History Shorts: snippets of local history

News from the wires, our occasional series on recent history and archaeology research... Example of Mesolithic pot used in the study. Credit: Lara González Carreteri (CC-BY-4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) Thousands of years ago, European communities used a variety of plant and animal products to create elaborate meals, according to a study by Lara González Carretero of the University of York and colleagues. A common technique for interpreting the diets of ancient cultures involves analysing fatty residues in ancient pottery. This method is limited because it mostly provides insights only into animal remains. In this study in PLoS One , the authors combined multiple techniques, including microscopic examination and chemical analysis, to identify the remains of plants that were eaten by ancient European hunter-gatherers. Researchers examined organic remains found in 58 pieces of pottery uncovered at 13 archaeological sites across Northern and Eastern Europe dating betwee...

Being Anglo-Saxon was a question of language and culture, not genetics, a new study by archaeologists at the University of Sydney and Simon Fraser University in Vancouver highlights. New findings based on studying skeletal remains clearly indicates the Anglo-Saxons were a melting pot of people from both migrant and local cultural groups and not one homogenous group from Western Europe. Professor Keith Dobney at the University of Sydney said the team's results indicate that "the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of early Medieval Britain were strikingly similar to contemporary Britain - full of people of different ancestries sharing a common language and culture". The Anglo-Saxon (or early medieval) period in England runs from the 5th-11th centuries AD. Early Anglo-Saxon dates from around 410-660 AD - with migration occurring throughout all but the final 100 years (ie 410-560AD). Studying ancient skulls Published in PLOS ONE , the collaborative study by Professor Dobney at University o...

This is the first in what I hope will be a regular series highlighting new history and archaeology research from around the world, the common denominator being that I find them particularly interesting! New research provides definitive evidence that modern humans were on the Atlantic coast of modern-day Portugal at a time when, if present at all, Neanderthal populations would have been extremely sparse. The discovery has important ramifications for our understanding of the process of modern human dispersal and replacement of Neanderthal populations. The results support a very rapid, unimpeded dispersal of modern humans across western Eurasia and support the notion that climate and environmental change played a significant role in the process. According to the findings, modern humans probably arrived in the westernmost part of Europe 41,000 - 38,000 years ago, about 5,000 years earlier than previously known. An international team of researchers revealed the discovery of stone tools used...