Journal of Anthropological Archaeology最新文献

A precisely dated, high-resolution palynological profile shows that around 5680 BCE a community that grew crops and raised livestock settled on the northern periphery of the area later covered by the LBK colonisations. This indicates that pioneer farmers reached this region around 300 years earlier than estimated by recognised models of the Neolithisation process. These findings point to the need for a revision of the Neolithisation model, not only regarding dating but also in terms of reassessing the role played by demographic pressure. The authors believe that the impact of the latter is widely overestimated, because the migration could also be caused by conflicts resulting from ethnic diversity and competition for prestige and access to the most valuable lands. Cooperation with hunter-gatherer communities could have been an additional factor that may have been particularly significant during the period of pioneering colonisation. The paper discusses the role of palynology in contemporary research on Neolithisation.

Red chert attributed to a small number of outcrops within the Munsungun Lake formation, northern Maine is nearly ubiquitous in late Pleistocene Fluted-Point-Period (FPP) archaeological sites throughout northeastern North America, including at sites hundreds of kilometers from this source. Red Munsungun chert also appears more frequently in FPP sites than any other material type in the region. The frequency of use and the distances over which this material was transported during the FPP differ qualitatively and quantitatively from other raw materials regularly found in FPP sites in the region. These differences in use, transport, and discard are not explained by technological considerations --such as texture or nodule size-- alone. One possible explanation for the unique treatment of this material during the FPP is color. Knappable brightly colored stone (including red) is uncommon in the Northeast which may have resulted in a specific preference for red Munsungun chert by stoneworkers during the FPP. The widespread transport and exchange of this material would also help maintain social relationships and information exchange between widely scattered bands, while the act of repeatedly returning to a specific location would have helped socialize a recently settled landscape.

This paper presents the first systematic study of pre-Columbian imported stone celts recovered from the limestone islands of the Lucayan archipelago, comprising The Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands of the northern Caribbean/West Atlantic. The majority derive from antiquarian collections and early archaeological investigations, prior to the destruction of many sites due to guano mining and development; only a handful have been recovered during archaeological investigations since the 1960s. The corpus includes 224 celts, of which 162 are complete and provide the measurements for a comparison with width/length ratios of celts from the proximate source islands of Cuba and Hispaniola. While the Lucayan archipelago shows a slightly higher proportion of wider celts, consistent with more reworking, overall the corpus suggests that exchange networks were sufficient to meet demand. This conclusion is supported by the absence of any clear diminution in size with distance from sources. The majority of stone celts (71.9 %) have been identified as various forms of “jade,” supplemented with a range of other materials. Despite the higher value often attributed to jade cross-culturally, we find no clear evidence for its differential treatment, though the archipelago’s northern islands do have a lower proportion of jade versus non-jade celts.

In Eastern Arabia, the Neolithic period (c. 6500–3300 BCE) corresponds to a cultural phase principally characterized by the development of mixed economies based on fishing, pastoralism, and hunting. Since the 1970s, a great number of Neolithic sites have been discovered and excavated along the coastline and on the coastal islands of both the Arabian Gulf and the Sultanate of Oman while only a few examples of inland sites are known to date. It evidences an original case of 'coastal adaptation' of the human populations of the Saharo-Arabian arid belt during the Holocene. In fact, Neolithic sites are mostly concentrated close to high biodiversity and biomass 'hot spots' such as estuaries, mangroves, seagrass meadows, and coral reefs where marine life abounds in the form of shellfish, crustaceans, marine mammals, and fish.

The scope of the present paper is to gather the data and discuss the results of the zooarchaeological studies conducted since the late 1980s on marine fish remains retrieved from Neolithic sites of Eastern Arabia (from Kuwait to the Sultanate of Oman) in terms of main catches, fishing grounds, techniques, and equipment as well as seasonality and consumption modes. Furthermore, subsistence strategies and mobility patterns during the Neolithic are discussed taking into account data from palaeo-climatic studies.

Archaeologists have long recognized that spatial relationships are an important influence on and driver of all manner of social processes at scales from the local to the continental. Recent research in the realm of complex networks focused on community detection in human and animal networks suggests that there may be certain critical scales at which spatial interactions can be partitioned, allowing researchers to draw potential boundaries for interaction that provide insights into a variety of social phenomena. Thus far, this research has been focused on short time scales and has not explored the legacies of historic relationships on the evolution of network communities and boundaries over the long-term. In this study, we examine networks based on material cultural similarity drawing on a large settlement and material culture database from the U.S. Southwest/Mexican Northwest (ca. 1000–1450 CE) divided into a series of short temporal intervals. With these temporally sequenced networks we: 1) demonstrate the utility of network community detection for partitioning interactions in geographic space, 2) identify key transitions in the geographic scales of network communities, and 3) illustrate the role of previous network configurations in the evolution of network communities and their spatial boundaries through time.

Ethnographically known weapon systems are crucial for the functional interpretation of pertinent archaeological materials. The tip cross-sectional geometries of North American ethnographic projectiles are particularly widely used as standards against which the probable functions of archaeological stone points are assessed. While their known weapon-delivery mechanisms make these North American samples ideal references for archaeological investigations, their applicability to Afro-Eurasian assemblages is contestable. Using metric and contextual data from contemporary hunting javelins in southwestern Ethiopia, we expand on recent efforts to recalibrate such reference datasets. We find that overall javelin size and tip geometry are governed by factors ranging from the hunter’s age and physical competence to prey type and the intended hunting (e.g., startling, diverting, wounding, killing), and even symbolic/ceremonial, tasks. We argue that such dynamics may explain the great variation in the tip cross-sectional geometries of stone points in the archaeological record. Comparisons of our tip cross-sectional values with relevant published data provide further metric constraints and highlight the need for cautious interpretations of prehistoric weapon-delivery mechanisms where the role of symbolism and of children in the making of the archaeological record should also be considered.

This paper discusses the maize consumption record among hunter-gatherers outside assumed production areas in northeastern Patagonia. We evaluated if this anomalous record is the result of occasional events of local production/consumption; the transport of the microremains in the teeth of individuals after consuming maize in non-local production areas; or the local consumption of maize after its transport/exchange from production areas. Archaeobotanical results showed that analyzed individuals, including maize-consumers, mainly consumed local wild plants. Maize was not cultivated locally, and its consumption was unusual but not extraordinary in northeastern Patagonia. Oxygen isotope values of analyzed individuals are strongly compatible with local water sources, which imply that the mobility range of them must have not exceeded extra-Andean North Patagonia. For this reason, the most plausible explanation for the presence of maize in the local archaeological record is that this plant to have entered northeastern Patagonia through exchange, probably from southern Andes (central Chile or central-west Argentina).

We have considered a range of commensality in Neolithic Çatalhöyük using ceramics, animal bones, and architecture. Integrating the data allowed us to capture the change in commensal practices over the Final occupational phase (ca. 6300–5950 cal BC). The shift from community commensality to family commensality is marked by a decrease in the size of jars, accompanied by slight changes in the size of bowls. These types of vessels were used both for cooking, as shown by soot and lipid residue analysis, and for serving, as can be inferred from the more open form, apparent with the bowls. In the case of bowls, this result contrasts with previous findings suggesting that they had relevance for plant foods only. When we consider feasting events, the data on everyday commensal practice can be seen to contrast with this exceptional commensality. In both, the main role is played by cattle, which are the driver of change as the status of the taxon moves from wild to domestic. Changes in culinary and social practices are embedded in architectural changes in the form of growing number of open spaces which served as places where people could share a meal.