First occurrence of the house mouse (Mus musculus domesticus Schwarz & Schwarz, 1943) in the Western Mediterranean: a zooarchaeological revision of subfossil occurrences

By T. Cucchi, J. Vigne, J. Auffray. 2005

234 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper provides a critical analysis of archaeological small mammal collections in the Mediterranean area, from the Late Glacial to the first centuries AD, to validate the presence/absence of the house mouse through zooarchaeological criteria. The results have been synthesized through a diachronic map, whose chronological phases are related to socio-economic and cultural human evolution. The house mouse (Mus musculus domesticus) progression in the Mediterranean begins with a quick but limited diffusion in the Eastern Mediterranean Basin achieved around the 8th millennium BC. Until the 1st millennium BC, the invasive process seems to have stopped or drastically slowed, despite the increasing opportunities of passive transport during the Bronze Age. During the 1st millennium BC, there was mass colonization by the house mouse of the entire Western Mediterranean Basin and Northern Europe. We propose to explain this chronological gap in the colonization of the Eastern and Western Mediterranean using source-sink theory considering that the western environments acted like sinks until the first millennium BC. At that time the Western Mediterranean was fully opened to Eastern influences and migrations, and the human pressures on the environment drastically increased. This may have favoured definitively the adaptation of the house mouse to the Western commensal niches.

Subfields: Archeology, Ecology, Genetics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cd73459854d487a08a0d8ea3c2e4231c72caa85c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Archeology

1. G. Willcox
2. M. Zeder
3. D. Fuller

In Ecology

1. D. Fuller
2. M. Zeder

In Genetics

1. M. García‐París
2. Xabier Rubio
3. Ainhoa Iraola
4. A. Machordom
5. E. Recuero
6. G. Willcox

Citations in the corpus

• Mitochondrial differentiation and biogeography of Hyla meridionalis (Anura: Hylidae): an unusual phylogeographical pattern (2007, background): “Introductions and translocations have contributed to the composition of communities both in islands and continental areas (Dobson, 1998; Corti et al., 1999; Pleguezuelos, 2002; Cosson et al., 2005; Cucchi et al., 2005).”
• Early Holocene cultivation before domestication in northern Syria (2008, background): “In this report we present new results of identifications of charred plant remains from the sites of Qaramel, Jerf el Ahmar, Dja’de and Tell ‘Abr dated to the tenth and ninth millennia cal B.C. (for the location and dating see Figs.”