The aim of the survey work was to examine the coastline of the Inner Sound for evidence of past human activity. As the focus was primarily on the Mesolithic, upstanding sites that were obviously of a later date, such as cairns, hut circles, shielings and so on were excluded.

Mesolithic

Source

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Human consumption of seaweed and freshwater aquatic plants in ancient Europe

Nature Communications (2023)

Stephen Buckley Karen Hardy Fredrik Hallgren Lucy Kubiak-Martens Žydrūnė Miliauskienė

Abstract During the Mesolithic in Europe, there is widespread evidence for an increase in exploitation of aquatic resources. In contrast, the subsequent Neolithic is characterised by the spread of farming, land ownership, and full sedentism, which lead to the perception of marine resources subsequently representing marginal or famine food or being abandoned altogether even at the furthermost coastal limits of Europe. Here, we examine biomarkers extracted from human dental calculus, using sequential thermal desorption- and pyrolysis-GCMS, to report direct evidence for widespread consumption of seaweed and submerged aquatic and freshwater plants across Europe. Notably, evidence of consumption of these resources extends through the Neolithic transition to farming and into the Early Middle Ages, suggesting that these resources, now rarely eaten in Europe, only became marginal much more recently. Understanding ancient foodstuffs is crucial to reconstructing the past, while a better knowledge of local, forgotten resources is likewise important today.

Mesolithic

Consumption

Marginal land

10.1038/s41467-023-41671-2

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Pleistocene dental calculus: Recovering information on Paleolithic food items, medicines, paleoenvironment and microbes

Evolutionary Anthropology Issues News and Reviews (2018)

Karen Hardy Stephen Buckley Les Copeland

Abstract Dental calculus is now widely used to recover information on items ingested in the past. It is particularly valuable in the earlier Paleolithic, where recovered data may represent the only evidence for plant use. Several recovery methods are used and each one produces different results. Biomolecular markers and genetic material recovered from dental calculus is providing new data on identifiable dietary and medicinal items and human microbial communities. The recovery of microfossils, in particular, starch granules, has triggered a new awareness of the role of plants in the diet throughout the Paleolithic. However, the minute amount of material recovered has little relationship with food eaten during a person's life, while salivary amylase breaks down cooked starch. Therefore, broader dietary interpretations and detection of cooked food are problematic. The study of ancient dental calculus holds great potential to recover information about past lives, within realistic parameters.

Upper Paleolithic

10.1002/evan.21718

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Code for 'Reconstructing settlement histories in the Papua New Guinea Highlands through ceramic analysis and oral traditions'

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (2023)

Karen Hardy

This dataset contains the data and code for the sherd macro-appearance model, LA-ICPMS and p-XRF analysis. The code is for R. The LA-ICPMS samples were separated using LAtools. The pXRF data was first processed with ARTAX. The ARTAX result files are provided. The XRFn.txt derives from further processing of the data in Excel.

New guinea

Settlement (finance)

Code (set theory)

10.5281/zenodo.8339671

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Living Lithics: ethnoarchaeology in Highland Papua New Guinea

Antiquity (2003)

Paul Sillitoe Karen Hardy

This paper represents the joint work of two very different specialists. The fieldwork was undertaken by Sillitoe as part of his ethnographic research in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the interpretative work was done by an archaeologist, Hardy. The work described here represents some of the last direct evidence from users of stone tools. It shows how procurement, manufacture, use, storage and the relative roles of men and women in the process was dependant on what other materials were available – material often sadly elusive in the archaeological record. Discard did not reflect use, but was often guided by the thoughtful wish to avoid cut feet.

New guinea

Ethnoarchaeology

Archaeological record

10.1017/s0003598x00092619

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