Human Behavioral Ecology (Other Keyword)
101-120 (120 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Behavioral Ecology and Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite extensive study of prehistoric human foraging behavior in the Bonneville basin, little is known about human exploitation of birds, as many of these analyses focus on the hunting of mammalian prey and present models of diet breadth that are limited to artiodactyls and lagomorphs. This study uses the prey choice model of foraging theory to...
Testing Theoretical Approaches for Inferring Hominin Behavior at Liang Bua (Flores, Indonesia) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and Human Origins: Archaeological Perspectives" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent debates in anthropology surround the utility of human behavioral ecological (HBE) approaches for inferring archaeological phenomena. Criticisms of popular HBE approaches, including optimal foraging theory (OFT), challenge the assumption that humans will always maximize their behavior. Thus, these...
There and Back Again: A Foragers-Farmers Model of Turkey Domestication (Part I) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Current Research on Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) Domestication, Husbandry and Management in North America and Beyond" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The human-domesticate relationship has long been a focus of archaeologists, and advances in archaeological science have revealed the dynamics of husbandry practices. But why domesticate? Evolutionary ecology suggests expanding human populations, depressed habitats, and...
To What Extent Is the Concept of Convergence Applicable to Lithic Technology: An Overview (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Establishing the Science of Paleolithic Archaeology: The Legacy of Harold Dibble (1951–2018) Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. For many Paleolithic archaeologists, it is important to determine whether similar characteristics of lithic artifacts and/or assemblages resulted from convergent evolution because this may help us better understand the evolutionary developments of stone artifact technologies from H....
A Traditional Approach to Analyzing Stunted Femoral Growth in Peruvian Highlands (2018)
Minimal research has been done on observing whether there have been incidences of stunted growth in populations, in times of environmental stress and social turmoil. One such example are the populations found during the Late Intermediate Period (~AD 1000-1400, LIP) in the South-Central Peruvian highlands. Utilizing Buikstra and Ubelaker’s Standards, nine measurements were taken on the femora of 37 individuals (N=37) from the sites of Sonhuayo, Masumachay, and Mina Cachilhuancaray in the...
Understanding Changes in Lagomorph Proportions within the Homol’ovi Settlement Cluster, Northeast Arizona (2018)
Lagomorphs (rabbits and hares) were a critically important dietary resource for inhabitants of the pre-contact American Southwest, where they typically dominate faunal assemblages. It is useful to examine proportions between genera of lagomorphs—specifically, cottontails (Syvilagus sp.) and jackrabbits (Lepus sp.)—to elucidate information about the past environment and how it might have changed in response to human actions. Based on habitat preferences and predator evasion strategies, the...
Understanding Prearchaic Mobility and Settlement Patterns: The Role of Theory, Models, and Ethnographic Analogies (2018)
Most evidence suggests that Prearchaic hunter-gatherers were highly mobile, and equipped with a hunting oriented lithic technology that lacked milling equipment. Nonetheless, they acquired a broad spectrum of prey and tended to camp near wetlands rich in small game and plant resources. Archaeologists have questioned to what degree this evidence reflects an adaptation that fundamentally differed from ethnographically observed patterns in the Great Basin, as well as whether it was shaped primarily...
Updating the Late Pleistocene Record of the Willamette Valley, Oregon (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Future Directions for Archaeology and Heritage Research in the Willamette Valley, Oregon" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Near the end of the Pleistocene, 35 genera of mostly large mammals became extinct in North America, yet the cause of these extinctions remains debated. The Willamette Valley in western Oregon boasts a robust record of up to nine megafaunal taxa (*Mammuthus, Mammut, Equus, Paramylodon, Megalonyx,...
Using Food Web Models to Examine Desert Networks in the American Southwest and Western Australia (2018)
Archaeological studies benefit from rich ecological data, yet linking ecological data to narratives of the past can be difficult. Here I use trophic network modeling to understand both Ancestral Pueblo and Australian Aboriginal food webs, comparing these systems for a greater understanding of human and environmental resilience. Here I show that Ancestral Pueblo people connected themselves into a greater environmental web and use network analysis to examine how the changing network properties of...
The Viability of Long-Distance Acorn Transport in Eastern California (2017)
The ethnographically documented Mono Lake Paiute of Eastern California regularly crossed the Sierra Nevada to procure acorns from Yosemite Valley; a total journey of fourteen days. It is not clear whether such trips are economically efficient in their own right, or were undertaken as components of social excursions to visit and trade with the Yosemite Me-Wuk, or as journeys of necessity in years with poor piñon pine nut harvests. To evaluate the economic productivity of procuring acorns from...
Wetland Maize Farming by 6000 BP Gave Way to Upland Farming with the Rise of Ancient Maya Settlements and Political Centers (2023)
This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent research in the American neotropics suggests that cultivation of plants for food began early in the Middle Holocene (ca. 7500 BP) and continued for millennia prior to the adoption of surplus agricultural production of domesticated staple foods by 5000 BP in South America and 4000 BP in the Maya lowlands. Data...
What Can We Learn from Nearly 50 Years of Accumulated Data on the Kcal Return Rates Achieved by Hunters Encountering Terrestrial Game? (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Behavioral Ecology and Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the mid-1970s the biologist D. Griffiths proposed that body size determines prey return rates and, citing the diet breadth model, D. S. Wilson stated that the lowest-ranked prey type harvested reveals the general efficiency of the foraging economy. Archaeologists, beginning with Bayham and Anderson, quickly made use of these proposals, initiating a...
What Drives the Variability in MSA Lithic Assemblages from Sibhudu Cave, South Africa (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Establishing the Science of Paleolithic Archaeology: The Legacy of Harold Dibble (1951–2018) Part II" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. After over a decade of excavation and analysis at the Middle Stone Age site of Sibhudu in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, the team from the University of Tübingen has established a uniquely complete and well-documented record of cultural change from the end or the Middle Pleistocene until...
What Makes a Forager Turn Coastal? An Agent-Based Approach to Coastal Foraging on the Dynamic South African Paleoscape (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Human Behavioral Ecology at the Coastal Margins: Global Perspectives on Coastal & Maritime Adaptations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Gram for gram, coastal shellfish have significant benefits over many terrestrial resources. They are higher in calories, fats, and proteins than most plants and are available in denser and more predictable patches than mammals. However, there are costs to foraging coastal shellfish....
What More Can We Learn about Complex Prehistoric Phenomena from an Aged, Simple Model? (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Fifty Years of Fretwell and Lucas: Archaeological Applications of Ideal Distribution Models" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Ideal Free Distribution is a heuristic device used for understanding or explaining behavior as a product of density-dependent habitat selection. More recently, the model has been used to track the emergence of social and political complexity through change in the patterns of prehistoric...
Why Pursue Fish in Small Quantities? The Case of Ancestral Puebloan Fishing in the PIV Middle Rio Grande (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Do Good Things Come in Small Packages? Human Behavioral Ecology and Small Game Exploitation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In prehispanic central New Mexico, small numbers of disarticulated fish remains—such as catfish, sucker, and gar—are frequently recovered from Pueblo IV (AD 1350–1600) sites in the Middle Rio Grande basin, but they are rare during earlier agricultural time periods. Increased aquatic habitat...
Why so Low so Long? Constraints on Human Population Growth in Late Pleistocene Sahul (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Fifty Years of Fretwell and Lucas: Archaeological Applications of Ideal Distribution Models" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Human populations in Sahul (Pleistocene Australia-New Guinea) probably numbered in the tens of thousands, two orders of magnitude below the 3-4 million estimated at time of European contact. They were also more patchily distributed than simple hypotheses grounded in an ideal free distribution...
Widespread Distribution of Fossil Footprints in the Tularosa Basin: Human Trace Fossils at White Sands National Monument (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Paleoindian Southwest" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. White Sands National Monument (WHSA) is well known for the world’s largest gypsum dunefield, but the geological elements that created this dunefield also persevered one of the largest (in area and number) assemblages of human foot prints in the world. Tracks are revealed under specific moisture conditions, linked to near-surface geophysics. Human and megafauna...
Women’s Time Allocation Trade-Offs in an Intensive Foraging Economy Led to Future Discounting Reproductive Behavior (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Life Is Risky: Human Behavioral Ecological Approaches to Variable Outcomes " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Population growth during the Medieval Climatic Anomaly (MCA) (1100–600 BP) and into the Late period (~600–180 BP) in Central California drove increased intensification and reliance on low-ranking, low-risk food sources, primarily acorn and small seeds inland, and shellfish and small schooling fish on the bay...
Working with Scotty: Perspectives on A Peripheral Paper Designed for the Ayacucho-Huanta Archaeological-Botanical Project (2018)
I was not involved directly with Scotty’s Ayacucho project (1969–1975), but from 1965 to 1968 I worked in the town of Quinua, engaged in dissertation research. Its territory included part of the site of Huari. After completing my dissertation, I returned to continue work in 1973, 1974, and 1980, and later, focusing on its ecological system, especially irrigation. Scotty invited me to prepare a paper on the ways farmers used ecological zones. The research, while more detailed, complemented what I...