Evesham Archer, West Midlands

A rescue mission is underway after a housing developer ran into a bunch of Iron Age and Roman materials, and to their surprise, a Bell Beaker archer burial.  Hat tip, Mandy Chamberlain!

Several odd pits surround the grave, one included a vessel, and other some sort of cooking pit.  It appears that the grave does not contain human remains, or at least did not survive in the acidic soil.

The story linked from Mandy [Worcesternews]  The actual developer, Redrow Homes, posted some additional information [here]. 

Spelt in the Belt (Akeret, 2005)

In the archaeo-botanical record of Europe, spelt is for the first time observed (uncontested [1]) in a Bell Beaker village near Cortaillod/Sur les Rochettes-est in Switzerland.  It appears to have been a staple crop in this location and is grown throughout the Bronze Age to the modern period in the Alps and parts of Central Europe. 

This is rather significant because, not but a mere distance away, in the village of Saint-Blaise/Bains des Dames, a slightly earlier Corded Ware-ized village exists, completely without spelt.  Rather, in Saint-Blaise, barley is the money grain.  So, it is clear that this was a more recently developed local crop or possibly an imported crop.  Either way it appears first with Bell Beakers.

Back in 2005, Akeret had referred to a previous hypothesis, that European spelt (genetically distinct from Asian spelt) was the result of an independent hybridization event between einkorn (diploid) and emmer (tetraploid) that happened in Europe creating spelt, a hexaploid wheat (2+4=6).  The situation has developed that bread wheat, a hexaploid, is not descended from spelt (also a hexaploid), but that both Asian and European spelts might be more recent and separate creations.

At Cortaillod, a great variety of domestic and wild plants are found in the occupation area, grains, legumes, flax, hazelnuts and apples.  The most interesting collections are the acorn stores that appear to have been common in Beakerworld (Akeret), probably for making cornmeal.  Also, there are quite a few collected juniper berries, which might suggest certain alcoholic drinks, to me at least.  There is also several caffeinated plants, maybe chamomile, sunflower seeds, and leafy plants.

Shewry, 2009 [Link]

So why plant spelt in Cortaillod?  Spelt is winter hardy and can be grown in crappy, poorly drained and sandy soils.  The people who planted spelt at Cortaillod did so with intelligent purpose, either having sought a suitable grain to meet the field conditions, or they imported themselves and the spelt hitchhiked.

I find the seed preferences of Late Neolithic Europeans interesting because it translates through time an intelligent decision process, one that involved contemplation, planning and networks. 

See also on spelt:
 Fokkens and Harding (2013) 

Dvorak et al (2011)

Akeret, Orni "Plant remains from a Bell Beaer site in Switzerland, and the beginnings of Triticum spelta (spelt) cultivation in Europe"   Veget Hist Archaeobot (2005) 14:279–286  DOI 10.1007/s00334-005-0071-1 [Link]

Villabruna Hunter-Gatherer R1b (Qiaomei Fu et al, 2016)

There's a lot to digest out of the Qiaomei Fu et al, 2016 paper. 

As to be expected, the overwhelming majority of Paleolithic Europeans belonged to paternal lineages that have effectively gone extinct or have been several times superseded.  Maternal lineages have mostly suffered from frequency changes because most women who ever lived had offspring.

The most interesting part of the paper is the blue-eyed, dark-skinned man from Villabruna Cave 1, directly dated to about 14,000 years ago and belonging to paternal haplogroup R1b1.  He was buried with a bag of implements and covered in red-painted rocks in the Dolomite Mountains.

There's more that is interesting about him than just the y-chromosome, but for a little background see the BBC story...

Fig 2 LUP burial of Villabruna 1.  (Vercellotti et al, 2008)

Since the Gravettian was an expansion of mammoth and bison hunters from north of the Black Sea going west, and because of some cultural, economic and mobility similarities with the Mal'ta-Burets hunters where this lineage was previously found, it might make some sense to see R1b1 lightly sprinkled as a minority lineage among a communities dominated by haplogroup I.  But a picture where Gravettian and Mal'ta cultures have anything common other than material borrowing doesn't square with the authors of Fu et al.  The two peoples are genetically distinct, and in fact, the Gravettians appear very distinct from even the Epi-Gravettians, who we might as well now more accurately call, Villabrunans.

So the first interesting thing is that Villabruna man's body proportions are intermediate between modern Europeans and Africans.  In fact, he generally clusters with North Africans on several skeletal metrics, although facially he is Caucasian.  This doesn't mean he is  <North African> and it doesn't mean mixed, but it does suggest some meaningfully deep ancestry in a sufficiently warm climate, possibly the Southern Near East(?).


Genetically, he and his cluster represent a shift towards the Near East from earlier Europeans, and really from the earlier 'true' Gravettians in Eastern Europe.  When looking at his physical proportions, Vercellotti et al (2008) seemed to suggest that his long-limbed features were a relict of early AMH or possibly some sort of new response to a warming climate.  It now seems migration offers the most plausible explanation for his body type in light of DNA.  To be clear though, his cluster extends all over Western Europe even though his unique lineage is so far only seen in Italy.

Fu et al, 2016

As far as I understand, Western Hunter Gatherer (WHG) might be mostly Middle Eastern with some ancestry of the oldest native hunters.  This will be an interesting complication to various memes, including my own memes.


See also  [Maju's post on Ahmarian culture]

Vercellotti, Alciati, Richards, Formicola (2008)  "The Late Upper Paleolithic skeleton Villabruna 1 (Italy): a source of data on biology and behavior of a 14.000 year-old hunter" Journal of Anthropological Sciences.  Vol. 86 (2008), pp. 143-163   [Link]

Arqueoceramica's Campaniforme Replicas

Check out arqueoceramica blog.  Juan makes a few Ciempozuelos style beakers...

Death Shall Have no Dominion