Evolutionary process and Polynesian prehistory

Kirch, Patrick Vinton. The Evolution of the Polynesian Chiefdoms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xii + 314 pp. including glossary, bibliography, and index. $44.50 cloth.     

Ancient molecules and human prehistory

Abstract

DNA and other molecules found in ancient remains are yielding new information about the origins, spread, interaction, and culture of early humans. Molecules of animal fats preserved in archaeological pottery have shown that in medieval societies people ate non-ruminant animals, such as pigs, but burned tallow from ruminants, such as sheep and cattle. Geochemical analysis of bitumen in the Middle East has documented ancient trade routes. Studies of molecular genetic diversity have shed light on when and how cattle were domesticated. Analysis of human hair from remains up to 5200 years old has revealed the diets of those ancient people. DNA recovered from other remains has also provided evidence for theories about the origins and spread of agriculture, and human migration into the Pacific.     

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.     

Engendered and Feminist Archaeologies of the Recent and Documented Pasts

Engendered and feminist archaeologies in historical archaeology have developed in complementary ways to those in nonhistorical archaeologies but with distinct methodological issues and sources of data. This article discusses the development of engendered and feminist archaeologies that use textual sources, the continuing themes that characterize this body of work, and the state of the field today. The article concludes with a discussion of future directions for practitioners to pursue.     

Comments on some developments in North European prehistory

The burials of the Nubian A‐Group recorded between the First and the Second Cataracts of the Nile and dated ca. 3200–2900 BC have yielded an important source material of rich and varied funerary offerings. This paper presents a case study aiming to establish a qualitative and quantitative ranking of the burials and to investigate relationships and patterns as regards age, gender and social organization, and also to study chronological implications. The results show that the A‐Group culture displayed a rather elaborate and mature social structure, perhaps organized around a female core with strong matrilineal traditions, and where the men occupied a different social sphere with their own symbolic expressions. One finds a shift from an earlier, uniformly stratified society towards a more complex structure with clear social inequality developed in Lower Nubia simultaneously‐with the emergence of the Firs t Dynasty in Egypt ca. 3000 BC.     

Holocene prehistory of the northernmost north Pacific

We examine evidence for Holocene contact between Asia and North America across what is now the Bering Strait, emphasizing maritime adaptation. After 10,000 B.P. residual influence of the Siberian Paleolithic is clear, and derivative Americans were moving southward along the open Pacific coast and settling in the eastern Aleutian Islands. By 6000 B.P. maritime adaptation is evident in the Kodiak Island region, and expansion westward brought colonization of the entire Aleutian chain of islands before 3000 B.P. In Asia there was marine subsistence on Hokkaido by 6000 B.P, but in the lower Amur River region, the southern and northern regions of the Okhotsk Sea, the coast of Kamchatka, and the Chukchi Peninsula no major maritime interest can be dated until after 2700 or even 2500 B.P In north Alaska, the mainland was cut off from Siberia by 6000 B.P with the rise of postglacial seas, but contact was reestablished 5000 B.P at the cultural level of the nonmaritime Siberian Neolithic. Pronounced marine orientation appears intrusively in north Alaska somewhat before 3000 B.P, when the only known source for the technology was the region extending from the Gulf of Alaska through the Aleutian Islands. Thereafter developed the maritime culture of the historic Eskimo people.     

The later prehistory of mainland Southeast Asia

Until the recent expansion of research into the prehistory of mainland Southeast Asia, the development of civilizations employing Indian religious and political concepts had been seen as a major fulcrum in the area's history. The prehistoric sequence in the area is reviewed, with particular attention being paid to evidence for ritual, display, exchange, and ranking behavior within lowland sedentary communities. These date to the two or three millennia preceding Indian contact. It is argued that already by the end of the prehistoric period, there were complex centralized societies with a long tradition of recognizing status differentials among individuals, affiliated groups, and communities. The sequence incorporates the exploitation of rice, and bronze and iron working. The chronology of these innovations is compared with that in China. It is not possible at present to argue for single or multiple origins, but the area of southern China is suggested as a crucial one in further research to resolve these issues.     

Bridging prehistory and history in the archaeology of cities

Abstract

Archaeology is ideally suited for examining the deep roots of urbanism, its materialization and physicality, and the commonalities and variability in urban experiences cross-culturally and temporally. We propose that the significant advances archaeologists have made in situating the discipline within broader urban studies could be furthered through increased dialog between scholars working on urbanism during prehistoric and historical periods, as a means of bridging concerns in the study of the past and present. We review some major themes in urban studies by presenting archaeological cases from two areas of the Americas: central Mexico and Atlantic North America. Our cases span premodern and early modern periods, and three of the four covered in greatest depth live on as cities of today. Comparison of the cases highlights the complementarity of their primary datasets: the long developmental trajectories and relatively intact urban plans offered by many prehistoric cities, and the rich documentary sources offered by historic cities.     

Reflections on North American Pacific Coast prehistory

The Pacific Coast of North America was occupied by many distinctive groups of coastal hunter-gatherers at the times of early contacts with Europeans. Despite significant cultural diversity, Pacific Coast peoples shared lifeways oriented toward generally similar marine, nearshore, littoral, and estuarine habitats. In this paper, we examine some major issues that guide much of the archaeology done along the Pacific Coast, then discuss some of the theoretical and methodological problems that limit the efficacy of archaeological reconstructions. Most archaeological research conducted on North America's Pacific Coast has been oriented toward the search for the origins and development of a variety of cultural patterns. A comparative review of California and Northwest Coast sequences provides interesting parallels and discrepancies in the approaches taken in studying some of the major issues in Pacific Coast prehistory.     

The late prehistory of xinjiang in relation to its neighbors

Recent research by Chinese archaeologists has identified many late prehistoric (2000-400 B.C.) oases, pastoral settlements, and cemeteries in eastern Central Asia (Xinjiang province of China). The synthesis presented here organizes the data into 10 archaeological cultures, defined on the basis of ceramics, burials, small finds, and architecture. The archaeological cultures reveal two periods, corresponding to the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. The oases cultures formed a core area before the Chinese Han period and maintained close contacts with nearby highland pastoralists in Siberia and western Central Asia. The evidence for interaction between Xinjiang and the complex cultures in China and western Central Asia is evaluated with regard to the origins of the early Xinjiang cultures.     

Engendered/endangered: women,tuberculosis, and the project of citizenship

The anti-tuberculosis campaign of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was an unprecedented display of medical authority and public health purview. With accumulating evidence that the disease disproportionately struck the poor, tuberculosis by the early decades of the century was perceived epidemiologically as embedded in individual practices including hygiene and domestic order. Tuberculosis was in a sense a trope for national degeneration, and as such it became the vehicle for a self-conscious thrust towards national renewal and moral regeneration. This paper uses a feminist Foucauldian framework in its analysis of the anti-tuberculosis campaign. In the case of San Francisco, efforts to combat tuberculosis centred in part on women in their roles as wives and mothers. Women were the gatekeepers of health because they were responsible for keeping the home clean and bacillus free. Not only did this focus become a medical legitimization of women's domestic duties, but it also became a discourse of citizenship. Whether explicitly or implicitly, physicians concentrated their attention on white middle class women in their messages of health maintenance. Within sanatoria, a primary agenda of tuberculosis treatment was the inculcation of middle class behaviour into the working class patients. The anti-tuberculosis campaign was thus a part of the early-twentieth-century project of nationhood where citizenship was largely calculated through the lens of class and race.     

The prehistory of northern Chile: A synthesis

Northern Chile, part of the south central Andes, consists of two main ecological subareas: extreme northern Chile, including the western valleys, and the Atacama Desert and oases. Different ecological conditions obtain in each subarea: puna, altiplano, and precordillera in the highlands; valleys, the desert, and oases in the intermediate zone; and coastal environments along the Pacific shores. In prehistoric times, all these environments were very interconnected. There are three different cultural traditions in the local prehistory: the early hunting and gathering tradition (10,000–4000 B.P.), the Chinchorro Tradition (7500–2500 B.P.), and the Altiplano or Andean Tradition (3000–0 B.P.). This proposed sequence is described, with emphasis on the early Chinchorro adaptations, including the important patterns of mummification, and its possible relation to tropical forest groups of the Amazon basin; and the Pre-Tiwanaku and later Tiwanaku and Inca developments, in relation to the circum-Titicaca region. The data presented in the paper are further developed to explore ideas and hypotheses for future research.     

A review of archaeological research on sami prehistory

Abstract

The English botanist and gardener John Tradescant the Elder's diary from a voyage to northern Russia in 1618 has lately attracted attention as a potential source on early Russian sea mammal hunting on the Svalbard archipelago. This article examines the usefulness of Tradescant's diary in this respect, but comes to a negative conclusion.     

走进史前彩陶王国

举世闻名的柳湾原始社会公共墓地,坐落在青海省乐都县高庙镇湟水北岸的柳湾村,这里气候宜人,环境优美,柳树成阴。湟水河从柳湾村南流过,它是青海的母亲河,千百年来,河水堆积了两岸广袤的肥田沃土,孕育了灿烂辉煌的青海远古文化。柳湾因村北约12万平方米的台地上分布着1730余座古墓和近2万件彩陶器而闻名于世,被誉为“彩陶的王国”,柳湾彩陶是继西安兵马俑之后,我国最大的文物发现。柳湾墓地的发现比较偶然。20世纪70年代初期,当地农民在村后旱台上平整土地过程中,一批批后来被定为是国家珍贵文物的精美彩陶在农民的锹镐下露出它昔日的风彩。…     

The prehistory of Cyprus: Problems and prospects

The archaeological record of prehistoric Cyprus is rich, diverse, well-published, and frequently enigmatic. Regarded by many as a bridge between western Asia and the Aegean, Cyprus and its past are frequently seen from scholarly perspectives prevalent in one of those two cultural areas. Its material culture, however, differs radically from that of either area. Apart from the early colonization episodes on the island (perhaps three during the pre-Neolithic and Neolithic), evidence of foreign contact remains limited until the Bronze Age (post-2500 B. C.). This study seeks to present the prehistory of Cyprus from an indigenous perspective, and to examine a series of archaeological problems that foreground Cyprus within its eastern Mediterranean context. The study begins with an overview of time, place, and the nature of fieldwork on the island, continues with a presentation and discussion of several significant issues in Cypriot prehistory (e.g., insularity, colonization, subsistence, regionalism, interaction, social complexity, economic diversity), and concludes with a brief discussion of prospects for the archaeology of Cyprus up to and beyond 2000.     

The archaic prehistory of the North American Southwest

Evidence today suggests that by at least 8000 to 8500 B.P., Archaic hunter-gatherer economies were established throughout the North American Southwest. The Early Archaic seems to be a period of considerable variability across the subregions; this may be a product of currently slim knowledge of the period, or it may indicate that the region witnessed considerable flux. With the Middle Archaic period from 5500 to 3500 B.P. there seems to be greater similarity in material culture across the region and a definite increase in the number of known sites. Finally, the Late Archaic/Early Agricultural period from 3500 to 2000 or 1500 B.P. sees the establishment of a mixed farming-foraging economy in much of the Southwest with apparently major changes in subsistence-settlement systems. Preagricultural Archaic land use patterns are known in broad outline but not in detail; high mobility by small social groups in an annual round would have permitted exploitation of diverse biotic communities. In most parts of the region, significant socioeconomic change accompanies the incorporation of agriculture into the late preceramic period, as witnessed by the appearance of longer-term residential sites with pitstructures and storage features.