dispersal (Other Keyword)
1-5 (5 Records)
International, interdisciplinary fieldwork is at the core of Lawrence Straus' long-term archaeological research. Inspired by such an approach since my involvement with Straus' excavations at the Abri Dufaure in southwest France, I have been conducting field work in the Arabian peninsula, which aims to understand the relationship between climate change and human demography across the Pleistocene. Satellite images and GIS studies have effectively demonstrated that there were wet phases in this...
Climatic variability and hominin dispersal: the accumulated plasticity hypothesis (2015)
It has long been known that temporally unstable environments are likely to promote the evolution of plastic adaptations, whilst it is equally clear that such adaptations are characteristic of successful colonizers. These two established findings, however, are rarely related. This contribution bridges this gap using a very simple evolutionary algorithm that tracks the evolution of plasticity under various climatic regimes, allowing for the construction of an index of climate-mediated dispersal...
Conduits of Dispersal. Dematerializing an early twentieth century village in Iceland. (2013)
This paper explores the process of ruination in terms of networks and channels of dispersal; how the materiality of a whole village is stripped by various agencies which move things along. Drawing especially on recent work in human geography and new mobility and materiality turn, this study takes an industrial fishing village on an island in the bay of Reykjavík to examine the processes and conduits through which the village is de-materialized. The village was established at the beginning of the...
Humanizing wave of advance dispersal models (2015)
Since Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza (1971) introduced Fisher’s (1937) wave of advance equation to archaeology, it has been the most commonly used method to model the complex dynamics behind human dispersals in a variety of regional and global case studies. The standard form of the model involves an initial population growing and spreading randomly outwards from an origin. Studies use the model to calculate expected arrival dates and expansion velocities based on population growth rate,...
Late Pleistocene Behaviors: Perspectives from the Middle Awash, Ethiopia (2016)
Behavioral contexts across the critical period associated with the evolution and successful dispersal(s) of anatomically modern humans (AMH) within and beyond Africa are inadequately understood. Although the genetic and fossil evidence in hand largely advocates eastern Africa as the most likely source and dispersal route of AMH, the sparseness of archaeological evidence relevant to this period limits behavioral inferences from the region. As a result, evidence for behaviors considered “modern”...