Showing papers in "Current Anthropology in 1990"

The Giving Environment: Another Perspective on the Economic System of Gatherer-Hunters

Abstract: For the past 25 years anthropologists have been interested in the relation between man and environment in reference especially to gathering and hunting societies. They have viewed these as "societies which by definition share the characteristic that their members obtain their food and other requirements directly from wild natural sources" (Woodburn I 980:95). Approaching the environments of these societies in terms of Western ecological criteria, they have examined how food collectors have adapted to them. For example, on discovering that giving without expecting an equivalent return is more common among food-gathering peoples than among any others and is a feature of most food-gathering societies, they have explained it as a way of reducing risk a kind of "collective insurance against natural fluctuations" (Ingold I980:I44; cf. Lee I968; Woodburn I972; Gould I982; Wiessner I977, i982; Cashdan I985; and Smith I988). This account, however, invoking modern economic and ecological ideas, is unlikely to be acceptable to foodgathering people themselves, for their own ideas about their environment are summed up by /Xashe, a !Kung mnan from Mahopa: "Why should we plant, when there are so many mongongos in the world?" (Lee I979:v). Furthermore, it makes little sense of these people's demand for generosity and practice of what has been recently described as demand sharing (Barnard and Woodburn i988:I2; Peterson I986:I). Why do they make constant demands for sharing and not require people to produce more (cf. Barnard and Woodburn I988: i I)? Why do they have this "collective insurance against natural fluctuations" when they have little difficulty in obtaining their material requirements and desires, setting these well within their capacity to achieve and allowing themselves much leisure (Sahlins i968:85-89; I972:I39), and when some of them have access to alternative sources from farming neighbours? Moreover, recent work has erased the "great divide" between food-collecting and food-producing peoples (Hamilton i982:232), showing that some gathererhunters (especially of Woodburn's [I980, I988] "immediate-return" type) have, and have had, close economic links with farming neighbours and have themselves pursued cultivation and husbandry periodically or occasionally (see Schrire I984, Headland and Reid I989, and case studies by Gardner I985, Endicott I984, and Bird-David I988). This work has led to doubts over how satisfactory it is to distinguish between them and other peoples in relation to their mode of subsistence and, hence, to explain their distribution practices in terms of that subsistence mode (see Barnard I983, I987; Williams and Hunn i982; Hamilton i982; and Schrire I984). Because the traditional approach has reached its limits with respect to certain important issues, in this paper another perspective on gatherer-hunters' economic arrangements is explored. This perspective suggests that gatherer-hunters are distinguished from other peoples by their particular views of the environment and of themselves and, in relation to this, by a particular type of economy that has not previously been recognized. They view their environment as giving, and their economic system is characterized by modes of distribution and property relations that are constructed in terms of giving, as within a family, rather than in terms of reciprocity, as between kin. This perspective is offered in reference to the South Indian gatherer-hunters called Nayaka, among whom I conducted fieldwork during I978-79 and again in I989,2

Paradigmatic History of San-Speaking Peoples and Current Attempts at Revision [and Comments and Replies]

Abstract: The time when there were no archaeological data for the Kalahari and the prevailing paradigm persuaded us that all the archives were empty, when presumed foraging peoples were consigned to simplicity in social relations, when we believed we could explain ourselves through evolution alone is long gone. Neither anthropological knowledge claims nor the peoples upon which those claims are based nor the policy decisions influenced by them are well served by denying this. Nevertheless, a \"Kalahari San debate\" has arisen around the question whether foragers are genuine or spurious. The identical question was raised by Fritsch against Passarge's \"revisionism\" in the first \"Bushman debate\" of I906. We consider the question itself spurious, arguing that \"Bushman\" and \"San\" are invented categories and \"Kalahari foragers\" an ethnographic reification drawn from one of several subsistence strategies engaged in by all of Botswana's rural poor.

Foragers, Genuine or Spurious?: Situating the Kalahari San in History [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract: Recent studies of societies hitherto portrayed as autonomous and self-regulating have sought to re-situate them in the context of wider regional and intemational economies, polities, and histories. In this revisionism there is danger of imputing links where none existed and assuming that evidence for trade implies the surrender of autonomy. Examination of the different historical experiences of two San groups, one largely dependent on its Bantuspeaking neighbours and the other (until recently) substantially autonomous, suggests that contact may take many forms, not all of which lead to dependency, abandonment of foraging, or incorporation into "more powerful" social formations.

Explaining Biased Sex Ratios in Human Populations: A Critique of Recent Studies [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract: DANIELA F. SIEFF is a graduate student in human ecology at the University of California, Davis (Davis, Calif. 956I6, U.S.A.). Born in I965, she received a B.A. from Oxford University in I987 and an M.A. in anthropology and psychology from the University of Michigan in I989. Her research interests are parental-investment strategies and the costs of children in traditional societies. She is currently engaged in a study of the interaction of women's work, polygyny, fertility, and child care among the Dotoga pastoralists of northern Tanzania. The present paper was submitted in final form 30 vi 89.

Anthropological Advocacy: A Contradiction in Terms? [and Comments]

Abstract: This paper is an attempt o integrate the discussion of advocacy in anthropology, as recently propounded by Robert Paine and others, with the broader debate on anthropological practice. The point is made that it is impossible to deal with advocacy without considering the nature of anthropological representation i general. On the basis of personal experience with the Arhuacos of Colombia, we argue that the rationale for advocating a particular cause can never be anthropological. Anthropology seeks to comprehend the context of local interests, while advocacy implies the pursuit of one particular interest. We also argue, however, that anthropology may provide an important background for engaging in advocacy, which in some cases may present itself as a moral imperative.

Explaining biased sex ratios in human populations: a critique of recent studies.

Abstract: Recent studies attempting to test evolutionary explanations of biased sex ratios in human populations are here critically reviewed. It is suggested that closer attention to a broad range of ecological and social factors that may affect differential investment in sons and daughters might contribute to better evolutionary understanding of the patterns observed. The geographical focus of the study is worldwide. (EXCERPT)

Tool-Making Tools and Middle Paleolithic Behavior

Abstract: SHALEV, S., AND P. NORTHOVER. I987. \"The Chalcolithic metal and metalworking from Shiqmim,\" in Shiqmim I. Edited by T. E. Levy, pp. 357-7I. British Archaeological Reports Intemational Series 3 5 6. STEKELIS, M. 1935. Les monuments megalithiques de Palestine. Archives de l'Institut de Paleontologie Humaine Memoires I 5. . 1972. The Yarmukian culture of the Neolithic period. Jerusalem: Magnes Press. TRIGGER, B. G., B. J. KEMP, D. O'CONNOR, AND A. B. LLOYD. I983. Ancient Egypt: A social history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. TYLECOTE, R. F. I987. The early history of metallurgy in Europe. London: Longman. VERCOUTTER, j. I959. The gold of Kush: Two gold-washing stations at Faras East. Kush 7:120-53.

Speaking of Forked Tongues: The Feasibility of Reconciling Human Phylogeny and the History of Language [and Comments]

Abstract: We address the problem of reconciling human phylogeny and linguistic history and conclude that its resolution requires (i) development of a valid objective method of quantifying linguistic relationships, (2) delimitation and subsequent characterisation of human populations and languages by large-scale demographic census, (3) integration of genetic and linguistic data with other types of information, (4) parallel analyses of the relationships between genetic and linguistic entities using specifically phylogenetic algorithms, and (5) clarification of the biological and philosophical relationship between human lineages and potentially dependent cultural phenomena such as speech. Also, increased discourse between linguists and biologists is needed to distinguish omologous from analogous processes in the two disciplines and thereby standardise terms and concepts. Even if these criteria re eventually satisfied, different processes and rates of evolution and radiation in human populations and languages will continue to complicate attempts to recover "racial" phylogenies. Although profound, these difficulties may not be insuperable, particularly if initial studies sample a regional rather than a global catchment.

Symbolism and Modern Human Origins [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract: Author(s): J. M. Lindly, G. A. Clark, O. Bar-Yosef, D. Lieberman, J. Shea, Harold L. Dibble, Phillip G. Chase, Clive Gamble, Robert H. Gargett, Ken Jacobs, Paul Mellars, Anne Pike-Tay, Yuri Smirnov, Lawrence Guy Straus, C. B. Stringer, Erik Trinkaus and Randall White Reviewed work(s): Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Jun., 1990), pp. 233-261 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2743625 . Accessed: 15/09/2012 00:27

Electron-Spin-Resonance Dating of Tooth Enamel From Klasies River Mouth Cave

Abstract: Archaeological excavations at the main site at Klasies River Mouth Cave (34?o6' S, 24?24' E), on the Tsitsikama coast of the Cape Province, South Africa, began in I967-68, and this first investigation produced abundant Middle Stone Age archaeological materials and important specimens of anatomically modern Homo sapiens (see Singer and Wymer i982). A further programme of investigation was begun in I984 and is still continuing (Deacon and Geleijnse I988, Deacon et al. I986, Deacon, Talma, and Vogel I988). Although the site also contains Holocene middens, it is only the Late Pleistocene Middle Stone Age sequence that is of relevance here. The archaeological deposits occur in a system of caves and rock-shelters labelled i, iA, iB, iC (see fig. i), and 2. Except for iB, where erosion has removed the intervening sediments, the sedimentary strata are continuous and can be correlated throughout the site. The oldest

On Hunter-Gatherers and Their Neighbors in Prehistoric India: Contact and Pathology

Abstract: WILEY, E. O., D. SIEGEL-CAUSEY, D. R. BROOKS, AND V. A. FUNK. n.d. The compleat cladist: A primer of phylogenetic procedures. Lawrence: University of Kansas Museum of Natural History. In press. WOLPOFF, M. H., H. WU, AND A. G. THORNE. I984. "Modern Homo sapiens origins: A general theory of hominid evolution involving the fossil evidence from East Asia," in The origins of modern humans: A world survey of the fossil evidence. Edited by F. H. Smith and F. Spencer, pp. 4I I-83. New York: Liss.

On the Emergence of Modern Humans

Abstract: M A U S S, M A R C E L. I 9 8 5. \"A category of the human mind: The notion of person; the notion of self,\" in The category of the person: Anthropology, philosophy, history. Edited by M. Carrithers, S. Collins, and S. Lukes, pp. I-25. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MICH EL, UTE. I987. Ethnologie und Nationalsozialismus am Beispiel Wilhelm Emil Muhlmanns. Master's thesis, Institut fur Ethnologie, Universitat Hamburg. MUHLMANN, WILHELM EMIL. I940. Krieg und Frieden: Ein Leitfaden der politischen Ethnologie mit Beruicksichtigung volkerkundlicher und historischer Stoffe. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. . I942. Umvolkung und Volkwerdung. Deutsche Arbeit Schriftenreihe d r NSDAP 42. RABINOW, PAUL. I978. Reflections on fieldwork in Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press. . i985. Discourse and power: On the limits of ethnographic texts. Dialectical Anthropology IO: I-I 5. ROSALDO, RENAT 0. I983. \"Grief and a headhunter's rage: On the cultural force of emotions,\" in Play, text, and story. Edited by E. Bruner, pp. I78-95. Washington, D.C.: American Ethnological Society.

Symmetry and Entropy: Mathematical Metaphors in the Work of Levi-Strauss [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract: Evaluation de l'apport de la theorie structuraliste de C. Levi-Strauss qui s'inscrit dans la preoccupation croissante pour les mathematiques, la physique et la biologie dans la premiere moitie du siecle. Son effort pour combiner l'approche structurelle a la theorisation du desordre et du changement est un aspect essentiel de sa demarche. Suivi de divers commentaires et d'une reponse de l'A.

On Anthropological Advocacy

Abstract: Hastrup and Elsass's (CA 3I:30I-8) article suffers from the limitations of their post-modernist approach and the poverty of their notion of advocacy. They establish a series of arbitrary oppositions-theoretical/practical, generalised other/present individuals, anthropology/ advocacy, traditionalist/modernist-that one would have expected them, from their adherence to deconstruction, to demolish with glee. In separating anthropological theory from political practice, they do no more than reformulate the weary distinction between academic and applied anthropology. However, whereas the ideas and techniques of anthropology in themselves may have no political ramifications, as soon as anthropologists "do" anything, written or otherwise, they place themselves in a socio-political context. Anthropologists may be liminal, but liminality is not neutrality. Recent writing on ethnography argues against anthropological representations of a "generalised other," stressing instead the location of the anthropologist in a particular socio-historical context and "multivocality" (Clifford i983). Likewise, the idea of "present individuals" is currently under review (Strathem i988); the indigenous movement is based on the self-determination of collectivities-peoples, nations, communities-and the perpetuation of processes of cultural and social reproduction. Henriksen (i985) and the late Helge Kleivan (in Paine i985) have expressed considerable skepticism about advocacy, both as a concept and in practice. With them, I consider the term paternalistic, presuming that the people affected by a problem do not think or speak for themselves. Hastrup and Elsass might better have dispatched the issue of advocacy early on and addressed more pertinent questions such as accountability in anthropological writing, whether anthropologists are any more than peeping Toms, or even the importance of land rights and self-determination to indigenous peoples. In their "fair-weather" post-modernism, concepts and ideas apparently cease to be contextual and relative once a committed anthropologist enters the scene. Their presentation of anthropologists as people who talk about

The Reproductive Success of Cheyenne War Chiefs: A Contrary Case to Chagnon's Yanomamo

Abstract: Smith, and P. Mortensen, pp. I1-42. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. BAR-YOSEF, O., AND J. C. VOGEL. I987. \"Relative and absolute chronology of the Epi-Palaeolithic in the southern Levant,\" in Chronologies in the Near East: Relative chronologies and absolute chronology I6,000-4,000 B.P. Edited by 0. Aurenche, J. Evin, and F. Hours, pp. 2I9-45. British Archaeological Reports Intemational Series 379. BELFER-CO HEN, A. I988a. The Natufian settlement at Hayonim Cave: A hunter-gatherer band on the threshold of agriculture. 2 vols. Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. . I988b. \"The appearance of symbolic expression in the Upper Palaeolithic of the Levant as compared to western Europe,\" in L'homme de NMandertal. Edited by M. Otte, pp. 25-29. Liege: l'Universit6 de Liege. BELFER-COHEN, A., AND 0. BAR-YOSEF. I98I. The Aurignacian at Hayonim Cave. Paleorient 7:I9-42.

Writing Within: Anthropology, Nationalism, and Culture in Sri Lanka [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract: The study of nationalism poses particular problems for anthropology, not least because nationalism and anthropology share certain concepts and certain assumptions; both anthropologists and nationalists have tended to depict a world made up of bounded, homogeneous cultures. The work of nationalist intellectuals in Sri Lanka has drawn explicitly on anthropological writing in the past, while the work of Sri Lankan anthropologists has been directed toward similar problems of historical continuity and cultural identity. Nationalist cultural production, like anthropology itself, is a kind of intercultural interpretation which aims to render specific ultural features in some more general idiom. Cultural explanations of particular nationalisms written from a point of view ostensibly \"outside\" the phenomenon paradoxically lead to a ratification of nationalists' own self-understandings. Anthropological ccounts of nationalism written from \"within,\" which acknowledge the shared assumptions of anthropologist and nationalist, allow for challenge and contestation. The study of nationalism serves as a reminder of the political dimensions of anthropological representation while also exemplifying the argument that theory in the human sciences is always implicated in that which is theorized about.

Art in the Levantine Epi-Palaeolithic: An Engraved Pebble from a Kebaran Site in the Lower Jordan Valley

Abstract: Non-utilitarian art objects from the early Epi-Paleolithic (I9,000-I4,500 b.p.) of the southern Levant are practically unknown. The discovery of an engraved pebble at the site of Urkan e-Rub IIa is therefore of special interest and significance. The site is located in the Lower Jordan Valley (UTM grid ref. 55067302) on an alluvial terrace of Wadi Ahmar, which flows from the Samaria hills eastward into the Jordan River. In the course of two seasons of fieldwork an area of 2o m2 has been excavated, in addition to three stratigraphic trenches (fig. I). The uppermost cultural horizon consists of early Epi-Palaeolithic (i.e., early Kebaran) material (see Bar-Yosef and Vogel I987 for a description of the industry and spatial characteristics), while a lower unit, possibly of Upper Palaeolithic age, appears in trench i (Hovers and Marder I989). The assemblage uncovered in area A consisted of a large number of lithic waste products, a limited number of flint tools, and a diverse faunal collection (Hovers et al. I988). Shells as raw material and shell beads were found in great quantities (D. Bar-Yosef in Hovers et al. i988:fig. 5). In area B, where only 4 m2 were excavated, the tool kit (fig. 2) was typologically similar to that of area A, consisting of non-geometric microliths (especially variants of micropoints), end-scrapers on blades, flakes, and burins. Both areas were therefore assigned to the early Kebaran. The bones appeared to be more fragmentary and splintered in area B. While it is tempting to see the two areas as activity areas of a single base site (Hovers et al. i988), this hypothesis remains to be tested in the field. A '4C date of I4,440 ? I50 years B.P. (OxA-i5o3), obtained from a charcoal sample from area A, seems too young in the light of the typological characteristics of the assemblage. The engraved pebble was found lying flat in square UI3c, at a depth of I42 cm below datum and about 25 cm below the surface. It is a limestone pebble 92 mm long, 65 mm wide, and only I 3 mm at its maximum thickness, with its edges thinned by intentional polishing. Pebbles of this size are rare in the silt-clay sediment of the site, and when they do appear they are considered to have been imported by man (Hovers et al. i988:25). The pebble is engraved on both faces. One side is deeply incised, without regard for the incrustations on its surface or the impurities in the limestone (fig. 3). Of the eight sets of incisions seen on this face, three are repeated patterns of "ladders" and lines. Each of these latter three sets has five lines, two comprising the "ladder," one to the left of it, and two to the right. The width of the "ladder" and the number of "rungs" differ from one set to another. Of the 34 rungs of the curved ladder at the top in the illustration, 24 are shorter than the space between the vertical lines, 6 fit that space exactly, and 4 extend beyond its limits. One pair of lines (the 4th and 5th from right) creates an angle, while the row of strokes is terminated with a curved line engraved at a go9 angle in relation to the set as a whole. No particular cycle could be detected in the sequence of strokes. The ladder on the left has only 2i rungs, the 3d and the i8th of which go beyond the vertical borders. The other lines in this set alternate between long strokes and short ones that do not touch the vertical lines. Again, no cycles could be detected. The third ladder has I 7 rungs, of which the upper 4 and the I3th seem to have been made by a different point that produced a double line. The latter also has a different orientation from the rest. This set seems to be the most regular of the three, with most of the short strokes confined within the vertical lines and more or less parallel to one another. However, three of the short strokes extend into the space to the right of the ladder, while three disconnected strokes appear to the right and one to the left of it. The other five groups are composed of parallel lines only. Of these groups one consists of four lines, another of six lines, and the remaining three of five lines each. Three of the corners of the pebble are demarcated by

The Impact of Regionalism on Palaeolithic Studies

Abstract: logic of horticultural intensification i eastern North America," in Emergent horticultural economies of the Eastern Woodlands. Edited by W. F. Keegan, pp. io9-28. Southern Illinois University at Carbondale Center for Archaeological Investigations Occasional Paper 7. KING, J. E. I98I. Late Quaternary vegetational history of Illinois. Ecological Monographs 5I:43-62. KRO EBER, A. L. I939. Cultural and natural areas of native North America. Berkeley: University of California Press.

On Neuropsychology and Shamanism in Rock Art

Abstract: interglacial lasted about 25,000 years (Turner I975). Towards the end of pollen zone Ho IIc there was a sudden marked increase in Gramineae pollen concomitant with a decline in Corylus and Taxus pollen and a slight increase in Alnus, Betula, and Pinus pollen (Turner I970). James (pp. 8-9) interprets the increase in Betula and Pinus as indicating that deforestation did not take place. He seems not to have realised, however, that Marks Tey is a relative-frequency pollen diagram. Therefore, because the increase in Gramineae pollen (from o to about io%) does not fully compensate for the decline in Corylus pollen (from about 25% to less than io%), the relative percentages of all the other species must increase a little. These increases, of only I-2%, are an artefact of percentage calculation, a problem long recognised (Kerrich and Clarke i967). Even were these increases real they would tend to bolster the deforestation hypothesis. Betula preferentially colonises open ground. Small percentages (<5%) of Pinus pollen are well-known to be the product of long-distance transport (e.g., Lowe and Walker I984: I 5 8) and ecologically meaningless. James is too sceptical. There was indeed a period, which appears to have lasted some i,500 years, towards the middle of the Hoxnian when extensive grassy clearings developed in the temperate deciduous forests of southern England. The cause of this is a separate issue. Following West's (I977:357) comment that "it is impossible to say whether the presence of man caused the deforestation, or the deforestation allowed the incoming of man, or whether other environmental factors were responsible," few archaeologists familiar with the Quaternary literature would still argue that this deforestation was of undoubted anthropogenic origin (e.g., Webb and Baynes n.d.). Its duration would rather suggest some natural cause. One need not deny deforestation in the midHoxnian to argue that the hominids then present in southem Britain were unable to control fire. In this particular case, James appears to be in danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

On Transportation Costs of Great Basin Resources: An Assessment of the Jones-Madsen Model

Abstract: vailing dogma for the interpretation flate prehistory in the mid-South. I attempted to identify tests that could falsify my claims (P. 766), and Eisenberg has quickly attempted to take advantage of one such test-to demonstrate that dice also occur in older assemblages. She has chosen to build a case on late-Mississippian specimens and ended by providing, at worst, support for my hypothesis. I doubt that convincing counterexamples will emerge from discussion of additional lateMississipppian specimens. It is still the case, however, that \"a few specimens from the well-controlled xcavation of a Middle Woodland [or Late Woodland or Late Archaic, etc.] house or burial would resolve the question of indigenous origin or diffusion\" (P. 766). If the dice were indeed native to the prehistoric mid-South, then there is no a priori reason that they should not be found in stratigraphically interpretable, dated contexts that are at least hundreds of years older than the known specimens. Several colleagues have told me that they consider the dice-origins hypothesis unlikely because there are no recorded i 6th-century incursions of Europeans as far north as southeastern Missouri and western Kentucky, where many of the astragalus dice have been found. In response, I can only indicate that evidence of direct contact is not at issue here. For the sake of those researchers who nevertheless feel compelled to pursue this tack, I must note that, given the extensive vidence of enduring prehistoric cultural interactions between the northern Lower Mississippi Valley, the lower Ohio Valley, and the Tennessee-Cumberland valleys (Lewis I987), I tend to favor the De Soto expedition's northernmost loop through eastern Tennessee (De Pratter, Hudson, and Smith, I985, National Park Service I989) or Juan Pardo's excursions in the same general region (De Pratter, Hudson, and Smith I983) as the most likely potential sources of things like the dice. These artifacts are unlikely to have entered the region from the Mississippi Valley.

Human Colonisation and Change in the Remote Pacific

Abstract: thropologists are not best qualified to study; they belong primarily to other disciplines, such as history, sociology, demography, economic science, political science, and social psychology. We can only make a contribution. But, in this confused mass of phenomena stretching beyond our scope, there may survive, or come into being, limited areas where ethnological research feels able to operate because it finds there conditions which correspond to its needs: relative continuity in time, contiguity within a space, and direct communication between people. The site may be a country village, a district within a town, or even the point of intersection of two or three streets in a metropolis of thousands or millions of inhabitants; these are all places where spatial proximity gives rise to habits or encourages their continuance. My first field of ethnological enquiry was the town of Sao Paulo, at a time when, as a young teacher, I was influenced by the urban sociology of the Chicago school. I have also read and reread the nine volumes of The New Survey of London Life and Labour, an inexhaustible source of instruction and suggestions for ethnologists. And I am proud of the fact that, in I949, under the aegis of Lucien Febvre, I initiated what I think was the first study of a French village conducted in an ethnological spirit; it eventually resulted in a book by Lucien Bernot and Rene Blancard, Nouville: Un village fran ais [I953]. But above all, let us focus our attention on the hundreds of inadequately studied societies in which traditional modes of life and forms of thought still survive, even though they may now have to be looked for in restricted areas of social life or collective activities. Just over 30 years ago, R. Gordon Wasson, who had no ethnological, or indeed any scientific, training-he was a banker-invented an entirely new branch of our discipline, ethnomycology, with sensational results. Other doors are waiting to be opened, other locks to be forced. What is lacking is imagination; there is no lack of material.

Earliest Gold Artifacts in the Levant

Abstract: BELFER-COHEN, A. I988. \"The appearance of symbolic expression in the Upper Pleistocene of the Levant as compared to Westem Europe,\" in L'homme de N6andertal, vol. 5, La pensee. Edited by M. Otte, pp. 25-30. Liege: Etudes et Recherches Anthropologiques de l'Universite de Liege 32. BETTS, A. i982. Prehistoric sites at Qa'a Mejalla, eastem Jordan. Levant I4:I-34. BOTTEMA, S., AND W. VAN ZEIST. I98I. \"Palynological evidence for the climatic history of the Near East So,ooo-6,ooo years B.P.,\" in Pr6histoire du Levant. Edited by J. Cauvin and P. Sanlaville. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. BYRD, B. I989. The Natufian: Settlement variability and economic adaptations in the Levant at the end of the Pleistocene. Journal of World Prehistory 3: I59-98. CALLEY, S. I986. Technologie du debitage a Mureybet, Syrie, 9e-8e mill6naire. British Archaeological Reports Intemational Series 3I2. CAMPANA, D. I989. Natufian and Proto-Neolithic bone tools: The manufacture and use of bone implements in the Zagros and the Levant. British Archaeological Reports Intemational Series 494. CAUVIN, J. C. I972. Les religions neolithiques de Syro-Palestine. Paris: Maisonneuve. CAUVIN, M. C. I987. \"Chronologies relatives et chronologies absolues dans l'Epipaleolithic du Levant nord,\" in Chronologies du Proche Orient/Chronologies n the Near East: Relative chronologies and absolute chronologies I6,000-4,000 B.P. Edited by 0. Aurenche, J. Evin, and F. Hours, pp. 247-66. British Archaeological Reports Intemational Series 379. COWGILL, U. M. I969. The waters of Merom: A study of Lake Huleh. 2. The mineralogy of a 54-m core. Archiv fur Hydrobiologie 7I:42I-74. D AV I S, S. J. M. I989. \"Hatoula I980-I986: Why did prehistoric people domesticate food animals?,\" in Investigations in South Levantine prehistory/Pr6histoire du Sud-Levant. Edited by 0. Bar-Yosef and B. Vandermeersch, pp. 43-60. British Archaeological Reports Intemational Series 497. FEREMBACH, D. I976. Influence nutritionelle et differences morphologiques chez les populations prehistoriques (NatoufienIsraEl). L'Anthropologie I4:I99-20I. GARRARD, A. N., A. BETTS., B. BYRD, AND C. HUNT. I987. Prehistoric environments and settlement in the Azraq Basin: An interim report on the I985 excavation season. Levant I9:5-25.

Another Perspective on Advocacy

Abstract: tury B.C. A later phase of innovation, which enhanced and consolidated this stratification, was the intensification of agriculture through the use of the ox-drawn plow. As Webster argues, however, social stratification developed differently from one region to another in accordance with varying rates of progress in production and achieved decisive importance only in the fully developed Bronze Age.

On Yanomami Warfare: Rejoinder

Abstract: 26:309-33. . I984. A propos des fouilles de Gavrinis (Morbihan): Nouvelles donn6es sur l'art m6galithique armoricain. Bulletin de la Societe Pr6historique Fran,aise 8 I:240-45. LE ROUZIC, Z. I927. D6pots rituels de haches en pierre polie d6couvert dans la region de Carnac. Bulletin de la Societe Pr6historique Fran,aise 24: I 5 6-6o. . I930. Carnac: Restaurations faites dans la r6gion, les cromlechs de Er-Lannic, Commune de Arzon, de I923 a I926. Vannes: Societ6 Polymathique du Morbihan. L'HELGOUAC'H, J. I983. Les idoles qu'on abat, ou Les vicissicitudes des grands teles de Locmariaquer. Bulletin de la Societe Polymathique du Morbihan II9:57-68. MEILLASSOUX, C. I967. Recherche d'un niveau de determination dans la societ6 cynegetique. L'Homme et la Societe 6:24-36. RENFREW, C. I976. \"Megaliths, territories, and populations,\" in Acculturation and continuity in Atlantic Europe. Edited by S. de Laet, pp. i98-220. Bruges: de Tempel.

On Yanomamo Violence: Reply to Albert

Abstract: Albert's (CA 30:637-40) criticism of my I988 article on Yanomamo violence and warfare is a repetition and elaboration of earlier arguments (see Carneiro da Cunha I989) to which I have already responded (Chagnon I989a, c). This recent piece contains data and arguments that presumably informed the earlier statements, as well as a few items obtained from Jacques Lizot as personal communications or from Lizot's then-unpublished similar critique (i 989). These statements and Ferguson's (i989) critique have a common thread: the assumption or suggestion that a \"sociobiological\" approach is somehow or other \"wrong,\" inadmissible, or perhaps even pernicious. Thus, one simply has to identify what I am attempting to do with this unacceptable theory to repudiate my data and conclusions. I will not waste time arguing about this element (but see Chagnon i989b and references therein), focusing only on academic issues here. I want to correct a number of misconceptions that Albert expresses regarding the data I published in Science on Yanomamo violence, warfare, and revenge. The most serious misconception is that the data I collected on killings/homicides have as their methodological starting point the Yanomamo concept known as unokai. Let me, for the time being, gloss this word to mean a man who has gone through the ritual purification ceremony called unokaimou as a consequence of having participated in the killing of another human being. Albert seems to assume that I began by asking a question such

Modeling Oneota agricultural production: a cross-cultural evaluation

Abstract: By the early 20th century, anthropologists and archaeologists recognized that the distributional limits of Native American agriculture in the American Midwest were climatically determined. Wissler (I 9I 7: I 7), for example, stated that "Indian tribes had extended agriculture in the east to its physical limits." Somewhat later, Kroeber (1939) suggested that only in those areas with a growing season of i 20 days in four out of five years was maize agriculture a reliable subsistence strategy. The ioo-day frost-free isopleth represented the extreme northern limit of maize agriculture, a limit where only the fastestmaturing varieties were reliably productive and where "only a people long and deeply addicted to agriculture would have tried to farm" (I939:212). More recently, Yarnell (i964) also identified climate as the variable determining the limits of maize agriculture in the Midwest and found no ethnohistoric or archaeological evidence for maize production in areas with modern frost-free periods of less than I20 days. There is, however, some controversy over the causes of differences in the intensity of agricultural production2 within these limits. Two major archaeological cultures are recognized in the Midwest during the late prehistoric Mississippian period (ca. A.D. iooo-i650): Middle Mississippian and Oneota (Upper Mississippian). Although they overlapped to some degree geographically (Emmerson i988), Middle Mississippian was primarily associated with the central Midwest and Oneota with the upper Midwest. Originally defined in terms of material-cultural traits (Holmes I903, McKern I939), these cultures have come to be increasingly associated with disparate subsistence economies. The Middle Mississippian subsistence economy was apparently focused on intensive maize production. Maize was probably double-cropped where possible through either staggered or consecutive plantings (Riley i987), and hunting and gathering played less significant roles (but see Milner i990). The Oneota evidently practiced a less intensive form of maize agriculture as part of a mixed economy; the contribution of maize to the subsistence mix was less than or only equal to that of the contributions of hunting, gathering, and fishing (Brown i982). If maize was universally available in the Midwest by at least A.D. 900 (Asch and Asch I985, Conard et al. i984), why did the Oneota not practice maize agriculture with the same flourish as their nearby Middle Mississippian neighbors? To date, answers to this question have drawn from two general theories of agricultural intensification: neoMalthusian and Boserupian (cf. Brown i982). NeoMalthusian interpretations emphasize deleterious macroclimatic conditions, and Boserupian interpretations emphasize low population density. Archaeological data remain insufficient to test these competing interpretations. By asking the more general question what determines the intensity of agricultural production, it is possible to test the general theories of agricultural intensification from which these interpretations are derived and therefore shed light on the more specific question. The results of path analysis employing data from 56 Native American societies indicate that the Boserupian approach holds more promise.