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Investigating the domestication and early management of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) in the Sámi archaeological context from teeth geometric morphometrics

For centuries, reindeer herding has been an integral part of the subsistence, lifeways, economy and cosmology of the Sámi of northern Fennoscandia. Despite its importance, the timing and details of early reindeer domestication are still highly debated. Identifying domesticated individuals in the arc...

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Autores principales: Pelletier, Maxime, Discamps, Emmanuel, Bignon-Lau, Olivier, Salmi, Anna-Kaisa
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10105696/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37061658
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-33422-6
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author Pelletier, Maxime
Discamps, Emmanuel
Bignon-Lau, Olivier
Salmi, Anna-Kaisa
author_facet Pelletier, Maxime
Discamps, Emmanuel
Bignon-Lau, Olivier
Salmi, Anna-Kaisa
author_sort Pelletier, Maxime
collection PubMed
description For centuries, reindeer herding has been an integral part of the subsistence, lifeways, economy and cosmology of the Sámi of northern Fennoscandia. Despite its importance, the timing and details of early reindeer domestication are still highly debated. Identifying domesticated individuals in the archaeological record remains complicated due to the presence of two interbreeding subspecies in Fennoscandia and a mixed socio-economic organisation by Sámi populations, which was mainly a combination of wild reindeer hunting and small-scale reindeer herding. This study proposes methodological improvement for identifying domestic individuals using 2D landmark and sliding semi-landmark based geometric morphometrics on the isolated lower molars of 389 modern specimens, and 90 teeth from four archaeological sites in Finnish Lapland. Our results indicate that despite the significant impact of wear on overall tooth morphology, our protocol is very useful for identifying subspecies (classification accuracy of the two species is between 78 and 91% depending on the wear class) and understanding the morphological changes induced by the domestication process. We suggest that the morphological variation observable among modern populations has been impacted by recent changes in herding strategies in northern Fennoscandia, and that the archaeological domesticated reindeer populations were relatively different, probably due to selection by the Sámi. This study also highlights the importance of using other direct evidence or contextual archaeological data to better trace the early evidence of a domesticated reindeer economy in northern Fennoscandia, and aid in reconstructing the socio-economic changes in Sámi populations over time.
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spelling pubmed-101056962023-04-17 Investigating the domestication and early management of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) in the Sámi archaeological context from teeth geometric morphometrics Pelletier, Maxime Discamps, Emmanuel Bignon-Lau, Olivier Salmi, Anna-Kaisa Sci Rep Article For centuries, reindeer herding has been an integral part of the subsistence, lifeways, economy and cosmology of the Sámi of northern Fennoscandia. Despite its importance, the timing and details of early reindeer domestication are still highly debated. Identifying domesticated individuals in the archaeological record remains complicated due to the presence of two interbreeding subspecies in Fennoscandia and a mixed socio-economic organisation by Sámi populations, which was mainly a combination of wild reindeer hunting and small-scale reindeer herding. This study proposes methodological improvement for identifying domestic individuals using 2D landmark and sliding semi-landmark based geometric morphometrics on the isolated lower molars of 389 modern specimens, and 90 teeth from four archaeological sites in Finnish Lapland. Our results indicate that despite the significant impact of wear on overall tooth morphology, our protocol is very useful for identifying subspecies (classification accuracy of the two species is between 78 and 91% depending on the wear class) and understanding the morphological changes induced by the domestication process. We suggest that the morphological variation observable among modern populations has been impacted by recent changes in herding strategies in northern Fennoscandia, and that the archaeological domesticated reindeer populations were relatively different, probably due to selection by the Sámi. This study also highlights the importance of using other direct evidence or contextual archaeological data to better trace the early evidence of a domesticated reindeer economy in northern Fennoscandia, and aid in reconstructing the socio-economic changes in Sámi populations over time. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-04-15 /pmc/articles/PMC10105696/ /pubmed/37061658 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-33422-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Pelletier, Maxime
Discamps, Emmanuel
Bignon-Lau, Olivier
Salmi, Anna-Kaisa
Investigating the domestication and early management of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) in the Sámi archaeological context from teeth geometric morphometrics
title Investigating the domestication and early management of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) in the Sámi archaeological context from teeth geometric morphometrics
title_full Investigating the domestication and early management of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) in the Sámi archaeological context from teeth geometric morphometrics
title_fullStr Investigating the domestication and early management of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) in the Sámi archaeological context from teeth geometric morphometrics
title_full_unstemmed Investigating the domestication and early management of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) in the Sámi archaeological context from teeth geometric morphometrics
title_short Investigating the domestication and early management of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) in the Sámi archaeological context from teeth geometric morphometrics
title_sort investigating the domestication and early management of reindeer (rangifer tarandus) in the sámi archaeological context from teeth geometric morphometrics
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10105696/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37061658
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-33422-6
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