Hunter-gatherer Land Research Articles

Editorial introduction

References Alcock, I., White, M.P., Taylor, T., Coldwell, D.F., Gribble, M.O., Evans, K.L., Corner, A., Vardoulakis, S. and Fleming, L.E., 2017. ‘Green’ on the ground but not in the air: Pro-environmental attitudes are related to household behaviours but not discretionary air travel. Global Environmental Change, 42, pp.136–147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.11.005 Broomell, S.B., et al., 2015. Personal experience with climate change predicts intentions to act. Global Environmental Change, 32, pp.67–73. Carson, R., 1962. Silent spring. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Demski, C., et al., 2017. Experience of extreme weather affects climate change mitigation and adaptation responses. Climatic Change, 140, pp.149–164. Feeney, J., 2019. Hunter-gatherer land management in the human break from ecological sustainability. The Anthropocene Review, 6(3), pp.223–242. Giddens, A., 1984. The constitution of society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Marx, K., 1959 [1894] Capital: Volume three. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Schneider-Mayerson, M. and Leong, K.L., 2020. Eco-reproductive concerns in the age of climate change. Climatic Change, 163, pp.1007–1023. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-020-02923-y Smith, M. 2019. Concern for the environment at record highs. YouGov. [online] Available at: <https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/06/05/concern-environment-record-highs> [Accessed 14 December 2020]. Spence, A., et al., 2011. Perceptions of climate change and willingness to save energy related to flood experience. Nature Climate Change, [e-journal] https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1059. Tucker, C.K., 2019. A planet of 3 billion. Washington, DC: Atlas Observatory Press. Vollset, S.E., Goren, E., Yuan, C.-W., Cao, J., et al., 2020. Fertility, mortality, migration, and population scenarios for 195 countries and territories from 2017 to 2100: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study. The Lancet, 396(10258), pp.1285–1306. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30677-2

Technology, subsistence, and mobility of Middle to Late Holocene hunter-gatherers in the southern Pampas: new archaeological data from Las Toscas shallow lake (Argentina)

Despite a long history of hunter-gatherer occupation in the Pampas region starting at the end of the Pleistocene, the known archaeological record is still sparse for some periods, such as the Middle Holocene. Here, we present new archaeological data from Las Toscas shallow lake, located in the inland plains of the southern Pampas, where systematic fieldwork revealed an abundant and diverse archaeological record resulting from hunter-gatherer occupation. The aims of this study were to establish the chronology of the occupations; to evaluate the use of faunal and lithic resources; and to contribute to the understanding of hunter-gatherer land use patterns. Archaeological evidence indicates that procurement, domestic, and ritual activities were conducted around the shallow lake during the Middle and Late Holocene, including hunting of terrestrial game; tool manufacture and repair; storing and use of mineral pigments; and likely human burial practices. Evidence also suggests that the use of this locality was not continuous but redundant and that this shallow lake was a persistent place for hunter-gatherers. Faunal data agrees with regional models that propose that Lama guanicoe was the main food resource during the second half of the Middle Holocene, although a taphonomic bias in favor of larger vertebrates cannot be ruled out. The lithic assemblages suggest that artifacts entered the locality mostly as part of individual toolkits and indicate a strong preference for orthoquartzite. Finally, bone remains of extinct fauna were recovered at the locality; however, a functional association between these remains and cultural material could not be demonstrated.

Hunter-gatherer land management in the human break from ecological sustainability

Evidence that human societies built on agricultural subsistence have been inherently ecologically unsustainable highlights the value in exploring whether any pre-agricultural subsistence approaches were ecologically sustainable or nearly so. The land management practices of some hunter-gatherer societies have been portrayed as sustainable, even beneficial. Research suggests such practices may fruitfully inform contemporary land management. As a human subsistence foundation, however, they may not have been ecologically sustainable. Figuring centrally in the late Pleistocene shift from immediate-return to delayed-return hunting and gathering, they enabled population growth, helped make possible the development of agriculture, and appear to have caused early environmental degradation. Consistent with this argument is research locating the origins of the Anthropocene near the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary, as societies were taking greater control of food production. It appears then that immediate-return hunting and gathering, which involved little or no land management, was the human lifeway most closely approaching ecological sustainability. Wider recognition of this idea would assist in understanding and addressing today’s ecological challenges.

‘Our life has turned upside down! And nobody cares.’

Many hunter-gatherers today find themselves caught between the dominance of neoliberal perspectives on development and progress that focus on extractive opportunities for supplying markets with natural resources, and on conservationists’ views of landscapes as wildernesses that require protection from any human activity, apart from their own. This dual occupation of hunter-gatherer land in the Congo Basin is putting huge pressure on the BaYaka Pygmies’ and their neighbours’ lifestyles and livelihoods. After giving their views to camera in a short film (https://ishgr.org/hunter-gatherer-voices/), the article examines some of the underlying assumptions about environments that legitimate the current structural and actual violence experienced by these hunter-gatherers. The article ends with a request for more accounts of the pressures facing hunter-gatherers, so we better understand them, and to assist in thinking about what we might do to support this vital part of humanity’s cultural diversity.

LiDAR-aided reconnaissance and reconstruction of lost landscapes: An example of freshwater shell mounds (ca. 7500–500 cal b.p.) in northeastern Florida

LiDAR datasets, from which high-resolution topographic maps can be generated, are becoming commonplace in archaeological analyses. Like any remote sensing technique, LiDAR records only a limited range of phenomena and the data are a snapshot of ground conditions at the time of collection. The temporally specific nature of LiDAR is problematic at sites with postdepositional destruction. This paper presents a method for identifying and recovering lost landscapes by combining LiDAR, archival aerial photographs, historical observations, and fieldwork. This method was developed to reconstruct the topography of ancient shell mounds constructed by hunter-gatherers on the St. Johns River in northeastern Florida (ca. 7500–500 cal b.p.) and altered by modern land use. The reconstructions demonstrate the influence of ancient communities on modern landscapes and can be used as a basis for further analyses of hunter-gatherer land use, social interaction, and cosmology.

Macro and Micro Scale Signatures of Hunter-Gatherer Organization at the Coastal Sites of Point St. George, Northwestern Alta California

Richard Gould's classic 1966 monograph, Archaeology of the Point St. George Site and Tolowa Prehistory, provided an important source of information on settlement and subsistence systems on the north coast of California. This article provides a quantitative assessment of two key ideas set forth in the study: (1) that there was profound variation in hunter-gatherer land use between the Middle and Late period components of the site, where marine foods were initially largely ignored and only later became a major focus; and (2) that the Late Period component was largely analogous to the ethnographic Tolowa, thus supporting an ethnoarchaeological approach. Drawing on previously unpublished quantitative macro-scale data from Gould's excavations at CA-DNO-11 and new micro-scale data from CA-DNO-13, we conclude that the components reflect two fundamentally different adaptive strategies: a more mobile foraging system in the Middle Period where people were targeting almost exclusively highly ranked taxa (regardless of whether they were marine or terrestrial foods), and a sedentary village-based system in the Late Period, when mass extractive methods, storage, and the logistical procurement of resources became important strategies. Identified dietary remains include all major staples used by ethnographic Tolowa, but certain interior resources (salmon and acorns) may have been less of a focus on the coast than previously portrayed.

Social work in Africa: exploring culturally relevant education and practice in Ghana

Preface Introduction Environment: Modern and Early Holocene Hunter-Gatherer Land Use, Lithic Technology, and Late Paleoindian Occupation of the Project Area Projectile Point Analysis Procedure Late Paleoindian Projectile Point Typology in the Western United States Late Paleoindian Projectile Points: Typological Variability Late Paleoindian Projectile Points: Raw Material Variability Late Paleoindian Projectile Points: Qualitative Technological Variability Late Paleoindian Projectile Points: Quantitative Technological Variability Late Paleoindian Projectile Points: Condition and Reworking Discussion and Conclusions.

Persistent land use patterns and the mid-Holocene housepits of Wyoming

The cyclical use of sites and locales over decades, centuries, and even millennia is an important aspect of hunter-gatherer land use that is rarely considered in studies that focus on a single annual cycle. The long-term perspective provided by archaeological data can be used to delineate persistent land use patterns and contribute to an understanding of the complexity of hunter-gatherer behavior. Mid-Holocene Wyoming housepit data document persistent land use over at least a 2000-year period at three spatial scales—the reuse of housepits, reuse of sites containing housepits, and use of different sites within the larger region. Slab-lined cylindrical basins at many sites in southwest Wyoming provide evidence for stable long-term land use during the middle Holocene. The focal point of this pattern was probably a predictable resource, possibly some type of root plant that would have been available during the dry middle Holocene.

The Windy Ridge quartzite quarry: hunter-gatherer mining and hunter-gatherer land use on the North American Continental Divide

Studies of hunter-gatherer activity at lithic raw material sources are relatively rare and largely descriptive, in part because archaeologists have viewed hunter-gatherer lithic procurement as a casual and low-cost activity. This paper presents the results of fieldwork at a hunter-gatherer quartzite quarry along the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains of northern Colorado that suggests that this perspective is incorrect. Hunter-gatherer groups at the site quarried stone intensively, although they did not often transport this stone any great distance. This suggests that it is useful to reconsider the way we think about lithic procurement, and particularly that we rethink the concepts of ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ procurement. The data presented here highlight the ability of quarry sites to expand our understanding of how mobile human groups used the landscape.

Long-Term Hunter-Gatherer Land Use in Central North Dakota: An Environmental Analysis

Time-averaged deposits characterize a substantial portion of the archaeological record in the northern Great Plains and contain significant information regarding hunter-gatherer land use over long periods of time. This paper explores the research potential of time-averaged deposits in a portion of central North Dakota,focusing on hunter-gatherer land use for approximately 2,700 years. Using non-site methods, the intensity of temporally extensive place use, or persistence, is assessed according to the spatial and compositional structure of suiface features, and this distribution is evaluated according to subsurface deposits. While this study suggests that highly persistent places tend to be located near wooded areas, relatively far from wetlands, in slightly higher elevations, and where good views are available; these variables in themselves do not sufficiently explain the variation in long-term settlement persistence found throughout this portion of central North Dakota.

Common Pool Resources, Buffer Zones, and Jointly Owned Territories: Hunter-Gatherer Land and Resource Tenure in Fort Irwin, Southeastern California

Anthropologists have described, but seldom explained, the existence and persistence of common pool resource systems among hunting and gathering populations. Land tenure practices in the Fort Irwin area of the Mojave desert, California are explored. Ecological, ethnographic, archeological, and ethnohistoric information suggests that this area was jointly owned and intermittently used by several distinct ethnic groups. Although the region was important as a buffer against resource shortfall during certain seasons, sporadic use and meager and variable resource yield may have made exclusive ownership difficult and costly. A jointly managed region with common pool resources better served surrounding groups, while simultaneously creating a spatial buffer to diffuse social tensions. Following presentation of the Fort Irwin case, the paper considers the formation of such land tenure practices among hunting and gathering populations.

Middle and Later Stone Age lithic technology and land use in East African savannas

This paper examines changes in the use of sites and lithic raw materials during the later Middle Stone Age (MSA) and early Later Stone Age (LSA) in East Africa. It proposes two models of hunter-gatherer land use and technological organization in East African savannas and examines changes in the procurement and use of raw materials in MSA and LSA lithic assemblage sequences from Lukenya Hill, Kenya, and Nasera Rockshelter, Tanzania. Changes in procurement strategies across the transition are related to technological change, mechanical properties of raw materials, and changes in site use and in mobility.

The Transition Between Hunting and Gathering and the Specialized Husbandry of Resources: A Socio-ecological Approach [and Comments and Reply

The Transition Between Hunting and Gathering and the Specialized Husbandry of Resources: A Socio-ecological Approach [and Comments and Reply