The Hǔngbu and Nolbu Tale Type: A Korean Double Contrastive Narrative Structure

There is a large class of Korean folk tales composed of parallel sets of contrasting narratives showing how good actions are rewarded and evil actions punished. This type of narrative structure, which I have termed double contrastive narrative structure, can be found throughout East Asia and the world. "The Story of Hǔngbu and Nolbu", the best-known Korean example of this tale about a good younger brother and evil elder brother, is distinguished from similar tales in China and Japan by the Confucian "subtext" of its narrative which emphasises the moral power of the younger brother to influence his elder brother to reform his behaviour. The Korean tale is thus an illustration of the Confucian concept of moral suasion and not simply about rewards and punishments.     

The Archaeological Record of Human Impacts on Animal Populations

Recent archaeological research has fundamentally altered our understanding of the scope of past human impacts on nondomesticated animal populations. Predictions derived from foraging theory concerning the abundance histories of high-return human prey and diet breadth have been met in many parts of the world. People are known to have introduced a broad variety of nondomesticated animals, from sponges to agoutis and rats, to a remarkably broad set of contexts, in turn causing a wide variety of secondary impacts. By increasing the incidence of fire, human colonists have in some cases transformed the nature of the vegetation on the colonized landscape, in turn dramatically affecting animal populations on those landscapes. In island settings, these triple threats--predation, biotic introductions, and vegetation alteration--routinely led to extinctions but there is no archaeological evidence that small-scale societies caused extinction by predation alone on islands or continents. Indeed, the recent history of this famous argument suggests that it is better seen as a statement of faith about the past rather than as an appeal to reason. Perhaps most importantly, our burgeoning knowledge of past human impacts on animals has important implications for the conservation biology of the future.     

Specialized Early Upper Palaeolithic Hunters in Southwestern France?

Paul Mellars has long used cave and rockshelter ungulate faunal assemblages from southwestern France to argue that the early Upper Palaeolithic people of this region focused their hunting on reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), and that such specialized hunting distinguishes the Upper from the Middle Palaeolithic in at least this region. We examine this argument quantitatively, using a sample of 133 Mousterian, Châtelperronian, and Aurignacian ungulate assemblages. We show that only five Aurignacian assemblages, from three sites, stand out in terms of the degree to which their ungulate faunas are dominated by a single taxon. We also show that some Mousterian cave and rock shelter ungulate assemblages are more heavily dominated by large bovids than Aurignacian assemblages are dominated by reindeer, and that Mellars' argument is highly dependent on the exclusion of open sites from the analysis and on the numerical threshold he has selected to indicate hunting specialization.     

The effects of sample size on some derived measures in vertebrate faunal analysis

Analysis of three kinds of measures derived from archaeological and palaeontological faunal collections (measures of relative taxonomic abundance, measures of taxonomic diversity, and a measure proposed to distinguish natural from cultural bone) demonstrates that in many instances such measures may be, or are, a function of sample size. A procedure for detecting this situation is suggested, and the source of the interrelationships discussed.     

Late Pleistocene mammalian extinctions in North America: Taxonomy,chronology, and explanations

Toward the end of the Pleistocene, North America lost some 35 genera of mammals. It has long been assumed that all or virtually all of the extinctions occurred between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, but detailed analyses of the radiocarbon chronology provide little support for this assumption, which seems to have been widely accepted because of the kinds of explanations felt most likely to account for the extinctions in the first place. Approaches that attribute the losses to human predation depend almost entirely on the assumed synchroneity between the extinctions and the onset of large mammal hunting by North American peoples. The fact that only two of the extinct genera have been found in a convincing kill context presents an overwhelming problem for this approach. Climatic models, on the other hand, are becoming increasingly precise and account for a wide variety of apparently synchronous biogeographic events. While a role for human activities in the extinction of some taxa is fully possible, there can be little doubt that the underlying cause of the extinctions lies in massive climatic change.     

Son Chint’ae and the Foundations of Modern Korean Folklore Studies

Although there were various antecedents, the academic discipline of folklore did not begin in Korea until the third decade of the twentieth century. The leading figure in the country’s development of the discipline is Son Chint’ae, who brought rigour to the methods of research and the collection of material; used a comparative method drawing on research from anthropology, ethnography, folklore, archaeology, and history; and saw ‘Korea’ in the broader context of North-east Asia. A nationalist during the Japanese colonial period, Son used the concept of minchok (the people) both to analyse his material and to serve as a means to revitalize the Korean nation.