Débora Zurro

Effect of Resource Spatial Correlation and Hunter-Fisher-Gatherer Mobility on Social Cooperation in Tierra del Fuego

This article presents an agent-based model designed to explore the development of cooperation in hunter-fisher-gatherer societies that face a dilemma of sharing an unpredictable resource that is randomly distributed in space. The model is a stylised abstraction of the Yamana society, which inhabited the channels and islands of the southernmost part of Tierra del Fuego (Argentina-Chile). According to ethnographic sources, the Yamana developed cooperative behaviour supported by an indirect reciprocity mechanism: whenever someone found an extraordinary confluence of resources, such as a beached whale, they would use smoke signals to announce their find, bringing people together to share food and exchange different types of social capital. The model provides insight on how the spatial concentration of beachings and agents’ movements in the space can influence cooperation. We conclude that the emergence of informal and dynamic communities that operate as a vigilance network preserves cooperation and makes defection very costly.

Emergence and Evolution of Cooperation Under Resource Pressure

We study the influence that resource availability has on cooperation in the context of hunter-gatherer societies. This paper proposes a model based on archaeological and ethnographic research on resource stress episodes, which exposes three different cooperative regimes according to the relationship between resource availability in the environment and population size. The most interesting regime represents moderate survival stress in which individuals coordinate in an evolutionary way to increase the probabilities of survival and reduce the risk of failing to meet the minimum needs for survival. Populations self-organise in an indirect reciprocity system in which the norm that emerges is to share the part of the resource that is not strictly necessary for survival, thereby collectively lowering the chances of starving. Our findings shed further light on the emergence and evolution of cooperation in hunter-gatherer societies.

An Ethnoarchaeological Study on Anthropic Markers from a Shell-midden in Tierra del Fuego (Southern Argentina): Lanashuaia II

ABSTRACT For many years the identification of activity areas has been carried out through the spatial distribution of lithics, zooarchaeological remains and specific features such as fireplaces. However, these data are rarely combined and integrated with results from specific analytical techniques such as phytoliths, organic matter, carbonates and multielemental analysis. This research presents the first results of an intrasite spatial analysis on a layer from the site Lanashuaia II, a shell-midden located on the Beagle Channel coast (Tierra del Fuego, Argentina). Ethnoarchaeology is used as a methodological tool to give content to the concept of anthropic markers by means of formulating archaeological hypothesis on the basis of ethnological information. This paper presents the application of specific anthropic markers, which have been designed and applied to identify ashy remains and waste areas through different combinations of proxies. The results show how an approach that integrates different techniques enhances data interpretation and allows to give visibility to activities that may not leave visible evidences.

The use of shells as tools by hunters-gatherers in the Beagle Channel (Tierra del Fuego, South America): an ethnoarchaeological experiment

This paper presents the results of the analysis of lipid residues extracted from two Aulacomya atra shells and a single Mytilus edulis shell found in the hunter-fisher-gatherer site of Lanashuaia II, a shell midden located on the Beagle Channel (Tierra del Fuego, Argentina). According to existing ethnographic information, the shells could have been used as receptacles (like spoons) or knives by the Yamana people that inhabited the region in the historical period (nineteenth and twentieth centuries). Yamana society is the final moment of a long history of hunter-fisher-gatherer societies present in the Beagle Channel and the rest of Fuegian Channels and islands. Higher concentrations of lipid residues were recovered from both A. atra shells than from the sedimentary control sample analyzed. This is consistent with existing accounts that these types of shells were used as containers to cook or melt fat-rich foods. The composition of lipids extracted from archaeological shell was significantly different from the degraded reference cooking residues prepared from modern A. atra shells.

One, two, three phytoliths: assessing the minimum phytolith sum for archaeological studies

The number of phytolith studies has increased steadily in the last decades in palaeoecological as well as archaeological research, and phytolith analysis is currently recognised as a proper area of expertise within archaeobotany. This has led towards a strengthening in the standardisation of the different steps involved in analysis; e.g. sampling strategies, laboratory extraction or processing of plant material/soils for the creation of reference collections. In spite of this, counting procedures remain one of the areas that could be further developed. The aim of this paper is to assess representativeness of phytolith count size in archaeological samples and specifically to assess whether an increase in total number of individuals counted influences the number or distribution of morphotypes observed. Two statistical tests are performed to evaluate the representativeness of count size: phytolith sum variability analysis (PSVA) and morphotype accumulation curve (MAC). The analyses show the relationship among the number of counted phytoliths, the variability (that is, the number of different morphotypes identified) and the stabilisations of the MACs. Results allow us to support the standard count size in phytolith studies, which ranges from 250 to 300 particles. Together with a quick scan, this strategy should produce a precise and clear phytolith assemblage for archaeological studies.

Anthropic Activity Markers: Archaeology and Ethnoarchaeology

This volume stems from a symposium organised by the three authors at the 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology held in San Francisco in 2015. This was the first instance when the concept of Anthropic Activity Marker was discussed deeply in a public venue and in which researchers from different countries and with different perspectives got together to share the advances on this topic. Since then, the symposium has become a regular event at the SAA meetings and it has been organised as well at the 8th World Archaeological congress, celebrated in Tokyo (Japan) in June 2016, testifying the growing interest for this research topic. Starting at the end of the seventies, several ethnoarchaeological studies observed that people recurrently use definite areas of their landscape or living space for specific activities (Kent 1987; Kroll and Price 1991) and that this might be archaeologically identified (Hodder and Orton 1976; Halstead, Hodder, and Jones 1978; Hassan 1978 among others). These initial studies were centred on the identification of spatial activity areas through the analysis of dispersions of macroscopic materials (especially lithic and faunal remains). The early adoption of these analytical techniques implied that such analyses were soon fully integrated into archaeological methodology. In the same years, Luis Barba and his team, started to use microscopic remains (i.e. residue and chemical elements) to tackle the same issue of identifying activity areas in archaeological sites. Indeed, they realised that the enduring use of space produces distinctive patterns of evidence in the deposit, in particular the enrichment and/or depletion of chemical and/or physical elements, which directly represent the result of the activity that produced them (Barba and Bello 1978; Barba 1986, 2007; Manzanilla and Barba 1990; Ortiz and Barba 1993; Middleton and Price 1996). Recently, Rondelli et al. (2014) have formalised this concept, using the term ‘Anthropic Activity Marker (AAM)’ and rooting it in interdisciplinarity, quantification and modelling. If the enduring use of space produces distinctive patterns of evidence, ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology drive the inferential reasoning that creates the model(s) connecting the concentration of particular proxies with a specific activity (Barba and Ortiz 1992; Middleton and Price 1996; Pecci 2003; Pecci et al. 2013). We define this/these model(s) as ‘Anthropic Activity Marker’ after Rondelli et al. (2014) (Figure 1). The possibility to identify, analyse and connect these markers to the activity that generated the record is pivotal to the correct interpretation of archaeological evidence and to our understanding of past human behaviour. Working within the framework of AAMs represents a methodological breakthrough, in that it provides the means to assigning a social significance to microscopic proxies and, as a consequence, to identify activities that do not commonly leave macroscopic traces. Thus, it allows the reconstruction of human behaviour related to some of the most fundamental spheres of human life (such as domestic practices). The identification of markers as the result of anthropic activities through time and space has therefore become a fundamental issue. We maintain that an interdisciplinary, multi-proxy approach is a key factor in the identification of anthropic markers. Specifically, to reduce problems related to equifinality, whereby the same pattern of proxies might be caused by several different activities, AAMs offer a structured approach that goes beyond the simple analysis of a set of separate proxies allowing also for properly assessing and counterbalancing the effects of taphonomic process, which affect each proxy in a slightly different form and intensity. In particular, the spatial distribution and variability of the fingerprints taken into account is considered a fundamental part of the definition of Anthropic Activity Markers. Formal analysis of spatial variability has been addressed much more in archaeological works (Hodder and Orton 1976; Blankholm 1991; Lloyd and Atkinson 2004; Maximiano 2012) than in ethnoarchaeological studies (see the review by Lancelotti et al. 2017). Modelling of spatial distribution, from site to activity, is currently gaining force in archaeology. Similarly, geostatistical methods, such as kriging interpolation methods, are becoming increasingly popular (Lloyd and Atkinson 2004; Entwistle, McCaffrey, and Dodgshon 2007; Bevan and Connolly 2009; Markofsky and Bevan 2012; Salisbury 2013; Ullah, Duffy, and Banning 2015) to predict spatial distribution of elements and micro-artefacts. Archaeologists ever more often use mathematical and formal models understand cultural processes, transmission mechanisms, settlement pattern, routes of movement and so on. In this special issue we gather contributions from leading scholars in different fields, who are willing to challenge the problem of revealing human activities through the application of AAMs,

Resilience of small-scale societies’ livelihoods: a framework for studying the transition from food gathering to food production

This paper is the result of a two-day workshop funded by ICREA (Catalan Higher Research Institution) and organized at the ICTA (Institute for Environmental Studies) of the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Department of Humanities of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. The workshop was cofounded by the SimulPast project (former Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, CSD2010-00034). CL, DZ, MM, and JJGG are part of CaSEs (Complexity and Socio-Ecological Dynamics Research Group), a Grup de Recerca Emergent of the Generalitat de Catalunya (SGR-e 1417). CL is currently a UPFellow; JJGG was supported by a JAE PreDOC PhD scholarship (Spanish National Research Council and European Social Fund) and the SimulPast project.