‘Moving South’: Late Pleistocene Plant Exploitation and the Importance of Palm in the Colombian Amazon

The role of plants in early human migrations across the globe has received little attention compared to big game hunting. Tropical forests in particular have been seen as a barrier for Late Pleistocene human dispersals due to perceived difficulties in obtaining sufficient subsistence resources. Archaeobotanical data from the Cerro Azul rock outcrop in the Colombian Amazon details Late Pleistocene plant exploitation providing insight into early human subsistence in the tropical forest. The dominance of palm taxa in the assemblage, dating from 12.5 ka BP, allows us to speculate on processes of ecological knowledge transfer and the identification of edible resources in a novel environment. Following the hypothesis of Martin Jones from his 2009 work, “Moving North: archaeobotanical evidence for plant diet in Middle and Upper Paleolithic Europe”, we contend that the instantly recognizable and economically useful palm family (Arecaceae) provided a “gateway” to the unknown resources of the Amazon forest.

High altitude hunting, climate change, and pastoral resilience in eastern Eurasia

The transition from hunting to herding transformed the cold, arid steppes of Mongolia and Eastern Eurasia into a key social and economic center of the ancient world, but a fragmentary archaeological record limits our understanding of the subsistence base for early pastoral societies in this key region. Organic material preserved in high mountain ice provides rare snapshots into the use of alpine and high altitude zones, which played a central role in the emergence of East Asian pastoralism. Here, we present the results of the first archaeological survey of melting ice margins in the Altai Mountains of western Mongolia, revealing a near-continuous record of more than 3500 years of human activity. Osteology, radiocarbon dating, and collagen fingerprinting analysis of wooden projectiles, animal bone, and other artifacts indicate that big-game hunting and exploitation of alpine ice played a significant role during the emergence of mobile pastoralism in the Altai, and remained a core element of pastoral adaptation into the modern era. Extensive ice melting and loss of wildlife in the study area over recent decades, driven by a warming climate, poaching, and poorly regulated hunting, presents an urgent threat to the future viability of herding lifeways and the archaeological record of hunting in montane zones.

Wilding the domestic: Camp servants and glamping in British India

How can a jungle be domestic, and a camp servant be a domestic servant? This article argues for a reconceptualisation of historical forests and jungles of India: spaces usually conceived of as wild and hostile in the popular imagination were also a domestic realm. Pushing the boundaries of traditional conceptualisations of both domestic and wild, I examine the lives of late nineteenth to early twentieth-century camp servants and colonial officers living and working in the central Indian hinterland. Building on my work on populations I have referred to as ‘subaltern shikaris’, typically ‘tribal’ employees in British big game hunting expeditions, and drawing from a vast literature left behind by European forest officers and big game hunters in central India, this article shows how servants and servitude were vital to establishing that jungle camps could indeed be quite domestic.

Sympathy for Cecil: using political ecology, ecofeminism, and animal ethics to understand western attitudes toward trophy hunting

This article draws from political ecology, animal ethics, and ecofeminism to examine sympathy, expressed by record-breaking donation from North Americans, for the death of Cecil the Lion. Sympathy is disclosive insofar as it reveals, relies upon, and reinforces different forms of sexual, racial, and neocolonial domination; especially when western sympathy remains ignorant of the politics and histories of the power relations that shape attitudes toward non-human animals and their status as members in a moral community. When does nature appear as something to take care of rather than take care against?Keywords: sympathy, animal ethics, ecofeminism, big-game hunting, wildlife conservation, Cecil the Lion

COLONIAL PIG-STICKING, IMPERIAL AGENDAS, AND NATURAL HISTORY IN THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

As the sport that purportedly enhanced martial conditioning of the ‘dominant’ race, pig-sticking assumed critical importance for the survival of the British in India. When numerous local insecurities and large-scale anxieties threatened the empire, hunting pursuits involving the wily Indian pig, it was said, made soldiers out of boys; the attendant spectacles of masculinity aimed to exert symbolic dominance over the restive Indian masses. The sport also served as an avenue for upward mobility for the subaltern soldier attempting to upstage aristocratic hunting performances in England and India. While masculinity and symbolic governance have been analysed repeatedly in critiques of hunting, sportsmen's contributions to natural history have seen limited analyses. Here, I show that the local intricacies of pig-sticking motivated a superlative understanding of the Indian wild boar, a tricky, unpredictable customer with a vile temper, and a ready propensity to attack its pursuers. Pig-sticking entailed a multi-faceted immersion with both land and people, incorporating hybrid knowledge-making, shaped within the contact zone of indigenous and colonial encounter. Further, while agreeing with post-colonial critiques on sport and imperialism, I propose looking beyond colonial exceptionalism to situate big-game hunting within the larger scholarship on costly signalling and hunting for prestige among human societies.

Defining the True Hunter: Big Game Hunting, Moral Distinction, and Virtuosity in French Colonial Indochina

This article examines the concept of the “true hunter” (vrai chasseur) among big game hunters in French colonial Indochina. Drawing primarily on French language texts published by highly experienced European hunters between 1910 and 1950, it first examines in detail the true hunter ethic, which required hunters to hunt and kill their prey in a “sporting” (sportif) manner. This ethic involved adherence to an expansive and complicated set of rules related to stalking, marksmanship, knowledge possession, restraint, prey selection, choice of firearms and ammunition, and others. True hunting was regarded as by definition difficult and, as is argued, the practical realization of the true hunter ideal entailed not simply engaging in hunting as an activity, but instead successfully performing a very difficult but specific type of killing. The article's second purpose is to engage a paradox associated with the texts, their authors, and the ethic. While critical of other hunters for “unnecessary slaughter,” many killed staggering numbers of animals. This paradox is accounted for by placing the true hunters in the broader social context of colonial Indochina. Both their type of sport hunting and the virtuosity of their killing distinguished them from the indigenous populations that served their hunts and other European hunters. This virtuosity also legitimized the scale of their killing and placed these hunters into a distinctive social and moral community.