Alternative adaptive regimes for integrating foraging and farming activities

There are two distinct forager-farmer adaptive regimes evidenced in the ethnographic record: an ancillary and surplus cultivation regime. Societies characterized by these different regimes define different systems for allocating time to the production of domesticated plants. Cross-cultural patterns support the proposition that two socioecological conditions are logically necessary in order for an ancillary cultivation regime to develop and persist within a population of foragers. Wild resources must be sufficiently available, and farmers who produce a surplus of crops must be available to exchange with, live with or raid to redistribute crops after an episode of crop loss. The cross-cultural presence of two empirically distinct regimes for integrating foraging and farming is a useful frame of reference for evaluating how prehistoric foragers first integrated foraging and farming activities in archaeological contexts of secondary crop acquisition. A preliminary examination indicates that the ethnographic patterns are most consistent with the interpretation that the earliest farmers to inhabit the American Southwest produced at least a minimal surplus of domesticated plants. It is postulated that the adoption of a surplus cultivation regime by a population creates the adaptive opportunity for ancillary cultivation to develop and persist on a landscape.     

George Washington carver slept here: Racial identity and laboratory practice at Iowa state college

Racialist social agendas have helped determine who will and will not be admitted to the engineering programs of American universities, and bench‐level activities within university laboratories have both followed from, and encouraged these structures of occupational opportunity. The engineering division of Iowa State College between 1900 and 1960 was one site of such exclusionary activity. African‐American students were under‐represented in its programs throughout this period, even as other areas of the university diversified and as women gradually increased their presence in the engineering division. This paper proposes a study of ISC's engineering curricula, instruments, and facilities as a means of identifying and understanding this inequity.     

Renegotiating Barbuda's commons: recent changes in Barbudan open-range cattle herding

Barbuda remains little developed and sparsely populated relative to its neighbors in the Leeward Lesser Antilles, a rather extraordinary and relatively unknown Caribbean place. Much of its distinctiveness derives from the communal land-tenure system, itself rooted in three centuries of open-range cattle herding. Yet, as revealed through interviews, newspaper archives, and landscape observations, open-range cattle herding has declined over the past three decades, with related changes in land tenure. As the new Barbuda Land Act came into effect in 2008, codifying the communal tenure system, the very landscape elements that manifest open-range herding have become obscure. In particular, the rock-walled stockwells have become largely defunct, many of the walls lie in ruins or have been entirely consumed by the crusher that converted them into gravel to surface roads. With the principal land use that had supported communal control largely out of practice, usufruct access to land now largely obsolete, the new act might have little actual impact in preserving Barbuda's uniqueness.     

Localised Primary Canine Hypoplasia: Implications for Maternal and Infant Health at Man Bac,Vietnam, 4000–3500 years BP

The aim of this paper is to assess the frequency of localised primary canine hypoplasia (LHPC) in a sample of 24 subadults from a Neolithic cemetery assemblage located at Man Bac, northern Vietnam (~4000–3500 years BP), and explore the range of factors potentially contributing to the development of this condition. It is found that 41.7% of individuals (20.9% of primary canines) have LHPC, which is similar to the frequency reported in a suite of ancient cemetery series from Neolithic through to Metal Age Thailand. A range of competing aetiological factors considered included trauma to the deciduous canine, ostensibly by way of early childhood exploratory behaviours (e.g. ‘mouthing’ objects), nutritional and dietary deficiencies (especially vitamin A and D), the impact of the mother's health on the developing foetus as well as the effects of premature birth on the developing child. It is concluded that while the aetiology LHPC is multi‐factorial, the reasonably high prevalence of this condition at Man Bac suggests depressed maternal and neonatal health, consistent with a community experiencing high rates of fertility and transitioning to an agricultural subsistence economy. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.