Ancient burial ground discovered at the Plain of Jars

Researchers are a step closer to unravelling one of the great prehistoric puzzles of South East Asia, after discovering an ancient burial ground, including human remains, at the Plain of Jars in central Laos.

The discoveries were made during excavations conducted in February 2016 and led by a team of Australian and Lao researchers including Dr Louise Shewan from the Monash Warwick Alliance and Centre for Archaeology and Ancient History, Dr Dougald O'Reilly from the Australian National University and Dr Thonglith Luangkhoth of the Lao Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism.

The field work is part of a five-year project, funded by the Australian Research Council, aimed at uncovering the mysteries surrounding the 90-plus jar sites, including who made the jars, what they were used for and how the sites came into existence.

The sites, located in the central Lao province of Xieng Khouang, comprise large carved stone jars of varying sizes – some as big as two metres in diameter and three metres high. Initially brought to the attention of science by French researcher Madeleine Colani in the 1930s, the sites have remained largely unstudied due to the huge quantity of unexploded bombs in the area - the result of heavy bombing during the 'Secret War' in Laos in the 1970s.

The recent excavations – the first major excavations in nearly two decades - uncovered an ancient burial ground in an area known as 'Site 1', and revealed various burial methods including the internment of whole bodies, the burying of bundled bones and bundled bones placed inside ceramic vessels and then buried.

Dr Shewan, who is analysing teeth found at the burial ground, says the project has the potential to ascertain who these people were and where they lived.

"My research involves the measurement of strontium isotopes in human dental enamel to shed light on the home environment of the individual," Dr Shewan says. "Teeth mineralise at different ages, so by analsying different teeth we are able to ascertain where an individual lived during their childhood."

The results of the project will be showcased in the CAVE2 facility with support from the Monash Immersive Visualisation Platform.

"To visualise all our research findings, including excavation data, remote sensing data and drone imagery in the CAVE2 environment is going to greatly assist our analysis and interpretation and provides a unique opportunity to conduct 'virtual fieldwork' in areas that are inaccessible by foot. From the drone imagery we may also be able to identify potential occupation areas. At present there are no known occupation sites. No one knows where these people lived," Dr Shewan said.
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Reference:

Phys.org. 2016. “Ancient burial ground discovered at the Plain of Jars”. Phys.org. Posted: March 24, 2016. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-ancient-burial-ground-plain-jars.html

Researchers determine 'patterns' for bones left on ground surfaces

For the first time, researchers have determined a signature of changes that occur to human remains, specifically bones, left outside in the New England environment. This signature or "patterning" can be used by law enforcement to help determine if remains have been moved after death from one environment to another and to separate natural changes to bone from those caused by possible perpetrators.

These findings, published in the Journal of Forensic Identification, may assist in crime scene investigations.

Prior to this study no one had previously tabulated the full range of changes from a series of forensic cases in order to determine a signature for this specific environment.

Using actual forensic anthropological cases, Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researcher James Pokines, PhD, compiled a complete set of physical changes to these bones and then compared them with the changes that occurred to large animal bones in the same environment.

"There are clear differences in the changes in bones caused in different environments; on land, these include animal scavenging, algae formation, soil staining and weathering (bleaching and cracking) of bones. These differ in ways from bones that have been buried or recovered from the ocean," explained Pokines, who is the corresponding author and assistant professor of anatomy and neurobiology at BUSM.

Pokiness hopes that this study helps to identify a specific signature regarding bones found in the New England environment and that this signature can be compared to those found in other parts of the country. "It is my hope that other researchers will do similar studies in other parts of the country following the guidelines established here," he added.
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Reference:

EurekAlert. 2016. “Researchers determine 'patterns' for bones left on ground surfaces”. Eurekalert. Posted: Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-03/bumc-rd030316.php

ASU team unlocks clues in unidentified human remains

Like something out of "CSI" or "Bones," researchers at Arizona State University are working to solve the mysteries of unidentified human remains - and just as on those TV shows, science plays a key role.

Gwyneth Gordon, an associate research scientist in ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration, will soon be making a trip to academia's most distinctive research facility: the University of Tennessee's Anthropological Research Facility, the original "Body Farm."

At the facility's open-air crime labs, decomposing corpses are left out in the elements, some on the ground and others in shallow graves. Gordon will collect samples from the cadavers and samples of soil and groundwater; in May, she'll do the same thing at Texas State University in San Marcos.

With funding from the Department of Justice's National Institute of Justice, Gordon and professors Kelly Knudson and Ariel Anbar will study how various isotopes in the human body behave during decomposition in different environments. These techniques have long been used in the anthropologic study of migration and lifestyle of ancient peoples, but only recently have begun to be used in modern cases of homicide, mass graves and unidentified migrants.

With some 10,000 open cases of unidentified human remains in the U.S. today, the research's results will have real-life implications for law enforcement, medical examiners and families looking for answers.

"Can our technique unravel a human story that was previously lost to history? That's what we're trying to find out," Gordon says. "The donor histories provide premortem travel and geographic life histories, and we'll see if our analyses match their life histories."

Unlocking clues hidden in bones

Every molecule in our bodies is made up not just of different elements, but of different ratios of stable isotopes of those elements. They leave an isotopic signature that can speak for the dead, revealing diet, birthplace and travel history.

Samples collected at the body farms - including hair, tooth enamel and skeletal elements - will be analyzed at ASU for oxygen and hydrogen isotopes to determine latitude; carbon and nitrogen to obtain dietary history; and strontium and lead isotopes and trace elements to establish the type of bedrock where the deceased was born or lived.

Sample preparation will occur both in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and in collaboration with the Archaeological Chemistry Laboratory under the supervision of archaeological chemist Kelly Knudson, associate professor in ASU's School of Human Evolution and Social Change and affiliated with the Center for Bioarchaeological Research.

Knudson uses biogeochemistry and bioarchaeology to answer anthropological research questions. She is a world expert on the application of isotopes to archaeological sites and individuals.

"As an archaeologist, I am more used to working with people who died hundreds or thousands of years ago. Applying my knowledge to forensics applications and, eventually, to helping to solve modern cases is one of the things that really appeals to me about our research project," Knudson says.

Finding migrants' birthplace

The sites of the two body farms have very different climates and soil types. Tennessee - very wet - is similar to significant portions of the United States, while the dry Texas site is similar to the U.S.-Mexico border.

"We chose that site explicitly because of the large number of undocumented immigrants who die in the desert while trying to get to the U.S. These individuals often have no identification on them, and their families never know what happened to them," Gordon says. "There's also commonly no DNA to match them to. If we can get a better idea where they were from using isotopes, the search for their families would be significantly easier."

According to Knudson, archaeologists have been using isotopic data to figure out people's diets for more than 30 years, while using that data to determine someone's birthplace has been common only in the past 15 years.

"These techniques haven't been used quite as much in forensic anthropology, despite what you may see on 'CSI' or 'Bones,' " she says.

While stable isotopes have proven themselves useful, they aren't staples of forensic science - yet. However, a number of case studies have demonstrated that these types of information can narrow the search and help discover a person's identification.

"What I think is great about this research is that we are doing the kinds of baseline research into how these isotopes act during decomposition so that the forensics community can use them," Knudson says.
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Reference:

EurekAlert. 2015. “ASU team unlocks clues in unidentified human remains”. EurekAlert. Posted: April 15, 2015. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-04/asu-atu041515.php

Red Lady cave burial reveals Stone Age secrets

Some 19,000 years ago, a woman was coated in red ochre and buried in a cave in northern Spain. What do her remains say about Paleolithic life in western Europe?

SHE was privileged to have a tombstone, and her grave may have been adorned with flowers. But the many who, for millennia after her death, took shelter in El Mirón cave in northern Spain must have been unaware of the prestigious company they were keeping. Buried in a side chamber at the back of the cave is a very special Palaeolithic woman indeed.

Aged between 35 and 40 when she died, she was laid to rest alongside a large engraved stone, her body seemingly daubed in sparkling red pigment. Small, yellow flowers may even have adorned her grave 18,700 years ago – a time when cave burials, let alone one so elaborate, appear to have been very rare. It was a momentous honour, and no one knows why she was given it.

"It's an area in the cave right where people were living," says Lawrence GuyStraus at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Along with Manuel González Morales of the University of Cantabria, Straus has been leading the excavation of El Mirón for 19 years. "It's not hidden away. This person in death was kind of presiding over the activities of her people."

The Red Lady, as researchers are calling her, was a member of the Magdalenian people of the late Upper Palaeolithic. They would have been anatomically just like us, they had clothes and probably language, too, and belonged to social networks that spread across Europe. But although they lived in large numbers in Portugal and Spain, and archaeologists have been searching for burial sites for nearly 150 years, the Red Lady's grave is the first Magdalenian burial found in the Iberian peninsula (Journal of Archaeological Science, doi. org/2t8).

"The Magdalenian age saw a real explosion in the number and abundance of art, and in the realism of the animals represented," says Straus, especially in sites in northern Spain and France. The El Mirón cave has its share, including an engraving of a horse and possibly one of a bison too. But most intriguing are the lines scratched upon the 2-metre-wide block of limestone behind which the Red Lady was buried. What looks like a mess of fine, straight lines could actually be far more significant.

"The lines seem to be sort of random, but there is a motif that is a triangle – repeated lines that make a V-shape," says Straus. "What is being represented, at least by some of these lines, might be a female person. Conceivably, this block serves as some kind of marker." It's as if the Red Lady had a primitive tombstone stating she was female (Journal of Archaeological Science,doi.org/2t9). Her remains were discovered when Straus's team began digging behind this block in 2010. Radiocarbon dating reveals that the block fell from the ceiling at most only a few hundred years before the woman was buried in the narrow space behind it. "The block was engraved more or less contemporaneously with the burial," says Straus.

Dozens of researchers have been excavating El Mirón since 1996, with around 20 working on the Red Lady's grave since it was found. When they began digging, they discovered the jawbone (see picture) and shin bone (tibia) almost immediately. Both were bright red – although they have since faded – a sign that the woman had been covered in red ochre, a specially prepared iron oxide pigment that humans appear to have slathered on their dead for thousands of years. "It goes back to pre-Homo sapiens," says Straus. "This is a colour that in their lives must have been very spectacular," he says, suggesting that its blood-like hue may have symbolised life and death. The people who buried her used a special form of ochre, not from local sources, that sparkled with specular haematite, a form of iron oxide. It may have been applied to her corpse or clothes as a preservative or as a ritual. The regular use of red ochre at burials throughout the Upper Palaeolithic elsewhere in Europe implies this formed part of a burial rite, says William Davies of the University of Southampton, UK. "It is certainly possible that [these people] held spiritual beliefs," Davies says.

Chewed by canines

But the skeleton is incomplete, a fact that may be linked to gnaw-marks on the tibia left behind. The pattern of black manganese oxide, which forms on bones as bodies rot, shows that a carnivore – about the size of a dog or wolf – took to the tibia some time after the flesh had decomposed.

After this incident, a number of large bones, including the cranium, seem to have been removed, perhaps for display or reburial elsewhere. Many of the remaining bones, including the tibia and jawbone, were treated once again with red ochre, possibly to resanctify them (Journal of Archaeological Science, doi.org/2vb).

María-José Iriarte-Chiapusso and Alvaro Arrizabalaga at the University of the Basque Country in Spain have taken a different tack, focusing on the pollen found at the burial site. They found an unexpected preponderance of pollen from the Chenopod group, which includes plants like spinach (Journal of Archaeological Science, doi.org/2vc). Chenopod pollen is rare at archaeological sites from this period, and the high concentration found by the researchers doesn't match the patterns at burial sites in areas where these plants were a food source, says Iriarte-Chiapusso.

It is possible that the plants were used medicinally at this time, but that would still fail to explain the high levels of pollen. "The extraordinary nature of the finds within the burial suggest that [the plants] had been deliberately sought out for some purpose related to the deceased," says Arrizabalaga. This leads the team to believe that the woman's people may have left a floral offering at the grave, probably of small, yellowish flowers.

"You can't get away from the conclusion that this person, [out of] the hundreds and perhaps thousands of Magdalenians who once existed for several thousand years in Iberia, was given some kind of special treatment," says Straus. "God only knows why."

Could she have been some sort of leader or queen? "We don't really know much about the social structure of these hunter-gatherers, whether they were matriarchal or patriarchal societies," says Ignacio de la Torre of University College London. "But certainly hunter-gatherer societies had no queens or kings," he says, as they did not have much of a social hierarchy.

The people who buried the woman may have had some strong emotional connection with her, suggests Davies, or perhaps she was exceptional in some way. "For example," he says, "some individuals buried in Italy have skeletal abnormalities and might have been seen as a special people, thus warranting a separate burial."

Whoever she was, the Red Lady lived at a time when Europeans were recovering from the worst of the last ice age, about 21,000 years ago. Many people took refuge in Iberia and southern France, and then expanded back out across the continent. Straus hopes that the Red Lady's DNA – to be analysed by Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany – will provide evidence that it was these Magdalenians in south-western Europe who went on to repopulate northern areas, including Belgium, Germany and the UK.

Perhaps the DNA will reveal that many Europeans today can trace their ancestry back to her artistic kinsfolk.
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Reference:

Sarchet, Penny. 2015. “Red Lady cave burial reveals Stone Age secrets”. New Scientist. Posted: March 18, 2015. Available online: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530134.200-red-lady-cave-burial-reveals-stone-age-secrets.html

Ancient domesticated remains are oldest in southern Africa

Researchers have found evidence of the earliest known instance of domesticated caprines (sheep and goats) in southern Africa, dated to the end of the first millennium BC, providing new data to the ongoing debate about the origins of domestication and herding practices in this region. The full results are published July 11 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

The researchers, led by David Pleurdeau of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and Eugène Marais of the National Museum of Namibia, investigated remains from Leopard Cave in Namibia. They could not determine whether the remains came from a sheep or goats, but they write that there is no doubt that the teeth came from domesticated animals. These remains have been found associated with hundreds of archaeological findings, including stone and bone tools as well as beads and few potsherds. The location and antiquity of the remains may provide further information about the domestication timeline, as well as potential movement patterns, for early herders in the region.
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References:

EurekAlert. 2012. "Ancient domesticated remains are oldest in southern Africa". EurekAlert. Posted: July 11, 2012. Available online: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-07/plos-adr071012.php