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We show that known archaeological sites in the Wemindji area of central eastern James Bay in Canada are more likely to show higher shoreline stability within a 2 km radius than randomly selected locations. We show that archaeological sites are surrounded by areas of greater diversity in shoreline stability within a 20 km radius than random locations. We propose that a cultural algorithm guides the selection of occupation sites in the region, including by today's Cree occupants, which identifies islands of stability in a sea of change in order to minimize the need for residential mobility while maximizing the diversity of resources available through logistical trips. This algorithm favours residential stability and logistical mobility, and evolved in the context of rapid shoreline displacement caused by post-glacial isostatic land-uplift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the primary goals of the palaeosciences is to produce robust understandings of palaeoecologies of extinct ecosystems. The time has arrived where such palaeoecologies can be significantly improved—agent-based models (ABMs) that synthesize our modern understandings of animal ecology with past conditions provide a unique opportunity for this. The Palaeo-Agulhas Plain (PAP), a now submerged landscape off the south coast of South Africa, formed a novel ecosystem during the lower sea levels of the Pleistocene. Here we provide a review of the utility of ABMs for understanding herbivores in prehistoric environments using the Paleoscape Model. The Paleoscape Model is fortunate to have features models of climate, geology and vegetation upon which we can understand how herbivores used the PAP environment. To incorporate aspects of herbivore behaviour and habitat suitability into the model requires analogies from extant systems. In addition to reconstructions of the availability of resources and associated risks, data on herbivore behaviour and physiology are imperative to our understanding of these systems. Behaviour, driven by changes in the environment, is interpreted by species, leading to selection of suitable habitats ultimately driving the herbivore's decisions within ABMs. Finally, we discuss herbivore integration into these models that can be used in numerous other scenarios (past, present and future). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human populations in Western Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum were geographically constrained to glacial refugia by the severity of the climate and ecological risk factors. In this research we use an agent-based model of human mobility and interaction, based on ethnographic and archaeological data, to explore the impact of ecological risk on human population structure via a reconstructed landscape of habitat suitability. The agent-based model allows us to evaluate the size and location of glacial refugia, the size of the populations occupying them and the degree of genetic relatedness between people occupying these areas. To do this, we model the probability of an agent foraging groups’ survival as a function of habitat suitability. The model’s simulated “genomes” (composed of regionally specific genetic markers) allow us to track long-term trends of inter-regional interaction and mobility. The results agree with previous archaeological studies situating a large glacial refugium spanning southern France and northeastern Spain, but we expand on those studies by demonstrating that higher rates of population growth in this central refugium led to continuous out-migration and therefore genetic homogeneity across Western Europe, with the possible exception of the Italian peninsula. These results concur with material culture data from known archaeological sites dating to the Last Glacial Maximum and make predictions for future ancient DNA studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract At the root of numerous archaeological research projects is a need to understand how mobility impacted the lives of our ancestors. Recent technological advances have made it easy for archaeologists to rely on Geographic Information Systems' least-cost path tools to identify the single easiest path to move between two points set in a realistically rugged landscape; however, least-cost path tools work on the assumption that the whole world is perfectly known, which does not represent human mobility accurately in all cases. Here, we present an agent-based least-cost path (AB-LCP) model, which does not make the assumption of complete landscape knowledge, and allows creating multiple anisotropic least-cost paths that take the traveler's local perspective and incomplete knowledge into consideration. We demonstrate the model's potential through a case study of the geographical distribution of Cantabrian (Spain) Lower Magdalenian engraved scapulae, which provides an interesting extension to current understanding of Magdalenian mobility, showcasing the flexibility and potential of this new LCP tool to study archaeological landscapes. The results of our study suggest that the studied engraved scapulae may have been created at El Castillo, and then brought to Altamira for transmission to other sites. The results show that El Castillo was strategically located on a bottleneck for coastal-to-plain mobility, whereas Altamira was located along social paths connecting other contemporaneous sites. This supports the already-accepted notion that both sites may have served for Upper Paleolithic population aggregation. However, our research builds on this idea by explaining why these two sites would have become so important. We suggest that Altamira was strategically placed near the boundary of inter-regional groups, thus taking the role as an aggregation site for unrelated populations, whereas El Castillo would have been used by the intra-regional group population to congregate during the summer and take advantage of the local mosaic of resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the relationship between the dispersal potential of a hominin population, its local-scale foraging strategies, and the characteristics of the resource environment using an agent-based modeling approach. In previous work we demonstrated that natural selection can favor a relatively low capacity for assessing and predicting the quality of the resource environment, especially when the distribution of resources is highly clustered. That work also suggested that the more knowledge foraging populations had about their environment, the less likely they were to abandon the landscape they know and disperse into novel territory. The present study gives agents new individual and social strategies for learning about their environment. For both individual and social learning, natural selection favors decreased levels of environmental knowledge, particularly in low-heterogeneity environments. Social acquisition of detailed environmental knowledge results in crowding of agents, which reduces available reproductive space and relative fitness. Agents with less environmental knowledge move away from resource clusters and into areas with more space available for reproduction. These results suggest that, rather than being a requirement for successful dispersal, environmental knowledge strengthens the ties to particular locations and significantly reduces the dispersal potential as a result. The evolved level of environmental knowledge in a population depends on the characteristics of the resource environment and afffects the dispersal capacity of the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Increasingly sophisticated hominin cognition is assumed to play an important role in major dispersal events but it is unclear what that role is. We present an agent-based model showing that there is a close relationship between level of foresight, environmental heterogeneity, and population dispersibility. We explore the dynamics between these three factors and discuss how they may affect the capacity of a hominin population to disperse. Generally, we find that high levels of environmental heterogeneity select for increased foresight and that high levels of foresight tend to reduce dispersibility. This suggests that cognitively complex hominins in heterogeneous environments have low dispersibility relative to cognitively less complex organisms in more homogeneous environments. The model predicts that the environments leading up to major episodes of dispersal, such as the initial hominin dispersal into Eurasia, were likely relatively low in spatial heterogeneity and that the dispersing hominins had relatively low foresight. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The origins and significance of an aquatic diet in hominin evolution is a scientific research topic of high significance. Some have argued that marine shellfish collection was a key ingredient in the emergence of modern human behavioral and cultural complexity. The collection of marine resources, which can be productive and predictable, may have evolved into a coastal adaptation that led to reduction in residential mobility and other important changes in behavior and culture. Therefore, studying the emergence and intensity of coastal occupations is important to understand the rise of this particular aspect of modern humans' behavioral and cultural evolution. In this article, we use an agent-based model to explore the interaction between foraging behavior and the environment, and the impact of such interaction on sites' length of occupation, which in turn affects the accumulation of artifacts and ecofacts. The results of the model suggest that the intensive occupation of coastal sites is likely to be influenced by their position within a restricted band of productive coastal habitat. Even when foragers spend most of their time in other habitats, the cyclical reoccupation of coastal sites – due to the coast's cyclical productivity as well as the low number of locations that can be occupied there – could naturally result in higher artifact density in coastal than inland sites. Here, we argue that, given those results, coastal locations should accumulate large and dense deposits of occupation debris. These will be obvious features on the landscape and should be easier to find than inland occupations because of the coastal habitats' confined space. Finally, given the higher find densities of those sites, this may lead archaeologists to overestimate the contribution of marine resources in prehistoric diets. Therefore, what archaeologists have interpreted as intensive coastal adaptation in the past may be more the result of geographical constraints rather than important evolutionary changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The paper implements a methodology for assessing the regional impact of investment grants on foreign direct investment (FDI) location, taking data for U.K. regional policy over the period 1985-2005. Using a Generalized Methods of Moments estimator it finds that each £25 million of grant changes the regional location of about six inward FDI projects. On average, projects have 150 jobs and each job diverted costs £27,500 (1995 prices). It also finds that the size of the area designated for grants has a positive location effect. The effect is small in relation to the overall scale of FDI, which may explain the weak grant effect found in recent plant-based location studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responds to criticisms of the author's theory that greater employment effects of industrial subsidies in small firms arise from the poorer access that these firms have to private funds. Impact of financial constraints on the effectiveness of subsidies; Increase in the effectiveness of assistance with the marginal cost of private funds.

Investigates the build-up and duration of subsidy-induced employment. Analysis of regional policy instruments and other financial assistance payments to industry in the United Kingdom; Firm's access to private funds; Nature of the coefficients on the assistance terms; Substitution of public for private funds.

The Palaeo-Agulhas Plain formed an important habitat exploited by Pleistocene hunter-gatherer populations during periods of lower sea level. This productive, grassy habitat would have supported numerous large-bodied ungulates accessible to a population of skilled hunters with the right hunting technology. It also provided a potentially rich location for plant food collection, and along its shores a coastline that moved with the rise and fall of sea levels. The rich archaeological and paleontological records of Pleistocene sites along the modern Cape south coast of South Africa, which would have overlooked the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain during Pleistocene times of lower sea level, provides a paleoarchive of this extinct ecosystem. In this paper, we present a first order illustration of the " palaeoscape modeling " approach advocated by Marean et al. (2015). We use a resourcescape model created from modern studies of habitat productivity without the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain. This is equivalent to predominant Holocene conditions before recent landscape modifications for farming. We then run an agent-based model of the human foraging system to investigate several research questions. Our agent-based approach uses the theoretical framework of optimal foraging theory to model human foraging decisions designed to optimize the net caloric gains within a complex landscape of spatially and temporally variable resources. We find that during the high sea-levels of MIS 5e (+5–6 m asl) and the Holocene, the absence of the Plain left a relatively poor food base supporting a much smaller population relying heavily on edible plant resources from the current Cape flora. Despite high species diversity of plants with edible storage organs, and marine invertebrates, encounter rates with highly profitable resources were low. We demonstrate that without the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain, human populations must have been small and low-density, and exploited plant, mammal, and marine resources with relatively low caloric returns. The exposure and contraction of the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain was likely the single biggest driver of behavioural change during periods of climate change through the Pleistocene and into the transition to the Holocene. • Agent-based model of Later Stone Age human foraging in coastal South Africa. • Reconstructed food resource landscape including mammals, shellfish, and plants. • Sustainable population is under 20 individuals/100 km^2. • Long foraging days (10 + hours per day) and small groups needed to survive. • Edible plants, including USOs, make up 80% or more of the diet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herbivore distribution throughout Africa is strongly linked to mean annual precipitation. We use that relationship to predict functional group composition of herbivore communities during the last glacial maximum (ca. 21 ka) on the now submerged Palaeo-Agulhas Plain (PAP), South Africa. We used metabolic large herbivore biomass (MLHB) from 39 South African protected areas, in five functional groups (characterized by behavior and physiology). We examined how modern factors influenced MLHB and considered the effects of biome, annual rainfall, percentage winter rainfall, and protected area size. Overall, biome was the most important factor influencing the relationship between MLHB and rainfall. In general, MLHB increased with rainfall, but not for the grassland biome. Outside grasslands, most functional groups' metabolic biomass increased with increasing rainfall, irrespective of biome, except for medium-sized social mixed feeder species in savanna and thicket. Protected area size was influential for medium-sized social mixed feeders and large browsers and rainfall influenced medium-sized social mixed feeders, offering some perspectives on spatial constraints on past large herbivore biomass densities. These results improve our understanding of the likely herbivore community composition and relative biomass structure on the PAP, an essential driver of how early humans utilized large mammals as a food resource. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropogenic climate change is currently driving environmental transformation on a scale and at a pace that exceeds historical records. This represents an undeniably serious challenge to existing social, political, and economic systems. Humans have successfully faced similar challenges in the past, however. The archaeological record and Earth archives offer rare opportunities to observe the complex interaction between environmental and human systems under different climate regimes and at different spatial and temporal scales. The archaeology of climate change offers opportunities to identify the factors that promoted human resilience in the past and apply the knowledge gained to the present, contributing a much-needed, long-term perspective to climate research. One of the strengths of the archaeological record is the cultural diversity it encompasses, which offers alternatives to the solutions proposed from within the Western agro-industrial complex, which might not be viable cross-culturally. While contemporary climate discourse focuses on the importance of biodiversity, we highlight the importance of cultural diversity as a source of resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European Union (EU) enlargement of the mid-2000s is likely to have changed the motives for foreign direct investment (FDI) location between the existing Member States (the EU15) and the new entrants of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs), but it is poorly understood. This paper uses the framework of Dunning's eclectic paradigm and data for 35,105 foreign investments in Europe not only to examine if the motives differ between these, but also how they are affected by the enlargement. Three asset-exploiting motives of market, resource and efficiency seeking are explored using a conditional logit model for the location choice. This is separately for greenfield and brownfield FDI, involving new facilities or jobs, where the latter is efficiency seeking from an expansion or a co-location of functions. The paper finds greenfield FDI in the CEECs seeks an export platform for the EU market and a low-skilled workforce but a national market and higher skills in the EU15. Brownfield FDI differs from this for expansions only, for which the EU market is important, reflecting scale economies. Surprisingly, EU enlargement has a much stronger effect on the FDI location motives in the EU15 by increasing the importance of the European market, which is possibly because the CEEC liberalisation was ongoing throughout the accession process. The paper finds evidence that the differences in the motives between the CEECs and EU15 are narrowing over time, but they are pronounced, and it is argued that they will persist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 8,000 years on the southwest coast of British Columbia there is a transition from assemblages dominated by chipped stone to assemblages that include more ground and polished stone, bone, and antler. In this study, we combine the plentiful data being produced by archaeological consultants and archived in provincial reports with that of more traditional academic sources to assess the nature of the documented transition and specifically determine if there is a major transition ca. 4850 cal B.P. as suggested by Moss et al. (2007). Our results show that not only is there a major transition between 5000 and 4500 cal B.P. but the long-standing conception of a gradual replacement of assemblages dominated by chipped stone to ones dominated by ground stone and faunal tools is inaccurate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There was a period of reduced mobility, increased population density, and social complexity among hunter-gatherers in northern Bothnian prehistory between about 4050 and 2050 cal BC. We argue that this was made possible by a combination of physical and social factors that include the shortening of the coastline due to isostatic land uplift, the reduction of distances between major river mouths along the Bothnian coast, and the local variability in rate of shoreline displacement at individual river mouths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The invention of projectile technology had important ramifications for hominin evolution. However, the number of stone points that could have been used as projectiles fluctuates in archaeological assemblages, making it difficult to define when projectile technology was first widely adopted and how its usage changed over time. Here we use an agent-based model to simulate a hunter-gatherer foraging system where armatures are dropped according to their usage. We explore the impact of interactions between human behaviors and the environmental constraints of a data-informed landscape on the distribution and number of lithic armatures found in archaeological assemblages. We ran 2400 simulations modeling different population sizes, rates of hunting with projectiles, and tool curation levels. For each simulation, we recorded the location of dropped armatures and calculated the number and percentage of used armatures that were discarded at habitation camps vs. lost during hunting. We used linear regression to identify the demographic, behavioral, and environmental factor(s) that best explained changes in these numbers and percentages. The model results show that in a well-controlled environment, most armatures used as projectile weapons are lost or discarded at hunting sites; only ∼4.5% of used armatures (or ∼2 armatures per year of simulation) are discarded in habitation camps where they would likely be excavated. These findings suggest that even rare hafted armatures found in the Early and Middle Stone Age could indicate a well-established use of such tools. Our model shows that interactions between reoccupation of archaeological sites, population size, rate of hunting with projectile weapons, and tool curation levels strongly influence the count of lithic armatures found in archaeological assemblages. Therefore, we argue that fluctuations in the counts of armatures documented at archaeological sites should be evaluated within their demographic and environmental contexts to better understand if they reflect spatiotemporal changes in hunting behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]