̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - burial

Face of Anglo-Saxon teen VIP revealed with new evidence about her life

ta385 — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 05:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��face of a 16-year-old woman buried near Cambridge in the 7th century with the ‘Trumpington Cross’ has been reconstructed following analysis of her skull. ̽��ֱ��striking image is going on display at MAA, with new scientific evidence showing that she moved to England from Central Europe as a young girl, leading to an intriguing change in her diet.

A rare discovery will shed new light on Mycenaean funerary practices

amb206 — Thu, 14 Sep 2017 09:18:59 +0000

For the first time, archaeologists have uncovered and carefully documented an intact burial in a monumental chamber tomb of the Mycenaean palatial period, around 3,350 years ago. Research into the material uncovered has only just begun but the discovery will expand our knowledge of Mycenaean funerals – from the treatment of the body to the selection of objects placed for burial.

̽��ֱ��tomb is approached by an impressive rock-cut passageway, 20 m long, which leads to a deep façade some 5.40 m in height. A doorway gives access to the burial chamber. Its area of 42 sq m makes this the ninth largest known to date out of 4,000 examples excavated in the last 150 years in Greece. ̽��ֱ��partial collapse of the original chamber roof has helped to preserve the burial layer intact.

“Mycenaean chamber tombs are generally found by archaeologists to have been disturbed or looted. Most contain many burials, making an association between individual people and objects very difficult or impossible,” said Dr Yannis Galanakis of Cambridge’s Faculty of Classics, co-director of the five-year Prosilio project and an expert in Aegean archaeology.

“Finding an intact burial, let alone in a monumental tomb of the palatial period, 1370-1200 BC, makes our discovery all the more special for the knowledge we can now acquire about the tomb-using group and the practices they performed during and after the funeral.”

Once huge quantities of soil and rubble had been carefully excavated, the archaeologists found in the chamber the remains of a man, aged 40 to 50 years. He was accompanied by a selection of fine objects: jewellery made in a range of materials, combs, pins, a pair of horse bits, arrowheads, a bow, a sealstone, a signet ring, and a group of tinned clay vessels of various shapes.

“ ̽��ֱ��size and quality of construction of the tomb correlates well with the discovered objects, all of which speak of a man from the upper echelons of the local society,” said Galanakis.

“Initial examination of the finds suggests a conscious selection by the tomb-using group responsible for the burial’s preparation of the objects interred with the body. ̽��ֱ��impression we get is that the tomb was built during the man’s life. It is indeed astonishing, and a very rare instance, to be able to excavate the remains of the man for whom the tomb must have been constructed.”

Galanakis was struck by the placement of different shapes and types of jewellery with a male burial, which challenges the commonly held assumption that jewellery in Mycenaean Greece should be chiefly associated with female burials. “It also chimes with the discovery of considerable quantities of jewellery by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cincinnati in 2015 in the burial of the ‘griffin warrior’ at Pylos, which is older by a century than that of the man at Prosilio.”

Striking too is the absence of painted pottery, with the exception of two painted stirrup jars, often taken to contain aromatic oils and which may be associated with the final use and closure of the tomb around 1300 BC. Painted pottery is very common in Mycenaean tombs. Its absence from the initial burial is further confirmation of the conscious choices made in the selection of objects placed alongside this man’s burial at Prosilio.

̽��ֱ��Prosilio team believes that this monumental structure, known as tomb 2, is associated with ancient Orchomenos, a major centre which controlled northern Boeotia, a region of Greece. Orchomenos, which is only 3.5 km away, oversaw in the 14th and 13th centuries BC the partial drainage of Lake Kopaïs – once the largest lake in Greece – a project that yielded a sizeable area of land for agriculture.

At its peak (1350-1250 BC), Orchomenos’s power is reflected in its most famous monument, the tholos tomb ‘of Minyas’, first excavated by Heinrich Schliemann in the 19th century and comparable only in size and refinement to the tholos tomb ‘of Atreus’ at Mycenae.

“Despite the tholos ‘of Minyas’ and some earlier important discoveries by Greek and German teams in the area, we still know very little about ancient Orchomenos. We hope that the continuation of our project will help us understand better Orchomenos’s position in the region and learn more about its population and their practices,” said Galanakis.

“ ̽��ֱ��discovery this year enables us to ask questions such as why certain objects were selected for burial while others were not – and what kind of rituals were performed as part of funerary and post-funerary practices. ̽��ֱ��finds will spark new discussions about the role of burials in Mycenaean life during the palatial period.”

̽��ֱ��five-year Prosilio project is in its first year. In subsequent years, the team aims to excavate more tombs and study and publish the archaeological data collected. ̽��ֱ��initiative is a collaboration between the Ephorate of Antiquities of Boeotia and the British School at Athens. Its directors are Dr Alexandra Charami (Director of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Boeotia) and Dr Yannis Galanakis, (Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Classics and Director of the Museum of Classical Archaeology, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge).

̽��ֱ��Prosilio team also includes Kyriaki Kalliga, archaeologist of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Boeotia, Dr Panagiotis Karkanas, geo-archaeologist and Director of the Wiener Laboratory at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Dr Ioanna Moutafi, bio-archaeologist and senior researcher at the Wiener Laboratory, Emily Wright, field supervisor and PhD candidate in Archaeology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, and Professor Ann Brysbaert of the ̽��ֱ�� of Leiden and Principal Investigator of the ERC project SETinSTONE. Some 25 students, specialists and workers helped in this year’s fieldwork.

̽��ֱ��Prosilio project was conducted with permission from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture & Sports and Ioannis Papadopoulos, the owner of the land. ̽��ֱ��project was generously funded by, among other sources, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge (Faculty of Classics, the McDonald Institute, the Cambridge Humanities Research Grant scheme, and Sidney Sussex College), the Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP) and the British School at Athens.

Inset images: entrance to Prosilio tomb 2; horse bits found with the burial (Yannis Galanakis).

̽��ֱ��discovery this summer of an impressive rock-cut tomb on a mountainside in Prosilio, near ancient Orchomenos in central Greece, will shed new light on Mycenaean funerary practices.

Finding an intact burial, let alone in a monumental tomb of the palatial period, 1370-1200 BC, makes our discovery all the more special.

Yannis Galanakis

Excavation of a Myceneaen tomb at Prosilio in central Greece, summer 2017

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Out of Asia: ancient genome lays to rest origins of Americas’ first humans

jfp40 — Wed, 12 Feb 2014 18:05:35 +0000

̽��ֱ��young boy’s genetic blueprint reveals that the Americas’ first human inhabitants came from Asia, not Europe, laying to rest a long-standing mystery.

Conducted by a consortium of scientists led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Copenhagen and including Drs Andrea Manica, Anders Eriksson and Vera Warmuth at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, the study is published in Nature.

̽��ֱ��child belonged to the Clovis people. They produced beautiful, distinctive stone and bone tools, and are named after the New Mexico town of Clovis where caches of the tools were first found in the 1920s and 30s.

̽��ֱ��Clovis culture moved south through the Americas, but where it came from, how it spread and whether modern Native Americans are descendants of the Clovis people has puzzled scientists.

Until now, two conflicting theories existed. One suggests that humans arrived in North America from Siberian parts of Asia through a corridor between the melting ice sheets, and that these people are the ancestors of modern Native Americans.

A second theory – known as the Solutrean – suggests people first travelled to the Americas from Europe via Greenland across the frozen ocean.

According to Dr Manica: “When we look at arrow and spear heads from the parts of Asia where we think Native Americans originated, we find no such technology, nothing that looked anything like a Clovis arrow head.

“On the other hand if we go all the way to Spain and France, we can find some arrow heads that resemble, to a certain extent, what we find in the Clovis culture.”

Solving the mystery depended on finding a well-preserved Clovis skeleton, from which researchers could extract DNA.

They located a skeleton that had been discovered, together with Clovis tools, in 1968 on a Montana farm. It is the only known Clovis burial site, and carbon-14 dating shows the bones are around 12,600 years old, close to the end of the Clovis culture.

“After obtaining permission from the current Native American tribes who live in the area, we were able to take the bones to the lab and extract the DNA. ̽��ֱ��bones turned out to be so well preserved that we were able to reconstruct the entire genome of that individual,” said Dr Manica.

̽��ֱ��child’s DNA revealed that the Clovis people came from Siberia, laying to rest the Solutrean theory.

“When we looked at this genome, it was definitely Asian; there was no sign of any European DNA, so it seems very clear that the people who made those Clovis artefacts were part of the Asian wave that came into the Americas about 15,000 years ago when the ice sheets started melting. Some stopped in North America, and invented the Clovis technology, and others continued all the way down to South America,” he said.

“As well as having a very clear Asian origin, it’s also very closely related to modern Native Americans. So the Clovis mystery is solved: we now know that Clovis were Asians and part of the group of people who colonised the Americas.”

Although the burial site is on private land owned by the Anzick family, the researchers worked closely with nine Native American groups with reservations in the surrounding area. A Crow tribe representative, together with the Anzick family, is working on an intertribal reburial of the bone fragments.

To see more about the research, view our film here

̽��ֱ��genome of a child who died some 12,600 years ago in Montana – the oldest known human remains from North America – has been sequenced for the first time.

As well as having a very clear Asian origin, it’s also very closely related to modern Native Americans. So the Clovis mystery is solved: we now know that Clovis were Asians and part of the group of people who colonised the Americas.

Dr Andrea Manica

Out of Asia: ancient genome lays to rest origins of Americas' first humans

Sarah Anzick

Examples of Clovis tools

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes

̽��ֱ��body snatchers: corpse and effect

lw355 — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 08:40:30 +0000

When you bury family members in a cemetery, you expect them to stay there. Not so 200 years ago, however, when body snatchers prowled the nation’s burial grounds looking for subjects. This lucrative cottage industry was driven by an acute shortage of bodies that were available for dissection by the growing number of medical students.

Now, a new book has amassed, for the first time, archaeological evidence for what happened to the corpses, from dissection and autopsy through to reburial and display. Many of the new findings have never been published before.

̽��ֱ��book reveals how the macabre activities of the body snatchers helped to further the progress of medicine and science by improving understanding of how the human body worked.

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge researcher Dr Piers Mitchell and colleagues from around the UK have assembled evidence from excavated human skeletal remains from the 1600s to the 1800s. ̽��ֱ��remains were buried close to workhouses, prisons, private anatomy schools and medical schools in Newcastle, Worcester, Oxford and sites in London.

̽��ֱ��archaeological evidence provides a vivid image of what it must have been like to cut up a corpse in order to study its constituent parts.

Moreover, it shows how anatomy was a key area of scientific investigation 200 years ago. “Thanks to the discoveries of the early anatomists,” said Mitchell, from Cambridge’s Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, “we have come to move towards our modern knowledge of how organs work and what normal anatomy is all about.”

Some of the remains show evidence of amputations performed as training exercises, probably equipping students with the ability to perform the surgery in living individuals. In one instance, the same cadaver had had multiple amputations, as well as their skull and chest opened.

Skeletons of adolescent males, believed to be the remains of executed criminals, had undergone craniotomies to open up the skull to give access to the brain, middle ear and other structures of anatomical interest. Fine cut marks on some skulls showed where the muscles had been carefully peeled away from the bone.

̽��ֱ��bones of dogs, rabbits, cats, cattle, horses, monkeys and even tortoises were also found. Many of the animal bones had saw cuts in the same position as those found in the human skeletons – highlighting the quest to understand comparative anatomy.

One skeleton had been decapitated through the spine with a saw, and several of the skeletons were incomplete, suggesting that dissected limbs were buried elsewhere.

“ ̽��ֱ��fact that different bodies were dissected by different medical students at different times means that the same parts of the same body weren’t always available to be recombined together,” said Mitchell. “So we may have a coffin of arms or a coffin of legs, or sometimes the upper part of the body would be present and the lower part of the body would be missing, and they would put material in there such as dissected animal bones or even rocks to balance out the coffin.”

Some anatomical specimens were preserved and retained for future reference, and form part of pathology collections that continue to be used for teaching medical students to the present day.

̽��ֱ��book Anatomical Dissection in Enlightenment England and Beyond: autopsy, pathology and display provides unprecedented evidence of dissection and autopsy practices – and the economical use of corpses – as Mitchell explained: “ ̽��ֱ��bodies were physically sawn up and divided, presumably so that different medical students could dissect different parts of the same body before it would have decomposed.”

Perhaps the most infamous providers of corpses to the medical establishment were Burke and Hare, two characters from Edinburgh who took the industry one stage further and murdered their victims to sell their corpses for dissection by the doctors teaching anatomy in the city. Their grisly occupation was exposed on 31 October, Halloween, 1828.

“This sent a signal out to the rest of the country,” said Mitchell. “It created a field change in attitudes as to what people should do with the bodies of the dead. Everyone decided what was more important was that the living got the best treatment from their doctors and that that was given a higher priority over the corpses of the dead.”

̽��ֱ��result was the 1832 Anatomy Act, when it became legal for the corpses of those who died in poorhouses and hospitals who were not claimed by friends or relatives to be used by the private anatomical teaching institutes. “No-one needed to be dug up from the graves anymore and the cemeteries could rest in peace,” added Mitchell.

̽��ֱ��research described here has been published in 'Anatomical Dissection in Enlightenment England and Beyond: autopsy, pathology and display' (2012), edited by Piers Mitchell, Ashgate Publishing Company.

For more information, please contact Louise Walsh (louise.walsh@admin.cam.ac.uk) at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Office of External Affairs and Communications.

Corpses sold for dissection by body snatchers helped improve understanding of how the human body worked, according to a new book that brings together archaeological evidence from their remains.

̽��ֱ��bodies were physically sawn up and divided, presumably so that different medical students could dissect different parts of the same body before it would have decomposed.

Dr Piers Mitchell

̽��ֱ��Body Snatchers: Corpse and Effect

Andrew Chamberlian.

Craniotomy of the skull.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes

From foraging to farming: the 10,000-year revolution

lw355 — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:30:18 +0000

̽��ֱ��moment when the hunter-gatherers laid down their spears and began farming around 11,000 years ago is often interpreted as one of the most rapid and significant transitions in human history – the ‘Neolithic Revolution’.

By producing and storing food, Homo sapiens both mastered the natural world and took the first significant steps towards thousands of years of runaway technological development. ̽��ֱ��advent of specialist craftsmen, an increase in fertility and the construction of permanent architecture are just some of the profound changes that followed.

Of course, the transition to agriculture was far from rapid. ̽��ֱ��period around 14,500 years ago has been regarded as the point at which the first indications appear of cultural change associated with agriculture: the exploitation of wild grains and the construction of stone buildings. Farming is believed to have begun in what is known as the Fertile Crescent in the Levant region, which stretches from northern Egypt through Israel and Jordan to the shores of the Persian Gulf, and then occurred independently in other regions of the world at different times from 11,000 years ago.

Recent evidence, however, has suggested that the first stirrings of the revolution began even earlier, perhaps as far back as 19,000 years ago. Stimulating this reinterpretation of human prehistory are discoveries by the Epipalaeolithic Foragers in Azraq Project (EFAP), a group of archaeologists and bioarchaeologists working in the Jordanian desert comprising ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Dr Jay Stock, Dr Lisa Maher ( ̽��ֱ�� of California, Berkeley) and Dr Tobias Richter ( ̽��ֱ�� of Copenhagen).

Over the past four years, their research has uncovered dramatic evidence of changes in the behaviour of hunter-gatherers that casts new light on agriculture’s origins, as Dr Stock described: “Our work suggests that these hunter-gatherer communities were starting to congregate in large numbers in specific places, build architecture and show more-complex ritual and symbolic burial practices – signs of a greater attachment to a location and a changing pattern of social complexity that imply they were on the trajectory toward agriculture.”

Fertile Crescent

Working at the fringes of the Fertile Crescent, at sites in the Azraq Basin and the marshlands of Jordan, the EFAP team is excavating the archaeological remains of the hunter-gatherers who occupied the region. Such sites have been under studied, said Dr Stock: “Because these early hunter-gatherers have been perceived as building only transient camp sites, they have been largely disregarded in explanations of the development of agriculture. Instead, excavations have focused on the later ‘Natufian’ period, beginning around 14,500 years ago, since this period more clearly shows cultural precursors of the transition to agriculture.”

Today, the Azraq Basin is a 12,000 sq km area of dusty, wind-blown desert, and a very challenging place to work. Temperatures can soar to 45°C, requiring the researchers to start field work at 5 am and finish by midday when the heat and winds become too strong to allow work to continue.

But when the first humans were leaving Africa, the open grasslands and lush marshlands of the Fertile Crescent teemed with gazelle, antelope and plant life. Given this region is situated at the crossroads between Africa and the rest of the world, it is perhaps unsurprising that it should be the site of regional agricultural innovation.

Few previous archaeological excavations have been carried out in this inhospitable terrain, most instead focusing on regions closer to the Mediterranean. With funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the researchers set out four years ago to redress the balance.

Complex burials

Dr Stock’s expertise lies in the analysis of hunter-gatherer bones. Over the past 15 years, he has analysed over 1,400 skeletons from around the world to understand what it is about early humans that made them such successful colonisers of the natural environment.

One of the most startling of the researchers’ findings in Jordan has been the hunter-gatherer graves. Evidence suggests that, far from simple burials, the hunter-gatherers had elaborate mortuary and sociocultural practices. In one grave in ʻAyn Qasiyya, an adult male was placed in marshland in a sitting position, and was likely to have been tightly wrapped in cloth. A previous finding by another archaeologist at Kharaneh IV was a burial of an older man underneath a hut floor, his age suggesting that he would have required the care of others in life.

At another site, ‘Uyun-al-Hammam, a ̽��ֱ�� of Toronto-based project led by Dr Maher has excavated a total of 11 burials, some of which show elaborate mortuary treatments. Indeed, one grave that includes a human buried together with a fox, said Dr Maher: “suggests a close emotional or symbolic tie between humans and foxes prior to the first domesticated animal – the dog – and shows continuity in burial and social practices with the later Neolithic”. Dr Stock’s study of the human remains demonstrates that these people were ancestral to the later farmers.

̽��ֱ��researchers argue that these examples may represent an increasing cultural sophistication and a greater complexity in the relationship between humans and animals – trends that had only previously been identified in later time periods.

Mega camp site

A major focus of the work of the EFAP team over the past four years has been the excavation of the site of Kharaneh IV, in the Azraq Desert of eastern Jordan. ̽��ֱ��site is much more than the sort of temporary camp site normally ascribed to hunter-gatherer groups. Covering almost two hectares, the 19,000-year-old site was occupied for 1,200 years and is, as Dr Stock described, “so huge, it’s the earliest sign of human activity that is large enough to be visible on Google Earth.”

“To produce the debris of stone tools and bones, in some places almost 3 m deep, we believe that many groups of hunter-gatherers would meet and live together for several months of the year before splitting into mobile groups at other times.”

̽��ֱ��team is researching the area in astonishing detail – in a technique known as 100% flotation, every square centimetre excavated is floated to check for plant remains and charcoal. As Dr Richter pointed out: “even very small remains are providing very important clues towards our understanding of the relationship between prehistoric humans and their habitat”.

To date, they have found plant remains, animal bones carved with repeated incised motifs, stones carved with geometric patterns, stone tools in their thousands, hearths, pierced shells and, just recently, oval hut structures. As the work continues, all indications point towards an advanced cultural and technological complexity in the exploitation of bone, shell, plants and architecture. “ ̽��ֱ��size of the site, combined with evidence for huts and other symbolic goods, imply that Kharaneh IV was long-term and repeatedly occupied,” said Dr Stock. “It could be regarded as a precursor to later farming villages.”

̽��ֱ��revolution that wasn’t

̽��ֱ��team’s discoveries extend many aspects of the behavioural complexity associated with the Neolithic to about 10,000 years earlier, pushing back the true roots of the transition to agriculture.

“On evolutionary timescales, the transition to agriculture can undoubtedly be regarded in revolutionary terms,” said Dr Stock. “But, we can now see this as a culturally dynamic process that began much earlier than previously thought.”

“This picture would not have come together through the excavation of one site alone,” he added. “ ̽��ֱ��burial complexity of ʻUyun-al-Hammam and ʻAyn Qasiyya, together with the architecture and size of the settlement at Kharaneh IV, collectively offer glimpses of a protracted period in which humans worked through the cultural and biological changes that needed to happen before village life and the systematic exploitation of grain could emerge.”

Excavation of 19,000-year-old hunter-gatherer remains, including a vast camp site, is fuelling a reinterpretation of the greatest fundamental shift in human civilisation – the origins of agriculture.

Because these early hunter-gatherers have been perceived as building only transient camp sites, they have been largely disregarded in explanations of the development of agriculture.

Dr Jay Stock

EFAP/L.Maher

Kharaneh shells

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes

Was the fox prehistoric man’s best friend?

ns480 — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:53:55 +0000

Researchers analysing remains at a prehistoric burial ground in Jordan have uncovered a grave in which a fox was buried with a human, before part of it was then transferred to an adjacent grave.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge-led team believes that the unprecedented case points to some sort of emotional attachment between human and fox. Their paper, published today, suggests that the fox may have been kept as a pet and was being buried to accompany its master, or mistress, to the afterlife.

If so, it marks the first known burial of its kind and suggests that long before we began to hunt foxes using dogs, our ancestors were keeping them as pets - and doing so earlier than their canine relatives.

̽��ֱ��cemetery, at Uyun-al-Hammam, in northern Jordan, is about 16,500 years old, which makes the grave 4,000 years older than the earliest known human-dog burial and 7,000 years earlier than anything similar here involving a fox.

Writing in the open-access journal, PLoS One, the researchers also suggest that this early example of human-animal burial may be part of a bigger picture of growing cultural sophistication that has typically been associated with the farming societies of the Neolithic era, thousands of years later.

Sadly for fox-lovers, however, the relationship between man and that particular beast was probably short-lived. ̽��ֱ��paper also says it is unlikely that foxes were ever domesticated in full and that, despite their early head start, their recruitment as a friendly household pet fell by the wayside in later millennia as their human masters took to the more companionable dog instead.

" ̽��ֱ��burial site provides intriguing evidence of a relationship between humans and foxes which predates any comparable example of animal domestication," Dr Lisa Maher, from the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said.

"What we appear to have found is a case where a fox was killed and buried with its owner. Later, the grave was reopened for some reason and the human's body was moved. But because the link between the fox and human had been significant, the fox was moved as well, so that the person, or people, would still be accompanied by it in the afterlife."

̽��ֱ��research focused on the contents of two particular graves at Uyun-al-Hammam, which is situated on an ancient river terrace in the small river valley of Wadi Ziqlab. ̽��ֱ��site has been one of major interest for archaeologists since the first graves were opened in 2005 because it provides a rich source of information about the so-called early Epipalaeolithic period, 16,500 years ago.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge-led team spotted a connection between Grave I on the site and Grave VIII, which lies beside it but was only opened more recently. In the first, they identified the remains of two adults, probably a man and a woman.

̽��ֱ��man had been buried earlier than the woman, and alongside him were the skull and humerus of a fox, as well as other grave goods.

It was only when Grave VIII was opened, however, that the researchers found both human remains that may have belonged to the same man, and the skeletal remnants of what was, almost certainly, the same fox. ̽��ֱ��fox skeleton was complete apart from its skull and right humerus - which is exactly what they had already found in the adjacent grave. Further studies indicated that the remains were indeed those of a red fox.

̽��ֱ��movement of the body parts is believed to be highly significant. If the human body is the same in both cases, then none of the other grave goods except the fox were considered worth moving, strongly suggesting that the fox had some sort of special relationship to the human.

Other such cases are very rare. Many of the next earliest involve dogs, including one site in Israel where a woman was buried with her hand resting on a puppy, but even they are about 4,000 years younger than Uyun-al-Hammam.

" ̽��ֱ��very first evidence of dog domestication in the Near East involves a burial of a puppy with a human," Dr. Jay Stock, also from the Leverhulme Centre at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said. "It's easy to imagine that the similarly-sized fox was also viewed by prehistoric people as a potential companion in the same way. Clearly, it had significant social status."

Studies carried out on foxes suggest that they can be brought under human control, but that the process is not easy because they are skittish and timid by nature. Perhaps for that reason, the researchers suggest, dogs ultimately achieved "best friend" status among humans instead.

Early humans may have preferred the fox to the dog as an animal companion, new archaeological findings suggest.

̽��ֱ��burial site provides intriguing evidence of a relationship between humans and foxes which predates any comparable example of animal domestication.

Dr Lisa Maher

fox

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes