Study Of Hunter-gatherers Research Articles

The first maternal genetic study of hunter-gatherers from Vietnam.

The current limitation of ancient DNA data from Vietnam led to the controversy surrounding the prehistory of people in this region. The combination of high heat and humidity damaged ancient bones that challenged the study of human evolution, especially when using DNA as study materials. So far, only 4kyears of history have been recorded despite the 65kyears of history of anatomically modern human occupations in Vietnam. Here we report, to our knowledge, the oldest mitogenomes of two hunter-gatherers from Vietnam. We extracted DNA from the femurs of two individuals aged 6.2kcal BP from the Con Co Ngua (CCN) site in Thanh Hoa, Vietnam. This archeological site is the largest cemetery of the hunter-gatherer population in Southeast Asia (SEA) that was discovered, but their genetics have not been explored until the present. We indicated that the CCN haplotype belongs to a rare haplogroup that was not detected in any present-day Vietnamese individuals. Further matrilineal analysis on CCN mitogenomes showed a close relationship with ancient farmers and present-day populations in SEA. The mitogenomes of hunter-gatherers from Vietnam debate the "two layers" model of peopling history in SEA and provide an alternative solution for studying challenging ancient human samples from Vietnam.

Land use and systematic survey in the study of hunter-gatherers from northwestern Patagonia, Argentina

In this paper, we focus on the results of the archaeological research in the Diamante Valley, the southernmost limit of the expansion of agriculture, sedentary societies, and the Inka empire (Fig. 1). We conducted the first fieldwork in this area involving random surface sampling, followed by test pits in open-air sites. Our analyses show changes in the settlement pattern of hunter-gatherer societies. During the first part of the Late Holocene (3000–1500 years BP), hunter-gatherers used the highlands and the piedmont seasonally. The archaeological evidence suggests a context of resource abundance and frequent movements from one patch of resources to the other in both biogeographic units. During the last part of the Late Holocene (post-1500 BP period), the increased demography made hunter-gatherers stay longer in each patch. In this later period, we observe a settlement pattern that combines, on the one hand, short-term particular tasks camps with shallow anthropogenic deposits, low artifactual density, richness, and diversity, and on the other hand, larger residential base camps with deep deposits, high artifactual density, richness, and diversity. We also find differences in how hunter-gatherers use the two biogeographic units. We find short-term non-residential camps and larger residential camps in the piedmont. Here we found versatile toolkits with abundant cores and cortex. Even though basalts are abundant in the highlands, there is a more significant amount of non-local raw materials, such as obsidians. Projectile points and scrapers dominate the assemblages, which might lead to task-specific activities such as hunting and processing guanacos. From these results, we can affirm that Late Holocene hunter-gatherer groups from Diamante Valley had an excellent knowledge of the landscape and took advantage of the different altitudinal gradients' different resources with an organized settlement pattern.

Consumers, not Contributors? The Study of the Mesolithic and the Study of Hunter-Gatherers

Abstract This article examines the relationship between the archaeology of the Mesolithic and the broader archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers. Bibliographic reviews of articles presented at past MESO conferences and recent high-ranking Mesolithic research publications are compared to content reviews of contributions towards previous Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies conferences. The results of these are presented as evidence to suggest that, whilst Mesolithic archaeologists consume the results of the broader field of hunter-gatherer research, we do not contribute to this field as much as might be expected. We argue that this lack of engagement impoverishes both Mesolithic archaeology and hunter-gatherer studies and that closer collaboration between these fields would open up new avenues for interdisciplinary research with the capacity to address the challenges of hunter-gatherer societies living around the world today.

A Review of Japanese Ecological Anthropology on Central African Hunter-gatherers

Contemporary hunter-gatherers in central Africa face similar problems concerning their culture and environment: destruction of the forests that have been accommodating their unique forest-based culture, influences of market economy and consumerism, and nature conservation initiatives that restrict their extractive activities in protected areas. In order to cope with these problems, it is important to understand their life and culture in local ecological settings, as well as in historical and wider economic and political contexts. I will describe here three approaches that have been taken and developed by Japanese ecological anthropologists to the study of central African hunter-gatherers. The three approaches are (1) cultural ecology, which describes the way the hunter-gatherers perceive, understand and utilize the forest environment, (2) historical ecology, which shows how they modify the forest through interacting with it, and (3) political ecology, which analyzes how the economic and political situation influences their relationship with the forest. I will then examine the implications of the results from these approaches for addressing the current problems faced by the central African forest hunter-gatherers and their environment.

The Centrality of Ancestral Grandmothering in Human Evolution.

When Fisher, Williams, and Hamilton laid the foundations of evolutionary life history theory, they recognized elements of what became a grandmother hypothesis to explain the evolution of human postmenopausal longevity. Subsequent study of modern hunter-gatherers, great apes, and the wider mammalian radiation has revealed strong regularities in development and behavior that show additional unexpected consequences that ancestral grandmothering likely had on human evolution, challenging the hypothesis that ancestral males propelled the evolution of our radiation by hunting to provision mates and offspring. Ancestral grandmothering has become a serious contender to explain not only the large fraction of post-fertile years women live and children's prolonged maturation yet early weaning; it also promises to help account for the pair bonding that distinguishes humans from our closest living evolutionary cousins, the great apes (and most other mammals), the evolution of our big human brains, and our distinctive preoccupation with reputations, shared intentionality and persistent cultural learning that begins in infancy.

Spondylolysis in the past: A case study of hunter-gatherers from Southern Patagonia

Spondylolysis is a fracture of the pars interarticularis, the portion of the neural arch that lies between the superior articular facets and the inferior articular facets. Clinical evidence has suggested repetitive trauma to be the most probable cause, even though morphological weakness of the vertebra is probably also involved. Prevalence is between 3% and 8% in modern populations, while in archaeological samples it varies from 0% to 71.4%. Considering that very little data about this condition is available in past populations from the southern extreme of South America, the aim of this paper is to analyze the spondylolysis in a human skeletal sample from Southern Patagonia and, at the same time, to explore the prevalence of spondylolysis in archaeological contexts around the world to gain a better understanding of the results presented here. The Southern Patagonian skeletal series analyzed here showed a prevalence of 20%, with lower prevalence in the pre contact sample (11.1%) than in the contact period (23.1%). Skeletons from the Salesian Mission “Nuestra Señora de La Candelaria” showed a higher prevalence (25%) than the sample of skeletal remains recovered from outside the mission (20%), suggesting that changes in lifestyle of hunter-gatherers during contact could be implicated in the development of spondylolysis in this sample. A worldwide survey displays a wide range of prevalence figures in American and Asian samples and low diversity between African and European populations. Hunter-gatherers from Southern Patagonia showed similar values to those observed in other American samples.

The lifeworld of hunter-gatherers and the concepts of territory

In this paper, I intend to show that the notion of an exchange network is much more useful than that of territory in the study of Paleolithic societies. The heuristic benefit of the notion of exchange network is demonstrated by its adaptability to different spatial scales, from local to regional and supra-regional, the last one being difficult to integrate in the traditional concept of territory.Models issued from the study of contemporary hunter-gatherers are easily applied to the European Upper Paleolithic. Interactions between groups should satisfy two contradictory requirements: each group needs to maintain its identity through specific markers, but on the other hand, it needs to communicate with neighbors and share with them material resources and cultural features such as beliefs and symbols. Hence the complex patterns that can be found in rock art and portable art, consisting in a mixture of strictly localized traits and other widely shared features. Exchange networks may be analyzed at different scales and their fluctuations over the course of time give us some access to the dynamics of Paleolithic human geography. In particular, I will evaluate this hypothesis using examples from the graphic images and forms of the Upper Paleolithic “arts”.

School influence on minority children: A case study of San hunter-gatherers in Botswana

School influence on minority children: A case study of San hunter-gatherers in Botswana

Lessons from the life history of natural fertility societies on child growth and maturation

During the evolution of hominids, childhood and adolescence have been added as new life-history phases. The transition from infancy to childhood (ICT) confers a predictive adaptive response to energetic cues that strongly influence adult height, whereas the transition from juvenility to adolescence establishes longevity and the age of fertility. Evolutionary short-term adaptations to energy crises apparently use epigenetic mechanisms that defer the ICT, culminating in short stature. The study of hunter-gatherers gives us an indication of pre-demographic transition populations and their life style that prevailed for 99% of homo's evolution. The secular trend for receding age of pubertal development has been an adaptive response to positive environmental cues in terms of energy balance. In natural fertility preindustrial societies with limited access to modern contraception and health care, and whose economies are primarily subsistence-based, most resources are invested as somatic capital in human body size and fertility. Here we review results from databases for natural fertility societies, with the information on life history, population density, height and body mass, indices of adolescence and fertility. By using them it was possible to verify the ICT model as well as to explore pubertal parameters that are related to evolutionary fitness. They confirmed that body size was adaptively smaller in hostile environments, and was tightly associated with reproductive fitness.

Challenging intensification: human—environment interactions in the Holocene geoarchaeological record from western New South Wales, Australia

An intensification theory was developed in Australian archaeology in the early 1980s from a desire to make the study of Australian hunter-gatherers closer to theoretical developments in hunter-gatherer studies elsewhere. An apparent increase in the quantity and range of archaeological deposits was interpreted as demonstrating a combination of population increase and increased social complexity beginning 2—3000 years BP. Data were amassed in support of the theory but, with only one or two exceptions, they were not directly tested. Here we report on a series of studies that permit us to formulate a test for one aspect of the intensification theory. Chronologies constructed using OSL determinations of sediments are combined with the results of age determinations obtained from hearth charcoal to develop an `envelope of time' for human occupation of the southeast margin of the Australian arid zone. The results indicate that the apparent increase in the quantity and range of archaeological materials in the late-Holocene record of western New South Wales reflects the age of the surface on which these materials rest. The apparent rapid increase in the archaeological record at the end of the Holocene reflects the culmination of erosion and deposition processes through time that have removed or covered archaeological records from earlier periods. A large number of radiocarbon determinations from hearths suggest that occupation was not continuous in the late Holocene, with occupation ceasing in this area during periods of climatic change. Analysis of surface stone artefact assemblages does not support the existence of semi-permanent camps or the congregation of large numbers of people. We conclude, therefore, that the intensification theory is incorrect at least in the areas of western New South Wales we have studied, and that human—environment interactions in the Holocene were much more complex than reflected by a simple summing of artefact and/or site data.

The Long Walk IV - Hunter-Gatherers and Anthropology: An Interview with James Woodburn

This interview took place at James Woodburn's home in Cambridge, England, on 30 March 2001, where James has now retired from teaching at the London School of Economics and Political Science. However, on the same day as the interview James drove down to Brighton to attend the ASA conference on `Rights, Claims and Entitlements' held at the University of Sussex. In June 2001 a symposium on `Property and Equality' was held in his honour at the new Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Germany), and James is also a member of the organising committee for the 19th Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies (CHAGS 9) held in Edinburgh in September 2002. It is clear that he has no intention of resigning from anthropology or more specifically from hunter-gatherer studies, which he has influenced since conducting field research with the Hadza of Tanzania (then Tanganyika) in the late 1950s and since his appearance at the `Man the Hunter' conference in 1966 and many more hunter-gatherer conferences since then. At the LSE, where he spent most of his professional career, he supervised numerous research projects on hunter-gatherers all over the world but also other projects, including work on pastoral and agricultural peoples in East Africa, the region that he knows best. JW--How many questions do you have, Thomas? TW--I have not counted them. They form a conglomerate, a set of shared questions by some of your colleagues and students whom I have contacted, plus some of my own. I start with your personal ancestry, then your academic ancestry, then move on to the Hadza, then on to questions of methods and theories, to the current and future situation of hunter-gatherers and the study of hunter-gatherers. JW--Goodness me! TW--Shall we start with some genealogical questions, first on personal ancestors and then on to academic ancestors? You studied here in Cambridge, you taught at the LSE and everybody thinks of you as being English, but you told me once that you thought of yourself as being Irish, Northern Irish. Now, to what extent do you think that this Irish ancestry does make a difference, given that you yourself have spent very little time living there? JW--Yes, I think it does make a difference. I value my mixed identity as both English and Irish. And, rather curiously, it has a bearing on how I became an anthropologist. In September 1954 I arrived in Cambridge to take a degree in history. I had spent the previous two years in the army doing my compulsory military service, during which I was trained as a military interpreter in Russian. I greatly disliked the army but liked the language work and wondered whether to give up the idea of taking history and instead to take a degree in Russian language and literature. But all this changed when by chance I wandered into the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology and happened to meet Professor Meyer Fortes. He invited me into his room and I explained my uncertainty about which degree to take--whether I should do history, or Russian or even archaeology which had greatly interested my Irish grandfather who, in my childhood, had shown me wonderful Irish archaeological sites and treasured neolithic arrowheads. At that stage I had almost no idea of what anthropology was. Fortes encouraged me to take archaeology and anthropology. He latched onto two themes, both of which were, as I later came to understand, very important to him. He talked about the significance of grandparent/grandchild relations. He also seized on the fact that I saw myself as being a kind of outsider and assured me that a sense of being an outsider was an important qualification for the study of anthropology. I was entranced by all of this and most of all by the fact that a Cambridge professor was willing to spend an hour of his time talking to me with such enthusiasm about his subject. Although all this happened more than forty years ago, I can remember it with great clarity. …

Why Life After Menopause?

AnthropologyIt's an evolutionary riddle: Why do women live so long after they stop reproducing? A study of African hunter gatherers suggests that women live to a ripe old age to make sure their grandchildren eat. By provisioning grandchildren, grandmothers ensure the children's survival, boost their daughters' fertility--and improve the chances that their own genes are passed on.

Critical Trends in the Study of Hunter-Gatherers

Hunter-gatherer were authorized in anthropology by Lee & De Vore's imaginative combination of evolutionary and ecological adaptationist concerns in the Man the Hunter volume (108). While recent reviews of hunter-gatherer studies (16, 23) have explored significant substantive issues, they have not considered the importance of the category itself in the formulation of anthropological research and theory. A major theme of this review is that the questioning of the category hunter-gatherer-rooted in varied responses to the evolutionary/ecological paradigm that constituted it-has been central to much contemporary work. Current writing about hunter-gatherers can be understand in terms of four categories of critique (or attack) on the original paradigm of hunter­ ways of life. I characterize the four broad theoretical orientations as (a) optimal foraging theory (or socioecology); (b) historicist (or ethnohistori­ cal) approaches; (c) sociology in the Marxist and structuralist tradition; and (d) humanistic approaches. In the latter, grab-bag category, I include those emphasizing hermeneutic and meaningful interpretation of in­ sider's views, reflexive works, and the advocacy research of political engage­ ment often undertaken on behalf of hunter-gatherers. Given good reviews of optimal foraging theory (23, 52, 112, 159, 181), I focus on categories b, c, and d. Their joint critical stance towards single archetypes for hunter-gatherer society suggests that the comparative method be considered an enduring problem in anthropology, a problem particularly marked in the very constituting of the category hunter-gatherer. For archeologists and social anthropologists, the category hunter­ gatherer as an evolutionary/ecological type had defined a shared area of

Archaeological Approaches To Hunter-Gatherers

subdiscipline, yet it is difficult to define an approach to the study of hunter-gatherers that can legitimately be termed archaeological. Apart from a battery of specialized techniques and tactics (none exclusive to hunter-gatherer research), there is little that separates archaeologist from cultural anthropologist where hunter­ gatherers are concerned and many scholars move back and forth between the study of living and extinct hunter-gatherers without perceptible difficulty. If the concept of an archaeological approach to hunter-gatherers has merit, perhaps it is in the archaeologist's recognition that most of the world's hunter-gatherers are dead, that they must be studied by excavation rather than interview, and that all this has some bearing on the kinds of theories in which students of hunter-gatherers ought to be interested. The archaeologist believes that theories about hunter-gatherers ought to have some chance of being tested in the ground since that is where most of the material they purport to explain currently resides. Because limits on space preclude a comprehensive survey of the field below, other contributions (e.g. 2) better convey a sense of the breadth of recent hunter-gatherer research in archaeology. My purpose here is more specific: to examine recent contributions to archaeological research explicitly derived from theories of limited sets; by this I mean theories that speak to limited sets of behaviors. In contrast to theories of general sets, i.e. general theories, which are by nature highly abstract and sometimes difficult to grasp, theories of limited sets are by design practical and intended for application in the real world: they are theories that have, in archaeological parlance, direct test implications. A detailed treatment of the relationship between general and

Politics and History in Band Societies.

Notes on the contributors Introduction Eleanor Leacock and Richard Lee Part I. Dynamics of Egalitarian Foraging Societies: 1. Political process in G/wi bands George Silberbauer 2. Politics, sexual and non-sexual in an egalitarian society Richard Lee 3. Risk, reciprocity and social influences on !Kung San economics Polly Wiessner 4. Descended from father, belonging to country: rights to land in the Australian Western Desert Annette Hamilton 5. Living dangerously: the contradictory foundations of value in Canadian Inuit society Jean L. Briggs 6. The ritualisation of potential conflict between the sexes among the Mbuti Colin M. Turnbull Part II. Forgager-farmer Relations: 7. Relations of production in band society Eleanor Leacock 8. The family, group structuring and trade among South Indian hunter-gatherers Brian Morris 9. Aka-famer relations in the northwest Congo Basin Serge Bahuchet and Henri Guillaume, translated by Sheila M. Van Wyck 10. Adaptive flexibility in a multi-ethnic setting: the Basarwa of the Southern Kalahari Helga I. D. Vierich 11. Patterns of sedentism among the Basarwa of eastern Botswana Robert K. Hitchcock 12. Nomads without cattle: East African foragers in historical perspective Cynthia Chang 13. In the land of milk and honey: Okiek adaptations to their forests and neighbours Roderic H. Blackburn Part III. Contemporary Political Struggles: 14. Utter savages of scientific value Renato Rosaldo 15. From foragers to fighters: South Africa's militarisation of the Namibian San Richard Lee and Susan Hurlich 16. Dene self-determination and the study of hunter-gatherers in the modern world Michael I. Asch 17. The future of hunters within nation-states: anthropology and the James Bay Cree Harvey A. Feit 18. Hydroelectric dam construction and the foraging activities of eastern Quebec Montagnais Paul Charest 19. The outstation movement in Aboriginal Australia H. C. Coombs, B. G. Dexter and L. R. Hiatt 20. Aboriginal land rights in the northern territory of Australia Nicholas Peterson 21. Political consciousness and land rights among the Australian Western Desert people Daniel A. Vachon Indexes.