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Dutch archaeologists from the private archaeological consulting firm RAAP recently uncovered the remains of a 2,000-year-old Roman temple complex in the Netherlands.

Genomic analyses of nomads from Europe and Asia has revealed that the ancestors of most western Iron Age nomads were individuals from the eastern Pontic-Caspian steppe, a region that experienced great population movements during this time. These findings* shed light on the nomadic tribes that had significant impact on the cultural development of Eurasia. The Pontic-Caspian steppe, which connects eastern Europe to western Kazakhstan, was inhabited by nomadic populations during the Bronze and Iron Ages (1800 BCE to 400 CE). While their presence during this time is confirmed from archaeological research, the genomic structure of the Bronze Age peoples (the Srubnaya-Alakulskaya cultures) and of the Iron Age populations (including the Cimmerians, Scythians, and Sarmatians) in the region has not been fully explored. Maja Krzewińska and colleagues analyzed genomic data for 35 Bronze Age and Iron Age individuals from the Pontic-Caspian steppe from four chronologically sequential cultural groups: 13 Srubnaya-Alakulskaya individuals, 3 Cimmerians, 14 Scythians and 5 Sarmatians – all radiocarbon-dated to have lived between 1900 BCE and 400 CE. The researchers’ analyses of these individuals’ genomic data revealed many genetic links between the Cimmerians and Sarmatians, suggesting that they shared a common ancestral gene pool. However, no group can be deemed a direct ancestor of another group, Krzewińska et al. say. Despite no direct link, these individuals possess common genetic signatures maintained over the years from peoples from eastern fringes of the Pontic-Caspian steppe. This, say the authors, suggests western Eurasian steppe nomads that survived into the Iron Age were not direct descendants of the Bronze Age Srubnaya-Alakulskaya peoples, but rather, that they descended from peoples of the eastern Pontic-Caspian steppe region.

The Survey and Excavation of the Lower Town of Mycenae

PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES—Researchers uncover evidence of fire at a 1-million-year-old archaeological site in Israel. Identification of fire at early hominin sites typically relies on visual assessments of physical alterations associated with fire. Filipe Natalio and colleagues combined spectroscopic techniques and machine learning to estimate the heat exposure of flint tools and faunal remains lacking visual indications of heat exposure from Evron Quarry, Israel, a Lower Paleolithic site dated to 1,000,000 to 800,000 years ago. The authors assessed the heat exposure of 26 flint tools using UV Raman spectroscopy and a deep learning model trained on modern flint materials heated to known temperatures. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy revealed the heat exposure of 87 faunal remains and associated sediments. The authors found that the flint tools were heated to a wide range of temperatures with no spatial patterning associated with temperature variability. The authors identified 13 tusk fragments that had been heated to temperatures above 600 °C. However, the sediments associated with the tusk fragments had not experienced temperatures above 400 °C. The authors suggest that hominin fire use is a possible explanation for the observed patterns of heat exposure. According to the authors, the methods could be used to identify nonvisual evidence of fire use at other Lower Paleolithic sites.

Recovering signals of ghost archaic introgression in African populations.