Book Reviews

Review of New Perspectives in Archeology, by Sally R. Binford and Lewis R. Binford, eds.; The Archaeology of Ancient China, by Kwang-chih Chang; Prehistoric Animals and Their Hunters, by I. W. Cornwall; Contes Malgaches en Dialecte Sakalava: Textes, Traduction, Grammaire et Lexique, by Otto Chr. Dahl; An Ethnographic Bibliography of New Guinea; Archaeology on the Island of Mo'orea, French Polynesia, by Roger C. Green, Kaye Green, Roy Rappaport, Ann Rappaport, and Janet Davidson; Polynesian Culture History: Essays in Honor of Kenneth P. Emory, by Genevieve A. Highland, et al.; Computer Analysis of Chronological Seriation, by Frank Hole and Mary Shaw; Prehistoric Japanese Arts: Jomon Pottery, by J. Edward Kidder and Teruya Esaka; A Selected and Annotated Bibliography of Korean Anthropology, by Eugene I. Knez and Chang-Su Swanson; Die Religionen der Sudsee und Australiens, by Hans Nevermann, Ernest A. Worms, and Helmut Petri; Geschichte und Sozialordnung der Sherpa, by Michael Oppitz; The Vermilion Bird: T'ang Images of the South, by Edward H. Schafer; Fijian Material Culture: A Study of Cultural Context, Function, and Change, by Alan Richard Tippett

Agents adopting agriculture:Modeling the agricultural transition

Abstract. The question “What drove foragers to farm? ” has drawn answers from many different disciplines, often in the form of verbal models. Here, we take one such model, that of the ideal free distribution, and implement it as an agent-based computer simulation. Populations distribute themselves according to the marginal quality of different habitats, predicting settlement patterns and subsistence methods over both time and space. Our experiments and our analy-ses thereof show that central conclusions of the ideal free distribution model are reproduced by our agent-based simulation, while at the same time offering new insights into the theory’s underlying assumptions. Generally, we demonstrate how agent-based models can make use of empirical data to reconstruct realistic environmental and cultural contexts, enabling concrete tests of the explanatory power of anthropological models put forward to explain historical develop-ments, such as agricultural transitions, in specific times and places.

Climate reversals and the transition to agriculture

Origin of agriculture, Origin of cultivation, Prehistory, Economic growth, Economic development, Technology, Technological change, Population dynamics, Climate change, Foraging, Hunting and gathering, Archaeology, Anthropology, Neolithic Revolution, O10,

Transformações da terra: para uma perspectiva agroecológica na história Transformation of the land: towards an agroecological perspective in history

O artigo discute a constituição do campo da história ambiental, que se deu nos anos 70 em meio aos debates sobre a crise ecológica e a eclosão do movimento ambientalista. Esta história não aceita a noção de que as sociedades humanas não produzem alterações ambientais significativas, e interpela as condições específicas dessa interação recorrente. O sistema agroecológico representa um dos casos mais típicos de rearranjo da atividade humana sobre os ecossistemas naturais, em uma relação complexa de interação entre plantas nativas, vegetação forasteira, fertilidade dos solos e diversas práticas agrícolas. O itinerário dessas mudanças é essencial para se compreender a história do ponto de vista ambiental<br>This article discusses the formation of the field of environmental history which originated in the 1970s in the middle of the debates on the ecologic crisis and the emergence of the environmental movement. This history rejects the notion that human societies do not cause significant environmental alterations and analyzes the specific conditions of that recurring interaction. The agroecologic system is one of the most typical cases of the intervention of human activity on natural ecosystems in a complex interaction between indigenous plants, exotic vegetation, fertility of the soil and diverse agricultural practices. The roadmap of these changes is essential to understand history from the view point of the environment