Dietary shifting in the Nasca Region as inferred from the carbon- and nitrogen-isotope compositions of archaeological hair and bone

The topography of the Andean Region results in short travelling distances among ecologically distinct production zones. As such, it is possible to infer relative changes in residence based on the spatial variability in the isotopic composition of food resources. Here, we determine long-term diet through carbon- and nitrogen-isotope analysis of bone collagen for twenty-nine individuals from Cahuachi, an important ceremonial centre in the Nasca Region. We also reconstruct the temporal sequence of change in dietary isotopic compositions along hair samples for seventeen individuals buried at Cahuachi and the neighbouring site of Huaca del Loro.     

Paleoindian technological provisioning strategies in the northwestern Great Basin

Great Basin populations during the Pleistocene–Holocene Transition (PHT) are often characterized as being mobile and focused on wetlands; however, the factors that influenced where Paleoindians selected residential campsites are poorly understood. Using predictions derived from optimal foraging-based patch choice models and GIS reconstructions of the PHT landscape, some researchers have argued that occupations in smaller wetlands should have been shorter than occupations in larger wetlands but such arguments have rarely been evaluated using empirical data. The PHT lithic record provides an opportunity to evaluate the relationship between wetland size and occupation span by applying Kuhn's (1995) concept of technological provisioning. Kuhn expects more mobile populations to provision individuals and more sedentary populations to provision places and suggests that: (1) a strategy of provisioning individuals should be reflected by a high proportion of more extensively used artifacts made on non-local raw materials; and (2) a strategy of provisioning places should be reflected by a high proportion of less extensively used artifacts made on local raw materials. We apply the technological provisioning concept to lithic assemblages from two of the Parman localities, extensive PHT sites in the northwestern Great Basin, and compare local and nonlocal artifacts to determine if Paleoindians shifted from provisioning individuals while moving to/from the sites to provisioning the place while occupying them. There is no relationship between artifact transport distance and artifact use intensity. We interpret these findings as evidence that Paleoindians did not alter their provisioning strategies while occupying the Parman localities, likely because occupations were brief within a small wetland poorly-suited to support groups for long periods.     

Meeting the demand for meat?

Renewed fears expressed by the United Nations about worldwide population growth have coincided with international concerns about the increased consumption of meat. This article, which draws upon long‐term fieldwork in the Guatemalan highlands and ongoing scientific research in the Netherlands, examines the ways in which global organizations are framing and responding to these concerns. Economists generally address the problem of increased meat consumption through the language of ‘demand’, while nutritionists adopt the rhetoric of nutritional ‘needs’. Not only do these approaches tend to present meat – which in practice takes many forms – as a single substance, but they also flatten the nuanced relationships that exist between the eater and the eaten, while overlooking the diverse contexts in which ‘meat’ eating takes place. This article addresses the question how anthropologists might approach the topic of increased meat consumption, suggesting that an analysis of the ways in which global actors approach this topic can help the discipline of anthropology to re‐engage with historic debates about the role of ‘the material’ and ‘the symbolic’ in relation to eating practices and to move these debates in new and productive directions.     

Tales from the Other Side of the Bridge: YMCA Manhood,Social Class and Social Reform in Turn‐of‐the‐Twentieth‐Century Philadelphia

This article examines the interplay of gender and class ideologies at University House, a settlement house run by University of Pennsylvania Christian Association students in Philadelphia. University House exemplified a pioneering national movement to inculcate social responsibility in college youth. As an initiative sponsored by a campus Christian Association that joined a national YMCA movement to evangelise college campuses, the settlement had a unique agenda. The settlement's advocates intended to reform the neighbourhood's working‐class Irish Catholic boys, but also to forge character and manhood in the students who worked there. Moreover, settlement leaders and volunteers preached a brand of manhood steeped in the rhetoric of evangelical Protestantism, an ideal that guided their actions among city boys. Though their publicly stated mission was to make men of city youths, they turned manhood into a tool for preserving class distinctions and cementing their own place among the country's educated élite. Meanwhile, they modified their own definitions of manhood through the practice of social reform.     

Policy Coherence and Component-Driven Policymaking: Arctic Policy in Canada and the United States

This research extends theorizing about the implications of political environments to the content of policy areas. We consider the case of Arctic policy in Canada and the United States as an example of what we label as component-driven policymaking. We show how the lack of a clear constituency and the lack of a stable policy subsystem for the Arctic create a policy environment for which the politics of particular issues dominate Arctic policymaking. The result is a policy space labeled Arctic policy that lacks policy coherence. We suggest that similar features of component-based policymaking help explain limited policy coherence for a variety of policy areas such as policies for children, families, rural areas, urban areas, and women in the United States.     

A Novel Application of Molecular Techniques to Pacific Archaeofish Remains*

Until recently, the identification of fish bone from Pacific archaeological sites generally relied upon morphological analysis of a relatively restricted number of skeletal elements. Limited morphological variation within fish families, amongst other things, has often restricted Pacific archaeofish determinations to the level of family or, in some cases, genus. We suggest that these relatively imprecise determinations may mask important aspects of prehistoric human fishing practices and subsistence patterns. This paper describes a molecular technique that allows for more precise taxonomic determinations, initially applied to the large and diverse family of Serranidae. The technique involves extraction, amplification, sequencing and analysis of mitochondrial DNA variation in the 16s ribosomal RNA gene. Following development of protocols and primers for modern reference materials, the technique was applied to an archaeological faunal assemblage from Aitutaki, southern Cook Islands.