Investigating the role of food processing in human evolution: a niche construction approach

While it is generally agreed that food processing has had a role in human evolution, the specific ways that is has affected our evolution are not well understood. Using a Niche Construction Theory (NCT) perspective, coupled with methodologies borrowed from “post-harvest” research in the plant sciences, this paper investigates the means and mechanism by which food processing is of evolutionary consequence. The central tenet of NCT is that organisms have an active role in their own evolution through reciprocal interactions with their environments; niche construction is understood to occur when organisms initiate long-term changes to their environments that modify the selection pressures on themselves and their descendants (and on other organisms in the environment). Humans and our hominin ancestors are considered to be the ultimate niche constructors due to our ability to modify selection pressures through diverse culturally generated and transmitted cultural means, i.e. cultural niche construction. In this paper, post-harvest methods are used to identify how food processing could feasibly have permitted hominins to modify their evolutionary selection pressures. Food processing is shown to facilitate access to increasing amounts of digestible nutrients and energy (kilocalories/kilojoules) as well as promoting increased dietary breadth and making possible the production of safer and more stable foods. It is argued that these advancements catalysed related technological and ecological skills and knowledge, which together with the nutritional benefits, further triggered changes in hominin brain and body and locomotory adaptations and increased longevity, disease prevention and juvenile survival rates.     

Catholic-Confucian Mortuary Practices in a Rural Manchurian Cemetery

Historical Archaeology - Catholic missionaries were active among rural populations in Manchuria, in northeast China, around the turn of the 20th century. Their presence influenced everything from...     

Jean-Jacques Rousseau on women and citizenship

The aim of this article is to shed light on the eighteenth-century Italian reflection on luxury and consumption in a comparative perspective, clarifying, on the one hand, the complex significance that it assumed and, on the other, the specificity of the Italian context, marked by the immense political value of the debate on the subject. In particular this objective will be pursued through the analysis of specific cases among the many offered by the Italian context and through different research strands. These are: the debate on the evaluation of luxury; the transition from the notion of luxury to that of consumption; and the discussion on luxury and consumption in the revolutionary context. This article intends to outline the particular contribution made by Italian thought, which conveyed a multifaceted discourse of social reform, critique and understanding built on more even foundations, and at the same time to clarify what contribution can be made to current historiography by the study of this theme within eighteenth-century Italy.     

A Microfacies Toolkit for Revealing Linkages Between Cultural Discontinuities and Exceptional Geogenic Events: the Tell Da’de Case Study (NE Syria)

High-resolution multi-archive studies have been promoted to reveal abrupt discontinuities that would express rapid social reactions (days to decades) to sudden exceptional geogenic phenomena (climatic, volcanic, tectonic, geomorphic, or cosmic). We expose here how we have adopted this approach for examining the causal linkages between a series of cultural discontinuities encountered through the cultural deposits of Da’de (Syria) and cosmic airbursts. Cosmic events, known to be rare, erratic, and unpredictable, are traced by exceptional debris that formed from aerosols when violently compressed during entry through the earth atmosphere of hypervelocity cosmic collider. They consist of singular organo-mineral materials in the form of volatile-rich hydrocarbon fuel with resistant metal-rich carbonaceous composites and colorful polymers. The archaeological sequence comprises Da’de phases 0 to III that represent a nearly continuous accumulation for 1,000 years during the Pre-pottery Neolithic period (ca. 9,900–8,900 years bp) and two short-term occupation phases during the pre-Halaf (Da’de IV) and early Bronze Age periods (Da’de V). Study of the exceptional debris in virgin soils and occupation deposits at Da’de has allowed to distinguish an intact debris assemblage that pulverized at the ground following an airburst (type 1 natural singular signal) with the ones that have been processed by humans (type 2 anthropic singular signal). Type 1 singular organo-mineral materials were found intact at the contact of the virgin soil with the earliest Pre-pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) occupation layers (Da’de phase 0, area [SB]), at the top part of the virgin soil with the PPNA occupation layers (Da’de phase Ia, area [B]) and just under the lower slabs of the EB III/IV burials (Da’de phase V, area [SB]). This has allowed to establish a strict contemporaneity between cosmic airbursts and remarkable historical events: initial settlement at phase 0, establishment of the magnificent communal building at phase 1, EBIII/IV cemetery after a long period of abandonment. Evidence for the collection of the singular materials (type 2) and meticulous processing of the related hydrocarbon fuel in occupation floors, earthen construction, coloring materials, and objects have been traced from the initial settlement (phase 0) through the successive cultural periods. This correlation has revealed a long-lasting transmission of the value of memorial natural resources which were only available from time to time in the surroundings. The close timing between changes in the use of the singular organo-mineral materials (preparation techniques, types of by-products) and cultural phases has enabled us to identify social discontinuities which correlate to distinctive geogenic events and search of the related exceptional resources. Based on the long-term record from Da’de, cosmic airbursts are suggested to be considered as a new class of dual-discontinuous signal of historical dimension, which have led to sudden (days to months) geogenic shifts in the availability of singular fuel resources and, simultaneously, to rapid cultural responses in their exploitation and use, depending on reactivity of local landscapes to the induced changes at short time scales (decades).