Shellfishing and the colonization of sahul: a multivariate model evaluating the dynamic effects of prey utility, transport considerations and life-history on foraging patterns and midden composition

pre-printArchaeological evidence of shellfish exploitation along the coast of Sahul (Pleistocene Australia-New Guinea) points to an apparent paradox. While the continental record as a whole suggests that human populations were very low from initial colonization through early Holocene, coastal and peri-coastal sites dating to that time are dominated by small, low-ranked littoral taxa to the near-complete exclusion of large, higher ranked sub-littoral species, precisely the opposite of theory-based expectations, if human populations and predation rates were indeed as low as other data suggest. We present a model of shellfish exploitation combining information on species utility, transport considerations and prey life-history that might account for this apparent mismatch, and then assess it with ethnographic and archaeological data. Findings suggest either that high-ranked taxa were uncommon along the Pleistocene coastlines of Sahul, or that abundant and commonly taken high-ranked prey are under-represented in middens relative to their role in human diets largely as a function of human processing and transport practices. If the latter reading is correct, archaeological evidence of early shellfishing may be mainly the product of subsistence activities by children and their mothers

Explaining prehistoric variation in the abundance of large prey: a zooarchaeological analysis of deer and rabbit hunting along the Pecho Coast of Central California

journal articleThree main hypotheses are commonly employed to explain diachronic variation in the relative abun dance of remains of large terrestrial herbivores: (1) large prey populations decline as a function of anthro pogenic overexploitation; (2 ) large prey tends to increase as a result of increasing social payoffs; and (3) proportions of large terrestrial prey are dependent on stochastic fluctuations in climate. This paper tests predictions derived from these three hypotheses through a zooarchaeological analysis of eleven temporal components from three sites on central California's Pecho Coast. Specifically, we examine the trade offs between hunting rabbits (Sylvilagus spp.) and deer (Odocoileus hemionus) using models derived from human behavioral ecology. The results show that foragers exploited a robust population of deer through out most of the Holocene, only doing otherwise during periods associated w ith climatic trends unfavor able to larger herbivores. The most recent component (Late Prehistoric/Contact era) shows modest evidence of localized resource depression and perhaps greater social benefits from hunting larger prey; we suggest that these final changes resulted from the introduction of bow and arrow technology. Overall, results suggest that along central California's Pecho Coast, density independent factors described as cli matically mediated prey choice best predict changes in the relative abundance of large terrestrial herbi vores through the Holocene

A land of work: foraging behavior and ecology

book chapterWork is a core theme in many of the major issues and debates in California archaeology. Work is central in understanding why the first Californians entered the region (e.g., Erlandson, this volume): how thousands of years of work following colonization resulted in the overexploitation of particular resources (e.g., Broughton 1994), the economic intensification of work effort (e.g., Basgall 1987), shifts in the patterns of population growth (e.g., Hull, this volume), changes in the currencies that drive work (e.g., Hildebrandt and McGuire, this volume), and the emergence of social hierarchies in politically complex societies (e.g., Arnold 1992, 1993). All of these were punctuated by environmental events which alter the very foundations of work (e.g., Jones and Schwitalla, this volume)

External impacts on internal dynamics: Effects of paleoclimatic and demographic variability on acorn exploitation along the Central California coast

book chapterResearch into human-environment interaction in California prehistory often focuses on either the internal dynamics of adaptive decisions or the external impacts of environmental change. While both processes were surely driving prehistoric variability, integrating these approaches is not altogether straightforward. Here we outline an inclusive approach examining the exploitation of acorn habitats in Central California. Acorns were critically important to many ethnographic groups in Native California, but the intensive use of acorns appears to be a Late Holocene phenomenon. Most research approaches the increased reliance on acorns as a process governed by internal dynamics linked to demographically-driven resource intensification, but there are strong reasons to believe that climatic variability also structured acorn use. Here we link internal and external human-environmental dynamics through a formal behavioral ecological model. This model provides clear predictions that can be used to identify departures from expected internal dynamics linked to external factors driven by paleoenvironmental change. Results show that prehistoric occupation along the central California coast shifts into interior oak-dominated regions with increasing population densities, consistent with model expectations of internally-driven resource intensification. However, acorn use is also affected by climate: foragers are less likely to live in productive acorn habitats during periods of drought. These findings show that neither internal nor external patterns can completely account for variability in prehistoric decisions, but that integrating these through formal ecological models can provide insights into the external impacts on internal dynamics that structure broad patterns in prehistory

Prearchaic Adaptations in the Central Great Basin: Preliminary findings from a stratified open-air site in Grass Valley, Nevada

posterEarly Holocene occupants of the Great Basin preferentially occupied highly productive habitats surrounding pluvial lakes. While growing evidence details in the adaptations of these Prearchaic foragers in the Eastern (e.g., Madsen et al. 2015) and Western Great Basin (e.g., Jenkins et al. 2012), our understanding of the Central Great Basin remains impoverished, largely due to the limited number of stratified archaeological sites containing well preserved material suitable for faunal analysis and radiocarbon dating

Environmental productivity predicts migration, demographic, and linguistic patterns in prehistoric California

Global patterns of ethnolinguistic diversity vary tremendously. Some regions show very little variation even across vast expanses, whereas others exhibit dense mosaics of different languages spoken alongside one another. Compared with the rest of Native North America, prehistoric California exemplified the latter. Decades of linguistic, genetic, and archaeological research have produced detailed accounts of the migrations that aggregated to build California’s diverse ethnolinguistic mosaic, but there have been few have attempts to explain the process underpinning these migrations and why such a mosaic did not develop elsewhere. Here we show that environmental productivity predicts both the order of migration events and the population density recorded at contact. The earliest colonizers occupied the most suitable habitats along the coast, whereas subsequent Mid–Late Holocene migrants settled in more marginal habitats. Other Late Holocene patterns diverge from this trend, reflecting altered dynamics linked to food storage and increased sedentism. Through repeated migration events, incoming populations replaced resident populations occurring at lower densities in lower-productivity habitats, thereby resulting in the fragmentation of earlier groups and the development of one of the most diverse ethnolinguistic patterns in the Americas. Such a process may account for the distribution of ethnolinguistic diversity worldwide

Why Men Trophy Hunt

The killing of Cecil the lion (Panthera leo) ignited enduring and increasingly global discussion about trophy hunting. Yet, policy debate about its benefits and costs focuses only on the hunted species and biodiversity, not the unique behaviour of hunters. Some contemporary recreational hunters from the developed world behave curiously, commonly targeting ‘trophies’: individuals within populations with large body or ornament size, as well as rare and/or inedible species, like carnivores. Although contemporary hunters have been classified according to implied motivation (i.e. for meat, recreation, trophy or population control, as well the ‘multiple satisfactions’ they seek while hunting (affiliation, appreciation, achievement; an evolutionary explanation of the motivation underlying trophy hunting (and big-game fishing) has never been pursued. Too costly (difficult, dangerous) a behaviour to be common among other vertebrate predators, we postulate that trophy hunting is in fact motivated by the costs hunters accept. We build on empirical and theoretical contributions from evolutionary anthropology to hypothesize that signalling these costs to others is key to understanding, and perhaps influencing, this otherwise perplexing activity

Violence among foragers: The bioarchaeological record from central California

Spatial and diachronic patterns in skeletal evidence for three forms of violence were evaluated for central California with information from a bioarchaeological database that contains information on 16,820 burials from 329 sites. The most abundant form of violence was sharp force/projectile trauma (462/6278, 7.4%), followed by blunt force craniofacial trauma (264/6202, 4.3%) and trophy-taking/dismemberment (87/12,603, 0.7%). Signs of violence were concentrated in the area with the highest ethnographic population densities (Sacramento River), but also in the southern San Francisco Bay area which seems to have been a contested interface zone between established residents and incoming migrants. Sharp force/projectile trauma was also high in the Sierra Nevada following introduction of the bow and arrow, and violence in general was more common among males, although there is less of a sex-difference among individuals with blunt force craniofacial injuries in central California relative to southern California, suggesting greater participation by females in this form of violence as attested by historic eyewitness accounts. Temporal patterning shows two episodes of elevated violence: the Early Middle Period (500 cal B.C.–cal A.D. 420) when trophytaking/dismemberment peaked, and the Protohistoric/Historic Period (cal A.D. 1720–1899) marked by high levels of blunt force craniofacial and projectile trauma. The Protohistoric/Historic peak, preceded by the appearance of the bow and arrow ca. A.D.1000–1200 and an associated upturn in projectile violence, is attributed to the arrival of Europeans into southwestern North America 250 years before their permanent settlement in California ca. A.D. 1769

Human Fire Legacies on Ecological Landscapes

The primacy of past human activity in triggering change in earth’s ecosystems remains a contested idea. Treating human-environmental dynamics as a dichotomous phenomenon – turning “on” or “off” at some tipping point in the past – misses the broader, longer-term, and varied role humans play in creating lasting ecological legacies. To investigate these more subtle human-environmental dynamics, we propose an interdisciplinary framework, for evaluating past and predicting future landscape change focused on human-fire legacies. Linking theory and methods from behavioral and landscape ecology, we present a coupled framework capable of explaining how and why humans make subsistence decisions and interact with environmental variation through time. We review evidence using this framework that demonstrates how human behavior can influence vegetation cover and continuity, change local disturbance regimes, and create socio-ecological systems that can dampen or even override, the environmental effects of local and regional climate. Our examples emphasize how a long-term interdisciplinary perspective provides new insights for assessing the role of humans in generating persistent landscape legacies that go unrecognized using a simple natural-versus-human driver model of environmental change