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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DENPH (Dental anthropology at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition â€“ insights on lifestyle and funerary behaviour from Neolithic Liguria (Italy))

Teaser

Summary

The DEN.P.H. project explored the dental changes and their dietary, evolutionary, and societal correlates at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, mainly by focusing on Neolithic skeletal assemblages from Liguria (8-4,000 BP; north-western coast of Italy), and by drawing comparisons with other Neolithic, Mesolithic and Palaeolithic samples, and pivotal sites such as Ã‡atalhÃ¶yÃ¼k in Turkey.
With the Holocene (8000 BP), human groups shifted their subsistence from hunter-gatherers to settled farmers and herders, with the spread of the Neolithic techno-cultural complexes (about 7,000 years ago). The Neolithic Transition (i.e. the adoption of a production economy based on the domestication of plants and animals), dramatically changed several aspects of the human experience and various studies suggest this shift was accompanied by a worsening in health status and well-being.
The study of Dental Anthropology is fundamental in bioarchaeology: teeth preserve better than bone, and do not undergo remodelling during life. They provide information on developmental disturbances, genetic variability, and are ideal for biochemical analyses. Furthermore, their decay and pathologies provide information on the environmental conditions of a population. The Recipient applied a number of advanced and classical dental anthropology methods on a large sample of adults and juveniles of the Ligurian Neolithic skeletal assemblage, as well as on comparative Neolithic, Mesolithic and Palaeolithic sample, to find answer concerning the changing ways of life and environments related to the â€œNeolithic Revolutionâ€. The DEN.P.H. project investigated also the changing patterns in selective pressures, growth and development, diet and weaning practices, health, and their relationship with funerary behaviour at the beginning of the Holocene.

Work performed

The first step of the DEN.P.H. project was to recover and organize information from the poorly-documented Neolithic skeletal collections from Liguria, excavated at the beginning of the 1800s. The Recipient travelled from Bordeaux to different Museums and institutions in Italy to collected data on dental remains creating a dental database for the Ligurian Neolithic burials and scattered human remains, and for comparative Neolithic, Mesolithic and Palaeolithic samples. For each tooth of each subject the Recipient observed the presence/absence of dento-alveolar pathological conditions, metric and morphological characteristics.
Contextually with the data collection on dental traits, the Recipient collected data on the biological profile, chronological distribution, demographic composition, isotopic parameters and funerary behaviour of the Ligurian skeletal series performed by the BUR.P.P.H. project (Burial practices at the Pleistocene-Holocene transition: the changing role of pathology, violence, and â€œexceptional eventsâ€, financed by IdEx, P.I. Dr. Vitale Stefano Sparacello). With a Dental Anthropological perspective, the DEN.P.H. project gained new insights on lifestyles and adaptative strategies of Neolithic people, both in Liguria (Italy) and comparative samples.

The results of the project have contributed to our understanding of stress during growth and life history adaptations in the Neolithic. Using the biochemical analysis of incremental structures of growth in the dentine, it was possible to determine that weaning patterns were delayed in the Neolithic compared to the Metal Ages in Liguria. This may be due to specific adaptive strategies by mothers to maximize immune protection in a highly infectious environment. The disease that appear to have plagued the Neolithic people in Liguria is tuberculosis, which seems to have the highest prevalence ever recorded in a Neolithic sample, also thanks to the discovery of several skeletal lesions made by the Recipient. Indeed, the timing of weaning inferred by isotopic analysis is consistent with the timing of growth disturbances in two other studies conducted by the Recipient, one based on enamel defects (linear hypoplasia), and one based on skeletal development. Overall, results suggest that the end of milk supplementation coincided with developmental stress, which may signal a sudden investment in immune defence by the child at a cost to growth. Therefore, three studies using different methodologies provide a coherent scenario of early development among Neolithic people, significantly improving our understanding of environmental pressures and adaptive strategies at the beginning of farming.

Final results

The cataloguing, analysis, and chronological characterization of the Ligurian Neolithic skeletal series led to the recognition of at least 150 individuals, with dates mostly concentrated between 4800-4400 BCE. This great number of individuals in a relatively short time span and small region makes the Ligurian Neolithic skeletal series one of the most relevant for bioarchaeological studies in Western Europe. In addition, the re-analysis and dating effort allowed for the discovery of the earliest Neolithic burials and human remains in the north-western Mediterranean.
In addition, the Recipient has collaborated to studies assessing regional patterns of Neolithic lifestyle through the bioarchaeological investigation of the extraordinary record of human remains and their context from Neolithic Ã‡atalhÃ¶yÃ¼k (7100â€“5950 cal BCE). This large archaeological site in Turkey has been considered one of the earliest â€œcitiesâ€ in human history. Study of Ã‡atalhÃ¶yÃ¼k human biology reveals increasing costs to members of the settlement over 12 centuries of human occupation, parallel with demographic increase and population packing, which was fuelled by elevated fertility. People were increasingly exposed to disease, violence, labour demands, and terrestrial mobility in response to community productive and consumption needs, such as caprine herding and agriculture. These changes in life conditions foreshadow developments that would take place worldwide over the millennia, constituting a fundamental comparison for studies in other areas of Neolithic expansion.