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

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?

Agenda of Week 5

> The Neolithic Revolution and the origins of agriculture

> Peopling of the Americas

Wright on Evolution of Complex Societies

> Pre-state societies, with 2 levels of site hierarchy persisted for centuries and some never made it further along the path of complexity;

> State emergence tends to occur in densely populated areas, with dispersed sites, where competition and conflict arise… not necessarily war…yet

> 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...

…congregating neighbors or enemies, or more often the parts of the population that make the complex arrangements of a urban center…

> 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: > State formation relatively fast in such conflict; > Concentrates in the competition within and between elites, and strategies of control

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

Pleistocene/Holocene Transition

> 10-15,000 years ago.> The last ice age (Wurm) is definitely over > Climate becoming gradually warmer> Changes in ice distribution and sea levels have

significance to topography > 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.

> Bering Land Bridge disappears; North Sea flooded; Britain separated from the continent.

Mesolithic in Europe & the Old World

> Mesolithic forest and coastal hunters and gatherers replaced tundra reindeer hunters around 13,000 BP.

> Not impoverished and limited environments as earlier thought but rich in wildlife such as red and roe deer, many plant foods.

> Coast, estuaries very productive.

> European Mesolithic ended around 8,000 B.P. with the spread of agriculture (from the Near East).

Diet is more diverse

> Broad Spectrum Revolution> Diet continues to change: secondary products> Patterns of the mesolithic are widespread > Find all kinds of fishing equipment> Ground-stone tools> Diverse projectile weapons from many materials> Some cultivation is apparent

Cultigens are plants that are cultivated but this does not equal domestication.

> Most important Holocene development > Starts the Neolithic/Formative period > Food collection and small scale cultivation to vegetable food production at a larger scale… More of it into the diet, in proportion to meat > Creation of new tasks and labor organization

The origins of agriculture: models and perspectives

Tomb of SennedjemThebes, c. 1250 BC

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 population…growth, healthier generations

But congregation of humans and animals, disease, viruses… epidemics

Achieving a symbiosis in viral history between humans and animals

New forms of organization: Lineage / Communal Ownership

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

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

Technologies

Dogon granaries, Mali

Storage

> Structures> Pottery to store> Stored food surpluses> In sedentary settings> Granaries: household,

centralized areas> Craft & religious

specialization> Recording contents…

Huánuco PampaInkaCentral Andes

Crete, Minoan Palace storeroom

Models on the Origins of Agriculture

Oasis Model

Hilly Flanks Model

Demographic Stress

Social Models

Co-evolution

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”

Hilly Flanks Theory• Robert Braidwood• Jarmo, Zagros Mountains, Iraq, 1950s• Lush, rich environment• Population increase• But why domesticate in

such positive conditions?

Zagros Mountains, Iraq Jarmo, Iraq

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, Syria8000 BC, room with grinding stones and

bins

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, Dja’De, middle Euphrates

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

Development of Agriculture

> Archaeological record clearly shows that the shift to an agricultural way of life in the Middle East was a process

> There was no “agricultural revolution”> The transition to agriculture can be traced through a

number of stages> Starting with Magdalenian in the shift towards

Mesolithic> In relationship to availability of game, diversity of

plants, use of secondary products

> Out with one-sided intentionality… a process ignited into the genetics of plantsSymbiosis or co-evolution (Rindos

following Darwin)

> Domestication occurs independently in different parts of the world

> Except in Europe… Ex oriente lux. Grains and other staples spread from the Near East

> Are any cultigens or animals domesticated in two different world regions?

> Which continent has less domestication cases?

Cotton

Sugarbeet Soybean

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.

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

Process of Domestication along the centuries

> No new significant domesticates since the Neolithic

> In the process: narrowed resource diversity… narrowed species diversity

> Potatoes: thousands of varieties, dozens in a single valley, dozens only in market

> Maize=corn, regional varieties> Erosion of genetic resources, disease

susceptibility> Irish famine, fungus…> Today, genetically improved plants

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 animals1. Genetic adaptations of plants and animals to

the conditions of cultivation and herding2. Results of human selection… control of

breedingIn essence, it refers to human practices that lead

to generic isolation from the wild populations, but there is a constant and mutual adaptation.

Peopling of the Americas Migration Routes

Debates surround how peoples migrated into the New world. Options:

Beringia—land bridge that connected Asia and North America during times of low sea level

Ice-free corridor—a potential (if viable) migration route running between ice sheets for people emerging from Beringia

Coastal migration—humans migrated into the Americas along the West Coast

• 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

Experimental Archaeology

NW Megafauna extinction

> Occurred globally at the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age by 13,250-12,900 BP

> 17 genera of N & S American megafauna went extinct including mastodons, mammoths, horses, and camels

> At the time the first Clovis sites were formed> Many archaeologists doubt whether overhunting was cause for extinction they did so

> Hunting low numbers — not enough > Clovis hunters: big game + smaller game

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.

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 bison—they then butchered them

Interestingly, despite evidence for many giant bison kill sites over time, bison did not go extinct

Olsen-Chubbock site, Colorado

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

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 adapted—they moved out of Beringia following the West Coast

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)

Non calibrated dates. Top of the pit fill: all three average 9990 ± 30 years before the present (yr B.P.) [11,620 to 11,280calendar (cal) yr B.P.]

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.

Archaic

Mesolithic