Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-15T13:24:39.757Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fleas From Pharaonic Amarna

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

E. Panagiotakopulu
E. Panagiotakopulu*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology & Prehistory, University of Sheffield, Northgate House, West Street, Sheffield S1 4ET, England
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The preservation of ectoparasites in archaeological sites is normally problematic, but the dry environment of the Egyptian desert keeps even the very fragile remains of fleas intact.

Fleas, Siphonaptera, can be divided in three large groups: the sedentary fleas that live in the nest of their hosts, the mobile fleas that still require a nest but can also live on the host, and the stick-tight fleas that attach themselves on the host. The human flea, Pulex irritans L. is one of the mobile fleas, nowadays cosmopolitan, and has been found on a wide range of hosts (Hopla 1980; Cooper 2001). Man evolved in the Old World and although the human flea is closely associated with him, it probably has a New World origin (Hopla 1980: 201; Traub 1985: 408; Buckland & Sadler 1989), as all its congeners are found in the Americas. Donkin (1985) thought that the original host for P. irritans was the peccary (family Tayassuidae). However peccaries do not have relatively permanent nest sites, and Buckland & Sadler (19891, after examining the profiles of different animal hosts, have suggested Cavia porcellus L., the guinea pig (cavy) as the primary host for the flea. C. porcellus was domesticated during the pre-Colombian period for its meat, but its contribution to the South American agricultural economy has always been on a local scale. Recent archaeological finds of Pulex sp. on a pre-Columbian C. porcellus from Peru (Dittmar 2000) support the above hypothesis.

Type
News & Notes
Information
Antiquity , Volume 75 , Issue 289 , September 2001 , pp. 499 - 500
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Buckland, P.C., Buckland, P.I. & Skidmore, P. 1998. Insect remains from GUS: an interim report, in Arneborg, J. & Gullov, H. C. (ed.) Man, culture and environment in ancient Greenland: 74–9. Copenhagen: Danish National Museum & Danish Polar Centre.Google Scholar
Buckland, P.C. & Sadler, J. 1989. A biogeography of the human flea, Pulex irritans L. (Siphonaptera: Pulicidae), Journal of Biogeography 16: 115–20.Google Scholar
Coope, G.R. 1981. Report on the coleóptera from an eleventh-century house at Christ Church Place, Dublin, in Bekker-Nielsen, H., Foote, P. & Olsen, O. (ed.), Proceedings of the Eighth Viking Congress (1977): 51–6. Odense: Odense University Press.Google Scholar
Cooper, J.E. 2001. Fleas, hosts and locations, The Veterinary Record (3 February 2001): 156.Google Scholar
Dittmar, K. 2000. Studies on parts of the 28Sr DNA of 1000 year old fleas (Pulex sp.) recovered from animal mummies from the preincaic Chiribiya Culture, Southern Peru. Abstract 50. Abstracts of 5th International Ancient DNA Conference, Manchester 2000.Google Scholar
Donkin, R.A. 1985. The peccary, with observations on the introduction of pigs to the New World, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 75, pt. 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, K., Huntley, J.P., Allison, E.P., Kenward, H.K. & Morgan, L.M.. 1991. The plant and insect remains from periods 2 and 2–3; The plant and insect remains from Building 1627; Building 1633; The plant and insect remains from the externai areas; The plant and insect remains from period 3B, in MR. McCarthy, The structural sequence and environmental remains from Castle Street, Carlisle: 9–20. Carlisle: Cumberland & Westmoreland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society. Research series 5.Google Scholar
Hopla, CE. 1980. A study of the host associations and zoogeography of Pulex, in Traub, R. & Starcke, H. (ed.), Fleas: 185–207. Rotterdam; Balkema.Google Scholar
Kenward, H.K. & Hall, A.R. 1995. Biological evidence from 16–22 Coppergate. York: Council for British Archaeology/York Archaeological Trust. Archaeology of York 14/7.Google Scholar
Kenward, H.K., Hill, M., Jaques, D., Kroupa, A. & Large, F.. 2000. Evidence from beetles and other insects; evidence for living conditions on the crannog, in Crone, A., The history of a Scottish lowland crannog: excavations at Buiston, Ayrshire, 1989–90: 230–47. Edinburgh: Scottish Trust for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Panagiotakopulu, E. 2001. Fossil records of ectoparasites, Antenna 25; 41–2.Google Scholar
Panagiotakopulu, E. & Buckland, P.C. 1999. The bed bug, Cimex lectularius L. from Pharaonic Egypt, Antiquity 73: 908–11.Google Scholar
Rothschild, M. 1973. Report on a female Pulex irritons in a tenth century Viking pit, Proceedings of the Royal Entomological Society of London 38: 29.Google Scholar
Traub, R. 1985. Coevolution of fleas and mammals, in Kim, K.C. (ed.), Coevolution of parasitic arthropods and mammals: 295–440. New York (NY): Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar