《中国河西走廊——历史·文化·艺术》为西北史地研究领域再添奇葩

河西走廊地处黄河上游东亚与中亚地区结合部,是我国中原地区通往今天新疆地区乃至中亚、西亚地区的过渡地带。由于其特殊的地理位置及和周围地理环境的特定关系,遂成为历史上文明于世的丝绸之路东段中最重要的干线路段,是古老的华夏文明与南亚印度文明、西亚两河流域文明和地中海文明等多种文明的交流融汇之     

鄂西北仰韶文化及同时期文化分析

仰韶文化是分布在黄河中游地带的主要新石器原始文化。其分布范围,西到渭河上游,东至河南境内,北达河套地区,南及汉水中上游。位于汉水中上游的鄂西北地区新石器时代文化,由于北与豫西庙底沟类型的仰韶文化分布区接壤,西与汉水上游地区的半坡类型仰韶文化相连,因而,在这里的郧西、郧县、房县等地的多处新石器时代遗址中,先后发现有仰韶文化向南发展的边缘区域的一个类型,及其对这一地域内,相当于仰韶文化时期的土著文化的影响。在这一区域范围内的新石器时代考古,见于报导中被认定为仰韶文化的遗存,分为两个类型:一为大寺类型;一为朱家台类型(或称林家店类型)。     

骆驼墩文化初论

骆驼墩遗址的发掘确立了骆驼墩文化遗存的存在,骆驼墩文化遗存代表了太湖西部山地向平原过渡地带的新石器时代考古学文化的新类型。根据其自身的文化特征、相对的年代跨度、所处的地理位置及周边同类遗址的空间分布,可将以平底釜为主要特征的骆驼墩文化遗存命名为骆驼墩文化。骆驼墩文化在其存在的时间段内,与长江下游的河姆渡文化、马家浜文化、宁镇地区的北阴阳营文化以及长江中游的大溪文化都有密切的交流。骆驼墩文化的发现,填补了环太湖西部史前考古学文化的空白,对深入研究长江下游新石器时代考古学文化及长江下游古代文明的进程等具有极其重要的意义。     

环境巨变、人事沧桑的县情巨著——《阳高县志》简评

阳高县位于山西东北部,呈条状葫芦形。她北跨万里长城,是中国地理环境中半湿润地区和干旱区的过渡地带,因而也是地理环境变迁中的脆弱地带。在历史上每当地理环境稍有变化,这里就会有强烈而明显的反应。本县也是种植农业与游牧业的交错地带和汉族与少数民族交错拉锯的地带。她是明代“九边”的重要关口之一。新编《阳高县志》深刻而形象     

中国长城地带石棺墓之研究

<正> 中国长城地带的石棺墓,又称石板墓、石箱式墓、石盖墓等,有的地方称为石椁墓。它包括多种不同的类型,依据目前掌握的材料,石棺墓在我国境内,分布在三个大的区域之内,即我国东北的松花江流域的吉林地区、辽宁北部,西喇木伦河上游,滦河、潮河流域包括冀北、长城地带,四川西部的岷江中上游的汶川、理县、茂汶、雅安地区和云南德钦等地。石棺墓有着明显的     

滦河中、上游流域村地土壤重金属污染特征及风险评估

滦河作为承德主要内水河,担负塞北地区生态资源循环可持续发展的重任.查明负有"京津冀水源涵养功能区"的塞北村地土壤重金属污染情况对积极开展生态资源保护至关重要.本文采用单因子法、内梅罗污染指数法、潜在生态危害指数法及地累积指数法综合对滦河中上游流域村地土壤重金属污染情况进行评估,得出:滦河中上游流域村地土壤重金属潜在污染...     

黄家湾旧石器遗址发掘简报

湖北省十堰市的丹江口水库位于汉水上游,地处鄂西北、豫西南交界处的秦岭、大巴山与江汉平原的过渡地带,属丘陵盆地型水库。正常蓄水位为157m,淹没区面积800多平方公里。南     

神山的洗礼——浅析大通老爷山"朝山会"的宗教文化

前言大通回族土族自治县在青海省的东北部,它位于湟水以北,祁连山以南。东邻互助,西接海晏、湟中,南与西宁市郊接壤,北与门源隔山相依。全县总面积为3,090平方公里。大通县因地处青藏高原和黄土高原的过渡地带,属高原大陆性气候,且是一个多山地区,地形复杂,气候垂直差异明显,霜冻、冰雹、春旱、秋涝等自然灾害比较频繁。     

河湟人文

河湟人是西北汉族主要族群之一,主要分布在甘青黄河上游地区和湟水流域的29个县市,人口约313.6万。河湟人以秦陇语支的河(河州)湟(湟中)方言为基本特征。河湟地区是多元文化荟萃之地,是中原地区与边远少数民族地区的过渡地     

红马山文化辨析

一、前言 嫩江发源于大、小兴安岭之间的伊勒呼里山南麓.其北部源头为南瓮河,南流至三岔河附近注入松花江.嫩江自北而南可分为三段,源头至尼尔基为上游,上游地区主要为丘陵山地.     

A REVIEW OF THE LATER UPPER PALAEOLITHIC IN THE ODER AND VISTULA BASINS IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT RESEARCH

Summary. The withdrawal of the Vistulan ice-sheet some 15,000 years ago permitted colonisation of the Oder and Vistula basins by a succession of Late Upper Palaeolithic peoples, amongst whom various distinct groups can be recognised. Magdalenian, Shouldered Point, Curved Back Point and Tanged Point technocomplexes are distinguished by the author, who discusses them with reference to the salient features of the archaeological assemblages, comments on the dating evidence, and considers both internal variability and possible relationships with industries in Western and Eastern Europe. The populations of this region, which coincides approximately with the boundaries of modern Poland, were hunter-gatherers exploiting late glacial and early postglacial game resources, but there is evidence that systematic use was made of other local resources, such as ochre (mined at Rydno), Jurassic flint and the chocolate flint of the Holy Cross Mountains. In this process some of the Late Upper Palaeolithic peoples travelled long distances and established wide contacts. Use of the chocolate flint by Swiderian groups of the Tanged Point technocomplex is proving to be a particularly worthwhile study: flint of this kind is found at some 300 out of 700 Swiderian sites. Actual quarrying places are known in the source area, with working and living sites occurring at various distances from them, offering considerable potential for a study of contemporary economic and social organisation and seasonal migration.     

Advances in the archaeology of the Pampa and Patagonia

Archaeological data reveal two distinctive cultural adaptations on the Pampa and Patagonia of Argentina: terrestrial hunter-gatherers in the former and most of the latter region and maritime hunter-gatherers along the southern extreme. Both adaptations were achieved by the end of the fifth millennium B.C. Thereafter, a stable equilibrium was maintained, with a slow drift toward greater emphasis on resources providing the maximum return for the least effort. The high productivity of the Fuegian environment sustained a population 30 times greater than occupied the Pampa and continental Patagonia prior to Araucanian penetration in the sixteenth century A.D. The long-term stability is attributable to the absence of environmental or demographic pressures or encroachments by neighboring groups, which might have made more intensive exploitation of the environment necessary.     

Stable isotope analysis of human bone and ethnohistoric subsistence patterns in Tierra del Fuego

Ethnohistoric records from Tierra del Fuego suggest that precontact Fuegians could be subdivided into three major groups: the Yamana, maritime hunter-gatherers of the Beagle Channel and islands to the south; the Selk’nam, terrestrial hunter-gatherers of southernmost Patagonia; and the Haush, a little-known group that seems to have combined elements of both Yamana and Selk’nam lifeways. However, the observed ethnographic patterns reflect societies whose way of life was significantly altered by European contact, habitat alteration, and exploitation of some of the key resources upon which Fuegian peoples were historically dependent. To test the linkage between ethnohistorically recorded subsistence patterns and prehistoric lifeways in the region, stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes were assayed from human burials that date within the last 1500 years before European contact. Isotopic analyses substantially confirm the ethnohistorically documented patterns, but also reveal some anomalies, such as Yamana populations who may have been more dependent on terrestrial resources (i.e., guanaco). Data from the Haush region suggest primary dependence on marine resources, like the Yamana, while the Selk’nam demonstrate limited use of such resources. Stable isotopic analysis can thus be used to test hypotheses concerning the validity of archaeological and ethnohistoric data.     

Hunter-gatherer economic complexity and “population pressure”: A cross-cultural analysis

This paper examines the relaionship between “population pressure” and socioeconomic complexity among hunter-gatherers. Population pressure is defined as the ratio between population density and the density of available resources. Socioeconomic complexity is measured by means of several correlated variables: storage-dependence, sedentism, social inequality, and use of a medium of exchange. Correlations between these variables are calculated from an ethnographic sample of 94 hunter-gatherer groups. The correlations between population pressure and socioeconomic complexity are found to be extremely high. Two major types of hunter-gatherers exist which are distinguished by a number of variables and may be termed “simple” and “complex.” Transitional groups between these two types are quite rare. It is also noted that population pressure does not arise in continental climates where famine mortality is common because of high-amplitude changes in productivity from year to year. It is argued that population pressure is a necessary and sufficient condition for and the efficient cause of socioeconomic complexity. The widespread disavowal by archaeologists of population pressure as a possible explanation for the prehistoric development of complex hunter-gatherers has no basis in ethnographic fact.     

Presenting the San Hunter-Gatherer Past to the Public: A View from the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park,South Africa

Abstract

The uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park (UDP) was declared a World Heritage Site in 2000 on the basis of its magnificent scenery, biodiversity, and archaeological richness, comprising a rich corpus of rock paintings and occupation deposits relating to the San hunter-gatherers. The desire to encourage heritage tourism to the UDP following the declaration, along with the wish to present a more positive picture of the San hunter-gatherers, led to the development of the Kamberg (in 2002) and Didima Rock Art Centres (in 2003). These centres, together with the Main Caves visitor attraction, which had been redeveloped in 1998, distinguish the UDP as the premier region in South Africa for the interpretation of the San past. Cognizant of the critical role that public interpretation plays in the management of archaeological resources, this paper investigates which aspects of the archaeological record have been stressed and which have been overlooked, the relationship between the interpretations and the findings of UDP archaeological research since the 1970s, and whether these findings enhance the significance and value of the resources and thereby promote their management. It is shown that the overall interpretive emphasis is on rock art and that information derived from Later Stone Age hunter-gatherer excavations since the 1970s have been neglected. Furthermore, it is revealed that the display of Early and Middle Stone Age material at Didima is inconsistent with regional archaeological findings and that there is a neglect of local archaeological remains. It is concluded that the development of any further attractions should be based on an interpretive plan which considers the interpretive requirements of the region as a whole.     

What Is a Hunter-Gatherer? Variation in the Archaeological Record of Eastern and Southern Africa

This article reviews the recent history of the archaeology of African hunter-gatherers, focusing on debates around the origins of modern humans and the destiny of hunter-gatherers with the advent of food production. African archaeologists are developing an increasing appreciation for the diversity of African hunter-gatherer societies. Understandings of hunter-gatherers based primarily on ethnography are being successfully challenged and extended.     

Exploring Adaptive Variation among Hunter-gatherers with Binford’s Frames of Reference

The most significant change in hunter-gatherer studies has been the shift from expecting hunter-gatherers to have similar properties wherever they are found to recognizing that hunter-gatherer adaptations should vary along many different dimensions. Although archaeologists approach research with different goals, there is remarkable convergence in our knowledge about hunter-gatherers past and present. The ethnographic record of recent hunter-gatherers reveals enormous variation along several dimensions. The specific combinations of characteristics displayed among hunter-gatherers are not infinitely variable but cluster as distinctive “system states” (following Binford, Constructing frames of reference: an analytical method for archaeological theory building using ethnographic and environmental data sets, 2001) that pattern with both environmental and demographic variables at a global scale. Frames of reference based on these generalizations have implications for what archaeologists should expect for hunter-gatherers in different environmental settings, and also for how they should change over time if regional population density generally increases. Recognizing that patterns of variation at the regional scale are different from those at the global scale, I propose a hierarchical strategy for developing expectations for variation among prehistoric hunter-gatherers that can both situate the research locale with respect to global patterns of variation and acknowledge important dimensions of variation in habitat structure that are likely to condition regional variation in hunter-gatherer mobility, subsistence, and social organization.     

'WHY THEY CAME'; THE COLONIZATION OF THE COAST OF WESTERN SWEDEN AND ITS ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT AT THE END OF THE LAST GLACIATION

Summary.   In this paper we will bring into view new aspects of Late Palaeolithic and early Mesolithic research on the west coast of Sweden. In doing so, we make use of oceanography and tidal modelling, in conjunction with basic research in the fields of archaeology and palynology. The focus of research concerns the Hensbacka culture group in central Bohuslän, a group of hunter-gatherers which visited the area between c.10,300–9300 bp (10,200/10,000–8500 cal BC). Recent investigations indicate that the frequency of Hensbacka sites in the archipelago of central Bohuslän, which at that time had a total land area of c.500 sq km, might well represent the highest site density area in northern Europe during a c.1000-year period of time at the close of the Late Glacial and beginning of the early Post Glacial. In the pages that follow, we will discuss how, and why, this 'seasonal colonization' was possible.     

The archaeology of complex hunter-gatherers

Archaeologists' reconstructions of paths to complexity have all too often excluded complex hunter-gatherers. However, recent theoretical contributions and long-term field research programs in several regions of the world have now significantly advanced our understanding of complex hunter-gatherers. A discussion of definitions of complexity and a review of current models of the emergence of complexity provide a framework for analyses of complex hunter-gatherers and important cultural phenomena such as sedentism, political integration, prestige economies, feasting, and ideology.     

Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer subsistence in Mediterranean coastal environments: an isotopic study of the diets of the earliest directly-dated humans from Sicily

The subsistence of hunter-gatherers in the Mediterranean Basin has been the object of few studies, which have not fully clarified the role of aquatic resources in their diets. Here we present the results of AMS radiocarbon dating and of isotope analyses on the earliest directly-dated human remains from Sicily, the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. The radiocarbon determinations show that the Upper Palaeolithic (Epigravettian) humans from Grotta di San Teodoro (15 232–14 126 cal. BP) and Grotta Addaura Caprara (16 060–15 007 cal. BP) date to the Late-glacial and were possibly contemporary. The diets of these individuals were dominated by the protein of large terrestrial mammalian herbivores, such as red deer (Cervus elaphus). There is no evidence for the consumption of marine resources, which is probably the result not only of the oligotrophic nature of the Mediterranean, but also perhaps of the lack of adequate technology for exploiting intensively the resources from this sea. In spite of being contemporaneous and of the cultural and technological affinities present between the San Teodoro and Addaura humans, the carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) isotope composition of their bone collagen suggests that significant differences were present in their diets. In particular, the hunter-gatherers from Grotta di San Teodoro, in NE Sicily where coastal plains are backed by high mountain chains (Monti Nebrodi), probably had easy access to resources such as anadromous brown trout (Salmo trutta), which might not have been similarly available in the NW of the island, where reliefs are noticeably lower and watercourses fewer and farther between. This study shows that the high biodiversity of this region, which results from the complex topography of Mediterranean landscapes, was probably exploited opportunistically by Late-glacial foragers. Our data also suggest that intensification and diversification of food acquisition in Sicily did not start in the closing stages of the late Pleistocene, as in other Mediterranean regions, probably because the island had only been (re-)colonized by humans around the Last Glacial Maximum.