Oxford Archaeology (OA, trading name of Oxford Archaeology Limited) is one of the largest and longest-established independent archaeology and heritage practices in Europe, operating from three permanent offices in Oxford, Lancaster and Cambridge, and working across the UK. OA is a Registered Organisation with the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA), and carries out commercial archaeological fieldwork in advance of development, as well as a range of other heritage related services. Oxford Archaeology primarily operates in the UK, but has also carried out contracts around the world, including Sudan, Qatar, Central Asia, China and the Caribbean. Numbers of employees vary owing to the project-based nature of the work, but in 2014 OA employed over 220 people.The registered head office is in Osney Mead, Oxford, southern England; this address is also the base for OA South. Other offices are OA North in Lancaster, northern England, OA East in Bar Hill, Cambridgeshire, eastern England. Between 2007 and 2011, OA had offices in Mauguio (OA Méditerranée), southern France and Caen (OA Grand Ouest), northern France.
Kinship can be difficult to discern in the archaeological record, but the study of ancient DNA offers a useful window into one form of kinship: biological relatedness. Here, the authors explore possible kin connections at the post-Roman site of Worth Matravers in south-west England. They find that, while clusters of genetically related individuals are apparent, the inclusion of unrelated individuals in double or triple burials demonstrates an element of social kinship in burial location. Some individuals also carried genetic signatures of continental ancestry, with one young male revealing recent West African ancestry, highlighting the diverse heritage of early medieval Britain.
Animal bones from archaeological contexts can reveal the interplay between past environments and human societies. Resource acquisition shaped many aspects of past societies and influenced the development of trade networks and migration. Fish have been a cornerstone of human subsistence for millennia, yet the rise of commercial fishing and trade was complex. Here, we synthesised a database of ∼1.9 million zooarchaeological fish records spanning 2000 years across Europe. Using machine-learning of catch compositions alongside fish thermal tolerances, we show that fisheries became less local over time, with homogenisation coinciding with Little Ice Age-associated cooling, a period of documented resource scarcity, concurring with growing trade. Moreover, increased proportions of marine taxa and more specialist marine fisheries were observed in the preceding Medieval Climate Anomaly, to sustain concurrent urban and population growth. Enhanced use of marine protein buffered food insecurity, whilst signalling the transition from localised to trans-regional trade networks. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. European Research Council, https://ror.org/0472cxd90, 951649
The discovery of Middle Bronze Age field systems at Fengate, to the east of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire (Pryor 1980), in the 1970s, was hugely significant for Bronze Age studies in eastern England. Since then, gravel quarry excavations along the western edge of the East Anglian Fens – several of which have become vast, long-running landscape projects – have shaped our understanding of the region’s prehistory. This paper will examine new evidence from the (comparatively) ‘upland’ region of East Anglia, to the south and east of the Fens – primarily through two case study landscapes: South Cambridgeshire (along the Cam Valley) and East Norfolk (the Bure and Yare/Wensum Valleys). Both areas have seen extensive archaeological investigation over the past 15 years and offer new perspectives on the region’s Bronze Age, where land division and settlement context appear different to that of the Fenland and where burial rites display a diversity that has until recently been largely unrecognised. Recent and upcoming publication of these landscapes highlights the need for up-to-date synthesis and review of the region’s Middle Bronze Age evidence, and accordingly, the wider East Anglian context is also briefly considered here, in the hope of providing stimulus for further research and analysis.
Ancient DNA is a valuable tool for investigating genetic and evolutionary history that can also provide detailed profiles of the lives of ancient individuals. In this study, we develop a generalised computational approach to detect aneuploidies (atypical autosomal and sex chromosome karyotypes) in the ancient genetic record and distinguish such karyotypes from contamination. We confirm that aneuploidies can be detected even in low-coverage genomes ( ~ 0.0001-fold), common in ancient DNA. We apply this method to ancient skeletal remains from Britain to document the first instance of mosaic Turner syndrome (45,X0/46,XX) in the ancient genetic record in an Iron Age individual sequenced to average 9-fold coverage, the earliest known incidence of an individual with a 47,XYY karyotype from the Early Medieval period, as well as individuals with Klinefelter (47,XXY) and Down syndrome (47,XY, + 21). Overall, our approach provides an accessible and automated framework allowing for the detection of individuals with aneuploidies, which extends previous binary approaches. This tool can facilitate the interpretation of burial context and living conditions, as well as elucidate past perceptions of biological sex and people with diverse biological traits.
