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Current evidence suggests domestications of the dog were incipient developments in many areas of the world. In southwest Asia this process took place in the Late Epipalaeolithic Natufian (∼14,500–11,600 cal BP) with the earliest evidence originating from the Mediterranean zone of the southern Levant. This paper presents new data for the importance of early domestic dogs to human groups in the region beyond this ‘core’ area where the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene environment is usually thought of as less favourable for human occupation. By the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A it is demonstrated that dogs were living alongside humans in significant numbers. Most discussions of early domestic dogs assume that these animals would have facilitated the hunting of larger prey following the innate behavioural traits of their wolf ancestors. This paper suggests that the benefits of hunting with dogs could also extend to the capture of smaller prey. An increase in the hunting of such animals, as part of the broad-spectrum revolution, was not necessarily a response limited to resource reduction in the Late Pleistocene and factors such as new hunting methods need consideration.

This paper presents a streamlined method for sequencing individual stone working events in cumulative palimpsests of sub-surface artefacts. The method presented demonstrates that the unit of analysis in un-stratified assemblages can be shifted from the assemblage or depth-divided unit to the event-refuse from specific knapping or discard activities. Crucially, this allows cumulative palimpsest assemblages to contribute to the construction of high-resolution behavioral sequences, a domain currently dominated by stratified sites. The method will be presented through the study of five Holocene hunter-gatherer assemblages excavated from open-air sand-sheet sites at Weereewaa (Lake George), in south-eastern Australia.

This paper concentrates on archaeobotanical evidence for the adoption of plant cultivation in the forests in seven regions of Colombia. We present a synthesis and explanation of the evidence we currently have for the process that involved the adoption of plant cultivation and the development of food production in this area. The use of locally available plant foods in these forests is evident by the Pleistocene/Holocene transition. By the Middle Holocene, exogenous plant domesticates were added, including maize, manioc, and possibly common beans. We further explore available data on other proxies to discuss models to explain the transition from hunting and gathering to horticulture.

Hunter-gatherers with a maritime economic orientation have been commonly characterised by an opportunistic use of terrestrial environments and its resources. Studies on transport and butchering activities help to reconstruct a better understanding of this human behavioural pattern. In this paper, I discuss spatial variations in guanaco (Lama guanicoe) exploitation patterns and butchering activities in different sectors of the southern coast of Tierra del Fuego (southern tip of South America) during the Late Holocene. The guanaco was the only terrestrial animal that played a significant role in the diet of the inhabitants of this region. Analysis show that guanacos butchering and transport strategies were not always consistent with the general parameters usually expected on the use of the terrestrial environment in coastal contexts of cold and temperate climates. The results suggest that, despite the geographical gradient and the paleoenvironmental variations, hunter-gatherers used the interior and the coastal environments as integrated zones that formed part of the same mobility system. However, foragers followed diverse strategies for optimal use of guanaco based on different foraging spatial ranges and butchering-consumption techniques.

Building on previous research at smaller scales, in this paper we assemble paleoecological data and archaeological time-series for deserts located in three latitudinal bands along the South American Arid Diagonal (16°–41°S, ∼1,236,000 km2 of area). Diverse proxies suggest the existence of arid and extremely arid conditions in large parts of these deserts. Working with a database composed of 914 archaeological dates falling between the first human presence in each region and 3000 years BP, which produce a minimum number of 578 occupational events, we identify a series of patterns at a macro-regional scale: a robust increase in the temporal signal at the beginning of the mid-Holocene (8000–7600 years BP) followed by two troughs (7600–7200, 6800–6400 years BP) during this period. The spatial scope of the data presented provides an opportunity for disentangling processes of spatial re-localization from actual changes in population size. We present a demographic hypothesis at a macro-regional scale, which suggests the existence of mid-Holocene population bottleneck(s). This hypothesis would account not only for the mid-Holocene troughs, but also for the posterior record of an intense and relatively rapid population growth (release) observed in many regions of the arid diagonal. These mid-Holocene events provide the context for independent trajectories of economic intensification based on different sets of resources -marine foods, camelids, and also probably wetland resources-, some of which lead to domestication processes. These cases occur in association with a tendency towards reduced residential mobility in regions that may have acted as refugia during arid periods of the mid-Holocene. The analysis produces testable expectations for future research at different scales and for different research domains, including human DNA and morphometric evidence. We consider that these issues have a fecund comparative potential, since the analysis of the socio-demographic meaning of archaeological discontinuities in different continents shares a similar conceptual structure. Fil: Barberena, Ramiro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina Fil: Méndez, César. Universidad de Chile; Chile Fil: de Porras, Maria Eugenia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica. Centro de Investigación Regional. Centro de Estudios en Zonas Áridas; Chile

This paper offers a method for estimating relative occupational duration at high elevations using lithic tool and raw material diversity. Presuming high elevation occupations are seasonal, we adapt methods traditionally used to estimate occupational duration for individual sites to the scale of landscapes, using data from the Beartooth and Absaroka Mountains of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Essentially, we work to understand how much of foragers’ seasonal rounds they were spending at high elevations. Averaged over the Holocene, the Beartooths appear to experience longer high elevation occupational duration than the Absarokas. In addition, Beartooths occupational durations are longest during the Early Archaic, likely related to the Early Holocene Warming. In the Absarokas, meanwhile, occupational durations are longest during the cooler, wetter Middle Archaic. Indeed, seasonal occupational durations consistently differ between the two ranges, suggesting diversity in mountain adaptations despite their similarities in resources and climate. Finally, the evidence suggests a gradual mid-to-late Holocene migration of Shoshonean peoples from the south and west rather than a sudden, unidirectional Numic Expansion.

This paper emphasises sub-regional variation in the timing and nature of subsistence changes in the New Guinea Highlands at the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. An analysis of the Kiowa lithic assemblage was used to examine the interplay between tool technology, mobility levels, and subsistence strategies by investigating changes in the procurement, manufacture, and use of different raw stone materials in an overall lithic technology. Throughout Kiowa’s occupation local stone was used extensively, and over time people increased their knowledge of the local lithic landscape, using more diverse local raw materials. Since the terminal Pleistocene, people carried reliable polished axes for a variety of activities and made expedient use of locally abundant river pebbles, while smaller nodules were located and carried as mobile toolkits to facilitate longer distance hunting and collecting excursions. In the mid Holocene exotic raw materials were also traded from more distant zones. The abandonment of Kiowa in the late Holocene shows that hunting became less economically important as cultivation developed in the area. Technological changes, in combination with changes in faunal remains are suggestive of increasing activity at Kiowa through the Holocene as the site became specialised for bat hunting, perhaps driven by restricted land use and reduced mobility, reciprocally affected by increasing populations and the intensification of plant food production in the Highlands generally. Despite this, evidence for changes to horticulture around Kiowa itself, in the Chimbu area, is limited to the mid-late Holocene, indicating that the early development of agriculture in the Wahgi may have been relatively localised, and did not necessarily displace existing subsistence strategies elsewhere in the Highlands.