Evaluation of the Early Paleo-Indian zooarchaeological record as evidence of diet breadth

Early Paleo-Indians in North America are historically hypothesized to have been large-game specialists. Despite decades of research, Early Paleo-Indian diets are alternately portrayed as of either specialist or generalist. Though some suggest that these terms are not useful, debate over the nature of these diets continues. Authors who have studied Early Paleo-Indian archaeofaunas from North America have analyzed either a conservative dataset, consisting only of taxa whose remains meet criteria indicating they were part of Early Paleo-Indian diet, or a liberal dataset which includes all taxa regardless of the presence or absence of evidence that represented taxa were part of the diet. Camp sites are assumed to be more indicative of long-term, average Early Paleo-Indian diet, but single-event kill sites and multiple-event kill sites are included in analyses. Richness, evenness, and heterogeneity of mammalian taxa and of body size classes for conservative and liberal datasets show that many assemblages cannot be categorized as representing either specialist or generalist diets regardless of dataset used or diversity measure employed. Early Paleo-Indian diet breadth was diverse and in some cases more diverse than during the subsequent Archaic.     

Prehistoric demography of North America inferred from radiocarbon data

Large radiocarbon datasets are increasingly used as a paleodemographic proxy, although potential sources of bias in such records are poorly understood. In this paper, we use more than 25,000 radiocarbon dates extracted from the Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database (CARD) to estimate long-term population trends in North America, while critically examining biases in such records. The frequency distribution of CARD dates shows a positive curvilinear pattern, such that older dates exist in lower numbers than more recent dates, which in part reflects the removal of cultural carbon from the archaeological record through processes such as erosion and dissolution. The average annual growth rate of radiocarbon dates in CARD was calculated and used to derive estimates of the population of North America from the Paleo-Indian to the Contact Periods. While taphonomic bias has likely affected the CARD data, other factors, such as the overrepresentation of Paleo-Indian and Archaic radiocarbon dates, may have offset any bias due to taphonomy. A quantitative reconstruction of Native American population shows that population increased rapidly around 2000 cal yr BP, reaching a maximum of 2,500,000 people by ～AD 1150. From this time until European contact, the population declined, possibly due to the effects of increased sedentism and population density.     

Railways as a Factor of Change in the Distribution of Population in Spain, 1900–1970

Abstract

The central focus of this work is to test a new methodology to measure the impact of the railway on the distribution of population, in this case in Spain. To achieve this, it was necessary to previously integrate data relating to population and railway lines into a geographical information system. The result was a spatial database that includes population data from homogeneous census series obtained for the municipal scale and the evolution of the railway network in service at corresponding points in time. This allowed the authors to apply spatial-temporal analysis. By so doing, this work constitutes an analysis of a new methodology, as they used exploratory spatial data analysis and geographically weighted regression to detect spatial patterns and estimate the influence of the railway and distance from the coast on population change. The results obtained show that the influence of the railway was very pronounced in some areas, while in others it was just one of the factors that could explain major changes in population distribution.     

MODIS‐derived NDVI Characterisation of Drought‐Induced Evergreen Dieoff in Western North America

Vegetation stress or mortality can be the result of many factors including drought‐induced water deficit, insect infestations and failures of, or fluctuations in, precipitation sources typical to an area. Reduction of cover and reduced health are identifiable in remotely‐sensed multispectral satellite images. A suite of images from NASA's MODIS sensor was used to calculate the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) during the 2000–2006 North American growing seasons. Fluctuations in NDVI over this period show a significant decline in vegetative health in the region with specific areas showing changes linked to moisture sources, prevailing wind patterns, slope aspect and solar radiation receipt. Ground‐truthing of these areas has confirmed the extent and magnitude of the dieoff signal. Historically, dieoff has been reversed through regeneration as climate conditions return to a normal regime. However, quantification of recent vegetative change in western North America suggests that the degree of change may be too severe for regrowth to occur and may have far‐reaching impacts on a scale unseen in modern times. The loss of vegetative habitat and native species in semi‐arid regions and lack of regeneration in these marginal ecosystems due to prolonged drought are growing global problems. Similar drought stress impacts on marginal ecotypes have also been observed in semi‐arid regions of Australia, South America, Asia and Africa. Observations of the spatial pattern of temperate forest vegetation globally can be used to develop a precise picture of vegetative health in these regions and how they are reacting to global climate change.     

Should we expect large game specialization in the late Pleistocene? An optimal foraging perspective on early Paleoindian prey choice

Several recent studies employ foraging theory to model early Paleoindians as big game specialists who focused on hunting large bodied, high-return animals such as mammoths. In this paper, we evaluate the specialist model by identifying the range of handling times and encounter rates within which mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) specialization would occur. We continue by using allometric relationships between body size and population density in mammals to estimate encounter rates for mammoth and other North American species. Combining these two pieces of information allows for the construction of an optimal diet curve representative of late Pleistocene prey choice, given the inclusion of mammoth. Our results seriously question the model of early Paleoindians as megafaunal specialists and suggest that foragers should have pursued a wide array of taxa including not only mammoth, but the full range of ungulates and some smaller game as well. These results accord well with empirical data on prey choice from late Pleistocene archaeological contexts from across North America.     

差异和差距:中国和北美旅游地理博士学位论文的比较研究

通过对56篇中国旅游地理学博士学位论文和76篇北美论文的比较研究发现:中国旅游地理研究的博士学位论文滞后于北美,但中国博士论文增长速度快于北美;北美论文选题视野宽泛而中国论文选题视角比较狭窄;北美旅游地理博士学位论文选题的学科本位特征比较明显,而中国旅游地理博士学位论文选题的实践驱动比较突出;由于中国和北美旅游业发展背景和所处发展阶段不同或研究者对旅游地理问题认识的差异使其博士学位论文选题倾向有明显不同,即使在同一时期也有不同的研究热点。在北美,旅游影响研究和旅游景观/形象/感知研究是两个长盛不衰的课题且涉及的论文数量最多;在中国,涉及最多的研究领域是区域旅游开发/发展和生态旅游。     

Mechanisms Shaping the Transition to Farming in Europe and the North American Woodland

Despite the fact that Europe and Eastern North America both have similar woodland environments, the emergence of agriculture in these areas proceeded very differently varying in timing, speed, and mechanism. To analyze the different subsistence paths the Global Land Use and Technological Evolution Simulator was used, a numerical model for simulating demography, innovation, domestication, migration and trade within the geoenvironmental context. I demonstrate how Europe receives a large package of foreign domesticates and converts rapidly. In contrast, trajectories relating to Eastern North America exhibit a gradual transition in which hunting and gathering and agropastoralism coexist for a long period of time, and agriculture is integrated slowly into the existing subsistence scheme. I deduce from this a qualitative economic difference in the two regional transitions: limited population size in Europe, limited resources in Eastern North America.     

Investigating the peopling of North America through cladistic analyses of Early Paleoindian projectile points

The initial colonization of North America remains a controversial topic. There is widespread agreement that Clovis and related cultures of the Early Paleoindian period (∼11,500–10,500 BP) represent the first well-documented indications of human occupation, but considerable differences of opinion exist regarding the origins of these cultures. Here, we report the results of a study in which data from a continent-wide sample of Early Paleoindian projectile points were analyzed with cladistic methods in order to assess competing models of colonization as well as several alternative explanations for the variation among the points, including adaptation to local environmental circumstances, cultural diffusion, and site type effects. The analyses suggest that a rapidly migrating population produced the Early Paleoindian projectile point assemblages. They also suggest that the population in question is unlikely to have entered North America from either the Isthmus of Panama or the Midatlantic region. According to the analyses, the Early Paleoindians are more likely to have entered North America via either the ice-free corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets that is hypothesized to have opened around 12,000 BP, or the Northwest Coast.     

Spatial pattern of land cover changes across Northeast China over the past 300 years

To accurately model the regional climatic effects of land use/cover change processes, precise reconstructions of historical land cover are essential. Over the past 300 years, the northeastern region has undergone more significant land cover change than any other region in China owing to large numbers of farmer migrants from North China, reflecting the tremendous effects human activities can have on such changes. In this paper, based on official statistical data, documentary records, survey data, and modern remote-sensing data and vegetation and soil maps, land cover changes across Northeast China over the past 300 years have been reconstructed through cropland data calibrations using correlation analysis, potential vegetation reconstructions, urban area estimations, spatial analyses of land cover type changes by K-mean clustering analysis, and consideration of land use driving forces. The results indicate that cropland expanded gradually from south to north through the cities of Shenyang, Jilin, and Ha’erbin as well as out to the margins of the central plain of Northeast China, with a maximum expansion occurring in the 1950s. Pristine forests and grasslands diminished significantly, especially in the early twentieth century, due to this expansion of cropland. The conclusions drawn from these results are, first, that these results provide a scientific understanding of the process by which the original land cover was replaced by cropland in Northeast China over the past 300 years. Second, the results enabled the development of a series of land use/cover changes maps with 50–100 year time resolutions and county-level spatial resolutions. Based on the reconstructed results of these land cover type changes, the dynamics and causes of land cover changes are discussed in their social–historical contexts.     

Environmental Systems and Human Impact at Cobrico Crater,South-western Victoria

This study assesses human impact on the landscape around Cobrico, a volcanic crater lake in dairying country in south-western Victoria. It compares the last 150 years of impact of European settlement against approximately the previous 1500 years of prehistoric occupation and land use. Focus is on vegetation dynamics, erosion, productivity changes and the fire regime. Since European settlement there has been woodland clearance and recovery, the introduction of many plant and animal species and a significant increase in the intensity in the fire regime. While many direct linkages are apparent between environmental variables some operate over significant time lags. Fire has played a major role in vegetation dynamics and has favoured open ground taxa at the expense of Eucalyptus and Melaleuca. While major fires do not always lead to erosion in the catchment it is clear that some changes in the chemistry of erosion products have resulted, with potassium and iron showing increases in the historic period.     

Geochronology of vegetation stages of south-east Baltic coast (Kaliningrad region) during the middle and Late Holocene

The raised bog sediments that have been continuously accumulated over time represent the most suitable natural object which enables us to reconstruct Late Glacial and Holocene vegetation and palaeoclimates. Bog peat consists of organic carbon formed in situ. It contains moss, plant fragments and microfossils that are necessary for the study of palaeovegetation and palaeoclimate. However, a successful study of palaeoenvironment can be carried out on the basis of investigation of a great quantity of samples along the whole peatbog thickness. In the present paper, the authors present the results of palynological, botanical investigations and radiocarbon dating of 31 peat samples taken from the raised bog Velikoye, located in the eastern part of Kaliningrad Region. The data obtained have enabled us to reconstruct the palaeovegetation, reveal the evolution of the bog and determine rate of peat formation at different evolutional stages over the last 7500 cal BP.     

Human impact and landscape utilization from the Mesolithic to medieval time traced by high spatial resolution pollen analysis and numerical methods

Pollen analysis in relation to archaeological excavations has been carried out by the coast of central Norway to investigate for the first time long-term human impact on the vegetation in this region. A total of 297 samples from eleven archaeological sites and connected bogs/peat profiles reveal the vegetation development from the Mesolithic until today. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is used to identify and elucidate the development through time and space, and the results of pollen diagrams from bogs are compared to the results of on-site pollen data. Human impact has transformed the vegetation to a varying degree in different time periods. A dense population connected to the shoreline is slightly visible as opening-up of the forest in the Mesolithic, whereas re-use of Mesolithic settlement sites for cultivation and grazing in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (from c. 2300 cal BC) is clearly documented by palaeobotany but weakly recorded in the archaeological record. Areas for settlement and cultivation are found from the Late Bronze and Iron Ages and pollen analysis contributes to a detailed picture of utilization of the landscape. The investigation shows the potential of combining archaeological and botanical data and analysing several small pollen sequences within an excavation area to reveal spatial patterns in vegetation development and human impact through time.     

SHELL-TEMPERED POTTERY ON THE CENTRAL PLAINS

Abstract

The Central Plains have not been included in recent coverage of issues related to the use of shell-tempered pottery in eastern North America. It has been known for over a century that this material does appear on the Central Plains. Its spatial and temporal distribution, however, are not well understood, and issues related to its presence and technology have only recently begun to receive needed attention. This paper reviews the status of what we know about the spatial and temporal distribution of shell-tempered pottery on the Central Plains by compiling data from many sources and visually portraying their patterning. Some factors affecting the distribution then are discussed, with particular attention given to firing and raw material properties. Vessel form and function, and decoration and its implications, also are briefly discussed.     

Recent Trends in Northwestern America

The Northwest Coast has long held a seminal role in the ethnographic and theoretical development of anthropology in North America. Both that role and the saliency of Native American Indigenous peoples have seemingly waned over time. Almost invisibly, however, a critical mass of new ethnographic perspectives and a new aspiration toward synthesis have emerged across the sub-disciplines and subject areas of Americanist anthropology in the United States and particularly in Canada. The Northwest Coast as the quintessential culture area has become a more fluid continuum of contact zones intersecting across Northeastern North America, as reflected in the works discussed here.     

The Role of Functional Efficiency in the Decline of North America’s Copper Culture (8000–3000 BP): an Experimental,Ecological, and Evolutionary Approach

The copper-using cultures of North America’s Archaic Period (10,000–3000 BP) have long been an archaeological enigma. For millennia, Middle and Late Archaic hunter-gatherers (8000–3000 BP) around the Upper Great Lakes region made utilitarian implements out of copper, only for these items to decline in prominence and frequency as populations grew and social complexity increased during the Archaic to Woodland Transition. From a cultural evolutionary perspective, the trajectory of North America’s copper usage presents a conundrum, as it is generally assumed that “superior” tools, i.e., metals, will replace inferior ones, i.e., stone. For well over a century, scholars have pondered the reason for the demise of copper technology that was once a wide-spread phenomenon. To address this question, an extensive archaeological experimental program was conducted which compared replica copper tools (spear points, knife blades, and awls) to analogous ones made of stone or bone to assess whether relative functional efficiency contributed to the decline of utilitarian copper implements. Here, the results of this three-part research program are presented in concert with population dynamics and ecological change to paint a broader picture of the complex interrelationships between the social, ecological, and technological spheres of past human behaviors. The synthesis of these approaches reveals that functional explanations—derived from experimental archaeology placed in an evolutionary framework—can shed much light on the trajectory of metal use in the North American Great Lakes.

     

Bayesian Model Averaging for Spatial Econometric Models

We extend the literature on Bayesian model comparison for ordinary least-squares regression models to include spatial autoregressive and spatial error models. Our focus is on comparing models that consist of different matrices of explanatory variables. A Markov Chain Monte Carlo model composition methodology labeled MC ³ by Madigan and York is developed for two types of spatial econometric models that are frequently used in the literature. The methodology deals with cases where the number of possible models based on different combinations of candidate explanatory variables is large enough such that calculation of posterior probabilities for all models is difficult or infeasible. Estimates and inferences are produced by averaging over models using the posterior model probabilities as weights, a procedure known as Bayesian model averaging. We illustrate the methods using a spatial econometric model of origin–destination population migration flows between the 48 U.S. states and the District of Columbia during the 1990–2000 period.     

Pollen taphonomy and airfall sedimentation in a tropical cave: the West Mouth of The Great Cave of Niah in Sarawak,Malaysian Borneo

This paper investigates the taphonomy of predominantly biogenic sediments and pollen in the key archaeological site in the West Mouth of the Great Cave of Niah, Sarawak. Strong spatial patterning of sediments and pollen were found, with a zonation related to distance into the cave. Near the cave mouth, sedimentation is silty and derived from waters running down the cliff outside the cave, with leaves from external vegetation. Pollen assemblages are similar to forest floor samples outside the cave, and thus are of airfall or wash origin. In the interior of the West Mouth, sedimentation is highly organic and composed largely of bird droppings. Pollen assemblages in the interior are strongly but regularly biased, with ‘over-representation’ of mangrove and riverine taxa resulting from the recruitment of pollen by bats and swiftlets foraging preferentially in these zones, over 7 and over 2 km from the cave, respectively. The significance of these findings for the understanding of humid tropical cave sequences and particularly for the current reassessment of Niah Cave is discussed.     

An analysis of a Natchez gunflint assemblage from the lower Mississippi valley and its implications for eighteenth-century colonial economic interactions

Archaeological analyses of European lithic technologies in North America are often discussed anecdotally within the context of other material evidence of European occupations. In North America, the presence of gunflints manufactured in Europe, generally England (which became part of Great Britain in 1707) or France, is used as a marker for the influence of these European powers and as a reflection of from whom residents obtained their material culture. Gunflints were made in Europe and in North America (north of the Rio Grande) from the early 1600s to the late 1800s. Thus, gunflints from sites such as the Natchez Fort, Louisiana (AD 1729–1731) provide a unique avenue of analysis for understanding both continuity in lithic technologies and the interactions between indigenous and introduced technologies. We address methodological concerns in typifying historic lithic collections, specifically eighteenth-century gunflints, particularly as these concern sourcing and the implications of sourcing for eighteenth-century colonial interactions in the southeastern United States.