Showing papers in "Current Anthropology in 1986"

Systematic Butchery by Plio/Pleistocene Hominids at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania

Abstract: Human origins research by archaeologists has expanded the evidence of the diet and subsistence activities of ancient hominids. We examine an important component of that evidence, the 1.75-million-year-old faunal assemblage from the FLK Zinjanthropus site at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Skeletal-part frequencies are used to evaluate hominid access to and differential transport of carcass portions of differing nutritional value. Cut-mark frequencies and locations are used to evaluate butchery patterns including skinning, disarticulation, and defleshing of carcasses. In contrast to other recently published assessments of the FLK Zinjanthropus data, we conclude that (1) ancient hominids had full access to meaty carcasses of many small and large animals prior to any substantial loss of meat or marrow bones through other predator or scavenger feeding; (2) ancient hominids were butchering animal carcasses by an efficient and systematic technique that involved skinning, disarticulation, and defleshing; and (3) the FL...

The Settlement of the Americas: A Comparison of the Linguistic, Dental, and Genetic Evidence [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract: The classification of the indigenous languages of the Americas by Greenberg distinguishes three stocks, Amerind, Na-Dene, and Aleut-Eskimo. The first of these covers almost all of the New World. The second consists of Na-Dene as defined by Sapir and, outside of recent. Athapaskan extensions in California and the American Southwest, is found in southern Alaska and northwestern Canada. The third, Aleut-Eskimo, is the easternmost branch of the Eurasiatic language family located in northern Asia and Europe. These three linguistic stocks are found to agree well with the three dental groups proposed by Turner and the genetic divisions of the New World population advanced by Zegura. The three groups are hypothesized as representing the settlement of the New World by successive migrations from Asia. The earliest is in all probability the Amerind; the relative priority of Na-Dene to Aleut-Eskimo is less certain. The evidence regarding the absolute chronology of these proposed migrations is discussed.

The Walls of Jericho: An Alternative Interpretation

Abstract: Historique des expeditions decidees a trouver les murs detruits par Josue. Reexamen des conclusions de K. Kenyon, grâce a la derniere publication de T. A. Holland. Expose des sequences chronologiques depuis le Natoufien (de I a XI) et leur datation C14. Afin de reconsiderer les interpretations de K. Kenyon, l'A. explore l'evolution generale des cultures prehistoriques du Proche-Orient, la position speciale de Jericho, les processus geomorphologiques qui influencerent son histoire. Il semble que les murs du PPNA aient ete construits a un moment ou les habitants songeaient surtout a proteger leurs installations des caprices de la nature

Isotope Assessment and the Seasonal- Mobility Hypothesis in the Southwestern Cape of South Africa1

Abstract: This paper consists of a stable carbon isotopic assessment of the diets of the Holocene human inhabitants of the southwestern Cape, South Africa. Samples of the foods these people ate were collected from each of the four major physiographic zones in the area and their 13C/12C rations measured. A total of more than 200 such analyses enabled the estimation of the average 13C values of prehistoric human diets in each zone. This information is used to interpret 13C measurements on a series of archaeological human skeletons. The results are consistent with a model of prehistoric subsistence behaviour in which a number of people living at the coast made intensive use of marine food resources throughout the Holocene, consuming such a large proportion of these foods that they must have spent much if not all of their time at the coast. Most inland skeletons reflect an almost entirely terrestrial diet. These results contradict hypotheses about seasonal population movements between the coast and the interior generat...

The Construction of Primary Data in Cultural Anthropology

Abstract: ERL: I don't find it so strange. there can be guile in these matters. Here in King's I am certainly seen as very conservative. It has already been forgotten that women became members of the College for the first time (after 525 years) while I was Provost. It is an interesting story. To make the proposal plausible, we had to have allies. There was much backstage negotiation with our neighbours, Clare and Churchill. Both these colleges eventually first admitted women at the same time as King's. But they had problems. In Clare the Master was enthusiastic; at Churchill the Master was opposed. The Clare story was that the Old Guard dug up a retired fellow who had not been seen for 20 years. He turned up in a Bath chair and cast his vote against the admission of women. So they were back at square one. We took things slowly and talked it out for a couple of years or perhaps more. The opposition were clearly in a minority, but we had to win by a two-thirds majority of the whole Governing Body (that is, all the Fellows, about 100 individuals). At the last minute, when I thought all was lost, the leader of the opposition got up and made a highly emotional speech to the effect hat this was the most important vote that the College had faced during the last 500 years. He could see that his supporters were in a minority, so he asked them to change sides and let this historic decision go through on a unanimous vote. One splendid old boy refused to take that one and said he must abstain. So King's voted for the admission of women nem. con.! That could only have happened in King's. But there was some anthropology in it, too. If I had not already begun to acquire the reputation of being much more conservative than my erratic predecessor, I doubt if we would have made it at all. I am no fisherman, but it was all rather like landing a salmon. References Cited

Phylogenetic Analysis of Early Hominids

Abstract: The proposal of the new australopithecine species Australopithecus afarensis has led to a multiplicity of hypotheses concerning the evolutionary relationships between the known Pliocene and Pleistocene hominid species. We use phylogenetic analysis to gain a new perspective on the subject. Using 69 traits, we construct a series of 12 complexes, each with a defining polarized morphocline. Four mutually exclusive cladograms are derived from these complexes, the most parsimonious of which implies that Homo habilis and A. robustus/boisei are more closely related to each other than either is to A. africanus and that these three species form a distinct evolutionary group relative to the more primitive A. afarensis. We advocate a phylogeny wherein A. afarensis is ancestral to A. africanus, which is in turn ancestral to A. robustus/boisei and H. habilis. We believe that the evolutionary transition from Australopithecus to Homo involved reduction in the size of the chewing teeth and associated traits leading to a u...

The Origins of Image Making

Abstract: Although often mythologized as sudden, primal, and spontaneous, image making is a predictable adaptation which should be coherently situated in the overall trajectory of hominid evolution. It was a distinctive and specific cultural achievement but one that can be derived logically from simple and archaic perceptual and cognitive processes. In the view presented here, image making originated in the discovery of the representational capacity of lines, marks, or blots of color which need not and often do not have a representational status. Continually marking the world will continually in crease the probability that marks will be seen as things. Thus the emergence of representation is the predictable logical and perceptual consequence of the increasing elaboration of the man-made visual world.

Zhoukoudian: A Closer Look [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract: On-site observations on the faunal collections remaining in Beijing from the prewar excavations of Zhoukoudian are reported. Assessments are made regarding the degree to which these collections represent both the faunal remains removed from the site. Comparative studies of the observed materials are then presented with the aim of assessing the relative roles of hominids and other denning animals. It is concluded that, given our current knowledge of diagnostic criteria, nonhominid denning animals were the dominant agents responsible for the Zhoukoudian faunal remains and that, while hominids were certainly also involved, they are likely to have been scavenging animal products rather than hunting. Provocative evidence of the "roasting" of horse heads seems indicated for the recent (<250,000 years ago) levels at Zhoukoudian.

The "Kurgan Culture," Indo-European Origins, and the Domestication of the Horse: A Reconsideration (and Comments and Replies)

Abstract: The "Kurgan culture" concept has for two decades been the central element in attempts to explain the cultural shifts that occurred during the Late Copper Age/Early Broze Age transition in Eastern Europe, ca. 2500 b.c. These shifts represented a significant departure from earlier cultural trajectories and established the foundation for the subsequent development of European societies. It is suggested here tht the "Kurgan culture" concept lacks interpretative utility, for it unites archaeological groups of widely different origin, chronological placement, and cultural affiliation. Such distinctions are documented in the cases of the Sredni Stog culture, the Yamma horizon, and the Usatovo culture. An alternative explanation for many of the observed cultural changes can be found in the domestication of the horse and its development as a mount by steppe river-valley societies during the period 3300-2700 b.c. The socioeconomic implications of this event are specified by using the American Indian experience with...

Food Sharing on Ifaluk

Abstract: by LAURA L. BETZIG and PAUL W. TURKE Museum of ZoologylDepartment of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48109, U.S.A. 26 III 86 Food sharing is probably universal in human societies (e.g., Sahlins 1972); it has also recently been considered a new Rubicon in human evolution (e.g., Isaacs 1978). So far, little quantitative work has been done to determine how and why people share food (but see Kaplan et al. 1984, Kaplan and Hill 1985, Betzig n.d.). The analysis which follows uses quantitative data to determine whether or not food sharing on Ifaluk, a Western Caroline Island, is an adaptive activity. Hamilton (1963, 1964) predicted that apparent altruism will be adaptive where k > 1/r, where k represents the ratio of reproductive benefit o the recipient o reproductive cost to the donor and r is the proportion of shared genes identical by descent. Gifts reciprocated in kind may be adaptive as well (e.g., Trivers 1971), but, because a return in kind on any gift is never a certainty, actors may be expected to minimize the risk of loss, other things being equal, by investing in related individuals (e.g., Essock-Vitale and McGuire 1980, 1985). Other things which may not be equal include the ability of the recipient to benefit by the gift, the cost of giving it, and, possibly, the cost of not giving it (e.g., Moore 1984, Blurton Jones 1984; see also Feinman 1979). In predicting that people will satisfy Hamilton's inequality in their food-sharing activity we make three assumptions. First, close kin should have been available as sources of altruism throughout human evolutionary history. The ethnographic record, especially on hunting-and-gathering societies (e.g., Lee and DeVore 1968), strongly suggests that this has been the case. Second, shared food must currently and/or historically have contributed to recipients' fitness. Both comparative (e.g., Betzig 1986) and quantitative (e.g., Irons 1979, Boone n.d., Borgerhoff Mulder n.d.) data from traditional cultures, including Ifaluk itself (Turke and Betzig 1985), suggest that access to productive resources corresponds to reproductive success. Third, reproductive costs and benefits not taken into account must roughly average out. Our analysis suggests that food sharing on Ifaluk does take place among close genealogical kin and that individuals do take specified costs and benefits into account, including the cost of transporting a gift of food, the cost of not giving food to people of rank, and the benefit of giving food to households with a higher proportion of dependent children.

Trade, Women, Class, and Society in Ancient Western Asia [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract: Recent discussion of the effects on society of long-distance exchange has brought the once generally accepted view of early Mesopotamian society as "statist" under heavy fire. There is now broad consensus that by Early Dynastic III there were widespread exchange systems in which the production of commodities played an important role and that by that time individuals were engaging in exchange for personal gain. These important new insights have had the effect of pushing into the conceptual background the role of the central societal institutions. Despite their import, however, it is inappropriate to single out any one factor in attempting to delineate the transformative forces of a social formation. Early Mesopotamian exchange should be approached as part of the changing complex of social relations of production that characterized Mesopotamian society. I suggest that the modes of production characterizing Mesopotamia were quite different from the modern capitalist mode; that centralized production with pub...

On Skull Form and the Supraorbital Torus in Primates

Abstract: by BRIAN T. SHEA Departments of Anthropology and Cell Biology and Anatomy, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. 60201, U.S.A. 29 xi 85 In her detailed and informative analysis of the supraorbital torus (CA 26:337-60), Russell critically reviews many previous explanations of browridge morphology in humans and other primates. Among those that she considers and rejects is an \"explicitly nonmechanical model of browridge function that is compatible with bone biology\" (p. 340) and that relates to the spatial relationships among the neurocranium, the orbits, and the face. She cites, among others, Weidenreich (1941), Biegert (1957), Moss and Young (1960), Scott (1963), and Enlow and McNamara (1973) as advocating this view of browridge form and function and states (p. 340, italics mine):

Individualism and Equality [and Comments and Replies]

Abstract: This paper examines, at the level of values, the relationship between individualism and equality. It has been widely held, since the time of Tocqueville, that, whereas traditional societies emphasize hierarchical values and collective identities, modern societies are marked by their simultaneous concern for equality and the individual. The assumption of a correspondence between individualism and equality appears to be challenged by programmes of affirmative discrimination in which collective identities are stressed, sometimes at the expense of individual claims, as a part of the pursuit of equality. Here the idea is that individual mobility is not enough to reduce certain disparities between groups and that special measures may be required to reduce these disparities and make equality more secure and meaningful. The relationship between individualism and equality is a complex one. Individualism might lead to either an appreciation of human equality or a preoccupation with the inequality of man. One may, f...

Vertical Movement of Artifacts in Alluvial and Stratified Deposits

Abstract: by JACK L. HOFMAN Oklahoma Archaeological Survey, 1808 Newton Drive, Rm. 116, Norman, Okla. 73019, U.S.A. 15 Ix 85 Definition of buried occupation surfaces and contextual interpretation of materials in alluvial and other stratified eposits are recurrent archaeological problems. Because of the central importance of these problems, we must employ as many methodological and technical aids as practical in the evaluation and definition of the assemblages we use in behavioral studies of the past. Historically, concern for evaluating the integrity of artifact samples in alluvium has focused on the problem of horizontal displacement (Butzer 1971:230-31; Cornwall 1958:23-24; Hanson 1980; Isaac 1967; Shackley 1974, 1978; Wymer 1976), and in stratified eposits there has been a general lack of concern for the evaluation of vertical postdepositional movement. There is, however, increasing evidence that vertical movement of buried particles, including artifacts, within and between stratigraphic units not only is common but in some sites may be pervasive. This report documents the results of one small study with implications for the interpretation of stratified alluvial sites in many regions and further demonstrates the utility of refitting as an aid in the resolution of contextual problems in archaeological analyses (Cahen 1976; Cahen and Moeyersons 1977; Bunn et al. 1980; Myers 1958; Van Noten 1978; Villa 1982, 1983). The background and analytical approach to the study of the Cave Spring site have been presented previously (Brakenridge and Hofman 1983; Hofman 1981a, b, 1983, 1984a; Hofman and Brakenridge 1982a, b; Turner, Hofman, and Brakenridge 1982). The results of these investigations are not, however, widely available and have not been placed in the context of alluvial site studies in general or stratified site investigations in particular. The results summarized here are pertinent o most sites in alluvial settings and to interpretations of open-air stratified eposits. The Cave Spring site was recognized as a concentration of lithic tools and debris on the Holocene Ti and Pleistocene T2 terraces of the Duck River in the Nashville Basin of middle Tennessee. Cultural deposits on the T2 terrace were restricted to the plowzone, but backhoe trenches revealed buried cultural material in the stratified Holocene Ti terrace. Chipped-stone artifacts, river gravel, and charred botanical remains were found scattered throughout a buried paleosol dated to between 6,500 and 7,300 radiocarbon years before present (Hofman 1982). Details of this stratigraphy have been presented elsewhere, and the analysis of the assemblage, river gravel, and botanical remains are not the primary concern of this report (see Amick 1984; Brakenridge 1982, 1984; Hofman 1984a, b). The key concern here is to disseminate conclusions about the postdepositional vertical movement of chipped-stone items throughout he buried paleosol and into adjacent sediments. The importance of these findings is in their implications for the definition of buried living floors or occupational surfaces and for assemblage definition and analysis. The vertical scatter of artifacts and other material in the backhoe trench profile is shown in figure 1. Mapping and study of this profile did not facilitate a direct interpretation of the number of depositional surfaces present or of the integrity of the materials. Therefore, a closely controlled manual excavation, consisting of two 2 x 3-m areas, was made in an attempt to evaluate the integrity of the deposit and its potential for use in behavioral studies of past activities. We needed to determine if the materials were in primary context or redeposited and how many depositional surfaces were present before designing and proceeding with further analysis. The basic approach was three-dimensionally plotting all items larger than 1 cm as encountered in the excavation and attempting to refit he materials recovered. Maps of refitted sets were then compared with histograms howing the vertical distributions of all gravel and chipped-stone items. All graphs showing the vertical density distribution of gravel and chipped stone, as recovered by levels extending through the buried paleosol, form highly peaked unimodal curves. Such leptokurtic distributions suggest that there was one primary depositional surface either (1) with materials subsequently vertically dispersed from it or (2) with lesser occupations or depositions above and below it. For purposes of this discussion I have limited the examples and illustrations to one of the 2 x 3-m test excavation areas, Area B. The same patterning is present in Area A, but the quantity of material recovered is considerably less. The vertical distribution of river gravel recovered from three 1-m units in Area B is shown in figure 2a; the histograms how the peaked unimodality noted. Also, the northern slope of the paleosol, which contained the majority of gravel and chipped stone, is evidenced by the increasing depth from south to north of the peak densities. The vertical distribution of chippedstone items less than 1 cm in greatest dimension, predominantly bifacial thinning flakes and flake fragments, is shown in figure 2b. Some evidence of vertical size sorting may be indicated. The very small flakes (less than 1 cm in size) tend to have peak densities or high densities slightly lower than the larger gravel and chipped-stone items (1-5 cm in size) for the same units. The vertical distribution of larger chipped-stone items is summarized in figure 3. The gravel and chipped-stone material have closely comparable vertical distributions, and this information is taken as an indication that at least the majority of these materials were originally deposited on a single surface. The gravel was apparently culturally introduced to the terrace surface for use in heating or stone boiling. One gravel concentration, perhaps reflecting a dispersed hearth or disposal of boiling stones, was encountered. The paleosol gravels were fire-fractured and thermally altered significantly more than a control collection from a nearby modern gravel bar (most of the available local gravel turns from tan to red with intense heating). Over 30% of the gravel from Areas A and B had been thermally altered as compared with less than 2% from the modern gravel-bar collection. This apparently reflects use of the gravel in stone boiling or as heat retainers in hearths or roasting pits. The presence of gravel in the paleosol originally cast some doubt on the integrity of the deposit. It was initially interpreted to have resulted from high-energy overbank deposition, and if it had been deposited by flood action at the same time as, or after, the artifacts rather than before, then the context of the artifacts would have been suspect. In addition to the gravel concentration and the high incidence of thermal alteration, several other lines of evidence indicated that the materials were in primary horizontal context. These included pristine edges on chipped-stone items, unabraded fragile paleobotanical remains, juxtaposition of large and minute, variously shaped stone items which would have been size sorted under conditions of high-energy fluvial transport, and the fine-grained matrix of the Ti terrace, which is composed of fine silty clay (Brakenridge 1984). The terrace sediments on I ? 1986 by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, all rights reserved 0011-3204/86/2702-0006$1.00. Research at the Cave Spring site and with the collection has been supported by Tennessee Valley Authority contract TV-49244A, with Walter E. Klippel the principal investigator. Steven R. Johnston and Lee G. Ferguson assisted with the refitting. Special thanks are due to Terry Faulkner for preparing the figures and Walter E. Klippel for continued support and encouragement. Patricia Hofman and Gary D. Crites provided critical reading of the manuscript, and the thoughtful comments of an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged.

New Data on the Origin of Modern Man in the Levant

Abstract: by 0. BAR-YOSEF, B. VANDERMEERSCH, B. ARENSBURG, P. GOLDBERG, H. LAVILLE, L. MEIGNEN, Y. RAK, E. TCHERNOV, and A.-M. TILLIER Institute of Archaeology, Mt. Scopus, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91905, Israel (Bar-Yosef, Goldberg)ILaboratoire d'Anthropologie, Universite de Bordeaux I, 33405 Talence, France (Vandermeersch)/Department of Anatomy and Anthropology, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel (Arensburg, Rak)lInstitut de Quaternaire, Universite de Bordeaux I, 33405 Talence, France (Laville)/Centre de Recherches Archeologiques, Sophia Antipolis, 06565 Valbonne, France (Meignen)/Department of Zoology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 91904, Israel (Tchernov)/Laboratoire de Paleontologie des Vertebres, Universite de Paris VI, 4 Place Jussieu, 75006 Paris, France (Tillier). 5 iv 85 The origin of modern man in the Near East has been a controversial subject since the discoveries of human remains by Garrod, McCown, and Neuville in the caves of Tabuin, Skhtul, and Qafzeh, respectively (Garrod and Bate 1937, McCown and Keith 1939, Neuville 1951). Recent excavations at Tabuin (1967-72) by Jelinek (1982a) and at Qafzeh (1965-1979) by Vandermeersch (1981) refocused attention on this issue. The new excavations at Tabuin provided a detailed stratigraphy for the Mousterian sequence and some portion of the earlier deposits. This enabled Farrand (1979) to suggest a reconstruction of the paleoenvironmental events that were responsible for the accumulation of this remarkably thick (ca. 20 m) sequence. One of the key interpretations was the correlation of the lowermost part of the sandy sequence (which contained Acheulian and \"Acheulo-Yabrudian\" assemblages recently named the Mugharan tradition by Jelinek) with the Last Interglacial, or Isotope Stage 5. On the basis of this suggestion, Jelinek (1981, 1982a, b) plotted the results of his metrical ithic analysis, which showed a gradual decrease in the thickness of the flakes that accelerated markedly between the Early and Late Mousterian. Consequently, Jelinek suggested \"an orderly and continuous progression of industries . . . paralleled by a morphological progression from Neanderthal to modern man\" (Jelinek 1982a: 1374). At Qafzeh, originally excavated by Neuville and M. Stekelis (1933-35) and recently by Vandermeersch (1965-79), the large collection of skeletal remains emanating from the lower portion of the Mousterian sequence has been assigned to Homo sapiens sapiens (Vandermeersch 1981). The age of these deposits remains controversial (Bar-Yosef and Vandermeersch 1981). Paleontological analyses of the microvertebrates by Tchernov (1981) indicate close affinities of the levels that contained the burials with the Upper Acheulian levels of Oumm-Qatafa (Neuville 1951, Haas in Neuville 1951, Tchernov 1968) and greater similarity to Tabuin D than to Tabuin C and B. These levels have been ascribed to a single biozone that Tchernov calls the \"Lower Mousterian.\" Preliminary micromorphological analyses at Qafzeh yield the same conclusion (Goldberg 1980). At Hayonim Cave (western Galilee), the transition from the \"Lower Mousterian\" to the \"Upper Mousterian\" is also documented (Tchernov 1981). Jelinek (1982a) rejects the

A Mechanism for the Origin of the Human Brain: A Hypothesis

Abstract: by KONRAD R. FIAi+KOWSKI Iglaseegasse 68, 1190 Vienna, Austria. 9 XII 85 Increase of brain volume is one of the basic features which differentiate he australopithecines and other human ancestors from modern Homo sapiens. Compared with most evolutionary changes, this increase was rapid, amounting during the Pleistocene to an average of 50-100 cm3 per 100,000 years. The increase in hominid brain volume can be described by an S-shaped curve (see Goralski and Wierciiiski 1964). The mechanism for this adaptation is unclear (Bielicki 1984). It is generally held that simple tool using and tool making and certain social requirements of the hunting mode of life generated powerful selection pressures for new mental abilities, such as planning, memory, more complex and more efficient communication, etc. However, tool making and tool using seem insufficient toexplain the beginning of the growth. The relatively small brains of the australopithecines were sufficient for making simple stone tools. Whereas the brain more than doubled in size during the Lower and Middle Pleistocene and its growth was exponential, stone tools show no comparable breakthrough in sophistication. If there was positive feedback (increase in tool sophistication -> increase in brain volume -> increase in tool sophistication, and so on), it should have resulted in a more evident acceleration and perhaps qualitative change in the sophistication of tools. On the contrary, effective hunting projectiles with hafted points are apparently absent prior to the terminal Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic (Camps-Fabrer 1974; Oakley et al. 1977; Klein 1978; Binford 1981, 1982). The lack of comparable accelerations in the two processes may indicate the lack of positive feedback between them; it may mean that although increase in brain volume produced gradual increase in tool sophistication, it was itself independent of tools and stimulated by other mechanisms. The idea that factors other than tool making or tool using triggered brain-size increase has already been expressed, for example, by Mayr (1970:384): \"Evidently the use and even the making of simple stone tools was not the decisive factor that led to the spectacular increase in brain size in the 1 million years between 1.3 and 0.3 million years ago.\" One of the immediate consequences of this approach may be the notion that increase in brain volume was a preadaptation for abstract thinking (i.e., that the human brain is a side effect of an unknown adaptation that had nothing to do with abstract thinking). Indeed, only the side-effect hypothesis can explain why, under such strong selection pressure as apparently operated in the Middle Pleistocene, the hominid brain did not develop into a simpler one just sufficient to process the information ecessary for a pack-hunting predator (a primate analogue of the wolf or the hunting dog) to control the manufacture of simple stone tools for crushing and the use of sticks or bones for killing, intimidation, and digging. If the hunting way of life generated selection pressures for new mental abilities, such a relatively simple, specialized brain would have been efficient enough to reduce them and make the rapid further evolution of the brain essentially unnecessary. Human brain capabilities definitely exceeding those required for hunting constitute the key problem of hominid evolution. Preadaptation seems the only evolutionary pattern that might result in the observed

Emics, Etics, and Social Objectivity

Abstract: Emic analysis, whether seen as opposed or as complementary to etic modes, is regarded as essential for ensuring that culture-specific particularities are not suppressed in efforts to subsume social phenomena under cross-culturally valid generalizations. Particularly, there is concern that the aim of providing an account of the concepts and principles subjects use to organize reality will be frustrated if alien etic notions function in ethnographic systematization where emic ones should. This paper examines this and other aspects of the emics/etics problem, with particular emphasis on the ostensible function of emic analysis to avoid interpreter imposition of etic categories. It is argued that ethnographic objectivity must acknowledge some degree of imposition but that this does not render emic analysis pointless. Particular emphasis is given to W. V. Quine's idea of the indeterminacy of translation, which seems antithetical to emics but which, with some reconstruction, provides a basis for a viable emic mode.

The Evolution of the Capacity for Culture: Sociobiology, Structuralism, and Cultural Selectionism [and Comments and Replies]

Abstract: Cultural selectionism is a Darwinian approach to the understanding of human culture which, in constrast to sociobiology, holds that cultural evolution proceeds solely on the phenotypic level. Unlike structuralism, cultural selectionism predicts that the form taken by any culture will reflect historical processes rather than underlying, genetically induced biases of the human mind. Genetic selection, however, must be invoked to explain both the origin of the human capacity for culture and the maintenance of this genetic capacity in modern humans. Both the origin and the maintenance of the genetic capacity for culture in humans are most realistically modeled if we assume that culture is fundamentally an adaptation to the social, as opposed to the natural, environment.

Cognitive and Optical Illusions in San Rock Art Research

Abstract: L'interpretation des peintures rupestres est delicate. Elle peut etre source d'hypotheses mais ne peut confirmer celles-ci. Exemple des peintures rupestres des San du Natal

Sex Bias in Intrahousehold Food Distribution: Roles of Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Characteristics

Abstract: A review of literature dealing with intrahousehold food distribution in India indicates that inequality of distribution has probably existed since prehistoric times and is present now as a cultural characteristic of diverse social and ethnic groups Generally females especially young females are the group most discriminated against A study was undertaken to determine whether variations exist with respect to sex bias: 1) between a traditional rural Hindu group and several groups of different ethnic ancestries; and 2) among economic occupational religious and rural/urban subgroups of these groups 1-day semiquantitative data on dietary intakes were collected from the woman running each household using as reference 8 containers decreasing in size from 3000 ml to 100 ml for each of the the following categories of household members: male household head; other male adult; male adolescent (13-18 years); male child; household heads wife other female adult; female adolescent; and female child Sex and age-specific calorie intakes recommended by the Indian Council of Medical Research were used as standards Null hypotheses tested were that each member of a household received what he or she needs and where the total quantity available was > or < that required by the household members food was shared equitably Among Lepchas except for urban Christian Lepchas a bias in favor of females is suggested Among sherpas the relationship is less clear although food intake of the household head and his wife appears lower Among Oraons no sex bias seems to exist Mahishyas of high economic status display a bias in favor of males but among those of medium and low income groups intake appears proportional to individual needs For other groups nutritional intake of most people appears low but small sample sizes may mean differences are insignificant

Cloth and the Organization of Human Experience

Abstract: in a sample of rock paintings from the Barkly East District. South African Archaeological Bulletin 29:93-103. . 1977. Ezeljagdspoort revisited: New light on an enigmatic rock painting. South African Archaeological Bulletin 32:165-69. . 1980. Ethnography and iconography: Aspects of southern San thought and art. Man 15:467-82. . 1981a. Believing and seeing: Symbolic meanings in southern San rock paintings. London: Academic Press. . 198 lb. The thin red line: Southern San notions and rock paintings of supernatural potency. South African Archaeological Bulletin 36:5-13. . 1982. The social and economic context of southern San rock art. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY 23:429-49. . 1983. The rock art of southern Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . 1984a. \"Ideological continuities in prehistoric southern Africa: The evidence of rock art,\" in Past and present in hunter-gatherer studies. Edited by C. Schrire, pp. 225-52. New York: Academic Press. . 1984b. Reply [to H. C. Woodhouse on the social context of southern African rock art]. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY 25:246-48. 1985. The San artistic achievement. African Arts 18(3):54-59. n.d. \"People of the eland\": An archaeo-linguistic crux. MS. LEWIS-WILLIAMS, J. D., and M. BIESELE. 1978. Eland hunting rituals among northern and southern San groups: Striking similarities. Africa 48:117-34. MAGGS, T. M. O'C., and J. SEALY. 1983. Elephants in boxes. South African Archaeological Society, Goodwin Series 4:44-48. MANHIRE, A. H., J. PARKINGTON, and R. YATES. n.d. Nets and fully recurved bows: Rock paintings and hunting methods in the western Cape. World Archaeology. In press. MARSHALL, L. 1969. The medicine dance of the Kung Bushmen. Africa 39:347-81. ORPEN, J. M. 1874. A glimpse into the mythology of the Maluti Bushmen. Cape Monthly Magazine, n.s., 9(49):1-13. PRAGER, H. 1971. Ndedema. Graz: Akademische Druckund Verlagsanstalt. . 1975. Stone Age myth and magic. Graz: Akademische Druckund Verlagsanstalt. PARKINGTON, J. E. 1984. \"Soaqua and Bushmen: Hunters and robbers,\" in Past and present in hunter-gatherer studies. Edited by C. Schrire, pp. 151-74. New York: Academic Press. RICHARDS, W. 1971. The fortification illusions of migraines. Scientific American 224:89-94. RUDNER, J. 1959. Cover design. South African Archaeological Bulletin 14(54). SIEGEL, R. K. 1977. Hallucinations. Scientific American 237:132-40. SIEGEL, R. K., and M. E. JARVIK. 1975. \"Drug-induced hallucinations in animals and man,\" in Hallucinations: Behavior, experience, and theory. Edited by R. K. Siegel and L. J. West, pp. 81-161. New York: Wiley. THACKERAY, A. I. 1983. Dating the rock art of southern Africa. South African Archaeological Society, Goodwin Series 4:21-26. VINNICOMBE, P. 1976. People of the eland. Pietermaritzburg: Natal University Press. WIESSNER, P., and F. T. LARSON. 1979. \"Mother! Sing loudly for me!\": The annotated dialogue of a Basarwa healer in trance. Botswana Notes and Records 11:25-31. WILLCOX, A. R. 1984. The rock art of Africa. Johannesburg: Macmillan. WOODHOUSE, H. C. 1969. Rock paintings of \"eland-fighting\" and \"eland-jumping.\" South African Archaeological Bulletin 94.63-65. . 1978. Rock art. (Pride of South Africa 25.) Cape Town: Purnell. 1979. The Bushman art of southern Africa. Cape Town: Purnell. 1984. When animals were people. Johannesburg: van Rensburg. . 1985. Elephants in the rain? South African Archaeological Bulletin 40:53-54.

Barter and Cash Sale on Lake Titicaca: A Test of Competing Approaches'

Abstract: THE COEXISTENCE OF BARTER AND CASH SALE offers an intriguing theme for economic anthropologists to explore. Two examples of this pattern are found in southern highland Peru. In the marketplaces, villages, and fields around Lake Titicaca, some vendors sell fish for cash and others barter them for potatoes and grains. In the snowcapped cordilleras that ring the lake, herders load their llamas and donkeys with dried meat, wool, and textiles and travel from the high grasslands to agricultural valleys often a number of days away and thousands of meters below to barter their products for maize and other agricultural foodstuffs. The presence of barter in a peasant economy may not seem unusual, but close inspection of these cases raises questions. In the case of exchange of fish, why is barter concentrated among the poorer peasants and in the area adjacent to the lake? Why are native fish bartered more often than introduced species? The herders appear more difficult to understand, since they derive income from the sale of wool and could purchase needed foodstuffs. They complain of the rigors of their trips, whether through muddy insect-infested canyons to the upper reaches of tributaries of the Amazon or across bleak arid wastes to the oasis valleys in the Pacific coastal desert. They could obtain more maize with less difficulty by selling instead of bartering more of their products. Why do they reject this opportunity? An explanation might also be sought for the persistence of barter in the face of the expansion of marketplace systems in the highland Andes in the last several decades. Pryor

Growth Patterns of European and Amerindian High-Altitude Natives

Abstract: by LAWRENCE P. GREKSA Department of Anthropology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106, U.S.A. 16 vii 85 The physical growth of Andean high-altitude natives has been evaluated by a number of researchers. A fairly consistent finding of these studies is that Amerindian highlanders are shorter than lowlanders of the same age from birth onwards (Beall 1981, Beall et al. 1977, Frisancho and Baker 1970, Haas, Baker, and Hunt 1977, Hoff 1974, Mueller et al. 1978, Stinson 1980). The delayed growth of highlanders is at least partially a consequence of their smaller size at birth (Haas et al. 1982). However, primarily on the basis of semilongitudinal and cross-sectional postnatal growth data on rural Quechua from Nufioa, Peru (4,000-5,500 m, about 80% of the sample residing at 4,000-4,500 m), it has been suggested that the smaller size of highlanders is also partially the result of a different pattern of growth than is observed at low altitude (Frisancho 1979). In particular, the growth of highlanders is generally described as slow and prolonged, with a late and poorly defined adolescent growth spurt and a late establishment of sexual dimorphism in stature (Frisancho and Baker 1970, Frisancho 1976). One consequence of this different pattern of growth is that the difference in stature for age between lowand high-altitude natives appears to vary with stage of development, being greatest during adolescence (Beall et al. 1977). Frisancho (1981) concluded that the delayed growth of Nufioans and the associated pattern of growth were probably due to the synergistic influence of hypoxia, hypocaloric stress, and genetic factors, with hypoxia playing a major role. Although the delaying effect of hypoxia on linear growth has been confirmed by numerous studies (Frisancho 1981), few attempts have been made to confirm the universality of the pattern of growth found in Nunioa children. This report presents data relevant to this issue. Ideally, an evaluation of growth patterns or, essentially, of the tempo of growth requires longitudinal data (Tanner 1978). As noted earlier, semilongitudinal data were central to the description of the Nunioa pattern. However, the Nufioa growth pattern is so extreme that it is also evident in the cross-sectional data (fig. 1). Cross-sectional growth curves for Nufioa (Frisancho and Baker 1970) were compared with the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) 5th-percentile stature for age (Hamill et al. 1977). Since Nufioans tend to be shorter than the U.S. 5th percentile (the lowest percentile for which data are available), it was necessary to adjust the scale of the U.S. curves downward in order to facilitate comparisons between the two populations. The pattern of growth in Nufioa, as evaluated by the shape of the cross-sectional growth curves, differs in the expected direction from that for U.S. children. For example, the U.S. growth curves begin levelling off, suggesting a cessation of growth, earlier than in Nufioa, especially in males. Also, whereas there is a clear divergence in stature between U.S. males and females at about 14 years, sexual dimorphism in Nunioa is established later and is never of similar magnitude. Finally, the delayed and poorly defined adolescent spurt in

Kinship and Cognition: Genealogy and the Meaning of Kinship Terms

Abstract: Anthropologists concerned with formal semantic analysis have overwhelmingly accepted the notion that the referential universe of kinship terms is genealogically constrained, while those concerned with a more discursive and symbolic approach have been equally consistent in rejecting that constraint. Formal analysts have typically defended their view by citing (semantic) psychological arguments, i.e., ones focusing on how the mental states and cognitive endowments of speaker/hearers map linguistic forms to real-world referents. For formalists, the facts and processes of meaning motivate accepting the genealogical constraint. Other uses are commonly conceived as metaphoric extensions from this (semantically) "proper" class of kin-term referents. Alternatively, symbolists have invoked social significance and relevance within systems of shared belief as the appropriate determinants of meaning. It is claimed that inasmuch as kinship terms are regularly and relevantly used to refer to nongenealogically related i...

Closure as Cure: Tropes in the Exploration of Bodily and Social Disorder [and Comments and Replies]

Abstract: A close semiotic relationship links textual form, social relations, and the etiology of illness. Using an ethnographic study of "evil eye" headaches on Crete and the verbal and other curing methods used there, this paper attempts to show how the villagers deploy textual form to explore and control both bodily and social discomfort and in some cases to "translate" inchoate experience-both bodily and social-into manageable bodily images. Textual closure both effects and symbolizes the provisional restoration of a sense of order, thereby also providing insight into the means by which the imagery of bodily self-control can serve as a trope of restored social harmony or moral acceptability.

Earliest Radiometrically Dated Artifacts from Southeast Asia

Abstract: Un gisement de la province de Lampang en Thailande, Ban Mae Tha, a fourni des eclats travailles dates du Pleistocene moyen (0,8 et 0,6 millions d'annees) par le Potassium-Argon et le paleomagnetisme. D'autres artefacts decouverts a l'abri de Kao Pah Nam attestent egalement une occupation pre-hoabinhienne

Relationships between Mousterian Lithic and Faunal Assemblages at Combe Grenal

Abstract: Etude du materiel lithique et faunique du Mousterien de Combe Grenal, Dordogne. Mise en evidence de relations entre le type de mousterien et les especes dominantes dans la faune. Comparaison avec les observations de Gabori pour l'Europe centrale. Incidences chronoclimatiques

The Growth of Ethnobiological Nomenclature [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract: This paper evaluates Brent Berlin's general principles of folk biological classification and nomenclature in view of evidence from hunter-gatherer groups which has accumulated over the past decade....

Early Food Production in West Africa: Rethinking the Role of the Kintampo Culture

Abstract: La culture de Kintampo, au Ghana central, est la premiere manifestation d'une economie de production en Afrique occidentale. Cette economie sedentaire est attribuee a la pression demographique. Resultats de la prospection de 36 sites de Kintampo et d'Age du Fer qui met en evidence le role d'autres facteurs comme la deterioration climatique