The complexity of the settlement pattern of hunter-gatherers is an underexplored issue in Tibetan archaeology; the multi-year survey and excavations at the Xiada Co site aim to address this situation. The project has provided evidence of long-term human occupation since the Early Holocene and has revealed the earliest human residential structures in Tibet.

Researchers increasingly rely on aggregations of radiocarbon dates from archaeological sites as proxies for past human populations. This approach has been critiqued on several grounds, including the assumptions that material is deposited, preserved, and sampled in proportion to past population size. However, various attempts to quantitatively assess the approach suggest there may be some validity in assuming date counts reflect relative population size. To add to this conversation, here we conduct a preliminary analysis coupling estimates of ethnographic population density with late Holocene radiocarbon dates across all counties in California. Results show that counts of late Holocene radiocarbon-dated archaeological sites increase significantly as a function of ethnographic population density. This trend is robust across varying sampling windows over the last 5000 BP. Though the majority of variation in dated-site counts remains unexplained by population density. Outliers reveal how departures from the central trend may be influenced by regional differences in research traditions, development-driven contract work, organic preservation, and landscape taphonomy. Overall, this exercise provides some support for the “dates-as-data” approach and offers insights into the conditions where the underlying assumptions may or may not hold.

Bone points were one of the major hunting implements in northern European hunter-gatherer societies. They differ in shapes, types, and manufacturing techniques. In this paper, we investigate 22 bone points from the territory of Lithuania, by studying their morpho-technological characteristics, direct dates, and adhesive residues. The majority are isolated finds, but four points were selected from excavated archaeological sites dated between the 5th and 3rd millennia cal BC. Most of the points belong to the barbed points category, but six slotted points were also studied. Of the 22, 16 previously undated points were sampled for accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon (AMS 14C) dating. The results of 10 successfully dated samples are discussed together with previously published 14C dates of bone points from the same region. ATR-FTIR analysis of adhesive residues from six points suggest that birch bark tar was used to haft barbed points and lithic inserts. The results reveal the diversity of types of Early Holocene bone points in the territory of Lithuania, while the slotted and Kunda-type bone points fall into narrow timeframes.

Se presentan los primeros resultados del análisis de pieles procesadas recuperadas en el sitio Puerto Tranquilo 1, ubicado en el extremo norte de la Isla Victoria, en el Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi, Provincia de Neuquén, Argentina. El material estudiado proviene de un nivel tardío, por encima de un fogón fechado en 640 ± 60 años aP (1288–1431 cal dC). El conjunto incluye tanto fragmentos de piel con pelo como depilados, con costuras de tendón y pelo, pintados y con reparaciones. Se aplicó una metodología específica para el análisis de las pieles y las fibras, con una descripción técnico-morfológica detallada a partir del análisis macro- y microscópico (SEM/óptico). Las características de la médula y de la cutícula de las fibras permitieron la identificación de Lama guanicoe y Mustelidae (cf. Galictis). Se aplicaron estrategias analíticas y metodológicas novedosas y se generaron datos acerca de las diferentes dimensiones del uso humano de los recursos faunísticos y de la producción de tecnologías en el área boscoso-lacustre norpatagónica. La comparación con otras evidencias arqueológicas, etnográficas y etnohistóricas permitió reconocer rasgos tecnológicos recurrentes en la preparación de las pieles y en la manufactura de artefactos, como parte del proceso productivo del cuero en Norpatagonia.

Unmodified and modified animal remains and animal representations significantly contribute to the content of Mesolithic and, in some cases, Early Neolithic hunter-gatherer burial assemblages in Northern Europe. Though these finds have received noteworthy attention, predominant archaeological narratives focus on their economic, aesthetic, or symbolic values in relation to humans. This contribution explores ways of looking at these assemblages beyond seeing them primarily as signifiers of human identities and human symbolic and/or economic choices. Drawing on insights from Russian ethnographic literature about near-recent East Siberian hunting and gathering communities, this paper explores paths for understanding unmodified and modified animal remains and animal representations from Mesolithic and Neolithic hunter-gatherer graves as animate objects and investigates ways of recognising their personhood. The paper outlines what could be considered as the material consequences of communicative actions and performative acts in relation to artefacts and animal remains that might have been perceived as having the qualities of a person, such as their placement and arrangement within the burial and treatment prior to deposition.

This article evaluates the level of interpersonal violence among human groups that inhabited northern Patagonia and southern Pampa (Argentina) during the Middle and Late Holocene, especially before contact with Europeans. We analyzed a particular type of trauma—blunt force trauma—in skull samples from several archaeological localities and compared our outcomes with those of a previous experimental work. The results agree with what is expected for small-scale societies within the regional historical and archaeological framework. The recorded percentages show a diachronic increase toward higher frequencies of this injury among males than among females and subadults, but the differences are not statistically significant. Generally, the levels of violence remained relatively constant during the period studied. Most of the injuries reflect low levels of damage, which allows us to hypothesize that the objects causing the injuries would be elements of everyday life. A smaller proportion show significant bone alteration that could be associated with weapons manufactured to exert violence or hunt animals.

Intense aeolian processes in arid and semi-arid environments play an essential role in the preservation and destruction of archeological sites. This is especially the case in the lower basin of the Colorado River at the eastern Pampa-Patagonia Transition of Argentina, as is illustrated by geoarchaeological and chronostratigraphic studies at a mid-Holocene hunter-gatherer site, La Modesta, where aeolian processes strongly influence the archeological record in dune sediments. At La Modesta, surface archaeological materials are numerous and well preserved, although the stratigraphic record is incomplete. Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of sediments that contain cultural material provides a chronology dating from ca. 8.2 ka but shows one or more hiatuses from ca. 6–2 ka in the sedimentary succession. Intense morphogenesis related to arid climates likely caused gaps in sedimentation, affecting the integrity and resolution of the archaeological record. This study helps explain mid-Holocene archaeological discontinuities throughout central Argentina and highlights the importance of considering taphonomic and geologic biases when dealing with the absence or reduction of the archaeological record in dryland regions.

Se presentan los resultados de las investigaciones llevadas a cabo en dos sitios del Holoceno medio ubicados en la cuenca superior del Río Loa (norte de Chile), conocidos como Alero Huiculunche y Corte de La Damiana. Los trabajos desarrollados incluyeron excavaciones estratigráficas, obtención y análisis de dataciones radiocarbónicas y análisis del material lítico y arqueofaunístico recuperado. Las dataciones obtenidas hicieron posible desarrollar un modelo cronológico bayesiano, el que permite definir los límites temporales más probables de ocupación para cada asentamiento y para sus unidades estratigráficas. La ocupación de Alero Huiculunche se muestra más temprana que en Corte de La Damiana, si bien el modelo revela alta probabilidad de una coexistencia breve entre las poblaciones de ambos sitios. Los análisis líticos y arqueofaunísticos sugieren que se trata en ambos casos de campamentos base de ocupación reiterada pero posiblemente intermitente, con ocupaciones menos intensas y/o recurrentes en Alero Huiculunche en relación con Corte de La Damiana. El conjunto de evidencias apunta a la existencia de un proceso de intensificación económica creciente entre aproximadamente 8000 y 5500 cal aP, el cual decanta en un sistema de asentamiento de mayor estabilidad y densidad ocupacional, en especial a partir de 6500 cal aP.

En este trabajo se discuten las estrategias de explotación de ungulados por parte de los grupos cazadores-recolectores que habitaron los sectores ecotonales del Parque Nacional Perito Moreno (Santa Cruz, Argentina). La importancia del guanaco (Lama guanicoe) y el huemul (Hippocamelus bisulcus) en la subsistencia de estos sectores precordilleranos se mantuvo constante desde la transición Pleistoceno/Holoceno. La muestra analizada corresponde a un basural datado en el Holoceno medio (ca. 5500 años aP) perteneciente al sitio Cerro Casa de Piedra 7. La variedad de partes anatómicas, junto con la diversidad y frecuencia de marcas de procesamiento, da cuenta de un aprovechamiento integral e intensivo de ambas especies. La explotación del guanaco se habría centrado, principalmente, en grupos familiares con una marcada selectividad de individuos en edad reproductiva. El incremento demográfico en las poblaciones de guanacos ocurrido durante el Holoceno medio, tal como señalan investigaciones moleculares en Patagonia, habría permitido esta interacción predador-presa sin consecuencias ecológicas negativas. En tanto, el huemul tuvo un rol complementario en la dieta y su obtención se basó en una estrategia de caza oportunista, sin causar una presión predatoria significativa sobre esta presa. Las discrepancias en el aprovechamiento responderían a cuestiones etológicas y demográficas propias de estos ungulados.

This essay interprets a classification of Africa's Bantu languages which used statistical tools guided by assumptions about farming and its chronology to analyze fresh vocabulary evidence. It shows a peeling movement from Cameroon's grassfields, into southern Cameroon, then along a savanna corridor through West Central Africa's rainforests, into the Savannahs, then to Southern Africa, the Great Lakes, and Indian Ocean coast. The clear sequence of movement masks methodological and historical factors. Language death, multilingualism, and the limits of vocabulary evidence restrain the classification's authority. ‘Transformations’ from food collecting to food producing or from no metals to full engagement with metals were mutable, unfolded at different speeds, and involved interactions with firstcomers. In Central Africa, Bantu speakers were often the first farmers and metal-users in the region but elsewhere they were commonly neither. Their arrivals did not immediately displace firstcomers. Computational methods can accommodate many of these issues.