Increasing Behavioral Flexibility? An Integrative Macro-Scale Approach to Understanding the Middle Stone Age of Southern Africa

The Middle Stone Age (MSA) of southern Africa represents a period during which anatomically modern humans adopted a series of diverse cultural innovations. Researchers generally attribute these behavioral changes to environmental, neurological, or demographic causes, but none of these alone offers a satisfactory explanation. Even as patterns at site level come into focus, large-scale trends in cultural expansions remain poorly understood. This paper presents different ways to view diachronic datasets from localities in southern Africa and specifically tests hypotheses of environmental and cultural causality. We employ an array of analyses in an attempt to understand large-scale variability observed during the MSA. We evaluated the diversity of stone tool assemblages to model site use, examined transport distances of lithic raw materials to understand patterns of movement, assessed the cultural capacities required to manufacture and use different sets of tools, applied stochastic models to examine the geographic distribution of sites, and reconstructed biome classes and climatic constraints. Our large-scale analysis allowed the research team to integrate different types of information and examine diachronic trends during the MSA. Based on our results, the range of cultural capacity expanded during the MSA. We define cultural capacity as the behavioral potential of a group expressed through the problem-solution distance required to manufacture and use tools. Our dataset also indicates that the actual behavior exhibited by MSA people, their cultural performance as expressed in the archaeological record, is not equivalent to their cultural capacity. Instead we observe that the main signature of the southern African MSA is its overall variability, as demonstrated by changing sets of cultural performances. Finally, at the scale of resolution considered here, our results suggest that climate is not the most significant factor driving human activities during the MSA. Instead, we postulate that behavioral flexibility itself became the key adaptation.     

A matter of fact rather than principle: women,work and property in papal Rome (eighteenth-nineteenth centuries)

During the last few decades, many studies have documented the considerable participation of women in the economy of past societies, even though women were bound by rules and laws that discriminated against them and denied them the rights of citizenship. Thus historians, and especially those in the field of gender history, have increasingly recognized the importance of interweaving two realms, those of work and of property. As part of this effort, this article focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Rome and shows that over a long economic period, women's position was defined by a complex interaction between their status as workers and as owners of property.     

Missionization in New Zealand and Australia: A Comparison

This paper discusses missionization in New Zealand and Australia during the nineteenth century. Despite sharing aspects of colonial history and a geographical proximity in the South Pacific, the development of missions in both countries was disparate, leading to two very different types of missions, types I have identified as the “household” mission in New Zealand and the “institutional” mission in Australia. In both types common themes can be found, concerned with the “civilizing mission,” domesticity, and gender roles. These two types of missions were replicated in other parts of the globe, such as North America and the Pacific.     

Recent work on the Middle Palaeolithic of the Eastern Sahara

Recent research at the remote depression of Bir Tarfawi, in the hyperarid Eastern Sahara, has revealed a sequence of four, or possibly five, Pleistocene lake-episodes. The first lake was probably associated with a Late Acheulean and the remaining four with a Middle Palaeolithic, specifically with a Denticulate Aterian, industry. Lithostratigraphic, macrofaunal and microfaunal analyses have permitted a quite detailed reconstruction of the local environment during the periods of the last two lakes; during the period of the fourth lake, local rainfall may have beenca 600 mm per annum but was rather less during the time of the fifth lake. Investigation of some of the many associated archaeological sites is revealing a complex pattern of specialized site-types, including living-sites, primary and secondary workshops and primary and secondary butchery-sites. Specific types of sites are closely related to the local landscape. Preliminary analyses from several experimental methods of chronometric dating suggest that almost all of the sequence falls within the Middle Pleistocene.

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Résumé Des recherches récentes dans la dépression isolée de Bir Tarfawi dans le Sahara oriental hyperaride, ont révélé une séquence de quatre, ou peut être cinq, épisodes lacustres au Pléistocène. Le premier lac est probablement associé à un Acheuléen final, et les quatre autres au Paléolithique moyen, et spécifiquement à une industrie atérienne denticulée. Des analyses de lithostratigraphie, de macrofaune et de microfaune ont permis de reconstruire d'une façon assez détaillée l'environnement local pendant les périodes des deux derniers lacs. Pendant la période du quatrième lac, la pluviosité locale était peut être deca 600 mm par an, mais elle était un peu moindre à lépoque du cinquième lac. Les recherches dans certains des nombreux gisements archéologiques associés nous révèlent un schéma complexe de sites spécialisés, y compris des sites d'habitat, des ateliers primaires et secondaires, et des lieux de dépeçage primaires et secondaires. Certains types de gisement sont étroitement liés au paysage local. Des analyses préliminaires par plusieurs méthodes expérimentales de datation chronométrique suggèrent que presque toute la séquence appartient au Pléistocène moyen.