Ecological Interpretation in Archaeology: Part II

1958 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. W. Meighan ◽  
D. M. Pendergast ◽  
B. K. Swartz ◽  
M. D. Wissler
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Animals ◽  
Present Discussion ◽  
Agricultural Communities ◽  
Hunting And Gathering ◽  
Culture History

In a previous paper (Meighan and others 1958), we considered techniques whereby the archaeologist can derive conclusions concerning prehistoric man's relationship to his environment. We limited our study to hunting and gathering societies since we felt that these were most directly and intimately affected by environment. In the present discussion, we have attempted to expand our study to include archaeological communities marked by the presence of agriculture, domestic animals, or both. Our inquiry can be phrased thus: what physical remains associated with agricultural communities can be used as evidence for ecological inferences? The answers to this question are neither as numerous nor as obvious as we first supposed, yet such answers are basic to an understanding of culture history.

Nomadism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Carl Salzman
Keyword(s):  
Primary Production ◽  
Domestic Animals ◽  
Population Movement ◽  
High Altitudes ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Natural Pasture ◽  
Hunting And Gathering ◽  
Environmental Adaptations ◽  
Desert Areas ◽  
Regular Patterns

Nomadism is a technique of population movement used to accomplish a variety of goals. It is used for primary production when the resources to be tapped are distributed thinly over a wide space, or are located in different places in a large region. Commonly nomadism is a technique used in a spatially extensive adaptation. Pastoralists raising domestic animals on natural pasture move from grazed areas to areas with fresh pasture, and from dry areas to those with water. Nomadism follows regular patterns where the resources tapped are reliable and thus predictable. This is common in macro-environmental adaptations to factors such as seasons and altitude. Some pastoralists have mountain adaptations, migrating to high altitudes in summer and low altitudes in winter, an adaptation called transhumance in Europe. Nomadic patterns are more irregular when rainfall patterns, and thus pasturage, are erratic and unpredictable, as is common in desert areas with low rainfall. Among some pastoral peoples, all of the households in the community move together. Among other pastoral peoples, a sector of the populations is nomadic; young and/or mature men migrate with the livestock, while women, children, and elders remain in a stationary home settlement. This is also the pattern in European transhumance. Many pastoral peoples produce primarily for their own subsistence; it is common that they have multi-resource or mixed economies, engaging also in hunting and gathering, horticulture, agriculture, and arboriculture. Economic activities are not limited to primary production; patterns of predation, including raiding and extortion, against other pastoralists, farmers, and traders are widespread. Other pastoral peoples are heavily market-oriented, producing for sale, or have symbiotic relations with hunters or cultivators; it is normal that they are more specialized in their production. But pastoralists can be found at all points on a continuum between subsistence- and market-oriented.

Approaches to the Origins of Agriculture

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme Barker
Keyword(s):  
Natural World ◽  
Domestic Animals ◽  
Cultivated Plants ◽  
Restricted Range ◽  
Origins Of Agriculture ◽  
Hunting And Gathering ◽  
The World ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Different Parts

Humans have occupied our planet for several million years, but for almost all of that period they have lived as foragers, by various combinations of gathering, collecting, scavenging, fishing, and hunting. The first clear evidence for activities that can be recognized as farming is commonly identified by scholars as at about 12,000 years ago, at about the same time as global temperatures began to rise at the end of the Pleistocene (the ‘Ice Ages’) and the transition to the modern climatic era, the Holocene. Subsequently, a variety of agricultural systems based on cultivated plants and, in many areas, domesticated animals, has replaced hunting and gathering in almost every corner of the globe. Today, a relatively restricted range of crops and livestock, first domesticated several thousand years ago in different parts of the world, feeds almost all of the world’s population. A dozen crops make up over 80 per cent of the world’s annual tonnage of all crops: banana, barley, maize, manioc, potato, rice, sorghum, soybean, sugar beet, sugar cane, sweet potato, and wheat (Diamond, 1997: 132). Only five large (that is, over 100 pounds) domestic animals are globally important: cow, sheep, goat, pig, and horse. The development of agriculture brought profound changes in the relationship between people and the natural world. Archaeologists have usually theorized that, with the invention of farming, people were able to settle down and increase the amount and reliability of their food supply, thus allowing the same land to support more people than by hunting and gathering, allowing our species tomultiply throughout the world. The ability to produce food and other products from domesticated plants and animals surplus to immediate subsistence requirements also opened up new pathways to economic and social complexity: farming could mean new resources for barter, payment of tax or tribute, for sale in a market; it could mean food for non-food producers such as specialist craft-workers, priests, warriors, lords, and kings. Thus farming was the precondition for the development of the first great urban civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus valley, China, the Americas, and Africa, and has been for all later states up to the present day.

Christianity and culture: history, tradition, modernity

1997 ◽  
pp. 65-66
Author(s):  
V. Klymov
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
National Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Culture History ◽  
State Administration ◽  
State Pedagogical ◽  
State Pedagogical Institute ◽  
The Many ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Cultural Experts ◽  
Practical Conference

Under this name, on November 20-21, the All-Ukrainian Scientific and Practical Conference took place in Poltava, which became one of the many events devoted to the 2000th anniversary of the Nativity of Christ. Its organizers were Poltava Regional State Administration, Department of Religious Studies at the Institute of Philosophy named after G. Skovoroda, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Poltava State Pedagogical Institute. VG Korolenko. The conference was attended by scholars: religious scholars, historians, philosophers, ethnographers, cultural experts, teachers from Kyiv, and many regions of Ukraine.

Modernism, Empiricism, and Rationalism

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-47
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Squires
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Irish Poetry ◽  
Dimensional Spectrum ◽  
Culture History ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Rule Out

Modernism is usually defined historically as the composite movement at the beginning of the twentieth century which led to a radical break with what had gone before in literature and the other arts. Given the problems of the continuing use of the concept to cover subsequent writing, this essay proposes an alternative, philosophical perspective which explores the impact of rationalism (what we bring to the world) on the prevailing empiricism (what we take from the world) of modern poetry, which leads to a concern with consciousness rather than experience. This in turn involves a re-conceptualisation of the lyric or narrative I, of language itself as a phenomenon, and of other poetic themes such as nature, culture, history, and art. Against the background of the dominant empiricism of modern Irish poetry as presented in Crotty's anthology, the essay explores these ideas in terms of a small number of poets who may be considered modernist in various ways. This does not rule out modernist elements in some other poets and the initial distinction between a poetics of experience and one of consciousness is better seen as a multi-dimensional spectrum that requires further, more detailed analysis than is possible here.

PROBLEMS OF STRAY ANIMALS IN NOVOSIBIRSK

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-91
Author(s):  
Elena E. Rinchinova ◽  
Diyara A. Takumova ◽  
Irina I. Bochkareva
Keyword(s):  
Urban Population ◽  
Domestic Animals ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Quantitative Indicators ◽  
The City

The article discusses main issues of organizing activities for the treatment of stray and street animals in the city of Novosibirsk. The important role of successful solving the problem of stray animals in ensuring environmental comfort and safety of the urban population is noted. Definitions of the concepts “stray animals” and “street animals” are given, the differences between them are emphasized. The main regulatory and legal documents governing the handling of stray and street animals are listed. The ways in which domestic animals get into a stray state are described briefly. The results of the collection and analysis of information on the activities of shelters for stray animals in Novosibirsk are described. The information on the quantitative indicators of the shelters are given. Conclusions on how to solve the problem of stray animals, relying on the latest regulations are drawn.

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