The domestication of plants in southwest Asia was an evolutionary process that took place over several millennia in the Early Holocene. During this time, domestic species developed distinct traits that distinguished them from their wild counterparts. Current models of plant domestication emphasize the role of genetic selection in the evolution of these traits, viewing these as heritable adaptations that arose in response to selective pressures associated with human cultivation. In cereals, domestication resulted in the evolution of nonshattering rachis and increased grain size, two traits that can be tracked directly in the archaeobotanical record. Analyses of Early Neolithic cereal remains demonstrate that grain size increase occurred prior to the evolution of nonshattering rachis, a sequence that is often interpreted as evidence of selection for larger grains under cultivation, specifically tillage. Here, we combine morphological and metrical analyses of cereal remains, stable carbon isotope analysis, and weed ecology to test this hypothesis, using three assemblages from the southern Levant: Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Sharara (c. 9250-9200 cal BCE), Pre-Pottery Neolithic A el-Hemmeh (c. 9400-8700 cal BCE), and Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B el-Hemmeh (c. 7500-7000 cal BCE). Our findings indicate that increased grain size in the Early Holocene can be better understood as a plastic response to variation in growing conditions, specifically moisture, rather than as a result of genetic selection for increased grain size under cultivation. We propose that cereal evolution in southwest Asia was initially driven by developmental plasticity, followed by genetic selection.

This study explores digital assets related to Jordan's Nabataean and Roman heritage, focusing on datasets from the MaDiH (Mapping Digital Cultural Heritage in Jordan) project. The MaDiH initiative aimed to assess Jordan's digital cultural heritage (DCH) landscape in order to inform research infrastructure policies and improve access to archaeological and historical data. Jordan has emerged as a regional leader in DCH development, with collaborations between the Department of Antiquities and international institutions yielding significant databases such as MEGA-Jordan and JADIS. The research evaluates 133 datasets specific to the Nabataean and Roman periods, assessing their accessibility, ownership, and usability. These datasets primarily cover tangible heritage, including archaeological sites and objects, with limited representation of intangible cultural aspects. The majority exist in digital formats, yet accessibility challenges persist due to restrictive licenses, offline storage, and limited public availability. Ownership is primarily concentrated in universities, museums, and heritage institutions, but a significant portion remains in private hands. The study identifies disparities in dataset accessibility, whether online or offline, depending on location, and highlights concerns regarding local access to national heritage. Additionally, language barriers exist, with most datasets in English rather than Arabic. Findings emphasize the need for improved data standardisation, interoperability, and expanded public access to digital heritage. The MaDiH catalogue serves as a foundational tool for researchers and is a good starting point for a Jordanian heritage catalogue, while providing an example for similar efforts in other regions, however it requires further development to enhance engagement and integration with World Heritage platforms. Future efforts should focus on federating existing datasets, fostering multilingual accessibility, and strengthening Jordan's digital infrastructure to maximize the academic and economic benefits of its rich cultural heritage.

The domestication of plants in southwest Asia was an evolutionary process that took place over several millennia in the Early Holocene. During this time domestic species developed distinct traits that distinguish them from their wild counterparts. Current models of plant domestication emphasise the role of genetic selection in the evolution of these traits, viewing these as heritable adaptations that arose in response to selective pressures associated with human cultivation. In cereals, domestication resulted in the evolution of non-shattering rachis and increased grain size, two traits that can be tracked directly in the archaeobotanical record. Measurements of cereal grains from Early Neolithic sites indicate that grain size increase occurred prior to the evolution of non-shattering rachis, and it has been proposed that this reflects selection for larger grains under tillage, signifying pre-domestication cultivation. Here we combine morphological and metrical analysis of cereal remains, stable carbon isotope analysis, and weed ecology to test this hypothesis, using three assemblages from the southern Levant: Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Sharara (c. 9250-9200 cal BCE), Pre-Pottery Neolithic A el-Hemmeh (c. 9400-8700 cal BCE) and Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B el-Hemmeh (c. 7500-7000 cal BCE). Our findings indicate that increased grain size in the Early Holocene is better understood as a plastic response to variation in growing conditions (specifically moisture), rather than a result of genetic selection for increased grain size under cultivation (i.e., tillage). We argue that cereal evolution in southwest Asia was initially driven by developmental plasticity, followed by genetic selection. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

which published December 18, 2023; 10.1073/pnas.2312962120 (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. Stanislav ?erna should be added to the author list between Katharina Fuchs and forming research in an early stage of the study, and Pascal Flohr and Cheryl A. Makarewicz should be credited with contributing data analysis and interpretation in The authors also note that the author names Marta dal Corso and Andreea Terna should The corrected author line, affiliation line, and author contributions appear below. The online version has been corrected. The SI Appendix has also been updated.

ABSTRACT We observe a growing universe of machine‐readable knowledge organisation systems (KOS) or even wider ‘semantic artifacts. We see at the same time, various attempts to bring semantic artifacts together via registries, catalogues and via cross‐walks among ontologies. This poster reflects how newest research on semantic interoperability informs current practice for research data repositories and registry service providers. We focus on the domain of humanities and cultural heritage, using different examples from Europe and the Netherlands: The European Archaeological Data Infrastructure Ariadne, services of the Dutch Cultural Heritage Network and two Data Stations (for Archaeology and for SSH) hosted at DANS‐KNAW. For those cases we report on current efforts to include ‘semantic artifacts’, together with opportunities and challenges. This poster is a practice report combined with an invitation to reflect about the context of semantic interoperability itself.

Much research has been conducted in the arid zone of Jordan, beyond the Mediterranean environments traditionally understood as the Neolithic core developmental area. The Neolithic of this arid zone has often been framed as marginal, as specially adapted to the dry environmental conditions, as maintaining hunting traditions, as providing protein to the settled communities of the core, and as made possible by new developments in pastoralism. As more evidence is discovered, an increasingly nuanced picture emerges. Not least, our understanding of the environment suggests that rather than adaptation to arid conditions much of this Neolithic expansion may relate to the exploitation of extensive areas that were better watered than today. Nonetheless, new ways of living did emerge, although typically Neolithic in their intensification of the exploitation of resources leading to the carving out of new cultural and environmental niches. The relationships between people living in these lands and those living in the core established the foundations of the economic networks that become visible in the Chalcolithic and into the Early Bronze Age.

Approaches used to design, build, and maintain digital cultural heritage communities and infrastructure in Europe, North America, and Australasia need to be tailored to regional contexts such as the Middle East and North Africa. Cultural and political differences, inherited issues with technical infrastructure and funding, and the need to build trusting and healthy working relationships across national boundaries makes this challenging. The framework and roadmap used during the MaDiH ( ): Mapping Digital Cultural Heritage in Jordan project (2019–2021) provides one of several possible models for such work, as well as highlighting its myriad challenges and opportunities.

MaDiH (Mapping Digital Cultural Heritage in Jordan) was a two-year UK-Jordanian project that aimed to identify essential systems, datasets and standards to contribute to the long-term sustainable development of Jordan's digital cultural heritage. The project launched an online catalogue and prototype repository using the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN) platform to present the collected data that was produced by the local and international research community on Jordan's cultural heritage. This paper assesses the usability of the MaDiH CKAN catalogue using qualitative and quantitative methods. A thorough analysis of the project's user engagement activities and online presence was undertaken to identify current and potential future uses of the CKAN catalogue by its research community. The preliminary analysis indicated that the largest user group were mid-senior to senior academics/professionals from the cultural heritage sector. Therefore, representatives of this group were selected for further usability analysis through semi-structured online interviews, in order to validate the research outcomes and get deeper insights into the research domain. The findings offer significant insights for similar digital cultural heritage initiatives in Jordan, as well as recommendations for the future development of the MaDiH CKAN catalogue as a National Heritage Portal repository.

The life-sized, naturalistic reliefs at the Camel Site in northern Arabia have been severely damaged by erosion. This, coupled with substantial destruction of the surrounding archaeological landscape, has made a chronological assessment of the site difficult. To overcome these problems, we combined results from a wide range of methods, including analysis of surviving tool marks, assessment of weathering and erosion patterns, portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, and luminescence dating of fallen fragments. In addition, test excavations identified a homogenous lithic assemblage and faunal remains that were sampled for radiocarbon dating. Our results show that the reliefs were carved with stone tools and that the creation of the reliefs, as well as the main period of activity at the site, date to the Neolithic. Neolithic arrowheads and radiocarbon dates attest occupation between 5200 and 5600 BCE. This is consistent with measurements of the areal density of manganese and iron in the rock varnish. The site was likely in use over a longer period and reliefs were re-worked when erosion began to obscure detailed features. By 1000 BCE, erosion was advanced enough to cause first panels to fall, in a process that continues until today. The Camel Site is likely home to the oldest surviving large-scale (naturalistic) animal reliefs in the world.

MaDiH (مديح): Mapping Digital Cultural Heritage in Jordan is an AHRC/Newton funded collaborative project between King’s Digital Lab (KDL), the Hashemite University, the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, the Jordanian Open Source Association, and the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project. The project aims to contribute to the development of Jordan’s digital cultural heritage by identifying systems, datasets, standards, and policies, and aligning them to government digital infrastructure capabilities and strategies. The MaDiH data catalogue or, in future, repository includes datasets that have been created over the past 50 years by archaeological teams, official institutions, museums, research institutions, or individuals from Jordan and other countries such as the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, France, Japan, and Canada. In total 325 datasets on Jordanian cultural heritage were recorded in the MaDiH CKAN repository. This representative sample is designed to be the core of the prototype for a national data catalogue using CKAN (ckan.org), an open-source data publishing tool for data collection. The project represented stage one of a larger three stage vision to ‘Map’, ‘Build’ and ‘Deliver’ enhanced Digital Cultural Heritage (DCH) capability for Jordan. MaDiH (مديح) sits at the intersection of numerous currents in contemporary DCH activity. It engages in long-standing practices such as software engineering, information management, data curation, open knowledge, and archive management informed by more recent initiatives such as Critical Infrastructure Studies, Postcolonial Digital Humanities (DH), Indigenous DH, and Global DH.

Palaeoclimate variability must be constrained to predict the nature and impacts of future climate change in the Eastern Mediterranean. Here, we present a late Holocene high‐resolution multiproxy data set from Kocain Cave, the first of its kind from SW Turkey. Regional fluctuations in effective‐moisture are recorded by variations in magnesium, strontium, phosphorous and carbon isotopes, with oxygen isotopes reacting to changes in precipitation and effective‐moisture. The new record shows a double‐peak of arid conditions at 1150 and 800 BCE, a wet period 330–460 CE followed by a rapid shift to dry conditions 460–830 CE, and a dry/wet Medieval Climate Anomaly/Little Ice Age pattern. Large discrepancies exist between Turkish records and the Kocain record, which shares more similarities with other Eastern Mediterranean coastal records. Heterogeneity of regional climate and palaeoclimate proxy records are emphasized.

Archaeological research in Lebanon often focuses on settlement from the Bronze Age to Roman periods, while surrounding landscapes, earlier and later periods are under-represented. Large datasets collecting information from all periods and site types, such as the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) database, address this imbalance. EAMENA predominantly uses satellite imagery to identify archaeological sites and the threats posed to them, leading to the recognition of many previously unpublished sites, including abandoned buildings and agricultural terraces. Here we explore how such data can be used to trace patterns of settlement and landscape use. Transects running from coast to uplands in northern and southern Lebanon are compared: the results show profound differences between north and south, and between coastal and inland zones. The importance of large, holistic datasets for previously understudied site types and periods in piecing together past patterns of land use, subsistence economies, burial traditions and change over time are demonstrated.

The UK-based Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project uses remote sensing techniques to rapidly record and evaluate the status of archaeological and cultural heritage sites in the MENA region. Applying remote sensing methods to the archaeological landscapes of 20 countries, EAMENA is one of the largest documentation projects of its kind. Such a scope raises important ethical questions fundamental to the practice of remote-sensed archaeology, and this paper contributes to this discussion by reflecting on EAMENA's unique role in this subfield. We present ethical issues and possible solutions related to remote sensing and archaeology, drawing on models developed within the humanitarian aid sector and postcolonial archaeology. In addition, we consider issues of national sovereignty and their relationship to the engagement of local communities. Finally, this paper examines the roles of data openness and open access policies as ethical factors and how EAMENA has addressed these so far.

The document details the approaches and processes employed by the MaDiH (مديح) Mapping the Digital Cultural Heritage in Jordan Project Team for the identification and collection of datasets recorded in the project CKAN instance (https://madih-data.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/).