Where are the foreigners of the first international age?
Researchers use genetic and isotopic data to investigate human mobility at the Bronze Age city of Alalakh in Turkey
A new study published in PLOS ONE reports genetic and oxygen and strontium isotopic data for individuals buried at Alalakh, finding little evidence for the foreigners mentioned in texts.
Title: Human mobility at Tell Atchana (Alalakh), Hatay, Turkey during the 2nd millennium BC: integration of isotopic and genomic evidence
Authors: Tara Ingman, Stefanie Eisenmann, Eirini Skourtanioti, Murat Akar, Jana Ilgner, Guido Alberto Gnecchi Ruscone, Petrus le Roux, Rula Shafiq, Gunnar U. Neumann, Marcel Keller, Cäcilia Freund, Sara Marzo, Mary Lucas, Johannes Krause, Patrick Roberts, K. Aslıhan Yener, Philipp W. Stockhammer
Journal: PLOS ONE
Researchers use genetic and isotopic data to investigate human mobility at the Bronze Age city of Alalakh in Turkey
A new study published in PLOS ONE reports genetic and oxygen and strontium isotopic data for individuals buried at Alalakh, finding little evidence for the foreigners mentioned in texts.
The Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean has long been considered by researchers to have been the ‘first international age,’ especially the period from 1600-1200 BC, when powerful empires from Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt set up large networks of subordinate client kingdoms in the Near East. These empires fought, traded, and corresponded with one another, and ancient texts from the period reveal rich economic and social networks that enabled the movement of people and goods.
A new study conducted by an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, geneticists, and isotope experts, and published in PLOS ONE, investigated the movement of people in this period at a single regional center, a Bronze Age city-state called Alalakh in present-day southeastern Turkey. Their results indicate that the majority buried at Alalakh were raised locally and descended from people who lived in the region.
Plain (Turkey). Photo: Murat Akar.
The team’s goal was to see if the high levels of interregional connectivity evidenced by the architecture, texts, and artifacts found at the site during 20 years of excavations, sponsored by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Hatay Mustafa Kemal University, could be detected among the population buried at the city.
To do so, they conducted strontium and oxygen isotope analyses on tooth enamel, which can detect whether an individual grew up locally at Alalakh or moved there only during adulthood. The genetic data on the other hand can be used to determine where a person’s recent ancestors came from.
The isotope analysis identified several non-local individuals. However, their DNA showed an ancestry that was local to Alalakh and neighbouring regions. “There are two possible explanations for our findings,” said co-lead author Stefanie Eisenmann from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. “Either these individuals are short-distance migrants from the region or return-migrants, people whose parents or grandparents originally came from Alalakh.”
While different types of mobility were identified, including short-distance, long-distance, and return migration, there were no complete foreigners in the dataset. Most people were born and raised at Alalakh and also their ancestors came from the region.
buried in such simple pit graves and often with ceramic vessels close to their heads. Photo: Murat Akar.
“There are several ways to explain this. It is possible that far less long-distance migrants were living at Alalakh than we had previously thought. Another possibility is that we haven’t found their graves, yet. Perhaps most individuals that came from far away were not buried directly at Alalakh, or in a way we cannot trace,” said Murat Akar, director of the excavations.
doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0241883
Contact:
Tara Ingman
tara.ingman@gmail.com
Stefanie Eisenmann