Greger Larson
Biographic Data
| ID | 171382 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Greger Larson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Greger |
| FAMILY NAME | Larson |
| SIGNATURE | LARSON G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4092-0392 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 223 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
A deliberately buried canid is not necessarily a dog
What does a bear-baiting assemblage look like? Interdisciplinary analysis of an Early Modern 'sport
Bear baiting was a popular form of entertainment in Shakespearean England that was staged across the country but formalised in the Early Modern entertainment hub on Bankside, London. Here, the authors bring together zooarchaeological, stable isotope and archival evidence in the examination of faunal assemblages from nine archaeological sites on Bankside to elucidate characteristics indicative of bear baiting. In doing so, they present criteria fo…
Redefining the timing and circumstances of the chicken's introduction to Europe and north-west Africa
Little is known about the early history of the chicken ( Gallus gallus domesticus ), including the timing and circumstances of its introduction into new cultural environments. To evaluate its spatio-temporal spread across Eurasia and north-west Africa, the authors radiocarbon dated 23 chicken bones from presumed early contexts. Three-quarters returned dates later than those suggested by stratigraphy, indicating the importance of direct dating. Th…
A Zooarchaeological and Molecular Assessment of Ancient Chicken Remains from Russia
We here conduct ancient DNA analyses on 58 chicken bones from 15 archaeological sites (from the 9th to the 18th century AD) across the Volga region, the Leningrad region, the Pskov region, and the north of the Krasnoyarsk region to investigate genetic diversity of past chicken populations within this geographical area. We find all samples belong to sub-haplogroup E1, ubiquitous throughout the world and dominant in Europe, Africa and the Americas.…
Reconsidering domestication from a process archaeology perspective
Process philosophy offers a metaphysical foundation for domestication studies. This grounding is especially important given the European colonialist origin of ‘domestication’ as a term and 19th century cultural project. We explore the potential of process archaeology for deep-time investigation of domestication relationships, drawing attention to the variable pace of domestication as an ongoing process within and across taxa; the nature of domest…
Celebrating Easter, Christmas and their associated alien fauna
Easter and Christmas are the most important events in the Christian calendar. Despite their global \nreach and cultural significance astonishingly little is known about the festivals’ genesis. Equally \nobscure is our understanding of the animals that have come to be associated with these celebrations \n– notably the Christmas Turkey and the Easter ‘Bunny’ (brown hare and the European rabbit). Like \nChristianity, none of these animals are native…
A landmark-based approach for assessing the reliability of mandibular tooth crowding as a marker of dog domestication
Tooth crowding is one of several criteria used to infer the process of domestication in the zooarchaeological record. It has been primarily used to support claims of early animal domestication, perhaps most contentiously in claims for the existence of so-called “proto-domestic” dogs as early as the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic. Tooth crowding studies vary in their methodological approaches, and interpretation of the resulting data is constrained by …
Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions
The exhibition of increasingly intensive and complex niche construction behaviors through time is a key feature of human evolution, culminating in the advanced capacity for ecosystem engineering exhibited by Homo sapiens . A crucial outcome of such behaviors has been the dramatic reshaping of the global biosphere, a transformation whose early origins are increasingly apparent from cumulative archaeological and paleoecological datasets. Such data …
Genomic and archaeological evidence suggest a dual origin of domestic dogs
A dogged investigation of domestication The history of how wolves became our pampered pooches of today has remained controversial. Frantz et al. describe high-coverage sequencing of the genome of an Irish dog from the Bronze Age as well as ancient dog mitochondrial DNA sequences. Comparing ancient dogs to a modern worldwide panel of dogs shows an old, deep split between East Asian and Western Eurasian dogs. Thus, dogs were domesticated from two s…
The use of close-range photogrammetry in zooarchaeology: Creating accurate 3D models of wolf crania to study dog domestication
Close-range photographic techniques - including photogrammetry - are becoming common tools for constructing three-dimensional (3D) models of artifacts, particularly in archaeological research. Whether models obtained through photogrammetry can be used for zooarchaeological studies requires a systematic examination. In the context of research into dog domestication, we explore whether 3D models of wolf crania, obtained through a photogrammetric ap…
Mitogenomics of the Extinct Cave Lion, Panthera spelaea (Goldfuss, 1810), Resolve its Position within the Panthera Cats
The extinct cave lion (Panthera spelaea) was an apex predator of the Pleistocene, and one of the largest felid species ever to exist. We report the first mitochondrial genome sequences for this species, derived from two Beringian specimens, one of which has been radiocarbon dated to 29,860 ± 210 14C a BP. Phylogenetic analysis confirms the placement of the cave lion as the sister taxon to populations of the modern lion (P. leo). Using newly recov…
Current perspectives and the future of domestication studies
It is difficult to overstate the cultural and biological impacts that the domestication of plants and animals has had on our species. Fundamental questions regarding where, when, and how many times domestication took place have been of primary interest within a wide range of academic disciplines. Within the last two decades, the advent of new archaeological and genetic techniques has revolutionized our understanding of the pattern and process of …
The Evolution of Animal Domestication
The domestication of plants and animals over the past 11,500 years has had a significant effect not just on the domesticated taxa but also on human evolution and on the biosphere as a whole. Decades of research into the geographical and chronological origins of domestic animals have led to a general understanding of the pattern and process of domestication, though a number of significant questions remain unresolved. Here, building upon recent the…
The zooarchaeological application of quantifying cranial shape differences in wild boar and domestic pigs (Sus scrofa) using 3D geometric morphometrics
The process of domestication increases the variety of phenotypes expressed in animals. Zooarchaeologists have attempted to study these changes osteologically in their search for the geographic and temporal origins of initial animal domestication during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. Traditional biometric approaches have explored broad changes in body size over time, but this approach provides poor resolution. Here we investigate whether…
Exploring the complexity of domestication: A response to Rowley-Conwy and Zeder
International audience
Pig Domestication and Human-Mediated Dispersal in Western Eurasia Revealed through Ancient DNA and Geometric Morphometrics
Zooarcheological evidence suggests that pigs were domesticated in Southwest Asia ~8,500 BC. They then spread across the Middle and Near East and westward into Europe alongside early agriculturalists. European pigs were either domesticated independently or more likely appeared so as a result of admixture between introduced pigs and European wild boar. As a result, European wild boar mtDNA lineages replaced Near Eastern/Anatolian mtDNA signatures i…
Using traditional biometrical data to distinguish West Palearctic wild boar and domestic pigs in the archaeological record: New methods and standards
Rethinking dog domestication by integrating genetics, archeology, and biogeography
The dog was the first domesticated animal but it remains uncertain when the domestication process began and whether it occurred just once or multiple times across the Northern Hemisphere. To ascertain the value of modern genetic data to elucidate the origins of dog domestication, we analyzed 49,024 autosomal SNPs in 1,375 dogs (representing 35 breeds) and 19 wolves. After combining our data with previously published data, we contrasted the geneti…
The long and winding road: Identifying pig domestication through molar size and shape
Genetics and Domestication: Important Questions for New Answers
The recent ability to extract genetic data from archaeological remains of wild and domestic animals has opened up a new window onto the history and process of domestication. This article summarizes the impact of that new perspective derived from both modern and ancient DNA and presents a discussion of the validity of both the methods and conclusions. In general I address the use of post hoc conclusions and the lack of starting hypotheses to infor…
Ancient DNA typing of archaeological pig remains corroborates historical records
The Pigs of Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific: New Evidence for Taxonomic Status and Human-Mediated Dispersal
This paper undertakes a major survey of the genus Sus from Island Southeast Asia and specifically attempts to re-examine the taxonomic status of the pigs of Wallacea, in order to re-evaluate the complex evidence for human mediated dispersal. This was undertaken using the combined approach of tooth outline and mitochondrial DNA analysis. The data provide clear evidence for three dispersal events: The first involved domesticated pigs, originating f…
Ancient DNA, pig domestication, and the spread of the Neolithic into Europe
The Neolithic Revolution began 11,000 years ago in the Near East and preceded a westward migration into Europe of distinctive cultural groups and their agricultural economies, including domesticated animals and plants. Despite decades of research, no consensus has emerged about the extent of admixture between the indigenous and exotic populations or the degree to which the appearance of specific components of the “Neolithic cultural package” in E…
Phylogeny and ancient DNA of Sus provides insights into neolithic expansion in Island Southeast Asia and Oceania
Human settlement of Oceania marked the culmination of a global colonization process that began when humans first left Africa at least 90,000 years ago. The precise origins and dispersal routes of the Austronesian peoples and the associated Lapita culture remain contentious, and numerous disparate models of dispersal (based primarily on linguistic, genetic, and archeological data) have been proposed. Here, through the use of mtDNA from 781 modern …
Worldwide Phylogeography of Wild Boar Reveals Multiple Centers of Pig Domestication
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences from 686 wild and domestic pig specimens place the origin of wild boar in island Southeast Asia (ISEA), where they dispersed across Eurasia. Previous morphological and genetic evidence suggested pig domestication took place in a limited number of locations (principally the Near East and Far East). In contrast, new genetic data reveal multiple centers of domestication across Eurasia and that European, rather tha…
The long and winding road: Identifying pig domestication through molar size and shape
Reconsidering domestication from a process archaeology perspective
Process philosophy offers a metaphysical foundation for domestication studies. This grounding is especially important given the European colonialist origin of ‘domestication’ as a term and 19th century cultural project. We explore the potential of process archaeology for deep-time investigation of domestication relationships, drawing attention to the variable pace of domestication as an ongoing process within and across taxa; the nature of domest…
The Pigs of Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific: New Evidence for Taxonomic Status and Human-Mediated Dispersal
This paper undertakes a major survey of the genus Sus from Island Southeast Asia and specifically attempts to re-examine the taxonomic status of the pigs of Wallacea, in order to re-evaluate the complex evidence for human mediated dispersal. This was undertaken using the combined approach of tooth outline and mitochondrial DNA analysis. The data provide clear evidence for three dispersal events: The first involved domesticated pigs, originating f…
The zooarchaeological application of quantifying cranial shape differences in wild boar and domestic pigs (Sus scrofa) using 3D geometric morphometrics
The process of domestication increases the variety of phenotypes expressed in animals. Zooarchaeologists have attempted to study these changes osteologically in their search for the geographic and temporal origins of initial animal domestication during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. Traditional biometric approaches have explored broad changes in body size over time, but this approach provides poor resolution. Here we investigate whether…
The use of close-range photogrammetry in zooarchaeology: Creating accurate 3D models of wolf crania to study dog domestication
Close-range photographic techniques - including photogrammetry - are becoming common tools for constructing three-dimensional (3D) models of artifacts, particularly in archaeological research. Whether models obtained through photogrammetry can be used for zooarchaeological studies requires a systematic examination. In the context of research into dog domestication, we explore whether 3D models of wolf crania, obtained through a photogrammetric ap…
Using traditional biometrical data to distinguish West Palearctic wild boar and domestic pigs in the archaeological record: New methods and standards
A landmark-based approach for assessing the reliability of mandibular tooth crowding as a marker of dog domestication
Tooth crowding is one of several criteria used to infer the process of domestication in the zooarchaeological record. It has been primarily used to support claims of early animal domestication, perhaps most contentiously in claims for the existence of so-called “proto-domestic” dogs as early as the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic. Tooth crowding studies vary in their methodological approaches, and interpretation of the resulting data is constrained by …
Mitogenomics of the Extinct Cave Lion, Panthera spelaea (Goldfuss, 1810), Resolve its Position within the Panthera Cats
The extinct cave lion (Panthera spelaea) was an apex predator of the Pleistocene, and one of the largest felid species ever to exist. We report the first mitochondrial genome sequences for this species, derived from two Beringian specimens, one of which has been radiocarbon dated to 29,860 ± 210 14C a BP. Phylogenetic analysis confirms the placement of the cave lion as the sister taxon to populations of the modern lion (P. leo). Using newly recov…
Genetics and Domestication: Important Questions for New Answers
The recent ability to extract genetic data from archaeological remains of wild and domestic animals has opened up a new window onto the history and process of domestication. This article summarizes the impact of that new perspective derived from both modern and ancient DNA and presents a discussion of the validity of both the methods and conclusions. In general I address the use of post hoc conclusions and the lack of starting hypotheses to infor…
Redefining the timing and circumstances of the chicken's introduction to Europe and north-west Africa
Little is known about the early history of the chicken ( Gallus gallus domesticus ), including the timing and circumstances of its introduction into new cultural environments. To evaluate its spatio-temporal spread across Eurasia and north-west Africa, the authors radiocarbon dated 23 chicken bones from presumed early contexts. Three-quarters returned dates later than those suggested by stratigraphy, indicating the importance of direct dating. Th…
Celebrating Easter, Christmas and their associated alien fauna
Easter and Christmas are the most important events in the Christian calendar. Despite their global \nreach and cultural significance astonishingly little is known about the festivals’ genesis. Equally \nobscure is our understanding of the animals that have come to be associated with these celebrations \n– notably the Christmas Turkey and the Easter ‘Bunny’ (brown hare and the European rabbit). Like \nChristianity, none of these animals are native…
Exploring the complexity of domestication: A response to Rowley-Conwy and Zeder
International audience
Ancient DNA typing of archaeological pig remains corroborates historical records
Worldwide Phylogeography of Wild Boar Reveals Multiple Centers of Pig Domestication
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences from 686 wild and domestic pig specimens place the origin of wild boar in island Southeast Asia (ISEA), where they dispersed across Eurasia. Previous morphological and genetic evidence suggested pig domestication took place in a limited number of locations (principally the Near East and Far East). In contrast, new genetic data reveal multiple centers of domestication across Eurasia and that European, rather tha…
Ancient DNA, pig domestication, and the spread of the Neolithic into Europe
The Neolithic Revolution began 11,000 years ago in the Near East and preceded a westward migration into Europe of distinctive cultural groups and their agricultural economies, including domesticated animals and plants. Despite decades of research, no consensus has emerged about the extent of admixture between the indigenous and exotic populations or the degree to which the appearance of specific components of the “Neolithic cultural package” in E…
Phylogeny and ancient DNA of Sus provides insights into neolithic expansion in Island Southeast Asia and Oceania
Human settlement of Oceania marked the culmination of a global colonization process that began when humans first left Africa at least 90,000 years ago. The precise origins and dispersal routes of the Austronesian peoples and the associated Lapita culture remain contentious, and numerous disparate models of dispersal (based primarily on linguistic, genetic, and archeological data) have been proposed. Here, through the use of mtDNA from 781 modern …
The Pigs of Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific: New Evidence for Taxonomic Status and Human-Mediated Dispersal
This paper undertakes a major survey of the genus Sus from Island Southeast Asia and specifically attempts to re-examine the taxonomic status of the pigs of Wallacea, in order to re-evaluate the complex evidence for human mediated dispersal. This was undertaken using the combined approach of tooth outline and mitochondrial DNA analysis. The data provide clear evidence for three dispersal events: The first involved domesticated pigs, originating f…
Ancient DNA typing of archaeological pig remains corroborates historical records
Genetics and Domestication: Important Questions for New Answers
The recent ability to extract genetic data from archaeological remains of wild and domestic animals has opened up a new window onto the history and process of domestication. This article summarizes the impact of that new perspective derived from both modern and ancient DNA and presents a discussion of the validity of both the methods and conclusions. In general I address the use of post hoc conclusions and the lack of starting hypotheses to infor…
Rethinking dog domestication by integrating genetics, archeology, and biogeography
The dog was the first domesticated animal but it remains uncertain when the domestication process began and whether it occurred just once or multiple times across the Northern Hemisphere. To ascertain the value of modern genetic data to elucidate the origins of dog domestication, we analyzed 49,024 autosomal SNPs in 1,375 dogs (representing 35 breeds) and 19 wolves. After combining our data with previously published data, we contrasted the geneti…
The long and winding road: Identifying pig domestication through molar size and shape
Pig Domestication and Human-Mediated Dispersal in Western Eurasia Revealed through Ancient DNA and Geometric Morphometrics
Zooarcheological evidence suggests that pigs were domesticated in Southwest Asia ~8,500 BC. They then spread across the Middle and Near East and westward into Europe alongside early agriculturalists. European pigs were either domesticated independently or more likely appeared so as a result of admixture between introduced pigs and European wild boar. As a result, European wild boar mtDNA lineages replaced Near Eastern/Anatolian mtDNA signatures i…
Using traditional biometrical data to distinguish West Palearctic wild boar and domestic pigs in the archaeological record: New methods and standards
Current perspectives and the future of domestication studies
It is difficult to overstate the cultural and biological impacts that the domestication of plants and animals has had on our species. Fundamental questions regarding where, when, and how many times domestication took place have been of primary interest within a wide range of academic disciplines. Within the last two decades, the advent of new archaeological and genetic techniques has revolutionized our understanding of the pattern and process of …
The Evolution of Animal Domestication
The domestication of plants and animals over the past 11,500 years has had a significant effect not just on the domesticated taxa but also on human evolution and on the biosphere as a whole. Decades of research into the geographical and chronological origins of domestic animals have led to a general understanding of the pattern and process of domestication, though a number of significant questions remain unresolved. Here, building upon recent the…
The zooarchaeological application of quantifying cranial shape differences in wild boar and domestic pigs (Sus scrofa) using 3D geometric morphometrics
The process of domestication increases the variety of phenotypes expressed in animals. Zooarchaeologists have attempted to study these changes osteologically in their search for the geographic and temporal origins of initial animal domestication during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. Traditional biometric approaches have explored broad changes in body size over time, but this approach provides poor resolution. Here we investigate whether…
Exploring the complexity of domestication: A response to Rowley-Conwy and Zeder
International audience
Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions
The exhibition of increasingly intensive and complex niche construction behaviors through time is a key feature of human evolution, culminating in the advanced capacity for ecosystem engineering exhibited by Homo sapiens . A crucial outcome of such behaviors has been the dramatic reshaping of the global biosphere, a transformation whose early origins are increasingly apparent from cumulative archaeological and paleoecological datasets. Such data …
Genomic and archaeological evidence suggest a dual origin of domestic dogs
A dogged investigation of domestication The history of how wolves became our pampered pooches of today has remained controversial. Frantz et al. describe high-coverage sequencing of the genome of an Irish dog from the Bronze Age as well as ancient dog mitochondrial DNA sequences. Comparing ancient dogs to a modern worldwide panel of dogs shows an old, deep split between East Asian and Western Eurasian dogs. Thus, dogs were domesticated from two s…
The use of close-range photogrammetry in zooarchaeology: Creating accurate 3D models of wolf crania to study dog domestication
Close-range photographic techniques - including photogrammetry - are becoming common tools for constructing three-dimensional (3D) models of artifacts, particularly in archaeological research. Whether models obtained through photogrammetry can be used for zooarchaeological studies requires a systematic examination. In the context of research into dog domestication, we explore whether 3D models of wolf crania, obtained through a photogrammetric ap…
Mitogenomics of the Extinct Cave Lion, Panthera spelaea (Goldfuss, 1810), Resolve its Position within the Panthera Cats
The extinct cave lion (Panthera spelaea) was an apex predator of the Pleistocene, and one of the largest felid species ever to exist. We report the first mitochondrial genome sequences for this species, derived from two Beringian specimens, one of which has been radiocarbon dated to 29,860 ± 210 14C a BP. Phylogenetic analysis confirms the placement of the cave lion as the sister taxon to populations of the modern lion (P. leo). Using newly recov…
A landmark-based approach for assessing the reliability of mandibular tooth crowding as a marker of dog domestication
Tooth crowding is one of several criteria used to infer the process of domestication in the zooarchaeological record. It has been primarily used to support claims of early animal domestication, perhaps most contentiously in claims for the existence of so-called “proto-domestic” dogs as early as the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic. Tooth crowding studies vary in their methodological approaches, and interpretation of the resulting data is constrained by …
Celebrating Easter, Christmas and their associated alien fauna
Easter and Christmas are the most important events in the Christian calendar. Despite their global \nreach and cultural significance astonishingly little is known about the festivals’ genesis. Equally \nobscure is our understanding of the animals that have come to be associated with these celebrations \n– notably the Christmas Turkey and the Easter ‘Bunny’ (brown hare and the European rabbit). Like \nChristianity, none of these animals are native…
A Zooarchaeological and Molecular Assessment of Ancient Chicken Remains from Russia
We here conduct ancient DNA analyses on 58 chicken bones from 15 archaeological sites (from the 9th to the 18th century AD) across the Volga region, the Leningrad region, the Pskov region, and the north of the Krasnoyarsk region to investigate genetic diversity of past chicken populations within this geographical area. We find all samples belong to sub-haplogroup E1, ubiquitous throughout the world and dominant in Europe, Africa and the Americas.…
Reconsidering domestication from a process archaeology perspective
Process philosophy offers a metaphysical foundation for domestication studies. This grounding is especially important given the European colonialist origin of ‘domestication’ as a term and 19th century cultural project. We explore the potential of process archaeology for deep-time investigation of domestication relationships, drawing attention to the variable pace of domestication as an ongoing process within and across taxa; the nature of domest…
Redefining the timing and circumstances of the chicken's introduction to Europe and north-west Africa
Little is known about the early history of the chicken ( Gallus gallus domesticus ), including the timing and circumstances of its introduction into new cultural environments. To evaluate its spatio-temporal spread across Eurasia and north-west Africa, the authors radiocarbon dated 23 chicken bones from presumed early contexts. Three-quarters returned dates later than those suggested by stratigraphy, indicating the importance of direct dating. Th…
What does a bear-baiting assemblage look like? Interdisciplinary analysis of an Early Modern 'sport
Bear baiting was a popular form of entertainment in Shakespearean England that was staged across the country but formalised in the Early Modern entertainment hub on Bankside, London. Here, the authors bring together zooarchaeological, stable isotope and archival evidence in the examination of faunal assemblages from nine archaeological sites on Bankside to elucidate characteristics indicative of bear baiting. In doing so, they present criteria fo…
A deliberately buried canid is not necessarily a dog
Biology (22 works) · Geography (20 works) · Archaeology (17 works) · Domestication (13 works) · Wildlife Ecology and Conservation (13 works) · Ecology (12 works) · Ecology (11 works) · Zoology (11 works) · Genetic and phenotypic traits in livestock (9 works) · Demography (8 works)