James F. O’Connell

Traditional and modern plant use among the Alyawara of central Australia

This is a descriptive summary of information on traditional and modern uses of native plants by Alyawara-speaking Australian Aborigines. It includes data on 157 species, 92 of which are used for food, 28 for medicines and narcotics, and 10 in the manufacture of tools, weapons and other gear. Descriptions of food plants cover form and distribution, collecting and processing techniques, caloric yields, and dietary importance. The paper concludes with some comments on traditional plant cultivation practices.

The long and the short of it: Archaeological approaches to determining when humans first colonised Australia and New Guinea

Abstract Despite significant advances in radiometric dating technologies over the last 15 years, and concerted efforts in that time to locate and date new sites and redate known sites in Australia and New Guinea, there is yet little consensus on when humans first arrived in the Pleistocene continent. A majority of scientists now agree people were present at least by 45,000 years ago, but many still argue for dates up to and beyond 60,000 years ago. The long chronology continues to be driven by the five well-known sites of Nauwalabila, Malakunanja, Huon Peninsula, Lake Mungo and Devil’s Lair. This paper reviews the data which have appeared for these sites over the last decade. It argues that uncertainty over much of the earliest data stems from questions of artefact context and site taphonomy rather than dating technologies. The problem is an archaeological one which has received insufficient attention.

Both half right: Updating the evidence for dating first human arrivals in Sahul

Abstract This paper updates our previous analyses of the evidence for the timing of human arrival in Sahul. It reviews advances in dating technologies, summarises new data for sites published a decade ago or earlier, and examines the evidence from sites published since 2004. Extensions in time for first arrival can be attributed to improvements in both luminescence and radiocarbon dating techniques and especially the refinement of 14C calibration. The similarity of the ages of the earliest dates and their consistency with data from eastern Asia and Wallacea suggests that the discipline has now defined an event horizon that places first colonisation near but somewhere short of 50,000 years ago.

Family Provisioning Is Not the Only Reason Men Hunt

Gurven and Hill (2009) ask, “Why do men hunt?” As they say, “The observation that men hunt and women gather supported the simplistic view of marriage as a cooperative enterprise. Greater sophistication suggests that males may often be motivated by mating and status rather than offspring investment” (p. 60). We agree (e.g., Hawkes 1990, 1991; Hawkes et al. 1991, 2001a, 2001b). This is the revision we first proposed nearly 20 years ago (Hawkes 1990) and have elaborated several times since. Having endorsed our point, Gurven and Hill then reject it, expressing continuing confidence in the idea that “men’s food production efforts are mainly motivated by a concern for familial welfare” (p. 68). Their rejection of our argument and related reaffirmation of conventional wisdom stem from a misunderstanding of data from the Paraguayan Ache and Tanzanian Hadza and a failure to appreciate the importance of other sources of information. We elaborate this critique on four key points.

Distribution of Refuse-Producing Activities at Hadza Residential Base Camps

Recent research on prehistoric hunter-gatherer site structure continues to be concerned primarily with the identification of discrete, activity-specific areas within sites (e.g., Carr 1984; Hietala 1984; Flannery 1986). However, an increasingly large body of ethnoarchaeological data suggests that such areas may be rare in the archaeological record, especially among middle- and low-latitude foragers (Yellen 1977; O’Connell 1987). Here we present additional data pertinent to this topic, derived from recent fieldwork among the Hadza of northern Tanzania. Preliminary analysis indicates that although activity areas can be identified within Hadza base camps, the range of activities associated with each are broad and broadly similar from area to area. Assumptions commonly made by archaeologists about the differential distribution of activities are only weakly supported by our data.

More Lessons from the Hadza about Men’s Work

Unlike other primate males, men invest substantial effort in producing food that is consumed by others. The Hunting Hypothesis proposes this pattern evolved in early Homo when ancestral mothers began relying on their mates’ hunting to provision dependent offspring. Evidence for this idea comes from hunter-gatherer ethnography, but data we collected in the 1980s among East African Hadza do not support it. There, men targeted big game to the near exclusion of other prey even though they were rarely successful and most of the meat went to others, at significant opportunity cost to their own families. Based on Hadza data collected more recently, Wood and Marlowe contest our position, affirming the standard view of men’s foraging as family provisioning. Here we compare the two studies, identify similarities, and show that emphasis on big game results in collective benefits that would not be supplied if men foraged mainly to provision their own households. Male status competition remains a likely explanation for Hadza focus on big game, with implications for hypotheses about the deeper past.

Shellfishing and the Colonization of Sahul: A Multivariate Model Evaluating the Dynamic Effects of Prey Utility, Transport Considerations and Life-History on Foraging Patterns and Midden Composition

ABSTRACT Archaeological evidence of shellfish exploitation along the coast of Sahul (Pleistocene Australia-New Guinea) points to an apparent paradox. While the continental record as a whole suggests that human populations were very low from initial colonization through early Holocene, coastal and peri-coastal sites dating to that time are dominated by small, low-ranked, littoral taxa to the near-complete exclusion of large, higher ranked, sub-littoral species, precisely the opposite of theory-based expectations, if human populations and predation rates were indeed as low as other data suggest. We present a model of shellfish exploitation combining information on species utility, transport considerations, and prey life-history that might account for this apparent mismatch, and then assess it with ethnographic and archaeological data. Findings suggest either that high-ranked taxa were uncommon along the Pleistocene coastlines of Sahul, or that abundant and commonly taken high-ranked prey are under-represented in middens relative to their role in human diets largely as a function of human processing and transport practices. If the latter reading is correct, archaeological evidence of early shellfishing may be mainly the product of subsistence activities by children and their mothers.

When did Homo sapiens first reach Southeast Asia and Sahul

Anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens, AMH) began spreading across Eurasia from Africa and adjacent Southwest Asia about 50,000–55,000 years ago (ca. 50–55 ka). Some have argued that human genetic, fossil, and archaeological data indicate one or more prior dispersals, possibly as early as 120 ka. A recently reported age estimate of 65 ka for Madjedbebe, an archaeological site in northern Sahul (Pleistocene Australia–New Guinea), if correct, offers what might be the strongest support yet presented for a pre–55-ka African AMH exodus. We review evidence for AMH arrival on an arc spanning South China through Sahul and then evaluate data from Madjedbebe. We find that an age estimate of >50 ka for this site is unlikely to be valid. While AMH may have moved far beyond Africa well before 50–55 ka, data from the region of interest offered in support of this idea are not compelling.

Human Fire Legacies on Ecological Landscapes

The primacy of past human activity in triggering change in earth’s ecosystems remains a contested idea. Treating human-environmental dynamics as a dichotomous phenomenon---turning “on” or “off” at some tipping point in the past---misses the broader, longer-term, and varied role humans play in creating lasting ecological legacies. To investigate these more subtle human-environmental dynamics, we propose an interdisciplinary framework, for evaluating past and predicting future landscape change focused on human-fire legacies. Linking theory and methods from behavioral and landscape ecology, we present a coupled framework capable of explaining how and why humans make subsistence decisions and interact with environmental variation through time. We review evidence using this framework that demonstrates how human behavior can influence vegetation cover and continuity, change local disturbance regimes, and create socio-ecological systems that can dampen or even override, the environmental effects of local and regional climate. Our examples emphasize how a long-term interdisciplinary perspective provides new insights for assessing the role of humans in generating persistent landscape legacies that go unrecognized using a simple natural-versus-human driver model of environmental change.