Brian F. Byrd

Public and private, domestic and corporate: the emergence of the southwest Asian village

Despite extensive research on the transition from semimobile hunters and gatherers to sedentary, food-producing villagers in Southwest Asia, associated changes in community organization remain unexplored. Undoubtedly new social and economic mechanisms were necessary to facilitate the success of these larger permanent settlements. The emergence of novel intrasite organizational patterns can be elucidated in the archaeological record through analysis of the built environment. This paper presents an interpretation of temporal transformations in community organization utilizing the results from the detailed analysis of Beidha, one of the most extensively excavated early Neolithic villages in Southwest Asia. It is proposed that the emergence of Neolithic farming villages in Southwest Asia was characterized by two parallel and interrelated organizational trends: a more restricted social network for sharing production and consumption activities, and the development of more formal and institutionalized mechanisms for integrating the community as a whole.

Social Circumscription, Territoriality, and the Late Holocene Intensification of Small-Bodied Shellfish Along the California Coast

ABSTRACT Shellfish eaten by hunter-gatherers, rather than being viewed as a monolithic food type, could more appropriately be divided into species that are more similar in behavior and reproductive biology to animals, and those that are more similar to plants, with the vast majority belonging to the latter category. We present the record of prehistoric gathering of two small shellfish species—bean clam (Donax gouldii) and California hornsnail (Cerithidea californica)—both of which follow a trajectory similar to plant remains in the archaeological record of California. We argue that Donax exploitation in southern California is tied to social circumscription, which led to increased settlement permanence and excluded some foragers from ready access to high-ranking lagoonal and rocky shore shellfish. Cerithidea were exploited throughout the Late Holocene in the Southern San Francisco Bay Area, but are found in varying abundances in regional assemblages. We argue that the inclusion of Cerithidea was not the result of diminishing populations of higher ranked oysters, but instead was part of a broader pattern of intensification driven by risk-averse foraging decisions, particularly by women with small children. Overall, this article reinforces the perspective that shifts in social interaction and demography are as important or more important in driving patterns of shellfish exploitation than biological and ecological processes.

Prehistoric Environment and settlement in the Azraq Basin. A report on the 1982 survey season.

During the past decade there has been a great increase in prehistoric survey and excavation in the arid lands of south-west Asia. There have been three, main reasons for this. Firstly, the need to correct the geographical imbalance of earlier work which concentrated on the Fertile Cresent. Secondly, the growing interest in reconstructing regional settlement patterns. The present day desert areas offer much better site survival than the more fertile regions with their recent agricultural and urban disturbance. Thirdly, prehistorians have become increasingly interested in the interrelationship between man and his environment. This relationship is particularly finely balanced along the borders of the arid zone. The major projects which have focused on the prehistory. of the desert regions of the Levant have been those of Bar Yosef and Phillips (1977) in Sinai, Marks (1976, 1977, 1983) in the Negev, Henry (1983, forthcoming) in southern jordan, Suzuki and Hanihara in the Palmyra region of Syria (Suzuki and Kobori 1970, Suzuki and Takai 1973, 1974; Hanihara and Sakaguchi 1978; Hanihara and Akazawa 1979, 1983) and Besancon et al. (1982) and Cauvin (1982) in neighbouring EI Kowm. During 1975 the author also began such a project in the Azraq Basin of eastern jordan (Garrard et al. 1975, 1977). The project was undertaken partly for the reasons described above, but also to obtain information on the role of the marginal areas fringing the Fertile Crescent in the beginnings of animal and plant husbandry. The Azraq Basin itself was chosen because rich prehistoric sites containing organic material had been found in the region by earlier workers (Waechter

Ancient human parallel lineages within North America contributed to a coastal expansion

Founder effects in modern populations The genomes of ancient humans can reveal patterns of early human migration (see the Perspective by Achilli et al.). Iceland has a genetically distinct population, despite relatively recent settlement (∼1100 years ago). Ebenesersdóttir et al. examined the genomes of ancient Icelandic people, dating to near the colonization of Iceland, and compared them with modernday Icelandic populations. The ancient DNA revealed that the founders had Gaelic and Norse origins. Genetic drift since the initial settlement has left modern Icelanders with allele frequencies that are distinctive, although still skewed toward those of their Norse founders. Scheib et al. sequenced ancient genomes from the Channel Islands of California, USA, and Ontario, Canada. The ancient Ontario population was similar to other ancient North Americans, as well as to modern Algonquian-speaking Native Americans. In contrast, the California individuals were more like groups that now live in Mexico and South America. It appears that a genetic split and population isolation likely occurred during the Ice Age, but the peoples remixed at a later date. Science, this issue p. 1028, p. 1024; see also p. 964 Two parallel, terminal Pleistocene lineages gave rise to Californian, Central, and South American populations. Little is known regarding the first people to enter the Americas and their genetic legacy. Genomic analysis of the oldest human remains from the Americas showed a direct relationship between a Clovis-related ancestral population and all modern Central and South Americans as well as a deep split separating them from North Americans in Canada. We present 91 ancient human genomes from California and Southwestern Ontario and demonstrate the existence of two distinct ancestries in North America, which possibly split south of the ice sheets. A contribution from both of these ancestral populations is found in all modern Central and South Americans. The proportions of these two ancestries in ancient and modern populations are consistent with a coastal dispersal and multiple admixture events.

Prehistoric Settlement Trends on San Clemente and San Nicolas Islands, Alta California

Abstract Analysis of temporal and spatial patterns in settlement between San Clemente and San Nicolas islands suggest that the trajectory of human adaptations differed significantly. On San Clemente, site densities increased dramatically during the latter portion of the late Holocene, including numerous small-sized upland residential sites targeting terrestrial resources. In contrast, occupation of San Nicolas was intensive and constant from the latter half of the middle Holocene onward, and subsistence was more marine-oriented. These divergent trends in land use intensity and settlement organization were driven in part by modest geographic and environmental differences between the islands tied to land mass, annual rainfall, and terrestrial vegetation.