumption of naturally available vegetation, cattle exhibit a higher input of C4 plants in places where these plants contributed little to the natural vegetation. This suggests that cattle consumed diets that were more influenced by human provisioning, and may therefore have been reared closer to the human settlements, than sheep and goats.

Spread of domestic animals across Neolithic western Anatolia: New stable isotope evidence from Ugurlu Höyük, the island of Gökçeada, Turkey.

The origins of agriculture in Southwest Asia over 10,000 years ago and its subsequent spread into Europe during the Neolithic have been the focus of much archaeological research over the past several decades. Increasingly more sophisticated analytical techniques have allowed for better understanding of the complex interactions that occurred amongst humans, animals, and their environments during this transition. The Aegean Islands are critically situated where Anatolia and the mainland Greece meet, making the region pivotal for understanding the movement of the Neolithic into Europe. Located on the largest Turkish Aegean island of Gökçeada, the site of Ugurlu Höyük dates to the early Neolithic and has been the subject of ongoing excavations and research integrating a rigorous dating program with comprehensive zooarchaeological research. This paper focuses on the combination of bone collagen and tooth enamel stable isotope data with existing archaeological data to develop a fine-resolution picture of the spread of the Neolithic, particularly the importation and management of domestic fauna on Gökçeada, with broader relevance for understanding Aegean-Anatolian interactions. The stable isotope values from the fauna at Ugurlu have been used for both diachronic intrasite analyses and intersite comparisons between contemporaneous mainland sites. Integrating stable isotope and zooarchaeological datasets makes Ugurlu one of the first island sites to provide a comprehensive understanding of the geographic origin of Neolithic livestock populations and the timing of their spread from Anatolia into Europe during the process of Neolithization.

Stable isotope analysis of white-tailed deer teeth as a paleoenvironmental proxy at the Maya site of La Joyanca, northwestern Petén, Guatemala.

Carbon and oxygen isotopes ratios from herbivore teeth have previously been used as paleo-environmental proxies in temperate zones. However, their utility in tropical zones remains uncertain. In this study, sequential sub-samples from white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) teeth (second and third molars) from the Maya archaeological site of La Joyanca, located in northwestern Petén, Guatemala, show that δ18O of enamel carbonate corresponds broadly to modern observed precipitation δ18O over the 10-month period of tooth formation, capturing rainfall seasonality. The analyses also detect significant diachronic differences in the δ18O between the periods 1100-1000 BP (850-950 A.D.) and 1000-900 BP (950-1050 A.D.) at La Joyanca. The δ13C in both periods are indicative of a C3-plant based diet, which suggests cultivation of maize did not differentially affect deer diet during this period.

Spread of domestic animals across Neolithic western Anatolia: New zooarchaeological evidence from Ugurlu Höyük, the island of Gökçeada, Turkey.

The zooarchaeological research presented here investigates Neolithic and Chalcolithic (ca. 6500-5000 cal. BC) animal exploitation strategies at Ugurlu Höyük on the Turkish island of Gökçeada in the northeastern Aegean Sea. Toward this end, we first discuss the results of our analysis of the zooarchaeological assemblages from Ugurlu Höyük and then consider the data within a wider regional explanatory framework using a diachronic approach, comparing them with those from western and northwestern Anatolian sites. The first settlers of Gökçeada were farmers who introduced domestic sheep, goats, cattle and pigs to the island as early as 6500 years BC. Our results align well with recently published zooarchaeological data on the westward spread of domestic animals across Turkey and the Neolithization of southeast Europe. Using an island site as a case study, we independently confirm that the dispersal of early farming was a polynucleated and multidirectional phenomenon that did not sweep across the land, replace everything on its way, and deliver the same "Neolithic package" everywhere. Instead, this complex process generated a diversity of human-animal interactions. Thus, studying the dispersal of early farmers from southwest Asia into southeast Europe via Anatolia requires a rigorous methodological approach to develop a fine-resolution picture of the variability seen in human adaptations and dispersals within complex and rapidly changing environmental and cultural settings. For this, the whole spectrum of human-animal interactions must be fully documented for each sub-region of southwest Asia and the circum-Mediterranean.

Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene Migratory Behavior of Ungulates Using Isotopic Analysis of Tooth Enamel and Its Effects on Forager Mobility.

Zooarchaeological and paleoecological investigations have traditionally been unable to reconstruct the ethology of herd animals, which likely had a significant influence on the mobility and subsistence strategies of prehistoric humans. In this paper, we reconstruct the migratory behavior of red deer (Cervus elaphus) and caprids at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in the northeastern Adriatic region using stable oxygen isotope analysis of tooth enamel. The data show a significant change in δ18O values from the Pleistocene into the Holocene, as well as isotopic variation between taxa, the case study sites, and through time. We then discuss the implications of seasonal faunal availability as determining factors in human mobility patterns.