Subsistence Systems Research Articles

Early Paleoindian foraging: examining the faunal evidence for large mammal specialization and regional variability in prey choice

North American archaeologists have spent much effort debating whether Early Paleoindian foragers were specialized hunters of megafauna or whether they pursued more generalized subsistence strategies. In doing so, many have treated the foraging practices of early North Americans as if they must have been uniform across the continent, even though others have pointed out that adaptations appear to have varied among groups inhabiting different kinds of environments. Resolving these issues fully requires referring to archaeofaunal data and evaluating those data critically. In this paper, we conduct such an evaluation of the existing Early Paleoindian faunal record, which we then use to test the hypothesis that early Americans across the continent specialized in the hunting of megafauna. After detailed attention is given to taphonomic issues, to the limited geographical distribution of sites with secure associations between humans and prey taxa, and to differences among sites in the roles that they likely played in settlement and subsistence systems, it becomes clear that the faunal record provides little support for the idea that all, or even any, Early Paleoindian foragers were megafaunal specialists. It does appear, however, that there was considerable variability in Early Paleoindian prey choice across the continent, which was likely related to variability in the environments that different groups inhabited.

Early plant domestications in southern India: some preliminary archaeobotanical results

Analysis of flotation samples from twelve sites in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh (south India) provides clear evidence for the predominant subsistence plants of the Neolithic period (2,800–1,200 cal b.c.). This evidence indicates that the likely staples were two pulses (Vigna radiata and Macrotyloma uniflorum) and two millet-grasses (Brachiaria ramosa and Setaria verticillata) which were indigenous to the Indian peninsula. At some sites there is evidence for limited cultivation of wheats (Triticum diococcum, Triticum durum/aestivum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare), and a few crops that originated in Africa, including hyacinth bean (Lablab purpureus), pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum) and finger millet (Eleusine coracana). In addition there is evidence for cotton (Gossypium sp.), and linseed (Linum sp.), as well as gathered fruits of Ziziphus and two Cucurbitaceae. This evidence suggests that the earliest agriculture in south India, dating to the third millennium b.c., was based on plants domesticated in the region, and that subsequently from the late 3rd millennium b.c. through the 2nd millennium additional crops from other regions were adopted into the subsistence system.

Synergies between veterinarians and para-professionals in the public and private sectors: organisational and institutional relationships that facilitate the process of privatising animal health services in developing countries.

The delivery of veterinary services in most developing countries was, until recently, considered to be the responsibility of the public sector. However, over the past four decades, economic constraints and the imposition of structural adjustment policies (SAPs) have led to a gradual decline in public sector investment in real terms and thus a reduction in the quality and quantity of services available to livestock keepers. Many governments acknowledged that they were no longer able to provide services that were essentially of a 'private good' nature and introduced radical policy changes which sought to introduce the concepts of a market orientated approach towards agriculture and livestock production in particular. The role of government, in the future, would be to provide a reduced range of essential 'public good' services and to create a favourable environment in which the private sector could become established as a provider of 'private good' services and at the same time act as a partner in carrying out certain public functions under contract or 'sanitary mandates'. In almost all developing countries, however, these policy changes were not accompanied by appropriate development strategies. The reasons for this are complex. Firstly, SAPs may be considered to have been foisted upon governments by donors and are thus perceived by many policy-makers as the cause of financial problems, rather than a solution to them. Secondly, most animal health senior policy-makers in the public sector have been trained as veterinarians and lack the required management skills to plan change effectively. Furthermore, as regards clinical veterinary service delivery, especially in rural or more remote areas, the solution fostered by donor investment, which involves deregulation and the deployment of privately operating para-professionals, is often perceived as a threat to the veterinary profession and might result in limiting access to international markets for the trade of livestock and livestock products. An informal delivery system has gained a foothold in many developing countries in the absence of a well-planned strategy for the privatisation of animal health services. Most governments would now acknowledge that this presents a greater risk than the deployment of well-regulated and effectively supervised para-professionals. This paper explores some of the principal challenges facing policy-makers in their efforts to bridge the transition from full state provision of animal health services to the formation of a partnership with the private sector. Governments and donors need to take active steps to facilitate the process of privatisation of animal health services, especially those targeting the poorer rural subsistence and pastoralist farming systems. This would entail an initial investment in developing the necessary management skills at all levels in the delivery system. Thereafter, further investment would be required to allow the changes to be managed using tools such as the strategic planning cycle. Should sufficient resources be made available to allow the full participation of all stakeholders in the delivery of animal health services, appropriate institutions and effective organisational relationships addressing all the more important issues will have to be identified. The paper then proceeds to describe how different livestock production systems determine the level of demand for animal health services. If these services are to be provided on a financially sustainable basis, they must be tailored to meet actual rather than perceived demand. Identifying an appropriate model for animal health service delivery thus requires careful analysis of the production system to be targeted. Governments and donors can play a useful role in providing resources for this type of study as well as for appropriate market studies, business planning, training and access to soft loans. Finally, as regards regulation, as the law stands today, many activities currently practised by para-professionals are classified as 'acts of veterinary medicine or surgery' and may only legally be performed by qualified and registered veterinarians. The concept of 'principal' and 'subsidiary' legislation provides the necessary flexibility in the regulation of the delivery of animal health services to accommodate the rapid changes taking place in this environment today. Deregulation involves the delegation of responsibility for the performance of a defined range of veterinary interventions to para-professionals under the 'supervision' or 'direction' of a registered veterinarian. The author illustrates how the experiences of a number of projects in Tanzania were used to propose a definition of 'supervision' in law. The definition offers an opportunity to overcome the fear of compromising standards of delivery of animal health services through the deployment of para-professionals. In addition, such functioning provides employment opportunities for private veterinarians in rural areas where access to formal primary animal health services would otherwise be denied and may contribute to the process of quality assurance of national veterinary services in developing countries.

Early Archaic Subsistence in the Central Plains: The Spring Creek (25FT31) Fauna

The Spring Creek site (25FT31) in southwestern Nebraska has been an important part of understanding Early Archaic adaptations to the central Plains since its excavation in 1961. A reanalysis of faunal remains from these excavations suggests that the Spring Creek site is a task-oriented bison processing site occupied for a limited duration in the late summer or early fall. Traditional zooarchaeological methods combined with stable isotope data indicate an archaeofauna dominated by bison from a single herd suggesting a subsistence system where bison hunting is not an unfamiliar activity. These ideas contradict many extant models of Early Archaic subsistence in the central Plains which de-emphasize bison resources in favor of a broad-spectrum foraging strategy. Finally, it is suggested that subsistence models developed for Middle Holocene hunter-gatherers in other areas of North America are not necessarily appropriate for coeval groups on the central Plains.

Jack Golson and the investigation of prehistoric agriculture in Highland New Guinea: recent work and future prospects

This collection of papers celebrates Jack Golson's influence on the investigation of prehistoric agriculture in the mountainous interior of New Guinea. The breadth of Golson's interests and his remarkable intellectual generosity have stimulated several of his former students to attempt to develop some of the lines of enquiry identified through his own work. Golson has already been the subject of a major festschrift volume (Spriggs et al. eds 1993), in which his personal history and professional career are charted, and his influence on several generations of archaeologists is amply demonstrated. However, a number of factors have prompted us to issue a further acknowledgment of Golson's influence, the first being his continued reluctance to disengage from scholarly debate and enquiry following his retirement as the Professor of Prehistory at the Australian National University in 1991 (Spriggs and Jones 1993). Golson continues to publish, to edit, and to challenge those around him. The authors of this collection represent a more recent generation of researchers than those featured in the original festschrift, all but one of us (John Burton) having worked with Golson in the period since 1991. It does also seem something of an omission in the original festschrift that only one of the papers--Doug Yen's contribution on subsistence systems in the Pacific (Yen 1993)--addresses in any substantial way the history of agriculture in the New Guinea Highlands, given the centrality of the topic in Golson's own work. Each of the authors in the present collection has worked in New Guinea and most have focused at some point on questions of early agricultural history and social transformation in the region. The continuing investigation of early agriculture Archaeology in the New Guinea Highlands was in its infancy when Golson first assembled a team to investigate the Manton's agricultural site on Warrawau Plantation in 1966, in Papua New Guinea's Wahgi Valley. A handful of other archaeologists had already initiated work in the Highlands region. Sue Bulmer's pioneering surveys in the Wahgi Valley, Kundiawa and Chuave areas in 1959 (Bulmer 1966), were followed by independent programs of excavation pursued by Peter White (1972) and David Cole (Watson and Cole 1977) during the 1960s at a series of sites in what were then the Western and Eastern Highlands Districts. The agricultural site at Kuk Swamp was first identified in 1969 by Jim Allen (Allen 1970). Thereafter, Golson focused his attention on Kuk, and many of his colleagues and students tackled projects that were allied in some way or other to the wider questions raised by this talismanic site (Golson 1996). A forthcoming publication will set out much of the history and the results of the Kuk Swamp investigations (Golson et al. eds in prep.). Golson's work at Kuk, as elsewhere, has been marked by a particular conception of archaeology as a form of historical enquiry unimpeded by disciplinary boundaries. His training as a mediaevalist (Gathercole 1993) may have played a critical part in the formation of Golson's fundamental orientation as an historian employing the various technologies of archaeology and synthesizing the results from a broad spread of disciplines, while always keeping questions about the transformation of societies to the fore. It is not surprising, then, that Golson has urged each of the authors in this collection, at various times, to pursue alternative lines of enquiry: to read more widely in regional ethnography, to experiment with different techniques, and to combine the broadest possible range of perspectives on the past. Some of the consequences of this expansive approach to archaeology are evident in this collection, in which an historian (Chris Ballard), a palaeo-ecologist (Simon Haberle), a plant botanist (Peter Matthews) and an anthropologist (John Burton) feature alongside archaeologists (Herman Mandui, John Muke and Tim Denham). …

Horticultural Hunters: Seasonally Abundant Animal Resources and Gender Roles in Late Prehistoric Iroquoian Subsistence Strategies

Iroquoian subsistence has been interpreted as a strategy that relied heavily on deer and corn. Recent archaeological investigations in western New York State, however, have produced diverse faunal and floral assemblages that a116w a more complex picture of Iroquoian subsistence to emerge. This paper discusses the faunal remains from the Spaulding Lake site (UB2497), located in the town of Clarence in Erie County. This single-component Iroquoian site on the Onondaga Escarpment was occupied seasonally between ca. A.D. 1450 and 1550. It was excavated between 1989 and 1991 by the Archaeological Survey of SUNY-Buffalo. This paper discusses 1) the ethnohistoric and archaeological evidence for animal procurement among Iroquoian and Great Lakes Indian groups, 2) the Spaulding Lake faunal material compared to other Iroquoian faunal assemblages from two nearby sites, the Nursery site (UB227) and the Piestrak site (UB2581), recently excavated, and 3) implications for interpretations of Iroquois settlement and subsistence systems, gender roles, and socio-political organization.

Phytolith and starch analysis of sediment samples from two archaeological sites on Dauar Island, Torres Strait, northeastern Australia

Current archaeological research suggests that first human occupation of the Torres Strait Islands occurred sometime between 2500 and 3000 cal b.p., and evidence indicates that the development of agricultural mound-and-ditch systems occurred there after 1200 cal b.p. Although archaeological remains testify to the existence of a marine based subsistence economy prior to 1200 cal b.p., the potential presence of earlier prehistoric horticultural signatures has yet to be adequately examined. This study investigates such evidence through a preliminary application of fossil phytolith and starch grain analysis using excavated sediments from two archaeological sites on Dauar Island, eastern Torres Strait. The results show the early presence of yam (Dioscorea sp.), and Musa species not endemic to the island. The occurrence of these edible plant types in association with carbonised phytoliths and anthropogenic shell and bone deposits may be indicative of a combined insular horticultural and marine subsistence system on Dauar Island. We suggest that with a larger and appropriate phytolith reference set for the research area, there is a potential to more clearly define human induced changes to vegetation and patterns of subsistence in the Torres Strait Islands.

Rainfall Variability and Subsistence Systems in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific

Subsistence systems in insular Southeast Asia and the western Pacific are geographically patterned: from west to east, grain crops disappear while root and tree crops become more important, and south of the Torres Strait no crops are grown. Previous explanations for these patterns have assumed either a historical cause (the expansion of root and tree crops before grain crops) or some form of environmental filter. Paralleling the agricultural pattern is a westtoeast pattern of increasing variability in interannual rainfall variation. I propose that this variability limited the utility of annual crops and increased reliance on longlived plants whose food production averages across longer periods. The range of human responses to these difficult conditions is illustrated by discussion of the anomalies represented by the unique qualities of the agricultural regimes of Botel Tobago and eastern Melanesia and by the distribution of crops and subsistence systems across the Torres Strait.

Brief communication: diachronic investigation of linear enamel hypoplasia in prehistoric skeletal samples from Trentino, Italy.

Linear enamel hypoplasia was scored on Neolithic, Copper Age, and Early Bronze Age samples from the Trentino region, Italy, in order to compare the extent of growth disruption in different biocultural subsistence systems (foragers with little agriculture, to agriculturists and agropastoralists). The Early Bronze Age sample shows a higher frequency of enamel defects and an earlier chronological onset than the early Neolithic sample. The higher frequency of defects in the Bronze Age sample could be linked to less diversified nutrition and, because of increased sedentism, a higher risk of disease.

Sources of Meat in Colonial Diets: Faunal Evidence from Two Nineteenth Century Tasmanian Whaling Stations

The analysis of faunal assemblages from two nineteenth century Tasmanian whaling stations provides information about meat in colonial diets. The assemblages include a combination of native mammal, bird, and fish species and European domesticates. The presence of diverse native species indicates occasional opportunistic hunting rather than a significant incorporation of local fauna in the subsistence system. The bulk of meat consumed was beef, pork, and mutton. Element representation and documentary evidence suggests that while the pork was almost certainly salted, the beef was a combination of fresh and preserved meat, and the mutton was fresh meat prepared locally. This analysis has implications for understanding colonial herd development and provisioning systems for maritime industries.

Depletion of a resource? The impact of prehistoric human foraging on intertidal mollusc communities and its significance for human settlement, mobility and dispersal

Ethnoecological studies have demonstrated the impacts that even relatively small-scale human foraging has on targeted species of shellfish and the structure of biological communities in intertidal zones. There is compelling archaeological evidence that people in various parts of the world often had a depleting effect on shellfish populations. Shellfish and other marine resources have sometimes been perceived as lowly ranked foods and coastal archaeological sites have often been interpreted as temporary (possibly seasonal) sites for the exploitation of these 'inferior' food resources. This model has been challenged by studies of mid-Holocene Mesolithic hunter-gatherer sites in Atlantic Europe, which have shown that marine foods were the main component of the total diet and that human foraging can deplete shellfish resources. Although subsistence systems based on coastal resources might have been both viable and acceptable in dietary terms, regular mobility would have been necessary for them to be sustainable. On longer time scales, such coastal mobility might result in population dispersal. Sites associated with early anatomically modern humans show the antiquity of coastal adaptations, including the consumption of shellfish, and the dispersal of early modern humans out of Africa into south-east Asia and 'Greater Australia' could have been through coastal environments. This coastal dispersal could have been driven, at least in part, by the impact of early human foragers on intertidal food resources. Resource depletion in coastal zones was probably among the first significant, but small-scale, 'ecological impacts' of human beings.

人類進化と新生代後期の環境変化 中部ヨーロッパの最終氷期と人類の適応

A framework of climatic changes and archaeological chronologies during the Last Glacial is discussed with particular reference to the correlation among MIS stages, GISP2 ice core oscillation, and calibrated radiocarbon dates from palaeolithic sites in Rhineland, Germany as one of the most intensively studied areas in Central Europe. Although the fine chronologies have been set up in the last decade, an analysis of a concrete example of a palaeollithic site is needed when hominid adaptation in the Last Glacial has to be discussed. This paper focuses on the subsistence of a late Magdalenian Gennersdorf settlement in the oldest Dryas period. Excavations have revealed two large houses, one big hut, and two small huts. Archaeological features that have been well preserved made it possible to set out a hypothesis that the large house was repeatedly used every winter and the small huts were used in summer by different human groups, in relation to the lithic raw material, procurement systems. Hominids of the late Palaeolithic period were characterized by having developed a subsistence system for the all round adaptive procurement of environmental conditions through seasonal migrations.

Intensification of Agriculture at Ban Chiang: Is There Evidence from the Skeletons?

Human skeletal remains excavated in 1974 -1975 at Ban Chiang, a premetal to Bronze/Iron Age site located in northeastern Thailand, are used to examine the health effects of sedentism and agricultural intensification. The archaeological sequence provides evidence for the introduction of iron and water buffalo in the Middle period, suggesting the beginning of intensified agriculture. The effects of this agricultural intensification on the paleodemography, health, and patterns of traumatic injury of Ban ChiangÕs early inhabitants is examined. The skeletal and dental attributes examined include palaeodemographic parameters, dental caries, dental enamel hypoplasia, cribra orbitalia, stature, skeletal infections, and trauma. The results of this analysis are mixed. There are decreases in life expectancy and mean age-at-death that are consistent with a decline in health over time, but evidence for an increase in fertility, expected with intensified agriculture, is not found. Expected temporal increases in dental enamel hypoplasia and adult cribra orbitalia are documented. However, the expected decline in adult stature and expected increases in dental caries, cribra orbitalia in subadults, skeletal infection, and traumatic injury are not found. Overall, the skeletal indicators support continuity in Ban Chiang health, suggesting continuous reliance on a broadly based subsistence system. These findings do not fit the typical pattern demonstrated for other human groups experiencing the transition to sedentism and intensified agriculture and may support the contention that Southeast AsiaÕs archaeological sequence differs markedly from those studied elsewhere in the world.

Subsistence agriculture and child growth in Papua New Guinea

Spatial statistical analyses of child anthropometric data were undertaken to assess the influence of systems of subsistence agriculture, in terms of staple foods and cash crops cultivated, on patterns of child growth in Papua New Guinea. These agricultural data explained between a quarter and half of the geographical variation in anthropometric growth indicators. Accounting for differences in altitude, relief and rainfall patterns, though explaining additional geographical variation, did not improve the predictions. Child growth was better in agriculture systems with cassava and sweet potato as staple crops, but worse in systems where banana, sago and taro were staple crops. Both the cultivation of all major cash crops, and sales of fish and food crops improved child growth. More intensive agricultural systems were associated with larger children indicating that the nutritional status of children benefited from intensification as well as from the introduction of cash crops into traditional subsistence systems.

The development of subsistence system models for Island Southeast Asia and Near Oceania: The nature and role of arboriculture and arboreal-based economies

Unique arboreal-based subsistence economies emerged in Wallacea, New Guinea and Near Oceania. Initial developments have their roots in the Pleistocene. The developmental history of arboreal-based economies (often called arboriculture) in Southeast Asia and the Pacific is not well understood. A framework of subsistence system diversification in relation to unexploited ecological opportunities is useful for subsistence system model building. The emergence of arboreal-based economies in Island Southeast Asia and Near Oceania has significant implications concerning Pacific prehistory, as Austronesian descendants probably incorporated arboriculture and arboreal resources into their economies and subsequently translocated these to the more distant Pacific islands. The overall framework can be applied to assessing subsistence developments elsewhere.

Caiçaras, caboclos and natural resources: rules and scale patterns

One important question concerning the sustainability of local or native populations refers to their interaction with local and global institutions. We should expect that populations with capacity to interact economically and politically with institutions, might show a better chance for their ecological and cultural continuity, as well as for their system of trade and subsistence. The level of ecological and social interaction of local populations, following concepts from ecology, occurs on different scales: for example, from the territories of individual fishermen on the Atlantic Forest coast to organizations of community Extractive Reserves in the Amazon. The scale of organization (individual/family/community) may influence the capacity to deal with institutions. This study analyses how Brazilian native populations, especially caiçaras of the Atlantic Forest coast, and caboclos from the Amazon, have interacted with regional, national and global institutions, concerning environmental demands. Concepts such as common management, natural capital, resilience and sustainability are useful to understand these illustrative cases.

Mortality Profiles as Indicators of Slowed Reproductive Rates: Evidence from Ancient Egypt

Fluctuations in Nile flood levels are proposed to have played a significant role in the development of Egypt's cultural elaborations. Nile flood levels played an increasingly important role in the availability of subsistence resources after 3800 B.C. when agriculture was the dominant subsistence system. A series of fluctuations in Nile flood levels are proposed to have constituted a temporally fluctuating environment consistent with Seger and Brockmann's (1987) bet-hedging model. Wasteful behavior, in the form of cultural elaborations, suggests an increased emphasis on nonsubsistence-oriented activities after 3300 B.C., indicating the population of Egypt was expending less energy on reproduction. Skeletal data are examined to determine whether the population appears to meet further expectations of the bet-hedging model in the form of decreased juvenile mortality and increased lifespans.

Gender and the Early Cultivation of Gourds in Eastern North America

Discovery and AMS dating of mid-Holocene Cucurbita pepo fragments from central Maine and north-central Pennsylvania necessitate the reevaluation of the status of the earliest gourds in noncoastal areas of the Eastern Woodlands and the role of women in their cultivation. Gourds may have been spread initially in conjunction with improvements in fishing techniques, with small gourds used primarily as net floats. In this scenario, people passed temperate, Eastern (ovifera-type) gourds northward from the coastal plains of the Southeast into river valleys of the Midwest and Northeast as fishing became more significant in Archaic subsistence systems. The growing of gourds was fully compatible with a fisher-gatherer-hunter lifeway, and it did not necessarily trigger a transition to farming. Women may have grown gourds, but the possible role of women in fishing activities is more ambiguous than is their role in gathering and eventually domesticating the food plants of the Eastern North American agricultural complex.

Biodiversity, taxonomic richness and specialists-generalists during Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene times in Pampa and Patagonia (Argentina, Southern South America)

Human subsistence systems in the Pampa and Patagonia regions evolved from generalists during the Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene to specialists during the Middle Holocene, according to diversity and relative taxonomic richness counts. The general hypothesis is summarized as follows: 1) at the end of the Pleistocene and beginning of the Holocene (interval between 13.0 and 8.5 ka), the Pampean and Patagonian landscape was different from the present one, with a mammal biodiversity larger than in the Middle Holocene; 2) during the Middle Holocene, the highest mammal taxonomic richness corresponds to one species, Lama guanicoe . Although available biomass was the same for the hunter-gatherers, it was due to the larger abundance of individuals of that single species; 3) the emerged continental surface during the Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene was more extensive than during the Middle Holocene. In ecological terms, this greater land mass is reflected in an equally larger biodiversity, even assuming that populations of Pleistocenic megafauna were diminishing in number since ca. 13,500 years BP. Based on the analysis of our own information and published data, we state that the human groups which colonized the Pampean and Patagonian regions towards the end of the Pleistocene and beginning of the Holocene used generalist strategies encompassing a wide range of faunal resources (birds and mammals, especially of terrestrial habitats). Plasticity of hunter-gatherer societies, plus a complex technology, a higher social mobility and unfilled territories, allowed them to rapidly replace one resource for another in conditions of environmental stress. This lifestyle resulted in the occupation of different ecological zones (niches) and the evolution to specialized systems, based on one or a few mammal species, once the colonization and support in the different environments were successful and the resources of the Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene disappeared.

Food Consumption and Subsistence in Three Caboclo Populations on Marajó Island, Amazonia, Brazil

In this article data on household food consumption is used to further understanding of subsistence strategies in three Caboclo populations on Marajo Island, Amazonia, Brazil. Data were collected using participant observation and 24-hour food recalls in 16 households for 7 consecutive days during the rainy (March) and dry (July) seasons. Marajo-Acu households (n = 6) had the highest levels of energy and protein intake relative to recommendations. This was probably related to their successful integration into the prosperous acai (a palm fruit) market of the riverine area. Praia Grande households (n = 6) had the lowest values for energy intake (rainy season), which supports the authors' ethnographic observations of some instability in the subsistence system of this population. Paricatuba households (n = 4) exhibited intermediate values of energy and protein intakes, but less seasonal variation in consumption than the other two populations. Despite the differences observed, food consumption does not appear to be a major limitation for any of the three populations. The data support recent hypotheses concerning the concomitant and multiple use of varzea (floodplain) and terra firme (upland) environments by the Caboclos and integration into the local market economy as the central strategies in dealing with the so-called socioenvironmental constraints of the Amazonian floodplain.