Search

Indigenous hunter-gatherers view the world differently than do WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) societies. They depend—as in prehistoric times—on intimate relationships with elements such as animals, plants and stones for their successful adaptation and prosperity. The desire to maintain the perceived world-order and ensure the continued availability of whatever is necessary for human existence and well-being thus compelled equal efforts to please these other-than-human counterparts. Relationships of consumption and appreciation characterized human nature as early as the Lower Palaeolithic; the archaeological record reflects such ontological and cosmological conceptions to some extent. Central to my argument are elephants and handaxes, the two pre-eminent Lower Palaeolithic hallmarks of the Old World. I argue that proboscideans had a dual dietary and cosmological significance for early humans during Lower Paleolithic times. The persistent production and use of the ultimate megaherbivore processing tool, the handaxe, coupled with the conspicuous presence of handaxes made of elephant bones, serve as silent testimony for the elephant–handaxe ontological nexus. I will suggest that material culture is a product of people's relationships with the world. Early humans thus tailored their tool kits to the consumption and appreciation of specific animal taxa: in our case, the elephant in the handaxe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Short-term hunter-gatherer residential camps have been a central feature of human settlement patterns and social structure for most of human evolutionary history. Recent analyses of ethnohistoric hunter-gatherer data show that across different environments, the average size of hunter-gatherer bands is remarkably constant and that bands are commonly formed by a small number of coresident families. Using ethnoarchaeological data, we examine the relationship between the physical infrastructure of camps and their social organization. We compiled a dataset of 263 ethnoarchaeologically observed hunter-gatherer camps from 13 studies in the literature. We focus on both the scale of camps, or their average size, structure, and composition, and the dynamics that governed their variation. Using a combination of inferential statistics and linear models, we show that the physical infrastructure of camps, measured by the number of household features, reflects the internal social organization of hunter-gatherer bands. Using scaling analyses, we then show that the variation among individual camps is related to a predictable set of dynamics between camp area, infrastructure, the number of occupants, and residence time. Moreover, the scale and dynamics that set the statistical variance in camp sizes are similar across different environments and have important implications for reconstructing prehistoric hunter-gatherer social organization and behavior from the archaeological record. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on local paleohydrological changes experienced by the Las Pitas and Miriguaca Rivers in the south-central Andes of Argentina and their impacts on hunter-gatherers as they transitioned to food-producing communities 7000-3000 cal. yr B.P. Paleoenvironmental reconstruction based on geomorphology, alluvial sedimentology, and diatom evidence indicates a dry phase of reduced streamflow between ca. 6700 and 4800 cal. yr B.P. for the Las Pitas River, and 6600 and 3000 cal. yr B.P. for the Miriguaca River. A phase of more humid environmental conditions commenced after ca. 4900 cal. yr B.P. along the Las Pitas River, and after 3000 cal. yr B.P. along the Miriguaca River. Differences in the chronology and magnitude of hydrological changes along both rivers are related to topographic and hydrological characteristics of their respective watersheds. Higher catchment elevation and enhanced orographic precipitation favored greater sensitivity for the Las Pitas River to short humid events during the middle-to-late Holocene. The archaeological evidence suggests that the paleohydrological changes within these catchments played a significant role in human occupational dynamics such that the Las Pitas River offered better environmental conditions for human occupation relative to the Miriguaca River as foragers increasingly relied on plant and animal domestication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous experiments have demonstrated that exposure to faces can change the perception of normality in new faces, such that faces similar to those at exposure appear more normal. Here we examined how experience influences adaptation effects in African Hadza hunter-gatherers, who have limited experience with White faces. We exposed participants to sets of either Hadza or White European faces that were manipulated to possess either wide-spaced or narrow-spaced eyes. We collected normality judgments both pre-exposure and post-exposure by showing pairs of images, one with wide-spaced and one with narrow-spaced eyes. Examining the difference between the pre-exposure and post-exposure judgments revealed that participants selected an increased number of images that were congruent with the faces to which they had been exposed. The change in normality judgments was strongest for White faces, suggesting that representations of White ethnicity faces are more malleable and less robust to adaptation, potentially because of the decreased experience that individuals had with them. A second experiment using the same test stimuli with a sample of White participants revealed equivalent adaptation effects for both Hadza and White faces. These data highlight the role of experience on the high-level visual adaptation of faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ontologies and epistemologies of hunter-gatherers have attracted growing attention in recent years as these people are undergoing changes. We examine these changes, focusing on one particular case based on our studies of the South Indian Nayaka; they have recently added cultivation and animal husbandry to their partially ongoing hunting and gathering life-style. Resisting analysis based on an assumed forest/domesticated dichotomy, we show that forest and domesticated animals and plants are both regarded as sentient co-dwellers in some cases, and as objects in others, depending not on what they are in essence, or where they are, but on when, by whom, and for what purpose they are approached. We argue that pockets of utilitarian framing emerge within the continuing relational epistemology of the Nayaka along with a growing departure from immediacy in the production-consumption nexus. In these pockets, the vivid presence of animals and plants is concealed, and they no longer appear as persons but as things. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Siberia's increasingly important role in the study of the emergence of pottery across northern Eurasia. The world's earliest pottery comes from Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherer sites in East Asia. This material is typically seen as disconnected from later pottery traditions in Europe, which are generally associated with sedentary farmers. However, new evidence suggests that Asian and European pottery traditions may be linked to a Hyperborean stream of hunter-gatherer pottery dispersals that spanned eastern and western Asia, and introduced pottery into the prehistoric societies of northern Europe. As a potential bridge between the eastern and western early pottery traditions, Siberia's prehistory is therefore set to play an increasingly central role in one of world archaeology's most important debates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropologists have long been fascinated by the isolated hunter-gatherer populations in Southeast Asia (SEA) collectively known as 'Negritos.' However, the origins and affinities of these groups remain unresolved. Negritos are characterized by their short stature, dark skin color, and wiry hair, and they inhabit the Philippines, Malay Peninsula, and the Andaman Islands. Among Philippine Negritos, the Batak are of particular interest in understanding population interactions in the region due to their location on Palawan Island, which likely formed a corridor by which human migrations entered the rest of the Philippine archipelago from Island SEA. Here, we extend current understanding of the distribution of genetic diversity in Negritos by presenting the first analysis of mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome diversity among the Batak. We show that the Batak are genetically distinct from Negritos of the Andaman Islands and Malay Peninsula and instead bear most resemblance to geographically proximate Philippine Negritos and to non-Negrito populations from the Philippines and Island SEA. An extensive degree of recent admixture between the Batak and their neighbors is indicated by the high frequency of recently coalescing haplogroups in the Batak that are found throughout Island SEA. The comparison of results from these two loci further lends support to the hypothesis that male-biased admixture has, in particular, been a prominent feature of the interactions between the Batak and surrounding non-Negrito populations. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2011. © 2011 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Domesticated animals spread from their ancestral heartland in northern Africa and southwestern Asia into eastern and southern Africa after 4000 BP. Three theories account for the relatively slow spread of domesticated animals into the southern latitudes between 4000 and 3000 BP. The first theory posits that arid climates hindered the dispersal of domesticated animals beyond the Lake Turkana basin until pluvial conditions set in after 3000 BP. The second theory argues that epizootic diseases were the inhibiting factors. Finally, indigenous cultural reticence to alter their primary modes of subsistence in favor of animal husbandry accords with the archaeological data from sites that date to this period. A single normative paradigm explaining the shift from a primarily foraging subsistence economy to one that relied heavily on domesticates is unlikely. This review of the current archaeological and paleoenvironmental state of knowledge finds the "static frontier" likely resulted from a combination of all of these factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeological research in the Middle Fraser Canyon of British Columbia offers significant opportunities for advancing our knowledge of the development of dense aggregate villages and complex social relations among hunter-gatherer-fisher peoples. our research indicates that these villages developed after 2000 cal B.P., grew in size during the subsequent millennium, and developed patterns of inter-household wealth-based inequalities in approximately the inal three centuries prior to abandonment. these indings contrast with conclusions drawn by Hayden primarily during the 1980s. Hayden and Mathewes (2009) now offer a broad critique of these results. Given that a new generation of archaeologists is initiating research in the Mid-Fraser, it seems time to review the current state of knowledge and to outline new theoretical models, hypotheses, and methodological approaches (e.g., application of applied geophysics to Mid-Fraser village investigations) to help guide the development of research in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hildebrandt et al. offer this rather vitriolic challenge to our conclusions on the Diablo Canyon fauna in order to recast the data in favor of their view that major diachronic trends in western North American prehistory are the product of an increase in men's prestige hunting over time. Here we respond, first by discussing our view of the relationship between historical contingencies and behavioral ecological models, second by showing that the patterns they find in a regional faunal dataset result only from inappropriate aggregation of bone counts, third by questioning the potential prestige value of highly vulnerable species, and finally by making the case that standard behavioral ecological models, punctuated by historical contingencies, provide more parsimonious, albeit less fanciful, explanations for patterning in the western North American faunal record. We conclude by suggesting that when practitioners attempt to explain away empirical variability in order to support a favored hypothesis, it might be time to acknowledge that the hypothesis has failed to take flight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from a single site along the central California coast (CA-SLO-2), Jones et al. (2008) critique our use of human behavioral ecology to explain changing hunting and fishing adaptations in prehistoric California and the Great Basin. Instead, they argue that human adaptations tend to stay relatively stable over time until they are influenced by historical contingencies. We question the utility of using data from a single site, and expand the sample with information from several deposits along the south-central coast. This expanded sample documents a dynamic evolutionary sequence characterized by increasing residential stability accompanied by hunting and fishing in more distant resource patches. Access to these patches, both terrestrial and marine, was made possible by changes in social organization and technology. Many of these behaviors appear to have incurred high costs, and are potentially explained with reference to costly signaling theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Chilena de Antropologia is the property of Universidad de Chile and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Female and male skeletal remains from early cemetery sites on the Western Gulf Coastal Plain of North America were analyzed to assess secular changes in stature across time. Sample populations consisted of hunter-gatherers and date from the Middle Archaic (3000-1500 B.C.), the Late Archaic (1500 B.C.-A.D. 600), and the Late Prehistoric (A.D. 600-1500) time periods. Results display a slight decline in average statures between the Middle and Late Archaic, but a more than 2.5 cm increase in stature from the Late Archaic to the Late Prehistoric. All populations achieved at least 94.9 percent of modern adult statures. Compared with historically documented nineteenth- and twentieth-century populations, prehistoric Texas foragers enjoyed a level of nutrition greater than that of nineteenth-century working class Europeans, Caribbean slaves, and twentieth-century hunter-gatherers. Average estimated statures were comparable with upper class nineteenth-century Europeans. Results of the study are consistent with the archeological consensus that the pre-historic hunter-gatherers of the Texas Gulf Coastal Plain practiced a conservative but highly successful hunting and gathering subsistence strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of a Geographic Information System (GIS) in the study of lithic procurement patterns provides crucial information about energy expenditure and territoriality of prehistoric communities. Cost-weight analyses calculate proxy energetic expenditures of agents who transport lithic materials from a quarry to the nearest habitation site. Illustrating energy expenditure values onto maps helps us understand changes in toolstone procurement patterns through time. Comparing energy expenditure values from one time period to another also demonstrates when agents developed the sense of territoriality. This research investigates how the central Mesa Verde Puebloans utilised resources on their landscape from A.D. 600 to 1280. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prehistoric sites with depictions of trees are fewer and farther apart than those exhibiting their animal and human counterparts in southern African rock art. Even so, this arboreal subject matter occupies a unique position in hunter-gatherer belief and folkloric systems. From extant ethnographic testimonies concerning trees, this report assesses the graphic features and associations of these depictions and recognizes their peculiar ontological and unifying force at the interface of the animal and human worlds. The significance of this oddity is inferable primarily from their generic physical form, which leads to their elevated metaphysical status in hunter-gatherer folklore, cosmology, and belief. While the outward arboreal appearance may be the most obvious in registering peculiarities that were in turn granted liminal status in hunter-gatherer cosmologies, it appears that some of this uniqueness may have derived from their invisible chemical properties of which very little is known in southern Africa at present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estudios Atacameños is the property of Estudios Atacamenos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Different hypotheses identifying factors affecting the complexity of implements used to obtain food resources by hunter-gatherer groups are assessed with regression analysis. A regression model based on interaction between growing season as a proxy measure for risk and number of yearly moves fits data on the complexity of implements for 20 hunter-gatherer groups. The interaction model leads to a division of hunter-gatherer groups into two subgroups that correspond to collector vs. forager strategies for procuring resources. Implications of the interaction model for the evolution of complex implements are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: During the years 1996 and 1997, a team of the Laboratory of Prehistory, National Museum of Natural History, Paris, and of the Departments of Archaeology, Karachi and Peshawar University, Pakistan, leads the first prehistoric field investigation in the District of Chitral, Hindu Kush, close to the Wakhan Corridor (the Amu Daria course in the Pamir). Problematics are the origins and the becoming of the Epipaleolithic/Neolithic hunters-gatherers known in the Pamir Plateau and the Gissar Range, the lithics tradition of which share common roots with the Sub-Himalayan Soanian tradition (Mode 1). A second field investigation has been conduced in the North West India, where Soan developed from Early Pleistocene, in the Frontal Range of the Siwaliks and Himachal Pradesh during the years 2003, 2005 and 2006 in cooperation with the Department of Archaeology and Museums of Punjab, India. New discoveries in both countries support new hypothesis for the understanding of human evolution in Asia and Homo sapiens origins. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses evidence of interpersonal violence manifested on the human skeletal remains of South African hunter-gatherers dated to approximately 2400-3000 Before Present (BP). The author addresses variations in adult body size in the human remains, the excavation of archaeological sites in the Cape Fold mountains in southwestern Africa, and research on the Holocene epoch. The archaeological excavation of four burial sites are presented including the Mouth of the Modder River site, the Melkbosstrand site, the Snuifklip site, and the Andrieskraal site, all in South Africa. Topics include patterns of foraging among the hunter-gatherers, cranial injuries to adults and children, and evidence of reduced adult stature between 4000 and 2000 BP.

Fertility inheritance, a phenomenon in which an individual's number of offspring is positively correlated with his or her number of siblings, is a cultural process that can have a strong impact on genetic diversity. Until now, fertility inheritance has been detected primarily using genealogical databases. In this study, we develop a new method to infer fertility inheritance from genetic data in human populations. The method is based on the reconstruction of the gene genealogy of a sample of sequences from a given population and on the computation of the degree of imbalance in this genealogy. We show indeed that this level of imbalance increases with the level of fertility inheritance, and that other phenomena such as hidden population structure are unlikely to generate a signal of imbalance in the genealogy that would be confounded with fertility inheritance. By applying our method to mtDNA samples from 37 human populations, we show that matrilineal fertility inheritance is more frequent in hunter-gatherer populations than in food-producer populations. One possible explanation for this result is that in hunter-gatherer populations, individuals belonging to large kin networks may benefit from stronger social support and may be more likely to have a large number of offspring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the influence of sedentary and semi-sedentary ‘tribally’ organized Eastern Woodlands and Middle Missouri horticultural villagers on Canadian plains hunter-gatherer social organization during the millennium prior to European contact. So-called tribal organization of Canadian plains bison hunters has been suggested to have been caused by the acquisition of domesticated horses from Europeans, which enabled the ritualized mass killing of bison, large group size and a more complex material culture. That is, the complex culture of plains groups at the time of European contact is held to be the result of that contact. It is clear, however, that the material culture correlates of semi-sedentism, complexity and tribal social organization begin to appear in the archaeological record of the Canadian plains with the development of horticultural villages to the south and east, and the appearance of certain aspects of village material culture (primarily specific types of pottery and lithic raw materials) in Canadian plains archaeological assemblages well prior to any European influence. Expansion of horticulture slowed dramatically upon encountering the plains peoples who, I suggest, adopted certain aspects of the culture of their horticultural neighbours and sometime invaders, including a segmentary tribal social organization, sodalities and limited use of traded horticultural products, primarily maize. By adopting a communal bison-hunting subsistence system that included the construction of gathering facilities such as pounds and jumps, people were able to increase their food production capabilities while reinforcing their tribal social structure. These cultural changes would have occurred as a result of resistance to the expansion of apparently aggressive horticultural neighbours combined with acculturation to a changing world system of food production. The complex culture of Canadian plains peoples appeared well prior to the appearance of Europeans and is an indigenous development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While “Pygmy” hunter-gatherers have generally been assumed to be the original inhabitants of the central African rainforest, recent studies dispute the viability of subsistence in tropical rainforests through foraging alone. There are, however, few studies that are based on sound data of actual long-term foraging. This paper examines the viability of “pure” foraging in tropical rainforests, based on data from participant observation of a long-term foraging expedition among the Baka in the northwestern Congo Basin. The group was observed to subsist solely on wild food resources, particularly wild yams, for two-and-half months. The study was carried out during the dry season when food resources are generally thought to be scarce in tropical rainforests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conditions in Late Holocene Australia, including variable and unpredictable environments, reliance on a wide array of food resources, relatively low population densities, some degree of mobility, and shared access to land and waters, contrast sharply with those posited as conditions for the emergence of complexity among hunter-gatherer societies such as those of the Northwest Coast of North America. Nevertheless, Aboriginal societies varied considerably in a number of ways, including resources of male power. In particular, the article contrasts features of ‘reproductive power’ in the high- and very-high-polygyny societies of the north coast of Australia with those of other regions of the continent. High to very high polygyny developed in areas with relatively high population density and certain forms of kin classification and engendered considerable inequality among patrigroups, but various social and environmental conditions imposed constraints on the development of enduring hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homo sapiens sapiens had spread into most diverse environments by the end of the Pleistocene, but many islands were not settled until the Holocene. One explanation is that because of space and resource limitations in many island environments, it was difficult for hunter-gatherers to survive there. Although some islands were colonized successfully by hunter-gatherers, agriculture may have been necessary to settle many islands permanently. Islands successfully colonized by hunter-gatherers were large, close to continents or larger islands, or had abundant marine resources (especially large sea mammals), or a combination of these elements. Relatively small and remote, the Ryukyu Islands south of Japan, were not characterized by the conditions mentioned above. The first humans who successfully colonized the Okinawa group of islands were “Late” Jomon people. In this paper, I examine subsistence strategies of prehistoric Okinawans using recent faunal and floral data, demonstrating that they lived on the islands using a foraging-based economy. In the process, I explore the reasons hunter-gatherers were able successfully to colonize Okinawa island environments for several thousand years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the way in which patterns of human occupation and geomorphic processes interacted to produce a highly structured distribution of artifacts and hearths over a period of over 3,000 years at the Allen site (25FT50), a Paleoindian campsite in southwestern Nebraska. Despite accumulation of roughly a meter of sediment, artifact concentrations remained in almost exactly the same horizontal locations throughout the period of site occupation. Hearth locations varied considerably, but were virtually always located in areas of low artifact density. Considered in light of ethnoarchaeological studies of hunter-gatherer site structure, our data indicate that the excavated portion of the site was at the periphery of a domestic area and was used for secondary discard and other purposes. Trash appears to have been collected and discarded onto previously existing and continuously visible middens throughout the occupation, and new hearths appear to have been located to avoid these middens. We discuss the implications of these patterns for current models of Paleoindian landuse on the Plains and for studies of hunter-gatherer site structure in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Variation in subsistence-related material culture is an important aspect of the archaeological and ethnographic records, but the factors that are responsible for it remain unclear. Here, we examine this issue by evaluating four factors that may affect the diversity and complexity of the food-getting tools employed by hunter-gatherer populations: 1) the nature of the food resources; 2) risk of resource failure; 3) residential mobility; and 4) population size. We apply step-wise multiple regression analysis to technological and ecological data for 20 hunter-gatherer populations from several regions of the world. The analyses support the hypothesis that risk of resource failure has a significant impact on toolkit diversity and complexity. The results do not support the hypothesis that the characteristics of the resources exploited for food influence toolkit structure, or that residential mobility affects toolkit diversity and complexity. They are also not in line with the hypothesis that population size has an impact on toolkit structure. While our analyses appear to strongly support the suggestion that resource failure risk is the primary influence on hunter-gatherer toolkit structure, we argue that it would be premature to discount the other factors at this stage, and outline the steps that we believe need to be taken next. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article first examines several anthropological studies to illustrate some substantial limitations of the concepts of ‘reciprocity’ and ‘exchange’ as applied to food sharing among hunter-gatherer societies. I then propose a new typology of food sharing for identification, classification, description, and comparison. The new typology includes nine types of sharing: giving based on rules, voluntary giving, demand giving, exchange based on rules, voluntary exchange, demand exchange, redistribution based on rules, voluntary redistribution, and demand redistribution. Finally, I demonstrate the utility of the new typology by using it to analyze food sharing among two Inuit groups in the Canadian Arctic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time-averaged deposits characterize a substantial portion of the archaeological record in the northern Great Plains and contain significant information regarding hunter-gatherer land use over long periods of time. This paper explores the research potential of time-averaged deposits in a portion of central North Dakota, focusing on hunter-gatherer land use for approximately 2,700 years. Using non-site methods, the intensity of temporally extensive place use, or persistence, is assessed according to the spatial and compositional structure of surface features, and this distribution is evaluated according to subsurface deposits. While this study suggests that highly persistent places tend to be located near wooded areas, relatively far from wetlands, in slightly higher elevations, and where good views are available; these variables in themselves do not sufficiently explain the variation in long-term settlement persistence found throughout this portion of central North Dakota. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies in the Andean mountains of central Chile allow us to identify, the coexistence of two different ways of life in the same territory during the Early Ceramic period (350 B. C. to A.D. 900). On the one hand, one way of life corresponds to a populations of hunter-gatherers who continued the Archaic tradition, especially in economic aspects and in a mainly curated lithic technology, while acquiring a few pots from other ceramic-producing groups. On the other hand, a second way of life corresponds to a semi-sedentary population with a horticultural economy, a developed ceramic technology, and a mainly expedient lithic assemblage. Both populations coexisted and interacted until around A.D. 900. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The largest movements and replacements of human populations since the end of the Ice Ages resulted from the geographically uneven rise of food production around the world. The first farming societies thereby gained great advantages over hunter-gatherer societies. But most of those resulting shifts of populations and languages are complex, controversial, or both. We discuss the main complications and specific examples involving 15 language families. Further progress will depend on interdisciplinary research that combines archaeology, crop and livestock studies, physical anthropology, genetics, and linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The earliest food producers in Africa were mobile pastoralists who left limited archaeological traces. As a result archaeologists studying the spread of food production in the region have difficulty distinguishing early pastoralists from hunter-gatherers with whom they interacted. This geo-ethnoarchaeological study contributes to the resolution of the problem through identification of sediments distinctive of livestock enclosures, and thus of pastoral settlements. Sediments were sampled in and around currently occupied and recently abandoned Maasai livestock enclosures ranging in age between one and 40 years. Twenty to thirty years after site abandonment, there is no visible difference between enclosure and regional sediments. Micromorphological, mineralogical, and phytolith analyses, of enclosure sediments, however, allow differentiation of enclosure from regional sediments. Our results show that a unique undulating microlaminated structure is distinctive of enclosure sediments. Enclosure sediments, especially small stock, also contain a rare mineral, monohydrocalcite (CaCO3 . H2O). In addition, large amounts of opal (SiO2 . nH2O), in the form of phytoliths, are found in enclosure relative to regional sediments. These differences are likely to be preserved in the archaeological record, and this approach will allow better understanding of the spread of pastoralism in Africa and elsewhere. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Yakuts of northeastern Siberia are a Turkic-speaking population of horse- and cattle-breeders surrounded by Tungusic-speaking reindeer-herders and hunter-gatherers. Archaeological and ethnohistorical data suggest that Yakuts stem from a common ancestral population with the Buryats living near Lake Baikal. To address this hypothesis, we obtained sequences of the first hypervariable segment (HV1) of the mitochondrial DNA control region from Yakuts and Buryats and compared these with sequences from other Eurasian populations. The mtDNA results show that the Buryats have close affinities with both Central Asian Turkic groups and Mongols, while the Yakuts have close affinities with northeast- ern Siberian, Tungusic-speaking Evenks and south Siberian, Turkic-speaking Tuvans. This different ancestry of the Yakuts and the Tuvans (compared with other Turkicspeaking groups) most likely reflects extensive admixture that occurred between Turkic-speaking steppe groups and Evenks as the former migrated into Siberia. Moreover, the Yakuts are unique among Siberian populations in having a high number of haplotypes shared exclusively with Europeans, suggesting, contrary to the historical record, that occasionally Yakut men took Russian women as wives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first Europeans who visited the Waterberg region during the 19th century encountered people known in derogatory terms as the Vaalpense or Masele. Interaction between the autochthonous hunter-gatherer and forming communities resulted in the emergence of this subordinate class of mixed descent. Their origins, way of life, interactive relationships and incorporation into African former groups are examined in this contribution. The hunter-gatherers of the Waterberg in present-day Limpopo Province shared the landscape with Iron Age farmers and, finally, European hunters and sewers. Several features of this contact situation are reconstructed through archaeological investigations as well as written accounts by contemporary observers. Such sources inform on how they negotiated their relationships with each other over time. The establishment of networks of interdependence, the appropriation of the hunter-gatherer beliefs and ritual localities by dominant groups, the displacement of and the incorporation of some of the hunter-gatherers into black communities and the final disintegration of the hunting-gathering society are among the issues dealt with. In other ports of southern Africa economic differentiation caused the incorporation of hunters into stock-owning groups arid the gradual emergence of herding people with a different social organisation from hunters, and it would seem chat similar processes were set in motion in the Waterberg, ultimately resulting in the formation of a group of mixed descent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animals in the role of guides and messengers are found in the texts (artistic, ritual, mythological and written) of many traditions, with the significance of the animals' presence going beyond the merely aesthetic or fanciful. The animal-related shamanic practice of hunter-gatherer cultures has influenced later world religions. Written texts can be divided into the mystical, concerning experience; the philosophical, concerning ideas; the devotional, concerning sacred places and utterances; and the ethical. Two important narratives provide examples of zoophilic ethical principles supporting ontological claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of the so called "hunting-gathering societies" has done necessary to make a revision of the proposals that many specialists in the thematic have exposed. With the help of the elements of analysis and evaluation of the proposal of theoretical analysis of Manuel Gándara, the internal congruence of four proposals of characterization of these societies is evaluated, and the advantages and disadvantages that these proposals have are exposed in relation to other theories against which they compete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decades, a wave of family law reforms has shaken the very foundations of family law as known in the West over the past centuries. Strict gender equality has been introduced, the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children has been abolished, divorce has been facilitated, and the borderlines between marriage and cohabitation and between heterosexual and homosexual relations are fading. Is this new family law historically unique? A broad historical and intercultural comparison undertaken to answer this question shows that a remarkable and unexpected substantive similarity can be observed between the family laws of the contemporary West and the folkways of some hunter-gatherer societies. This is explained by the fact that in both types of society, as opposed to nearly all other societies on the record, the social function of family law is reduced (or on its way to being reduced) to organizing fathers for newborn children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeologists interested in the late prehistory of the Southeast have tended to fix their attention on sedentary, mound-building agricultural groups, often excluding those that lacked farming and institutionalized societal ranking, the hallmarks of Mississippian life. Coastal societies of the period given any consideration are usually those depicted as most similar to interior Mississippian chiefdoms; that is, coastal groups dependent on fish and other wild resources, with supplementary swidden agriculture and hierarchical sociopolitical organization. Southeastern North America, however, was not a socially and politically uniform landscape, and not all late prehistoric groups were farmers, nor were they all organized as chiefdoms. This article focuses on the St. Johns 11 peoples of northeastern Florida, who were coastal fisher-hunter-gatherers with a communally oriented political economy during the early Mississippi period (AD 900–1250). These coastal peoples were not cut off from the Mississippian world, but rather were actively engaged in interaction and exchange networks that brought utilitarian artifacts, exotica, and information to northeastern Florida. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several claims have been made about genetic engineering (GE) in comparison with crop domestication and classical plant breeding, including the similarity of genetic changes between those taking place during domestication and by GE, the increased speed and accuracy of GE over classical plant breeding, and the higher level of knowledge about the actual genes being transferred by GE compared with classical breeding. In reviewing evidence pertaining to these claims, I suggest that (i) it is unlikely that changes introduced by GE will make crops weedier, although exceptions have been noted, (ii) changes brought about by GE currently often involve gain-of-function mutations, whereas changes selected during domestication generally involve loss-of-function mutations, (iii) adoption of GE cultivars has been much faster than any previous introduction and spread of agriculture that occurred earlier but has occurred at about the same rate as the spread of cultivars obtained by plant breeding, (iv) introduction of agriculture reduced the health of agriculturists compared with that of hunter-gatherers, suggesting that introduction of innovations do not automatically improve well being, (v) although GE is not a substitute for plant breeding, it can significantly contribute to plant breeding by generating additional genetic diversity, (vi) uncertainties associated with the site of insertion of transgenes in the genome and the expression of transgenes following insertion, makes GE less rapid and precise than originally claimed, and (vii) a potential advantage of GE over classical breeding is the knowledge of the actual gene(s) being inserted, although few cases of unwanted gene introductions through classical plant breeding have been documented. Further advances in GE will increase the precision of the technique, its relevance to consumers, and its environmental friendliness. What is most needed are evenhanded, case-by-case assessments of the benefits and potential pitfalls of... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reconstructions of the Equatorial forest in Central Africa fuel the debate on whether hunter-gatherers at the end of the Pleistocene were capable of living in or off the forest prior to the advent of agriculture. Their traces are rare and often reduced to their stone equipment. In an attempt to see to what extent technology and environmental exploitation are interrelated, all Central African sites dated between 40,000 and 12,000 B.P. are analyzed for their material culture, the environmental setting at the time of the occupation, and the exploitation of that environment. Although the evidence is still circumstantial, two large technological traditions have been recognized in Central Africa at the end of the Pleistocene, the Lupemban and microlithic industries, and both are associated with a variety of environments. This, in combination with a fragmented forest and concomitant increase of ecotone during the Last Glacial Maximum, would have enhanced rather than hampered human occupation in the area. It may be argued that the inherent flexibility and capability of exploiting a variety of environments enabled the hunter-gatherer communities to face and adapt to environmental changes regardless of stone technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the hunter-gatherer human adaptation patterns in Tamil Nadu, India. Environmental background; Systematic archaeological research; Test excavations.

Past Aboriginal hunter-gatherer adaptation is modelled in Western Australia's 'lower South-west' — an informally named archaeological study area incorporating coastal and immediate hinterland districts from the Swan Region southward to Cape Leeuwin and then eastward to King George Sound. The modelling is principally based on Stanner's concepts of estate ownership and interpenetrative ranges, and is developed regionally through review of ethnohistoric records describing the mobile systems of land usage practiced by Nyungar-speaking groups in this most south-westerly part of the South-western cultural bloc. These records show that the ecological and demographic viability of these contiguously distributed open systems was sustained through reciprocal arrangements between families, local descent groups and bands, at times interacting in larger groupings provisionally termed 'middle-tier' socio-economic units. Five ethnologically recorded 'tribal' or 'dialect' group territories reaching across the study area provide the biogeographical and topographical framework for this systemic model, framed within parameters of spatial, demographic and social behaviour formulated for the European Palaeolithic. The regional record of archaeological sites classifiable as congregative or dispersive supports the territorial and socio-economic modelling. Site complexes in the Leeuwin-Naturaliste Region and the Swan Region reflect adaptive systems existing through a broad span of Late Quaternary time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consequences of early agricultural development in several regions of the Old and New Worlds included population growth, the spread of new material cultures and of food-producing economies, the expansions of language families, and in many cases the geographical expansions of the early farming populations themselves into territories previously occupied by hunters and gatherers. This chapter discusses some of the different outcomes that can be expected according to the differing perspectives of archaeology, linguistics, and biological anthropology. I argue that agriculturalist expansion lies at the root of many of the world's major language families, although this need not imply that farmers always replaced hunter-gatherers in the biological sense. History, enviromental variations, and prior cultural configurations dictated many of the outcomes, some of which played a fundamental role in the large-scale genesis of human cultural and biological patterning from Neolithic/Formative times into the world of today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the child-rearing system of Efe foragers of the Ituri Forest, Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to the study, the infants have received care from many individuals other than their mothers from birth into early childhood, under the Efe foragers' child-rearing system. The study has emphasized that from an explosion of research on animal behavior since the 1960s, three general hypotheses have come to dominate ecological perspectives on apparently altruistic parenting behaviors, these include nepotism, reciprocity, and learning-to-mother.

Paleoclimatic data indicate that the Pleistocene/Holocene transition was a period of considerable ecological change in the Caledon Valley of the southern African interior. Stone artefact assemblages from sites in one part of this region, the Phutiatsana ea Thaba Bosiu (PTB) Basin of western Lesotho, were analyzed in order to investigate whether changes in settlement and subsistence strategies during this period are also reflected in the organization of lithic technologies. It appears that although technological solutions to the problems of subsistence risk may have been emphasized during the late Pleistocene, social means, such as exchange, dominated at the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary. Subsequent innovation or adoption of new formal tool types suggests that both strategies were important from the middle Holocene onwards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the aspects of physical form, diet, and settlement pattern in the southern Cape, South Africa, and consider the extent to which the findings are consistent with the ethnographically derived picture of Southern African hunter-gatherers. Information on the past 10,000 years in the southern Cape is discussed. Body size and population history of the Khoisan people is provided. The use of stable nitrogen and/or carbon isotope measurements of archaeological human skeletons to reconstruct diet have been used by several studies.