Sardinians are "outliers" in the European genetic landscape and, according to paleogenomic nuclear data, the closest to early European Neolithic farmers. To learn more about their genetic ancestry, we analyzed 3,491 modern and 21 ancient mitogenomes from Sardinia. We observed that 78.4% of modern mitogenomes cluster into 89 haplogroups that most likely arose in situ. For each Sardinian-specific...

The locality of Kastel in Banja Luka, the area its second court, had been a subject archeological excavations at end 1992. Archeological itself is positioned on highest point city long plateau that was following Crkvena creek till river Vrbas estuary. Dominant position to surrounding, existence fresh drinking water and bountiful pastures, made this suitable settling spot for both prehistorical ...

BACKGROUND Anatomically Modern Humans (AMHs) are known to have spread across Europe during the period coinciding with the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition. Whereas their dispersal into Western Europe is relatively well established, evidence of an early settlement of Eastern Europe by modern humans are comparatively scarce. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDING Based on a multidisciplinary appro...

Dogs originated more than 14,000 BP, but the location(s) where they first arose is uncertain. The earliest archeological evidence of ancient dogs was discovered in Europe and the Middle East, some 5-7 millennia before that from Southeast Asia. However, mitochondrial DNA analyses suggest that most modern dogs derive from Southeast Asia, which has fueled the controversial hypothesis that dog dome...

This study investigated strontium isotopes in the dental enamel of 32 human skeletons from Forte Marechal Luz sambaqui (shellmound), Santa Catarina, Brazil, aiming at identifying local and non-local individuals. The archeological site presents pot sherds in the uppermost archeological layers. Dental enamel was also examined from specimens of terrestrial fauna ((87)Sr/(86)Sr = 0.71046 to 0.71273...

An important concern of paleoethnobotanists is accounting for the presence and charring of seeds recovered archeologically. The possibility that seeds can be brought to a site incorporated in animal dung and charred when that dung is burned as fuel is considered. Researchers have shown that animal dung can contain seeds. Ethnoarcheological data from the rural village of Malyan, Iran demonstrate...

Buried archeological features show up as crop marks that are mostly visible using high-resolution image data. Such data are costly and restricted to small regions and time domains. However, a time series of freely available medium resolution imagery can be employed to detect crop growth changes to reveal subtle surface marks in large areas. This paper aims to study the classical Chinese settlem...