Population history of the middle Euphrates valley: Dental non-metric traits at Tell Ashara, Tell Masaikh and Jebel Mashtale, Syria

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Population history of the middle Euphrates valley: Dental non-metric traits at Tell Ashara, Tell Masaikh and Jebel Mashtale, Syria Arkadiusz Sołtysiak ∗, Marta Bialon Department of Bioarchaeology, Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw, ul. Krakowskie Przedmie´scie 26/28, 00-927 Warszawa, Poland

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 24 April 2012 Accepted 30 April 2013 Available online xxx Keywords: Biodistance research Phenetic affinity Northern Mesopotamia Migrations

a b s t r a c t Fifty-nine dental non-metric traits were scored using Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System on a sample of teeth from 350 human skeletons excavated at three sites in the lower middle Euphrates valley. The dataset was divided into six chronological subsets: Early Bronze Age, Middle Bronze Age, Early Iron Age with Neo-Assyrian period, Classical/Late Antiquity, Early Islamic (Umayyad and Abbasid) period and Modern period. The matrix of Mean Measure of Divergence values exhibited temporal homogeneity of the sample with only dental non-metric trait scores in the Modern subset differing significantly from most other subsets. Such a result suggests that no major gene flow occurred in the middle Euphrates valley between the 3rd millennium BCE and the early 2nd millennium CE. Only after the Mongolian invasion and large depopulation of northern Mesopotamia in the 13th century CE a major population change occurred when the area was taken over in the 17th century by Bedouin tribes from the Arabian Peninsula. © 2013 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.

Introduction Political, economic and social history of ancient Mesopotamia is relatively well known, chiefly due to intensive archaeological excavations and findings of public and private archives of cuneiform

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +48 22 5522837; fax: +48 22 5522801. E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Sołtysiak). 0018-442X/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jchb.2013.04.005

Please cite this article in press as: Sołtysiak, A., Bialon, M., Population history of the middle Euphrates valley: Dental non-metric traits at Tell Ashara, Tell Masaikh and Jebel Mashtale, Syria. HOMO - J. Comp. Hum. Biol. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jchb.2013.04.005

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documents. However, this knowledge is strongly biased, as spatial, chronological and topical distribution of textual sources is uneven, with most documents retrieved from large cities of southern alluvial Euphrates plain, and most economic sources dated to a few decades of later Ur III period (second half of the 21st century BCE; Yoffee, 1988). For that reason, the history of southern and central Mesopotamia, especially during the Bronze Age, is better known than the history of the northern plains and there are substantial gaps in our knowledge about the later periods, when clay tablets were no longer used as writing material (Postgate, 1992). Historical and archaeological sources enable the rough reconstruction of the population history in this region. Changes in the population size may be estimated with the use of archaeological survey data (Adams, 1965, 1981; Adams and Nissen, 1972; Copeland, 1985; McClellan, 1992; Wilkinson, 1990; Wright et al., 2007) and some migrations and/or ethnic changes were attested by written documents (Van De Mieroop, 2004a). However, the picture obtained from these sources is quite superficial, as the real impact of migrations on local population may be only loosely correlated with the change of language or self-identification, not even mentioning the material culture (Kramer, 1977). In theory, research of ancient DNA polymorphisms would be the best source of knowledge about population history, but the climatic conditions are not favourable for DNA preservation (Schutkowski, 2012) and only a few very preliminary regional studies were published so far (Baca and Molak, 2008). For that reason, bioarchaeological methods of phenetic affinity reconstruction are the only reliable alternative, especially the research on dental non-metric traits, which are less subject to environmental stress and postmortem alterations than skeletal non-metric traits or metric measurements (Irish, 2006, 2010; Scott and Turner, 1997). The major issue related to this tool is the need for large and relatively homogenous samples, which may be virtually impossible to obtain at ancient Mesopotamian sites (Sołtysiak, 2006). Fortunately, during large scale excavations in the region of Tell Ashara (ancient Terqa), lasting for more than 15 years, almost a thousand human skeletons have been unearthed, most of them buried at regular cemeteries (Sołtysiak and Tomczyk, 2008a,b,c). In spite of often poor preservation and relatively high degree of dental wear, the dental sample is sufficient for rough estimation of phenetic affinities between populations inhabiting the middle Euphrates valley in the Bronze Age, in Classical/Late Antiquity and after Islamic conquest. Historical and archaeological background Middle Euphrates valley around Tell Ashara is located in an arid climatic zone with average annual rainfall under 150 mm, which is not enough for dry farming (van Zeist, 2000). For that reason, plant cultivation was possible only in a narrow strip of floodplain. However, the arable fields may have been extended in a limited way using artificial irrigation, which was attested in historical sources from the Middle Bronze Age (Durand, 1998; Heimpel, 2003; Viollet, 2004) to the Umayyad period (Berthier, 2001; D’Hont, 2005; Genequand, 2009; Rousset, 2001) (Table 1 for chronological chart) and is now applied with the use of mazut pumps (Kolars, 2000). Alternative subsistence strategy available in the region was nomadic or semi-nomadic herding of sheep and goats in the large areas of dry steppes around the valley. In some periods, as e.g. Middle Bronze Age, this economic duality led to the formation of the so-called dimorphic society with close links between farmers and pastoralists (Hesse, 1995; Kirsch and Larsen, 1995; Rowton, 1967, 1974, 1980). In others, as in the Late Roman period, the level of economic interactions was much lower (Parker, 1987). In spite of relatively low carrying capacity and small potential for population growth as compared with the alluvial plains of lower Euphrates, since the beginning of the third millennium BCE large cities (such as Mari, Terqa and later Dura Europos) have been present in the region and urbanisation was usually correlated with the importance of the Euphrates valley as a major trade route or as an imperial borderland (Butterlin, 2010; Dalley, 2002; Edwell and Edwell, 2008; Margueron, 2004; Masetti-Rouault, 2008). The earliest known human occupation in the middle Euphrates, near the Khabour confluence, is dated to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (Akkermans et al., 1982), but the settlement size was very small until the end of the Chalcolithic. Archaeological surveys in the region suggest dramatic growth of human populations at the dawn of the Early Bronze Age, chiefly due to the establishment of two urban centres in Terqa and Mari. The settlement size was relatively stable then until the Middle Bronze Please cite this article in press as: Sołtysiak, A., Bialon, M., Population history of the middle Euphrates valley: Dental non-metric traits at Tell Ashara, Tell Masaikh and Jebel Mashtale, Syria. HOMO - J. Comp. Hum. Biol. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jchb.2013.04.005

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Table 1 Simplified chronological chart of the lower middle Euphrates valley.

Archaeological

Historical

Chronological unit

Absolute dates

Tell Ashara

Early Bronze Age (EBA) Middle Bronze Age (MBA) Late Bronze Age (LBA) Iron Age 1/2 (IA)

c. 3300–2100 BCE c. 2100–1550 BCE c. 1550–1200 BCE c. 1200–850 BCE

Medium site Major site Major site Small site

Neo-Assyrian period Neo-Babylonian period Achaemenian period Hellenistic period Early Roman period Late Roman period Umayyad/Abbasid period Modern re-settlement

c. 850–609 BCE 609–539 BCE 539–331 BCE 331–64 BCE 64 BCE–284 CE 284–636 CE 636–1258 CE Since c. 1650 CE

Small site ? ?

Tell Masaikh

Jebel Mashtale

Small site

? Small site

Major site ? ? Small site Small site Small site/cemetery Cemetery

Cemetery

?

Cemetery Small site

? the site was probably inhabited, but no larger structures were found during archaeological excavations.

Age. After its evident collapse from the Late Bronze Age until the Achaemenian period, with some recovery in Neo-Assyrian period, another episode of population growth started in the Hellenistic times and lasted until the 13th century CE, with its peak during the Umayyad/Abbasid period (Geyer and Monchambert, 1987; Simpson, 1984). It is evident that the periods of population growth in the middle Euphrates valley were correlated with urbanisation. It is impossible to say anything about ethnic affinities of people living within the Euphrates valley prior to the mid-3rd millennium BCE. Available documents from the later 3rd millennium include exclusively Semitic (chiefly Akkadian) names, which suggests that whole Mesopotamia, except for the alluvial plain in the south was uniform with respect to ethnic affinity and language (Buccellati, 1992; Oppenheim, 1977:34). Akkadian continued to be the main Mesopotamian language through second to the first half of the first millennium BCE, although divided into southern Babylonian and northern Assyrian dialect since the early second millennium onwards (Deutscher, 2000). At the turn of the third millennium BCE, Amorite names begun to dominate in records from Mari and Terqa (Anbar, 1991; Buccellati, 1992) and—although Akkadian was still used as official language—the Amorites seemed to be the main ethnic group in the whole of Mesopotamia throughout the entire first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. In early views of the Mesopotamian history, this rapid expansion of the Amorite ethnic affinity (but not language, which had virtually not been attested in textual evidence) was explained in terms of massive migrations of pastoralists from the western arid steppes (Leemans, 1957). They were viewed by early 20th century scholars as barbarians who politically dominated the farming population of Sumerians and Akkadians, but quickly adopted the urban way of life and lost their nomadic identity (Buccellati, 1966). Some early authors proposed a theory of four migration waves from the west: Akkadian in remote past, Amorite at the turn of the 3rd millennium, Aramean at the turn of the 2nd millennium BCE and Arabic in the first millennium CE (Clay, 1909; Kraeling, 1918; Kupper, 1959). These groups of Semitic pastoralists were thought to rapidly assimilate the civilisation based on agriculture, originally invented by Sumerians in the south and to some extent by so-called Subarians in the north (Gelb, 1944; but see esp. Gragg, 1995; Ungnad, 1936). Actually, available evidence does not support the theory of a massive Amorite migration from the west. Amorite names and ethnic designation (MAR.TU in Sumerian, Amurru in Akkadian) were first attested by the cuneiform texts c. 2600 BCE in southern Mesopotamia (Gelb, 1961), but they were rare before the 21st century BCE (Westenholz, 1999). It seems likely that Mesopotamia was the original homeland of the Amorites who used marginal pastures for sheep and goat herding all around the territories of farmers and their alleged migration was just a population movements inside the dimorphic society (Liverani, 1973; Lönnqvist, 2008). In spite of the rise of new Amorite kingdoms in the whole territory of Mesopotamia, and the kingdom of Mari in particular, the material culture and social organisation did not substantially change in the transitional period between Early and Middle Bronze Ages (Stone, 2002; Yoffee, 1995). Abundant Please cite this article in press as: Sołtysiak, A., Bialon, M., Population history of the middle Euphrates valley: Dental non-metric traits at Tell Ashara, Tell Masaikh and Jebel Mashtale, Syria. HOMO - J. Comp. Hum. Biol. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jchb.2013.04.005

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archives found in Mari allow quite detailed insight into both political history, interactions between farmers and herders and the daily life in this very important urban centre of northern Mesopotamia at that time (Durand, 1997, 1998, 2000; Heimpel, 2003). Mari had been completely destroyed by Hammurabi of Babylon in the 18th century BCE and has never recovered, while the political power moved to Terqa some 50 km upstream Euphrates (Van De Mieroop, 2004b). The history of this obviously less powerful kingdom of Terqa is less known. In the 18th century BCE it was controlled by the Kassite dynasty, which then moved to Babylon after its plundering by the Hittites (Brinkman, 1972; Charpin, 1995). The original homeland of the Kassites is not known (Brinkman, 1972; De Smet, 1990), and it is not very likely that they have ever migrated to Mesopotamia in great numbers (Sommerfeld, 1995). The kingdom of Khana with its capital city in Terqa lasted through later Middle Bronze Age and early Late Bronze Age (Buccellati, 1988), and then became a part of the Mitanni and then Middle Assyrian state (Chavalas, 1992). At that time, some migration of Hurrians from the North may have reached the middle Euphrates valley (Burney, 1997; Kramer, 1977; Rouault, 1992). In the beginning of the Iron Age, the whole Mesopotamia plunged into chaos and for three centuries farming lands were flooded by nomadic pastoralists who used Aramean language and were divided into many tribes (Sader, 1984, 1992). The origin of the Arameans is as disputable as the origin of Amorites (Schwartz, 1989), but it seems likely that they inhabited the steppes of northern Mesopotamia in the Late Bronze Age and probably were forced by the climatic change to search for pastures in lands previously cultivated by farmers (Brinkman, 1968; Neumann and Parpola, 1987). Terqa and other major sites in its neighbourhood were virtually deserted in that time (Masetti-Rouault, 2007). In the 9th/8th century BCE, the area was reconquested by the Assyrian state. Assyrian kings developed the policy of mass deportations (Oded, 1979) and the middle Euphrates valley was resettled by farmers (Masetti-Rouault, 2008, 2010), although the cultural continuity from earlier period suggests that they may have been sedentarised local pastoralists rather than newcomers (Masetti-Rouault, 2009). The capital of the region moved to the left bank of Euphrates, to Kar-Assurnasirpal (modern Tell Masaikh) where rectangular city was established over the remains of previous Chalcolithic and Middle Bronze Age villages (Masetti-Rouault, 2007; Masetti-Rouault and Salmon, 2010). After the fall of the Assyrian Empire, the city was abandoned, and it is possible that the population of farmers again decreased due to emigration or pastoralisation. Throughout Classical and Late Antiquities, the middle Euphrates valley became unstable borderland between Romans and Parthians/Sasanians, with a buffer kingdom of Osrhoene controlling steppes on the left bank of the Euphrates (Bertinelli, 1976; Dillemann, 1962; Oates, 1968). Most important urban centre in that time was Dura Europos, a stronghold established by Seleucos I, then rebuilt by Parthians and Romans. Finally the city was completely destroyed by Shah Shapur I in 256 (MacDonald, 1986). In that time, the flow of peoples from outside northern Mesopotamia was perhaps greater than previously due to the military importance of the area and also the activity of mercenaries in more peaceful times (Goodblatt, 1987; Simpson, 2000). Moreover, both the Romans and the Sasanians adopted the policy of deportations (Drijvers, 2009). After the fall of Dura Europos, no major city south of Circesium at the Khabur confluence existed in the region, but the area was still covered by a dense network of small farming villages. The expansion of the Islamic Caliphate finished the period of military conflicts and it is possible that due to large irrigation works attested in the sources (Genequand, 2009; Rousset, 2001), the region experienced highest population growth in its history. Only in the 10th century the conflicts between Abbasids and Hamdanids, as well as subsequent expansion of the Seljuq Turcs, contributed again to the political instability in northern Mesopotamia (Basan, 2010). The middle Euphrates valley in that time was controlled through the castle Rahba near modern town Mayadin (Rousset, 1996). Finally, the whole area was heavily depopulated due to raids of Mongolians commanded by Hulagu Khan in 1250s and 1260s (Amitai-Preiss, 1995). For the following centuries, the middle Euphrates valley was very sparsely populated. In the early 17th century CE, steppes around have been taken over by Northern Shammar and Bishr Aneze Bedouin tribes, which migrated from the Arabian Peninsula (Chatty, 1990; Raswan, 1930). In the early 20th century, when Syria was under French control, the fertile lands in the Euphrates valley were resettled by sedentarised Bedouins and by farmers from south-eastern Anatolia and western Syria (Velud, 2000). Please cite this article in press as: Sołtysiak, A., Bialon, M., Population history of the middle Euphrates valley: Dental non-metric traits at Tell Ashara, Tell Masaikh and Jebel Mashtale, Syria. HOMO - J. Comp. Hum. Biol. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jchb.2013.04.005

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The population growth due to high fertility and immigration rate was continued after World War II (Ababsa, 2009; Meyer, 1990) and the contemporary population of the Deir-ez Zor governorate exceeds 1.2 million people (Central Bureau of Statistics, Syrian Arab Republic). During the last hundred years, the interpretation of ethnic changes attested by the Mesopotamian historical sources shifted from long-distance migrations to short-distance local exchange of people between settled farmers and more mobile pastoralists, related to social re-organisation and forced by climatic change or political circumstances. It is possible that both the Amorite and the Aramean expansions during the two “dark ages” of Mesopotamian history were movements of that kind and did not affect the genetic polymorphism of the regional population in a considerable way. Migrations of Hurrians and Kassites, which occurred in the later Early and Middle Bronze Ages, likely had its initial point in quite remote places, but the impact of both these ethnic groups on the large Mesopotamian population, although attested in the sources, was rather small or even completely negligible. The first large scale evident population movement in history took its place in the Neo-Asyrian period when the policy of mass deportations forced millions of people to move sometimes to quite distant places. The origin of colonists who were settled in that time in the middle Euphrates valley is not known, but they might be local or originate whether in the Levant or in the Zagros mountains as well. When Northern Mesopotamia became a part of larger empires, the level of mobility related to troop movements, long-distance trade and deportations obviously increased in comparison with the Bronze Age. However, if the new settlers—such as Greeks or Romans—retained their ethnic identity, they were forced to move back when the region was conquered by Parthians and then by Sasanians. Thus, it may be expected that the Classical and Late Antiquity was characterised not only by political, but also ethnic instability in the frontier region of the middle Euphrates. To some extent this situation may have continued in the Islamic period. After the Mongolian invasion in the 13th century CE, Mesopotamia was depopulated and practically re-settled by Bedouins several centuries later. Research on dental non-metric traits Biodistance analyses aiming at reconstruction of population histories are common in physical anthropology and bioarchaeology (Buikstra et al., 1990). In the early history of the discipline they were based chiefly on skull metric measurements (Howells, 1973), which are still used albeit less frequently than decades ago (Buzon, 2011; Molleson and Rosas, 2012; Pinhasi and von Cramon-Taubadel, 2012). The only major attempt to reconstruct the population history of the Near East was based on average cranial measurements (Bernhard, 1993). After the 1960s non-metric cranial (Hanihara et al., 2003; Hauser and De Stefano, 1989; Nagar, 2011; Rösing, 1982) and especially dental traits (Dahlberg, 1963) became more and more popular in the research on phenetic affinities. Dental non-metric traits are superior to cranial non-metric traits and metric measurements, as their heritability is relatively higher and more stable between populations, they are sex-independent, and also independent from each other in most cases (Scott and Turner, 1997). Moreover, tooth tissues are denser and thus less susceptible than bone to any postmortem alterations. Several scoring protocols for dental non-metric traits are available, including Zubov’s (1968, 1977) odontoglyphics and the system used by Alt and Vach (1991, 1998) for kinship studies. The most popular protocol is the Arizona State University Dental Anthropology System (ASUDAS) (Turner et al., 1991). It includes only traits observed on permanent dentition, although deciduous teeth are also occasionally studied (Kitagawa, 2000). Because many traits are scored in an ordinal scale, they must be dichotomised prior to further analysis (Irish, 2010). The two most common distance measures used in research on dental non-metric traits are generalised Mahalanobis D2 distance and Smith’s Mean Measure of Divergence (MMD) (Irish, 2010), although occasionally other methods—as Balakrishnan and Sanghvi B2 distance (Schillaci et al., 2009) or R-matrix (Hanihara, 2008)—are also used. Because Mahalanobis D2 distance may be used only for complete or almost complete datasets, in case of a dataset with many missing cells the MMD is the only remaining option (Irish, 2010). Literature about population histories inferred from the study of dental non-metric traits is large and especially North America (Haydenblit, 1996), Italy (Coppa et al., 1998, 2007), North Africa Please cite this article in press as: Sołtysiak, A., Bialon, M., Population history of the middle Euphrates valley: Dental non-metric traits at Tell Ashara, Tell Masaikh and Jebel Mashtale, Syria. HOMO - J. Comp. Hum. Biol. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jchb.2013.04.005

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(Guatelli-Steinberg et al., 2001) and Eastern Asia (Hanihara, 2010; Matsumura and Hudson, 2005) are well covered. There is also a number of worldwide studies (Hanihara, 2008; Scott and Turner, 1997). Not only archaeological dental samples, but also living populations are occasionally studied (Peiris et al., 2011). Although some cranial non-metric traits were occasionally scored in more or less standardised way at various Mesopotamian sites (Bolt, 1991; Burger-Heinrich, 1989; Ehrich, 1939; Rathbun, 1975; Wittwer-Backofen, 1983; Molleson, 2000; Sołtysiak, 2009), available dental data are virtually absent (Anfruns et al., 1996; Özbek, 1979; Swindler, 1956). This is related to the general poor state of preservation of human remains at Near Eastern archaeological sites and to the fact that the number of excavated cemeteries is small and most human skeletons come from settlement sites where chiefly subadult individuals were buried (Sołtysiak, 2006). For that reason it is very difficult to gather a homogenous sample large enough for the research on phenetic affinities. Mesopotamia differs completely in this respect from Egypt and Nubia where dental and cranial non-metric traits were scored at many sites and used successfully in answering many questions concerning the population history of the Nile valley (Godde, 2009; Irish, 1997, 2005, 2006; Irish and Konigsberg, 2007; Nikita et al., 2012; Prowse and Lovell, 1996; Schillaci et al., 2009). Materials Human teeth studied in the present paper were found at three archaeological sites located in the lower middle Euphrates valley, about 60 km south of Deir ez-Zor. They have been excavated since 1987 by a joint French-Syrian team directed by Olivier Rouault (Université Lumière Lyon 2) and Maria Grazia Massetti-Rouault (École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris). Tell Ashara (ancient names Terqa and Sirqu) is a major site located on the right bank of Euphrates (Fig. 1). It had been inhabited at least since the beginning of the 3rd millennium BCE until the Late Bronze Age, then it was occasionally re-settled in later periods and finally used as a cemetery in late 19th and early 20th century CE (Rouault, 2008). The maximum size of the site is not certain because the modern village Ashara covers most part of the ancient settlement. So far, more than 250 human skeletons were found at Tell Ashara, chiefly among Bronze Age houses and in the modern cemetery (Sołtysiak and Tomczyk, 2008a). Tell Masaikh (ancient name Kar-Assurnasirpal) is the second site about 5 km upstream from Tell Ashara, on the left bank of Euphrates. It was inhabited as early as in the Halaf period (5th millennium BCE) and then in the Middle Bronze Age, but the time of its prosperity was the Neo-Assyrian period when the city with local governor’s palace was established and the settlement size reached at least 17 ha. Kar-Assurnasirpal was abandoned by the end of the Neo-Assyrian period, but some domestic remains indicate that the site was occasionally inhabited in later periods. However, Tell Masaikh was used as a cemetery from the Hellenistic period to modern times, with the majority of excavated burials dated to the Late Roman and Umayyad/Abbasid periods (Frank, 2006; Masetti-Rouault and Salmon, 2010). This cemetery covered most part of the site and so far more than 500 human skeletons have been retrieved, together with another c. 40 skeletons from the Middle Bronze Age strata (Sołtysiak and Tomczyk, 2008b). Another Early Islamic cemetery was found at the third site Jebel Mashtale, some 6 km south to Tell Masaikh, with remains of c. 30 individuals excavated during two years of salvage excavations (Sołtysiak and Tomczyk, 2008c). Human remains from all three sites excavated between 1997 and 2006 had been studied by Arkadiusz Sołtysiak in the dig house in Darnaj. Between 2006 and 2011, the fieldwork and bioarchaeological ´ University in Warsaw). Teeth and research was done by Jacek Tomczyk (Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski bone samples were imported to Poland and now are curated in the Department of Bioarchaeology, Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw and in the Department of Anthropology, Cardinal Stefan ´ Wyszynski University in Warsaw. In total, teeth of 350 individuals were suitable for dental non-metric traits scoring, including 111 from Tell Ashara, 229 from Tell Masaikh and 10 from Jebel Mashtale. They were divided into six chronological subsets: Early Bronze Age (EBA, c. 2700–2100 BCE), Middle and Late Bronze Age (MBA, c. 2000–1200 BCE), Early Iron Age and Neo-Assyrian period (INA, c. 1200–600 BCE), Classical and Late Please cite this article in press as: Sołtysiak, A., Bialon, M., Population history of the middle Euphrates valley: Dental non-metric traits at Tell Ashara, Tell Masaikh and Jebel Mashtale, Syria. HOMO - J. Comp. Hum. Biol. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jchb.2013.04.005

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Fig. 1. Map showing the location of sites discussed in the paper. Ancient names are italicized.

Antiquity (CLA, c. 300 BCE–600 CE), Early Islamic, i.e. Umayyad and Abbasid period (ISL, c. 600–1200 CE) and modern Bedouin cemetery (MOD, c. 1800–1950 CE). Because of the high rate of missing teeth, high dental wear rate and, occasionally, considerable postmortem erosion, individual traits could have been scored for less than a half and sometimes even for less than a quarter of individuals. For that reason the INA subset was completely unsuitable for comparisons and not taken into account in further analysis, and the EBA, MBA and MOD subsets were just above the lower acceptable sample size (Table 2). It must be noted that the Late Roman and Early Islamic cemeteries at Tell Masaikh were located in the same part of the site and sometimes the dating of individual burials—often without any grave goods—was based on such a weak criterion as body orientation or position (Frank, 2006). Methods A total number of 59 dental non-metric traits was scored using ASUDAS protocol, which is most commonly used in the research on biodistances in the Near East. To avoid inter-observer error, all Please cite this article in press as: Sołtysiak, A., Bialon, M., Population history of the middle Euphrates valley: Dental non-metric traits at Tell Ashara, Tell Masaikh and Jebel Mashtale, Syria. HOMO - J. Comp. Hum. Biol. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jchb.2013.04.005

Trait

MBA N = 48

INA N = 18

Breakpoint

EBA N = 39

−

+

n

%

n

%

n

CLA N = 92 %

ISL N = 122

MOD N = 31

n

%

n

%

n

%

0–1 0–1 0

2–6 2–6 1

11 10 11

36 0 18

13 13 13

31 0 0

3 3 3

0 0 0

24 24 25

37 0 4

47 47 47

34 11 2

15 14 14

47 7 0

UI2

Shovellinga Tuberculum dentale Interruption groovesa Peg-reduceda

0–1 0–1 0 0

2–6 2–6 1 +

12 13 13 20

33 24 15 5

17 19 17 22

18 26 18 5

4 4 3 6

50 25 0 0

36 37 42 53

17 32 24 2

56 60 56 71

21 33 4 3

14 15 14 19

7 20 0 11

UC

Shovellinga Tuberculum dentalea Mesial canine ridge Distal accessory ridgea

0 0–1 0 0

1–2 2–6 1–3 1–5

14 15 14 14

0 7 0 21

19 19 19 20

5 26 0 20

4 5 4 4

0 40 0 0

40 40 40 39

5 5 5 13

58 60 58 58

2 7 2 9

16 16 17 17

13 19 0 35

UP1

Paracone accessory ridge Accessory marginal tuberclea Root number

0 0 1

+ + 2+

8 8 10

0 37 60

15 15 11

7 33 27

3 3 7

33 0 29

22 22 39

9 14 41

29 30 44

3 20 41

9 10 8

11 40 50

UP2

Paracone accessory ridgea Accessory marginal tubercle Root numbera

0 0 1

+ + 2+

9 9 15

0 22 13

9 9 9

0 22 11

3 3 6

0 0 17

25 25 38

12 12 13

27 27 45

11 22 13

7 7 7

14 29 43

UM1

Hypoconea Carabelli’s trait Cusp 5 Accessory marginal tubercle Root numbera

0–3 0–1 0 0 3–4

4–5 2–7 1–5 1–3 1–2

20 18 13 13 16

85 44 8 15 13

21 17 17 17 10

95 35 6 18 0

8 7 6 6 5

100 43 0 0 0

49 46 40 39 40

94 41 17 21 15

77 60 52 52 46

91 43 15 27 7

15 14 10 10 8

100 43 10 20 0

UM2

Hypocone Carabelli’s trait Cusp 5 Accessory marginal tuberclea Root number

0–3 0–1 0 0 3–4

4–5 2–7 1–5 1–3 1–2

16 14 13 13 13

44 7 8 15 39

22 18 18 18 11

36 6 11 11 9

7 7 5 5 4

100 29 20 0 25

44 35 31 31 45

23 9 6 3 24

54 40 38 38 36

31 7 5 5 31

13 13 12 11 8

46 8 8 9 13

UM3

Hypoconeb Carabelli’s traitb Cusp 5b Accessory marginal tubercleb Root numberb

0–3 0–1 0 0 3–4

4–5 2–7 1–5 1–3 1–2

6 5 6 6 5

0 20 17 0 60

7 6 6 6 8

0 0 33 0 50

1 1 1 1 1

0 0 0 0 100

24 19 20 18 24

0 5 55 0 33

29 24 24 24 20

0 0 4 0 85

6 7 6 6 5

17 14 0 0 40

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Table 2 Dental trait frequencies in six chronological subsets (abbreviations explained in the text).

a

MBA N = 48

INA N = 18

CLA N = 92

ISL N = 122

MOD N = 31

Breakpoint

EBA N = 39

−

+

n 13 9

0 0

16 9

6 0

2 5

0 0

35 43

0 0

50 43

6 0

18 7

22 0

%

n

%

n

%

n

%

n

%

n

%

Distal accessory ridge Root numberb

0 1

+ 2+

LP1

Protoconid accessory ridge Multiple lingual cusp

0 0

+ 1–5

7 7

0 29

12 12

0 33

2 2

0 50

29 29

0 3

33 33

0 15

9 9

11 22

LP2

Protoconid accessory ridgea Multiple lingual cuspa

0 0

+ 1–5

9 9

0 55

11 11

0 82

2 2

0 50

26 27

0 63

30 30

0 57

8 8

13 87

LM1

Hypoconulida Groove patterna Cusp 6a Cusp 7a Protostylida Anterior foveaa Root numbera

0–3 +X 0 0–1 0 0 1–2

4–5 Y 1–5 2–4 1–6 1 3–4

14 11 11 11 12 11 13

50 64 0 0 50 64 8

14 13 12 12 13 14 13

86 46 17 8 54 71 0

6 6 3 3 5 3 5

67 33 0 0 80 67 20

53 46 43 44 50 44 50

66 57 0 7 56 70 2

57 44 43 45 54 45 45

82 52 2 11 50 62 4

17 14 16 15 18 15 9

88 36 13 13 72 40 0

LM2

Hypoconulid Groove pattern Cusp 6 Cusp 7 Protostylid Anterior fovea Root number

0–3 +X 0 0–1 0 0 1–2

4–5 Y 1–5 2–4 1–6 1 3–4

12 12 11 11 11 11 13

8 8 0 0 45 36 0

15 18 15 15 16 15 11

0 6 0 0 56 60 0

1 4 1 1 3 3 4

0 0 0 0 67 100 0

40 49 39 38 43 41 45

5 6 5 0 56 66 2

48 62 44 44 53 44 42

4 16 0 2 47 52 7

14 14 14 14 14 14 9

0 7 0 0 71 50 0

LM3

Hypoconulidb Groove patternb Cusp 6b Cusp 7b Protostylidb Anterior foveab Root numberb

0–3 +X 0 0–1 0 0 1–2

4–5 Y 1–5 2–4 1–6 1 3–4

2 2 2 2 2 2 3

50 50 0 0 0 0 0

3 3 3 3 3 3 3

0 0 0 0 0 0 33

0

21 21 19 19 19 20 21

19 5 0 0 26 70 14

26 29 25 25 28 24 27

12 24 8 4 21 29 4

6 5 6 6 6 6 6

17 40 17 0 17 33 33

a

Traits selected for the second analysis.

b

Traits with no diversity or too low number of teeth.

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Table 2 (Continued )

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Table 3 MMD matrix for all traits except these scored for M3 and LC root number.

EBA MBA CLA ISL MOD

EBA

MBA

CLA

ISL

MOD

– 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.001

0.033 – 0.000 0.000 0.000

0.024 0.021 – 0.000 0.048*

0.023 0.020 0.011 – 0.007

0.037 0.034 0.025 0.024 –

MMD values are given below and standard deviations above the diagonal. Negative MMD values were replaced by 0. * MMD values statistically significant at p < 0.1.

data were recorded by one observer (Marta Bialon). In case of bilateral trait asymmetry, higher score was chosen (after Turner and Scott, 1977; see also Green et al., 1979). Correlations between traits were checked with use of Kendall’s tau correlation coefficient (Irish, 2005). Trait scores expressed in rank scale were dichotomised at breakpoints, which produced highest inter-sample variance for first tooth from a group (e.g., breakpoints for M2 and M3 are the same as for M1). Data for all 350 individuals, separately for six chronological subsets, are presented in Table 2. Due to many missing cells in individual scores, the differences between chronological subsets were explored using Smith’s MMD with Freeman and Tukey angular transformation and correction for small sample size (all formulae after Harris and Sjøvold, 2003; Green and Suchey, 1976; Sjøvold, 1977). MMD values, their standard deviations (after Sjøvold, 1973) and statistical significance were computed using a script written in the R language (Sołtysiak, 2011). The differences between chronological subsets were visualised using a dendrogram for the MMD values obtained with the Ward linkage method. Results Two matrices of MMD values were constructed for five chronological subsets. In the first of them (Table 3) all traits were used except these for which sample size was too low and these with no intersample variability (marked with b in Table 2). Kendall’s tau coefficients were statistically significant for analogical traits in tooth groups (e.g., the shovelling in UI1 and UI2), but the correlation was small to medium ( < 0.4), so no traits were rejected. Most MMD values in this matrix are negative or close to zero and only the distance between CLA and MOD is relatively high. For the second analysis, only traits with positive MMD values for at least 3 per 10 pairs of chronological subsets were selected. From this set of traits, only one analogical trait for the group of teeth was left, with highest average MMD value for all 10 pairs of subsets (e.g., the accessory marginal tubercle of UM2 was selected, and this trait in UM1 was rejected, as it produced the same number of positive inter-pair MMD values but lower average MMD value). Twenty-seven traits passed such a selection, which aimed at highlighting any differences that may have been previously blurred by small sample size. The second matrix (Table 4) again shows no differences between earlier chronological subsets, but the difference between MOD and three out of four earlier subsets becomes now clear (Fig. 2).

Table 4 MMD matrix for selected 27 traits.

EBA MBA CLA ISL MOD

EBA

MBA

CLA

ISL

MOD

– 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.094*

0.047 – 0.005 0.000 0.000

0.033 0.030 – 0.001 0.130**

0.032 0.029 0.015 – 0.059*

0.050 0.048 0.034 0.033 –

MMD values are given below and standard deviations above the diagonal. Negative MMD values were replaced by 0. * MMD values statistically significant at p < 0.1. ** MMD values significant at p < 0.001.

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Fig. 2. Dendrogram for the MMD values from Table 4; Ward linkage method.

Discussion and conclusion Although the sample size is small, obtained results suggest that no major gene flow from other regions occurred in the middle Euphrates valley between the Early Bronze Age and the Umayyad/Abbasid period and dental trait proportions remained surprisingly stable. Such a continuity was expected for the Bronze Age, assuming that both the Amorite and the Aramean expansions were rather related to disequilibrium between farmers and local nomadic pastoralists than to large-scale migrations. However, in the times of great empires, which had begun in the Neo-Assyrian period, higher mobility and immigration of people from more distant regions was suggested by historical sources. The present study, however, shows that this mobility must have been quite superficial and did not affect the local population to such a degree that would change dental trait proportions. It is interesting that the Bronze Age and Early Islamic subsets are closer to each other than to the Classical/Late Antiquity subset, which would be expected as a sign of migrations from more distant regions, such as e.g. Greece and then the Roman Empire, to the region of Tell Ashara. This difference is so small, however, that may be just an artefact of small sample size, but it is possible that further studies on larger datasets may clarify the question of Greek and Roman presence in the middle Euphrates valley. On the other hand, the modern Bedouin population represented by skeletons from the recent cemetery at Tell Ashara differs with respect to dental trait proportions from earlier populations, and this difference may be quite easily observed in spite of small sample size. Such a result was expected taking into account historical sources that recorded population discontinuity between the Mongolian invasion in the 13th century CE and re-population of the region first by the Bedouin tribes coming from a northern part of the Arabian Peninsula in the 17th century and then by farmers from western Syria and southern Anatolia in the early 20th century. Although these migrations were also quite limited in distance (less than 800 km in a straight line), the heavy depopulation during late Middle Ages probably affected local gene pools in the whole Near East and also contributed to observed discontinuity in the history of the middle Euphratean population. Results of the present study may look rather disappointing, but still they throw some new light on the history of northern Mesopotamia. First of all, the continuity of local populations was confirmed not only for early periods, as it was suggested by textual and archaeological evidence, but also for the imperial periods, when a much higher degree of mobility was expected. In spite of the presence of such cosmopolitan cities as Dura Europos or Circesium, the local population did not change substantially before the Mongolian invasion. There are no available estimates of the scale of the 13th century depopulation in northern Mesopotamia, except some anecdotal sources (Venegoni, 2006), Please cite this article in press as: Sołtysiak, A., Bialon, M., Population history of the middle Euphrates valley: Dental non-metric traits at Tell Ashara, Tell Masaikh and Jebel Mashtale, Syria. HOMO - J. Comp. Hum. Biol. (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jchb.2013.04.005

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