Oxhide ingots in Scandinavian rock art

Antiquity / Volume 89 / Issue 343 / February 2015, pp 191-209

Representations of oxhide ingots in Scandinavian rock art: the sketchbook of a Bronze Age traveller?

Johan Ling and Zofia Stos-Gale

Bronze Age trade networks across Europe and the Mediterranean are well documented; Baltic amber and bronze metalwork were particularly valued commodities. Here it is argued that demand for copper and tin led to changes in Scandinavian trade routes around 1600 BC, which can be linked to the appearance of figurative rock art images in southern Scandinavia. Images identified as oxhide ingots have been discovered in Sweden and suggest that people from Scandinavia were familiar with this characteristically Mediterranean trading commodity. Using trace element and lead isotope analysis, the authors argue that some bronze tools excavated in Sweden could have been made of Cypriot copper; these two discoveries suggest that Scandinavians were travelling to the Mediterranean, rather than acting through a middle man.

Link

Strong (?) linguistic and archaeological evidence for steppe Indo-Europeans

In a new paper in Annual Review of Linguistics, David Anthony and Don Ringe make the archaeological and linguistic case for the steppe IE homeland hypothesis. It is very useful to see the evidence presented concisely in this way. Of course, I don't think that the evidence for the steppe IE hypothesis is "so strong" as it is said to be in the paper's abstract.

The authors first discuss the phylogeny of IE languages:

It seems clear that the ancestor of the Anatolian subgroup (which includes Hittite) separated from the other dialects of PIE first, so from a cladistic point of view Anatolian is half the IE family (e.g., Jasanoff 2003). Within the non-Anatolian half, it appears that the ancestor of the Tocharian subgroup (whose attested languages were spoken in Xinjiang, today in western China, until approximately the tenth century ce) separated from the other dialects before the latter had diverged much (e.g., Winter 1998, Ringe 2000). It follows that an item inherited by two or more of the daughter subgroups can be reconstructed for “early” PIE only if it is attested in at least one Anatolian language and at least one non-Anatolian language, and such an item can be reconstructed for the ancestor of the non-Anatolian subgroups only if it is attested in one or both of the Tocharian languages and in some other IE language. 

This doesn't seem to be evidence for the steppe hypothesis, but rather for the Anatolian one. The authors hypothesis a pre-4000BC Out-of-Steppe migration into the Balkans (migration 1 left), but that takes you only into the Balkans and not into all the places in Anatolia where IE languages were spoken historically (right). The hypothesis that pre-4000BC Proto-Anatolians migrated from the steppe must bridge quite a lot of ground to reach the historical Anatolians of the 2nd and 1st millennium BC. It must also explain that the physical anthropological change in Anatolia in the Chalcolithic and the Bronze Age is associated with migration of brachycephals which seems incompatible with movements from either the Copper Age Balkans or the Pontic-Caspian steppe that were occupied by gracile and robust dolicho-mesocephals respectively. Migration 1 is of course possible but it is hardly a better explanation for the first-order split of Anatolian vs. post-Anatolian Indo-European than expansions from the Neolithic "womb of nations" that included Anatolia. Arrows 1 and 2 do harmonize with the proposed linguistic phylogeny. But, why would steppe Indo-Europeans first migrate southwest, then east, and then west? What was the cause of this particular sequence of migrations (which is invoked to harmonize the the linguistic evidence)? I am perfectly willing to consider linguistic replacement in Anatolia (it happened at least twice in recorded history, first with Greek and then with Turkish), but the case is not particularly strong that it happened from a pre-4000BC Out-of-Steppe movement via the eastern Balkans. As for the Tocharians, their recorded language of the 1st millennium AD is 4ky removed from movement 2 to the Altai, so even if future discoveries convincingly prove this movement, the yawning gap of 4 thousand years will remain. My analysis of modern Uygurs shows that the Caucasoid element in the Turkic inhabitants of Eastern Turkestan (which presumably includes the Indo-European element) is complex, and perfectly compatible with a non-steppe, but rather West Asian ultimate origin of Tocharians.

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The authors next discuss the wheel vocabulary (left). The idea is that wheeled vehicles weren't known when farmers colonized Europe, so if PIE has terminology for wheeled vehicles, then it has to be later. I don't find these arguments convincing, because words change meanings, and PIE doesn't have a word for wheeled vehicle, but for a variety of its components, each of which might have meant something else originally.

But, even if one concedes wheeled vehicles, it's still the case that neither Anatolian nor Tocharian has a repertoire of many terms for wheeled vehicles. So, all the wheel vocabulary proves (if one accepts it at all) is that post-Anatolian or even post-Tocharian languages had wheeled vehicles. This then provides a chronological constraint to the spread of post-Anatolian (or post-Tocharian) IE languages after the invention of wheeled vehicles, but tells us absolutely nothing about where they spread from (and hence the steppe hypothesis) but only when they spread. Thus, the wheel vocabulary is consistent with a whole number of theories that propose a spread of IE languages after the invention of wheeled vehicles and provides no special support for the steppe hypothesis over others.

The authors next discuss the lexical borrowings into Proto-Uralic and Proto-Finno-Ugrian. But, this only shows that early Uralic and Finno-Ugrian speakers came into contact with early Indo-Europeans, not that Indo-Europeans originated near Uralic and Finno-Ugrian speakers. Moreover, the authors also mention that PIE shows evidence of contacts with Proto-Kartvelian speakers. By the same line of argument, the PIE homeland should be close to Georgia where Proto-Kartvelian languages were presumably spoken. Indeed, Uralic languages are very widely spoken from Europe to eastern Siberia and the Uralic geographical constraint is much weaker than the Kartvelian one, as there are many parts of Eurasia (including the Pontic-Caspian steppe) that Uralic languages may have been spoken of, but a very small part of Eurasia (the southern Caucasus and northeastern Anatolia) for which any evidence of Kartvelians exists. The authors suggest that a steppe PIE explains both Proto-Uralic and Proto-Kartvelian borrowings as the steppe is between presumable speakers of these two language families. True, but Northeast and Northwest Caucasian speakers lie between Proto-Kartvelians and the steppe. A PIE origin on the steppe must bypass the NW/NE Caucasian speakers to bring Indo-Europeans in contact with Kartvelians, and a PIE origin in highland West Asia must bypass the same to bring them into contact with Uralic speakers. In sum, I don't see at all how the evidence from lexical borrowings favors the steppe hypothesis strongly.

The authors next discuss the archaeological implications of placing the homeland on the steppe and discuss how it may have been carried out. I continue to think that the spread of metallurgy is the most obvious candidate for an enabling factor. Having the capacity to build and trade metal objects, or kill people with metal weapons gives one obvious advantages that are unquestionable in every circumstance in the way that flocks of cattle and sheep, horses, and wheeled vehicles are not. Not only Indo-Europeans but also Semitic speakers may have been enabled by metallurgy to spread their languages. Neither Indo-Europeans nor Semites may have been master metallurgists, but metallurgical progress enabled language spread just as other technological innovations (e.g., stirrups, firearms, ocean-worthy boats) did in more recent history.

The authors then criticize past work on phylogenetic modeling of languages and end their article with this sentence:

Work currently in progress by the team of Chang, Hall, Cathcart, and Garrett promises to fill that gap.

An article by these authors is listed in the journal Language website, albeit without the actual text of the article yet:

Ancestry-constrained phylogenetic analysis supports the Indo-European steppe hypothesis 

Will Chang, Chundra Cathcart, David Hall and Andrew Garrett, University of California, Berkeley 

Discussion of Indo-European origins and dispersal focuses on two hypotheses. Qualitative evidence from reconstructed vocabulary and correlations with archaeological data suggest that Indo-European languages originated in the Pontic-Caspian steppe and spread together with cultural innovations associated with pastoralism, beginning c. 6500–5500 BP. An alternative hypothesis, according to which Indo-European languages spread with the diffusion of farming from Anatolia, beginning c. 9500–8000 BP, is supported by statistical phylogenetic and phylogeographic analyses of lexical traits. The time and place of the Indo-European ancestor language therefore remain disputed. Here we present a phylogenetic analysis in which ancestry constraints permit more accurate inference of rates of change, based on observed changes between ancient or medieval languages and their modern descendants, and we show that the result strongly supports the steppe hypothesis. Positing ancestry constraints also reveals that homoplasy is common in lexical traits, contrary to the assumptions of previous work. We show that lexical traits undergo recurrent evolution due to recurring patterns of semantic and morphological change.

It's not clear what the article itself shows. If this is simply a criticism of the "old" dates of the first PIE split proposed by Gray/Atkinson and Bouckaert et al., then this does not really support the steppe hypothesis uniquely, but rather argues against the Neolithic Anatolian one. However, there are many hypotheses other than these two (including my Bronze Age expansion of Indo-European languages hypothesis from West Asia which is somewhat related to that of Stanislav Grigoriev) that can accommodate a later split of PIE.

To conclude, I think that archaeology and linguistics have failed to make a convincing case for steppe Proto-Indo-Europeans. It is certainly a respectable and popular theory but the evidence for it is hardly "so strong" as to create serious problems for other hypotheses. Hopefully, archaeogenetics will succeed where archaeology and linguistics (despite their valiant efforts) have failed.

Annual Review of Linguistics Vol. 1: 199-219 (Volume publication date January 2015) DOI: 10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-124812

David W. Anthony1 and Don Ringe2

The Indo-European Homeland from Linguistic and Archaeological Perspectives

Archaeological evidence and linguistic evidence converge in support of an origin of Indo-European languages on the Pontic-Caspian steppes around 4,000 years BCE. The evidence is so strong that arguments in support of other hypotheses should be reexamined.

Link

Chernykh on Eurasian metallurgy

Bell Beaker blogger points me to this excellent new review of the Eurasian Metallurgical Provinces scheme of Yevgeny Chernykh. I also include an abstract from an earlier study by the author.

Of interest:

The metallurgical contacts and character of interrelations between eastern and western parts we can observe in the Xinjiang among the materials of eastern focuses of the Circumpontic metallurgical province and later in the rich metal collections of the West-Asian and East-Asian steppe provinces. In this sphere extreme interest presents so called Seima-Turbino transcultural phenomenon: their impressive metal forms of eastern sources spreaded from the Western China up to Baltic Sea at the turn of the III and II millennium and in the early centuries of the II mill. BCE.

I have argued before that the Seima-Turbino phenomenon is associated with the spread of Finno-Ugrians into Europe. It would certainly be in accord with a recent thesis about Finno-Ugrians arriving to the Baltic after Indo-European speakers.

Metallurgical Provinces of Eurasia in the Early Metal Age: Problems of Interrelation

General chronological frame of the Early Metal Age (EMA) in Eurasia limited from IX/VIII up to turn II/I mill. BCE. The chronological scale of this investigation founded on the systematized date base of more than 3.5 thousand calibrated 14C analyses. EMA can be subdivided into five unequal in chronological sense periods. The Early Metal Age was the epoch clear domination of the western metallurgical centers – particularly up to III mill. BCE. In all probabilities the apogee of the western predominance was incarnated in the immense of the famous Scythian world, in the limits of the first millennium BCE – i.e. beyond the EMA. The eastern centers take up the initiative of westward pressing after collapse of the Scythian world.

Link

The “Steppe Belt” of stockbreeding cultures in Eurasia during the Early Metal Age

The stock-breeding cultures of the Eurasian “steppe belt” covered approximately 7-8 million square km2 from the Lower Danube in the West to Manchuria in the East (a distance of more than 8000 km). The initial formation of the “steppe belt’cultures coincided with the flourishing of the Carpatho-Balkan metallurgical province (V millennium BC). These cultures developed during the span of the Circumpontic metallurgical province (IV-III millennium BC). Their maturation coincided with the activity of the various centers of the giant Eurasian and East-Asian metallurgical provinces (II millennium BC). The influence of these stock-breeding nomadic cultures on the historical processes of Eurasian peoples was extremely strong. The collapse of the “steppe belt” occurred as late as the XVIIIth and XIXth centuries AD.

Link

6,500-year old tin bronze from Serbia

Antiquity Volume: 87 Number: 338 Page: 1030–1045

Tainted ores and the rise of tin bronzes in Eurasia, c. 6500 years ago

Miljana Radivojević et al.

The earliest tin bronze artefacts in Eurasia are generally believed to have appeared in the Near East in the early third millennium BC. Here we present tin bronze artefacts that occur far from the Near East, and in a significantly earlier period. Excavations at Pločnik, a Vinča culture site in Serbia, recovered a piece of tin bronze foil from an occupation layer dated to the mid fifth millennium BC. The discovery prompted a reassessment of 14 insufficiently contextualised early tin bronze artefacts from the Balkans. They too were found to derive from the smelting of copper-tin ores. These tin bronzes extend the record of bronze making by c. 1500 years, and challenge the conventional narrative of Eurasian metallurgical development.

Link

Multiple sources of European barley

This seems to parallel quite well with my hypothesis of a secondary expansion into Europe of the component I've labeled "West Asian", after the early Neolithic. From the paper:

The wild progenitor of barley, Hordeum spontaneum, is typically a winter-germinating species, responsive to day length (Turner et al. 2005), but recent work (H. Jones et al. 2008) has demonstrated that the non-responsive allele also occurs in wild barley in Israel, Jordan and Iran, in regions where this allele is favoured by the climatic conditions. There is strong evidence to suggest that the non-responsive allele in European cultivars (Group A) is genetically more similar to the allele in Iranian wild barleys than to the allele in wild barleys from Israel and Jordan.

and:

 Detailed genetic comparisons between groups A, B and C (H. Jones 2008; H. Jones et al. 2008) suggest that Group A represents a more recent introduction of day-length non-responsive barley into Europe, rather than the selection of non-responsiveness from within populations that diffused into Europe in the Early Neolithic. In addition, three of the nine principal groups identified on the basis of the neutral SSR markers (groups 1–3) are genetically closely related and very similar in their phenotypic characteristics. They are located in north-west and Central Europe (Figure 3b), and are made up almost entirely of  day-length non-responsive barleys (98 per cent) with a spring growth habit (98 per cent) (H. Jones et al. 2011). The distinctiveness of the landraces making up groups 1–3 suggests that the responsive/non-responsive difference between Southern and Northern Europe is not simply a reflection of current selective pressure but rather is one aspect of a more fundamental genetic difference between barley populations. These day-length non-responsive cultivars have therefore been interpreted as representing a later spread of barley into Northern Europe from the eastern part of the Fertile Crescent or beyond. This raises the issue of when they spread into Europe and whether or not they were introduced via the same route as the initial  spread of agriculture.

and:

A possible channel for the introduction of day-length non-responsive barley into Northern Europe from the east at this time could have been through early exchange networks with metal-working communities of south-eastern Europe (Sherratt 1976; Bogucki 1999: 220–21). The Chalcolithic societies of the Balkans also maintained connections further east with the west Eurasian Steppes, Anatolia, and the Caucasus in the fifth and early fourth millennia, and copper was exchanged from west to east across the steppes north of the Black Sea (Kohl 2007: 31–39). Day-length non-responsive barley could, therefore, have travelled from east to west along the same route, north of the Black Sea via the Caucasus or, perhaps more likely given its agricultural nature, south of the Black Sea through Anatolia, possibly via a coastal route around the Black Sea, and then from the Carpatho-Balkan metallurgical region into Northern Europe (Figure 3b). A similar suggestion has been made for the later appearance of the oil plant Lallemantia, which was apparently introduced into Europe in the third millennium BC, possibly along the same trade routes as tin-bronzes (Valamoti & Jones 2010). 

Antiquity Volume: 87 Number: 337 Page: 701–713

DNA evidence for multiple introductions of barley into Europe following dispersed domestications in Western Asia

G. Jones et al.

It has long been recognised that the Neolithic spread across Europe via two separate routes, one along the Mediterranean coasts, the other following the axis of the major rivers. But did these two streams have a common point of origin in south-west Asia, at least with regard to the principal plant and animals species that were involved? This study of barley DNA shows that the domesticated barley grown in Neolithic Europe falls into three separate types (groups A, B and C), each of which may have had a separate centre of origin in south-west Asia. Barley was relatively rarely cultivated by the early Linearbandkeramik farmers of Central and Northern Europe, but became more common during the fifth and fourth millennia BC. The analysis reported here indicates that a genetic variety of barley more suitable for northern growing conditions was introduced from south-west Asia at this period. It also suggests that the barley grown in south-eastern Europe at the very beginning of the Neolithic may have arrived there by different routes from two separate centres of domestication in south-west Asia. The multiple domestications that this pattern reveals imply that domestication may have been more a co-evolutionary process between plants and people than an intentional human action.

Link

Origin of copper ores of Nordic Bronze Age

Journal of Archaeological Science doi:10.1016/j.jas.2013.07.018

Moving metals II: provenancing Scandinavian Bronze Age artefacts by lead isotope and elemental analyses 

Johan Ling et al.

The first part of this research published previously proved without doubt that the metals dated to the Nordic Bronze Age found in Sweden were not smelted from the local copper ores. In this second part we present a detailed interpretation of these analytical data with the aim to identify the ore sources from which these metals originated. The interpretation of lead isotope and chemical data of 71 Swedish Bronze Age metals is based on the direct comparisons between the lead isotope data and geochemistry of ore deposits that are known to have produced copper in the Bronze Age. The presented interpretations of chemical and lead isotope analyses of Swedish metals dated to the Nordic Bronze Age are surprising and bring some information not known from previous work. Apart from a steady supply of copper from the Alpine ores in the North Tyrol, the main sources of copper seem to be ores from the Iberian Peninsula and Sardinia. Thus from the results presented here a new complex picture emerges of possible connectivities and flows in the Bronze Age between Scandinavia and Europe .

Link

The Nordic razor

I had posted a few studies suggesting links between Mycenaean Greece and Scandinavia, and here is another one. From the paper, this ties a bit to my ideas about the establishment of long-range networks associated with metallurgy in the Bronze Age:

It can be seen that there were two, chronologically separate, lines of introduction or transfer of the razor idea from the eastern Mediterranean to northern Europe. The spread of the two-edged razor to Central and Western Europe including Britain and Ireland took place just before or around 1500 BC. The one-edged razor arrived in Scandinavia in the decades before 1400 BC. The two ‘time-slots’ of transfer from the Mediterranean of two types of razors indicate the use of specific long distance networks that were probably in existence beforehand.

Antiquity Volume: 87 Number: 336 Page: 461–472

The Nordic razor and the Mycenaean lifestyle

Flemming Kaul

*Danish Prehistory, The National Museum of Denmark, Frederiksholms Kanal 12, Copenhagen DK 1220, Denmark (Email: flemming.kaul@natmus.dk)

The bronze razor with the horse-head handle appeared in Scandinavia in the fifteenth century BC. Where did it come from and what did it mean? The author shows that the razor had some antecedents in the Aegean, although none of these objects were imported to the north. He argues that the Scandinavian warrior class consciously adopted elements of the Mycenaean warrior package, including a clean-shaven face. This vividly exposes new aspects of the busy and subtle nature of international communication in the Bronze Age.

Link

Origins of the Maykop phenomenon

Unfortunately this is in German, so I can only read it with a lot of effort and the help of Google Translate. Anyway, it seems to argue against the "Uruk expansion from Mesopotamia" hypothesis and point towards Central Asia, with the author finding parallels of the Maykop culture in the Kura valley and Lake Urmia area. That would certainly fit the bill of a more "eastern" PIE homeland as I mention in one of my posts below -if we accept, as many do- an IE identity for at least elements within the Maikop culture.

It would be great if ancient DNA was ever able to shed some light on archaeological controversies such as this. It has already done so in Europe, where the discovery of a Mediterranean-like TRB farmer in Sweden destroyed theories of "acculturation" in the diffusion of the Neolithic economy into that continent, and I'm sure that similarly interesting things were taking place during prehistory in other parts of the world.


A couple of related recent posts:

• Stanislav Grigoriev's "Ancient Indo-Europeans"
• Uruk migrants in the Caucasus

Praehistorische Zeitschrift. Volume 87, Issue 1, Pages 1–28

Kaukasus und Orient: Die Entstehung des „Maikop-Phänomens“ im 4. Jahrtausend v.Chr.

Mariya Ivanova

[English abstract] Graves and settlements of the 5th millennium BC in North Caucasus attest to a material culture that was related to contemporaneous archaeological complexes in the northern and western Black Sea region. Yet it was replaced, suddenly as it seems, around the middle of the 4th millennium BC by a “high culture” whose origin is still quite unclear. This archaeological culture named after the great Maikop kurgan showed innovations in all areas which have no local archetypes and which cannot be assigned to the tradition of the Balkan-Anatolian Copper Age. The favoured theory of Russian researchers is a migration from the south originating in the Syro-Anatolian area, which is often mentioned in connection with the socalled “Uruk expansion”. However, serious doubts have arisen about a connection between Maikop and the Syro-Anatolian region. The foreign objects in the North Caucasus reveal no connection to the upper reaches of the Euphrates and Tigris or to the floodplains of Mesopotamia, but rather seem to have ties to the Iranian plateau and to South Central Asia. Recent excavations in the Southwest Caspian Sea region are enabling a new perspective about the interactions between the “Orient” and Continental Europe. On the one hand, it is becoming gradually apparent that a gigantic area of interaction evolved already in the early 4th millennium BC which extended far beyond Mesopotamia; on the other hand, these findings relativise the traditional importance given to Mesopotamia, because innovations originating in Iran and Central Asia obviously spread throughout the Syro-Anatolian region independently thereof.

Link

Uruk migrants in the Caucasus

From the paper:

The period between the 4th and 3rd millennia B.C. was the time of great cataclysmic events in the Caucasus; its cultural advances were influenced by changes within its boundaries as well as interactions with the outside world. 

The most significant occurrence of this epoch was the appearance of a large number of peoples of Mesopotamian cultural identity who contributed to speeding up the rhythm of its cultural development, adding “explosive” character to its progress. 

...  

During this period the South Caucasus experienced two powerful waves of Middle Eastern expansion: the first at the time of Late Neolithic culture of Sioni in the 4th-5th millennia B.C., and the second at the period of Tsopi culture in the Late Neolithic Age, at the end of the 5th and the first half of the 4th millennium B.C., which is known as the Uruk expansion era. Later, in the second half of the 4th and throughout the 3 rd millennium B.C., during the Early Bronze Age the Kura-Araxes culture of the Caucasus spread throughout the greater part of the Caucasus, Eastern Anatolia, northern parts of Iran, Middle East and even Europe. 

...

In this context, recent archaeological finds in the Southern and Northeastern Caucasus gave yet another, entirely new nuance to scientific researches into the ancient past of the Caucasus. They made it clear that incursion of these peoples into the Caucasus was not a onetime event, but continued for a significantly long period. Reasoning by the topography of the archaeological finds in Mesopotamia, it becomes clear that large masses of migrant settlers from that area did not move straight along the route to Transcaucasia in order to reach the destination faster. Actually, they settled down in every region of the Caucasus, in the mountains and flatlands, in areas where they could maintain a lifestyle familiar to them.     

... 

It seems obvious that from that period on, two cultures of the Caucasus that had been at different stages of development could coexist peacefully on the basis of their mutual participation in metallurgical manufacturing; it was this type of communal economy that gave impetus to a speedy development of the local culture. This is well illustrated by the metallurgical items of the Kura-Araxes culture, which is significantly more advanced in comparison with the preAeneolithic culture. 

...  

At present the situation has changed drastically. On the basis of a whole series of radiocarbon analyses, it has been proved [15; 82] that burial mounds of the ancient pit-grave culture are of a significantly later period in comparison with Maikop archaeological sites. This allows scholars to assume that the tradition of building this type of burial mounds emerged precisely in the Maikop culture. Its ties with Levant and Mesopotamian antiquities point to its earlier origin [15: 97]. At the same time, a whole range of chronological data obtained with radiocarbon analysis has established that the settlements and burial mounds of the South Caucasus containing Uruk artefact are coexistent with the Maikop culture [13: 149-153] and, accordingly, the ancient pit-grave culture and its burial mounds belong to a later period. Therefore, today we cannot possibly ascribe the emergence of this kind of burial mounds in the Maikop culture as well as similar contemporaneous sites in the South Caucasus to the influence of the steppe zone cultures. Moreover, there were no adverse conditions that would have prevented emergence of this type of burial mounds in the Caucasus itself  

UPDATE: Also relevant a book chapter on The Caucasus - donor and recipient of materials to and from the ancient near east, and a talk by EN Chernykh in a recent conference on the topic of Caucasus as the Bridge Between the Settled Farming and the Pastor.

BULLETIN OF THE GEORGIAN NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, vol. 6, no. 2, 2012

Uruk Migrants in the Caucasus

Konstantine Pitskhelauri

ABSTRACT. At the end of the 5th and in the 4th millennia B.C. large masses of Uruk migrants had settled in the South, and later in the North Caucasus. Assimilation of cultures of the newcomers and residents, as a result, caused their “explosive” development paving the way to the formation of the Maikop culture in the North Caucasus and the Kura-Araxes culture in the South Caucasus. © 2012 Bull. Georg. Natl. Acad. Sci.

Link (pdf)

Links between Mycenaeans and Scandinavia

Three papers on a similar theme. An excerpt from a source mentioned in the second paper:

Det visar sig att alla undersökta svenska föremål utom ett enda - en slaggbit - kommer från gruvor och malmfyndigheter från platser på Cypern, Sardinien, Iberiska halvön, Massif Central i nuvarande Frankrike, Tyrolen samt Brittiska öarna. Kopparn har transporterats hit och i utbyte har man skeppat tillbaka stora mängder bärnsten. Fram träder en bild av en tid då internationella kontakter över stora vatten var självklarheter, och det redan cirka 2000 år innan vikingarna gav sig iväg på sina färder. [Google Translate]: It turns out that all examined Swedish subject except one - a slaggbit - comes from mines and ore deposits from sites in Cyprus, Sardinia, the Iberian Peninsula, the Massif Central in the current France, Tyrol and the British Isles. Copper has been transported, and in return it has been shipped back large amounts of amber. What emerges is a picture of a time when international contacts over large water was obvious, and there are already some 2000 years before the Vikings set off on their journeys.

From the third paper:

Both the lead isotope and chemical analyses have undoubtedly showed that the copper from the 33 Scandinavian Bronze Age artefacts diverges significantly from Scandinavian copper ores and that the copper must have been imported from elsewhere. The results furthermore indicate that there are variations in metal supply that are related to chronology, in resemblance with artefacts from Scandinavia as well as from other parts of Europe indicating analogous trade routes for copper, during the respective periods. Maritime networks and changing sources of metal seem to have been a key feature for Scandinavia in the Bronze Age.

Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia

Volume 40, Issue 2, June 2012, Pages 99–103

Grave Circle B at Mycenae in the Context of Links Between the Eastern Mediterranean and Scandinavia in the Bronze Age

I.B. Gubanov

Artifacts from royal burial graves Gamma and Omicron of grave circle B at Mycenae attest to cultural ties between the Eastern Mediterranean elite and that of the Scandinavian Early Bronze Age (mid- and late 2nd millennium BC). The appearance of the running spiral motif and representations of ships with rams in Scandinavia coincide with the beginning of the Mycenaean civilization. These facts, along with the finds of Baltic amber only in the royal burials at Mycenae but not in Crete, suggest that a principal role in the introduction of these cultural elements in Scandinavia during the Scandinavian Bronze Age (periods I–III according to Montelius) was played by the Mycenaean elite.

Link

Journal of Geography and Geology Vol 5, No 1 (2013)

The Bronze Age in SE Sweden Evidence of Long-Distance Travel and Advanced Sun Cult 

Nils-Axel Mörner, Bob G. Lind

The Bronze Age of Scandinavia (1750-500 BC) is characterized by the sudden appearance of bronze objects in Scandinavia, the sudden mass appearance of amber in Mycenaean graves, and the beginning of bedrock carvings of huge ships. We take this to indicate that people from the east Mediterranean arrived to Sweden on big ships over the Atlantic, carrying bronze objects from the south, which they traded for amber occurring in SE Sweden in the Ravlunda-Vitemölla–Kivik area. Those visitors left strong cultural imprints as recorded by pictures and objects found in SE Sweden. This seems to indicate that the visits had grown to the establishment of a trading centre. The Bronze Age of Österlen (the SE part of Sweden) is also characterized by a strong Sun cult recorded by stone monuments built to record the annual motions of the Sun, and rock carvings that exhibit strict alignments to the annual motions of the Sun. Ales Stones, dated at about 800 BC, is a remarkable monument in the form of a 67 m long stone-ship. It records the four main solar turning points of the year, the 12 months of the year, each month covering 30 days, except for month 7 which had 35 days (making a full year of 365 days), and the time of the day at 16 points representing 1.5 hour. Ales Stones are built after the same basic geometry as Stonehenge in England.

Link

Journal of Archaeological Science
Volume 40, Issue 1, January 2013, Pages 291–304

Moving metals or indigenous mining? Provenancing Scandinavian Bronze Age artefacts by lead isotopes and trace elements

Johan Ling et al.

The aim of this study is to further the discussion as to whether copper was extracted locally or imported to Sweden during the Bronze Age or if both of these practices could have coexisted. For this purpose, we have carried out lead isotope and chemical analyses of 33 bronze items, dated between 1600BC and 700BC. Among these are the famous Fröslunda shields and the large scrap hoard from Bräckan and other items from three regions in southern Sweden which are also renowned for their richness in copper ores. It is obvious from a comparison that the element and lead isotope compositions of the studied bronze items diverge greatly from those of spatially associated copper ores. Nor is there any good resemblance with other ores from Scandinavia, and it is concluded that the copper in these items must have been imported from elsewhere. The results furthermore indicate that there are variations in metal supply that are related to chronology, in agreement with other artefacts from Scandinavia as well as from other parts of Europe. Altogether these circumstances open up for a discussion regarding Scandinavia’s role in the maritime networks during the Bronze Age.

Link

The comings and goings of Near Eastern and European domestic pigs (Ottoni et al. 2012)

This is an excellent paper whose findings re: pig domestication seem to parallel many of my own observations regarding the flow of human populations. It is open access, so you can read it for yourselves, but the following figure illustrates the situation admirably:

The left-right arrangement of the columns corresponds to a west-east longitude across West Asia. It can be easily seen that some of the early domestic samples (yellow, bottom row) are concentrated in the west (Y1 haplotype), while others (blue, Arm1T) in the east.

Neolithic European samples possessed the Y1 haplotype, but lacked the Arm1T one. So, the authors conclude that:

The ancient Anatolian data presented here reveal that both wild and possibly domestic Neolithic pigs (identified using traditional metrics) possessed Y1 haplotypes ... The presence of these lineages corroborates the supposition that the earliest domestic pigs in Europe originated from populations originally domesticated in the Near East, conclusively linking the Neolithization of Europe with Neolithic cultures of western Anatolia (Larson et al. 2007a; Haak et al. 2010).

I have repeatedly highlighted the "puzzle" of the early European Neolithic: the signature Y-haplogroup G2a was unaccompanied by other common Near Eastern lineages, and the modal "West Asian" ancestral component in present-day West Asian populations seems to have been absent in early Neolithic samples, which were dominated by a "Sardinian-like" population. I have argued that this meant that the European Neolithic was drawn from a limited founder source that was more "Mediterranean/Southern" autosomally than "West Asian", at least in terms of the components identified by the Dodecad Project.

In Europe itself, the early Near Eastern domestic pigs were replaced by European ones:

Ancient DNA extracted from early Neolithic domestic pigs in Europe resolved this paradox by demonstrating that early domestic pigs in the Balkans and central Europe shared haplotypes with modern Near Eastern wild boar (Larson et al. 2007a). The absence of Near Eastern haplotypes in pre-Neolithic European wild boar suggested that early domestic pigs in Europe must have been introduced from the Near East by the mid 6th millennium BC before spreading to the Paris basin by the early 4th millennium BC (Larson et al. 2007a). 

By 3,900 BC, however, virtually all domestic pigs in Europe possessed haplotypes  from an indigenous European domestication process (Larson et al. 2007a) only found in European wild boar. This genetic turnover may have resulted from the accumulated introgression of local female wild boar into imported domestic stocks, or from an indigenous European domestication process (Larson et al. 2007a).

We have seen that early Neolithic domestic pigs came from Western Anatolia, but apparently these did not last, but were replaced in Europe by pigs carrying mtDNA of European wild boar. An additional possibility is that the European wild boar were better adapted to local conditions in Europe, so the stock of European farmers gradually became "local" due to artificial/natural selection favoring the local "European" type. It might also be that in accordance with Bergmann's rule, European-descended pigs were simply bigger, and thus more economically productive.

In any case, the interesting thing is that pigs carrying the "European" haplotype went the other way, crossing from Europe to Asia. The beginning of this process seems to have occurred in the Middle Bronze Age:

The temporal and geographic distribution of genetic haplotypes presented in our study demonstrates that the first AMS dated pig with European ancestry (haplotype A) appeared almost 1,000 years earlier than the Armenian samples in a Late Bronze Age context (~1,600-1,440 BC) at Lidar Höyük (fig. 1). An even earlier Middle Bronze Age specimen from the same site also possessed a European signature, but a direct
AMS date for this specimen could not be obtained.

I have written how increased mobility and long-range networks associated with the new metallurgical class facilitated commerce during the Bronze Age. The authors suggest the possibility of Minoan-Mycenaean/Hittite involvement during the Bronze Age, which are certainly plausible conduits for European pigs to have crossed the Aegean at this time. But, as you can see from the figure, the "European" pigs are still outliers during the Middle and Bronze Ages, but become common in the Iron Age sample from Lidar Höyük, and eventually replacing local types throughout Anatolia and Armenia, but, apparently, not Iran:

The frequency of pigs with European ancestry increased rapidly from the 12th century BC, and by the 5th century AD domestic pigs exhibiting a Near Eastern genetic signature had all but disappeared across Anatolia and the southern Caucasus. Though we did not detect European signatures in the ancient Iranian samples (fig. 1), the eastward spread of European lineages may have continued into Iran later than the Iron Age since European lineages have been found in wild caught modern Iranian samples (Larson et al. 2007a).

Of course a 12th century BC increase in European domestic pigs is entirely consistent -chronologically- with the Phrygian/Armenian settlement in Anatolia, and this association is further reinforced by the lack of European signatures in pigs from Iran where Phrygo-Armenians did not settle. The increase in European pigs could later be mediated by the Greek colonization, and the increase in trade during antiquity, just as trade would later introduce East Asian pig DNA into Europe.

The beautiful temporal transect presented in the Figure may also prove useful for students of ancient human DNA. I'd love to see how humans living close to sites #14-16, dominated by Arm1T haplotypes throughout history might differ from those of Neolithic West Anatolia, and whether the "mixed" Iron Age sample from Lidar Höyük shows evidence of the arrival of European-like human populations to accompany the European pigs.

Mol Biol Evol (2012) doi: 10.1093/molbev/mss261

Pig domestication and human-mediated dispersal in western Eurasia revealed through ancient DNA and geometric morphometrics

Claudio Ottoni et al.

Zooarcheological evidence suggests that pigs were domesticated in Southwest Asia ∼8,500 BC. They then spread across the Middle and Near East and westward into Europe alongside early agriculturalists. European pigs were either domesticated independently or appeared so as a result of admixture between introduced pigs and European wild boar. These pigs not only replaced those with Near Eastern signatures in Europe, they subsequently also replaced indigenous domestic pigs in the Near East. The specific details of these processes, however, remain unknown. To address questions related to early pig domestication, dispersal, and turnover in the Near East, we analyzed ancient mitochondrial DNA and dental geometric morphometric variation in 393 ancient pig specimens representing 48 archeological sites (from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic to the Medieval period) from Armenia, Cyprus, Georgia, Iran, Syria and Turkey. Our results firstly reveal the genetic signature of early domestic pigs in Eastern Turkey. We also demonstrate that these early pigs differed genetically from those in western Anatolia that were introduced to Europe during the Neolithic expansion. In addition, we present a significantly more refined chronology for the introduction of European domestic pigs into Asia Minor that took place during the Bronze Age, nearly 1,000 years earlier than previously detected. By the 5th century AD, European signatures completely replaced the endemic lineages possibly coinciding with the demographic and societal changes during the Anatolian Bronze and Iron Ages.

Link

An estimate of the admixture time for Finns

Using a similar procedure as in my recent post on the Baltic (Update II), I used 15 FIN individuals from the 1000 Genomes together with 12 Nganasans from Rasmussen et al. (2010) as reference populations, and 15 other FIN individuals to estimate admixture LD in a rolloff analysis. Three outlier Nganasan individuals (GSM558800, GSM558802, GSM558807) were removed.

The estimated time of admixture is 86.095 +/- 10.187 generations, or 2500 +/- 300 years. It corresponds rather well to the beginning of the Iron Age in northern Europe.

As I mention in my previous post, there is evidence for intrusive cultures (Battle Axe and Seima Turbino) converging on the area from different directions during the preceding Bronze Age. If the above date is accurate, it will suggest a rather late admixture event between the Europeoid and Siberian elements of Finns. The former may have included both the descendants of Mesolithic European hunter-gatherers and intruders from Central Europe (Corded Ware/Battle Axe); the latter may have included both Comb Ceramic and the descendants of the Seima Turbino metallurgists.

3D laser scan of Stonehenge reveals axehead graffiti

Stonehenge up close: digital laser scan reveals secrets of the past

The first complete 3D laser scan of the stone circle has also revealed tool marks made 4,500 years ago, scores of little axehead graffiti added when the enormous slabs were already 1,000 years old, and damage and graffiti contributed by Georgian and Victorian visitors. 

...

Long after the monument was built, when Bronze Age burial mounds rich in grave goods began to be scattered across the plain around Stonehenge, and the archaeological evidence suggests those who could make or trade in metal goods had an almost shamanic status, people carved little images of daggers and axes, many now invisible to the naked eye, into the stones. Scores more have been revealed by the scan, including 71 new axe heads, bringing the total to 115 – doubling the number ever recorded in Britain.

"It is wonderful to have discovered so many more, but what is fascinating is that they are carved without regard to the importance or the siting of the stones – almost as if the people who carved them could no longer quite remember the significance of the monument and how it worked," Greaney said.

They probably could no longer remember, because they were Indo-European newcomers, and not the same people as the Megalithic folk who built Stonehenge.

A little history:

Craniologists of the time used a ratio based on length and width measurements, known as the cranial index, to divide skulls into two basic types: 'dolichocephalic', long and narrow in shape, and 'brachycephalic', broad and round in shape. Based on his observations at sites like Belas Knap, Thurnam established his famous axiom, 'long barrows, long skulls; round barrows, round skulls'. The long skulls were found in long barrows and never in association with metallic artefacts, while round skulls were found in round barrows sometimes with metalwork. 

... 

Thurnam's and Rolleston's theories gained considerable credibility in the late Victorian period and survived well into the earlier 20th century. Such racist theories failed to stand up, however, in the face of Gordon Childe's arguments for the definition of an archaeological culture based on shared social characteristics and material culture rather than race or biological type. In addition, the considerable moral repugnance felt towards Victorian anthropology and its role in the rise of fascist ideology in the 1930s caused the argument over long and round skulls to be sidelined and eventually dismissed. The identification of the Bronze Age incomers based on their material culture, including metalwork and Beaker pottery vessels, remained a more acceptable alternative.
In the 1990s, however, the archaeologist Neil Brodie took a fresh look at the craniological evidence and concluded that there was undeniably a difference between the shape of skulls from Neolithic long barrows and Bronze Age round barrows. A trend from long to round skull shape was clearly shown. 

The differences, he argued, could be caused by cultural practices, such as the binding of infants' heads, as well as by diet and a range of climatic or environmental factors. Looking at the totality of human history, he showed that head shape fluctuates in populations over long periods of time, and that extremes of head types occur in successive prehistoric populations as a matter of historical chance.

We don't have DNA evidence from British round barrows yet, but Beaker burials from Germany show the first R1b ever found, while Neolithic Western Europe shows a mix of I2a and G2a. Difference in material culture? check. Difference in physical anthropology? check. Difference in time of appearance? check. Difference in genetics? preliminary check.

So, it seems like a good bet that the people who carved axehead graffiti on Stonehenge were simply invaders who took over the site from the previous inhabitants, and, as is so often the case, used it for their own purposes.

The rise and wane of the cremation ritual

A thought occurred to me recently as I was reading about the Urnfield culture and the two components of the Andronovo horizon, the Alakul and Fedorovo cultures which contrasted in their practice of cremation vs. inhumation. It seems that the cremation ritual rose to prominence during the Bronze Age and then largely waned during the Iron Age.

Of course, this did not occur everywhere, not was it an entirely linear process. For example, most of the patrician Roman gentes practiced cremation into historical times. The Greeks, on the other hand, who mostly practiced inhumation during the Bronze Age, seem to have adopted cremation during the Dark Age, and this was the custom immortalized by Homer. Of the Indo-Iranians, one branch leading to the modern Hindus adopted a cremation ritual, while another, leading to the Zoroastrian Persians adopted the well-known exposure ritual.

But, nonetheless, it is a fact that the cremation burial first rose to prominence during the Bronze Age, and this requires an explanation.

I don't know whether this hypothesis has been advanced before, but it seems to me that the most practical reason for the cremation burial is to facilitate transportation of remains.

In modern times, the desire to be buried in familiar surroundings is often strong, and people are often buried in a different place than where they die. Of course, thanks to technological advanced related to preservation and transportation, this is often practical. But, this would not have been so in the past: cremation may have been devised as a way to dispose of the dead and carry their remains.

I have argued before that a sort of "globalization" took place during the Bronze Age, as extensive networks associated with metallurgy, combining prospecting, mining, metalworking, distribution, and security were formed. The non-local nature of these natures was driven by the need to co-ordinate a range of activities that took place in geographically distant areas: sources of ore needed to be identified and mined; metal needed to be worked on by talented experts who could fashion it into useful instruments of high added value; the end products had to be protected (because of their high value) and transported to areas where it would be in demand.

In the context of this theory, the rise of the cremation burial makes sense. In Paleolithic times, there was no concept of "home", as humans lived nomadic lives, endlessly driven away in search of resources. In Neolithic times, a strong concept of "home" emerged, as humans were tied to their crops and domesticated animals, and to the dwellings they had created. And, indeed, people were literally buried under their homes in the earliest Neoltihic.

The revolution of the Metal Age was the rise of mobility. This was facilitated by advanced in transportation technology associated with wheeled vehicles, and was driven by the trade in metal objects and other specialized, high-value items. The segment of the population involved in this business formed the elite, because of their access to weaponry and wealth, and these elites were intrinsically mobile for the reasons enumerated above. They, like other Neolithic peoples, had inherited a "love of home" and were territorial, but their way of life demanded that they live and fight away from "home".

Hence, the rise of the cremation ritual, which was then copied by others, due to its association with the elite, as well as its signalling effect, because a proper full cremation requires a large quantity of wood and is expensive to prepare and carry out. The intensification of warfare during the Bronze Age may have been an additional factor in the rise of the cremation ritual, because it is a convenient way to dispose of the dead at a battle site, or away from an established cemetery.

My hypothesis may not capture all the complexities of the phenomenon, but I think that a utilitarian origin of the ritual, which later assumed ideological, social, or religious connotations may make good sense of at least the origins of the practice at a wide level during the Bronze Age.

An obvious downside of the cremation ritual is its almost certain detrimental consequences for the preservation of ancient DNA. As more DNA evidence from the prehistoric past continues to accumulate, it is useful to remember that part of the puzzle may have been irretrievably lost, although I suspect that the transience of the practice in many parts of the world and its co-existence with inhumation in others may have left us with enough evidence to work out the larger picture.

La Bastida, Bronze Age Iberian fortified site

From a website dedicated to it:

La Bastida (Totana, Murcia) is one of the most important archaeological sites of Prehistory in Europe. It was inhabited about 4000 years ago in the Bronze Age, and it has a great potential to understand our past and the heritage and cultural projection of Murcia Region. 

The archaeological site is located in the Sierra Tercia, on a steep hill at  confluence of the Rambla de Lebor and Salado Cliff around 6 km west of Totana town. The four hectares of surface make it one of the most extensive sites and it can only be compared to the one that occupied the present town of Lorca.

The Argaric society was a milestone of  sedentary life, urbanism, metallurgy and political and economic inequalities. La Bastida offers a unique and exceptional opportunity to understand this key stage of our past.

From a recent press release:

La Bastida unearths 4,200-year-old fortification, unique in continental Europe 

Similar characteristics have not been observed in other constructions of the Bronze Age, with three-metre thick walls, square towers originally measuring up to seven metres, a monumental entrance and an ogival arched postern gate; a fully conserved architectural element unique in Europe in that period. 

The wall protected a city measuring 4 hectares located on top of a hill. With architectural elements reminiscent of people with Eastern styled military skills, its model is typical of ancient civilisations of the Mediterranean, such as the second city of Troy. 

... 

One of the most relevant architectural elements discovered is the ogival arched postern gate, or secondary door, located near the main entrance. The arch is in very good conditions and is the first one to be found in Prehistoric Europe. Precedents can be found in the second city of Troy (Turkey) and in the urban world of the Middle East (Palestine, Israel and Jordan), influenced by the civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. This indicates that people from the East participated in the construction of the fortification. These people would have reached La Bastida after the crisis which devastated their region 4,300 years ago. It was not until some 400 to 800 years later that civilisations like the Hittites and Mycenaeans, or city-states such as Ugarit, incorporated these innovative methods into their military architecture.

Related: 4.2 kiloyear event, and El Argar.

Proto-Indo-European homeland in Neolithic Anatolia (Bouckaert et al.)

A new paper in Science uses Bayesian phylogeographic methods to model the spatial expansion of Indo-European languages from their Anatolian homeland. An informative video shows how the authors estimate the process took place across space and time:



There is also a podcast with Q.D. Atkinson on the new study, as well as a website by the authors on their research; the FAQ/Controversies section seems particularly useful.

I don't hold high hopes that, despite the mounting evidence, this will dissuade people from arguing for a steppe PIE origin. And, it shouldn't. Only a vigorous debate will resolve the issue conclusively. And, since IE languages appear on the archaeological record long after their split under any scenario, this may be one of those problems that will never be solved to everyone's satisfaction.

I don't agree with all the details of the authors' model, but certainly they place the PIE homeland near to where I believe it was. Resistance to an Anatolian origin will become more convincing if adherents of different homeland solutions manage to put their ideas in quantitative form. Expert opinion is valuable, but very knowledgeable linguists and/or archaeologists have placed the PIE homeland all the way from Central Europe to Bactria-Sogdiana and from the Pontic-Caspian steppe to Mesopotamia. So, one has to wonder why expert opinion has such a high variance, but every quantitative effort to solve the problem has come up with a single solution.

As I wrote recently:

My own working hypothesis would derive the earliest Proto-Indo-Europeans with groups living in Neolithic eastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia. There are details to be fleshed out, such as when this group of people reached the Balkans (pending ancient DNA from the region), and how they interfaced with the populations living in the north of the Black and Caspian seas (e.g., via a trans-Caucasus movement or a counterclockwise spread around the Caspian).

The current paper suggest a slightly different origin, in Southern Anatolia, perhaps influenced by the distribution of the historical Anatolian languages in the area when they were first put down in writing. But, I suspect that the transposition of Anatolian languages into the areas where they were first attested may have happened late in prehistory. In any case, whether the PIE homeland was in Southern or Eastern Anatolia, the results of this paper explicitly reject the Kurgan Pontic steppe hypothesis.

From the paper:

The distribution for the root location lies in the region of Anatolia in present-day Turkey. To quantify the strength of support for an Anatolian origin, we calculated the Bayes factors (21) comparing the posterior to prior odds ratio of a root location within the hypothesized Anatolian homeland (11) (Fig. 1, yellow polygon) with two versions of the steppe hypothesis—the initial proposed Kurgan steppe homeland (6) and a later refined hypothesis (7) (Table 1). Bayes factors show strong support for the Anatolian hypothesis under a RRW model.  

... 

As the earliest representatives of the main Indo-European lineages, our 20 ancient languages might provide more reliable location information. Conversely, the position of the ancient languages in the tree, particularly the three Anatolian varieties, might have unduly biased our results in favor of an Anatolian origin. We investigated both possibilities by repeating the above analyses separately on only the ancient languages and only the contemporary languages (which excludes Anatolian). Consistent with the analysis of the full data set, both analyses still supported an Anatolian origin (Table 1). 

The West Asian origin of the Proto-Indo-Europeans makes excellent sense in the light of the genetic evidence. But, as I hint at the above paragraph, the tempo of their expansion into Europe remains to be clarified. I strongly suspect, on the basis of the Iceman and Swedish Neolithic TRB farmer (Gok4) whose DNA has been published that the earliest Neolithic was not Indo-European, because these individuals lack the "West Asian" autosomal component.

But, when did the Indo-Europeans first set foot on Europe? Were they already present at the time of Dimini and Vinča in the Balkans? I tend to think that a reasonable proposition, because the 8.2 kiloyear event may have transposed a second set of Neolithic farmers into Europe, of Halafian origin. Or, did they appear later, during the Copper and Bronze Ages with the spread of metallurgy? Until we get ancient DNA from the Balkans and Anatolia, we won't know for sure. But, Y-haplogroups J2, and R1 so conspicuously absent from Neolithic Europe down to 5ka (and in the case of J2, completely missing from the record altogether) must have entered Europe at some point. Did they take the fast train into Europe post-5ka, or did they lurk in both Anatolia and Europe pre-5ka? Thanks to the BEAN project we might find out.

The idea that ~5ka something happened in Europe is also supported by the paper:

Despite support for an Anatolian Indo- European origin, we think it unlikely that agriculture serves as the sole driver of language expansion on the continent. The five major Indo-European subfamilies—Celtic, Germanic, Italic, Balto-Slavic, and Indo-Iranian—all emerged as distinct lineages between 4000 and 6000 years ago (Fig. 2 and fig. S1), contemporaneous with a number of later cultural expansions evident in the archaeological record, including the Kurgan expansion (5–7). 

So, while the deepest prehistory of Indo-European is firmly rooted in Anatolia during the early Neolithic, this is not inconsistent with something important happening in Europe during c. 5ka. But this was a secondary phenomenon, not the earliest seat of the Indo-Europeans. Also, I would not particularly relate this to the Kurgan expansion, but more probably to the arrival of metallurgical "guilds" with higher social complexity.

Both horses and wheeled vehicles quickly spread far and wide because of their simplicity and utility; if they were first adopted by a particular people, they quickly spread beyond it. Metallurgy, on the other hand, requires specialized knowledge about a variety of technical subjects, as well as a complex network of people with distinct roles: miners, metalworkers, traders, warriors, administrators. As such, the people who invented it would have had a distinct advantage until their trade secrets were leaked, or too many Bronze weapons were in the hands of their enemies. During the Bronze Age, more and more people got access to weaponry, and by the end of it, wars were raging all across Western Eurasia.

We tend to think of the Neolithic farmers, but it is quite likely that people kept coming into Europe since its initial colonization. After all, the people who came to the Americas in 1492 were the vanguard of many others who followed them. The same must have happened in Europe as well: a continuous process of settlement by various groups at different times, at least until the Bronze and Iron Ages when everyone, all over West Eurasia, seem to have become very quarrelsome and more than willing to use their swords, spears, axes, and arrows to dissuade newcomers who ventured into their territory.

Coverage of the new paper elsewhere: NY Times, Nature, Gene Expression, John Hawks.

Science 24 August 2012: Vol. 337 no. 6097 pp. 957-960 DOI: 10.1126/science.1219669

Mapping the Origins and Expansion of the Indo-European Language Family 

Remco Bouckaert et al.

ABSTRACT

There are two competing hypotheses for the origin of the Indo-European language family. The conventional view places the homeland in the Pontic steppes about 6000 years ago. An alternative hypothesis claims that the languages spread from Anatolia with the expansion of farming 8000 to 9500 years ago. We used Bayesian phylogeographic approaches, together with basic vocabulary data from 103 ancient and contemporary Indo-European languages, to explicitly model the expansion of the family and test these hypotheses. We found decisive support for an Anatolian origin over a steppe origin. Both the inferred timing and root location of the Indo-European language trees fit with an agricultural expansion from Anatolia beginning 8000 to 9500 years ago. These results highlight the critical role that phylogeographic inference can play in resolving debates about human prehistory.

Link

Dodecad Project components and East Eurasian-like admixture

See Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

I went back to the Dodecad Project K7b and K12b calculators, and calculated f4 statistics of the form:

f4(Southern_K7b, X, East_Asian_K7b, African_K7b)

I wanted to see how the various components related to East Eurasians.

Here are the results:

Visually for the West Eurasian components:

This shows the relative ordering of the different components on the East Asian-African axis. Notice that of the mainly Caucasoid components the most Asian-shifted is the North European component, the most African shifted is the Southwest Asian one. This makes sense because of the admixture phenomenon I've been describing in this series, and also the proximity of Arabia (which is where the Southwest Asian component is modal) to Africa.

The existence of East Eurasian-like admixture in Europe is further supported by the following observation: both the Atlantic_Baltic and North_European components (who are the most East Asian-shifted) are mainly geographically distributed to the west of the West Asian, Caucasus, and Gedrosia components (who are less East Asian-shifted). This seems discordant with geography. On the other hand, the relative position of the Caucasus, Southern, and Southwest Asian components vis a vis Africa are concordant with geography, as their center of distribution is close to Africa along land migration routes, with Southwest Asia being closer both genetically and geographically, and Caucasus most distant.

Another observation is that the Atlantic_Med component, which is modal in Sardinians and Basques is actually Asian-shifted relative to the Southern component (modal in Arabia).This might indicate the presence of some degree of East Eurasian-like admixture in Sardinia itself. So, while Sardinia may possess the minimum of this element in Europe, it may not do so in the wider Caucasoid world.

Unscrambling the omelette of West Eurasian origins is no easy task. Hopefully, new statistical methods and ancient DNA will help us achieve it.

Stories from the Stone Age

Quite a decent Australian documentary that tells the story of prehistory from the Natufians all the way to the beginnings of the Iron Age. Obviously some things are simplified, but overall this is quite watchable. Part 3 may be interesting for some blog readers as it paints a rather good picture of the Bronze Age social transformation associated with metallurgy.

Stories From the Stone Age 1/3 - Daily Bread
Stories From the Stone Age 2/3 - Urban Dream
Stories From the Stone Age 3/3 - Waves of Change

Archaeometallurgy in the Mediterranean

Continuing a discussion on metallurgical innovation which I began here.

Some interesting excerpts from a book chapter:

Tin bronze first appeared in Mesopotamia and Anatolia during the third millennium B.C., or Early Bronze Age (Pare 2000a:6–7). In the Mediterranean,the transition from arsenical to tin bronze took place during the course of the Middle Bronze Age (late third to early second millennium B.C.in the eastern Mediter-ranean, somewhat later in the west). The implication (Renfrew 1972:313–319) that tin bronze was an independent development in the northeast Aegean is contradicted by lead isotope analyses which show that most copper or bronze objects from sites such as Troy, Poliochni, and Kastri were not produced from local ores (Muhly and Pernicka 1992; Pernicka 1998:140–141). Exactly what caused the transition from arsenical to tin bronze is not well understood: as an alloy, tin bronze is not mechanically superior to arsenical copper (Pernicka 1998:135–136).Unlike arsenic, moreover, tin is not widely available as a mineral, and new trade networks would have been required to enable its distribution. However, it may have been easier to control the quality of tin bronze, and the production of tin bronze would have overcome the problem of working with toxic arsenic fumes (Charles 1978:30;Pare 2000a:7).

Given the limited number of tin deposits in the region, the source(s) of tin usedin the prehistoric eastern Mediterranean has always been a highly controversial issue. The suggestion that Afghanistan served as a prime source of tin for Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean societies is based in part on the existence of its rich tin resources (Muhly and Pernicka 1992:315;Weeks 1999:60–61).Muhly (1999:21) recently argued that Afghanistan or central Asia provided the tin that supplied the bronze industries of Mesopotamia, Anatolia, and the eastern Mediterranean, including Cyprus. Cuneiform documents from the early second millennium B.C., moreover, point to a trade network that brought tin from the east to the early states of Anatolia and Mesopotamia (Maddin et al.1977:41:Weeks 1999),and thence to the Mediterranean. Weisgerber and Cierny (2002,with fuller references) now maintain that prehistoric tin mining (second millennium B.C.), attested at the sites of Karnab (Uzbekhistan) and Musciston (Tajikistan), provided an important source of tin for Anatolia and Mesopotamia, if not for the Mediterranean. In contrast, Yener and Vandiver (1993) have argued that (very limited) tin deposits in the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey were exploited during the Early Bronze Age. Their argument has been challenged by several scholars (e.g.,Muhly 1993;Weisgerberand Chierny 2002:180–181;papers in Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 5[1995]) who maintain that the archaeological evidence is unclear,and far too limited to demonstrate anything beyond local use. Even if tin from the Taurus were mined during the Early Bronze Age, it now seems more likely that central Asia provided at least some of the tin used during the Middle-Late Bronze Ages,when tin bronze was far more widely produced, traded, and consumed in the Mediterranean. 

... 

By the Late Neolithic period (ca.4800–3100 B.C.), most people living in the Mediterranean region produced their own food, lived the year round in sedentary communities and increasingly were involved in intricate social and economic exchanges. By the beginning of the Bronze Age, certain alliances, special-interest groups, or even individual local leaders came to control access to raw materials in demand: obsidian, precious or semi-precious stones, metals such as gold, silver, copper, and tin, and a range of more perishable goods. From about 3000 B.C.onward – corresponding to the Chalcolithic period (Argaric culture) in Spain, the Final Neolithic in Italy, and the Early Bronze Age in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean – the production and trade in metals increasingly became a key factor in promoting social change (Giardino 2000b;Knapp 1990a;Levy et al.2002;Manning 1994;Ruiz Taboada and Montero Ruiz 1999).  

...  

Technological innovations may be seen as progressive by managers and elites, but for the people who mined ores or smelted metals they were also potentially disruptive, forming the backdrop for social change as well as social abuse (Heskel andLamberg-Karlovsky 1980:260–261;Stollner 2003:427–429). Miners and metal-smiths often use ideology as a means to maintain, resist,or change their power base within society. Because elites who control and organize metallurgical produc-tion often use material culture to restructure relations of power (Gamble 1986:39), we may also expect such transformations to be visible in the archaeological record. 

...  

Consequently, there is little room to doubt that innovations in technology had deep-seated and long-lasting social and ecological effects, placing constraints as well as conferring benefits on Bronze Age mining and metallurgical production. In social terms, whereas the intensified production of copper employing an advanced technology did not preclude a strong sense of local community, such factors served to increase social distinctions between those at the top of the control structure and those at the bottom (Hardesty 1988:102,116;Knapp 1986b;2003). 

...  

The trade in metals during the Chalcolithic period was carried out on a very limited scale, and most metals were certainly consumed in the same area where they were produced (cf.Gale 1991). During the Early Bronze Age (third millennium B.C.), technological innovations like the longboat and sail facilitated the bulk transport of raw materials or manufactured goods on a much larger scale than ever before (Broodbank 1989). 

... 

Metals and metallurgy wielded an immense impact on Mediterranean Bronze Age societies, clearly evident in all the fundamental changes seen in the archaeological record from the end of the Chalcolithic period (Copper Age) onward. During the Bronze Age,innovations in maritime transport and the earliest cultivation of olives and vines stimulated the economy of the Mediterranean region and spurred some of its inhabitants to produce metals, take part in maritime trade, manufacture distinctive artifacts, and build domestic and public structures that represented the earliest towns and ceremonial complexes in the Mediterranean. The advent and spread of metallurgy promoted greater social distinctions,as certain individuals or groups acquired new wealth and prestige items. Because tin had to be imported in order to produce bronze, long-distance trade was stimulated. Duringthe second millennium B.C., gold, silver, copper, and tin came to represent what Sherratt (2000:83) has termed “convertible”value, both in an economic sense and in the literal sense that they could be consumed, stored, redistributed, or recycled in diverse forms and for various symbolic or ideological ends.Such documentary evidence as exists, exclusively in the eastern Mediterranean, is frequently preoccupied with these self-same metals (Liverani 1990:205–223,247–266;Moran,inKnapp 1996:21–25).

A remarkable series of social and economic changes thus were linked closely to all the innovative developments in extractive and metallurgical technologies,and tothe increasingly widespread and intensified production and distribution of metalsand metal objects. These changes include but are not limited to: (1) the proliferation of settlements and the emergence of town centers;(2) the development and expansion in interregional trade;(3) the growth of palatial regimes and city-state kingdoms,with their attendant writing systems (notably in the eastern Mediterranean);(4) the development and refinement of craft specialization and the spread of an iconographic koine;(5) the elaboration of mortuary rituals and burials with large quantities of precious metal goods;(6) the widespread occurrence of metal hoards and the related trade in recycled and scrap metal. The circulation of goods, ideas, and ideologies across geographic,cultural,and economic boundaries represents a social transaction,one that entangled producers, distributors, and consumers in wider relations of alliance and dependence, patronage and privilege, prestige and debt (Thomas 1991:123–124). Certain occupational identities came to be focused around metallurgical production and trade, and Cyprus even gave its name to the island’s most prominent product: copper ore (Muhly 1973:174–175).The coming of the Age of Iron, subsequent to all the developments discussed in this study, itself relied on extractive and smelting technologies developed during theBronze Age,together with the use of carburization, all of which are linked directly(albeit over the millennia) to the dramatic social and economic changes that ushered in the Industrial Revolution and the beginnings of the modern era.If it is indeed the case that “metals make the world go round” (Pare 2000b),nowhere can this slogan be better and more widely illustrated than in the prehistoric Bronze Age of the Mediterranean.

Archaeometallurgy in the Mediterranean: The Social Context of Mining, Technology, and Trade

Vasiliki Kassianidou and A.Bernard Knapp

Link

A physico-anthropological study of skeletal material from Neolithic age to Hellenistic times in Central Greece and surrounding region

I have located the text of George Panagiaris important 1993 doctoral thesis on Greek skeletal material. This may be one of the most comprehensive efforts to study the Ancient Greek population from a physical anthropological perspective (413 male and 354 female crania, using 65 biometric characters as well odontological traits).

Panagiaris' conclusions in English can be found in p.10 of the document. He confirms that the greater period of discontinuity in the material is observed during the Helladic period (=Bronze Age in Greek archaeology), where broad-headed incoming groups appear, side by side with the older Mediterranean population. He attributes this to the arrival of such people from the highlands Pindos range, although he sees the possibility of Anatolian influences as well, but has no comparative data. He cites the tendency for broader skulls in higher latitudes, although this general trend in H. sapiens probably does not explain the local trend within Caucasoids where the key difference is between mountaineers (where the Alpine, Dinaric, Armenoid, and Pamir-Ferghana types are well-represented) and lowland folk. Perhaps, if various ancient DNA projects manage to study some Greek material we may be able to ascertain the events that were taking place in Greece at that time.


Of course, the issue cannot be seen in isolation, because at this time we see an increase in brachycephalic types in Crete and Anatolia, the appearance of the intrusive brachycephalic Bell Beaker folk in Western Europe, and perhaps even the presence of the interfluvial type (Pamir-Ferghana type) in the eastern Saka. 

Personally, I see something important in these developments: why would broad-headed mountaineers make their appearance in the lowlands at this time in history? I am strongly leaning towards the idea that this has to do with metallurgical innovation during this time. According to Roberts et al. (2009), from which the figure on the left is taken:

Metallurgy in Eurasia originated in Southwest Asia due to the widespread adoption of, and experimentation in, pyrotechnology and the desire for new materials to serve as aesthetic visual displays of identity, whether of a social, cultural or ideological nature. This can be demonstrated through the early use of metal for jewellery and the use of ore-based pigments along with the continued use of stone, bone, and other materials for most tools. The subsequent appearance of metals throughout Eurasia is due to the acquisition of metal objects by individuals and communities re-inventing traditions of adornment, even in regions hundreds of kilometres from the nearest sources of native metals or ores. The movement of communities possessing metallurgical expertise to new ore sources and into supportive societies led to the gradual transmission of metallurgy across the Eurasian landmass. By the second millennium BC, metallurgy had spread across Eurasia, becoming firmly rooted in virtually all inhabitable areas (Sherratt 2006). The ability to smelt different ores, create different metals or increase metal production did not occur in a linear evolutionary fashion throughout Eurasia, but rather appeared sporadically over a vast area – a result of regional innovations and societal desires and demands. 

There is no evidence to suggest that metallurgy was independently invented in any part of Eurasia beyond Southwest Asia. The process of metallurgical transmission and innovation created a mosaic of (frequently diverse) metallurgical traditions distinguished by form, composition and production techniques. It is within this context that innovations such as the earliest working of gold in the Balkans or the sudden emergence of distinctive tin-bronze working in Southeast Asia should be seen. 

The richest ore deposits were found in mountain areas as Thornton (2009) makes clear:

Models for the development of metallurgy in Southwest Asia have for a long time been focussed on research carried out in the lowland regions of the Levant and Mesopotamia. These models do not take into account the different developmental trajectories witnessed in the resource-rich highlands of Anatolia, the Caucasus, and Iran. In this paper, the beginnings of the use and production of metals in Iran will be juxtaposed with a cursory overview of the lowland model (the ‘Levantine Paradigm’) in order to highlight these differences. By synthesizing data from a number of current research projects exploring the early metallurgy of the Iranian Plateau, this paper demonstrates how at least one of the highland regions of Southwest Asia was at the very forefront of technological innovation from the seventh through the second millennium BC.  

I had planned to write a separate post on the interplay between metallurgy and the rise in social complexity that led to the spread of (at least some branches of-) Indo-European and Semitic during time, but this is probably as good a place as any to summarize the argument:

The practice of metallurgy launched the first globalization: in order to produce high quality metal objects, one needed a variety of specialized workers: prospectors, miners, metalworkers. The necessary ores do not occur everywhere on the map, and production requires a complex logistic operation to manage resources and talent. One needed, in addition, to establish a network of traders and warriors to carry out and supervise the trade, since demand for metal objects was wide and not limited to the vicinity of their production.

Production and trade networks facilitated the flow of ideas, and necessitated the flow of peoples, both because expertise was non-local, and also because the producers wanted to supervise their profitable business. There is an advantage to being an early adopter of new technology; many of the shifts in power in world history depended on a technology differential (European guns in the New World, mounted archers on the Eurasian steppe, triremes in the Mediterranean, Macedonian long-spears vs. Persian light infantry being some examples).

The technology differential eventually dissipates as everyone gets access to the new inventions. This process may take several centuries, but in the meantime those monopolizing them enjoy a triple advantage:

1. There is demand for their product
2. They have the better weapons
3. They are part of broader communities that can muster resources against anyone who crosses them

It is no accident that the Bronze Age started with technological innovation and ended up in a series of military conflicts. What began as a transformation of Neolithic communities by monopolizing guilds of the bearers of the new technologies ended up with everyone having access to them, and of course they went to war.

Getting back to the topic of Panagiaris' dissertation, I might try my hand at translating some interesting portions. These will be posted as updates in the space below.