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The Andersson Collection housed at the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities holds finds from the earliest archaeological fieldwork ever conducted in northwest China. Recent years have seen an increased interest in the archaeology of that region, especially prehistoric subsistence practices and their environmental correlates. The Andersson Collection which has lain largely dormant since the 1940s provides a great opportunity for further research on this topic, especially on sites which are no longer accessible for a variety of reasons. As part of a larger project aimed at “re-excavating” these materials from museum storage and answer questions of identity and interaction along the old exchange corridor of the proto-Silk Road, this pilot study explores the potential of using molecular and isotopic characterization of organic residues from Neolithic and Bronze Age ceramic vessels to understand subsistence practices in northwest China. Organic residue analysis can aid our understanding what kinds of foodstuffs these vessels held and shed light on cooking and eating habits and how these practices change or remain consistent over time and/or space. There is some concern that long-term storage in potentially unsuitable containers, cleaning with harsh chemicals, or restauration methods deemed suitable at the time may have destroyed much of the residue. Indeed, this pilot study finds that there is a considerable amount of contaminants in all samples, however, some residue has been observed and analysed, suggesting that more advanced extraction methods combined with an investigation into museum records to find out about previous cleaning and restauration methods, may help mitigate these issues. A similar approach may also be applied to other legacy collections.

Present-day hunter-gatherers (HGs) live in multilevel social groups essential to sustain a population structure characterized by limited levels of within-band relatedness and inbreeding. When these wider social networks evolved among HGs is unknown. Here, we investigate whether the contemporary HG strategy was already present in the Upper Paleolithic (UP), using complete genome sequences from Sunghir, a site dated to ~34 thousand years BP (kya) containing multiple anatomically modern human (AMH) individuals. Wedemonstrate that individuals at Sunghir derive from a population of small effective size, with limited kinship and levels of inbreeding similar to HG populations. Our findings suggest that UP social organization was similar to that of living HGs, with limited relatedness within residential groups embedded in a larger mating network.

Marriage a-la-Mode No. 3 (The Inspection) belongs to a six part series of paintings by English painter, printmaker and society critic, William Hogarth. The print in the possession of the RPS Museum depicts Viscount Squanderfield and his child mistress visiting a quack. Viscount Squanderfield, who is seated and holding up a pill box to the quack doctor, is depicted with a large black spot on his neck. This spot is often interpreted as a syphilis sore and the pills are likely to be mercury pills. His child mistress holds another pill box whilst dabbing the edge of her mouth which may indicate she could be suffering from excessive salivation as a result of mercury poisoning or she could be dabbing an oozing sore. Hogarth’s Marriage a-la-Mode can be interpreted as 18th Century syphilis awareness campaign posters. Viewers are made aware of the early symptoms of the disease and the side effects of its ineffective treatments. Hogarth also hints at the mode of transmission and that it is contagious. The necrosis of the bone on the skull of a previous patient with tertiary syphilis can also be seen on the table situated next to the quack doctor in the print.

Genomic analyses of Neanderthals have previously provided insights into their population history and relationship to modern humans1–8, but the social organization of Neanderthal communities remains poorly understood. Here we present genetic data for 13 Neanderthals from two Middle Palaeolithic sites in the Altai Mountains of southern Siberia: 11 from Chagyrskaya Cave9,10 and 2 from Okladnikov Cave11—making this one of the largest genetic studies of a Neanderthal population to date. We used hybridization capture to obtain genome-wide nuclear data, as well as mitochondrial and Y-chromosome sequences. Some Chagyrskaya individuals were closely related, including a father–daughter pair and a pair of second-degree relatives, indicating that at least some of the individuals lived at the same time. Up to one-third of these individuals’ genomes had long segments of homozygosity, suggesting that the Chagyrskaya Neanderthals were part of a small community. In addition, the Y-chromosome diversity is an order of magnitude lower than the mitochondrial diversity, a pattern that we found is best explained by female migration between communities. Thus, the genetic data presented here provide a detailed documentation of the social organization of an isolated Neanderthal community at the easternmost extent of their known range.

Chemical analysis of ancient residues of pharmaceutical or cosmetic preparations such as balms or ointments is made problematic by the high complexity of these mixtures, composed of organic and inorganic materials. Consequently, a multi-analytical approach and special caution in the interpretation of the results are necessary. In order to contribute to the improvement of analytical strategies for the characterization of complex residues and to reconstruct ancient medical practices, a replica of a pharmaceutical formulation of the seventeenth century was prepared in the laboratory according to a historically documented recipe. In a round robin exercise, a portion of the preparation was analysed as a blind sample by 11 laboratories using various analytical techniques. These included spectroscopic, chromatographic and mass spectrometric methods. None of the laboratories was able to completely reconstruct the complex formulation, but each of them gave partial positive results. The round robin exercise has demonstrated that the application of a multi-analytical approach can permit a complete and reliable reconstruction of the composition. Finally, on the basis of the results, an analytical protocol for the study of residues of ancient medical and pharmaceutical preparations has been outlined. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.