Andrea L. Balbo

Squaring the circle. Social and environmental implications of pre-pottery neolithic building technology at Tell Qarassa (South Syria).

We present the results of the microstratigraphic, phytolith and wood charcoal study of the remains of a 10.5 ka roof. The roof is part of a building excavated at Tell Qarassa (South Syria), assigned to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period (PPNB). The Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) period in the Levant coincides with the emergence of farming. This fundamental change in subsistence strategy implied the shift from mobile to settled aggregated life, and from tents and huts to hard buildings. As settled life spread across the Levant, a generalised transition from round to square buildings occurred, that is a trademark of the PPNB period. The study of these buildings is fundamental for the understanding of the ever-stronger reciprocal socio-ecological relationship humans developed with the local environment since the introduction of sedentism and domestication. Descriptions of buildings in PPN archaeological contexts are usually restricted to the macroscopic observation of wooden elements (posts and beams) and mineral components (daub, plaster and stone elements). Reconstructions of microscopic and organic components are frequently based on ethnographic analogy. The direct study of macroscopic and microscopic, organic and mineral, building components performed at Tell Qarassa provides new insights on building conception, maintenance, use and destruction. These elements reflect new emerging paradigms in the relationship between Neolithic societies and the environment. A square building was possibly covered here with a radial roof, providing a glance into a topologic shift in the conception and understanding of volumes, from round-based to square-based geometries. Macroscopic and microscopic roof components indicate buildings were conceived for year-round residence rather than seasonal mobility. This implied performing maintenance and restoration of partially damaged buildings, as well as their adaptation to seasonal variability.

Resilience of small-scale societies: a view from drylands

To gain insights on long-term social-ecological resilience, we examined adaptive responses of small-scale societies to dryland-related hazards in different regions and chronological periods, spanning from the mid-Holocene to the present. Based on evidence from Africa (Sahara and Sahel), Asia (south margin of the Thar desert), and Europe (South Spain), we discuss key traits and coping practices of small-scale societies that are potentially relevant for building resilience. The selected case studies illustrate four main coping mechanisms: mobility and migration, storage, commoning, and collective action driven by religious beliefs. Ultimately, the study of resilience in the context of drylands emphasizes the importance of adaptive traits and practices that are distinctive of small-scale societies: a strong social-ecological coupling, a solid body of traditional ecological knowledge, and a high degree of internal cohesion and self-organization.

A microarchaeological approach for the study of pits

Abstract The study of the technology underlying pre-industrial storage structures has an interest from an anthropological and archaeological perspective, in terms of the evolution of key cultural and cognitive capabilities, often related to the transition to food production. Microarchaeological techniques offer a unique perspective on the study of pre-industrial storing technologies. In this work, examples are presented from two archaeological contexts in different climatic and socio-ecological situations during the Holocene in S Asia and SW Europe. Microarchaeological techniques used in this study include micromorphology, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and phytolith analyses. The comparative study of two pits highlights key aspects of the decision-making process involved in technological solutions of storage: • The choice of a location for the construction of a given storage facility is highly affected by contextual climatic, microclimatic, soil and bioturbative factors• The time taken to consume stored foodstuffs seems to affect technological investment as much as the intrinsic conservation requirements of the stored taxa• The use of fire to hygienise pits implies that such structures were not conceived for single use• Pre-industrial storage systems can be seen as modular structures, which components (e.g. topographical location, sediment type, lining type, hygienisation techniques and cover) can be recombined to improve storage performance for different climatic settings and foodstuffs.

Use of Satellite SAR for Understanding Long-Term Human Occupation Dynamics in the Monsoonal Semi-Arid Plains of North Gujarat, India

This work explores the spatial distribution of monsoonal flooded areas using ENVISAT C-band Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) in the semi-arid region of N. Gujarat, India. The amplitude component of SAR Single Look Complex (SLC) images has been used to estimate the extent of surface and near-surface water dynamics using the mean amplitude (MA) of monsoonal (July to September) and post-monsoonal (October to January) seasons. The integration of SAR-derived maps (seasonal flooding maps and seasonal MA change) with archaeological data has provided new insights to understand present-day landscape dynamics affecting archaeological preservation and visibility. Furthermore, preliminary results suggest a good correlation between Mid-Holocene settlement patterns and the distribution and extension of seasonal floodable areas within river basin areas, opening interesting inroads to study settlement distribution and resource availability in past socio-ecological systems in semi-arid areas.

Food for all: An agent-based model to explore the emergence and implications of cooperation for food storage

Abstract A consistent access to food is paramount for humans at individual and group level. Besides providing the basic nutritional needs, access to food defines social structures and has stimulated innovation in food procurement, processing and storage. We focus on the social aspects of food storage, namely the role of cooperation for the emergence and maintenance of common stocks. Cooperative food stocks are examined here as a type of common-pool resource, where appropriators must cooperate to avoid shortage (i.e. the tragedy of commons). ‘Food for all’ is an agent-based model in which agents face the social dilemma of whether or not to store in a cooperative stock, adapting their strategies through a simple reinforcement learning mechanism. The model provides insights on the evolution of cooperation in terms of storage efficiency and considering the presence of social norms that regulate reciprocity. For cooperative food storage to emerge and be maintained, a significant dependency on the stored food and some degree of external pressure are needed. In fact, cooperative food storage emerges as the best performing strategy when facing environmental stress. Likewise, an intermediate control over reciprocity favours cooperation for food storage, suggesting that concepts of closed reciprocity are precursors to cooperative stocks, while excess control over reciprocity is detrimental for such institution.

Comigrants and friends: Informal networks and the transmission of traditional ecological knowledge among seminomadic pastoralists of Gujarat, India

Previous research has shown that social organization may affect the distribution of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) within local communities of natural resource users in multiple ways. However, in this line of research the potential role of informal relationships has mostly been overlooked. In this article, we contribute toward filling this research gap by studying how two types of informal relationships, namely migration partnership and friendship, affect the distribution of TEK within a community of seminomadic pastoralists from the Kutch area, Gujarat, India. Using social network analysis, we map three networks, migration, men friendship, and women friendship, and compare with similarity-based quantitative approaches the clusters extracted from these networks in relation to four domains of TEK: knowledge about soils, about ethnoveterinary practices, about sheep breeds, and in ethnobotany. Our results show that (1) migration clusters are associated to significant variations in three TEK domains, while (2) friendship clusters are associated to minor variations. We relate these results to the importance of common practical experiences involved by joint migration. Moreover, kin relations are shown to strongly underlie friendship and migration relations, and as such appear as a potential driver of the dynamics of the local TEK system. We conclude by advocating for a better inclusion of such informal relationships in future research on local TEK dynamics, following recent developments in studies on natural resource governance.

Changes in settlement patterns on the River Rena, southeast Norway: A response to Holocene climate change?

The melting of the Scandinavian Ice-Sheet in the early Holocene allowed humans to populate the northernmost parts of Europe. Recent excavations of archaeological sites on the riverbank, floodplain and kame terraces of the River Rena, southeast Norway have defined periods of human occupation in riverside environments, which became ice-free during the last deglaciation. In this paper, we extend the scope of previous archaeological work by examining the sedimentology and chronology of five riverside sedimentary sequences along the River Rena. Our aims were to reconstruct the Holocene evolution of part of the river, and determine whether changes in Holocene settlement patterns might be linked to changes in river evolution and/or climate. Results show: (1) widespread draining of the kame terraces of the River Rena occurred shortly before the first consistent human settlement in the area began c. 8 ka BP; (2) human settlement was maintained until the present day, except during a period of previously undocumented abandonment between c. 4 and 3 ka BP, associated with a sustained period of high river discharge. We link the establishment of first undisputable settlement to reduced water levels as glaciers retreated upstream during a ‘warmer’ phase of the early Holocene, shortly after the 8.2 ka climatic downturn event. The most recent abandonment of the riverbank settlements 4—3 ka BP occurred during the last phase of glacier advance in the River Rena region, which has been linked to the Europe-wide late-Holocene Thermal Decline (Neoglacial) downturn in climate.

Radiocarbon Dating of Agrarian Terraces by Means of Buried Soils

Soils buried under terrace fills have been widely used to date the construction of ancient agrarian terraces. The reliability of the obtained radiocarbon dates entirely depends on the degree of preservation and isolation of the Ab horizons and on the amount of embedded older carbon. To assess these caveats, we analyzed 14 C dates (11 on charred material and 3 on the bulk organic fraction) obtained from buried soils under Andalusi terrace fills in Ricote, Spain (AD 711–1492). The preservation of Ab horizons was assessed through bulk analyses [particle size distribution (PSD), carbon analyses, magnetic susceptibility (Mag Sus)] and statistics [Welch’s ANOVA, MANOVA (Wilk’s lambda) and effect size tests]. The effects of older carbon were quantified through the systematic dating of Ab horizons within the earliest terrace cluster of Ricote. Our results show that (1) Ab horizons were not disturbed nor mixed with the terrace fills above; (2) the dates determined from the bulk organic fraction were statistically significantly older than those provided by the charred material, probably due to the higher stability of the microcharcoal fraction; and (3) the earliest dates measured on charcoal clustered reliably around cal AD 989–1210, suggesting that the first Andalusi irrigated terraces of Ricote were built between the end of the 10th and the beginning of the 13th centuries AD.

Size and stochasticity in irrigated social-ecological systems.

This paper presents a systematic study of the relation between the size of irrigation systems and the management of uncertainty. We specifically focus on studying, through a stylized theoretical model, how stochasticity in water availability and taxation interacts with the stochastic behavior of the population within irrigation systems. Our results indicate the existence of two key population thresholds for the sustainability of any irrigation system: or the critical population size required to keep the irrigation system operative, and N* or the population threshold at which the incentive to work inside the irrigation system equals the incentives to work elsewhere. Crossing irretrievably leads to system collapse. N* is the population level with a sub-optimal per capita payoff towards which irrigation systems tend to gravitate. When subjected to strong stochasticity in water availability or taxation, irrigation systems might suffer sharp population drops and irreversibly disintegrate into a system collapse, via a mechanism we dub ‘collapse trap’. Our conceptual study establishes the basis for further work aiming at appraising the dynamics between size and stochasticity in irrigation systems, whose understanding is key for devising mitigation and adaptation measures to ensure their sustainability in the face of increasing and inevitable uncertainty.