Hominid–Carnivore Coevolution and Invasion of the Predatory Guild

Coevolution is defined as reciprocal selective pressures that operate to make the evolution of one taxon partially dependent on the evolution another. This process often involves multiple species exploiting shared limiting resources. In classic coevolutionary models, populations of sympatric species are seen to diverge in one or more morphological, ecological, or behavioral traits to effect more even partitioning of resources and reduce levels of interspecific competition. Character displacement and resource partitioning are thought to be central not only to how species coexist on limited resources, but also to how species invade new resource niches. Hominid invasion of the predatory guild at least 2 my ago would have brought them into contact with a range of new selective pressures including competition with a number of large-bodied predators. This study explores resource partitioning between hominids and other Plio-Pleistocene large-bodied predators through analyses of predator food transport strategies. The anatomical content (head/limb MNE) of hominid transported faunal assemblages at Bed I Olduvai and FxJj 50 (Koobi Fora), when compared to modern predator control cases, suggests that Plio-Pleistocene hominids practiced food transport strategies intermediate between those of top predators such as wolves and those of confrontational scavengers such as spotted hyaenas. Plio-Pleistocene hominid food transport strategies do not resemble those of nonconfrontational scavengers such as brown and striped hyenas. The highly regular patterns differentiating bone assemblages accumulated by top predators, hominids, and confrontational and nonconfrontational scavengers suggest that hominid invasion of the predatory guild involved resource partitioning potentially based on some form of character displacement.     

Identifying the Involvement of Multiple Carnivore Taxa with Archaeological Bone Assemblages

Information on the number of carnivore taxa that were involved with archaeological bone assemblages is pertinent to questions of site formation, hominid and carnivore competition for carcasses and the sequence of hominid and carnivore activity at sites. A majority of early archaeological bone assemblages bear evidence that both hominids and carnivores removed flesh and/or marrow from the bones. Whether flesh specialists (felids) or bone-crunchers (hyaenas), or both, fed upon the carcasses is crucial for deciphering the timing of hominid involvement with the assemblages. Here we present an initial attempt to differentiate the tooth mark signature inflicted on bones by a single carnivore species versus multiple carnivore taxa. Quantitative data on carnivore tooth pits, those resembling a tooth crown or a cusp, are presented for two characteristics: the area of the marks in millimetres, and the shape as determined by the ratio of the major axis to the minor axis of the mark. Tooth pits from bones modified by extant East African carnivores and latex impressions of tooth pits from extinct carnivore species are compared to those in the FLK Zinjanthropus bone assemblage. Data on tooth mark shape indicate greater variability in theZinj sample than is exhibited by any individual extant or extinct carnivore species in the comparative sample. Data on tooth mark area demonstrate that bone density is related to the size of marks. Taken together, these data support the inference that felids defleshed bones in the Zinj assemblage and that hyaenas had final access to any grease or tissues that remained.     

Les Pradelles (Marillac-le-Franc, France): A mousterian reindeer hunting camp?

The site of Les Pradelles has an important mousterian stratigraphic sequence. In the lower levels, the very low density of artefacts as well as the carnivores scavenging of carcasses abandoned by the neanderthals point to short-term human occupations; the introduction of finished tools (made on non-local, good quality flint) later highly curated, together with an expedient strategy on strictly local flint, suggest a task-specific location, within a low mobility pattern. The large faunal sample (mainly reindeer) underlines the preponderance of hunting activities. A range of butchering activities took place on the site and the abundance of filleting marks may be an indication of the processing of meat for transport to another settlement. The hypothesis of “specialized hunting” during Middle Palaeolithic is assessed with this new data set.     

Hunting and Scavenging by Early Humans: The State of the Debate

During the last 25 years, there has been a shift towards the belief that early humans were scavengers instead of hunters. This revisionist interpretation has brought a reconciliation with the Darwinian paradigm of gradual progressive evolution that has traditionally guided (and very often, misled) an important part of anthropological thinking. However, empirical support for the scavenging hypothesis is still lacking. Recent data based on bone surface modifications from archaeological faunas suggest, in contrast, that hominids were primary agents of carcass exploitation. Meat seems to have been an important part of Plio-Pleistocene hominid diets. Passive scavenging scenarios show that this kind of opportunistic strategy cannot afford significant meat yields. Therefore, the hunting hypothesis has not yet been disproved. This makes the hunting-and-scavenging issue more controversial than before, and calls for a revision of the current interpretive frameworks and ideas about early human behavior.     

Taphonomy of ungulate ribs and the consumption of meat and bone by 1.2-million-year-old hominins at Olduvai Gorge,Tanzania

The phenomenon of equifinality complicates behavioral interpretations of faunal assemblages from contexts in which Pleistocene hominins are suspected bone accumulators. Stone tool butchery marks on ungulate fossils are diagnostic of hominin activities, but debate continues over the higher-order implications of butchered bones for the foraging capabilities of hominins. Additionally, tooth marks imparted on bones by hominins overlap in morphology and dimensions with those created by some non-hominin carnivores, further confounding our view of early hominins as meat-eating hunters, scavengers or both. We report on the manual/oral peeling of cortical layers of ungulate ribs as taphonomically diagnostic of hominoid/hominin meat- and bone-eating behavior that indicates access to large herbivore carcasses by hominins at the site of BK, Olduvai. Supporting these inferences, we show that certain types of rib peeling damage are very rare or completely unknown in faunas created by modern carnivores and African porcupines, but common in faunas modified by the butchery and/or consumption activities of modern humans and chimpanzees, during which these hominoids often grasp ribs with their hands, and then used their teeth to peel strips of cortex from raggedly chewed ends of the ribs. Carnivores consume ungulate ribcage tissues soon after kills, so diagnostic traces of hominin butchery/consumption on ribs (i.e., peeling and butchery marks) indicate early access to ungulate carcasses by BK hominins. Tooth marks associated with the peeling and butchery marks are probably hominin-derived, and may indicate that it was not uncommon for our ancestors to use their teeth to strip meat from and to consume portions of ribs. Recognition of rib peeling as a diagnostic signature of hominoid/hominin behavior may also aid the search for pre-archaeological traces of hominin meat-eating.     

Effects of distance from stone source on landscape-scale variation in Oldowan artifact assemblages in the Paleo-Olduvai Basin,Tanzania

Ongoing excavations at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, reveal tremendous variability among stone artifact assemblages across the Plio-Pleistocene Olduvai Lake Basin during Bed I and lower Bed II times. Theoretically, stone artifact traces of Oldowan hominin land use are determined by the distribution of larger mammal carcasses and arboreal refuge from predation as well as proximity to stone material sources.     

Prehistoric seal carcass exploitation at the Shag Mouth site,New Zealand

Seal populations in New Zealand declined dramatically during the prehistoric period. The loss of this important resource significantly affected the foraging practices at the Shag River Mouth site. Previous research documented substantial changes to the diet with the decline of seals and the corresponding decline in foraging efficiency. In this study, I examine how New Zealand foragers altered their use of seal carcasses as the availability of these marine mammals declined. Otariid seal data from the Shag River Mouth site in southern New Zealand are analyzed to test changes in butchery/transport and skeletal element breakage patterns expected with resource depression and declining foraging efficiency. This research shows that at Shag Mouth, seal carcasses were used more intensively over time. However, bone breakage patterns showed little change in the exploitation of within-bone nutrients.     

Cut and Tooth Mark Distributions on Large Animal Bones: Ethnoarchaeological Data from the Hadza and Their Implications For Current Ideas About Early Human Carnivory

Distributions of cut and tooth marks on the bones of large animals found in archaeological sites are increasingly used as sources of inference about the relative importance of hunting and scavenging in early human diets, and (by extension) about the role of meat-eating in human evolution. Here we review the empirical basis for these inferences in light of ethnoarchaeological data from the Tanzanian Hadza, a modern East African foraging population. Comparison of the Hadza data with those produced by other actualistic work indicates that while there may be a relationship between cut and tooth mark distributions and order of consumer access (human- versus carnivore-first), it is less clear-cut than many have suggested. Application of these results to the analysis of Plio-Pleistocene archaeological collections is further complicated by inconsistencies in the ways cut and tooth marks have been defined and counted, and by significant differences between patterns observed in modern control samples and those reported at ancient sites. These observations indicate that cut and tooth mark analyses are unlikely to speak effectively to questions about early human carnivory in the absence of: (1) better-warranted, more comprehensive expectations about the potential range of variation in past human carcass acquisition strategies, (2) a larger, more rigorously designed set of control experiments that model the archaeological consequences of these strategies, and (3) a larger, more consistently analysed archaeological data base. Even if these requirements are met, the idea of meat-eating as an important catalyst in the evolution of early humans will remain highly problematic, mainly due to problems involving the frequency and short-term reliability of carcass access.     

Molluscan foraging efficiency and patterns of mobility amongst foraging agriculturalists: a case study from northern New Zealand

A New Zealand example illustrates the potential of foraging efficiency (FE) measures to inform not only on human-prey dynamics, but also to help identify situations where mobility is constrained or stimulated. Marked declines in Māori molluscan FE, coupled with increased shellfish usage, are identified over a ca. 450-year period at the coastal locality of Harataonga Beach, New Zealand. The potential effects of climate change are considered using newly available southwest Pacific multi-proxy records and temperature sensitive species, but correlations are lacking. The molluscan results signal possible restrictions on logistic and/or residential mobility in late prehistory, while evidence from the broader cultural landscape points to increasing agricultural investments and marked social competition. The Ideal Free Distribution model (IFD) is used to consider regional-scale interactions between foraging efficiency, agricultural developments, and competition, and their effects on mobility. Geographic and temporal variation in the patterning and causes of population movements is highlighted through this model, particularly differences between large game foragers in the south and populations with mixed economies in the north. In late prehistory, many northern areas including Harataonga apparently experienced reductions in the geographic scale of population movements, coupled with intensified intra-territorial mobility. The latter was an outcome of labour being widely dispatched across tribal territories, quasi-specialisation in subsistence tasks, and pooling and exchange of resources through a variety of social mechanisms which often involved population movements.     

Feeding the scavengers. Actualistic taphonomy in the Jordan Valley,Israel

This paper describes the results of a 3‐year project carried out in the Jordan Valley, Israel, in which the influence of specific local environmental conditions, such as scavenging, weathering and scattering of carcasses, were related to the rate of their bone survival. During the 3 year period, the taphonomy of 16 whole animal carcasses, deposited in a nature reserve and agricultural cultivated area were compared. The exact age, date of death and weight of all animals was known. Results of animal scavenging activities on the carcasses, such as disappearance of bones and damage, such as tooth marks, breakage, gnawing to the leftover bones, were recorded at the end of the initial, intensive scavenging period (Phase I), and at later dates. Bone scattering maps were drawn at the end of Phase I and 2.5 and 3 years later. Weathering of surviving bones at the sites is described. Results show that in the Jordan Valley Nature Reserve, scavenging is the most important taphonomic agent causing total disappearance of all bones of young dairy calves, and reducing amount of bones remaining of more mature animals to a minimum. These small number of leftover bones, after only 2–3 years are the only candidates for eventual burial and fossilization. The loss of most of the bones through scavenging in the nature reserve might cause serious bias to conclusions about subsistence behaviour of prehistoric man. This is a taphonomic actualistic analogue to eventual conditions in prehistoric times. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Diet choice, risk, and food sharing in a stochastic environment

Foraging models can predict the optimal diet selection for an organism which has the goal of maximizing its net acquisition rate for energy while hunting and gathering. Here a simulation methodology is used to determine the optimal diet selection under the assumption that the forager's goal is to minimize the risk of an energy shortfall. The results show that the rate-maximizing and risk-minimizing diets are similar; that sharing is more effective than changes in diet in reducing risk; and that the risk-reduction which can be obtained from sharing requires quite small numbers of participants. Food sharing may be an ancient and pervasive feature of hominid foraging adaptations.     

Food for thought: using game cameras to better understand the movement of bones by scavenging in archaeological faunal assemblages

This paper questions our understanding of the movement of bones by animal scavengers in the archaeological record. Since assumptions regarding the effects of animal scavenging shape final interpretations of skeletal element frequencies in archaeological faunal assemblages, they are important for our understanding and reconstruction of ancient human behaviour. The results of a 4-year actualistic kangaroo scavenging study from Australia are used to question our understanding of the movement of the bone by contrasting visual data captured by motion-activated digital game cameras with traditional taphonomic studies using skeletal element frequencies. Game cameras are commonly used by ecologists to capture the behaviour of living species but have not yet been used in experimental archaeology where visually documenting animal scavenging behaviour can be used to understand the movement of carcasses and individual bones. Results suggest that traditional zooarchaeological analyses may not be accurate indicators of hunted versus scavenged prey in archaeological faunal assemblages. Moreover, they most certainly fail to document the entire suite of animals scavenging a carcass. These implications are discussed with particular reference to the ability to definitively ascertain the role of humans in the megafaunal extinction debate in Australia.     

Gendered mobilities and immobilities: Women’s and men’s capacities for agricultural innovation in Kenya and Nigeria

Abstract

Social norms surrounding women’s and men’s mobility in public spaces often differ. Here we discuss how gendered mobilities and immobilities influence women’s and men’s capacities to innovate in agriculture. We analyze four case studies from Western Kenya and Southwestern Nigeria that draw on 28 focus group discussions and 32 individual interviews with a total of 225 rural and peri-urban women, men and youth. Findings show that women in both sites are less mobile than men due to norms that delimit the spaces where they can go, the purpose, length of time and time of day of their travels. Overall, Kenyan women and Nigerian men have better access to agricultural services and farmer groups than their gendered counterparts. In Southwestern Nigeria this is linked to masculine roles of heading and providing for the household and in Western Kenya to the construction of women as the ‘developers’ of their households. Access and group participation may reflect norms and expectations to fulfill gender roles rather than an individual’s agency. This may (re)produce mobility pressures on time constrained gendered subjects. Frameworks to analyze factors that support women’s and men’s agency should be used to understand how gendered mobilities and immobilities are embedded in community contexts and affect engagement in agricultural innovation. This can inform the design of interventions to consider the ways in which norms and agency intersect and influence women’s and men’s mobilities, hence capacity to innovate in agriculture, thus supporting more gender transformative approaches.     

Gendered mobilities in the making: moving from a pedestrian to vehicular mobility landscape in Shimshal,Pakistan

Although feminist geographers understand gender and mobility as mutually constitutive social processes, few studies explain how gender relations are constituted in particular mobility contexts, and how and why they shape mobility patterns in specific socio-spatial circumstances. We address these questions in an analysis of gendered mobilities in Shimshal, Pakistan, which until recently have taken shape in the context of a pedestrian mobility regime. The gender and mobility relationship has transformed as vehicular mobilities have replaced pedestrian mobilities with the construction of the Shimshal road. To demonstrate empirically the co-constitution of gender and mobility, we analyze aspects of socio-spatial context that have shaped gendered pedestrian mobilities, followed by those associated with the new vehicular mobility regime that are modifying gender relations in Shimshal. Shifting gender relations reshape corporeal mobility patterns. Road infrastructure has enhanced men’s and youth’s outbound travel as wage earners and students, respectively. These mobilities have reshaped women’s capacity to move, constraining their mobility beyond the village. As prosperity becomes contingent on outbound movement, men’s and youths’ social horizons and mobilities are expanding, while women’s compromised access to mobility as a social resource produces new mobility hierarchies and gendered exclusions.     

城市公共空间与移民跨群体融合研究——时空间行为视角的研究综述

大规模人口流动背景下的社会极化和社会排斥是全球城市普遍面临的挑战,移民的跨群体社会融合已成为中国城市研究关注的新议题。城市规划和地理学者长期重视公共空间的社会融合效应,强调通过公共空间的营造改善群体间的包容态度、促进群体间融合。然而,持续增强的移动性使得本就存在争议的公共空间跨群体融合效应更加复杂。本文从时空间行为的视角出发,从时间、空间、行为三个维度,构建围绕公共空间的移民—本地居民跨群体融合效应综合分析框架。此框架整合空间、行为和时间三个维度,考虑个体活动与移动的连续性,构建多重空间情境下的活动—移动链,揭示公共空间在不同时间尺度上的跨群体融合效应。在移动性增强的背景下,时空间行为视角的研究框架有助于理解人—地交互的社会融合效应,为包容性城市建设提供参考。     

TRANSPORT AND SUBSISTENCE PATTERNS AT THE TRANSITION TO PASTORALISM,KOOBI FORA,KENYA

The Turkana Basin in Kenya has an extensive record of Holocene activities relating to mobility and economy of foraging and herding communities. Obsidian is only known from a few key localities in northern Kenya. As such, the use of obsidian as a toolstone material, commonly used during the mid‐Holocene, provides one way to trace exchange, interaction and population movements during the transition to pastoralism. We employ X‐ray fluorescence to characterize obsidian artefacts from four Pastoral Neolithic assemblages. Data reveal a highly mobile and diversified population that used watercraft to access and transport obsidian resources. Specifically, the use of the North Island obsidian source in Lake Turkana indicates that boat use was significant during this transitional period. The incorporation of watercraft transport and aquatic resources in our analyses of Pastoral Neolithic sites affords a greater understanding of subsistence, mobility and economy in this important period in East African prehistory.     

Onward Precarity,Mobility, and Migration among Latin Americans in London

Contributing to debates around the relationships between precarity, mobilities and migration, this paper examines the nature of precarity among onward Latin American (OLA) migrants as they have moved transnationally to multiple destinations from their homelands to southern Europe and onwards to London across different time periods. Drawing on primary research with over 400 OLAs, the discussion highlights how precarity maps onto onward migration trajectories in fractal rather than linear ways. In moving beyond a continuum approach to labour exploitation, the paper develops the concept of “onward precarity” to capture how migrants negotiate intersecting vulnerabilities in holistic spatio‐temporal ways as they move through different structural contexts across the world from origin, through transition to their final destination country over time. These negotiations are underpinned by multiple agentic tactics that revolve around resilience and reworking strategies as onward migrants traverse wider structures of disadvantage in situ and through mobility in different places.     

Mobility,Land Use,and Leadership in Small-Scale and Middle-Range Societies

Over the past century, the fields of archaeology and anthropology have produced a number of different theoretical approaches and a substantial body of data aimed at ways to understand hunter-gatherer, horticultural, and agropastoral societies. This review considers four recent edited volumes on foraging and food-producing societies. These books deal in innovative ways with a broad array of issues, including transitions in human prehistory and history, mobility, land use, sharing, technology, social leveling strategies, leadership, and the formation of social hierarchies. Small-scale societies include hunter-gatherers or foragers, while middle-range societies may include complex hunter-gatherer (ones with storage and delayed return systems), horticultural, and agropastoral societies, some of them with institutionalized leadership, status hierarchies, and differential access to power and resources. An important set of themes in these books includes diversity in adaptations to complex social and natural environments, the significance of (1) matter, (2) energy, and (3) information in small-scale and middle-range societies on several continents, the persistence of foraging, and the development of inequality. The roles of sharing, exchange, and leadership in small-scale and middle-range societies are explored, as are explanations for social, economic, and political transformations among groups over time and across space.     

Measuring Accessibility for People with a Disability

This paper discusses some of the inherent problems associated with measuring accessibility for people on a landscape of surfaces, barriers, and travel modes. Along with this discussion we propose a new perspective for measuring accessibility with a focus on people with differing abilities. Even though our focus is on people with a physical disability, such an approach can be easily extended and is able to be generalized to other needs and differences. Traditional measurements of accessibility are flawed, as they fail to directly account for mobility and physical differences among people. They ignore structural barriers and individual mobility limitations that affect travel time, effort, and even successful completion. To make sense of this dilemma, we propose an accessibility measurement framework that includes measures of absolute access, gross access, closest assignment access, single and multiple activity access, probabilistic choice access, and relative access. Most of these measures of access have been proposed by others, but our framework attempts to codify an approach that helps to overcome weaknesses in using only the absolute access measurement currently used in ADA compliance. Such measures can be used to map accessibility as well as to help select the mitigation or renovation projects that yield the greatest increase in accessibility for people with disabilities. We argue that for many urban and building design problems providing absolute access for people with physical disabilities should be accompanied by the use of a relative access measurement, so that removing barriers can be done in the order that provides the greatest improvement in access for a given level of expenditure.