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In a previous Current Anthropology article considering the Scandinavian Bronze Age (Ling, Earle, and Kristiansen 2018), a model was proposed to explain the concentration of metal wealth and social stratification under conditions of low population density. This model is now considered to help understand anomalies in the archaeological sequence of eastern Taiwan during the Neolithic and Early Metal Ages. In contrast to Taiwan's agriculturally richer western coast, evidence of complexity arose unexpectedly early on the east despite its more limited agricultural soils and lower populations. We propose that these outcomes resulted from a maritime economy, in which local agricultural surpluses finance distant voyaging that an emergent elite might control. Travels carried a substantial amount of rare nephrite from Taiwan's eastern coast to Island Southeast Asia and the South China Sea. Subsequently, metals and glass technologies were introduced from there into Taiwan. This trade and technological transfer were earliest on the eastern coast, perhaps unexpected because it was more removed from the Chinese mainland, a likely source for cultural transfers. We propose that eastern coast Taiwanese populations developed an entrepreneurial raiding-trading political economy, perhaps involving slaves, that would explain these anomalies. Predating specialized merchant trading, a raiding-trading complex, not unlike later piracy, may have provided broadscale maritime interactions partially responsible for patterned developments of political complexity in this region of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book "Fisher-Hunter-Gatherer Complexity in North America" edited by Christina Perry Sampson explores the concept of complexity among hunter-gatherer societies in North America. The book challenges the traditional binary categorization of simple vs. complex hunter-gatherers and argues for a more nuanced understanding of variability within these societies. The authors emphasize that complexity should not be limited to socioeconomic aspects but should also include other domains such as worldviews, ritual, knowledge, and historical trajectories. However, the reviewer disagrees with the book's premise and argues that complexity should primarily be understood in terms of socioeconomic inequalities. The reviewer also critiques the book for oversimplifying the ethnographic record and creating strawman arguments. Overall, the book does not offer new perspectives but instead attacks traditional concepts of complexity. [Extracted from the article]

The way that feasting contributes to fitness in traditional societies as a risk-reduction strategy is discussed. Feasting creates inflationary food production forces in hunter-gatherer societies which lead ultimately to the domestication of plants and animals.

One of the most common tendencies of human settlements is for larger settlements to display higher population densities. Work in urban science and archaeology suggests that this densification pattern reflects an emergent spatial equilibrium where individuals balance movement costs with social interaction benefits, leading to increases in aggregate productivity and social interdependence. The temporary camps created by hunters and gatherers exhibit a tendency to become less dense with their population size. The different manner in which hunter-gatherer groups express their sociality in residential space suggests that they typically lack the social structures and material technologies necessary for humans to live at greater spatial densities in permanent settlements. Here we examine why this difference occurs and consider conditions under which hunter-gatherer groups may transition to sedentism and densification. We investigate the relationship between population and area in hunter-gatherer camps using a data set representing a large cross-cultural sample derived from the ethnographic literature. We present a model based on the interplay between social interactions and scalar stress that describes the observed patterns among mobile hunter-gatherers. We find that the transition to a densification scheme does not necessary involve domestic food production, only surpluses and storable resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review four examples of ritual or symbolic behavior from the central European Mousterian site of Krapina in present-day Croatia. These include evidence of ritual cannibalism and secondary burials; a cranium of a Neandertal female with 35 mostly parallel postmortem lines inscribed into the forehead; eight talons and an associated foot bone from three or four different white-tailed eagles, all with signs of manipulation and assembly into a necklace, bracelet, or rattle; and a limestone rock with black inclusions that appears to have been carried onto the site as a curiosity. These occur well before any modern Homo sapiens entered Europe and are evidence that the Krapina Neandertals had ritual and symbolic capacities. Along with Krapina, there is mounting evidence from other earlier and later Neandertal sites of behaviors generally exclusively attributed to modern H. sapiens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on data from the Enga of Papua New Guinea, I (1) compare the challenges in organizing collective action for warfare in small-scale societies with those for peacemaking; (2) identify the many different channels of appeal that are interwoven to elicit the cooperation of individuals with different agendas: the rational or pragmatic, the emotional and the ritual; (3) propose that warfare is a dynamic process involving continual change in response to internal group conflicts of interest that generate new institutions, rules, and morals to facilitate collective action; and (4) show how the juxtaposition of war and active peacemaking is an effective strategy for building social complexity. This raises the question of why active peacemaking was relatively rare in small-scale societies or if it indeed was in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burial and commemorative rites form significant components of many routines and activities accompanying the disposal and remembrance of the dead in numerous past and present societies. Various artifacts seem to have had an important role in burial and commemorative rituals and may have been used to reflect social unity and strengthen group identity. Burial-related paraphernalia clearly gained special importance in the southern Levant with the onset of the Natufian culture (ca. 15,000-11,500 calBP), a culture exhibiting cardinal changes in subsistence economy, social behavior, and symbolism. One hallmark of this culture is the appearance of large boulder mortars, massive implements frequently associated with burials and burial grounds, long accepted as a manifestation of technological skill and petrological knowledge. We report the results of a new study of Natufian boulder mortars and their contexts and present novel relevant data. Our conclusions suggest that Natufian boulder mortars share specific traits that go beyond size as well as use contexts. We suggest that they reflect common practices pertaining to Natufian burial and commemorative ceremonies and can be held as indicators of a south Levantine tradition overriding a variety of territorial and group-specific social and symbolic traits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on feasting before cultivation. Feasts characterize communities prior to cultivation or domestication, and such competition played a causal role in the domestication process. The communal structures that the authors refer to in arguing for community and regional integration rituals were too small to accommodate entire social groups.

Comments on Natalie Munro's paper on Levantine Natufian subsistence and domestication. Munro's equation of hunting pressure with food or resource pressure; Little basis for maintaining that human populations in the core area declined in Late Natufian; Factors indicating that the Natufians were complex hunter-gatherers who engaged in substantial feasting and ritual; Assumptions about ritual food.