Inhabiting Remote Tropical Seashores at 1500–1100 b.c.: Water,Practicalities, and Rituals in the Mariana Islands

When people first inhabited the Remote Oceanic region of the world at 1500 b.c., they generated archaeological sites attesting to their practical coastal adaptations in tandem with their ceremonial traditions, wherein water figured vitally in daily living and ritual performance. Of eight known first-settlement sites in the Mariana Islands, Ritidian in Guam uniquely incorporates one residential habitation plus two caves related to water collection, pictographs, consumption of unusual foods, and use of exceptionally decorative objects. The inter-connected findings clarify what was “special” about the special-use caves, in total articulating a fuller sense of cultural life and landscape than otherwise could be possible.     

一部多学科合作的考古著作--读《龙虬庄》

随着考古信息量的增加与研究的深入,对考古报告的编排形式提出了新的要求。《龙虬庄》确立了江淮东部新石器时代化——龙虬庄化,编排形式上体现出化遗物和自然遗物并重的特点。报告对江淮东部古环境、遗址反映的经济形态、人地关系等进行了合理构建和研究。从其所揭示的大量信息来看,《龙虬庄》是一部多学科合作的新体例的考古学作。     

旅游地理学视角下第二居所旅居研究

后现代流动性范式下，旅游正经历从单一化的观光到多元化的生活方式转变，旅游与日常生活的界限逐步被打破。一种基于“休闲度假”与“居住生活”为一体的第二居所旅居现象方兴未艾，并因其独特的流动性特征及引发的新的“人-地”互动关系，引起学界的高度关注。本文在对国内外第二居所旅居发展历程进行梳理的基础上，以旅游地理学“人-地”关系为研究脉络，对第二居所旅居研究内容进行归纳，并总结出基于“人-地”关系的研究内容体系。对比国内外研究成果，发现我国现有研究对第二居所旅居引发的新的“人-地”关系关注相对较少，整体上还处于起步阶段。最后，基于旅游地理学的本质特征，按照人地关系理论的“要素与结构-特性与演化-作用与机制-协调与优化”的研究主线，对未来第二居所旅居研究提出展望，以期形成具有旅游地理学特色的第二居所旅居研究的理论体系。     

传统地域文化形成中的人地关系作用机制初探——以徽州文化为例

人地关系是人文地理学重要的研究领域。徽州文化是农耕文化繁盛时期遗存的典型地域文化。本文主要结合对徽州地域文化的案例研究,剖析传统地域文化形成中的人地关系作用机制。论文认为,自然环境将影响地域人口社会、经济结构的特征,而人口的社会、经济结构则对地域文化的形成和发展有着关键性影响,因此,地域人口的社会、经济结构可以被视为人地相互作用中的关键性链接因素,优化人口结构将有助于区域文化的持续健康发展。     

人地关系系统及其调控

论述了可持续发展与人地关系系统调控的关系。在系统理论的指导下,分析了人地关系系统的基本特征和人地化学元素同构特性;给出了人地关系调控的理论思路。     

Food production in the Early Woodland: macrobotanical remains as evidence for farming along the riverbank in eastern Tennessee

ABSTRACT

Open riverbanks and disturbed floodplains are targeted by archaeologists as optimal habitats for the growth of many of the weedy indigenous seed crops in eastern North America, but there is still little evidence for garden locations in the archaeological record. This article combines macrobotanical and geoarchaeological analyses from the Birdwell site (40GN228), located on the Nolichucky River, to give insight into where cultigens were planted and how they were managed in eastern Tennessee during the Early Woodland period. The recovery of uncharacteristic amounts of edible seeds and wood charcoal from the lower terrace of this site suggests that inhabitants were actively managing cultigens along the floodplain of this settlement. The presence of these remains in a non-midden context is evidence that precontact farmers in the Tennessee foothills took advantage of the newly created floodplains of the Early Woodland by implementing a burning regime, an early agricultural strategy aimed at increasing soil productivity and encouraging the growth of weedy annuals on the riverbank. In absence of lines of evidence such as preserved paleosols that can be examined for soil micromorphology, pollen, and phytoliths, integrated paleoethnobotanical and geomorphological analyses can be used to reconstruct land use and archaeologically identify prehistoric cultivated fields.     

Chasing the Halcyon Light – Human-Kingfisher Relations in Eastern Han-Dynasty China (CE 25–220) and Their Material,Sociocultural and Ecological Articulations

ABSTRACT

This article takes a fresh look at human-kingfisher relations in Eastern Han-dynasty China (CE 25–220). It argues that the confined appearance of kingfisher figurines in graves excavated in the southwest of the modern-day People’s Republic of China reflects the structural differences in human-kingfisher interactions between the centre(s) of the Han empire and its peripheries. By re-visiting the archaeology of the figurines and placing them into the wider cultural and ecological context, it is shown that distinct sociocultural transformations such as urbanisation processes and infrastructural projects profoundly changed the exposure and interactional dynamics between humans and kingfishers in the northern parts of the realm. This situation contrasted sharply with human-kingfisher interfaces in the southwest, where relatively ‘untamed’ environments harbouring a great number and diversity of kingfishers provided more favourable conditions for encountering them. I propose that this framework, in turn, fostered conceptualizations of kingfishers in which the birds came to encapsulate an experience fundamentally opposed to the type of human preponderance showcased in the core areas. By discussing a set of local practices and beliefs that might have further promoted this view, I suggest that they served as catalysts for the emergence of the kingfisher figurines at a particular time in a specific place. In this wider context, the article finally considers whether the southward expansion of the Eastern Han, with which the appearance of the figurines coincides, contributed to a re-configuration of north–south dynamics, shaping the general logic of human-kingfisher relations at the time.     

Gazing at Owls? Human-strigiform Interfaces and their Role in the Construction of Gravettian Lifeworlds in East-Central Europe

ABSTRACT

This paper develops a new perspective on human-owl relations in the Pavlovian, a regional group of the early Gravettian of East-Central Europe. It argues that the regular representation of owls in figurative art and ornamentation in this context must be understood as a result of unique conditions of encounter and interaction emerging at the intersection of Southern Moravian early MIS 2-environments, Pavlovian sociocultural practice, and owl presence and behaviour. It is shown that the diverse and tree-rich environments of East-Central Europe, and the Pavlovian Hill region in particular, provided highly favourable living conditions for a rich owl community. In conjunction with Pavlovian settlement behaviour which produced large-scale aggregation sites and seems to have been associated with a more sedentary mode of life, humans were thus particularly exposed to owls that likely dominated the nightly soundscapes of the region. This coincides with the fact that many of the present owl species are resident birds and aligns with compelling evidence for a pronounced ‘sense of place’ in the region's early Gravettian. The paper therefore suggests considering the saliency of negotiating the owl theme in the Pavlovian as an expression of the general eco-cultural entanglement of humans and owls in this setting. I argue that human-owl relations in the Pavlovian might have ultimately been fashioned by a shared sense of place.     

Palaeoecological research in the Department of Geography and Environment,University of Aberdeen

ABSTRACT

Palaeoecological research in the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Aberdeen can be traced back to pollen-analytical (palynological) and geomorphological collaborations in the early 1970s. The research has generally been nested within Quaternary science and it features strong interdisciplinary links with archaeology, chronostratigraphy, climate change and ecology more generally. The pollen-based emphasis has been augmented by multi-proxy approaches including plant macro- and microfossils, geochemistry and pedology. There has always been techniques- and methodologically-orientated output and the chronological focus has spanned especially the period from the Lateglacial through to the present. With an emphasis upon research since the year 2000, the account is structured around such themes as environmental change in Scotland and the rest of the British Isles, human-environment interactions in the North Atlantic region, Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, atmospheric pollution and metals in prehistory, and carbon sequestration and chronologies. A final section looks briefly and selectively at future research.