This paper presents geochemical data from a blanket peat located close to a Bronze Age copper mine on the northern slopes of the Ystwyth valley, Ceredigion, mid-Wales, UK. The research objective was to explore the possibility that the peat contained a geochemical record of the pollution generateD by mining activity. Four peat monoliths were extracted from the blanket peat to reconstruct the pol...

Ochre is the common archaeological term for prehistoric pigments. It is applied to a range of uses, from ritual burials to cave art to medications. While a substantial number of Palaeolithic paint mining pits have been identified across Europe, the link between ochre use and provenance, and their antiquity, has never yet been identified. Here we characterise the mineralogical signature of core-...

Human settlers transported chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) to most East Polynesian archipelagos between AD 1000 and 1300; however, it has long been assumed that New Zealand was an exception. Despite the fact that chicken bones have been recovered from localities of early archaeological middens in New Zealand, their age and genetic relationships have never been critically assessed. Here, we ...

THE CRADLE of the history of medicine in the Old World is to be found in Ancient Egypt and Nubia. Abundant data is available from medical papyri, mummies, osseous remains, literature and art and extends from prehistoric to Graeco-Roman times. The range of pathological processes afflicting the Ancient Egyptians and Nubians has been extended with the description of more material. However, most ex...

Current ecologicalarchaeology,as often practiced, is too closed a system.The realization that introduced external factors may playa role in cultural changeas potently as localizedmechanismsdemands increasedattention to analytical boundaries and matters of scale.This article questions the utility and effectiveness of localizedadaptive explanations for large-scalehistorical processesand, as an il...

BrMedJf 1989;299:1579-81 It is now nearly 120 years since Wilks' described the condition that Sir James Paget called "osteitis deformans."2 Although Paget considered that he was describing a new disease, the fact that he was able to collect data on 23 cases during his lifetime suggests that it was an established condition. On 13 December 1882 in the Bradshaw lecture "On some rare and new diseas...

The mound known as Cayönü Tepesi (38 degrees 16' N; 39 degrees 43' E) in southeastern Turkey is one of the increasing number of early village sites which, since World War II, have been excavated archeologically in greater southwestern Asia. The evidence recovered in the autumn 1972 campaign of the Joint Istanbul-Chicago Prehistoric Project is briefly described, with particular attention to Cayö...