Archaeology 100-D200

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Archaeology 100-D200 Ancient Peoples and
Places Archaeology and the Study of
Prehistory Week 5 THE NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION
PEOPLING OF THE NEW WORLD ANCIENT PEOPLES AND
PLACES IN DISTRESS! February 6th 8th
2012 Dr. Alvaro HiguerasSimon Fraser
University, Spring 2012
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• The Essay for February 22th
• The Fourth Option
• Pay a visit to our SFU museum beside Renaissance
  Coffee. Ask yourself these questions as you visit
  the exhibit
• 1. Who is speaking to you? (it might be an
  unnamed curator speaking through label text, or a
  recording of a voice or something else entirely)
• 2. How is the material in the exhibit arranged?
  Is it just objects or are other elements
  included? Is it arranged in groups of similar
  objects, or from oldest to youngest or in another
  way?

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Agenda of Week 5 gt The Neolithic Revolution
and the origins of agriculture gt Peopling of the
Americas
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• Wright on Evolution of Complex Societies
• gt Pre-state societies, with 2 levels of site
  hierarchy persisted for centuries and some never
  made it further along the path of complexity
• gt State emergence tends to occur in densely
  populated areas, with dispersed sites, where
  competition and conflict arise not necessarily
  waryet
• gt While a 3 or 4 level hierarchy appears with the
  multiplication of sites, a process of aggregation
  and power acquisition is responsible in the
  formation of a paramount center...

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• congregating neighbors or enemies, or more
  often the parts of the population that make the
  complex arrangements of a urban center
• gt While not necessarily at the origin of the
  process, there is a continuous increase in
  conflicts as populations grow, both at a city
  scale and a regional scale (raiding becoming
  warfare).
• Wright gt State formation relatively fast in
  such conflict gt Concentrates in the competition
  within and between elites, and strategies of
  control

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The Mesolithic After the Magdalenian (Upper
Paleolithic) This last period jumpstarted the
need for refined technologies, the need for
rituals, the birth of new forms of production and
relationships with the environment Now, a full
blown transition from foraging to farming Are
there revolutions that lead this
transition? Broad spectrum R HR 3
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• Pleistocene/Holocene Transition
• gt 10-15,000 years ago.
• gt The last ice age (Wurm) is definitely over
• gt Climate becoming gradually warmer
• gt Changes in ice distribution and sea levels have
  significance to topography
• gt Core borings of coral beds shows that sea
  levels at glacial max were 121 meters below
  modern levels. They rose by 20 between 15 and
  10,500 years ago, then a rise of 24 meters in
  1,000 years.
• gt Bering Land Bridge disappears North Sea
  flooded Britain separated from the continent.

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• Mesolithic in Europe the Old World
• gt Mesolithic forest and coastal hunters and
  gatherers replaced tundra reindeer hunters around
  13,000 BP.
• gt Not impoverished and limited environments as
  earlier thought but rich in wildlife such as red
  and roe deer, many plant foods.
• gt Coast, estuaries very productive.
• gt European Mesolithic ended around 8,000 B.P.
  with the spread of agriculture (from the Near
  East).

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• Diet is more diverse
• gt Broad Spectrum Revolution
• gt Diet continues to change secondary products
• gt Patterns of the mesolithic are widespread
• gt Find all kinds of fishing equipment
• gt Ground-stone tools
• gt Diverse projectile weapons from many materials
• gt Some cultivation is apparent
• Cultigens are plants that are cultivated but this
  does not equal domestication.

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The origins of agriculture models and
perspectives
gt Most important Holocene development gt
Starts the Neolithic/Formative period gt Food
collection and small scale cultivation to
vegetable food production at a larger scale
More of it into the diet, in proportion to meat
gt Creation of new tasks and labor organization
Tomb of Sennedjem Thebes, c. 1250 BC
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• Some consequences of domestication and the
  achievement of increasing production
• Surplus food storage stabilize food
  availability
• Constant food, more nutritious maintains a
  consistent level of fecundity in women in a
  populationgrowth, healthier generations
• But congregation of humans and animals, disease,
  viruses epidemics
• Achieving a symbiosis in viral history between
  humans and animals

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New forms of organization Lineage / Communal
Ownership

• Farmland, livestock as property of lineages
• Corporate ownership of resources
• Stability, predictability
• Conflict resolution

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Horticulture cultivation that makes no
intensive use of land, labor, capital (or
machinery) Use simple tools, field not
permanently cultivated, Slash-and-burn
cultivation, mixed and shifting cultivation, rain
fed Agriculture cultivation that requires more
labor than horticulture uses land intensively
and continuously fertilizer, constant water
Domesticated animals, used as means of production
in the process of plowing, threshing
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Technologies
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Storage

• gt Structures
• gt Pottery to store
• gt Stored food surpluses
• gt In sedentary settings
• gt Granaries household, centralized areas
• gt Craft religious specialization
• gt Recording contents

Dogon granaries, Mali
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Huánuco Pampa Inka Central Andes
Crete, Minoan Palace storeroom
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Models on the Origins of Agriculture Oasis
Model Hilly Flanks Model Demographic
Stress Social Models Co-evolution
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Oasis Theory

• Gordon Childe, 1950s
• domestication began as a symbiotic relationship
  between humans, plants, and animals at oases
  during the desiccation of Southwest Asia at the
  end of the Pleistocene.
• Resource concentration (circumscription)
• But it was wetter at end of Pleistocene!
• Why this subsistence pattern at one particular
  early period? Expect many oases

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Hilly Flanks Theory

• Robert Braidwood
• Jarmo, Zagros Mountains, Iraq, 1950s
• Lush, rich environment
• Population increase
• But why domesticate insuch positive conditions?

Jarmo, Iraq
Zagros Mountains, Iraq
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Edge Hypothesis

• Lewis Binford, 1960s Demographic Stress
• The need for more food was initially felt at the
  margins of the natural habitat of the ancestors
  of domesticated plants and animals (population
  pressure)
• Settlements inland at end of Pleistocene

Jerf el Ahmar, Syria 8000 BC, room with grinding
stones and bins
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Social Models

• Barbara Bender, 1980s
• Political alliances, trade, pressure for
  surpluses
• Agriculture before complexity? (factor of scale
  or quality?) The know how the genetic scenario
• Caral phenomenon?

PPNB house, 6500 BC, DjaDe, middle Euphrates
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Co-evolution / Symbiosis

• Charles Darwin The Variation of Plants and
  Animals Under Domestication
• David Rindos, 1980s
• Symbiosis between humans and
• plants
• Mutualism cultural AND natural selection

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• Development of Agriculture
• gt Archaeological record clearly shows that the
  shift to an agricultural way of life in the
  Middle East was a process
• gt There was no agricultural revolution
• gt The transition to agriculture can be traced
  through a number of stages
• gt Starting with Magdalenian in the shift towards
  Mesolithic
• gt In relationship to availability of game,
  diversity of plants, use of secondary products

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• gt Out with one-sided intentionality a process
  ignited into the genetics of plants
• Symbiosis or co-evolution (Rindos following
  Darwin)
• gt Domestication occurs independently in different
  parts of the world
• gt Except in Europe Ex oriente lux. Grains and
  other staples spread from the Near East
• gt Are any cultigens or animals domesticated in
  two different world regions?
• gt Which continent has less domestication cases?

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Sugarbeet
Soybean
Cotton
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Sheep and goat, as well as some cereals (emmer
wheat and einkorn) and pulses (lentil, pea, chick
pea, and bitter vetch) had no wild ancestors in
Europe during the Holocene.
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• The center of it all The Fertile Crescent
• It is an area of Mediterranean climate
  characterized by dry summers and winter rains
  with enough precipitation to support vegetation
  ranging from woodlands to open park woodland
• South and east of the Fertile Crescent, the open
  park woodlands give way to steppes and true
  deserts

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Process of Domestication along the centuries

• gt No new significant domesticates since the
  Neolithic
• gt In the process narrowed resource diversity
  narrowed species diversity
• gt Potatoes thousands of varieties, dozens in a
  single valley, dozens only in market
• gt Maizecorn, regional varieties
• gt Erosion of genetic resources, disease
  susceptibility
• gt Irish famine, fungus
• gt Today, genetically improved plants

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• The process of domestication path towards
  agriculture and pastoralism (a higher
  productivity in the economic realm)
• A combination of parallel genetic social
  factors
• 2 views of early changes in plants and animals
• Genetic adaptations of plants and animals to the
  conditions of cultivation and herding
• Results of human selection control of breeding
• In essence, it refers to human practices that
  lead to generic isolation from the wild
  populations, but there is a constant and mutual
  adaptation.

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• Peopling of the Americas
• Migration Routes
• Debates surround how peoples migrated into the
  New world. Options
• Beringialand bridge that connected Asia and
  North America during times of low sea level
• Ice-free corridora potential (if viable)
  migration route running between ice sheets for
  people emerging from Beringia
• Coastal migrationhumans migrated into the
  Americas along the West Coast

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Experimental Archaeology

• The canoes of the Polynesian Voyaging Society
  have provided insight into the archaeology of the
  Pacific Islands
• These vessels have also served as a powerful
  means for local people to explore their history
  and identity

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• NW Megafauna extinction
• gt Occurred globally at the end of the
  Pleistocene Ice Age by 13,250-12,900 BP
• gt 17 genera of N S American megafauna went
  extinct including mastodons, mammoths, horses,
  and camels
• gt At the time the first Clovis sites were
  formed
• gt Many archaeologists doubt whether overhunting
  was cause for extinction they did so
• gt Hunting low numbers not enough
• gt Clovis hunters big game smaller game

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• There are three models
• 1. Clovis First supporters believe that Clovis
  culture (13,500-12,500 BP) is the initial human
  occupation of the Americas.
• 2. Pre-Clovis holds that human occupation of the
  Americas predates 13,500 BP.
• 3. Early Arrival states that humans were present
  in the New World by 30,000 BP.

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• Kill sites after the Clovisperiod
• At Olsen-Chubbuck site,
  Colorado, remains of a
  massive bison kill from
  about 10,000 years ago
  was found
• Hunters had stampeded a
  herd into an arroyo
  killing
  almost 200 bisonthey then
  butchered them
• Interestingly, despite evidence for many giant
  bison kill sites over time, bison did not go
  extinct

Olsen-Chubbock site, Colorado
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• 1. Clovis First model
• Clovis culture, dated to 13,500 to 12,500 BP, is
  defined largely on the presence of Clovis spear
  points found across North America.
• Asian populationscrossed the Bering land
  bridge into
  North America,
  were funneled down from
  Alaska to the Great Plains
  by
  an ice-free corridor.
• Hunted all the megafauna in
  the New World to extinction
  in
  about 1000 years.

Clovis points from Arizona
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• 2. Pre-Clovis sites in the New World
• Meadowcroft Rockshelter, Pennsylvania
  (23,000-15,000 BP)
• Other sites indicate that Clovis was simply one
  of several regional traditions Pedra Pintada,
  Brazil (13,000-11,000 BP) and Quebrada Tacahuay,
  Peru (12,700-12,500 BP)
• Pre-Clovis peoples thought to have been coastally
  adaptedthey moved out of Beringia following the
  West Coast

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• 3. Early arrival model
• Human occupation of the Americas took place
  before the later stages of the last period of
  glacial advance, as early as 50,000 BP.
• Sites that appear to support early arrival are
  found in North and South America and widely
  contested
• They include Old Crow Basin, Canada
  (40,000-30,000 BP), Monte Verde, Chile (33,000
  BP), and Pedra Furada, Brazil (48,000-35,000 BP)

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Non calibrated dates. Top of the pit fill all
three average 9990 30 years before the present
(yr B.P.) 11,620 to 11,280 calendar (cal) yr
B.P.
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• The researcher concludes
• A small social group, including adult females
  and young children, foraged from their
  residential base camp in mid-summer, acquiring
  locally available fish, birds, and small mammals.
  The pit was dug within the house and functioned
  as a cooking hearth, cooking debris disposal
  area, and/or cache pit. The child died and was
  placed within the pit, with little evidence of
  disturbance after cremation. The pit was
  backfilled soon after burning, and the relative
  lack of artifacts atop the pit fill suggests
  immediate abandonment of the house.

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Archaic
Mesolithic