Stable isotope analysis of humans from Xiaojingshan site: implications for understanding the origin of millet agriculture in China

Millet agriculture originated in Northern China in the early Neolithic period (ca. 8000 BP), however, the actual importance of millet in human diets is still not clear. To determine the relative contribution of millet in human diets in this period we undertook stable isotope analysis of humans from Xiaojingshan site and fauna from Yuezhuang site, both of which are attributed to the Houli Culture and date to about 8000 years ago. The carbon isotope values of human bone collagen showed that millet (as a C₄ plant) only contributed approximately 25% of dietary protein, with the rest from C₃ based plant and animal sources, if a simple mixing model is used. We did not observe any statistical dietary difference between males and females at the site, although it has been argued that the Houli Culture was a matriarchal society. Finally, we compared our data with other published isotopic data from the contemporary Jiahu site and Xinglongwa site and a number of sites from the subsequent Yangshao Culture and found that millet only became a significant source of dietary protein approximately 1000 years later, as human carbon isotope values from these later sites indicated that almost all of dietary protein came from C₄ (i.e. millet) sources.     

Community Pharmacies in the City Area: Evidence from an Italian Province

Pharmacy opening and pharmacy location are heavily regulated in Italy. This paper investigates how pharmacies are positioned in the city area and analyses the role of some factors relevant for gaining access to pharmacy services and competition. For this purpose, a probit regression model has been estimated. A main finding is that the spread of pharmacies all over the city area is unbalanced. The number of residents in the surroundings is not a main determinant of location. In spite of the availability of competing outlets nearby, pharmacies tend to be situated in areas attracting visitors as part of the working and travel circuits. This contributes to good access to the extent to which consumers can easily get to the pharmacy from the doctor's office as well as from work or shopping. However, while multiple outlets are available in the areas offering better business opportunities, the other parts of the municipal district are often unsupplied. As a result, accessibility within the city area is not the same for all residents. Several aspects of the overall pharmacy market regulation prove unsuited for opposing this pattern of location.     

Discard behavior on domestic historic sites: Evaluation of contexts for the interpretation of household consumption patterns

Consumer behavior has become an important topic in historical archaeology, and patterns of domestic acquisition, use, and discard are often directly expressed in the archaeological record. Consumption patterns are influenced by factors such as household morphology, life cycle, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, therefore analysis of domestic site formation processes should take these factors into account. The formation processes exhibited on historic domestic sites may be quite complex, but there is a broad range of analytical methods available for examination of these processes.     

Local diversity in settlement,demography and subsistence across the southern Indian Neolithic-Iron Age transition: site growth and abandonment at Sanganakallu-Kupgal

The Southern Indian Neolithic-Iron Age transition demonstrates considerable regional variability in settlement location, density, and size. While researchers have shown that the region around the Tungabhadra and Krishna River basins displays significant subsistence and demographic continuity, and intensification, from the Neolithic into the Iron Age ca. 1200 cal. BC, archaeological and chronometric records in the Sanganakallu region point to hilltop village expansion during the Late Neolithic and ‘Megalithic’ transition period (ca. 1400–1200 cal. BC) prior to apparent abandonment ca. 1200 cal. BC, with little evidence for the introduction of iron technology into the region. We suggest that the difference in these settlement histories is a result of differential access to stable water resources during a period of weakening and fluctuating monsoon across a generally arid landscape. Here, we describe well-dated, integrated chronological, archaeobotanical, archaeozoological and archaeological survey datasets from the Sanganakallu-Kupgal site complex that together demonstrate an intensification of settlement, subsistence and craft production on local hilltops prior to almost complete abandonment ca. 1200 cal. BC. Although the southern Deccan region as a whole may have witnessed demographic increase, as well as subsistence and cultural continuity, at this time, this broader pattern of continuity and resilience is punctuated by local examples of abandonment and mobility driven by an increasing practical and political concern with water.     

Historicizing the German Question: Toward an International History of the Cold War

Book reviewed:
William Glenn Gray. Germany's Cold War: The Global Campaign to Isolate East Germany, 1949–1969 . Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. xii + 351 pp. Maps, notes, bibliography, index. $49.95 (cloth).     

Evidence from the Yana Palaeolithic site,Arctic Siberia,yields clues to the riddle of mammoth hunting

It has become commonplace to talk about humans hunting mammoths, and overhunting is thought to have been one of the causes of the mammoth extinction. However, definite evidence of mammoth kills by humans remains surprisingly scarce. Here we show convincing evidence of mammoth hunting in the Siberian Arctic between 29 000 and 27 000 ¹⁴C years BP. Our data set, from the Yana Upper Palaeolithic site (Siberian Arctic), includes the following: fragments of lithic points and ivory shaft embedded in two mammoth scapulae; two identical holes made by projectiles in a mammoth scapula and a pelvic bone; mammoth tongue bones found in the cultural layer far away from the main mammoth bone accumulation, indicating the consumption of fresh mammoth meat; and a narrow mammoth bone size distribution, implying hunting selection based on animal size. The data suggest that Palaeolithic Yana humans hunted mammoths sporadically, presumably when ivory was needed for making tools. Such non-intensive hunting practiced by humans over millennia would not be fatal to a sustainable mammoth population.     

The Gubbio Papers: historic centers in the age of the economic miracle

World War II is over. Italy is radically transformed with new modes of production and consumption, of thinking and dreaming, of living the present, remembering the past, and projecting the future. Here is the end of an 'old' archaic Italy, and the beginning of a 'modern' one, which rethinks its own national identity on the basis of its 'Atlantic' collocation and Marshallized economy - but also as resistance to an 'Americanization' of its culture. An emblematic episode in this reconstruction of Italy is the discussion, opened by the Gubbio Papers in the early 1960s, on the ­'management' of Italy's artistic 'patrimony'. The restoration of Italy's historic centers, aimed at avoiding American urban sprawl and the culture of US neo-capitalism, engenders, however, new and more peculiar problems - last but not the least the 'museumification' of both Italy's culture and its past. This article frames the Gubbio 'solution' within the larger contemporary debate concerning the models of economic and cultural development that should be deployed in Italy's 'reconstruction'.     

Special alloys from remote frontiers of the Shang Kingdom: scientific study of the Hanzhong bronzes from southwest Shaanxi, China

More than 200 bronze objects found in Hanzhong, southwest Shaanxi Province, China, a frontier region of the Shang Kingdom during the Shang dynasty, have been analysed for their composition and microstructure. Forty-three typologically distinct, and probably culturally indigenous, items have been found to be compositionally distinctive as well. This paper presents analytical results of the two types of local Hanzhong bronzes, namely the sickle-shaped and sceptre-shaped objects. Three special alloys, arsenic bronze, antimonial bronze and copper–nickel–arsenic ternary alloy, are particularly emphasized and discussed. The archaeological context of Hanzhong bronzes and their significance for the archaeometallurgy research of the Shang period are discussed as well.     

Synchrotron radiation-based x-ray analysis of bronze artifacts from an Iron Age site in the Judean Hills

Seven bronze bangles from Tell en-Nasbeh, northern Judah, were investigated to understand the phase composition and manufacturing process of the artifacts, and possibly suggest a provenance for their origin. Synchrotron x-ray radiation diffraction (XRD) and fluorescence (XRF) were used in the analysis to avoid any destructive sampling and at the same time penetrate through the surface into the core metal. These techniques enabled us to determine that the bangles were not just tin bronze, but leaded tin bronze. Based on excavation reports, it is unlikely that the metal objects were manufactured locally at Tell en-Nasbeh; rather, preliminary XRD and XRF data point towards the neighboring region of Edom as their origin. Despite their political enmity during the Iron Age II, the data suggest that Judahite social demands for bronze may have fostered a strong economic relationship between these two polities.     

Patterns of Temporary Mobility in Australia: Evidence from the 1991 Census

While Census data are generally employed to examine permanent migration, they also provide a unique window on temporary population movements, a phenomenon largely neglected in Australia. Building on the work of Zelinsky, this paper outlines a conceptual framework for analysis of temporary mobility and reviews the strengths and limitations of the Census as a source of information. Data from the 1991 Australian Census are then used to analyse the incidence of temporary movements, the characteristics of temporary movers, and their spatial distribution. It is shown that temporary mobility is selective of certain groups and that there are substantial concentrations of temporary movers in both coastal and inland locations. By combining analysis of their origins with the attributes of their destinations, a preliminary typology of temporary population movement is proposed. The concluding section considers the implications of this form of mobility and identifies some avenues for further research.     

Landscapes, land use, and the history of territory formation: An example from the Puebloan southwest

Territories are spatial units that encompass the broadest range of a society's land-use behaviors as well as the history of human interactions with the natural landscape. Drawing from published documents pertaining to the North American Indian Land Claims and to the prehistory and history of land use among the Hopi Indians of Arizona, this paper integrates spatial, material, and historical variables of land use behavior (1) to formulate an empirical definition of territory and (2) to develop a generalized life history of territory formation that can be applied explicitly to the archaeological record.     

Hunting behavior and Neanderthal adaptability in the Late Pleistocene site of Pech-de-l'Azé I

The late Mousterian of Acheulian tradition (MTA) site of Pech-de-l'Azé 1 shows a very particular stratigraphic sequence characterized by numerous elements not usually found in Mousterian contexts such as avifauna exploitation and the use of hundreds of mineral pigments. Recent zooarchaeological and skeletochronological analyses provide new insights into the evolution of subsistence behaviors and settlement patterns of the Neanderthals that inhabited the shelter. Due to changes in hunting season, Neanderthals adapted their hunting strategies, exploiting various red deer populations which presented very different behavior. The evolution in the seasonal occupation of the shelter may have been the results of major modifications of its (series of roof collapsed) which induced a shrank in inhabitable space., which forced the Mousterians to adjust the way they used the cavity to its characteristics in order to optimize its exploitation. The conclusions underline the excellent adaptability of the Neanderthals to their physical environment.     

War in the feudal zone: state failure and the abandonment of anthropological research in Mexico and Central America

We analysed the extent to which violent, organised crime has disrupted anthropological research in Mexico and Central America by conducting a survey of anthropologists who work in the region. We found that although anthropologists will continue research in regions they perceive to have the socio-economic characteristics of a failed state they are far less inclined to work in areas that they perceive as excessively violent. We continue with examination of the state failure and feudalisation that are affecting the region. We conclude that in the feudal zones, the state has lost its comparative advantage in the use of force and that state intrusion into these areas increases armed collective violence in a manner similar to that described in the literature on warfare in tribal zones.     

The Transition to the Acheulean in East Africa: an Assessment of Paradigms and Evidence from Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania)

The origin of the Acheulean constitutes a key aspect of current research in the archaeology of human evolution. Olduvai Gorge is one of the main sites in Africa in the study of the transition from the Oldowan to the Acheulean, due to both the uniqueness of its archaeological record, and the influence of early investigations at Olduvai on the development of Early Stone Age research. This paper reviews the impact of work at Olduvai in shaping a modern view of cultural evolution from the Oldowan to the Acheulean. It also evaluates the lithic assemblages excavated by Mary Leakey in Olduvai Middle and Upper Bed II, based on a first-hand review of the collections. We conclude that previous paradigms used to explain inter-assemblage variability are not superseded as much as generally assumed, and that a modern view of the origins of the Acheulean requires a reassessment of the cultural, biological, and paleoecological evidence at Olduvai and elsewhere in Africa.     

Property Rights and the Environment in Pastoral China: Evidence from the Field

It is widely perceived that the degradation of China’s rangelands has accelerated since the introduction of rural reforms in the late 1970s. The popular explanation for this phenomenon has been that a ‘tragedy of the commons’ exists, as privately‐owned livestock are being grazed on ‘common’ land. Since the passing of the Rangeland Law in 1985, Chinese pastoral tenure policy has emphasized the establishment of individual household tenure as a necessary condition for improving incentives for sustainable rangeland management. Yet household tenure has yet to be effectively established in many pastoral regions. The first objective of this article is to describe pastoral tenure arrangements in northern Xinjiang‐Uygur Autonomous Region. Its second objective is to explain pastoral tenure arrangements, particularly the observed persistence of collective action. It is argued that there is no ‘tragedy of the commons’ and that it is characteristics of rangeland resources and the social environment that give rise to the particular types of institutional arrangements found.     

The Order of Battle in the Roman Army: Evidence from Marching Camps

The Iron Age in the North-West of Iberia is characterized by settlement patterns in which small hilltop enclosures or castros were dominant. Recent field-survey work has revealed more about the distribution of rural settlement sites in part of this area, and an analysis has been made of the pattern of rural site distributions in relation to the castros. This confirms the continued focal role of castros into the Roman period. An explanation for the settlement pattern in this region and the absence of typically Roman features like developed villas is sought in the nature and extent of Roman military recruitment from the region.