Donkey (Equus Asinus) in Iberia 2,500 B.C. (Cardoso et al, 2013)

The ass was present at the walled fortress of Leceia around 2,500 B.C.  This was demonstrated using mitochondrial and radiocarbon evidence by Cardoso, Vilstrup, Eisenmann and Orlando.

Leceia Ass Tooth (Drawn by B. L. Ferreira; photos by J. L. Cardoso)

The molecular evidence demonstrates an animal not native to Pleistocene Iberia as being present in Chalcolithic Leceia, it being a descendant of those wild asses native to Northeast Africa, possibly of a subgroup having been domesticated in Egypt or Mesopotamia.  While it is impossible to ascertain whether this ass was domesticated, it would almost certainly need to be given the circumstances and the type of find.

The tooth of the ass at Leceia was directly dated to a range that is almost perfectly contemporary with the Standard of Ur, being the middle of the third millennium.  This is fairly significant because, using the last post as one example, trade and cultural links between Iberia and the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa are well demonstrated.  Cardoso et al believe these trade links may have brought the donkey to Iberia at this time.

Sumerian chariots and donkeys trample a miserable soul c.2,500 (British Museum #1928,1010.3AN12575001) ( FI-000833573)

Below is the tower where the tooth was found.

And below is a general layout of the site from the paper.  You can see the fortress is slightly north of the Tagus near modern Lisbon.  It has been previously held that the Phoenicians brought the ass to Southern Europe (and the chicken as well), but at least for the ass, it has an older presence.

Leceia is one of the many great Portuguese walled enclosures that project on the surrounding landscape.  The are built rapidly using the same plans at about the same time before falling into disrepair.  Around the middle of the third millennium, Bell Beaker artifacts appear, as does changes in weaving and now dairy processing.

Cardoso has written about those artifacts and ceramics termed 'pre-campaniforme' [here] and those of the early campaniforme [here] and its general chronology to give a little context of this site. 

One question that may be asked is, that if this is in fact a domesticated ass, why did it take so long to spread into Europe?  I think this could partly be explained by the fact that the ass is a browser and better suited for hot climes and badlands, whereas the Asian horse, mostly a grazer, may have been more suitable for deforested, temperate Europe.  If this sounds unreasonable, consider the fact that even after its most recent plausible introduction (with the Phoenicians), it still was not a widely used animal in Northern Europe, even with the Roman conquest and Christian missions.

As with the horse in the Late Neolithic, the evidence may have always been there and now new tools are revealing the provenance of materials and the sub-species of animal bones..

"First evidence of Equus asinus L. in the Chalcolithic disputes the Phoenicians as the first to introduce donkeys into the Iberian Peninsula" João L. Cardoso, Julia T. Vilstrup, Véra Eisenmann, Ludovic Orlando (2013) Journal of Archaeological Science 40 (2013) 4483e4490  [Link]

Olifant Horn of the Chalcolithic?

In the previous post, Andrew linked to a story on an Irish music archaeologist by the name of Billy Ó Foghlú.  Ó Foghlú has proposed some ideas concerning the ancient Iron Age horn, which is a slightly different instrument than what I'll start with...  The article is in Science Daily >  [Link]

This subject got me thinking about the evolution of the modern European horn and what examples could be considered the earliest hunting horn in archaeology.  I was reminded of this early Chalcolithic artifact from Valencia de la Concepcion in a paper by link>Garcia SanJuan et al, 2013.  I'll add some quick thoughts then move on.

How different from a Medieval Olifant?!  Photo: Miguel Ángel Blanco de la Rubia. (possibly 36-37 cm from interior or chord line?) (García Sanjuán et al., 2013)

During Medieval Times, the uber-rich, landed nobility often carried exotic hunting horns made of elephant ivory, commonly called the olifant horn.  The carved elephant horns often feature what might be called 'a man's room', a hunting scene with stags, boars, bears, heraldry, saints, etc. You can see that in the Portuguese example below, along with its boar's head mouthpiece.

Hunting Horn including Portuguese Royal Arms and Cross of Beja c. 1490 (48 cm) (British Museum Af1979,01.3156) FI-000833090

This other example appears to have been reworked with silver (in Italy?) after a century or so.  Many of these were imported in Italy and Portgual, then sold throughout Europe.  Some may have been made in Byzantium or other far away places.

Savernake Horn, England c. 1100s (British Museum 1975,0401.1 )( FI-000833091) (58 cm along chord)

Going back to the artifact from Valencia, it is slightly shorter than the two Medieval hunting horns; of course there is some question as to the length of the Neolithic tusk and how it was measured, whether along the chord line or another way.  Given the circumference of the distal end, it might have been very comparable to the two late examples.

Another interesting aspect raised by Garcia-Sanjuan et al, is that the distal end* (the acorn as they call it) might have been perforated near the tip, but not directly; or it could just be a broken area.  But if it was perforated in this strange way, it might have been, as Juarez Martin suggested concerning a separate artifact, as to mimick the gland end of the main.  (* or proximal end if you considerate a mouthpiece)

Another from La Molina Link>(Juarez Martin, 2010) is noted by the Garcia Sanjuan authors as having a similar protuberance at the distal end.   Juarez Martin believed this to signify a gland, as in the male context, and while he says it is hollow, does not mention if the end has a hole at the tip.  There are plenty of examples of horns without perforations from Scandinavia since these were drinking horns.  Garcia Sanjuan hinted at this possibility, but only suggest a container for liquids.

Either way, it is an odd artifact without a clear purpose and I doubt the proximal end (using their orientation, this is the large end) was enclosed seeing that it would be nearly impossibly to hollow out with any tool known at the time.  Therefore it must be a stylized drinking horn for special occasions or a hunting horn for someone with more money than time.

Elephant Tusk of La Molina Artificial Cave.  Jose Maria Juarez Sanjuan (2010)

If you have a pile of cash sitting on the shelf, you may be interested in a book entitled "Die Mittelalterlichen Olifante" by Avinoam Shalem April 2015 ISBN 9783871572357.  This book discusses the deeper history of magical olifante horns in the Near East and their associations in Europe.

Garcia Sanjuan (2013)

Going back to Billy Ó Foghlú, the modern brass instruments, horns and saxhorns excluding trumpets and trombones, have a history in Iron Age horns that might be called cornos.  The hammer-sheet cornos curl around the horn player which makes them mobile and gives them a semi-comparable octave range as the alpine horn, or alpenhorn.

The corno and similar horns, are probably quite literally curled up alpenhorns, which were at some shadowy time in the past carved from trees.  In any case, I wrote all of this as an excuse to post this...

Cheers, everyone have a beer!


xc

Footnote>  You'll notice at 2:36 Lisa Stoll changes the mouthpiece to change key.  This is my basic point with the Irish horns, if O Foghlu is correct.

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]