To Hell with Ethnoarchaeology … and Back!

Lyons, Diane; Nicholas, David

doi:10.1080/19442890.2019.1642557

Cited by 25 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 172 publications

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“…Chirikure highlights the different stakes and standards that apply to 'archaeologies of us' when the 'us' refers to indigenous communities, and further queries how separable ethnoarchaeology (or, indeed, ethnography) is from archaeologies of the contemporary world. That said, African archaeologists are much better represented in the former than the latter, and arguments have been made to take ethnoarchaeology's reflexive as a way to interrogate the traces of archaeology's own practices (Roddick, 2019) and focus on the historicities of non-Western communities contributing ethnoarchaeological knowledge (Lyons and David, 2019). Methodologically, the distinction between ethnoarchaeology and archaeologies of the contemporary world is particularly salient where the latter have not engaged with the issues just described and where they uncritically conflate or combine ethnographic and material culture-focused methodologies; these developed along different trajectories and with different understandings of how data are generated.…”

Section: Orientations and Methods For Archaeologies Of The Contemporary Past In Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

Archaeologies of the Recent and Contemporary Past in Africa

King¹

2020

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology

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Archaeologies of the recent and contemporary world represent a relatively young movement within Africa. Rather than being conceived as relative to a particular chronology, this movement is often characterized as concerned with investigating the practice of archaeology itself, especially its politics and its understanding of time. The small but growing body of literature in this subfield is reviewed both to highlight a moment of disciplinary innovation and to reflect on what modifications of methodology, ethics, and theory are necessary to adapt an intellectual movement developed in other parts of the world for the African continent. These include an emphasis on foregrounding African knowledge systems, especially diverse experiences of time and materiality; the potential for co-creation of data through relationships between these and Western ways of knowing; and mixed research methods. Themes such as time, materiality, and reflexivity are considered in contexts across the continent, as well as where archaeologies of the contemporary world overlap or exist in tension with related moves in cognate African Studies fields.

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Section: Orientations and Methods For Archaeologies Of The Contemporary Past In Africamentioning

confidence: 99%

Archaeologies of the Recent and Contemporary Past in Africa

King¹

2020

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology

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“…However, the extent to which entomophagy played a main role in the diet and evolution of hominoids is still unclear (Scott 2019), and suggesting an analogy between chimpanzees and early hominoids with regard to this form of subsistence may still be speculative, something for which future studies may provide further insight. We are reminded that the use of relational analogies, even within species, to infer past behavior has long stirred debate and undoubtably will continue to do so (Cunningham and Mc-Geough 2018;Gosselain 2016;Lyons and David 2019), a complication only further compounded by comparing behavior among genera that diverged long before major changes in locomotion and diet were in place.…”

Section: Wei Chumentioning

confidence: 99%

Archaeology of the Perishable

Pascual‐Garrido¹,

Almeida-Warren²

2021

Current Anthropology

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Selection and transport of materials for tools is ubiquitous throughout our species' evolutionary history. Yet our understanding of early human material culture is heavily skewed toward lithic technology. This poses challenges when reconstructing our technical origins, as organic raw materials, especially plants, likely played a significant role despite their absence from the record until 300 kya. Studies of plant-tool use by living apes can serve as a proxy to reconstruct such aspects of human behavior. Employing archaeological methods, we investigated raw material procurement for termite-fishing tools by three chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) populations in Tanzania: Gombe, Issa, and Mahale. All communities exploited plant sources from the immediate vicinity of termite mounds, as well as farther away, and reused them. However, at Issa, more parts were sourced per plant, with the number of removals decreasing as distance from the mound increased. These disparities are likely caused by environmental differences. Issa apes might try to minimize transport costs in what is a comparably more open and drier habitat with fewer suitable sources available near mounds. Despite similar raw material types being available, Issa and Mahale chimpanzees exclusively used bark for tool manufacture, while at Gombe, various materials were employed; these differences may reflect cultural variants. Our study highlights how environmental and cultural factors shape chimpanzee technology and identifies similarities to raw material selection processes inferred for Oldowan tool users. The archaeology of the perishable, even if at its infancy, is providing a new framework for reconstructing archaeologically invisible aspects of early human behavior and our own technological origins.

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“…In this respect, the work of L. Binford [20] has been fundamental for developing such correlates and for exploring large datasets in ethnoarchaeology (herby defined as the study of the present for archaeological purposes). However, notwithstanding the recent increase of research in this area [21], quantitative approaches are still few in the discipline [22].…”

Section: Aim Of the Present Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantitative Analysis of Drought Management Strategies across Ethnographically-Researched African Societies: A Pilot Study

Biagetti

Zurro

Alcaina-Mateos

et al. 2021

Land

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In this paper, we present a pilot study aimed at investigating the impact of subsistence strategies and environmental pressure on the distribution of ethnographically documented strategies to cope with drought and its effects across 35 current societies in Africa. We use freely accessible ethnographic databases to retrieve data on how a number of African societies deal with the circumstances of drought, and ascertain the impact of geography on their distribution in order to measure possible relationships between them, a set of subsistence choices, and proxies of environmental constraints. We use Canonical Correspondence Analysis to explore the emerging patterns and find that subsistence strategy strongly impacts the choice of drought management strategies, especially if considered with a proxy of local environmental condition. Spatial proximity and aridity per se have only marginal impact, highlighting other relevant processes of cultural transmission that at least partly transcend (a) the intensity of human interaction over geographic gradients and (b) local adaptation primarily dependent on water availability. This study supports the wide applicability of quantitative and replicable methods to cross-cultural evidence on a variety of adaptive strategies and uses ethnographic data to propose new hypotheses that can inform future archaeological research by showing recurrent and non-case-specific choices highlighting resilient practices and adaptive behaviour in Africa.

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To Hell with Ethnoarchaeology … and Back!

Cited by 25 publications

References 172 publications

Archaeologies of the Recent and Contemporary Past in Africa

Archaeologies of the Recent and Contemporary Past in Africa

Archaeology of the Perishable

Quantitative Analysis of Drought Management Strategies across Ethnographically-Researched African Societies: A Pilot Study

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