High-ranked Resources Research Articles

Forager mobility, landscape learning and the peopling of Late Pleistocene North America

The process(es) by which hunter-gatherers learned novel food resources as they dispersed across previously unknown landscapes, such as Late Pleistocene North America, are not known. A key trade-off in the process must have involved the decision, once high-ranked resources in a patch declined, to stay in place and learn about untried food resources or move to another patch to exploit familiar resources. Modelling the process suggests that learning a new resource will be more likely when the handling time for that resource by a novice forager is not too much higher than that for a practiced forager, and when patch residence times are long enough for within-patch resource depression to occur. The decision to move or stay would likely have varied depending on the richness and structure of the resources in different patches and habitats. The model further indicates it is not large mammal hunting per se that favors the most frequent residential moves by central place foragers, but rather the pursuit of the rate-maximizing suite of resources, whatever the composition of that suite may be. These findings imply, as previous empirical work has suggested, that the dispersal process likely played out in different ways across Late Pleistocene North America.

Modeling Incipient Use of Neolithic Cultigens by Taiwanese Foragers: Perspectives from Niche Variation Theory, the Prey Choice Model, and the Ideal Free Distribution

The earliest evidence for agriculture in Taiwan dates to about 6000 years BP and indicates that farmer-gardeners from Southeast China migrated across the Taiwan Strait. However, little is known about the adaptive interactions between Taiwanese foragers and Neolithic Chinese farmers during the transition. This paper considers theoretical expectations from human behavioral ecology based models and macroecological patterning from Binford’s hunter-gatherer database to scope the range of responses of native populations to invasive dispersal. Niche variation theory and invasion theory predict that the foraging niche breadths will narrow for native populations and morphologically similar dispersing populations. The encounter contingent prey choice model indicates that groups under resource depression from depleted high-ranked resources will increasingly take low-ranked resources upon encounter. The ideal free distribution with Allee effects categorizes settlement into highly ranked habitats selected on the basis of encounter rates with preferred prey, with niche construction potentially contributing to an upswing in some highly ranked prey species. In coastal plain habitats preferred by farming immigrants, interactions and competition either reduced encounter rates with high ranked prey or were offset by benefits to habitat from the creation of a mosaic of succession ecozones by cultivation. Aquatic-focused foragers were eventually constrained to broaden subsistence by increasing the harvest of low ranked resources, then mobility-compatible Neolithic cultigens were added as a niche-broadening tactic. In locations less suitable for farming, fishing and hunting continued as primary foraging tactics for centuries after Neolithic arrivals. The paper concludes with a set of evidence-based archaeological expectations derived from these models.

Resource intensification and zooarchaeological record in the southern margins of pre-Hispanic Andean agriculture

Central Western Argentina is an area archeologically defined as one of the southernmost limits of farming in the pre-Hispanic Americas. Optimal foraging models help to predict important changes in faunal use prior to the adoption of agriculture related to resource depression and environmental changes. This paper evaluates changes in pre-Hispanic human subsistence from a zooarchaeological perspective and explores archeological record trends from the northern area of Central Western Argentina. Using zooarchaeological information in Northern Mendoza (Central Western Argentina), trends related to the human exploitation of faunal resources were explored in connection with time and space. Two high-ranked resource indexes were calculated: the artiodactyl index and a high-ranked resources index. The results show a decrease in the dependence on high-ranked resources by human groups after ca. 2000 bp and an increase in richness, indicating a diet breath expansion. Long-term trends in the density of radiocarbon dates suggest a considerable population growth after ca. 2000 bp. These trends are consistent with the contemporary changes reported by other archaeological proxies in Northern Mendoza. The results of the zooarchaeological analysis confirm changes in human organization around 2000 years bp that reflect an intensification process.

Resource intensification and osteoarthritis patterns: changes in activity in the prehistoric Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region.

Ethnohistoric accounts and archaeological research from Central California document a shift from the use of lower-cost, high-ranked resources (e.g., large game) toward the greater use of higher-cost, low-ranked resources (e.g., acorns and small seeds) during the Late Holocene (4500-200 BP). The subsistence transition from higher consumption of large game toward an increased reliance on acorns was likely associated with increases in levels of logistical mobility and physical activity. This study predicts that mobility and overall workload patterns changed during this transition to accommodate new food procurement strategies and incorporate new dietary resources during the Late Holocene in Central California. Osteoarthritis prevalence was scored in the shoulder, elbow, hip, and knee of adult individuals (n = 256) from seven archaeological sites in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta region. Comparisons were made between osteoarthritis prevalence, sex, age-at-death, and time period using ANCOVAs. The results of this study indicate significant increases in osteoarthritis prevalence in the hip of adult males and females during the Late Period (1200-200 BP), even after correcting for the cumulative effects of age. No differences were observed between the sexes or between time periods for the shoulder, elbow, and knee joints. The temporal increase in hip osteoarthritis supports the hypothesis that there was an increasing need for greater logistical mobility over time to procure key resources away from the village sites. Additionally, the lack of sex differences in osteoarthritis prevalence may suggest that females and males likely performed similar levels of activity during these periods.

Humans, water, and the colonization of Australia

The Pleistocene global dispersal of modern humans required the transit of arid and semiarid regions where the distribution of potable water provided a primary constraint on dispersal pathways. Here, we provide a spatially explicit continental-scale assessment of the opportunities for Pleistocene human occupation of Australia, the driest inhabited continent on Earth. We establish the location and connectedness of persistent water in the landscape using the Australian Water Observations from Space dataset combined with the distribution of small permanent water bodies (springs, gnammas, native wells, waterholes, and rockholes). Results demonstrate a high degree of directed landscape connectivity during wet periods and a high density of permanent water points widely but unevenly distributed across the continental interior. A connected network representing the least-cost distance between water bodies and graded according to terrain cost shows that 84% of archaeological sites >30,000 y old are within 20 km of modern permanent water. We further show that multiple, well-watered routes into the semiarid and arid continental interior were available throughout the period of early human occupation. Depletion of high-ranked resources over time in these paleohydrological corridors potentially drove a wave of dispersal farther along well-watered routes to patches with higher foraging returns.

Patch Choice, Landscape Ecology, and Foraging Efficiency: the Zooarchaeology of Late Holocene Foragers in Western Argentina

Abstract Different but complementary foraging adaptations existed in the Payunia volcanic and the Andean highland (or mountain) subregions of southern Mendoza, Argentina during the late Holocene. We employ an evolutionary ecological perspective to study the zooarchaeology of foraging adaptations after 4000 BP. Seasonal exploitation of guanaco (Lama guanicoe Muller) in the mountains appears to have been sustainable, which relates to high productivity of mountain river valley bottoms during the late Holocene. The mountains were a productive, seasonally available resource patch. A greater diversity of fauna in the Payunia subregion resulted in a different foraging strategy with larger diet breadth. Despite mounting evidence that human population growth occurred during the late Holocene, there is little evidence of resource depression of high-ranked resources, such as the guanaco. Application of foraging theory models in this context clarifies that hunting decisions occurred in the context of two factors, str...

Differential Carnivore Damage as a Potential Indicator of Resource Availability and Foraging Efficiency

Carnivore damage is typically documented in faunal assemblages to understand if attrition of elements or element portions has occurred. Thus, the amount of carnivore damage often is used to simply reflect how “complete” the assemblage is. However, gnawing is a means for carnivores to extract within bone nutrients. Thus, according to the marginal value theorem, the amount of time a carnivore gnaws on an element should be related to the availability of higher-ranked resources or foraging efficiency. In resource-rich environments, less damage is expected than in less productive ones. This expectation was tested by examining the degree of carnivore damage on fur seal remains from three archaeological sites in New Zealand that vary in availability of high-ranked resources. The analysis indicates that the extent and intensity of carnivore damage can relate to resource availability and thus may be a useful measure in prey choice studies. This research also has implications for the hominid scavenging-hunting debate where the degree of carnivore damage has been used to determine primary (hunting) versus secondary (scavenging) access to carcasses.

Assessing diet and seasonality in the Lower Pecos canyonlands: an evaluation of coprolite specimens as records of individual dietary decisions

This article presents an evaluation of coprolite specimens from the Lower Pecos canyonlands as records of individual dietary decisions. Prior studies of coprolites from this region have greatly expanded our knowledge of Archaic subsistence patterns, but have not taken full advantage of the record of individual dietary decisions recorded in each coprolite specimen. The menu, or dietary combinations, reflected in individual coprolite specimens are assessed through the identification of several congruent botanical components derived from the same food resource, phytoliths, fiber ultimates, and epidermal sheets. The data is analyzed with hierarchical cluster analysis, an exploratory statistical technique. The resultant menus reflected in these clusters are evaluated with reference to a diet-breadth model developed for the known staple resources of the canyonlands. Three main menus are apparent in the specimens. The first menu consists of prickly pear ( Opuntia sp.) cladodes, or nopales, and was principally, although not exclusively, consumed in the late spring. This menu is primarily consumed when other resources were not readily available and may be considered a dependable but undesirable meal. The second menu consists of pit-baked lechuguilla ( Agave lechuguilla) and sotol (Dasylirion sp.) caudices, or hearts, common throughout the cool season. This menu entails high processing costs, but would provide a reliable caloric return. The third menu exhibits a monolithic reliance on prickly pear fruits, or tunas, during the summer. The ease of harvest and consumption is reflected in the seasonal dominance of this resource, which was assuredly a highly desirable meal. The dietary patterns recorded in the coprolite specimens from the Lower Pecos canyonlands demonstrate a seasonally variable diet-breadth that incorporated low-ranked resources during times of seasonal scarcity as well as a monolithic dependence on high-ranked resources when they were available in the local landscape.

Embedded Socio-oriented Model for End-to-End Reliable Stream Schedules by Using Collaborative Outsourcing in MP2P Systems

File-sharing systems have, in the past few years, witnessed an upsurge in research development and implementation of new technologies, and in the deployment of actual solutions and technologies. The type of protocol used to interconnect embedded nodes has a decisive impact on whether the system can operate in a deterministic way. File chunk streaming policy plays a major role for the quality of the end-to-end service provision, where, along with the diffusion process, they both aim to provide availability of the resources on-demand. Considering that reliability and availability are affected by the temporal characteristics, this work proposes an embedded framework using a k-hop collaborative outsourcing scheme for enabling and preserving the reliability in any requested path and for any requested resources. The proposed replication scheme takes into account the pre-determined vehicular mobility—as real-time users—in a k-hop path. The outsourcing strategy uses a sequential scheme for caching requested high-ranked resources onto neighboring nodes. The scheme takes into consideration the community-oriented triggered feedback for cluster formation and topology updates, the different file chunks’ capacities, the relay epoch and mobility considerations of each node in the k-hop path for evaluating the device's outsourcing schedules in order to enable end-to-end reliable streaming. Simulation experiments show that the proposed model, through the efficiency of the proposed collaborative streaming policy, can provide scalability and increases the successful delivery rate while it improves significantly the throughput response of the system.

Resource depression on the Northwest Coast of North America

The mammal and fish faunal record from eight sites on the Columbia River (Oregon, USA) dating to the last 2200 years is examined to study subsistence change before and after European contact. Results show an increased use of low-ranked resources before contact and increased use of high-ranked resources after contact, trends that are predicted from changing demography and human predation pressure.