Design Space and Cultural Transmission: Case Studies from Paleoindian Eastern North America

Tool design is a cultural trait—a term long used in anthropology as a unit of transmittable information that encodes particular behavioral characteristics of individuals or groups. After they are transmitted, cultural traits serve as units of replication in that they can be modified as part of a cultural repertoire through processes such as recombination, loss, or partial alteration. Artifacts and other components of the archaeological record serve as proxies for studying the transmission (and modification) of cultural traits, provided there is analytical clarity in defining and measuring whatever it is that is being transmitted. Our interest here is in tool design, and we illustrate how to create analytical units that allow us to map tool-design space and to begin to understand how that space was used at different points in time. We first introduce the concept of fitness landscape and impose a model of cultural learning over it, then turn to four methods that are useful for the analysis of design space: paradigmatic classification, phylogenetic analysis, distance graphs, and geometric morphometrics. Each method builds on the others in logical fashion, which allows creation of testable hypotheses concerning cultural transmission and the evolutionary processes that shape it, including invention (mutation), selection, and drift. For examples, we turn to several case studies that focus on Early Paleoindian–period projectile points from eastern North America, the earliest widespread and currently recognizable remains of hunter–gatherers in late Pleistocene North America.     

The Long Goodbye: British Agency in the Creation of Navies for India and Pakistan

The armed forces of India and Pakistan draw legacies from a common British imperial past. British influence persisted in the navies that emerged from independence and partition on the South Asia subcontinent. Complaints over treatment and other grievances in the colonial Royal Indian Navy underscored a major mutiny in February 1946, prior to division of warships, shore-based establishments and personnel between the two countries. The transformation into truly national navies was long and involved, buttressed by continued reliance on British professional expertise and arms transfers. While the Admiralty offered warships on the basis of association with the commonwealth and defence cooperation in the Indian Ocean, navies in India and Pakistan led by senior British officers pursued distinct agendas and force structures that more and more looked towards potential war against each other. Louis Mountbatten, the last British viceroy, intervened often in naval matters before and after partition, encouraging Indians and Pakistanis to build up naval forces suited to national needs as well as serving British interests and imperial defence commitments during the early Cold War. Continued British presence impaired full nationalisation and the assumption of higher leadership roles by qualified indigenous naval officers in the newly independent commonwealth nations.     

Shellfish exploitation in Stone Age Arctic Norway: procurement patterns and household activities

Archaeological evidence for coastal shellfish exploitation in Arctic Norway mostly dates from 5300 to 1500 BC, encompassing the terminal Mesolithic, the Late Stone Age, and the beginning of the Early Metal Period. Shell middens are generally associated with semi-subterranean houses, but may also occur as free-standing deposits. The primary shellfish taxa exploited were Littorina littorea, Arctica islandica and Mytilus edulis. Most of the species utilized were available in the littoral zone and were easily procured in the course of daily household activities, but sub-littoral A. islandica would have required greater investment in procurement technology and time, as well as labor cooperation. Shellfish were an occasional dietary supplement and could also serve as fishing bait. Spatial and temporal variation in shellfish assemblages reflects local marine ecology, sea-level changes, household dynamics, and perhaps field processing. Interpretation of the existing data is constrained by inadequate midden sampling and documentation methods.     

Supporting ‘Film Cultural Peripheries’? The dilemmas of regional film policy in Norway

Public funding is crucial for the small Norwegian film industry. Based on an analysis of policy documents and interviews with regional film workers, this article discusses the implementation of regional film policy in Norway, and the tensions it has caused between center and periphery with respect to the allocation of funding. The creative industries discourse and the cluster concept are important for understanding this implementation; despite the new regional film policies the capital Oslo remains the undisputed hub of film production, and low production volume is still a challenge for the regions. Size, the article explains, is not only central when discussing Oslo as compared to the regions, but has also become a contentious issue within the regions. A key concern for the government, the article suggests, is how to create strong film milieus all over the country, which may entail the risk of spreading funding too thinly across the regions, resulting in a fragmented industry.     

Living a Long Way from Home: Communicating Land-related Knowledge in Dispersed Indigenous Communities,an Alternative Approach

Many indigenous communities are at a crossroads as regards lived experience of traditional livelihoods and members with intimate knowledge of their traditional landscapes. Using case studies from two indigenous communities, this article explores the application of both GIS tools and other geographic multimedia in community-based research projects that document landscape-related knowledge. The study involves a First Nation community in British Columbia, Canada and a Sámi community in Finnmark County, Norway. We discuss how land-use traditions and related knowledge constitute a peoples' identity and explore digital means of transferring this knowledge to support the ongoing transfer of indigenous knowledge between geographically dispersed community members, as well as future generations.     

A charcoal-rich horizon at Ø69, Greenland: evidence for vegetation burning during the Norse landnám?

It is often assumed that the colonisation of Greenland by Norse settlers in c. A.D. 985 had a sudden and dramatic effect on the environment, involving substantial vegetation clearance and environmental degradation. Consequently, it has been argued that charcoal-rich horizons, visible in many sections in Greenland, represent the initial burning of the vegetation by Norse farmers to create land suitable for agriculture. In this study a charcoal-rich layer, visible in a modern drainage ditch beside the Norse farm of Ø69, was analysed using archaeobotany, sedimentary analysis and radiocarbon dating to test the date and formation processes of the horizon. It is demonstrated that the charcoal-rich layer at Ø69 was not derived from in situ vegetation burning in the 10th century and concluded that the layer was probably formed by the addition of midden material to the infields around Ø69 in the 13th and 14th centuries cal AD, perhaps as part of a soil amendment strategy. It is argued that caution must be exercised when interpreting charcoal-rich horizons as time-specific chronological markers in palaeoenvironmental sequences in Greenland.     

Cities and climate change – examining advantages and challenges of urban climate change experiments

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes to the literature on urban climate change experiments by analysing ascribed advantages and challenges of organizing climate change experiments at the urban scale, and by examining how local actions translate into effect. We here distinguish between effects of experiments in achieving actual sustainability gains (‘goal-oriented objectives’) and instigating broader institutional change (‘process-oriented objectives’). Empirically, we analyse efforts related to energy supply in two Danish urban climate change experiments: The ‘CPH 2025 Climate Plan’ in Copenhagen, and ‘ProjectZero’ in Sønderborg. Our analysis poses considerable question marks over the importance of the advantages ascribed to urban climate change experiments including ‘authority advantages’ and possibilities of ‘engaging and mobilizing stakeholders’.