Behavioral ecological models of lithic technological change during the later Middle Stone Age of South Africa

This paper examines changes in the organization of lithic technological systems during the later Middle Stone Age (MSA) of South Africa. Using principal components analysis (PCA), the study looks at the lithic data from two important South African MSA sites: Blombos Cave and Klasies River Mouth. The paper uses PCA to describe the transition to (1) the biface-dominated Still Bay industry at Blombos Cave and (2) the microlithic Howiesons Poort industry at Klasies River Mouth. Based on these analyses, the paper offers a synthetic scenario of the emergence of the Still Bay industry from earlier MSA industries, closely followed by the dramatic transition to the Howiesons Poort. Using a few principles of tool design and behavioral ecological models derived from the study of modern foragers, the paper suggests that the Still Bay came about as the result of deteriorating environmental conditions at the beginning of Oxygen Isotope Stage 4, which caused resources to become scarce and more widely distributed. The study proposes that the bifacial point strategy of the Still Bay was a response to wider mobility patterns and increased movement away from lithic raw material sources. The paper then suggests that Howiesons Poort emerged as information sharing strategies improved, and resources in the environment could be more efficiently targeted with more task-specific tools. The paper closes by reviewing the implications of these findings for modern human origins in South Africa.     

论城市现代化进程中的人文关怀

从世界现代化进程看,城市现代化作为现代化的一个载体,本质上是一种历史文化现象。从这一视角考察城市现代化问题,文化生态是城市现代化的一个重要内涵。南京作为历史文化名城,其文化生态主要包括六朝文化、明文化和民国文化三个方面。在城市现代化的进程中,应当充分发挥文化生态的功能,展示出人文关怀的独特魅力。     

旅游规划的文化生态理论研究

为了克服物质性旅游规划的弊端,规划中越来越多的考虑了"历史传统、伦理道德、价值观、社会公正"等文化因素,这些零散的"旅游与文化"融合研究还没有形成系统的旅游规划理论。本文根据新文化地理学的文化生态思想和工具理性与价值理性相统一的原理,以人类精神文化需要和旅游规划实践为现实需求,结合旅游规划的主要内容,应用系统分析的方法,将文化生态系统与旅游规划系统进行耦合,实现旅游规划中"工具要素之形"与"文化生态要素之神"的统一,构建旅游规划的文化生态理论。     

什么是环境史?——对唐纳德·休斯的环境史理论的探讨

唐纳德·休斯是美国丹佛大学约翰.埃文斯历史学杰出教授,环境史的开创者之一,从环境史诞生伊始到现在,一直活跃于环境史研究领域,发表了大量的相关成果。休斯对环境史的贡献,不仅在于他取得的丰硕成果,更在于他所作的理论思考。这突出地表现在如下方面:1)对生态及其在历史中的作用的论述;2)对"什么是环境史"及其与其他学科之关联的分析;3)对环境史与其他历史门类之区别和联系的阐述;4)对环境史的丰富意义的揭示。通过对休斯环境史著述中的理论思考的梳理,我们既可以从总体上把握他对环境史的一般理论问题的认识,也可以在一定程度上领略他从事环境史研究的个性特征。而休斯对环境史的意义的揭示,还使我们更深刻地体会到,历史学家在研究和叙述历史的同时也在创造历史。     

“Hungry for Knowledge”: Towards a Meso‐History of the Environmental Sciences

In recent years, cultural studies and cultural theory have experienced a new wave of ecological thought. Despite the engagement with the Anthropocene the history of ecology and the environmental sciences has remained somewhat of a puzzle. This goes especially for the 20^th century, a period when the sciences of the environment came to matter on a broader scale. Why do we actually know so little about the environmental sciences in the 20^th century? And what could a history of the environmental sciences in that period look like? This article answers these questions with two interrelated arguments. First, by reflecting on different approaches to write the history of ecology since the 1970s, it uncovers crucial entanglements between the history of science and ecological thought that created blind spots regarding the environmental sciences in the 20^th century. Second, it argues for a shift in scales of analysis—towards meso‐scales. With a more regional approach historians can engage with the often‐neglected aspects of the political and economic history of the environmental sciences in the 20th century and thereby also reveal their fundamental infrastructural dimension. Because at its core, the article claims, the environmental sciences were and are essentially infrastructural sciences.     

Managing the risk of climatic variability in late prehistoric northern Chile

The concept of risk management encompasses the diverse strategies employed in preventing and mitigating losses associated with social and environmental calamities. Building on the growing literature on risk, we use archaeological data from the Tarapacá Valley, located in northern Chile, to document the risk-reduction tactics mobilized by the valley’s inhabitants to navigate the increasingly volatile environmental and social conditions of the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1450). With the onset of exceptionally unpredictable environmental conditions after AD 1100, residents of the Tarapacá Valley chose strategies such as increased trade and agricultural diversification and extensification to minimize shortages in staple resources. Threats of raiding and intra-community strife exacerbated the risks associated with subsistence shortfalls. Valley communities elected a number of strategies to curtail conflict-induced risk, including movement of settlements and field systems to defensible locations, construction of walls and other defensive features, and the introduction of plazas. Rock art data suggest that trade was increasingly embedded in ritually sanctioned events involving groups from different ecological zones. While studies of risk have focused disproportionately on environmental hazards, subsistence-related crises are often compounded by social hazards that require their own risk-mitigating strategies, further constraining options for coping with subsistence stress.     

Historical ecology of late Holocene sea otters (Enhydra lutris) from northern British Columbia: isotopic and zooarchaeological perspectives

We examined the isotopic composition (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) of sea otter (Enhydra lutris) bone collagen from ten late Holocene (ca. 5200 years BP–AD 1900) archaeological sites in northern British Columbia (BC), Canada. Because sea otters are now extinct from much of this region and have not fully recolonized their former range (e.g. Haida Gwaii and most of northern BC) these data represent an important first step towards better understanding sea otter foraging ecology in BC. The isotopic data suggest a diet composed primarily of benthic invertebrates, with a very low reliance on epibenthic fish. There is very low isotopic and thus inter-individual dietary variability in Holocene BC sea otters during the late Holocene. Furthermore, zooarchaeological abundance data suggest that otters represented a widespread and significant focus of aboriginal hunting practices on the northern BC coast during the mid- to late-Holocene. The consistent reliance on a small number of low-trophic level prey and limited dietary variability in Holocene BC sea otters may reflect top-down impacts on otter populations by aboriginal peoples. As part of our assessment of sea otter diet, we review trophic discrimination factors (Δ¹³C and Δ¹⁵N) for bone collagen from published literature and find marked variability, with mean values of +3.7 ± 1.6 for Δ¹³C (n = 21) and +3.6 ± 1.3 for Δ¹⁵N (n = 15).