Climatic anomalies,food systems,and subsistence crises in medieval Novgorod and Ladoga

Climatic factors have affected subsistence strategies throughout human history. In northern Europe and Russia, short-term climatic anomalies and weather extremes are commonly thought to underlie famines in the Middle Ages. However, medieval subsistence crises were not just natural disasters and medieval people were not passive victims of climatic anomalies. In addition, the capacity to cope with climatic anomalies has varied temporally and spatially throughout the Middle Ages. Yet only a few studies have explored the climatic impact on regional medieval food systems comprehensively. This article examines the significance of climate variability on subsistence crises in medieval Novgorod and Ladoga (Russia), focusing on the relationship between short-term climate anomalies and crop cultivation. In addition, this paper evaluates the impact of crop failures, frosts, and other weather phenomena on the food system. The materials are drawn from medieval sources, paleoclimatological reconstructions, and archaeological evidence. The results show that short-term climatic anomalies alone rarely lead to severe subsistence crises, and during every famine period there is evidence of other contributing factors, such as unfavourable weather phenomena, disease, or social unrest. The variety of cultivated crops and agricultural techniques is shown to increase the region’s resilience to climatic anomalies and to crop failures.     

Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies and Germanic oral tradition

The object of this study is to examine the possibility that, although the Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies are in their extant from products of ecclesiastical scholarship, the keeping of royal genealogies in early England was not an innovation brought about by Christian literacy, but was rather a native, originally pre-Christian institution which the church adopted. The discussion is divided into two parts. The first argues that the genealogical lists derive at least in part from the sort of historical record which the Anglo-Saxons, in common with other early Germanic peoples, maintained in the form of orally transmitted narrative traditions. The second tries to show that these traditions were cultivated by a court poet known to the Anglo-Saxons as the scop. The conclusion is that the extant royal genealogies are ultimately dependent on orally transmitted royal dynastic histories the keeping of which was an established part of native, originally pre-Christian traditional culture in England.     

The role of honey hunting in supporting subsistence livelihoods in Sumbawa,Indonesia

Honey from the giant Asian honey bee (Apis dorsata) has been harvested by communities throughout Southeast Asia for centuries. In Indonesia, 80 per cent of the national supply of honey comes from Sumbawa; however, there is limited information regarding the sustainability and importance of honey hunting in supporting rural livelihoods. This study used semi‐structured interviews and questionnaires to examine honey hunting and forest honey production in Sumbawa. It evaluates the economic and cultural importance, opportunities, and constraints of honey hunting and prompts us to suggest that income generation from honey plays a critical role in supporting rural communities. Of respondents, 83 per cent reported that income from honey was essential and accounts for 68 per cent of cash income. Yet honey hunters were harvesting using destructive methods under dangerous conditions and are subject to unpredictable market prices and fluctuating yields. Unlike situations in other areas of Indonesia, no system of customary law was found to exist that defines ownership of honey trees and the right to harvest from them. Limited access to market information, high moisture content of honey, and limited training and extension services were identified as key constraints. Future research exploring the sustainability of harvesting practices and mechanisms for improving profitability of honey hunters would be valuable.     

The dynamics of tradition in Panajachel and Zinacantan

George A. Collier. Fields of the Tzotzil: The Ecological Bases of Tradition in Highland Chiapas. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1975. xv + 255 pp. Appendix, bibliography and index. $9.75.

Robert E. Hinshaw. Panajachel: A Guatemalan Town in Thirty‐Year Perspective. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1975. xxvii + 203 pp. Forward, epilogue, appendix, notes, glossary, bibliography and index. $16.95.     

Artificial Scarcity in Housebuilding and the Impact on Affordability: The Return of Absolute Rent

The slow response of volume housebuilders to changes in demand has been cited as a contributing cause of a global crisis of housing affordability and allegations of land banking have persistently dogged the industry. This article reviews the supply responsiveness of speculative housebuilders in the United Kingdom and Australia through the neglected Marxian analytic category of absolute rent. Absolute rent directs attention to the relationship between the value of land and the cost of housing and models a market in which landowners may withdraw land from supply to inflate prices. Through the lens of absolute rent, the real estate practices of the housebuilding industry can be understood as a strategy of artificial scarcity straddling land and housing markets. The findings of this investigation demonstrate the insights to be gained by a return to absolute rent that valuably expand the current debate on the supply and cost of housing.     

The long–term survival of bone: the role of bioerosion

Fossil bones (N = 350) spanning more than 350 million years, and covering a wide range of depositional environments, were studied to compare the distribution of microbial destruction features in fossil bones with previously published data sets of bones of archaeological age. The distribution of bioerosion in fossil bones is very different from that found in bone from archaeological sites. Fossil bones typically show little or no bioerosion. Under normal conditions, if a bone is to survive into the fossil record, then rapid bioerosion must be prevented (or halted). This conclusion suggests that early post mortem processes,such as the mode of death, influence the potential of any bone to survive into deep time.     

Discussion: the subsistence of the Teotihuacan metropolis

In this chapter, the issue of how the huge multiethnic metropolis of Teotihuacan was fed will be addressed reassessing data from four different contexts:

1. 1.
   The apartment compounds where people dwelled
    
2. 2.
   The neighborhood centers where many people of different origins worked
    
3. 3.
   The palatial structures of the ruling elite
    
4. 4.
   The rituals inside the main pyramids
    

My extensive excavation project at the multifamily apartment compound of Oztoyahualco 15B:N6W3 (1985–1988) provides the primary dataset to address the first context; there, the faunal and floral remains relate directly to food preparation and consumption, as well as fuel provisioning, manufacture, and domestic ritual. My project at the multiethnic neighborhood center of Teopancazco (1997–2005) addresses the complexity of multiethnic relations established through caravans linking Teotihuacan with allied sites along the corridor towards the Nautla region of the Gulf Coast of Veracruz. Foreign fauna, as well as cotton and other raw materials and products, arrived to Teotihuacan through these caravans, together with migrant specialized craftsmen/women. The third context will be addressed through my excavations in Xalla, a huge palatial complex to the north of the Pyramid of the Sun, where the ruling elite participated in ceremonial and sacrificial activities. The fourth context will only be mentioned briefly and is related to the excavations in the main monumental structures, where faunal and floral remains were associated with consecration rituals, as well as those found in the fill of these structures.     

Amanda L. Logan: The Scarcity Slot: Excavating Histories of Food Security in Ghana

African Archaeological Review -