Using biomarkers from prehistoric human feces to track settlement and agriculture

For researchers who study Earth's past environment, disentangling the effects of climate change from those related to human activities is a major challenge, but now University of Massachusetts Amherst geoscientists have used a biomarker from human feces in a completely new way to establish the first human presence, the arrival of grazing animals and human population dynamics in a landscape.

... D'Anjou carried out the work just north of the Arctic Circle, at Lake Liland in the Lofoten Islands in northern Norway, where humans were thought to have lived in prehistoric settlements from the early Iron Age through the Viking period. They extracted two sediment cores from the lake bottom and used radiocarbon measurements and the presence of volcanic ash from Iceland to establish their chronology. The sediments provided a continuous record extending back roughly 7,000 years. [...] ScienceDaily

Actualización 29-11-12. Rastreando la actividad humana con excrementos
Los arqueólogos usan todo tipo de "marcadores" para rastrear la actividad humana a lo largo del tiempo, pero unos científicos estadounidenses son pioneros en el estudio de elementos poco ortodoxos: excrementos humanos.

Investigadores de una universidad de Estados Unidos fueron capaces de determinar la presencia y el tamaño de poblaciones de hace más de 7.000 años a través del análisis de sus excrementos...