Gatherings in biosemiotics

http://www.ester.ee/record=b2860486*es

The Camutins Chiefdom: Rise and Development of Social Complexity on Marajo Island, Brazilian Amazon

The emergence and development of complex societies in the Amazonian lowlands has been historically debated as a function of the relationships between human populations and the natural environment. Culture ecology on one hand, and historical ecology, on the other hand, have offered different views on cultural development, without providing compelling archaeological testing.The present study proposes an ecological-economic model to account for the emergence of social complexity on Marajó Island. This model predicts that in areas of abundant aquatic resources, communal cooperation for the construction of river dams and ponds allowed for the development of a highly productive fishing economy with low labor investment. The production of surpluses created opportunities for kin group leaders to compete for the administration of the water-management systems, leading to control over resources and surplus flow. The differential access to resources created social stratification, and the development of a complex religious-ideological system in order to legitimize the political economy. Focusing on one of the Marajoara chiefdoms, a group of 34 mounds located along the Camutins River, the study demonstrates that the location of ceremonial mounds in highly productive areas was related to control over aquaculture systems. The study suggests that the existence of similar ecological conditions in several other locations on the Island led to the multiplication of small chiefdoms, which, once in place, competed for labor, prestige, and power. Based also on data provided by other researchers, this study proposes a chronology for the emergence and demise of complex societies on Marajó Island, as well as defining the main periods within Marajoara phase

Eleutherodactylus ridens (Pygmy Rainfrog) Predation

Workers of the large ponerine ant Paraponera clavata typically forage on small to medium-sized arthropods or collect pieces of plants or nectar but have been suspected of predating small vertebrates

Encountering El Tigre : jaguars, knowledge, and discourse in the Western world, 1492-1945

The jaguar is one of the most charismatic species found in the Western Hemisphere, and its presence has long resonated with human communities. Throughout history these large spotted cats have evoked a myriad of responses, from reverence and respect, to fear and disdain. Situated within ongoing re-examinations of the place of animals in public discourse, this dissertation examines representations of jaguars from the fifteenth through twentieth centuries, exploring the ways in which knowledge about this species was constituted in the Western world within the evolution of scientific thought and natural history. Locating the jaguar at the intersections of nature, science, and culture, this dissertation is concerned with the ways this elusive species’ animality was constructed and represented. Records produced by Europeans in the New World demonstrate the dynamic ways in which humans imagined the jaguar’s physical form, interpreted their actions, characterized their feline-ness, and ultimately, attempted to locate these cats within their own notions of natural order. Loaded within these accounts from the outset are notions of value, which are as fluid as the positions these cats occupied in ecological, biological, and imaginary landscapes of the New World. This dissertation examines accounts from prominent explorers, scholars, scientists, authors, and artists, all of whom sought to represent jaguar lives. Drawing from accounts of explorations, guides produced by naturalists, scientific reports, and the letters and journals of those who traveled through the shared margins, these chapters locate the jaguar at the center of its own natural history. These jaguars are a connective thread moving through the span of post-contact natural history, and they keep notable company: from Cortés to Balboa; Alexander von Humboldt to Charles Darwin; and Theodore Roosevelt to Aldo Leopold. All of these men published tales of the jaguar that circulated widely through Western Europe and the United States, playing a significant role in the production of jaguar knowledge. In so doing, the jaguar’s tale become one that operates across scales of time and space, simultaneously immediate and localized within these encounters and yet timeless and global, embedded within global circulations of information and power.Geography and the Environmen

On the Backs of Tortoises: Conserving Evolution in the Galápagos Islands

The Galápagos Islands are today considered a world-renown natural laboratory of evolution and one of the best-preserved ecosystems on earth. Yet even this remote archipelago is not immune from global environmental crises: in 2007, UNESCO put the Galápagos on its list of World Heritage Sites In Danger because of booming tourism development. Most analyses explain this crisis as a Malthusian problem of over-development on fragile islands. However, I argue that adequately understanding current problems in the Galápagos requires a return to the annals of evolutionary science to analyze how that history shaped the islands. This dissertation traces this history on the backs of the islands' most iconic species, giant tortoises, to show how the development of evolutionary science has reshaped understandings of island nature and how it is managed. The dissertation traces a history of the present through detailed archival and ethnographic attention to shifting human engagements with giant tortoises over the past century. Chapters chart the shifting biopolitical strategies through which endangered nonhuman life has been managed, from natural history and zoological collection to in situ conservation breeding. They analyze how changing methods of biological science--from morphological taxonomy to phylogenetics--articulate with different modes of valuing and saving nonhuman life. In particular, they track how scientific valuations of the islands as a natural laboratory justified both conservation work and tourism development. By detailing the relationship between conservation and tourism through which giant tortoises became charismatic icons, the dissertation reframes the recent crisis not as the intrusion of globalization into a space of pristine nature, but as produced through an alliance between scientific conservation and global capitalism. By engaging with the science and nature of evolution, the dissertation returns to the disciplinary history of geography. To avoid re-inscribing determinist interpretations that marked early twentieth century disciplinary engagements with evolutionary theory, the dissertation uses the Galápagos case to elaborate a critical geography of evolution. This perspective foregrounds the contingent, politicized processes through which nature and society co-evolve. It demonstrates how the circulation of evolutionary science orders relationships between nature and society and shapes the discursive and material production of landscapes.Doctor of Philosoph

Material Encounters and Indigenous Transformations in the Early Colonial Americas

Material Encounters and Indigenous Transformations in the Early Colonial Americas brings together 15 archaeological case studies that offer new perspectives on colonial period interactions in the Caribbean and surrounding areas through a specific focus on material culture and indigenous agency. Readership: Scholars in archaeology and early history, graduate students, educated public with an interest in early colonial history of the Americas

Archaeological investigations on St. Martin (Lesser Antilles). The sites of Norman Estate, Anse des Pères, and Hope Estate. With a contribution to the 'La Hueca problem'

Wetensch. publ. non-refereedFaculty of Archeolog

Archaeological Investigations between Cayenne Island and the Maroni River

Stratigraphic archaeological research in French Guiana is barely 50 years old and has been conducted primarily in the coastal zone, stretching approximately between 5 and 50 kilometres from the Atlantic coast to the Precambrian Shield. This bias, mainly caused by means of modern infrastructure, has sketched an archaeological record concerning pre-Columbian French Guiana focussing on the Late Ceramic Age (AD 900-1500) of Cayenne Island as well as the western Holocene coastal plains. The present study contains the results of six archaeological investigations, conducted from a compliance archaeological perspective, in order to enhance our knowledge of the afore-mentioned coastal area. It not only presents us with fresh archaeological data on the (Late) Archaic and Early Ceramic Age, a hiatus that is now partially filled up, but also sheds new light on the Late Ceramic Age of this specific region concerning funerary rites, ceramic series and subsistence economy. Martijn van den Bel studied History and Archaeology of Indigenous America at Leiden University and graduated in 1995 with an ethnoarchaeological study on the Palikur potters of French Guiana. Currently he works as a project leader for Inrap in French Guiana. He carries out compliance archaeological research in the French Guiana and the French Lesser Antilles. Next to archaeology, Martijn is interested in the early history of the Guianas and the Lesser Antilles, notably the encounter between Amerindians and Europeans during the 16th and 17th century, resulting in various publications