Stone Fences Research Articles

3. The Excavation of Pulemelei Site 2002–2004

ABSTRACT Pulemelei mound on Savai'i Island in Samoa is thought to be the largest freestanding stone structure in Polynesia. The mound and adjacent structures in the Letolo plantation have been the focus of archaeological investigation from 2002 to 2004. Initial survey work at the site in the 1960s and 1970s was used to investigate the prehistoric settlement pattern, but our recent investigations comprise the first large‐scale archaeological investigation of a monumental complex in Samoa. Our study examined the chronology and function of the large mound and other structures with archaeological and geophysical investigations. In this paper we describe the results of the archaeological excavations.

Tundra Game Drives: an Arctic-Alpine Comparison

Stone fences and blinds built by prehistoric hunters to gather and ambush elk and bighorn sheep above timberline in the Colorado Front Range are similar in concept and function to structures built by the Copper Inuit and their predecessors for hunting caribou near Bathurst Inlet, in the Central Canadian Arctic. Four principal differences exist: (1) Circular blinds and continuous rock walls are more numerous in the Front Range than in the Arctic, where arcuate breastworks and lines of widely spaced cairns predominate. Differences in prey-species behavior are the most probable explanation. (2) Stone house foundations, meat-drying facilities, meat caches, kayak-storage racks, and fox and wolf traps occur near drive sites along caribou migration routes in the Bathurst Inlet region. The structures imply long-term habitation made possible by a plentiful meat supply. Comparable structures are absent above timberline in the Front Range because people retreated to warmer environments in winter, and because steep terrain and deep snow discouraged return visits to high-altitude caches. (3) The technique was adopted much earlier in Colorado than in the Central Canadian Arctic. The oldest Front Range drive systems were constructed while the Laurentide Ice Sheet still covered the Bathurst Inlet landscape. (4) Pedestrian game-drive hunting was abandoned in the Front Range soon after arrival of the horse (ca. a.d. 1700), but remained an integral part of Copper Inuit subsistence until the mid twentieth century. The rich ethnographic and oral history record of communal hunting in the Arctic is invaluable for interpreting the Colorado structures.

Stretching Minds, Opening Doors... Losing Identity?

AMERICAN ENTOMOLOGIST • Summer 2004 Pedaling my pink bicycle back and forth to work each day, I found myself musing about mentors and the graduate school experience. This led naturally to thoughts of the enormous breadth of our discipline, the scholarship it has wrought, and the attrition rate of departments of entomology. Initially, I thought to entitle this essay “Lazing in Lexington,” as the luxury of ruminating on such topics seems to be accessible only when one is enjoying a sabbatical leave, as I am currently doing at the University of Kentucky. The undulating wheat and lentil fields of the Palouse, home to my employer, Washington State University in Pullman, have given way to the rolling hills of the Bluegrass, a region bedecked with manicured horse farms and impeccably constructed stone fences. I am liberated (albeit temporarily) from committee meetings, course instruction, and continuing budget concerns. Once again I am living the life of a graduate student, complete with timeworn furniture, second-hand kitchenware, and a cast-iron bathtub sans shower. Thomas Wolfe wrote that “You can’t go home again,” but my return to a former lifestyle has undoubtedly fueled my retrospective cogitations. How many of us, I wonder, chose our discipline because we came under the tutelage of an inspiring individual? What percent of our collective curiosity became channeled into insect studies as a result of a galvanizing mentor? In her essay “The Biologist/Poet and the Poet/Biologist,” Maura C. Flannery (2001) notes that John Enders abandoned his graduate studies in English literature in favor of a Ph.D. in microbiology after working in the lab of Hans Zinsser, who rekindled Enders’ latent affinity for biology. The world Stretching Minds, Opening Doors... Losing Identity?

Crops

Crops My grandfather used to swear that rocks grew in his fields. "Might be my finest crop," he said, and I, a child, believed him. Each spring at plowing time plow blades struck sparks on stone not there before in fields picked clean for harrowing and planting. They harnessed up the mule to slick iron-runnered sled, circled through shiny new-turned earth harvesting flat limestone slabs, In slack-time, after rains had washed them clean, my uncle chose proper stones judiciously, from great heaps that spring produced and mended his stone fences or built new ones, stacked tight and straight though mortarless. In fifty years, the fields I've worked have yielded up a less enduring crop. —Barbara Mabry A West Virginia Memory The hills are the basis of life in that land, both as life given—and taken. A harsh land with soft people, yet, and also, a soft land with harsh people. The land of my birth, With paths through blackberry and greenbrier. Kind winds blowing gently of a song forgotten. A greenness everywhere on her rugged slopes and she gives forth her inner blackness as if a painful abortion of her babe within. And all left to flow are her tears of acid. The nights of West Virginia mellow sharp lines and soaring peaks and the shadows embrace every living thing in her grasp till the dawn. So much time I have spent in those hills, in games, thoughtful solitude, in the questions of life. West Virginia is not bound by rivers and streams, for we all come from a land that calls from within us, to find greenness once again. —Thomas W. Chapman 52 ...

Orientation to Landmarks within the Preferred Habitat by Peromyscus leucopus

A field study was conducted in two woodlots to identify the major physical features of the habitat that Peromyscus leucopus uses in short-range orientation and navigation, and to which it is responsive in the process of habitat selection. In one woodlot, landmarks used for short-range orientational and navigational aids were trees, logs (fallen branches and tree trunks), rocks, stone fences, and rock piles. In the other woodlot, trees (particularly those of large diameter) were important but logs and rocks were avoided to some extent. For both woodlots, areas with high densities of woody stems were avoided; logs were not important as refuge sites.

SYMPOSIUM: THE SEA AND FISHERIES

It is a very serious problem that our maritime circumstances are changing rapidly, especially, regarding to a tendency of possessing of waters by coastal countries and to contaminations of waters according to rapid growth of industrial progress of all over the world. Maritime products as a resource of food are very important for all mankind, especially for Japanese. Fishing ground of Japanese fisheries has been expanding in these years, but it seems to have come to bounds in international competition. The symposium was intended to discuss three viewpoints including somewhat newer standpoints than ever. The first was on the Japanese fishery itself, either of coastal fishery or of pelagic fishery, with an orthodox technigue in Japanese economic geography up to this time. The second was concerning to the process of the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea, because Japanese fishery might be considered in global scale. The third was discussed from an understanding in geography, from cultural anthropological standpoint. The members of the symposium consist of four reporters, four commentators, five chair-men, two organizers and some fifty attendants. In the morning session, three reporters read their papers from 9:00 to 12:00 a.m.. The afternoon session started from 1:00 p.m., and commentators led discussion till 5:00 p.m.. There were interesting arguemends by these participants, but we had not enough time to complete all these discussions, conclusion. The papers of the reporters are in the following. (1) Takeichi Yoshiki (Nagasaki Univ.) explained coastal fishery of Japan, showing some samples of isolated islands of western Japan. He described the recent tendency, and pointed out the facts that coastal fishery is not declining so far as it has been said, and some villages are keeping their constant products by the efforts of fishermen. (2) Naoki Kusuhara (Nagasaki Univ.) spoke about pelagic fishery of Japan, with the connection of landing ports of its products. He handled some fishing ports of the Pacific coast of eastern Japan, and mentioned the condition of capital in fishery. (3) Kenzo Kawakami (The Foreign Office), who is an expert of international conference of fishery, lectured the history of laws and treaties of fisheries and of the seas. He said that Japanese fishery would be soon influenced by the problem of 200-nautical-mile economic waters which was discussed at Caracas in 1974. (4) Takeshi Saito (Kagoshia Univ.) compared fish-traps of stone fences, fishponds for marine culturings and salt beds, which stood at estuaries, rivermouths and shallow waters. He tried to combine these three cultural constructions, which are somewhat characteristicelements of Southeast Asia. Concerning these reports, commentators gave some questions and comments to each reporters, and led some discussions with many debators from the floor: Michihiro Kono (Okayama Univ.) to Yoshiki's report, Akira Osaki (Kokushikan Univ.) to Kusuhara's, Hisashi Tajima (Shizuoka Univ.) to Kawakami's and Hiroshi Oguri (Tokyo Gakugei Univ.) to Saito's. There were plenty of remarkable comments, and each discussion, as an individual problem, came to some good results, but it was very difficult to combine all these arguements into the focussed one. It may need another chance to continue such discussions for obtaining some fruitful conclusion about these problems.

A Simplification of Hubbell’s Method for Trapping and Preserving Specimens of Ceuthophilus (Orthoptera, Gryllacrididae)

Insects of the genus Ceuthophilus although widely distributed in North America are seldom encountered by the collector unless attracted and captured by means of Hubbell's molasses traps. These traps, which consist of glass jars (Hubbell recommends pint-size Mason jars) containing half an inch to an inch of molasses diluted one-half with water, are buried to the brim in the ground or heaped around with stones, leaves, etc., to give access to the edge of the jar. Hubbell recommends placing them “…at least ten feet apart, and where ground-cover is scanty…, near such as does occur” in habitats or situations which are expected to yield specimens of Ceuthophilus: almost any type of forest, rock piles, stone fences, vicinity of the openings of mammal burrows, caves, certain grasslands, etc….

The Folk Approach in Extension Work: A Bulgarian Experience

One day in Dragalevtsy, a Bulgarian village of 1600 people, the mayor's courier went from house to house to inform all expectant mothers of a meeting to be held in the schoolhouse the next afternoon. The public health nurse from Sofia wanted to tell them about prenatal and postnatal care. Attendance, according to the courier, was compulsory. As he made his rounds, comments such as these flowed in his wake: "What does that mayor think he's doing? Making a public spectacle of pregnant women!" "I've already had more babies than that nurse will ever have. She can't tell me anything I don't know." By nightfall the women of the village, after discussing it over the stone fences between the yards, had decided that the expectant mothers should not attend the meeting.