Reflections on North American Pacific Coast prehistory

The Pacific Coast of North America was occupied by many distinctive groups of coastal hunter-gatherers at the times of early contacts with Europeans. Despite significant cultural diversity, Pacific Coast peoples shared lifeways oriented toward generally similar marine, nearshore, littoral, and estuarine habitats. In this paper, we examine some major issues that guide much of the archaeology done along the Pacific Coast, then discuss some of the theoretical and methodological problems that limit the efficacy of archaeological reconstructions. Most archaeological research conducted on North America's Pacific Coast has been oriented toward the search for the origins and development of a variety of cultural patterns. A comparative review of California and Northwest Coast sequences provides interesting parallels and discrepancies in the approaches taken in studying some of the major issues in Pacific Coast prehistory.     

The archaeology of complex hunter-gatherers

Archaeologists' reconstructions of paths to complexity have all too often excluded complex hunter-gatherers. However, recent theoretical contributions and long-term field research programs in several regions of the world have now significantly advanced our understanding of complex hunter-gatherers. A discussion of definitions of complexity and a review of current models of the emergence of complexity provide a framework for analyses of complex hunter-gatherers and important cultural phenomena such as sedentism, political integration, prestige economies, feasting, and ideology.     

Local and nonlocal knowledge typologies: technological complexity in the Irish knowledge space

This paper advances a measure of knowledge complexity to analyse for Ireland whether more complex knowledge is generated by local or foreign firms. Information on assignees, technological structure and global ownership contained within a recently developed Irish patent database forms the basis for distinguishing between technologies developed by local and nonlocal firms. Thereafter, our knowledge complexity index uses a modified bipartite network to link these technologies to their country of origin, i.e. local or nonlocal. Our results indicate that the most complex technologies tend to be produced in a few diverse regions. Furthermore, the majority of complex knowledge is generated in technology classes where the share of foreign activity is greater than local firms.     

Towards a trickster science/fiction: complexifying boundaries with Neal Stephenson and Michel Serres

ABSTRACT

This article highlights an intersection between the science fiction of Neal Stephenson and the science philosophy of Michel Serres. As two of the most prolific contemporary advocates of the communication between literature and science, Serres and Stephenson employ permutations of the trickster figure as a potent lens on the epistemological transformations that occur when boundaries are crossed and static systems perturbed. Allegorizing the birth of science and rational consciousness as the intervention of a trickster, Stephenson finds in hackers and couriers the same generative force that Serres associates with the Greek god Hermes and the figure of the parasite. With particular attention to Stephenson’s postcyberpunk novel Snow Crash (Stephenson, Neal. 1992. Snow Crash. London: Penguin Books) and Serres’ Hermes series (1969–1980), the concept of the trickster will be explored as both a personification of the kinship between creation mythologies, information theory, anthropology, and modern physics, and as the template for a productive transdisciplinary mode of cultural inquiry.     

Long-Term Regional Landscape Change in the Northern Tequila Region of Jalisco,Mexico

The Tequila Valleys, in Jalisco, Mexico, are well-known in archaeology for an early complex society known as the Teuchitlán tradition (350 b.c.–a.d. 450/500), but later developments have received little attention. Here I report on the first systematic, full-coverage survey of the Tequila region north of the Tequila volcano. I explore the ways in which the societies that occupied this territory experienced sociopolitical change diachronically by investigating settlement scale, integration, complexity, and boundedness. Through the use of these core features, I analyze how each changed in varying ways, resulting in patterns that do not conform to static societal categories. Interestingly, there is no evidence that a large polity controlled the entire region at any point in the sequence. Results indicate a dynamic sociopolitical landscape that did not develop along any predetermined pathway.     

The Archaeology of California

Stimulated by several important, recent empirical advances, California archaeologists are engaged in a series of lively debates. These advances include new discoveries about the early peopling of western North America and sustained occupation of the California coasts as early as 12–13,000 BP. There also have been significant new developments in the role of paleoenvironmental change in cultural evolution, the emergence of long-distance interaction spheres, the presence of intensive craft specializations, and the appearance of sociopolitically complex hunter–gatherers. This article addresses these issues—and several others—with a view to the general interests of scholars worldwide. The exceptional heterogeneity of California ecosystems (from deserts to dense redwood forests to bountiful offshore islands) and the remarkable cultural diversity exhibited by the dozens of major groups who made these lands their home combine to produce a complex indigenous sociopolitical picture. Current understandings reveal myriad trajectories of cultural change across nine major subregions of the state.     

Complexity science and human geography

Complexity science has attracted considerable attention in a number of disciplines. However, this perspective on scientific understanding remains ill defined. In this paper, ideas and approaches from complexity science are reviewed. It appears that complexity science fundamentally is driven by ontological decisions on the part of the investigator. This is a result of the epistemological approach fundamental to complexity as it is currently studied, which is based on the construction of computer simulation models of reality. This methodology requires that researchers decide what exists and is important enough to represent in a simulation, and also what to leave out. Although this points to serious difficulties with complexity science, it is argued that the approach nevertheless has much to offer human geography. Drawing on complexity science, renewed engagements between physical and human geography, and between both and geographical information science seem possible, based on clearly shared concerns with the representation of geographical phenomena. In conclusion, it is suggested that seeing models as a source of geographical narratives may be a useful way to promote constructive engagement between different perspectives in the discipline.     

Recent Research on Chaco: Changing Views on Economy, Ritual, and Society

Current research on Chaco Canyon and its surrounding outlier communities is at an important juncture. Rather than trying to argue for the presence or absence of complexity, archaeologists working in the area are asking different questions, especially how Chacoan political, economic, ritual, and social organization were structured. These lines of inquiry do not attempt to pigeonhole Chaco into traditional neoevolutionary types, but instead seek to understand the historical trajectory that led to the construction of monumental architecture in Chaco Canyon and a large part of the northern Southwest in the 10th through 12th centuries. This review discusses the conclusions of current research at Chaco including definitions of the Chaco region, recent fieldwork, histories of Chaco archaeology, chronology, paleoenvironmental reconstruction, demography, political organization, outlier communities, economic organization, social organization, ritual, violence, and the post-Chacoan reorganization. Although many issues are hotly debated, there is a growing concensus that power was not based in a centralized political organization and that ritual organization was a key factor in the replication of Chacoan architecture across a vast regional landscape. Exactly how ritual, social, and political organization intersected is a central question for Chaco scholars. The resolution of this problem will prove to be of interest to all archaeologists working with intermediate societies across the globe.     

国外旅游目的地品牌化研究现状与分析

20世纪90年代末以来,旅游目的地品牌化研究逐步受到关注。本文在回顾国外相关研究文献的基础上,从旅游目的地品牌化概念、旅游目的地品牌构建、旅游目的地品牌传播、旅游目的地品牌管理以及旅游目的地品牌评估等五个方面对研究状况进行归纳,并就其中存在的某些局限提出了一些见解,以供国人在相关研究中参考。     

A new perspective on Late Holocene social interaction in Northwest Alaska: results of a preliminary ceramic sourcing study

This research examines the evidence for prehistoric ceramic exchange networks over the last 2000 years in northwest Alaska through the use of neutron activation analysis of ceramic artifacts. Results from ceramic analysis on eight coastal and inland archaeological sites identified three source macrogroups and three associated subgroups. Clay source diversity and shared source macrogroups between geographically distant sites suggest the use of multiple sources and/or the movement of pots between production locales, mirroring related patterns in pottery stylistic data. Although additional analytical work is needed to fully understand the changing character of clay procurement and ceramic distribution across this time period, this study provides exploratory data on past ceramic production and distribution that hints at changes in exchange and territoriality in northwest Alaska during the late Holocene.