Lior Weissbrod
I am interested in the evolutionary relationship between human culture and biodiversity and in reconstructing the environments and paleoecology of ancient human settlements. My research has focused on developing taphonomic and ecological approaches to the study of mobile and sedentary use of settlements among complex hunter-gatherers of the Natufian culture in southwest Asia and Neolithic pastoral societies in East Africa. I have been examining these questions through the analysis of microvertebrate remains in archaeological sites in Israel and by studying the ecology of small mammalian species in contemporary settlements in Kenya in an ethnoarchaeological context. Additional projects that I have been involved in include research on microvertebrate assemblages from Iron Age Tel sites in Israel looking at regional settlement variability and on reconstructing paleo-environments of Paleolithic cave sites in Armenia.
Supervisors: Fiona Marshall
Phone: 97248240528
Supervisors: Fiona Marshall
Phone: 97248240528
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Books by Lior Weissbrod
This research was designed to test Tchernov's commensalism hypothesis through a study of seasonally occupied settlements of Maasai pastoralists in East Africa. Methods from ecology, ethnography, and archaeology were used to document the impact of Maasai settlements on associated communities of small rodents and shrews (micromammals), to measure the intensity of human occupation in settlements, and to relate settlement intensity to micromammalian communities. Taphonomic approaches were also used to evaluate the potential for accumulation and preservation of evidence on commensalism in the substrate of the settlements.
The results of the study showed that, in contrast to what we might expect in highly sedentary settings, Maasai settlements increased rather than decreased the biological diversity of local micromammalian communities. Along a gradient of decreasing settlement mobility, but continued seasonal use of settlements, there was no manifest increase in the population of any single species that would amount to pronounced commensalism. This supports the commensalism/sedentism linkage but also suggests more broadly that it should be possible to demarcate distinct contexts of commensalism and related levels of biological diversity in relation to varying intensities of site occupation. These results call for greater investment in systematic fine-recovery and study of variability of micromammalian assemblages at archaeological excavations.
Papers by Lior Weissbrod
extends the time frame for the out-of-Africa presence of anatomically modern humans. It also provides an opportunity to reassess variation in early modern human population responses to climate change in
the Levantine sequence. Information on species ranking and diversity estimations (Shannon functions) is obtained from quantitative data across 31 Levantine assemblages and investigated in a broad
comparative frame using multivariate analyses. Recent models of human-climate interactions in the late Early-Middle Paleolithic of the southern Levant have drawn heavily on on-site associations of human
fossils with remains of micromammals. However, there has been little, if any, attempt to examine the long-term picture of how paleocommunities of micromammals responded qualitatively and quantitatively
to climatic oscillations of the region by altering their compositional complexity. Consequently, our understanding is vastly limited in regard to the paleoecosystem functions that linked past precipitation
shifts to changes in primary producers and consumers or as to the background climatic conditions that allowed for the development of highly nonanalog ancient communities in the region. Although previous
studies argued for a correspondence between alternations in H. sapiens and Neanderthal occupations of the Levant and faunal shifts in key biostratigraphic indicator taxa (such as Euro-Siberian Ellobius versus
Saharo-Arabian Mastomys and Arvicanthis), our data indicate the likelihood that early H. sapiens populations (Misliya and Qafzeh hominins) persisted through high amplitudes of paleoecological and climatic oscillations. It is unlikely, given these results, that climate functioned as a significant filter of early modern human persistence and genetic interactions with Neanderthals in the Levant.
Guy Bar Oz and Lior Weissbrod foretell that even the
smallest fragments will be analyzed for information.
The coming decades will allow researchers to unlock
and decode fully the banks of information which presently
remain hidden in ancient animal bones and teeth.
This research was designed to test Tchernov's commensalism hypothesis through a study of seasonally occupied settlements of Maasai pastoralists in East Africa. Methods from ecology, ethnography, and archaeology were used to document the impact of Maasai settlements on associated communities of small rodents and shrews (micromammals), to measure the intensity of human occupation in settlements, and to relate settlement intensity to micromammalian communities. Taphonomic approaches were also used to evaluate the potential for accumulation and preservation of evidence on commensalism in the substrate of the settlements.
The results of the study showed that, in contrast to what we might expect in highly sedentary settings, Maasai settlements increased rather than decreased the biological diversity of local micromammalian communities. Along a gradient of decreasing settlement mobility, but continued seasonal use of settlements, there was no manifest increase in the population of any single species that would amount to pronounced commensalism. This supports the commensalism/sedentism linkage but also suggests more broadly that it should be possible to demarcate distinct contexts of commensalism and related levels of biological diversity in relation to varying intensities of site occupation. These results call for greater investment in systematic fine-recovery and study of variability of micromammalian assemblages at archaeological excavations.
extends the time frame for the out-of-Africa presence of anatomically modern humans. It also provides an opportunity to reassess variation in early modern human population responses to climate change in
the Levantine sequence. Information on species ranking and diversity estimations (Shannon functions) is obtained from quantitative data across 31 Levantine assemblages and investigated in a broad
comparative frame using multivariate analyses. Recent models of human-climate interactions in the late Early-Middle Paleolithic of the southern Levant have drawn heavily on on-site associations of human
fossils with remains of micromammals. However, there has been little, if any, attempt to examine the long-term picture of how paleocommunities of micromammals responded qualitatively and quantitatively
to climatic oscillations of the region by altering their compositional complexity. Consequently, our understanding is vastly limited in regard to the paleoecosystem functions that linked past precipitation
shifts to changes in primary producers and consumers or as to the background climatic conditions that allowed for the development of highly nonanalog ancient communities in the region. Although previous
studies argued for a correspondence between alternations in H. sapiens and Neanderthal occupations of the Levant and faunal shifts in key biostratigraphic indicator taxa (such as Euro-Siberian Ellobius versus
Saharo-Arabian Mastomys and Arvicanthis), our data indicate the likelihood that early H. sapiens populations (Misliya and Qafzeh hominins) persisted through high amplitudes of paleoecological and climatic oscillations. It is unlikely, given these results, that climate functioned as a significant filter of early modern human persistence and genetic interactions with Neanderthals in the Levant.
Guy Bar Oz and Lior Weissbrod foretell that even the
smallest fragments will be analyzed for information.
The coming decades will allow researchers to unlock
and decode fully the banks of information which presently
remain hidden in ancient animal bones and teeth.