Lisa Kealhofer

A combined pollen and phytolith record for fourteen thousand years of vegetation change in northeastern Thailand

Abstract Pollen and phytolith analyses of a 6.18 m core (3KUM) extracted from Lake Kumphawapi, northeastern Thailand provide the oldest continuous sequence of vegetation change for continental Southeast Asia. The combined microbotanical data suggest human/environment interaction from at least the Early Holocene to the present. An amelioration of arid Late Pleistocene environments in this region is indicated by the development of herbaceous swamp and swamp forest communities at the core site. Early Holocene vegetation changes reflect the rapid expansion and diversification of mixed-deciduous forests, which may also have been disturbed by anthropogenic burning. The Late Holocene reduction in dry-land forest and the subsequent establishment of secondary-growth forests, suggests a further change to burning regimes. Changes in both human subsistence strategies as well as climate occurred during this period, including the critical transition to rice agriculture. These changing subsistence patterns are reflected in the Kumphawapi record by evidence of shifting burning regimes, including indirect evidence of agricultural activities in the Middle Holocene. The timing and nature of agricultural development indicated by the archaeological data for northeastern Thailand needs to be re-evaluated in order to account for the burning regimes and vegetation changes evident in the 3KUM microfossil record.

Early agriculture in southeast Asia: phytolith evidence from the Bang Pakong Valley, Thailand

Phytoliths — the microscopic opal silica bodies inside plant tissue that often survive well in archaeological deposits— are becoming a larger part of the world of human palaeobotany. They give a new view of early rice in southeast Asia.

Looking into the Gap: Land Use and the Tropical Forests of Southern Thailand

The pollen and phytolith analysis of a 20,000-year lake core from southern Thailand provides the first long-term environmental sequence for this region. The evidence suggests that groups continuously occupied southern Thailand through both the early Holocene formation of the tropical rainforest and the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture. Hunter-gatherers of the late Pleistocene apparently made the initial transition to the new tropical forest in the early Holocene by maintaining, expanding, or creating localized areas of disturbance or forest gaps to focus economic resources.

Bioarchaeology of Native American adaptation in the Spanish borderlands

Most researchers of the European settlement of North America assume that the local populations were decimated solely by introduced disease. Challenging that assumption, this book demonstrates that Native American societies responded to European encroachment in complex and varied ways.

LAND USE, POLITICAL COMPLEXITY, AND URBANISM IN MAINLAND SOUTHEAST ASIA

Debates about the development of political complexity and cities are typically focused on material cultural correlates and situated within the wider context of the emergence of states. Conventionally, state emergence is linked to agricultural surpluses and a new phase of agricultural intensification. However, this approach remains fundamentally reliant on the preservation of an appropriate and diverse suite of material cultural correlates. For mainland Southeast Asia, archaeological correlates of early political complexity are comparatively impoverished and are dominated by evidence from disparate burial contexts and architecture. In this paper, we employ an alternative approach based on a case study from north central Thailand that uses paleoenvironmental evidence of land use. These data are then related to historical urban development in the region. We suggest that large-scale patterns of agricultural expansion relate directly to increases in political complexity. Our results demonstrate that the long-term development of large-scale agricultural landscapes in this region predates the earliest evidence of monumental cities in central Thailand. We conclude that significant progress in better understanding the emergence of complex societies, both in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, is unlikely to be possible without more systematic integration of archaeological and paleoenvironmental approaches.

Ceramics, trade, provenience and geology: Cyprus in the Late Bronze Age

The island of Cyprus was a major producer of copper and stood at the heart of east Mediterranean trade networks during the Late Bronze Age. It may also have been the source of the Red Lustrous Wheelmade Ware that has been found in mortuary contexts in Egypt and the Levant, and in Hittite temple assemblages in Anatolia. Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) has enabled the source area of this special ceramic to be located in a geologically highly localised and geochemically distinctive area of western Cyprus. This discovery offers a new perspective on the spatial organisation of Cypriot economies in the production and exchange of elite goods around the eastern Mediterranean at this time.

A broad-spectrum subsistence economy in Neolithic Inner Mongolia, China: Evidence from grinding stones

Recent archaeological and archaeobotanical data suggest a very long tradition for the broad-spectrum subsistence economy in North China. It can be traced back at least to the Upper Paleolithic, in the last glacial maximum, and it continued into the early Neolithic period. Subsistence strategies also show great regional variation, suggesting a complex mosaic of adaptations in the transition to agriculture. The research reported here focuses on the plant-derived subsistence economy of the earliest Neolithic communities in the Daihai Lake area, Inner Mongolia, where the ecosystem was sensitive to climatic fluctuations. Neolithic groups likely migrated to the region as part of population expansion from the Central Plain. Previous scholars have suggested that this expansion was due to a search for agricultural land for millet farming. By examining residue remains and usewear patterns on sandstone grinding stone tools unearthed from the Shihushan I and Shihushan II sites, dating to the mid-5th millennium bc, we show that the earliest Neolithic settlers in Daihai appear to have enjoyed a way of life making use, and possibly management, of a wide range of plants, including various underground storage organs (tubers, roots, rhizomes, and bulbs), nuts, and wild grasses, while engaged in a limited level of millet production. This study adds to a growing literature that questions the economic significance of early cereal crops in subsistence system, suggesting that it is important to understand the role of roots and tubers in the development of early agriculture in Neolithic North China.

Scales of impact: Settlement history and landscape change in the Gordion Region, central Anatolia

The expansion of agriculture in the Near East during the middle Holocene significantly altered the physical landscape. However, the relationship between the scale of agriculture and the magnitude and timing of the environmental impacts is not well known. The Gordion Regional Survey provides a novel dataset to compare settlement density during archaeological periods to rates of environmental disruption. Sediment samples from alluvial cores directly date the environmental disruption, which can be matched to period-specific settlement intensities in the watershed as constructed from archaeological survey ceramics. Degradation rates rose sharply within a millennium of the earliest Chalcolithic occupation. Early Bronze Age (EBA) land use induced the greatest rates of environmental degradation, although settlement density was relatively low on the landscape. The degradation rate subsequently decreased to one-third its early peak by the Iron Age, even as settlement intensity climbed. This trajectory reveals how complex interaction effects can amplify or subdue the responses of the landscape–land use system. Prior to settlement, landscape soil reservoirs were highly vulnerable, easily tipped by early agricultural expansion. Subsequent reduced rates of erosion are tied both to changes in sociopolitical organization and to depletion of the vulnerable soil supply.

The potential for portable X-ray fluorescence determination of soil copper at ancient metallurgy sites, and considerations beyond measurements of total concentrations

Copper (Cu) at ancient metallurgy sites represents the earliest instance of anthropogenically generated metal pollution. Such sites are spread across a wide range of environments from Eurasia to South America, and provide a unique opportunity to investigate the past and present extent and impact of metalworking contamination. Establishing the concentration and extent of soil Cu at archaeometallurgy sites can enhance archaeological interpretations of site use but can also, more fundamentally, provide an initial indication of contamination risk from such sites. Systematic evaluations of total soil Cu concentrations at ancient metalworking sites have not been conducted, due in part to the limitations of conventional laboratory-based protocols. In this paper, we first review what is known about Cu soil concentrations at ancient metallurgy sites. We then assess the benefits and challenges of portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF) as an alternative, rapid technique for the assessment of background and contaminant levels of Cu in soils. We conclude that pXRF is an effective tool for identifying potential contamination. Finally, we provide an overview of some major considerations beyond total Cu concentrations, such as bioavailability assessments, that will need to be considered at such sites to move toward a complete assessment of environmental and human risk.