Some people from an ancient community in what is now northern Italy were interred with animals and animal parts from species such as dogs, horses and pigs. The reasons remain mysterious, but might indicate an enduring companion relationship between these humans and animals, or religious sacrificial practices, according to a study published in PLOS ONE by Zita Laffranchi from the University of Bern, Stefania Zingale from the Institute for Mummy Studies, Eurac Research Bozen, Umberto Tecchiati from the University of Milan, and colleagues.

Of the 161 people buried at Seminario Vescovile, an archaeological site in Verona from the third to first century BCE, 16 were buried with some kind of animal remains. Some of the graves contained the remains of animals often eaten by people—including many pigs, a chicken and part of a cow—which may have represented food offerings to the dead. But four of the people buried on the site were buried alongside the remains of dogs and/or horses, which are not commonly eaten.

The bones of a Neolithic man found over a century ago in a Danish peat bog reveal that he was an immigrant who was brutally murdered. To solve the 5,000-year-old cold case, researchers studied everything from dental plaque to DNA. They concluded that this "Vittrup Man," as researchers call him, may have been an itinerant flint trader who was sacrificed by hostile locals.

In 1915, peat diggers discovered a handful of human and bovine bones at the bottom of their trench near the village of Vittrup in northern Denmark. After finding a ceramic pot and a wooden club, the diggers contacted the local history museum about the artifacts. While these two objects, dated to around 3800 to 3500 B.C., were soon taken to the National Museum of Denmark and displayed, the bones remained largely unstudied for a century.

Two recent studies of genomes of people who died in the Mesolithic to Neolithic periods of European prehistory, however, revealed that Vittrup Man lived between 3300 and 3100 B.C. and had a genetic profile distinct from those of his local contemporaries. The results of a full analysis of Vittrup Man, published Wednesday (Feb. 14) in the journal PLOS One, reveal a life history that included migration, dietary changes and an early death in a land far from his original home.

A gallery's worth of rock art decorating the inside of a cave in Argentina is several millennia older than once thought and contains hundreds of drawings that span 100 generations.

At one time, archaeologists dated the art — located in Patagonia, a region in South America's southern tip — as being only several thousand years old. But a new analysis has revealed that some of the works actually date to as early as 8,200 years ago and were created during the late Holocene epoch (11,700 years ago to present), according to a study published Wednesday (Feb. 14) in the journal Science Advances.

"It turned out to be several millennia older than we expected," study lead author Guadalupe Romero Villanueva, an archaeologist with the Argentine National Research Council (CONICET) and the National Institute of Anthropology and Latin American Thought (INAPL), told Live Science. "We got surprised."

An underwater stone wall discovered in the Baltic Sea near Germany was built about 11,000 years ago for hunting reindeer when the location was dry land, a new study indicates.

The researchers suggest the local prehistoric people built the wall; its remaining parts were crafted from 1,670 stones and stretch about two-thirds of a mile (975 meters) long, stand 3 feet (1 m) tall and are 6.5 feet (2 m) wide. The team discovered the wall via sonar and dives to the location, which is at a depth of about 70 feet (21 m) and roughly 6 miles (10 kilometers) east of Rerik, Germany, in the Bay of Mecklenburg.

The wall may be the largest of its kind from the early Holocene (11,700 years ago to present) in Europe, the researchers said in the study. Based on similar prehistoric walls — including the ancient "desert kites" found in the Middle East — the authors propose that it was built on dry land by hunter-gatherers to drive wild animal herds into corrals where they could be killed. They also suggest that the wall in the Bay of Mecklenburg was used to hunt reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), which was a common species in that part of Europe at the time.

A team of archaeologists led by Dr. Maaike Groot from Freie Universität Berlin has provided the first firm evidence that the Romans deliberately collected and used the poisonous seeds of the black henbane plant.

The team analyzed seeds found in a hollowed bone discovered at the Roman-period settlement of Houten-Castellum in the Netherlands and compared them to other archaeological occurrences of the plant. The results of the study were published in the journal Antiquity.

A study led by researchers at the Nagoya University Museum in Japan may change how we understand the cultural evolution of Homo sapiens at the time of their dispersal across Eurasia about 50,000 to 40,000 years ago. These findings challenge traditional beliefs about the timing and nature of cultural transitions during this critical period in human history.

Abstract

A tubular bone bead dating to ~ 12,940 BP was recovered from a hearth-centered activity area at the La Prele Mammoth site in Converse County, Wyoming, USA. This is the oldest known bead from the Western Hemisphere. To determine the taxonomic origin of the bead, we extracted collagen for zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS). We also used micro-CT scanning for morphological analysis to determine likely skeletal elements used for its production. We conclude that the bead was made from a metapodial or proximal phalanx of a hare (Lepus sp.). This find represents the first secure evidence for the use of hares during the Clovis period. While the use of hare bone for the manufacture of beads was a common practice in western North America during the Holocene, its origins can now be traced back to at least the terminal Pleistocene.

A joint Italian-Polish archaeological mission has uncovered during their work at the Sheikh Mohammed site in Aswan the skeletal remains of a young woman who suffered rheumatoid arthritis.