scholarly journals Modeling a primate technological niche

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan S. Reeves ◽  
Tomos Proffitt ◽  
Lydia V. Luncz
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Tool Use ◽  
Short Distance ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Evolutionary Success ◽  
Distance Transport ◽  
Material Record ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThe ability to modify the environment through the transport of tools has been instrumental in shaping the evolutionary success of humans. Understanding the cause-and-effect relationships between hominin behavior and the environment ultimately requires understanding of how the archaeological record forms. Observations of living primates can shed light on these interactions by investigating how tool-use behaviors produce a material record within specific environmental contexts. However, this requires reconciling data derived from primate behavioral observations with the time-averaged nature of the Plio-Pleistocene archaeological record. Here, we use an agent-based model to investigate how repeated short-distance transport events, characteristic for primate tool use, can result in significant landscape-scale patterning of material culture over time. Our results illustrate the conditions under which accumulated short-distance transport bouts can displace stone tools over long distances. We show that this widespread redistribution of tools can also increase access to tool require resources over time. As such, these results elucidate the niche construction processes associated with this pattern of tool transport. Finally, the structure of the subsequent material record largely depends on the interaction between tool transport and environmental conditions over time. Though these results have implications for inferring hominin tool transports from hominin archaeological assemblages. Furthermore, they highlight the difficulties with connecting specific behavioral processes with the patterning in the archaeological record.

Cultural contacts and identity construction: a colonial context in NE Spain (2nd - early 1st c. B.C.)

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 7-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alejandro G. Sinner
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Cultural Contact ◽  
Italian Peninsula ◽  
Monetary System ◽  
Construction Techniques ◽  
Over Time

This paper focuses on a century of interaction between a colonial agent (Rome) and an indigenous people (known in classical texts as the Laietani) who inhabited the area before the arrival of the conquerors. It investigates how contact between the two societies may be detected in the archaeological record, and, where possible, what changes in local culture resulted. The first part, which presents the archaeological sites of the Cabrera de Mar valley and its material culture, documents the contacts over time between those that occupied the valley and those who arrived from the Italian peninsula. A number of indices of such contacts are considered: architecture, construction techniques, imported pottery, epigraphy, and the monetary system. The second part considers whether it is possible to detect in the valley not only cultural contact but also cultural change.

Photographs as Artifacts

Anthropos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 114 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dánae Fiore
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Tierra Del Fuego ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Large Samples ◽  
Two Agents ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Indigenous Society ◽  
Shed Light

This article presents key concepts and methods used to develop a visual archaeology of two Indigenous societies of Tierra del Fuego (Shelk’nam, Yámana/Yagan). Photographs are conceived as artifacts, which condense the traces of at least two agents: photographers and photographed subjects. These visual records are not only biased by the different photographers who took them, but also shed light on the different material culture patterns produced by each Indigenous society, which are visible on the images when studied in large samples. The article discusses some results of systematic investigations carried out on a corpus of 847 photographs taken by 39 photographers of Shelk’nam and Yámana/Yagan persons (19th and early 20th centuries). These are compared to materials found in the archaeological record in order to generate new data about the material culture used by Fueguian hunter-gatherers.

Narrated Photography

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-52
Author(s):  
Sarah Dunlop ◽  
Peter Ward
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Family Relationships ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Lived Religion ◽  
Visual Context ◽  
Textual Material ◽  
Shed Light

This article describes how a recently refined visual ethnographic research method, “narrated photography,” contributes to the study of religion. We argue that this qualitative research method is particularly useful for studies of lived religion and demonstrate this through examples drawn from a study the sacred among young Polish migrants to England. Narrated photography, which entails asking people to photograph what is personally significant to them and then to narrate the image, generates visual and textual material that mediates the subjective. Through using this method we discovered that family was considered to be sacred, both in terms of links to religious practice and a desire for a secure home which family relationships provide. Additionally, narrated photography has the potential to expand our conceptions of lived religion through the inclusion of visual material culture and the visual context of the research participants. In this case the data revealed that the Polish young people view structures within their landscape through a particularly Polish Catholic lens. These findings shed light on the religious tensions that migrants encounter in everyday life.

Imagining the Woman Reader in the Age of Dante

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Lombardi
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
The Other ◽  
Women Readers ◽  
Literary Authority ◽  
Woman Reader ◽  
History Of ◽  
Female Literacy ◽  
Female Audience ◽  
Shed Light

The literature of the Italian Due- and Trecento frequently calls into play the figure of a woman reader. From Guittone d’Arezzo’s piercing critic, the ‘villainous woman’, to the mysterious Lady who bids Guido Cavalcanti to write his grand philosophical song, to Dante’s female co-editors in the Vita Nova and his great characters of female readers, such as Francesca and Beatrice in the Comedy, all the way to Boccaccio’s overtly female audience, this particular sort of interlocutor appears to be central to the construct of textuality and the construction of literary authority in these times. The aim of this book is to shed light on this figure by contextualizing her within the history of female literacy, the material culture of the book, and the ways in which writers and poets of earlier traditions (in particular Occitan and French) imagined her. Its argument is that these figures of women readers are not mere veneers between a male author and a ‘real’ male readership, but that, although fictional, they bring several advantages to their vernacular authors, such as orality, the mother tongue, the recollection of the delights of early education, literality, freedom in interpretation, absence of teleology, the beauties of ornamentation and amplification, a reduced preoccupation with the fixity of the text, the pleasure of making mistakes, dialogue with the other, the extension of desire, original simplicity, and new and more flexible forms of authority.

Material Evidence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen L. Dyson
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
Freed Slaves ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Shed Light

Slaves were central to every aspect of Roman society. However¸ they are difficult to identify in the archaeological record. Most were genetically similar to the free population. Unlike slaves in the American ante-bellum South they did not have distinctive residential systems and foodways that can be differentiated archaeologically from those of free persons. Structures related to slavery like market buildings or slave barracks are not easily identified. In contrast, freed slaves, common in ancient Rome are very visible, especially in mortuary monuments. This chapter surveys the extent to which material evidence can shed light on various aspects of the life course of slaves, from enslavement through slave life, to death or manumission.

A Quantitative Study of the Paratexts in Erasmus-Froben Imprints

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-181
Author(s):  
Ann Blair ◽  
Maryam Patton
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Study ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Over Time

Abstract We study the paratexts in Erasmus’ imprints with Johann then Hieronymus Froben of Basel between 1514 and 1536. From Valentina Sebastiani’s bibliography of Johann Froben we observe that Erasmus was a more abundant paratexter than other authors who published with Johann Froben. We supplement that work with a bibliography of Erasmus’ imprints with Hieronymus Froben. We note trends across the Erasmus-Froben corpus, including: a remarkable number of imprints, equally balanced between new editions and re-editions, abundant dedications without correlation to format, indexes in folio volumes especially, a growing attention to errata lists over time. These patterns shed light on one author-printer partnership but also on more general trends in learned publishing in the early 16th century.

scholarly journals Apulo-Calabrese and Crossbreed Pigs Show Different Physiological Response and Meat Quality Traits after Short Distance Transport

Animals ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gizella Aboagye ◽  
Stefania Dall’Olio ◽  
Francesco Tassone ◽  
Martina Zappaterra ◽  
Salvatore Carpino ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Meat Quality ◽  
Short Distance ◽  
Blood Parameters ◽  
Quality Traits ◽  
Large White ◽  
Meat Quality Traits ◽  
Genetic Types ◽  
Alkaline Phosphate ◽  
Distance Transport ◽  
Sodium And Potassium

Despite the increasing interest in the welfare of animals during transport, very little is known on the response of local pig breeds to the transport procedures. This study aims to compare the effect of short journey on behaviour, blood parameters, and meat quality traits in 51 Apulo-Calabrese and 52 crossbreed [Duroc × (Landrace × Large White)] pigs. All the animals were blood sampled five days before delivery (basal condition) and at exsanguination for the analysis of creatine kinase, cortisol, glucose, lactate, albumin, albumin/globulin, total protein, urea, creatinine, aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase, alkaline phosphate, sodium, and potassium. Post mortem pH, color, drip loss, cooking loss, and Warner-Bratzler shear force were measured at different times in longissimus thoracis samples. Univariate and multivariate analyses showed that glucose, albumin/globulin, urea, and AST at exsanguination were influenced by the genetic type. Apulo-Calabrese showed the highest increase in blood values of lactate, creatinine, sodium and potassium after the short distance transport. Behavioural occurrences were similar in both genetic types during unloading and lairage. Small differences were observed for meat quality although significantly higher a* and lower L* were found in Apulo-Calabrese pigs, showing meat with a deeper red colour than crossbreeds.

scholarly journals Protected cerrado fragments grow up and lose even metapopulational birds in central São Paulo, Brazil

2006 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 829-837 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin O. Willis
Keyword(s):  
Tree Growth ◽  
Sugar Cane ◽  
Short Distance ◽  
Sao Paulo ◽  
São Paulo ◽  
Forest Species ◽  
Vegetation Growth ◽  
Over Time

Moderately dense woodland (cerradão) grew in two isolated patches of bushy savanna (cerrado) in central São Paulo over 23 years of bird censuses. Various uncommon birds were lost and some forest species were permanently gained. Fall and winter fruits attract long and short-distance migrants. Woodpeckers and some birds that nest in their holes seem to disappear during tree growth. Some birds in weedy areas nearby disappeared when the pastures replaced these areas, however sugar cane reduced the numbers of birds even more up to the point when some areas became pastures once more. Even travel-prone species disappear with vegetation growth in cerrado protected fragments, and therefore "metapopulations" may not survive over time, only in space.

scholarly journals Weaving the Common Threads of Simulation and Formation studies in Archaeology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Davies
Keyword(s):  
Computer Simulation ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Computational Models ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Surface Erosion ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Material Record

Computer simulation is a tool increasingly used by archaeologists to build theories about past human activity; however, simulation has had a limited role theorising about the relationship between past behaviours and the formation of observed patterning in the material record. This paper visits the argument for using simulation as a means of addressing the gap that exists between archaeological interpretations of past behaviours and their physical residues. It is argued that simulation is used for much the same reason that archaeologists use ethnographic or experimental studies, and that computational models can help to address some of the practical limitations of these approaches to record formation. A case study from arid Australia, examining the effects of episodic surface erosion on the visibility of the record, shows how simple, generative simulations, grounded in formational logic, can be used to compare different explanatory mechanisms and suggest tests of the archaeological record itself.

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