• Login
    View Item 
    •   Home
    • Science
    • Earth sciences
    • View Item
    •   Home
    • Science
    • Earth sciences
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of The Natural History Museum repositoryCommunitiesTitleAuthorsIssue dateAvailable dateSubjectsTypesJournalPublisherThis CollectionTitleAuthorsIssue dateAvailable dateSubjectsTypesJournalPublisher

    My Account

    Login

    About

    AboutOur scienceDepartments and staffCollectionsLibrary and ArchivesContact usCreative Commons Attribution 2.0 LicenseGetting Started

    Statistics

    Display statistics

    Aveline's Hole: An Unexpected Twist in the Tale

    • CSV
    • RefMan
    • EndNote
    • BibTex
    • RefWorks
    Thumbnail
    Name:
    Schultingetal.2019UBSSAvelines ...
    Size:
    6.095Mb
    Format:
    PDF
    Description:
    Published/publisher’s pdf
    Download
    Average rating
     
       votes
    Cast your vote
    You can rate an item by clicking the amount of stars they wish to award to this item. When enough users have cast their vote on this item, the average rating will also be shown.
    Star rating
     
    Your vote was cast
    Thank you for your feedback
    Authors
    Schulting, R
    Booth, T
    Brace, Selina cc
    Diekmann, Y
    Thomas, M
    Barnes, I cc
    Meiklejohn, C
    Babb, J
    Budd, C
    Charlton, Sophy cc
    van der Plicht, H
    Mullan, G
    Wilson, L
    Show allShow less
    Issue date
    2019-06-20
    Submitted date
    2019-06-21
    Subject Terms
    Spelaeology
    Somerset
    Mendip Hills
    Mesolithic
    Cemetery
    Cave
    Human bones
    DNA
    Palaeogenomics
    
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    Aveline's Hole is the largest known Early Mesolithic cemetery in Britain, previously thought to have no evidence for subsequent burial activity. Thus, it came as some surprise when the results of a recent ancient human DNA study found that, of four individuals from the site yielding genomic data, two showed high levels of ancestry from Early Neolithic Aegean farmers. Radiocarbon dating confirmed that these two individuals were indeed British Early Neolithic in date, while the other two had the expected 'Western Hunter-Gatherer' ancestry genomic signatures, with the two groups separated in time by nearly five millennia. Moreover, the two Neolithic samples were both crania, while the two Mesolithic samples were long bones. Given the absence of Neolithic dates in the previous sizeable dating programme combined with the difficult history of the collection, i.e., the WWII bombing of its Bristol repository, this raised the question of whether the crania might in fact be from another site. As we show in this paper, a very strong case can be made that the crania do in fact originate from Aveline's Hole. Additional radiocarbon dating (14 in total, including the above mentioned four) suggests that about half the cranial elements from the site fall within the Early Neolithic, though there is still no evidence for the deposition of post-cranial remains at this time, nor is there any burial evidence in the long intervening period between the Early Mesolithic and the Early Neolithic. Intriguingly, craniometric analyses of legacy data including three crania lost in the bombing suggest that one, Aveline's Hole 'A', may be Upper Palaeolithic in date. As part of this re-investigation of the human remains from the site, we present new stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses that differ significantly from those originally reported for the Early Mesolithic, with the new results more in keeping with other isotopic data for this period. We also present new stable carbon and nitrogen isotope results on human remains from the nearby Early Mesolithic sites of Badger Hole and Greylake, and report new Early Mesolithic radiocarbon dates and isotopic data from Cannington Park Quarry. Clear isotopic differences between the Early Mesolithic and the Neolithic remains can be seen, but these are argued to relate primarily to shifts in the underlying ecological baselines, rather than to differences in types of foods consumed (with the caveat that terrestrial wild and domesticated foods will be isotopically similar). The genetic data are summarised, giving evidence not only of the ancestry of Mesolithic and Neolithic individuals from Aveline's Hole, but also suggesting something of their physical appearance. The degree of population replacement now indicated by ancient DNA suggests that there was a substantial migration of farmers into Britain at the start of the Neolithic. This new information demonstrates the archaeological importance of Aveline's Hole for both the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods.
    Citation
    Babb,J., Booth,T., Budd,C., Charlton,S., Meiklejohn,C., Mullan,G.J., Schulting,R.J., van der Plicht,H., and Wilson,L.J., 2019. Aveline's Hole: An unexpected twist in the tale. UBSS Proceedings, 28(1) , pp 9-63.
    Publisher
    University of Bristol Spelaeological Society
    Journal
    Proceedings of the University of Bristol Spelaeological Society
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10141/622631
    Additional Links
    https://www.ubss.org.uk/proceedings.php
    Type
    Journal Article
    Item Description
    Papers are available 12 months after publication and can be downloaded free of charge, without registration after this period. The attached file is the published pdf.
    Collections
    Earth sciences

    entitlement

     

    DSpace software (copyright © 2002 - 2023)  DuraSpace
    Quick Guide | Contact Us
    Open Repository is a service operated by 
    Atmire NV
     

    Export search results

    The export button (to the right?) will allow you to export the search results of the entered query to a CSV file. To export the items, click the "Export" button.

    There are two options to select the items you want to export to a CSV. Either you export all results from a search query, or you select a subset of items from the search results.

    To select a subset of the search results, click "Selective Export" in the Export menu.

    After making a selection, click the 'CSV' button. The amount of items that will be exported is indicated in the bubble next to 'CSV'.

    The amount of items you can export is limited, but authenticating will increase this limit.