Understanding Decision—Making Among Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers Via the Study of Lithic Technological Organization

2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas H. MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Technological Organization ◽  
Lithic Technological Organization

scholarly journals Mycological rationality: Heuristics, perception and decision-making in mushroom foraging

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roope Oskari Kaaronen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
Ecological Rationality ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Decisions Under Uncertainty ◽  
Rules Of Thumb ◽  
Intuitive Decision Making ◽  
Human Foraging ◽  
Simple Heuristics

How do mushroom foragers make safe and efficient decisions under uncertainty, or deal with the genuine risks of misiden-tification and poisoning? This article is an inquiry into ecological rationality, heuristics, perception, and decision-makingin mushroom foraging. By surveying 894 Finnish mushroom foragers, this article illustrates how socially learned rules of thumb and heuristics are used in mushroom foraging, and how simple heuristics are often complemented by more complex and intuitive decision-making. The results illustrate how traditional foraging cultures have evolved precautionary heuristics to deal with uncertainties and poisonous species, and how foragers develop selective attention through experience. The study invites us to consider whether other human foraging cultures might use heuristics similarly, how and why such traditions have culturally evolved, and whether early hunter-gatherers might have used simple heuristics to deal with uncertainty.

Lithic Technological Organization and Hafting in Early Villages

2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (4) ◽  
pp. 708-727
Author(s):  
Colin P. Quinn ◽  
Nathan Goodale ◽  
William Andrefsky ◽  
Ian Kuijt ◽  
Bill Finlayson
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
Food Storage ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Social Strategies ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
Technological Organization ◽  
Lithic Technological Organization ◽  
Economic Decision Making

Hafting is an important part of lithic technology that can increase our understanding of socioeconomic behavior in the past. In this article, we develop a holistic approach to studying hafting by using the concept of curation within a broader assessment of lithic technological organization in early villages. Early villages were loci of socioeconomic transformation as part of the shift from mobile foraging to more sedentary cultivation lifeways. We suggest that an examination of hafting can provide new insights into how early villagers negotiated technological requirements, economic decision making, and social interactions in these novel contexts. As a case study, we develop a curation index and apply it to an archaeological context of hafted and unhafted pointed tools from the early Neolithic village of Dhra’, Jordan. This curation index allows for a discussion of the technological, economic, and social dimensions of hafting strategies at Dhra’. The presence of multiple hafting traditions within early Neolithic villages of Southwest Asia is evidence of persistent social segmentation despite food storage and ritual practices that emphasized communal integration. Through the lens of lithic technological organization, we demonstrate that hafting and curation patterns can increase our understanding of technological, economic, and social strategies in early villages.

scholarly journals New insights into the spatial organization, stratigraphy and human occupations of the Aceramic Neolithic at Ganj Dareh, Iran

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. e0251318
Author(s):  
Julien Riel-Salvatore ◽  
Andrew Lythe ◽  
Alejandra Uribe Albornoz
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Organization ◽  
Mortuary Practices ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Depositional History ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
Technological Organization ◽  
Lithic Technological Organization ◽  
Level Sequence ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Aceramic Neolithic

The Aceramic Neolithic site of Ganj Dareh (Kermanshah, Iran) is arguably one of the most significant sites for enhancing our understanding of goat domestication and the onset of sedentism. Despite its central importance, it has proven difficult to obtain contextually reliable data from it and integrate the site in regional syntheses because it was never published in full after excavations ceased in 1974. This paper presents the Ganj Dareh archive at Université de Montréal and shows how the documentation and artifacts it comprises still offer a great deal of useful information about the site. In particular, we 1) present the first stratigraphic profile for the site, which reveals a more complex depositional history than Smith’s five-level sequence; 2) reveal the presence of two possible pre-agricultural levels (H-01 and P-01); 3) explore the spatial organization of different levels; 4) explain possible discrepancies in the radiocarbon dates from the site; 5) show some differences in lithic technological organization in levels H-01 and P-01 suggestive of higher degrees of residential mobility than subsequent phases of occupation at the site; and 6) reanalyze the burial data to broaden our understanding of Aceramic Neolithic mortuary practices in the Zagros. These data help refine our understanding of Ganj Dareh’s depositional and occupational history and recenter it as a key site to improve our understanding the Neolithization process in the Middle East.

scholarly journals Hadza hunter-gatherers prefer deontologists as social partners, but most Hadza are not deontologists

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristopher M Smith ◽  
Coren Lee Apicella
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Partner Choice ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Social Selection ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Social Partners

Researchers hypothesize that social selection resulting from partner choice may have shaped deontological moral reasoning in humans. Indeed, people in Western societies judge deontologists to be more cooperative and trustworthy than utilitarians, and prefer them as partners. We test if the preference for deontologists as social partners generalizes to a small-scale society, specifically the Hadza, who are extant hunter-gatherers residing in Tanzania. We presented 134 Hadza participants with three ecologically-relevant sacrificial dilemmas and asked them to judge whether the actor should sacrifice one person to save five. We then randomly assigned participants to hear that the actor made either a deontological or utilitarian decision and asked them to make moral and partner choice judgments about the actor in the dilemma. Participants were ambivalent about whether the actor should make the utilitarian decision. However, participants who said the actor should make the deontological decision judged the utilitarian option worse, but participants who said the actor should make the utilitarian decision judged both actions to be equally bad. Regardless of whether participants believed the actor should make the utilitarian decision, participants judged the utilitarian actor lower on traits considered important for social partners, compared to the deontological actor. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that utilitarians are perceived worse than deontologists. However, because participants do not show a preference for the deontological option, it raises questions as to whether partner choice shaped deontological moral decision-making in humans.

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