Grand challenges for archaeology Kintigh, Keith W.; Altschul, Jeffrey H.; Beaudry, Mary C. ...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
01/2014, Letnik:
111, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Reconstructing demographic profiles is valuable for revealing animal exploitation strategies at archaeological sites. For pig (Sus scrofa), the method presented by Grant (1982) demonstrates a ...promising technique for estimating age through dental wear pattern analysis. Grant's study is, however, limited as it requires complete or nearly complete mandibles, exclusively uses mandibular teeth, and offers only a relative scale for aging. While some work has been done to establish useful age classes based on tooth eruption and wear patterns in S. scrofa, a systematic study producing a standardized and comprehensive methodology for using tooth wear to age pigs remains to be conducted.
The study presented here is part of ongoing research aimed at developing new methods for the construction of S. scrofa demographic profiles based on both dentition and long bone fusion. In this paper, we present the results of a study of eruption and wear patterns in a large modern assemblage of wild boar which provides the basis for a new method for constructing pig harvest profiles and addresses some of the most serious limitations of Grant's earlier study. The utility of this method in detecting subtle differences in pig prey/harvest profiles is demonstrated through its application to three Near Eastern archaeological assemblages from three distinct time periods: Bronze Age Tell Leilan, Halafian Banahilk, and Epipaleolithic Hallan Çemi, where residents likely employed widely different pig exploitation strategies. The results of these case studies demonstrate the ability of this method to reliably reconstruct age demography and distinguish age profiles between sites with different animal procurement strategies. This method provides a standardized means of collecting accurate and reliable age data crucial in examining patterns of past pig exploitation.
•We present an updated method for reconstructing archaeological Sus harvest profiles.•We conduct a study of tooth eruption and wear in a large modern assemblage of wild boar.•This method can reliably reconstruct and distinguish age profiles between differing sites.•This method provides a standardized means of collecting accurate and reliable age data.
Domestication, a process of increasing mutual dependence between human societies and the plant and animal populations they target, has long been an area of interest in genetics and archaeology. ...Geneticists seek out markers of domestication in the genomes of domesticated species, both past and present day. Archaeologists examine the archaeological record for complementary markers – evidence of the human behavior patterns that cause the genetic changes associated with domestication, and the morphological changes in target species that result from them. In this article, we summarize the recent advances in genetics and archaeology in documenting plant and animal domestication, and highlight several promising areas where the complementary perspectives of both disciplines provide reciprocal illumination.
Zeder and Smith explore the process of agricultural emergence in both the Near East and eastern North America. In both the Near East and eastern North America, agricultural emergence was shaped by ...efforts directed at meeting these overarching goals through the engineering of local ecosystems and the manipulation of targeted resources within local biotic communities. Isolating and selectively emphasizing any of these very general, macrolevel overarching factors, however, does not explain very much about how the process unfolded on the ground in either region. Instead, the solutions that people in both regions found to meet these overarching economic and social goals in large part were shaped by highly localized parameters and constraints.
Grand Challenges for Archaeology Kintigh, Keith W.; Altschul, Jeffrey H.; Beaudry, Mary C. ...
American antiquity,
01/2014, Letnik:
79, Številka:
1
Journal Article
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This article represents a systematic effort to answer the question, What are archaeology’s most important scientific challenges? Starting with a crowd-sourced query directed broadly to the ...professional community of archaeologists, the authors augmented, prioritized, and refined the responses during a two-day workshop focused specifically on this question. The resulting 25 “grand challenges” focus on dynamic cultural processes and the operation of coupled human and natural systems. We organize these challenges into five topics: (1) emergence, communities, and complexity; (2) resilience, persistence, transformation, and collapse; (3) movement, mobility, and migration; (4) cognition, behavior, and identity; and (5) human-environment interactions. A discussion and a brief list of references accompany each question. An important goal in identifying these challenges is to inform decisions on infrastructure investments for archaeology. Our premise is that the highest priority investments should enable us to address the most important questions. Addressing many of these challenges will require both sophisticated modeling and large-scale synthetic research that are only now becoming possible. Although new archaeological fieldwork will be essential, the greatest pay off will derive from investments that provide sophisticated research access to the explosion in systematically collected archaeological data that has occurred over the last several decades.
Agriculture is the lever with which humans transformed the earth over the last 10,000 years and created new forms of plant and animal species that have forever altered the face of the planet. In the ...last decade, significant technological and methodological advances in both molecular biology and archaeology have revolutionized the study of plant and animal domestication and are reshaping our understanding of the transition from foraging to farming, one of the major turning points in human history. This groundbreaking volume for the first time brings together leading archaeologists and biologists working on the domestication of both plants and animals to consider a wide variety of archaeological and genetic approaches to tracing the origin and dispersal of domesticates. It provides a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in this quickly changing field as well as reviews of recent findings on specific crop and livestock species in the Americas, Eurasia, and Africa. Offering a unique global perspective, it explores common challenges and potential avenues for future progress in documenting domestication.
Teeth are thought to be less affected than post-cranial elements by factors such as age, region, sex, and post-Pleistocene climate change, making changes in tooth size a better gage of ...domestication-induced morphological change in Sus scrofa. Rigorous empirical evaluation of this assumption, however, has been lacking. Here we examine the impact of multiple factors on molar size in an assemblage of modern wild boar from Southwest Asia, as well as a large assemblage of ancient S. scrofa from an archaeological site in southeastern Turkey dated to 11,600 cal. BP. We find that age related interstitial wear has a profound impact on molar lengths. Comparisons of length measurements of S. scrofa molars should only be made if one strictly controls for the state of wear, as well as the stage of crown development and eruption in third molars. Breadth measurements, on the other hand, are little affected by progressive wear and, as a result, are preferable to length measurements in the analysis of molar size in S. scrofa. We also evaluate the impact of logarithm size index (LSI) scaling on molar dimensions. Molar lengths are subject to a number of factors that distort meaningful patterning rendering LSI values of length dimensions of little utility in the evaluation of molar size in S. scrofa. With the exception of the upper first molar, LSI values of molar breadths appear to both capture and amplify patterns seen among unconverted measurements of individual teeth. Our evaluation also confirms the assumption that the size of post-cranial elements is more profoundly affected than molars by factors such as region and Post-Pleistocene climate change. While sexual dimorphism also has a greater impact on the size of post-crania than on molars, the degree of sexual dimorphism in molar breadths, as well as in M3 lengths, is still substantial and must be taken into account in any study of S. scrofa molar size. Before interpreting downward shifts in molar size as an indicator of domestic status, archaeozoologists need to first to consider the possible impact of differences in the proportions of males and females in archaeological assemblages. We conclude with a number of recommendations for new protocols for the analysis of S. scrofa dental metrics. We also offer observations about the impacts of factors like region, sex, and change over time on the size of the molars of this species that may open up new areas of research.
•Age related wear has profound impact on molar length dimensions but not on breadths.•Region and time have little impact on molar size.•Sex has a significant impact on molar breadths and third molars occlusal lengths.•Logarithm size index scaling introduces biases that distort occlusal length measurements.•LSI breadth values amplify patterns seen in raw measurements of individual teeth.•Molars are less affected than post-crania by region, climate change, and sex.•Impact of sex must still be considered in analysis of molar size in S. scrofa.
A deposit of gazelle bones at Tell Kuran in the Khabur Basin of northeastern Syria provides evidence for the use of desert kites in the mass-slaughter of steppic game. The deposit's late 4th ...millennium BCE date, long after livestock had replaced game as primary meat sources, suggests that this practice was directed toward social rather than economic ends. Evidence for the use of kites in the mass killing of steppe animals in the Khabur Basin is examined and the possibility that not only gazelle, but also onagers and possibly other steppe animals' were hunted in this way is explored. The role of such socially driven practices in the local extirpation of steppe species is discussed.
A number of different starting dates for the Anthropocene epoch have been proposed, reflecting different disciplinary perspectives and criteria regarding when human societies first began to play a ...significant role in shaping the earth's ecosystems. In this article these various proposed dates for the onset of the Anthropocene are briefly discussed, along with the data sets and standards on which they are based. An alternative approach to identifying the onset of the Anthropocene is then outlined. Rather than focusing on different markers of human environmental impact in identifying when the Anthropocene begins, this alternative approach employs Niche Construction Theory (NCT) to consider the temporal, environmental and cultural contexts for the initial development of the human behavior sets that enabled human societies to modify species and ecosystems more to their liking. The initial domestication of plants and animals, and the development of agricultural economies and landscapes are identified as marking the beginning of the Anthropocene epoch. Since this transition to food production occurred immediately following the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary, the Anthropocene can be considered as being coeval with the Holocene, resolving the contentious “golden spike” debate over whether existing standards can be satisfied for recognition of a new geological epoch.
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