Sediments exposed to high temperatures: reconstructing pyrotechnological processes in Late Bronze and Iron Age Strata at Tel Dor (Israel)

Many of the sediments analysed from Tel Dor (Israel) show structural alterations indicating that they were exposed to high temperatures. This observation is consistent with the abundant evidence for use of pyrotechnology from the earliest exposed Middle Bronze Age strata through the Roman period. Such structurally altered sediments may well represent one of the more widespread and durable records of pyrotechnology, and as such could be invaluable for reconstructing past human activities. The specific aims of this research are therefore to develop the means for identifying local sediments that were altered by different pyrotechnological activities and to elucidate the varying circumstances whereby sediments were exposed to high temperatures in a Late Bronze and Iron Age 1 section.     

Mauna Kea: Two Cultures and the 'Imiloa Astronomy Center

When Snow wrote delivered his lecture on ‘The Two Cultures’ in 1959, he considered this to be a phenomenon that had British, Western and global significance. This article looks at how Snow's ideas play out in the setting of Hawai'i from the early contact with Western navigators through to current disputes over the building of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) atop Mauna Kea. ‘Mutual incomprehension’, identified by Snow as the chief characteristics of his two cultures are clearly seen to be at play in Western-Hawai'ian encounters.

This article places the TMT disputes in the setting of the Hawai'ian Renaissance, a movement that has gathered pace since the 1960s. It looks Gieryn's notions of ‘boundary work’ and that of Star and Griesemer on ‘boundary objects’ as ways of framing the discussion. The final focus of the article is the 'Imiloa Astronomy Center in Hilo as a ‘place of safe disagreement’.     

Mountain anthropology and mountain anthropologists: The comparative study of populations at high elevations

Baker, Paul, and Corneille Jest, eds. L'Homme et Son Environnement à Haute Altitude: Environmental and Human Population Problems at High Altitude. Cahiers Népalais. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1981. 163 pp. including plates and bibliography. n.p.

Cook, David Noble. The People of the Colca Valley: A Population Study. Dellplain Latin American Studies No. 9. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1982. xx+101 pp. including bibliography and index. $15.50 cloth.

Poffenberger, Mark. Patterns of Change in the Nepal Himalaya. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1980. v+116 pp. including maps, bibliography, and index. $20.00 cloth.

Millones, Luis, and Hiroyasu Tomoeda, eds. El Hombre y Su Ambiente en los Andes Centrales. Senri Ethnological Studies No. 10. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 1982. v + 307pp. including plates, maps, and bibliography, n.p.

Lehmann, David, ed. Ecology and Exchange in the Andes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. v + 245 pp. including bibliography, glossary, and subject and author indices. $47.50 cloth.

Skar, Harold A. The Warm Valley People: Duality and Land Reform among the Quechua Indians of Highland Peru. Oslo Studies in Social Anthropology No. 2. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1982. v + 350 pp. including plates, appendices, bibliography, index, and glossary. n.p.     

On Behavioral Depression in White-tailed Deer

Behavioral depression is a decline in prey availability because of enhanced alert response, movement away from areas, increased social behavior, and other responses to predators. This form of resource depression is an alternative hypothesis to be contrasted to over-exploitation that potentially explains a decrease in hunting efficiency over time should the zooarchaeologist observe a decline in the relative abundance of remains of high-rank prey. Gregarious ungulates, such as many North American cervids, may exhibit such behavioral responses under predation. The white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), one of the most common high-rank prey animals from Holocene archaeological sites in eastern North America, is less gregarious, more r-selected, and exhibits greater home-range fidelity than other cervids. As a result, whitetails are less likely to exhibit behavioral depression than other North American ungulates, which may explain their common occurrence in Holocene archaeological faunas, such as that from the Eagle??s Ridge site in southeast Texas where resource depression appears to have occurred from 4,500 to 1,500?years ago. The behavioral ecology of ungulate species should be considered on a case-by-case basis to develop testable hypotheses about prehistoric human predation.