The social-ecological landscape of herding on the high mountain commons of Larrau in the western Pyrenees (France)

IntroductionMuch has been written about herding, pastoralism and the ethos of the commons that persists in Soule and the valley republics of the western Pyrenees. However, more has been written about the idealized norms of the practice than the social dynamics of alliance formation on which cooperation in herding on the high mountain commons in Soule has depended for centuries. We use empirical evidence from the parish-commune of Larrau to analyze the emergence, social alliance, and landscape placement of Cayolar, a syndicate of herders associated with a named inholding within the high mountain commons, to inform our understanding of the process of settling down in the western Pyrenees.MethodsWe abstract the institutional features of herding in the Soule Valley then proceed with a (1) Bayesian analysis of calibrated radiocarbon dates from herding sites across the commons, (2) a Bayesian social network analysis of herders and other alliance-relevant information, and (3) a landscape analysis of the placement of Cayolar inholdings.ResultsA syndicate of herders organized as a Cayolar succeed by following mutually agreed upon rules, making credible commitments to each other, and monitoring members' conformance to the rules. The organizational performance of a Cayolar depends on the articulation of herders to the members of the Soule community of interest through nested levels of institutional decision-making. Archaeological, historical and ethnographic results provide direct evidence for use of Cayolar structures and inholdings by c. 1000 CE and the institutional and organizational aspects of decision-making by c. 1100 CE.DiscussionThe Cayolar is an enduring place-based organization with an average use-span of c. 850 years. Members have a regulatory interest in enforcing the collaboration of others in collective herding and little incentive to defect since unlike Hardin's herders, Cayolar members share a past and expect to share a future as members of the Soule community of interest. Íñigo Arista established the Basque kingdom of Navarra in 824 CE, and his donations contributed to the founding of the Benedictine monastery of Leyre that established a pastoral enterprise at Betzula within the Soule Valley. Other monastic orders soon turned their attention to the western Pyrenees responding to attempts by the Catholic Church to counter civil unrest in southern France. The real turning point for collective herding on the high mountain commons was the introduction of primordial fueros on the Iberian side of the Pyrenees. These direct royal agreements with freemen encouraged resettlement and repopulation of the western Pyrenees and provided the means for local communities of interest to coalesce and develop institutions to organize the collective effort of individuals for the benefit of a group

Long-term ecological research in a human-dominated world

Author Posting. © American Institute of Biological Sciences, 2012. This article is posted here by permission of American Institute of Biological Sciences for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in BioScience 62 (2012): 342-253, doi:10.1525/bio.2012.62.4.6.The US Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network enters its fourth decade with a distinguished record of achievement in ecological science. The value of long-term observations and experiments has never been more important for testing ecological theory and for addressing today's most difficult environmental challenges. The network's potential for tackling emergent continent-scale questions such as cryosphere loss and landscape change is becoming increasingly apparent on the basis of a capacity to combine long-term observations and experimental results with new observatory-based measurements, to study socioecological systems, to advance the use of environmental cyberinfrastructure, to promote environmental science literacy, and to engage with decisionmakers in framing major directions for research. The long-term context of network science, from understanding the past to forecasting the future, provides a valuable perspective for helping to solve many of the crucial environmental problems facing society today.2012-10-0

Patch occupancy of stream fauna across a land cover gradient in the southern Appalachians, USA

We modeled patch occupancy to examine factors that best predicted the prevalence of four functionally important focal stream consumers (Tallaperla spp., Cambarus spp., Pleurocera proxima, and Cottus bairdi) among 37 reaches within the Little Tennessee River basin of the southern Appalachian Mountains, USA. We compared 34 models of patch occupancy to examine the association of catchment and reach scale factors that varied as a result of converting forest to agricultural or urban land use. Occupancy of our taxa was linked to parameters reflecting both catchment and reach extent characteristics. At the catchment level, forest cover or its conversion to agriculture was a major determinant of occupancy for all four taxa. Patch occupancies of Tallaperla, Cambarus, and C. bairdi were positively, and Pleurocera negatively, correlated with forest cover. Secondarily at the reach level, local availability of large woody debris was important for Cambarus, availability of large cobble substrate was important for C. bairdi, and stream calcium concentration was important for P. proxima. Our results show the abundance of stream organisms was determined by the taxon-dependent interplay between catchment- and reach-level factors.Keywords: Patch occupancy, Stream chemistry, Appalachians, Consumers, Land us

Time in Service to Historical Ecology

Historical Ecology is one of the ascendant views in ecological and environmental anthropology. It originates in the intellectual transformation of history and ecology during the last 50 years, and seeped into anthropology in the last 10 to 15 years. Historical Ecology is increasingly recognized as one of the key approaches in the discipline helping to advance our understanding of what it means to be human. There are numerous definitions of historical ecology, but the anthropological challenge is to place human decision-making, and the consciousness that drives it, at the center of our analyses of the human-environmental relationship (Crumley 1994, Whitehead 1998, Whitney 1994). What this challenge entails is clear from a caricature of how the natural and social sciences view this relationship. In the natural sciences, humans are drivers of environmental change and there is little or no insight into the rationality behind any given transformation. In the social sciences, cognition and the resulting choices made by humans link them to their environment in a dialectical process of transformation. Humans as drivers of environmental change are nothing more than a problem to be disposed of; humans as coproducers with environment of the transformation offer the potential for altering the final outcome. As is so often the case with emerging approaches there is debate as to whether historical ecology is a unified theoretical position or merely a research tool (Balée 1998, Whitehead 1998). However, it can be productive to consider a different question emerging from our responsibility to manage Earth (Vitousek, Mooney, and Lubchenco 1997): How can anthropology participate in the collaborations needed to understand the neglected-to-engineered gradient of current environmental systems? Toward answering this question I first review the points of origin for historical ecology then examine how the essential properties of time can help center the practice of historical ecology on a problem and a place. The objective is to move historical ecology closer to addressing how past ecologies produce present ones in order to consider the future(s) we might pursue rather than simply let happen

Native American Ethnogenesis in the early 18th Century of the Southeast US.

Abstract. Governor Robert Johnson of Carolina prepared a report in 1719 thatprovides the first reliable enumeration of native populations in the Southeast USsignificant for two reasons: 1) it is a comprehensive, time-stamped compendium ofinformation on the size and distribution of native populations in the US Southeast, and2) it reflects the earliest and in some cases only population profile for nativesoutheastern groups (several went extinct within the next 10-20 years). The ultimatesignificance of the Johnson report is the knowledge it provides on Native Americandemography in the first half of the 18th century after Virgin Soil diseases had run theircourse across the region. In this presentation we examine the size, location andethnolinguistic affiliation of the diverse groups enumerated in Johnson's report in lightof the ethnogenesis taking place among remnant populations at this critical moment inNative American history of the Southeastern US.Etnogénesis entre los Amerindios a principios del siglo XVIII en elSudeste de los Estados UnidosResumen. El gobernador Robert Johnson de Carolina preparó un informe en 1719en el cual presenta la primera enumeración confiable de las poblaciones nativas delsureste de los Estados Unidos, significativo por dos razones: 1) es un compendioexhaustivo, con temporalidad de la información sobre el tamaño y la distribución de laspoblaciones nativas en el sudeste de los Estados Unidos, y 2) refleja los más tempranosy, en algunos casos, los únicos perfiles de grupos nativos del sudeste americano (variosse extinguieron en los siguientes 10 a 20 años). El significado particular del informeJohnson es el conocimiento que proporciona sobre la demografía de los amerindios en laprimera mitad del siglo 18, después que las epidemias de “Suelo Virgen” habían afectadoa toda la región. En este trabajo se examina el tamaño, la ubicación y la filiaciónetnolingüística de los diversos grupos enumerados en el informe de Johnson, a la luz dela etnogénesis que tenía lugar entre las poblaciones remanentes en este momento críticoen la historia nativa americana del sudeste de los Estados Unidos

Pume exploitation on Mauritia flexuosa (Palmae) in the Llanos of Venezuela

Volume: 15Start Page: 177End Page: 18

Basque Cultural Landscapes of the Western French Pyrenees

Results are presented on the co-evolution of agropastoralism and soils in the western Pyrenees Mountains (>800 masl) over the course of the Holocene conducted in the ethnically Basque commune of Larrau, France. Larrau presents a unique opportunity to examine the structural legacies and biotic factor in soil evolution across millennia. Multi-proxy evidence from geoarchives, archaeology, history and ethnography is analyzed to evaluate the relation between land management practices, soil characteristics and chronostratigraphy in the study area. Research indicates that the landscape of Larrau has been subject to intense human transformation through agropastoral use since at least the early Bronze age, yet there are no signs of significant degradation of the soil mantle. The place-based approach followed in this research provides the means for evaluating modal human behaviors and decisionmaking within a complex adaptive system. It details how the present is connected to the past and how contemporary land systems can contribute to a sustainable future.Nel corso della ricerca effettuata nel comune etnicamente basco di Larrau (Francia) abbiamo indagato tracce multi-proxy per esaminare le forme di domesticazione dei paesaggi montani (> 800 m slm) dei Pirenei occidentali, nel corso dell’Olocene. I nostri dati suggeriscono che in quest’area le foreste originarie sono state trasformate in pascoli diverse migliaia di anni fa, senza che questo abbia comportato un degrado significativo del paesaggio e dei suoli. Il patrimonio dei paesaggi agropastorali di Larrau offre una rara opportunità per esaminare un doppio sistema in lento cambiamento, nel quale, attraverso millenni, le attività di gestione umana hanno strutturato un paesaggio scenografico, creando un sistema di produzione agropastorale resiliente e durevole, e hanno reindirizzato i sottostanti percorsi e meccanismi di pedogenesi. Se i sistemi terrestri contemporanei mirano a raggiungere un desiderabile futuro sostenibile, la situazione attuale deve essere continuamente e fortemente collegata al suo passato