English Heritage

About: English Heritage is a archive organization based out in London, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Bronze Age. The organization has 203 authors who have published 443 publications receiving 26356 citations. The organization is also known as: English Heritage Trust.

IntCal13 and Marine13 radiocarbon age calibration curves 0-50,000 years cal BP

Abstract: Additional co-authors: TJ Heaton, AG Hogg, KA Hughen, KF Kaiser, B Kromer, SW Manning, RW Reimer, DA Richards, JR Southon, S Talamo, CSM Turney, J van der Plicht, CE Weyhenmeyer

Earliest date for milk use in the Near East and southeastern Europe linked to cattle herding

Abstract: The use of the 'secondary' products of domesticated animals — the milk, wool and traction power that can be had without having to kill the animals — was an important advance in the development of farming. It's not clear, though, whether these products were exploited soon after animals were first farmed to be eaten, or whether as some experts believe, it took another few thousand years to emerge. Cattle, sheep and goats were farmed by the eighth millennium BC. Until now the first clear evidence for milk use was the late fifth millennium. Now an analysis of organic residues from more than 2,200 pottery vessels excavated from archaeological sites across the Near East and the Balkans, puts the first known use of milking back to the seventh millennium, with milking being of particular significance in what is now north-west Turkey where the environmental conditions were probably particularly favourable to cattle. The domestication of cattle, sheep and goats had already taken place in the Near East by the eighth millennium bc1,2,3. Although there would have been considerable economic and nutritional gains from using these animals for their milk and other products from living animals—that is, traction and wool—the first clear evidence for these appears much later, from the late fifth and fourth millennia bc4,5. Hence, the timing and region in which milking was first practised remain unknown. Organic residues preserved in archaeological pottery6,7 have provided direct evidence for the use of milk in the fourth millennium in Britain7,8,9, and in the sixth millennium in eastern Europe10, based on the δ13C values of the major fatty acids of milk fat6,7. Here we apply this approach to more than 2,200 pottery vessels from sites in the Near East and southeastern Europe dating from the fifth to the seventh millennia bc. We show that milk was in use by the seventh millennium; this is the earliest direct evidence to date. Milking was particularly important in northwestern Anatolia, pointing to regional differences linked with conditions more favourable to cattle compared to other regions, where sheep and goats were relatively common and milk use less important. The latter is supported by correlations between the fat type and animal bone evidence.

Comparative genomic and phylogeographic analysis of Mycobacterium leprae

Abstract: Reductive evolution and massive pseudogene formation have shaped the 3.31-Mb genome of Mycobacterium leprae, an unculturable obligate pathogen that causes leprosy in humans. The complete genome sequence of M. leprae strain Br4923 from Brazil was obtained by conventional methods (6x coverage), and Illumina resequencing technology was used to obtain the sequences of strains Thai53 (38x coverage) and NHDP63 (46x coverage) from Thailand and the United States, respectively. Whole-genome comparisons with the previously sequenced TN strain from India revealed that the four strains share 99.995% sequence identity and differ only in 215 polymorphic sites, mainly SNPs, and by 5 pseudogenes. Sixteen interrelated SNP subtypes were defined by genotyping both extant and extinct strains of M. leprae from around the world. The 16 SNP subtypes showed a strong geographical association that reflects the migration patterns of early humans and trade routes, with the Silk Road linking Europe to China having contributed to the spread of leprosy.

Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values of bone and teeth reflect weaning age at the Medieval Wharram Percy site, Yorkshire, UK.

Abstract: We report on the measurements of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes of both bone and teeth from a single site and population (Medieval Wharram Percy), undertaken to explore variations due to weaning in a past population. There have been a number of recent studies of weaning using delta(15)N values of ribs, and we indicate a number of assumptions that must be met before the results of such studies can be correctly interpreted. We found that rib collagen delta(15)N values decrease to adult levels after age 2 years, indicating that weaning occurred at or before this age. Rib collagen delta(13)C values are also more enriched than adult delta(13)C values before age 2 years, and we argue that this is due to the so-called "carnivore" effect in delta(13)C. We measured teeth and rib delta(15)N values from the same individuals and found that for individuals up to age 11 years, tooth dentine delta(15)N is higher than adult rib delta(15)N values, indicating that the dentine was formed during breast-feeding and that there was almost no turnover of dentine since. We observed some decrease in delta(13)C and delta(15)N rib values, compared to adult rib and teeth values, for the few years after weaning that may relate to a theoretically predicted physiological nitrogen imbalance during this period of rapid growth, but this is more likely due to a childhood diet (up to age 9) which was isotopically different from later diet, possibly consisting of a greater proportion of plant foods.