Patron-client relationships have been well known in the field of social anthropology and political sociology since middle 20thcentury. What can model patronage or clientelistic bondstell us about articulationand dynamicsof ancient Palestine’s societies organizations? This paper, originating a lectureat University Rome “La Sapienza”,demonstratesthe heuristic interpretative utility this asymmetri...

The Late Iron Age has traditionally been portrayed as an age of swords, Celtic-patterned shields, and bronze cauldrons, a time warfare, banquets, raids, mostly starring male warriors. But what do we know about the rest population, especially women? Is it possible, based on same data, to uncover alternative narrative that includes This article focuses northern Meseta Iberia, area with long resea...

Multiple geographical regions have been proposed for the domestication of Equus caballus. It has been suggested, based on zooarchaeological and genetic analyses that wild horses from the Iberian Peninsula were involved in the process, and the overrepresentation of mitochondrial D1 cluster in modern Iberian horses supports this suggestion. To test this hypothesis, we analysed mitochondrial DNA f...

A volcanic catastrophe even more devastating than the famous anno Domini 79 Pompeii eruption occurred during the Old Bronze Age at Vesuvius. The 3780-yr-B.P. Avellino plinian eruption produced an early violent pumice fallout and a late pyroclastic surge sequence that covered the volcano surroundings as far as 25 km away, burying land and villages. Here we present the reconstruction of this preh...

The widely accepted models describing the emergence of domesticated grain crops from their wild type ancestors are mostly based upon selection (conscious or unconscious) of major features related either to seed dispersal (nonbrittle ear, indehiscent pod) or free germination (nondormant seeds, soft seed coat). Based on the breeding systems (self-pollination) and dominance relations between the a...

Although sheep (Ovis aries) have been one of the most exploited domestic animals in Estonia since the Late Bronze Age, relatively little is known about their genetic history. Here, we explore temporal changes in Estonian sheep populations and their mitochondrial genetic diversity over the last 3000 years. We target a 558 base pair fragment of the mitochondrial hypervariable region in 115 ancien...

Mysterious abandonment of palaces on Crete during the Late Minoan period was always a challenging problem for archeologists and geologists. Various hypotheses explained this event by effects of tsunamis, earthquakes or climatic changes that were caused by the volcanic eruption of the Santorini volcano. While each of them or their possible combination contributed to the abandonment of palaces an...

The use of classes of materials has been used to classify stages of civilizations, ranging from the Stone Age more than 300,000 years ago, to the Bronze Age, and possibly the Silicon Age in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. However, a systematic analysis of materials in the context of linking chemical and physical concepts as well as the understanding and manipulation of nanostructures fo...