Anthropological Archaeology

Adolescence is a developmental period that entails substantial changes in risktaking behavior and experimentation with alcohol and drugs. Understanding how the brain is changing during this period relative to childhood and adulthood and how these changes vary across individuals are key in predicting risk for later substance abuse and dependence. Method: This review discusses recent human imaging and animal work in the context of an emerging view of adolescence as characterized by a tension between early emerging "bottom-up" systems that express exaggerated reactivity to motivational stimuli and later maturing "top-down" cognitive control regions. Behavioral, clinical, and neurobiological evidences are reported for dissociating these two systems developmentally. The literature on the effects of alcohol and its rewarding properties in the brain is discussed in the context of these two systems. Results: Collectively, these studies show curvilinear development of motivational behavior and the underlying subcortical brain regions, with a peak inflection from 13 to 17 years. In contrast, prefrontal regions, important in top-down regulation of behavior, show a linear pattern of development well into young adulthood that parallels that seen in behavioral studies of impulsivity. Conclusions: The tension or imbalance between these developing systems during adolescence may lead to cognitive control processes being more vulnerable to incentive-based modulation and increased susceptibility to the motivational properties of alcohol and drugs. As such, behavior challenges that require cognitive control in the face of appetitive cues may serve as useful biobehavioral markers for predicting which teens may be at greater risk for alcohol and substance dependence.

Secondary refuse disposal behavior is structured by three major concerns in the Maya Highlands: economy of effort, potential value of refuse, and potential hindrance by refuse. According to the needs of each household and the nature of the refuse, material slated for discard ...

Objective-To identify predictors and moderators of outcome in the first Pediatric OCD Treatment Study (POTS I) among youth (N=112) randomly assigned to sertraline, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), both sertraline and CBT (COMB), or a pill placebo.

The emphasis on tooth enamel for extraction of stable light isotope signals from the mineral phase of archaeological and paleontological calcified tissues is based on the widespread understanding that enamel remains a relatively closed system, while bone does not. Twenty years ago, however, Sullivan and KruegerÕs groundbreaking study demonstrating the potential of stable carbon isotopes from the mineral phase relied entirely on bone apatite samples from archaeological sites. Further effort to test whether diagenetic effects in bone mineral may be circumvented remains important because bone apatite yields dietary information about adult life-stages beyond the discrete snapshots obtainable from enamel. In this paper we re-examine the grounds for exclusion of bone apatite as sample material, using case studies drawn from three sites which differ in age and depositional conditions. We use 13 C/ 12 C, 18 O/ 16 O, 87 Sr/ 86 Sr, and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy data from three sites (Reunion Rocks, Border Cave, and Makapansgat Limeworks) to show that, while enamel is not a closed system, it nevertheless retains biogenic isotopic signals. In addition, bone signals may be surprisingly well preserved where fossilisation pathways have induced Ôenamel-likeÕ crystallisation changes.

The scale and nature of early cultivation are topics that have received relatively limited attention in research on the origins of agriculture. In Southwest Asia, one the earliest centers of origin worldwide, the transition to food production is commonly portrayed as a macroevolutionary process from hunter-gatherer through to cultivator-forager and farming stages. Climate change, resource intensification, sedentism, rising population densities, and increasing social complexity are widely considered by prehistorians as pivotal to the emergence of protoagricultural village life. In this paper we revisit these narratives that have been influenced by culture-history and social evolution, together forming the dominant theoretical paradigms in the prehistory of Southwest Asia. We propose a complementary contextual approach seeking to reconstruct the historical development of Early Holocene plant-food production and its manifold sociocultural environments by intersecting multiple lines of evidence on the biology of plant domestication, resource strategies, settlement patterns, cultivation and harvesting technologies, food storage, processing and consumption, ritual practices and symbolic behaviors. Furthermore, we propose that early plant-food production in Southwest Asia should be dissociated from ethnographically derived notions of sedentary village life. Plants emerge as important components of community interactions and ritual performances involving suprahousehold groups that were mediated through communal food consumption.

Anthropological archaeology has long been a process of categorization. The history of the subdiscipline could be rendered in terms of an ongoing project to create, critique, and then refashion the categories by which archaeologists understand and explain social and ecological processes. Despite ever-changing theoretical tides, many archaeologists have continued to adhere to a lingua franca that demarcates their object of study, whether "the past," "nature," complexity, material culture, or historical knowledge. In 2018, strong currents in archaeological scholarship have both challenged and washed out the boundaries of many of these epistemological mainstays. This was more than a postmodern exercise to question metanarratives of history or to destabilize supposed social universals. The recent scholarship develops innovative theoretical perspectives and sophisticated methodological tools to shed light on the varied human interactions, practices, and projects that were previously occluded by research too sharply focused on bounded categories such as periods, polities, adaptations, and meanings. Furthermore, archaeologists are now more than ever critically examining the colonial institutions that they perpetuate and seeking to establish new common ground with Indigenous communities. A decidedly archaeological perspective seems to be taking shape. This is a view that sees social life from the ground up in terms of complicated relationships between people, things, and other organisms that cannot be reduced to catchall categories. [year in review, archaeology, archaeological theory, current issues, Indigenous archaeology, environmental anthropology]

RESUMEN La arqueología antropológica ha sido durante mucho tiempo un proceso de categorización. La historia de la subdisciplina podría ser descrita en términos de un proyecto continuo de crear, criticar y luego rehacer las categorías a través de las cuales los arqueólogos entienden y explican los procesos sociales y ecológicos. A pesar de las mareas teóricas siempre cambiantes, muchos arqueólogos han continuado adhiriéndose a una lengua franca que demarca su objeto de estudio, ya sea "el pasado", "naturaleza", complejidad, cultura material o conocimiento histórico. En 2018, corrientes fuertes en la investigación arqueológica han tanto retado como difuminado los límites de muchos de los pilares epistemológicos. Esto fue más que un ejercicio posmoderno para cuestionar metanarrativas de la historia o para desestabilizar supuestos universales sociales. La reciente investigación desarrolla perspectivas teóricas innovadoras y herramientas metodológicas sofisticadas para arrojar luz sobre las variadas interacciones humanas, prácticas y proyectos que estuvieron previamente ocluidos por investigación excesivamente enfocada en categorías delimitadas tales como períodos, unidades políticas, adaptaciones y significados. AdemásAdem´Además, los arqueólogos ahora están más que nunca examinando críticamente las instituciones coloniales que perpetúan y buscando establecer un nuevo terreno común con las comunidades indígenas. Una perspectiva decididamente arqueológica parece estar tomando forma. Esta es una perspectiva que ve la vida social desde el principio en términos de relaciones complicadas

House societies have become popular with archaeologists in recent years, due to (among other things) their conspicuous material basis (wealth, heirlooms and the houses themselves). As yet, however, most archaeological studies have focused only on individual societies. In this article, we offer a comparative and long‐term approach to the phenomenon, using as case studies the Bronze Age and Iron Age communities of the Levant, the Aegean and the central Mediterranean. We describe the elements that define them as house societies and examine their evolution through time. We follow a strictly Lévi‐Straussian definition of the house that prevents the concept from losing heuristic power. Using this definition, we consider that houses are to be found in ranked societies without centralization and in complex agropastoral systems, like those of the Mediterranean, where agricultural soil is scarce and liable to be monopolized. We argue that the house emerges in these competitive contexts as an institution to control land and retain patrimony undivided. Through a combination of archaeological and written sources, we try to demonstrate that it is possible to document several strategies used by house societies to acquire and retain power and wealth, including dowry, levirate, a bilateral system of marriage alliances, ancestor cults, specific architectures and house treasures. The case studies addressed here offer good comparative material for assessing similar processes elsewhere. At the same time, we argue that the Mediterranean area developed a particular ideology, that of the shepherd ruler, that was essential to legitimate the house.

Bioarchaeologists researching historic period populations recognize that textual sources provide abundant information on ancient political, social, and economic contexts of the individuals they are investigating. These researchers however often treat these documents and inscriptions as truthful, legitimate historical narratives simply used for comparison with biological data. This case study from the Classical Near East demonstrates the utility of critically assessing textual data used in bioarchaeological research in addition to the applicability of bioarchaeology for answering research questions in Near Eastern archaeology. Multivariate assessment of non-specific indicators of stress and evidence of skeletal trauma identified homogeneous health and disease profiles among indigenous communities in provinces of Arabia and Palaestina Tertia in addition to higher trauma levels among pastoral nomadic samples. These results contrast with some forms of textual data from the region emphasizing the barbaric nature of local populations. Addressing why textual and biological data differ and including the physical, ideological, political, and cultural context of ancient writers, papyri, inscriptions, and graffiti in this case increased bioarchaeology's interpretive ability for understanding life under Roman and Byzantine rule in the Near East.

I use Later Stone Age artifacts and faunal remains from Blydefontein Rock Shelter in the eastern Karoo, South Africa to investigate the interaction between risk and hunter-gatherer technological organization. ModiWcations in stone-tool repair and replacement are inXuenced by changes in past environments, resources, and the economic and settlement strategies of these Later Stone Age hunter-gatherers. The technological approaches range from time-minimization tactics to resource-maximization tactics. Time-minimization tactics favor the intense curation of extractive tools and the expedient use of maintenance tools, while resource-maximization tactics employ a more rapid replacement of extractive tools coupled with intense curation of maintenance tools. Time-minimization tactics occur with lower risk wetter conditions and the selection of larger animals for prey, while resource-maximization tactics correspond to higher risk conditions during drier periods and the more intensive exploitation of smaller animals. EYcient technologies were also employed for the rapid production of backed microlithic tools, but this does not appear to be in response to economic or environmental factors. 

Despite fish bone being rare in even the best preserved Classic Thule Inuit (ca. A.D. 1000 -1400) faunal assemblages from the Canadian Arctic, it has often been assumed that fish played an important role in Thule economies. This is due to the prominent place of fishing in the harvesting practices of the Historic Inuit and the ubiquity of fishing implements in Thule artifact assemblages. Based on an evaluation of potential taphonomic, sampling, and interpretive biases and the artifactual and zooarchaeological evidence for harvesting of sea mammals, land mammals, fish, and birds, it appears that fishing was of generally limited importance in the eastern parts of the Canadian Arctic and before about A.D. 1400, likely due to resource scheduling conflicts. The nonetheless widespread occurrence of fishing gear invites consideration of alternative scenarios for the place of fishing in Thule society, in which a minor dietary role is not inconsistent with important cultural roles.

Debate over the taxonomic status of the Neanderthals has been incessant since the initial discovery of the type specimens, with some arguing they should be included within our species (i.e. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) and others believing them to be different enough to constitute their own species (Homo neanderthalensis). This synthesis addresses the process of speciation as well as incorporating information on the differences between species and subspecies, and the criteria used for discriminating between the two. It also analyses the evidence for Neanderthal-AMH hybrids, and their relevance to the species debate, before discussing morphological and genetic evidence relevant to the Neanderthal taxonomic debate. The main conclusion is that Neanderthals fulfil all major requirements for species status. The extent of interbreeding between the two populations is still highly debated, and is irrelevant to the issue at hand, as the Biological Species Concept allows for an expected amount of interbreeding between species.

... 8. Melissa Bateson and Alex Kacelnik , Risk-sensitive foraging: decision making in variable environments ... In: TL Bray and TW Killion, Editors, Reckoning with the Dead: The Larsen Bay Repatriation and the Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington (1994 ...

Warfare and violence played an important role in the history and development of complex huntergatherer societies on the north Pacific Rim. Wars were waged between islands over 700 km apart and included dozens of villages within and between ethnic groups. Wars were generally fought for revenge, status, over women, and rarely, over critical resources. Warfare was so ubiquitous in the later prehistoric sequence that is must be considered central to the development and organization of north Pacific society. ᭧ 1998 Academic Press

Three main hypotheses are commonly employed to explain diachronic variation in the relative abun dance of remains of large terrestrial herbivores: (1) large prey populations decline as a function of anthro pogenic overexploitation; (2) large prey tends to increase as a result of increasing social payoffs; and (3) proportions of large terrestrial prey are dependent on stochastic fluctuations in climate. This paper tests predictions derived from these three hypotheses through a zooarchaeological analysis of eleven temporal components from three sites on central California's Pecho Coast. Specifically, we examine the trade-offs between hunting rabbits (Sylvilagus spp.) and deer (Odocoileus hemionus) using models derived from human behavioral ecology. The results show that foragers exploited a robust population of deer through out most of the Holocene, only doing otherwise during periods associated with climatic trends unfavor able to larger herbivores. The most recent component (Late Prehistoric/Contact era) shows modest evidence of localized resource depression and perhaps greater social benefits from hunting larger prey; we suggest that these final changes resulted from the introduction of bow and arrow technology.Overall, results suggest that along central California's Pecho Coast, density independent factors described as cli matically-mediated prey choice best predict changes in the relative abundance of large terrestrial herbi vores through the Holocene.

Animal bones in human burials may reveal aspects of the relationship between animals and humans. This article describes the roles of birds in mortuary practices and in the ideology of Stone Age northern Europe. Bird bones from two large burial sites, Middle Neolithic Ajvide (Gotland, Sweden) and Mesolithic and Neolithic Zvejnieki (Latvia) are investigated with osteological methods. Beads and pendants were fashioned from the wing bones of waterbirds, and used in the decoration of the body or the burial dress. The jay was found in three Neolithic burials at Zvejnieki, and it may have been a totem animal for the Middle Neolithic people at Zvejnieki, and its wings or feathers were presumably attached to dresses and costumes for the dead. Bird remains in burials at Ajvide, Zvejnieki and some other Stone Age cemeteries may indicate similar features in the way of perceiving birds, especially the possible symbolic roles of waterbirds and wings. The findings are discussed from the perspective of the cosmology of historical hunter–gatherer (and herding) groups in modern Russia.

... In studying the emergence mensional nature of equality and inequality of social inequality, researchers have fo-inherent in most mortuary ritual practices, illustrated that mortuary ritual can serve as ... Page 3. 315 NATUFIAN AND NEOLITHIC MORTUARY RITUAL ...

Bioarchaeology is a powerful tool in the examination of prehistoric collections of human skeletal remains. Application of a few bioarchaeological techniques (ancient DNA, carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes, and dental micro-wear) to the human osteological remains from the Early Neolithic LBK settlement of Vedrovice (Moravia), has allowed us to reconstruct not only broad cultural patterns but also the life histories of the individuals with insights into diet, migrations, ancestry, personal identity, social position and life experience. Vedrovice acted as a gateway settlement for a farming community with close ties to western Hungary and northeast Bohemia. The individuals showed clear differences in status and migration histories, giving glimpses of more complex social practices and patterns than could have been determined through the traditional culture-historical studies.

This paper discusses land use patterns of hunter-gatherers inhabiting arid grasslands of later Pleistocene East Africa, inferred from an analysis of raw material economy in five Later Stone Age (LSA) lithic assemblages from Lukenya Hill, southern Kenya. Later Stone Age lithic assemblages at Lukenya fall into two groups, one based predominantly on the use of quartz to manufacture scrapers and other flake tools, and the second using greater amounts of rarer chert and obsidian lithic materials to manufacture microliths. Aspects of raw material use, coupled with ethnographic data on how food and water abundance affects Kalahari forager land use, indicate that the first group of sites had longer occupations by groups with smaller home ranges. The second group of sites had shorter occupations by more mobile groups with larger home ranges. The paper compares the land use patterns of arid grassland LSA foragers, like those at Lukenya Hill, with those in woodland and forest areas of Central and Southeastern Africa. Improvements in the ability to procure food, such as the development of fishing and fowling technologies or better hunting projectiles, allowed grassland groups to become more mobile in the later LSA, while foragers in wetter parts of Africa, including woodlands, riverine areas, and lakeshores, seem to have intensified the procurement of fish and plant foods. The processes of economic specialization taking place in both grassland and woodland areas of Later Stone Age Africa may have parallels in other parts of the Old World.

Objective: Although twin and family studies have shown attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to be highly heritable, genetic variants influencing the trait at a genomewide significant level have yet to be identified. Thus additional genomewide association studies (GWAS) are needed. Method: We used case-control analyses of 896 cases with DSM-IV ADHD genotyped using the Affymetrix 5.0 array and 2,455 repository controls screened for psychotic and bipolar symptoms genotyped using Affymetrix 6.0 arrays. A consensus SNP set was imputed using BEAGLE 3.0, resulting in an analysis dataset of 1,033,244 SNPs. Data were analyzed using a generalized linear model. Results: No genomewide significant associations were found. The most significant results implicated the following genes: PRKG1, FLNC, TCERG1L, PPM1H, NXPH1, PPM1H, CDH13, HK1, and HKDC1.

This paper deals with the question of human dispersals out of Africa. Some hypotheses concerning dispersals for both Mode 1 and Mode 2 technologies are presented. We suggest that early humans were technically split into at least two groups, those producing Oldowan (Mode 1) and those producing the more advanced Acheulean (Mode 2). Environmental changes caused a major faunal dispersal at around 1 my, which may have facilitated the first human dispersal toward Eurasia. However, this first dispersal involved only Mode 1 technology, although Mode 2 was already well developed. Therefore, we suggest that the main cause for this dispersal must have involved differential subsistence strategies, such as the competition for resources between Mode 1-and Mode 2-producing populations, which drove the former, but not the latter populations out of the Rift System to other areas. Although Mode 1 technology was highly effective in successfully facing the new Eurasian environments, when the African areas with Mode 2 became saturated, this technical system started to spread, replacing Mode 1 technology in Eurasia long after its initial settling. © 1999 Academic Press older than 500 thousand years (ky) include Korolevo VIII and VII (Ukraine), Le Vallonet (France), Soleilhac (France), Isernia La Pineta (Italy), Monte Poggiolo (Italy), Ceprano (Italy), Fuentenueva 3 (Spain), and Gran Dolina TD4 and TD6 (Atapuerca, Spain). All these localities yielded technical systems called Oldowan by Leakey (1971) and Mode 1 by Clark (1971). The traditional hypothesis for the first coloni-zation of Europe by humans with more developed technical systems, such as Acheulean (Mode 2), has to be reconsidered in the light of this new evidence.

Between 1900 and 1970, American archaeologists perceived themselves as second-class anthropologists because the archaeological record suggested little not already known ethnographically, archaeology served anthropology by testing ethnologically derived models of cultural evolution, the archaeological record was ethnologically incomplete as a result of poor preservation, and archaeologists used but did not write anthropological theory. Ethnologists of the period agreed with these points and regularly reminded archaeologists of their limited role in anthropology. A few archaeologists claimed in the 1950s that archaeology could contribute to anthropological theory but they were ignored. The claim was reiterated by new archaeologists of the 1960s, and by the 1970s worries about the poor preservation of the archaeological record had softened. However, most archaeologists after 1970 (and before 1990) used anthropological theory and did not write new theory on the basis of archaeological data. The root cause of American archaeology's ninety-year absence from anthropology's high table of theory seems to be the discipline-wide retention of the ninety-year old belief that archaeology is prehistoric ethnology and the (unnecessary and constraining) corollary that archaeologists must use anthropological theory to explain the archaeological record.

Objective: To examine the efficacy and maintenance of developmentally adapted prolonged exposure therapy for adolescents (PE-A) compared with active control time-limited dynamic therapy (TLDP-A) for decreasing posttraumatic and depressive symptoms in adolescent victims of single-event traumas. Method: Thirty-eight adolescents (12 to 18 years old) were randomly assigned to receive PE-A or TLDP-A. Results: Both treatments resulted in decreased posttraumatic stress disorder and depression and increased functioning. PE-A exhibited a greater decrease of posttraumatic stress disorder and depression symptom severity and a greater increase in global functioning than did TDLP-A. After treatment, 68.4% of adolescents beginning treatment with PE-A and 36.8% of those beginning treatment with TLDP-A no longer met diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder. Treatment gains were maintained at 6and 17-month follow-ups. Conclusions: Brief individual therapy is effective in decreasing posttraumatic distress and behavioral trauma-focused components enhance efficacy. J. Am.

Population growth, or, more specifically, pressure, is often viewed as being critical to the development of food production in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the Near East. It is surprising, therefore, to recognize how little detailed archaeological research has explored the rates of population growth and how they might be related to social crowding in early village social environments. Combining archaeological and ethnographic perspectives, this article explores the possible links between demographic change, possible social crowding, and reasons for the "collapse" of large aggregate villages occupied between approximately 8500 to 8000 years before present. Reflection upon the timing, estimated magnitude, and rate of demographic change prompts the researcher to reconsider the perceived links between sedentism, food production, and the emergence of social inequality in the context of early agricultural villages of the south-central Levant.

The middle centuries (200 B.C.-A.D. 600) of the Woodland period in the central riverine region of North America witnessed significant changes in the amount of decorative effort that people invested in their household pottery. Such historical phenomena raise the usually unasked question, why do people decorate their utilitarian household goods at all? More specifically, why might people in a particular historical setting decorate their utilitarian household objects at one time but not at another? This paper argues that the answer to such questions must always be different for each historical setting, and not predictable from any crosscultural regularities. The Woodland case also illustrates a need to take into account relationships minimally among (a) construction practices, (b) decorative practices, (c) the physical uses of utilitarian objects, and (d) household-scale social relations in any social analysis of decoration on household objects. 0 1991 Academic Press, Inc.

We use instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) of ceramics from three centers, Cerro Portezuelo, Chalco, and Xaltocan, in the Basin of Mexico, whose occupations span the Postclassic to examine the changing role of markets and evaluate models of political economy. Our results suggest that production and distribution of Epiclassic serving wares was highly localized conforming closely to a solar market model. Ceramic exchange within the Basin increased during the Early and Middle Postclassic, in some cases paralleling political alliance networks. The Late Postclassic marketing pattern incorporated both increased regionalism and increased exchange between hinterlands and imperial cities. These patterns are probably not unique to the Basin of Mexico. INAA is a fruitful means to explore the development of preindustrial markets related to fluctuating economic, demographic, and political processes.

Decades of systematic archaeological investigations highlight the importance of fish and fishing for prehistoric people along the central coast of California, but to date temporal and spatial trends remain unsynthesized. An evaluation of 202,177 fish remains from 86 sites on the central coast of California yielded a sample of 75,532 NISP from temporally and methodologically controlled contexts. Seventynine temporal components demonstrate a 10,000-year history of fishing within estuaries, along the open rocky coast, and on the Monterey Peninsula. Fishes within six taxa dominate the record throughout including New World silversides, small surfperches, and members of the herring family which almost certainly were caught with nets, and rockfish and cabezon which were amenable to individual hook and line capture. The persistent dominance of these fishes suggests that nets and hooks/gorges were employed throughout the sequence along with watercraft. Only very modest changes are apparent between 10,000 and 300 years ago, suggesting continuous harvest of a relatively productive, stable resource that was too abundant to be seriously impacted by pre-European harvesting practices. There is no evidence for gradual or incremental intensification in fishing, rather there are three intervals of change in fish remains and inferred fishing practices that reflect changes in human population and/or environment. There is no compelling evidence for depression of the prehistoric fishery and the record seems to reflect epiphenomenal sustainability related to low human populations and a highly productive, upwelling-fueled, under-exploited fishery. Comparison of the prehistoric record with enormous yields recorded historically further supports this conclusion. .

Much recent debate has focussed on the relative significance of phylogenetic (branching) versus ethnogenetic (culture contact induced) processes of cultural transformation. In this paper we employ a longterm and regional framework to analyse the transmission of languages and craft traditions amongst Californian Indian groups. Initial results suggest that basketry assemblages exhibit a significant ethnogenetic signal, arising from the horizontal transmission of cultural attributes across sharply defined linguistic boundaries. These findings converge with those from other regions, where geographic propinquity rather than linguistic affinity has been shown to have a slightly greater-but not exclusive-influence on the composition of material culture assemblages. However, the results presented here also indicate that despite these broader similarities local basketry traditions remain relatively distinct, and therefore cannot be explained through ethnogenesis alone. It remains a possibility that differential rates of cumulative innovation in language and craft traditions may have been present, leading to the erosion of phylogenetic signals for shared descent and the rapid emergence of distinct local basketry traditions. These issues require further research at a sub-regional scale.

While archaeologists have long been interested in how human prey choice decisions vary both spatially and temporally, recent research has often focused on the role climate and human overhunting play in the process. Regardless of the issue receiving particular attention, these studies have also faced the dilemma of determining to what degree observed patterns are driven by underlying taphonomic processes rather than the factor of interest. Here, the faunal record from two Fremont residential sites located in UtahÕs Parowan Valley (southeastern Great Basin) shows patterns of taxonomic representation, age structure, element representation, and fragmentation which covary through time both with each other and with local tree-ring records. Analysis of these materials: (1) contradicts previously reported work suggesting that human overhunting alone drove prey choice decisions in the area, (2) clarifies the relationship between environmental variability and anthropogenically induced changes in the local resource base, (3) provides a possible explanation for variability apparent in long-term studies of Fremont prey choice, and (4) illustrates how climatic impacts on farming and foraging opportunities may have structured element representation through its affect on human processing decisions and the nature of the bones subsequently presented to secondary consumers. This last issue has broader zooarchaeological implications in that it attempts to address the behavioral factors affecting density-mediated attrition and how they may vary with local ecology.

Hunter–gatherer adaptations to moist tropical grasslands are not well known from either the ethnographic or the archaeological record. This is unfortunate as grassland adaptations are clearly significant to human biological and behavioral evolution. The most effective strategy for remedying ...

Nabta Playa basin offers an unprecedented longitudinal view on the emergence, consolidation and complexification on human-livestock relationships, from the early stage of the Early Holocene (c. 11,000 cal. B.P.) to 6000 B.P. The problem of cattle domestication in Northeastern Africa is considered and hopefully ''solved'' in the light of new mtDNA evidence which suggest an early late Pleistocene split between African, Asian, and Eurasian wild Bos populations. The paper presents a contextualized analysis of almost all the components of archaeological investigation, including climatic change, culture history of Early to Mid-Holocene Nabta-Playans, the development of social differentiation, and probably ranking with ''labor-consuming'' megalithic features with the emergence of characteristic features of pastoral ideology and religions. As far as the emergence and adoption of new foodways are concerned, the cultural development outlined with the Nabta Playa archaeological record is important for the understanding of the Holocene prehistory of Africa as a whole.

"This article focuses on the social organization of Iron Age II villages in ancient Israel. Based on the analysis of houses size, size and distribution of agricultural-industrial installations, the presence of terrace systems, storage facilities and other elements such as a boundary wall, several conclusions are presented.
The basis social units were large extended families that dwelled together. These families were organized in larger kingship groups (probably lineages) which, to some extent, were probably responsible for production and storage facilities and can be seen as "corporate groups". The lineage frequently comprised an entire village, but in some cases several lineages constituted a settlement. In any event, in light of the archeological evidence it seems that there was a forum responsible for decisions-making on the village level, even when the village was larger than the lineage.
These conclusions are compared with the biblical/historical data concerning the organization of the "traditional Israelite society" and are examined in light of our knowledge of similar societies throughout the world and in the ancient Near East.
"

Within a pan-Iroquoian perspective, this paper seeks to characterize the pace of the culture change that occurred between A.D. 500 and A.D. 1300 in most of the regions occupied by Iroquoians. The two basic points of the paper are that Iroquoian villages were not year-round sedentary communities until around A.D. 1300 and that a shift to a greater dependance on maize and other cultigens occurred around the same time. The sedentarization of these groups is examined along several lines of research including settlement pattern criteria such as sites location, longhouses, pits, middens, artifact density, and cultigens chronology and adoption. It is argued that the Iroquoians became agriculturists after a slow and discontinuous transformation. Increased sedentariness is then viewed as a precondition for some social changes in the Iroquoian cultural system that provided the basis allowing corn to become the staple food after a long period of domestication.

Genes likely play a substantial role in the etiology of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). However, the genetic architecture of the disorder is unknown, and prior genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have not identified a genome-wide significant association. We have conducted a third, independent, multisite GWAS of DSM-IV-TR ADHD.Families were ascertained at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH; N = 309 trios), Washington University at St. Louis (WASH-U; N = 272 trios), and University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA; N = 156 trios). Genotyping was conducted with the Illumina Human1M or Human1M-Duo BeadChip platforms. After applying quality control filters, association with ADHD was tested with 835,136 SNPs in 735 DSM-IV ADHD trios from 732 families.Our smallest p value (6.7E-07) did not reach the threshold for genome-wide statistical significance (5.0E-08), but one of the 20 most significant associations was located in a candidate gene of interest for ADHD (SLC9A9, rs9810857, p = 6.4E-6). We also conducted gene-based tests of candidate genes identified in the literature and found additional evidence of association with SLC9A9.We and our colleagues in the Psychiatric GWAS Consortium are working to pool together GWAS samples to establish the large data sets needed to follow-up on these results and to identify genes for ADHD and other disorders.

Most scholars agree that the urban states of Classic Mexico developed from Formative chiefdoms which preceded them. They disagree over whether that development (1) took place over the whole area from the Basin of Mexico to Chiapas, or (2) emanated entirely from one unique culture on the Gulf Coast. Recently Diehl and Coe (1996) put forth 11 assertions in defense of the second scenario, which assumes an Olmec "Mother Culture." This paper disputes those assertions. It suggests that a model for rapid evolution, originally presented by biologist Sewall Wright, provides a better explanation for the explosive development of Formative Mexican society.