Dataset Information

Ancient DNA from a 2700-year-old goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa) supports gazelle hunting in Iron Age Central Asia.

ABSTRACT: Central Asia has been an important region connecting the different parts of Eurasia throughout history and prehistory, with large states developing in this region during the Iron Age. Archaeogenomics is a powerful addition to the zooarchaeological toolkit for understanding the relation of these societies to animals. Here, we present the genetic identification of a goitered gazelle specimen (Gazella subgutturosa) at the site Gazimulla-Tepa, in modern-day Uzbekistan, supporting hunting of the species in the region during the Iron Age. The sample was directly radiocarbon dated to 2724-2439 calBP. A phylogenetic analysis of the mitochondrial genome places the individual into the modern variation of G. subgutturosa. Our data do represent both the first ancient DNA and the first nuclear DNA sequences of this species. The lack of genomic resources available for this gazelle and related species prevented us from performing a more in-depth analysis of the nuclear sequences generated. Therefore, we are making our sequence data available to the research community to facilitate other research of this nowadays threatened species which has been subject to human hunting for several millennia across its entire range on the Asian continent.

SUBMITTER: Rodrigues Soares AE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9198508 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Ancient DNA from a 2700-year-old goitered gazelle (<i>Gazella subgutturosa</i>) supports gazelle hunting in Iron Age Central Asia.

Rodrigues Soares André Elias AE Boroffka Nikolaus N Schröder Oskar O Sverchkov Leonid L Benecke Norbert N Günther Torsten T

Royal Society open science 20220615 6

Central Asia has been an important region connecting the different parts of Eurasia throughout history and prehistory, with large states developing in this region during the Iron Age. Archaeogenomics is a powerful addition to the zooarchaeological toolkit for understanding the relation of these societies to animals. Here, we present the genetic identification of a goitered gazelle specimen (<i>Gazella subgutturosa</i>) at the site Gazimulla-Tepa, in modern-day Uzbekistan, supporting hunting of t ...[more]

PMID: 35719876

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Project description:The average body size of human prey animals in archaeological sites is influenced by myriad environmental, physiological and anthropogenic variables. When combined with supporting evidence, body size has the potential to provide a proxy for several variables of fundamental interest to archaeologists including climatic change, food availability and hunting impacts, among other things. In the southern Levant changes in mountain gazelle (Gazella gazella) body size in the Late Pleistocene were initially interpreted as evidence for a climatic downturn, but the picture has become increasingly murky as data has grown. Here we reconsider trends in gazelle body size using an updated dataset from the Mediterranean zone that spans the Early Epipaleolithic to the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period (ca. 24,000-9,500 cal BP). Our results reveal that gazelle were smallest in the Early and Middle Epipaleolithic (Kebaran and Geometric Kebaran), reached their largest size in the early Late Epipaleolithic (Early Natufian) and then shrunk slightly before stabilizing in size through the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic. We see no evidence that sex ratio, or climatic factors influenced this trend. Instead, we explore the role of human impacts on gazelle populations and their habitats as they grew in earnest at the beginning of the Late Epipaleolithic when people first began to settle into more permanent communities. Initially, in the Early and Late Natufian, anthropogenic impacts related to more intensive hunting and the increased footprint of more permanent settlements on the landscape. This may have pushed gazelle numbers below what could be supported by the environment, thus increasing the amount of food available for each animal and hence average body size. Later, as humans began to cultivate plants, manage animals and establish permanent villages, avoidance of humans and livestock by gazelle, and greater stability in food and water availability provided by agriculture, may have similarly reduced gazelle population size and intraspecific competition, thus allowing individual animals to grow larger on average.

Dataset Information

Ancient DNA from a 2700-year-old goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa) supports gazelle hunting in Iron Age Central Asia.

Publications

Ancient DNA from a 2700-year-old goitered gazelle (<i>Gazella subgutturosa</i>) supports gazelle hunting in Iron Age Central Asia.

Similar Datasets

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