ANTH120

Derived Traits

  • Smaller teeth are an example of a derived trait.

Man the Hunter Hypothesis

  • Definition: This hypothesis suggests that hunting and tool use were the primary drivers of human evolution.

  • Core Idea: Early hominids migrated to the savannahs, and hunting, along with tool use, led to the development of "humanness."

  • Characteristics of "Humanness" as per the Hypothesis:

    • Bipedalism

    • Smaller teeth

    • Larger brain

    • Base camps

    • Monogamy

    • Division of labor

    • Aggressive males

    • Attractive and subservient females

    • Sexual dimorphism (larger males for protection, attractive females gaining better mates)

Problems with the Man the Hunter Hypothesis

  • Data Bias: The available data are heavily skewed towards hunting activities.

  • Bipedalism Timeline: Bipedalism predates hunting and tool use, challenging the hypothesis's sequence of events.

  • Oldowan Tools: These tools were primarily used for processing food, including chopping plants and meat, rather than hunting.

  • Dietary Evidence: Tooth wear patterns indicate that a significant portion of early hominid diets consisted of plants.

  • Base Camps: There is a lack of substantial evidence to support the existence of base camps.

  • Burdened Females Analogy: The analogy of burdened females staying in base camps is inaccurate, as they were primarily gatherers and did not remain stationary.

  • Monogamy: Monogamy is not unique to humans, undermining its significance in defining "humanness."

  • Essentialist Notion: The hypothesis relies on an essentialist view, suggesting a fixed set of traits that define humanity.

  • Sexist Bias:

    • It portrays women as passive recipients of food from males.

    • It reduces women to a reproductive role, solely focused on bearing and raising children.

    • It reflects European notions of gender roles prevalent from the mid-19th century to the late 1960s.

Hawke’s 1996 Division of Labor and Food Sharing

  • Female Reproductive Success:

    • Survival of offspring is crucial.

    • Passing on their genes is essential.

    • Dependable plant foods are a primary resource.

    • Females travel considerable distances to gather food.

    • They carry offspring with them while breastfeeding.

  • Male Reproductive Success:

    • Access to females is key.

    • Meat acquisition serves as costly signaling, demonstrating status.

    • Meat is used to elevate status within the group.

  • Division of Labor: The division of labor is not essentialist or strictly monogamous.

Grandmothering Hypothesis

  • Premise: Humans have a longer post-menopausal lifespan compared to other primates.

  • Grandmother Role: Grandmothers assist new mothers by gathering food for the children.

  • Genetic Certainty: Grandmothers primarily help their daughters (rather than sons) because they can be 100% certain that their daughters' children carry their genes.

  • Impact on Reproduction:

    • Children are weaned sooner.

    • They operate in habitats they otherwise could not.

    • A later age of maturity increases the rate of reproduction.

    • Offspring are more successful.

  • Skeletal Evidence:

    • Larger brain and body size.

    • Delayed maturity (dental eruption).

  • Archaeological Evidence:

    • Increased geographic range.

    • Weather changes make fruit less available, necessitating broader foraging.

    • Digging tools are used for gathering.

    • Evidence of fire use by Homo erectus.

  • Problem with the Theory: It largely ignores male activities and their roles.

Expensive Tissue Hypothesis (Aiello & Wheeler 1995)

  • Core Idea: Larger brains demand more calories.

    • Brain = 2\% \text{ of body weight but uses } 18\% \text{ of calories}

  • Stone Tools: Increase access to meat and fat, providing necessary calories.

  • Supporting Evidence:

    • Homo habilis shows a significant increase in cranial capacity (brain size) shortly after the emergence of stone tools.

    • Stable isotopes analysis should support this.

Dominance Status, Food Sharing, and Reproductive Success in Chimpanzees

  • Food Sharing Patterns:

    • Females share with offspring.

    • Males share with females.

    • Males share with males.

  • Male Reproductive Success: Being an attentive mate increases reproductive success.

  • Female Reproductive Success: Eating more meat enhances reproductive success.
    *Evolution of human behavior is NOT necessarily Hunting but food sharing that selects for a larger brain.

Social Brain Hypothesis

  • Social relations, select for a larger brain.

  • Benefits & challenges of living in social groups.

Australopithecines

  • Scavengers, collectors, and sharers of plants and animals.

  • Not primarily hunters.

Homo Habilis

  • Relatively large brain.

  • More fruit eaters.

  • Bipedal.

  • Also spent time in trees.

Homo Ergaster (1.9 - 0.5 mya)

  • Larger brain and brow ridge.

  • Long legs, shorter arms.

  • More bipedal, less time in trees.

  • Less hair on bodies.

  • Less sexual dimorphism.

  • Perhaps the first true humans.

  • Acheulean industry (1.65-0.25 MYA):

    • Often found in river channels or dried-up lakes.

  • First group to use fire:

    • Protection from predators.

    • Cooking (easier to eat, more digestible, more nutritious).

  • First species to leave Africa:

    • Fire helped them live in colder places.

  • First species to wear clothes:

    • Lice DNA and clothing can show evidence of this.

Turkana Boy

  • Died at approximately 12 years old; 5ft 3in tall.

  • Olorgesailie, Kenya: "The factory of stone tools".

Homo Erectus (1.6 mya)

  • First remains found outside Africa in Asia.

  • Early version of humans outside of Africa.

  • Distinct brow ridge.

  • Long limbs.

  • Relatively tall.

  • Narrow hips.
    *zhoukoudiam, china .8-.4 mya

  • Homo erectus skull found in 1929

  • Using cave as a base camp

  • Remains of over 40 individuals

  • Animal bones

  • 100,000 stone tools

  • Chopping tools, Feb 19th Online

Atlatal

  • More accurate.

  • More force tool.

  • Europe.

  • Later Paleolithic.

  • North America too

Three Models for Peopling of the Americas

  • Land bridge.

  • Coastal route (West Coast).

  • Solutrean route (Atlantic glacier).

First Americans

  • Tailored clothing (cold weather adaptation).

  • Boats.

  • Brought dogs/wolves (domesticated 35,000 years ago).

  • Dogs came into the Americas.

Land Bridge Theory

  • Viable ice bridge connecting 13,500 years ago.

  • Migrating birds/mammoths led people groups.

  • Major flyway for birds today.

  • Clovis people (13,500 years ago).

  • Problems:

    • Glacier desert environment.

    • 50k \text{ wide}

    • Would the bridge be able to support mammoths and people groups?

    • How did people get down to Chile so quickly from the bridge?

Coastal Migration Hypothesis

  • People could have followed the "kelp highway".

  • Sites along the coast are now gone because of sea levels and erosion.

  • No coastal sites.

  • Better explanation for how people got to Chile.

Atlantic Ice Sheet Route

  • Solutrean toolkit (22,000 years ago):

    • A lot of similarities between tools in America and Europe:

    • Eastern US.

    • 24,000 year old Solutrean point vs 14,000 Jefferson Island Maryland tool (similar tool).

  • Overall tool kit was manufactured differently

    • Solutrean

      • Work on only one side

    • Clovis Tools

      • Bifacial tool

      • More sophisticated

  • The Atlantic route is not widely accepted because there is no DNA evidence.

Linguistic Evidence

  • 1987 Joseph Greenber

  • Number of languages across the Americas with similar routes

  • More developed languages have been around

  • Amerind Languages 600-11,000 years

  • Na-dene 34

  • mtDNA and Linguistic go hand in hand.

  • Mitochondrial DNA comes from the mother.

Sunrise Child Girl Site in Central Alaska

  • 11,500 years old.

  • Complex set of population mixing.

When were the Americas people?

  • Pre-Clovis before 15,000 years ago (ya).

  • Clovis first after 15,000 ya.

  • At Least by 13,500 ya.

  • Tricky to get evidence.

Meadowcroft Rockshelter, SW Pennsylvania Site

  • 1970s.

  • 19,000-14,000 ya.

  • 700 pieces of stone tool kits.

  • Dating issues with the radiocarbon dates.

Cactus Hill Site, Virginia

  • Dug below clovis level.

  • Found artifacts.

  • Small blade cores.

  • 10-15 centimeters below the clovis.

  • 18,000-10,000 ya.

  • Questions about the radiocarbon dating.

Page-Ladson Site, Florida

  • Sink hole.

  • Flake tools, hammerstones, mastodon tusk.

  • 71 radiocarbon dates.

  • 14.5 thousand years ago.

Paisley Caves, Oregon

  • Use of plant materials.

  • Poop that contains human DNA.

    • More than 200 samples.

    • Pre clovis.

    • 3 are dated to 14.1 thousands years ago.

Monte Verde, Chile Site

  • 14,000 ya.

  • Near a creek.

  • Great preservation.

  • Preserved meat.

Early Sites in Alaska

  • Stratified sites.

  • Bone tools.

  • Microblade technology (connections with Siberia).

  • Well drained lowlands.

  • People could have been following birds/mammoth migraaint patterns.

Sites

  • Swan Point:

    • 14,300 ya.

    • Hunted bison.

  • Broken Mammoth:

    • 13,200 ya.

    • Butchering, cooking.

    • Tool making.

    • Clothing.

    • Hunting.

  • Dry creek:

    • 13,000 ya.

    • Small bifacial tools.

    • Microblades.

    • No longer contact with people in siberia

  • On your knees cave:

    • Oldest human remains, 10,000 ya.

    • Site on the coast supports coastal migration theory.

Clovis Culture

  • 13,500 - 12,900 ya.

  • Distribution of clovis points:

    • Ton in the Eastern US.

    • Fewer outwest.

  • Big game hunters:

    • Eating a wide range of animals

  • Mammoths, mastodon, bison.

  • Deer.

  • Turkeys.

  • Rabbits and squirrels.

  • Turtles.

  • Wild plant foods.

  • Each population had a preserved stone to use to make stone tools.

Overkill Hypothesis

Humans killed off certain animals (not the best explanation).

Significant climatic changes would have had more impact.

Some hypothesis this led to the demise of clovis people

Anzick Site in Montana

  • 1 ya clovis child found in 1968.

  • Stone tools.

  • Radiocarbon date 12,600 ya.

  • Only human burial for clovis culture.

  • DNA from child shows relation to people from europe

    • Native Americans.

Yucatan Cave Sites

  • Skeletal remains 13,000 ya.

  • Female 10,000 ya:

    • Cavities.

    • Trauma to her head.

  • Clovis descendants.

  • Paleoindian Sites in South America

  • Clovis descendants.

Post Clovis Variation in North America

  • Groups not as mobile.

  • Stone tools lose the fluteing.

  • Foragers:

    • Hunting and gathering, fishing.

  • Adapting to local conditions.

  • End of the ice age.

Kennewik Man: Ancient One

  • Remains found in 1996.

  • Native american graves protection and repatriation 1990.

  • 9,000 year old remains.

  • Found on federal property.

  • No cultural affiliation.

  • Suggested that skull had european characteristic, japanese.

NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act)

  • Gave scientist 16 days to review and study remains

  • Passed in 1990:

    • Requires repatriation by all federal entities and federally funded institutions/museums:

  • Human remains.

  • Associated funerary objects.

  • Items of cultural patrimony (items that belong to a group / their identity; Represented of their entire culture).

  • 1976 first act that went into effect in Iowa.

  • Who has ownership of these items?

  • Museum instructions.

  • Gives ownership back to the federally recognized Tribal Nations (573 Indian Tribal Nations, Alaska Native villages, and Native Hawaiian organization).

  • Only applies to:

    • Cultural items found on federal or Tribal Nation land.

    • Cultural items under control of federal agencies or museums and institutions with federal fundings.

  • Kennewick man

    • Skull morphology looks similar to japanese.

    • Asian groups.

    • No ties to Europe.

    • Reburied in 2017

  • Anzick child reburied in 2014

Settlement of Australia

  • 60,000-55,000 years ago.

  • Skeletal remains at Lake Mungo.

  • Madjedbebe:

    • OSL dates.

    • Sand.28,000 grains of sand.

    • Several migration events over 20,000 year.

  • Tasmania

    • Papua New Guinea → Tasmania Migration.

  • Rapid expansion throughout the continent.

  • 2,000 years population grow.

  • 25,000 years ago people were living all over australia and in the dessert.

Australian Rock Art

  • Walinynga (Cave Hill).

Australian Toolkits

  • Localized styles.

  • Microtechnology.

  • Steep edge scrapers.

  • Boomerangs.

Changing Landscapes~ 7,000 years ago

Rock art around 7,000 years ago depicting battle scenes (conflict).

More changes in the environment around 4,000 years ago:

Sites become larger and more abundant (becoming more sedentary).

Rising populations or more sedentary (people staying near water sources).

Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, Toolondo

  • Built long fish / eel traps.

  • Near lakes.

  • Lake waters would rise and fill traps with food.

  • Producing their own food.

Europeans Arrive in 1606

  • Rapid changes.

  • Diseases spread: Smallpox.

Ethnoarchaeology Among Indigenous Australians

  • How to use tools.

  • Watch how they use tools now to figure out how they used them in the past.

  • Patterns of trash disposal.

  • Patterns of hunting.

  • Listened to oral histories.

Australia

  • 250-500 language groups across australia.

  • Interacting with Europeans.

Collaborative Archaeology

  • 1998 - announced a national sorry day for people under their gov.

  • National reconciliation day (recognize).

  • Inclusion of native australians.

  • 1984 - protected original heritage.

  • Cultural custodian:

    • Has to be with you at all times.

    • Knows the area.

    • Do not exploit their past for our benefit.

Foragers: Hunting/Gathering/Fishing

Oldest human substance strategy (99% of humans have been foragers).

Colonized the continents around the world

  • 250,000 foragers left
    Plants are over 50% of their diet (more productive and reliable than animals).

Game is important for protein

Smaller animals.

Shell fish, fish.

Do not use all of the potential resources.

Staples in their diet but wil

Foragers work 12-20 hours a week on food procurement

How do foragers live day to day

Local resources affect how often they move

Nomadic Foragers

  • Move much more frequently.

  • Move for firewood, water sources.

  • Move before they use up everything at one camp.

  • Marginal value theorem.

  • Move because of quarreling.

  • Move to meet up with other groups.

  • Low population density.

  • Few possessions, temporary shelters, minimal storage.

  • Land cost high.

  • Energy cost (human input) low.

  • Low risk.

Sedentary / Semi Sedentary

  • Live in one camp for half the year.

  • Higher demography.

  • Greater material investment in tools, houses, and storage.

  • land cost less than nomadic foragers.

  • Energy cost (human input) low.

  • Higher risk than nomadic foragers.

  • Live in resource rich areas.

Foraging

Without too much difficulty provide food for

What happens if you need more food

Expand into neighboring area

climate change = resources in your area depleting

Leads to competition with other groups

Increase quantity of resources already using

Exhausting local resources

Diversify to less desirable resources

Invent new technologies (eel traps)

Optimal Foraging (Human behavioral ecology)

People tend to perform rational

Get the most bang for their buck

Go for turkey, deers, other higher ranked meat

When they cannot get that they go for lower ranked like rabbits

Egalitarian VS. Social Complexity

When do foragers develop hierarchies

Garden of Eden

Climate/Resource Uncertainty

Population Increase

Power, Prestige, and competition for resources

Preconditions for cultural complexity among hunter-gatherers

Constraints on fissioning

Resource abundance

Storability of surplus

Settlement permanence

High population density

Who are/were complex hunter/gatherers

Collected nuts

Consequences of Complexity

Intensified land use practices.

Increased production.

Increased trade.

Decrease in Leisure time

Invest networking trade

Technological innovation

Increased fertility

Ween infants earlier
Increased nutritional stress

Increased epidemic diseases

Decrease in hygiene

Increased social strife

Northwest Coast Complex Societies

Social Stratification and cultural complexity:

Large villages

Status-related objects

Physical markers of status

The potlatch

Control of production locations

Namu Site, British Columbia

Since 9,000 ya

Intensification of shellfish collection after 4,500

Fishing technology improvement

Intensification of marine resource/new technologie

Fish weir

Salmon baton

Technology

Changes in woodworking

Adzes

Hafted adzeStorage box

Importance of Cedar

Strong, lightweight wood

Totem poles

Houses

Spears

Used the roots to make ropes, nets, baskets

Heat and waterproof baskets

Baby diapers

Plank houses: archaeological evidence to 4,000 BP

Low roofs to keep warm

One hole in the roof to let smoke out

One entrance/exit

Increased social interaction

Shell bead trade

Craft specialization

Signs of Social ranking: personal ornamentation - personal ornamentation

Labret: a pulley shaped object of stone bone or wood that would be in the mouth

Differential burial/status

Grave goods

Exoctic finely made pieces

Skull shaping as a child

Development of slavery and increasing conflict~ 1800-1500 BCE

War, conflict

Wealth and distribution

The potlatch or gift

Consequences of complexity

Southwest Asia

Kebaran (13-11,000 BCE)

End of the ice age

Wild grains

Wild emmer wheat

Nut trees

Microblades - arrowheads

Natufian (11-8,500 BCE)

Acorns

Almonds

Cold Snap

Younger dryas period: 10,800-9,500 BCE

  • House structures at Eynan, Israel

    • 13-10,000BCE

  • House remains at ‘Ain Mallaha, Israel

    • 10-8,200 BCE

  • Hilazon Tachtit, Israel~ 10,400 BCE

  • Göbekli Tepe (9,600 BCE)
    *Abu Hureyra, Syria~ 11,00-7,500 BCE

  • Early circular house floors ~11 - 9,800 BCE

  • Reoccupied ~8800-7500BCE
    *Abu Hureyra, Syria Reoccupied in 8800-7500 BCE

  • 300-400 people living here year round

  • Big investment in structures

Farming

High demography

Land cost is low

Even greater material investment in tools, houses, storage, ownership of land

Human cost is high

60 hour work weeks

High risk

If you have a bad year it is hard to recover food for your community

Innovations

Sickle tools, hoe tools

Storing animals

Ownership is developed more

Domestication of plants and animals

Domesticates: dependent on people for survival and reproduction

Intervene ourselves in their reproductive cycles

Breed animals

Process of domestication

Human behaviors/actions change the selective pressures on plants and animals

Leads to genetic changes

Results in physical and behavioral changes in plant or animal population

Continuum of interactions between humans and plants or humans and animals

On one end is no intervention on the other is full control

Human actions (some intentional, some unintentional) produce changes over time

Plants and animals become dependent on people

People become dependent on plants and animals

Changes:

Biological

Species and genetics

Ecological landscapes

Cultural

How we use these plants

Two big steps towards domestication:

People separate individuals from wild breeding populations

People intervene in lifecycle

Intervention of people changes conditions of selection

Intentionally

Unintentionally

Genetic Perspective

Individuals that survive and reproduce contribute genes to next generations

Human manipulation can change which forms or characteristics are beneficial

Human actions selecting for change

Harvesting combined with storage & planting

A. Wild stand: unharvested ones are the next

B. Wild stands = harvested, people eat them all -Unharvested = grow the next year

C. Domesticated stands = harvested = people eat most, store some, plant the next year

Harvest methods

A. If beat and collect you do not select for seed retention (tougher rachis) or clustering

B. If cut stalks, bundle them, and then thrash seeds, you collect the ones that are clusters and stay on plant (tougher rachis)

Storage

Dormancy vs. relaxed dormancy

(seed coat thickness)

New rules for survival and reproduction

Deliberate human management favors certain characteristics

Harvest, store, sow

Unintentional: Selection for non brittle rachis

Intentional: Planting biggest seeds

Common changes in plants

Going from disperse seeds to retained on the stalk

Branching to clustered seeds

Sequential to simultaneous ripening

Increases in seed and fruit size

Characteristics of wild relatives of early domesticates

Already important foraged food items

“Generalist” or weedy plant (does well in disturbed soils)

Adapted to growing in dense stands

Tolerable of storage conditions

High rate of mutation/genetic variation

Adaptable to new selective pressures

Domestication of plants and animals

Domesticates: dependent on people for survival and reproduction

Breeding controlled by humans

Which animals are good candidates for domestication

Not territorial

Gregarious (likes to live together in groups).

Easy to tend - not too skittish

Social hierarchy

Flexible feeding habit

“hard”/adaptable - With animals living so close to each other disease can spread

Reproduction easily controlled by humans

Fast growth rate and short birth spacing

Bad traits for domestication

Independent tendency

Territorial

Lare range and solitary

Cats are the exception

Rhinoceros

Solitary animal

One offspring every 2-4 years

Why domesticate animals

Hunting/companionship/protection/bed warmer/food supply: dog

Meat supply: sheep/goat/cow/pig

Traction: horse/donkey/camel

Secondary products

Clothing material (wool,leather)

Honey

Dung

Process of domestication

Continuum of interactions- regulate breeding

Keep more females than males

Cull younger males, older females

Burning the underbrush gives better foliage, more nutritious leave for animals

Regulation of breeding

Much easier to do for animalsSeparate males and females

Selective breeding

30 \text{ generations for impact to show up}

120 \text{ years until you see effects for larger animals}
60 \text{ years or faster for smaller animals effects}

Far more females than males in the group.

Females reproduce more

Milk

Eat the younger males

Eat older females since they can no longer reproduce

Archaeological evidence of animal domesticationReduce in size

Process of Domestication
Continuum of interactions:
Regulate breeding: --Keep more females than males, Cull younger males, older females

Archaeological evidence of animal domestication

Reduction in size:
Nutritional: Retention of juvenile characteristics: -- Smaller teeth (more selecting of juvenile behaviors of individuals)
Changes in horns (change in shape, females loose horns all together in sheeps)
Spreading outside of their native range (indication that people are directly managing animals)
Sex profiles change: more males culled at a younger age shifts in species frequencies
Shift in unregulated frequencies at NAtufian sites between 8000 and 10,000 years ago:
Changes in cultural practices: Domesticated Animals
DogsOldest burial 12,000 years agoSick puppyWolvesGoats Wool and meatSheepCattle Taurine cattle Zebu CattlePigsCatsFor rodent controlHorse Russian TarpanDonkeyCamelChicken Egg production: SilkwormsCamelidsAndesGuinea PigsRitual purposes\Origins of Agriculture or Agricultural Revolution
Agricultural RevolutionNot a single, abrupt developmentNot necessarily an improvementNot a single inventionNot agriculture: horticulture came firstWhen and where: Independent centers of domesticationNo previous experience with domesticatesFertile crescent 10-8,000 years ago Asia 8-8,500 years ago North ChinaSouth China sugar caneSub Saharan AfricaPacific rim islands coconutMesoamerica squash, gourds, corn years agoSouth america potatoes, llamas, guinea pigs, chili peppersEastern north america squash, sunflower, marshelder, chenopodEvidence for DomesticationsLook for genetic diversityNikolai Vavilov (1930s and 1940s)Look for and map wild progenitorsIdentify the wild progenitorsLook for archaeological evidenceMicroremains PollenLook for tools to process plants and animalsLook at sites themselves
Pens to keep animalsStorage places for foodWhy agriculturePositives of farmingPredictableStay in one placeControl over the food you haveStore a lot of food in one placeSet your group up when there is a droughtDrawbacks of farminggenetically modified plants and animals are less nutritious\nOasis HypothesisGordon Childe 1930sDrying climates at the end of the pleistocene in Near EastBoth humans andn animals and plants would be concentrates around water sourcesThe nuclear / natural habitat zone hypothesisRobert J. Braidwood 1950sHumans would domesticate plants and animals in areas where those species first existed in the wild (nuclear areas) as part of a gradually increasing association with humansDemographic/Population pressure theoriesLewis Binford, Ester Boserup 1960sIncreasing human populations required more food than could be obtainedResulted in intensification of food production and eventual domestication of plants and animalsCoevolutionary hypotheses
David rindos, bruce smith 1980sOnce humans start living for longer periods in one area, they create disturbed habitats that favor certain plant speciesHumans, plants, and animals in close contactUnintentional domestication of plants and animals which in turn domesticated humansSocial theories
(Barbara Bender, Brian Hayden 1980s-2000s)Expanding trade and political alliance created new social and economic pressures to produce surplusesSelf aggrandizing individuals would try to build up food surpluses to exchange for goods, services, and followersFor example, redistribution in feastMultivariate ModelsCombination of factors at play
Population growth, climate change, etcHumans manipulating the landscape to their benefitExploitation of certain resources and intentional changes to landscape lead to unintended consequences, like domestication of plants and animalsConsequences of AgriculturePopulation growthForaging/ carrying one baby at a timeIncrease sedentism and specializationProduced food starts replacing foraged foodsHealth and nutrition consequencesIncreased dependence on carbohydratesDecrease intake of animal proteinPeople are chronically undernourished AnemiaStatus higher status people get more meatGender males eat more meatInfants weened off of mother milk onto food and this does not nutritionally fulfill themMothersstress on their bodiesIncrease risk of famine DroughtFloodsTornadoSkeletal evidence
Decrease in heightEnamel hypoplasiaPorotic hyperostosisOrbitalia Lab paleoethnobotanyStudy of the interrelations between people and plants in the pastTwo main categories:Microbotanical remains: Cannot be seen with naked eye PollenStarch grainsMacrobotanical: can be seen with naked eye
HOW CAN WE get plants from archaeological sites
Desiccation - caused by dry conditions
Waterlogging - caused by wet conditions
Carbonization - caused by burning

Preservation

Biases - Items with high water content that burn to ash are underrepresented and Items with high sugar/starch that burn to unrecognizable mass are underrepresented and Small, fragile items that do not easily withstand mechanical damage
microbotanical remains
Take dirt samples; FlotationHow do we identify plants from archaeological sites?Look at fractions under microscope or with eyeModern comparisonsWhat information can we learn from food related artifacts?
Chemical analysis to determine migrationHow are plant remains introduced to archaeological sitesPaleoethnobotany Research Topics:Environmental ReconstructionSubsistence Strategies and organization: DomesticationsSeasonalityEastern woodland of USBeginning 5,000 years ago: squash Before presentSunflowers Before present Sumpweed Before present Goosefoot Before present Cultigens Centers of Domestication Consequences of AgriculturePopulation GrowthIncreased sedentism and specializationDisease risk is higherBone lesions form from the disease reaching the bonePopulation pool to make disease spread quickerDecrease in santitazion
Rodent and insects attracted and bring diseases and parasites with themHealth and nutrition consequencesEnamel hypoplasiasPorotic hyperostosisSkeletal remains
Decrease in heightCribra orbitaliaDental cariescornChanges in workloadsArthritis elbow - from grinding, lower back, toesLower in strength in generalSocial consequences agricultureChanges in attitude about land --territorialityDifferential access to resources (Inequality 4comp/violence)Surface production specialistsComplex division of laborArt, tool and craft specialists
Development of leaders