Katherine A. Spielmann

Why ecology needs archaeologists and archaeology needs ecologists

Over the past five decades, ecologists and archaeologists have dismantled two longstanding theoretical constructs. Ecologists have rejected the “balance of nature” concept and archaeologists have dispelled the myth that indigenous people were “in harmony with nature”. Rejection of these concepts poses critical challenges to both fields as current disciplinary approaches are inadequate to grapple effectively with real-world complexities of socioecological systems. In this review, we focus on the relationship between human action and ecosystem change by examining some of the long-term impacts of prehistoric agriculture. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we present results from two studies that suggest that even relatively non-intensive and short-term agriculture can transform ecological systems for a very long time. It is therefore imperative that ecologists and archaeologists work more closely together, creating a truly cross-disciplinary alliance that will help to advance the fields of archaeology and ecology.

PLAINS-PUEBLO INTERDEPENDENCE AND HUMAN DIET AT PECOS PUEBLO, NEW MEXICO

Using bone-chemistry data, this project sought to assess the degree of dietary change that occurred among eastern border Pueblo populations due to prehistoric food exchange with hunter-gatherers on the Plains and to the arrival of Spanish colonists. In so doing we introduce a technique for dietary reconstruction that determines the range of diets compatible with bone-chemistry data from a particular population. The data are derived from samples of modern and archaeological plants and animals collectedfrom the area surrounding Pecos Pueblo, and from archaeological humans recoveredfrom Pecos itself Bone-strontium concentrations were measured to monitor the relative proportions of meat to vegetables in the diet. Carbon and nitrogen stable-isotope ratios in food items and in bone collagen were measured to monitor the dependence on maize and bison meat. The results do not provide support for the hypothesis that bison replaced mule deer in the diet during the period of significant PlainsPueblo trade. If bison, whose diets are relatively enriched in 13C had replaced mule deer, an increase in average 613C values should have occurred. This, however, was not observed. A decrease in carbon-isotope values in the historic period suggests that either bison meat or maize or both decreased in importance in the Pecos diet and that dependence on wild plants increased.

Interdependence among egalitarian societies

Abstract Egalitarian societies are rarely entirely self-sufficient for subsistence. The conditions fostering interdependence, however, have yet to be studied systematically. Utilizing ecological models, this research analyses the process by which interdependence involving food resource sharing and exchange develops among egalitarian societies. Two distinct types of interdependence are defined: buffering, which alleviates periodic food shortages, and mutualism, in which complementary foods (carbohydrates, fats, and proteins) are exchanged on a regular basis. The utility of these models is then evaluated using ethnographic data. The article concludes with a discussion of the evolutionary trajectories of interdependent egalitarian systems.

LATE PREHISTORIC EXCHANGE BETWEEN THE SOUTHWEST AND SOUTHERN PLAINS

A system of interdependence, or mutualism, between Puebloan horticulturalists in New Mexico and Southern Plains hunter-gatherers was documented by the first Europeans to enter the Southwest. This interdependence involved the exchange of subsistence resources, pri marily corn and bison meat, as well as durable goods such as ceramics, lithics, and turquoise. Analyses of the forms and distributions of the archaeological remains of this exchange system indicate an abrupt increase in Plains/ Pueblo trade beginning ca. A.D. 1450. It is argued that this increase documents the development of Plains/ Pueblo interdependence. The distributions of obsidian and Puebloan ceramics on the Plains, in conjunction with ethnohistoric data, indicate that the Plains/Pueblo ex change system was part of a larger system of hunter gatherer/horticultural interaction which encompassed populations from central Kansas to western Oklahoma.

Climate challenges, vulnerabilities, and food security

Significance Climate-induced disasters are impacting human well-being in ever-increasing ways. Disaster research and management recognize and emphasize the need to reduce vulnerabilities, although extant policy is not in line with this realization. This paper assesses the extent to which vulnerability to food shortage, as a result of social, demographic, and resource conditions at times of climatic challenge, correlates with subsequent declines in social and food security. Extreme climate challenges are identified in the prehispanic US Southwest and historic Norse occupations of the North Atlantic Islands. Cases with such different environmental, climatic, demographic, and cultural and social traditions allow us to demonstrate a consistent relationship between vulnerability and consequent social and food security conditions, applicable in multiple contexts. This paper identifies rare climate challenges in the long-term history of seven areas, three in the subpolar North Atlantic Islands and four in the arid-to-semiarid deserts of the US Southwest. For each case, the vulnerability to food shortage before the climate challenge is quantified based on eight variables encompassing both environmental and social domains. These data are used to evaluate the relationship between the “weight” of vulnerability before a climate challenge and the nature of social change and food security following a challenge. The outcome of this work is directly applicable to debates about disaster management policy.

A review: Dietary restrictions on hunter-gatherer women and the implications for fertility and infant mortality

The relatively low reproductive rates of huntergatherer populations have been attributed to high natural mortality, low fertility, and cultural practices such as infanticide and sexual abstention. While we currently lack the data necessary to determine the relative effects of each of these factors on reproduction in any huntergatherer population, an analysis of the relations between cultural practices and reproduction at a more general level can set the stage for further research in huntergatherer societies. This paper reviews and discusses the current literature on specific links between female nutritional health, fertility, and infant mortality. It begins with a consideration of food taboos, one potential source of huntergatherer female nutritional stress. In particular, it is argued that the timing of food taboos on females in many huntergatherer societies often coincides with critical periods in womens reproductive careers. Next, the paper explores the interrelationships between female nutritional health and fertility and infant mortality, using data from modern huntergatherer and agricultural populations. Finally, because data adequate to test specific relationships between patterns of food restrictions and reproduction are not yet available, the paper concludes with a brief discussion of the data necessary for testing these relationships in huntergatherer populations.

Sustainable Small-Scale Agriculture in Semi-Arid Environments

For at least the past 8000 years, small-scale farmers in semi-arid environments have had to mitigate shortfalls in crop production due to variation in precipitation and stream flow. To reduce their vulnerability to a shortfall in their food supply, small-scale farmers developed short-term strategies, including storage and community-scale sharing, to mitigate inter-annual variation in crop production, and long-term strategies, such as migration, to mitigate the effects of sustained droughts. We use the archaeological and paleoclimatic records from A.D. 900-1600 in two regions of the American Southwest to explore the nature of variation in the availability of water for crops, and the strategies that enhanced the resilience of prehistoric agricultural production to climatic variation. Drawing on information concerning contemporary small-scale farming in semi-arid environments, we then suggest that the risk coping and mitigation strategies that have endured for millennia are relevant to enhancing the resilience of contemporary farmers’ livelihoods to environmental and economic perturbations.

Glimpses of Gender in the Prehistoric Southwest

Research on gender in the prehistoric Southwest, although in its infancy, has tackled several issues of interest to archaeologists who study middle-range societies worldwide. The articles in this volume focus on agricultural production, craft specialization, social hierarchies, and leadership. This article focuses in particular on agricultural production. Combining information from bone chemistry, osteological, and mealing bin analyses, a link is developed among high corn diets, women as corn processors, the context of corn processing, and womens access to communal information. In particular, it is argued that women increased their processing of corn in public spaces as their access to ritual space decreased after around A.D. 1300. Gendered implications for trade in corn are also discussed.

Style and resistance in the seventeenth century salinas province

This paper draws upon James Scotts insights concerning the “public” and “hidden” transcripts of subjugated peoples to investigate Pueblo responses to Spanish colonization in the seventeenth century. We focus on the marked changes that occurred in the decoration of two ceramic wares produced in the Salinas Pueblo region of central New Mexico, and suggest that these changes express one aspect of native resistance to Spanish missionary efforts to eradicate Pueblo religious practices. We document that differences in the impact of missionization between the northern and southern Salinas pueblos led to marked and divergent changes in the ways women decorated glaze and white ware vessels. Women who made glaze ware bowls lived in villages under the direct control of Spanish missionaries, and appear to have deliberately simplified and masked the iconography on their vessels. Women who made white ware jars, however, lived in villages without resident Spanish missionaries. Following Spanish colonization, these women began decorating their vessels with detailed, diverse ritual iconography, apparently in an effort to reinforce, and probably to teach, religious knowledge.

Crafting the sacred: Ritual places and paraphernalia in small-scale societies

The archaeological record of small-scale societies is replete with examples of people expending considerable labor to craft both places and objects for communal rituals. Archaeologists often infer these efforts to have been the product of aspiring elites. This chapter focuses instead on the larger community responsible for the construction of places and objects, through a ritual economy analysis of the social logic people use to organize the production of ritual places and paraphernalia. A review of ethnographic and archaeological data suggests that the production of communal ritual places often involves the creation of sociograms, while the production of objects for use within these places encompasses a web of complementary and competitive relations. Two examples of large-scale communal ritual spaces, the early British Neolithic causewayed enclosures and the Ohio Hopewell geometric earthworks, are explored in light of these ethnographic and archaeological patterns.