Shrouded in history: Unveiling the ways of life of an early Muslim population in Santarém, Portugal (8th- 10th century AD).

In around 716 AD, the city of Santarém, Portugal, was conquered by the Berber and Arab armies that swept the Iberian Peninsula and went on to rule the region until the 12th century. Archaeological excavations in 2007/08 discovered an Islamic necropolis (Avenida 5 de Outubro #2-8) that appears to contain the remains of an early Muslim population in Santarém (8th- 10th century). In this study, skeletal material from 58 adult individuals was analysed for stable carbon (δ13Ccol; δ13Cap), nitrogen (δ15N) and sulphur (δ34S) isotope ratios in bones, and stable oxygen (δ18O), carbon (δ13Cen) and radiogenic strontium (87Sr/86Sr) isotopes in tooth enamel.

Mandibular morphology and the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Westernmost Iberia.

Neolithic farming and animal husbandry were first developed in the Near East ~ 10,000 BCE and expanded westwards, reaching westernmost Iberia no later than 5500 BCE. It resulted in major social, cultural, economic and dietary changes. Yet, the impact of this change on human mandibular morphology in Iberia is yet to be assessed, which is regrettable because mandible form is impacted by population history and diet.

Evidence for the earliest structural use of wood at least 476,000 years ago.

Wood artefacts rarely survive from the Early Stone Age since they require exceptional conditions for preservation; consequently, we have limited information about when and how hominins used this basic raw material. We report here on the earliest evidence for structural use of wood in the archaeological record. Waterlogged deposits at the archaeological site of Kalambo Falls, Zambia, dated by luminescence to at least 476 ± 23 kyr ago (ka), preserved two interlocking logs joined transversely by an intentionally cut notch.

Pliocene hominins from East Turkana were associated with mesic environments in a semiarid basin.

During the middle Pliocene (∼3.8-3.2 Ma), both Australopithecus afarensis and Kenyanthropus platyops are known from the Turkana Basin, but between 3.

Changes in dental wear magnitude in the last ∼8000 years in southwestern Iberia.

Objective: This study examines changes in dental wear magnitude in the past ∼8000 years, i.e., since Mesolithic until the 19th century, in southwestern Iberia.

Ancient DNA and deep population structure in sub-Saharan African foragers.

Multiple lines of genetic and archaeological evidence suggest that there were major demographic changes in the terminal Late Pleistocene epoch and early Holocene epoch of sub-Saharan Africa. Inferences about this period are challenging to make because demographic shifts in the past 5,000 years have obscured the structures of more ancient populations. Here we present genome-wide ancient DNA data for six individuals from eastern and south-central Africa spanning the past approximately 18,000 years (doubling the time depth of sub-Saharan African ancient DNA), increase the data quality for 15 previously published ancient individuals and analyse these alongside data from 13 other published ancient individuals.

Direct evidence for increased disease resistance in polyandrous broods exists only in eusocial Hymenoptera.

Background: The 'genetic diversity' hypothesis posits that polyandry evolved as a mechanism to increase genetic diversity within broods. One extension of this hypothesis is the 'genetic diversity for disease resistance' hypothesis (GDDRH). Originally designed for eusocial Hymenoptera, GDDRH states that polyandry will evolve as an effect of lower parasite prevalence in genetically variable broods.

Beyond faith: Biomolecular evidence for changing urban economies in multi-faith medieval Portugal.

Objectives: During the Middle Ages, Portugal witnessed unprecedented socioeconomic and religious changes under transitioning religious political rule. The implications of changing ruling powers for urban food systems and individual diets in medieval Portugal is poorly understood. This study aimed to elucidate the dietary impact of the Islamic and Christian conquests.

Ecosystem engineering in the Quaternary of the West Coast of South Africa.

Despite advances in our understanding of the geographic and temporal scope of the Paleolithic record, we know remarkably little about the evolutionary and ecological consequences of changes in human behavior. Recent inquiries suggest that human evolution reflects a long history of interconnections between the behavior of humans and their surrounding ecosystems (e.g.

The environments of Australopithecus anamensis at Allia Bay, Kenya: A multiproxy analysis of early Pliocene Bovidae.

Australopithecus anamensis, among the earliest fully bipedal hominin species, lived in eastern Africa around 4 Ma. Much of what is currently known about the paleoecology of A. anamensis comes from the type locality, Kanapoi, Kenya.

Late Glacial and Early Holocene human demographic responses to climatic and environmental change in Atlantic Iberia.

Successive generations of hunter-gatherers of the Late Glacial and Early Holocene in Iberia had to contend with rapidly changing environments and climatic conditions. This constrained their economic resources and capacity for demographic growth. The Atlantic façade of Iberia was occupied throughout these times and witnessed very significant environmental transformations.

The early Aurignacian dispersal of modern humans into westernmost Eurasia.

Documenting the first appearance of modern humans in a given region is key to understanding the dispersal process and the replacement or assimilation of indigenous human populations such as the Neanderthals. The Iberian Peninsula was the last refuge of Neanderthal populations as modern humans advanced across Eurasia. Here we present evidence of an early Aurignacian occupation at Lapa do Picareiro in central Portugal.

Impact of 3D surface scanning protocols on the Os coxae digital data: Implications for sex and age-at-death assessment.

The 3D imaging technologies have become of paramount importance for example in disciplines such as forensic anthropology and bioarchaeology, where they are being used more and more frequently. There are several new possibilities that they offer; for instance, the easier and faster sharing of data among institutions, the possibility of permanent documentation, or new opportunities of data analysis. An important requirement, however, is whether the data obtained from different scanning devices are comparable and whether the possible varying outputs could affect further analyses, such as the estimation of the biological profile.

Chimpanzee face recognition from videos in the wild using deep learning.

Video recording is now ubiquitous in the study of animal behavior, but its analysis on a large scale is prohibited by the time and resources needed to manually process large volumes of data. We present a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) approach that provides a fully automated pipeline for face detection, tracking, and recognition of wild chimpanzees from long-term video records. In a 14-year dataset yielding 10 million face images from 23 individuals over 50 hours of footage, we obtained an overall accuracy of 92.