Populations of the African lion Panthera leo are declining dramatically, with the species' survival in some areas closely linked to levels of tolerance by rural communities. In Tanzania and Kenya several of the remaining lion populations outside protected areas reside adjacent to rural communities, where they are hunted. As many of these communities are Maasai, research and conservation efforts have focused on understanding and curbing Maasai lion hunting practices. Much of this work has been informed by a dichotomous explanatory model of Maasai lion hunting as either a 'cultural' ritual or a 'retaliatory' behaviour against predation on livestock. We present qualitative data from interviews (n 5 246) in both countries to illustrate that lion hunting by Maasai is related to overlapping motivations that are simultaneously social, emotional and political (in response to conservation initiatives). Additional case study material from Tanzania highlights how politics associated with conservation activities and age-set dynamics affect lion hunting in complex and overlapping ways. Our findings contribute an ethnographic perspective on Maasai lion hunting, people-predator relations, and how these relations are linked to conservation politics.

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Chert outcrops on eastern Santa Cruz Island were of vital importance to the inhabitants of the Santa Barbara Channel region because of their comparatively limited availablity elsewhere on the California Channel Islands. Temporally diagnostic artifacts and radiocarbon dates from associated shell middens suggest that chert quarries were exploited throughout the Holocene. The importance of these quarries has been well documented in regard to microlith production as part of the shell bead industry during the late Holocene. However, relatively little is known about local chert tool manufacture and exchange in earlier times. Systematic documentation of 26 known chert quarries, and sampling at associated shell middens on eastern Santa Cruz Island has resulted in the identification of significant spatial variability in chert exploitation through time. Whereas chert quarrying during the middle Holocene appears to have been opportunistic and dispersed throughout the landscape, comparable activities during the late Holocene became increasingly circumscribed as microlith production was intensified. These trends in chert procurement are interpreted in the context of temporal changes in subsistence, tool manufacture, and residential mobility on the northern Channel Islands, and have broad implications for spatial and temporal patterning in prehistoric lithic exploitation.

Abstract:How can the utilization of newly developed advanced portable technologies give us greater understandings of the most complex of prehistoric rock art? This is the questions driving The Gordian Knot project analysing the polychrome Californian site known as Pleito. New small transportable devices allow detailed on-site analyses of rock art. These non-destructive portable technologies can use X-ray and Raman technology to determine the chemical elements used to make the pigment that makes the painting; they can use imaging techniques such as Highlight Reflective Transformation Imaging and dStretch© to enhance their visibility; they can use digital imagery to disentangle complex superimposed paintings; and they can use portable laser instruments to analyse the micro-topography of the rock surface and integrate these technologies into a 3-D environment. This paper outlines a robust methodology and preliminary results to show how an integration of different portable technologies can serve rock art research and management.