scholarly journals Middle Neolithic of the Kamchatka Peninsula

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 86-102
Author(s):  
Irina Yu. Ponkratova
Keyword(s):  
Population Size ◽  
Marine Mammals ◽  
Life Support ◽  
Kamchatka Peninsula ◽  
High Water ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Oval Cross Section ◽  
Stone Industry ◽  
Primary Cleavage

Purpose. The study of archaeological sites of the Middle Neolithic of Kamchatka should offer a chronology and a set of criteria for identifying the period. Results. The research data is based on the materials of the studied cultural layer, buried dwellings and individual artifacts of 46 archaeological sites. It has been established that the average Neolithic of Kamchatka can be dated back to 4 000–1 500 cal BP. The sites were found on high water-glacial terraces with a height of 4 to 30 meters on the banks of large rivers and lakes, the sea coast of the eastern part of the peninsula. Their number had increased compared to the previous period. Dwellings had become more complex. Perhaps this is due to the need to have more reliable shelters in the conditions of the marine climate and frequent precipitation of volcanic ash. The ground buildings, semi-underground dwellings and workshops for the manufacture of stone tools were found at the sites. Near the dwellings, special fortifications in the form of artificial ditches and ramparts made of stones and soil were also found. These may have been defensive structures. The increased population size, its settlement mainly along the coast in order to develop marine resources, may have caused conflicts between certain groups of the population in the struggle for the best fishing sites. The stone industry is represented by cores (amorphous and prismatic knife-shaped blades) and primary cleavage products (knife-shaped blades of different sizes without retouching, with edge retouching and on both sides). Among the tools there were retouched triangular stone arrowheads without stem and with stem, leaf-shaped, including miniature, arrowheads; knives – narrow and wide-bladed with a dedicated handle, leaf-shaped oval; roughly beaten and polished sharp-edged adzes of different sizes with a sub-triangular and oval cross-section; end scrapers of various geometric shapes; calibrators of arrow shafts. The strategy of life support of society was aimed at hunting for marine mammals, fishing and gathering, including shellfish. In the sphere of spiritual culture, signs of ceremonial activity (labrets) and art (small figurines and ornaments) have also been identified. Conclusion. It is assumed that with an increased population size and changes in the environmental situation, a new way of life of the population developed, associated with a highly specialized and complex appropriating economy which essentially formed its own archaeological culture (Taryinskaya culture).

Using art to explore children’s perceptions of their Arctic community in a changing climate 

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lipson ◽  
Kim Reasor ◽  
Kååre Sikuaq Erickson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Sea Ice ◽  
Marine Mammals ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Arctic Sea Ice ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Polar Bears ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Subsistence Hunting ◽  
Sea Ice Decline

<p>In this project we analyze artwork and recorded statements of 5<sup>th</sup> grade students from the community of Utqiaġvik, Alaska, who participated in a science-art outreach activity. The team consisted of a scientist (Lipson), an artist (Reasor) and an outreach specialist (Erickson) of Inupiat heritage from a village in Alaska. We worked with four 5th grade classes of about 25 students each at Fred Ipalook Elementary. The predominantly Inupiat people of Utqiaġvik are among those who will be most impacted by climate change and the loss of Arctic sea ice in the near future. Subsistence hunting of marine mammals associated with sea ice is central to the Inupiat way of life. Furthermore, their coastal homes and infrastructure are increasingly subject to damage from increased wave action on ice-free Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. While the people of this region are among the most directly vulnerable to climate change, the teachers reported that the subject is not generally covered in the elementary school curriculum.</p><p>The scientist and the local outreach specialist gave a short presentation about sea ice and climate change in the Arctic, with emphasis on local impacts to hunting and infrastructure. We then showed the students a large poster of historical and projected sea ice decline, and asked the students to help us fill in the white space beneath the lines. The artist led the children in making small paintings that represent things that are important to their lives in Utqiaġvik (they were encouraged to paint animals, but they were free to do whatever they wanted). We returned to the class later that week and had each student briefly introduce themselves and their painting, and place it on the large graph of sea ice decline, which included the dire predictions of the RCP8.5 scenario. Then we added the more hopeful RCP2.6 scenario to end on a positive note.</p><p>Common themes expressed in the students’ artwork included subsistence hunting, other aspects of traditional Inupiat culture, nature and family. Modern themes such as sports and Pokémon were also common. The students reacted to the topic of climate change with pictures of whales, polar bears and other animals, and captions such as “Save the world/ice/animals.” There were several paintings showing unsuccessful hunts for whales or seals. Some students displayed an understanding of ecosystem science in their recorded statements. For example, a student who painted the sun and another who painted a krill both succinctly described energy flow in food webs that support the production of whales (for example, “I drew krill because without krill there wouldn’t be whales”). Some of the students described the consequences of sea ice loss to local wildlife with devastating succinctness (sea ice is disappearing and polar bears will go extinct). The overall sense was that the children had a strong grasp of the potential consequences of climate change to their region and way of life.</p>

scholarly journals The advance of cultivation at its northern European limit: Process or event?

The Holocene ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 427-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Lahtinen ◽  
Markku Oinonen ◽  
Miikka Tallavaara ◽  
James WP Walker ◽  
Peter Rowley-Conwy
Keyword(s):  
Population Size ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Pollen Analysis ◽  
Probability Distributions ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Limit Process ◽  
Northern European ◽  
Complex Process

Dates for early cultivation in Finland obtained from pollen analysis and remains from archaeological sites are compared with the changes in population size derived from the summed calendar-year probability distributions. The results from these two independent proxies correlate strongly with one another indicating that population size and the advance of farming were closely linked to each other. Moreover, the results show that the adaptation and development of farming in this area was a complex process comprising several stages and with major differences between regions The most intensive expansion having occurred in and after the Iron Age. It is therefore more accurate to describe the introduction of farming into the area as a long-lasting process, rather than an event.

scholarly journals From a Concentration of Finds to Stone Age Architecture

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 2-21
Author(s):  
Irina Khrustaleva ◽  
Aivar Kriiska
Keyword(s):  
Border Zone ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Forest Zone ◽  
Architectural Form ◽  
Radiocarbon Age ◽  
New Information ◽  
Settlement Site ◽  
European Forest

High-quality documentation that was made during fieldwork at archaeological sites can provide new information for old excavations, even decades later. The revision of the archival data of the Stone Age settlement site Lommi III, located in the border zone of Russia and Estonia and excavated by Richard Indreko in 1940, allowed us to identify the remains of a Comb Ware culture (4th millennium cal BC) pit-house based on the concentration of artefacts marked in the field drawings. The rectangular shape and size of the concentration (c. 7.1x4.4m, depth 0.7–0.75m) corresponds to the architectural form common in the European forest zone and has numerous analogies at the settlement sites of that time in Finland, Karelia (Russia) and Estonia. The composition and diversity of the finds and their distribution indicate the (semi-)sedentary way of life of inhabitants of the pit-house. The radiocarbon age obtained from the organic crust on pottery fragments collected in the pit-house corresponds to the first half of 4th millennium cal BC.

The Mechanism of International Legal Support of Effective Management of Indigenous Peoples in the Northern Territories

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 1095
Author(s):  
Vadim Avdeevich AVDEEV ◽  
Stanislav Vasilyevich ROZENKO ◽  
Igor Nikolaevich FEDULOV ◽  
Igor Mikhailovich OSPICHEV ◽  
Elena Vyacheslavovna FROLOVA ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Life Support ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Negative Influence ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Legal Policy ◽  
Indigenous Minorities

The article examines the key directions to improve the effectiveness of legal means to protect the interests of the North’s indigenous minorities in the context of globalization. Attention is paid to the improvement of legal instruments for regulating public relations related to small indigenous minorities of the North. Special attention is focused on the correlation between international legal bases, national legislation and regional acts. Close attention is paid to the role and place of small indigenous minorities in Russian Federation state policy. The state and legal transformations taking place in the context of globalization are modelling a new level of social relations and give rise to special interest in improving their traditional way of life. The scientific rationale for new conceptual approaches is predetermined by the specificities of indigenous peoples’ social development. In this regard, the main areas of national policy applicable to the country’s indigenous population as a whole and to individual regions where they live in the twenty-first century require modernization. Preservation and development of ethnic groups requires the solution of modern problems through public authorities and self-government. The article analyzes the priority directions of state and legal policy, goals and objectives that meet the interests to protect the rights of small indigenous peoples. At present, it is necessary that the focus of legal policy should be directed at proclaiming and ensuring the rights of indigenous peoples, preserving their unique way of life, promoting life support in the changed conditions of the cultural and natural environment and protecting them from the negative influence of post-industrial society.

scholarly journals Thresholds for impaired species recovery

2015 ◽  
Vol 282 (1809) ◽  
pp. 20150654 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey A. Hutchings
Keyword(s):  
Population Size ◽  
Marine Mammals ◽  
Small Population ◽  
Marine Fishes ◽  
Population Increase ◽  
Allee Effects ◽  
Individual Fitness ◽  
Resource Managers ◽  
Aquatic Vertebrates ◽  
Declining Populations

Studies on small and declining populations dominate research in conservation biology. This emphasis reflects two overarching frameworks: the small-population paradigm focuses on correlates of increased extinction probability; the declining-population paradigm directs attention to the causes and consequences of depletion. Neither, however, particularly informs research on the determinants, rate or uncertainty of population increase. By contrast, Allee effects (positive associations between population size and realized per capita population growth rate, r realized , a metric of average individual fitness) offer a theoretical and empirical basis for identifying numerical and temporal thresholds at which recovery is unlikely or uncertain. Following a critique of studies on Allee effects, I quantify population-size minima and subsequent trajectories of marine fishes that have and have not recovered following threat mitigation. The data suggest that threat amelioration, albeit necessary, can be insufficient to effect recovery for populations depleted to less than 10% of maximum abundance ( N max ), especially when they remain depleted for lengthy periods of time. Comparing terrestrial and aquatic vertebrates, life-history analyses suggest that population-size thresholds for impaired recovery are likely to be comparatively low for marine fishes but high for marine mammals. Articulation of a ‘recovering population paradigm’ would seem warranted. It might stimulate concerted efforts to identify generic impaired recovery thresholds across species. It might also serve to reduce the confusion of terminology, and the conflation of causes and consequences with patterns currently evident in the literature on Allee effects, thus strengthening communication among researchers and enhancing the practical utility of recovery-oriented research to conservation practitioners and resource managers.

scholarly journals Greenhouse Module for Space System: A Lunar Greenhouse Design

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Conrad Zeidler ◽  
Vincent Vrakking ◽  
Matthew Bamsey ◽  
Lucie Poulet ◽  
Paul Zabel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
System Analysis ◽  
Life Support ◽  
Inner Core ◽  
High Water ◽  
Dry Mass ◽  
High Water Content ◽  
Power Performance ◽  
Potential Growth ◽  
Depth Analysis

AbstractIn the next 10 to 20 years humankind will return to the Moon and/or travel to Mars. It is likely that astronauts will eventually build permanent settlements there, as a base for long-term crew tended research tasks. It is obvious that the crew of such settlements will need food to survive. With current mission architectures the provision of food for longduration missions away from Earth requires a significant number of resupply flights. Furthermore, it would be infeasible to provide the crew with continuous access to fresh produce, specifically crops with high water content such as tomatoes and peppers, on account of their limited shelf life. A greenhouse as an integrated part of a planetary surface base would be one solution to solve this challenge for long-duration missions. Astronauts could grow their own fresh fruit and vegetables in-situ to be more independent from supply from Earth. This paper presents the results of the design project for such a greenhouse, which was carried out by DLR and its partners within the framework of the Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative (MELiSSA) program. The consortium performed an extensive system analysis followed by a definition of system and subsystem requirements for greenhouse modules. Over 270 requirements were defined in this process. Afterwards the consortium performed an in-depth analysis of illumination strategies, potential growth accommodations and shapes for the external structure. Five different options for the outer shape were investigated, each of them with a set of possible internal configurations. Using the Analytical Hierarchy Process, the different concept options were evaluated and ranked against each other. The design option with the highest ranking was an inflatable outer structure with a rigid inner core, in which the subsystems are mounted. The inflatable shell is wrapped around the core during launch and transit to the lunar surface. The paper provides an overview of the final design, which was further detailed in a concurrent engineering design study. During the study, the subsystem parameters (e.g. mass, power, performance) were calculated and evaluated. The results of the study were further elaborated, leading to a lunar greenhouse concept that fulfils all initial requirements. The greenhouse module has a total cultivation area of more than 650 m² and provides more than 4100 kg of edible dry mass over the duration of the mission. Based on the study, the consortium also identified technology and knowledge gaps (not part of this paper), which have to be addressed in future projects to make the actual development of such a lunar greenhouse, and permanent settlements for long-term human-tended research tasks on other terrestrial bodies, feasible in the first place.

scholarly journals A risk assessment of the sustainability of the harvest of beluga (Delphinapterus leucas (Pallas 1776)) in West Greenland

2004 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos M. Alvarez-Flores ◽  
Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Population Size ◽  
Bayesian Methods ◽  
Marine Mammals ◽  
Delphinapterus Leucas ◽  
Gradual Reduction ◽  
Harvest Rate ◽  
West Greenland ◽  
Management Procedures ◽  
Reduction Schedule

Abstract Risk assessments to assess the efficiency of management procedures to regulate removals of marine mammals have rarely been conducted. Using Bayesian methods, we conducted a risk assessment on a harvested beluga population off West Greenland. The population size in recent years was estimated to be 22% of the size in 1954. Results indicate that current catches are unsustainable and that continuation of this situation represents a 90% probability that the population will become extinct in 20 years. The analyses suggest that the harvest should be reduced to no more than 130 animals. Constant catch quotas represent a greater risk of depletion compared with catch limits that are a function of harvest rate and population size. An alternative gradual reduction schedule is proposed as a viable strategy, reducing the harvest in 5 years and adjusting the subsequent quota using a harvest rate of 0.5 of Rmax, with updates in the abundance. This analysis is presented as an alternative for cases where an immediate catch reduction is desirable but not feasible for marine mammal populations that appear vulnerable or in danger and where catch and abundance data are available.

How Animals Create Human History: Relational Ecology and the Dorset–Polar Bear Connection

2015 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew w. Betts ◽  
Mari Hardenberg ◽  
Ian Stirling
Keyword(s):  
Polar Bear ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Polar Bears ◽  
Special Relationship ◽  
Human History ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Ice Edge ◽  
Symbolic Ecology ◽  
The Universe

AbstractCarvings that represent polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are commonly found in Dorset Paleo-Eskimo archaeological sites across the eastern Arctic. Relational ecology, combined with Amerindian perspectivism, provides an integrated framework within which to comprehensively assess the connections between Dorset and polar bears. By considering the representational aspects of the objects, we reveal an ethology of polar bears encoded within the carvings’ various forms. Reconstructing the experiences and perceptions of Dorset as they routinely interacted with these creatures, and placing these interactions in socioeconomic, environmental, and historical context, permits us to decode a symbolic ecology inherent in the effigies. To the Dorset, these carvings were simultaneously tools and mnemonics (symbols). As tools, they were used to directly access the predatory and spiritual abilities of bears or, more prosaically, to teach and remind of the variety of proper hunting techniques available for capturing seals. As symbols, however, they were far more powerful, signaling how Dorset people conceptualized themselves and their place in the universe. Symbolic of an ice-edge way of life, the effigies expose the role that this special relationship with polar bears played in the creation of Dorset histories and identities.

scholarly journals A new approach to renewal and presentation of an archaeological site as unique cultural landscape

Spatium ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 35-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirjana Roter-Blagojevic ◽  
Gordana Milosevic ◽  
Ana Radivojevic
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Archaeological Site ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Military Camp ◽  
Historic Areas ◽  
Interactive Relation ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Historic Area

In recent years, a series of students? projects have been carried out at the Faculty of Architecture of Belgrade with aims at protection and investigation of possibilities or presentation of archaeological sites dating from the Roman period, in which Serbia is very rich, and their active inclusion in modern way of life and tourist programs. The project for the revitalization of the Roman military camp Timacum Minus was one of them. It showed that the students? involvement in resolving complex issues of the presentation and revitalization of archaeological remains was fruitful because numerous fresh ideas were obtained in numerous subjects. The focus was on a concept that significant cultural and historic areas with ancient remains were to be presented to both the domestic and foreign public in a modern manner and in interaction with the environment, the natural beauties of the landscape. The projects enable to promote an interactive relation with the historic area as a place where visitors, at various activities, meet with history, but also with a reflection of a modern era.

scholarly journals New investigations of early Neolithic layers (on the example of Rakushechny Yar)

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 127-136
Author(s):  
Andrey Vitalievich Tsybriy ◽  
Ekaterina Vladimirovna Dolbunova ◽  
Andrey Nikolaevich Mazurkevich ◽  
Tatiana Vladimirovna Tsybriy ◽  
Viktor Vitalievich Tsybriy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Water Level ◽  
High Water ◽  
Domestic Animals ◽  
Early Neolithic ◽  
Ceramic Assemblage ◽  
Shell Middens ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Don River ◽  
Stone Industry ◽  
First Time

Rakushechny Yar has attracted interest for a long period of time. New questions arose around its materials and the site itself, which led to renewal of excavations and investigations of this site nowadays. New investigations of the place allowed the authors to distinguish early Neolithic layers, which were inaccessible before due to a high water level of the Don River. Particularities of Unio and Viviparus shells distribution show that these were different shell middens within several horizons. Also variety of spots full of bone debris and pits were uncovered here. New paleogeographical studies allowed reconstruction ancient landscape in the surroundings of this place. Shell tools, stone industry and ceramic assemblage, bone and antler tools are early Neolithic finds. The first time wooden artefacts and coprolites were found in a low watered layer. Finds of bones of domestic animals suggest even more complicated organization of this early Neolithic society.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document