Ten Square Miles Surrounded By Reality? Materialising Alternative Economies Using Local Currencies

This article examines the success of paper‐based alternative currencies in facilitating convivial, sustainable localised economies. Based on fieldwork in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, it discusses the capacity of activists to create alternative forms of currency that communicate the organisers’ visions of a localised economy, before examining material practices: for whom do the currencies work, and who struggles to use them? Using insights from a diverse economies perspective, the article argues that we cannot read off the likelihood of an economic actor using the currency from the extent of their local economic embeddedness: economic actors in similar positions respond to the same stimuli in different ways, and local business owners and activists can form productive alliances to develop their shared project. The article concludes by arguing that local currencies should be used more proactively to stimulate new forms of concrete local production to meet locally identified needs.     

Scaling alternative economic practices? Some lessons from alternative currencies

This paper engages with recent geographical debates on alternative economic practices, arguing that insufficient attention has been paid to the scale at which they operate. Through an analysis of recent attempts to 'fix' economic activity at a scale felt to be normatively desirable through alternative currencies, the paper argues that when attempting to build non-capitalist practices, scale matters. The paper discusses processes of financial structuration that limit and channel these spaces through an analysis of localized alternative networks in the UK (Local Exchange Trading Schemes – LETS) and the geographically wider barter networks in Argentina.     

Human Ecology of Shellfish Exploitation at a Prehistoric Fishing-Farming Village on the Pacific Coast of Mexico

ABSTRACT

Shellfish remains excavated from an early agricultural village on the Pacific Coast of Mexico (Guerrero) indicate a dietary shift from locally obtained estuarine shellfish (1400–1100 BC) to a greater diversity of mollusks collected from more distant marine environments (900–500 BC). The timing of this shift suggests that it occurred as human populations increased and impacted the availability of local estuarine resources. We argue that this prompted the incorporation of a more diverse array of shellfish species harvested at greater distances or obtained via trade, possibly with the use of boats to transport shellfish and other resources back to the village.     

Domesticated Landscapes: The Subsistence Ecology of Plant and Animal Domestication

Harvesting different species as foods or raw materials calls for differing skills depending on the species being harvested and the circumstances under which they are being taken. In some situations and for some species, the tactics used are mainly behavioral—that is, people adjust, or adapt, their own actions to fit the behavior and circumstances of the species they are taking. Under other circumstances and for other species, the skills and tactics used may call for greater environmental preparation or manipulation. Therefore, instead of trying to distinguish people today and in the past as either foragers or farmers, it makes sense to define human subsistence behavior as an interactive matrix of species and harvesting tactics, that is, as a provisions spreadsheet.     

Risk-senstive adaptive tactics: Models and evidence from subsistence studies in biology and anthropology

Risk-sensitive analysis of subsistence adaptations is warranted when (i) outcomes are to some degree unpredictable and (ii) they have nonlinear consequences for fitness and/or utility. Both conditions are likely to be common among peoples studied by ecologicll anthropologists and archaeologists. We develop a general conceptual model of risk. We then review and summarize the extensive empirical literatures from biology and anthropology for methodological insights and for their comparative potential. Risk-sensitive adaptive tactics are diverse and they are taxonomically widespread. However, the anthropological literature rarely makes use of formal models of risk-sensitive adaptation, while the biological literature lacks naturalistic observations of risk-sensitive behavior. Both anthropology and biology could benefit from greater interdisciplinary exchange.     

Late Holocene Great Basin prehistory

Late Holocene Great Basin prehistory is a spatial and temporal mosaic of lifeways related to changing physical and social environments. Evidence shows changes in technology, subsistence, foraging tactics, and population density, though the causes of these changes are still under investigation. Current research has emphasized the role of wetlands and, related to this, the so-called Numic expansion, whose timing and nature are still poorly understood. Behavioral ecology applied to a macroregional scale probably offers the most useful approach to solving this and other issues, given the exigencies of hunter-gatherer archaeology in a desert environment.     

微生物分子生态学技术在文物保护中应用的进展

微生物分子生态学技术近年来在文物保护研究中得到了广泛的应用,已经成为控制文物被微生物侵害的一个不可或缺的工具。本研究较系统地总结了国内外利用微生物分子生态学技术进行文物保护研究的进展,为更有效防治微生物危害侵蚀文物,进而长久的保存文物提供理论支持。     

Behavioral Ecology and Archaeology

Behavioral ecology is the study of adaptive behavior in relation to social and environmental circumstances. Analysts working from this perspective hold that the reproductive strategies and decision-making capacities of all living organisms—including humans—are shaped by natural selection. Archaeologists have been using this proposition in the study of past human behavior for more than 30 years. Significant insights on variation in prehistoric human subsistence, life history, social organization, and their respective fossil and archaeological consequences have been among the more important results.     

Pilgrimage as costly signal: Religiously motivated cooperation in Chaco and Nasca

Religiously motivated cooperation in the form of pilgrimage is a neglected element in discussions of the dynamics of cooperative behavior among humans. In this paper, we invoke costly signaling theory to propose how pilgrimage centers emerge in some contexts. On one hand, as has been suggested by other scholars, monumental centers are costly signals of the authority and influence of competing centers’ leadership, which can include the leaders’ influence over supernatural forces. We argue that equally important is the pilgrimage itself, which serves as a costly signal of the pilgrims’ commitment to the religious system and the beliefs and values associated with it; this in turn facilitates cooperation and other prosocial behaviors among pilgrims who otherwise might be strangers. To explore the utility of this approach to pilgrimage, we compare Chaco Canyon in the US Southwest and Cahuachi in the Nasca region of Peru, two prestate sociocultural settings in which pilgrimage was an important component in maintaining cooperation, group cohesion, and identity. While specific patterns are distinct in each society, we argue that pilgrimage had a significant impact in the development of both prosocial behavior and religious leadership in Chaco and Nasca.     

游客时空行为与保护教育感知研究——以香港海洋公园为例

传统的时空间行为研究建立在均质人、机械人的假设基础上.游客时空行为作为客观制约和主观选择的共同结果,对其展开研究时加入游客情感变化分析有助于理解行为环境与游客行为的互动关系.本研究关注游客时空行为过程中的保护教育感知,以香港海洋公园为案例地,展开游客时空行为跟踪调查和控制教育环境线路的实验组调查.分析发现:①游客行为分...     

Modeling wood acquisition strategies from archaeological charcoal remains

Archaeological charcoal remains are often used to reconstruct local woodland composition in the past, but rarely address how and why people may have selected specific woody taxa for particular purposes. Models from the field of human behavioral ecology predict that people forage for wood resources by taking into account the relative usefulness, abundance, and handling time related to procuring different wood types. Archaeological and ecological data from the site of Gordion, in Central Anatolia (modern Turkey), were used to test expectations associated with such models. Results suggest that inhabitants of Gordion used wood types for fuel in proportion to their local availability, but that they selected specific, more distant woods for construction. In most occupation periods pine was preferred for construction, perhaps because it produces long, straight timbers for roofing, despite the distance at which it grows from the site. This case study demonstrates that behavioral ecology modeling can help to distinguish between multiple wood acquisition strategies potentially used in the past and improve our understanding of wood use from archaeological charcoal remains.     

Rationalization and Conservation: Ecology and the Management of Nature in the United Kingdom

Nature conservation in the UK comprises not only a response to the perceived impacts of rationalization on nature but is itself a dimension of that process of rationalization. The paper describes the development of conservation institutions and ideologies in the UK and considers the ways in which ecology (and particularly ideas of nature as equilibrium) have provided the intellectual framework for conservation. Ecology underpinned the establishment of government conservation institutions, provided intellectual strategies for classifying and objectifying nature, and provided the knowledge base for the control and management of nature. The paper discusses the implications of non-equilibrial ideas in ecology for ideas and practice in conservation and the implications of responses to them in the form of re-rationalization.