Mark J. Hudson

Occupation Mediates Ecosystem Services with Human Well-Being

The 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment linked ecosystem services, the benefits people obtain from ecosystems, directly with four constituents of human well-being: security, basic material for good life, health, and freedom of choice and action. No explicit model of the role of human activity in the transformation of ecosystem services into well-being was, however, developed by the Assessment and the connective relations between ecosystem services and human well-being remain poorly understood. The authors of this paper argue that the concept of “occupation” is a crucial addition to understanding these connective relations. It is proposed that human well-being, human activity, and ecosystem services are mediated by, i.e., connected through the medium of, occupational performance. Some implications of this proposal for the study of the human dimensions of global environmental change are briefly discussed.

Waist-to-hip ratios of Jomon figurines

The authors show that the Jomon clay figurines made by hunter-gatherers use imagery that emphasises a narrow waist and full hips, showing that a female construct was part of the symbolism of these possibly shamanistic objects. In creating these figurines, prehistoric people were no doubt turning a recognition of health and fertility into more cultural icons. Admirers of the female form will be interested to learn that preference for the fuller, curvaceous ‘hourglass’ shape ‘has probably been the norm over much of human evolution’.

The South Tyrol as Occupationscape: Occupation, Landscape, and Ethnicity in a European Border Zone

This article attempts the beginnings of an occupational theory of landscape. We propose the concept of occupationscape, defined as landscapes formed and performed through histories of occupational behavior. This concept is used to examine the relationships between occupation, landscape and ethnicity in the South Tyrol border region of northern Italy. After the South Tyrol was ceded to Italy following the First World War, occupations in this region have been used to negotiate ethnicity through an idealized contrast between the rural, agricultural lifestyles of the German-speaking and the more urban, craft- and industry-focused activities of Italian-speaking populations. In this article we analyze how this contrast has functioned in discourse over the prehistoric Ötzi “Iceman” mummy discovered in 1991. Museum exhibits and other popular images are used to argue that the occupations and daily life of the Iceman have become linked with both landscape and with the idea of a broader, rural occupational heritage. The Iceman occupationscape primarily indexes ethnic German folk lifestyles yet its inherent focus on occupation foregrounds questions of daily life and social justice that have the potential to help bridge the modern ethnic divisions of the South Tyrol region.

Hunter-gatherers and the behavioural ecology of human occupation.

Background. Despite growing interest in indigenous peoples within occupational therapy in Canada and elsewhere, there has been little consideration of hunter-gathering—an occupation that retains great material and symbolic significance for many indigenous groups. Purpose. A preliminary analysis of occupational behaviour amongst hunter-gatherers was conducted to aid understanding of the nature and evolution of human occupations and inform policy in indigenous occupational therapy. Methods. Human behavioural ecology was used to analyze four aspects of hunter-gatherer occupations: occupational diversification, the sexual “division of labour,” the long dependence of juveniles on adult provisioning, and active foraging by postmenopausal women. Findings. It was concluded that many occupational adaptations of human foragers can be related to life-history traits, namely slow maturation, long lifespans, weaning before independent feeding, and postmenopausal longevity. Implications. Further research will help understand how our hunter-gatherer heritage has affected the evolution of occupational behaviour and to develop program designs using foraging occupations.

Koji Mizoguchi. The archaeology of Japan: from the earliest rice farming villages to the rise of the state . xix+371 pages, 94 bw 978-0-521-88490-7 hardback £75 &

time-depth and enhances their archaeological nature. The parallel organisation of these chapters ensures a high degree of comparability, which is cemented by recurrent cross-references; an additional result is that these chapters and indeed the book as a whole cohere very well, despite the often very detailed discussions of objects and contexts. Given these rich accounts and the emphasis on materiality, it is a shame that the book offers few and poorly drawn maps and that the material culture has not been illustrated more abundantly, especially as the photographs and drawings of objects, places and contexts that are included do much to enliven the descriptions.