Late Neolithic Bronze Age Research Articles

Middle Holocene hunter-gatherers of Cis-Baikal, Siberia: An overview for the new century

The paper examines Middle Holocene hunter-gatherer adaptive strategies in the Baikal region of Siberia based on diverse data (radiocarbon, mortuary, geochemical, genetic, human osteological, and zooarchaeological) accumulated over the last 10–15 years. The new model emphasizes the cyclical nature of the long-term changes and recognizes similarities between the Early Neolithic and Late Neolithic–Early Bronze Age cultures. The overall impression seems to be that change in the region was rapid rather than gradual. A number of interesting correlations between various cultural and environmental variables have been identified. During the Early Neolithic and Late Neolithic–Bronze Age, the spatial distributions of mortuary sites, open landscape, and good fisheries are all correlated and both intervals are coeval with periods of environmental stability. For the Early Neolithic two additional sets of correlated variables have been identified: (1) the uneven distribution of fish resources, uneven distribution of the human population, and cultural heterogeneity; and (2) poorer overall community health, more extensive male travel and heavier workloads, and higher reliance on fishing. For the Late Neolithic–Early Bronze Age, the sets of correlated variables are somewhat different: (1) more even distribution of terrestrial game resources (herbivores), more even distribution of the human population, and cultural homogeneity; and (2) better overall community health, less travel and lighter workloads, more equitable distribution of labor between males and females, and higher reliance on game hunting. Viewed together, these patterns emphasize the much more dynamic pattern of hunter-gatherer cultural variability, temporally and spatially, compared to what was known before.

Sedentism, Territorial Circumscription, and the Increased Use of Plant Domesticates Across Neolithic–Bronze Age Korea

As evidenced from the Korean archaeological record, there is an increased use of plant domesticates and a decrease in other food sources during the Holocene. These changes in overall human diet breadth culminate with the Late Neolithic–Bronze Age (c. 3500 B.P.) transition where dependence on hunted and gathered food packages decreases during the former period and full-scale agriculture becomes the norm during the latter cultural stage. This dietary shift appears to coincide with Holocene shoreline stabilization and overall large-scale population increase and movement through time. It is proposed here that two primary reasons exist for the change in overall diet breadth: (1) increasing shoreline stabilization during the Holocene and (2) an increase in hunter-gatherer population pressure due to a sedentary lifestyle. Both of these factors would have led to some degree of territorial circumscription, resulting in a progressive decline in overall hunter-gatherer foraging e‰ciency. In turn, this would have prompted the Holocene Korean Peninsular peoples to find other ways to offset their lowered overall foraging efficiency that had originally focused primarily on higher-ranked food resources (e.g., deer, wild boar). In this case, Korean peoples expanded their overall diet breadth to include a lower-ranked set of food packages (e.g., fish, shellfish) that by the advent of the Bronze Age eventually included plant domesticates regularly.