Background Checks

Ever feel like there's something missing in a news break? Written by U.S. archaeologist and science writer K. Kris Hirst, these stories support breaking news items by filling in some of the blank spaces, fueled by Kris's irrepressible nosiness, uh, curiosity. The dates reflect the embargo date—that is to say, the date that the article was published.

So: I don't like this name very much. Shall we call it Digging Into? Excavations? Reading Round? Extra Curricular?

May 19, 2021 Was the Opium Poppy Domesticated in Northern Europe?

• Jesus, Ana et al. "A Morphometric Approach to Track Opium Poppy Domestication." Scientific Reports, vol. 11, no. 1, 2021, p. 9778, doi:10.1038/s41598-021-88964-4.

February 22, 2021 Collaborative Rock Art Studies in Australia

• Finch, Damien et al. "Ages for Australia’s Oldest Rock Paintings." Nature Human Behavior, 2021, doi:10.1038/s41562-020-01041-0.

January 21, 2021. Early Bronze Age Money of Neck Rings

• Kuijpers, Maikel H. G. and Cătălin N. Popa. "The Origins of Money: Calculation of Similarity Indexes Demonstrates the Earliest Development of Commodity Money in Prehistoric Central Europe." PLoS ONE, vol. 16, no. 1, 2021, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0240462.

January 6, 2021. Yersinia pestis and the Bubonic Plague

• Kılınç, Gülşah Merve et al. "Human Population Dynamics and Yersinia Pestis in Ancient Northeast Asia." Science Advances, vol. 7, no. 2, 2021, p. eabc4587, doi:10.1126/sciadv.abc4587.

December 20, 2020. Human-Altered Diversity of the Amazon Rainforest

• Iriarte, José et al. "Geometry by Design: Contribution of Lidar to the Understanding of Settlement Patterns of the Mound Villages in Sw Amazonia." Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology, vol. 3, no. 1, 2020, pp. 151-169, doi:doi.org/10.5334/jcaa.45.
• Lombardo, Umberto et al. "Early Holocene Crop Cultivation and Landscape Modification in Amazonia." Nature, vol. 581, no. 7807, 2020, pp. 190-193, doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2162-7.
• Pärssinen, Martti et al. "The Geoglyph Sites of Acre, Brazil: 10 000-Year-Old Land-Use Practices and Climate Change in Amazonia." Antiquity, vol. 94, no. 378, 2020, pp. 1538-1556, Cambridge Core, doi:10.15184/aqy.2020.208.
• Pärssinen, Martti et al. "Domestication in Motion: Macrofossils of Pre-Colonial Brazilian Nuts, Palms and Other Amazonian Planted Tree Species Found in the Upper Purus." Environmental Archaeology, 2020, pp. 1-14, doi:10.1080/14614103.2020.1765295.

November 19, 2020. The Everlasting Unextinguished Legacy of Palimpsests

• Auburn, Luke. "RIT students discover hidden 15th-century text on medieval manuscripts." News Release, Rochester Institute of Technology, November 18, 2020.

October 14, 2020. Desert Flowering in the Byzantine Agricultural Settlements in the Negev

• Butler, Don H. et al. "Byzantine—Early Islamic Resource Management Detected through Microgeoarchaeological Investigations of Trash Mounds (Negev, Israel)." PLoS ONE, vol. 15, no. 10, 2020, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0239227.

September 30, 2020. Greenland Ice Melt Highest in 12000 Years and Why That Matters

• Briner, Jason P. et al. "Rate of Mass Loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet Will Exceed Holocene Values This Century." Nature, 2020, doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2742-6.

September 14, 2020. Domestic Paddy Rice Expansion Was Affected by Climate Change

• "Holocene Coastal Evolution Preceded the Expansion of Paddy Field Rice Farming." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020, doi:10.1073/pnas.1919217117.

September 3, 2020. Redating Lactose Tolerance in Adults

• Burger, Joachim et al. "Low Prevalence of Lactase Persistence in Bronze Age Europe Indicates Ongoing Strong Selection over the Last 3,000 Years." Current Biology, 2020, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2020.08.033.

August 31, 2020. A New Population of New Guinea Singing Dogs

• Surbakti, Suriani et al. "New Guinea Highland Wild Dogs Are the Original New Guinea Singing Dogs." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020, doi:10.1073/pnas.2007242117.

August 27, 2020. Experimental Archaeology in Food Residues

• Miller, Melanie J. et al. "Interpreting Ancient Food Practices: Stable Isotope and Molecular Analyses of Visible and Absorbed Residues from a Year Long Cooking Experiment." Scientific Reports, 2020, doi:10.1038/s41598-020-70109-8.

August 21, 2020. High-Res Images of Egyptian Animal Mummies

• Johnston, Richard et al. "Evidence of Diet, Deification, and Death within Ancient Egyptian Mummified Animals." Science Reports, vol. 10, no. 1, 2020, p. 14113, doi:10.1038/s41598-020-69726-0.

August 18, 2020. The Tetchy History of Derecho Science


August 7, 2020. Arabian Neolithic Pastoralism and Fluted Points

• Crassard, Rémy et al. "Fluted-Point Technology in Neolithic Arabia: An Independent Invention Far from the Americas." PLoS ONE, vol. 15, no. 8, 2020, p. e0236314, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0236314.

• August 4, 2020. Inca Votive Deposit at Titicaca Part of 2,500 Year History
• Delaere, Christophe and José M. Capriles. "The Context and Meaning of an Intact Inca Underwater Offering from Lake Titicaca." Antiquity, 2020, doi:10.15184/aqy.2020.121.

July 24, 2020. Battling Typhus in the Warsaw Ghetto

• Stone, Lewi et al. "Extraordinary Curtailment of Massive Typhus Epidemic in the Warsaw Ghetto." Science Advances, vol. 6, 2020, p. eabc0927, doi:10.1126/sciadv.abc0927.

July 21, 2020: Disability Ramps for Ancient Greeks

• Sneed, Debby. "The Architecture of Access: Ramps at Ancient Greek Healing Sanctuaries." Antiquity, 2020, doi:10.15184/aqy.2020.123.

July 15, 2020: Origins of the Hyksos

• Stantis, Chris et al. "Who Were the Hyksos? Challenging Traditional Narratives Using Strontium Isotope (87sr/86sr) Analysis of Human Remains from Ancient Egypt." PLoS ONE, 2020, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0235414.

July 8, 2020: Precolumbian American and Polynesian Sailors

• Ioannidis, Alexander G. et al. "Native American Gene Flow into Polynesia Predating Easter Island Settlement." Nature, 2020, doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2487-2.

April 21, 2020: Recovering from Catastrophe: Lessons from the Past

• Oinonen, Markku et al. "Buried in Water, Burdened by Nature - Resilience Carried the Iron Age People through Fimbulvinter." PLoS ONE, vol. 15, no. 4, 2020, p. e0231787, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0231787.