‘Clan’ and ‘Family’: Transformations of Sociality among the Wampar, Papua New Guinea

Changes in what anthropologists understand “clan” to refer to, and the social relations that many sociologists think of as constituting a “nuclear family” are at the centre of this article. It is based on ethnography among Wampar speakers in north-eastern Papua New Guinea (PNG). Among the Wampar, different, sometimes conflicting, transitions relevant to the emergence of the family as an accentuated social entity can be observed; yet all are a result of Christianisation and the local effects of capitalism. Nominally patrilineal clans (sagaseg), after a period when they seemed to have a somewhat diminished social significance, are again crucial social units: a result of the government’s requirement that statutory Incorporated Land Groups (ILGs) form the sole legal basis of compensation for land use. At the same time, there has been an increasing emphasis on the nuclear family, which, along with the aspiration for modern lifestyles (and their associated consumption patterns) and education for children, has reconfigured the gendered division of labour. Ideals of companionate marriage and values specific to the nuclear family have become much more critical to social practices. In some families, traditional notions of descent have lost importance to such an extent that some young people are no longer aware of their sagaseg membership. Wampar men and women discuss these conflicting tendencies and argue about the different values that ground them. Which argument prevails often depends on the specific position of the person confronting them.

Fishing intensification as response to Late Holocene socio-ecological instability in southeastern South America

The emergence of plant-based economies have dominated evolutionary models of Middle and Late Holocene pre-Columbian societies in South America. Comparatively, the use of aquatic resources and the circumstances for intensifying their exploitation have received little attention. Here we reviewed the stable carbon and nitrogen isotope composition of 390 human individuals from Middle and Late Holocene coastal sambaquis, a long-lasting shell mound culture that flourished for nearly 7000 years along the Atlantic Forest coast of Brazil. Using a newly generated faunal isotopic baseline and Bayesian Isotope Mixing Models we quantified the relative contribution of marine resources to the diet of some of these groups. Through the analysis of more than 400 radiocarbon dates we show that fishing sustained large and resilient populations during most of the Late Holocene. A sharp decline was observed in the frequency of sambaqui sites and radiocarbon dates from ca. 2200 years ago, possibly reflecting the dissolution of several nucleated groups into smaller social units, coinciding with substantial changes in coastal environments. The spread of ceramics from ca. 1200 years ago is marked by innovation and intensification of fishing practices, in a context of increasing social and ecological instability in the Late Holocene.

Towards a Socio-Economic Model for Southwest Asian Cereal Domestication

Mechanisms of selection for domestication traits in cereals and other annual plants are commonly explained from agro-technological and genetic perspectives. Since archaeobotanical data showed that domestication processes were slow and protracted, research focused on genetic constraints and hypothetical ‘non-selective’ management regimes to explain the low selection rates. I argue that these factors only partially explain the observed patterns and develop a model that contextualises the archaeobotanical data in their socio-economic settings. I propose that developments towards individual storage by small household units and the gradual increase in storage capacities with the development of extended households represent key factors for establishing the conditions for selection, as these practices isolated individually managed and stored cereal subpopulations and gradually reduced the need to replenish grain stocks with grains from unmanaged populations. This genetic isolation resulted in stronger and more persistent selection rates and facilitated the genetic fixation of domestication traits on a population level. Moreover, individual storage facilities within buildings reflect gradual developments towards households as the social units that mobilised agricultural labour, which negotiated new sharing principles over cultivated resources and drove the intensification of cultivation practices. In this sense, selection rates and the slow domestication process can be understood as a function of limited food sharing networks and increased labour-inputs into early arable environments—socio-economic processes that also unfolded gradually over a protracted period of time.

Groups and Social Boundaries

Social groups were a key concept in early sociology (German formal sociology, symbolic interactionism). Since the 1960s, they have been replaced by “social network” as the prime concept for informal social structures. We rarely find the bounded and internally homogeneous social units suggested by the group concept in the real world. Instead, individuals are embedded in a complex mesh of social relationships. Building on relational sociology, we can reconceptualize groups as a particular case of densely connected network patterns of social relationships. These exist only by degree, to the extent that they are reinforced by a social boundary separating the group members symbolically from the outside world and by foci of activity for the group to meet. Densely connected groups develop a particular group culture, and they frequently use symbols to signal group membership and the cultural difference to other groups and to the wider cultural context (group style).

Patterns of social practices and activities in the early ALPC settlement of Bükkábrány-Bánya VII (Northeast-Hungary)

Bükkábrány-Bánya VII, an early ALPC settlement in Northeast Hungary, was just recently exposed to international research, but we would like to illustrate in our study how much promise its archaeological material has. We focused our investigation on these finds because the site contains a three-hectare excavated area and a welldefined settlement structure. Our first results are based on a quantitative examination of the many categories of archaeological finds. The first stage in our intra-site investigation involved the analysis of artifact fragmentation, as evaluated by the weight-to-frequency ratio, which indicated variances in depositional procedures. The spatial distribution of each find category was analyzed using kernel density, which revealed unique hot spots within activity zones. To split the settlement territory into spatial units, we employed the primary structural characteristics, such as rows of houses, empty spaces, and wells. The distribution and fragmentation data matched our theoretical spatial units well, providing an interpretive framework for the early ALPC settlement’s social units.

Relationships in works Poet Na. Muthukumar

Relationships with others or similar groups in society in the youth of everyone's life provide many experiences. Home situations, the sense of safety and care available to parents are significant in this development. For the youth, the family provides the protective features of food, clothing, shelter and love. It is desired to give himself priority and freedom in homes. It is learnt that children's attitudes also develop according to the upbringing of their parents at home. Human behaviors are developed and regulated by social units in which human interaction sits. In this way, relationships are often the state of family relationships and the state of co-relationships of society. It is the urge to live together, the urge to depend, to do so, and to take the lead in the process of conception and co-operation. This article is a demonstration of the nature of such relationships through the works of poet N. Muthukumar.

Assets and Domestic Units

Tracking change in assets access and ownership in longitudinal research is difficult. Assets are rarely assigned to individuals. Their benefit and management are spread across domestic units which morph over time. And this dynamism means that any claim about changing prosperity must also include other important claims about how prosperity should be measured and the stability of the social units which experience that prosperity. The chapter reviews the challenges of using assets to understand poverty dynamics, and tracking the domestic units that own and manage assets. It argues that changing asset ownership can be tracked, but who owns them and how their benefits are distributed—and how those distributions change—remains key.

Fishing intensification as response to Late Holocene socio-ecological instability in southeastern South America

The emergence of plant-based economies have dominated evolutionary models of Middle and Late Holocene pre-Columbian societies. Comparatively, the use of aquatic resources and the circumstances for intensifying their exploitation, have received little attention. Here we reviewed the stable carbon and nitrogen isotope composition of 390 human individuals from Middle and Late Holocene coastal sambaquis, a long-lasting shell mound culture that flourished for nearly 7000 years along the Atlantic Forest coast of Brazil. Using a newly generated faunal isotopic baseline and Bayesian Isotope Mixing Models we quantified the relative contribution of marine resources to the diet of some of these groups. Through the analysis of more than 400 radiocarbon dates we show that fishing sustained large and resilient populations during most of the Late Holocene. A sharp decline was observed in the chronology of non-ceramic sites from ca. 2200 years ago, possibly reflecting the dissolution of several nucleated groups into smaller social units, coinciding with substantial changes in coastal environments. The adoption of ceramics from ca. 1200 years ago is marked by innovation and intensification of fishing practices, in a context of increasing social and ecological instability in the Late Holocene.

The Long Road Out of Eden: Early Dynastic Temples, a Quantitative Approach to the Bent-Axis Shrines

This study was conducted to quantitatively assess the architectural data stemming from 70 buildings usually considered as bent-axis temples, a type of Mesopotamian temple mainly constructed from 2900 to 2300–2200 BC. The study reviews, region-by-region and site-by-site, the dimensions of the rooms considered the “holy of holies”, registering width, length, and surface area. The results are discussed in comparison to the previous reception rooms of the tripartite buildings, considered the original matrix from which these shrines developed. The chronological and regional differences that are outlined provide some insights about the kind of social units that were involved in the use of those buildings, which were key structures in the urban fabric of Early City states.

Toward the identification of social signatures in ceramic production – An archaeological case study

Ceramic analysis has been concerned with categorizing types according to vessel shape and size for describing a given material culture at a particular time. This analysis’ long tradition has enabled archaeologists to define cultural units across time. However, going into the analysis of sub-typological variations is rarely done, although their meanings bear significant consequences on the understanding of ties between individuals and social units. This study, aiming to assess whether it is possible to identify social signatures, focuses on a single archaeological ceramic type. For this propose, we selected a corpus of 235 storage jars from two distinct periods: storage jars from the Intermediate Bronze Age (the 25th -20th century BCE); and the Oval Storage Jar type (hereafter: OSJ) from the Iron Age II (the late 9th–early 6th century BCE). The vessels selected were 3-D scanned to extract accurate geometric parameters and analyzed through an advanced shape analysis. The study results show that integrating computational and objective analysis methods, focusing on the “minute variation” within a single ceramic type, yields substantial insights regarding the relationship between variability and social units. In addition to the methodological guidelines and the suggested “work protocol” for further studies, the results shed light on the social organization of the Intermediate Bronze Age and the Iron Age II in Southern Levant.