Giving the worst part

When I think of trade, I usually have this image of two persons exchanging objects of a certain value. For example, in prehistory, one could probably exchange pieces of good raw material from their region for another material, or a piece of meat… Even if I am not aware of the exact nature of the objects exchanged in the past, my impression is that they were valuable.

But what if the objects traded were actually the less valuable ones? In her paper Cultural Difference and the Density of Objects, Weiner (1994) introduces the notion of keeping-while-giving, where individuals keep their valued possessions, but give mundane objects in order to keep the trade going. She compares different forms of this behavior seen in some indigenous groups of New Guinea in order to better understand its implications.

One of the illustrations of keeping-while-giving is given by the shell exchange in the kula, a political and power system found in the region. In this system, the biggest shells are seen as valuable and “dense”; in a sense, they give status to its owner. In the kula, however, people exchange shells at special occasion in order, I guess, to maintain social bonds and to give a certain impression of equality. The exchange of shells gives everyone the impression that they could, at some point, own one of those ranking ones. In reality, the odds of getting their hands on one are very slim as the owner will usually exchange its ordinary shells instead. In other words, if the trade is few by the desire of getting one “dense” shell, it is actually done with mostly ordinary shells…

A similar situation is found in the Samoa, an archipelago of New Guinea. In there, the exchanged objects are hand-made mats. They are usually exchanged and given on special occasions and it is usually the new ones, the ones without ranking, that are exchanged more often. In the Samoa, a mat can pass from one generation to the next without living the house if it is deemed very valuable. The mats acquire more status as they get “older”, but they also give their status to their owners, in a mutual giving pattern. To add to this situation, the status of the object is also linked to the status of its previous owners, situation that the author compares with New York art dealers who will try to sell their art to important figures…

I thought this paper was relevant because it made me realize something I already knew but had forgotten; that we should not be blinded by our own cultural custom when trying to interpret the archaeological record, or even simply trying to understand other contemporaneous cultures.

At the beginning of her paper, Weiner says that when she first saw women exchanging banana leaf bundles, in the Trobiands, she did not understand what was the purpose of this behavior; according to her judgment, leaf bundles did not have any aesthetic or even use values. It is only after studying the shells of the kula and the mats of the Samoa that she understood that it is not always the valuable objects that are exchanged. Ordinary objects sometimes have as much, if not more, importance as valued ones in social interactions.

What I take from this paper is that, due to the variability in behavior, we always need to question our interpretation. An exotic object found in the archaeological record does not always mean that it was considered as valuable. Nowadays, people dream of novelty; getting a new car is usually more synonymous of success than driving a rusted 1990 one… However, we should not forget that some people attach more importance to the history of an object than to its characteristics. A good analogy would be the value given to very antique, but well-preserved, cars, or even better, Christian relics… They are old and could seem insignificant to an ignorant eye, but their history make them more “dense”, more valuable than anything else.

We need to be careful in assessing value to artifacts, as much as we need to be careful in overlooking those that seem, to us, unimportant.

Reference:

Weiner, A. B. 1994. Cultural Difference and the Density of Objects. American Ethnologist 21(2): 391-403

No evidence of cannibalism...ever?

The subject of cannibalism in contemporary and archaeological populations can be difficult to discuss without passing negative judgment on the barbarity of individuals eating their neighbors. Yet with ample evidence of ritualistic cannibalism occurring around the world for a myriad of relatively logical reasons (ritualistic, nutritional stress, survival, warfare, inter-group violence…), it is hard to deny that cannibalism happens. However, William Arens, an anthropologist at the University of New York at Stony Brooks, claims that any evidence of cannibalism throughout human history is simply a myth.

Discussed in the article, “Anthropologists Suggest Cannibalism Is a Myth” by G. Kolata (based upon Arens’ book “The Man-Eating Myth”), Arens perspective appears to be well thought out. For example, potential evidence for archaeological cannibalism cannot conclusively be deemed as cases of anthropophagic behavior for two reasons. First, there are no credible witnesses that have seen cannibalism practiced first-hand since these populations exist only in the archaeology record. Secondly, ritual defleshing (or excarnation) could potentially explain archaeological evidence such as cut marks on leg and arm bones, most likely to remove the muscles post-mortem, without precluding that cannibalism (or anthropophagi) must have occurred.

In terms of contemporary cases of cannibalism, Arens claims once again that no anthropologists have seen cannibalism first-hand, and therefore cannibalism is a myth. Yet Arens appears to be either unaware or unwilling to believe the witness accounts of cannibalism that do exist. For example, during the Conquest by the Spaniards of the Aztec population in Mexico, there have been many recovered texts of “outsiders” (the conquerors) who saw violent warfare leading to the ritual killing and eating of human prisoners by the victorious warriors in the 1960s (Harner 1977). In Arens opinion, texts such as these are “highly suspect”. He points to the case of Hans Staden, a 16^th century seaman who claims to have witnessed cannibalism occur among the Tupinamba Indians of South America. Arens believes that despite the details Staden offers, Staden is not a credible source because the account has several inconsistencies (e.g., Staden recounts a conversational exchange between two local peoples upon his arrival, despite the fact that he would not have been able to speak the local language initially).

While it is true that Staden’s text may lack consistency, this in itself cannot be construed as proof that cannibalism never occurred. In the same vein, lack of first-hand evidence cannot definitely prove that an event did not occur. Just because we did not have anthropologists scrupulously recording the dietary habits of australopithecines 3 million years ago, for example, does not mean that australopithecines did not eat. From archaeological clues such as tooth size, jaw muscle strength and position, remains of animal bones, charring or cutting on bones, and hunting tools, we can get a general idea of what likely constituted an Australopithecus Africanus’ diet. Therefore, when evaluating cases of potential cannibalism, it is important to cautiously analyze witness reports and data available while being careful to not systematically dismiss all signs of cannibalism based on one dubious account, as Arens does.

Aside from witness accounts of cannibalism, Arens finds fault in archaeological evidence of cannibalism as well. Of course as Arens rightly points out, there is an archaeological difficulty in differentiating between anthropophagi and excarnation; however there are clues which would suggest cannibalism was more likely to have occurred than excarnation. For example, when human leg bones are cracked open, this is more likely to be a case of humans trying to access and eat the nutritious bone marrow, and therefore an example of anthropophagi rather than a case of ritual defleshing, where there would be no reason to crush the bones and extract the marrow (see Turner and Turner 1992).

I feel that Arens general argument is weak. While acknowledging that survival cannibalism occurs, he flatly denounces all accounts of ritual cannibalism based only on his personal assessment on the validity of others’ accounts and the possibility of re-framing archaeological evidence. As well, Arens argues that individual populations will never proclaim themselves as cannibals and it is only their enemies or conquerors with hidden agendas who claim that cannibalism occurs (Kolata 1986). This point, however, is false. The Fore tribe of New Guinea has been recorded as self-proclaimed cannibals (see Stewart and Strathern 1999).

However, I do acknowledge that Arens perspective is necessary to generate debate and revisit archaeological accounts of potential cannibalism in order to authoritatively affirm or deny the presence of cannibalism in a case by case basis. As a direct result of the publication of Arens’ “The Man-Eating Myth”, Tim White (anthropologist and professor at University of California at Berkeley) decided to travel around the world and assess all hominid fossils with potential marks of cannibalism (Kolata 1986).

In addition, Arens’ perspective does serve to offer counter-hypotheses for common assumptions related to cannibalism. For example, the Fore tribe in New Guinea was assumed to not only practice cannibalism, but it is said that the Fore contracted Kuru disease as a direct result of anthropophagi. Kuru disease, a version of the modern “mad cow” disease, is a virus that affects the mucous membranes of the Fore and leads to death. Since there is documented proof that kuru did exist and had a huge impact on Fore demographics, Arens accepts the presence of the kuru epidemic but not the cannibalistic cause. Instead, Arens proposes that kuru is “a variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease…which was almost certainly introduced by the Europeans” (Kolata 1986). This point challenges a taken-for-granted proof of cannibalism; however, even if Arens’ assertion is true in this case, cannibalism may still have occurred. In the end, just as Arens demands that we should take caution when reading reports of cannibalism, I believe that we should also take caution when reading Arens’ counter-perspective.

Works Cited

Arens, W. 1979. The Man-Eating Myth. Oxford University Press, New York.

Harner, M. 1977. The Ecological Basis for Aztec Sacrifice, American Ethnologist 4(1): 117-135.

Kolata, G. 1986. Anthropologists Suggest Cannibalism is a Myth. Science, New Series 232(4757): 1497-1500.

Stewart, P. J. and A. Strathern. 1999. Feasting on My Enemy: Images of Violence and Change in the New Guinea Highlands. Ethnohistory 46(4): 645-669.

Turner, C. G. and J. A. Turner. 1992. The First Claim for Cannibalism in the Southwest: Walter Hough’s 1901 Discovery at Canyon Butte Ruin 3, Northeastern Arizona. American Antiquity 57(4): 661-682.

Identity in objects

In this article, Sassaman looks at the social organization of the Stallings Culture found in the Savannah River valley around 4000 years ago. In this process, he looks at two types of artifacts, namely pots and bannerstones and, by measuring spatial differences in their decoration or manufacture, he attempts to recreate their inter- and intra-group social system.

Sassaman starts by examining rims of coastal pottery, on which one can see differences between right-handed and left-handed maker. The totality of the sample, including 600 rim sherds from 27 sites show that about 10% of the sample have been made by left-handed makers, percentage that fits with the modern and historical worldwide rate of left-handedness. What is interesting is that percentages of left-handedness varie from one site to the next. Sassaman links this result to matrilocality, as it is said that handedness is influenced by maternal ties (Ashton 1982; Carter-Saltzman 1980; Porac et al. 1986). In an environment where mothers and daughters live together, the rate of left-handedness would increase after a few generations. Thus, Sassaman uses pots sherds to conclude that coastal Stallings Cultures were living in a matrilocal system.

There are several incorrect things with this reasoning. The first and most obvious would be that a high rate of left-handedness seen in pots sherds does not equate a high rate of left-handed people in the population. Sassaman seems to assume that each sherd has been produced by a different person, which is probably not the case. As Sassaman does not clarify if the sherds were regrouped when found to be from single pots, we have no way of knowing if the majority of the sherds they examined in a particular site were not coming from one pot made by a left-handed individual. Differences in designs should be considered in order to distinguish between makers and better evaluate the number of left-handed people at each site.

The second difficulty with this reasoning is the simple fact of equating an object with a social organization. I can see how Sassaman comes to the conclusion that Coastal Stallings were matrilocal. It is a plausible scenario, but the reasoning that led to this conclusion is quite stretched. As mentioned earlier, the rate of left-handed people is not assured for those sites. However, for the sake of this critic, if we take for granted that Sassaman was right on that point, that there was actually a higher rate of left-handed people at particular Stallings sites, we have no way of knowing for sure that this handedness was influenced by females. It could have been influenced by males, and in that situation, we would conclude that those groups were following a patrilocal settlement pattern.

At this point, one could say that Sassaman supports his assumption of female influence on handedness by citing three scientific studies (Ashton 1982; Carter-Saltzman 1980; Porac et al. 1986), thus that this comportment is found somewhere. What I have to answer to this is… yes, it is found somewhere and the opposite is probably the case as well. If there is one thing I’ve learned from the seminar we’re following, it is that there is extreme variability in hunter-gatherers’ organization.

The second type of artifacts looked at in this article is called ‘bannerstone’. The bannerstones are pierced stones of unknown function. They were found primarily in the Piedmont Region and were, according to Sassaman, used for some form of trade. He explains that those type of stones were manufactured in the periphery, by marginalized people who searched for alliances elsewhere. When their trading partners faded away (the Mill Branch affiliation), they abandoned their technology and integrated the Stallings Culture. This would have coincided with the heyday of the Stallings “drag-and-jab” pottery…

Again here, I find that Sassaman is quick at making conclusions. The appearance of the Mill Branch people at the second to last page of the paper confused me. I do not doubt that trade between Piedmont and Mill Branch sites would have been possible, but the data given to the reader is too thin to evaluate this assumption.

Moreover, Sassaman here again uses an object to “evaluate” the behavior of the makers. The claim of marginalization of bannerstones makers based on their geographic distribution would need other data to be supported.

This is an interesting paper. The evaluation of handedness in artifacts is an important process that should be applied to other types of artifacts. The results of left-handedness rates, if unbiased, would show an intriguing pattern. However, I think that we should be careful in jumping to conclusions based on the presence of one pattern that is visible in the ethnographic record. We have to keep in mind that variability is present and that different techniques can lead to similar products…

References:

Ashton, G.C. 1982. Handedness: an alternative hypothesis, Behavior genetics 12:125-147

Carter-Saltzman, P. 1980. Biological and sociocultural effects on handedness: comparison between biological and adoptive families, Science 209:1263-1265

Porac, C. S. Coren, and A. Searleman. 1986. Environmental factors in hand preference formation: evidence from attempts to switch the preferred hand, Behavior genetics 16:251-261

Sassaman, K.E. 1998. Crafting Cultural Identity in Hunter-Gatherer Economies, Archaeological papers of the American Anthropological Association 8(1):93-107

Critical Commentary: The Where, When and How of Novices in Craft Production

In his paper, The When, Where, and How of Novices in Craft Production, Ferguson discusses the training involved in acquiring proficiency in craft production, concentrating on lithic and ceramic manufacture, and how this might appear in the archaeological record. He then compares sets of stone tools produced in the lab by novices given different instructional methods.

In particular, Ferguson focuses on scaffolding as a means of skill acquisition, in which a novice will work closely with a skilled craftsperson to lean the steps involved in the creation of a tool while only performing the steps that he or she can successfully complete. By providing scaffolding, a group can effectively train novices while producing functional tools. The implementation of a scaffolding instructive technique will therefore be influenced by the access to and value of raw material, recyclability of raw material, dangers of craft production, the individual’s physical and mental development, and social or cultural factors.

Ferguson then describes an experiment in which he compares two methods of instruction in stone tool manufacture. Two groups of four adult volunteers, randomized for sex and previous tool experience, were brought into the lab and taught how to flintknap. One group was given a visual demonstration and verbal instruction, the other was taught using scaffolding to minimize loss of raw material. Each volunteer produced 30 projectile points, with every fifth point being sampled and shown in sequence. In the case of the scaffolding group, these six points were completed without any scaffolding assistance so that they could be compared to the verbal instruction group. The final five points of each volunteer were completed with no assistance to assess the effectiveness of each teaching method. (See table 1)

Instructional Method	Knapper(s)	Points Created
Skilled Knapper	Ferguson	29 points
Scaffolding	4 volunteers	o Each created 30 points o Most points were created with Ferguson performing all steps that the volunteers could not complete successfully o Every fifth point was created without manual assistance
Verbal instruction and visual demonstration	4 volunteers	o Each created 30 points o All created without manual assistance

The results showed that verbal instruction and demonstration was less effective at creating functional points during the learning process and produced only two out of four competent knappers. Scaffolding on the other hand, almost always produced functional points (except every fifth point that was sampled) and produced three out of four competent knappers. Ferguson used the maximum width to thickness ratio (W/T), which measures a knapper’s ability to thin a biface, to show efficacy of teaching methods and conservation of raw material.

When instructed to cover the entire surface of the points with pressure flake scars, the volunteers fell in to two categories depending on their experience with tools, with the frequent tool users being much more proficient in this regard. Ferguson suggests that because children have even less forearm strength and precision in hand movements than the non-tool users, they are likely to be even less proficient. If this were the case, no amount of scaffolding would have been sufficient to teach knapping, and instruction would not have begun until early puberty. Ferguson concludes that archaeologists cannot assume that artefacts demonstrating unskilled production were made by children.

Ferguson defines three situations in which archaeologists should look to find evidence of children and their participation in craft production (1) formal apprenticeships (2) scaffolding, which will appear as the absence of other methods of teaching, and (3) individual experimentation, the most obvious sign of child participation. It is important for archaeologists to note that an increase in scaffolding will cause a decrease in archaeological visibility of novices.

Finally, Ferguson discusses the variability among stone tools as a measure of proficiency. It is generally assumed that the more uniform a lithic assemblage is, the greater the expertise of the individual or group that produced it. This theory was corroborated by Ferguson’s own experiment in which his points had the greatest standardization and the verbal instruction groups had the greatest variability. However he cautions that this may not always be the case, referencing examples in which expert craftspeople strived to produce variability in their work.

Ferguson’s discussion of the differing methods acquiring craft production skills is a necessary one given that this will have considerable consequences on the form of the archaeological record. The majority of the factors he discusses are accessible to archaeologists such as the avaialability of raw material, the recyclability of material and dangers associated in production. Given these factors, deviations from the expected pattern may be due to the less understood variables of individual development or social/cultural factors.

Both in the introduction and before introducing the experiment, Ferguson highlights the inaccuracy of conflating the terms “novice” and “child” when dealing with the products of unskilled craftspeople. He states that, “Unless unskilled work can be shown to be the work of children, it should not be assumed to be the work of children.” Although this is an important concern, Ferguson himself repeatedly makes this mistake, conflating the terms “novice” and “child” throughout his discussion on instructional methods. When making statements such as, “There are numerous examples in which the general access to and value of raw material influenced the specific access of novices to raw material….In cases where raw material is relatively abundant and low in value, children may be permitted to experiment, either on their own,” Ferguson conflates these two terms which he previously goes to lengths to disentangle.

However, the most significant criticism of this paper can be leveled against the experimental methods and conclusions that demonstrate differences between instructional techniques. In this study, two out of the four volunteers taught by verbal instruction and demonstration became competent knappers, while three out of four taught by scaffolding became competent. This is a difference of a single individual, yet Ferguson concludes that “While this is a small sample size, the scaffolding method was more successful at producing knappers skilled at small point pressure flaking while at the same time conserving raw material.” It is difficult to tell whether this statement is incorrect or simply misleading, its exact meaning depending heavily on how it is interpreted. In any case, it is not possible to conclude that scaffolding is a more successful method of producing knappers with a difference of a single volunteer.

To support the claim that scaffolding is a superior method of instruction, Ferguson turns to the W/T ratio, a calculation that is “useful in demonstrating the utility of scaffolding in both teaching novices to knap and in conservation of raw material.” He compares these measurements in his own points, the 25 points of each volunteer taught using scaffolding, and the first 25 points of each volunteer taught through verbal instruction. The points selected introduce significant bias into this comparison of efficacy of teaching methods. First, by selecting the points from the scaffolding group that he in fact helped to produce, Ferguson is elevating the apparent ability of these volunteers who did not complete the majority of the flake removals until the 15th-20th points. A better method of comparison may have been to use every fifth point from the scaffolding group, which was entirely made by the volunteers, as these would have best represented what they had learned. Secondly, Ferguson does not include the final five points of the group that received verbal instruction, removing what was most likely their best work.

Finally, although Ferguson discusses the merits and drawbacks of scaffolding and experimentation as methods of instruction, he only refers to the effects on the immediate act of instruction, and not in the wider context of daily activities. For example, scaffolding may have advantages in that the points produced will be functional, however this teaching method may involve a greater participation on the part of the expert, time that would be taken from other necessary activities. A log of the time spent actively assisting each of the two groups would have provided a simple yet useful addition to the study.

Despite the problems in the design and conclusions in his study, Ferguson raises a very important theoretical point. The evidence of novice craft production in the archaeological record will show significant variation depending on how instruction was carried out, and in the case of scaffolding, there may be little or no evidence at all.

Reference:

Ferguson, Jeffrey R. 2008. The When, Where, and How of Novices in Craft Production. J Archaeol Method Theory 15:51-67.

Grann on the lost Amazonian tribe "hoax"

A few months back we were talking about the so-called "lost Amazonian tribe" that had been much discussed in the news in May of 2008.



David Grann has an interesting post with an update on the 'hoax' at the Huffington Post. Some of it is publicity for his new book, but there's some interesting information, and useful back links, so I thought I'd link to it here as well. It raises some thought-provoking questions on the reporting of anthropological news, especially in this day of 24 hour news cycles. Here's an excerpt:

The dispute over the photographs stemmed from confusion over the meaning of "uncontacted," as these groups are commonly designated. Though Meirelles had never said the tribe was unknown, many in the press had initially portrayed the group as such. In fact, like many of these tribes, the group's existence had had long been known about--its presence detected either by frontiersmen or by satellite imagery. Indeed, it is likely that many of these tribes have had some form of fleeting "contact" with outsiders over the years.

But that did not make the photographs "fakes" or a "hoax." The reason these tribes are classified as "uncontacted" is because they have retreated into the jungle and consciously avoided any interaction with settlers--an interaction that has frequently led to the extinction of Amazonian tribes.

Might making yourself 'uncontacted' be a form of territoriality driven by concerns not considered in the readings on the topic we discussed?

Santino!

Here's a link to the story of the 'plan-ahead chimp' Santino. Maybe it's not so surprising this primate got so irate at crowds of people that disturb it, what with it sharing the name of perhaps the most irascible character in the Godfather.


The paper that the report mentions is Osvath (2009). Here's a summary:

Planning for a future, rather than a current, mental state is a cognitive process generally viewed as uniquely human. Here, however, I shall report on a decade of observations of spontaneous planning by a male chimpanzee in a zoo. The planning actions, which took place in a calm state, included stone caching and the manufacture of discs from concrete, objects later used as missiles against zoo visitors during agitated chimpanzee dominance displays. Such planning implies advanced consciousness and cognition traditionally not associated with nonhuman animals [1]. Spontaneous and unambiguous planning behaviours for future states by non-humans have not previously been reported, and anecdotal reports, describing single occasions, are exceptionally scarce [2,3,4]. This dearth of observations is arguably the main reason for not ascribing cognitive foresight to nonhuman animals [1]. To date, the surprisingly few controlled demonstrations of planning for future states by animals are experimentally induced behaviours in great apes [5,6,7] and corvids [8,9]. The observational findings in this report suggest that these laboratory results are not experimental artefacts, at least in the case of great apes.

There's been a few, mostly humoristic write-ups about this news report, including one by John Hawks, and another one by PZ Myers. As we discussed in class, I think that the crucial aspect of this research on Santino's behavior is that of establishing that some non-human animals exhibit behaviors that imply a relatively sophisticated form of planning. The debate over this blows open some of the preconceptions that many researchers still have about human uniqueness...

Reference:

Osvath, M. 2009. Spontaneous planning for future stone throwing by a male chimpanzee. Current Biology 19(5): R190-R191. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2009.01.010

Informative teeth

Sometimes, one realizes that small objects are holding a wider range of information that would have been thought. Simple teeth in the archaeological record are an example of that situation; it seems that an assemblage of pierced teeth in an archaeological burial can give us information on how prehistoric people hunted, in which environment and even which type of animal was preferred. Those are at least the conclusions reached by d’Errico and Vanhaeren in their 2002 paper.

This paper could be divided into three main parts. The first one is an attempt to find a way of assessing the age and sex of deer by looking at metrical and morphological measures. In order to come with an effective model to age animals, d’Errico and Vanhaeren look at two British reference collections of red deer (Cervus elaphus) teeth. As the age of those teeth is already known, they can play around to find the model that is best-fitting to the real situation. Seeing dimorphism between stag and hind teeth, they divide those two groups and come to a different equation for each sex to predict the age of a teeth based on its morphology and wear pattern. Both equations predict 80% of the age of the teeth with an error ranging from 2.5 years (male) to 4 years (female).

The second part is an attempt to apply those equations to an archaeological assemblage of 196 deer canines found in a multiple burial at the site of Aven des Iboussières (dated to around 10,210 + 80 BP) in order to see the pattern of kill of the occupants of the site. Based on the high number of prime-age males and the wide variety of age in females seen in the assemblage, they come to the conclusion that hunters were targeting males in the time of rut, while going at random in hunting females, which is hard to understand for me. Why would they try to find specifically prime-age males but kill any female that crossed their paths? The authors’ explanation is that this would have prevented a depletion of reproductive females, thus acting for a renewal of the hunted population. This makes sense but I feel that, in this situation, it would have been more productive to target older females… What also surprises me is that, by looking at those prehistoric teeth, they are capable of inferring that those animals were being hunted in wooden environments. While I am very interested in this possible link between mortality profile, sex ratios and environment, I cannot keep myself from wondering if this is a solid assumption. I do not claim to have any particular knowledge of animal behavior and thus I wonder if the social organization of deer is really that different according to the environment in which they are found.

In the third part of the paper, the authors combine the ratio of paired to unpaired teeth in the Aven des Iboussières assemblage to the differences in decoration on certain teeth to suggest systematic gift-exchange of single tooth between individuals. If this hypothesis makes sense, it unfortunately misses empirical data to back it up. D’Errico and Vanhaeren quickly mention that this type of behavior is found in ‘traditional societies’, but they do not explain this any further. I would be interested in getting more information on those social behaviors in order to have a better idea of the material they would leave in the archaeological record.

I found this paper very interesting. Even if some of the links it made are unclear to me, it brings up very important issues for archaeologists. The emphasis put on the importance of differentiating between the hunting practices in regard to the sex of the animals should be kept in mind for future research. The equations used to age prehistoric teeth seem promising and should be applied to assemblages in which we have associations between skeletons and ornaments. In those situations, we could go further into assessing if social differentiations were present and what those would entail.

Reference:

D'Errico, F. and M. Vanhaeren. 2002. Criteria for identifying red deer (Cervus elaphus) age and sex from their canines. Application to the study of Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic ornaments, Journal of Archaeological Science 29:211-232

Extended phenotypes and niche construction theory

Following yesterday's class on human niche construction and on the interactions between foragers and their environment, here's a link to a report (slightly over a month old) about a conference on the notion of the extended phenotype as originally proposed by the famous evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and the recent debates between proponents of niche construction theory.

Here's a taste:

"... there was lively debate between Dawkins and proponents of niche construction over the role of evolution within closely coupled ecosystems. Niche construction theory goes further than EP [extended phenotype] by suggesting that organisms can alter the selective pressures acting on them by modifying their environment in many ways beyond immediate constructions such as beaver dams. In niche construction theory, the link between variations in an organism's genes and in the surrounding environment is more loosely coupled with no clear mechanism for natural selection to operate.

However according to niche construction theory, there is a feedback effect, in that the genes of organisms alter the environment indirectly, for example by improving nests, that in turn modifies the selective pressures on those genes. Dawkins argued that niche construction is really a special case of EP, relating to genes of those organisms that participate in the relevant environmental construction. But he dismissed the idea that evolution can act in a broader sense across a whole ecosystem, extending to organisms not directly involved in the niche construction. He reiterated the point running through all his books, that selection can only operate against variation of replicators, which are almost always alleles (variants) of genes. The variation in genes caused by mutation generates the different phenotypes, characteristics such as animal behaviour, that allow natural selection to work."

You can read the whole story here.