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The current study adopts a population-based biocultural approach to the investigation of prehistoric violence in the hunter-gatherer Jōmon period of Japan (15,000-2750 cal BP). It challenges two incompatible beliefs: the view widely held in Japan that the Jōmon were peaceful people, and a relatively new 'orthodoxy' in archaeology which asserts that all ancient hunter-gatherer societies were frequently violent. Skeletal remains of 1208 individuals from across the Japanese archipelago were examined for evidence of violence-related trauma. Wherever possible, skeletons were physically examined to confirm previously reported cases of Jōmon violent injuries contained in the archaeological literature, and to uncover new cases in old osteological collections. Both the 'Minimum Number of Individuals' (MNI) and the more sophisticated 'Effective Number of Individuals' (ENI) methods were employed. This was especially important given the generally poor preservation conditions and completeness of Jōmon skeletons predominantly due to Japan's highly acidic soils. The resulting data were analysed to establish the prevalence of violence, and its distribution spatiotemporally, as well as by age-at-death and biological sex. Trauma timing, type, and quantity were determined, in addition to identifying the skeletal element and side most affected. To help assess the level of violence, this direct bioarchaeological data was augmented by indirect archaeological evidence: weapons; settlements; defensive structures; iconography, and warrior graves. Combined with an exploration of the environmental, geographical, and sociocultural contexts, the thesis shows that a multi-layered framework is better at identifying patterns of (non)violence in prehistoric societies. To deduce whether Jōmon Japan was more or less violent than other prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies, it was compared with Mesolithic Europe and California. The Jōmon were found to be significantly more violent than previously thought, but nevertheless somewhat less violent than Mesolithic Europeans as a whole and especially prehistoric Californians. Overall, the prevalence of violent trauma in all three regions hovered around 4~5%, but unlike for the latter, there is no definitive evidence-direct or indirect-to suggest that the Jōmon people engaged in large-scale organised intergroup conflict (warfare). Blunt force traumatic injuries predominated in Japan, whereas in California sharp force/projectile trauma were more prevalent. Furthermore, in contrast to California where young to middle-aged adult males exhibited the most violent trauma, in Jōmon society, males sustained only slightly more trauma than females, and old adults were more likely to have suffered (antemortem or perimortem) trauma. Moreover, clear evidence of trophy-taking and ritualised violence have been unearthed in central and southern California, respectively, but not in Japan. The fallibility of population estimates and the imprecision of skeletal dating make it impossible to identify clear causes or reach any definitive conclusions about the effects of violence on these societies. No single factor can explain the disparate and fluctuating patterns of violence, but a combination of climate, topography, population, resources, and socio-political structure goes some way towards solving this riddle.

My dissertation focuses on the ways the Orochen-Evenki reindeer herders and hunters living in the taiga and villages of the northern part of the Zabaikal’ia responded and adapted to a post-Soviet environment.  This environment featured the collapse of a centralized system of resource redistribution and the privatization of collective property.  One important response by people was to appropriate taiga territories for subsistence, as well as increase their reliance on taiga resources.  Hence, vernacular notions of mastery (R. khoziian) and luck (O. kutu, R. udacha) have become important Orochen concerns shaping their interactions with other persons as well as taiga places or achieving hunting and herding success.  Drawing on ethnographic and comparative sources, this thesis investigates the underdeveloped concept of mastery in Siberian ethnography.  Orochen mastery describes relational forms of power intrinsic to interactions among humans, animals and spirits associated with different places, material objects and experiences of luck.  Luck is achieved because of the good will of master-spirits and because the hunter is strong enough to win his contests with animals.  Hunters and herders engage in complex relations of cooperation with other persons aiming to gain luck and maintain well-being, while at the same time relying on aggression to achieve hunting success.  They creatively re-enact old forms of rituals for gaining success in subsistence, securing their territories as well as reassessing their identities.  This study also is critical of statements founding countless ethnographies that animals give themselves to hunters as long as they are treated with respect.  Rather it is here suggested that these interactions are based on complex relations as well as experiences infused with anxiety, ambiguity and doubt.

The research reported here arose from perceived lacunae regarding archaeological understanding of mesolithic settlement in eastern Scotland. Historically this area, for a number of reasons, has seen 1ittle archaeological research in comparison to the maritime west of the country, a bias that requires redressing. The characteristics, problems and potentials of available data are assembled for the first time and critically assessed. Discussion of methodologies appropriate to this material is developed, and small-scale fieldwork undertaken within this framework presented. Any introduction of a new range of data is, in part, a construction of that data, and the particular interpretative and thematic stresses of the thesis arise from the argument that narratives of gatherer-hunter communities in the past have objectified those groups, consequently hindering comprehension of them. To this end an approach to a social archaeology of the mesolithic is developed, stressing the importance of examining skills and routines that, through thei; extension in particular contexts, may have structured an agent's experience of landscapes in the past. In order to flesh out these arguments and introduce the material evidence in more detail, a series of overlapping case studies is developed exploring in turn, the relationships between mesolithic folk and woodlands, the significance of salmon fishing, the inhabitation of the coast, and stone tool procurement, production and discard. These varied narratives incorporate the results of a range of small-scale desktop projects and fieldwork designed to test the potential of this approach to a social archaeology of the period. Whilst these studies are at present fragmentary, it is contended that they demonstrate that accounts of gatherer-hunter communities in the east of Scotland can aspire to a meaningful level of engagement with human lives in the past. The project scholarship was funded by Historic Scotland.

The chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes, Pongidae) among all other living species, is our closest relation, with whom we last shared a common ancestor less than five million years ago. These African apes make and use a rich and varied kit of tools. Of the primates, and even of the other Great Apes, they are the only consistent and habitual tool-users. Chimpanzees meet the criteria of working definitions of culture as originally devised for human beings in socio-cultural anthropology. They show sex differences in using tools to obtain and to process a variety of plant and animal foods. The technological gap between chimpanzees and human societies living by foraging (hunter-gatherers) is surprisingly narrow, at least for food-getting. Different communities of chimpanzees have different tool-kits, and not all of this regional and local variation can be explained by the varied physical and biotic environments in which they live. Some differences are likely customs based on non-functionally derived and symbolically encoded traditions. Chimpanzees serve as heuristic, referential models for the reconstruction of cultural evolution in apes and humans from an ancestral hominoid. However, chimpanzees are not humans, and key differences exist between them, though many of these apparent contrasts remain to be explored empirically and theoretically.