Bighorn hunting,resource depression,and rock art in the Coso Range,eastern California: a computer simulation model

The extraordinary record of prehistoric rock art depicting tens of thousands of animal images in the Coso Range of eastern California provides an opportunity to study the relationship between aboriginal hunting, forager ecology, bighorn prey population levels, and the production of rock art. We review archaeofaunal evidence that the Coso desert bighorn sheep population was strongly depleted during the Newberry era after 1500 B.C. We discuss the dating of the rock art and show a correlation between bighorn depletion and increased rock art production. These data are consistent with the arrival of Numic foragers ca. A.D. 600 who competed with the Coso Pre-Numics and eventually terminated the Coso rock art tradition. An ecological predator-prey computer simulation of the human populations (Numic and Pre-Numics), the sheep population, and the rock art “population”, demonstrates these proposed interconnections and gives a reasonable fit to the observed rock art production rate.     

Late Pleistocene protein residues from the Mahaffy cache,Colorado

This paper reports the analysis of protein residues from tools recovered in a cache within the city limits of Boulder, Colorado, USA. This cache included a total of 83 artifacts, all of which we subjected to cross-over immunoelectrophoresis (CIEP). Four of the 83 produced results, with residues from each of these reacting with antigens from a different taxon: one tool shows evidence of use on sheep, one on bear, one on horse, and one on camel. Varieties of sheep and bear have been present in Colorado throughout human history, but horses and camelids have been in the state either during the Pleistocene or the last 200 years. Several lines of evidence indicate that the cache cannot be recent, and our CIEP results therefore imply that the cache date to the late Pleistocene. Typological aspects of the artifacts in the cache are consistent with artifacts known to be Clovis, and the combination of CIEP and typological data thus indicate that the cache is Clovis as well. These data contribute to an increasing dataset documenting the broad range of animals other than elephants hunted by Clovis groups in North America.     

The economic geography of the impacts of climate change

Our ability to understand the geographical dispersion of theimpacts of climate change has not yet progressed to the pointof being able to quantify costs and benefits distributed acrossglobe along one or more climate scenarios in any meaningfulway. We respond to this chaotic state of affairs by offeringa brief introduction to the potential impacts of a changingclimate along five geographically dispersed portraits of howthe future climate might evolve and by presenting a modern approachto contemplating vulnerability to climate impacts that has beendesigned explicitly to reflect geographic diversity and uncertainty.Three case studies are offered to provide direct evidence ofthe potential value of adaptation in reducing the cost of climateimpacts, the versatility of thinking about the determinantsof adaptive capacity for specific regions or sectors, and thefeasibility of exploring both across a wide range of ‘not-implausible’climate and socio-economic scenarios. Three overarching themesemerge: adaptation matters, geographic diversity is critical,and enormous uncertainty must be recognized and accommodated.