Lactase persistence (LP) is common among people of European ancestry, but with the exception of some African, Middle Eastern and southern Asian groups, is rare or absent elsewhere in the world. Lactase gene haplotype conservation around a polymorphism strongly associated with LP in Europeans (213,910 C/T) indicates that the derived allele is recent in origin and has been subject to strong positive selection. Furthermore, ancient DNA work has shown that the 213,910*T (derived) allele was very rare or absent in early Neolithic central Europeans. It is unlikely that LP would provide a selective advantage without a supply of fresh milk, and this has lead to a gene-culture coevolutionary model where lactase persistence is only favoured in cultures practicing dairying, and dairying is more favoured in lactase persistent populations. We have developed a flexible demic computer simulation model to explore the spread of lactase persistence, dairying, other subsistence practices and unlinked genetic markers in Europe and western Asia’s geographic space. Using data on 213,910*T allele frequency and farming arrival dates across Europe, and approximate Bayesian computation to estimate parameters of interest, we infer that the 213,910*T allele first underwent selection among dairying farmers around 7,500 years ago in a region between the central Balkans and central Europe, possibly in association with the dissemination of the Neolithic Linearbandkeramik culture over Central Europe. Furthermore, our results suggest that natural selection favouring a lactase persistence allele was not higher in northern latitudes through an increased requirement for dietary vitamin D. Our results provide a coherent and spatially explicit picture of the coevolution of lactase persistence and dairying in Europe.

/pdf/the-origins-of-lactase-persistence-in-europe-553ptfhim5.pdf

The Origins of Lactase Persistence in Europe

There is hardly a more romantic image in anthropology than that of a small band of hunter-gatherers setting off into the bush, their few belongings on their backs. Mobility, in fact, has long been considered a defining characteristic of hunter-gatherers. At the Man the Hunter conference, for example, Lee & DeVore (101:1 1) assumed that all hunter-gatherers "move around a lot." This is not entirely accurate, for many hunter-gatherers move infrequently-some less than many "sedentary" horticultural societies. Early concepts of mobility blinded us to the fact that mobility is universal, variable, and multi-dimensional. Partly because of these concepts, and partly because we do not understand the relationships between movement and material culture, archaeologists have had difficulty identifying different forms and levels of mobility. This is especially true in defining and then detecting sedentism. It is important that we learn to recognize the various forms of mobility archaeologically, because the ways people move exert strong influences on their culture and society. In his classic study, Mauss (105), for example, related the Inuit's seasonal mobility to their moral and religious life. Sahlins (136) saw mobility as conditioning cultural attitudes towards material goods. Currently, archaeologists focus attention on the sedentarization process because reduced mobility precipitates dramatic changes in food storage, trade, territoriality, social and gender inequality, male/female work patterns, subsis-

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/2155980

Mobility/Sedentism: Concepts, Archaeological Measures, and Effects

Nimrods, Piscators, Pluckers, and Planters: The Emergence of Food Production

In this book, Robert L. Kelly challenges the preconceptions that hunter-gatherers were Paleolithic relics living in a raw state of nature, instead crafting a position that emphasizes their diversity, and downplays attempts to model the original foraging lifeway or to use foragers to depict human nature stripped to its core. Kelly reviews the anthropological literature for variation among living foragers in terms of diet, mobility, sharing, land tenure, technology, exchange, male-female relations, division of labor, marriage, descent and political organization. Using the paradigm of human behavioral ecology, he analyzes the diversity in these areas and seeks to explain rather than explain away variability, and argues for an approach to prehistory that uses archaeological data to test theory rather than one that uses ethnographic analogy to reconstruct the past.

The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum

Archaeology of the continental shelf: Marine resources, submerged landscapes and underwater archaeology

Nomads in Archaeology

List of illustrations List of tables Preface 1. Introduction 2. Origins and definitions 3. Nomad pastoral economy 4. Residence, descent and territory 5. Nomads - the invisible culture? 6. Nomad architecture and domestic space 7. Ali's camp: a nomad household campsite 8. The structure and location of nomad settlements 9. Sariaydin Yayla 10. The lost world of Nemut Dag 11. Nomad archaeology: an assessment 12. Towards a model of unstable settlement systems References Glossary Index.

Nomads in archaeology

Cet article est consacre aux differents moyens d'accumulation de coquillages, dans la zone de Weipa (Australie), dans des monticules ou les bivalves Anadara seraient majoritaires. Les differentes etudes stratigraphiques, de textures et de composants specifiques sont relatees. De toute evidence elles prouvent que l'accumulation de l'Anadara dans differents substrats, y compris les lateritiques, de ces monticules ne s'est pas produite par l'action de differents depots cotiers. Les AA. en concluent que des humains en sont responsables

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/40386985.pdf

The origin of Anadara shell mounds at Weipa, North Queensland, Australia

The logic of the herd: A computer simulation of archaeological herd structure

The following is a preliminary report on archaeological work undertaken in September and October 1985 in conjunction with an ethnographic mapping project carried out by the South Australian Museum and Arukun Shire Council.Â  The mapping project, which has continued in some form for the past 15 years, was set up by anthropologists Peter Sutton and John von Sturmer along with the traditional owners of clan estates.Â  As this work, and similar work in eastern Cape York, has had as one of its primary aims the elucidation of traditional patterns of land tenure, it represents a major potential resource for archaeology (Chase 1980; Sutton 1978; von Sturmer 1978).

/pdf/a-preliminary-report-on-archaeological-findings-in-aurukun-4t7vq2ni6z.pdf

Roger Cribb

Papers

Nomads in Archaeology

Nomads in archaeology

The origin of Anadara shell mounds at Weipa, North Queensland, Australia

The logic of the herd: A computer simulation of archaeological herd structure

A preliminary report on archaeological findings in Aurukun Shire, western Cape York