Mussels and mongongo nuts: logistical visits to the Cape west coast,South Africa

Very large late Holocene shell middens (‘megamiddens’, some over 10 000 m³ in extent) along a 20 km section of the west coast of South Africa provide a particular interpretative challenge in determining whether they result from residential visits or from logistical processing of shellfish for transport and consumption elsewhere. The latter interpretation is preferred here and is consistent with stable carbon isotopic readings on coastal human burials and site contents that illustrate that groups visited specific localities, collected and dried black mussels and then transported and consumed the dried product inland. The sizes and contents of these large middens contrasts sharply with those of unquestionably residential residues from earlier and later time periods. This approach is supported with reference to the ethnographically described processing and consumption of mongongo nuts by 20th century San of the Kalahari.     

Addressing seasonal site use through ancient DNA species identification of Pacific salmon at Dionisio Point,Galiano Island,British Columbia

We use ancient DNA analysis to identify Pacific salmon vertebrae to species in order to provide an important line of evidence that helps to establish the timing of seasonal residence at a Pacific Northwest Coast village site. Ancient DNA results from House 2 at Dionisio Point allow a characterization of the salmon fishery. Ten of eleven randomly selected smaller-sized salmon vertebrae were positively identified as sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) while only a single pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) was identified. Of the 322 whole salmon vertebrae identified from House 2 occupation deposits during zooarchaeological analysis, 58 percent measure less than 8.0 mm and 70 percent are less than 8.5 mm in maximum transverse diameter. Together with documented aspects of the material record from Dionisio Point, most notably the vertebrate fauna from House 2, the indication that sockeye was the primary focus of the Dionisio Point salmon fishery suggests the site was inhabited during the spring and summer. This approach to the identification of season-specific site occupation has the potential for application over much of the Northeast Pacific.     

Late-Holocene Dungeness crab (Cancer magister) harvest at an Oregon coast estuary

Coastal peoples worldwide harvested and consumed a wide variety of shellfish. Most archaeological analyses of shellfish remains tend to focus on bivalves such as clams and mussels while other shellfish such as gastropods, barnacles, and crabs have received much less attention. Here we examine the use of Dungeness crabs (Cancer magister) at a late-Holocene village on Netarts Bay, northern Oregon Coast. Ethnographic and ethnohistoric records suggest that crabs were both individually hunted as well as gathered, often en masse. We employ allometric scaling of Dungeness claws (propal fingers) recovered from several household middens to estimate crab body size and age. These data indicate that while a wide age range of crabs were collected, most harvesting efforts focused on juveniles and young adults. This suggests that most Dungeness crabs at the site were gathered (not individually hunted) in Netarts Bay, most likely in shallow subtidal areas where cockles (Clinocardium nuttalli) were also being regularly taken. As such, Dungeness crabs were part of a foraging strategy that involved the efficient mass harvest of small prey using minimal technology.     

Global human impacts or climate change?: explaining the Sooty Shearwater decline at the Minard site,Washington State,USA

Sooty Shearwater (Puffinus griseus) remains decrease throughout the occupation (AD 1000–1600) of the Minard site (45-GH-15) on the southern Washington coast, USA. Given that New Zealand is one of the major breeding locations for this long-distant migrant, the decline at the Minard site may be due to human impacts on a global scale. In particular, the Maori practice of muttonbirding, the killing and preparation of fledgling shearwaters for storage, may have affected the number of summer migrants reaching the Pacific Northwest Coast. A second hypothesis attributes the decline in Sooty Shearwaters at the site to increasing sea surface temperatures and/or increased frequency of ENSO events during this period. Understanding how Sooty Shearwaters responded to human hunting and/or climate events in the past may be useful for the current management of this species, which has faced dramatic declines in recent decades.     

Starch analysis reveals prehistoric plant translocations and shell tool use,Marquesas Islands,Polynesia

Starch analysis is proving particularly useful in tropical regions like the central Pacific where crop inventories are often dominated by starchy fruits and tubers and recovery of macrobotanical remains is rare. Analysis of 23 shell tools from the Marquesas Islands provides direct evidence for translocation of five traditional crop plants. Four taxa derive from the western Pacific, including Artocarpus altilis (breadfruit), Piper methysticum (kava), Colocasia esculenta (taro), and one or more species of Dioscorea (yam). The fifth taxon, the South American Ipomoea batatas (sweet potato), dates from the 14th century AD onward and constitutes the earliest record of this cultigen in the archipelago. The occurrence of sweet potato starch suggests that this crop plant may have been more important than usually is assumed, while the limited recovery of breadfruit starch, the main Marquesan food plant at western contact, requires further investigation. The starch residues also inform on tool use, demonstrating that shell tools ethnographically associated with specific crops (e.g., “breadfruit peelers”) had more generalised functions. This study is a further demonstration of the potential of starch analysis to provide important information on the history of crop introductions, on-site activities, and artefact use.     

Long-term developments in complex hunter-gatherer societies: Recent perspectives from the pacific coast of North America

The Pacific coast of North America is ideally suited to the study of long-term developments in complex hunter-gatherer societies. This paper synthesizes current research in California and the Northwest Coast on three related research problems. The first concerns the timing, spatial distribution, and economies of the earliest coastal peoples in the region. The second problem involves the growth and florescence of complex Pacific hunter-gatherer societies. What constitutes archaeological evidence of hunter-gatherer complexity, when and where it occurs, and the interpretations proposed to account for it are reviewed. The final problem addresses how complex hunter-gatherer peoples responded to European exploration and colonization, and how these early encounters affected the Pacific coast societies recorded in early ethnohistoric accounts and later studied by ethnographers.     

Late Paleocene foraminiferal faunas with Chapmanina and Reticulophragmium from offshore southeastern Australia: a Tethyan influence

Samples from off southern New South Wales in approximately 1750 m water depth have yielded late Paleocene faunas of benthic and planktonic foraminifera and other invertebrates. Two faunal associations with a strong Tethyan influence, dominated respectively by Chapmanina conjuncta sp. nov. and Reticulophragmium naroomaensis sp. nov., are described; this is the first formal record of these genera from Australasia. The age of the host sediment is based on both benthic species and few planktonic foraminifera.

The environment at the time was warm temperate to subtropical at the southwestern extremity of a counter-clockwise Pacific Ocean gyre. The new occurrence extends the record of Palaeogene marine sediments and palaeoenvironments along the eastern margin of Australia and confirms earlier observations that conditions in the marine environment at that time were considerably warmer along the east coast of Australia than those along the southern margin; the biogeographic association was Tethyan. The circulation model may go some way to explaining coeval warmth along the east Antarctic coast.     

Modelling land use around an early Neolithic timber ‘hall’ in north east Scotland from high spatial resolution pollen analyses

A methodology is described by which spatial patterns of land use were reconstructed from pollen analyses on anthropogenic sediments at a recently excavated early Neolithic timber ‘hall’ in north east Scotland. The anthropogenic sediments were from a deep, small diameter pit within the building. They present numerous taphonomic and interpretative challenges to the analyst, but from this type of deposit, the power to estimate quantitatively the vegetation structure around the archaeological site makes such difficult deposits very significant. A rigorous methodology is firstly described, therefore, by which confidence in ecological interpretation can be established. Secondly, the source of pollen in the deposit is evaluated. Thirdly, the possible pollen source area and structure of the surrounding vegetation are estimated by quantitative simulation modelling. Finally, these analyses are compared with region-scale pollen analyses from nearby conventional wetland deposits with much larger pollen source areas. The pollen assemblages recovered probably reflect land uses adjacent to the ‘hall’ and up to 2.5 km around. Cereal cultivation was the most important land use immediately around the ‘hall’, possibly grown between stands of scrub Corylus (hazel) woodland. These intensive but local-scale land uses cannot be discerned in region-scale pollen analyses.     

Why so many wings? A re-examination of avian skeletal part representation in the south-central Northwest Coast,USA

Ten years ago, I summarized hypotheses for the abundance of bird wing elements in archaeological sites and rejected the hypothesis that differential preservation caused this pattern in the Pacific Northwest Coast (Bovy, 2002). I also noted that distal wing elements (relative to proximal wings) dominated several assemblages in the Gulf of Georgia sub-region. I re-examine this issue, focusing on behavioral hypotheses for the abundance of distal wings. Ethnographic evidence is used to formulate predictions for the cultural explanations, which are tested using data from the late Holocene Watmough Bay (45SJ280) site, where distal wings comprise 98% of the large duck assemblage (n = 4195). Diving ducks, dabbling ducks, geese, loons and grebes all have more distal wing bones than expected, and were likely caught using submerged nets. The most plausible explanation for the prevalence of distal wing bones is either that only the distal wings were transported back to the sites (perhaps attached to skins) and/or the distal wings were discarded separately during cooking.     

Refining the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization</Emphasis>: How Plant Fiber Technology Drove Social Complexity During the Preceramic Period

Moseley’s (1975) Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization hypothesis challenges, in one of humanity’s few pristine hearths of civilization, the axiom that agriculture is necessary for the rise of complex societies. We revisit that hypothesis by setting new findings from La Yerba II (7571–6674 Cal bp) and III (6485–5893 Cal bp), Río Ica estuary, alongside the wider archaeological record for the end of the Middle Preceramic Period on the Peruvian coast. The La Yerba record evinces increasing population, sedentism, and “Broad Spectrum Revolution” features, including early horticulture of Phaseolus and Canavalia beans. Yet unlike further north, these changes failed to presage the florescence of monumental civilization during the subsequent Late Preceramic Period. Instead, the south coast saw a profound “archaeological silence.” These contrasting trajectories had little to do with any relative differences in marine resources, but rather to restrictions on the terrestrial resources that determined a society’s capacity to intensify exploitation of those marine resources. We explain this apparent miscarriage of the Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization (MFAC) hypothesis on the south coast of Peru by proposing more explicit links than hitherto, between the detailed technological aspects of marine exploitation using plant fibers to make fishing nets and the emergence of social complexity on the coast of Peru. Rather than because of any significant advantages in quality, it was the potential for increased quantities of production, inherent in the shift from gathered wild Asclepias bast fibers to cultivated cotton, that inadvertently precipitated revolutionary social change. Thereby refined, the MFAC hypothesis duly emerges more persuasive than ever.     

Submergence: Precarious Politics in Colombia's Future Port‐City

This article examines popular politics under precarious conditions in the rapidly expanding port‐city of Buenaventura on Colombia's Pacific coast. It begins by identifying the intersecting economic, ecological, and political forces contributing to the precarity of life in Buenaventura's intertidal zone. Focusing on conflicts over land in the waterfront settlements of Bajamar (meaning “low‐tide”), it then describes the efforts of Afro‐Colombian settlers and activists to defend their territories against threats of violence and displacement. In doing so, they must navigate historical legacies of ethno‐racial politics as well as formations of liberal governance and their multicultural and biopolitical logics of vulnerability and protection. The socio‐material conditions of the intertidal zone, and in particular the figure of submergence, are used to illuminate forms of political life in Colombia's future port‐city. The struggles of Afro‐Colombians to contest violent dispossession in Buenaventura reflect the racialized politics of precarity under late liberalism.     

Macrobotanical food remains from a trans-Holocene sequence at Daisy Cave (CA-SMI-261), San Miguel Island, California

Carbonized macrobotanical remains from a trans-Holocene archaeological and paleontological sequence at Daisy Cave provide important insights into the use of food plants by Paleocoastal people as well as later groups on California’s Northern Channel Islands. Small seeds are rare among the macrobotanical remains recovered in the cultural strata at Daisy Cave, which are dominated by charcoal from woody plants used as fuel. The recovery of Brodiaea-type corms from the Early and Late Holocene strata suggests, however, that geophytes were an important source of carbohydrates and calories for Channel Islanders throughout the Holocene. The proposed importance of geophytes is consistent with the abundance of Brodiaea in island vegetation communities recovering from more than a century of overgrazing, as well as the large numbers of digging stick weights found in island sites.     

Hunter-gatherer tobacco smoking: earliest evidence from the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America

Chemical analysis of residue extracted from stone pipes and pipe fragments excavated at sites in the southern Pacific Northwest Coast of North America demonstrate that hunter-gatherers smoked the psychostimulant tobacco (Nicotiana sp.) by at least AD 860. Non-farming ethno-historic Native Americans throughout the west gathered and sometimes cultivated tobacco for ritual and religious purposes, but until now the antiquity of the practice on this part of the continent was unknown. Method validation includes chemical characterization of a suite of smoke plants and experimental reproduction of “smoked” pipe chemistry; results indicate biomarkers are traceable for several species commonly smoked by ethnographic native peoples, including tobacco (nicotine, cotinine), tree tobacco (anabasine), and kinnikinnick (arbutin). Developed methods—where residue is extracted directly from the stone or clay matrix of whole and fragmentary archaeological pipes—may be applied in similar studies investigating the spread and use of ritual smoke plants in the ancient Americas and elsewhere.     

Plant microfossil analysis reveals disturbed forest and a mixed-crop,dryland production system at Te Niu,Easter Island

Plant microfossil analysis was carried out on 12 soil samples from a variety of landscape features at three locations (100–250 m a.s.l.) along a 950 m transect at Te Niu, Easter Island. Pollen and phytolith assemblages were dominated by palms and ground ferns, and suggested disturbed forest. We identified pollen of bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) and starch grains of the common yam (Dioscorea alata), sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) and taro (Colocasia esculenta). The data suggest a mixed-crop, dryland production system at Te Niu dominated by yam and sweet potato, and supplemented by taro and bottle gourd. The data provide direct evidence of crop type and range, supporting the indirect evidence (topographic and landscape features, field and historical research, comparisons with elsewhere in the Pacific) that much of the rock covered landscape of Easter Island was used for intensive horticulture.     

Andean Ores,Bronze Artifacts,and Lead Isotopes: Constraints on Metal Sources in Their Geological Context

With a focus on bronze production in the south-central Andes during the Middle Horizon, this study reports the first archaeological use of lead isotope analysis to investigate metallic ores and metal artifacts in the Andean zone of South America. Because the vast majority of metal deposits in the Andean cordillera formed in a convergent plate boundary setting, lead isotope compositions of most Andean ore sources are not unique. Lead isotope ratios of central and south-central Andean ores define four geographically distinct ore lead isotope provinces, oriented and elongated parallel or sub-parallel to the trend of the Andean cordilleras. Consequently, ore lead isotope ratios vary strongly from west to east along transects through the coast, highlands, and altiplano, but they exhibit much less variation from north to south. The strong west-to-east variation in ore lead isotope signatures allows discrimination between ore bodies, and ultimately between metal artifacts, as a function of macro-ecozone location: coast, junga-qiswa, puna, and altiplano. We present the most up-to-date database of ore lead isotope signatures for the south-central Andes including those determined for ores we sampled over an approximate 250,000-km² region within Bolivia, northern Chile, and northwest Argentina. Lead isotope signatures of Cu-As-Ni bronze artifacts from Tiwanaku (altiplano capital) and San Pedro de Atacama (desert oasis entrepôt) establish that altiplano and high sierra ore bodies provided the metal for both assemblages. Conchopata (Wari) arsenic bronze artifacts exhibit lead isotope ratios compatible with the Julcani (Huancavelica) copper sulfarsenide deposit.     

Testing flora as bioindicator of buried structures in the archaeological area of Maxentius’s villa (Rome,Italy)

The flora of the archaeological area of Maxentius’s villa (Rome) was tested as bioindicator of buried remains of masonry and pavements. A total of 53 floristic surveys provided the occurrence of each species in sample units, as well as some their phenological features. The data were elaborated through multivariate statistical analysis in order to assess floristic affinities/differences among sample units, and define their ecological characteristics. The fuzzy set methodology was applied to evaluate relation between floristic richness, plant cover and soil depth. Results showed that the buried remains of stonework create a discontinuity in the ground, influencing the flora growing above it. This phenomenon may give rise to differential presence of some species (e.g., Cota tinctoria, Trifolium scabrum ssp. scabrum on thin soil; Ranunculus bulbosus, Trifolium pratense on deeper soil), but will not have such a great effect on floristic richness. The bioindication of this phenomenon also occurs through phenological irregularities in single specimens and changes in plant cover. Nevertheless other environmental factors (soil moisture/aridity, trampling, enrichment of nitrogen, cutting, ground depression) can interfere with the use of plants as bioindicators of buried structures. It is therefore necessary to consider other factors ecological influencing each site when you want to use plants as bioindicators in archaeological prospection.     

Seasonal stability in Late Holocene shellfish harvesting on the central California coast

Oxygen isotope determinations from 92 California mussel (Mytilus californianus) shells from ten archaeological sites in central coastal California show relatively stable seasonal harvesting patterns between 3600 CAL BP and historic contact (AD 1769). Coastal occupants harvested mussels nearly year-round and seem to have occupied individual residential bases throughout the seasonal cycle. Interior groups returned with mussels from the coast mostly in the spring and early summer, but almost never in the late summer/early fall when nut crops were harvested. These findings suggest two inter-dependent groups with distinct seasonal settlement strategies: inland people, reliant on acorns and other nut crops harvested in the fall, and coastal inhabitants who were less involved with acorns. This pattern is supported by accounts recorded by the first Spanish explorers in AD 1769. While some interior groups may have been seasonally migrating “collectors,” coastal populations were less mobile, inhabiting individual residential sites throughout the year, albeit not necessarily on a permanent basis. These findings highlight the strong influence of coastal environments and resources on hunter-gatherer mobility.     

Muricid boreholes in Pleistocene acorn barnacles from the Beagle Channel: trophic interactions during the Last Interglacial in southern South America

Gordillo, S., 2013. Muricid boreholes in Pleistocene acorn barnacles from the Beagle Channel: trophic interactions during the Last Interglacial in southern South America. Alcheringa 37, 1–8. ISSN 0311-5518.

Acorn barnacles with boreholes were recovered from a Pleistocene marine deposit on Navarino Island, on the southern coast of the Beagle Channel. Balanomorph shells were identified as Balanus laevis (Bruguière, 1789 Bruguière, J.G., 1789. Encyclopédie méthodique. Histoire naturelle des vers 1, 158–173, pis. Paris, 164–166. [Google Scholar]), and a few bear small round holes located generally on the middle or apical part of the parietal plates, thus suggesting that they represent the work of small muricid predators. If so, this study is the first record of drilling predation on fossil barnacles reported in southern South America.

[Sandra Gordillo [sgordillo@cicterra-conicet.gov.ar], Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencias de la Tierra, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CICTERRA, CONICET-UNC); Centro de Investigaciones Paleobiológicas (CIPAL), Facultad de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Av. Vélez Sársfield 1611 X5016GCA Córdoba, Argentina. Received 8.1.2013; revised 26.3.2013; accepted 2.4.2013     

Stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis on human remains from the Early Mesolithic site of La Vergne (Charente-Maritime,France)

We report here the results of stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis of human and faunal remains from La Vergne (Charente-Maritime, western France), a rare Early Mesolithic burial site (ca. 8500–8000 cal BC). The results for nine humans (average δ¹³C = −19.3‰; δ¹⁵N = 9.4‰) indicate a strongly terrestrial diet, dominated by animal protein, with the possibility of, at best, a slight contribution of marine-derived protein. Given lower sea-levels in the early Holocene, the site would have been some 60–80 km from the sea at the time of its use; nevertheless, contacts with the coast are shown by the presence of numerous marine shell beads in the graves. In the light of the stable isotope results, it is suggested here that such contacts most likely took the form of exchange with coastal communities whose remains now lie underwater.     

Patronage of the poetic Mélusine romance: Guillaume l’Archevêque’s confrontation with dynastic crisis

In 1400 Guillaume l’Archevêque, the lord of Parthenay, commissioned the Roman de Parthenay (RP), a poetic ancestral romance affirming his family’s descent from Mélusine, the mythic fairy-serpentine matriarch of the Poitevin Lusignan dynasty. Prevailing scholarship holds that Guillaume’s commission was a political response to the earlier patronage of a prose Mélusine romance by Jean, duke of Berry, c. 1392. According to this view, Guillaume was an English partisan who sought to counter the French claims to Poitevin territories embedded in Berry’s romance with a text that proclaimed his own (and therefore English) rights to lands in central France. After exploring textual and historical evidence for this conventional view, the paper argues that clues to understanding Guillaume’s patronage lie in an analytical comparison of passages in the RP with the specific dynastic circumstances confronting l’Archevêque at the end of the fourteenth century. Examination of the romance in conjunction with evidence provided by feudal, financial, and legal sources suggests that Guillaume’s literary patronage was motivated not by contemporary affairs of state but by his anxieties about the imminent extinction of the Parthenay dynasty.