The Coming of the Dingo

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Balme ◽  
Sue O'Connor
Keyword(s):  
Population Growth ◽  
Late Holocene ◽  
Companion Animals ◽  
Indigenous Australians ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Human Relationship

The dingo, or native dog, arrived in Australia with people traveling on watercraft in the Late Holocene. By the time Europeans colonized the continent, dingoes were incorporated into the lives of Indigenous Australians, integrated into their kin systems and songlines, and used for a variety of purposes, including as companion animals, as guards, and as a biotechnology for hunting. Women, in particular, formed close bonds with dingoes, and they were widely used in women’s hunting. The incorporation of dingoes into Indigenous societies would therefore have had a significant impact on people’s lives. The greater contribution of meat to the diet would have allowed increased sedentism, improved fecundity, and therefore population growth. Such changes are hinted at in the archaeological record and indicate that more analysis of subsistence evidence could identify when and how the dingo–human relationship formed and how it varied in different environments across Australia.

An initial study of the dynamic influences and interactions upon levels of sustainability at the global spatial scale

2021 ◽  
pp. 205301962110358
Author(s):  
Jason Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Population Growth ◽  
Greenhouse Gases ◽  
Spatial Scale ◽  
Influencing Factors ◽  
Initial Study ◽  
Global Environment ◽  
Human Relationship ◽  
Sustainable Society ◽  
Dynamic Impacts ◽  
Dominant Influence

This paper conducts an initial determination and evaluation of the fundamental dynamic influences and interactions upon indicated levels and nature of sustainability occurring, at the global spatial scale over the specified period of 2006–2016. This is achieved by the first full application of the Sustainability Dynamics Framework (SDF) to the results of the Sustainable Society Index (SSI). The results indicate that obtained S-values are potentially influenced primarily by a triumvirate of influencing factors – Population Growth, GDP and Greenhouse Gases. A cumulative analysis of indicator categories indicated that Environmental Wellbeing was the dominant influencing category upon obtained S-values for the period 2008–2014, and Anthropospheric Wellbeing was the dominant influence in 2006 and 2016. The analysis concludes that the triumvirate has potentially caused fundamental breaches and dynamic impacts and feedbacks upon the global environment-human relationship and system. Unless the triumvirate is managed and mitigated urgently, then there is a potential realistic risk of unsustainability occurring.

Holocene Environments in Northeast Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 62-78
Author(s):  
Martin Williams
Keyword(s):  
Late Holocene ◽  
Flood Plain ◽  
Low Flow ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Human Occupation ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
Maar Lake ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
White Nile ◽  
Ne Africa

This chapter provides an overview of the geography, hydrology, and climate of NE Africa, with particular reference to the complex interactions between river regime, climate, the biota, and human settlement. During the Early (11.7–8.2 ka) and Middle Holocene (8.2–4.2 ka) the climate was far less arid than today across the Nile basin, including Nubia, albeit with sporadic dry phases. Climatic desiccation set in during the Late Holocene (4.2 ka to present), with minor wet phases. Intervals when the Nile flow regime was apparently shifting from high to low flow and flood plain incision have provisional ages of ca. 8.15–7.75 ka, 6.4–6.15 ka, 5.7–5.45 ka, 4.7–4.25 ka, 3.35–2.9 ka, 2.8–2.55 ka, and 1600 ce. In the Kerma area of Nubia there were two periods of relatively dense human occupation in the earlier part of the Holocene from 10 ka to 8 ka and from 7 ka to 6 ka, with two significant gaps in the archaeological record at 7.5–7.1 ka and 6.0–5.4 ka, that coincided with very low levels in Lake Challa, a maar lake on the eastern flank of Mt Kilimanjaro, near the Ugandan headwaters of the White Nile.

scholarly journals Human Niche Construction and Population Growth in Pre-Columbian Amazonia

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Arroyo-Kalin
Keyword(s):  
Population Growth ◽  
Late Holocene ◽  
Niche Construction ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Archaeological Research ◽  
Environmental Alteration ◽  
Human Niche Construction ◽  
Continued Use ◽  
Research Demands ◽  
Landscape Legacies

The use of Niche Construction Theory in archaeological research demands that we establish empirically how human-constructed niches acted as legacies that shaped the selection pressures affecting past human populations. One potential approach is to examine whether human demography changed as a result of the continued use of landscapes enduringly transformed by past societies. This paper presents proxies for Amazonian population growth during the late Holocene and discusses their significance within the broader context of landscape legacies resulting from cumulative anthropic environmental alteration during pre-Columbian times.

scholarly journals La secuencia arqueológica en el cinturón forestal centroafricano

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raquel Martí
Keyword(s):  
Late Pleistocene ◽  
Late Holocene ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Archaeological Record

Este trabajo presenta una revisión de la evidencia arqueológica en el cinturón forestal de África Central desde el Pleistoceno Final al Holoceno reciente. El avance generado por la investigación en África en las últimas décadas ha mostrado una mayor complejidad y variabilidad en el patrón de cambio tecnológico de lo que en un principio se estableció. Estos patrones además, difieren en gran medida de los observados en el registro europeo.This paper explores from the Late Pleistocene to the Late Holocene archaeological record of Central África. The advance provided in África by the research during the last decades has shown a more complexity and variabllity in the technological chango pattern than earlier believed. These patterns are quite different from the European record.

scholarly journals Toward an Ethnoarchaeomalacology of Achatina in East Africa

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Walz
Keyword(s):  
Late Holocene ◽  
Land Snail ◽  
Land Snails ◽  
Eastern Africa ◽  
Snail Species ◽  
Natural Occurrence ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Achatina Fulica ◽  
Snail Shell ◽  
Human Subsistence

Land snail shell is a material commonly identified in the Late Holocene archaeological record of eastern Africa. Typically, archaeologists designate land snail shell as a natural occurrence or as debris produced from human subsistence. Ethnographic observations in lowland northeastern Tanzania show that contemporary communities employ the soft parts and shells of land snails, particularly Achatina fulica, for a range of everyday and special purposes. The array of land snail uses by mixed subsistence farmers and agropastoralists in the area documents the significance of A. fulica and other robust land snail species. Present uses of land snails observed in Tanzania offer a set of analogies that, when critically applied, can enrich archaeologists’ interpretations of land snail debris in antiquity.

scholarly journals The Archaeology of the Southern Curtis Coast: An Overview

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Ulm ◽  
Ian Lilley
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Late Holocene ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Paper Briefly ◽  
Study Region ◽  
Preliminary Results ◽  
Initial Results

Since 1993 archaeological surveys and excavations have been undertaken on the southern Curtis Coast as the coastal component of the Gooreng Gooreng Cultural Heritage Project. This paper briefly outlines the physical environment of the study region including geology, vegetation and fauna communities before presenting the preliminary results of archaeological surveys and excavations. These initial results suggest that the region has an extensive mid-to-late Holocene archaeological record that has the potential to contribute to understandings of changes in late Holocene Aboriginal societies in Central Queensland.

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