Melinda Zeder

In this paper we present the results of a study of post-cranial fusion in pigs (Sus scrofa) and propose a new system for the construction of harvest profiles of pigs based on epiphyseal fusion. The study examined post-crania of 40 Asian wild boar in museum and personal collections. It finds a regular pattern in the sequence of fusion of elements in this sample that also agrees with the fusion sequences of 56 European wild boar published in earlier studies. The fusion sequence of post-cranial elements is grouped into eleven different age classes (A-K). Comparison of the dentition based age classes assigned to 38 of the wild boar studied here in and earlier study (Lemoine et al. 2014) shows a close correspondence between dental and fusion based age classes. Although the age at death of these specimens is not known, it is possible to assign age estimates for the fusion based age classes defined here based on the relatively secure age estimates for the dentition based age classes. A comparison of the fusion based harvest profile for a large assemblage of pig remains from the Epipaleolithic site of Hallan Çemi (southeastern Anatolia) constructed using the system proposed here with dentition based profiles using the three systems proposed in Lemoine et al. shows a very close correspondence, especially in the younger age classes. We conclude with a consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of fusion based and dentition based harvest profiles finding that when taphonomic conditions permit fusion based harvest profiles are a valuable tool for understanding ancient exploitation strategies, especially when used in tandem with dentition based profiles.

We are pleased Ellis et al. (1) found value in our recent synthesis of the deep history of human impacts on global ecosystems (2) and agree that our paper should influence the current debate on if and how an Anthro-pocene epoch is defined. We also agree that the ecological consequences of human niche construction have profound and growing effects on the evolutionary trajectories of humans and other species living within human-altered ecosystems. Niche construction theory (NCT) provides an explicit framework for linking evolutionary and ecological processes into a coherent theory of biological evolution (3). Of special appeal to us as archaeologists is that NCT bridges biological and cultural evolution by including human culture and social learning within the mechanisms of evolutionary change, allowing scientists to address issues at the interface of human and natural systems (4). Some of us have contributed significantly to human NCT (5–8), addressing some of the very issues raised by Ellis et al. (1). Finally, we agree that human transformations of ecosystems are inherently social processes—clearly humans are intensely social organisms—and that such processes result from long-term melding of biological and cultural evolution. As our title indicates, however, our aim was to examine the ecological consequences of human niche construction as Homo sapiens spread around the world (9)—not the complex evolutionary processes by which such behaviors developed. We synthesized a global literature on the pervasive effects of ancient human niche construction with three primary goals: to (i) show that humans have significantly altered environments since the origins of our species, (ii) trace the growing scope and the scale of such activities across millennia of human cultural evolution, and (iii) use the increasingly fine-grained record of these activities afforded by new methods and data sets to demonstrate that archaeology has much to offer current ecological and policy debates about human impacts on Earth's ecosystems. In our view, such large-scale and high-resolution archaeological datasets are powerful and are ignored at our peril. They offer crucial context to controversy surrounding the role of humans in altering environments and climate today, confirming the human capacity for broad-scale ecological transformation even at past population sizes significantly lower than today. Ultimately, our aim was to broaden recognition and understanding of new ecology-related findings in archaeology. Our hope is that this will stimulate innovative cross-disciplinary research and broader engagement with archaeological data, which, in the context of US educational funding policies, is often seen as marginal and of limited value (10). NCT is one of many approaches, theoretical and methodological, that can broaden understanding of the early roots of the Anthropocene, and the relevance of the past to the present.

The exhibition of increasingly intensive and complex niche construction behaviors through time is a key feature of human evolution, culminating in the advanced capacity for ecosystem engineering exhibited by Homo sapiens. A crucial outcome of such behaviors has been the dramatic reshaping of the global bio-sphere, a transformation whose early origins are increasingly apparent from cumulative archaeological and paleoecological datasets. Such data suggest that, by the Late Pleistocene, humans had begun to engage in activities that have led to alterations in the distributions of a vast array of species across most, if not all, taxonomic groups. Changes to biodiversity have included extinctions, extirpations, and shifts in species composition, diversity, and community structure. We outline key examples of these changes, highlighting findings from the study of new datasets, like ancient DNA (aDNA), stable isotopes, and microfossils, as well as the application of new statistical and computational methods to datasets that have accumulated significantly in recent decades. We focus on four major phases that witnessed broad anthropogenic alterations to biodiversity—the Late Pleistocene global human expansion, the Neolithic spread of agriculture , the era of island colonization, and the emergence of early urbanized societies and commercial networks. Archaeological evidence documents millennia of anthropogenic transformations that have created novel ecosystems around the world. This record has implications for ecological and evolutionary research, conservation strategies, and the maintenance of ecosystem services, pointing to a significant need for broader cross-disciplinary engagement between archaeology and the biological and environmental sciences.

Domestication, a process of increasing mutual dependence between human societies and the plant and animal populations they target, has long been an area of interest in genetics and archaeology. Geneticists seek out markers of domestication in the genomes of domesticated species, both past and present day. Archaeologists examine the archaeological record for complementary markers – evidence of the human behavior patterns that cause the genetic changes associated with domestication, and the morphological changes in target species that result from them. In this article, we summarize the recent advances in genetics and archaeology in documenting plant and animal domestication, and highlight several promising areas where the complementary perspectives of both disciplines provide reciprocal illumination.

In this paper we present the results of a study of post-cranial fusion in pigs (Sus scrofa) and propose a new system for the construction of harvest profiles of pigs based on epiphyseal fusion. The study examined post-crania of 40 Asian wild boar in museum and personal collections. It finds a regular pattern in the sequence of fusion of elements in this sample that also agrees with the fusion sequences of 56 European wild boar published in earlier studies. The fusion sequence of post-cranial elements is grouped into eleven different age classes (A-K). Comparison of the dentition based age classes assigned to 38 of the wild boar studied here in and earlier study (Lemoine et al. 2014) shows a close correspondence between dental and fusion based age classes. Although the age at death of these specimens is not known, it is possible to assign age estimates for the fusion based age classes defined here based on the relatively secure age estimates for the dentition based age classes. A comparison of the fusion based harvest profile for a large assemblage of pig remains from the Epipaleolithic site of Hallan Çemi (southeastern Anatolia) constructed using the system proposed here with dentition based profiles using the three systems proposed in Lemoine et al. shows a very close correspondence, especially in the younger age classes. We conclude with a consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of fusion based and dentition based harvest profiles finding that when taphonomic conditions permit fusion based harvest profiles are a valuable tool for understanding ancient exploitation strategies, especially when used in tandem with dentition based profiles.