Journal of Anthropological Archaeology最新文献

Research on regional depopulation is often framed around identifying external causal factors and subsequent effects on adjacent societies. This has been the case for studies of the depopulation of the St. Lawrence River Valley (SLRV) of northeastern North America. During the sixteenth century CE, an estimated 8,000–10,000 St. Lawrence Iroquoians (SLI) left the valley in response to climatic and social disruptions. We argue that preexisting sets of relations between people residing in the SLRV and neighboring groups were equally important for structuring the relocation and incorporation of SLI peoples and traditions. To evaluate this process, we employ high-resolution radiocarbon timeframes and data on the quantity, nature, and distribution of SLI material culture to examine when and how objects associated with SLI practices appeared and remained within six community sequences belonging to ancestral Wendat, Onoñda’gegá, and Kanien’kehá:ka traditions. Our results demonstrate that localized SLI material practices first appear outside of the SLRV by 1450 and continue to appear in each sequence, though with meaningful variation. We argue that while SLI individuals and groups extended their familial and cultural connections through strategic interactions and movements, the ways in which those identities were expressed varied as per distinct cultural and historical contexts.

Animal dung is still considered a secondary by-product of domestication, even though a growing body of evidence is showing that humans recognized its properties as fuel and fertilizer and utilized dung prior to—and alongside—the process of animal domestication. In this paper, we review the advancements made in dung identification over the last decades and suggest a multi-proxy workflow for fast screening for dung in the field laboratory and more refined post-excavation analysis. In addition, we provide a global synthesis of evidence for dung used as a resource, both from ethnographic and archaeological records. We review the use of animal dung as fuel, fertilizer, construction material, and medication, alongside its symbolic role in different societies around the globe. Finally, the use of animal dung as a proxy for human-animal interaction is discussed, and possible avenues for future research are proposed. Understanding how humans used dung can help answer a range of questions related to animal domestication, subsistence practices, technological advancements, and human decisions regarding resource allocation, among others.

Ceramic traditions are constantly evolving, but the pace of change is variable and not all stages of the chaîne opératoire are affected in the same way, depending on the causes of borrowing, abandonment, or innovation. Few ethnoarchaeological studies in Africa have focused on a detailed understanding of these dynamics, which are important for the interpretation of past societies. Our study was conducted from 2012 to 2015 along the Falémé Valley in eastern Senegal, characterized by diverse cultures and environments. It aims to understand the historical dynamics of ceramic traditions by documenting the variability and spatial distribution of the different stages of the chaîne opératoire, and analyzing the factors that explain the transformations of techniques, potters’ tools and finished objects over different temporalities, both long- and short-term.

The results show that the same fashioning technique, molding on a convex shape, is used by all potters, whatever their cultural identity. On the contrary, firing procedures indicate two different traditions. The reconstruction of potters’ genealogies and apprenticeship networks anchor both traditions in distinct social trajectories, and their spatial distribution corresponds with the ones of precolonial kingdoms expanding after the Mâli empire’s collapse, between the 17th and the 19th century CE: the Fulbe kingdom of Boundou in the north, and three Mande kingdoms in the south. Beside this long-term dynamic, elements of paste recipes’ or potter toolkits’ transformation, and the abandonment of certain types of pots refer to recent dynamics dating back to a few decades, in a context of climate change and growing globalization.

The emergence of social inequality is one of, if not the, most important research question in anthropological archaeology. Social inequality within different types of households is relational, between individuals as well as within communities, multidimensional, multi-scalar, and is measured in degrees instead of merely being present or absent. In exploring how archaeologists develop narratives of inequality we need to keep in mind that field archaeologists do not find inequality, as if it was hidden beneath the ground or cultural ruins, so much as we create arguments for inequality based on material variability. Engaging with Jeanne Arnold’s (1993) paper Labor and the Rise of Complex Hunter-Gatherers, in this brief essay I explore how archaeologists are often quick to use the label inequality but fail to consider if this was meaningful to people in the past. At times we draw upon methods such as Gini indexes but without any sense of what we are measuring, and we often fail to consider how household social inequality might be connected to food storage.

The Columbia-Fraser Plateau of Northwestern North America was inhabited by complex hunter-gatherer populations throughout the Late Holocene. Archaeological studies have typically characterized these peoples as having corporate households and wealth inequality. Ethnographic accounts emphasize the societies of this region as egalitarian communities and pacifist. In this paper we compare radiocarbon dates for semi-subterranean houses with legacy data for skeletal remains with trauma, mesa-top and island habitations, and storage caves to identify patterns in semi-sedentary settlement and conflict. Additionally, analysis of wealth inequality is conducted using legacy data of burials from throughout the Columbia Plateau. The radiocarbon dataset and legacy data can be reconciled with ethnographic patterns using an anarchist theoretical framework, to provide a potential explanation of the historical changes in socio-economic systems.

An important facet in the study of complex societies involves documenting how the extraction of resources to support political structures (the political economy) impacted the subsistence economy of everyday life. Caprine production was a central feature of ancient Mesopotamian subsistence, while ancient texts reveal that wool was centrally important to the region’s political economies. It has long been thought that at some point in the Chalcolithic or Bronze Age (c. 4500–1500 BC) caprine husbandry was reorganized at the regional level to support the wool industry that was so dear to state finance and elite wealth. Here, we use kill-off patterns and biometrics to test whether caprine husbandry patterns across northern Mesopotamia underwent a regionwide transformation. We synthesize existing data and use Bayesian modeling to estimate average sheep size, male–female ratio, and harvesting patterns targeting older sheep. We confirm previous assessments that document an increase in sheep size in the 4th millennium BC. We find no pattern in male–female ratios. Diachronic kill-off data from across the region show subtle and local shifts in the slaughter of older caprines. While ambiguities in the data persist, there is no evidence of a dramatic shift toward intensive wool production at the regional level.

The Iamal-Nenets region of Siberia is one of many Arctic areas where women’s sewing skills were and are crucial to daily existence. Our article explores archaeological needles and needle cases that were made and used by ancestors of the current Indigenous peoples of this region. We frame our examination of these materials through a discussion of women’s sewing bags, which are a symbolic representation of every stitch made by a woman’s hands in creating dwelling covers, bedding sets, storage bags, and every piece of clothing, all of which are crucial to the survival and well-being of her family. These particular bags are not merely containers for essential sewing supplies such as needles and needle cases. They embody layers of multigenerational skill, ancestral knowledge, and identity that are passed by women to their daughters, nieces, and granddaughters. We summarize archaeological needle and needle cases from Iamal to stitch together the meanings and importance of the materials both in the past and present. In doing so, we highlight and acknowledge the complex history of Indigenous women and their incredible sewing skills, which have allowed families to survive and flourish in the Siberian Arctic for hundreds of generations.

Adopting a building and village biography approach combining archaeology and ethnography, we critically reevaluate the historical argument that Neolithic villages were occupied by many thousands of people. Focusing on the settlement at Çatalhöyük, Turkey, where it has been argued that 3,500 and 10,000 people lived in the village, we argue that this is a significant overestimate of the number of people that occupied this settlement. Drawing upon revised distribution of residential buildings across the mound, and employing archaeological and ethnographic data exploring building life-history, we estimate that between 600 and 800 people would have lived at Çatalhöyük East during an average year during the Middle (6700–6500 cal BC) phase. This research highlights the need to critically revaluate historical population estimates for Neolithic villages, the importance of developing explicit population modeling methods in archaeology, and to reconsider population-driven evolutionary models linking the Near Eastern Neolithic to urbanism.

Mobility is considered to play an important role in the way people use their habitual space. Highly mobile societies present a particular challenge to archaeologists as a direct relation is assumed between the duration of occupation and the intensity of its archaeological signature. Here, we present a cross-cultural, ethnoarchaeological study carried out among three contemporary societies that, while showing different patterns of mobility, all live in humid tropical forests—in Thailand, the Congo Basin, and India—and share many social notions and values. The aim of this study was to observe how differences in patterns of mobility affect the formation of archaeological signatures. Our study demonstrates that when a site is occupied for only a few days to a couple of weeks, activity residues tend to be deposited in situ. This could potentially preserve the original spatial pattern of material distribution that directly reflects the activity areas and people’s use of space. However, when a site is occupied for more than a week or two, maintenance practices such as sweeping begin to take place, which result in almost complete removal of activity residues from their primary location and the formation of waste areas at the edge of the dwelling sites.

Three trace elements in human bones permit the delineation of temporal and social variability among medieval to early modern Danes in what they ate (strontium, Sr) and whether they lived in an urban or non-urban setting (lead, Pb; copper, Cu). The chemical composition of bones from 332 children (5 to 12 years old) buried in 51 Danish cemeteries was estimated through Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). Children provide a local chemical signal because they were less likely than adults to have moved from one place to another. There was no age effect on trace element concentrations. Geographical variability in trace element concentrations was highly localized, so the three elements, individually or collectively, cannot be used to identify where in Denmark people originated. Diets and exposure to sources of Pb and Cu, however, did not remain constant over time. Trace element concentrations show that the life experiences of people from towns differed from their rural counterparts. While most apparent with Pb and Cu, it is also true of Sr until urban and rural diets converged in the early modern period.