Siberia and neighboring regions in the Last Glacial Maximum: did people occupy northern Eurasia at that time?

An updated analysis of Paleolithic sites in Siberia and the Urals ¹⁴C-dated to the coldest phase of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), with its timespan currently determined as ca. 23,000–19,000 BP (ca. 27,300–22,900 cal BP), is presented. It is demonstrated that people continuously occupied the southern and central parts of Siberia and the Russian Far East (up to 58° N latitude), and perhaps sporadically settled regions located even further north, up to 70° N, throughout the LGM. This is in accord with our previous data, but is now based on a larger dataset, and also on a paleoecological analysis of the major pre-LGM archaeological sites in Siberia and the Urals north of 58° N. It is clear that Paleolithic people in northern Eurasia were able to cope with the treeless tundra environment well in advance of the LGM, at least at ca. 34,000–26,000 BP (ca. 38,500–30,000 cal BP). Therefore, a high degree of adaptation to cold conditions allowed people to survive in Siberia during the LGM.     

Archaeologist as anthropologist: Much ado about something after all?

It has been said that “archaeology is anthropology or it is nothing.” And so archaeologists have become conversant in and contributors to cultural theory. Other archaeologists have undertaken ethnoarchaeological studies on material culture when ethnographers have not supplied the data needed. Yet archaeologists might undertake more traditional participant-observation fieldwork to help nuance the cultural questions we ask and to render our tales of the past more convincing, in particular, when we purport to speak of the sensuous and meaningful experience of the “prehistoric other.” This article discusses the venturing of one archaeologist in Madagascar tracking aspects of the classic problem of state origins across archaeology, oral history, ethnoarchaeology, and ethnography. This process of joining objective analysis to lived experience is perhaps the most proper task of anthropology, the one that distinguishes it from other social science…     

Beyond NIMBY

Using survey data, this study tests competing hypotheses about the nature of opposition to a hazardous waste incinerator. Using a multivariate model, we challenge some of the basic assumptions of the Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) label typically used to characterize opposition. We find little evidence for components of the NIMBY label such as concern about property values and aesthetics, but find instead that opposition is related primarily to trust in government, fear of health consequences, and other ideological or demographic factors. We conclude with a discussion urging facility proponents to gain a better understanding of the nature of opposition and of the complexities of public opinion.     

Repetition and Variability in Urban Travel

Most travel models and theories assume the existence of habitual behavior, yet few empirical studies have examined the question of how much repetition or variability characterizes daily travel. We first review the arguments for expecting both repetition and variability in urban travel-activity patterns and then conduct an empirical analysis of repetition and variability in travel over a five-week period. The results show that, whereas many behaviors that make up the daily pattern are highly repetitious (they occur with high frequency over the 35 days), the similarity between daily travel patterns on different days in an individual's longitudinal record is quite low. Even the day that is the most typical of the individual's travel is a poor indicator of that person's overall travel pattern. Moreover, we found that each person generates several archetypical daily patterns over 35 days, and this finding has important implications for data collection and modeling in studies of urban travel.