Author Topic: Divided by DNA: The uneasy relationship between archaeology and ancient genomics  (Read 1003 times)

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Offline Elderberry

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Nature by Ewen Callaway 28 March 2018

Two fields in the midst of a technological revolution are struggling to reconcile their views of the past.

Thirty kilometres north of Stonehenge, through the rolling countryside of southwest England, stands a less-famous window into Neolithic Britain. Established around 3600 bc by early farming communities, the West Kennet long barrow is an earthen mound with five chambers, adorned with giant stone slabs. At first, it served as a tomb for some three dozen men, women and children. But people continued to visit for more than 1,000 years, filling the chambers with relics such as pottery and beads that have been interpreted as tributes to ancestors or gods.

The artefacts offer a view of those visitors and their relationship with the wider world. Changes in pottery styles there sometimes echoed distant trends in continental Europe, such as the appearance of bell-shaped beakers — a connection that signals the arrival of new ideas and people in Britain. But many archaeologists think these material shifts meshed into a generally stable culture that continued to follow its traditions for centuries.

“The ways in which people are doing things are the same. They’re just using different material culture — different pots,” says Neil Carlin at University College Dublin, who studies Ireland and Britain’s transition from the Neolithic into the Copper and Bronze Ages.
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More: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03773-6

@Elderberry, I trimmed this a little bit so that we don't fall afoul of copy write laws.  Thanks for posting it.   
« Last Edit: June 17, 2019, 01:12:56 am by Sanguine »