South African palaeoenvironments during marine oxygen isotope stage 4: a context for the Howiesons Poort and Still Bay industries

Spanning the period from ∼74–58 ka, and being broadly coeval with marine oxygen isotope stage 4 (MIS 4), the Still Bay and Howiesons Poort industries represent important phases in the development of the material culture of early modern humans. How and why these industries occurred when they did, however, remain matters for speculation. A key element of this debate has been the question of what role environmental change during the early stages of the last glacial period may have had on influencing human activity. Unfortunately, well-dated palaeoenvironmental evidence from this period is limited, and the debate has, out of necessity, been driven by the application of conceptual models of environmental change, many of which associate colder and warmer global climates with increased aridity and humidity respectively. In this paper, the regional marine and terrestrial evidence is synthesised to create an evidence-based palaeoenvironmental context. Based on the information available to date, it appears that rather than being characterised by dry conditions, MIS 4 was a period of relatively cool, moist climates, the ubiquity of which transcends the modern regional climate boundaries. It is suggested that orbital parameters at this time created greater interaction between tropical and temperate circulation systems, bringing more moisture to the subcontinent. These findings highlight the distinct nature of southern African climate systems, and caution against the application extra-regional conceptual models or inferring linear relationships with polar records.     

Nature and significance of the Howiesons Poort to post-Howiesons Poort transition at Klein Kliphuis rockshelter,South Africa

This paper considers the transition from Howiesons Poort to post-Howiesons Poort technologies at the rock shelter site of Klein Kliphuis, South Africa. The transition at this site is shown to be gradual, with incremental changes in material selection and in the size and shapes of flakes and cores. Implements which appear to blend characteristics of those distinctive of the earlier and later industries appear briefly at the mid-point of the transition. The results suggest that there is unlikely to have been an occupational hiatus between the Howiesons Poort and post-Howiesons Poort. Explanations for the Howiesons Poort phrased in terms of population expansion and contraction are also difficult to support. Technological changes at this time may relate to environmental variation, though the limited nature of terrestrial archives documenting changes in resource productivity necessitate that any such suggestion be made with caution.     

A Segment is not a Monolith: evidence from the Howiesons Poort of Sibudu,South Africa

Segments from the Howiesons Poort of Sibudu, South Africa, can be separated into at least three populations based on quartz, hornfels and dolerite rocks used for their production. Length, breadth, thickness and tip cross-sectional areas are significantly different between segments made on the three rock types. Segments are not monoliths, and they were not intended as a single tool type, they were flexible enough to be mounted to shafts in a variety of ways. Several hafting strategies are evident, including the use of different adhesive recipes. Most segments were probably parts of hunting weapons, based on use trace analysis, but weapon types varied. Quartz segments have standardized shapes (short and deep), perhaps because they were hafted as transverse arrowheads. While hornfels and dolerite segments may on occasion also have been parts of projectiles, the large dolerite segments could sometimes have served as parts of spearheads, with two segments hafted back-to-back. Howiesons Poort segment technology is sophisticated; its makers appreciated distinct properties of rocks, their flaking, wear and impact possibilities. Further, they recognized the best sizes and shapes for use with each kind of weapon, they understood the qualities and applications of various adhesive recipes, and they knew how to make a variety of hafts from materials that included bone and wood.     

Blade technology and tool forms in the Middle Stone Age of South Africa: the Howiesons Poort and post-Howiesons Poort at Rose Cottage Cave

It has been suggested that between 80 and 35 ka the Middle Stone Age record of South Africa reveals episodes of inventiveness and innovation, punctuated by apparent returns to more conventional technologies. One such episode is the Howiesons Poort (HP). The appearance of a range of small geometric forms, apparently used as insets in multi-component tools, has been considered as evidence of improved hunting weapons, with possible social and symbolic connotations. On the basis of evidence such as backed tool production, small blade technology, the occurrence of typical end-scrapers and burins similar to those encountered in the European Upper Paleolithic, long-distance transport of fine-grained raw materials, and non-lithic novelties, the HP is associated with increased levels of technological efficiency and with behavioral innovations that could have allowed the expansion of African populations to other regions. Yet our knowledge of HP technology and tool production is limited to the analysis of Klasies River Main site by Singer and Wymer and Sarah Wurz, and a few preliminary reports from other sites. This is why we present here a detailed technological and typological analysis of several HP and post-HP assemblages from the well-excavated, well-dated and well-stratified site of Rose Cottage. Our analysis shows: (a) that the HP blade production was a real technical innovation, but was not based on indirect percussion, as often suggested; (b) that blade production was based on the use of marginal percussion which does not occur in the blade production of the Eurasian Middle Paleolithic; (c) that the tool kit was dominated by backed pieces, but not all can be considered as hunting weapons; (d) that neither end-scrapers nor burins are typical of this industry and are no more an antecedent to the European Upper Paleolithic than the end-scrapers and burins of the Middle Paleolithic; (e) that patterns of raw material procurement do not conform to models based on evidence from Klasies; (f) that diachronic changes within the Rose Cottage sequence indicate slow, gradual abandonment of the technological style of the HP; (g) that the post-HP assemblages are of MSA character and are typologically and technologically quite similar to the European Middle Paleolithic; (h) that the lack of persistence of the HP innovations is in need of an explanation. The HP is not a monolithic entity. Implications for the symbolic interpretations of the HP phenomenon are discussed.     

Hunting with Howiesons Poort segments: pilot experimental study and the functional interpretation of archaeological tools

For many decades the use of backed pieces from the Howiesons Poort, between about 70 ka and 55 ka ago, in South Africa has been a point of discussion. Recently direct evidence has been provided to associate these tools with Middle Stone Age hunting strategies. Yet, whether they were used to tip hunting weapons or as barbs remained an open question. In this paper we introduce a set of pilot experiments designed to test the effectiveness of Howiesons Poort segments, the type fossils of the industry, hafted in four different configurations as tips for hunting weapons. It is shown that the morphological type can be used successfully in this way. We present the results of a macrofracture analysis conducted on the experimental tools and compare these to results obtained from three Howiesons Poort backed tool samples. By correlating experimental outcomes, macrofracture data and the interpretation of micro-residue distribution patterns, we provide some insight into the functional variables that might be associated with Howiesons Poort segments.     

Evolutionary Foraging Models in Zooarchaeological Analysis: Recent Applications and Future Challenges

The last few decades have witnessed a rapid rise in the use of foraging models derived from behavioral ecology to explain and predict temporal and spatial differences in faunal assemblages. Although these models build on conventional ideas about utility firmly embedded in zooarchaeological analyses, when cast in an evolutionary framework these ideas produce some of the most sophisticated and elegant interpretations of archaeofaunas to date. In this article I review the methodological and practical strengths and weaknesses of current zooarchaeological applications of foraging models. Recent applications of foraging models to the zooarchaeological record reveal important variability in human-prey interactions across time and space. Case-specific applications generate theoretical and methodological advances that augment and are complementary to model building in allied fields. Recent applications also identify shortcomings in the underlying assumptions and rationale of some foraging models that mirror past and on-going discussions in anthropology and biology. I discuss how these shortcomings can fruitfully direct future applications and research in foraging economics.     

Finding resolution for the Howiesons Poort through the microscope: micro-residue analysis of segments from Sibudu Cave,South Africa

In this paper I present the results of a micro-residue analysis of stone segments, the type fossils of the Howiesons Poort technocomplex in South Africa, with an age of more than 60 ka at Sibudu Cave, KwaZulu-Natal. Fifty-three segments were systematically analysed and 1826 organic micro-residue occurrences were documented on the sample. The distribution patterns of micro-residues and other use-traces are interpreted in terms of hafting and function. It is shown that most of the tools were indeed hafted and most were probably used as inserts for hunting weapons. There is evidence for differences and changes over time in haft materials and hafting configurations of the segments. The study demonstrates how functional studies could improve our understanding of change and variability in human behaviour during the Middle Stone Age, a period that used to be portrayed as static or slow changing.     

An improved OSL chronology for the Still Bay layers at Blombos Cave,South Africa: further tests of single-grain dating procedures and a re-evaluation of the timing of the Still Bay industry across southern Africa

This paper presents a series of new single-grain optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages for the Still Bay at Blombos Cave, South Africa, and compares them to previously published OSL, thermoluminescence (TL) and electron-spin resonance (ESR) ages for this site. Details are provided about the measurement and analytical procedures, including a discussion of the characteristics of the OSL signals of individual quartz grains. This forms the basis for further investigations into the sensitivity of the equivalent dose (D_e) estimates to a range of different analytical approaches, including changes in the size of the test dose, the choice of signal integration interval, the subtraction of an appropriate background, and isolation of the most light-sensitive (‘fast’) component of quartz OSL. We also report the results of an inter-operator test of D_e determination using seven new samples from Blombos Cave, and demonstrate the reproducibility of results obtained for two samples that had been dated previously at another laboratory and were measured and analysed again in this study. Together, these tests validate the robustness of the Blombos Cave single-grain OSL age estimates to a variety of alternative OSL dating procedures. We have incorporated, for the first time, these ages for Blombos Cave into a data set of all single-grain OSL ages for Still Bay and Howieson's Poort sites across southern Africa, and have used a statistical model to re-evaluate the timing and duration of the Still Bay industry. We calculate the most plausible start and end dates of the Still Bay as 72.2 ka and 71.3 ka, respectively – amounting to a duration of 0.9 ka – and estimate (with conventional 95% confidence) that this industry began no earlier than 75.5 ka, ended no later than 67.8 ka and lasted no longer than 6.6 ka.     

Americanist Stratigraphic Excavation and the Measurement of Culture Change

Many versions of the history of Americanist archaeology suggest there was a stratigraphic revolution during the second decade of the twentieth century—the implication being that prior to about 1915 most archaeologists did not excavate stratigraphically. However, articles and reports published during the late nineteenth century and first decade of the twentieth century indicate clearly that many Americanists in fact did excavate stratigraphically. What they did not do was attempt to measure the passage of time and hence culture change. The real revolution in Americanist archaeology comprised an analytical shift from studying synchronic variation to tracking changes in frequencies of artifact types or styles—a shift pioneered by A. V. Kidder, A. L. Kroeber, Nels C. Nelson, and Leslie Spier. The temporal implications of the analytical techniques they developed—frequency seriation and percentage stratigraphy—were initially confirmed by stratigraphic excavation. Within a few decades, however, most archaeologists had begun using stratigraphic excavation as a creational strategy—that is, as a strategy aimed at recovering superposed sets of artifacts that were viewed as representing occupations and distinct cultures. The myth that there was a stratigraphic revolution was initiated in the writings of the innovators of frequency seriation and percentage stratigraphy.     

Tiwanaku and Its Precursors: Recent Research and Emerging Perspectives

The Lake Titicaca Basin provides a fascinating case study for examining the prehistoric rise of complexity and archaic state development. The development of the Tiwanaku state and preceding polities involved conjunctions of regional environmental, socioeconomic, and ideological transformations. Significant social, economic, and ideological diversity characterized each major phase, indicating that the creation of inclusive domains of shared values, practices, and identities was critical to the formation of polities in the region. Tiwanaku and its precursors were, in great part, incorporative sociopolitical phenomena in which social diversity remained vital throughout their histories.     

Wind(ow) of Change: A Systematic Review of Policy Entrepreneurship Characteristics and Strategies

What lessons can we learn from 40 years of policy entrepreneurship scholarship on policy entrepreneurs’ strategies and defining characteristics? While scholars have offered important insights, many questions remain open. This article systematically reviews 229 articles that were published between 1984 and 2017. Our findings provide (i) an analysis of policy entrepreneurship characteristics by sector, policy domain, individual/group, government layer, and geographical spread, (ii) an empirically based identification and classification of policy entrepreneurship strategies, and (iii) a statistical analysis of the relationship between policy entrepreneurs’ characteristics and strategies. We conclude with an agenda for future studies that will continue to examine new theoretical approaches that advance our understanding of the role that individuals and small groups play in the policy process.     

Economic Restructuring,Coping Strategies and Social Change: Implications for Institutional Development in Africa

Since the early 1980s, most African countries have experienced unsatisfactory rates of economic growth and profound changes in livelihood systems, which have affected the way their modern institutions function. However, when confronted with evidence of poor economic performance in countries undergoing adjustment, the international financial institutions often blame governments for their lack of political will in regulating the activities of bureaucrats and vested interests. They recommend policies aimed at restructuring public sector institutions through privatization, public expenditure cuts, retrenchment, new structures of incentives and decentralization. Despite efforts to implement these measures in a number of countries, the problems of low institutional capacity remain. Two key contradictions appear to explain why institutions have been largely ineffective in crisis economies in Africa: the growing contradiction between the interests of bureaucratic actors and the goals they are supposed to uphold; and the contradiction between the institutional set-up itself and what goes on in the wider society. To understand how these contradictions work, it is necessary to look more closely at the set of values and relationships that anchor institutions on social systems. The issues here are social compromise and cohesion; institutional socialization and loyalties; overarching sets of values; and political authority to enforce rules and regulations. The crises in these four areas of social relations, which are linked to the ways households and groups have coped with recession and restructuring, have altered Africa's state institutions so that it has become difficult to carry out meaningful development programmes and public sector reforms without addressing the social relations themselves.     

Land Use Planning Tools and Institutional Change in Germany: Recent Developments in Local and Regional Planning

This paper seeks to understand how recent social, economic and institutional developments have affected the land use planning tools and instruments that German planners have at their disposal. Although traditional planning practice was focused on the equitable distribution of services and infrastructure and managing growth within a highly structured plan approval process, planning tools at both the local and regional level have become increasingly concerned with enhancing local or regional competitiveness, primarily through the inclusion of a greater number of actors in formulating land use decisions. I argue, however, that despite these changes, the overall institutional framework, which revolves around legal and procedural concerns such as the plan approval process or the granting of building permission, has generally remained unaffected, and a significant gap exists, particularly at the regional level, between the strategic goals of regional governance and actual land use planning tools.     

Policy Diffusion and Strategies for Promoting Policy Change: Evidence From California Local Gun Control Ordinances

Recent research efforts on policy innovation and diffusion largely have focused upon policymaking at the state government level. In this article we seek to develop an understanding of the ways momentum for policy change can be generated among receptive local governments. We use gun control policymaking within California to illustrate how local government characteristics, the presence of regional associations, and the establishment of interest groups may lead to policy development and diffusion. We also identify linkages between interest groups, focusing events, and the successful use of a new image of gun violence as a public health problem, yielding insights into strategies that may be used successfully to promote policy change.     

Nurturing Culture Through Country: Resource Management Strategies and Aspirations of Local Landowning Families at Napranum

In the context of generations of living in the ‘long and terrible shadow’ (Berger, 1991) cast by hostile political structures, mission influences and industrial resource management systems, the culture and identities of the local Aboriginal landowning families of the Weipa area have survived. These families actively nurture their culture through the development of resource management strategies. Local landowners' experiences of colonisation and the ways in which they sense their history and geography are explored and various cultural maintenance and transmission practices centred on country and resources are described. Active engagement with wider scale processes is contributing to more effective outcomes for the landowning families.     

The Neolithic Macro-(R)evolution: Macroevolutionary Theory and the Study of Culture Change

The macroevolutionary approach in archaeology represents the most recent example in a long tradition of applying principles of biological evolution to the study of culture change. Archaeologists working within this paradigm see macroevolutionary theory as an effective response to the shortcomings of neo-Darwinian biological evolution for studying cultural evolution. Rather than operating at the level of individual traits, macroevolutionary archaeologists emphasize the role of hierarchical processes in culture change. While neo-Darwinian archaeologists disavow any element of human intent in culture change, to macroevolutionary archaeologists human agency is a key component of cultural evolution that allows cultures to respond to pressures more quickly and with greater degree of flexibility and directedness than found in biological evolution. Major culture change, when it happens, is likely to be rapid, even revolutionary, with periods of rapid change separated by periods of relative stasis of actively maintained stability. The emergence of Neolithic cultures has long been recognized as one of two periods of major revolutionary culture change in human prehistory. Here I examine the record for the Near East, tracing the empirical record for the origin of agriculture in this region, as well as other demographic, social, and ideological components of Neolithic emergence. While the empirical record from the Near East subscribes in a general way to basic principles of macroevolutionary theory, cultural evolution cannot be understood through appeal to principles of biological evolution alone, whether based in macroevolutionary theory or neo-Darwinianism. Instead, the key role of human agency in culture change distinguishes cultural evolution from biological evolution and requires a more pluralistic and less doctrinaire appeal to multiple models of change based in both the biological and social sciences.     

一致性和多样性——拉美现代化模式研究中的两种视角

本文从拉美现代化模式的地区性研究和国别研究两个角度,对国内学术界前一阶段的主要成果作了简要回顾,认为所谓拉关现代化研究,首先应该是民族国家的现代化研究．应该以民族国家为研究单位,民族国家的现代化是拉美现代化研究的基础;在强调地区一致性的同时．不能忽视了国别差异性,而在国别研究中．要重视比较研究和非经济因素的研究。     

The Relational Sources of Advocacy Strategies: Comparative Evidence from the European and U.S. Climate Change Sectors

How do advocacy organizations make tactical choices? This paper contributes to theory building in advocacy studies by examining how the decision‐making processes of advocacy organizations are affected by the choices of their peers. Drawing on qualitative interviews with practitioners in two contexts—the European Union and the United States—I document that organizations face pressures toward cohesion and differentiation with the tactical choices of other organizations. Other important processes—such as rational evaluation of political opportunities, resource dependence, and ideological constraint—are also reported to be influential, although these processes are sometimes influenced by relational dynamics. These findings suggest new variables and relationships of interest for future quantitative research and provide insight into the growing complexity of climate politics.