This study investigates the land-use patterns of the Iroquoian populations that occupied south-central Ontario during the Late Woodland period. Its initial objective is to understand their cultural ecology as reflected in the placement of their semi-permanent settlements over time. Its ultimate goal is to ascertain how environmental change and ecological adaptation contributed to culture change and particularly to the historical development of these populations and their long-term settlement shift from the north shore of Lake Ontario to Huronia and Petunia. / The theoretical guide for this study is the premise that an understanding of culture change can only be achieved by considering evolutionary sequences in all their particularistic complexity, taking into account both generalizations about human behaviour and contingent influences. The methodological guide is the concept of multidimensional constraint, the idea that human behaviour is the rational negotiation of objectives that are constrained by both internal and external parameters operating in a nested series of contexts. These principles are used to develop a methodology utilizing detailed environmental description, summary statistics, and careful evaluation and interpretation to investigate correlations between settlement locations and environmental features at the local, regional, and pan-regional scales. The overall objective is a well-grounded explanatory narrative outlining the multiple dimensions of constraint that influenced Late Woodland settlement in south-central Ontario. / The ensuing investigations yield numerous insights into Iroquoian cultural ecology and illustrate the complexity of the long-term settlement shift. In broad outline, it involves an initial phase of settlement, indicating continuity with the Middle Woodland period, an expansion phase, involving the occupation of analogous physiographic zones throughout south-central Ontario, and a final contraction phase, involving coalescence into the uplands of northern Simcoe County. At the local and regional scales, these phases involve slightly different adaptive strategies over time and space, influenced by constraints that included community population size, intensifying food production, temporal and spatial climatic variation, foraging logistics, changing distributions of natural resources, and geo-politics. These results demonstrate the adaptive capacity of these Iroquoian populations, confirm the efficacy of the methodological approach, and establish an ecological context for future investigations dealing with the social aspects of Late Woodland culture change in South-central Ontario.

The Newport Army Ammunition Plant archaeological survey showed the existence of a more complex settlement pattern than could be explained by the simple dispersed hunting model used in organizing the survey. This reexamination of the survey data in light of a more complex model of subsistence and settlement drawn from ethnographic data indicates the existence of a system of three classes of sites including camps, intelligence gathering stations, and resource extraction locations, that can be distinguished in part by the number of artifacts per site. It is further shown that the subsistence activities of prehistoric Indians did not differ significantly between unwatered forest sites and prairie sites. Finally, it is suggested that a relatively high density of sites in the prairie and the high intensity of their occupation is related to the presence of nearby water sources.

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On the broadest level this dissertation makes a methodological statement about the design of regional research in archaeology, especially for Cultural Resource Management. It advocates by example a revised concept and set of requirements for regional research design. This revision views regional research design as something different from project-specific design. Regional research design requires the archaeologist focus on the total research potential of a region, rather than those problems that fascinate an individual. The regional research design resembles an overview in taking this perspective, but differs by providing an archaeological research program. This program specifies how the potential of an area relates to the coordination of research effort between projects, the assessment of archaeological significance and the integration of small projects. At no time is the regional research design a cookbook. It can never realize the unique potential of a specific project, nor specify exact techniques for field work. A regional research design for southwestern Arizona provides the empirical illustration of the revised concept and requirements. As is typical of most CRM research, this area does not equate to either a physiographic or cultural unit but rather results from the Bureau of Land Management and the National Forest Service's division of Arizona into Class I overview units. The core of this research design is a synthesis of the environment, ethnography, and archaeology of the region. This synthesis and an historical consideration of archaeological research in the area provides the basis for identifying the major scientific issues which archaeologists have (or can) addressed in the region. This leads to the development of a research program for southwestern Arizona. The research program specifies a minimal representative data set that all projects in the region should collect.

This thesis provides a model for understanding how social classes arose in the Gulf of Georgia area. This model distinguishes how social status in rank and a class societies are manifested and maintained in non-state, kin-based societies, drawing mainly from ethnographic descriptions. The relationship between the living and the dead for making status claims in both rank and class societies makes the archaeological study of mortuary ritual important for investigating these relationships. I propose that burial mounds and cairns, which were prominent in the region from 1500 to 1000 years ago, reflect a time when status differentiation was defined mainly through social rank. Following this period, when all forms of below-ground burials cease and above-ground graves become the dominant form of mortuary practice, I propose that the historically recorded pattern of social class emerged. Archaeological investigations of the burial mounds and cairns at the Scowlitz site have provided the first fully reported instances of mound and cairn burials in this region. Using less well reported data from over 150 additional burial mounds and cairns reported from other sites in the region, evidence for the nature of status differentiation sought out. Patterns in the burial record are investigated through discussing variation within classes of burials, demography and deposition, spatial patterning, grave goods, and temporal variation. These patterns and changes are then discussed within the context of the larger culture history of the region, suggesting that the late Marpole or Garrison sub-phase may be defined as ending around 1000 BP with the cessation of below-ground burial practices. The general patterns observed in mound and cairn burials and the changes in mortuary ritual subsequent to their being built generally support the idea of a shift from a rank to a class society. The thesis provides a basis for further investigation of questions of social status and inequality in the Gulf of Georgia region. / Arts, Faculty of / Anthropology, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

The research discussed in this study involves examining Late Archaic settlement and subsistence practices in the Tucson Basin. The Late Archaic encompasses the time period from 3000 BP until the adoption of ceramics, ca. AD 200, and witness many changes in adaptation including a reduction in residential mobility and the adoption of cultigens. Data from excavations of Late Archaic sites in the Tucson Basin and elsewhere in the southern desert have documented agricultural villages dispersed along major waterways by 2500 BP. Much of the research has been limited to excavation of sites in single environmental zones, primarily the floodplain, however, and limited information on exploitation or occupation of other ecological zones has been available. This study uses a regional data base to examine Late Archaic occupation of all ecological zones in the Tucson Basin. The Tucson Basin Survey, a 100 percent survey of the Northern Tucson Basin, has provided a unique opportunity for interpreting Late Archaic settlement and subsistence. Late Archaic site distributions are analyzed and assemblage and other site data are used to determine potential roles of sites within the Late Archaic settlement system. The Tucson Basin environment is examined to determine its influence on settlement and subsistence practices. Existing models of Late Archaic settlement-subsistence systems are evaluated using the survey data, and three potential settlement-subsistence models are proposed.

This research is concerned with Kai Tahu experiences and understandings of the concept and use of the term, landscape. The term itself is one used variously to represent for us as Iwi, the land and the sea including flora and fauna. The Kai Tahu landscape is Papatuanuku, our cosmological mother. Particular areas used for the case studies include the following marae: Otakou, Karitane, Kaikoura, Tuahiwi, Ka marae e toru o Horomaka, Taumutu, Te Tai Poutini, Hukanui, Waihopai, Arowhenua, Oraka, Awarua and the many places of te rohe potae o Kai Tahu i Te Waipounamu. Material was drawn from literature, the participants formally interviewed and many from within and outside Kai Tahu rohe potae. All responses are used to illustrate the ways in which Kai Tahu and some of their non-Kai Tahu spouses express particular definitions of what for each, constitutes and is constituted in the landscape. Kai Tahu participants� landscape definition includes whakapapa, placenames, identity (personal and cultural), spirituality and sustenance. Elements of these are present to a similar degree for some of the spouses, but not all. This seems largely dependent upon the degree to which they have participated in matters pertaining to Kai Tahu. Degrees of participation and connection may be applied to Tahu people alienated from their kaik, whether urbanised near or distantly domiciled. Theoretical bases in literature from a number of disciplines are used to discuss perceptions of what anthropologists more usually term �place� and how Kai Tahu fit this or choose to fit the understanding of cultural others into our world view. The research also looks briefly at the environmental landscape and who presently has power and therefore mana over its use and or misuse, especially in relation to management of Papatuanuku. Due to the [sic] of the type [sic] project this thesis is, it cannot finally conclude there is a single Kai Tahu or gender specific perception of landscape. This would never be provable in any circumstance, since it is not scientifically based. It does however, suggest there is an indigenous perspective of landscape that differs from certain Western thinking and within the indigenous perspective, a Kai Tahu epistemological understanding of the landscape based on our theory and knowledge of ourselves.

A programme of archaeological research was undertaken in the Wairarapa region on the northern shores of Cook Strait, New Zealand. Some 27 excavations conducted during a 3 year period were designed primarily to examine prehistoric economy and settlement pattern in the region. In addition, studies were made of early historical records of Maori life, Maori traditional history, and aspects of the modern and prehistoric enviroment. In the analysis of excavated material, particular attention was given to physical anthropology, subsistence economy, and the trading patterns revealed by the importation of a number of rock types from elsewhere in New Zealand. It was found that human occupation in Palliser Bay was most intense from about 1150AD to 1400AD, and that significant depopulation may have occurred by 1650AD. At least 6 kinship linked communities were resident in this early period, probably originating from further north. Over several centuries thay strengthened their social ties with other communities in Cook Strait, progressively losing contact with northern areas. A conjunctive picture is reconstructed of a typical community of 30 to 40 people, and aspects of their physical condition, economy, technology, settlement pattern, external social relationships and ideology described. Their economy was initially a balance between hunter-gatherer pursuits and kumara-based horticulture, but in the course of time their forest clearing activities set into motion a series of episodes of erosion which culminated in the development of broad shingle river beds and active fans. High riverine sediment loads led to the loss of much of the local marine fauna at river mouths. A general climatic deterioration about 1450AD and then from 1600 onwards accelerated this process to render the enviroment largely unsuitable to Polynesian habitation. It is argued that coupled to these changes are settlement pattern modifications and an increase in human disease and malnutrition.

Thesis (D. LITT.)--University of London.