Innovations,food storage and the origins of agriculture

Abstract

The global phenomenon of the birth of agriculture remains an enigma and challenges the role of food storage. Much has been written about their invention. A general explanation is needed for its progression in various parts of the world, which is both sociologically based and founded on the archaeological data. This task led Alain Testart to claim that it was by developing their existing skill sets (foraging, pottery, food storage and small-scale agriculture) that nomadic hunter-gatherers, burdened by an increasingly diverse set of tools and equipment, became sedentary. This sedentarism in turn allowed them to specialise in those activities, which had (literally) weighed them down: notably, breeding the first plant cultivars and, often, storing food.     

Sustainable management of metallurgical forest on Mont Lozère (France) during the Early Middle Ages

Mont Lozère, located in the French Massif Central region, provides an exceptional context in which to research the impact that charcoal production and metallurgy had on woodlands, along with the role that these activities played in changing the mountain landscape. This study provides an insight into the land use, forest management methods and metallurgical practices in the area during the Middle Ages (11th to 15th centuries). Medieval charcoal burning platforms, archaeological remains that have often been neglected in the past as a source of historical information, along with nearby smelting sites, were identified, sampled and analysed. In this paper, spatial analyses, radiocarbon dating and anthracological and dendro-anthracological studies have been combined in a unique manner. The results reveal that charcoal burners practiced beech coppicing, where the species and diameter of wood used remained the same over a period of four centuries. It is proposed that this form of metallurgical forest management be considered an early example of a sustainable utilisation of natural resources.     

Scientific Discourse and Local Discourses: The Case of African Archaeology

To the extent that knowledge is the product of a complex construction of Nature-Culture facts more or less perpetuated, the challenge, for archaeology as science discovering and explaining the pasts for developees, is to learn how to manage: (1) its scientific “facts” more or less stabilized or hardened in function of precise, reproducible, universal “buildings of facts,” these facts being combined in networks and allied to specific societal facts, according to a dichotomy between Nature and Culture positioned as incommunicable poles of the world, and (2) traditional, ordinary, daily “facts,” local, contextual“facts” encountered during our activities, publications, lectures, and exchanges with everybody. These facts link approximately or unconsciously Nature and Culture, two poles we moderns have created and separated ontologically. How to produce a legitimate cooperation between these two conflicting discourses during the applications and the improvement of the processes which form, even in the case of archaeology, what is currently termed “development.”Pour l’archéologie en tant que science découvrant et expliquant les passés des peuples en voie de développement, le savoir étant le produit, selon les cultures, de fabrications complexes de faits de Nature-Culture plus ou moins pérennisés, le défi consiste à apprendre à gérer ensemble: (1) ses “faits” scientifiques, plus ou moins stabilisés ou durcis selon des “mises en fait” précises, répétables, universelles, ces faits étant établis en réseau et alliés à tel ou tel secteur de la société en question selon une dichotomie établissant la Nature et la Culture comme pôles incommunicants du monde; et (2) les “faits” de savoirs traditionnels, ordinaires, quotidiens, faits locaux, contextuels rencontrés durant nos activités, publications, cours et échanges avec tout le monde. Ces faits lient approximativement ou inconsciemment la Nature et la Culture, ces deux pôles que nous, modernes, avons créés et ontologiquement séparés. Comment légitimement, même en Archéologie, faire collaborer ces deux discours, en conflit lors des applications et améliorations des processus relevant de qu’on appelle couramment le Développement?     

Unexpected Wind Power ‘Potentials’: The Art of Planning with Inherited Socio-Geographical Configurations (France)

Abstract

The deployment of wind power induces deep changes in landscapes and territories. The politicization of wind power generates new ad hoc collectives. In the French case, because of the institutional framing resulting from landscape and wind power policies (centralization, feed-in tariffs, private developers), collectives of emerging wind power landscapes are regularly set apart from wind power planning processes. This paper explores the extent to which these recompositions and new collectives could be part of emerging wind power potentials. The empirical evidence stemming from our case studies shows that wind power technology, like any other technology, is not endowed with a potential per se. Wind power potentials differ – ‘capitalistic’, ‘controversial’, ‘negotiated’, ‘conditional’ – depending on planning processes and inherited configurations. The notions of striated space and smooth space enable us to adopt a relational perspective on these emerging collectives and to account for the role of inherited socio-geographical configurations and planning processes.     

Does size matter? Foreign aid in Taiwan's diplomatic strategy, 2000–8

This article is the first systematic attempt at estimating the size of Taiwanese foreign aid and, thus, the cost of Taiwan's aid diplomacy. It questions the Republic of China (ROC) President Ma Ying-jeou's justification of his ‘diplomatic truce’ with China as necessitated by an ineffectiveness of his predecessor Chen Shui-bian's costly aid diplomacy. Deriving its evidence from the ROC governmental budgets, local media reports and interviews with Taiwanese officials involved in foreign aid implementation, the article argues that President Chen did not engage in ‘generous financial aid’ and proposes that this parsimony, rather than futility of aid diplomacy as a strategy to expand Taiwan's international space, should be considered as contributing to Taipei's diplomatic failures from 2000 to 2008.     

Creating the 1831 Canadian Census Database

The 1831 census database is the newest addition to the series of 19th century Canadian census microdata available for social science research, thanks to a collaboration between the Programme de recherche en démographie historique (PRDH) and FamilySearch. This article presents the work undertaken to prepare this database and the main challenges encountered in the course of this work. While the data extracted from the 1831 census are an invaluable tool for demographic research, particularly on account of the agricultural and industrial questions included in this census, cleaning these data have required particular attention to the age-sex-marital status tallies of the household co-residents. Additional efforts were devoted to integrating missing data for Montréal’s Notre-Dame parish and for other parishes.     

Mid-Holocene age obtained for nested diamond pattern petroglyph in the Billasurgam Cave complex,Kurnool District,southern India

India has one of the world's largest and most significant bodies of rock paintings and engravings, yet not a single rock art site or image has been directly and accurately dated using radiometric techniques. Here we report on results from the Billasurgam Cave complex near Kurnool in southern India. Although this cave complex has been investigated archaeologically since the late 1800s, it was not until 2008 that a large petroglyph, consisting of the remains of three nested diamond designs on a stalactite, was noted. In order to determine if this petroglyph had been made recently, flowstone was sampled from on top of and below the engraving. Radiocarbon dating revealed a mid-Holocene age of about 5000 cal BP for the petroglyph, but we cannot rule out the possibility that the engraving is several centuries younger. Similar nested diamond designs at some rock painting sites and on a chert core elsewhere in India have been assumed to be Mesolithic. Our result is consistent with this hypothesis, although we note that it also consistent with the creation of the petroglyph in the early Neolithic. We conclude that the Billasurgam engraved diamond design was probably made by Mesolithic foragers of the Kurnool region and is the oldest surviving form of rock art yet directly dated in southern India.