Quinoa, potatoes, and llamas fueled emergent social complexity in the Lake Titicaca Basin of the Andes.

The Lake Titicaca basin was one of the major centers for cultural development in the ancient world. This lacustrine environment is unique in the high, dry Andean altiplano, and its aquatic and terrestrial resources are thought to have contributed to the florescence of complex societies in this region. Nevertheless, it remains unclear to what extent local aquatic resources, particularly fish, and the introduced crop, maize, which can be grown in regions along the lakeshores, contributed to facilitating sustained food production and population growth, which underpinned increasing social political complexity starting in the Formative Period (1400 BCE to 500 CE) and culminating with the Tiwanaku state (500 to 1100 CE). Here, we present direct dietary evidence from stable isotope analysis of human skeletal remains spanning over two millennia, together with faunal and floral reference materials, to reconstruct foodways and ecological interactions in southern Lake Titicaca over time. Bulk stable isotope analysis, coupled with compound-specific amino acid stable isotope analysis, allows better discrimination between resources consumed across aquatic and terrestrial environments. Together, this evidence demonstrates that human diets predominantly relied on C3 plants, particularly quinoa and tubers, along with terrestrial animals, notably domestic camelids. Surprisingly, fish were not a significant source of animal protein, but a slight increase in C4 plant consumption verifies the increasing importance of maize in the Middle Horizon. These results underscore the primary role of local terrestrial food resources in securing a nutritious diet that allowed for sustained population growth, even in the face of documented climate and political change across these periods.

Growing up different in Neolithic China: A contextualised case study and differential diagnosis of a young adult with skeletal dysplasia.

This paper presents a case study of a young adult from the late Neolithic Yangshao cultural period site (∼3300-2900 years BC) of Guanjia () located in Henan Province on the Central Plains of China, who has evidence for skeletal dysplasia characterised by proportional stunting of the long bones and a small axial skeleton, generalised osteopenia, and non-fusion of epiphyses. We provide a detailed differential diagnosis of skeletal dysplasia with paediatric onset and conclude that this is likely a form of hypopituitarism or hypothyroidism, an extremely rare finding within the archaeological context. This paper highlights the issues of distinguishing the forms of proportional dwarfism in palaeopathology because of the considerable variation in manifestation of these conditions. Finally, we assess whether there were any health and social implications for this person and community through the consideration of a bioarchaeology of care approach across the lifecourse, burial context, and information on social perceptions of 'difference' in the community. ：： （3300～2900）。，，，，。，，。。，。，、、""，。.

Chemical evidence for the use of multiple psychotropic plants in a 1,000-year-old ritual bundle from South America.

Over several millennia, various native plant species in South America have been used for their healing and psychoactive properties. Chemical analysis of archaeological artifacts provides an opportunity to study the use of psychoactive plants in the past and to better understand ancient botanical knowledge systems. Liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) was used to analyze organic residues from a ritual bundle, radiocarbon dated to approximately 1,000 C.E., recovered from archaeological excavations in a rock shelter located in the Lípez Altiplano of southwestern Bolivia. The site is located at an elevation of ∼3,900 m above sea level and contains evidence of intermittent human occupations during the last 4,000 years. Chemical traces of bufotenine, dimethyltryptamine, harmine, and cocaine, including its degradation product benzoylecgonine, were identified, suggesting that at least three plants containing these compounds were part of the shamanic paraphernalia dating back 1,000 years ago, the largest number of compounds recovered from a single artifact from this area of the world, to date. This is also a documented case of a ritual bundle containing both harmine and dimethyltryptamine, the two primary ingredients of ayahuasca. The presence of multiple plants that come from disparate and distant ecological areas in South America suggests that hallucinogenic plants moved across significant distances and that an intricate botanical knowledge was intrinsic to pre-Columbian ritual practices.