Tracking the division of labour through handprints: Applying Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) to clay ‘tokens’ in Neolithic West Asia

The residents of Boncuklu Höyük, a mixed forager-farming community dating to the pre-ceramic Neolithic c. mid-9th to mid-8th millennium cal. BC, used their hands to manipulate local clays into artefacts, often leaving behind traces of their palm prints and fingerprints on the surface of the objects. Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), a digital imaging technique that uses multiple images and mathematical models to reveal the 3-dimensional shape of an artefact's surface, provides a detailed, post-processing interactive view of the prints on each artefact. Geometric clay objects are the single-most abundant artefact category at Boncuklu Höyük with over 1000 clay objects recovered and studied at this central Anatolian village to date. The aim of the project is to understand the manufacture, use, and disposal of geometric clay objects at Boncuklu Höyük through an analysis of the hand and fingerprints present on their surfaces. RTI reveals palm and fingerprints on more than half of the study sample consisting of eighty-eighty clay artefacts. Analysis of the prints using friction ridge density protocols indicates that adult females were the primary makers of the artefacts. The results were unchanged when taking into account artefact shape and type, and when considering temporal and locational data. The association of these artefacts during manufacture principally to women suggests an early link in the life of the object to women, potentially suggesting a gender based division of tasks at Boncuklu Höyük. © 2018 Elsevier LtdThis work was supported by Pacific Legacy Inc ., and carried out with the kind permission of Prof. Douglas Baird and Dr. Andrew Fairbairn, directors of the Boncuklu Höyük Project along with Dr Gökhan Mustafao?lu, Assistant Site Director

Conservation targets for viable species assemblages in Canada: are percentage targets appropriate?

Percentage targets for conservation have become a popular tool (advocated in both the scientific literature and the conservation community) for setting minimum goals for the amount of land to be set aside as protected areas. However, there is little literature to support a consistent percentage target that might be widely applied. Moreover, most percentage targets have not taken into account issues of species persistence. A recent study of herbivores in Kruger National Park took into account issues of representation and persistence in setting conservation targets and found that results were consistently about 50% and were unaffected by different permutations of the reserve selection process. Here, we carry out a similar analysis for representation of mammals within sites that are predicted to allow for their persistence, across eight ecologically defined regions in Canada to test whether we see similar consistent patterns emerging. We found that percentage targets varied with the different permutations of the reserve selection algorithms, both within and between the study regions. Thus, we conclude that the use of percentage targets is not an appropriate conservation strategy