Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach" at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This symposium will feature the research of the Baikal Archaeology Project (BAP), an international and multidisciplinary team of scholars investigating Middle Holocene hunter-gatherer culture dynamics. The BAP is rooted in the bioarchaeology of individual life histories approach and provides a unique theoretical perspective and rich empirical data to address the dynamism, variability, and resilience of prehistoric Holocene hunter-gatherers. The BAP focuses on an intensive comparative analysis of two long-term regional trajectories of Holocene hunter-gather culture change (ca. 9,000–3,000 years ago): the Lake Baikal region (Siberia) and Karelia (northeast Europe). The international team of BAP scholars possesses a range of expertise in archaeology, osteology, bioarchaeology, chronology, genetics, paleoenvironmental studies, spatial analysis of multiple isotopic proxies, and ethnography, to comprehensively examine multiple aspects of hunter-gatherer population level and individual life histories. The insights from these synthesized results and ongoing research will promote a greater appreciation for the dynamic pattern of hunter-gatherer cultural variability, both spatially and temporally.

Other Keywords
Bioarchaeology/Skeletal Analysis • Hunter-Gatherers/Foragers • Neolithic • Bronze Age • ancient DNA • Dating Techniques: Radiometric • Hunter-Gatherers • Mobility • Stable Isotopes • Warfare

Geographic Keywords
Chukotskiy avtonomnyy okrug (State / Territory) • Russian Federation (Country) • North America (Continent) • Kamchatskaya oblast' (State / Territory) • Magadanskaya oblast' (State / Territory) • Koryakskiy avtonomnyy okrug (State / Territory) • Asia (Continent) • Darhan (State / Territory) • Aginskiy Buryatskiy avtonomnyy okrug (State / Territory) • Irkutskaya oblast' (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-9 of 9)

  • Documents (9)
Documents
  • Ancient Genomics of Hunter-Gatherers at Lake Baikal: Shamanka II Case Study (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ruairidh Macleod. Rick Schulting. Angela Lieverse. Andrzej Weber. Eske Willerslev.

    This is an abstract from the "Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This talk will discuss the utility of ancient genomic data to gain insight into prehistoric hunter-gatherer lifeways and social organization at Lake Baikal. Specifically, we will focus on familial relationships in a putative massacre instance from the Early Bronze Age at the cemetery...

  • Bite into This: Interproximal Wear Facets in Middle-Holocene Hunter-Gatherers (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer Laughton.

    This is an abstract from the "Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this dental anthropology project, the use of interproximal wear facets of teeth will be measured and studied to assess changes in facet size between Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Early Bronze Age hunter-fisher-gatherer populations. These populations hail from the Latvian Stone Age...

  • Early Bronze Age Cemeteries on Lake Baikal, Siberia: Their History and Patterns of Use (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrzej Weber. Olga Goriunova.

    This is an abstract from the "Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Prehistoric hunter-gatherer cemeteries are usually analyzed as one chronologically flat block of data representing certain groups of people. While justified by small sample sizes or dating problems, such an approach is obviously ahistorical in that it denies these cemeteries and...

  • Expanding Individual Life Histories to Large-Scale Dietary Comparisons of Early Neolithic Cemetery Populations at Lokomotiv and Shamanka II, Cis-Baikla, Siberia (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ian Scharlotta.

    This is an abstract from the "Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Reconstructing individual life histories using bio- and geochemical proxy records from 3-molar sequences of incremental dentin has elucidated a surprising degree of interpersonal variability amongst Early Neolithic populations in southwestern Cis-Baikal, Siberia. Previous...

  • Hunter-Gatherer Violence in the Middle Holocene Baikal Region: A Probable Massacre at Shamanka II (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Angela Lieverse. Rick Schulting. Vladimir Bazaliiskii. Artur Kharinskii. Andrzej Weber.

    This is an abstract from the "Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Violence was uncommon among the Middle Holocene hunter-gatherers of Siberia’s Baikal region (<5%), and lethal violence even less so (~1%). At the site of Shamanka II, however, 11 (or 85%) of 13 interred Early Bronze Age (EBA; 4970⎼3470 cal. BP) individuals exhibit evidence of...

  • Linking Life and Death at the Early–Mid-Holocene Hunter-Gatherer Cemetery of Zvejnieki, Lativa, Northern Europe (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rick Schulting. Lucy Koster. Andrea Czermak. Gunita Zarina. Ilga Zagorska.

    This is an abstract from the "Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The nature of the relationship between the living and the dead as seen through funerary rites is central to many aspects of archaeological interpretation. Indeed, this was the focus of early processual/postprocessual debates, with the former seeing a “real,” if distorted, connection...

  • A Multi-isotope Approach to Hunter-Gatherer Mobility and Microregional Connectivity in Middle Holocene Cis-Baikal, Southern Siberia (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Karolina Werens. Rick Schulting. John Pouncett. Andrzej Weber. Christophe Snoeck.

    This is an abstract from the "Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Strontium (87Sr/86Sr) and oxygen (δ18O) isotopic variability in the environment is commonly used in archaeology to study provenance and mobility in the past. The interpretation of 87Sr/86Sr and δ18O isotopic values in humans, typically measured in dental enamel, relies on a comparison...

  • Radiocarbon Dates and Freshwater Resource Use within Prehistoric Diets (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Corrie Hyland. Rick Schulting. Amy Styring. Andrzej Weber.

    This is an abstract from the "Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The human remains of Early to Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age populations surrounding Lake Baikal have known and large offsets in their radiocarbon ages caused by “old carbon” in freshwater ecosystems. This freshwater reservoir effect (FRE) causes human radiocarbon ages to appear...

  • Sediment Environmental DNA (eDNA) Analysis of Lake Ochaul (2023)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Yucheng Wang. Bianca De Sanctis. Ruairidh Macleod. Pavel Tarasov. Eske Willerslev.

    This is an abstract from the "Northeast Asian Prehistoric Hunter-Gather Lifeways: Multidisciplinary, Individual Life History Approach" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Detailed reconstruction of paleo-ecosystems is the key for understanding the interactions of climate changes, ecological variation, and human activities. In this study, we applied novel environmental DNA (eDNA) shotgun metagenomics methods on the ancient eDNA isolated from the lake...