This doctoral thesis presents the results of the pioneering archaeological investigation conducted in the Northern Mexican Highlands with the aim to evaluate the existing indicators of the earliest human occupations at the end of the Pleistocene and discover new evidence of ancient cultural manifestations through a systematic exploration of an endorheic basic in the Zacatecas desert, a region never studied before. An exhaustive survey and analysis of the available literature on Mexican prehistory establishes the weak points of the local paradigms, differentiating between academic myths and objective realities. A complete historiography of the topic of the earliest humans in Mexico has been achieved, for the first time. The study of several collections of flaked stone artefacts, in different cities in Mexico, show new indicators of the presence of bearers of the Late Paleoamerican cultures, in regions where their presence had been weakly confirmed. The most important part of the research consisted in fieldwork realised during two long seasons; the first one dedicated to the surface explorations and the second one to excavations. Thirty-five new archaeological sites were discovered in the first phase, most of them open campsites reminiscent of hunter-gatherer societies, with a richness of stone artefacts on their surface. They indicate a long cultural sequence, going from the Late Pleistocene to the Late Holocene and the historic periods. Four sites were further studied by fourteen test excavation units: Dunas de Milpa Grande, San José de las Grutas, the Chiquihuite Cave and Ojo de Agua. Two new archaeological cultures were identified, one at Dunas (an interesting assemblage of limestone and basalt flaked stone tools) and another one at San José (a limestone concave-based points complex). First indicators of ʻolder than Clovisʼ human presence have also been obtained. The palaeoenvironmental data provide a preliminary reconstruction of the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene landscape of the basin, based on geology, extinct fauna, phytolith and mollusc analyses. Radiocarbon and OSL results support a first cultural and paleoclimatic model for the study area. This investigation also discovered the first case of a “black mat” in Mexico: a black layer of sediment deposited under specific environmental conditions during the Younger Dryas cooling event.

Social networks have been essential throughout hominin evolution, facilitating cooperative childrearing, transmission of cultural knowledge and the sharing of information and resources. As hominins dispersed out of Africa, these networks needed to be maintained at progressively higher latitudes. The first part of this thesis explores the impact of latitude on brain organisation and the possible implications for social cognition. I hypothesise that the lower temperatures and light levels found at higher latitudes select for larger bodies and visual systems, which in turn necessitate larger somatic and visual brain areas. Using orbit size to index eye and visual cortex size, I demonstrate a robust positive relationship between absolute latitude and orbit volume in recent humans. I show that Neanderthals, who solely inhabited high latitudes, have significantly larger orbits than contemporary anatomically modern humans (AMH), who evolved in lower latitude Africa and had only relatively recently dispersed into higher latitudes. Since Neanderthals and AMH dated 27-75kya have almost identical endocranial volumes, I argue that if a greater proportion of the Neanderthal brain was required for somatic and visual processing, this would reduce the volume of neural tissue available for other functions. Since, according to the Social Brain Hypothesis, neocortex volume is positively associated with social complexity, I propose that Neanderthals might have been limited to smaller social networks than AMH. The second part of the thesis explores the challenge of maintaining social networks across greater geographic distances at higher latitudes, where high travelling costs seem to prevent whole tribes from bonding during periodic aggregations. Using a gas model I predict that at lower latitudes daily subsistence mobility allows sufficient encounters between subgroups for the tribe to maintain connectivity, whereas in (Sub)Arctic biomes additional mechanisms are required to facilitate tribal cohesion. This may explain the apparent ‘explosion’ of Upper Palaeolithic art in Europe: symbolic representations allowed social ties to be sustained in the absence of frequent face-to-face contact. Overall, this thesis demonstrates that latitude may influence both brain organisation and cultural expression and argues that both can have a substantial impact on the maintenance of hominin social networks at high latitudes.

Prior to this study, knowledge of Gobi Desert prehistory was mostly limited to early and mid-20th century descriptions of undated stone tool assemblages from unanalyzed museum collections. This research focuses on the use of extensive existing museum collections to establish a baseline chronology of technology, economy, and land-use for prehistoric Gobi Desert groups. Radiocarbon and luminescence dating are used to establish an artefact-based chronology and provide a relative age for 96 archaeological site assemblages. Interpretations of land-use derived from lithic analysis are compared to detailed regional and local palaeoenvironmental records in order to contextualize residential mobility and subsistence. Results indicate that a dramatic shift in land-use after about 8000 years ago was related to a combination of widespread forestation and the increased productivity of lowland habitats during a period of high effective moisture. Hunter-gatherers organized their movements around dune-field/wetland environments, but utilized a range of both high- and low-ranked foods such as large ungulates from adjoining plains and uplands, and seeds and/or tubers from dune-fields and wetlands. New radiocarbon dates indicate that the use of dune-fields and wetlands persisted into the early Bronze Age, overlapping with the rise of nomadic pastoralism across Northeast Asia. These findings illuminate the period just prior to the rise of nomadic pastoralism in Northeast Asia and add considerable depth to our understanding of hunter-gatherer adaptations within arid environments following the Last Glacial Maximum.

The δδ¹³C and δ¹⁵N composition of incremental segments of tooth dentine was used to infer infant and childhood diet in a post-medieval London population, and a hunting and gathering Mesolithic/Neolithic group from Latvia. Health was analysed using defects on the tooth enamel caused by stress, termed enamel hypoplasia. The populations, which differ markedly in their economy, diet and health, were selected because of the difference in childhood experiences between the two groups. The results were used to consider questions about childhood, including how early diet may have been influenced by social factors such as class or status, the effect this could have on population dynamics and how childhood diet and health are related. The results show that the London individuals were rarely breastfed beyond 6 months and in some instances not at all. A small isotopic difference between males and females was observed which could be caused by dietary or physiological differences. The peak incidence of hypoplasia may be related to developmental patterns, rather than stress caused by weaning. The Zvejnieki individuals had a slightly longer breastfeeding duration. Those buried with pendants consumed a different diet in childhood to those without pendants, suggesting a complex social system, possibly indicating that diet was related to the role a person had within the community. There is a suggestion diet may have shifted between the Middle Mesolithic and Late Neolithic, although not dramatically. Neither population have elevated δ¹³C often associated with breastfeeding. The early life histories of the groups are not compared directly, but general observations concerning the children’s lives are considered. It is concluded that economy is not a reliable predictor of infant feeding strategies, as hunter-gatherers provide children with solid foods at a similar time to industrial groups. Intra-population variability was found to be a feature of all socio-economic groups.

This thesis constructs an ethnography for the nineteenth century ǀXam Bushmen of the Northern Cape Province of South Africa, known primarily through a nineteenth century manuscript collection of oral narrative (the Bleek-Lloyd archive), which has, over the past twenty-five years, increasingly become the focus of scholarly attention, mined for insights about the cultural world of southern Bushman societies. It draws on the Bleek-Lloyd archive to produce a detailed ethnographic case study, focusing on the ideological and ontological concepts that underpinned the differentiation of ǀXam society. Firstly, the thesis situates the archive and ǀXam society within their particular environmental and historical contexts, providing valuable supplementary information that informs readings of the narratives. By producing a fully searchable transcription of the entirety of the archive, paying close attention to emic terminology, and examining the recurrence of thematic associations of this phraseology throughout the narratives, the analysis explores the constitution of ǀXam ‘personhood’ and examines the extent to which the ‘hunter-gatherer’ category forms a useful heuristic for understanding ǀXam society, with a particular focus on models of the ‘animic ontology’. The ǀXam deployed a series of positively and negatively evaluated traits in the creation of dimensions of authority, obligation, and social responsibility, embedded in particular social identities; central to these constructions and to the differentiation of these identities were the techniques and resources of ǀXam subsistence practices, salient in the production of admirable (socially-responsible hunters), reprehensible (antagonistic ‘beasts of prey’), and more ambiguous (ǃgi:tǝn ritual specialists) identities. Recognising this internal differentiation, the thesis outlines ǀXam ‘subsistence strategies’ and suggests they should be defined broadly to include their contacts and interactions with non-ǀXam groups, with domesticated animals, and with the novel material culture of the colonial period; these interactions were a consequence of their ‘hunter-gatherer’ strategies rather than a negation of them. Such strategies generated experiences that reinforced and reconstituted ǀXam ideological frameworks, incorporating the dynamics of the nineteenth century ‘frontier’ scenario and provided avenues for social change that ultimately led to the collapse of independent hunter-gatherer lifeways, and to the adoption of strategies that incorporated ǀXam individuals within rural and urban ‘Coloured’ populations of the Northern Cape; placing the ǀXam in a comparative colonial context, the thesis stresses the wider relevance of this particular ethnography for understanding hunter-gatherer engagements with food-producing, state-level societies.

The challenges of producing and directing small professional theatre in any metropolitan area are many. This thesis is concerned with the process of finding a producing theatre, casting, rehearsal and staging the play, "Nothing Sacred" by George F. Walker, in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Unlike many thesis projects this one was conducted completely outside of the university setting and is thus a true reflection of the small professional theatre community.

In many cases in the past fish bones recovered during archaeological excavations at Upper Palaeolithic sites were often assumed to result from human activity without any consideration for alternate accumulation processes. Many of these assemblages had not been analysed in a scientifically rigorous manner, with some receiving no consideration at all. A review of current evidence and results of new analyses indicate that salmonids (salmon and trout) are the most frequently recorded fish at the European Palaeolithic cave sites. Two potential accumulation agents for fish remains were explored: brown bears (Ursus arctos) and eagle owls (Bubo bubo). Controlled feeding experiments integrated with ecological studies indicate that salmonid remains survive the digestive systems of both species and result in distinctive patterning in assemblage characteristics. Post-depositional taphonomic processes, such as trampling, also produce distinct taphonomic signatures and are an agent of differential inter-species preservation. A thorough consideration of depositional and post-depositional processes of archaeological assemblages in central Italy (Grotta di Pozzo, Maritza, La Punta and Ortucchio) and Spain (El Juyo, Altamira, Salitre, Castillo and Rascaño) shows that the fish remains from these sites result from human activity. The overrepresentation of cranial elements at the Italian sites suggest that fish were processed by removing the head to perhaps smoke or dry before transportation to other locations for consumption. This research lead to improved methods of analysis, and thus enhanced understanding of the role of fishing and fish consumption in Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer societies.

[pt] Esta dissertação buscou compreender a relação das ações sociais das micro e pequenas empresas no processo de revitalização do centro do Rio de Janeiro. O objeto empírico de nossa pesquisa foi constituído pelas empresas que compõem o projeto Pólo Novo Rio, cujas ações têm como alvo os moradores de rua e catadores de lixo. O estudo revela alguns embates que ocorrem entre os interesses dessas empresas em fortalecer e ampliar seus negócios e os interesses dos moradores de rua e catadores de lixo, que circulam na área e apresentam uma imagem negativa do espaço, que na visão dos empresários fica marcado pela violência e o abandono da cidade. / [en] This dissertation sought to understand the participation of the social actions of the micro and small enterprises in the revitalization process of Rio de Janeiro´s urban center. The empirical object of this research focussed on the enterprises that comprise the project Polo Novo Rio (Pole Rio´s New), the actions of which target the homeless population and trash collectors. The study reveals some struggles that occur between the interests of those enterprises in strengthening and increasing their businesses and the interests of the homeless population and trash collectors in establishing themselves in such a busy area. In the view of the businessmen, this area becomes marked by violence and abandon, which yields a negative image to it.

Lithic artifacts are used in the understanding of human history. In order to do so, analyses and categorizations are made of the artifacts with the use of several methods and terminology. In this thesis, the minimum analytical nodule analysis (MANA) is used as method to analyze assemblages of lithic artifacts from 16 archaeological sites in Sweden. The sites date to Middle Mesolithic (c. 6800–5500 BC) and Late Mesolithic (c. 5500–3900 BC). The aim is to try to understand activities at the sites, and the theory of social organization is used. The results of the study indicate that it is possible to divide the sites into three types based on activity scenarios. In addition to this, the words ‘mobility’ and ‘sedentism’ are problematized in an attempt to understand how mobility and sedentism can be interpreted, both in the light of previous research and based on the results of this study. / Litiska artefakter används i förståelsen av människans historia. För att göra det, görs analyser och kategoriseringar av materialet med användning av flertalet metoder och terminologi. I den här uppsatsen, används minimum analytical nodule analysis (MANA) som metod för att analysera samlingar av litiska artefakter från 16 arkeologiska platser (eng. sites) i Sverige. Platserna är daterade till mellanmesolitikum (ca 6800–5500 f.Kr.) och senmesolitikum (ca 5500–3900 f.Kr.). Syftet är att försöka förstå aktiviteter på platserna, och teorin om social organisation används. Studiens resultat indikerar att det är möjligt att dela in platserna i tre typer baserat på aktivitetsscenarion. Därtill, problematiseras orden ’mobilitet’ och ’sedentism’ i ett försök att förstå hur mobilitet och sedentism kan tolkas, både i ljuset av tidigare forskning och baserat på resultaten av den här studien.

Gotska Sandön is the Baltic ocean’s most isolated island, located approximately 40 kilometres north from the closest civilisation. Today the island serves as a national park and a tourist attraction. The remoteness has made the island a difficult place to reach both in the past and today. Yet, excavations on the island show that human activity existed long before tourists arrived.                     The study observes Gotska Sandön through a long-term perspective by examining the osteological and archaeological findings from the island. The study is part of a larger project conducted by Uppsala university and Södertörns högskola. The purpose of the study is to examine the historic human activity on the island to determine the island’s importance for humans in the past. Therefore, this paper examines all ages where human activity can be traced, resulting in a perspective from the stone age to present-time.         Results indicate human activity through different eras where the island has worked as a hunting ground as well as a place for rituals such as funeral sites. Conclusions that can be drawn from the study is that the island has had different meanings through different times, ritual such as functional. The study finds a strong connection between human activity and seal hunting throughout the ages and indicates the impact seal hunting has had for human survival.