Thesis (M.A.)--University of Montana, 2007. / Title from title screen. Description based on contents viewed July 12, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 100-108).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Montana, 2007. / Title from title screen. Description based on contents viewed July 18, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 80-88).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Montana, 2007. / Title from title screen. Description based on contents viewed July 25, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 55-60).

Bibliography: pages 190-203. / This thesis consists of a stable carbon isotopic assessment of the diets of the Holocene human inhabitants of the southwestern Cape, South Africa. Samples of the foods these people ate were collected from each of the four major physiographic zones in the area, and their ¹³C/¹²C ratios measured. A total of more than 200 such analyses enabled the estimation of the average δ¹³C values of prehistoric human diets in each zone. This information is used to interpret δ¹³C measurements on a series of archaeological human skeletons. The results are consistent with a model of prehistoric subsistence behaviour in which people living at the coast made intensive use of marine food resources throughout the Holocene, consuming such a large proportion of these foods that they must have spent much, if not all of their time at the coast. Inland skeletons reflect an almost entirely terrestrial diet. These results contradict hypotheses about seasonal population movements between the coast and the interior generated from excavated archaeological material. Considerable changes in many of our current views of the Late Stone Age of the south-western Cape will have to be made in order to accommodate these data.

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Anthropology, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Department of Anthropology, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

The research reported here arose from perceived lacunae regarding archaeological understanding of mesolithic settlement in eastern Scotland. Historically this area, for a number of reasons, has seen 1ittle archaeological research in comparison to the maritime west of the country, a bias that requires redressing. The characteristics, problems and potentials of available data are assembled for the first time and critically assessed. Discussion of methodologies appropriate to this material is developed, and small-scale fieldwork undertaken within this framework presented. Any introduction of a new range of data is, in part, a construction of that data, and the particular interpretative and thematic stresses of the thesis arise from the argument that narratives of gatherer-hunter communities in the past have objectified those groups, consequently hindering comprehension of them. To this end an approach to a social archaeology of the mesolithic is developed, stressing the importance of examining skills and routines that, through thei; extension in particular contexts, may have structured an agent's experience of landscapes in the past. In order to flesh out these arguments and introduce the material evidence in more detail, a series of overlapping case studies is developed exploring in turn, the relationships between mesolithic folk and woodlands, the significance of salmon fishing, the inhabitation of the coast, and stone tool procurement, production and discard. These varied narratives incorporate the results of a range of small-scale desktop projects and fieldwork designed to test the potential of this approach to a social archaeology of the period. Whilst these studies are at present fragmentary, it is contended that they demonstrate that accounts of gatherer-hunter communities in the east of Scotland can aspire to a meaningful level of engagement with human lives in the past. The project scholarship was funded by Historic Scotland.