Search

The Camino de Santiago emerged in the first half of the 9th century CE following the reported discovery of the remains of the Apostle St James by the bishop of Iria-Flavia, Teodomiro. Since then, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims have walked from different parts of the Iberian Peninsula, Europe, and further afield to Santiago de Compostela's Cathedral. This route was particularly important to the populations of Navarre and Aragon, two kingdoms in northern Spain that rose to prominence with the resurgence of Christianity from the 11th century onwards. Here, we present multidisciplinary analysis of medieval individuals buried in Navarre and Aragon at a time when the Camino de Santiago was reaching its peak of popularity (11th-15th centuries CE). We use stable isotope analysis (δ15N, δ13C, δ18O, and δ13Cap) and radiocarbon dating to investigate a total of 82 human individuals together with 42 fauna samples from 8 different archaeological sites located in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. Twenty of these individuals were buried with a scallop shell, a symbol of a pilgrim who had completed the Camino de Santiago. Our data corroborate the use of the pilgrim's shell since at least the 11th century CE. Moreover, our results suggest that the pilgrimage was mainly an urban phenomenon for populations from the northern Iberian Peninsula, conducted equally by women and men, although with indications that female pilgrims may have had greater access to animal protein than their male counterparts. Our results represent the largest isotopic dataset of medieval individuals linked to the Camino de Santiago, allowing us to further investigate the origins and diets of potential pilgrims and, more generally, other sampled portions of northeastern Iberian society. 1. Introduction 2. Background 2.1. Historical insights into medieval Iberian diets and pilgrims 2.2. Stable isotope analysis and dietary reconstruction 2.3. δ18Oap analysis in tooth enamel 3. Materials and methods 3.1. Materials 3.2. The archaeological sites 3.2.1. Plaza de San José and Plaza del Castillo, Pamplona 3.2.2. Irulegui Castle 3.2.3. Santa María de Arlas, Peralta (14th century CE) 3.2.4. Santa María la Real de Sangüesa (11th-12th centuries CE) 3.2.5. Santa María de Ujué (12th-15th centuries CE) 3.2.6. San Saturnino de Artajona (14th-15th centuries CE) 3.2.7. Jaca, Zaragoza (13th-15th centuries CE) 3.3. Radiocarbon dating 3.4. Stable isotope analysis of bone and dentine collagen, and tooth enamel 3.4.1. δ18Oap and δ13Cap, analysis in tooth enamel 3.4.2. δ13C and δ15N analysis of bone and dentine collagen 3.5. Statistical analysis 4. Results 5. Discussion 5.1. Radiocarbon dating 5.2. Geographical mobility 5.3. Diet and social status 5.4. Medieval pilgrims 5.5. Comparison with data from northern Iberia 6. Conclusions more...

Growing reliance on animal and plant domestication in the Near East and beyond during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) (the ninth to eighth millennium BC) has often been associated with a “revolutionary” social transformation from mobility toward more sedentary lifestyles. We are able to yield nuanced insights into the process of the Neolithization in the Near East based on a bioarchaeological approach integrating isotopic and archaeogenetic analyses on the bone remains recovered from Nevalı Çori, a site occupied from the early PPNB in Turkey where some of the earliest evidence of animal and plant domestication emerged, and from Ba'ja, a typical late PPNB site in Jordan. In addition, we present the archaeological sequence of Nevalı Çori together with newly generated radiocarbon dates. Our results are based on strontium ( 87 Sr/ 86 Sr), carbon, and oxygen (δ 18 O and δ 13 C carb ) isotopic analyses conducted on 28 human and 29 animal individuals from the site of Nevalı Çori. 87 Sr/ 86 Sr results indicate mobility and connection with the contemporaneous surrounding sites during the earlier PPNB prior to an apparent decline in this mobility at a time of growing reliance on domesticates. Genome-wide data from six human individuals from Nevalı Çori and Ba'ja demonstrate a diverse gene pool at Nevalı Çori that supports connectedness within the Fertile Crescent during the earlier phases of Neolithization and evidence of consanguineous union in the PPNB Ba'ja and the Iron Age Nevalı Çori. more...

Santiago de Compostela is, together with Rome and Jerusalem, one of the three main pilgrimage and religious centres for Catholicism. The belief that the remains of St James the Great, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ, is buried there has stimulated, since their reported discovery in the 9th century AD, a significant flow of people from across the European continent and beyond. Little is known about the practical experiences of people living within the city during its rise to prominence, however. Here, for the first time, we combine multi-isotope analysis (delta C-13, delta N-15, delta O-18(ap), delta C-13(ap) and Sr-87/Sr-86) and radiocarbon dating (C-14) of human remains discovered at the crypt of the Cathedral of Santiago to directly study changes in diet and mobility during the first three centuries of Santiago's emergence as an urban centre (9th-12th centuries AD). Together with assessment of the existing archaeological data, our radiocarbon chronology broadly confirms historical tradition regarding the first occupation of the site. Isotopic analyses reveal that the foundation of the religious site attracted migrants from the wider region of the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula, and possibly from further afield. Stable isotope analysis of collagen, together with information on tomb typology and location, indicates that the inhabitants of the city experienced increasing socioeconomic diversity as it became wealthier as the hub of a wide network of pilgrimage. Our research represents the potential of multidisciplinary analyses to reveal insights into the origins and impacts of the emergence of early pilgrimage centres on the diets and status of communities within Christian mediaeval Europe and beyond. This project has been supported by a grant from the ‘la Caixa’ Banking Foundation (ID 100010434; Code: LCF/BQ/ES16/11570006). Patxi Pérez-Ramallo and Patrick Roberts would also like to thank the Max Planck Society for funding for this project. Patxi Pérez-Ramallo, Hannah Koon and Julia Beaumont would like to thank the University of Bradford for funding a support the first osteological and stable isotope analysis conducted in 2015. Two of the isotopic analyses and 14C dates have been carried out with funding from the Xunta de Galicia to the CulXeo Group (ED431B 2018/47) and to the research network ‘Cultural Heritage, archaeological and technical services’ (R2016/023). Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. more...

Although once considered a ‘counterfeit paradise’, the Amazon Basin is now a region of increasing interest in discussions of pre-colonial tropical land-use and social complexity. Archaeobotany, archaeozoology, remote sensing and palaeoecology have revealed that, by the Late Holocene, populations in different parts of the Amazon Basin were using various domesticated plants, modifying soils, building earthworks, and even forming ‘Garden Cities’ along the Amazon River and its tributaries. However, there remains a relatively limited understanding as to how diets, environmental management, and social structures varied across this vast area. Here, we apply stable isotope analysis to human remains (n = 4 for collagen, n = 17 for tooth enamel), and associated fauna (n = 61 for collagen, n = 28 for tooth enamel), to directly determine the diets of populations living in the Volta Grande do Rio Xingu, an important region of pre-Columbian cultural interactions, between 390 cal. years BC and 1,675 cal. years AD. Our results highlight an ongoing dietary focus on C3 plants and wild terrestrial fauna and aquatic resources across sites and time periods, with varying integration of C4 plants (i.e. maize). We argue that, when compared to other datasets now available from elsewhere in the Amazon Basin, our study highlights the development of regional adaptations to local watercourses and forest types. Introduction Background - Environmental and cultural contexts of the Xingu River - Isotope analysis in the tropics Materials and methods - Archaeological sites - Samples - Stable isotope analysis - Statistical analysis Results - Radiocarbon dating - δ13Cco and δ15N from collagen - δ13Cca and δ18O from enamel bioapatite Discussion - Amazonian baselines - Diets on the Xingu River between 390 cal. BC and 1,675 cal. years AD - Comparison with other Amazon datasets Conclusions more...

Oceania is a key region for studying human dispersals, adaptations and interactions with other hominin populations. Although archaeological evidence now reveals occupation of the region by approximately 65–45 000 years ago, its human fossil record, which has the best potential to provide direct insights into ecological adaptations and population relationships, has remained much more elusive. Here, we apply radiocarbon dating and stable isotope approaches to the earliest human remains so far excavated on the islands of Near and Remote Oceania to explore the chronology and diets of the first preserved human individuals to step across these Pacific frontiers. We demonstrate that the oldest human (or indeed hominin) fossil outside of the mainland New Guinea-Aru area dates to approximately 11 800 years ago. Furthermore, although these early sea-faring populations have been associated with a specialized coastal adaptation, we show that Late Pleistocene–Holocene humans living on islands in the Bismarck Archipelago and in Vanuatu display a persistent reliance on interior tropical forest resources. We argue that local tropical habitats, rather than purely coasts or, later, arriving domesticates, should be emphasized in discussions of human diets and cultural practices from the onset of our species' arrival in this part of the world. 1. Introduction 2. Background (a) Human colonization of near and remote Oceania (b) Stable isotope analysis and past human adaptations in the tropics 3. Methods (a) Radiocarbon dating (b) Stable isotope analysis (c) Phytolith analysis of dental calculus 4. Results (a) Radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modelling (b) Stable isotope analysis (c) Phytolith analysis of dental calculus 5. Discussion and conclusion more...

South Asia hosts the world’s youngest Acheulean sites, with dated records typically restricted to sub-humid landscapes. The Thar Desert marks a major adaptive boundary between monsoonal Asia to the east and the Saharo-Arabian desert belt to the west, making it a key threshold to examine patterns of hominin ecological adaptation and its impacts on patterns of behaviour, demography and dispersal. Here, we investigate Palaeolithic occupations at the western margin of the South Asian monsoon at Singi Talav, undertaking new chronometric, sedimentological and palaeoecological studies of Acheulean and Middle Palaeolithic occupation horizons. We constrain occupations of the site between 248 and 65 thousand years ago. This presents the first direct palaeoecological evidence for landscapes occupied by South Asian Acheulean-producing populations, most notably in the main occupation horizon dating to 177 thousand years ago. Our results illustrate the potential role of the Thar Desert as an ecological, and demographic, frontier to Palaeolithic populations. Results - Sediment sequence. - Luminescence dating. - Palaeoenvironmental studies. - Lithic artefacts. Discussion Methods more...