Mobility, competition, and Plio-Pleistocene hominid foraging groups

Evidence for carcass access times and levels of early hominid mobility is synthesized using studies of carnivore ethology and theories of interspecific competition to arrive at tentative conclusions about the organization of Plio-Pleistocene hominid foraging groups. The model presented suggests that group foraging tactics, in combination with high mobility, are central to successful confrontational scavenging (interference competition), whereas individual foraging tactics and high mobility are central to successful nonconfrontational scavenging (exploitative competition). In contrast, group or individual foraging tactics and low mobility characterize the acquisition of fresh carcasses in low-competition contexts. Individual foraging tactics and low mobility are employed in response to extreme competition over marginal resources. Preliminary tests with data from Bed I Olduvai Gorge and Koobi Fora suggest that Plio-Pleistocene hominids, like other large-bodied predators, employed flexible foraging tactics involving changes in group size and levels of mobility to gain access to carcasses in both low-and high-competition contexts.     

Declining foraging efficiency and moa carcass exploitation in southern New Zealand

The application of foraging theory to understanding carcass exploitation is a relatively recent development. The methodology developed by archaeological and ethnoarchaeological research on butchery/transport studies has been integrated into a behavioral ecological framework to create models that can be used to understand archaeological carcass exploitation. In this paper, I use such a model to examine how New Zealand foragers altered their use of moa carcasses as the availability of these large birds declined. Moa 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, field processing of moas increased and marrow, and possibly grease extraction intensified over time.     

The effects of resource depression on foraging efficiency, diet breadth, and patch use in southern New Zealand

While many studies have examined human impacts on prehistoric environments, few have explicitly examined how foragers adapt to the changing environmental situations that they have created. The goal of this analysis is to study the relationship between human foraging economies and human-related environmental change in southern New Zealand. Foraging theory is used to generate predictions about subsistence change resulting from the declining abundance of important resources such as moas and seals. In particular, these predictions examine changes in (1) the kind of resources exploited (foraging efficiency), (2) the number of resources utilized (diet breadth), and (3) the habitats exploited (patch choice). The predictions are tested using the large assemblage of vertebrate faunal remains from the well-stratified and well-dated Shag River Mouth site. This study shows that using foraging theory models to structure analysis provides a more fine-grained spatial and temporal resolution of subsistence change in southern New Zealand than has been previously achieved.     

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.     

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.     

Editorial

Similarities in late Middle Cambrian trilobite, inarticulate brachiopod and molluscan faunas are apparent between Bornholm (Denmark) and New Zealand. Tuarangia gravgaerdensis sp. nov. is described from the late Middle Cambrian Andrarum Limestone of Bornholm, Denmark. The Andrarum Limestone is stratigraphically correlated with the Tasman Formation, New Zealand, from where the genus Tuarangia was first described. A single specimen, referred to Tuarangia, has been found in an erratic boulder from NW Poland. The boulder is estimated to be of early Late Cambrian age. The initial taxonomic assignment of Tuarangia to the Bivalvia, Subclass Pteriomorphia, is upheld. The distance between Bornholm and New Zealand, the position at opposite hemispheres, and the palaeogeography in general clearly indicate isocommunities with restricted possibility of exchange of the gene pool at species level.     

明代社会流动性初探

本文从官方的户籍控制,人口的分化与等级制度的解体,以及客籍、附籍的出现诸方面,对明代中期以后的社会流动性进行了考察.文章认为,明代社会是一个具有相当流动性的社会.社会流动的形式,既有地域之间的人口流动,又有社会阶层之间的流动,而这种社会阶层之间的流动,又包括向上与向下两种流动方式.社会流动的加剧,则显示出晚明社会正好处于一个转型时期.     

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.     

河南史前城址的分类研究

河南地区史前城址脱胎于早期的环濠聚落。在史前人口不断滋生的情况下,由于婚姻和血缘纽带集中聚居,构成了规模更大的史前城址。史前晚期的社会分化导致城址的构成模式由"大同模式"向"小康模式"转变,进而形成了三代大型都邑聚落的"城郭体系"。     

史前墓地研究述评

墓葬资料对于研究没有字记载的史前社会,具有特殊的价值和意义,其研究的主要内容包括编年、墓地形成过程、人口数量与结构、社会组织和结构、葬俗和葬制、体质特征和人种、习俗和病理、随葬品等。中国史前墓葬和墓地的研究,经历了四个阶段,即资料积累阶段、社会性质讨论阶段、发展阶段和扩展阶段。     

An Exemplary Leader?: New Zealand and Decolonization of the Cook Islands and Niue

ABSTRACT

New Zealand is proud of its decolonization record: Prime Minister Peter Fraser’s role in developing provisions for non-self-governing territories in the United Nations; New Zealand’s support for the 1960 declaration on colonialism; its leadership on decolonization in the Pacific; the innovative decolonization solution of self-government in free association with New Zealand adopted by the Cook Islands in 1965, and similar arrangement by Niue in 1974. This record is ascribed to a New Zealand belief in self-determination. Closer examination shows many officials, ministers and parliamentarians were opposed to self-government for the Cook Islands, and concerns lingered about Niue. The arrangements reached reflected New Zealand’s reluctance to let go. Yet self-government was granted, in the context of a reassuring New Zealand view of itself as the centre of the South Pacific region. With new competition for influence in the region, it is important that New Zealand does not seek to constrain the Cook Islands’ and Niue’s self-government and potential future self-determination.     

Late Holocene Great Basin prehistory

Late Holocene Great Basin prehistory is a spatial and temporal mosaic of lifeways related to changing physical and social environments. Evidence shows changes in technology, subsistence, foraging tactics, and population density, though the causes of these changes are still under investigation. Current research has emphasized the role of wetlands and, related to this, the so-called Numic expansion, whose timing and nature are still poorly understood. Behavioral ecology applied to a macroregional scale probably offers the most useful approach to solving this and other issues, given the exigencies of hunter-gatherer archaeology in a desert environment.     

Variability in cementum deposition in springbok from the South African Cape

Over the past two decades, cementum increment analysis has played an important role in determining the season of death of ungulates at archaeological sites in many parts of the world, but its potential to address questions of seasonality in South African prehistory has remained largely unexplored. The ability to determine the seasonality of hunting practices would prove an important asset to understanding the foraging strategies and mobility patterns of Middle and Later Stone Age people in this region. A sample of springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis) of known date-of-death was collected from the South African Cape, a region across which three different rainfall regimes are represented. This study documents a very general correspondence between rainfall patterns and cementum development in springbok but also a level of variability that exceeds that observed by studies in other regions. In two sub-samples in which the sex of all individuals is known, cementum deposition among females is more strongly correlated with season of death than it is among males. This difference may reflect the social organization of springbok. The findings for springbok highlight the complexity of applying cementum increment analysis to archaeological studies not only on the Cape but also in regions of similar climatic variability.     

An Overview of Alaskan Late Pleistocene Archaeology: Historical Themes and Current Perspectives

Alaska has long held an important role in the late Pleistocene prehistory of the New World. Alaska being situated at the juncture between the Old and New Worlds, scholars have long looked to the Alaskan archaeological record to provide clues into the initial peopling of the New World. As such, Alaska figures prominently in most models of the peopling of the New World. In recent years, however, it has become clear that the late Pleistocene archaeological record of Alaska is characterized by great technological and adaptive diversity, and no single interpretive model can adequately explain that diversity. This paper traces the development of Pleistocene Alaskan archaeology by outlining the history of site discoveries and interpretations. In so doing, it provides a historical perspective on current frameworks of Alaskan Pleistocene prehistory. Based primarily on a search for the first inhabitants of the New World, however, the research questions traditionally guiding Alaskan archaeology have tended to complicate rather than clarify the picture. In some cases, this has led to false expectations and oftentimes contradictory interpretations, many of which still persist, and which can only be resolved by addressing the Alaskan record on its own terms.     

The Seasonal Mobility of Prehistoric Gazelle Herds in the Azraq Basin,Jordan: Modelling Alternative Strategies Using Stable Isotopes

The hunting of Gazella subgutturosa was a dominant practice for Epipalaeolithic and early Neolithic hunter–gatherers in the east Jordan steppe. The seasonal mobility of this taxon in the Levant is poorly understood, especially for early prehistory when herd movements would have influenced hunter-gatherer use of the steppes. This paper proposes four patterns of seasonal herd mobility for G. subgutturosa centred on Jordan’s Azraq Basin. The four patterns are modelled using oxygen, carbon and strontium stable isotopes. Seasonal environmental signatures of each are understood through carbon and strontium isotopic variation in sixty modern plant specimens collected from twelve selected locations in north Jordan, published data on oxygen isotopes in local precipitation, and the adaptive behaviour of G. subgutturosa. The integrated isotopic datasets provide clear discriminatory markers for each proposed mobility pattern. Results will be applied in future to isotopic data from archaeological gazelle teeth from the Azraq Basin.     

Characterization of New Zealand obsidian using PXRF

New Zealand has some of the most active areas of rhyolitic volcanism in the world and this has produced numerous obsidian sources in the northern half of the North Island. In total archaeologists have recognized 27 named locations from which obsidian can be obtained scattered across 4 geological source regions. Shortly after colonization in the late 13th century AD Polynesian settlers began transporting this material some thousands of kilometers throughout the country and across the sea in small quantities to distant neighbors in the Kermadecs and Chatham islands. Although considerable research has been conducted on obsidian sourcing in New Zealand the complexity of geochemical source discrimination and the lack of a practical method of non-destructive geochemical analysis has hindered progress. We present the results of our use of PXRF to provide geochemical data on New Zealand obsidian sources and to compare the use of discriminant analysis and classification tree analysis to discriminate among sources and attribute archaeological samples to sources. Our research suggests that classification tree analysis is superior to discriminant analysis in sourcing studies. A large case study using an important settlement phase site (S11/20) from the Auckland region demonstrates the utility of the methods and the results support a model of high degrees of mobility and interaction during the early settlement of New Zealand.     

Comparing election outcomes in Australia and New Zealand

It has been claimed that Australian and New Zealand voters have followed parallel paths since the Second World War. A comparison of the patterns of net vote movement at contemporaneous Australian and New Zealand elections since 1965 reveals that most have not been alike, although there were some remarkably similar patterns in the 1970s. Most Australian elections have been dominated by movement to the Opposition, but this is not true of New Zealand elections. At New Zealand elections, movements to minor parties have been as common.     

Christianity,Gender, and the Working Class in Southern Dunedin, 1880–19401

This article is a study of the southern suburbs of Dunedin, which during the late nineteenth century became the most industrialized and working class urban area of New Zealand. Analyzing the social composition of fifteen southern Dunedin churches, I question the idea, widely held by New Zealand historians, that the working classes had largely turned their backs on organized religion. In keeping with recent scholarship in the social history of British and Irish religion, I show that unskilled workers were better represented in many southern Dunedin congregations that previous historians have acknowledged and that skilled workers numerically dominated most churches. When women are included in the analysis, working class predominance increases further. Signing the suffrage petition in remarkable proportions, working class Christian women turned the southern suburbs into a world‐leading first wave feminist community. Moreover, varieties of popular Christianity flourished beyond the ranks of active churchgoers. I conclude by suggesting that New Zealand historians need to rethink the old “lapsed masses” and “secular New Zealand” assumptions and to investigate the diverse varieties of Christianity shaping the culture, and their sometimes conflicting this‐worldly meanings.     

A news flow analysis of the sale of a public asset

As the marketplace approach to economic regulation swept through New Zealand in the late 1980s and early 1990s many new business opportunities were created. The deregulation of the electricity industry resulted in Utilicorp, a United States‐based utility holding company, entering into a joint venture with Waikato Electric Corporation in Hamilton, New Zealand. The public felt betrayed by the sale of a former public asset and a media crisis event was born. This study examines the crisis event from its historical origins and conducts a content analysis of the media coverage of the crisis. Waikato Electric and Utilicorp both underestimated the potential for public backlash to what appears on its face to be an excellent business opportunity. The Waikato Times assumed an adversarial role in this public controversy and sustained the coverage of this community crisis to effect change in the proposed merger.     

Hunter–gatherer movement patterns: Causes and constraints

The study of hunter–gatherer mobility patterns is of vital importance to our understanding of the paleolithic archeological record. Such patterns necessarily comprise many interacting locales, and it is at the landscape scale that we should attempt to understand the relationship between ethnographic and archeological data. This paper derives, quantifies and tests a series of basic predictions about the effects of group size, occupation duration and habitat quality on mobility strategies using a substantial ethnographic dataset. The results demonstrate that habitat quality is the best determinant of move distances among hunter–gatherers, but that occupation duration also has an effect among those foragers who rely principally on hunting. It is suggested that three roughly concentric zones, the limit of scatter, the foraging radius, and the logistic radius, are predicted by group size and occupation duration, habitat quality, and proportions of hunting and logistical mobility, respectively. The relevance of these conclusions to more generic ecological theory is discussed in the context of evolutionary forces acting on hunter–gatherer mobility in prehistory.