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Archaeological investigations in the Iron Gates reach of the Lower Danube Valley between 1964 and 1984 revealed an important concentration of Stone Age sites, which together provide the most detailed record of Mesolithic and Early Neolithic settlement from any area of southeastern Europe. Over 425 human burials were excavated from 15 sites. Of these, less than one-fifth have been directly dated. This article presents 37 new AMS dates on human bone from five sites in the Iron Gates, together with the corresponding δ13C and δ15N values. They include the first dates on human bone from two sites, Icoana and Velesnica. The results are important for the chronology of Stone Age mortuary practices in the Iron Gates and the timing of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have used a paleogenetics approach to investigate the genetic landscape of coat color variation in ancient Eurasian dog and wolf populations. We amplified DNA fragments of two genes controlling coat color, Mc1r (Melanocortin 1 Receptor) and CBD103 (canine-β-defensin), in respectively 15 and 19 ancient canids (dogs and wolf morphotypes) from 14 different archeological sites, throughout Asia and Europe spanning from ca. 12 000 B.P. (end of Upper Palaeolithic) to ca. 4000 B.P. (Bronze Age). We provide evidence of a new variant (R301C) of the Melanocortin 1 receptor (Mc1r) and highlight the presence of the beta-defensin melanistic mutation (CDB103-K locus) on ancient DNA from dog-and wolf-morphotype specimens. We show that the dominant KB allele (CBD103), which causes melanism, and R301C (Mc1r), the variant that may cause light hair color, are present as early as the beginning of the Holocene, over 10 000 years ago. These results underline the genetic diversity of prehistoric dogs. This diversity may have partly stemmed not only from the wolf gene pool captured by domestication but also from mutations very likely linked to the relaxation of natural selection pressure occurring in-line with this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When humans consume foods from different radiocarbon reservoirs offset in age to the atmosphere, inaccuracies in the 14C date of bone collagen can occur. Mesolithic human skeletons from the Iron Gates section of the Lower Danube Valley have yielded reservoir offsets of up to ~500 yr. This has been demonstrated through direct dating of bulk collagen from human bones and the remains of ungulate bone projectile points that were found embedded in them (Cook et al. 2001). We present improvements to a novel HPLC method for the detection and separation of underivatized amino acids using a wateronly mobile phase free of organic or inorganic modifiers, ensuring very low carbon backgrounds. Our hypothesis is that direct 14C dating of single essential and non-essential amino acids might allow an improvement in the dating accuracy for reservoiraffected human bones. The method facilitates separation of less polar amino acids (mostly "essential"), currently not possible in the recently published protocol. We discuss methodological developments, demonstrate carbon backgrounds, and present analytical approaches to minimize their effects. We validate the precision and accuracy of the method by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating relatively modern and 14C-dead, known-age bone standards. Finally, we apply the method to the dating of single amino acids from bone samples with a proven ~500-yr carbon reservoir effect from Mesolithic burials at the Iron Gates sites. We investigate whether differences can be found in AMS dates for essential and non-essential amino acids since, although contemporaneous, these are expected to derive from dietary sources with differing 14C reservoirs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]